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 introduction the purpose of this special, doubleissue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (ijcyfs) is to provide a platform for new scholars to communicate their interests, concerns and critical perspectives; contribute to the generation of new knowledge; and report on their practices with children, youth, and families across a wide range of contexts and settings. we are very pleased to welcome these new voices to the ongoing scholarly conversation and believe that the contributions assembled here showcase the rich diversity of the field. it is our hope to make this “new scholars” issue a regular feature in ijcyfs, with at least one issue per year dedicated to publishing contributions from undergraduate and graduate students, recently hired faculty members, and others who are new to the field. all of the authors in this volume address topics of critical importance and relevance for those who want to make a meaningful difference in the lives of children, youth and families. many of the issues being examined in this issue will be familiar to those in the field of child, youth and family studies. at the same time, the creative ways that these authors critically engage with these topics and the manner in which they challenge the status quo to invite fresh perspectives and new questions are what make this volume truly exciting. other articles focus on topics that have remained relatively underexplored in our field and on that basis, represent important and novel contributions. collectively, we believe that the voices of these new scholars provide grounds for hope and inspiration as we confront the ever-changing, complex demands of working with children, youth and families in local, regional, national and global contexts. responding to our current times in child and youth care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 494–497 494 responding to our current times in child and youth care janet newbury and veronica pacini-ketchabaw the 21st century is marked with a variety of unique and intersecting issues, opportunities, and political realities. child and youth care (cyc) theory and practice continues to take place within and in response to a range of relationships, discourses, and institutions. our relationship with the physical world is now understood with a sense of urgency as never before. globalized economic systems are impacting how we organize on institutional and even interpersonal levels. technologically mediated worlds are altering who we are, how we engage with each other, and how we envision and enact futures together. these pressing issues are often cast to the margins of cyc discussions, but are increasingly being experienced by many as central to the work we do and the lives we live. students, practitioners, and researchers had the opportunity to connect with each other, and with youth in the community and colleagues from across canada and around the world, at the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria in british columbia, canada to discuss how to respond to our current times. cyc in action iv: responding to our current times (may 1 to 3, 2014) was a lively conference that aimed to put child and youth care practice into context, considering not only what we do and how we do it, but also the political, cultural, and economic conditions at play in our work. janet newbury, ph.d. is a sessional instructor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: newburyj@uvic.ca veronica pacini-ketchabaw, ph.d. is a professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: vpacinik@uvic.ca mailto:newburyj@uvic.ca mailto:vpacinik@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 494–497 495 responding to our current times was an opportunity to critically engage with these matters. it was a chance to explore diverse perspectives and experiences not only to help us better understand our current times, but also to consider how we might creatively engage with these realities. together participants discussed research, practice, theory, and policy as they relate to children, youth, families, and communities. some of the general themes of the conference included: • individual and collective healing: responsibilities and risks • economic, social, cultural, and political considerations • social justice and ethical praxis • queer and feminist perspectives on cyc research, practice, theory, and policy • conversations on decolonization • human service practices and the material world • solidarity, ally work, and friendship in cyc • contemporary child and youth care practices the conference aimed to honour the diverse practices and ways of being that comprise this field as it continues to evolve in response to our times. those who presented at the conference came wearing multiple hats, raising important considerations about residential care, early childhood education, counselling, research, intercultural practices, decolonizing practices, gender identities, diverse family compositions, mental health, diagnoses, youth justice, cyberspace, global conditions for children and youth, therapeutic relationships, music and art therapy, concepts and theories that guide our practice, mindfulness, organizational change, intercultural collaborations, advocacy, and so much more. importantly, these and other topics are understood not as distinct, but as interrelated by the very fact that they co-exist. ron barnett (2013) identifies these murky times as an era of “supercomplexity”. he notes that supercomplexity gives rise to open-textured questions that yield, in a global and pluralist world, interpretations that are not just different but which are incompatible; and there is no straightforward way of resolving those differences. and this, in itself, marks off supercomplexity from complexity. supercomplexity produces a multiplication of incompatible differences of interpretation. (p. 67) the incompatible yet co-existing differences to which barnett refers certainly presented themselves at the conference, and they are not likely to go away soon. acknowledging supercomplexity changes our task from eliminating differences and determining “right” ways forward (in terms of practices, policies, or pedagogy), to “learning for an unknown future” (barnett, 2013, p. 65). since the multiplicities in which we find ourselves co-create our world through the ways they come together, he asserts that “the way forward lies in construing and enacting a pedagogy for human being … an ontological turn …” (p. 65, emphasis added). it was in the spirit of inviting differences to interact that we organized cyc in action iv: responding to our current times. and it is in the same spirit that we put forward a call for conference presenters to submit articles to this special issue of the international journal of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 494–497 496 child, youth and family studies. just as the conference sessions did not represent all that there is to the field, but rather offered a collection of possible entry-points, so too does this special issue refrain from making claims of representation. instead, we invite you, as readers, to see this as a selection of important articles through which you can temporarily step into different areas of concern in child and youth care, get a sense of its diversity, and imagine the ways these areas come together to create this evolving field of practice. the first article is by jennifer white, and is drawn from her keynote address at the conference. recognizing that we are living in an era of constant change, she suggests that relying on fixed notions of right and ethical action might be getting us into trouble. how then might decisions be made and standards be determined when we acknowledge the power dynamics at play when doing so? in her article an ethos for the times, white challenges all of us to critically reflect on our own place in relation to the norms, discourses, and practices of our field, highlighting the complexities of ethical engagement. by engaging with our field on this macro level, she invites all of us to see our piece as part of what constitutes the whole. in so doing, she sets the tone for the remainder of this special issue, and raises important questions that can guide us in our reading throughout. patti ranahan, natasha blanchet-cohen, and varda mann-feder take up some of these challenges as they consider how we educate for such a diverse and evolving field of practice. taking as a case in point a graduate program in youth work at concordia university in montreal, canada, the authors demonstrate how a range of practices and guiding principles are folded into their integrated approach to teaching and learning. experiential activities, deep reflection, and critical engagement – even contradictory and competing conceptual frameworks – are thoughtfully incorporated into the curriculum. moving towards an integrated approach to youth work education provides a glimpse into how youth workers are currently being prepared for such diverse roles as clinical counsellors, community outreach workers, and more. it is crucial to understand that these macro discussions (and the decisions they inform) have very real implications for service delivery. the next article, by alexandra fleurie-hunter, is entitled exploring the role of agency accreditation in shaping services for street-involved youth and invites us to do just that by considering one particular agency in vancouver, canada. being exploratory in nature, the article outlines some of the developments in service provision for street-involved youth, importantly contextualizing these recent trends in policy development. in particular, it provides a more in-depth look at the move towards accreditation, reviewing literature from both its proponents and its critics. through this, significant points for further inquiry are identified in order to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between accreditation and service provision. shifting now from the vantage point of those who deliver services to that of some of the young people we strive to support, victoria namuggola’s narrative study sheds important light on the day-to-day lives of domestic workers in uganda. critically engaging with the concept of “child labour”, the voices of the young people she interviews call into question notions of autonomy, power dynamics, and freedom. this article, exploitation or empowerment? adolescent female domestic workers in uganda, highlights some of the opportunities, challenges, and agency of so-called “house girls” and also recognizes the activities that take international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 494–497 497 place within households as critical components of the economies in which they take place (and of which they are a part). in a contemporary analysis of capitalism, kathleen skott-myhre and hans skott-myhre propose to reconfigure notions of self-care, boundaries, professionalism, and more in child and youth care. in their article, revolutionary love: cyc and the importance of reclaiming our desire, they suggest that the field of cyc might pay attention to what happens “between people, not within people”. drawing on the work of deleuze and guattari, the authors engage with desire as an affective force rather than as a story of lack, and propose revolt through love. the final article, the canonical self and politicized praxis: a tracing of two concepts, also challenges child and youth care conceptualizations of the self. scott kouri provides a genealogical account of how “the self” has been mapped in the post-secondary child and youth care curriculum, and shows how these accounts of the self adhere to western philosophical preoccupations with the individual. kouri terms this treatment of the self in child and youth care as “the canonical self”. the article ends with a call for alternative approaches that politicize the individualizing and essentializing canonical self. reference barnett, r. (2013). learning for an unknown future. higher education research and development, 31(1), 65–77. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.642841 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 42 exploring the link between school attendance, developmental assets, and social capital in a first nations community kim sanderson, bonnie hutchinson, and jana grekul abstract: in alberta, concerns about the state of educational achievement among first nations students have been widely reported. academic literature has well established the link between poor school performance and delinquency. miyo wahkohtowin community education authority of ermineskin first nation in hobbema (“miyo”) has identified one of its major concerns to be low attendance rates among many students. based on the significant body of work related to risk and protective factors in school-aged children by the search institute of minneapolis, and research related to social capital in aboriginal communities by mignone and o’neil (2005) and others, this study draws on the standard developmental asset profile developed by the search institute, and mignone and o’neil’s (2005) standardized questions related to cultural and social capital in aboriginal communities. results from a survey administered to high school age students (n = 69) and attendance rates for the students, reveal a strong correlation between attendance rates and developmental asset scores. on the other hand, no correlation was revealed between attendance rates and sense of cultural heritage, or perceptions of a positive community context. implications for building assets and social capital among youth, and strengthening community attachments are discussed. key words: developmental assets, cultural capital, social capital, school attendance, first nations acknowledgements: the authors would like to acknowledge the centre for criminal justice research at mount royal university in calgary for funding this research and for their support and encouragement of independent canadian research on criminal and social justice issues, and on safe communities. corresponding author: kim sanderson, m.a., consultant, full circle strategies, inc., box 20 site 270, rr 2, carvel, alberta, canada, toe oho. e-mail: kimsand@telus.net bonnie hutchinson, m.a., consultant, hutchinson associates. telephone: (780) 429-3369. e-mail: bonniehutchinson@shaw.ca jana grekul, ph.d. is assistant professor of sociology and director of the b.a. (criminology) program at the university of alberta, edmonton, alberta, canada, t6g 2r3. e-mail: jana.grekul@ualberta.ca mailto:kimsand@telus.net� mailto:jana.grekul@ualberta.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 43 in alberta, concerns regarding the state of education for first nations students were highlighted in 2009-2010, when results from a northern school division inquiry (the northland school division inquiry team report) revealed that in a jurisdiction where 95% of students were first nations or métis: “…high school completion rates are low and …few of these students complete four or more diploma examination subjects required to meet the entry requirements of most post-secondary institutions” (government of alberta, 2010, p. 22). the link between poor academic performance and delinquency has been well established in academic literature. the results of a meta-analysis reported that students with: “...lower academic performance offended more frequently, committed more serious and violent offences and persisted in their offending” (maguin & loeber, 1996, p. 145). an important factor that affects academic performance is regular attendance. students who attend regularly are more likely to have success and to complete high school than students who attend less regularly. miyo wahkohtowin community education authority of ermineskin first nation in hobbema, alberta (“miyo”) is curious about the link between the engagement of first nations students in their education, as measured by attendance rates, and their engagement with culture and community. in a canadian study with black students in toronto, for example, solomon (1992) found that for black students, school resistance is a consequence of conflict between schools’ cultural assumptions and rules and students’ own cultural backgrounds and experiences. might the same be true for first nations students? the developmental assets profile survey and questions from mignone and o’neil’s (2005) standardized social capital survey contain several items related to culture and cultural engagement. in developing this study, the researchers and miyo representatives thought a comparison of the results between students who attend regularly and students who do not might reveal a link between school success, culture and community, as suggested by solomon’s study and the literature of social capital in aboriginal communities. results from these two research instruments create a potential for learning opportunities that can be shared with other first nations communities. aim of the study miyo wahkohtowin community education authority operates the junior/senior high school and an alternative school on the ermineskin reserve. they report that during the 20102011 school year approximately 39% of high school students attended less than 75% of school days. the student body is comprised of individuals from a fairly homogeneous community. most of the students live in a rural environment and are bused to school. the majority of students are first nations, and the vast majority of the students are from one of the four bands that make up the community of hobbema. in spite of these similarities, some students attend regularly and achieve passing grades while others, from apparently similar circumstances, miss classes, achieve poor results, and eventually drop out. located about an hour south of the provincial capital city, edmonton, the community of hobbema is comprised of four cree nations: samson, louis bull, montana, and ermineskin. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 44 geographically the four groups are neighbours, but they operate independently of each other: members of each band elect their own chiefs and councils, run schools, social agencies, and other forms of governance. hobbema shares characteristics that are common to many aboriginal communities in canada. these include a number of structurally-based disadvantages such as the long-term effects of colonialism, marginalization, government legislation, and the devastating residential schools policy employed in canada from the 1840s until the 1980s (brzozowski, taylor-butts, & johnson, 2006; grekul & laboucane-benson 2008). as a result, aboriginal communities struggle with issues relating to parenting, family dysfunction, substance abuse, and violence. understandably these experiences have resulted in feelings of alienation, mistrust, and animosity toward mainstream institutions and authorities including teachers and the educational system, police and the courts (mercredi, 2000; trocme, knoke, & blackstock, 2004; grekul & sanderson, 2011). it is against this backdrop that the current research project was conducted. miyo wahkohtowin community education authority and the researchers agreed that the project should recognize the two distinct communities to which the students belonged – the school community itself and the broader cultural community. to situate possible solutions within these two communities, and to guide the study, the researchers looked to literature related to developmental assets of school-aged children and to recent canadian research on social capital in aboriginal communities. the following research questions emerged from the discussion: 1. do high school age students with a history of low school attendance have greater, lesser, or a similar number of developmental assets compared to students who attend school regularly? 2. do high school age students with a history of low school attendance have greater, lesser, or a similar sense of their cultural identity, and perceptions of positive social capital in their community, compared to students who attend school regularly? theoretical framework since 1996, the search institute of minneapolis, minnesota has surveyed thousands of students throughout the united states. in analyzing the data, researchers identified 40 different factors (“developmental assets”) that impacted the success of a child. these factors were divided into two categories. the 20 external assets included such things as family support, a caring school climate, and opportunities to be of service to others, while the 20 internal assets included factors such as honesty, cultural competence, and personal power. miyo is interested in using the developmental asset profile (dap) to identify deficits and strengths in the acquisition of assets for high school age students at risk of failure and dropping out. another factor that impacts student motivation and ability to attend school regularly is the perception of safety, opportunities, and care (“social capital”) in their community. social capital is the idea that communities work well or poorly based on the social dimensions of life. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 45 for example, how life is lived in specific places depends on how people get along, whether they trust and respect each other, and the extent to which they share resources. mignone and o’neil (2005) researched cultural and social capital in aboriginal communities and identified three conditions (i.e., socially invested resources, relationships, and networks) that can have a positive or negative impact on children and adults in first nations communities. miyo is also interested in a preliminary exploration of how social capital concepts might strengthen miyo’s ability to enhance student outcomes. methodology members of the research team contacted the miyo administrators to inquire about their interest in a small-scale research project. during initial discussions, miyo administrators advised that a primary concern was the low attendance rate of many students, which ultimately leads to poor academic performance and to some students dropping out completely. acknowledging that it may be difficult to reach those students who do not attend, the researchers and the administrators wondered if something could be learned from those students who attend regularly, and if there might be value in comparing information gained from regular attendees to information from those who attend sporadically and are at risk of not completing their education. given that the target population for this research project was comprised of youth from a first nations school community, it was imperative that an ethics review take place. the ethics application was submitted to the university of alberta research ethics board in july, 2011, along with: (a) copies of the consent forms for parents and for students of legal age; (b) information sheets for anyone participating or providing consent for someone else to participate in the study; and (c) a copy of the draft survey instrument. there were no requests for revisions and ethics approval was received on august 7, 2011. surveys the researchers used two surveys for this project: 1. the first was the developmental assets profile (dap) developed by the search institute (2005). consisting of 58 items, the survey is a standardized method of “eliciting and quantifying information on developmental assets” (p. 1) based on responses from the students themselves. the survey was designed to be used for both genders, within an age range of 11 to 18. the dap was developed with an average reading level at or near grade 6. 2. mignone and lewis’ (2005) social capital survey was used to elicit information on student involvement in and knowledge of first nations culture. the work derived from mignone’s doctoral research completed in manitoba in collaboration with three first nations communities and the health information and research committee of the assembly of manitoba chiefs. sample ermineskin junior/senior high school students in grades 10, 11, and 12, as well as students in the ehpewapahk community school were invited to complete the surveys. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 46 rationale for this age group was twofold. first, as a result of their increased life experience, students in later grades are more likely to have been subjected to opportunities to be involved in unhealthy and/or criminal activity. second, ermineskin junior/senior high school has approximately 100 students in grades 10 to 12 and ehpewapahk school has approximately 45 students, mostly of high school age. the potential number of completed questionnaires was manageable in terms of the project’s time frame for compiling and analyzing data. prior to the day the surveys were completed, students were invited to submit consent forms. the two schools arranged for students who had submitted consent forms to meet the researchers, and be assured of confidentiality. students then completed and submitted their surveys directly to the researchers. miyo provided the researchers with student attendance rates. results response rate and respondent characteristics of the 160 high school age students in miyo, 69 students (43%) completed a survey. the respondents’ average attendance rate (84%) is somewhat higher than the average attendance rate for the total student population (82%). table 1 shows that respondents included a greater proportion of higher-attending students that the total student population. table 1. attendance rate for all high school age students and for survey respondents n = 67* attendance rates 90% to 100% 75% to 89% 50% to 74% % to 49 % total population n % n % n % n % n % all high school age students 72 46% 47 30% 30 19% 9 6% 158 100% survey respondents 36 54% 19 28% 12 18% 0 0% 67 100% *attendance rate was not available for two new students. respondents included a higher proportion of male students (52%) and a lower proportion of female students (48%) than the total student population (49% male and 51% female). respondents included a lower proportion of grade 10 students (58%), a higher proportion of grade 11 students (28%), and an equal proportion (14%) of grade 12 students compared to the total high school population (grade 10: 62%; grade 11: 22%; grade 12: 14%). because the correlation results are so strong, discrepancies between the respondent sample and the total student population do not limit the value of the findings for miyo (see table 2). however, the small sample size and these discrepancies suggest the findings may not be generalizable to larger international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 47 youth populations. while the findings are limited to hobbema and may not be directly generalizable to other aboriginal communities, many aboriginal communities share similar characteristics to hobbema. thus further research on this topic would be worthwhile and could provide insight into practical interventions that could impact on student school and community involvement in other first nations communities. attendance rate and developmental asset score for the purpose of this study, attendance was measured simply by student presence at school. if a student was absent, there was no coding to indicate absenteeism due to illness or some other reason. miyo assigns the following labels to school attendance: students who attend more than 90% of the time are considered to have high attendance rates; those who attend between 75% and 89% of the time have moderate attendance rates; and those with less than 75% attendance rates are considered to have low attendance. in this research sample, students with a history of low school attendance have lower developmental asset scores than students who attend school regularly. as shown in table 2, the correlation between attendance rate and developmental asset score was very strong. table 2. correlation between attendance rate and average developmental asset score n = 69 attendance rate average developmental asset score (score out of 60 was converted to a percentage) 90-100% 66.86 75%-89% 66.23 50%-74% 60.92 correlation 0.953833442 (about 95% correlation) the survey results indicated almost no correlation (.07 in the high school and -.01 in the community school) between attendance rates and students’ sense of cultural identity or their perceptions of social capital. thus, it is not possible to state whether students with a history of low school attendance are likely to have a greater, lesser, or similar sense of cultural heritage, or similar perceptions of positive social capital, compared to students who attend school regularly. limitations as with any project, care must be taken to understand the findings within the context of the particular study. this study had a small sample size and was undertaken in a first nations school. the findings are relevant for miyo school authorities but one cannot assume that the findings would be equally relevant in a non-aboriginal community, in another first nations community, or in another first nations school. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 48 the pen and paper nature of the survey itself is a further limitation. the survey had a grade 6 reading level, and researchers read the questions out loud to some students to increase their opportunity to understand. still, about five students visibly struggled with the task. their surveys could not be used because of incomplete answers, or answers with a pattern that suggested these students did not read or understand the questions. finally, in order to complete a survey, one had to be present at school. thus, those students who completed a survey are perhaps from the group who place an importance on regular attendance. our data shows that of those students whose attendance rates are less than 50%, none completed a survey. a further line of inquiry, then, might be with the population that attends less than 50% of the school year. discussion the results reported above do not tell the entire story. as is often the case, the smaller details provide the nuances and point to areas worthy of more analysis and follow-up action. research from the search institute has repeatedly shown that the more developmental assets a child has, the more likely he or she will avoid risk-taking behaviour, make healthy choices, and succeed in a variety of arenas, including school (starkman, scales, & roberts, 2006, p. 14). our data revealed a strong correlation between regular school attendance and a higher developmental assets score. this finding is consistent with previous research. the immediate teaching, learning, and follow-up opportunities from this research are for miyo school authorities. the challenge and the opportunity for miyo derive from some of the other connections that were revealed in the data analysis. throughout the survey, students validated the work their teachers are doing. students at both schools perceive their teachers to be encouraging (90% of the maximum score). students also had high average scores for “i have a caring school” (87%), “my school has clear rules” (80%), and “i am engaged in learning” (80%). students at the community school rated the school as their highest source of support (93% of the maximum possible score) while students at the high school rated “caring school” and “family support” as equally strong sources of support (both school and family received 83% of the maximum score). miyo school authorities can be assured that their work efforts and concerns are noted and are making a difference in the school experience of their students. these are strengths on which to build. these results suggest that the school may be one means through which student commitment to school, community, and culture can be encouraged. for example, perhaps the school could work to include parents and other members of the community to engage students in activities that facilitate cultural knowledge and experience. it may be that the school in this community has the potential to provide linkages to family, social, and cultural factors that can strengthen bonds and build developmental assets. if students respect and “connect” with school, then expanding the role of the school in the community might be one avenue for building on developmental assets among young people in this community. students with higher developmental assets also reflected a significant degree of support from parents and family. for example, students at the high school rated “parents’ help” as their highest source of support (87% of the maximum possible score) and students at both schools international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 49 rated “parents’ encouragement” at 87% of maximum score. most students also feel safe at home (80% of the maximum score). there is an opportunity for miyo to work even more closely with students’ families in support of building developmental assets. on the other hand, not every student has supportive family circumstances. a total of 9% of respondents had family context scores that the search institute considers “ low” (less than 50% of the maximum score) and another 11% had scores for family context that the search institute considers only “fair” (less than 65% of the maximum score). for these students, school may be their strongest – and perhaps only – positive supportive environment. respondents’ average scores related to community context (developmental assets questions) were 56% of the maximum score, which the search institute considers “fair”. respondents’ average scores related to community and cultural strengths (social capital questions) were 53% of the maximum score. in the developmental assets questions, 70% of respondents had community context scores that were “fair” or “low”. in the social capital questions, 77% of respondents had “social capital” scores that were “fair” or “low”. from these scores, it appears that respondents do not perceive their community to be a source of positive cultural or social support. however, a growing body of work states that aboriginal youth do better when they have a positive sense of their cultural identity and their community (see, for example, tousignant & sioui, 2009; mignone & o’neil, 2005; williams & mumtaz, 2007). since this study indicates that more than two-thirds of miyo students do not perceive their community as supportive, miyo may find it beneficial to work with others in the community to help strengthen the components that make the community a supportive environment for youth, whether or not a supportive environment is correlated to high attendance. student social capital scores suggest that the few areas of strength on which to build a stronger community context include: “proud to be my first nation” (83% of the maximum score), number of community events attended (76% of the maximum score), “traditional activities” (70% of the maximum score), and “friends in other first nations” (70% of the maximum score). there are a number of specific practical and policy implications that arise as a result of the findings of this study: for miyo wahkohtowin community education authority. miyo schools are already positioned as an epicentre of activity within the larger community. enhancing this strength will have positive benefits for students and the community. there are two reasons for this. the first was cited in a literature review completed by the alaska school boards’ initiative for community engagement (boettcher, 2004). extensive review of research pertaining to aboriginal students and schools noted that: “native students are more likely to do better in school when they feel connected to their parents, communities and teachers” (p. 8). the second reason for positioning the schools as the centre of activity for ermineskin members is that schools, particularly in small communities, can and often do play a much larger role in the lives of students and their families. in great places to learn: how asset-building schools help students succeed (starkman, scales, roberts, & blegen, 1999), the search institute international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 50 identifies 13 out of 40 assets that schools can directly influence. the 13 assets include parent involvement in schooling, other adult relationships, peer influence, interpersonal competence, high expectations, caring school climate, school boundaries, school engagement, academic motivation, homework, reading for pleasure, and youth programs. a number of these assets have points of contact with the broader community, with parents, or with family life. in deciding where to prioritize, it may be optimal to select those areas that are easiest to influence, most likely to be supported, achievable within available resources, and likely to demonstrate measurable positive results most quickly. identifying specific priorities is beyond the scope of this project. more detailed information about survey results has been provided to miyo, and this information may suggest areas of greatest strength on which to build. for crime prevention programs and aboriginal youth programs. programming that increases the number and strength of developmental assets for youth can easily be incorporated into existing programs. organizations such as thrive canada1 or the search institute of minneapolis2 for researchers and practitioners working in crime prevention, health promotion, or community development. again, the search institute and thrive canada both have a wealth of information related to asset building. given the emphasis on community within asset building, it is also recommended that consideration be given to the emerging literature on social capital. these two streams of thinking have the potential to be significant factors in the development of healthy youth and vibrant communities. have a myriad of resources to assist with asset building. most of the ideas require little in the way of financial resources, making them very attractive to agencies with limited budgets. conclusion the link between poor academic performance and delinquency is well established in the academic literature. academic performance, in turn, is affected by attendance. curious about the link between first nations students’ engagement in their education, as measured by attendance rates, and students’ engagement with culture and community, miyo wahkohtowin community education authority of ermineskin first nation in hobbema (“miyo”) partnered with the researchers to explore the possible linkages between school attendance and developmental assents among high school age students. a second objective of the current study was to explore the potential relationship between school attendance and sense of cultural heritage and perceptions of positive social capital in their community. results from a survey administered to high school age students indicate that, at least for this sample, students with a history of low school attendance have lower developmental asset scores than students who attend school regularly. in terms of the second research objective, survey results indicate almost no correlation between attendance rate and students’ sense of cultural identity or their perceptions of social capital. in light of the fact that more than two-thirds of miyo students do not perceive their community as supportive, miyo may find it beneficial to work with others in the community to 1 thrive canada is now lions quest canada www.lionsquest.ca/ 2 www.search-institute.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 51 help strengthen the components that make the community a supportive environment for youth, whether or not a supportive environment is correlated to high attendance. this exploratory study has relevance for other first nation school authorities, as well as criminologists, program designers, or practitioners in crime prevention, child and youth development, mental health promotion, and community development. the study results suggest that activities to strengthen developmental assets among aboriginal youth correlates with higher school attendance, which in turn may enhance positive social outcomes and reduce the risk of harmful behaviour. as well, learning more about strengthening the positive components of social capital in aboriginal communities may be a productive line of research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 52 references boettcher, k. (2004). asset building and student achievement. a literature review and bibliography of research and resources. juneau: alaska initiative for community engagement. brzozowski, j.-a., taylor-butts, a., & johnson, s. (2006). victimization and offending among the aboriginal population in canada. catalogue no. 85-002-xie, 26(3). ottawa: statistics canada. government of alberta. (2010). the northland school division inquiry team report. edmonton: author. grekul, j., & leboucane-benson, p. (2008). aboriginal gangs and their (dis)placement: contextualizing recruitment, membership and status. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 50, 31–57. grekul, j., & sanderson, k. (2011). “i thought people would be mean and shout”. introducing the hobbema community cadet corps: a response to youth gang involvement? journal of youth studies, 13(6), 1–17. maguin, e., & loeber, r. (1996). academic performance and delinquency. in m. tonry (ed.), crime and justice: a review of research (vol. 20, pp. 145–264). chicago: university of chicago press. mercredi, o. w. (2000). aboriginal gangs: a report to the correctional service of canada on aboriginal youth gang members in the federal corrections system. ottawa: correctional service canada. mignone, j., & o’neil, j. (2005). conceptual understanding of social capital in first nations communities: an illustrative concept. pimatisiwin: a journal of aboriginal and indigenous community health, 3(2), 8–44. search institute. (2005). developmental assets profile, group assessment user manual. minneapolis, mn: author. solomon, p. (1992). black resistance in high school: forging a separatist culture. albany, ny: state university of new york press. starkman, n., scales, p., roberts, c., & blegen, m. b. (1999). great places to learn: how assetbuilding schools help students succeed. minneapolis, mn: search institute. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 42–53 53 starkman, n., scales, p., & roberts, c. (2006). great places to learn: creating asset-building schools that help students succeed (2nd ed.). minneapolis, mn: search institute. tousignant, m., & sioui, n. (2009). resilience and aboriginal communities in crisis: theory and interventions. journal of aboriginal health, 5, 43–61. ottawa: national aboriginal health organization (naho) trocme, n., knoke, d., & blackstock, c. (2004). pathways to overrepresentation of aboriginal children in canada’s child welfare system. social service review, 78(4), 577–600. williams, l., & mumtaz, z. (2007, february). being alive well. aboriginal youth and evidencebased approaches to promoting mental well-being. prepared by the prairie region health promotion research centre for the national aboriginal youth mental health promotion strategy (naysps) symposium hosted by the first nations and inuit health branch, saskatoon, sk. exploring the link between school attendance, developmental assets, and social capital in a first nations community aim of the study results limitations conclusion references microsoft word j. morrisrev'd journal versionsa/ jaed.doc 
 
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 in-between, across, and within difference: an examination of “cultural competence” jonathan morris abstract: “cultural competence” is often part of contemporary discourses of practice in child and youth care and is often referred to in curricula and documents that lay out the expected competencies of practitioners. this article represents an effort to critically examine the notion of “cultural competence”, paying particular attention to how “culture” and “competence” are taken up in the literature, and how they are positioned in relation to each other in the context of practice. efforts are made to critique the idea that “culturally competent” practice can be attained through the linear and proceduralized acquisition of pre-specified competencies. rather, an argument is made for the development of a practice that is critically reflexive, relational, and constantly in motion while working inbetween, across, and within difference. the purpose of this article is to critically engage with some of the current literature as it pertains to the notion of “cultural competence”. the discussion will have a particular emphasis on how cultural competence is taken up in the literature and the availability of tools, strategies, and skills designed to assist practitioners in their commitments to intentional and strategic practice amidst cultural differences. it is guided by the following research questions: 1. what is the consensus definition of “cultural competence”? 2. what ideas exist about achieving individual cultural competency in practice? specifically, i intend to identify the central themes shared between the multiple definitions of culture, competence, and cultural competence in the literature and elucidate contemporary ideas related to the development of an individual’s capacity to practice in a culturally competently manner. furthermore, i intend to frame consideration of these two areas within a critical commentary on the state of the contemporary literature. i begin the article with a brief description of the methodology used to conduct the literature review, followed by a brief description of “critical reflexivity”. i then turn to a discussion of “culture” and “competence” separately before considering the juxtaposition of “cultural competence”. i conclude with some recommendations for practice. methodology the literature review was conducted using the databases psychinfo, social work abstracts, sage psychology full-text collection, social services abstracts, and springerlink. the following key words were used singularly or in combination to perform searches in the above databases: 
 
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 • culture; • cultural; • competent and competence; • child and youth care; • counselling and counseling; • psychotherapy the reference lists from articles found during the database searches provided additional sources for consideration. further searches were completed using the internet to consult government and private organization publications. in order to avoid omitting literature describing the historical perspectives of cultural competence, searches were not limited to any particular time period. articles with a focus upon: (a) definitions of cultural competence; (b) principles designed to facilitate individual cultural competence development; and (c) cross-cultural interactions were included. articles with a focus on specific ethnic, racial, or cultural groups were discarded, as the review was not designed to focus upon cultural competence with particular identified groups. the two main intellectual traditions that emerged from the search included psychology (psychotherapy, counselling, mental health) and healthcare (in-patient/outpatient service delivery, nursing). preliminary findings in the literature the impetus for human services professionals, including child and youth care practitioners, to attain “cultural competence” in their practice has intensified over the past 25 years (atkinson, thompson, & grant, 1993; collins & arthur, 2007; mcphatter & ganaway, 2003). many researchers, educators, and clinicians have suggested that the increasing impetus for understanding, integration, and application of cultural competency, is linked to demographic shifts and an increasingly diverse client population (brach & fraser, 2000; pedersen & leong, 1997). this call to action has led to the generation of a rich and diverse literature related to cultural competency, with several u.s. researchers making considerable contributions to the knowledge base. sue (2001) has been present in the literature since the early 1980s, theorizing about cultural competency and positing several evolving conceptual models designed to facilitate practitioner cultural development. other notable contributors to the field include arredondo and toporek (2004), pedersen and leong (1997) and weinrach and thomas (2002, 2004). the canadian literature appears less replete than the american, but canadian researchers collins and arthur (2007) have undertaken considerable work in this area, while hoskins’ (1999, 2003) thinking offers alternative ideas to the dominant competency-driven discourse. in concert with the findings of harris (2004) who completed an international and australian-level review of the cultural competence literature, i too observed a lack of empirical research on cultural competence with the majority of the literature focusing on descriptive, theoretical, or conceptual ideas. harris (2004) suggests this is a result of the difficulties associated with conducting empirical research into cultural competence, and he suggests a greater emphasis upon using systematic empirical enquiry to evaluate the theoretical models presented for cultural competency development. before considering the literature in more detail, it is perhaps useful to pause here to explain how i will engage “critically” with the literature. 
 
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 maintaining a critically reflexive stance mezirow (1998) asserts that critical reflection is predicated upon an understanding that knowledge is produced, not found, and that it rests upon particular epistemological foundations, all of which allow the context(s) of knowledge creation to be revealed and analysed. in addition, awareness of one’s histories, biases, and assumptions about knowing speak to the adoption of a “reflexive stance” (white, 2007b). white describes the usefulness of adopting a reflexive stance when interrogating and “destabilizing taken-for-granted ideas and professional routines” (p. 215) and suggests that a critically reflexive stance can help draw one’s attention to the “limits of language . . . and the crude ways in which we speak and write about differences” (p. 215). identifying myself using discrete terminology like “western” or “non-indigenous” would be an example of this. in relation to this paper, most of the cultural competence literature i have explored tends to “other” and create problematic binaries of “us and them” categorizations. for example, static terms such as “ethnic minorities”, “racialized groups”, and “disabled” inundate the literature, helping create static and reified identity categories. one can be left with a perception that culture is homogeneous or singular in nature, i.e., there is “singular” muslim culture. holton (2004) uses bhaba’s words when she argues that such characterizations can limit, creating boundaries that classify people and meanings forming “inescapable spaces which we all live out” (p. 1). white’s (2007b) reminder of the ways language can limit or emancipate meaning is useful insight to carry throughout this discussion, as well as the understanding that i am not a “neutral observer” (p. 216), but someone who carries multiple cultural identities and assumptions of my own. having described some of my analytical stance, i will now turn to addressing the first task: seeking meaning for the construct of “cultural competence”. understanding “culture” culture stands as a contested term as evidenced by the multiple and nuanced permutations of its definition across the literature. amidst this multiplicity, one definition appears to appear quite frequently, and is offered up by cross, bazron, dennis, and isaacs (1989) who state that culture “. . . implies the integrated pattern of human behaviour that include thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group” (p. 28). cross and colleagues’ definition can be contrasted with the description of cultural and human diversity contained in the competencies for professional child and youth work practitioners (mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2002) which frames culture as: . . . the eight major factors which set groups apart from one another, and which give individuals and groups elements of identity: age, class, race, ethnicity, levels of ability, language, spiritual belief systems, educational achievement, and gender differences. (p. 10) cross et al.’s (1989) definition shifts conceptualization of culture beyond the “tip of the iceberg” (hanley, 1999, p. 10), allowing for consideration of the elements of culture that are “hidden from view” (p. 10). surface notions of culture might include the fine arts, dress, and cooking, while deeper aspects of culture include group decision-making processes, conceptions 
 
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 of “self”, or patterns of handling emotions. cross’ inclusion of communication, thoughts, beliefs, and values are congruent with a deeper and fuller consideration of culture and its meaning. it can be argued that “deeper” concepts of culture are typically out of immediate awareness, are less visible or easy to identify, and difficult to know (hanley). arguably, mattingly et al.’s (2002) articulation of culture resists further exploration, limiting culture to discrete and readily identifiable categories. again, the use of language in each definition emphasises the capacity for limiting or emancipating social meaning. while cross’ definition can be interpreted as more expansive and inclusive, it is clear that both tend to bind and categorize people, constructing dichotomies across pre-conceived cultural or diversity identifiers. furthermore, the definitions help essentialize culture and assume that culture is fixed, singular, and homogenous in nature. of note, mattingly et al.’s definition appears to contain an error of omission, proclaiming the “eight major factors that set apart” while failing to include mention of sexual identity. does this omission imply that sexual identity is considered a minor factor or one that bears no relation to cultural identity? in sum, both definitions constrain the meaning to be made with culture and leave questions such as: who assigns people to belong to these groups? can one self-determine membership to one of the ascribed categories? how can i make sense of the fact my cultural identities transect each of the categories provided? fitzgerald, mullavey-o’byrne, and clemson (1997) provide the last definition of culture for consideration, defining culture as: an abstract concept that refers to learned and shared patterns of perceiving and adapting to the world. culture is reflected in its products: the learned, shared beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviours that are characteristic of a society or population. culture is not a static phenomenon; it is dynamic and ever-changing, but it maintains a sense of coherence. (p. 15) this definition appears delimiting and expansive, avoiding the creation of “inescapable spaces” but emphasizing culture’s existence as a variable construct. elements of this definition can be unpacked a little further. culture can be interpreted here as having a collective quality that helps shape the meaning made with social life and the world. this definition also implies that culture is productive in its yielding of “shared beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviours” that can be held amongst people. the definition’s emphasis on cultural elements being “characteristic of a society or population” underscores an assumption that cultural knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviours are not homogenous across societies or peoples (armstrong & fitzgerald, 1996) with cultural interpretation being contingent upon ecological context, e.g., individuals, families, communities, regions. in a departure from the previous two cultural definitions, there is a sense of cultural fluidity and movement beyond an essentialized and “other-ed” rendering of culture, by emphasizing the dynamic and relational nature of culture. it is important to note that broader definitions of culture such as this one have not been without controversy. pedersen (2001) highlights the tensions between adopting a culture-specific (emic) or culture-general (etic) perspective. the earlier two definitions (cross et al., 1989; mattingly et al., 2002) could be described as “emic” perspectives, as they demarcate specific 
 
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 indicators that differentiate cultures. fitzgerald et al.’s (1997) efforts are “etic” in nature. pedersen (1984, as cited in pedersen, 2001) explains that complexity arises when counsellors attempt to describe behaviours in terms that are true to a particular culture, while at the same time comparing those behaviours with a similar pattern in one or more cultures. instead of dichotomizing the “etic” and “emic” approaches to understanding culture, pedersen suggests blending the two to avoid “cultural encapsulation” where counsellors’ practice is predicated upon their own culture-specific assumptions. understanding “competence” as the discussion above has shown, there are multiple ways of defining, understanding, and making meaning with culture in practice. conversely, arriving at a mutually understood definition of competence appears a lot more straightforward. the word competence offers a sense of absoluteness, certainty, and clarity, invoking ideas of mastery, proficiency, and efficacy. white (2007a) locates competency within the technical-rational paradigm, imbued by an “instrumental-view of practice”, whereby, “knowledge is acquired, skills are mastered, attitudes are adopted, self-awareness is gained, and then these things are applied to children, youth, families and communities” (p. 230). in many ways, the technical-rational paradigm of competence allays the natural anxiety i feel as a practitioner, when trying to comprehend the nuance and complexity of culture and its implications for cyc practice. specifically, competence imparts the perception that culturally competent/sensitive/responsive practice is indeed attainable if appropriate steps are followed, requisite knowledge is acquired, and the boxes are ticked. mckee sellick, delaney, and brownlee (2002) problematize the allure of certainty afforded by the technical-rational paradigm: increasing scrutiny and pressure from agency administrators, insurance providers, and consumers to prove that we know what we are doing and that what we are doing really works, makes us susceptible to the clarion call of the empirical practice and evidencebased practice movements. their certainty is seductive, an answer to our desire for real competence. (p. 493) harris (2004) argues that if fitzgerald et al.’s (1997) expansive definition of culture is coupled with “competence”, a deeper and more complex meaning can be inferred. i would argue that such a shift in meaning requires deliberate attention and the principles of pendlebury’s “perceptive equilibrium” (white, 2007a, p. 230), where procedural principles (i.e., competency areas) are afforded equal consideration to the contextual particulars of a practice situation (e.g., political, historical, social influences). moreover, i resist the idea of “attaining” cultural competence as being the meeting of a pre-specified standard or level. rather, instead of a quantifiable outcome, culturally competent practice exists on a continuum of process, where one pays particular attention to understanding, integrating, and applying practices that are as relational, collaborative, and culturally responsive as possible. understanding “cultural competence” having devoted some time to describing and critically reflecting upon the definitions of “culture” and “competence” separately, i will now attend to describing the literature’s definitions 
 
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 of the “cultural competence”. from a historical perspective, some have argued the origins of cultural competence lie with dr. carter g. woodson, often regarded as the “father of black history”. his message was that blacks should carry pride in their history, and reciprocally, society as a whole should understand black history (hanley, 1999). woodson’s aim in calling on people to understand their histories and contributions to society was to increase peoples’ selfesteem, leading to other cultures feeling better and “accepting”, hence causing greater intragroup acceptance and a subsequent reduction in racism and oppressive practices (hanley). several of the tenets of contemporary cultural competency are present in woodson’s ideology, which can be emphasised by considering a more recent definition. brach & fraser (2000) draw attention to cross et al.’s seminal work on increasing cultural competency in settings serving emotionally disturbed children and youth, which advocates for recognition of “strengths inherent in all cultures” (cross et al., 1989, p. 18). cross et al.’s ideas of cultural competence transverse from the individual practitioner, to their agency, to broader systems and society itself, all with the central aim of providing culturally-responsive practice to best support racially diverse children and youth. the anecdotes cross and colleagues provide serve to highlight the inequities of treatment in the mental health, youth justice, and child welfare systems 20 years ago, and the associated impetus for culturally competent practice. there are striking similarities to the state of affairs 20 years later: if you are an adolescent and black and you are seriously emotionally disturbed, chances are you will end up in the juvenile justice system rather than in the treatment setting to which your caucasian counterpart would be referred. if you are a native american child and seriously emotionally disturbed, you will likely go without treatment or be removed legally and geographically from your family and tribe. if you are a child who is hispanic and seriously emotionally disturbed, you will likely be assessed in a language not your own. and if you are an asian child and seriously emotionally disturbed, you will likely never come to the attention of the mental health system. (p.19) it is clear cross and colleagues (1989) wanted to respond to gross disparities in treatment settings for culturally diverse groups. the catalyst for change has been explicated. how does one move forward? cross et al. (1989) created a continuum of cultural competence that will perhaps offer some perspective to the journey of developing intentionality in one’s practice amidst diversity. the continuum can be applied both at the individual and agency levels. for this purposes of this paper, the focus will be upon locating the individual along the spectrum. the continuum starts at cultural destructiveness typified by attitudes, policies, and practices that are destructive to cultures and the people who make meaning with them (cross et al.). cultural genocide (e.g., residential schools and indigenous populations), dehumanizing or subhumanizing clients, or conducting experiments that risk the health and safety of cultural groups all serve as examples of efforts to disenfranchise, control, exploit, or systematically destroy those that are perceived to be different (cross et al.). according to cross and colleagues (1989), cultural incapacity is typified not by intentional cultural destruction, but by a lack of capability to respond to cultural diversity. individuals or agencies subscribe to the discourse that the “dominant” cultural group is 
 
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 “superior”, while adopting a paternalistic stance to “inferior” groupings or individuals. moreover, there is a belief that helping practices located within the “dominant” cultural group are more effective than alternatives. oppression and discrimination are endemic at this stage of the continuum, with practitioners holding lower expectations of clients with diverse cultural identities. during cultural blindness, practitioners and agencies subscribe to the belief that no difference exists between people (cross et al., 1989). arguments of universality and generalizability are applied to the helping approaches typically used by the “dominant” culture, with the assumption that everyone can be served with equal effectiveness. ethnocentrism persists along with the continued push for assimilation. other notable characteristics include ignorance of cultural strengths, victimization, and endemic institutionalized oppression and discrimination. the first sign of movement or progress takes place when individuals or agencies reach the pre-competence stage. cross et al. (1989) suggest individuals/agencies develop an awareness of inadequate service delivery, start to experiment with change by hiring culturally diverse practitioners, conduct needs assessments, and recruit culturally diverse representatives to their governance structures. hence, there is a likelihood of tokenistic hiring practices. cross et al. convey optimism that at this point a forward progression is starting; agencies or practitioners are just lacking accurate information about how to proceed next. at the stage of cultural competence, cross et al. describe characteristics of “acceptance and respect for differences” (p. 32) with practitioners and agencies attending to continued selfassessment, inter and intra cultural dynamics, expansion of culturally appropriate resources, and adapted service delivery models. tokenistic hiring has ceased and practitioners demonstrate an ability to relate to, collaborate with, and respond to a culturally diverse world, while ensuring culturally responsive policies and regulations are translated into practice. finally, cultural proficiency is a transition toward “holding culture in high esteem” (cross et al., 1989, p. 32), whereby practitioners and agencies actively contribute to the culturally competent knowledge base, construct knowledge in relation to interventions and treatments, and disseminate those findings for others to utilize. hallmark characteristics include hiring specialists in culturally competent practice and strategic advocacy for systemic and societal change with respect to cultural diversity. cross et al.’s (1989) continuum provides the necessary foreground for defining “cultural competence”, which they state as follows: cultural competence is set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enable that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. (p. 28) critical commentary both cross et al.’s (1989) model and their definition provide a useful starting place from which to take the necessary steps toward developing cultural competence in practice, but several 
 
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 questions remain. the continuum as presented resembles a linear and sequential actualization of higher states of competency; it might be useful to include consideration of the dynamics of individuals or agencies that oscillate between stages. notably, the continuum leaves culture open to interpretation, but there are implicit themes suggesting the model is designed to respond to racial and ethnic diversity. this may be related to the historical, political, and social context to which it was originally applied, but would similar processes exist if other cultural identities were applied? the literature suggests that researchers have attempted to address some of these limitations. mcphatter and ganaway (2003) apply diclemente’s and prochaska’s transtheoretical model of change to cross et al.’s (1989) continuum, which helps explicate not only one’s own stage of change in relation to moving toward cultural competency, but presents a means of assessing readiness for change across groups of practitioners or managers within an agency. recognition of the variability within individuals’ and agencies’ ability to move forward with change, can help create the necessary conversational space to establish the barriers in operation and strategies for facilitating the most effective change process possible. mcphatter & ganaway also present their own definition of cultural competence: cultural competence is the ability to transform knowledge and cultural awareness into health and/or psychosocial interventions that support and sustain healthy client-system functioning within the appropriate cultural context. (p. 105) in comparing the two presented definitions, mcphatter & ganaway (2003) operationalize cross et al.’s (1989) further, emphasising the transition between knowledge acquisition and knowledge utilization, breaking “effective practice” down into “interventions” that promote “health”. i would like to see a thickening of both definitions, specifically to illuminate the didactic and relational interface between cultural identities, and the subsequent reciprocal influence upon the practitioners themselves. to summarize this particular critical commentary, i would like to attend to the view of practice that is being taken up by both definitions. as white (2007a) states, “. . . the assumption that the complexity of practice – and professional development – can be adequately conceptualized and measured by discrete ‘outputs’ like knowledge, skills, and attitudes can be highly problematic” (p. 230). arguably, cross et al.’s (1989) continuum and definition, and mcphatter’s and ganaway’s (2003) definition take up a narrowly defined view of practice that is predicated upon procedural and routinized acquisition of knowledge. the problem lies in the arguably messy, uncertain, and unpredictable nature of practice situations and whether such “technical solutions” can be applied to the “swampy lowlands” of day-to-day practice (schön, 1987, p. 1). conclusions and recommendations by way of conclusion, throughout the course of this literature review, i have described several salient definitions of culture, competence, and cultural competence. i have maintained a stance of critical reflexivity in an attempt to interrogate and reveal some of the hidden assumptions embedded within the claims made in the literature. first, several themes related to 
 
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 defining culture emerged in the literature: (a) culture is relational and fluid, providing frames of reference for negotiating the world; (b) culture is systemic, occurring within, between, and across individuals, families, communities, and regions; (c) each individual carries culture – culture is not simply a construct applied to “others” apart from “us”; and (d) culture embodies heterogeneity, carries temporal qualities, and cannot be singularized. second, particular attention should be paid to the problems related to seeing “competence” as an end-point in the journey to practicing ethically, relationally, and responsively amidst diversity. rather than being seen narrowly as routinized or procedural, competence in this context can be seen as an organic process requiring a critically reflective stance to continued learning. third, it is perhaps useful to frame cultural competence within a cyclical continuum, with different indicators to mark changes in the journey of developing culturally competent practice. a useful addition to the continuum are the stages of change, which may help create conversational spaces to identify obstacles to the process of moving forward. again, it is important to respect the procedural principles of such schemas, but equally important to consider the particular contextual nuances of the everyday practice situation. 
 
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 references armstrong, m. j., & fitzgerald, m. h. (1996). culture and disability studies: an anthropological perspective. rehabilitation education, 10(4), 247-304. arredondo, p., & toporek, r. (2004). multicultural counseling competencies = ethical practice. journal of mental health counseling, 26(1), 44-55. atkinson, d. r., thompson, c. e., & grant, s. k. (1993). a three-dimensional model for counseling racial/ethnic minorities. the counseling psychologist, 21(2), 257-277. brach, c., & fraser, i. (2000). can cultural competency reduce racial and ethnic health disparities: a review and conceptual model. medical care research and review, 57(1), 181-217. collins, s., & arthur, n. (2007). a framework for enhancing multicultural counselling competence. canadian journal of counselling, 41(1), 31-49. cross, t., bazron, b. j., dennis, k. w., & isaacs, m. r. (1989). toward a culturally competent system of care: a monograph on effective services for minority children who are severely emotionally disturbed. washington, dc: georgetown university child development center. fitzgerald, m. h., mullavey-o’byrne, c., & clemson, l. (1997). cultural issues from practice. australian occupation therapy journal, 44, 1-21. hanley, j. (1999). beyond the tip of the iceberg: five steps toward cultural competence. reaching today’s youth, 3(2), 9-12. harris, p. (2004). culturally competent disability support: putting it into practice. retrieved on july 9, 2010, from www.mdaa.org.au. holton, t. (2004). suicidology and the “other”: a discursive analysis of literature and discourses. (doctoral dissertation, university of calgary, 2005). amicus abstracts, 31075197. hoskins, m. (1999). worlds apart and lives together: developing cultural attunement. child & youth care forum, 28(2), 73-85. hoskins, m. (2003). what unites us, what divides us? a multicultural agenda within child and youth care. child & youth care forum, 32(6), 319-336. mattingly, m., stuart, c., & vanderven, k. (2002). competencies for professional child and youth work practitioners. journal of child and youth care work, 17, 16-49. 
 
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 mckee sellick, m., delaney, r., & brownlee, k. (2002). the deconstruction of professional knowledge: accountability without authority. families in society: the journal of contemporary human services, 83(5/6), p. 493-498. mcphatter, a., & ganaway, t. (2003). beyond the rhetoric: strategies for implementing culturally effective practice with children, families, and communities. child welfare league of america, 82(2), 103-124. mezirow, j. (1998) on critical reflection. adult education quarterly, 48(3), 185-198. pedersen, p., & leong, f. (1997). counseling in an international context. the counseling psychologist, 25(1), 117-122. pedersen, p. b. (2001). multiculturalism as a generic approach to counseling. journal of counseling and development, 70, 6-12. schön, d. (1987). educating the reflective practitioner. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. sue, d. w. (2001). multidimensional facets of cultural competence. the counseling psychologist, 29(6), 790-821. weinrach, s. g., & thomas, k. r. (2002). a critical analysis of the multicultural counseling competencies: implications for the practice of mental health counseling. journal of mental health counseling, 24(1), 20-35. weinrach, s. g., & thomas, k. r. (2004) the amcd multicultural counseling competencies: a critically flawed initiative. journal of mental health counseling, 26(1), 81-93. white, j. (2007a). knowing, doing, and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child & youth care forum, 36(5), 225-244. white, j. (2007b). working in the midst of ideological and cultural differences: critically reflecting on youth suicide prevention in indigenous communities. canadian journal of counselling, 41(4), 213-227. jonathan morris has, over the past ten years, practiced across several contexts in child and youth care including programs for children responding to violence at home, hospital-based psychiatric treatment, school-based youth suicide prevention education, and campus mental health promotion. jonathan has taught in the undergraduate child and youth care program at the university of victoria and is nearing the completion of his m.a. degree. his graduate research explores how the ideas of michel foucault can be used to critically examine youth suicide prevention curricula. other scholarly interests include the role of communities of practice in campus mental health promotion and narrative-informed approaches to child and youth care work. report title: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 113 child sexual abuse and youth suicide: a review of the evidence with implications for future research anne e. rhodes, jennifer bethell, and lil tonmyr abstract: studies of suicide and non-fatal suicide-related behaviours demonstrate a gender paradox: suicide rates are typically higher in males than females, whereas the opposite is true for non-fatal suicide-related behaviours. however, the reasons for these differences are unclear. among the potential explanations, particularly in youth, is the effect of child maltreatment. a previous review suggested that while child sexual abuse may be more common in girls, the negative effect may be more potent for boys (with respect to suicide attempts). however, as their risk/protective factors may not always overlap, it is unclear whether this pattern seen for suicide attempts extends to suicide. the current study reviewed the evidence for potential sex differences in the association between child sexual abuse and suicide, identified methodological challenges to such studies, and discussed implications for future theoretical formulations/testing in research. the findings confirmed that the association between child sexual abuse and youth suicide remains unclear and the potential sex differences in the association remain largely unaddressed. further, a test of the association between child sexual abuse and suicide would be best pursued in very large, populationbased studies (with standardized measures of child sexual abuse) later linked to mortality data. keywords: suicide; self-injurious behavior; suicide, attempted; child abuse, sexual; child; adolescent acknowledgements: the injury and child maltreatment section, health surveillance and epidemiology division, public health agency of canada (phac) provided support for this study. anne e. rhodes, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in department of psychiatry and the dalla lana school of public health, university of toronto and a research scientist at the suicide studies research unit, st. michael's hospital, 30 bond street, toronto, ontario, m5b 1w8, canada. e-mail: rhodesa@smh.ca jennifer bethell, ph.d. is a recent graduate of the doctoral program at the dalla lana school of public health, university of toronto and works with the suicide studies research unit, st. michael’s hospital, toronto, canada. e-mail: bethellj@shm.ca lil tonmyr, msw, ph.d. is a senior researcher with the injury and child maltreatment section, centre for chronic disease prevention and control, public health agency (phac) of canada, ottawa, canada. e-mail: lil.tonmyr@phac-aspc.gc.ca mailto:rhodesa@smh.ca mailto:bethellj@shm.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 114 the gender paradox of suicide and non-fatal suicide-related behaviours in most regions of the world, the suicide rate in males is at least double that of females and the sex differential is most apparent at older ages (krug, dahlberg, mercy, zwi, & lozano, 2002). conversely, non-fatal suicide-related behaviours (srb)1 selfinflicted injury or poisoning tend to be more common in females and the sex differential lessens with age (hawton & harriss, 2008). however, the reasons for these sex differences, first evident in youth, have not been thoroughly explained. as suicide rates begin to increase during the transition from childhood to adolescence, making it the second leading cause of death in 10to 24-year-olds worldwide (world health organization, 2010), studies of this age group are crucial. the association between child maltreatment and suicide among the potential explanations for the sex differences in srb rates, particularly in youth, is the effect of child maltreatment. although this area of research has been somewhat limited with respect to deciphering the unique contribution of specific forms of abuse (joiner et al., 2007), recent evidence suggests child sexual abuse (csa) may be a particularly potent risk factor. bruffaerts et al. (2010) used the world mental health survey (55,299 respondents aged 18 years and over in 21 countries) to study the association between nine childhood adversities (physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, parental death, parent divorce, other parental loss, family violence, physical illness, and financial adversity before age of 18) and lifetime suicide ideation and attempts. the study showed csa was the strongest predictor for both ideation and attempts, in bivariate and multivariate analyses adjusting for other adversities, as well as demographic and parental psychopathology variables. similarly, csa has been found to predict suicide attempts among suicidal ideators, independent of other factors (brezo et al., 2007). further, although other studies have demonstrated the association between other forms of maltreatment and non-fatal srb in youth, they have not always controlled for csa (mironova et al., 2011), even though different forms of abuse may often present together and thus bias results and limit the studies’ abilities to test theories linking the abuse to outcomes (joiner et al., 2007). with regard to potential sex differences in the association between csa and nonfatal srb specifically in youth, in a previous systematic review (rhodes et al., 2011), the relationship was found stronger in boys, and specifically for suicide attempts. seven population-based studies provided sex-specific unadjusted estimates of the association between csa and suicide attempt(s) and all found a statistically significant positive association in both boys and girls, but the association was stronger in boys than girls 1 suicide-related behaviours (srb) encompass fatal and non-fatal acts, including suicides (deaths with at least some degree of suicidal intent), other self-inflicted deaths, and non-fatal self-inflicted injury or poisoning. non-fatal srb includes suicide attempts (where there is an intent to die from suicide) as well as acts carried out without this intent (silverman, berman, sanddal, o'carroll, & joiner, 2007a; silverman, berman, sanddal, o'carroll, & joiner, 2007b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 115 (odds ratios [ors] from 4.5 to 30.8 and 2.2 to 5.1, respectively), including for multiple suicide attempts (ors 11.2 and 5.0, respectively). fewer studies provided adjusted estimates; however, these studies showed that other factors explained some, but not all, of the observed sex difference. this sex differential may reflect the nature and timing of the abuse. for example, perpetrators of abuse of boys are more likely to be same-sex (edgardh & ormstad, 2000) which may be especially traumatic and isolating for these victims, also making them less likely to disclose the abuse and seek help because of shame or fear of stigmatization. other factors may include sex differences in whether the abuse involved the use of physical force; joiner’s theory and analysis of suicidal behaviour have implicated exposure to violence in the context of abuse as key to later risk for suicidal behaviour (joiner et al., 2007). in other words, while csa may be more common in girls, the negative effect may somehow be stronger for boys (with respect to suicide attempts). taken together, an implication for population attributable risk estimates may be that csa gives rise to as many suicide attempts among boys exposed to csa as it does among exposed girls (rhodes et al., 2011). although a stronger association between csa and suicide attempt(s) among boys compared to girls has already been reported, as their risk/protective factors may not always overlap, it is unclear whether this pattern seen for suicide attempt(s) extends to suicide. it is critical to clarify the validity of causal pathways to inform prevention efforts. accordingly, this report will begin to assess sex differences in the association between csa and youth suicide and discuss implications for future theoretical formulations/testing in research. the present investigation this study reviewed the empirical literature on the association between csa and suicide in samples of youth, highlighting evidence of possible sex differences in the association, then identifying methodological challenges to such studies and discussing implications for future research. method a search of published research was carried out. studies eligible for inclusion met each of the following criteria: published between 1988 and 2011 (inclusive); reported empirical results on the estimate of csa among suicides, and/or the association between csa and suicide; included (but were not necessarily limited to) suicides in children, youth and young adults (up to age 25 years); and were english language. electronic databases (including medline, psycinfo, and social services abstracts) were searched, using subject headings “suicide” and “child abuse, sexual”, to identify relevant papers. case reports, qualitative studies, reviews, and editorials were excluded, along with studies that examined non-fatal srb and/or suicidal ideation (not suicide), child welfare involvement (not specified as csa), or, suicide in csa perpetrators (not victims). additional papers were identified by searching references lists. descriptive information international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 116 on the studies was abstracted and tabulated by one reviewer: type of study (psychological autopsy2 or cohort study); information about the population studied; study characteristics (whether a control group was included and whether analyses were sex-stratified); and estimates of csa in youth suicides (including the association with suicide). this information was reviewed and checked for accuracy by a second reviewer. formal quality assessment rules were not applied, given the lack of consensus and evaluation tools to assess the quality of observational studies (sanderson, tatt, & higgins, 2007). results the search yielded nine studies. tables 1 and 2 provide information on the six psychological autopsy studies (séguin, renaud, lesage, robert, & turecki, 2011; moskos, olson, halbern, keller, & gray, 2005; houston, hawton, & shepperd, 2001; appleby, cooper, amos, & faragher, 1999; brent, baugher, bridge, chen, & chiapetta, 1999; brent et al., 1994) and three cohort studies (cutajar et al., 2010; white & widom, 2003; plunkett et al., 2001) that reported estimates of csa among suicides, and/or estimates of the association between csa and suicide. however, of these nine studies, three (séguin et al., 2011; brent et al., 1999; white & widom, 2003) did not distinguish sexual abuse from other types of abuse and maltreatment. publication bias appears unlikely among the psychological autopsy studies, given that csa was typically studied among an array of potential risk factors. overall, of these nine studies, only three reported sex-stratified results: one psychological autopsy study (brent et al., 1999) and two cohort studies (white & widom, 2003; cutajar et al., 2010). in the psychological autopsy studies, where reported, estimates of the history of csa among suicides were about 20% (houston et al., 2001; appleby et al., 1999), but ranged from less than 10% (brent et al., 1994) to 33% (moskos et al., 2005) (and no sex-specific estimates of csa were provided). moskos et al. (2005) found history of csa ranged from about 5% to 33%, depending on the informant type (csa was reported most often by parents). information on the perpetrator was reported only by houston et al. (2001), who found that of the five cases of csa, the perpetrator was a parent in one, and for the remainder, perpetrators were friends, family friends, and strangers. estimates of the history of csa among suicides in the cohort studies could not be derived. very few psychological autopsy studies provided estimates of the association between csa and suicide, either because there was no control group (moskos et al., 2005; houston et al., 2001) or because there were empty cells for the control group (appleby et al., 1999). of the two studies that did provide estimates of the association (séguin et al., 2011; brent et al., 1999), neither distinguished csa from other types of abuse and maltreatment and both were hampered by very small numbers (especially in the control group), yielding very wide confidence intervals for effect estimates. 2 a systematic assessment of decedents’ circumstances before suicide, using interviews with one or more proxy respondents (i.e., informants) (conner et al., 2012) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 117 estimates of the association between csa and suicide from cohort studies varied; white and widom (2003) showed neither a statistically significant association between maltreatment and all-cause or violent death (suicide or homicide) mortality, plunkett et al. (2001) found the suicide rate among csa victims was about 10 times the comparable national rate, and cutajar et al. (2010) showed the relative risk of suicide, comparing csa victims to controls, was 14.2 (95% ci: 5.0-40.6) in males and 40.4 (95% ci: 25.065.3) in females, however, subjects were followed for many years, some up until age 64. taken together, a history of csa appears to be fairly common among youth who die by suicide (reported for roughly one in five). cohort studies of csa victims estimate suicide risk may be at least tenfold higher compared to the general population. however, it remains unclear whether the stronger association between csa and suicide attempt(s) observed for boys compared to girls (rhodes et al., 2011) extends to youth suicide. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 118 table 1. psychological autopsy studies of suicide that reported on sexual abuse author, year population (suicide cases) study characteristics estimate of sexual abuse among suicides location age (years) source, year of death response rate control group sexstratified séguin et al., 2011 quebec, canada <30 consecutive suicides recorded by quebec’s coroner’s office and the montreal central morgue, year of death not stated 67 of 89 (75%) 56 living, non-suicidal (within the previous year) controls, matched on age, sex and geographical region no among suicides, sexual abuse, physical or psychological violence, by age: age 0-4 (16%); age 59 (19%); age 10-14 (18%), and age 15-19 (16%). or suicide (abuse/violence vs. no abuse/violence), by age: 10.8 (95% ci: 1.4-86.5) age 0-4; 13.2 (95% ci: 1.7-104.8) age 5-9; 12.0 (95% ci: 1.5-95.5) age 1014 and 9.6 (95% ci: 1.277.9) age 15-19. moskos et al., 2005 utah, u.s.a. 13-21 151 consecutive suicides recorded by utah office of the medical examiner, 1996-98 51 of 108 families contacted (47%) no no sexual abuse, reported by informant type: parent (33%); sibling (7%); friend (4%); relative (7%); and, other (18%). note: categories not mutually exclusive. houston et al., 2001 oxfordarea, england 15-24 35 consecutive suicides, 26 undetermined deaths and 26 accidental deaths, recorded by 27 of 47 (57%) no no sexual abuse was “known” to have occurred in five (19%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 119 seven coroners in four counties (40 undetermined and accidental deaths later excluded as not suicides), 1993-95 appleby et al., 1999 man chester, england <35 92 consecutive suicides and 53 undetermined deaths, recorded by four coroners’ courts (six undetermined deaths later excluded as not suicides), 1995-96 84 of 139 suicides and probable suicides (60%) 64 living controls, matched on age and sex no among suicides and probable suicides, history of sexual abuse was reported for 17 (21%) and in none of the controls. brent et al., 1999 western pennsyl vania, u.s.a. 13-19 consecutive suicides, year of death not stated 140 of 194 (72%) 131 living controls, obtained by geographic cluster sampling, matched on age, sex, race, county of origin and ses yes history of abuse (not strictly csa and only for a subsample of the suicides (n = 75) but all of the controls). rr suicide (current abuse vs. no current abuse): 16.0 (95% ci: 0.9-279.1) in boys and 10.4 (95% ci: 0.5-226.9) in girls. rr suicide (lifetime abuse vs. no lifetime abuse): 49.3 (95% ci: 6.4-377.3) in boys and 11.7 (95% ci: 1.1-124.8) in girls. brent et al., 1994 western pennsyl vania, <20 consecutive suicides, 1986-90 67 of 91 (74%) 67 living controls, obtained by no among suicides, sexual abuse in past year (2%) and before past year (5%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 120 u.s.a. geographic cluster sampling, matched on age, sex, county of residence and ses or: odds ratio; ses: socioeconomic status; 95% ci: 95% confidence interval international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 121 table 2. cohort studies of child sexual abuse (csa) and suicide author, year population (sexual abuse cases) death data source study characteristics suicide deaths location age, years follow up source control group sexstratified cutajar et al., 2010 victoria, australia <17 13-44 years 2,759 children ascertained by the victorian institute of forensic medicine (forensic medical service for suspected csa), from 1964 to 1995, as having been sexually abused. national coroners informa tion system (ncis) and victorian coronial informa tion database (vcid) australian national population data, for 15-64 yearolds, for the year 2000 yes eight deaths by suicide documented in the sexually abused cohort, two (0.4%) in males and six (0.3%) in females. rr suicide (csa vs. control cohort): 14.2 (95% ci: 5.040.6) in males and 40.4 (95% ci: 25.0-65.3) in females. white & widom, 2003 metropoli tan area of midwest, u.s.a. <11 23-27 years 908 children who were abused (physically or sexually) and/or neglected, as established through court proceedings, from 1967 to 1971. national death index 667 children matched on age, sex, race/ethnicity, family social class. yes, for all-cause mortality rr all-cause mortality (abused vs. control cohort): 0.9 (95% ci: 0.5-1.9) in males and 1.6 (95% ci: 0.64.6) in females. rr violent death, i.e., homicide or suicide (abused vs. control group): 0.4 (95% ci: 0.1-1.9) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 122 plunkett et al., 2001 sydney, australia 4-15 9 years 183 children presenting to one of two specialist child protection units in sydney in 1998 and 1999 and confirmed as sexually abused. national death index 84 children chosen by stratified random sampling from area schools no three deaths by suicide in the sexually abused cohort, none among control cohort. suicide rate among abused: 179 per 100,000 personyears (comparable national suicide rate: 13.8-16.7 per 100,000 person-years) rr: relative risk; 95% ci: 95% confidence interval international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 123 discussion this literature review demonstrated there are very few studies of the association between csa and suicide. accordingly, we have a poor understanding of the relationship and any potential sex differences. the few studies that have tested the association between csa and suicide have been hampered by methodological challenges. the following section will outline these methodological challenges, by study type (as applicable). sampling psychological autopsy studies. moskos et al. (2005) found that of the families invited to participate in the study, those who had been referred to child and protective services were less likely to participate. given that response rates for psychological autopsy studies tended to be about 50% to 75%, this could have important implications. more specifically, this would suggest that csa (and other forms of maltreatment) would be underestimated among youth suicides studied by psychological autopsy. it is also unclear whether this pattern of study participation also applies to controls and/or differs by sex. cohort studies. these studies included children and youth for whom abuse had been substantiated through medical, legal and/or social services. as such, they represented only the very small subset of abused children and youth who come to the attention of authorities (macmillan, jamieson, & walsh, 2003). further, as discussed by cutajar et al. (2010), these children tend to come from more “disorganized and disadvantaged families”; among children exposed to csa, those from lower income families may be more likely to come into contact with child protection services (macmillan et al., 2003). children in these families likely also face other factors, aside from abuse, that might put them at increased risk for suicide (thereby possibly explaining the observed positive association). it is also unclear whether sexually abused girls are more or less likely than sexually abused boys to have their abuse substantiated through these services. given that boys may be less likely to discuss their abuse (hebert, tourigny, cyr, mcduff, & joly, 2009; edgardh & ormstad, 2000), it seems plausible that official records capture a smaller proportion of abused boys than abused girls; in fact, macmillan et al. (2003) showed that among children who reported csa, girls were more likely to report contact with child protection services than boys, but the effect was not statistically significant (odds ratio 1.70, 95% confidence interval 0.71-4.08). misclassification psychological autopsy studies. methodological problems, including differences in measures and the number and type of informants used for each suicide, all of which vary across studies, in all likelihood affect the comparability and reliability of data from psychological autopsy studies (pouliot & de leo, 2006). in fact, moskos et al. (2005) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 124 found that the history of csa depended on the type of informant; csa was frequently reported by parents (33%), but much less often by others. csa is highly secretive, so measurement may be particularly susceptible to misclassification either because the informant was unaware or deliberately withheld some information (conner et al., 2012), for example, because most csa is perpetrated by someone known to the victim, including family (finkelhor, 1994). as such, the history of csa is likely under-recorded among youth suicides (as well as controls), and assuming non-differential misclassification, estimates of the association between csa and suicide are likely also underestimated (kleinbaum, kupper, & morgenstern, 1982). furthermore, given that boys appear less likely to disclose csa (edgardh & ormstad, 2000), this misclassification may differ by sex. cohort studies. although the substantiated csa cases may be well defined in the cohort studies, control groups no doubt included some victims of csa. for example, cutajar et al. (2010) used national data as the control population; however, given that csa cases were restricted to only those documented in the state of victoria (population about 5 million), the control group would include not only the substantial proportion of csa that goes undocumented, but also csa victims documented in other jurisdictions. as such, the authors themselves pointed out that their study likely underestimated the association between csa and suicide. again, given boys may be less likely to disclose their csa, this misclassification may differ by sex. sample size and statistical power psychological autopsy studies. these studies typically do not accrue large samples because of the time and resources required to do so. as such, studying relatively rare exposures, such as csa, may be problematic for analysis and/or yield imprecise effect estimates. for example, several studies found that none of the control group had a history of csa and thus, in the analysis, the empty cells would have caused bias in odds ratios estimates (agresti, 1996). this issue also restricts opportunity for sex-stratified analyses. cohort studies. even assuming suicide risk is elevated among children and youth exposed to csa, fortunately suicide is still a rare outcome and therefore, requires long follow-up and/or large samples exposed and unexposed to csa in order to accumulate events. for example, cutajar et al. (2010) followed a cohort of 2,759 individuals with csa for up to 44 years, and recorded eight suicides (< 0.5% of the cohort). theoretical formulations a better understanding of the complex association between csa and suicide will require identifying and analyzing related factors (linked to both csa and suicidal ideation, plans, and behaviour) (kalucy, 2010), including mental health problems (green, 1993), re-victimization (balsam, lehavot, & beadnell, 2011) and other risk/protective exposures during childhood (nelson et al., 2002). as such, future studies will need to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 125 carefully consider the roles of other variables in the association between csa and suicide (e.g., confounder or mediator), including how to analyse them in the context of a wider hypothesized causal model (vittinghoff, glidden, shiboski, & mcculloch, 2005). for example, one study showed the association between csa and suicide ideation and attempts was largely mediated by mental health problems and stressful life events (fergusson, woodward, & horwood, 2000). conversely, molnar, berkman, and buka (2001) found the association was only partially explained by psychiatric disorders and other childhood adversities (e.g., other forms of parental abuse). with regard to any sex differences in the association between csa and suicide, rhodes et al. (2011) identified possible pathways for further investigation, suggesting differential disclosure and helpseeking behaviour and recommending qualitative research, mixed methods, and more focused hypothesis testing in large, prospective observational studies. suicides in adulthood it should be noted that the cohort studies listed in the previous section extended follow-up into adulthood and therefore, may not have been studying strictly youth suicide as the outcome. in fact, cutajar et al. (2010) found most of the suicides occurred in adulthood (mean age: 31). accordingly, it is unclear if these relative risk estimates apply specifically to youth. further, although we have previously reported that the association between csa and suicide attempts may be stronger in boys than in girls, this finding may not extend to adults; results from large surveys in mainly adults have reported differing findings with regard to sex differences in the association between sexual abuse and suicide attempts (bebbington et al., 2009; molnar et al., 2001), suggesting substantive differences between csa and lifetime sexual abuse and/or methodological issues including recall, disclosure, or selection bias (e.g., because of premature mortality in males). taken together, regardless of study type, these findings reinforce the importance of carefully considering and specifying the age at which the abuse occurs and (suicide and non-fatal srb) outcomes are studied, including the need for stratification by age as well as sex. suicides in childhood csa appears to be associated with non-fatal srb at a young age, perhaps even more strongly than later in life. bruffaerts et al’s analysis of world mental health survey data showed that history of csa (before age 18) was associated with a tenfold increase in the odds of a suicide attempt between ages 4 and 12, but this association decreased for suicide attempts in adolescence and adulthood, with odds ratios of about 6 and 3, respectively (bruffaerts et al., 2010). similarly, analysis of the netherlands mental health survey and incidence study, with just over 7,000 adults, did not find an association between csa and incident suicide attempts, however, additional analyses suggested this was because csa likely results in onset of suicide attempts at a relatively young age (enns et al., 2006). nevertheless, there are considerable concerns in assigning a verdict of suicide to children, such as whether they communicate or understand suicidal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 126 intent (crepeau-hobson, 2010). consequently, by excluding suicides that occur among the very young, studies may not capture the full extent of the association between csa and suicide. conclusion a review of the literature confirmed that the association between csa and youth suicide remains unclear and the potential sex difference in the association remains largely unaddressed. studies of the association between csa and suicide face major methodological challenges, as discussed here, underscoring inherent difficulties in addressing these questions. some of these challenges introduce opportunities for bias, and all require careful consideration when planning for such a study, including study design and population, data sources, sample size, and length of follow-up (if applicable). taken together, these findings suggest that the theory regarding sex differences in the association between csa and suicide needs further investigation. ideally, theories could be tested in large, population-based cohorts with standardized measures of csa, later linked to mortality data. two such examples are population-based surveys, and, population-based child welfare registries or surveys, similar to cutajar et al. (2010). population-based surveys may be most promising because surveys in youth have already demonstrated sex differences in the association between csa and suicide attempts and can capture csa that has not been formally disclosed. given the likely sex differential in disclosure of csa (girls disclose more than boys), it is possible that studies based on child welfare registries or child welfare surveys would not find sex differences in the association between csa and suicide, for example, if shame and isolation from nondisclosure were key in the causal pathway to suicide. however, to date, the surveys of youth that have addressed csa and non-fatal srb have been anonymous, in schoolbased settings (rhodes et al., 2011) or collected data retrospectively from adults in order to avoid ethical issues of mandatory reporting of child abuse (fergusson et al., 2000). the designs in the former may have precluded later linkage to mortality data, and the latter may introduce opportunities for bias (e.g., recall, disclosure, or selection). ultimately, the need to test theoretical formulations to explain the association between csa and suicide, and any potential sex differences therein, must be approached with an appreciation of the challenges in conducting the research and interpreting the study results. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 113–130 127 references agresti, a. 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(2010). suicide prevention (supre). geneva: world health organization [electronic version]. available: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/ http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/ dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0145-2134(03)00110-8 the present investigation sampling misclassification sample size and statistical power suicides in childhood conclusion efficiency in the problem-solving process international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 426 family problem-solving: how do families with adolescents make decisions? luisa molinari and marina everri abstract: in the present study, we adopt an observational method for the analysis of family members’ interactions during a problem-solving task. the specific focus of our work is to put the family as a whole beneath the lens of observation, as well as to analyze how the parents and the adolescent separately contribute to the task solution. twentyeight non-clinical families with adolescents (13 to 16 years old) were filmed in their homes during a problem-solving task. family interactions were analyzed according to four observational measures: family efficiency, family communication, family climate, and family participation. three different patterns of family decision-making are described: families that control (high efficiency, calm family climate, collaborative participation), families that surrender (low efficiency, tense family climate, individual participation), and families that struggle (intermediate efficiency, serious family climate, alternated participation). theoretical and practical implications in terms of everyday ways of dealing with problems in families with adolescents are discussed. keywords: family problem-solving, observation, decision-making, family efficiency, adolescence address correspondence to: luisa molinari, dipartimento di psicologia, borgo carissimi 10, 43100 parma (italy). tel. 0039-0521-034821. e-mail: luisa.molinari@unipr.it luisa molinari, ph.d. is a full professor of developmental psychology at the faculty of psychology, university of parma, italy. marina everri, ph.d. is a lecturer of social psychology at the faculty of psychology, university of parma, italy. e-mail: marina.everri@unipr.it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 427 family problem-solving is typically defined as an interactive situation to which all members are called to participate in order to make a decision or find a solution and accomplish a new adjustment (miller, lefcourt, holmes, ware, & saleh, 1986; rettig, 1993; tallman, 1993). as such, it is a task involving the family as a whole: when confronted with problematic issues, all members are engaged in interactive processes of negotiation, reconstruction, and interpretation of the reciprocal positions (cowan, 1991; silverstein, bauxbaum bass, tuttle, knudson-martin, & huenergardt, 2006). there are times in the life-course when families, involved in multiple changes and transitions, encounter many problem-solving situations in their everyday lives, and the way they deal with them may affect family functioning. adolescence is undoubtedly one such time. during adolescence, parents and children need to regulate their interactions in order to negotiate the new developing competencies (grotevant & cooper, 1986; kreppner, 1996; kreppner & ullrich, 1998; molinari, everri, & fruggeri, 2010) and to deal with the adolescent’s demands for more autonomy and self-determination (collins & laursen, 2004). the study of how family members interact during problem-solving tasks lies at the core of the foundational works of david reiss (reiss, 1971, 1981; costell, reiss, berkman, & jones, 1981), who collected an extensive corpus of data based on observational methods over several years of both empirical and clinical work. reiss emphasizes the extraordinary variety of coping strategies that families employ in response to stress situations, and argues that these strategies are related to an enduring structure of beliefs, convictions, and assumptions held by the family about its social world and shaping its action. in the most recent studies on this topic, the observation of how families actually interact when facing problem-solving situations has given way to more subjective methods for the study of the conflict resolution styles adopted by parents and adolescent children. among others, an influential research team (branje, van doorn, van der valk, & meeus, 2009; van doorn, branje, & meeus, 2007, 2011) has conducted a longitudinal study lasting four years with the aim of investigating the associations between inter-parental and parent-adolescent conflict resolution styles and the changes of such styles during adolescence. using self-report instruments, these authors reached positive conclusions about both the association and the gradual shift in favor of a more horizontal relationship between parents and children. similar questions were addressed in a cross-sectional study conducted by reese-weber (2000) with questionnaires distributed to middle and late adolescents. the results highlighted the mediator role of mother-adolescent and father-adolescent conflict resolution skills on sibling conflict resolution styles for both samples. though interesting, these studies share a methodological approach based on the analysis of what family members say they usually do when facing stressful situations, while the more interactional approach emphasized by reiss is left behind. in the current study, we observe how families with adolescents actually interact during a problem-solving task. there are two characteristics of the method we have used in the current study: one is the focus on the whole family, given that the expression of new competencies on the part of the youngsters requires all members to learn and practice new resolution skills (cooper, grotevant, & condon, 1983; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 428 hauser, 1991); the second is the use of direct observations, suitable for overcoming the focus on the participants’ perceptions and for grasping the family processes leading to the task’s resolution. in order to do so, we have investigated in particular three family dimensions: emotions, communication, and participation. there are theoretical reasons to believe that emotions and affects have an impact on how families solve problems. for instance, forgatch and colleagues (forgatch, 1989; capaldi, forgatch, & crosby, 1994) have found that the expression of antagonistic and hostile emotions is negatively associated with families possibly solving a problem. consistent with this finding, mccolloch, gilbert, and johnson (1990) showed that, in addition to negative emotions, the display of aggression during the task also limited the family’s effectiveness. going further into this topic, reuter and conger (1995) confirmed that problem-solving is negatively influenced by hostility and aggression, but they also argued that the opposite is not true, since an emotional climate characterized by warm and supportive interactions is not associated with a higher quality of the resolution process. in regard to the members’ participation in the task solution, several authors have assumed that during problem-solving situations families have to coordinate and work together in order to maintain efficient family functioning (silverstein et al., 2006). only a few studies have specifically analyzed how family members participate in a problem-solving task. in a two-year longitudinal study, vuchinich, angelelli, and gatherum (1996) asked families with children in the transition from childhood to adolescence to solve a series of tasks, consisting overall in structured discussions, which were videotaped in the families’ homes. their results show that throughout the two years, families became progressively less effective in the process of task resolution. as they grow older, children tended to be more active in the discussions than they were before, as they argued and raised more controversial issues. as a consequence, the family had to engage in and commit more strongly to longer negotiations about the problem, before a common solution was eventually reached. jory and colleagues (jory, rainbolt, karns, freeborn, & greer, 1996; jory, yan, freeborn, & greer, 1997) also conducted a series of studies videotaping families’ interactions during structured problem-solving tasks. their results show the importance of analyzing, among other variables, the families’ communication styles. drawing on reiss’ assumptions, these authors developed a classification of problem-solving interactions in families with adolescents, and showed a variety of ways in which members verbally communicate. for example, some families tended to express criticism of one another, correcting and trying to direct the actions of others underlining their possible mistakes. other families instead mainly expressed concerns for the feelings of others, as they praised one another, communicated positive feelings, and shared information as a means of benefiting others. the present study in the present study, we adopt an observational method for the analysis of family members’ interaction during a problem-solving task. the specific focus of our work is to put the family as a whole beneath the lens of observation, as well as to analyze how the parents and the adolescent contribute separately to the task solution. given the specifics of adolescence, we argue that the adolescent’s expression of autonomy and self-determination in solving the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 429 problem, and the corresponding acknowledgement, on the part of the parents, of their child’s action and initiatives are indicators of a good family functioning. the objectives of our work were twofold. first, we have developed a classification system of the family efficiency in the resolution process, emerging through the analysis of indicators that describe how family members interact and proceed in the course of the task. how can we define the efficiency of a family facing a stressful situation? we uphold that families perform different degrees of efficiency: efficient families will concentrate on the task, proactively evaluating if they are proceeding towards the resolution, and eventually reaching the solution to the problem. on the contrary, non-efficient families will avoid focusing on the task and will circumnavigate the topic, disrespectful of the allocated time and of the request to work together in order to find the task solution. we controlled for some demographic variables, such as number, gender, and ages of children, in order to verify whether they contribute to the degree of family efficiency. second, we have investigated if family communication, emotional climate, and participation affect the degree of efficiency. in doing so, we considered separately the contribution of the adolescent and his or her parents. we predict that in highly efficient families members will tend to talk about the solution process itself, will set up a relaxed emotional climate, and will show the ability to coordinate one with the others. we also advance the hypothesis that in these families the parents’ and adolescent’s contributions to the task will differ, with the first acknowledging and respecting the child’s autonomy and initiative while at the same time keeping a degree of engagement and control over the interactive process. in families of low efficiency, disengagement from the task and from demonstrating support for the adolescent’s initiatives will instead be observed; moreover, parents and adolescents will assume similar roles, heedless of their specific positions in the developmental process. method participants twenty-eight italian non-clinical families with adolescents, recruited through the schools, were videotaped in their homes during a problem-solving task. they all participated in this study on a voluntary basis. to be eligible for the study, families had to have at least one child in the 13 to 16 age bracket. all family members, with the exception of the children under the age of 6, were invited to participate. the participant families came from emilia romagna, a region in northern italy. they were all caucasian and rather homogeneous for ses (they belonged to the upper-middle class). twenty-one adolescents were males (mean age = 14.29) and seven females (mean age = 13.85). in six families, the adolescent was the only child, in 15 families two siblings were present, and in seven families there were three or four siblings. prior to data collection, parents’ informed consent and children’s assent were acquired from all participants. in line with the ethical norms defined by the american psychological association, family members were informed that they had the option to stop the filming at any international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 430 time if they felt uncomfortable or tired, and that the video recordings would be used only for research and educational purposes. after we obtained the families’ agreement to participate, two researchers went to their homes. one researcher introduced the task and answered any questions, while the other was in charge of the videotaping (the whole of the task was videotaped). problem-solving task the choice of the specific task required a certain caution. the first question was: what is the validity of observing a family solving a structured problem in a research setting? once again, reiss’ (1971, 1981) conclusions meet the requirement: drawing upon the many results obtained in 17 years of studies, he argued that in such occasions families show interactive patterns reflecting the way they face problems in everyday life. but another question was even more crucial, and concerned the external validity of any specific task we decided to ask the families to solve. after several trials, we decided to use a tri-dimensional puzzle made up of five pieces. the reason for this choice is that it requires all family members to find the way to regulate their interactions in order to make decisions and solve problems, thus accomplishing the theoretical assumptions guiding our work. the “pharaoh’s pyramid” puzzle is a five-piece wooden pyramid enclosed in a transparent plastic box with a hard paper base containing the instructions for the solution. this type of task can be solved through the work of all members, of a couple, or of one single member. however, to reach the solution members have to coordinate, as all five pieces are necessary for the task completion. one single member can reach the solution working alone only if the rest of the family accepts that he or she assembles all five pieces of the puzzle. on the contrary, if one member works with two or three pieces and another separately handles the remaining ones, any of them will be able to complete the task. the procedure was as follows. family members were invited to sit around a table comfortably. before the instructions were given, it was ascertained that the families had not previously encountered the task or any form of it. the task was then explained to every family in exactly the same way by reading the following from a written script: “open the box, pull apart the pieces of the puzzle and then reassemble them working together in about ten minutes. when you have finished, put again the puzzle back in the box.” after the assignment of the task, the researcher sat to one side and let the family solve the puzzle without intervening. if a family member asked a question, the researcher replied as concisely as possible, and drove all the members’ attention back to the task. if the family did not solve the task in the allocated time (10 minutes), the researcher would not interrupt and let the members go on until they finished or asked for the solution (this happened in two cases). preparation of the material for the analysis a research team carefully watched the filmed material several times, in order to let the categories of analysis emerge from the data rather than decide in advance which indices to consider and how to define them. after repeated viewings of the video recordings, we agreed that the degree of family efficiency (i.e., the process through which families proceed along the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 431 task) is expressed by four indicators: (a) the task duration; (b) the fact that families reach or do not reach the solution of the task (the problem is considered as solved if the family completes the task within a period of time not exceeding the assigned time by more than 30 percent); (c) the number of solution strategies they try; and (d) the time they allocate to each strategy. a solution strategy is defined as one trial of solution, that is, one of the possible ways to reassemble the puzzle (i.e., the table as a base, the hard paper base, the plastic box, the instructions). each of these strategies may be used more than once, thus theoretically the number of solution strategies is unlimited. the preparation of the material for the analysis was carried out in three steps. in the first step, we identified the solution strategies used by each family. a strategy started when at least one family member proposed, either verbally or non-verbally, a way to solve the task and at least one other member joined him or her (again, either verbally or non-verbally). this happened, for instance, if a member said: “why don’t we use the paper box as a base?” and another member replied: “yes, it’s a good idea!” or nodded as to express compliance with the proposed strategy. during this step, we worked independently first and afterwards discussed together until we reached a complete agreement. for each family, the number and mean duration of strategies were then calculated. as stated above, the indices of task duration, solution, number, and mean duration of strategies combine together to define family efficiency. the second step consisted in the detailed transcription of all that was observable during each strategy. the first transcription was done by one researcher, who annotated facial expressions, body movements, and verbal exchanges produced by each family member, considering the effects that they had on the other participants as well. afterwards, another researcher watched the same video while reading the transcription, and expressed agreement and/or disagreement. both researchers then discussed until a draft categorization of verbal communication, emotions, and participation was eventually devised. after hours of discussion within the research team, an observational coding system was finally developed. lastly, three trained observational coders applied the coding system to the material. judges first worked independently and then they discussed together with the research team until a satisfactory degree of agreement was reached for each index. the coding system three observational measures were considered: 1. family communication, comprising two indices: the total number of verbal messages, and the number of effective verbal messages produced by each family member (inter-raters agreement > .90). a verbal message is defined as the conversational turn; an effective verbal message is defined as a message directed to the advance towards the resolution of the problem. examples of effective messages are: “put the triangular piece on the top” or “look at the pyramid shape before pulling the pieces apart”. in our analyses, we consider the messages expressed by the adolescent and by his or her parents separately1 . 1 the data we present in this paper refer either to the family as a whole (for the measures of family efficiency and family climate) or to the contribution of the parents and the adolescent child to the task (for the measures of family communication and family participation), while the contribution of any single sibling was not considered. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 432 2. family climate, expressed by two indices. one refers to the emotions displayed by the family (considered as a whole) during each strategy: family members can be prevalently calm (when they smile and show relaxed facial expressions), serious (when they express neutral facial expressions close to seriousness), or tense (when they display sudden and short laughter and sneers). for every family, judges were asked to assign an emotional label to what they observed in each strategy, considering the prevailing emotion displayed (inter-raters agreement > .85). the second index concerns the quality of the actions observable during the transition from one strategy to the successive. actions were coded as fluent, when members gradually introduced a new strategy, or abrupt, when they displayed sudden and quick motions (for example, tearing away one wooden piece from someone else). inter-raters agreement was > .95. after coding was complete, for each of the indices referring to the family climate (calm serious, tense, fluent, abrupt) we calculated a proportion of occurrence in every single family, given by the number of strategies in which they were observed divided by the total number of strategies (for example, if a family was coded as calm during all strategies, its values were: calm = 1.00, serious = .00, tense = .00; if instead a family was coded as calm during one out of four strategies, serious during another, and tense during the remaining two strategies, the corresponding values were: .25, .25, .50). 3. family participation. this measure refers to the quality of the adolescent’s and the parents’ involvement in each strategy. in particular, we considered three different indices for participation: peripheral (the member is not actively involved in the task); individual (the member works individually on the task); and collaborative (the member cooperates with one or more members). a proportion of the adolescent’s and parents’ peripheral, individual, and collaborative participation was again calculated (inter-raters agreement > .90). results a k-mean cluster analysis was conducted on the indices of family efficiency (table 1). table 1. k-mean cluster analysis: families’ degrees of efficiency during the resolution process group 1 highly efficient families (he) group 2 intermediate efficient families (ie) group 3 low efficient families (le) task duration (sec.) 249.18 814.38 1569.67 number of strategies 4.59 7.88 6.33 strategies’ duration (sec.) 55.24 116.95 265.33 solution (1 = yes; 2 = no) 1.00 1.38 2.00 number of families 17 8 3 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 433 three clusters were considered (three is the maximum number of cluster having more than two families in each group). families in the first group (highly efficient, he, n = 17) progressed rapidly towards the task solution, which they all reached, passing through an average of four to five strategies, spending less than one minute on each strategy, and solving the task in a limited amount of time. on the contrary, families in the third group (low efficient, le, n = 3) took a long time and eventually did not reach the solution; moreover, they persisted on the same strategy before deciding to move and explore a new way of resolution. families in the second group (intermediate efficient, ie, n = 8), in addition to the fact that they were “in the middle” as far as task duration, strategies’ duration, and solution were concerned, went through the highest number of strategies. non-parametric tests (kruskal wallis) showed no differences among the groups as far as gender, number, and ages of children in the families were concerned. we then conducted other analyses in order to verify whether the three clusters differed as far as family communication, family climate, and family participation were concerned. table 2 reports the results concerning the family communication. table 2. parents’ and adolescent’s communication by cluster membership group 1 he families group 2 ie families group 3 le families total messages by adolescents 19.12 34.62 101.67 proportion of effective messages by adolescent .22 .26 .15 total messages by parents 19.32 46.62 110.67 proportion of effective messages by parents .24 .18 .17 the total number of messages produced by the adolescent and the parents in the three groups was very different: le family members produced a number of total messages which was five to six times higher as compared to he (for adolescents, chi2 (2) = 9.32, p < .009; for parents, chi2 (2) = 18.23, p < .001). as for the proportion of effective messages, adolescents in the ie families were those who revealed to be more effective for the task solution (chi2 (2) = 8.04, p < .01), while the same was true for parents in the he group (chi2 (2) = 9.47, p < .009). groups’ comparison concerning the family climate is reported in table 3. table 3. family climate by cluster membership group 1 he families group 2 ie families group 3 le families emotions calm .88 .40 .67 serious .09 .40 .08 tense .03 .21 .25 actions fluent .92 .59 .75 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 434 non-parametric tests (kruskal wallis) conducted for the comparison among the three groups revealed that, as far as emotions were concerned, he families were the calmest (chi2 (2) = 10.53, p < .005), ie families tended to be more serious than the other groups (chi2 (2) = 5.34, p < .05), and ie and le families were more tense than he ones (chi2 (2) = 9.47, p < .009). as for actions’ indicators, he families moved more fluently from one strategy to the other (chi2 (2) = 8.11, p < .01), while ie families were more abrupt (chi2 (2) = 8.11, p < .01). finally, we explored whether the quality of the adolescent’s and parents’ participation in the task differed (table 4). table 4. parents’ and adolescent’s participation in the task by cluster membership group 1 he families group 2 ie families group 3 le families adolescent’s participation peripheral .10 .38 .13 individual .35 .32 .72 collaborative .56 .29 .15 parents’ participation peripheral .45 .31 .14 individual .18 .36 .82 collaborative .38 .33 .07 the non-parametric tests showed differences among the groups for all variables. adolescents in ie families were the most peripheral (chi2 (2) = 8.34, p < .01), in le families were the most individuals (chi2 (2) = 6.13, p < .03), and in he families were the most collaborative (chi2 (2) = 6.91, p < .05). parents in he families were the most peripheral (chi2 (2) = 6.12, p < .03), in le families were the most individual (chi2 (2) = 12.75, p < .002) and the least collaborative (chi2 (2) = 7.51, p < .04). discussion drawing on the results of this study, an interesting view of how families with adolescent children interact when facing problem-solving situations is depicted. as far as he and le families are concerned, our predictions were confirmed. however, with the cluster analysis we also identified a third group, the intermediate efficiency families, that shows a very interesting interactive pattern. in this discussion, we propose an overview of the interactive patterns characterizing each group of families, enriched by a few descriptions extracted from the videos. highly efficient families: those who control. the videos provide us with some hints about how he families typically approached the task. as soon as the researcher gave them the pyramid and read the instructions, one member, generally the adolescent or an older sibling, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 435 explored it carefully, often expressing comments on the possible strategies for its solution. this immediately triggered the prompt activation of other members, thus giving the idea of a family that directly faces the problem to be solved, with concentration and initiative. the results of the analyses reported above tell us that these families solved the problem in a very short time. six families actually completed it in a couple of minutes, using only three strategies: they (a) explored the pyramid and opened it, (b) tried one of the possible solution strategies, and (c) found the solution and put the pyramid back in its box. when they did take a longer time, they rapidly moved through a higher number of strategies (five or six). their progression towards the solution (which they all reached) seems to be guided by the regular evaluation (expressed through effective messages) of how the task was proceeding and by introducing innovative ideas (new strategies) as soon as the old ones proved to be ineffective. a closer look at the family communication during the task reveals that parents and adolescents expressed approximately the same number of comments; however, parents’ comments were slightly more effective than those of the adolescents. as for their actual participation in the task, the adolescents of these families were seldom peripheral. at times, they worked individually but more often they collaborated with other members. parents, on the other hand, seldom worked on the task individually. they mainly performed peripheral or collaborative participation. the emotional climate was relaxed, and the transitions from one strategy to the other were always smooth. in brief, the way he families went through the task seems to be characterized by a high amount of control. all members regularly contributed, with suggestions and evaluations, to the task solution in the allocated amount of time. the parents assumed different positions, at times allowing the adolescent to work alone on the task, at others cooperating with him or her. in either case, they maintained the control of what was happening by verbally guiding the children through the process, thus facilitating a good family performance. low efficient families: those who surrender. a very different approach to the task was observed in le families. the video recordings show that in all these three families, members asked the researcher for supplementary information as soon as she had read the instructions. in one case, the adolescent inquired about the number of families that were able to solve the task, in another the mother asked for specifics about the research goal, and in the third the father stated: “it’s too much for us!” the families grouped under the le label used much more than the allocated time without eventually reaching the solution (the fastest of these families gave up after 22 minutes of trials). they remained “stuck” in the same strategy for many minutes, while talking about unrelated issues and joking about their poor performance. the emotional climate was prevalently calm; however several moments of tension among participants were observable, particularly in the abrupt movements performed when moving from one strategy to the other. finally, le families did not work together on the task, as the assignment explicitly asked. rather, they separately worked on some pieces and tried to assemble a few of them, without international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 436 showing any concern about the fact that if individual actions were not accompanied by some form of coordination among the members, they could not lead to the solution. in short, these families seemed to get lost in the task and eventually gave up. they did not concentrate on the problem and tended to avoid the effort required in finding a common solution, for instance, by talking about anything but the task. intermediate efficient families: those who struggle. the third group of families shows a very interesting pattern, differing partly from the other two. in comparison with he families, they turned out to be less efficient in the resolution process, since they needed a longer time and did not always reach the solution. however, the data also tell us that they went through a higher number of strategies, the highest of all. even when the time pressure was high and they still seemed far away from the solution, ie families did not give up or moved around the task (as le families did), but rather went on struggling and making attempts. this effort is documented by their serious concentration on the task. what is also very important is that the adolescent’s contribution was highly relevant throughout the whole process, as it was actually the youngster who verbally guided the process more than parents did, a pattern which was not observed in any of the other groups. as regards the quality of the family participation in the task, the parents and the adolescent switched their positions in the course of the task resolution: sometimes the parents remained peripheral and let the adolescent work, at other times it was the adolescent who withdrew and left the field open to the parents, at still others they all actively cooperated. in brief, these families seem to be going through a “testing” time, with all members struggling to find their specific role. conclusion in the present study we have described the process of decision-making during a problemsolving situation in families with adolescent children. the notion of family efficiency has shown to be important in order to shed light on the interactional processes displayed by family members when they face critical situations, as is frequent during adolescence (molinari et al., 2010). several considerations arise from the discussion of our results. first, we can highlight that, consistent with what reuter and conger (1995) have described, the family climate, and even more the quality of the verbal messages, affect the processes by means of which families face the situation at hand. when dealing with the adolescents’ requests in everyday life, parents are often called upon to engage in discussions and negotiations that can benefit from a calm setting and an open and direct communication style. also relevant is how family members actually work in the course of problematic situations. not surprisingly, highly efficient families are very collaborative. the ability to coordinate in a group is significant to decision-making, because it gives each family member the possibility to intervene. however, beyond everybody’s active participation in the task, in these families the adolescent and the parents hold different positions, with the first who seldom has the chance to work alone and the second who verbally guide and support him or her. this reveals a form of control over the adolescent’s behavior on the part of parents. on the contrary, families international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 437 working mainly individually, and eventually surrendering, seem to convey the idea that both parents and adolescents should rely on their own individual efforts in order to make decisions. we suggest that this form of participation recalls a sort of premature attribution of responsibility to children that is close to disengagement, which prevents the family reaching the solution of the problem. as a final remark, let us consider in more detail the interactive picture of the struggling families. in these families, adolescents are more active, and members engage in multiple strategies. at times all of them actually collaborate and participate, but there are also times when the adolescent talks and individually works on the task, while the parents lessen their control thus favoring the child’s individuation and autonomy, regardless of the fact that the apparent struggle to put forth different suggestions makes the process longer and more complicated. our work certainly has several limitations and leaves many questions unanswered, since it only provides a snapshot of the different ways families with adolescents deal with decisionmaking. one limitation concerns the fact that the unbalanced number of families in the three clusters did not allow for more rigorous statistical analyses. moreover, the families are limited in number, and they do not necessarily reflect the demographic composition of the region; as a consequence, we are unable to make generalizations about family adjustment during adolescence. another important weakness concerning the external validity of our work lies in the degree to which the task that we asked families to solve reflects other types of tasks that they are called upon to solve in everyday life. this still remains an open question that has to do with the more general problem of how “real” our conclusions can be in terms of the recurrent ways that families will interact during decision-making. one more limitation is that this is a study at a particular moment in time, and we do not know if there were external factors (e.g., marital conflicts or other family problems) that might have influenced the outcomes. finally, we are aware that the particular research setting, requiring the presence of an observer in the families’ homes as well as the video-recording equipment, constitutes in itself a limitation, given that the families might have only been willing to present themselves in an “ideal” way. beyond these limitations, we believe that household observations of non-clinical families are crucial and deeply needed to further an understanding of how parents and adolescents, who are called upon daily to find new ways to readjust their relations, deal with the challenges that are enhanced by the frequent changes and problematic situations of their everyday live. we conclude our contribution by raising an issue that may be further addressed in future research and can also be considered as an interesting working hypothesis for professional practice. we have shown that the most efficient families are those in which parents continuously control and monitor the adolescent’s actions. but the crucial question is: does this interactive process accomplish this efficiency through the specific nature of adolescence, calling for a balance between cohesion and autonomy? the variety of interactive patterns we have observed allows us to put forth the idea that adjustment and functioning in families with adolescents are not just a matter of efficiency in solving problems and making decisions. in some cases, a loss in efficiency on the part of the families who engage in discussions and negotiations before coming to the final decision is offset by the fact of acknowledging the adolescent’s needs for exploration, initiatives, trials, and errors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 438 what are the practical implications of this study for educators and practitioners working with families and adolescents? our results highlight the need for rethinking around the dimension of parental monitoring. an interesting debate about this issue has recently been raised by psychologists (stattin & kerr, 2000; kerr, stattin, & burk, 2010) who, drawing on the results of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, have shown that parental monitoring, based on tracking and surveillance, is linked to forms of internal and external adjustment. however, the same authors also stress that many prevention and intervention programs addressed toward parents and based on the exclusive increasing of monitoring are not effective. they state that “there must be mechanisms not yet considered or tested that explain the role of parents and that suggest what they might best do to guide their children through adolescence into adulthood” (kerr, stattin, & burk, 2010, p. 62). we suggest that the focus on the family interactive patterns can account for a wider perspective in which the adolescent’s position and behavior concur with the parenting dynamics. from this point of view, the dimension of monitoring is questionable, at least in the process of decision-making. adolescents have the possibility to cooperate, to make mistakes, and eventually to become competent in coping with problematic issues only if parents sometimes let them “take the risk” of experimenting with new situations. the distinction between high and low efficiency, as well as that between high and low monitoring, is therefore not enough to grasp the multifaceted universe of families with adolescents: their interactive processes may also take on different nuances meeting the requirements of the continuous oscillations implied in the identity formation process, which is the most challenging developmental task for adolescents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 426–441 439 references branje, s. j. t., van doorn, m. d., van der valk, i., & meeus, w. h .j. 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(1996). context and development in family problem solving with preadolescent children. child development, 67(3), 1276–1288. from the zone of risk to the zone of resilience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 259 resilience in child welfare: a social work perspective dermot j. hurley, lisa martin, and rhonda hallberg abstract: this study explores the concept of resilience as it is applied in child welfare practice from the perspective of front line child protection workers (cpws). specifically it examines how cpws understand the concept of resilience and how they see themselves nurturing resilience in children and families. the paper also explores how working with resilient clients helps foster resilience in cpws through a process of vicarious or shared resilience. this study is part of a larger three-site study conducted in canada, ireland, and argentina examining the concept of resilience within specific socio-cultural contexts of child protection practice. keywords: resilience, child protection, vicarious resilience dermot j. hurley, msw, rsw (the corresponding author) is an associate professor at the school of social work, king’s university college at western university, 266 epworth avenue, london, ontario, canada, n6a 2m3. e-mail: dhurley2@uwo.ca lisa martin, msw, rsw child & family mental health, child and parent resource institute, london, ontario, canada. e-mail: lisa.martin@ontario.ca rhonda hallberg, msw, rsw is a child welfare consultant, london, ontario, canada. e-mail: rhallber@uwo.ca mailto:dhurley2@uwo.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 260 resilience the question of how children cope with adversity and develop competence and skills under difficult circumstances has been the subject of resilience research for some time. resilience has been defined as “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000, p. 543). the concept has been extensively researched and there is a widely held view that resilience involves a complex interaction of individual characteristics and environmental factors within specific cultural contexts (garmezy, 1985; rutter, 1987; werner & smith, 1992; masten & coatsworth, 1998; luthar et al., 2000; ungar, 2004a). in a comprehensive review of resilience research and practice in the areas of developmental psychology and child welfare, ann masten (2011) notes that for decades the emphasis has been on enumerating risk and protective factors, understanding human adaptation, and articulating dynamic processes that trigger resilience. she points to a recent shift away from deficit-based to competence-based models of practice, and suggests that current efforts to promote resilience have in common a focus on positive indicators of adaptation, risk moderators, social development, and the quality of relationships (masten, 2011). other researchers suggest that a greater understanding of the social ecological roots of positive development is essential in promoting resilience (ungar, 2011), which has particular relevance for disadvantaged child welfare populations. resilience and child protection in the last decade there has been a concerted effort to introduce resilience concepts into child welfare practice. this has resulted in a number of studies enumerating various strategies to actively promote resilience in children at risk (flynn, dudding, & barber, 2006; masten, 2006; schofield & beck, 2005; stein, 2006; ungar, 2004a). the goal generally is to reduce risk or threat to children’s development and increase positive adaptation through resilience-building interventions. authors have emphasized the importance of promoting resilience in children in a variety of ways and settings: for example, mentoring talents and skills, (gilligan, 2000); child care (daniel & wassell, 2002); access to systems of care (armstrong, stroul, & boothroyd, 2005); child protection (flynn et al., 2006); children, families, and communities (dolan & canavan, 2008); and aboriginal youth in care (filbert & flynn, 2010). common to these approaches is the application of resilience-based concepts in an effort to promote resilient functioning in children and youth. some programs offer specific strategies for building resilience which can be applied in various settings. for example in the united kingdom, daniel and wassell (2002) have developed a comprehensive and effective framework for promoting resilience which targets educational, social, relational, and personal assets (daniel, 2006; daniel & wassell, 2002). more recently their conceptual framework for resilience building has been successfully adapted for use in a statutory children’s home in northern ireland (houston, 2010). despite efforts being made to actively promote resilience in child welfare, authors have suggested that the concept of resilience is not well understood or articulated within the field of child protection and that there continues to be conceptual vagueness and lack of clarity in the application of resilience concepts. mcmurray, connolly, preston-shoot, and wigley (2008) looked at how social workers constructed and utilized the concept of resilience in child welfare international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 261 practice in the u.k. they found that social workers had difficulty conceptualizing resilience, and linking the concept to practice, and noted that “knowledge of the concept of resilience was generally derived from their everyday understanding rather than a policy-based or theoretical comprehension” (p. 307). similarly, daniel’s (2006) research identifies a lack of knowledge of resilience theory among social work professionals, and notes the importance of integrating resilience concepts into assessment and intervention practice. there is a continuing debate among researchers about the specific mechanisms that are likely to enhance resilience, which raises an important question about how child protection workers (cpws) understand resilience and how they see themselves nurturing and enhancing resilience in their clients. high rates of emotional exhaustion and burnout among cpws are well documented (anderson, 2000; corovic, 2006; bride & figley, 2007) and of particular concern in a profession that seeks to promote stability and continuity in the lives of children at risk. cpws deal with adversity in many forms and are impacted in a deep emotional way by exposure to severe conflict in child protection work (ferguson, 2004). cpws are confronted by extreme emotional pain and wrenching loss on a regular basis. despite this, there is growing evidence to suggest that working with resilient clients can strengthen a worker’s own resilience. hernandez, engstrom, and gangsei (2010) explored the idea of reciprocity in therapeutic relationships and described how witnessing clients overcoming adversity can change a therapist’s “attitudes, emotions and behavior in ways that the authors conceptualized as manifesting vicarious resilience” (p. 72). hence, the concept of vicarious resilience offers a unique perspective on how resilience in practitioners who are working daily with traumatized clients can be developed by proxy, through participation in the lives of resilient survivors of trauma and abuse (hernandez, gangsei, & engstrom, 2007; alvarez & hurley, 2010). the study this study is concerned with the question of what cpws understand to be resilience and how they see themselves promoting resilience in children at risk. from a phenomenological perspective it explores three basic questions: 1. how is the concept of resilience understood within child protection practice? 2. what do cpws see themselves doing to promote resilience in children and families? 3. how is the cpw impacted by the client’s resilience? from the authors perspective, child protection discourse in canada, as in many other jurisdictions, has been dominated by deficit thinking and risk aversive practice which has been extensively critiqued in the u.k., australia, and elsewhere (lonne, parton, thomson, & harries, 2008). a resilience approach to child welfare practice is consistent with a strengths-based perspective and seeks to explore the link between resilience research and front line child welfare practice. some new themes emerged from the study alongside those that had been identified in the literature adding an important dimension toward understanding resilience as a shared, mutually beneficial dynamic process between worker and client. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 262 sample the research participants consisted of 20 social workers (10 bsw & 10 msw) ranging in age from 26 to 50, with between 3 and 22 years of experience in child welfare; 80% of the respondents were female. all participating cpws were employed at a children’s aid society in southwestern ontario. of the participants, over 90% reported having removed a child on at least one occasion from a high-risk home and placing them in care. caseloads ranged from 8 to 26 reflecting the diversity and complexity of practice within the agency. the sampling technique was purposive, ensuring that the child protection workers interviewed reflected a broad range of experience and years of service. following a call for volunteers to participate in the project respondents were selected from adoption services, crisis intake, specialized foster care, family services, domestic violence, and sexual abuse teams. purposive sampling allowed the researchers to select a wide range of participants with similar but quite distinct experiences within child welfare allowing for maximum variability within the study. method the study employed semi-structured interviews based on questions related to how cpws understand and utilize the concept of resilience in their work with children and families. questions included in the interview guide were informed by the extant literature, feedback from a focus group session, and the extensive experience of the authors in child protection work. ethics approval was granted by the ethics review committee (erc) of king’s university college at western university, as well as senior management at the participating agency. written consent was received at the beginning of each interview, and a guarantee of confidentiality was provided. all the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed by research assistants. data collection and analysis in-depth interviews (1 to 1.5 hours) were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. the interview guide allowed for some thematic consistency across interviews while preserving the uniqueness of each interview session. data analysis and interpretation utilized a systematic approach for the management of textual data. the process involved careful reading of the text, coding, clustering topics, and identifying emergent themes (cresswell, 2008). content analysis was conducted manually, frequently with accompanying playback, in order to identify recurring patterns and themes in the interviews. drafts of all transcriptions were read independently by members of the research team to ensure that different points of view were fully explored before consensus was achieved on emerging themes and categories. following transcription the researchers worked intensively with the text, coding the emerging themes and identifying patterns in the coded material. discussion among team members enabled refining of coding frames, and initial themes emerged from the data, which were coded by team members using phenomenological bracketing. codes with similar content were clustered into categories from which final themes emerged. these were then organized into a framework with matched sections of text illustrating the main thematic findings. an independent audit was conducted by two colleagues (both professors of social work) who read segments of data and independently compared them with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 263 coding frames (inter-rater reliability was 0.85). every effort was made to identify commonalities and contradictions between the respondents allowing for a fuller and more critical appraisal of emerging categories and themes. care was taken to triangulate data via journal entries and field observations and member checking was undertaken with the respondents to ensure credibility and trustworthiness. member checking the principal investigator (pi) conducted all of the recorded interviews with a coinvestigator acting as an observer and note taker. the pi, a trained systemic family therapist with over 25 years experience in clinical interviewing, engaged the interviewee in prolonged collaborative open-ended discussion, frequently summarizing comments made by the participant in the form of ongoing informal member checking. formal member checking occurred when the research team presented their initial findings to the host agency and invited the participants to comment on the initial themes that emerged in the research. this form of respondent validation via cross-checking interim research findings added greater authenticity to the study findings. prior to the submission of the manuscript for publication, selective participants were contacted and asked to provide input on whether the final selection of themes accurately reflected what had been discussed in the interviews. findings in this section of the paper the authors have chosen to use the exact words of the respondents which are presented in italicized speech and quotation marks interspersed with connecting commentary by the authors so as to maintain a sense of narrative flow and coherence. constructing resilience in child protection the construction of resilience among cpws in the study is based on a number of ideas that are conceptually linked to practice. resilience is seen as a multidimensional concept involving a complex interplay of family history, developmental factors, mental health, environmental and cultural influences. “resilience is a very unique idea, i think it’s a mixture of things like biology, environment, family development and culture”. resilience is described as a universal attribute which requires the development of internal resources. “i think we’re all born with different strengths and resilience is one of them, but you really have to work at it!” universality was again underscored in the following statement: “every human being has something in there that’s worth working with or exploring and having them build up some type of resilience to whatever life’s thrown at them”. genetic endowment was seen as significant in the development of resilience as is evident in the following: “it’s not just the supports we put in place, a kid can be from an environment of severe neglect and one has this persistence and this tenacity which makes them very successful while another is still stuck at the start”. resilience is conceptualized as a developmental process that builds over time, “resilience, for me is a continuum, i think it’s about building on strengths that you have as an individual, a worker, a parent, or child, it relates to everybody”. it is the ability to move forward despite adversity, “it’s being able to manage to overcome difficult international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 264 situations in your life, so that when bad things happen, you’re able to pick yourself up and get on with getting the best out of your life”. the willingness of families to acknowledge problems and accept support is a key element in what is viewed as resilient functioning. any effort by the client to change the conditions that sap resilience is generally seen by cpws as evidence of resilience at work. cpws expect setbacks and are realistic about change, in fact the coupling of realism and resilience is central to how resilience is constructed by cpws in the study, “even though she had serious mental health issues she worked with us and tried her very best to be there for her children”. clearly resilience is viewed as an ongoing process and a natural consequence of having to deal with adversity, which is why some cpws emphasize the importance of resilient thinking when engaging clients, “you couldn’t survive in this work if you hadn’t got a resilience perspective”. data analysis revealed three overarching themes related to the construction of resilience by child protection workers, which include characteristics of the child, an enabling/dynamic relationship, and access to resources that enhance resilience. characteristics of the child resilient children are seen as possessing tenacity and persistence based on temperament, traits, and genetic endowment. characteristics most often noted about resilient children include stubborn determination, an ability to overcome the odds, a willingness to work on problems, and resourceful self-advocacy, “she had a strength about her that i thought, she’s going to make it in the world, she somehow figured out from a young age what she had to do to survive, but i don’t think she recognizes her own resilience”. in contrast, some children are described as possessing greater self-reflection, “i think it’s a child’s view of themselves, it’s the ability to see their strength(s) which is often demonstrated through an interest or skill or something else outside of the family”. resilient children are able to remain connected to others in school and extracurricular activities and use resources effectively toward building a positive sense of their own identity. they are also seen as having some capacity for self-reflection and emotional regulation as long as essential contacts with family members are safeguarded, “i have this one boy who is still in care who’s dealing with a lot of anger and resentment to mom who is a crack addict on the streets and he constantly worries about her safety and well-being but at least i can tell him that i know she’s okay and that he’ll see her again soon”. resilient children have a “sense of belonging” in their local community even when the relationship with biological parents is damaged or severed. “i had one client who used to talk about the lady who owned the pizza parlour across the street and when her mom was drunk and passed out she would go sit with this woman and watch her make pizza at her restaurant and that’s what she remembers when you ask her who was the person who most influenced her in her life”. another worker offered a similar comment about a pre-teen girl she worked with for many years: “throughout her time in foster care she remained involved with her mother’s best friend from church and i believe her biggest strength today is the spiritual connection she has to her church”. such comments underscore the importance of understanding and preserving vital links in a child’s social ecology in order to promote resilient functioning (ungar, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 265 though these children have faced adversity and been hurt by it, “they try and live a normal life” despite numerous setbacks. statements like, “she’s been through so much, she can be very difficult to work with”, add substance to the notion that resilient children can be challenging and are not always open to a therapeutic relationship. “i like you sometimes eva but i hate that you’re a child protection worker”. they are often skilled at self-advocacy and are effective in getting their message across, “she can be very intimidating, but she knows her own mind and is able to get what she needs”. another worker spoke of an exceptional young girl in the following manner: “she was fascinating to me because she understood the system, she was a kid that was able to sit down and tell me how it felt to stand out, to be a foster child, she was very gifted verbally, she was a child that i thought to find an adoptive placement for because she was able to say that she wanted a family, i want somewhere i belong, i want to be out of the system”. clearly there are limits to resilience and one worker remarked that “you can’t develop resilience if you keep on getting knocked down...it’s like an elastic band that can only be stretched so far, so many times”. there is also the concern that too strong a focus on resilience can have negative implications since it suggests that children are invulnerable and can handle whatever adversity or stressors they may encounter in life. it is noted, with some irony, that there is greater expectations placed on children who are seen as resilient since typically they are more likely to be the first in a group of siblings to be returned to parents, which can inadvertently increase their risk for further maltreatment. an enabling/dynamic relationship resilience is related to traditional social work with families where collaboration, trust, and empathy are key ingredients of an effective working relationship. the emerging view is that resilience is seen as a dynamic relational phenomenon that develops through significant interactions with children and families over time. “we’ve had many ups and downs but i still feel connected to this family, even when mom is really depressed she makes an effort to work with us for the sake of the kids”. it means being alert to possibilities for improving clients’ lives by recognizing their personal resources, “you know despite the vulgar language she was very intelligent and articulate, people really liked her, sometimes i think she was a bit manipulative, but she made a really good impression at court”. child protection requires an emotional investment by the cpw in the context of mitigating risk and supporting resilience, “emotional support is so important in this work, just as much as safety and stability; i think she was so resilient because we were able to give her a lot of stability but we also gave her lots of support”. continuing along this theme cpws spoke about the importance of searching for resilient qualities in working with children and families. “the social worker has to see and promote strengths, ignoring these qualities makes no sense when working with families at risk”. there was a tendency among some cpws to blur the conceptual boundary between strengths-based work and resilience concepts and they frequently used the words interchangeably. supporting self-efficacy and family decision-making is a natural part of the resilience orientation of the cpw. it includes a notion of children developing the capacity for self-reflection and self-knowledge through the relationship with the worker, which is seen as fundamentally related to resilience building, “resilience must be reflected, clients have to see it in themselves”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 266 it’s important to note that “there is no absolute standard to judge whether someone is resilient or not, some kids fall under the radar, we need to look at how we fail to see resilience”. the importance of identifying what is sometimes referred to as “hidden resilience” (ungar, 2004b) suggests that some behaviors deemed problematic by society can actually help children experience themselves as resilient. this belief is reflected in the following: “we have to help them to discover those talents and become aware of their abilities even if they are using those skills to engage in risk taking or anti-social behaviors”. resilience is seen as dependent on relational process with key individuals in the child’s world. in order to overcome the effects of abuse and victimization, a child or adolescent requires developmentally attuned adults who understand that promoting resilience is “a step in a resilient chain”. resilience is not an end point in itself; rather it is an ongoing process that occurs in the context of caring and supportive relationships greatly facilitated by a secure attachment to parents or foster parents: “my role is to be a facilitator for that child, to have a healthy bonding relationship with whoever is going to be their caregiver…i tell my students you are not their parent, you are not their aunt or uncle, you are not their best friend because these kids are going to go through so much change, it’s unfair to set them up to have a strong attachment to you”. generally cpws are aware that resilience is not a fixed quality and that it “waxes and wanes” with changing circumstances. they are also tuned into the idea that “lapses” in resilience can occur with loss of support and that resilient lacunae exist where a child shows resilience in one situation but not in another. these views accord well with the observation that resilient functioning is not necessarily even or consistent (masten & powell, 2003) the research revealed a good deal about the resilient relationship that can develop between the child and their cpw which is poignantly captured in the following statement: “for some reason she calls me every mother’s day before she calls her mother and says ‘i know you’re not my mother but i just want you to know that you have been more of a mother to me in all those years that you worked with me than my mother ever has been’”. on the other hand, relationships with clients frequently test the resilience of both parties “i have to put clear boundaries in place with her…i tell her, ‘you can’t call me a bitch every day or tell me to f…off every day and expect that i’m going to be available to you 24/7..but i’d much rather you come to me as your support rather than taking it out on your kids’”. access to resilience-enhancing resources the point was repeatedly made throughout the interviews that in order to be resilient, it’s essential for families to be able to access key resources within their own community. cpw’s appeared to understand the link between resilience and resources and work on behalf of their clients, particularly children in care, for academic, health, social, and recreational resources. one worker commented, however, that “resilience is not just about having resources, it’s about using them effectively”. all of the social workers interviewed spoke of the importance of access to family supports, child and adult mental health, and addiction services. in general, cpws demonstrated persistence and tenacity in accessing resilience-enhancing resources tailored to a child’s particular interests and circumstances, so for example a child could proclaim himself to be a “part of a dynamite travelling basketball team rather than a child in care”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 267 one cpw with a background in banking spoke of the “price of resilience”, meaning that accessing financial resources is key to enhancing resilience in children, “why not get the best that money can buy?....i would never send my own child to a second-rate music teacher, why would i do any less for my clients!”. cpws speak about the importance of making resources available to children for the purposes of nurturing resilience by “investing in whatever talents and skills a child has so that they can be developed further”. generally greater emphasis was placed on children’s ability to utilize resources rather than linking resilience to the availability of resources, particularly for economically disadvantaged children living in high-risk communities. nurturing and promoting resilience in clients building on the client’s resilience is critical to resilience-based practice. for example, “i like to think that i always go into my work believing that children are resilient, and that i can interject a positive person in that child’s life, or do something to try to tap into that child’s resilience to get them through”. cpws provided numerous examples of how they see themselves working to enhance resilience in the context of a dynamic enabling relationship within a child’s social ecology. “i think resilience occurs when there’s a relationship, or an interaction that is so positive for a young person that it enables them to move in a positive direction in their life, … this one child did so well because we were able to keep him with the same teacher for a number of years”. clients are viewed as bringing resilient capacities into the relationship through selfreflection and insight. for instance, one worker talked about a parent who after many years of involvement with child protection came to terms with not being able to parent her children and supported a stable foster home placement for her children. another worker spoke of a young child who came to the realization that her mother could not care for her and asked for input into her own adoption. many cpws showed an understanding of the cumulative nature of resilience, “i don’t have the grandiose idea that a 30-minute interview with me is going to build a lifetime of resilience…although you can help to build resilience over the long term by your input at key points”. persistence is also highly valued in the service of building resilience “it’s very important to stick with it, especially when everything is falling apart”. an important aspect of supporting resilience for children in care is the crucial role of long-term workers who are guardians of narrative threads in the lives of children, providing essential continuity and meaning that would otherwise be lost in the frequent disruptions and relocations that are ubiquitous in child protection practice. one cpw described herself as “part of the living history of that child, kids are asking the worker stories about themselves when they were young, it’s like holding on to the memories for the child which might easily be lost with moves from foster home to foster home”. another cpw remarked, “i’m reminded of situations where the social worker took all of the birthday photos, kept a journal, family heirlooms and bits and pieces that were very important to the child…the worker kept them all, she kept the child’s memories safe”. there was an appreciation of the unique relationship that can develop between a child in care and a long-term cpw who can act as a container of narrative memories helping to preserve and retrieve vital self-narratives, providing a sense of continuity and connection, “we’d be making cookies and she’d ask me, ‘what was i like as a baby, did i cry a lot?’”. there is an irony that resilience-enhancing resources are more often available to children who have been removed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 268 from their family, as children in care generally have greater access to resources than children living in situations of marginal neglect or abuse. however resilience is more likely to flourish when the worker has been successful in preserving the social ecology of the child, which is often not the case. one worker in particular wondered if the child protection system overall does more harm than good which was expressed in the following quote: “i often ask myself are we doing a better job these days of promoting resilience or are we finding better ways to kill it?”, which is a reference to the many placements and cpw turnover, common in child protection practice. child protection work as a “vocation dedicated to helping clients discover their own resilience” was poignantly described in the following words: “i would love when i die that my clients might say! maria was an encouraging person, someone who always saw the positive”. cpws offered numerous examples of what they say and do in their work to promote and sustain resilience in their clients. for example, sharing their personal story, “sometimes i tell them about my own life as a teenager, i suppose i was resilient enough to cope with circumstances in my life, i look at young people the same way…you know what can i give them which will help get them through this period”. cpws understand the importance of cultivating a resilient perspective and being open to finding resilience in their clients as an antidote to a deficit-based discourse which is endemic in the field of child protection. in summary, cpws see themselves as nurturing resilience in children by being aware of the importance of resilience, by understanding resilience as a developmental process and by exposing children to resilience-enhancing activities within the social ecology of the child. how is the social worker’s resilience impacted by the client’s resilience? cpws clearly enjoyed telling stories of positive outcomes in which resilience was a key component of their work and it was evident that the worker benefited from the process of sharing stories about resilient clients. for example, one social worker in the study captured the sentiment expressed by many others in the following account of an encounter with a client a long time after the termination of a case. “a few years ago i was out with my wife to a food court and there was a young man in his late 20s holding a baby in a really gentle way and my wife remarked that it was lovely to see a guy looking after a baby like that…; anyway i didn’t know who this guy was until he came over and told me that he remembered me, and he actually said, ‘i just want to thank you, i was hell on wheels in the group home, but there was a lot of things that i heard you say that really struck home later in life’”. resilience shared between the cpw and child or family is a dynamic process based on the idea that the worker receives in return something from the child or family that is not always recognized in child protection practice. a key finding in this study is the extent to which social workers themselves are impacted by their perception of client’s resilience. this emerged in the form of stories regarding how clients overcame adversity and made positive changes in their lives. in this sense resilience can be viewed as a reflexive process with benefits for both parties involved. cpws acknowledge that they learn a lot about their own lives by observing their clients and seeing how they manage their problems, “i’ve learned so much from my clients not just about what to avoid in life but how to be strong….how to make the best of a terrible situation and still come out on top”. there are also recognized benefits for the cpw from sharing success stories captured in the following: “good outcomes make our work worthwhile, it’s important to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 269 acknowledge the positive work we’re doing and to celebrate our successes with the team”. the benefits for the worker are acknowledged in phrases such as “they help us become better at our job” or self-reflexive statements such as “it forces us to dig deeper into our own emotional lives”. there appears to be a bi-directional “transmission of resilience” in which both people in a relationship are affected by the resilience of the other. for example, a child might find in their worker a degree of persistence, tenacity, and commitment to them paralleled by the same qualities in the child directed towards their own family. one cpw described it as a “contagious process”, meaning that resilience can be triggered by witnessing or participating in the performance of another person’s resilience. cpws also take vicarious pleasure in their client’s successes and emotional growth and they are greatly heartened by stories of successful outcomes in which they themselves have participated. “if i have a young man or woman who was sexually assaulted as a child, who is now able to walk into a classroom and be successful, who can have friends that are healthy and not destructive, who can have a healthy relationship that is not power driven and abusive, to me that’s something to celebrate because it means that they’ve overcome their victimization to be able to have some sort of a sense of self”. discussion resilience in this study is described as an innate human quality that can flourish in the face of adversity when facilitated within a social ecology that enables the development of resilient capacities. the concept is broad-based and includes ideas such as preserving attachments, strengthening social connections, accessing resources, and promoting successful outcomes. resilience from a cpw perspective makes sense when it is applied to real life situations, where resources, skills, abilities, strengths, and possibilities are identified as essential ingredients of resilience-based practice. these finding are consistent with earlier resilience research and practice that offers evidence-informed strategies for enhancing resilience (brooks & goldstein, 2002; hart & blincow, 2007). resilience for cpws in the present study means building on the resourcefulness that individuals utilize in adverse conditions and facilitating the development of these capacities in whatever way they can. it is based on the view, widely held among cpws, that children at risk can develop resilience despite situations of neglect, abuse, and deprivation. cpws appear to have some conceptual basis for resilience practice though they do not utilize a critical social work theory perspective in discussing resilience in child welfare. generally, there was not a lot of discussion about the problem of promoting resilience when resources are scarce, which is frequently the case for severely disadvantaged families and communities who are typically overrepresented in child welfare populations (lescheid, chiodo, whitehead, & hurley, 2006) the study also identified characteristics in children and families that social workers associate with resilience and examined how resilience is fostered in a dynamic enabling relationship between a child and a cpw. in this respect social workers are seen as having the potential to be part of a resilience-enhancing environment for child clients. cpws look for “a glimmer” of resilience in their clients, and they see themselves as “nurturing the seeds” of resilience through a dynamic enabling relationship and by accessing a variety of supports within the social ecology of the child. resilience is related to the ability of cpws to access resources to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 270 support the development of children’s talents and skills. ironically, it is the experience of many cpws that these resources are made available after children have been removed from their families and are in the care of the child protection agency, which clearly has significant implications for child welfare policy and practice. resilience in child protection is viewed as a two-way relationship in which both participants can benefit from the strength and resourcefulness of the other. cpws see themselves as supporting resilience by identifying and promoting resilience in their work with clients. this activity is recognized as being mutually beneficial, as supporting resilience in clients creates the potential for shared resilience to flourish. though not labelled in this way by cpws, there is an understanding that vicarious resilience is a natural consequence of participating in the resilience of others. it is a concept that requires a deeper understanding of resilience within the context of shared emotional experience. cpws spoke about how they had been inspired and strengthened by their client’s way of coping with adversity, and throughout the study it became obvious that this effect could be reinforced by consciously attending to it (hernandez et al., 2007). the point was made in the study by a number of cpws that nurturing resilience in children required cpws to be resilient themselves so that a parallel process could be enacted thereby enabling the cpw to be more protective of the resilience of their clients. limitations there are limitations to this study. there is the potential for the effect of professional bias, resulting in members of the research team being overly sympathetic to the experience of fellow social work professionals, perhaps at times minimizing problematic aspects of child protection practice. there may also be a tendency to reify resilience and ascribe greater significance to it than may be warranted, given the reality of child protection work and its attendant risks. the narrative excerpts show that the themes are not discrete and frequently overlap. it is important to acknowledge the anecdotal stories told about resilient clients as “evidence” of resilient functioning in the absence of more solid outcome data to support the observations made about resilient children. also there is a “parallel discovery” process between theory and findings occurring throughout the study in relation to the concept of vicarious resilience which needs greater clarification. a further limitation of the study is that resilience work at the community level was not explored and a model of community-based intervention to enhance resilience would add a further dimension to intervention with children and families (landau, 2007). lastly, this research did not explore different manifestations of resilience, such as discontinuous, partial or situational, which would have enriched the data, and is an important area for further research. despite these limitations the study recognizes that resilience-based child protection practice, which entails commitment, sensitivity, and ingenuity, is essential for promoting and sustaining resilience in children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 271 references alvarez, l., & hurley, d. (2010). desde la zona de riesgo a la zona de resiliencia. revistacientifica de uces, x1v (2)-primavera, 13–36. anderson, d. g. (2000). coping strategies and burnout among veteran child protection workers. child abuse and neglect, 24(6), 839–848. armstrong, m. i., stroul, b. a., & boothroyd, r. a. (2005). intercepts of resilience and systems of care. in m. ungar (ed.), handbook for working with children and youth: pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts (pp. 387–405). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. brooks, r., & goldstein, s. (2002). raising resilient children: fostering strength, hope and optimism in your child. new york: mcgraw-hill. bride, b. e., & figley, c. r. (2007). the fatigue of compassionate social workers: an introduction to the special issue on compassion fatigue. clinical social work journal, 35(3), 151–153. corovic, t. (2006). child protection workers and vicarious trauma: a view from the edge. ontario association of children’s aid societies journal, 50(1), 11–15. creswell, j. w. (2008). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. daniel, b. (2006). operationalizing the concept of resilience in child neglect: case study research. child: care, health and development, 32(3), 303–309. daniel, b., & wassell, s. (2002). adolescence: assessing and promoting resilience in vulnerable children 3. london: jessica kingsley publishers. dolan, p., & canavan, j. (eds.). (2008). special issue: building resilience in children, families and communities. child care in practice, 14(1). ferguson, h. (2004). protecting children in time: child abuse, child protection and the consequences of modernity. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. filbert, k. m., & flynn, r. j. 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(2003). a resilience framework for research, policy, and practice. in s. s. luthar (ed.), resilience and vulnerabilities: adaptation in the context of childhood adversities (pp. 1–25). new york: cambridge university press. mcmurray, i., connolly, h., preston-shoot, m., & wigley,v. (2008). constructing resilience: social worker’s understandings and practice. health and social care in the community, 16(3), 299–309. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 259–273 273 rutter, m. (1987). psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. american journal of orthopsychiatry, 57(3), 316–331. schofield, g., & beck, m. (2005). risk and resilience in long-term foster care. british journal of social work, 35(8), 1283–1301. stein, m. (2006). resilience and young people leaving care: overcoming the odds. york, uk: joseph rowntree foundation. ungar, m. (2004a). a constructionist discourse on resilience. youth society, 35(3), 341–365. ungar, m. (2004b). nurturing hidden resilience in troubled youth. toronto: university of toronto press. ungar, m. (2011). the social ecology of resilience: addressing contextual and cultural ambiguity of a nascent construct. american journal of orthopsychiatry, 81, 1–17. werner, e. e., & smith, r. s. (1992). overcoming the odds: high risk children from birth to adulthood. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. resilience in child welfare: a social work perspective microsoft word deh kidz in jamaica final sa/jaed.doc deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 deh kidz in jamaica: an evaluation report about a community organization serving children and adolescents leslie yaffa abstract: this report details the evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents in jamaica. the short-term goal of this study was to offer recommendations to the community organization. the long-term goal is to enhance services in order to improve child and adolescent outcomes in jamaica. this study highlighted present trends for child and adolescent services in this community organization and provides an analysis that seeks to enhance those same services in the future. recommendations include suggestions for increasing social programs, for increasing the impact of social programs on this inner-city community, and for exploring an approach to programming that benefits children and adolescents from this community. children and adolescents living in the inner city of jamaica face the harsh realities associated with the poverty and physical decline of the community (united nations children’s fund [unicef] jamaica, 2007). in 2003, jamaica‘s total population was approximately 2.65 million, of which 977,000, or 37%, were children and adolescents under the age of 18, half of whom lived in poverty (world bank, 2003). overall, despite declining growth rates, the level of all inner-city investment in social resources and services over the past three decades has not kept pace with the demands of supporting the basic needs of children and adolescents (world bank, 2003). consequently, children and adolescents in jamaica have poor access to housing, education, employment opportunities, social services, and basic amenities (aleph, 2002; black, 2001; unicef jamaica, 2006). this lack of essentials for children and adolescents weakens their opportunities to grow in secure foundations that generate emotional, social, and economic development (world bank, 2004). living circumstances for children and adolescents in jamaica have deteriorated to a deprive level (unicef jamaica, 2006). socioeconomic conditions in the community under study continue to contribute to high unemployment, intimidating levels of criminal activity, and disproportionate poverty (black, 2001; united nations, 2006). conditions in this inner-city community are also complicated by political tribalism, subcultures, and turf wars, which in turn have led to the physical destruction of the area and stigmatization and victimization of residents by the wider community. the following research question formed the framework for this study: how effective have child and adolescent services been in this community organization? deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 methodology the community organization that is the subject of this report is located in a well-known, southern part of a large, inner-city community in jamaica.
this organization is a member of a larger association that exists for the promotion and well-being of children and adolescents. the organization takes a holistic approach by supporting physical, mental, social, and spiritual development. this study was an improvement-based, summative evaluation designed to focus on program enhancement and expansion (fitzpatrick, sanders, & worthen, 2004). the research questions generated for this study were both qualitative and quantitative and employed a quasi-experimental approach, utilizing in part an interrupted time-series design. the design in part examined the causal relationship in which the outcomes of interest were observed over time. specifically, the approach assessed the present trends for child and adolescent services in this community organization and provided analyses that is meant to lead to enhancement of those same services in the future. in conjunction with the summative evaluation, an evaluation checklist generated from stufflebeam’s (2002) context, input, process, and product model was used as a process framework to support the research study. first, the impact evaluation checklist was placed into the present structure of the community organization to identify the concerns of this service organization. then, input from the community and participants described the resources presently available and how those services impact the children and adolescents being served by this community organization. lastly, the process of administering surveys and data collection to validate the community’s concerns aided in making further recommendations to contribute to program improvements and future services. to guide this study, the researcher followed a services-development logic model. this model involved five steps: 1. first, the model helped in understanding the unmet service needs for children and adolescents and facilitated recommendations for current resources that are provided to children and adolescents in this community organization. 2. second, the model allowed the planning of meetings with staff and community members at the community organization. these meetings assisted the researcher to understand the organizational resources and funding. 3. third, the output of data achieved through surveys was based on the consideration of the staffing resources, number of volunteers, and community alliances at the time of surveying. 4. fourth, the short-term outcome was simple: make recommendations from the study for service needs forn finally, the long-term outcome would be to provide sustainable, enhanced services for children and adolescents in this community organization. participants the population targeted in this study was 25 adolescents (16 to 18 years of age) who were involved in programming at the community organization; 25 parents, guardians, and advocates; and 25 administrators, teachers, and community members. the total number of participants was 75. all participants, regardless of age, were selected on the basis that they were deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 of jamaican descent, were living in the country, and had association with the community organization. why this community organization? programs for children and adolescents in this community organization have been active in jamaica since 1923. part of the community organization‘s mission is to meet the social, physical, emotional, and spiritual development of children and adolescents, in the community and on the island. this community organization is well respected in this inner city and the aim is to provide the following three services on limited resources for children and adolescents: 1. improve the environment where children and adolescents live. 2. provide programs that enhance the development of children and adolescents. 3. promote participation in services that will develop the lives of children and adolescents. although theoretically children and adolescents are given priority in jamaica‘s national documents and policies, allocation of resources has not been proportionate to the expressed objectives and has dwindled slowly over generations (black, 2001; unicef jamaica, 2006). this lack of resources is in part due to the systemic and complex nature of governmental practices (unicef, 2005). what is jamaica’s priority? a 2005 budget analysis estimated the allotment for child and adolescent services was only 10.68% in 2004-2005 and slightly higher at 10.87% in 2003-2004 (unicef jamaica, 2006). this form of social exclusion should be reversed if children and adolescents are to survive, develop, participate, be protected in their communities, and be part of jamaican society (unicef jamaica, 2006). community leaders, organizations, and advocates have exhibited a strong drive to organize, mobilize, effectively lead, and participate in the renewal and redevelopment of services for children and adolescents. it is the desire of the community to hold the jamaican government accountable for adhering to policies and plans that have been set forth in national documents (unicef jamaica, 2007). this mobilization on the part of the non-profit sector appears to be the one positive force in this community (unicef jamaica, 2004). community leaders, organizations, and advocates have been a part of the community for decades, while business and commerce have been moving out of the inner cities, further contributing to the decline in residential life (world bank, 2004). the significant feedback from adolescents, parents and guardians, and community leaders recognized the existing child and adolescent services in this community organization and acknowledged the demand for basic programs (world bank, 2004). community leaders have explained that having access to costeffective, community-based initiatives will provide the basis for the standards, work ethics, patriotism, and discipline for which jamaicans of past generations have been recognized (thomas, 2005; world bank, 2004). deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 what does the literature indicate? the review of relevant literature is divided into four sections. the first section focuses on the concept of services for children and adolescents. the aim of this section of the review was to stimulate an awareness of the issues regarding children and adolescents and to encourage an understanding of services related to them. the second section is a review of service areas and related interventions. the next section reviews literature regarding services and social environments. the last section summarizes services in jamaica for children and adolescents and the practical implications for delivery of those services. services a review of the relevant literature indicated that overall services for children and adolescents have become scarce, and investment choices must be made to maximize returns for better services (karcher & lindwall, 2003). services that provide health-related programming yield excellent results for children and adolescents (unicef jamaica, 2005). much of the literature (e.g., unicef, 2005) has explained that healthy children and adolescents reduce many of the pertinent risk factors (substance abuse, hiv/aids, etc.). children and adolescents need access to health care to have healthy environments. the interconnectedness between health and related factors remains obvious for most children and adolescent services. the government in jamaica has recognized this interconnectedness, though health programs and services overall seem to be poorly funded and weak (unicef jamaica, 2005). however, unicef jamaica (2007) reported that jamaica has begun offering its youngest citizens free health care. jamaica’s prime minister has established a program in which jamaicans aged 18 and under will be treated free of charge at the island’s public hospitals and clinics (unicef jamaica, 2007). the free program will cost between $5.2 million and $7.4 million annually (unicef jamaica, 2007). yet, looking beyond health needs, there is a need for expansion of services that collaborate with the community sector, such as schools, governmental organizations, ngos, and community organizations (united nations, 2006). encouraging collaboration in communities strengthens the understanding of the multiple issues, increases involvement, gives voice to the voiceless, and allows for multiple perspectives to be heard on a variety of issues (world bank, 2003). with the capacity to collaborate about issues, a multisectoral response will develop coordination for better service delivery (leadbeater et al., 2006). increasing multisectoral responses will benefit and expand coverage to children and adolescents and their communities (leadbeater et al.). this form of service delivery will enhance the power of programs and move towards a model of service that is seamless. simply put, the world wants all children and adolescents to live full and healthy lives, with their rights secured and protected (unicef, 2007). in an ideal world with committed services and resources, all infants would start life healthy; all young children would be nurtured in caring environments; all children, including the poorest and most underprivileged, would complete a basic education of good quality; and all adolescents would have the prospect to develop fully and participate in their societies (unicef, 2007). conversely, white and wyn (2004) supported the idea that needs far outweigh most countries’ resources for services allotted to children and adolescents. service initiatives for children and adolescents often become convoluted by political, social, and economic agendas deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 and misplace the basic understanding of need. despite these challenges, communities must move towards accountability and engagement if services are going to address the deficit (wandersman et al., 2006). engaging children and adolescents as partners whose input is important in the strengthening of services in communities and countries is vital. often, children and adolescents have been placed in the background of their own villages (voisin, 2007). older children and adolescents often run their households, caring for their younger siblings or ailing family members, and many work long days in factories and in fields. children and adolescents are, in effect, the villages in many countries and communities (unicef, 2007). organizations should include children in the process of gaining experience through services and let them hone their skills and knowledge, so they can have meaningful influence on decisions that impact their lives (schubert, 2007). jamaica relies on a collectivism that takes into consideration the needs, objectives, and values of the group, as opposed to those of the individual (unicef jamaica, 2005). partly because of a lack of resources, members of the community are interdependent, and children and adolescents participate in that collectivism, which sets forth the village approach to service delivery (unicef, 2005). organizations such as unicef jamaica (2004) recognize and value the collectivism by assembling services that include all groups in the population. service areas and interventions overall, the literature focused on four main service areas for children and adolescents: (a) promotion of healthy lives; (b) free quality education; (c) protection against abuse, exploitation, and violence; and (d) the battle against hiv/aids. the concerns for children and adolescents remain overwhelming for all countries, and the need for services is staggering (best, 2007). yet, progress has been made in the last couple of decades to provide children and adolescents with the necessities to become healthy members of society. in every region of the world, countries are moving forward with a diverse range of programs focusing on issues related to their population (chen, greenberger, farruggia, bush, & dong, 2003). in jamaica, service interventions for children and adolescents are a complex set of social policies; coverage of social services for children and adolescents spans everything from building schools and clinics to the more complex issues of how to improve the quality and efficiency of social services (united nations, 2004). jamaica’s policymakers realize that without economic growth, a country will find it difficult to provide a sustainable basis to support social services (united nations, 2004). therefore, conditions that threaten economic stability are likely to have a negative impact on a country’s ability to fund social services. with this in mind and using jamaica as an example, the greatest challenges in most countries involve the sustainability of social services, because of economic stability (unicef, 2005). social services initiatives in most countries are a priority in theory, but not in practice. however, guaranteeing services for children and adolescents in any country requires a legal and moral responsibility. to advocate for social investment in children and adolescents means accountability that visualizes future social and economic development and a prosperous country (unicef, 2005). services for children and adolescents span the globe. to improve the lives of children and adolescents, it is necessary to determine their circumstances, their needs, and the services they require to meet those needs (seginer & lilach, 2004). it is simple: people who develop and provide services to assist children and adolescents should gather accurate and culturally specific deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 information that provides appropriate support and committed services (leadbeater et al., 2006). the world should be made aware that the welfare of more than 140 million children and adolescents is at stake (world bank, 2003). programs and social environments the foundation for any child and adolescent service should be programs that make progress in environments where children and adolescents are the most vulnerable (nayak, 2003). programs have the ability to move forward, make change, and eliminate the need for services. organizations can draw together and create opportunities for the eradication of many of the issues children and adolescents experience (thompson, 2006). the purpose of any program should be developed around the philosophy of leadership, human rights, health, security, dignity, freedom, justice, and peace (peer assistance and leadership, 2004). yet, social environments are not always structured for such a commitment. traditionally, child and adolescent programs in north america have filtered through institutions in the social service system, which customarily have borne the responsibility for taking care of concerns regarding children and adolescents (dubois & karcher, 2005). social service programming in north america has been associated with social serving agencies; further, depending on the environment, communities have the support of private funds, which develop and take responsibility for children and adolescent programs and services (dubois & karcher). the environmental structure in north america is quite different than that in other countries, as north america appears to have plenty of resources to serve the needs of children and adolescents (scales, 2003). yet, the common thread of never having enough services appears to be the connection between north america and the rest of the world (united nations, 2006). children and adolescents in the caribbean have negative outcomes as a result of failures on the part of policies and programs that do not address and support their needs (world bank, 2003). the target of jamaica and the caribbean as a whole is the social development and social welfare of children and adolescents, having set up many departments and resources. however, limited empirical data and accountability have accompanied the social development and resources that have been established (unicef jamaica, 2006). many programs and services in jamaica focus on leisure activities and overlook an understanding of the needs and challenges of children and adolescents (unicef jamaica, 2006). jamaica, like many other developing countries, has been impacted positively and negatively by globalization (united nations, 2004). the rapid development of telecommunications and computer technology has increased the quantity and speed of information shared between children and adolescents in jamaica and across the globe (united nations, 2004). the internet has made children and adolescents in jamaica acutely aware of others, and they have gained information that otherwise would not be accessible to them (unicef, 2007). hence, a growing number of very knowledgeable young people understand the issues and their social environments and are asking questions. questions mean accountability; slowly, jamaican children and adolescents are realizing how social development influences their views on justice and equality, and they are curious about the actions of governments and outside organizations (unicef jamaica, 2007). technology has empowered jamaica’s young people to start asking questions, which is a step forward for this generation and will give rise to responsibility for issues pertaining to children and adolescents (united nations, 2004). deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 this literature review identified issues pertaining to the programming and social environments of children and adolescents. these three issues transcend all parts of the world and reflect aspects of global uniformity (international labour organization, 2004): 1. some children and adolescents are trapped in poverty and some are not. 2. some benefit from new social and human service resources and technologies and some lack access to them (united nations, 2004). 3. some children and adolescents pursue their ideas in an unwavering environment of structure and security, and some are unfortunate enough to become trapped in constant conflict, both in their homes and countries (united nations, 2004). these disparities and inequalities between children and adolescents of the world need to be eradicated (unicef, 2007). most importantly, making the world’s policies, programs, and social environments accountable for children and adolescents would be a step towards true progress. overview of jamaica and services for children and adolescents overall, jamaica’s children and adolescents are still governed by a collectivism that has been entrenched culturally and rooted in jamaican history (aleph, 2002; thomas, 2005). the island population has had to rely on resources that mostly include immediate and extended family to ensure the welfare of the younger generation (unicef jamaica, 2006). thus, it would be negligent for practitioners not to consider and understand the collectivist ideology when evaluating the services provided to children and adolescents in jamaica (unicef, 2005). like many countries outside the westernized philosophy, communities guide generations through wisdom, experience, and history. community collectivism in jamaica and the caribbean has attempted to establish an identity for children and adolescents and to counteract some of the media influence (united nations, 2004). the caribbean is no different than other regions in terms of what program developers want to see for children and adolescents in areas of their achievement. there are minimal differences in the way that non-profit agencies plan effective practices and program development in north america, the caribbean, and other regions of the world (unicef jamaica, 2006). children and adolescents need protective environments so they become active participants as adults, and if that environment is not provided in any facet of their lives, they tend to flounder (united nations, 2004). jamaica has a wide range of developmental concerns requiring social service interventions for children and adolescents. as a result, service needs on the island are many and varied. traditionally, programs and services on the island include tutoring from preschool through community college, helping children and young adults with basic literacy and coping skills, health care clinics, health education, drug abuse programs that address medical issues, microbusiness, and women’s projects that contribute to community and economic development (unicef, 2007). typically, the government is primarily responsible for services and programs administered to children and adolescents. the various ministries have a targeted amount that is deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 given to services, which has not been managed efficiently (national center for youth development, 2003). in order to better direct and lessen waste of resources because of overlap and duplication in services, coordination among government bodies is needed (national center for youth development). individual organizations often seek private institutions for further funding. the ministry of education, youth, and culture tries to provide consistent funding, and programs such as the national youth service operate under the auspices of the ministry. yet, priorities and mandates are not always service initiatives for this population (national center for youth development). the jamaican government has published the final draft of the national youth policy pointing out that educational and life skills development will elevate young people to move towards their full potential (national center for youth development, 2003). this policy documents goals that young jamaicans will progress and contribute to their community and country through the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies (unicef jamaica, 2006). the policy is part of the government’s larger national vision for the country from 2003 to 2015. it is one of the few pieces of literature that states what is desired and includes many community agencies as contributors (national center for youth development). pessimism remains when governments create policies but do not have the resources to back up recommendations. as a result, redundant documents explain the problems of children and adolescents, with few resources allocated for interventions (unicef, 2006). child and adolescent programming staff in jamaica strive to work with the limited resources to create different levels of outcomes and interventions, which accommodate multiple levels in programming (world bank, 2003). the various levels of services provided to children and adolescents are similar to an umbrella, with a spectrum and varying degrees of complexities (canino & spurlock, 2004). commonly cited themes and issues are living environments, education and training, employment and entrepreneurship, health, participation and empowerment, and care and protection (world bank, 2003, 2004). countries such as jamaica often lack the manpower or resources to become sophisticated in child and adolescent service delivery (national center for youth development, 2003; thomas, 2005). although social service practitioners in jamaica want successful outcomes, it is difficult to use some of the principles set forth in north american literature. whereas north american mainstream service outcomes can be used for the basic application of service delivery, the emerging information and literature from ngos in developing countries should be examined because of their direct contact with countries, community organizations, and service providers (wandersman et al., 2006). programs and interventions should be modified to meet the ethnically specific service needs and identify how they differ for children and adolescents in different countries (unicef, 2005). over the years, jamaica and different ngos have developed a comprehensive understanding of responses needed to tackle the root causes of child and adolescent exclusion (unicef jamaica, 2005). services need to be consolidated, expanded, and reviewed to take into account new dimensions of social service integration (unicef jamaica, 2005). further, encouraging research and interventions from both island and foreign resources will promote better programming and planning for the benefit of children and adolescents in the future (united nations, 2004). deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 ultimately, long-term outcomes need to be the mission of service delivery for children and adolescents in jamaica. first, to achieve long-term outcomes and goals, officials initially must identify the issues affecting children and adolescents and understand they are not limited to one sector; thus, the response cannot be devised successfully by any one ministry or agency (national center for youth development, 2003). additionally, the identifiable information regarding the issues affecting this population should be distributed to the government, private sector, ngos, and community-based initiatives (national center for youth development). next, a network of awareness should be established both in the traditional sense and through electronic networks. lastly, children and adolescents should be involved in the exchange to ensure that themes, outcomes, and information are accurate in relation to what is going on in their communities (unicef, 2005). jamaica has the basic framework that is needed to achieve generational change and movement in child and adolescent services (national center for youth development). clearly, work needs to be done by many sectors in jamaica to accomplish longterm goals and objectives that are measurable. summary of the literature this literature review illustrated that child and adolescent services have great potential on many levels. by virtue of their membership in a community, neighbourhood, school district, and cultural group, children and adolescents are shaped by the world around them (k. mccluskey, noller, lamoureux, & a. mccluskey, 2004). programs that are well developed usually have sustainable research that affords them further funding for continued progress (nayak, 2003). yet, to impose lessons from progressive nations on less affluent countries with inadequate resources can be counterproductive (national center for youth development, 2003). the reality of resource constraints for countries implies selectivity of child and adolescent services for those environments. yet, a clear message is developing in the literature: children and adolescents are not the problem, but a derivative of their environments (weissberg, walberg, utne-o’brien, & bartels-kuster, 2003). as a whole, it is difficult to know the impact and effectiveness of child and adolescent services. even though countries are acknowledging and implementing programs on different levels, when neither systems nor proper data analysis are monitored, the quantity of effectiveness is called into question (unicef, 2007). the multitude of programs in place to address issues related to children and adolescents is endless. yet, worldwide little exists in the way of evaluative practices for initiatives related to children and adolescents (jones & perkins, 2006). despite progress on many accounts, children and adolescents worldwide still suffer the worst from economic and social disparities; problems are felt most deeply by children and adolescents living in extremely poor urban and rural communities (united nations, 2006). organizations all over the world need to continue to improve living circumstances of children and adolescents by fostering self-sustaining programs such as literacy, skills training, community development, and proper health care (unicef, 2007). the recognition that services are an investment in the building of human and social capital is the best hope for children and adolescents and a necessity for economic growth and social peace (unicef, 2007). deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 conclusion this study was designed to evaluate a community organization that serves children and adolescents in jamaica. the community organization involved in this study was open to examining the issues related to child and adolescent services because of the overall lack of resources: poor access to housing, education, employment opportunities, social services, and basic amenities (aleph, 2002; black, 2001; unicef jamaica, 2006). deficiency in resources leads to a greater lack of essentials for children and adolescents in jamaica and weakens their opportunities to grow in secure foundations that generate emotional, social, and economic development (world bank, 2004). as a result of substantiating the program deficits through this study, concerns and interests were identified, and efforts can now begin to form alternatives for serving children and adolescents in this inner-city community and in jamaica as a whole. the issues experienced by the children and adolescents who participated in this study served are not the fault of these young people, but are essentially the by-product of their micro and macro environments, which have produced reduced opportunities for them (world bank, 2003). in an effort to change those consequences with a view to increasing child and adolescent opportunities, the following services need to be emphasized: investing in social programming in a collaborative manner, understanding the correlation between social programming and resource deficits, identifying key trends suggested by the literature, ensuring community participation, and recognizing the culture and tradition of children and adolescents in jamaica. deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 references aleph, s. a. (2002). youth in jamaica: meeting their development needs. kingston, jamaica: ministry of education, youth, and culture, national center for youth development. best, a. l. (2007). representing youth: methodological issues in critical youth studies. new york: new york university press. black, s. (director & producer). (2001). life and debt [motion picture]. united states: tuff gong pictures. canino, i. a., & spurlock, j. (2004). culturally diverse children and adolescents: assessment, diagnosis, and treatment (2nd ed.). new york: guilford press. chen, c., greenberger, e., farruggia, s., bush, k., & dong, q. (2003). beyond parents and peers: the role of important non-parental adults (vips) in adolescent development in china and the united states. psychology in the schools, 40, 35-50. dubois, d., & karcher, m. (2005). handbook of youth mentoring. thousand oaks, ca: sage. fitzpatrick, j. l., sanders, j. r., & worthen, b. r. (2004). program evaluations: alternative approaches and practical guidelines (3rd ed.). new york: pearson education. international labour organization. (2004). global employment trends for youth. geneva, switzerland: author. jones, k. r., & perkins, d. f. (2006). youth and adult perceptions of their relationships within community-based youth programs. youth & society, 38, 90-109. karcher, m. j., & lindwall, j. (2003). social interest, connectedness, and challenging experiences. what makes high school mentors persist? journal of individual psychology, 59(3), 293-315. leadbeater, b., banister, e., benoit, c., jansson, m., marshall, a., & riecken, t. (2006). ethical issues in community-based research with children and youth. toronto: university of toronto press. mccluskey, k., noller, r., lamoureux, k., & mccluskey, a. (2004). unlocking hidden potential through mentoring. journal of strength-based interventions, 13(2), 85-93. national center for youth development. (2003). national youth policy. kingston, jamaica: ministry of education, youth, and culture. nayak, a. (2003). race, place and globalization: youth cultures in a changing world. oxford, uk: berg. peer assistance and leadership. (2004). pal peer assistance and leadership. retrieved july 18, 2006, from http://www.peerprograms.org deh kidz in jamaica: evaluation of a community organization serving children and adolescents 
 
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 wandersman, a., clary, e. g., forbush, j., weinberger, s. g., coyne, s. m., & duffy, j. l. (2006). community organizing and advocacy: increasing the quality and quantity of mentoring programs in the community. journal of community psychology, 34(6), 781-799. weissberg, r. p., walberg, h. j., utne-o’brien, m., & bartels-kuster, c. (2003). long-term trends in the well-being of children and youth. washington, dc: cwla press. white, r., & wyn, j. (2004). youth and society: exploring the social dynamics of youth experience. south melbourne, australia: oxford university press. world bank. (2003). caribbean youth development: issues and policy direction. washington, dc: author. world bank. (2004). the road to sustained growth in jamaica. washington, dc: author. leslie yaffa
phd,
has spent 20 years in the field of human and social services and has held clinical social work positions in hospital,
community
and
agency
settings. currently, she works in private practice and is a full-time faculty member at the university of new england in maine in the online msw program. she teaches
in
the msw program at the university of toronto and in the cyc program at ryerson university. leslie is the founder of the walk good foundation, which uses research to support program development and cost-effective services to children and adolescents in jamaica and the caribbean. abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 301 parental monitoring, media literacy, and media violence: a preliminary evaluation of the fourth r parent media violence workshop ryan broll, claire v. crooks, shanna burns, ray hughes, and peter g. jaffe abstract: as youth’s lives have become increasingly infused with all types of media, debates regarding the effect of violent media on youth have emerged. within this debate, parental monitoring has been identified as an important protective factor against some negative outcomes. accordingly, the fourth r parent media violence workshop was developed to educate parents about the importance of setting rules around media use and to encourage parents to monitor their children’s media consumption. two waves of data were collected six months apart (ntime 1 = 226, ntime 2 = 52) with parents who attended the workshop, and results indicate that parents engaged in enhanced, appropriately restrictive and active monitoring practices following the workshop. a significant decrease in children’s media consumption was also reported between time 1 and time 2. the results provide preliminary evidence to suggest that even short, one-time intensive workshops for parents can move parents’ behaviours in the intended direction and positively impact their monitoring strategies. keywords: parental monitoring, media violence, media consumption, parent education acknowledgement: this study was partly supported by a grant from the public health agency of canada (6785-15-2010-3381071). corresponding author: ryan broll, centre for addiction and mental health (camh), centre for prevention science, 100 collip circle, suite 100, london, ontario, canada n6g 4x8. telephone: (519) 858-5411 ext. 22155. fax: 519-858-5149. e-mail: rbroll@uwo.ca ryan broll, m.a. is a ph.d. candidate in department of sociology at university of western ontario, room 5320 social science centre, london, ontario, canada n6a 5c2. e-mail: rbroll@uwo.ca claire v. crooks, ph.d., c.psych. is associate director of camh centre for prevention science, 100 collip circle, suite 100, london, ontario, canada n6g 4x8. e-mail: ccrooks@uwo.ca shanna burns, m.ed. is manager at camh centre for prevention science, 100 collip circle, suite 100, london, ontario, canada n6g 4x8. e-mail: sburns@uwo.ca ray hughes, m.ed. is senior program advisor and national education coordinator at camh centre for prevention science, 100 collip circle, suite 100, london, ontario, canada n6g 4x8. e-mail: rayhughes@rogers.com peter g. jaffe, ph.d., c.psych. is professor of education, university of western ontario, 1137 western road, london, ontario, canada n6g 1g7. e-mail: pjaffe@uwo.ca mailto:rbroll@uwo.ca mailto:rbroll@uwo.ca mailto:ccrooks@uwo.ca mailto:sburns@uwo.ca mailto:rayhughes@rogers.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 302 young people’s lives are becoming increasingly infused with all types of media content and the majority of north american children are growing up in media-saturated environments. the average child now consumes 7.5 hours of media per day, not including media accessed at school or time spent using cell phones (rideout, foehr, & roberts, 2010). amongst preschoolers, the average child spends about two hours every day exposed to media (rideout & hamel, 2006). the normative expectations of parents of preschoolers are that most media consumption will be educational and that parents will closely monitor their children’s media use (davies & gentile, 2012). however, research finds that this is often not the case. for example, researchers have found that one-third of preschool-aged children in the united states have a television in their bedroom (rideout & hamel, 2006) and that up to half of the time preschoolers spend viewing television is unsupervised (roberts, foehr, rideout, & brodie, 1999). parents of elementary school-aged children face different normative pressures and parenting challenges. specifically, parents of children in elementary school are expected to foster self-management and a sense of responsibility in their offspring (collins, madsen, & susmanstillman, 2002). according to davies and gentile (2012), these norms suggest that parents of elementary-school-aged children (i.e., children aged approximately 5 to 13) should gradually relax their monitoring of their children’s media consumption and family rules around media use. likewise, as children begin to interact more with others outside of the family, it can be expected that media consumption will increasingly shift in purpose from being education-oriented to being more entertainment-oriented (davies & gentile, 2012). these expectations are reflected in the media consumption of elementary-school-aged children: 6to 8-year-olds view about two hours less educational content per week compared to preschoolers, and 9to 12-year-olds view about half an hour less educational content per week than 6to 8-year-olds (wright et al., 2001). during adolescence, youth’s autonomy tends to increase. this shift includes having the autonomy to choose one’s own entertainment and leisure activities (davies & gentile, 2012). as may be expected, adolescents’ increased autonomy is reflected in their media consumption. specifically, the number of hours spent viewing television – which may have previously been a family and educational activity – decrease markedly, whereas time spent listening to music – independently and with one’s peers – increases (rideout et al., 2010). alongside adolescents’ increased autonomy come parenting norms that encourage decreased monitoring of media consumption, fewer rules governing media use, and less consistency in the ways in which rules are applied (davies & gentile, 2012). indeed, teenagers are much less likely than younger children to report having rules around media consumption. adolescents are also more likely than younger children to have a television, video game console, or music player in their bedroom and they are more likely than elementary-school-aged children to have access to the internet (rideout et al., 2010). parental monitoring parents who are aware of their children’s activities and peer group, and who communicate to their children that they are concerned about their activities, are engaged in parental monitoring (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). a great deal of research in several fields international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 303 indicates that parental monitoring can have a positive impact on the social and health outcomes of children and youth. for example, high levels of parental monitoring are inversely related to children’s substance use and abuse (clark, shamblen, ringwalt, & hanley, 2012; griffin, samuolis, & williams, 2011; huang, murphy, & hser, 2011; martins, storr, alexandre, & chilcoat, 2008), susceptibility to depressive symptoms (hamza & willoughby, 2011), engagement in delinquent and anti-social behaviours (huang et al., 2011; laird, marrero, & sentse, 2010; willoughby & hamza, 2011), gang affiliation (mcdaniel, 2012), and dating victimization and relational aggression (leadbeater, banister, ellis, & yeung, 2008). similarly, using discrete-time survival analysis to analyze data from a national sample of more than 5,000 youth, huang and colleagues (2011) found that compared to youth reporting low parental monitoring, those who reported high parental monitoring delayed sexual initiation by 1.5 years. likewise, parkes, henderson, wight, and nixon (2011) found that parental monitoring was associated with delayed sexual intercourse, lowered expectations of sex in a relationship, and increased condom use. with respect to media, research has consistently shown that parents often do little to monitor their children’s media use (dorr & rabin, 1995; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999) and that most families have few rules restricting the amount or types of media that can be consumed (gentile, lynch, linder, & walsh, 2004; roberts et al., 1999). however, it does seem as though most parents set rules about newer forms of media, such as the internet. for example, lenhart and madden (2007) found that most parents set rules about their children’s internet use and retrospectively monitor their children’s online behaviour by reviewing their internet browser’s history. even still, it seems as though parents’ monitoring of their children’s internet use is initially high, such as when children first begin using the internet or when the family first obtains internet access, but that this vigilance decreases steadily over time (bjornstad & ellingsen, 2004; wang, bianchi, & raley, 2005). interestingly, and perhaps because it is a newer technology, about 50% of parents limit when their children can use a cell phone and almost two-thirds of parents monitor text messages and other content on their children’s cell phone (lenhart, ling, campbell, & purcell, 2010). researchers have yet to examine whether monitoring of cell phones wanes over time, as is the case with the monitoring of internet usage. the overall lack of parental monitoring of children’s media use and consumption – and parenting norms that suggest decreased monitoring as children mature – is troublesome because research has also shown that parental monitoring of children’s media use can also have positive effects on youth. to date, most such research has focussed on television. parents who view television with their children are able to effectively minimize many of the harmful effects of television viewing by reinforcing positive messages, rejecting negative messages, and teaching children media literacy skills (huston et al., 1992; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999). conversely, if parents simply co-view with their children and do not discuss problematic content, children may assume that their parents endorse the negative content (nathanson, 2001). nevertheless, the children of parents who restrict access to television by developing family rules around the amount or type of television viewed watch less television (atkin, greenberg, & baldwin, 1991) and are less aggressive than other children (nathanson, 1999). when it comes to the internet, several studies have suggested that passive monitoring techniques such as glancing at computer screens and reviewing browser histories are not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 304 effective methods of minimizing risks associated with internet use and the consumption of various types of online content (e.g., kerr & statin, 2000; mitchell, finkelhor, & wolak, 2001). instead, experts tend to recommend that parents openly communicate with their children about internet use and actively participate in their children’s decision-making online (liau, khoo, & ang, 2008). media violence and youth of the many types and forms of media consumed by youth, perhaps none have been as hotly contested as the impact of consuming violent media. debates around the impact of media violence on youth tend to become especially heated in the aftermath of extremely violent incidents committed by young people. two such incidents occurred in the united states in 2012 further fuelling these debates. first, in july, a 24-year-old man opened fire in a crowded aurora, colorado movie theatre at the opening of a new batman film, the dark knight rises, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. six months later, in december, a 20-year-old man walked into sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut and began shooting. he ultimately killed 20 young children and six adults. the popular media linked both incidents, at least in part, to the shooters’ consumption of violent media, including violent video games and movies (common sense media, 2013). correlational studies have linked the consumption of violent media content to moderate aggression and serious violent behaviour into adulthood (anderson et al., 2003; funk, bechtoldt baldacci, pasold, & baumgardner, 2004). exposure to violent video games is also correlated with desensitization to real-life violence (bartholow, bushman, & sestir, 2006; carnagey, anderson, & bushman, 2007; engelhardt, bartholow, kerr, & bushman, 2011; funk et al., 2004). further, ybarra et al. (2008) found that youth exposure to violence in the media, both online and offline, is associated with an increased likelihood of perpetrating serious violence, including shooting or stabbing someone, aggravated assault, robbery, and sexual assault. although these findings are alarming, correlational studies can provide an oversimplified view of the debate. for example, ferguson, san miguel, garza, and jerabeck (2012) found that although video game violence was associated with dating violence in bivariate analyses, this relationship disappeared when other variables were controlled for. these authors suggest that “these results confirm expectations by other scholars that any links between video games and aggression are merely the by-product of other processes occurring in the life of the child” (ferguson, san miguel, garza, & jerabeck, 2012, p. 144). others have similarly suggested that there is almost no relationship between media violence and criminal behaviours (ferguson, 2007; ferguson, san miguel, & hartley, 2009), and that effect sizes become smaller as the degree of seriousness of the offence increases (anderson et al., 2003; bavelier et al., 2011). although media is not likely the leading cause of pediatric health problems, it does contribute to many problems including violence stemming from learned behaviours developed through the media (strasburger, 2009). exposure to media violence is most likely one facet of a complex set of interacting variables that increase the probability of problem behaviours and related concerns. modelling aggression through a risk and resilience framework in a study of third and fourth grade students, gentile and bushman (2012) found that six risk/protective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 305 factors measured at time 1 – media violence exposure, physical victimisation, sex, hostile attribution bias, parental monitoring, and prior aggression – all significantly predicted increased physical aggression at time 2 six months later. moreover, the authors found a cumulative effect whereby the combination of risk factors was a stronger predictor of aggression than any single risk factor. therefore, gentile and bushman concluded that, “exposure to violent media is not the only risk factor for aggression, or even the most important risk factor, but it is one important risk factor” (p. 149). gentile and bushman liken this conclusion to public health debates about heart disease: although scientists recognize that a number of risk factors contribute to heart disease, including smoking, alcohol consumption, characteristics of one’s diet, exercise, and one’s family history with heart disease, most statistical analyses concentrate on one factor independently of the others. stemming from research on the impacts of media violence on youth, the american academy of pediatrics (2009) issued a policy statement urging safer media consumption through, amongst other things, increased media literacy and parental regulation of children’s media use. clearly, exposure to violent media can be considered one risk factor for aggression and other negative outcomes and parental monitoring of children’s media use can be considered a protective factor (austin, 1993; nathanson, 2001). accordingly, a lack of parental monitoring can be considered an additional risk factor (anderson, gentile, & buckley, 2007) for negative outcomes – that is, the effects of consuming violent media are greater when parents do not monitor their children’s media consumption and discuss content with them (anderson et al., 2007). indeed, parental monitoring and media literacy have been found to positively balance the negative effects of violent media. for example, the effects of exposure to media violence are minimized when parents guide their children’s exposure and discuss observed violence with their children (corder-bolz, 1982; hicks, 1968; nathanson, 1999; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999). although most families may have no or few rules governing media use, parental monitoring and media literacy are variables that may be successfully targeted by intervention (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). the fourth r parent media violence workshop the fourth r consists of a comprehensive range of school-based programs designed to include and engage students, teachers, parents, and the community in reducing violence and related risk behaviours (wolfe, crooks, hughes, & jaffe, 2005; see also crooks, wolfe, hughes, jaffe, & chiodo, 2008; wolfe, crooks, hughes, & chiodo, 2008; wolfe, crooks, jaffe, chiodo, hughes, ellis, et al., 2009; wolfe, jaffe, & crooks, 2006). it is especially important for comprehensive approaches to violence prevention and healthy youth relationships to involve parents (crooks et al., 2008). given the centrality of media in the lives of youth, the many negative relationship models in media, and research indicating that parents’ knowledge of media, rating systems, and media effects may have an important impact on how their children consume media (gentile & walsh, 2002), a workshop for parents on issues related to youth media consumption and media violence was developed to complement school-based lessons. the fourth r parent media violence workshop (hereafter “workshop”) is a 90-minute intensive workshop that provides information to participants on a number of topics, including how children and youth use media, how violence is portrayed in the media, the messages international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 306 communicated by violent media, the impacts of media violence on youth, the importance of monitoring children’s media use, how to set rules around media use, positive forms of media designed for youth, and the importance of maintaining privacy online. participants are also provided with several additional resources, including suggestions for computer monitoring and parental control programs, a guide on how to appropriately set facebook privacy and security settings, and a list of additional resources and websites from which parents may obtain more information about the topics covered in the workshop. given widespread confusion over traditional ratings systems (gentile & walsh, 2002), participants are also informed about common sense media1. common sense media is a non-profit website that provides easy-tounderstand reviews and ratings for movies, video games, television shows, apps, books, websites, and music. rather than using traditional ratings systems, common sense media rates media based on its age appropriateness and educational potential as determined by its team of experts. a simple, easy-to-understand ratings system (red, yellow, green) is used to indicate whether a given form of media (e.g., movie, television show, video game) is appropriate for a specific age. their reviews also include information about positive messages and role models in a given movie, for example, as well as the level of violence, sexuality, consumerism, and offensive language. in particular, the workshop is designed to encourage parents to engage and monitor their children’s engagement with new media environments, such as the internet, where there are many possibilities for encountering violence. basic program feedback has been collected from workshop participants for several years. parents have consistently rated the workshop favourably, reporting that they intend to make use of the tools provided to them and monitor their children’s media consumption more closely. however, whether such behavioural changes occurred and were maintained over time was unknown. furthermore, despite evidence suggesting that parental monitoring is inversely related to negative outcomes associated with consuming violent media, there are few programs aimed at parents to help them navigate monitoring their children’s media use. of those programs that do exist, no evaluations of any kind have been conducted, so it is unknown whether they have any positive impact on parental monitoring. the purpose of this study is to examine whether parents implement the strategies they learn during the workshop and, if so, to understand what specific strategies they use. method participants this study used two waves of longitudinal panel data to assess whether an intensive, 90minute parental monitoring and media violence workshop for parents can increase parents’ monitoring of their children’s media use, and to examine what strategies parents use when they do monitor their children’s media use post-workshop. participants at time 1 included 337 individuals who attended the workshop as part of a large, professional development conference on issues related to media violence at the university of western ontario in october 2011. of those individuals who attended the workshop, 101 participants were dropped from this study because they were not parents (n = 236). of the 236 participants included in our final sample at 1 http://www.commonsensemedia.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 307 time 1, 180 (76.3%) were female and 221 (93.6%) reported that their job requires them to work with youth. a relatively even distribution of children’s ages was reported by the 236 parents in our final sample. specifically, 54 (25.4%) had a child in senior kindergarten or younger, 82 (38.5%) had a child in grades 1 through 5, 61 (28.6%) had a child in grades 6 through 8, and 89 (41.8%) had a child in grades 9 to 12. at time 1, we sought permission from all participants to contact them again six months later (in april 2012) to complete a follow-up interview (time 2). of the 236 parents who completed the first survey at time 1, 98 (41.5%) gave us permission to contact them for the time 2 survey. amongst these 98 participants, 66 completed the follow-up survey at time 2 (response rate = 67%). twelve of the 66 participants at time 2 did not consent to us linking their responses to their time 1 survey; as a result, these 12 participants were dropped. two additional participants were also dropped because we were unable to link their time 1 and time 2 surveys (n = 52)2. of the 52 participants included in our final sample at time 2, 40 (76.9%) were female. as with the time 1 sample, a relatively even distribution of children’s ages was reported by the 52 parents in our time 2 sample: 14 (27.5%) had a child in senior kindergarten or younger, 23 (45.1%) had a child in grades 1 through 5, 17 (33.3%) had a child in grades 6 through 8, and 20 (39.2%) had a child in grades 9 to 12. no significant differences in the sex of the participant or ages of their children were observed between the initial group who completed the time 1 survey and the follow-up group who completed the time 2 survey. measures both the time 1 and time 2 surveys were developed by the authors for the purposes of this study. the time 1 survey was a brief (two pages) paper-and-pencil survey administered immediately following the workshop. the time 1 survey comprised three sections. the first section sought background and basic demographic information from participants. questions included the participants’ sex, the gender and age of their children, and their fields of employment. the second section measured participants’ perceptions of what they learned in the workshop. nine key learning objectives were measured on a four-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). sample questions included, “i learned more about how children and youth use media”; “i learned more about the messages being communicated by media violence”; “i learned more about the impacts of media violence on children and youth”; “i learned more about the importance of monitoring children’s media use”; and “i learned more about how to set rules around children’s media use”. participants’ responses indicated high levels of perceived learning from the workshop – in excess of 90% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they learned more about each of the learning objectives than they knew prior to the workshop (see table 1). 2 we used e-mail addresses to link participants’ time 2 surveys that were completed online to their time 1 surveys. these two participants provided a different e-mail address at time 2 than we had on file. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 308 table 1. participants’ self-reported learning as a result of the workshop learning objective % agree or strongly agree mean std. deviation i learned more about how children and youth use media 94.8 3.67 0.73 i learned more about violence itself and the different forms it can take 94.7 3.47 0.74 i learned more about how the media portrays violence 94.7 3.50 1.10 i learned more about the messages being communicated by media violence 95.2 3.59 0.73 i learned more about the impacts of media violence on children and youth 94.8 3.53 0.73 i learned more about the importance of monitoring children’s media use 95.1 3.67 0.71 i learned more about how to set rules around children’s media use 94.3 3.49 0.74 i learned more about positive forms of media designed for children and youth 90.4 3.24 1.61 i learned more about video games and their impact on children and youth 92.5 3.53 0.76 the third section of the survey included a series of questions related to parental perceptions of media consumption and parental monitoring in the participant’s household. first, participants were asked about their perceptions of their children’s daily media consumption (e.g., “approximately how many hours of media do your children consume per day?”). second, participants were asked to respond to the following statements regarding their monitoring behaviours: “before this workshop i had visited common sense media”; “before this presentation i monitored my children’s media use”; and “before this presentation i had family rules about media use”. responses to these statements were recorded on a three-point scale (1 = no, 2 = sometimes, 3 = yes). scores were summed to obtain a basic composite measure of preworkshop parental monitoring where higher scores indicated greater monitoring (minimum = 3, maximum = 9, x = 6.37, sd = 1.18, α = .452). the time 2 survey was administered approximately 6 months after the time 1 survey and also comprised three sections. in the first section, participants were again asked to report their perceptions of their children’s media consumption (e.g., “approximately how many hours of media do your children consume per day?”). the second section of the survey measured restrictive forms of parental monitoring employed by participants in the six months since the workshop. there is evidence to suggest that restricting access to content is an effective method of mediating the harmful effects of television and that the children of parents who restrict access to media view less television (atkin et al., 1991; nathanson, 1999). we expected these same international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 309 processes to occur with respect to online media. questions about restrictive parental monitoring practices centred around two themes. first, participants were asked about new rules developed since the workshop (e.g., “after the workshop, did you create new rules about media use?” and if so, “have you noticed a change in media use since you implemented the new rules?”). second, participants were asked about their use of the ratings and reviews website common sense media (e.g., “since the workshop have you visited common sense media?” and if so, “how many times have you visited common sense media since the workshop?”). visiting common sense media can be considered a form of restrictive parental monitoring because by reviewing ratings before youth engage with media, parents are able to more effectively restrict their children’s access to harmful content. the third section of the survey measured active monitoring strategies employed by parents since the workshop. the literature on parental monitoring of television indicates that active co-viewing by parents when their children watch television can mediate the harmful effects of media violence (huston et al., 1992; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999). with respect to the internet, research also suggests that passive monitoring, such as glancing at the computer screen or checking the internet browser’s history, are not effective methods of parental monitoring. instead, active participation in children’s online activities is recommended (liau et al., 2008). first, participants were asked whether they have actively participated in their children’s online activities since the workshop (e.g., “did you ask your children to show you their favourite website?” and if so, “approximately how many websites have your children shared with you since the workshop?”). the majority of participants (70.6%) reported that their children have shared 1 to 5 websites with them, although 26.5% have shared between 6 and 10 websites and 2.9% have shared more than 16 websites (x = 1.35, sd = 0.65). second, because of the popularity of facebook amongst north american youth (common sense media, 2012), participants were asked specifically about the ways in which they monitor their children’s facebook account (e.g., “do you monitor your children’s facebook account?” and if so, “how do you monitor your children’s facebook account?”). descriptive statistics for questions related to active and restrictive monitoring are presented in table 2 (dichotomous items were measured on a two-point scale where 1 = yes and 2 = no). filtering questions were asked where relevant (e.g., if parents reported that their children do not use facebook, we did not ask how they monitor their children’s facebook account). procedure time 1 data collection took place immediately following a workshop that took place as part of a larger professional development conference on media violence at the university of western ontario in october 2011. as noted, some workshop participants were not parents and these individuals were dropped from all analyses. surveys were distributed to all those in attendance and the purpose of the survey was explained. an implied consent procedure was used and participants were informed that they could take time to relax or review other materials if they did not wish to complete the survey. upon completing the survey, participants were asked if they wished to participate in a follow-up survey approximately six months later (i.e., in april 2012). those who were willing to complete the follow-up survey provided their contact information. six months later, these persons were contacted via phone or e-mail to remind them of the second survey and invite them to participate. all those contacted were informed that the second survey international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 310 could be completed by telephone or online (96% of participants completed the survey online). again, an implied consent procedure was used. participants who completed the second survey received a $10.00 gift certificate to a popular coffee shop as compensation for their time. the study protocol was approved by centre for addiction and mental health’s research ethics board. results parental monitoring before the workshop the time 1 survey measured the parental monitoring habits of participants prior to them attending the workshop, and the results indicated that 66.0% of participants monitored their children’s media use most of the time and 33.0% monitored it some of the time. likewise, 74.0% of participants always had family rules about media use and 22.0% sometimes had family rules about media use. in contrast, 85.7% of participants had never visited the ratings and reviews website common sense media. the results of a one-way anova test on the composite parental monitoring score by the age of participants’ children produced results that were highly statistically significant (f(4) = 6.019, p < .001) – that is, consistent with other research findings, parents of older children were much less likely to monitor their children’s media use than parents of younger children. anova also revealed that parental monitoring prior to time 1 was significantly and inversely related to the number of hours participants’ children used media per day (f(6) = 6.618, p < .001). thus, the greater parental monitoring prior to the workshop, the lower the number of hours per day children spent with media. did parents implement the monitoring strategies learned during the workshop? as whittaker and cowley (2012) explain in their comprehensive review of the literature on parent educational program participation and engagement, “program availability alone does not guarantee positive outcomes” (p. 138). therefore, although participants rated the workshop favourably and reported that they learned more about media violence and strategies to monitor their children’s media use, it was previously unknown whether participants actually implemented any of these strategies once they went home and post-workshop excitement and motivation diminished. descriptive data indicate that many parents did implement both the restrictive and active monitoring strategies learned during the workshop. for example, 44.2% of participants created new rules about media use following the workshop. interestingly, open-ended responses to a follow-up question about rule setting suggest that, upon further reflection, many parents were satisfied with the rules they already had in place. in fact, many participants reported feeling validated by what they learned in the workshop. for example, one parent of teenage children stated, “i actually felt validated in what my teens previously considered ‘draconian’ rules. [it] turns out the rules were bang-on”. other parents reported that they already had strong rules in place and felt no need to adjust them or create new rules. as one parent explained, “we only allow computer/internet use within our view and only on sites that we have approved. these are the only rules we feel we need at this time”. it may be that an important role of the training was to validate parents who had already implemented effective monitoring strategies and to increase their confidence in maintaining those rules even when their children feel they are unreasonable. in contrast to the 7.2% of parents who had visited common sense media prior to attending the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 311 workshop, 71.2% visited the ratings and reviews website following the workshop. visiting websites such as common sense media allows parents to be more educated and effective when engaging in restrictive monitoring practices. with respect to active forms of monitoring after the workshop, 65.4% of participants asked their children to show them their favourite website, 60.6% reported their children shared multiple websites with them, and 71.4% indicated that they monitor their children’s facebook account (see table 2). these monitoring strategies are not dissimilar to co-viewing television programs with one’s children, which can be an effective method of mitigating the harmful effects of media violence when problematic content is pointed out and discussed with children and youth. in contrast to parental monitoring prior to the workshop, anova results indicated no significant age differences with respect to any of the methods of parental monitoring at time 2. however, for all methods of monitoring except having been shown multiple websites, participants with children in grades 9 to 12 (i.e., children in the oldest age category) reported the highest levels of engagement (see figure 1). this suggests that the workshop led participants to re-evaluate potentially problematic parenting norms related to monitoring and children’s ages. table 2. active and restrictive parental monitoring at time 2 % yes mean std. deviation restrictive parental monitoring after the workshop, did you create new rules about media use? 44.2 1.56 0.50 since the workshop, have you visited common sense media? 71.2 1.29 0.46 active parental monitoring after the workshop did you ask your children to show you their favourite website? 65.4 1.35 0.48 have your children shared other websites with you? 60.6 1.40 0.50 do you monitor your children’s facebook account? 70.0 1.30 0.47 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 312 figure 1. parental monitoring strategies post-workshop by grade of children the enhanced parental monitoring practices that participants engaged in following the workshop also coincide with a reduction in the perceived amount of media consumed by their children from time 1 to time 2. specifically, 53.4% of participants reported that their children consumed 3 or more hours of media prior to the workshop, compared to only 32.7% of participants who reported the same at time 2. as shown in table 3, the results of a pairedsamples t-test revealed that the overall perceived media consumption of participants’ children at time 2 was significantly lower than at time 1 (t(47) = 3.411, p = .001). this finding is consistent with other research in that parental monitoring tends to reduce the number of hours children spend with media (atkin et al., 1991) and, therefore, exposure to violent media. table 3. participants’ perceptions of their children’s media consumption preand post workshop daily media consumption % (time 1) % (time 2) t(df) 95% ci p less than 1 hour 12.7 13.5 3.411(47) [.171, .662] .001 1-2 hours 33.8 53.8 3-4 hours 28.4 32.7 5-6 hours 16.2 0.0 7+ hours 8.8 0.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 313 discussion as youth’s lives increasingly revolve around media, debates as to the effect of media on young people have heightened. one of the more prolific and hotly debated topics has centred on the impact of media violence on youth, with some research linking the consumption of media violence to desensitization to real-life violence and increased aggression (anderson et al., 2003; bartholow et al., 2006; carnagey et al., 2007; common sense media, 2013; engelhardt et al., 2011; funk et al., 2004; ybarra et al., 2008). others have more cautiously reported that media violence is, at minimum, one contributing factor to aggressive and risky behaviour in youth (gentile & bushman, 2012; strasburger, 2009). given the potential problems associated with consuming particularly violent media, appropriately regulating and monitoring youth’s media consumption is of great importance. parental monitoring has long been identified as a protective factor against a number of negative outcomes, including children’s substance use (clark et al., 2012; griffin et al., 2011; huang et al., 2011; martins et al., 2008), poor mental health (hamza & willoughby, 2011), gang involvement (mcdaniel, 2012), early engagement in sexual behaviours (huang et al., 2011; parkes et al., 2011), and delinquent and aggressive conduct (huang et al., 2011; laird et al., 2010; leadbeater et al., 2008; willoughby & hamza, 2011). research has also shown that parental monitoring can minimize the negative effects of consuming certain types of media, such as violence (atkin et al., 1991; huston et al., 1992; liau et al., 2008; nathanson, 1999; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999). unfortunately, few families have rules around media consumption and most parents do not seem to monitor their children’s media use (dorr & rabin, 1995; gentile et al., 2004; roberts et al., 1999; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999; wang et al., 2005). accordingly, [blinded for review] parent media violence workshop was developed to teach parents about the impact of media violence on youth and the importance of setting rules around media use. the workshop also endeavours to encourage parents to become more actively involved in monitoring and regulating their children’s media consumption. although program feedback has consistently indicated that parents are satisfied with the workshop, whether they feel they learned something from the workshop and whether they implemented the strategies they learned was previously unknown. the purpose of this study was to examine whether parents implement the strategies they learn during the workshop and, if so, to understand what parental monitoring strategies they use. participants were surveyed immediately following the workshop to gauge their monitoring strategies and perceptions of their children’s media consumption prior to the workshop. these same participants were then surveyed six months later to identify changes in their monitoring strategies that had occurred following the workshop as well as changes in their children’s media consumption. the results indicated that, following the workshop, many participants re-evaluated their monitoring strategies and made some changes to the ways in which they regulate their children’s media use. for example, almost half of all participants created new rules about media use and almost three-quarters made use of common sense media post-workshop. likewise, many parents engaged in more active forms of monitoring after the workshop: 65% asked their children to see their favourite website (61% reported that their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 314 children shared multiple websites) and 71% reported monitoring their children’s facebook accounts. as opposed to time 1, age was not a significant predictor of monitoring behaviours at time 2, suggesting that following the workshop parents re-evaluated potentially problematic parenting norms that encourage decreased monitoring as children mature (davies & gentile, 2012). thus, the workshop may have countered prevailing notions that adolescents are capable of navigating the media world on their own. participants also reported a statistically significant decrease in the amount of media consumed by their children per day from the time 1 survey to the time 2 survey. this finding is consistent with other research in that enhanced parental monitoring tends to reduce the number of hours children spend with media (atkin et al., 1991). limitations three limitations to this study should be noted. first, as a group, parents tend to underreport the amount of time their children spend with media and the amount of violence they see (gentile & walsh, 2002; strasburger & donnerstein, 1999). thus, reports of media consumption should be considered conservative estimates. second, the sample was not randomly selected and results may not be widely generalizable. for example, 89% of those represented in the time 1 sample were educators who may reasonably be expected to be more knowledgeable on issues affecting youth than the average parent. in contrast to the literature, many of the participants in our sample already had rules in place and may, therefore, have been more “ready” for the intervention than others. furthermore, it is unlikely that those who found the workshop to be of little use for them or who are relatively uninvolved parents would have agreed to participate in the follow-up survey. third, our measurement of children’s ages may mask the identification of age-variation effects. many of the parent behaviours measured, including monitoring, rule setting, and media literacy, are more difficult tasks with teenage children. although there has been much research on parental monitoring as a mediating factor in the relationship between media consumption and undesirable outcomes, there are few programs aimed at parents that are intended to help them navigate their children’s media use. of those programs that do exist, none have been formally evaluated. this study makes an important contribution to the literature by demonstrating that even short workshops for parents can have a positive impact on parental monitoring of children’s media use and can encourage parents to foster their children’s media literacy skills. there is preliminary evidence that the brief intervention presented in this paper had a positive impact in changing behaviours and enhancing parental monitoring. certainly, given the potential negative effects of unsafe media use and consumption, providing parents with the necessary resources and motivation to effectively monitor and protect their children is becoming increasingly important. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 301–319 315 references american academy of pediatrics. 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(2008). linkages between internet and other media violence with seriously violent behavior by youth. pediatrics, 122(5), 929–937. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221031 scaling up positive parenting practices in uganda: research evidence from an integrated community-led initiative for reducing violence against children in lira district, northern uganda mathew amollo, john bosco apota, clare ahabwe bangirana, tom musika, and timothy opobo abstract: community-based action research is increasingly gaining traction in development work, partly because of its benefits in contextualizing societal problems and “handing over the stick” to the communities; that is, researchers listen, question, and learn as the experts (the community members) identify their problems and define the change they desire. this research approach, therefore, empowers communities and is a shift from traditional research where the researcher presupposes that deductions about a phenomenon are to be made outside the natural environment. this research paper documents the use of participatory learning and action approaches in designing, implementing, and monitoring interventions to prevent violence against children in post-conflict northern uganda, a region that suffered through the lord’s resistance insurgency from 1987 to 2006. keywords: violence against children, community-driven, participatory learning and action, parenting mathew amollo msc (corresponding author) is the research manager at the africhild centre, makerere university, plot 103 mary stuart rd., kampala, uganda. email: mamollo@africhild.or.ug john bosco apota ba is a community development worker at the africhild centre, makerere university, plot 103 mary stuart rd., kampala, uganda. email: japota@africhild.or.ug clare ahabwe bangirana mme is the director for research and knowledge development at the africhild centre, makerere university, plot 103 mary stuart rd., kampala, uganda. email: cbangirana@africhild.or.ug tom musika is the program manager at lango child & community development federation (laccodef), 23/25 achol enock road, adyel division council, lira municipality, lira, uganda. email: tommusika@gmail.com timothy opobo msc is the executive director of the africhild centre, makerere university, plot 103 mary stuart rd., kampala, uganda. email: topobo@africhild.or.ug international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 33 violence against children (vac) is a global public health concern with a wide impact on the overall well-being of children. vac, which includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, has significant health consequences such as depression, suicidal behaviour, sexually transmitted infections, risky sexual behaviour, and even death (clarke, 2016). a 2015 study by the ministry of gender, labour and social development (mglsd) in uganda found that 59% of young females in uganda, and 68% of young males, reported having experienced physical violence (p. 27); 34% of young females and 36% of young males reported emotional violence (p. 39); and 35% of females and 17% of males reported sexual violence under age 18 (p. 15). the same study found that more than 1 in 10 girls and 1 in 20 boys had experienced all three types of violence in childhood (p. 43). in school settings, common perpetrators included teachers, peers, and intimate friends (mglsd, 2017). previous research has indicated that, although vac has lasting negative consequences, it is predictable (fang et al., 2017; hillis et al., 2016) and preventable (world health organization [who], 2016). numerous studies have been conducted about various aspects of vac including its causes (balume johnson, 2020; bukuluki et al., 2017; ezekiel et al., 2017; font & maguire-jack, 2021), children’s experiences of vac (nyangoma et al., 2019), and the repercussions of vac on children and families (copeland et al., 2021; fernandes de magalhães et al., 2020). however, apart from roygardner et al. (2020), there is a dearth of studies on the role of community-led initiatives in reducing vac. to fill this gap, the africhild centre for the study of the african child (makerere university, kampala), in conjunction with the mailman school of public health (columbia university, new york), undertook a study in 2015 of parenting practices in three districts of uganda — lira, ibanda, and kampala — to enumerate and understand risks and protective factors for vac in uganda and generate qualitative evidence augmenting the uganda child wellness survey carried out by boothby et al. (2017). negative parenting practices that ranked highly included lack of concern for their children’s future (neglect), lack of protection, lack of care, neglect of health, and poor nutrition. positive parenting practices included providing care (including adequate nutrition), investing in their children’s future, engaging in productive enterprise, and protection of children (boothby et al., 2017). despite several efforts by government and non-government actors to improve child well-being and protection, research-based evidence shows that many children still suffer different forms of violence and abuse that affect their growth and development (boothby et al., 2017). government of uganda initiatives aimed at increasing access to education include universal primary education (upe)1 and universal secondary education (use)2. the national child policy (government of 1 the upe policy, aimed at poverty reduction and improving human capital development, was introduced by the government of uganda in 1997. with this policy, government committed to provision of free primary school education to all children and abolished all fees levied by public schools. 2 the government of uganda introduced the use policy in 2007 following 10 years of successful implementation of upe. this policy aimed to increase access to quality secondary education for economically vulnerable families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 34 uganda, 2020) was put in place to streamline operations concerned with the well-being of orphans and other vulnerable children. the national integrated early childhood development policy (government of uganda, 2016) aimed to integrate early childhood development activities to promote the holistic development of children. in 2018, the government launched the national parenting guidelines (government of uganda, 2018). however, realization of the desired positive outcomes for all children has been delayed: there is still a gap between the policies that have been put in place and their implementation (africhild, 2018; ejuu, 2021). lira district in northern uganda faces a high level of poverty, which has limited the ability of many parents to provide for their children’s basic needs (boothby et al., 2017). also, due to psychological trauma caused by war, many parents do not give adequate time to guiding their children (khamis, 2016; olema et al., 2014). some parents continue to use corporal punishment, which is seen as an easy option for disciplining children (ayo, 2016). some previous studies have recommended scaling up government and civil society initiatives to prevent vac (chiang, 2021). however, others have found that such top-to-bottom decontextualized initiatives based on eurowestern methods of gathering empirical evidence may not produce a lasting impact (mannell et al., 2021). in uganda, efforts to strengthen child protection and promote child well-being have often been top-down initiatives in which the government, along with humanitarian agencies and other non-government actors, came in as “experts” to determine which kinds of intervention to implement in addressing community challenges, the designated front-line responders being viewed as inadequate (child et al., 2014). this undermines the principle of community ownership since the community does not fully participate in the process of identifying problems and arriving at their own solutions. in essence, such approaches undermine the self-reliance and sustainability of development initiatives (wetmore & theron, 1998). the complexity of vac in ugandan communities necessitates the adoption of approaches that are sensitive to the unique needs of local contexts and that allow community members to actively participate in developing solutions to address their problems. participatory learning and action (pla) and participatory rural appraisal (pra) are powerful tools for collective consultation and empowerment of communities regarding the issues and interventions that shape their lives (thomas, 2004). pla is an approach for learning about and engaging with communities in which local people are seen as experts because they are the ones who understand their communities best: researchers “hand over the stick” by listening to, questioning, and learning from discussions led by the experts — the community members (thomas, 2004). pla approaches have been used in low-resource settings (bozalek, 2011; mukherjee, 2002) and in various sectors such as health (prost et al., 2013), education (bozalek, 2011), development (thomas, 2004), and agriculture (defoer et al., 2000). these approaches are gaining in popularity; they are flexible and recognize the paradigm shift to learning from the field, learning to respect and recognize indigenous knowledge and experience, listening to alternative perspectives, appreciating other people’s realities, and hands-on learning (pretty et al., 1995). they resonate with the global south context (thomas, 2004), where practices are deeply rooted in sociocultural value systems and wider international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 35 inequalities between rich and poor, between men and women (wallerstein & duran, 2006), and in the relationship between privileged development partners and the ostensibly dependent communities they serve (madsen camacho, 2004). pla approaches are effective in tapping into the unique perspectives of the rural poor on the nature and causes of issues that affect them (thomas, 2004), and in addressing potential paradoxes in the development field, such as balancing community autonomy, respect and scientific rigour (buchanan et al., 2007; wallerstein & duran, 2006). in this paper, we describe a project, conducted in 2016 and 2017 by africhild centre in partnership with lango child and community development federation (laccodef), that adopted pla approaches to implement and scale up positive parenting practices in barr sub-county in lira district. this project was conducted to fill the gap left by previous research findings (bukuluki et al., 2017; nyangoma et al., 2019), which were not focused on using positive parenting as a strategy to reduce vac. the study aimed at building on existing positive parenting practices in the community, with the full engagement and leadership of community members. recognizing existing gaps in the translation and implementation of policies in uganda, the project intervention was based on the assumption that a community-led approach would increase active participation, leading to better outcomes and increased ownership of the interventions and outcomes by the communities. the parenting interventions implemented included livelihood strengthening through the adoption of modern farming technologies, school-based student clubs, and the use of the start awareness support action (sasa!) approach. the sasa! approach (abramsky et al., 2016) is a proven tool for developing effective community-wide advocacy to prevent primary and secondary intimate partner violence and vac. to ensure sustained outcomes, the project worked with local councils’ child protection committees, village health teams3, and sub-county child protection committees. through this project, the researchers attempted to explore the role community-led initiatives play in promoting positive parenting approaches as a response to vac in uganda. the project was guided by three objectives: to actively engage the community in scaling up positive parenting practices, to engage households in socioeconomic initiatives as an approach to positive parenting, and to scale up the sasa! approach in order to promote positive parenting practices. it was theorized that the attainment of these objectives would lead to the realization of a community that is knowledgeable, empowered, and actively practising positive parenting, and thus contribute to a reduction in vac. 3 the village health team is a health structure established by government of uganda in 2001 to strengthen community linkage to primary health care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 36 theoretical framework this project was guided by the social ecological model (bronfenbrenner, 1979) which was described by kohli et al. (2015): [the model] emphasizes two key concepts: (a) individuals are nested in a multilevel environment, and (b) these levels interact to produce outcomes (bronfenbrenner, 1979). the four-level framework of factors that affect the individual include (1) personal; (2) microsystem, which describes the immediate setting (e.g., family, home, peer groups) and interpersonal relationships; (3) exosystem, which includes institutions and social structures (e.g., work, neighborhood, social networks); and (4) macrosystem (i.e., the cultural, historical and political context). (p. 277) the rights-based approach was embedded in this ecological model to holistically address multipronged drivers of vac observed in the intervention community. methodology the study adopted qualitative pla approaches to guide implementation, documentation, and learning because they promote innovativeness, dialectic learning, and sustainability (zuberskerritt, 2015). pla thus empowers communities to identify issues that affect them, envision desired change, enumerate local resources for addressing common challenges, and formulate strategies by which changes can be sustained. study area the interviews were conducted in four parishes of barr sub-county in lira district: onywako, alebere, abunga, and ober. these were selected because the researchers had previously interviewed participants from the same parishes during the project’s baseline study (boothby et al., 2017). this was specifically important in determining the relevance of the intervention. study participants the participants comprised parents, pupils, out-of-school children, teachers, sub-county officers, community advisory board (cab) members, and project implementation staff. a cab is a group of 10 to 12 members nominated by the community to oversee implementation and monitoring of project activities. a total of four cabs were formed, one in each parish and one at the sub-county level. altogether, 164 participants were purposively selected based on their lived experiences and their position in society. since the project utilized farmer groups as the entry point, all parents who were members of such groups in the four parishes were eligible to participate. in each parish, the researchers worked with local leaders to identify potential participants from the farmer groups. three focus group discussions (fgds) for parents were constituted per parish, along with one fgd international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 37 for male pupils and another for female pupils. because comparatively few out-of-school children were available for an fgd, they were drawn from all four parishes to create one group for males and one for females. data collection methods a total of 26 fgds were conducted, 12 with parents, eight with pupils in primary school, two with pupils who were out of school, and four with cab members. we chose to use fgds because the method provides for the expression of a diversity of views and experiences. also, the researchers were able to facilitate discussions about selected topical issues, while study participants shared experiences based on their knowledge of their communities, and their beliefs, attitudes, and practices. key informant interviews were conducted with the community development officer and a senior administrative secretary from the sub-county, four teachers, and two project staff. the key informants were chosen for their knowledge of vac issues and the previous interactions between their offices and the project through the research conducted at barr sub-county by boothby et al. (2017) in 2015. pla approaches the study adopted pla approaches during the design, implementation, and learning phases. the approaches used included: problem and solution analysis, stakeholder analysis techniques, community visioning, participatory monitoring, and evaluation. during intervention design, the participating local community members (parents and children) were engaged in gender-specific groups to highlight the root causes of vac (problem tree analysis), rank their community problems (priority-ranking exercise), and identify potential solutions to the root causes of the vac (solution tree analysis). to guide implementation, the participating community members identified the resources available in their communities that could be utilized to address the problem (by venn diagramming), collectively drew a “picture” of the change they wanted to see at the end of the project (community visioning), and discussed how they would monitor progress (participatory monitoring and evaluation). analysis the study produced 31 transcripts from interviews of parents, children in school, children out of school, opinion leaders, and key technical staff within the district. upon receipt of the transcripts, we reviewed them for completeness. reviewed transcripts were formatted and went through a de-identification process in which each transcript was given a unique identifier that would ensure that sources of information were concealed. also, any text with identifying information (e.g., names) within the body of the transcripts was removed before coding and analysis. after the first three transcripts had been read through, a codebook was composed. this formed the preliminary sub-thematic areas, which were refined as further transcripts were coded international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 38 and new themes were identified. coding and analysis of these data was conducted with the help of atlas ti.8.0. after a preliminary analysis of a sub-sample of the transcripts, the coding structure for each theme was reviewed, and the codebook was refined through comparison and categorization of its properties and dimensions. during the analysis, integrating insights from a variety of sources and interpretations enabled the researchers to build a deeper picture of such study variables as perceptions of child well-being, parenting practices, and violence, and to identify protective and harmful parenting practices and underlying drivers of vac. the output from the analysis included word query reports for each node, word maps, and word clouds. trustworthiness was achieved through frequent team debriefing sessions, peer scrutiny, triangulation, and iterative questioning of data and themes (shenton, 2004). ethical considerations the research was approved by the mildmay uganda research and ethics committee (rec#: ref 0806-2015) and the uganda national council of science and technology. with the help of local guides, the research team identified children and adult participants to take part in the study. parental permission and assent forms were translated and administered to guardians and children respectively based on their language preference. parental permission was obtained for children to participate in the interviews. all children gave their verbal assent to being included in the study. additionally, the study team worked with the sub-county officer in those cases where a referral to relevant government service providers within the district was indicated. results approaches for problem identification pla approaches were used in the identification of community needs and solutions. communities participated in identifying, prioritizing, and designing their interventions to address the problems raised. this process was conducted at the community level with parents, children, and local leaders. meetings with stakeholders were conducted at the parish level (4 meetings) and village level (16 meetings) to identify and rank priority parenting challenges and design ways of addressing them. four approaches for problem-solving community advisory boards people in the community were invited to nominate cab members. the cab was the first community structure established under this project. a total of five cabs were formed: four at the parish level and one at the sub-county level. each parish cab comprised 10 to 12 respected and trusted community members, such as religious, cultural, and opinion leaders. the parish cabs participated in identifying and mobilizing parents to take part in different project activities such as enumerating approaches to be used, identifying role-model parents and survivors of child abuse, and making appropriate referrals. they also participated in the monitoring of project activities, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 39 attended review meetings, and provided feedback on the progress of the project. at the sub-county level, the cab comprised sub-county officials (community development officer, parish chiefs, and community representatives) and was responsible for advocacy, biannual joint monitoring and review, and provision of technical support to parish-level cabs. the cabs at parish level also participated in identification of role-model parents who would act as champions of change for this project. we documented all cab activities throughout the project. our analysis shows that cabs were very useful: they made it possible for the project team to work with parents in ways that supported the protection of children’s rights and were likely to contribute to a long-term reduction in vac in the community. application of sasa! by role model parents first, parents from the community listed the qualities they regarded as typical of a good parent. the attributes they identified included: showing love to children, not beating or abusing children, talking over any concerns with the child, advising children if they have done something inappropriate, teaching children to respect other community members, making sure that children are in school, living in harmony with household members and the entire community, and having the respect of the community. during fgd engagements, parents were then asked to identify two individuals within their communities who possessed the desired qualities of a good parent. the nominated parents were independently approached and asked whether they would be interested in sharing their parenting experiences with other parents. these role model parents used the start awareness support action (sasa!), a rights-based approach to raise awareness and advocate for actions in the community (carlson, 2013). “sasa” is a swahili word meaning “now”. the sasa! approach was developed by raising voices, an activist organization dedicated to ending violence against women by raising awareness and promoting action (abramsky et al., 2012). in our study, sasa! was adopted to raise awareness and champion action to end child abuse in the community, emphasizing that “now” is the time to stop abusing children and promote children’s rights through positive parenting. the sasa! approach is personal and proactive, and starts with raising awareness at the individual level. it works through engaging individuals, families, and community members. the sasa! approach was promoted by the role model parents who engaged community members at every interaction or meeting to pass on positive parenting messages. it was not necessary to mobilize people to do sasa! since they were already meeting at their different events. the role model parents shared parenting information informally through churches, village savings and loan associations (vslas), markets, and home visits. application of sasa! by school peer support groups the peer model is anchored in the rights-based approach that emphasizes creating awareness of the rights and responsibilities of both children and duty bearers. first, pupils, with the guidance of their teachers, identified those pupils they felt could encourage the sensitization of their peers. teachers and administrators provided guidance on the content and planning platforms to be used international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 40 in the sensitization effort. through peer support groups, using school-based structures like clubs, debates, assemblies, and music and dance sessions, the designated pupils used the sasa! approach to promote children’s rights, build the self-esteem of fellow students, and empower themselves as agents of change. participants’ comments about the sasa! school peer support groups included: here in the school, the teachers are always organizing debates, drama, and songs on children’s rights and children are mobilized to take part in them. (fgd_peers_ps_01) teachers assist pupils to draw work plans and also do translations of words that learners are unable to explain to fellow learners. (fgd_pupils_ps_02) some parents, police, and health workers are sometimes invited to facilitate the [children’s rights] sensitization process in the school. (fgd_pupils_ps_02) however, peer support groups often found it difficult to identify the best ways of comprehensively articulating children’s rights concepts to both children and duty bearers. we found that some children used their knowledge of children’s rights to avoid carrying out their responsibilities within the school and at home. in other cases, the increased agency of the children created a rift between them and their parents. some parents viewed children as disrespectful, while children saw themselves as exercising their rights, as revealed by one participant: it creates disharmony between parents and children. this is because some children do not want to do some of their responsibilities and they think that their parents are mistreating them … (fgd_peers_ps_01) this comment implies that promoting positive parenting as a strategy to prevent vac was misunderstood by the children. some children, for example, would refuse to engage in household chores or school activities because the sasa! approach discourages the use of corporal punishment by parents and teachers, not all of whom have learned more appropriate methods of securing children’s cooperation. household socioeconomic strengthening households were engaged to identify viable farm enterprises and supported to undertake modern farming practices to improve yields and generate household income. in each parish, the households were part of the existing farmer groups formed to collectively acquire, through training provided by the government, skills applicable to modern farming practices. three community groups from each parish, for a total of 12 groups, were identified by the cabs. the participants from each community group also identified land where each group would establish a demonstration garden to act as a field school for farmers where they could develop modern farming skills and routinely meet, with the support of an agricultural extension worker, to share experiences. the farmer field school activities were linked to vsla activities to enable members to routinely save specified amounts of money and also acquire small loans to advance their household enterprises. to improve the nutritional status of children and thus boost their well-being, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 41 kitchen gardens were established at the household level and supported using the knowledge and skills acquired from farmer field schools. each household was supported to establish a kitchen garden for income generation and improved nutrition; their performance was monitored by the cabs. below are some quotations from our discussions about how household economic strengthening was beneficial for vac prevention: holding community meetings and talking to parents through community meetings organized to sensitize parents on child care and support. (fgd_parents_02) we also carry out follow-up on children in schools to find out from the teachers if our children are having some problems within themselves and the community responds by providing advice to children. (fgd_parents_03) advising children by talking to them during family time, school pta [parent– teacher association] and smc [school management committee] meetings to address those problems. (fgd_parents_03) the above excerpts from our fgd data show that household economic strengthening can be a useful approach to sensitize parents about child protection as a strategy to prevent vac in their communities. relevance of approaches to preventing violence against children intervention resonance the children liked messages that raised their awareness of children’s rights and responsibilities. the information shared through the peer support groups was viewed by children as educative (new ideas) and empowering (more awareness of the availability of services and how to access them in case of child abuse). as one peer support group member commented: children’s rights and responsibilities is a very interesting [topic] because learners say it helps them to know their rights and are aware of what they can do and can’t do. they can now report cases of abuse to anyone that they were taught to report to. (fgd_peers_ps_01) it was reported that neighbouring community members had started visiting the farmer groups to learn how they are practising modern farming and to discuss other topics from the program. comments from parents included: the tools have been very useful because the communities in those areas are informed and they get the information on child care and protection and also they participate in the discussions organized. (fgd_parents_02) advice [is provided] to parents to carry out agricultural activities because this is the treasury of the rural people so that they can have enough food to support children’s nutrition. (fgd_parents_02) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 42 our findings, therefore, show increased participation of target groups in project activities and the uptake of available child protection services within the community. feasibility of delivery and flexibility of the approaches the approaches identified can be effectively implemented by existing structures within the community such as churches, schools, and farmer groups. members of the various child protection structures were instructed in pla approaches and in the monitoring and support supervision of community-led activities. below are some excerpts from participants: through the churches, many children and their parents have been reached and advised accordingly. this is because many of them attend church functions since they are believers who find the church useful for meeting their demands and providing solutions for their problems. (fgd_parents_02) making follow-ups on issues of child protection within the community has strengthened the structures to take action against child protection violation issues through referring cases, discussions, and providing advice. (fgd_parents_03) our findings, therefore, demonstrate that such community-led approaches are feasible for delivery of the vac prevention initiatives. we also found these approaches to be flexible for parents and cab members. the strength of community-led interventions arises from leveraging the goodwill of the target population. our findings demonstrate that communities not only understand the challenges they are faced with but also have the capacity to address them. our approach allowed community members the flexibility to take the lead in identifying problems, ranking them, identifying potential solutions, and deciding how the desired change can be achieved: accessing churches, group meetings, cpcs, schools, community groups, etc. has been very easy for community members. this is because you can choose who to talk to in case you have problems instead of being forced to talk to someone you do not want to talk to. (fgd_parents_02) during the training, facilitators allowed the community members to talk about [their] children’s fate…. and people came out with all those problems faced by children. so talking about the problems helped them to identify child protection issues within the community. (fgd_parents_01) community-led initiatives for vac prevention are more flexible than conventional government-led child protection systems under which parents or caregivers report cases of vac to a designated authority. our project shows that this flexibility is crucial to the effectiveness of the community-led approach. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 43 the cabs and the various groups agreed on what changes they would like to see in their communities, developed activities to be implemented, and made work plans to guide the implementation of proposed activities. during their weekly meetings, the groups agreed on what activities needed to be implemented, the roles assigned to group members, and what should be reported on at the next meeting. this flexible approach allowed for the active participation of all group members regardless of education or socioeconomic status. the knowledge received was applied by the target communities, especially in regard to parent involvement in school-related activities. some parents shared their experiences of escorting children to and from school, paying school fees on time, and attending school meetings. there was a general increase in knowledge about parenting, including an appreciation of parental responsibility in holistic child upbringing and fulfilling children’s physical, emotional, and psychosocial needs. one participant said: yes, the tools are useful because after training … parents are encouraging children to continue with their education especially girls who in the past were not encouraged or sent to schools, they were only prepared to be married off by their parents. (fgd_parents_04) because we utilized community-based structures and indigenous knowledge in addressing child protection challenges faced by the communities, the intervention was low in cost, with a high likelihood of sustainability. our findings suggest that, if scaled up, this intervention is likely to reach more beneficiaries and generate meaningful impact at the community level. changes attributable to the intervention after the intervention, schools integrated topics on children’s rights and child protection into the school curriculum, with topics being discussed during debates, in drama, and in songs based on children’s input and ideas, and directly taught in classes where they were accessible to all children. as well, information on good parenting practices was passed on through the schools to parents and other community members. farmers’ groups (vslas) integrated project interventions into their daily program activities. during their meetings, a member led the discussion on positive parenting and provided feedback to the group at their next sitting. this was done freely without facilitation. the establishment of kitchen gardens was seen to improve the nutrition of children and their families and also produced household income that could be used to meet household basic needs. knowledge and skills in kitchen gardening were provided to 400 households, along with the inputs needed to start. as one participant put it: it is helpful because, after the sensitization program, communities can operate kitchen gardens well as a result of the knowledge that they got from the group. (fgd_parents_02) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 44 as a result of the intervention, there is increased agency at the community level as evidenced by enhanced reporting of vac. we found that action was being taken against parents who failed to protect their children against abuse. for example, parents responsible for school absenteeism have been summoned before local leaders for reprimand. community child protection structures were strengthened: the cabs, role model parents, and school peer support groups have increased awareness of vac, and the reporting of cases of child abuse has consequently improved. the intervention also enhanced the agency of children in terms of negotiating with adults to protect their rights and in identifying and reporting any cases of abuse perpetrated against fellow children in the community. one participant noted: community members are aware of children’s rights policy and are respecting these rights and taking up their responsibilities of providing children with basic needs. (fgd_parents_04) our findings show that not only was the intervention beneficial for vac prevention but also for responding to vac. by engaging community members in cabs and activities to improve their livelihoods, stronger relationships were developed between parents and children, and also parents’ understanding of child protection improved. additionally, there was enhanced interest among community members in responding to vac within household and school settings. discussion this paper documents the attempt to use community-led initiatives that tap into the power of pla approaches and positive parenting practices to reduce vac in lira district in northern uganda. children and women remain more vulnerable to violence in our societies than men (who, 2016; cunningham & baker, 2007; ez-elarab et al., 2007), largely due to their sociocultural marginalization. research evidence indicates that, although violence against vulnerable groups in our societies has devastating effects, it’s also predictable (fang et al., 2017; hillis et al., 2016) and preventable [who, 2016]. vac also remains highly gendered, with girls experiencing more effects of violence than boys do (yarnell et al., 2014). moreover, yarnell et al. (2014) suggested that girls are more likely to drop out of school than boys because of the investment required (school fees, buying school uniforms, books, pens, and menstrual pads). in other cases, girls are married at about the same time as they transition to secondary school. this pattern of abuse has also been reported by similar studies (uganda bureau of statistics & icf, 2018; performance monitoring and accountability, 2020, 2017, 2018). using a systematic process to understand the root causes of vac enables communities to identify lasting solutions. the vac prevention intervention reported in this study was implemented as a comprehensive community-driven intervention in an attempt to harness existing yet underutilized resources for improvement of child protection (jamshidi et al., 2014). as in the inspire strategy initiated by who (2016), this approach has the potential to generate impactful international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 45 solutions to vac in low-resource settings like those found in uganda and elsewhere in subsaharan africa. the findings indeed confirm that the multi-level environments inhabited by children interact to produce vac (stoebenau et al., 2019; deb & modak, 2010). key to the success of such community-led interventions are community engagement and the contextualization of approaches in development work (melton & mcleigh, 2020; banks et al., 2017). as in other post-conflict communities, the recovery context cannot be downplayed when designing child protection programs in northern uganda. local communities will not remain mere recipients and passive players in the development fields: they have lived the problems identified and therefore have a deeper appreciation of the their magnitude and the complexities that arise in addressing them than outsiders do. therefore, the contribution of community-driven initiatives to the realization of sdg target 16.2 (“end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children”); sdg target 5.2 (“eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation”); and sdg target 16.1 (“significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere”) becomes critical (who, 2016, p. 9). during the implementation of this intervention, discourse on children’s rights was more challenging than expected due to the disconnect between parents’ and children’s perspectives. the concept of children’s rights and, essentially, human rights, was largely seen to be a western concept in the communities. this perception is held by a broad spectrum of community members including the young, the old, in-school and out of school children, men, and women. this view of children’s rights as foreign continues to undermine advancement of child protection programs in uganda (ashukem, 2019; katsui & kumpuvuori, 2008; olafsen et al., 2019), in africa generally (london, 2017), and throughout the third world (cornwall & nyamu‐musembi, 2004; ife, 2012; london, 2017). to break through such strongly held beliefs, there is a need to integrate human rights with community engagement (london, 2017). indeed, because community engagement activities were used as an entry point in our intervention, the attempt to integrate children’s rights issues with community engagement generated interest and the active participation of target groups. though this paper presents qualitative evidence on use of pla approaches to prevent vac, we recognize that this study was conducted within a limited scope and does not provide any quantifiable measurements for inference. conclusion this study aimed at preventing vac by scaling up positive parenting practices. communityled pla approaches were adopted to elicit active participation and to empower communities. we recognize that vac is deeply rooted in our sociocultural systems with its causes and consequences complexly intertwined with other societal challenges. local communities are pivotal in the identification, design, and implementation of comprehensive, workable, and sustainable programs that address both the root causes and the risk factors associated with vac in those communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 32–51 46 references abramsky, t., devries, k., kiss, l., francisco, l., nakuti, j., musuya, t., kyegombe, n., starmann, e., kaye, d., michau, l., & watts, c. 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(2015). participatory action learning and action research (palar) for community engagement: a theoretical framework. educational research for social change, 4(1), 5–25. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/173161 “if everyone copies me, thailand will be so much better off”: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 189 “if everyone copies me, thailand will be so much better off”: the power of verbal irony in youth conversation e. leslie cameron, lea hedman, nora didkowsky, sombat tapanya, and catherine ann cameron abstract: this paper explores the types of verbal irony employed by resilient youth in spontaneous conversation and examines how they use this irony to navigate potentially challenging psychosocial terrain. we documented and analyzed instances of irony in the spontaneous speech of adolescent participants in an international, ecological study of resilience using quasi-naturalistic and participatory visual methods. we found irony to be co-constructively utilized by the youths we studied. they spontaneously used many types of irony to mute criticism and avoid embarrassment. these resilient youth, who were thriving under adverse circumstances, used irony in a positive way to facilitate affiliation with their friends and family. keywords: humor, irony, youth, resilience, interaction, visual methodology, quasiecological note: this project is part of a large multi-method study entitled the negotiating resilience project, led by michael ungar, catherine ann cameron, and linda liebenberg, funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and housed at the resilience research centre at dalhousie university, halifax, canada. information about this project is accessible at http://resilienceproject.org/ e. leslie cameron, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is associate professor in the department of psychological science, carthage college, 2001 alford park drive, kenosha, wisconsin, 53140 u.s.a. email: lcameron@carthage.edu. lea hedman, b.a. is a 2011 graduate of carthage college, kenosha, wisconsin. e-mail: lhedman@carthage.edu. nora didkowsky is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary ph.d. program, dalhousie university, halifax, nova scotia, canada. e-mail: nora@gpiatlantic.org sombat tapanya, ph.d. is retired assistant professor in the psychiatry department, chiang mai university, thailand. e-mail: sombat.tapanya@gmail.com catherine ann cameron, ph.d. is honorary professor of psychology at the university of british columbia, 2136 west mall, vancouver, b.c., v6t 1z4, (604) 822-9078. e-mail: acameron@psych.ubc.ca http://resilienceproject.org/ mailto:lcameron@carthage.edu mailto:lhedman@carthage.edu mailto:sombat.tapanya@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 190 adolescence is a time of significant personal and social growth and change. successful navigation through this developmental period can be enhanced by the recruitment of a wide variety of psychosocial resources in ecological context (masten & wright, 2010; sameroff, 2010; ungar, 2011; werner & smith, 2001). data from an international multi-method study of resilience (cameron et al., in press) provides a unique opportunity to explore the use of certain resources by diverse at-risk but thriving youth. this paper explores the use of irony in spontaneous conversation by these resilient youth and demonstrates that verbal irony is a beneficial communicative resource for navigating potentially challenging psychosocial terrain. irony is conceptualized as a type of humor and our previous research on the development of humor (e. l. cameron, fox, anderson, & c. a. cameron, 2010) demonstrated the use of humor by resilient youth in conversation with family members and peers. in this paper we extend our findings to demonstrate the variety of types of irony used by these youth and the functions that using irony serves. in order to situate irony in the broader context we begin with a discussion of humor and its development in children and youth. we use the term “irony” throughout the paper to refer to verbal irony. studies of humor there are a variety of definitions of humor, and many of them focus on incongruity and the element of surprise, which highlight the cognitive nature of humor. within a cognitive framework, “canned” humor, typically jokes in which people tell relatively fixed, short stories that are amusing and end in a punch line, have been useful in exploring humor comprehension and appreciation. this type of humor is a staple in the investigation of humor in experimental settings because jokes are relatively “context-free” and “self-contained”, and have within them much, if not all, the information necessary to be appreciated by a wide range of participants (martin, 2007, p. 12). socio-emotional functions of spontaneous humor in children and youth whereas a good deal has been learned within a cognitive framework, more recent attempts have been made to explore humor from a socio-emotional perspective (martin, 2007, p. 9). socio-emotional aspects of humor are better understood from spontaneous conversations in naturalistic environments in which the context is critical to the comprehension and appreciation of humor. moreover, spontaneous conversation includes many forms of humor, jokes per se accounting for only 11% of daily laughter (martin & kuiper, 1999), and other forms of humor serve many psychosocial functions. we have previously explored, using audiovisual methodologies, a broad range of humor types and, importantly, the socio-emotional functions of socially contextualized youth humor. we have documented examples of joking, teasing, physical play, light tones, mocking/parody, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 191 and finally and relevant to the current investigation, irony and sarcasm in youth conversation (e. l. cameron, fox, anderson, & c.a. cameron, 2010; see also e. l. cameron, accorti gamannossi, gillen, & c. a. cameron, 2010, for a discussion of types of toddler humor). humor, broadly defined, scaffolds youth and young children in navigating complex, socially sensitive topics and situations, deflecting unwanted attention, protecting interlocutors, eliciting laughter and attention from others, and facilitating affiliation with friends and family. humor assists in traversing challenging socio-emotional terrain and may serve as a facilitatory or “promotive” factor in resilience or thriving (sameroff, 2010, p. 14), especially in delicate psychosocial situations (e. l. cameron, fox, anderson, & c. a. cameron, 2010). conceptualizing irony and its functions broadly speaking, irony, a type of humor, is a complex speech act in which the intended meaning of a statement differs from its literal meaning (martin, 2007, p. 13), and can take many configurations. according to dews, kaplan, and winner (1995), “irony is characterized by opposition between two levels of meaning: the speaker’s literal meaning is evaluatively the (approximate) opposite of the speaker’s intended meaning” (p. 298). colston (1997) also defined ironic speech as being non-literal because “the words used do not correspond with the meaning intended by the speaker” (p. 319). according to winner (1988), “an understanding of irony requires that one recognize the evaluative incongruity between what is said and what the speaker believes to be true” (p. 25), that is, that one understands and appreciates a (comic) synergy between them. incongruity, or perhaps more aptly cognitive synergy (apter, 1982, 2007) plays an important role in understanding irony as there is a disjunction between the real and the apparent, or the literal and non-literal meanings of the ironic utterance. many types of irony have been identified in the literature, which we have synthesized in table 1. there are ironic statements that are ironic criticisms and ironic compliments (dews et al., 1995); sarcasm, rhetorical questions, hyperbole, and understatement (gibbs, 2000); literally false, literally true, ambiguous, or nonverbal (winner, 1988). pexman, glenwright, krol, and james (2005) outlined the complexity of comprehending irony and confirmed the need to accommodate both listener and speaker perspectives in ironic discourse. definitions of these types of irony and examples are all provided in the second and third columns of table 1 to provide a compilation of the types of ironic utterances already identified. as irony allows the speaker to convey messages in an indirect/non-literal way it may serve a variety of cognitive-linguistic and socio-emotional functions as well (see table 2), including a humorous and muting expressive modulation of communications (dews et al., 1995). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 192 table 1. types of irony 1 dews et al. (1995) 2 gibbs (2000) 3 winner (1988) types definitions examples examples from youth participants ironic criticism1 “the most commonly used form of irony [is one] in which the speaker says something positive to convey a negative attitude.” (p. 298) “great game” after losing a game. lorraine: “nice one” after friend has mistakenly referred to the game “four-square” as “foreplay”. ironic compliment1 “… a negative statement used to convey a positive evaluation.” (p. 298) “terrible game” after winning a game. lorraine: “you’re a terrible, terrible friend” when the friend does not immediately agree to spend the day with her. jocularity2 “… speakers teased one another in humorous ways.” (p. 12) “what, wo-ah, you’re dissin’ my latin” during a conversation with friends who are joking about the purpose of taking a latin class. neil: “i just seen him bookin’ down the street” when he sees his friend coming down the street. (cameron, fox, et al., 2010) sarcasm2 “… speakers spoke positively to convey a more negative intent”. (p. 12) “they bring in the most wonderful guests in the world and they can totally relate to us” about unpleasant guests. lorraine: “yes on you, jerry” when responding to a boy who asks if the research project is actually about him. (cameron, fox, et al., 2010) rhetorical questions2 “… speakers literally asked a question that implied either a humorous or critical assertion.” (p. 12) “isn’t it so nice to have guests here?” about unpleasant guests. lorraine: “why don’t you say you’re going to jenny’s one more time?” when sister repeatedly mentions she is going to visit her friend jenny. hyperbole2 “... speakers expressed their non-literal meaning by exaggerating the reality of the situation.” (p. 12) “i was like the happiest person on earth.” lorraine: “that’s only you, meg” when sister is questioning lorraine’s friend about birth control. (cameron, fox, et al., 2010) understatement2 “… speakers conveyed their ironic messages by stating far less than was obviously the case.” (p. 13) “james was a bit late with his rent,” when in reality james was very late with his rent. no examples observed from youth. literally false3 an ironic utterance that is purposefully not true to make a point. (p. 27) “i really appreciated waiting for you on the street corner for an hour!” lorraine: “you’re a terrible person. you’re a terrible, terrible friend.” literally true3 an ironic utterance that is purposefully true. (p. 27) a woman is asked how her blind date was and she replies: “he had nice shoes.” idzel: “but i just want to have a dog” in response to her father’s comment of being able to have children. ambiguous3 an ironic utterance used so that its “truth value is difficult to determine.” (p. 27) “she is as smart as she is kind.” nu dang: “silly you, if everyone copies me thailand will be so much better off” in reference to the type of life she leads. non-verbal3 a form of irony in which no words are used. (p. 27) when someone claps after an individual makes a mistake. lorraine and friend pump their fists, mock-praising the friend’s father. (cameron, fox, et al., 2010) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 193 table 2. some functions of irony the goal of the current paper is to explore, in more detail, various types of irony used by youth and the functions that these examples of irony serve. given that irony is an oblique form of humor and that paralinguistic information is important in its interpretation, we have analyzed videotaped spontaneous conversation in this investigation. such methodology affords the use of more subtle, situational aspects of humor such as tone of voice, non-verbal cues, and forms of non-literal speech to interpret both the meaning of and the functions served by this form of speech. in this paper we explore the use of this non-direct speech to examine how youth use it to navigate tricky psychosocial waters and maintain their resilient functioning. method participants three of five female participants from a negotiating resilience project (described in more detail below) were selected for the analysis. we restricted our analysis to these specific three girls because their languages and cultures were most readily accessible to the authors. girls are the focus of this research as they have been identified as an understudied population (cunningham, 2006). one girl had recently moved to live with her aunt and her aunt’s young family in an impoverished community in eastern canada. “lorraine” turned 16 while we were working with her. the second girl, originally from burma, had moved to a northern community in thailand where she lived with her mother and older sister. her father was deceased. “nu dang” was 15 years old when we worked with her. the third girl, 14 year-old “idzel”, had recently moved with her refugee claimant family from mexico to western canada. she was living with her mother, father, younger sister, and grandmother. functions definition/purpose humor function (e.g., dews et al., 1995) more humorous than literal language: yields pleasurable surprise in the appreciation of the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. muting function (e.g., dews et al., 1995) “sugaring a pill”. muffles the implied criticism (in the case of ironic criticism) or implied compliment (ironic praise). tones down (or up) what is literally stated. face saving function (e.g., dews et al., 1995) emotion control used to protect speaker and/or listener from offense, to prevent the occurrence or escalation of social discomfort. affiliative function (gibbs, 2000) bond speakers together and promote group solidarity. condemning function (colston, 1997) “salt a wound.” making an ironic criticism about a target or a listener, to convey a negative attitude. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 194 data collection the negotiating resilience project employed an adaptation of a novel socio-ecological “day in the life (ditl)” methodology originally developed to observe relatively naturally occurring experiences of thriving toddler girls in their home contexts in diverse locations around the globe (gillen et al., 2007). these adaptations of the ditl method were developed in the present research (cameron, 2011; cameron, theron, ungar, & liebenberg, 2011) to reflect the ecologies of resilient migrant adolescents in their diverse natural environments, again, around the globe. in each location, community youth workers selected participants whom they considered to be “at risk but doing well” in their somewhat adverse, economically challenging environments. the goals of the methodological adaptation from our earlier work with toddlers were to enable the youths to have a voice in the selection of their day’s activities, to include interviews with them to enhance understanding of their perspectives, and to provide as many opportunities as possible for them to contribute to an understanding of their perceptions of their own experiences of adversity. institutional ethics review boards, following accepted local practices, approved the procedures whilst the participants, their parents/guardians, and any bystanders gave informed consent for involvement. this is particularly critical when using such intimate visual methodologies as used here. summary of procedure this study involved multiple phases. first, youth advocating members of an advisory team selected youth who in their experience were thriving despite adverse circumstances. the youths and their families were approached and the adolescents were invited to participate in our study. upon agreeing to participate, the teenagers in each culturally diverse location engaged in an intensive interview to discuss their perspectives on their strengths and the challenges they encountered in their daily lives. this interview was concluded with a photo elicitation request: they were given a disposable camera and asked to photograph in the upcoming week people, places, and things of importance to them. the next convenient weekend, two researchers visited the teenager: one, a note taker and the other, a cameraperson who recorded up to 12 hours of the youth’s day. they also retrieved the disposable cameras. the researchers then viewed and shared the visual data and field notes with researchers in at least one of the other international sites; and they first, independently, and then together, compiled a half-hour composite video, that seemed to them to represent important interchanges during the day that might exemplify the youths’ strengths. this video was then shown to the youth, along with their elicited photographs, in order to engage them further in reflections on their lived experiences. table 3 documents the stages of the research methodology. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 195 table 3. summary of methodology research phase researchers’ task research activity 1. initial recruitment community workers nominate youth; researchers meet youth & family, detail procedures & give informed consent information none 2. preliminary research visit: having obtained consent, build rapport, commence data collection researchers obtain parental & youth consent, interview youth, practice filming, provide camera, decide filming date audiotape interviews, acclimatising filming practice, photo elicitation instruction 3. day in the life filming local researchers film and document full day researchers film day; take field notes, maps; retrieve camera 4. compilation selection researchers select exemplary interchanges from day for half-hour compilation local & distal colleagues independently select and then agree on approximately six 5minute compilation segments 5. iterative data collection youth reflects on day’s compilation, elicited photos local researchers tape youth’s reflections on film clips, photos 6. data from above research phases shared among team; consultative theme selection, analysis & dissemination researchers compile local data to share with international team who collaborate on thematic analysis & publication subgroup teams conduct protocol analyses of interviews, field notes, videos, photos, grounded in data. interpretation always requires local input transcription of passages the field notes and transcriptions of the daily interactions were written in the language used by the participants: english in eastern canada, thai in thailand, and spanish in western canada for the current study. these notes and transcriptions were then translated as necessary into english by at least one balanced-bilingual native speaker of both languages. we confirmed our interpretation of each episode of irony with either the local investigator or the participant herself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 196 data analysis of ironic exchanges in our previous study of youth humor (e. l. cameron, fox, anderson, & c. a. cameron, 2010) we scrutinized, from the interviews, video footage and field notes of one canadian pair of adolescents (one boy and one girl), all instances of humor in their filmed days. for the present study, these already identified instances of humor from lorraine were examined to determine which of these humorous statements could be considered ironic. likewise, ironic passages were identified by native speakers of spanish and thai, and the primary investigators of idzel and nu dang’s corpora respectively selected ironic examples from each. the authors collaboratively reached consensus on selected exemplary ironic utterances for in-depth analysis, and finally, the functions of these utterances were identified and explored in the context of the youths’ complete corpus of exchanges that day. it is important to note that the ironic statements were identified line-by-line from the transcriptions and field notes. that is, each single ironic statement was identified and analyzed. ironic episodes of longer duration were not explored. ironic criticism, ironic compliment (praise), sarcasm, jocularity, rhetorical questions, hyperbole, understatement, literally false, literally true, ambiguous, and non-verbal were identified. each instance identified in these data was matched with one category in the psychological taxonomy of irony reported in table 1. results all of the youth used irony in their spontaneous conversations and the following are some noteworthy examples. canada use of a muting rhetorical question: “why don’t you say you’re going to jenny’s one more time?” (lorraine to her sister whose son lorraine is called on to care for). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 197 figure 1. grabbed still showing lorraine (left) gentling sparring with her sister. “grabbed still” images from the actual filmed footage are presented to give readers the sense of the dynamic nature of the target exchanges reported here. lorraine has recently moved to live with her aunt, who is her legal guardian. the household also includes her aunt’s four children, her aunt’s partner, and lorraine’s nephew, michael. michael’s mother, lorraine’s older sister, megan, lives elsewhere. lorraine’s aunt has custody of michael, and megan has court-issued, supervised, visitation rights. lorraine is sometimes called upon to supervise her sister’s visits with her nephew if her aunt is unable to be present. this can strain the relations between lorraine and megan, when lorraine is expected to monitor the care of her older sister’s son. lorraine thus has a somewhat inverted sibling relationship with her sister and in the conversation that occurred before this target ironic utterance, lorraine had implied resentment that megan imposes on her to babysit. on this particular day, in addition to the needing supervision of her parenting, megan also wants someone to babysit for her child. instead of asking tactfully, she bluntly tells lorraine to stay home with the baby so she can visit a friend. lorraine’s aunt would typically watch her nephew, but on this afternoon she is at a beach (where lorraine would like to be) and lorraine is volunteered to fulfill this responsibility. lorraine has an exchange with megan when megan mentions several times that she is going to her friend jenny’s house, which will leave lorraine stranded with the baby. lorraine becomes increasingly annoyed and asks megan, “why don’t you say you’re going to jenny’s one more time?” lorraine uses an indirect/non-literal query to respond to her sister. figure 1 shows a grabbed still image of lorraine gently sparring with her sister megan. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 198 following gibbs (2000) we code this type of ironic utterance a rhetorical question, asking a question that humorously implies a critical perspective with no expectation of a rejoinder. she does not expect a response from her sister, but instead is ironically telling megan that she is adding “insult to injury” and that by repeatedly mentioning going to jenny’s she is reinforcing the fact that lorraine is going to be left to take care of the baby. lorraine is showing her annoyance and frustration with her sister in a way that does not further put “salt in the wound” which more overt criticism of her sister might do. this statement has a muting function that masks the implied criticism directed towards megan. lorraine expresses her frustration with her sister obliquely without directly saying that she is upset with her, thereby avoiding an altercation. lorraine wants megan to be aware that she is frustrated with having to stay home with her child but does not directly criticize, which could possibly exacerbate the situation. the rhetorical question mutes her expression of unhappiness with her sister and the situation megan is putting her in, but provides lorraine with a way to do so indirectly. by softening her criticism, lorraine avoids a confrontation with an older sibling, thereby assuming her duties as a responsible sister and family member. a muted affiliative ironic compliment: “you’re a terrible person. you’re a terrible, terrible friend.” (lorraine to her friend on the telephone). figure 2. grabbed still of lorraine talking with her friend on the telephone. figure 2 shows a grabbed still image of lorraine talking to her best friend on the phone, asking her if she would come to the lake with her that day. lorraine’s friend is unsure about accompanying lorraine, but knows that not going would leave lorraine companionless at the lake. after her friend tells lorraine that she is not sure she will be going to the lake, lorraine says, in a joking tone of voice, “you’re a terrible person. you’re a terrible, terrible friend”. this statement is an ironic compliment. in a broad sense, lorraine does not literally mean her friend is a terrible person, but instead implies that her friend is a good person and friend by saying the opposite. the nature of this compliment makes it clear in the tenor of the exchange between the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 199 friends that lorraine values her friendship and wants to spend time at the beach with her. however, the meaning of this statement also is altered conditionally within the context of the conversation. while lorraine is implying that her friend is a good person whom she wishes to spend the day with, her statement also implies that only a “terrible friend” would not accompany her to the lake. she does not, however, truly consider her friend to be a “terrible friend,” making this statement ironic. this instance of irony serves two functions: muting and affiliation. it is muting in that lorraine diminishes what she truly feels for her friend by covering it up with what would sound on the surface to be an insult. her friend knows this is not an insult and understands this from her relationship with lorraine as well as from lorraine’s joking tone of voice. this example is affiliative because lorraine is implying that as a good friend, she would come to the lake. lorraine is expressing an “in-group” stance, which in this example consists of her and her friend, by indicating what would be appropriate intimate friendship behavior. muted ironic criticism: “nice one.” (lorraine to her best friend at home). figure 3. grabbed still image of lorraine congratulating her friend on her error. figure 3 shows an image of lorraine when she and her friend are discussing playing the game four-square. lorraine’s friend mistakenly refers to the game four-square as foreplay, to which lorraine replies “nice one”. lorraine points out her friend’s mistake using ironic criticism. she realizes her friend’s mistake but because of their close relationship, does not insult her. lorraine does not literally mean that her friend did something good, but teases her friend for her verbal slip with gentle irony. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 200 the function of this statement is muting: “nice one” in response to her friend’s mistake is a way to tone down taunting her friend. lorraine uses it in a way to tease her friend about her mistake. she also lets her friend know that she herself had made a similar mistake, telling her shortly afterwards, “i think i called it that the other day though when i was talking to the baby”. by admitting to this, lorraine makes it apparent that she does not really wish to criticize her friend, but instead to make light of her friend’s mistake in a gentle way. lorraine’s comment could also be viewed as serving the affiliative function. lorraine’s comment on her friend’s mistake, combined with her confession that she had also said foreplay a few days earlier, would facilitate the two becoming close through their common error. thailand use of muted ambiguous irony: “silly you, if everyone copies me thailand will be so much better off.” (nu dang to her friends in preparation for a radio interview). figure 4. grabbed still of nu dang being interviewed on air. nu dang and her family were displaced from their home in burma and now reside in a northern thai community. she lives in a small apartment with her mother and older sister, rarely seeing her mother because of her mother’s long work hours to support her family. dang has a distant relationship with her mother, as she does not speak their shan dialect any longer, so they have some difficulty communicating with each other. dang’s shan ethnicity sometimes causes her to be subjected to ridicule at school; however, she persists in surmounting in her difficult situation in part through her academic successes, as well as, in her opinion, her ability to choose good friends who also, in her words, stay out of trouble. in this episode in which dang uses irony, she is in a community radio broadcast studio with two of her friends who are the hosts of a youth radio show, and are featuring dang as their guest on a live broadcast for the day (see figure 4). dang questions her friends on what she should expect from the interview in order to prepare herself to answer their questions. she asks how she should go about telling about her life, and her friend replies lightly, “just say ‘nothing special, only eat sleep and watch tv’”. her friend’s statement implies that dang need not claim international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 201 that she has a life of extraordinary activity and excitement. dang’s reply of “silly you; if everyone copies me thailand will be so much better off” indicates that reporting doing nothing special in her life would be no way to inspire others to overcome their adversities. it is an example of an ambiguous statement (winner, 1988): the truth-value of dang’s statement is difficult to determine. dang does not feel everyone would be better off leading a life that is nothing special; on the contrary, she feels that many would view this type of life as uninspiring. in this way, her ironic statement could be perceived as untrue. however, her life trajectory has so far kept dang out of trouble, making it advantageous for her to continue her chosen path. dang has been able to overcome much adversity in her life and may truly believe that if others follow her lead, they will be better off. therefore, dang could also be truthful in her modestly ironic statement. the uncertainty as to whether or not she is being literal with her comment makes the statement ambiguous. this statement also serves a muting function to her main contention: dang is deflecting an implied compliment. she is aware that she has strengths that have allowed her to thrive under challenging circumstances. through her academic success and school engagements, dang has overcome many life challenges and could be seen as a role model for other adolescents. however, she does not wish to be immodest. humility is an important value in dang’s culture, and she is able to sustain this through the use of irony. the muting function on the statement provides dang with a way to express her awareness of her success in life without seeming arrogant. canada ironic literal truth: “but i just want to have a dog.” (idzel in conversation with family and two missionaries from the mormon church). figure 5. grabbed still of idzel at the dinner table engaging with lds missionaries. idzel relocated with her family, which includes her mother, father, younger sister, and grandmother, all of whom are sustained by deeply held religious values and the strong support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 202 from the (mormon) church of latter-day saints (lds). idzel does not have many friends outside her home and church, and spends most of her day with her family. idzel is working on an art project with her sister when two lds missionaries join her family for a meal and subsequent bible studies. after grace is said, idzel joins the table to study with the elders (see figure 5). idzel questions them about their views of their work and their beliefs while her mother, grandmother, and father listen. idzel asks the missionaries why god created people, to which, one missionary haplessly responds, “just to see what would happen” while the other opines, “because he loves you”. idzel’s father jumps in, offering as a stronger explanation: “so you can have children!”. her father is referring to idzel’s ability to bear children, or reproduce, which in its turn creates a somewhat embarrassing situation for idzel to navigate. she is confronted with the topic of procreation at a table with young men present, and uses irony to deflect this embarrassment. she replies to her father, “but i just want to have a dog”. she plays on her father’s words; although she knows that he technically means, “to bear children,” idzel uses “to have” as a form of possession. we classify this statement as literally true (as would winner, 1988): the statement is purposefully true. idzel does want a dog, and ironically and incidentally points this out to her father, using this play on words. idzel is aware of what her father literally meant with his statement, but by using her literally true but contrastive statement is able to deflect embarrassment while at the same time reminding her father that she would like to possess a dog. idzel does not wish to discuss the subject of bearing children further, so she uses this situation as an opportunity to change the subject. this statement serves a humor function: idzel’s turn of phrase affords surprise value, bridging what is asked by what is returned. there is a startle value in idzel’s response to her father: while her father is referring to bearing children, idzel unexpectedly responds in a humorous way to broach the subject of the family getting a dog. idzel’s use of irony allows her to deflect embarrassment in an uncomfortable situation by using a literally true but divergent statement to relieve embarrassment through its humorous function. discussion irony is a non-literal and indirect speech act delivered in many forms. in this study we have explored examples of ironic utterances made by resilient adolescent girls in their daily conversations, demonstrating both their comprehension and production of the non-literal speech identified as irony. we have provided examples of what we have coded as an ironic compliment, an ironic criticism, a rhetorical question, an ambiguous statement, and one that was coded as literally true. these youth use ironic utterances to achieve many ends, such as muting potentially confrontational statements, deflecting embarrassment, and affiliating with an interlocutor. types of irony much recent work (e.g., pexman & olineck, 2002; pexman & glenwright, 2007; whalen & pexman, 2010) has focused on children’s understanding of ironic compliments (e.g., saying “you’re a terrible friend” when in fact the person is a fine friend) and ironic criticism (e.g., saying “you’re a great friend” when in fact the person has just said something insulting), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 203 but relatively little research has explored the broader range of types of irony used by children and youth. we have documented examples of ironic criticism and ironic compliments (lorraine’s “you’re a terrible, terrible friend” and “nice one”), but we have also observed various other types of irony. we demonstrated the use of a rhetorical question, as did gibbs (2000) with adults, and literally true and ambiguous statements as winner (1988) documented for children. we have provided an extensive list of types of irony in table 1. it is worth noting that although some types of irony (e.g., ironic criticism) are more common than others, even early adolescents skillfully use a wide range of ironic forms. the development of humor and irony comprehension previous research has demonstrated that although some forms of humor are performed and understood as early as the first year of life (e.g., reddy, 2001; loizou, 2007), and certainly by toddlerhood (mcghee, 1979), the comprehension of irony does not clearly emerge much before the age of 5 (for a review see creusere, 1999). however, children may understand the muting function of irony before they are aware of its humorous function (dews et al., 1996). children’s understanding of humor in irony appears at about 7 to 8 years of age (harris & pexman, 2003). thus, pexman and glenwright (2007) suggest a long course for the development of the full range of comprehension and production of irony. that time course is extended in part because of the complex nature of irony. pexman and glenwright (2007) describe what must be understood in order for full comprehension of an ironic statement: an understanding of the speaker’s belief, the speaker’s non-literal meaning, and the speaker’s attitude. lack of any of these factors could lead to confusion and/or a lack of comprehension. the adolescent participants in the present study clearly understood irony, as described by pexman and colleagues (pexman & glenwright, 2007; pexman, et al., 2005; pexman & olineck, 2002) and understood it well enough to deploy it for multiple end goals. what accounts for the development from age 8 years to the teenage years? how do children come to understand irony and employ it toward social ends? these questions await targeted developmental investigation. one speculative answer may come from their developing cognitive and linguistic skills. the early adolescent youth we studied here are becoming abstract thinkers and problem solvers, as reflected in their articulated perceptions with respect to their situations during our interviews with them. for example, both idzel and nu dang were able to describe their nuanced relationship toward religious practices and all three of our participants astutely characterized the foibles of parents, teachers, and peers. such abstract thought makes possible an understanding of complex non-literal language. thus another distinct possibility comes from the maturation of their social and cultural learning experiences (pexman & glenwright, 2007). exposure to and uptake on irony might be reciprocally faciliatory in coming to reflect upon and appreciate their own situations. functions of irony use the social norms of daily conversation typically involve contributing prosocial utterances (saying “nice” things,) and not making disparaging remarks (grice, 1989). moreover, as indicated by grice’s (1989) conversational maxims, interlocutors follow rules in their speech acts, such as, for example, that the quality of their speech matches expectations. irony clearly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 204 violates this maxim, as determining the meaning of ironic utterances is not straightforward. irony is a complex form of communication both because it apparently violates social norms – for example, the conversational maxim of quality as described by grice (1989) – and because it complicates the interpretation of interchanges as described above. so, why use irony? irony in spontaneous conversation serves many functions, as described in table 2: 1. irony is used to add levity to a situation, such as when idzel says she wants to own a dog, not bear a baby. 2. irony also allows people to save face by speaking indirectly. lorraine wants a good friend and she wants to help her friend save face in a potentially embarrassing (foreplay) exchange. 3. irony mutes the contested discourses of our participants, as demonstrated in the majority of the samples described here. that irony may serve a muting function has been somewhat controversial. for example, dews et al. (1995) proposed a “tinge hypothesis” that argues that irony modulates the criticism conveyed in both ironic insults and ironic compliments. it is a way to tone down what is literally uttered. however, colston (1997) argued that ironic statements do not serve to soften criticism, but instead they enhance it: he reported that ironic criticism enhanced condemnation rather than diluting it (colston, 1997). to reconcile these disparate views, pexman and olineck (2002) hypothesized that for ironic insults the tinge function might only apply when one considers the listener’s reception (i.e., the way they understand the statement) and might not apply when considering speaker intent alone (i.e., the motivation of the speaker which may or may not be obvious to a listener). their research supported this hypothesis in that ironic insults were rated as more polite than literal insults, but they were also rated as more mocking and sarcastic than direct insults. on the other hand, ironic compliments were seen to be more mocking and less polite than direct compliments. according to pexman and olineck (2002), then, the tinge hypothesis only functions with ironic insults, whereas ironic compliments are seen to be less positive because they convey a more negative message than literal speech. the apparently contradictory finding about muting is akin to the seeming contradictory functions of affirmation and condemnation with irony. irony can bond speakers together and promote group solidarity (see gibbs, 2000), but again, see colston (1997) on “salting the wound”. thus, we suggest that despite the complications of the interpretation of ironic utterances, and notwithstanding the varied perspectives on the functions of the use of irony, these youths employed this form of speech because irony can be a beneficial communicative resource for navigating the potentially challenging psychosocial terrain of their particular circumstances. irony and humor appreciation apter’s (1982, 2007) reversal theory of humor appreciation provides an integrative perspective within which we can understand irony. apter argues that humor emerges due to both the synergy and the surprise evoked by verbal or physical acts. thus, humor puts people in a playful (paratelic) state situating them to enjoy incongruity or comic synergy. there is comic synergy in ironic statements in that there is a distinction between appearance (what is said) and reality (what is meant). if we understand the incongruity of the statement and recognize that it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 205 meant within a paratelic meta-motivational state then it could be experienced as funny. further, according to apter, superiority is experienced in the context of this synergy, which is a reason why the synergy might be found to be funny. the humor may involve disparagement or a feeling of superiority over others or our former selves. apter’s theory is consistent with many other researchers in highlighting the aggressive and disparaging nature of humor. we have previously reported, by way of contrast, but in accord with socha and kelly (1994), that the very young children we have studied did not use aggressive or disparaging humor (e.g., e. l. cameron, kennedy, & c. a. cameron, 2008; e. l. cameron, accorti gamannossi, gillen, & c. a. cameron, 2010), and here we extend this finding to resilient youth in conversation with friends and family. we do not observe irony used by either children or youth as a way to distance interlocutors, but rather as a way to maintain interpersonal connections, even in delicate negotiations. in conclusion, the participants in these observational, naturalistic case studies are resilient youths who are thriving despite the risky environments in which they are functioning well. the data provided here support the notion that these resilient youths appear facile with the use of various forms of irony. we suggest that this complex verbal form is an important communicative resource that serves a protective function for them in the navigation of their challenging socio-emotional landscapes and thus should be considered a candidate promotive factor in the investigation of adolescent resilience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 189–208 206 references apter, m. j. 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(1988). the point of words. london: harvard university press. building safe communities from the start: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 119 building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey dawne clark, leslie barker, and karen benzies abstract: healthy child development sets the foundation for the lifelong trajectory of children and the very health of our society. effective parenting supports optimal child development in all its domains. the upstart parent survey was developed to help agencies that provide prevention-focused parenting programs (p-fpps) determine the successful parental acquisition of common outcomes known to predict effective parenting. the purposes of this initial project, building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey, were threefold: (a) to determine the psychometric properties of the tool, (b) to determine the feasibility of using the upstart parent survey in p-fpps, and (c) to examine the effectiveness of p-fpps using the upstart parent survey. this article addresses the latter two purposes. keywords: parenting, preschool children, program evaluation, feasibility studies, mixed methods acknowledgements: we thank the agencies who participated in building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey: alberta health services, parents and children together (pact), calgary urban project society (cups), calgary immigrant women’s association (ciwa), families matter, and attachment parenting canada. these agencies supported the development of the upstart parent survey from its inception. funding was provided by upstart: champions for children and youth of the united way of calgary and area, and the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university. finally, we extend our appreciation to research assistants bree crone, kristen duke, and preet dhesi from mount royal university, and jen smith and hilary rancourt from the university of calgary. dawne clark, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor and director of the centre for child well-being, mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary alberta, canada, t3e 6k6, (403) 440-6941. e-mail: dclark@mtroyal.ca leslie barker, rn, bscn is a research project coordinator with the provincial early childhood team, health promotion, disease and injury prevention, alberta health services. e-mail: leslie.barker@albertahealthservices.ca karen benzies, rn, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of nursing, university of calgary, 2500 university drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2n 1n4. e-mail: benzies@ucalgary.ca mailto:benzies@ucalgary.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 120 in the human lifespan, the period before birth up to about 5 years of age encompasses the most rapid growth and brain development (knudson, 2004; shonkoff, 2003). the basic architecture of the human brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues to early adulthood. early experiences literally shape how the brain is built (kolb, gibb, & robinson, 2003). the brain ultimately determines language, behaviour, mental and physical health, and a child’s capacity to learn throughout life (shonkoff, 2003). all areas of development are inextricably linked, each dependent on the other. a strong foundation starting in infancy increases the probability of positive outcomes for children; a weak foundation increases the odds of later difficulties. parents are the most significant influence on how their children grow and learn (shonkoff, 2003). all parents need information, support, and guidance to enhance their children’s development. recent research shows that there is a meaningful gap in what parents need to know to positively impact their children’s development (rikhy, tough, trute, benzies, kehler, & johnston, 2010). parenting programs to promote healthy development of young children can offer parents an opportunity to learn how to help their children grow and learn, learn from one another, build vital support networks, and create a strong sense of community (kaminsky, valle, filene, & boyle, 2008). effective parenting is a key contributor to healthy child development (shonkoff, 2003). parenting is primarily a task of socializing children within an ecological context (white, 2005). effective parenting refers to carrying out the responsibilities of rearing and interacting so that the child is well prepared to realize his or her full potential (white, 2005). several decades of research have shown a consistent relationship between the quality of parenting and the developmental outcomes of children (lundahl, risser, & lovejoy, 2006; o'connor, 2002), particularly behavioural development (benzies, keown, & magill-evans, 2009; nagin & tremblay, 2001). in a longitudinal sub-sample of children (n = 975) drawn from the national longitudinal survey of children and youth (nlscy), benzies and colleagues (2009) determined that ineffective or hostile parenting had not only an immediate effect on children’s physical aggression, but also a sustained effect that carried forward in time at least to the age of 6 years. in low-income families, time spent with the child and stimulating resources are predictors of cognitive and language outcomes, while parenting is a key mediator of problematic social behaviour (mistry, benner, biesanz, clark, & howes, 2010). using structural equation modeling with children (n = 1,851) from early head start, mistry and colleagues (2002) highlighted the detrimental effects of exposure to negative parenting practices, particularly during infancy. while the majority of children “grow out” of aggressive behaviours in early childhood, many do not and continue with an escalating trajectory of physical aggression that can result in later criminal behaviours and justice system involvement (tremblay et al., 2004). ineffective parenting is significantly related to increased risk of school failure and of the child developing conduct problems which increase the risk for becoming involved in anti-social, aggressive, and offending behaviour (gardner, burton, & klimes, 2006; o’connor, 2002). behavioural problems in children are linked to increased costs to government systems, including education, social services, and justice (scott, knapp, henderson, & maughan, 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 121 by age 6 years, approximately 25% of canadian children have one or more physical, social/emotional, or cognitive developmental concerns likely to cause problems in later life (mccain, mustard & shanker, 2007). traditional beliefs about who is at risk have been challenged in that the nlscy has shown that 70% of these children live in two-parent, middleincome families (mccain et al., 2007), a group not usually thought to need parenting information and support. families are the first point for the socialization of children to the norms and rules of society. increasingly, efforts to properly equip children for the demands of today’s society are being threatened because families are challenged by lack of knowledge, increasing external time demands, and socio-economic pressures (armstrong, birnie-lefcovitch, & ungar, 2005; rikhy, et al., 2010). parenting programs can be a valuable source of information and support. there exists a continuum of parenting programs that ranges from promotion/prevention at one end, to intervention/treatment at the other. the definitions of terms on this continuum are borrowed from the field of population and public health where primary prevention is the foundation (stewart, 2000). primary prevention is population focused and is aimed at education, increasing people’s resiliency, and decreasing or eliminating the underlying causes of health and social problems. the focus of primary prevention is on health, not illness. the goal of secondary prevention is to reduce the number of existing cases by working with clients who have risk factors for the development of disease or who are in the early stages of clinical problems. tertiary preventions focus on clients with known clinical problems with the intention of preventing conditions from worsening. in the context of parenting programs, primary prevention focuses on developing parental knowledge, skills, competence, and healthy relationships between parents and their children from the outset, rather than waiting to treat problems once they occur. secondary prevention focuses on families who have identified risks for poorer outcomes but who are still not in the clinical problem zone. tertiary prevention focuses on families who have identified clinical problems, such as parental mental illness or child conduct disorders. the term “prevention-focused parenting program” (p-fpp) is used to describe parenting programs that are primarily focused on providing education and support, and promoting healthy child development – at either the primary or secondary prevention level. p-fpps offer parents a chance to learn from each other and from an experienced professional about ways to help their children grow and learn, and how to cope with typical parenting challenges. in the process, parents have the opportunity to build more supportive parent/child relationships, and create vital social support networks and a stronger sense of community (kaminsky et al., 2008). evidencebased p-fpps are well positioned to provide the information and supports that parents need to support healthy child development in all its domains decreasing the likelihood of problematic social behaviours. while not all problems can be prevented, current evidence suggests that when parents are more knowledgeable about what to expect, have effective ways to respond, and know when to be concerned, they are less likely to have a problematic relationship with their child (canadian association of family resource programs [frp canada], 2011; rikhy et al., 2010). p-fpps provide education and support to parents thereby increasing the likelihood of positively influencing parent/child relationships and child development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 122 in the current economic climate, there has been an increased demand for accountability. although most p-fpps are designed on a solid base of theory (kaminski et al., 2008), evaluation of most p-fpps in canada has not been scientifically rigorous (mclennan & lavis, 2006). limited evaluative evidence of p-fpps constrains decisions about program development and quality improvement. in addition, most evaluation data for parenting programs come from intervention-focused programs for families with children with serious problems (sanders, markie-dadds, tully, & bor, 2000; webster-stratton & reid, 2003). while the effectiveness of these intervention-focused programs in treating problems is well documented, these results cannot necessarily be applied to p-fpps as the focus of this type of programming is to promote healthy early relationships by understanding and effectively managing with challenging normative behaviour, thus preventing problematic patterns of coping before they occur. thus, an appropriate research agenda and evaluation tools for p-fpps are needed. rigorous evaluation requires the use of reliable and valid instruments. frequently, program providers and program evaluators have conflicting goals that affect evaluation. program providers want evaluations that are as unobtrusive as possible, take up minimal program time, constitute minimum respondent burden, do not alienate respondents, are inexpensive and easy to analyze and report, and give useful information for quality improvement (griner hill & betz, 2005). on the other hand, program evaluators want to obtain meaningful data that present an accurate assessment of program outcomes using measurement tools with strong psychometric properties, including reliability and validity (national forum on early childhood program evaluation, 2007). if the measurement of program outcomes is burdensome, it may actually interfere with outcomes by annoying participants or using important program time (sibthorp, paisley, gookin, & ward, 2007; moore & tanais, 2009). the ideal tool for program providers and program evaluators is a brief, parentand provider-friendly tool with strong psychometric properties. the upstart parent survey was designed by a partnership of community agencies, researchers, and policy-makers – through upstart: champions for children and youth of the united way of calgary and area – to assess the common outcome indicators of parenting programs as identified by the alberta centre for child, family and community research or accfcr (2007). these indicators are known to predict effective parenting and more positive parent/child relationships, and include parenting knowledge and skills, self-efficacy, mental health, social support, parenting stress, and family functioning. the building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey project had a threefold purpose: 1. to determine the psychometric properties of the tool; 2. to determine the feasibility and acceptability of using the upstart parent survey in pfpps; and 3. to examine parental perceptions of program impact using the upstart parent survey. this article reports on the latter two purposes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 123 methods the building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey study was a mixed-methods design, conducted in a major urban centre in western canada between june 2010 and april 2011. it was cleared by both mount royal university’s human research ethics board and university of calgary’s conjoint health research ethics board. participating parents were accessed through existing parenting programs. agencies providing these programs volunteered to be part of the study. the parenting programs participating in this project were diverse. all programs were stable with established curricula. the programs varied in length from 4 to 11 weeks, with weekly classes that lasted between 2 to 3 hours. the major focus of the programs was parenting education; however, each program was tailored to specific parenting populations, including first-time mothers, parents with low income, and parents new to canada. programs targeted parents of children 6 years of age and under. program components varied, but all programs included facilitated parent discussion and learning in a classroom setting. some programs included both parent and child sessions where parents could learn by observing and engaging in age-appropriate learning activities with their own child and other children from the program. common aspects of all curricula were knowledge of child development, effective parenting strategies, as well as information on additional parenting resources such as educational literature, websites, and other community programs and resources. six agencies providing seven programs participated in the building safe communities from the start study. primary contacts for the project were the agency program managers, that is individuals responsible for decision-making and administration of the programs. program facilitators were staff from each of the agencies; facilitators were responsible for the delivery of the program to the parent groups. three hundred and fifty-four parents or caregivers of young children participated in the study by completing the upstart parent survey. participants ranged in age from 18 to 50 years; 90% of participants were female. the majority of participants were married (70%); 12% had less than a high school diploma and 79% had some amount of post-secondary education. average household income was under $80,000 per year for 48% of participants. nearly 30% of the participants self-identified as non-caucasian and the vast majority (87%) had either one or two children. measures data used to determine the feasibility of the survey were gathered through a single-item question on the upstart parent survey, two focus groups with parents, one focus group with program facilitators, and a capacity-building workshop with program managers. program outcomes for participating programs were measured using the upstart parent survey – an evaluation tool with a retrospective pre-test design containing both closed and open-ended questions. it is a paper and pencil, self-report survey that takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete. the participants’ responses to the open-ended questions about what they had learned and changed in terms of their parenting were thematically analyzed through the lens of promoting safe communities, a key area of concern for one of the funders. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 124 the quantitative component consists of three subscales: parenting knowledge and skills (i.e., typical child growth and development, discipline strategies, child health and safety, and dealing with everyday challenges); parenting experience (i.e., parenting confidence, formal and informal social support, emotional health, and stress management); and program satisfaction (i.e., parent satisfaction with the attended program). the parenting knowledge and skills scale and the parenting experiences scale have a retrospective pre-test design with a 7-point likert scale and a “not covered” response option. participants respond to each statement twice, once with a “today” score and then with a “before this program” score for each item. the program satisfaction scale is a 5-point likert scale measuring the parents’ satisfaction with the program. a series of demographic questions are followed by a single-item question asking participants to rate the difficulty of completing the survey with the choices of “easy”, “average”, or “hard”. the qualitative component of the survey contains three open-ended questions at the end of the survey known as “the 3/2/1 questions”: three things i have learned from this program; two things i have done differently because of this program; and one thing i still have a question about. in addition, parents were asked for any suggestions to improve the program. these questions were developed collaboratively by program administrators for quality improvement purposes. qualitative data, using a set of structured questions, were collected from two focus groups with parents and one focus group with program facilitators. structured questions were used to focus the discussion about using the survey at the capacity-building workshop with program managers. procedure the project team initially met with program managers to review the project goals, outline the process, and distribute the materials including upstart parent surveys, a program summary form, and an instruction script for the program facilitators. program managers subsequently met with their facilitators about the upstart parent survey project to gain their support and assistance, and reviewed the process and forms. parent participants were asked to complete the upstart parent survey at the end of the last class of their parenting program. after distributing the surveys, facilitators read out the instruction script and were present to answer any questions. the program facilitator then compiled all surveys with a program summary form and mailed them to the principal investigator of the project. only program names were identified on the survey forms; no participant names were collected. two parent focus groups and a facilitator focus group were held part way through the study. all parent participants and facilitators involved with the study were invited through flyers and promotion at each participating agency. all participants were provided with information about the purpose of the focus groups, gave their informed consent, and understood that they would be guaranteed confidentiality. for all focus groups, qualitative data were collected to address the format and feasibility of the survey: ease of implementation and completion, challenges and benefits of the survey, and parent and facilitator willingness and comfort in completing and administering the survey. the focus groups were digitally recorded and notes were made on flip charts during the conversation to enable participants to confirm the accuracy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 125 of the notes or to clarify their comments. audio recordings were transcribed and the data were analyzed thematically to determine parents’ and facilitators’ view of the feasibility of the upstart parent survey. only aggregate comments or comments that did not contain identifiers were used in any written reports (for example: “we eat supper together as a family”). a capacity-building workshop for program managers was held at the completion of survey data collection. all participating agencies were invited to attend. the workshop was facilitated by an external consultant and its purpose was to present the aggregate and confidential agency program evaluation reports, and to get managers’ feedback on the feasibility of the survey. comments were recorded on a flip chart to ensure accuracy and for purposes of clarification, and a summary with documented comments was reported back to the project team. a follow-up managers’ meeting was held two months later and a summary of participant comments were recorded in the meeting minutes. results parent responses to the upstart parent survey question asking them to rate the difficulty of completing the survey (i.e., easy, average, or hard to complete) indicated that the survey was relatively easy (i.e., 97%) to complete. two parent focus groups were conducted by the student research assistants with a total of ten parents from two different agencies. while all parents who participated in the study were invited, parents only attended if a focus group had been organized by their specific agency. parents in the two focus groups differed demographically; one group had four parents with low literacy and the second group had six “mainstream” parents. the survey was well received by parents and many indicated the importance of completing a survey or evaluation after finishing a parenting course. parents suggested that the survey both allowed for self-reflection relating previous knowledge to current knowledge, and was thought provoking with respect to items they still had questions about. one parent said: the survey kept everything a little more clear and opened up a few more questions that i actually brought up with the facilitator later. challenges identified with the survey included the length of the survey and the time it took to complete. parents made some suggestions that would have better supported them in overcoming these logistical challenges: i’m thinking people should be prepared and aware this is going to take time. so you make time for it. parents indicated that the format and language of the survey was clear and they understood what the survey was asking. some parents suggested that, initially, the retrospective design was not easy to follow; however, once the facilitator had explained international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 126 how to complete the questions and the purpose of the retrospective design, parents had a better understanding of the concept: they are trying to gauge where you were at the beginning and how much you grew. all program facilitators were invited to a focus group conducted by the principal investigator and student research assistants. only two facilitators were able to attend; however, the conversation was lively and provided very helpful information for the project. facilitators were asked to comment on the opportunities, challenges, and logistics presented by the upstart parent survey. when asked about opportunities presented by the survey, one facilitator commented that the open-ended 3/2/1 questions in the survey were very useful as parents’ answers were detailed, clear, and informative. the other facilitator found, however, that these questions were difficult to explain to parents with english as a second language. this facilitator commented that the closed questions were more appropriate for her parents as they helped her determine if she had covered all of the required topics with parents. facilitators were asked about the challenges presented by administration of the upstart parent survey. both facilitators suggested that there were varying levels of understanding of the survey by participating parents. when parents with english as their second language or low literacy required the facilitator to provide a verbal explanation of a specific question, the meaning of the question may have changed thus potentially altering the participants’ responses. this additional explanation may also lead parents to look for the right answer from the facilitator. one facilitator also wondered whether cultural understandings of different words may have altered the meaning of the questions and thus of the responses. the retrospective design of the study did cause some challenges for some parents, particularly those in one group who live with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd). however, both facilitators felt that, once this design was explained, parents understood and were able to complete the survey relatively easily. the program facilitators were asked to discuss the logistics of administering the survey. one facilitator explained that she anticipated that the survey might take considerable time for the parents to complete so she planned for 45 minutes at the end of the last session. in addition, she had arranged a potluck meal to celebrate the conclusion of the program so it gave everyone time to talk more about both the program and the use of the survey. the other facilitator, however, did not anticipate the need to provide significant time at the end of the last session; therefore, the parents in her program were rushed to complete the survey. she also realized that she had not provided a suitable setting for parents to complete the survey; parents had to write on their laps, sometimes holding a child at the same time. this rush at the end of the session also meant that she did not have time to discuss how the parents felt about the survey questions or the process of completing the survey. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 127 both facilitators followed the provided instruction script and found it to be helpful. one facilitator, whose participants all speak english as a second language, found the need to explain the survey page by page but, as she had allotted the time, it worked reasonably well. both facilitators commented that when they collected the surveys, they were careful to place them face down to protect privacy so there was no appearance of reading the answers with the parents still in the room. neither facilitator heard any negative comments either about completing a survey or the questions on the survey. as one said, the parents expect an evaluation at the end of a program so this survey was not unusual. when asked about the impact on their programs of using the upstart parent survey, both commented that the survey provided good information about what had been provided in the program and how parents had responded. they both felt that the survey gave them a strong indication of whether or not they had covered all the topics and how to modify their approach to make it more effective for parents. in addition, the parent responses reminded the facilitators of what they should be emphasizing throughout the program. they also appreciated comments that provided ideas for future groups. one facilitator suggested adding more open-ended questions and also asking about the children’s reactions to what parents were learning and doing differently as a result of participation in the program. at the end of the focus group session, both facilitators commented on how useful the focus group had been for them, both in terms of how to administer the survey appropriately and how to make use of the results. a capacity building workshop was held with program managers at the end of the study to provide individual and aggregate program evaluation reports from the upstart parent survey data and to support managers in using their individual results to improve their programs. an invitation to attend the workshop was extended to the six participating agencies; four were represented. the workshop was facilitated by an external facilitator. following introductions, the aggregate results from all programs compiled to date were circulated; the co-researchers explained the meanings of the aggregate data, the terms used to describe the data, as well as how the data related to each individual agency and their program outcomes. the program managers then had the opportunity to review their individual program reports and ask questions. program managers were asked to discuss the logistics of implementing the survey. it appeared that the survey took, on average, about 20 minutes for parents to complete. most parents completed the survey independently and did not appear to have any difficulties. if parents had questions, facilitators were able to assist. the most challenging questions for parents seemed to be those which asked about their partners and about parenting support. managers suggested minor changes in wording. program managers were then asked about their experience participating in the upstart parent survey project. managers were appreciative that the project did not compare programs but, instead, provided both individual program and aggregate results to create an “overall view of p-fpps”. they commented that the survey was useful in providing a “before and after” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 128 perspective for parents and they appreciated that parents could reflect on their “increasing parenting ability and confirm their own personal reflections”. managers commented that parents seemed “willing and able” to complete the survey at the end of their program. while some questions were not applicable to all programs, managers saw their ability to tailor the survey to meet their individual program needs. as the project continues, programs will be able to provide translations and tailor their curricula through the use of the survey. generally, managers commented that, while the project required patience as processes for implementing and testing the survey were developed, they felt supported by the researchers and research assistants. comments about the impact of the survey and the reports included some wanting to use the survey for all of their programs. managers felt that the survey increased their confidence and program credibility, and encouraged them that they were “now able to show the value of the work” they do. all managers agreed that they were pleased with the results from the survey and, while they acknowledged that there were a few more steps before the survey would be able to be widely distributed, were keen to be able to use the survey on a regular basis in their programs. examining the effectiveness of p-fpps another purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of p-fpps using the upstart parent survey. thematic analysis of the qualitative data gathered from the 3/2/1 questions on the upstart parent survey indicated strong themes related to parenting knowledge and skills, parenting efficacy, and the importance of a connection to the community among parents attending a p-fpp, factors demonstrated to mediate the early precursors of later problematic behaviour. parenting knowledge and skills parenting knowledge and skills are key contributors to child development (mistry et al., 2002). parent knowledge of child development shapes overall expectations of and interactions with the children. parents with little knowledge of child development often overestimate the rate of development, which could potentially lead to inappropriate expectations, impatience, and intolerance (cowen, 2001). when parents falsely attribute challenging behaviour (such as tantrums) to willful defiance, they are more likely to punish their child for normative, albeit challenging, behaviour (ateah & durrant, 2005). parent responses to the 3/2/1 questions of the upstart parent survey indicated learning in the following areas of knowledge: (a) child development, (b) nurturing and attachment, and (c) effective discipline. knowledge of child development refers to a level of understanding related to emotional, physical, social, and cognitive development of children. parents identified learning about the ages and stages of their children, and how that learning has affected their parenting, specifically in regard to communication and interactions with, and responses to, their children. parents described learning about developmental milestones, the physical changes of a growing child, and the importance of providing age-appropriate activities. parents also identified the value of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 129 learning that development has a predictable pattern but that their children may regress when under stress, such as when a new baby arrives in the family. this allowed them to be more patient when their children were undergoing new or difficult situations. parents talked about acquiring skills related to their child(ren)’s development; for example, one parent commented that she learned how to use her new understanding of child development to make the transition from a crib to a bed easier for her child. nurturing and attachment focuses on the relationship between parents and their child(ren) (vanijzendoorn, schuengel, & bakermans-kranenburg, 2010). parents identified new knowledge and skills that maintain and strengthen their parent/child relationships while supporting the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of their children. parents talked about learning to build relationships with their children by listening to what their children are trying to say; they also talked about the strategies they had learned to help their children develop positive self-esteem. parents spoke about the importance of unstructured play and reading to support their children’s development; they also spoke about how they had learned to play with their children using songs and movement, and engaging in various play activities by following their child(ren)’s lead. parents talked about understanding that age-appropriate activities would help to encourage their children’s self-confidence. one parent talked about the importance of being a positive role model for her child. having knowledge of what to expect at each age and stage appeared to help parents be more patient and increased their confidence in their ability to relate to, and nurture, their children. parents talked about becoming more sensitive to their children’s feelings and being more open-minded towards what their children do and say. one parent recognized that when she responded to the challenges of parenting in a stressed manner, her children might also feel stressed and react accordingly. another parent referred to having a new view of her family where each member has rights, which led her to think about developing more positive parenting skills. another focused on how she had learned to understand and give her child a chance to think for himself. other parents commented: i tell her i’m proud of her. i have taken more time to hear what my daughter is “saying”. i [now] talk to my children about my values which i [had] never done before. parents indicated that they had gained a better appreciation of what to expect in terms of typical child behaviour related to development and had learned the importance of ageappropriate expectations of their children. they were interested in learning about more effective ways to discipline their children and talked about implementing new, more positive discipline strategies. one parent commented about learning the importance of taking the time to set guidelines for children so that they understand boundaries and limits. many parents expressed a greater understanding and skill set for dealing with challenging behaviours and helping to teach their children instead of punishing them. they talked about learning that different types of discipline could be applied in different situations; they further commented that they were learning that yelling and physical punishment (e.g., spanking) was not necessary. the following international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 130 demonstrate what parents felt they had learned and how they were implementing that knowledge into their daily practice as parents: i learned what discipline really is and how to do it. integrated new discipline strategies at home that have been effective. altered my way of communicating to my children. managing tantrums in [the] most productive way for my child [and] myself. parenting efficacy parenting self-efficacy is moderated by the caregiver’s knowledge of child development (reiner hess, teti, & hussey-gardner, 2004). ineffective and hostile parenting is significantly related to increased risk of school failure and of children developing conduct problems which increase the risk for becoming involved in anti-social, aggressive, and offending behaviour (gardner et al., 2006; o’connor, 2002). many parents expressed that they gained a better understanding of their role as parents and were able to maintain and increase their parenting efficacy through self-awareness, effective communication, and self-care. parents talked about how important it was to acknowledge themselves as parents – an important role – and to find ways to build confidence in their parenting skills. one parent commented that she was more aware of the different parenting styles she and her partner had and how she was using that awareness to work together with her partner when parenting. some parents talked about the importance of maintaining communication with others in their families and how communication is different with a partner than it is with children. several parents commented that they had learned the importance of self-care and different ways of looking after themselves: my confidence as a parent has improved and i feel so much more capable of enjoying motherhood because of the tools learned in [agency name]. [i] have become more patient [and am] more educated about my child’s behaviour. i gained more confidence not only [in] myself but [in] how [i] take care of my son and family as well. [i] shared information with my partner so that we can parent together. importance of community to build safer and healthier communities, there needs to be a relationship between families and their communities. social support is a key influence on parenting behaviour, and a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 131 supportive social network and community can improve the knowledge of parents about child development and increase confidence in their parenting (crill russell, birnbaum, avison, & ioannone, 2011). in addition, parental access to additional social supports has been shown to improve effectiveness of parental learning and the success of parenting programs, improving both parent and child outcomes (mann, 2008). through the upstart parent survey, many parents expressed that the p-fpp they attended helped them to gain a better sense of community cohesion and increased their access to resources. parents also identified that attending a p-fpp provided an opportunity to meet other parents who were encountering the same challenges and successes of being a parent: i learned that i was not alone in the way i felt. parents expressed that the classes were a safe environment where sharing ideas, concerns, and successes was an opportunity to learn and improve their parenting skills and knowledge as well as validate their current skills and knowledge: it is a great feeling to know that i can share my concerns when i have [them] and instead of just talking or complaining or worrying together [as a couple], we discuss[ed] with moms and an educator and learn[ed] what to do and how to think [about the situation]. parents talked about how the parenting group itself became a supportive social network, a community to which they were connected, a place to improve their knowledge and build their parenting confidence: it addresses things i never even thought of. knowing that a couple things you are doing, you are doing right…it’s not me that is the problem…gave me a positive feeling about what i am doing at home. parenting practices, expectations, and cultural norms are different around the world. this creates difficulties for parents when they move from one culture to another, often without their extended families or other familiar parenting supports. canada has received new families from many diverse cultures as well as diverse family structures and practices. parents new to canada commented in the survey how their participation in a p-fpp helped them become more aware of canadian norms, laws, and expectations related to parenting. parents from a variety of programs showed a greater awareness of services and resources in calgary after attending a p-fpp, thereby promoting a sense of community and support: parents are human too; we can ask for help. [i] learned where to go/call whenever i need help. [i learned about] different agencies to call for support in terms of parenting programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 132 discussion this paper reports on the thematic analysis of qualitative data collected to address the feasibility of using the upstart parent survey in p-fpps and the effectiveness of p-fpps who used the survey. the study was an initial exploration of the use of the upstart parent survey by p-fpps, was limited to one major canadian city, and was conducted over a relatively short period of time. as such, our conclusions are preliminary and require further exploration in other contexts. analysis of feedback from focus groups with parents and program facilitators, and a workshop and meeting with program managers, indicated that the upstart parent survey appeared to be a feasible tool for p-fpps in that 97% of parents found the survey either easy or average to complete and were generally comfortable completing the tool at the end of their program. facilitators indicated that most parents were able to complete the survey independently or with some assistance and appeared willing to complete the tool. p-fpps provide parents an opportunity to normalize the challenges of everyday child behaviour and give families the chance to learn effective parenting strategies to support their child(ren)’s development. p-fpps are a prevention strategy; consequently, it is difficult to measure “what might have happened” had parents not attended a p-fpp. thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected through this study indicated that both parents and program facilitators saw improvements in parental knowledge and parental experience/efficacy as a result of attending a p-fpp. however, it is important to note that this was a small initial study conducted in one city. it will be necessary to conduct further studies of the psychometric properties, feasibility, and efficacy of the upstart parent survey by engaging more agencies and parents in different geographic and demographic populations. long-term studies will be necessary to determine the residual effectiveness of p-fpps over the course of family parenting, and could more closely examine the impact of issues such as the mental health of family members, parent-child relationships, different family settings, and so on. throughout this project, researchers were aware of the need to support the agencies and the facilitators involved in the delivery of the upstart parent survey and the additional components needed for the psychometric testing. while only two facilitators were able to attend the focus group, the sharing between the facilitators was found to be very helpful. as a result of this low participation, the project team requested that the student research assistants visit each of the programs to provide further information, offer support, and elicit any further feedback. participating agencies, at a follow-up project meeting, indicated that they appreciated this support from the student research assistants and the additional points of clarification they were able to bring from the other participants. research clearly shows that effective parenting increases the likelihood that children will grow up to be healthy, productive citizens. strong knowledge about child development, healthy parent/child relationships, positive discipline, parent mental health and sense of competency, and social support are key components of effective parenting and should be part of any p-fpp. it is important to know whether parenting programs are achieving these common outcomes; therefore, there is a need for a valid, reliable tool that is feasible for use by both parent participants and program facilitators. this was an initial study; a more in-depth analysis of the psychometric properties of the upstart parent survey is required. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 119–135 133 references alberta centre for child, family & community research. 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(2005). assessment of parenting capacity: literature review. ashfield, new south wales, australia: center for parenting research. building safe communities from the start: the upstart parent survey keywords: parenting, preschool children, program evaluation, feasibility studies, mixed methods methods procedure results examining the effectiveness of p-fpps parenting knowledge and skills parenting efficacy importance of community discussion white, a. (2005). assessment of parenting capacity: literature review. ashfield, new south wales, australia: center for parenting research. microsoft word 09 yoga_youth_trauma.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220661 a descriptive study of practitioners’ use of yoga with youth who have experienced trauma madeline nance, megan sease, brandi crowe, marieke van puymbroeck, and heidi zinzow abstract: it is not uncommon for youth (ages 2–19) to experience trauma. there are various types of traumatic events that may lead to adverse effects on youths’ emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and spiritual health. it is important that youth receive support and resources to address the negative impacts trauma may have on their minds and bodies. yoga is a holistic practice that may address these negative effects in all 5 health domains. however, there are many inconsistencies and gaps in the literature regarding the use of yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. the purpose of this descriptive survey research study was to address these inconsistencies by describing the approaches of 56 practitioners who utilize yoga with youth who have experienced trauma, and their perceptions of how and why they use yoga with these youth. findings highlighted the importance of implementing trauma-specific adaptations when facilitating yoga with youth who have experienced trauma, such as increasing participant autonomy, providing a safe environment, and developing a therapeutic rapport. results also indicated that the most common use of yoga among these practitioners was to address emotional and physical needs of youth who have experienced trauma. implications of study findings and opportunities for future research are discussed. keywords: adolescents, children, youth, trauma, yoga, trauma-informed yoga, trauma-sensitive yoga madeline nance ms (corresponding author) is a youth services coordinator for the city of alexandria’s court services unit, 520 king street, alexandria, va 22314. email: mlnance@clemson.edu megan sease ms is a graduate student in the master of science in counseling program at barry university, 11300 ne 2nd ave, miami shores, fl 33161. email: masease@clemson.edu brandi crowe phd is an assistant professor of recreational therapy at clemson university, 170 sirrine hall, clemson, sc 29634. email: bmcrowe@clemson.edu marieke van puymbroeck phd is associate dean of parks, recreation, and tourism management graduate studies at clemson university, e-106 martin hall, clemson, sc 29634. email: mvp@clemson.edu heidi zinzow phd is a professor of psychology at clemson university, 321 calhoun drive, clemson, sc 29634. email: hzinzow@clemson.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 125 according to dr. robert black, the former president of the american academy of pediatrics, “adverse childhood experiences are the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today” (keebler, 2017, para. 1). adverse childhood experiences are potentially traumatic events that may lead to lasting impairment of overall health and well-being (ranjbar & erb, 2019). trauma may be acute or chronic depending on whether the trauma is the result of a single event or repeated occurrences (bui et al., 2014). trauma can stem from various sources, including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; major accidents; and parental mental illness (keebler, 2017; telles et al., 2012). in 2016, almost half (46%) of the u.s. population under the age of 17 reported having experienced at least one traumatic event (sacks & murphey, 2018). such events can affect youths’ development (feldman & vengrober, 2011). development can be divided into four stages: early childhood (ages 2–3), preschool (ages 4–5), middle childhood (ages 6–11), and adolescence (ages 12–19). each developmental stage is marked by a change in how youth view and understand themselves and the world around them (eccles, 1999). each stage is typically characterized by the achievement of emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and spiritual milestones. because development is progressive, the ability to achieve each milestone depends on the attainment of previous ones. youth development and functioning may therefore be impaired if trauma is experienced during the developmental years (racco & vis, 2015). while traditional trauma treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy have been shown to produce positive outcomes among youth who have experienced trauma, complementary and integrative health approaches that address both the body and mind should also be considered for treatment (west et al., 2017). yoga is one such approach. the impact of trauma on youth trauma results from an event, or set of events, that cause extreme psychological and physiological stress (ranjbar & erb, 2019). emotionally, trauma may increase fear, preventing calm and ultimately leading to dysphoria, a state characterized by terror, rage, and grief (cook et al., 2005; mulvihill, 2005). trauma may also lead to a range of other issues among youth, including low self-esteem and poor body image, high levels of shame and guilt, difficulty in regulating emotions, and inability to label emotions (cook et al., 2005). cognitively, trauma may cause youth to have trouble maintaining attention, solving problems, and learning new information, and to suffer from impaired memory and decreased information processing (cook et al., 2005). trauma may also cause feelings of dissociation, which can be characterized by amnesia, depersonalization, and impaired memory (cook et al., 2005). socially, trauma may cause difficulty in understanding others’ emotions and perspectives (cook et al., 2005). social isolation is often the result, due to poor quality friendships, rivalry between siblings, inability to communicate needs, resistance to changing routines, and shame surrounding the traumatic event (cook et al., 2005; peltonen et al., 2010). these effects may international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 126 further impact youth by leading to sleep disturbances, disordered eating, and oppositional behavior (cook et al., 2005). physically, trauma has the potential to cause a permanent activation of the fight-or-flight response, which can lead to negative short-term (e.g., physical aggression) or longterm (e.g., becoming immobile) effects (kisiel et al., 2009; perry et al., 1995). spiritually, youth who have experienced trauma may have a diminished feeling of safety, which can disrupt their peace of mind and hinder their connection to others and the world around them (bryant-davis et al., 2012; walker et al., 2010). a youth’s overall health comprises functional interactions between emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and spiritual health domains. when one health domain is impacted by trauma, the effects may extend to the others and to the individual as a whole (feldman & vengrober, 2011). the effects of trauma can also lead to an increased chance of developing adverse health conditions (bethell et al., 2014). experiencing trauma as a youth has been linked to increased prevalence of chronic disease, higher cost of health care across the lifespan, and greater likelihood of being emotionally, cognitively, or physically unprepared to attend school (bethell et al., 2014). youth who have experienced trauma are at greater risk for developing depression, anxiety, other post-traumatic stress symptoms, heart and liver diseases, substance use disorders, and extreme anger as adults (kimbrough et al., 2010; mental health connection of tarrant county, n.d.). to prevent, or decrease the likelihood of, these conditions, it is crucial that youth who have experienced trauma receive support and resources that address their specific symptoms. traditional trauma treatments, including trauma-processing treatment, insight-oriented therapy, and exposure therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy and prolonged exposure therapy, often do not fully address the complex manifestations of trauma-related symptoms (west et al., 2017). trauma-processing treatment and insight-oriented therapy focus on processing traumatic experiences through verbal communication. exposure therapies focus on exposing individuals to memories and trauma-related stimuli to help them cognitively process the traumatic experience with the goal of altering their responses to trauma-related stressors; research has found that these therapies do benefit youth who have experienced trauma (foa, 2011; racco & vis, 2015). however, in most cases, these therapies fail to address somatic symptoms, as west et al. (2017) observed. in their study of 31 adult female survivors of chronic childhood trauma, the same authors suggested that complementary and integrative health practices can help fill this gap, a finding that may also apply to youth who have experienced trauma. for example, as a strength-based intervention, yoga may be used to address trauma in youth as it engages both mind and body, which could lead to empowerment and personal growth (johnson et al., 2005; west et al., 2017). yoga: a therapeutic modality for treating trauma yoga is a mind–body practice that originated in india, and has historically been practiced in association with religions in eastern cultures. yoga was introduced to the west in the 19th century, and by the 20th century was increasingly being applied, without the religious dimension, for physical and psychosocial benefit (douglass, 2007; sengupta, 2012). in modern medicine, yoga is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 127 sometimes used as a complementary and integrative health approach across the continuum of care (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2021). yoga is composed of three elements, often known by their names in sanskrit: physical poses (asana), meditation (dyhana), and breath work (pranayama); these collectively focus on the “unification of oneself” (siegel et al., 2016, p. 94). yoga may be beneficial for people who have experienced trauma thanks to its ability to positively impact emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and spiritual health (beltran et al., 2016; seena & sundaram, 2018). in individuals who have experienced trauma, yoga has been found to lower muscle tension, improve hormonal activity, increase sense of community, and help in processing and shaping negative thoughts into more positive ones (crews et al., 2016). as trauma often affects individuals differently, modalities like yoga that allow for various styles (e.g.,vinyasa, yin), paces, durations, and techniques are vital in providing individually tailored treatments (spinazzola et al., 2011). six common styles of yoga are hatha, gentle, restorative, vinyasa, trauma-informed, and trauma-sensitive. hatha yoga is not only the most common style of yoga (kiecolt-glaser, 2010), but also the foundation of all other yoga styles (mustian, 2013; mustian et al., 2013). hatha yoga focuses on the three components of yoga: meditation, physical postures, and breath work (elkins et al., 2010; kiecolt-glaser, 2010). gentle yoga emphasizes relaxation through its focus on breathing and stretching (cowen & adams, 2007). similarly, through the use of props, limited poses, and focused breath work, restorative yoga works to help the mind and body enter total relaxation (danhauer et al., 2008; elkins et al., 2010). in contrast, vinyasa is a more vigorous yoga style that focuses on fast flowing postures, often referred to as sun salutations (elkins et al., 2010; uebelacker, 2010). lastly, both trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga are designed for individuals who have, or may have, experienced trauma, but their exact differences are unclear in the literature. while yoga has the potential to address the effects of trauma, the literature regarding how and why yoga is used with youth who have experienced trauma is inconsistent and sparse. in one of the few such studies, 30 adolescent females (ages 13–18) who had experienced sexual abuse and maltreatment participated in a “psychospiritual intervention” consisting of a combination of yoga and psychotherapies (seena & sundaram, 2018). although improvement in the participants’ emotional, cognitive, physical, and spiritual health was reported, neither the credentials of the yoga facilitator nor the content and format of the intervention were described (seena & sundaram, 2018). similarly, beltran et al.’s (2016) study involved 10 boys (ages 8–12) with histories of trauma who attended weekly 90-minute yoga-based psychotherapy group sessions for 14 weeks. the purpose of these sessions was to assist participants in developing a safe environment and personal boundaries, increasing self-awareness, and improving socialization. the majority of session descriptions reported by beltran et al. (2016) described the focus of the session but did not detail specific exercises or yoga poses used. while the study showed promising results (e.g., improved emotional regulation) from using yoga with youth who have experienced trauma, the yoga facilitator’s credentials and field of practice were not specified. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 128 the lack of standardized reporting procedures specific to the use of yoga with youth who have experienced trauma contributes to inconsistencies in the literature regarding how, why, and by whom yoga is being implemented with these youth. these inconsistencies may cause practitioners to have difficulty planning and facilitating evidence-based yoga interventions. methods the purpose of this descriptive survey research study was to describe practitioners who utilize yoga with children (ages 2–11) and adolescents (ages 12–19) who have experienced trauma, and their perceptions of how and why they use yoga with these populations. for the purpose of this study, trauma was defined as one or more adverse events that cause an individual to experience extreme stress resulting in negative effects on overall health and well-being (ranjbar & erb, 2019). participants using a criterion-based sampling strategy, participants eligible for this study were health care practitioners who self-reported graduating from their professional degree program and implementing yoga within the previous year with youth (ages 2–19) who had experienced trauma. individuals who had implemented yoga solely during internship, practicum, or fieldwork experiences were excluded from the study. information about the study and an electronic survey link were distributed across professional listservs and social media platforms related to health care practitioners and yoga therapists (e.g., the yoga alliance1, bridge builders to awareness in healthcare2). snowball sampling was also used for recruitment. study participants who completed the survey were invited to share the survey link with other practitioners or colleagues they knew who fit the study criteria and might be interested in participating. data collection after receiving clemson university’s institutional review board approval, a 27-item survey developed by the researchers was piloted online twice in order to strengthen its content and face validity. participants were asked to complete different versions of the survey (e.g., children, adolescents, youth) using different devices (e.g., ipad, computer, mobile phone). five individuals who were not health care professionals completed the first pilot, and four professionals with expertise in either trauma or yoga completed the second pilot. participants were asked to focus on survey length, readability, and formatting; those with a background in trauma or yoga were also asked to comment on the appropriateness of content. participants who completed the first round of piloting consistently reported the survey was too long, which led to the elimination of two 1https://www.yogaalliance.org/ 2https://www.facebook.com/groups/bridgebuilderstoawarenessinhealthcare?_rdr international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 129 primary questions and 16 sub-questions. results of the second pilot led to minor formatting changes, and the streamlining of questions. the final 26-item survey was distributed electronically to participants through social media sites and professional listservs. the online qualtrics survey (qualtrics xm3, provo, ut) was anonymous and voluntary; all respondents provided consent to study participation before any survey questions were presented. following two criterion questions confirming that participants had worked with children or adolescents (or both) who had experienced trauma, participants were asked to respond to questions related to how (14 primary questions, 27 sub-questions) and why (one primary question, five sub-questions) they implement yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. nine demographic questions, with three sub-questions, were asked to obtain information about who implements yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. data analysis survey responses were exported into ibm spss statistics for windows, version 24.0 and cleaned in preparation for analysis. the 51 cases in which participants completed less than twothirds of the survey, or provided contradictory responses, were deleted from the 107 total survey responses. the remaining 56 respondents made up the final study sample. descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages of categorical variables and the standard deviation and mean of continuous variables were used to analyze the quantitative data. both conventional and summative content analysis were used to analyze the qualitative data (hsieh & shannon, 2005). using conventional content analysis, two researchers independently analyzed and coded participant definitions of “trauma-informed yoga” and “trauma-sensitive yoga”. codes were developed based on repeated patterns and commonalities within the data and then translated to final themes. to increase the credibility of data analysis, two researchers separately coded the participants’ responses prior to comparing results to determine agreement. a third researcher also reviewed the qualitative data independently to confirm agreement with the final themes. several questions offered “other” as an answer option. on selecting “other”, participants were offered a text box in which to provide an open-ended response. summative content analysis was used to analyze these responses. using the intercoder agreement process, two researchers grouped similar data into categories; a frequency count was then used to quantify commonalities within participants’ responses. for example, when asked to elaborate on the “other” settings in which practitioners have implemented yoga with youth who have experienced trauma, the responses “juvenile justice center – short and long term county program” and “juvenile probation girls’ empowerment program” were grouped together as “juvenile justice centers” (n = 2). 3https://www.qualtrics.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 130 results the online survey was completed by 56 participants (see table 1). nine respondents indicated having worked with children (ages 2–11), 25 with adolescents (ages 12–19), and 22 with both children and adolescents who had experienced trauma. the majority of respondents were female (50; 89.3%) and white (46; 82.1%). participants ranged in age from 24 to 61 years old. most participants (50; 89.3%) were united states residents, representing 22 states. who implements yoga with youth who have experienced trauma participants were asked to indicate their primary area of professional practice from a list of health care professions. however, the most frequent response (16; 28.6%) was “other”, specified as: professions related to yoga (n = 6); education (n = 4); miscellaneous (n = 4; e.g., hair stylist, equine-assisted learning); and marriage, family, and child therapy (n = 2). the next most frequently reported profession was social work (n = 13). with regard to professional experience, the number of years of practice reported by participants was divided about equally among those with less than 4, those with 4 to 10, and those with more than 10. participants indicated various locations in which they had facilitated yoga with youth who had experienced trauma: communitybased settings (21; 37.5%), outpatient mental health settings (19; 33.9%), and “other” settings (17; 30.4%) such as schools (n = 9), juvenile justice centers (n = 2), and private practice (n = 2). professional credentials were reported by 46 participants (82.1%), with some reporting having obtained professional certifications in specific areas: yoga (e.g., 200-hour registered yoga teacher, certified yoga therapist), trauma (e.g., trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, professional crisis management), both yoga and trauma (e.g., 300-hour trauma center traumasensitive yoga), and other (e.g., licensed clinical social worker, licensed marriage and family therapist). most participants (45; 80.4%) believed that practitioners should obtain one or more yoga certifications prior to implementing yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. recommended certifications included those specific to yoga (e.g., irest, registered yoga teacher200, inner peace yoga therapy teacher training) and those for both yoga and trauma (e.g., trauma center trauma-sensitive yoga training, yogafit for warriors, yoga for humankind). only 11 participants (19.6%) reported that they did not believe practitioners should have to obtain certifications prior to facilitating yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. finally, most participants (46; 82.1%) indicated that they personally practiced yoga: 18 (32.1%) had practiced for 6 to 10 years and 13 (23.2%) for 11 to 15 years. see table 1 for additional demographic details. the 31 participants who had implemented yoga with children reported that the most common types of trauma were physical abuse (16; 51.6%), sexual abuse (14; 45.2%), and neglect (10; 32.3%). additional traumas related to “medical trauma”, “homelessness”, and “trafficking survivors” were also reported. the 47 practitioners who had implemented yoga with adolescents reported that the three most common types of trauma were sexual abuse (25; 53.2%), physical abuse (23; 48.9%), and neglect (21; 44.7%); additional types of trauma identified were related to “gender identity”, “immigration”, and “education”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 131 table 1. who implements yoga with youth who have experienced trauma (n = 56) characteristic n (%) gender female male non-binary prefer not to say 50 (89.3%) 3 (5.4%) 2 (3.6%) 1 (1.8%) race white hispanic, latinx, or spanish asian other not reported 46 (82.1%) 5 (8.9%) 3 (5.4%) 1 (1.8%) 1 (1.8%) country of residence united states canada australia finland hong kong (s.a.r.) 50 (89.3%) 3 (5.4%) 1 (1.8%) 1 (1.8%) 1 (1.8%) primary area of practice other (e.g., hair stylist, education) social work yoga therapy occupational therapy recreational therapy counseling physical therapy psychology activity therapy speech-language pathology 16 (28.6%) 13 (23.2%) 7 (12.5%) 5 (8.9%) 5 (8.9%) 4 (7.1%) 2 (3.6%) 2 (3.6%) 1 (1.8%) 1 (1.8%) years of experience in clinical practice < 1 year 1 to 3 years 4 to 10 years 11 to 20 years > 20 years 3 (5.4%) 16 (28.6%) 19 (33.9%) 11 (19.6%) 7 (12.5%) settinga community-based program outpatient mental health other (e.g., schools, juvenile justice centers) yoga studio inpatient mental health 21 (37.5%) 19 (33.9%) 17 (30.4%) 12 (21.4%) 11 (19.6%) personal yoga practice yes no 46 (82.1%) 10 (17.9%) a participants were instructed to select all settings in which they had implemented yoga with youth who had experienced trauma. only the most common responses are given here. the 31 participants who had implemented yoga with children reported that the most common types of trauma were physical abuse (16; 51.6%), sexual abuse (14; 45.2%), and neglect (10; 32.3%). additional traumas related to “medical trauma”, “homelessness”, and “trafficking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 132 survivors” were also reported. the 47 practitioners who had implemented yoga with adolescents reported that the three most common types of trauma were sexual abuse (25; 53.2%), physical abuse (23; 48.9%), and neglect (21; 44.7%); additional types of trauma identified were related to “gender identity”, “immigration”, and “education”. practitioners’ perspectives of trauma-informed versus trauma-sensitive yoga as the terms “trauma-informed yoga” and “trauma-sensitive yoga” are often used interchangeably in research, participants were asked whether or not they believed these two terms were synonymous, and accordingly to construct either a shared definition or contrasting definitions. one participant did not respond to the question or provide any definitions. thirty-three participants (58.9%) indicated that they believed that “trauma-informed yoga” and “traumasensitive yoga” were synonymous. conventional content analysis of participants’ definitions of the terms revealed two themes: (a) knowledge of trauma, and (b) a safe and autonomous environment. several participants who indicated trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga are synonymous terms defined them both as a type of yoga that is planned and facilitated by an individual who is trained in and knowledgeable about trauma. for example, one participant defined it as “yoga that is grounded in an understanding of trauma theory … how to assist survivors of trauma in asana … what happens in the body of those who have post-traumatic stress and how yoga impacts those symptoms”. similarly, another participant wrote: “yoga practice with trauma in mind. it’s understanding how yoga can help someone through trauma … it’s knowing trauma responses and how different types of trauma may affect people.” in referencing yoga and yoga facilitators’ knowledge and understanding of trauma, several participants indicated that the content and delivery in this approach to yoga are deliberately planned to decrease trauma triggers. for example, one participant shared that the approach “carefully curate[s] the [yoga] sequence that doesn’t trigger any past traumatic somatic experiences”. another participant wrote that “the [yoga] environment is set up in a way that reduces [trauma] triggers”. a second theme among practitioners who indicated that trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga were synonymous terms related to the importance of creating a safe and autonomous environment. participants commented that such yoga programs “allow [clients] a safe space to process and heal from trauma”, offer clients “freedom of choice to move at their own pace … promotion of participation at their comfort level”, and assist in “helping them to learn to listen to and feel safe in their own body”. for 22 participants (39.3%), “trauma-informed yoga” and “trauma-sensitive yoga” were not synonymous terms. the definitions provided by these participants suggest that trauma-informed yoga is a broader term intended to reflect a facilitation style in which yoga instructors plan and implement a yoga session with the intent of being supportive of individuals who may have a history of trauma, without actually knowing whether they do or not. for example, one participant wrote: “teachers need to be aware that any student in any context could have experienced trauma … being a trauma informed teacher means … you creat[e] space in your class to allow students to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 133 leave out parts of class they aren’t comfortable with.” correspondingly, one participant described trauma-informed yoga as an “awareness that yoga is able to assist individuals who have had past trauma”; another defined it as “general yoga open to the general public that incorporates some information related to trauma theory and best practices for trauma care”. participants’ definitions referenced the importance of “allowing participants to be in charge of their practice” and “considering the needs of those in your class. creating a safe environment …”, but indicated that “a focus on alignment, sequencing, etc.” may still occur. over half (14; 63.6%) of the 22 participants defined trauma-sensitive yoga as a type of yoga for dealing with trauma, that is, as one put it, “specifically designed for individuals who have experienced trauma”, or is a specific protocol “intended as an adjunct treatment for complex trauma and/or ptsd [post-traumatic stress disorder]”. one participant defined trauma-sensitive yoga as: working with a group [of individuals] that is in that group … because of the trauma they’ve faced. coming to a group like that, i [yoga teacher/practitioner] make sure to leave out certain poses that have the potential to be triggering and generally spend less time on poses and more time on mindfulness and connection. another participant defined trauma-sensitive yoga as “a trauma-specific approach that integrates a more intentional focus on relational safety, power dynamics, choice, and agency. has more of a focus on befriending the body, not as much alignment or sequencing.” likewise, participants indicated that trauma-sensitive yoga allows “students … to focus on how they feel internally rather than worrying about what the poses look like externally” and “emphasizes developing a greater sense of mind–body connection”. specific to facilitation techniques, participant definitions referenced practice that involves “…noncoercive language, choice based and empowering …” and “… no physical assists …”. it is important to note that some individual participants’ definitions of the two terms were the exact opposite of the aggregate themes presented above — their definitions of trauma-informed yoga reflected themes described above as associated with trauma-sensitive yoga, and vice versa. how yoga is implemented with youth who have experienced trauma of the 31 participants who reported implementing yoga with children who have experienced trauma, 22 (71.0%) reported implementing group yoga sessions; amongst those, the most common (8; 36.4%) group size was 6 or 7 clients. almost half (15; 48.4%) of participants indicated that they provided one-on-one yoga sessions with clients. the most commonly reported yoga styles used with children who have experienced trauma were trauma-informed yoga (19; 61.3%) and gentle yoga (14; 45.2%). the majority of participants working with children reported that traumaspecific trainings (28; 90.3%) informed their yoga planning and facilitation processes. when asked about how they prepared the yoga space, several strategies were indicated; offering different lighting options (20; 64.5%) was the most prevalent. participants also adapted yoga sessions for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 134 children who have experienced trauma by helping clients improve their ability to be present in the moment (29; 93.5%) and working to develop a sense of trust with clients (28; 90.3%). table 2. how yoga is implemented with youth who have experienced trauma implementation children (n = 31) n (%) adolescents (n = 47) n (%) group yoga sessions 2 to 3 youth per sessiona 4 to 5 youth per session 6 to 7 youth per session 8 to 10 youth per session > 10 youth per session 22 (71.0%) 1 ( 4.5%) 5 (22.7%) 8 (36.4%) 4 (18.2%) 4 (18.2%) 31 (66.0%) 4 (12.9%) 8 (25.8%) 10 (32.3%) 5 (16.1%) 4 (12.9%) one-on-one yoga sessions 15 (48.4%) 23 (48.9%) styles of yoga implementedbc gentle yoga hatha yoga restorative trauma-informed yoga trauma-sensitive yoga vinyasa 14 (45.2%) 12 (38.7%) 12 (38.7%) 19 (61.3%) 12 (38.7%) 11 (35.5%) 27 (57.4%) 18 (38.3%) 25 (53.2%) 28 (59.6%) 29 (61.7%) 19 (40.4%) informed planning & facilitation of yoga sessionsbc evidence/research literature, research publications, etc. trauma-specific trainings 24 (77.4%) 24 (77.4%) 28 (90.3%) 40 (85.1%) 38 (80.9%) 34 (72.3%) preparation of yoga environment/spaceab lighting options essential oils reduce distractions set up music, etc. 20 (63.5%) 11 (35.5%) 15 (48.4%) 14 (45.2%) 33 (70.2%) 15 (31.9%) 31 (66.0%) 25 (53.2%) trauma-specific adaptations made for the yoga sessionsbc aided participants’ ability to be in the moment developed trust between practitioner and participants provided choice for participants set a non-judgemental tone emphasizing safety used invitational language 29 (93.6%) 28 (90.3%) 27 (87.1%) 26 (83.9%) 20 (64.5%) 38 (80.9%) 44 (93.6%) 41 (87.2%) 43 (91.5%) 40 (85.1%) average duration of yoga sessionsc 15 minutes 30 minutes 45 minutes 50 minutes 60 minutes 8 (25.8%) 8 (25.8%) 7 (22.6%) 3 ( 9.7%) 5 (16.1%) 5 (10.6%) 13 (27.7%) 12 (25.5%) 1 ( 2.1%) 13 (27.7%) yoga sessions (%) used as adjunct to psychotherapyc 0% 1–25% 26–50% 76–99% 100% unknown 2 ( 6.5%) 5 (16.1%) 5 (16.1%) 5 (16.1%) 6 (19.4%) 7 (22.5%) 4 ( 8.5%) 6 (12.8%) 7 (14.9%) 7 (14.9%) 13 (27.7%) 10 (21.3%) a group size percentages are calculated out of 22 (children) and 31 (adolescents). b participants were instructed to select all answer items that applied. c additional answer options were selected. only the most common responses are included. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 135 the yoga sessions designed by the participants for adolescents who have experienced trauma were broadly similar to those provided to children. participants (n = 47) who reported offering yoga to adolescents implemented both group sessions (31; 66.0%), most commonly with 6 to 7 participants per session (10 of 31; 32.3%), and one-on-one sessions (23 of 47; 47.9%). traumasensitive (29; 61.7%) and trauma-informed yoga (28; 59.6%) were the most commonly reported styles of yoga used with adolescents. participants indicated that evidence/research (40; 85.1%), and literature/research publications (38; 80.9%) informed their planning and facilitation of yoga with adolescents who have experienced trauma. preparing different lighting options (33; 70.2%) and minimizing distractions (31; 66.0%) were the most frequently reported strategies used to prepare the yoga space for adolescents. developing practitioner–client trust (44; 93.6%) and using a non-judgemental tone to emphasize safety (43; 91.5%) were the most common trauma-specific strategies used by practitioners to support adolescents during yoga. see table 2 for additional details. why yoga is implemented with youth who have experienced trauma participants (n = 31) who implemented yoga with children who have experienced trauma reported using yoga to improve all five health domains. emotional health (87.1%) and physical health (64.5%) were the most frequently reported domains that yoga was used to address. fewer participants indicated using yoga to help children improve their social (54.8%), cognitive (54.8%), or spiritual health (38.7%). practitioners working with adolescents (n = 47) also reported using yoga to improve in all five health domains. again, the results were similar in this group as in children, with emotional health (89.4%) and physical health (70.2%) being the domains most frequently reported as targeted by yoga. over half of participants indicated using yoga to focus on adolescents’ social (68.1%) and cognitive health (61.7%); only 34% reported using yoga to improve their spiritual health. see table 3 for additional details. discussion the purpose of this study was to describe how, why, and by whom yoga is being implemented with youth (ages 2–19) who have experienced trauma. results of the study support previous literature and address some of its gaps and inconsistencies by providing more detailed information about the planning and facilitation strategies used by practitioners implementing yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. libby and colleagues (2012) identified various health care professionals (e.g., social workers, psychologists, recreational therapists) who had implemented yoga among individuals receiving services within veterans affairs ptsd treatment programs. most participants in the current study indicated a health care field as their primary profession, thus aligning with previous literature suggesting some health care practitioners use yoga as an adjunctive treatment. however, several study participants (16; 28.6%) reported professions outside health care (e.g., hairstylist, teacher) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 136 as their primary profession. relatedly, community-based and “other” settings (e.g., schools, juvenile justice centers) were frequently reported by participants as the setting in which they were offering yoga to youth who had experienced trauma. thus, future research should explore use of yoga in community settings with youth who have experienced trauma by those who are not health care providers, as this population is not well represented in the literature. table 3. why yoga is implemented with youth who have experienced trauma reason for implementation children (n = 31) n (%) adolescents (n = 47) n (%) to improve emotional healtha to improve affect regulationb to improve body image to improve emotional expression to increase autonomy to increase self-concept to increase self-esteem 27 (87.1%)26 (96.3%) 19 (70.4%) 19 (70.4%) 13 (48.1%) 15 (55.6%) 19 (70.4%) 42 (89.4%) 37 (88.1%) 26 (61.9%) 30 (71.4%) 30 (71.4%) 29 (69.0%) 31 (73.8%) to improve physical healtha to improve balanceb to improve coordination to improve motor skills to reduce heart rate 20 (64.5%)14 (70.0%) 17 (85.0%) 15 (75.0%) 12 (60.0%) 33 (70.2%) 27 (81.8%) 26 (78.8%) 22 (66.7%) 21 (63.6%) to improve social healtha to improve nonverbal communication skillsb to improve verbal communication skills to increase interpersonal communication to increase social competence 17 (54.8%)11 (64.7%) 10 (58.8%) 12 (70.6%) 11 (64.7%) 32 (68.1%) 18 (56.3%) 13 (40.6%) 23 (71.9%) 24 (75.0%) to improve cognitive healtha to improve memoryb to increase ability to adjust to plans & strategies to increase ability to orient to time and space to increase ability to plan and anticipate to increase information processing 17 (54.8%) 9 (52.9%) 7 (41.2%) 10 (58.8%) 10 (58.8%) 14 (82.4%) 29 (61.7%) ---------- to improve spiritual healtha to develop deeper understanding of spiritualityb to find meaning in life to increase peace & harmony in lives of youth to increase sense of purpose 12 (38.7%) 4 (33.3%) 6 (50.0%) 9 (75.0%) 7 (58.3%) 16 (34.0%) 4 (25.0%) 4 (25.0%) 16 (100%) 9 (56.3%) other (e.g., “family bonding”, “resilience building”) 7 (22.6%) 8 (17.0%) no identified targeted outcomes 1 (3.2%) 1 (2.1%) note. participants selected all answer items that applied for all survey items reported in this table. due to a survey error, subcategories for “to improve cognitive health” within the adolescent data could not be reported. a additional answer options were selected. only the most common responses are included. b percentages are calculated out of the total within each reason for implementation. research identifies a number of trainings in yoga (e.g., registered yoga teacher, certified yoga therapist; covaleski, 2019) and in yoga for trauma (e.g., trauma center trauma-sensitive yoga facilitator; cooke-cottone et al., 2017) that are either required or recommended by organizations where yoga practitioners work with youth. of the 56 participants, 46 (82.1%) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 137 reported having various trauma-related (e.g., professional crisis management), yoga-related (e.g., 200-ryt, c-iayt), and yogaand trauma-related (e.g., 300hour trauma center traumasensitive yoga) trainings or certifications. a majority of study participants (45; 80.4%) also indicated that they believed that practitioners should obtain yoga certifications prior to implementing yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. while several recommendations were provided, there was a lack of consensus; therefore, future research is needed to determine which trainings or certifications should be recommended for, or required of, practitioners implementing yoga with youth who have experienced trauma. in that way, evidence-based standards of practice can be established to ensure a safe and productive experience for youth. the existing literature uses “trauma-informed” and “trauma-sensitive” yoga terminology, but often fails to clarify the meaning of the two terms. some studies may suggest that the terms are synonymous (e.g., nicoreta et al., 2020), or provide a definition that complicates the matter by incorporating both. for example, nolan (2016) defined trauma-sensitive yoga as a “style of yoga [that] adapts the typical yoga studio class — which may be overwhelming and unwelcoming for an individual with ptsd — to be trauma-informed” (p. 33). study participants’ definitions of trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga confirmed the lack of consensus surrounding the meaning of these terms as 33 (58.9%) participants indicated that the terms were synonymous, while 22 (39.3%) indicated that they carried different meanings. study participants who regarded the terms as synonymous described them as reflecting yoga being facilitated in a safe and autonomous environment by instructors knowledgeable in trauma. this perception was reflective of both trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga. however, the literature does differentiate between the terms, defining trauma-informed yoga as a method used by yoga teachers who have been educated in trauma and its potential impact on individuals; this training is applied when planning and facilitating community yoga sessions under the assumption that anyone who participates the sessions may have experienced trauma (cook-cottone et al., 2017). in contrast, trauma-sensitive yoga is defined as a type of yoga that is used as an adjunctive treatment with individuals who are receiving treatment for, and working to recover from, trauma (cook-cottone et al., 2017; jackson, 2014). definitions of trauma-sensitive yoga provided by those study participants who regarded the terms as not synonymous closely align with the literature and confirm their perception that trauma-sensitive yoga applies to treatment specifically with individuals with a known trauma. similarly, participants’ definitions of trauma-informed yoga suggest that it is a facilitation style implemented by yoga instructors for the purpose of their being cognizant of, and wanting to be welcoming and supportive of, individuals in attendance who may have a history of trauma. thus, with trauma-informed yoga, teachers may not be certain whether particular individuals have experienced trauma, nor are they applying yoga for therapeutic purposes: the yoga sessions are open to individuals who self-select to attend. future research should adopt standardized definitions of trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga so that consistent and accurate terminology is disseminated in the literature and appropriately used in professional trainings and treatment practices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 138 in reference to how yoga is facilitated among youth with trauma, literature highlights the importance of yoga being provided in a safe and autonomous environment, where a strong client– practitioner therapeutic rapport can be established and maintained (emerson et al., 2009; ranjbar & erb, 2019). a peaceful and safe environment, in which mirrors and distracting noises are limited, provides a space in which individuals can focus on addressing and overcoming the impact of their trauma (anderson et al., 2015; beltran et al., 2016). an autonomous environment offers them an opportunity to experience a sense of control of themselves and their bodies, and to practice making decisions during yoga, which could help to increase their decision-making confidence in areas of their life outside of yoga (emerson et al., 2009; justice et al., 2018). therapeutic rapport between clients and practitioners is also important, as trauma can negatively impact youths’ social development (banyard et al., 2001). study participants frequently identified concepts associated with a safe and autonomous environment when defining trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga; therapeutic rapport was less frequently reported in definitions. however, when asked to identify which of five traumaspecific adaptations they employed when facilitating yoga with youth who had experienced trauma, participants most often selected the three that align with providing a safe and autonomous environment and building therapeutic rapport: developing trust, providing participants with choices, and setting a non-judgemental tone that emphasizes safety. further research is needed to better understand how and why the trauma-specific adaptations chosen by practitioners varied depending on the age of the clients and the types of trauma they had experienced, and whether the practitioner’s approach was trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive. trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga were the two most common types of yoga used by survey respondents who implemented yoga with adolescents who had experienced trauma. those who used yoga with children who have experienced trauma most often reported using trauma-informed and gentle yoga. significantly fewer practitioners reported using traumasensitive yoga with children than was the case with adolescents. this was an interesting finding, as respondents who worked with children reported that their yoga facilitations were informed by trauma-specific trainings. this incongruence could be attributed to the different interpretations of the terminology. in contrast, respondents who reported using yoga with adolescents who had experienced trauma identified research as the most frequent source of information used to inform their planning and facilitation of yoga sessions. future research should focus on a better understanding of when and for what purposes practitioners choose to implement different types of yoga (e.g., hatha, restorative) when working with youth who have experienced trauma, and identify what the curricula of these sessions involve. study findings indicate that the primary goal of practitioners who offer yoga to youth who have experienced trauma is the improvement of the youths’ emotional health. outcomes related to improved physical, social, cognitive, and spiritual health were also reported. with regard specifically to emotional health, study participants reported working to help both child and adolescent clients to focus on, and increase, affect regulation, a functional ability often negatively international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 139 impacted by trauma (cook et al., 2005; d’andrea et al., 2012; sevecke et al., 2016). traditional trauma treatments do not often directly address the physical impact of trauma (johnson et al., 2005; west et al., 2017); yoga does, thanks to its focus on mind–body connection. that may be the reason why physical health was the second targeted outcome reported among practitioners offering yoga to youth who have experienced trauma. limitations the use of a non-standardized survey resulted in challenges that impacted data collection and results. for example, the wording of some questions and some answer options may have been confusing or duplicative, which would probably have impacted participants’ responses. also, some questions and answer options did not display correctly for respondents, due to an error in how the survey was set up. several questions and data points were excluded from analysis as a result. to minimize errors in future studies, researchers using a non-standardized survey should increase the sample size used for piloting to increase the likelihood of errors being caught and corrected prior to data collection. another limitation was that the population size of practitioners who implement yoga with youth who have experienced trauma is unknown; the results of this study are not generalizable as we are unable to determine whether the sample is adequately representative of the population. additionally, due to selection bias, the sample consisted primarily of white females residing in the united states. future studies should aim to obtain a more diverse sample, reflective of individuals with various racial and ethnic backgrounds, and across nations. conclusion the opportunity for youth to engage in holistic treatment after experiencing trauma is important because trauma may impact all five health domains. however, the current research on yoga with youth who have experienced trauma contains many inconsistencies. by surveying practitioners, this research was able to gather foundational knowledge about how, why, and by whom yoga is implemented with youth who have experienced trauma. this study also identified various opportunities for future research to increase the understanding of yoga facilitations with this population, which the authors feel can contribute to the development of a standardized facilitation protocol. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 124–144 140 references anderson, e. m., blitz, l. v., & saastamoinen, m. 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(2017). trauma sensitive yoga as a complementary treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: a qualitative description analysis. international journal of stress management, 24(2), 173–195. doi:10.1037/str0000040 how can local governments level the social gradient in health among families with children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 328 how can local governments level the social gradient in health among families with children? the case of norway elisabeth fosse and marit k. helgesen abstract: the norwegian national government has recently developed policies to reduce health inequalities; this should be achieved by a health in all policies approach (hiap). most policies are to be implemented at the local level and municipalities are responsible for the implementation. the aim of this paper is to answer this question: how can municipalities reduce social inequalities and among families with children through a mixed methods approach, using surveys as well as qualitative interviews in the collection of data? the main conclusion is that they are in different places when it comes to implementing public health and health promotion policies. the responsibility for public health and health promotion is to a large degree still left to the health sector, including those in positions as public health coordinators. to achieve hiap, these positions should have an executive function in order to coordinate and influence local policies using a combination of universal and targeted measures. however, no extra funding has been allocated via the national budgets, and intensified efforts are still funded via projects. still, we observe a change towards increased awareness of the hiap approach to reduce social inequalities. keywords: norway, policy, municipalities, levelling the gradient, families acknowledgments: the research presented in this paper is funded by the norwegian research council projects “addressing the social determinants of health: multilevel governance of policies aimed at families with children” (project no.213841/h10) and “evaluation of the coordination reform: impact of the reform on health promotion and disease prevention in municipalities” (project no. 229628). the research is also built on the project “health promotion and prevention” funded by the norwegian association of municipalities and counties. elisabeth fosse, ph.d. is a professor in the department of health promotion and development, university of bergen, christiesgate 13, 5015 bergen norway. e-mail: elisabeth.fosse@hemil.uib.no marit k. helgesen, ph.d. is a dr. polit., and senior researcher, norwegian institute for urban and regional research, gaustadalléen 21, 0349 oslo. e-mail: marit.helgesen@nibr.no international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 329 norway is a scandinavian nation with a rather small population of 5.1 million. over the last 30 years the country has become increasingly wealthy as a result of its growing oil economy. norway is one of the so-called social democratic welfare states, as classified by esping-andersen (1990). the “social democratic” regime is characterized by its emphasis on solidarity and universalism, and the redistribution of resources among social groups, mainly through a progressive tax system and entitlements to vulnerable groups. this is a system of emancipation, not only from the market, but also from the family (esping-andersen, 2009). the result is a welfare regime with direct transfers to families and children and one which takes direct responsibility for the care of children, providing services that enable women with families to engage in paid work. while there may be lack of agreement on what policy measures are necessary in order to reduce social inequalities in health among families with children, researchers have suggested the following measures (östergen & barnekow, 2007; marmot, 2007; lundberg, 2009): • increasing quality of life and reducing social inequalities among children will demand resources. countries need to spend more resources on children and families to reduce inequalities. • it is necessary to carry out comprehensive, intersectoral action. • it is also necessary that comprehensive, intersectoral policies must be combined with targeted measures aimed at disadvantaged and vulnerable children and families. • macro-level policies, in terms of universal and generous welfare policies, will provide a social safety net and promote the health of children and families. there is an overall recognition that policies developed in other sectors than the health care sector play an important role for the health of the population. policies to keep children and families out of poverty and ill-health include: labour market policies; cash benefits; child care; access to education; participation in culture, sport, and recreation; access to decent housing and safe neighbourhoods; access to health care; and access to social services (ministry of labour and social inclusion, 2006). countries with a policy structure reflecting the social democratic welfare state regime are most likely to have policies in place to support families with children. a vital point seems to be the fact that family policies are an important feature of these regimes. policies like generous parental leave and affordable child care of good quality represent supports to dualearner families in general, but also provide single parents with a safety net that prevents them from falling into poverty (fosse, bull, burström, & frtitzell, 2014). these welfare states also are highly decentralized as municipalities provide most welfare services (sellers & lidstrøm, 2007). over several years norway has been ranked at the top of the united nations human development index. however, even though the overall picture of norway is a positive one, the country still has its challenges. social inequalities in health are increasing. for example, more children now than 10 years ago live in families with persistently low income (dahl, bergsli, & van der wel, 2014; fosse, 2013). these children are more exposed to air pollution in neighbourhoods and poorer air quality in their homes than other children; they take part in sports and other leisure activities less often than others; and their families are more isolated and considered to have less social capital than other families (kjelvik, 2012). this implies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 330 that relative health inequalities in norway are not smaller than in other european countries (popham, dibben, & bambra, 2013). the norwegian national government has recently developed policies to reduce health inequalities (directorate of health, 2010, 2012). most policies are to be implemented at the local level and municipalities are responsible for providing the overall bulk of welfare services. in this paper we ask whether or not municipalities are acting in concert with the central government in implementing policies to reduce social inequalities in health. does the national policy impact on the priorities of the municipalities regarding policies that distribute services for families with children? how do the municipalities act to reduce social inequalities and level the social gradient in health? we answer these questions by first presenting the new norwegian public health act, which provides the basis for policies to level the gradient among families with children. secondly, we look at the norwegian governance system. thirdly, we present recently gathered quantitative and qualitative data on local government implementation of such policies. lastly, we discuss the impact of the policies for families with children. the public health act a new public health act (pha)1 was introduced in norway january 1, 2012 (ministry of health and care services, 2011). the act establishes a new foundation for strengthening systematic public health work and developing policies and planning for societal development based on regional and local challenges and needs. the pha provides a broad basis for the coordination of public health work horizontally across various sectors and actors and vertically between authorities at local, regional and national levels. in the intention underlying the act it is stated that: only by integrating health and its social determinants as an aspect of all social and welfare development through intersectoral action, can good and equitable public health be achieved (ministry of health and care services, 2011). the pha underlines that health inequities arise from the societal conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age – the social determinants of health. furthermore, it is stated that social inequities in health form a pattern of a gradient throughout society. levelling up the gradient by action on the social determinants of health is a core public health objective and it is stated that fair distribution of societal resources is good public health policy. the principle of health in all policies (hiap) implies that equitable health systems are important to public health, but health inequities arise from societal factors beyond health care (leppo, ollila, peña, wismar, & cook, 2013; melkas, 2013). as stated by ståhl, wismar, ollila, lahtinen, and leppo (2006), the health in all policies principle addresses the effects on health across all policies such as agriculture, education, the environment, fiscal policies, housing, and transportation. it seeks to improve health and at the same time contribute to the well-being and the wealth of nations through structures, mechanisms, and actions planned and managed mainly by sectors other than health. this implies that the impact on health must be considered when policies and action are developed and implemented in all sectors. intersectoral action is regarded as key to reduce health inequities. the pha embraces the idea of “health in all policies”. in governance terms, one of its main features is that it 1 the norwegian term “folkehelse” has a wider connotation than the english term “public health” as it includes both traditional public health practice and health promotion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 331 places public health work as a whole-of-government and a whole-of-municipality responsibility rather than a responsibility for the health sector alone. in public health work the municipalities should involve all their sectors and all corresponding units providing services for the promotion of public health, not just their health sector. a particular focus is on having the local planning system serving to ensure that the overall aims of the policy are being implemented. at the national level the pha is coordinated with the planning and building act (pba) in which one of the goals is stated as: contribute to reduce social inequalities in health (pba § 1). this means that the broad determinant perspective in the pha is to be the foundation for local government planning (hofstad, 2011). an overview of public health and health determinants constitutes the starting point for evidence-based public health work. all local governments must develop an overview of the population’s health status and determinants that influence health and disease in the population. the overview should identify local health challenges and their determinants combined with a specific focus on social inequalities in health. based on local assessments of the public health challenges, public health policy development must be integrated into ongoing societal and spatial planning and administration processes in counties and municipalities, as well as part of other social development strategies. to initiate the overview and ensure coordination among local government units providing services, municipalities are advised to employ a public health coordinator. the norwegian governance system the norwegian governance system may be characterized as decentralized and multilevel (hanssen & helgesen, 2011). a total of 428 municipalities have the overall responsibility for welfare provision, including services such as preschools, schools, child care, and care for the elderly, social support and services, primary health care, culture, agriculture and social development in local areas; this includes the development of industry and jobs (tallarek, helgesen, & fosse, 2013). norwegian municipalities have a dual role. on the one hand, they are agents for the welfare state through their responsibility for implementing national policy goals. on the other hand, they form independent local democratic arenas that decide how to use national funding in accordance with local preferences and needs (baldersheim & ståhlberg, 2002). these needs vary to a great extent as norwegian municipalities strongly differ with regard to size – their populations range from 200 to 600,000, the average being a little over 10,000. they also vary regarding resources, geographical conditions, and infrastructure, as well as their political and administrative organization (ministry of local government and regional development, 2012). the term “multi-level” pertains to the changed role of municipalities in the centrallocal relationship. thus, a shift in governance can be observed towards a more egalitarian relation between actors across sectors and levels of formal authority. this may be considered as being necessary in order to reach political objectives, as the national government cannot reach its ambitions without taking the opinions and interests of actors at lower levels into consideration (sørensen & torfing, 2005, 2007). this implies that the traditional forms of hierarchical government have been decoupled. centralized leadership is no longer carried out through a detailed hierarchical system of sanctioned rule but rather is increasingly taking place through more indirect regulation with the assumption that actors are self-regulating (sørensen and gjelstrup, 2007). the relationship between institutions at different levels of government is held to be increasingly fluid, negotiated, and contextually defined. this trend international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 332 has often been denoted as multi-level governance, understood as a system of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several territorial tiers (hooge & marks, 2004). the governance practices, targets, procedures, steering instruments, and distributional mechanisms are illustrated in the figure below. figure 1: governance practices (osborne, 2010) governance practices targets procedures steering instruments distributional mechanisms public administration policy formulation and implementation (content) decision making, planning financial, legal regulations hierarchy, command, and control new public management management of resources and performance (results) strategic management, output control supervision and audit the market or market-like mechanisms new public governance negotiation of values, meanings, and relationships (processes) designing, framing, and guiding networks networking, negotiations networks and relational mechanisms these governance practices have changed over time. the national institutional context shapes the administrative framework and the organization of policies and services at all administrative levels. procedures involve decision-making and planning, while the steering instruments are mainly financial and legally binding. the distributional mechanisms are hierarchical command and control. as in many other countries, the principles often referred to as the “new public management” (npm) were introduced in norway during the 1980s. management by objective was institutionalized in the state-local relation by the implementation of the act on local and regional governments in 1992 (ramsdal & skorstad, 2004). however, national steering ambitions have not disappeared. as a consequence, the complexity in steering and regulation has increased. the governance practices of management and negotiation allow municipalities to interpret and translate policies to accommodate them to their own circumstances and priorities (helgesen & hofstad, 2014). in the pha, all three governance practices outlined above come into play. hierarchical governance is identified by more regulations and corresponding guidelines. management manifests itself as the audits performed by the national government, via the county governors. the county governor is responsible for overseeing that municipal plans are followed up. the municipal master plan is the committing document, which must comply with national laws and regulations. furthermore, the network governance mechanisms are obvious as municipalities must collaborate closely with regional government, other relevant actors, and accommodate intersectoral cooperation among local government units providing services. municipal income is provided through economic transfers, consisting of general grants from the national government, and carried out as a formula budget system. no earmarked funds international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 333 have been allocated to the municipalities for the implementation of the pha. some funding is available to target particular priorities but these are mostly for time limited projects and programs (helgesen et al., 2014). within this complex framework of multilevel procedures, local governments implement policies to promote health and level the social gradient. in the following we will discuss whether or not local governments establish policies and practices in concert with national policy ambitions. methods the article is based on a mixed methods approach, using surveys as well as qualitative interviews in the collection of data. two surveys of norwegian local governments were carried out. a baseline study was conducted in 2011, a few months before the pha was implemented. in 2011 there were 430 municipalities and the 15 partly self-governing urban districts of oslo. the survey was sent to the chief executive officers in municipalities and urban districts who either answered the survey themselves or passed it on to an appropriate employee to answer. a total of 361 municipalities and urban districts filled in the questionnaire, which gave a response rate of 87%. the smallest and most remote municipalities were the ones that in most cases did not respond (helgesen & hofstad, 2012). the second survey was carried out in spring 2014. as with the first, it was sent to chief executive officers in municipalities and urban districts of oslo, and 303 units responded. the response rate was 73%. again this time, the smallest and most remote municipalities did not respond to the survey. focus group interviews were conducted in six municipalities. inclusion criteria were that municipalities had worked to implement the pha policy – planning, intersectoral collaboration – and had a focus on social inequalities. among these, we created a convenience sample building on distance and time of travel to the nearest centre. the chosen municipalities had worked in partnership with their respective counties and they all described this as important in both raising consciousness about the importance of public health and having the support and the facilitating role of the county administration. when quotations from municipalities are provided, they are numbered subsequently from one to ten. findings the norwegian public health policy provided a main focus on comprehensive, intersectoral strategies several years before the pha was launched (fosse, 2009, 2012, 2013; strand & fosse, 2011). on this basis, it could be expected that the policies had been adopted by the municipalities. however, the 2011 study showed that the municipalities had only to a small extent adopted the principles of the new public health policy (helgesen & hofstad, 2012, 2014; tallarek et al., 2013). the findings identified a divide between the national policies and the strategies adopted at the municipal level to implement these public health policies. many municipalities focused mainly on measures related to lifestyle and health care. the health in all policies perspective was present only to a limited extent, as only a few municipalities had acknowledged the social determinants of health and had implemented intersectoral strategies to level the social gradient in health. at the time, few municipalities had started to develop health overviews. in the 2014 survey we wanted to check whether this was still the situation or if local governments now comply more with national policies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 334 planning and health overviews the norwegian public health institute provides the local governments with statistical data on the health situation of their citizens. variables on various determinants of health are included in the overviews, as for example the number of unemployed, number of singleparent households, and how many children and youth feel that they are bullied at school. municipalities are to complete these overviews with knowledge of local determinants that they, among others, gather from their service-providing agencies. this would typically include the number of children receiving child welfare, the status of their housing policies, how local governments consider the child environments according to schools, kindergartens, and outdoor recreation, and their need for professional employees in various fields of service provision. the overviews should be used as a basis for planning, and for the development of measures to meet documented health challenges in the population. such overviews were identified as important by the pha. when we asked municipalities in 2011, only 13% had developed an overview and by 2014, 24.5% had completed one. local governments are mandated to develop several plans. such plans are first and foremost the land use plan and the long-term plan on economic prioritization; the master plan, and the short-term action program (hofstad, 2011). also thematic plans can be used to put certain themes on the local government agendas. in land use plans, local governments allocate land to different aims according to local development, and this plan is legally binding (fallet & saglie, 2013). in 2011 we asked if the municipalities had integrated one public health theme or more into their local plans. how municipalities included certain themes in their plans in 2011 is shown in table 1. table 1 inclusion of public health themes in local government plans in 2011, in percentages with numbers in parentheses. n = 284 plan type / theme land use plan (%) long-term master plan (%) short-term action program (%) green and recreational areas 34 (95) 33 (93) 15 (43) universal design 21 (59) 34 ((95) 14 (43) housing 19 (55) 38 (109) 26 (75) child environments 13 (38) 48 (136) 27 (77) physical activity 10 (27) 40 (121) 22 (62) kindergartens 9 (26) 34 (97) 32 (84) green and recreational areas score the highest among the public health themes in the land use plans, while child environments scores highest in the master plans and kindergartens in the action program. we can, however, conclude that a plethora of themes are included in plans, and many of them are relevant to public health even though an overview of the local health situation had not been developed (helgesen & hofstad, 2012). in 2014 we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 335 asked how many municipalities had used the overview as a basis to establish priorities between policies, and 12% out of 282 answered yes to this question. about 12% had used the overview to prioritize in their action program and 4% in their master plan. in municipality 4 the public health coordinator spoke of the overview and planning in the following way: my approach to the overview will be based on my background as a land use planner. what do we have and what do we need? and then include it in plans and structure it [the knowledge and the prioritized measures derived from the knowledge]. and it involves all political committees, all minor municipal councils, the executive committee and the elected municipal council. (municipality 4) prioritized measures were, among others, directed at school dropouts, immigrant citizens, and children. in municipality 5 the focus group contended that: we are about to update our land use plan. it will be very exciting to see if we are able to anchor health promotion in the plan. …. it is to acknowledge that physical environments, the accommodation made by integrating it into the land use plan is important to, for instance, lower the threshold for physical activity. … short distances, walking distance, bicycle distance, and the possibility to establish a network of walking and bicycling roads to accommodate leisure as well as school and job travels [is important]. (municipality 5) to achieve these goals, local planning officers will need to have in-depth knowledge about their local area, as for instance where different groups of people such as older persons, children, and youth live and what are the smartest routes to get to schools and jobs. health in all policies require intersectoral collaboration at both the policy and service levels. the overview of health determinants and the integration of health in planning are not the only indicators of the extent of a local health in all policies approach. the extent to which municipalities have established intersectoral working groups is also vital. in 2011, 95% of 316 municipalities had established such groups. in 2014 the number of municipalities (n = 281) who answered yes to this question was reduced to 62%. furthermore, whether service-providing agencies are involved in such groups is an indicator of intersectoral collaboration. table 2 shows these trends. a third indicator is whether or not municipalities have employed a public health coordinator. in 2011, 74% of 347 municipalities had employed a coordinator. in 2014, 85% out of 307 municipalities had done so. the fourth indicator is the organizational location of the coordinator. this last indicator is displayed in table 3. even though there were fewer municipalities reporting on having established intersectoral working groups in 2014, there is an increase in the reported number of municipal service-providing agencies involved in such groups. this is displayed in table 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 336 table 2 municipal service-providing agencies involved in intersectoral work groups on health promotion, in percentages with numbers in parentheses. n = 2011:301; 2014:175 year / agency taking part 2011* 2014** child health centre/school health service 82 (259) 81 (142) culture/sports 74 (233) 68 (119) schools 69 (209) 75 (132) mental health 67 (201) 41 (71) ceo staff 56 (176) 69 (120) child care 36 (114) 41 (72) kindergartens 55 (174) 50 (88) plan/environment/technical 17 (50) 65 (114) *in 2011 respondents were asked to answer to a great extent, to some extent, not taking part, and do not know. those answering to a great and some extent are included. ** in 2014 respondents were asked to answer yes, no, do not know. both years more answers were possible. these findings give a picture of which service-providing units are involved in intersectoral working groups. for most units there is a decrease in intersectoral collaboration. for the schools, the ceo staff, and the planning department, there is an increase. for the planning unit there is also an increase in absolute terms. for both years the child health centres and the school health services are most involved in intersectoral work groups, as well as in culture, sports, and schools. these are the units most associated with health promotion in municipalities and the ones with the longest traditions of carrying out such work. schools are more involved in 2014 than in 2011, as are child care and kindergartens. the growth in the number of municipalities in which culture/sports take part are only relative and there is a substantial increase in the number of municipalities in which plan/environment and technical services are involved in intersectoral work groups. this is a positive finding according to the national policy goal of integrating health promotion into plans and it indicates that this is a process in progress. municipality 1 is in the forefront as the focus group and contends that: the leader of the planning agency is the most important health promotion worker in the municipality. (municipality 1) municipality 4 is in their fourth round of integrating health promotion in the action program: it is a common understanding among us working in the organization [that health promotion is to be integrated into plans] and it is anchored in the administration, with the chief executive officer, the mayor and assistant executive officers. health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 337 promotion is to be mirrored in the planning system, the master plan and action plans. (municipality 4) the second indicator for a hiap approach is whether or not the municipality has employed a public health coordinator. in 2004 a program was launched providing municipalities who entered into health promotion partnerships with the county councils with economic support. the funding was part of a partnership program implemented by the ministry of health and care services. municipalities were advised to use some of their funding to employ public health coordinators; 74% of municipalities had employed a coordinator in 2011 and 85% had done so by 2014. the hiap perspective on public policies highlights how health is to be a responsibility not only for the health sector, but also for the whole of local government and its administration. and it is to include health in plans as stated by the pha. therefore it is of importance in which department the public health coordinator is located. if the coordinator is located in the health sector, it is not possible to have the necessary overview on the totality of policies carried out in municipalities. an employee in the chief executive officer’s staff, on the other hand, could have such opportunities, as could an employee in the planning department as planning is to cover all services. table 3 the department in which the leader – the public health coordinator – works, in percentages with numbers in parentheses. n = 2011:209; 2014:237 year / department of nearest leader 2011 2014 chief executive officer 33,5 (70) 27 (65) culture 12 (26) 9 (22) health 46 (96) 36 (85) children and youth 5 (10) 2 (5) planning 3 (7) 7 (16) others 19 (44) more respondents answered this question in 2014 than in 2011, but there has not been any substantial growth in those answering they have employed a public health coordinator. nor has there been any growth within any department besides “others”. on the other hand, there has been a reduction of public health coordinators in all departments except for planning in which there is a 4% increase from 3% to 7%. most of the focus groups had views on the localization of the public health coordinator. in municipality 6 the focus group discussed the usefulness of having a public health coordinator: it is not decided where to locate it. but it is clear that it must be located centrally in the organization, it has to be a position that can bridge between services, because we are talking about the technical services, among others. so the coordinator must be more centrally located, than in a department unit. (municipality 6) in municipality 2 the public health coordinator position, also a full-time position, was recently established and the focus group reasoned about it the same way: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 338 my position is located within the chief executive officer’s staff, and my leader is the director of the department of children, youth and culture. organizational location is important when the political and administrative anchoring of public health is considered … to raise awareness and ensure responsibility. (municipality 2) to have responsibility for overview over services and at the same time combine service provision and strengthen local development was a goal in municipality 3: we reorganized last year and the public health coordinator was moved to a unit that works with local development. those working with local development, planning, environment, agriculture and public health were brought together in the same unit labeled the “local development unit”. …. we are to work with local development, planning and strategies – measures that cover the whole municipality. (municipality 3) social inequalities as municipalities are responsible for the provision of most services to individuals as well as the local area development there are opportunities for them to reduce social inequalities in health. in 2011 we asked if the reduction of social inequalities in health was a goal for the work in municipal service providing agencies. table 4 shows what agencies and in how many municipalities this was considered a goal. table 4 municipalities in which there was a goal of reducing social inequalities in health among units providing services, in percentages with number in parentheses. n = 269 service-providing agency percent consider this a goal child health center 43 (117) school health service 41 (110) social care 37 (99) youth health service 34 (91) kindergartens 31 (82) mental health 30 (81) schools 27 (74) child care 27 (74) sports 20 (53) culture 19 (52) gps 14 (39) plan/environment/technical 6 (16) as table 4 shows, respondents most often consider services provided by the child health centers to have the reduction of social inequalities as a goal. services providing health and social care also have quite high scores, even though no service scores more than 43%. schools and child care are not considered to a great extent to have the reduction of social inequalities as a goal, even though these are established goals in norwegian educational policies. this observation made us question the understanding of the term social inequalities held by municipalities. many municipalities consider that the sports, culture, primary health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 339 care, and planning/environment/technical departments do not have a role in reducing social inequalities in health. in 2014 the question was posed a bit differently: as you consider it, is the municipality capable of reducing social inequalities in health? of 272 municipalities 51% answered yes; 18% want to strengthen general welfare services; 34% will carry out targeted measures for vulnerable groups; and 43% will combine the two to accomplish this goal. in 2014 we were also interested in knowing if distribution or redistribution between social groups was prioritized. table 5 shows the distribution of responses. table 5 presence of priorities of distribution/redistribution of resources amongst social groups, in percentages with numbers in parentheses. n = 264 priorities in: municipalities the master plan 41 (109) agency activity plans 44 (116) proceedings for political decisions 38 (99) measures for health promotion and prevention 71 (187) in the master plan local governments outline their long-term economic priorities. our results indicate that local governments are slowly adopting the understanding that they are in fact capable of reducing social inequalities in health. the interviews support these findings, and indicate that municipalities implement health promotion measures, including universal as well as targeted measures to reduce social inequalities. in municipality 1 it was described as a challenge that the children of poor families did not take part in any sports activities. the members of the focus group reasoned as follows: we have families that are really poor. i think there are more inequalities in society than before. … to reduce inequalities you need to offer a plethora of activities for children and youth. not all can play football and to do biathlon is very expensive. … we do have a plethora of activities, but they are not free. (municipality 1) the members of the group concluded that this was not in the hands of the municipality, and that national agencies were responsible to help out the children in these families. in municipality 3 the members of the focus group were aware of poverty among children. their solution was to establish measures that could help families. the municipality had established a depot for sports equipment to be lent to children and their families. kindergartens and schools were to be used to give children an opportunity to try out different activities. the municipal focus on this was a result of the national program to combat poverty. the local branch of this program was perceived as involving hiap and intersectoral work and the children of mentally ill and drug addicted parents received special attention. in municipality 4 the focus group pointed to a project to engage all children and youth, especially children from poor families, in activities that were funded by the local government and voluntary organizations, including a sports organization. in municipality 6 the focus group had some other views: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 340 i think it is important to focus on the universalistic measures for children and youth. we need to economically support sports and other organizations and to keep our youth clubs. …. they are important for youth who don’t take part in organized activities and important social meeting places. … we also have three youth contacts [positions established to work according to the youth clubs]. (municipality 6) even though the municipality experienced financial cutbacks the youth clubs and contacts were prioritized. all municipalities were aware of a rather high level of school dropouts from upper secondary schools and that this had to be tackled at the lower levels in the primary and lower secondary schools. some of the municipalities expressed helplessness responding to this challenge, but municipality 6 had found their way around by working with youth in the youth clubs. in municipalities 3 and 5 the work to reduce dropouts were systematized and done in collaboration with the county council. they had started health promoting kindergarten and school programs to focus the inclusion of children and get parents to know each other. a special program of parental support was adopted and every employee working with children and youth was to know it and take part: we work universally and we also direct our work at vulnerable parents. …we have a parental support coordinator; we have counselors within mental health and drug/alcohol, in kindergartens, culture and schools. we reach out broadly to reach the actual parents. the thought is that we will make parents more resilient and able to take care of their children. this will contribute to a better community. (municipality 5) we have worked very close to kindergartens and they have started to conduct conversations with parents when children start in kindergartens. in the conversations they focus mental health, risk of violence, drug and alcohol. we see great changes in what we accomplish. … we have established robust transition procedures from kindergartens to schools. (municipality 3) funding before the implementation of the pha there was no earmarked funding from central government for health promotion at the local level. in 2011, when the first survey was sent, we therefore asked how local governments funded their health promotion activities. of 269 respondents that answered the question, 47% indicated they funded it, to a great extent, themselves. table 6 shows the percentage of municipalities receiving funding from the county councils and the regional offices for the ministry of health and care (regional state). table 6 the share of municipalities receiving funding from county councils and the state, in percentages with numbers in parentheses. n = 2011: 269; 2014: 441 year / funding agency 2011 2014 received funding from county councils 28 (75) 37 (162) received state funding 6 (17) 44 (195) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 341 as was described above, a partnership and funding program was established in 2004 and municipalities could enter into partnerships with county councils and receive some small funding. many used this to employ a public health coordinator. in municipality 5, the members of the focus group reasoned about project funding as follows: i have been a bit preoccupied by this project funding. it looks like it is a method used quite actively here… it has a lot of advantages but some challenges as well. one is: what do you do when the funding ends? the second is: how do you ensure that those involved in fact change their practice when projects end? (municipality 5) in municipality 6 the members of the focus group reflect on this: we fund a lot with project money. that is good for temporary programs and projects, but the challenge is to take it to ordinary operation. (municipality 6) in municipality 4, they are aware that project funding is not necessarily in line with the goals of the pha that state that the need for health promotion measures and interventions should be based in a defined municipality need for measures: we like to believe that, when we start new measures, they emanate from a defined need. often there is a national or regional program but we are more conscious that measures must be linked together so that it belongs [to an agency in the municipality administration] and not just pops up because oh, there was some money. (municipality 4) municipalities are not happy with this way of funding as it makes their health promotion policies and measures dependent on the interests of actors outside the municipality. it might jeopardize the municipal competence on health promotion as it is built up during the implementation of projects and often have to be transferred to other functions or even laid off when projects end (helgesen et al., 2014). discussion the aim of this paper has been to answer the question of how municipalities can reduce social inequalities and level the social gradient in health among families with children. norwegian national government policies have a strong focus on reducing social inequalities, and in the public health act this is an overall aim. according to the act, this should be achieved by intersectoral action at all administrative levels – a “health in all policies approach”. national steering mechanisms to achieve this are many, and laws and regulations as well as monitoring and funding are in use to make municipalities comply with national policy goals. county councils are given responsibility to guide municipalities within their area in the right direction but local governments have been given the most important role in implementing this ambitious policy. in the norwegian context this is quite logical, since the municipalities are responsible for the services that might contribute to achieving these aims: primary health care, social services, child day care, and primary and lower secondary school. nevertheless, the norwegian local government is embedded in a system of multilevel governance, which makes the implementation of the policy quite complex. when we look at the municipalities overall, it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 342 is obvious that they are in different places when it comes to implementing public health and health promotion policies. for some, the pha is long-standing and they have been working to include health in plans and establish intersectoral working groups for many years and the inclusion of health in plans has been well established. these municipalities have worked stepwise to reach their level of inclusion of health in plans and most of them have started by developing a theme plan on public health and health promotion policies and measures. over time, these policy areas are included in the general planning system of municipalities: the master plans, action programs, and spatial plans, in this order. including public health and health promotion in action programs is important to ensure that it is prioritized politically and even financially. still, the inclusion of health promotion in the spatial plan is the most important as it is the plan that is legally binding. this is a positive development as it anchors public health and health promotion within the decision-making realms of local government. whether or not the inclusion of health in plans is a result of intersectoral collaboration is not yet clear, and our preliminary analyses can only suggest a connection. our findings suggest that the dilemma of vertical budget control as opposed to horizontal and intersectoral collaboration is not solved in many municipalities. the responsibility for public health and health promotion is, to a large degree, still left to the health sector, including the public health coordinators (helgesen & hofstad, 2012, helgesen et al., 2014). from this location, very remote from the level where decisions are made, the public health coordinator is not in the position to have an overview of local determinants for health, or the municipal needs for public health measures. furthermore, placing these positions within the health services does not facilitate collaboration with other service-providing agencies in order to implement policies or include health in plans. to comply with the pha and develop their overview of local determinants, municipalities must consider employing a public health coordinator as well as locating this position in the municipal administrative organization. by localizing the coordinator with the chief executive leaders’ staff or in the staff of the planning agency, the opportunities to actually have a coordinating role increases, and would give the coordinator some authority in the municipal administrative organization. to have a specialized function to coordinate will also be important in order to fulfill obligations to complete the health overviews and collaborate with the county and actors from civil society. we argue that this is the most efficient way to include health in local government plans. to increase the priority of a health in all policies approach, there needs to be explicit support – and even political pressure – from the national government. our findings indicate that funding is important to incentivize municipalities to take on the new challenges in public health work. funding is always a strong incentive to prioritize health, and so far the funding to the municipalities following the public health act has been scarce. coordinated action at the national level, also expressed in coordinated funding, may be an important tool to initiate a process in which the municipalities give higher priority to developing a hiap approach to health promotion. the main aim of norwegian policy is to provide equal opportunities for all citizens to achieve the same level of health and well-being. given the large differences between the municipalities, this is not currently the case. our findings indicate that the municipalities meet the challenges of the new act differently. in particular, how they meet the expectations that they should contribute to levelling the social gradient in health seems to vary, especially how this problem is conceptualized. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 328–346 343 the norwegian welfare state is to a wide extent built on universal measures, the core of these is access for all and redistribution among social groups. marmot (2010), states that the principle of “proportionate universalism” is important to level the social gradient. according to marmot, the basic principle should be universal measures, but some groups will need extra attention and support. the health promoting kindergarten and schools projects, as well as projects to ensure access to sports activities are results of the national plan to combat poverty. the main aim of these policies is that they in the long run will prevent school drop out by focusing on the inclusion of all children and their parents in kindergartens, schools, and sports activities. these policies have been developed by several ministries but implemented locally by municipalities as projects. the measures combine universal and targeted strategies and they also meet the health equity principle in the pha. there seems to be agreement in the municipalities on this principle, but there also seems to be different sources of funding for the different types of services. while the regular, universal services are funded on a permanent basis, the services aimed at improving the situation for disadvantaged groups are targeted, time limited, and often project funded. this means that the municipalities have to “run after the funding” which come from many different sources. to secure sustainability and ensure that the objectives of levelling the social gradient are met, measures addressing the social determinants of health should be provided with long-term, stable funding. conclusion municipalities have a plethora of possibilities to reduce social inequalities and level the social gradient in health for children and families. this can be done first and foremost by making an overview of the health and living conditions of their citizens, and including this overview in planning and decision-making, thus using their service-providing agencies to assure universal and high quality 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(2013). reducing social inequalities in health in norway: concerted action at state and local levels? health policy, 113(3), 228–235. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2012-201525 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2007.00374.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230625006 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2010.492210 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2013.09.019 how can local governments level the social gradient in health among families with children? the case of norway the public health act the norwegian governance system methods findings planning and health overviews health in all policies require intersectoral collaboration at both the policy and service levels. the overview of health determinants and the integration of health in planning are not the only indicators of the extent of a local health in all policies... the extent to which municipalities have established intersectoral working groups is also vital. in 2011, 95% of 316 municipalities had established such groups. in 2014 the number of municipalities (n = 281) who answered yes to this question was reduce... social inequalities funding discussion conclusion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 the spectrum of visibility: youth experiences of marginalization and homelessness jane robson, lynda m. ashbourne, and kevin de leon abstract: in this paper, we present some of the results of a youth participatory action research (y-par) project that involved youth aged 16 to 20 who reported being marginalized in their community, primarily due to a lack of stable or consistent housing. participants met in weekly group meetings to explore the influences of structural violence on their lives. the participants used arts-based methods to express their experiences of inclusion and exclusion, the influences of structural violence in their lives, and how they see those factors contributing to their ability to influence their own visibility in their communities. themes in their visual arts projects highlighted aspects of visibility of marginalized youth. youth participants described visibility as both a positive and negative attribute, depending on the youth’s need for resources or support. we include examples of the participants’ arts projects to demonstrate these themes and descriptions. keywords: structural violence, homelessness, youth, arts-based research, youth participatory action research jane robson is a phd candidate in the department of family relations & applied nutrition, university of guelph, 50 stone rd. e., guelph, on n1g 2w1. e-mail: robson@uoguelph.ca lynda m. ashbourne, phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of family relations & applied nutrition at the university of guelph, 50 stone rd. e., guelph, on n1g 2w1. e-mail: lashbour@uoguelph.ca kevin de leon is a master’s student in the department of family relations & applied nutrition, university of guelph, 50 stone rd. e., guelph, on n1g 2w1. e-mail: kdeleon@uoguelph.ca acknowledgements: this project was supported with funding from the canadian institutes of health research. this paper is part of the cihr team grant “promoting health through collaborative engagement with youth in canada: overcoming, resisting, and preventing structural violence” conducted under the leadership of dr. helene berman, western university. a full list of team members can be found at www.voicesagainstviolence.ca. this paper is made possible through the contributions of the six youth who participated in the group discussions and arts-based productions. mailto:robson@uoguelph.ca mailto:lashbour@uoguelph.ca mailto:kdeleon@uoguelph.ca http://www.voicesagainstviolence.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 105 this youth participatory action research (y-par) project involved youth aged 16 to 20 who reported experiences of marginalization related to inconsistent or unstable housing. a lack of consistent or stable housing can be identified by accommodations that lack security of tenure, couch surfing, living temporarily with others, transitional or interim housing, living temporarily in institutional contexts, or living without permanent housing arrangements (see examples in gaetz, donaldson, richter, & gulliver, 2013). the presented feedback explores youth experiences of visibility and invisibility. the youth reported that they were most visible when they were acknowledged in the community, were able to access support, or felt safe. they felt least visible when they were not acknowledged, were unable to access support, or did not feel safe. the youth explained that support systems, community networks, and personal resourcefulness were factors that they felt youth could control to make choices about when and how they wanted to be visible in the community. the participants portrayed the media, socioeconomic class, financial resources, police, city planning, and geography/space in urban areas as factors that they could not control and that influenced the degree to which they felt exposed, safe, or unsafe. this small group project was part of a larger research program 1 exploring the everyday experiences of diverse groups of young people in canada in relation to the implicit and explicit influences of structural violence, how it affects their health and wellbeing, and what strategies they use to resist it. the primary focus of this paper is visibility, which was one of the main themes that emerged in visual artwork and group discussions. literature review structural violence refers to those social and institutional practices that produce and maintain pervasive and enduring inequalities between groups of people (deverteuil, 2015; gil, 1999), obstruct persons from accessing resources and reaching their full potential (galtung, 1990) and violate human rights (jeong, 2008). understanding the influences of such systemic oppression requires attending to subtle patterns of exclusion and marginalization. these subtleties manifest themselves through language, religion, ideology, gender, class, ethnicity, and other markers of social identity. systemic inequalities between groups can serve to normalize this violence, erasing its political and social origins so it is seen as an inevitable and natural consequence of individual choices or characteristics (gatlung, 1990). this study’s construction of structural violence is derived from these ideas, and suggests that the imposition of gendered, class-based, or racialized social hierarchies, in various contexts and formations, serves to produce violence that socially and culturally marginalizes individuals’ opportunities for emotional and physical well-being. although the number of homeless individuals is difficult to ascertain, it is estimated by the homelessness partnering secretariat of canada that 150,000 to 300,000 individuals in canada experience homelessness every year. further, it is estimated that youth make up 20% of 1 promoting health through collaborative engagement with youth in canada: overcoming, resisting and preventing structural violence (pi dr. helene berman), renamed “voices against violence” by our national youth advisory board, is funded by canadian institutes of health research (2011-2016). see website at www.voicesagainstviolence.ca. http://www.voicesagainstviolence.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 106 that population (gaetz, donaldson, richter & gulliver, 2013). literature on youth who have experiences of unstable or inconsistent housing is largely focused on the health and social consequences of unstable housing, drug and alcohol misuse (boivin, roy, haley, & galbaud du fort, 2005; hwang, 2001), and young people’s participation in frequent at-risk behaviours (karabanow, 2010) such as criminal or risky sexual activities (votta & manion, 2004). youth who are deemed to be at risk or engaging in risky behavior are often seen as the authors of their own misfortune (see kidd, 2007). communities across canada continue to be challenged by the increasing number of individuals who experience inconsistent and unstable housing (gaetz, 2013). in ontario, the provincial government has attempted to move toward long-term approaches to homelessness rather than focusing on short-term emergency responses that have proven to be difficult to sustain. some of the more recent initiatives developed in ontario include the expert advisory panel on homelessness, which provides recommendations to reduce ongoing and chronic homelessness; the community homelessness prevention initiative, which grants increased funding to municipalities for homelessness programming; and the canada-ontario investment in affordable housing agreement (iah), which contributes to the development and maintenance of numerous affordable housing units (ontario poverty reduction strategy, 2014). although these initiatives are beginning to shift policy and practices, researchers suggest that there is still a need for youth-focused prevention strategies. such proposed strategies include: multifaceted assessments in youth integrated systems (gaetz, 2013); outreach programs and funding rooted in communities, including specialized services for subsets of the population (springer, lum, & roswell, 2013); and enhanced transitional programming for youth exiting institutional care (nichols, 2013). gaetz (2004) suggested that one of the most likely experiences that youth with unstable housing will encounter is social exclusion. social exclusion may occur across several domains such as housing, shelter (protection from the elements), employment, or education. youth may be denied participation in economic, social, or cultural aspects of society (arthurson, 2003; robinson, 2013; silver & miller, 2003), which negatively affects their quality of life and wellbeing (levitas et al., 2007). youth who have experienced inconsistent or unstable housing may undergo a cumulative process of exclusion, which can result from a lack of ongoing care and nurturing relationships (kelly & caputo, 2007) and intensifies as youth are exposed to the risks that accompany unstable housing. their lives often take place in a public environment in which their movements are constrained and they have limited opportunities to control the people, places, or activities that surround them (gaetz, 2004). consequently, the subsistence strategies they utilize may directly impact the risks that they are exposed to on a day-to-day basis, and thus their immediate safety and well-being (see frankish, hwang, & quantz, 2005). these strategies can cause youth to disengage from mainstream services (baron, 2001) or reject assistance from others (kelly & caputo, 2007). other researchers have explored the experiences of children and youth when accessing social service delivery systems. ungar (2006) found that these children and youth go through a dual process of navigating and negotiating in order to locate resources and services. there is little research regarding the influence of power, marginalization, or personal agency of the children and youth accessing social services; rather, some have suggested that the main focus has been on intervention and outcomes (karabanow, 2010; ungar, 2005). ungar (2005) argues that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 107 researchers need to spend more time engaging with the youth who access these services, and considering how their personal agency influences their ability to access social resources and supports. this could provide an opportunity to explore how at-risk youth can mobilize resources to become resilient in their communities and manage experiences of unstable housing. current study the current study is part of a larger national research team project utilizing youth participatory action research (y-par) methods to examine the ways in which structural violence is woven into the everyday lives of young people. across the larger team project, various y-par groups were conducted with diverse groups of marginalized youth. in order to extend our knowledge of youth who are deemed to be at risk of victimization, lack of access to services, or other forms of marginalization and exclusion due to their experience of homelessness and poverty, the current study examines the day-to-day influences of structural violence in collaboration with young people who have experienced unstable and inconsistent housing. during this research project, we invited the youth participants to reflect on how they understand structural violence, its influences in their lives, and how they might respond to these influences. disclosure i, first author, am a white female graduate student in my late 20s who lives in stable housing, attends university, and works as an attachment and trauma family therapist in the same community as our participants. i, second author, am a white academic researcher and family therapist in my 50s, and a co-investigator in the larger research project team. while i have worked with diverse marginalized and mainstream client populations in rural and urban settings as a family therapist, my relative privilege and age means that i am quite different from these participants. i served primarily in an advisory capacity during data collection and analysis, although i also attended one meeting in order that the participants would have a sense of who i was as a person rather than simply as a “removed researcher”. i, third author, am an asiancanadian male in my late 20s who lives in stable housing and attends university in the same community as our participants. method participatory action research (par) is grounded in the ideas that the world is transformable, and that people can actively participate in the world as change agents (flicker et al., 2008). par research recognizes the power of collaboratively produced knowledge (cahill, 2007), where participants are viewed as knowledge experts, and their lives and experiences are integral to shaping questions and framing interpretations of the research (torre & fine, 2006). more specifically, for the purpose of this study we used y-par, which encourages youth engagement in social research (ozanne & saatciogul, 2008), gives voice to youth concerns (cammarato & fine, 2008), and invites social action (cahill, 2007; newbury & hoskins, 2012; powers & allaman 2012), in an attempt to engage with individuals whose lives are directly affected by the issues under study (bradbury & reason, 2003). rather than conducting research “on youth”, y-par allows us to conduct research “with youth” — co-researching local and contextualized knowledge, and considering what change might follow from enhanced critical consciousness. y-par is a tool that generates youth leadership and youth enthusiasm for social justice and community change (cammarato & fine, 2008). this methodology enables space for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 108 critical reflection and has empowering potential that may contribute to change either at the individual level or at broader structural and social levels. after obtaining institutional research ethics approval from the university of guelph, we recruited a total of 13 youth between the ages of 16 and 24 years for this arts-based y-par study in a mid-sized urban centre in south-central ontario, canada (population approximately 120,000). the inclusion criteria for participating in the project were that the youth had to be 16 to 24 years old and report experiences of unstable or inconsistent housing. our recruitment methods included meeting with local community partners who provide direct services to young persons, such as youth shelters, alternative education programs, and drop-in centres. these community partners posted recruitment posters at their agencies, and some agencies allowed us to be on-site during programming in order to speak with youth. in our first meeting with the youth we explained the purpose of the project, shared various ideas and definitions regarding structural violence, and answered the youth’s questions about the project. not all of the recruited youth were able to continue to attend the research group, and the final group comprised six persons, three females and three males2, ranging in age from 16 to 20 years. the youth who participated in this project stated that they had experiences of housing instability or homelessness ranging from direct personal experience to supporting someone else in their life through an experience of inconsistent or unstable housing. these participants were also socially and economically disadvantaged. for example, all of the youth participants were receiving supports at the time of the research group or in the recent past from child welfare agencies, food banks, local shelters, and youth drop-in centres. experience of inadequate housing was self-identified as among the most salient characteristics of these youth at the time of recruitment. at the time of the research project, two of the participants were finishing high school, two had dropped out of high school, and two were in alternative education programs. they reported living arrangements at the time of the group that included living at home with their parents, renting space, and living in youth shelters. sexual orientation and ethnicity or racialized identity were not explicitly noted by participants at the time of recruitment. attendance at weekly group meetings over the course of two and a half months was somewhat sporadic and not all the youth were able to attend all the sessions. we believe that this inconsistent attendance reflected some of the complexity and uncertainty in these participants’ daily lives (see gaetz et al., 2013 for examples). the youth did not all have phones or someone else in their living space to wake them up in the morning. the participants attended weekly three-hour y-par sessions for a period of ten weeks co-facilitated by the first and third authors. participants were paid $10 an hour ($30 a session) at 2 although it was not explicitly noted by the youth participating in this project, the literature suggests that the gender ratio of youth with a lack of stable or consistent housing is roughly two males on the street for every female (o’grady & gaetz, 2009) and that aboriginal youth (belanger, weasel head, & awosoga, 2012: higgitt et al., 2003) as well as lesbian, gay, and transgendered youth (abramovich, 2012) are more likely to have unstable or inconsistent housing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 109 the end of each group session attended. the y-par sessions typically began with a check-in, and preliminary discussion about topic areas determined by group members’ recent experiences of structural violence. the youth and facilitators used the original definitions of structural violence discussed in the introductory meeting to collectively brainstorm ideas regarding structural violence, how it is defined, and in what ways it is present in the youth’s lives. these conversations would build on discussions from previous meetings and preliminary ideas regarding structural violence that were introduced in the first group meeting by the group facilitators. discussion and arts-based activities followed from these topic areas. the arts-based activities drew from the interests of the participants, and the group worked together to brainstorm two or three options before selecting what they wanted to do. these discussions were conducted collaboratively in order to generate youth leadership and enthusiasm (cammarato & fine, 2008). during these sessions, group facilitators and participants made notes of themes, quotes, or other information that emerged; incorporated multiple voices in the data; and provided space to acknowledge that “no one voice can be characterized by one perspective” (newbury & hoskins, 2008, p. 228). the group facilitators and youth checked in with each other following group conversations to discuss whether all of their views were being expressed, whether the individuals felt their ideas were being captured, and whether the focus of the group was fitting with the youths’ own experiences. these check-ins served to ensure that the knowledge generated and documented was collaboratively produced (cahill, 2007). in the results section, we present the participants’ artistic expressions and reflective comments made during group discussions, as recorded in writing by facilitators and youth participants during each meeting. these represent the participants’ observations of structural violence, marginalization, the effects of inconsistent or unstable housing, and their experiences of various degrees of visibility in their communities. the three authors of this paper selected the themes and observations by reviewing all of the artwork and group notes after the group had finished. member-checking occurred in the form of ongoing checking with participants during the course of group meetings, including conversations about how they would like their ideas and thoughts captured in writing and their artwork presented. we were unsuccessful at memberchecking after the group meetings were completed. we used various means to try and contact the youth to discuss the selected themes but did not hear back from them after numerous attempts. it was evident while the group was wrapping up that following up might be difficult due to complexities such as hospitalization, residential treatment programs, and a general lack of access to the internet. these barriers are addressed in our limitations section. the presented findings speak to the notion of visibility, a prominent theme proposed by participants in art production and dialogue. pseudonyms are used throughout to denote participants, with the exception of devin, who explicitly requested that his name be included with his quotations, artwork and photos. the youth used a variety of arts-based methods in examining their experiences and considering their social responses. the methods included painting, collages, drawing, comic strips, community mapping, self-portraits, and mask-making. these activities were used in a variety of ways to facilitate reflection on the influences of structural violence and marginalization, and to express personal life-experiences. drawing comic strips provided an introduction to ideas related to structural violence and participants’ experiences, and allowed participants to explore the political climate of their experiences. producing collages about structural violence in the community, especially as related to homelessness, allowed an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 110 exploration and expression of the varied dimensions of these influences. creating paintings on the theme of the roots of structural violence allowed the youth to illustrate what systems contribute to marginalization and exclusion, and how these influences might be seen in society. the youth also completed maps using the technique of community mapping, a data collection and communication tool based on constructing maps of different neighbourhoods in order to identify capacities, abilities, gaps, and assets (amsden & ao, 2003; amsden & vanwynsberghe, 2005). the youth used these community maps to explore and describe spaces they experience as safe or unsafe, as well as how they experience their own visibility in the community. selfportraits provided expression of how individuals are affected by structural violence. the multiple faces of structural violence were expressed through mask-making. a photovoice project was the final arts-based project decided upon by the youth participants. photovoice is a tool used to support participants in capturing their experiences through photographs. using this mode of observation and expression encourages participants to reflect on community concerns or strengths, day-to-day lived experiences of marginalization, and influences of structural violence; it also promotes critical knowledge and dialogue regarding community issues (catalani & minkler, 2010). this methodology has been used with a range of populations who have experiences with marginalization (castleden & garvin, 2008; graziano, 2004; harley, hunn, ellio, & canfield, 2015;wang, cash, & powers, 2000) and is particularly useful for youth-based research because it is not constrained or mediated by language and is often more attuned to youth culture (rudkin & davis, 2007). this methodology enables dialogue that reaches more nuanced aspects of experience, which may not be accessed through direct questioning (leitch, 2006). in photovoice, participants are taught how to use cameras creatively and usually work together to generate a theme to be the focus of their photos (newbury & hoskins, 2008). in this project, each youth collaborator was given a camera and some basic photography training, and spent three weeks taking photos in the community. the group decided to take photos related to the common themes that were contained in the group discussions over the course of earlier research meetings. the participants chose to take pictures that they felt represented their understanding of structural violence, homelessness, and class. these photos were brought back to the group, discussed, and organized into a photovoice presentation. the group worked together to decide which photos to include in the photovoice project, based on the messages the group members felt the photos conveyed and how these messages fitted into the overall presentation. typically, the final step of photovoice involves sharing the photos or presentation with decision-makers, community members, or policymakers in the hopes of influencing social change (see carleson, engebretson, & chamberlin, 2006; wilson et al., 2007). the youth in this group shared an interest in having their presentation viewed by city council, in schools, by social service employees (such as social workers or probation officers), and by decision-makers in the community. results the youth involved in this group pointed to their own experiences of visibility as evidencing structural inequities and social marginalization. they made a distinction between being “actually seen” versus being “looked through” by others in the community. they described institutional practices that rendered them invisible and did not take their needs and current context into consideration. they pointed to the ways in which they attempt to manage their visibility by presenting themselves in certain ways and their awareness of how media and social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 111 norms influence how others see them. in addition, these youth described their own acts of resistance to being rendered invisible by making connections with others to build on their own resources. being “actually seen” or “looked through” the participants in this group described visibility as an important aspect of experiencing or witnessing homelessness. they described a spectrum of visibility that included feeling safe or feeling unsafe based on the positive or negative gaze of others. these youth defined visibility as being “actually seen” rather than “looked through.” devin talked about his experiences of homelessness and how many people would walk by him on the street as if he did not exist. he shared with the group that he wanted to tell everyone walking by him, “don’t look through me. i am here. treat me like a person, not an animal.” experiences of visibility were differentiated by these youth based on how, when, and whether they felt they were acknowledged in interactions with others in the community. they described experiences of sitting on the sidewalks downtown and having individuals they did not know make some sort of visual contact (eye contact, waving) or verbal contact (saying hello, asking them to move). the participants stated that they felt most visible when they initiated contact with others to gain support and were successful in obtaining a positive response. in comparison, they suggested that they felt least visible when people on the street looked at them but did not appear to register their presence, or looked past them without changing their demeanour. devin described sitting on the street and reaching out to an adult passing by for help. he stated that he was told to get a job, get off the streets, and to move out of the way. he explained that he felt insignificant in the face of this response, and that this was a form of negative visibility because, although he had reached out to a stranger, he was no further ahead in obtaining support. the participants in this study stated that they did not always have a choice regarding whether they were visible or invisible in their communities. being visible could lead to being exposed or unsafe; there were times that they did not necessarily want to be seen. heather gave the example of having difficulty finding a place to stay cool on a hot summer day. she explained that she had stepped inside a store to cool off but immediately after entering the store she was asked to leave by the owner. heather felt that she was asked to leave because of her clothing, and how she looked, and felt that the store owner may have guessed that she wasn’t able to purchase anything in the store. in terms of safety, youth described how challenging it was to find a safe space during the day. the youth discussed numerous public spaces such as a few particular parks downtown, and described how they had no control of who came in or out of such spaces, creating a sense of unpredictability regarding their own safety. the participants suggested that, because of their clothing, how they looked that day (e.g., if they were able to shower), or where they passed time in the community (e.g., downtown or at a drop-in centre), youth who were experiencing unstable or inconsistent housing were often assumed to be of a lower class than others. heather talked about having to hang out downtown during the day and that there were always “creepy men and weirdos” approaching her. she talked about times when men downtown had approached her asking for drugs or trying to befriend her or convince her to use drugs with them. grace suggested that when people judged that she was of a different — lower — class, either from conversation or appearance, they would treat her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 112 differently. she gave an example of a woman with children crossing the street rather than walking past her on the street. in the comic shown in figure 1, heather drew two sections: individuals who consider themselves part of a higher class, and individuals who consider themselves part of a lower class. she separates these two types of classes and suggests that those who see themselves as higher class ignore and discriminate against those they see as lower class. she describes individuals who are a part of the lower class as more inclined to support one another by sharing resources. figure 1. “comic of experiences of violence”. how youth are seen by institutions these participants described institutions as having significant influence on their experiences of visibility and marginalization. they discussed how being involved with systems such as probation, the children’s aid society, the education system, shelter systems, or various levels of government had made them realize how exclusion or feeling invisible had become “normal, it’s everywhere and no one seems to be doing anything about it” (james). the group provided examples of these systems making them feel invisible, such as probation workers forgetting to call to check in regarding a curfew (kris), or a social worker at the children’s aid society calling heather by the wrong name after years of being her case worker. the youth described structural violence as “the people in power making decisions” (grace) with “different priorities” (kris) than their own. the youth gave examples of the mayor and city council making a decision to move the bus terminal away from downtown to get rid of the “dirty downtownies” (heather) who hung around the bus terminal, who were described to be youth who had experiences of unstable or inconsistent housing. the youth described the implications of these decisions on their visibility in the community. devin suggested that by moving the bus terminal away from downtown, community members wouldn’t have exposure to youth who are homeless, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 113 and this could lead them to believe it was not a problem or that they did not need to help. james expressed his frustration at the messages being given by city decision-makers, and there was a general consensus that these efforts could be causing the issue of unstable housing to be invisible to community members. systems, such as the city, were described by youth participants as being at the root of structural violence (see figure 2). grace stated, “i am not sure i even notice it anymore, it’s ingrained in our society.” the group members discussed how social service systems or the government “have the power to be selective about bringing attention to only certain kinds of structural violence” (grace) and that “it’s not about us, that’s not as important” (kris). they talked about how challenging it was to obtain food or shelter and their frustration over the fact that, to their knowledge, these issues weren’t ever the focus of the mayor or city decisionmakers. kris described his ongoing interactions with his probation officer, and suggested that, “it’s not natural, they are paid to look into me. so i know they don’t care about me or what i do. they don’t hear me.” the youth agreed that these systems interacted with them like they were “just another face” (lauren) or “just another number on their caseload” (james). heather was sick with a chest infection for part of the group, and when attempting to reach her social worker during a group break in order to get her health card to fill her prescription, she was redirected four times to four different workers and the call was eventually disconnected at the other end. the participants agreed with each other that this was a typical chain of events and that, even after being in care for over a decade, the social worker “doesn’t even know us or remember us” (heather). devin gave an example of his teacher suggesting that to live a healthier lifestyle he should start going to the gym. he explained, “i don’t even know where i am going to sleep tonight, so jumping on a treadmill didn’t seem important” (devin). he described his frustration with the fact that a teacher could be so out of touch with a student’s needs or background, and how misunderstood he felt during this conversation. the youth talked about systems, such as the shelters, following procedures and protocols that prevent youth from feeling visible or able to control their day-to-day activities. heather, who was living in a youth shelter for the duration of the group, talked about how young people were not allowed inside the shelter during the day. she expressed her frustration about having to be gone in the day by 9 a.m., and most public places not opening until 10 or 11. she described “freezing to death” sitting outside during the winter, waiting for stores or the mall to open after leaving the shelter in the morning. the youth talked about how the shelter system may be one of the reasons that “homeless people get into trouble, what else are they supposed to do during the day” (devin). heather stated, “instead of having a home, it’s [the shelter is] just a place that people let you sleep at night.” she expressed her frustration with explaining this situation to the workers at the shelter and being told that it is a policy that youth cannot be inside during the day and there is nothing the workers can do about it. the youth expressed how these sorts of procedures or protocols caused youth to feel less visible, and to generalize that any youth staying in shelters were not trustworthy enough to be indoors during the day. heather asked, “what if i was different? and why doesn’t that matter?” the youth discussed how they should have an opportunity to prove themselves before being made to feel invisible by having to stay outdoors all day because of policy or protocols. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 114 figure 2. “the roots of structural violence”. the youth also described how certain agencies made them feel visible and like they belonged. the youth described one particular community centre downtown, where the staff knew them and where they were welcomed upon entering. grace discussed how this was a place that staff supported you even though they were aware of your circumstance (unstable housing, on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 115 streets, recovering from addiction). heather talked about how this particular centre protected youth, by doing “more than they have to.” devin stated that when he was living on the streets a worker gave him permission to use the centre’s phone number as his contact information. he would attend the centre when he could and the staff would pass along voice messages from his family, case workers, or landlords of potential apartments. the youth discussed how having someone who knows your name, or recalls what you had previously told them and asks about it, can make youth feel safe and appreciated. youth presenting and resisting visibility these youth discussed how their sense of being visible could influence their ability to make connections to obtain support. for example, they described ways that they could influence their visibility by being selective about where they chose to stay, what they chose to wear, or how they presented themselves in a particular situation. in times of need, they suggested that their choices about presentation could elicit support such as food or shelter from community members or professionals, or these choices could lead to upheaval, fights, or judgement. devin suggested that, even though they could make choices about how to present themselves, there was always a sense of unpredictability when initiating an association with others. for example, devin stated that when he was sleeping on the street he got to know one of the police officers that worked nights. he said that he and the police officer would chat and ended up getting along fairly well. devin further explained that, because of this, eventually the police officer told him how to “rotate locations.” he said that he learned that he was able to sleep in certain areas on certain nights without being monitored or told to relocate by the police. however, he acknowledged that the degree of agency to influence his visibility was still limited. the police officer could still arbitrarily decide to change the monitoring schedule or a community member could call in a complaint about someone sleeping in a public place. the youth also described not always having choices about being visible. heather gave an example of staying on the floor at a “drug house” because she was did not have stable housing at the time and a friend of hers was staying there. heather stated that one of the nights she was staying at the home there was a police raid, and she was arrested with the other individuals in the home. heather described having to stay in jail overnight. she explained that although she had made the choice to sleep at the drug house, she had no choice about being arrested and “lumped in” with the individuals in the home dealing or using drugs. heather stated that, in this circumstance, she would have resisted visibility if possible, but based on the fact that she was sleeping on the floor in the home, the police assumed her to be “just like the rest.” devin suggested that if heather had a private apartment to sleep in, she wouldn’t have to worry about her own visibility because she could choose who would be welcome in her apartment and would not have to associate with individuals involved with drugs. these participants also suggested that other youth taught them about choosing their visibility levels by providing information and resources regarding community centres, or certain shelters in the community that were more welcoming, understanding, and staffed by people who “want to help, that can help you make change” (devin). as suggested by the image presented in the final photovoice photo (figure 3), the youth stated that “there’s safety in numbers” when connecting with others who have similar experiences of unstable housing who can “teach you where to eat, where to sleep, and what to do” (devin). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 116 figure 3. “safety in numbers”. the youth participants explained that they could sometimes choose when to participate in the support systems they deemed helpful or when to access resources. grace gave the example of the police attending a community centre looking for drugs, or drug dealers. she heard about what had happened through a friend and made a choice to stay away from that particular centre until things had settled down. she described feeling personally resourceful in making that decision and staying away so she didn’t get associated with the individuals causing problems. in this case, grace made a choice not to be visible at the community centre. the participants explained that over time they would learn how to be resourceful on the street. devin stated, “at first it was hard, i was cold, i couldn’t find food but after a while i got used to it. you learn where to sleep. you learn where you can get food.” he explained that, over time, he learned to keep a backpack, water bottle, and blanket ready at all times, in case he chose to leave the shelter at the last minute or if there was trouble and he needed to get away. although devin could not control when trouble might arise at the shelter, he did describe choosing to be prepared to become less visible if necessary. he drew a self-portrait of structural violence (figure 4) in which he stood alone in the cold with a backpack, water bottle, and blanket beside him. he explained that he didn’t know in this instance where the road was going and that, as a person who experienced homelessness, he never knew where the road was going. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 117 figure 4. “self portrait of structural violence”. captions read, “that’s some nice stuff you have there!” and, “it’s so cold and dangerous here. i should get out of here!” the directional signs say “home” and “shelter”. the participants identified the media as another structure that influences their visibility and the ways that they should be visible. james suggested that social media shapes the stories society hears about youth, and can influence which stories are most commonly shared. this, in turn, influences how individuals choose to present themselves. kris added that the media reinforces stereotypes about how youth should look. for example, grace pointed to female teenagers in the media being skinny, blonde, and wearing nice clothing. these youth explained that this set a standard regarding how youth should look and present themselves in society, which wasn’t always attainable for them due to a lack of resources, leading to youth feeling invisible or unsafe. heather talked about how she could not afford to wear the clothes presented in the media, and other group members talked about how difficult it was to maintain good hygiene when experiencing unstable or inconsistent housing. in the photovoice presentation, the participants used the following photo (figure 5) and description to exemplify how they saw media influencing their visibility. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 118 figure 5. “the media influences the general population”. discussion the participants in this y-par group, sharing experiences of unstable or inconsistent housing, provided us with an instructive picture of how they believe that they are “actually seen” or “looked through” by others when they are in the street; their experience of being seen by institutions and systems in certain ways that are reflected in policies and protocols; and how they see themselves presenting or resisting visibility in order to promote their own well-being and safety. the artwork and discussions that these youth collectively produced provides us with direction for further action in this area and for the education of those who interact with youth in their day-to-day work. these youth talked about how beneficial it would be for young people who attend agencies such as ontario works or the children’s aid society to provide a workshop regarding how services can support youth who are experiencing marginalization. they also suggested that more attention should be paid to urban spaces and institutional practices that can serve to exclude persons and exacerbate risk to personal safety. the y-par participants suggested that city decision-makers could spend time in some of these urban spaces, and consult with the youth who use these spaces regarding the impact of making changes to them. these youth provided examples of social exclusion (gaetz, 2004) in their feelings of visibility (or invisibility) in their communities. in particular, they pointed to the gaze of others, as well as specific institutional practices that served to exclude them. although gaetz (2004) described a cumulative process of exclusion, in which youth implemented subsistence strategies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 119 that increased their levels of risk over time, the youth participating in this study described becoming progressively more “street savvy”. they indicated that they were thus able to make choices that enhanced and increased their levels of safety, such as learning where to obtain food on weekends or what areas of downtown to stay away from at certain times. these youth described learning from others, over time and through repeated experiences of having unstable housing, about how to exercise control over the choices they were making in regards to how they presented themselves, where they spent their time, whom they associated with, and what kind of relationships they formed. in contrast to a narrative suggesting that “at-risk” youth put themselves at more risk by associating with the “wrong crowd” or by engaging with deviant peer associations (whitbeck, hoyt, yoder, cauce, & paradise, 2001), these findings suggest that there may be times when such associations build positive collective resources and lead to social inclusion. this challenges some taken-for-granted views of who or what constitutes a positive association. the youth spoke fondly of relationships they had formed with other youth who were experiencing unstable housing and who had an understanding of such experiences. it was evident that these relationships not only enabled the youth to be visible but also gave them some of the knowledge or resources required to make choices regarding their own visibility. these youth demonstrated their capacity to be resilient in a challenging context and mobilize resources in their community to manage unstable housing. this fits with ungar’s (2005) findings that youth undergo a dual process of navigating and negotiating resources. it also extends ungar’s (2005) findings by providing suggestions for how service providers could support youth navigating and negotiating social service systems. the participants emphasized the importance of service providers getting to know the youth and their circumstances, spending time “understanding who we are” (kris). they explained that this could foster a trust between services and young clients that would enable youth to feel more visible, and more confident about reaching out to social service agencies for support. another important consideration is the high rates of staff turnover evident in social service sectors, specifically with service providers who have opportunities to engage with youth experiencing unstable or inconsistent housing (daiski, 2007). this may contribute to some of the youth’s frustrations regarding a lack of connection or consistency with their social workers, teachers, or probation officers. the youth participating in this project were not always able to attend the group. we believe that this reflects the unpredictability and complexity of their day-to-day lives. this in itself is an interesting finding with regard to the ways in which structures and organizations attempting to impose a timetable for participation overlook the obstacles present for those whose lives are not so much governed by a daily or weekly schedule or routine. further to this, although the arts-based activities and photovoice project inspired the creation of ideas for social action, due to the competing and serious concerns in these youths’ lives (for example, hospitalization, admission to residential drug treatment program) it proved impossible to move these plans to action in the time set aside for the y-par group. similar challenges meant that attempts to maintain ongoing contact with the youth through social media and texting were unsuccessful due to the impermanence of contact information and geographic location. therefore, to the best of our knowledge, the youth were unable to fully participate in the dissemination of the photovoice project in the ways they had suggested or hoped (such as presenting to city council, or attending a social service agency to present). we would recommend that future projects involve early negotiation of means of connecting after the project is completed, in order to facilitate any international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 104–124 120 further action or knowledge sharing that the participants wish. as well, we recommend allocating a longer time frame for a y-par project. we believe that y-par and arts-based methodologies provided a unique opportunity for us as researchers to collaborate and learn together with youth about their direct experience of structural violence in the context of homelessness, and social and economic disadvantage. the participants described this methodology as enabling them to feel heard, to have a voice (“we were heard, and that’s a good thing”), and to think 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(2007). engaging young adolescents in social action through photovoice: the youth empowerment strategies (yes!) project. the journal of early adolescence, 27(2), 241–261. doi:10.1177/0272431606294834 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15357449.2003.11069166 http://dx.doi.org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2003.06.002 http://dx.doi.org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/10.1177/152483990000100113 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/088626001016011005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0272431606294834 the spectrum of visibility: youth experiences of marginalization and homelessness jane robson, lynda m. ashbourne, and kevin de leon literature review current study disclosure method results being “actually seen” or “looked through” how youth are seen by institutions youth presenting and resisting visibility discussion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 178 stickability, transformability and transmittability: alternative, pull-out programs within schools — what the literature says about effective practice and provision for disenfranchised young people david zyngier, rosalyn black, nathan brubaker, and marc pruyn abstract: this paper draws on the findings of a recent and extensive literature review to examine the efficacy of pull-out education programs (alternative programs) in schools in relation to student learning, well-being, and pathways. it synthesises the research on alternative education programs and their contribution to student outcomes using three main conceptual categories: how sustainable these programs are — their stickability; how effective these programs are in achieving their stated purpose of improving and enhancing vulnerable students’ learning, wellbeing, and pathways — their transformability; and how these programs may be used successfully in other locations and contexts — their transmittability. it concludes with recommendations for future practice, suggesting that school systems should prioritise prevention and early intervention in providing support to vulnerable students in ways that take account of students’ own reasons for why they are disengaged from schooling. keywords: alternative programs, withdrawal, pull-out, at-risk students acknowledgement: this paper was made possible through funding by youth pathways & transitions, south-eastern victoria region of the victorian department of education and early childhood development (now the department of education) and the frankston/mornington peninsula local learning & employment network (fmpllen). david zyngier, phd (corresponding author) is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education, monash university, po box 527 frankston 3199. email: david.zyngier@monash.edu rosalyn black is a senior in the faculty of arts and education at deakin university 221 burwood highway burwood, vic 3125. email: rosalyn.black@deakin.edu.au nathan brubaker is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education, monash university, po box 527 frankston 3199. email: nathan.brubaker@monash.edu marc pruyn is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education, monash university, po box 527 frankston 3199. email: marc.pruyn@monash.edu mailto:david.zyngier@monash.edu mailto:david.zyngier@monash.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 179 the relationship between individual socioeconomic disadvantage and academic outcomes is well established. current data confirm that underprivileged and disenfranchised1 students have lower rates of school completion and university uptake than those of higher socioeconomic status (department of education, employment and workplace relations, 2011; steering committee for the review of government service provision, 2011). there is also substantial evidence that both the quality and the socioeconomic profile of a school matter with respect to academic outcomes (gemici, lim, & karmel, 2013; gonski et al., 2011; organisation for economic co-operation and development [oecd], 2010; perry & mcconney, 2010; watson & ryan, 2010). in many instances, schools seeking to improve the educational engagement and achievement of underprivileged or disenfranchised students turn to alternative forms of educational provision. a growing number of external agencies have entered the market, developing and offering a burgeoning range of programs to address the learning, well-being, and pathway needs of young people who may otherwise become disengaged from schooling. in particular, there is a growing trend for schools to work responsively with such agencies by introducing “pull-out” education programs (alternative programs). these programs are characteristically developed outside of the school, the education system, or both. they either withdraw students from the mainstream curriculum or are conducted parallel to that curriculum. the field of alternative education is famously diverse. it is characterised by a pervasive lack of clarity and a troubling lack of consensus about the definition, purposes, best practice implementation, and even the terminology of this kind of practice. it also operates under a wide range of organisational arrangements. in this paper, we are particularly concerned with “pullout” programs because of the increasing support that they are attracting from education systems. under the banner of partnership and innovation, many systems have acquired an increasingly external focus, looking to outside agencies to provide the means and the models for strategies to engage disenfranchised students in learning (black, 2008). the provision of externally provided alternative programs is particularly supported by the shift in education policy to local partnerships as part of the notion of “neo‐liberal localism” (robertson & dale, 2002, p. 470). such trends have led to what te riele has described as “a bewildering array of projects,” a “multitude of programs [that] has led to confusion and inefficiency” (2007, p. 54). yet, despite the growth of this alternative education market, in which agencies often compete with one another for funding opportunities in what thomson (2002) has described as an “at‐risk industry,” there is very limited research literature that focuses on the impact of externally provided alternative programs on students’ educational outcomes. in this paper, in line with the intentions of this special edition, we have sought to review and critically analyse literature concerning 1 we prefer the term disenfranchised to disadvantaged or at-risk as it recognises the reality of these communities of promise — the working-class, inter-generationally poor, indigenous and refugee communities — without any deficit implications. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 180 alternative programs to help advance our understanding of externally provided programs. in synthesising research on the efficacy of alternative programs within schools in relation to student learning, well-being, and pathways for disenfranchised youth, we have used three main conceptual headings to capture the findings concerning external provision: how sustainable these programs are — their stickability; how effective these programs are in actually achieving their stated purpose of improving and enhancing vulnerable students’ learning, well-being, and pathways — their transformability; and how these programs may be used successfully in other locations and contexts — their transmittability. methodology as stated above, we know much about alternative education programs, but surprisingly little about ones that are externally provided. our purpose in this paper was therefore to review relevant literature concerning alternative programs to inform our understanding of the contribution that alternative, pull-out, and externally provided programs within schools make towards student learning, well-being, and pathways to employment. to identify relevant literature, we conducted an extensive search of education-focussed electronic databases. such databases included proquest, expanded academic asap, informit, a+ education, eric, psychinfo, the british education index, and springerlink. other databases — perhaps less uniquely focused on education issues — such as jstor and web of knowledge were also included in our electronic searches. we used google scholar (http://scholar.google.com) to help compare search results across the academic databases. we also searched the websites of relevant organisations whose work encompasses the topic area. these included the oecd, departments of education (states and federal), and the dusseldorp skills forum. the keywords and phrases we used included the following: (1) alternative, pull-out, “atrisk”, pathways, student well-being, and student engagement programs; and (2) external provision, external providers, and external agencies. other keywords used in combination with the main search phrases included research, effectiveness (and its variants, such as effects or effective), and outcomes. we limited our search to literature published in english but not necessarily from anglophone countries. we focused, initially, on primary research literature, and subsequently reviewed the multitude of programs in australia highlighted as good practice by the dusseldorp skills forum2 on the learning choices online database. such programs offer pathways to enable young people to remain in school or to return to complete their education in safe, inclusive, innovative, and flexible settings. overall, we reviewed 100 australian and international research papers and reports relevant to this research, from which we formed our framework of stickability, transformability, and transmittability. 2 http://dusseldorp.org.au/priorities/alternative-learning/program-database/ http://scholar.google.com/ http://dusseldorp.org.au/priorities/alternative-learning/program-database/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 181 measuring the effectiveness of alternative programs: their stickability alternative, pull‐out, and externally provided programs within schools are developed in response to the identified needs of individuals and groups of young people. some programs are of a more general nature, and are concerned with “preventative” approaches, addressing issues of education structures, curriculum, and pedagogy in ways that seek to make schooling more inclusive of the needs of all students, particularly those who are currently marginalised. such preventative approaches can also be seen to include programs inclusive of all students as well as those specifically targeted towards keeping “at‐risk” youth engaged in school. the landscape of alternative programs is often characterised by ambitious aims and purposes; they seem to provide a strong vision and purpose for the particular services they offer. at the same time, it must be asked how realistic the aims of such programs are. tyler and stokes (1997) proposed that three questions should be satisfactorily answered before the decision is made to base an alternative service in schools: is it in the best interests of the young people?; is it in the best interests of the service?; and is it in the best interests of the school? these questions could be usefully applied to all alternative programs for disenfranchised and disengaged youth. the lack of agreement about what constitutes the effective provision of alternative programs, and how this provision should be accessed and coordinated within any one given school, makes it almost impossible to determine what the successful outcomes of such provision would look like (aron & zweig, 2003). the development of mechanisms for the evaluation and assessment of alternative programs would be an important step in understanding their efficacy, and coordinating the most effective provision of such programs, as well as documenting and sharing successful approaches, yet rigorous evaluation and assessment is relatively uncommon (brown & holdsworth, 2001). one significant criticism of alternative programs that emerges from the literature (te reile, 2006, 2007, 2012) relates to the lack of consistency, coherence, and consensus that characterise alternative program provision overall. this lack of orchestrated provision represents a challenge for systems, especially at the regional or local level. it also represents an issue for individual schools. black, lemon, and walsh (2010) noted that any effective practice should include “the thorough monitoring and measurement of its actions and outcomes and the capacity to respond to the evidence that [such measurement] yields” (p. 11). yet the consensus from the literature on alternative programs is that there is a consistent lack of measurement or analysis in relation to either provision or outcomes. in her overview of alternative education programs in australia, for example, te riele (2012) noted that, while most programs are informed by clear objectives, “they do not necessarily gather or provide strong evidence on the extent to which these objectives are achieved” (p. 23). this is not to underestimate the complexities that may attend the measurement of the efficacy of alternative programs. some programs are interventions with multiple variables that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 182 do not immediately lend themselves to “orderly” analyses. they often involve complex “real world” settings (mortimore & mortimore, 1999, p. 114). many of the outcomes that they aim to achieve require time to change the young person and to accurately assess the program’s efficacy and impact (kenny, waldo, warter, & barton, 2002). as te riele observed, even a fairly fundamental measure such as attendance within alternative programs may be complex to assess as often alternative programs have a “chequered attendance history” (2012, p. 19). student attendance within alternative programs may be better than their attendance within mainstream classes, but the base-level of attendance may still be low, or vary from term to term or week to week, as a function of the complexity of these young people’s lives, circumstances, and relationship to schooling. other challenges to the effective measurement of alternative programs may include the nature or the expertise of the agency undertaking the measurement. the evaluations of many alternative programs are conducted or commissioned by the agencies that are responsible for funding or conducting them and they are (understandably) eager to justify their provision and success (black et al., 2010; cole, 2004). such self-monitoring is an important mechanism for the ongoing development and improvement of individual programs and agencies (aron & zweig, 2003), but it is unlikely to provide answers to more rigorous questions about the efficacy of alternative program provision, especially given that many of these self-evaluations have been found to be methodologically flawed (raffo & dyson, 2007). self-monitoring is also unlikely to provide the longitudinal data that is essential in understanding the efficacy of such programs for the young people they target. the lack of coherent and orchestrated provision of alternative programs already represents a significant challenge for such young people. stokes (2000) has noted that some young people attending such programs move disjointedly from one program to another. especially where the programmatic intention is to ensure better pathways to training or employment, such lack of coherence within program provision reduces the likelihood that the young people concerned will be able to utilise their experiences within these various programs to develop a coherent pathway to future success. longitudinal analyses are needed to better demonstrate the long-term outcomes of such programs for participating young people. in the absence of such mechanisms for measurement, the stickability of individual programs is at risk. measuring the effectiveness of alternative programs: their transformability a consistent theme that emerges from the literature is the efficacy of alternative programs, as researchers question whether such programs have the capacity to effect lasting or widespread transformations at the student, school, or community levels. in this section, we consider the debates that continue to attend the role of alternative programs in achieving these three levels of transformation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 183 transforming student outcomes one of the most controversial questions that arises from the research literature is whether programs that remove students from mainstream activities also remove them from important sources of knowledge, including their peers, and from the kinds of authorised knowledge that is most valued, and rewarded, by education systems (apple, 1993). practices associated with such concerns expressed in the literature include maintaining environments that do not engage students, insisting on curriculum content that is too difficult or irrelevant, or alienating students through poor teacher–student relations (young, 2000, p. 150). the research also warns that students who are identified as being most at-risk of educational failure are the least likely to be exposed to intellectually challenging and relevant learning material and opportunities, causing them to fall progressively further behind their peers and so making it even harder to alter the pattern of inequality of outcomes (lingard et al., 2001). these writers caution that the redistribution of vulnerable students into alternative programs will not address the root cause of educational underachievement. batten & russell’s (1995) major review of teaching and learning for disenfranchised youth suggests that even the most vulnerable students are capable of quality educational outcomes if they have access to a supportive educational environment that: • builds on their strengths; • responds to their needs, and monitors their progress; • promotes their social and personal development as well as their academic and vocational development; • has a focus on practical learning related to their own life experience; • encourages them to share responsibility for their own learning and to be involved in decisions about that learning; • sets high expectations for their achievement, challenges and extends them, and gives them the opportunity to work cooperatively with others, both inside and outside the classroom; and, • involves parents, the community, and relevant agencies in a collaborative endeavour to support them. brown & holdsworth (2001) add to such recommendations, suggesting that effective alternative programs should: • link learning to real life and to work applications, and provide opportunities to learn outside the classroom and the school; • have flexible pacing and allow young people to learn at their own rate; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 184 • include opportunities and assistance for students to talk with staff about their future aspirations and goal-setting; and, • maximise student autonomy and decision-making. two strategies are strongly suggested for promoting the most significant improvements in the learning, well-being, and pathways of disenfranchised students: first, implementing an intensive and individually-targeted alternative program; and second, changing the nature of pedagogical practice within the regular classroom in line with the kind of measures described above (slavin & madden, 1989). while different organisational arrangements may suit different programs, settings, or student needs, the general consensus within the relevant research literature is that where alternative programs are poorly integrated with regular classroom pedagogy and fail to influence that pedagogy, they fail to make a significant or sustainable difference to student outcomes. rice and lamb (2008) have shown that the most favourable outcomes are achieved when specific interventions, such as alternative programs, are provided within the context of a supportive school culture and by school-based strategies designed to ensure the best possible classroom practice at the mainstream level. this sentiment is echoed by other researchers (druian & butler, 1987; te riele, 2006), who conclude that the factors that are most predictive of educational success for students placed as “at-risk” include effective school leadership, coherent classroom management across all curricular areas and year levels, and the regular and coordinated monitoring of student progress. less integrated models of alternative provision are less likely to substantially build the capacity of the school and its community to meet disenfranchised young people’s needs, let alone to inform or support systemic change. other studies (apte, 2001; dwyer, stokes, tyler, & holdsworth, 1998; teese & polesel, 2003; zyngier, 2003) are more forceful in their analysis, suggesting that many vulnerable students are “driven out” of school (zyngier, 2003). such studies deplore the labelling or stigmatisation of vulnerable students, but they also recognise some of the forces that may impel educators to isolate such students within the school. these include the need within a competitive educational market, so prevalent in neo-liberal societies, to show improvement by moving underperforming students on to other schools, or to improve the educational profile of specific classes or year-level groups by moving such students into diversionary or alternative programs. there is a clear warning from the literature that the needs of vulnerable students may be given less consideration in what has become a market-driven education system. transforming schools while slavin and madden’s review (1989) is now more than two decades old, its themes continue to have currency within more recent studies. their primary recommendation is that a comprehensive and whole-school approach is the only strategy that will have significant outcomes for the learning, well-being, and future transitions of disenfranchised students. by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 185 contrast, the uneven or sporadic provision of alternative programs is unlikely to achieve these aims. in particular, the uncoordinated provision or proliferation of disparate programs within any one school runs counter to the conclusions of the research. as slavin and madden (1989) note, “it is not enough to take a little of program a and a little of program b and hope for the best” (p. 10). moreover stringfield, millsap, and herman (2005) concluded that students in schools using externally developed pull-out programs tended to achieve less than did students in schools that attempted whole school reform programs. particularly in highly disadvantaged contexts, alternative program provision has been criticised for targeting a cohort of students without changing the culture of the school, focusing on superficial problems rather than addressing root causes, and implementing educational reform without the social and economic reforms needed to change the circumstances of such communities (dyson & raffo, 2007; muijs, 2007). such programs are supplemental rather than fundamental or mainstream; they are directed at specific “sub-populations” of students and remain isolated alternatives to the mainstream (department of education, training and youth affairs [detya], 2001a). it has been suggested that such programs work against sustained student improvement because they are poorly linked to, and lack articulation with, the mainstream curriculum (luke et al., 2003). as slavin and madden (1989) have argued, such programs fail to emphasise the responsibility of the whole school, and of all teachers, for the educational success of all students. in some ways, the continued emphasis in some schools on alternative programs that are poorly connected to the mainstream curriculum and pedagogical approaches can be seen as running counter to the direction and priorities of their systems. national and state-based initiatives such as extended service schooling, school regeneration projects, and the integration of early childhood and schooling services are driven by a desire to achieve more integrated service provision for children and young people in high-need contexts (black et al., 2010). they are also driven by the recognition that the achievement of positive learning, well-being, and pathways for all students requires not just “a proliferation of new practices … but also whole-ofschool change … backed up and mandated by systemic guidelines, policies and appropriate resource allocations” (detya, 2001b, p. 26). even with the best will in the world this is sometimes too much to ask of over-worked and over-stressed public school teachers. transforming communities a major review (strategic partners, 2001) of innovation and best practice in relation to the education of vulnerable young people found that schools that engaged the local community and participated directly in community capacity building had the greatest impact on the young people involved. such schools provided options and strategies that attempted to address the factors that caused young people to be vulnerable in the first instance. they took a leading role in the rebuilding of “human communities” at the local level, especially in communities where disadvantage is an issue (szirom et al., 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 186 there is a view, expressed strongly within the wider literature, that any alternative education service provision should be designed to meet the specific needs and reflect the specific context of the school and its local community (black et al., 2010). researchers recommend that the most successful provision for vulnerable young people is that which is developed locally and in response to local need. doing so may require schools and brokers to establish strong links with other local agencies. it may also require the development and provision of culturally appropriate alternative programs and services, especially in contexts where indigenous, workingclass (see rubin et al., 2014), migrant, and refugee young people are involved (brown & holdsworth, 2001). in relation to extended service schooling (mckinsey & company, 2010), the policy trend is to set no single blueprint for practice. an example comes from the largest centralised initiative to date, the full service extended schools program in the united kingdom: within this model, schools are expected to decide what constitutes their local community; what the needs of that community are; whether interventions are best directed at the level of the young person, the family or the community; and which interventions should be employed (success works, 2001). researchers express caution, however, about how far such variability should extend. a dissenting view from the literature is that the absence of a single, coherent vision or mandate from educational systems represents a significant challenge to the efficacy of alternative service provision in schools. an authoritative evaluation of the united kingdom full service extended schools initiative suggests that good practice should rely less on what it calls “entrepreneurship at the school level” and more on “policy coherence and stability” (cummings, todd, & dyson, 2007, p. 4). the inference for alternative programs is that they may prove most effective when supported by a policy plan that establishes minimum standards for practice and considers longterm sustainability. how alternative programs may be used in other locations: their transmittability the research literature acknowledges that schools play a critical role in the prevention and early intervention programs for vulnerable youth. however, the research also suggests that much of this work appears to be fragmented, with individualistic approaches that contribute little to the capacity of the system overall. there is a view within the research literature (black, 2007; kenway, 2012; mills & mcgregor, 2010; teese & polesel,2003; te riele, 2007), that it is easier, and more desirable, to change the education system than to change the student. at the same time, researchers (szirom et al., 2001;the allen consulting group, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c) caution that proposals to change the system through a “bits and pieces” approach will not deliver long-term sustainable change. such conflicting assessments raise the question of the extent to which alternative programs conducted in individual schools have the capacity, or even the potential, to effect lasting or widespread transformations at the level of the school system: that is, whether international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 187 they have the potential to be scaled up across a greater number of schools, or to inform and serve as models of practice in other schools. young people do not disconnect from education because of the failure of any one system, and reconnecting them requires collaboration and coordination among multiple systems. in this vein, one criticism of alternative education programs is that they are, on the whole, “dead-end” programs: they do not lead to recognised and credentialed outcomes, or allow movement or substantial entry qualifications to further education and training (holdsworth, 2011). from such a view, the delivery of alternative programs within individual schools is considered to also overlook the consensus among researchers that “the problem of youth disconnecting from mainstream schools is largely a systemic problem” (aron & zweig, 2003, p. 42) that requires a better systemic overview and coordination of alternative provision ( mills & mcgregor, 2010; te riele, 2012). in particular, researchers recommend a better systemic overview and coordination of the cost of provision of alternative programs. while the proliferation of alternative programs in individual schools represents a groundswell of commitment to meeting the needs of vulnerable young people, government reports have acknowledged that “[a] lot of money can be spent in pursuit of limited benefits without some commitment to systemic change” (detya, 2001a, p. 2). the detya report (2001b) noted that “without system change, effective practice that serves marginalised or ‘at-risk’ young people will either remain localised, and/or dissipate as resources shrink and creative energy is exhausted” (detya, 2001b, p. 102). researchers, including gonski et al. (2011) in their review of funding for schooling, urge school systems to better recognise that meeting the needs of vulnerable young people requires significant investment, including greater staffing resources and facilities and a higher level of leadership and support. based on long-term research by the oecd, mortimore and mortimore (1999) concluded that improving outcomes for vulnerable students requires a move away from narrow or instrumentalist views of what educational success means as well as greater support and recognition of the role of educators in planning and implementing change. he also warns that these outcomes cannot be achieved without adequate resources. such a view is echoed by teese (2006), who argues that improved outcomes for vulnerable students “must be supported by an intensity of effort, high expectations and solidarity in sharing resources” (p. 3). such studies, however, are not simply a call for additional resources, as echoed by luke and colleagues (2003). in a significant review of provision for students in the middle years of schooling,3 luke et al. (2003) argued that dedicated funding tied to specific groups of vulnerable young people, including indigenous young people, appears to encourage piecemeal and pull-out approaches that are not supportive of whole school change. 3 in australia the middle years refer to grades 8 to 10 or pupils aged 13 to 16. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 188 the findings of such studies, and others, including black (2007) and brown and holdsworth (2001), provide a reminder that educational change and innovation works best if it is both “top down” and “bottom up.” we suggest that investment should be particularly targeted towards teacher learning and the creation of new and supportive mechanisms and strategies for teachers to work together and with other staff and agencies to meet all students’ needs. these may include strategies to improve the professional knowledge and learning of all educators, not just those who are directly involved in the delivery of alternative programs. also needed are strategies to deliver smaller student–staff ratios, strategies to provide time within the timetable for staff to provide pastoral care, and strategies to improve the quality and capacity of student welfare and mentoring programs. investment in such strategies shifts the locus of expertise from the agencies or individuals delivering alternative programs to all teachers within the school. doing so recognises that, with adequate support, all teachers can act as internal change agents within their own school contexts. before investment of resources can be more effectively directed, however, educational systems need to know the scale and extent of the provision of alternative programs in school. a necessary first step is a comprehensive environmental scan or mapping of existing provision. cole noted in 2004 that, “there is no overall strategy that considers the location and placement of alternative settings within the community” (p. 11). our findings likewise suggest that little has changed in this regard. such mapping should go beyond a simple analysis of what kind of programs and agencies are operating in specific schools and regions to include an analysis of what funds are being expended in the provision of alternative programs. such an analysis should address the following overarching questions: • what is the cost of alternative programs in schools? what resources are required to access externally provided programs and agencies, and where do schools obtain such resources? • what are the sources and security of funding for such programs? (te riele, 2012) • what are the cost-benefits, cost-effectiveness, and opportunity costs of such programs? it should also enable educational systems to answer these more specific questions: • how do schools access externally provided programs and agencies? what issues of equity apply to such access? do all schools have equal access to externally provided programs and agencies? • what is the longevity of externally provided programs within any one school and what factors contribute to this longevity? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 189 • what opportunities exist to coordinate the provision of programs across schools within the same geographic area? what collaboration exists between schools accessing the same externally provided programs and agencies (myconos, 2011)? • what is the nature of the young people being targeted for participation in alternative programs? what other services are these young people accessing, and what are the opportunities for better coordination of this provision? • what are the shortand long-term outcomes for the young people who participate in alternative programs? what pathways or positive destinations exist for such young people, both within the school and beyond it, and how long does it take for such youth to achieve such positive destinations? what is the impact for students of their time spent in any one program as well as of the duration of the program (te riele, 2012)? discussion teese (2006) has concluded that “in the end, the quality of a school system can be judged by the experience of the most vulnerable children in it” (p. 3). kenway (2012) adds that: we can judge the virtue of a nation by how well it treats its most vulnerable people. equally, we can judge the virtue and thus the quality of an education system by how well it educates its most vulnerable students. (p.78) international research (oecd, 1998), as well as australian research (applied economics, 2002; macdonald & marsh, 2002; the allen consulting group, 2003a , 2003b, 2003c), indicates that if we do not purposefully address student and school failure, we risk paying a considerable economic and social penalty, as has been reaffirmed more recently by noted economists and scientists.4 a criticism of alternative programs relates to their effects on the perception and identity of the students targeted for their inclusion. for young people, there is a persistent association among vulnerability, risk, and deficit. as wright, mcglaughlin, and weekes (2000) note, vulnerable students may be stereotyped not only as suffering “deficit” but also as “deviant.” they too often are seen as capable of “contaminating” the school culture. 4 for example, british scientists richard g. wilkinson and kate pickett's the spirit level: why more equal societies always do better (see pp. 106–115); french economist thomas piketty's 2014 capital in the twenty-first century (see pp. 22, 218–219, 224,339–341); nobel laureate and columbia economics professor joseph stiglitz's influential 2013 treatise the price of inequality: how today's divided society endangers our future. (see pp, 10, 13, 27, 36, 62, 76) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 190 schools that adopt such a deficit approach to young people’s learning, well-being, or pathways typically focus on individualised, de-contextualised understandings of student vulnerability that take little account of the wider forces and factors that influence young people’s experience of education, including school, community, and system-level factors. from such a view, programs are designed to “reinforce structures that have [already] broken down” (wright et al., 2000, p. 35) rather than questioning the structures themselves. while programs to address students’ vulnerability may be either preventative (i.e., operating as part of an early intervention strategy; detya, 2001a), or ameliorative (i.e., remedial), the most common approach by schools, according to an earlier oecd study (1998), is to offer remediation rather than preventative programs. there is no conclusive evidence in the literature that suggests students have improved achievement or altered patterns of learning through such remediation programs (mortimore & mortimore, 1999). there is also a concern expressed in the literature that alternative programs serve as “dumping grounds” for students whom the school has identified as problematic (de jong & griffiths, 2006, p. 32). the removal of students from the mainstream classroom to participate in alternative programs is often associated with reduced opportunities for normal social interaction between targeted students and others, with the negative labelling or stigmatisation of targeted low-achieving students (teddlie & stringfield, 2006) and with the formation or reinforcement in these students of a sense of self as “other” or as “delinquent” (hawkins, doueck, & lishner, 1988; slavin & madden, 1989; zyngier & gale, 2003). this last claim warrants greater investigation. the literature consistently emphasises the importance of schools “focusing on changing conditions rather than on [changing] the perceived problems of young people or their families” (te riele, 2012, p. 32). zyngier and gale’s(2003) suggestion that schools and systems must “take account of students’ own reasons for why they are disengaged from schooling and what changes schools and teachers themselves might need to consider” (p. 1) continues to be a pertinent one for any alternative education provision. conclusion the findings from this review suggest that school systems must prioritise prevention and early intervention in the provision of support to vulnerable students. remedial programs and interventions should be used as a last resort, not as the first or preferred strategy. as the review of the literature suggests, alternative pathways to educational success are needed at every stage of schooling, beginning with prevention and early intervention strategies in the early years, progressing to a range of high-quality alternative options within mainstream k-12 systems, and, finally, offering “second chance” opportunities for those who have been unable to learn and thrive in the general education system (aron, 2005). it is essential that our teachers are active participants in change to ensure that alternative programs stick and transform. they may require considerable adaptation of their practices, habits, and beliefs. in particular, to ensure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 191 transmittability and stickability, further research is required to establish a more definitive inventory of international “best practice” principles and exemplars in order to ensure: that those students who currently derive the least benefit from their schooling years are provided with enhanced opportunities to attain academic and social outcomes from their learning that are of value in the difficult transitions and pathways that many need to negotiate in the years ahead. (luke et al., 2003, p. 9) schools have not always taken up the challenge or had the resources or capacity to address such issues. as a result, many turn to external providers who offer “quick fix” and “offthe-shelf” solutions that have little or no impact on the deeper and substantive school-based issues that may contribute to the creation of young people’s vulnerability. however, our findings show a common flaw in these solutions: no single or overarching explanation can account for young people’s vulnerability in relation to education, and there is no simple or universally applicable measure that can address it. overcoming risk for young learners requires a sustained and long-term effort to meet the needs of all students, especially of low achievers (oecd, 1998, p. 56). as mortimore and mortimore (1999, p. 113) observed, the maintenance of improvement requires considerable and sustained effort: “schools cannot either rest on their laurels or switch to auto-pilot!” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 178–197 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615717 192 references apple, m. 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(2003). non-traditional and non-systemic educational programs in frankston/mornington peninsula secondary schools. melbourne, australia: faculty of education, monash university. stickability, transformability and transmittability: alternative, pull-out programs within schools — what the literature says about effective practice and provision for disenfranchised young people david zyngier, rosalyn black, nathan brubaker, and marc pruyn methodology measuring the effectiveness of alternative programs: their stickability measuring the effectiveness of alternative programs: their transformability transforming student outcomes transforming schools transforming communities how alternative programs may be used in other locations: their transmittability discussion conclusion references gender-typical participation patterns in leisure time activities among norwegian adolescents across different socio-economic status groups international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 355 gendered leisure activity behavior among norwegian adolescents across different socio-economic status groups ingrid leversen, torbjørn torsheim, and oddrun samdal abstract: the present paper explores gendered behavior based on participation patterns of leisure activities among adolescents across socio-economic status (ses) groups, aiming to increase knowledge and understanding of how gender socialization processes are expressed through boys’ and girls’ participation in leisure activities. furthermore, the aim is to investigate whether such gendered behavior is associated with general levels of participation, and if there may be differences between low, middle, and high ses groups. the study used norwegian nationally representative data of 15and 16-year-olds from the world health organization's cross-sectional survey, health behaviour in school-aged children 2005/06 (n = 3,273). logistic regression analysis and propensity scores showed that adolescent boys and girls had clear gendered behavior patterns based on leisure activity participation in 27 different activities, and that boys and girls had about equal distributions on what was classified as typical (“boyish” or “girlish”), atypical, and neutral gender behavior. furthermore, gendered behavior was correlated with higher levels of participation for both sexes, and it was more or less similar for boys and girls and for different socio-economic status groups. however, when investigating differences in distributions between ses groups, high ses girls were found to have a significantly higher prevalence of both “boyish” and “girlish” activity behavior, but less “gender-neutral” compared with girls in medium and low ses groups. there were no such differences for boys. keywords: adolescents, leisure activities, gendered activity behavior, gender socialization, socio-economic status ingrid leversen (the corresponding author) is a ph.d. candidate in the department of health promotion and development, faculty of psychology, university of bergen (uob), p.o. box 7807, no-5020 bergen, norway. phone: +47 555 84849. e-mail: ingrid.leversen@uib.no torbjørn torsheim, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of psychosocial science, faculty of psychology, university of bergen, norway. e-mail: torbjoern.torsheim@uib.no oddrun samdal, ph.d. is a professor in the department of health promotion and development, faculty of psychology, university of bergen, norway. e-mail: oddrun.samdal@uib.no mailto:ingrid.leversen@uib.no� mailto:torbjoern.torsheim@uib.no� mailto:oddrun.samdal@uib.no� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 356 leisure activity participation constitutes a large and important part of young people’s lives. an active leisure time is associated with greater well-being, good mental health, and increasing likelihood of healthy adjustment in the future (caldwell, 2005; casey, ripke, & huston, 2005; larson, 2000). however, the prevalence and preferences of activity participation may differ between subgroups of adolescents. previous research has demonstrated strong differences between boys and girls in how leisure time is spent and choices and preferences in adolescents’ leisure activities (e.g., athenstaedt, mikula, & bredt, 2009; fitzgerald, joseph, hayes, & oregan, 1995; hilbrecht, zuzanek, & mannell, 2008; larson & verma, 1999; west & zimmerman, 1987). overall, boys tend to do more team sport than girls, whereas girls are more often involved in individual sport and music and drama activities (e.g., hirsch et al., 2000; jacobs, vernon, & eccles, 2005; pedersen & seidman, 2005). gender-stereotypical presentation of activities may prohibit adolescents from participating in activities in which they have a genuine interest. consequently, overall levels of participation may be negatively affected as the smaller numbers of activities the adolescents perceive are available to them, the less active they are likely to be. in order to provide both sexes with equal opportunities for an active leisure time, it is thus important to increase current knowledge on such differences in leisure activities and to better understand the mechanisms that may influence differences in participation patterns between the sexes. gender socialization may be an important mechanism to both understand and counteract observed differences in leisure activity participation between the sexes. adding to the media, the larger society, and the influence of peers, the family plays a major role in establishing and developing values, ideologies, and norms that influence adolescents’ gender identity development, and thereby also their interests and behaviors. the development of such values and preferences are also found to be dependent on the socio-economic status of the family (bourdieu, 1984; cassidy, 2005; raymore, 2002). exploring gendered behavior based on the activity patterns and interactions among adolescent boys and girls in and of themselves, and with respect to their parents’ socio-economic status, may thus offer new knowledge on social influences on adolescents’ gendered behavior and this is also the objective of the current paper. this knowledge may provide a new basis for developing actions to equalize gender opportunities in leisure activity. these relationships will be investigated and discussed against a backdrop of a gender-sociological perspective. gender socialization and adolescents’ leisure choices the leisure time of adolescents may provide them with free choices of activities in which to participate, enabling them to develop their identity, improve self-regulation, and express an interest (eccles & barber, 1999; eccles, barber, stone, & hunt, 2003; fredricks et al., 2002; larson, 2000). boys and girls may have different subjective values regarding options of activities. they may also attach different values to different activities, which are likely to influence the choices they make. leisure activities may thus vary for boys and girls in the extent to which they provide the opportunity to explore one’s masculine or feminine self, and participation may therefore be influenced by gender-role identity (eccles et al., 2003). gender may be described as a culturally defined set of meanings attached to sex and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 357 sex differences, where sex is categorized on the basis of anatomy and physiology (unger, 1979). thus gender, based on this view, is referred to as the social meaning of the biological distinction. helgeson (2005) further described gender as referring to the social categories of male and female, which are distinguished from each other by “a set of psychological features and role attributions that society has assigned to the biological category of sex” (p. 3). west and zimmerman (1987) explained gender divisions as a combination of perceptual and behavioral patterns produced through social interactions and embedded in recurrent, everyday activities. in trying to understand the impact of social interaction on the leisure choices of adolescent boys and girls, it is important to consider the societal or cultural socialization of gender as they grow up. many theories have contributed to the understanding of gender socialization. bem’s (1981, 1983) theory of gender schemas describes the process by which humans acquire and transmit culturally defined sex-specific concepts of femininity and masculinity. the schema is a framework, which organizes objects and behaviors as male or female. it is believed to become internalized and predispose individuals throughout life to construct an identity that embodies and reproduces the beliefs classified in the schema. many sports activities, such as soccer, have been associated with masculinity, in defining what it means to be a “real” man or boy (scraton, fasting, pfister, & bunuel, 1999; skelton, 2000). masculine sports (such as soccer and wrestling) are frequently identified as having a more competitive nature (metheny, 1965; riemer & visio, 2003) whereas stereotypes of feminine sports have focused more on aesthetics and rhythms (such as gymnastics and aerobics). the influence from parents and peers on gender socialization parents may, as role models and socialization agents, influence and facilitate their children’s participation in leisure activities in a number of ways; for example, through parental example, messages that parents provide regarding the value they attach to various activities, and their being leisure educators and providers of opportunity (jacobs et al., 2005; raymore, 2002). parents communicate norms and values to their children through what they say and what they do. they may talk to their children specifically about why leisure time is important and why some behaviors are more acceptable than others (ennet, bauman, foshee, pemberton, & hicks, 2001; wood, read, mitchell, & brand, 2004). in this process of socialization, which may be led by typical feminine and masculine schemas and stereotypes, parents encourage specific activities for their children in accordance with what they see as desirable and appropriate for girls or boys (helgeson, 1994; schmalz, 2006). parental socialization patterns may exert very different effects on sons and daughters. works on the socialization of expectations, especially regarding academic achievement, have suggested that parents have different beliefs for boys and girls regarding their academic abilities, and that they communicate these beliefs through various behaviors (crouter, mchale, & bartko, 1993). similarly, it is reasonable to assume that parents may encourage their children to participate in activities congruent with their gendered beliefs about their children’s abilities and the typical activities matched with these beliefs (eccles, 1987). in addition to the parents and the family, peers are significant contributors to children’s gender-role development. in social cognitive theory, the role of peers in modelling international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 358 normative gender attributes and reinforcing gender-typical behavior is underscored (bussey & bandura, 1999). it has further been suggested that through interactions with others, children experience pressure to conform to gender norms, which may result in a reduction of genderatypical characteristics and greater adherence to gender expectations (egan & perry, 2001). empirical work has furthermore found that children disapprove of peers who engage in gender-atypical behavior (blakemore, 2003; carter & mccloskey, 1984; lobel, 1994; mcaninch, milich, crumbo, & funtowicz, 1996), especially gender-atypical boys who have been found to be more prone to adolescent bullying, and also psychological distress (young & sweeting, 2004) and lower levels of school adjustment (ueno & mcwilliams, 2010). adolescence is a vulnerable time, and the felt pressure to participate in activities congruent with their gender may be high. the role of social position for socialization processes the individuals’ preferences for activities may be connected to their social position. this is what, in the sociological theory of bourdieu (1984), is called “habitus”. social habitus is linked to the individual’s different resources, especially economic and cultural, and it is defined as a system of dispositions that controls the acts of individuals. these dispositions are products of the social conditions in which individuals grow up. gender is, moreover, considered to be a fundamental dimension of the habitus that modifies all the social qualities that are connected to essential social factors. gendered habitus thus broadly refers to the social construction of masculinity and femininity (bourdieu, 2001). the knowledge provided to the child is already structured by the society, and especially by the influence of parents. this process of taking over and internalizing this knowledge contributes to a reproduction of the social system, meaning that children and adolescents are influenced to behave similarly to significant others and to follow what is supported within the social environment. building on bourdieu’s theory, the parents’ socio-economic status is likely to exert influence on the gendered upbringing of their children. fathers and mothers with high educational and occupational status may have more cultural resources at their disposal, and may thus be more likely to create an intellectual environment that encourages children to actively participate in leisure activities to get a broader base for their learning. additionally, this group of parents may stimulate their children to question traditional attitudes and activity choices so that they participate in a broader range of activities, including cultural activities, and not only the traditional sports activities (myers & booth, 2002). several studies have suggested that a higher level of education, more economic advantages, and having a working mother are associated with more liberal gender-role attitudes and ideology (corder & stephan, 1984; crompton & lyonette, 2005; kulik, 2002; lackey, 1989; marks, lam, & mchale, 2009; quarm, 1983). such differences in socio-economic assets may potentially result in more children in the high ses group to cross gender borders in boyor girl-dominated activities. the present study previous studies have primarily addressed sex differences in leisure activity participation, where boys have been found to spend more time on team sports and computerrelated activities than girls, whereas girls have been found to do more individual sports and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 359 creative activities – such as music, drama, and dancing – than boys (eccles & barber, 1999; fitzgerald et al., 1995; hirsch et al., 2000; jacobs et al., 2005; larson & verma, 1999; pedersen & seidman, 2005; schmalz, 2006). a study by young and sweeting (2004) used a gender diagnostic approach to investigate the associations between gender-atypical behavior, gender role, and different psychological outcomes and peer relations among a sample of 15year-olds. the gender diagnostic calculation was built on the work by lippa and connelly (1990) and includes a series of discriminant analyses of data on frequency of participation in different leisure activities such as looking around in shops, hanging around in the streets, and doing different sport activities. in the present study we used a similar approach to the discriminant analyses to classify gendered behavior based on more typically organised activities in which they participate regularly (weekly). rather than focusing on the extremes of atypical behavior and its associations, this study sets out to explore and describe the differences in degrees of gendered participation in leisure activities. the study aims to contribute to the understanding of how and to what degree gender socialization processes can be expressed through boys’ and girls’ leisure activity participation within different socioeconomic status groups, and whether it is associated with their overall activity levels. the first objective of the present study was therefore to examine gendered behavior predicted by adolescents’ leisure activity participation. based on the previous research on leisure activity patterns and theories of gender sociology, we expected that activity behavior would make a strong predictor for gendered behavior and gender group classifications. the second objective was to investigate whether such gendered behavior was associated with boys’ and girls’ general activity participation level, hypothesising that the less “boyish” or “girlish” the adolescents are, the fewer activities they see as available for them to participate in, and thus the less they participate in general. the third objective was to explore gendered behavior based on activity participation in association with their parents’ socio-economic status (ses). in the light of previous research showing more liberal gender attitudes in high ses groups, it is a possibility that this will also be present in adolescents’ leisure choices. thus, we wanted to explore whether parents with high socio-economic status could be seen to have a more liberal attitude and influence on their children and whether low ses parents have a more traditional influence with regard to what boys and girls do in their leisure time, observed through ses differences in the adolescents’ activity participation. ses-influenced attitudes may thus potentially lead to a stronger gendertypical leisure behavior in low ses groups and more atypical behavior in high ses groups. methodology participants and procedure the paper is based on data from the norwegian part of the seventh world health organization associated survey, health behaviour in school-aged children (hbsc) 2005/06 (currie, samdal, boyce, & smith, 2004). a nationally representative sample of norwegian adolescents aged 15 and 16 years were used in the study. the students were selected with a stratified, systematic sampling procedure, and the sampling unit was the school class. the sample numbered 1,537 from grade 10 (mean age 15.48 years) and 1,736 from grade 1 upper secondary class (mean age 16.51 years). there were approximately equal numbers of boys and girls (51.8% boys). one class per school participated in the study. of the invited schools, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 360 70% chose to participate in the study (30% of schools refused), and in the actively participating schools, the student response rate was 83%. in sum, taking into account the nonparticipating schools, there was a response rate of 58% at the student level. the nonparticipating students were registered as absent because of sickness (445 pupils), individual or parental withdrawal from the study (163 pupils), or other unknown reasons for absence (217). the data collection procedures were approved by the norwegian social science data services privacy ombudsman for research and classified as not needing additional approval from the regional committees for medical research ethics. data were collected in accordance with a standardized procedure of sampling procedures from the hbsc (roberts et al., 2009) through an individual questionnaire given to all students in the selected classes. the survey was conducted in december 2005. a couple of weeks prior to the survey, parents received a letter with detailed information about the purpose and content of the survey. a passive consent procedure was followed, requiring parents to return a letter of non-consent to the teacher if they did not want their child to participate and giving them an opportunity to withdraw their child from participation. the teachers were given instructions on how to administer the survey. questionnaires were distributed and filled out during an ordinary school class (45 minutes). students were informed that participation was voluntary and that their responses were anonymous. all the data were treated anonymously. measures leisure activities. in this study, the independent variable of leisure activities comprised a list of 27 activities such as soccer, dancing, karate, playing an instrument in an orchestra/band, drama, volunteering, and church activities. the adolescents reported how often they participated in the different activities by ticking one of four options [“don’t do this activity” (0), “two to three times a month or fewer” (1), “about once a week” (2), or “twice a week or more” (3)]. for the analysis identifying gender-predicted groups based on activity participation, the responses were recorded only for those who participated weekly in an activity; this suggested it was a more regular activity, possibly representing the individuals’ (and the genders’) main interests. socio-economic status. in order to account for the possible various dimensions of socio-economic status influencing the patterns of leisure activity participation, three different indicators of socio-economic status (ses) were used: parental occupational status, family affluence, and cultural capital. parents' occupational status (pos) was based on children’s responses on their parents’ occupations, and classified similarly to the british registrar general’s social classification of occupations (bray, adams, getz, & stovall, 2001) reflecting the outcome of educational attainment: i, professional (ses 1 high); ii, managerial (ses 2); iiin, clerical non-manual (ses 3); iiim, skilled manual (ses 4); iv, semiskilled manual; v, unskilled (ses 5 low). categories iv and v were combined because they represent very similar occupations. both mothers’ and fathers’ occupational statuses were measured and used in the analysis. a family occupational status variable was constructed, based on the parent with the highest registered status. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 361 family affluence scale (fas) is an indicator of material wealth and is a composite of four indicators: “does your family have a car or a van?” (“no,” “yes,” “yes, two or more”); “how many computers does your family own?” (“none,” “one,” “two,” “more than two”); “do you have your own bedroom?” (“yes,” “no”), and “during the past 12 months, how many times did you go away on vacation with your family?”(“not at all,” “once,” “twice,” “more than twice”) (currie, elton, todd, & platt, 1997; currie, 2008). when the four indicators are combined to produce a linear composite score, the family affluence scale ranges from zero (lowest affluence) to nine (highest affluence). the scale has been validated as reflecting the material resources of the family (andersen et al., 2008). cultural capital refers to the number of books in the household as an indicator of the cultural capital of the family. it was measured by one question: “approximately how many books do you have in your home?” responses were reported on a seven-point scale: “none,” “1–10,” “11–50,” “51–100,” “101–250,” “251–500,” and “more than 500.” a similar measure for cultural capital has been used in other studies and shown to be an important dimension of socio-economic status (georg, 2004; myrberg & rosen, 2006; pedersen, 1996). unified index for socio-economic status (ses). to obtain a unified index for ses, a categorical principal component analysis was performed (meulman, van der kooij, & heiser, 2004) using ibm spss statistics version 19 (spss inc., n.d.), where the three indicators for ses were included (torsheim, leversen, & samdal, 2007). the ses index is thus a formative scale that includes composite indicators (here parents’ occupational status, family affluence, and cultural capital), and the adolescents’ ses is thus determined by these three indicators (bollen & lennox, 1991). in the present study, the estimated ses index component was further ridit transformed. a central assumption is that all three ses indicators included in this ses index have ordinal measurement properties. ridit analysis is a method of analysis for such ordinal variables that proceeds from the assumption that the ordered categorical variable is an approximation of an underlying, but not measurable, continuous variable (bross, 1958). the successive categories are assumed to correspond to consecutive intervals on the underlying continuum. ridit transformation converts ordered categorical responses to cumulative probabilities, and the individuals are thus ranked on this continuum. ridit transformation is an approach that has previously also been used for ses scales with ordinal measurement (mackenbach & kunst, 1997; manor, matthews, & power, 1997). in the present study the estimated ses index component was ridit transformed to yield a continuous socio-economic deprivation score ranging from 0 to 1, with a whole-sample mean of 0.5. a score of 1 indicated an adolescent at the top of the socio-economic hierarchy (with the highest material wealth, highest number of books in the household, and highest occupational status of the parents), whereas a score of 0 represented an adolescent at the bottom of the hierarchy. students with ridit scores among the lowest 20% were classified in the present study as “low ses”; students in the second, third, and fourth quintile (60%) were classified as “middle ses”; and students with ridit scores among the upper 20% were classified as “high ses”. in the study by torsheim and colleagues (2007) this indicator showed consistent results across different health behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 362 analyses statistical analyses were conducted with ibm spss statistics version 19 (spss inc., n.d.). the analyses were performed in two stages. in stage one the pattern in the data of leisure activity participation was used to classify gender distinctiveness and gender-typical behavior. a similar procedure for gender diagnostics has also been performed in other studies (lippa & connelly, 1990; young & sweeting, 2004), and is based on the assumption that behaviors that show differences between men and women (or boys and girls) in a given population serve as measures of what they call “maleness” and “femaleness”. the estimated likelihood that an individual is boy (male) or girl (female) is thus based upon gender-related interests, such as leisure activities. in the present study propensity scores were used in order to predict the probability of “girlishness” or “boyishness” in activity type participation. propensity score is the probability of a unit (e.g., a person) being assigned to a particular condition (here “boyishness and “girlishness”) in a study given a set of known covariates (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983). the score then summarizes all of the background (covariate) information (here about boys’ and girls’ participation in leisure activities) into a scalar. the propensity score may be found through logistic regression analysis. in the present study “sex” was treated as the dependent variable, whereas the 27 different leisure activities were treated as the independent variables. the participants’ sex was coded “0” for boys and “1” for girls. high significant score estimates represented girl-typical activity behavior, low significant score estimates represented boy-typical activity behavior, and non-significant score estimates represented more gender-neutral activity behavior. the propensity score was obtained through logit transformation of the estimates from the logistic regression analysis. the logit is defined as the natural log ln(p/1-p) where p is a proportion. in order to show the distribution of scores and indication of skewness, a histogram was produced based on the density propensity scores for girls and boys. based on the propensity scores, gendered behavior was collapsed into three groups: the first group contained the lowest 33.3%, classified as “boyish”; the second group contained the second percentile (33.3%), classified as “gender-neutral”; and the third group was composed of the upper 33.3%, classified as “girlish”. in stage two, we investigated the propensity scores of boys’ and girls’ gendered behavior through a histogram, and furthermore through regression analysis to explore whether the general level of participation was influenced by the gendered behavior of boys and girls. finally, cross-tabulations were run in order to reveal possible differences in “girlishness”, “boyishness”, and “neutrality” (based on leisure activity participation) between high, middle, and low socio-economic status groups. results classification of gender predicted groups a logistic regression analysis was performed using the prevalences of participation in the 27 leisure activity variables as predictors of gendered behavior (and gender predicted groups). table 1 presents results from these analyses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 363 table 1. results of logistic regression analysis in classification of gendered behavior, with estimates ranging from the most “girlish” to the most “boyish” behavior based on 27 different leisure activities (n = 2,212). 95% ci for or b se wald test odds ratio lower ci higher ci 1. dance 1.57 .15 111.89 4.80*** 3.59 6.41 2. aerobics 1.09 .14 59.22 2.99*** 2.26 3.94 3. hiking .75 .09 76.65 2.11*** 1.78 2.49 4. handball .71 .11 43.86 2.03*** 1.64 2.50 5. drama (theater/show) .36 .27 1.75 1.43 .84 2.44 6. singing in a choir .34 .23 2.25 1.40 .90 2.18 7. gymnastics .27 .22 1.47 1.31 .85 2.03 8. jogging .24 .08 8.22 1.27** 1.08 1.49 9. take music lessons .19 .14 1.86 1.21 .92 1.58 10. scouting .13 .27 .22 1.14 .67 1.93 11. play brass band/orchestra .14 .13 1.09 1.14 .89 1.47 12. swimming .07 .18 .17 1.08 .76 1.53 13. volunteering .03 .12 .05 1.03 .82 1.29 14. church activities -.19 .16 1.35 .83 .60 1.14 15. basketball or other ball games -.07 .11 .38 .93 .75 1.16 16. sing/play in a band -.16 .14 1.36 .85 .65 1.12 17. athletics -.20 .16 1.50 .82 .60 1.13 18. boxing/kickboxing -.21 .23 .85 .81 .52 1.27 19. karate, judo, tae kwondo, jujitsu -.27 .16 2.95 .77 .57 1.04 20. cycle -.30 .06 21.77 .74*** .65 .84 21. snowboarding/downhill skiing -.30 .09 10.71 .74** .62 .89 22. cross-country skiing -.54 .13 16.29 .58*** .45 .76 23. soccer -.66 .07 87.56 .52*** .45 .59 24. make music -.69 .13 27.76 .50*** .39 .65 25. ice hockey -.75 .22 11.61 .47** .31 .73 26. weight lifting/weight training -.88 .08 107.76 .42*** .35 .49 27. wrestling -1.47 .41 13.04 .23*** .10 .51 ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001 note: or are based on estimates when boys are set as indicator “girlish” activity behavior was most strongly predicted by activities such as dance, aerobics, hiking, and handball (estimates > 2), whereas “boyish” activity behavior was most strongly predicted by activities such as wrestling, weightlifting, ice hockey, make music, and soccer (estimates > .55). “gender-neutral” activity behavior was predicted by activities such as scouting, swimming, volunteering, basketball, and being in a band. figure 1 shows the distribution of gendered behavior within the sexes, based on the density propensity score after logit transformation of the estimates from the logistic regression analysis. the density propensity scores show that boys and girls are skewed to each side of the centre (0) demonstrating the distribution of gendered behavior for each sex. the largest proportion of both boys and girls has a gender-neutral or gender-typical activity pattern. for both genders there is, as well, a small proportion of atypical behavior. the distribution of scores towards the atypical was relatively similar for both sexes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 364 figure 1. graph showing the density propensity scores of the gendered behavior of boys and girls based on leisure activity participation in 27 activities. a regression analysis between the propensity scores of gendered behavior and general participation level (when controlling for socio-economic status), revealed that boys’ gendered behavior (“boyish”) had a stronger impact on their participation level (β = .43, p < .001), than the impact of girls’ gendered behavior (“girlish”) on their participation level (β = .20, p < .001). in other words, the more gender-typical boys were, and to some degree girls, the more they participated in activities. the relation between gendered activity behavior and socio-economic status to investigate further the gendered behavior in different socio-economic status groups, the relationship between the gender predicted groups and ses were analysed through crosstabulation of “boyish”, “gender-neutral”, and “girlish” behavior (split on sex), and low, middle, and high socio-economic status (table 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 365 table 2. results of cross-tabulation analysis between predicted gender group and socio-economic status group split on sex (n = 2,212) sex socio-economic status group boy low ses middle ses high ses total predicted group “boyish” 55% 56% 58% 56% predicted group “gender-neutral” 36% 34% 30% 33% predicted group “girlish” 10% 10% 13% 11% mean gendered behavior -.98(1.38) -1.02(1.53) -1.05(1.50) -1.02(1.50) mean participation level .09(.07) .10(.07) .12(.08) .10(.07) girl predicted group “boyish” 9% 9% 15% 11% predicted group “gender-neutral” 41% 35% 25% 34% predicted group “girlish” 51% 56% 60% 56% mean gendered behavior 1.05(1.57) 1.15(1.64) 1.16(1.85) 1.13(1.68) mean participation level .08(.06) .09(.07) .11(.07) .09(07) the results in table 2 show that there were equal distributions in the gendered behavior groups for both boys and girls, with 56 % having a gender-typical behavior (boys behaving “boyishly” and girls behaving “girlishly”), 11% having a gender-atypical behavior (boys behaving “girlishly” and girls behaving “boyishly”), and about 33% were “genderneutral”. for boys the distribution of the different gendered behavior groups was also relatively stable across socio-economic status groups, showing no significant differences in gendered leisure activity behavior between high and low ses groups. the picture was, however, a bit different for girls. high socio-economic status girls were significantly more “boyish”, less “gender-neutral”, and more “girlish” in their leisure activity behavior than girls in the low socio-economic status group (χ² = 19.48, p < .01). there was a tendency for low ses boys to be more “gender-neutral” than boys in the high ses group, similar to the pattern observed for girls, however this difference was not significant. independent sample t-tests, revealed no significant differences in the means of the propensity scores of gendered behavior between the socio-economic status groups, neither for girls nor for boys. this signifies that the overall gendered behavior is about the same in all socio-economic status groups for both international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 366 the sexes. additionally, there were no significant sex differences in gendered behavior levels, indicating about equal levels of gendered behavior in boys and girls in total. furthermore, through independent sample t-tests, the mean level of activity participation was found to be significantly higher for adolescents in the high ses group than adolescents in middle and low ses groups, and this was evident both for boys (t(d) = 4.22(1,1107), p < .001, cohen’s d effect size = .29) and for girls (t(d) = 4.15(1,1101), p < .001, cohen’s d effect size = .29). discussion the purpose of this study was to explore gendered behavior in norwegian adolescents based on their leisure activity participation and to investigate whether there are differences in such gendered behavior between boys and girls and between socio-economic status groups. the study found support for the hypothesis in that there were clear gender-typical patterns in leisure participation in adolescent boys and girls. leisure participation proved therefore to be a good indicator of the classification of gendered behavior for both boys and girls, and thus supports previous research where similar procedures for gender classification of behavior were used (lippa & connelly, 1990; young & sweeting, 2004). in general, boys were as “boyish” as girls were “girlish”, and this gendered activity behavior was positively associated with a higher level of activity participation. such gender-typical patterns found in this study can be considered to be associated with societal gender socialization. a consequence of gender socialization may be that when the adolescents are choosing activities, some options may not be considered because they do not fit in well with the individual’s gender role perception. integration of the culturallyand socially-defined gender role schema can have such a strong effect on how the world is viewed that activities classified as part of the opposite gender role may be rejected without much evaluation or consideration. other studies have provided some support for this hypothesis (eccles, 1987). the specific gender-typical activities found in the present study were, for boys, competitive team sports like soccer and ice hockey, and for girls, activities such as dance and drama. this is consistent with the findings in studies looking at similar kinds of activities (hirsch et al., 2000; jacobs et al., 2005; pedersen & seidman, 2005). in line with previous research on liberal and traditional gender roles in socio-economic status groups (crompton & lyonette, 2005; kulik, 2002; lackey, 1989; marks et al., 2009), it was hypothesized that adolescents from high ses groups would be more liberal in their activity choices and have less gender-typical activity behavior, and that adolescents in low ses group would be more traditional. however, the results in the current study did not find support for this hypothesis. overall, the gendered behavior level was quite similar between boys and girls across the socio-economic status groups. this may indicate that the general gender socialization of boys’ and girls’ leisure activities in the norwegian culture is so strong that possible socio-economic differences in gendered activity behavior are not so influential, or in other words, that the socialization process for choice of leisure activities is relatively independent of socio-economic status. however, in the investigation of prevalence of “boyish”, “girlish”, and “neutral” behaviour in the three ses groups, girls in the high status group were found to be both more “girlish” (gender typical), and more “boyish” (gender atypical) in their behavior than the girls in the low status group. additionally, the girls in the low status group were more genderinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 367 neutral than those in high status group. these findings were exclusively found for girls. the higher gender-atypical and gender-typical pattern across socio-economic status groups found for girls could be a result of the gender socialization within the family. high status parents may be more conscious of their influence and support for girls to participate in any activities that they have a true interest in, whether such activities are considered girl-typical or boytypical. such stimulation particularly of girls may be connected to a strong political focus over the last three decades in norway on equal status and equal rights for both genders represented by the 1978 law of equal status (teigen, 2000), which has emphasized the equalization rights and opportunities for women and girls more than for men. we also find these tendencies throughout the rest of europe, australia, and north america (hargreaves, 1994), which could be seen as the political outcome of a liberalfeminist discourse that centres on equal opportunities for women, socialization practices, and legal or institutional reform. it is likely that such equality focus and changes in gender roles will influence the values and preferences for girls’ leisure activities. the strong cultural equity focus in norway may also influence parents’ habitus and the transfer of world knowledge to their children. in line with bem’s theory on culturally influenced gender schemas (bem, 1981, 1983), previous research on gender-typed activities has suggested that such social changes also have opened doors for girls to participate more in traditionally masculine activities (mchale, kim, whiteman, & crouter, 2004). given this background, it might be perceived as more acceptable and “cool” for girls to participate in boy-dominated activities, although in parallel, the typical girl interests and activities are still highly valued. some countries, and norway in particular, have also been found to have a stronger development of well-organized youth policies for girls and young women, which helps them follow their true interests and increases the numbers of girls participating in leisure activities (scraton et al., 1999). a similar encouragement of boys to participate in what are culturally viewed as feminine activities (riemer & visio, 2003) would probably demand more conscious encouragement from parents as there is a shorter cultural history for stimulation of boys to cross gender lines between traditionally identified masculine and feminine activities. one important point, however, is that in the present study only patterns of participation were measured. we do not know how the individuals perceived their leisure participation and how they may have perceived possible culturally or parentally imposed constraints regarding participation in atypical activities. depending on socio-economic status background, including differences in economic status, values, and prioritization, parents are likely to represent divergent socializing agents for their children. although girls showed some differences in distribution in the classified gender behavior groups (“girlish”, “boyish”, and “neutral”), the overall level of gendered behavior was relatively stable across the socio-economic status groups for both girls and boys. this may indicate that the possibly different gendered upbringing in socio-economic status groups does not heavily influence the choice of specific activity participation. the socioeconomic status of the parents may, however, influence adolescents’ leisure activity participation in other ways. in general, the results of this study show that there were clear variations in level of activity participation between socio-economic status groups, where adolescents of high status parents participated more in leisure activities in general than adolescents with low status parents. this is in accordance with other studies (huebner & mancini, 2003; raymore, godbey, & crawford, 1994). a possible explanation could be that high status parents value leisure participation and strongly emphasize the stimulation of their children to participate in leisure activities. more adolescents from low ses families have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 368 previously been found to report less parental influence, where parents intervene less in their choice of leisure activities, than adolescents from high ses families (zeijl, te poel, du boisreymond, ravesloot, & meulman, 2000). some studies have also shown that adolescents with high ses parents are more likely to have active parents (doing different activities themselves), thereby being good role models for their children in terms of participation in activities (scheerder, vanreusel, & taks, 2005). these studies showed, however, that only parent participation and not the socio-economic status in itself influenced adolescents’ participation. high ses families have also been found to devote more of their free time to being physically active and engage more in various types of activities (wold, øygard, eder, & smith, 1994). adolescents’ levels of leisure activity could therefore be seen as connected to their habitus. high ses families may value being active and recognize why it is important for health and for the development of social resources to a larger degree than do low ses families (huebner & mancini, 2003). this may then be transferred to their children directly through encouraging them to participate, but also indirectly by being good role models. the higher participation level found in this study for high ses adolescents could be explained by such role modelling and encouragement from parents. the measure of parents’ occupation was based on individuals’ self-reporting, and comprised one of the indicators in the ses index used in this study. self-reports in general can act as a limitation, especially for ses, because such subjective criteria might not give sufficient information on parents’ social status; children in many studies have been shown to have problems in reporting their parents’ characteristics of occupation, education, income, etc. (goodman, 1999; lien, 2001). the study sample does, however, include only 15and 16year-olds and they are more likely to be able to report more accurately on parents’ occupation. furthermore, the ses unified index, based on three different indicators, was used for the analysis in this study. this may have given a more accurate and nuanced picture of the social influence of ses on adolescents’ leisure activities. for an even better understanding of the impact of sociological processes related to social status on adolescents’ leisure participation, it is suggested that future research include also parents’ education as an additional component for socio-economic status. a major strength of the study is that it employs a nationally representative sample. thus it is reasonable to assume that the findings provide a valid picture of adolescents’ participation in leisure activities in norway when it comes to both overall levels for the included activities and association with gender and socio-economic status. conclusions and future directions the present study has demonstrated clear gender-typical patterns of leisure participation among adolescent boys and girls, and there were no significant differences in gendered behavior between the sexes. when we compared the socio-economic status groups, there were increasing levels of participation with increasing status. there were, however, no or only minor variations in gendered behavior across the status groups, implying that gender stereotypes in activity participation in general are more a result of a general cultural and societal socialization than a specific parental socialization. girls in high ses groups participated, nevertheless, both in more girlish and boyish activities than their counterpart middle and low ses groups, indicating that high ses girls may be more strongly stimulated international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 355–375 369 in the society and by their parents to follow their leisure interests regardless of whether activities are classified as either typical or atypical for their gender. additionally, gendered activity behavior was positively associated with the adolescents’ higher activity level, which may indicate that gender-typical boys and girls may still perceive more activities as available for them to participate in. in order to maximize the perceived availability of and thereby developmental opportunities through leisure activities, it seems pertinent to obtain a better understanding of mechanisms preventing and stimulating adolescents to cross gender-typical borders of leisure activities. it would be of particular relevance to replicate the study in other cultures to identify whether the relationships are similar or different from what is found in norway. this may help us to create and implement effective programs both nationally and internationally, which can provide adolescents with a variety of activity opportunities that may stimulate their development. a first step in acting on the knowledge gained from the present study could be to implement policy interventions in the leisure setting encouraging and facilitating participation of activities regardless of gender. further, the school setting represents a unique opportunity to expose boys and girls in all socio-economic status groups to a broader spectrum of activities aimed at balancing the exposure of stereotypical masculine and feminine activities and specifically stimulating and supporting adolescents’ choices of crossing gender lines if they like a given activity itself. this could be a way to render gendered activities more gender-neutral. thus the activity may be in reduced conflict with the gender identity 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(2000). the role of parents and peers in the leisure activities of young adolescents. journal of leisure research, 32(3), 281–302. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 living in a transnational room: transnational online communication by unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states tae-sik kim abstract: seeking to understand the wide use of the internet as a transnational communications technology, this qualitative study inquired into the internet use of unaccompanied korean adolescents. grounded in the findings of the adolescents’ living contexts, this study set a basic question: how do the transnational online communication practices of unaccompanied adolescents shape and reflect their transnational lives? spending a tremendous amount of time in their rooms at host homes due to their limited social relationships in the united states, they intensively consumed korean media content via the internet. they also made efforts to maintain interpersonal relationships with people in korea by utilizing multiple online technologies. this study found that technological availability, cultural sensibility, and healthy peer community were important contexts of the adolescents’ transnational online communication. keywords: transnational online communication, unaccompanied adolescents, internet use, media consumption, interpersonal communication tae-sik kim is a lecturer/ postdoctoral fellow in the department of media studies and journalism at masaryk university, joštova 10, 602 00, brno, czech republic. e-mail: beinkid@mail.muni.cz mailto:beinkid@mail.muni.cz international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 690 the present study is a part of a larger research project on unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states, and examines, in particular, the young international students’ transnational media consumption and communication. the study is grounded in an understanding of two important aspects of the study population: as young expatriates pursuing precollege education in a foreign country, they belong to the wave of “early study abroad” (ahn, 2011; popadiuk, 2010); and as “digital natives”, they adroitly adopt advanced communication technologies in their everyday lives (palfrey & gasser, 2008). international education is a typical way of accumulating sociocultural capital in a globalized world (ong, 1999). this transnational activity reflects multilayered relationships between and beyond the sending and receiving countries: the global hegemonic relationship among nation-states has led to large-scale migrations to some english-speaking countries for the purpose of education. as a result, an increased number of actors are seeking their economic fortunes in commercialized international education, and well-to-do international students and their families are able to engage in transnational lives more easily than before (collins, 2009). the present study population, comprising unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states, is a typical example of the recent wave of educational migration, which has been accelerated by increasing competition not only in the field of education but also in society as a whole. while rapid economic development has increased the number of middle-class families who can afford to invest a large amount of money in their children’s education, the influence of neoliberal ideas on norms in korea has forced families to look for more advantageous positions in endless competition. since the late 1990s, the number of korean precollege students abroad has increased, creating a social phenomenon known as educational exodus (kang & abelmann, 2011). the recent increase in transnationalism has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the availability and affordability of international telephone services (vertovec, 2004). rapid development of new communications technologies and more efficient means of transport have facilitated transnational life: individuals who relocate are able to be engaged in multiple locales. although transnational communication is not new, its scope among young people who have grown up in a more digitally-networked world has widened dramatically. young koreans are viewed as aggressive users of new communications technologies; they are often called “cyber kids” (yoon, 2006). in investigating its geographically flexible and technologically adaptive participants, the present study focuses particularly on how unaccompanied korean adolescents use communications technologies, and how they contextualize their communication practices within other aspects of their transnational experiences. the study begins with a discussion of the contexts of the unaccompanied adolescents’ lives. young international korean students routinely experience unstable personal relationships, cultural estrangement, social isolation, and idealization of their past experiences in korea (kim, 2014). these experiences furnish important clues for comprehending the ways in which such students have adopted advanced communications technologies to facilitate their transnational communication practices. therefore, the present article offers a summary of the life experiences of the study population, then shows how these students actively embrace the internet and other technologies to maintain and develop communities between korea and the united states. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 691 literature review and study background unaccompanied adolescents unaccompanied korean adolescents who go abroad to study are called jogi yuhaksaeng, a neologism meaning “early study abroad students.” the modern trend of pursuing international education can be traced to the notions of cultural citizenship and neoliberal economic citizenship (miller, 2007). international education is a consequence of neoliberalism; it is an aspect of the pursuit of the accumulation of sociocultural capital, which is believed to foster political and economic success (ong, 1999). the tradition of intense competition in korean education gives further impetus to this phenomenon. lavish spending on private supplemental education in korea is not unusual (park, byun, & kim, 2011), and about 70% of precollege students participate in after-school private education (korean statistical information service, 2012). the ever-intensifying educational competition in korea within the global neoliberal context has fostered a trend of sending young korean students to english-speaking countries to pursue and secure advantageous positions (kang, 2013; park & abelmann, 2004). recognizing the perceived value of english-language skills, the education industry and well-to-do families have reacted swiftly (park, 2009). the purpose of studying abroad is not only to learn english, but also to pursue degrees from renowned colleges in english-speaking countries, which are widely believed among koreans to maximize human capital accumulation (shin, 2013). this belief is fact-based: 65.3% of high-ranking bureaucrats in the current korean government have foreign degrees, and 75% of them have studied in the united states (ryu, 2008). another important attraction of early study abroad is that the educational environment in many foreign countries is less competitive than it is in korea (koo, 2007). although the total number of precollege students has slowly decreased, there were still 18,742 korean precollege students enrolled in schools abroad in 2012 (korean educational development institute, 2012).no statistical report covering the number of korean precollege students by country has been published, but it is estimated that about 30% of korean international students in the united states are precollege students (kim, 2005). studies have been conducted on korean international students in various countries, such as canada (e.g., shin, 2013), singapore (e.g., kang, 2013), and the united kingdom (moon, 2011). however, these studies have not focused on the use of communications media; in some, the subjects include both accompanied and unaccompanied adolescents. some studies have shown that unaccompanied students may have especial difficulty in building cultural competency in the host society; eventually this may result in an increasing attachment to their homeland and culture (e.g., ying, 2001). others have also pointed out that unaccompanied sojourners suffer high acculturative stress as well as homesickness in host countries (kuo & roysircar, 2006; tartakovsky, 2007). although there have been multiple comprehensive studies on the cultural experiences of unaccompanied precollege students (e.g., popadiuk, 2010), there has been little specific attention to one important aspect of their life experiences in foreign countries: their use of electronic communications media. transnational media use and communication with the emergence of advanced communications technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, migrants are able to routinely communicate with family members and friends international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 692 across national borders, leading to dramatic changes in their everyday lives (e.g., bacigalupe & camara, 2012). migrants can now access “the density, realtime character, and flexibility” of communication that these technologies make possible, and which were not available to their predecessors (portes, 2001, p. 188). how transnational family relationships are maintained or transformed by technologically mediated communication is the most popular topic in transnational communications research (e.g., kang, 2012). advanced communications technologies play an important role in maintaining existing family practices (wilding, 2006). the internet has been widely adopted by migrant families to maintain healthy relationships with communities in their home countries (bacigalupe & camara, 2012). there are also studies on wider aspects of interpersonal communication, including peer and community relationships maintained by migrants using advanced communications technologies. metyková (2010) states that technologically competent migrants flexibly adopt a variety of interpersonal communications technologies, including video conferencing and multimedia-sharing applications, while collins (2009) focuses more specifically on the uses of social-networking sites by sojourner students in maintaining and developing transnational friendships. as noted in various studies on the relationships between mass media and immigrants’ daily lives, many people who live outside their home countries still actively consume mass media content produced at home (e.g., christiansen, 2004; mayer, 2003; sun, 2005), online home-country media (yin, 2013), or ethnic media in the host countries (e.g., lin, song, & ballrokeach, 2010). according to metyková (2010), young migrants who are accustomed to internet technology tend to maintain the patterns of media consumption they formed in their countries of origin. while studies on interpersonal communications in transnational settings pay more attention to relationship maintenance and psychological consequences, those on transnational media use tend to stress the influences of media on identity formation, questioning whether migrated subjects maintain their ethnic identities or acculturate to their new communities (e.g., wang & quan, 2013). also, psychological factors that are part of the process of acculturation, such as acculturative stress and homesickness, have been analyzed to find their relationships with patterns of media use (e.g., ye, 2005). although these studies provide important empirical evidence of how certain communication practices are correlated with cultural consequences of transnational life, they do not pay extensive attention to the context of everyday life surrounding the transnational communication practices and activities in question. wilding and metyková, on the contrary, stress the importance of contextual understandings of migrants’ daily lives in studying transnational communication practices; wilding (2006, p. 127) posits questions such as, “when, under what circumstances, and why, do people decide to adopt the internet as a communications technology?”. similarly, metyková (2010, p. 326) places “migrants’ media use in the context of their everyday lived experiences and routines.” as a part of a larger study on life experiences of unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states, this study also places the young migrants’ media use and mediated communications in the broader context of their life experiences. understanding that media use is one of the most important parts of transnational life, this study particularly looks at how media use and mediated communications shape young sojourners’ transnational lives as well as reflect their life experiences overseas. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 693 unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states this study is the second part of my dissertation research focusing on the transnational communications and the cultural positioning of unaccompanied korean adolescents. in order to find the contextual background of their communication practices, i first investigated the young sojourners’ life experiences in the united sates (kim, 2014). therefore, the research questions driven by this study are grounded in an understanding of their life experiences, which are summarized in the following sections. the unaccompanied being separated from parents was the most distinctive living context of the unaccompanied adolescents. all participants in this study lived with host families, relatives, or their parents’ friends in the united states. the double foreignness experienced as a result of living with others in a foreign country hindered them in building stable personal relationships. first, they commonly suffered as a result of their incompetence with the language and culture in their host homes, avoiding intimate interactions with host-family members. second, a host home was not necessarily a permanent base. rather, many participants underwent frequent moves to new host homes for a variety of reasons, including a host’s poor service, emotional conflict with household members, and business relationships with study-abroad agents. the young students tended not to form social relationships easily within their same-age peer group. most participants reported that they had comparatively few interethnic friends, and that activities with those friends were limited. along with the language barrier, a different peer culture was cited as the main cause of unsatisfying personal relationships with american classmates. on the other hand, the relatively small number of korean students in american schools also created complications regarding peer relationships among the adolescents; they became extremely cautious in their maintenance of personal relationships with fellow koreans. young strangers many participants encountered difficulties in negotiating foreign customs, cultures, and systems in their everyday lives. first, the unaccompanied adolescents often became business targets of the early study abroad industry. their lack of knowledge about american schools, cities, and environments forced them to rely strongly on professional agencies. although they had a good understanding of their business relationships with the agencies, host families, and schools, they often thought of the relationships negatively because they felt they had become targets for profit-seeking, particularly by professional agencies. for the adolescents who had little experience in the business world, relationships with adults occasionally became very stressful, discouraging them from placing trust in adults generally. participants often pointed out that american school cultures and systems were the main barriers separating them from school communities. in korea, students usually take the same subjects with the same classmates throughout the school year. many students thought that the korean system was more advantageous than the american system in terms of the opportunity to establish friendships. as transfer students, they also experienced hardships entering into group activities, especially in contexts where existing groups with strong identities had long been established. at the same time, they intentionally disengaged themselves from activities. many international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 694 students in this study tended to regard their high-school education in the united states as merely a course they needed to pass to fulfil the purpose of early study abroad: entering an american college. the different after-school culture in the united states was another challenge; more than a third of the participants disliked having free time after school and complained about the disorganization of their everyday lives. their schedule in korea, which was filled with private after-school classes, was organized mainly by their parents and counsellors from private institutes. for these passive adolescents, time management after school in the united states was a big challenge. last but not least, restricted mobility brought about by limited transport options was an important stressor for the unaccompanied adolescents. many participants regarded inconvenient transportation as the most significant contributor to everyday stress. those who had no transportation option other than the host family’s car felt uneasy whenever they asked hostfamily members for transportation to a place other than school. occasionally, they gave up on social life with friends altogether, and instead spent large amounts of time in the host homes, which strengthened their feelings of isolation and loss of control over their free time. isolation and romanticization those daily experiences in the united states drove this study’s twofold conclusion about characteristics of participants’ life experiences: first, the socially isolated young international students spent an excessive number of hours in their own rooms; second, they often described their past experiences in korea in idealized terms. a lack of social opportunities fostered a tendency to build relationships exclusively with fellow koreans. because of the limited number of koreans, however, peer activities tended to be infrequent. in addition, their restricted mobility confined them to their host homes. at home, many participants also felt instability because of the transitory nature of their stay and because of the foreign culture. the private room at home frequently served as a refuge from the stresses of interacting with strangers. many participants compared their difficult experiences in the united states to their pleasant memories of korea. dissatisfied with their living environments, the people they met, and their sociocultural experiences in the united states, they glamorized their past experiences in korea. this idealization could be attributed mainly to the differences in their personal relationships in the two countries. in the united states, lack of direct parental care and limited peer relationships reduced the social opportunities available to the unaccompanied adolescents. the sharp contrast with their active social lives in korea led them to romanticize their time there. grounded in the findings of the young sojourners’ living contexts, this study set a basic research question: • how do the transnational online communication practices of young sojourners shape and reflect their transnational lives? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 695 this question was followed by a series of subquestions probing daily media use and communication practices: • how do unaccompanied adolescents spend time with media in the united states? • how do they utilize communications technologies in response to their transnational lives? • what kinds of media content do they mostly use? why and how do they use them? • how do they utilize the internet for interpersonal communication? methods participants this research was first conducted in the metro area of oklahoma city (okc), because i, as a doctoral student at the university of oklahoma, was familiar with the korean community there. okc is not known as a popular destination for early study abroad: there is no after-school institute for koreans and no early study abroad agency owned by koreans. when a series of interviews was conducted in 2010, many participants in okc complained about the limited number of potential korean friends in their communities, and their monotonous daily lives caused by the lack of public transportation and the shortage of congenial destinations in the city. guided by those findings, i conducted the next phase of data collection in a bigger city than okc in terms of general population, population density, and the size of the korean community. although the korean-american population in boston is smaller than in other major cities such as new york and chicago, boston is well known in korea as the most popular destination for early study abroad. despite the lack of official demographic information, it was easy to find various commercials and information identifying boston as the most popular site. unlike the research participants living in okc, those in boston had access both to larger korean communities and to convenient transportation. the final phase of data collection was conducted in dallas in late 2010. one of the largest cities in the southwestern region, dallas has a relatively large korean community. there were also multiple korean business centers in the dallas metro area at the time of this study. while dallas is larger than boston in terms of population, there were fewer education-related businesses than in boston. since korean businesses in the dallas metro area are spread throughout multiple suburban centers like carrollton and allen, the living environment for unaccompanied minors was expected to be different from that in boston. the institutional review board initially approved the whole research project including this study for the metropolitan area of okc, followed by approval for boston and dallas (irb no. 12066). in compliance with the approval, all participants were over 18 years old and were either juniors or seniors in high school. since the first semester of an academic year begins in march in korea, there are usually some technical problems when korean students transfer to american high schools. therefore, korean high school students usually lose a semester in order to be in line with the american academic calendar. moreover, many korean high school students spend around a year practicing english before they transfer to american high schools. for this reason, korean juniors and seniors are usually older than american students. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 696 the sampling of this study was purposive. with the help of several key informants in each city, i recruited participants who were not accompanied by their parents, lived with host families, and had been in the united states for over one year. i was also able to recruit additional participants who were introduced by initially recruited participants. a key informant, who was also a korean high school student in okc and a friend of my niece, helped recruit participants in okc. in boston, a korean teacher who taught english to korean students at a private institute introduced eight students to me. a participant in boston also helped me recruit another two students. in dallas, a former student of mine introduced two participants, and those two students helped me recruit four more. table 1 demographic information of participants category number of participants current city okc 15 (male: 8, female: 7) boston 10 (male: 7, female: 3) dallas 6 (male: 4, female: 2) age 18 17 (male: 11, female: 6) 19 14 (male: 8, female: 6) years in the us 1-2 10 (male: 6, female: 4) 2-3 19 (male: 13 female: 6) 42 (male: 0, female: 2) data analysis based on a pilot study with three participants in 2008, i initially developed 23 openended questions in three categories: general questions about the participants, questions regarding the uses of communications technology, and questions regarding everyday communication and interpersonal relationships. following the methodological guidelines of the grounded theory method, i began data analysis as soon as the first data were collected (charmaz, 2006). the first data analysis allowed me to add more questions and categories to the interview protocol for the next phases of data collection. therefore, the next phases of data collection in the three cities were conducted with five categories and a total of 52 questions. i transcribed interviews verbatim in korean for data analysis and coded the data by repeatedly reading the fully-transcribed interviews in order to compare interviews and find similarities and differences in the data, which eventually led to finding common themes. the coding process was divided into multiple steps. first, a list of codes was made after reading the transcripts repeatedly. second, after being compared to one another multiple times, similar and related responses from different participants were inserted in the same column on a workbook in excel. third, each code was assigned an inserted response, and only exclusively related responses were left in the same column. finally, i selected and underlined important comments representing each theme. this process was conducted not only for refining the properties of each theme but also for describing the essential nature of the themes (thorne, 2000). these underlined international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 697 comments and their corresponding themes were reviewed by a colleague, a native of korea, at my institution in order to ensure reliability. during the process of data analysis, each participant was assigned a pseudonym. findings always online in studying the life experiences of the participants, i found that the socially isolated young international students spent a strikingly large number of hours in their own rooms. a lack of other social opportunities fostered a tendency to build relationships exclusively with fellow koreans. however, with relatively few other koreans available, possibilities for peer activities were rather limited. in addition, their restricted mobility tended to confine them to their host homes. at home, many participants also felt instability because of the transitory nature of their stay and because of the foreign culture. the private room at home was felt to be secure from undesired encounters with strangers. the students’ isolation in their own rooms set the stage for intensive internet use. only four participants occasionally watched television in the living room. most hours at host homes were devoted to internet-based activities. although most participants reported that studying was one of their main activities after school, it was also blurred with internet use: i don’t know how much i use the internet. i am just always online. nothing special done. search some information. watch some tv clips. sometimes chat with friends online. but, i use the internet all the time when in my room. (minkee in okc) the participants often compared their active social lives in korea with their monotonous ones in the united states, which led them to romanticize their past in korea. their patterns of internet use apparently reflected this preference. transnational mass media use watching “korean television” in the u.s. in order to comprehend the patterns of media use, it is important to note that the young students did not regard television and the internet as clearly distinct media. the ongoing convergence of media technologies produces an indifference to the technical specifics of media delivery. most of the participants who consumed korean television content through the internet said “i watch korean tv” because the content was originally developed for television. these young adolescents, adroit in the use of the internet, obtained their viewing material in a variety of ways: some of them paid money for multimedia content, while others illegally downloaded electronic files. they actively shared their downloaded content with their friends using flash drives. since pirate file-sharing services were frequently shut down by the korean government, the students actively sought alternative sources from web services based in china and southeast asian countries. however, watching korean television via the internet was not a new pattern the students developed in the united states. in korea, the adolescents spent most of their after-school hours at “cram schools”, and rarely had occasion to watch broadcast television. they were already used international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 698 to watching television shows via the internet, and accustomed to controlling their media consumption with the power to pause, resume, skip, and replay shows at will. six participants even reported that they had not watched television on a television set in a long time. therefore, the use of the internet for consuming korean media content had already been contextualized in their daily lives, and they simply maintained the old pattern even after relocation. table 2 activities at host home and internet use note. the category marked * was counted multiple times. many participants (26 out of 31) identified “familiarity” as the reason they watched certain television shows intensively. they said that their habitual watching of those shows could be traced back to their time in korea. taewon divulged that he watched most weekend shows while in korea and continued that practice in the united states. during weekdays in korea, he did not have enough time to watch television due to his tight school schedule. many participants also pointed out the importance of korean sensibility in their media consumption. they were more interested in the love stories, crime scenes, and family conflicts in korean television dramas than in those of american television. inpyo said: when watching korean reality tv shows, i can feel these shows try to deliver some messages like family value and real friendships. i think they are our common sensibilities. korean reality shows and comedies are much funnier than those of american. i know it’s a bit because of my language. but still i feel the same code. (inpyo in boston). participants identified the different languages and cultures of the two countries as the main reasons they avoided american sitcoms and shows for teenagers. since most young participants category number of participants (percentage) *activites at host home internet surfing 30 (97%) consuming korean media content 25 (81%) watching american tv shows via the internet 16 (52%) internet messaging, phone call 30 (97%) video (computer) games 8 (26%) watching tv in the living room 4 (13%) studying 28 (90%) talking with host family and housemates 8 (26%) default home page of web browser naver, korea 15 (48%) google, usa 6 (19%) daum, korea 5 (16%) nate, korea 2 (6 %) yahoo, usa 2 (6 %) blank 2 (6 %) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 699 mainly consumed television shows for fun, they wanted to watch those shows mindlessly. however, it was hard for the young sojourners to sufficiently understand the flow of american television shows. although several participants initially tried to watch american television shows for the purpose of learning english, the motivation did not last long: i don’t enjoy american tv with no reason. they are just no fun. in the beginning of my american life, i tried to watch american tv shows because all the people told me that they would be helpful for me to improve my english. but, i gradually avoided them. i can easily watch korean tv shows, which are more fun (dowon in dallas). watching american television shows with korean subtitles. many participants (22 out of 31) also routinely watched american television shows such as prison break, grey’s anatomy, and american idol. however, they did not rely on television sets in the living room but on electronic files of those shows downloaded onto their own computers in their rooms. the availability of korean subtitles and habitual use of the internet were the main reasons for consuming american television shows available online. according to participants, it was very easy to download american shows with korean subtitles on the internet. while they mostly understood american television without korean subtitles, many preferred subtitled shows. they even downloaded american shows that were imported and broadcast in korea. some participants said they continued to consume multiple american shows they had watched before coming to the united states. in this case it was hard to distinguish consuming american shows from consuming korean ones: my favorite is prison break. i completed season 1 and 2 in korea and season 3 and 4 in the states. i already got all files of season 5 with korean subs. i watched american dramas a lot in korea and i’m still watching most of them here. (doosik in okc) on the other hand, some participants expressed their discomfort with spending time in the living room instead of their own room. jin, joon, and yuna said they did not enjoy watching television with host-family members in living rooms: i sometimes watched american tv shows like american idol with my host mom and dad, but i don’t feel comfortable with that. they don’t pressure me and it is, of course, a relaxed time; nevertheless, i am not comfortable on the couch. they are elder persons and actually not my family members. i feel i must be nice and humble in front of them (joon in okc). jin had different reason for not liking to watch television shows with host-family members. her older host parents always watched old-fashioned shows, which were too boring for her. the christian family also blocked channels she liked, such as mtv. in such circumstances, the young students preferred watching television shows in their rooms on their personal computers. keeping updated. obtaining information from korea was one of the most common motivations for internet use. some participants specifically expressed that these activities prevented them from feeling left behind. although they admitted that seeking korea-related information was not directly related to their everyday needs, they insisted that knowing updated information made them feel involved in korean communities. the strong preference for koreainternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 700 related information was also reflected in their responses to the question, “what is the home page of your web browser?”. many students set korean portal services as their default home pages (table 2). one of the popular targets of information seeking was gossip about korean entertainers. there were abundant news items and many stories about korean celebrities on the internet, especially on blogs, online newspapers, and various internet forums. jin, one of the most active participants, searched for information on her favorite korean actor: i’m a big fan of an actor, jang geun seok. i search for information about him over the internet. do you know tel-zone service at daum? tel-zone has all the information i seek: entertainers’ photos and gossip. new information is updated every moment. i feel i need to follow it. visiting tel-zone is part of my daily routine (jin in okc). many young participants paid attention exclusively to korean popular stars rather than american celebrities. according to joon, multimedia content featuring korean celebrities was helpful for catching up with new korean cultural and fashion trends. sungil actively sought information related to korean television shows that he watched because information about newly-aired shows was a good resource for his everyday conversations with korean friends. the young sojourners actively sought newly updated information about and from korea. although these activities clearly demonstrated their need for keeping up with their long-time interest in events occurring in korea, as some participants indicated, the information from korea also helped them forget about feeling separated from familiar people and experiences. some participants also believed that obtaining korea-related information and consuming korean media would help them maintain healthy relationships with korean friends. transnational interpersonal communication. instant and constant connectivity is a unique characteristic of the internet that led the unaccompanied young sojourners to use technology intensively in their long-distance communication with family members and peers in korea. participants in this study listed several different means of interpersonal communication on the internet. some participants communicated exclusively with korean people in both korea and the united states. media consumption for peer relationships. by repeatedly reading transcribed interviews and comparing multiple categories of findings, i found that one of the main purposes for participants’ media consumption was to conduct interpersonal communication across borders. the internet was the main communication channel for the young sojourners not only to continue their consumption of korean media, but also to interact with peers in korea. however, conversations with these peers ran the risk of being limited to rote topics or casual greetings. therefore, many participants made special efforts to develop subjects they could talk about with friends in korea. new episodes of a television show provided good material to help them initiate or continue conversations with their old friends in korea. some participants identified televisionrelated topics as the most popular sources of their daily conversations with their old friends via the internet: television is a kind of connection with my old buddies in korea. though we talk with each other frequently, i sometimes feel that we don’t have many things to chat about. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 701 after talking about boyfriends briefly, television shows and stars became the only topics we can share. because i watch korean tv shows almost real time, i can share my opinions, feelings, and gossips with my friends in korea (soo in okc). jimin actively used korean television shows as topics of conversation with her peers in korea. she employed the phrase “develop topics” in order to stress her efforts to maintain old relationships by using television-related topics. in jongsoo’s case, english premier league soccer was a means of maintaining his friendships with friends in korea. he watched english soccer matches every saturday morning during the soccer season. he learned about the league and watched highlights of matches via streamed webcasts from daum, one of the largest portal websites in korea. advanced internet technologies made it possible for the students to constantly and instantly contact their korean peers. transnational peer communications. although the young international students often felt that their social life dramatically decreased after arriving in the united states, they actively tried to build and maintain online social relationships. with the exceptions of song, han, and young, all participants in this study maintained close online relationships with korean friends by using cyworld, a korea-based social networking site. soo pointed out that various kinds of multimedia content, including photos and pictorial journals she and her friends posted on cyworld, helped her share everyday experiences and memories with long-distance friends. use of facebook was much less frequent, even when participants did have accounts on that service. some participants reported that the different meanings of friend and friendships in the united states were reflected on facebook, which hindered them from becoming active on the site: most friends added on my facebook are not real friends. some of them never even greet me at school. they just “collect” friends. i think it is their culture; for example, they are kind to me at the beginning of a school year, but then they never greet me…. but on my cyworld, i have many close friends both in korea and the u.s. i feel i connected with them when using cyworld. we are also good friends at school or in my town. korean friends on my cyworld share many interesting things that i can easily enjoy. their postings make me miss them a lot (yuna in boston). since the cyworld service is interlocked with nateon, korea’s largest instant messaging (im) service, using both services is common, allowing the international students to communicate easily in real time with people in korea. for example, heeseon used nateon as her main route to reach korean friends. if one of her friends updated a new activity on cyworld, nateon notified her about it. therefore, nateon was not only a messenger delivering her friends’ messages to her but also a tool that kept her informed about the everyday lives of her old friends. she found it an effective means to share daily experiences. without exception, all participants could maintain long-distance peer relationships via the internet. although a few participants felt that they and their old friends had drifted apart somewhat, most were able to maintain their intimate relationships with old friends by frequent communication. in their everyday lives at host homes and schools, they had few or no dynamic social relationships. but in their private rooms, they became active social beings interacting with old friends through advanced communications technologies. their peer relationships across international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 702 borders went beyond simply maintaining contacts; rather, the students tried to maintain stable peer networks by sharing their daily lives and spending time to understand their friends’ lives in korea. table 3 interpersonal communication via the internet note. categories marked * were counted multiple times. transnational family communications. while separated from family members, the unaccompanied adolescents tended to maintain close ties of communication with their parents. most participants, with the two exceptions of han and song, routinely shared their daily experiences with their parents and consulted them about study, personal relationships with host families and friends, and future plans. however, many participants expressed that these frequent exchanges were not just utilitarian but reflected their closeness to their parents. many who experienced limited peer relationships in the united states regarded their parents as their best friends: my mom calls me almost every day. i also call her occasionally. so we sometimes call each other three times a day. even if we talk a lot, i still have lots of things to tell her. she wants to know what happened to me every day. i also have many things to talk about and ask my mom. she is kinda my best friend now (soo in okc). im and the 070 internet phone (an internet phone service based in korea) were their main communication channels for reaching their parents, although many participants also used email. the 070 internet phone service became popular in late 2008 when a carrier marketed it as a free service among 070 subscribers, regardless of their location. when using the 070 internet phone, a user does not have to enter the international area code or long-distance pass code that most international phone card services require. the students were able to keep 070 phone devices in category number of participants (percentage) rate of communications with parents once a month 2 (6%) once a week 7 (23%) 2-4 times a week 14 (45%) 5 times or more a week 8 (26%) *means of communication with parents/with friends in korea email 21 / 24 (68% / 77%) internet messaging 12 / 26 (39% / 84%) international phone card 5 / 1 (16% / 3%) 070 internet phone 19 / 3 (61% / 10%) social network sites 15 / 27 (48% / 87%) *peer activities on the internet with non-koreans 11 (35%) with koreans in the united states 21 (68%) with koreans in korea 27 (87%) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 703 their own rooms, and so did not need to share telephones with host-family members. many participants agreed that the new technology increased their frequency of communication with their parents so much that it made them feel closer to their parents. since they could also send text messages in korean to friends and parents by using the 070 phone, some noted that it was as though they were in korea themselves, and that this psychological closeness helped to allay their daily stresses. since many participants actively communicated with their parents, i asked a related question about changes in intimacy with their parents after the participants arrived in the united states. however, no participant reported such a change. participants who communicated with parents extensively also had a close relationship with their parents when they were in korea, and the converse was also true: most who communicated less also reported less intimate communication with their parents even when in korea. neither physical distance from parents nor new communications technologies affected the quality of family relationships. summary of demographic findings as indicated in the methods section, the present study recruited participants in three different cities. while individual differences existed in the results from each city, no strong pattern of variation emerged in the consumption of korean media and transnational communication with people in korea by participants. in boston, four participants reported that it was easy for them to make new korean friends because of the large size of the community of korean early abroad students. however, none maintained stable relationships with new korean friends made in boston. it was only with korean friends in korea that they created stable networks of peer relationships. except for the few who made a special effort to avoid heavy use of the internet, participants in the three cities spent a large amount of time with the internet in order to consume korean media content and to communicate with people in korea. while there was no a significant difference between male and female participants in their consumption of korean media content, female participants tended to communicate more frequently with parents than male participants did. three female participants spoke on the phone with their parents every day. on the contrary, two male participants rarely communicated with their parents over the phone. many other male participants did not call their parents as often as most female participants did. although there were gender differences in the frequency of communication with parents, most participants reported that they did not feel a barrier to communication with family members. since they could use many different communications technologies, they could easily share the issues, needs, and concerns of their everyday lives with their family members. there was no evidence that male participants intentionally avoided phone calls with parents. when asked why they did not often speak to their parents on the phone, many male participants answered that they rarely called their parents even before they came to the united states. thus, this was another example showing that their communication practices did not change dramatically after they crossed the border. discussion “i want to go back home to korea” was one of the most frequent statements made by participants throughout the interviews. boredom and loneliness in the united states were the two most common reasons for their homesickness. the students tended to think that these feelings international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 704 were the product of their isolated lives at host homes and limited peer relationships. the unaccompanied adolescents spent most of their time outside school in their own rooms at host homes. since internet use was not a goal in itself for the participants, many of them had difficulty accounting for their internet usage in detail. however, their frequent use of the internet could suggest that they were grounded more in communities in korea than in the united states. the majority of participants still used korean websites as their informational hubs, consumed media content through korean web services, and maintained existing family and peer relationships in korea. although living in the united states and attending american high schools, their afterschool hours were filled with activities related to their old communities in korea, which were mediated through the internet. like the young eastern european migrants in the united kingdom that metyková (2010) discussed in her study, the unaccompanied korean adolescents also maintained their routine patterns of media consumption and interpersonal communication, which were formed before they came to the united states. the findings of the study suggest that there were three important aspects to the unaccompanied adolescents’ transnational media consumption and interpersonal communication. first, technological availability and literacy were important conditions for transnational media consumption. participants in this study were adept at accessing media sources by using their own laptops. they also actively shared information regarding korean media content with peers in both korea and the united states. these low-cost and easy-to-use technologies also helped them keep in touch with people they felt more attached to than those in the united states. second, cultural sensibilities and emotional attachment were crucial reasons for their consumption of korean media and involvement in communities in korea. as presented in the study of unaccompanied adolescents’ life experiences (kim, 2014), they tended to romanticize past experiences and people in korea partly because of their limited social relationships and unsatisfactory life experiences in the united states. their strong preferences for korean media content could also be further evidence of their romanticization of korea-related things. advanced communications technologies made it possible for the adolescents to communicate with their parents in korea to any desired degree. some participants regarded this as a vital means of maintaining psychological health in their transnational lives in the united states. third, both their consumption of korean media and interpersonal communication with people in korea can be explained by their desire to remain involved in peer communities based in korea. distanced from their old friends in korea, and unable to share other types of experiences with them, the young sojourners often used their common viewing of korean television shows as material for social exchanges. the adolescents also utilized multiple internet technologies that kept them informed about their friends’ everyday lives in korea. these shared experiences facilitated by the internet became an important means of maintaining their social lives. concluding remarks while the abovementioned practices represent interesting transnational scenes in relation to new communications technologies and migrant lives, it is also important to point out that these communication practices were not completely new for the adolescents. rather, as many international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 689–708 705 participants reported, they maintained their habitual patterns of media consumption, kept their cultural tastes, and stayed in touch with people in korea, practices already built into their daily lives in korea. in other words, their communication practices in the united states were not solely caused by their life experiences in the united states. but it is would be mistaken to conclude that their transnational communication practices were solely the result of the development and diffusion of new technologies. rather, their media use and interpersonal communication via the internet had been contextualized in complex relation to sociocultural environments and their daily lives both in korea and the united states. this study did not predetermine a direction of cause and effect, such as “migrants’ life experiences might lead to certain communication practices” or “transnational communication transforms migrants’ life experiences.” instead, it initially posited that a comprehensive understanding of the contexts of the participants’ lives was key to an understanding of their communication practices. it could not be denied that limited personal relationships was one of the main problems forcing the students to be isolated in their private spaces. however, their isolation was not solely caused by the conditions of their lives but also by their choice to maintain habitual use of the internet. the unaccompanied korean adolescents’ limited personal relationships and social activities in the united states were reciprocally strengthened by the excessive use of the internet and exclusive communication with koreans. on the surface, the unaccompanied korean adolescents began their transnational lives after arriving in the united states. however, their actual transnational lives had already begun in korea. on the one hand, as reviewed earlier, their study abroad was a response to global political economic relationships; on the other, the students had already been active transnational media users, flexibly adopting advanced communications technologies. the international students attended american schools in order to improve their english skills and enter american colleges, both of which are regarded as important symbolic capital. in spite of psychological burdens imposed by misunderstandings, uncomfortable relationships with people, 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(2006). the making of neo-confucian cyberkids: representations of young mobile phone users in south korea, new media & society, 8, 753–771. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444813505363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444813505363 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2004.00088.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ebn.3.3.68 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2006.00137.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2005.8.154 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444806067587 living in a transnational room: transnational online communication by unaccompanied korean adolescents in the united states tae-sik kim literature review and study background methods findings discussion concluding remarks references seeking solutions without centering problems: from research to practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 20 seeking solutions without centering problems: from research to practice janet newbury and marie hoskins abstract: while it is often a commitment to social justice ideals that bring people to the helping professions as practitioners, our theories and approaches to care are often serviceoriented and expert-driven. such an orientation to helping often focuses more on individual change – that is, changing those who are experiencing difficulties – than it does on systemic or collective change. the current article offers one very accessible possibility for practitioners who have adolescent clients. by incorporating photo elicitation into the helping relationship, the social nature of “social” problems can be acknowledged and attended to, gently nudging the boundaries of practice in a way that is more contextualized, centering possibilities rather than problems. keywords: addiction, civic engagement, photovoice, social justice, systemic change, youth acknowledgements: we would like to thank david segal for his contribution to this research process and the reviewers for valuable feedback on the manuscript, and acknowledge the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for funding it. address correspondence to: janet newbury, c14 southview rr#2, powell river, bc, canada, v8a 4z3. janet newbury is a ph.d. student at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria bc, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: newburyj@uvic.ca marie hoskins, ph.d. is professor and graduate advisor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria bc, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: mhoskins@uvic.ca mailto:newburyj@uvic.ca� mailto:mhoskins@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 21 child and youth care practitioners and other helping professionals often describe our role as being “supportive” and “therapeutic” (egan, 2002; garfat, 2003; maier, 1991). we depict our approach to help as “relational” and “strength-based” (gharabaghi, 2008; white, 2007). our intention is to help individuals and families work through their difficulties in a way that preserves dignity and increases their potential to experience fulfillment and success (peavy, 2004; richardson, 2005; wade, 2007). however, the systems in which such practices occur are still largely service-oriented and expert-driven (gergen, 1994; hillman, 1965/1997; mcknight, 1995; szasz, 2002). such systems embody assumptions about what need looks like, where agency lies, and how change occurs (diclemente, 2007; ellis, 2002; gergen, 2009). largely, these implicit assumptions undermine the potential of those seeking help and locate knowledge and power within help providers (mcknight, 1995; szasz, 2002). in the current discussion, we wish to present an alternative to this dominant discourse about helping by considering a case in point. this article draws from a study that involved five female participants, all of whom are teenagers or young adults who use crystal meth. while the details of the study and its contribution to learning can be found elsewhere (newbury & hoskins, 2008, 2010), in the current article we wish to focus on the implications for practice. by considering our research in light of the current literature on drug use, photo elicitation, and professional helping practices, how might our study inform addiction services for adolescents? a review of the literature methamphetamine use methamphetamine use is an area of study in which there is a constantly growing body of literature (see, for example, bradford, voorhees, & pehl, 2007; lende, leonard, sterke, & elifson, 2007; lambert & charles, 2008). by simply logging onto the internet, we now know what combinations of readily accessible chemicals and substances can be used to manufacture the drug, how it is distributed, and why youth initially begin using it in many cases. we have learned that it is highly addictive and that the damage it can cause to the brain and nervous system is extensive and, in some cases, irreversible. before the damaging side effects make themselves apparent, crystal meth can contribute to weight loss, lessen anxiety, heighten sex drive, and increase focus, productivity, and concentration, and these “benefits” are often part of the lure for potential users. there is currently a movement toward increasing awareness about the dangers of crystal meth (see community for action against crystal meth [caama], 2006; centre for addictions research of british columbia [carbc], 2007; british columbia mental health and addictions research network [mhanet], 2007; partnership for a drugfree america, 2007). within this movement, there is a growing emphasis on coordinating efforts among health care professionals, educators, social service providers, law enforcers, educators, and even business owners to work together to combat the problem of crystal meth or, in communities in which it does not yet have a foothold, prevent it from making an appearance (american academy of family physicians, 2007; australia national council on drugs, n.d.; saul, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 22 thus, the dominant discourse about methamphetamines within the research is one that emphasizes the destruction caused by the substance and efforts towards combatting it. however, there is an alternative discourse, one that is generated by some of those using meth, who may or may not express a desire to give “her” up. in this conversation, her presence is one that is sometimes welcomed, sometimes missed, and sometimes resented, as is evident in online discussions such as those from www.lifeormeth.com. there is a sense of camaraderie among many who engage in this kind of “relationship” discourse, and an understanding that being a “functional user” is a possibility and often a choice (caama, 2006). lende and colleagues (2007) conducted research on functional methamphetamine use. in their study, they identify the need for a deeper understanding not only of the hazards of the substance, but also of the reasons people continue to use it despite those hazards. they believe that “focusing on functional use, rather than on more global and general ‘reasons to use’ is a crucial next step in understanding why people continue using drugs” and in developing effective and meaningful supports (p. 466). while there is an abundance of epidemiological research on drug use among adolescents, there is an identified need for research that looks at substance use as it relates to other aspects of the lives of the people involved, rather than in isolation (burrell & jaffe, 1999; kwee, 2007; lambert & charles, 2008; neuhaus, 1993; truan, 1993). from our review of the literature, we concur with wilson et al. (2007) that “although risk behaviours are often seen as matters of individual choice, the decision to participate in these behaviours is set within a broader societal context” (p. 243). it is the relationship between individual users and this broader context that is still minimally understood. carleson, engebretson, and chamberlain (2006) contend that “most health intervention programs have been based on theories of social change that target individual behaviour” (p. 837). truan (1993) states that “efforts for change are blocked by the mainstream of psychological theory, which currently embraces the empirical tradition ... to the exclusion of more contextual, structural causes and solutions” (p. 497). the high rate of relapse experienced by people who have received addiction support “reveals the importance of innovative ... approaches” (neuhaus, 1993, n.p.) to addiction treatment. perhaps by not only conceiving of addiction differently, but also by conceiving of helping differently, we might better fulfill the supportive roles we wish to play in the lives of youth who struggle with addiction. photovoice: methodological implications for research rather than relying entirely on interviews, our research involved a photo elicitation process adapted slightly from photovoice (see newbury & hoskins, 2008). each of our participants was provided a camera, a journal, and some very general questions1 1 for the first two weeks, participants were given two questions to explore through photography and journaling: “what images represent how i see myself at this point in time?” and “what images represent how i think others see me at this point in time?” two weeks later, the participants were asked to explore these questions but as they imagine they would answer them five years from now. for more detail please see newbury and hoskins (2008). around which to http://www.lifeormeth.com/� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 23 explore their experiences through photography. we then met with the participants one-on-one, scrolled through their photographs, and dialogued about the ideas they wished to convey through them. rather than conceiving of this procedure as “data collection”, our own social constructionist orientation enabled us to view these dialogues as co-constructive meaningmaking processes (denzin & lincoln, 2000; gergen, 1994; kvale, 1996). this means we were less interested in accessing an “objective” truth about their experiences with addiction than we were in understanding how they experience their addictions in context – recognizing that at least for a brief time, our research was also part of their contextual realities. the process took very different routes with each participant; this was valuable in helping us to understand that addiction is experienced in relation to other dimensions of life, including family, friends, identity, media, gender, nature, and relationships (burrell & jaffe, 1999), and must also be responded to as such. the fact that the inquiry centered images rather than text or discussion is significant. harper (2000) points out that especially with new technologies, photographs are no longer viewed as objective representations as they once were. rather, the use of images can provoke reflection that goes beyond the limits of language and invites consideration of the more felt and embodied aspects of life (leitch, 2006). this enabled the dialogue that occurred later to reach into those more nuanced aspects of experience, deepening the level of inquiry and the learning that could follow, moving beyond that which might have been achieved through direct questioning (leitch, 2006). while we stated above that we are working from a social constructionist orientation, this does not in fact represent the theoretical origins of photovoice. we adapted photovoice to function as a research tool, but it is primarily used as a practice to evoke social change (wang, morrel-samuels, hutchison, bell, & pestronk, 2004). the theoretical basis for this approach comes mainly from paulo freire’s work on the role of critical consciousness in educational reform in which there is an intentional move from dialectical transfer of knowledge to dialogical (egalitarian) construction of knowledge (carleson et al., 2006; freire, 1970). the idea behind photovoice is that every personal story is “mediated by the forms of representation available in a culture” (wang et al., 2004, p. 911). by addressing social issues photographically through the exploration of personal stories, these deeply nuanced, complex relationships among individuals, cultures, discourses, power (and more) can be addressed. by dialoguing about these relational dynamics in the public realm with policy-makers, for example, concrete social change can occur (wilson et al., 2007). while this differs fundamentally from a social constructionist orientation, it is this understanding that personal stories and social realities are not in fact separate that suggests photovoice might also be a valuable therapeutic tool for helping professionals who are attempting to incorporate social justice into the fold of their practices. rather than locating the onus for change within individuals who are seeking help, photovoice provides a means for practitioners and clients to both see and respond to the complex interconnections between personal struggles and social realities. while helping professionals are increasingly acknowledging there are indeed significant “social determinants of health” (saul, 2005, p. 6), we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 24 still lack sufficient tools that help us to practice in a way that is congruent with this awareness (rojano, 2007). photovoice offers potential as one of these tools. in order for such a practice to be embraced, however, a reconceptualization of what it means to help is also necessary. doherty and carroll (2007) nudge us in this direction with the following observation: missing from our discourse is a way to think of ourselves as citizens, not just providers, as people engaged in partnerships with other citizens to tackle public problems. also missing is the idea of our clients as citizens with something to contribute to their communities ... the provider/consumer dichotomy leaves out a third alternative – citizen partnerships where we are neither providers nor consumers – which our world sorely needs in an era of widespread disengagement from civic life. (p. 225) professional care: critically engaging with a service orientation to help the above excerpt is a very direct challenge to the common assumption that help is a service to be provided for clients. indeed, such challenges have come from a multitude of theoretical origins, ranging from friere (as mentioned above) to foucault (see below). what these critiques all share in common is a concern with the status quo when it comes to the services available for the least privileged in society. what follows is a brief overview of some of these perspectives. moss and petrie (2002) distinguish services from other provisions, and observe that most commonly the use of the word “service” links to “particular dictionary definitions of ‘service’ such as ‘performance of a function’ and ‘the checking and (if necessary) repairing and/or replacing of parts’ ... to ensure efficient operation” (p. 62). while they acknowledge that the word service can have many meanings, such as “the sense of offering yourself to the other, the performance of a duty or obligation, being of service” (p. 62), it is their sense (and ours) that the term “services” is often associated with the former of the above meanings when it comes to helping professions. mcknight (1995) has long criticized such a service-oriented conceptualization of care. he says: the political nature of service depends on its association with the unlimited universality of love ... since love is not a political issue, care is not a policy question and service becomes the one business that is an unlimited, unquestionable, and non-political ‘good’ ... the result is that the politico-economic issues of service care hidden behind the mask of love. (pp. 38–39) but to what political issues is mcknight is referring? why does he insist that conceptualizing of care as service provision is inherently political, economic, and problematic? mcknight (1995) suggests that not only is the service “industry” unsuccessful in solving certain social ills, but it actually perpetuates them with its iatrogenic effect of replacing organic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 25 community support with professionalized “expertise”. moss and petrie (2002) concur by making a case for “children’s spaces” as opposed to “children’s services”. they argue that attending to the discourses underlying policies can shed light on why and how practices are constructed as they are. this, in turn, calls into question our taken-for-granted assumptions about what children “need” and makes space for other possibilities. over 30 years ago, roche (1976) posed a similar argument in the context of international development. grounding his critique in historical events, he challenges the ethnocentrism that supposes the direction of “development” and the folly in assuming that just because certain countries happen to be prosperous, their path should be understood as a model for others. instead, he suggests, this model of progress has required the subjugation that occurred through colonialism and other international policies in order to bring about that prosperity, and now change must be made that reconsiders the assumption that growth equals progress. the solutions he seeks do not involve providing services for less advantaged populations, but require challenging the systems that have placed them in disadvantaged positions in relation to more affluent nations. rose (1998) shares this critique of service-oriented notions of support with an even more cynical view that suggests the intention of the “psy” disciplines is in fact to control, not to help. tracing the history of psychology in particular, rose’s post-structural analysis of the discourses of helping casts a shadow of doubt over the implications of individualized helping practices. while he understands individual psychologists and psychiatrists might genuinely aim to contribute to the well-being of their clients, rose suggests that they may, in fact, be further contributing to their imprisonment. drawing greatly from foucault, rose fears that convincing populations to manage their behaviour in socially acceptable ways through the mainstreaming of the psy disciplines and their discourses effectively convinces each and every one of us to police ourselves and each other. as we engage critically with ourselves in terms of our productivity, our relationships, our contributions, and our responsibility, we engage much less critically with those aims in and of themselves. we feel less powerful in the face of political forces and instead turn to our personal lives to exert and experience power, leaving larger systems unchecked. szasz (2002), whose position may differ in many ways from some of the theorists above, has also long critiqued service-oriented approaches to care. he argues that diagnosing individuals as either well or not well perpetuates conditions in which help-seekers and professionals must continue to play the respective roles of “afflicted and deliverer” (p. 169). this does nothing to work towards prevention of individual struggles; rather it ensures there will always be another “client” around the corner waiting for assistance. szasz argues that this individualized approach to care does a more effective job of meeting the “needs” of professionals whose livelihood depends on the existence of clients than it does of meeting the needs of clients themselves. hillman (1965/1997) also insists helping is not something that can be done by a profession (with rules and protocol) to a client; rather, it requires individuals to relate honestly and equitably with each other. the particularities of each and every person must be utilized international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 26 through this process, not generalized from and applied universally. this critique of a service orientation to helping is reminiscent of mcknight’s (1995) judgement of institutionalized care, where he asserts that: service systems can never be reformed so they will “produce” care. care is the consenting commitment of citizens to one another. care cannot be produced, provided, managed, organized, administered, or commodified. care is the only thing a system cannot produce. every institutionalized effort to replace the real thing is a counterfeit. (p. x) civic engagement: a promising alternative these critics are convincing, and many helping professionals agree with their ideas in theory. but what realistic alternatives exist for those who are seeking support through difficulties, such as adolescents who are struggling with addiction? aldarondo (2007) reminds us that most helping professions (including but not limited to family therapy, social work, counselling, and psychiatry) emerged at least in part from a commitment to social justice. that is, from the early days of these professions, “social justice concerns and the will to act on behalf of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy were shared by many of the founding figures” (p. 12). however, as the professions developed and formalized, logistical and other concerns sometimes took center stage. thus, the ability of these initiatives to reform systems became restricted, all too often leaving the ideals of equity and justice that brought them into being in the shadows of yet another individualized professional helping practice (aldarondo, 2007). according to rojano (2007), these practices have contributed to a great many important changes “within the existing system, when its rules are kept intact” (p. 251). that is, individuals who are struggling have experienced support and success through such interventions. some systemic changes have also been achieved, but are much more difficult to bring about. they either require the introduction of “new rules into the existing system” (p. 251) or further still, the opportunities for people find ways to step out of the system entirely, equipping themselves with new tools to then join with others and re-enter the system differently, facilitating further changes within it (p. 252). such an approach, in the case of addiction, would require moving out of a problem centered paradigm altogether. by moving beyond the individual (not her problems, and not her as a problem) for a time, she might then be able to shift out of a problem-saturated view of herself and her experience. from this approach, positive change is understood as something that occurs in relation – through civic engagement, or otherwise – not in isolation. conceived as such, the idea of positive change has the potential to become a reality. gergen (1994, 2009) advocates such a reconceptualization of helping practices and change processes. by centering relational dynamics, individuals are no longer required to change international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 27 on their own; instead, the dynamics between us demand our attention. this moves us out of blame, but importantly also moves us all into a place of responsibility. from this perspective, all change is social – there simply is no individual (gergen, 2009). systemic change that has implications in the lives of individuals requires movement away from an individualized service orientation to help. while it may involve change on the part of individuals, its implications do not stop there and its practices do not necessarily have to start there. this idea is attractive, but aldarondo (2007) acknowledges that practitioners rarely have the training to translate such conceptualizations into practice. our tools are still shaped around service-based notions of help. what is needed, then, are some practical approaches to supporting such change that might in fact bring us back in touch with the social justice orientations that informed the development of our fields in the first place. implications for practice: photovoice, addiction, and change the changes articulated in the previous section are reflective of the educational reforms friere (1970) advocated. this is no coincidence. those same ideals also informed the practice of photovoice we used in our research. engaging youth who are addicted to substances through the use of photo elicitation has a number of individual and collective therapeutic implications. it is the implications of photovoice for therapeutic practice, not research (newbury & hoskins, 2008) or social change (wang et al., 2004), to which we will turn for the remainder of this paper. in the following sections, then, we will draw from the (a) research findings to inform a (b) discussion of (c) implications for practice, rather than addressing each of these aspects of the study as if they are distinct. before launching in, however, we want to make clear two important points. first, we recognize that great efforts towards more contextualized practice already exist among the various helping professions. as mentioned previously, aldarondo (2007) highlights a number of these efforts. nature-based programs also serve to highlight the connectedness of individuals with their surroundings (human and otherwise) in an effort to work towards solutions without locating problems within help-seekers (taylor, segal, & harper, 2010). performance-based group work is another widely used approach to constructively responding to struggles without individualizing them (lee & de finney, 2004). similarly, a number of narrative approaches are also used in this way (denborough, 2008). we simply offer photovoice as one fruitful possibility among many, in order to increase the number of resources from which practitioners can draw. secondly, we are not suggesting an emphasis on social engagement as a replacement for consideration of individual experiences. on the contrary, it is by acknowledging their social embeddedness that individual struggles can more effectively and respectfully be addressed (gergen, 2009). in this way, we do not wish to eliminate one-on-one intervention; we offer this as an avenue through which such helping relationships may be fostered. our concern is not with whether one-on-one interventions should take place, but rather how they occur. perhaps by putting more emphasis on social dynamics within helping relationships, it will become clear that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 28 it is not a matter of choosing to focus on individual or social struggles, but recognizing the interrelatedness of both. with that, we will share some of the potential for practice we have gleaned from our research in which photovoice was used. engaging “in the moment” first, and perhaps most obviously, utilizing visual methods in therapy with adolescent participants can be beneficial in that “it is closely related to the medium of video/television, which is an integral and accepted part of young adults’ terrain. as a consequence, the method has an appeal that can be readily ‘tapped into’ ...” (riley & manias, 2004, p. 399). as child and youth care (cyc) practitioners and others who work with young people can attest, engaging in a way that resonates for young clients can sometimes be the biggest challenge to establishing a meaningful connection (hoskins, 1999; lee & de finney, 2004). moreover, such a connection is often seen as critical to any kind of helping relationship (garfat, 2003). in our research, the use of digital cameras proved an effective tool for doing just this, as the girls who participated in our project were very comfortable with the medium. not only that, but the act of working through something together, while having something relatively benign and impersonal between us (that being a computer screen), enabled the conversations to flow easily. sitting side by side rather than face to face, and focusing our attention on the screen rather than each other, made the conversation feel much less strained as well. a great deal of practice and research with youth supports the idea that engaging in a task together is a therapeutic way of developing strengths and working through difficulties (garfat, 2003; krueger, 1994; lee & de finney, 2004). several of our research participants articulated that they experienced therapeutic value in the photovoice process. for example, when beth2 was asked halfway through the first research conversation how she was feeling she said, “it’s going pretty good. this is the first opportunity i’ve had in a long time to say what i think.” thus, photovoice can serve as one tool by which practitioners can engage relationally with youth in a therapeutic process. this, however, still leaves us within the realm of individual change, albeit relationally facilitated. depth and quality of dialogue because the conversations center the photographs rather than the participants, the dialogue that occurs can move to a place in which nuance and contradictions can be explored without defensiveness, which is an important aspect of the helping practices in which alternative possibilities are intentionally being sought. together with the researcher, the participants can unpack some of the ideas that emerge through the images and the metaphors they employ. as 2 names have been changed to protect confidentiality and anonymity of participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 29 explained by wilson and colleagues (2007), “in photovoice, participants represent their world with their own photographs, which they then analyze to surface their meaning” (p. 242). the following image (figure i) and excerpts demonstrate how this process evolved with one of our participants: figure i (puddle) beth: this picture of the puddle with the reflection of the tree in it and the sky, i think it’s more about the second question, what images represent what other people think i am at this point in my life. a lot of people have told me lately that they are reminded of themselves when they look international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 30 at me, i’m a reflection of themselves ... i think they’re seeing intelligence but struggle, like struggling from the past that’s still living life day to day and for the future. later in the conversation, she comes back to this image in relation to some complexities of life: beth: the picture of the tree is life. in that picture there is life. and it’s overcast, right? it’s still gloomy, but that tree is in there, there is still life ... i believe i am a reflection of life. ... it doesn’t mean that i am the way of life or anything; i am another thing that represents life. and later still she returns to this image again, when discussing her changing understanding of her place in the world in relation to others: beth: i remember stomping through puddles when i was a little kid, and now that i am older i try to walk around them because you do not want your feet getting wet ... that little puddle has a life; it has feelings ... people do not even notice that they are right there and they just walk right through. and the whole stomping through the puddle, like, and being walked on and everything – when people do realize that you are there, you know, it feels like that is all they want to do, like stomp on you and walk all over you. david: so, when someone realizes that you are right there in front of you, they have this desire to want to stomp on you? beth: yeah, and walk on you, and kind of abuse you, ’cause you know how i just made that little joke about puddles having feelings, you know kids want to go and stomp through the puddles, not meaning that kids are out to get me. those who use photovoice as a tool for social change recognize that “photovoice helps people to use visual evidence to recognize and voice their problems and potential solutions” (walter goodhart et al., 2006, p. 52). by moving beyond the literal and perhaps more obvious interpretations of events, a process such as photovoice invites critical thinking that enables a number of contextual elements to be incorporated into interpretations, as evidenced by the example above. with one image of a reflection of a tree in a puddle, beth was able to explore her relationships to other people, her understandings of how she is perceived, how this in part informs her identity, and even very general conceptualizations of life and her place in it. by making room for unstructured critical thinking, the conversation can eventually move to her own agency within such complex dynamics, her values, and the choices she has the capacity to make within it all. more than “couch talk” photovoice provokes generative dialogue, but it also has the potential to do more than that. for another participant, karen, the introduction of photography into her life provided an alternative that did not previously exist. as the following image (figure ii) and excerpt international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 31 demonstrate, photography has opened doors for her not only creatively, but even in terms of the role she plays in the world. photovoice is part of a process through which she is beginning to redefine herself from addict to citizen. in this way, it is a tool that can promote change “within the existing system” (rojano, 2007, p. 251). figure ii (fire hydrant) karen: and some person left the – you know those cranks to take the front of the fire hydrants off. someone left one of those right there and i was like, “man, you guys are lucky i don’t still do international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 32 drugs or i would have taken that and like caused some shit, man.” but i didn’t. i just left it there and took a picture of it instead. this is not to say, of course, that a love of photography itself is necessary in order for photovoice to be a valuable therapeutic tool for youth who use certain substances. nor do we intend to suggest that that photography itself simply serves as a diversion from the impact of such use. but for this participant, her participation in photovoice provoked an exploration about what she deems important and how she can live in accordance with these priorities. she discovered throughout the course of the photovoice project that her previous choices were not in alignment with her overall values. this discovery did not occur in isolation, but was a process that developed alongside other initiatives she was taking at that time towards recovery from her crystal meth use. by understanding photovoice as a tool that can facilitate such developments rather than a singular answer, practitioners may be able to support youth in working towards their own solutions. another example (figure iii) provided by the same participant illustrates again how the photovoice process provoked her both to think differently and (importantly) to act differently. here she explains a situation that occurred between our first and second interviews in which she chose photography over drug use: figure iii (skate park) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 33 karen: um, this is actually interesting here. we were on our way to get drugs and then i changed my mind. janet: really? why did you change your mind? karen: ’cause i just decided i don’t want to. i saw all the graffiti here and i just thought, “you know what? i’d rather take pictures of this graffiti here than like go get drugs.” and she [friend] was like, “yeah?” and i was like, “actually i don’t want to do drugs. i’m going to call my mom.” and i called my mom and she came and picked me up ... also, it was after i ran into these people too [shows me a picture of some old friends] ... and they were like, “oh, you look so good. i’m glad you’re doing so good!” ... and i called my mom and we went out for dinner. as is made clear with the above example, karen’s choice not to use drugs that day was not an entirely self-driven decision. it was made possible in part because there was a camera in her purse and she had been recently enjoying photography, in part because she knew her mom was available to come and get her, and in part because her friends had complimented her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 34 progress, strengthening her newly developing identity as “clean”. experienced together, all of these relational dynamics contribute to her recovery process, and none of them center her “problem” of drug use. this leads us to the next reason photovoice may be a valuable resource for practitioners who are supporting youth who engage in problematic substance use. connecting individual struggles with social realities as was described earlier, helping professionals across various fields have been working hard to incorporate social justice ideals into clinical practice (aldarondo, 2007; denzin & giardina, 2009; newbury, 2010; reynolds, 2002). within public health in general there is an increased awareness that “concepts that inform philosophical and theoretical approaches have been based on ... theories of social change that target individual behaviour” (carleson et al., 2006, p. 837). focusing interventions on the individuals who are seeking support, requiring that they alone change can serve to further marginalize people who are already living in the margins (reynolds, 2002). within the social services in particular, the importance of acknowledging the social nature of individual struggles is increasingly recognized (coates & wade, 2007; reynolds, 2002). viewing individuals in isolation from their political and social contexts is not only potentially ineffective in working through difficulties, but according to clarke (2005) it is based on a fallacy. individuals do not exist in isolation, and a situation is comprised of many human, non-human, and relational dimensions which all must be taken into consideration when aiming to change a given situation. gergen (2009) affirms this position by suggesting that understanding an experience and working towards a resolution does not involve developing an objective picture of reality and then fixing it. rather, it involves recognizing there is no objective picture of reality; it is everchanging due to its fluid nature and the fact that none of us approach a situation with the same set of experiences (i.e., knowledge), nor from the same vantage point. thus, from this perspective, supporting someone in a difficulty such as addiction requires finding a way to move through the dynamic matrix of elements comfortably, not presenting them with objective answers that make sense to someone else’s “expert” reality (szasz, 2002). this brings us finally to a more systemic approach to change – change that requires movement not only on the part of “clients”, but also on the part of helping practitioners. in other words, this brings us to citizen partnerships (aldarondo, 2007). in order to avoid individualizing a struggle such as addiction, but still supporting clients to recognize and utilize what agency they have within their particular contexts, practitioners need tools that enable clients to connect their struggles with their social realities. they need to find ways that move beyond the readily available techniques and strategies that – even unwittingly – locate problems and solutions inside their individual clients. embodied knowing, performance, and emotion have the capacity to move us beyond what already is, towards new possibilities (denzin & giardina, 2009). photovoice is a very concrete, practical tool that can help practitioners and clients tap into such possibilities together. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 35 how exactly might photovoice facilitate this process for adolescents who are addicted to substances, and what implications might that have for next steps within their therapeutic process? throughout the conversations we had with our research participants, there are a great many examples as to how this may occur. allowing it to unfold differently for each participant is a crucial aspect of any therapeutic endeavour (hoskins & artz, 2004). perhaps an example can help illustrate the value of photovoice in connecting individual struggles with social realities. the following series of images (figures iv through vi) were shared by meghan, a young woman who used crystal meth for many years and had been “clean” for almost one year prior to participating in our project. through images, reflection, and dialogue, she was able to convey how her experience of addiction is very much enmeshed with her world in general and cannot be tackled in isolation: figure iv (globe in colour) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 36 meghan: i know the world’s a big place but, um, i think i can – if i can conquer the whole thing with crystal meth i think i can take on the whole world. sometimes i feel like that. janet: that is so amazing. so do you feel like you’ve already taken steps towards that? meghan: um, probably in the last year, less than the last year. probably the last six months maybe, that i’ve started feeling like i have more control over everything. janet: what changed for you? meghan: i have no idea ... but when i got my full-time job, ’cause i was only working a part-time job, and i started paying rent on my own and everything ... janet: when you applied for the job – the full-time job – did you feel like, “yeah, i can do this”? meghan: um, yeah, i had been wanting to apply for a job but my roommate’s dad had kind of found out they were hiring there, and he told me about that ... janet: so you had a lot of people behind you who believed you could do it? like your roommate’s dad? meghan: yeah, oh yeah. it helps when people are pushing you and telling you you can do it. yeah, definitely. janet: was there a time when you didn’t? meghan: um yeah. when i was really into drugs and stuff i didn’t really hang around anyone that was really caring about what i was doing. janet: i wonder what led you into surrounding yourself with people who believed in you again? meghan: i don’t know. tired of doing what i was doing maybe. tired of – i don’t know. i think it was a lot to do with my boyfriend, ’cause i never, i didn’t take care of myself. i really didn’t care about taking care of myself or what i looked like or how healthy or unhealthy i was until i started going out with him. and he was kind of reminding me, he reminded me, you know, life is a lot better when you actually care about yourself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 37 figure v (globe black and white) meghan: the black and white one i thought it made it feel more like when i’m trying to do things and it doesn’t really work. like when i kind of get pushed back. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 38 figure vi (globe shaky) meghan: that one’s when i’m angry, and feeling really angry at the whole world more than anything. janet: so what would be a situation that brings out this feeling in you now? meghan: partly when i’m, like, wanting to smoke, craving to smoke crystal meth, ’cause i get those sometimes. and i’m just pissed off at everything and everything just pisses me off so i just want to forget about it all but i know i can’t ... i get mad at my mom and everything. my mom can get – she thinks she’s helping and she’s just pissing me off more by getting a little bit too “mom-like” i guess. i don’t know what you call it but yeah, things piss me off. or i get sort of – there are situations where i don’t have enough money. like my rent cheque almost bounced or something but doesn’t but i get myself all into this huge fluster or mess and i’m running around. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 39 that’s when i’m really angry. sometimes i feel like it’s just easier not doing anything legitimately or anything, but it is. the above series of images and excerpts illustrate the complex interplay between her individual struggles with addiction and the world around her. they also demonstrate how her experiences with addiction can be either exacerbated or alleviated in part by the people around her. however, her agency in strategically selecting who to surround herself with depending on what she feels she needs is also made evident above. through photovoice, meghan was very effectively able to share the fact that she clearly does not experience addiction as an individual phenomenon. therefore, as helping professionals, it does not make sense to respond to it as such. this does not only mean recognizing the myriad of contextual elements that inform the circumstances these girls are experiencing. such a perspective does not honour the agency demonstrated above by meghan. responding to addiction contextually also means recognizing that recovery itself requires engaging contextually. social justice, then, does not only mean supporting those who are less privileged. social justice requires providing spaces for those who are struggling to be civically engaged, that is focusing not only inward during their recovery process, but also outward. as cited in rojano (2007), “putnam (2000) found a strong correlation between social engagement and wellness” (p. 257). rojano goes on to say that with civic engagement, the opportunity exists to for clients to move away from a position of isolation and victimization, the person is now an empowered and committed community member. shifting from the passive role of user or recipient of the services and the good will of others, the person becomes the helper and provider of assistance to others. (p. 258) towards this end, photovoice generally involves direct dialogue with policy-makers on the part of participants (carleson et al., 2006; wang et al., 2004). this was not the case for our research process, but our participants shared with us a sense of satisfaction that by engaging in research, they hope to be indirectly contributing to the recovery of others addicted to crystal meth. for most of them, this was their primary reason for choosing to do the project. some of them were also socially engaged in other ways: several gave presentations in local high schools about drug addiction; one even wrote an article for a local paper. another participant is passionately involved in environmental activism which she claimed ultimately provides her with the drive to overcome her addiction. as evidenced by these commitments, addiction is not something these girls need to control in order to engage socially. perhaps it is precisely the opposite: their desire to engage in the world may enable them to more readily overcome their addictions. by attending to such dynamics as practitioners, rather than insisting on centering problems when our clients are striving not to, perhaps we can contribute to both individual and systemic change. rojano (2007) reminds us that the present therapeutic expectation that clients “take control over their lives” does not take into account the fact that social inequities do not provide us all with the same opportunities to do so all of the time (p. 257). a more socially international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 40 conscious approach to therapeutic practice, which invites those who are struggling to engage socially, could disrupt such dynamics greatly. conclusion: photovoice, change processes, and clinical practice while photovoice can take place one-to-one, it is active, engaged, critical, and necessarily contextualized. thus, it can be a valuable tool for those practitioners who wish to incorporate social justice ideals into their clinical practice. clearly, photography alone is not sufficient to overcome addiction. but that is not the argument of this piece. used as one tool among several used by practitioners who work with adolescents, it can disperse the onus for change beyond the individual, to address multiple aspects of the experience being explored, and to follow the lead of clients as to where the most time is spent. indeed, as the examples above indicate, it can even provide opportunities for some spontaneous encounters in which the clients will find themselves responding differently to their situations. the likelihood that engaging in photovoice will also provoke different kinds of interactions and conversations for clients outside of the clinical relationship – with friends and family, for instance – is certainly high, as most of our participants expressed a desire to share their photographs and reflections with others in their lives. this moves the “real” work out of the hands of practitioners, and into the hands of the clients themselves. as freire (1970) asserted years ago, the goal is “to engage the people to participate in their own learning, a combination of action and reflection that he called praxis” (carleson et al., 2006, p. 838). and this aspect of the work can be considered a step in the direction of more socially just practice. nakkula and ravitch (1998) remind us that it is not only clients who need to change. enough research has been conducted already to make clear that approaches to helping must also be adjusted at this point. they state: although the concept of mutual transformation through meaningful engagement with clients, including children and youth, may sound reasonable, exciting, or even obvious, therapeutic models tend to look almost exclusively at client change ... most of us in the broader counselling and development field view ourselves as caregivers, not as recipients of or participants in a change process. (p. 86) in order to move beyond the dominant individualistic, service orientation to helping, we need effective tools that can support clients without further pathologizing them. we need to be willing to challenge our own notions of what that looks like, and how it is likely to occur. photovoice is one such tool that can move us in this direction. while it does not occur entirely outside of individualized interventions, “it is in the collision of traditions that innovation is born” (gergen, 2009, p. 94). this tool provides practitioners with a way to work relationally with clients, to encourage clients to critically reflect on their social realities, and to support them in moving beyond merely thinking differently, to acting differently in a way that does not turn them into the problem they are facing. and this, in turn, may bring us one step closer to socially just practice by encouraging us, too, to embrace change in the ways we are conceptualizing and enacting support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 41 references aldarondo, e. 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(1993). addiction as a social construction: a post-empirical view. the journal of psychology, 127(5), 489–499. http://www.drugfree.org/portal/drug_guide/methamphetamine� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 20–45 45 wade, a. (2007). despair, resistance, hope: response-based therapy with victims of violence. in c. flaskas, i. mccarthy, & j. sheehan (eds.), hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: adversity, forgiveness and reconciliation (pp. 63–74). new york: routledge/taylor & francis group. walter goodhart, f., hsu, j., baek, j., coleman, a., maresca, f., & miller, m. (2006). a view through a different lens: photovoice as a tool for student advocacy. journal of american college health, 55(1), 53–57. wang, c., morrel-samuels, s., hutchison, p., bell, l., & pestronk, r. (2004). flint photovoice: community building among youths, adults, and policymakers. american journal of public health, 94(6), 911–913. white, j. (2007). knowing, doing, and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child and youth care forum, 36(5/6), 225–244. wilson, n., dasho, s., martin, a., wallerstein, n., wang, c., & minkler, m. (2007). engaging young adolescents in social action through photovoice: the youth empowerment strategies (yes!) project. journal of early adolescence, 27(2), 241–261. microsoft word l. ditomasso journal versionsa jaed.doc approaches to counselling resettled refugee and asylum seeker survivors of organized violence lara di tomasso abstract: the number of resettled refugees and asylum claims in minority world countries continues to grow. some of the individuals and families who arrive in western countries through the refugee process are survivors of organized violence. despite the recognition in destination countries that counselling resettled survivors of organized violence necessitates a sensitive and responsible approach, the mental health field is polarized about responsible practice. an increasing number of mental health professionals challenge western biomedical approaches to counselling, and seek to disrupt dominant notions of trauma and disorder. this article is a review of the literature on the topic of refugee mental health, the current debate in the field, and how this has led to divergent approaches to working with survivors of organized violence. each year a vast number of people leave their homes in search of safety and stability. last year alone, the united nations high commission for refugees (unhcr) counted some 42 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. this includes 15.2 million refugees, 827 000 asylum seekers (pending decisions in host countries), and 26 million internally displaced people (unhcr, 2009b, p. 2). one-fifth of them have settled in the minority, or “industrialized”, world. according to the unhcr, the number of asylum seekers worldwide rose by 12% in 2008 (unhcr, 2009a, p. 3). canada recently saw a dramatic increase in the number of refugee claims last year, with 36,000 claims filed in 2008-2009 alone – a 30% increase from 2007-2008 (immigration and refugee board of canada, 2009, p. 8). this number reflects the higher number of mexicans and haitians who entered canada through the united states to claim asylum last year (immigration and refugee board of canada, 2009, p. 8), other asylum seekers, as well as those who are pre-selected by the canadian government from refugee camps abroad through the unhcr. once in canada, selected refugees and asylum seekers begin the challenging process of starting a new life, usually in a new language. children are registered in schools, parents take language classes and look for employment, and some seek out professional mental health services for assistance in dealing with the multiple stresses of processing the conditions of their departure, acculturation, and in the case of asylum seekers, the refugee claims process itself. dominant discourse around the mental health of survivors of organized violence assumes that a sizeable proportion live with posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd). an increasing number of mental health professionals contest approaches to treatment based on western psychology, which has pathologised and medicalised human suffering (blackwell, 2007; bracken, giller, & summerfield, 
 
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 1997; goździak, 2009; papadopoulos, 2007; quosh & gergen, 2008; summerfield, 2002). this has served to polarize professional counsellors and psychotherapists around the issue of what constitutes best practice in this domain. in recent decades, there has been a proliferation of research and therapeutic techniques aimed at better understanding and treating the mental health issues of refugees and survivors of organized violence (bracken et al., 1997). an in-depth look at counselling approaches with children and youth, or families specifically, is beyond the scope of this paper. this review refers broadly to survivors of organized violence – which necessarily includes children, youth, and families – with the intention of exploring prevailing notions of refugee mental health and approaches to counselling. three questions have guided this literature review. first, what are the current views on refugee mental health, and what is the current debate in the field? second, how do these views inform different approaches to working with refugees and survivors of organized violence? finally, how does culture impact approaches used in counselling survivors of organized violence? methodology this review will attempt to answer the questions posed above with the secondary intention of identifying strengths and gaps in the reviewed literature. this is a general and multidisciplinary review of literature that addresses theoretical and some methodological issues. the review, which spans 13 years, will hopefully serve as the foundation for a more detailed and thorough future project of working in canada with resettled survivors of organized violence. at the outset, the intention was to focus primarily on cross-cultural counselling with refugees, however the abundance of information around the debate on ptsd and work with refugees shifted the focus of the review. the literature used in this review was collected by searching the university of victoria e-library databases, the internet, the journal of refugee studies, the springer database, as well as the bibliographies and publications found on the websites of the intervention network for persons affected by organized violence and the canadian centre for victims of torture. when expanding on this review, it would be interesting to approach these two organizations and acquire more obscure resources, such as lecture/conference notes, internal reports/statistics, as well as intergovernmental organization (igo) and nongovernmental organization (ngo) reports and studies. key words employed in this search were refugees, organized violence, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, counselling, cross-cultural counselling, culture, and canada. different combinations of at least two of the above-mentioned search keywords yielded between 160 and 700 results. when the search terms included canada, the number of results was extremely low. for example, the keywords counselling, refugees, canada yielded few results in a search of the university of victoria databases. thirty sources were selected in total for the purposes of this review, of which only nine were canadian. considering the number of refugees that resettle in canada, there seems to be a lack of literature on this population in the counselling and mental health domain. many sources cited in this review originate in the united kingdom or the united states. 
 
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 however, in proportion to its population, canada takes in twice as many immigrants and refugees than the u.s. and four times as many as the u.k. (dyer, 2001, as cited in li, france, del carmen rodriguez, & cheboud, 2004, p. 46). lastly, it is important to mention that the search turned up many articles dealing with counselling survivors of torture, but a specific examination of torture is beyond the scope of this review, which will deal more broadly with organized violence in its various forms. background there are many issues bound up with counselling refugees and survivors of organized violence. while mental health professionals working with resettled refugees attempt to support their clients within the microcosm of the therapeutic relationship, the mental health issues presented often have socio-political origins. dick blackwell suggests that in the same way that asylum seekers have crossed borders, counsellors must also “cross borders” to work with asylum seekers, into the realm of history and politics, wherein an understanding of these contexts is a prerequisite for responsible practice (blackwell, 2007). survivors of organized violence are part of a collective or social suffering, which reveals the direct links between personal and social problems, the individual and the collective, psychopathology, ideology, and the political (rousseau, 2000). what rousseau alludes to as the link between the personal and the social, reynolds (2010) cites as the activist and feminist analysis of “private pain/public issue” (p. 15). this nicely characterizes the complex space that counsellors inhabit with their clients. before embarking on a review of the current literature addressing perspectives on mental health and approaches to working with the resettled survivors of organized violence, several key terms will be explored with the goal of laying the groundwork for a concise synthesis and analysis: refugees and asylum seekers the 1951 united nations convention relating to the status of refugees defines who is (and who is not) a refugee, specifies the rights of refugees worldwide, and the legal obligations of nation states. according to the convention, a refugee is a person who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” (unhcr, 1951). refugees differ from immigrants in that migration is predominantly unplanned, and often triggered by natural or human-caused adversity (tribe & keefe, 2007). another important element to highlight, and one that is extremely relevant to work with migrants, is the distinction between refugees and asylum seekers. in canada, the status of refugee describes someone who has either been pre-selected by the canadian government to resettle from abroad, or someone whose claim from within canada has been examined and accepted by the immigration and refugee board (irb). accepted refugees ultimately become permanent residents, and have the eventual option of citizenship. an asylum seeker, or claimant, is an individual whose claim is in process, with a decision pending. the claims process, including appeals, can last several years, during which time people put down roots. the 
 
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 longer an individual or family waits for a decision, the harder it is for them to deal with the possibility of refusal and return. claimants live in a constant state of uncertainty and fear of being refused and deported (tribe & keefe, 2007). furthermore, claimants in canada have less access to social services than accepted refugees. for the purpose of this review, the terms refugee and asylum seeker will both be used, as members of both of these legal status groups have sometimes been subjected to organized violence. these terms will be used with an awareness that immigration status should never be a totalizing definition, and efforts will be made in this paper to explore the complexity of the migratory experience. as rousseau (2000) warns, misconception or lack of understanding of the complex process of being a refugee can do more harm than good. organized violence “organized violence is the purposeful and systematic use of terror and brutality to control individuals, groups and communities. through the use of overwhelming force, it causes fear and helplessness among its victims. its methods include causing severe pain and suffering, killing, intimidating, threatening and in some cases destroying a community, ethnic group or political opposition” (krane, 1995, as cited in réseau d’intervention aupres des personnes ayant subi la violence organisée [rivo], n.d.). it can also include hostage taking, torture, imprisonment without trial, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, mock executions, “or any other form of violent deprivations of liberty” (world health organization, 1997, as cited in regel & berliner, 1997, p. 291). organized violence is perpetrated directly by government through its police, military or political organizations, or by a group of civilians acting independently (regel & berliner, 1997). according to rousseau (2000), it is violence perpetrated by one group of humans against another based on political, racial, religious, ethnic, social, or sexual characteristics. rousseau goes on to state that the west likes to speak about organized violence as though it were a far-off phenomenon, the “not-me” of wars fought “over-there”, rather than a reflection of our own universal human nature. part of the pain and suffering inflicted on the targets of organized violence is the rendering of that person’s world “non-sensical” – a provoked feeling of absurdity, disorganization, and incoherence at the individual, family, and community levels, everything that constitutes someone’s personal universe (marotte, 1995, as cited in rousseau, 2000). the state of chaos that organized violence creates, and the survivors’ need to restore order, is mentioned in several articles (summerfield, 2002). trauma the word trauma in psychology and psychiatry refers to a psychological injury, a pathological state – an injury of the mind (papadopoulos, 2007). trauma stems from a traumatic event that generates extreme stress, “such that the resources of the person are overwhelmed” (quosh & gergen, 2008, p. 98). definitions of what constitutes a traumatic event are broad, and include military combat, a natural or human-caused disaster, a violent personal attack, or a serious accident. according to allen (1995), the 
 
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 more the individual perceived that he/she was in danger, the more severe the resulting traumatization (as cited in quosh & gergen, 2008). trauma can generate injuries both physical and psychological in nature. in terms of the medical model of diagnosable mental health conditions, psychological adaptations to trauma include post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, dissociative phenomena, substance disorders, and anxiety disorders (wilson, 2007). post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) the vietnam veterans working group (vvwg) in the united states was instrumental in pushing for a reconsideration of trauma in the 1970s. during their campaign to get ptsd recognized as a disorder, they extended their definition of trauma to include other forms of stress, as they believed that this would strengthen their case (quosh & gergen, 2008). in 1980, with the publication of the third edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm iii), the vvwg succeeded in getting the symptoms of trauma pathologized under the title “post-traumatic stress disorder” (quosh & gergen, 2008). the diagnostic criteria for ptsd include a specific traumatic event, followed by the presentation of three main symptoms for at least one month: “1. the persistent reexperiencing of the traumatic event causing distress and signs of panic; 2. the persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, numbing of general responsiveness; and 3. the persistent symptoms of increased arousal” (dsm iv, as cited in quosh and gergen, 2008, p. 98). ptsd is classified as an anxiety disorder, but is the only disorder in the manual to specify an etiologic event as part of the diagnostic criterion (quosh and gergen, 2008). what was at first a disorder introduced through a campaign of recognition is still very political today. veterans diagnosed with ptsd received compensation, and now the diagnosis of ptsd has become an important part of the refugee claims process. without denying the impact that trauma has on the body and mind, especially for those who have endured unfathomable heights of violence, critics of ptsd and the trauma-based approach to counselling question the prevalence of this diagnostic category and its relevance across cultures. suffering some perspectives on suffering are pertinent to this review as the main critics of the trauma-based approach to counselling survivors of organized violence have claimed that the prevalence of ptsd in diagnosis and treatment has served to “medicalise” and “pathologise” human suffering (blackwell, 2007; bracken et al., 1997; goździak, 2009; papadopoulos, 2007; quosh & gergen, 2008; summerfield, 2002). goździak (2009) points out that suffering is “a universal aspect of human experience in which individuals and groups have to undergo or bear certain burdens, troubles and serious wounds to the body and spirit [author’s emphasis]” (p. 147). in addition, bowker (1997, as cited in goździak, 2009) asserts that it is the relations of individuals together in a society that 
 
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 attribute meaning to suffering, and in this way suffering needs to be viewed as more than the sum of its parts. this is a call to dig for the causes of suffering, which is in essence the job of the counsellor. tribe and keefe (2007) pose the important question, “do we not need to involve ourselves in campaigning for better conditions of asylum and for an end to the armed conflict and persecution which causes movements of refugees?” (p. 250). the term “survivor” the use of the term survivor is not without its complexities. reynolds (2010) uses the term in her practice with survivors of torture, yet prefers the word “victim” as it clearly places responsibility for violence in the hands of the perpetrator(s). use of the word survivor throughout this review is intended to honour the strength and resilience of people who have survived the heights of terror, brutality, and imposed degradation. perspectives on the mental health of refugee/asylum seeking survivors of organized violence “[c]ontroversy about the impact of psychic trauma on populations exposed to mass violence and displacement has tended to dominate debate in the field, with two theoretical poles emerging…” (silove, 2005, p. 32). advocates of the universalistic or etic perspective assume that patterns of psychiatric disorder can be identified across cultures and contexts with minor variations (silove, 2005). they believe in the pervasiveness of trauma in survivors of organized violence, and its psychological consequences, which can be categorized into diagnostic categories. they stand in opposition to transculturalists and post-modernists who regard culture as pivotal in both the framing of mental distress, and the way it is expressed (minas & silove, 2001, as cited in silove, 2005). a critique of the existing research on the mental health of refugees while it is right to assume that survivors of organized violence experience varied degrees of pain and discomfort, it does not logically follow that they all suffer from a mental disorder such as ptsd (papadopoulos, 2007). in the 1990s, mental health professionals in industrialized countries reached the consensus that there had been a severe lack of mental health resources available to refugees in previous decades. according to bracken et al. (1997), the mental health disciplines in the 1990s, beset by a sense of responsibility, became preoccupied with how to better offer services to vulnerable refugee populations. this led to a proliferation of research and service programs designed and directed specifically at refugees and survivors of organized violence, which aimed to control, “the disorder provoked by suffering and loss through instituting programs of analysis and therapy” (bracken et al., 1997, p. 434). research and programming during this era were guided by assumptions that characterize dominant mental health practice: (a) psychiatric knowledge, like medical knowledge, is an applied science; (b) psychiatric knowledge is disinterested, neutral and objective, and its techniques are value-free; and (c) it is a rational discourse (bracken, et al., 1997, p. 433). these assumptions are increasingly problematic for a growing number of practitioners 
 
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 and researchers, particularly those who ascribe to transculturalist and postmodernist perspectives. studies in the domain of refugee mental health have only recently started to focus on experiences of socio-political violence, collective suffering, and the presence of disease and trauma as interrelated phenomena (pedersen, 2002, as cited in goździak, 2009). research on survivors of organized violence has also centred on the west’s individualistic conceptions of the self, which goździak (2009) believes has contributed to several flaws in the majority of existing literature, and has led to the overestimation of psychiatric disorder among refugee populations. first, a large majority of research has been conducted with individuals who have actively sought out help, or who have been referred to mental health professionals (eisenman et al., 2003; fernadez et al., 2004; hinton et al., 2000; all as cited in goździak, 2009). second, individuals requesting asylum may exaggerate experiences of trauma in order to strengthen their claims, which poses a challenge to accessing accurate data (keller et al., 2003; laban et al., 2004; both as cited in goździak, 2009). third, the majority of research with asylum seekers and refugees takes place in the camps before resettlement, or directly after migration – a period of time when stress is probably the most acute (goździak, 2009). additionally, studies have relied heavily on strandardized screening instruments, such as the harvard trauma questionnaire (htq), the clinician administered ptsd scale, and the posttraumatic stress diagnostic scale. in reference to their own use of the htq with tamil refugees and asylum seekers, steel, silove, bird, mcgorry, and mohan (1999) acknowledge that “the questionnaires, although appropriately translated and backtranslated, are based on constructs of mental disorder that may not be identical to notions of traumatic stress in tamil communities” (p. 430). detractors of the trauma-based approach doubt the accuracy of these measurement tools that use three to five point scales to code for the frequency and intensity of symptoms linked with ptsd as set out in the dsm iv. another point, which will be taken up in more detail later on, is the concern expressed by some professionals that existing research on refugee mental health has overlooked the large majority of refugees who display enormous capacities for resilience. trauma as pathology – a universalist perspective while statistics concerning the pervasiveness of mental health disorders among refugees vary, proponents of the universalist approach estimate disorder at a notably higher rate than those with transculturalist or postmodernist leanings. for example, according to bemak and chung (2002, as cited in li et al., 2004), ptsd among the clinical refugee population is 50% or higher, and depressive disorders range from 42% to 89%. the pervasive belief in this approach is that refugee mental health is universally lower during acculturation due to stress, identity confusion, anxiety, depression, feelings of marginality, and alienation (berry, 1990; furnham and bochner, 1986; both as cited in li et al., 2004, p.125). during this process, refugees often do not get the support that they need, rendering them “vulnerable to mental breakdown” (li et al., 2004). 
 
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 trauma as pathology? postmodernist approach it is difficult to define trauma according to a universal standard. as explored above in the background section of this review, the definition of trauma has become more expansive, and includes a wide range of diverse etiologic events. parallel to this trend, critics of the universalistic approach to mental health, trauma, and ptsd have called the medicalisation of suffering into question. as gergen and quosh (2008) point out: in effect, mental health professionals, in concert with the pharmaceutical industry, contribute to the creation of the “illnesses” for which they provide the “cure.” in the case of ptsd, by avoiding the political implications of the categorization, the mental health field has also succeeded in generating reactions to stressful events as abnormal: despite its political origins, the category has shifted to a pathological medical category. (p.103) by framing the “problem” within the individual, mental health professionals, and society, are absolved of the responsibility to address the socio-political context that played a role in causing said problem. further criticisms of the widespread diagnosis of ptsd challenge the ability of a diagnostic category to capture the multiple and complex effects of trauma. even the term “post-traumatic” to describe a condition, which in the case of the refugee or asylum seeker may be ongoing, can be problematic (goździak, 2009). the tendency to universalize the symptoms of trauma so that they fit within the symptomatology of the dsm iv can also mean that other symptoms go unrecognised, such as the existence of secondary distress due to migration and acculturation (blackwell, 2007). between 1980, the year that ptsd was introduced into the dsm iv, and 1999, over 16,000 publications on ptsd have been written and stored in the database of the u.s. national center for ptsd (summerfield, 2000). while none of the critics of the pervasive use of ptsd diagnoses deny that there is tremendous suffering involved in being witness to, or surviving, horrendous acts of violence, they question the framing of normal reactions to traumatic events as disorders, which insinuates abnormality and disease. blackwell (2007) emphasizes this when he cites yet another detractor of ptsd discourse, “yet, as yehuda (2003) has pointed out, the three symptom groups i.e., reexperiencing, avoidance, and arousal, are virtually universal reactions to extremely shocking experiences and should not be classified as abnormal” (p. 255). in the case of refugees or asylum seekers resettled in the west, those who were targeted in their countries of origin are declared sick in the host country by mental health professionals (becker et al., 1990, as cited in rousseau, 2000, p. 193). as an alternative to using the ptsd model, papadopoulos (2007) suggests a conception of trauma as an attack on one’s capacity to be resilient, or what he refers to as an attack on the psychological immune system. how would mental health professionals approach work with resettled survivors of organized violence if trauma discourse were disturbed and reformulated on a mass scale in the ways discussed above? 
 
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 pathologizing distress and trauma – impacts and implications rather than assisting people to heal, the label of ptsd and the framing of suffering in biomedical terms may actually reduce people’s ability to deal with suffering and pain (rousseau, 2000; summerfield, 1999, and pupovac, 2002, both as cited in goździak, 2009). furthermore, dominant mental health discourse appropriates what may have been a natural response to unnatural events and situations, and constructs the problem as being beyond the capacity of the individual, thereby necessitating the intervention of professionals and experts to analyse and heal (lock, 1997, as cited in goździak, 2009). survivors of organized violence involved in a therapeutic relationship based on prevailing western notions of trauma may begin to consider their distress through the dominant framework, i.e., the language and structures available to them. in a post-structuralist analysis of this dynamic, insofar as speech is understood as an act that makes meaning, the dominant group thus translates, attributes, or lends its own meaning to what is said, rendering speech outside of dominant discourse “unspoken” (spivak, 1988, as cited in skott-myhre, 2008). with asylum seekers, there is also the added element of having to navigate a system that requires proof of persecution, where, for example, a person who would not necessarily qualify their experience as torture would do so to increase the likelihood of getting accepted (bracken et al., 1997). the literature highlights two negative outcomes stemming from this. the first is that the person’s ties to their meaning-making structure are loosened, weakening their connection to their culture of origin and its built-in coping strategies, thus undervaluing the individual’s capacity to cope (bracken et al., 1997). the second consequence is the creation of identities of victimhood among people who may not have considered themselves victims before the therapeutic encounter (goździak, 2009), or assigning refugees a “sick” role instead of the opportunities that would be necessary to begin the healing process in a new country (rousseau, 2000; summerfield, 2000). lastly, the generalization that survivors of organized violence have been traumatized and damaged can contribute to the creation of a “spoiled identity” (summerfield, 2002). this is particularly prescient if we consider the number of children exposed to war. the united nations refers to children of war as a “lost generation”, insinuating a damaged psychology that may never fully heal (summerfield, 2002). the u.n. estimates that 10 million children were traumatized by war, or “lost”, between 1990 and 2000. a 1995 report claims that 40% to 50% of all refugee children in the united states have a severe psychiatric disorder (sack, clarke, & seeley, 1995, as cited in summerfield, 2000). this leads summerfield (2000) to pose some important ethical questions: have people consented to having their identities defined in this way, and what might the implications be for assuming that refugee children affected by war will be psychologically vulnerable in the long term? to take it one step further, to what extent might diagnoses shape the identities of these young people? despite heavy criticism of ptsd, the field broadly recognizes the relevance of 
 
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 diagnostic categories, and that to operate separately from them is not presently an alternative. as previously mentioned, western psychotherapy based on the dsm iv may assist some people to make sense of their anguish and distress. on a practical level, the ptsd label is too bound up with insurance policies, legal codes, and corporate interests to be threatened (quosh & gergen, 2008). as gary fewster (2002) writes in his critique of the dsm iv: … dsm iv has now become the power base of the service delivery system, the controlling mechanism through which services are funded and provided. without a “diagnosis” people in trouble have very limited access to professional resources and service providers are unlikely to attract sponsors unless their patients or clients are judged to be suffering from some classified syndrome or disorder. (p. 379) thus until a viable alternative emerges, capable of taking the complexity of the human experience into consideration, mental health professionals have to learn to live and work with the dsm iv. the literature seems to suggest that mental health professions need to move towards an approach that utilizes knowledge from traditional psychotherapeutic models while recognizing that the bio-psycho-medical approach alone may harm the very people they are trying to help. the following sections will explore numerous approaches, suggestions, and musings on how to work responsibly and appropriately with refugees and survivors of organized violence. the literature explores the inclusion of local knowledges and traditional approaches to mental health as a means of reconciling the two very distinct perspectives outlined above. diverse approaches to working with resettled survivors of organized violence putting the migratory experience into context modern conflicts do not only target people, but entire ways of life that serve to connect humans to a particular identity (summerfield, 2000). women and children bear the brunt of modern conflicts (summerfield, 2000; goździak, 2009; eisenbruch, dejong, & van de put, 2004), and constitute the majority of displaced people worldwide. leaving one’s country unexpectedly, and indefinitely, is extremely difficult. the process of migration that asylum seekers and refugees undertake is a journey marked at first by extreme loss, which may include the loss of home, country, culture, family, homeland, profession, language, friends, social support, shared cultural, spiritual, political, or religious views, and, perhaps most importantly, plans for the future (tribe & keefe, 2007, p. 249). the process of acculturation is no easier, as refugees who resettle in the west have to reconcile their idealized vision of exile with the reality of a sometimes hostile or racist host population (rousseau, 2000). asylum seekers in the west are thrust into a 
 
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 legal process upon arrival, which first assumes that they are liars and fraudsters, and then requires them to prove otherwise by revisiting the events that caused them to flee over and over again (rousseau, 2000). this has resulted in a shift in the public perception of refugees, which tends now towards considering them burdens on society. within this context, counsellors and other mental health professionals are often called upon to offer proof of torture, mental illness, ptsd, etc., as part of the asylum claim. this places therapists in the undesirable position of having to either believe their client or not (tribe & keefe, 2007). the discourse around lies and “false refugees” can serve to trivialize the experiences of those who have survived traumatic events, and may need to be addressed in therapy (rousseau, 2000). many refugees are resilient; however, the people that do seek out help usually require assistance on multiple levels. frequently articulated needs include welfare support, legal advice, access to social services, assistance in language learning, family reunification, and therapeutic support (tribe & keefe, 2007). considerations for counsellors therapies aimed at assisting survivors of organized violence involve a discourse of “healing” and “recovery”, which places an expectation on clients to solve a problem that exists within themselves instead of in society (summerfield, 2002). elaborating on the notion of internalized problem discourse, summerfield (2000) writes: indeed, western psychological models have never really acknowledged that social action directed at the conditions of one's life might be a strategy for improving mental health. psychotherapy promotes an ethic of acceptance: it is the individual who has to change, not society. (pp. 5-6) counsellors face the challenge of being able to understand the wide range of reactions to extreme violence as “normal”, while working to alleviate the very real manifestations of suffering (summerfield, 2002; rousseau, 2000). not many mental health professionals in the west have had the experiences that refugees have had, and thus an effort to comprehend the particular socio-political contexts that lead to migration is important. the literature also proposes that counsellors allow room in the therapeutic encounter for the individual to make meaning of their own traumatic experience, and “historicize” their experience (lira, 1995, as cited in peltzer, 2001). however, is this feasible within the dominant approaches to counselling? richman (1993, as cited in rousseau, 2000) questions the dominant approach of “talk therapy” to treat survivors of organized violence by problematizing a model that ascribes a diagnosis, then asks people to relive trauma in order to work through it. could the non-verbalisation of trauma help some survivors cope? it is clear that mental health professionals do not agree on one coherent approach to responding to the needs of survivors of organized violence. however, this general review of the literature has revealed that working with this population requires a commitment to address a diverse range of needs, and necessitates that counsellors wear different “hats”. refugees require support throughout the claims and resettlement processes, which necessitates that counsellors hold a genuine commitment to the right of asylum and engage on various 
 
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 levels of the client’s experience in order to develop a therapeutic alliance (rousseau, 2000). post-migration, practical and logistical issues present most urgently, and refugees and asylum seekers may initially value the mental health professional for advocacy work more than for anything else (summerfield, 2000). the trauma-based approach to therapy trauma assessment involves the identification of symptoms of disorders resulting from trauma, and in the majority of cases leads to medicalized interventions of conditions such as ptsd. the trauma-focused approach to therapy is grounded in the premise that patients need to reveal as many details about their traumatic experiences as possible to allow for catharsis and a process of meaning-making (peltzer, 2001, p. 246). in working with survivors of torture, peltzer (2001) outlines the following steps involved in traumabased methodology: 1. detailed recollection of past trauma (in chronological order and in precise detail), express suppressed anger, rage, grief, and hatred; 2. analyze psychological defense mechanisms, uncovering unconscious memories, and actively reintegrating traumatizing experiences (morris & silove, 1992); 3. focus on individual’s own thoughts, fantasies, emotions, and aspirations; 4. focus on torture and violation of personal integrity and identity. (p. 246) it is important for counsellors using this approach to recall that traumatization is cumulative and, as mentioned earlier, possibly ongoing if the client is experiencing difficulties with acculturation. also, it demands particular skills of the therapist, who must be careful not to become “overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness” (peltzer, 2001, p. 245). it is important to mention cognitive behaviour therapy (cbt) in particular as there have been many studies conducted on the effectiveness of cbt in the treatment of ptsd. cognitive behaviour therapy is based on the assumption that reorganizing the way one thinks will result in the reorganization of behaviour. “among the most prominent interventions in this tradition are training procedures aimed at establishing self-regulation through the development of self-monitoring, self-generated problem solving strategies and self-evaluations of outcomes” (kendall & braswell, 1985; lochman & curry, 1986; both as cited in shirk, 1999). the use of cbt is centred around a belief in the universality of the symptomatology and expression of traumatic stress. according to the authors of a recent study conducted in the united states, intention-to-treat analysis revealed that 44% to 60% of clients with ptsd showed significant improvement after participating in cbt (kelly, rizvi, monson, & resick, 2009, p. 287). the study compared the use of cognitive processing therapy (cpt) with and without the use of written accounts, and a percentage of participants were asked to write down their worst traumatic event ever and read it repeatedly to themselves and their therapist. although this study was not conducted with survivors of organized violence, it is instructive in that 
 
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 it is an example of the type of technique that critics of traditional trauma-based approaches to mental health feel may be culturally, or even ethically, inappropriate. as cited in regel and berliner (2007), the national institute for clinical excellence (nice) in britain states in their guidelines that cbt is an effective treatment for ptsd. regel and berliner (2007) argue that not only is cbt effective in treating ptsd, but it is culturally appropriate for working with survivors of organized violence, including torture. because cbt operates on a rich understanding of the relationship between behaviour, cognition, emotion and context, it is able to effectively focus on the problems presented. it is directive and collaborative, and “often fits the expectations of clients from other cultures who frequently desire practical solutions to their problems” (regel & berliner, 2007, p. 290). based on the premise that substantive attitudinal change can only occur through a change in behavioural experience, regel and berliner involve their clients in the selection of techniques and treatment plans, thus making room to take into account social and political factors in order to debunk the “this is my fate” view of distress. what may also account for cbt’s popularity is that it is a brief form of intervention, usually occurring over the span of several months, and is considered by service providers to be more cost-effective than other forms of mental health treatment (regel & berliner, 2007). in reviewing work done with people living with trauma, other research states that there is no clear-cut evidence that psychological debriefing after a trauma is effective (rafael, meldrum, & mcfarlane,1995, as cited in summerfield, 2000; bisson, 1998, as cited in rousseau, 2000). however, different types of debriefing, based on alternatives to the western medical model, have been developed. for example, similar to the written accounts discussed above, but framed by a completely diferrent theroretical orientation, “testimony therapy” was successfully used in chile and argentina with survivors of organized violence in the 1980s. survivors wrote down detailed accounts of traumatic events, and the testimonies were subsequently used to document war crimes. narrative therapy approaches, which will be discussed below, support clients in developing narratives using the client’s vocabulary and meaning-making structures, and creates opportunities to link private pain with public issues. a strengths-based approach to therapy a recurrent observation encountered in the literature suggests that the number of people thought to develop ptsd and need professional mental health care in the aftermath of organized violence is grossly overestimated (goździak, 2009; papadopoulos, 2007; rousseau, 2000; summerfield, 2002; wilson, 2007). by one estimate, the number of people who require psychosocial help or who actually experience the symptoms of ptsd after a traumatic event is 20% (rousseau, 2000). more recent data claims otherwise (fazel et al., 2005, as cited in goździak, 2009): a meta-analysis of interview-based studies of the prevalence of ptsd, major depression, psychotic illness, and generalized anxiety disorder in refugees resettled in western countries revealed that about one in ten adult refugees has 
 
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 ptsd, about one in 20 has major depression, and about one in 25 has a generalized anxiety disorder.(p. 151) the literature reminds us that post-traumatic reactions fall on a continuum between traumatized and resilient, but also that the reality that trauma “has the potential to dysregulate emotions and set up complex patterns of prolonged stress cannot be dismissed as statistically infrequent” (kessler et al., 1996, as cited in wilson, 2007, p. 25). this begs the following question: is it possible to take all of these factors into consideration and build an approach based on the strength and local knowledge of clients? there has been some research done on resilience and positive outcomes following trauma. although this approach is not dominant in western service provision, it offers interesting tools to reframe refugee mental health. papadopoulos (2007) suggests that adversity can serve to strengthen individuals in certain instances, a trend he calls adversity-activated development (aad). other terms for similar ideas include: stressrelated growth, crisis-related growth or development, thriving in adversity, post-trauma growth, positive transformation following trauma, positive transformation of suffering, etc. (affleck & tennen, 1996; folkman, 1997; harvey, 1996; all as cited in papadopoulos, 2007). these theories are based on the belief that in moments of intense adversity, people are pushed beyond the limits of what they thought themselves capable of, permitting a new sense of self to emerge. whereas resilience signifies the capacity to withstand pressure and stress, to retain qualities that existed before the trauma, aad leads to the development of new strengths. papadopoulos’ article is extremely instructive in that it reminds professionals to avoid totalizing, generalizing, and assuming what their clients are experiencing. the complexity of the human experience is such that people often experience conflicting emotions simultaneously and, as previously mentioned, the role of the professional counsellor is to assist the client to make meaning of his or her own experience. narrative therapy practices of narrative therapy are intended to assist people to re-author the stories that constitute their sense of themselves. white (2006) contends that trauma can cause people to experience a dislocation from “a particular and valued sense of who they are” (p. 26). viewed in this way, part of the narrative therapist’s role is to aid the person in getting in touch with their preferred sense of self (white, 2006). referred to as “double listening”, narrative therapists strive to uncover what the client values in his or her life, as well as moments when the person may have responded to or resisted trauma. based on the power analytics of michel foucault, narrative therapy seeks to externalize traditionally internalized problem discourse so as to better understand oppressive discourses. this opens up interesting terrain in working with refugee survivors of organized violence, which often requires that counsellors move effectively between the personal and the public, the personal and the social, the individual and the cultural. narrative practice offers an doorway into a heightened undertanding of the political within the therapeutic encounter which, for some counsellors and survivors of organized 
 
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 violence, may serve as the foundation for the emergence of a relationship of trust. addressing this directly, denborough (2008) asks, “how can we provide forums for the sorrow, anguish and hardship of the stories that we receive to be transformed into collective actions?” (p. 192). incorporation of cultural knowledge into work with refugees and survivors of organized violence in reference to canada, duran and dana (1995, as cited in france, del carmen rodriguez, & hett, 2004, p. 49) state that, “[c]ontemporary service delivery is still failing not only first nations but other ethnic groups as well…most providers are trained only in delivering services to the majority/dominant population”. dana (2007) outlines the lack of knowledge of the cultures of origin of immigrants and refugees in service provision. therapeutic encounters with asylum seekers and accepted refugees in the west are usually “pluricultural” or “cross-cultural” in nature, and require that professionals possess an astute awareness, understanding, and sensitivity to their own cultural location and biases, to the culture of origin of their clients, the conditions that led to migration, and the challenges of acculturation. in the reviewed literature, the centrality of culture to working with refugees and asylum seekers is mentioned frequently. if we are to keep culture front and centre, we must ask ourselves, are western notions of mental health universal, and can diagnoses be carried across cultural lines? what elements of the client’s culture of origin can mental health professionals incorporate into therapeutic practice? before exploring this, an examination of canada’s “multicultural” context, and approaches to culturally sensitive practice would be instructive. culture – some considerations refugees and asylum seekers who resettle in canada enter a country that has defined itself as multicultural. unlike models of assimilation, or interculturalism, multiculturalism posits that individuals of diverse backgrounds coexist peacefully side by side, retain their core values and beliefs, and share in the nation’s common values. critics of canada’s multiculturalist model say that it does not allow for the substantive understanding of diversity as it precludes the possibility of multiple and shifting identities, and has a tendency to be reductionist, thereby making invisible hierarchies and power structures (moodley, 2007). official multiculturalism in canada is a policy of depoliticization, which brown (2006) strongly cautions against when she writes, “[d]epoliticization involves construing inequality, subordination, marginalization, and social conflict, which all require political analysis and political solutions, as personal and individual on the one hand, or as natural, religious or cultural on the other…” (p. 15). many of the authors cited in this review call for an authentic understanding of the complexity of culture, both the therpist’s and the client’s, so that it may be integrated into practice. authentic understanding of culture is difficult, if not impossible to attain, as there is always the risk that we fall into cultural relativism. hoskins (2003) warns of inherent difficulties in interpreting cultural awareness as striving to understand all cultures as equal, as it may reduce the counsellor’s capacity to be critical of culturally 
 
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 embedded ideas that run counter to ideals of freedom and equality. nanda (2004) criticizes the fetishization of majority world culture, and cautions against what she calls “culturalism”. in what seems like a direct answer to post-structuralism, nanda writes: the post-developmentalist notion of the non-western cultures is shaped by the ideological needs of western intellectuals…to invest other cultures with critical force against their own supposedly hyper-rational, one-dimensional scientist culture. this radical xenophelia of western intellectuals has minimized the theoretical space for a critical assessment of non-western cultures…treating rationality and knowledge as completely constructed by culture puts culture beyond a reasoned critique. (pp. 215-216) culture and practice del carmen rodriguez, (2004) tells us that, “worldview refers to the outlook or image we have concerning the nature of the universe, the nature of humankind, the relationship between humanity and the universe and other philosophical issues or orientations that help us define the cosmos and our place in it” (p. 31). while some of the symptoms of ptsd may be experienced across cultures, it is the variance of world view that leads to the difference in perceptions of mental health and healing (wilson, 2007). del carmen rodriguez (2004) suggests that by getting to know the world view of the client, counsellors can adapt their practice in ways that will resonate with that individual’s cultural reference points. as hoskins (2003) affirms, the goal is not to develop ethnic-based skills and strategies, but a flexible approach that is reflexive, and that strives to uncover one’s own cultural biases and assumptions. france (2004) points out that all counselling is in essence multicultural, and urges the field to move away from the notion that cross-cultural techniques belong to a specialized knowledge kit. involving local traditional knowledge every culture has its own psychological knowledge (summerfield, 2000). a growing number of professionals have called for the inclusion and integration of traditional healing practices into counselling across cultures (summerfield 2000; goździak, 2009; moodley, 2007; wilson, 2007). wilson (2007) urges openness among counsellors when he writes, “the concept of traumatic stress and the multidimensional nature of cultures requires a conceptual framework by which to address core issues that have direct relevance to understanding the nature of trauma as embedded within a culture” (p. 8). goździak (2009) proposes an eclectic approach to working with survivors of organized violence, involving: indigenous healing strategies, the role of spirituality and religion, human rights and truth and reconciliation approaches, ethnography and participatory action research, and psychosocial programs. however hoskins’ (2003) approach to “cultural listening” may be the most instructive in terms of how to orient oneself to working with people experiencing distress and suffering. she states: what is really needed is the ability to sit and just “witness” the pain of years of oppression, to honestly admit that there is really no way of rectifying the kinds of 
 
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 injustices that have been levied towards one culture for the benefit of another, and to listen so carefully to the contours of a person’s experience that one’s own perspective shifts considerably just through the act of listening. this for me is what it means to be culturally attuned. (p. 331) reflections on what is and what is not there this literature review aimed to provide a broad overview of the main debates around conceptions of mental health and the resulting approaches to working with survivors of organized violence. thus an exhaustive look at the literature on this topic was not intended. however, this review did succeed in highlighting several gaps in knowledge and information. first and foremost, as highlighted above by several authors, there is a lack of longitudinal research on survivors of organized violence in their countries of resettlement. these types of studies would allow for the long-term assessment of symptoms, and carries the potential to restructure the way in which trauma, ptsd, and treatment are conceptualized. secondly, there is recognition amongst the detractors of ptsd that what refugees need just as badly as mental health treatment upon arrival in new countries is a sense of order. this order comes from the stability and peace found in a predictable and safe day to-day routine, which is wholly dependent upon having enough to eat, a place to live, and a sense of community. there is an abundance of information written by and for academics and mental health professionals, but very little research that focuses on community work and mental health. a collaborative project between front line community workers and mental health professionals is called for. there is also an absence of research conducted in collaboration with survivors. a community-based research project that involved survivors of organized violence in asking their own questions, and finding their own answers, would be an invaluable source of learning for counselling in this domain. lastly, there is a lack of canadian research on this topic. particularly because interactions with migrants are cross-cultural, local research is crucial in the formation of nuanced sensitivities around elements of the socio-political context of the host country that support and hinder healing. the literature on counselling resettled refugee and asylum seeker survivors of organized violence does not elucidate one coherent, fixed or clear approach to practice. however, it points to an important shift taking place within the mental health field that questions the universal imposition of the biomedical western model. this shift urges counsellors to cross borders, blend the socio-political with the psychological, and open themselves up to cultural encounters that defy definition. 
 
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 reynolds, v. (2010). doing justice as a path to sustainability in community work. (doctoral dissertation). retrieved from: http://www.taosinstitute.net/vikkireynolds1 rousseau, c. (2000). les réfugiés à notre porte: violence organisée et souffrance sociale. revue criminologie, 33(1), 185-201. shirk, s. r. (1999). developmental therapy. in w. k. silverman & t. h. ollendick (eds.), developmental issues in the clinical treatment of children (pp. 60-73). boston: allyn & bacon. silove, d. (2005). from trauma to survival and adaptation: towards a framework for guiding mental health initiatives in post-conflict societies. in d. ingleby (ed.), forced migration and mental health: rethinking the care of refugees and displaced persons (pp. 29-51). new york: springer. skott-myhre, h. (2008). youth and subculture as creative force: creating new spaces for radical youth work. toronto: university of toronto press. steel, z., silove, d., bird, k., mcgorry, p., & mohan, p. (1999). pathways from war trauma to posttraumatic stress symptoms among tamil asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants. journal of traumatic stress, 12(3), 421-435. summerfield, d. (2000). childhood, war, refugeedom and ‘trauma’: three core questions for mental health professionals. journal of transcultural psychiatry, 37(3), 417-433. doi: 10.1177/136346150003700308 summerfield, d. (2002). effects of war: moral knowledge, revenge, reconciliation, and medicalised concepts of recovery. british medical journal 325, 1105-1107. tribe, r., & keefe, a. (2007) editorial introduction. european journal of psychotherapy and counselling, 9(3), 247-253. united nations high commission for refugees. (1951). convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49da0e466.html united nations high commission for refugees. (2009a). asylum levels and trends in industrialized countries 2008: statistical overview of asylum applications lodged in europe and selected non-european countries. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/statistics/49c796572.pdf united nations high commission for refugees. (2009b). global trends: refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, internally displaced and stateless persons. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/4a375c426.html 
 
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 white, m. (2006). working with people who are suffering the consequences of multiple trauma: a narrative perspective. in d. denborough (ed.), trauma: narrative responses to traumatic experience (pp. 25-85). adelaide, south australia: dulwich centre publications. wilson, j. p. (2007). the lens of culture: theoretical and conceptual perspectives in the assessment of psychological trauma and ptsd. in j. p. wilson & c. c. so kum tang (eds.), cross-cultural assessment of psychological trauma and ptsd (pp. 330). new york: springer. doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-70990-1_1 lara di tomasso has worked with refugees and immigrants in montreal and abroad since 2002. most recently, as a family support worker at a community organization in montreal, she had the opportunity to offer settlement and support counselling to newly arrived immigrant and refugee families in an elementary school setting. she is currently completing her master’s in child and youth care at the university of victoria. she hopes to become a clinical counsellor and return to community-based work with migrant children and families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 corporal punishment of children in the jamaican context delores e. smith abstract: research literature has shown that violence against children poses a serious threat to public health and exacts a profound toll on society overall. however, corporal punishment continues to be used extensively in many countries despite the united nation’s call for its prohibition in all contexts in member states. notwithstanding the significant progress jamaica has made in advancing the rights of children, it is one of the member states in which corporal punishment remains pervasive. the purpose of the current article is to review the literature on the prevalence and scope of corporal punishment of children in the jamaican context. in addition to presenting information on corporal punishment and its consequences, the article discusses the prevailing cultural dynamics and the debate surrounding the issue. further, the article proposes strategies for addressing existing child socialization norms and beliefs about the efficacy of corporal punishment and offers suggestions to stakeholders regarding workable approaches to limiting the potential adverse outcomes for children and for society. it is presumed that legislative, educational, and media endeavors will be beneficial to reducing the incidence of corporal punishment of children in jamaica. keywords: jamaica, physical discipline, corporal punishment, violence against children acknowledgment: the author acknowledges the support of geoffrey mabe for his assistance with the literature search for this manuscript. delores e. smith, ph.d., is an associate professor in the department of child and family studies, college of education, health, and human sciences, 1215 w. cumberland ave., knoxville, tn 37996. e-mail: delsmith@utk.edu mailto:delsmith@utk.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 28 physical violence against children is both a public health concern and a breach of children’s human rights. prevalence data have indicated that across the globe many children continue to be subjected to violence. the data also show that physical violence is the leading cause of injury and death among children (pinheiro, 2006; unicef, 2013a; unicef, 2014). in many cases, children are victimized in the settings that would be expected to be safe havens for them, such as homes and schools, and by people in positions of trust (pinheiro, 2006; unicef, 2010; unicef, 2014). annually, an estimated one billion children between the ages of 2 and 14 across the globe are subjected to violent discipline by their caregivers on a regular basis (unicef, 2014). equally troubling is the fact that despite the overwhelming data on the harmful effect of physical violence against children and the almost universal1 consensus amongst governments that all forms of violence against children should be forbidden, its incidence remains high and is, in fact, rising (unicef, 2006; unicef, 2013a; unicef, 2014). the purpose of the current article is to provide a review of the prevailing literature on the prevalence and scope of violence against of children in the jamaican context. however, the broad range of violence against children is beyond the scope of this article; therefore, the focus here is on physical discipline — corporal punishment — and its consequences for child developmental outcomes and society in general. psychological aggression is also included because it always accompanies physical discipline (pinheiro, 2006; unicef, 2006; unicef, 2014). in addition, strategies for addressing prevailing social norms about the efficacy of violent discipline in child rearing are presented and suggestions are made regarding workable approaches to limiting the deleterious outcomes for children and society. scope of physical violence against children the united nations (un) defines physical violence against children as “all corporal punishment and all other forms of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as well as physical bullying and hazing by adults or by other children. ‘corporal’ (or ‘physical’) punishment is defined as any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light.” (unicef, 2014, p. 4). according to some sources (e.g., pinheiro, 2006; unicef, 2006; unicef, 2014), corporal punishment of children is endemic in all societies regardless of their level of development and its prevalence is markedly higher than official published rates. a report by the global initiative to end all punishment against children (2013), indicated that almost all (94.6%) of the world’s children are legally not fully protected from corporal punishment in the home and 53% are not legally protected in schools. according to a united nations (2006) report, between 80% and 98% of children are physically punished in their homes, mostly with the use of implements such as sticks, belts, and canes (pinheiro, 2006). furthermore, corporal punishment is standard practice in schools in many societies and in many countries juveniles in the justice system are sentenced to whipping and caning (pinheiro, 2006). 1 the convention on the rights of the child is ratified by all countries except the united states. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 29 across the globe, many caregivers consider corporal punishment an acceptable and desirable feature of the child socialization process and readily provide justification for its use. however, most child development scholars and practitioners disapprove of any kind of physical discipline on the grounds that all physical punishment, however mild or infrequent, carries a built-in risk of escalation and abuse. moreover, there is strong agreement that its use is ineffective in bringing about sustained desired behavior (gershoff, 2002; gelles & straus, 1979; unicef, 2006; unicef, 2014). the jamaican context jamaica, the largest of the english-speaking caribbean islands, is an independent nation whose population of about 2.8 million is mainly (92%) of african descent. the median age is 24.9 years with children and youth aged 0 to 24 representing half (50.13%) of the population (cia world factbook, 2015). in the context of the un, jamaica is situated within the latin american and caribbean region and classified as an upper middle income economy with a human development index of .73 (united nations development programme [undp], 2012). according to several un reports (e.g., unicef, 2006; undp, 2012), despite the country’s economic struggles, it has made good progress towards many of its national millennium development goals and scored well on several social indicators of well-being. for example, the country boasts a life expectancy of 73.4 years, a literacy rate of 87%, and a decent standard of living (unicef, 2006; undp, 2012). the country is a signatory to and has ratified the un convention on the rights of the child. further, the country is a signatory to the un millennium declaration and the world fit for children declaration and plan of action, a commitment towards which the government has made steady progress (statistical institute of jamaica & unicef, 2013). however, despite its favorable showing in selected areas of development, major social challenges are evident. the country has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and the highest number of youth convicted of crime in the caribbean region (undp, 2012), with concomitant negative effects on the wellbeing of children and society in general. according to several sources (e.g., cia world factbook, 2015; undp, 2012; unicef, 2006), the high incidence of violence is jamaica’s most debilitating challenge, and children and youth are increasingly affected as witnesses, victims, and perpetrators. as victims, violence is the leading cause of death in the 15 to 24 age cohort of jamaican males (ward, hutchinson, levy, & ashley, 2011). crime and violence statistics show that in 2010, children and youth aged 10 to 19 represented 25.3% of all intentional injuries treated at local hospitals, 27.4% of all stab wound cases, 42% of attempted suicides, and 68% of victims (primarily girls) of sexual assaults (unicef, n.d.). in 2012, jamaican child welfare authorities received 8,726 reports of child abuse (almost 1,000 cases above the previous year) and 16 children were murdered in the first four months of 2013 (mcfadden, 2013). the problems are believed to be much more widespread than even these numbers indicate, because violence against children is significantly underreported (unicef, 2006; unicef, 2014). as perpetrators of violence, youth aged 15 to 24 are responsible for more than 50% of all major crimes (ward et al., 2011). in 2010, 815 children and youth aged 12 to 19 were arrested for violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, wounding, and possession of firearms; 89% of those crimes were committed by youth aged 15 to19 (unicef, n.d.). over 4,000 children and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 30 youth (primarily boys) of the 15 to 19 age cohort were brought before the courts for various offences in 2012 (unicef, 2013b). children and youth are also witnesses to the commission of violence across all the major social institutions including domestic violence, corporal punishment at home and in school, and violence in the wider community and media. it has been suggested that the cumulative effect of exposure to violent experiences has desensitized children and led them to believe that violence is acceptable and normal (unicef, 2006; undp, 2012; unicef, 2014). the elevated rates of youth crime have provoked speculation about the etiology of the problem in jamaican society. many have pointed to economic issues and their attending social maladies; others implicate an entrenched “culture of violence” to which children are exposed, particularly the violent discipline meted out to children in a variety of societal contexts (unicef, 2006; undp, 2012; smith & mosby, 2003; ward et al., 2011). the following section summarizes the resulting public debate on the use of corporal punishment. the corporal punishment debate in jamaica, attempts to explain the acceptance of corporal punishment have focused on child socialization practices within what is characterized as a “culture of beating children” (smith & mosby, 2003). several sources (e.g., smith & mosby, 2003; unicef, 2013b; ward et al.,, 2011) blame jamaica’s harsh childrearing tradition on its british colonial past, a history that included slavery and brutal punishment (smith & mosby, 2003; undp, 2012; world bank, 2003). however, while acknowledging the historical context, family professionals and child advocates have bemoaned the ubiquity of corporal punishment of children in contemporary times and have called for its abolition (ward et al., 2011) ; undp, 2012; unicef, 2006; global initiative, 2015a). child advocates are frustrated that the un’s specific directive to outlaw corporal punishment in all sectors of jamaican society has not been realized (global initiative, 2015a; niles, 2008). however, the un’s edict has at least served to intensify the debate between opponents and supporters of the corporal punishment of children. armed with the latest research on the adverse effects of violent discipline on child outcomes, opponents of corporal punishment have argued that “violence begets violence” and that the perpetration and acceptance of the practice in children’s proximal environments teach them that violence is an effective and legitimate problem-solving strategy (smith & mosby, 2003; unicef, 2006; undp, 2012). furthermore, they have pointed to research (e.g., afifi, mota, dasiewicz, macmillan, & sareen, 2012; gershoff, 2002; lansford et al., 2007; middlebrooks & audage, 2008; widom, marmorstein, & white, 2006) indicating that serious psychosocial problems in children are invariably preceded by exposure to violence, particularly corporal punishment. for example, professor paulo sérgio pinheiro, author of the un’s global report on children and violence, in an address to the jamaican parliament warned that, “in an environment where violence breeds more violence, the ways in which jamaican children are subjected to violence are inextricably linked to the unrelenting levels of crime and violence affecting the island” (niles, 2008, para. 4). further, pinheiro reminded the jamaican government that “no form of violence, however light, is acceptable under international law.… if we want to protect children from all kinds of violence we must have clear and objective laws prohibiting the use of violence in all situations, including inside homes and schools” (niles, 2008, para. 7). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 31 defenders of corporal punishment regard it a necessary tool for proper child rearing, and the most effective deterrence to indiscipline in childhood and even afterwards. they view the jamaican government’s recent efforts to curtail the practice in schools as a serious miscalculation. for instance, one prominent politician has warned that the ministry of education’s charge to teachers to cease the use of corporal punishment in schools is a “grave error” that will engender “assassins of the future” (flemming, 2013, para. 8). supporters also often cite a biblical maxim, “spare the rod and spoil the child”, in support of their position (smith & mosby, 2003; unicef, 2006; unicef, 2014). they may offer themselves as examples of successful citizens who were not harmed by the corporal punishment they received as children (unicef, 2006). moreover, proponents of corporal punishment draw support from research challenging the validity of information about the adverse effects of physical punishment on optimal child development. for example, some relevant research (e.g., larzelere, cox, & smith, 2010; paolucci & violato, 2004) has found no evidence that spanking increased children’s susceptibility to developmental problems and antisocial behaviors. opponents of corporal punishment in jamaica counter that spanking as such is rare in the jamaican context. for example, smith and mosby (2003) noted that what is considered normative corporal punishment in jamaica would warrant charges of physical abuse in many other countries. the following sections delineate the specific contexts in which jamaican children are subjected to corporal punishment, also referred to as “physical punishment” or “violent discipline” in the literature. this article follows the usage of the source when reviewing the literature below. the contexts of corporal punishment gelles and straus (1979) maintained that, outside of the police and military, the family is the most violent social group and the home the most violent context in society. in jamaica, as is the case globally, harsh physical punishment is the most common form of discipline against children in the home (global initiative, 2015a; smith & mosby, 2003; ward et al., 2011) and its widespread use across boundaries of social status, family structure, and geographic location (rural versus urban) has been confirmed (hamilton, 2010; smith & mosby, 2003; unicef, 2006; unicef, 2010). for example, data from the multiple indicator cluster survey program (mics) carried out from 2005 to 2006 showed that 89% of jamaican children aged 2 to 14 years experienced some form of violent discipline, either physical or psychological, from a primary caregiver in the month prior to data collection (unicef, 2010). boys and girls were equally likely to experience physical punishment (e.g., being slapped, spanked, hit with an implement) and the same applies to psychological aggression. a small minority (7%) of parents indicated that they used non-violent discipline exclusively. according to findings from international data (e.g., unicef, 2014), many children are subjected to corporal punishment even when their caregivers do not think it is a necessary form of discipline. in jamaica, a minority (33%) of caregivers indicated that physical punishment was necessary for proper childrearing, but the overwhelming majority (77%) employed it as a disciplinary measure. follow-up data from mics4 2010/2011 (statistical institute of jamaica & unicef, 2013) showed a slight decline (5%) in the occurrence of any form of violent discipline in the same age cohort of children. in the more recent data, 84.5% of children experienced any violent discipline; 68.4% were physically punished, 71.9% experienced psychological aggression, and 27% of parents viewed physical punishment as a necessity. however, there was a 3% increase in the percentage of caregivers (9.9%) who indicated that they used non-violent discipline international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 32 exclusively. in the latter survey boys were more likely than girls to experience physical discipline (71.4% vs. 65.2%) and were subjected to more severe punishment. evidence from a study of childrearing in 24 developing countries showed that jamaican caregivers registered the highest prevalence (84%) of administering physical punishment to their children under 5 years in response to children’s perceived misbehavior (lansford & deater-deckard, 2012). a government survey assessing jamaican adults’ attitudes toward the use of corporal punishment indicated that the majority (56%) of jamaicans believed that “beating” a child was necessary to correct bad behavior. however, nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents indicated that they would abandon the use of corporal punishment if their children obeyed them (hamilton, 2010). despite the un’s call for a universal ban on corporal punishment in schools among member states, 72 countries, including jamaica, still have not fully prohibited its use in that context (global initiative, 2015b). according to the united nations children’s fund (unicef, 2006), violence in schools is most often directed at students through physical punishment and psychological abuse (e.g., humiliation, intimidation) by teachers. in jamaica, as in many societies, corporal punishment of children in school is used not only as a disciplinary measure but as a pedagogical strategy (flemming, 2013; global initiative, 2015a; smith & mosby, 2003). for example, one principal defended the practice on pedagogical grounds by explaining that the “flogging of students plays a key rule (sic) in ensuring that they [children] focus and display the behaviours that are conducive to learning” (hamilton, 2012, para. 2). in a survey of 11to 12year-old children, 75% reported being beaten with an object by teachers (samms-vaughan, jackson, ashley, & lambert, 2000) and 80% of the teachers in another jamaican study reported that they often used corporal punishment to discipline children (pottinger & nelson, 2004). jones and brown (2008) noted that 81% of jamaican teachers in one study admitted to using implements such as a belt, strap, or board to hit children, and students equated the punishment they received at school to the punishment they received at home. officially, corporal punishment is already banned in jamaican early childhood settings serving children under the age of six years and in alternative care settings, such as schools for children in conflict with the law, but remains legal in other educational institutions (flemming, 2013; global initiative, 2015a). in 2009, citing corporal punishment as a breach of the united nations convention on the rights of the child, the ministry of education issued an order to suspend the practice across the education system (flemming, 2013). however, not surprisingly, the order has met with stiff opposition from many stakeholders including parents, teachers, and policy makers. indeed, even where the practice is legally prohibited (i.e., daycare and alternative care settings), policies are ignored and the corporal punishment of children continues, openly in some environments and surreptitiously in others (global initiative, 2015a; grant, morris, & gibson, 2011; undp, 2012). the momentum that sustains the corporal punishment of children in jamaican life extends into the justice system. in grant, morris, and gibson’s 2011study of children’s experiences with the jamaican justice system, they found serious non-compliance with the law, as set out in the 2004 jamaica child care and protection act (ccpa), requiring children in residential facilities to be free from corporal punishment. in that study, children in conflict with the law2 reported 2 defined by unicef as anyone under age 18 who comes into contact with the justice system as a result of being suspected or accused of committing an offence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 33 harsh treatment by the police, including physical and emotional abuse. children also reported similar treatment by the staff of residential facilities; those reports were confirmed by practitioners in the field. it is instructive that the majority of children who come in conflict with the law are not violent offenders but children in need of “care and protection following abuse, neglect, or abandonment” (undp, 2012, p. 46). conceptualization of corporal punishment the relevant literature is inconsistent in its use of terms such as corporal punishment, violent or physical discipline, and physical abuse. there is also much irregularity on how those concepts are operationalized (e.g., spanking vs. beating, mild vs. harsh, discipline vs. abuse) and this has led to the terms being used to some extent interchangeably. however, there is disagreement regarding whether the interchangeable use is functional. on the one hand, there is general agreement among many social scientists that physical punishment and physical abuse fall along the same continuum of undesirable family violence; that most physical child abuse emanates from physical discipline; and that, therefore, it is meaningless to draw a distinction between mild physical punishment and physical abuse (gelles & straus, 1979; gershoff, 2002; unicef, 2006; straus & paschall, 2009; unicef, 2014). furthermore, many scholars have argued that for physical punishment to be “effective” (i.e., temporarily halt the perceived misbehavior), it has to be administered increasingly more severely; thus, a mild swat on the buttocks will likely escalate into a cycle of abuse (mckenzie, nicklas, waldfogel, & brooksgunn, 2012; unicef, 2014). in one study (mckenzie et al., 2012), long-term behavioral problems were found to be associated with spanking in children in a vicious circle: spanking increased children’s externalizing behavior which in turn predicted parental spanking. contrarily, some researchers (e.g., baumrind, larzelere, & cowan, 2002; paolucci & violato, 2004), have insisted that spanking be differentiated from abuse and conceptualized accordingly. for example, paolucci and violato (2004) defined spanking as physically non-injurious discipline administered with the intention of modifying the child’s behavior. this is in contrast to physical abuse which denotes severe actions such as slapping the face, beating, choking, or other repeated demoralizing treatment. further, some research studies (e.g., larzelere et al., 2010; paolucci & violato, 2004) have shown that non-abusive physical punishment can be beneficial to child outcomes or at the very least have no significant risk for adverse child development. those researchers suggest that it is inept parenting and physical abuse that put children at risk for detrimental outcomes, not corporal punishment per se (baumrind et al., 2002; larzelere et al., 2010). moreover, they have hypothesized that there might be variance in development outcomes as a function of the context in which the punishment is delivered. for instance, battered children may have worse outcomes than children who are spanked mildly. further, children’s misbehaviors may elicit a variety of parental corrective measures such as verbal correction, privilege removal, and ignoring. these alternative disciplinary measures may confound the analysis of outcomes, obscuring the effects from corporal punishment alone (larzelere et al., 2010). in contrast, holden (2002), while admitting the flaws in many studies of corporal punishment and child outcomes, has concluded that there is enough empirical evidence to indicate that “corporal punishment does no good and may even cause harm” (p. 594). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 34 consequences of corporal punishment despite some conflicting findings and ongoing controversy regarding the effect of corporal punishment on child outcomes, the preponderance of the research literature has indicated that victims of corporal punishment suffer both shortand long-term developmental difficulties. this has led many child development scholars to question the efficacy of corporal punishment (harford, yi, & grant, 2014; mckenzie et al., 2012; widom et al., 2006). furthermore, the research on the harmful effects of corporal punishment is so robust that, as of september, 2015, 46 countries had abolished all corporal punishment of children in all settings and 126 have outlawed its use in schools (global initiative, 2015b). according to holden (2002) “…the weight of the available evidence, as well as theory, is clearly on the side of the negative effects of customary corporal punishment” (p. 595). gershoff’s (2002) seminal meta-analysis of 88 studies on the effects of corporal punishment of children revealed that although physical discipline induced immediate compliance by the child, it engendered problematic outcomes such as decreased rates of internalization of morals and values, maladaptive socioemotional functioning, poor parent–child relationship, and increased shortand long-term aggression. in addition, physical punishment was linked to delinquency and other antisocial conduct, increased risk of subsequent victimization, the perpetuation of the cycle of violence by victimizing one’s own children or spouse, and increased likelihood of involvement in criminal behavior. in another study, preschoolers who had ever been smacked by their primary caregiver in the first 22 months of life were twice as likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems as their peers who were never smacked (scott, lewsey, thompson, & wilson, 2014). compared to the control group, children who were physically punished were one and a half times more likely to use illicit drugs and have drug related problems in adulthood (widom et al., 2006). also, child victims of corporal punishment were found to be at greater risk for dropping out of high school, teen parenthood, being arrested as juveniles (lansford et al., 2007), interpersonal aggression, low self-esteem, and suicidal behaviors and other psychiatric disorders (afifi et al., 2012; harford et al., 2014; middlebrooks & audage, 2008; smith, springer, & barrett, 2011). in a study by felson and lane (2009), inmates who reported experiencing childhood physical abuse (inmates’ subjective assessment of abuse) were more likely to commit violent offenses, such as homicide, robbery, and sexual assault, than nonviolent offenses. neuropsychological research and neuroimaging studies have indicated an association between corporal punishment and adverse cognitive and psychosocial development. although the exact pathway is unclear, researchers have indicated that physical punishment produces detrimental effects on the trajectories of brain development. in one study (tomoda et al., 2009), children who experienced harsh corporal punishment (operationalized as being spanked at least once per month for more than three years) had a lower volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain associated with such cognitive abilities as decision making, sensorimotor functioning, mental health, and overall intelligence. straus and pachall (2009) reported that mothers’ use of corporal punishment (slapping or hitting with an object) in children aged two to four years old was independently related to decreased cognitive ability relative to other children who received little or no spanking. specifically, “the more cp [corporal punishment] experienced, the more they fell behind children who were not spanked” (p. 459). in another study, a mother spanking her three-year-old child more than twice in the previous month international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 35 was correlated with higher levels of aggression at age 5. (taylor, manganello, lee, & rice, 2010). it is noteworthy that many of the psychosocial outcomes of corporal punishment noted here have been reported in the limited research done in jamaica. in the study by smith et al., corporal punishment was associated with adverse psychological and behavioral consequences (2001). compared to the control group, adolescents who reported being victims of corporal punishment (being slapped or hit with objects) also indicated a greater propensity to developmental adjustment problems including alcohol and drug use, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. global data have also shown that high levels of exposure to violence at home and school independently predicted childhood aggression (unicef, 2006). however, a major criticism of many studies that show detrimental effects of corporal punishment is that they often do not take potentially confounding variables into account. for example, factors such as marital discord, stress pile-up, and a family history of antisocial behaviors are customarily omitted in those studies (paolucci & violato, 2004). various sequelae of negative physical health outcomes in adulthood have been linked to physical punishment in childhood. these include cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, obesity (afifi, mota, macmillan, & sareen, 2013; fuller-thomson, brennenstuhl, & franck, 2010), and general poor health (middlebrooks & audage, 2008; springer, 2009). however, except for direct physical injury, the connections are unclear. some researchers (e.g., fuller-thomson et al., 2010; springer, 2009) have hypothesized the link to be a product of the coping mechanisms used by victims to alleviate the stress brought on by the violent experiences and which in turn drive poorer health status. for instance, stressful childhood experiences have been shown to increase the risk of poor health behaviors in adulthood and health risk behaviors have been implicated as the main conduits through which cardiovascular diseases occur (fuller-thomson et al., 2010; springer, 2009). springer (2009), using a multi-pathway life course model, delineated smoking and substance use as key pathways connecting childhood physical abuse to respiratory problems such as bronchitis and emphysema; mental health problems to ulcers; and body mass index and mental health to general physical health. in that study physical abuse was operationalized as the frequency (some or a lot) at which the child had been slapped, shoved, or had things thrown at him or her before age 17 by a parent or guardian. for society, the direct and indirect economic and social costs of violence against children are high. direct costs include shortand long-term medical care for injuries, mental health services and treatment for survivors, and the cost to the justice system. indirect costs are the less conspicuous ones such as the loss of potential human capital, reduced productivity, and decreased quality of life. worldwide, the financial burden of all kinds of violence against children is conservatively estimated at us $7 trillion — about 8% of the world’s gross domestic product (gpd) (pereznieto, montes, routier, & langston, 2014). in the united states, the lifetime cost of child abuse to society is about us $124 billion annually (fang, brown, florence, & mercy, 2012). a search of the literature showed no specific data on the cost of violence against children in jamaica; however, extrapolating from estimates of expenditures on violence in general is instructive. in 2006, the annual direct and indirect cost of interpersonal violence amounted to an estimated $29.6 billion jamaican dollars. direct medical cost alone averaged 12% of the total health expenditure of the country; loss of productivity due to interpersonal violence related injuries accounted for approximately 160% of the total health expenditure or 4% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 36 of the country’s gdp (butchart et al., 2008). one source (undp, 2012) estimated that jamaica spends more than us $529 million annually to fight youth violence and loses another us$99.3 million in potential investment revenue. strategies for prevention and intervention once physical violence against children is accepted as a serious problem, the continued high prevalence of harsh corporal punishment in jamaican homes and schools strongly suggests the need for action at the national level. most relevant scientific research has shown evidence of a strong link between physical punishment and child adjustment problems. therefore, strategies to respond to the practices that promote problematic development are imperative. global studies on the cost of violence against children have confirmed that violence is a major drain on national economies and that the best approach to addressing the problem is prevention. for instance, pertinent data from europe reveal that every euro spent on protecting children from any kind of violence produces a social return of 87 euros (unicef, 2013a), an indication that the consequential cost is significantly higher than the preventative investment (pereznieto et al., 2014; unicef, 2013a). for countries with developing economies, like jamaica, implementing programs and services can be a major economic challenge. nonetheless, those societies will need to weigh the cost of protecting children from violence and abuse against the benefits of a stable, healthy, and productive citizenry, and the implications of these for national development and prosperity. any effort to address caregiver violence against children in jamaica would necessitate a dramatic cultural shift and major social change in norms, beliefs, and attitudes regarding child socialization practices. the task may not be as daunting as it seems initially, since the admittedly scant literature suggests that many jamaicans would be amenable to considering alternatives to violent disciplinary practices. as noted earlier, two-thirds of jamaicans indicated their willingness to abandon the use of corporal punishment if their children would obey (hamilton, 2010; unicef, 2006). moreover, many parents indicated their familiarity with and use of positive child discipline techniques (e.g., showing affection to the child, withdrawing privileges, using time outs), and expressed a strong desire for training in child behavior management (baker-henningham, 2011). an obvious discrepancy between that knowledge and practice exists: despite parents’ general agreement that corporal punishment was neither desirable nor effective, they reportedly used the practice anyway (baker-henningham, 2011; unicef, 2014). therefore, a communal shift in child socialization would require a concerted multisectoral and multifaceted approach and the collective effort of stakeholders at all levels: parents, family, community, and government (unicef, 2006; united nations, 2009; unicef, 2014). programs and services that promote positive caregiver–child relationships are desirable and serve both prevention and intervention purposes. the following sections outline specific areas for consideration as approaches to addressing current harsh disciplinary childrearing practices in jamaica. laws and policies. a positive first step toward reducing harsh childrearing practices would be for the government to implement legal reforms in accordance with the un’s mandate to outlaw corporal punishment in all settings in jamaica. according to unicef (2010), the prohibition of violence against children in all contexts sends a clear and resolute message to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 37 society that such violence is unacceptable and intolerable. however, the jamaican government has resisted banning corporal punishment of children in the home, perhaps because of perceived opposition, particularly from those who hold the view that it is the parents’ prerogative to discipline their children however they see fit (unicef, 2006). nonetheless, the government has already taken some steps toward reducing the occurrence of corporal punishment of children by prohibiting the practice in some settings. furthermore, the government has indicated its intention to outlaw the practice in all educational settings (global initiative, 2015a). regrettably though, even within contexts where the practice is legally prohibited, such as daycare, policies are poorly enforced (global initiative, 2015a; grant, morris, & gibson, 2011; undp, 2012). proper enforcement of these existing laws is another necessary step towards fulfilling the un’s mandate to implement laws that protect all children from corporal punishment (global initiative, 2015a; unicef, 2013a; unicef, 2014). once legal reforms are instituted, intensive ongoing public service and mass media campaigns to raise awareness and build support among the public must be undertaken. both the detrimental effects of corporal punishment and the positive consequences of non-violent methods of discipline must be emphasized. media campaigns have been shown to be effective in changing public behavior (evans et al., 2006; unicef, 2014). they should be complemented with nationwide comprehensive training programs for professionals who work with and for children; for parents, families, and caregivers; and for children themselves. according to the un (unicef, 2014), a real cultural shift in attitudes towards violence against children must occur at two levels: “on the government side, a solid legal framework must be instituted, implemented and monitored; on the part of each citizen, an effort must be made to drive change on a daily basis” (p. 170). professional education and training. policy makers, teachers, and other professionals (e.g., social workers, health professionals, clergy, law enforcement personnel) should be targeted for special ongoing training in child behavior management. since corporal punishment is a culturally-sanctioned practice, it is likely that professionals themselves may not be aware of what constitutes child abuse or may not be adequately skilled to detect it. govender and sookrajh (2014) found that 18 years after the abolition of corporal punishment in south african schools, teachers were still confused about what constitutes appropriate and acceptable discipline. therefore, professionals in similar situations should be provided with and directed through workable models of alternative discipline since they will be obliged to teach the requisite skills to community stakeholders. another issue related to professionals’ skill sets is understanding the rights of the child as laid out by the un convention on the rights of the child. it has been confirmed that professionals for the most part are inadequately educated on children’s rights (global initiative, 2015a), indicating a need to promote greater public understanding of the content and purpose of that un treaty. clergy and religious leaders are particularly critical to the fight against the corporal punishment of children. because those leaders are trusted and authoritative members of local communities, they can play a pivotal role in persuading their congregants to change their childrearing behaviors. an estimated 76% of jamaicans are affiliated with a religion; of those, 70% are christian (cia world factbook, 2015). however, considering that many clergy hold steadfastly to and promote corporal punishment as a divine mandate, an especially resolute effort to get religious denominations to join forces in combating harsh discipline may be required. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 38 indeed, there has been increasing religious support worldwide for the un’s declaration on violence against children through the kyoto declaration (religions for peace, 2006) but locally, strong and decisive opposition to corporal punishment has been slow (unicef, 2006). family programs and services. providing families with positive child guidance techniques can help mitigate the risk of harsh discipline and the undesirable outcomes that accompany corporal punishment (holden, 2002; unicef, 2014). therefore, family skills training programs should be key components of any effort to curb the practice. indeed, a strong body of literature has demonstrated the efficacy of such programs and services in preventing and alleviating harmful family interactions. for example, an evaluation of family skills training across the globe has indicated that those programs, in addition to being cost-effective, can “positively change family functioning and parent practices in enduring ways” (united nations, 2009, p. 1). research has also demonstrated that the most effective programs (a) were implemented before the targeted problem began (e.g., before children are born); (b) involved training for the whole family; (c) were overseen by trained professionals; and (d) were presented by trained professionals through regular home visitations or conducted at local community centers (unicef, 2014). the un recommends intensive “home visiting services during late pregnancy and in the first few years of their child’s life and/or extended parenting education workshops when the child begins pre-school” (unicef, 2006, p. 32). positive parent–child interaction and child abuse prevention skills are particularly advantageous (unicef, 2014). the fact that alternative methods of discipline tend to require significantly greater time and effort than does corporal punishment may lead caregivers to conclude that corporal punishment is more efficacious (pinheiro, 2006; unicef, 2006, unicef, 2014). additionally, many caregivers may be uninformed about the child development process and what behaviors are appropriate and normal at each developmental stage. thus, it is conceivable that children are punished for what should be seen as routine development and conduct. therefore, basic child development information coupled with elements of non-violent discipline should be emphasized in parent education programs. taken together, parents and prospective parents should be educated on the investment of time and effort required for optimal child outcomes, made aware of the advantages of non-violent discipline, instructed on basic child development processes, and coached on alternative models to corporal punishment. research (e.g., mckenzie et al., 2012) has provided good evidence on the circular relationship between physical punishment and children’s externalizing behavior: violent discipline predicted children’s conduct problems which in turn increased children’s likelihood of incurring physical punishment. one approach to protecting children from disciplinary violence is thus to help them acquire good social skills. social skills competence has been shown to enhance emotional regulation, boost communication and problem solving skills, promote positive selfesteem, and lessen conduct problems (unicef, 2006). such skills also enable children “to cope with violence and break the cycle of abuse” (unicef, 2014, p. 170). in fact, researchers in one study (baker-henningham et al., 2012), pilot-tested a low-cost school-based intervention program to assess its effectiveness on jamaican children’s social skills and conduct problems. at the end of the intervention, parents and teachers reported significant improvement in social skills and behaviors among children who were exposed to the intervention. an additional positive outcome was children’s improved school attendance. it would be prudent, therefore, for such programs to be introduced nationwide. life skills and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 39 social skills education can be subsumed in formal activities, such as school, and informal ones, such as sports (unicef, 2014). additionally, children should know and understand their right to be protected from all kinds of violence. hence, exercises geared toward helping children recognize violence against themselves and how to protect themselves from abuse should be a critical component of such training (unicef, 2006). conclusion the preponderance of research literature on the corporal punishment of children finds a robust link between the practice and enduring adverse consequences in childhood and adulthood. in addition to the economic costs to society, the human toll — in terms of human capital and productivity, physical and mental health, and overall quality of life — cannot be calculated, but is surely unacceptable. the literature, therefore, has provided a persuasive argument in favor of encouraging caregivers to abandon the use of physical punishment. clearly, jamaica has made significant progress in advancing the rights of children; however, the disciplinary practices to which children are exposed on a daily basis urgently need to be addressed. although a history of corporal punishment is not a guarantee that a child will suffer serious developmental impairment, the risk of problematic outcomes is increased. to guard against those risks, appropriate child protection laws must be enacted and enforced. in addition, public education and training of key stakeholders, which could be made available through ante-natal care clinics, community health care clinics, and parent-teacher associations, are needed to help shift entrenched cultural attitudes that condone violent disciplinary practices. this will require the concerted effort of all segments of society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 27–44 40 references afifi, t. o., mota, n. p., dasiewicz, p., macmillan, h. l., & sareen, j. 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(2011). youth violence in kingston, jamaica. in social and economic costs of violence: workshop summary from the forum on global violence prevention; board on global health; institute of medicine; national research council. washington, dc: national academies press. retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/nbk190004/ widom, c., marmorstein, n., & white, h. (2006). childhood victimization and illicit drug use in middle adulthood. psychology of addictive behaviors, 20(4), 394–403. world bank. (2003). caribbean youth development issues and policy directions. (a world bank country study). washington, d.c.: author. http://www.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/jamaica_coar_2013.pdf http://www.unicef.org/violencestudy/reports/sg_violencestudy_en.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/nbk190004/ corporal punishment of children in the jamaican context delores e. smith scope of physical violence against children the jamaican context conceptualization of corporal punishment consequences of corporal punishment strategies for prevention and intervention conclusion references microsoft word 08 witnessing.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120081 witnessing, grieving, and remembering: letters of resistance, love, and reclamation from daughters of izzat mandeep kaur mucina abstract: this article challenges public and private constructions of honourrelated violence as they impact second-generation south asian women and girls in canada. while much has been written about the victims of honour killings, including high profile cases of young women killed by their families in canada, considerably less attention and space has been given to second-generation south asian canadian women and girl’s stories of survivance and resistance against honour-based violence (hbv). this paper moves towards storying processes of grieving and of witnessing public stories of hbv, and documents a collective writing process i undertook in collaboration with survivors of hbv. we shared narratives of grief and pain, and the power of collective storywork. the paper includes two letters that speak to the context in which second-generation south asian women are embodying resistance and reclamation, and witnessing stories of grief, loss, love, and acceptance. keywords: honour based violence; witnesse; survivance; action based research; mandeep kaur mucina phd is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: mmucina@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 14  in 2009, i embarked on a research journey to understand how second-generation south asian canadian1 women were resisting acts of family violence in their lives. my reentry to graduate school was inspired by therapeutic work i had been doing as a counsellor in a diverse toronto neighbourhood, where i was providing support to immigrant women and girls living with or leaving violent relationships. the families i worked with were fractured by their migration to this settler colonial nation, which had often resulted in mental health challenges and violence directed at women and girls in the family. on december 10, 2007, the murder of a young south asian girl, aqsa parvez, by her father and brother reverberated through the south asian communities across toronto, including the community i was working in. aqsa’s story and body became symbols of a newfound public interest in honour killings, and what was often termed as a culture clash between the barbaric east and the liberal west (abu-lughod, 2002). i witnessed the women, girls, and families in this community express shame, guilt, and fear as they processed what had happened to aqsa. i was particularly concerned for those “second generation”2 women and girls who were struggling with conflict in their families and navigating the racism and islamophobia in the public sphere, and were now hearing the dominant narrative that aqsa was murdered in a clash over the hijab. aqsa parvez’s death and the wider public response to her murder added fuel to my existing rage against the dominant racist discourses i had heard throughout my life. i was tired of hearing that south asian women and girls were liable to experience violence from their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and that the men in our community were “barbaric” tribal patriarchs while the women needed to be saved by western liberal feminism. the multiple conflicting messages left me rocking between rage and anxiety, as i was also moving through my own experience of exile from my family and community for transgressing perceived boundaries of izzat (mucina, 2015). “izzat” is a punjabi word that can be translated as “honour”3, though that is an unsatisfyingly simple and limiting definition of what is historically a relevant cultural construct that shapes the actions of individuals and their responsibilities to family and community (mucina, 2018). izzat is 1in the western context, the term “south asian” encompasses people from at least seven countries with diverse languages, histories, and religions, and includes those with bangladeshi, bengali, east indian, goan, gujarati, hindu, ismaili, kashmiri, nepali, pakistani, punjabi, sikh, sinhalese, sri lankan, and tamil ancestry. my doctoral research (mucina, 2015) focused specifically on punjabi-speaking women living in canada who identified as part of the south asian canadian community. i will be referring to the women in that study as punjabi women. when referring to the wider community, i will use the term “south asian canadian community” to emphasize that the people who encompass the above diversity of language and religion all have their roots in the indian subcontinent. 2“second generation” describes “children of immigrants, those who were born and/or arrived in canada before adolescence” (rajiva, 2005, p. 25). statistics canada (2011) refers to generation status according to “the number of generations a person’s ancestors have lived in canada” (p. 3), specifically referring to the second generation as individuals born in canada with at least one parent born outside canada. 3for other meanings of this complex word, see https://www.shabdkosh.com/dictionary/punjabienglish/�����������-meaning-in-english international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 15  a system of thinking about and relating to oneself, one’s family, and one’s community that shapes how punjabis see each other and engage with each other (mucina, 2015, 2018). i have lived with izzat as a second-generation punjabi woman throughout my life, feeling and witnessing how perceived boundaries set around a woman’s body in the name of izzat or honour can lead to violence. i could see my story reflected back each time a south asian woman or girl was murdered and the words “honour killing” shaped the media stories, using her death as a way to fuel xenophobia and racism against communities of colour and culture. feeling the need for alternative perspectives, i wanted to hear and learn from other south asian women about their stories of survivance and resistance against violence, sexism, and racism throughout their lives, while also creating space to hear their stories of exile from family and community after behaviour perceived as transgressing the boundaries of izzat. anishinaabe writer and distinguished scholar gerald vizenor (2013) defined survivance as “an intergenerational connection to an individual and collective sense of presence and resistance in personal experience and the world, or language, made particularly through stories” (p. 8). vizenor saw resistance in stories and in transforming language; similarly, i am drawn to witnessing the power and resistance in how we story our lives. is it possible to centre stories of survivance and resistance while also calling out and denying the systems that focus on victimhood and cultural racism when talking about honour-based violence (hbv)? how do we resist “damage centered” research (tuck, 2009, p. 415) while also giving space for the complex stories second-generation south asian canadian women have of living and navigating honour throughout their lives? over the course of 10 years, i have dedicated my research and practice to critically countering the discourses shaping mainstream ideas of south asian canadian women and girls and hbv. my work in the gender-based violence sector has concentrated on shaping critical understandings of violence in diasporic south asian communities by focusing on acts of witnessing and stories of resistance and survivance, while paying attention to how women are reclaiming culture and identity for themselves. i was able to do this with the generosity and guidance of six secondgeneration punjabi women who shared their life histories with me — each woman had experienced exile or lived in conflict with her family and community because her family perceived her as transgressing izzat (mucina, 2015, 2018). this paper4 moves towards storying a process of grieving, and witnessing public stories of hbv, as well as undertaking a collective writing process with survivors of hbv, sharing narratives of grief and pain and thus the power of collective storywork. the approach involved writing letters of grief, loss, love, and acceptance, both personal and collective. 4this paper emerges from two arts-informed parts of my doctoral research (mucina, 2015), expanding slightly from the other articles in this special issue where authors have focused on challenging current structural systems and public discourses when talking about gender-based violence and hbv in south asian communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 16  in the first part of the discussion below, i focus on witnessing — remembering the women who were murdered by their families, with izzat playing a significant role in justifying the violence. at significant moments during my own journey of addressing and fighting hbv, the honour-related murders of amandeep atwal; jassi sidhu; aqsa parvez; zainab, sahar, and geeti shafia; and rona muhammad omar haunted and preoccupied me. i start this special issue by carving space to engage in an active written forum for witnessing their lives and reimagining their resistance against the dominant narratives that surround their deaths. i write a letter to them and in so doing ask the reader to bear witness to their lives, and to be mindful of the women and girls who are surviving every day within the confines of gender-based violence. in the second half of the paper, i share a collective letter-writing process with the women who participated in my doctoral research. this collective writing draws from an action-based research approach, in which i invited women to participate in a process of engagement and creation that allowed us to speak to our collective experience with hbv and call out to our families, our communities, and the wider public. action-based research pushes for participant or community involvement in the research process from the beginning to the end, focusing on collective action (brydon-miller et al., 2003; pain, 2004, van der muelen, 2011). in order to create individual and community capacity for resistance to violence, i lean towards promoting social justice action through research processes (holder, 2015). what emerged from this gathering is an open letter addressed to our families and communities, a letter intended to raise critical consciousness in the south asian canadian community, as well as in white settler heteronormative society that orients towards patriarchal white supremacy to maintain a dominant narrative about hbv. this collective letter pushes the reader to question how we engage with violence in our communities and aims to instil in readers the importance of listening to intergenerational women’s voices and stories of everyday survival against racism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. reclaiming izzat and our voices this special issue attempts to move away from self-serving discourses about hbv and challenge the cultural racism permeating these discourses while asking researchers, practitioners, and educators to consider how we conduct complex conversations about gender-based violence with children, youth, families, and communities. often when i talk about my research within my own communities — including the punjabi, sikh, and wider south asian canadian communities — i get responses such as, “honour-based violence does not happen in canada” and “this happens among the lower classes in india.” the intersection of class, caste, and patriarchy shape public and private responses within the south asian communities in the west (walton-roberts & pratt, 2006). the hbv women and girls experience in their families as the families attempt to preserve honour and avoid shame is a form of gender-based violence and in my experience is an ongoing concern for south asian women in canada (mucina, 2018). when we deny these concerns within our communities, it contributes to the cycles of family violence we continue to hear about in media discourses. furthermore, western media and canadian policies continue to use second-generation south asian canadian women’s bodies as a way to uplift western feminism and the superiority of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 17  the west over the east, leaving families, women, and girls afraid of stigma and thus further silenced from sharing their first-person experiences (razack, 2003). in the west, a common threat to immigrant families is the erasure of who they were before migrating to the west and potential assimilation into the host culture (rajiva, 2010). resisting this requires careful negotiation on the part of parents regarding how culture, language, and religion are passed down and sustained in the second generation (an-na’im, 2000; espiritu, 2001; haque, 2010). competing with the pull from families to stay close to tradition is the push from the dominant society, whose agendas, stemming from multiculturalism, accommodation, and assimilation policies, are aimed at the second generation, also known as the “home grown generation” (haque, 2010, p. 80), who are seen as the last hope for full assimilation into “canadian values”. this push and pull for the second generation and the migrant family often leads to what abdullah an-na’im (2000) refers to as fear responses and a sense that cultural survival is threatened, leading immigrant families to “turn inward and reinforc[e] the very practices that those on the outside are seeking to change” (p. 2). feelings of rage and urgency to say something ignited my writing and led me to pursue doctoral research on honour-based violence. this urgency was also the impetus for the initial meeting of a diverse group of south asian canadian women who joined forces to start this special issue. we originally came together to share in our common pain and to tell the multiple stories of honour we do not hear, yet have experienced, while dismantling the ideologies framing hbv and patriarchy. this urgency led me to pursue research on hbv, research that placed me as an outsider in my own community as i used a public platform to talk about stigmatized issues that plague the south asian canadian community, and to frame the stereotypes that follow us in the west. yet, these feelings also come from a need or desire to witness those lives lost because of the violence of izzat. the complicated process of sharing narratives of women who are not here to share their own stories also leaves me with a sense of discomfort — one stemming from the fear, stigma, and shame of speaking about the violence that is connected to our cultures and religions, knowing such narratives can be taken up to ignite orientalist discourses that support the white saviour complex. as hbv has gained currency in mainstream and academic discourses, acts of witnessing and listening to the stories of women who have experienced hbv remain few and far between. however, there is a penetrating gaze on honour killing. for example, wikipedia pages are dedicated to jassi sidhu5, aqsa parvez6, and the shafia family murders7, and documentaries and reenactments have aired on canadian tv that engage with many of these women’s lives and the stories leading up to their gruesome deaths (see cbc fifth estate, 2012, 2019; saywell, 2010; tripp, 2013). those who tell the stories of women killed in the name of honour are often outsiders who tell a story imposed on her corpse with little or no consent from her family. their clear avoidance or 5https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=jaswinder_kaur_sidhu&oldid=992601882 6https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=murder_of_aqsa_parvez&oldid=984095005 7https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=shafia_family_murders&oldid=1002676142 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 18  assumption of the truth of a woman’s story is a final act of violence on her body. in the case of the shafia sisters, their daily struggles in the public realm and how they feared their family did not become public knowledge until journalists interviewed social workers and school professionals, whose comments revealed their complacency and their lack of capacity to respond appropriately to the girls’ disclosures, so that only a bare minimum of action was taken (“ ‘suicidal’ shafia daughter”, 2011). the obsession on the part of the media to understand the short lives of the shafia girls revealed these deeper systemic barriers, yet the narratives that often accompany this investigative journalism fail to name the complacency as a form of cultural racism, glossing over these important points as just bad practice on the part of professionals. as with any form of oppression, there is always resistance and struggle on the part of the oppressed (freire, 1973), yet these discourses portray south asian canadian women as having no agency and as bodies “fixed in the western imagination as confined, mutilated, and sometimes murdered in the name of culture” (razack, 2004, p. 130.) how dominant media discourses frame these murders is another kind of violence, one that leaves a stain on the south asian diaspora. reporting on honour killings sustains a narrative that south asian canadian women are victims of their barbaric cultures, supporting racist discourses about racialized immigrants who refuse to assimilate to settler colonial canada and its values. media’s oppressive and obsessive gaze towards the gruesome has only led to defensiveness on the part of our community, rather than the collective action against hbv that will be necessary for any restoration and healing (herman, 1992). what if we were to bear witness to the pain and violence in the south asian canadian community in order to instigate change and shift the ideologies underlying izzat and family violence? the act of witnessing, as articulated by dori laub (1995), is about a “narrative that could not be articulated to be told, to be transmitted, to be heard” (p. 69). the act of witnessing includes both the survivor sharing and witnessing their own story, and a public listening. the power of witnessing, in the words of bonnie burstow (2003), should include “actions that counter alienation”: … possible examples include telling one’s story; naming one’s own experiences; debunking myths about one’s community; creating public rituals and ceremonies for expressing grief and outrage; rebuilding community ties, traditions, and models; reclaiming personal community or national space; reclaiming the product of one’s labor; reconnecting with nature; and indeed all environmentally responsible liberatory initiatives. (p. 1313) the power of witnessing cannot be denied. in trauma-informed work and in the gender-based violence field, it can accelerate the recovery, not only of individuals who are surviving the traumatic experience, but also of a community connected to the story. paul farmer (2003) outlined the critical role bearing witness plays in the social justice work of shifting and changing the world’s inequities. the first step in bearing witness is to observe, document, and speak out about the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 19  suffering of others we have witnessed with our own eyes. by doing this, we are making connections between our personal pain and structural violence. indeed, this special issue is a way of speaking to the structural violence of hbv and patriarchy. the authors of this special issue have made connections between the personal and political in multiple contexts, and ultimately they are speaking to how these systems impact children, youth, families, and communities. the second step to bearing witness, farmer (2003) wrote, is to stay present and engage with “surface silence” — a silence that is fostered by structurally inequitable and oppressive institutions — and to respect the “profound eloquence” that lies beneath it (p. 26). what power lies beneath the silence after a tragic death or loss in a community? our desire as a society to label and engage with the stories of the dead fills a void for survivors where we try to give meaning to a violent moment difficult to comprehend. what would it look like to bear witness to the lives of women killed in the name of izzat? it was important for me in my research journey to bear witness to the lives of women and girls who have become symbols of honour killing discourses in the west, and to weep and grieve through my writing. the following letter is one way of remembering amandeep atwal; jassi sidhu; aqsa parvez; zainab, sahar, and geeti shafia; and rona muhammad omar, and of imagining their resistance, while offering space for multiple stories to emerge about women who have been killed in the name of izzat. a letter of resistance to my dear sisters, we have never met in person but your names have visited me at very important times in my life. i write this letter knowing we will never share eye contact as i read it, but i hope you hear the words as they fill space between us. i want to start by telling you all a story. when i was 7 years old, my family decided to travel to india for the first time since they migrated to canada 10 years prior. this trip was very exciting for me. as a child, i felt in my bones i was going somewhere special. i did not have the language or understanding of how this trip would influence the rest of my life, but it did in so many ways. one of the many experiences i had that has always stayed with me, was witnessing a mourning ceremony in a rural village of northern india. we had been travelling all day to journey to my father’s extended family’s village, involving a bus ride and a long hike in the mountains of himachal pradesh. once we arrived, there were only a few homes settled around the hills. approaching the compound of the house, i heard distinct haunting sounds coming from a distant room on the compound where the family lived. it was the sound of women wailing. as we came closer, the wailing grew louder. i remember being afraid, not familiar with what my senses were experiencing. a sense of sorrow and pain was conjured deep inside me by hearing those voices. i also knew not to ask questions and to continue walking in silence. my mother, bebe (grandmother), phua-ji (paternal aunts) and maawsi-ji (maternal aunt) all joined the women in the room. as they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 20  opened the door to enter, i peeked in to see what was happening, i saw a circle of women with their dupattas covering their eyes, swaying back and forth. i waited outside with my father and uncles. no men or children were permitted inside. the wailing carried on for an hour and then just like that, it all stopped. they were finished. tears were wiped away and tea was served. there was no sign of what had just happened on any of the women’s faces. this mourning ceremony was for the death of a relative that had happened many months prior, but because my family had come to their home for the first time since then, it was necessary to do this public and very physical ritual. the wailing of the women was so visceral that even at such a young age, i felt the emotions that accompany a death, yet i do not even remember who had died and how i was connected to them. this ritual is one of the many ways my family remembers and mourns those we have lost, a ritual involving the physical and emotional connection to a community and to your self. even if you do not participate in the wailing, hearing it is enough to feel something for the lost person or any person we have lost. now, when i look back on it, i can see this ritual as a form of witnessing a person’s life and death and giving those who have been left behind a chance to recognize their loss. to shower the body with tears of love, pain, and grief so they know we loved them. many deaths have happened in my family and community since i witnessed my first wailing ceremony, and each time there is a comfort accompanying these emotions. i felt proud knowing the women in my family and community were the ones to lead this ceremony; its sacredness was held in a circle of women. as i conjure these memories of family and friends who have died around me, i yearn to know more about you. i feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow if there was no wailing ceremony for you … or maybe there was, but in the collective consciousness i remember seeing shame/regret/anger/resentment on the faces of my family and community when your death was shared. the public mourning seemed to have been stifled by the media headlines and overshadowed by the criminal acts of those who were connected to you by blood: your father, brothers, uncles, and mothers. i think about the love you felt by those who cared for each of you and want to embrace them in the public pain they suffered when each of you left this world. jassi sidhu, i remember hearing about your body found in a ditch in india by the local authorities, but i do not recall my community, your community, our community wailing for your life lost so young. the anger inside me grew when they blamed you for your death. amandeep atwal, i was in my car when i heard about your father stabbing you over and over again in your car. i do not remember anyone expressing grief for what happened to you, only shame. the rage inside me sprouted and grew when your story hit the news. aqsa parvez, did you hear the wails of your sisters and brothers when we heard you had succumbed to your injuries in your hospital room? these wails were subdued by the noise of the media who wanted so desperately to hold you up as the poster child for honour killings. aqsa, there is a picture of your mother in our local papers wailing — alone — without the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 21  accompaniment of her sisters. this must have hurt you as much as it pained me to witness. the fury inside started to trickle out and my voice quavered when i spoke about you in public. zainab, sahar, geeti, and rona, i want to imagine you all holding hands together as you were plunged into the canals of kingston. i heard your names repeated in every corner of toronto, yet your names mean so much more than girls on a freedom pursuit, dying for “honour.” my rage moved from silence to a storm of resistance and i will no longer remain quiet. jassi sidhu, amandeep atwal, aqsa parvez, zainab shafia, sahar shafia, geeti shafia, rona muhammad omar, i imagine, and hear, you struggled in many internal and external battles, many of which involved your responsibility to your family’s izzat, and others involving your fight with patriarchy, racism, and sexism. i am sorry your bodies have become a site for discourses/words that burden you, even in death. i wail for you all through this letter and think about the sisters who have shared their stories of surviving izzat violence with me; we see you and ourselves in your stories. i hope this wailing can release the penetrating gaze and noise, which continues to follow your bodies, even in our memories of you. i wail for the short lives you lived, and we will remember each of you as resisters who chose to express your agency, not as women who were victims of tragic death. no, you are not victims, martyrs, or even statistics. you are our sisters, and we see your death as a reminder to each of us of what we have to change in our community and the world. my rage has finally slowed down and fuels my work, holding space for any woman who has been hurt by izzat or honour. love, roohan di rishtedari mkm process of witnessing our collective story of resistance and reclamation the second letter in this paper is a collective writing effort with punjabi women who participated in my doctoral research. i will start by sharing the process of writing collectively, as it shaped the research process and the action research methods that i took in my research on hbv. the collective letter is a powerful way to express the grief, trauma, loss, and reclamation that the women and i experienced with our families and communities: transcending any one voice or one story, it combines the voices and stories of many women who have experienced exile and violence from izzat. between 2010 and 2015, i connected with six second-generation punjabi women, who had survived hbv after transgressing the boundaries of izzat when they chose to be in an intimate partner relationship across race, culture, or caste boundaries, or with a same-sex partner. each woman was exiled from her family or community after “coming out” about her intimate relationship. in ongoing in-depth life-history interviews with each woman, interviewees shared stories from early childhood to the present day, with a particular focus on how themes of izzat or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 22  honour featured throughout their lives, leading up to the moment when they were driven from their families or communities. i termed this moment the “impossible choice”, where each woman confronted an ultimatum of either giving up her intimate relationship or being expelled from her family or community; their stories are documented in my doctoral dissertation (mucina, 2015). in the last part of this paper, i share a collective open letter i wrote with some of the women, whom i will call sisters for the remainder of the paper. i use the term “sister” to describe a relationship that speaks to a shared experience beyond the parameters of the research. as an insider to this community and to this particular phenomenon, i would often share my own story with the women in the group in order to make a connection to their story and izzat. the work of indigenous scholar linda tuhiwai smith (1999) informs the insider approach i took, as she spoke about the negotiation that is required of an insider/outsider voice in research: the critical issue with insider research is the constant need for reflexivity. at a general level, insider researchers have to have ways of thinking critically about their processes, their relationships and the quality and richness of their data and analysis. so too do outsiders, but the major difference is that insiders have to live with the consequences of their processes on a day-to-day basis for ever more, and so do their families and communities (smith, 1999, p. 137). as an insider i felt, as smith suggested, a significant level of responsibility with every word i wrote in my dissertation. what my sisters and i created in the action part of the research represented a part of our lives that was raw and made us acutely vulnerable. this writing also challenged our communities to reflect in a public way on the impact of a cultural construct — izzat — and how patriarchy shapes our cultures. as an insider to this research, i live with the consequences of this letter every day, whether they are good or bad. after the research process had begun, three of the six women agreed to participate in a circle with other women to consider some form of action around those hbv discourses with assimilationist agendas that portray our families and communities as “barbaric”. the intention of the circle was to create a space where we could talk about how to move our stories towards action and to speak back to our own communities. we collectively chose to use our stories as a launching point for potential action and engagement about the impact of izzat on our lives and potentially on the lives of other second-generation punjabi women. each of us had come from an activist social justice background, so we were aware of the dynamics of sharing and the potential for collective work. however, this was the first time we were using our stories as the starting place for action. we revisited this challenge at various points throughout the process and gained insights on how difficult action and activism is for survivors or “insiders”, recognizing the complex pain, trauma, and grief we must visit upon ourselves as we consider the larger context and how it shapes our individual stories. the following questions directed our brainstorming sessions: “what messages would have been important for us to hear as young women going through those traumatic moments of being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 23  exiled from our families and/or communities?”, “what message do we want to convey to our families? to our community?”, and “what needs to change?” we also considered speaking directly to dominant media discourses; however, this endeavour felt futile at the time, as we sensed the media could use our stories to support racist or culturally prejudiced sentiments about our family and community, a risk we were not willing to take. this work was not easy for any of us. there were many internal struggles along the way, and each woman took a break from the group at various times. the grief, loss, and trauma of displacement from our family and communities is a painful burden we carry with us almost every day, one that feels heavier when we are reminded of our loss. we collectively agreed that this action was not about making our individual stories into survival stories, which would give readers an excuse to see our stories as exceptions while maintaining the narrative that south asian canadian women in general require saving from their family and culture. the letter was intended to speak to the punjabi and south asian canadian communities about the way that the boundaries placed on women as we perform and represent the izzat of the family are hurting us, displacing sisters and daughters, and leaving our families to live in unnecessary shame and guilt. after meeting, eating, and drinking a lot of chai (tea) for two years, we finally agreed to spend an entire day together to write an open letter. i had written the shell of the letter after transcribing all of the recordings from our meetings and collecting the overarching themes we all identified as being important. i asked the women to contribute their changes through the web-based google docs service, which allows a shared document to be edited by anyone who has been given permission. at this stage of the writing process, each of the women expressed the heaviness of reading and writing this letter, as it brought with it personal triggers. it was a painful undertaking to edit such a personal letter with multiple layers of meaning for each of us. one of my sisters eloquently articulated the difficulty in an email exchange to the group: “you wrote a beautiful letter and it hit me right in places where i realized that i still needed to work on strengthening for myself.” after reflecting on these barriers, i asked if we could spend a full day together and go through the letter word for word, sentence by sentence, and write the final draft collectively. this seemed to work for everyone, and spoke to the importance of collective engagement on interpersonal connections when witnessing stories of trauma and pain. when the day arrived, one of our sisters was unable to participate; she described having trouble getting out of bed when thinking about our collective project. i realized the process of speaking back to our past experiences and relationships is a harrowing task: to make meaning of the past brings up many internal struggles, while one must also live and breathe through the everyday struggles of daily life. as we pondered each word strung together in the letter, we were conscious of the heaviness in the room and took many collective breaks, gave each other hugs, and shared in food and, of course, chai. at the end of the full day, we had written a beautiful piece. we sent it to our sister who was unable to participate so she too could make changes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 24  the women were not willing to be the representation of this piece to the world, or have their stories demonstrated in any big public way. each of them was very private, and it took tremendous strength for them to share their stories with me. they were satisfied with taking our action as far as the creation of this letter, and gave me permission to use this letter for future public knowledge mobilization in the form of publication or potentially a podcast. in a group email exchange one of the sisters spoke to what she called the “silence” — hesitation to represent this letter — referencing the spirit of the work we did: “this work is painful, so it makes sense that there is silence although challenging for the dissertation writer — it frustrates me when other folks are doing work that doesn't involve spirit and emotion …”. before i began this research, it was unclear to me what might happen when a group of women who are survivors of izzat-related violence or hbv come together to create something personal and political. this collective letter was a necessary part of our individual journeys and stories; we are witnessed by many others when it is read in public. yet how we witnessed each other in our small group was as powerful as any public form of engagement possible with this work. the process we went through together will remain the most personal and powerful part of this research journey, and i am thankful to have been a part of this circle of sisterhood. i ask you, the reader, to see yourself as sitting outside a circle of strong, resilient, generous south asian canadian women as you read this last letter. this letter is addressed to our families and communities, so it is personal, yet speaks to the complex ways second-generation women and girls must navigate identity development, race, culture, and patriarchies inside and outside the family home. ultimately, this letter is for the punjabi and other south asian communities in the diaspora — our fathers, brothers, and uncles; our mothers, grandmothers, and aunties; and, most importantly, our sisters who have moved through experiences of hbv in their lives. we hope you find meaning in what we are calling you all in to witness. a letter of love and reclamation dear family, this is an open letter to our families. it is a letter to our individual families, our mothers, brothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, those faces who said hello phuth (hello dear) to us every week at the gurudwara, temple, masjid. to the aunties and uncles who made us dinner while our parents were working long hours. to our nieces, nephews and little cousins who look up to us as their big sisters. to our children, and to our children yet to come. and finally to our future generations. this is a letter for our fellow punjabi sisters who may hear our words and struggle with these conversations with their own families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 25  this is a letter to the families that feel the distance from their daughters but cannot comprehend why we see the world differently. this is for families who are hurting because they feel we, your daughters, are abandoning the family izzat and betraying your trust. families that believe they are protecting their daughters, yet don’t realize this protection feels like control. control over how bodies are read and who has access to them. we are writing to call for a moment of silence and invite you to hear us. who are we, you ask? we are women who have survived/experienced displacement and have been wounded by our families’ words and actions. we have come together to speak in a collective voice to our family. to your family. to you. we are here to speak in a collective voice about the imposition of izzat in our lives. but most importantly, we are speaking so you can bear witness to our struggle, and we can come to a place of mutual respect and reciprocity. we are speaking about our pain so that for a moment we can sit together with these words between us, in all our rawness and see/hear each other, actually see/hear each other. so you can for a moment hear/feel what we have to say. yet, we are not here to share our personal stories of trauma and tragedy. the details don’t matter. the details that we have so often lingered over. in fact you know the details that shattered our sacred bonds, the relationship that we had before that moment of revelation. the day we came out of our closet of secrets. that day is the first day of our displacement from each of you, the day we were excommunicated from a world we called home. that day when our relationships died and new relationships grew from the ashes of the familiar. relationships which will forever be filled with a shadow, a memory of pain, anger and words stir tears in each of us each time we remember them. we see the tears in your eyes, even though they are dry, we feel the pain you sometimes hide and other times refuse to hide even though we beg you to stop. but we are not here to speak about what happened on that day … moment … time when our worlds collided and you saw us with new eyes. the day you saw shame in our bodies and were convinced we had shattered your izzat … the izzat of the family in the eyes of our community. when we chose to share our bodies with those you deem unsuitable. other bodies that represent shame. that day we became outcasts. that day we feared what your eyes suggested. where you were willing to go for your honour. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 26  we write what we have thought of sharing with you numerous times. words we have repeated in our heads but were too afraid to say aloud. afraid no one would listen. that you would not listen. there are those who can take our words to fuel their fires of hatred of our foreign bodies and foreign ways. you warned me of these enemies of our culture many times, and we understand the risks we are taking by speaking out about izzat, honour, pain, but we must speak! we take this risk in the hopes you will be our foremost audience. we speak and write here not so you can feel shame or even understand why we do what we do, why we choose this life, this partner, this solitary existence. we want you to come with us for a moment to remember our collective bond. you have taught us the actions of a member of a clan reflect on everyone in the tribe. this is the collective bond we value, and it is from this worldview you chose to excommunicate my body. yet, in the spirit of this collectivism we ask you to listen with this teaching in mind. we are here because of you. and you are a part of us, as we are a part of you. therefore, your actions impact my body as much as my actions reflect your izzat. let us sit in this reciprocity and come to terms with our actions. it is important to go back to the beginning. you may wonder when we turned into daughters you couldn’t recognize. but we have been carrying the pain and work of creating multiple worlds we live in, without your knowledge. we worked hard to lie. so hard that sometimes those lies became truths and we couldn’t distinguish between the lines of reality and the world of lies we were creating around us. covering tattoos, and hiding partners, masking love, this was our burden. but when our worlds collided and for a moment we could not bear to lie any more, we were asked to erase this world and continue with the mask of lies we had built for you to believe. you demand us to forget, to move on, to not speak of this relationship ever again. this sacrifice was expected because this is what we are supposed to do as women. sacrifice in the name of our family. the moment of resistance when we said nahin (no), was scary. do you understand how difficult this choice was? do you understand to make this choice meant loss? tremendous loss either way. the day you said we must choose between family and {them, her… him… myself} we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 27  were condemned to an impossible place. a place of loss and trauma. and when we did choose the path away from you, family, your rejection of my body followed. maan, ammi, biji, bebe (mother)… you are usually the first to have a window into my world of resistance. it is with you i am most vulnerable, and where my need for acceptance is greatest. to be denied your love is a violence i cannot bear. that moment when i was afraid you were going to deny me was a moment i could not comprehend. i need your acceptance and love, and feel i deserve it. i know you deserve so much more from me, but i don’t know what else to do. i hope you will always forgive. ma you saw my worlds and as much as they haunt you and you fear my future, know you remain the constant i always come back to. the pain of rejection is a wound so easily opened. it is trauma we carry with us in our everyday life, and will forever haunt us in our relationships. a shadow hanging over every relation. a threat that anyone who loves us can reject us at a moment’s time. the loss that comes from this choice is like losing a womb sibling. losing people who we have felt even before birth. and then the loss turns to a rebirth. there are many who have carried on with us. there are those who could not let go and despite the pain and sorrow, you still chose to communicate. and many of you choose to remain in the ashes. is it possible we can come to a rebirth with you? or will we forever be dead to each other? with some of you, there is a rebirth, with others there are still lies and the rest may still continue to reject our bodies and whom we chose to share our bodies with. yet, there still continues to be an erasure of this world we shared with you, an erasure of our lovers who represent our transgressions. but do you know those same lovers crave your love? do you know they have conversations with you when you are not there? did you know these same lovers who you have erased have not erased you? yet your conditions for contact with us are based on this erasure. you have created a world involving just us, without our love, our children, and our political struggle. our world seems to be too scary for you to embrace, so it does not exist for you. this erasure is easy for us to fall into; we participate in erasing our partners when you need us to. but do you realize, for us to be truly present with each other we may need to address these erased bodies? we want you to come to a place where we can stand together and say to the world: yes this is who we are and only join our movement if you are happy to share in our truth. but then again we may not be interested in having you recognize our world, not because we are scared but because when you acknowledge this world there is always so much pain. avoidance has become a constant companion in our lives. so you believe you did nothing wrong to lead us down this road. we reel in guilt, while you sit there in the power of knowing heteropatriarchy is on your side. you left us with no home, no place international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 13–30 28  to run to when we need help. our only home is in the acceptance of our mother, and for that we are relieved. we are trying to move on and hope you will search for us with love, before one of us carries on beyond this world. we will always leave a door open for you to call us back home. to those families who find themselves struggling with their daughters transgressions, move beyond what you believe society, community, honour is telling you to do. think with your heart and see the child you held on your laps, arms, or held hands with, see this daughter/sister is a part of you and whatever actions you expect of her body for your izzat, is coming from a place of power and control, not from a place of safety, security or even love. this daughter is transgressing because this is how she is surviving and defining herself in this racist, colonial, heteropatriarchal world. she is surviving. to those sisters who are finding their selves struggling to share these words with their families, remember why you are transgressing. you are not a bad brown girl or daughter. your desire to not participate in the “good brown girl” ways is justified, because this image of the “good brown girl” was created to never be fulfilled, it is an image you are meant to fail. sister you are not alone, yet the road is lonely and scary, but the road is scattered with many of us who have chosen to carry on. we are here, come find us. for the reader who has come on 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(2006). mobile modernities: a south asian family negotiates immigration, gender and class in canada. gender, place and culture: a journal of feminist geography, 12(2), 173–195. doi:10.1080/09663690500094823 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918855 addressing pain and pain-based behaviours for children and young people in child protection and out-of-home care annette l. jackson, raeleen mckenzie, and margarita frederico abstract: in this paper we discuss the concepts of physical and emotional pain and people’s reactions such as pain-based behaviours. we describe our work with children and young people in the victorian (australia) child protection and out-ofhome care system who have experienced many painful experiences often resulting in pain-based behaviours. we describe our practice approach with a description of the “pain relief” emotional first aid tool. we highlight implications for practice, and training in response to emotional pain and pain-based behaviours. keywords: pain-based behaviours, emotional first-aid, trauma, neuroscience acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the work of dr. jenny dwyer, who developed the pain relief approach with the authors. annette jackson msw is regional director, berry street gippsland, 37 elgin street morwell 3840, victoria, australia. email: ajackson@berrystreet.org.au raeleen j. mckenzie ba is a consulting psychologist and clinical neuropsychotherapist at mckenzie psychology, geelong, victoria, australia. email: mckenziepsych8@gmail.com margarita frederico msw, mba (corresponding author) is a professor of social work and social policy, school of allied health, college of science health and engineering, la trobe university, melbourne, victoria. australia. email: m.frederico@latrobe.edu.au mailto:ajackson@berrystreet.org.au mailto:mckenziepsych8@gmail.com mailto:m.frederico@latrobe.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 104 pain is a universal phenomenon, yet how it is experienced and expressed is diverse. whether it is a stiff upper lip, wailing, rocking, or grimacing in silence, the expression of pain is influenced by age, gender, cultural norms, family patterns, and the individual’s historical and current context. we commonly conceptualise pain in its physical dimensions such as localisation, intensity, duration, frequency, chronicity, and type. yet increasingly the emotional and psychological elements of pain are also being recognised. pain is a biopsychosocial phenomenon even when its source is physical (richardson, 2012). in this paper we focus on the emotional and psychological pain that comes from a distressing event or cumulation of events, an experience, or an internal thought process, which may or may not be accompanied by a physical source of pain. whilst physical pain provides a useful metaphor to better understand emotional pain, it also shares some common features with emotional pain. pain is typically something the body seeks to alleviate as quickly as possible. the universality of pain is true for both physical and emotional pain. anglin’s (2002) concept of pain-based behaviours drew our attention to the concept of pain as a valuable descriptor of much of what we see in the field of child protection and out-of-home care. it adds another lens to trauma-informed practice by helping to explain key messages that can otherwise be lost in obtuse terminology and jargon. it is broader than the concept of trauma. in this article we consider the concepts of pain and pain-based behaviours in our work with children and adolescents1 in the child protection and out-of-home care system in victoria, australia. a construct that assists the understanding of emotional pain is that of complexity. concepts of emotional pain, pain-based behaviours, and trauma can be difficult to engage with yet have a profound impact on the person and the situation. the high degree of complexity that exists in the lives of children in care is explored in this paper through a trauma-informed lens. an understanding of complexity facilitates working with multiple variables and rejects a linear understanding of the child’s state and experiences. understanding complexity can assist workers to make sense of the multidirectional impacts of multiple elements, such as poverty, abuse, neglect, violence, and addiction. another important concept, although often elusive for children in care, is love. sadly, whilst love is part of winnicott’s (1987) “ordinary devotion”, it is too often out of reach for children living in out-of-home care, especially residential care. we argue that without love being expressed by those caring for children in care, they will be left to react to pain in the only ways available to them, so pain-based behaviours will be perpetuated. 1 the use of the term children throughout the paper refers to both children and adolescents unless otherwise indicated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 105 we discuss neuroscience principles and other theories that informed our development of an emotional first aid tool, known as “pain relief” (dwyer, jackson, mckenzie, & frederico, 2010). this mnemonic tool was developed to help children be more prepared for new and potentially painful situations, and to assist workers and caregivers understand and respond to their own reactions. we describe some of the ways we apply this tool in practice. children in out-of-home care in victoria, australia the present day child protection and out-of-home care system is predicated on the realisation that some children need protection from their own parents to ensure their safety, health, and well-being. terms such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and family violence denote countless experiences that are inadequately condensed to this concise language. this tragic reality underscores the many ways in which children in the child protection and care system commonly confront painful experiences, such as:  direct physical and psychological pain resulting from abuse and neglect  loss and grief due to separation from families or from caregivers if they experience multiple placements  betrayal of trust  absence, distortion, or inadequacy of love  isolation and loneliness  anxiety and fears of not having certainties in their future  resentment or shame when they become aware of how their life differs from others  reverberating impacts of their own behaviours leading to further harm  feeling deliberately silenced, misunderstood, or unworthy to be heard  being without control, joy, or hope when children enter care they often arrive with few belongings but lots of emotional baggage. they bring a confused mismatch of memories, gaps in memories, reality-based and distorted thoughts, experiences of loss, and fears. their behavioural reactions are strategies they have developed over time to help them survive their world but that may not fit their current situation. a new placement can be a source of further confusion and pain but can also provide the child with an opportunity to learn new ways to respond to the existing pain. we cannot undo or delete toxic and painful memories, but we can help make sense of them and build new positive ones. attuned care offers children developmental experiences that support healthy emotional and relational development and new rich positive memories. the sources of pain for children involved with child protection may stem initially from their family of origin. however, what happens to them when they enter the protection and care system may not only fail to protect them but can subject them to further harms. court hearings, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 106 medical interventions, changes of residence (frequently unplanned), changes of school, changes of decisions, lack of authentic participation in decision-making, barriers to positive contact with family and friends and to building relationships, exposure to other children whose behaviours can cause pain to others, denigration and labelling in the community, and disconnection from culture and community are just some of the realities for many children in care. a long-standing system dilemma in providing care for children is how best to provide care (especially for adolescents) when, for a range of reasons often associated with the extent of their traumatic and poor attachment history and subsequent behaviours, they are not able to be placed in foster care or kinship care. in victoria, australia, the policy is that residential care is for children over 12 years of age; however; residential care options for children under 12 years are also used when other alternatives do not exist. these children are sometimes placed in residential care on a shortto medium-term basis. residential care in victoria is usually funded by government and conducted by non-government not-for-profit community service organisations. residential care is typically based in four-bed units located in communities that are not distinguishable from other houses in the neighbourhood. from 2008 to 2012, the government of the state of victoria, australia piloted a new form of residential care called therapeutic residential care (trc). this was an attempt to alleviate the harmful impacts of children’s experiences of trauma and to support recovery and achievement of positive life outcomes (department of health and human services, 2015) by introducing a traumafocused therapeutic approach. the pilot was successful and since 2012 approximately one quarter of residential care facilities in victoria are trcs. most children in residential care, including in trcs, are adolescents. therapeutic residential care is intensive and time-limited care for a child or young person in statutory care that responds to the complex impacts of abuse, neglect and separation from family. this is achieved through the creation of positive, safe, healing relationships and experiences informed by a sound understanding of trauma, damaged attachment, and developmental needs. (mclean, pricerobertson, & robinson, 2011, p. 1) working within each trc program are therapeutic specialists who are trained in understanding mental health and trauma and its impact on human development. therapeutic specialists are professionals from disciplines such as psychology and social work. they lead the development of a therapeutic plan for each young person. the therapeutic plan guides residential care workers in understanding and responding to the child’s behaviours and enhancing their general well-being. this includes educating residential care workers on pain-based behaviours and approaches to assist the young person find different ways to respond to situations that are new or are perceived as threatening. novelty is often perceived as threatening by children who have had limited support in meeting new challenges. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 107 two authors of this paper (mckenzie and jackson), through their work in the berry street take two program (a therapeutic program for children who are clients of child protection, based within a large child and family services organisation), were part of the team that established many trc pilots. in collaboration with glenys bristow of the salvation army westcare, they designed and delivered the training to support the implementation of these models for all residential staff throughout victoria. the training utilised theories of child development, trauma, and attachment to understand many aspects of the children’s experiences and their path to recovery. anglin’s (2002) model was one of the major platforms informing this training. anglin, whilst rarely using the terminology of trauma, provided fresh insight into pain-based behaviours and was very timely in informing aspects of trc models and training, as reported in the evaluation of trcs (verso consulting pty ltd, 2011). a therapeutic foster care program has also been introduced in victoria with similar principles to trc. a significant reduction in unplanned placement changes was found to be an outcome of the foster care program (frederico, long, mcnamara, mcpherson, & rose, 2017). the statewide training for this therapeutic foster care program was also developed in part by mckenzie and jackson. pain, trauma and pain-based behaviours physical pain and reactions there is little surprise when someone stubs a toe and cries out and hops around or when someone is anxious and reluctant about going to the dentist. there is a natural reaction to the physical sensation of pain and a drive to avoid or alleviate that pain as quickly as possible. nonetheless, we are puzzled when someone shows an unexpected reaction. whether or not we interpret what we observe as an overor under-reaction, we automatically compare their behaviour to our own lexicon of pain and pain-reactions and we judge accordingly. an elderly woman trying to explain her swollen leg to an emergency department doctor said, “i don’t know what’s wrong, i only know it hurts.” the doctor needed to see the x-ray results and accept that her ankle was broken before acknowledging her pain as real and “worthy” of treatment and providing pain relief. x-rays are the wrong tool for seeing emotional and psychological pain. studies using mri and pet scans have reported structural and functional changes in the brain associated with psychological pain in the form of symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress (teicher & samson, 2016). however, such tools are unable to shed light on the depth of emotional pain. the international association for the study of pain (n.d.) defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. the painaustralia (n.d.) website adds “pain is not just a physical sensation. it is influenced by attitudes, beliefs, personality and social factors, and can affect emotional and mental well-being.” in an article on physical pain and culture, pain is described as: a private experience, however pain behaviour is influenced by social, cultural and psychological factors. it is these factors that influence whether private pain is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 108 translated into pain behaviour, the form this behaviour takes, and the social setting in which it occurs. (peacock & patel, 2008, p. 7) pain is not intrinsically a bad thing; in fact, it is essential. for example, it is protective and supplies a crucial signal to ward off further injury. however, chronic pain has additional elements that move it beyond just a prolonged form of “normal” pain (twilley, 2018). this portrayal of physical pain, chronic pain, and pain-based behaviour has close symmetry with anglin’s concept of emotional or psychological pain-based behaviour. despite its universality, the experience of pain is often hard to put into words. there are many words we use, such as ache, hurt, sharp, dull, burning, acute, stabbing, shooting, discomfort, deep, and agony, yet they are often inadequate. we may find ourselves desperately trying to find the right way to explain a particular sensation. “physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned” (scarry, 1985, p. 4). emotional and physical pain emotional and psychological pain can be even more diverse and difficult to express with words, as the source of pain can be harder to perceive. we don’t always know why we’re crying or reacting, we can’t point to the stubbed toe. we may scan our minds in vain for what has triggered this intense emotion, but there is a deeply felt pain, a physiological reaction, or strong fear nonetheless. for the purposes of this paper, emotional and psychological pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential emotional or psychological harm. in his book on suicide, shneidman (1996, p. 13) writes of psychological pain or “psychache” as “…the hurt, anguish or ache that takes hold of the mind.” in addition to each person’s personal experiences of emotional pain, in communities we are increasingly exposed to displays of community-wide expressions of emotional pain through the 24-hour media and social media cycle, such as the aftermath of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, natural disasters, children in detention, and the reality of warfare. this makes it easier to acknowledge the reality of emotional pain, but not to understand its complexities. there is likely to be a degree of sympathy, if not empathy, for those living with ongoing physical pain due to ill-health or physical injury. even so, compassion fatigue can lead to exasperation with sufferers of chronic physical pain. responding with empathy can be even more challenging and frustrating when supporting those dealing with emotional pain, especially chronic emotional pain. society has much to learn about emotional and psychological pain and its aftermath for those living in an internally pain-filled world. rather than emotional pain being a transitory experience, for too many children it is their only reality. children of all ages, whose lives are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 109 impacted by the traumas of physical and sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect and family violence, live with such pain without understanding what it is or even that it truly exists. similarly, children removed from their families and from all they know as familiar, even when to a safer environment, may experience this as deeply painful. there are also experiences of emotional pain such as grief from loss, fear of failure, and loneliness from isolation. pain-based behaviours just as children react in numerous ways to alleviate physical pain, so will they react to alleviate or in other ways deal with emotional pain. it is this reaction we call pain-based behaviours. anglin (2002) described pain-based behaviours as a useful phrase to remind workers that challenging or concerning behaviours or emotional responses are frequently the result of triggering deep-seated and longstanding internalised pain. attachment behaviour is described as a child seeking proximity when in need of comfort by someone bigger, wiser, and stronger (bowlby, 1969/1982). pain-based behaviours are similarly adaptive in that they are a protective mechanism attempting to stop the source of pain and to alleviate the depth of painful sensations. however, as explained through trauma theory, such adaptations to mitigate pain can in turn be maladaptive and extend the child’s exposure to pain. whatever the reaction (conscious or unconscious), the intent is usually to reduce or end the pain as quickly as possible, but not always. in some situations, a person will purposely maintain or increase physical pain to achieve a different objective, such as distraction, self-punishment, or dissociation. in other words, they may submit to physical pain in order to try to alleviate emotional pain. just as with physical pain, it is our brain that does the work with emotional and psychological pain. our reactions to emotional pain are similarly intended to reduce or eliminate the pain. painbased behaviours refer to behaviours that emanate from emotional and psychological pain. as with physical pain, some reactions serve to continue the emotional pain, usually as a form of selfloathing, whereas other reactions are a means to dull or avoid the pain. although utilised as a protective mechanism, pain-based behaviours can continue a path that is harmful and destructive. a child can be trapped in a cycle whereby the original source of pain may be forgotten, but the consequences of the behaviours perpetuate pain anew. for this to change, those caring for them have to help break this cycle. understanding the origins and functions of the behaviours can be helpful when working with children in out-of-home care. however, there are times when such history-taking is difficult if not impossible. in the context of emotional and psychological pain, pain-based behaviours can erupt or develop slowly in relation to actual pain and anticipation of further pain. pain-based behaviours can be understood as a response to each person’s fundamental need for safety and how the human brain is programmed to ensure survival as its most basic function. the children we work with have lived in environments that compromised their safety, leading to the emergence of fear-based patterns of neural activation. whether it is exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 110 abuse, neglect, family violence, or all of the above, children learn to adjust to a world that primes them for danger, isolation, and the absence of caring adults. trauma comparing the language of trauma with pain and pain-based behaviours highlights how trauma theory can aid understanding of the behaviours for children under duress. a useful definition of trauma developed by the substance abuse and mental health services administration (samhsa; 2014), is referred to as the three “e’s”: individual trauma results from an event, a series of events, or set of circumstances, that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. (p. 6; emphasis in original) when applying samhsa’s definition of trauma to the concept of emotional pain, such pain may not always be directly attributable to a specific event, but it is experienced and has many effects. for the purposes of this paper, we will primarily refer to pain-based behaviours while acknowledging that it is an overlapping concept with trauma. children whose threat-response systems have been primed to ward off danger throughout the day and night find it difficult to approach new situations with confidence. they do not know if they will be able to avoid pain and find comfort when times are tough. children are less able to tolerate new experiences or to seek novelty when they do not feel safe (perry, hambrick, & perry, 2015). they can be overwhelmed by old feelings of loss, helplessness, and grief that they cannot identify or label. their behaviour is pain-based, coming from the patterns laid down in their brains responding to perceptions of threat. when children feel safe enough when facing new experiences, they can think through the situation instead of unthinkingly reacting to protect themselves. there are numerous reasons why children in out-of-home care may respond to adults caring for them in challenging and counterproductive ways, and this includes patterns established in the brain. when children who have experienced rejection, neglect, and abuse are faced with situations that feel threatening, their brains are triggered to act defensively, and it is these defenses that lead to actions to protect themselves. as circumstances change, these behaviours may become unnecessary, but the neural circuitry continues to respond as if a threat still exists. the children become sensitised so that when they perceive a threat they can react quickly, even when the threat is not real. the brain will generate a fight, flight, or freeze response (national scientific council on the developing child, 2005; perry, pollard, blakely, baker, & vigilante, 1995). in the writers’ experience, children who often fight or flee can generate high levels of anxiety in the broader service and legal systems that are focused on risk. this can inadvertently lead to punitive responses, changes of placement, further disruption to relationships, and reinforcing what the children are trying to avoid in the first place. for example, a child whose behaviours include international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 111 frequently running away from placement may discover he or she is no longer allowed to return to that placement, thereby solidifying the experience of abandonment, rejection, and actual homelessness. the adolescent who uses violence to control his or her immediate environment may be placed in a youth justice custodial facility, with no control over his or her environment, thereby increasing feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. there is frequently a failure in this setting to help the adolescent manage pain-based behaviour. to an observer, the stress experienced by children who freeze can be invisible until they place themselves in serious jeopardy, such as through self-harming. other more subtle signs may be displayed through physical and mental health symptoms. before children can become aware of and change these behaviours they need to experience a safe, containing, predictable environment, enriched by rewarding relationships with safe, caring adults. connection to safe adults can down-regulate the threat response and enable the young person to develop cortical pathways that enable them to learn. inconsistent, abusive, or neglectful caregiving in early childhood alters the normal development of neural systems involved in both relationships and the stress response. it is through patterned, repetitive neural stimulation provided by consistent, nurturing, predictable, responsive caregivers that the infant’s brain receives what is needed to develop the capacity for healthy attachment and selfregulation capabilities. (ludy-dobson & perry, 2010, p. 30) the brain neuroscience and trauma theory offer insight into pain and pain-based behaviours. painbased behaviours are mediated by neural circuitry that serves to ensure survival. defensive approaches are developed when a child lives in a fearful environment with little choice over what happens to and around them (roussow, 2014). the human brain is equipped to live in a world of actual and potential threats. there are many interrelated systems in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems that work together to help prepare us to react to an immediate threat without “thinking”, and to respond to other threats and stressors in a more “thoughtful and considered” way. for example, there is a great deal written on the role of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal gland (hpa) axis that is activated by the amygdala and results in increased production of neurochemicals such as norepinephrine and cortisol. these neurochemicals have different roles in preparing the body and the brain to respond quickly and efficiently to threats (e.g., national scientific council on the developing child, 2005; nunn, 2004; sapolsky, 2003; shonkoff & phillips, 2000; van der kolk, 2003). “the brain’s neurochemistry is exquisitely sensitive to behavioral and environmental stimuli.” (shonkoff & phillips, 2000, p. 194). similarly, research has shown other areas involved in the threat response include the locus coeruleus, corpus collosum, hippocampus, vagus nerve, and prefrontal cortex (perry, 2001; porges, 2004; teicher & samson, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 112 figure 1 portrays the many facets of the brain and body implicated in the human threat response. the brain is efficient and integrated to enable survival in the face of danger. figure 1. how the brain and body react to threat. the hebbian principle of neurons that fire together, wire together is commonly understood in relation to neurodevelopment (hebb, 1949). the more often neurons fire in a similar sequence, the stronger the neural connections (synapses) become. where children have not experienced the safety of caring adults to scaffold their development, to explain and interpret the world for them, and advise on how to respond, they must do the best they can with the limited knowledge and experience they have. in a chaotic world they use whatever defences they can to survive. if the brain pathways are consistently activated around survival mechanisms, these pathways become sensitised at the expense of other areas including the prefrontal cortex, which mediates executive function — the ability to manage thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. early neuroimaging studies of veterans with symptoms of ptsd showed that during the retelling of a traumatic story there was decreased functioning in broca’s area via reduction in oxygen, and increased activity in the right hemisphere. broca’s area, in the frontal cortex, is responsible for mediating word generation to match internal experience. van der kolk (2003) concludes it is difficult for traumatised people to speak about their experiences, especially when emotionally aroused. they often seem either too aroused or insufficiently aroused to be able to process and communicate their experiences (hull, 2002; van der kolk, 2003). this hearkens back to the earlier discussion about the difficulties of putting pain, especially emotional pain, into words. broca’s area is necessary for the labelling of emotions, therefore its deactivation under symptom provocation would explain why patients with ptsd can experience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 113 intense emotions without being able to label and understand them. this marries clinically with survivors often describing an inability to put their experience into words — it is, in effect, ‘unspeakable’. (hull, 2002, p. 107) choice or control over life circumstances along with attachment to others and the ability to avoid pain and experience pleasure are considered base elements that structure the brain optimally in the emergence of the self (rossouw, 2014). children in the protection and care system often have little control over much of their lives and few opportunities for the development of relationships and familiarity in a system that is driven by organisational demands, court hearings and decisions, parents who are unreliable, and changes of case managers and caregivers. all these elements are the opposite to what the young person needs. these children need familiar adults, routine, consistency, and structure to provide them with the repetition and continuity that aids their learning and embeds new behaviours into their repertoire. an example of a neuroscientific principle relevant to how we respond to pain-based behaviours is that of state-dependent functioning. all brain-mediated functions are state-dependent (perry et al., 1995). we not only all have some days where we are better than other days, but during our off days or off moments, such as when we are sick, tired or under threat, we do not think, feel, or behave as effectively and efficiently as at other times (perry & jackson, 2018). this applies to children who may resort to more pain-based behaviours during these times, but it also applies to caregivers and workers who may struggle some days to respond in the way they would normally wish. the essence of relationships in responding to pain-based behaviours emotional pain can only truly be resolved by and for the individual through relationship. whilst humans of any age usually look to others when in physical or emotional pain, this is fundamental during childhood as young children are ill-equipped to deal with pain on their own. this is also true for adolescents, although their potential sources of support can be from a wider circle. children in care have often had very disrupted relationships with their family and caregivers. as such, their ability to trust others to “kiss it better” or in other ways make the pain go away, is fragile, distorted, or non-existent. this can complicate how they learn to manage the pain in ways that caregivers, workers, and society find unacceptable or incomprehensible. it is difficult to engage at any depth with the child who views the world as hostile. having knowledge of trauma and its consequences is important, but to respond effectively requires more than knowledge and skill. effective engagement leading to transformation for the young person requires the crucial element of caring about what happens to them. it is an element of care that is usually not written about, especially in the terminology of love, but is at the core of building a relationship with the children.. this type of caring in a professional relationship in social work has been referred to as agape — the greek word for love of others. the existentialist philosopher paul tillich (1962) was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 114 one of the first to identify the importance of this concept for social work. he describes it as a concern for the well-being of others, which seeks to transform. martin luther king, jr. (washington, 2002) spoke of agape as the basis for a just society, identifying the concept as caring for one’s neighbour. he described it as spontaneous, selfless, and creative, and the basis for nonviolence. we highlight this concept of agape as working with and caring for children experiencing emotional pain can be difficult and even painful. caregivers need to draw on their own resources and values. having a genuine concern for the children, and wanting to find new ways to help them manage their pain, can assist in engaging with them and not rejecting them when faced with repeated difficult behaviour. the pressures on workers and caregivers when dealing with emotional pain expressed by these children can be high, and it can trigger their own pain and loss. thus the caregiver needs to have self-awareness of the impact of their own experiences of trauma and loss. this self-awareness of how pain-based behaviours can engender feelings of helplessness, and lead to controlling responses that can trigger the pain-based behaviour of the child, can help caregivers avoid battles of escalating pain. moreover, unrecognised feelings of pain and loss can lead to burnout for the caregiver and impact their ability to care effectively. consideration of the needs of the children and their well-being can assist caregivers to maintain focus on the desired outcomes for the children, even when the going is tough. complexity trauma-informed practice is not and cannot be the solution to complexity. we are extraordinary and unfathomable creatures, yet we strive to discover, explore and question ourselves and our environment to try to understand our own complexity. complexity is not a vice, but it is a challenge. (perry & jackson, 2018, p. 135) grappling with the concept of complexity is like grappling with the ocean. we can perceive our work with children from the shallows or the depths but neither provides the whole picture. it is easy to feel overwhelmed with complexity and try to avoid it or simplify it; we may feel as if we are drowning. in child and family welfare, the term “complex” is frequently used to describe different albeit overlapping phenomena, such as children and families with multiple problems, complicated and difficult to describe situations, high-risk children, multiple risk factors for children and families, multiple and potentially competing services involvement, and thorny dilemmas that may appear as no-win situations or situations with unforeseeable consequences and elaborate sophisticated interventions. complexity theory places an emphasis on understanding the uniqueness of each child along with the multiple and often inter-related factors having an impact on them. although this means we cannot prescribe a single model or intervention, we can utilise approaches that provide greater insight and assist in navigating the complexities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 115 we have defined complexity in practice as arising when children and their families have multiple and difficult problems across many domains that affect the child, family, and service system’s ability to cope and respond. the customary or typical responses in these situations are likely to be insufficient. instead, these children and their families require enhanced, integrated, flexible, and coordinated responses to redress these problems to meet the young person’s needs for safety and well-being. the study of complexity challenges notions of linear, causal, static, reductionist, and predictive approaches to knowledge and science, and yet encourages and inspires the relentless search for understanding (carroll, 2001). complex systems are open, multilayered, and dynamic, and can include chaotic and inexplicable behaviours as well as simple and predictable behaviours. complexity is associated with the concept of a “system”. something that is complex comprises multiple components in an intricate arrangement that can create new or emerging properties. complexity does not refer to something that can be explained by a single linear sequence. thus, a complex system is a network of varied components that interact nonlinearly, to give rise to emergent and not always predictable behaviour. the brain is an example of a complex system. neuroscience provides an important lens but cannot be sufficient to understand people or painbased behaviours. in an article on kinship care, warren-adamson and stroud (2013) noted some relevant concepts in complexity, such as attractor patterns where practices, values, and memories can perpetuate themselves over time; non-linearity; the need for caution in drawing causal conclusions; emergence as the transformational quality of complex systems; and the creative organizational phase of chaos. complexity relates to all humanity (kurtz & snowden, 2003) not only those with painbased behaviours. all behaviour is complex, yet some behaviours are more perplexing than others. this reminds us of the need for the humility that comes with recognising that not only is pain universal but we each have our own pain-based behaviours that may catch us unawares. adopting a complexity perspective makes apparent enduring challenges for practice, inter alia, managing anxiety and uncertainty, sustaining continuity and containment, accruing and sustaining experience, taking account of the complex developmental needs of all the actors, and raises questions about appropriate sites for practitioners to undertake such a demanding area of child and family social work. (warren-adamson & stroud, 2013, p. 6) the pain relief emotional first aid approach the pain relief approach was initially developed by the authors as an emotional first aid tool and a “circuit breaker” to assist children in residential care and youth justice who were caught in a cycle of pain-based behaviours to find new and positive ways to relate and respond. the development of the tool was informed by trauma, attachment, and human development theories; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 116 cognitive behavioural therapy; and solution-based practice. pain relief does not aim to simplify complexity, but rather acknowledges that when dealing with complexity, we can benefit from an easy to remember mnemonic to help manage our own anxieties as well as of those we are seeking to help. the pain relief approach is not an intervention on its own. it provides workers and caregivers, regardless of whether they have professional training, with a tool to help them remember key points to help de-escalate or avoid a crisis situation, provide meaningful comfort, and model an approach from which the young person can learn. it does not take away the need for other practice interventions but it can assist the young person to be more open to these. a key message in emotional first aid approaches is a reminder to professional workers and caregivers that there needs to be an immediate response in a situation that is, or is perceived by the child to be, a threat and/or trauma. the pain relief tool guides workers and caregivers during a crisis or a perceived crisis when the child is currently safe and able to be engaged in a discussion. there are four integrated steps in the model: predicting and preparing; acknowledging and putting words to feelings; informing, and nurturing and noticing. there are several ways in which this tool can be used in practice. the most common way is as a mnemonic to assist workers and caregivers when wondering how they can assist children in preparation for situations they may find overwhelming and unable to manage, and therefore threatening. prediction and preparation reminds us that if the child perceives the unfamiliar as a threat or as an exacerbation of threat, then reducing the unknown and increasing the familiarity can contribute to the child’s sense of safety and sense of control. this also applies to us as workers and caregivers. examples of prediction in practice include providing information about what is going to occur at court, or in a medical, or in the next 30 minutes. it can also mean helping them predict how they may react to certain situations. it is not about over-preparing or crystal ball gazing but about making the “knowable known”, recognising that not everything can be known. once nebulous fears are made explicit they are less likely to be acted upon in ways that surprise or disturb the child further. acknowledgement: being able to put feelings into words is one of the functions that trauma can disrupt. as stated earlier, physical and emotional pain can make finding the right words more difficult. trauma can impact our normal ability to put words to our emotions, assuming we had the ability through normal child development in the first place. positive emotionally informed parenting helps children learn words to describe their feelings and validates their experience. employing this element of emotional first aid does not mean telling children what they are feeling but rather helping them find their own words. inform: in addition to prediction, there is often information that can assist children to manage themselves and the situations that confront them or can let them know that others are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 117 managing it with them. it is important not to provide too much information but to give children control over their own information and only provide information that can assist them. for example, psychoeducation in small sound bites can help children understand why they are reacting the way they are and what choices are available for them. nurture and notice: we know that trauma and pain isolates and fragments. any intervention is better when done in a relational way. offering comfort, support, and nurture to the child in the moment can create a lifelong memory. it is not about overwhelming children with unwanted affection but finding ways to provide comfort and for them to feel that someone genuinely cares for them and notices who they are and what they are dealing with. it is perhaps in this step that the concept of agape is most useful. an emphasis on nurturing and seeking to know the children is pivotal to helping them know and like themselves. pain relief in practice each of these steps can inform the development of a plan for the young person to manage emotions and predict bad feelings. it can provide a framework for an action or safety plan that can be put in writing or memorised by the young person. with repetition the new thinking and behaviour can generalise to other situations and become a habit. workers can assist the young person to identify situations that are likely to be perceived as a threat. predicting a crisis and assisting the young person prepare a response has the potential to avert the situation being perceived as a crisis. in the preparation the young person can plan how they can regulate their behaviour and emotions. the next step of acknowledging feelings helps the young person recognise feelings that can be triggered. by labelling feelings and understanding their source they can better regulate their emotions and their response. the pain relief approach acknowledges that labelling feelings and understanding the source of the feelings can assist workers to act more effectively as we can also find these situations overwhelming. the third step, informing, is about identifying strategies that will provide alternatives to pain-based response behaviour. these strategies can inform the action plan. it also requires workers and caregivers to identify how they can respond to the child in the time of crisis. the final step in this tool, nurturing and noticing, is identifying how the adult can build a relationship with the young person. ensuring the safety plan includes relational strategies is important so that it is not based on an illusion that safety can exist in isolation. emotional first aid provides a supportive framework for both the caregiver and young person. it is both protective and an early intervention. modelling the pain relief approach to children can break the cycle of pain-based behaviours and facilitate their trajectory of positive development. the pain relief approach is one way of helping the child access his or her “thinking” brain while feeling calm and therefore able to gain access to the prefrontal cortex and to learn new international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 118 information. the pain relief approach can provide a structure for understanding and responding in ways that enable choice. it begins to model to children how to think and make choices within their unique experience. some potentially stressful events can be predicted. an aim of pain relief is to offer information ahead of time so the event is not unexpected and ways of responding can be rehearsed; thus, the children will have a repertoire of helpful responses that provide choice in how they respond. this creates an increased sense of control and safety. of course, many stressful events are unpredictable. pain relief emphasises the power of relationship at these times and the need to ensure the child is not alone in the face of the stressor. instead, a quiet presence can help children slow their own reactivity and make sense of what is happening and consider different ways they can respond. instead of what may have been an automatic defense reaction to protect themselves resulting in destructive behaviours, they may be able to consider alternative strategies. pain relief can also be used when providing supervision to workers or caregivers to prepare them for challenging situations. workers in child protection, residential care, youth justice, and other aspects of the system, similar to people in all walks of life, have their own experiences of loss and trauma (anglin, 2002). it is important for supervisors to recognise that a child’s unregulated and pain-based behaviours can be perceived as threatening to workers and caregivers and they may react accordingly. supervisors can provide a more positive environment for the children if they support workers to respond to the child’s needs rather than the worker’s unregulated fear. workers can be “stuck” in their behaviour in a similar way that the child can be stuck. anglin (2002) encourages workers and caregivers to respond rather than react, which is a parallel process to what we hope for the young person. utilising the pain relief tool, a supervisor can assist staff to move beyond their own patterned responses as well as to apply pain relief in their work with the children in their care. we have given presentations on pain relief as part of the training program for trcs, youth justice, and in other settings. this has enabled residential care workers, youth justice workers, and others to think ahead about how they may assist children early in the face of a threat. a recent example occurred when training a range of different professionals about sexual exploitation and different strategies to help children recover and reconnect once safety is established. pain relief was provided as a mnemonic to assist workers when they were worried about “saying the right thing” to focus instead on the importance of “being with the young people” and, when the opportunities arose, using the pain mnemonic to structure what they wanted to discuss. an example of pain relief in action assisting a young person to manage a perceived threatening yet planned eventis described below. the case vignette demonstrates how each step in the pain relief approach was used to assist a boy to gain a sense of control and identify ways to minimise the emotional pain he fears. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 119 this is in contrast to an unregulated response, which could lead to an inability to avoid pain and to separate the young person from an important relationship. (note: the name and identifying details have been changed.) jaxon’s situation jaxon was a young boy of 13 years of age living in therapeutic residential care. he had not seen his mother for 12 months. his mother suffered from serious mental health problems and drug addiction, which often made her unpredictable. her partner, who was not jaxon’s father, had physically assaulted her and this led jaxon to worry about her safety. he missed his mother. they had a loving relationship, but one where he felt responsible for her. the context workers were anxious about protecting jaxon from distress should his mother either not arrive or be in a worrying state when she did, and about ensuring his emotional well-being after seeing her. they had worked hard to help him cope with the separation, and he seemed to have settled into an acceptance that his mother was responsible for her own well-being, that there were responsible adults who could assist her if she wanted help, that he would see her as soon as she was able, and that he should put energy into his own well-being. the strategy to address the situation the pain relief strategy was utilised by one of the authors of this paper in her role as a consultant therapeutic specialist, to help residential care workers manage their concerns and to help jaxon manage his contact with his mother and to constructively deal with his emotions. jaxon had a history of violent, aggressive behaviour that included assaulting workers when overwhelmed and of withdrawing and disconnecting from others. in the time he had been living in therapeutic residential care, staff had worked hard to help him, with the result that his aggressive behaviour was reduced and his disengagement was significantly reduced. this was an ongoing process and took much energy as his listlessness and lack of connection would sometimes lead workers to feel sapped of energy. he had recently been much more actively engaged with others. they feared this would change. jaxon was very keen to see his mother but also anxious about how it would go. he had been let down many times. he had not seen his mother for a year. they had a strong bond, but she was often overwhelmed by her own circumstances and unable to prioritise him. applying pain relief with workers residential care workers expressed anxiety about the proposed contact and whether it would be helpful for jaxon. they wanted to better understand how they could support the contact and help jaxon manage his feelings in a constructive way. we began with a discussion with the workers as a group, outlining the pain relief process and rationale. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 120 predict and prepare: this phase involved speaking with workers to provide them with information on jaxon’s mother’s current presentation and how the request for contact arose. this enabled them to express their fears and the type of problems they predicted might occur and to explore strategies that would be helpful. their fears were that his mother would not arrive, and he would be disappointed, overwhelmed, and angry, which in turn might result in a worker being assaulted; his mother would arrive and not be able to live up to his expectations; or his mother would arrive drug affected and then what? acknowledge: the concerns were heard and acknowledged, enabling workers to discard some fears and bring others into perspective. it emerged that workers were judging jaxon’s likely reactions on the way he behaved when he first entered the therapeutic residential unit and were losing sight of the relationships they had built with him and what he had learnt about managing his feelings. while regression was possible, he also had the experience of his relationships with workers to draw on and this would be protective. there was much workers could offer him to further enable him to learn how to manage his distress. inform: the conversation provided the opportunity for psychoeducation to help with understanding jaxon’s likely experience and appropriate responses. likely scenarios were posed and helpful responses identified. nurture and notice: it was agreed that we would meet again after the visit to discuss how each person had been able to contribute to jaxon’s responses to the situation. applying pain relief with young person it was agreed that a residential care worker and the therapeutic specialist would speak to jaxon to prepare him for his mother’s visit. this would ensure that a worker he knew well was present and enabled the therapeutic specialist to model the process. predict and prepare: this conversation occurred with a residential care worker he knew well who could help him feel settled. a time when he was comfortable discussing the forthcoming visit from his mother was chosen. the emphasis of this conversation was to assist jaxon before he became distressed and overwhelmed by thinking about the different possibilities of what might occur. questions such as how long it had been since he had seen his mother and what he thought may happen were examples. he recognised that she might not come or might be “out of it”. what if mum didn’t arrive? why might that happen? what if she wasn’t ok? he was able to say that she meant to do the right things but couldn’t always manage to do it. we discussed what this meant with the aim of him understanding or reiterating that it didn’t mean she didn’t love him but that her problems often overwhelmed her. if she was drug affected what would he like to happen? this provided an opportunity to advise jaxon that the worker supervising the contact might have to make that decision, but his wishes would be considered. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 121 we spoke about where the visit would occur, what the setting was like, how mum was planning to get there, how long it would be, and who would be there with him. we asked what he wanted from the worker during the visit and how he would let the worker know if he needed help. acknowledge: the focus here was to acknowledge and validate jaxon’s feelings of distress and abandonment without judgement. the aim was to bring the swirling emotions and nebulous fears into consciousness and name them so they could be recognised and addressed. jaxon had difficulty putting words to his feelings so we did this together. we talked about his mother and how things had been in the past, what his worries were, and what sensations he felt in his body when he thought about seeing her. we put words to those sensations. we discussed how hard it is to manage these feelings and why he might be affected so deeply. we let him know that anyone would struggle with these feelings. jaxon was asked about his worries regarding the pending visit and we helped him to assess the impact if his fears were realised and how he could respond. the aim was to help him realise that while he might feel sad and let down, he could cope and he did not have to manage this alone. inform: this discussion was an opportunity to remind jaxon about the strategies he had identified and could use when feeling uncertain of what was going to happen. previous conversations had provided him with an opportunity to learn and practice strategies, so this focus was on tapping into information that he already held. nurture and notice: following jaxon’s contact with his mother, the residential care worker and therapeutic specialist sat with jaxon to process his feelings in a non-judgmental way that was not critical of his mother. this involved asking questions that helped him to process his feelings such as, “what was the best thing about seeing mum?”, “was anything not so good?”, and “sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye and it leaves us with sad feelings.” these questions could lead into conversations at his pace. the conversation finished with thinking about how what we had discussed would be helpful with future visits; this was an opportunity for consolidation and a future orientation. the case example presented above illustrates a way of working with children who experience emotional pain in the context of a lifetime of trauma. it also shows that the four steps in the model can be overlapping. this approach assisted the young person to take more control of his responses, recognise what he could not control about his mother, find new ways to regulate emotional pain, and build relationships that could assist in alleviating the pain. whilst each young person and situation is unique; this approach can guide the worker and caregiver to work effectively and can give the young person their own positive strategies to approach situations perceived as threatening. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 122 conclusion children locked in a state of emotional pain, and who thus are driven to respond to perceived threatening situations by engaging in self-destructive behaviour, are unlikely to find new ways manage their pain without the informed support of workers and caregivers. in this paper we explored the nature of emotional pain and its impact on behaviour and relationships. we have offered an example of a practice approach to assist children, caregivers, and workers in preventing or responding to pain-based behaviours. the approach also recognises the stress on caregivers and workers when assisting the child and the value of having an easy-to-remember approach when we are desperately seeking the most helpful way to respond. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 103–125 123 references anglin, j. p. 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(1987). babies and their mothers (c. winnicott, r. shepherd, & m. davis, eds.). reading, ma: addison-wesley. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12507 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12089 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 539 exploring the role of agency accreditation in shaping services for street-involved youth alexandra fleurie hunter abstract: over the past decade, the social/human services sector across north america has continually moved towards a strong emphasis on new management systems and tools for performance measurement, as a means to track government investment and to inform services planning. this trend has contributed to the growth of a parallel industry in the form of independent accreditation bodies, which act to develop regulatory standards, as well as to perform evaluations and monitoring. in many communities accreditation now plays a significant role in defining both the eligibility of agencies to apply for government contracts, as well as the performance objectives of organizational management and service delivery. this paper looks at the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver, canada, as a site to explore this novel institutional arrangement. drawing from broader literature on regulatory standards institutions, this paper outlines a research agenda to question the role of accreditation bodies in shaping child and youth care services, as well as the broader values, ideologies, and power dynamics that surround accreditation. keywords: street-involved youth, homelessness, accreditation, service delivery, private accreditation bodies, standardization alexandra fleurie hunter is a graduate student in the faculty of environmental studies at york university, hnes 137 – 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada, m3j 1p3. e-mail: fleurie.hunter@gmail.com mailto:fleurie.hunter@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 540 this paper is exploratory in nature. it seeks to expose, and begin to investigate, a significant gap in research related to the planning and delivery of services for streetinvolved youth. in north america, organizational management and program evaluation in the social and human services sector have been an area of interest since the 1970s. however from the late 1990s onwards, the focus on adopting management practices modeled after the business sector has grown substantially, as both service providers and funders look to track investment, produce tangible results, and demonstrate value and accountability. in the context of street-youth services, this has been part of a wider effort to develop more strategic and coordinated service delivery systems (hambrick & rog, 2000; rosenheck et al., 2001; concodora, 2008; wiig & tuell, 2008; social planning and research council of hamilton, 2009). while many of theses initiatives have led to significant service improvements (see basi, clelland, khind, & severinson, 2012, pp. 31–34), they have also led to major changes to service delivery, to organizations, and to the practices and objectives that frame policy and funding (see guenther, 2011). therefore as researchers and community advocates strive to engage the actors, resources, and public support necessary to building effective solutions to youth homelessness (see gaetz, 2014), an accurate understanding of the factors that shape the service system is vital. these new management trends have also contributed to the emergence of a related industry in the form of private accreditation bodies, which develop performance standards and carry out evaluations and monitoring. across north america accreditation now often plays a significant role in defining both the eligibility of agencies to apply for government contracts, as well as management and service delivery practices. while there is a relatively expansive body of research on street-youth services, the role of accreditation in shaping policy and service systems – as well as the private institutions that administer accreditation – is an area of research almost entirely unexplored. this paper looks at vancouver, canada as a site to examine the role of private accreditation in shaping services for street-involved youth in a local setting. in the context of vancouver, accreditation requirements have been formalized into the contract policies of the provincial ministry of children and family development (mcfd) since 1999. while much of the research and policy discussion on street-youth services in vancouver is focused on interventions at the municipal or urban-regional level (e.g., millar, 2009; basi et al., 2012), funding decisions by the mcfd – which is considered the largest funder of street-youth services in vancouver (guenther, 2011, pp. 71–72) – play a substantial role in shaping the service system. the increasing influence of private accreditation in street-youth services, and the social/human services sector more broadly, reveals the need for an expanded perspective on how planning and policy decisions are made, and the actors and institutions involved. through a focus on governance – meaning “the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences” (united nations development international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 541 programme, as cited in brunet-jailly & martin, 2010, p. 9) – this paper draws from the literature on accreditation, policy trends in public management, and transnational private regulatory standards institutions, in order to formulate a research agenda on the role of private accreditation in shaping the service system for street-involved youth. street-involved youth and the service system the term “street-involved youth” is often used interchangeably with other terms such as “homeless youth”, “street youth”, “at-risk youth”, or “vulnerable youth”, each of which are commonly used to describe young people who are homeless (gaetz, 2009). in general, homelessness is understood as people who sleep on the street. however homelessness can best be understood as a continuum, ranging from “absolute” homelessness, whereby people “do not have access to safe and affordable housing and may be living on the street or using temporary emergency shelters” to “relative” homelessness, where housing may be unsafe, unsuitable, unaffordable, or insecure (condon & newton, as cited in millar, 2009, p. 7). youth also experience homelessness in unique ways, and encompasses a broad range of conditions, experiences, and backgrounds – from youth who are living on the streets, to youth who have unstable or overcrowded accommodations, or are at risk of homelessness through instability of relationships or income (see toro, lesperance, & braciszewski, 2011; and gaetz, o’grady, buccieri, krabanow, & marsolais, 2013, pp. 7–8). debate exists regarding the nuances of the various terms listed above (see guenther, 2011), as well as an important critique regarding the harmful effects on youth identity and unequal power dynamics involved in certain labels and descriptions (see madison, 2000; and lindell, 2012). while this larger discussion remains outside the scope of this paper, the choice of terminology was intentionally considered. “streetinvolved youth” appears as a common and consistent choice of language by community agencies and service providers, as well as in academic literature related to this topic. while i would prefer to avoid expressions that impose a characterization on service users, the term “street-involved youth” serves a practical purpose, and also serves as a link to research that frames this article. i therefore adopt the definition of street-involved youth employed by guenther (2011): “youth and young people up to 24 years of age who do not have a permanent place of their own and are living on the street or are involved in street life to a significant extent” (p. 15). the concept of the “service system” was also deliberately selected for the purpose of this paper. there are certain important distinctions to be considered, specifically in distinguishing between a “service system” and “homelessness services”. as described by de jong (2013), “a homeless service provider…should be focused on ending each individual’s or family’s homelessness first and foremost”. therefore, while the service system for street-involved (or homeless) youth incorporates a continuum of supports and prevention services including street outreach, counseling and mental health services, drop-in centers, hot meal programs, employment and educational supports, these programs should not be equated directly with homelessness service providers. the service system framing also fits into how homelessness intervention is discussed in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 542 vancouver, as a “continuum of housing and support” (greater vancouver regional steering committee on homelessness, 2003), and “refers to organizations in vancouver which have staff and resources designated to work with street youth” (guenther, 2011, p. 15). based on the reasons described above, the “service system for street-involved youth” has been established as the most clear and appropriate terminology for the scope of this research. lastly, for the purpose of this paper, consideration of the various service providers involved in street-youth services will serve two purposes. first, as service providers often participate in consultations and decision-making processes, they will be considered as actors involved in governance and policy-making processes. second, they will be also be considered in the aggregate – “the service system” – as changes to the composition of service providers in the system are an outcome, or product of policymaking processes. the mcfd and the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver is highly complex, and has evolved significantly over time. through the interaction of broad social, political, and economic processes as well as local dynamics, “many significant changes have manifested themselves in the sector…policy and legislative changes…various restructuring and contracting out processes, funding changes and centralization and decentralization movements” (guenther, 2011, p. 40). as described by guenther (2011), the governance of street-youth services in vancouver falls under the jurisdiction of numerous government departments and ministries: “the ministry of children and family development (mcfd), health/mental health, the school board, probations/corrections …and you also have a dynamic whereby the three layers of government (city, federal and provincial) are fighting around who has which mandate”, and the “right” approach to policy-making (pp. 71–72). private actors also have a role through grant-making and private fundraising. however based on the description below, the mcfd is considered to be one of the most important stakeholders, and is presumed to be the largest funder of street youth services in vancouver (guenther, 2011). prior to the 1980s the availability of services for street-involved youth in vancouver was quite limited. the service system was composed primarily of small charities and faith-based organizations, with the province directly providing various social welfare services (guenther, 2011). in the early 1980s, vancouver’s street-youth services began a period of significant expansion, coinciding with broader political trends of welfare state reform (geiger & wolch, 1986; skinner & rosenberg, 2005). the provincial government moved to contract out many social service functions to the nonprofit sector and, aside from child welfare/protection and income assistance, “privatization was declared a major policy direction for government in social services” (callahan & mcniven, as cited in guenther, 2011, p. 45). guenther (2011) describes an overall growth in resources and support for street-youth services during this period, paired with a decentralization of service delivery through a growing non-profit sector of service providers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 543 this expansion of the non-profit sector as the delivery system for street-youth services continued through the 1990s. however, during this period the composition of the service system changed somewhat, as the province began to implement specific funding requirements that favored larger, more business-oriented organizations. by the early 2000s this transformation began in earnest. described by some as “the corporate makeover of the non-profit sector” (guenther, 2011, p. 59), large-scale funding cuts at the provincial level incited an overall restructuring of services funded by the provincial mcfd. this included the consolidation of contracts, which resulted in the closure of many small community-based agencies, as well as the introduction of for-profit service providers, including a major contract in vancouver for one of the four “youth services hubs” established in 2003/2004 (see miller, 1998; guenther, 2011). as it currently stands, the service system in vancouver is dominated by several large organizations (both for-profit and non-profit) that deliver the majority of services, with a limited array of small agencies generally operating through more precarious funding arrangements such as grants and corporate or individual fundraising. in vancouver, as in many urban centers across north america, there is growing pressure to develop more strategic coordination and long-term planning across the services system, to not only provide services for homeless and street-involved youth, but to achieve tangible results in decreasing, if not ending, homelessness. over the past decade, novel governance arrangements have emerged in the metropolitan vancouver region that include representatives from different levels of government, community agencies, the business sector, and various individual actors. one significant institution is the greater vancouver regional steering committee on homelessness (rsch), which brings together over 40 representatives and allocates funding from the federal government to community agencies that work to address homelessness in metro vancouver (basi et al., 2012). yet the amount of funding allocated by the greater vancouver rsch for services targeting street-involved youth is significantly less than the funding available from the provincial government through the mcfd. overall the policies of the mcfd have a dominant role in shaping the service system. this frames the rationale for this article. through the influence of accreditation on the mcfd (and contracted providers), and the influence of the mcfd on the service system for street-involved youth, it is vital to engender greater understanding of accreditation in order to move forward with effective local planning and intervention. the mcfd accreditation policy the policy of british columbia’s provincial mcfd for accreditation of contracted agencies was originally approved in january 1999. agencies were given five years to adapt to the new requirements. the policy requires third-party accreditation for all service providers with annual ministry contracts over $500,000 (ministry of children and family development [mcfd], n.d.a). in 2013 there were 18 service providers in vancouver affected by this requirement (mcfd, 2014). according to the mcfd website, the ministry assists service providers to pay for the direct costs of accreditation, and may pay for other related costs (mcfd, n.d.a). there are two accreditation bodies approved international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 544 by the provincial government: the council on accreditation (coa) and the commission on accreditation of rehabilitation facilities (carf international) (mcfd, n.d.a). of the accredited agencies listed by the mcfd, approximately 90% are accredited through carf international (mcfd, 2013). as described by the mcfd (n.d.b), the purpose of accreditation is “a process of meeting organizational and program/service standards developed by impartial consumers, stakeholders, professionals, and provincial and national organizations”. the key benefits described are the assurance of an appropriate level of organizational proficiency including reliable mechanisms to continually improve quality, as well as numerous management controls to ensure “accountability and efficient, effective use of available resources” (mcfd, n.d.b). the commission on accreditation of rehabilitation facilities (carf international) does not provide free public access to the standards associated with accreditation; however it describes the standards as “developed with the input of providers, consumers, payers, and other experts from around the world” (carf international 2013a). the council on accreditation (coa) provides an overview of its canadian standards, which are grouped under three broad categories: administration and management, service delivery administration, and service standards (coa, 2013a). according to coa (2013a), standards development is guided by “information gathered formally through expert panels and advisor work groups; informal discussion with human service organizations…and reviews of published research and professional literature”. to examine the accreditation standards or the accrediting institutions in depth is beyond the scope of this paper. the intent is, however, to situate this policy development within broader policy trends, in order to frame the basis for further research into the various aspects of accreditation, as an influential feature of the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver. current literature on accreditation in social/human services as a general definition, accreditation is “a system and process of reviewing programs against certain quality standards for the purpose of approving (or credentialing) the program” (brommel, 2006, p. 14). the concept originally emerged in the fields of higher education and medicine in the late 19th century, and did not appear in social and human services until the mid-20th century. much of the literature on accreditation focuses on different models and processes of how accreditation works. for example, the institute of medicine (2001) proposes three different models of accreditation: supplementary (additional) to government regulation; a substitute for government regulation; or a model whereby standards are developed by one entity (public or private), and the accreditation process is performed by another entity. there is also a body of literature that looks at the costs and benefits of accreditation. accreditation has been seen as a valuable tool to assess the value or quality of an organization (stufflebeam, 2000). more specifically, private (or third party) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 545 accreditation has been described as less costly than government oversight, as well as more flexible and responsive to change (institute of medicine, 2001). accreditation also can benefit organizations as a way to “respond to accountability demands” (lee, mcmillen, knudsen, & woods, 2007, p. 52), and a tool for managers to develop performance-monitoring processes (carman & fredericks, 2013). these (or similar) benefits to organizations are described in the limited research on accreditation in the social and human services sector (slatten, guidry, & austin, 2011; carman & fredericks, 2013). in terms of critiques, accreditation can be labour/resource intensive and expensive for organizations compared to the value or benefits derived by organizations (institute of medicine, 2001; bowman, as cited in brommel, 2006, pp. 30–31). moreover, within the social and human services field, brommel describes a substantial growth in the number of competing accrediting bodies affiliated with different groups, which can lead to redundancy, misguided priorities, and resistance to change. a significant portion of the research on accreditation in social and human services also looks at the negative effects on front-line workers of imposing practices and priorities that do not reflect their values and reduce their sense of autonomy (janz, 2004; bates, 2005; lirette, 2012). there is a limited pool of literature on accrediting institutions and much less so in the field of social and human services. nichols (1980) looked at seven national organizations in the united states that ran accreditation programs in social and human services, and found that the impetus to develop standards came from at least three groups including professional leaders, groups of providers, and external sources such as funders and government (nichols, 1980, p. 64). the primary focus of nichols’ (1980) study was the way different influences shaped accreditation and standards, highlighting three important trends at that time: “pressure to make accreditation a condition for receipt of funding, a trend away from ‘in-house’ accrediting, and concern to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits of accrediting programs” (pp. 3–4). more recently, brommel (2006) produced a historical analysis of the council on accreditation (coa), an accrediting body focused primarily on child, youth, and family services. the purpose of the study was to “examine the context in which coa developed, the assumptions behind its practice…so that social workers and program evaluators may apply the knowledge gained through this research to understand the historical, philosophical, and theoretical basis of accreditation” (brommel, 2006, p. 9). along with a thorough description of the evolution of the organization, brommel found that a primary purpose and ongoing goal of the coa is to promote the social service model of service delivery and program management. brommel recommends future research on the organizational capacity of the coa in relation to the stated purpose of the organization, and also recommends research on the value or role of accreditation as a form of program evaluation. brommel’s study also supports the need for further research on accrediting institutions, as she highlights that inherently “power rests not so much with the accredited, but with those who control the process of accreditation” (malherbe, as cited in brommel, 2006, p. 32). according to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 546 brommel research on accrediting institutions is foundational to developing a clear theory of accreditation in a given field. however missing from brommel’s (2006) writing, as with the majority of literature on accreditation, is connecting outwards in terms of the role and relationship of accreditation and accrediting institutions to broader social, political, economic, and cultural trends. overall, the existing literature on accreditation and accrediting institutions raises several important areas for future research. these include the impact of accreditation on a given service sector, and the congruence of the values of a specific accrediting institution with the values and objectives of an organization or community of service providers. the literature also emphasizes the value of research on specific accrediting institutions, and the relationships between competing institutions, as a means to build a theory of accreditation. in relation to the context of street-youth services in vancouver, as approximately 90% of providers contracted by the mcfd use the commission on accreditation of rehabilitation facilities (carf international), it would be valuable to produce research on carf international, to offer a comparative look at brommel’s (2006) study on the council on accreditation (coa), which holds only 10% of the market in british columbia. however, what is somewhat lacking in the literature on accreditation is perspective on how accreditation fits into the broader evolution of the social and human services sector. further, based on the limited research on accrediting institutions, the methodology and theoretical framework for such research is underdeveloped. as such, i draw from broader literature on policy trends in public management, as well as transnational private regulation for additional perspective in framing a research agenda on accreditation relevant to the service system for streetinvolved youth in vancouver. policy trends in public management as described, the transformation of vancouver’s service system for streetinvolved youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, specifically in adopting management practices modeled after the business sector, was largely prompted by policy developments at the provincial mcfd. however these developments can also be connected to broader trends in public management. this section will provide a brief overview of such trends, and also draw connections to the recent history of the mcfd. the movement to bring business practices into british columbia’s provincial government (including the mcfd) is connected to broader trends in public and nonprofit administration across north america and western europe (see barzelay, 2001). while this “business turn” began to take off in the 1990s, the search for accountability mechanisms and program evaluation was initiated in the early 1970s. this trend is described in part as a reflection of the normative framework of western democracy, whereby “accountability of government to its constituents is fundamental…and performance measurement and management enable accountability to be determined” (brunet-jailly & martin, 2010, p. 21). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 547 simultaneously, as demonstrated by numerous scholars, from the 1980s onwards the funding and scope of public welfare services in north america has been in decline (geiger & wolch, 1986; brodie, 1996; griffin cohen, 1997; harvey, 2005). the overall effect of increasing accountability demands and decreasing resources inserted “markets and market-mimicking devices into the coordination of public services” (newman & clarke, 2009, p. 90). in this way “provider organizations are invited to imagine themselves as a business…to be ‘business-like’ in the way they manage themselves…identifying and improving the product; mapping competitors and collaborators; assessing the market…capturing and satisfying customers – becomes a framing device for organizational decision-making” (newman & clarke, 2009, pp. 82– 83). the recent history of the mcfd mirrors the trends described above in many ways. with regard to accountability and performance evaluation, aside from the accreditation policy for contracted service providers, the mcfd has implemented a range of policies and procedures within the ministry itself (for a detailed discussion, see callahan & swift, 2007). further, while guenther (2011, pp. 73–76) was not able to compare data on mcfd funding for street-youth services over time, she asserts that from the 1990s onwards the overall funding of the mcfd has decreased, while the proportion of mcfd services contracted out has continued to increase (reaching approximately 70% to 80% by 2011). thus key themes identified by guenther (2011) regarding the mcfd included the “non-profit sector forced into competitiveness” and an increasing “culture of managerialism” (p. 75). the literature highlighted above raises several important critiques that can be related to accreditation, and contribute to the formulation of a research agenda. a first concern is that tools and policies related to monitoring and evaluation often simultaneously move towards standardization, and represent an assumption that standardization is equated with quality. according to callahan and swift (2007, p. 171), while some degree of standardization is considered desirable within the field of social work, flexibility is also considered vital to the autonomy and effectiveness of front-line staff, at the risk of an overly prescriptive service system with a “one-size-fits-all” approach. these are thoughts echoed elsewhere in the literature on management in public service professions, wherein research suggests that positive outcomes in actuality correlate with the capacity of different professional groups to practice discretion and autonomy by renegotiating policy implementation either formally or informally (brodkin, 2011; mccann & ward, 2011; miller, 2005). another concern is that performance measurement and program evaluation often “measures what they can count…rather than what counts” (brunet-jailly & martin, 2010, p. 22). this concern is amplified by brodkin’s (2011) research; she describes the management prerogative: “as long as performance benchmarks are met, it is not necessary to consider how policy work is done” (p. 272). yet, similar to callahan and swift (2007), the results of her research demonstrate that while overall benchmarks may be met, the underlying and unacknowledged impacts could include the shifting of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 548 administrative costs onto clients, prioritizing “speed over need”, and creating restrictions on access to services (brodkin, 2011, p. 273). a third concern related to performance measurement and program evaluation practices, is that “what counts” is assumed to be obvious and apolitical. however as described by agocs and brunet-jailly (2010), measurement is inherently political, occurs within a context of power relations, and is influenced by dominant values and ideologies. as a certain degree of standardization, as well as a focus on performance and program evaluation is inherent in accreditation, these concerns demonstrate the need for both indepth research on accreditation and standards, and a contextual view of the broader social, political, and economic trends that have shaped their development and implementation. private transnational regulatory standards institutions based on a review of the literature, i propose that both accrediting institutions approved in british columbia (the coa and carf international) can be considered “private transnational regulatory standards institutions”, a perspective that offers important insight to framing research on accreditation. each of these terms has specific significance in describing the characteristics of the accreditation bodies. in order to explore these ideas further, i draw from literature on transnational private regulation (tpr), the theory of regulatory capitalism, and select literature related to regulation, standards, and “novel assemblages” of governance. both coa and carf international are based in the united states yet perform accreditation in canada, amongst other countries. further, their accreditation has been incorporated into government policies and legislation through “mandated” or “deemed” status in numerous states and provinces. therefore according to the literature on tpr, these institutions are transnational as “their effects cross borders, but are not constituted through the cooperation of states as reflected in treaties” (scott, cafaggi, & senden, 2011, p. 3). these accreditation bodies are also private, as they are independent not-for-profit organizations governed by a board of directors. based on their function in setting industry standards, the coa and carf international fit the definition of regulatory standards institutions, which “set and enforce standards for performance” (bartley, 2007, p. 302). these standards, which represent a set of agreed-upon rules and norms related to the technical or other qualities of any system of production (salter & salter, 1997), are regulated through some form of “implementation and enforcement…legal or non-legal” (black, 2008, p. 139); for an expanded discussion on standards see salter (1994). institutions – as situated within the literature on tpr – are a central component of “governance regimes which take the form of ‘coalitions of non-state actors which codify, monitor, and in some cases certify firms’ compliance with labor, environmental, human rights, or other standards of accountability” (barley, as cited in scott et al., 2011, p. 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 549 lipshutz and fogel (2002) point out that regulation is a fundamental feature of contemporary governance: while participation in international public affairs by socially based, nonstate actors is not new, it appears that the current scope of non-profit, nongovernmental activity at all political levels far exceeds that found in the historical record. not only have social actors become more involved in many international meetings and institutions, and in transnational networks and alliances of various types; they have also become instrumental in the establishment of a growing number of semi-public and private transnational regimes. (pp. 116-117) this shift in regulatory responsibility has historically been seen as part of broader trends in welfare state reform, notably propelled forward by the reagan administration and the thatcher government of the 1980s (see peck & tickell, 2002), whereby what had previously been considered core government functions (including welfare provision and regulation) were shifted to an array of non-state actors (black, 2008). yet in this way, regulation is conceived primarily as a responsibility shifted to the private sector, as opposed to a core mechanism of governance itself. levi-faur (2005) describes the trend: the notion of a new order of regulatory capitalism goes beyond privatization and includes an increase in delegation to autonomous agencies, formalization of relationships, proliferation of new technologies of regulation in both public and private spheres, and the creation of new layers of both national and international regulation. (p. 202) while aspects of regulatory capitalist theory have been challenged, and much debate exists regarding how much the responsibilities and functions of the state have been transferred to private actors – that is, is the state a rule “maker” or a rule “taker” (cafaggi, 2011, p. 21)? – it is clear that the reallocation of regulatory power has important implications with regard to both governance and accountability. cafaggi (2011) argues that the recent growth of private regulatory institutions reflects “first, a reallocation of regulatory power from the domestic to global sphere and second, a redistribution between public and private regulators” (p. 21). these are two important yet distinct features in considering the place of regulatory institutions on governance. i will begin with a discussion of the second feature, the division of control between state and non-state actors, and then move to the first feature, that of scale. according to brunet-jailly and martin (2010), the shift in public policy discourse from a focus on the formal structures and institutions of government to the wider frame of “governance” demonstrates a recognition of the various processes through which nonstate actors participate in decision-making, wield power and authority, and in turn influence public policy (see also young, 2012). the literature on regulatory capitalism suggests that through the emergence of regulatory regimes, a new form of “second-level indirect representative democracy” is taking shape, whereby “citizens elect international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 550 representatives who control and supervise experts who formulate and administer policies” (levi-faur, 2005, p. 201). while these changes are often considered a form of privatization, whereby the process of regulation has been “captured” to varying degrees by private actors (e.g., mattli & woods, 2009), this overlooks a key detail related to the topic of governance. not only is there a shift in authority between “public” and “private” but also the very notion of what is “public” should be reconsidered. the conventional notion of the state under liberal democracy has taken new form. this transformation is described by salter and salter (1997) as a newly emerging infrastructure, and by sassen (2008) as a movement away from the very idea of the nation state as the “center” of a clearly structured governance network. as illustrated by sassen (2008), “specialized assemblages” form that spread and disperse control, cross traditional notions of borders and boundaries, and are linked based more on sector or interest than territory (p. 61). these ideas challenge the fundamental frameworks through which “modern societies, economies and polities have operated” (p. 61), as the structure of governance has changed, and with it the lines between public and private have blurred. this development relates directly to the other aspect of redistribution of regulatory power: the shift from the domestic to the global sphere. as highlighted by lipschutz and fogel (2002), while globalization receives much attention for its disruptive social and economic effects, the topic of regulation is often not considered. as noted above, a key feature of the current period is the multiplication of different, highlyspecialized governance “assemblages” defined more through interest or industry versus traditional territorial boundaries (sassen, 2008, p. 61). in this regard, mccann and ward (2013) suggest it is useful to think of the varying levels of political organization as nonstatic, and to “focus on how [these varying] scales are brought and held together – assembled – by actors and institutions” (p. 5). overall, they argue we have moved beyond “easy analytical dichotomies” of local/global and public/private, and must look to the practices and actors/institutions that are networked together in fluid governance arrangements (p. xvi). with regard to the accreditation bodies coa and carf international, these institutions are embedded within broader regulatory regimes or so-called governance “assemblages”. accreditation by different institutions has become incorporated into government policies or regulation in various territorial settings. however this is also fluid, as these “mandates” by the states and provinces often change. therefore the accrediting institutions in some ways assemble their own governance regimes that not only span traditional borders, but are also incorporated into broader regulatory regimes that included different accrediting bodies, are held together and expanded by a range of actors/institutions, and are connected to diverse and possibly conflicting social, economic, and political projects. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 551 informing a future research agenda based on the literature review on accreditation, policy trends in public management, and private transnational regulatory standards institutions, several important theoretical and methodological considerations emerge, as well as important points for future investigation. in formulating a plan for future research it is essential to return to the underlying objective of this paper, namely, to produce key points of inquiry to build a better understanding of the relationship between private accreditation and the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver, canada. to do so, as outlined below, it is necessary to focus on the standards and accrediting institutions directly connected to this context, and also to look to the broader context of accreditation, as it is embedded within broader regulatory regimes and governance assemblages, as well as social, political, economic, and cultural processes. future research is needed on the value and impact of accreditation on services, staff, and organizations, as well as the congruity (or not) of the culture and objectives of accrediting standards and those of the local community of service providers, policymakers, and the general population. the issue of the added cost of accreditation – both in terms of the fees as well as the significant administrative resources required – is identified as a significant factor in determining whether (and what type) of organizations can achieve and maintain accreditation. further, research on accrediting institutions is described as a valuable tool to develop a broader theory of accreditation in social and human services, and is necessary given that a power imbalance exists that favors those who control accreditation over “the accredited” (malherbe, as cited in brommel, 2006, p. 32). this body of literature highlights an important issue around the growth in competing accreditation bodies, and how this shapes the practices and objectives of the different accrediting bodies. lastly, research that could allow for a comparative look at competing accrediting institutions would provide important insight into the different characteristics of the institutions and their standards, as well as how or why they “fit” with different local settings. since carf international holds 90% of the market in british columbia versus the 10% market share of the coa, a better understanding of these accrediting bodies could provide valuable insights into the service providers and the overall service system for streetinvolved youth. in looking at the connections between the street-involved youth services in vancouver, the policies of the mcfd, and the literature on policy trends in public management, several important themes emerge that merit further inquiry in relation to the specific context of vancouver’s street youth services. first, it should be recognized that accreditation plays a substantial role in the “competitive market” between service providers, and thus the relationship between the mcfd accreditation policy and the landscape of service providers for street-involved youth should be explored in greater depth. second, as identified within the literature, a risk of the emphasis on meeting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 552 performance benchmarks, specifically within a highly competitive environment for funding, is that the pressure to meet such benchmarks may trump other more nuanced aspects of service delivery that are not easy to measure. a third related theme involves implicit assumptions that surround policies that aim to standardize, improve efficiency, or implement so-called best practices. as noted by multiple scholars, while such initiatives are generally framed as technical and thus apolitical, overarching values, ideologies, and power dynamics inherently shape them. therefore a critical look at the political and cultural implications of accreditation is necessary. through the literature review on transnational private regulatory standards institutions, it is clear that accreditation institutions are a component of broader regulatory regimes with highly complex and fluid characteristics. as such, there is an ambiguity of responsibility and control in accreditation, and by proxy local service systems. this body of literature is rich in methodology and, therefore, i’ve identified four broad approaches outlined within the literature that i believe would be useful in framing future research on accreditation in social and health services. the first approach is to focus on specific institutions, such as the council on accreditation (coa) or the commission on accreditation of rehabilitation facilities (carf international), which can provide an in-depth perspective on the various relationships, interests, and power dynamics involved in decision-making processes. salter (1998) describes standard setting as “the housework of capitalism”, whereby regulatory institutions represent “the detailed implementation of both policy and politics” (p. 163, emphasis added). in this regard, salter (2013) makes a case for the added insight that can be gained from specificity, as compared to a broader analysis: “in studying actors, you focus on those individuals, groups, organizations, governmental units and corporate bodies that do things to affect the fate of public issues; in studying institutions, you focus on the constraints operating on these same actors…to the systemic influences on deliberation and decision-making” (p. 3). more specifically, several scholars advocate in favor of a close examination of the origin of regulatory institutions, as a way to explore how the conditions of emergence relate to the practices and effects of regulation over time (see scott et al., 2011). bartley (2007) points out that “institutions arise out of political, cultural, or professional projects led by strategically positioned and socially skilled ‘institutional entrepreneurs’” (p. 309). in this way private regulation is – at least to some extent – a manifestation of the interests of those advancing the regime, an important perspective to consider in regard to private regulation in the form of agency accreditation. the actors involved, in all likelihood, have “different, and often conflicting incentives for creation and implementation” (cafaggi, 2011, p. 31), depending upon their relationship to the service system. while the objective of improving quality may well be present, when the social or human services operate in a competitive market, actors are inherently responding to different “incentives, risks, and uncertainties in the market” (bartley, 2007, p. 306). for this reason, a comprehensive look at the emergence and development of a regulatory institution can offer a snapshot of the social, political, and economic dynamics at play, which can then be related to a specific context, such as the street-youth service system in vancouver. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 553 both the second and third approaches to research expand out from the individual regulatory bodies in order to consider the multitude of other actors and institutions that make up the broader regulatory regime. a regulatory regime includes “not only the regulator and the regulated but also the beneficiaries of the regulatory process” (cafaggi, 2011, p. 32). the primary difference between the two approaches is based on scale. on one hand, a regulatory regime can be considered primarily within a localized context, such as a city or urban region. on the other, the regime can be considered on a much broader scale wherein the territorial boundaries of a regime are fluid. the work of mccann and ward (2011) on urban policy mobilities provides a strong framework for researching a regulatory regime centered around a city or urban region. their mode of inquiry focuses on particular case studies using “ethnography or careful technical analysis, but does not lose sight of the contexts and constraints within which these practices are located” (p. xvii). this approach looks at “how policies are carried from place to place and learned in specific setting” (mccann, 2010, p. 107), as well as the relationships and actors of the specific research site (city). this provides direct insight into both of the themes identified above – the values, ideologies, and competing interests at play – as well as the dynamics of power and control. a key feature of accreditation and policy-making processes in general is the prominent role of private actors with technical knowledge or expertise. as described by mccann and ward (2011), “the expertise of various think tanks, consultants, gurus, and mediators has become central to day-to-day governance [of local settings]…and these actors act as key agents in the transference of policies and practices in urban governance” (p. xix). cutler (2010) agues that similar to the depoliticized framing of performance metrics, “the particularistic interests pursued by experts are obscured by presumptions of the technical and neutral nature of their professional knowledge”, and thus “few question just whose interests these private actors represent” (p. 160). to this regard, the methodological approach of mccann and ward’s work allows for a critical look at the interests of various actors, as well as the relationships and hierarchy between them. the third research approach looks at a regulatory regime as an expansive network that crosses territorial boundaries. the work in this area focuses on the relationships between actors, as a means to explore the varying competing/complementary interests involved. at the same time, this body of work looks at regulatory regimes to explore the emerging phenomenon of cross-border governance networks. the methodology proposed by cafaggi (2011) attempts to classify the relationship between actors, to identify dominant actors within the regime, and specifically to look at the degree of complementary interests between actors (see pp. 32–35 for a detailed account). cafaggi then seeks to use this information to analyze boundaries, such as between public and private, as well as local, national, and transnational. in the same vein, black (2008) proposes a “decentering” analysis of regulation. this approach examines the “institutional embeddedness” of regulatory regimes within the broader social environment, an approach conceptually rooted in structuration theory whereby international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 554 “regulation, like any set of social relations, is dialectical: both regulator and regulated are at once autonomous and dependent on each other” (p. 140). in this way her research looks at private regulation as a proxy to explore the nature of how legitimacy and accountability are socially defined. the final approach to this topic is a look at the accreditation standards themselves, and the impact of the standards on service delivery practices, service providers, and the outcomes resulting from the implementation of the standards. while this approach would also provide insight into values, ideologies, and competing interests involved in accreditation, as well as to a certain degree the power dynamics surrounding regulation in the service system, this area is less of a focus in the literature surrounding transnational private regulatory standards institutions. at the same time, this is an important area to consider in regard to informing planning and policy-making to address youth homelessness. future research in this area could draw on institutional ethnography methodology (smith, 2005) as a means to further explore the relationship between institutional practices and the experiences of service providers and service users. overall, based on the above literature review, an expansive future research agenda is revealed, as the gap in knowledge related to private accreditation in the social/human services sector spans from a micro-level of service providers and the local regulatory regimes that form around urban centers, to a level of transnational accreditation bodies and the broader regime in which they are embedded. conclusion in british columbia accreditation requirements for contracted service providers are an outgrowth of a progressive policy trend in the public sector, towards greater standardization and performance measurement. while in some ways accreditation is still optional for street-youth service providers in vancouver, it is a necessary condition to access funding from the mcfd, which is the most significant funder of service providers. as described by cafaggi (2011), “compliance with a set of standards conditions access to the market or the ability to compete, thereby reducing freedom to choose” (p. 22). through this paper, i propose an expanded perspective of the service system for street-involved youth in vancouver to include a broader look at the actors, institutional arrangements, and influences involved in governance and policy-making. i also challenge dominant assumptions about the apolitical nature of accreditation, and argue for a more nuanced and inquisitive look at accreditation and accrediting institutions/regimes. in pursuing the proposed research agenda i believe that policy research and advocacy can be strengthened, in order to support the broader objective of ending youth homelessness in vancouver and beyond. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 539–560 555 references agocs, c., & brunet-jailly, e. 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(the corresponding author) is an associate professor with the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 1455 de maisonneuve blvd. w., montreal, quebec, h3g 1m8. e-mail: w.linds@sympatico.ca alison sammel, ph.d. is a lecturer and smithsonian fellow at the school of education and professional studies at griffith university, gold coast, australia. e-mail: a.sammel@griffith.edu.au linda m goulet, ph.d. is a professor in the department of indigenous education at the northern campus of first nations university of canada. e-mail: lgoulet@firstnationsuniversity.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 338 [l]iving the life of a dancer requires that one attends to motion, synergy, and the internal and variant rhythms of consciousness housed in one’s own body as well as the bodies of those with whom one lives/dances. (salvio, 1997, p. 248) in a variant rhythm of questions and answers, the authors of this article explore a larger constant: the often invisible and unheard rhythm of the dance of power. this rhythm glides and flows within teaching practices. this dance of power occurs between adult and youth, and youth and their peers. bearing witness to the unfolding subtle or overt dance of power that occurs in teaching spaces requires both the youth and adult to not only recognize the dance, and themselves as dancers, but also to understand how it has historically been orchestrated and how it can be reimagined. for the authors of this article, this reimagining is embodied in emancipatory practices. such practices involve enhancing critical and creative thinking and reflective understanding, as well as promoting individual and collective action. teaching and learning are viewed reflexively, and come together through dialogue and action to address and transform power relations between adults, youth, educational settings, and society (arnold, burke, james, martin, & thomas, 1991). by understanding what power is and can be in our educational settings, and by envisioning how it can be shared, the authors have come to understand that for emancipatory practice to become a reality, both teachers and students need to understand and negotiate power relationships by negotiating authority. we believe it is important to discuss how we each make sense, both theoretically and practically, of the complex and elusive concepts of power, authority, and emancipatory practice. therefore, we begin our joint choreography by reflecting on traditional understandings of the term authority. with this as a foundation, we each begin the discussion around the complexity of this term in relation to how it evolves in and through our own educational practices. tripping the light fantastic with authority some ideas about authority in the educational system assume that authority is something that teachers and students possess and use (e.g., giroux, 1986; hirsch, 1999; shor, 1992). bingham (2008) explains that traditionally, authority is seen to reside with the knower: the knower has authority. the knower then communicates this knowledge to those who do not have the authority of knowing. if this is done with clarity and effectiveness, then the authority of knowing can be passed along to rational people using a language that is assumed to be common to all. this form of authority is key in educational institutions where traditions and time have legitimated beliefs and practices normalizing imbalances of power between teacher and student. this imbalance dictates who can be considered expert and who can be granted authority. others (e.g., applebaum, 1999; bingham, 2008; burbules, 1995; freire, 1970) conceive of authority as emerging in dialogical relationships between teachers and students much like the dance described in the above quotation. this article will ask what this latter concept of relational authority means in theory and practice to those who teach students who will go on to work with youth. it does this by exploring the beliefs and practices of three university teachers. warren will explore the dynamic nature of authority that shifts in the interplay between content, process, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 339 the power relationships that need be considered when adults and youth work together in group settings. linda explores the paradox of how teachers use their authority to create spaces where students can express themselves and develop their authority. ali invites the reader to reflect on her journey investigating how a flipped classroom (where knowledge production is shared) can be achieved through sharing authority. through reflection on our educational experiences and in dialogue with each other, we ask the reader to join us in exploring the concept of authority and how it can evolve into a sharing of authority that promotes emancipatory practices. warren linds: i teach university students in an undergraduate human relations program. these students are already, or will be, working in positions of authority with youth. authority, though, is a slippery concept. bingham (2008) has written about authority as being relational, in that in his experience lecturing in a university situation, authority is dynamic and constantly shifting through dialogue and questioning between teacher and student. he asks us to consider how authority operates and how its careful use might lead to human agency, which is an important consideration when thinking about authority in professional relationships. for heron (1999), “genuine authority proceeds from those who are flourishing from their own inner resources and can thereby enable other people to flower in the same way” (p. 20). he describes three kinds of authority: 1. tutelary: the use of content and processes to enable understanding of something. 2. political: the use of power in decision-making processes by the facilitator alone, in collaboration with a group, or by the group with the facilitator being there to guide. 3. charismatic: how the leader influences learners and the learning process. the leader or facilitator is present through expressive use of the voice and words, as well as behaviour, and is seen to take risks in their interactions with learners. heron (1999) writes that these three kinds of authority are often confused. because teachers have knowledge, the traditional assumption is that they should therefore exert political authority in a directive way, making all decisions for their students as to what they should study and how they should study it. then, because they have to direct everything, they should exercise their charismatic authority to control power, that is, to enforce rules and carry out assessments of student learning. “thus the traditional teacher decides what students shall learn, when and how they shall learn it and whether they have learnt it” (p. 21). linda goulet: how do these different kinds of authority translate in your professional practice? warren: well, look at the example of tutelary authority. there are knowledge and skills that have been accumulated that can be passed on. i think of the popular education spiral model – drawn from arnold et al. (1991), which was based on the work of paulo freire among others – that i use in my teaching. in this model, we acknowledge that people come to learning with experiences of something. we make that experience visible and conscious, and then add new theory and information in order to deepen the understanding of those experiences in order to develop plans for action. so authority is useful, but it always sits in tension between the passing on of information on the one hand, and the self-generated and emergent nature of personal learning on the other. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 340 heron (1999) feels therefore that ideally the responsibility for learning should rest with the learner with the facilitator as a guide. the challenge then is to find ways to integrate the authority of the facilitator with the autonomy of the learner. heron proposes that the facilitator pass on some body of knowledge and skill – the content of learning – by a process of learning that affirms the autonomy and wholeness of the learner. this is a paradox, especially because learners and teachers come from a system that doesn’t reconcile the dilemma of teacher authority with student autonomy. the reluctance by learners to exercise their autonomy comes from students being socialized into authoritarian forms of authority and, “learners who emerge from it are conditioned to learn in ways that are relatively short on autonomy and holism. in a special way, they need leading into freedom and integration, when they enter another more liberated educational culture where these values are affirmed” (heron, 1999, p. 24). ali sammel: that’s a good point because i see that in my students, too. if only one form of authoritarian leadership is modelled to us as students in school, we tend to use that form in our professional lives without often being aware of how we have been conditioned to fit into hierarchical relationships of authority. do you have an example of this conditioning in your students? warren: i was speaking recently to a student in my class who said that he was initially resistant to the ideas of different uses of authority according to context. his background was in situations where directive leadership was exercised and he couldn’t see the point of involving the group in making decisions. he said he doubted i had the authority to teach this class but, after looking up my background, was willing to try to learn these different forms of leadership. a series of workshops transformed his views and three months into the course he has become the one most willing to take risks in his learning process about facilitation. i would say he now has the confidence to exercise his own authority in different ways when facilitating. ali: what do you think happened in the workshops to transform his views? warren: perhaps by experiencing the facilitation processes in the course. i try to be transparent in my relationship with the students by teaching through explaining and modelling the three forms of authority articulated by heron (1999). i feel that as an experienced facilitator i have knowledge about the processes of facilitation. this gives me tutelary authority as a facilitative leader. i consciously use the term facilitative leadership instead of the word leadership alone. there are three modes of this kind of leadership: (a) hierarchical (where the facilitator directs the learning process); (b) cooperative (where power is shared with the group); and (c) autonomous (where the facilitator creates, as heron says, “the conditions within which people can exercise full self-determination in their learning” [p. 17]). each one of these is appropriate in certain contexts and with certain purposes that are used in the learning process. heron calls these issues “dimensions” and as a facilitator, one should be able to move “from mode to mode and dimension to dimension in the light of the changing situation in the group” (p. 9). linda: your student’s initial resistance to exploring different forms of authority illustrates the importance of attention to context. to me, it is important to think about authority international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 341 not just in relationships but in relationships that occur in the broader and historical context. we are all embedded in relationships of authority in our personal lives and in our work. policies, practices, and laws are enacted by delegated authority in our society and institutions so we do need to recognize that as teachers or others professionals, in addition to our informal authority through our knowledge and skills, we do have formal authority delegated to us in our positions as teachers or youth workers. we make decisions that affect the lives of others. warren: so how does this play out in your work? linda: my work in education is, and has been, with indigenous peoples where the context includes the history of colonization. from an indigenous perspective, smith (1999) describes colonization as the process that facilitated the economic, political, and cultural expansion of european power and control by subjugating indigenous populations. colonization includes both the material and the ideal imposition of power with the material occurring through concrete actions (such as military conquest) and the ideal taking place through the racialization1 and denigration of a people based on their culture and race, where europeans and their civilization were seen as superior and therefore in possession of the right to exercise power over others deemed inferior due to their culture and race. part of this process in canada with indigenous people was the creation of residential schools that had a history of demanding submission to authority that brought about learned irresponsibility among children in their care. the relationship between learner and teacher (and the school, parents, and community) was one in which the teacher had the power and authority. students were only able to exercise their autonomy through resistance to the authority of the institution. so that is some of the historical context of the students i work with. warren: how does that history impact your teaching practice? linda: as a teacher striving to move forward from this colonial past to a more emancipatory teaching practice, i have to be aware of how i exercise power and authority in my classes. whether it is conscious or not, indigenous students are aware of past colonial relationships of schooling. as such, they do not respond well to authority figures and imposed control (l. goulet & k. goulet, in press). instead, teachers need to invite indigenous students into the learning endeavour by developing close, personal, trusting relationships with the students that respect their culture and individuality. students will then follow the lead of the teacher and respect their use of shared authority because they then believe the teacher is using their authority in a way that respects the student. so rather than denigrating the student in the learning process as is the case in the racialized or colonial educational endeavour, the teacher uses authority to create a respectful learning environment for all students where power is used in such a way that it develops respectful relationships between the teacher and student, and among the students. freire (1998) helped me to see the complexity of the use of authority with marginalized populations when he wrote about the difference between “power” and “power over”. to analyze power in the teaching-learning relationship, freire explores the contradiction of freedom and 1 racialization is a sociological term that refers to the social process by which certain groups of people are singled out for unique treatment on the basis of real or imagined physical characteristics. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 342 authority, of developing voice and critical reflection within limits of respect for others, and the development of discipline and democratic practice. to freire, democratic leadership balances freedom and authority. authority is use of power that can silence students and impose one’s own views upon them. or, power can be used to set ethical limits on the exercise of freedom. ethical limits are established and enforced when respect is used to guide the actions of both teacher and student. respect means that the teacher does not abuse power. she or he acts in the interest of the student in a way that maintains the right of the student to develop her or his own voice. power is used to ensure that the voice is an ethical or respectful one that does not “falsify the truth” (freire, 1998, p. 66), is responsible in its expression, and is not used to silence others. warren: so does freire believe that teachers should exercise political power directly to ensure the norms of the social relationships are respectful? linda: yes. referring back to heron’s (1999) kinds of authority, directive leadership is used to create a group that knows how to interact effectively. once the students have skills for working together, it enables the teacher to move from directive political use of power to collaborative or guided decision-making. often in schooling, authority refers to the regulation of behaviour and the acquisition of knowledge. in the past, western education has viewed knowledge as one truth coming from an external expert. more recently, theories of the social construction of knowledge have taken a more equitable view with input coming from the student. similarly, the classroom is being seen as a learning community where supportive social relationships lead to the positive construction of knowledge that has meaning for students. in order for learning to have meaning in a context of indigenous education, positive social relationships – between the teacher and the students and among the students – are needed to overcome past colonial practices that imposed eurocentric thought. bishop, berryman, cavanagh, and teddy (2007) use the term culturally responsive pedagogy of relations where power is shared, culture counts, and learning is interactive. in contrast, dion’s (2009) study of teachers integrating indigenous content in classes with non-indigenous students demonstrated how some teachers are reluctant to share authority with their students. teachers tended to present aboriginal content as factual, personal stories of characters with whom students could empathize, but failed to engage students in a discussion of broader, systemic issues. dion theorized that it was the teachers’ “systems of reasoning” (p. 80) that constrained their teaching approach. even though students appeared ready for “disruptive” discussions, teachers led students away from controversy, bound by their beliefs and pedagogy of mastery and control where dealing with systemic issues may lead to controversy, the disruption of euro-canadian beliefs about history and identity, and negative feelings on the part of their euro-canadian students. teachers also feared that this kind of controversy might lead to a backlash from parents and administrators, so used their authority to keep the discussion within the realms of their own comfort zones. dion’s account illustrates the need for teachers to be able to take risks if they are to create shared authority in the classroom. risk requires trust in teacher-student relationships: trust in oneself and in the students. such is the case when teachers adopt the talking circle as a method of sharing knowledge construction in the classroom. in the talking circle, each in the circle has the opportunity to contribute ideas and opinions in a manner respectful of others. the teacher retains international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 343 her authority to ensure the sharing is respectful while creating space for students to practice their authority. ali: this sounds wonderful. so the talking circle is a method that illustrates freire’s contradiction of developing student autonomy and teacher authority. can you give an example of how this is put into action? linda: i observed a student teacher using a talking circle with a grade 5 class for the first time. she described the expectations at the beginning: that the circle is a place of respect, there are no right or wrong answers, that each person is to take a turn speaking or pass if they choose to do so, that whoever has the stone is the only one speaking, that those who don’t have the stone listen respectfully, and that there are no put-downs in the circle. as the stone was passed, some students were shy and reluctant to talk in front of others when they were the centre of attention. while waiting for a student to gather his thoughts, some students began to talk to each other so the teacher used her authority to remind students to be patient while others thought about what they wanted to say. as others shared, some students giggled. again the teacher interrupted the flow of the circle to remind students to be respectful and not to laugh at the sharing of others. in this example, we see students being given the opportunity to develop their voices and their independent thoughts as the teacher creates the social space that is safe. the circle equalizes the power in the classroom by creating a space where students have the opportunity to say what they think. the teacher ensures that students are given the time needed to think before they speak, and censures the inappropriate behaviour of other students. the teacher enacts the contradiction of autonomy and authority. she uses her authority to create the social conditions and social relationships in which students can learn and practice how to think independently and have the freedom of self-expression that is respectful and does not take away the freedom of others. i think the talking circle is an effective form of shared leadership that can be used across contexts in adult-youth interactions. ali, how do your theoretical and practical experiences coincide with this teacher’s practice? ali: like the teacher in your example, linda, i seek to work with my students to explore how pedagogic power, enacted through teacher authority, can be reimagined. i teach in the formal education system, at a large university and i work across three campuses teaching science to students of all ages who are studying to be school teachers. linda: so your experiences working with relational authority are similar to the situation bingham (2008) explores? ali: yes, the context is the same because i am assigned to lecture in a university setting. however, bingham explores authority within the teacher-student relationship of question and answer while i have been trying what i believe to be a more emancipatory approach that is called the flipped classroom in my lectures. this is where you use a two-hour lecture time slot to do hands-on science activities that are feasible for 200 students in a large lecture room. by completing the activities together, we co-construct our explanations of science concepts. it is this mutually agreed upon explanation that is written on the board that becomes the initial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 344 understanding of the science concept. by conducting individual or group activities and discussing findings, i am seeing how sharing the co-development of knowledge can be disruptive to traditional notions of knowledge authority (i.e., the idea that only the teacher has the knowledge and is able to provide it). traditionally the authority of the teacher is assumed to be recognized by reasonable students, who also assume the speaker has engaged in scholarship with the academic community from which this knowledge has been generated. i believe a key aspect in this scenario is that the receivers of knowledge have to gain the exact understanding of the knower to receive the prestige of having gained the authority to themselves become speakers. so the content of what is said by the speaker becomes a critical aspect of teaching and learning. traditionally, the process of engagement by the student with the content or the speaker is not seen to be as important. if, as bingham (2008) suggests, the relationship between the speaker and the listener in the process of learning is viewed as importantly as the content itself, then we need to rethink how we understand knowledge and authority. my use of the flipped classroom within my formal university lectures in science education has encouraged me to revisit my own beliefs and assumptions of knowledge generation and authority. if my pedagogic practice is built upon the belief that each student brings to lectures his or her own life stories and knowledge base, then dialogical communication must be an essential element to generating understanding. as such, misunderstanding a concept or question is as important as understanding it. interpreting what the speaker has said in a way that is different than what was intended can allow for a deeper level of communication to occur, one that can produce clearer meaning and a new, collectively generated knowledge outcome. linda: so your beliefs about all participants coming to the group with life stories is similar to warren`s belief about all having experiences to build upon. how does this professional belief lead to unfolding a deeper level of knowledge? ali: i believe the key point here is the relationship between speakers and listeners, for it is within the process of communication that personal and scientific knowledge is analysed and deconstructed for both parties, and traditional notions of who has the knowledge and authority may be challenged. by speaking and listening, all individuals can construct a new knowledge base for themselves, if applicable, and can be part of the process of collective knowledge generation. in my flipped classroom, instead of me being the authority on the topic of photosynthesis, for example, i employ demonstrations or individual or group activities to elicit conversations. students explain and discuss what they have witnessed and collectively we generate points representing what was witnessed to occur. these points then form the basis of the theory that is generated for the concept. in this way, i do not come in and explain the concept of photosynthesis, but create situations in which students generate and explore their own understandings and theories through a variety of activities and conversations. i strive not to lead conversations toward a specific end point, but rather let the key points naturally develop and allow for other points to be present or absent, as per class conversations. all mutually agreed upon ideas are recorded and all will be up for scrutiny via further exploration conducted after the flipped classroom lecture. during these conversations my role tends to be that of a facilitator of questions, clarifier of points, and note taker. much of what i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 345 would have previously indicated as key points around the concept of photosynthesis is generated by the group, but new unanticipated ideas offering insight into student thought processes are also recorded. this process hinges on the idea that all communally made points are equally worthy of confirmation through further exploration rather than all points are equally scientifically valid. therefore, how authority is understood within the lecture space shifts slightly, and rather than viewing me as having it and the students as not having it, authority becomes understood as communal in relation to knowledge exploration and generation. warren: does that mean that in this flipped classroom style of lecture, you have less authority? ali: i don’t think it’s a question of less or more, i think i am using my authority differently. what i have found is that i have not abdicated my infrastructural position of authority, for i have structured the activities so that many of the roads do indeed lead to rome. and with the clarification questions i seek, i understand that i am having some input into shaping the knowledge outcomes. an example of this would be, if a student’s interpretation is not in line with current scientific understanding, i ask further questions exploring the student’s meaning and initiate a conversation leading to an analysis of that line of thought, and/or the introduction of a contradictory piece of information. through this process, i learn more about how my students comprehend and construct knowledge and how they communicate and summarize their understandings and misunderstandings. by engaging with the students in this way, i develop a deeper understanding of their interpretations and misinterpretations of what they observed in the activities. this allows me to gain new insights and knowledge that become part of the conversation. more importantly, what has become evident is that by generating knowledge collectively, assumptions of who has authority to speak and who can only listen are being disrupted. this process provides alternative ways for students to understand their identities and roles as students and allows them to conceive of an unorthodox science pedagogy, one in which their own future students can have the authority to develop knowledge. linda: so the flipped classroom approach also creates a space for students to develop their autonomy. but as they exercise their autonomy in a discipline where there is usually thought to be one right answer, with this collective knowledge construction, how do the students know if what is generated together is scientifically valid or not? ali: as a large class we develop our rudimentary theories around science concepts. however, you are right, our theories might not be exactly the same as current science theory. so to clarify which is which, we do two things. first we deconstruct the scientific endeavour of knowledge generation, which leads to the understanding that science is a never-ending process, where information is always in a state of flux and being revised. unwavering universal truths do not have a place in scientific ways of working. science can be likened to an exploration process where all ideas must be justified and stand the test of community questioning. this allows students to understand they have been involved in the process of generating scientific knowledge for themselves and, as happens with other scientists, some ideas are currently supported by the larger community and some are not. reflection on the process and justification of ideas is a regular occurrence, both in the scientific community and in the online discussion time after our international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 346 lecture. students are asked to read articles and listen to podcasts and join online discussions to clarify, justify, and validate the conceptual points generated collectively in the lecture. linda: it’s interesting how this approach reveals to the students the process of knowledge creation in the broader context. ali: when students are given an activity and asked to record what they observe and are able to combine it with their life experiences to generate theories, a shift happens: the students start to perceive themselves as knowledge generators. they come to understand a different style of learning and themselves as having the experience base to become an authority. so like the talking circle described in your example, linda, i believe this flipped classroom approach allows me to model a similar teaching and learning style. in both approaches, the teacher uses his or her authority to create relationships and social conditions that allow students to have the freedom to think independently. in this way, much of the joy and responsibility of constructing knowledge sits with the student. what is your opinion and practice around this, warren? warren: i like stacey and griffin’s (2005) point, drawn from complexity theory, that we can’t change people or the pattern of their interactions, but we can change the conditions in which people interact. so i apply this in my teaching by creating spaces for students as facilitators to experience many different ways to explore the role of authority in leading groups. for example, every year for the past eight years i have taught a course called leadership in small groups, where undergraduate students in a human relations program are given the opportunity to explore their own facilitation skills and styles. one of the key assignments i give them is to lead a workshop that will enable the rest of the class to learn about a particular element of facilitation. students learn effective ways to observe and interpret the significance of group behaviour for the purpose of intervening effectively. the first step to doing this is for them to become aware of how they view themselves as facilitators. because the course is on facilitative leadership, i had asked the students in the first week of class to write a sentence that begins with, “i lead ...”. they did not put their names on the papers. i then collected them, shuffled them, and distributed them randomly at the end of the class where students each then read aloud their classmates’ sentences. the sentence “i lead” is sufficiently ambiguous that it results in some surprising and personal statements. for example, one student wrote, “i lead because i know where i want to go and try not to let anyone get in my way”. another wrote, “i believe a good leader doesn’t point himself out, but has a quiet, noticeable presence and that’s how i try to lead”. a third shared, “my sister is 15 years old and [ever] since i can remember, she has looked at me as if i was her role model. therefore, i try to give her a good example so that she can become a great adult”. then the teaching team (the teaching assistant and the professor) took the papers, grouped them into four categories of statements about leadership, and brought them back to the class, posting them in different areas of the classroom. one of the group of statements included sentences we identified but did not name as encompassing, controlling, or directive leadership (where the facilitator has and exercises power). another represented charismatic leadership (where one’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 347 inner resources and presence enables a sharing of authority). the third included examples of situational leadership (where authority is determined by the reading of the context and matching facilitator authority with what is needed at the time), and the last encompassed examples of collaborative leadership (which involves sharing authority as an underlying value). each student then looked at all four lists and chose the one that best fit their own preferred leading style. linda: so what choices did the students make? warren: no one chose the directive style. one supposition we made from this was that our classroom and departmental culture is founded on the helping profession where to be directive or controlling is seen as a negative. this was also my experience in previous classes. students invariably had a negative view of directive as being authoritarian and were often caught in the binary between authoritarian (“all determination of policy by the leader”) and laissez-faire (“complete freedom for group or individual decision, without any leader participation”) styles of leadership (lewin, lippit, & white, 1970, p. 202). one goal of the class is to help them see another view where the two styles are equally useful at different times in the life of a group, as in the examples we have shared of the talking circle and the flipped classroom. i operate on the assumption that my students who often work with youth come into the course with experiences in groups that don’t function very well. so i asked them to portray these experiences by using their bodies to illustrate a dysfunctional group through a still tableau or bodies frozen in time, a technique developed by theatre practitioner augusto boal (1979) as part of his theatre of the oppressed. after choosing their groups, students then gave a title to the style from reviewing the group of statements, prepared a tableau of a dysfunctional group, and tried to change the tableau to make the group function better. following this, they discussed the role of group facilitation in making the group functional and the type of facilitator that would be needed in each case. the following are some observations by a teaching assistant of two groups of students who portrayed two forms of facilitator authority2 and how it may be used with groups: situational leadership (“i lead when i feel the need to for certain situations”) the group summarizes these qualities by calling this leadership “according to what the situation calls for.” they add that this happens, “when no one else steps forward, when i am asked to lead, when i feel like i have some experience and expertise.” this tableau they show portrays a group as sitting in a semicircle, some look away, one talks on her cell phone, a member is sprawled, legs outstretched, a hat pulled over her face, while another stands with an angry expression on her face. the facilitator of the class taps the shoulder of each individual in the tableau in turn and asks the character to speak from inside their characters. “i don’t want to be here,” says one. another states, “i’m so over the top.” yet another declares, “i’m pissed at you.” the facilitator asks the students who are watching this tableau, “what is going on?” “no one is paying attention, people are doing their own thing,” responds the class. 2 the whole workshop, including two other leadership styles, is described and analyzed in linds & ebbesen (in press). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 348 observing the woman standing, the class points out that “one member is reacting,” and they see a potential leader in this because “there is nothing positive, but the expression of anger is at least something.” warren, the instructor, asks, “why is she mad?” someone reasons that it is because everyone is withdrawn, that there is a sense of rejection, particularly from the woman with the hat. the facilitator asks those looking at the tableau to try and change it so that it becomes a more functional group. the class wants her to “lose the hat,” describing it as a “blocker.” when her face is exposed, the class comments she looks like she is crying. a student places someone’s hands on her shoulders in a gesture of “empathy and concern.” they suggest that the person holding the phone hang up, and they move another member into the middle of the group “so she gets everyone’s attention, in order to create community.” (observer notes, september 2011) warren: interestingly, the facilitator’s actions appear to represent a response to the group’s need for cohesion. in this case, through the leader’s actions, the group was able to focus on the task at hand, thus creating community. this is situational leadership, where “effective leadership is contingent upon matching styles with situations” (rothwell, 2001, p. 141). the notes continue: collaborative leadership (“i lead most often by example and collaboration with my colleagues”) the group standing beside this list identified the leadership style as leading by example. reasons for choosing this were “it is very important to consider people's feelings; to include everyone; to lead from the heart.” the group sits facing in all directions; the image is crowded with individuals in pairs locked in distinct story lines: one member crouches in front of another, others appear to be arguing, and a woman weeps. “different power relationships, too many people trying to lead at the same time, multiple hierarchies, all of them are isolated,” the class calls out. the voices from the image group recount, “i feel inferior,” “i don’t want to talk to anyone,” and “i don’t agree; get involved.” the class decides that some of the group should stand facing in, “inviting them to be part of the group.” they take a woman’s hands off her hips, and turn another, saying, “this member needs to see the group.” the changed image has everyone circled around the woman who is weeping. the facilitator asks, “what is the main thing that has to happen here to get to a functioning group?” “someone needed to initiate,” the class answers. (in other words, in order to lead by example someone needs to initiate.) what types of facilitation skills were needed to change this? students respond, “active listening; being present for the group; supportive environment.” (observation notes, september 2011) as we see in these two examples the creation of conditions to work collaboratively as a facilitative leader is linked to the purposes and contexts of the groups that are being worked with. they have illustrated collaborative leadership as being concurrent (involving more than one leader), collective (working together for a common purpose), mutual (all are able to speak for the group), and compassionate (preserving the dignity of all) (raelin, 2006). these aspects of collaborative leadership connect to the oral history idea of shared authority which michael international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 349 frisch (1990) articulates as “what should not only be the distribution of knowledge from those who have it to those who do not, but a more profound sharing [emphasis added] of knowledges” (p. xxii). this idea of sharing knowledges links to a notion of authority being nurtured and developed in relationships. linda: as authority is developed in relationships, one needs to be aware of the power dynamics in the relationships, not just within the micro-context of past student experiences, but also within the history of how institutional power was exercised in previous relationships because that history impacts how youth or students interpret how we exercise our power in the present. similar to arnold et al.’s (1991) popular education theory that new learning will be layered upon past experience, cultural psychology considers the impact of culture and broader social relationships on learning. for example, cole and engestrom (1993) argue that all learners and teachers, no matter their age, bring their personal and cultural histories to learning. for example, work with indigenous peoples needs to recognize the past and ongoing colonial relationship between indigenous peoples and settler canadians, as well as the authoritarian stance of institutions in the past. in my work, i prefer to use the term shared or distributed authority, where the teacher recognizes students’ history and uses her authority to structure the learning so that students bring their knowledge and thus their authority to the learning. rather than being a one-way process of the learner gaining access to external expertise, the teacher structures the learning into an interactive, iterative process of the teacher setting the parameters for learning, the students contributing their knowledge which the teacher then responds to, followed by a further response from the students. learning becomes an iterative process that connects the internal knowledge of the student with the shared knowledge of the class that includes the teacher’s pedagogical knowledge and knowledge that comes from sources external to the classroom. ali: that sounds very circular, like the teacher gives over authority for a time, then the students have authority for a time, and back and forth. can you give us an example to clarify how that happens in a learning situation? linda: sure. earlier, warren referred to the teacher being responsible for content while the authority is shared with students in the process of learning. in the following example, the authority for both the content and process of learning are shared. in the last class i taught to my teacher education students who were all indigenous students of the denesuline nation, i used pedagogical knowledge (photovoice3) that i had learned at a conference from a pueblo educator. the curriculum goal i had was for students to learn how to use the cultural values of the community as the foundation for the classroom social interactions in their practice teaching situation. the pedagogical form of photovoice drew out of students their knowledge of community values to organize and interpret that knowledge by taking and choosing photographs that represented those values. the community values were knowledge that i, as teacher and outsider to the community, did not have. by becoming part of the curriculum of the class, the 3 photovoice was developed by caroline c. wang and mary ann burris in 1992. participants are asked to represent their community or point of view by taking photographs, discussing them together, and developing narratives to go with their photos. it is often used among marginalized people, and is intended to give insight into how they conceptualize their circumstances. a fuller explanation is available in wang and burris (1994). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 350 value of the students’ knowledge was acknowledged as the students expressed their authority in the classroom in relation to the curriculum. as the teacher, i set the structure of the experience. in “doing” the experience of taking, choosing, and discussing the photographs, students set the content. as teacher, i did not know what this content would be and did not have the authority to dispute it since the content drew on the expertise of the students, not on my expertise. my role was to set the task and draw out of students the meaning the photos had for them. in this way, authority was enacted in different forms by the students and by me as the teacher, in both our relationship with one another, among the students in the class, and in our relationship to the curriculum of the course. thinking about shared responsibility for content and process gives value to community knowledge, an aspect often ignored when working with students, especially in situations where the youth are from marginalized populations. warren: so as professionals, authority is a complicated business – one that we have to reflect on in our practice to help us think about how we use our authority to draw on and develop the autonomy and the authority of those with whom we work. what do you think ali? ali: like linda, reflection on my teaching practices aims to make sense of how teachers can have both wariness towards their authority and a desire to use authority to promote student engagement and learning. in moving away from traditional understanding of authority and pedagogic practices, i actively sought to provide students with the space to explore, analyze, critique, and communicate their experiences, thoughts, and ideas in a safe and supportive environment. however, i initially believed safe and supportive to mean i needed to be more passive as a teacher. i quickly came to appreciate that being a passive teacher was not effective for student learning. an effective teacher cannot abdicate her authority, but needs to embrace it to challenge those same experiences, thoughts and ideas that her students hold. to challenge students, even through gentle approaches, means that a teacher needs to directly rely on and implement their pedagogic power. to confront students and have it legitimated, the teacher needs to act from an authority position, for this position provides the jurisdiction to do so. warren: have you found that confrontation, even when gentle, impacts on the safe space you wish to create? ali: yes, absolutely. when i ask students to problematize raised points, the safe space to offer ideas and thoughts becomes slightly less safe for those students not comfortable with this kind of investigation. as such, i found some students choose to become excluded from the collaborative development of knowledge. when other students do engage, insightful conversations emerge creating a banter that offers a variety of perceptions and spaces for reengagement. interestingly, i have discovered other reasons why students do not engage when the authority of knowledge construction is shared. i have found some students expect the teacher to have and use their authority in traditional ways. they may distrust and disrespect the teacher, and/or question her credibility if this authority is not traditionally implemented. warren, you said you explained and modelled different forms of leadership that explore authority in different contexts. similarly, in my situation, in order to help students understand what i am doing when i create shared learning spaces, i have found it important to explain the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 351 pedagogic thought processes and the research supporting this form of shared authority. discussions of what good teaching and learning theories and practices have looked like traditionally, and how practices can be shaped to enhance contemporary learning helps students to explore their own expectations and assumptions. specifically, discussions of what student’s ideals, roles, and practices have been within learning spaces, and how these are linked to historical assumptions of what the “good student” should do or be, have helped me set the scene for my interactive lecture processes. i have found that student’s perceptions are always contextually bound to their past experiences. who they understand themselves to be and what they are prepared to give in a collective learning space is very much determined by how they engaged with and were treated in past educational experiences. linda: so you have also found the context and the students’ history or past experiences impact their response to authority? ali: yes. the students’ past experiences are reflective of bigger educational pictures from the era in which they were educated. educational approaches are influenced by cultural opinion, beliefs, and traditions about what good education should encompass. i work with students to see how they have been acculturated to understand certain things about who they can and should be in a teaching space. we analyze traditional cultural expectations of what a teacher is supposed to do and be, and this has helped to deconstruct past expectations of teacher and student, and has offered the students spaces to imagine who they would like to be, as a student now, and as a teacher in the future. when offered another way of being students, the majority do take the initiative of trying something interactive and new. in this way, i have been trying to overcome a dualism that can develop when exploring relational authority. i have found the opposite of teacher authority in my practice is not teacher passivity, but a deconstruction of expectations of how the learning and teaching space have historically been viewed and how these assumptions impact today’s learning spaces. as such, alongside interactive processes to co-developing content knowledge, i work with my students to discuss good pedagogical practices that both promote active, long-lasting learning and encourage critical and creative thinking. comparing traditional forms of rote learning, which rarely leads to deep understanding and developing knowledge collectively, has allowed my students to appreciate my use of pedagogic power and authority. they recognize i will not provide content to learn by rote in my lectures but will create situations where learning can support self-directed thinkers. linda: supporting self-directed thinking on the part of the learner or the youth sounds like emancipatory practice to me. it looks like there are different aspects to consider but also different approaches to developing shared authority in relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 352 dancing beyond the dance how can we know the dancer from the dance? (yeats, 2002, p. 105) as you have read, each of us is using different forms of shared authority which are dynamic and ever-evolving according to the relationships of the dancers, the dance, and the dance space. but the dance continues as a daily practice for each of us. so how do we conclude something that really has no conclusion? the only thing that we can do here is to reflect upon and summarize the key lessons from our practices at this point, but we are excited that this learning journey will continue individually, together with each other and with the reader. linda: as professionals we have authority, both in terms of recognized expertise and institutional power. historically, in our institutions, authority has been directive and not attentive to the history, context, and knowledge of those with whom we work – who are the experts in their own lives. for me, reflecting on and changing how i use authority with others has helped my practice to become more effective because shared authority expands the resources available to all participants for moving into the future through problem solving or learning as the expertise and authority of the other is identified and utilized. at the same time, it is up to me, as the professional, to bring to my practice the ways in which authority can be shared appropriately in my context and the context of those with whom i work. ali: for me, i have found that student empowerment or the creation of learning spaces where knowledge production is shared does not require the relinquishment of teacher or adult authority. i now believe that understanding and managing the constraints and parameters within lectures that influence student and teacher relations and engagement in the co-creation of knowledge is a key point in generating relational authority. how students expect a teacher to behave, how they make sense of what a lecture or learning space should look like, and how they understand their own identities and behaviours within that space will impact on their engagement with sharing authority. it is important to explore these ideas with your students and deconstruct their responses as you create these shared learning spaces. further, students need to be reminded of what you are doing in these spaces, why you are using the pedagogy you employ, and what the research shows about learning outcomes via this shared approach (versus the traditional lecture-based learning style, for example). i have found that when students understand why you are using the methods you are, they tend to understand what you are trying to do. some will still struggle with this new approach, as they have been trained in and by a different teaching style and it has worked well for them, but others will not only embrace this practice but flourish with their learning. in the end, i have found that the majority of students grant you the respect and professional authority that comes from realizing that a teacher does not have to be the traditional authority figure to be a good teacher. what a good teacher does is employ good teaching practices for the enhancement of student learning. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 353 warren: kevin kumashiro (2001) writes: anti-oppressive education works against commonsense views of what it means to teach. teachers must move beyond their preconceived notions of what it means to teach, and students must move beyond their current conceptions of what it means to learn.... [it] involves constantly re-examining and troubling the forms of repetition that play out in one’s practices and that hinder attempts to challenge oppressions, desiring and working through crisis rather than avoiding and masking it ...[and] imagining new possibilities for who we are and can be. (p. 9) new possibilities involve imagining and enacting different forms of authority through spaces of what mason (1998) calls “safe uncertainty”. he writes, “this position is not fixed. it is one which is always in a state of flow, and is consistent with the notion of a respectful, collaborative, evolving narrative, one which allows a context to emerge whereby new explanations can be placed alongside rather than instead of, in competition with” (p. 194) the explanations the teachers, students, adults, and youth bring to their work together. safe uncertainty is not a technique but rather a perspective that is constantly evolving as the group develops. the facilitator enables the group to deal with the complexities of situations. the political power of the facilitator shifts in response to what is happening – from directive to collaborative to autonomous forms of leadership according to the context of learning. guiding students into the emergent space that is necessitated by this process of relational and contextual authority is emancipatory practice. as the music fades... in most adult-youth relationships, adults have the most power, either by influence or directly from their positions within institutions. our society is organized so that power is exercised through hierarchical relationships. as professionals moving toward emancipatory practice, we need to reflect on our use of our power and authority as well as how the youth with whom we work are exercising their power. youth do exercise their power as best they can, and, as in bingham’s (2008) example of students choosing to leave the classroom of a teacher they don’t like, sometimes the exercise of that authority is expressed as resistance to excessive authority and imbalance of power, which is most often not beneficial to the youth. exercising our authority in different ways opens spaces for youth to exercise their power in different ways. like heron (1999), we believe there are different kinds of leadership that are appropriate in different situations with a wide variety of ways to exercise authority. as professionals, there are times when we need to use our authority directly. other situations call for students or youth to exercise their power directly. in between these two extremes lies a wide range of ways to share authority where power is more dispersed. as the stories in this article have illustrated, the teacher has the authority to create spaces where power sharing in relationships can be more dynamic, in a flow between the teacher and the student, among the students, and with the content and processes used by the teacher or chosen by the students. as professionals, we judge when and how to disperse authority depending on the situation. therefore, although we agree that authority is expressed in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 354 relationships, we find the term situational authority more useful to reflect the view of the teacher or youth worker. that is not to discount the authority of the youth in our relationships. but as the adult in the relationship, it is up to us to educate, model, and create space for youth to express their authority in ways that meet both their goals and ours. through reflection on our praxis, and in dialogue with each other, our insights have allowed us to move forward in our journey understanding authority. we hope that you, as a reader, can use our experiences and apply the points raised to your youth-adult interactions. we invite you to continue this dialogue with us. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 337–356 355 references applebaum, b. 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(pp. 103–105). new york: scribner poetry. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918851 understanding and responding to pain and pain-based behaviour with youth in and from care: perspectives from the inside-out and outside-in lilia m. zaharieva and james p. anglin abstract: this article presents the findings from a dialogical research project involving a young adult student with lived experiences in care (inside-out perspective) and a seasoned child and youth care professional (outside-in perspective), exploring the pain of complex trauma and formulating healing responses to pain-based behaviour. the co-authors identify elements and dynamics related to the healing journey and present their findings largely in conversational format congruent with the process of discovery. notions of family privilege, shattered assumptions, double distortion, pain and pain-based behaviour, the language of pain, evolution of self, moments of choice, following the yellow brick road, eight stages of healing, and self-compassion are discussed with an emphasis on understanding and responding supportively to the lived experiences of young people in and from care. keywords: pain-based behaviour, healing, dialogic research, complex trauma lilia zaharieva is a fourth-year student in the bcyc program at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, bc, canada. email: lmzaharieva@gmail.com james anglin phd (corresponding author) is professor emeritus in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, bc, canada. he can be reached at #78, 1255 wain road, north saanich, bc, canada v8l 4r4. email: janglin@uvic.ca mailto:lmzaharieva@gmail.com mailto:janglin@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 26 this article is constructed using a combination of dialogue and narrative formats, as the material presented evolved over a four-month period involving 13 sessions and more than 25 hours of conversation between the two authors. late in 2016, jim was approached to present a three-hour plenary session to open a conference of mental health professionals in bergen, norway. when he asked what the theme was, he was told “pain-based behaviour”, a notion that jim had created and published in 2002. not having explored the notion for a number of years, jim asked lilia if she would work as a research associate over a four-month period in order to assist with a more indepth exploration of pain and pain-based behaviour experienced by youth in and from care. we agreed to meet every week for about two hours to engage in an extended dialogue about our experiences, and about our responses to selected readings related to pain and pain-based behaviour that we would read in advance. what follows includes a blend of actual elements of dialogue and some paraphrasing of more extended exchanges. we have been urged by colleagues to retain the informal and conversational approach we took in this research, so we have attempted to reflect the dialogical spirit of the process as well as capture some of our major insights and findings more or less as they happened. we have inserted into our dialogue the key references that we drew upon, for readers who may wish to do followup reading. the research method we used has been called “dialogical research” (frank, 2005) or “dialogic inquiry” (denzin & lincoln, 1994, 101–102). such a qualitative approach provides an opportunity for in-depth exploration of a phenomenon through the lived experiences of the two dialogue participants. in this instance, it became a reciprocal exploration resulting in joint analyses and co-constructed formulations. permission to undertake this study was obtained from the university of victoria’s human research ethics board (hreb) and the dialogue took place between january 5 and april 13, 2017. a note on terminology we find the term “former youth in care” problematic and thus prefer not to use it. we have some discomfort labelling people in terms of what they used to be, and not in terms of who they are now, or may be becoming. as one care leaver stated: “i am not what i went through. i am the courage that escaped, the spark that lit the fires as so many child survivors are” (wacuka, 2017). in another co-authored paper we wrote with a colleague (zaharieva, anglin, & rutman, 2017), we experimented with a new term, coined by lilia — “future anything”. while having a more promising tone, this term also has its limitations: can any of us really be anything? we now prefer to speak of young people with lived experiences in care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 27 an inside-out and outside-in dialogue throughout the conversation, we drew upon our respective “careers in care”, lilia having lived in foster homes over a five-year period and having more than a decade of post-care experience, and jim having run a group home for adolescents and worked in the child and youth care field for over 45 years. in reality, there were many other participants involved indirectly as well, through our engagement with selected books and articles, and our drawing upon interviews from related research projects we had undertaken, singly and jointly, involving young people in care and post-care. we refer to this dialogue as a conversation involving an “inside-out” (lilia, as the io) and an “outside-in” (jim, as the oi) perspective. an io, in the context of this paper, is someone who brings deep lived experiences of being removed from their family of origin and placed “in the care of strangers” (brown & seita, 2009). an oi refers to someone who has not lived in care, but who has been involved professionally in working with young people in or from care. family privilege meets childhood trauma jim: growing up in my family of origin, i experienced stability, parental care, and love from both parents for my entire childhood and adolescence. in fact, we lived in the same house until i was 20 years old. so, in terms of understanding the experience of growing up in care, i have suffered from an absence of pain. in john seita’s words, i have benefitted from “family privilege” (seita, 2001). growing up with such privilege and an absence of significant trauma can be obstacles and limitations in terms of understanding childhood pain and pain-based behaviour. lilia: well, i was no stranger to feeling abandoned, neglected, maltreated, and — as i have only recently come to fully realize — unwanted, most of my childhood and adolescence. i was fortunate to spend my earliest years being loved and cared for by grandparents, but after moving from bulgaria to canada at five years old my home life seriously deteriorated. i was removed from my family and placed in care at fourteen. jim: i appreciate you being willing to dialogue about your childhood and experiences in care, and to reflect on some of the literature related to lived experiences of trauma and living in care. it was important that we have both the okay from your trauma counsellor and hreb approval, but i want you to let me know if, at any time, we need to stop the conversation, take a break, or stop this process altogether — okay? lilia: certainly. but i am really looking forward to this. i feel i am in a good space to reflect on both my own experiences and the notions of pain and pain-based behaviour. i think it might actually help me in my own processing, although i know that is not the purpose of this process. jim: great.… i hope that will be the case, but i want to be careful i don’t cross the line from research into counselling. lilia: agreed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 28 jim: okay. a little background on my child and youth care journey may be helpful. when i was 24 years old, after studying philosophy for five years, i unexpectedly found myself working with adolescents in a mental health centre, never having taken a course on child development, communication, or helping skills. in fact, i didn’t even know if i liked or could tolerate children or adolescents. almost five decades later, i am still struggling to understand what those growing up “in care” want and need from the adults around them. but most of all, i am still struggling to understand myself, to make sense of the injustices of the world, especially those affecting young people. and i am wanting to discover how each of us creates meaning and moves forward within a world of unfathomable pain, whether it is our own pain or the pain of those with whom we live and work. lilia: during my years in care, and over more than a decade post-care, i have been involved in various ways, locally, nationally, and internationally, with literally hundreds of youth with lived experience in care. for example, i attended and presented at an ifco (international foster care organization) conference in sofia bulgaria, my birthplace, and at a youth in care conference in washington, dc. i have found that all too often young people have been placed in the care of the state while too rarely experiencing the feeling of being cared for, or even being cared about. in many cases, these young people have deliberately, even if unwittingly, pushed away the adults charged with their care, thus ensuring a continuation and sometimes escalation of their pain and suffering. i certainly found myself doing this as a survival tactic. jim: i think those working with young people in or from care need to be careful not to blame the victim. as you are well aware, such distancing behaviour by youth serves an important purpose. young people who have suffered various combinations of maltreatment, rejection, loss, abuse and abandonment have every right — and i would add, often a deep need — to push purported helpers away. why should they trust adults? what evidence do they have that these adults will be any better than those who have already hurt them deeply, and who were supposed to care for and protect them? helpers must be careful not to blame youth for their pain; their task is to understand and respond in a respectful, caring, and healing manner. it was precisely to assist helpers to focus on the meaning and origins of young people’s aggression, rejection, or withdrawal that i coined the term pain-based behaviour, to counteract such glossing terms as “troubled”, “challenging”, “misbehaving”, “acting out”, and the like (anglin, 2002). we need to recognize and face head-on the legitimate distrust, anger, disappointment, and deep-seated pain of young people at whatever stage in their “care career” they may be. helpers are often, inadvertently, a part of young people’s problems, because we threaten the protective shell they have created to keep themselves from experiencing more hurt, more suffering, more unspeakable pain. it seems to me that his is a central paradox of care work. lilia: yes, and there are no simple formulas for working with young people living in profound psychoemotional pain. in the primal wound that we were reading this week, verrier presents a template for responding to a person in pain (verrier, 1993). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 29 everyone feels “x”; some [such as you] more than others – this is how, this is why. the “x” can be filled in with almost any emotion or experience: “everyone feels pain”, “everyone thinks of death”, “we all feel anger”, “we have all felt abandoned”, for example. and some, such as youth in care or post-care youth, often feel more pain, more abandonment, more anger, more suicidal than most of us. jim: i really like that — that is brilliant! in using this template, or formulation, one begins by normalizing the emotion or experience (“everyone feels “x”), then personalizing it (“youth in care such as yourself more than most”), and then completing the response by clarifying how things happen (“this is how”) and what may cause these things (“this is why”). discovering the “how” and “why” of an emotion or experience for a particular youth will likely need to emerge through a process of dialogue, through taking a curious stance; asking, “what do you think happened here?” lilia: i hadn’t quite conceptualized it that way, but you are right — it is actually quite elegant, and i think could be adapted to many situations and conversations between ois and ios. jim: i am so glad you shared this. i was actually reading a book last week that had a story in it that i think may be relevant here. bruce lipton, in an intriguing book the biology of belief (2015), has written movingly about how, in grade 7, when he was about 12 years old, he first looked through a microscope and was mesmerized when a paramecium swam into view. at that magical moment, a crack in the universe opened to him and he knew he wanted to become a biologist. he also talks about the time, in graduate school, when he first had an opportunity to enter a pitchblack room to look through an electron microscope that allowed him to experience 1,000 times, 10,000 times and even 100,000 times the magnification of his elementary school instrument. it seems to me, and i wonder what you think, that this story illustrates an important aspect of working with others when one has not lived a similar reality oneself. for example, while each of us has experienced moments of feeling abandoned, by parents, friends, or others, the experiences of abandonment by youth in care may be infinitely greater than many of us blessed with family privilege, such as myself, have experienced. i actually recall an occasion in my childhood when i was 6 years old, when my very loving parents took my two older sisters (10 and 12 years old) to new york city, from montreal, for a long easter weekend. they left me behind with my grandmother. now, even though she was a lovely person, the recollection of this time still brings up visceral feelings of anger and a sense of outrage at this deep injustice. (“dammit, i am old enough to come! how dare you leave me behind?”) in reflecting on this incident, it seems to be the only time in my life when i felt “left behind” or unjustly treated by my parents whose love i never had reason to doubt — even during this challenging long weekend. as an outside-in person trying to understand the experiences of insideouts, i at least had this experience to draw upon from which i can then extrapolate in my mind, my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 30 imagination, to 10,000 or even 100,000 times magnification in order to have a somewhat better sense of what being an abandoned youth in care might feel like. lilia: i think this is a useful analogy. experiences such as this can perhaps serve as a reminder, or sensitizer, even though such psychological extrapolation — if i can put it that way — is not able to create a truly comparable experience. shattered assumptions lilia: those who approach youth from the outside-in need to remember that experiences of respect, health, wholeness, efficacy, and joy may be rare for those in care. as bruce perry said, in order to create the necessary new brain pathways, youth in and from care need steady and preferably frequent doses of positive experience (perry & szalavitz, 2006). in shattered assumptions, the book you gave me last week, janoff-bulman (1992) talks about children needing to develop and maintain their belief in such fundamental assumptions as the benevolence of the world, the meaningfulness of life, and their own self-worthiness. reading this book has been deeply healing for me, and i have ordered my own copy. it helped me not to take personally some of my rejections. i realized how calcified our language is. youth who have suffered the effects of abuse or neglect from those supposed to love and protect them often cling desperately to the belief that they are loved and accepted. jim: yes. these fundamental assumptions shape our interpretations of past and present reality as well as our expectations for the future. lilia: it may take a great many affirming experiences over an extended period of time to create the new and embedded pathways in the brain that can then interpret sensory inputs in a new way. bessel van der kolk, in his book the body keeps the score (2014), stressed the bodily dynamics involved in the internalizing of trauma. in our conversation last week, we identified a harmful phenomenon that you dubbed “double distortion”. i really like this notion. i think it identifies a dynamic that can play a powerful role in keeping those who have experienced complex trauma stuck in negative thinking and self-damaging behaviour patterns. as i understand it, the first distortion occurs when a young person is maltreated in significant ways. this results in various distorted beliefs and reactions that are then projected onto the world. the second distortion occurs when others react negatively to the expression of distorted behaviours as a result of misunderstanding their origins and meaning, thereby trapping the young person in a downward spiral with no apparent way out. i have experienced this downward spiral into a vortex of deeper pain; it can feel like being sucked down a sewer. it is painful and frightening, and yet it can also be painful to try to put on the brakes, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 31 and to start to move back up the whirlpool away from the drain. but i think this is what needs to happen for the process of healing to begin. pain and pain-based behaviour jim: when i undertook research into residential care for young people in order to gain a better understanding of whether staffed group homes could be positive for at least some of the youth living in them, one of the major and shocking findings was the profound psycho-emotional, as well as resulting physical, pain experienced by the group home residents — all of them in my study, 100%. as you know, the discovery of such deep-seated and pervasive pain at the heart of group home life and work came in a powerful dream where i woke up after plunging through ice into freezing water. i knew instantly the water represented the pain i had been absorbing viscerally but that had not yet become conscious in my mind. (for an account of this dream, see anglin & scott in this issue.) lilia: that is such a powerful story. i could almost feel the freezing cold water, and your terror at feeling like you’re drowning. pain-based behaviour for sure! jim: it was this uncovering of the submerged and generally unacknowledged pain being borne by all the children in the research sample that led me to develop the notion of “pain-based behaviour”. a new term was needed in order to encourage staff members to see beyond “problem” or “acting out” behaviours and to understand the “inside” of “acting out”, which is where the unbearable pain resides. in fact, the central challenge for care work staff is responding to pain and pain-based behaviour. less effective programs focus on behaviour, and on imposing consequences, sanctions, or punishments on such behaviours — in effect “inflicting pain on pain” (brendtro & du toit, 2005). lilia: when i was a teen living in a foster home, one evening a few other under-age friends and i drank too much peach cider. when my social worker found out, she said “are you ready to be homeless?” there is no more threatening thing you can say to a youth in care. i was confused and angry, with a strong a sense of injustice. i can’t make one mistake without being thrown out on the streets? experimenting with alcohol is such a normal activity at that age, and we all became quite sick — that was consequence enough! and at age 16, i was under pressure to go into independent living — at 16 years old! what child living in their own family is ejected at 16? my foster mum would say things like, “you are so lucky to be here”, and, “i don’t have the luxury of feeling depressed.” i was called self-indulgent for struggling with my emotions, and this drove me back to being a scared animal, like a porcupine, huddling under my quills. youth in care are very familiar with the look of judgement that comes across people’s faces, and that hits us at the core. but helpers also need to beware judging in what they consider positive ways. “you’re so strong”, “you are so competent”, “you are so resilient” — these don’t ring true to us. i sometimes wonder whether workers are invoking resilience for their own needs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 32 the evolution of self while living “in care” and “post-care” lilia: verrier (1993) identifies the development of a “coping self” that young people removed from their families and homes have to create. she maintains that young people in and from care need to uncover their “real selves” that lie buried within them. however, it is not clear to me if such a “real” or “authentic” self was ever developed by many youth in care, especially if the child was removed very early in life or after a life of continual maltreatment. verrier also believes that many counsellors are fooled by the “coping self” and encourage their clients to accept and become comfortable with their coping self that is mistaken for a “real self”. there are two types of coping selves; a compliant coping self and a defiant coping self, both of which can stifle maturation and the growth or flourishing of one’s personality. i know well the dangers of developing a “compliant self”, as that was my survival mode throughout most of my childhood. i felt like water; i would take on the shape of any container into which i was poured — foster home, classroom, social situation. it was all about surviving, not being a problem. surviving is surviving, but there is no joy in it. there is a sense in which the coping self is experienced as an authentic self, as it is the reality of the young person’s life as it has evolved to that point. in my early 20s, i committed myself to helping other young people who grew up with a parent experiencing mental illness. i started a program called, interestingly in the context of this conversation, “inside-out.” i even gave a tedtalk (tedxyouth@victoria, 2012) where i told my own story of growing up with cystic fibrosis, and where i shared some of my struggles, all with humour, of course! i was being as genuine as i could be at that time; i hadn’t yet fully realized that i was presenting my coping self, and that there were deeper layers yet to explore. however, the coping self needs to be faced for what it is, an adaptation to a dysfunctional reality, a survival mechanism, that can keep important parts of one’s personality frozen in time. it needs to be freed to grow into a mature sense of identity — into an authentic self. in those days, people liked me more; i was more fun, but i wouldn’t trade being authentic for being liked. jim: i have watched that youtube video of your ted-talk. you were amazing! poised, engaging, articulate, and very funny — you commanded the stage and the audience. it seems you have travelled on quite a journey of self-discovery since then. lilia: that was quite a moment for me, opening myself up publicly that way. jim: according to robert kegan (1982), healing from psychoemotional pain is not restoring or retrieving an old or pre-existing self; healing requires evolving from a distorted self into one that allows for more healthy interactions with the environment and with other people (pp. 266–267). we can never restore or recover a previous state of balance; we need to create a new state of harmony in the context in which we are now embedded. of course, we also may need to change our context, removing ourselves from harmful, toxic relationships or dysfunctional situations, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 33 whether familial, peer, institutional, or societal. kegan makes reference to “natural therapy” which occurs when a person is embedded within a healthy environment. he calls what happens in this more healthy or normative context “unselfconscious therapy.” kegan also identifies a bio-socialecological model with a series of interactive domains, or cultures. there is the mothering culture, the parenting culture, the role-recognizing culture (includes school, or work settings), the culture of mutuality (peers, friends, relationships), the culture of self-authorship (experiencing one’s own efficacy), and the culture of intimacy (living intimately with another person). a person is embedded in all of these cultures at the same time, and kegan maintains that each culture has three core functions: confirmation, contradiction, and continuity. we need from our environment experiences that affirm our value and worth (confirmation), that challenge us to change and grow (contradiction), and that we can count on over time (continuity). the process of development that kegan describes is reminiscent of bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social-ecological model and his assertion that the process of human development is “the progressive mutual accommodation between the active, growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives, as this process is affected by relations between these settings, and by the larger contexts in which the settings are embedded” (p. 21). moving beyond pain-based behaviour: discovering and seizing the moments of choice lilia: i found the book we read last week by the national youth in care network, pain… lots of pain by brian raychaba (1993), quite disturbing. i felt like i was immersed in unprocessed pain. it seems that many research studies and reports involving youth in care engage a sample of young people in interviews, or encourage the young people in some manner to tell their stories. i think stories can be powerful. they can be sensitizing for those wanting to understand the experiences of young people in care, and i think sometimes their telling can be therapeutic for the storytellers themselves. however, there seems to be precious little literature relating stories of the healing process, of moving beyond the pain and pain-based behaviour into living with, in your words, “a sense normality” (anglin, 2002, pp. 123–132). jim: wonderfully and powerfully put. unprocessed pain is such a powerful and accurate phrase. it gives me a visceral sensation, and conveys vividly how i also felt reading that book. lilia: when i think of healing processes and dynamics, i often think of the profound work of victor frankl (1963), the psychiatrist and survivor of the holocaust who developed an approach to healing he termed logotherapy. the greek word logos can mean both meaning and spirit, both of which pertain to foundational dimensions of the human experience. frankl believes that people have an intrinsic will to meaning which leads them to strive for understanding about themselves and their place and significance in the world. for frankl, this is as fundamental as freud’s will to pleasure or a will to survive. i think one of his insights is especially important and relevant for the struggles of young people who live with the effects of trauma. frankl says: “between stimulus and response there is a space. in this space, is our power to choose our response. in our response lies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 34 our growth and our freedom” (quoted in cochran, 2017, p. 7). i have often been in social situations where i have felt like elevator doors were starting to close, and i had a brief moment to either put my finger in the way or let the doors slam shut. jim: this is a powerful image for the experience of this fleeting “space” that frankl identifies as offering a crucial moment of choice. lilia: yes, and finding choice is such an important part of emerging from a traumatic past, where there was often little or no choice. what frankl is highlighting is that in every interaction, each of us has the opportunity to make a choice. but first we have to be aware of this space, and then begin to exercise our “choice muscle” that we may have allowed to atrophy, being under the false impression we had no choice, or that our choices would not make a difference. it is true that often we have little or no choice in what happens to us, but frankl points out that we always have a choice in our attitude towards what happens to us, and in the brief spaces in any interaction, how we choose to respond. jim: i realized after our last meeting that although we are reading the same books, we are reading different books. you are reading from the inside-out, from lived experience and with great sensitivity to the experiential implications. i am reading from the outside-in, with a focus on conceptual understanding and practice implications. lilia: i like the way you said that. we are reading two different books. i read research like i read a person: do i trust the voice of the researcher? jim: i see us as co-researchers, each bringing different but essential aspects to this process. lilia: do you think we might co-produce something? a workshop, an article, or something? jim: i think that will come when we have our framework better developed and clarified, when we have a sense of what we might be able to contribute to the field. forming or rebuilding fundamental assumptions lilia: i sometimes feel like my bath water is full of babies. when i moved from one placement to another, i didn’t know i didn’t have to jettison everything. i didn’t know it was physically or logically a choice to keep some of my attachments, and not leave them all behind. there was deep, deep, deep shame, lots of shame. [see bath in this issue for a detailed exploration of shame.] jim: it seems negative beliefs need to be challenged through the creation of “cracks” in their seeming intransigence and solidity. unfortunately, belief in the truth of our mindsets can result in self-fulfilling prophesies and lead to negative consequences that seemingly verify their truth and reality. one of the tasks of helpers is to poke holes in these beliefs, point out contradictory evidence, and demonstrate their exaggerated and self-constructed status. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 35 lilia: i sometimes visualize my insides as containing a calcified ball of pain, ugly pain festering inside. in my experience, the mental gymnastics necessary to try to hold on to the fundamental positive beliefs about the world and self can be astounding. i felt the need to maintain these assumptions at all costs, including the convoluted distortions of reality necessary to retain these beliefs. in fact, if we think about the inner struggle of many traumatized young people to hold on to a sense of benevolence, meaning, and worth, it is evident that this process is even more complex than the “double distortion” phenomenon we identified earlier. jim: i sometimes think that students with experience in care attending post-secondary education are taking an extra course every term that is invisible, compulsory, and non-credit; namely, dealing with the ongoing effects of trauma. lilia: i think of it as like having an “app” running on your cellphone all the time, draining an excessive amount of energy from the battery without you even realizing it. the amount of energy required to deal with the residue of childhood pain can be exhausting! emergence from pain distortions — following the yellow brick road jim: well said; you have such a wonderful way with words and images. so, how do we help young people who have experienced complex trauma to jam their fingers into the closing elevator doors, to experience choice, and to chip away at their calcified pain? lilia: well, it is a journey. in a recent interview, a student who had lived in care said to me: “well, i’m on the yellow brick road.” that image really stuck with me, and i began to think more about dorothy and the wizard of oz (baum, 1900). i’m actually a huge fan of that book; i even donated to the smithsonian institute fundraising campaign to repair and restore a pair of the original red slippers judy garland wore in the movie. dorothy is an orphan of course; she lives with aunt em and uncle henry when she is swept up in the cyclone. jim: you’re right! today we would call that kinship care. lilia: and along the yellow brick road, she meets these three characters who are searching for a brain, a heart, and courage. i see it as a metaphor for the journey of youth from care, searching for lost parts of themselves. jim: wonderful! i think you are on to something here. you are reminding me of a powerful quote from sam keen who says “the chief function of the teacher is to give students permission to allow exiled portions of their own personalities to return home and be welcomed” (keen, 1990, p. 68). lilia: perhaps dorothy was seeking the wizard, hoping he could make her whole again … to bring her home to her self. the last line of the movie is dorothy back in kansas saying, “there’s no place like home.” this oft-repeated phrase is very poignant for youth who have been placed in outof-home care. jim: you need to write a book about this. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 36 lilia: i have wanted for some time to write about my experiences in various foster home placements, and the title i have in mind is “there’s no place like home.” jim: you must do it! … when you are ready, of course. this makes me think about the language we use for various forms of living in “out-of-home” care. if a child is adopted, they are chosen. if a child is in foster care, we say they are placed. first nations youth tell me they were kidnapped, and their parents talk about their children being stolen. lilia: for youth in or from care, language is very important. jim: we have not talked about paulo friere, but as you talk about the power of language, i think of his work in the context of our own dialogue, as well as in relation to being in care. lilia: i don’t know about friere. jim: i first heard about him back in the 1970s, when i was doing my master’s degree. he wrote a very famous book called pedagogy of the oppressed (friere, 1972). in a nutshell, he talks about teaching illiterate poor people through a process of naming their oppression, for he believed that being able to name your reality is the first step towards changing it. he also points out that one cannot liberate, or empower oneself; nor can one liberate or empower another; we are liberated or empowered only by working together, in solidarity. for his work, he was “invited by the brazilian government to leave his homeland” (friere, 1972, book jacket). lilia: that makes me wonder … is there a pedagogy of pain … and a literacy of pain? perhaps we need to help young people to name their pain. i once met a woman who had made flash cards because she was having trouble explaining to people, especially doctors, what her pain felt like. for example, she had one that was labelled “popcorn pain”. jim: yes, indeed — a literacy of pain. and “popcorn pain” is very evocative. early on in our conversations, you used the phrase “i was eviscerated!” that word has stuck with me, and evokes a visceral reaction in me. lilia: in my experience, it can be difficult for young people to describe their pain; sometimes images can be useful, such as calcified pain, smacked-inthe-face pain, or eviscerated pain, all of which i use, as you know. i also like friere’s emphasis on solidarity. that is at the heart of the youth in care movement. i spent years in care not knowing any other youth in care. when i discovered the federation of bc youth in care networks1 i had a new family — i was no longer a struggling alien … feeling all alone in outer space. 1 see http://fbcyicn.ca/ http://fbcyicn.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 37 stages of healing: a tentative formulation over the course of our dialogue, a tentative outline emerged of the process of healing, of emerging from pain distortions. we identified some elements and dynamics, along with some of the responses that those on the healing journey want or need from those in a position to help. it is important to note here that these stages are not necessarily experienced in a linear fashion. for example, an individual may experience stage 2 (a sense of normality) before stage 1, when their trauma is truly interrupted. as well, not every person will necessarily experience all of the identified stages as described here. perhaps another way to understand this framework is that each of these stages represents a dimension of pain and healing, and that an individual may not experience all of these dimensions, or perhaps not in such a sequential fashion. however, we are suggesting that there seems to be a “logic of pain”, and that while these dimensions identify what appear to be commonly experienced processes, each person may experience them according to their own “private logic” (dreikurs, 1973). what follows is a brief synthesis derived from our many hours of discussion and exploration, drawing on our own experiences, and the readings we undertook together as well as the stories shared with us previously by young people from care. we offer this formulation for your consideration, and as a work in progress. stage1 — trauma interrupted early traumatic childhood events occur that elicit psychoemotional (developmental) disruptions and experiential distortions, in a context of partial cognitive development. the result of these experiences is what can be termed distorted introjection. introjection is the process of internalizing aspects of one’s environment, especially the actions of people close to us, and in childhood this happens largely unconsciously without the ability to discern what is healthy and what is distorted. what is needed from helpers at this stage are caring, loving responses as well as intervention to stop abuse, neglect, or maltreatment, thus creating more positive experiences in a nurturing environment for the child. stage 2 — a sense of normality at the point that the child is gradually exposed to more normative, positive realities of other children and families, they experience cognitive dissonance; that is, a process of having to shape the new facts to fit the existing distortions. the child struggles to maintain their “assumptive world” (the world is benevolent, life is meaningful, i am worthy) through mental gymnastics. what the child or youth needs is to experience, and thereby begin internalizing, is a sense of normality. research by jim has identified eleven interactional dynamics associated with positive changes in human development (anglin, 2002, pp. 66–71). in his research over 14 months, across all levels of 10 organizations, jim noted hundreds of positive changes — from minute to large — international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 38 and each one involved one or more of these dynamics. these are presented below along with some of their potential impacts on youth self-perceptions. 1. listening and responding with respect to youth helps to develop a sense of dignity, a sense of being valued as persons, and a sense of self-worth. 2. communicating a framework for understanding helps to develop a sense of meaning and a sense of rationality within daily life. 3. building rapport and relationships with youth helps to develop a sense of belonging and connectedness with others. 4. establishing structure, routine, and expectations assists with developing a sense of order and predictability in the world, as well as a sense of trust in the reliability of others. 5. inspiring commitment in youth encourages the development of a sense of value, loyalty, and continuity. 6. offering youth emotional and developmental support helps to develop a sense of caring and mastery. 7. challenging thinking and actions helps youth to develop a sense of potential and capability. 8. sharing power and decision-making encourages the development of a sense of personal power and discernment. 9. respecting personal space and time helps youth to develop a sense of independence and autonomy. 10. discovering and uncovering potential in youth helps develop a sense of hope and opportunity. 11. providing resources helps develop a sense of gratitude and generosity. we suggest that any counselling or caring relationship needs to make use of many of these responses on a regular and frequent basis in order to support a healing developmental relationship (li & julian, 2012) and a developmental process over time. stage 3 — shattered assumptions as stage 2 unfolds, there comes a time when major cracks appear in the distorted mental structure, and the distressing reality of the youth’s painful past pierces the defences constructed over many years, often leading to discouragement, disillusionment, a sense of hopelessness, and feeling overwhelmed (“i am a monster.”; “i am beyond hope.”) the task of this stage is facing shattered assumptions. the response from helpers needs to continue the development of a sense of normality utilizing positive interactional dynamics such as those outlined in stage 2 (above). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 39 stage 4 — masquerade if fortunate, the young person starts to connect with others who can offer support and inspire a sense of hope and the potential for a better life, with less pain and suffering (“you can get through this.”). at this stage, a mask of normality is created which acknowledges the painful past at a surface level, but leaves the deeper pain hidden and not fully acknowledged. at this point, life is a masquerade and the young person may feel they have “made it” through their pain to a new future. this stage represents a first, but somewhat false, start to healing. at this juncture, the young person needs someone who can supportively challenge their false self, encouraging them to face difficult and painful realities while offering evidence of hope for a better future (“you have had a painful past, but i have seen you make some good and courageous choices.”). stage 5 — cracks in the façade the mask developed in stage 4 can be fragile, and deeper cracks in the façade begin to intrude into consciousness. an increasing awareness of the harsh and unfair reality of what one has lived through, and the internal struggle to face distortions and false beliefs can bring with it a new form of pain. mixed with the desire to overcome the effects of the original pain is the pain of the struggle to free oneself from the negative impacts and residues of the past. there comes a point when skimming the surface and sugar-coating the least troubling aspects of the past and present, to make them palatable for easy consumption by others, is no longer sufficient. the distortions, in all their ugliness and darkness (“i was born in the mud.”; “i am a horrible person.”) need to be confronted, and the pursuit of authenticity needs to be understood as more important than the desire to be accepted and liked. this can be a very lonely time. letting go of a more light-hearted and happy-go-lucky self might mean feeling less loved and accepted, at least by some former friends and acquaintances, and this can be a high price to pay. but perhaps they may reach the point where they are able to say, in lilia’s words, “i wouldn’t trade being liked for being authentic.” what youth at stage 5 need from helpers and carers is support and encouragement to face these realities, to recognize the false self they have created, and to keep moving forward with the process of healing and positive development (“it is a painful struggle, but you can get there.”). stage 6 — threshold “to face one’s demons is a painful journey that involves honestly accepting the ‘calcified’ pain that has been building up inside in a hard ball for many years” (lilia). it takes courage, and usually a sensitive and trained confidante or counsellor, to have the strength to keep chipping away at this calcification. at this point, a significant threshold may be reached, when there is a realization that there is no turning back (“you’ll never go that low again — you’ll have drops, but won’t go back as low as you were before.”). while there may be some slippage, two steps forward, one step back, there will not be a return to the deepest darkness encountered at some earlier stages. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 40 if this stage is successfully navigated, it represents crossing the threshold into a process of genuine growth and development. to be fully successful, it is likely that some form of therapeutic support, such as formal trauma counselling, will need to be provided on an ongoing basis, perhaps for a long time. stage 7 — following the yellow brick road (or the journey) it seems that each stage has its own form of pain and struggle. the next painful stage involves learning to respond to the hurtful and insensitive statements and comments of others, whether in person or indirectly (through the media, in classrooms, in the workplace, etc.). if therapeutic counselling has been underway, there is likely now a greater awareness and sensitivity to the second part of the “double distortion”, namely the judgements and labels imposed by others. once again, youth or young adults can become vulnerable to what they perceive as personal criticism from outside themselves. the temptation is to run and hide, or to do whatever got them through their trauma in the past, but now this is not so easy to do. the cracks in the emotional armour cannot be closed, the glimpses of reality are too powerful to fully ignore, and most importantly, they have developed increased self-awareness and the ability to make healthier choices in their responses. the task of this stage is learning to face and overcome obstacles to healing and growth, drawing upon the support of both friends and counsellors, as available; youth need companions and mentors to help them continue to progress on the journey along “the yellow brick road.” stage 8 — flourishing the last phase is the ongoing process of growth, and it will have its ups and downs, but without slipping back past the threshold between false start and genuine healing. the central process of this final and likely never-ending stage is flourishing, thanks in large measure to the presence and love of others, even though the deep-seated pain may always be in the background and perhaps flare up again, from time to time. “what helps most is love. see, it’s being ripped from love that causes the wound in the first place, and it’s only love in the end that heals it. (wagamese, 2009, p. 12) the importance of self-compassion lilia: one other theme that has permeated our dialogue, on my part at least, is the importance of self-compassion. for anyone who has grown up with significant ongoing trauma, it can be difficult to feel compassion for oneself. often, as i have mentioned frequently, the dominant self-perception is one of disgust, self-loathing, or shame — the results of the introjection of negative messages and emotional rejections. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 41 it is interesting that the three fundamental assumptions identified by janoff-bulman (1992) parallel the three components of the self-compassion learning process that i have been through recently, namely mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness [neff, 2003). mindfulness embraces the notion that “this is a moment of suffering”, but we need to understand that, overall, the world is benevolent. common humanity means that “suffering is a part of life”, but the world, and life, are meaningful. self-kindness involves reminding myself “may i be kind to myself”, because i am worthy. some questions arising one day early in our dialogue, lilia came with an intriguing question that popped into her head on the way to a yoga session: “is pain-based behaviour a pain-based behaviour?” that was a significant question and offered a new insight into the notion of pain-based behaviour. it raised the question of how someone develops a disposition to react with pain-based behaviour. there are many different forms of pain-based behaviour, such as anger, withdrawing, self-harming, aggression, and so on. how and why are each of these different forms developed by an individual? what is the link between the individual and the specific form their pain-based behaviour takes? are there also positive pain-based behaviours, such as the development of hyper-vigilance to the subtleties of the behaviours of others, or fierce independence and self-reliance, for example? we now refer to these as “foster kid superpowers”. channeled properly, and in the right contexts, they can be great strengths. some superpowers, such as valiant isolation, masking one’s persona, and trusting no one can become dysfunctional in new contexts and stages of growth. lilia calls this the cruel paradox of resilience. for example, the very traits that bring youth from care to postsecondary education admission could be holding this group back from the very connections that make the university experience endurable, enjoyable, and successful (for more on this transition, see zaharieva, anglin, & rutman, 2017). if there is some validity to the notion that there are stages of healing, such as we have outlined, is it helpful to explore further the different types of therapeutic responses and strategies that may be most appropriate to each stage? is the notion of a “threshold” in the process of healing from trauma helpful in the counselling or therapeutic process? does the threshold occur at the same stage in the process for everyone, as we hypothesize, or can it be at different stages for different individuals with different trauma histories, unique living environments, or different constellations of supports? we will not attempt to answer these questions here, but rather offer them for further consideration by other investigators. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 42 epilogue in addition to writing this article, the two of us carried our dialogue into a 90-minute session at the 2018 national child and youth care conference in richmond, bc with about 50 participants. it was an amazing experience for us to expand the conversation in this manner, and we received some encouraging feedback. perhaps the most powerful was from a woman who had lived in care who said: “i have been reading and reading, searching for years for a framework for understanding my pain. i found that here today.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 25–44 43 references anglin, j. p. 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(2017, march). from a ward to award, and beyond: supporting former youth in care at the university of victoria. report to the office of student affairs, university of victoria, bc, canada. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.2012.01151.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaowbxf5zwm https://bettercarenetwork.org/sites/default/files/opening%20addres%20by%20ruth%20wacuka-final.pdf https://bettercarenetwork.org/sites/default/files/opening%20addres%20by%20ruth%20wacuka-final.pdf post-traumatic stress disorder in children following natural disasters: a systematic review international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 111 post-traumatic stress disorder in children following natural disasters: a systematic review of the long-term follow-up studies akiko terasaka, yoshiyuki tachibana, makiko okuyama, and takashi igarashi abstract: the objective of this article was to conduct a systematic review of long-term follow-up studies on post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) symptoms in children and adolescents. the medline and psycinfo databases were searched from 1980 through january 2014. studies that examined ptsd symptoms in children for over three years after mass natural disasters were selected. ten studies, including four cohort studies, four cross-sectional studies, one descriptive study, and one case-series study following disaster-exposed children, met all the selection criteria and thus were included in this review. the follow-up period ranged from three to 20 years after the disasters. synthesized results regarding ptsd prevalence rate, changes over time, and influential factors on ptsd were summarized and discussed. the reviewed studies indicated that ptsd symptoms decrease rapidly during the first two years after a disaster; however, the long-term course is not yet clear. several factors including gender and disaster experience appeared to be influential on ptsd symptoms; however, gender effect was possibly confounded by other factors. to examine moderating effects among those influential factors, as well as to avoid confounding, multivariate analytical methods would be beneficial and recommended in future research. also, recovery patterns await further investigation for better understanding of the factors associated with chronic ptsd. keywords: natural disasters, ptsd, child, long-term, follow-up acknowledgement: this work was supported by the ministry of health, labour and welfare in japan, under health labour sciences research grant for research on region medical, h25-iryou-shitei-002 (fukkou). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 112 akiko terasaka (the corresponding author) is a post-doctoral fellow at the division of maternal-child psychiatry, department of pychosocial medicine, national medical center for children and mothers, 2-10-1 okura, setagaya-ku, tokyo, japan, 157-8535. e-mail: teakiko@gmail.com yoshiyuki tachibana is chief of the division of maternal-child psychiatry, department of pychosocial medicine, national medical center for children and mothers, 2-10-1 okura, setagaya-ku, tokyo, japan, 157-8535. e-mail: tachibana-y@ncchd.go.jp makiko okuyama is the department head of pychosocial medicine, national medical center for children and mothers, 2-10-1 okura, setagaya-ku, tokyo, japan, 157-8535. e-mail: okuyama-m@ncchd.go.jp takashi igarashi is the president of the national medical center for children and mothers, 210-1 okura, setagaya-ku, tokyo, japan, 157-8535. e-mail: igarashi-t@ncchd.go.jp mailto:teakiko@gmail.com mailto:tachibana-y@ncchd.go.jp mailto:okuyama-m@ncchd.go.jp mailto:igarashi-t@ncchd.go.jp international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 113 according to annual disaster statistical review 2012 (guha-sapir, hoyois, & below, 2013), 107,000 people were killed and 268 million were affected by natural disasters on annual average between 2002 and 2011. there are 25 natural disasters reported that produced more than 50,000 deaths between 1990 and 2011 in the em-dat database (www.emdat.be/database) (lindell, 2013). mass natural disaster can be especially traumatic to children. many of the children who survived mass natural disasters, such as southeast asia tsunami in 2004, hurricane katrina in 2005, and great east japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011, lost family members, friends, neighbors, houses and schools. furthermore, disaster aftermath could usually last for months or even years. these negative impacts of disasters may create secondary stress and substantially interfere with the availability of support to the child from parents, family, school, and community (pynoos, steinberg, & piacentini, 1999), thus disturbing children’s recovery. a set of psychological post-traumatic symptoms such as re-experiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal, which last more than a month after the traumatic event, is known as post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). ptsd has received a great deal of attention for the last several decades since the diagnosis was introduced in diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, third edition (dsm-iii) in 1980. although the criteria for ptsd were originally developed based on the knowledge from adult samples, several age-related symptoms were added in the subsequent versions (dsm-iii-r, dsm-iv, and dsm-v). there have been several comprehensive reviews of post-disaster research in children (e.g., foy, madvig, pynoos, & camilleri, 1996; pfefferbaum, 1997; vogel & venberg, 1993). in recent years, hoven, duarte, turner, and mandell (2009) performed a systematic search, and reported 18 selected studies that included more than 100 participants, with first assessment of post-traumatic reactions conducted within a year after the disaster, and employed some type of randomization approach. wang, chan, and ho (2013) identified 60 cross-sectional and 25 longitudinal/long-term follow-up studies of post-disaster research on child psychopathology including ptsd. additionally, furr, corner, edmunds, and kendall (2010) conducted a systematic review and meta-analytic examination of 96 identified youth ptsd studies following natural and human-made disasters. these reviews indicated that children show symptoms most in the first year post-disaster, and the symptoms mostly decrease rapidly (furr et al., 2010; wang et al., 2013) by nine to 14 months post-disaster (vogel & venberg, 1993). however, the long-term course of ptsd is not yet well known since the majority of the identified studies were conducted during the first two years postdisaster. although most of the children may recover shortly after, there seem to be several pathways of recovery, and ptsd symptoms persist longer for some of the children (masten & obradovic, 2008). moreover, there are not enough longitudinal data that enable us to understand risk and protecting factors for chronic ptsd. as these authors suggested, there is a great need for long-term follow-up studies of ptsd in children and adolescents. in this article, we focus on studies that investigated post-traumatic symptoms in children over a three-year period after they had experienced mass natural disasters so that we could learn more about the long-term course of ptsd in children and adolescents. we followed the prisma (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis) statement international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 114 (moher, liberati, tetzlaff, & altman, 2009), which consists of a 27-item checklist to help authors improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, in reporting this review. materials and methods selection criteria studies that (a) examined post-traumatic symptoms in children and adolescents after mass natural disasters, (b) followed the subjects for at least three years post-disaster, (c) assessed ptsd symptoms as outcomes, and (d) were peer-reviewed, were included in this review. accordingly, studies reporting about the effects of other types of disasters (e.g., war, terrorist attacks, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, etc.), and studies that assessed only other psychiatric problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, serious emotional disturbance, etc.) were excluded from this review. intervention studies were also excluded since they are beyond the scope of this review. the targeted population was children and adolescents who experienced mass natural disasters when they were under 18 years of age. data sources and searches in order to identify potential studies for inclusion, we conducted an electronic database search on medline and psycinfo for studies published from january 1980 through january 2014 using the following keywords: (post-traumatic or posttraumatic stress disorder) and (disaster or disasters) and (child or children or adolescent[s]) and (long-term or followup or longitudinal). only peer-reviewed articles were searched. study selection and data extraction after potential studies were identified by the database search (phase 1), we reviewed all abstracts and titles (phase 2). studies that were written in a non-english language, that did not include original data or an assessment of child responses, and that were on irrelevant topics (e.g., the development of assessment tools, physical health related to disasters) were excluded. the full text of selected potential studies were further reviewed to determine their eligibility (phase 3). studies reporting other types of disasters, studies that followed the subjects for less than three years, studies that assessed only other psychiatric problems, and intervention studies were excluded in sequence. from the included studies, the study design, study time frame after the disaster, samples (sampling method, size, and age), ptsd measures, ptsd prevalence and classification were abstracted. for the age of the sample, since time frame varied across studies, we showed not only the age at the time of the study, but also the estimated age at the time of the disaster. quality assessment observational studies are known to be vulnerable to some types of study bias, especially to selection bias and confounding compared to randomized controlled trials (reeves, deeks, higgins, & wells, 2008; lu, 2009); thus including quality assessment is recommended when reporting systematic review by prisma. in this review, we used the checklist from saqor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 115 (systematic appraisal of quality in observational research), which was developed especially for observational studies (for details, see ross et al., 2011), and also employed in the former review article (wang et al., 2013), to rate the quality of the included studies. the saqor consists of six categories with two to five questions for each assessment category: sample; control/comparison group; quality of exposure/outcome measurements; follow-up; distorting influences; and reporting data. note that for cross-sectional studies, the “follow-up” category is excluded. and also for case-series studies, the “control/comparison group” category is excluded, due to the feature of the study designs. each of the included studies was rated as “adequate” in all these categories when the study met the category’s requirements stated in saqor. the category of “distorting influences” was developed to rate the risk of confounding (ross et al., 2011). confounding is defined as “a mixing of effects between the exposure of interest, the disease, and a third factor (i.e., the confounder) that is associated with the exposure that independently affects the risk of developing the disease” (mann & wood, 2012, p. 18). several strategies are recommended to reduce confounding at three phases of study (lu, 2009): at the design phase, (a) restriction – inclusion to the study is restricted to a certain category of confounder (e.g., male); and (b) matching of controls to cases to enhance equal representation of subjects with certain confounders among study group. at the analysis phase, (c) stratification – the sample is divided into subgroups or strata on the basis of characteristics that are potentially confounding the analysis (e.g., age); and (d) statistical adjustments for dissimilarities in characteristics between the study groups, including regression, propensity score, and instrumental variables. in the literature of child ptsd, there is no confounder commonly recognized so far, although several factors such as children’s gender, age, and proximity to the disaster are considered to be affecting ptsd symptoms. thus, we did not set “primary key confounders” in the quality assessment of this review, which is originally suggested by saqor. studies that counted for at least two potential confounders, including age, gender, disaster experience, depression, etc., using strategies such as those listed above were rated “adequate”. results search results the search process is summarized in figure 1. the database search identified 232 potentially relevant studies (phase 1), 114 of which were selected for further screening after excluding irrelevant studies based on our screening the titles and abstracts (phase 2). the numbers of papers published per year are presented in figure 2, in order to allow readers to grasp the trend in post-disaster follow-up studies in children and adolescents. the earliest work selected in phase 2 was published in 1987, following the ash wednesday fires in australia in 1983 (mcfarlane, 1987). the highest number of selected papers was published in 2009, representing 13.2% (n = 15) of the total 114 studies, followed by 2008 and 2011 (n = 13, 11.4%). twenty-eight studies followed earthquakes (24.6%), 26 followed hurricanes (22.8%), and 10 followed two tsunamis (8.8%). the most studied event was hurricane katrina in 2005 (n = 14, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 116 12.3%), followed by the south asia tsunami in 2004 (n = 9, 7.9%), the world trade center attack (n = 8, 7.0%) in 2001, and the jupiter shipping disaster in 1988 (n = 7, 6.1%). in phase 3, 104 of the 114 previously selected studies (88.6%) were excluded because they did not meet the selection criteria stated earlier; 39 studies followed other types of disasters (34.2%), 59 studies followed the subjects for less than three years (51.8%), two had non-ptsd symptoms as the outcome (1.8%), and four were intervention studies (3.5%). finally, 10 of the 114 previously selected studies (8.8%) were included in this review as long-term follow-up studies of ptsd symptoms in children following natural disasters. figure 1. flow diagram of the study selection international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 117 figure 2. number of the papers published on long-term follow-up studies of child ptsd overview of the included studies the characteristics of the included studies are summarized in table 1. all included studies were published between 2005 and 2013. six events were studied in the 10 included studies: three earthquakes, one tsunami, one hurricane, and one wildfire. the earliest event was the ash wednesday fires in australia in 1983 (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009), and the latest was sichuan earthquake in china in 2008 (jia et al., 2013). three of the studies followed the spitak earthquake in armenia in 1988, and another three followed south asia tsunami in 2004. the age of the participants ranged from eight to 19 years for child and adolescent samples, and 23 to 34 for adult samples who had experienced disasters in their childhood (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009; najarian, sunday, labruna, & barry, 2011). the estimated age of the participants at the time of the disasters ranged from three to 16 years old. with respect to study design, four of the 10 studies were cohort studies (goenjian, walling, steinberg, karayan, & pynoos, 2005; jia et al., 2013; kronenberg et al., 2010; najarian, et al., 2011), another four were cross-sectional studies (agustini, asniar, & matsuo, 2011; goenjian et al., 2009; kilic, kilic, & yilmaz, 2008; mcfarlane & hooff, 2009), one was a descriptive study (piyasil et al., 2011), and the other study was based on a case-series design (ularntinon et al., 2008). one of the cohort studies compared ptsd symptoms between the subjects who had and had not received group/individual psychotherapy (goenjian et al., 2005). since intervention studies were not the focus of this review, we did not include the information regarding treatment effect in the summary table, and included the results of non-treated subjects only. the length of the follow-up period ranged from three to 20 years after the disasters. four international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 118 studies followed disaster-experienced children for three to four years after the disaster (agustini et al., 2011; jia et al., 2013; kronenberg et al., 2010; ularntinon et al., 2008), four studies followed them for between five and six-and-a-half years after (goenjian et al., 2005, 2009; kilic et al., 2008; piyasil et al., 2011), and two followed them for more than 20 years after the disaster (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009; najarian et al., 2011). none of the included studies conducted a predisaster assessment. two studies included subgroups of the subjects: goenjian et al. (2005) included groups of children from three different cities located at increasing distances from the epicenter of the earthquake; goenjian et al. (2009) included groups of children with different types of parental loss (loss of both parents, loss of father, and loss of mother). four studies included control/comparison groups: three studies had non-affected groups as controls (kilic et al., 2008; mcfarlane & hooff, 2009; najarian et al., 2011); however, two of them did not include ptsd assessment of the control group (kilic et al., 2008; najarian et al., 2011). one study had children who were exposed to the disaster but did not experience any parental loss as a comparison group to bereaved children who lost one or both of their parents (goenjian et al., 2009). three of the studies stated that the subjects did not receive any psychological treatment following the disaster (goenjian et al., 2005, 2009; najarian et al., 2011). two studies stated that some of the subjects received psychological intervention during the follow-up period (jia et al., 2013; kronenberg et al., 2010; piyasil et al., 2011), and one study stated that school-wide intervention was conducted at the targeted schools (ularntinon et al., 2008). risk of bias a summary of the quality assessment for six categories is presented in table 2, together with a summary of the findings of each study. four cohort studies were rated for all six categories: three studies were rated “adequate” in four (goenjian et al., 2005; jia et al., 2013; kronenberg et al., 2010) and one study was “adequate” in three of the six categories (najarian et al., 2011). four cross-sectional studies were rated for five categories (the category of “followup” was excluded): one was rated “adequate” in all five categories (kilic et al., 2008); one was “adequate” in four (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009); one was “adequate” in three (goenjian et al., 2009); and the remaining was “adequate” in two of the five categories (agustini et al., 2011). one case-series study was rated for five categories (the category of “control/comparison group” was excluded), being “adequate” in four of them (ularntinon et al., 2008). one descriptive study was rated for all six categories, being “adequate” in two of the six categories (piyasil et al., 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 119 table 1. summary of the included studies ptsd2 study disaster measure 2008 sichuan earthquake, china (may 12, 2008) jia et al. (2013) cohort 15mths 430 8-16 7-15 cptsd-ri 12.4% to 10.7% , from 15th to 36th month (probable ptsd) 36mths 4.2% to 4.7% (comorbid with depression) 2005 hurricane katrina, u.s. (august 29, 2005) kronenberg et al. (2010) cohort 2yrs 387 9-18 7-16 3yrs 2004 southeast asia tsunam i (decem ber 26, 2004) agustini et al. (2011) cross-sectional 4.5yrs 482 11-19 6-15 cptsd-ri 22.4% (probable ptsd) piyasil et al. (2011) descriptive 6ws, 6mths 1,625 9-14 8-14 1, 2, 3, 4, 5yrs ularntinon et al. (2008) 1y 45 11.35 8.31 3yrs 1999 bole earhquake, turkey (novem ber 12, 1999) kilic et al. (2008) cross-sectional 5yrs 81 8-15 3-10 non exposed cptsd-ri (n = 87) 1988 spitak earthquake, arm enia (decem ber 7, 1988) najarian et al. (2011) cohort 2yrs 19 28-30 8-10 non-exposed cptsd-ri 21.1% (probable ptsd) at 20yrs post disaster 20yrs (n = 44) dica-r goenjian et al. (2009) cross-sectional 6.5yrs 48 13.8 7.3 cptsd-ri n/a (n = 44) goenjian et al. (2005) cohort 1.5yrs 125 15-17 10-12 cptsd-ri n/a 5yrs 1983 ash wednesday fires, australia (february 16, 1983) mcfarlane & hooff (2009) cross-sectional 20yrs 540 23-34 3-13 non-exposed cidi ptsd 15.2% (past month ptsd) (n = 464) 36.7% (lifetime ptsd) 1 the range of participants' age at the time of the study and the disaster. mean age was noted when the range was not available. author (year) ptsd prevalence and classification 18.5% (probable ptsd) time after psychiatric interview nctsn screener psychiatric interview 23.0% (breakdown without recovery), 4.7% (delayed breakdown), 27.1% (normal response and recovery), 45.2% (stress resistant) control/ comparison group case-series samplestudy design 11.1% (cronic ptsd), 11.1% (depressive disorder), 11.1% (anxiety disorder), 46.7% (partial remission), 24.4% (full recovery) children in the housholds randomly selected from the city center children diagnosed with ptsd at 1y post disaster 57.3% , 46.1% , 31.6% , 7.6% , 4.5% , 3.9% , and 2.7% , from 6ws to 5yrs after disaster, respectively. adults who experienced the disaster, and were selected for the previous study at 2 years after the disaster adults who experienced the disaster, and were recruited as children 2y after the disaster age1 size students in 2 selected schools from the most affected area random sample of students in the severely affected areas students in 4-12th grades from the targeted community students from 4 boarding schools in the same community students in the selected schools from 3 cities located at increasing distances from the epicenter students at a trade school for bereaved students 2 cptsd-ri = the child post-traumatic stress disorder reaction index (pynoos et al., 1987; steinberg et al., 2004), ntctsn screener = ntcsn hurricane assessment and referral tool for children and adolescents (ntctsn, 2005), cidi = composite international diagnostic interview (who, 1997), exposed noparental loss international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 120 table 2. quality assessment and major findings of the included studies author (year) study design summary of the findings 2008 sichuan earthquake, china jia et al. (2013) cohort + + + + 2005 hurricane katrina, u.s. cohort + + + + 2004 southeast asia tsunami agustini et al. (2011) cross-sectional + + n/a piyasil et al. (2011) descriptive + + ularntinon et al. (2008) case-series + n/a + + + previous work: piyasil et al. (2007) 1999 bole earthquake, turkey kilic et al. (2008) cross-sectional + + + n/a + + 1988 spitak earthquake, armenia najarian et al. (2011) cohort + + + previous work: najarian et al. (1996) goenjian et al. (2009) cross-sectional + + + n/a goenjian et al. (2005) cohort + + + + previous work: goenjian et al. (1995) 1983 ash wednesday fires, australia cross-sectional + + n/a + + previous work: mcfarlane et al. (1987) 1 '+' = adequate, '-' = inadequate' not only did overall symptoms decreased from the 2nd to the 3rd post disaster year, but also 72.3% of the children were classified as "stress resistant" or "normal response and recovery". however, 27.7% of the children were classified as "breakdown without recovery" or "delayed breakdown". younger age, female gender, consulting with a mental health professional, and endorsing family and school problems were found to be the most associated with the recovery patterns. preand postdisaster loss or trauma and current living conditions were not associated with the recovery patterns. gender (female), loss of parents, somatic response and support level were significantly associated with ptsd symptoms among the tsunami-affected adolescents at 4.5 years after the tsunami. the prevalence of ptsd was 57.3% after the disaster, and gradually decreased to 2.7% throughout the 5-year follow-up period. female to male ratio of the students with ptsd was 1.7: 1. no significant difference was found in ptsd symptom scores by the type of parental loss at 6.5 years post disaster. however, orphans had the highest depression scores, followed by those who lost fathers, those who lost mothers, and those who did not have parental loss. no significant difference on anxiety and depression between the earthquake-exposed group and the non-exposed group at 5 years post disaster. trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity contributed to the severity of ptsd reactions in the subject group, but not depression. gender and age were not significant factors in regression analysis. s am pl e saqor 1 c on tro l/c om pa ris on gr ou p e xp os ur e/ ou tc om e m ea su re m en t fo llo w -u p d is to rti ng in flu en ce s r ep or tin g of d at a overall prevalence rates of ptsd and depression symptoms did not change significantly from 15 to 36 months post disaster. the linear regression model showed that depression, objective experiences, subjective experiences, and earthquake-related loss had influence on ptsd symptoms at 36 months after the disaster. gender was not significant in the regression analysis, although females scored higher than males. mcfarlane & hooff (2009) earthquake-exposed group had higher scores on several symptoms than the nonexposed adults, and 4 out of 19 earthquake-exposed adults scored probable ptsd at 20 years post disaster. 63% of the earthquake experienced adults had at least one clinical elevation in the symptom chicklist-90-r; whereas 64% of the control group had no clinical elevation. no correlation was found between time1 and time2 depression scores and number of the ptsd symptoms. about 25% of the students, who were diagnosed with ptsd at 2 yeas post disaster, had full recovery at 3 years post disaster. the history of previous trauma and physical injury at the time of the disaster were associated with the outcome. gender was not associated with the outcome. although 75% of the bushfire-exposed group still reported some degree of distress in relation to the bushfires, there was no significant difference between bushfire group and the controls in the prevalence of ptsd resulting from the self-nominated worst lifetime event. in the bushfire-exposed group, individuals who nominated the bushfire as their worst event had lower risk than individuals who nominated other traumatic events as their worst event. students from the city located the closest to the epicenter had higher ptsd reactions at 1.5 years after the disaster, and remained higher at 5 years after the disaster than the other 2 groups farther from the epicenter, although scores decreased over time significantly in all 3 groups. meanwhile, depression scores did not decrease over time in all 3 groups; even a significant increase was found in the group second closest to the epicenter from 1.5 to 5 years after the disaster. kronenberg et al. (2010) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 121 regarding “distorting influences”, five studies were rated “adequate”, adjusting for more than two potential confounders that are listed in table 2. in four of the studies, age and gender were controlled for, by matching (kronenberg et al., 2010) and statistical adjustment (goenjian et al, 2009; kilic et al., 2008; kronenberg et al., 2010; mcfarlane & hooff, 2009). two studies controlled for disaster-related loss (goenjian et al., 2009; jia et al., 2013), and two studies controlled for depression (jia et al., 2013; kilic et al., 2008) in their analyses phase. preor post-disaster loss or trauma was treated in jia et al. by restricting the enrollment, and in kronenberg et al. by statistical adjustment. as for the method, three studies employed multivariate methods to control confounding. two of them employed linear regression analyses: jia and colleagues included depression, residence, gender, ethnicity, objective/subjective experience of the disaster, disasterrelated loss, and perceived social support in their analysis, with the subject without any preor post-traumatic experience; also kilic and colleagues included state/trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, gender, age, and depression, as explanatory variables to the ptsd scores. one study conducted multi-nominal logistic regression, including age, gender, recovery stressors related to the disaster, preor post-disaster significant loss or trauma, and current perceptions of life problems as explanatory variables to the recovery patterns (kronenberg et al., 2010). the measurement and prevalence of ptsd the most commonly used outcome measure was the child post-traumatic stress disorder reaction index or cptsd-ri (pynoos et al., 1987; steinberg, brymer, decker, & pynoos, 2004), which is a self-report questionnaire assessing the severity of ptsd symptoms and also probable ptsd prevalence using a cut-off score, and was employed in six studies (agustini et al., 2011; goenjian et al., 2005, 2009; jia et al., 2013; kilic et al., 2008; najarian et al., 2011). kronenberg et al. (2010) used the hurricane assessment and referral tool for children and adolescents developed by the national child traumatic stress network (2005), which is based on the cptsd-ri and also includes a number of questions regarding depressive symptoms. mcfarlane and hooff (2009) employed the computerized version of the composite international diagnostic interviews or cidi (world health organization, 1997). two other studies involved diagnostic interviews conducted by psychiatrists using the dsm-iv (piyasil et al., 2011; ulartinon et al., 2008). the overall (probable) prevalence rates over three years post-disaster were available in six of the included studies. at three years after, the prevalence rates were 10.7% following shichuan earthquake in 2008 (jia et al., 2013) and 4.5% following south asia tsunami in 2004 (piyasil et al., 2011). at 4.5 to five years after the disaster, the rates were 22.4% and 2.7% following south asia tsunami in 2004 (agustini et al., 2011; piyasil et al., 2011), and 18.5% following bolu, turkey earthquake in 1999 (kilic et al., 2008). after 20 years, the rates were 15.2% following the ash wednesday fires in 1983 (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009) and 21.1% following spitak earthquake in 1988 (najarian et al., 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 122 three studies compared the subjects who experienced the disaster with the controls who did not experience the disaster in ptsd and related symptoms; of these, one compared these two groups in ptsd prevalence rates 20 years after the disastrous bushfire; mcfarlane and hooff (2009) found no significant difference in ptsd prevalence between the bushfire-exposed and non-exposed groups; however, bushfireexposed participants who experienced other traumatic event showed a higher risk, with a rate 1.8 times as likely as the controls. changes over time in ptsd symptoms two studies examined change over time in the prevalence of ptsd. piyasil and colleagues (2011) showed that the prevalence rate decreased over time: 57.3% (six weeks post-disaster), 46.1% (six months), 31.6% (one year), 7.6% (two years), 4.5% (three years), 3.9% (four years), and 2.7 % (five years); however, the statistical significance of the decrease was not tested. in jia et al. (2013), the probable prevalence rate was 12.4% at 15 months and 10.7% at 36 months post-disaster, but the change was not significant. on the other hand, goenjian et al. (2005) examined over time changes in the ptsd scores rather than the prevalence rate, and found a significant decrease from 1.5 to five years post-disaster. two studies examined post-disaster recovery. ularntinon et al. (2008) followed 45 children diagnosed with ptsd a year after the disaster, and found that 11% of them still met the criteria for ptsd diagnosis at three years post-disaster, whereas 24% of them had a full recovery. kronenberg et al. (2010) investigated the recovery patterns of post-traumatic symptoms including ptsd and depression from the second to the third post-disaster year, categorizing children into four different groups: (a) stress resistant; (b) normal response and recovery; (c) delayed breakdown; and (d) breakdown without recovery. the percentages of the children included in each of these groups were 45.2%, 27.1%, 4.7%, and 23.0%, respectively; the total percentage of children who scored above the cutoff was 50.1% and 27.7% at the second and third year post-disaster. influential factors 1. gender: seven of the included studies investigated gender difference in ptsd symptoms. of these, five studies found that females had higher scores than males on ptsd measures (agustini et al., 2011; goenjian et al., 2005, 2009; jia, et al., 2013; kronenberg et al., 2010). piyasil et al. (2011) described that the ptsd prevalence at six weeks after the disaster for female to male was 1.7 : 1; however, the statistical siginificance of this difference was not tested. additionally, kronenberg and colleagues investigated gender influence on the recovery patterns from the second to the third year post-disaster, as well as on ptsd scores, with females being more likely to be classified in the “breakdown without recovery” compared to “stress resistant”, although gender did not alter the relation between other variables and the recovery patterns in the moderation analysis. however, multiple linear regression analyses in jia et al. (2013) and kilic et al. (2008) revealed that gender did not contribute to the ptsd scores when entered with other variables at three and five years after the disaster, respectively, although girls showed signifiantly higher ptsd scores. one study found no significant gender international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 123 difference in the recovery patterns among the clinical group with ptsd diagnosis from the first to the third post-disaster year (ularntinon et al., 2008). 2. age: five studies investigated age-related differences. four of them found no significant age diffrernce in ptsd symptoms. further, kilic et al. (2008) showed no age effect on ptsd symptoms in the linear regression analysis when entered with other variables at five years after the disaster. conversely, kronenberg et al. (2010) found that younger children (ages 9 to 11) scored higher than older children (ages 15 to 18) at both the second and third post-disaster years, and that the recovery patterns of older children were about four times more likely to be in the “stress resistant” group than the “breakdown without recovery” group when other factors were adjusted for; however, age did not alter the relation between other variables and the recovery patterns in the moderation analysis. 3. disaster experience and loss: goenjian and colleagues (2005) found that students who lived closest to the epicenter of the earthquake had higher ptsd symptoms at 1.5 years post-disaster, and their symptoms remained higher at five years post-disaster than students who lived a greater distance from the epicenter. similarly, physical injury (ularntinon et al., 2008), and both the objective and subjective experience of the disaster (jia et al., 2013) were associated with ptsd symptoms at three years post-disaster. regarding disaster-related loss, loss experience including family members, significant others, houses, and important belongings (jia et al., 2013) and loss of parents (agustini et al., 2011) were associated with ptsd at three and 4.5 years after the disaster, respectively. however, goenjian et al. (2009) found no significant difference in ptsd symptoms at 6.5 years post-disaster between students who lost their parents and students without parental loss, although orphans had the highest depression scores followed by those who lost fathers, compared to those who lost mothers and those who did not have parental loss. 4. depression and anxiety: jia et al. (2013) found that ptsd symptoms were predicted by depression, together with objective and subjective experiences and disasterrelated loss at three years post-disaster when entered with other variables into the regression analysis; however, kilic et al. (2008) included anxiety factors into the linear regression analysis and found that ptsd symptoms were predicted by trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity, but not by depression or state anxiety at five years post-disaster. 5. other traumatic experiences: ularntinon and colleagues (2008) showed that a history of previous trauma influenced the recovery of the children previously diagnosed with ptsd at three years post-disaster. mcfarlane and hooff (2009) found that there was a significant difference between bushfire-exposed adults and the controls in ptsd symptoms at 20 years post-disaster, only if the bushfire-exposed adults experienced additional trauma. conversely, kronenberg et al. (2010) found that previous loss or trauma, and post-disaster major loss or trauma did not affect the recovery patterns from the second to the third year post-disaster when other factors were adjusted for. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 124 6. environmental factors: kronenberg et al. (2010) found that family and school problems were associated with the recovery patterns from the second to the third year after the disaster, but that the current living conditions, family connectedness, or friend problems were not associated with them. the perceived support level was also found to be associated with ptsd symptoms at three and 4.5 years after the disaster (jia et al., 2013; agustini et al., 2011). however, the influence was no longer significant when entered into the regression analysis with other variables in the study of jia et al; it decreased depression symptoms, rather than ptsd symptoms. discussion this review exclusively looked at long-term follow-up studies of ptsd symptoms in children after natural disasters. the included studies followed children who experienced disaster for three to 20 years post-disaster. the results of the study selection in phase 2 showed that the number of such studies has largely increased in the last 10 years. of these studies, about 35% followed other types of disasters (e.g., war, terrorist attacks, ship sinking, accidents, etc.), indicating that natural disaster is the major focus of long-term ptsd research in children, as furr et al. (2010) and hoven et al. (2009) mentioned earlier. however, almost 80% of the natural disaster studies followed the subjects for less than three years after disasters. although hurricane katrina in 2005 was the most studied event among the selected studies in phase 2, only one of them was included in this review in phase 3. in addition, all included studies were published between 2005 and 2013. the importance of the long-term follow-up study seems to have been recognized relatively recently in post-disaster research, and thus the research over time awaits further investigation. the studies included in this review varied in the study design, sample size and age, assessment method and timing, magnitude of the disaster, etc. considering this heterogeneity, we presented the results as a narrative synthesis of the individual findings from the original studies. the results of the quality assessment using saqor indicated that the included studies had mostly moderate to high quality; however two studies were rated “adequate” in only two categories. thus, these findings need to be interpreted cautiously. long-term course of ptsd and recovery as previous reviews have summarized (e.g., furr et al., 2010; vogel and venberg, 1993; wang et al., 2013), we have already learned that post-traumatic symptoms decrease substantially during the first year after the disaster; however, the course of ptsd after the first few years is not yet well known. the results reported by piyasil et al. (2011) suggested that ptsd symptoms decrease largely during the first two years (from 57.3% to 7.6%), and there may not be a significant decrease after that up to five years postdisaster. although piyasil and colleagues did not test the statistical significance of the decrease, this data delineated the course of ptsd symptoms. however, it should be noted that in their study, a school-based intervention was conducted in the targeted school, so international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 125 there must have been some intervention effect on the prevalence rate. although mcfarlane and hooff (2009) indicated that ptsd symptoms would be mostly remitted to the level of the non-exposed group by 20 years post-disaster, two studies that investigated change over time of between 15 months and five years showed inconsistent results: goenjian et al. (2005) found a significant decrease in ptsd scores from 1.5 to five years post-disaster, whereas jia et al. (2013) found no significant decrease in prevalence rate from 15 to 36 months post-disaster. the significance of the decrease of ptsd prevalence after the first post-disaster year may not be large enough to be captured in a short period. regarding post-disaster recovery, kronenberg et al. (2010) examined the recovery patterns proposed by masten and obradovic (2008) based on post-traumatic symptoms – including ptsd and depression – and reported that among the children who scored above the cutoff score on the screening at the second post-disaster year, 54% were considered to have recovered at the third year. these findings were similar to the result of perkonigg et al. (2005) on youth ptsd, showing that about a half of the youth, previously diagnosed with ptsd, had recovered at 50 months after the disaster. ularntinon et al. (2008) also found that about 25% of the children, who were diagnosed with ptsd at the first year after the disaster, had full recovery at the third year after the disaster, whereas 11% continued to have ptsd. although the recovery rate would vary across studies due to the employed symptom measures, study time frame, study population, magnitude of the disaster, etc., these studies enable us to examine the course of ptsd in children, which is not captured by overall prevalence rates. also, both risk and protective factors to the development of chronic ptsd could be examined. more studies that investigate recovery patterns or followed case samples would be needed in the future. risk factors gender and disaster experience were the most studied influential factors on ptsd symptoms among the included studies. on the other hand, age effect was supported by only one study. these findings were consistent with the meta-analysis reported by furr et al. (2010), which demonstrated that gender, but not age, was significantly associated with ptsd in youth. with regard to gender difference, although seven of the 10 included studies found that girls were more likely to have ptsd symptoms than boys, the linear regression analyses did not support the gender influence on ptsd symptoms (jia et al., 2013; kilic et al., 2008), indicating that the gender-related differences might be confounded or moderated by other variables. the gender difference in ptsd symptoms may due to the gender difference in depression, as it is known that girls report more depression symptoms than boys (see hankin & abramson, 2001; jordan, 2013). it is necessary to determine whether gender has a significant influence on ptsd when other potentially influencing variables are accounted for. furthermore, there might be a moderating effect of gender on the relation between some risk factors and ptsd symptoms; for example, lack of social support may impact girls more adversely than boys considering that women’s coping style is more relational than men’s (jordan, 2013; lazarus & folkman, 1984). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 126 regarding disaster experience, physical proximity and subjective experience were associated with ptsd symptoms, as has been suggested by vogel and venberg (1993) and furr et al. (2010). however, the influence of parental loss on child ptsd was not clear: two studies showed its influence on ptsd symptoms at three and 4.5 years after the disaster (agustini et al., 2011; jia et al., 2013), whereas goenjian et al. (2009) demonstrated that parental loss was associated with depression, not with ptsd symptoms at 6.5 years after the disaster. loss of parents may be a risk factor for developing ptsd after the disaster, but may not be a strong predictor for chronic ptsd. children who lost their parents may continue to suffer from depression even after recovering from ptsd symptoms. depression is one of the most studied post-disaster symptoms except for ptsd (hoven et al., 2009), and is known to often be comorbid with ptsd (45.9% in eksi & braun, 2009; 79% in goenjian et al., 2001). as it has been suggested that depression symptoms predict subsequent ptsd symptoms (roussos et al., 2005; ying, wu, & lin, 2012; zhang et al., 2012), so too jia et al. (2013) found that ptsd symptoms were explained by depression. considering that children with comorbid symptoms of ptsd and depression have poorer recovery (lai, la greca, auslander, & short, 2013), having depression symptoms seems to be a risk factor for prolonged ptsd in children. with regard to the risk factors for depression, goenjian et al. (2009) showed that parental loss is associated with depression. on the other hand, jia et al. (2013) demonstrated that depression was not predicted by disaster-related loss, but by perceived social support. disaster-related loss may lead to impaired social support available to the child, which could increase the child’s depression symptoms, but this relation was not yet known. anxiety is considered to be another influential factor: asarnow et al. (1999), la graca, silverman, and wasserstein (1998), and weems et al. (2007) showed that preexisting anxiety and trait anxiety significantly contributed to the subsequent development of ptsd in children, after controlling for the effects of other variables. among the studies included in this review, kilic and colleagues (2008) found that ptsd symptoms were explained by trait-anxiety and anxiety sensitivity, but not by depression and stateanxiety. trait-anxiety and anxiety sensitivity are considered to be personal traits functioning as vulnerability factors, which precede post-traumatic symptoms, rather than symptoms following the disaster. as mentioned in furr et al. (2010) and hoven et al. (2009), pre-disaster assessment is rare in disaster research, since disaster research is usually initiated after the disaster occurrence. more studies are needed to understand these preceding and potentially predisposing factors to identify children at risk at an earlier stage. finally, the influence of being exposed to multiple traumas was not yet clear, with two studies showing a significant influence on chronic ptsd (mcfarlane & hooff, 2009; ularntinon et al., 2008), which was consistent with the results of pekonigg et al. (2005), while one study showed no significant influence (kronenberg et al., 2010). all three studies employed different measures for assessing the experience of other traumas. there is a need to develop a more standardized measure to assess preand post-disaster traumatic experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 127 limitations and future directions several limitations regarding study design were found. first, among the studies included in this review, none conducted a pre-disaster assessment. although there are constraints, pre-disaster information would be beneficial for obtaining a better understanding of the risk factors for chronic ptsd, such as pre-existing anxiety. second, a control/comparison group was included in only three studies, and none of them had longitudinal data for the comparison. there are many barriers to having comparable groups to in post-disaster research, as well as having representative samples in disaster research (masten & osofsky, 2010). however, it is ideal to include control groups in cohort studies as well so that the long-term impact of the disaster can be evaluated properly. using some strategies to reduce confounding caused by sampling and selection flaws is also required. third, some of the subjects in the included studies received psychological interventions after the disaster. such information should be taken into account when evaluating the influence of the disaster on ptsd symptoms and the recovery from them. it is recommended to have both an intervention and a nonintervention group in the study, as with goenjian and colleagues in their 2009 work, although we did not report that information in this review. regarding the risk of confounding, five of the included studies used one to two strategies recommended to avoid confounding by lu (2009). thus, some of the possible confounding was controlled in these studies. such strategies, especially multivariate methods, enable us to have a better understanding of the mediation and moderation effects of the factors on the ptsd symptoms, as well as to avoid confounding. gender influence was suggested to be more complicated than a simple risk factor in this review. studies investigating dimensional factors, including pre-disaster trait (e.g., gender, trait anxiety), disaster experience (i.e., proximity, physical injury, threat to life, loss of important others), other post-traumatic symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety), and current distress (e.g., social support, parental symptomatology, school stress, living conditions), using multivariate strategies would be beneficial and thus recommended in the future research. age was not found to be an influential factor, with only one study showing a significant age effect on the ptsd symptoms (kronenberg et al., 2010). the age range of the participants of the included studies was not small, especially the age at the time of the disaster (ages three to 16). disaster experience may affect children’s development differently depending on their developmental levels. considering that younger children are more dependent on care from adults, loss of parents or impaired parental functioning associated with parents’ symptomatology may influence younger children’s recovery more adversely than that of older children. additionally, masten and osofsky (2010) mentioned the possibility that psychological or physical adversity experienced become embedded in child development through a variety of pathways, from the effects of elevated cortisol on the developing brain to the effects of maternal deprivation on attachment, emotional security mastery, motivation, the development of self-regulation, and later relationships. thus, not just an age difference among study participants, but also a difference in developmental stage needs be taken into account to examine its influence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 128 on ptsd symptoms and recovery. also, an age-sensitive assessment method based on dsm-v (american psychiatric association, 2013), which separated ptsd in children younger than six years, await development. two of the included studies examined the post-disaster recovery patterns (ularntinon et al., 2008; kronenberg et al., 2010). however, the influential factors on the recovery patterns were not yet clear. considering that there would be limited resources for psychological interventions in severely affected areas, and most of the children would show recovery over time, identifying children and adolescents at the highest risk for chronic ptsd would be particularly important. several studies mentioned the importance of the ongoing life stress in the disaster research as well as the magnitude of the disaster (see masten & osofsky, 2010). disaster magnitude and experience is known as a strong risk factor to the development of ptsd, whereas secondary stress associated with family loss, family symptomatology, peer support, et cetera may function as risk factors to the recovery from ptsd. also, factors protective against the onset or later development of ptsd, and factors associated with resilient recovery from ptsd versus chronic forms of the disorder (pynoos et al., 1999) may be different. more studies focusing on recovery would be needed in the future in order to reveal risk and protecting factors associated with chronic ptsd. conclusions this article reported a systematic reiew of the long-term follow-up studies of ptsd symptoms in children and adolescents after natural disasters. the results of the database search demonstrated that the number of long-term follow-up studies has increased in the last 10 years. the synthesized results of the included studies indicated that ptsd symptoms decrease over time, especially during the first two years after the disaster, as mentioned in the previous reviews (furr et al., 2010; hoven et al., 2009; vogel & venberg, 1993); however, the long-term course is not yet clear. among possible risk factors, gender, disaster experience, depression, trait-anxiety, experiencing multiple trauma, and parental loss were considered to be associated with ptsd; however, there is a possiblility that the gender effect on ptsd might be confounded by other factors, such as depression and anxiety. more detailed reseach, including assessments of, among others, children’s pre-disaster traits, disaster experience, depression, current living distress, and social support, using multivariate analytical methods would be needed. furthermore, studies that examine recovery would be beneficial in order to provide a better understanding of the factors associated with chronic ptsd, and thus await futher investigation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 111–133 129 references american psychiatric association. 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(2012). prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among adolescents after the wenchuan earthquake in china. psychological medicine, 42(8), 1687–1693. doi: 10.1017/s0033291711002844 risk factors running head: exploring developmental assets international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 500 exploring developmental assets in ugandan youth christopher f. drescher, eu gene chin, laura r. johnson, and julie s. johnson-pynn abstract: ugandan youth face a number of threats to their healthy development including poverty, high rates of disease, civil conflict, and environmental degradation. cultivating developmental competencies is critical, not only for youth, but also for the future of ugandan communities and civil society. in this article, we highlight contextual challenges facing ugandan youth, report exploratory results on “standard” measures of developmental assets, and discuss the utility of a positive youth development (pyd) framework in uganda. despite difficult circumstances, our results indicated high levels of internal and external assets as assessed with the developmental assets profile (dap). the dap demonstrated acceptable internal consistencies and was correlated with two other measures of youth assets, self-efficacy, and civic action. although researchers should proceed with caution when using psychometric measures in new cultural contexts, our results provide preliminary support for the use of the dap and a pyd framework for advancing adolescent research and programming in uganda. keywords: uganda, positive youth development, developmental assets, self-efficacy, civic action acknowledgements: this research project was supported by funds from the national geographic society conservation trust and the j. w. fulbright foundation. we thank collaborators from makerere university, the ministry of environment and water, the uganda wildlife and education center, and the ugandan national forest authority. christopher f. drescher, m.a. (the corresponding author) is a clinical psychology doctoral student at the department of psychology, university of mississippi, peabody building, oxford mississippi, u.s.a., 38677. phone: (304) 389-4734. e-mail: cfdrescher@gmail.com eu gene chin, m.a. is a clinical psychology doctoral student at the department of psychology, university of mississippi, peabody building, university of mississippi, oxford mississippi, u.s.a., 38677. e-mail: egchin4@gmail.com laura r. johnson, ph.d. is an associate professor of psychology at the university of mississippi, peabody building, oxford mississippi, u.s.a., 38677. e-mail: ljohnson@olemiss.edu julie s. johnson-pynn, ph.d. is an associate professor of psychology at berry college, 2277 martha berry highway nw, mount berry, georgia, u.s.a., 30149. e-mail: jpynn@berry.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 501 rapidly occurring environmental and socio-cultural changes in the landscape of child and adolescent development call our attention to young people’s capacity to address major societal problems. increasingly, youth are becoming engaged in their communities in order to create solutions to society’s grand challenges such as poverty, oppression, intercultural conflict, and environmental catastrophes. how to foster youths’ sense of purpose, self-efficacy, and commitment to work for the betterment of themselves and of society are key concerns in applied developmental psychology and are relevant the world over (lerner, 2004; limber & kaufman, 2002; naudeau, cunningham, lundberg, & mcginnis, 2008). enhancing youths’ capacity to address challenges in their communities may be especially critical in sub-saharan african countries where far too many children suffer grave threats to their daily living, such as poverty, civil conflict, high rates of communicable diseases, and loss of family members or social supports (mccandless & bangura, 2007; united nations development program [undp], 2010). moreover, developing countries that depend on local resources for subsistence farming are among those (along with island nations) suffering the most immediate effects of environmental degradation and climate change (chawla, 2002). this is particularly true in equatorial locations like uganda, where livelihoods depend on predictable growing and rainy seasons. in this article, we highlight contextual challenges facing ugandan youth, report exploratory results on “standard” measures of youth developmental assets, and discuss the utility of a positive youth development framework for advancing youth research and programming in uganda. the context of youth in uganda uganda, a lush equatorial country situated on lake victoria, the source of the nile river, represents one of the most diverse ecosystems in africa (u.s. department of state, 2010) and has served as a focal point for anthropologists and environmental researchers for decades. unfortunately, war and civil conflict, unregulated agricultural practices, illegal mining activities, misuse of natural resources, and a doubling of uganda’s human population in the last 20 years, combine to threaten the sustainability of natural resources (johnson-pynn & johnson, 2010; kibanja, kajumba, & johnson, 2012). poor nutrition, lack of clean water, malaria, and aids contribute to high mortality rates in uganda. experts have reported that climate change is frustrating poverty eradication programs such as those in the united nations millennium development goals (central intelligence agency [cia] world factbook, 2009; tenywa, 2007). in addition to intense environmental pressures, and in large part because of them, sociopolitical unrest threatens the physical and psychological health of individuals and communities. from colonization, through the brutal dictatorships of amin and obote, the people of uganda have suffered numerous socio-political and ethnic conflicts that continue today resulting in an uneasy atmosphere and unsafe situations for youth across the country (kibanja et al., 2012). the 24-year war with the lord’s resistance army (lra) has resulted in death and displacement on a massive scale, including the conscription of tens of thousands of youth into the lra. fighting continues in the west with the hemu-lendu conflict on the congolese border and the bakigainternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 502 banyoro conflict in kibale region. violence also spread to the central regions, including the buganda kingdom and the capital in the run-up to the 2011 presidential elections. as is often the case, children and adolescents face the brunt of the impact associated with these social, economic, and environmental difficulties. high rates of stress due to civil conflicts and daily living conditions result in poor physical and mental health. epidemiological studies of depression have indicated strikingly high rates (bolton, wilks, & ndogoni, 2004) compared to global rates and other countries in africa. unemployment, homelessness, substance abuse, sex trafficking and prostitution, assault, and child labor are among the concerns facing ugandan adolescents (cheney, 2007; uganda youth development link [uydel], 2011). rural to urban migration and rapid social and cultural changes have also placed new demands to adapt education, employment, family structures, and daily life to keep pace in a rapidly modernizing environment. the needs for infrastructure development, education, health and human services for adolescents remain high. faced with such challenges, an exigent need exists for ugandan communities to build on the skills, talents, and interests of young people, as a means to enhance resilience and empower youth to make a positive difference in their communities. despite many contextual threats, ugandan youth may possess strengths and assets, including confidence, family values, school supports, and religious or cultural beliefs that protect them from harm and contribute to their well-being and development. uganda is a youth-saturated society and with 45% of the population under age 15, youth have a substantial role to play, for better or worse, in leading uganda toward social justice and harmony, or toward ongoing conflict. focusing on adolescent and emerging adult strengths, resources, and contributions through a positive youth development model (pyd) may be a key to constructive research and successful programming. positive developmental assets framework positive youth development (pyd) is a conceptual approach that emphasizes behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social competencies in children and adolescents (catalano, berglund, ryan, lonczak, & hawkins, 2004). pyd represents a synergy between normative adolescent development, preventive science, and resilience research traditions (scales, benson, roehlkepartain, sesma, & dulmen, 2006), functioning as a strengths-based framework for promoting mental health and well-being. pyd approaches may be particularly well suited to contexts in which more formal mental health intervention is unavailable or carries stigma (johnson & johnson-pynn, 2007; johnson & tucker, 2008). indeed, seeking help from the formal mental health service sector in uganda is rare, based on the interplay of accessibility, availability, cultural beliefs, and reliance on traditional and social supports for mental health needs (johnson, kajumba, bangirana, & kizito, 2009). despite an unmet need for mental health services in uganda, many ugandans would not seek out formal mental health, even if it were available (johnson et al., 2009). the pyd emphasis on fostering personal development and strengths would be advantageous in this context. moreover, pyd aims to create community connections, a sense of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 503 purpose, and commitment to civic action for the greater good (lerner, 2004). these aspects are consistent with socio-centric and collectivist values common among ugandan cultural beliefs, which increases the acceptability of using a pyd framework for adolescent intervention and research or assessment in uganda. despite the potential benefits of using a pyd approach with youth internationally, there is a paucity of research in this area. as arnett (2008) explicated, there is an unreasonable research focus on the american population, to the detriment of the other 95% of the population of this planet. this disparity may be especially present within the african continent given the limited research capacities of african universities (atuahene, 2011) and its historic neglect by psychologists. although government and non-government programs exist to promote pyd, there is a dearth of research regarding such programs, and adolescent psychology in general. developmental assets profile the developmental assets framework, which organizes youths’ strengths according to relationships, supports, and personal values, is one useful system for research in pyd (benson, 1997). the framework is based on 40 assets measured by the developmental assets profile (dap), which groups assets into internal and external domains. the internal assets categories include commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity, while external assets categories include family and community support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time. scores can also be parsed into the context areas of personal, social, family, school, and community. although norms based on a representative national sample are not yet available, the search institute (2004) conducted a field study of u.s. american youth to serve as a preliminary point of comparison for research and fieldwork. this study included a diverse sample of 2,428 boys and girls (grades 6 through 12) from public middle schools and high schools in oregon and minnesota, representing hispanic, american indian, asian, and multiracial youth (search institute, 2004). studies utilizing the dap suggest that u.s. youth with more assets were less likely to engage in risky behaviors (e.g., benson, roehlkepartain, & sesma, 1999) and more likely to endorse indicators of thriving (benson et al., 1999; scales, benson, leffert, & blyth, 2000). higher scores on the dap have been reported by girls compared to boys and middle school students compared to high school students (e.g., leffert et al., 1998). recently, the dap has begun to be studied with non-western youth (scales, 2011; wilson, 2010). scales (2011) reported the data from the use of the dap in five countries. the psychometric properties of the dap were generally acceptable within these samples suggesting “that the dap is usable across a variety of global cultural settings” (scales, 2011, p. 635). although these results are promising, they are limited; for example, no african or south american countries were included. further research is necessary if the dap is to be reliably used in a wide variety of international youth settings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 504 despite the limited data available at this time, the dap is potentially applicable in a number of international applied settings. for example, the dap may be used by school and mental health personnel as an individual assessment tool or to assess group level assets in settings such as youth programs or schools. this information can be used to highlight strengths and also to identify potential areas for intervention. furthermore, when the dap is used in applied research it can help elucidate patterns of youth development across the globe, which is especially important in understudied regions like east africa. the present study given the challenges facing ugandan youth and the potential applicability of the developmental assets framework, we wanted to explore the dap as a viable tool for advancing pyd practice and research in uganda. the dap’s extensive psychometric development and inclusion of a wide range of developmental assets makes it a potentially useful tool in a variety of programmatic and research contexts. furthermore, the dap’s ability to highlight different categories and contexts of pyd allow for the tailoring of pyd and other youth programs to meet specific youth needs in a given community. the study was exploratory and discovery-oriented. we administered the dap along with measures of self-efficacy and civic attitudes and skills. we hoped the dap would demonstrate acceptable internal consistencies and demonstrate convergent validity with other pyd measures (i.e., self-efficacy and civic action). based on previous studies (leffert et al., 1998), we predicted that the dap would be related to socio-demographic factors (i.e., socio-economic status, age, gender). we expected some variability between the overall profiles of developmental assets for ugandan youth in our sample and previous dap studies. method participants participants were ugandan youth members of school-based wildlife clubs of uganda (wcu; n = 68; ages 14 to 23, mean age = 18.63) in two forest areas: kitubulu and mpanga. wcu’s mission is to promote the conservation and scientific study of natural resources and wildlife in uganda. the wide age range reflects differential entry points and access to school. participants were unmarried school students, and thus locally, fall into the category of “youth”. the majority of participants were male (n = 37; 54%) and most participants spoke three languages: luganda, english, and their tribal language. most students’ parents had some education, with the majority of fathers completing some secondary school and mothers completing some primary school (see table 1). procedures international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 505 this study was a part of a larger project involving youths’ participation in communitycentered conservation initiatives in one of two forest areas of uganda (see johnson-pynn & johnson, 2005, 2010; russell, johnson-pynn, johnson, & lugumya, 2006). participants were welcomed to the workshop setting (see appendix for wcu and workshop details) and invited to participate in the study. workshops were facilitated by ugandan youth educators, ugandan biological scientists, and two u.s. psychologists. students completed measures before workshop programming began. measures were completed in english, the official language of uganda. program staff members were available for clarification. all procedures were approved by the institutional review board at the university of mississippi. measures developmental assets profile. all participants completed the 58-item developmental assets profile or dap (search institute, 2004) in which participants indicate the degree to which statements represent them (e.g., “i deal with frustration in positive ways”) by selecting from four response choices ranging from: “not at all or rarely” to “extremely or almost always”. based on a sample of 6th through 12th graders in minnesota and oregon, good internal consistencies were obtained for the dap’s total (α = .97) and subscale scores (α = .81 .95). a sub-sample (n = 225) from the same participant pool produced acceptable test-retest reliability values across a span of two weeks: total score (r = .79), internal assets (r = .86), external assets (r = .84). scores on the positive identity subscale in the dap significantly correlated with scores on the rosenberg’s self-esteem scale (r = .70; p < .001) and the harter’s global self-worth scale (r = .72; p < .001) providing evidence for convergent validity of the dap (search institute, 2004). in terms of criterion validity, dap scores for students in schools with greater resources have been found to be higher than scores for students from less resource-rich schools (search institute, 2004). general self-efficacy scale (gse). the general self-efficacy scale or gse (schwarzer & jerusalem, 1995) is a 10-item scale developed to assess the respondents’ general confidence in coping with a range of stressful circumstances. respondents endorse their agreement with each item (e.g., “i can always manage to solve difficult problems if i try hard enough”) on a 4-point likert-type scale that ranges from 1 (“not at all true”) to 4 (“exactly true”). this measure has been translated into 28 languages, based on the german and english versions of the gse scale. scholz, doña, sud, and schwarzer (2002) reported internal consistency values (cronbach α) from 25 different countries that ranged from .75 to .91. over a one-year period, schwarzer and jerusalem (as cited in scholz et al., 2002) reported test-retest reliability coefficients of r = .75 and r = .55 for teachers and students respectively. the gse has also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity (schwarzer, schmitz, & tang, 2000). additionally, confirmatory factor analyses with international samples support the unidimensionality of the scale (scholz et al., 2002; schwarzer & born, 1997). civic attitudes and skills questionnaire (casq). the civic attitudes and skills questionnaire or casq (moely, mercer, ilustre, miron, & mcfarland, 2002) is a 45-item international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 506 measure designed to evaluate students’ self-perceptions about their own attitudes, skills, and behavioral intentions that may be influenced by participation in service-learning activities. composed of six scales derived from a principal component analysis (civic action, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, political awareness, leadership skills, social justice attitudes, and diversity attitudes), it requires that respondents indicate their agreement with each item (e.g., “i understand the issues facing this nation”) on a 5-point likert-type scale that ranges from 1 (“completely disagree”) to 5 (“agree completely”). in terms of reliability, moely et al. (2002) reported cronbach’s α values that ranged from .69 to .88 for each subscale. test-retest reliability values over a three month period ranged from .56 to .81 and the casq scales also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity (moely et al., 2002). analysis in order to explore the psychometric viability of the dap with a ugandan sample, we first calculated descriptive statistics for all dap scales. we then calculated cronbach’s α for all scores on the dap and computed bivariate correlations between the dap and other pyd measures. next, we conducted independent samples t-tests to compare total asset scores across gender and economic status, and a bivariate correlation to assess the relation between age and dap total score. results the total asset score for the dap in our sample was high (median = 49, mean = 48.51, standard deviation = 6.52). eighty-seven percent of the sample reported an excellent (44%) or good (43%) level of total assets based on the descriptions suggested by the search institute (2004). throughout the asset categories and context areas, the majority of participants reported abundant or good levels of assets (see table 2). asset category scores ranged from 12 to 30 (the maximum possible score) and context area scores range from 8 to 30. commitment to learning, composed of items such as “i care about school”, was the highest rated asset category (m = 25.9, sd = 3.57). conversely, empowerment, which includes items such as “i feel safe and secure at home”, was the lowest rated category (m = 23.1, sd = 4.53). within the context areas, family (m = 25.9, sd = 3.38) was rated highest and community (m = 23.0, sd = 4.02) was rated lowest. the family context area is comprised of items such as “i have a family that gives me love and support” while the community features items such as “i am serving others in my community”. means and standard deviations for all measures within our sample are reported in table 3. preliminary analyses of the dap yielded very good internal consistency (α = .91) for the total asset score in our sample, using the guidelines proposed by devellis (2003). internal consistencies for internal and external assets were .88 and .81, respectively. for the asset categories, internal consistencies were .74 (positive identity), .68 (social competencies), .68 (boundaries and expectations), .67 (commitment to learning), .67 (support), .62 (positive values), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 507 .59 (empowerment), and .32 (constructive use of time). for the context area scales internal consistencies were .82 (family), .77 (community), .76 (social), .74 (school), and .66 (personal). correlations with pyd constructs as expected, the dap was related to several other pyd scales. the dap total asset score correlated significantly with scores on the self-efficacy measure, the gse (r = .36, p = .003) and four of the six casq subscales: civic action (r = .40, p = .001), interpersonal and problemsolving skills (r = .38, p = .001), political awareness (r = .25, p = .038), and leadership skills (r = .31, p = .010). at the subscale level, all dap scores correlated significantly with the gse or casq subscales excluding the boundaries and expectations, support, and family subscales (see table 4). to our surprise, dap scores did not correlate significantly with the social justice or diversity attitudes scales of the casq. closer inspection of table 4 reveals that the internal assets generally have a stronger correlation with the other constructs measured within this study compared to external assets correlation with these constructs. we decided to conduct a post hoc analysis to examine these differential relations. to test the differential strength of the relations between external and internal assets and other variables, we used chen and popovich’s (2002) test for differences between non-independent correlations for variables that were significantly related to both external and internal assets (gse, interpersonal problem solving, civic action). results indicated that the internal assets were more strongly related to interpersonal problem solving scores than external assets (t (65) = 1.736, p < .05). differences in the strengths of relations were not present for the gse or civic action scores. demographic factors the dap total score was not significantly related to age (r = -.04, p > .05). also, the participants who did not have enough money to meet basic needs (m = 49.3) did not have a significantly different dap total score (t (65) = -.776, p > .05) compared to those who usually or always had enough money to meet basic need (m = 48.0). however, females (m = 50.2) had a higher mean total asset score than males (m = 47.1, t (66) = 2.00, p = .049). discussion in order for empirical research to continue to develop in this area, psychometrically sound instruments must be adapted or created; one cannot assume measurement equivalence across different cultures and contexts. to that end, this study attempted to explore the viability of using the dap in a ugandan youth sample. scores were relatively high on the dap in this ugandan sample with a mean and median total score of 49 as compared to a median score of 39 from two dap field studies of u.s. youth (search institute, 2004). this result was surprising given the higher level of situational and daily international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 508 life challenges faced by ugandan youth as compared to u.s. youth. in the current sample 84% of youth reported that they were not always able to meet basic needs, yet 87% reported good or excellent level of assets. this is consistent with survey results reported from the pew research center (2010) in which sub-saharan africans (despite their low rankings on human development indicators) reported higher rates of optimism compared to individuals from all regions (united nations, 2010). the mean total score is also considerably higher than scores from any country reported by scales (2011). interestingly, our samples had higher scores than youth in bangladesh and the philippines who had recently completed pyd programs (scales, 2011). at the level of asset categories, participants displayed a relatively high level of assets. considering all asset categories and context areas, only a single score was lower for our sample as compared to samples from five non-western countries and the u.s. field trial of the dap (scales, 2011). specifically, bangladeshi youth who had completed a pyd program scored higher in the family context area than our sample (scales, 2011). additionally, in five of eight asset categories (commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, positive identity, and constructive use of time) the present sample reported a higher mean level of assets than a sample of adolescent competitive swimmers in canada from both large and small communities (fraser-thomas, côté, & macdonald, 2010). only in the asset category of empowerment did swimmers from both small and large communities report a higher mean level of assets than the ugandan youth participants of this study. the high scores may reflect selection bias among our participants, who were not only attending school but also were involved in an extracurricular environmental club, potentially indicating access to more supports than typical ugandan youth. similar results have been reported with a larger sample of east african youth in conservation clubs who scored higher than comparison samples or reported norms on measures of pyd (johnson-pynn & johnson, 2010). although selection bias may be playing some role, these results may also reflect a method bias (e.g., extreme response style) that can be present when measures are transported to a new context (byrne et al., 2009). females reported a higher level of overall assets as compared to males within our sample. although this is somewhat surprising given the status of women in developing countries like uganda, it is consistent with reports from u.s. samples that note high levels of assets among girls (e.g., leffert et al., 1998). it is possible that while girls may have fewer resources and opportunities, their roles and responsibilities may facilitate their personal growth. it is also possible that selection bias is operating to create this gender difference given that these girls were exceptional for uganda; they are female adolescents who are enrolled in school and participating in an extracurricular activity. further research is necessary to substantiate this difference and explore its potential implications. results from this study indicate very good internal consistencies (using the guidelines proposed by devellis, 2003) for the total, internal, and external assets scores of dap and respectable internal consistency for the context scales of the dap. two asset category scales international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 509 (constructive use of time and empowerment) yielded low internal consistencies. these category scales also were the least internally consistent of the dap subscales during the initial field trial of the dap, and had the lowest alphas among non-white participants (search institute, 2004). furthermore, the majority of non-western youth samples reported by scales (2011) demonstrated less than promising reliability (i.e., α < .60) for these scales. users should be cautious when interpreting these scales without further psychometric development. hence, the findings of this study also point toward future research that can improve the psychometric properties of these scales. the developmental assets correlated moderately with other pyd constructs, although the correlations were much smaller in magnitude than the developmental assets’ correlations with positive measures in u.s. samples (search institute, 2004). the correlations with other pyd constructs offer preliminary evidence of the convergent validity of the dap in a ugandan context, but further investigation is necessary to substantiate this finding. generally, internal assets appeared to be stronger predictors of the other pyd constructs measured in this study than the external assets, especially in the case of interpersonal problem solving. a possible explanation for this finding is that the other constructs, measured by the casq and gse, could also be classified as “internal” (i.e., an individual quality). it is possible that if more contextual variables had been measured (e.g., community efficacy), the external assets would have been more strongly related to these constructs. further studies including both personal and contextual variables can further clarify the discriminant validity of these dap subscales. notwithstanding identified areas needing more research, results from this study support the notion that pyd is a promising framework when used with ugandan youth populations. youth in developing countries often receive programmatic attention only after they engage in risky behavior and/or experience negative outcomes (naudeau et al., 2008). yet, as naudeau and colleagues note, it is more beneficial for youth and less costly for society to focus on pyd and prevention rather than post hoc interventions. indeed, patel, flisher, nikapota, and malhotra (2008) have noted that proactive community-based mental health promotion programs focusing on reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors may be the best way to meet the mental health needs of youth from lowand middle-income countries. the potential benefits of such programming for youth and their communities are exemplified by a statement from a youth member of wcu: “i think i will solve the problems by educating my community members what i have learned and put into practice.” further demonstrating the empowerment and efficacy experienced by pyd participants, a second wcu member declared: “i should act as an example to my community. i will be able to mobilize people to work together and conserve the environment for a better future.” additionally, an assessment of developmental assets may be useful for social workers, teachers, health care workers, and others, such as non-government organizations (ngos) working with youth populations in uganda. while a pyd framework offers many benefits, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 510 measurement of clinical variables and risk factors (e.g., depression, ptsd, substance use, exposure to violence, civil unrest) should be included to give a full snapshot of youth development internationally. this is especially important in countries like uganda where the landscape of youth development is characterized by such multiple threats as poverty, illness, and civil conflict (e.g., bolton et al., 2004). future research should continue within the pyd paradigm and examine the dap and other measures associated with behavioral outcomes relevant to ugandan and other international youth. although the results of this study show promise concerning the use of the dap and pyd within a ugandan population, they must be interpreted with caution for a few reasons. first, our sample included some participants who were older (ages ranged from 14 to 23 years old) than the recommended age range for the dap (11 to 18 years old). however, we found no relation between the dap and age. additionally, other international samples (e.g., the lebanese sample within scales, 2011) have successfully included participants in their early 20s. second, there is some concern about the conceptual equivalence across cultures of some dap items. even though normed assessments like the dap give us the convenience of comparing developmental assets across international populations, the singular use of it constitutes a limitation to our study since pre-designated items and response options developed for use with one population (e.g., american youths) may not function the same way when transported to another population of a different culture (e.g., ugandan youths). for example, initial pilot data with a swahili version of the dap indicated that concepts included in the dap, such as “family”, “neighborhood”, and “caring” have a differential meaning in an east african context (cupit, 2011). concerns about method bias, differential item functioning, expectancy bias, response sets, and cultural distrust also remain. further psychometric studies of the dap are needed. other limitations are the small sample size and the lack of qualitative data. larger scale quantitative studies are needed to further assess the dap, including factor analyses. at this stage, qualitative studies are also important, as social, cultural, and ecological factors will shape a society’s attitudes about youth. open-ended interviews with youth, teachers, parents, village elders, and professionals could reveal unique and varying perspectives on developmental assets (popay, rogers, & williams, 1998). more studies should gear toward adapting measures for maximum validity within particular contexts, especially in areas of the world such as uganda, which are ignored by the majority of psychological research. despite these limitations, we believe that this study provides a starting point for further investigations of the dap as a framework for assessing youth development in a way that is relevant in uganda. future studies can build on this work by evaluating pyd in diverse ugandan youth and other international youth samples. ultimately, further research is necessary to highlight the important role that a pyd approach can play internationally. conclusion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 511 active participation in communities may be especially critical for youth living in poverty or whose daily lives are threatened by environmental degradation or civil conflict. in 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(2010). adaptation of surveys across cultures: the dap in japan. retrieved november 26, 2010 from http://www.l.yamaguchipu.ac.jp/archives/2010/part1/01.intercultural%20studies/inter_08_wilson.pdf http://www.uydel.org/downloads/police%20meeting%20report%20-%20csec%20final%201-20111102-163707.pdf� http://www.uydel.org/downloads/police%20meeting%20report%20-%20csec%20final%201-20111102-163707.pdf� http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/� http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2963.htm� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 516 table 1: socio-economic status of participants socio-economic indicator response percentage of sample ability to meet basic needs do not meet 32 usually meet 52 always meet 15 more than enough 0 no response 2 father’s educational level none 4 primary school 16 secondary school 32 some college or technical 19 college graduate 7 graduate degree 15 do not know 4 no response 2 mother’s educational level none 9 primary school 28 secondary school 34 some college or technical 10 college graduate 6 graduate degree 9 do not know 3 no response 2 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 517 table 2: asset levels for asset categories and context areas dap scale level of assets (%) excellent/abundant good fair low asset categories positive values 41 46 13 0 social competencies 41 40 18 2 positive identity 40 28 28 4 empowerment 25 46 25 4 boundaries & expectations 56 28 16 0 constructive use of time 43 34 21 3 support 43 30 24 4 commitment to learning 68 22 9 2 context areas personal 35 49 16 0 social 32 49 18 2 family 59 24 15 3 school 60 31 9 0 community 27 46 27 2 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 518 table 3: means and standard deviations for pyd measures measure subscale total (n = 68) mean (sd) dap external asset 24.00 (3.59) internal asset 24.51 (3.40) dap asset categories commitment to learning 25.91 (3.57) positive values 24.39 (3.28) social competencies 24.18 (4.20) positive identity 23.54 (4.88) empowerment 23.06 (4.53) boundaries & expectations 24.94 (3.83) constructive use of time 24.47 (4.70) support 23.53 (4.53) dap context areas personal 24.27 (3.56) social 23.81 (3.97) family 25.08 (4.55) school 25.85 (3.28) community 22.97 (4.02) casq civic action 4.52 (0.40) interpersonal problem solving 4.07 (0.54) political awareness 3.51 (0.87) leadership skills 3.67 (0.66) social justice 3.68 (0.51) diversity attitudes 3.72 (0.79) gse* 2.16 (0.43) note. * = no subscales; dap = developmental assets profile; casq = civic attitudes and skills questionnaire; gse = general self-efficacy scale. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 519 table 4: correlations between dap scores and pyd constructs pyd constructs gse civic action ipps political awareness leadership skills social justice diversity attitudes dap total .36** .40** .38** .25* .31** .15 .03 internal .38** .37** .43** .28* .40** .09 .09 external .29* .37** .29* .20 .19 .18 -.04 positive values .39** .40** .38** .33** .38** .21 .03 social competencies .18 .21 .31* .07 .32** -.05 .13 positive identity .43** .35** .42** .31* .34** .07 .07 empowerment .28* .46** .29* .21 .21 .08 -.06 boundaries .21 .22 .16 .14 .10 .24 .02 use of time .27* .29* .41** .10 .14 .06 .00 support .20 .24 .06 .19 .16 .21 -.09 commitment to learning .29* .29* .35** .25* .31** .13 .06 personal .34* .24* .31* .24* .38* .11 .02 social .27* .35** .34** .19 .25* .06 .11 family .14 .16 .12 -.02 .17 .23 .00 school .31* .34** .23 .34** .21 .21 .03 community .39** .49** .47** .36** .31** .07 -.05 note: gse = general self-efficacy; ipps = interpersonal problem solving; * p < 0.05; ** p < .01. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 500–520 520 appendix description of youth programs program description pedagogical approaches content/ topics wildlife clubs of uganda a non-government organization, begun in 1975, designed to instill pride in uganda’s natural heritage and to promote conservation and sustainable development; youth participate in schoolbased clubs. hands-on learning via meaningful community projects; youth involvement in community education about the environment; weekly meetings facilitate social bonding and connection. focus on community concerns such as agroforestry (tree nurseries), income generation projects (bee keeping and ecotourism), anti-poaching, sanitation, and community health issues (e.g., malaria). national geographic conservation trust workshops twoand three-day residential workshops held at two ugandan national forest preserves; attended by wcu members from different clubs; designed to supplement regular wcu programs. youth mentoring by university scientists; hands-on field research to assess biodiversity and health of forests; nature immersion; bringing diverse groups (and tribes) together; film showing and discussion of an inconvenient truth. focus on global issues such as climate change (global warming), biodiversity and cultural diversity, interspecies dependence, social and political context, and scientific basis for research and action. the context of youth in uganda uganda, a lush equatorial country situated on lake victoria, the source of the nile river, represents one of the most diverse ecosystems in africa (u.s. department of state, 2010) and has served as a focal point for anthropologists and environmental r... the high scores may reflect selection bias among our participants, who were not only attending school but also were involved in an extracurricular environmental club, potentially indicating access to more supports than typical ugandan youth. similar r... microsoft word 07 core_connectors.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220657 the core connectors initiative: development of a youth mental health program fred chou, kesha pradhan, and carmen huang abstract: this paper provides an overview of the development and field-test evaluation of a group-based youth mental health promotion program known as the core connectors initiative (cci). cci is a program that aims to help youth gain mental health knowledge and peer support competencies, and reinforce positive help-seeking behaviour. the purpose of the study was to evaluate and refine cci by examining whether it attains its training objectives of mental health literacy, gatekeeper training, and fostering positive youth development, while exploring helpful and unhelpful participant experiences of the program. cci was field-tested during the latter half of the 2017/2018 school year at 3 different locations: a private school, a community centre, and a public school. using mixed methods, the evaluation yielded information on the strengths and areas of growth for future program development. the quantitative data were collected from a sample of 29 youth, while the qualitative data were collected from 9 youth using the enhanced critical incident technique. the converging data highlight the importance of connection, the value of critical mental health literacy, and the importance of clarifying expectations. the lessons learned from implementing this program can be applied to other youth mental health promotion programs. keywords: youth, mental health promotion, mental health literacy, program development, program evaluation acknowledgement: funding for this project was supported by mitacs accelerate grant and adam’s apples foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts the core connectors initiative program. the first author was the developer of the program. fred chou phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in counselling psychology at the department of educational psychology and leadership studies at the university of victoria, po box 1700 stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: fchou@uvic.ca kesha pradhan ma is a doctoral student in counselling psychology at the department of educational and counselling psychology, and special education at the university of british columbia, 2125 main mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: kesha@student.ubc.ca carmen huang med is a registered clinical counsellor at touchstone family association, 210-3031 viking way, richmond, bc v6v 1w1. email: chuang@touchfam.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 31 mental health concerns are becoming more widespread for youth. based on analysis of the canadian community health survey (n = 71,700), the prevalence of negative mental health outcomes for adolescents (ages 12–24) has increased from 2011 to 2018 (wiens et al., 2020). for instance, diagnosed mood and anxiety disorders increased over this period from 4.3% to 7.8% and 6.0% to 12.9% respectively, while past-year suicidality increased from 4.3% to 7.8%. other associated trends indicate that suicide rates (per 100,000) have been increasing since the 1950s, from 7.3 in the 1950s to 12.8 in the 1990s (canadian association for suicide prevention, 2009). skinner and mcfaull (2012) reported that suicide was the second leading cause of death amongst youth in canada. these trends in youth mental health highlight a growing need for preventive efforts through mental health promotion and literacy (mental health commission of canada, 2016; wiens et al., 2020). our study was situated in british columbia, a canadian province where 15% of students aged 12 to 19 (n = 38,015) endorsed having some form of mental illness, including anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (smith et al., 2019). the students also indicated having difficulty managing stress (17%), considering suicide (17%), attempting suicide (5%), and self-harm (17%). these numbers are consistent with the international and canadian prevalence of mental health concerns (see kieling et al., 2011; wiens et al., 2020). in smith et al.’s (2019) survey, 50% of the respondents identified wanting to learn more about their mental health — specifically, how to manage symptoms of depression, stress, and anxiety, and how to support their peers — indicating a desire for mental health literacy. in light of these trends, a communityand school-based mental health promotion program was developed and field-tested. this program, known as the core connectors initiative (cci), trained youth to gain peer support competencies and mental health knowledge by working with them, in a dialogical group-based format, to take leadership in addressing mental health concerns in their school communities. the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of cci, report the results of the field-test evaluation, and discuss lessons learned for future youth mental health promotion programs. the core connectors initiative: program description the core connectors initiative (cci) is a peer gatekeeper-training (gkt) leadership program developed in british columbia that incorporates a structured mental health literacy component. cci aims to train youth leaders to be mental health advocates and peer gatekeepers in their school communities. the core components of the program involve: (a) mental health literacy, (b) peer gkt, and (c) fostering positive youth development (pyd). cci follows the mandate set by the united nations convention on the rights of the child (1989), which asserts that children and youth have a right to make decisions regarding programs that affect their lives (e.g., schools and communities) and have a fundamental right to express themselves (see articles 12, 13). cci draws from freire’s (1970) philosophy of praxis, the iterative process of critical reflection and social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 32 action, and critical pedagogy. the manifestation of these principles is demonstrated in its dialogical approach to program facilitation and its two-phase programming, with a training phase and an action phase. these two phases are based on freire’s praxis, with phase 1 fostering reflexivity of lived experiences of mental health and phase 2 using this reflection to facilitate social action. the training phase (phase 1) of the program involves 14 modules that focus on the following topics: understanding mental health and stigma, peer support skills (e.g., active listening, empathy, how to support a friend), mapping local support networks, managing stress, suicide prevention, and positive mental health and resilience. during the action phase (phase 2), youth participants who have completed the training phase have the option to form localized action teams to advocate and raise awareness about mental health, and take part in providing peer support and gatekeeper efforts. throughout the program, youth are supervised by two facilitators trained in counselling. mental health promotion and literacy mental health promotion involves the process of enhancing the capacity of individuals and communities to take ownership of improving their mental health (joubert et al., 1996). its goals are to increase protective factors, decrease risk factors, and reduce inequities (kobus-matthews et al., 2014). mental health literacy refers to knowledge about mental health and comprises the following components: (a) understanding how to obtain and maintain positive mental health; (b) understanding mental disorders and their treatments; (c) decreasing stigma associated with mental illness; and (d) enhancing help-seeking behaviours (kutcher et al., 2016). mental health literacy is considered to be one of the outcomes of mental health promotion as the knowledge of mental health encourages agency with regard to enhancing one’s own positive behaviours relating to mental health (bjørnsen et al., 2017; jorm, 2012). meta-analyses and reviews on mental health promotion among youth and in schools indicate that these interventions positively impact social, emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes (clarke, 2019; o’reilly et al., 2018; roach, 2018). studies that focus on school-based mental health literacy programs show that these bring significant increases in knowledge of mental health and illness and fostering help-seeking intentions (mansfield et al., 2020; ojio et al., 2015). one mental health literacy program involved the integration of a standardized mental health curriculum into high schools in canada (milin et al., 2016). utilizing a randomized controlled trial (n = 534), the study showed that the curriculum resulted in a significant reduction in mental health stigma and increase in mental health knowledge compared to the control group (milin et al., 2016). despite positive outcomes, there is need for more research on school-based mental health promotion and literacy programs (o’reilly et al., 2018; salerno, 2016; wei et al., 2013). efforts to bring greater health literacy to schools typically focus on knowledge dissemination as opposed to opportunities to critically understand and act upon the information provided to youth (peralta et al., 2017; sykes et al., 2013). mental health literacy in schools tends to be based on mental disorder literacy as opposed to critical and culturally sensitive models of mental health (mansfield et al., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 33 2020). meanwhile, best practices on youth mental health promotion highlight the need for skillbuilding and empowerment (kobus-mathews et al., 2014). taken together, the current challenges and opportunities for mental health promotion and literacy illustrate a need to move towards critical mental health literacy that is adapted to adolescent learning, incorporates critical pedagogy, and involves action-oriented skill-building initiatives (kobus-mathews et al., 2014; mansfield et al., 2020; peralta et al., 2017). peer gatekeeper-training and positive youth development suicide prevention programs within schools can be categorized in the following manner: curricula for all students, skill-building programs for students at risk of suicide, and peer leader programs (substance abuse and mental health services administration [samhsa], 2012). curricula for all students have a broad scope that focuses on general suicide prevention, typically in a classroom setting. skill-building programs are more targeted and aim to build skills for coping with mental health challenges among at-risk populations. lastly, peer leader programs identify students who are capable of helping at-risk peers, building connections with other students, and improving school environments (samhsa, 2012). based on samhsa’s (2012) categorization, cci can be situated as a peer leadership program that focuses on developing peer support competencies and youth leadership through peer gkt. peer support serves as a protective factor against negative mental health (e.g., suicide, depression, anxiety) and is associated with positive mental health (roach, 2018), while gkt focuses on training members in a community to identify people at risk for suicide and enhancing help-seeking behaviours for target populations (robinson-link et al., 2020; wyman et al., 2010). peer-based youth gkt is a promising preventive approach for youth suicide and mental health concerns as it can enhance mental health literacy and help youth identify peers at risk (wyman et al., 2010). although there are several gkt programs that focus on suicide prevention for youth, these programs usually target adult supports such as parents, teachers, and school staff to increase knowledge about youth suicide behaviour and risk factors. some of the more popular programs include qpr (question. persuade. refer) and kognito (robinson-link, 2020; wyman et al., 2010). though these models are beneficial in enhancing suicide prevention knowledge among gatekeepers, research indicates that gatekeeper training for adults in schools is insufficient to change their suicide prevention behaviours, thus indicating the need for a more comprehensive approach (robinson-link et al., 2020). furthermore, there are potential limitations to adult gatekeepers, as youth are more likely to confide in their peers about distressing issues and typically seek help from their peers (gilchrist & sullivan, 2006; smith et al., 2019). there are several peer-based youth leadership gkt programs, including how not to keep a secret, students for students, just talk about it, connect youth leaders, and native h.o.p.e. (samhsa, 2012; suicide prevention resource centre, 2021); however, most programs have not been empirically studied. programs covered in at least one published study include the lifesavers training program (walker et al., 2009), sources of strength (wyman et al., 2010), saving and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 34 empowering young lives in europe (seyle) awareness program (wasserman et al., 2012), and, in canada, the alive group (also known as youth as gatekeepers; ohlmann et al., 2014; wicker, 2012). these peer gkt programs show positive benefits for the youth peer leaders who are involved in them, including “a significant increase in knowledge and positive attitudes towards suicide prevention, and also self-esteem” (walker et al., 2009, p. 335), enhanced knowledge about mental health (wasserman et al., 2012), increased positive coping and connection to adults (wyman et al., 2010), and perceived interpersonal resilience (ohlmann et al., 2014). the dissemination of knowledge about suicide prevention, mental health, and peer connection in gkt programs can be understood as a way to promote pyd (lobenstein, 2018). pyd aims to enhance youths’ strengths, as opposed to focusing on deficits, by establishing supportive contexts and opportunities to help them flourish in their environments (taylor et al., 2017). school-based interventions that target social and emotional learning can build on pyd in the areas of well-being and social behaviours (curran & wexler, 2016; taylor et al., 2017). focusing on pyd can be a broad strategy for suicide prevention in school as it can facilitate connection within schools and communities, thus enhancing protective factors against suicide (white, 2016). there are limitations to the peer gkt training programs discussed above. studies of such programs tend to focus on the program’s influence on youth leaders and thus do not make clear whether the program contributes to changes in suicide prevention behaviour in school settings. all of the programs except alive and seyle’s awareness program were developed and situated in the united states. the sociohistorical context of canadian education differs from that of the united states to the extent that contextually relevant programming is needed (robson, 2019). lastly, mental health awareness and literacy appear to be core components of peer gkt programs; however, the programs approach these components didactically. to engage with mental health awareness and literacy in a way that is consistent with the critical mental health literacy model, these programs should move towards a youth-driven critical and dialogical approach to discussing mental health (mansfield et al., 2020). purpose of the study a partnership between the centre for group counselling and trauma at the university of british columbia and the adam’s apples foundation (a non profit organization) was formed to field test cci and to conduct a formative evaluation of the training phase (phase 1). the cci program was field-tested during the latter half of the 2017/2018 school year at three different locations: a private school, a community centre, and a public school. as the purpose of the study was to further develop the cci training, it was not necessary to examine the action phase (phase 2). as phase 2 is youth-led and contextually based, it would be fluid and operate differently at each of the sites, whereas phase 1 is structured and is conducted similarly at each site, making it amenable to further program refinement. the evaluation focused on whether the cci training phase was able to meet its training objectives — mental health literacy, gkt, and fostering pyd — and examined how it could be improved. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 35 method an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was used for the formative program evaluation to assess the cci (creswell & plano clark, 2011). this approach involved the collection and analysis of quantitative data followed by qualitative data. in this study the quantitative data were collected from nearly all the participants who took part in cci (n = 29), while the qualitative data were collected from nine randomly selected participants who completed the program. the purpose of the quantitative data was to determine the effects of cci on mental health literacy, gkt, and pyd; the qualitative portion identified features of the program that were helpful, a hindrance, or missing, and gave insight into what could be improved for future implementation. the mixed-methods approach allowed us to determine whether cci was able to address its outcome goals and to utilize qualitative data to provide a richer understanding of participant experience in order to offer a more nuanced explanation of the quantitative analysis. the timeline of the field test and evaluation is illustrated in table 1. table 1. explanatory sequential mixed-methods research overview step procedure outcome step 1: field test preparations coordination with 3 sites training of program facilitators (n = 5) purposive sampling of youth participants (n = 30) establish conditions for program and research implementation step 2: quantitative data collection demographic and pretest measures (n = 30) field test of cci program post-test measures of participants who completed the program (n = 29) demographic information pretest and post-test measures for 29 participants step 3: quantitative data collection spss data analysis quantitative analysis results step 4: qualitative data collection recruitment of nine participants enhanced critical incident technique (ecit) for interviews transcription of interviews audio recordings transcriptions step 5: qualitative data analysis atlas.ti analysis thematic analysis based on ecit helping, hindering, and wishlist categories step 6: integration of quantitative and qualitative results explanation of quantitative and qualitative data discussion and limitations implications for future programming step 7: revision of cci program utilizing the analysis to revise the cci program based on participant feedback revised version of cci program for future study international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 36 participants all procedures of the study were approved by the institutional review board at the university of british columbia before any participants were recruited. purposive sampling recruited 30 youth participants from three different sites (group 1: n = 13; group 2: n = 10; group 3: n = 7) during the latter half of the 2017/2018 school year. cci program coordinators collaborated with administrative staff, teachers, and school counsellors at each site to identify potential candidates (15–18 years old) who were interested in learning more about mental health. of the 30 recruited participants, 29 completed phase 1 of the cci program; one member did not complete the program, resulting in a 3.33% attrition rate. overall, the participating youth ranged from 15 to 17 years of age (m = 15.35, sd = 0.55). the majority of participants were female (65.5%) and in grade 10 (79.3%). the youth were largely from european (51.7%) or asian (41.4%) backgrounds, with the remainder being of mixed backgrounds (6.9%). youth who completed the cci training phase served as the sampling frame to recruit for the qualitative interviews. participants were randomly sampled from each group and invited to share their experiences of the cci program. ten youth participants were invited for interviews, with nine agreeing to participate (group 1: n = 3; group 2: n = 5; group 3: n = 1). overall, their ages ranged from 15 to 17 years old with five participants from grade 10 and four from grade 11. six participants were female and the majority of the participants identified as chinese. youth were interviewed individually at the site where they had participated in the cci program. the interviews were an hour long. researcher description the three authors were all involved in different aspects of the research process. at the time of the study, the first author was a doctoral candidate in a counselling psychology program. he designed the cci program and coordinated with the non-profit organization that hosted the program. the two other authors were master’s students in counselling psychology. to limit the potential bias of the first author having a dual role, this author was not involved in any program facilitation or data collection. the first author was involved in the qualitative analysis; however, credibility checks were incorporated into the procedures to ensure the trustworthiness of the analysis. the second author was also involved as a facilitator and research assistant and, to address any potential bias, this author was not present when the quantitative data were collected for the group she facilitated. the third author conducted the qualitative interviews. there were no prior researcher–participant relationships or interactions that would have impacted the research process. data collection the cci program’s training phase (phase 1) ran from february to june in 2018. youth met for 1.5 hours at the same day and time each week for 14 weeks in a confidential space within their respective schools or a community centre. each week focused on one of the 14 modules, in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 37 order listed above. the cci used a dialogical approach to facilitation; as such, it was situated in the perspectives that the youth brought to the program to ensure ecological validity. youth were not provided with any additional incentives or compensation for their participation. altogether, the program was implemented by five (two male, three female) facilitators with backgrounds in counselling psychology. two of the facilitators were clinical counsellors, while three facilitators were graduate students completing their training in counselling psychology. each site had two facilitators, one a clinical counsellor and one a graduate student, with one of the counsellors working at two different sites. the facilitators received training and biweekly supervision from the first author, who at that time was also a clinical counsellor. youth identified as candidates for the cci program were provided information about the program and consent procedures prior to starting the program. as the youth participants were all over the age of 15 and considered to be mature minors, the research team, with approval from the international review board, decided that participants could provide their own consent to take part in the project. on the first day, questions about the program and the research evaluation of the program were addressed and youth were invited to complete a written informed consent form. the consent form covered involvement in the cci program and the quantitative and qualitative evaluation procedures. the participants’ guardians were given a letter about the cci program and its evaluation and invited to discuss their children’s involvement with the research team. all the participants consented to take part in the project and no participant guardians questioned their children’s involvement. baseline quantitative measures were collected from participants on the first day of the cci training program while post-intervention measures were collected on the last day. in addition, as outlined in the consent form, participants were randomly invited to take part in the qualitative evaluation after completing the post-intervention measures. those who agreed to take part in the qualitative evaluation were given a $15 gift card as an honorarium. measures demographic questionnaire: the demographic questionnaire was administered alongside the baseline measures. youth were asked to indicate their age, gender, ethnic background, and school grade. general help-seeking questionnaire (ghsq): the ghsq (wilson et al., 2005) is a 20-item measure of participants’ intentions to seek help for their personal or emotional problems, and suicidal ideation. this measure asks two questions: “if you were having a personal or emotional problem, how likely is it that you would seek help from the following people?” and, “if you were experiencing suicidal thoughts, how likely is it that you would seek help from the following people?” participants rated their likelihood of seeking help from different people in their lives (e.g., intimate partner) on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (extremely unlikely) to 7 (extremely likely). the measure was scored and analysed both as a composite variable and on each probleminternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 38 type subscale (personal or emotional, suicidal ideation), with higher mean scores reflecting a stronger intention to seek help. the ghsq has been used with adolescent populations and has demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability (overall: α = .85; personal-emotional: α = .70; suicidal ideation: α = .83) and good test-retest reliability (overall: r = .92; personal-emotional: r = .86; suicidal ideation: r = .88; wilson et al., 2005). the present study had good internal consistency reliability scores before implementation (overall: α = .90; personal-emotional: α = .81; suicidal ideation: α = .81). after the program was implemented, the cronbach’s alphas for this measure were lower (overall: α = .68; personal-emotional: α = .47; suicidal ideation: α = .26). these lower internal consistency scores reflect participants’ inconsistent responses to the ghsq overall and its subscales. after participating in the cci program, adolescent participants may have been reconsidering whom they would seek help from for personal-emotional concerns, for suicidal ideation, and overall; such an evolution is consistent with the sample’s transitional developmental period. the social connectedness scale-revised (scs-r): the scs-r (lee et al., 2001) is an 8-item measure of the degree to which youth (14–18 years of age) feel connected to others in their social environment. participants respond to items on a 6-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). items include statements like, “i feel disconnected from the world around me.” a composite score is calculated with higher scores indicating a higher sense of connection and belonging. in validation studies with a sample of 184 university students, the scsr demonstrated an internal consistency reliability of .92 and concurrent validity with measures of loneliness, self-esteem, and social avoidance and distress (lee et al., 2001). the scs-r has been used in studies with adolescents with an acceptable internal consistency reliability (α = .70; chen et al., 2012). the present study had excellent internal consistency reliability, with scores of .90 before implementation and .94 after implementation. positive youth development inventory (pydi): the pydi (arnold et al., 2012) is a 55-item measure of the perceptions of pyd as an outcome of youth participation in a program. this measure uses the stem, “as a result of participating in this program” and asks people to rate their agreement with statements such as, “i feel connected to others in my community” on a 4-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). the measure comprises six subscales: competence, confidence, character, connection, caring, and contribution. subscale scores are calculated with higher mean scores reflecting pyd. the pydi was validated with 748 adolescents between 11 to 19 years of age and found to have excellent internal consistency reliability (α = .97) and adequate convergent validity (arnold et al., 2012). in the study, internal consistency reliability of scores for the subscales before the program ranged from .77 to .94, with scores of .69 to .88 after the intervention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 39 qualitative interviews a semi-structured interview protocol was developed using the enhanced critical incident technique (ecit; butterfield et al., 2009) to examine the experiences that participants found either helpful or unhelpful when learning about mental health through the cci program. all interviews were conducted by the third author and were approximately an hour long. data analysis quantitative analysis a p value of .05 was used as the criterion for all analyses. effect sizes were interpreted using guidelines provided by cohen (1992): small (.20), medium (.50), and large (.80). descriptive statistics were calculated on the sample of 29 youth who completed the cci program and used to evaluate normality assumptions. all dependent variables had skewness values between -1 and +1, suggesting that the distribution of dependent variables was approximately symmetric (ghsq). one-tailed paired-samples t-tests were conducted to examine the impact of the cci training phase on help-seeking, social connectedness, and pyd. pairwise deletion was used to handle missing data; in consequence, t-test results reflect mean differences on the dependent variables among 21 youths. qualitative analysis all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using atlas.ti. the interviews were analysed using the ecit method. ecit examines both concrete events (critical incidents) that helped or hindered a specific phenomenon, and wish-list items — items not present in the studied phenomenon, but that would have been helpful (butterfield et al., 2009). data analysis involved three steps: (a) organizing the raw data, (b) identifying critical incidents and wish-list items, and (c) creating categories based on inductive reasoning and pattern identification. the coding and analysis were performed by the first author. results quantitative analysis table 2 provides descriptive information of the sample on all the dependent variables in the preand post-implementation phases of the cci program. table 3 provides the results of one-tailed paired-samples t-tests on help-seeking, social connectedness, and pyd. the results suggest that the cci intervention impacted participants’ intentions to seek help. specifically, after engaging in the cci program, youth participants were more likely to seek help, both overall and for the case of suicidal ideation (small effect size). while other mean scores increased or decreased post-cci intervention, no other results were statistically significant. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 40 table 2. descriptive statistics of the dependent measures preand postcci implementation pre-implementation post-implementation measures na range m sd nb range m sd ghsq personal-emotional 29 2.20–5.11 3.91 0.71 22 2.33–5.50 4.09 0.92 suicidal ideation 29 1.50–5.75 3.72 1.17 21 2.33–6.38 4.27 1.23 overall 29 2.27–5.00 3.83 0.84 22 2.33–5.94 4.17 1.01 scs-r 29 17.00–48.00 35.62 9.23 22 9.00–48.00 34.41 10.58 pydi competence 29 1.71–3.86 3.05 0.45 22 2.43–3.64 2.99 0.37 character 29 2.78–4.00 3.51 0.33 22 3.00–4.00 3.51 0.32 connection 29 2.00–3.88 3.22 0.49 22 2.13–4.00 3.24 0.51 caring 29 2.13–4.00 3.47 0.45 22 2.50–4.00 3.51 0.38 confidence 29 2.22–3.89 3.14 0.45 22 2.22–4.00 3.07 0.43 contribution 29 1.86–4.00 3.29 0.55 22 2.29–4.00 3.19 0.47 a n varies. one participant who completed the program was not available on the first day to complete the initial questionnaire package. b n varies. six participants across the three different sites were not present on the final day of the program to complete the final questionnaire package. one participant dropped out of the program and did not complete postprogram measures. table 3. paired-samples t-tests comparing means on ghsq, scs-r, and pydi pre-intervention post-intervention measure m sd m sd t(20) p d ghsq overall 3.80 0.90 4.15 1.03 -3.08 < .001 0.36 personal-emotional 3.82 0.75 4.08 0.94 -2.00 .06 0.30 suicidal ideation 3.87 1.15 4.25 1.26 -2.39a .03 0.31 scs-r 35.67 9.71 34.19 10.79 0.990 .33 0.14 pydi competence 2.99 0.45 3.00 0.37 -0.31 .76 0.04 character 3.52 0.35 3.53 0.31 -0.23 .82 0.03 connection 3.24 0.51 3.25 0.52 -0.29 .78 0.03 caring 3.46 0.48 3.52 0.38 -0.69 .50 0.15 confidence 3.10 0.45 3.08 0.44 0.33 .74 0.05 contribution 3.26 0.56 3.20 0.48 0.62 .55 0.12 a df = 19 for this measure as one participant did not complete this subscale of the ghsq. qualitative analysis in the nine interviews, the features of the program (critical incidents) that participants identified included 131 helping incidents (54.4%), 69 hindering incidents (28.6%), and 41 wish-list items (17.0%), from which 7 helping categories, 7 hindering categories, and 6 wish-list categories were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 41 developed. these categories, along with an example of a participant description for each category, are described in tables 4, 5, and 6. the qualitative analysis demonstrates that cci was generally beneficial for participants, specifically with having a positive learning environment, learning peer support skills, and learning relevant and meaningful content. the areas of difficulty and wish-list items can be broadly seen as having their source in a sense of disconnection from, and misunderstandings about, the program and its pedagogical approach. due to logistical challenges related to the project and because interviews were completed at the end of the school year, there were two ecit credibility checks (exhaustiveness and crosschecking of participants) that could not be completed. of the nine ecit credibility checks (see butterfield et al., 2009), seven checks were completed: (a) descriptive validity (achieved by audiotaping interviews), (b) interview fidelity (audiotapes were reviewed by the first author and feedback provided to the third author, who was the interviewer), (c) independent extraction of incidents by another researcher (100% agreement rate between the first and third authors), (d) participation rates (categories were viable if at least 25% of participants contributed to at least one of the helping, hinder, or wish-list areas), (e) independent placement of helping and hindering incidents into categories (agreement rate of 80% or higher), (f) expert opinion (one expert reviewer agreed that the categories were viable), and (g) theoretical agreement (the categories were supported by the literature). discussion our evaluation indicates that the training phase of cci was generally helpful for increasing help-seeking attitudes and knowledge, learning peer support skills, and engaging in meaningful mental-health-related topics. the significant quantitative outcomes regarding help-seeking are consistent with the literature on mental health promotion and literacy programs (salerno, 2016; wei et al., 2015). positive help-seeking attitude outcomes are beneficial characteristics associated with gatekeeper-based suicide prevention programs (katz et al., 2013). the qualitative data also show that there were a number of helpful incidents highlighting the value of group-based learning, skill development, and connection. identifying hindering incidents and wish-list items was particularly valuable, as they constitute formative feedback that can be used to improve future iterations of the program. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 42 table 4. helping incidents: categories and descriptions. category endorsementa description example quote positive group environment (35; 27%)b 8 this refers to the group environment of cci. participants identified a friendly environment, equal power dynamics, trust and safety, and connection with other members as factors that facilitated their engagement in the program. “it was like really nice because it was really inclusive and then it was such a small group and it was kind of like everyone was kind of shy before but like after a few weeks we got pretty close and so that makes it like easier to talk about this kind of issue.” (youth 5) group structure (21; 16%) 8 this refers to how the group was structured and organized with its focus on dialogue. participants appreciated the flexibility of the conversational learning style provided by this structure. “i really liked the learning aspect … it was more like a group therapy atmosphere. i feel like we shared a lot about ourselves, which i think is very important for what we were learning. it taught me a lot about myself and my classmates and i became closer with people who i didn’t really talk to.” (youth 1) learning listening skills (19; 15%) 7 the participants appreciated the practical component of being able to learn and practise empathic listening skills. “ya there are many skills [when it came to] active listening … [this] method is actually really good, i tried it out on my friends and they respond with, ‘ya that is what i feel.’ ” (youth 2) facilitation approach and experiential learning (14; 11%) 6 the way that the facilitators led the meeting and incorporated experiential learning was helpful for participants. some incidents included: demonstration of skills, providing feedback, ensuring that everyone shares, and discussions. “i think we just got to break things down. like say at first if i just look at this formula [the listening skill] it’s like oh what is this who would say something like that? but once you get more fluent and comfortable with it, it actually comes out really naturally and because they showed us an example of how they would say it and it actually made a lot more sense.” (youth 5) relevant content about mental health (13; 10%) 7 participants found the topical discussions to be relevant to their own lives and found them to be impactful. specific topics (e.g., addictions, and stress and anxiety) were especially relevant for participants. “it was really random, they were talking about brain structure and three different stages of dealing with stress … i didn’t like know it beforehand and then i kind of related to a period in my life because it was kind of hard and then i got a bit emotional and then we [the facilitator and i] talked afterwards.” (youth 2) suicide content and skills (11; 8%) 6 the participants identified their appreciation for being able to talk about suicide and learning about strategies for suicide prevention. “i hear a lot about suicide, but i guess we never really hear about what to do if someone approaches you.… so we learned about ‘ask, listen, and tell’, which i thought was really helpful because that way you can just kind of know [what to do] if someone says to you they’re considering suicide.” (youth 3) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 43 category endorsementa description example quote shared learning and experiences (9; 7%) 4 participants appreciated having a space to share and learn from one another. in particular, hearing other members’ personal experiences was helpful for their learning. “the sharing is pretty good because people started sharing different experiences and we also have a common experience with them so it’s easy to understand more.… at first a few people only shared a little bits but after — people after that started talking more and people got more engaged in sharing. (youth 2) a number of participants (n = 9) who endorsed the category. b number of incidents; % of 131 overall incidents. table 5. hindering incidents: categories and descriptions category endorsementa description example quote fear of judgement and difficulty with vulnerability (17; 25%)b 6 this refers to concerns of being judged and being vulnerable to each other. for some this was due to the lack of cohesion or trust, and personal discomfort with feeling vulnerable when sharing. “i feel like although [the group] was confidential, i’m 15 and everyone’s 15–16 so it’s hard to trust everyone when you haven’t really talked to some of them.… it’s kind of hard to like talk to people and share really personal things when you don’t know them that well and you don’t know if they’re actually going to like abide by the confidentiality agreement.” (youth 1) discomfort with silence in group discussions (12; 17%) 6 participants felt uncomfortable with silence during group discussions and felt that some unstructured discussions contributed to that silence. “[the silence] was kind of uncomfortable.… i know a lot of people went into [this program] and they were super excited and so it was a little disheartening for some people [when there was] awkward silence that made it feel like you couldn’t say anything, because no one else was.” (youth 1) peer and topical disconnection (11; 16%) 6 participants experienced a sense of disengagement from some of their peers. participants also identified difficulty connecting to the group when there were topics unrelated to their own experiences. “i feel like my friends and i really got a lot from the experience but when some other people who maybe didn’t want to participate or didn’t go in by choice, like, didn’t, so that kind of threw the group off a little bit.” (youth 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 44 category endorsementa description example quote external factors unrelated to the program (8; 12%) 5 external factors outside the program, such as other commitments, tiredness (as the group was conducted after school), and limitations with space and time, hindered some participants’ engagement. “i would say definitely like the lack of focus can make it a bit harder to participate just cuz i would be like tired from school.” (youth 3) facilitators not considering readiness (8; 12%) 6 this refers to a facilitation style where some of the youth felt pressured to share, while others felt there was not enough time to reflect about their experience. “most of the sessions felt slightly rushed, there was a curriculum to get to, but once we were done that we would go straight into closing. i feel like there wasn’t exactly enough time to connect with each other about those issues.” (youth 4) issues with curriculum (7; 10%) 6 there were general challenges with some of the lessons. for instance, participants described how there was too much focus on curriculum, while others described difficulties learning some of the skills. “some topics people weren’t really as interested in, i remember i know one week we talked about like substance abuse and we had a really good discussion about that, so i think it was dependent on what we were talking about that week.” (youth 3) discrepant program expectations (5; 7%) 3 participants experienced a discrepancy between what they expected the program to be like and how they perceived it when it was running. “i thought that it would be more classroom style, which isn’t necessarily better, it was just what first came to my mind. i thought there’d be like more handouts.… i know i talked to a bunch of people as well and we all kind of expected it to be more like this is our lesson plan, this is what we’re going to learn today.” (youth 6) a number of participants (n = 9) who endorsed the category. b number of incidents; % of 69 overall incidents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 45 table 6. wish-list items: categories and descriptions category endorsementa description example quote organization and session structure (10; 24%)b 5 participants described wanting more structure to the modules and more effective use of time. “i’d say programs can be a little bit more compact because right now its like each week is an hour and a half and the check-in and the check-out period really takes a long time and sometimes i feel it’s even dragging a little bit. so could’ve fit in more materials inside. (youth 5) program structure (10; 24%) 6 this refers to general programmatic structure. participants requested smaller groups, meetings outside of a school environment, and more time for the program. “being outside of the school environment would’ve been kind of helpful.… i think we should… all should’ve met without our uniforms and outside maybe … just because it would help us to just get out of school and get rid of the pressure that school kind of holds.” (youth 5) additional learning activities and opportunities (6; 15%) 5 participants described wanting more learning activities and educational opportunities, such as guest speakers. “i feel like, uh, there should be at least like one more module on empathy statements or on how to engage in a conversation with someone without scaring them off and making them defend themselves or to feel like they’re being attacked.” (youth 8) additional support (5; 12%) 3 participants shared that they wanted to have more directive support within the group setting. “if [the facilitator] gave a little bit of advice or something; like, i’m not a counsellor so i don’t really know, but like more of a reaction response instead of trying to get more [information] cuz i feel like a lot of people didn’t like that.” (youth 1) more opportunities to practise skills (5; 12%) 4 this refers to participants wanting to practise their skills more and to have more opportunities to work together to improve their skills. “i think [the skills] should be practised outside, but that would be weird maybe. there should be little assignments, like go talk to people and use empathy statements or something like that.” (youth 8) engage through participant interests (5; 12%) 5 participants wanted facilitators to connect more with their interests, and to have more concrete examples relevant to their experience. “i guess if we had more times where they [the facilitators] started building off of interests and curiosity, i guess people would be a lot more interested to answer or ask questions.“ (youth 4) a number of participants (n = 9) who endorsed the category. b number of incidents; % of 41 overall incidents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 46 no significant differences were found between the preand post-program data in the domains of pyd, consistent with other leadership programs that have examined pyd as an outcome. these studies showed non-significant quantitative results, but clear qualitative benefits (curran & wexler, 2017). in regard to the qualitative results, some of the categories seemed to contradict one another; however, it is important to understand that ecit is about identifying specific incidents from a collective of participants. it is natural that various experiences would resonate more strongly with some participants than others; certain participants indicated that they had experienced both benefit and detriment from engaging with cci. their mixed reactions do not mean that the overall experience was problematic. furthermore, incidents are contextualized to the participant’s respective group, and some experiences can be considered group-specific. for instance, there were thematic differences in the experiences of participants who took part in group 1 compared to those who took part in the other two groups. based on the evaluation of phase 1 of cci and the integration of the quantitative and qualitative analysis, three main themes can be discerned: (a) importance of connection, (b) value of critical mental health literacy, and (c) clarification of programmatic expectations. importance of connection according to the helping, hindering, and wish-list categories, having a sense of connection was vital for the success of the program. most of the participants described having experiences of safety and comfort. however, some indicated feeling a sense of disengagement and desiring more connection. from the hindering categories, the fear of judgement, disengagement, and discomfort with silence can all be understood as being associated with disconnection and issues with group cohesion. for the program to be successful, it is important to focus on building safety, connection, and group cohesion. despite cci’s focus on dialogue and connection, it was interesting to find non-significant scsr results that showed a decrease in social connection. this contradicts the qualitative results that indicate positive experiences of the group environment, and valuing being able to share with one another, although it was clear that some participants encountered challenges related to the group environment. the qualitative analysis provides contextualized information that offers a more nuanced understanding of these results. further analysis indicated that there were challenges unique to one of the groups, which may have skewed the results, with more reported hindering experiences and lower scs-r scores. as group cohesion is fundamental to all groups (see yalom & leszcz, 2005), it is valuable to have group “buy-in”. based on the evaluation, participants should be self-selected. potential candidates can be identified by schools, but it must be the candidate’s choice whether or not to take part in the group. it may also be beneficial to involve youth with diverse backgrounds and experiences. this is consistent with curran and wexler’s (2017) review of pyd programs, where the authors suggested that a mixed group of youth can encourage positive peer-to-peer interactions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 47 value of critical mental health literacy cci was facilitated according to principles of freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy that emphasize dialogical as opposed to didactic learning. participants appreciated being able to link discussion topics to their own lived experiences and learn practical skills to support their peers. they generally found it unhelpful when the program focused on curriculum and didactic learning, as opposed to connecting topics directly to their own experiences. this further highlights the importance of situating topics in a relevant manner and offering space for youth to critically engage with the material. learning about helping skills (listening, speaking, and empathy) and engaging in particular topics, such as suicide, were found to be very helpful aspects of the program. in the quantitative analysis, these appeared to impact help-seeking attitudes and knowledge, resulting in significant positive benefits in this domain. the endorsement of these aspects by participants highlights the importance of learning helping skills and having an opportunity to learn experientially. the cci program has the capacity to facilitate these types of lessons given that facilitators have been trained in and can model helping skills and behaviours. the desire to learn more about mental health and how to manage mental health challenges is consistent with what was endorsed by nearly half the participants in the bc adolescent health survey (smith et al., 2019, p. 100). as indicated in the qualitative analysis, certain topics — learning helping skills, and discussing suicide, stress, anxiety, and addictions — were vital to the program. it is important to understand that expecting students to excel in peer support helping skills in a limited time frame is unrealistic. students may gain some proficiency; however, it is not expected that they will become full-fledged peer support providers. to do so requires further training and coordination with the respective locations; moreover, ethical and legal implications must be considered, and the developmental stage of youth taken into account. lastly, though phase 2 (the action phase) of the program was not examined in this study, it could be a potential avenue for continued skill development, critical reflection, and engagement in social action that would further realize the critical pedagogical intentions of cci. clarification of programmatic expectations as noted earlier, a critical approach to mental health literacy and peer gkt is valued by scholars in the field. however, this approach appeared to deviate significantly from the expectations of the youth regarding these types of programs, as indicated by one participant who had expected the program to be didactic (see “discrepant program expectations” in table 5). the participants may have become more accustomed to the banking model of mental health education, which emphasizes didactic learning, rather than the critical pedagogical approach (freire, 1970). for some youth, the dialogical and experiential approach of cci appeared similar to group therapy, which seems to have been a more commonly understood frame of reference. the lack of clarity about the intentional differences in how the program was being conducted may have left some participants confused. this shows that, when engaging youth in models of mental health literacy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 48 that deviate from the norm, it is important to: (a) make sure that the administration at implementation sites clearly understand what to expect from the program, (b) explain the program model to potential participants in an information session prior to starting the program, and (c) create pathways for social action even during phase 1 of the group and facilitate more situated and applied learning. table 7. revised core connectors initiative training (phase 1) curriculum module description 1. orientation and team building overview of cci. facilitators foster engagement by building the group and instil a sense of purpose about being part of the cci program. 2. mental health overview and stigma youth discuss mental health stigma and its impact on themselves and others. 3. how to support a friend youth share their perspectives on common social issues that impact youth and explore strategies they can utilize to support a friend. 4. active listening skills youth learn how to utilize active listening and supportive speaking skills. youth practise these skills as taught by the facilitator. 5. stress and social media this module highlights the connection between stress and mental health. youth are invited to discuss the role of social media in their lives and its influence on well-being. 6. empathy skills building on the active listening skills they have learned, youth hone their helping skills by exploring empathy. youth practise skills modelled by the facilitator. 7. anxiety and depression youth are provided with information about anxiety and depression and discuss how it relates to themselves and their peers. 8. identifying support networks and online support youth create a visual map of the mental health and general support networks available, either in person or online, within their school and community. they explore strategies for helping others to get support. 9. addiction awareness and prevention youth engage in discussions about addiction, then participate in an exercise to learn what to do to support a friend dealing with addictions. 10. suicidal ideation and prevention youth learn about suicidal ideation through discussions that are facilitated in a sensitive manner. youth learn the act (acknowledge, care, tell) model for suicide prevention. 11. positive mental health and resilience this module focuses on well-being and involves exercises that foster mental health. it stresses the importance of connection. 12. summarization of learning in this module, material from previous sessions will be reviewed. it is an opportunity to debrief, and to consolidate learning garnered from the training. 13. celebration youth receive a certificate commemorating their completion of the training and discuss the action phase of cci. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 49 implications and programmatic changes the analysis shows that cci contributes to enhanced help-seeking attitudes and knowledge, as well as perceived positive connections and skill-building. the study is in line with research that shows that peer leadership gkt can be beneficial for those who are involved as youth leaders (ohlmann et al., 2014; walker et al., 2009; wasserman et al., 2012; wyman et al., 2010). uniquely, this study demonstrated the potential benefit of utilizing a critical pedagogical approach to youth mental health literacy and promotion and may have implications for other programs. suicide prevention and mental health promotion efforts require a comprehensive approach and cannot be sustained with just one program (robinson-link et al., 2019; white, 2016). the study did not examine whether the program can enhance overall suicide prevention within schools and community settings. the effectiveness of peer gkt on the overall suicide prevention within schools and communities continues to be an area that requires more research. even while such research is pending, there remains a need for continued innovation aimed at promoting suicide prevention efforts, and mental health in youth populations in general. the purpose of the study was to conduct a formative evaluation on phase 1 of cci and to integrate the findings into improving the program. based on the evaluation, the cci program was updated to be more relevant and concise (13 modules, rather than 14 as previously, with changes in module themes). the updated phase 1 program can be found in table 7. other programmatic changes included the following: (a) inclusion of an information session for youth prior to starting the program; (b) implementation of the program on a weekend, as opposed to on a weekday after school; and (c) further refinement of logistical processes for program implementation. limitations there were a number of limitations in this study. the overall research design did not include a control group or assessment of confounding variables; since other variables could not be controlled for, internal and external validity were limited. in regard to the quantitative results, the sample size was small (n = 29), and a post-hoc power analysis (β = .72) indicated that our study was underpowered. as such, there may have been more differences between preand post-scores on help-seeking, social connectedness, and pyd than were found in the study. subsequent studies addressing these limitations are needed to better determine the impact of the cci. with the qualitative results, two ecit credibility and trustworthiness checks could not be completed: exhaustiveness, and cross-checking of participants. exhaustiveness refers to the saturation of critical incidents that form categories. however, given the time limitations of the cci program being completed at around the same time the school year ended, it resulted in a limited sample size: participants had agreed to take part in the pilot study during the school year and were not available afterwards. as a result, there may be other helping or hindering incidents that were not represented in this study. member-checking could not be completed due to the time constraints of the project and difficulty contacting participants after the school year ended. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 50 conclusion overall, the study shows a promising development effort and highlights a critical approach to peer gkt and mental health promotion and literacy. these types of programs can be empowering and can offer a situated approach that addresses the unique contextual needs of various youth-led communities. preventive efforts and mental health promotion programs like cci can play an important role as part of a broader strategy for youth suicide prevention in schools and communities, and can help to address the increasing mental health concerns of youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 30–55 51 references 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(2005). the theory and practice of group psychotherapy (5th ed.). basic books. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 immigrant and refugee youth settlement experiences: “a new kind of war” marian j. rossiter, sarvenaz hatami, daniel ripley, and katherine r. rossiter abstract: the settlement and adaptation of immigrant and refugee youth in receiving countries is a long-term process with many challenges. in this study, we explored factors that influenced the settlement experiences of 14 immigrant and refugee youth who arrived in canada as adolescents. the interviewees (9 male, 5 female) ranged in age from 19 to 32 years and represented 10 source countries. analyses of the semi-structured interview transcripts revealed that their settlement and adaptation were negatively influenced by pre-migration experiences; difficult socioeconomic circumstances in canada; lack of knowledge of canadian laws and legal sanctions; challenging educational experiences; racism and discrimination; and cultural identity issues. however, several factors exerted a positive influence on participants’ settlement experiences or served to mitigate the negative influences in their lives: in particular, strong support networks and involvement in prosocial community programs as participants and/or leaders. we make recommendations for facilitating the integration process in school settings and in the wider community. keywords: immigrant youth; refugee youth; settlement; integration; crime acknowledgements: we would like to express our appreciation to the immigrant and refugee youth who participated in this study; to our community partners and correctional services, alberta solicitor general and public security for their support; and to research assistants l. sallis and l. nickel. we are very grateful to the prairie metropolis centre and the metropolis project for funding this research, and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. marian j. rossiter (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the teaching english as a second language (tesl) program in the department of educational psychology, 6-102 education north, university of alberta, edmonton, ab, canada t6g 2g5. e-mail: marian.rossiter@ualberta.ca sarvenaz hatami has a phd in teaching english as a second language from the department of educational psychology at the university of alberta, canada. e-mail: sarvenaz.hatami@ualberta.ca dan ripley, med, is a linc instructor and online classroom developer at mosaic english language centre, 205-123 east 15th street, north vancouver, bc v7l 2p7. email: dripley@mosaicbc.com katherine r. rossiter is an adjunct professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, v5a 1s6. email: rossiter@sfu.ca mailto:marian.rossiter@ualberta.ca mailto:sarvenaz.hatami@ualberta.ca mailto:dripley@mosaicbc.com mailto:rossiter@sfu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 747 canada is a nation of increasing diversity: its 6.8 million immigrants represent approximately 200 countries of origin and native languages (statistics canada, 2011). in recent years, it has welcomed 200,000 to 250,000 immigrants annually, approximately 0.8% of its population (ferrer, picot, & riddell, 2014). between 2008 and 2012, youth aged 15 to 24 years accounted for an average of 17% of that number (citizenship and immigration canada, 2012). by 2016, the canadian council on social development (2006) has estimated, immigrant youth and canadian-born children of immigrant families will represent 25% of the country’s population under the age of 18. the extent to which newcomer youth integrate into society will have a significant impact on the roles that they play in it. as a result, “it becomes imperative for researchers, service providers, and social policymakers to investigate the multiple challenges and barriers that newcomer youth face as they navigate through their adjustment and settlement processes” (chuang & canadian immigrant settlement sector alliance [cissa], 2010, p. 1). immigrants who arrive as adolescents face unique educational, cultural, linguistic, economic, and psychosocial challenges that may negatively affect their settlement, adaptation, and integration experiences (ngo & schleifer, 2005). as berger (2008) notes, immigrant adolescents also face challenges associated with the transition from childhood to adulthood. despite difficult pre-migration or migration experiences, however, many youth exhibit resilience, defined by ungar (2012) as “a set of behaviours over time that reflect the interactions between individuals and their environments, in particular the opportunities for personal growth that are available and accessible” (p. 14). several individual and environmental factors that promote resilience in immigrant children and youth have been reported in the literature, including individual traits (e.g., adaptability, self-esteem, optimism); parental psychological health; family integrity and support; availability of schooling; the school environment; and peer and community support (este & ngo, 2011; montgomery, 2010; rothe, pumariega, & sabagh, 2011). for many immigrant youth, however, negative experiences in their home countries have a continuing influence on their adaptation to a new culture. for example, refugees may have witnessed or experienced war, violence, persecution, rape, and torture; and they may have suffered malnutrition, infectious disease, and brutality in refugee camps. the effects of these experiences can include anxiety, anger, flashbacks, disruption of sleep patterns, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), learning disabilities, and fear of authority (e.g., ellis, macdonald, lincoln, & cabral, 2008; kanu, 2008; magro, 2009; mcbrien, 2005; ngo, 2010; ngo & schleifer, 2005; seat, 2003; wilson, murtaza, & shakya, 2010). resettlement itself exerts additional economic, educational, and psychosocial stresses on newcomer youth (chuang & cissa, 2009, 2010; lustig et al., 2004; ngo & schleifer, 2005; seat, 2003; shakya, khanlou, & gonsalves, 2010), which can exacerbate the impact of pre-migration experiences (e.g., ellis et al., 2008; kanu, 2008; seat, 2003; wilson et al., 2010). kanu (2008), for example, reported a case in which a high school fire drill triggered a heightened stress response in a traumatized sudanese refugee, leading to hospitalization (p. 932). economic issues also negatively affect many newcomer youth and their families. lowincome rates rose dramatically among immigrants to canada between 1980 and 2005 (picot, lu, & hou, 2009), and the income gap between canadian-born and new immigrant workers has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 748 continued to increase (frank, phythian, walters, & anisef, 2013). child poverty rates in canada in 2006 were highest in the immigrant (41%) and recent immigrant (48%) groups (campaign 2000, 2012) due to “the decline in the economic fortunes of successive cohorts of newly arriving immigrants” (reitz, 2014, p. 111). according to ferrer et al. (2014), the current poverty rate of recent immigrants is nearly double that recorded in the early 1980s and 2.7 times greater than that of the general population (p. 850). many newcomer families have great difficulty early on providing adequate nutrition, warm clothing, secure and appropriate housing in safe neighbourhoods, and other necessities for the healthy development of their children. parents without english or french language proficiency, employment skills, foreign credentials, or canadian work experience may struggle to achieve economic stability and may be obliged to work at multiple entry-level jobs. for single parents, particularly mothers, providing sufficient income to meet their families’ daily requirements can be especially challenging. poverty may also expose youth to social problems in low-income neighbourhoods (e.g., kanu, 2008; kazemipur & halli, 2000; ngo, 2010; ngo, rossiter, & stewart, 2013; rossiter & rossiter, 2009) and create stress in families (e.g., kilbride & anisef, 2001; li, 2010; shakya et al., 2010). these experiences are shaped by broader structural factors. racialized immigrants experience social and economic exclusion and discrimination (block & galabuzi, 2011; galabuzi, 2006; shields, kelly, park, prier, & fang, 2011). block and galabuzi (2011) provide data showing that racialized male newcomers earn 68.7% of the income of non-racialized male immigrants, and this continues into the second generation. galabuzi (2006) states that “despite higher levels of educational attainment, disproportionate numbers of racialized workers, confined to precarious forms of work in certain sectors of the economy, cannot utilize their skills and are condemned to low-status occupations and low-wage jobs” (p. 234). employment for these workers may be contract, temporary, part-time, or piecework, with little or no job security or benefits. to supplement the family income or to support themselves, youth may find fullor parttime employment while attending school: wilkinson (2008) found that many employed immigrant and refugee students worked in excess of 30 hours a week. employment offers several advantages: for example, in addition to helping to improve their economic circumstances or those of their families, employed youth gain the opportunity to improve their linguistic and pragmatic skills, as well as canadian work experience and familiarity with canadian culture. however, there are also disadvantages to employment, particularly if youth are both working and attending school. kanu (2008) reported that the majority of the african refugee high school students from war-torn countries in her study were working full-time to support themselves. some were also supporting family back home or repaying refugee transportation loans, which cover the cost of refugees’ overseas medical examinations and transportation to canada and may total $10,000 for parents and minors (canadian council for refugees, n.d.). in kanu’s (2008) study, teachers in the participants’ schools perceived a direct relationship between refugee students’ involvement in full-time employment and their low academic success. furthermore, for some newcomer youth, “low-end jobs are long term and an example of significant downward trajectories in their careers” (lauer, wilkinson, yan, sin, & tsang, 2012, p. 8). some refugee families have been reported to support gang membership or criminal activity to generate income and facilitate the repayment of canadian government interest-laden international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 749 transportation loans (ngo et al., 2013; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). magro (2009) noted the challenge that youth in her study faced in balancing work and school responsibilities and assisting family back home; in the participants’ experience, despite the desire and pressure to succeed, the supports and resources required to do so were not always available. parents often experience worries and frustrations regarding other aspects of settlement that affect them personally, such as language barriers, changes in status and personal identity, and their relationships within the family and mainstream society (seat, 2003). when youth adapt to the receiving society and its cultural values (e.g., gender roles, fashion, curfews, and dating) more quickly or easily than their parents, intergenerational conflict may arise (anisef, kilbride, & khattar, 2003; chuang & cissa, 2009, 2010; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). the deterioration of family and school relationships can result in the unravelling of youths’ self-concept, identity, and sense of belonging, and this in turn can lead to other serious problems (ngo, 2010). education is key to successful integration (anisef et al., 2003; anisef, brown, phythian, sweet, & walters, 2008; berry, 2008), and immigrant youth have high educational aspirations (e.g., krahn & taylor, 2005; seat, 2003). newcomer youth have both extensive and intensive contact with canadian schools (wilkinson, 2002), and these institutions have the potential to provide the support and resources necessary to enhance students’ sense of self-worth and belonging in the community (e.g., anderman, 2002; dei, 2007). self-esteem and a sense of belonging, in turn, can foster academic success (e.g., anderman, 2002) and lead to active participation in the community and the development of pluricultural competence. baumeister and leary (1995) assert that belonging is a basic human need and that lack of a sense of belonging leads to negative outcomes. among those identified in the immigration literature are low academic grades, social rejection, psychological distress (e.g., depression, hopelessness), victimization, and gang membership (e.g., anderman, 2002; kia-keating & ellis, 2007; ngo, 2010; ngo & schleifer, 2005). although basic interpersonal communication skills in a second language are typically acquired within two to three years, the cognitive academic language proficiency skills required for success in school take from five to seven years to develop (cummins, 2000). youth who enter secondary schools with low second-language proficiency face greater challenges in achieving high school completion. since the introduction of the immigrant and refugee protection act in 2002, canada has selected refugees on the basis of humanitarian need rather than adaptability. as a result, educators are faced with an increasing number of refugee youth with multiple, complex needs and gaps in their formal education. o’hara and pritchard (2008) assert that “the provision of english language and subject matter instruction to english learners is one of the most critical challenges confronting teachers and teacher educators today” (p. 43). however, howard research and management consulting (2006) suggested that k-12 teachers in school systems in the province of alberta were inadequately prepared to meet the challenges posed by immigrant students in their classes. only 14% of the schools surveyed in the 2006 study reported that their english as a second language (esl)-designated teachers had a teaching english as a second language (tesl) diploma, certificate, or degree. alberta studies show immigrant high school dropout rates of between 61% (derwing, decorby, ichikawa, & jamieson, 1999) and 74% (watt & roessingh, 1994). more recent immigrant non-completion rates in british columbia schools of 38% (garnett, 2010) and 40% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 750 (toohey & derwing, 2008) are lower, but completion rates still leave much room for improvement. because they have limited literacy and employment skills, immigrant youth who fail to complete high school have difficulty gaining employment and could be at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence, which seem to promise easy access to income and relief from poverty (e.g., ngo et al., 2013; kanu, 2008). discrimination can exacerbate acculturation challenges and lead to low self-esteem, stress, depression, poor academic performance, school dropout, substance abuse, and behavioural problems (chuang & cissa, 2009, 2010; kanu, 2009; oxman-martinez et al., 2012; shakya et al., 2010). the bullying and teasing that take place in schools can also lead to the marginalization and isolation of minority youth. males tend to be victims of bullying and violence, whereas females more frequently suffer teasing or taunting because of their lack of english, immigrant status, or newness to the school (e.g., anisef et al., 2003). oxman-martinez et al. (2012) found that “being a child from an immigrant single-parent family predicts higher perceived discrimination by peers and teachers, greater likelihood of feeling like an outsider at school, and lower academic grades” (p. 385). research by berry, phinney, sam, and vedder (2006) has shown that discrimination discourages involvement in the receiving society and contributes to an increased orientation toward newcomers’ own ethnocultural groups or ambivalence about their involvement in the new culture, thus hindering cultural integration and the development of a pluricultural identity. participation in prosocial activities plays an important role in the settlement of newcomer youth. in the immigration literature, youth with strong support networks (e.g., friends, family, faith communities) have been found to adapt more easily to their new culture (anisef et al., 2003; lamba & krahn, 2003). involvement in supported prosocial extra-curricular activities, particularly with youth outside their own ethnocultural groups, can provide immigrant adolescents with potential role models, as well as valuable social capital and opportunities for integration (e.g., anisef et al., 2003; chuang & cissa, 2009; ngo et al., 2013; rossiter & rossiter, 2009; seat, 2003). este and ngo (2011) stated that community-related factors such as immigrant youths’ “access to cultural programs and activities …, involvement with their respective ethnic communities, … [and] having opportunities to socialize with friends and to play sports” (p. 43) may play important roles in fostering resilience and adaptation. schools may provide a wide range of activities in which newcomer youth can become involved (e.g., buddy or mentor programs, clubs, recreational activities); in the larger community, however, there are often numerous barriers to participation. for example, many families are unable to pay fees or assist with fund-raising (e.g., bingos) for programs in their neighbourhoods. one enterprising accommodation in alberta (laboucane-benson, hossack, erickson, & grunland, 2009) was initiated by two mothers who organized continuing support for aboriginal and refugee children in their local soccer league. in a cost-benefit analysis of involvement in soccer programming and crime prevention, the authors estimated that “95 youth could play a season of outdoor soccer for the cost of one youth committing a serious crime as a member of a gang” (p. 8). the opportunity for youth to develop social networks and human capital is key to successful integration. another means by which immigrant youth can develop social networks is through volunteering (ngo et al., 2013; chuang & cissa, 2009, 2010). ngo et al. (2013) interviewed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 751 focus groups composed of representatives of ethnocultural communities, service providers, and law enforcement personnel; the groups recommended that newcomer youth become engaged in community volunteer work. they perceived that, as a result of these activities, youth would gain opportunities to develop organizational, language, and leadership skills; demonstrate their abilities; acquire valuable canadian experience; become empowered; and find increased meaning in their lives. furthermore, participants asserted, youth who were engaged in out-of-school activities in the community were less likely to become involved in crime. in a study by dudley (2007), adult esl newcomers reported that, as a result of their volunteer experiences, they gained a sense of community belonging, as well as insight into canadian culture (e.g., daily life, customs, habits). research by berry and colleagues (2006) has shown that active participation in the receiving culture, combined with the maintenance of immigrants’ heritage culture, enhances newcomers’ psychological and sociological adaptation. seat (2003) asserted that “newcomer youth need more help and support in becoming involved in the community, which, along with their families and their schools, is an important pathway for socialization” (p. 193). the linguistic, social, and psychological benefits of volunteering and participating in community activities help to foster youths’ integration into mainstream society. the immigration literature to date has identified a number of key factors affecting the integration of immigrant and refugee youth: pre-migration experiences, socioeconomic circumstances, family relationships, education, discrimination, and social networks. however, these studies are few in number, and this has given rise to calls for more research related to newcomer children and youth in canada (e.g., chuang & cissa, 2010; wideman-johnston, 2014). theoretical and methodological framework the current study aims to contribute to the existing body of research by examining the perspectives of immigrant youth regarding the factors that they perceived to have had a positive or negative influence on their settlement and integration experiences. maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of needs provides a useful framework for exploring the adaptation of immigrants to their adopted country (adler, 1977; nguyen, 1987; onchwari, onchwari, & keengwe, 2008). newcomers may initially struggle to satisfy the needs at the base of the hierarchy: physiological needs (e.g., food, sleep) and safety needs (e.g., security, shelter). before they can reach their potential, however, they must fulfill two additional needs: need for belonging (love of family, friends) and need for esteem (respect, appreciation). the extent to which they are successful in meeting these needs will have a significant impact on their acculturation process. a qualitative approach was considered to be most appropriate for examining the factors perceived by immigrant youth to influence their settlement and integration experiences. individual interviews, in particular, gave voice to youth themselves and facilitated the exploration of their adaptation to canadian society. they also provided a more nuanced understanding of unique positive and negative factors, and how these factors shaped the participants’ integration experiences. this offered greater ecological validity; that is, it provided us with first-hand data on the experiences and challenges that this population encounters in their settlement process, as opposed to anecdotal reports from teachers and other stakeholders. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 752 the following research questions guided our study: 1. what factors do immigrant and refugee youth perceive to have exerted an influence on their settlement and adaptation? 2. what services or programs have interviewees accessed? to what extent have these been perceived as helpful? instrument a semi-structured interview guide was developed to explore the backgrounds, experiences, and perceptions of youth with respect to their settlement experiences. interview questions focused on pre-migration experiences; family circumstances; housing and neighbourhoods; school experiences; relationship networks; employment experiences; programs, services, and individuals that may have had an influence on their adaptation; incidence of discrimination and racism; as well as advice to newcomer youth (lessons learned). these factors reflect those identified in earlier studies of the challenges faced by newcomer youth (anisef et al., 2003; ngo & schleifer, 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). the interviews were conducted and audio-recorded by one of the authors; they ranged from 54 to 108 minutes in length (m = 75 minutes). recruitment participants in this study were young immigrants or refugees who had arrived in canada as adolescents and who had sufficient english-language proficiency to enable them to participate in an open-ended interview. with the support of the government of alberta office of the solicitor general and public safety, we initially attempted to recruit youth who had come into conflict with the law. we had little success, due mainly to the reluctance of this population to participate in interviews and of their parents/guardians to grant permission. therefore, we decided to also recruit, through ethnocultural organizations and social service agencies, youth who were considered leaders or role models in their communities and might be more willing to discuss their experiences. it was anticipated that these participants would provide insight into promising approaches to support immigrant and refugee youth to successfully integrate into canadian society and to avoid potential negative outcomes, such as involvement in crime and violence. data analysis the digital audio files of the interviews were uploaded to a computer and transcribed and verified by research assistants and two of the authors using express scribe. we analyzed the data using qualitative data analysis software (nvivo7), coding and categorizing the data broadly, according to areas of inquiry (e.g., pre-migration experiences, family circumstances, school experiences) reflected in the interview instrument. within each category, the data were analyzed thematically, using an iterative process, to identify shared themes within each category (denzin & lincoln, 2003). salient themes were selected for inclusion based on their frequency. multiple readings ensured coding consistency and accurate representation of responses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 753 participants a total of 14 youth (9 male, 5 female), 12 of whom were refugees, participated in individual semi-structured interviews. eleven youth (p1–p11) were recommended by representatives of ethnocultural or social service organizations as leaders or role models in local community groups. the remaining three (p12–p14) had come into conflict with the law and had been referred by staff in a provincial correctional centre, a community corrections office, or a local youth centre. one was incarcerated, one was on parole, and the third was awaiting a second court hearing. the participants ranged in age from 19 to 32 years (m = 23.7 years) and had been in canada for an average of 6.7 years (range = 1–17 years; mdn = 5.5 years). they represented ten source countries: colombia, democratic republic of congo, ethiopia, indonesia, iraq, liberia, mexico, rwanda, sierra leone, and somalia. two participants were unaccompanied upon arrival; the others had arrived in canada with some or all members of their family, but only four had immigrated with both parents. eight of the interviewees had resided in a country other than their country of birth for an average of 3.5 years (range: 1–6 years) before immigrating to canada. eight participants had some post-secondary education; three had completed high school, two were attending high school, and one had dropped out. results and discussion the participants’ responses converged to provide the following shared themes within the interviews: (a) pre-migration experiences, (b) socioeconomic circumstances, (c) knowledge of canadian laws, (d) support networks, (e) educational experiences, (f) racism and discrimination, (g) cultural identity, and (h) involvement in community programs. several of these themes are captured in one youth’s description of initial settlement experiences: i came from a war-torn country, and coming to canada for me was like a new kind of war in terms of learning a new language all on your own, in terms of adjusting to the school curriculum all on your own, in terms of being bullied because you couldn’t speak english or you didn’t have enough money to dress a certain way like everybody else is dressed in school, adjusting to the fact that my parents couldn’t find jobs because they couldn’t speak english and we just didn’t have enough to eat and we didn’t have anything to do. (p8) because we found no significant differences between the responses of the criminally involved youth and the youth leaders, we have combined them below and noted divergence where it occurred. pre-migration experiences in addition to post-arrival stresses, many youth had negative pre-migration experiences, including exposure to violence and war, which affected their daily lives in canada: i was young.... you don’t really understand it at that time, but now that i’m older, i have flashbacks of the war, and of the things that i witnessed, and so it’s becoming harder now for me to adjust to what happened then than it was when i was younger. (p8) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 754 explained another, reminiscent of one youth’s reaction to fire drills in kanu’s (2008) study: when i hear noises, like a loud boom, i react.... should i run, should i take cover, or you don’t know which direction, ’cause in the refugee camp people just start running from some direction and you see someone running, [shouting] “they’re shooting, they’re coming”. (p5) several participants felt that pre-migration experiences made many newcomer youth particularly vulnerable to substance abuse. as one explained: i know some people that are gang affiliated and that rely on drugs for survival. and these are former child soldiers in their native country, and kids that have been traumatized by war, or have lost their parents through wars or aids, or just have had very traumatic experiences. and upon arrival to canada, i guess they still had that resentment and posttraumatic stress.… so they do abuse drugs on a regular basis.… and yeah, some may have ended up dead or in jail, you know, because of it. (p2) another added that pre-migration experiences, exacerbated by post-migration circumstances, may also increase refugee youths’ vulnerability to alcohol and drug abuse: it’s a coping mechanism…. you know, they want to get high … or get drunk and forget about what’s going on at home or … school…. they’ve been in refugee camps…. i think once they get back into the real world, they figure out how hard it is for them to start over again and a lot of them … don’t have the strength or the support system to do that. (p8) similar effects of pre-migration experiences on refugee youth have been reported in the literature (see, for example, ellis et al., 2008; magro, 2009; ngo, 2010; ngo et al., 2013; ngo & schleifer, 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009; wilson et al., 2010). the participants in this study confirmed the link between the pre-migration experiences of newcomer refugee youth and their potential for subsequent substance abuse and gang involvement. socioeconomic circumstances financial stress was a concern for most participants and their families. the need to provide an income for the family often meant that english and other employment skills were not acquired, thereby limiting future employment and opportunities for socialization and integration, as in this case: “my [older siblings] were working, paying for their [refugee] transportation loan and also ours. so that was a bit challenging because they missed out on their education and even on their communication skill” (p2). experiences such as these have given rise to calls for the elimination of refugee transportation loan repayment (e.g., kanu, 2008; ngo et al., 2013; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). the parents of many participants in this study were unemployed or under-employed after arrival in canada, due to lack of recognition of their foreign credentials. one youth explained: my dad was an engineer.... and he has a big experience [in our home country], but when he came here, they wouldn’t take anything he has. he has to start all over again. up to date, he hasn’t been able to find a job. (p1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 755 one youth (p6) explained that although she needed glasses, the family was unable to afford them, despite moving to cheaper accommodation, because winter clothing and other basic necessities were a higher priority. these accounts are representative of circumstances faced by low-income newcomer families (e.g., picot et al., 2009; ferrer et al., 2014). single parents and their families were particularly disadvantaged, as described by this participant: by the time you’re done paying all the bills … you have nothing left to pay for school fees or to even pay for the [transportation] loan.... the burden is on mom, ’cause she’s usually paying most of the bills now, so it’s really tough on her, like really, really tough. (p5) those who were here without family support also reported economic challenges: to be in [university] in canada is very tough…. if you want to go to school, it’s not something that everyone can do — it’s really tough. actually, i work 45 hours in the week [nights], plus 24 on the weekends. (p9) this is reminiscent of reports by wilkinson (2008). when students are both working and attending school, they may find it hard to progress academically; this places them at risk of dropping out. dropping out of school isolates youth further and increases their vulnerability to recruitment in criminal activities (e.g., ngo, 2010; ngo et al., 2013). one youth (p12), who later became involved in drug-related crime, attributed leaving school to financial difficulties: “i feel like i can’t afford to go to school and pay and still survive, so i feel like i had to work.” another (p13) stated, “i was working two jobs and i was going to [high] school…. you gotta do what you gotta do.” one participant (p7) stated that parents in her community did not want their children to be employed while attending school. however, this conflicted with their children’s desire for popular items (e.g., brand name running shoes, ipods), and led some youth to find illegal ways to achieve their goals. she elaborated: the trend right now is … whatever the tv says is fine.... the problem is it’s very expensive, so … if you wanna be considered as somebody but you don’t have the money, what do you do? you go steal from whoever you can…. and the kids that don’t work …? they start selling drugs. this quote echoes reports from previous studies that the pressure to conform and to develop a sense of belonging can place youth at greater risk of criminal activity (rossiter & rossiter, 2009), particularly as adolescents often have difficulty distinguishing between needs (adequate clothing) and wants (the “right” outfit and accessories). another youth (p11) spoke about the desire of youth in her community for access to cash: the father’s never involved in the kid’s activity, so the mother is just struggling and struggling, and the money is not enough … and [the kids] want quick money…. some other kids just say, “oh, yeah, you know, i just made $1,000 yesterday, you know, by [dealing drugs]. oh, it’s cool!” and ... that’s what they do. they sell. drug use can intensify dissension within families. one youth reported that many immigrants from her country chewed khat, a stimulant drug that can cause mood swings and other effects. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 756 she explained that some males in her community spent as much as $100 each per evening on the drug, an expensive practice that often led to family conflict: “the family are just starving and they’re spending the money sitting in the basement with other men” (p11). because of limited family incomes, many participants had lived in subsidized housing in the city, and two of the criminally involved youth had been homeless at one time. in some of the social housing complexes, youth reported being exposed to criminal activity on a daily basis: if you have at least five kids, you should be working two or three jobs at the same time. the government, maybe they will help you find a government house. but where the house is gonna be, the location? ... this kid, before he goes to school, he's seeing this guy in the morning … making drug deals….this is normal stuff; that's how they see it. so they go and they do it. and they grow up with that mentality. (p2) the transient, high-crime nature of some of the low-income neighbourhoods in which many newcomers settle has been identified elsewhere (e.g., kanu, 2008; kazemipur & halli, 2000; ngo, 2010). these dysfunctional neighbourhoods have been described as “zones of decay” for young immigrants (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). drug dealers, however, use the lure of money, power, and a sense of belonging to recruit gang members (chuang & cissa, 2009; ngo, 2010; rossiter & rossiter, 2009): [gangs] approach you, like persuade you, like the benefit of being in a gang and how much money you can make … and they make it sound more like a family. so, they’re there for you like you’re there for them. (p12) however, this youth had declined the invitation to join a gang, suspecting that it would be difficult to leave once he had joined. another participant explained that one of his friends had exited a gang because, as he stated, “he's helping them, and then when it's time for them to help him, they don't want to” (p13). several of the participants in this study were aware of gangs in their schools and neighbourhoods; two had had friends recruited; two had become acquainted with gang members during their incarceration; and another had tried to mentor and help youth exit gangs in the community. however, the interviewees all stated that they themselves had not been involved in gangs. knowledge of canadian laws some youth became involved in criminal activities as a result of peer influences, and their knowledge of canadian laws and legal sanctions was reported to be very limited. this finding is convergent with that of ngo et al. (2013). five participants in the current study had received some information on canadian laws at school or at a settlement orientation; informal sources of information included personal reading, the internet, and television (although most crime programs are american). one youth (p6) reported learning from others in her community that domestic violence was illegal in canada, unlike in her home country, and that she could call 911 if her father beat her or her mother. eight participants (including all three criminally involved youth) reported that they were ignorant of canadian laws or had learned about the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 757 consequences of breaking some laws only as a result of their own or another’s experience. the following is representative of their comments: … you cannot hit a girl. whether she’s your girlfriend or wife, no, you cannot here. you can get arrested. i found out about that … when [my friend] hit his girlfriend when she was pregnant, and she fainted or something and the cops have to come. that’s when i found that was wrong. (p13) another explained, “i learned about canadian laws when i started getting myself into trouble — started getting arrested and going to courts and such” (p12). a third asserted that his crime of dishonesty was “… not that bad — i’m not hurting nobody. like what’s the worst that could happen?” (p14). had he known that he would be facing jail time if caught, he said he would not have committed the crime. in the experience of this incarcerated youth, information on canadian law was not widely available to newcomers: people tell them about where to get welfare, how to get their social insurance number, health card … but nobody talks to them about the law. and i think personally, that’s the single most important thing, you know, ’cause coming from [country], for example, you know, spouses fight.... here, it’s a crime, you can’t beat up your wife, or your wife can’t beat you. one youth (p11) reported that although police came to her ethnocultural community to talk about the law, it was only to parents; she recommended that the information be shared with both parents and youth. another interviewee recommended that information on canadian laws be shared in schools, agencies, and ethnocultural communities, as a series of classes or workshops, not just one seminar “’cause some people don’t learn stuff in one day, so it’s gotta be step by step” (p13). one participant emphasized the importance of teaching not only canadian laws but also the consequences of crime: when i get out [of jail], i’m gonna go to the [ethnocultural] community and help the other kids there, right? if someone showed up and talked about their experience, like my experience from being in jail, that would help the other kids ... understand better, even if they didn’t know the language yet. they would know that, hey, we came to canada, and this is what can happen here, you know?... like in [home country], who cares if you’re drunk and you’re driving? no one. (p14) legislative reforms also need to be clearly communicated to all newcomers in a language in which they are proficient. with amendments to canada’s criminal code, new criminal offences have been introduced and increased mandatory minimum sentences imposed. a criminal record can result in the deportation of permanent residents under canadian federal government law (immigration and refugee protection act, 2002, s. 36.1). the consequences of criminal convictions can be long-term, as explained by one participant: i have like a criminal record, so most of the time … as soon as the employer’s aware of that, they’re more scared to hire you and, at the same time, you have no other choices, so you keep looking mostly. (p12) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 758 these circumstances could also tempt some youth to become involved in more lucrative criminal activity, as noted by, for example, ngo et al.(2013) and wortley (2003). one youth (p11) stated that, in some cases within her community, “as soon as [parents] find out the kid has been doing something really bad and maybe he has hurt somebody or committed an assault, they’ll ship [him] back home [before he can be arrested].” the lack of knowledge of canadian laws and legal sanctions reported by participants in this study shows the critical importance of ensuring that this information is communicated effectively to both newcomer youth and their families (congruent with wortley, 2003). support networks most participants in this study reported that they had received very limited psychosocial support when they first arrived in canada. one youth (p11) stated that it would be very helpful to have buddies or mentors in schools who would listen to newcomer youth, provide advice, and not judge them if they were experiencing difficulties. those who had immigrated alone or whose parents were working two or more jobs were disadvantaged, as one youth (p12) explained: “there’s no one who’s there to guide you — like here, this is good, this is bad.…” participants reported a lack of positive role models, especially for young males, similar to findings from earlier studies (e.g., anisef et al., 2003; rossiter & rossiter, 2009; seat, 2003) reflecting reports of children being raised by television and limited supervision leaving some youth vulnerable to negative influences in their communities. positive relationships with family served to lessen the impact of negative influences in participants’ lives. one participant credited his family for keeping him in school: my relatives … they was pushing me every day, saying, “we didn’t have chance to go to school, and now we have a chance, so we need you to be successful, we need you to get education, to get a degree”. (p10) esl teachers and programs were also praised for the support that they provided to youth: my first [esl] teacher ... she was wonderful, like she guided me a lot and told me a lot of stuff and advised me, and even so right now every time she sees me, she asks me how’s everything, what you can do, who you can talk to. (p7) individuals such as these can play nurturing and sustaining roles in the lives of newcomer youth. some schools also offered valuable extracurricular opportunities, such as leadership programs, that attracted newcomer youth: ... we would go volunteer at different places, we would volunteer at different events at the school, so it builds up really our self-confidence and how we would interact with people and i think it kind of like built up our public speaking skill because we would participate in the meetings every monday. and it was a really, really, really positive student body. (p3) associating with youth from other cultural backgrounds was seen as an advantage by several interviewees; as one youth (p2) explained, “i went to [name] high school where i think i was the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 759 only student from [country]. i think it was a good thing because i was able to make friends with people from other cultures, as well.” those youth who made an effort to develop a network of friends outside of their ethnocultural group found that this was beneficial to them: the first year, it was just very hard to open up to a lot of different backgrounds of students.... i stick to my [ethnocultural] friends.... it was just pretty much our own circle ... but i realized after … a year and a half that i really need to expand … my horizon of friends and because i think that by doing that, there’s a lot more opportunities that i can make. (p3) the social networks and skills developed in school settings had positive effects on participants’ development, supporting findings by anderman (2002) and dei (2007). another support that was perceived as important for most participants in both groups was their faith, which helped to create a sense of belonging and stability for youth and their families. as one youth (p1) explained, “church did a lot for us, especially for my family. it’s a big thing in our family and so to find that, it was like we had a community — somewhere to belong.” this sense of belonging satisfied a basic need for many (baumeister & leary, 1995; maslow, 1970). community groups and organizations such as catholic social services, the mennonite centre for newcomers, and others also provided new possibilities. one participant stated: [a settlement service representative] really opened the doors to the opportunities that are available in canada.… it’s just a matter of knowing about them and knowing how to take advantage of them…. it was a really nice turning point in our lives and from there on, things have gone a lot better for us. (p8) it is clear from the statement above that one caring individual can have a significant impact on the future prospects of immigrant youth. school teachers, programs, and community groups were all reported to support newcomer youth and give them a sense of belonging in the wider community. educational experiences congruent with previous research (e.g., anisef et al., 2003; kanu, 2008; ngo & schleifer, 2005), school placement issues were a source of frustration and discontent for many immigrant students and their parents. one participant explained: here in canada it’s based on your age; you’re put [in a grade] according to your age, but from where we come from it’s based on your knowledge. you write a test and they put you in a grade that’s suitable for you. so i was put back three years behind and i had to repeat junior high all over again. so that was very frustrating. (p2) some teachers were perceived to have neither the time nor the skills to adapt subject content to accommodate esl learners (as noted also by kanu, 2008), and additional supports were not always available for either the english language learners or their teachers: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 760 teachers have so much on their hands….they kind of deliver their curriculum and their plan…. anything else that a student might need — extra help with homework for me because of my language — was not there. the teacher didn’t have the language [teaching] skills or the time to help me. (p8) without the necessary assistance, youth often made slower academic progress. one youth (p11) stated, “it would be great if in our … communities, we had some sort of after-school homework, or some tutoring for the kids....” another recommended that the age cap for attending high school be raised (a recommendation supported by garnett, 2010) so that students had a chance to complete high school with their peers. those who take upgrading courses after leaving high school must pay tuition fees that many immigrants cannot afford. parents were often unable to provide educational support or advocacy, as many had little or no understanding of the canadian school system and limited contact with teachers. one participant explained: my parents … were so intimidated to go into the classrooms and to talk to the teachers because they felt like, the fact that they didn’t speak english, or the fact that they didn’t know about the school system, the teacher would automatically think of them as not very smart people and that would kind of create that stereotype of me not being very smart. (p8) however, with the support of their families, nine of the eleven youth leaders and one of the three criminally involved youth aspired to or were attending post-secondary programs. one youth (p8) explained her motivation this way: “i want to change lives, make meaningful changes to the world, and i think that a law degree can be a useful weapon, a positive weapon to do that.” these findings echo the aspirations of participants in earlier studies by seat (2003), and krahn and taylor (2005). racism and discrimination when asked if they had experienced racism or discrimination since their arrival in canada, the majority of participants responded affirmatively. some youth also reported numerous incidents of discrimination at work, in the local community, and at school. one female youth stated, “a boy in my … classroom … followed me to the washroom and began yelling at me, telling me to go back to my country” (p8). another youth who had experienced everyday bullying and discrimination in canadian schools explained, “people here just call each other names, but there’s no fist fights, there’s no slapping, there’s no hair pulling, none of that here” (p11). she attributed her attitude to resilience developed in schools in her home country, where “there’s bullying, there’s fights every day, in class, at class, everything. so you had to be really tough … and you have to portray this image of fear into the other kids so they wouldn’t fight you.” discrimination in canadian schools was also attributed to inter-tribal conflicts among youth. the same interviewee reported that african children were often told by their parents not to associate with youth from different tribes. she maintained that some children, who may not have experienced violence back home, were being taught to hate in canada. conflict with youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 761 from other tribes and minority groups, as well as those from mainstream canadian society, constituted a serious issue for many newcomer adolescents. as work by berry and colleagues (2006) has shown, discrimination has a negative effect on psychological adaptation (personal well-being, mental health) and on sociocultural adaptation (interactional competence in a new culture). cultural identity developing a pluricultural identity was a challenge that had social and academic consequences for most youth, as explained by this participant: you tend to struggle between two cultures. the cultures you have at home where it’s very close-knit — it’s very different from what you’re used to outside, right?… [newcomer youth] don’t really know how to balance the two cultures. (p8) another youth (p11) explained that, unlike many of her muslim friends who would leave home wearing a religious head covering and then change at school, she had refused to wear a headscarf as an adolescent. as a result of continuing conflict with her parents and in particular with her father, who was very strict, she dropped out of high school, left home, and eventually completed her education in adult upgrading classes. difficulties with cultural adaptation and intergenerational conflict have been noted by anisef et al. (2003), ngo (2010), ngo et al.(2013), and rossiter and rossiter (2009), among others; these stories highlight some of the struggles that families face in parenting their children in a society with differing norms. involvement in community programs community-based organizations offer a variety of programs and mentorship opportunities to engage young newcomers; however, many have difficulty connecting with immigrant youth in the wider community. all but one participant in the present study were involved in their ethnocultural organizations or their churches. unlike the three criminally involved youth, however, 10 of the other 11 youth were involved in multiple activities in the larger community, eight of them extensively. participants explained the importance, particularly early in the settlement process, of programs available to them through community organizations and settlement agencies. i was very involved in [settlement agency]. they will teach about the canadian culture, so how the police work, you know, rules and stuff, and my [parent] and i will always go there.... they have a summer program where they show you around the city.... they also gave us something like a sponsor family, so we had like a family that helped us out around the city. (p1) citizenship and immigration canada’s cultural links program (formerly the host program) is designed to facilitate settlement by matching newcomers with trained volunteers whose role is to welcome and engage newcomers. several models of similar promising programs have been offered in various parts of the country to facilitate the integration of individuals or groups of immigrant youth into canadian society; however, the majority of them have been subject to only informal, in-house evaluations (anisef et al., 2005), funding is limited, and there are often long international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 762 waiting lists for newcomers to be matched with volunteers from the wider community (derwing & waugh, 2012). the majority of youth leaders were involved in newcomer or youth programs offered by organizations such as air cadets, boys and girls clubs/big brothers big sisters, the canadian council for refugees, catholic social services, faith communities, the john humphrey centre for peace and human rights, the mennonite centre for newcomers, multicultural health brokers, music groups, community recreational programs, and others. programs such as these empower youth, develop leadership skills, and provide valuable role models for others in the immigrant community (ngo et al., 2013). for example, one interviewee reported: this summer i was helping with boys and girls club. they had a program where they ... help junior high kids. they have difficulties with the culture and stuff. and they all do activities for them. so, kind of like a mentorship program…. i would have loved to have somebody like that.… it would have helped me more, i think. (p1) the significance of mentorship was echoed by other participants in the study. when asked what wisdom they would like to share with newcomer youth, one participant advised: … find really positive role models, you know? because it’s really easy to fall off track and lead your life in a disastrous way, but if you have the right people that will show you around, it will help you — it’s very good. (p2) this was reiterated by another (p14), who warned that immigrants are often given misinformation to lure them into the drug trade or black market (“selling drugs, oh, it’s okay”). he advised newcomer youth to “stay close to family and actually true friends … or talk to somebody else who is like older … or has been here.” several participants explained the importance of giving back to canadian society. one youth (p10) stated, “once i help people, i feel good about myself, like helping people to be successful.” another offered this opinion: main thing is, immigrants should have open minds, too, you know, because it’s a give and take. you move to a country, you have to have an open mind to that country. you have to see that country as your new home or that environment as your new home, and give to the environment, because you’ll never take out if you don’t give. (p4) participation in prosocial group activities that allowed them to contribute and grow was reported to increase the self-esteem and sense of belonging of participants in this study. it has also been reported to promote newcomer youths’ resilience and adaptation (este & ngo, 2011). youths’ perceptions of the benefits of volunteerism, echoing those of stakeholders in ngo et al. (2013), constitute a key contribution of this study. recognizing the lack of role models for newcomers, they were providing mentorship for younger immigrants and found it rewarding. interestingly, the three criminally involved youth in this study did not report extensive involvement in the wider community; their activities were restricted to their ethnocultural organizations and their churches. mentorship and involvement in the larger community, however, appeared to be important for successful integration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 763 conclusion analyses of participant interview transcripts revealed that the settlement and adaptation of the immigrant and refugee youth in this study were influenced by negative pre-migration experiences (e.g., trauma resulting from war and violence); difficult socioeconomic circumstances (e.g., poverty, unsafe neighbourhoods); lack of knowledge of canadian laws and legal sanctions; challenging educational experiences (e.g., limited support from mainstream teachers, little or no parental engagement with the school); racism and discrimination; and cultural identity issues. however, several factors were reported to mitigate the negative influences in participants’ lives. these included, in particular, support networks (e.g., in esl programs, faith communities, settlement agencies) and involvement in cultural and recreational community programs as participants and leaders. the contributions of the participants whose voices have been included here confirm many of the factors affecting the settlement of immigrant youth that have been identified in previous studies (e.g., anisef et al., 2003; ngo & schleifer, 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). they also highlight, in youths’ own words, aspects of their experiences that have not been closely examined elsewhere: the negative impacts of refugee transportation loans and of subsidized housing environments; their lack of knowledge of canadian laws and sanctions; and the benefits of volunteering in community activities and mentorship programs. the findings of this qualitative study must be interpreted in light of several limitations, one of which is the small sample size: interviews were conducted with 14 youth. the participants were not necessarily representative of the numbers or proportions in local immigrant communities. future studies of larger groups could explore differences in male and female responses and in youths’ understanding of gender script in their home countries and in canada. although some of the youth interviewed were able to communicate their ideas more articulately than others, the interviews were all instructive and contributed to a greater understanding of the settlement experiences of vulnerable immigrant and refugee youth; in particular, they highlighted the value of mentors, community organizations, and knowledge of canadian laws. a number of key recommendations follow, based on shared experiences of the participants in this study. the first addresses education: schools are the most accessible context in which to address many of the issues facing newcomer youth. to foster academic success, transition programming should be provided for immigrant youth and their families to address procedural, social, and academic aspects of the education system. adequate supports and accommodations should be provided in the schools to help youth integrate successfully. pre-service and in-service teachers need to understand students’ preand post-migration backgrounds and develop the skills to adapt instruction to effectively accommodate english language learners. second, we recommend the development, formal external evaluation, and enrichment of programs that promote mentoring, volunteerism, leadership skills, a sense of belonging, and the integration of immigrant youth into the wider community. interviews revealed that participation in prosocial activities was a key support in the lives of the youth in this study. there is a clear need for more mentoring and more community connections programs to facilitate successful adaptation and integration; to expand relationship networks for both youth and, by extension, their families; and to provide additional support for independent youth. within the school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 746–770 764 context, designated peer buddy or mentoring programs could be provided for those learning the english language both at the beginning of and throughout the school year. ethnocultural organizations should work closely with settlement agencies, local government, and community groups to ensure that affordable out-of-school recreational programs, both sports and art-based, are available in schools and neighbourhoods and have the necessary supports (e.g., transportation, fee waivers). more efficient means should also be used to make newcomer families aware of these and other accessible programs available in their communities (e.g., free library cards, subsidized recreation for newcomer and low-income families). this information needs to be available in schools, registry offices, city offices, libraries, recreational centres, settlement agencies, clinics, and other frequently accessed locations, as well as in the media (local ethnic radio, community newspapers). accessible cultural and recreational programs in schools and neighbourhoods should be available not only to engage youth participants but also to provide leadership training and experience for immigrants from diverse cultures. these and other opportunities to become involved in community activities in various capacities need to be more actively and effectively communicated to youth and their families. finally, we encourage the development of culturally sensitive programs to introduce immigrant youth and their families to the canadian justice system. the financial and psychological pressures of poverty make some youth vulnerable to involvement in criminal activities. those participants who had come into conflict with the law expressed their lack of understanding of canadian laws and sanctions, which differ significantly from laws in their home countries. authoritative, up-to-date information on canadian laws and legal sanctions for youth, families, and immigrant-serving agencies is vital to the well-being of the newcomer community. without this knowledge, immigrants face the risk of fines, incarceration, or possibly deportation, at significant cost to themselves, their communities, and canadian society. more federal funding is required to achieve these goals. although the federal government makes immigration decisions, many of the subsequent costs are downloaded to the provinces and municipalities in which newcomers settle. the mandatory long-form canadian census was replaced by a voluntary national household survey in 2010; many analysts believe that vulnerable groups, such as recent immigrants, could be under-represented as a result of this change (reitz, 2014, p. 112). further responsibility is therefore placed on both researchers and advocates to identify and communicate the needs of newcomers. greater educational support, awareness of and access to opportunities for community involvement, and knowledge of canadian systems will inform and guide newcomer youth through their settlement and adaptation process, help them to develop a sense of belonging, and facilitate fuller participation in canadian society. combining these with systemic changes on the part of the receiving community, such as the elimination of refugee transportation loans; recognition of foreign credentials; adequate funding for settlement services; cultural sensitivity programs in schools, workplaces, and the wider community (e.g., rossiter & rossiter, 2009); employment equity and unionization of the workforce (galabuzi, 2006); provision of a guaranteed minimum income for all; 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(2003). hidden intersections: research on race, crime, and criminal justice in canada. canadian ethnic studies journal, 35(3), 99–117. immigrant and refugee youth settlement experiences: “a new kind of war” marian j. rossiter, sarvenaz hatami, daniel ripley, and katherine r. rossiter theoretical and methodological framework results and discussion conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 595 the canonical self and politicized praxis: a tracing of two concepts scott kouri abstract: this article maps various conceptualizations of the self and praxis in child and youth care theory. with specific reference to the curriculum and pedagogy developed at the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, the shift from the knowledge, skills, self (kss) model to the praxis framework is argued to exemplify a move to a more dynamic and politically nuanced rendering of the concept of the self relative to its more canonical expressions. the canonical self of cyc is proposed here as an aggregate of the writings of a small group of cyc theorists that together constitute the dominant conceptualization of the self in the field’s literature. historical and philosophic context is provided for the articulation of the self in the canonical literature and a brief review of this literature is provided. the concept of politicized praxis builds on white’s (2007) praxis framework, as well as the work of other cyc theorists and practitioners (e.g., de finney, dean, loiselle, & saraceno, 2011; gharabaghi & krueger, 2010; skottmyhre & skott-myhre, 2011), to propose an avenue of theoretical development that might more adequately respond to the realities and experiences of diverse children, youth, and families. as a review this paper critically reflects on cyc’s theoretical traditions; as an opening gambit it proposes a way forward in theorizing a praxis that is responsive to the realities of contemporary society. keywords: child and youth care, self, praxis, theory, kss model, context, political acknowledgement: this research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. scott kouri is a ph.d. student and instructor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. he works as a clinical counsellor and youth worker. scott’s research focus is related to politicized cyc praxis and how concepts of the self, identity, and subjectivity are circulated in cyc curricula. e-mail: skouri@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 596 the praxis framework (white, 2007) is quickly becoming a guiding pedagogical force at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, as well as across north american child and youth care (cyc). building on the earlier knowledge, skills, self (kss) framework, while transforming some of its central components, praxis offers us a way of integrating theory and practice in complex, shifting, and politically charged contexts. in such contexts white (2007) proposes that the concept of “ways of being”, as an active and dynamic rendition of the concept of the “self”, allows for relational and ethical accounts of practitioners’ being in the world. this paper proposes that a close tracing of the concept of the self through cyc’s rich literature and into the current praxis framework can help us map our theoretical and pedagogical past and future possibilities. i therefore chart conceptual approaches to the self in north american cyc literature, curricular, and professional development, and western philosophy more generally. while a full account of these dimensions of the concept of the self is beyond the scope of this paper, i do provide a tracing of these ideas that connects our theoretical lineage to a proposal for further development to the praxis framework. i begin by providing a context for the paper by outlining a history of the concept of the self in cyc curriculum and professionalization. next i provide a very brief genealogy of the self in western philosophy, elaborate my concept of the canonical self, and engage with the central cyc literature on the topic. i close the paper by providing an account of the transition that occurred in 2007 at scyc from the kss model to the praxis framework and argue for further developments in line with a more politicized rendering of the self and praxis. this paper does not attempt an objective report on the state of affairs in the field or its literature but rather, as part of my own praxis, elaborates an account of my own thinking, practice, and hopes. the concept of the self in early cyc curriculum (1970 to 2000) contemporary cyc is a practice approach to supporting the well-being of children, youth, and families. with roots in residential care, youth work, and developmental psychology, cyc has been developing as an academic program at school of child and youth care (scyc) since 1973 (anglin, 1999; pence, 1989). the field of cyc, inclusive of practice and academic domains, is generally concentrated on direct, caring, and holistic therapeutic relationships with children and youth informed by developmental, systems, and strengths-based theories (anglin, 1999; mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2010). the self has featured as a core concept in the understanding of the caring relationship and the fully present practitioner, and has thus enjoyed a central place in cyc. white (2007), for example, describes one the hallmarks of cyc practice as “bringing oneself fully to the therapeutic relationship” (p. 225). the concept of the self has been central to north american cyc for at least the past 40 years. writings on the self, for example, constituted a large part of the curricula in the first canadian degree program in cyc, then called the child care program, which was offered at the university of victoria (uvic). the early “knowledge, skills, self” (kss) model (school of child and youth care, 2011) and later “self-driven” (garfat & ricks, 1995) and “self-awareness” (ricks, 1989) models have been used to train practitioners and theorize practice, as well as to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 597 differentiate cyc from other professions and academic disciplines (anglin, 1999). in the field’s early writings, the self, in addition to a state of being present that underlies caring relationships, was understood as the ethical cornerstone to practice (garfat & ricks, 1995). contemporary thinking continues in this tradition and views the self as the mediator of professional practice (mattingly et al., 2010) and a lens through which we interpret (garfat & charles, 2007). north american cyc, based originally on the educator programs in europe, became a distinct academic discipline in the 1960s and 1970s, in part through program development at uvic (pence, 1989). the impetus for the development of a child care program at uvic, pence explains, came predominantly from governmental and child service agencies requesting university-level training programs for child care workers. the child care program was inaugurated at uvic in 1973 with a broad focus on training workers in child and adolescent service delivery and a specific focus on “residential and day centres, particularly those individuals with emotional, learning, and social adjustment problems” (program description, may 1974, as cited in pence, 1989). the school of child care, which delivered the program, gradually became the school of child and youth care, and the program was later renamed child and youth care. by the end of the 1970s, the scope of the practice field encompassed residential treatment, rehabilitation, early intervention, juvenile justice, child-life, child care, recreation, and work in communities (denholm, pence, & ferguson, 1983). throughout the 1980s, scyc developed individual courses with specific practice foci, as well as more encompassing frameworks. the first formal educational framework was the tripartite “knowledge, skills, self” (kss) model (pence, 1989) which featured in scyc curriculum for decades to come and inaugurated an unprecedented concentration on the concept of the self. the kss model conceptualized the self in terms of the personal values, beliefs, and assumptions the practitioner brings into practice and the meaning-making process (ricks, 1989). the undergraduate student handbook for scyc (2011) described the self as the personal characteristics evidenced by presentations of thought, word, and action. in terms of training and curriculum, the handbook explained that learning about one’s self involved developing awareness of thoughts, beliefs, values, communication, and actions. one of the distinguishing characteristics of cyc was thought to be the development of therapeutic or caring relationships that combined the personal and professional, which required “an integration of a complex constellation of knowledge, skills, and elements of self” (anglin, 1999, p. 146). the self was viewed as the mediator of relationship; it comprised the personal characteristics that would facilitate therapeutic relationships, the framework for meaning-making, the driving force of actions and ethics, and the capacity of being present and reflective (fewster, 1990; garfat & ricks, 1995; ricks, 1989, 1993). by the 1990s, a proliferation of writings, theories, and practice approaches inextricably tied the concept of the self to cyc. extending on the kss model, theoretical developments in the late 1980s and the 1990s contributed to a more nuanced and operationalized view of the self that was related to ethics, awareness, relationship, and personal/professional development. garfat and ricks (1995) put forward a self-driven model of ethical decision-making in which the self of the practitioner informs and mediates the application of ethical codes and standards in specific contexts of practice. frances ricks (1989) advanced a self-awareness model that included self-image, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 598 material, social, and spiritual aspects of the self, and a communicable knowledge of the self. fewster (1990, 1999) offered personal experience and insights from psychology to explicate the self in its authentic and relational nature. importantly, these authors continued to write about the self into the third millennium. the trend in cyc of emphasizing the importance of the self in theory and practice during the 1980s and 1990s was paralleled and further impelled by educational standardization and professionalization in cyc. professionalization and educational standardization beyond individual academic programs, the self, by the 1990s, was also gaining currency in larger cyc consortiums, credentialing organizations, and professional associations. two influential organizational bodies in early north american cyc were the north american consortium of child and youth care educational programs (naccycep) and the association for child and youth care practice (acycp). these organizations led the way in consolidating and standardizing the definition, scope, and educational standards of cyc in north america, as well as mobilizing practitioners toward professionalization. the importance of the concept of the self was to resonate throughout these processes of standardization and professionalization. naccycep was formally established in 1990 with the purpose of advancing postsecondary cyc education. in 1995, anglin published a special report on naccycep’s curriculum recommendations, which outlined what the consortium understood as the “unique and central” (p. 269) elements of post-secondary cyc education. the consortium’s recommendations, drafted by henry maier, focused on the interactional and interpersonal aspects of cyc work and defined many of the key curricular elements in terms of the self. the recommendations included the development of curriculum to support a practitioner’s “sense of self” (p. 271) and “professional use of self” (p. 272), arguing that, “the most effective interactions between workers and clients are based on relationships and the professional use of self” (p. 272). for naccycep, the practice of care depended on the “use of self in shared experience” (p. 273). in 1998, mark krueger reported on naccycep and advanced an interactive youth work curriculum that foregrounded “self in action” (krueger, 1998, p. 68). once the self was solidified as a central concept in north american cyc curricula, it quickly became important to professional standards and certification processes. between 2000 and 2007, acycp, a north american professional credentialing and research organization, sponsored the north american certification project (nacp) in developing a certification program for professionals (eckles et al., 2009). to develop a professional certification, “the nacp defined the field of child and youth care practice, described the requisite knowledge and skills necessary for professional practice and established a method to assess competence” (p. 2). in 2010, acycp, through the work of its certification board, published standards and implemented a comprehensive certification program. known as the competency document, the competencies for professional child and youth work practitioners (mattingly et al., 2010) put forward a list of five professional competency areas and a framework for evaluating professional competence across five practice contexts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 599 as in the curriculum consortiums, the concept of the self was deeply embedded in the competency document and given a full exposition as one of the contexts for practice. some examples of the self in the competency areas include being “self-directed” and “engaged in professional and personal development and self-care” (p. 10), having “self-awareness” (p. 11) and “self-understanding” (p. 12), and assessing relationships “in an ongoing process of self reflection about the impact of the self” (p. 18). professional practice is explained in the document to focus “on the use of self as a mediator of knowledge and skills” (p. 27). furthermore, the competency document dictates that “foundational to child and youth care is the use of self, but to make effective use of self in practice one must first be aware of and able to articulate the nature of the self” (p. 28). the nature of the self, however, was not elaborated on, nor was the process of acquiring or evaluating such knowledge described beyond the professional educational standards of diploma or baccalaureate in cyc. the competency document (mattingly et al., 2010) has become the standard and central driving force in cyc professionalization in north america. professionalization of the field, however, has not been achieved without significant criticisms and detractors. a recent volume (volume 43, issue 2) of one of the field’s most high-impact journals, child & youth services, for example, specifically deconstructs, assesses, and, at times, criticizes professionalization. although the definition of the field, its history, and its central concepts are debated and often disagreed upon, the concept of the self has been and continues to be central to cyc theory, curriculum, and professionalization. before engaging in review of the literature on the self in cyc, in the next section i provide a brief genealogy of the concept of the self in western philosophy and sketch out my concept of the canonical self. i do so to more fully examine my own philosophic underpinnings and foundational assumptions of the concept of the self. i also specifically look to highlight the diversity of ways the self has been conceptualized and critiqued in order to open up new avenues for thinking about the self in the 21st century. western philosophic context the cartesian image of the self has dominated western thinking for nearly 400 years. throughout the second half of the second millennium ad, western philosophy, espoused in the texts of predominantly caucasian european christian heterosexual males, travelled the globe through the vectors of colonialism and imperialism. descartes (1637/1996), as a foundational thinker in western philosophy, proposed a split between mind and matter and described the self as reflective, perceiving, questioning, and the foundation for knowledge. these claims of a mindmatter dualism and a self-reflective consciousness, although highly contested, have embedded themselves in many philosophical discourses on the self, including much of cyc theory. the modern concept of the self in western philosophy can be traced in variable form from classical greek philosophy to descartes’ cogito. plato (1992, trans.), in his dialogues on the death of socrates, argued that the soul is immortal and distinct from the mortal body. the soul, for plato, was a form that brought forth life in the material body and existed in another world after physical death. aristotle (2008, trans.), highly indebted to plato but divergent from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 600 latter’s clear separation of soul and body, developed the notion of the soul as the essence of a thing or living being. in aristotle, for example, cutting was the essence of a knife and, following the same logic, the essence or soul of a human body was rational activity. platonism and aristotelianism flourished for centuries in the western hemisphere and gradually entwined with christian theology, particularly in scholasticism, to produce variable articulations of the self based on the ideas of essence or soul. in the 17th century, descartes criticized classical and scholastic philosophy and formulated his cogito as a response. descartes (1637/1996) founded a new philosophy on a skepticism applied to received, doubtable, and conjectural knowledge. he argued that sense perceptions and received knowledge can be ambiguous or suspect, and are therefore insufficient to found a philosophy seeking absolute truth. descartes’ skeptical approach left him doubting everything except the very fact of his doubting. his new philosophy, therefore, was founded on the self-present consciousness that thinks and doubts, or the cogito. in meditation ii, descartes argued that the proposition “i am” or “i exist” is necessarily true when put forward by a mind that conceives itself as such, and is therefore a reliable foundation for philosophy. the cogito, or thinking self, became the only rational basis of knowledge and was differentiated from the body, extensive reality, or matter. the thinking mind and the objects of extensive reality were henceforth two distinct ontological categories, the latter being perceived and acted on by the former. dussel (2003) explains that descartes’ separation of the mind from the body was firmly embedded in a european conceit that claimed a god’s eye view of the world removed from any spatial or historical coordinates. throughout the enlightenment period, he argues, europeans usurped the power once attributed to an all-seeing and all-knowing god, endowing themselves with a subjectivity in a paternalistic relationship to the material world and non-europeans others. for dussel, the image of the conscious mind acting on an innate matter was also predicated on the prevalent colonial attitudes of the 1500s during europe’s rise as an imperial power. alcoff (2012) emphasizes that for descartes and european modernity in general, “the knowing i is imagined to be both universal arbiter and neutral or perspectiveless observer and as such need not give an account of its own prejudgments or accord presumptive authority to others” (p. 63). the production of a european consciousness free of historical and material tethering and endowed with an beyond-doubt existence shot through with a sentiment of mastery justified much of the invasiveness of this philosophy throughout europe’s colonies. as the spread of colonialism and western philosophy intensified, so too did racist discourses that differentiated between a normative white or european subject and those marked by differences in skin, hair, and bone and categorized as other (du bois, 1897/1970). throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, during the years of war between colonial and indigenous nations in north america and worldwide, western idealist philosophers such as kant (1781/2003), as well as empiricists such as hume (1740/2003), wrestled with the notion of a unified self and its relationship to empirical reality, the body, spirit, and god. kant proposed a critical philosophy in which subjective experience was understood in terms of universal or transcendental structures whereby consciousness had subjective awareness of objects in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 601 world through representations. however, kant participated in a growing anthropology based on racial taxonomies, and privileged these “universal” structures of consciousness and reason to “men”, which he understood as white and civilized (eze, 1997). hume, contrary to kant’s transcendentalism, foreclosed the possibility of a consciousness that unifies or underlies the multiplicity of sense perceptions that constitute temporal experience. hegel (1807/1998), a starting point for teleological thinking about self-consciousness, viewed individual and social consciousness as a necessary and progressive development of spirit. following another century of dialogue in philosophy, and the continued spread of european philosophy and dominance across the globe, the conversation on the self shifted again within western thought through what ricoeur (1970) called “the school of suspicion” (p. 32). the cartesian self (descartes, 1637/1996), he argued, received its most sustained critiques from the masters of suspicion nietzsche, marx, and freud. nietzsche rethought the self in terms of its history and embodiment, whereas marx returned consciousness to material conditions of life and class, and freud posited an ego wrenched between bodily drives and cultural rules. while the concept of the self has had a rich history and undergone enormous criticism, the self in cyc has generally coalesced around notions of reflexivity, essence, authenticity, morality, awareness, and presence, all of which can be traced through dominant european thought. in the next section i engage with an assemblage of literature which i believe has been central to thinking about the self in cyc and continues in the western philosophic tradition. i then provide a short critique of this literature and attempt to think through how we as a field might address some of the problems facing contemporary children, youth, and families through a more politicized notion of self and praxis. the canonical self the canonical self is a concept i developed to help me think through a central portion of the cyc literature related to the self. for me, the canonical self is an aggregate of the writings of a small group of cyc theorists that together constitute the dominant conceptualization of the self in the field’s literature. the canonical self, as i have thus far demonstrated, is for me situated within the historical development of cyc and european philosophy more generally. the main authors who contributed to this canonical body of literature, and who have thus come to hold a place of authority in articulating the self for the field, include frances ricks (1989, 1993, 2001), thom garfat (1998, 2003; garfat & charles, 2007; garfat & ricks, 1995), gerry fewster (1990, 1999, 2010), and mark krueger (1991, 1994, 1997, 2009). many other individuals in north american have contributed to cyc’s rendition of the self; however, the texts of these four authors constitute what i believe to be the canonical literature. these canonical authors who wrote prolifically during the 1980s and 1990s – and in some cases continue to do so up to the present day – were influenced by other innovators in the cyc field and other disciplines, such as henry maier (1979, 1987, 1995), michael baizerman (1974, 1994, 1995), edna guttmann (1991), fritz redl (1966; redl & wineman, 1952), jerome bruner (1990), and karen vanderven (1979, 1999). combined, these theorists have worked for over 50 years to articulate a foundational theory of self and its relationship to cyc. the relationships between the self and knowledge and practice in cyc primarily include self-reflection, presence, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 602 and authenticity. within the canonical discourse, understanding and articulating the self has come to be understood as necessary for effective, ethical, relational, and professional practice. although the self is described with some variability in the canonical texts, the authority imbued to these authors, their intra-group referentiality, use of personal experience as evidence, shared assumptions around individuality and introspection, reflexive rather than definitive articulations, and depoliticized understanding of the self all constitute the canonical nature of the self. nealon and giroux (2012) explain that “to be an author in the canonical sense is to be invested literally with author/ity, to be taken seriously and even revered for your accomplishments” (p. 11). it is in reference to the issue of authority as it is employed in relation to particular articulations of the self that the canonical self emerges and necessitates critique. importantly, i am not standing outside of this particular cyc tradition to level a critique: i was trained through these canonical texts, have engaged with them thoroughly in my education and practice, and consider myself to be, in some small way, part of a new generation of selftheorists in cyc. my interest here is to use the canonical notions of self-reflection and questioning assumptions to interrogate the very foundations of our thinking on the self. i work at this project from within the very discourse that i seek to open up. as such, i perform a doubling practice which lather (2001) describes as simultaneously working-within and troubling-fromwithin. this type of conservative transgression is a double gesture that depends on a shared horizon yet gives new inclinations and twists to those shared lines. i therefore sample from the cyc literature in order to provide a reading that i feel moves us in a direction more accountable to our contemporary circumstances. i emphasize the depoliticized nature of the self in its canonical form in order to work towards a notion of politicized praxis as a shared horizon of possibility. the canonical literature gerry fewster gerry fewster (1990, 1999, 2010) is one the most visible figures in articulating a cyc perspective of the self. fewster (1999) generally capitalizes the “s” in self and describes it variously as the experiencing of a unique perspective, an inner voice or real essence, and “a mind-boggling notion that urges me to come to terms with my place in the cosmos” (para. 2). in the company of frances ricks, mark krueger, and thom garfat, fewster has literally written the book on the self in cyc. his first major work, 1990’s being in child care: a journey into self, which is cited in nearly all the works of the other canonical writers, argues that the experience of self is the heart of cyc practice. although he draws consistently on psychological theories, he also critiques them and works on a perpetually evolving theory that integrates psychology, new age theory, and science with his personal experience. moving back and forth between theories of the self and his lived experience, fewster (1999) intertwines the intellectual and the reflective with examples from his practice with children and youth. in terms of relationships, he explores the paradox of needing autonomy for relatedness, stating that “the more i am able to experience my self as a separate and unique international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 603 being, the more i am able to become an active participant in seeking, creating, and sustaining my relationships with others – and vice versa” (para. 3). he also explores the mind-body connection via his training in western psychology, his forays into new age experience and energetics, and his ongoing work to hear his internal voice. fewster shares the insight that, “when my mind opens up to what my body already knows, i will be free to become all that i am” (para. 34). it is important to fewster to continually reconceptualize the self in the light of new experience, to seek empirical evidence for the self, and to explore the utility of concepts and evidence for working with the self. in the end, he suggests that “the self emerges through direct contact with other selves” (para. 52). in his most recent major work, don’t let your kids be normal, fewster (2010) reduces political, ideological, and environmental constraints on human development to projections of individual psyches inundated by fear. in other words, the social here is reduced to the self. rather than changing the contexts in which development takes place, fewster argues, developing curiosity, compassion, caring, and awareness at the individual level are primary to solving society’s ills. only the recognition of an authentic self within each parent and child can intercede in the intergenerational transmission of fear that catalyzes hostility and insecurity worldwide. fewster places unprecedented responsibility on parents for their lack of personal development that, in turn, interferes with their children’s inherent development potential. on the other hand, fewster reassures parents about their natural belonging in this world, their authentic selves, and provides a practical avenue for personal and intergenerational healing. this healing, he argues, is available only through consciousness raising and authentic relationships based on the universal communication systems of intuition and energy. in a rousseauian turn, fewster (2010) claims that children inherently know what they need to develop, and that it is only adult fear, projection, and rejection that stifle children’s growth. in his view, parents make individual choices that allow the mythology of medical diagnosis and the practices of pharmaceutical companies to maintain power over their children. here again, he reduces social phenomena to failures in parenting, a reading of the social order that does not account for issues of power, structures, or discourse related to economic or political systems. fewster locates himself within the psychological establishment, which he renders as a soulless enterprise incapable of meaningful relationship. again, however, he holds out a glimmering piece of salvation in the form of a reading of quantum theory that offers a radically new vision of reality in which humans are an integral and purposeful aspect of the cosmos. mark krueger mark krueger (1991, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2009) has been acknowledged for his lifelong direct work with youth, as well as his literary and theoretical contributions to cyc. krueger (1997) extrapolates insights from research contexts to explore how using presence in cyc work often employs stories as a frame. krueger explains that self-understanding, including knowing one’s feelings and consciousness, can deepen “understanding of the meaning of what is occurring” (p. 154) and “ the subjective world of the child by sharing the road to self-discovery” (p. 154). this author contends that cyc workers frame experience in stories, integrating three sets of thoughts: (a) the uniqueness of the story due to the worker’s presence in it; (b) the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 604 existence of the story achieved through recollection; and (c) the interpretation based on familial and cultural experience. in describing the self as a reflective and interpreting being that can come to understand itself in the process of storying experience, krueger (1997) highlights the regular practice of using experiential approaches to think about cyc work. he emphasizes the subjective nature of storying and cyc work, while noting that some sort of objective accuracy is also possible through the reflective process. although krueger (1997) posits a cultural and familial component to the practice of telling and interpreting stories, there is insufficient acknowledgment, i believe, of the power and structures that allows one to be a legitimate storyteller or have a valid interpretation. there seems to be, in krueger’s account, an assumption that an individual can story and reflect on experience relatively independent of economic, unconscious, linguistic, or social factors. while krueger’s earlier work emphasized practitioner meaning-making, more recently he has explored genuineness in human interactions, and he has this to say about his experience: “i had to know self so i could be available to mirror back my experience of the other” (2009, p. 49). such genuine interactions are predicated on the ability to be present, curious, and sensitive, he says, but at bottom, youth are really “waiting for someone real” (p. 50) to show up. krueger explains that this “real” person is someone whom they can emulate, some who can be with youth through their own questioning of who they are. the “real” person here is related to an authentic, independent, and timeless individual essence. frances ricks ricks (1989, 1993, 2001), although acknowledging that the concept of the self is amorphous, puts forward three principles of self-awareness: (a) the self is available to awareness; (b) the self-image produced by this awareness is affected by new information and therefore changes; and (c) this changing self-image affects the functioning or behaviour of the self. the self-awareness model that ricks proposes for cyc contains two major categories: beliefs and style. in her model, beliefs are statements held to be true and style, or “presentation of individuality” (p. 37), are the essence of one’s being. self-awareness is tied so intimately to presence that “presence of self and action of self comes into operation only when one’s attention is turned inward, and until or unless that happens, there is no self to be present” (p. 35). ricks proposes moving beyond a view of self-awareness as summary knowledge of views, values, beliefs, and personal characteristics, toward a more active state or dispositional presence in which being aware is “to act in knowing what is; to be present in that knowing, and taking that presence into action” (p. 34). for conceptual purposes, ricks (1989) describes the self as a “combination of being/presenting one’s thoughts, feelings and behavioural acts out of one’s construction of reality or world view” (pp. 35–36). ricks describes the self in terms of positions, or configurations within a temporal dimension, that are evident as thoughts, feelings, and acts. these positions are postures of the self and are “bottom line statements of one’s being or the essence of who one is” (p. 39). while ricks argues for increased self-awareness and presence, she also cautions that positions or constructions of reality “are constructed from one’s reality and they serve one by maintaining that reality” (p. 39). self-awareness therefore necessitates critical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 605 evaluation of potential deceptions done in a “safe environment for self-awareness discoveries” (p. 40). once the beliefs, values, attitudes, style, feelings, and actions of a person are brought into conscious awareness at a specific time, then, and only then, is there a being or becoming self. the self, therefore, is provisional, subjective, and transitory, yet at any given moment or position can be thought of as having a specific essence or bottom line. in the context of practitioner training, ricks (1993) reflects on the role of a worker’s own needs and desires, and their capacity to impose particular interpretations on clients. ricks proposes a model of practitioner training called therapeutic education to integrate personal growth in curriculum objectives. she argues that cyc training should “adopt a new approach which incorporates a therapeutic element” because “just about every student in a counsellor training program will need help with personal issues if they are to be effective in their work” (p. 22). ricks proposes a complete reworking of departmental values and structures to accommodate an educational approach that centres the student’s personal growth needs. she ties the therapeutic education model to the kss model and explains the conjunction as a process whereby personal learning supports the learning of others, individual differences are attended to, and trust and care are central to the learning process. positing the development of self as the focus of education, ricks argues that, “educators must have clarity about the self and how to assist students in inquiring and discovering the self whether they are teaching research or intervention methods” (p. 33). in her 1989 model of self-awareness, ricks takes up the idea that being present to the other (client) is impossible without being present to the self (practitioner). she goes so far as to claim that “to know about the client requires being aware of self since the client only exists out of one’s self experience of the other person” (p. 35) and that “without self there is no other” (2001, para. 1). stated like this, self-awareness borders on solipsism and subjective idealism. ricks, however, is specifically speaking to the awareness of the practitioner rather than to the actual physical existence of other people. from the outset, she puts forward self-awareness as a precondition for being accountable to the children and families that cyc practitioners work with. almost 20 years after ricks put forward the self-awareness model, she, with hoskins, returned to the idea of understanding otherness and difference through the lens of self-awareness. while the early writings of ricks parallels the emphasis on self-reflection and authenticity to the minimization of social factors, ricks and hoskins (2008) situate their investigation into self and the experience of difference within a dynamic and shifting globalized world. they argue that, “due to globalization and increased connectedness, people are challenged to re-examine old assumptions about differences as expressed through language” (p. 283). the authors explore the challenges inherent in engaging with the complexities of difference and argue for a raised level of consciousness in cyc practitioners. they contend that differences themselves must be more consciously appraised and that practitioners must better understand their relationship to differences. building on the self-awareness model, the authors conclude that negotiating difference is a process of “coming to terms with one’s self” (p. 285) through selfobservation and co-created consciousness. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 606 in describing self-observation and co-created consciousness, ricks and hoskins (2008) explain that individuals build rational frameworks, or construct systems, to interpret, organize, and manage the complexities of life. these construct systems rely on assumptions, beliefs, biases, and interpretive schemes to assimilate information, make sense of reality, and provide choices for action. when engaging with difference, however, our construct systems are challenged and possibly threatened because our basic assumptions and beliefs are not attuned to all of these new experiences. there is a tendency, ricks and hoskins contend, for individuals to withdraw from the experience of difference because of the perceived threat to their construct framework, sense of self, or professional identity. conversely, however, sophisticated selfobservation and co-created consciousness are alternative approaches to engaging with difference. a sophisticated self-observer, ricks and hoskins (2008) explain, has the capacity to incorporate knowledge of how the interaction among self, other, and context affects their experience and understanding of the world. co-created consciousness, accordingly, is a process of taking a stance in relation to others, while at the same time deconstructing the beliefs, assumptions, and values that underlie that stance. constructing and deconstructing experience is a collaborative effort in which understandings are shared, explored, and questioned (ricks & hoskins, 2008). the self in this rendering is an ongoing and situated complexity that weaves history, context, and relationships into a reflexive engagement with other. ricks and hoskins conclude by remarking that, not only is this perspective infinite in the “possibilities for creativity, communion, and compassion,” it also “demands from everyone the capacity to be helpful and merciful in understanding themselves and others in the moment” (p. 307). this co-created matrix in which self, other, relationships, and ways of being creatively emerge from conscious relationship opens enormous possibility and dynamism in cyc practice. the model generally puts difference at the centre, whereas models of professionalization and credentialing seem to centre standardization and similarity of competence and ability. this more recent writing demonstrates a subtle shift in cyc literature towards more relational and sociallyinflected accounts of the self. thom garfat in “four parts magic: the anatomy of a child and youth care intervention”, garfat (2003) analyzes the therapeutic moment of cyc interventions and uses practice examples to demonstrate how interventions take place through noticing, connecting, giving meaning, and speculating on the meaning-making of others. he then goes on to explain how “checking-in with self” (p. 8), “monitoring self-presentation” (p. 11), and “the utilization of self” (p. 12) are all processes that occur throughout the interventive process. checking in with self is explained as a self-awareness of one’s own experience and the assumptions and constructs that structure meaning. the monitoring of self-presentation is the process of scrutinizing one’s external self, including behaviour, body, and interactions, and how they might impact others. for garfat, the utilization of self involves the intentional actions a practitioner makes “using some characteristic of herself or her experience to influence the process of intervention” (p. 12). some examples of these characteristics are exposing emotional experience, appearing confused, or showing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 607 annoyance. garfat explains that to use the self, one needs to be in touch with experience, understand one’s presentation, and have insight into the impacts of presentation and use of self. in terms of relational practice, garfat (2008) describes the self as individual existence, but positions cyc practice as a relational endeavour that manifests in the joining of self and other in the performance of a co-created “in-between” (p. 9). the in-between he describes contains both self and other in an interconnected and synchronized “we” where both selves are maintained. as the context for a cyc relationship and healing, the in-between is relational in the sense that it refers to the experience of self and other in the interaction and doing of relationship. relational practice, for garfat, although distinctively attentive to in-the-moment presence, also necessitates a monitoring of self and a check-in with other. borrowing the metaphor of the self as a lens for viewing the experienced world from ricks (1993), garfat (2008) puts forward the idea of a “perceiving self” (p. 10) and asks us to turn our lens on our self and our experiences. he asks the reader to ponder who we are, how we know ourselves, and what the limits are to our full engagement of self. he explores the self as the experience when we have our reflection turned on itself. the self in this rendition is therefore the observer, the instrument of observation, and the observed. the self is able to know itself, but is also self-limiting in the sense that it makes decisions regarding which perspectives it is attuned to and which it cuts off. these choices of perspective therefore structure the experience of self, other, and the in-between, and can limit connection. garfat, however, also proposes transcending these limitations of perspective and connection through “the purity of self that is present in the in-between” (p. 11). the in-between provides the opportunity to experience self through relationship with other, and in a truly connected relationship, the guarded self is said to be cast aside and the real self honestly exposed. in “how am i who i am? self in child and youth care practice”, garfat and charles (2007) explicitly attend to presence, authenticity, and training practitioners in reflective practice through attention to the self. in their presentation of the theory of self, garfat and charles rely primarily on the views articulated by ricks (1989), fewster (1990), and their own previous individual publications. they speak of the influences of culture, time, personal experience, and history on definitions of the self, yet do not situate their rendition of self in any of these domains. these authors continually recognize a difficulty in expecting a situated self to define itself, yet deliver a singular and final definition. garfat and charles (2007) begin their exposition of the self by claiming that, “it would be an understatement to say that the self is central to child and youth care practice” (p. 6). next, they relate the idea of self to the concepts of context, being, other, and responsibility. their concept of the context of self is underdeveloped except for some indication that a “true individual self” exists that mediates all experience, yet is only knowable within “the vulnerable context of an intimate relationship” (p. 6). the authors maintain that the self, as a way of being, is manifest as a presence in relationship rather than as a tool, technique, or strategy. on the one hand they posit a true authentic self at the core of every individual, while on the other they contend that this self is a dynamic way of being that is manifest through an aware and present engagement with others. the self is, therefore both “the centrality of that which we are” (p. 7) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 608 and constituted through relationship-based constructions of meaning such that “that we grow and change while constantly redefining who we are in the moment” (p. 6). the gradual move towards relational accounts of the self, i believe, sets a path towards beginning to more fully theorize social factors in our conceptualizations. the ethical and moral self garfat and ricks (1995) raise the question of the relationship between doing right and being effective in cyc, and also introduce the concept of context into the ethical decisionmaking process. their self-driven model of ethical decision-making holds that the self of the practitioner informs and mediates the application of ethical codes and standards in specific contexts of practice. the self in this model includes the values, beliefs, and abilities of the worker, which interact with unique situations to resolve problems that can inform future ethical deliberations. the focus is on a responsible and self-aware individual who moderates ethical practice rather than “being driven by external variables” (p. 397). according to garfat and ricks, the attributes necessary for a functional self-driven ethics include: (a) a knowledge of self defined as an awareness to how values, beliefs, and previous experience act to inform current experience; (b) critical thinking skills, including the capacity to identify and challenge assumptions and the role of context; (c) consideration for alternative choices; and (d) utilizing evaluation and feedback. throughout their description of the self-driven model, the authors position the practitioner as the mediator of ethics and the dispenser of ethical choices on a client. although they emphasize the unique context of every ethical dilemma, this model lacks consideration of the client’s choices, values, and beliefs. the self-awareness model determines values as feeling-based, thoughts as belief-based, and ethics – or the rules for what one should and should not do – as based in the ability to analyze what one does in the world. building on the self-driven model of garfat and ricks (1995) and attending more to others in ethical decision-making, ricks and bellefeuille (2004) put forward the concept of concerned responsiveness. they argue that concerned responsiveness and the participatory inquiry approach inherent in it bridge the concepts of knowing self and attending to the other and include negotiating values, incorporating different voices in constructing the problem, subjecting personal beliefs and knowledge to scrutiny, and co-creating the context of care. ricks and bellefeuille also prioritize critical analysis as central to ethical practice. leading with the assumption that “internal maps of reality” (p. 118) shape practitioners’ perceptions and interpretations, they argue for an ethical stance of not-knowing or of being curiously engaged with the unknown. a stance of inquiry and not-knowing therefore challenges practitioners to rediscover the ethical and the self in the shifting and unique context of every experience. white (2005) continues in this line of emphasizing the role of the self and context in practice ethics. she posits that ethical caring depends on “the development of an ideal self . . . in congruence with one’s best remembrance of caring and being cared-for” (p. 13). agreeing with ricks and garfat (1995), she highlights the personal and context-based character of ethical deliberation while also emphasizing the impact and involvement of an individual’s personal history. her approach to ethical decision-making assumes a self that is temporally positioned between a personal historical narrative and an imagined future self. by 2007, white had international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 609 developed her conception of ethics through a praxis model that highlights the political, social, and moral character of practice. metaphors of the self although concepts of the self abound in cyc literature, they have received little comprehensive review or classification. marie hoskins, a professor in cyc at uvic, has, however, investigated the self as a concept in counselling theories and her texts are used in scyc curriculum. i was introduced to hoskins and leseho’s (1996) “metaphors of the self: implications for counselors” in my undergraduate studies at scyc and the article became influential in my appreciation of the diversity of theories of the self among human service practitioners. in the article, hoskins and leseho analyze the prevalent theories of the self in counselling literature in terms of their metaphoric articulations, categorize these metaphors as either traditional or postmodern, and elaborate practice implications. categorizing various metaphors as traditional or postmodern, they refer to the unitary self, the integrated self, the narrative self, possible selves, the empty self, and internalized selves. the two traditional perspectives of the self that hoskins and leseho (1996) begin with, the unitary and the integrated, reflect a description of the self as an enduring autonomous core, in the case of the former, and a higher cohesive authentic self in the case of the latter. the unitary self is analogous, they contend, to an artichoke with a psychic fingerprint at its core: it is vulnerable when it is young and develops protective layers as it interacts and adapts to an outer world. these protective layers, however, are not the true self, and the goals of counselling and development, from this perspective, include discarding aspects of the self that do not relate to the true core, and finding a sense of cohesion in life. the integrated self, while similarly positing an essence or authentic core, does not contend that the protective layers need to be peeled back, but rather integrated. those who write about the integrated self, such c. g. jung, believe in a higher actualized self and that the path to that cohesive and authentic whole is through the integration of all aspects of oneself. hoskins and leseho offer a board of directors as a metaphor for this view, describing the self as the board’s chair and the other aspects of the personality as members of the board. the work of human service practitioners, from this perspective, is to find how the disparate pieces of a client’s life can be brought together into a whole. the postmodern perspectives that hoskins and leseho (1996) summarize include the following: the narrative self as comparable to an author who uses language and stories, both personal and cultural, to engage in an ongoing process of narration; possible selves as a bridge between past and future events, which are shaped by socio-cultural influences; the empty self as a holograph, which is incapable of connecting with history or spirituality due to current consumerist culture; and the internalized selves perspective, which is broken down into a community of selves metaphor and a dialogical self metaphor. the community of selves metaphor is similar to the integrated self view of traditional psychology, but hoskins and leseho insist that within this view, there is less of an organizing centre and more of a cooperative diversity of voices. the dialogical self is reminiscent of a theatre performance with a variety of characters, dialogues, dramas, and acts representing the complexity, interdependence, and polyvocality of self-organization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 610 the self in this rendering is a synthesizing process that does not unify the diversity and complexity, as in the integrated metaphor, but rather organizes and balances the plentitude of autonomous characters in the play. what hoskins and leseho offer us is attention to the diversity of ways that the self can be conceptualized and how being accountable to the discourses we use is necessary for practice. the authors argue that practitioners are guided in their approaches by the metaphors of the self to which they have access; therefore, the metaphors themselves recirculate as social activity. reflections on the canon what i have termed the canonical self, an aggregate of a small number of theorists’ writings in the field, plays a central role in educating students as to what a self is and how it is developed and used in practice. there is some historical precedent for the canonical self, such as the desire to include a concept of personhood and a professional self into a practice-based academic discipline. however, the concept of the self, as it is articulated in the canonical texts, has not shown itself to be in any way necessary, natural, substantiated, or obvious. adding the term canonical when referencing the concept of the self as articulated in core cyc literature has both helped me to locate it within a particular history. it has also helped me to undo some of the reifications that go along with the notion of the self by considering it specifically as a concept – and moreover, a concept among many possible concepts. although the concept of the self has a central place and rich history in cyc, its definition, explication, and adequacy continue to be debated on a number of related fronts. first, equivocation: the concept has been defined a number of ways across time and this multiplicity is shrouded by the single term self. in the cyc literature, there is a tendency to draw on a variety of philosophic and psychological theories for conceptualizing the self, but the tensions, nuances, and complexities of these different traditions are not always engaged with. the second and connected issue is contraction. with the concept’s almost innumerable relations to political, sociological, and psychological theory, many important considerations have not yet been dealt with in cyc formulations. finally, with regard to the issues of critique and proliferation, the validity and adequacy of the concept of the self has been significantly challenged in the humanities and social sciences in the past century. social constructionist (gergen, 1991), feminist (de beauvoir, 1949), queer (britzman, 1995, 2009; butler, 1997, 2004), post-structural (derrida, 1976, 1978; foucault, 1978, 1980, 1988; st. pierre, 2000), indigenous (watts, 2013), and post-colonial (dussel, 2003; fanon, 1961/2004, spivak, 1976) perspectives, among many others, have variously critiqued, rejected, and/or deconstructed the concept of the rational and internal self. such critiques or alternative ways of knowing have given rise to a plurality of divergent and competing concepts, such as those of identity, subject formation, being, place-based existence, singularity, and subjectivity. this ongoing critique and proliferation of concepts challenges static notions of the self and provides rich opportunities for dialogue. this article provides a first gambit in such a critical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 611 dialogue by elaborating the concept of the self as it has been rendered in cyc’s central texts. by identifying critiques and problems with our current conceptualizations i hope to hint at some of the possibilities for rethinking the self in terms of a contemporary politicized praxis. i argue, following yoon (2012), that with the increasing diversity of cyc students and cyc service recipients in canada, it may be time to rethink and critique our central concepts. while critical theories, feminisms, post-structural and continental philosophies, and indigenous ways of knowing may provide new directions for thinking about the self in cyc, an elaboration of these possibilities is beyond the scope of this article and hereafter i therefore specifically focus on the adequacy of the concept of the self for addressing or conceptualizing social and contextual factors in contemporary canadian society. to address some of these issues, i turn now to the praxis model that superseded the kss model at scyc and i further suggest approaches to making cyc more responsive to the current canadian context. the praxis model: knowing, doing, and being in context at the turn of the 21st century, the concept of self was so thoroughly integrated in cyc that garfat and charles (2007) claimed “it would be an understatement to say that self is central to child and youth care practice” (p. 1). furthermore, as professional competencies and curriculum standards began to take root across north america, the self was transposed from its theoretical origins into much more substantial, powerful, and overarching frameworks. the concept of the self, however, over the period of its expansion and transposition, was not articulated in a unitary way. in 2007 another important transition point occurred as the knowledge, skills, self or kss model was changed to the cyc praxis model. i believe a new period is on the horizon in which the praxis model can provide a basis for radically rethinking and politicizing concepts of the self and thereby more adequately responding to contemporary issues. despite the existence of other conceptual frameworks throughout cyc’s relatively brief history as an academic discipline, the kss model was the leading framework at scyc from its inception in the 1980s. recently, however, the kss model was extended and superseded by the praxis framework, which is now the central framework at scyc. in 2007, dr. jennifer white, associate professor in cyc at uvic, published the groundbreaking article “knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care”. following white’s publication, the praxis framework quickly replaced the kss model in course readings and field handbooks at scyc. white (2007) recognized the need for a more dynamic framework that could “adequately represent the complexities of everyday cyc practice, while also offering a practical tool for critical reflection and analysis” (p. 225). white also provided a critique and new rendition of the concept of the self as being or ways of being. while the praxis model retained many of the older notions of the reflexive self in action and the integration of theory and practice in the application of self-understanding, white (2007) also proposed a more embodied, embedded, and narratively informed understanding of the self, or what she called being. knowledge, skills, and self became knowing, doing, and being in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 612 white’s work, which emphasized the active and dynamic nature of the three concepts (see figure 1 below). white referenced many of the self theorists of the 1990s, such as ricks (1989), fewster (1990), krueger (1997), and garfat (2004), while also emphasizing the difficulties of representing in words the embodiment and expression of values, ethics, habits of thought, and ways of being. white articulated the notions of being with and knowing how to be in her conceptualization of being, and provided some examples of ethical approaches and habits of mind for effective cyc. the qualities she articulated included the following: mindful and selfaware; relational and collaborative; curious and open; caring; situationally immersed; and inclusive. white inaugurated a shift in the conceptual landscape at scyc and provided a new framework for thinking about cyc in a more dynamic, embodied, and contextualized way. figure 1. the praxis framework. knowledge, skills, self praxis knowledge knowing skills doing self being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 613 illustrated as a web, white’s (2007) praxis framework, on the right, highlights the active and contextualized aspects of the “knowledge, skills, self” framework, which is illustrated on the left as a triangle. the praxis framework provided a situational, complex, and dynamic understanding of cyc that challenged both the notion of a static self and a standardized cyc. at scyc, the praxis framework introduced a new vocabulary for articulating the relationship between theory, practice, and self, and challenged students, instructors, and professors to rethink cyc. as an undergraduate student at scyc from 2007 to 2011, my academic beginning coincided with the introduction of the praxis framework, and i experienced first-hand the excitement and challenge of thinking through cyc as a praxis. i had been interested in ideas of the self prior to starting at the school, and the conversations that were happening around praxis during my undergraduate studies further motivated me to conceptualize my work in terms of a way of being and a contextualized integration of theory and practice. furthermore, i was inspired by a number of cyc scholars (e.g., de finney et al., 2011; gharabaghi & krueger, 2010; skott-myhre & skottmyhre, 2011) who extended white’s model or developed their own notion of praxis to emphasize the political and revolutionary aspects of cyc. white’s praxis framework supported my early conceptualizations of the self in cyc (kouri, 2010) and generally inspired my practice and research interests. now i argue that reconceptualizing the self within a politicized praxis framework is imperative for contemporary north american cyc. politicized praxis and the canadian humanscape post-secondary education, particularly human service training programs such as cyc, are increasingly being understood as responsible for preparing citizens to participate in our world of unbalanced internationalization, legacies of colonialism, and ideologies that support inequity (jorgenson & shultz, 2012). in canada, visible minority, indigenous, and immigrant populations are consistently, yet differentially, found to be impacted on health and economic outcome measures (pendakur & pendakur, 2011; veenstra, 2013; wu, noh, kaspar, & schimmele, 2003), disproportionately involved with foster care (assembly of first nations, 2008; statistics canada, 2011a), and underrepresented in political decision-making processes (black & erickson, 2006). given the rapidly growing diversity of children, youth, and families in canada, spurred in part by increasing immigration from outside europe and high birth rates in indigenous and racialized minority groups (statistics canada, 2010, 2011b), attending to disparities is critical. traditional models of cyc that inform national curricula and practice standards are grounded in assumptions of individualism, meritocracy, objectivity, and cultural essentialism, and they do not adequately represent or respond to the realities and experiences of diverse canadian populations (de finney et al., 2011; yoon, 2012). contemporary cyc must develop alternatives to individualizing and essentializing approaches to care and elaborate strategies that address inequitable social realities (de finney, little, skott-myhre, & gharabaghi, 2012; gharabaghi & krueger, 2010; kivel, 2007). tyyskä (2009) argues that rather than reducing the interplay of complex social and identity factors to single-issue approaches, a broad perspective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 595–621 614 inclusive of social, political, and economic features is necessary to prepare practitioners for contemporary practice. research in cyc (e.g., de finney, 2010; di tomasso, 2012; paciniketchabaw, 2007) suggests practice approaches that conceptualize and respond to differential experiences of inequity related to identity and socio-cultural factors are important for improving practitioner responsiveness to indigenous, racialized, visible minority, immigrant, and marginalized children and youth. although cyc has traditionally been committed to providing contextualized care through direct practice, there are significant gaps in current cyc models. to better respond to canada’s rapidly changing populations, cyc requires new models of practice that integrate research on socio-cultural processes, inequity, power, and identity. i believe we need to question how cyc can better respond to today’s diverse child and youth populations by critically revising our foundational philosophies, questioning professional roles, and politicizing praxis. although canada’s child and youth populations are heterogeneous and impacted differentially by sociocultural factors such as poverty, racism, globalization, and sexism, i argue that a praxis framework that premises these processes and integrates critical theories of identity and society into notions of the self can advance our state of knowledge and practice significantly. the current leading model in cyc conjoins theory and practice in praxis and defines that praxis as self-aware and accountable action that responds to socio-cultural, historical, and political contexts (white, 2007). while this model offers a language for research and training, it has yet to be systematically linked to research on globalization and neo-liberalism (burnett, 2004), heterosexism (morris, 2011), individualization (white, 2011), neo-colonialism (de finney, 2010), civic education (claes, hooghe, & dietlind, 2009), representation (nxumalo, 2012), cyc identity (kouri, 2012), cultural hegemony (saraceno, 2012), and/or revolution (skott-myhre, 2004; skott-myhre & gretzinger, 2006). by thoroughly interrogating and updating cyc’s foundational concepts of the self and praxis through socio-cultural and intersectional analyses, critical race and gender theories, and anti-colonial frameworks, i believe that we will be able to more adequately respond to contemporary contexts. this article has contributed to this development by outlining how the self and praxis have been conceptualized thus far. as an opening gambit, i hope that this work will inspire us in cyc to critically reflect on our theoretical traditions and move forward towards a praxis that more adequately responds to the realities of contemporary society. international journal of 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(2012). courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling. international journal of child, youth, and family studies, 3(2–3), 164–186. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0243-2 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1519788 the canonical self and politicized praxis: a tracing of two concepts scott kouri the concept of the self in early cyc curriculum (1970 to 2000) professionalization and educational standardization western philosophic context the canonical self the canonical literature metaphors of the self reflections on the canon the praxis model: knowing, doing, and being in context politicized praxis and the canadian humanscape running header: an ethos for the times international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 498 an ethos for the times: difference, imagination, and the unknown future in child and youth care jennifer white acknowledgment: a version of this paper was originally presented as a keynote address at the cyc in action conference iv: responding to our times, university of victoria, victoria, british columbia, canada, may 2, 2014. jennifer white, ed.d., former co-editor of the international journal of child, youth and family studies, is director and an associate professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: jhwhite@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 499 what does it mean to develop an “ethos for the times” when the times we are living in are marked by ongoing change, unpredictability, and uncertainty? how do we make sense of, and actively engage with, the complexities that surround us? what ideas, values, and frameworks can help us, and those we work with, to feel most alive to our mutual potentials and collective possibilities? these questions provide a point of departure for thinking about child and youth care (cyc) in the 21st century. in a world that is always on the move, we need to constantly re-evaluate our theoretical and practice frameworks to determine if they are useful and relevant for the times in which we are now living. as ulrich beck (2000) put it, “[the] attempt to apply nineteenth-century ideas to the twenty-first century is the pervasive category mistake of social theory, social sciences and politics” (emphasis in original, p. 224). recognizing that the field of cyc is itself a site of contested meanings, where ongoing debates about identities, roles, boundaries of practice, and professional status continue to animate the field, the aim of this piece is not to argue for more certainty, specificity, or role clarity. on the contrary, it is a call for increased plurality, greater imagination, and an ongoing openness to the unknown future. starting places in the spirit of starting off in a good way, it is important to acknowledge the significance of place, history, and politics in the work that we do as cyc practitioners, educators, and scholars. for example, the university of victoria (where i am writing from) is located on unceded coast salish and strait salish territory. whenever we gather in public for conferences or other formal events, it is common to hear speakers acknowledge the territory we are on. lately i have been wondering whether some of us need to move beyond a mere reciting of this fact (which seems a bit too easy), towards a more explicit naming of whiteness, racism, and the violent practices of cultural invasion that marked the arrival of many of our european ancestors to these territories. when we move away from simply acknowledging the indigenous territory we are on, we are potentially stepping towards a “responsibility-based ethic of truth-telling” which is ultimately “a call for justice and the return of stolen lands/waterways to the indigenous peoples who maintain special relationships to these places” (snelgrove, dhalmoon, & corntassel, 2014, p. 4). this position is also consistent with what jennifer harvey (2007) calls “racial justice making”. she writes: to locate our role in fighting white supremacy and to struggle for justice with integrity and effectiveness requires that those of us who are white interrogate – for the purposes of response and action – who we are as racial subjects. (p. 8) for canadians, we are living in a nation that came into being through the theft of indigenous people’s land and a disavowal of indigenous sovereignty. ahmed (2004) suggests that when we “unlearn the forgetting of this history” (p. 36), we can no longer remain the same. by calling attention to the historical, political, and institutional relations that structure our personal and professional lives in ways that serve to reproduce white privilege and by recognizing how we are all implicated in the ongoing legacy of colonization, we begin to take steps towards more just racial relations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 500 the move to explicitly name whiteness and racism, while a step in the right direction, is somewhat problematic, though, as it may have the undesired effect of positioning the author (in this case, me) as “the right kind of white person” or “the good white person”. as chapman, hoque, and utting (2013) put it, “white people’s naming of racism [frequently] contributes to their exaltation as moral and as on the side of justice” (p. 35). i will say a bit more about how complicated all this is (see also hoskins, 2012; skott-myhre & little, 2014), but for now, i will just note that child and youth care, as a professional field of helping, is never innocent or outside of this colonial history (little & walker, 2014; loiselle, de finney, khanna, & corcoran, 2012; saraceno, 2012; skottmyhre, 2006). key concepts two key ideas have been particularly influential in shaping the overall tenor of this paper. the first is from steve fuller (2014) who recently blogged about the role of public speaking in academia: keynote speeches should be about challenging the taken-for-granted assumptions of the field, but in a way that enable the audience to go forward. in other words, however critical one is of the field, there must be a sense that field contains the resources to move forward. (para. 6) the second influential idea is taken from a quote that sits above my desk: to look with planned emptiness is deliberately to cultivate an area in one’s mind that is reserved for the unknown, that is ready to accommodate the new, perhaps alien idea, and experience it, rather than rationalize it away or avoid it (middleman & wood, 1990, p. 24). with this as my backdrop, my aim is to offer an appreciative critique of the field of cyc; leave room for the not yet known; and through the use of questions and provocations, open up new possibilities for fresh thinking. to help me move in these directions, i have been inspired by sara ahmed’s work on diversity, ethics, and the cultural politics of emotion (ahmed, 2004; 2012). i have also been reading henry giroux’s (2014) ideas around critical pedagogy and the threat that neo-liberalism poses to higher education. ronald barnett’s (2000; 2012) ideas on supercomplexity have been particularly useful in helping me reconceptualize some of the challenges we face as cyc practitioners, educators, and scholars. through my twitter feed i have discovered hybrid pedagogy, a digital journal that seeks to disrupt the distinctions among students, teachers, and learners. this journal offers a series of thoughtful articles for rethinking teaching and learning for the 21st century, with implications for cyc education. the creative work of julian stodd, who writes (and illustrates) a blog on the topic of the social age, social leadership, and collaborative learning, has also been an important touchstone. i am also building on the important work of many cyc scholars who have been thinking and writing about http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/ http://julianstodd.wordpress.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 501 diversity, ethics and, sociopolitically informed approaches to practice in theoretically robust and imaginative ways (definney, little, skott-myhre, & gharabaghi, 2012; hoskins, 2012; pacini-ketchabaw, 2014; skott-myhre & little, 2014; kouri, 2014; loiselle et al., 2012; newbury, 2009). we are all implicated as most of us know by now, we are born into a world with a playing field that is anything but level. it is a myth to say that every person has the same opportunity to flourish, succeed, or prosper as long as she works hard enough. this is because there are many systemic and structural barriers that create disadvantages for some groups but not others. to say we are all implicated does not mean we are all equally implicated. transnational feminist frameworks have helped to show us that we are all multiply constituted as well as differentially privileged and disadvantaged along complex intersecting lines of race, class, ability, gender, sexual orientation, and age – all of which play out within particular institutional hierarchies and specific localities (deepak, 2012; lee & definney, 2008; patil, 2013; saraceno, 2012). because existing systems of domination are interlocking, fellows and razack (1998) remind us that we must continuously resist the temptation to view forms of oppression as somehow unrelated. more specifically, they warn us against the dangers of thinking about ourselves as innocent. no one is innocent and “(w)hen we view ourselves as innocent, we cannot confront the hierarchies that operate among us” (p. 335). the field of cyc, like most fields of professional helping, has emerged out of a euro-western, liberal humanist tradition and has been strongly influenced by colonial logic and the ideals of the enlightenment (de finney et al., 2012; saraceno, 2012; skottmyhre, 2006). among other things, this includes the acceptance of the bounded, autonomous, and individual western self as natural and desirable, coupled with an unquestioned faith in the value of professional interventions and expertise (wexler & gone, 2012; white, 2011). meanwhile normative assumptions about “the good life”, “the healthy child”, “the productive citizen”, and “the successful, functioning family”, combined with dominant conceptualizations of “research”, “knowledge”, and “expertise”, exert a strong but often unspoken influence on our practice and research activities. for example, within the dominant empiricist tradition, it is assumed that “there is a real world with real attributes, and that it is the job of social science to discover those of social or political significance” (law & urry, 2004, p. 393). by contrast, i am starting from the premise that our received ways of thinking about and engaging with the social world are not neutral or required, but are highly productive. in other words, “[t]hey do not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it” (p. 391, emphasis added). the corollary of this is that other descriptions, possibilities, framings and other ways of imagining how we might go on together are always available (gergen, 2009). if we want to “respond to our times” then, one place to start might be to move towards a more complicated reading of child and youth care. i have in mind here a form of engagement that takes us beyond the familiar formulation of cyc as a set of neutral international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 502 approaches, professional competencies, ethical codes, or ahistorical relational interventions towards a more nuanced, uncertain, politicized, and dynamic rendering. what is being envisioned here is akin to jeffery and nelson’s (2011) understanding of the ethical encounter whereby “power relations and social inequalities are understood to infuse the very core of relationship, rather than complicated ‘extras’ to be transcended in favour of a comfortable exchange” (p. 248). such an orientation invites us to consider both the sources of social suffering as well as our own complicity in reproducing inequitable social arrangements through our professional practices, research methodologies, and institutional and social locations (newbury, 2009; prilleltensky, rossiter, & walsh-bowers, 1996). importantly, this way of working means occupying and negotiating many unexpected and potentially contradictory spaces simultaneously. braidotti (2010) recognizes the paradoxical nature of this type of affirmative politics, “which entails the production of social horizons of hope, while at the same time doing critical theory, which means resisting the present” (p. 42). along similar lines, tuck (2009) argues for more “desire-based frameworks” which are not predicated on documenting or fixing other people’s pain, damage, or victimhood and do not require us to pledge allegiance to one (or the other) side of an enclosed logic or irreconcilable binary such as structure/agency or individual/social. as she puts it, “we can desire to be critically conscious and desire the new jordans [sneakers], even if those desires are conflicting” (p. 420). thinking with these theorists, for the purposes here, i am most interested in thinking about “what cyc does” and “what it might become” and the productive possibilities of theorizing the cyc field as a kind of “ethos” – or way of doing things – that is rooted in a strong set of ethical, political, and ontological commitments and entanglements: • as cyc practitioners and scholars, how do we develop ways of going on together that are relevant for the times in which we are all living? • what kind of social world and ways of being are we aspiring to? • what new vocabularies, values, practices, and politics might be required to engage with the current complexities? i will begin by bringing to the surface some of the overlapping social and political forces that are shaping our lives as we attempt to work, study, and live in the 21st century. this is by no means an exhaustive accounting and of course it is inflected with my own intellectual and political commitments, which draw from various strands of critical, constructionist, feminist, post-structural, and post-colonial ideas (ahmed, 2012; barnett, 2012; braidotti, 2010; gergen, 2009; tuck, 2009). next i will offer some tentative ideas and resources for moving forward in these unsettled times. these are not prescriptions or attempts to replace what currently exists or foreclose on what else might be possible. i hope some of these ideas will provide points of connection and offer new openings for creative thought. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 503 contextualizing our times we are living in a globalized world that is marked by growing interdependence, unprecedented cross-border movements, and a constant flow of people, information, knowledge, technologies, products, and capital. globalization commonly refers to “the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness” (held, mcgrew, goldblatt, & perraton, 1999, p. 14). while calls to educate “global citizens” and the promotion of “global mindedness” permeate educational and professional discourses today, globalization is actually a highly contested term (roman, 2003) and the effects of globalization are uneven, bringing benefits to some groups, often at the expense of some others. for example, not everyone has a choice about moving from their homelands and many children and families around the world are living as refugees, without the basic rights and protections of citizenship (ditomasso, 2012). we need to ask ourselves how our theory and practice frameworks in cyc help us to think and respond to an increasingly complex and globalized world in ways that do not replicate what roman (2003) describes as overly simplistic colonial discourses (e.g., the perception of the nonwestern “global” figure as the other to the local western self). we are also living under the pervasive influence of neo-liberalism, an ideology and mode of governance that casts all dimensions of life in terms of a market rationality. we see this, for example, within certain contexts of higher education, where competition and profit-making are central organizing features. here, students become consumers, faculty become entrepreneurs, and universities become corporations (giroux, 2014). we can also see clear evidence of the neo-liberal currents shaping the way we think about ourselves and the children, youth, and families we work with through the language we deploy: measuring up; bottom line; quick wins; doing more with less; targets and benchmarks, and auditable practices. in other words, we are constantly being expected to demonstrate our value in the marketplace. how does the language and logic of the market potentially limit or distort the ethical project of caring for those who may be vulnerable, dependent, or socially excluded? when care becomes commodified, what are the implications for children, youth, families, and communities? meanwhile, through the highly visible occupy movements, most of us are very aware that the gap between rich and poor is growing, which means that we are living in a time of growing inequality. structural violence is a term that has been used by many to refer to the devastating impact of social inequality, systemic forms of racism, and social deprivation on marginalized populations (farmer, 2003). oftentimes children, youth, and families are blamed for their plight even though unjust structural arrangements are known to produce and perpetuate inequalities. farmer argues that “hiding this suffering, or denying its real origins, serves the interests of the powerful” (p. 17). a contemporary example of this form of concealment from my own practice is the way in which suicides among young people are often framed exclusively in terms of individual mental health problems. meanwhile, sociopolitical factors, structural forces, and relations of power (e.g., racism, colonization, heteronormativity), all of which make significant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 504 contributions to the emergence of distress and hopelessness among young people, are very often obscured from view (white, 2012). this can result in an invidious form of victim blaming whereby we “train the disenfranchised to remediate their personal deficits and adapt to the status quo” (fondacaro & weinberg, 2002, p. 481). in recent years, a large body of evidence has begun to accumulate which demonstrates the undeniable role that the social determinants of health play in shaping children’s health and well-being. the social determinants of children’s health (sdch) include the following: quality child care, housing and food security, income and wealth distribution, and public policy and government intervention (raphael, 2014). as cyc practitioners who prize holistic and contextually responsive approaches (newbury, 2009; white, 2007), it is worth asking ourselves how well we take into account the sources of suffering in our work with children, youth, and families, and how well our preferred practices address the broader sociopolitical and historical influences on well-being (aldarondo, 2007). if we fail to engage with the social and structural conditions that have such a clear and strong influence on the well-being of children, families, and communities, our efforts are bound to be inadequate. perhaps even more importantly, we place an unfair burden on cyc practitioners when we suggest that they could somehow overcome the political and structural forces that contribute to youth marginalization, social deprivation, and experiences of distress through an exclusive reliance on individual interventions. to conclude this section on the current context, it is worth noting that we are also living in a time when the identification and management of risk has become a central preoccupation. as douglas (1992) observed, living in a risk society means we are “ready to treat every death as chargeable to someone’s account, every accident as caused by someone’s criminal negligence, every sickness a threatened prosecution” (p. 16). the proliferation of risk assessment tools and other professional technologies designed to quantify and eventually ameliorate “risk” in the lives of children, youth and families, is but one manifestation of this. in a risk culture, “it is the perception of threatening risks that determines thought and action” (beck, 2000, p. 213), which can often generate a fearful stance towards the future (diprose, 2008). as just one example, we might consider the “mimo baby monitor” which, according to the company website, offers peace of mind to parents and caregivers in the following ways: • our new respiration sensors are non-contact, soft and comfortable for baby while also letting you check your baby’s breathing, giving you the peace of mind that all is ok • with our temperature sensors you can know for sure that your little one is the perfect temperature with just a peek at your app • with our clinically validates sleep algorithms, you can even track their sleep patterns over time http://mimobaby.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 505 it is interesting to contemplate how our own cyc practices exploit, resist, manufacture, or exacerbate this culture of risk and fear. for example, how do we conceptualize risk and how do our professional interventions position us and those we work with? an even more difficult question is posed by saraceno (2012) when she asks, “what are the implications for ethical engagement with our clients and with our communities when our livelihood is dependent on the suffering and disenfranchisement of others?” (p. 258). in other words, our conceptualization of risk needs to move beyond procedural talk of “assessment” and “management” towards a more critically reflexive posture that invites us to consider how our positioning as professionals and our use of specialized interventions may actually produce and/or perpetuate the very risks we are attempting to ameliorate. these are complicated and troublesome questions that require richer, more politicized conceptualizations of practice that go beyond the articulation of professional ethics and competencies (little, 2011; loiselle et al., 2012; white, 2007). in other words, we need practice and pedagogical frameworks that can help us to engage with unprecedented levels of complexity. a world of supercomplexity living in the midst of multiple and competing knowledge claims, unparalleled levels of social change, and facing high levels of uncertainty, ronald barnett (2000, 2012) characterizes the times we are living in as more than simply complex. he suggests we are living in a time of supercomplexity. in a world of supercomplexity, everything is contested, risks are difficult to quantify, and we are required to engage with multiple open-ended questions, ambiguity, and competing frameworks. the problems and challenges we confront are often unrecognizable to us and we do not even have language or concepts to name what is going on. as barnett (2000) puts it: supercomplexity denotes a fragile world but it is a fragility brought on not merely by social and technological change; it is a fragility in the way that we understand the world, in the way in which we understand ourselves and in the ways in which we feel secure about acting in the world. (p. 257) in the field of cyc, multiple and conflicting ideas about children, youth, knowledge, research, practice, ethics, and professional identity abound, and no singular or straightforward answers are available to guide or guarantee “right action”. this can contribute to an overall feeling of instability and vulnerability. paradoxically, the ability to act in a world that is radically unknowable is perhaps the hallmark of professional preparedness in a world of supercomplexity (barnett, 2012). according to barnett, the task is not one of dissolving anxiety for this is recognized as impossible, but rather it is about developing a capacity to live with the anxiety, and even flourish under such conditions. in short, it requires “a willingness to live in contention” (snelgrove et al., 2014, p. 3). as barnett notes, this form of engagement with the world is fundamentally ontological in character (i.e., concerned with our ways of being), and has implications for how we might consider educating future practitioners: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 506 it is the task of enabling individuals to prosper amid supercomplexity, amid a situation in which there are no stable descriptions of the world, no concepts that can be seized upon with any assuredness, and no value systems that can claim one’s allegiance with any unrivalled authority. (p. 69) with this notion of supercomplexity in mind, in the next section i hope to invite more interesting and generative ways of thinking by critically scrutinizing some of our professional assumptions and approaches. through a series of carefully crafted questions i intend to show that descriptions are not final, meanings are not settled once and for all, and things can always be otherwise (gergen, 2009). i am not asking these questions as a judging outsider, but rather as one who is firmly embedded in the field and implicated in these practices. this questioning approach to practice is in keeping with a critical ethics of practice (jeffrey & nelson, 2011; rossiter, 2005; skott-myhre & little, 2014; white, 2011), where the confusing, messy, and contradictory nature of “caring” practice requires ongoing interrogation, critical reflexivity, and a high tolerance for uncertainty and contradiction. constructions of children, youth, and families who comes to mind when we think about the children who are in need of “professional care”? what are we doing when we say we are “working with” children? what is it like for children to be “worked with”? what is the primary motif of cyc practice – playing, rescuing, empowering, organizing, educating, liberating, treating, intervening, controlling, counselling, radicalizing, loving? who are the youth who are the objects of care in child and youth care? how do terms like “troubled”, “in need”, “at risk”, “vulnerable”, or “marginalized” position young people and practitioners? what do such descriptions do? who are the families who come to our attention? which families do not? when “daily events” become sites of ongoing cyc interventions, are families ever outside of our professional gaze? each of these questions points to the reality that we are always working in the midst of struggle and contestation, where the security and certainty of our professional knowledge is always at risk of coming undone. in other words, professional identities and practices are always problematic, always precarious. in support of this idea, stronach, corbin, mcnamara, stark, and warne (2002) closely examined nurse and teacher identities and noted that uncertainty is the defining narrative where “each moment of practice articulates an accommodation between the actual and the ideal, the possible and the desirable” (p. 131) – which could also fairly describe cyc practice. constructions of problems meanwhile, it is worth asking this: what counts as a cyc problem? in the absence of problems, can cyc exist? what do our cyc “solutions” reveal about how problems have been framed? as just one example, if we are putting our energy into teaching young people how to cope better, how to be better problem-solvers and selfinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 507 regulators, through skill development and other resilience enhancement interventions, what assumptions are we making about what the problem is and who is responsible? where is the onus for change primarily located? what is concealed from view? when we resist the temptation to take problems for granted, and instead interrogate how the problems have been constructed, more space is opened up for thinking creatively, ethically, and politically. as just one example, if we were to make more explicit connections between so-called private troubles (i.e., ptsd, adhd, anxiety, disordered eating, self-harm) and the larger sociopolitical and economic context, might traditional cyc problems perhaps rightfully become matters of public consideration and social responsibility (fusco & baizerman, 2013; rossiter, 2005)? while cyc has a long history of working in a “strengths-based way” it may be time to follow the lead of many of our cyc colleagues (loiselle et al., 2012; saraceno, 2012; skott-myhre, 2006) and start claiming “sociopolitically-engaged” as a defining characteristic of our field as a way to signal that we recognize the limits of individualized, decontextualized, and apolitical interventions. we will also need to think very carefully about how to theorize diversity in ways that go beyond “celebrating multiculturalism” (skott-myhre & little, 2014). thinking about differences there are multiple ways for thinking about differences within cyc. these include: differences in terms of power and privilege; world views, traditions, and conceptualizations of reality; theoretical and methodological orientations; sites of practice; as well as ethno-cultural identities, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and class backgrounds. recently there has been increased attention paid to issues of cultural safety, cultural responsiveness, and cultural attunement across many helping fields, including cyc. at the same time, notions of diversity are highly contested and the dominant discourse of multiculturalism has been productively critiqued by many cyc scholars.1 for example, within liberal multiculturalism, there is typically an absence of any analysis of the workings of power and the primary imperative is to “embrace differences” or “celebrate diversity”. ahmed (2012) talks about the ways that the word diversity can sometimes serve as a happy substitute for not talking about racism. how do we think about diversity within cyc? who comes to mind as the face of diversity? do we take sufficient account of history and politics? what counts as a worthwhile, livable life? whose vision of a preferred future is privileged in our work? what unspoken norms about “healthy childhood” are exerting their influence over our work? whose cultural traditions are privileged when conceptualizing well-being, distress, and healing (wexler & gone, 2012)? these are important questions to ask because, among other things, they remind us that while many of our professional goals and aspirations remain unspoken, they still actively shape how we think about ourselves and those we care for. further, professionalism is itself a culture that takes certain 1 see skott-myhre and little (2014) for an excellent volume on the limitations of the discourse of multiculturalism within a contemporary canadian context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 508 understandings for granted, including the value of expertise and professional knowledge. professional identities we have a long tradition in our cyc field of debating the respective benefits and limitations of professionalization. recently there was yet another lively and spirited discussion about professionalization in a special issue of child & youth services. in it, fusco and baizerman (2013) concluded that, ours is a turbulent world – in thought, politics, and economics, socially and culturally. there is a reformation occurring across disciplines, a challenge to heretofore dominant scientific, moral, social, and political paradigms of what is right, good, and effective. (p. 96) this emphasis on constant change and the need for an ongoing reflexive posture towards our knowledge and practice frameworks is consistent with the position i am setting out here. it also holds strong resonance with the recent work of scott (2012) who cautioned against seeking singularity or “purity” in cyc, and little (2011) who used her own experiences as a cyc-educated scholar and practitioner to challenge the idea that there exists a “real cyc” that can be distinguished from related, but counterfeit versions. it seems that it is difficult for many of us to think about “professionalism” outside a very traditional and normative framework (i.e., specialized body of knowledge, code of ethics, authority to make decisions). in addition to the thoughtful and generative questions about professionalization that fusco and baizerman (2013) raise in their article, such as “why that?” and “to what end, for young people and community?” (p. 97), i would like to add two of my own. first, by becoming part of the dominant group of “recognized professionals” are we not simply perpetuating the existing social order; one which is governed by the creation of hierarchies; centres and margins; insiders and outsiders? secondly, if we move in this direction, who then is setting the terms for how we think about ourselves and the children, youth, and families we support? cyc for the unsettled times clearly we are living in unsettled times. having just stepped into the role of director of the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, i understand the importance of bringing an enlarged perspective to the field, one which recognizes the valuable work that we all do to support children, youth, and families. thanks to the tireless contributions of so many cyc colleagues, we have witnessed the emergence of a unique, visible, and skilled workforce that is highly regarded for its unique contributions to promoting child and youth well-being in group care, residential treatment programs, and other school and community settings. at the same time, the field of cyc is also unfolding in many new directions at once. for example, graduates from our undergraduate program are qualified to work in child protection if they take the child protection specialization. we also have a child life specialization for those who want to care for critically ill children in hospital settings. we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 509 have an indigenous specialization for those who want to practice in culturally informed and respectful ways with first nations, inuit, and métis communities. we have an early years stream that enables students to receive certification in early childhood education so that they can practice in a variety of early years contexts. several former students who have graduated from our m.a. and ph.d. program are now working as faculty members in post-secondary contexts, educating the next generation of cyc practitioners and scholars. many others are working as research analysts, policy consultants, child and youth mental health clinicians, private practitioners, and leaders in a variety of national and international contexts. in addition to their educational qualifications in cyc, many of our alumni are seeking additional forms of certification through a range of professional bodies (e.g., child life, early childhood, clinical counsellors, among others). their business cards grant them many different titles; however, their practices are always contextually sensitive, holistic, strengths-based, collaborative in spirit, and grounded in a very strong set of ethical and political commitments (white, 2011). opening up the field in so many new directions is a source of worry and consternation for some, and a source of excitement and exhilaration for others. we are constantly living the tension of honouring our foundations on the one hand and pushing the field in new directions and opening up new horizons on the other. no matter where you sit on the issue, the reality is that cyc is already hybrid! and as i hope to show next, this ethos of hybridity, multiplicity, agility, and fluidity is one that i think very much suits the times we are living in. living the tensions and adding to the complexity if the aim is to “be willing to live in contention” (snelgrove et al., 2014), how might we prepare ourselves, as well as future cyc practitioners and scholars, to thrive in the midst of unprecedented levels of complexity? to begin, we can add to the complexity by extending our thinking and reworking existing theories (barnett, 2012). part of this effort will entail generating new questions, visions, and vocabularies for rethinking a changing world. for example, this could include advancing new ways of theorizing the self; enlarging our ethical vision; and complicating and politicizing our current notions of practice and research in cyc (kouri, 2014; kouri & white, 2014; pacini-ketchabaw & pence, 2011; skott-myhre & little, 2014; white, 2007). this work will inevitably involve disruption, change, and new ways of doing things. this will also mean moving in multiple directions at once and maintaining a diversity of descriptive forms in both our theorizing and in our practices (stronach et al., 2002). meanwhile, by paying close attention to the effects of our preferred practices in cyc, some new and creative spaces can be opened up. for example, taking inspiration from the work of sarah ahmed (2012), who “followed diversity around” in higher education contexts, if we follow cyc around and ask what it is doing, what might we discover? here are just a few possibilities: • cyc comes into being by saying “who we work with” • cyc explains itself by saying “where cyc practitioners can be found” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 510 • to do cyc is to reflect on a “capital-s” self • cyc talks in (concentric) circles • cyc is about setting clear boundaries • to do cyc is to be worried • cyc is not to be found “in offices” among other things, it is worth noting that all of our current understandings about cyc practice are historically and culturally specific. with this in mind, we might ask: what were the conditions and contexts that set the stage for cyc’s arrival? what is the history of some of our most cherished cyc ideas and preferred practices (e.g., use of self; life space interventions)? what did these preferred practices emerge in response to? how did these particular ways of seeing and doing things gain such traction in our field? at the time of their emergence, what were these ideas taking a stand against? what are the effects of these ways of thinking and working on the children, youth, and families who seek our help today? what identities do they make available for practitioners? each of these questions reminds us that we are always entangled with, and responding to, that which has come before. we need to continuously ask how our earlier conceptualizations of cyc practice and understandings of children, youth, and families fit the current times. our work is always historically situated, relationally negotiated, and ethically saturated. this way of thinking contrasts with many traditional views of professional ethics which regard ethics as an “add-on” to practice and typically locate responsibility for “doing ethics” with the individual practitioner. the view being advanced here is that all cyc practices are ethical encounters and ethics is always a collective venture that is developed through conversation, joint story telling, community, and relational practices (chapman et al., 2013; white, 2011). we have a long tradition within cyc that draws on artistic and fluid metaphors for conceptualizing the work. descriptions of cyc practice often foreground the language of conversations, dialogue, mutual inquiry, wisdom, and narratives of care. we also need to attend to the sociopolitical context of problems because our practices are never neutral or ahistorical (jeffery & nelson, 2012). even “relational meaning–making” takes place within a sociopolitical context where certain dominant explanatory frameworks strongly influence what can be thought, said, and imagined. unfolding into the unknown future as i have tried to show here, the field of cyc is already poly-vocal. we do not have to settle for either/or choices but can continue to explore “third spaces” that creatively engage with neither/both/and (little, 2011; tuck, 2009). i have further suggested that we might want to reimagine professionalism for the times. maybe we are already leading the way in terms of showcasing an unbounded, agile, hybrid, relevant, remixed, boundary-crossing form of professionalism (cyc as “mash-up”). what new stories can we co-create together? are there any stories we might need to retire? what stories might we tell that would enable us to build a professional identity based on multiple narratives and our earned reputation (stodd, 2014)? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 498–515 511 the task ahead is one of not just coping with uncertainty and contingency, but thriving, prospering, and adding to the complexity (barnett, 2012). we will maintain our spirit of aliveness and be most awakened to our collective potential by sustaining our creative differences, thriving in the midst of complexity, and by dwelling responsibly. just because the world we are living in is constantly changing and always uncertain does not mean we must throw up our hands in despair and concede defeat. on the contrary, such a world demands a new form of agility, responsiveness, and accountability. as i have argued here, we need an ethos for the times that is grounded in the knowledge of particular places and histories, governed by an awareness of global realities and settlercolonial relations, and which pursues an ongoing commitment to justice (definney et al., 2012; newbury, 2009; snelgrove et al., 2014). recognizing our interconnectedness and making a point of dwelling responsibly are in keeping with indigenous world views as well as early understandings of the word ethos. 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(2012). youth suicide as a ‘wild problem’: implications for prevention practice. suicidology online, 3, 42–50. http://julianstodd.wordpress.com/about/ text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10566-006-9010-2 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680930110100081 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2011.300432 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 international journal of child, youth, and family studies, volume 3, number 2/3, 2012 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 300 nomadic youth care kathleen s. g. skott-myhre abstract: it has been argued that the field of child and youth care is founded on a relationship. generally, this relationship has been posited as being between two identifiable subjects, a worker and a child or youth. in this paper, i will argue for both a different theoretical framework and significant rethinking of the human individual as the central player in a relation of care. in recent writings on feminist thought, several authors have proposed what they have termed nomadic feminism. this work focuses on developing a theory of the human organism that is no longer centered in a binary with nature. what if we began to see care as an interdependent bringing together of all elements in our environment? what if we began to think consciously about the mingling of human and non-human form as platform for experimentation? what might happen if we broke down the rigid distinctions between staff and youth, neighborhood and agency, male and female, gay and straight, our racial and ethnic identities, not so much to abandon them but so as to open them to experiment, to see what bodies can do together? keywords: child and youth care, feminism, identity, professional boundaries, youth-adult relations, ethology in psychology, holism, nomadic feminism kathleen s. g. skott-myhre, psy.d. is an assistant professor of psychology at the university of west georgia, 1601 maple street, carrollton georgia, u.s.a., 30118. email: kskott@westga.edu mailto:kskott@westga.edu� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 301 it has been argued that the field of child and youth care (cyc) is founded on a relationship (fewster, 2010; garfat, 2003; garabaghi, 2010). generally, this relationship has been posited as being between two identifiable subjects, a worker and a child or youth. in the professional writing about the field, the quality of the relationship and the practices associated with various, and sometimes contradictory, views of what constitutes quality have been explicated and examined (fulcher & ainsworth, 2006; garabaghi & phelan, 2011; krueger, 2005). the identities and ethical compositions of the subjects involved have been scrutinized and proposals made about what kind of child/youth/ worker might maximize the relational aspects of care (garfat, 2003; garabaghi, 2010). practice standards, ethical codes, and professional training have been developed and deployed to produce an optimal worker who will, in turn, have a relationship that will produce an optimal child or youth (mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2002). within this set of practices and descriptions there have been some key theoretical perspectives that frame and support the child and youth care relational project. among others, key conceptual frameworks would consist of theories from developmental psychology, humanism, and phenomenology (garabaghi, h. skott-myhre, & krueger, in press). each of these in turn has been focused on the individual human subject as the central interest of child and youth care. in this paper, i argue for both a different theoretical framework and significant rethinking of the human individual as the central player in a relation of care. as a feminist psychologist with a background in youth work, i have long been troubled by the ways in which the developmental tasks of the child or youth have been framed within a series of binary either/or conceptualizations. some of these include, child and adult, child and adolescent, male and female, gay and straight. several feminist theorists such as erica burman (2008), rosi braidotti (2006), and bracha ettinger (2006) argue that these binary formations derive from a specifically masculinist point of view. they argue that the male gaze is constructed on what lacanian psychoanalysts term the logic of the phallus. in phallic logic, the father’s body is the ideal body against which all other bodies must be measured. since the father in question is historically a heterosexual, able-bodied, white male, lack is defined as any body that is not white and male. the fact that the white male body has held such force has had serious historical implications for anybody who lacked the attributes ascribed to the great white father. this would include women, of course, but also all people of color and non-heterosexual subjects as well; this latter group, because of a perceived feminization of their sexuality. while this lacanian phallic logic might be argued as outmoded psychoanalytic theory that doesn’t really apply to the emerging field of evidence-based care, i would suggest that it actually still has a profound impact. developmentally, children are still perceived as lacking adult maturity and decision-making capacity. that girls must continue to find ways to integrate themselves into a male-dominated social structure, that feminism and female-centered approaches to child and youth care are still marginalized, and that race, sexism, homophobia, and a direct acknowledgement of power relations remain of marginal concern in much of our training curricula. traditional hierarchies of power and discipline remain the standard for structuring institutions and disciplining international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 302 young people to adapt to a male-dominated social structure continues to be the goal of most programming. indeed, if we examine the current cyc competencies for the united states (mattingly et al., 2002), we find a call for compliance with dominant social norms and laws premised in terms redolent with modernist colonial conceptual frameworks and language. in a section entitled “performance of organizational duties”, child and youth care workers are advised to “know and conform to work rules relating to attendance, punctuality, appearance . . . and workload management”. this might well seem like common sense; after all, we work for an organization that has rules and expectations and as employees we are subject to those rules. however, this apparent common sense actually obscures a form of disciplinary apparatus inherited from both industrial capitalism and the european colonial project. punctuality as a competency for cyc workers is actually not a simple matter. cesare casarino (2003) argues that one of the first and most essential steps to ensuring the domination of capitalist logic and the interests of the capitalist ruling class was regulation of time. in the development of early industrial capitalism, regulation of time was an absolute necessity in transforming the rural peasantry into industrial workers. clock time – for a discussion of the clock and the classroom, see pacini-ketchabaw (in press) – had to be introduced to people for whom time had been defined by the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and the rhythms of crops and animals. if farmers were to be turned into factory workers, then the body must be trained to work according to the regimented time of the assembly line as opposed to the contingent time of agriculture. industrial time spread beyond the realm of the factory into all aspects of society. in a very short period of time, people went from telling time by the rhythms of nature to telling time by the clock (casarino, 2003). in addition, the model of the assembly line, or what became known as fordist production, began to structure non-industrial sites such as the school, the clinic, the family home, and the hospital (foucault 2003; gramsci 1971). the hospital is of particular interest in terms of the cyc competencies since the primary organizational settings for cyc, such as residential care, are modeled after the shift work of the hospital. the model of the hospital derived from fordism is based on a logic that defines patient care on par with assembly line production: get the patients in and out as quickly and efficiently as possible. to these ends, the staff becomes health technicians who bring specialized skills to bear on the bodies passing along the assembly line. processing of human bodies is designed to bring them into compliance with normatively established standards of “health”. the question then becomes: is the processing of bodies the best and most effective model for a relationally built field? what happens to both the staff and patient or the worker and the youth when the relational gathering place is driven by notions of efficiency and scheduling? can we imagine work without the clock? what if our relationships with young people engaged more organically without the hierarchical demands of the shift and accountability to punctuality? whose needs are being met by a corporatized model of time being imbedded in the competencies expected of cyc workers? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 303 the same association for child and youth care practice (acycp) set of competencies calls for, “personal appearance and behavior [that] reflect an awareness of self as a representative of the organization” (mattingly et al., 2002, p. 24). once again, we have a rather odd incursion of the corporate needs of the organization into the worker’s performance of the body. in this case, workers are being asked, as a basic competency, to account for their dress as an expression of self in terms of the organizational identity of the agency. the postcolonial theorist edward said (1979) writes about the double effect of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer. he draws our attention to the demands made by whiteness on the dress, habits, and affects of those operating on behalf of the colonizing force. he suggests that in order to differentiate themselves from those being colonized, the colonial functionary must discipline his body to the regimen of cultural authority. he suggests that this is at some cost to the individuality and subjectivity of the colonizer. in this competency, we are being told that in order to be a competent cyc worker, we must subject our very physical appearance to the demands of the organization. leaving aside the questionable claim in this competency that an organization can have an identity that can be demonstrated through an expression of self, this conflation of self and organization is deeply disturbing. one might wonder what happens to relationships when the very expression of the self of the worker becomes one with the identity of the organization. does this mean that the youth and children are having a relationship with the worker or with the organization? judith butler (1990) suggests that the self is not derived from an essential identity that can be expressed from the inside out. instead, she proposes that the self is a performance constructed of the social elements that produce and are produced by the body. the sociologist pierre bourdieu (1984) similarly suggests that the self and its habitual performances are historically derived out of the specific historical conditions of a given society. foucault (1979) discusses this in terms of the way that the body is inscribed with the habits and beliefs of one’s own age. he also suggests, however, along with butler (1990) that resistance to dominant forms of power are to be found in deviant performances of the body. indeed, authors such as dick hebdige (1979), lauraine leblanc (1999), stuart hall and toni jefferson (1975) suggest that fashion and dress can constitute important political statements about class and gender. what are the implications for cyc power relations when the dominant professional discourse in our field takes the highly paternal position that workers should accommodate their clothing and style to the needs of the organization? what is the message to young people about their force and power in the world? what is the message about accommodating oneself to the array of dominant force and corporate identity? finally, the competencies outline a set of prescriptions for what constitutes an appropriate relationship. the competencies begin by stating that appropriate relationships should involve professional boundaries. what are these boundaries? they include, “describing own needs and feelings and keeping them in perspective when professionally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 304 engaged” (mattingly et al., 2002, p. 24). again, this seems reasonable on the surface. it is important to be able to identify what one wants or needs from the work and what feelings one is experiencing while working so as to be able to manage them. however, foucault (1979) points out that one of the central defining modes of disciplining and creating what he called docile bodies, or those bodies available to exploitation, was the demand to reveal and confess. to place as an expectation, competency within the organizational disciplinary structure we have described above, a demand for identification of needs and feelings is to make the body available to organizational discipline of both affects and desires. this disciplinary practice becomes clear when we see that these feelings and desires are to be kept in perspective. whose perspective this is becomes critical here. who decides what an appropriate perspective is? obscured here is an implicit valuing of objectivity and distance as an important set of competencies. this is a subtle introduction of the values of scientism that feminist authors, such as sandra harding (1991), find to be maculinist and at odds with both indigenous and feminist forms of knowing. it also places an immediate disciplinary restraint on the formation of relationship. one must not become too involved, too close, or too emotionally sensitive to the young people in one’s care. if we were to draw on the colonial vernacular, we might talk about this as the necessity to avoid “going native”. indeed, the competencies go on to call for ability to model professional boundaries and to, “separate personal from professional issues” (mattingly et al., 2002, p. 24). this call to separate the personal from the professional through the creation of boundaries is once again a veiled introduction of colonial practices. foucault (1979) points out that one of the hallmarks of the colonial project was the introduction of what he called biopower. biopower is the ability to designate different forms of life, including different groups of people, by their biological characteristics. this ability is premised in the capacity to create taxonomies of difference or the ability to create criteria by which one thing can be distinguished from something else. the trick here is to be able to claim that the distinction is not simply subjective, random, or culturally based, but true and objective. these taxonomic practices led to a proliferation of problematic distinctions and practices. some of the more dramatic include the construction of racial categories leading to slavery and colonization, the development of theories about genetic superiority with genocidal results, hierarchical distinctions about gender that disenfranchised and sexually subjugated women, and taxonomies of sexuality that pathologized non-heterosexual identities and practices (foucault, 1994). the practice of taxonomic distinction was also used linguistically and geographically within the construction of the colonial project. the division of land masses into countries and states was premised on the same kind of logic. indeed, postcolonial authors such as homi k. bhabha (1990) and gloria anzaldua (1999) have noted that the creation of boundaries as a way of dividing people and geographies is highly problematic. they propose that these divisions are not simply acts of state politics but are also acts of creative subjectification (deleuze & guattari, 1994) or interpellation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 305 (althusser, 2001). the creation of geographical, racial, or ethnic divisions is taken on by the subjects whose land or identity is being bounded. indeed deleuze and guattari propose that geography and the identity of a people are deeply intertwined. when the sense of the land and one’s connection to it is redefined, one’s identity is similarly disturbed. indeed, one might argue that the very act of bounding things as a political act of force extends from the geopolitical to the personal. in terms of the demands of the competency above, the call for professional boundaries becomes a political call for collusion in the ongoing project of defining the terms and conditions of what one can do and where one can go. it is a disciplinary act that asks, once again, that the worker give over their sense of personal boundaries to those defined by the profession or agency. unquestionably, this mandate for personal boundaries is designed to control workers who might violate the boundaries of young people in dangerous and damaging ways. however, like the previous competency, this is an extremely paternalistic and juridical response to a small number of workers. like the no touch policies instituted by some schools and programs, the call for bounding oneself operates at odds with the construction of actual relationship. bhabha (1990) and anzaldua (1999) call for the hybridization of boundaries. they suggest that it is borders and not boundaries that are what is interesting in the work. it is at the border between ourselves, young people, the community, and other workers that new possibilities emerge. it is the creative tension of the border and the space between subjects that has a high degree of possibility. to hybridize is to mix the categories found at the border. it is to violate the sanctity of pure cultural or social identity and find what deleuze and guattari call “a people to come”. this is the promise of youth-adult relations freed from the stifling constraints of organizational, professional, corporatized boundaries. deleuze and guattari challenge us to quit defining ourselves, quit knowing who we are, quit associating ourselves with strict definitions and instead experiment in the border space between us and others. this is what will be discussed later as the process of becoming. however, what is more significant for me than any of these concerns with the particular competencies of our field is the pervasive conceptualization of lack as a driving force in our work. even the most progressive work on girls, race, and homophobia tends to advocate for these identities on the basis that they lack access to dominant structures of privilege and domination. in other words, we have not yet developed a politics of care focused on difference as a source of social transformation. i argue that the process of phallocentrism constitutes a social diagram that favors centering particular attributes and identities in order to give them social force. for example, the anthropocentric positioning of the human as the central concern of social justice has marginalized all other life as of secondary concern. the results of this can be seen in contemporary events as species become extinct, the environment becomes increasingly toxic, and catastrophic events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, oil spills, and nuclear accidents become commonplace events. the binary logic that separates humans from their environment, children and adolescents from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 306 adults, homosexuals from heterosexuals, and women from men is increasingly dangerous and its two central identities – human and male – may well be finished as useful social forms. the field of child and youth care may be one of the places where we can begin to challenge these binary forms and rethink the role of developmentalism and humanism. by challenging these binary forms we might begin to propose a new phenomenology of the subject that frames experience not as a function of the individual but as the lived experience of life itself as it is manifested through the human organism as a part of a much larger whole. one way we might approach a new phenomenology of the subject is to consider theoretical approaches to care that are premised in either binary formations or phallic logic. this would mean exploring theories of care that would be inclusive and multiple in orientation. it would also imply the decentering of any particular form of life in favor of a politics of life itself. in recent writings on feminist thought, several authors have proposed what they have termed “nomadic feminism” (braidotti, 2006; ettinger, 2006; gatens, 2000). this work focuses on developing a theory of the human organism that no longer centers it in a binary with nature. instead, they suggest that the human organism, “is neither wholly human, as a person, nor just an organism. it is an abstract machine, radically immanent, which captures, transforms and produces inter-connections” (braidotti, 2006, para. 23). to help understand the concept of nomadic feminism i will take it one idea at a time. the first idea is that the human organism is larger than any description we can give of it. when we say that it is human, we accept a set of definitions that limits the organism to certain concepts of what it is to be human such as to be a person. a person, in this sense, is separated from other persons by the boundaries of the human body and also by what we term to be the personality and social identities associated with the person. the person as a human is separated from animals and nature and in some schemas is purported to be in charge of nature or, in another version, a steward of nature. in some thinking, nature is there to be used by the person/human for her or his own purposes. these descriptions have what deleuze and guattari (1987) call an ordering function. that is to say, these descriptions order the world by telling us what our place is in it and by telling us what our behaviors should be. for example, a human is superior to animals and should either care for them or exploit them for food, clothing, entertainment, and so forth. therefore, human is not an animal and must not behave like an animal. think about how much of this kind of thinking drives our interventions with young people in terms of teaching them how to behave like human beings and not animals, how to take advantage of their environment and seek to control their circumstances. the description given above of what it means to be human and to center the human outside nature is what nomadic feminists, following deleuze and guattari (1987), would call an abstract machine. that means a way of producing, the way a machine international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 307 would produce a subject, as an abstract set of ideas. it can be quite disorienting to begin to think this way, because it challenges so much that we take for granted and value such as our view of ourselves as individuals. the proposal is that the human organism is simply a description. the idea of the human is simply that – an idea. the supposed fact that it is a discrete organism is again just an abstract idea. it can be argued that it is an idea with tremendous force that captures us and produces us in ways that limit our creative possibilities as an expression of life itself. however, we are also told that such a machine produces interconnections. if these interconnections occur on the field of life itself, then the human organism might be said to have far greater capacity than just that originating within itself. but what is life itself and what does it have to do with care? to understand this question we need to understand life as encompassing everything, including the form we call the human organism. such a system that includes everything is called an immanent form. it is a system that has nothing outside of itself and so everything is an expression of it. the concept of immanence has received recent attention in feminist writings by scholars and psychoanalysts such as ettinger (2006), gatens (2000), braidotti (2006), and lloyd (1994). gatens (2000) refers to immanence in her writing on feminism as a kind of experimental project that has the force to elude dominant forms of social control as, “nature . . . conceived as immanently self-governed”. it is nature without an outside sovereign force to define or order it. drawing from both deleuze and spinoza, she states that it is a form of ontology that is monistic and, “inclusive rather than disjunctive” (p. 60). put differently, nothing is excluded and all aspects of nature are mutually productive. gatens (2000) reads spinoza as conceiving of the human body as part of an interconnected web of life in which each body holds its difference from other bodies in terms of its singular attributes of intensities and composition. the human body is what spinoza calls a complex body composed of a multiplicity of other bodies. such a body, gatens (2000) tells us, “can never be viewed as a final or finished entity . . . [it is] a nexus of variable interconnections, a multiplicity” (p. 61). this multiplicity of bodies together is composed according to their ability to express their idiosyncratic and singular capacities. in this sense, an immanent system focuses on the given capacities of any composition of bodies rather than on any sense of lack. immanence is, therefore, composed of what exists rather than what does not. included in this, however, are all virtual forms as well as all instantiated forms. accordingly, immanent systems are constantly assembling and reassembling the component bodies so as to express the infinitude of virtual possibility. hence, the body is an ongoing experimental site of virtual expression. imagine if we began to think about our agencies and centers of care in this way; if we began our staff meetings with a discussion of all of the possible combinations of bodies and the capacities inherent in our setting including the richness of capacity that is the children and youth, the neighborhood, the plant life, the animal life, the flow of life into and out of the institution. what if we began to see care as an interdependent bringing together of all elements in our environment and if we began to think consciously about the mingling of human and non-human forms as a platform for experimentation? what if international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 308 we broke down the rigid distinctions between staff and youth, neighborhood and agency, male and female, gay and straight, our racial and ethnic identities, not so much to abandon them as to open them to experiment, to see what bodies can do together? so much of what we do is driven by a sense of lack. we begin with the idea that there is a need. in other words, we assume lack from the very beginning. we accept that the children and youth who come to us have a need that is unfilled. if we isolate an individual human organism at a particular moment in time and assess only her or his need and our capacity to meet that need then, of course, we will see that organism as needy. this is what spinoza called inadequate knowledge. inadequate knowledge is the failure to see how all life is interconnected in what braidotti (2006) calls, “symbiotic interdependence” (para. 23). put differently, it is the failure of seeing the body as inseparable from the web of life both in the actuality of the moment but also in the virtual possibility of what has not yet manifested. i am reminded of the story of michael lewis as told in the film, the blind side (hancock, 2009). in the film, michael is portrayed as a desperately needy foster child who is taken in by a wealthy, white family and given the resources and opportunities to become a professional football player. it is a powerful story and one that validates, for many of us as child and youth care workers, our mission to help the needy by providing the missing elements of their lives. recently, however, michael lewis wrote his own story and went on a speaking tour. in his own story, he points out that there was something crucial missing from the account given in the movie. what was missing, he said, was the drive he always had to both survive and take advantage of every opportunity presented to him. this drive is what the nomadic feminists would call desire, or the force of becoming. braidotti (2006) defines becoming as, “un-programmed . . . mutations, disruptions, and points of resistance. their time frame is always the future anterior, that is to say a linkage across present and past in the act of constructing and actualizing possible futures” (para. 29). in michael’s case, the force of his own becoming transgressed his past and took advantage of its unique elements to create disruptions of other’s expectations, to create mutations of the anticipated racial relations of being placed with a wealthy white family, and to create points of resistance to any barrier that stood in the way of his ability to discover his capacities. this becoming force did not allow for any form of static or traditional identity within the social formations available to him as a poor black youth, a foster youth, a homeless youth, and so on. instead, there were “unprogrammed” becomings that occurred as he traversed the terrain of other bodies in such a way as to discover in his interactions with them his capacities for transformation. in this sense, the question of need is no longer to be seen in the conventional sense of lack. instead it configures itself as the need to become. to begin to reorient our thinking beyond the traditional frameworks of development, human, or lack so that our systems of care might engage the immanent force of becoming, it would be useful to think as psychological ethologists rather than international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 309 psychological developmentalists. gatens (2000) tells us that ethology is not so much interested in what things are in terms of category or definition. rather, it is interested in how things are composed in terms of “affects and powers” (p. 60). that is to say: what is the capacity of an organism to be affected by things and other organisms and what are its capacities when affected? in this sense, the ability to separate and distinguish one body from another is of less interest than the ways in which different bodies come into contact with one another and form compositions. therefore, as gatens (2000) puts it: an ethological evaluation will not select subjects, animals, or persons categorized according to species and genus, but rather will individuate according to principles of composability, sets of fast or slow combinations, the range of affects and degrees and affectability. (p. 61) as ethologists, we would be more interested in the capacities a body has for certain velocities and intensities than how it might be categorized according to an outside set of standards or measures. ethology, as defined by gatens, is interested in how bodies interact as dynamic, ever-fluxuating systems. it assumes that each body is composed in a relation with other bodies, each eliciting unique and idiosyncratic capacities for expression in both thought and physical acts. gatens (2000) proposes that, “ethology does not impose a plane of organization but rather posits a plane of experimentation, a mapping of extensive relations and intensive capacities that are mobile and dynamic” (p. 61). ethology, therefore, is a mapping of an immanent system in which all elements are part of single system that are differentiated in the unique way that each body expresses that system. from an ethological point of view, it is impossible to separate bodies from each other into taxonomies, hierarchies, or categories. all bodies are dynamically interconnected but radically distinct in their own mode of expression. what becomes important here are the border spaces between bodies in which becoming occurs. gatens (2000) tells us that each body is always part of a more complex body. this is true from the atomic particle, to the molecule, to the organs of the body, to the complexity of the human form. these organic bodies can then form complex assemblages with their environment including other life forms, technological forms, architectural forms, and conceptual frameworks to create composite forms such as residential care, street-based outreach programs, shelters, schools, families, and so on. these compositions always strive to persist as long as possible in a stable form. however, such stable forms, as we have noted above, rely on the capture and retention of experimental becomings. gatens states that: from the point of view of the individual, such composites may be harmonious and joyful or conflictual and sad. when two or more bodies combine, harmony assumes that the kinetic particularity of each body is respected and that the new composite leads to an enhancement of the powers of each. anything else will amount to either incompatibility or the capture of some bodies for the benefit of others. (p. 65) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 310 as a psychological ethologist, the primary question becomes: in what way might we create institutions that enhance the powers of each body rather than producing selfvalorizing systems that only reproduce themselves through the capture of other bodies? in other words, how might we organize the composite body that is a residential facility as a space of maximum experimentation in both thought and action? one possibility is to think of our systems of care as border spaces of mutual co-production. this view of care as a border space returns us to the issue of phallocentrism in the work of bracha ettinger (2006). in ettinger’s (2006) work we find the definition of a border space that goes beyond the binary logic of the phallus. like much of the theorizing in the field of child and youth care, she is interested in the issue of relationship, but suggests that the primary relationship we should explore is between the i and the emergent non-i (p. 85). ettinger argues that such a relation must be found in a non-binary plurality, specifically, in an encounter or a space between. she suggests that the model for this space is the mother’s womb in which there is both the subject of the mother and the subject to become. in this space, there is an i and a non-i in mutual co-poeisis or co-becoming. she refers to this mutuality as the becoming-m/other (p. 66). this shared process of becoming ettinger refers to as “differentiation in coemergence and distance in proximity” (p. 19). in other words, there are two subjects that have mutually constitutive effects on one another only one is not yet, while the other is emerging into a new subject position of being mother. the two subjects share the space of the womb in very different ways and yet to common purpose. they are different in their forms of emergence and, while in intimate proximity, they sustain a distance. this productive relation, ettinger suggests, violates the traditional definitions of subjectivity defined as distinction. the relation of m/other transcends the binary constructions of inside and outside or penis versus womb and opens instead onto what she calls a “psychic event-encounter” (p. 19). this encounter is one in which a border space is produced that in constant flux. while this border space is not comprised of clean cuts or divisions, it is also not pure assimilation of either subject. there are, instead, moments wherein “borderlines may become thresholds and passages from one to the other, may produce possible transformations, circulations, sharings” (p. 19). the process of border crossing and its productive effects is what ettinger calls metramorphosis (p. 94). she defines this as a process in which, “limits, borderlines and thresholds conceived are constantly transgressed or dissolved thus allowing the creation of new ones” (p. 21). metramorphosis has no capacity for domination. it is a co-creative process of mutual transformation and becoming. it does not create any one subject but what ettinger calls “subjectivity in severality”. subjectivity in severality means that in the process of the emerging subject we are never one but always composed of a multitude of virtual selves in constant generativity in the border space that is modeled in the womb but persists in all living relations. what if we were to rethink the competencies for cyc according to the logic we have been outlining here? what would it mean to our practice and our identity? what elements of our current practice would we maintain and what would we leave behind? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 311 what we might possibly consider as a first step is to acknowledge that there is no theoretical or practical certainty in what we do. there are no fixed templates, best practices, explanatory frameworks, or fixed ethical standards that can account for the richness of the encounter that occurs at the border between two subjects, each of whom constitutes an equally evocative other. this means that practice emerges experimentally in the liminal space created by the chance encounter of subjects in relationship. there are no abstract rules. there is only the necessity to pay attention to as much of what is occurring as possible, and to note especially as many of the options, possibilities, and capacities that are being opened in each millisecond of the encounter. this means letting go of attempting to control, shape, and define. instead, the worker and the young person engage in an experimental space, as krueger (2010) has pointed out, much like that of art or music. like the most experimental art or music, the work becomes an improvisation inclusive of as many possible elements of the moment as possible. not just the human elements, but also the non-human and even the non-organic. this requires a different form of self-discipline and a different set of competencies truly rooted in lived experience and not in corporate, professional, or organizational abstract reasoning. it is with hope that i offer this as a way to return the work to the land of the living, which is a space that is always opening onto the border. i am not writing of the binary border that draws a line between, but of a complex and ever shifting border of multiple dimensions full of liminality, creativity, hybridity, and expressivity. work in such a space returns psychology and child and youth care to the realm of the relationship in all its complexity. what does working as a nomadic child and youth worker look like? let me begin by being clear that there is no template of practices or specific ways of thinking a child and youth care worker can learn or implement in a program or center that will facilitate nomadic child and youth care. instead there is a constant practice if dissembling and reassembling one’s thoughts and practices through the encounter with all of the elements of a given moment. in this regard, the work might be said to have more in common with alchemy, sorcery, or the shamanic than instrumentalist practices of behavior change. such work is alchemy in the sense that the work is centered in the violation of traditional limitations of transformation; sorcery in the ancient sense of divination that exceeds the dictates of reason; and shamanic in seeking to cross into the liminal space between worlds and return with a double knowledge of the world. practice as shamanic, alchemical or sorcerous, however, is neither esoteric nor metaphysical. in fact, it is a concrete discipline rooted in what the buddhists call mindfulness – a deep attentiveness to the moment. i once worked in a runaway and homeless youth shelter that had a family reunification program that utilized a team approach to working with families. the family was seen by one worker, with a team of workers observing from behind a one-way mirror. the team behind the mirror could phone in ideas and suggestions to the worker in the room or any of the family members. at a certain point in the session, the worker would stop the interview with the family and the lighting would be reversed so that the family was now watching the team. the team would then have a conversation about their thoughts and reflections on what they had observed. the family was encouraged to phone in questions about what the team was saying. the lighting was reversed again and the family was asked to reflect on what the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 312 team had said. while using this process, the team was careful to pay particular attention to any unanticipated behaviors or statements that indicated the possibility of alternative stories that violated the narratives of pathology and dysfunction that brought them to the therapy room. i would argue that the mirror provided a liminal space, a permeable boundary in which both the team and the family opened themselves up to a mutually reflective praxis. switching the lighting and the roles of observation muddied the traditional hierarchy of who was the observer and who the observed. as the team and the family became more comfortable with the practices of the mirror, the composition of the team would sometimes shift so that members of the family might join the team behind the mirror to observe a conversation from a different perspective. the blurring of team boundaries also extended to the content of reflections. indeed, the team often found themselves reflecting on their own lives and families while the family observed them. the boundaries between the lived experience of the workers and that of the family began to engage a space between them that opened itself to the creation of new stories and new ways of becoming for both groups. the reflective practice of the mirror is an example of the metramorphosis outlined by ettinger (2006) in which, “borderlines may become thresholds and passages from one to the other, may produce possible transformations, circulations, sharings” (p. 18). the practices of the mirror as a space of co-becoming for families and child and youth care workers metastasized across the agency influencing the way we did groups, daily planning, staff meetings, and activities. the act of jointly reflecting and deploying physical spaces in ways that enhanced our capacity to reflect became increasingly prevalent. it should be noted that a number of staff were uncomfortable with these trends and perceived them as unprofessional and even dangerous. the challenging of traditional boundaries can be unsettling and increase the challenges of maintaining an orderly and structured environment in a given facility. the creative challenge of opening boundaries into liminal spaces requires a mindfulness that is attentive to the desires and needs for stability and structure. the womb, as ettinger points out, is not an anarchic space. it is a space from which a certain order is emerging. in the birthing, there will be two coherent bodies emerging, a mother and an infant, not an amorphous assemblage of cells without boundary. i end this piece on this cautionary note. deleuze and guattari (1987) make the point that life is a constant process of deterritorializing and reterritorializing. living force both assembles the world and almost immediately takes it apart, only to put it into a new form that it will then take apart. deleuze and guattari are quite clear that this is not a binary process. it is not two things that are happening or contesting one another. it is one process composed of two different elements. to the degree we can find ways to be attentive to this process in our work and our lives, liminal spaces become available to us and we can become the sorcerers, alchemists, and shamans of the mundane. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 300–315 313 references althusser, l. 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(1971). selections from the prison notebooks of antonio gramsci (g. n. smith, ed.; q. hoare, trans.). new york: international publishers. microsoft word 12 police_understandings.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120085 police understandings of and responses to a complex vignette of “honour”-based crime and forced marriage wendy aujla abstract: police understandings of honour-based crimes (hbcs) and forced marriages (fms) vary in terms of an individual officer’s level of expertise, knowledge, and experience in handling such situations. this study applied constructivist grounded theory approaches to analyze individual interviews with 32 police officers and 14 civilians in police agencies operating in urban and rural settings in alberta, canada. specifically, this paper seeks to answer how police officers and civilians who work in police agencies experience, make sense of, and understand hbcs. participants received a hypothetical vignette about a young woman who had reached out to the police. the vignette illustrated various forms of abuse by the woman’s father, the involvement of other actors (mother, brother, family friend) and the culmination in an fm. after reading the vignette, participants were asked to respond to six questions. analysis revealed that both police and civilians recognized the need in the vignette scenario for intervention, while experiencing uncertainty about how to respond. the findings showed that not everyone in policing would be able to identify reliably the need for police intervention, and that investigations could proceed differently depending on the investigator’s level of knowledge and awareness of hbcs and fms. police have achieved some successful interventions, but still lack sufficient guidance on how to respond to these crimes. clear, appropriate policies regarding which cases need to be directed to specialized domestic violence units for follow-up are needed. a significant finding points to the importance of considering cultural sensitivity discourses as well as the impact of cultural and racist stereotypes when responding to situations like the one outlined in the vignette. keywords: “honour”-based crimes, forced marriages, vignette, constructivist grounded theory approaches, policing, perceptions of the police acknowledgement: i would like to thank dr. mandeep kaur mucina, editor of this special issue, and the two anonymous reviewers for their edits and constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript. i would also like to thank my supervisor, dr. jana grekul, for her insightful comments that greatly improved this manuscript. i acknowledge the support received from all the participating law enforcement agencies and individual participants who shared their perspectives. wendy aujla ma is a phd candidate in the department of sociology at university of alberta, 5-25 hm tory building, edmonton, ab t6g 2h4. email: waujla@ualberta.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 94  in response to growing concerns over “honour”-based killings (hbks) and over inadequate interventions in the initial responses to such cases from canadian police, school officials, and child protection services, this paper details the findings of a research study that examined how police respond to “honour”-based crime1 (hbc) and forced marriage (fm; keeping, 2012; macintosh & keeping, 2012). i use hbc as an umbrella term to include fm and hbks as forms of gendered violence within the broader spectrum of violence against women and girls (vawg; mucina, 2018). i highlight the gendered context of hbcs as the rates of victimization are higher among girls and women, although boys and men can also be victims (korteweg, 2012). “in the conceptualization of family honour that informs honour-related violence and honour killing, honour inheres in women but is the property of the family, including the women of the family” (korteweg, 2014, p. 188). in this view, women are responsible for maintaining “honour”, and the family must punish them if they are viewed as having injured the family’s “honour”. behaviours associated with a woman’s sexuality or body can lead families to trigger the process of an fm or to commit murder (hbk) to restore family “honour” (gill, 2009; gill et al., 2012; gill et al., 2018; idriss, 2018; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010). hbcs are often carried out by the victim’s family members (fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles) and community members may play a role in executing an fm or hbk. these crimes are premeditated, planned, and motivated by the commitment to defend family “honour” (gill, 2009; korteweg, 2014). macintosh (2012) pointed out that “the extent to which [fm] is associated with ‘honour’-based violence merits further investigation” (pp. 49–50). such an association may be seen in the case of 16-year-old aqsa parvez in toronto, who “was very likely facing [an fm] when she was murdered” by her father and brother (macintosh, 2012, p. 49). as a feminist scholar, i conceptualize fm as a form of vawg. fm violates human rights and is considerably different from an arranged marriage2 (chantler, 2012; chantler & mccarry, 2020; gill & anitha, 2011) in that an fm is entered into without the full and free consent of one or both parties, and duress is involved (anis et al., 2013; chantler, 2012), including emotional or physical threats and coercion (anis et al., 2013; esthappan et al., 2018). fm is a hidden problem: its warning signs are often missed by professionals (see anis et al., 2013; chantler & mccarry, 2020). thus, given the nature of fms and hbks, it is important to ensure that service providers in canada react with informed actions rather than naïvely refraining from action, especially in the case of police officers who face a challenging task as first responders and investigators. police play a crucial role in responding to these complex calls for service and are often the last resort for 1the quotation marks around the term “honour” are intended to reflect the problematic nature of this term; without them, the term could be perceived as justifying violence or murder as honourable (see aujla & gill, 2014; korteweg, 2014). 2in an arranged marriage, the families introduce the couple, who then decide for themselves whether to accept the arrangement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 95  victims when other professionals have failed to intervene appropriately. i argue that police can do their work effectively only if they are aware of the challenges victims experience in seeking help from law enforcement, and must learn from the ways victims have been denied adequate protection by other professionals (e.g., school counsellors, school teachers, social workers, child and youth protection workers) who have failed to understand the risks those victims faced. korteweg (2014) stated that: often we see that in cases of honour killing service providers misrecognize the danger — girls are told that their brothers will not kill them when they tell school teachers in fear or social workers call in entire families to discuss family problems. (p. 187) service providers may misinterpret or struggle with the complexity of these cases and may find themselves ill-prepared to grasp the challenging issues (e.g., identifying multiple intersecting levels of risk). awareness of these issues and their implications for improving supports may aid law enforcement agencies to improve their practices and formal systems. looking at findings from a larger study that explored how alberta policing agencies conceptualize, understand, and respond to hbcs within the context of domestic violence (dv), also called family violence (fv)3, this paper specifically focuses on the following research questions from that study: “how do police officers and civilians who work in police organizations experience, make sense of, and understand hbcs?” and “how do policing agencies intervene to prevent, protect, and investigate an hbc?” it seeks to fill a research gap by drawing on in-depth subjective interviews with participants who discussed how they would respond to a situation described in a written vignette. numerous cases in canada have included features similar to the vignette, and actual cases of girls and women murdered in the name of “honour” shaped the construction of the vignette (aujla, 2020b). the vignette does not point out that in those cases elements of risk were missed by service providers, which resulted in the deaths of girls such as aqsa parvez in 2007 and the shafia sisters in 2009. instead, i designed the scenario to explore how participants perceived certain behaviours that escalated into an fm threat. the participants’ responses shed light on police interventions and the actions needed to help prevent an hbk or fm in the situation described in the vignette. the scope of the phenomenon canada does not maintain official national statistics on hbc and fm, although policy reports estimate that a dozen cases of hbk have taken place across the country since 2000 (keeping, 2012; muhammad, 2010; papp, 2010). a survey of 32 agencies (30 in ontario and 2 in quebec) 3dv, like its near-synonym family violence (fv), refers to violence in the home. dv and fv include not just intimate partner violence, but any pattern of abusive behaviour (e.g., physical or psychological) in any familial relationship (involving, e.g., partners, parents, children, or siblings). i use the term dv broadly to refer to one or more abusers exerting control over a victim in an intimate partner relationship or other family relationship (aujla, 2020a). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 96  showed that they dealt with 219 cases of fm between 2010 and 2012, with 202 of the victims identifying as female, 13 as male, 3 as transgender, and 1 unknown (anis et al., 2013). of all victims, 81% were between the ages of 16 and 34, 8% were older, and 10% younger, with 1% unknown (anis et al., 2013). the fms occurred across different communities, including many cultures from several continents and various religious backgrounds. unlike the united kingdom and scotland, canada and alberta did not track or release police data on hbc and fm at the time of this study (chantler & mccarry, 2020; gill et al., 2018; hague et al., 2013; hall, 2014). the calgary police service (cps) did collect such data for a short period prior to the study; approximately 40 “honour”-based violence (hbv) victims came forward in 2012 (quebec council for women, 2013). however, it is largely unknown how frequently or to what extent canadian police see hbc and fm cases. the few cases reported in canada have included girls being confronted about boyfriends, removed from school, and flown back to their country of origin (macintosh, 2012; macintosh & keeping, 2012). fms may also be underreported because some victims do not understand what is happening (chantler et al., 2009; chantler & mccarry, 2020); moreover, families may also attempt to cover up hbks by reporting them as suicides (hall, 2014; korteweg, 2012; roberts, 2017). this paper does not attempt to establish the prevalence of hbc and fm in alberta; instead, it highlights challenges for police in situations similar to the one described in the vignette. in canada, the majority of hbk victims are racialized women, and hbc and fms are mainly reported in certain communities (e.g., south asian and kurdish; chantler et al., 2009; gill et al., 2012; macintosh, 2012). however, hbc should not be regarded as intrinsically a cultural problem (olwan, 2013) since it occurs in a range of cultures (chantler, 2012; gill et al., 2018; hall, 2014): it does not support the designation of any particular culture, ethnicity, or religion as “barbaric” (gill, 2006; hall, 2014; jiwani, 2014; olwan, 2014). all cultures are complex and nuanced, and most — including euro-canadian culture — have been impacted in various ways by patriarchy and misogyny. abuse and violence manifest differently in different cultural groups because of patriarchy (aujla & gill, 2014). as korteweg et al. (2013) argued, vawg is shaped by many individual and structural forces that intersect with culture, which “informs all forms of violence in all groups that make up society” (p. 4). hbc is one manifestation of vawg and is the focus of this research project. racism and discriminatory practices can result in animosity between the police and racialized communities, whose members may feel too vulnerable to report their concerns. racialized immigrant women suffering dv are doubly victimized when they encounter discrimination from the police service (aujla, 2020a; belur, 2008). such institutionally racist practices make victims “vulnerable to accepting abuse and retracting their statements” because they lack trust and confidence in the police (belur, 2008, p. 440). the available research indicates that victims of hbc and fm are usually reluctant to report their experiences to the police, give statements, or criminally charge or testify against family members (blum et al., 2016; chantler & mccarry, 2020; gill, 2009; gill et al., 2018; hall, 2014). previous negative experiences in countries of origin also international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 97  influence certain communities’ perceptions of police intervention (chan, 1997). these barriers to reporting cannot be separated from the multiple and interlocking oppressions victims experience from police officers’ attitudes, racial stereotypes, and ethnocentrism that result in missed or unsatisfactory interventions (aujla, 2020a; hague et al., 2013; hall, 2014). shortcomings of interventions that failed to protect victims a discussion of police failure to protect victims of hbc, mainly in the shafia case, has been noted in the literature (aujla & gill, 2014; korteweg, 2012, 2014; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; olwan, 2014). in 2009, the bodies of the three shafia sisters and that of their father’s first wife were found in the rideau canal in kingston, ontario, canada. all four had been murdered by the afghan father, his second wife, and the brother (olwan, 2013; schliesmann, 2012): the father had disapproved of the girls wearing makeup, skipping school, and dating boys (aujla & gill, 2014; muhammad, 2010; schliesmann, 2012). the victims had feared for their lives, opposed the violence, and actively reached out for support from the police, teachers, youth protection services, and other social service agencies (fournier, 2012). in covering the murders, the media criticized professionals for mishandling the case and ignoring potential indicators of the emotional and physical violence the girls were experiencing, including attempts to run away, depression, and selfharm (see jiwani, 2014; macintosh & keeping, 2012; olwan, 2014). a careful analysis of evidence at the murder trial concluded that: both social services and the police have been blamed for the shafia murders and for their failure to act in the interest of the children who had appealed to them for protection and care. to explain their inaction, state services have noted that while trained in confronting patriarchal violence, they had no experience with the particular type of violence to which the shafia girls were subjected. (olwan, 2014, p. 224) research on this case and others has assessed interventions and noted that school counsellors and social workers often do not adequately respond to victims’ needs or are reluctant to involve the police (blum et al., 2016; keeping, 2012; korteweg, 2014). these professionals and the police have been criticized for their adherence to stereotypes, inadequate responses, and failure to protect vulnerable victims (keeping, 2012; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; macintosh & keeping, 2012). in addition, research has shown that victims experiencing hbv and fm are likely to run away, to self-harm, or to attempt suicide, demonstrating the severe implications of hbc (belfrage et al., 2012; chantler, 2012; chantler et al., 2009; chantler & mccarry, 2020; hague et al., 2013; jiwani, 2014; khan, 2018; khan et al., 2018). law enforcement agencies need to be prepared to respond adequately to victims who come forward to report their hbc experiences. some researchers, mainly in the united kingdom, have examined victim and survivor interactions with police and encouraged the improvement of services to ensure safety from hbv (gill et al., 2012; idriss, 2018; khan et al., 2018) and fm (idriss, 2018). while strategies have been implemented in the united kingdom to assess risk, train international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 98  police officers, raise public awareness, and collect national police data to support victims of hbc, police remain inconsistent in responding to hbv (gill & harrison, 2016; idriss, 2018) and scholars continue to focus on the need to improve the criminal justice system response (gill, 2009; gill et al., 2012; hague et al., 2013; hall, 2014). existing scholarship has focused on the variations in victims’ and survivors’ lived experiences of hbv (gill et al., 2018; khan et al., 2018; withaeckx & coene, 2014), fm (chantler et al., 2009; chantler & mccarry, 2020; esthappan et al., 2018; gill et al., 2018; jaspal, 2014; samad, 2010). interviews with women impacted by these acts of violence help us better understand the experience of reporting them to the police, whose responses vary unpredictably and may even do further harm (gill et al., 2018; idriss, 2018; mulvihill et al., 2019). victims of hbcs may suffer for years before they seek help; if, when they eventually do so, police do not assist them, victims are less likely to reach out again and more likely to return home to their abusers (aplin, 2018; gill et al., 2012; idriss, 2018). little practical information is available regarding how police can prepare to detect red flags and support victims of hbc and fm (roberts et al., 2014). research suggests that police should avoid assuming that all individuals from the same culture will adhere to the same “honour” codes or norms (roberts, 2017; roberts et al., 2014), and should consider the perceptions and meaning of “honour” for victims, offenders, and witnesses in their risk management strategies (roberts, 2017). this is important because individuals who accept “honour”-based norms might be uncooperative, and perpetrators may mislead police into accepting their interpretation of the situation (aplin, 2018). police may not recognize how the “honour”-related beliefs of victims, offenders, and witnesses impact their investigations. police perspectives on these crimes are rarely examined; relatively few police officers, and those mainly in the united kingdom, have been included among the frontline professionals interviewed in research studies (see aplin, 2017, 2018, 2019; gill et al., 2012; gill & harrison, 2016; gill et al., 2018; hague et al., 2013; idriss, 2017, 2018). it is crucial for policing professionals to grapple with how best to investigate hbc cases and meet victims’ need for protection. research design and methods a constructivist approach to grounded theory was best suited for this study because i was interested in gaining new insights into the meaning-making process police use to make sense of an understudied phenomenon (birks & mills, 2015; creswell, 2013). constructivist grounded theory (cgt) is different from other versions of grounded theory since it views reality as socially constructed in multiple ways and allows for reflexivity during the research process (see birks & mills, 2015; charmaz, 2006). cgt focuses on multiple meanings and social processes that are coconstructed between the researcher and the participants to interpret the relevant phenomenon (charmaz, 2006). importantly, it considers researchers to be “part of the world we study and the data we collect” (charmaz, 2006, p. 10). my knowledge, assumptions, and preconceptions informed the research questions i asked and how i approached data collection and analysis. as a second-generation punjabi sikh woman from the south asian diaspora, my identity and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 99  experiences shape my research process and academic interest in this topic, which i came to through my research and advocacy work on vawg. various conferences and workshops challenged me to think critically through an antiracist feminist lens. my views did not align with training that emphasized cultural explanations for hbc and hbks, as these further racialized and stigmatized girls and women for the violence they experienced. even the very term hbk reinforces racism, as opposed to terms like “femicide” and “patriarchal homicide”, which focus on the gendered violence of the crime (aujla & gill, 2014; grewal, 2013; korteweg, 2014). after all, canadian women of all ethnicities are victims of dv and homicide (razack, 2004). in addition, what is “dishonourable” in one family may not be so regarded in another family from the same community (hall, 2014; korteweg, 2014). “honour” is a socially constructed system, and its meaning varies according to individual interpretations, social context, and complex meaning-making processes in different communities (gill et al., 2012; idriss, 2018; withaeckx & coene, 2014). as an antiracist feminist sociologist, i situate my study within my preconceived notions of a police culture under which systemic racism exists in all societal institutions. although a complete analysis of racism in policing is beyond the scope of this paper, the brief discussion that follows reveals how privilege and oppression operate in the process of “othering”. scholars have examined racist policing practices and culture, specifically how police often treat individuals differently based on their cultural or racial backgrounds. police officers are socialized into a subculture in which biased policing occurs, and share membership in an institution that reinforces white supremacy, racial bias, and discrimination towards indigenous, black, and racialized communities (chan & chunn, 2014; henry & tator, 2010; tator & henry, 2006). as chan (1997) argued, “police are acting as agents of an essentially racist or oppressive system” (p. 28). individual police officers and civilians working within police services may not be racist, but they are part of a powerful institution that has oppressed racially diverse groups in canadian society. belur’s (2008) study on policing in the united kingdom demonstrated how racialized victims of dv encounter discrimination and institutional racism. she explained that dv is overlooked in discussions of institutional racism and policing, particularly when victims are part of racialized groups. nevertheless, police interventions are needed until society develops better options for combatting gendered violence across diverse cultural communities. policing is a male-dominated field based not just on the need to maintain public order but also on power relations mediated in part by race and gender. i was aware of my identity as a woman of colour entering a police milieu, and it was apparent that my race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as my civilian status, made me an outsider. this required me to think about whether participants might not trust me, which could potentially have impacted the interview dynamics. i expected that i would mainly be speaking to white male police officers and civilians, and that power relations and racial differences could potentially make it challenging to conduct cross-racial interviews. i had to consider the race and gender dynamics as well as the research process and design so that participants would feel comfortable sharing their perceptions and experiences. cgt is a flexible process that enables researchers to use multiple methods to collect data (charmaz, 2006), and i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 100  constructed the vignette as a method of complementing the semi-structured interviews. the vignette allowed me to establish rapport with my participants and explore the meaning they attributed to it (see aujla, 2020b for details about the development of the vignette, its use of language, and why all reference to culture and ethnicity was omitted). the vignette allowed me to obtain data and insights on a sensitive topic, which may not have been possible without gaining participants’ trust (aujla, 2020b). data collection this paper focuses on the qualitative data findings from six semi-structured in-depth interview questions that participants answered after the presentation of a vignette related to hbc and fm. having received approval from the research ethics board at the university of alberta and from the law enforcement agencies, i began recruiting participants from police services in different regions of alberta using gatekeepers, snowball sampling, and word-of-mouth techniques. knowledge of or exposure to hbc and fm was not required. potential participants were identified by gatekeepers, who in some cases made a general announcement of my appeal for volunteers and in others contacted potential participants directly or furnished me with their contact information. for example, one gatekeeper sent out my invitation as a listserv announcement and also posted the request on a bulletin board in the policing organization. in all of these instances, once potential participants were identified, i would follow up with an email inviting them to participate in the research study. after recruitment, participants assisted with contacting colleagues they thought might be interested in participating. i made initial contact with potential participants through email and telephone. then, in an email message, i informed them about the study and provided a consent form, instructions for reading the vignette, and an interview guide. participants could choose to be interviewed either by telephone or in person. telephone participants returned signed consent forms via email before the scheduled interview time. in-person participants provided written consent during their face-to-face interviews. i informed each interview participant that they could opt out of answering questions or decline to respond to the vignette. however, the vignette technique and its application were central to the interviews, and data collection would have been adversely affected had not all participants been prepared to discuss it. in the event, all participants did read and respond to the vignette, which helped me understand the cultural framing and the racist and privileged perspectives that some participants held. for example, some participants were quick to stereotype marginalized communities and blame certain cultures for the violence depicted in the scenario. the rich data that emerged show that the vignette method was successful (see aujla, 2020b). participation was voluntary, and i assured participants that their responses and involvement would be kept confidential so as not to affect their employment. between 2015 and 2017, i conducted 46 interviews with 32 police officers and 14 civilians from five law enforcement agencies across alberta in rural and urban settings. the officers were employed by calgary police service (cps; 8 participants), edmonton police service (eps; 11), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 101  royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) “k” division (9), integrated threat and risk assessment centre (i-trac; 3), and the ministry of justice and solicitor general of alberta (1). the civilians were employed by cps (3), eps (7), rcmp “k” division (1), i-trac (1), and the ministry of justice and solicitor general (2). pseudonyms are used in this paper to ensure participant confidentiality and preserve anonymity. sociodemographic information is grouped (police officers and civilians), and quotes are identified with the assigned pseudonym and type of participant (police officer or civilian). with direct quotes, i do not disclose the law enforcement agency (e.g., specific division, detachment, unit) or position the participant represented. this study’s sample of police officers and civilians was diverse, aside from ethnicity, in contrast with the lack of diversity generally found in policing (henry & tator, 2010). the sample included white (38), south asian (5), indigenous (1), and mixed-race (2) individuals. in 2019, there were 68,718 sworn police officers in canada, of whom 8% identified as a visible minority and 4% as indigenous; female police officers numbered 15,268 (22%), and their representation in all ranks has continued to increase (conor et al., 2020). police services such as eps and the rcmp have made progress with their efforts to attract females recruits. despite the growing number of women entering law enforcement, however, there is evidence that retention of female officers is still a challenge and that policing remains a male-dominated profession (government of manitoba, 2014). even though there are still many fewer female police officers than male, i was able to recruit 20 male and 26 female participants, who ranged in age from 25 to 68 years; most (37) were 36 or older. the participants were highly educated: their level of education ranged from high school (3) to some post-secondary classes (2), completed college diplomas (12), or undergraduate (22) or graduate-level (7) degrees. most police officer participants had received certificates in leadership or police academy training. all participants had worked in policing for several years. the 32 police officers had from 3 to nearly 30 years of service, including some international policing experience. some came from the lower or junior ranks (3 frontline patrol officers, 3 general-duty officers, and 8 constables from specialized units); others were of upper or senior rank (7 sergeants including staff sergeants, 5 detectives, 1 investigator, 4 corporals, and 1 detachment commander). the 14 civilians had experience in dv and policing that ranged from a few months to 28 years. the civilian positions varied (e.g., frontline victim service advocates, intake and threat assessors, outreach and crisis workers, social workers, psychologists, senior advisors, project coordinators, supervisors, managers of specialized units, and 911 call operators) across the law-enforcement agencies. all of the interviews were face-to-face except four conducted by telephone to reach participants in rural parts of alberta. the face-to-face interviews took place in edmonton and calgary or their surrounding communities, in spaces where participants felt comfortable: at their office (11), in an interview room or boardroom within their workplace (26), or in a seminar room at the university of alberta (5). after the 46 interviews were completed, theoretical saturation was reached, and no new data were collected (charmaz, 2006). the interviews varied in length from 1.5 to 4 hours. i opened the interviews using the vignette technique as a data collection tool; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 102  discussions about it lasted from 20 to 30 minutes. i also asked participants a number of unrelated but complementary research questions, data from which will be published in future papers. the vignette and accompanying questions a vignette is a short descriptive story with hypothetical characters in a scenario to which participants are invited to respond (bradbury-jones et al., 2014; finch, 1987; hughes & huby, 2004). participants were asked to read this vignette and respond to the hypothetical call for service: nina, age 17, is seen by a close family friend kissing her boyfriend on a movie date. usually she is careful to tell lies, such as “i am going to work,” to hide the relationship. her father often asks the brother to follow her places, and he constantly checks on her whereabouts. when the family friend reports the kiss, nina’s father confronts nina for the behaviour and then blames nina’s mother for failing to keep an eye on her own daughter. the father starts yelling about his daughter wearing makeup and running around with boys, and claims that this western lifestyle brings shame. nina’s brother agrees with their father and threatens to kill the boyfriend. the father slaps nina across the face saying, “what kind of daughter are you; how will i face the community? you have disrespected me and disgraced this family. i wish you were dead.” out of fear nina escapes to a friend’s place where she is encouraged by the friend’s parents to report the incident to the police instead of eloping with her boyfriend. when the police arrive at her family’s home, the brother says there should be no concerns as the family is discussing preparations for his sister’s wedding. the mother calls nina’s cell phone and begs her to come home to avoid further community accusations. the mother tells her to end the current relationship because her father is planning her marriage to another man from a conservative family. under pressure, nina agrees to the forced marriage, and tries to defend herself by saying everything is based on rumours. participants received the written narrative and accompanying questions a day before the scheduled interview and were given specific instructions not to feel pressured to prepare, but to expect to answer the questions below. during the interview, some participants were given time to reread the vignette before responding to the questions. participants were invited to think out loud as they offered their responses to the following questions: 1. describe your initial thoughts about what is happening in the scenario. 2. what parts of the vignette stood out to you, and why? 3. how would the police respond to the scenario, and what influences this response? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 103  4. how comfortable would law enforcers (police officers) feel in investigating and reporting similar situations? 5. what experiences or situations have you heard of that are similar to the one presented in the scenario? if so, tell me more about this. 6. what else concerns you about this scenario? any other comments? data analysis all 46 interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim for coding and analysis. i reviewed all transcriptions for accuracy and analyzed the data using the guiding principles of cgt (charmaz, 2006). i entered the written data (transcripts, field notes, and memos) into nvivo 11 and began organizing the initial codes from the vignette into emerging conceptual categories as i continued collecting data (charmaz, 2006). this iterative cycle and non-linear coding process was flexible, making it possible to pursue topics and themes as they emerged. i reexamined my earlier data to develop additional questions or insights while still conducting interviews with participants. themes were identified and labelled with in vivo codes — that is, using the exact words or phrases provided by participants — which gave meaning to the data and prevented me from imposing my own ideas on the codes, letting the data speak for themselves. i used constant comparative techniques (charmaz, 2006), as outlined by grounded theorists, to compare and contrast the data across the interview transcripts before finalizing the coding scheme. throughout the data analysis process, i remained grounded in the data, reviewing the relevant literature later to make connections. the data analysis and interview processes took place simultaneously, so they informed one another. through this inductive approach, my aim was not to develop a theory, but to use the cgt coding approach to understand the connections within my data. cgt acknowledges that literature and existing theories can help explain concepts or categories that emerge from data. the coding process allowed me to identify four main themes that demonstrated how participants interpreted and responded to the vignette scenario. because of the prior knowledge i brought to the study, the lens through which i interrogated the data and interpreted the emergent themes originates in antiracist and feminist theoretical frameworks. i drew on critical race feminism, also known as canadian antiracist feminist thought (dua, 1999) and canadian feminist antiracism (razack et al., 2010), as a conceptual framework to analyze the findings and to theorize from an antiracist perspective. the central focus of critical race feminism is race, which contributes to feminist theorizing of gender oppressions as it interrogates broader issues of migration, integration, settler colonialism, discriminatory immigration and citizenship policies, and racism (dua, 1999; razack et al., 2010). critical race feminism scholars have examined violence against racialized women, and noted that the dominant discourses of “othering” in mainstream society shape racist stereotypes. for example, in the period since the terrorist attack on the united states of september 11, 2001, arabs and muslims have been subject to islamophobia and institutional racism by state, media, and criminal justice systems that see them as alien to western culture (chan & chunn, 2014; jiwani, 2014; razack, 2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 104  scholarly work has deconstructed the canadian media and state discourse, which portrays immigrant communities as “backward” and as outsiders importing “barbaric” practices into the country (see jiwani, 2014; korteweg, 2014; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; olwan, 2013, 2014). i add to this work by analyzing the emergent themes in policing and paying attention to how racism in policing reinforces marginalization and “othering”, similar to the state and media discourses that perpetuate stereotypes. i examine the gaps in knowledge and cultural understanding that underpin the problematic institutional responses of the police to hbcs and fms. my research builds upon the foundational work done by other sociologists, social workers, and activists in the dv sector to challenge the dangers of culture talk and to approach culture as a meaning-making process (see abji et al., 2019; korteweg, 2012, 2014; korteweg et al., 2013; razack, 1994). findings the findings speak to the ongoing challenges police have to grapple with in situations like the one presented in the vignette. four main themes emerged consistently. theme 1: preparation through experience and exposure participants discussed at length how prior knowledge and understanding shaped their perceptions of the vignette and influenced how they understood it. the majority of the participants discussed nina’s experience through their understanding of cases they had followed in the media, relevant training, and past involvement in or awareness of similar situations. except for two police officers, all participants had some working knowledge and awareness of the topic. participants recognized that police response to the vignette was challenging, were reminded of past cases with missed opportunities for intervention, and feared that police would continue to overlook the possibility of early intervention in future cases. when examining the vignette, participants tended to reflect on the shafia murders, other hbks, specific hbv, and fm cases (whether carried out or only attempted) they had assisted in or heard about in their work. some participants recalled details about canadian and international cases, such as who was involved and how the victims were killed. the vignette allowed participants to openly reflect on the painful nature of past incidents and their desire not to hear about another case of professionals failing victims. a civilian member, judy, explained: those shafia girls had been signal[ling] [for help] to the community in a lot of ways and nobody realized the extent of the danger they were in. if you or i interviewed her, we would know. that, um, she would not be safe going home. and there was ample information there, ample, but people weren’t well enough trained in diversity to pick them up. and that’s, like that’s the biggest thing. is understanding these socalled honour-based issues. and the depth that they go to. judy highlighted the problem with interviewing girls in front of their parents: victims often retract their statements, reconcile with family members, and return home, only to later be murdered. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 105  judy’s concerns around the seriousness of taking action suggest that service providers are not looking or listening for evidence that might indicate the level of risk facing young girls. she also stressed that not being trained in diversity means professionals are more likely to gloss over critical details. it is important to note that diversity and cultural training may not be the most appropriate way to confront these problems. while diversity training focuses on cultural awareness and sensitivity to potential biases toward people who do not share a similar background, it may fail to take into consideration how to look at forms of gendered violence without racializing women and girls. elizabeth, a senior police officer, was first exposed to an hbk during training on the banaz mahmod case in the united kingdom. she described how mahmod had contacted police multiple times, but officers did not take her pleas for help seriously. mahmod’s family disapproved of her boyfriend and after they witnessed her kissing him, she was killed. her body was stuffed into a suitcase and buried (see gill, 2009; idriss, 2017). elizabeth explained: so … when i read this [vignette], that was exactly what i thought was that, yeah, it’s ah … an honour-based issue. for sure. because, i mean, family values and the reputation of the family is paramount. right? to these families. having undergone some specialized training, elizabeth perceived the vignette context as escalating and potentially progressing to an hbk. she expressed concern for nina and was conscious of the potential danger if the police did not follow up on the case. similarly, sarah, a civilian member, reflected on how she understood the situation presented in the vignette: instantly when i read it, it reminded me of the shafia case, so i thought honourbased violence, [and] the complexity, right? very, very complex situation, and with people that had less knowledge in the area, it would look more complicated and messy. sarah’s comment shows how challenging she thought it would be to effectively take on a case like the one described in the vignette with no understanding of hbv. in general, due to their exposure to other hbc cases, participants understood the vignette and did not seem to underestimate the severity of the potential consequences or danger to victims if police did not follow up on the case. most participants felt the situation could prove complicated to respond to and that nina was vulnerable. very few perceived the risk as low; most referenced well-known cases of hbk in which there had been a professional failure to safeguard victims. a civilian member, amy, explained: “there’s enough here saying this is high enough risk that somebody needs to be, like, intervening and trying to prevent her from being married or possibly killed.” however, despite their awareness that the danger described would merit police involvement, several participants worried that a lack of knowledge and training could prevent police from responding appropriately. angie, a junior police officer, suggested that officers who international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 106  are unaware of the complexities of the issue would probably use mediation strategies with the family, and that this approach might not address nina’s needs or resolve the potential for an fm: these situations, i guess, can come across to some, you know, as maybe not too high risk and maybe there just needs to be a bit of intervention on how to have the family work better together, as a unit, and understand each other. but, clearly, you know, when you look a little further and have a little more information about these types of crimes, they are actually quite high risk. you know, they’re looking at her having a forced marriage, so, clearly that’s going to escalate things. they wouldn’t want her to disgrace the family or not follow through on the forced marriage and, to the point where, you know, could it escalate that they would rather have her be dead than to follow through with this other boyfriend and not follow through on the marriage? so, definitely, you know, extremely high risk. like angie, several participants highlighted how the vignette situation could escalate, so police must be prepared to assess and respond appropriately. effective intervention strategies could help protect nina by preventing the escalation to fm or homicide that has occurred in many real cases. as participants noted, a lack of awareness prevents officers from immediately taking action, identifying risk factors, and protecting nina. theme 2: making sense of individual-level interventions most participants had not only heard of similar cases, but had actually handled them, assisted with investigations, or provided advice on them. patrick, a senior police officer, shared, “i’ve seen that situation countless times, when i was with the domestic [violence] team, that was a very common call that we would receive.” some participants told me about responses that were helpful to the victims who reached out. such intervention strategies at the individual level relied on a police officer’s ability to detect and investigate a potential hbc, and in many cases, to help victims receive support. bryan, a senior police officer, commented on the similarities between the vignette and a case where specialist knowledge was required to further the police investigation: i’ve seen these things where we had a girl [who] … wanted to marry her boyfriend. father didn’t want anything to do with it.… i think she was assaulted, just a minor assault. but she was kept in the house by her mother and sat on, i think, actually.… i think they held her down while the dad and the brother went off to kill the boyfriend, which was in another part of [the city]. and, she, i think she managed to break free, call the police and initially, with that, the police arrived, and the mother was at the door, “oh! no problem here, no problem here,” and they could hear some disturbance, so they went in, and the girl said, “no. they’re threatening to kill my boyfriend.” so they ended up sending some police. so, and really, when you’ve got something like that … you’re not going to treat that any different, to a regular threat’s file. you’re gonna — “hang on a sec, they’re on their way to try and kill somebody? we need to get somebody, you know, some officers there to stop them.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 107  … thankfully there were a couple of guys in [the dv unit], one of them used to work with me … [and] he’s got a knowledge of it and it helps a heck of a lot because you do need key people that have had knowledge and interest in particular areas to highlight the fact that, hey, we need to look at this differently. this isn’t a standard, one person against one person. this could be distant family members from other countries, from other provinces. you know, causing serious, serious issues. something that we just think is really minor. bryan’s comments reveal the importance of the identification and recognition of multiple perpetrators. for example, the mother supported the father and son threatening to kill the boyfriend, but this role is often underinvestigated (aplin, 2017). bryan stressed that addressing family dynamics and the roles played by extended family members requires cultural sensitivity. most importantly, police officers took actions to ensure protection, and this case did not progress to an fm or hbk. civilians also noted that similar cases come up regularly, particularly those involving girls being taken abroad to carry out an fm, and reflected on their involvement in related police files. eve, a civilian member, explained, “the last one i can remember is where we did get a [dv] team involved. and they actually had to go to the airport and pull the girl off the plane.” i refer to this well-known fm situation as the “airport case” (see macintosh & keeping, 2012; quebec council for women, 2013): a 16-year-old girl was nearly forced to take “a family holiday” to the middle east because her father disapproved of her having a boyfriend. many participants spoke about the cps investigation of this case. after a family friend alerted police about the risk to the girl’s life, cps took proactive steps to rescue her. cps also turned to child and family services (cfs) for assistance, but they refused to cooperate. the investigating officer on the airport case, who was a participant in this study, explained, there was no risk assigned by cfs, who really, they’re the ones — it’s not really a police issue, now, to protect this girl.… [however] we took her back to the police station, [and the] social worker left us, left us just pfft [dismissal of seriousness], “oh, we got another call. bye.” and they left. this officer expressed frustration with the cfs worker, who minimized the risk level and left the police to deal with the situation. at the time, the investigating officer was relatively new to the police service, but managed to apply for an emergency protection order under the protection against family violence act. the investigating officer explained, “i actually got that emergency protection order not to protect her from her dad; it was to protect her from cfs.” this comment speaks to the system-level barriers and differences in perspective across social service agencies that ideally should work in cooperation with police. the airport case and others described by participants demonstrate the importance of paying attention to the needs of girls who share potential fm threats with authorities. these crimes are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 108  not straightforward, and police have to be prepared to investigate them expeditiously. these examples illustrate one-off interventions that were successful because of decisions made by individual police officers. however, these successes do not mean that police and social supports such as cfs are always ready to act; as described above, the responses were inconsistent depending on whether the officer had the necessary understanding and expertise. similarly, in a few negative case examples, participants indicated that they have no experience of individual-level interventions. rebecca, a junior police officer, said: you know, this type of situation, like, with regards to honour-based, we don’t see those. we don’t have these happening very often here [in a small rural community]. in fact, i actually was asking some of the members, and … they’ve never investigated one. comments like this highlight the difficulty of determining the occurrence levels in rural areas, where there are likely fewer reports. however, some participants noted that they may have missed signs of potential hbcs due to lack of knowledge. for instance, steven, a senior police officer, said: i could think of like maybe five cases that i investigated and maybe another, um… 10 or so cases where i, maybe, advised on.… i’m sure there’s been a lot more where we just didn’t, i just didn’t respond in, with the understanding that it was an honourbased violence situation. his comment again highlights how individual interactions are closely tied to experience and prior knowledge. theme 3: implicit cultural bias and policing implicit cultural biases can influence police officers’ actions. some participants associated the vignette with certain cultures or ethnicities. nathan, a senior police officer, shared the thought that popped into his head when he read the vignette: i immediately, after reading this, just based on the scenario, based on the information presented, i immediately went to the thought that it was east indian. indian culture. and, i mean, it could be a different culture.… i already, in my mind, formulated that it was an east indian family. without even knowing that. nathan’s comment illustrates how he associated this type of violence with south asian culture. when i asked him to share more, he explained: the name, … the actions and the statements of the brother. the actions and statements of the father. the actions and statements of the mother. the [forced] marriage. yeah. that’s — because, i’m not super worldly, but, i don’t know too many other cultures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 109  these attributes led nathan to view nina as the racial and cultural “other” who suffered from a culture of violence, as opposed to a girl suffering from gendered violence. another senior police officer, sandra, explored these ideas further: you want to treat everybody the same … but if somebody’s of a certain culture, is it wrong to say i’m going to treat them a bit differently because i think they need a little more help or it needs to be approached differently? so there’s that stigma, right away, where you don’t want to do anything wrong by trying to do something right, if that makes any sense. so, if i were to, because if i were to read this … and assuming that it was a white family, brought up in canada or in [the city], then maybe i wouldn’t have as many red flags, because maybe i might think that the threats were just a, “you’re an idiot and i’m going to kill you”, and they don’t really mean anything, but, because you kind of have a vague understanding of a certain culture, it means a little bit more and you have to take it more seriously.… it’s so awful, because i don’t want to sound like i’m racist, because i’m totally not. but you have more red flags if it’s an ethnic family as opposed to not, even in the first paragraph, right? even if it wasn’t and the father was a little bit upset, if he’s going to get mad at his daughter, i’m not going to have these red flags going off that is, maybe serious and we might need to take a really close look at this. sandra’s comments reinforce how challenging it can be for police to determine what actions to take, especially when they don’t have a solid understanding of hbc or fm. police need to be culturally aware and sensitive in their approach because hbc victims may require different supports depending on the intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, sex, gender, and caste. sandra did not want to seem prejudiced towards the actors in the vignette, but she made generalizations about an entire group of people based on their race and ethnicity. simplistic views and racial biases can impact police perceptions about who is affected by this form of violence. identifying and questioning these biases, assumptions, and stereotypes will help police improve their response not only to hbc and fm, but also to other types of crime in racialized communities. police officers who are familiar with the way family dynamics, patriarchy, and the larger community contribute to this type of violence may be more inclined to help nina, as opposed to those who do not understand family structures in collectivist cultures. the vignette was designed to alert officers to the role of multiple perpetrators at the family and community level in collectivist cultures when interpreting and making sense of the scenario. officers also need to understand that the involvement of the family friend and the father’s reaction are important in this case. a few participants did identify how the father has involved family (e.g., brother and mother) and community members in keeping a watchful eye on his daughter. the control and surveillance of young girls like nina is seen as protecting the value and belief system within the family and community. the “honour” of the family and their social standing in the community are seen as resting on her behaviour. the father believes that she has engaged in dishonourable behaviour that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 110  has brought shame upon the family, and that the fm is needed to cleanse the family’s reputation. to cope effectively in such circumstances, officers must be willing to improve their understanding of how patriarchy intersects with the preservation of family and community “honour” (see gill, 2009; mucina, 2018). conversely, an officer who does not understand these family dynamics, patriarchy, and the community context may dismiss this call and normalize the violence as being “part of their culture”. the outcomes range widely depending on the investigating officer, and many police officers are not specifically trained to recognize complex forms of dv. theme 4: police beliefs and meaning-making in alberta, police guidelines inform the response to dv, fv, and intimate partner violence calls. the mandatory family violence investigation report (fvir), which is an investigation checklist rather than a risk assessment tool, was produced to assist with investigations and lines of questioning. since 2008, all municipal police services and the rcmp “k” division have been required to use the fvir, which asks critical questions about relationship history (alberta ministry of justice and solicitor general, 2020, pp. 38–42). police officers use the fvir card to remind themselves to ask specific questions, and several participants mentioned that they might use the fvir as they considered nina’s situation. however, not all participants viewed it as a valuable tool for hbv and fm cases, because “the fvir is strictly for dv. it’s for intimate partner [violence]. so you’re missing a lot of the nuances of this”, according to jackie, a senior police officer. the tool has limitations for collecting information on other forms of violence, and while it can be applied to all families and cultures, it is not culturally sensitive to hbv. some frontline patrol members were candid about feeling pressure to use the fvir even in circumstances where it is not effective, and thus feeling less motivated to complete it. participants suggested revising the fvir with culturally sensitive questions to address family members other than partners, or developing a similar tool for hbv. nancy, a civilian member, explained the need for questions that focus on “specific threats, by her parents to, you know, harm her or harm a boyfriend, etc. something like that. because it’s not always what’s just on the surface. like, you know, they have to be able to dig deeper.” some participants raised concerns about adding questions to the fvir because the tool already has so many, and instead suggested developing a specific hbv-fvir. however, cathy, a civilian member, shared concerns about this approach because “it could, feed into bias, … make it so people get missed, and investigations are done one way for some people and another way for other people and that’s concerning on a professional and personal level.” she noted that violence happens in all communities, and worried that developing an hbv-fvir tool could contribute to or perpetuate police officer beliefs, attitudes, and racial biases. other concerns included the language used to label the incident. participants repeatedly discussed the meanings and understandings of “honour”, hbv, and hbk; whether to use the term “honour”; and how to describe the context within which these behaviours occur. it is crucial to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 111  understand how each term is or is not used in policing and what informs those decisions, since unclear terminology and inconsistent definitions could potentially hinder interventions. there is no universally accepted way to respond to hbc and fm, partly because no standard definitions of dv and fv exist across all police services. for example, some definitions used by police services and specialized dv units do not include people who are not in intimate relationships but are instead related by blood. eps uses the term “domestic violence” where the rcmp uses “relationship violence”. the narrow definitions in use are unclear about the possibility of physical or emotional abuse from family members or how to properly categorize the varieties of dv. while participants recognized the gaps within their police service, they acknowledged that other law enforcement agencies, such as cps, do employ inclusive definitions of dv4. thus, participants’ understandings of the vignette varied significantly because of their meaning-making processes. amy, a civilian member, expressed how it is difficult to know what to do when approaching a case: like, in this situation, it’s more than domestic violence. there’s absolutely like cultural implications happening and whether or not, and this is the part where i’m not an expert, but, you know, like taking it that extra step to being honour-based, i don’t know if i know where — or if anybody knows — fully, where that line is, right? but this is definitely more than just domestic violence. amy’s observation illustrates the process of “othering”, where certain cultures are racialized as “backward”, with the use of hbv terminology focused on ethnicity instead of gendered violence rooted in patriarchy. she elaborated on how the behaviour is outside the power and control dynamics usual to “common” dv. she felt that, “this kind of situation is not something we would commonly see from like european or north american cultures, right? it’s going to be more like, you’re east indian or asian.” she implied that the west is relatively free from hbv compared to regions that immigrants come from. this “us versus them” comment did not surprise me after i learned from her that she had attended training on how cultural practices motivate hbv in south asian communities. it had influenced her lens on dv cases and reinforced a monolithic understanding of culture, which could negatively impact her interactions with south asian women who managed to overcome their hesitation and approach the police with dv concerns. later in the interview, she shared her response to a facebook post from canadian prime minister justin trudeau in which trudeau opposed the previous government’s characterization of hbv as a “barbaric cultural practice” and touted the withdrawal of this phrase in new legislation. this made 4see https://www.calgary.ca/cps/pages/community-programs-and-resources/crime-prevention/domesticviolence.aspx for the extended definition of dv used by cps. cps describes dv as “physical violence, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, stalking and harassment between family members or persons in a relationship or related by virtue of children, marriage, or adoption. it can happen in heterosexual and same-sex relationships, and both men and women can be victims.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 112  her angry: “…if you don’t think, like, strangling your daughter because she wore makeup is not barbaric, then i think that’s crazy.” moreover, her comment connects to wider discourses, associated with the federal government (2006–2015) of prime minister stephen harper, that targeted racialized people for allegedly bringing harmful cultural practices to canada. the government used racist rhetoric to emphasize the protection of “canadian values” of equality and freedom; for example, the warning for canadian newcomers against certain “barbaric cultural practices” such as hbk and fm in “the equality of women and men” section of the revised citizenship guide5 (ministry of citizenship and immigration canada, 2012). in 2015, the government passed bill s-7, an amendment to the immigration and refugee protection act, the civil marriage act, and the criminal code, giving it the short title of zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act6. the term “barbaric” invokes a racist and xenophobic discourse to discriminate against non-white people. amy’s comment above takes a similar position to that of the government, one implying that racialized people commit “barbaric” acts of violence that conflict with a civilized society. this “culture clash” discourse dismisses both the fact that many forms of vawg are found in canada across cultures, and the effects of colonial history, especially the tragedy of the many missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (see korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; olwan, 2013; 2014; razack, 2004). other participants highlighted the range of elements that are unique to hbc (including fm) and categorized the crime under the umbrella of fv. angie, a junior police officer, said: i think, generally, people think about honour-based crimes, they do think about domestic violence and inter-partner relationship violence. but i think that, at least in what i’ve seen or heard and read, that a lot is directed towards the female children in the family. so, in this case, it wouldn’t fit [our] definition of domestic violence but definitely, it’s [fv]. that being said, we definitely take any kind of [fv], you know, just kind of to the next level, because we know that the end result in a lot of family conflict can be death, homicide, suicide. though the vignette didn’t quite fit her agency’s definitions, angie believed police would intervene in any family relationship to prevent death. many participants shared frustrations with narrow definitions of dv used within police services and specialized units, definitions that may not include fv and other complex forms of 5 the 2009 publication discover canada: the rights and responsibilities of citizenship can be accessed at: https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/pub/discover.pdf 6 bill s-7: zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act: an act to amend the immigration and refugee protection act, the civil marriage act and the criminal code and to make consequential amendments to other acts, assented to june 18, 2015, 41st parliament, 2nd session. retrieved from the parliament of canada website: https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/41-2/bill/s-7/royal-assent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 113  violence like those in the vignette. trina, a civilian member, suggested police services must address this gap without reinforcing racist stereotypes, and recommended ongoing conversations to understand these behaviours as “complex forms of [fv], or community violence, or communityinvolved violence”. she identified a danger in dominant media narratives and hbv terminology that categorize behaviours to specific racialized communities, whereas a similar situation in a white, catholic, anglo-saxon family would be defined as fv. the biases and stereotypes deflect attention away from understanding family dynamics or gendered explanations of violence. however, a few white participants suggested the vignette scenario could happen in families of any race, ethnicity, or religion. kyle, a senior officer, explained that he had “seen similar things in nonethnic families as well … by ‘non-ethnic’ i guess caucasian”, where a father didn’t like his daughter’s boyfriend and decided to arrange an fm. instead of the family’s ethnicity, kyle focused on the gendered context of vawg and how the father’s actions emerged from patriarchal values. in addition, cps participants explained that their dv policy includes an “extensive” list of family members (“grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, common laws. and then same-sex.”), and this broad approach helps them better consider situations like the vignette. another example of the confusion and lack of policy is the question of whether or not participants believed nina required attention from cfs. while most police officers were aware of their duty to call cfs because nina is a minor, not all were sure whether cfs would support her to prevent the fm. nina is 17, a child, but close enough to the age of majority that this fact may be overlooked. timothy, a senior police officer, said: this is just going to be left with a patrol member … he should call children’s services … and i can’t answer what children’s services would do in this. it’s so minor. on the face of it. but knowing what i know, this is not minor.… but, if i were to see this, as a supervisor, on my desk, i would be like, ok. we’ve got some issues, and we need to ramp up this investigation.… this doesn’t fit under any unit. this is — because she’s 17 [and] it’s not a spousal. so, if it’s domestic violence, it has to be [a] spousal relationship — we don’t have a [fv] unit.… so if you are a child that’s 16, or older… end up having a problem with the family — whatever.… if she was 15 and the assault was serious enough, it would come to [a child protection unit]. timothy’s concern that cfs might not help nina echoed the airport case, where cfs failed to work closely with the police to protect a 16-year-old. a coordinated response with cfs and police should consider the risk of fm threats and dv involving young women under the age of 18. however, it can be extremely frustrating if an agency is unwilling to cooperate. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 114  discussion and conclusion: implications for policing practices critical race feminism provides a lens to conceptualize how racism operates in policing. from an antiracist feminist perspective, i was able to critically examine the participants’ conceptualizations of the vignette and how these influenced their responses to my questions. as my findings illustrate, we must challenge racism and implicit bias within institutions that are designed to intervene, such as law enforcement and other helping professions. the notion of “us” (whiteness, with “canadian values”), and “them” (cultural, “backward”, “other”) is undesirable as it separates certain groups from the rest of society and perpetuates racist stereotypes (korteweg, 2012). the discourse of “otherness” does significant harm to communities: professionals working to understand the unique challenges facing young girls and women need to adopt a stance of cultural safety and cultural humility7 (rossiter et al., 2018). much more needs to be done to challenge racism within law enforcement and other social services. police services have implemented initiatives such as cultural sensitivity training and diversity hiring practices to recruit ethnic officers, but these responses are not sufficient to deal with institutional racism in policing policies and practices (belur, 2008; chan, 1997; henry & tator, 2010; reiner, 2010; stenning, 2003). while it is important to consider cultural differences, such measures do not support the police in conceptualizing dv across cultures. the underlying issues left unaddressed by cultural sensitivity training and diversity hiring are that neither reduces discriminatory policing practices or allows for trust to be built with racialized communities. these measures do not deter a police officer from stereotyping hbcs and fms as a cultural or religious issue. thus, communities will continue to be stereotyped for hbcs and fms until police examine their policies and include mandatory education about racism and institutional discrimination as a part of dv training. these findings shed light on the challenges participants foresaw in their responses to the vignette. the participants’ concerns varied by gender and illustrated the difficulties associated with these complex investigations. the quotes from female participants seem qualitatively different from those of male participants. in interviews, the female participants were more reflective, contemplative, and empathetic; they took these cases quite seriously. this is not surprising given that dv calls are seen as “rubbish” work in policing and female officers are more likely to take on this type of emotional labour (belur, 2008; reiner, 2010). however, regardless of gender, participants who were parents showed empathy and wanted to support nina. implementing a comprehensive response strategy between police and other services requires that attention be paid 7cultural safety and cultural humility extend further than cultural sensitivity. these concepts are relevant tools for police and can help with responding to dv in racialized communities (rossiter et al., 2018). cultural safety is present when racialized people receive a safe service free from discrimination. a focus on cultural safety encourages police officers and civilian members working within police services to question their own biases, assumptions, and stereotypes. it means having a deeper understanding of systemic racism in police institutions and in police officers’ attitudes that prevent safety. cultural humility requires self-reflection and awareness. for instance, police officers’ “own cultural values impact the services they provide” (rossiter at al., 2018, p. 10). cultural humility suggests that police officers recognize power differences and see themselves as learners when interacting with people from other cultures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 115  to these varied perspectives. overall, this study demonstrates that police lack the resources to support victims at risk. blum and colleagues (2016) highlighted that “service providers [must] understand this possibility as they ponder interventions to help these young people” affected by hbv to avoid a fatal outcome (p. 146). the critical insights obtained in this study add to a growing body of knowledge and understanding of hbcs and fms. it is important to highlight the extent to which participants’ perspectives on hbks, like those of the community at large, relied on media coverage. as jiwani (2014) argued, the media reinforces racist and xenophobic perceptions of communities. however, participants seemed to care about nina’s safety, feared for her life, and tried to help even if they did not know exactly what to do next. it is important to have consistency in policing practices, but a lack of consistent policy and training continues to be an often-unrecognized issue within police agencies. additionally, gaps in the system ignore the needs of vulnerable victims. minors are somewhat covered by dv policies, as are married women, but what about unmarried women who have reached the age of majority? even younger unmarried women may not be helped; a few participants doubted that cfs would have helped in nina’s case, as she was 17, just a year away from the age of majority in alberta. a lack of cultural understanding, and racist discourses that stereotype and stigmatize racialized communities, can also lead to inaction. this study confirms that police still struggle with appropriate responses to hbcs and fms despite the insightful discussions and policing initiatives that have taken place since the shafia murders in 2009 (macintosh, 2012; macintosh & keeping, 2012; quebec council for women, 2013). building on previous work (gill et al., 2012; idriss, 2018), the findings presented here may allow police to respond more proactively and less reactively. rather than suggesting responses that they felt were both practical and achievable within their police service, participants identified challenges, including the need for collaboration across service providers. policing these crimes is a complex task requiring a multidisciplinary approach, and specific actions must be taken by all partners to improve the ways in which support is offered. appropriate processes need to be set out for a consistent multiagency response (e.g., police and cfs). for example, if a person is under 18 years of age, like nina, should a referral be made to cfs? if the person is 18 years or more, should the police enlist the support of a social worker? should the police be called to address a case like nina’s at all, especially if they feel ill equipped to understand family dynamics and violence? this concern is consistent with blum and colleagues’ (2016) study, where conflicting mandates and a lack of a coordinated response were correlated with hbv. policing practices seem to be more advanced in some other countries; for example, the united kingdom has multiagency policies and interventions such as the forced marriage unit, which investigates cases and protects victims. there is also literature that discusses survivor accounts of feeling betrayed by professionals who could have prevented an fm, but instead denied them help or missed opportunities to ask why they were removed from the education system (chantler & mccarry, 2020). canada must establish a policy, similar to scotland’s, to take action international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 116  when young girls are removed from school by parents and pressured into an fm (chantler & mccarry, 2020). their disappearances should not go unnoticed, and police should be notified. social workers, health professionals, police, and teachers need education on how to provide adequate support in identified fm cases (anis et al., 2013). police should prioritize communitybased strategies to extend services and build trust; for example, improving relationships with racialized communities will help reduce levels of fear and distrust (chan, 1997). school resource officers are visible and accessible (see broll & howells, 2019, on the importance of relationship building with youth in canadian schools), so they may be able to help facilitate the early detection and prevention of hbcs and fm. to the best of my knowledge, this paper is the first to explore the perspectives of police officers and civilians employed in law enforcement agencies with the use of a vignette. while the vignette helped me understand how police would respond, more work is needed to prepare supports for these situations, whether formal (e.g., teachers, social workers, and cfs workers) or informal (e.g., community leaders, system navigators, and advocates). the findings also highlight the need to go beyond cultural sensitivity training and diversity hiring practices and specifically educate and train the police and other professionals on investigating hbv and fm. training in the “one-chance rule”, as outlined in the united kingdom’s strategy to train police officers, must be taken in order to ensure appropriate responses (association of chief police officers, 2010, p. 378, as cited in eshareturi et al., 2014)8. this training is vital because, given the complexity of these situations, the police may be the first and only responders. education and training programs can be developed to increase awareness and identify strategies to detect situations similar to nina’s. acknowledging the problem is one thing, but organizations need to give police officers the appropriate tools to investigate what is really going on. for instance, responders to the situation in the vignette would ideally ask the right questions, separate nina from her family to allow her to open up, and involve a trained social worker to support the required intervention. police services should monitor cases and offer practical information to inform best practices and identify areas for improvement. the information collected could inform the development of a policing protocol for handling hbcs and fms in alberta, which could then be shared with police in other jurisdictions. at the time of this study, eps had introduced interactive web-based training to increase knowledge of hbv, although it was not mandatory for all members. the rcmp has also developed online training on hbv and fm for frontline officers, and cps trains police officers and new recruits on hbv and cultural diversity (quebec council for women, 2013). despite this progress, access to training tends to vary across police services; it needs to be mandatory to ensure that all police officers are prepared to deal with these cases. police services that have designed training initiatives should evaluate both the content and the delivery method, since any improvement to the training will assist prevention and intervention strategies to protect victims. a 8the “one-chance rule” indicates that a police officer and other professionals need to be aware that they might only have one opportunity to speak to an hbv or fm victim. therefore, an officer’s initial interaction with a victim is crucial, and could even save a life. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 117  few studies have shown that despite training initiatives, police officers do not always respond compassionately to victims of hbcs (gill, 2009; gill & harrison, 2016). victims may feel more comfortable coming forward if police officers avoid judgement, take statements seriously, and remember that each victim has different needs and safety concerns. taking this approach will also help reduce underreporting and minimize harm to the victims. as these findings illustrate, there is a need to better understand hbc and fm and how they fit within the context of dv. additionally, my research reveals that the police agencies in this study do not have guidelines that direct their actions with hbcs and fms. some participants felt that the broad questions in the mandatory fvir did not apply to these situations, while others felt they might. it is essential to reconsider the fvir tool and determine whether it applies to incidents like nina’s and, if not, what could be improved or developed. additionally, this research suggests that clear, appropriate policies would allow police officers and civilians to use their judgement to decide which cases need to be directed to specialized dv units for follow-up. at the time of the interviews, the police services included in this study did not collect data on the prevalence of hbcs and fms. while participants referenced cases and interventions they had seen or heard of, without the data, it is not possible to assess the number of cases that have been responded to in alberta. studies in the united kingdom have shown that police and other organizations have failed to accurately track the number of reported hbv and fm cases (hague et al., 2013; samad, 2010; also see chantler, 2012; gill et al., 2012). for example, gill and colleagues (2018) found that police reported certain incidents as cases of dv rather than hbv, and when hbv was linked to dv, it was not flagged as both. it is important to have clear guidelines on how to classify cases of hbv and fm — as “honour”-related, or dv, or both — to ensure accurate data collection. if the police keep statistics, it is worth asking why and how the process works as labels such as hbv can lead to stereotypical assumptions and racial profiling. thus, police must be sensitive not to reinforce racism as it can affect victims reaching out for help. this paper makes a unique contribution by identifying gaps related to hbcs and fms in policing from the perspectives of both police officers and civilian members. however, research studies are needed that take into account the unique perspectives of professionals of other types (e.g., child, youth, and family protection workers; school counsellors; school teachers; and social workers). limited information is available in the canadian context on the legal duty of schools and other service providers to report these cases or make referrals to appropriate authorities (blum et al., 2016). it is hoped that the present research will help service providers in various sectors (e.g., social service, education, and law enforcement) to mount a coordinated response that considers preparedness, prevention, and protection. cases can escalate quickly. future research should focus on early intervention strategies with a view to forestalling tragic outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 118  references abji, s., korteweg, a. c., & williams, l. h. 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(2018). attitudes towards 'honor' violence and killings in collectivist cultures: gender differences in middle eastern, north african, south asian (menasa) and turkish populations. in j. l. ireland, p. birch, & c. a. ireland (eds.), the routledge international handbook of human aggression: current issues and perspectives (pp. 216–226). routledge. khan, r., saleem, s., & lowe, m. (2018). “honour”-based violence in a british south asian community. safer communities, 17(1), 11–21. doi:10.1108/sc-02-2017-0007 korteweg, a. c. (2012). understanding honour killing and honour-related violence in the immigration context: implications for the legal profession and beyond. canadian criminal law review, 16(2), 135–160. korteweg, a. c. (2014). ‘honour killing’ in the immigration context: multiculturalism and the racialization of violence against women. politikon: south african journal of political studies, 41(2), 183–208. doi:10.1080/02589346.2013.866186 korteweg, a. c., abji, s., barnoff, l., & mattoo, d. (2013). citizenship, culture, and violence against women: social service provision in the south asian communities of the gta [ceris research report]. http://www.torontolip.ca/portals/0/resources/general/citizenship,%20culture,%20and%20v iolence%20against%20women%20_ceris%20report.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 122  korteweg, a. c., & yurdakul, g. (2010, november 12). religion, culture and the politicization of honour-related violence: a critical analysis of media and policy debates in western europe and north america (pp-gd-12). united nations research institute for social development. macintosh, h. (2012). forced marriages in canada. in h. macintosh & d. shapiro (eds.), gender, culture, religion: tackling some difficult questions (pp. 44–55). sheldon chumir foundation for ethics in leadership. macintosh, h., & keeping, j. (2012). afterword. in h. macintosh & d. shapiro (eds.), gender, culture, religion: tackling some difficult questions (pp. 80–84). sheldon chumir foundation for ethics in leadership. ministry of citizenship and immigration canada. (2012). discover canada: the rights and responsibilities of citizenship [study guide]. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/pub/discover.pdf mucina, m. k. (2018). exploring the role of “honour” in son preference and daughter deficit within the punjabi diaspora in canada. canadian journal of development studies, 39(3), 426–442. doi:10.1080/02255189.2018.1450736 muhammad, a. a. (2010). preliminary examination of so-called ‘honour killings’ in canada. department of justice. http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/fv-vf/hk-ch/index.html mulvihill, n., gangoli, g., gill, a. k., & hester, m. (2019). the experience of interactional justice for victims of ‘honour’-based violence and abuse reporting to the police in england and wales. policing and society, 29(6), 640–656. doi:10.1080/10439463.2018.1427745 olwan, d. m. (2013). gendered violence, cultural otherness, and honour crimes in canadian national logics. canadian journal of sociology, 38(4), 533–554. doi:10.29173/cjs21196 olwan, d. m. (2014). ‘no place in canada’: triumphant discourses, murdered women and the ‘honour crime’. in a. k. gill, c. strange, & k. roberts (eds.), ‘honour’ killing & violence: theory, policy & practice (pp. 218–236). palgrave macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137289568_11 papp, a. (2010). culturally-driven violence against women: a growing problem in canada's immigrant communities. frontier centre for public policy: fcpp policy series no. 92. https://www.fcpp.org/files/1/culturally-driven%20violence%20against%20women.pdf quebec council for women. (2013). honour crime: from indignation to action. government of quebec. https://www.csf.gouv.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/avis-les-crimes-dhonneur-delindignation-a-laction-version-anglaise.pdf razack, s. h., malinda, s. s., & thobani, s. (eds.), (2010). states of race: critical race feminism for the 21st century. between the lines. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 93–123 123  razack, s. h. (2004). imperiled muslim women’, dangerous muslim men and civilized europeans: legal and social responses to forced marriages. feminist legal studies, 12(2), 129–174. doi:10.1023/b:fest.0000043305.66172.92 razack, s. h. (1994). what is to be gained by looking white people in the eye? culture, race, and gender in cases of sexual violence. signs, 19(4), 894–923. doi:10.1086/494944 reiner, r. (2010). the politics of the police (4th ed.). oxford university press. roberts, k. a. (2017). honour-related beliefs and risk of harm: theory and challenges for policing. in n. l. asquith, i. bartkowiak-théron, & k. a. roberts (eds.), policing encounters with vulnerability (pp. 243–261). palgrave macmillan. roberts, k. a., campbell, g., & lloyd, g. (2014). honor-based violence policing and prevention. crc. rossiter, k. r., yercich, s., baobaid, m., al jamal, a., david, r., fairbairn, j., dawson, m., & jaffe, p. (2018). domestic violence in immigrant and refugee populations: culturally informed risk and safety strategies [domestic homicide brief 4]. canadian domestic homicide prevention initiative. samad, y. (2010). forced marriage among men: an unrecognized problem. critical social policy, 30(2), 189–207. doi:10.1177/0261018309358289 schliesmann, p. (2012). honour on trial: the shafia murders and the culture of honour killings. fitzhenry & whiteside. stenning, p. c. (2003). policing the cultural kaleidoscope: recent canadian experience. journal of police and society: an interdisciplinary israeli journal of law enforcement and criminology, 7, 13–47. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/242329.pdf tator, c., & henry, f. (2006). racial profiling in canada: challenging the myth of ‘a few bad apples’. university of toronto press. withaeckx, s., & coene, g. (2014). ‘glad to have honour’: continuity and change in minority women’s lived experience of honour. journal of gender studies, 23(4), 376–390. doi:10.1080/09589236.2013.785940 zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act: an act to amend the immigration and refugee protection act, the civil marriage act and the criminal code and to make consequential amendments to other acts 2015 bill s-7 (canada). https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/41-2/bill/s-7/royal-assent/page-24 john winterdyk, dept international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 1–4 1 introduction to the special issue on crime prevention within the alberta context john winterdyk, guest editor this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies is distinctive on a number of levels. first, not all the articles speak directly to families and/or children, as is the case with virtually all articles that appear in this journal. but they do all speak to the issue of crime prevention that directly and/or indirectly impacts families, children, and the community at large. second, the articles were all funded by the mount royal university centre for criminology and justice research (ccjr) through a grant that was received from the ministry of justice and attorney general of the province of alberta. the ccjr represents the first centre of its type in alberta. third, in addition to being funded solely through the same organization, the articles all represent an effort to bridge theory and practice and speak to the importance of exploring and supporting alternatives to conventional criminal justice response mechanisms. the ccjr officially opened its doors for business in january of 2010. the purpose of the centre is to provide independently conducted, evidence-informed research involving qualitative and/or quantitative analysis. the ccjr was also created in an effort to provide faculty and students with research opportunities. the idea of such an approach is to help ensure that community agencies and organizations can and will make decisions and implement policies that are in the best interest of their success and sustainability. in a time when there is an increasing call for evidence-based or evidence-informed policy, the ccjr is in a unique position to offer such a broad-based service. throughout the provincial funding period (january 1, 2010 to december 31, 2012), the ccjr supported 16 different projects whose primary focus was on crime reduction and crime prevention initiatives. in addition to funding projects, the centre continues to undertake independently funded projects as well as to submit proposals for funding. john winterdyk, ph.d. is a professor in the department of justice studies, mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary alberta, canada, t3e 6k6, (403) 440-6992. e-mail: jwinterdyk@mtroyal.ca mailto:jwinterdyk@mtroyal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 1–4 2 this issue is comprised of ten articles. all the funded projects’ principal investigators were invited to submit an article version of their final reports for consideration. although the final selection may not be reflective of traditional journal articles, the articles represent a solid cross-section of the type of research that is being done in alberta, which is spearheading a new initiative in crime control and crime prevention in the province. crime prevention, although a long-established goal, has remained a rather marginal priority across the criminal justice spectrum. however, with burgeoning criminal justice budgets, the potential financial impact of the omnibus bill (bill c-10), general public disillusionment with the criminal justice system, consistently high recidivism rates that seem to remain resistant to all traditional remedies (i.e., stiffer and/or longer sentences, surveillance or monitoring techniques, etc.), the general failure of rehabilitation and deterrent theories, it is ever more imperative that we begin to seriously embrace alternative options. as noted in alberta’s crime prevention framework (government of alberta, 2011), alberta and a number of its communities have set out clear crime intervention strategies that revolve around crime prevention (i.e., primary, secondary, and tertiary) – that is, initiatives that are proactive rather than reactive in their approach. furthermore, as reflected in the articles presented in this issue, it is evident that there are no issues that cannot be addressed at some level through primary, secondary, or tertiary crime prevention initiatives. as related in the crime prevention framework report, “violent crime in alberta remains higher than the national average” and certain crimes, such as gang-related homicides, have increased in recent years (p. 16). the report further notes that focusing on reaction “to crime is not enough” as we also need to address the “underlying factors that contribute to crime” (p. 17). the report identifies eight strategic directions (p. 7) that revolve around the need to conduct research with academic partners and research entities that are capable of providing evidence-based advice to government to focus on existing and new program initiatives. of particular importance is that all evidence-based research be guided by the inclusion of measurable outcomes (i.e., strategic direction #8) that can be used to monitor the relative progress and success of the crime prevention initiative. the process model recommended in actualizing the strategic direction is based on a simple but effective and practical model whose core purpose is to create and promote safer communities throughout alberta. the process follows four basic steps. first is to establish priorities that align with the provincial priorities. the second step involves implementing and financially supporting the programs that have undergone a review process. the third phase involves the evaluation (i.e., the measurement and assessment of progress) in accordance with clearly defined and proscribed outcome indicators such as the social return on investment. the final and fourth phase of the crime prevention framework is the diagnosis, which includes addressing the gaps in programs or services (strategic direction #4) and contributing to the existing research and knowledge base (strategic direction #1). and while all the articles have a primary focus on the province of alberta, it is readily recognizable that all the issues transcend provincial and national boundaries. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 1–4 3 the first article by leslie macrae-krisa is a literature review that focuses on the unique and understudied issue of how best to assist gang members in exiting gangs. the paper aligns itself with the alberta gang reduction strategy initiative whose primary focus is on reducing gang-related violence. while there is no one method or strategy that is considered best, the article addresses how important it is to understand the complexity of the gang phenomenon before offering any effective intervention strategies. the second article, again, is a unique study in that gillian stevens and her associates forecast the demographic trends and crime patterns in the province of alberta up to the year 2020. relying on official statistics from statistics canada, the authors suggest that crime rates are likely to drop largely because of the aging population. the article also provides estimates for a range of crimes and the projected direction of crime trends over the next few years. the article serves to show the value of forecasting. next, kim sanderson and her colleagues present a case study on the results of school attendance, developmental assets, and social capital in a first nations community. adapting a successful model out of the search institute in minneapolis, minnesota, the authors found a strong correlation between attendance rates and developmental asset scores. based on their results, the authors offer some suggestions for strengthening community attachments, which in turn will help to reduce social unrest in such communities. the fourth article by hieu ngo and his associates speaks to a growing issue both within alberta and across canada. the issue examined is crime prevention within multicultural societies through the use of 10 focus groups in several locations throughout the province. the study identifies a series of risk and protective factors that help to strengthen community ties and reduce the risk and incidence of crime among ethnocultural members. cathy carter-snell and sonya jakubec undertake a quasi meta-analysis of the literature related to intimate partner violence, a topic relatively unexplored in criminology. the article discusses some of the risk and resiliency factors as they relate to intimate partner violence. the article represents a step forward in helping to not only inform future research but also to develop better intervention and prevention programs for prospective victims. the sixth article by gaye warthe and her colleagues also focuses on a unique topic – that of peer-to-peer dating violence. the authors tested the relative effectiveness of a dating violence prevention program for post-secondary students. although the program shows promise, the authors discuss some of the limitations of their sampling size and methodology. next, dawne clark et al. present the results of an important study that addresses healthy child development, using the upstart parent survey to test the viability of the survey as a tool to assist in developing a prevention-focused parenting program. due to limited funding from the ccjr, this study represents the first phase of a proposed multi-phased project to refine the survey. the next article by crystal hincks and her associates presents the result of an evaluation of a pilot program in grande prairie in northern alberta. the pact (i.e., police and crisis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 1–4 4 team) program was developed to respond to the needs of the rural population in the peace country region. in addition to including an sroi (social return on investment) evaluation component, the study points to the value of a comprehensive service program to address the needs of families who are facing personal challenges. the article also speaks to some of the pragmatic issues practitioners confront when engaging in applied research. the ninth article, by a group of authors headed by lana wells, focuses on domestic violence within the filipino community of calgary. in response to a growing concern in this community about domestic violence, the study represents an exploratory and informative approach contributing to the development of a province-wide plan to address and prevent domestic violence among the target population. in spite of a small sample size, some preliminary observations are offered. the tenth and final article by lorne bertrand and his colleagues examines the risk and protective factors affecting young offenders from one of four ethnically diverse groups who have committed at least one substantive criminal offence. the results bring into focus some of the conventional misconceptions that tend to exist – that is, while there are no statistically significant differences between the ethnic groups in terms of their risk and protective factors, there are a number of significant differences in terms of other variables. the implications of these differences are discussed. reference government of alberta. (2011). alberta’s crime prevention framework. edmonton, ab: author. introduction to the special issue on crime prevention within the alberta context john winterdyk, ph.d. is a professor in the department of justice studies, mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary alberta, canada, t3e 6k6, (403) 440-6992. microsoft word s. mccaffrey journal version2sa jaed.doc 
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kookum knew . . . exploring historical contexts: aboriginal people, the justice system, and child welfare shanne mccaffrey abstract: this paper concerns the inclusion of a “gladue report” in aboriginal child welfare cases in canada. a gladue report is named after a criminal trial in nanaimo, vancouver island, british columbia, involving a cree/métis woman, jamie gladue. during the trial, the defence referred the court to section 718.2(e) of the criminal code that allows a judge to take into consideration the historical context pertaining to an accused aboriginal person. this section was added to the code in 1996 in response to the gross overrepresentation, as a percentage of the canadian population, of aboriginal people in the justice system. using this section as an additional tool of analysis, the judge and the court can consider the unique experiences, context, and circumstances of the aboriginal person’s life, factors that may have played a role in bringing this person before the court. providing valuable historical context in the life of a child, family or community, the gladue report is quickly evolving into an important assessment tool in criminal sentencing, as well as in child welfare cases. often, the wisdom keepers – the grandmothers and grandfathers in a community – keep these historical memories and stories. they are proving invaluable in supplying insight, information, and understanding, not only in court cases, but in relating the story of the broader dynamic of human interaction and discourse that has clashed and thundered on this land for the past 300 years. “i got you, you fucking bastard!” exclaimed jamie as she jumped up and down as though she had tagged someone (r v. gladue, [1999] 1 s.c.r. 688, p. 2). it was the last thing jamie gladue would say to her fiancé, rueben beaver. she had suspected him of cheating on her. both were fuelled by alcohol that evening of jamie’s 19th birthday, when rueben was fatally stabbed in the heart and died while trying to flee their home in nanaimo, british columbia. jamie gladue’s story neither ends nor begins with the tragic death of her fiancé and the father of her children. her name and story became the premise upon which a very important concept of jurisprudence in canada was founded and evolved, in particular with respect to its application and relevance, not only to criminal cases of canada involving an aboriginal person, but also to aboriginal child welfare cases. around the same time that jamie gladue killed rueben beaver, the government of canada amended the criminal code of canada. the government was responding to the consistently high rates of incarceration among aboriginal people ensnared in the justice system. “for example, aboriginal people constituted close to 3 percent of the population of canada, yet amounted to 12 percent of all federal inmates” (gardner & james, 2007). 
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 in reaction to this alarming statistical anomaly of aboriginal people seemingly entrenched in the system, a new subsection (e) that would consider the singular and unique circumstances of aboriginal people was added to section 718.2 of the criminal code. this amendment would be remedial in nature and was cast to ameliorate the grave problem of the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in the justice system. in both the ten provinces and in canada nationally, aboriginal people represent a small fraction of the population. for example, in the province of british columbia in 2009, the general population is recorded at almost 4 million people, of which close to 200,000 are aboriginal people, or about 5% (government of canada, 2009, p. 5). the bloated percentage of aboriginal people evident in the justice system is repeated in the child welfare system. in 2002, in british columbia, aboriginal children were at risk of being in government care at a rate seven times greater than their non-aboriginal peers (macdonald, 2005, p. 6). this high rate of aboriginal children in care came under scrutiny by the provincial health officer who declared in 2002 that there was a direct correlation between the numbers and the legacy of colonization (macdonald, 2005, p. 6). there was now a clear hard recognition that was indisputable. statistics and data supported the finding that there were other factors and forces, apparently out of the control of aboriginal people, that shaped and formed their life experience, often almost inevitably leading them into direct contact with the “authorities” be it the criminal justice system or the child welfare bureaucracy. in 1996, section 718.2(e) was added in the criminal code of canada. it reads: (e) all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal [sic] offenders. this was a provision specific to aboriginal people in the sentencing portion of the offence. this section would allow judges to alter their method of analysis to include an aboriginal person’s unique background, or systemic factors that may have played a role in bringing this aboriginal person before the courts. in other words, there was finally acknowledgement that the role of colonization and all its consequences, both current and residual, would be considered. hereafter, the historical context of the accused’s life could be reported to the judge who in turn could take into consideration such colonizing systems and forces as residential schools, child welfare issues, substance addiction, abuse, poverty, loss of autonomy, and loss of cultural identity. the second consideration for the judge was to look at alternatives types of sentencing procedures and restorative approaches if available. this new method of analysis was not designed to reduce the incarceration period or the seriousness of a crime. in the instance of killing another, this type of offence would often warrant the same sentencing time as that of a non-aboriginal offender. when the trial judge asked about jamie gladue’s background, her defense counsel replied that she was cree. the trial judge then inquired as to whether or not mclennan, alberta, the town jamie grew up in, was an aboriginal community. her defense counsel responded that mclennan was just a regular community. this was the full extent of the 
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 report submitted by her defence to the court. in his deliberation, the trial judge noted that both jamie and rueben were aboriginal, but indicated that because they were living in an urban, off-reserve area, no special circumstances arising from their aboriginal status should be given consideration by the courts (r v. gladue, [1999] 1 s.c.r. 688). when section 718.2(e) came into effect, there was confusion around the practical matter of exactly who would gather the information pertaining to the unique circumstances and background of the aboriginal person before the courts and provide it to the defence counsel. this still remains a fundamental problem. in most aboriginal families, the elders are highly revered and respected for the knowledge and memories they hold with respect to individuals and families. my “kookum” or grandmother was the wisdom keeper of our cree family. my “mushoom” or grandfather died before he reached the age of 70 years. my older aunties and my mother could often speak to the memories and experiences of the family and held those important historical contexts for our family. in jamie’s case, her cree mother left the home in 1987. marie gladue left all nine of her children to the care of their métis father when jamie was only 11. at the age of 14, her mother was killed in a car accident. at the age of 17, jamie began living with rueben beaver and they had a daughter. in 1995, along with her father, two of her sisters, and rueben, the family moved to nanaimo, british columbia. after the death of her fiancé, and with the help of rueben’s mother, jamie reconnected with her cree culture. she was able to gain her “status card” and status for her children with rueben. jamie took both educational upgrading and counselling for alcohol and drug abuse. she was subsequently diagnosed with a hyperthyroid condition, known to produce an exaggerated reaction to any emotional situation (r v. gladue, p. 2.). she was treated for this condition, but still struggled with alcohol and pleaded guilty to one incident of alcohol consumption while out on bail. the details of jamie’s life story now begin to unfold. the historical context of her story found its way into the court transcript of the appeal process and ultimately of the supreme court of canada. looking back on her life, it clearly must have been very difficult for jamie, not yet a teenager, to have her mother leave home. although jamie’s métis father takes over parenting of jamie and her eight siblings in the small town of mclennan, when jamie is asked about her heritage, she identifies only as cree and does not mention her métis ancestry. mclennan, alberta is a small town nestled close to lake kimiwan, about 415 kilometres northwest of edmonton. there are some obvious métis settlements in the larger area, like peavine and gift lake métis settlement, as well as first nations communities like beaver ranch, john d'or prairie, fox lake, and peace point. this is a land rich in cultural holdings, which nonetheless bears the scars of communities deeply affected and impacted by the forces of colonization. 
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 from the beginning of contact in the americas, the tentacles of colonization have insidiously spread out to reach, squeeze, and grasp anything that comes into their path. aboriginal people have been, to put it bluntly, terrorized and subjugated by the atrocities of colonialism for centuries. our families, collectives, and communities have been broken, our children abducted, our languages, culture, and spirituality outlawed. the colonization of the americas has been a pervasive and destructive force overwhelming aboriginal people causing multi-generational trauma. its effects linger on in successive generations of the people, families, and communities and with these effects come the stories. so, too, in canada: every person has a story, or as we sometimes say in academia a “historical context”. through years of contact and colonization, indigenous people in canada have suffered tragedy after tragedy in a struggle for the autonomy to live as free people in a free world. at the highest levels of the canadian government, the history and reality of colonialism is still challenged, contested, and glossed over, as it has been for decade upon decade. it has been unacknowledged and openly denied. it is important, therefore, when looking at historical context, to also consider the speaker of the story: who holds these stories, the historical context of aboriginal peoples, if not the people themselves? jamie gladue’s story never completely revealed itself at the original trial. the supreme court of canada ruled that the trial judge did err in not considering historical context based on reasoning that jamie and rueben were not living on reserve or in an aboriginal community (r v. gladue at para. 18). the supreme court also made an important determination in interpreting the new subsection (e) of section 718.2 of the criminal code. within the deliberation it was noted – replete with an underline – that “judges should pay particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders because those circumstances are unique, … ” (r v. gladue at para, 37). such circumstances refer to unique systems or background factors, which may have played a part in bringing the aboriginal person before the courts. it is acknowledged that many aboriginal people experience both systemic and direct discrimination. experiences include: memories from residential schools; abuse; child apprehension and adoption; dislocation; disconnection from land, culture, spirituality, language, and community; loss of identity and connection; poverty, and a lack of opportunities and options. the second area of interpretation the supreme court addressed in looking at subsection (e) was in the matter of sentencing. the court recognized again that community-based values and the principles of restorative justice are more meaningful and relevant to aboriginal peoples, families and communities. as gardner and owen (2007) explain: most traditional aboriginal conceptions of sentencing place a primary emphasis upon the ideals of restorative justice. restorative justice is an approach to remedying crime in which it is understood that all things are interrelated and that crime disrupts the harmony, which existed prior to a crime’s occurrence. 
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 the crown advanced the argument in jamie gladue’s case (and others) that this could be “reverse discrimination”, but that was overruled, the supreme court stating that the fundamental purpose of this section is to treat aboriginal people fairly by taking into account their difference (r v. gladue at para. 87). the “gladue report”, now part of the criminal justice system in the determination of the supreme court, is the result of recognition that too many aboriginal people were being charged, convicted, and incarcerated in a justice system that mirrored a dominant society’s perspective of both justice and punishment. as we have seen, through the passage of legislation and section 718.2(e), judges have the discretion to include as part of their analysis and deliberation the historical context of an aboriginal person. a judge may now thoughtfully deliberate in the sentencing phase to provide restorative and even healing measures that are more relevant and meaningful to aboriginal communities. as in the criminal justice system, the child welfare system is a vast wasteland populated with aboriginal children who have found themselves adrift and, as noted previously, a highly overrepresented group. often families find themselves entrenched in the system of child welfare, more often than not due to the same principal cause, systemic and direct discrimination. this concept, the taking into account of historical context, should also be applied in child welfare cases in which children and families find themselves in court. judges should be given an opportunity to assess the historical context of a child or children, families, and communities. this could be accomplished in the same procedural way that a gladue report is brought before the courts in a criminal case. practitioners, child welfare workers, and family lawyers working with families and communities could gather the information and bring it forward by way of normalized practice in the family court setting. both the language and method of analysis of such an approach are familiar to judges. this type of report also appropriately cues the court that there may be a lot more going on with this aboriginal child and family than surface appearances might suggest. the wording could be: the unique interrelationship of background factors and historical context which may have played a part in bringing the particular aboriginal child(ren) and family before the child welfare system and/or courts should be considered. the vast number of aboriginal children being removed is based upon neglect. we now know that neglect is married to poverty and poverty is still making itself very much at home in the lives of aboriginal people in both urban and rural communities. to continue with the model used in a “gladue report”, the second part of the analysis in a child welfare case could determine: …the types of services, care and support procedures, resources and measures for aboriginal child(ren) and families that should be considered in light of their particular aboriginal heritage, history, and culture which may be appropriate and relevant, in consultation with the family, community, and/or advocates. 
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 this approach would offer a complete reframing of the analysis now used in child welfare cases before the courts. it would also introduce a completely new paradigm based on both assessing and providing resources, supports, and measures, where appropriate, in consultation with the family, wisdom keepers, the community, and advocates. for example, in cases of “poverty” linked to neglect and then channelled down the child welfare pipeline, these cases could completely bypass the usual and predictable child apprehension route. supports, education, and healing could be real outcomes for children, families, and communities and could reflect back those principles and values esteemed by aboriginal people. the issues can be broad and they can be narrowly focused. it will take a concerted effort and push from many peoples to find solutions to the community, national, and global problems occurring within indigenous nations. the first step is in acknowledging that there are real problems as a result of colonization. colonization has touched the earth all over for centuries. the struggles are concurrent and speak of a strong spiritual resistance occurring at all levels globally. ottawa – amnesty international is accusing canada of stalling a united nations negotiation on the rights of indigenous peoples. the human rights group says canada has been obstructionist and exploitive in its efforts to block discussion on the issue. it notes that canada and russia were the only two members of the 47-country human rights council to vote against the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples in june 2006. (associated press, june 6, 2007, canada blocking un aboriginal [sic] rights: amnesty). amnesty international canada spokesman alex neve says while canada does not have the dismal human rights record of such countries as china or sudan, we have more work to do. “there are real issues of real concern in canada when it comes to human rights protection. while we have much to be proud of, we are far from perfect. we owe it to the people whose rights are at stake to do better.” (ctv news, may 28, 2009, amnesty raps canada for treatment of natives). at the trial sentencing hearing, the judge acknowledged that the offence was a serious one and gavelled out a sentence of three years imprisonment. in both the british columbia court of appeal and the supreme court of canada, the sentence stood its original dictum and seemed peripheral to the discourse. through it all, jamie gladue’s sentence remained the same. again at the trial hearing, when asked if she had anything to say, jamie gladue, expressed remorse. she stated she was sorry for what had happened and that she had not intended to do it. she said she was sorry to reuben’s family, the beavers. the baby that she was carrying on the night of the stabbing was a little boy. he was named rueben beaver after his father (r v. gladue at para. 11). we are still two worlds apart, with differing values and principles, ways of knowing, doing and being. it has been our star-crossed dynamic through the years – these two worlds co-existing, turning and twisting, often clashing and thundering on the land – 
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 in the halls of law and justice, and now over the most precious and sacred cultural holding of all, aboriginal children. my kookum knew. she held the stories long enough to pass them down, so they could make their way to me. she knew that i would have a place to store them, and pass them on. my kookum knew. 
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 references case cited: r. v. gladue, [1999] 1 s.c.r. 688. associated press, ctv winnipeg. (2007, june 6). canada blocking un aboriginal [sic] rights: amnesty. ctv news canada. retrieved june 16, 2010, from url http://edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/ctvnews/20070606/indigenous_rights_0 70606?hub=winnipeghome ctv news. (2009, may 28). amnesty raps canada for treatment of natives [sic]. ctv news canada. retrieved may 20, 2010 from url: 
 http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/articlenews/story/ctvnews/20090528/canada_rights_ 090528/20090528?hub=canada gardner k., & james, o. (2007). sentencing theory. justice education society and centre for education, law & society. vancouver, bc: simon fraser university retrieved july 15, 2010, from http://www.lawconnection.ca/ government of canada. (2009). canada year book (2009 edition). ottawa, on: minister of industry. macdonald, k. (2005). vocalpoint aboriginal child welfare wounds and work, healing and hope: our children, our future. vancouver, bc: society for children and youth of bc. retrieved may 20, 2010, from html version of file: http://www.scyofbc.org/site_assets/www.scyofbc.org/images/dynamic/sc_vp_extr act.pdf. shanne mccaffrey is a senior instructor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. shanne has a background in education, law and social services. she has worked with various aboriginal communities on the island and is grateful to the coast salish, kwagiulth and nuu’chah’nulth people who are such generous hosts of this island territory. shanne has cree metis ancestry and attended the university of saskatchewan and the university of victoria. her academic interests include child welfare, colonialism as a shared experience and aboriginal community development. the grande prairie pact program evaluation: discrepancy between model evaluation practice and constrained real world evaluation of crime prevention in small communities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 136 the grande prairie pact program evaluation: discrepancy between model evaluation practice and constrained real world evaluation of crime prevention in small communities crystal hincks, anne miller, and monica pauls abstract: this article discusses and demonstrates the discrepancies between ideal, theoretical program evaluation processes and real world evaluation practice, which is constrained by numerous and varying factors. the article describes the real world experience of mount royal university’s centre for criminology and justice research researchers in conducting an evaluation of the police and crisis team (pact) in grande prairie, alberta, including a social return on investment (sroi) analysis. pact, which partners a royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) officer with a mental health professional, represents a blend of secondary and tertiary crime prevention and attempts to diminish crime in the community by addressing the risk factors of individuals with mental health concerns (creating trust with individuals, increasing awareness of resources, and decreasing stigmatization in the community). pact also specifically targets those individuals with mental health issues who are in contact with the law to try to decrease recidivism and increase community safety. challenges were present in the evaluation due to the time frame, staff turnover, program start-up issues, and confidentiality and sensitivity of the program focus. despite the challenges, the ccjr team completed an evaluation including a forecast sroi, identifying several successes, challenges, and recommendations for change. keywords: evaluation, challenges, mental health, social programs, alberta safe communities innovation fund (scif), police and crisis team (pact) crystal hincks, is a research associate at the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university, t154, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary, ab, t3e 6k6. she is currently a masters candidate in the department of sociology at the university of calgary. e-mail: crystalhincks@gmail.com anne miller is a research associate at the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university. she completed her masters in public policy and public administration from concordia university in montréal and is one of two practitioners in north america accredited by the social return on investment (sroi) network in london. e-mail: miller.annechristine@gmail.com monica pauls, m.a. is a research associate at the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university. she also teaches at mount royal’s departments of justice studies and child and youth studies. e-mail: mpauls@mtroyal.ca mailto:crystalhincks@gmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 137 evaluation is an ongoing process, which starts with the development of an initiative and continues throughout the life of a project and beyond. utilized as a tool to support and enhance, evaluation should provide a means for continual monitoring, diagnosis, and change (powell, 2006). a rigorous, systematic evaluation framework should be part of the overall planning process of an organization or program. powell (2006) further notes that solid evaluation monitors progress towards goals and objectives, measures effectiveness, and is integral to the assessment of services and resources. evaluation guides strategies for change and is critical for program sustainability and replication. since its inception in january 2010, the centre for criminology and justice research (ccjr) at mount royal university has undertaken over 20 evaluation projects, working from the foundation of this philosophy. however, the real world is often different from learned theory and the circumstances of program evaluation often limit research activities, data collection and analyses. such is the challenge of engaging in applied research. academic research centres, like the ccjr, when undertaking these types of projects, should demonstrate flexibility and creativity in order to provide an accurate picture of program effectiveness. this article discusses the experience of conducting applied research in the face of various restrictions and limitations. the authors focus on the evaluation of one particular program, the police and crisis team (pact) in grande prairie, alberta, to demonstrate how the research was achieved despite several challenges. background police and crisis teams (pact) already operate in the two major cities in alberta, calgary and edmonton. similarly, the grande prairie pact project was developed to respond to the needs of the rural population in the peace country region. the mobile community-based crisis team addresses the mental health needs of individuals who come into contact with the law. the number of people with mental illness involved in the justice system is increasing, and the police service in this area lacks the resources and time to deal effectively with this population. utilizing pact to respond to these incidents allows for a more appropriate intervention, leading to a reduction in the number of people with mental illnesses involved in the criminal justice system and to an increase in the use of effective community supports. this represents a blend of secondary and tertiary crime prevention. the program attempts to diminish crime in the community by addressing the risk factors of individuals with mental health concerns through creating trust with individuals, increasing their awareness of resources, and decreasing stigmatization in the community; it also specifically targets those individuals with mental health issues who are in contact with the law to try to decrease recidivism and increase community safety. in 2009, grande prairie pact secured a grant from the safe communities innovation fund (scif) of the alberta government to run a three-year pilot from 2009 to 2012 (grande prairie pact, 2009). as part of the grant requirements, the pilot was to be evaluated from both a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 138 formative and summative perspective, as well as to have a social return on investment (sroi) analysis conducted. the centre for criminology and justice research (ccjr) of mount royal university was contracted to conduct the evaluation. although the project was originally funded as a three-year pilot starting in 2009, the ccjr was contracted in july 2011, giving them a four-month time frame to conduct the evaluation. this was the first of several challenges faced by the evaluation team. the reality of conducting the research over such a relatively short period is that the evaluators were restricted in terms of what could actually be done. for example, the evaluators could not locate and interview former pact clients, in part due to the nature of mental illness, but also due to time constraints. in addition, because the ccjr team was not involved with the program from the start, minimal evaluation planning was included in pact’s overall program model. very little formal or informal documentation existed about the program’s development and implementation. this significantly limited the formative component of the evaluation, since the evaluators could only look back on what had been done, rather than working through the processes as they happened. the team was also restricted in terms of the data that was collected. the evaluators had no input into the type or quality of data, or the thoroughness of data collection; they had to work with what was already there to measure program effectiveness and this was not always consistent with the outcomes identified in the program logic model. in collaboration with the pact team, the ccjr evaluators analyzed the existing statistical data, reviewed program materials, and conducted key informant interviews in order to document the program description, conduct an outcome analysis, and construct a forecast sroi to determine the potential social return on investment of pact in grande prairie. successes and challenges of the program were identified and discussed in the final report, as well as recommendations for change. the following sections discuss these processes in more detail. research activities the research team collected data for the evaluation via one phone interview with a former pact team member, one client interview, a review of the available statistical data that the pact team members were responsible for collecting, a review of program information (including the funding proposal, progress reports, community presentations, etc.), as well as one site visit to grande prairie during which 12 key informant interviews were conducted with the pact coordinator, representatives from the rcmp and alberta health services, and individuals from partner agencies. the interviews conducted during the site visit followed a schedule with questions designed to address both the formative and summative aspects of the evaluation. the interviewers used the schedule as a guide, but also encouraged respondents to speak freely and contribute any information they thought was relevant. it is important to note that the evaluators were not included in the process of selecting interviewees, but rather were offered a list of potential stakeholders to interview by the pact director. while it was necessary to have the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 139 pact director offer the list as opposed to having the evaluators spend a large amount of time developing it, there is room for bias in the interviews if the director selected only those stakeholders who would offer positive feedback of the pact program. with respect to the data set maintained by the pact team members, the evaluators were able to analyze the data provided in order to determine the location, length of call, length of follow-up, presenting problems, referral source, service provided, where the client was referred, as well as a number of demographic details. there were two major limitations to the data set: first, the evaluators had no input into what data was collected, and therefore some indicators that could have been used to assess different processes and outcomes were missing; second, the data set itself was incomplete for a variety of reasons, which restricted the ability to conduct a comprehensive and accurate analysis. because of the short evaluation timeline, the evaluators were unable to complete or collect the missing data. lastly, it is important to note that only one client was willing to be interviewed by the evaluators. it was anticipated that several clients would be interviewed in order to determine client satisfaction; however nearly all of the clients refused to be interviewed, while others agreed to interviews but then changed their minds shortly before the scheduled times. because a major component of the pact program is the ability of the team members to build rapport with the clients, the evaluators were unable to assess the success of the program from the view of the clients without adequate interviews. community context population it is important to bring into context the community in which the pact program operates; grande prairie, a small municipality located in alberta’s peace region, has a population of approximately 50,000 inhabitants. the surrounding towns and rural areas for whom grande prairie serves as a regional hub for many amenities have a combined population of approximately 25,000. additionally, because of the proximity of the northern oil fields, grande prairie has a high transient population; while the constant population remains somewhere near 50,000 people, fluctuations of the economy may add as many as 20,000 more. this can greatly affect the clientele of the pact program. the transient population is thought to have a significant impact on drug crimes in grande prairie, for example; virtually every stakeholder interviewed indicated that drugs are a major concern in the grande prairie area, and that the majority of individuals with mental health issues have a concurrent drug or alcohol addiction as well, which often exacerbates their mental condition. this can affect the nature of the calls to the pact program, with respect to both connecting the client to appropriate resources (i.e., mental health, addictions, or both), as well as maintaining staff safety around unpredictable clients that may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol (lambert, 2002). the nature of grande prairie’s transient population contributed to the difficulty of evaluating the program. some clients who came into contact with pact were responded to during a crisis, but follow-up efforts were unsuccessful when those clients could not be located international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 140 afterwards. this not only affected the program’s ability to maintain a complete database, but also reduced the opportunity for the evaluators to conduct client interviews. partnerships and community engagement according to several stakeholders, because grande prairie is a relatively small and “isolated” city, it was observed that the collaboration between agencies is often fluid. most agencies have an awareness of other services offered, thus creating a broad resource network for clients. information sharing between agencies is ongoing so clients are offered current information about services available. most of the interviewed stakeholders indicated that while there is some awareness of other agencies, most of the familiarity between programs is based on how often those programs offer overlapping services. this is to be expected, as agencies are more likely to have in-depth knowledge of other agencies when they are working collaboratively. with respect to pact, several stakeholders experienced a fluid relationship with pact based on frequent use of each other’s services. other stakeholders indicated that while they felt they had a “general” idea of what pact was, they could not comment in-depth because they had minimal interactions with the program. the dynamics of community agency relationships can affect evaluation efforts when there is minimal knowledge about a program or agency. the interviewed stakeholders who indicated they had minimal knowledge of the pact program expressed an interest in learning more about it once the evaluators presented an overview of the goals and functions of the program. even if a given agency or program did not deem it beneficial to form a working relationship with pact, this did allow the evaluators to determine why some agencies are unsuitable for partnership and thus assisted the overall evaluation. although somewhat different from basic social research, evaluation research still requires the application of methods of research design, including measurement, internal validity, and external validity; the main difference therefore lies in the social context in which the methods are applied (singleton & straits, 2010). there are, however, methodological issues in evaluation research, specifically as they relate to external validity. while validity is important in establishing a connection between the program’s inputs, outputs, activities, and outcomes, there is a risk in attempting to generalize the results to other programs. because each evaluation is specific to the organization, program, or agency, it is nearly impossible to address various threats to external validity. specifically, evaluation researchers must rely on non-probability samples when conducting field research; selecting participants to interview is usually the result of self-selection, whereby the requirement to include certain staff, partners, and stakeholders replaces the selection of random participants. the selection of a sample that is based on availability, or the likelihood that they will offer desirable feedback, can ultimately threaten the validity of the entire program evaluation. with respect to the pact program, the participants interviewed by the researchers were pre-selected by the director of the program and because the researchers were somewhat unfamiliar with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 141 program’s partnerships and community relationships, they were reliant on the program staff to provide the contact information of pertinent stakeholders available or willing to participate in an interview. potentially, this may have biased the results if the director arranged interviews with participants most likely to give positive feedback about the program. based on the mixed results of the interviews, this does not appear to have occurred. however, with evaluation research, the possibility is always there. pact social return on investment sroi analysis social return on investment (sroi) is about financially valuing the social change brought about by a program or intervention. in other words, as nicholls, lawlor, neizert, and goodspeed (2009) state: sroi measures change in ways that are relevant to the people or organizations that experience or contribute to it. it tells the story of how change is being created by measuring social, environmental and economic outcomes and uses monetary values to represent them. this enables a ratio of benefits to costs to be calculated. (p. 8) sroi analysis requires a significant understanding of the ways that outcomes are achieved, as well as data on the changes experienced by program participants. the lack of data within the pact program provided some challenges to the use of sroi analysis (to be discussed below). further, a proper sroi analysis is supposed to involve the program participants in identifying and valuing outcomes to ensure, first, that the analysis is representative of the actual change experienced, and second, that the analysis captures and appropriately values those changes which are most important to participants. due to the limited time frame of the evaluation, staff turnover within the program, and freedom of information restrictions, participant involvement did not play a large role in the analysis presented here and thus limited the robustness of the findings from the sroi analysis. social value creation with respect to the interventions made by pact, social value is created in different ways. first, since pact staff members receive special training to de-escalate situations involving individuals with mental health concerns, fewer of these individuals are brought into custody, charged, and involved in the criminal justice system. further, beyond the de-escalation of crisis situations, pact ensures that individuals with mental health concerns are able to access the community resources that are most appropriate to their needs, thereby reducing the impact of untreated and undiagnosed mental health concerns on society. in this way, systemic financial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 142 value is created through the reduction of violent acts and criminal justice system involvement, as well as through the integration and treatment of individuals with mental health concerns. beyond criminal justice system involvement, the rcmp in grande prairie benefit from the specially trained pact team in that they spend less time trying to address issues related to mental health, including spending less time waiting in the hospital emergency room with individuals who could otherwise be sent to more appropriate services. the pact team alleviates stresses on the rcmp and is also able to resolve issues more quickly with their specialized skills. individuals with mental health concerns who have contact with the law also benefit from the deployment of pact in grande prairie as their situations are treated with greater sensitivity and in a more appropriate manner. these individuals frequently require police intervention due to incidents brought on by their mental state, and as the pact team responds to their repeated calls, it develops both consistency and a trusting relationship with the rcmp that helps to de-escalate situations and reduce the magnitude of crises. further, pact serves to educate the community, victims, and complainants about mental health concerns thereby creating greater understanding and sensitivity towards individuals suffering with mental health issues, as well as helping to repair the fear and damage from crimes committed by these individuals. finally, with their special training, the pact team in grande prairie is able to effectively intervene in crisis situations, such as attempted suicides, in order to minimize damage, decrease risk, and prevent significant social costs. in this way, a significant amount of social value is created in grande prairie through investment in the program. sroi forecasting, calculations, and ratio this social value was measured using sroi analysis. when the evaluation was conducted, the pact program had only been operational for one year, and much of the needed sroi data was not available. therefore, a forecast sroi was constructed for the program. a forecast sroi takes into account any actuals gathered from the program (in this case, the first year actuals) as well as research on the results from other, comparable, programs to determine the expected return on investment for a new program. for the pact program forecast sroi, the team began by mapping the outcomes in an impact map (which is similar to a logic model, and can help feed the development of an effective logic model). these outcomes were then assigned financial proxies that could represent the value of each change either systemically or to the stakeholders (see table 1). next estimates were made about the number of target stakeholders experiencing each change. where actuals were available for things like the number of calls taken by pact (that would otherwise have been taken by the rcmp), these figures were used in the analysis. where no actuals were available due to the novelty of the program, and in the absence of evaluation research from other similar programs, only one stakeholder was included in the analysis in order to avoid over-claiming. in other words, in order to present the minimum possible return on investment generated through pact, where numbers could not be based on actuals or research, only one stakeholder was counted in the analysis. finally, estimations were made based on evaluations of other, similar, programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 143 after estimating the total value of the investment in the pact program, this value was discounted, outcome-by-outcome, for deadweight (i.e., the amount of change that would have happened anyway), attribution (i.e., the amount of change attributable to the actions of others), and drop-off (i.e., the amount of change that will drop off over time). overall, a 3.5% discount rate was applied to the entire analysis to account for the volatility of the success of the program, and a 3.7% inflation rate was applied to values extended into the future. table 1: financial proxies used in the pact forecast sroi indicator of outcome financial proxy fewer emergency calls from clients with mental illness cost of police call out cost of ems call out less escalation of situation at emergency calls emergency room visit criminal court case cost of pain and suffering per assault victim less escalation of situation at emergency calls and less suicidal ideation cost per suicide fewer presentations to hospital er with mental health complaints emergency room visit cost of incarceration (adult in alberta provincial prison) less time spent in er by both client and rcmp awaiting psychiatric assessment cost of additional police stay at er less “revolving door syndrome” for stakeholders who present to er, and get readmitted within two weeks from discharge from hospital. psychiatric admission to hospital medical costs to treat undiagnosed mental illness increased employment short-term work loss due to diagnosed mental illness increased stable housing cost per homeless person the final forecasted sroi ratio for the pact program was calculated to be 2.04 : 1. this indicates that the program more than doubles its investment through the social value that it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 144 creates in the community. considering the extension of sroi analysis beyond the confines of regular cost-benefit analysis, this return is on par with similar programs, such as the integrated mobile crisis response team (imcrt) in victoria, british columbia (baess, 2005) that has indicated that: “the average cost per case was $300.00 for situations handled by regular police intervention versus $190.00 per case when imcrt clinicians were paired with patrol officers”, a ratio of $1.57 : $1.00. further, while many different specific financial values were used in this calculation, the overall value of the pact program goes beyond these values to the impact on the lives of stakeholders and community members that are in contact with the program. challenges and the usefulness of an sroi forecast in a similar way to the rest of the evaluation, the sroi analysis was challenging due to a lack of data, and the absence of a data plan associated specifically with the sroi, as well as the difficulty experienced in contacting key stakeholders (namely participants). while one of the most important aspects of an sroi (i.e., forecast or evaluative) is stakeholder involvement, the remoteness of the community, the lack of follow-up possibilities, the short time frame of the evaluation, and the nature of the program were all contributing barriers to proper stakeholder involvement. in the end, this means that the forecasted sroi ratio probably undervalues the program overall. although these challenges were present, from an evaluation and programming perspective the process of sroi analysis and the forecasted results can be extremely useful for future evaluations. the sroi impact mapping process resulted in a comprehensive model of the expected outcomes of pact in grande prairie, and can feed logic model improvement and program planning. further, determining what indicators should be tracked in order to value outcomes from the program results in a framework for future data collection and outcomes tracking. in the future, the forecast sroi can act as the basis of a proper evaluation plan leading to an increasingly better understanding of the impact of the pact program. the forecast sroi can also help describe the program to potential investors, illustrate the value of investment to the community, and provide a clear understanding of the activities and expected outcomes of a program when dealing with high staff turnover (as is the case in the social sector in many northern communities, including grande prairie). finally, it should also be kept in mind that as the program evolves, the forecast sroi can be modified and adjusted in order to continue to capture the value of the program, and actuals can be used in the analysis. conversely, as activities or outcomes change and are valued through the established sroi framework, program improvements can be immediately valued, and actions that foster increased social value can be built upon and developed. in this way, while the sroi analysis portion of this evaluation was limited in some ways, it also presents a unique opportunity to add a significant social metric tool to the evaluation toolbox of the pact program in grande prairie. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 145 conclusion engaging in field research and evaluation is often fraught with challenges that can bring into question the validity and reliability of the outcomes. this is critical when such evaluations may, and often do, have a direct bearing on the future funding and sustainability of such programs. the focus of this study involved the evaluation of the grande prairie pact program. despite the challenges, the ccjr team completed the evaluation for the pact program in grande prairie, identifying several successes, challenges, and recommendations for change. the challenges presented should not be seen as failures, but rather as areas for growth. all new programs have weaknesses and face obstacles. the ability of the program to address these issues and make necessary changes is what will determine success and sustainability. evaluators need to adapt to all contexts and address the various inadequacies of all programs. while implementing an evaluation strategy from the start of a program and continuing to be involved throughout an initiative’s life is ideal, the reality of evaluation is not always perfect. flexibility, creativity, and the ability to work with the program will ultimately lead to a successful evaluation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 136–146 146 references baess, e. (2005). integrated mobile crisis response team (imcrt): review of pairing police with mental health outreach services. prepared for the victoria city police department. retrieved from http://www.pmhl.ca/webpages/reports/pairing-report.pdf grande prairie pact. (2009). application to the safe communities innovation fund (scif). grande prairie, ab: author. lambert, m. t. (2002). linking mental health and addiction services: a continuity-of-care team model. journal of behavioral health services & research, 29(4), 433–444. nicholls, j., lawlor, e., neizert, e., & goodspeed, t. (2009). a guide to social return on investment. london: office of the third sector, the cabinet office. powell, r. r. (2006). evaluation research: an overview. library trends, 55(1), 102–120. singleton, r. a., & straits, b. c. (2010). approaches to social research (5th ed.). new york/oxford: oxford university press. http://www.pmhl.ca/webpages/reports/pairing-report.pdf� depression among chinese children and adolescents: a review of the literature international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 442 depression among chinese children and adolescents: a review of the literature maggie zgambo, fatch kalembo, he guoping, and wang honghong abstract: the purpose of this review is to explore, identify, and discuss the predisposing factors and associated outcomes of depression in chinese children and adolescents. for inclusion in the review, studies had to meet our objectives, be original peer-reviewed articles, conducted among chinese children and adolescents in china. articles were sourced through medline, embase, wan fang data, psycinfo, and doaj databases. the results of the review indicate that the prevalence of depression symptoms in chinese children and adolescents is high. the following factors are related to depression in chinese children and adolescents: family, social factors, peer relations, gender, age, obesity, body image, and ethnicity. the outcomes of depression are poor academic performance, psychosocial retardation, conduct problems, cognitive distortion, and suicide. depression is a major mental health problem among chinese children and adolescents. this points to the need for longitudinally designed and controlled studies to establish effective preventive strategies. keywords: depression, chinese, children, factors, outcomes maggie zgambo is a graduate student in nursing, xiangya medical college, central south university, tongzipo road 172, changsha 410013, china. (86) 187-17174954, fax: (86)731-82650268, e-mail: zgambo.maggie@yahoo.ca fatch kalembo is a graduate student in maternal child and adolescent health, tongji medical college, huazhong university of science and technology, hangkong road 13, wuhan 430030, china. phone: (86) 152-71811322, e-mail: kalembofatch@yahoo.com he guoping, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor and dean of nursing faculty, xiangya medical college, central south university, tongzipo road 172, changsha 410013, china. phone: (86)731-82650268, fax: (86)731-82650268, e-mail: hgpcsu@yahoo.com.cn wang honghong, ph.d. is a professor and head of research studies, faculty of nursing, xiangya medical college, central south university, tongzipo road 172, changsha 410013, china. phone: (86)731-82650268, fax: (86)731-82650268, e-mail: honghong_wang@hotmail.com mailto:zgambo.maggie@yahoo.ca� mailto:kalembofatch@yahoo.com� mailto:hgpcsu@yahoo.com.cn� mailto:honghong_wang@hotmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 443 globally, children have historically been thought not to be susceptible to depression. in recent years, this view has given way to an understanding that child depression not only exists, but also constitutes an insidious and major public health problem (afifi, 2006). depression is predicted to be the illness with the greatest negative impact and disease burden by the year 2020 (lopez & murray, 1998). major depression was the fourth most prevalent human disease in 1990 and is expected to rank second by the year 2020 (andrews & szabo, 2002). prior to the 1980s, depression was thought to be very rare in children and adolescents (keenan & hipwell, 2005) but this view has changed in recent years. its prevalence increases sharply with age precisely during adolescence. although there is widespread acknowledgment that the onset of depression among children is still uncommon, estimates of the prevalence of major depression during adolescence range from 14% to 20% (kessler, avenevoli, & merikangas, 2001). china has not been spared from incidents of depression in children and adolescents. even though there is no official estimate of the prevalence of depression in the country, there are significant rates from studies on the subject. according to studies conducted in taiwan, nanjing/hefei, and beijing, prevalence of depression in children was found to be 10%, 13.2%, and 13.2% respectively (liu, 2003; stewart & sun, 2007; li et al., 2007). studies done on adolescents in hunan, hong kong, and nanjing found that 22.9%, 50%, and 15.7% of the participants were depressed respectively (yang et al., 2010; sun, hui, & watkins, 2006; hong et al., 2009). these rates are high taking into account that studies were conducted in schools. the rates are actually higher than those from western countries (chan, 2000; sunita et al., 1999; tepper et al., 2008; sawyer et al., 2000). these high rates of depression in chinese children and adolescents affect the lives of those afflicted in multiple areas of life and have been associated with a variety of factors. this paper examines peer-reviewed articles conducted on depression in china with an emphasis on predisposing factors and outcomes. method we reviewed peer-researched articles done in china on depression in children and adolescents using the medline, doaj, wanfang, psycinfo, and google scholar databases. some information was collected from a reliable source, namely the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef). for inclusion in the review, studies had to be original peer-reviewed articles of any study design, conducted in china among chinese children and adolescents aged 8 to 19 years. the search terms used in the electronic databases were: depression in children and adolescents in china; depression symptoms in children and adolescents; predisposing factors of depression symptoms; outcomes of depression symptoms in children and adolescents. the combined searches resulted in 1,834 articles. the articles were screened for eligibility by scanning the titles and 146 abstracts of the articles were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 444 retrieved for further assessment. the abstracts were further scrutinized, and 63 full text articles were obtained. out of the 63 full text articles, only 45 met our inclusion criteria and were included in the review. the studies were excluded if they tackled depression among adults, were conducted outside china, studied subjects who were not chinese children and adolescents, or if they were review articles. the results are presented under the following headings: • predisposing factors, • associated outcomes, • the way forward • conclusion. predisposing factors many predisposing factors have been associated with depression: family factors, social factors, age and gender, ethnicity and culture, and physical (or body) factors. 1. family factors as the core center for the development and life of children and adolescents, the chinese family has been demonstrated to affect mental health status either positively or negatively. the economic, social, spiritual condition, liability condition, and status of the family have been shown to play a pivotal role in the mental health status of children and adolescents. tactlessly, parents expose children to these factors through situations they feel are out of their control or out of ignorance, for instance, by leaving home or letting their children be raised by other people. it has been shown that children and adolescents who live without parents exhibit higher levels of depressive symptoms than those with parents around them (wang, yan, hui, & juan, 2011). in china, children and adolescents become victims of “without-parents” quandary due to migration, divorce, or death. for the past few years in her explosive economic growth, china has experienced the greatest migration of its citizens from rural areas to urban centers looking for greener pastures. this has resulted in a significant toll on the mental health of children left behind, particularly on children whose parents left early in their lives (liu, li, & ge, 2009). a cross-sectional study done in anhui, chongqing, and guizhou indicated that the presence of parents in the early years of a child’s life prevents depression in children. in the study, the children’s depression inventory (cdi) score was highest for children whose parents left before they reached the age of 3 years (mean = 43.97; sd = 9.03) compared with children whose parents left after they entered school (aged 7 years or older), who showed significantly fewer symptoms of depression. in addition, children whose parents went away before their third birthday had the most symptoms of trait anxiety (mean = 47.56; sd = 8.73) (liu et al., 2009). the presence of parents therefore appears to prevent depression symptoms in chinese children and adolescents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 445 studies have also shown that the composition of the family exposes children to risk of depression symptoms. children from divorced and single-parent families have been reported to have higher levels of anxiety and depression compared to children from nuclear and stem families (dong wang, & ollendick, 2002; yu & seligman, 2002). the stress of single parenthood can lead to both paying less attention to a child and also to physical and verbal punishments that promote depression (especially when done frequently). perceived parental warmth decreases the onset of depression symptoms in children and adolescents (yu & seligman, 2002; greenberger, chen, tally, & dong, 2000). one hong kong study found the perception of a lack of parental understanding to be one of the strongest variables in predicting depressed moods in adolescents (sunita et al., 1999). some studies have indicated that lower family cohesion, higher family conflict, a poor quality of family relationships, and conflicts with parents lead to greater depression in children (sun et al., 2006; yu & seligman, 2002; greenberger et al., 2000). poor family cohesion in china increases the risk of depression in children and adolescents. depression is decreased by higher levels of parental care and lower levels of parental indifference (zhang, li, & zou, 2011; liu, 2003). greenberger and colleagues (2000) stipulate that strong positive family relationships lessen the symptoms of depression. 2. social factors the social world impacts on the lives of chinese children and adolescents positively or negatively. how young people relate with peers and teachers, what is expected in their peer groups, and social and academic achievements are elements that send messages affecting the mental status of the children and adolescents for good or for ill. there is evidence showing that perceptions of positive messages regarding children themselves, their world, and their future are negatively associated with depression, whereas a negative perception of the same messages has an opposite effect on depression symptoms (liu, 2003). negative messages are stressful. stressful life events are negative life events. negative life events are depressive (yang et al., 2010; greenberger et al., 2000). negative life events predict higher levels of future depression symptoms (yu & seligman, 2002). however, higher social and peer support lower the risk for depression. peer support increases levels of self-esteem by moderating the effects of particular risk factors for depressive symptoms in each cultural setting (yang et al., 2010; sun et al., 2006; greenberger et al., 2000). being accepted by one’s peers is very important for good mental health status in the life of every child and adolescent. lack of peer acceptance and unpopularity predict symptoms of depression (sunita et al., 1999; li & zhang, 2008). a child who does not associate with peers could be lonely enough to be negatively affected in terms of mental health. besides, it is evident that peer-related loneliness and seclusion are more predictive of depression than parent-related loneliness (lau, chan, & lau, 1999). loneliness leads to depression. children and adolescents who are lonely are most likely to develop symptoms of depression. teachers have also been known to cause stress in children and adolescents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 446 supportive teachers decrease the risk of depression symptoms in children by increasing levels of self-esteem. in one study done in hong kong, girls perceived higher levels of teacher support and lower levels of self-esteem (sun et al., 2006; yu & seligman, 2002). teachers can erode or destroy the mental status and capacity of a child or adolescent through negative attitudes and unconstructive criticism. children who have been harmfully disapproved of by teachers view criticism as an accusation or condemnation. teachers ought to criticize children constructively. ineffectual criticism is harmful to children and adolescents as they begin to have a negative attitude towards criticism and themselves. perceived criticism directly influences the student depression (lue, wu, & yen, 2010). positive criticism and good attitudes on the part of teachers increase levels of optimism and encourage sound coping skills. this strengthens the child to be spirited or resilient. increasing levels of resilience, optimism, and positive affectivity (e.g., education) decrease levels of depressive symptoms in children and adolescents (stewart & sun 2007; zhang et al., 2011). 3. age and gender for a long time, depression has been known to be more common in girls than in boys. in china, the findings of many studies validate this notion, agreeing with a classification of adolescents (lau et al., 1999; sunita et al., 1999; greenberger et al., 2000). sex is directly related to expressions of depression with females being more susceptible than males (lue et al., 2010; hesketh, ding, & jenkins, 2002). tepper et al. (2008) argue that depressive symptoms do not differ between boys and girls but intensify with age. however, some authors have argued that gender differences in depressive symptoms are greater in some cultures than others. for instance, one comparative study done between adolescents in china and the united states found that gender differences in depressive symptoms were greater among the u.s. adolescents compared to the chinese (greenberger et al., 2000). one cross-sectional study found that the girls’ depressive symptoms were more related to maternal messages while boys’ depressive symptoms were more related to paternal messages (liu, 2003). 4. ethnicity and culture the high prevalence of depression and the associated risk factors among adolescents are said by some researchers to be related to cultural factors (zhang et al., 2011). studies have noted differences in the prevalence and associated factors for adolescents’ depression symptoms among various races and cultures. other researchers reported that the occurrence of depression in adolescents might be associated with differences in race and cultural background (park et al., 2010; seaton, caldwell, sellers, & jackson, 2010). auerbach, eberhart, and abela (2010) found that chinese adolescents reported a higher level of depressive symptom than canadian adolescents because of different cultures and beliefs. in yu and seligman’s (2002) longitudinal study, 1,416 students ranging from 8 to 15 years of age were investigated using the children depression inventory. it was found that chinese children had significantly higher overall cdi scores than american children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 447 these findings are similar to the findings from several studies in different parts of the world which indicate that depression levels and causative factors are not exactly the same among diverse racial and cultural groups (franko & striegel-moore, 2002; bach & louw, 2010; evans et al., 2008). by contrast, a two-year longitudinal study conducted on primary school children in shanghai found the same mean depression scores as those in the west (chen, kenneth, & li, 1995). however, most studies agree there is a cultural difference. for example, one cross-sectional ethnocultural comparative study of children and adolescents was conducted in the houston, texas metropolitan area examining the following ethnic groups: anglo or white; african or black; native american; specific hispanic groups including cuban, puerto rican, mexican and central american; and specific asian groups including cambodian, vietnamese, indian, pakistani, chinese, korean, and pacific islander. subjects of chinese descent were found to have the lowest prevalence of depression adjusted for impairment of 1.9% (roberts, roberts, & chen, 1997). occurrence of depression in adolescents is associated with differences in race and cultural background and the conceptual organization of the symptoms characterizing depression are related to culture (park et al., 2010; seaton et al., 2010; lu, bond, friedman, & chan, 2010). this suggests that measures for preventing and curing depression symptoms in children and adolescents should be culturally sensitive in any setting. 5. physical body factors physical body fitness has been shown to have an effect on depression symptoms in chinese children. active children and adolescents have been proven to be less vulnerable to depression symptoms than those who are inactive. regular physical exercise benefits children and adolescents with a positive enhancement in mood and lower rates of depression. researchers in china have come to conclude that body and mind exercises and freedom from physical maltreatment reduce the onset of depression and other psychopathologically-related problems in chinese children and adolescents (ying & liu, 2005; hong et al., 2009; jiang & zhu, 1997; tao et al., 2006). in one cross-sectional study, it was concluded that physical activity is inversely related to depression. it was found that participants who spent 1 to 7 hours per week, 8 to 14 hours per week, and more than 15 hours per week engaged in recreational physical activity, respectively, had odds ratios of 0.70 (95% ci = 0.57, 0.86), 0.68 (95% ci = 0.53, 0.88), and 0.66 (95% ci = 0.50, 0.87) for likelihood of being depressive, compared to their counterparts who spent 0 to 0.9 hours per week engaged in physical activity (hong et al., 2009). therefore, total inactivity or partial physical exercise in chinese children and adolescents correlates with depression symptoms. some authors have related depression to being overweight and having a poor body image (tang et al., 2010; li et al., 2007). the obese children with body dissatisfaction have significantly lower self-esteem and higher levels of depressive symptoms than the obese children without body dissatisfaction or children of normal weight (shin & shin, 2008). there is a suggestion that the overweight perception is related to school-related stress and depression in both girls and boys (bin et al., 2006). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 448 associated outcomes most of the outcomes of depression are unpleasant and disruptive. many studies have found that depression symptoms have an impact on the lives of children and adolescents. some of the depression outcomes have been discovered to affect depression symptoms and be caused by depression symptoms in some cases. for example, poor academic performance has been associated with depression symptoms and the same poor academic performance has been found to cause depression symptoms (lue et al., 2010; greenberger et al., 2000; chen & li, 2000; hesketh et al., 2002; li & zhang, 2008). it could be that persistent poor academic performance causes depression due to feelings of failure resulting in low self-esteem. symptoms of depression have a negative impact on school performance (unicef, 2004). the characteristics of depression, such as aggressive behavior, withdrawal, lack of interest, and social problems, can all distract a child from concentrating on education (liu et al., 2000). in a related study, grades in school were found to be affected by depression (greenberger et al., 2000). this was replicated in a cross-sectional study done among 12-year-old chinese children where depression was found to be associated with academic performance in that children who had poor academic performance had more depressive symptoms than those with good academic performance (lue et al., 2010). this means that the more depressive symptoms are present the greater the likelihood of poor school performance. depression symptoms are preventable, avoidable, and curable, and given that children and adolescents will compose the world of tomorrow, it is perhaps not overstating the case to say the future of the present world depends on their academic achievement. therefore children and adolescents who have symptoms of depression should be helped to overcome this condition and unleash their potential to realize their educational goals. the effects of depression symptoms not only affect the child or adolescent but also his or her parents, teachers, peers, and friends. a number of studies have positively associated symptoms of depression with conduct problems, cognitive distortion, aggressive, disruptive, or antisocial behavior, poor peer relations, and low social competency in chinese children (chen & li, 2000; liu, tein, sandler, & zhao, 2005; lue et al., 2010; chen et al., 1995; liu et al., 2000; unicef 2004). depression is the main culprit of antisocial behavior and poor social competence. a child who is depressed fails to socialize effectively. social incompetence is social retardation. a child who cannot socialize is disposed to low self-esteem, feelings of failure, and is often alone. this creates a vicious circle of depressive symptoms as some outcomes are predisposing factors too (e.g., loneliness). depression symptoms have a tendency of reoccurrence and it is therefore important to curb initial predisposing factors. social competence is important in the life of a child to facilitate socialization for maturity and peer matching. socialization develops social and psychological skills. depressed moods are a significant phenomenon in the social development of chinese children. depression symptoms have a deleterious impact on future achievement for the reason that poor social and psychological development, adjustment to difficulties and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 449 emotional status underlie mental health problems (chen & li, 2000; lau et al., 1999; zhang et al., 2011). as perilously as depression symptoms have been neglected in china, effects are prominent including the sundry suicide cases of children and adolescents. many studies of chinese children and adolescents have found depression to be the major cause of suicide incidents or ideation (phillips et al., 2002; liu et al., 2005; sun et al., 2006). it is evident that china has a high national suicide rate of two to three times the global average with 300,000 suicides annually. this accounts for 30% of the world’s suicides with the majority being females in the age group of 15 to 24 (samuel & pozi, 2008; yip, liu, hu, & song, 2005; unicef, 2004). adolescence is a stage of life in transit from childhood to adulthood. depression during this period is very common in many individuals. this happens due to hormonal imbalances, an individual fighting to attain independence and seeking social approval and identity from peers which, when failed or compromised, results in self-hatred, rejection, poor social competence, poor coping skills, poor life skills, and so depression develops. since this period of development happens to everybody, effective strategies to prevent predisposing factors leading to depression symptoms in this age group are inconsistent and neglected by policy-makers, teachers, health workers and even parents. these factors are neglected because they are regarded as normal. an escalation of problems resulting from depression at this stage of life is what calls attention to the condition. adolescents’ concomitant problems range from failed first romantic associations, early sex involvement, unwanted pregnancy, contracting sexually transmitted infections like hiv/aids, substance abuse, and alcoholism which can lead to depression putting these children and adolescents at risk of suicide. there is a need to develop strategies that will meet children’s and adolescents’ emotional needs and bolster their psychological status in homes, schools and hospitals. chinese children and adolescents should be taught knowledge of life skills, coping mechanisms and the power of resilience. let there be knowledge dissemination that will inform children and adolescents of the need to seek assistance when confronted with a psychological problem. normally in china, traditional societies often view the need for counseling as indicating severe mental illness (unicef, 2004) yet minor mental illness when untreated may gradually develop into severe conditions. this suggests the need to educate every group of persons that come in contact with children and adolescents including parents, guardians, teachers and health workers to start prioritizing the mental health status of children and adolescents. furthermore, there is a need for more mental health workers and more dedication because suicide ideation and incidence among chinese children and adolescents is high. in studies done in china, suicide ideation is highly rated ranging from 16% to 32% (hesketh et al., 2002; liu, 2004; sun et al., 2006; chan, 1995; yip et al., 2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 450 the way forward and conclusion this review provides a better and more comprehensive understanding of the importance and intensity of problems associated with depression symptoms in chinese children and adolescents. it also highlights the significance of preventing depression symptoms in children and adolescents. the fact that rates of depression in children and adolescents are so high means policy-makers should pay attention to, internalize, and implement guidelines to prevent and manage depression. there is a need to educate parents, guardians, and teachers on the severity of depression symptoms (as a mental disease), predisposing factors, their preventability and their devastating effects on the lives of children and adolescents. this will help these adults to have an overall understanding of depression in children and adolescents, hence assisting in its prevention and in pursuing mental health assistance when necessary. mental health services are lacking in most of the programs in china serving adolescents and children. we therefore recommend the integration of mental health services into youth-friendly programs and school curricula by government or non-governmental organizations (ngos). this will help to equip adolescents and children with life skills to help them to effectively cope with problems that result from lack of peer, teacher and family support, low self-esteem, and negative life events. at the same time, we recommend more youth-friendly services, programs, projects, and centers in china. this will not only help in reaching out many children and adolescents but also provide a rare opportunity for adolescents to practice physical and intellectual exercises that help to develop their mental health. these centers will also assist in identifying adolescents and children with symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation and provide counseling services to help them deal with their problems. our review has also identified poor family relationships, lack of parental care due to divorce or migration of parents from rural to urban areas as some of the factors predisposing adolescents and children to depression. we therefore recommend that the government introduce more counseling centers closer to people so that parents with marital problems and affected children can receive counseling support. the government should also come up with policies that promote the development and creation of job opportunities for people in the rural areas to help prevent migration to urban areas. there is limited psychosocial support offered to chinese adolescents and children with depression. this highlights the need for culturally tailored public health studies to come up with depression models of care that encourage peer psychosocial support for adolescents and children. most of the studies conducted in china on depression in adolescents and children were found to be cross-sectionally designed; we therefore call for more longitudinal studies like cohorts and quasi experiments to be conducted which can determine scientifically reliable preventive strategies of depression symptoms in children and adolescents. such study methods could determine culturally sensitive and effective interventions and approaches towards reducing and eradicating international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 451 predisposing factors of depression symptoms in children and adolescents. there are also some research gaps in the area of knowledge, attitude, practices, and beliefs of teachers, health workers, parents, children, and adolescents on depression symptoms, which are the basis for mapping intervention protocols. depression is a major mental health problem for chinese children and adolescents which requires the collaboration of all stakeholders involved with the care of adolescents and children in planning and implementing programs that will help to overcome the problem. adolescents and children should be involved from the outset of such programs. government and non-governmental organizations should provide financial muscle to support the programs in order to ensure their sustainability. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 442–457 452 references afifi m. 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and could that sense of connection be interwoven into youth suicide prevention programs, not to diminish what is already there but to enrich and enliven current best practices, and research-based information? throughout this article, i will uncover the possibilities of what can emerge when practice is informed by the professional literature and a purposeful intent to create a sense of connection and relational engagement. keywords: youth suicide, youth suicide prevention, school-based suicide prevention programs, connection, engagement, relational engagement, adolescent acknowledgements: the author would like to express gratitude to: dr. jennifer white for her editorial support of this paper and her collaborative interest in the evolution of our programs; elizabeth newcombe, executive director vancouver island crisis society for her willingness to support the ongoing growth and evolution of our suicide prevention programs for youth; and heather owen for her passion and interest in continuing to learn and to create alongside me as we move forward in the work. lyndsay wells is the public education program coordinator for vancouver island crisis society/crisis line. she is a certified crisis intervention worker, a suicide bereavement support group facilitator, an asist master trainer, and an innovative program developer with a passion for working with youth to help them uncover and acknowledge their own potential, and strengths. prior to coming to the crisis society in 1996, lyndsay was a constable with the royal canadian mounted police. e-mail: lyndsay@vicrisis.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 132 i came to the field of youth suicide prevention mostly by accident, beginning my professional career as a police officer who sensed early on that my desire to help people might override my ability to arrest them. armed with this desire to make some kind of a difference, i still was disinclined to delve into the murky waters of suicide prevention. one afternoon during a presentation for a room full of police colleagues about the issues facing youth, i experienced a foreshadowing (though i did not know it then) that my road might take a different course. a group of 10 young people – all of whom had faced their fair share of troubles including thoughts of suicide – were asked to seek out the officers in our crowd they would most likely turn to for support. all 10 approached me. i joined the police force with a desire to help people, and though i left the force shortly after the above experience, i still wished to engage in meaningful work and so eventually rerouted my career in the direction of crisis and suicide prevention. i was determined to use whatever “it” was that caused those students to come to me as a way to help others. though the experience dims with the passage of time, i continue to contemplate and reflect upon it, puzzling over the notion of human connection, how it ignites, and what might emerge were it to be the central theme that informed my practice. while the dark and solitary beast of suicidal despair lurks as an entity that actually thrives in isolation, what power might human connection have to combat it? moreover, could that sense of connection be interwoven with youth suicide prevention programs, not to diminish what is already there but to enrich and enliven current best practices, and research-based information? this is the story of the evolution of two school-based suicide prevention programs: (a) grasp (growth, acknowledgement, suicide awareness, personal safe planning), and (b) speak out, reach out, help out. throughout this article, i will explore the possibilities of what can emerge when practice is informed by the professional literature and this sense of “something else” that i am calling connection. i also discuss how safe spaces for learning might be created between youth and practitioners in classrooms. early experiences of unexpected vulnerability the first time i ever walked into a classroom was in 2005. after having spent the better part of the previous eight years as a telephone-based crisis line worker, and later a crisis line trainer, the bulk of my experiences was with adults and adult learners. following the tragic suicides of three students in our school district in 2003, the mandate of our organization began to shift and we embarked on providing schooland community-based education on the topic of suicide prevention. we began with the school district, bringing together a multidisciplinary team with a vested interest in creating prevention, intervention, and post-intervention protocols along with annual training for school staff and administrators. the next step was to begin the process of implementing a program for students. our organization purchased a well-recognized researchendorsed program which consisted of standardized lesson plans, presenter’s notes, a power point presentation, and a video that featured a young person helping a friend who is having thoughts of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 133 suicide. as an adult educator, i appreciated the way it was laid out and looked forward to entering classrooms, seeing this as an opportunity to inspire young people. reality, however, does not always meet expectation and the sense of connection i alluded to in my introduction was palpably absent as i walked into the florescent lit classroom with my co-facilitator, heather. we stood before row upon row of blank-faced grade 10 students to impart information that, we believed, had the potential to save lives. the material was consistent with recommended best practices in this area (kalafat, 2003). the curriculum included the following: warning signs for suicide, suicide myths and facts, why we should never keep suicide a secret, asking about suicide, and help seeking. sadly, the yawns and tired faces suggested a distinct lack of student engagement and an overall disconnection from the information we were trying to share. this was validated when one young man, in his post-questionnaire comments, suggested that we “make the presentation less boring.” throughout the school year this sense of disconnect with the students continued to be our experience. now, along with a feeling of impending doom every time we had to set foot in a classroom – situating ourselves as “experts” while feeling intensely vulnerable – i wondered if students were capturing any of our messages. more importantly, i began to wonder if conceptualizing our roles as “message transmitters” was even appropriate. was “mastery of content” the only thing to consider when doing this kind of work (white & morris, 2010)? parsons and taylor (2011) acknowledge that, “if the environment in which learners explore is sterile and lacks context, there is a chance transference of knowledge will not occur beyond the classroom” (p. 39). by having to stick so closely to a script there was definitely a sense of sterility for me. we also constantly worried that if we veered away from sanctioned material we might get something wrong. there are many eyes on a presenter coming into a school, each with their own set of expectations. students, parents, teachers, administrators, counsellors all have strong ideas about the topic of youth suicide prevention. in the field of suicide prevention, “getting something wrong” comes with its own set of dire implications. a personal reflection from jennifer white exemplifies this: an unspoken concern that threaded through all of my work as a suicide prevention educator was the idea – and fear – of inadvertently facilitating contagion or imitative suicidal behaviour. for as long as i can remember we were sensitized to the fact (through literature and professional conversations) that there might be a vulnerable student sitting in the classroom who was seriously contemplating suicide. we had to hold this imaginary vulnerable student in mind as we facilitated discussions and worked our way through the curriculum, making sure that we weren’t doing or saying anything to glamorize suicide as an option or make it seem like an attractive way out… uncertainty, conflicting opinions, and occasional anxiety about potentially doing harm were thus a backdrop of this work. (white, morris, & hinbest, 2012, pp. 339–340) in a very real sense, the weight of responsibility, vulnerability, and fear i felt probably led me further and further away from a relational form of engagement. i also began to wonder what was going on in the minds of students; wondering if they too had fear and anxiety around the subject of suicide. white, morris, and hinbest (2012) suggest that, “suicide prevention education is by no means a straightforward technical task of information dissemination. on the contrary, it is a site where multiple identities, ethical relations, and possible future worlds are constructed” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 134 (p. 341). bearing this in mind, i wonder what we might have been missing if none of these unspoken tensions were ever addressed? with the school year coming to a close, it seemed clear that our programs needed some refreshing. we began to make some changes which were informed by recommendations from the youth suicide prevention school based guide produced by the louis de la parte florida mental health institute at the university of south florida (doan, roggenbaum, & lazear, 2012). recommendations to educators included the following: • avoid using a brief (2to 4hour) one-shot approach in assembly presentations or classes. • use a more prolonged approach when using curriculum delivered to students. • consider implementing suicide awareness curriculum within the context of established classes such as health classes or a life management skills class. consider incorporating problem-solving skills, coping skills, and self-esteem building skills into the curriculum. back to the drawing board: designing a pilot based on these recommendations, we decided to move away from our standard presentations of 80 minutes duration and secured funding from the vancouver foundation to create a 12-hour pilot gatekeeper training program, originally called “youth crisis intervention skills training” or ycist. the pilot took a two-pronged approach. first, self-awareness and coping skills would be taught. second, students would be supported in learning to identify peers in crisis and would be taught how to take appropriate action. the pilot was taught in four different schools for students in grades 9 to 12 who expressed an interest in becoming peer helpers. based on a series of pre and post-tests along with written and verbal feedback, the students let us know that they had not only learned meaningful, life changing skills, they also felt connected to the program. in other words, they were actively engaged in the learning process. somehow we had created a program that had relevance. research suggests that student engagement may be influenced by several phenomenological factors, including relevance of instruction and perceived control. with respect to instructional relevance, students are more likely to become engaged with authentic academic work that intellectually involves them in a process of meaningful inquiry to solve real life problems that extend beyond the classroom. (newmann et al., as cited in d. shernoff, csikszentmihalyi, schneider, & e. shernoff, 2003, p. 159) the core concepts being taught in the pilot version of ycist were informed by the training we conducted with crisis line volunteers and included basic listening skills, recognizing our biases and how they affect our ability to listen, crisis as dangerous opportunity, using a crisis helping model, suicide myths, warning signs (is path warm), asking about suicide, the danger of keeping secrets, and how to seek appropriate help. while we were encouraged by the feedback coming from our preand post-tests, there was still an intuitive sense of something lacking in the program. we wondered whether we had created enough of a connection or sense of safety, or whether we were still positioning the youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 135 as passive observers rather than active participants. they were engaged, the content seemed to resonate, but there still remained a chasm not yet crossed between teacher and student.. part of this may have been about the facilitation itself. even though we had redesigned the program, we were still operating on a set agenda and i can remember feeling pressured to move conversations along in order to accommodate the complete range of pre-set materials. i have to wonder whether the students sensed this and complied by refraining to comment or question further. there was also a part of me who was still not fully comfortable presenting for groups of young people. in retrospect, it is probable these feelings of insecurity on my behalf were also contributing to the chasm, or sense of disconnection that i speak of. it is noteworthy that the ease of delivery i now feel in a classroom has come after years of experience, self-reflection, and effort. later sections of this article will address the relevance of experience and how it contributes to the creation of relational engagement. i also hope to add to a discussion already begun by white, morris, and hinbest (2012): our lived realities as practitioners, educators, and researchers, which include the joys, missteps, and uncertainties of this work, are important to include. for one thing, they trace some of the animating forces that have shaped our curiosities and they also show our deep embeddedness in the everyday practice of youth suicide prevention. (p. 340) these lived realities that i will call my experiences played a part in creating a sense of disconnect in the classroom; however, through the practice of self-reflection, they also played a part in learning how to narrow the chasm between student and presenter. back to the drawing board, again: grasp it was back to the drawing board. keeping the idea of cultivating a safe and open space for learning in mind, my co-facilitator, executive director, and i were all in agreement that the name “youth crisis intervention skills training” sounded somewhat daunting. it also failed to accurately portray what we were trying to do. over the course of a three hour brainstorming session, we narrowed down the field of possible names to the one we all agreed best described our vision: grasp – an acronym that stands for: growth, resilience, acknowledgement, suicide awareness, and personal safe planning. we also decided that though we were no longer operating as a pilot project, we were not going to develop a static version of grasp but would rather attempt to leave it as open-ended as possible to reflect changes in emerging literature and technologies. in this sense, we felt the program was unique. we were willing to let it move, and grow, and become along with us as we learned more about working with youth and how to engage them. it was around this time that i was introduced to dr. jennifer white in person. in keeping with her ideas about “blurring the sharp boundaries that traditionally exist between researchers and practitioners” (white, morris, & hinbest, 2012), she invited us to be a part of a collaborative inquiry team that would include the voices of researchers with practitioners as a way of looking at youth suicide prevention programs from a whole new lens. i cannot even begin to express the feelings of relief we had when we heard from others working in the field that they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 136 shared the same fears, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties that we did. i left my first collaborative inquiry meeting with a new sense of hope and purpose and when i returned to my office tacked the following quote from rainer maria rilke (1954) to my bulletin board where it remains to this day: perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. it is the cornerstone upon which grasp and later, speak out, reach out, help out were built. the evolution of a program we continued to develop grasp and began to conceptualize it as a positive youth development program. positive development is defined as “programs that provide opportunities and support to help youth gain the competencies and knowledge they need to meet the increasing challenges they will face as they mature” (roth, brooks-gunn, murray, & foster, 1998, p. 423). thus, we aimed to provide students with the tools to recognize troubled peers and also supported them to be alert to their own struggles so that they might more willingly engage in healthy coping strategies and help-seeking behaviours. we also looked to recommendations from the report published by the british columbia coroner’s office (2008), looking for something to look forward to: a five year retrospective review of child and youth suicide in bc. we were particularly interested in the section of the report that focused on the subject of school connectedness, a theme we saw again in the state of florida through the schoolbased youth suicide prevention guide discussing school climate (lazear, roggenbaum, & blase, 2003). we also wanted to place more explicit emphasis on skillbuilding. according to doan, roggenbaum, and lazear (2012): pro-social behavioral skills training that focuses on problem solving, coping, and conflict resolution strategies have shown positive results on distress coping skills... and may be one of the most effective ways to prevent adolescent suicide. (p. 4) we set to work and divided the grasp program into a quartet of three-hour sessions. we developed learning modules that were explicitly focused on creating empathetic connections since this was one of the ways we could promote coping strategies in a safe and supportive learning environment. it was becoming evident, however, that students didn’t always know what we meant by creating an atmosphere of “acceptance and non-judgment” and we’ve had many enlightening conversations to this effect. most commonly, the students express hesitation in responding to others in a validating way for fear that it might come off as “phony” or contrived. during the course of these conversations it has also become evident that few students have been the regular recipients of non-judgemental validation – for example, being told that they are smart, funny, or even worthwhile. for the most part, students seem to be more accustomed to criticism, whether constructive or otherwise, but have never questioned the validity of this criticism in the same way they question the validity of validation. further, even when they understood the importance of reaching out to others and championing climates of inclusivity and belongingness in their schools, there was a gap between knowledge and action. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 137 learning these things came as a surprise. grasp is an experiential program where the students actively practice listening skills, validation, and enquiry. though they seem to understand concepts, such as why being empathetic and non-judgemental are positive helping skills, they don’t always have the language or the confidence to validate one another, ask defining questions, open difficult or unusual conversations, or enquire about suicide. these were areas students had improved on when we did preand post-testing with crisis intervention skills training but we were learning that knowledge of the material wasn’t translating as practical skills they were comfortable actually using. further, individual schools have distinct personalities that vary based on factors like administration, socio-economics, and geographic location. as such, there are social constraints that routinely take place, for instance less “popular” or younger students not being as participatory for fear of ridicule, aboriginal students being hesitant to take the program, or students with an image to maintain acting out as a way of protecting that image. these are a few examples of the ways a student’s perceived social position within a school can create barriers to learning. this is especially so in a program like grasp where the facilitators only have a brief window of time to talk about potentially vulnerable topics. i share these things as a way of illustrating what a facilitator might be up against when entering a classroom – in other words, there are more dynamics at play than a simple transference of knowledge. i also believe it is imperative that the students’ individual fears, beliefs, and values be taken into account. if the social climate in a school, or a student’s own fears, values, or insecurities preclude them from taking action on behalf of themselves or others, what might occur if we allowed space for these kinds of discussions, even if it meant occasionally veering away from our agenda and prescribed program? the power of transparency these ideas stir up new questions for me and i continue to wonder if we have become too sterile (i.e., focused on content) in our approach to youth suicide prevention. i have come to appreciate the depth of emotion young people are capable of expressing. in order to help them get there, however, it has been my experience that transparency with my own emotions and vulnerabilities helps to take down walls and perhaps reduce stigma. by being transparent about my own fears and imperfections, i am able to help young people see that it is normal to make mistakes, feel sad, victimized, angry, or overwhelmed and still be a happy, successful person. by making our presentations personal we are able to help students recognize that struggles, even to the extent of having suicidal thoughts, aren’t about “other people” but are rather another part of the human condition. when i can achieve a balance between being a practitioner with research informed material and a human being with struggles to share, a transformation often occurs in the classroom. we have had many teachers express surprise over the level of student engagement during our presentations and youth consistently tell us that our transparency and willingness to share is what they find most memorable. it is important to note, however, that each personal story has been well thought out and carefully chosen to complement the underlying messages of hope, and compassion woven into the program. in this sense, i echo cooper, clements, and holt (2011) that mental health and adolescent suicide prevention programs be “proactively and skillfully addressed” (p. 701). this is a theme i will address in greater detail later in this article. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 138 connection and compassion crisis line work and suicide prevention activities are loaded with emotion and yet in our well-intentioned ways of trying to fix things, we run the risk of squeezing the feelings out of it altogether. human compassion, the acknowledgement of our collective frailty, and the power love might have to combat suicide are mostly absent when we talk about suicide prevention. i wonder what youth suicide prevention might look like if a greater sense of empathy and compassion was consistently built into the delivery of these programs. what if we taught students how to communicate this sense of compassion and empathy to others? and what if we also explored what it is to be compassionate and empathetic toward ourselves? though we had initially developed a series of learning objectives that would correspond to the words growth, resilience, and acknowledgement, suicide awareness, prevention and safe planning, we noticed unexpected themes beginning to emerge when we allowed the learning space to emerge. in essence, the students were letting us know that the concerns in their lives were far more complex than we might have originally imagined and that by allowing this unravelling, while being transparent ourselves as facilitators, we were creating dialogue that was authentic. according to dunleavy and milton (2009), “the work students undertake also needs to be relevant, meaningful, and authentic – in other words, it needs to be worthy of their time and attention” (p. 34). in this sense we began noticing a shift, not only in what was being shared during grasp, but also in the students’ willingness to explore the notion that compassion and empathy might have a role to play in suicide prevention and to more seriously examine the role they might each play as caring individuals. we developed experiential activities to help students learn how to self-reflect before passing judgment, and to look and listen “beneath” what is being presented in order to have a deeper understanding of the people and the world around them. our hope is that in helping students understand these concepts, a ripple effect might resonate outward from grasp and into the culture of a school. grasp’s effect since its humble beginnings as youth crisis intervention skills training, over 300 students have participated in the grasp program. of those, 25 have taken the program more than once, and five were trained this year as grasp mentors, having gone through the program twice. these outputs further validate what dunleavy and milton (2009) had to say about students’ perspectives on what it would take for them to feel fully engaged in learning. in school they imagined they would: • solve real problems. • engage with knowledge that matters. • make a difference in the world. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 139 • be respected. • see how subjects are interconnected. • learn from and with each other and people in their community. • connect with experts and expertise. • have more opportunities for dialogue and conversation. (p. 10) observing students eager to re-experience the program and take on new roles as “mentors” has given us a unique perspective for program evaluation. we have had opportunity to see first-hand how a young person might make meaning of a suicide prevention program that explores the potential that empathy might have and makes space for meaningful connection and engagement. another output of the program has been the students’ ongoing connections to us, sometimes several years after they have taken the program. to date, one grasp student has gone on to become a crisis line volunteer, three have volunteered for our agency at a suicide awareness event, and several remain in touch via social media. on their own initiative, students at one high school created a group called “empathy” and they actively engage with the student population to create a safer, more inclusive school. this group helped to plan and stage our first youth connection day at the end of the school year in 2012, bringing together 53 grasp students from across two school districts to meet and explore further possibilities for suicide prevention and safety. on “youthcon” day we asked the students to create cards to be distributed to a group of mental health and addictions workers known as “the downtown team” in nanaimo, british columbia. these cards would go to people struggling with homelessness and addiction. the students were asked to share messages of hope and inspiration on the cards and it was relevant to note that 42% of the cards carried one or more of the tagline messages from the students’ experience in grasp: you are awesome; you are valuable; you matter. the school where the students created “empathy” has decided to make empathy a curriculum course that will be taught alongside grasp. according to ciffone (2007, as cited in cooper, clements, & holt, 2011) “the greatest strength of a curriculum-based program is not the content that is taught but rather the effect that it has on the milieu of a school” (p. 699). this sentiment was carried a step further by the vice principal of the school who shared, “the school is different this year, it feels different in the hallways, it feels more positive.” speak out, reach out, help out despite the growing success of grasp, we were still only reaching a small percentage of the student population and the schools were beginning to request our 80-minute presentations. these shorter sessions are now called speak out (speak out about suicide) reach out (reach out to others) and help out (there are things we each can do to make a difference). during the academic year, there were two suicides in the district, a male in grade 8 and another male in grade 12. although neither student was known to us personally, one of the deaths took place in a school we had been actively involved in. i remember having feelings of guilt and fear once again international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 140 that we weren’t doing enough, or worse, that we had done something wrong. although i knew from a rational perspective that neither was the case, my past experience as a police officer carried with it a desire to “do the right thing” and i found myself having to rely on the support of colleagues so as not to succumb to my own feelings of inadequacy and despair. i share this as another example of the complex nature of suicide prevention education and encourage others in the field not to work in vacuums but to instead surround themselves with supportive teams they can turn to in times of stress. these deaths prompted an increased interest on the part of administrators in providing suicide prevention education sessions to more students. as part of the district’s protocols for suicide post-intervention, the crisis society was called upon to lend support during the aftermath of both tragedies and help guide the schools in providing post-intervention support to the students. it is difficult to describe the feelings of fear and responsibility that come with being relied upon during the tragic and tenuous days following a suicide. these were real lives, and real tragedies, and we were constantly on guard to do the right thing – whether that meant talking to the media, or advising a school not to hold a large public memorial. through it all, the schools wanted more information and training. over the years we had tried to present “speak out, reach out, help out” in a variety of different ways, but nothing was connecting in a manner that felt “right” to us as experienced facilitators. further, we began to question the veracity of presenting information about “what to watch out for” as opposed to “how to stay safe”. cooper et al. (2011) note: kalafat (2006) also notes that some older studies have shown that programs that enhance protective factors may be more effective than those that address risk factors; specifically there is longitudinal evidence that programs that enhance protective factors may be more effective. (p. 701) this observation resonated with me based on some past experiences in policing. as a young officer, i noticed that many of the people who ended up in the back of my squad car were not “bad” per se, but were individuals who had not been well supported in their lives; people who made poor decisions, or had minimal problem solving or coping skills. in that sense, it was compelling to explore the role these kinds of protective factors might also play in suicide prevention. further to that, i wondered what might make a suicide prevention presentation interesting enough to engage students in safe, non-threatening ways, but still leave them with tools and strategies for coping (i.e., protective factors) that they would remember and actually employ later. research tells us that music can enhance learning. specifically, “multimedia and technology (cameras, video, and video editing, projectors, smartboards, sound recording equipment, animation and gaming software, and ubiquitous powerpoint) have proven helpful in engaging students in learning about subjects, in exploring ways to present their learning, and more importantly in helping students control their learning” (parsons & taylor, 2011, p. 41). today’s youth are accustomed to living in a world that moves and changes rapidly and it made sense to me that they would respond to programs that are designed with this reality in the forefront. as parsons and taylor (2011) argue: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 141 the literature repeatedly states the need to re-examine our assumptions about learning and about learners; there is a common call to revisit traditional teaching pedagogy and, if not change altogether, at least infuse our daily classroom offerings with student engaging pedagogy based on more recent neurological, cognitive, and demographic science and human development research. our past (and current) practices and measures have focussed almost entirely on academic achievement. there is little definitive research on what enhances…or engages them in learning. (pp. 5–6) with this in mind, we began using popular music videos that carried messages of resilience and hope in our presentations. what has emerged from speak out, reach out, help out in the 2011/12 school year, over 1,000 students from grades 8, 9, and 10 experienced speak out, reach out, help out. in that time, counsellors have reported surprise over the number of students who were not aware they could visit their school’s counselling departments for anything other than career planning. they have also noted an increase in students coming in to “unpack their problems” which is language directly from the speak out, reach out, help out program to express why they are there. moreover, several calls have come into the crisis line from youth who have taken speak out, reach out, help out that required some kind of suicide intervention and one youth stopped us in the halls at a school to say “thank you.” he had been the recipient of one of those caring interventions. we were also learning that the level of skill required to create engagement in classrooms should not be undervalued. this is further validated by dr. jerry hinbest (white, morris, & hinbest, 2012) who asks: how can we understand the curriculum as a living process, which facilitators change based upon context, but also based upon their own strengths and capabilities? how do facilitators develop skill and knowledge about when or whether to go beyond the curriculum, and to be responsive to the needs of students? how is the process facilitated or prohibited by the actions of other stakeholders? how do they introduce new ideas or concepts from the literature, or practice knowledge from other contexts, or from discussion with co-facilitators, ongoing research or professional development? (p. 346) i believe the answer to this lies in cultivating educators with a vested interest in what white and morris (2010) describe as having a “constructionist approach to inquiry that seeks to expand options, invite new questions and perspectives, accommodate ambiguity and multiplicity, while making no attempt to freeze meaning, silence alternative views, or curtail innovation; processes that we consider to be vital in the ‘doing’ of youth suicide prevention” (p. 2188). as a facilitator i continue to cultivate within myself a constructionist approach to practice that seeks to create authentic moments, an acknowledgement of real world struggles, selfanalysis, reflection of practice, and an open willingness to meet youth where they stand. though i doubt any program, researcher, practitioner, facilitator, or clinician will have the last word on the prevention of youth suicide, there is life in being a part of the conversation and in being open to the creativity, compassion, real world knowledge, and ideas youth bring to the table when they are relationally engaged and feel connected. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 142 concluding remarks i’m brought back to that presentation so many years ago in the room filled with uniformed police officers. what was it about me, also in uniform and carrying a gun that suggested to young people that i might be a safe person to talk with? it occurs to me that to a group of teens, the room filled with police officers was potentially a threatening place, and though i will never know for certain, my guess is that as a young female officer who was gentle by nature, i was the least threatening or perhaps the most open and responsive person of the bunch and, therefore, the person they were drawn to. if i were to compose a list of comparisons between the feelings in the room that day and the feelings i might have prior to a suicide prevention workshop, i would identify them as a “complex social process where uncertainty, resistance, and negotiated meanings are defining aspects” (white, morris, & hinbest 2012, p. 353). i believe that when we have an understanding that suicide prevention is “far from being a straightforward technical enterprise where the facts about suicide are neutrally conveyed to a passive audience” (p. 353), we free ourselves to be more open and responsive as facilitators, thus making it more likely for connection and relational engagement to occur. and so i circle back to my original question: could a sense of connection be interwoven into youth suicide prevention programs, not to diminish what is already there but to enrich and enliven current best practices, and research-based information? the simple answer is yes, and certainly, the work has been richer and the outcomes encouraging when students are engaged in the process. i believe, however, that for this to occur, it is essential that we not undervalue the role of a suicide prevention educator. we do youth a disservice when a subject with the kind of complexity and intricacy that suicide holds is given over to less experienced hands. suicide prevention education needs educators and trainers with excellent practice who embrace and understand this complexity, practitioners who have experience working with youth, an ongoing commitment to staying current with literature, technology, and media, who possess an appreciation and passion for the process, and have the “skill and knowledge to know about when or whether to go beyond the curriculum” (white, morris, & hinbest, 2012, p. 346). it involves equipping ourselves with the insights from research-based evidence and remembering the “something more” that can occur when educators know how and when to be transparent and share space with students in a way that acknowledges our collective frailty and resilience. just as we expect skilled instructors to teach our children mathematics, history, or language arts, the same need be said for those entrusted with youth suicide prevention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 131–143 143 references british columbia coroners service. (1998). child and youth suicide in bc: summary of a five year retrospective review. victoria, bc: author. cooper, g. d., clements, p. t., & holt, k. (2011). a review and application of suicide prevention programs in high school settings. issues in mental health nursing, 32(11), 696–702. doan, j., roggenbaum, s., & lazear, k. (2012). youth suicide prevention school-based guide issue brief 1: information dissemination in schools. tampa, fl: department of child and family studies, division of state and local support, louis de la parte florida mental health institute, university of south florida. (fmhi series publication #218-1) dunleavy, j., & milton, p. (2009). what did you do in school today? exploring the concept of student engagement and its implications for teaching and learning in canada. toronto: canadian education association. kalafat, j. (2003). school approaches to youth suicide. american behavioral scientist, 46(9), 1211–1223. parsons, j., & taylor, l. (2011, march). improving student engagement: what do we know and what should we do? edmonton, ab: university of alberta. retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ rilke, r. m. (1954). letters to a young poet (rev. ed.). new york: w.w. norton & company. roth, j., brooks-gunn, j., murray, l., & foster, w. (1998). promoting healthy adolescents: synthesis of youth development program evaluations. journal of research on adolescence, 8(4), 423–459. shernoff, d. j., csikszentmihalyi, m., schneider, b., & shernoff, e. s. (2003). student engagement in high school classrooms from the perspective of flow theory. school psychology quarterly, 18(2), 158–176. white, j., & morris, j. (2010). precarious spaces: risk, responsibility and uncertainty in schoolbased suicide prevention programs. social science &medicine, 71(12), 2187–2194. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.09.046 white, j., morris, j., & hinbest, j. (2012). collaborative knowledge-making in the everyday practice of youth suicide prevention education. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 25(3), 339–355. doi: 10.1080/09518398.2010.529852 http://cie.asu.edu/ dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01612840.2011.597911 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764202250665 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327795jra0804_2 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/scpq.18.2.158.21860 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.09.046 running head: crime prevention in a multicultural society international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 54 understanding risk and protective factors associated with criminal involvement in a multicultural society hieu v. ngo, marian j. rossiter, and cam stewart abstract: this study examined r i sk a nd p r ot ec ti v e f a ct o rs a ss o ci ate d wit h t h e criminal involvement of some members of the ethnocultural community. results from ten focus groups comprised of diverse ethnocultural community members, law enforcement personnel, and service providers in four centres in alberta revealed multiple, complex criminological risk factors related to home country experience, acculturation, strains in community interactions, socioeconomic disparity, negative media influence, and interaction with the criminal justice system. they also highlighted a number of protective factors that have prevented criminal involvement of ethnocultural community members, including family support, the strengths of ethnocultural communities, community engagement and civic participation, and access to social services. insights from the focus groups served as the basis for a theoretical discussion and recommendations for crime prevention in a multicultural society. key words: crime, risk factors, protective factors, ethnocultural, immigrants, visible minorities acknowledgement: this research was made possible by support from the centre for criminology and justice research, mount royal university. we wish to thank the ethnocultural community members, law enforcement personnel, and service providers who participated in the focus groups in the four centres. we appreciate the research assistance of the following justice studies students at mount royal university: chris abtosway, brandon pollon, veronica rosito, and vi tran. hieu v. ngo, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is assistant professor in the faculty of social work, university of calgary, 2500 university drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2n 1n4. email: hngo@ucalgary.ca marian j. rossiter, ph.d. is associate professor in the department of educational psychology, university of alberta, 6-102 education north, edmonton, alberta, canada, t6g 2g5. e-mail: marian.rossiter@ualberta.ca cam stewart, m.a. is a part-time instructor in the department of justice studies, mount royal university, t154, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. e-mail: cgstewart@mtroyal.ca mailto:hngo@ucalgarycalgary.ca mailto:marian.rossiter@ualberta.ca mailto:cgstewart@mtroyal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 55 communities across alberta have become increasingly diverse in terms of their racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds. census data from 2006 show that foreign-born residents and visible minorities make up 16.2% and 13.9% respectively of the province’s population (statistics canada, 2007a, 2008). this diversity enriches alberta economically, politically, socially, and culturally. overall, residents of the province c o n t i n u e t o have a strong sense of safety (see alberta crime reduction and safe communities task force, 2007) congruent with declines in property and violent crime rates, as well as in severity of crime (dauvergne & turner, 2010). however, in recent years, perceptions of criminal involvement of ethnocultural community members have risen, despite lack of evidence to support these fears (see rassel, 2006). unfortunately, the lack of public crime statistics related to immigration status, race, and ethnicity has seriously impeded research efforts to inform the public about the prevalence, patterns, and changes with respect to the criminal involvement of individuals from the various ethnocultural groups. drawing upon the analysis of 10 focus groups comprised of diverse ethnocultural community members, law enforcement personnel, and service providers in four centres in alberta, this article examines criminological risk and protective factors that are specific to ethnocultural communities. background changing demographics alberta has the fourth highest rate of immigration of all the provinces in canada; almost 11.6% (32,642) of all immigrants to canada settled in alberta in 2010 (citizenship and immigration canada, 2011). according to statistics canada (2007b), between 2000 and 2009, immigrants from asia made up more than half of all newcomers to alberta (70.1%), followed by those from europe (12.1%), africa (9.2%), the united states (4.4%), and the caribbean and central and south america (3.7%). these patterns were in sharp contrast to those prior to 1961 when 90.5% of all newcomers arrived from europe. accordingly, the visible minority population has increased; data from statistics canada (2008) reveals that of those who immigrated to alberta between 2000 and 2006, 75% were of visible minority background, the largest groups being chinese (26.5%), south asian (22.9%), filipino (11.2%), african (10.4%), southeast asian (6.3%), latin american (6.0%), and arab (5.8%). almost one-fifth of residents had a native language other than english or french, and almost one-tenth of the population reported that they spoke non-official languages at home (statistics canada, 2007a). projections indicate that this trend toward increasing diversity will accelerate as the province continues to rely on immigration to meet workforce demands (see statistics canada, 2010; bélanger et al., 2005). overview of social, political, and economic realities ethnocultural community members are underrepresented in social, political, and economic spheres in canada. socially, their rates of participation in activities and groups such as sports, hobbies, and community organizations are low (statistics canada, 2003a). they face barriers in accessing language training, housing, and health care (ng, wilkins, gendron, & berthelot, 2005; schellenberg & maheux, 2007), and are underrepresented in senior leadership international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 56 positions in organizations (mcbride-king & benimahdu, 2004). many ethnocultural members have experienced social marginalization, racism, and discrimination (khanlou, koh, & mill, 2008; reitz & banerjee, 2007; statistics canada, 2003a), and resultant mental health issues (davies & stevenson, 2006; zayas, 2001). economically, immigrants’ participation in the labour market has been hindered by a lack of recognition of foreign credentials; furthermore, although twice as many immigrants as canadian-born residents have a university education, immigrant unemployment is higher during the first 10 years of residence (7.3% and 4.9%, respectively; zietsma, 2007), and immigrants earn significantly less than canadian-born residents (corak, 2008). only 42% are employed in their occupation of choice (statistics canada, 2005); a greater proportion work in the sales, service, and manufacturing sectors than canadian-born residents (cheung, 2007; statistics canada, 2003b). second generation canadians from immigrant families achieve higher education and earnings, but ethnocultural background plays a large role in their success. for instance, offspring of chinese and indian immigrants achieve higher levels of education than their counterparts from a portuguese or african heritage (abada, hou, & ram, 2008; abada & tenkorang, 2009; simmons & plaza, 1998), and second generation visible minorities tend to have higher unemployment and lower earnings (aydemir, chen, & corak, 2009; palameta, 2007). in the political sphere, immigrant communities have a potentially strong influence as political parties increasingly appeal to the “ethnic vote”, but they are less likely to cast a ballot during their first 10 years in canada (statistics canada, 2003a). visible minority canadians vote less frequently than non-visible minorities (reitz & banerjee, 2007), and are underrepresented in all levels of government (black & hicks, 2006a, 2006b). criminal involvement of ethnocultural community members in canada, data related to crime, immigration status, race, and ethnicity are not generally available to the public, resulting in a lack of reliable information on diversity and crime to educate the public or inform policies and services. annual reports from the federal correctional system, which is responsible for only a small fraction of all offenders with aggregate sentences of two years or more, provide some statistics in the form of annual reports. in 2009, almost twothirds of offenders in federal prisons were caucasian (65%); of the remainder, 18% were aboriginal, 8% black, 5% asian, 1% hispanic, and 3% other/unknown (public safety and emergency preparedness portfolio corrections statistics committee, 2010). incarceration rates for aboriginals and blacks compared with their proportional representation in canadian society were almost three times higher than the national rates. immigration status is not directly related to criminal involvement, but racial background is tied to gang membership; youth from black, hispanic, and aboriginal backgrounds are more likely than others to become gang members (wortley & tanner, 2006). violent delinquency is more common among second generation youth than among those who were born in canada or immigrated after five years of age (mcmullen, 2009). the findings of the limited canadian studies on criminal involvement of ethnocultural community members are congruent with those from various studies from the united states. firstgeneration immigrants are less frequently involved than native-born residents in violent crime, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 57 homicide, and incarceration (sampson, morenoff, & raudenbush, 2005). rates of incarceration increase, however, with length of residence in the u.s.a. and are particularly high amongst school dropouts (rumbault, gonzales, komaie, morgan, & tafoya-estrada, 2006). morenoff and astor (2006) document the increased involvement in violent crime of secondand thirdgeneration children of immigrants, and of first-generation immigrants who arrived at six years of age or younger and have fewer language barriers than their older counterparts. method focus group the research team used the focus group approach for this study. ten focus group interviews were organized in four centres in alberta, involving a total of 70 representatives of ethnocultural communities, service providers, and law enforcement personnel (see table 1). in city a, four focus groups were conducted, two for ethnocultural communities and two for service provider and law enforcement representatives. in each of the smaller centres, ethnocultural representatives formed one focus group, and law enforcement and service providers made up a second. the structured, audiotaped focus groups lasted from one to three hours. the research team transcribed and used the qualitative softwares, atlas.ti and nvivo, to code and identify key themes, concepts, and relationships among the categories. table 1. focus group participants city number of focus groups ethnocultural community members service providers law enforcement personnel a 4 16 10 8 b 2 7 5 1 c 2 2 7 1 d 2 4 7 2 total 10 29 29 12 participants a total of 70 individuals from diverse ethnocultural communities, the law enforcement sector, and service agencies participated in the ten focus groups. the 29 ethnocultural community representatives (12 women, 17 men) were (a) of african, asian, south asian, middle eastern, or hispanic descent; (b) 18 years or older; (c) residents of alberta for a minimum of 6 months; and (d) able to participate in discussions in english. their average length of residence in alberta was 7 years. all 12 law enforcement personnel and 29 service providers (17 women, 24 men) who participated in the focus group discussions had at least six months’ experience working directly with ethnocultural communities in alberta. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 58 limitations of the study the study had several limitations. since it was based on the perceptions and opinions of the participants, it is possible that not all aspects of the involvement of ethnocultural community members in crime were accurate and free of bias. the short time frame in which this research was conducted did not allow adequate outreach activities to ensure full diversity of ethnocultural groups in the four communities. with respect to the group process, as is often the case with focus groups, some participants might have been more vocal than others in the discussions. results risk factors there was a general consensus among stakeholders that there are multiple, complex risk factors that have led some ethnocultural community members to commit crime. as a service provider pointed out, “it is schwack of issues. it is like peeling an onion.” stakeholders identified a range of risk factors related to home country experience, changing family dynamics, community interaction, socioeconomic disparity, and interaction with the criminal justice system. home country experience and pre-migration preparation many respondents highlighted the exposure of some ethnocultural members to violence prior to their arrival in canada. they pointed out the successive waves of refugees who had escaped violent wars in bosnia, sudan, and elsewhere. they felt that families who lost relatives to crime committed by members of another ethnic group and young men who were child soldiers in their countries of origin might suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and be particularly vulnerable to violent crime. in addition, some participants in the ethnocultural focus groups felt unprepared for the struggles that they faced in canada. they were told by the embassies that their children would have free schooling, but they did not anticipate that their expectations would not be met, that they would live in poverty, and that crime might thereby become part of their life in canada. we come and we don’t get the fulfillment of what we are expecting, you know. it causes us to be disconnected from the society. it seems that the only avenue they’re put on is the avenue to commit crime. they’re blocked off from every other opportunity, but the one to commit crime is wide open. (ethnocultural community member) family dynamics as articulated by a number of respondents, the experience of immigration and acculturation can cause family disruption and tension. many workers who arrived in canada alone have been challenged by the practical and emotional hurdles involved in bringing their families to canada and taking care of them once they are reunited. limited employment opportunities place stresses on workers and their families, which could create interpersonal tensions. some ethnocultural families have struggled to accept changing gender roles. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 59 inability of some male partners or parents to adjust their expectations of their spouses or daughters could result in domestic violence. many respondents echoed the belief that the varying levels of acculturation and conflicting life perspectives among family members weaken familial bonds and interactions, which in turn often results in inadequate parental guidance, the increased vulnerability of young people to negative influences, and experimentation with or sustained able engagement in unlawful activity. they were particularly concerned about the broad generation gap between first generation immigrants and their canadian-born children. i see that some of these children are having an identity crisis because they consider themselves as canadians and their parents still hold onto the beliefs and the traditions and the culture. so that leads to a big gap, and it comes to a point that some of the kids are beyond parental control, because they just don’t see eye to eye. (ethnocultural community member) indeed, many respondents were concerned about erosion or underdevelopment of cultural identity among young ethnocultural members. they attributed this lack of an empowering cultural identity to rifts in family interactions, rejection of heritage culture, and internalization of negative cultural stereotypes. i know these muslim kids who have been in canada for three or four years. they started to discover about drugs. i have parents calling kids into my office and said, "look what i found in his room marijuana." these young immigrants dive in headfirst. they haven’t had the training in how to handle that kind of stuff. (social services representative) respondents also observed role reversal in the parent-child relationship, where young people take on leadership roles to support their parents with language interpretation, understanding of new cultural norms, and, in some cases, financial assistance. they considered that these changes in power dynamics and sense of responsibility could set the stage for some young people to navigate the underworld and engage in illegal activities to support their families. some respondents stated that young people also took advantage of their parents’ limited english to mislead them with regard to their trouble with the law. stakeholders pointed out that the practical demands of life in canada and financial responsibility for other family members in the home country have led many ethnocultural community members to overextend themselves with work. in their view, long working hours could hinder parents’ ability to be actively involved in their children’s lives, particularly in providing social opportunities and guidance to their children, especially in single parent households with limited financial capacity. i am working with families that they are getting paid minimal wage and they are working constantly and so their children are unsupervised. their children are pretty much alone to do a lot of things on their own. they tend to stray and seek approval from friends even if it's negative. (social services representative) another respondent explained the cultural consequences of not having extended family in canada: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 60 in our culture, we can bring kids to our sisters and siblings, family, or relatives, leave them there and be assured they will be in good hands. here, we have a different system and we don’t have very much family support. (ethnocultural community member) having to depend on canadian caregivers in daycare facilities was reported to contribute to the acquisition of conflicting values, such as the development of independence at an early age, thus leading to cultural dissonance. a few respondents observed that due to differing beliefs regarding acceptable parenting methods, many ethnocultural families have encountered serious trouble when parents use corporal punishment. one ethnocultural community member stated: “the kids have more authority than a parent because they report it to the school and now child services gets involved and then in two weeks the whole family collapses”. they pointed out that, due to a fear of involvement of child protection services, some parents simply avoid disciplining their children altogether, which in turn can encourage young people to continue undesirable behaviours and, in some cases, move toward involvement in delinquent activity. several respondents were concerned that parents with a criminal history have exposed or involved their children in illegal activity, particularly in drug-related crime. community interaction according to stakeholders, complexities in the interactions between ethnocultural community members and the broader community have given rise to some criminological risk factors, including social isolation and lack of access to community support, cultural insularity, racism and discrimination, and absence of a sense of belonging. a lack of english proficiency and unfamiliarity with canadian norms and customs have hindered the abilities of some ethnocultural members to cultivate and maintain cross-cultural social networks. respondents noted a lack of knowledge of community resources and support among ethnocultural community members, as well as a limited access to existing services. they asserted that in some instances, ethnocultural community members neither identify with professional support nor trust the existing services in the larger community. one social services representative explained: “the families are afraid to send their kids to after-school programs because they think they will come back corrupt”. respondents were quick to point out that many ethnocultural community members also do not receive or access social services and support in their cultural communities due to a lack of community capacity, or because, fearing social stigmatization, they choose not to access the existing support: we don’t usually learn about anger management or stress management. and we don’t seek counseling because there is so much stigma there. it’s just like you are going to go see a counselor because you are ill, you are crazy, in your mind. (ethnocultural community member) many respondents indicated that racism and discrimination have alienated some ethnocultural community members. they shared incidents of racism and acknowledged the invisible cultural divides in their communities. some respondents perceived the cultural insularity in some ethnocultural communities as a hindrance to crime prevention: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 61 often you can say you can take the person out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the person. so what you find is that they have the bond, the trust, they have built upon themselves within their own communities. they literally shelter themselves, and, good or bad, they stand by it. so the challenge is actually being able to go in, going back to the trust, and how do you break in? how do you get them to buy in and how do you get them to engage? (law enforcement officer) furthermore, stakeholders were concerned that many ethnocultural members, especially young people, do not have access to positive role models and are not involved in community and civic activities. they also identified exposure to negative media influences, notably in video games, television shows, or violent content on the internet as a risk factor for criminal involvement: black ops it’s all about killing and it’s really bloody scenes and it really influences. many young people play it almost every day, like they’re addicted. they love that kind of experience, so they probably want to experience it in life. (ethnocultural community member) inequitable socioeconomic realities stakeholders attributed the criminal involvement of some members to inequitable socioeconomic realities facing ethnocultural populations. they observed that many immigrants have limited access to employment opportunities and well-paid positions due to a lack of recognition by employers of foreign credentials and experience or, for some ethnocultural community members, due to a lack of english language skills and/or limited access to education and training. they contended that disenchantment with their economic prospects in canada, compounded by financial responsibilities to extended families in their home country, could make profitable illegal activity an appealing option for some ethnocultural members. there is money to be made [illegally], so why not get a good part of that? as opposed to working at lakeside [packers], getting up early and wrecking your body. what also leads some people to get involved in criminal activity is unemployment due to their limited english skills, [or] their credentials are not recognized here. they come home, they’re frustrated, they’re not living their purpose, they get angry with family members. (social services representative) several respondents were concerned that not only do many ethnocultural community members not have their fair share of employment opportunities, but their children also lack access to responsive education and services. stakeholders were concerned about: the practice of age-appropriate placement in schools that put young people with little prior education in high grade levels without adequate specialized educational and social support; the lack of support for both children and youth to develop english language proficiency; and an overall lack of advocacy for ethnocultural learners in the education system. a social services representative noted: “young people don’t have advocates for them at all, so it’s easy for them just to jump on the other side, where it’s easy to be accepted into a gang”. a few respondents argued that discriminatory practices and limited socioeconomic and educational opportunities have perpetuated a sense of disconnection and marginalization among international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 62 some ethnocultural members. they observed that after some time many immigrants have become disillusioned: you come to canada because of the opportunity for your dream and your kids to have a better life, compared to where you came from. but when you come to the end, and this is the end of it, you become hopeless. you don’t know what to do. you become isolated, confused. you just don’t care. (ethnocultural community member) furthermore, respondents identified poverty as a major risk factor for becoming involved in crime. they pointed out that those newcomers who bring money with them spend it on housing and utilities within the first few months and then become destitute. they also noted that some low income families have relied on subsidized housing by the government, and in some cases, members of one ethnic community are housed in the same complex to create social cohesion in the community, but they end up living in a ghetto. several respondents observed that after the financial support from the federal government ends, the income of some immigrant families may decrease, and criminal activity may become more common in the neighbourhood. they also argued that homelessness is a stressor that can lead to intentional criminal acts by some ethnocultural members, who then find refuge in jail. a few respondents were critical of the refugee transportation loan which created a great financial burden on newcomers and pushed some refugees toward criminal involvement. they pointed out that loans may amount to $10,000 plus interest for families (with additional loans to children over the age of 18): a lot of refugee families are working to repay the loan, and there were some cases that they decided, “okay, we have a big family and we have a big loan to repay. we need to sacrifice by sending one or two children to the gang or to commit some crimes so that they can make money quickly and repay the loans”. (ethnocultural member) interaction with the criminal justice system in the justice arena, stakeholders observed that some ethnocultural community members lacked knowledge of canadian law, which led to violations. several respondents recounted incidents where newcomers struggled to understand complex legal language and procedures, as well as nuanced assumptions about law enforcement in canada: the barriers are things like language. the criminal justice system is confusing. half of my job is trying to explain the process to youth or to parents because it’s a very confusing system. if you have never been in the system before and don’t know what’s going on. (social service representative) to complicate matters, stakeholders pointed out that some ethnocultural community members came from countries where the laws regarding certain offences, such as domestic violence or drinking and driving, were not enforced. a few participants insisted that foreign-born residents may perceive the canadian criminal justice system to be lenient, and thus do not find judicial sentencing a stern deterrent to criminal involvement: [gang activity] is a high-risk business in itself, but you know, in canada there is no death sentence, so who cares? and you can get bail easily, and it’s so easy for people to be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 63 offered, for example, the grow-op business. you can get a few hundred, tens of thousands of dollars within a month or so, so why not? it’s so easy. (ethnocultural community member) some ethnocultural community members, however, disagreed. they felt that the criminal justice system does not take into account the lack of understanding of canadian laws and that it fails to give newcomers a second chance: our system makes us criminals from day one because, for example, someone arrives in this country. within one week, they don’t know how the law functions here. and then he drives a car without maybe having a license one day and, some days, drink and drive, and the license is confiscated. that would affect him not to get a job, because a vehicle is very important here. and if he fails to get a job, the only activity could involve drugs. (ethnocultural community member) a few respondents saw contact with the correctional system itself as a risk of criminal involvement. they encountered young people who had learned from other inmates to become more skillful in their criminal activity: even getting caught and thrown in jail is a bit of a status symbol for some of these kids. they go in for a month, right, and then they come out better skilled. they actually receive a bit of respect from their peers, right? because now they’re a bad person – they’ve been in jail. (youth worker) protective factors focus group participants emphasized that, in spite of tremendous challenges, most ethnocultural community members are law-abiding citizens. they identified a number of effective factors that have prevented the criminal involvement of ethnocultural community members, including family support, the strengths of ethnocultural communities, community engagement and civic participation, and access to social services. family support stakeholders identified active parental involvement and effective parental guidance as key to crime prevention. they noted that many ethnocultural community members are familyoriented and enjoy strong bonds and support from immediate and extended family members. several respondents observed that in healthy families, parents pay a great deal of attention to their children and provide them with guidance, structure, and plenty of opportunities for positive social development. they also pointed out that young people look up to other family members for life choices and inspiration. my parents kept us very busy with sports and were very diligent with keeping us in our routine. they were on top of us for pretty much every minute of our day, with either sports or chores...he [father] would always sit down and he just literally just watched me and my brother do our homework until we were done. (ethnocultural community member) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 64 family values, with emphases on family honour and family togetherness, were also seen by participants as protective factors. respondents from southeast asian communities in particular explained that youth who committed delinquent acts brought collective shame on their family and their community. expectations of good behaviour are impressed upon youth from the outset. some respondents pointed out that the tradition of children living with their parents until marriage in some cultures can also served as a protective influence. furthermore, respect for parents and an understanding of parental expectations help children and youth to think about the consequences of behaviour. a respondent stated that if parents do not pay attention to where their children go, what they do, or who they spend time with, their children may get into trouble. this individual felt that parental supervision helped to lower the risk of criminal involvement, although it created cultural conflict for youth who espoused the independence promoted by canadian culture. strengths of ethnocultural communities respondents recognized that the close-knit nature of various ethnocultural communities and their strong communal values discouraged individuals from engaging in activity disapproved of by their communities, while, at the same time, enabling community leaders and members to stay abreast of challenges facing individuals and to provide them with timely support. some respondents cited the availability of mentors and role models in ethnocultural communities as a strong deterrent to crime. they pointed out that an informal network of mentors and role models provides natural community support that is more readily understood and embraced by many ethnocultural community members. if you have a problem, you have your aunty or eldest in the family come together. they talk to you, they solve the problem. you don’t have to go to a counselor or someone that is not a relative. (ethnocultural community member) many respondents from various ethnocultural communities asserted that religion provides a protective influence. in their view, religious institutions provide natural community gathering places where ethnocultural community members readily benefit from moral guidance and practical and psychosocial support for positive integration. they pointed out that many immigrant families from middle eastern or south asian communities have accessed services through religious organizations. some respondents believed that religious teaching serves to remind individuals of ethical choices and the consequences of their behaviour. another ethnocultural respondent explained that members of his church had been very supportive: “it has been a blessing for us because they have become our friends, our family, and everything, like we used to have in our country. people who we share our problems, our worries”. broad community engagement and civic participation respondents agreed that active participation in all aspects of canadian life would mitigate the risk of ethnocultural community members committing crime. they particularly highlighted the importance of volunteerism in cultivating a commitment to the well-being of the community, in utilizing skills and potential in positive ways, and in creating meaning in one’s life. they pointed out that at a practical level, participation in voluntary activities enables many immigrants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 65 to improve their english and to gain canadian experience, and thus to broaden their access to legitimate employment opportunities: volunteerism, especially for youth, will help deter them from doing crime. some of these youth have good leadership and organizational skills. volunteerism gives them new vocabulary and opportunities to show what they are good at. this empowers them. (social services representative) some respondents shared the view that accessing positive community gathering places could deter criminal involvement. they observed that many communities have used community centres and public libraries as safe, open spaces to provide after-school activities for young people and opportunities for all community members to socialize and learn with others. one of the things we do at the library is we have some interactive video games in the basement. we have the friday afternoon after-school program for teens…and so you have a way to keep them engaged, to keep them involved. (librarian) several participants also identified integrated residence as a factor mitigating social solitude and ghettoization, which can make some members vulnerable to recruitment from organized criminal groups. a social services representative from one centre took pride in the city’s success in achieving proportionate distribution of ethnocultural members in all communities. access to social services respondents agreed that access to timely, effective social services steers some ethnocultural community members away from criminal activity. they recognized that in spite of funding restraints, agencies have managed to provide a wide range of integration services to immigrants, ranging from language and life skills training to after-school programs for youth and classes on parenting and canadian law. they also noted the benefits of various organizations’ efforts to hire staff from diverse cultural backgrounds, to provide culturally responsive services and serve as positive role models for young people. there was an emphasis on availability of early prevention and after-school programs as a protective measure. respondents explained that, through these programs, young people are involved in recreational activities and receive educational and social support. they recognized the importance of early prevention and intervention programs that provide outreach and support to disadvantaged, behaviourally challenging children and youth. a few service providers found that leadership programs for youth with a criminal history can prevent recidivism: we have some programs for youth with some sort of leadership qualities to make them community ambassadors. when the kids are told, “you’ve been identified by someone in the community as a leader”, and the kids say, “i just got out of jail and now you want me to be a leader”, you know it just changes that whole perception of how they feel about themselves. (social services representative) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 66 discussion drawing upon what was learned from the focus groups with ethnocultural community members, law enforcement personnel, and service providers in southern alberta, this study identified the multiple risk factors related to home country experience, family dynamics, community interaction, socioeconomic opportunities, and interactions with the justice system that have contributed to the criminal involvement of some ethnocultural community members. at the same time, it was pointed out that the various protective factors, including family support, strengths of ethnocultural communities, broad community engagement and civic participation, and access to services can mitigate the risk of unlawful activity. our findings supported the world health organization’s (2002) ecological framework for identifying risk factors associated with crime, which asserts that individuals are affected not only by their individual characteristics and experiences (e.g., mental health, prior victimization, and substance abuse), but also by their relationships (e.g., family violence, crime-involved friends), the community in which they live (e.g., transient, high-crime neighbourhoods), and society at large (e.g., socioeconomic disparity). the findings lent support to the assertion that no single factor predisposes a person to become involved in crime, and that the greater the exposure to risk and the greater the absence of protective factors, the more likely it is that an individual will commit a crime (blum, mcneely, & nonnemaker, 2002; farrington & welsh, 2007; the institute for the prevention of crime, 2007). in addition, our findings located the risk and protective factors in the unique experiences of immigration and acculturation of ethnocultural members, and their complex interactions with canadian institutions. theoretically, the findings of this study illuminated both functionalist and structuralist criminological perspectives. echoing the functionalist focus on the behaviour of individuals during a period of social anomie (see durkheim, 1897/1952), they brought attention to the difficulties experienced by some ethnocultural members in coping with pre-migration and resettlement challenges (e.g., pre-migration trauma, lack of knowledge about canadian norms, limited english), and in adapting to changing roles and expectations (e.g., gender roles, generational gap). at the same time, they were congruent with the structuralist school of thought which links crime to economic, social, and political inequities (see bonger, 1936; quinney, 1970). our findings provided ample evidence of ethnocultural members who have struggled to gain access to employment opportunities and been denied responsive education and services. they also raised questions about social exclusion and the racialization of poverty. this study suggested an intricate interplay within the social construction of crime of individual capacity to achieve positive integration into canadian society and the prevalent socioeconomic inequities facing many ethnoculutral members. crime prevention strategies in the context of a multicultural society, thus, ought to be comprehensive, coordinated, and culturally responsive, and address the three levels of prevention (see brantingham & faust, 1976): namely, primary prevention (the general public or environment); secondary prevention (those at risk of committing crime); and tertiary prevention (those at risk of re-offending). at the primary level, prevention strategies can promote policies and programs that build social harmony and cohesion through cultural exchange and public education, address the continuum of resettlement (e.g., language and literacy training, cultural orientation) and integration (e.g., sustainable livelihood, citizenship education, civic participation) needs of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 67 ethnocultural members, and strengthen access of ethnocultural members to culturally competent services in health, education, social services, and justice (see canadian council for refugees, 1998; cross, bazron, dennis, & isaacs, 1989; ngo, 2008, 2009a). at the secondary level, prevention strategies can focus on the availability of and access to family-based, communitybased and school-based support by ethnocultural members most at risk of committing crime. there are opportunities for stakeholders in all sectors – including the various levels of government, education, social services, and business – to develop and/or strengthen programs and services to address the key issues identified in this study such as english language education, literacy support, employment training, domestic violence and conflict resolution, acculturative gaps, pre-migration trauma, housing, and sustainable employment. community development initiatives can help mobilize and involve community members in collaborative efforts to improve the surroundings and conditions that are conducive to unlawful activity. finally, for those ethnocultural members with a criminal history, tertiary prevention strategies can focus on their positive reintegration into the community. former gang-involved ethnocultural members who have successfully reintegrated into their ethnocultural communities and broad canadian society, for instance, identified strong family support and access to timely, coordinated support and services, employment and education opportunities, and mentorship as effective tertiary strategies (see ngo, 2009b). conclusion this study sheds light on the risk and protective factors affecting criminal involvement in a multicultural society. our findings validated the risk and protective factors highlighted in the existing literature, notably individual characteristics, family dynamics, access to socioeconomic opportunities, and the importance of the community environment. theoretically, the findings reinforced both the functionalist and structuralist perspectives on criminology. this study made a unique contribution in presenting the specific issues facing ethnocultural community members, such as pre-migration experiences, acculturative challenges, specific socioeconomic inequities as related to immigrant and/or visible minority status, and access to culturally responsive supports and services. additionally, the study demonstrated that effective crime prevention in a multicultural society requires coordination and comprehensiveness, and must address the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of prevention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 54–71 68 references abada, t., hou, f., & ram, b. 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(2006a). visible minorities and under-representation: the views of candidates. electoral insight, 8(2). retrieved from http://www.elections.ca/res/eim/article_search/article.asp?id=145&lang=e&frmpagesize=5. relative contributions of elder siblings’ versus parents’ acceptance and behavioral control to the psychological adjustment of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 209 relative contributions of elder siblings’ versus parents’ acceptance and behavioral control to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings in turkey ronald p. rohner, azmi varan, and nicholas koberstein abstract: this study explores the differential contribution of elder siblings’ versus parents’ acceptance and behavioral control to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings in turkey. one hundred eighty younger siblings (m = 12.38 years) in intact nuclear families with at least one older sibling (m = 15.79 years) responded to four selfreports. results of simple regression analyses showed that younger siblings’ perceptions of older siblings’, mothers’, and fathers’ acceptance (but not behavioral control) each made a unique contribution to the psychological adjustment of the younger siblings. hierarchical regression analyses, however, showed that younger brothers’ perceptions of older sisters’ acceptance did not make a unique contribution to the boys’ adjustment. but all other sibling pairs did contribute uniquely to the adjustment of younger siblings. keywords: sibling acceptance, parental acceptance, behavioral control, psychological adjustment acknowledgement: the authors wish to thank neşe ç. özyavru for her contribution to the data collection process. ronald p. rohner, ph.d., the corresponding author, is professor emeritus of family studies and anthropology in the department of human development and family studies, university of connecticut, unit 2058, 348 mansfield road, storrs, ct, u.s.a., 06269-2058. telephone: (860) 486-0073, fax: (860) 486-3452. e-mail: r.rohner@uconn.edu azmi varan, ph.d. is an associate professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry, school of medicine, ege university, 35100 bornova, izmir, turkey. email: azmi.varan@ege.edu.tr nicholas koberstein is a ph.d. candidate in the department of human development and family studies, university of connecticut. e-mail: nicholas.koberstein@uconn.edu mailto:r.rohner@uconn.edu mailto:azmi.varan@ege.edu.tr mailto:nicholas.koberstein@uconn.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 210 even though a great part of developmental research has focused on parent-child relationships, an emerging literature shows that sibling relationships are also important (gamble, yu, & kuehn, 2011; waite, shanahan, calkins, keane, & o’brien, 2011). research in recent decades, for example, has shown that siblings often spend more time with each other than with parents (waters, 1987). moreover, it is uncommon for siblings to discontinue their relationship with each other, even if the relational experience has been mostly negative (cicirelli, 1985; ross & milgram, 1982). beyond this, siblings often serve as confidantes, teachers, role models, and friends (cicirelli, 1985), even though close contact often decreases over the lifespan (pulakos, 1987). much of the early work on siblings focused on such structural characteristics of the sibling relationship as age spacing, birth order, and gender composition. however, these early studies tended to show that structural characteristics made only a small contribution to children’s development and adjustment. more recent research on sibling relationships has focused on four issues: (a) the developmental course of the sibling relationship over time (feinberg & hetherington, 2000; kim, mchale, crouter, & osgood, 2007); (b) the link between sibling relations and other family and peer relationships (bryant, 1992; milevsky, schlechter, & machlev, 2011); (c) differentiation of siblings (feinberg, mchale, crouter, & cumsille, 2003; hetherington, reiss, & plomin, 1994); and, (d) the contributions of the sibling relationship to individual development and adjustment (hetherington & clingempeel, 1992; krienert & walsh, 2011). research discussed in this article emphasizes one aspect of the latter issue, specifically the contribution of the sibling relationship to individual psychological adjustment. with respect to that, for example, past research has shown that teaching and caregiving experiences in sibling relationships can benefit both younger and older siblings in terms of emotional, cognitive, language, and psychosocial adjustment and development (brody, 2004). an overall nurturing sibling relationship often has elements of conflict, however. in fact, a positive sibling relationship is thought by brody (2004) to contain a balance of both nurturance and conflict. this type of relationship has been shown to provide a basis for healthy psychosocial development, the understanding of emotions, perspective taking, appropriate management of anger, conflictresolution skills, and the ability to be nurturing (brody, 2004). sibling conflict, however, can also increase the likelihood that a younger sibling will not receive prosocial and responsive care (mchale & crouter, 1996). and children growing up with an aggressive older sibling have been found to have a higher risk of internalizing, externalizing, and conduct disorders among other problems (bank, patterson, & reid, 1996; krienert & walsh, 2011; stocker & burwell, 2002). further, negative feelings originating in the sibling relationship during childhood may persist into adulthood (ross & milgram, 1982). bank et al. (1996) also noted that chronically high conflict in the sibling relationship may serve as an arena for the development of aggressive behavior, and campione-barr and smetana (2010) reported that sibling conflict was negatively associated with the quality of sibling relationships. on the other hand, research focusing on the benefits of positive and nurturing sibling relationships has been shown to be associated with an increase in the development of social understanding and positive outlook (dunn, 1999). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 211 nurturing sibling relationships provide an environment for cooperative pretend play and other opportunities to enhance children’s social understanding and peer group interactions (downey & condron, 2004). the great majority of studies dealing with the impact of sibling relationships on youths’ psychological adjustment have been drawn from american samples. only recently have studies begun to appear from other nations (lecce, pagnin, & pinto, 2009; modestin, marrer, & agarwalla, 2008; ripoll, carrillo, & castro, 2009). as a result, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which conclusions found in north america can be generalized to other sociocultural systems. the study reported here helps to redress that shortcoming. more specifically, we tested in turkey the sibling portion of one of parental acceptancerejection theory’s (partheory’s) central postulates. the postulate states that the psychological adjustment of children everywhere throughout the world – regardless of differences in culture, race, language, gender, or other such defining conditions – is likely to be affected in a specific way (described below in the acceptance-rejection syndrome) when they perceive themselves to be accepted or rejected by their parents, siblings, or other attachment figures. the acceptancerejection syndrome (rohner, 2004) is composed of two complementary sets of factors. first, it asserts that four classes of accepting-rejecting behaviors appear to universally convey the symbolic message that “my parent, sibling, or other attachment figure loves me (or does not love me – i.e., rejects me)”. these behaviors include perceived warmth/affection (or coldness and the lack of affection), indifference/neglect, hostility/aggression, and undifferentiated rejection. second, the acceptance-rejection syndrome asserts that the psychological adjustment of children and adults (as defined by the following personality dispositions) tends universally to vary directly with the level of perceived acceptance or rejection. in particular, the acceptancerejection syndrome specifies that individuals who perceive themselves to be rejected by attachment figures at any point in life are likely to develop problems with: 1. anger, hostility, aggression, passive aggression, or problems with the management of hostility and aggression; 2. dependence or defensive independence depending on the form, frequency, duration, timing, and intensity of the perceived rejection; 3. negative self-esteem; 4. negative self-adequacy; 5. emotional instability; 6. emotional unresponsiveness; and 7. negative worldview. taken together, these seven personality dispositions are used in partheory as an overall measure of psychological adjustment. additionally, perceived rejection by an attachment figure is also expected to be panculturally associated with: 8. anxiety; 9. insecurity; and 10. distorted social-cognitive orientations (mental representations). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 212 the theoretical rationale for including these issues in personality subtheory and the acceptancerejection syndrome is discussed in rohner (1986, 2004), and elsewhere. a huge body of data summarized in meta-analyses by khaleque and rohner (2002b, 2012a, 2012b) and by rohner and khaleque (2010) as well as elsewhere (rohner & britner, 2002) overwhelmingly supports the postulate with respect to the effects of perceived rejection in the parent-child relationship. strong supportive international evidence is also emerging with respect to perceived acceptance-rejection in adult intimate relationships (rohner & melendez, 2008). the study described here, however, is the first partheory-based study to explicitly test for possible international generalizability of the postulate in the context of sibling relationships. more specifically, this study examines the differential contribution of elder siblings’ versus parents’ acceptance and behavioral control to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings in turkey. methods sample characteristics the sample consisted of 180 younger siblings reflecting on the behavior of their elder siblings along with both their mothers and fathers. eighty-seven of the younger siblings were females; 91 were males, and two failed to identify their gender. ninety-four of the elder siblings were females; 86 were males. younger siblings varied in age from 8 through 17 years (m = 12.38 years, sd = 1.90). elder siblings varied in age from 12 through 18 years (m = 15.79 years, sd = 1.43). sibling pairs varied in age difference from one to eight years, but on average (m = 3.42 years, sd = 1.68) there was an approximately three-and-a-half year spread between the age of the younger sibling and the older sibling. on average, families of the sibling pairs were middle to low socioeconomic status; 24% of the mothers and 37% of the fathers had a high school or more education. procedures the study was conducted through seven elementary schools and high schools in izmir, turkey. parents of the school children, all of whom lived in intact nuclear families with at least one older or younger sibling, were invited to allow their child to participate in the study. after securing informed consent from parents and assent from the children, the youths responded in school during a single class period to the four questionnaires, described next. measures turkish-language versions of four measures were used in this research. these included: (a) the child version of the parental acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire for mothers (child parq/control: mother; rohner, 2005); (b) the child version of the parental acceptancerejection/control questionnaire for fathers (child parq/control: father; rohner, 2005); (c) the elder sibling acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire (esar/cq; rohner, 2008); and (d) the child version of the personality assessment questionnaire (child paq; rohner & khaleque, 2005). each of these questionnaires is described more fully below. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 213 child version of the parental acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire for mothers and for fathers (child parq/control: mother and father). the mother and father versions of the parq/control are almost identical 73-item questionnaires designed to assess children’s perceptions of maternal and paternal acceptance and behavioral control, respectively. both versions consist of five scales. the first four scales (60 items) measure children’s perceptions of parental warmth/affection, hostility/aggression, indifference/neglect, and undifferentiated rejection. undifferentiated rejection refers to children’s belief that their parents do not really love them, want them, or care about them without necessarily experiencing any clear behavioral indicators that the parents are truly neglecting, aggressive, or unaffectionate toward them. the fifth scale (13 items) measures perceived parental behavioral control. sample items on the acceptance-rejection portion of the mother version of the measure include: “my mother makes me feel wanted and needed” (perceived warmth/affection); “my mother goes out of her way to hurt my feelings” (perceived hostility/aggression); “my mother ignores me as long as i do nothing to bother her” (perceived indifference/neglect); and, “my mother does not really love me” (perceived undifferentiated rejection). children respond to items such as these on a four-point likert scale from (4) “almost always true” through (1) “almost never true”. scores on the four acceptance-rejection scales are summed (after reverse scoring the warmth/affection scale to create a measure of perceived parental coldness/lack of affection), producing an overall measure of perceived maternal and paternal acceptance-rejection that ranges from a possible low score of 60 (maximum perceived acceptance) to a possible high score of 240 (maximum perceived rejection). scores at or above 150 reveal the experience of significantly more caregiver rejection than acceptance. analyses of the reliability and validity of the acceptance-rejection portion of the measure show it to be robust in national and cross-cultural research. for example, a meta-analysis of 7,152 respondents within the u.s. and cross-culturally revealed a mean weighted effect size of coefficient alpha aggregated across all versions of the parq/control to be .89 (khaleque & rohner, 2002b). coefficient alpha of the acceptance-rejection portion of the turkish measure used in this study were .96 for mothers and .97 for fathers. possible scores on the behavioral control scale spread from a low of 13 (minimum behavioral control, or extreme permissiveness) to a high of 52 (maximum behavioral control, or restrictive control). a sample item on this scale says, “my mother wants to control whatever i do”. the scale was designed in such a way that scores between 13 and 26 indicate low/lax control (permissiveness); scores between 27 through 39 indicate moderate behavioral control; and, scores between 46 through 52 indicate strict/restrictive behavioral control. a meta-analysis of the behavioral control scale in 11 studies cross-culturally (rohner & khaleque, 2003) showed that the mean weighted effect size of the scale aggregated across all versions of the scale and across all samples was .73. alpha coefficients of the behavioral control scale used in this study were .73 for mothers, and .75 for fathers. elder sibling acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire (esar/cq). the esar/cq is a newly created measure that mirrors the child parq/control. it too is a 73-item questionnaire international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 214 containing the same items as the child version of the parq/control. in this case, however, younger siblings reflect on the accepting and behaviorally controlling behaviors of a specific older sibling. the esar/cq contains the same five scales as the parq/control. the first four scales (60 items) measure younger siblings’ perceptions of their older siblings’ warmth/affection, hostility/aggression, indifference/neglect, and undifferentiated rejection. the fifth scale (13 items) measures younger siblings’ perceptions of their older siblings’ behavioral control. sample items on the acceptance-rejection portion of the measure include: “my elder sibling says nice things about me” (perceived warmth/affection); “my elder sibling ridicules and makes fun of me (perceived hostility/aggression); “my elder sibling totally ignores me” (perceived indifference/neglect); and “my elder sibling does not really love me” (perceived undifferentiated rejection). younger siblings respond to items such as these on the same fourpoint likert scale described for the child parq/control. additionally, scores on the four acceptance-rejection scales are summed in the same way as on the child parq/control, thus creating an overall measure of perceived elder sibling acceptance. the behavioral control scale is almost identical in structure and content to the child parq/control. however, items in this scale are phrased to be appropriate for older siblings. for example, one item in the scale states, “my elder sibling is always telling me how i should behave”. because the esar/cq is newly created, it has little history of evidence about its reliability and validity. however, coefficient alpha on the acceptance-rejection portion of the measure in this sample was .81; alpha coefficient for the behavioral control scale was .76. moreover, an exploratory factor analysis of the measure produced, as expected, a rejection factor, an acceptance factor, a strict behavioral control factor, and a permissive behavioral control factor (varan, 2009). this evidence supports the conclusion that the esar/cq is a reliable measure for use in turkey. child version of the personality assessment questionnaire (child paq). the child paq is a 42-item questionnaire designed to assess children’s self-reports about their overall psychological adjustment. it is composed of seven personality dispositions including: hostility/ aggression, emotional responsiveness, dependence or defensive independence, self-esteem, self-adequacy, emotional stability, and worldview. sample items on the child paq include: “i think about fighting or being mean” (hostility/aggression); “i like my parents to make a fuss over me when i’m hurt or sick” (dependence); “i like myself” (positive self-esteem); “i can compete successfully for things i want” (positive self-adequacy); “it is easy for me to show my friends that i really like them” (emotional responsiveness); “it is unusual for me to get angry or upset” (emotional stability); and, “i think the world is a good, happy place” (positive worldview). children respond to items such as these on a four-point likert scale from (4) “almost always true of me” through (1) “almost never true of me”. a profile of children’s overall selfreported psychological adjustment is achieved by summing the seven scale-scores after reverse scoring needed items. scores on the measure can spread from a low of 42, indicating healthy psychological adjustment, to a possible high of 168, indicating serious psychological international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 215 maladjustment. the mean weighted alpha coefficient of the paq in nine studies internationally was .83 (khaleque & rohner, 2002a). alpha coefficient of the turkish version of the child paq in this study was .88. additional evidence about the reliability and validity of the child paq is provided in rohner and khaleque (2005). because psychological adjustment is the outcome variable in this research, and because all measures used were self-reported by younger siblings, it is important to document the validity of children’s reports about their own psychological adjustment using the paq. here, two external sources of evidence from foster parents and from school social workers and guidance counselors are germane. in the first source, cournoyer (1989) reported in a sample of 50 foster families that children’s paq scores correlated strongly (r = .64, p < .001) with foster mothers’ reports about the children’s behavior and psychological adjustment on the cbcl (achenbach & edelbrock, 1983). further evidence about the validity of children’s self-reports comes from school social workers and guidance counselors in a study by rohner, bourque, and elordi (1996). in that study school professionals informally evaluated the psychological adjustment of 281 school children on a four-point likert scale from (1) no discernable psychological problem to (4) severe psychological problems. their evaluations – though informal – correlated significantly (p < .001) with children’s reports on the paq. substantial additional evidence regarding the validity of children’s self-reports on the paq is provided in rohner and khaleque (2005). results both younger boys and younger girls generally perceived themselves to be accepted by their older siblings, mothers, and fathers. additionally, younger boys and girls also tended to perceive their older siblings, mothers, and fathers to be moderate in behavioral control. moreover, both younger boys and girls tended to self-report healthy psychological adjustment. finally, we should note that there were no significant gender differences between younger boys and younger girls in any of the major variables included in this study. accordingly, all further analyses involving younger siblings were pooled across genders. furthermore, t tests showed that younger siblings tended not to report significant differences in their older brothers’ versus older sisters’ accepting or behaviorally controlling behaviors. accordingly, all further analyses involving elder siblings were also pooled across genders. table 1 displays intercorrelations among the major variables in this study, as perceived by younger siblings. there one can see that younger siblings’ perceptions of their older siblings’ acceptance correlated significantly with the psychological adjustment of the younger siblings. this was also true of the younger siblings’ perceptions of both maternal and paternal acceptance. additionally, maternal control (but neither elder sibling nor paternal control) correlated significantly but weakly (r = .16) with the psychological adjustment of the younger youths. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 216 table 1. intercorrelations among major variables, as perceived by younger siblings. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 elder siblings’ 1. acceptance -- 2. behavioral control -.01 -- mothers’ 3. acceptance .61*** .01 -- 4. behavioral control -.02 .56*** .02 -- fathers’ 5. acceptance .41*** .01 .60*** -.07 -- 6. behavioral control -.08 .57*** -.06 .57*** -.17* -- 7. psychological adjustment .55*** .12 .55*** .16* .48* .03 -- * p < .05, *** p < .001. further inspection of table 1 reveals that not only were perceived elder sibling and parental acceptance – along with perceived maternal control – correlated significantly with the younger youths’ psychological adjustment, but perceived elder sibling, maternal, and paternal acceptance were also significantly correlated with each other. this fact raised the question: what, if any, unique or independent contribution do perceived elder sibling, maternal, or paternal acceptance make to the psychological adjustment of the younger youths? in order to answer this question we computed a simple multiple regression analysis, with perceived elder sibling, maternal, and paternal acceptance as the predictor variables, and younger youths’ psychological adjustment as the outcome variable. results showed that the linear combination of these three predictor variables was significantly related to younger youths’ psychological adjustment, f(3,176) = 39.18, p < .001. the sample multiple correlation was .63, indicating that 40% of the variance in younger youths’ psychological adjustment could be explained by the combination of the three predictors. results also showed that each of the three predictors accounted for a unique portion of the variance in younger youths’ psychological adjustment (elder sibling acceptance, β = .31, t = 4.24, p < .001; maternal acceptance, β = .24, t = 2.85, p < .01; paternal acceptance, β = .21, t = 2.81, p < .01). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 217 table 2. hierarchical multiple regression analyses predicting younger siblings’ psychological adjustment from mother, father, and elder siblings’ acceptance and behavioral control. note: el sis = elder sister; yng sis = younger sister; el bro = elder brother; yng bro = younger brother. acontrol variables are ages of elder sibling and younger sibling. tp < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. a hierarchical multiple regression analysis by gender pairs shown in table 2 (i.e., older sister-younger sister, n = 40; older brother-younger brother, n = 39; older sister-younger brother, n = 45; and older brother-younger sister, n = 50) provides a more nuanced view of the influence of older siblings’ acceptance and behavioral control on younger siblings’ psychological adjustment, after controlling for the influence of perceived parental (maternal and paternal) acceptance and sibling age. results of analyses displayed in table 2 show that younger siblings’ perceptions of their older siblings’ behavioral control made no unique contribution to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings in any sibling pair. younger siblings’ perceptions of their older siblings’ acceptance, however, did make a significant and unique contribution in every sibling pair except for younger brothers’ perceptions of their older sisters’ acceptance. for this sibling pair it appears that it was primarily the boys’ perceptions of parental (especially maternal) acceptance that was associated with the greatest portion of the unique variance in the younger brothers’ psychological adjustment. finally table 2 also shows that, collectively, the three classes of variables included in the hierarchical regression younger siblings’ psychological adjustment el sis – yng sis el bro – yng bro el sis – yng bro el bro yng sis predictor ∆r2 β ∆r2 β ∆r2 β ∆r2 β step 1 .05 .01 .15* .11t control variablesa step 2 .36** .32** .31*** .38*** mother acceptance .61** .05 .41** .15 mother control .17 .23 .18 .05 father acceptance -.10 .20 .21 .61** father control -.02 .39t .02 .07 step 3 .14* .11 t .03 .07* elder sibling acc .50** .49** .16 .30* elder sibling control -.15 .19 .13 .05 total r2 .55*** .43** .48*** .55*** n 40 39 45 50 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 218 (i.e., sibling age, perceived parental acceptance, and perceived older sibling acceptance) explained from 43% to 55% of the variance in the various pairs of younger siblings’ psychological adjustment. discussion this study is the first of its kind to explore the differential contribution of older siblings’ versus parents’ acceptance and behavioral control to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings. the study is also the first partheory study to explicitly test the sibling portion of one of the theory’s central postulates. this postulate states that the psychological adjustment of children everywhere throughout the world – regardless of differences in culture, race, language, gender, or other such defining conditions – is likely to be affected in a specific way (described in the acceptance-rejection syndrome) when they perceive themselves to be accepted or rejected by their parents, siblings, or other attachment figures. as expected from this postulate, results of the initial simple regression analyses on the full sample demonstrate that, overall, each of elder sibling, maternal, and paternal acceptance (but not behavioral control) make a unique contribution to the psychological adjustment of younger siblings. the results become more nuanced, however, when one looks at the relative contribution of older siblings’ acceptance to younger siblings’ psychological adjustment in different sibling pairs (e.g., older sister-younger sister versus older sister-younger brother). in that context – unlike all other sibling pairs – we find that younger brothers’ perceptions of older sisters’ acceptance does not make a significant contribution to the psychological adjustment of the brothers over and above the contribution made by parents (especially mothers). we have no explanation at this time for this unexpected result except to caution that all analyses of sibling pairs in this study are based on small sample sizes. small samples such as these can sometimes make the results of hierarchical regression analyses somewhat unstable. alternatively, there could be some currently unidentified cultural factors in turkey that specifically tend to dampen the impact of older sisters’ acceptance on the psychological adjustment of younger brothers. a solution to this conundrum awaits further research in turkey. despite this unexpected conclusion, it seems clear that perceived elder sibling acceptance tends overall to be a significant predictor of younger siblings’ psychological adjustment. insofar as this is true, then clinicians, social workers, and others working with children who display the constellation of mental health-related personality characteristics described in the acceptancerejection syndrome should make a point of inquiring about the younger children’s relationship with their older siblings as well as with both parents prior to developing any intervention or treatment plan. finally, we note that conclusions reached in this study should be interpreted with caution because all information about perceived sibling acceptance, parental acceptance, and psychological adjustment are self-reports. we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that shared method variance and response set might be significant contributors to the results. the likelihood that these forms of method bias are primary explanations of the results is reduced, however, by the fact that substantial prior evidence described earlier has shown a convergence of results across a variety of independent sources of measurement of psychological adjustment and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 219 perceived acceptance. additionally, generalizing from this research should be done with caution in light of the fact that the conclusions are based on evidence about sibling and parental relationships in intact nuclear families. at this time it is unknown if the same results would emerge within the context of other family forms such as extended family households or singleparent households. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 220 references achenbach, t. m., & edelbrock, c. (1983). manual for the child behavior checklist. burlington: university of vermont, department of psychiatry. bank, l., patterson, g., & reid, j. (1996). negative sibling interaction patterns as predictors of later adjustment problems in adolescent and young adult males. in g. brody (ed.), sibling relationships: their causes and consequences (pp.197–229). westport, ct: ablex publishing. brody, g. (2004). siblings’ direct and indirect contributions to child development. current directions in psychological science, 13, 124–126. bryant, b. (1992). sibling caretaking: providing emotional support during middle childhood. in f. boer & j. dunn (eds.), children's sibling relationships: developmental and clinical issues (pp. 55–69). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. campione-barr, n., & smetana, j. g. (2010). “who said you could wear my sweater?” adolescent sibling conflict and associations with relationship quality. child development, 81(2), 464–471. cicirelli, v. g. (1985). sibling relationships throughout the life cycle. in l. l’abate (ed.), the handbook of family psychology and therapy (pp. 177–214). homewood, il: dorsey press. cournoyer, d. e. (1989). that unloved feeling: coping with perceived maternal rejection. dissertation abstracts international, 49(12-b), 5558. downey, d., & condron, d. (2004). playing well with others in kindergarten: the benefit of siblings at home. journal of marriage and family, 66(2), 333–350. dunn, j. (1999). siblings, friends, and the development of social understanding. in a. w. collins & b. laursen (eds.), relationships as developmental contexts (pp. 263–279). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. feinberg, m. e., & hetherington, e. m. (2000). sibling differentiation in adolescence: implications for behavioral genetic theory. child development, 71(6), 1512–1524. feinberg, m. e., mchale, s. m., crouter, a. c., & cumsille, p. (2003). sibling differentiation: sibling and parent relationship trajectories in adolescence. child development, 74(5), 1261–1274. gamble, w. c., yu, j. j., & kuehn, e. d. (2011). adolescent sibling relationship quality and adjustment: sibling trustworthiness and modeling, as factors directly and indirectly influencing these associations. social development, 20(3), 605–623. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 221 hetherington, e., & clingempeel, w. (1992). coping with marital transitions: a family systems perspective. monographs of the society for research in child development, 57(2-3), 1– 242. hetherington, e., reiss, d., & plomin, r. (1994). separate social worlds of siblings: the impact of nonshared environment on development. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. khaleque, a., & rohner, r. p. (2002a). perceived parental acceptance-rejection and psychological adjustment: a meta-analysis of cross-cultural and intracultural studies. journal of marriage and family, 64(1), 54–64. khaleque, a., & rohner, r. p. (2002b). reliability of measures assessing the relation between perceived parental acceptance-rejection and psychological adjustment: meta-analysis of cross-cultural and intracultural studies. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 33, 87–99. khaleque, a., & rohner, r. p. (2012a). pancultural associations between parental acceptancerejection and psychological adjustment of children and adults: a meta-analytic review of worldwide research. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 43, 784–800. khaleque, a., & rohner, r. p. (2012b). transnational relations between perceived parental acceptance and personality dispositions of children and adults: a meta-analytic review. personality and social psychology review, 16(2), 103–115. kim, j., mchale, s., crouter, a., & osgood, d. (2007). longitudinal linkages between sibling relationships and adjustment from middle childhood through adolescence. developmental psychology, 43(4), 960–973. krienert, j. l., & walsh, j. a. (2011). my brother’s keeper: a contemporary examination of reported sibling violence using national level data, 2000-2005. journal of family violence, 26(5), 331–342. lecce, s., pagnin, a., & pinto, g. (2009). agreement in children’s evaluations of their relationships with siblings and friends. european journal of developmental psychology, 6(2), 153–169. mchale, s., & crouter, a. (1996). the family contexts of children's sibling relationships. in g. brody (ed.). sibling relationships: their causes and consequences (pp. 173–195). westport, ct: ablex publishing. milevsky, a., schlechter, m. j., & machlev, m. (2011). effects of parenting style and involvement in sibling conflict on adolescent sibling relationships. journal of social and personal relationships, 28(8), 1130–1148. modestin, j., marrer, k., & agarwalla, p. (2008). parenting and psychopathology in sibling pairs. european journal of psychiatry, 22(2), 99–105. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 222 pulakos, j. (1987). brothers and sisters: nature and importance of the adult bond. the journal of psychology, 121(5), 521–522. ripoll, k., carrillo, s., & castro, j. a. (2009). relationship between siblings and psychological adjustment in adolescents: effects of the quality of parent-child relationship. avances en psicologia latinoamericana, 27, 125–142. rohner, r. p. (1986). the warmth dimension: foundations of parental acceptance-rejection theory. beverly hills, ca: sage publications. rohner, r. p. (2004). the parental “acceptance-rejection syndrome”: universal correlates of perceived rejection. american psychologist, 59, 827–840. rohner, r. p. (2005). parental acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire (parq/control): test manual. in r. p. rohner & a. khaleque (eds.), handbook for the study of parental acceptance and rejection (4th ed., pp. 187–226). storrs, ct: rohner research publications. rohner, r. p. (2008). elder sibling acceptance-rejection/control questionnaire. unpublished manuscript, university of connecticut at storrs. rohner, r. p., bourque, s. l., & elordi, c. a. (1996). children's perceptions of corporal punishment, caretaker acceptance, and psychological adjustment in a poor, biracial southern community. journal of marriage and the family, 58(4), 842–852. rohner, r. p., & britner, p. a. (2002). worldwide mental health correlates of parental acceptance-rejection: review of cross-cultural and intracultural evidence. cross-cultural research, 36, 16–47. rohner, r. p., & khaleque, a. (2003). reliability and validity of the parental control scale: a meta-analysis of cross-cultural and intracultural studies. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 34, 643–649. rohner, r. p., & khaleque, a. (2005). personality assessment questionnaire: test manual. in r. p. rohner & a. khaleque (eds.) handbook for the study of parental acceptance and rejection (4th ed., pp. 107–135). storrs, ct: rohner research publications. rohner, r. p., & khaleque, a. (2010). testing central postulates of parental acceptance-rejection theory (partheory): a meta-analysis of cross-cultural studies. journal of family theory and review, 2, 73–87. rohner, r. p., & melendez, t. (eds.). (2008). parental acceptance-rejection theory studies of intimate adult relationships. [special issue]. cross-cultural research, 42. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 209–223 223 ross, h. g., & milgram, j. i. (1982). important variables in adult sibling relationships: a qualitative study. in m. e. lamb & b. sutton-smith (eds.), sibling relationships: their nature and significance across the lifespan, (pp. 225–249). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. stocker, c. m., & burwell, r. a. (2002). sibling conflict in middle childhood predicts children’s adjustment in early adolescence. journal of family psychology, 16, 50–57. waite, e. b., shanahan, l., calkins, s. d., keane, s. p., & o’brien, m. (2011). life events, sibling warmth, and youths’ adjustment. journal of marriage and family, 73(5), 902– 912. waters, b. (1987). the importance of sibling relationships in separated families. australian and new zealand journal of family therapy, 8, 13–17. varan, a. (2009). cronbach’s alphas and factor analysis of the elder sibling acceptancerejection/control questionnaire (esar/cq). unpublished manuscript, ege university, izmir, turkey. microsoft word d.segal journal version sa/jaed2.docx 
 
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 exploring the importance of identity following acquired brain injury: a review of the literature david segal abstract: life following acquired brain injury (abi) for survivors and their families is often accompanied by experiences of tremendous physical and emotional difficulties. upon returning home from in-patient rehabilitation, many survivors struggle to maintain their intimate relationships, come to terms with their injuries, and ultimately build satisfying lives. addressing the loss and reconstruction of identity for survivors and their families is emerging as a crucial component of rehabilitation following injury. this paper reviews the literature surrounding these phenomena from a social neuropsychology, cognitivepsychological, and psychosocial perspective. in doing so, the epistemological tensions between these perspectives are uncovered and examined. finally, a summary of post-hospitalization strategies for addressing identity loss and (re)construction for both abi survivors and their families are provided. acquired brain injury (abi) is a serious concern for survivors, their families, and communities. although technological advancements have increased our ability to screen for injury, locate precise areas of damage through mri and neuropsychology testing, and encourage the development of new neural pathways, substantial regeneration of neurons is still a distant dream. thus, practitioners supporting people with abi are tasked with the difficult job of assisting individuals, their families, and communities in a lengthy process of “recovery” that takes place long after the initial exterior wounds of the injury have healed. ironically, the majority of attention regarding abi research and clinical intervention has been devoted to the acute care and management of the injury from a strictly biological perspective. this is despite recognition from families, friends, and community agencies that support is drastically needed in the years following the injury, specifically in areas pertaining to psychosocial development. one such area emerging in the literature is the concept of identity loss following abi. thus, the focus of this paper is to present a literature review pertaining to the experience of loss of identity or “personality change”1 following abi for adult survivors. 























































 1
identity loss and personality change have been used interchangeably to describe the experience of a disparity between how the survivor of an abi experiences themselves post-injury, compared to pre-injury. considerable attention will be devoted below to clarifying the differences between these terms and their associated epistemological underpinnings.
 
 
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 although there are numerous factors to consider when serving people with abi, the issue of identity is emerging from its previously neglected position among rehabilitation professionals as a pivotal area of concern for survivors and (ben-yishay, 2008) and their families (landau & hissett, 2008). there is now mounting support suggesting that in the aftermath of abi, individuals undergo a profound change in their current experience of themselves compared to pre-injury and this brings forth tremendous discomfort (e.g., ben-yishey et al., 1985; myles, 2004; nochi, 1997). this literature review focuses on adult populations, as attempts to include the literature on children and youth presented too broad a scope for this paper. however, many of the concepts discussed are applicable for child and youth populations. following a brief overview of the profound impact that abi has on survivors, their families, and communities, i will attempt to answer the following questions: 1. why has identity been overlooked in the past by rehabilitation professionals? 2. why is identity an important component of rehabilitation? 3. how do biological, psychological, and social perspectives explain experiences of so called personality change? 4. what are some clinical interventions being used to address these issues? methodology the original topic for this literature review was the experiences of identity change for abi survivors following injury. key words used for this search were: acquired brain injury and identity and the databases medline, psychinfo, psychabstracts, ebsco, web of science, and academic search complete were used to conduct the search. initial results were too limited so the search was expanded with the same databases using the following key words: • acquired brain injury • traumatic brain injury • identity loss • self • self-concept • personality • narratives searches using combinations as well as singular key words were conducted. moreover, additional sources were located by using reference lists from relevant articles. a recent literature review was conducted on the topic of abi and identity by yeates, gracey, and mcgrath (2008) entitled, a biopsychosocial deconstruction of “personality change” following acquired brain injury. yeates et al. (2008) use a biopsychosocial framework to investigate the topic of identity change. this is a useful framework, as it allows for the inclusion of different perspectives alongside dominant medical and neuropsychological understandings of personality change found in the rehabilitation literature (myles, 2004). in addition to commenting on the aforementioned literature 
 
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 review, additional sources that were omitted or newly published are included in this review. unpacking “personality change” following an acquired brain injury acquired brain injury: a grim prognosis according to the world health organization (1996), acquired brain injury is defined as “damage to the brain, which occurs after birth and is not related to a congenital or a degenerative disease. these impairments may be temporary or permanent and cause partial or functional disability or psychosocial difficulties” (as cited in b.c. brain injury, 2009, p. 3). this definition has been adopted in the province of british columbia (b.c. brain injury, 2009). as of 2007, approximately 160,000 british columbians were living with the impacts of acquired brain injury and 14,000 people in the province were expected to acquire new brain injuries by the end of the year (b.c. brain injury, 2009). acquired brain injury is highly idiosyncratic and involves changes to biological, cognitive, emotive, and social functioning, ranging in severity depending on the extent and location of injury, age, premorbid personality, and individual social circumstances, e.g., family support, access to rehabilitation services, etc. (lezak, howieson, loring, hannay, & fischer, 2004). abi is the most common cause of brain damage in children and young adults, with most accidents occurring between ages 15 to 24 (particularly in the first five years) and for the elderly (lezak et al., 2004). falls account for half of all injuries for young children and the elderly, and motor vehicle accidents account for more than half of all head injuries in other age groups (lezak et al., 2004). mild abi2 makes up the majority of cases, with moderate cases accounting for 8% to 10%, and severe cases accounting for fewer than 10%. although the severe and moderate categories make up a relatively small percentage, “these groups represent a major and growing social problem, because their rehabilitation needs are so great and so costly, because so few return to fully independent living, and because their disabilities create severe financial and emotional burdens for their families” (lezak et al., 2004, p.179). potential changes following abi are presented in table 1. 























































 2
estimates of severity of acquired brain injury are determined by the length of post-traumatic amnesia duration, e.g., 5 to 60 minutes is considered mild, and 1 to 7 days is considered severe (lezak et al., 2004).
 
 
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 table 1. potential changes following abi physical cognitive behavioural sensory/perceptual problems: double vision photophobia dizziness deafness and/or tinnitus headache vision impairment motor problems: coordination of movements ataxia involuntary eye-movement paralysis weakness numbness structural: limb shortening weight gain muscle atrophy slowed reaction time slowed processing poor concentration memory problems difficulty with retrieval of information confusion disorientation inability to think clearly compromised spatial learning compromised executive functions heightened distractibility difficulty multi-tasking emotional distress fatigue automatic activities become effortful heightened irritability depression and anxiety sleep disturbances low self-confidence diminished initiative affective flattening impulsivity planning ability and automatic self-monitoring are frequently compromised diminished or heightened sexual desire social isolation empathy and self-reflective or self-critical attitudes are greatly diminished impaired capacity for self-control unpredictable behaviour inability to profit from experience compromises the capacity for social learning lowered self-awareness (adapted from lezak et al., 2004). not surprisingly, life for survivors and their families following acquired brain injury is often accompanied by experiences of tremendous physical, emotional, and psychosocial difficulties. upon returning home from in-patient rehabilitation, many struggle to maintain their intimate relationships (condeluci, ferris, & bogdan, 1992), come to terms with their injuries (corrigan, bogner, & mysiw, 2001; gan, campbell, gemeinhardt, & mcfadden, 2006) and arrive at satisfactory identities post-injury (nochi, 1998). as a result, many experience increasing social isolation, develop a range of mental illnesses, and fall short of the improvements in psychosocial functioning that may have been possible had they received the necessary support (lezak et al., 2004; thomas, 2004). in addition, recent research suggests that adjustment following abi is a continuous and cyclical process, not a static arrival at a state of rehabilitation as once thought (muenchberger, kendall, & neal, 2008). considering the aforementioned potential changes, it is no surprise that for individuals who can remember their pre-injury selves and have the capacity for selfawareness, experiences of identity confusion is an extremely common occurrence (myles, 2004). why has identity typically been an overlooked component of rehabilitation following abi? haslam et al. (2008) claim that rehabilitation plans following abi are beginning to expand their recognition of the need for services beyond acute medical care, and family and community-based services are emerging as important sites for attention postinjury. this is important when considering that identity change for most individuals only becomes an issue post-hospitalization, long after many of their physical wounds have 
 
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 healed and direct medical care is no longer readily available (muenchberger
et
al.,
 2008). another reason why identity has been overlooked in the rehabilitation literature has to do with a belief that the subjective experience of abi survivors is not a reliable or important source of information when evaluating progress (gracey et al., 2008). instead of considering the perspectives of survivors, outcome measurements such as scores on depression indices and income levels were seen as indicative of rehabilitation progress (johnston, goverover, & dijkers, 2005). according to crisp (2004, as cited in nochi, 1998), most studies have approached the topic of subjective experience from a medical or neuropsychological point of view and an individual’s perspective is rarely valued. furthermore, despite research focusing on the self of people with acquired brain injuries, the self is still largely “regarded as a dependant variable of a brain injury” (nochi, 1998, p. 869). perhaps due to advancements in qualitative methodologies, or a more accurate appreciation of the importance of subjective experience in rehabilitation for abi survivors, there has been a shift in focus away from primarily neuropsychological and medical perspectives. brown, gordon, and haddad (2000) point out that subjective quality of life for abi survivors is emerging as a key variable in predicting rehabilitation outcomes. this has stirred increasing interest in the experiences of loss of identity for abi survivors and the resulting impact on their lives. there have been numerous studies indicating the drastic impact that abi has on a person’s sense of self (muenchberger
et
 al.,
2008;
nochi, 1997, 1998). furthermore, a new york based holistic rehabilitation program, established in 1978 by yehuda ben-yishay, was the first of its kind to seriously consider the psychosocial aspects of rehabilitation and focus specifically on reconstructing an individual’s identity (ben-yishay, 2008). largely ignored for many years, ben-yishay’s holistic rehabilitation program is now being recognized as a superior example of an efficacious and comprehensive clinical intervention and is being replicated all over the world (e.g., coetzer, 2008; sarajuuri & koskinen, 2006). why is identity an important component of rehabilitation? as moldover, goldberg, and prout (2004) point out, “[abi] is not only a neuropathological event but also a unique psychological process with profound implications for identity development” (p. 151). they go on to describe abi as resulting in a severing of the continuity of who the person is, which has a profound impact on one’s sense of self. the authors view abi as a developmental process that requires a grieving period in which the old identity can be mourned and the construction of a new identity can occur. cantor et al. (2005) claim that after abi, “the injured person lives with two images of the self: ‘who i am now’ and ‘who i was before injury’” (p. 531). these differing conceptions of self can be highly distressing, leading to affective disorders such as anxiety and depression and severely restrict the possibility of successful rehabilitation post-injury (cantor et al., 2005). in 2005, vickery, gontkovsky, and caroselli investigated the intra-personal variable of self-concept, or positive self-identity, for abi survivors and its association 
 
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 with subjective experiences of quality of life. their study confirmed previous research suggesting that development of positive self-identity was predictive of higher levels of quality of life post-injury. cloute, mitchell, and yates (2008) expand on this idea by explaining that despite achievements in significant rehabilitation goals (e.g., work, financial security, mobility), individuals who experience a sustained disruption to their identity are more likely to experience mental health concerns (e.g., depression, anxiety), lack a positive sense of the future, and are less likely to report a good quality of life. it has also been shown that identity disruptions are associated with increased difficulties in forming and maintaining social networks (hoofinen, gilboa, & vakil, 2003; engberg & teasdale, 2004). according to haslam et al. (2008), maintenance of one’s social identity is predictive of well-being following abi. furthermore, in his latest study, nochi (2000) investigated the self-narratives of abi survivors and found that “people with abi are not coping with their changed lives just by ‘accepting’ their injuries. instead, they seem to ultimately revise their self-narratives”(p. 1799).
 muenchberger et al. (2008) suggest that for survivors of abi to experience a sense of control and fulfillment in their lives, they need to make sense of the profound changes associated with their injuries and come to some understanding regarding their processes of identity transition following injury. this is consistent with other literature that found abi survivors ability to cope with changes in identity were predictive of anxiety levels (dewar & gracey, 2007). considering these points, it is clear that understanding and adequately addressing identity disruptions is a crucial component of the rehabilitation process following abi. my intention up to this point has been threefold: 1. to provide an overview of acquired brain injury; 2. to demonstrate how advancements in knowledge regarding abi have allowed identity to take its rightful place on the agenda of researchers and practitioners; and 3. to make a case that identity is a crucial factor in the rehabilitation process following acquired brain injury. the next part of this review will examine a selective sample of the biological, psychological, and psychosocial accounts of the causes of identity change and the clinical interventions cited in the literature. this will also involve a clarification of the nomenclature, as this is necessary and has yet to be done. how do biological, psychological, and social perspectives explain experiences of identity change? as noted by yeates et al. (2008), biological explanations of personality change following abi have traditionally been derived from individualized notions of personality such as eysenck (1967), where alterations to neurological structures are directly linked to changes in personhood. from this perspective, personality traits are unique to the individual, stable, biologically-based and located in the brain. thus, when an injury occurs to a person’s brain, personality change is associated primarily with damage to specific cortical areas. although this conceptualization of a direct brain-mind connection 
 
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 has been commonplace, at least in the west, yeates et al. (2008) point out that social neuroscientists, psychologists, and cultural theorists have been contributing convincing evidence suggesting that perhaps subjective and intersubjective factors contribute to the personality changes experienced by abi survivors. they claim that this offers clinicians a way out of the determinism of personality trait theorists (which offers a dead end in terms of rehabilitation) and proposes a more complex and integrative understanding of these changes. however, there still exists much controversy in the literature, largely due to epistemological and ontological reasons. this helps explain why different terms such as “personality”, “self-concept”, “self-narratives”, and “identity” are used to describe changing personhood following abi. it is apparent that theoretical foundations of what constitutes the “self” dictate the terms used to describe this phenomenon. it is hoped that an in-depth examination of the biological, psychological, and social literature will provide additional clarification. social neuroscience perspective it is well established that damage to the orbitofrontal and ventromesial frontal cortical areas (prefrontal brain systems) are associated with lack of social insight and executive dysfunctions such as altered emotional processing, decision-making, disinhibition, and euphoria, often contributing to “personality change” that is disruptive to the healthy maintenance of social relationships (mathiesen & weinryb, 2004; namiki et al., 2008). however, recent advancements in social neuroscience are expanding our understanding of connections between cortical damage, social interaction, and personality change. more specifically, damage to portions of the brain connected to socio-affective processes is being explored. summarizing the socio-affective neurological processes involved in a one-to-one encounter, yeates et al. (2008) claims that key parts of the brain (inferior parietal and anterior cingulated networks) are involved in the concurrent process of (a) predicting the intentions of others, (b) aligning to another’s subjective experience, and (c) influencing the subjectivity and behaviour of the other person. these cortical areas, also commonly referred to as “mirror neurons”, seem to be crucial components in aligning to another’s experience and “connecting”. furthermore, perceptions of one’s internal emotional experiences have been shown to be compromised following damage to areas in the limbic system and frontal lobes, resulting in difficulty perceiving such emotions as fear and anger (park et al., 2001), sadness (blair & cipolotti, 2000), disgust (calder, keane, manes, antoun, & young, 2000), and experiencing and expressing empathy (lezak et al., 2004). yeates et al. (2008), commenting on the results from recent social neuroscience literature claim that “[now] it is possible to specify how both subjective experience and social interactions can be differentially altered through neuro-anatomical damage” (p. 571). this recognition of the interchange between social and neurological processes is an important step towards deepening traditional individualized neurological accounts that isolate personality primarily in the person’s brain and fail to recognize interactions with social processes. there also is growing literature surrounding memory impairment and the experience or judgment of personality change. fotopoulou (2008) reminds us that connections between memory and personality have long been discussed in the history of 
 
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 philosophy by such prominent thinkers as john locke (1690) and william james (1890/1999). advancements in cognitive-neuropsychological understanding are again drawing attention to the connections between memory and personality as an important area for further inquiry. moreover, survivors of abi who are experiencing gaps in short or long-term memory appear to have difficulty maintaining a coherent and continuous narrative of their experience (nochi, 1998). explaining this further, yeates et al. (2008) state that, “a loss of autobiographical memory as a part of retrograde amnesia removes large portions of personal history and can thus devastate narratives about the self, while antegrade amnesia can also interfere with personal narratives by interrupting with their construction” (p. 571). a recent study conducted by fotopoulou (2008), sought to expand on the connection between memories and their influence on the processes of personhood following abi. drawing on current neuroscientific literature and case studies, attention was drawn to the process of confabulation (false memories produced without conscious knowledge of their falsehood) and how abi survivors appear to draw on such confabulations, altering perceptions of themselves. fotopoulou (2008) claims that, “lost or disrupted memories may lead to the experience of a discontinued and fragmented identity, over and above other post morbid difficulties and concerns. they instead construct false ‘selves’, potentially insisting they are somewhere else, doing something else and having a different profession and family” (p. 548). in accounts of memory and personality in both yeates et al. (2008) and fotopoulou (2008), an attempt to merge neuroscience literature with material from the “narrative turn in psychology” (mahoney, 2003) was used to support their claims. however, sufficient attention was not given to the latter and resulted in the introduction of terms such as identity and self-narrative without thorough explanations of the theoretical grounding underpinning this “narrative self”. for example, no mention of the relational and political processes involved in the creation and maintenance of particular self-narratives were offered (e.g., gergen, 1985; mahoney, 2003; white & epston, 1990). these ideas are taken up further in the section below on social processes and identity. 
 this section attempted to present advancements in social neuroscience that have been helpful in explaining changes in personality following abi. there was an intentional omission of individualized biological accounts, as social neuroscience is posing a serious challenge to these claims and offers more hope in the realm of effective intervention. the term “personality change” is most commonly used in this biologicalmaterialist paradigm, however it was noted that in some accounts, attempts at incorporating a narrative conception of “self” was included. moving from biological explanations, the relevant cognitive-psychological literature will be explored. cognitive-psychological models the literature regarding psychological models of change following abi is vast and divided. descriptions such as changes in ego, self-concept, self-schemas, and selfconstructs are indicative of how these theorists are conceptualizing the location of personhood. within these accounts, there appear to be epistemological tensions resulting 
 
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 in different researchers failing to acknowledge each other’s work. for example, research on schematic-information processing models and cognitive-behavioural approaches fail to mention constructivist and phenomenological literature and vice-versa. common across all these accounts is recognition that an alteration to the subjective processes in which information about oneself is stored
and constructed governs experience or perception of self in specific contexts (yeates et al., 2008). a selective account from each of these approaches will be utilized to investigate the topic of concern from a psychological angle. cognitive-behavioural (self-concept) ylvisaker and feeney’s (2000) theoretical paper was one of the first cognitive accounts attempting to explain changes to self-concept3 following abi. they draw on an interacting cognitive subsystems (ics) approach, suggesting that schematic mental models of the self are constructed through cognitive processes that rely on the relationship between recurring experiences and their associated emotional states and behaviours. more specifically, they argue that changes in self-concept are tied to the novel constructions of schematic models of the self, triggered automatically by problematic stimuli that are associated with negative emotional states and socially adverse behaviours. thus, biological changes following brain injury result in alternate self-coding and can explain changes in self-conception. although, their theoretical ideas were supported through anecdotal evidence and case studies, it marks the beginning of psychological accounts of self-concept change following abi. expanding on these ideas, myles (2004) employs relational frame theory (rft), a modern behavioural approach to language and cognition, to investigate selfconcept changes following abi. according to rft, there exist three distinct senses of self that can be directly experienced by humans: (a) the conceptualized self, (b) self as an ongoing process of verbal knowing, and (c) self as context (myles, 2004). drawing on the extensive work of hayes (e.g., 1994), the originator of rft,
myles
(2004) presents the conceptualized self as “the network of verbal self-relations that develops as a person repeatedly applies categorical concepts to her behaviors” (p. 493). this is very similar to the “self concept” described previously by ylvisaker and feeney (2000), as it involves mental representations of “self” that are constructed based on relationships between experiences and how these were interpreted, allowing for a cohesive self-conception. however, the conceptualized self is seen as one component of the experience of self. the second is self as ongoing process of verbal knowing (self-awareness), which according to hayes (1994) is “a fluid, dynamic process of knowing one’s own flow of experiences” (as cited in myles, 2004, p. 493). the essence of this self is the private subjective experiences that comprise one’s psychological content such as emotions, thoughts, and memories. the third sense of self is the self as context, which appears in early childhood with the development of a sense of perspective. it is the place from which the person experiences the world that never changes and is never lost, while consciousness remains. 























































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identity loss and personality change have been used interchangeably to describe the experience of a disparity between how the survivor of an abi experiences themselves post-injury, compared to pre-injury. considerable attention will be devoted below to clarifying the differences between these terms and their associated epistemological underpinnings.
 
 
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 “it is a stable, enduring sense of self that is not dependent on the nature of the content that comprises one’s ongoing flow of psychological experience (hayes & gregg, 2001, as cited in myles, 2004, p. 494). typically, the conceptualized self dominates over the other two selves. people tend to identify with their psychological content rather than the context from which they experience it. however it is pointed out that some practices (e.g., meditation) can increase a person’s awareness of and identification with, self as context, and this is often described as a spiritual or transcendent experience (myles, 2004). myles (2004) argues that “loss of self” following injury is connected to a “crisis of the conceptualized self” (p. 494). more specifically, he makes the straightforward claim that loss of self is largely a verbal and relation process where persons’ experiences of themselves as “not the same” is due to conscious awareness of the inconsistencies between post-injury functioning and pre-injury conceptualized self. myles (2004) also points out the potential for negative outcomes such as emotional distress and denial: “if the survivor’s pre-injury self-concept is positively evaluated by her, any post-injury changes in functioning that are inconsistent with it will very likely lead to negative evaluations, both of those changes and of the resulting new self-concept” (p. 494). the claims put forth by myles (2004) are helpful in expanding the work of ylvisaker and feeney’s (2000) investigation of the “self”, as well as providing rft as the theoretical basis for changes in self-concept following abi. these claims are consistent with cantor et al.’s (2005) adaptation of self-discrepancy theory, which proposes that emotional distress following loss of self is due to tensions between preinjury and post-injury conceptions of self. however, anecdotal evidence and case studies were used to support the theoretical claims being put forward. thus, these arguments are to be cautiously approached and perhaps used as theoretical guides for further empirical research on the cognitive aspects of changes to self-concept. constructivist (self-constructs) constructivism is a branch of psychology that is interested primarily in human meaning-making processes, which constructivists claim are central to experiences of personhood. much of what constitutes the roots of constructivism comes from the work of george kelly and his personal construct psychology (pcp). (for a full account of the history of constructivism see mahoney, 2003). summarizing the work of kelly (1955/1991), gracey et al. (2008) explain the process of psychological representation of external reality from a pcp perspective: each of us actively makes sense of or interprets all the things we encounter… and repeated interpretations of experiences are made on the basis of, and from dichotomous constructs that become hierarchically organized. it is proposed that the logic of ascribing meaning via the application of unidimensional concept (e.g. pain, love) is flawed as these concepts only make sense in relation to their absence or opposite (pain-free, hate). sets of constructs will develop for specific sets of situation, people or other aspects of reality. this means that for a given 
 
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 encounter our sense making is restricted by constructs formed from past encounters with people and relationships. (p. 631) this quote is helpful in identifying how research from a constructivist perspective is similar to and differs from the work presented earlier from a behavioural-analytic perspective. there is congruence on the point that people make sense of themselves through mental interpretations of their experiences, yet constructivist accounts emphasize the relations and contrasts between concepts as crucial in the process of making meaning. in an attempt to map out a person’s constructs, some constructivist researchers have devised rigorous, quantitative methods that are highly sensitive to the subjectivity of the individual. this allows for a detailed account of how one makes sense of or construes other people and repeated ratings over time and can be used to measure change (gracey et al., 2008). such an approach was utilized by gracey et al. (2008) in their attempt to “find out the salient patterns of self-construing engaged in by individuals when making sense of changes after brain injury” (p. 632). results suggest that following brain injury, individuals may be especially concerned with personal meanings and feelings associated with activity, both practical and social. for example, belonging, capability, the extent to which activities “reinforce who i am”, or how the activity helps to make someone “feel part of things”, were all found to be pertinent factors. moreover, their data highlights that existential concerns also feature strongly in the process of self-construal after injury and that there is a wide range of ways in which people make sense of themselves. this study represents the first attempt to elicit and analyze the personal constructs of survivors of abi. however, it is not without its weaknesses. in particular, a selective and small sample was used limiting the generalizability of their findings and the robustness of the constructs identified. in addition, little consideration was given to the extent of brain damage that participants had and how this might have influenced their capacity to create constructs. nonetheless, the work of gracey et al. (2008) is an impressive contribution to constructivist understandings of changes to self-constructs following abi. another notable study from a phenomenological qualitative perspective was conducted by muenchberger et al. (2008) in which an attempt to create a broader understanding of the development of self, following injury, was undertaken. this complements the work by gracey et al. (2008) as the phenomenological paradigm is also centrally concerned with individual meaning and the changes in self-construction over time are examined. muenchberger et al. (2008) found that the process of (re)constructing self following injury is a dynamic affair that involves balancing between the phases of contraction and expansion of self and tentative equilibrium. contraction of self was explained as experiences of sense-making when the self “appears characterized by internal and external pressures to conform to a desired state” (p. 986) and where limited opportunities for individualization, creativity, or the development of self-confidence exist. examples of contraction periods involved experiencing a lack of a continuous sense of self, a focus on daily functioning, a sense of being different, and a reliance on others. 
 
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 conversely, muenchberger et al. (2008) found that periods of expansion of self were marked by feelings of being given a second chance at life, and an “emerging focus on pursuing an alternate life role and redefining personal goals” (p. 987). examples include experiencing a greater sense of being able to cope, an ability to understand the need for acceptance of change, and the benefits of interdependence and working towards goals. finally, these authors also noted that the tentative balance phase was likened to the concept of liminality, which “describes both a state of being in ‘limbo’ and a process in which individuals find themselves between former and future states” (p. 990). examples of how tentative balance was experienced were: (a) forward but fragile progression; (b) self-doubt; (c) uneasy sense of past, present, future; and (d) tensions relating to compliance and need for control. the current findings provide a broader conceptual understanding of the processes of reconstruction of self for a selective sample of abi survivors. it highlights the profound disruptions to “self” following injury and presents a transitional account where periods of expansion, contraction, and relative stability of self are experienced. these conclusions challenge accounts of reconstruction of self as being linear and progressive and instead suggest cyclical and ongoing processes. furthermore, these findings contest the literature that positions survivors as passive recipients of their biology. instead, it demonstrates how survivors are actively involved in the interpretation of their symptoms, which supports similar claims made by other researchers (e.g., nochi, 1998). this section examining the literature from a psychological perspective attempted to clarify some of the different epistemological positions functioning within this perspective. common to all these accounts was a privileging of individual subjectivity in the construction of reality. this was indicated in the use of terms such as self, selfconcept, and self constructs to describe notable changes preand post-injury for survivors of abi. social/intersubjective accounts there is a growing body of literature examining intersubjective accounts of meaning-making and identity construction following abi. the language involved in descriptions of preand post-injury, social meanings, and discourses are emerging as important contextual parameters in survivors’ post-injury sense-making and identity formation (yeates et al., 2008). terms such as narratives and identity tend to be frequently used in these accounts of changes to personhood post-injury, signifying the recognition of a multiplicity of factors involved in constituting the self. a number of studies have taken an interest in the narratives of survivors. the narrative turn, as introduced earlier, was articulated in polkinghorne’s (1988) seminal work, narrative knowing and the human sciences. this book had a profound influence on bringing forth the importance of narratives for organizing and understanding human experience. polkinghorne makes a strong case for the centrality of meaning-making processes in human experience and the role that narratives play in organizing these experiences into temporally meaningful episodes. embedded in the language of narratives are a systematic view of human experience and an understanding of multiple 
 
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 realities versus one concrete truth. summarizing the importance of narratives, polkinghorne (1988) argues: narratives are a scheme by means of which human beings give meaning to their experience of temporality and personal actions. they provide a framework for understanding the past events of one’s life and for planning future actions. they are the primary scheme by which human existence is rendered meaningful. thus, the study of human beings by the human sciences needs to focus on the realm of meaning in general, and on narrative meaning in particular. (p. 11) at first glance, narrative inquiries can appear to be solely a subjective and individualized process. however, the language available to tell the stories of our lives is highly reliant on the culture and power relations in which we are embedded. michel foucault’s large body of work (e.g., 1969, 1977) has been instrumental in our understanding of how power relations influence the creation, maintenance, and authority of different regimes of knowledge or discourses. a more detailed review of his work is outside the scope of this paper, yet it is crucial in our understanding of how narratives are a psychosocial process. furthermore, the work of narrative therapists such as michael white and david epston (1990) have extended foucault’s work by deciphering the numerous ways in which intersubjective processes are involved in the authoring of people’s identities. in turn, they have created therapeutic interventions, such as communities of concern and therapeutic letter writing campaigns, to assist people in resisting dominant discourses and facilitate the re-authoring of preferred stories. in a series of studies, nochi (1997, 1998, 2000) examined the self-narratives of survivors following abi. in doing so, he demonstrated the reliance of the abi survivor on the broader social contextual dimension. in his 1997 work, he identified a “void” that is present in many survivors’ self-narratives, largely due to memory problems interfering with their recollection of their accidents and portions of their recovery. recognizing that many survivors carry with them something unknown, nochi (1997) remarks that “[abi] is a real crisis of the self” (p. 18) as the void in past memories serves as a barrier to selfunderstanding. this description of a void is very similar to the above concept of liminality introduced by muenchberger et al. (2008). furthermore, cloute et al. (2008) found that survivors’ attempts to retell and fill their lost memories are often challenged by the interpretations of close relatives and friends, highlighting the interpersonal components of re-authoring processes. in his 1998 study, nochi identified three areas of “loss of self” following abi: (a) loss of self in relation to preto post-injury comparison, (b) loss of self in the eyes of others, and (c) discontinuity of identity through lost or disrupted memories. the first and third theme support much of the work introduced above, yet the second theme highlights the importance of other people’s opinions regarding identity change. this was supported by the work of weddell and legget (2006, as cited in yeates et al., 2008) as they found that while social neuropsychological factors did predict relatives’ and friends’ judgments of identity change, it was in fact the level of psychological distress in both survivors and relatives that was most predictive. 
 
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 in his latest work, nochi (2000) focuses on narratives from survivors who have managed to reconstruct a coherent self-narrative and who felt “at ease” with their situation. he concludes that successful developments of self-narratives need to occur, “in interaction with other people, society, and culture” (p. 1802), as opposed to isolated rehabilitation. this may involve reorganizing interpersonal relationships and environments so that they support newly developing and preferred self-narratives. the impact of social relations on identity was taken up by haslam et al. (2008) in their investigation of stroke survivors, which also provides the first quantitative support for the importance of social processes in recovery. drawing on social identity theory which emphasizes, “the importance of both social identities in general and social continuity in particular for well-being” (p. 672), they found that maintenance of group membership predicted well-being after a stroke. these findings highlight the role of social continuity in facilitating positive rehabilitation outcomes. furthermore, it brings to light the importance of group membership and social identity in neuropsychological rehabilitation, rather than personal identity. the work of social constructionists such as ken gergen (1991) have been instrumental in our understanding of how social relations influence the creation of reality. this social constructionist turn “emphasizes subjectivity, language, social processes and the importance of understanding individuals as actively constructing meaning in the context of interactions with others” (gracey & ownsworth, 2008, p. 522). from a social constructionist perspective, there is no individual identity, but instead a co-constructed intersubjective relational identity that is dependent on the social practices (e.g., creation of language, knowledge, processes of interpretation) that bring them into being (gergen, 1985). from this perspective, “the mind becomes a form of social myth; the self concept is removed from the head and placed within the sphere of social discourse” (gergen, 1985, p. 271). this does not mean that people cannot relate to themselves, or have a “stable” sense of self. however, it does recognize that all accounts of a self are interwoven within the culture and relations that one is embedded within. relational conceptualizations of identity have been emerging in recent neuropsychology and rehabilitation literature. in a recent study, cloute et al. (2008) employed a social constructionist methodology to investigate the question of construction of identity following abi. they were interested in how the language and interactions from dominant medical services influenced the creation of self following abi. their discursive approach reveals that particular attention needs to be paid to how people are positioned and identified, particularly by the medical community. for example, binaries such as patient-expert, abnormal-normal, and sick-healthy often implicitly function in medical discourse and have a tremendous impact on how a person understands him or herself. in the cloute et al. (2008) study, it was found that “medical model referencing left participants seemingly dependent upon the active interpretations of expert professionals and specialist services” (p. 665), leaving little room for survivors and their families to construct themselves in alternate ways. this example highlights the dynamic and social aspects of identity construction and supports other research that has investigated the passive positioning of people with disability and illness when seeking medical support (oliver, 1990). 
 
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 rebuilding a coherent sense of self: clinical interventions reconstructing identity following abi represents a challenge on many fronts. as demonstrated, the biological, personal, familial, and community levels are all implicated to some degree. table 2 presents the different therapeutic approaches, found in the literature, arranged based on theoretical area of inquiry. 
 
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 table 2. summary of interventions for “personality change” based on biological, psychological, and social accounts.
 social neuroscience: 
 socio-affective (yeates et al., 2008) • training to identify emotional expression from facial, bodily, and conversational cues. • social skill training aimed at teaching social responses and reading social norms. cognitive neuropsychological (yeates et al., 2008) • problem-solving frameworks addressing executive functioning, and emotional regulation. • creating memory and autobiographical aids. (e.g., keep newspapers and doctors’ notes from the time of the accident.) confabulations (fotopoulou, 2008) • liaising with significant others to understand and explain how confabulations are cognitively and motivationally constructed. • discouraging rehabilitation staff from confirming or contradicting patients’ confabulations. • using individual sessions to progressively explore the subjective meaning of confabulations and provide non-threatening feedback. • discussing confabulation in the third person. cognitive-psychological: interacting subsystems approach (ylvisaker & feeney, 2000) • reconstruction of self-concept through appealing metaphors. • concrete organization of self-concept through models using graphic organizers. • desensitization to prevent dysfunctional emotional reactions. acceptance and commitment therapy (myles, 2004) • improve persons’ recognition of self as context in order to facilitate acceptance of the changes in functioning and self-concept. client-focused and value driven (muencherger et al., 2008) • provide a dynamic and flexible context in which individuals can devise strategies to move forward and expand amidst the cycles of expansion, contraction, and liminality. meaning centred therapy (gracey et al., 2008) • focus on changing personal meanings and feelings associated with postinjured self and activities. psychosocial: narrative focused (nochi, 1997, 1998, 2000) • focus on reconstructing self narratives. • recognize that clients have more than one narrative about themselves and search for the preferred stories. • develop self-narratives in interaction with people, society, and culture and modify environments if needed. • teach individuals and family members how to disseminate preferred narratives about themselves. • develop support groups designed at strengthening preferred stories. discursive positioning (cloute et al., 2008) • facilitating the co-construction and re-authorship of empowering and inclusive narratives. • facilitate diaries written by the family and the injured party. • become aware of referencing medical discourse and the potential for dependency. this might involve referencing more empowering repertoires. • practitioners undertake a process of self-reflection in order to become reflexively engaged in their work. social identity (haslam et al., 2008) • assist individuals to develop meaningful social roles in the community. • support the maintenance and facilitation of social identification. 
 the examples provided in table 2 represent only a small fraction of the different rehabilitation strategies devised to address issues of identity change following abi. however, addressing identity is usually seen as only a side concern for most rehabilitation professionals. the introduction of the holistic neuro-rehabilitation model 
 
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 (ben-yishay, 2008) was the first program to focus on reconstructing shattered identities. furthermore, it attempts to provide a “therapeutic community setting” (p. 514), where integration of these approaches are offered to both individuals and their families. these intensive, short-term programs have recently been taken into the communities and offered over a longer duration with less intensity. outcome data appears to be promising, but research is still in its early stages (coetzer, 2008). in agreement with yeates et al. (2008), interventions that consider the interacting and interdependent casual mechanisms across neurological, psychological, and psychosocial levels offer the most promising rehabilitation outcomes for survivors and their families. gaps in the literature in addition to the critiques and concerns presented above, a crucial component largely absent from the literature is the ethical dimension of supporting the rehabilitation of someone with abi in the reconstruction of their identity. as little (2005) points out, ethical practice cannot be separated from political spheres. thus, the way we conduct ourselves in accordance with our ethics is a political act. this requires reflexive practice, as simply having the desire to help, is not a sufficient condition to absolve the potential for harm. these ideas were touched on in the work of cloute et al. (2008), where practitioner reflexivity was recommended, yet it still remains an important area for further exploration. white (2007) offers some helpful insights in her articulation of a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. she defines praxis as, “an ethical, selfaware, responsive and committed action” (p. 1). perhaps rehabilitation professionals would benefit from exploring this literature more thoroughly. another important area that appears to be neglected is the manner in which rehabilitation professionals can engage with family and community members regarding matters of identity. lezak et al. (2004), points out that “family members are more likely to find the physical deficits acceptable to discuss and deal with than the emotionalpersonality problems” (p. 183). thus, although the importance of interpersonal aspects has been emphasized, further attention regarding strategies to effectively include family and community members in the rehabilitation process is warranted. finally, finding ways to integrate the diverse epistemological understanding and interventions presented is necessary to ensure that rehabilitation professionals have the most complete account possible. wilber’s (1995) integral framework might be one possible method by which to merge these seemingly disparate parts. conclusion it is clear that biological, psychological, and social components are involved in the experiences of “personality change” or identity loss following abi. having an understanding of these different perspectives is crucial in approaching the most complete understanding of this phenomenon. however, it is also evident that in doing so, particular epistemological tensions and contradictions emerge, indicated by the variety of terms being used to describe the experience of personality change. it is hoped that by uncovering the underpinning theoretical foundations, a clearer understanding of their origins has been achieved. furthermore, it is hoped that an exploration of the subjective 
 
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 and intersubjective processes involved in the construction of identities post-injury demonstrates the “paradigm shift” (kuhn, 1962) taking place towards more diverse accounts and away from traditional biologically dominated explanations. movement towards integrated and interdisciplinary theories are equipping practitioners with a wide spectrum of strategies which they can use to support individuals and their families through the processes of (re)constructing, (re)discovering, and (re)claiming their lost identities. 
 
 
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 david segal is currently pursuing graduate studies with the school of child and youth care, and is working towards becoming registered as clinical counsellor in bc. for over 10 years he has been working with children, youth and families primarily in an outdoor context. his current area of study includes the intersections of ecopsychology, identity construction and adventure therapy. when he is not working, he can often be found exploring the forests of vancouver island. 
 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221032 the role of cities in ending violence against children in south africa rongedzayi fambasayi and rejoice shamiso katsidzira abstract: the global development agenda acknowledges the role of cities in achieving the united nations’ sustainable development goals (sdgs) and addressing contemporary challenges caused by urbanization. sdg 11 aspires to make “cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” by 2030, even as the global urban population continues to grow exponentially, along with — even more rapidly — the population of children living in cities. cities are the level of government closest to people’s daily lives, and are best placed to address the numerous challenges and rights violations that children are exposed to, including sexual exploitation and abuse, violence, trafficking, and child labour. sdg 16.2 has the primary aim of ending the “abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against children”. through the lens of the subsidiarity principle, this article argues that localization to the city level of law and policy strategies that address violence against children can provide normative and powerful legal tools for their protection. although there is developing scholarly literature on the global aspirations expressed in sdg 11 and sdg 16.2, little has been offered from a child rights perspective on the role of city governments in the prevention of, and protection of children from, violence. keywords: cities, sdg 11, violence against children, sdg 16.2, pathfinding cities acknowledgement: rongedzayi fambasayi’s contribution was supported by a national research foundation of south africa grant (no. 115581). all viewpoints and errors are the authors’ own. rongedzayi fambasayi llm (corresponding author) is a doctoral researcher at the south african research chair in cities, law and environmental sustainability, faculty of law, northwest university, south africa. email: rongedzayi@gmail.com rejoice shamiso katsidzira llm is a doctoral candidate at the centre for human rights, faculty of law, university of pretoria, south africa. email: rejokats@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 53 the global development agenda acknowledges the role of cities in achieving the united nations’ sustainable development goals1 (sdgs) by 2030. to that end, sdg 11 aspires to make “cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” by 2030 (united nations department of economic and social affairs, 2015). this aspiration is founded on the understanding that the global urban population is growing exponentially (united nations department of economic and social affairs [undesa], 2018; un-habitat, 2018). more than half of the world’s population, approximately 55%, live in cities and other urban areas, and this percentage is expected to increase to approximately 68% by 2050 (undesa, 2018). inevitably, the proportion of children who are born in or migrate to cities and other urban areas will only increase. it is estimated that by 2030, 60% of the global urban population will be under the age of 18 (united nations children’s fund [unicef], 2012) and the south african urban context is not an exception (south african local government association, 2019). violence against children (vac) is a global threat to children’s well-being that demands multisectoral coordination and collective action (pinheiro, 2006). yet all forms of vac, such as sexual exploitation, trafficking, and abuse, are experienced in the local communities where children live (pinheiro, 2006): cities are the level of government closest to urban people’s lives, children included. the rates of vac are alarming (world health organization [who], 2020): globally, it is estimated that one out of two children aged 2–17 years experience some form of violence each year [hillis et al., 2016]. a third of students aged 11– 15 years worldwide have been bullied by their peers in the past month, and 120 million girls are estimated to have suffered some form of forced sexual contact before the age of 20 years [unesco, 2019; unicef, 2014]. (p. x) the results of a survey covering 176 cities and towns across south africa’s nine provinces indicate an alarming rate of vac from online activities (unicef, 2022; see also phyfer et al., 2016). for instance, unicef south africa observes that one third of south african children who access the internet are vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and abuse from risky online behaviour (unicef, 2022). in south africa, overall vac is escalating, as are its immediate and long-term impacts, including child death (cappa & jijon, 2021): it is estimated that 13% of injury deaths in children under 15 are due to child abuse and neglect (department of social development, 2019). we concur with who (2020) in conceptualising vac as comprising all violence against persons below the age of 18, whether perpetrated by parents or other caregivers, peers, or strangers; 1 the sdgs are: (1) no poverty; (2) zero hunger; (3) good health and well-being; (4) quality education; (5) gender equality; (6) clean water and sanitation; (7) affordable and clean energy; (8) decent work and economic growth; (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure; (10) reduced inequalities; (11) sustainable cities and communities; (12) responsible consumption and production; (13) climate action; (14) life below water; (15) life on land; (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions; and (17) partnerships for the goals. see https://sdgs.un.org/goals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 54 its forms include physical, sexual, and emotional violence. south africa is the most researched african country as far as vac is concerned. previously published literature focused on the prevalence and magnitude of violence (e.g., cappa & jijon, 2021; devries & meinck, 2018; kassanjee et al., 2018; smit, 2021; ward et al., 2018), on children’s experiences of violence (e.g., lansink & nampewo, 2022; petrowski et al., 2021), and on the implications thereof (e.g., fang et al., 2017; hsiao et al., 2018; myers et al., 2021; schmidt & azzi-lessing, 2021). scholars have recommended a multipronged approach to vac prevention (mathews & benvenuti, 2014), and identified a need for positive and supervisory caregiving coupled with household food security (cluver et al., 2020). other preventive measures that have been recommended include changing social norms (rasool, 2022), and focusing on community-level interventions (molnar et al., 2022; weber & bowers-dutoit, 2018). in their study on community-level programming to prevent vac, molnar et al. (2022) identified a need for relevant “efforts to build infrastructure that effectively coordinates services and prevention efforts” (p. 465). in this article, we focus on vac in cities as a way of extending the discourse on localized responses and on prevention measures that focus on the role of cities. in 2019, adapting the pathfinding countries model, the global partnership to end violence against children (end violence partnership; 2022) piloted “pathfinding cities”, a program in which cities make a public commitment to ending vac in all its forms, complementing the efforts of the central government. pathfinding cities focus on the localization of violence prevention strategies at the city level. in the pathfinding countries model, governments make a formal public declaration and commitment to take comprehensive measures to end all forms of vac.the pathfinding initiative is framed around the who’s (2018) “inspire: seven strategies for ending vac”2, and joins with the end violence partnership to provide technical support and coordination, and to galvanise efforts, modelled on what works in other countries, to upscale prevention and response measures. as the end violence partnership’s (2022) website explained: within 18 months … pathfinding country governments are expected to: • appoint a senior government focal point to lead the in-country process; • convene and support a multistakeholder group; collect, structure and analyse data on violence against children; • develop an evidence-based and costed action prevention and response plan that sets commitments for three to five years, and a related resource mobilisation plan; • consult with children and adhere to partnership standards on child participation. (para. 5) south africa has been a pathfinding country since july 2018, and the coordination of efforts is a responsibility of the department of social development. 2 inspire is an abbreviation for: implementation and enforcement of laws; norms and values; safe environments; parent and caregiver support; income and economic strengthening; response and support services; and education and life skills. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 55 this article argues that the localization of vac prevention strategies and responses in urban law and policy at the city level (a) provides children with a powerful tool to protect themselves and (b) provides city authorities and stakeholders with key reference documents for violence prevention, mapping, implementation, and monitoring. given the role of cities in global governance, there is emerging scholarship on the crucial role cities play in protecting children from contemporary challenges, such as climate change (e.g., fambasayi, 2021). however, the authors of this article are aware of the criticism that cities are not bound by international laws and standards, as it is the domain of national governments to ratify international human rights laws and developmental goals. we argue that states parties are obligated to comply with international laws and standards and to adopt them into national legal and policy frameworks. in the same light, cities are constitutionally and legislatively bound to respect and observe national laws, policies, and standards, and this should arguably put them in compliance with international normative frameworks as well. in the pages that follow, we detail the methodology used in the study and proceed to undertake a legal and policy review of international, national, and city-level literature. this article uses sdg 11 (specifically in relation to the “safe cities” aspect), sdg 16.2 (on ending all forms of vac), and other children’s rights literature to provide the normative expectations in terms of policies. methodology for this contribution, we adopted a doctrinal research methodology, which entailed a legal and policy analysis of the literature on children’s rights with a specific focus on protection from all forms of vac in the context of urban law and policy. we employed a desktop qualitative content analysis of laws, policies, and strategies in relation to vac (broadly) and focused the analysis on city-level violence prevention and response strategies. this involved reviewing primary sources of data ranging from international and national law to policy documents relevant to vac at the city level. a qualitative approach demands a transparent and rigorous literature search to select the most relevant laws, policies, and publications. it also requires identifying relevant data in a systematic fashion. for example, given the focus on vac, attention was paid in the search process to such concepts as the pathfinding initiative in which governments make public commitments to ending vac, and even more to the emerging concept of pathfinding cities that localise the vac agenda. the documents were searched online using various search engines such as google scholar and google. we further made use of databases such as juta and lexis-nexis, enabling us to access literature not available through google. access to vac-related reports was enabled through a survey of the websites of relevant organisations, such as unicef, un-habitat, the global partnership to end violence against children, and who. reports on vac are not in short supply; we therefore narrowed our focus using keywords such as “cities”, “local government”, and “localization”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 56 in total we reviewed 57 documents, including 11 legal and policy instruments, 1 strategy, 2 action plans, 4 reports, 3 handbooks, and 36 studies, commentaries, books, or journals relevant to vac or cities. the selected documents were read and analysed to determine the extent to which their content (goals, objectives, strategies, etc.) focused on ending vac in south africa, and on the role of cities in relation to vac. our analysis provides insights on gaps in scholarship, thereby situating this article to provide a unique contribution to research on, and policy implementation to address, vac prevention from a city-level lens in south africa. law and policy review international urban policy attuned to the protection of children from violence the role of cities, globally and locally, has been the subject of many legal and urban policy debates, finding expression in the sdgs, and by extension, the new urban agenda (nua; 2016), which was developed at habitat iii, a united nations conference on housing and sustainable urban development. generally, commitment to implementation of the sdgs and the nua is voluntary — they have no binding legal force. yet, these global policy documents have the potential to advance human rights protection in unprecedented ways. in interpreting and implementing these policy goals and aspirations, states have a duty to fulfil their rights-based obligations, whether at the national level or indirectly through ensuring compliance from provincial and local governments. as observed earlier, sdg 11 specifies four descriptors — inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable — that characterise its urban development goals to be achieved by 2030. sdg 11 elevates both the role and status of cities in global governance (aust & du plessis, 2018; du plessis, 2019;) and the localization of sdgs such as sdg 16.2, which aims to end the “abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture of children”. a purposive and unified reading of sdg 11 and sdg 16.2 thus creates an expectation for the localization at the city level of efforts to end all forms of vac. looking at sdg 11 through a children’s rights lens, we find that two of its targets explicitly mentions children. target 11.2 aims to provide “access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, … with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons”. target 11.7 aims to provide “universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities”. these two targets express a safety paradigm to benefit and protect children in city life. sdg 11 thus tasks cities with the protection of children from any actual or potential harm or violence in the public space. the concept of safer cities in sdg 11 relates to addressing contemporary threats to life, freedoms, and individual peace and integrity (stoffels & du plessis, 2019). vac is a threat to the life, freedom, integrity, and dignity of children living in cities. viewed from a child rights perspective, a safe city is one in which children are free to come and go with no fear of harm or violent deprivation of fundamental factors that are essential for their well-being. in terms of international children’s rights law, such as the united nations convention on the rights international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 57 of the child (crc; 1989), south africa has an obligation “to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, … maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse” (art. 19[1]). in addition, the nua (2016), which was adopted to contribute to the implementation and localization of the sdgs, takes into account vulnerable groups, particularly children. the nua emphasises the key role of city governments in strengthening the interface among all relevant stakeholders (urban planners, policymakers and lawmakers, politicians, and children themselves) who work on ending vac. for instance, paragraph 39 declares a commitment to promoting a safe, healthy, inclusive, and secure environment in cities … enabling all to live, work and participate in urban life without fear of violence … taking into consideration that women and girls, children and youth, and persons in vulnerable situations are often particularly affected. the paragraph goes on to encourage deliberate efforts “towards the elimination of harmful practices against women and girls, including child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation” (nua, para. 39). in addition, city authorities are urged to enforce all practical measures that “will, where appropriate, engage relevant local communities and non-governmental actors in developing urban strategies and initiatives … concerning public safety and crime and violence prevention” (nua, para. 103). nua provides guidance to city governments and other local stakeholders on how to approach the issue of cities and sustainable development (lin, 2018), and on how to manage violence prevention. the transition in cities from theory to practice in the “safety” dimension embedded in sdg 11 and the nua — part of a thickening layer of urban law and policy, localization, and good urban governance — is a work in progress. un-habitat has been working on issues around safety in the urban public environment for over two decades, since the un conference on human settlements (habitat ii) of 1996. the report of the un conference on human settlements (1996) explicitly set action targets in relation to urban crime, and called for a series of government actions: to prevent, reduce and eliminate violence and crime, governments at the appropriate levels, including local authorities, in partnership with all interested parties, should: a) design, create and maintain liveable human settlements that encourage the use of public spaces as centres of community life so that they do not become places for criminal activity; b) promote awareness and provide education in an effort to mitigate crime and violence and strengthen society; c) promote crime prevention through social development by finding ways to help communities deal with underlying factors that undermine community safety and result in crime …. (para. 123) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 58 more importantly, the report on habitat ii (1996) explicitly referred to children (and women) in the context of urban safety and the necessity for all levels of government to play a role towards achieving that goal. for instance, in the context of crime, habitat ii encouraged children and youth to take an active interest in their own futures and the future development of their communities (para. 123[d]). it can thus be inferred that the safety of children was regarded as having paramount importance, and that having children participate in the discussion of such issues could provide a further important perspective on how to eliminate vac in cities. further, habitat ii encouraged the establishment of programmes and projects for children and youth, and urged all levels of government to commit to serious efforts in the prevention of violence and crime (para. 123[i]). according to the crc (1989), states must adopt protective and preventive institutional structures, mechanisms, and measures to protect and offer psychosocial support to victims of abuse or exploitation (art. 19[2]). it is clear that international and african regional children’s rights law has entrenched a safety and protection dimension as an integral part of the rights-based approach. thus, it is peremptory for governments at all levels to take all appropriate measures to protect children from actual and potential harm, danger, and exploitation. as the level of government closest to children’s lives, city governments have a duty to take all appropriate legal, administrative, social, and educational measures to protect children from harm. the human rights council (2015) document, “role of local government in the promotion and protection of human rights” states that, “local government is, in principle, in a much better position than central government to deal with matters that require local knowledge and regulation on the basis of local needs and priorities” (para. 8). in principle, a safe city guarantees the respect, protection, and promotion of human rights, thereby ensuring the fulfilment and enjoyment of those rights. for children, some of these rights include the right to play and recreation, and the right to enjoy and participate in cultural activities (crc [art. 30, 31], 1989). the violation of children’s rights — the right to play, for example — increases their exposure to vac, making them more vulnerable to living on the street, gang violence, and child labour and other forms of exploitation. in practical terms, public open spaces are urban policy resources of profound significance that can serve as arenas for community revitalisation and participatory local democracy (carmona, 2015). open spaces are locations where children interact with the city, meet with peers to play and socialise, and experience their cultural life and identity. children have the right to temporarily appropriate (physically occupy) the urban space, thereby enhancing the realisation of their “right to the city” (see pieterse, 2014). safe urban environments are places in which children can develop their cultural identities and recognise their vital role in the development and governance of their communities. in line with the above commitments, un agencies have launched programmes to foster urban safety and address protection concerns. for instance, at the request of african mayors, un-habitat (n.d., 2019) launched the safer cities programme in 1996. safer cities supports city governments in their efforts to combat crime and ensure the safety of all urban inhabitants, including children (birkenkötter, 2019, p. 133). another agency, the un entity for gender equality and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 59 empowerment of women (un women, 2019a), launched the safe cities and safe public spaces initiative to address the perpetual vulnerabilities and continuous acts of violence against women and girls in cities and urban communities. this programme has been implemented in a number of cities, including some in egypt, morocco, mozambique, south africa, and rwanda, the gains it has made in advancing the respect, protection, and promotion of the rights of girls cannot be overstated. for instance, the un women report, “safe cities and safe public spaces for women and girls global flagship initiative: international compendium of practices”, documents the expected safety impacts of installing a gender-responsive bus system in cairo, egypt (un-women, 2019b). of course, improvements made to provide safer transit for women also provide safer transit for children. accordingly, we note that there is a sound policy and programme framework, built on both international law and african regional law, that aims to protect the rights of urban inhabitants, children included. the concept of safe cities is also embedded in the child friendly city initiative launched by unicef (2004) in recognition that a healthy habitat is central to the well-being and development of children. the child friendly city initiative recognises urbanization as a transformative trend, and acknowledges the significant role that city governments play within national political and economic systems in regard to the respect, protection, promotion, and fulfilment of children’s rights (thivant, 2018). as thivant (2018) put it: a “child friendly city” is a city, town, community or any system of local governance committed to fulfilling child rights as articulated in the [crc]. it is a city or community where the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are an integral part of public policies, programmes and decisions. (p. 10) simply put, a child-friendly city has a system of governance committed to fulfilling the rights of children and, in particular, to protecting them from violence using the powers of local government. in principle, the child friendly city initiative envisages the implementation of international and african regional children’s rights as the responsibility of not only national governments but also of local authorities. this implies that local governments have obligations under international, regional, and national human rights agreements to ensure that children’s rights and interests are taken into account in decision-making, budget formulation, and policy and strategy review. at a conceptual level, the child friendly city framework is built on the crc’s (1989) four cross-cutting principles of children’s rights: the right to life, survival, and development (art. 6); the right to non-discrimination (art. 2); the best interests of the child (art. 3); and the right to participate and be heard (art. 12). thivant (2018) noted that the framework of action for a child-friendly city is anchored on: the right of every child to be valued and respected as a distinct individual, non-discrimination, the right to participate and be heard, protection rights and the right to live in a safe and healthy environment, and the right to play and recreation, laying the onus on city governments to uphold protection rights (the safety dimension) in cities and urban environments. international and regional children’s rights law, as read with sdg11 and the nua, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 60 thus provides a normative framework for the safety concerns and protection of children from violence in the urban context. furthermore, the local governments of child-friendly cities commit, among other things, to the safety of children, protecting them from violence, exploitation, degradation, and sexual abuse (thivant, 2018). this implies a commitment to adopting institutional structures and mechanisms, along with appropriately framed governance instrumentation, that take into account the best interests of every child (whitzman et al., 2021), including violence prevention strategies and coordination. thus, municipal laws, governance policies, and resource allocations should be tailored to create safe public spaces and foster opportunities to raise awareness and advocacy strategies for ending vac. considering the normative framework discussed above, it is clear that international and african regional children’s rights law and the developing body of urban policy offer city authorities a legal and policy framework that enables respect, promotion, protection, and fulfilment of the human rights of children living in cities, and, in particular, supports efforts to prevent vac and to address its harmful consequences. south african legal and policy review national law and policy framework for the protection of children in cities south africa has a multilevel legal and policy framework that is aimed at, on the one hand, addressing urban challenges and transforming cities and, on the other hand, addressing the scourge of vac. first, the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996 (constitution) provides for a justiciable bill of rights, in which the rights of all persons are protected, including children. children are bearers of rights and entitled to the full enjoyment of all rights guaranteed in the bill of rights, except those they cannot legitimately exercise such as the right to vote. importantly, section 28 of the constitution, the children’s rights clause, explicitly outlines specific rights of children including the right to protection from exploitation, abuse, degradation, and child labour, and the right to have their best interests considered paramount in all matters concerning them. in terms of section 7(2) of the constitution, all spheres of government including municipalities must respect, protect, promote, and fulfil the rights in the bill of rights, including those of children. in addition to the constitutional protection of children, many pieces of legislation collectively promote the protection of children from violence. for instance, the domestic violence act, 116 of 1998 addresses the forms of violence perpetrated in home settings and provides for remedies to respond to or prevent its occurrence. given that gender-based violence can have significant impacts in the lives of children, the domestic violence act is a useful legal tool that cities can highlight in awareness raising and advocacy campaigns to educate communities about responding to violence that interferes with children’s rights and well-being. the prevention and combating of trafficking in persons act 7 of 2013 provides for the law on criminalisation of human trafficking, including child trafficking, and lists among its aims the prevention and combating of trafficking, and the protection of victims. another legal instrument that addresses vac is the criminal law (sexual offences and related matters) amendment act 32 of 2007, whose goal was to provide a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 61 comprehensive review and amendment of the laws pertaining to sexual offences, including new and revised provisions regarding such matters as the grooming of children and child pornography. although criminal charges are laid only after a violation of a child’s rights has already occurred, in some instances courts provide deterrent sentences with the hope that future would-be offenders will refrain. municipalities are a distinct sphere of government with governance responsibilities closest to the lives of children. they have the legal status, rights, duties, functions, powers, and political mechanisms to govern their urban communities on a wide range of issues. in particular, section 4 of the local government: municipal systems act 32 of 2000 declares that the municipality has a right to, among other things, govern the affairs of the local community and also to “promote a safe and healthy environment” (p. 20) free from all forms of violence. of note, according to part b in schedule 4 and part b in schedule 5 of the constitution (1996), municipalities have exclusive competencies in functional areas such as child care facilities, wherein violence prevention measures could be strategically implemented and monitored. the above provisions on the power and competencies of municipalities are embedded in the subsidiarity principle, which holds that, to promote localisation and efficiency, regulation and governance should take place at the lowest level of government (du plessis, 2006). in addition to the assortment of laws explicitly or implicitly protecting children from violence, south africa adopted the national strategic plan on gender-based violence and femicide (nsp; 2020). the nsp is a comprehensive document that demonstrates a political commitment at the highest level of government to ensure multisectoral, coherent, strategic policies and programming to end violence against women and children. it aligns with the who definition of vac and instructs all levels of government to take deliberate and collective action aimed at preventing and effectively responding to violence. the nsp is guided by 10 principles that work in a synergistic manner: (1) “multisectoral approach”, (2) “complementing and augmenting existing strategies”, (3) “active and meaningful participation”, (4) “gender-responsive and transformative approach”, (5) “human rights-based, victim-centred, survivor-focused approach”, (6) “intergenerational, youth-friendly approach”, (7) “progressive realisation of outcomes”, (8) “forward looking”, (9) “mutual accountability”, and (10) “inclusivity, embracing diversity and intersectionality” (p. 18). these principles espouse multilevel leadership and multisectoral coordination on violence prevention and responses. at face value, the role of cities (municipalities) is subordinate to national government departments. for instance, municipalities are assigned a supportive role in coordination, accountability, leadership, violence prevention, and responses in the implementation of the nsp, instead of a frontline position (pp. 66–77). while this may appear to align with the constitutional legislative mandate bestowed on cities (see local government: municipal systems act, 2000), there is more that cities could do in leading the agenda at the community level to end vac. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 62 moreover, the national plan of action for children (2019) acknowledges that vac is extremely high in south africa, and observes that large numbers of vulnerable children remain trapped in environments in which they experience various forms of violence such as sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation (p. 69). it creates a workable policy framework to strengthen the protection of children from violence, especially when taken together with the department of social development’s (2018) integrated programme of action addressing violence against women, children, and lgbtiq persons (2019–2024). while specific to vac, these policies are not binding and must be interpreted in line with other instruments, such as the children’s act 38 of 2005, to ensure the comprehensive protection of children in urban settings. further, the concept of urban safety is embedded in national urban policy frameworks that could be used to accelerate the protection of children from violence in the urban context. for instance, the national development plan: vision 2030 (ndp; national planning commission, 2012) — a blueprint to inform and guide urban development and governance until 2030 — sets as one of its key objectives the need to build safer communities, placing the onus upon city governments to understand and prioritise safety needs at the local level (see south african cities network, 2016; white paper on safety and security, 2016). while the ndp does not explicitly reference “violence against children”, one could interpret the express emphasis on the safety needs of children, particularly girls, to assert that city authorities have a blanket normative duty to act to protect children. in addition to ndp, the integrated urban development framework (iudf; 2016) — the government’s blueprint for domestic urban policy — anchors south africa’s urban transformation and articulates a national vision on matters relating to the survival, development, and well-being of urban residents. the iudf has four strategic goals, nine policy levers, and three cross-cutting issues3, which are central to the protection and realisation of human rights in cities, including the rights of children and the protection of children from violence. interestingly, the development of the iudf was informed by sdg 11. the provisions of the iudf are sensitive to vulnerable groups; a purposive reading of the iudf could foster the adoption of approaches that ensure the protection of children from violence. explicitly, the iudf (2016) aims for: cities and towns that are stable, safe, just and tolerant, and respect and embrace diversity, equality of opportunity and participation of all people, including disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and persons. (policy lever 7, p. 41) cities and towns that have the necessary institutional, fiscal and planning capabilities to manage multiple urban stakeholders and intergovernmental 3 the four goals are: spatial integration, inclusion and access, growth, and governance. the nine policy levers are: integrated urban planning and management, integrated transport and mobility, integrated sustainable human settlements, integrated urban infrastructure, efficient land governance and management, inclusive economic development, empowered active communities, effective urban governance, and sustainable finances. the three cross-cutting issues are: rural–urban interdependency, urban resilience, and urban safety. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 63 relations, in order to build inclusive, resilient and liveable urban spaces. (policy lever 8, p. 41) although there is no mention of children in the iudf (2016), except in reference to children dropping out of school, city governments may harness the opportunities that are presented within the legal and policy frameworks and invest in the protection of children and young people. importantly, the iudf sets urban safety as one of its cross-cutting issues. in this regard, the iudf aims to ensure liveable and safe urban spaces, where all persons live free from violence and crime (pp. 33–34). the iudf acknowledges that south african cities are hotspots of violent crime; many risk factors, including high levels of substance and alcohol abuse and high unemployment, directly and indirectly drive the rise in cases of vac, specifically against girls (p. 33). it further recommends the integration of urban safety into the entire fabric of local municipal programmes (p. 34). safety concerns within the sphere of city governments and the protection of children are also emphasised in the white paper on safety and security, 2016. the white paper on safety and security aligns itself with the ndp, the iudf, and, to some degree, international norms, in advocating that city authorities be provided with standards to protect children from vac and thereby ensure their safety in their urban communities. we have shown that the south african national legal and urban policy framework expressly recognises the need to protect children from all forms of violence, and aligns with international urban policy frameworks, as well as international and african regional children’s rights laws, creating a strong legal and urban policy framework that promotes safe cities for children in south africa, which cumulatively contributes to efforts aimed at ending vac. however, the reality on the ground is that these laws and policies fail to protect millions of boys and girls from exploitation and abuse. city-level perspectives: city of johannesburg as a key example, to provide a local government perspective, we use the city of johannesburg, which is a “category a” city4 and therefore has executive powers to govern matters within its jurisdiction. the city of johannesburg is an economic hub in southern africa, attracting both south african and foreign migrants, thereby increasing social instability, making the city riskier for children. the city of johannesburg has adopted the joburg 2040 growth and development strategy (city of johannesburg, 2019), which addresses, among other key outcomes, inclusiveness 4 the south african local government: municipal structures act 117 of 1998 provides for three categories of municipality: category a (metropolitan municipalities), category b (local municipalities), and category c (district municipalities). for a city to qualify to be in category a, it must have “a conurbation featuring areas of high population density; an intense movement of people, goods, and services; extensive development; multiple business districts and industrial areas; a centre of economic activity with a complex and diverse economy; a single area for which integrated development planning is desirable; and … strong interdependent social and economic linkages between its constituent units” (ch. 1, part 1, para. 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 64 and safety within the city. in regard to urban safety, for instance, the document affirms that all inhabitants should feel “safe, individually and collectively, from real or perceived forms of threat, harm or risk” (p. 15). in addition, the city of johannesburg has adopted strategies and policies to ensure a comprehensive approach to achieving safer communities. the johannesburg city safety strategy (2015) emphasises the role of municipalities in creating safe communities. the city safety strategy, as presented at the johannesburg cid forum (2016) envisages a safer johannesburg as: • a city where everyone feels and is safe • a city in which safety is supported by a culture of respect and care • a city that provides for equitable access through welcoming public spaces, trustworthy public transport and safe streets • a city designed and managed with safety in mind • a vibrant, thriving city that fosters individual, family and community well-being, resilience, prosperity and self-sustainability … • a city in which … law enforcement and regulatory role-players are relied on and respected, as an integral part of a well-functioning safety system • a city in which safety is ‘grown’ through the collective efforts of everyone (p. 17) the draft city of joburg children’s services policy of 2022 envisages the protection of children from violence, abuse, and exploitation as not just a basic moral value, but a constitutional obligation imposed upon the city. additionally, in 2020, the city’s gender policy acknowledged the alarming rates of domestic and gender-based violence and aimed to mainstream a gendertransformative approach to city plans, programmes, service delivery, and institutional governance with a view to dealing with violence against women and girls. however, municipal by-laws do not explicitly mention the safety and protection of children in public open spaces. for example, one would expect that the public open spaces by-laws (2004) would be explicit on protection and safety concerns, yet they focus instead on the social purpose, regulation, and management of public spaces. on the other hand, the culture and recreation by-laws (2010) state that when a child below the age of 14 years who attends cultural and recreational activities in public places should be accompanied by, or under the supervision of, a parent or other responsible adult (section 52). the central aim of this provision is to ensure the protection of children from potential harm or violence in the urban space. while the city of joburg is not representative of all south african cities, it serves to illustrate the fact that cities are conscious of the scourge of vac and are making efforts to prevent and respond to cases of violence, exploitation, and abuse. we have established that south african municipalities have the constitutional mandate and legislative powers to govern in matters of concern to their communities, including matters relating to ending vac. south african cities have different developmental, human resources, and financial capacities and priorities, which affect the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 65 success or failure of their efforts to end vac. however, there is no excuse to justify the continued violation of children’s rights by any form of violence in any city. the city of joburg is not currently a pathfinding city, yet it has already taken some legal and policy measures that can be expected to reduce vac. given this start, the city could now leverage its legal and policy arsenal to make a public declaration of its intention to join the pathfinding cities initiative and of its commitment to ending vac. conclusion with this contribution, we establish that cities are important actors in global and national governance on matters relating to the sdgs and human rights, and specifically the protection of children from violence. this is based on a normative framework envisaged in terms of the crc (art. 19), sdg 11, sdg 16.2, and the nua in regard to cities and the protection of children from violence. within international and african regional children’s rights laws, there is a compelling and robust demand for the protection of children from all forms of violence, abuse, and exploitation in all spheres of government, including the city level. for instance, we have demonstrated that the right to protect children and prevent any real or potential harm is enshrined in international children’s rights and in the south african constitution and in legislation. the protection of children from violence is thus a legal requirement operationalised through policies and other measures. violence prevention is non-negotiable and cannot be left to the discretion of — or sidelined by excuses from — governmental authorities at any level. this article has demonstrated that vac, whether it occurs at home or in the streets, whether it is in the form of sexual abuse, exploitation, child labour, or degradation, is a matter that affects the well-being, integrity, and dignity of children in cities. we argued that, in light of the subsidiarity principle, city governments have the legal duty to ensure the respect and promotion of children’s rights and protect them from threats in public spaces, and even in private homes. the indivisibility and interrelatedness of the sdgs, in particular sdg 16.2 and sdg 11, require authorities to adopt an integrated, multisectoral approach to the protection of children from violence at the city level, and to demonstrate their political commitment to doing so. while existing laws and policies do broadly address children’s rights, one challenge we observe is that policy on vac is generally framed as addressing violence against “women and children”; vac receives no special attention at the city level. this could lead to cases of vac falling through the cracks in policy programming, prevention, and responses. we argue for the deliberate and explicit incorporation of vac in urban law and policy: this will provide children with a powerful legal and policy tool to use in attaining their rights, and also offers civil society organisations a firmer footing from which to advance violence prevention strategies and advocacy in south african cities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 52–71 66 references literature aust, h. p., & du plessis, a. 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(2016). https://www.saferspaces.org.za/resources/entry/2016-white-paper-on-safety-and-security international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 198 alternative education: providing support to the disenfranchised martin mills and glenda mcgregor abstract: this paper is concerned with “what works” in alternative schools, also known as flexible learning centres, in the state of queensland, australia. generally, young people who find their way to an alternative educational provider have left school early due to difficult personal circumstances or significant clashes with schooling authorities and their associated disciplinary requirements. this research at eight case-study alternative schools shows that their students were reconnecting to educational futures because of policies and practices that were quite different from those of mainstream schools. by reimagining their relational, pedagogical, curricular, and pastoral work, many of these alternative schools and centres have created learning environments that cater to the holistic needs of young people, particularly those on the margins of societies. it is our contention that mainstream schools might use ideas from this growing alternative educational sector to inform their practices positively and thus retain many of their most vulnerable students. keywords: alternative schools, marginalised youth, disengagement acknowledgement: funding for the research from which this article has been developed was provided through an arc linkage grant (lp12010014), marginalised students: enhancing life choices through engaging educational policies and practices. martin mills, phd (corresponding author) is a research professor in the school of education, the university of queensland, brisbane, australia 4072. email: m.mills@uq.edu.au glenda mcgregor, phd is a senior lecturer in youth studies and history curriculum at the school of education and professional studies, griffith university, mt. gravatt campus, 176 messines ridge rd, mt. gravatt, qld 4122, australia. email: g.mcgregor@griffith.edu.au mailto:m.mills@uq.edu.au mailto:g.mcgregor@griffith.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 199 globally, many governments have shown a commitment to improving school retention rates, addressing disengagement from schooling, and enhancing educational achievement outcomes for all young people (bush, 2012; department for children, schools and families [dfcsf], 2007; evans, meyer, pinney, & robinson, 2009; finlay, sheridan, mckay, &nudoz, 2010; joseph rowntree foundation, 2014; riddell, 2009; ruiz de velasco et al., 2008; scottish government, 2008). in many australian jurisdictions alternative educational provision has been central to the project of re-engaging young people who have left the mainstream either through their own volition or through compulsion (department of education and early childhood development (vic), 2010; harper, heron, houghton, o’donnell, & sargent, 2011; kpmg, 2009; mills, mcgregor, & muspratt, 2012). much has been written about the quality, both positive and negative, of this type of provision (martin & brand, 2006; mcgregor & mills, 2011; ogg & kaill, 2010; te riele, 2007; thomson & russell, 2007). in this paper, we focus on the current situation in one state in australia: queensland. whilst the states and territories have constitutional responsibility for educational matters, in recent times the commonwealth government has taken a much more interventionist approach through tied-funding regimes (lingard, 2000; lingard, martino, & rezai-rashti, 2013). however, to date, whilst concerned about school retention and achievement, the commonwealth government has taken little interest in alternative education provision. most australian states do have approaches designed to address schooling disengagement. for example, in victoria all government schools are, under its effective schools are engaging schools framework, expected to develop a student engagement policy1. this policy provides support for school-based strategies that include working with community agencies and alternative provision. in all states there are also alternative learning options outside the government system for young people disengaged from school. the dusseldorp foundation provides a comprehensive list of these sites (te riele, 2012). in the australian capital territory (act), the education and training directorate worked with a range of agencies serving young people to construct the act youth commitment, signed in 2011. its purpose is to determine pathways for re-engagement (see mills, mcgregor, & muspratt, 2012 for a discussion of the situation in the act). in the state of western australia (wa) there is a range of community programs and courses for young people who have left school or who are still in the compulsory phase of learning, but struggling. wa also has a system of independent schools for students with “exceptionally challenging behaviours” called curriculum and re-engagement (care) schools (department of education [wa], 2014). in queensland there has been an expressed concern with disengagement in mainstream schools. great teachers=great results a direct action plan for queensland, is a policy 1 see http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/participation/pages/default.aspx http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/participation/pages/default.aspx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 200 document issued in 2013 by the department of education, training and employment (qld) aimed at developing excellence in queensland’s mainstream state schools; it also supports alternative educational provision, demonstrated through funding for what are known as “special assistance schools” (sas)2. these sas are independent from the government system but supported through government funding. in order to obtain this status they are expected to meet a set of criteria that ensures that highly disadvantaged students receive an education. they are not to charge school fees; they must have flexible and specific accredited educational programs to reengage young people in learning; and they must develop sustainable learning and employment pathways. in addition to the sas, there is also increasing support from the department for those government schools which have decided to construct alternative education annexes, usually offsite, to support young people who appear to have rejected, or been rejected by, mainstream schools. in this paper we explore an sas and an annex model of alternative provision. our focus on these two schools is based on the grounds that they appear to be making a significant difference to the lives of their students and, we suggest, offer lessons to both the mainstream and alternative education sectors. we are concerned with three key elements: the material supports they provide to students; their climate; and their pedagogy and curriculum. material supports are essential to ensure that many of the barriers that prevent these students from attending school are, if not removed, somewhat disrupted; the climate is also essential in that the climate of previous schools is what has been at the heart of many students’ exit from the mainstream; and pedagogy and curriculum, we argue, has to be a key concern to ensure that these schools become something other than drop-in centres and are able to provide students with a meaningful education. in order to provide a quality education to all young people it is vital that alternative provision is viewed as “different from” not “inferior to” mainstream education. there has been growing recognition of the importance of a rigorous curriculum as opposed to a narrow focus on competencies and skills in the field of curriculum theory (biesta, 2006, 2014; yates, 2011; young, 2008;). biesta (2014) reminds us of john dewey’s (1895) point that “the problem of education lies in the co-ordination of the individual and the social factors”. his work is interesting in that it indicates the need for pedagogy and curriculum to be more than childcentred; drawing on dewey’s theories, he argues that the approach should be “communicationcentred … and … that education is neither about getting the curriculum into the child nor about the child doing just anything, but about establishing a productive and meaningful connection between the two” (biesta, 2014, p. 30). hence, when considering the curriculum offered in alternative schools, centres, and programs, consideration must be given to what is offered (depth, breadth, disciplinary knowledge, and skills); why it is offered (pathways and futures); and, 2 see http://education.qld.gov.au/schools/grants/non-state/recurrent.html http://education.qld.gov.au/schools/grants/non-state/recurrent.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 201 equally importantly, how it is taught: pedagogy is as important as content and disciplinary knowledge if young people are to be engaged in education. additionally, if we accept current curricular thinking, the communicative context of students and teachers (i.e., relationships) must be included as a significant element. thus, within our case-study sites, the relational environment was fundamental to facilitating effective pedagogy and subsequently, meaningful learning experiences for the students. the study and method the data for this paper are drawn from a larger study of alternative educational provision in queensland which began in 2009 and grew with available funding to continue into 2015, involving eight case-study schools located in diverse regions of the state. for much of the research we collaborated with the peak body, or advocacy group, for youth workers in the state, the youth affairs network of queensland (yanq). all relevant ethics approvals were obtained, and pseudonyms have been used for all participants and schools. the research sought to provide in-depth analysis of the types of practices that re-engage young people in learning. in gathering data we utilised a mixed methods approach. thirteen telephone surveys (3060 minutes) and sixteen on-line surveys were undertaken with key personnel from the youth sector, and queensland youth services in rural and regional areas of the state. these surveys helped to map existing alternative educational providers and determine awareness of such services among professionals who work closely with disadvantaged and marginalised young people. paper surveys were undertaken with the following groups in urban, rural, and regional areas of queensland: • 79 workers (teachers and youth support) in 13 alternative education sites, to determine how referral processes work and to ascertain their views on the types of programs and practices that are the most effective in terms of retaining and challenging the young people; • 154 young people undertaking education in 15 flexible education sites and programs, to determine the factors that attracted them to the sites, the practices and learning occurring at the sites that they found useful, and their aspirations for the future; • 36 young people who had disengaged from all formal educational processes, to explore their knowledge of alternative education services in their local region, their broad aspirations for further study or employment, their experiences of education, and their recommendations for alternative sites. the young people asked to complete this survey were approached through a variety of agencies that have contact with young disengaged people (e.g., youth legal services, housing and accommodation service providers). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 202 from the alternative education sites that participated in the relevant surveys, eight casestudy sites were selected to supplement and enrich the initial data. these sites all provide educational opportunities for young people who have disengaged from education. they were selected to exemplify different approaches to alternative educational provision. there was also diversity in: location (e.g., inner city, regional, rural, remote); in the characteristics of the young people catered for (e.g., indigenous young people, pregnant girls and young mothers); in the types of programs offered; and in governance and funding. the aim was not to obtain a representative sample across all these variables but to identify schools that exemplify different ways of re-engaging young people in varying circumstances. visits were conducted periodically during the course of the project. data collection methods included on-site observations and analyses of documents. all such preliminary data helped to inform the subsequent interviews at our case-study sites with 68 administrators, workers, teachers, and community volunteers; and 81 young people. these semistructured interviews aimed to explore participants’ personal experiences as well as their perspectives on their particular site and its practices. for purposes of this paper, two case studies were chosen to reflect two particular models of alternative schooling in queensland. our first case study, victoria meadows learning centre, has been selected from the queensland government’s list of special assistance schools; and the second, woodlands flexi-school, from the high school annex models in our study. as well as being an sas school, victoria meadows learning centre is also part of a youth program sponsored by a major church, which has become increasingly involved in the australian alternative education sector, operating 17 flexible learning centres nationally, 12 of which are situated in queensland. according to its website, this network “celebrates the unique character and hopes of young people of secondary school age and is dedicated to “enfranchising young people through inclusive learning communities”. these centres, which are registered schools, focus on re-engaging young people in educational pathways within contexts of “trusting relationships”. all their flexible learning centres focus on the individual needs of young people; small group learning; teacher and youth worker support; learning experiences supporting social and emotional needs of young people as well as academic skills; and empowering young people to take personal responsibility for their actions and learning. complementing this educational framework are four principles: “respect, participation, safe & legal, and honesty”. according to their website, these principles are used by young people and staff to encourage learning, build personal relationships, and resolve conflict. whilst our focus here is on victoria meadows, and not the actual youth program sponsored by this church, it should be noted that we have visited many sites within this network and despite the structural similarities, each flexible learning centre in the network has unique characteristics and ways of operating because the needs of their students are shaped by their local contexts, geographies, and histories. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 203 the off-site high school annex model operating in queensland provides an alternative school for those young people whose needs have not been met by mainstream educational contexts. this model requires mainstream state schools to retain responsibility for all their students rather than seeking to remove those who prove challenging in terms of behaviour and educational engagement. woodlands flexi-school is attached to a state high school, and along with their “parent-school” students, it also takes students from other high schools in the town. in our various discussions with senior people in the state department of education in queensland, it was very apparent that this school is seen by many within the bureaucracy as one of its flagship alternative schools. victoria meadows flexible learning centre victoria meadows flexible learning centre was founded in 1990 for homeless young people by a major city council in a central city park. in 2000 it moved to a building in an inner city neighbourhood. in 2004 it once more relocated, this time to its current location in shared premises with a behavioural management unit, again very close to the central business district. in 2006 it became a registered school. historically, victoria meadows flexible learning centre has mostly catered to young people in the post-compulsory years of education. many of these young people have had to contend with homelessness, early parenthood, mental illness, and various forms of addiction. being in the post-compulsory age group has meant that attendance has traditionally been entirely voluntary and their re-engagement with education as flexible as their lives allow.we were told that, due to increased demand, the school was in the process of opening up to younger students. our research involvement in victoria meadows flexible learning centre started in 2009. since that time, we have spoken to a students, teachers, workers, and several campus coordinators. the essential story remains constant: this is a school that is making a great difference in the lives of many young people who are not only struggling to re-engage with educational institutions but are also seeking solutions to many personal challenges in their lives. thus, this school prides itself on being known as a “learning community” with the following characteristics: it is a non-uniform school; first names are used for all people regardless of age and position; teachers, youth workers, and other support staff are usually known simply as “workers”; the staff’s work crosses boundaries of teaching and counselling regardless of their formal titles. young people who attend victoria meadows come from a range of ethnic backgrounds, although white working-class australian students are in the majority, and many are living independently. the centre also caters to young parents, primarily young mothers. evidence from our research at this site clearly supports the perspective that broader socioeconomic factors along with a variety of social prejudices are major contributors to young people’s disengagement from mainstream schooling. one girl, who had a small child but very little support, felt forced out of her previous school: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 204 my mum left to go to sydney when my daughter was four months old and my dad’s never met my kids so … yeah, i moved into my boyfriend’s house and his mum and dad supported me – and then yeah he’s left. the principal (of former school) just basically told me halfway during the year “leave or i’m just going to fail you and expel you at the end of the year”. and yeah, i just left. (sarah, victoria meadows) while the backgrounds of the students were diverse, common elements include strong life ambitions and determination. to maintain their connection to learning, some juggle work and/or caring responsibilities, while others travel significant distances . during an interview with one young student it emerged that her daily trip to the flexible learning centre took 90 minutes. on the way to school she passed several mainstream schools, the closest of which was just a five minute walk from her home. at the time of this research, victoria meadows was operating as a senior campus. as mentioned earlier, this was to change in 2015; however, they intended to maintain their approach to education, which a social worker told us was “informed by adult education models”, and where attendance at the school had to be voluntary. she noted that, “we can’t operate with young people who... are mandated to come”. many of the young people at victoria meadows had been suspended or excluded for a variety of reasons from mainstream schools. they tended to look back at their times in those schools with anger, resentment, or sadness. yet, in this school, they spoke of the respect they had for the workers and for the school and what it was trying to do for them. much of this respect came from the ways in which they were given opportunities to make contributions to the community and to the ways in which they were listened to by the workers. flexible arrangements for attendance and completion of tasks for learning underpin the ways in which victoria meadows accommodates the many challenges inherent in the lives of the students. their focus is on retaining students and this may mean allowing the students to have periodic sessions of non-attendance while they sort out their lives. the metrics that apply in mainstream settings would not work here. material support for students victoria meadows flexible learning centre tackles head-on the lack of resources and poverty that face many of its students. for instance, there is a crèche so that young parents, primarily young women, are able to access childcare while they are studying. according to one young mother: because i can still have my education, my son can come and it’s, like, i don’t know, it’s so much different to a school like you have a really good relationship and bond with the teachers and other students. no one looks at you differently, everyone gets along … throughout the day, provision is made for such things as food, showers, and access to social workers who can locate shelters for those needing accommodation or access to legal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 205 services. meeting the material needs of these young people was critical for ensuring that they could stay at school. however, this alone did not completely explain many of the young people’s ongoing commitment to their education. there were other elements identified by the students, including: the environment; teaching strategies; relationships; and curricula that were connected and relevant to the interests and goals of students. school climate: environmental and relational factors the way people treat each other impacts the emotional climate of places and this was frequently noted by our interviewees. like the other schools in this youth network, victoria meadows flexible learning centre has replaced traditional school rules with the four rs — “rights, respect, relationships, and responsibilities”. these apply to staff and students alike. one of the teachers affirmed the need for having: “a place where difference is accepted, where alternative viewpoints are accepted; alternative lifestyles are accepted in a safe and respectful environment where your ability to succeed in academic endeavours isn’t the be all and end all of you as a person.” another teacher stressed the importance of community in contrast to some structures he had experienced in mainstream schools: “one of the advantages that victoria meadows has is that it started with community and has introduced education rather than beginning with education and introducing community.” he believed that this was fundamental to the creation of a “learning community”. teacher/youth worker gary noted the relationship-focus of the school: “to me, schooling and stuff is about relationships — we work within principles, not rules — those principles of ‘respect, relationship, safety, rights and responsibilities’…” the positive relationships and community ethos were also noted by a female student who had come to victoria meadows after suffering severe bullying at her previous school: “[our] community is a really big thing. it is really nice because if i am having problems, i am not afraid to talk to any of the teachers.” the use of first names as an important aspect of the emotional climate of the school was noted by many students. it also worked to distance many of the students from their earlier negative experiences of schooling. one of the students explained: you know it’s not sir, madam, it’s not mr. and mrs. whatever. i couldn’t even tell you what half the teachers’ last names were.… yeah pretty much, they’re all you know, like, george or angela and …. it makes you feel equal, not below, like it’s not “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir”. this student who had had a very difficult time at his previous school was fully engaged in learning and he saw the practices that “make you feel equal not below” as central to supporting this engagement. given the stressful issues many of the young people face, students are sometimes asked to go home as a “circuit breaker” when emotions run high, however, they are always welcomed back. workers and students at the school emphasised to us that their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 206 relationships were based on trust and that when students were asked to take some time out they later returned to the school and the issue was addressed as a community. in sum, the environment cultivated at victoria meadows aims to be a socially supportive and educative one that allows young people to develop interpersonal skills that facilitate their relationships elsewhere, as noted here by the associate head of campus, damian: just to be able to sit down and have lunch with other young people and adults; to be able to pick up their plate and put it away and not be engaging in any social aggressive behaviour and just to be able to interact; where we are working with young people and they are able to develop these life skills and be able to be members of the community; and be able to then get work/jobs, because they are now able to socialise and interact. pedagogy and curriculum students at victoria meadows have learning plans that responded to individual needs. if there is a need to address learning gaps, the focus will be on those areas; teaching begins at the place where each student is at. the young people who attend victoria meadows work at their own pace along curricular pathways that may lead to the queensland certificate of education3 or a variety of technical and further education (tafe) certificates, preparation for university studies, or employment. students appreciated the individualised instruction and pathways as noted by this student, craig, “the teachers are willing to help you out and have one-on-one sessions if required and they treat you like an actual person, no matter what your back story.” structures at the school are also flexible enough to allow young people to manage their lives as well as their learning as noted here by one of the students, keith: like, it’s flexible you’ll have assignments but like, people might have things going on at home, and in a normal school they wouldn’t take that into consideration whereas here they’ll take that into consideration, like personal things. there’s reasons you can’t do your assignments. material support coupled with supportive, respectful relationships shape the pedagogy and flexibly delivered curriculum, as evidenced in this story from a 20-year-old man who had come to victoria meadows to finish year 12 and had found support for his musical ambitions there. the staff were going to accompany him to the nearby college of music technology: 3 the qce is queensland's senior school qualification, which is awarded to eligible students usually at the end of year 12. the qce recognises broad learning options and offers flexibility in what, where, and when learning occurs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 207 well, olivia (music teacher) has been trying to talk to them and see if we can go in for a visit one day and just talk to them about it, see what we actually need to be able to get in, if that’s what we want. he described how another student had been able to get a job through a similar process: the other month we had ronald (worker) take a couple of us over to the wharf [a nearby music studio] and we did the induction there. after that, one of the guys actually got a job at the wharf … many of the young people who attend victoria meadows flexible learning centre face challenging life issues. however, what was very apparent in the comments from our student participants was that the vast majority of these students would not be in any form of education at all if it were not for the opportunities provided by victoria meadows. this school provides a way for young people to reconnect educationally within a supportive environment that includes real material assistance with childcare, accommodation, food and clothing, and various types of help in accessing social security and legal support. woodlands flexi-school located in a regional city of queensland, woodlands flexi-school began as a community project involving a regional university education academic, a member of the local council, and a school counsellor. it was originally set up in the mid-1990s as a drop-in centre where homeless or disadvantaged young people could come and talk to volunteers. many of these young people indicated interest in returning to school so the centre organised distance education for them. this, one of the founding members indicated, “worked well for a few years”. however, he noted that there was a sense of something missing. as the president of a community organisation, rotary, in the town, in 2001 he worked with the local business community and the city council, which between them donated buildings and land, to set up a school for these students. in 2005 they approached a local high school that had a very supportive principal to take over the responsibility for the school; she was able to garner support from the state department of education and has remained as the principal of the school, with staff from her mainstream school, including the teacher-in-charge, allocated to the flexi-school. the latter has community partnerships with many local groups including a local men’s network and the local university. in 2010, its sponsor high school won the queensland multicultural service award in education and the national australia bank schools first “local impact” award for the work it was doing with the flexischool in respect of disadvantaged young people and creating inclusive learning pathways. as with victoria meadows, we have had a connection with the school since 2009. many of the staff have remained the same, including the principal of the sponsor school and the head of campus, along with board members and community support. whilst the students have changed, their issues have remained relatively constant. many students came from very difficult family international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 208 circumstances and some were living independently. shona, one of the teachers, also told us: “so we get quite a few kids who are maybe under a psychologist’s care, on medication, have had a history of … types of mental illness, like depression, anxiety, all of that.” she went on to say: the majority of kids — my year 10s from last year, probably 90 per cent of them were victims of the bad elements of other schools and they were so highly anxious or bullied or whatever, they came in here and went, “ohhhh, we can learn. ” i had the best time with my year 10s last year; they were just beautiful. the school has a waiting list and tries to support those in most need. the head of campus, judy, indicated that they gave priority to those who had very little support at home: when a child doesn’t have anyone to build those relationships with and they are disengaging and they are depressed and anxious, that’s when they need a centre like this that basically becomes their family, becomes their support; they build self-confidence, self-esteem and then they can get themselves on the right track. the principal of the main school, margaret, also remarked: “we are well aware of our growing waiting list over time and we are also well aware of the increasing (demand)... at a far younger age.” she noted that many of her colleagues in primary schools were finding the demands of student needs greater and greater. she went on to say: “so they are struggling in primary schools and then we pick this up in year 8, and of course, too young, too young for flexi.” material support for students an important aspect of woodlands flexi is the material support it provides to students, including clothing, transport, and access to social security and legal aid. some of it is quite simple, like the provision of food: children know they can come and have brekky and smell cookies baking. it is a homely smell — one of our basic needs. so they feel like, “okay, if i go there, someone’s going to chat to me, someone’s going to feed me. ” while they are here, “okay, here’s an english class”! the school also helps students in quite substantial ways. one indigenous girl aged 16 who had had a very difficult life — her mother was in gaol and she lived with her grandmother who had a brain tumour — told a story about how she had made a decision to return to education after dropping out, and about how the school had helped her pursue her love of dance: “i explained to her [the principal], ‘i love dance. my goal is to get to bangarra.’ ” she went on to say how the staff had managed to organise work experience for her with bangarra, and how they had kept the organisation of the trip secret from her and that when they did tell her: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 209 i nearly cried when i found out because, yeah, since — it’s a pretty big thing.… and i just thought, “i’m so happy that i came back because it’s just helped me so much”, like in the past couple of months i have gotten so far and got my head screwed on, that i definitely want to go somewhere. if i was in any other school, i would still be like, “oh”, you know, having doubts about it. using funds from the account set up with prize money from one of the school’s national awards, two of the teachers from the school took her to sydney for a week to work with bangarra as part of her work experience. at the time of our last visit, she had an application in to a bangarra feeder dance school in nsw for the end of year 12. she went on to say how much she loved the school and how it was “like a family environment” and how a lot of the students came up to her to say: “good luck. i hope you have fun”. school climate: environmental and relational factors the workers and teachers at woodlands strive to ensure that there is a positive climate and relationships in the school. however, the head of campus was at pains to tell us that this is something that should come quite easily. she spoke of how the students feel when they come to school: they are happy. they are really happy. people think that it can’t be that simple but it is that simple! people often ask me, “what do you do? ” we do nothing special. we do basic things. we do them well, but they are basic; basic, basic. you know, feeding someone; talking to someone; making a connection; asking them about their day; they are basic, basic things. it’s finding the right people who care, who take that time to find a staff, and then just building the warmth around it and then they want to come. central to creating a positive climate in the school is the linking of students with adults with whom students can build a connection. the head of campus told us: you want some significant person in their life to take an interest. that could be a mentor, it could be a connection with a teacher, it could be an employer.… sometimes it can be someone quite random … that makes the difference.… we link with community, rotary, employers. a lot of employers, amazingly, take our students under their wing, and they just see something special. the school’s mentoring system with a local men’s organisation is run by the “outreach officer”, mary. she organises the mentoring and is responsible for indigenous engagement and has a key role in the school. the head of campus noted the significance of her work: and those support people are really important. it gives children a different face to talk to. that i love, because not everybody is going to connect to the one person. you have got lots of personalities around, lots of options. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 210 we were also told that the environment is supportive enough that students who are gay or lesbian are able to be “out”. the head of campus informed us that bullying of any form of difference was not tolerated: we are quite hard on bullying here and basically just, yeah, i get students to talk about it immediately, whatever is said. you know, they are encouraged to write it down … we can’t have it. it wouldn’t be any good for the students that are here. all the students we spoke with praised the teaching. one boy in year 11, corey, had been referred to the flexi-school after he had started failing at school and had “got to the point where i just didn’t care anymore”. he wanted us to know how good the school and the teachers were: it’s great, it really is … i think it is not just the one-on-one with the teachers, but more that — not that it is lenient — it is better because the teachers are nicer … they are allowed to be themselves. they don’t have to put on a face or mask and act.… they can tell you to be quiet like a normal person. they can talk to us normally. it’s great. he was now hoping to go to university to do science: “i really love science. it’s one of my biggest passions. always talking about it, facts, information, everything. i enjoy space, chemistry, physics, everything.” this did not mean that there are never any tensions at the school. this same boy, corey, also described an incident after some students had been “mucking up” in maths and the teacher had said to the head of campus that they “had lost the meaning of flexi-school” which had “crushed her”. following this she ran an “hour-long session” with the students, “talking about what flexi was and why we were here.” pedagogy and curriculum woodlands flexi was focussed on providing the students with a rich and rigorous curriculum. however, the quality of the environment was seen as being central to engaging the students. the head of campus, judy, explained: “first of all, before we even went to the curriculum, we wanted to make this place a place where they feel welcomed and they feel connected. because once you build that relationship, they will do anything for you. then you build the curriculum.” this, she argued, required high-quality teachers: “if a teacher can’t cut it in mainstream, they are not going to cut it here.” as a consequence the teachers were handpicked from the main high school. the people they looked for were those who related well to young people, but were also experienced. the head of campus emphasised this: i believe you have to start in mainstream. you have to build your skill, build your craft, and this is something … you do have to have good content knowledge, too, because you have got children from such a wide range. so you don’t want to get teachers who are struggling with the content in mainstream... yeah, you do want good teachers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 211 from our observations, they appeared to have found such teachers. we examined some of the work and listened to students in one class as part of this study and were impressed with the quality of work that the students were undertaking. for example, shona, who taught english, study of society and the environment (sose), and art at the school, has a double major and honours in english and a thorough understanding of effective pedagogies. she taught a lot of integrated units, sought to ensure that there was relevance in the unit, and often provided opportunities for students to present their work publicly. at the time of one visit the year 10s were doing a poetry unit where they had to analyse three poems and create one of their own; they would then represent the theme or mood of their poem in an artwork. their work was to be used in the school magazine at the end of the year. shona showed us some of the work associated with this unit, commenting, “they do a whole heap of things that they don’t realise … we look at gaps and silences and discourse.… we use those terms. they don’t realise that they are actually doing it.” the students here were involved in work of a high intellectual quality. however, at the same time shona saw a place for rote learning in order for the students to obtain some facts. for instance they had been doing a unit on world war 1 in sose. she said that they had had to do a lot of rote learning for them to grasp some of the key events and she did some short-answer closed questions at the beginning of each lesson to reinforce this learning. once the students were able to answer some of the factual questions, she said, “they were so excited.… and they started asking each other questions, ‘would we change sides?’ for the first time in their lives, they know what’s going on.” she was also able to link this to current events for them to see the relevance: the kids were actually interested in what’s happening in russia and ukraine. now, again, it’s a perfect thing to actually say, “well, here’s the history of your balkan states in world war i. you can see the problem still exists.” so it’s linking the current knowledge in that as well. importantly, as evidenced by the quality of her lessons as well as her attitudes, shona had also rejected deficit constructions of the students: what i keep saying to these kids is “you are not stupid. you just haven’t been taught or you haven’t got the skill or you don’t know the rule.” … i don’t tend to treat the kids down here intellectually any differently, while we modify a whole heap of other things. this rejection of negative constructions of the young people was also reflected in other teachers’ comments. mary, another teacher, for example, stressed to us the significance of students’ efforts in just attending school: some of these kids are coming from fairly horrific backgrounds/families and they are getting themselves to school … we don’t recognise the individual backgrounds of these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 212 kids. we don’t give them any credit for the fact that they even get up and come to school, in their circumstances. in summary, woodlands has developed a very positive reputation within the state department of education and the local community. it caters to some of the most highly disenfranchised young people in the local area. it supports students not only from its own sponsor school, but also many other schools in the local area. many of the independent schools in our study are isolated and receive very little support, apart from some funding from the department of education, training, and employment if they have managed to acquire sas status, although victoria meadows benefits from being part of the youth network. however, for woodlands flexi-school there were obvious benefits to being attached to a high school. being connected to the main school ensures, for instance, that teachers have access to professional development, and, as noted by the principal, “all professional learning is shared; all structures are shared”. this sharing was critical to the flexi-school’s success. margaret noted that the high school subsidised the nurse, social worker, and guidance officer at the flexi-school. however, the head of campus believed that being physically separated from the main school site was also central to the way in which the students engaged with the flexi-school. she told us: i think they feel more special because it’s their little place. … we tell them, “this is a great place to be.” we have our own graduation day. we have our own formal. they love it. we make a big deal of it. analysis and conclusion these two case-study schools highlight a number of key features about alternative schooling. they provide a snapshot of the types of issues that are faced by young people that lead to their departure from the mainstream. these issues relate to the lack of economic and material assistance they have in their lives, and the consequences of that for their engagement with conventional schools that usually lack the wrap-around services required to support young people in need. the case studies also give some indication of the ways in which the climates in their previous schools impacted upon their sense of being valued and how this was also a key feature in their exit from the mainstream. the case studies show that most of the young people who leave the mainstream are still interested in learning. these two schools were both highly successful in engaging young people and providing them with opportunities to demonstrate this. the material supports that the schools provide to students are not simply drawn from their own budgets, but include the backing from and engagement with other organisations. as with many of the alternative providers in our research, these schools alluded to their close working relationships with their local communities, which provide access to elements fundamental to helping young people re-engage with education, training, or employment. these include access to health and welfare agencies, both government and private; social security, accommodation, and youth services; and supportive relationships with organisations such as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 213 rotary, town councils, and business groups so as to facilitate support for fund-raising; building projects; mentoring of young people; and opportunities for work experience and possibly apprenticeships. the schools are smaller than typical mainstream schools, which facilitates the development of a positive climate where students and teachers have opportunities to get to know each other. it also provides possibilities for students to express their concerns and to ensure that their voices are heard. many students noted that the small size of their school meant that they could express their differences in an environment where they felt respected and supported. in terms of the learning that was taking place in the alternative sites, we noted that as the nurturing environments shaped positive self-esteem for the young people, students increasingly expressed a growing confidence in their ability to learn. such confidence translated into expressed feelings of greater enjoyment of learning and shaped their belief in the possibility of preferred futures. teachers adopted individualised approaches to assessing the starting point for each young person and then developed learning plans that took into account the interests and aptitudes of each student. they asked them what they wanted to be and then helped them find ways to begin their journeys towards such goals; the story of the young aspiring bangarra dancer is but one example of this approach. most of these schools do not take part in regimes of national testing such as the national assessment program – literacy and numeracy4 (naplan) and at present, hard data in respect of specific academic outcomes are patchy. more research that tracks students longitudinally is needed to provide this, but we have much qualitative evidence to support our contention that these alternative schools are facilitating meaningful learning for students that can lead to employment and/or further education. it is not always possible to quantify the learning that occurs in schools and we would argue that for the young people who use alternative sites, the evidence of “outcomes” is manifest in their greater self-efficacy and developed capacities relevant to the pathways they choose post-school. in this paper we have demonstrated some of the ways in which two alternative schools in the australian state of queensland have sought to make a difference to those young people who have exited the mainstream sector, either of their own accord or due to pressure from their former schools, which failed to acknowledge and accommodate difficult personal circumstances. in providing these two case studies, we are not suggesting that they offer a “recipe for success” but rather that they provide a snapshot of some of the current practices that appear to be making a difference in the lives of previously disengaged young people. asking these young people what they might be doing without their alternative school drew responses such as “nothing”, “crime”, “dead”, and “drugs”. attending these schools had changed their lives. however, we have discovered that a number of jurisdictions (some european countries, for example) emphasise the importance of changing the mainstream rather than providing alternative provision (harper et al., 4 http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/naplan.html http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/naplan.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 214 2011). they argue that having a second tier of educational options enables mainstream schools to abrogate their responsibilities to all students and can lead to increased referrals from the mainstream. we have some sympathy for this argument. we too are of the view that the mainstream needs to change to better meet the needs of young people they are currently failing. a former youth worker, and now principal, in one of the alternative schools in our larger project, told us that the existence of their school was “like the canary in the mine” — it proved that the mainstream system was not working. we would suggest that there is, therefore, much that the mainstream sector may learn from the most effective of these alternative schools in order to cater to the educational needs of all young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 198–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615718 215 references biesta, g. 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(2011). curriculum in today’s world: configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. london, uk: routledge. young, m. (2008). bringing knowledge back in: from social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. london, uk: routledge. alternative education: providing support to the disenfranchised martin mills and glenda mcgregor the study and method victoria meadows flexible learning centre material support for students school climate: environmental and relational factors pedagogy and curriculum woodlands flexi-school material support for students school climate: environmental and relational factors pedagogy and curriculum analysis and conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 can i tell just by myself? discussing a parental mental disorder with a child in a research interview anu leinonen, jaakko seikkula, and maarit alasuutari abstract: in this single-case study, we focus on how to have a dialogue in a research interview with a child whose parent has been diagnosed with a mental disorder. the interactional context and the interviewer’s role in co-constructing the child’s accounts have been largely neglected in the qualitative psychological research on this subject. stigma related to mental disorders is increasingly being recognized as a central issue for the entire mental health field. it is considered to have far-reaching effects on the social interaction of the stigmatized person and also to contaminate the interactions of those around that person. we examine how the stigma of a parental mental disorder arises and is negotiated in the dialogue between an 8-year-old girl and a female interviewer. the perspective of the study is micro-sociological and constructionist. three categories of the child’s talk were identified: actively describing her position and voice in the ongoing dialogue, normalization of the parental problem and herself, and talking about shame and embarrassment. keywords: children, parental mental health, dialogue, research interview, stigma anu leinonen, ma (corresponding author) is preparing a doctoral thesis in psychology at university of jyväskylä. she works at the helsinki mother and child home association, ensikodin tie 4, 00510 helsinki, finland. email: anukaleinonen@gmail.com jaakko seikkula, phd is a professor of psychology and psychotherapy at the university of jyväskylä, po 35, fi-40014, university of jyväskylä, finland. email: jaakko.seikkula@psyka.jyu.fi maarit alasuutari, phd is a professor of early childhood at the university of jyväskylä, po 35, fi-40014, university of jyväskylä, finland. email: maarit.alasuutari@jyu.fi mailto:anukaleinonen@gmail.com mailto:jaakko.seikkula@psyka.jyu.fi mailto:maarit.alasuutari@jyu.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 126 in our previous study, we interviewed children 8 to 12 years old who had a parent with a mental health problem (alasuutari & järvi, 2012). as in a growing number of qualitative studies (e.g., riebschleger, 2004; aldridge, 2006; mordoch & hall, 2008; östman, 2008; backer, 2011; oskouie, zeighami, & joolaee, 2011), our focus was on children’s views of their parent’s problem. in the interviews, all the children, without being asked, reported feelings of shame about their parent’s problem, thereby demonstrating their awareness of the stigma attached to mental health disorders. their seemingly spontaneous talk about the shame they experienced prompted us to explore the topic of stigma in our data. however, it soon became evident that stigma could not be studied outside of the interaction taking place in the interview. instead, it emerges in several, and often tacit ways in the talk of the interviewer and the child. in this article, we examine how the stigma of a parental mental disorder emerges and how it is negotiated in a research interview between an 8-year-old girl and a female interviewer. in our approach, we depart from the existing literature, which has mainly addressed content in interviews with children (mordoch & hall, 2008; östman, 2008; oskouie et al., 2011), and focus explicitly on the dialogue between a child and an interviewer. the perspective of our study is thus micro-sociological and constructionist. stigma, in the context of mental disorders, is increasingly being recognized as a central issue for the entire mental health field. it has also been argued that psychiatric diagnoses are always stigmatizing, which makes their use, especially when working with children, both challenging and ethically questionable, (hinshaw, 2005; corrigan, 2007). stigma can be defined as a severely discrediting attribute that has far-reaching effects across the whole of a person’s social interaction. goffman (1963, pp.3) states that stigma is a linguistic concept referring to relationships and that the stigmatizing attribute is neither creditable nor discreditable in itself. it is contextual in its nature, although many stigmatizing attributes seem to be quite permanent and culturally undesirable. conditions associated with stigma can be differentiated into three categories: physical anomalies, personal weaknesses, and racial attributes. mental health problems belong to the second category, since affected persons are often seen as mentally or even morally weaker than others. in addition to a personal stigma, there is a so-called “courtesy stigma”, which socially contaminates those around the stigmatized person (goffman, 1963). thus, children whose parents are diagnosed with a mental disorder would also be affected by the stigma attached to it. the concept of an associative stigma corresponds to that of a courtesy stigma (e.g., chang & horrocks, 2006). for example, koschade and lynd-stevenson (2011) propose that children with parental mental problems have to find ways to cope with their associative stigma; the old saying “like father like son” may insidiously affect the life of these children. moreover, gladstone, boydell, and mckeever (2006) argue that being identified as “at risk” for a mental disorder is a powerful label for children. furthermore, hinshaw (2005) points out that stigma international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 127 incorporates both social and psychological processes owing to the strong likelihood of degradation being internalized by the stigmatized person. overall, a stigma can be considered as present when there is a negative gap between a person’s actual social identity and what she or he would like to be. since human beings prefer to present themselves as non-deviant, this gap entails that the person needs to manage the parts of his or her identity that are seen as discredited or spoiled (goffman, 1963). this has also been confirmed in research with young people. for example, adolescents using counseling services seem to manage mental health stigma by resisting, in their argumentation, being positioned in a discourse of mental illness (prior, 2012). moreover, children with parents suffering from mental health problems struggle hard to present themselves as “normal” and equal in their peer group, and avoid talking about their parents in an unfavorable light (fjone, ytterhus, & almvik, 2009). additionally, it has been demonstrated that children who live in informal kinship care carefully manage to control stigmatizing information, such as serious parental problems, keeping it from their peers (farmer, selwyn, & meakings, 2013). in his classic study on stigma, goffman (1963) examined how stigmatized people describe the management of their spoiled identity in different social situations. lawrence (1996) points out, however, that goffman’s writings do not explicate the methods by which stigmatized activities are normalized “in the span of real interactional time”; lawrence himself demonstrates how, through neutralism, a news interviewer collaborates to normalize the interviewee’s practices in a house of prostitution. furthermore, osvaldsson (2004) analyses how the “normality” of young people in a custodial institution is constructed in interaction by relocating the notion of deviance from the person to the social circumstances. in line with the two latter studies, the present article examines the interactional management and negotiation of an associative stigma. while some authors underline the stigmatizing character of psychiatric diagnoses (hinshaw, 2005; corrigan, 2007), having knowledge about them is also seen as important for children who have a parent with a mental disorder. several studies argue that having an understanding of the parent’s mental disorder increases a child’s resilience (beardslee, gladstone, wright, & cooper, 2003; stallard, norman, huline-dickens, salter, & cribb, 2004; backer, 2011). pihkala, sandlund, and cederström (2012) also report that children experience a sense of relief after gaining more knowledge about a parental mental problem. thus, it seems to be important for children to acquire information, and to be able to communicate about parental mental problems (focht-birkerts & beardslee, 2000; riebschleger, 2004; stallard et al., 2004). this presents a dilemma. on the one hand, topicalizing a parental mental disorder can be understood as stigmatizing the child and, on the other hand, it can be seen as a relief for her or him. this contradictory starting point leaves us with a paradox: how is it possible to have a dialogue with a child about parental problems, for example in a research interview, without the child “losing face” (goffman, 1963)? if the interview context and the interaction are framed by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 128 the child’s potentially spoiled identity owing to parental mental problems, what kind of dialogue would best enable the interviewee to control her or his normality and deviancy? in this article we consider these questions and examine how a child’s potentially spoiled identity is dealt with in a research interview related to a parental mental problem, and what contribution is made to this process by the interviewer. we also study how the interlocutors locally produce and co-construct the child’s “normality”. after describing the theoretical framework of our study — the dialogical approach and the social study of childhood — we introduce the methodological approach. the results are then presented in three sections, each describing a specific interactional way of handling the associative stigma of the interviewee, tanja. the article concludes by drawing the main findings together and discussing them more generally. a dialogical perspective and childhood studies as the theoretical framework our work draws on a theoretical view of human action as basically dialogical (marková, linell, grossen, & salazar orvig, 2007). a dialogical approach examines human communication as sequentially organized and interdependently and jointly constructed (linell, 1998). very much the same assumptions are also the starting point of discursive research, which emphasizes dialogue and interviews as situated, co-constructed, and negotiated by the interlocutors (potter & hepburn, 2005). in accordance with dialogical principles, the interlocutors construct themselves in varying, negotiable positions in relation to each other, to the cultural context, and to their own inner dialogue. this gives rise to the notion of “the heterogeneity of the speaker”, which means that when one speaks it is done from a variety of perspectives. the subject may use different voices in constructing his or her argumentation. these voices might refer to different pieces of discourse(s), but they might also indicate the heterogeneity of the subject (grossen, 2007). consequently, each voice contains the voices of others and, therefore, a voice never has its origin in one individual (prior, 2005). dialogical analysis has mostly been used in therapy and counseling work, which share similarities with an interview, since both contexts are characterized by asymmetrical participation. it is typical of institutional interaction that professionals ask questions which clients are expected to answer (linell, 1998). the same pattern is at the very core of interviewing. following the dialogical approach, we can assume that in these contexts “knowledge” is co-produced by both parties. the interviewer maintains the frame and focus of the interview and, hence, she or he participates in constructing knowledge with the interviewee. moreover, talking in an interview is never the pure reflection of thoughts on the topic under discussion. instead, the parties continuously monitor who they are in relation to each other and to the topic of the interview, and adjust their actions and talk accordingly (holstein & gubrium, 1995). in dialogical terms, adjusting one’s response to the other speaker’s talk exemplifies listening. in dialogical dialogue, listening to one another becomes a basic act that enables giving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 129 and receiving a response. receiving a responsive response may, as such, be strengthening for the interlocutor (seikkula & trimble, 2005; seikkula, laitila, & rober, 2012). the opposite of a dialogical act is a monological one, where the speaker does not adapt his or her words to those of the other party. because of this, the other party is left without a response and new and shared meanings are not co-constructed. on the one hand, a research interview can be understood as monological dialogue: it aims at eliciting information on the topics the interviewer is interested in. on the other hand, a qualitative interview often focuses on meanings and listening to the voices of the informants. therefore, qualitative interviews rarely follow a monological question– answer pattern. instead, they are more conversational and varied in their interactional patterns (see holstein & gubrium, 1995). interest in listening to children and, consequently, the use of qualitative approaches, are characteristic of the social study of childhood (e.g., james, 2007; spyrou, 2011), and are factors which also prompted our investigation. childhood studies have underlined the importance of the role of the cultural power relations, both institutional and generational, that exist between researcher and child (see christensen, 2004; alanen, 2009). however, in these contexts generation does not primarily refer to different age categories. instead, it is associated with a relational approach to childhood and adulthood. this means that the notions of childhood and adulthood are understood as interdependent and relational, and as negotiated in social practices. the term generational order has been adopted to refer to these social negotiations that arise on the innumerable occasions when children and adults encounter each other (alanen, 2009). consequently, the asymmetry between an adult and a child is no longer seen as prototypical but instead as collaboratively achieved (hepburn, 2005). in other words, power does not reside in categorical positions, such as adult or child, but rather in the social representations of the positions that we negotiate in social life (christensen, 2004). consequently, the child–adult relation as a generational and hierarchical relationship both offers opportunities for and imposes limitations on children’s agency (james, 2007). in this study, the research interview can be seen as a continuous negotiation of generational relations that takes place in every utterance of the dialogue and that can both support and rupture the traditional generational ordering. data and methodology this article draws on a single research interview from the data gathered in our previous study (alasuutari & järvi, 2012 ); that is, qualitative interviews with ten children, 8 to 12 years old. the children had attended a peer-group intervention for families with a parental mental disorder. the intervention was provided by a family association for mentally ill persons in finland. the association was a non-profit, “third sector” agent that does not provide medical services but focuses on peer support. the intervention consisted of separate group meetings for children and their parents. its aim was to support parents in their parenting and to increase children’s understanding of their parent’s mental health problem (beardslee et al., 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 130 the family association invited one of the authors to carry out interviews with the parents and children to provide feedback on the intervention. the representatives of the association agreed to the researcher’s suggestion to broaden the scope of the interviews in such a way that the data could be used for research. in the case of the children, the research interest was in their perspectives on the mental health problem of the parent. the semi-structured interviews with the children started with a conversation about the aims and the context of the interview. after this, the children were asked about their experiences of the peer-group intervention. this often led to talk about the children’s views of their parent’s health status. the everyday life of the children, for example, their typical day, hobbies, friends, and family were also discussed. the interviews were voice recorded and transcribed verbatim1. we have chosen here to report a single case study, that of “tanja”, owing to the richness of this particular interview. as was mentioned in the introduction, the stigma of having a parent with a mental problem emerged not only explicitly, but also in more tacit ways. tanja’s interview is representative in this sense. she produces lengthy narratives on several topics, and the interview shows her ways of deploying all three of the discourse types (professional and empirical discourses and the discourse of concern) that we analyzed in our previous study (alasuutari & järvi, 2012). moreover, the interview also aptly illuminates different aspects of adult–child interaction in a research interview, and when discussing parental problems. in its richness, it meets the criteria for an extreme case, examination of which can yield valuable general information about a particular phenomenon (flyvbjerg, 2006; mcleod, 2010). case studies have an important function in the field of psychotherapy, especially in consultative work, in revealing interactional processes. such studies are not carried out for the purpose of making statistical generalizations; instead, what is potentially generalizable or transferable to other cases is the theoretical construction (mcleod, 2010, p. 22). flyvbjerg (2006, p. 237) states that case studies often contain a substantial element of narrative and that good narratives typically illuminate the complexities and contradictions of real life. therefore, a single-case study can also provide valuable insights for professional practice. in the analyses, we first divided the interview talk into episodes according to the changes in the topic of the talk. then we analysed both the changes in topic and the interaction in each episode by applying the ideas of a dialogical analysis method, developed by seikkula et al. (2012). the method has been used, in particular, in analyses of the dialogical qualities and patterns of therapeutic conversations (seikkula, 2002; seikkula et al., 2012 ). in such analysis, 1 the research project, led by alasuutari, was carried out in collaboration with the particular family association for the mentally ill. the interviews had been granted the necessary ethical approvals from the association’s representatives and from the participating family members. the data gathering and the analysis followed the guidelines for ethical research (e.g., christians, 2000, pp. 138–140). both children and parents had the right to withdraw from the research at any time. before they signed the informed consent it was explained to them how the interviews would be used in the research reports and how their anonymity as interviewees would be safeguarded. the children and the parents were also informed about the confidentiality aspects of the interviews; the child’s talk would not be revealed to the parent(s), and vice versa. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 131 both the questions and the responses are examined following the principles of dialogism and discursive thinking (potter & hepburn, 2005), in which an utterance is considered in its immediate sequential context and as an answer to something previously said. therefore, in the present instance, our interest was in which utterance the speaker is answering, what the answer is like, and who changes the subject. we also applied the concepts of semantic, interactional, and quantitative dominance in analyzing the utterances (linell, 1998; seikkula, 2002; seikkula et al., 2012). semantic dominance refers to the introduction of new words and terms, interactional dominance to control over a communicative action, and quantitative dominance to the amount of talk produced in the interaction. results the interview consists of 32 topical episodes. in 23 of these, the interviewer initiates the topic and in 9 tanja is the initiator. overall, the interviewer has semantic and tanja quantitative dominance in the interview. tanja’s initiatives concern such topics as being bullied at school, arguments at home, and pets. she also initiates talk about how other people might see her family situation and about shame. in these parts of the interview, she has semantic, interactional, and quantitative dominance in the discussion. one-third of the episodes include talk about her parent’s mental health problems. the interviewer typically initiates them by asking questions about the peer-group intervention that tanja had attended. tanja talks about her parent’s problems both directly and indirectly. for example, she implicitly brings up the impact of these problems when talking about her hobbies. because of her father’s sometimes fluctuating ability to work, the economic situation of the family is insecure, and tanja frequently mentions how all her hobbies are either very cheap or free. moreover, she openly introduces into the discussion (and has all three types of dominance when talking about) her emotions and concerns related to the potential revelation to her schoolmates of her father’s mental problems. in the following sections, three categories of talk are introduced: active positioning in an ongoing dialogue; normalization of the parental problem and herself; and talking about shame and embarrassment. at the same time, interactional means of dealing with the issue of tanja’s spoiled identity are introduced. they are the interlocutors’ shared ways of talking about tanja’s experiences and include, among other themes, her ways of making sense of a parental mental disorder. they can also be understood as different voices in the dialogue. active positioning in an ongoing dialogue each interview commenced with a few moments of “settling down” during which the confidentiality of the interview was explained to the child. the recording was only started after this. in the beginning sequence of tanja’s recording, the interviewer has interactional and semantic dominance in the discussion, but not quantitative dominance, since tanja takes an active position in the interaction fairly early on. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 132 first, the interviewer inquires if tanja has any questions about the study. after a short exchange, the interviewer continues and asks how tanja felt about coming to the interview. she gets a brief response, “all right.” the dialogue following this response is given below. tanja has met the interviewer once during a home visit and shows that she is aware that the interviewer knows about her family situation2. excerpt 1: co-constructing alliance i: you knew who would be here t: =yeah i: waiting (for you) so t: yeah i: well (.) would it have been different if it had been (.) an unknown person t: well yes it would have then some (issues) would have like been unspoken (.) like it would have been a little uhh (.) but in a way (1) well (.) *cos* (.) well as you’re familiar you know i: =yes t: =cos you have visited us in the beginning of the extract the interviewer puts a rhetorical question to tanja about her knowing beforehand the person she would be talking to. following tanja’s confirmatory response, she continues with the topic and asks whether it would have made a difference if the interviewer had been someone unfamiliar to her. in putting this question, the interviewer marks the interview as potentially sensitive. tanja acknowledges the implicit suggestion and topicalizes it as a family issue by referring to the interviewer’s prior visit to her home. at the same time, she produces a specific alignment with the interviewer. on the whole, this part of the interview can be seen as co-construction of an alliance between the parties, in which tanja is also active. the potential stigma and the potentially spoiled identity of the child are also suggested in the excerpt, when family matters are constructed as delicate. in keeping with the principles of dialogical dialogue, tanja’s identity is managed and her agency supported collaboratively as the dialogue evolves. 2 in the excerpts, i indicates the interviewer and t tanja. the other transcription symbols are: = no pause between speakers’ turns (.) a very short pause (less than one second) (3) length of pause in seconds * the starting or ending point when speaking in a low voice [ start of overlapping talk (for you) an explanatory addition international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 133 excerpt 2: prescribing her agency t: [can i just tell by myself what has happened here (refers to the intervention) i: =[yes (.) yes soon after the dialogue shown in the first excerpt, tanja takes an initiating and active role in the discussion by topicalizing her position in it. she introduces herself as a social actor who is negotiating her position by asking for permission to talk in her own way in the ongoing discussion. she is both adapting to the institutional frame of the interview and, as a response to the interviewer’s interest in her question, modifying this frame by widening the notion of an interviewee as an informant. in the interaction, tanja’s question presupposes a positive answer. the interviewer’s acknowledging response is important, since it strengthens tanja’s possibilities to be heard on her own terms later in the interview. towards the end of the interview, tanja takes even a stronger lead in the dialogue and changes the respective roles of the parties. this occurs after a discussion about her relationship with her brother, which tanja ends by giving the interviewer an acknowledging response and then starting to talk about her wish to have a puppy. this leads to a long episode during which tanja tells the interviewer about her experiences with animals and about her wishes to have a pet herself. she has semantic, quantitative, and interactional dominance, and finally starts to interview the interviewer. excerpt 3: changing the roles of the parties t: do you have a cat or some other pet i: (.) well we have a cat now t: =yes i: a kind of [but it is] t: [what is it called] i: [mushroom] t: mushroom i: [laughs] t: [what a lovely name] i: it’s a name that our son gave it (.) it’s a funny little name t: yes it is by adopting the position of an interviewer, tanja changes the social distance between herself and the interviewer. the interviewer aligns herself with the change and responds to tanja’s questions by telling her how the cat got its unusual name. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 134 the excerpt demonstrates aspects of a responsive dialogue and also those of an ideal dialogue, in which the interlocutors are under a duty to respond to each other (linell, 1998). however, quite soon after this exchange and its untypical intrusion in an interview, tanja reverts to the more common interviewee position by continuing to talk about the same topic, but on a more general level. in consequence, the interviewer ceases to speak from a private perspective (cf. ruusuvuori, 2005). the social choreography (aronsson, 1998) and the dialogue in tanja’s interview are mainly congruent with the traditional interview process: the focus is on the interviewee’s ideas and she is asked questions by the interviewer. however, the above excerpt shows how tanja, with the alignment of the interviewer, changes the frame of the discussion by putting a question to the interviewer. in this way she also represents herself as an active social actor with views, interests, and experiences of her own despite her the problems posed by her father’s illness. normalization of the parental problem and herself normalizing her parental and family difficulties and constructing herself as “normal” or non-deviant constitute tanja’s main discursive means for negotiating her identity in the interview. she applies normalizing talk in 10 of the 32 topical episodes, especially when talking about her father’s health. she also uses normalizing utterances when speaking about arguments in the family and about expressing her concerns for her parents. moreover, normalization is salient in tanja’s talk about the effects of her parental problems on her life and in how she finds herself positioned in relation to those problems. the next excerpt, which exemplifies tanja’s normalization of her father’s mental health, followed a part of the interview (not shown here) in which the interviewer asked tanja whether observations of their parents’ depressive behavior made by other children in the peer group were similar to the perceptions tanja had made and now mentioned herself. excerpt 4: normalizing the father’s mental health i: was it the kind of issue that then well (1) or when you (.) think back to the group (intervention) (was it) like (.) that the children had seen at home that there was (the parent had) [or t: [mm (1) well (1) or i hadn´t in a way seen that about dad but (.) my dad has now been okay [like i: [mm t: (.) (he is) by no means (.) mm like (.) well he speaks and (.) is happy [like (he) is i: [mm t: not by any means just (stare)-= of course he watches tv but when there's ski jumping or some (.) formula on of course he's interested in [those i: [mm international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 135 t: and (…) he does hear the talk (.) whenbut he doesn't necessarily answer [but i: [mm t: anyhow he comes to eat on the one hand, the interviewer’s question seems to allow tanja to distance herself from the talk of her personal problems and to focus on other children’s experiences instead. on the other hand, the question does not specifically ask about the other children in the intervention, but can also be understood to include tanja as a member of the group. tanja first seems to agree or align herself with the interviewer’s latter implication (“well … or”), but then she quickly gives a corrective and at the same time, a normalizing, account. she points out and assures her interlocutor through detailed descriptions of her father’s behavior that he cannot be labeled as depressed. she refers, for example, to her father’s ways of interacting (“speaks”) and mood (“happy”). she also normalizes his television watching by linking it with an interest in sports, something widely shared and viewed as normal. the detailed description embraces the same topics that she has drawn on earlier in the interview when describing her father’s depression, but now they are depicted from the perspective of ordinary and normal behavior and as taking place in the present. focusing on, and underlining, the present (“now”) allows tanja to talk with the voice of a member of a non-deviant family. the interviewer enables normalization by being a conforming listener. in this excerpt, and in several other topical episodes, the interviewer’s feedback is mostly minimal, which shows that she is paying attention but also permits and gives tanja space to continue speaking. in institutional settings, minimum feedback using supportive continuers (uhum, mm, yeah, etc.) are commonly experienced differently than in a vernacular setting. sticking to giving minimum feedback may denote disagreement in everyday conversations, whereas in an institutional context it is understood as giving space (hepburn, 2005; ruusuvuori, 2005). continuing to give minimum feedback seems to function as appropriate support for tanja to continue talking. she has both quantitative and interactional dominance in the episode. giving sufficient supportive feedback to a “non-deviant” and actively talking interviewee characterize the interviewer’s role in the normalization of tanja and her family situation. in some episodes, tanja’s normalizing of the family does not include her father, only the other members. in these, her means of normalizing her situation is to individualize the issue of mental problems. the next extract is an example of this. in it, she also constructs a dual position for herself in relation to her father’s mental health. the episode starts with the interviewer asking tanja her reasons for attending the intervention. excerpt 5: positioning herself as a recipient of help and as a helper i: yes (1) what about (3) how do you remember (.) how did it start that you joined the group(intervention) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 136 t: (1) well so that we could get the kind of help like (.) that a little bit (1) we could talk about it (her father’s mental health and get a little bit (.) of information [too i: [mm t: (.) and then we could at least help that person like i: mm t: *like* i: so do you mean the parent [then t: [yes the formulation of the interviewer’s question is discreet: it does not make any reference to psychiatric discourse. the interviewer refers to the intervention by using the word “group”, which tanja has also used from the very beginning of the discussion. tanja gives two different explanations for her family’s participation in the intervention: to obtain help and to be able to help “that person”. on the one hand, she defines herself as a “client” needing help along with the other members of her family; on the other hand, she positions herself as her father’s helper alongside her mother and brother. through the difference that she draws between her father and the other family members, she individualizes the mental problems in the family and constructs both herself and her mother and brother as non-deviant or normal. in the above excerpt, tanja conforms to the dominant discourses of familial mental ill health by positioning her family and herself as a client. this could also be interpreted as an example of “relational rationality” (see aronsson & hundeide, 2002): seeking help from the peer-group intervention might be an issue that tanja thinks the interviewer would like to hear. however, in the excerpt, tanja also challenges the dominant discourses, which usually underline the importance of separating children and parental difficulties (e.g., focht-birkerts & beardslee, 2000), and regard a situation in which a child is caring for a mentally ill parent as risky or pathological. this is captured in the concept of parentification, first theorized by minuchin, montalvo, guerney, rosman, and schumer (1967). parentification is typically associated with dysfunctional family interaction, and therefore seen as an issue that needs to be addressed in cases of families’ parental problems. however, by adopting the helper position, tanja positions herself as an active interlocutor and a non-deviant subject and member of her family. a reference to having too much responsibility or worry and a reference to the negotiation of normality are also present in the following excerpt. it starts with a dialogical question from the interviewer about the effects on tanja’s life of her father’s problem and symptoms that she has just described. excerpt 6: normalizing her own concerns about her father’s mental health i: how have they affected your [everyday life and living t: [well international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 137 i: what do you think t: i haven’t been like monitoring them (the parents) all the time what they might do i: okay, yeah t: and like what (.) not in that way like i am quite happy the interviewer’s question is semantically linked to the preceding discussion on parental symptoms, and therefore can be understood as problem-oriented. this seems to be also tanja’s interpretation. her response, which she phrases as a denial, implies that “monitoring” her parents could have a negative impact on a child. moreover, such a concern is associated with a mental state that would be the opposite of being happy, as she describes her state of mind at that particular moment. a little later in the dialogue, she admits that she takes “a little bit but not an awful lot of responsibility for them”, but again states that she is not monitoring her parents all the time. hence, she seems to be trying to convince the interviewer, and perhaps herself, that her behavior is normal or ordinary, and that her mood is “happy”. after the dialogue shown in the excerpt, tanja continues to talk about the impact of parental difficulties on her life. the pattern of her talk stays the same: she describes or hints at her concerns about her father’s mental health, but then normalizes or dissolves them immediately after raising them. consequently, she also normalizes her mental state and conduct in relation to parental ill-being. tanja’s talk is contradictory in the ways she describes and solves her family situation and her parents’ problems and how she defines herself. she both raises problems and actively normalizes them — and does the same with her family and herself. the interviewer supports this in various ways, partly by discreet formulating of questions and minimal feedback tokens; for example, she does not confront the girl with the fact that her father still needs open-care treatment. normalizing problems is an act that goffman (1959) calls face-work. by normalizing the parental condition and her own mood and conduct in relation to her parental problems, tanja is at the same time showing her awareness of the associative stigma that can attach to her through having mental problems in the family and the professional discourses related to the children of mentally ill parents and managing it. she also has both interactional and quantitative dominance in the dialogue. talking about shame and embarrassment thus far, the analysis has shown examples of how the stigma related to parental mental problems is implicitly constructed in tanja’s talk. however, tanja also speaks about it explicitly when she talks about her peer relations. there, she also mentions such feelings as embarrassment, confusion, and shame, which she does not try to normalize or dissolve in her accounts. when talking about these feelings she speaks in her own voice, the voice of a “principal” (goffman, 1981): she commits herself to a category of children whose parents do not meet societal expectations and whose position among their peers is therefore experienced as difficult. for her, the only way to avoid the likelihood of associative stigma is to hide the family situation from her peers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 138 tanja spontaneously introduces her awareness of the possibility of associative stigma by her peers when she talks about a molding task that the children had been given in the intervention, which had colored her hands green. she assumes quantitative, semantic, and interactional dominance in explaining how she had tried to rub the dye off her hands, since if her schoolmates had noticed it, they would have found out about the intervention, which would have embarrassed her. tanja then goes on to talk about other topics related to the intervention group and the interviewer does not try to change the topic at this point. however, the interviewer returns to tanja’s reference to embarrassment in a dialogical manner five minutes later. she asks tanja what would have happened if her schoolmates had found out about the group. excerpt 7: talking about embarrassment t: like then *like* (.) like some of my friends might first promise that they won’t spread it and then [it spreads spreads so that the whole school knows about it i: [yeah (.) yeah (.) yeah (.) yeah t: (.) and it is quite then really shameful i: [yeah (.) yeah t: [naturally but (.) but [mm i: [so you would have been ashamed but would your classmates then have said something about it or t: well i: [what do you think t: [well i don’t know (.) surely they’d ask why (.) why you [take part i: [yeah t: and why you (.) [and i: [yeah t: and they’d ask that why (.) and would all the time start yacking about why do you have (.) so i: mm t: it would then be quite embarrassing [to tell about (it)] in tanja’s response, her shame and embarrassment are linked to two aspects of her situation. first, tanja explains that revealing her attendance in the group intervention would be embarrassing and shameful, since word about it would spread among her peers. however, this is not the whole story, since she links the embarrassment and shame she would feel with the pressure to reveal the reasons for her attendance (parental problems) to her peers. hence, here tanja fairly openly introduces her fear of associative stigma. she also presents hiding the problem as her way to avoid shame and embarrassment, and consequently, to construct a nondeviant identity among her peers. this was also what the other interviewees explained as their way of dealing with their peers and managing associative stigma (alasuutari & järvi, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 139 in the extract, the interviewer is active in specifying the consequences of the spread of information. later on she demonstrates her interest and the validation of tanja’s feelings, mainly by giving minimum feedback. this process seems to be responsive and dialogical from tanja’s point of view. in the final excerpt tanja brings up an interesting example of stigma management, that of recognizing others with the same stigma. tanja has talked about the molding activity in the group and the interviewer has asked if tanja has told any of her schoolmates or another child about the group. she answered that she has not told anyone, because “all my schoolmates wouldn’t necessarily understand the reason for attending a group like that”. she has also explained that not everyone would necessarily understand parental mental health problems at all. by drawing this line she differentiates herself from them — she is wise enough to understand them even if they don’t understand her. she continues: excerpt 8: well-kept secret t: but (1) that (.) that’s why i haven’t [told about it] i: [yeah] t: but (.) er a friend of mine she’s called ada she does understand [that (.)] i: [hmm] t: but i haven’t talked about it in that way but her father has had (.) depression [of course (.)] i: [hmm t: but (.) well it’s ok to talk to her (.) [that] i: [yes] (.) yes t: [well then] i: [do you] talk to ada (.) more (.) [then] t: [well] i: about these kinds of things [or what have you talked about] t: [no we don’t really not in that way] we do talk [yes] i: [yes] t: but we don’t (talk) terribly much (about) it (.) she knows how to handle it she doesn’t [spread] i: [hmm] t: it around [(.)] in this excerpt we see precisely how tanja determines who is to be informed about potentially stigmatizing information. it is ok to talk to ada, because her father has had depression, too. after this excerpt, tanja even talks about how ada’s mother also understands, because she has experienced “those kinds of things, too”. at the same time, she makes it clear international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 140 that “we don’t really talk that way”, suggesting that it is something that is only mentioned and not really shared. it is obvious that “these kinds of things” are to be concealed from others who don’t have similar problems, and consequently don’t understand. having a parent with a mental health problem may nevertheless be something that can be shared, at least to a certain extent, with someone who is facing the same issue in his or her life, someone who understands that it is highly confidential. discussion the findings of our previous interview study with children were the starting point of this article (alasuutari & järvi, 2012). in the previous study, all the interviewees described their parental mental disorder as something that they want to conceal, and have concealed, from their peers. in the literature, this kind of stigma has been termed a courtesy stigma (goffman, 1963) or an associative stigma (chang & horrocks, 2006) that produces a “spoiled identity” (goffman, 1963) for the person. in this article, we have presented a single, but rich, case study, that of “tanja”. we examined how tanja constructed her normality or non-deviance in a research interview related to a parental mental problem, and how the interviewer contributed to the process. however, it should be kept in mind that as a case study, the generalizability of the findings is limited. we differentiated three categories of constructing normality: active positioning of oneself in the dialogue, problem normalization, and negotiating shame and embarrassment. by active positioning, we referred to accounts in which tanja intervened in the frame of the research interview, for example, by expressing her personal views and interests or by momentarily adopting the position of an interviewer. active positioning allowed her to represent herself as an ordinary girl with ordinary interests (like wanting a pet) despite her parental mental problem. the normalizing talk took different forms and produced partly contradictory descriptions of tanja’s family and herself. however, its core function was to represent her father and the other family members, as well as tanja herself and her relation to her parental difficulties, as non-deviant. the normalizing accounts also showed how challenging for a child the assumptions of psychiatric discourse may be. in several episodes, tanja made it clear that she is not too involved in her parental problems. the topic, framed by the concern about parentification, had been discussed in the intervention she had participated in. however, she also constructed an opposite picture of herself, representing herself simultaneously as her father’s helper. by positioning herself as a helper she was able to represent herself as a responsible and healthy young person. gladstone et al. (2006, p. 2542) states that children's desire to be recognized as ‘‘important to their parents well-being conflicts with adults’ perceptions that children should be protected from too much responsibility” (cf. trondsen, 2012). however, previous studies show international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 141 that children can find it satisfying to be able to help their family members and that it can enhance their social skills (backer, 2011; fjone et al., 2009). in the first two categories of constructing normality, the references to associative stigma were mainly implicit, but when negotiating shame and embarrassment tanja explicitly referred to her potential stigmatization by her peers. she also voiced her feelings related to this and described hiding family matters as her way of dealing with family problems in peer relations. our findings corroborate those of previous studies that have demonstrated the experience of shame and associative stigma of children with parental mental problems (cogan, riddel, & mayes, 2005; östman, 2008; fjone et al., 2009; chan & ying, 2010). they are also in accordance with the findings of prior (2012), who analysed how young users of counseling services resist being positioned in a stigmatizing discourse of mental illness, and with those of fjone et al. (2009), who argue that children with parental mental disorders wish to present themselves as normal and equal in their peer group. to achieve this end, the most obvious action is to conceal the parental situation (see also oskouie et al., 2011). furthermore, research shows that in seeking to guard a family secret, children often isolate themselves psychologically from others (riebschleger, 2004; chan & ying, 2010; chang & horrocks, 2006). the present analysis also showed how the interviewer participated in the management of tanja’s associative stigma and in presenting herself as a non-deviant young person. an important aspect in the interaction was the interviewer’s flexibility in relation both to the agenda of the interview and the dominant institutional and generational order prevailing between the interlocutors. she positioned herself, first, as a social person and, second, as a professional with a specific mission in the interview. for example, she was willing to reveal information about her life when tanja started to interview her, despite the unwritten rule in finland that a professional, at least in psychiatry, does not reveal personal information (see ruusuvuori, 2005). in dialogical terms, we can also hear the voices of a human being, a mother, and an adult in the interviewer’s comments (seikkula & arnkil, 2014). the flexibility of the interviewer can also be related to what christensen (2004) refers to as presenting oneself as an atypical adult in research with children; that is, enabling children to have their say by showing serious interest in their perspectives and yet not pretending to be a child. moreover, the analysis demonstrated active listening on the part of the interviewer. this was evident, for example, in her way of dialogically returning to the issues raised by tanja, sometimes in a delayed manner. in this way, it was possible to both finish the topic under discussion and explore other topics, such as shame, more thoroughly. furthermore, the interviewer’s minimal feedback was important in the dialogue both in demonstrating that she was paying attention to tanja’s talk and in supporting tanja when she wanted to continue talking on the topic. it also conveyed the interviewer’s acceptance of tanja’s experiences and emotions (cf. graham & fitzgerald, 2011). finally, the interviewer also formulated her comments discreetly, especially when the talk concerned tanja’s parental problem. she did not remind tanja about her fathers’s unstable condition when tanja spoke positively about her father’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 142 activities. instead of addressing tanja’s experiences and family worries directly, she chose to ask what tanja observed and thought about the other children in the intervention. with this formulation, tanja could choose her own level of intimacy in answering. tanja’s description of talking to her friend who is in a similar situation (excerpt 8) was also interesting. tanya and her friend had not shared much, despite the commonality of their experience. the difficulty of talking about sensitive family issues may be something to take into account when arranging group interventions for children. in their study, moore and seu (2011) argue that in family therapy the voice and position of young children seems to be much more closely bound to the dynamics of the interview than is the case with adults. in her interview, tanja seemed to be able to voice herself both as an ordinary young person and as a child living in a challenging and vulnerable family context. the interviewer, for her part, facilitated this by her use of dialogical flexibility and active listening, and by accepting and validating feedback, and varying the ways in which she asked questions. these interactional features might help other practitioners in developing dialogical dialogues with children whose parents have severe problems in their lives, such as a mental disorder. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 125–147 143 references alanen, l. 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(2012). living with a mentally ill parent: exploring adolescents' experiences andperspectives. qualitative health research, 22(2), 174–188. doi:10.1177/1049732311420736 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732311420736 can i tell just by myself? discussing a parental mental disorder with a child in a research interview anu leinonen, jaakko seikkula, and maarit alasuutari a dialogical perspective and childhood studies as the theoretical framework data and methodology results active positioning in an ongoing dialogue normalization of the parental problem and herself talking about shame and embarrassment discussion references children’s early relationships: siblings and friends international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 274 canadian early adolescents’ self-disclosure to siblings and best friends brynheld martinez and nina howe abstract: this study addressed children’s reports of self-disclosures to their siblings and best friends in early adolescence. twenty-four boys and 22 girls in grade 4 (m age = 9.48, sd = .59) and 19 boys and 28 girls in grade 6 (m age = 11.15 years, sd = .55) were interviewed regarding disclosures to siblings and friends. they also completed the sibling relationship questionnaire (furman & buhrmester, 1985b) and the friendship activity questionnaire (bukowski, hoza, & boivin, 1994) to rate the quality of each relationship. participants were more likely to disclose peer, academic, and shared interest issues to friends than siblings. boys reported discussing shared interests more frequently with both siblings and friends. respondents who disclosed to their sibling also reported higher warmth, rivalry, and greater conflict in their sibling relationship. early adolescents who did not disclose to their friends reported greater friendship conflict. findings are discussed in light of recent theory and empirical literature. keywords: self-disclosure, friendships, sibling relationships, relationship quality acknowledgement: this research was supported by a grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada to the second author as well as the concordia university research chair in early childhood development and education. we would like to thank the children who participated and marie-hélène brody, lisa fiorentino, nadine gariépy, leigh karavasilis, alanna lynch, abby ostien, and stephanie peccia for help with data collection and coding. please address correspondence to: nina howe, department of education, concordia university, 1455 de maisonneuve west, montreal, quebec, canada h3g 1m8. telephone: (514) 848-2424, extension 2008. e-mail: nina.howe@education.concordia.ca. brynheld martinez is a doctoral student with an emphasis in school psychology at the university of rhode island, 10 chafee road, kingston, rhode island 02881 u.s.a. e-mail: bmartinez@my.uri.edu nina howe, ph.d. is professor of early childhood and elementary education and holds the research chair in early childhood development and education at concordia university, department of education, 1455 de maisonneuve blvd. w., lb-579, montreal, quebec, canada, h3g 1m8. e-mail: nina.howe@education.concordia.ca mailto:bmartinez@my.uri.edu mailto:nina.howe@education.concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 275 relationships theorists argue that close intimate relationships with both siblings and friends are important contexts for children’s development (carpendale & lewis, 2006; dunn, 2002; hartup, 1989; hinde, 1979, 1995). these dyadic relationships may provide a context for the disclosure of intimate, personal information (jourard, 1971), which is a defining feature of close relationships (hinde, 1979). as children move into early adolescence, they develop greater abilities to engage in self-disclosure (blockin, crouter, updegraff, & mchale, 2011; buhrmester & prager, 1995; buhrmester & furman, 1990). most research has focused on investigating selfdisclosure and links with relationship quality in either sibling relationships (e.g., howe, aquanassee, bukowski, lehoux, & rinaldi, 2001; howe, aquan-assee, bukowski, rinaldi, & lehoux, 2000) or friendships (e.g., altermatt & ivers, 2011; buhrmester & prager, 1995; rose & rudolph, 2006), but has rarely examined links between the two relationships. although the two relationships are conceptually similar, they also differ in critical ways (e.g., voluntary nature, history of co-constructed experiences), which may influence children’s propensity to engage in self-disclosure. therefore, the present study examined (a) grades 4 and 6 children’s disclosure to their sibling and best friend, (b) disclosure across the two relationships, and (c) associations of disclosure and relationship quality. sibling relationships and friendships as contexts for self-disclosure self-disclosure was originally defined by jourard (1971) as the mutual revealing of personal information and feelings, and thus, is a central process in intimate relationships. the divulging of personal, intimate information informs two persons about one another and enhances closeness, while serving to maintain psychological well-being and increase one’s self-awareness. moreover, the pace, bi-directionality, and quality of disclosure between two individuals is related to the fondness and trust cultivated in their relationship and determines the course and depth of future disclosures. jourard argued that individuals are likely to disclose their most private matters when relationships are high in intimacy and companionship. hinde (1979) distinguished between breadth (i.e., extent of topics) and depth (i.e., how deeply the disclosure delved into personal issues) of disclosure, an important distinction for our purposes. given that sibling relationships and friendships are crucial sources of closeness and intimacy, both provide contexts for disclosure (dunn, 2002; rubin, bukowski, & parker, 2006). critical social and cognitive changes occur from middle childhood to early adolescence, which can influence children’s social interactions, including the propensity for disclosure. as children devote greater attention to peers beginning in middle childhood, siblings and friends become the main sources and recipients of disclosure (blockin et al., 2011; buhrmester & prager, 1995; furman & buhrmester, 1985b), although parents continue to be important recipients into and during adolescence (smetana & metzger, 2008; smetana, metzger, gettman, & campionebarr, 2006; stattin & kerr, 2000; yau, tasopoulos-chan, & smetana, 2009). sibling self-disclosure. from infancy, siblings co-construct a long history of shared experiences and form intimate bonds; thus a child’s earliest experience with self-disclosure may be with a brother or sister (dunn, 1993; howe et al., 2000). sibling affiliations are characterized by both positive and negative affect, companionship, and individual perceptions of relationship quality (howe, ross, & recchia, 2011); further, siblings play a fundamental role in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 276 development of children’s social skills and social understanding (dunn, 2002; howe et al., 2011), which may be important for the development of disclosure skills. sibling self-disclosure is facilitated by reciprocal and mutual exchanges that encourage warmth, dependability, communication, and also hierarchical interactions that sometimes promote instrumental or emotional support (howe et al., 2001; howe et al., 2000). in a seminal study, buhrmester and furman (1990) reported that compared to adolescents, younger children rated siblings as higher in companionship, intimacy, and affection. although sibling companionship and intimacy decreased during adolescence (updegraff, mchale, & crouter, 2002), levels of sibling disclosure remained consistent across middle childhood and early adolescence (buhrmester & furman, 1987). given that sibling interaction is an integral part of family dynamics (kim, mchale, crouter, & osgood, 2007; yeh & lempers, 2004), family concerns were expected to be key topics of sibling disclosure (howe, aquan-assee, & bukowski, 1995). relative power between older and younger siblings may decrease as these relationships become more symmetrical over time (buhrmester & furman, 1990), which may facilitate siblings’ willingness to communicate and relate to each other’s interests, difficulties, and experiences. disclosure between friends. friendships are voluntary, more symmetrical than sibling relationships, and are commonly based on shared fondness, similar values, loyalty, and sensitivity (berndt, 1982; rubin et al., 2006). young children rarely cite disclosure as an aspect of friendship, but beginning in early adolescence, disclosure is perceived as a defining feature of friendships (altermatt & ivers, 2011; dolgin & kim, 1994). adolescents identify friends as individuals with whom they can share private feelings and concerns (berndt & hanna, 1995; dolgin & kim, 1994); as children mature, friendship intimacy ratings increase and adolescents report greater intimacy with friends than with siblings (e.g., berndt & perry, 1986; updegraff et al., 2002). given expectations of commitment and trust, children may sometimes feel more comfortable confiding in friends than in siblings, particularly about peer relations. in fact, trust is conceptualized as a critical aspect of an individual’s willingness to disclose to others (smetana & metzger, 2008). disclosure across relationships. although sibling relationships and friendships both offer intimacy and companionship for children during early adolescence (e.g., kim et al., 2007; updegraff & obeidallah, 1999), associations between the two relationships and links with development remain unclear (updegraff et al., 2002). nevertheless, interactions with siblings and friends offer a critical environment for facilitating children’s social competence, because they share the features of companionship and affection and function as sources of emotional support and instrumental help (dunn, 2002; rubin et al., 2006). despite their similarities, the two relationships vary in specific ways, which may influence the propensity and nature of disclosure. as parker and asher (1993) noted, the voluntary nature of friendships means that children must acquire important skills and understanding regarding how to maintain “commitment, personal responsibility, and loyalty” (p. 620), including the ability to establish a warm friendship partly based on intimate disclosures. friendships may also be vulnerable to threats to the relationship (i.e., from conflict or lack of disclosure or gossip). in comparison, sibling relationships are not voluntary and will continue to exist whether or not children use these as a context to learn how to co-construct a warm and intimate relationship. nevertheless, there is evidence that when siblings report warm and intimate relationships, they also have positive relationships with peers and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 277 friends (e.g., lockwood, kitzmann, & cohen, 2001; van aken & asendorpf, 1997) suggesting links across relationships (howe et al., 2011). given the limited research on sibling-friend linkages, one of our study’s objectives – upon which we report here – was to investigate the associations of children’s disclosures in these two key relationships. age and gender differences in disclosure. girls perceive their relationships to be of greater significance and to provide more support for both siblings and friends compared to boys (buhrmester & furman, 1987; furman & buhrmester, 1985b). further, females typically disclose at younger ages and higher rates than males (berndt & hanna, 1995; parker & asher, 1993; rose et al., 2012; rose & rudolph, 2006; swenson & rose, 2009). thus it appears that the gender constellation of sibling and friend dyads impacts intimacy and companionship, and therefore selfdisclosure (buhrmester & prager, 1995; dolgin & kim, 1994; rose & rudolph, 2006). further, same-sex siblings and friends report greater companionship and intimacy that is sustained into adolescence (furman & buhrmester, 1985a, 1985b). while sisters are sometimes the recipients of disclosure (buhrmester & prager, 1995), this is not always the case (howe et al., 2001). therefore we proceeded with the expectation that same-sex siblings and friends would be likely to confide in one another, with girls expected to engage in more disclosure than boys. disclosure and relationship quality. friendship and sibling relationship quality is important in influencing ongoing interactions and children’s social adjustment (berndt, 2002; buhrmester & furman, 1990; dunn, 2002; howe et al., 2011). both same-sex and narrowlyspaced sibling dyads share high levels of closeness, while both opposite-sex sibling and widelyspaced dyads report less warmth and conflict (furman & buhrmester, 1985b; buhrmester & furman, 1990). harmonious sibling relationships are high in warmth and low in conflict, while negative sibling relationships are perceived as high in conflict and low in warmth (howe et al., 2011). it has previously been found that warm, intimate, and close relationships most likely offer optimal contexts for reciprocated sibling disclosure, emotional understanding (howe et al., 2000; howe et al., 2001), and strong social support (kim et al., 2007). it has also been shown that children who do not trust their sibling reported that this was one reason for not engaging in disclosure; however, associations between trust and engaging in disclosure were not explored in this study (howe et al., 2001). nevertheless, as buhrmester and prager (1995) argue, not confiding may limit the opportunities for intimacy, warmth, and closeness in the relationship, whereas warmth appears to be critical in facilitating an optimal family climate for promoting disclosure. for example, adolescents’ disclosure to parents about activities was associated with reciprocal features that define responsive and warm parent-child relationships including trust (smetana & metzger, 2008). interestingly, greer and campione-barr (2011) reported that adolescents who disclosed to their siblings about activities and body-related issues had both a more intensely positive and negative relationship. although sibling conflict may include intense negative exchanges, it does not threaten the continuation of the relationship due to the involuntary nature of sibling relationships, unlike intense friendship conflict that may lead to a breakdown of this voluntary relationship (furman & buhrmester, 1985a). while highly antagonistic sibling relationships may not appear to foster reciprocal communication, howe et al. (2000) did not find a significant negative association between rivalry or conflict and disclosure. a number of studies have been conducted to examine the characteristics of high quality friendships and findings identify that greater positive and less negative affect (berndt, 2002) and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 278 friendship stability over time (bukowski et al., 1994) are associated with greater disclosure (swenson & rose, 2009). in fact, swenson and rose (2009) reported that adolescents who rated their friendships as high in quality based on positive aspects of friendship (i.e., warmth) measured on the network of relationships inventory or nri (furman, 1996), and who engaged in disclosure were also reliable reporters of their friends’ internalizing symptoms. the internalizing symptoms were measured via items on a self-report questionnaire focused on problems (e.g., withdrawal), suggesting that warmth and intimate knowledge about the other were important factors (swenson & rose, 2009). additionally, these authors noted that perceiving a friendship as high quality could increase one’s motivation to share and attend to a friend’s feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. this idea highlights the bi-directional nature of close relationships. altermatt and ivers (2011) also indicated that children who disclosed their success on an achievement-related task to a friend reported more positive affect when their friend had been supportive. they also found that children who rated their friendship as high in companionship on the friendship quality questionnaire (parker & asher, 1993) engaged in more help-seeking behavior toward each other. further, in a study determining the important features of friendship, children’s ratings of items regarding companionship (e.g., “my friend thinks of fun things for us to do together”) were strongly positively associated with items measuring security (i.e., reliance, trust), instrumental help, and closeness (bukowski et al., 1994). given this pattern of findings, one might expect that children who view friends as companions and feel valued by them might frequently engage in disclosure as argued by smetana and metzger (2008). alternatively, as the friendship develops, each person may increase the degree of intimate self-disclosures in which they are likely to engage and thus perceive greater companionship and value in the relationship. while the complexities of how, when, and to whom to self-disclose may be learned through communications with friends (buhrmester, 1990), there is also the potential that those with limited social competence may be slower in developing these skills (berndt & hanna, 1995). also, the question of whether low quality friendships are characterized by less self-disclosure has not been addressed in the literature. however, we speculate that friendship defined by constant discord is probably a less suitable environment for self-disclosure, possibly due to the perceived lack of dependability or security provided by the peer. perhaps friendships rated as low in quality may not be a context for disclosure because of a lack of trust, as has been found in the sibling relationship (howe et al., 2001). clearly, this is a question for further research. in sum, based on the studies reviewed, when children perceive their relationships to be warm, intimate, and supportive, they are likely to engage in self-disclosure perhaps due to a high degree of trust between relationship partners. of course, these are correlational studies, thus the direction of effect between relationship quality and self-disclosure is not known. further, the question of how children perceive the quality of their sibling relationships and friendships and whether both are contexts for intimate self-disclosures has not been addressed. nor is it known whether children who engage in self-disclosure in one relationship are likely to do so in the other, perhaps depending on the topic of disclosures. overall, based on the literature, children’s perceptions of their relationships are likely to influence the exchange of private information (and vice versa), but the defining conditions that encourage disclosure in these contexts are not entirely clear (buhrmester & prager, 1995; howe et al., 2000). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 279 the present study our mixed-methods study examined the associations between children’s self-disclosure to siblings and friends and links with both sibling and friendship relationship quality during the period of early adolescence. our first objective was to identify the breadth (i.e., frequency and topics) of reported self-disclosure to siblings versus friends (hinde, 1979). it was hypothesized that same-sex siblings and friends would engage more frequently in disclosure than opposite-sex dyads (furman & buhrmester, 1985a, 1985b; howe et al., 2001). to test this hypothesis comparing dyadic gender composition and disclosure, chi-square and mcnemar’s tests were employed. the second objective was to investigate gender and age differences in self-disclosure in the two relationships. it was hypothesized that girls would disclose more than boys (rose & rudolph, 2006). participants were predicted to disclose more to friends in grade 6 than grade 4 given the increasing importance of friends in children’s lives (swenson & rose, 2009). to assess the depth of disclosure, we investigated the degree to which children shared problems with their sibling or best friend (hinde, 1979). children were predicted to share peer problems with friends and family problems with siblings (buhrmester & prager, 1995; swenson & rose, 2009). chisquare and mcnemar’s tests were also employed to test these hypotheses comparing gender and age differences in disclosure. the third objective was to examine the links between perceptions of relationship quality with sibling and friend disclosure. based on buhrmester and prager (1995) and howe et al. (2000), it was hypothesized that children who disclosed to their sibling would report greater sibling warmth and less conflict. we also predicted that disclosure to best friends would be positively associated with greater friend companionship and closeness, but less conflict. finally, it was predicted that a positive sibling or friend relationship would be associated with increased disclosure in the two relationships (howe et al., 2000; swenson & rose, 2009). univariate anovas were conducted to ascertain the predicted associations between relationship quality and self-disclosure. method design of study a quasi mixed-methods design was employed in the present study, because a combination of methods was determined to be the most efficacious approach to addressing the hypotheses. first, in terms of data collection, children were individually interviewed using a qualitative method to allow them to answer the questions about disclosure in each child’s own voice. children also responded to two quantitative standardized questionnaires regarding sibling and friend relationship quality, because these measures are effective and efficient for assessing the different characteristics of relationships (e.g., warmth, conflict), as described in the procedure section. second, in terms of coding of the data, the themes in the children’s responses to the interviews were determined via a qualitative process, as described below. also, quantitative scores for the subscales on the two relationship quality questionnaires were calculated. third, as elaborated in the results section, the data were analyzed to determine if the hypotheses were supported or not. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 280 participants a total of 93 target children in the 4th and 6th grades participated: grade 4 (24 boys, 22 girls; m age = 9.48 years, sd = .59); grade 6 (19 boys, 28 girls; m age = 11.15 years, sd = .55). each participant was asked to identify his or her best friend through personal nomination with no limitations on age, grade, or school attended. additionally, they identified the sibling to whom they felt closest. recipient friend mean age was 9.41 years (sd = .83) for 4th graders and 11.53 years (sd = .58) for 6th graders. participants reported no cross-sex friendships and thus the gender composition of the recipient friends was identical to the sample. of 4th graders, 24 identified a younger sibling as their recipient (m age = 6.37, sd = 1.86; 10 male-male, 3 male-female, 6 female-male, 5 female-female dyads), while the remaining 22 chose an older sibling (m age = 13.23 years, sd = 2.78; 7 male-male, 4 male-female, 2 female-male, 9 female-female dyads). for 6th graders, recipient siblings included 23 younger siblings (m age = 8.0 years, sd = 1.98; 9 malemale, 1 male-female, 2 female-male, 11 female-female dyads), 22 older siblings (m age = 13.86 years, sd = 1.46; 6 male-male, 4 male-female, 9 female-male, 4 female-female dyads) including two sets of twins (m age = 11.00 years, sd = .00; 1 male-male, 1 female-female dyad). lower and middle-class english-speaking, mostly caucasian children were recruited from local english elementary schoolsi in a large urban (population = 3,000,000), bilingual (french-english) community in the majority french environment of québecii. parental permission was obtained via a consent form and assent was obtained from children. procedure data were collected in the elementary school setting, either in the classroom or a separate room (e.g., library). as a group, children completed two questionnaires: (a) sibling relationship questionnaire (furman & buhrmester, 1985b), which measured perceptions of the quality of interactions with the recipient sibling; and (b) friendship activity questionnaire (bukowski et al., 1994), which measured perceptions of the quality of interactions with the best friend. these measures were selected because of their strong psychometric properties, appropriateness for measuring relationship quality, and also they are widely used in the literature. in addition, each child was individually and privately interviewed regarding the frequency, topics, and problems raised during sibling and friend self-disclosure; interviews were considered the appropriate method for determining this kind of qualitative information. these interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded as described below. measures sibling relationship questionnaire (srq). the focal children completed the 48-item srq (furman & buhrmester, 1985b) to evaluate the relationship quality with their closest sibling; this is a highly statistically reliable and efficient measure. four dimensions were assessed: (a) warmth/closeness (e.g., “how much do you show your brother how to do things he doesn’t know how to do?”); (b) relative power/status (e.g., “how much does your sibling tell you what to do?”); (c) conflict (e.g., “how much do you and your sister argue with each other?”); and (d) rivalry (e.g., “how much do you and your sister compete with each other?”). the response scale for each question included a 5-point likert scale (from 1 = hardly at all to 5 = extremely much). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 281 cronbach’s alphas assessed the internal consistency of the subscales in the present study: warmth (.93), conflict (.91), rivalry (.77), and power (.75). friendship activity questionnaire (faq). the focal children completed the 45-item faq (bukowski et al., 1994) to assess friendship quality, which is a highly statistically reliable and efficient measure. five dimensions were assessed: (a) companionship (e.g., “my friend and i spend a lot of our free time together.”); (b) closeness (e.g., “i feel happy when i am with my friend.”); (c) help (e.g., “my friend and i help each other.”); (d) security (e.g., “i can trust and rely upon my friend.”); and (e) conflict (e.g., “i can get into fights with my friend.”). children employed a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (i.e., not true) to 5 (i.e., really true). in the present study, cronbach's alphas measured the subscales’ internal consistency: help (.89), closeness (.83), conflict (.74), security (.76), and companionship (.68). interview. the focal children were audiotaped during individual and private interviews (about 15 to 20 minutes) using a semi-structured format adapted from howe et al. (2000) to include questions about friendships. participants were asked 26 open-ended questions concerning the nature of disclosure to their sibling and best friend. first, each focal child was asked to identify the sibling to whom he or she felt closest and to name his or her best friend. second, the child was asked if he or she disclosed to the sibling or best friend (i.e., “do you share special thoughts with your sibling/best friend?”), the rate of disclosure (i.e., “how often do you share secrets?”), the topics shared (i.e., “what kind of things do you tell your sibling/best friend?”) and if they shared problems (i.e., “do you ever share problems about your family?” “what kind of problems might you share?”). after carefully reviewing the interview transcripts, a coding scheme was developed by categorizing recurrent themes in participants’ responses (see table 1). operational definitions were developed for each of the five disclosure topics raised by participants: (a) family, (b) peer, (c) academic, (d) interest in the opposite sex, and (e) shared interests. topics were coded dichotomously as either present or absent and all possible topics were coded. responses to questions about problems regarding (a) family, (b) peer, and (c) academic issues were coded using the same dichotomous method. finally, disclosure frequency to each recipient was coded on a 1 to 4-item likert scale: 1 = not often (i.e., once in a while); 2 = sometimes (i.e., once weekly); 3 = often (i.e., twice to four times weekly); 4 = very often (i.e., everyday). reliability two coders conducted interrater reliability on a random subsample of 20% (19/93) of the interviews; one coder was unfamiliar with the study’s goals. interrater reliability was calculated for topics disclosed to sibling and friend (kappa = 1.0, .97, respectively), problems disclosed to sibling and friend (kappa = 1.0 for both), frequency of disclosure to sibling and friend (kappa = 1.0, .93, respectively). discrepancies were resolved through discussion. results first, descriptive analyses were performed to identify the specific types of information and frequency of disclosure to siblings and friends. second, we examined gender differences in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 282 disclosure. finally, descriptive statistics and associations of perceptions of sibling relationship and friendship quality were determined. disclosure recipients descriptive information (raw frequencies, percentages) for disclosure topics and frequency of disclosure between friends and siblings are presented in table 2; given the categorical binary nature of the interview data, we employed chi-square analyses and mcnemar’s tests. most participants (63%) reported disclosing to both their sibling and best friend, some disclosed only to their best friend (30%), and a few disclosed only to their sibling (3%) or to neither recipient (3%). a 4 (categories of disclosure recipients) x 2 (disclosure, no disclosure) chi-square goodness of fit test revealed a statistically significant difference among these groups compared to expected values (see table 2). overall, participants were more likely to disclose only to their best friend or both recipients, and less likely to disclose only to their sibling or to neither recipient. these patterns were also evident in both grades; 4 (categories of disclosure recipients) x 2 (disclosure, no disclosure) chi-square goodness of fit test was significant for 4th grade, as well as 3 (categories of disclosure recipients) x 2 (disclosure, no disclosure) chi-square goodness of fit test for 6th grade participants. given that there were no students who disclosed to neither a friend nor sibling, there are only three categories of disclosure recipients in this last analysis. breadth and depth of disclosure to siblings and friends: topics and problems to assess breadth of disclosure, we examined the topics and problems (i.e., academic, peer, shared interests) revealed to recipients with mcnemar’s tests (see table 3). overall, approximately one-third of the sample reported discussing academic issues with their best friend (31%) and sibling (32%). fourth graders were equally likely to report talking about academic issues to their best friend or their sibling (26% to both), as were 6th graders (siblings = 38%; friend = 36%). mcnemar’s tests revealed no significant differences between children disclosing academic issues to a friend compared to a sibling. however, overall respondents were significantly more likely to discuss shared interests with friends (27%) than siblings (12%). table 3 shows the same pattern in both grades, but 6th graders disclosed more about shared interests to a friend than a sibling. overall, 23% of participants disclosed peer issues to their best friend (see table 3), but significantly fewer (9%) disclosed peer issues to their sibling. overall, 20% of participants disclosed their interest in the opposite sex significantly more to their best friend compared to their sibling (5%); in particular, 6th graders were significantly more likely to confide interest in the opposite sex to their best friend (30%) than their sibling (9%). no significant differences were detected for revealing family issues with a friend or sibling, as frequencies were generally low. to examine the depth of disclosure, we examined whether children revealed problems to their friend or sibling (see table 3). overall, best friends were significantly more likely than siblings to be recipients of problems regarding peers (80% vs. 51%) and academics (80% vs. 52%); 4th and 6th graders showed the same significant patterns for these two problem topics. disclosing family problems to friends and siblings was not significant overall or within grades. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 283 in summary, a majority of participants reported disclosing to both siblings and best friends. respondents were more likely to discuss shared interests, peer issues and problems, interest in the opposite sex, and academic difficulties with their friends than their siblings, but no differences were apparent for family issues. self-disclosure by gender gender differences. next, we addressed gender differences in disclosure topics employing a series of 2 (disclosure, no disclosure of topic) x 2 (male, female) chi-square analyses (see table 4). a significant difference was observed in the disclosure of shared interests for the total sample of 4th and 6th graders: boys were more likely than girls to share details about hobbies and activities with both their best friend and sibling. when analyzing differences within grades, similar outcomes were obtained wherein 4th grade boys significantly disclosed more about shared interests than girls to their best friends, while 6th grade boys were more likely than girls to disclose about shared interests to both their best friends and siblings. in terms of disclosing problems, overall girls were significantly more likely to disclose family and peer problems, but only to their sibling. sixth grade girls were more likely to talk about family problems than boys to their best friends. fourth grade girls revealed more peer problems to their friends than boys, as well as more family problems to siblings. regarding disclosure frequency, a one-way anova, f(1, 40) = 7.90, p < .01, indicated that 4th grade girls (m = 2.71, sd = 1.23) disclosed significantly more often to their best friends than boys (m = 1.81, sd = .81), which supported the hypothesis that girls may disclose more than boys, particularly to their best friend. same-gender versus opposite-gender sibling dyad differences. to address the question of sibling dyadic gender differences in disclosure, a series of 3 (brother-brother, sister-sister, brothersister) x 2 (disclosure, no disclosure) chi-square analyses were performed (see table 5). support was evident for the hypothesis that same-sex sibling dyads would disclose more to one another than opposite-sex pairs; however, there was no significant difference between sister-sister and brother-brother dyads. sister-sister dyads and opposite-sex dyads reported disclosing significantly more family problems than brother-brother dyads, thus providing support for the hypothesis that dyads with one female have a greater likelihood of engaging in disclosure. same-gender sibling versus friendship dyad differences. due to the lack of oppositegender friendships within the sample, comparisons between sameand opposite-gender friendships were not possible. however, in the analysis of differences between same-sex sibling and friend dyads, we employed a 2 (disclosure, no disclosure) x 2 (boy-boy, girl-girl) chi-square analysis (see table 5). brother-brother dyads significantly disclosed more about academic issues than boy-boy friend dyads. on the other hand, male friend dyads were significantly more likely to disclose academic problems compared to brother-brother dyads. a significant difference was found in girls’ disclosure of shared interests, wherein girl-girl friends were more likely than sistersister dyads to discuss hobbies and activities. self-disclosure and perceptions of relationship quality with siblings and friends self-disclosure and sibling relationship quality. descriptive statistics for the subscales on the sibling and friendship measures of relationship quality are reported in table 6. anovas were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 284 conducted to examine differences in sibling relationship quality by disclosure (see table 7). these analyses employed the constructs of relationship quality (i.e., warmth, rivalry, conflict) as separate dependent variables, with the presence or absence of disclosure as the independent variable. consistent with the hypothesis that sibling relationship quality variables would differ between groups who engaged (or not) in sibling disclosure, significant differences were revealed for warmth, rivalry, and conflict (see table 7). participants who disclosed to their sibling scored significantly higher on warmth than those who did not disclose, thus, supporting the hypothesis. for rivalry, children who engaged in sibling disclosure scored significantly higher on rivalry than those who did not disclose. finally, for conflict, individuals who disclosed to a sibling reported more conflict compared to those who did not disclose, which did not support the hypothesis. self-disclosure and friendship quality. a one-way anova was conducted on each of the five subscales of friendship quality and a significant difference between groups was found only for conflict, f(1, 45) = 4.25, p < .05; specifically, there were lower levels of conflict for 6th graders who disclosed to their best friend (m = 2.40, sd = .84) compared to those who did not (m = 3.70, sd = 1.84). this finding provided partial support for the hypothesis that best friends who disclosed to one another would be less likely to report conflict. discussion first, we discuss the nature of children’s disclosures to siblings and best friends. second, we analyze gender and age effects. lastly, associations with relationship quality are considered. children’s disclosures to their sibling and best friend most boys and girls reported engaging in self-disclosure with both siblings and friends during the transition into early adolescence; very few participants reported a preference for disclosing only to their sibling or neither recipient. however, if children preferred one recipient, it was most likely to be their best friend. although disclosure is a defining characteristic of friendships, it may not necessarily be as strongly evident between siblings, which may account for the pattern of findings (hartup & stevens, 1997). it is likely that sibling disclosure may be influenced by age differences, personalities, and relationship quality (howe et al., 2000; howe et al., 2001), and thus a more detailed analysis is warranted. the findings suggest that friend and sibling relationships fulfill different functions as disclosure recipients. for example, while individuals were equally likely to disclose academic issues to both recipients, shared interests were discussed more with friends than siblings. this is consistent with theory and previous research indicating that during this developmental period children form connections based on “concrete reciprocities” (hartup & stevens, 1997, p. 356), such as common activities and hobbies, and seek out others who are similar in various ways (hinde, 1979). apparently, shared interests may be more significant for older than younger children, perhaps because friends may be their main companions. since friends are important resources (hartup & stevens, 1997), it was not surprising early adolescents confided peer concerns to best friends rather than to siblings. due to the importance of peer relations in early adolescence (bukowski et al., 1994; rubin et al., 2006), best friends may be perceived to be more knowledgeable, sympathetic, and relate more easily to these issues than siblings (buhrmester & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 285 prager, 1995). certainly, romantic interests were divulged at higher rates to best friends, perhaps because friends know the person of interest, understand emotions regarding the opposite sex, and are more trustworthy with this delicate information compared to siblings. trust has been identified as a key ingredient in an individual’s willingness to disclose (smetana & metzger, 2008). howe et al. (2001) reported one reason early adolescents did not disclose to siblings was a lack of trust, for fear of being teased, criticized, or having information communicated to parents. although participants did not differentially disclose to siblings and friends about general school issues, they did prefer to share academic problems and difficulties with their friends, perhaps because they were in the same class or grade. instrumental help is a principal attribute of friendships (bukowski et al., 1994); thus, if one’s best friend is knowledgeable in a specific subject, the focal child may choose to ask the best friend for help or confide difficulties rather than a sibling, especially if the sibling is younger. similar to general peer issues, peer problems were most likely to be disclosed to best friends. friends are familiar with one another’s peer groups, social status, and disliked peers, and thus they may be a better source of advice and protection from peer victimization than siblings (bukowski et al., 1994). unexpectedly, family incidents and crises were disclosed equally to both siblings and friends in both grades, although gender was an important factor as noted below. the low rates of disclosure about family issues suggested that either they were of less concern or perhaps parents were more likely recipients (stattin & kerr, 2000; yau et al., 2009). gender and age differences clearly, boys and girls disclosed different topics and problems with their best friends compared to their siblings. males generally disclosed shared interests to both recipients, suggesting their relationships were activity oriented. while mutual activities are a fundamental aspect of friendships (berndt, 2002; hartup, 1989; hartup & stevens, 1997), our findings draw attention to its value in sibling relationships, specifically for boys. further, boys’ hobbies may be of greater importance than personal issues or problems (rose et al., 2012), which in is line with work suggesting that boys may be less interested in interpersonal problems. interestingly, brothers reported discussing general academic topics more compared to boyboy friend dyads. however, male friend dyads were more likely to share serious academic problems than brothers. these findings may indicate that while boys talk to their siblings about broad school issues, they may be sharing major academic concerns primarily with their friends, possibly because friends may simply be disclosing more intimate or sensitive information (berndt & hanna, 1995; berndt & perry, 1986; dolgin & kim, 1994), particularly about academics. it is also possible that boys may perceive their same-sex friends as better sources of emotional and instrumental support (hartup & stevens, 1997) compared to their brothers. alternatively, females were more inclined to talk about family and peer problems, but exclusively with their siblings, perhaps due to greater emotional support and intimacy females perceive in sibling relationships compared to males (buhrmester & furman, 1987). in addition, girls divulge private emotions and information at a younger age than boys (buhrmester & prager, 1995; rose et al., 2012), suggesting competence in using self-disclosure as a means of selfinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 286 expression and for obtaining social input regarding their personal experiences and dilemmas. siblings often engage in disclosure early in their relationships (howe et al., 1995), and as a result of their shared history may have developed closeness and trust, which may account for greater discussion of troubles regarding family and peers. however, girlfriends are more likely to discuss shared interests compared to sisters, which is consistent with the premise that friendships are based on mutual hobbies and shared activities (berndt, 2002; hartup, 1989; hartup & stevens, 1997). early adolescence is a period when individuals begin to spend less time with their family (updegraff & obeidallah, 1999), interact more with their peer groups (berndt, 1982), and experience increased sibling conflict (lempers & clark-lempers, 1992). at the same time, early adolescents may share more about peer problems with their best friends due to the increasing focus on peers and social status (berndt, 1982; dolgin & kim, 1994; lempers & clark-lempers, 1992). as boys and girls individuate themselves from their family, they may feel that the family does not provide the emotional support or advice needed to navigate their peer groups and the developmental challenges of adolescence. also, reports of confiding about interest in the opposite sex increased in early adolescence (dolgin & kim, 1994), which is consistent with the reports that early adolescents share more about attraction, romance, and cross-gender relationships than younger children (buhrmester & prager, 1995; dolgin & kim, 1994). when investigating within grades, both grade 4 and grade 6 males reported disclosing more than females about shared interests with their best friends, which again supports the high priority that activities have in males’ friendships across this developmental period. however, older males also disclosed about shared interests to their sibling. this pattern may also indicate that the greater symmetrical power and increasing reciprocal exchanges evident between siblings as they mature (buhrmester & furman, 1990) may increase the likelihood of engaging in common activities. grade 6 girls reported disclosing more family problems to both recipients compared to males and younger girls. perhaps in early adolescence, females are more comfortable and capable of sharing concerns (rose et al., 2012) with their best friends and siblings compared to boys and younger children. surprisingly, although 4th grade girls disclosed more overall to their best friend than boys, 6th graders did not prefer their best friend as a disclosure recipient, as prior research suggested (buhrmester & furman, 1987; updegraff et al., 2002). disclosure processes and intimacy in the friendships of the 6th graders may still be developing as they enter the period of early adolescence, perhaps accounting for the rather weak age differences. variations in the relationship history of friends or siblings may also be critical and require further examination. in conclusion, the gender findings are in line with prior research revealing that girls disclose more to girls (buhrmester & prager, 1995; dolgin & kim, 1994; rose & rudolph, 2006), and that youngsters disclose more information to same-sex than opposite-sex siblings (howe et al., 1995). yet, girl-girl dyads did not report disclosing more than boy-boy dyads, suggesting that merely having a same-sex sibling may facilitate greater self-disclosure. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 287 associations of disclosure and relationship quality sibling disclosure was positively correlated with the sibling relationship quality constructs of warmth, rivalry, and conflict, indicating its important association with relationship quality. these findings were partly in line with howe et al. (2000), who reported that self-disclosure was likely to occur along with positive emotions, which may encourage communication between siblings. sibling disclosure most likely is associated with intimacy and trust (howe et al., 2000; howe et al., 2001; smetana & metzger, 2008), which may also reflect warmth between siblings. alternatively, siblings may have developed supportive and receptive communicative exchanges as a consequence of early and regular positive interaction or contact (howe et al., 2000). contrary to the hypothesis, sibling conflict and rivalry were not lower when children reported engaging in disclosure, which is in line with reports that adolescents’ disclosures about activities were associated with both positive and negative sibling interactions (greer & campionebarr, 2011). perhaps, siblings who disclose to one another may interact more frequently than those who do not disclose, thus increasing opportunities for disputes perhaps due to the intimate quality of their relationship. howe et al. (2000) also proposed that siblings who shared negative experiences and affect may increase the likelihood of disclosure, perhaps because they have advanced social skills and social understanding that allows them to resolve their issues through disclosure. for example, constructive (e.g., collaborative resolution, reasoning) rather than destructive (e.g., hostile, aggressive behaviors) conflict resolution strategies may characterize siblings who disclose to one another (howe et al., 2011), but this warrants further study. while rivalry’s association with disclosure has not been investigated previously, our findings indicate that it is a factor to be considered. rivalry has been associated with a negative sibling relationship, but only if a child perceived parental differential treatment as excessive (howe et al., 2011). perhaps, if children believe their perceptions of parental differential treatment are fair, disclosing may help them to understand parents’ and siblings’ motivations for their behavior, a speculation meriting further investigation. unexpectedly, only one feature of friendship quality (i.e., conflict) was perceived to vary along with friend disclosure, but only for older boys and girls. given that friendships are often based on mutual liking (hartup & stevens, 1997), children may select friends who place a similar value on disclosure. nevertheless, as expected, early adolescents who did not disclose to their friends reported greater friendship conflict. this pattern may be associated with friends drawing apart and eventually to a breakdown of the relationship (hartup, 1989). discord and tension between friends may intensify if they do not discuss and resolve their problems, while friendships already high in conflict may simply be running their course towards dissolution. the disclosure competencies learned and/or applied in the sibling relationship may have continuing effects, as they were associated with more disclosure between friends in both grades. perhaps children who have siblings, may have previously developed and used social and communication skills in the family context that can be easily transferred, extended, and enhanced with close friends. alternatively, children and adolescents who engage in disclosure with their friends and experience beneficial effects may also promote it in their sibling relationships. in conclusion, the processes of disclosure appear to play an important and meaningful role in enriching both sibling relationships and friendships, in line with theory (buhrmester & prager, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 288 1995; carpendale & lewis, 2006). ultimately, the more satisfied children were with their relationships, the more frequent disclosure behavior was displayed. although perceptions of quality can differ between relationship partners (hartup & stevens, 1997), mutual positive interactions likely contribute to the reciprocated exchange of confidential information. conclusion due to the fairly homogenous population, the findings may not apply to children of other ethnic and social backgrounds, which should be addressed in future work. the relatively small sample size reduces the feasibility of using complex analytical approaches; however, the interviews provide a rich source of data that cannot easily be obtained from questionnaires. individual attributes such as temperament, extroversion, and liking the recipient have been associated with disclosure (buhrmester & prager, 1995; jourard, 1971), but were not investigated in the present study. given the dyadic nature of relationships and the interdependence of the data, future studies should take into account the experience of each child in each relationship. nevertheless, an individual’s perceptions are important influences on interactions and relationship quality (hinde, 1979, 1995) and thus, the frequency of self-disclosure. the history of a friendship may also be a potential factor with longer friendships being associated with more trust and intimacy, thus warranting future investigation. lastly, individuals’ perceptions of the roles and functions of sibling relationships and friendships in their lives should be examined. the present study is one of the first to compare boys’ and girls’ disclosure in friendships and sibling relationships in the transition to early adolescence. this investigation not only extends the literature, but also illuminates some of the links between these two critical relationships for young adolescents, particularly in terms of dyadic structure, relationship quality, and disclosure processes. healthy relationships with siblings and friends, characterized by closeness, care, and mutual support, are important for children's enhanced social-emotional development and adjustment, as well as overall well-being. self-disclosure may facilitate the development of highquality dyadic relationships. our findings should inform parents, teachers, and clinicians by highlighting the need for educational programs, interventions, and strategies that help children and adolescents develop and sustain satisfying relationships through self-disclosure. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 289 references altermatt, e. r., & ivers, i. e. 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(2004). perceived sibling relationships and adolescent development. journal of youth and adolescence, 33(2), 133–147. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 293 table 1. definitions and examples of interview coding scheme topics of self-disclosure (a) family: interactions with parents, siblings, and/or relatives (e.g., family events, pets) (b) peer: interactions with best friend and other peers (e.g., future plans, hanging out) (c) academic: related to school (e.g., grades received, interactions with teachers) (d) interest in the opposite sex: romantic interest and/or interactions with a boyfriend or girlfriend (e.g., crushes) (e) shared interests: related to hobbies (e.g., video games, music, reading) problems disclosed (a) family: conflict with parents, siblings, and/or relatives (e.g., divorce, arguing with brother or sister) (b) peer: conflict with best friend and other peers (e.g., bullying, gossip) (c) academic: related to school (e.g., failing, falling behind in school work) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 294 table 2. descriptive statistics for self-disclosure recipients and frequency of disclosure grade 4 (n = 46) grade 6 (n = 47) both grades (n = 93) n % χ2 n % χ2 n % χ2 general disclosure to sibling only 1 2 45.65** 2 4 23.28** 3 3 91.20** to friend only 12 26 16 34 28 30 both 30 65 29 62 59 63 neither 3 7 0 0 3 3 disclosure freq. to sibling not often 11 24 7 15 18 19 sometimes 12 26 6 13 18 19 often 2 4 9 19 11 12 very often 6 13 9 19 15 16 disclosure freq. to friend not often 12 26 14 30 26 28 sometimes 17 37 15 32 32 34 often 3 7 7 15 10 11 very often 10 22 9 19 19 20 * p < .05. ** p < .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 295 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 296 table 3. descriptive statistics and mcnemar’s test results for self-disclosure topics and problems grade 4 (n = 46) grade 6 (n = 47) both grades (n = 93) to sibling to best friend mcnemar’s to sibling to best friend mcnemar’s to sibling to best friend mcnemar’s n % n % p n % n % p n % n % p topics of disclosure family 3 7 6 13 ns 4 9 1 2 ns 7 8 7 8 ns peer 3 7 8 17 ns 5 11 13 28 ns 8 9 21 23 .011 academic 12 26 12 26 ns 18 38 17 36 ns 30 32 29 31 ns interest in opposite sex 1 2 5 11 ns 4 9 14 30 .021 5 5 19 20 .004 shared interests 8 17 13 28 ns 3 6 12 26 .004 11 12 25 27 .003 problems disclosed family 12 26 19 41 ns 20 43 26 55 ns 32 34 45 48 ns peer 19 41 32 70 .007 28 60 42 89 .003 47 51 74 80 .001 academic 21 46 33 72 .004 27 57 41 87 .004 48 52 74 80 .001 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 297 table 4. summary of chi-square test results for self-disclosure gender differences 4th grade 6th grade both grades males females χ2 males females χ2 males females χ2 no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes topics of disclosure shared interests to best friend to sibling 11 10 10 6 18 13 3 2 5.46* 2.36 9 11 9 3 24 17 3 0 8.35** 4.03* 20 21 19 9 42 30 6 2 13.78** 5.98* problems disclosed family to best friend to sibling 14 21 10 3 13 13 9 9 .003 4.80* 12 13 7 6 9 14 19 14 4.41* 1.57 26 34 17 9 22 27 28 23 2.51 6.44* peer to best friend to sibling 11 17 13 7 3 10 1 12 5.62* 3.05 1 9 18 10 4 10 24 18 .97 .64 12 26 31 17 7 20 43 30 2.75 3.87* * p < .05. ** p < .01 note. the relevant comparisons for males versus females are presented horizontally (e.g., 10 males versus 3 females disclosed to their best friend about shared interests). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 298 table 5. summary of chi-square tests results for self-disclosure relationship dyad differences no yes no yes no yes sisters brothers opposite-sex χ2 general disclosure 8 22 7 25 8 22 7.15* family problems 15 15 27 5 19 12 8.49* male friends brothers topics of disclosure academic 26 13 15 10 6.66* problems disclosed academic 11 32 17 15 5.06* sisters female friends topics of disclosure shared interests 20 2 42 6 9.40** *p < .05. **p < .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 299 table 6. descriptive statistics for the sibling relationship and friendship activity questionnaires grade 4 (n = 46) grade 6 (n = 47) both grades (n = 93) m sd m sd m sd sibling relationship questionnaire warmth 3.21 .80 3.37 .71 3.29 .76 power 3.05 .65 3.31 .62 3.18 .64 rivalry 2.87 .51 2.73 .51 2.79 .54 conflict 3.13 .99 2.68 1.02 2.91 1.03 total 3.10 .58 3.15 .49 3.12 .54 friendship activity questionnaire companionship 3.90 .77 3.88 .84 3.89 .81 help 3.94 .76 4.04 .66 3.99 .71 closeness 4.11 .75 4.16 .64 4.14 .69 security 4.20 .58 4.21 .66 4.20 .62 conflict 2.50 .98 2.45 .90 2.48 .94 total 3.80 .55 3.80 .49 3.80 .52 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 300 table 7. summary of anova results for self-disclosure and relationship quality discloses to sibling (n = 62) m (sd) does not disclose to sibling (n = 31) m (sd) f(df) sibling relationship questionnaire warmth 3.47 (0.71) 2.93 (sd = 0.73) f(1, 91) = 11.95** rivalry 2.88 (2.63) 2.63 (sd = 0.57) f(1, 91) = 4.37* conflict 3.07 (0.96) 2.58 (sd = 1.10) f(1, 91) = 4.84* *p < .05 **p < .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 274–300 301 endnotes i in quebec, all children attend elementary school (kindergarten to grade 6) and then enter high school in grade 7. therefore, no participants had yet experienced a school transition. ii we did not directly measure social class, but our assessment is based on the catchment areas for the suburban and inner city (e.g., eligible for subsidized programs as determined by the government) schools where the data were collected. in quebec, immigrant children are not eligible for the english school system and must attend the french system; thus all children in the study were english-speaking. for children to be eligible to attend the english school system, one parent must have been educated in english at the primary or secondary level in canada, thus restricting the ethnic diversity of the sample to second generation (or more) english-speaking families, most of whom happen to be caucasian in the montreal area. parental monitoring and risky behavior in bahamian youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 376 parental monitoring and risky behavior in bahamian youth giavana jones, xinguang chen, bonita stanton, veronica dinaj-koci, lynette deveaux, sonja lunn, nanika brathwaite, m. perry gomez abstract: adolescent involvement in risk behaviors is a concern that crosses geographical and cultural boundaries. research has identified a number of factors that influence child behavior outcomes. this study explored the role of perceived neighborhood problems, parent-child relationships, and parental monitoring, as they relate to engagement in risk behaviors among a sample of 497 bahamian early adolescents. contrary to the hypothesized direction, results of the latent growth model showed an increase in perceived parental monitoring over the four-year period. consistent with our hypotheses, adolescents who reported greater monitoring reported less involvement in sexual activity, less involvement in physical fights, and less alcohol consumption. positive interactions between parent and child also significantly predicted the initial status and rate of change of parental monitoring. keywords: adolescent risk behavior, parental monitoring, caribbean acknowledgements: we thank the national institute of mental health (nimh) for support for this research (r01 mh069229). we are also grateful to the ministry of education and the students who participated in the study. finally, we would like to thank dr. dennis jackson, university of windsor, for his assistance in the early development of the paper. correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to dr. bonita stanton, m.d., department of pediatrics, pediatric prevention research center, wayne state university school of medicine, 3901 beaubien boulevard, detroit, michigan, u.s.a. email: bstanton@dmc.org mailto:bstanton@dmc.org� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 377 giavana jones is a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology, university of windsor, 401 sunset avenue, windsor, ontario, canada, n9b 3p4. e-mail: jones123@uwindsor.ca xinguang (jim) chen, m.d., ph.d. is a methodologist and professor within the pediatric prevention center, wayne state university school of medicine, 3901 beaubien boulevard, detroit, michigan, u.s.a. e-mail: jimchen@med.wayne.edu. bonita stanton, m.d. is a pediatrician and vice dean for research, wayne state university school of medicine, 3901 beaubien boulevard, detroit, michigan, u.s.a. e-mail: bstanton@med.wayne.edu. veronica dinaj-koci is a doctoral student in the department of psychology at wayne state university, 3901 beaubien boulevard, detroit, michigan, u.s.a. e-mail: ar0687@wayne.edu. lynette deveaux is local coordinator for the focus on youth program bahamas at the ministry of health, royal victoria gardens, east hill street, nassau, bahamas. e-mail: lc.deveaux@hotmail.com. sonja lunn is the assistant coordinator for the focus on youth program bahamas at the ministry of health, royal victoria gardens, east hill street, nassau, bahamas. e-mail: slunn@coralwave.com. nanika brathwaite is a statistician with the ministry of health, royal victoria gardens, east hill street, nassau, bahamas. e-mail: nanikab@hotmail.com. m. perry gomez, m.d. is director of the bahamas national hiv/aids programme, princess margaret hospital, ministry of health, bahamas. e-mail: docgomez47@gmail.com. mailto:jones123@uwindsor.ca� mailto:jimchen@med.wayne.edu� mailto:bstanton@dmc.org� mailto:ar0687@wayne.edu� mailto:lc.deveaux@hotmail.com� mailto:slunn@coralwave.com� mailto:nanikab@hotmail.com� mailto:docgomez47@gmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 378 adolescent involvement in problem behaviors occurs across the globe. historically, adolescence has been characterized as an intensely emotional period during which youth struggle with defining their identity as they move from childhood to adulthood (erickson, 1968). it is a time of exploration and pushing boundaries. some risk behaviors that are found in adolescents include alcohol and drug use and abuse, fighting, gang involvement, and early involvement in sexual behavior (carroll et al., 2006; tapert, aarons, sedlar, & brown, 2001). such behaviors are considered “risky” or problematic because of the ramifications to the individual, their immediate family, and/or the wider community. these behaviors place youth at risk for threats to their well-being including alcohol and drug dependency or addiction, legal problems, health problems, teenage parenthood, or premature death. once initiated, some of these problems persist through adulthood (brook et al., 2004; karp, o’louglin, paradis, hanley, & difranza, 2005; park, weaver, & romer, 2009; trim, meehan, king, & chassin, 2007). additionally, because of the substantial emotional and financial investments required to address such undesirable consequences, families of the adolescents and the wider community are also greatly impacted (greenwood, model, chiesa, & rydell, 1996; hoffman, 2006). research suggests that for some youth, involvement in problem behaviors may have been present from early childhood, even as early as the preschool years (moffitt, 1993). for others, risk-taking behaviors are only associated with adolescence, oftentimes not posing problems for these individuals as they move into adulthood (steinberg, 1999). regardless of the timing of onset, certain factors have been commonly associated with adolescent problem behaviors. for more than four decades, researchers have been studying these risk factors to better understand the roots of problem behaviors (steinberg & morris, 2001). while specific personality factors, including impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and temperament, have consistently been found to be associated with problem behavior in adolescence (arnett, 1992; lynam & miller, 2004; pharo, sim, graham, gross, & hayne, 2011; shaw, bell, & gilliom, 2000; steinberg, 2007), human development occurs within a nested set of interconnected systems (bronfenbrenner, 1979). that is, social and environmental influences moderate these and other individual characteristics, thus impacting child development including the propensity for risk-taking behavior. variables such as the parent-child relationship, supervision and monitoring, parenting style, peer groups, and neighborhood conditions have all been explored as they relate to child behavioral problems (aalsma, liu, & wiehe, 2011; deaterdeckard & dodge, 1997; dodge, pettit, & bates, 1994; leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2011; loeber & dishion, 1983; sameroff, peck, & eccles, 2004). from an ecological perspective, adolescent behavior is best understood as a function of the systems that encompass these variables and other environmental level factors in which they are embedded including the roles of the neighborhood and community, parent-child relationships, and peers. neighborhood influences neighborhood has a profound influence on child development (leventhal & brooksgunn, 2000). leventhal and brooks-gunn propose three broad and complementary categories international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 379 useful to our understanding of neighborhood influences: (a) norms and collective efficacy, (b) institutional resources, and (c) relationships and ties. norms and collective efficacy is a structural construct that assesses the role of socioeconomic status, residential stability, and the ethnic composition of neighborhoods. institutional resources assess the presence, accessibility, and quality of various community resources including childcare availability, medical facilities, social supports, and learning opportunities. relationships and ties address the family structure, specifically parental stability and the home environment. impaired outcomes in child development have been linked to disruptions in any of these attributes of neighborhood organization (leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000; mrug & windle, 2009; romano, tremblay, boulerice, & swisher, 2005; sampson, 1997). for example, children raised in impoverished neighborhoods have been found to be more likely to be physically aggressive (leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2011; romano et al., 2005) and delinquent (chung & steinberg, 2006; mrug & windle, 2009) and to manifest conduct problems and antisocial behavior (edwards & bromfield, 2009). parent-child relationships researchers have identified several social processes that promote healthy adolescent development, one of which is effective parenting (malecki & demaray, 2006; masten, 2001; ryan, miller-loessi, & nieri, 2007). effective parenting is characterized by positive and healthy parent-child relationships. healthy parent-child relationships are marked by the parents’ engagement in the child’s life, the use of positive reinforcement, and open and positive communication patterns (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). other characteristics of a healthy parentchild relationship include trust, responsiveness, warmth, and sensitivity (barnard, morisset, & spierker, 1993). such positive parenting practices minimize, and sometimes obliterate, the negative effect of neighborhoods on children’s behavior (emery & forehand, 1996; vanderbiltadriance & shaw, 2008). conversely, ineffective parenting practices are often characterized by poor parent-child interactions, insufficient monitoring, and harsh physical discipline. additionally, ineffective parenting is a risk factor for child and adolescent problem behaviors (patterson, debaryshe, & ramsey, 1989; romano et al., 2005). specifically, for example, poor parent-child relationships have been associated with delinquency in childhood and adolescence (frick, christian, & wootton, 1999; keijsers, loeber, branje, & meeus, 2011). parental monitoring parental monitoring refers to the parents’ awareness of and ability to track their child’s whereabouts and activities (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). it is a function of the parent-child relationship (dishion & mcmahon, 1998), in that healthy parent-child relationships foster open communication, which in turn has been shown to be associated with increased parental monitoring, particularly as it relates to the child’s willingness to check in with the parents (kerns, aspelmeier, gentzler, & grabill, 2001; stattin & kerr, 2000). parental monitoring is associated with positive outcomes in childhood (leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000). specifically, it is positively associated with adolescent school performance and inversely associated with adolescent involvement in deviant behaviors (dishion, capaldi, spracklen, & li, 1995). parental monitoring has been linked with decreased involvement in and delayed introduction to various international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 380 negative behaviors in adolescence, including substance use and abuse (chilcoat & anthony, 1996; li, stanton, & feigelman, 2000; richards, miller, o’donnell, wasserman, & colder, 2004; stattin & kerr, 2000), delinquency (griffin, botwin, scheier, diaz, & miller, 2000; richards et al., 2004; smetana, crean, & daddis, 2002), and sexual experiences (huebner & howell, 2003; li et al., 2000; meschke & silbereisen, 1997; wight, williamson, & henderson, 2006). parental monitoring becomes even more salient in families who live in neighborhoods with diminished resources and/or increased rates of crime and violence (beyers, bates, pettit, & dodge, 2003; byrnes, miller, chen, & grube, 2011; jarrett, 1999). jarrett (1999) suggests that parents need to be more aware of their child’s whereabouts to decrease the likelihood that their children will succumb to the risks associated with stressed neighborhoods. thus increased parental monitoring is a means to keep children safe, particularly in communities where violence is prevalent. research has validated this supposition, providing evidence that increased monitoring among children raised in poor neighborhood conditions results in better outcomes than their peers who are not as closely monitored (a. baldwin, c. baldwin, & cole, 1990; chilcoat & anthony, 1996; gonzales, cauce, friedman, & mason, 1996). whereas parental monitoring, by definition, has to do with the parents’ awareness of the child’s whereabouts, an important aspect of the monitoring process is also the degree of communication between parent and child (eaton, krueger, johnson, mcgue, & iacono, 2009; stattin & kerr, 2000). whether or not the child is providing information on his or her whereabouts is critical to the parental monitoring process. although some research suggests that communication by the youth with their parents plays a large role in the monitoring process, substantial evidence underscores the importance of parental efforts in this process (soenens, vansteenkiste, luyckx, & goossens, 2006). regardless of the initiator of the process, parental monitoring is an important part of parenting in promoting positive outcomes and decreasing the likelihood of a child’s engagement in negative behaviors. parental monitoring is often assessed among middle-to-late adolescents in relation to the adolescents’ involvement in certain behaviors; however research also supports the importance of parental monitoring among pre-adolescents for positive adolescent behavioral outcomes (chilcoat & anthony, 1996). rates or degrees of monitoring activities are likely to change as the child moves through different developmental stages. research to date has generally revealed a decrease in parental monitoring as children age, particularly for children in at-risk populations (dishion, nelson, & bullock, 2004; stoolmiller, 1994). this change reflects both parent withdrawal and the natural shifts that occur in adolescent development as peers become a more powerful influence (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). bahamian population the bahamas is comprised of more than 20 inhabited islands and is located about 50 miles south of florida, united states of america. although once a colony of britain, it is now an independent nation, with a population of about 325,000 (department of statistics, bahamas, 2005). new providence, with a land mass of 80 square miles, houses about 70% of the entire bahamian population (gomez et al., 2002). similar to other densely populated cities, parts of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 381 new providence are home to high rates of poverty, violence, and disease (department of statistics, bahamas, 2004). taking an ecological approach to understanding adolescent behavior, this study explores the role of neighborhood (resources and problems), parent-child relationships, and parental monitoring in adolescence, particularly as it relates to the engagement of young people in risky problem behaviors. the research questions guiding the analyses are: 1. do neighborhood problems and the parent-child relationship at baseline predict the initial status and trajectory of parental monitoring over a four-year period? 2. does the intercept and trajectory of parental monitoring predict future childhood behaviors namely fighting, alcohol usage, and early sexual involvement? based on the parental monitoring literature, this manuscript seeks to explore three hypotheses: • overall parental monitoring would decrease as the child ages. • higher reported parental monitoring would predict less child behavior problems. • stronger parent-child relationships will be associated with higher parental monitoring at baseline and over the four-year period. method sample and procedures data used for these analyses are a subset of data collected as part of a randomized trial of the hiv risk prevention intervention, focus on youth in the caribbean (foyc), which was conducted in 15 elementary schools on new providence, bahamas. of the total 1,340 students who were included in the study, only the students who participated in the control condition were included in this sample. the foyc trial involved the random assignment of schools to one of three conditions: two versions of an hiv prevention intervention and an environmental promotion intervention that served as the control. at baseline the students in the sample used for the analyses in the present study were from the grade 6 classes of five elementary schools assigned to the control condition. the final sample included 269 females and 228 males for a total sample of 497 students at baseline. the students in this sample had a mean age of 10.40 (sd = .64) at baseline. the project was approved by institutional review boards at wayne state university and also the ministry of health (bahamas). ministry of education officials also granted permission for schools to be included in the study. all schools were invited to participate although only the first 15 to respond were used in the project. permission and assent was required from both parents and students respectively before any information was collected. both parents and students completed questionnaires that assessed basic demographic information; knowledge of hiv, including prevention and transmission; academic, family, and neighborhood conditions; participation in, as well as intentions and expectations for, risky and protective behaviors; parentchild relationship; and parental monitoring. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 382 a paper and pencil questionnaire was the primary tool for collecting information. this was administered in a group format in classrooms at each of the schools. questions were read out loud by the researcher. to ensure confidentiality, pre-assigned, unique id numbers were used throughout the project for tracking, organization, and storage of the data. measures the bahamian youth health risk behavioral inventory (byhrbi) is a cultural adaptation of the youth health risk behavior inventory (stanton et al., 1995). it assesses: (a) demographic information; (b) basic knowledge of condom usage, hiv transmission, healthy sex practices; (c) behavioral history, which includes sexual history, alcohol and drug history; and (d) perceptions, intentions, and expectations regarding risk and protective behaviors (cole et al., 2007). the subtests used for analyses were from the student questionnaire and include: neighborhood conditions, parent-child communication/relationship, parental monitoring, and three questions that target the individual student’s current [or past] involvement with alcohol, fighting, and sex. neighborhood problems. this scale consists of nine statements to assess the frequency of violence, alcohol usage, and drug usage present in the student’s environment (e.g., “how often have you seen a person who lives in your neighborhood drink alcohol?”). the students respond to the questions on a three-point likert scale ranging from 1 (very often) to 3 (never). however the values were reverse-coded, and thus, higher scores indicated more problems in the neighborhood. the internal consistency for these nine items = .901. parent-child relationships. this scale of 19 statements requests students to rate their agreement with various statements (e.g., “my parent is a good listener”; “i am very satisfied with how my parent and i talk together”) on a five-point likert scale ranging from 1 (yes) to 5 (no). for some questions, the values are reverse-coded to ensure that all responses were positively directed such that higher scores are indicative of a stronger relationship. the internal consistency for these 19 items = .908. parental monitoring. the eight items constituting this scale request students to rate their agreement with statements about their parents’ knowledge of their whereabouts (e.g., “my parents/guardians know where i am after school”) on a five-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). the internal consistency for these eight items = .841 at year one, .748 at year two, .899 at year three, and .769 at year four. child behavior problems. this is a latent (composite) variable with three indicators derived from students’ responses to the following questions. response options were either yes or no: • fight: “in the last six (6) months, have you been in a physical fight, other than with your brother or sister?” • alcohol usage: “in the last six (6) months, have you had a drink of alcohol, beer, wine, rum, or bush rum or liquor (not including when you are taking communion)?” • sex: “have you ever had sex?” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 383 data processing and statistical analysis data were manually entered into the computer. the double entry procedure was used for quality control purposes. missing data were imputed using the mcmc method (schafer, 1997). before any analyses were run, the data were checked for accuracy and then for missing values; the missing values analysis was run in pasw spss 18 and the data was found to be missing completely at random. latent growth modeling (lgm) is a statistical procedure that allows for the examination and prediction of both individual and group level changes over time. it is one of the structural equation modeling (sem) techniques, where two key parameters, intercept and slope, estimate the growth trajectory of an outcome measure at different time points (preacher, wichman, maccallum, & briggs, 2008). the intercept represents the initial status of the outcome variable and is typically set at “0”. the slope represents the linear rate of change in the outcome variable and can be set incrementally to correspond with the time points at which the outcome variable has been measured (preacher et al., 2008). modeling analyses were conducted using mplus (version 5.1), which provides estimation of the maximum likelihood (ml) function. a conditional lgm was the statistical analysis selected to examine growth in parental monitoring over four years. two time invariant covariates (tic) were included to help explain the between individual variance in the intercept and slope estimates. the intercept and slope (latent constructs) were based on four indicators: parental monitoring score over a four-year period. factor loadings on the intercept for all four indicators were set at 0; loadings on the slope for the first two indicators were set sequentially from 0-1, while the final two years were not constrained and were allowed to be estimated. the time invariant covariates – neighborhood problems, and parent-child relationship – were also included in the model. paths from both covariates were allowed to be estimated for both intercept and slope latent factors. two growth models were assessed: the first was used to account for fit of the basic growth model, that is without the two covariates (figure 1), and to determine whether parental monitoring is associated with risk behavior outcomes. the second model expanded upon the first to include the two covariates (figure 2) and to assess the relationship between parental monitoring and risky behavior after controlling for the influences of the neighborhood and the parent-child relationship. results the data for the present analyses were collected over a four-year period. data from 497 students were included in these analyses; 54.1% of these students were female. in year one, the ages of students ranged from 9 to 14 years (grade 6) with 10-year-olds representing 61.4% of the participants. of the students who reported missing a day (or more) of school at year one, 1.4% missed school due to suspension, and 3.9% reported playing “hooky”. however, in year four (grade 9 for most students), 16.3% of the students who missed a day (or more) reported suspension as the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 384 reason and another 3.4% reported playing “hooky”. in year one, 36% of the participants reported being in a fight as compared to the 26.4% of the students in year four. as it relates to alcohol consumption, 23.5% and 27.1% reported drinking alcohol in year one and year four respectively. finally, in year one 3.6% of the students reported having sex; this number increased to 17.2% by year four. descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviations) for all variables included in the model that can be found in table 1. t tests were conducted with each of the three outcome variables (at year four) with gender and age as the independent variables. there was a significant difference between males (m = .34) and females (m = .21) as it relates to fighting (equal variances not assumed), t (345.29) = 2.84, p < .05. differences were also found between male (m = .23) and female (m = .04) participants who reported sexual involvement, t (328.87) = 2.46, p < .05. no gender differences were found for the participants who reported consuming an alcoholic beverage; 13 and 14-year-olds accounted for 50% and 43% of the participants in year four. the group was split in half at age 14, with the older group consisting of students 14 years and older. no significant differences existed for the two sub-groups as it relates to fighting, alcohol consumption, and sexual involvement. primary analyses the data fit the two latent growth models well with cfi = 0.98 and rmsea < 0.05 for the model without controlling for covariates and cfi = 0.97 and rmsea < 0.04 for the model with covariates being included. results in figure 1 indicate that first the levels of parental monitoring at baseline (year 1) showed a significant negative effect on risk behavior at year four (standardized coefficient = 0.36, p < 0.01). second, the level of parental monitoring showed an increasing trend over time with the standardized model coefficients = 0.44, 0.63, and 0.78 in year 2, year 3, and year 4 respectively after the level of monitoring in year 1 was fixed to zero. the increments in parental monitoring during the 4-year period also significantly predicted risky problem behaviors at year 4 (standardized coefficients = -0.72, p < 0.01). this coefficient is exactly two-times the coefficient assessing the initial status of parental monitoring on the risk behavior measure. after controlling a potential confounding effect from parent-child relationship and perceived neighborhood risk, the association between parental monitoring assessed at baseline and child risk behavior was shown to have increased (standardized coefficients = -0.38, p < 0.01) while the association between changes in parental monitoring over time and risk behavior was slightly reduced (standardized coefficient = -0.68, p < 0.01). in addition, data in this model indicated that parent-child relationship showed a positive relationship (standardized coefficient = 0.36, p < 0.01) with increments in parental monitoring over time, although these two were negatively associated at baseline (standardized coefficient = -0.33, p <0.01). perceived neighborhood risk was not significantly associated with the increase in parental monitoring over time (standardized coefficient = 0.05, p > 0.05); however, it was negatively associated with baseline parental monitoring (standardized coefficient = -0.18, p < 0.01). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 385 discussion this study tested a growth model of parental monitoring over a four-year period in predicting adolescent behavior outcomes. contrary to our first hypothesis, significant mean level increases for parental monitoring over a four-year period were found. this increase was then found to predict risky problem behavior in year four. supportive of our second hypothesis, higher reported parental monitoring was associated with less reported youth problem behaviors. the data partially supported our third hypothesis: better parent-child relationships over the four year period were associated with a greater increase in monitoring. however, students who initially had higher scores for parent-child relationship reported lower mean monitoring scores, but experienced the greatest amount of growth of parental monitoring over the four-year time frame. additionally, students who reported witnessing more exposure to alcohol, drugs, and violence in their neighborhoods reported higher levels of parental monitoring. with the exception of the level of parental monitoring over time, the results were generally consistent with findings from other studies that assessed parental monitoring and child outcomes in north american samples (dishion & mcmahon, 1998). specifically, the youth in this sample who reported less involvement in problem behaviors also reported greater parental monitoring (chilcoat & anthony, 1996; meschke & silbereisen, 1997; richards et al., 2004). the results of this sample provide further evidence for the connection between neighborhood, monitoring, and positive outcomes, such that the youth whose parents provided greater monitoring, reported less involvement in risky problem behaviors even in the presence of less than optimal neighborhood conditions (baldwin et al., 1990; beyers et al., 2003). the unexpected finding of an increase in parental monitoring with advancing age among this sample of bahamian youth may imply another mechanism impacting the trajectory of parental monitoring in early adolescence. culture is a possible factor to explain the differences; it is possible that family structure or parenting styles of bahamian families differ from those in the u.s. and european countries from which much of the monitoring literature is derived. for example, it is common to find more than one generation of bahamian families living together; thus, even if the primary caregiver is absent or unaware, there are grandparent(s), aunt(s), and/or uncle(s) who are present in the home environment to assist with monitoring youth’s activities. moreover, most youth who reside in the inner city areas of new providence island are a part of very small and tightly knit communities, where neighbors are familiar with each other and frequently are related to each other. therefore, the actions of youth within the community or surrounding area can be accounted for due to the interconnectedness of the community. another possible explanation for the increase in parental monitoring among this sample could be the age range included for the analyses; it would be interesting to see if the steady increase of parental monitoring continues, plateaus, or even decreases as the youth move through middle adolescence into their later teen years. intuitively, it makes sense that at pre-adolescence and into early adolescence, the dependence on parents is still very high and thus “monitoring” may not be as salient a factor with respect to older youth who spend more time with their peers. an additional finding of this study was that the students who initially reported weaker parent-child relationships over time reported stronger relationships as parental monitoring international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 386 continued to increase. this interesting shift may be a function of the dual aspect of parental monitoring reporting where both the child’s and the parent’s perspectives are important. research has shown that youth who have better relationships with their parents tend to check in more often than their peers and thus, “monitoring” is higher even if the parents’ actions have not increased overtly (kerns et al., 2001; soenens et al., 2006). this finding could potentially support a competing conceptualization of parental monitoring initially proposed by stattin and kerr (2000) which suggests that self-disclosure on behalf of the youth is more important than the actions of the parent in explaining the relationship between parental monitoring and problem behavior. additional support for this conceptualization was found in the results of this study, as the participants who reported better parent-child relationships also reported the greatest amount of growth in parental monitoring over time. whereas the researchers acknowledge the merit of this conceptualization, it was not one of the directions of this study and so it is difficult to draw any stronger conclusions in this regard. limitations there are several potential limitations of this study. first, these data were obtained from students and parents who agreed to participate in a randomized controlled trial; therefore, although they were randomized to the control condition, they may or may not be representative of bahamian society in general. additionally, parental monitoring was measured using only the student reports. as mentioned, parental monitoring is a function of the parent-child relationship as communication is an important aspect of monitoring (li et al., 2000). results presented here could be strengthened if both parent and student reports were factored into the model and subsequent analyses. given that the data used for these analyses were from a longitudinal study, it is noted that attrition was a possible limitation. in this study, there were both drop-outs and students missing for specific time points of data collection; students who missed more than two of the four time points included in these analyses accounted for 7% of the total sample. finally, it should be noted that the data used in these analyses were from a larger study looking at a school-based hiv prevention program and health risk behaviors. the research questions and hypotheses guiding the analyses in this paper differ from the original purpose and were proposed after the data had been collected. while the literature on parental monitoring is extensive, this study is the first to look at patterns of parental monitoring and its relationship with problem risk behavior specifically in bahamian youth. this adds to the literature on the function of parental monitoring, as it relates to non-north american cultural contexts. the results of the study have implications specifically for bahamian families and immediate communities as it relates to decreasing and/or delaying adolescent involvement in risky problem behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 387 references aalsma, m. c., liu, g. c., & wiehe, s. e. 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(2006). parental influences on young people. journal of adolescence, 29(4), 473–494. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 393 table 1. correlations and descriptive statistics of all variables variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 gender 1 2 age -.06 1 3 neighborhood problems .06 -.16** 1 4 parent-child relationship .01 -.08 .23** 1 5 monitoring (year 1) .12** -.10* .50** .28** 1 6 monitoring (year 2) .15** -.06 -.02 -.04 .12* 1 7 monitoring (year 3) .24** -.13** .00 .00 .06 .40** 1 8 monitoring (year 4) .21** -.17** .03 .03 .13* .26** .44** 1 9 involved in a fight -.14** .02 -.01 -.01 -.05 -.04 -.12* -.18** 1 10 drank alcohol -.03 .01 .02 -.01 -.05 -.10* -.17** -.19** .25** 1 11 had sex -.13* .02 -.06 -.02 .01 -.08 -.11* -.12* .17** .13** 1 m 1.54 10.40 2.21 2.05 3.67 4.18 4.19 4.14 .26 .25 .13 sd .50 .64 1.37 1.49 2.01 1.14 1.19 1.01 .44 .64 .75 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 394 figure 1. basic growth model of parental monitoring over four years note. the number above the slash is the modeling results and the number under the slash is the standardized modeling results. **p < 0.001 *p < 0.05 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 376–395 395 figure 2. growth model of parental monitoring with covariates note. the number above the slash is the modeling results and the number under the slash is the standardized modeling results. **p < 0.001 *p < 0.05 moffitt, t. e. (1993). adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomy. psychological review, 100(4), 674–701. microsoft word 09 child_welfare_discourses.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220662 in history’s shadow: child welfare discourses regarding indigenous communities in the canadian social work journal jeanette schmid and marina morgenshtern abstract: this article reviews all items in the canadian social work journal over its almost 90-year history that relate to child welfare practice in an indigenous context. we review the journal contents as a way of understanding the profession’s voice, noting that a journal’s discursive practice reflects disciplinary discourse and that this journal positioned itself as a platform for social work debates. our analysis contributes also to the truth-telling and accountability of social workers. while around 10% of the 1500 journal articles focused on child welfare practice, only 9 of these 152 articles addressed child welfare practice with indigenous children and families. our discourse analysis highlights that there was contemporaneous silence regarding social work complicity in the residential schools movement, the sixties scoop, and the current millennium scoop. in the 1980s, sustained critique around the role of social work in perpetuating colonization began to emerge. the journal, though, left child protection discourse unexamined and thus overlooked its role in maintaining dominant canadian child welfare practice. we suggest that white supremacy and settler colonial discourses support the dominance of the child protection discourse, and that part of decolonizing child welfare practice relates to revealing and resisting these discourses and generating alternative decolonized discourses. keywords: child welfare, indigenous, colonization, decolonization, discourse analysis, canada jeanette schmid phd (corresponding author) is a professor in the department of social work, faculty of health and human services, vancouver island university, 900 fifth street, nanaimo, bc v9r 5s5. email: jeanette.schmid@viu.ca marina morgenshtern phd is a professor in the department of social work, faculty of social sciences, trent university durham-gta, 55 thornton rd. s., oshawa, on l1j 5y1. email: marinamorgenshtern@trentu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 146 this article aims to unpack the representation of indigenous child welfare in the canadian association of social workers’ (casw) peer-reviewed journal, canadian social work (csw; first known as the social worker), published from 1931 to 2019. this analysis is part of our professional accountability as immigrant white settlers contributing to the uncovering of the social work history with indigenous people in canada and thereby countering an ontology of forgetting (pon et al., 2011). our perspectives nevertheless are shaped by our positionality and are likely to carry biases. what prompted us to analyze csw’s contents? beyond simply curating scholarly articles, journals can provide insight into the thinking of a discipline over time. they also exercise power in determining the professional agenda through controlling what is published (mcmahon, 2002; schmid, 2014; wodak & meyer, 2001; yu, 2018). indeed, by offering a platform for social work debate around contemporary issues (novik & schmidt, 2018), csw intentionally influenced canadian social work discourse. professional discourses are sustained (if reinforced by ideological, historical, or contemporary societal positions or other disciplinary narratives), or evolve into new discourses (more acceptable to the discipline), or are replaced by other discourses (roscoe, 2019): taken as a whole, csw’s contents reflect social and cultural interactions within canadian social work. because meaningful contemporary, contextualized, decolonized responses operate in history’s shadows, an analysis of csw’s discursive practice allows the critical social worker (a) to understand social work history and social workers’ complicity in perpetuating harm or, alternatively, creating liberatory spaces (chapman & withers, 2019; schmid & morgenshtern, 2019; van breda & sekudu, 2019); and (b) to see how social work (here child welfare), particularly with indigenous communities, was constructed historically and is reflected in present-day discourses. this research was also motivated by two related analyses. yu (2018) reviewed australian social work regarding the “stolen generation”; the articles reviewed were published during the the 1950s and 1960s, the last decades in which indigenous australian children were actively being removed in great numbers from their families. morgenshtern et al. (2022) examined csw regarding social work’s engagement with indigenous people in canada. the present article carries that investigation further by focusing specifically on the child welfare discourses represented; it complements yu’s discussion by providing a canadian scenario. this article is being written in the wake of the news regarding the discovery of unmarked graves of children at the sites of former residential schools in canada. while these gruesome tidings confirm what indigenous people already knew, they reactivate grief, loss, and anger. these events underline the importance of attending to our professional history and complicity, and thus strengthened our motivation to present our research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 147 literature review our literature review focuses on key child welfare discourses that inform social work in canada and indigenous child welfare. we contextualize canadian child welfare within indigenous communities and highlight issues regarding the decolonization of indigenous child welfare. mainstream canadian child welfare approaches to dealing with vulnerable children are not universal, each type of child welfare system being informed by a particular discourse (freymond & cameron, 2006). as identified by freymond and cameron (2006), mainstream child welfare in canada is rooted in the anglophone child protection model, described by them as one in which child welfare systems generally do not engage with families until a safety issue or significant risk has been identified. this individualized approach is typically constructed around a single entry point. it frequently assumes an unambiguously identified abuser (typically a parent), expert-driven responses, and legitimate (state-based) intervention and intrusion. the removal of children (though cast as a last resort) and statutory intervention are central, often creating an adversarial experience in which families stand in opposition to child welfare workers and the courts (freymond & cameron, 2006). the child protection model has been criticized inter alia for resulting in the overrepresentation of racialized and indigenous children and youth; providing service only to those who fit narrow criteria; marginalizing family voices; prioritizing statutory work over prevention and early intervention efforts (freymond & cameron, 2006); and being highly conflictual (reich, 2005). in the current neoliberal environment, the paternalism, the focus on risk, the reliance on standardized procedural interventions, and the deprofessionalization of social workers have all intensified (parton, 2016). similar critiques have also been raised with respect to the canadian child welfare system, with trocmé et al. (2013, 2014) recommending the employment of differential response (thus customizing responses to the severity of reports) and montgomery et al. (2016) redirecting attention to children’s rights as well as issues impacting indigenous and racialized families. strategies inferred from this work include child welfare practice responding to structural issues and being strengths-based, debureaucratized, and decolonized. however, rather than transforming the child welfare model, current canadian social work continues to focus on traditional child welfare issues: using a risk assessment lens — though tempered by a strengths-based framework (oliver, 2017); maintaining a continuum of care; engaging kinship care; facilitating international and transracial adoption; and managing aging out of care and family reunification (kufeldt & mckenzie, 2013). indeed, the child protection model has increasing international credence and dominates family social work (przeperski, 2021; schmid, 2017) and as such is viewed as immutable (freymond & cameron, 2006). indigenous issues in canadian child welfare the child protection discourse, and dominant child welfare interventions with indigenous people, may be understood within the context of colonization. canadian social work literature international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 148 underlines that settler colonialism has since the 1800s aimed to eradicate the indigenous population and culture through conquest, decimation, and assimilation. initially, because indigenous parents and indigenous cultures were cast as savage (neeganagwedgin, 2019), children were forcibly removed and placed in a schooling system — day or residential — that, in the language of the time, aimed to erase the indian in them (methot, 2019), and acculturate them to white, middleclass norms, belief systems, and language. children often experienced significant, sometimes fatal, abuse and neglect, and were disconnected from their families and cultures (alston-o’connor, 2010; baskin, 2018; blackstock, 2009; sinclair, 2007, 2016). this resulted in severe intergenerational trauma, even as indigenous communities demonstrated immense resilience in the face of these eradication and assimilation efforts (methot, 2019). social workers of the day justified residential school placements and the “sixties scoop” — the removal of several thousand indigenous children into non-indigenous care from the 1950s to the 1980s — as rescuing children from poverty and harm (alston-o’connor, 2010; baskin, 2018; blackstock, 2007, 2009; fachinger, 2019; sinclair, 2016; sinha & koslowski, 2013); that is to say, they were relying on a child protection discourse. during this period, these indigenous children had not only to contend with racism and abuse in substitute care, but their sense of belonging as well as their cultural and familial identification were compromised or erased (fachinger, 2019). currently, the oppressive trajectory regarding child welfare for indigenous children and families continues as the “millennium scoop”. indigenous children, like their counterparts in other racialized communities, are markedly overrepresented in the canadian child welfare system (hahn et al., 2020; mahikwa, 2017; mckenzie et al., 2016): according to census data from 2016, more than half of the children in foster care were indigenous even though they accounted for only about 8% of all canadian children under the age of 15 (indigenous services canada, 2022). child welfare governance as an instrument of settler colonialism has also impacted indigenous children. although the needs of indigenous children on reserves remain a federal responsibility, a 1951 amendment to the indian act allowed provincial laws to also apply to indigenous children (national collaborating centre for aboriginal health [nccah]; 2017). since the early 1980s, a system of delegated agencies with various levels of jurisdiction has developed (nccah, 2017). these agencies are frequently constrained by having to work within the dominant child welfare system and legislation as they deal with resourcing and funding challenges, significant caseloads, and lack of trust regarding authorities (richard, 2017). there have been some recent efforts, albeit fragmented, to address issues arising out of the indigenous child’s intersection with child welfare systems. these include greater attention to cultural sensitivity, sustaining indigenous children’s cultural roots and attachments to their communities of origin, and offering delegated agencies increased independence (hahn et al., 2020). despite this, lack of funding parity and inadequate mechanisms for self-determination have been perpetuated, confirming indigenous children and their families’ second-class citizenship (blackstock, 2019; hahn et al., 2020). because federal support focuses on children on reserves, the needs of inuit and métis children, who are not administered under the reserve system, as well as those of indigenous children in urban centres, tend to be overlooked (caldwell & sinha, 2020). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 149 discourses inherent in indigenous perspectives regarding children’s well-being despite the dominance of mainstream child welfare, indigenous child welfare approaches are emerging, and it is therefore useful also to understand which child welfare discourses reflect indigenous perspectives. for example, assumptions informing indigenous child well-being models (nccah, 2017) primarily reflect a community care discourse: indigenous approaches centre the family as a collective; view children as precious gifts; construct belonging as attachment to culture, land, and people; and adopt a holistic perspective that integrates the spiritual (baskin, 2016; swanson et al., 2021). the extended family group is assumed to have expertise regarding their own situation and a desire to be involved in decision-making regarding their children (freymond & cameron, 2006). the community care discourse sees children’s belonging as tied into the family group rather than to an individual parent, and regards the integration of local culture as essential to children’s care (baskin, 2016). there are also elements of a family services model (freymond & cameron, 2006), a framework that recognizes that all families may require parenting supports, embraces universality of service, and values solidarity and collaboration. indigenous child welfare practice additionally reflects a model that integrates developmental social welfare with community development (schmid, 2010; butterfield et al., 2015), in that development of community capacity and building on existing knowledges and resources are identified as goals. finally, because indigenous child welfare work must comply with provincial legislation and institutions, it thus also adopts, in an uncomfortable marriage, child protection perspectives. although similar principles inform frameworks across indigenous practice, communities are developing approaches that are context-dependent and thus specific (hyslop, 2021; nccah, 2017). indigenous child welfare is consequently emerging as a distinct discourse. the scholarly and grey literature therefore affirms the continuing marginalization of the indigenous child and family in a settler colonial system. it also identifies that a child protection discourse informs the canadian system’s practices and work with indigenous children, a model that is incompatible with indigenous values and discourse (swanson et al., 2021). an indigenous child welfare model is being formulated. conceptual and theoretical framework we adopt a critical discourse analysis to guide this study. this conceptual framework assumes that knowledge is created through discourse and discursive practice (roscoe, 2019; wodak & meyer, 2001). discourse is both “constitutive and constituted” (roscoe, 2019, p. 197); that is, every text is informed by and formed through previous text. in this case we consider how mainstream discourse creates dominant child welfare discourse while itself being shaped by discursive practices. another assumption is that discourse is political, with dominant discourse representing mainstream societal views (foucault, 1994). consequently, political listening (brown & potts, 2015) becomes important in understanding how discourses are strengthened, sustained, diluted, interrupted, or eradicated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 150 moreover, our work is situated theoretically in critical social work. critical social work assumes “fundamentally different … ontological, epistemological, and political assumptions” from mainstream social work (webb, 2019, p. xxxv), considering, for example, mechanisms of power informing social work encounters (webb, 2019) that reinforce, disrupt, dilute, or displace certain discourses. critical social work additionally highlights the subjectivities that are created through discourses (chapman & withers, 2019). another aspect of critical social work pertinent to this article is the interrogation of the social work role and of the social worker’s location and its intersection with social work intervention (chapman & withers, 2019). indeed, critical social work aims to reflexively (re)consider problems to lift out new meanings (webb, 2019), and accordingly, we revisit how child welfare with indigenous populations has been constructed and find relevance in this to the current context and practice of child welfare. methodology our discourse analysis methodology intersects with our conceptual and theoretical framework. we use critical discourse analysis to highlight, contrast, and compare the various discourses reflected in the relevant articles, and to identify dominant and subordinate discourses (roscoe, 2019). this process conforms to the “archaeology” of foucault’s history of the present (rabinow, 1984). the articles identified constitute the artifacts in this study and as units of data might be compared to interviews in other studies. we then also consider the relationships of these artifacts to one another to draw out meaning, using foucault’s method of “genealogy” (rabinow, 1984). wodak and meyer (2001) characterized this foucauldian approach as lifting out unique discourses by attending to the “structure” or “discourse strands” in a text, identifying “discourse fragments” through “fine analysis”, and finally understanding the “entanglement” of such discourses (p. 47). they asserted that such analysis allows the researcher to speak to the “history, present and future” of particular discourses (p. 48). we adopted various strategies to select relevant french and english articles from the csw. first, with a focus on understanding discourses relevant specifically to indigenous child welfare practice, we searched for those digitized and non-digitized articles that contained the terms “indigenous”, “aboriginal”, “native”, “indian”, “inuit”, “metis”, “colonization”, “residential schools”, and “child welfare”. we established that out of 1500 articles published over almost 90 years, around 10% (152) focused on child welfare issues. of the 152 articles, nine dealt directly with matters pertaining to indigenous child welfare. (see table 1 below). these nine were all in english. we then scoured each of the nine articles to identify phrases that suggested unique discourses. next, we conducted a thematic review of the emergent discourses (wodak & meyer, 2001), initially identifying apparent discourses and then weaving these categories together into the “entanglement” of larger themes to articulate primary discourses. finally, both researchers reviewed the material, allowing for confirmation of the themes identified and thereby promoting trustworthiness (connelly, 2016). we were attentive not only to familiar discourses but also to those that might be considered more marginal (roscoe, 2019). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 151 to provide context to our analysis, our discussion is informed by a review of all the articles published in the journal regarding social work with indigenous people, as well as those articles discussing child welfare more generally. we identified these further articles by reviewing the tables of contents, as well as going beyond the search terms to use our experience to identify any further articles potentially related to child welfare. in addition, we scanned the occasional presidential, executive director, national, and provincial casw reports published in the journal, which appeared mainly in the 1980s, and looked through the four articles that discussed the nature of social work. these additional sources are also reflected in table 1 below and marked as “contextual”. table 1. data sources reviewed for the study a# year title authors a2 1981 child welfare and native people: the extension of colonialism pete hudson & brad mckenzie a6 1986 still not home: the indian and native child and family service provisions of ontario’s bill 77 frank tester a7 1988 culturally selective perceptions in child welfare decisions reginald t. durmon a8 1993 rural yukon: innovations in child welfare michael hodgson a9 1995 collaborative decision making in child protection cases alex scheiber a11 2003 colonization as disease: native adoption and cultural genocide wesley crinchow a12 2005 aboriginal and non-aboriginal child welfare organizations: the practitioner’s perspective christopher j. walmsley a13 2005 implementing the youth criminal justice act: can a metis youth justice committee serve the people? sharon small a14 2011 the national arts and youth demonstration project: removing barriers to participate for youth of color and aboriginal youth robin wright, giovani burgos, & eric duku a25 2016 navigating through systems: the journey of young mothers to adulthood peter smyth a1a 1935 welfare services of the federal government of canada barbara m. finlayson a16a 1947 joint submission of canadian association of social workers and canadian welfare council to the senate commons committee on indian affairs nora lea a19a 1949 manitoba branch studies the metis a18a 1951 social work with indian affairs helen martins & jane bartlett a3a 1984 manitoba casw report john chudzik & jean boyes a27a 1984 saskatchewan casw report otto dreidger, beth predy, & diana ralph a4a 1984 british columbia casw report marilyn callahan & chris walmsley international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 152 a# year title authors a5a 1988 alberta casw report a20a 1989 alberta casw report a21a 1989 saskatchewan casw report a28a 1994 breaking free: the viewpoint of aboriginal women josephine mandamin a22a 1998 the government as customer. purchaser of child welfare services burt galaway & joe hudson a23a 1998 the government as policy maker provider. against contracting out brian wharf a10a 1998 social work: our roots, our future glenn drover a15a 2002 needs and challenges of foster parents jason brown & peter calder a24a 2002 factors affecting timely permanency planning for children in care jo-anne lodermeier, deborah hammond, hayley henderson & nicole carralbo a17a 2014 promoting equity for a stronger canada: the future of canadian social policy: casw report glenn drover, allan moscovitch, & james mulvale a26a 2016 reformulating understanding of productivity for clinical social work practice jeffrey w. more, barney d. williams jr., & judy gillespie a these articles are contextual. due to the small number of articles and the large gaps between their dates of publication, inferences could generally not be made regarding the articles’ discourses and their historical context, thus not allowing for coherent, substantive, thick discourses to be developed. nevertheless, meaningful commentary can be offered. as white immigrant women settlers, identifying as allies, we were alert in our analysis to the ways in which the dominant child welfare discourse has entrenched colonial perspectives. however, we aimed also to identify nuance within what first appeared to be monolithic discourses, while recognizing that our biases might lead us to stereotyping positions and thus missing alternative discourses. findings in reflecting the discourses excavated by our analysis, we maintain the language used in the original articles to offer a credible and authentic rendering of the discourse. we also avoid identifying the specific articles by author because the artifact and its associated discourses are constituted by the article contents, though each article is referred to as a#. where the author has self-identified as indigenous, we have taken this into account in our analysis, noting that social location affects how and what is said. on the one hand, the analysis uncovered silenced or omitted discourses pertaining to the abuses of the residential schools and child welfare practices as these occurred; on the other hand, critical social work discourses on other topics are present. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 153 silenced, subjugated, or omitted discourses we begin by identifying what is not there and what has been marginalized. the topic of child welfare pertaining to people identified as indigenous is explored only minimally in a subset of nine articles. another general omission is that the needs of inuit and métis children are overlooked, as are the needs of urban first nations children. next, there is a glaring gap in coverage regarding residential schools and the sixties scoop at the time when children and their families were being impacted by these movements. while we acknowledge that the few child welfare articles available cannot provide a consistent child welfare history, the absence of any relevant articles and the overwhelming silence is surely significant, nevertheless. this echoes yu’s (2018) observation that in australia the stolen generation was simply not discussed while it occurred. only later are these horrors named. the millennium scoop also has not been problematized as a replication of earlier colonizing patterns. although the casw reports discussed matters such as international engagement and activism and reflected a sense of social justice by highlighting local advocacy around a range of issues from social security to hiv/aids to violence in the home, awareness of indigenous matters seldom surfaced. silence about colonizing child welfare practices is overlaid with other discourses that endorse what are now viewed as harmful practices, such as csw’s support in its early days for residential schools: one contextual 1935 article describing the government’s welfare services, states that indian affairs “through its 120 agencies seek[s] to bring opportunity to the 112,510 indians of the country. residential and day schools, as well as vocational instruction, serve to train the indian for a useful productive life” (a1). another example is reflected in a 1998 article noting that social work might consider “the 1960s and the 1970s a halcyon period to which we should and can return” (a10), the author referring to a time of significant welfare reform. while silence regarding harms done by social work and the profession’s complicity in bringing them about is characteristic of the time during which these abuses were perpetuated, the general overlooking of the needs of indigenous people is also apparent in later articles, with issues of race and ethnicity being obscured. as such, a 2002 article talking about foster care suggests that cultural differences relating to indigenous children in care are a challenge, but what these might constitute, or mean, is not discussed (a15). similarly, another 2002 contextual article (a24) that did not focus on indigenous issues notes that many foster parents felt that biological families “interfered”, but it did not explore how this behaviour intersected with the families’ cultural heritage and intergenerational experience. moreover, two articles from 2016 that appear after the truth and reconciliation report’s publication (2015) explicitly talk about indigenous issues (such as reformulating productivity in clinical practice, a26; discussing a culturally relevant group for young mothers, a25). they do not, however, discuss the overrepresentation of indigenous children in care and the displacement of children from their families and culture that characterize the millennium scoop, even though these appear to be evidence of the replication of colonialism. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 154 additionally, by not using the language of a millennium scoop, they avoid making visible any continuity in child welfare practice with the sixties scoop. there are gaps also in what initially appears to be more progressive discourse, in that not all the critically informed child welfare journal articles apply their thinking to indigenous populations, despite the matters discussed having implications for indigenous families and communities. for example, a 1995 article discussing anticipated legislation providing for collaborative family engagement situates dominant child welfare strategies, adversarial court processes, and court delays as disempowering to families, while also suggesting that the family group’s expertise must inform child welfare decision-making (a9). in another contextual article from 2014, a lengthy casw treatise to the harper government, calling for an equity framework through coordinated federalism, contains just one brief statement maintaining that without such support first nations will be adversely affected. overall, the specific needs of indigenous families are not addressed, perpetuating the invisibility of indigenous populations in what appears initially to be more progressive discourse. there are a few exceptions, which we discuss later. thus, wrongdoing against indigenous children was not contemporaneously named as such in csw. indeed, the mainstream voice of child welfare as reflected in this journal did not recognize harm until many years later in 2009. even progressive discussion overlooked indigenous issues, rendering the presence —indeed, the overrepresentation — of indigenous and racialized children invisible in favour of a universal (white) child. a critical voice in contrast to the silence and omissions, another discourse emerges. this discourse critiques mainstream contemporary and historical processes. it reflects concerns regarding cultural issues, inappropriate legislation, and colonizing processes, and offers some alternative ways of addressing these. limited critique critique offered in the first 50 years of the journal is circumscribed. for example, a 1947 casw brief to indian affairs suggested that while residential schools might have their place for “indians” that are “nomadic”, the schools should not be used to address neglect or delinquency, the implication being that the purpose of the schools was education rather than addressing welfare concerns (a16). the brief moreover appeals for indigenous people to be recognized as full citizens; for meaningful state resourcing, public assistance, and education; and for quality social service delivery by qualified social workers and skilled indian agents. adopting a similar voice, a 1951 contextual article, discussing social work with indian affairs, sees residential schools as valid for educational purposes but does recommend supporting young adults after their residential school attendance to adjust to life in an urban setting (a18). the focus seems to be on social workers ensuring that this group transitions smoothly into dominant society and does not disrupt it. even so, this report does point out that “indians” were the first citizens of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 155 canada, that indigenous youth find it difficult to find jobs because their “past records and race” are held against them, and that indigenous people are “too frequently isolated from assistance”. while highlighting system deficits, the article does not point to any needed transformation of the child welfare approach or to the harms being committed. in 1949, the manitoba casw branch explored the impact of child and family social work on the métis (a19). in this brief, they suggested that service “should be equally available to all citizens” and that the métis were entitled to their own way of life. the article recommends that social workers have an awareness of “indian tradition” and should adopt a community approach, not an individualized one. the article also calls for adequate staffing, “special training” for child welfare employees, adequate safety rules and procedures regarding adoptions, and children remaining with their own families. further recommendations include social workers supporting “adopting or foster parents [to] accept the child of partly indian descent, recognizing not only the need of the child, but also the fact that the potentialities he brings to the childless home do not differ in any important respect from those of other children in the community”. the article’s critique of the indian agent system is implied rather than explicit. consequently, these pieces, while pointing to inadequate government responses, sustain an ethnocentric lens that allows dominant practice to largely remain in place. for decades, then, we have silence (and assumed acquiescence) rather than any opposition or resistance to the colonial agenda. development of explicit critique a more critical discourse begins with a slate of articles that specifically question the intersection of child welfare with indigenous communities. for example, a 1981 article was the first to table the various abuses that the child welfare system has perpetrated against “native” children and their families, evidenced in the significant overrepresentation of indigenous children (a2). the system “has not always acted in the best interests of clients”, indigenous communities only having a relationship with child welfare workers at the point of removal. inadequate funding was exacerbated by provincial versus federal jurisdictional tussles. the article emphasizes that indigenous children placed with white families or in institutions did not fare well. moreover, the article asserts that psychosocial theories of human development, anthropological notions of cultural conflict, and socioeconomic explanations lead to inappropriate or simplistic solutions. in their place, the article offers an analysis problematizing colonialism and understanding “the location of power and decision-making structures within dominant society”. this article is thus the first to name contemporary disproportionality and cultural harms in the removal of children, to frame the discussion within colonization, and to advance self-governance regarding child welfare issues. indeed, the article’s authors offer steps towards decolonization: first, ensure the “transfer of autonomy and control of mandated child welfare services to the communities and culture that are affected”; second, adopt “the principle of cultural bonding”; and third, redefine the “clientworker relationship”, which includes seeing the “family as the primary client” and children as part international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 156 of the collective extended family and community. these principles are consistent with baskin’s (2016) discussion of indigenous child-rearing and helping practices, the community care model identified by freymond and cameron (2006), and native american social work practice as described by swanson et al. (2021). the article accurately predicts: these innovations will not be facilitated by the growing preoccupation with issues of technique and traditional methods of social work intervention and control which are becoming more evident within social service education, and the many agencies involved in providing child welfare services to native people. the article’s position is remarkable, coming before other formal recognition of the wrongdoings inherent in the child welfare system. a 1986 article offers a critique of ontario’s bill 77, an amendment to the indian and native child act. the title of the article, “still not home”, signals that while the bill is a step in the right direction, it fails to address issues regarding meaningful self-governance for indigenous people (a6). an article two years later, in 1988, points to “non-indian” workers being twice as likely as their indigenous counterparts to label “aboriginal” children as in need of care or as having behavioural problems, perhaps because “dominant society places strong value on educational, legal and other institutions” (a7). indigenous workers instead prioritize families and communities and consequently produce qualitatively different assessments. to minimize culturally selective perceptions that result in the disproportionate representation of indigenous children in the child welfare system, the article recommends hiring indigenous workers to engage with indigenous populations. at about the same time as these critiques were published, some casw reports included limited commentary on the issues raised. in 1984, three provincial reports reference child welfare with indigenous communities, offering a more critical perspective than in the past. for example, the manitoba report (a3) calls for child and family services to be extended to “every native indian reserve in the province”, noting that the province was the first to transfer “legal mandate and responsibility to native controlled agencies” and to offer training in a competency-based model. in the same year, the saskatchewan report identified that the branch was “lobbying for greater native control over services affecting families of indian ancestry” and wanted to “focus on balancing the role of government with that of parents via expanded commitment to preventive services, re-definition of child apprehension provisions and more involvement from the indian community in childcare matters” (a27). similarly, the british columbia report (a4) points to “the necessity for bc social workers to develop an intercultural perspective … in work with native indian families”. connections had been developed with native community representatives “prior to, or instead of, apprehension of children”. the report underlined these concerns by stating that “since the 1960s, approximately 40% of children in care have been of native indigenous origin, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 157 although they make up only 3.5% of the children under 19 in the province”. the report notes that one band had adopted responsibility for providing social services to its children, and that there were many strengths in this approach. in 1988, the alberta casw report noted that they would establish a working group around the “placement of children with native heritage” (a5) and in 1989 had begun developing a position paper around “native children’s mental health” (a20). in 1989, the saskatchewan casw report also announced its intention to formulate a position paper on “native child welfare” (a21). these reports show the influence of the kimelman report (1985), which named as cultural genocide such child welfare practices as the forcible removal of children from their families and communities, and appears to have impacted social work awareness of the issues surrounding dominant child welfare practice with indigenous groups. in the next decade, a 1993 article speaks to the potential use of the indigenous local justice council in place of the yukon territorial court for child welfare matters as a means of foregrounding indigenous expertise and culture (a8). advantages identified are cultural appropriateness, the empowerment of the local community, and a consensus, rather than an adversarial, approach. plans made in this forum blend conventional approaches (e.g., family and substance-use counselling) with culturally informed responses (e.g., a local bush retreat). the collaboration is not only with the family group, but with the relevant indigenous community and speaks to self-determination not only on the micro but also meso and macro levels of governance. a 1995 article draws issue with the overrepresentation of aboriginal children in child welfare (a9). placing these children in care is seen as eroding their cultural heritage. a 2003 article offers further critique, labelling “native adoption” out of the community as “cultural genocide” and thereby echoes kimelman’s (1985) sentiments from almost two decades earlier (a11). the article further argues that child welfare legislation’s use of “best interests” is racist, placing the rights of the individual over those of the community, subordinating indigenous cultures and heritage to western notions of bonding, and marginalizing the importance of land and ancestral heritage to “urban aboriginal people”, themes later developed by sinclair (2016). the article suggests that canada constructs legislation as “neutral” (thus obscuring the political dimension of legislation), reinforcing de montigny’s (1995) contention that language is used to set up the child welfare system, with its workers and its processes, as the objective authority. a diversity of other topics is taken up in the new century. some relate to the increasing influence of neoliberal thinking. for instance, there is a 1998 debate reflected in two articles about the legitimacy of the government purchase of child welfare services and their associated commodification (a22; a23); in 2002, an article takes issue with child welfare system service users being cast as “cases”, its author maintaining that such a “technocratic” construction primarily benefits the system by allowing it through case management to label, “count, classify and control” those involved with the system (a24). while the 2002 article’s focus is on child welfare generally, it is noted that the associated definition of permanency planning (a systemic process that offers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 158 continuity of relationship in a family) overlooks a “flowing pattern of care” (where children may move between households) that might be favoured in indigenous contexts. an article in 2005 appears to assume that technocratic, hierarchical approaches in dominant child welfare systems give rise to contrasting organizational cultures in “aboriginal” and “non-aboriginal” child welfare organizations. the article identifies indigenous agencies as being less hierarchical — paying workers greater respect and providing them more discretion than non-indigenous organizations — and suggests that these are important differences which may impact worker’s decision-making (a12). together with the 1988 article (a7) regarding workers’ differential approaches to assessment that was referenced above, the implication is that indigenous workers and an indigenous-informed environment foster collaborative approaches amongst staff and with the populations they serve, which aligns with a community care model (freymond & cameron, 2006; swanson et al., 2021). in sum, this set of articles offer a critical narrative and some counter-storying to the dominant discourse that is focused on general child welfare issues and that silences or obscures wrongdoing of the system regarding indigenous children and families. the critiques centre around the implications of adopting a colonizing approach that ignores the collective communal approaches preferred by indigenous families, and the long-term impact of such engagement. discussion: genealogy we have identified in the archaeology two primary discourses: one that emphasizes the contemporaneous silence in the journal regarding residential schools, the sixties scoop, and the millennium scoop; and another that challenges the child protection system regarding its problematic and oppressive engagement with indigenous people. these discourses demonstrate that for a lengthy period the profession chose to ignore the significant harm being perpetrated against canada’s indigenous children. more recently, the journal has created space for debate and critical voice, allowing readers to learn about some of the concerns associated with child protection systems in canada. even so, the journal never directly acknowledged its silence at a crucial time, nor explicitly identified the reproduction of harm during the millennium scoop as a recreation and even intensification of past practices. csw offered social workers a space to engage in debate regarding social work matters. as such, the articles it published tended toward professional reflections and commentaries, rather than formal research studies. our analysis suggests that this format did not promote scrutiny and critical reflection, instead allowing contributors to present materials that were typically infused with mainstream colonial and assimilative agendas. how does one explain the silence regarding the residential schools, the sixties scoop, and the millennium scoop as these occurred? why has there not been any comment in the journal regarding this silence? in offering our analysis, we recognize that casw may have taken stances international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 159 that are not reported on in the journal. again, though, our exploration is on what stands in the record of this journal. discourses reflective of the period various factors may have contributed to the silence. the types of discourses appearing in the journal, and the overlooking, ignoring, or silencing of others, seem to be reflective of the period. even the muted criticisms offered would have been unusual for their time, though it is notable that by 1907 dr. peter bryce had already made known his deep concerns regarding residential schooling (blackstock, 2009). criticism has become more acceptable with the rise of critical social work, anti-oppressive social work, and indigenous social work approaches (pon et al., 2011), and with the truth and reconciliation commission’s (2015b) calls to action on child welfare, which recommended ongoing reporting of numbers of indigenous children in care, improved funding and resourcing, and greater autonomy for indigenous authorities and child welfare organizations, among other measures (caldwell & sinha, 2020). there is thus less reluctance involved in offering a critique of historic and contemporary child welfare practice. canadian social workers also appear to have been responsive in recent decades to critical reports such as kimelman’s (1985) report. although the articles appearing in in the journal’s last years of publication tended to be critical, collectively, the csw articles on child welfare with indigenous groups do not present a consistent and strong critique. white supremacy and colonialism the role of white supremacy, and social work’s adherence to the moral economy of the white ruling class, in the construction of the canadian social work agenda may account for the long, overwhelming silence regarding the residential schools, the sixties scoop, and the millennium scoop (chapman & withers, 2019; pon et al., 2011): these factors apparently overrode the ethics and values of the profession. white supremacy is also reflected in the fact that few contributors to the journal were indigenous (indeed, it was not until 1994 that an indigenous author identified themselves as such in the journal, a28); in earlier decades, the few indigenous social workers that there were perhaps would not have been given voice or may themselves have assumed that there was no place for their voice. alongside white supremacy, an analysis of settler colonialism suggests that dominant society maintains discursive practices that sustain assimilation and eradication (fortier & wong, 2019; veracini, 2010; wolfe, 2006). carriere (2018), citing regan (2010), observed that canada resorts to bureaucratic responses that draw on a mythology of it as a peacemaker; in social work, “helping” is a way of suggesting engagement in reconciliation while avoiding actual transformation. indeed, this is evidenced in the ongoing lack of political will for substantive change, with the state not responding meaningfully to a series of reports, including the 1985 kimelman report; the 1996 royal commission on aboriginal people; the 2000 first nations child and family services joint international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 160 national policy review (mcdonald & ladd, 2000); blackstock et al.’s 2005 report “wen:de: we are coming to the light of day”; the 2015 truth and reconciliation commission (2015a) report; the 2016 canadian human rights tribunal ruling (first nations caring society, 2016); and the 2019 national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. similarly, despite acknowledging such reports in its more recent articles, we do not observe in the journal demonstrable shifts in dominant child welfare practice. the dominance of the child protection model another significant factor that may reinforce the intransigence of the child welfare system regarding systemic change is the construction of the child protection model as universal and thus not subject to challenge. reflexivity is limited if the discourse is viewed as the only one available. the child protection discourse is evident in the articles’ assumption that child protection is the primary task, and in the authors’ opinions regarding when, where, and how social work might intervene. the critical articles present the child protection system as harmful to indigenous children and families due to, inter alia, (a) systemic racism, cultural blindness, and incompatibility with indigenous values; (b) a lack of understanding of the role of structural issues; (c) restricted indigenous self-determination; and (d) an increasingly technocratic, neoliberal, approach. though the critiques offered in the journal point to how the system might need to change, they do not problematize the child protection discourse, accepting that it is the responsibility of the state (or its delegated authority) to intervene when a child is at risk or has been abused. the discourse in the journal thus does not unsettle the fundamental assumptions of the child protection discourse and ignores how historic and ongoing colonization have operated through this discourse. the immutability of this discourse is in turn strengthened through individual social workers who, inducted into child welfare systems, fear reprisals including loss of employment, and adopt organizational professionalism, which, to paraphrase fenton (2019), is informed by following directives, routinizing work, and “othering” service users. looking at recommendations for change from sources other than csw shows that the child protection discourse is so immovable that most recommendations lie within the frame of this discourse and thus fall short of calling for transformation of the system. caldwell and sinha (2020) recommended adopting a different understanding of neglect and a different approach to addressing it through legislation, while fuchs (2018) suggested strengthening indigenous family reconnection and kinship care, drawing on community knowledge and collaborative practices, creating access to such knowledge and practices, treating parents as experts, doing rights-based work, shifting the assessment of kinship care, resisting standardized approaches, and educating and training child welfare staff. additionally, the truth and reconciliation commission (2015b) recommended ensuring parenting programs are culturally informed, and tracking the numbers of indigenous children in care. indeed, canadian child welfare systems now promote cultural competence, cultural continuity, family involvement, and the increased hiring of indigenous social workers, even entrenching these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 161 through legislation and policy. these corrections, although important, are insufficient, as they do not fundamentally change child protection assumptions. moreover, indigenous authorities are still required to work within the ambit of western-informed child protection legislation that privileges statutory intervention. as our analysis shows, emergent tensions in child welfare practice tend to be resolved by dominant practice reasserting itself and thereby diluting any potentially meaningful change. the perceived immutability of the child protection model and its associated discourse is indirectly revealed by the fact that in the articles reviewed this foundational discourse is not problematized. neither is the discourse named as the source of fundamental discrimination and ongoing oppression of indigenous children, their families, and communities by the social work community more generally. however, a strengthened critique might unsettle this dominant framework, suggest another discourse, and interrupt social work complicity. montgomery (in fuchs, 2018) suggested that the assumed truths of the child welfare system should be challenged. recognizing that each child welfare model has a different effect on interactions with the vulnerable child, family, or community, and impacts the roles of service providers differently (katz & hetherington, 2006), and, moreover, that child welfare systems are constructions based on societal values, social workers must ask how we have come to such a narrow understanding of child welfare. we must expose the dynamics of power flows in the child protection system and show who benefits, identify its inherent inequities and how the exercise of power is maintained, and articulate how systemic racism is ingrained in the child protection discourse and its fundamental assumptions about children and families. such interrogation must extend not only through practice and organizational culture, but also to funding and legislation. baskin (2016) and fuchs (2018) have recommended developing legislation with indigenous people in mind. this is important, though policy and legislative change need to replace child protection assumptions with a holistic, collaborative approach that decentres issues of protection, reframes safety, and foregrounds the well-being frameworks that indigenous communities are proposing. additionally, social workers must recognize how neoliberalism operates through the dominant child protection discourse with its emphasis on blame and individual responsibility. fenton (2019) suggested that social workers be transparent in acknowledging that child welfare work is not about social justice but instead is about risk management. an alternative discourse should prioritize and incorporate indigenous knowledges, address structural issues (such as housing and food insecurity), recognize communal aspects of family, promote collaborative models that include collective decision-making, and advance meaningful self-governance. child welfare practice could therefore engage at micro, meso, and macro levels, and integrate child, family, and community well-being. in developing alternatives, the work that is already being done must be acknowledged. there are, for example, encouraging anecdotal reports that child welfare models informed by indigenous principles and managed by indigenous communities keep children safely in their communities (see, e.g., hyslop, 2021). whatever alternatives emerge, appropriate resourcing will be required. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 162 we recognize that this is an ongoing challenge but suggest that directing funding towards what amount to bandaid corrections of the child protection system is counterproductive. our focus has been on the impact of dominant child welfare practices on indigenous children and families. critiques of child protection (such as that of freymond & cameron, 2006) position the system as harmful, alienating, gender-biased, discriminatory, and adversarial, disempowering all children and families engaged by it. the child protection system has, since its inception, targeted families who are poor and racialized (chapman & withers, 2019; de montigny, 1995). interrogation of the child protection discourse and consideration of alternatives thus would be advantageous to all who are served through this system; it is therefore incumbent on social workers to decolonize child welfare practices (sinclair, 2007, 2016). conclusion we have undertaken an analysis of the articles in csw related to indigenous child welfare and shown how the histories of canadian child welfare and social work adherence to the socially dominant discourses of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and child protection help maintain today’s taken-for-granted practices. we recognize that this study represents the discourses in this journal only and cannot be seen as representing canadian child welfare discourse in its entirety, though the tracking over almost nine decades does have merit as a historical representation of issues. we also appreciate that our sample is limited and that even where indications of subordinate discourses are visible, these could mostly not be substantiated through other examples. nevertheless, the analysis demonstrates, that, on the one hand, canadian social workers did not at the time use their professional journal to speak to the abuses of residential schools, the sixties scoop, and the emergent millennium scoop. on the other hand, this professional journal has, particularly in recent years, presented articles that contribute to a critique of the canadian child welfare system’s interactions with indigenous communities and the ways in which they have substantially harmed indigenous children, families, and communities. as such, csw has encouraged professional social workers to examine their practice and to begin considering what the decolonization of child welfare might involve. despite the emergence of these later, and important, critiques of the child welfare system in relation to indigenous children and their families, they usually do not sufficiently interrogate the fundamental assumptions underpinning the child protection discourse that shapes the systemic response, thus leaving this discourse in place. indeed, it is imperative to interrupt the worldview that generated the extensive harm against indigenous people (chapman & withers, 2019). noting that child protection discourse perpetuates colonization, we have suggested how this discourse might not only be unsettled but disrupted. social workers remain largely complicit in sustaining neoliberal child protection discourses, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, with all of the associated harms for indigenous children, families, and communities. they are accordingly hindering the shift to a collaborative approach that centres indigenous and other ways of knowing and that would focus resources on addressing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 145–168 163 structural issues while providing individual, familial, and community healing. the fundamental assumptions of a child protection discourse are woven intricately and deeply into the fabric of canadian child welfare. even though unravelling this fabric to create a meaningful alternative, particularly for indigenous and racialized children, is challenging, 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(2018). interrogating social work: australian social work and the stolen generations. journal of social work, 19(6), 736–750. doi:10.1177/1468017318794230 health impact assessment, municipal development practices, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 308 health impact assessment, municipal development practices, and children's health robert rattle abstract: public policies can have a considerable effect on health outcomes. all too often, however, public policy and health are debated at a national level, creating a disconnect between local politics and actionable and meaningful health outcomes. this article draws on the results of a retroactive policy health impact assessment (hia) of a new hospital siting exercise to illustrate how local municipal policies can affect the social determinants of health. it will highlight and discuss results for the health of children. these results show that children’s health is differentially affected across the new host (urban sprawl) and old host (downtown) neighbourhoods. a number of adverse impacts resulting from the shift in location and related development patterns have been generated across the city. despite the direct relevance to the health sector and the significant control local authorities had over the development processes, development decisions and existing frameworks played a central role in a less than optimal result for children’s health. means of mitigating these effects and recommendations for future development are briefly considered. keywords: health impact assessment, urban development, hospitals/health care services, child health, noise pollution robert rattle, bsc, is an independent researcher and consultant, and executive director of the crane institute for sustainability, 736a queen street east, sault ste. marie ontario, p6a 2a9. email: robert14robert@yahoo.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 309 the social determinants of health (sdh) are the social and economic conditions that determine the health of populations (world health organization [who], 2008). these conditions are largely laid down by public policies, making public policy an important driver of health outcomes. the living environments that children encounter derive from these conditions and “form a critical foundation for their entire lifecourse” (irwin, siddiqui, & hertzman, 2007, p. 7). the health care systems, social and cultural environments, physical environments and built form, emotional support structures and cognitive domains that children encounter will influence learning abilities and outcomes, economic and social participation, and general well-being throughout their entire lives. anchor institutions comprise significant public infrastructure facilities and produce considerable social, economic, and health impacts through the community structures and networks they establish. universities and hospitals are two of the largest such anchor institutions. hospitals can produce both beneficial and adverse impacts on both their host communities and the wider community or municipality. in addition to serving health care needs, hospitals can directly serve employment, economic, educational, social development and cohesion, long-term care, disaster relief, and other community purposes. indirectly, such institutions can affect the broader determinants of community health. their siting and operational features are key urban design and engineering factors that must meet local municipal bylaws, provincial regulations, and federal requirements. as such, hospitals can affect access to recreational and leisure services, mobility and transportation, health care facilities and services, and community design and wellbeing. in so doing, hospitals play an important role in the social and environmental conditions of communities and their health determinants. these conditions will have far-reaching and diverse consequences for children’s health. urban design, mobility options, and transportation choices will: affect road safety and build mobility expectations well into the future; produce recreational opportunities and affect physical skills and fitness levels; facilitate early child development; and define access to health care. children’s health is also affected by family and community conditions. family and community opportunities such as social and economic conditions, emotional and psychological supports, and community cohesion may be influenced by the nature and characteristics of major anchor institutional developments. the built environment is an important factor in health. research suggests the built environment can contribute to human health outcomes such as respiratory and cardiovascular health, injuries, physical fitness, obesity, mental health, and social capital (bray, vakil, elliott, & abelsohn, 2005; frank, 2004; lee & rubin, 2007). in addition, the built environment can have significant impacts on vulnerable populations such as children, including their perceptions of and future life opportunities, skills development, educational outcomes, and health practices and coping skills (who, 2009b). a major anchor institution such as a hospital will produce consequences for the built environment due to the nature of its physical footprint and development activity, including the natural environmental characteristics such as forest and ground covers, drainage and flood patterns; roads and sewers, water and wastewater infrastructure; traffic and road infrastructure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 310 along with public transit routes and frequencies, pedestrian and cycling facilities; and noise, and air quality. in addition, major facilities often invoke community-wide urban design and development activities, shifting, altering or transforming market values, well-being, and community cohesion across an entire community. in 2004, the government of ontario provided funding through infrastructure ontario and the north east local health integration network (nelhin) for the construction of a new private-public partnership (p3) hospital facility in the city of sault ste. marie. during the development stages of the new sault area hospital (sah), discussions were initiated on the design and location of the new facility. primary information provided to the public suggested two options: reconstruction of a new facility at the current downtown site or a new facility at a new site. the final decision was to construct a new facility on a new site distant from both the downtown core and existing hospital site. the process to develop the new sah required considerable input from the municipality in terms of urban design and development processes, bylaws and official plan amendments, and local authority input. in addition, the facility was required to satisfy provincial mandates (e.g., ministry of environment – now ministry of environment and climate change – noise legislation) and federal requirements and guidelines (e.g., transport canada helipad design configuration). despite these existing requirements, very little community input (beyond fundraising) or dialogue was undertaken by local authorities or at the political level. in contrast, impact assessment and health impact assessment (hia) processes stress the importance of early and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders (sinclair & diduck, 2009; national collaborating centre for healthy public policy [ncchpp], 2012). following the construction of the new hospital, it became evident a number of adverse impacts had occurred. a rapid desk-based retroactive health impact assessment (hia) was conducted, supplemented by the ministry of health and long term care’s (mohltc) health equity impact assessment (heia) toolkit to identify and evaluate impacts and suggest possible means of mitigating these impacts, as well as to inform policy and programme development for future anchor institutions of a similar nature. health impact assessment hia and heia are important tools that can help decision-makers reduce the shortand long-term costs of policy, programme and project decisions. they help to ensure activities are undertaken in fair, equitable, sustainable and healthy ways that improve the health and well being of diverse populations and avoid or minimise adverse and unintended impacts of those activities. hia is a practice to make visible the interests of public health in decision-making. the world health organization (1999) defines hia as “a combination of procedures, methods, and tools by which a policy, program, or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population” (p. 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 311 four values are integral to hia: democracy, equity, sustainable development, and the ethical use of evidence that emphasizes a rigorous structured analysis based on scientific disciplines and methodologies. while available guidance documents for hia describe the procedural steps and products of each stage of the hia process, there exists considerable diversity in the practice and products of hia due to the variety of decisions assessed, diverse practice settings, and the nascent evolution of the field (pew charitable trusts, 2014). in general, the steps of a hia include screening, scoping, assessment, reporting, and monitoring. key impact characteristics and impact assessment considerations are listed in table 1. table 1 key impact characteristics considered by a health impact assessment nature of impact temporal characteristics magnitude direction of change in the affected environmental parameter spatial extent reversibility of change of the affected environment al parameter probability of occurrence incremental additive synergistic antagonistic duration continuity immediacy frequency regularity size degree concentration increasing decreasing positive negative on-site off-site regional global reversible irreversible likelihood risk source: noble (2010). the project method utilised a rapid desk-based hia within a framework and template reflective of all health determinants contained in the mohltc’s heia toolkit. the assessment had its focus on the municipal development processes related to the new hospital. while the assessment area focused on the local neighbourhood of the new sah site, the study assessment was bounded by the entire community of sault ste. marie. the assessment did not consider the medical operations of the facility, the management and internal activities of the facility, the interior design and construction, or other internal operations of the facility or the health care services it provides. this paper distills the main elements relevant to the political economy of children’s health, specifically how certain public policy sectors affect the health of children during the municipal development processes undertaken for the hospital facility. health impact assessment of the new sault area hospital the identified impacts differentially affect populations across the municipality. the immediate community around the new sah benefits from local health care and improved access to a growing number of health care services. but, residents and those who attend school, work, and recreate in the area must confront the realities of increased traffic, air pollution, noise, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 312 stresses and reduced safety and green spaces, despite a marginal improvement in walkability and cycling infrastructure. simultaneously, the downtown area, previously host to the sault area hospital, now experiences the economic and social impacts resulting from the loss of a major anchor institution along with reduced access to many health care services and facilities, despite the potential for reduced traffic flows and less 24-hour noise. in the area of the new site, new developments include major retail establishments, tourist amenities, educational and health care facilities, a major renewable energy site, and residential developments. in addition, extensive transportation network expansions and new construction has been undertaken. figure 1 illustrates the new site and related development activity. the associated increased traffic volumes and related development have introduced new health risks for children resulting from higher levels of traffic-related pollution and reduced road traffic safety. figure 1. new site of the sault area hospital and surrounding neighbourhood. increased noise from a new helicopter landing pad and overnight activity has negatively affected sleep patterns and school learning, and affected family socio-economic opportunities and social engagement. an increased number of smokers and hospital-related drug paraphernalia in the area of the school and a significant loss of forested and natural spaces have raised health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 313 challenges for children and function to militate against smoking reduction policies and programmes. with the loss of such a significant anchor institution in the downtown core, access differentials to health services have emerged across the municipality. relocating from a central downtown location accompanied by a shift in many health care services to the new location has further isolated a key population segment with limited transportation, time, and financial resources from effective access to health care facilities. the balance of this section will discuss details of the results of the hia relevant for children’s health from traffic and noise impacts, and provide a brief overview of impacts on children’s health from changes in air quality, natural spaces, and socio-economic status. traffic traffic can generate a significant source of noise, air pollution, safety risks, and loss of community cohesion. children in particular are adversely affected by traffic and traffic patterns in a variety of ways. the new sah site has had a considerable influence on municipal development and subsequently traffic patterns and volumes, especially in the immediate area of the new site. once the new site location was announced, an urgent need to increase roadway capacity in the site study area was identified as a municipal priority. roadway expansion encourages a greater volume of vehicles, producing as a consequence a number of adverse health impacts to which children are especially vulnerable. as illustrated in figure 1, road expansion activities include extending pine street, sackville road, and third line. in addition, great northern road has been resurfaced and second and third lines have been widened. studies are also underway to expand the capacities of third line east and black road. development activities also include a new high school, with roadway access to the neighbourhood community. in part to facilitate higher traffic volumes associated with development in the area (school, hospital, commercial, etc.), local neighbourhood streets have been resurfaced. this has the potential to invite higher speeds and increased injuries for pedestrians as the roadway cross-sections were not upgraded at the times of resurfacing (and remain so) despite community requests for sidewalks and traffic calming infrastructure. since these roadways are the primary routes for children travelling to and from school and moving about the neighbourhood, the children must now compete with increasing traffic volumes and speeds on streets that do not have sidewalks or grade-separated routes for pedestrians. in addition to increased safety risks for children travelling and at play, higher traffic volumes overall throughout the study area have led to increased air pollution. this will be briefly discussed below. traffic is also a considerable source of noise (also discussed below). the municipality has reasoned that there is no new traffic generated and, in effect, traffic has merely shifted from the downtown core of the previous hospital site to the areas around the new sah site. in part, this is true, in that there has indeed been a shift in traffic. however it is an incomplete picture. significant additional trips, extra distances, higher speeds, and increased volumes are likely to have been generated due to the urban sprawl nature of the new site, wider international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 314 roads with higher posted speed limits, additional commercial development outside the urban service boundary surrounding the new site (including that directly and indirectly related to the sah, such as medical offices and health care services), and significant additional residential developments occurring adjacent to the new hospital site outside the municipal service boundary. public transport, while expanded to service the sah, is significantly less effective as population density is considerably lower at the new site than in the downtown core. pedestrian and cycling access to the new site and in the local area is considerably less effective or appealing. in addition, access to off-site resources and amenities, such as restaurants and shops, are much less accessible in a much more hostile environment to people-centred mobility. accordingly, there are far more vehicle trips made by employees and staff of the sah to access these services than at the previous site. not only does excess traffic and auto-dependency generate considerable health concerns for children from the pollution and safety aspects, it also generates a perception of normalisation of mobility being closely linked with a sedentary lifestyle. furthermore, it also associates that level of normalisation with a certain level of expectations of material acquisition that, in addition to sedentarianism, creates a powerful incentive for economic instability. these factors reinforce lifelong and early childhood experiences which can lead to cardiovascular disease, obesity, asthma, and other chronic non-communicable diseases later in life. noise noise is often defined as an unpleasant or annoying nuisance that affects auditory sensation and can be harmful to health (e.g., ncchpp, 2014; health canada, 2005). however, as dr. william h. stewart, former u.s. surgeon general observed, referring to noise as a nuisance is like calling smog an inconvenience (environmental protection agency [epa], 1978, p. 25). noise is generally defined as unwanted sound (hammer, swinburn, & neitzel, 2014; european agency for safety and health at work, n.d.). noise, however, is a far greater health risk than a mere “nuisance” might imply. noise can produce significant adverse health impacts including stress, sleep disorders, increased heart rate, raised blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. there have been numerous studies that correlate a variety of physiological effects with excess noise (frankenhaeuser, 1974; henkin, 1963; rosenberg, 1991). these can lead to increased releases of stress hormones, increased blood pressure, and increased muscle spasms. exposure to moderate levels of noise may also induce psychological disorders including stress, annoyance, irritability, and intellectual function impairment and interference with the execution of complex tasks. intense levels of noise can cause personality changes and aggressive responses, reduced coping abilities, sleep disturbances, and changes in mental health (kam, kam, & thompson, 1994; kujala & brattico, 2009). noise activates the body’s sympathetic nervous system to raise blood pressure and heart rate (haralabidis et al., 2008). while residents may indicate they have become used to noise or are able to “tune it out”, that habituation does not seem to extend to the cardiovascular system during night time exposures (muzet, 2002). sleep disruption is associated with increased lipid and cortisol levels, raising risks of depression and atherosclerosis (meerlo, sgoifo, & suchecki, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 315 2008; hoffman et al., 2013). large-scale studies have identified an association between aircraft noise exposure and increased hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases (correia, peters, levy, melly, & dominici, 2013; hansell et al., 2013). residential road traffic noise has been associated with a higher risk of diabetes (sorensen et al., 2013). fatigue, anxiety, mood changes, depression, and reduced performance are typically associated with sleep disorders (berglund, lindvall, & schwela, 1999; maynard et al., 2010; who, 2009a). in children, sleep disorders can lead to cognitive impairment and learning difficulties (milette & carnevale, 2003; who, 2011). sleep disturbance also has an effect on mood, fatigue, performance, cognitive abilities, vigilance, and can boost epinephrine levels that contribute to stress (passchier-vermeer & passchier, 2000). vulnerable groups include the elderly, the sick, children, and shift workers. the maximum sound level should not exceed 45 dba, similar to a refrigerator, but is ideally around 30 dba (alenius, 2001; who 2009a). the who (2011) has conservatively estimated that “dalys lost from environmental noise are 61,000 years for ischaemic heart disease, 45,000 years for cognitive impairment of children, 903,000 years for sleep disturbance, 22,000 years for tinnitus, and 587,000 years for annoyance in the european union member states and other western european countries” (p. v). in 1981, the u.s. environmental protection agency (epa) estimated that nearly 100 million people in the united states had annual exposures to traffic noise that were high enough to be harmful to health (simpson & bruce, 1981). there are numerous sources of noise directly attributed to the new hospital which have generated concern and complaints from local residents. these include traffic and transportation, including public transit buses both during movement and while idling, parking lots which produce noise from vehicle movements, idling, and security alarms, and on-site activities such as shipping and receiving, property maintenance, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment. the most significant noise is generated by on-site snow maintenance and related activities (such as spring and summer street sweeping) that operate primarily during the overnight hours, typically beginning at 21:00 and progressing through the night until 06:00 through the months of october until june. in addition, the proximity of the elementary school serves as a reminder of poor planning practices that neglect the adverse impacts from noise that can directly affect children’s health. finally, noise is generated throughout the neighbourhood and especially for perimeter residents from an on-site helicopter pad located 100 meters from the nearest residential dwellings. by contrast, the old site had one residential dwelling in immediate proximity to most of these noise sources, with the exception of traffic. parking facilities were located between the hospital and st. mary’s river, with institutional government buildings on the west side and one residential dwelling adjacent to the property on the east. however, the previous site was well serviced by public transit and had excellent pedestrian and cycling access. the helicopter pad was 240 metres from the hospital and 380 metres from the nearest residence while situated adjacent to the st. mary’s river. normal flight paths did not disturb residents on a regular basis. at the new site, these additional sources of noise affect children’s health by elevating the background levels of noise, generating interruptive noises, producing sleep disruptions through a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 316 substantial portion of the year, and affecting concentration levels in and out of school. noise also necessarily affects children when it affects the community or family, and the ability and quality of parents’ work, social engagement, and community participation. psychological and emotional distress caused by loss of sleep or increased stress can have deep and profound effects on families and the health of children. these impressions can last throughout a lifetime and manifest as future domestic violence, poverty, and economic performance. the who has identified benchmark levels of 30 dba for maximum nighttime noise levels. local residents have measured levels as high as 85 dba overnight for snow clearing. in comparison, levels of a hydraulic jackhammer measured 71 dba on the same tools and scale, at a much closer distance. at point of impingement, the helicopter measures only slightly above snow clearing machinery, at 86 dba. of importance, snow clearing and maintenance activities operate throughout the night for most of the year. however, measures of sound pressure alone are a poor indicator of noise disturbance. as noted above in table 1, the duration, continuity, immediacy, frequency, and regularity of noise can contribute to adversely impact human health. for example, whereas certain high frequency sounds may be attenuated with sufficient building techniques and sound barriers, heavy vehicles (snow removal machinery, trucks or buses idling, front-end loaders operating, etc.) generate considerable low frequency noises and vibrations that can transmit through ground substrate and into building foundations, amplifying noise and vibrations within residential dwellings. children are especially vulnerable to adverse noise for a number of reasons. first, their perceptions of noise are different from adults and many children are unable to comprehend and recognise dangerous exposure levels, as in the case of helicopter landings and takeoffs, for example. children are also less able to effectively react and respond to noises – they are unable to identify and avoid sources of noise. noise can also interfere with the communication of danger or dangerous situations, and noises can interfere with learning and concentration. children may also be more at risk for noise due to their behaviour such as use of electronic devices or playing outside where noise sources may be present. finally, children are less likely to identify sleep disruptions as the source of their adverse health impacts, and convey such information to parents or guardians for mitigating action. compounded by a parents’ sleep loss, domestic, economic, and educational stress can rapidly escalate. these and other factors can place children at an increased risk of long-term adverse health outcomes through such pathways as the lifelong impairment of learning and education, short-term deficit followed by adaptation and non-intentional lesions (who, n.d.). the result can be indirect such as through long-term physiological and psychological impacts, direct such as noise-induced hearing loss and threshold shifts, and impaired cognition. exposure to sudden or unexpected noise can induce a startle reaction with stress responses and can lead to non-intentional injuries. for example, the sudden blast of an ambulance siren may cause a child to leap before looking, resulting in a potential traffic injury especially where road and pedestrian traffic is not grade separated or does not otherwise incorporate human-centred design. chronic noise exposure can impair cognitive function, reading comprehension, and long-term memory (evans, 1993; maxwell & evans, 2000; wachs, 1982; yang & bradley, 2009). the effects of noise can be different for different age groups, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 317 length of exposure and other factors (brandon, 2008; milette & carnevalle, 2003). in addition, children become especially susceptible to noise when family and community noise-derived impacts affect the social, economic, and cultural backgrounds of their environments. loss of income or economic security by parents, for instance, can generate a considerable adverse affect on children’s health, which can be long-lasting into their future. the p3 arrangement further complicates matters. a transnational corporation has been contracted through the provincial government to manage site operational aspects for an extended period. this arrangement exposes the community to the challenges inherent in outsourcing the role of the state in health care provisions, making implementation of its responsibilities as guarantor of health rights responsibilities more difficult (chapman, 2014). the p3 approach to fiscal management is a provincial policy for health care facilities. despite the lack of financial incentive for the sah to invest in capital or operational expenditures to reduce the burden of disease associated with certain noises, the private member of the p3 partnership responsible for maintaining the facility has even less incentive to do so. an additional complicating factor was the lack of incentive for any substantive discourse with the community. in ontario the environmental impact assessment (eia) process does not extend to private development proposals, although there are provisions should the developer choose to undertake an eia, or if the minister believes there to be reasonable public concern. the lack of community discourse effectively thwarted public engagement to identify possible issues. eia provisions in ontario to include private proposals would strengthen health outcomes. noise in ontario largely falls under municipal jurisdiction. in the case of sault ste. marie, an antiquated noise bylaw regulates noises with specific exemptions for snow clearing activities. these bylaws predate the widespread use of heavy machinery for clearing of private parking spaces and the co-locating of mixed urban development zones. the existing bylaws also target activities rather than noise (thus the exemption for snow clearing), leave enforcement and interpretation in the hands of local police services, and maintain the existing quiet zone as outlined around the old hospital site (now sold to developers). moreover, the bylaw makes little reference to ambient noise levels from traffic and mobile sources with the exception of idling engines in excess of five minutes under liberal conditions. while legal services have been working on an updated noise bylaw, no public discourse has been undertaken, no proposed draft yet exists, and no interim provisions have been offered despite over four years of efforts and numerous public petitions for an improved bylaw. the province also regulates noises under the ministry of the environment and climate change; however, there are explicit exclusions for mobile noises as these are left to municipalities to regulate. similarly, transport canada regulates heliports. despite requirements to include consultations with the municipality, in the case of the sah helicopter pad, the level of consultations seem to have been limited to a request to the building division for a building permit. unfortunately, transport canada does not define “consultations” in the legislation. an assessment of the health impacts resulting from the requested location of the helicopter pad was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 318 left to the building division to evaluate, which clearly falls well beyond their expertise, interest or, arguably, jurisdiction. the leadership in energy and environment design (leed) “recommends standards to enhance buildings and is based on scores to improve sustainability. leed standards incorporate american national standards institute recommendations regarding background noise and encourage sound‑ absorptive finishes to limit reverberation in schools. improvements in construction materials, siting considerations (e.g., siting sensitive structures such as homes and schools well away from noise sources such as high traffic roads and hospitals), and design can have a dramatic impact on noise levels inside buildings – and improve the occupants’ quality of life in the process ” (united states green building council [usgbc], 2008). while there are important elements of urban design (such as traffic noise, locating institutions such as hospitals separate from residential areas and schools), holzman (2014) notes that professionals “studying community noise highlight the need for controlling noise at the source” (p. a58), suggesting it is important to provide a quiet community environment rather than simply separate people and noise. other experts note that distancing houses from noise and pollution from vehicle exposures and reducing air pollution by reducing stop-and-go traffic may actually increase noise since traffic may then travel faster producing more noise. unless carefully planned, the result may merely exchange one health risk for another. the result has been adverse impacts on children’s health through interrupted and poor sleep patterns, co-location of an elementary school exposed to considerable noises, and parental and community socio-economic impacts. air quality as the sah is now located in a more remote location which depends increasingly on personal automobility, many who may previously have walked or taken public transit are much more likely required to drive to access health care facilities. in addition to a more remote location, the poor urban design of the area makes healthy transportation modes far more difficult to engage in the area, exacerbating the problem of automobility. as children under 16 are not allowed to drive in ontario, this segment is especially isolated and dependent upon public transit or parents to access the new facilities. in addition, patient, employee, staff and contractor access is characterised by private vehicle use. an air ambulance helicopter pad is also located on-site compounding local air pollution. moreover, the designated flight paths, which may be deviated from at a pilot’s discretion, pass directly over many residential houses and properties and in very close proximity to the elementary school (see pad location and flight path in figure 1). limited to no data exist on the long-term health effects of jet fuel nor on the soil contamination from jet fuel in urban landing pad locations, exposures of populations on low flight activities of helicopters, and health impacts from residential agricultural and food growing practices from aviation fuels. however, existing data on the health impacts of aviation fuel and children living near airports suggests an adverse health outcome for a variety of diseases (sheer & moss, 2012). some of the health effects of repeated exposure to lead include damage to the central nervous system, kidneys and red blood cells, and decreased function in the cardiovascular and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 319 immune systems. lower iq levels and learning disabilities can also result from lead exposure, especially in children, whose young bodies are more sensitive than those of adults. and scientists at the national toxicology program (2010) have concluded that lead and lead compounds are “reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens”. while aviation fuel and that used by ornge (the air ambulance service of ontario) is likely different, the health impacts of a petrochemical exhaust fumes accumulating over a neighbourhood from low elevation flights, landings, and takeoffs is likely adverse. staff and students have noted odours inside classrooms when the fresh air intake system is operating while the helicopter is in use. numerous residents have commented on the pungent odours when the helicopter is taking off and landing, whether it passes directly overhead or the wind carries fumes across the neighbourhood. furthermore, the increased traffic and much larger parking lots require constant maintenance and, as reflected in the section on noise, this is done with heavy diesel machinery, including dump trucks, front-end loaders, sweepers, and pumper trucks. diesel emissions are a complex mixture of hazardous particles, gases, and vapours. they contain carbon monoxide (co), carbon dioxide (co2), oxides of nitrogen (nox), sulphur dioxide (so2), and volatile organic compounds (voc), specifically non‑ methane hydrocarbons, carbonyl compounds such as aldehydes, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pah) (maybe, mackinnon, & kerr, 2005). diesel emissions are the source of over 40 toxic air contaminants. health effects of exposure to diesel emissions range from the immediate to long term, and can include mutagenic and carcinogenic, to eyes, nose, throat, and lung irritations including aggravating chronic health problems and triggering asthma events (office of environmental health hazard assessment [oeaha], n.d.). health canada (n.d.) has identified that there is no threshold level below which adverse health effects from exposure to particulate matter (pm) are not observed. in addition, the increased traffic and construction activity (roads, infrastructure, commercial, and residential developments) in the study area has and continues to generate significant levels of air emissions on an ongoing basis. given the proximity to an elementary school and residences, and that children are often outside playing, this has considerably elevated the risks for future adverse health effects for these children in adulthood. the situation is heightened for children in lower socio-economic families as these children are often left unsupervised and more often outside within the neighbourhood, with fewer chances to exercise and recreate in more environmentally friendly environments due to the limited financial and mobility resources available to them and their parents. natural spaces access to natural spaces is beneficial for healthy child development (children and nature network [cnn], 2012). exposure to a natural environmental setting has been shown to develop richer imagination, increased physical activity, greater focus and a calmer disposition, and positive social interactions in children (nedovic & morrissey, 2013). access to green spaces has been associated with beneficial outcomes on fetal growth (dadvand et al., 2012; van den berg & van den berg, 2011). poor access to green spaces has been associated with behavioural problems in children (markevycha et al., 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 320 the new hospital site required the clearing of 20 acres of natural green space, and the related residential developments each cleared a similar amount of green spaces surrounding the school and local neighbourhood. those spaces provided refuge for a variety of wildlife and opportunities for learning and natural connections for students. local residents also used much of this area for walking or skiing, and it served as a natural flood buffer and respite from the stresses of city life. in addition, the natural vegetation served as both a sink for carbon and air pollutants, as well as offering a cooling effect during hot summer days. this has all been replaced with concrete and pavement, adding both to noise, stress and heat island effect, as well as eliminating natural settings and learning opportunities for children and youth. ironically, negotiations between the city and school board enabled a new recreational trail (negotiated with the city as part of the sah development) to cross the perimeter of the school property leading to the elimination of additional green space to expand parking spaces at the elementary school. in so doing, the new parking lot severed a recently constructed two-year-old nature trail and outdoor learning centre, eliminating it from possible future use. socio-economic impacts from related development hospitals have the potential to negatively impact the quality of life of nearby residents. hospitals contribute to high traffic volumes that not only congest neighbourhood streets, but also potentially elevate risks for pedestrians and families with children. the background noise of traffic, coupled with emergency sirens, construction projects, on-site activities and helicopters, can also make for noisy neighbourhoods near hospitals. these conditions can drive away some residents, which can lead to lower property values and neighbourhood instability (beecher, 2007). anecdotal information suggests approximately 35 homes went up for sale in the 18 months following the opening of the new sah. while listing reasons remain largely unknown, numbers, list prices, and selling prices suggest at least some were directly attributable to the new hospital site opening; 35 listings in 18 months compares to approximately one home per year in the same neighbourhood in the previous four years. regardless of the reasons for these sales, the increase is on the order of 2,000%. information also suggests sale prices are considerably lower than listing prices, suggesting a marked reduction in property values despite a notable increase in property taxes in the new host neighbourhood. unless real estate agents were well off their mark, this reduction in property values is quite significant. other house sales in residential areas surrounding the new sah have been followed by rezonings in support of expanded health care and related services in the neighbourhood, advancing commercial boundaries further into existing residential neighbourhoods. these trends and adverse impacts are supported by other information suggesting that a new hospital can destabilise local neighbourhoods by pressuring residents to sell and making living conditions difficult for those unwilling to leave their homes (bailey, 2007; beecher, 2007). in and of itself, these changes have generated considerable transitions in the cohesion of the neighbourhood. families directly affected by reduced home sale prices may suffer economic burdens, while families purchasing into a deflating market may find themselves in an undesirable situation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 321 additionally, the co-location of the hospital with a residential neighbourhood and elementary school has heightened problems associated with drug paraphernalia, smoking in and around school property and within frequent visual range of children, trespass onto private and school properties (including reports of smokers standing in residents backyards near windows), and cases of patients in distress wandering from hospital areas (including one death in a residential backyard). these present certain risks to children’s health. for example, the denormalisation of smoking is a key component of smoking reduction strategies. while the city applied these theories and practices to prohibit smoking near neighbourhood recreational facilities and the school board has policies in place that prohibit smoking on its school properties, the same cannot be said (or enforced) on public streets and trail networks. this will certainly function at odds with public health initiatives seeking to de-normalise smoking behaviour. a strict “no smoking” policy on hospital property has prompted patients and staff to follow the path of least resistance to satisfy nicotine needs. this includes the use of a (private) forested area beside the constructed recreational trail as an ad hoc smoking area, except for those ignoring the policy at risk of enforcement, or those who trespass or use public spaces for smoking, such as the recreational trail and local neighbourhood streets. within clear view of the school playground, this smoking area and those smokers who wander past the school on the recreational trail present a range of unhealthy messages to the children. finally, official plan amendments are generally required for development proposals when they do not conform to the current official plan. in some cases, the above developments were outside the urban service boundary. as a result, such developments will levy additional expenses on taxpayers and the public in order to both provide new services and maintain various existing municipal services. newly generated municipal tax revenues from such developments have historically not recovered their direct expenses, causing an increase in municipal taxes (fodor, 1999). this suggests an additional levy on taxpayers, which will affect household finances, adversely affecting those most financially insecure. it will also generate a demand for services and resources that could otherwise have been directed to more urgent needs and concentrated in areas that contribute to community health and well-being. discussion the world health organisation’s commission on the social determinants of health called for health equity impact assessment of all economic agreements, market regulation, and public policies (who, 2008). the senate committee has called for canada to adopt health impact assessments of all public policies, plans, and programmes (standing senate committee on social affairs, science and technology [sscsast], 2009). in july 2013, the canadian medical association released their document, what makes us sick?, recommending “that the federal government require a health impact assessment as part of cabinet decision‑ making process” (canadian medical association [cma], 2013). this hia has demonstrated the benefits for children’s health and public policy from conducting such an assessment. the results of this project also demonstrate the enormous potential for local municipalities to affect the sdh, despite concerns to the contrary as expressed by municipal authorities (collins & hayes, 2010) – municipal policies already exist to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 308–327 322 adequately manage most of the identified adverse impacts. for instance, traffic calming, speed regulation, development patterns, and official plans can, and generally exist to promote healthy urban development. noise bylaws can be structured to produce healthy urban soundscapes. this hia also suggests that there are additional provincial, federal, and private sector actions that could support municipalities when new health care facilities are being planned and developed. for instance, local noise bylaws would benefit from provincial and federal oversight that would equalise and standardise noise bylaws across the country. to support municipal noise bylaws and regulatory development, national noise mapping, as has been called for by the cma, would support healthy soundscapes for children and youth. likewise, federal actions, such as improvements to the legislation concerning heliports and, in particular, urban design and consultations, would enhance the local municipal decision-making process. at the provincial level, an heia of new health care facilities would fill an important gap. furthermore, exclusion of mobile noise sources leaves a gaping hole in urban noise level management. improved building standards, fuel efficiency, and air quality policies at federal and provincial levels can leverage best evidence for healthy environments in the same manner tobacco reduction policies have produced healthier environments for children and youth at the municipal level. hospitals could consider a more equitable parking fee structure that links parking fees to ability to pay using digital technologies and smart meters, and revisit the design and locating of parking lots, sound barriers, and the timing and use of equipment. the municipality could weigh the costs and benefits of locating anchor institutions outside urban boundaries, and factor in the costs of minimum parking spaces per square foot of building space in commercial, institutional, and industrial zones. reorienting these bylaws towards maximum numbers of parking spaces and encouraging developments to incorporate transportation demand management plans would serve to expand equity of access and health-enhancing opportunities. the hospital could also revisit their strict no smoking polices in terms of societal tobacco reduction objectives and the derived impacts on the surrounding community. local school boards could consider outdoor education programs and reclaim lost natural spaces wherever possible, working with local groups and neighbourhoods, and forming partnerships with organisations such as the sah to identify opportunities (e.g., local gardens and food security curriculum development). conclusions the new sah in sault ste. marie was constructed on a new site in the northern portion of the city. this shift has generated considerable development activity in and around the new site. that activity has become 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(2009). effects of room acoustics on the intelligibility of speech in classrooms for young children. journal of the acoustical society of america, 125(2), 922–933. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2010.01172.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9215-0 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3058900 16 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 46 children’s and parents’ experiences on everyday life and the home/work balance in finland taina kyrönlampi-kylmänen and kaarina määttä abstract: paid work and the high-pressure working life are reflected in the everyday life of finnish families with children. this article introduces a research project where 29 children aged between 5 and 7 years and their 13 wage-earner parents were interviewed in order to discover to what degree they are able to achieve a home/work balance in their family lives. there is a lack of such research that examines children’s and parents’ experiences simultaneously and comprehensively, as this study does. the children’s experiences were analyzed with an existential-phenomenological method, while the parents’ experiences of how their work affects everyday life were interpreted within a hermeneutically advancing interpretation process. this research describes the challenging combination of work and family, the demanding relationship between children and parents, and the ways in which parents approach balancing work and everyday life when parents’ paid work, stress, and fatigue follows them home. parents’ working life moulds the rhythm of their children’s everyday lives, which are structured by the departures and arrivals at home and at their daycare centers. this article makes visible finnish families’ daily worries and how they cope with everyday life. the research highlights the question of how to secure both children’s and parents’ rights to a safe and anxiety-free everyday life. keywords: everyday life, paid work, parenthood, children’s experiences, work/family combination correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: kaarina määttä, university of lapland, faculty of education, p.o. box 122, fi-96101 rovaniemi, finland. email: kaarina.maatta@ulapland.fi, tel. +358 400 696 480, fax. +358 16 362 933. taina kyrönlampi-kylmänen, ph.d. is senior researcher in the project, “rhythms and practices in everyday life of families in transitions”, academy of finland, university of helsinki. kaarina määttä, ph.d. is professor of educational psychology in the faculty of education, university of lapland, rovaniemi, finland. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 47 everyone is an expert on everyday life. everyday life is such a familiar concept that many of the daily phenomena, happenings, and operations seem self-evident. not very often do people have time to question or deliberate that ordinary phenomenon. what we think of as everyday life does not conform to particular boundaries nor is it easy to recognize, which therefore makes it hard to understand just what is being referred to when we discuss everyday life. conceptualizing and studying everyday life is even more challenging (felski, 2000; jokinen, 2005; tuomi-gröhn, 2009). as well, discussing everyday life in families is made more complicated by the fact that the notion of family as a concept is multidimensional and can be defined as a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. however, nowadays, family can refer to a variety of combinations of people varying from the so-called traditional nuclear family with parents and children to singles (e.g., williams, sawyer, & wahlstrom, 2005). in this article, the word “family” refers to a family unit with children and parents (mother and father) because the families that participated in the original research represented this kind of a family structure. today’s families with children describe their everyday life as busy: filled with routines, repetition, and cycles. certain events and happenings take place similarly day after day, week after week, and month after month. parents’ work schedules, children’s daycare and school schedules, hobbies, outdoor activities, dining times, and sleeping patterns set the rhythm for everyday life. according to previous research, children experience their everyday life by departures and arrivals as well (korvela & keskinen, 2008; korvela, 2003; kyrönlampi-kylmänen, 2007; rönkä, laitinen, & malinen, 2009). everyday life is often associated with negative images: it is something that one wants to escape from. adults seem to have the desire to break out from everyday life and its preoccupations, monotony, stress, and their demanding work (jokinen, 2005). after annual leaves, employees in the coffee breaks of workplaces bemoan the fact that the holidays have ended. for a family, it may be difficult to spend time together on weekdays something that is, on the other hand, possible on holidays. according to previous studies, parents may feel themselves enslaved by housework and by the routines at home and at work (e.g., daly, 2003; korvela & keskinen, 2008; rönkä & korvela, 2009). in addition, everyday life is charged with the effort of combining the parents’ personal needs with needs of the whole family. the parents of small children wonder how they can find more time for themselves, marriage, children, and hobbies. nowadays, more and more demands are set for the family and intimate relationships (karney & bradbury, 1995; määttä, 2005; sternberg, 1999). emotional satisfaction, a comfortable emotional atmosphere, and equality are required from family relationships (määttä, 2006; uusiautti, 2008; uusiautti & määttä 2010). the increase in the number of divorces reflects, for its part, the increasing demands on the family and intimate relationships (e.g., gottman, 1994, 1999). from a parent’s point of view, everyday life lacks time. however, various roles enrich everyday life (clark, 2000). for many families, combining work and family roles is quite painless (leiter & durup, 1996). for example, some of these roles repay the accompanying demands in the form of increased income level, self-esteem, and social success (barnett & hyde, 2001). thus, after a fulfilling workday, a parent has enough energy to be active with the children even though they have already used significant energy at work. similarly, a satisfying family life can help with coping at work (uusiautti & määttä, 2010). it is worth remembering that when it comes to the work/family combination, it is not just about “either-or” but international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 48 “both-and” kinds of experiences (frone, 2003). nonetheless, it seems that the everyday lives of families sometimes present moments when the demands and needs of various areas of life are on a collision course (rönkä & korvela, 2009; rönkä et al., 2009). according to bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2001) ecological theory, a parent’s working life or paid work greatly affects a child’s experience of his or her immediate surroundings. a society’s legislation, for example labor legislation and daycare system, affects a child’s world indirectly through a parent. thus, the well-being of a child depends primarily on the nature of the growing surroundings provided by his or her parents. the living conditions of an individual family are connected with the general societal living conditions within which the parents have to act (klein & white, 1996). combining work and family is a continuous issue in labor market negotiations, with political speeches often referring to families with one parent or two parents and children (see lammi-taskula, salmi, & parrukoski, 2009; barling, 1994). the combination of work and family and their symbiotic relationship have become more and more complex. children’s parents have to balance between home and work more than before (hoschild, 2000; jallinoja, 2000; michel & hargis, 2008). one reason for the stirring of this discourse since the 1990s has been an escalating pace of working life that leaves less time for parenting. the other reason for this debate involves how work itself has changed: new technology has made working at home possible and increased the probability of doing so as well. a parent can read e-mail in the evenings and answer work calls (daly, 2003; dunom, 2000). people’s opportunities to affect their work schedules have increased but, at the same time, working hours lack predictability as employees may be reached at all hours (dunom, 2000). the situation in finland the separation between work and leisure accompanied industrialization in western societies beginning in the 19th century when parents’ everyday life started to be divided between home and paid work outside the home (klein, izquierdo, & bradbury, 2007; scott, 2009; wintersberger, 2000). in finland, the passage from an agrarian society into an industrial one took place after the second world war. people moved from the countryside to cities in the 1960s and 1970s starting the development into a so-called welfare state in finland (korvela & keskinen, 2008). thus, nowadays finland uses nordic welfare state principles and methods that are based on the state’s responsibility for its citizens. welfare services, such as early childhood education and care (ecec), are arranged and funded by central and local government. daycare services are open for every child – or in other words, all children below school age are entitled to receive municipal daycare. there are also private daycare services available with different costs (heinämäki, 2008). in finland, there are a variety of family policy activities, services, and benefits available (see the social insurance institution of finland kela, www.kela.fi): before and after childbirth, mothers (and children) use the services of maternity and child welfare clinics. leaves related to childbirth begin with mothers starting their maternity leave at the earliest 50 days and at the latest 30 days before the expected date of delivery. after that, either the mother or the father can have a parental leave (parental allowance is funded for 158 working days) or they can share it. in addition, fathers can take between one and 18 days of paternity leave after childbirth in order to look after international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 49 their child at home together with the mother. all the leaves are funded by the social insurance institution of finland. after parental allowance or extended paternity allowance, parents can take a childcare leave with full employment security to look after a child under age 3, though both parents cannot be on full-time leave at the same time (heinämäki, 2008; official statistics of finland, 2009). all children in finland have to go to school at age 7. school begins at the start of the autumn semester at primary school and the nine-year-long compulsory education is free for all pupils. finnish children have the right to participate in voluntary and free preschool education during the year preceding compulsory education (official statistics of finland, 2009). the aim of this article in the public discourse, everyday life – or at least the contemplation of it – is present in the current era. politicians, educational professionals, researchers, and teachers as well as the representatives of the church and various associations write and talk about the meaning of everyday life. emphasizing its significance partly shows that people’s daily behavior is subject to increasing concern. although various academic disciplines have focused more and more on children’s opinions on matters directly affecting them, the effect of parents’ work on the everyday life experiences of preschool-aged children are still studied relatively scarcely; in particular, there is a lack of such research that would study children’s and parents’ experiences simultaneously and comprehensively. the aim of this article is to describe children’s and parents’ experiences on the balance between the parents’ work and everyday life at home. the following research questions are set to guide this study: 1. how do the working parents describe the combination of work and family? 2. how do the working parents describe their relationship with their children? 3. how do the children of the working parents describe their everyday life? as a conclusion, what the parents and children really say will be discussed: what do the results reveal about the situation of today’s finnish families and their struggle between work-related and family-related expectations. research data and methods the empirical data of this research was collected in northern finland during the spring of 2003; 29 children (14 girls and 15 boys) between 5 and 7 years of age and 13 of their parents (seven mothers and six fathers) participated in the research. the parents’ professional positions varied but what they had in common was that all of them worked outside the home. the children spent their weekdays at a daycare center. the children were invited from three different municipal daycare centers in rovaniemi, a dynamic and growing city with a current population of 60,000 people located on the arctic circle in northern finland. the participants were selected based on their willingness to participate in the research. the research data was acquired from three different daycare centers, where the first author spent abundant time before carrying out the interviews. the researcher-adult became familiar to the children. as time went on, the children noticed the difference between the researcher and the staff in the daycare center. from the children’s perspective, the researcher was someone who spent time international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 50 with them but still did not have an educative or authoritative relationship with them. before carrying out the interviews with the children, permission was obtained from both the children’s parents and other partners in cooperation with the daycare center. when designing the research interviews, the questions had to be carefully formulated and phrased so that they would not be too difficult, problematic, or stressful for a child. inquiries about the children’s and parents’ experiences were placed through a semistructured interview. the themes for the child interviews were the following: “the child’s family”; “the child’s day at the daycare center”; “the parent’s work”; and “being together with the parent”. respectively, the themes for the parent interviews were the following: “our family”; “the parent’s work”; “being together with the child”; “the child’s daycare history”; “experiences of daycare”; “the rhythm of everyday life”; and “the social net”. all the interviews were recorded and then written up. altogether, the transcript consisted of about 500 pages. the interviews varied between 30 minutes to two hours in length. the children were interviewed at their daycare center and the parents at their home, one individual at a time. the children’s experiences were analyzed with an existential-phenomenological method. this method wants to be loyal to the phenomenon under study and aims to observe the phenomenon as open-mindedly as possible. the existential-phenomenological analyzing method utilized in this research is based especially on giorgi’s (1994) phenomenological research method (kyrönlampikylmänen, 2007). the parents’ experiences of how their work affects everyday life are interpreted within a hermeneutically advancing interpretation process. this kind of interpretation process pursues analyzing the experiences with reconstructive methods; in practice, it means structuring, explicating, and condensing the interview data. furthermore, the conclusions made based on the analyses and interpretations are always compared with the original data (latomaa, 2005; van manen, 2002; see also gadamer, 2004). the analysis also brought out and highlighted the special nature of carrying out child interviews, as well as the challenges of understanding the children’s world. we will evaluate the interview process at the end of this article but we have also discussed these issues in greater detail in our previous publications (kyrönlampi-kylmänen, 2007; kyrönlampi-kylmänen & määttä, 2010). results how do the working parents describe the combination of work and family? looking for balance. according to the parents participating in this research, the most challenging moments in their family life often concerned the difficulties of adjusting family life to the demands of working life and other areas of life, such as hobbies and social networking (see also daly, 2003; jokinen, 2005; korvela, 2003; rönkä & korvela, 2009). the parents thought they had too little time to spend together with their children during the week, as one mother pointed out: “we should have more time for cuddling”. working outside the home is more common in families with children than in other households in finland. the fathers of small children work more overtime, on average, than other men and this pattern persists regardless of the age of their children. every third child’s mother works irregular hours (for example, shift work or weekends). considering the time spent in paid international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 51 work and housework, the parents of preschool-aged children are the most encumbered (lainiala, 2010; pulkkinen, 2002; sauli & kainulainen, 2001). the research data showed especially that full-time jobs took plenty of time from a weekday. one dad described what kinds of conflicts balancing the combination of work and family life can cause: “when the children are small, you could be more at home. i have really tried to be more and more but i also think that i have to work long hours”. most of the small children’s fathers thought their work took too much time from their family life. this fact can actually cause regret later on in a parent’s life (see paajanen, 2007). the mothers in this study adjusted their working hours and duties to the needs of family life and everyday situations more than fathers did (see also dunom, 2000; lainiala, 2010) and tended to give priority to the family more frequently than the fathers. the families preferred a traditional role model, according to which the women’s duty is to take care of the children and home whereas the men’s duty is to earn a living (dunom, 2000). the mothers thought that responsible motherhood required togetherness with a child (cf., sevon, 2009). the families’ everyday tasks and time management were mostly the mothers’ responsibility. in this research, the mothers tended to be more flexible concerning their work duties rather than with respect to the time spent together with their families and children. two of the interviewed mothers had resigned directorships in order to devote more time to family, children, and parenthood. “so, i have tried to work as a manager but combining working life and family in that sector is really hard; and for women especially. you see, i like to fuss with my children in the evenings a lot…” (cf., bowes, 1998). on the other hand, the fathers who worked as managers thought that their work was interesting and did not consider changing the content of their work or reducing their working hours. the satisfaction they gained from the paid work was considered more important. although 70% of finnish women work, the attitudes in our society do not necessarily support women’s careers and female leadership. it is common for finnish women to work in occupations where the majority of employees are female, while finnish men work in male-oriented work communities. there are fewer female than male business managers, especially at the highest levels of decision-making. the glass ceiling phenomenon refers to the invisible obstacle between the highest level of decision-making and women. in this research, women’s careers that included managerial work generally were restricted to decision-making within the families. it is perhaps worth asking whether the opportunities for women provided by society are replicated inside a family from the perspective of women’s careers (see also aaltio-marjosola, 2001; donati, 2000; klein & white, 1996). in this study, the parents did not have part-time jobs because having one was considered an economically impossible option (cf., hayes & watt, 1998). nonetheless, a part-time job was a dream for one mother: “i would like to be at home at least the next fall when my son goes to the first grade. it is my dream and i can’t live on relief because the benefit is so small that i can’t pay the loans with it… [i would like to] take them to school and walk with them to the bus stop to wait for [the school transportation]. i would like to do that… it is my dream but i know that it won’t come true anymore”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 52 in finland, the housewife tradition has not been well established because industrialization took place quite late compared to other western societies. furthermore, working life has not been separated from home as strongly as in some other parts of europe; nor has the culture of part-time working been regularized. even if part-time work would make the parents’ everyday life easier, it appeared merely as a dream, especially among the mothers interviewed in this research. the participating fathers did not have the same kinds of dreams as they seemed to consider a full-time job as a matter of course. the parents’ work-related issues bother the everyday life at home. unpredictable working hours cause problems for the family’s everyday life. several everyday routines are time-bound: picking up the children from the daycare at a certain time, going to the grocery store, preparing dinner, the children’s bedtime, and so on. work may also follow parents home in their thoughts. working at home after-hours changes everyday routines. naturally, this bothers the children as the following example related by a 6-year-old girl shows: “my dad is always there at the computer… yeah, he does the paper work and tells us to shut up when he’s on the phone”. in this study, the children considered home a place where their parents would be present for them, where they would not have to be share their parents with the parents’ work. some children seemed almost “jealous” of a parent’s work if work took time and a prominent place in the home environment. the children defined home as a place where work-related matters do not belong (e.g., bowes, 1998; daly, 2003; kyrönlampi-kylmänen & määttä, 2010). rouvinen’s (2007) research showed how kindergarten teachers think parents concentrate too much on their own work, among other things, and do not have enough time to concentrate on rearing their children. according to kindergarten teachers, working life interferes with child rearing because it involves the families in a busy lifestyle with a lack of time for togetherness. further, these teachers thought that parents liked their work almost too much because at work they could receive recognition (see also hochschild, 2001). some of the kindergarten teachers claimed that the parents had more interest in ascending their own career ladder than in their own children (rouvinen, 2007). noteworthy, however, is the fact that at least this phenomenon did not occur among the mothers in this study. from the perspective of time management, combining work and family was already considered challenging, but the instability of working life and worries about the possibility of underemployment, or even unemployment, add extra challenges. the problems in the work/family combination were often related not only to the lack of time but also to lack of money. in this research, the parents were concerned with whether they had sufficient money. one father stated, “it is possible that it would make the children suffer if we didn’t have money to buy gear and odds and ends. i just realized when the school started that there is quite a pressure for it at school”. indeed, several studies have proved that finnish families with children have relatively weak social status. in finland, approximately 70% of the incomes of families with preschool children go into food and housing (e.g., blom, 2001; hujala & kyrönlampi-kymänen, 2003). this is how economic prerequisites determine the rhythm of everyday life and cause people to make choices (such as the one between full-time and part-time work). in this study, the children did not worry about the sufficiency of money in their family, nor did they bring up their materialistic hopes or claims. apparently, the livelihood of the families in this research was at an adequate level. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 53 similarly, the hectic characteristics of the parents’ demanding work schedules, as well as all the 24/7 operations and services that often accompany them, followed the parents home and thus affected the nature of the “family time”. it has been pointed out that because of, for example, an unexpected firing or furlough, the mutual time for parents and children in a family may be increased but at the same time subverted by concern about the future that exasperates parents, thus affecting the atmosphere at home as well as the quality of interactions between children and parents. it is necessary – although not sufficient as such – for a child and a parent to spend time together in order to create a caring atmosphere at home. a family may realize this after a firing (haverinen & martikainen, 2004; rönkä & korvela, 2009). how do the working parents describe their relationship with their children? the parents transmitted their work-related stress and anxiety into their children’s world. indeed, even a small baby is capable of sensing and noticing a parent’s moods (bowes, 1998; hayes & watt, 1998; näsman, 2003; stern, 1997). the children were aware of how working life made their parents exhausted thereby detracting from their time together. the children proved to be sensitive in recognizing their parents’ moods. a 6-year-old girl observed, “well, she [mom] doesn’t ever play with us or watch tv but dad sometimes does. he would always watch tv on the couch and mom would tell him to clean the table with me and he would always just watch that tv there”. the parents reported they felt exhausted after a workday, as did the children after a daycare day as well. often, the parents had the added strain of completing unfinished work tasks at home. according to the interviews, the tired and busy parents found it difficult to concentrate on the children and their needs. when the parents felt tired, they were impatient; nor did they have the strength to confront the children’s anger. one father noted, “but when you feel really exhausted, the child can provoke you and certainly knows how to make a parent really angry”. the parents expressed how sorry they felt after getting angry with a child and for their inconsistent child rearing in general. the concern over this situation was amplified when the child was also tired after a day spent at daycare. this can easily lead to conflicts and clashes between a child and a parent. fatigue on the part of both parent and child and the arguments caused by it were of great concern for the parents. the children were tired in the mornings at the time of going to daycare. they found this tiredness uncomfortable and unwanted. those children who attended daycare part-time were more satisfied with the everyday rhythm and their amount of sleep. a 6-year-old boy thought: “it is a fitting day by its length…”. the children experienced insufficient rest as uncomfortable. deficient sleep causes headache, restlessness, and concentration difficulties for a child. sufficient good quality sleep improves the body’s immune system, focuses the ability to learn and concentrate, as well as maintaining the healthy fuctioning of the central nervous system. adequate sleep is salient for a child’s well-being, growth, and health (see siren-tiusanen & tiusanen, 2001). the data in this study implies that a parent’s full-time work affects a child’s well-being and vigor, particularly after a daycare day during the weekdays. one of the dads noted: “[i’m] present physically but my thoughts are elsewhere”. this statement illustrates how parents and children may spend time together but still inhabit worlds of their own. korvela (2003) refers to the tension of acting together and separately (p. 145). children easily recognize if a parent’s mind is straying at home or if parents do not concentrate on playing together with them. in these situations, the children may bend and continue playing either alone or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 54 with a sibling or a friend. working life affects family life and vice versa (e.g., bowes, 1998; hayes & watt, 1998; rönkä & korvela, 2009). trouble either at work or in the family life is reflected in the relationship between parent and child. this phenomenon is illustrated by one mother’s utterance: “at the times, when it is extremely hard both at work and in private life, it surely takes enormous amounts of your strength to handle it. i have to admit that i have been quite tired”. the changing situations in family life seemed to affect work most when a child was sick. then, the family has to solve the daycare problem because a sick child cannot go to the daycare center. it is not necessarily easy for a small child’s parents to be absent from work although they have a legal right in finland to do so (see reuna, 1999). some employers seem to be dead set against a parent staying at home to take care of a sick child. naturally, an employer’s inflexible attitude makes a parent feel concern and guilt. a participating mother discusses this dilemma: we have to present the medical certificates. and that too, i call it a snooping note, because they ask where my husband will work and at what time; and they require a signature from his boss… to ensure that we won’t be at home at the same time. because i’m like that, if you have to be out of work a lot because children are often sick one after the other, and yourself as well, then i have a bad conscience. relaxed time together in the weeknights may remain minimal for working parents and children. after preparing dinner and doing housework, it is already so late that there is no time for shared activities. the weekday mornings are busy and even chaotic: “where are your socks?”; “won’t you hurry up now, will you?”. it may be difficult for a child to wake up instantly and a parent’s patience is tested when trying to get the child awake. from a child’s point of view, the reason for this is the hurry and stress caused by a parent’s work (see also kyrönlampi-kylmänen & määttä, 2010). how do the children of the working parents describe their everyday life? the way the children describe the parents’ work. most of the children in this study had a well-defined conception of their parents’ work. the more concrete a parent’s job description was, the easier it was for the children to understand it. in addition, if a child had visited his or her parent’s place of employment, the child found it easier to understand what the parent did for a living, as the following conversation with a 6-year-old girl illustrates: i: where does your mom work? g: at a hospital. i: what does she do there? g: she is a hospital attendant. i: have you visited your mom’s workplace? g: oh yes… when i left my toe under a bench. it was flattened and got a little bit squashed and it was all black. those children who had not visited a parent’s workplace or did not find a parent’s work description as concrete seemed to have difficulties understanding the content of the parent’s work. in the next example, another 6-year-old girl thinks of her mother’s work duties: “she [mom] is a manager somewhere… bosses others… bosses around like this and that… at least they count money there at the workplace… my mom’s”. furthermore, a child does not always find it easy to answer an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 55 adult’s questions (cf., kyrönlampi-kylmänen, 2007), as a 6-year-old girl answers in the following example: i: where does your dad work? g: well, he is there, far away. one child remembered all the things that seemed funny, exciting, and special at his parent’s workplace, such as the coffee machine, stairs, elevators, and extraordinary objects like cable reels. the child described the parent’s workplace in the following manner: “well, there are those weird stairs and a sort of elevator. and then, all the doors are opened in a sort of funny way by pushing a button. i always like to push buttons. the one who pushes it will get in”. respectively, the parents related that they are aware that most of the children know what the parents do for living. those parents whose work even adults find hard to understand knew that the children did not understand what they were doing for work. several parents who worked in the electronics industry stated that they are not allowed to talk about their work in detail. the rhythm of everyday life – a child’s perspective. everyday life in families is moving constantly and always subject to change. everyday life in families consists of daily emotional transfer and a spectrum of various feelings. everyday life in families involves creating an atmosphere, arranging and combining practicalities and schedules (perlow, 1997, 1999). nowadays, most finns do not have to fight against the forces of nature as they did 50 years ago. today, for example, basic groceries can be found in the store and we have enough warm water for laundering. instead, modern everyday life struggles are more likely to concern a problem like combining work and family, as well as other areas of life, or having enough time for the activities that are considered important (daly, 2003; freeman & louca, 2001; rönkä & korvela, 2009). even a child (in this case a 6-year-old boy) distinguished two different worlds in everyday life: “well, i guess it is like leisure. you can act a little bit freely. five days of preschool and two days off”. what was this child talking about? his statement revealed the way he experienced the difference between work and leisure in everyday life: daycare and school took time away from his free time. everyday routines and rhythms are crucial for people’s well-being (felski, 2000). often a lack of these routines causes problems for children and youth. it is an adult’s responsibility to create the routines in a child’s life. routines and repetition make a child’s everyday life familiar and safe because repetition is the supporting structure of everyday life. predictability and repetition of activities frees energy and time for other tasks (see korvela, 2003). in child rearing, it is important to realize the role of daily routines in the experience of a meaningful life. effective everyday life includes the parents initiating and handling daily routines such as cleaning, laundering, going to the grocery store, eating, outdoor activities, and children’s basic care. however, this is not always the case for every family or in every instance. if the everyday life lacks a regular structure, it will cause a child to have feelings of insecurity, as illustrated by the 7-year-old boy narrating the following example: “we always stay up late. i guess we set a record. because even the neighbors go to sleep at 7:00 p.m. but we still make a fuss at home all the time, so the neighbors probably wake up too”. everyday life that lacks regularity and routine is chaotic and unpredictable from the perspectives of both child and parent. previous studies have shown how a disordered and chaotic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 56 everyday life increases children’s disruptive behavior, influences a child’s health (for example, as arterial hypertension), weakens a child’s social skills and ability to play collaboratively, as well as slows down linguistic development (korvela 2003; korvela & keskinen, 2008). this indicates that the significance of a controlled daily rhythm of life in families with children cannot be overstated. a child’s everyday life follows the basic rhythm of his or her significant adults; the changes in the adults’ everyday life are reflected in the child’s everyday life. similarly, adult anxiety is transmitted to children. in this study, the children were clear in their opinion that an ordinary, relaxed everyday life is best. according to these children, the highlights of everyday life were things such as being able to play in peace and, at the same time, being able to relax after a busy day at a daycare center. everyday life reveals the power structures that prevail between adults and children. at speech level, adults express this as “i have the right” whether they refer to daycare, custody, dividing parental leaves between mother and father, visiting rights, or adoption. more rarely, children’s rights are discussed (see, for example, wintersberg, 2000), expressed as, “well, i want to rest on the bed when i’m tired”. how could the preschool-aged children’s wishes be realized? they have to wake up at 5.30 a.m. five days a week. for children, a daycare center represents a place where they are separated from their parents. the time that is shared with a child and a parent can be divided into mutual time at home when a parent is physically present, and the mental time or the remembering time away from home when family members remember each other during the day although they are not physically present and within each other’s sight (gillis, 2003). for children then, the daycare center is also, in part, a place where they have time to reminisce about their parents. thus, the emotional world at the daycare center is tinted with feelings of longing and yearning for a parent (kyrönlampi-kylmänen & määttä, 2010). at some daycare centers in finland, it has been considered important that the children think back to their parents during their time at daycare. the children therefore always have a picture of their family with them when longing for a parent intensely. the picture helps a child to relieve the emotional anxiety that manifests itself to a child as longing for a parent and as a wish to get back home. in this research, the parents did not talk about the nature of the feelings their children would experience during a daycare day. conclusion beyond children’s and parents’ experiences what can be concluded about the results that emerged from the interviews carried out with the working parents and children? what do the results disclose about the situation of today’s finnish families as they struggle between work-related and family-related expectations? the research data was of a comparatively small sample but still reveals something about the everyday life of finnish families. when comparing the answers of the parents and children interviewed in this research with previous studies, a relatively coherent picture of a demanding everyday life is created. the participants in this research were parents and children whose everyday life included parents with full-time jobs and children rotating between home and daycare center. according to the results, although paid work incurred conflicts in everyday life, it also supported the families and parenthood. the parent/child relationship is an entity where all areas of life interact international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 57 with each other. according to rönkä et al. (2009), work sets a rhythm for everyday life; similarly, the search for economic subsistence and security, a parent’s need for development, the company of other adults in the workplace, and maintaining professional skills support parenthood. a refreshed parent can be a better parent for their children. economic security, for its part, creates a relaxed atmosphere in a family whereas a shortage of money induces stress for parents and tension in the atmosphere of the family. the results of this study could be complemented by or compared with, for example, interviews with those families that are able to take care of children in the home when the children are small. these families do not necessarily have the best financial standing but may content themselves with a more moderate and lower living standard in exchange for more time spent with their children in the early years of life. elaborating the research method an interview situation always includes several issues that the researcher has to consider beforehand, whether the interviewee is an adult or a child. adults are accustomed to or comfortable with producing information about their families but the children are less so. when it comes to interviewing children, one does not necessarily know how to ask questions in a child-like way: what the child’s life is like, what the child’s experiences are like, and what acting in the child’s position is like (alanen, 2009). in this study during the first interviews, some of the interview questions seemed to represent an adult-centered point of view; these questions were not of importance in a child’s world. drawing up questions suitable for the children was challenging because as an adult, the researcher saw the world quite differently than a child. an interview can be considered as a researcher-dependent method of collecting data. this feature is emphasized when conducting a study by interviewing children. in every interview, a researcher enters the foreign land where the interviewee decides how far they will travel and how profoundly the experiences will be discussed. reaching other people’s experiences always demands consideration and humility but these features become particularly important when doing child interviews (perttula, 1995; rauhala, 2005). academic research does not always favor the equal relationship between a researcher and a research subject. a non-verbal expression, such as a look or smile, is an important way by which a child can be supported in an interview situation. it is important that a researcher express both by non-verbal and verbal communication that he or she really wants to listen to the child and hear what the child has to say. generally, a fluent and democratic dialogue is based on equality and respect. then, both child and adult have the space to elicit their thoughts and contemplations in turn. a research interview should resemble as much as possible an everyday conversation. the word “chitchat” could describe the spirit of an interview during which the conversation moves on by a dialogic and equal interaction between a child and an adult. the adult’s active and intensive listening influences the child’s will to carry on the dialogue (e.g., samuelson, 2005). a child’s point of view often remains in the background when the image of the child becomes erroneous and one-sided. an adult’s perspective is differently emphasized than that of a child’s. children’s experiences are left in the background, are thought to be less important. in this study, by contrast, the purpose was to bring the children’s experiences together with those of the adults, and give as much space as possible to all their voices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 58 discussion finland has a high standard of living, a well-established educational system, and a high level of technology. both women and men actively participate in working life. this is manifested in a high gross domestic product and standard of living. this reality raises these questions: how does this success appear from the point of view of families’ everyday life? who takes care of everyday life and children’s well-being? working life and parental work schedules interfere with the responsibilities of parenthood. in finland, one of the present government’s aims is to encourage more equal use of family leaves between women and men, referring to a so-called 6+6+6 model according to which fathers and mothers take turns being at home with their children. this is rooted in the idea of strengthening the likelihood of fathers taking a family leave. what possibilities promote the sharing of the family leaves or contemplate the practice of part-time work? parents’ freedom of choice is restricted by workplace culture, society’s conceptions of acceptable solutions, and differences in the wages of women and men, as well as prevailing models of the distribution of work within families. unfortunately, a corporate employee who has been on an extended family leaves gets fired or laid off more easily. in public discourse, a father having a family leave is considered as “a hero”. on the other hand in finland, a woman has to make excuses if she, for example, wants to resign from a secretary’s position. the threat is that the inequality between women and men will continue growing if bending the working hours and work tasks rely just on women despite the nominal opportunities provided by the state discussed at the beginning of this article. the weekly working hours conform to the phases of life to a certain extent. in finland, the parents are entitled to cut their working hours until their child completes grade 2. however, parttime work has not been regularized in finnish working life, especially with respect to gender division, in the same way as in sweden and the proportion of those finnish parents who work parttime or reduced hours is relatively small. the reason for this originates from the 1960s when mothers increasingly started to work in finland. therefore, those families with housewives and male breadwinners remained more unusual than elsewhere in europe (e.g., aaltio-marjosola, 2001; hoschild, 2000). part-time work would make it possible to have more relaxed everyday life and to enjoy the positive aspects of work. part-time work provides more time, more flexibility, and perhaps more strength to confront the challenges that accompany a child’s development. in addition, it may have a positive influence on the parents’ mutual relationship. nevertheless, part-time work also affects a family’s income level. employers and labor market organizations have not noticed the effect their policies may have on child rearing: these institutions have not historically wanted to cut parents’ daily working hours. government laws no longer control working hours because the corporate and organizational culture now has a central role in determining work schedules. the enterprise sector would need new mechanisms for arranging working hours that cater to people’s changing life situations. on average, the weekly working hours have increased (for example, administrative employees work approximately 48 hours per week). later in life, a parent might feel guilty for having to work long hours when the children are small, even if he or she really wanted to work reduced hours and spend more time with the children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 46–64 59 a new phenomenon has occurred within the last 15 years in finland, namely concern for the permanency of work. labor markets have become insecure and temporary jobs are common, primarily among young women. the culture in enterprises and organizations can be rough. when returning to work from a maternity leave, a woman’s work may have been given to another employee or her position may even have been axed while she has been taking care of her baby at home. at the legislative level, employees’ protections should be strengthened because the children are our future. the family’s everyday life and the time parents and children spend together have become more and more scheduled during the last 100 years. parents and children spend time together on holidays and weekends. however, the demand for evening, weekend, and nighttime care has increased both in big and small cities. will it be positive for child development if the need for daycare is totally dependent on the demands of working life? in addition, stores in finland are now permitted to open on sundays complicating children’s daycare arrangement for more parents, particularly the parents of school-aged children. there are no daycare possibilities for school-aged children on weekends, a problem that is especially acute for single parents. the complications of everyday life and the potential solutions discussed in this article concern the whole society and its future. all the stress and anxiety at work are transmitted to a child’s everyday life. children are aware that a parent’s paid work requires energy and attention that could be used when playing and being together with them. work becomes a so-called third party, not only in a relationship between parents, but also in the relationship between parent and child. an intense working pace and the overall speeding up of modern life make one wonder whether parents have enough time, strength, and energy to be together with their children. do they have the strength and time to listen to a child’s everyday joys and sorrows after work? 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(2000). childhood perspectives and policies. in h. cavanna (ed.), the new citizenship of the family. comparative perspectives (pp. 173–190). aldershot, uk: ashgate. microsoft word 11 introduction_revised.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221029 towards a localized understanding of violence against children and adolescents in africa doris m. kakuru abstract: despite global and african continental efforts to curb violence against children (vac), it is the fourth leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 19 in africa, according to a 2021 unicef report. in introducing this special issue on vac in africa, i contend that violence prevention and response efforts ought to be situated in local understandings of how violence is inflicted and experienced. sociocultural and political ideals and values present in africa nurture an atmosphere in which adults exercise power over children’s lives and can inflict harm upon them if they choose. age-based power (adultism) facilitates vac. therefore, this special issue is underpinned by childism as a framework for challenging adultism in an effort to achieve a contextualized understanding of vac in africa, and how best to respond to and ultimately prevent it. keywords: violence against children, children’s rights, childism, adultism, child protection doris m. kakuru is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 2 violence can be broadly described as a manifestation of power (churchill, 2011) between two groups or individuals. according to the world health organization (who; 2014): violence is “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, or against a group or community that either results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” (p. 2) violence against children (vac) includes corporal punishment, sexual violence (rape/forced sex), child marriage, female genital mutilation, murder, and child labour (vohito, 2017). other forms of vac are consensual sex involving a child (“defilement”), child neglect, verbal abuse, emotional violence, cyberviolence, and so on. vac can be categorized as overt (e.g., corporal punishment) or covert (e.g., child neglect), and as physical or psychological (churchill, 2011). vac happens wherever children are to be found: in homes, schools, communities, care institutions, on the streets, and online. although vac is sometimes associated with harmful cultural practices, this is not always the case. violence also occurs within a legal framework that legitimizes oppression (tamale, 2020). vac affects approximately one billion children aged 2 to 17 worldwide every year (who, 2020, p. 12). over the past decades, there has been a surge in global attention on the importance of eradicating vac. article 19 of the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc; 1989) addresses vac and the specific protective measures that states party to the crc must undertake. additionally, general comment no. 13 (2011) on the crc addresses the need for children to enjoy the right to freedom from all forms of violence, including protection from corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment (un committee on the rights of the child, 2011, pp. 8–9). in 2016, the african committee on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc) launched africa’s agenda for children 2040, which promotes ending all forms of vac (acerwc, 2016). target 16.2 of the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development focuses on ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking, torture, and all forms of vac (un general assembly, 2015, p. 25). in addition, a wide array of pan-african regional and national strategies, action plans, policies, and laws aimed at eradicating violations of children’s rights have been put in place by governments across sub-saharan africa. for example, the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (organization of african unity [oau], 1990) came into force in 1999. in 2016, the african partnership to end violence against children (apevac)1 was created as a pan-african platform to promote a continent-wide movement and conversation around preventing and responding to vac. 1 https://www.iwf.org.uk/about-us/our-international-work/international-partnerships/african-partnership-to-endviolence-against-children/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 3 the continent of africa is currently home to over 20% of the world’s children (united nations department of economic and social affairs, 2020); it is also home to the highest number of children deserving a better childhood. despite global and continental child protection efforts, vac annually impacts at least 82% of african children aged 2 to 17 years (better care network, 2017, p. 10). recent studies suggest that cases of vac skyrocketed during the covid-19 pandemic (see haffejee & levine, 2020; katz et al., 2021; sserwanja et al., 2021). violence ranks as the fourth highest cause of death for young people aged 15 to 19 in africa (unicef, 2021). before proceeding to an overview of the articles in this special issue, i will give a general description of the theoretical framework within which they are situated. the case for childism childism is an extension of childhood studies that is critical of developmentalist conceptions of children as “becomings” instead of “beings” (qvortrup, 1985). according to childism, we can only understand childhood properly if we look at society differently (warming, 2020). childism is a lens “for critiquing the deeply engrained adultism that pervades scholarship and societies and reconstructing more age-inclusive research and social imaginations” (wall, 2019, p. 257). childism views adults as able to exploit the lesser age of children and youths to exercise control over their lives. such control is a source of adultism, which is a form of oppression and discrimination against children and young people (alderson, 2020; wall, 2019). i agree with christensen (2010), who asserted that an individual’s location within a hierarchically structured society determines their susceptibility to harm. for african children, simply being young increases their exposure to violence and negatively impacts their agentive abilities with regard to vac. the african sociocultural and political context gives adults decisive control over children and youth irrespective of their evolving capacities. the convention on the rights of the child requires adults to recognize that children’s competencies evolve as they grow (lansdown, 2005). limited recognition of evolving capacities blocks children’s agency (sami, 2022) and ratifies generational power inequalities. following wall (2019), i contend that vac in africa is rooted in the unequal power relations between children and adults. those power relations are, in turn, ingrained in formal attitudes (e.g., adultism, colonialism) as well as social institutions (e.g., schools, judiciary), which sustain systemic violence (curtin & litke, 1999). hence, adultism facilitates the violation of children’s right to a safe and secure environment free of corporal punishment, sexual violence, child/forced marriage, female genital mutilation, child sacrifice, and other harmful cultural practices and beliefs. africa has a diversity of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts that directly and indirectly dictate how violence is experienced, responded to, and prevented. the contextual factors that disempower children are crucial in sustaining violence. they shape the extent and range of vac and the existence and implementation of child protection legal frameworks (vohito, 2017), or lack thereof. to boost afrocentric vac prevention and response mechanisms, all stakeholders should take a childism stance on children’s rights policy, programs, practice, and research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 4 therefore, this special issue is underpinned by childism as a framework for challenging adultism, which is necessary if africa is to achieve a contextualized understanding of vac, and how best to prevent and respond to it. additionally, this issue is grounded in the contention that addressing vac in sub-saharan africa will require “unpacking the cultural discourses through which children’s everyday lives, as children, are constructed on an ongoing and mundane basis” (james, 2011, p. 168). to this end, the creation of the apevac by the african child policy forum to advance the implementation of target 16.2 of the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development can be viewed as a step in the right direction. an abundance of scholarly work has been done on violence in african childhoods over the past decades (see artz et al., 2018; kaawa-mafigiri & walakira, 2017; vohito, 2017; wangamati et al., 2018). however, scholars have focused on children’s experiences of violence and how it impacts their well-being with only limited reference to prevention and response initiatives. while highlighting the magnitude of violence is crucial, it is not enough to bring about the desired changes in policy and programming. this special issue gives prominence to the localized dimensions of vac prevention and response to shed light on future possibilities for african children and adolescents. the issue spotlights work that has been done or reviewed on the continent by africans to bring to the fore localized understandings of vac prevention and response. throughout this issue, the authors demonstrate that the prevention of and response to violence should be put into an african childhood contextual perspective. overview of the articles in the first article, julie ada tchoukou explains that, while some studies underscore the relevance of social norms to the persistence of violence against girls in nigeria, those norms are not the only factor. tchoukou uses a critical legal studies lens to reveal the organizational structures of control in which ideologies confronting girls are embedded, and how norms are used as an excuse for inaction by the government and political elite. she asserts that remedies to violence against nigerian girls must focus on institutional change as well as social transformation. one of the articles in this volume addresses the childism movement’s concern in regard to ageinclusivity in research by focusing on children’s participation in vac research. mathew amollo et al. demonstrate how research based on participatory learning and action can empower community members to take ownership of solutions to vac, thereby reducing its prevalence and impact. the authors highlight the importance of scaling up positive parenting as a strategy for fostering a community intolerance of vac. the article by harriet murage et al. (2022) discusses psychotherapy dropout among survivors of child sexual abuse in kenya. the study identifies parents’ income status, perpetrators’ relationship with the survivor or their family, lack of knowledge about psychotherapy, and parental involvement as contributing to psychotherapy adherence or attrition. the authors highlight the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 5 centrality of parental and community support to achieving successful psychotherapy for survivors of child sexual abuse. the next two articles focus on children’s safety online. sylvia tuikong discusses cyberviolence induced by publishing children’s pictures online, with a focus on kenya. the article recommends strengthening the implementation of safety measures to enhance children’s safety while online, and suggests that parents and caregivers refrain from publishing their children’s photographs. the concern for children’s safety online is reiterated in roseline olumbe’s article, which analyzes cybercrimes in a sample of 125 children aged 13 to 17. olumbe discusses children’s exposure to the risk of pornography, cyberbullying, viewing harmful content, hateful messaging, and sexualized violence. she recommends strengthening measures for enhancing children’s safety in both urban and rural areas. the article by rongedzayi fambasayi and rejoice shamiso katsidzira discusses the role of cities in ending vac. this is a timely topic given the centrality of city governments in child protection, particularly in a context where the number of children and adolescents living in cities is constantly growing. focusing on city-level violence prevention and response strategies in south africa, fambasayi and katsidzira review laws, policies, and strategies in relation to vac. they argue that having policy strategies localized at the city level is essential for protecting children from violence. special section: networking for prevention of and response to vac in east africa the special section of this special issue focuses on networks and networking to prevent and respond to vac in east africa. according to who (2020), strengthening ties between child protection actors is necessary for accelerating the elimination of vac. nevertheless, approaches to vac in east africa are often disconnected and sporadic. networking for vac prevention and response has not been well understood because it has hitherto received little attention in scholarly work. civsource africa (2020), an independent advisory organization, conducted a study to understand the functionality and connectivity of existing networks and their impact on the prevention of vac and the realization of children’s rights in east africa. the results of that study reveal how east african networks operate at national, sub-national, and grassroots levels and comprise ties between state and non-state actors. the four articles in the special section present findings on grassroots networks in east africa, networking dynamics in tanzania, the dichotomy between formal and informal networks in uganda, and state actors in kenya. the first paper in this special section, by doris m. kakuru, annah kamusiime, kylee lindner, and jacqueline asiimwe, examines the role of grassroots networks in vac prevention and response work in kenya, uganda, and tanzania. the authors are critical of the fact that while grassroots network actors do the bulk of vac prevention and response work, formal networks receive the lion’s share of recognition in policy decision-making, programming, and social science research. consequently, vac philanthropy is informed by a blurry and limited conceptualization of networking as a form of existence rather than a function. in order to achieve enduring international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 6 consolidated success in vac prevention and response, the authors prescribe the centring of grassroots networks in programming and philanthropic efforts for east africa. the next article, by annah kamusiime and colleagues, discusses the dynamics of vac networking in tanzania. kamusiime et al. show how various actors make strategic decisions to create a stronger voice, with improved visibility, increased resources, and enhanced impact. the benefits of networks notwithstanding, tanzanian vac networks face challenges that call for joint reflexivity and deliberate strategies to strengthen their ties. in the third article in this section, doris m. kakuru, annah kamusiime, martha kibukamusoke and colleagues question the unequal access of dominant and subordinate actors to recognition and resources in uganda. while formal networks are better resourced, more visible, and more widely recognized, informal network are invisibilized in government plans, philanthropic efforts, and scholarly research. the authors assert that a more collaborative and inclusive vac networking landscape is instrumental to enhancing vac prevention and accelerating response. the final article by jacqueline nassimbwa et al. analyzes the involvement of state actors in vac networks in kenya, where non-state actors dominate the child protection networking environment. the authors challenge the absence of government actors in the vac networking discourse and contend that, despite the loose ties between state and non-state networks, vac state actors should not be relegated to the periphery. the articles in this special issue speak to the importance of working towards a contextualized understanding of vac. the involvement of children, families, and communities in generating knowledge about and remedies for vac based on local understanding is pivotal. since unequal power relations between young people and adults underlie the perpetration of vac, policies, programs, practices, and research for vac prevention and response will be beneficial to the extent that adultism can be addressed. future research could explore how generational power inequities can be exploited to prevent rather than perpetuate vac. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 1–9 7 references african committee on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc). 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(2018). communities’ perceptions of factors contributing to child sexual abuse vulnerability in kenya: a qualitative study. culture, health & sexuality, 20(12), 1394–1408. doi:10.1080/13691058.2018.1438666 warming, h. (2020). childism. in d. t. cook (ed.), the sage encyclopedia of children and childhood studies (vol. 1, pp. 356–357). sage. doi:10.4135/9781529714388.n137 world health organization. (2014). global status report on violence prevention 2014. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241564793 world health organization. (2020). global status report on preventing violence against children 2020. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/332394 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 review essay learning from the political theories of the young philippa collin a review essay based on constance flanagan’s 2013 book, teenage citizens: the political theories of the young. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. isbn: 978-0-674-04862-1. philippa collin is a research program leader of the young and well cooperative research centre and a senior research fellow at the institute for culture and society, university of western sydney, building em, parramatta campus, locked bag 1797, penrith nsw 2751, australia. e-mail: p.collin@westernsydney.edu.au while recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in situated and comparative analysis of youth civic engagement and political participation, questions of political socialisation have received relatively less attention. this is in part the product of a branching of scholarship in youth political participation underpinned theoretically by either a developmental or a social model of childhood and youth. despite moving away from the classic theories of stage-based development, such as those offered by piaget and freud, towards a life-course perspective, developmental approaches have nonetheless often positioned young people as “becoming citizens”. in contrast, studies adopting a social model have argued for a difference-based conception of children and young people (lister, 2008) “as citizens” whose political opinions and actions are obscured by adult-centric discourses and social structures. consequently, though much of the research and collaboration in the field has been interdisciplinary, these two strands have developed in distinct trajectories. yet both have tended to focus on what can be identified, measured, or qualified regarding what young people “know” and “do”, failing in the process to sufficiently explain how political socialisation is achieved (frazer & emler, 1997; henn, weinstein, & wring, 2002; coleman & rowe, 2005). mailto:p.collin@westernsydney.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 772 the field of political socialisation, with its roots in functionalist and developmental psychology, has also met with criticism, particularly for its tendency to focus on system stability and not the development of political subjectivities, communities, and cultures (for a good summary, see edwards, 2012). in her new book, teenage citizens: the political theories of the young, constance flanagan seeks to address these concerns. while pursuing a largely normative project, flanagan breaks with many of the theoretical and methodological traditions of the field to focus on the question of what young people make of politics: how they conceptualise political issues, their role as citizens, and their place within formal political processes. as with much research in the field, she examines knowledge and attitudes but takes a youth-centred approach that emphasises how young people make meaning of such central concepts in democratic theory as the state, equality, trust, and participation. her use of a life-course approach acknowledges development and change throughout life, not just in adolescence, and the key role of context, but stops short of invoking a generational line. impressively drawing together over two decades of research and data from four different studies, flanagan explains how teenagers develop political feelings, ideas, and capabilities. significantly, she weaves together quantitative and qualitative data in her analysis, ensuring that general and specific views can be adopted. the voices of young people are clearly presented and are the foundation of flanagan’s claim that young people develop “socially mediated political lay theories” based on “their experience of the terms of the social contract that binds them to other members of their communities” (p. 228). the concept of a social contract is, as flanagan acknowledges, highly problematic. nevertheless, she deploys it as a conceptual tool to analyse the relationship between the dominant political, economic, cultural, and social arrangements of society, and young people’s everyday interactions in local institutions and relationships. to make this claim, she first establishes the critical role of context through discussion of data from a study comparing stable western democracies (the united states, australia, and sweden) with countries whose democracies were in “transition” or “flux” (bulgaria, the czech republic, and hungary). from there the analysis is largely grounded in research in the united states, and while the specifics of the studies, measures, and analysis are not always easy to discern due to the presentation of this material, the overall structure of the book is clear and the writing is sophisticated, but accessible. covering substantial theoretical terrain and drawing in much empirical data, the book presents a summary of the conceptual framework of the research, followed by chapters looking at youth perspectives on the role of the state; notions of national identity and citizenship; definitions of democracy; laws, regulation, and public good; inequality; social trust; and community service. through use of diverse data, flanagan shows that young people develop ideas and commitments to civic norms and values, in their everyday contexts of home, school, and community and through the interpersonal relationships constituted therein, notably those of parents, peers, and teachers. it is somewhat surprising then, that significant features of contemporary youth everyday life — especially the media and the internet — are not considered. new contexts and networks of political socialisation there is now a sizable body of work that demonstrates that young people have a more expansive conception of politics and participation than is commonly captured in most quantitative research (see harris, wyn, & younes, 2007; marsh, o’toole, & jones, 2007; harris, 2013; collin, 2015). this literature points to the increasing, if uneven, role of the internet and other technologies for youth political practice: seeking news, information on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 773 issues and politics, communicating with peers and relatives, joining or participating in online organisations or interest groups, cultural expression, and exploring views on social and political issues (stanyer, 2005;vromen, 2007; banaji & buckingham, 2013). while there are widely divergent standpoints on the extent to which the internet mobilises new political actors or increases engagement, it is generally accepted that social life is increasingly digitally mediated and networked. and while going online is a daily activity for most young people in advanced western democracies, quality of use and access continues to be shaped by social structures such as gender and socio-economic and cultural background (mossberger, 2007; vromen, 2007; boyd, 2014). where flanagan is primarily interested in how young people develop views and values, scholarship in the area of digital participation has theorised a range of characteristics salient to contemporary youthful “political subjectivities” (edwards, 2012) or to what loader, vromen, and xenos (2014) term the “networked young citizen”. these include an explicit emphasis on identity, personalisation, participation, and horizontal relations for civic and political engagement. these approaches often examine how young people conceptualise and engage with politics, and the relationships, practices, and contexts that feature in the formation of political subjectivity. these approaches take seriously the role of online and networked media in ways that are directly relevant to flanagan’s project. for example, while her finding that exposure to controversy — a key factor in the development of an ethic of civic participation — has particular policy implications in the domains of family and education, this also connects with research on how information and ideas travel online shaping understanding and views of political issues. for example, while some are concerned about an “echo chamber” effect, recent international comparative research finds that regular review of a social media news feed can expose young people to incidental information on political issues and activities they might not otherwise be knowledgeable about or interested in (xenos, vromen, & loader, 2014). studies also point to the way participation and membership in community, faith, and interest-based organisations are changing, theorised variously as a decline in social capital (putnam, 2000) or a shift from what norris has termed “a politics of loyalty” (i.e., loyalty to traditional political actors, organisations, institutions, and processes) to a “politics of choice” (i.e., embracing new forms of participation, new targets for political expression, and forms of collective action) (norris, 2002, 2003). while young people may not be undertaking volunteer activities or membership in traditional organisations such as churches, charities, and political parties (collin, 2008), they are, nevertheless, what harris and colleagues have termed “joiners” (harris et al., 2007) who are likely to participate in online and local activities run by community groups, organisations, and networks. key to this is an acknowledgement of changes to the form and engagement strategies of some community organisations in the context of the affordances of digital technologies and the personalisation of politics (chadwick, 2007; vromen, 2011; collin, 2015). though flanagan points to the important role of community organisations as sites for community service and “service learning”, she does not consider the implications of such shifts. this highlights another significant question: how can understandings of the processes underpinning the development of political identity support a move beyond a narrow focus on what should be done to young people and their immediate contexts to broader questions about the kinds of political cultures and public institutions that engage with and serve the interests of “teenage citizens”? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 774 the role of formal political institutions and policy discourses from the outset, flanagan challenges narrow conceptions of politics “as the business of government and the result of electoral contests” (p. 1) arguing, as have others in political sociology, that politics concerns membership of communities and the practices of shaping the kind of society we want to live in (vromen, 2003). she focuses on the connections between the development of political views and behaviours, historically and culturally embedded practices and beliefs, and the sites where political socialisation takes place to demonstrate that the political theories young people develop tend to reflect their context. this acknowledges how young people’s views are influenced by the macro social, political, and economic arrangements of societies but does not specifically examine how their lived experiences are shaped by the principles and practices of the political systems in which they live. yet research in both the united kingdom and australian contexts demonstrates that young people are sensitive to the ways in which they are constructed by the political system: as citizens-in-waiting, and as either deficient or apathetic (see marsh et al., 2007; collin, 2015). in my own research with young people in australia and the united kingdom, young people described feeling sidelined by formal political processes and actors and believed that decision-makers and other political elites discounted and delimited their views and interests (collin, 2015). such insights lead to one of the most crucial questions of our time: how can new knowledge about the development and nature of contemporary political identities inform a rejuvenation of political institutions, processes, and culture in order to bridge the disconnect and lack of trust that young — and old — citizens report in relation to formal political institutions and actors? in the coda, flanagan tentatively responds to this question by arguing for more opportunities for young people to participate in community-level decision-making. however, how such a recommendation translates to broader institutional and political processes is not explored. as vromen and i have argued, a focus on how this can be achieved is critical given the persistent disconnect between the views of young people and policy-makers regarding the role young people can play in policy processes (vromen & collin, 2010). can paying attention to young people’s views give hope for the future of democracy? flanagan’s empirical exploration of the political theories of the young provides an opportunity to revisit, reconsider, and challenge established theories of what politics means in contemporary society and how it is learned, enacted, and negotiated. consistent with several decades of research on youth participation, flanagan finds that young people are more politically engaged when they can influence decisions and outcomes in meaningful ways, and she calls for educators, politicians, public servants, community leaders, and parents to engage in dialogue with young people. but her discussion of the policy implications is disappointingly brief. she does not, for instance, tackle the question of what kinds of politics, policies, and public institutions can foster democratic norms and values capable of both genuine engagement with people young and old and effectively dealing with the complex policy issues of our times. her commitment to a civic republican conception of the role of civic engagement for the cultivation of good citizens reinscribes young people as the object of interventions. this limits the role of contestation — the very quality flanagan argues is core to the development of an ethics of civic participation — which can also be understood as the basis of a more radical conception of citizenship (for a more detailed discussion, see marsh et al., 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 775 overall flanagan makes a welcome and well-argued case for studies of political socialisation to focus on the process of political development in a way that accounts for young people’s perspectives, and the roles of emotion, identity, and context. this is a call that must be made more loudly within the discipline of political science, where normative, institutional, and individualised approaches to political engagement, and quantitative methods for measurement, have dominated. flanagan argues we should view young people as valued citizens who can improve democracy in the present through increased engagement with political controversies, political processes, and decision-making. however, the central concern of the book is: how can we cultivate active citizens for the future? this is ultimately because the focus is on how to effect change in young people, and not what is required of social and political institutions and adult actors. in recent years many western governments have rolled back support for youth affairs and advocacy, adopting neoliberal policies that emphasise individual responsibility and local level participation by reducing social welfare, discontinuing mechanisms that connect young people directly to government debate and decision-making, and advocating initiatives to promote youth enterprise. in this context, we should take seriously flanagan’s final call, in the tradition of peter levine, “to have a public conversation about the normative reasons for the civic programs that we propose” (p. 237). this should entail serious examination of the degree to which the design and quality of civics education produces tangible and desirable effects (manning & edwards, 2013). moreover, policy implications should not only consider how to strengthen engagement with young people in general but also creatively address persistent inequalities and exclusion that many young people perceive in existing policies and programs (vromen, 2012). harris (2012) reminds us that even policy discourses that promote young people’s participation can produce categories of exclusion and “failed citizenship” for those who don’t meet normative expectations of the actualising, resourceful, entrepreneurial young citizen. nevertheless, in this highly accessible book, flanagan demonstrates there are multiple ways young people develop political theories and that the relationships and activities that constitute this learning (in the family, in school, in communities) in fact shape the communities and society they live in. political socialisation is therefore a fundamentally dynamic process, and requires more creative and engaged forms of policy-making and practice. the development of the political theories of the young is not straightforward, simple, or linear. rather, the political theories of the young represent a process of life-work: of coming to know, to contest, to define, and to shape the political contours of society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 776 references boyd, d. (2014). it's complicated: the social lives of networked teens. new haven, ct: yale university press. chadwick, a. (2007). digital network repertoires and organizational hybridity. political communication, 24, 283–301. coleman, s., & rowe, c. (2005) remixing citizenship: democracy and young people’s use of the internet. london, uk: carnegie young people initiative. collin, p. (2008). young people imagining a new democracy: a literature review. sydney, australia: the whitlam institute. collin, p. (2015). young citizens and political participation: addressing the democratic disconnect. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. edwards, k. (2012). political socialisation. in r. smith, a. vromen, & i. cook, (eds.), contemporary politics in australia: theories, practices and issues (pp. 83–93). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. frazer, e. & emler, n. (1997). participation and citizenship: a new agenda for youth politics research? in j. bynner, l. chisholm, & a. furlong (eds.), youth, citizenship and social change in a european context (pp. 171–195). brookfield, vt: ashgate publishing. harris, a. (2012). citizenship stories. in n. lesko & s. talburt, (eds.), keywords in youth studies: tracing affects, movements, knowledges (pp. 143–152). new york, ny: routledge. harris, a. (2013). young people and everyday multiculturalism. new york, ny: routledge. harris, a., wyn, j., & younes, s. (2007). young people and citizenship: an everyday perspective. youth studies australia, 26(3), 19–27. henn, m., weinstein, m., & wring, d. (2002). a generation apart? youth and political participation in britain. british journal of politics and international relations, 4(2), 167–192. lister, r. (2008). unpacking children's citizenship. in j. williams & a. invernizzi, (eds.), children and citizenship (1st ed.) (pp. 9–19). london, uk: sage. loader, b. d., vromen, a., & xenos, m. a. (2014). the networked young citizen: social media, political participation and civic engagement. information, communication & society, 17, 143–150. manning, n., & edwards, k. (2013). does civic education for young people increase political participation? a systematic review. educational review, 66(1), 22–45. marsh, d., o’toole, t., & jones, s. (2007). young people and politics in the uk: apathy or alienation? basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10584600701471666 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137348838 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139192552 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203805909 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203082980 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-856x.t01-1-00001 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446214756.n1 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2013.871571 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.763767 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230625631 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 771–777 777 norris, p. (2002). democratic phoenix: reinventing political activism, cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. norris, p. (2003). young people and political activism: from the politics of loyalties to the politics of choice? cambridge, ma: j.f kennedy school of government. putnam, r. (2000). bowling alone. the collapse and revival of american community. new york, ny: simon & schuster. stanyer, j. (2005). the british public and political attitude expression: the emergence of a self-expressive political culture? contemporary politics, 11(1), 19–32. vromen, a. (2003). 'people try to put us down... ': participatory citizenship of 'generation x'. australian journal of political science, 38(1), 79–99. vromen, a. (2007). australian young people's participatory practices and internet use. information, communication & society, 10(1), 48–68. vromen, a. (2011). constructing australian youth online. information, communication and society, 14, 959–980. vromen, a. (2012). youth participation from the top down: the perspectives of government and community sector decision makers in australia. in j. van deth & w. maloney, (eds.), new participatory dimensions in civil society: professionalization and individualized collective action (pp. 212–230). abingdon, uk: routledge. vromen, a., & collin, p. (2010). everyday youth participation? contrasting views from australian policymakers and young people. young: nordic journal of youth research, 18(1), 97–112. xenos, m., vromen, a., & loader, b. d. (2014). the great equalizer? patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies. information, communication & society, 17(2), 151–167. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511610073 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569770500098623 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1036114032000056260 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691180701193044 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2010.549236 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203142738 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/110330880901800107 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2013.871318 review essay learning from the political theories of the young philippa collin philippa collin is a research program leader of the young and well cooperative research centre and a senior research fellow at the institute for culture and society, university of western sydney, building em, parramatta campus, locked bag 1797, penrit... while recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in situated and comparative analysis of youth civic engagement and political participation, questions of political socialisation have received relatively less attention. this is in part the product of... the field of political socialisation, with its roots in functionalist and developmental psychology, has also met with criticism, particularly for its tendency to focus on system stability and not the development of political subjectivities, communitie... impressively drawing together over two decades of research and data from four different studies, flanagan explains how teenagers develop political feelings, ideas, and capabilities. significantly, she weaves together quantitative and qualitative data ... to make this claim, she first establishes the critical role of context through discussion of data from a study comparing stable western democracies (the united states, australia, and sweden) with countries whose democracies were in “transition” or “fl... there is now a sizable body of work that demonstrates that young people have a more expansive conception of politics and participation than is commonly captured in most quantitative research (see harris, wyn, & younes, 2007; marsh, o’toole, & jones, 2... where flanagan is primarily interested in how young people develop views and values, scholarship in the area of digital participation has theorised a range of characteristics salient to contemporary youthful “political subjectivities” (edwards, 2012) ... studies also point to the way participation and membership in community, faith, and interest-based organisations are changing, theorised variously as a decline in social capital (putnam, 2000) or a shift from what norris has termed “a politics of loya... this highlights another significant question: how can understandings of the processes underpinning the development of political identity support a move beyond a narrow focus on what should be done to young people and their immediate contexts to broade... from the outset, flanagan challenges narrow conceptions of politics “as the business of government and the result of electoral contests” (p. 1) arguing, as have others in political sociology, that politics concerns membership of communities and the pr... in the coda, flanagan tentatively responds to this question by arguing for more opportunities for young people to participate in community-level decision-making. however, how such a recommendation translates to broader institutional and political proc... flanagan’s empirical exploration of the political theories of the young provides an opportunity to revisit, reconsider, and challenge established theories of what politics means in contemporary society and how it is learned, enacted, and negotiated. c... overall flanagan makes a welcome and well-argued case for studies of political socialisation to focus on the process of political development in a way that accounts for young people’s perspectives, and the roles of emotion, identity, and context. this... in recent years many western governments have rolled back support for youth affairs and advocacy, adopting neoliberal policies that emphasise individual responsibility and local level participation by reducing social welfare, discontinuing mechanisms ... nevertheless, in this highly accessible book, flanagan demonstrates there are multiple ways young people develop political theories and that the relationships and activities that constitute this learning (in the family, in school, in communities) in f... references boyd, d. (2014). it's complicated: the social lives of networked teens. new haven, ct: yale university press. chadwick, a. (2007). digital network repertoires and organizational hybridity. political communication, 24, 283–301. coleman, s., & rowe, c. (2005) remixing citizenship: democracy and young people’s use of the internet. london, uk: carnegie young people initiative. collin, p. (2008). young people imagining a new democracy: a literature review. sydney, australia: the whitlam institute. collin, p. (2015). young citizens and political participation: addressing the democratic disconnect. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. edwards, k. (2012). political socialisation. in r. smith, a. vromen, & i. cook, (eds.), contemporary politics in australia: theories, practices and issues (pp. 83–93). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. frazer, e. & emler, n. (1997). participation and citizenship: a new agenda for youth politics research? in j. bynner, l. chisholm, & a. furlong (eds.), youth, citizenship and social change in a european context (pp. 171–195). brookfield, vt: ashgate p... harris, a. (2012). citizenship stories. in n. lesko & s. talburt, (eds.), keywords in youth studies: tracing affects, movements, knowledges (pp. 143–152). new york, ny: routledge. harris, a. (2013). young people and everyday multiculturalism. new york, ny: routledge. harris, a., wyn, j., & younes, s. (2007). young people and citizenship: an everyday perspective. youth studies australia, 26(3), 19–27. henn, m., weinstein, m., & wring, d. (2002). a generation apart? youth and political participation in britain. british journal of politics and international relations, 4(2), 167–192. lister, r. (2008). unpacking children's citizenship. in j. williams & a. invernizzi, (eds.), children and citizenship (1st ed.) (pp. 9–19). london, uk: sage. loader, b. d., vromen, a., & xenos, m. a. (2014). the networked young citizen: social media, political participation and civic engagement. information, communication & society, 17, 143–150. manning, n., & edwards, k. (2013). does civic education for young people increase political participation? a systematic review. educational review, 66(1), 22–45. marsh, d., o’toole, t., & jones, s. (2007). young people and politics in the uk: apathy or alienation? basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. norris, p. (2002). democratic phoenix: reinventing political activism, cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. norris, p. (2003). young people and political activism: from the politics of loyalties to the politics of choice? cambridge, ma: j.f kennedy school of government. putnam, r. (2000). bowling alone. the collapse and revival of american community. new york, ny: simon & schuster. stanyer, j. (2005). the british public and political attitude expression: the emergence of a self-expressive political culture? contemporary politics, 11(1), 19–32. vromen, a. (2003). 'people try to put us down... ': participatory citizenship of 'generation x'. australian journal of political science, 38(1), 79–99. vromen, a. (2007). australian young people's participatory practices and internet use. information, communication & society, 10(1), 48–68. vromen, a. (2011). constructing australian youth online. information, communication and society, 14, 959–980. vromen, a. (2012). youth participation from the top down: the perspectives of government and community sector decision makers in australia. in j. van deth & w. maloney, (eds.), new participatory dimensions in civil society: professionalization and ind... vromen, a., & collin, p. (2010). everyday youth participation? contrasting views from australian policymakers and young people. young: nordic journal of youth research, 18(1), 97–112. xenos, m., vromen, a., & loader, b. d. (2014). the great equalizer? patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies. information, communication & society, 17(2), 151–167. introduction: transforming practices: emancipatory approaches to youth engagement international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 320 introduction to the special issue on transforming practices: emancipatory approaches to youth engagement natasha blanchet-cohen, warren linds, varda mann-feder, and felice yuen acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, the centre for human relations and community studies, the department of applied human sciences, and the faculty of arts and sciences, concordia university for their support. we also wish to express our appreciation to peggy herring, our copy editor for the special issue. natasha blanchet-cohen, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor, department of applied human sciences, concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca warren linds, ph.d. is an associate professor with the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke west, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: w.linds@sympatico.ca varda mann-feder, d.ed. is a professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke west, room ve 227-3, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca felice yuen, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke street west, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: felice.yuen@concordia.ca mailto:natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca mailto:w.linds@sympatico.ca mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 321 this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies focuses on emancipatory approaches to youth engagement. evoking ideas of freedom, release, and liberation, we explore youth engagement as a means to facilitate social change, to improve organizations, and to build healthier communities. broadening and deepening youth engagement beyond a shift from youth as objects to subjects necessarily entails youth workers and educators grappling with the significance of engaging in respectful and transformative youth-adult relationships. in taking up this agenda, youth and adults collaboratively explore opportunities and obstacles, and make recommendations for extending youth engagement beyond a mere trend or project, to constitute a value system that underlies practice. the 12 articles appearing in this issue result from a two-day workshop hosted by the applied human sciences department at concordia university in montreal, quebec in june 2012. the workshop brought together youth, practitioners, and educators who work with youth in australia, finland, the united states, and canada (including montreal and other canadian urban centres) in order to connect around promising practices. presenters ignited interactive dialogue that built on an earlier collaboration that had emerged in an edited book: emancipatory practices: adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (linds, goulet, & sammel, 2010). the workshop itself was planned to maximize the sharing of knowledge, to critically dialogue on application, and to illuminate underlying assumptions involved in adopting emancipatory approaches to youth engagement. in experiential games during the workshop, adults and youth were placed in relationship with each other and invited to question their positionality and the power dynamics in adult-youth relationships. illustrative of the type of reframing was an activity called “colombian hypnosis” (boal, 1992, p. 63) which involves one partner’s “hands” guiding the “eyes” of another around the room. the game was introduced in order to explore issues of leaders and followers, but also to emphasize the concept of collaborative leadership that involves mutual respect and responsibility in the leader and follower roles. beyond experiential exercises and games, youth and adult participants met in mixed groupings throughout the event to process thoughts and reactions to presentations on the uses, challenges, and benefits of emancipatory practices with youth in different contexts. in inviting contributions to the special issue, we asked authors to address particular topics in youth-adult collaboration from within their own contexts. we encouraged authors to: • examine effective approaches to working with youth in a collaborative leadership model. this included work being undertaken by a variety of informal, non-formal, and formal youth-serving organizations which practice youth engagement and the development of youth leadership as a form of pedagogy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 322 • share the changes individuals and organizations need to make in order to adopt emancipatory practice in working with youth. this meant identifying effective actions that facilitate collaborative leadership in emancipatory practices for and with youth. • explore the transformations involved, both in the work and the personal framework of practice. this involved examining youth participation in decision-making processes and the extent to which youth are given space and power to explore democratic and dialogic partnerships. features and strategies while each article focuses on a specific topic and context, emerging from them is a better understanding of the significance and implications of emancipatory approaches to youth engagement. linds, goulet, and sammel (2010) initially defined emancipatory approaches broadly “as those that enable youth to develop agency as active participants working in partnership with adults in the development of youth leadership and community change” (p. xiv). their primary focus was on the adult’s role in enabling equitable relationships and building democratic leadership among adults and youth. this focus remains fundamental because of adults’ considerable role in fostering conditions and opportunities for youth to have influence in institutions. based on the workshop and the articles, we identify several features of emancipatory approaches: (a) collaboration, (b) shared power, (c) the presence of colearning, and (d) transparency in youth-adult relationships. strategies for implementation involve: (a) mentoring, (b) creativity, (c) creating a sense of belonging, and (d) reflection. collaboration in emancipatory approaches means youth and adults codetermining the best ways to move forward. collaboration involves deliberately working together “in the quest for meaningful solutions to problems and answers to questions that emerge in particular contexts” (sumara & luce-kapler, 1993, p. 393). thus, it is not necessarily about working the same way or doing the same things, but drawing on each person’s strengths to work towards reaching a common goal. shared power implies that youth and adults have an equal say in what and how decisions are made about necessary changes or ways of functioning. it often entails youth acting on the power that they have, and adults relinquishing some of their power in providing for more balanced decision-making. it can include exploring the multidimensional aspect of power including power over, power under, and power with, and identifying different forms of leadership. it is about seeking to establish dialogue that is guided by principles of mutual respect and commitment. co-learning means adults and youth come together, remain open to hearing and listening to each other, and are convinced of the benefit of finding solutions together. new knowledge collaboratively produced by both adults and youth has the potential to change dominant practices and ideologies. as discussed in the articles that follow (see international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 323 cooper, nazzari, king, & pettigrew; shaw-raudoy & mcgregor), creating co-learning opportunities involves focusing on adult and youth skills, as opposed to overtly trying to involve youth. such a process can develop into a social movement in which youth and adults are brought into an action-oriented environment (see blanchet-cohen, warner, di mambro, & bedeaux; evans & lund; nabavi & mahboub). as emphasized by linds and his colleagues (also in this special issue), co-learning can happen even in the most hierarchical institutions. transparency in youth-adult relationships conveys the need for honesty in the place and voice given to youth, bringing to the forefront the values attached to emancipatory approaches. as articles in this special issue document (see dupuis & mann-feder; roach, wureta, & ross; snow et al.), systems aimed at providing for youth’s well-being that enforce the dichotomous labelling of youth and adults are disempowering and marginalizing. youth inclusion requires an ongoing process that develops trusting and respectful relationships between youth and adults. transparency in youth-adult relationships helps reduce risks of tokenism and increases opportunities for meaningful participation that is foregrounded in culture and contextually responsive (liebel, 2012). strategies to implement emancipatory approaches include peer-to-peer and youthadult mentoring. providing guidance and sharing experiences help other youth and adults to realize the potential of youth engagement, to overcome fears, to imagine possibilities, and to take action. considering that youth often bring different perspectives, creativity is also needed to discover different forms of knowledge. creativity ultimately opens up the possibility of finding much needed answers to the social and environmental challenges of our time. in taking on an emancipatory approach, several articles – including snow et al., and yuen and context(e) – emphasize nurturing a sense of belonging for youth and adults to feel safe and to develop. ungar’s article in this issue points to the importance of the quality of the youth-adult interaction. these essential needs have often been crushed by systems that negate the humanity of people, as is shown in yuen and context(e). emancipatory approaches also require providing space for reflection so that adults and youth can pause and question themselves and the systems within which they operate. both internal and external dialogues are important because change can be destabilizing; so it is necessary to be grounded, which in turn can help in working through the challenges that will arise when things are neither clear nor certain (see blanchet-cohen, warner, di mambro, & bedeaux; evans & lund; nabavi & mahboub). this is integral to undo, remake, and relearn. given the prevalent notion of youth as undeveloped beings, in need of protection and not able to fully participate as citizens in institutions, organizations, and society (myers & bourdillon, 2012), making these noble concepts a reality is difficult. historically, funding systems and structures have been founded on hierarchical, deficitbased ways of operating that pigeonhole youth and adults in specific roles. when adults are not open to exploring emancipatory practices, it is difficult for youth to break away from them (see roach, wureta, & ross). the good news is that, as conveyed throughout international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 324 the articles making up this special issue, rich and innovative ideas and examples exist of how emancipatory work involving youth and adults in co-construction can contribute to social justice. overview of the special issue the special issue brings together youth and adult practitioners and educators from a range of interdisciplinary fields including education, community development, child welfare, youth work, and public policy. most articles result from collaboration between authors with different lived experiences and of various ages; the process of writing itself is an illustration of the complexity, creativity, and negotiation involved in youth-adult collaboration. there are two parts to this special issue. part one opens with conceptual articles that explore core features of emancipatory practice. michael ungar (the impact of youthadult relationships on resilience), the invited keynote presenter at the workshop, demonstrates that engaging and transformative youth-adult relationships exert the greatest impact on youth who are most marginalized. adults act as resilience-promoting resources when they build quality relationships in ways that young people value, and where they are engaged in decision-making. warren linds, ali sammel, and linda goulet (dancing together: a conversation about youth and adult relational authority in the context of education) discuss situational authority through a three-part choreography. drawing on their experiences as university educators in different geographical contexts, they identify sharing of authority between adults and youth as essential to negotiating power and to supporting emancipatory approaches. this part of the special issue continues with three contextual articles that focus on the implications of emancipatory practices when working with marginalized youth; all three articles result from co-authorships between academics and youth who have experienced the system. felice yuen and gabriell context(e) in a bridge to alien-nation: connecting through humanity, diversity, and relationships, reflect on the oppressive nature of mainstream systems. social commitment, knowledge, aspirations, and openness are seen as necessary to build bridges and deal with the broken communication between adults and youth. jennifer dupuis and varda mann-feder (moving towards emancipatory practice: conditions for meaningful youth empowerment in child welfare) grapple with the conditions that would facilitate youth empowerment in the child welfare system, a historically deficit-based and expert-driven institution. kim snow and members of the voyager project (aspirations and belonging: touchstones for the journey), a peer-to-peer support group for young people in and from care, explore the importance of belonging, and point to how the system works against its role in developing collective agency and social capital. part two of this special issue also opens with two conceptual articles. kathryn shaw-raudoy and catherine mcgregor (co-learning in youth adult emancipatory partnerships: the way forward?) explore the histories and possibilities of shared adultyouth civic learning outcomes. they contend that iterative forms of reciprocal cointernational journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 325 learning with youth and adults as collaborators are necessary to actualize emancipatory goals. denise bulling, lyn carson, mark dekraai, alexis garcia, and harri raisio (deliberation models featuring youth participation) focus on deliberative democracy as a model to build bridges between youth and decision makers. they explore the role of relationships, collaboration, and leadership in generating democratic spaces for the inclusion of youth in policy formation and reform in australia, finland, canada, and the united states. the contextual articles in this part use versions of duoethnography (sawyer & norris, 2013), a collaborative research methodology, to discuss activism involving youth and adults in three canadian provinces. rachel evans and darren lund (forging ethical adult-youth relationships within emancipatory activism) focus on their recollections of the formation of a gay-straight alliance at a secondary school in a small city in alberta, dialoguing on effective adult-youth collaborations in the context of notions of power and privilege, and the role of adults in protecting students from hostile community backlash. natasha blanchet-cohen, alan warner, giulietta di mambro, and christophe bedeaux (‘du carré rouge aux casseroles’: a context for youth-adult partnership in the québec student movement) examine the divergent experiences of students and professors in the 2012 québec student movement through in-depth personal narratives. they provide structures and spaces for youth-led processes essential to counter powerful youth stereotypes, especially those delivered through mainstream media. maryam nabavi and romina mahboub (a movement to belong: the green movement as a site of citizenship) dialogue on their involvement as immigrant youth in the global movement of dissent in response to the 2009 presidential elections in iran. straddling national and cultural identities, they consider emancipatory practice insofar as providing space to be a citizen, to belong, and to explore a sense of identity. the special issue concludes with two articles on community development and educational programming. jeanette roach, esayas wureta, and laurie ross (dilemmas of practice in the ecology of emancipatory youth-adult partnerships) use two case studies in applying an ecological analysis to explain the dilemmas and challenges faced in forging youth-adult partnerships. they demonstrate that young people will embrace adult-provided structures when adults and young people are not ready to work in emancipatory youth-adult partnerships, and that structural changes are needed in many organizations that deal with youth. amy cooper, vincenza nazzari, julie kon kam king, and annie pettigrew (speaking rights: youth empowerment through a participatory approach) present a curriculum that fosters youth empowerment in communities. as practitioners, they reflect on the need for training youth workers to motivate youth towards meaningful and effective participation. concluding thoughts as we explore the frameworks, strategies, and opportunities in implementing a new approach to working with youth, we are struck by the possibilities for bringing about social change. youth and adults coming together to collaborate and share power on respectful terms opens up possibilities for personal, organizational, and societal changes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 326 as in an ecotone (the place where two ecological regions overlap and transition into one another), the meeting is fertile even though rough, uncertain, and contentious at times. this is an “ethical space” (ermine, 2007) which is formed when two different world views encounter one another. where they meet becomes a place where something can be developed together. but as workshop participants concluded in their reflections on our time together: “be prepared for a few bumps, quick turns, and good luck,” and “we can leave with more questions than answers, and that’s okay.” we invite you to read these articles in the hope that you may be inspired to join us in making our world that much better for all. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 320–327 327 references boal, a. (1992). games for actors and non-actors (a. jackson, trans.). new york: routledge. ermine, w. (2007). the ethical space of engagement. indigenous law journal 6(1), 193– 203. liebel, m. (ed.). (2012). children’s rights from below. cross-cultural perspectives. new york: palgrave macmillan. linds, w., goulet, l., & sammel, a. (eds.). (2010). emancipatory practices: adult/youth engagement in social and environmental justice. rotterdam: sense publishers. myers, w., & bourdillon, m. (2012). concluding reflections: how might we really protect children? development in practice, 22(4), 613–620. doi: 10.1080/09614524.2012.673558 sawyer, r., & norris, j. (2013). duoethnography: understanding qualitative research. new york: oxford university press. sumara, d. j., & luce-kapler, r. (1993). action research as a writerly text: locating co-labouring in collaboration. educational action research, 1(3), 387–395. running head: a bridge to alien-ation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 357 a bridge to alien-nation: connecting through humanity, diversity, and relationships felice yuen and gabriell context(e abstract: this paper is a reflexive process that considers the practices of mainstream service providers that aim to support marginalized youth but unintentionally result in further oppression. to engage in this deconstructive exercise, we use a poem that was written in response to an activity done at a youth engagement workshop held in montreal in june 2012. coupled with existing literature and further reflections of a young person’s experiences with social service providers, we offer recommendations for meaningful and empowering ways to connect with alienated youth. these recommendations emphasize acknowledging the diversity of experiences, developing authentic relationships, and embracing the humanity that unites us all. keywords: diversity, humanity, poetry, marginalized youth, reflexivity, youth-adult relationships, youth empowerment felice yuen, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke street west, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: felice.yuen@concordia.ca gabriell context(e is a runaway, survivor, mental health advocate, and trans*-youth-adult-indifficulty, montreal, quebec, sharing on twitter.com/frets, facebook.com/prosody and tiltrue.com. e-mail: prosody@facebook.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 358 the purpose of this article is to consider mainstream practices that aim to include, empower, and support marginalized youth, but unintentionally result in further oppression. as argued by fox and lashua (2010), “inclusion processes typically and predominantly focus on how ‘to help’ people on the margins without questioning the value, ‘goodness,’ and change requirements of the dominant status quo” (p. 230). through a reflexive process, we pause to consider the perspectives of youth who locate themselves on the fringes of society and propose recommendations for potential change in adult-youth interactions1. gabriell offers a first-hand perspective as a trans*2 youth who has felt marginalized from self-empowerment. felice offers the perspective of a researcher whose interactions with gabriell encouraged her to question and ultimately engage in the deconstruction of dominant paradigms and knowledge. marginalization and alienation are used interchangeably throughout the paper. it was gabriell’s idea to use the word alien in the title of this article. the term alien reflects the identity ze3 was given through interactions with adult role models and social service providers. in other words, youth on the margins are aliens and the experience of marginalization is alienating. upon further reflection, gabriell writes: systems do not easily connect with us. we are alien to them. aliens are treated like unknowns. aliens experience a great loss of understanding. aliens are strangers. young people need to feel human, but often are left feeling removed again and again.... i do not like that my status is nearly so officially alien. it does not feel necessary. the alien identity created, in part, through interactions with others reinforces marginalization and oppression. following the presentation of the poem “circulation” written by gabriell, we offer recommendations for meaningful and empowering ways to connect with marginalized youth. these recommendations emphasize acknowledging the diversity of experiences and developing authentic relationships. standing still this paper is a reflexive process inspired by the authors’ experiences at the “transforming practices: emancipatory approaches to youth engagement workshop” – a threeday event in which researchers, practitioners, and youth met to discuss the complexities of youth engagement and empowerment. according to macbeth (2001), reflexivity is described as a “deconstructive exercise for locating the intersections of author, other, text, and world, and for penetrating the representational exercise itself” (p. 35). the process of reflexivity involves the conscious and deliberate inclusion of the self (dupuis, 1999) and often begins with a relatively 1 this paper was a collaborative effort between gabriell and felice. facebook and google docs were the locations in which we would meet to discuss ideas and engage in the co-creation of this paper. notably, there are places in the text where we have inserted gabriell’s words verbatim to emphasize personal ideas and thoughts. 2 trans* with an asterisk is a popular stylization for transgender people. trans* is symbolic of including and more than. it is used to escape the oppressive contexts of normal language. 3 ze is a term used to reflect gabriell’s transgender identity; it is “a gender neutral pronoun that is an alternative to ‘she’ and ‘he’” (driskill, 2008, p. 6). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 359 formal writing exercise such as a reflexive journal (yuen, 2011). writing can be used as a method of inquiry through discovery and analysis (richardson, 2000) and has the potential to provide a context for critical reflexivity that evokes new questions (richardson, 1999). in addition to journal writing, other methods used include letters (macmahon, 1996) and poetry (yuen, 2010). poetry initiated our engagement in reflexive practice and enabled the deconstruction of experiences beyond the workshop involving gabriell’s interactions with adults and social service providers. these experiences occurred in contexts that include youth shelters, emergency shelters, day centres, support groups, family support services, religious institutions, recreational facilities, and child and youth services. the deconstructive exercise was also inspired by interactions with teachers, guidance counsellors, community outreach workers, psychologists, and mental health professionals. locating the self is important in the reflexive process (fine, 1994; richardson, 1999). thus, we include a brief introduction of the authors. felice: i am an associate professor at concordia university and was a member of the organizing committee for the transforming practices workshop. my research focuses on examining leisure as a context for community development and capacity building. i grew up in saskatoon, saskatchewan with my parents, older sister, and dog named dexter. as a youth, i experienced empowering opportunities through recreation and leisure activities such as summer camps, extracurricular sports, and art classes. one of my most compelling experiences was through an organization called children’s international summer villages (cisv). my experiences with this organization led me to pursue an academic career in leisure studies. my involvement in cisv had a strong influence on my perspective of leisure as a context for social capital development and community building with youth (see yuen, pedlar, & mannell, 2005). like other researchers, i view leisure as a positive experience that contributes to the growth and development of young participants (see caldwell & smith, 2006; danish, taylor, & fazio, 2003; mahoney, larson, & eccles, 2005; witt & crompton, 1996; witt & caldwell, 2010). the dialogue i was privileged to have with gabriell led me to question the outcomes of the wellmeaning intentions of youth services providers (in leisure as well as other contexts) who inadvertently end up further marginalizing the youth they are trying to include, engage, and help. gabriell: i am a mental health advocate and activist. as i shared before, i am a trans* youth who feels marginalized from self-empowerment. i grew up in wheaton, maryland, close to the politics of washington, dc. members of my family were highly involved in public school administration, teaching, and education rights. being so closely connected to a highly politicized environment led me to be highly sensitive and aware, yet feel alienated and disconnected from a social system that was designed to help and support. interactions with the majority of adult role models i met in my childhood and adolescence were marginalizing. i recently have been evolving my feelings of oppression, by coming out as a trans* youth and subsequently advocating for more sensitive and mentally healthy governance and leadership. i have lived in emergency and homeless shelters. while these places covered my basic need for shelter, there was little emotional or psychological support. i repeatedly experienced a lack of information, insight, and safe spaces for listening, care, and intervention. from a very early age, i repeatedly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 360 ran away from emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. i have also run from social systems that were supposed to help but ultimately created a sense of loss and alienation. i feel like my true self is underappreciated and misidentified. i self-identify as alien because i feel disconnected from service organizations and people who try to help, but lead me (and my friends) to feel like unknown and invisible people beyond help. we are young and growing old without self-identity. who we truly are has never been affirmed by the social systems holding our hands. it is like they try to tell us who we are and forget to let us ask ourselves who we really are. oppressive rules, structures, and environments have denied my right to ask questions and seek information. consequently, i was alienated from having knowledge of, and understanding the rationale behind the policies that ultimately dictated where and how i lived. these experiences, talking with felice, and participating in other conferences have led me to believe the consequences of disconnected and alienated youth are due, in part, to misunderstanding and broken communication between adults and youth. it is our hope that this article will help build a bridge of understanding between adults and youth by embracing the humanity that encircles us all. building the bridge circulation many people are running in circles many systems are running in circles many people we know are walking in circles a circulation around what is important so i stood still stillness i stood still outside our circle i stood still in our middle people just circled what do people do if people stand still? i met few others who recognized and understood still, standing with me i met many others who told me to keep walking in circles no place of understanding to stop and go it shows we know we are walking in circles we do not know how to stop consciously and subconsciously, we know we are all in a circle but we circle around each other without stopping to help international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 361 our circulation around what is important we leave humanity out of our circle this poem was inspired by a get-to-know-you activity, which occurred at the beginning of the workshop. the activity was a movement exercise in which the facilitator had us randomly walk around a small space and greet people as we wished. the greetings were diverse. felice did as she was told; she walked around, smiled, and shook people’s hands as societal conventions dictate. gabriell stood in one spot, briefly looking up and occasionally providing eye contact to individuals as they passed by. many people are running in circles. many systems are running in circles. ...stillness empowerment is often a goal of youth service providers. according to pedlar, haworth, hutchison, taylor, and dunn (1999), initial conceptualizations suggested that empowerment occurred when a relationship of dominance was established and individuals gained control over certain resources. however, as pedlar and her colleagues’ social ecological theory of empowerment suggests “one person becoming empowered does not require that others become proportionally disempowered; in fact people’s life experiences appear most empowering when there is an equitable distribution of power” (p. 101). striving for this kind of empowerment requires us to stop and reflect upon our practices and policies by engaging in stillness and questioning whether current processes encourage equitable distribution of power for youth. as stated by westley, zimmerman, and patton (2006), “we live, by and large, in a culture that divorces contemplation or reflection from action” (p. 61). consequently, practitioners, academics, policy-makers, and youth alike need to consciously pause and reflect upon their regular routines. “this is the way we’ve always done it” should not be the rationale for standard practice. rather, decisions should be based on conscious, deliberate, and purposeful action. this time for reflection is much like the process of standing still described by westley and her colleagues (2006). they explain that standing still is a period for exploration that requires careful observation of details and their relationships to each other. standing still is not necessarily a pleasant experience. indeed, the authors state, “sometimes challenging the accepted wisdom may seem like spitting into the wind, a dampening experience” (p. 61). while this period of reflection is time consuming and may be unpleasant, it contributes to the development of meaningful relationships and change. inserting stillness into practice will enable service organizations and community leaders to effectively consider meaningful ways to empower the individuals with whom they are working. individuals are complex systems; each person is unique and constantly changing (westley et al., 2006) and each person’s preferences, strengths, weaknesses, and motivations are different. as further suggested by westley and her colleagues, working with complex systems requires balancing expertise with responsiveness. in other words, rigidity is counterproductive and organizational policies and procedures should offer enough flexibility for service providers to adequately respond to the specific context of each individual they encounter. for example, one international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 362 of the homeless shelters gabriell used told hir4 that ze had 30 days to stay there. towards the end of the 30-day period, ze was beginning to feel physically and mentally well and was in the process of developing a direction for hir future. because of hir progress, ze asked for more time and was rejected. reflecting on hir experience, gabriell writes, “it felt ugly, begging for time and having to explain why i felt better. there was a lot of pressure for both me and the staff – both of us feeling pressured by their own rules.” as henderson (1996) contends, “one size doesn’t fit all” (p. 139). in her article, henderson problematizes generalizations made when adopting a universal approach to policy development. while the context of the paper is leisure policy and women, her recommendations are useful for policy-makers and researchers as they engage in stillness. according to ladsonbillings (2000), “the ahistorical and acontextual nature of much law and other ‘science’ render the voices of the dispossessed and the marginalized group members mute” (p. 265). henderson argues the consideration for personal dimensions such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and (dis)ability will contribute to the illumination of diversity, and historically and culturally specific experiences. research and analyses that emphasize diversity underscore that some individuals are more disadvantaged because of multiple layers of oppression (henderson, 1996). social science and social policies have long been influenced from a patriarchal perspective (dustin, 1992). this hegemonic authority has led to rigid structures that disempower and alienate the very individuals they were intended to help. considerations for diversity will invariably highlight the multiple histories and experiences of youth and facilitate meaningful experiences of understanding and empowerment. recognize and understand ... stand with me “policies and programs are often implicated with subtle and insidious forms of oppression, subjection, racism, discrimination, [and] undervaluation” (fox & lashua, 2010, p. 234). social systems and structures will become more contextualized and pluralistic if we take a moment to ask where the knowledge that informs social policies comes from, and ensure that diversity is a central aspect of the research that informs our practices. adopting the perspective of a standpoint feminist will help facilitate considerations for diversity. feminist standpoint theorists believe that “the dominant conceptual schemes of the…social sciences fit the experience that western men of the elite classes and races have of themselves and the world around them…. by starting research from women’s lives, we can arrive at empirically and theoretically more adequate descriptions and explanations” (harding, 2004, p. 48). such a perspective also involves the deconstruction of traditional understanding and experience by considering other positions of marginalization and oppression such as race and class (olesen, 2000). standpoint feminists argue that past research is only a partial understanding of the world and that a feminist perspective can provide another. individuals who are marginalized and oppressed generally require time to heal. as gabriell reflects on hir moments of healing, ze recalls, “i can’t believe how many time i am asked why i need to heal.” while this kind of questioning may have come with good intentions, the mere question reflects a lack of acknowledgement (or knowledge) of hir personal story. adopting a standpoint perspective would encourage us to ask not why but how we can help gabriell heal. 4 hir is “a gender-neutral pronoun that is an alternative to `her’ or ‘his’” (driskill, 2008, p. 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 363 no place of understanding to stop and go providing opportunities and encouraging youth to engage in them will contribute to their empowerment as they take the time to reflect and develop their own identities and establish their own voices. an environment conducive to such experiences requires a sense of security and safety. notably, fox and lashua (2010) emphasize that without consideration for the life experiences of youth, creating such environments may be harmful and may lead them to feel invisible. as these authors further contend, even though creating connections between marginalized youth and service providers is necessary, inclusion in mainstream programs and practices may not be an appropriate strategy. mainstream programs tend to limit what we consider effective tools for empowerment, engagement, and citizenship. as stated by fox and lashua, mainstream systems and structures instead tend to reinforce efficiency and achievement, or “euro-north-american values related to capitalism, excellence, people as expendable resources, and profit-lines.... [they] ignore the well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman communities” (p. 238). as there is no blueprint for what is effective (westley et al., 2006), we offer no list of methods to facilitate youth empowerment. rather, we encourage youth service providers to develop authentic relationships with the youth they are working with. effective and meaningful tools for youth empowerment will emerge from these relationships, where diversity, humanity, and an equitable distribution of power are emphasized. bringing humanity into our circle borrowing from freire (2006a), we argue that true empowerment involves the humanization of all parties involved (e.g., adult and youth, oppressor and oppressed). all human beings ought to be engaged in meaningful relationships and dialogue so they can achieve critical awareness of their perspectives and discover their own and each other’s potential for transformation. discovering the potential for transformation involves focusing on the assets and strengths each person has. this process of discovery needs to reoccur because, as previously stated, people and their circumstances are constantly changing. once perspectives are broadened and strengths are seen and used, humanity inevitably prevails and the type of empowerment where there is an equitable distribution of power becomes possible. as pedlar and her colleagues (1999) state, “in situations where people [flourish], we noticed they treat each other differently…. dreams and plans were taken seriously” (p. 102). they further contend: the process and outcome of empowerment are mutually reinforcing among the people who interact with one another in that social context. this means that empowerment is much more dependent upon a balance of power among the interacting individuals than is suggested by conceptualizations which portray empowerment as resting on domination. (p. 102, original emphasis) social commitment, knowledge, aspirations, and openness are four conditions of the ecological theory of empowerment (pedlar et al., 1999). these conditions are discussed in the following paragraphs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 364 social commitment. in accordance with pedlar and her colleagues, “the nature of the relationship people have with those who provide support to them is central to their well-being” (p. 109). they suggest an empowering relationship is based upon social commitment, which includes unconditional acceptance, endures challenge, and is sustainable. in their analysis of human service providers, the authors also emphasized that liking a person is an important aspect that is not often considered. the researchers found that in most empowering relationships, “there appeared to be an unspoken understanding – either that the support worker and the person being supported liked one another, as though it were a given; or alternatively, that it was irrelevant” (p. 110). truly liking a person is important because it contributes forming a relationship centred upon humanity. as gabriell states, “we are not working with a building, we are not working with a job title, we are working with a person.” an alien identity suffers from systematically encouraged emotionless neutrality. it is not enough to receive the empathetic response, “i understand.” true encouragement, support, and acceptance are communicated and felt by expressions of a desire to understand. the following poem by gabriell reflects what ze often hears (in regular font) and what would be more meaningful in hir experiences with youth service providers (in italics): i understand you. i want to understand you. i will talk to you ’til i understand better. i want to talk to you ’til i understand more and i will not stop trying to understand conscious thought leading toward whether we like the people we are working with will contribute toward a more humanizing experience. it is better to change the people we are working with if personalities clash. conscious thought toward our actions and expressing a desire to understand will contribute to building a bridge of understanding. these simple changes can contribute to authentic relationships and lead to empowering experiences. knowledge. the ability to act upon one’s knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself. pedlar and her colleagues (1999) suggest that, “knowledge of how human service systems and policies are devised and operationalized is a significant factor in the kind of support a person ultimately receives. policies are often complex and difficult to navigate” (p. 104). for many youth, there is little opportunity to participate in the production of knowledge. furthermore, as previously stated, youth are generally not privy to the knowledge affecting the operational decisions of the systems that involve them. even when gabriell participated in programs designed to promote youth-leadership, the unspoken guidelines were “rules first, ask second”. that is, youth participants were expected to simply follow the rules set up by the organization. there was no opportunity to reflect and analyze these rules (i.e., to understand and question the rationale behind the rules) or to participate in the actual development of these rules. these experiences of forced ignorance contributed to hir exclusion from participating and engaging in civic society. being informed, creating knowledge, and participating in the development of policies that affect one’s life can be freeing from self-identifying as alien. creating an environment that is centred on humanity should include both opportunities for open discussions about policies as well as potential for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 365 change. transparency is a critical aspect of these discussions. those who gain access to knowledge are then able to use it. as described by pedlar and her colleagues, empowerment through the acquisition of knowledge and understanding is a cumulative process as though “people’s sense of potency and energy grows stronger with each success” (p. 107). aspirations. to aspire is “the ability and willingness to visualize a bright future, along with a desire to grow and to experience those possibilities (pedlar, et al., 1999, p. 107). to aspire and to hope are a part of what makes us human; they are a part of the humanity that encircles us all. empowering experiences are fuelled by youth’s opportunities for hope. as freire (2006b) contends, hope is attained through action. moreover, aspirations need to be supported and encouraged by others (pedlar et al., 1999). through the development of meaningful relationships with youth services providers, youth’s ideas and dreams can be shared without shame and without fear of judgment. but it is so hard to do that gabriell has been heard too many times. such a response to hir ideas and dreams evokes feelings of being forced to stay on the margins, ultimately reinforcing the identification with being alien. marginalized youth are too well aware of barriers that constrain their hopes and dreams for the future. rather than emphasizing the barriers, encouraging discussion with youth will enable them to further their reflections and decide for themselves whether their aspirations are realistic and feasible. these conversations should involve the disclosure of organizational policies, procedures, and societal norms that may be inhibiting the potential for their dreams to become reality. notably, the purpose of this disclosure is not to provide a rationale but to collectively engage in critical inquiry into both the aspirations of the youth and what has been accepted as conventional wisdom. sometimes it is the mere act of dreaming and having someone believe in the dreamer’s potential to achieve it that matters most, as opposed to the actual dream itself. in accordance with pedlar et al. (1999), “in contrast to those who simply stopped at empathy, staff who shared people’s belief in their ability and who were committed to helping them improve their quality of life greatly facilitated their attempt to realize their dreams (p. 108).” part of being human is a constant iteration of dreaming, believing, and achieving or failing. having someone believe in our potential to dream and achieve is an important process. as gabriell reflects, “we need to dream to change and we need systems to dream with us.” while the specific aspiration that has been articulated may not be achieved, the fact that someone believes and trusts in one’s ability to dream will foster the desire to continue dreaming and contribute to a sense of empowerment to move towards a greater quality of life. openness. openness is considered the most important condition of empowerment because the other three components (social commitment, knowledge, and aspiration) contributed more to empowerment when they were characterized by a sense of openness. pedlar and her colleagues (1999) argue: the knowledge that really counts is knowledge concerning...opportunities [to participate in one’s life]. the aspirations that really count are aspirations to take on the challenges such opportunities present. the social commitment that really counts envisages the person to whom one is committed. (p. 112) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 366 unfortunately, it is rare for marginalized youth to have experiences of true openness. while they are told disclosure is healthy, the disclosure that actually occurs is one-sided. in gabriell’s experience, there is a normative expectation that youth should tell all to adults. as ze states, “it would be nice to walk into an organization that lets you understand their own history; where their policies come from, and how they came into existence.” if the process and outcome of empowerment is to be mutually reinforcing, openness should be an expectation of every party involved in the relationship. in the previous section we mentioned the idea of collective engagement in stillness. this process, which is characterized by mutual openness and transparency, involves critical and analytical discussions between youth and adults about aspirations and procedural norms. understanding increases, perspectives are broadened, and opportunities for meaningful outcomes for both the youth and agency can be found by entering into stillness together. conclusion: standing still … again humanity has been repeatedly emphasized throughout this paper and is arguably the foundation required to build empowering relationships between adults and youth. acknowledging the diverse experiences and histories of the youth we encounter will contribute to including humanity in the policies and procedures we create. forming authentic relationships which are characterized by commitment, the co-creation of knowledge, the sharing of and believing in hopes and dreams, and openness will enable us to embrace the humanity that unites us all. empowering outcomes require both adults and youth to engage in stillness – individually and collectively. entering into stillness will facilitate the acknowledgement of diversity and the formation of authentic relationships. returning to the title of gabriell’s poem, circulation, we are still circulating, but with humanity at the core and with the opportunity to stand still. undoubtedly, some of these recommendations do not resonate with dominant values of productivity, efficiency, and, some may even argue, professionalism. engaging in a reflexive practice involves a deconstructive process that has the potential to evoke more questions (mcmahon, 1996). there are implications of these recommendations that raise some critical questions. is the luxury of taking the time to reflect possible in a profession that is already understaffed? of what use is engaging in philosophical dialogue when the primary concern is moving our clients towards independence? how will we secure funding by adopting these practices? it is not our intention to undermine these questions by not addressing them. we intend to continue reflecting on the implications and we urge readers to do the same. some readers may perceive our recommendations as great change and maybe even impossible, while others will see them as small change. as gabriell contends, “connecting with aliens is serious business. structural changes are needed to break through the very walls meant to create order.” placing humanity, diversity, and relationship at the core of organizational policies is possible and has been done in other areas of human service, for example in some organizations which work with adults who have developmental disabilities (pedlar et al., 1999) and in some organizations which work with women who have been in conflict with the law (yuen, thompson, & pedlar, 2005; yuen, 2008). according to henderson (1996), “individual empowerment is key, [but] only collective action can effectively generate lasting social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 367 transformation” (p. 151). it is our hope that we have inspired readers to reconsider the standard practices and policies that guide our interactions and decisions from the perspective of marginalized youth. we also hope that readers will find their own ways to embrace the humanity that encircles us all. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 368 references caldwell, l. l., & smith, e. a. 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(2010). kicking and screaming. international review of qualitative research, 2(4), 429–432. http://www.nrpa.org/uploadedfiles/nrpa.org/publications_and_research/research/papers/witt-caldwell-summary.pdf http://www.nrpa.org/uploadedfiles/nrpa.org/publications_and_research/research/papers/witt-caldwell-summary.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 357–370 370 yuen, f. (2011). embracing emotionality: clothing my “naked truths”. critical criminology, 19(1), 75–88. yuen, f., pedlar, a., & mannell, r. c. (2005). building community and social capital through children’s leisure in the context of an international camp. journal of leisure research: special issue, leisure and social capital, 37(4), 494–518. yuen, f., thompson, j., & pedlar, a. (2006). engagement in leisure: a restorative justice approach to working with incarcerated women. restorative directions journal, 2(1), 22–35. international journal of child, youth, and family studies, volume 3, number 2/3, 2012 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 316 the question of doors hans skott-myhre abstract: this paper will argue that child and youth care is a kind of social diagram that maps the relations of children and adults. it will propose that residential care in particular, when thought of as a machinic social diagram, has certain characteristics that map its functions and capacities. perhaps the most central of these is the fact that it is an institution that houses people. the paper will trace the roots of residential care to the model of the asylum. it will go on to explore the door or entrance to the asylum/residential care program as a significant component in the production of the machinic social diagram of residential care. keywords: residential care, franco basaglia, foucault, deleuze and guattari, machinic diagram, ideology hans skott-myhre, ph.d. is an associate professor of child and youth studies at brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. email: hskottmy@brocku.ca mailto:hskottmy@brocku.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 317 child and youth care as residential care most of us who work in child and youth care have at one time or another practiced within an institution. outside of street work (whose relationship to the institution is considerably more ambivalent) cyc is a field largely set within the confines of a building designed to house young people. indeed, a recent read-around in the on-line site cyc-net.org included over 50 articles on residential care as a site of cyc practice. books by maier (1987), durrant (1993), and anglin (2003) have also engaged the practice and theory of residential care for children and youth. much of this writing has focused in four major areas: the development and deployment of relationship, issues related to behavioral change, management of staff, and theories and practices related to child development. while the encounter with children and youth within the institutional parameters of residential care is obviously significant, we might also easily expand the scope of our work beyond the residential facility to the more general field of encounters between young people and adults. indeed, one might argue that institutional sites such as residential care are transition points in the broader set of social relations between young people and adults that involve caring for children and youth. it would even be possible to go further and suggest that residential care is but one institutional site in an array of buildings designed to contain sets of relations between young people and adults that include schools, family homes, children’s psychiatric wards, and day treatment centers among others. if we were to be even more comprehensive, we might note that there are sites such as wilderness and outdoor recreational/experiential programs that have little or no buildings involved at all. i would argue, however, that all of these sites, despite their apparent differences, share a commonality of structure and purpose. to use a term from deleuze and guattari (1987), they compose a certain kind of machine or, in foucault’s (1979) parlance, a social diagram. child and youth care as a machinic social diagram thinking about this diverse array of sites as a machine is premised in a view of the world as an ongoing and indeterminate set of compositions. to get a sense of this view, we might well imagine all elements of the world as made up of particles. each particle has a certain set of capacities that only it can express. the capacity for expression in each particle is entirely unique and cannot be replicated by any other particle. at the same time, however, within that same particle, there are an infinite number of possible ways that its unique capacity can be expressed. to use a very approximate example, let’s use the color red. red is unique in that it cannot express itself as anything other than red. it is rather specifically not blue or any other color. nonetheless, there are an infinite number of variations of shadings of red that are possible. these shadings occur, though, through encounters with other colors, such as blue. it is through these encounters that the capacities for expressing red are enhanced and expanded. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 318 this encounter between colors constitutes a form of composition. as we have noted, each color has a unique and idiosyncratic capacity for expression. exactly what range of capacity the color has, however, is unknown in advance. in fact the color can only be expressed in a relation with another color. red as an expression cannot stand alone. its capacity for redness in all its variation can only be known through collisions with other colors. with this in mind, let’s return to the realm of the world as particles. like colors, each element of the world has capacities for expression. these capacities can only be expressed in combination with other particles. this means that the world can only come into being as a dynamic set of relations between an infinite array of particles in collision with each other. this implies that the world is not a stable predetermined set of structures. it is instead an indeterminate composition in which no element has an a priori form or structure. each form or structure is being produced in the moments of its collision with other forms that elicit unpredictable capacities for expression. each of these compositions, made up of elements in chance encounter with each other, constitutes a particular form. this form is not static, but has unique capacities of its own. these capacities are of two types. one capacity, as we have noted, is that of composition. the other is that of decomposition. each form can compose or decompose its own structure. it can also combine with other forms to compose or decompose itself, the other form, or the structures within which it is embedded. implied in this last statement is the recognition that there is no capacity to step outside this system of composition and decomposition. all forms, structures, particles, and capacities are mutually folded into themselves like a multidimensional kaleidoscope made of time, space, and thought. the discrete elements of composition that occur in any given moment are what deleuze and guattari (1987) refer to as a machine, that is, a composition of elements which, when set in relation to one another, have the capacity to do something. all of the forms of care, when thought of as machinic, are actually sets of relations composed at both the macro and micro level. for example, each of the forms of child and youth care from street outreach, to schools, to residential treatment, form a macro machine composed of a network of practices, ideas, and physical structures. at the broadest level, this machine produces the field of child and youth care as a global machine made up of all forms of care across the planet1 1 this becomes increasingly clear when one notes the international composition of articles and postings on a site like cyc-net.org. . as we come in closer, the sets of relations become more specific and include particular children and adults, unique practices, forms of thought and reflection, sets of affects, as well as all the elements of the physical plant including furniture, heating and cooling systems, lighting, plants, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 319 animals, insects, food stores, and so on. all of these elements compose and are composed by their encounters with each other and form a certain kind of machine that creates definitions, boundaries, structures, rules, forms of discipline, as well as revolts, forms of resistance, lines of flight, and spaces of retreat. when such a machine is read at the level of a given society, in a particular historical moment, it constitutes a physical mapping of social norms and expectations, as well as a distribution network for disciplinary practices and dominant ideas. this is what foucault (1979) called a social diagram. child and youth care, as a social diagram, maps the relations of children and adults. it inscribes sets of values, codes of conduct, definitions of childhood and adulthood, trajectories of social competence, and deviance. it distributes these maps in the forms of codes, both linguistic and material. at the level of linguistic code, the diagram facilitates the movements of certain ideas and beliefs across all the bodies in the field of child and youth care. at the material level, the diagram enables the spread of practices and forms of discipline. that is to say, it promotes certain usages of the body and mind as preferable or ideal. the field of child and youth care as a machinic social diagram often produces itself as apparently ahistorical. that is, it claims to simply describe its beliefs and practices in terms of either common sense or as true. when this is done, important context is removed that might help us to see the ways that certain ideas and practices are actually sites of struggle and contestation. foucault (1971) suggests that what he calls the habits and beliefs of one’s own age are products of the ongoing tension between dominant assertions of social control and the productive power of creativity and living force. deleuze and guattari (1987) similarly propose that all social forms are historically produced. these social forms are contingent and time limited and will eventually dissemble into something else. such forms of thought and practice are far from being fundamentally true. they may, in fact, form a certain kind of common sense, but as gramsci (1971) and friere (2000) point out, such common sense is generally to the advantage of the ruling class in any given historical period. certainly, the institutional form of child and youth care referred to as residential care is composed of all of the elements of the machinic social diagram we have outlined above. indeed, one might argue that it constitutes a perversely central role in the field of practice. perverse in the sense that very few child and youth care thinkers or practitioners believe that having young people spend their childhood and youth in an institutional setting is ideal, and yet the form persists. residential care as a machinic social diagram has certain characteristics that map its functions and capacities. perhaps the most central of these is the fact that it is an institution that houses people. it is a system of care premised on residency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 320 child and youth care and the asylum the specific form of residency is premised on the model of the asylum2 . the asylum might well be defined as a residence that is ostensibly specifically designed to remove certain members of society on the basis of a need for care exceeding the abilities of other social structures such as families. the diagram for the asylum was founded in pre-revolutionary france in 1656 when, within the space of several months, hundreds of parisians were incarcerated in what had previously been a hospital for leprosy (foucault, 1988). the social and political reasons for these actions had to do with a breakdown in social order leading to an extraordinary influx of the poor into paris. the government, faced with a large and unhappy population of the poor, first posted archers at the city gates with orders to shoot any unemployed poor person attempting to enter the city. when this failed, the government simply began to arrest and incarcerate the poor on the basis that they could not care for themselves (foucault, 1988). this desperate act of incarcerating people against their will in order to care for them, by a government in crisis, was to have historical implications that resonate today. foucault (1988) traces the evolving government rationale for incarceration. he notes the ways in which the poor were identified and classified, as both morally and mentally incapable. instead of acknowledging a breakdown in the capacity of the government to meet the needs of its people, the poor became the scapegoats for moral and political disorder. there are two aspects of what foucault (1988) calls the great confinement that are of particular interest in terms of what eventually emerged as residential care. the first that foucault proposes is the idea that poverty is a personal moral failing that may indicate an emotional or psychological disorder. thus, poverty is not to be remediated by any substantive reallocation of wealth or resources, but by the treatment of the individual’s moral, psychological, or emotional problems. basaglia (1987) noted that the mad who inhabited the asylums well into the 20th century were disproportionately poor. certainly, my own experience working and consulting in residential care would indicate a similar trend, which is that those incarcerated for care tend to be the children of the poor. this in and of itself might not be too surprising, as poor families and communities have fewer resources to care for children. however, what is interesting is that very few programs address the issue of poverty. instead, as foucault (1988) suggests, residential care continues to deal with the children of the poor as primarily in need of emotional and psychological care. while one population that has carried forward in residential care within the diagram of the asylum is the poor, there is a second group that is of interest to us here. this second group is unmanageable youth. donzelot (1980) tells us that one of the effects of the social disorder in france that led to the great confinement was a breakdown in the 2 see goffman (1961) asylums for a read on the asylum as a total institution that produces what he calls “institutionalization”. he argues that institutionalization socializes people into the role of passive participants in the institution or good patients. a similar argument will be made here in terms of residential care. see also beker and feuerstein (1991) who utilize goffman to make a series of proposals challenging the totalizing effect of the institution in residential care for children and youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 321 authority of the father within the merchant class. the financial crisis of the 17th century severely strained relations between the merchant class and the ruling regime. donzelot (1980) reports that the ruling regime gave significant control over the affairs of the family to the father. the fathers in turn provided financial and social protections to their wives and children. in exchange, the fathers provided the ruling class with sons as soldiers, merchants, and colonial functionaries. donzelot (1980) further explains that the financial and social crisis that led to the great confinement threw this relationship into chaos. the regime was unable to provide the fathers with the means to provide their families with social and economic stability. the sons and daughters who had lived under the absolute authority of the father began to question that relationship. in short, they began to rebel by breaking social conventions of all types. the fathers reacted by using the newly formed asylum. using the power vested in them by the state over their children, they began to have them incarcerated as mad. in fact, this became such a prevalent practice that the asylum ran out of space to house these mad children of the merchant class. the government had to refuse orders of incarceration causing even greater crisis in social and family relations. indeed, donzelot argues, this may well have been a significant causal factor in the french revolution. he notes that the first institution liberated by the revolutionary masses in paris was the bastille, where the political prisoners were held, but the second was the asylum that housed the children of the merchant class. it would be hard not to note a similar trend in the current practices in residential care. one could well argue, as paolo virno (2004) has, that we are living in the new 17th century. the disintegrating relationship between the current capitalist ruling class and the middle class, under conditions of financial crisis and social upheaval, has eerie similarities to what we have described above. similarly, authors such as henry giroux (1996) and mike males (1996) have noted broad claims that the children of the middle class are losing both their minds and their moral compass. in the 17th century, the ruling class managed the crisis of the poor by designated them mad and morally unfit. in today’s crisis, they have instituted a proliferating array of diagnoses that allows the designation of young people in crisis as oppositionally defiant or biochemically imbalanced. the machinic diagram of the asylum, founded in the parisian financial crisis of 1656, has sustained itself well into our current historical period. our current institutions of care continue to be composed of the elements of incarceration, psychological diagnosis, and moral remediation. we continue to operate on behalf of the ruling class in controlling and disciplining our own children under the guise of care, rather than addressing the actual moral and functional bankruptcy of the existing system of global capitalism. we perpetuate the machinic social diagram in our current institutions of residential care. in light of this, i would suggest that an examination of the elements of this diagram might be in order. i would like to open that analysis here with a look at one particular element: the door of the institution. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 322 the question of the door each residential care facility is comprised of an inside and an outside mediated by an entrance. this entrance is a portal to a building accessed by adults on behalf of young people who generally have little or no choice about entering themselves. in the case of young people, the subjects who enter the asylum/residential program are there either involuntarily or because they have no other viable living arrangement. upon entering the facility, their relation to the institution is, at best, ambivalent and most often hostile or resistant (arieli, 1997). their allegiance is to life outside the institution and their attitudes and behaviors often reflect this. the staff of the institution also holds an ambivalent relation to the facility. oftentimes, their relation to the agency that runs the facility is that of subjugation. put simply, they are at the bottom of a hierarchy of power that exercises disciplinary control on their actions and expects that they put their bodies and their thoughts at the disposal of the agency’s agendas. they ostensibly enter and leave the facility freely, but for many the choice to come and go is driven by financial exigency and may not be absolutely voluntary. their job is to integrate and transform the young people into clients of the agency’s services. they are to turn the allegiances of the youth/children from the outside world to the inside of the facility. to do this, they deploy an extensive array of social technologies including using their own affective engagements with the young people to attach them to the staff and hence ultimately to the institution3 . the question of bodies, their attachments, and flow inside and outside of the institution is defined by both the physical infrastructure of the buildings, rooms, and grounds as well as by the attachments and internalizations of institutional values and regimes of discipline and control. perhaps the object most symbolic of a body’s engagement with the facility is the entryway and most specifically the door. in what follows, i will engage the question of the door as a certain kind of mechanism or machine that produces the inside and outside of any space. a door is always a space between. it can be open or closed, opaque or clear, locked or unlocked, barred or unbarred, thick or thin. it can serve multiple purposes including keeping a hostile world outside or creating a productive space of solitude. in the service of a dominant system of control, it most often is deployed as mediation between spaces that holds the possibility of being controlled and shaped to particular purposes. the door in question within the residential facility is a physical door that can be locked to prevent those inside from gaining access to the outside. however, the door also represents the inside and the outside as a set of relations beyond any specific physicality. in this case, it comprises a very complicated set of meanings that produces multiple and, at times, contradictory inflections of the relation of inside to outside. these meanings can be plotted on a grid composed of bodies, psychic structures, social norms, and institutional physicality. the function and quality of the door in 3 macleod (2010) notes the complexity of this role and the anxiety it produces for staff in residential care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 323 question is composed of bodies; bodies on one side of the door and bodies on the other side. some bodies can move through the space defined by the door and others may not. there are, of course, rules about which bodies can move and which cannot. within this space, functionaries of the institution can enter and leave by using keys provided by the institution. they cannot, however, simply enter and leave when they would like, but only in their role as staff. within these parameters, the institution functions as an outside to all bodies within its realm. it produces the identities and functions of the staff as well as the youth. the institution not only controls the activities of the young people, but also regulates the flow of staff in and out and prescribes what they are to do and what they must not do. staff as functionaries of the dominant ideology the anti-psychiatrist, franco basaglia (1987), notes this as the way in which the staff are deployed as, “functionaries of the dominant ideology” (p. 144). he states that the way in which such staff operate within the institution is often diametrically opposed to their own political orientation outside. they become, what basaglia references in sartre as, “technicians of practical knowledge, whose duty is to concretely implement both ideologies and the crimes of peace that those ideologies legalize and justify” (p. 145). basaglia (1987) had reason to think carefully about the relation of staff to the institution and about the question of doors. in 1961, he was a young italian psychiatrist who had become the director of an asylum in gorizia, italy. although he had nearly 10 years experience as the director of a university clinic, nothing prepared him for what he would find in the back wards of his new institution. the world of the asylum at that time was savage and brutal in both its rampant use of electroshock, psychosurgery, and hydrotherapy as well as restraint, and its complete disregard for human dignity and basic hygiene4. deeply influenced by sartrean phenomenology as well as the marxist theories of gramsci and the frankfurt school5 , basaglia set out to dismantle the asylum in order to return what he termed subjectivity to the patients whom he felt had lost any sense of themselves through their incarceration. his methods were radical and innovative involving restructuring the lives and roles of both patients and staff. he claimed that the people incarcerated within the asylum were suffering not so much from psychiatric illness as the effects of a brutalizing socioeconomic system amplified by the institutional effects of the asylum itself (scheperhughes & lovell, 1987). while basaglia’s efforts were only partially successful at gorizia, where he faced significant political opposition, he set the groundwork for his life’s work. he left in 1977 4 for a documentary account of similar conditions see frederick wiseman’s 1967 film titicut follies. for a fictional account of the italian experience, see m. t. giordana’s (2003) film, best of youth. for a photo essay, see manzoli’s (2004) images of madness, the end of mental hospitals. 5 in particular horkheimer, adorno. the trieste group also used lukacs to advance their theoretical work. see scheper-hughes and lovell (1987, 315 n 5, 8). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 324 and moved to trieste where he continued his efforts at dismantling the institution. at trieste he was very successful and in fact his model of deinstitutionalization spread across italy resulting in national legislation that prohibited long-term institutionalization of those termed mentally ill (scheper-hughes & lovell, 1987). basaglia began with a problem. he had decided, upon taking directorship of the asylum, that he would unlock the back wards and allow patients freedom of movement. his problem was that they wouldn’t leave. he opened the door but, basaglia discovered that the open door merely reminded the patients of their confinement, and of their rejection by the world outside. instead of taking the cue to freedom and autonomy offered by the open door, the newly liberated patients at gorizia remained passive and imprisoned by an internalized image of the asylum. basaglia wrote, “as long as they accept liberty as a gift from the doctor they remain submissively dominated.” (scheper hughes & lovell, 1987, pp. 18–19) with the problem of the door, we engage the question of this essay. in what ways does the door operate, not imply as an entrance, but as an active piece of machinery that signals certain practices, beliefs, and even forms of identity? the institution, in this way, not only controls and shapes the embodied flow of staff and clients, but also shapes the ideological underpinnings of their behavior so that it might well become alien to their own stated beliefs on the outside. in shaping the ideas and beliefs of the staff and clients, the institution functions between the literal outside community and the internal relations of the facility in ways that produce even the staff as alienated from their external identities. take, for example, a staff member whose identity outside the institution is that of a racial minority often subject to police harassment and racial slurs. however, inside the institution they hold a supervisory role and deal with the police and white staff with the backing and authority of the institution. once they walk in the door, they are in a position of authority and control; once they walk out the door, they are once again subjected to the racism and intolerance of the dominant social. giving a more concrete example, a few years back i was attending a retreat with a black, male colleague where he was giving a key presentation. the retreat was set in a white suburban area, and during the lunch break my colleague took a walk whereupon he was confronted by a police car and asked what he was doing walking in that area; inside the retreat he was a member of the institution, outside he was not. obviously, it is the physical edifice that constitutes the physicality of both inside and outside. at the same time, it is also the ultimate mediation of all kinds of flow throughout its interior. all bodies within the physical plant of the agency must function in relation to the institution itself. all bodies have the institution etched across their every movement. it is critical to note here that they are not the institution, even though they may carry it with them in all their interactions including outside the gates of the physical plant, and in spite of the fact they may begin to see all other bodies in their world in the terms of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 325 institutional grid, as emotionally healthy or sick, developmentally appropriate, or oppositional and defiant. basaglia (1987) argued that the institution remains estranged from them. even as the institution enters the bodily flow of subjects and directs it across its face, it remains strange and alien: always outside. the functionaries of the institutions often want to belong to it and may even claim membership in it or mistake its derived power for their own, but it is not so. the institution is separate and strange. even though it may masquerade as familiar, its familiarity is to be found in the rituals of its designated orders. its habits, inscriptions, proscriptions, and prescriptions may be known, but not the institution itself. the institution is, in its estrangement, invisible even in its entry into life. doors, rituals and technicians of practical knowledge the door, as a manifestation of the unknowable institution, signals a series of rituals that shapes the flow of bodies across its face. through the mixture of bodies and rituals, we can infer that psychic structures associated with the embodied subject are also in play here. it is in the belief in the rituals of the door that both the functionaries and the clients enter into the space of institutional ideology. this is what basaglia (1987) referred to when he describes the staff as technicians of practical knowledge. the phrase is designed to infer a cold and even clinical sense of the work as a technical application. certainly, we can see edges of this in our work in the worst practices of evidence-based practice or in the blind application of a new technique or strategy of behavioral modification. these practices and techniques are often offered to us as practical knowledge; practical, as opposed to the supposedly unprofessional, impractical, and complex sets of feelings and thoughts we might have in relation to young people left to our own devices. basaglia (1987) goes further to describe this technical application of practical knowledge by stating that the duty of these technicians is to “concretely implement . . . ideologies”. here he is using a term from althusser (2001) that refers to a system of ideas and beliefs that supports the interests of a particular class. in particular, basaglia is suggesting that once the staff enters through the doors of the institution, they begin to become social technicians. in this role, they take on the task of finding ways to concretely put into practice the beliefs and ideas of the ruling class. if basaglia is correct, then it would behoove us as staff who work in residential care institutions, to closely examine the dominant ideas and beliefs we have been taught or have come to believe are simply common sense. for example, we might ask, in what ways does the commonly held concept of development support the interests of the ruling class? basaglia (1987) goes one step further and states that the entry into the institution and the adoption of the role of social technician also requires that we commit what he calls, “the crimes of peace that those ideologies legalize and justify”. here, he is juxtaposing the crimes of peace to the category of war crimes. however, he is suggesting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 326 that peacetime is no guarantor of humane and ethical treatment. like foucault (1979) who has proposed that war continues in a different form once peace is declared, basaglia is suggesting that apparent domestic normalcy can obscure subtle yet horrendous violations of dignity and sovereignty. such practices will be carried out under the auspices of ideology masquerading as common sense. the range and scope of such practices and rituals is often determined by a door. doors indeed have often opened onto spaces filled with ritual, from churches to homes, schools, factories, barracks, camps, and prisons. the door is a critical element in the production of spaces of containment under the regimes of the disciplinary society. the subjects, as they pass through the door, are directed into the rituals associated with certain spaces such as: cooking, cleaning, running machinery, beating prisoners, reading books, writing on chalkboards, committing genocide, vacuuming, water-boarding, praying, fucking, and confessing. indeed, each door signals the rituals of space with its expectations of safety or cruelty for each subject depending on whether they enter the kitchen, the classroom, the cell, the concentration camp, the bedroom, the therapist’s office, or the factory. importantly, it is in the violation of these rituals that the possibilities for eluding control and constituting alternate subjectivities are produced. that is to say, that the events within the institution are both composed of rules and regulations, as well as behavior that does not make sense within those rules. the “mad” things that go on in the facility signal that there is an outside to that logic that cannot be fully contained by the rules and proscriptions. there is a surplus of behavior, as violation, that signals an opening in the hegemonic ideological structure of the institution. in final analysis, the violations are not always sanguine. they can be violations of immense cruelty and trauma as well as the violations comprised of small bids for freedom and resistance. the psychic structure of the institution, produced as the simulacrum of singularity we call the individual, is premised always in relation to the doors and rituals of contained space. even the individual self is comprised in this way. the psychic structure of residential treatment attempts to open a door between the self as unconscious and conscious, rational and irrational, speakable and unspeakable selves. this door is also comprised of a set of rituals and simulacra of relations through which the child and youth care worker produces a space in which the ritualized relations of family life, with its doorways and rituals, can be re-entered and replicated. within this, there are both possibilities of producing the self as compliant within the confines of the dominant social, as well as creating an avenue of resistance and creative flight. what are we to say of the possibility of the spaces produced beyond effective discipline, signaled by an engagement with creative deviance? contradictions of care critical here is the notion of contradiction. the institution produces itself as seamless ideologically and structurally; everything that occurs is rational and ideologically justifiable. as we have pointed out, this seamless space can only sustain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 327 itself as an enclosure that circulates highly ritualized flows. any violation, however slight, must be caught and sanctioned, which means for a young person in care: diagnosed and treated; and for a staff member: corrected through training or supervision. the moment at which this seamless architecture fails to conceal the gap between its ideological facade and the actuality of its daily material function, a deviant line is opened. it is in this space of contradiction that new possibilities can be nurtured. inevitably though, it is quite clear that such openings are temporary and that the dominant structures of the social will put all its resources to reconfiguring its architecture to recover its seamless form. the source of the contradiction, however, is not to be found in ideological production, but in the subject that has been excluded. such a subject must remain excluded in order to provide both the justification for the institution itself and the dominant social ideology that it protects. the vehicle for the production of this exclusion is the relation between the community and the institution. community, in this sense, is that community built on a framework of exclusion. the children and youth in care are produced as outside the social by the very aspect of their confinement. their confinement signals an absence. they are missing, but we are not allowed to miss them; at least not publicly. they are where they are for a reason. they cause us trouble because when they are with us in community, they produce holes in the fabric of our lives, our habits, our comforts, and our commonality. their difference must be secluded away and not missed except in the solitude of those who know they also do not really belong to the commonality of the social. unfortunately, the reason that they are troubling is because they illustrate the bare fact that the social is incapable of caring for its members. basaglia (1987) points out, that in a functioning social, those members who are experiencing difficulties are cared for within their families, homes, and workplaces. these spaces are provided, or are able to provide for themselves, the necessary resources to compassionately care for those who are suffering. obviously, this would require a radical re-orientation of resources and a reallocation of time based on people’s actual needs rather than the needs of capitalism for profit. the entire system of care for young people is the demonstration of the failure of the dominant social. nonetheless, the liberal capitalist state promises that it can meet all human need through the ever-expanding creation of wealth and technology. if everyone will wait their turn and work hard, all needs and desires will be met. if someone is failing to achieve their potential as a citizen of capitalist society, they must not interfere with the work of the rest of us. they will be “cared for” by institutions specifically designed to “help” them. each of these institutions has a door that will hide their suffering from view. it is clear, though, that each of the inmates knows that that door simply symbolizes their rejection by the dominant social and holds little possibility of actual care. even if an inmate is released into the outside world, they know they must never, ever, show any trace of their suffering or they will be shunned and excluded. they must assimilate into international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 328 the world of capitalist relations and its sets of alienated relations. so, each in her turn carries the door with them even into the outside world. destroying the logic of the door the question then becomes: how to destroy the logic of the door? one opening for accomplishing this is through the concepts of contradiction and antagonism. it is crucial, as foucault (1971) has pointed out, that the apparently benign institutions of civil society be stripped of their benevolent veneer to expose their raw disciplinary force. to do this within the kind of institutional machinery we have elaborated here, the doors produced by the dominant social to their own ends, must be removed. in other words, the barriers between the forces of the various bodies within the institution must be cast aside. this is, we should note, neither a liberal project of reform, with all of its mediated safety, nor simply a humanitarian project, which would make the institution a less ugly or painful place. what we must aim to do is to destroy the institution itself so as to release the life it contains into the social. correspondingly, this flow of missing bodies out of the institution would release the force of the bodies embedded within the carapace of civil society by their collision with the bodies from the inside. in short, this would be a revolutionary project designed, not simply to free those within the institution, but also those on the outside; to join those bodies together through the exposure of the contradictions and antagonisms made obvious in the exposure of the machinery of the institution itself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 316–330 329 references althusser, l. 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(2004, june). images of madness. the end of mental hospitals illustrated through photographs. journal of science communication, 3(2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221034 just technopanic or a real risk? publishing children’s pictures online: a review of literature sylvia tuikong abstract: the internet has become an essential resource for social interaction among children, but it brings with it both advantages and disadvantages that depend in part on how it is used. this study, which is anchored in social learning theory, employed a desktop review of existing literature that focused on kenya but covered global and other regional levels as well. the study found a number of benefits of the internet for children: updating family and friends on new developments in the children’s lives, reviewing photos and other records of past events, engaging in online interactions, and increasing their capacity for learning. nonetheless, there are also internet-specific risks, such as access to inappropriate content and unsafe interactions with other children or adults. other risks include “digital kidnapping” and contact with perpetrators who encourage children to engage in sexual activity. although some countries have policies on internet usage, few have specific policies or guidelines addressing children’s vulnerability when sharing their pictures online. moreover, most such policies are not applied in practice, especially in african countries. the study recommends developing and implementing policy frameworks to protect children online and using privacy settings to protect their information. keywords: technopanic, real risk, children’s pictures sylvia tuikong phd is a senior lecturer in peace, conflict studies, and psychology as well as the director, quality assurance and accreditation at daystar university, p.o. box 44400-00100, nairobi, kenya. email: stuikong@daystar.ac.ke international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 73 the pervasive global digital environment that today’s children must learn to navigate presents new parenting challenges (brosch, 2016). parents are increasingly using social media networks such as facebook to “share the joys and challenges of parenthood and document children’s lives publicly.… many children have a plethora of pictures, posts and updates about their lives on social media before they can even walk” (brosch, 2016, pp. 225–226). this practice is called “sharenting”, a term coined by leckart (2012) in a headline in the wall street journal that asked, “are you a mom or dad who’s guilty of ‘oversharenting’?”. in spite of such concerns, the sharing and public display of personal information about children by caregivers through social network sites is growing daily, as indicated in numerous studies. a survey done in michigan, united states (c. s. mott children’s hospital national poll on children’s health, 2015) indicated that 56% of mothers and 34% of fathers shared information related to childcare on social networks (para. 3). the survey also found that: the majority of parents who use social media (74%) know of another parent who has shared too much information about a child on social media, including parents who gave embarrassing information about a child (56%), offered personal information that could identify a child’s location (51%), or shared inappropriate photos of a child (27%). (para. 6) as they grow older, the child may come to find the shared information humiliating. for example, the family online safety institute (2015) surveyed 589 u.s. parents of 6to 17-year-olds and found that 1 in 10 parents said that “their child asked them to take down something they posted about the child” (p. 22). technological advancement has put camera phones in the hands of many caregivers: sharing photos now ranks at the top among practices prevalent on social media (brosch, 2016). a survey of 404 polish parents revealed that 21% uploaded a photograph or video of their child to the internet once a week or more (sas, 2020). in an article for good housekeeping magazine, lombardi (2022) also advanced this point of view, indicating that the average parent shares almost 1500 images of their child before the child’s 5th birthday. globally, internet use among children has become widespread; it may be expected to have benefits and risks for them, depending on which online activities they pursue (bulger et al., 2017). in europe, “the internet is somehow inscribed in the everyday lives of young people, since 60% of 9to 16-year-olds use the web every day or almost every day” (wojniak & majorek, 2016, p. 132). as far back as 2009, a survey comparing the activities of japanese and american children on the internet determined that, “about 80% of american children use the instant messenger (im) and 70% use the social networking services (sns), but for japanese children, only 20% use im and 10% use sns” (kanoh, 2009, p. 912). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 74 in nigeria, nkordeh et al. (2017) noted that while university students did use social media for online learning, communicating with friends was the dominant use, as well as posting and viewing photos, joining groups, and watching movies, and that this mix of activities had had “a negative impact on the reading culture of nigerian youths” (p. 225). ravalli and paoloni (2016) noted that, “in argentina, 45% of adolescents [had] used the internet for the first time before the age of 10” (p. 16), and that nearly all adolescents used social media, especially facebook. the same study found that both adults and adolescents regarded “loss of privacy, given the excess of personal and family information posted on the web” (p. 30) as one negative consequence of heavy internet use. phyfer et al. (2016) showed that the widespread use of the internet was changing how children live and interact with their friends in south africa, where most children have access to the internet in schools and homes. children who used the internet highlighted “the importance of the internet to school work and broadening their knowledge on various subjects, accessing entertainment, socialising and access to educational opportunites” (p. 23). phyfer et al. (2016) also reported that some children as young as 6 were using the internet, although “the average age at which participants started using the internet was 11.7 years” (p. 16). according to pavlick (2017), kenya leads internet usage in africa: the communications authority of kenya is cited as reporting that “mobile penetration now stands at 88%, while internet penetration is at 74% — 9 out of 10 kenyans have a mobile device and 7 out of 10 can access the internet” (para. 2). the current study has a focus on kenya because, in spite of this extensive use of mobile devices and the internet in the country, there is a scarcity of studies on the risks and benefits of internet usage for children in the kenyan context. this study was guided by social learning theory, originated by albert bandura in 1969 (bandura, 1969). social learning theory holds that knowledge is a cognitive process in a social context and that learning can occur either through observation or instruction (akers, 2011). according to ahn et al. (2019), social learning entails people learning by observing other people, considering noticeable effects experienced by those people, and rehearsing (first mentally) what could occur in their own lives if they adhered to other individuals’ actions; in doing so, people can compare their own experiences with those of others. oyero and oyesomi (2014) supported these views, noting that “whatever children learn while watching cartoons, they tend to act out, thereby influencing their mode of socializing with other children and with the world in general” (p. 97). social learning theory can frequently aid in identifying and treating the sources of specific actions. the theory describes human behaviour in terms of a continuous mutual interface “between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental determinants” (bandura, 1977). the theory has been used extensively to understand aggression and psychological disorders, especially with regard to behaviour modification. it is also the theoretical foundation for behaviour modelling, which is widely used in training programs. for these reasons, social learning theory provided a crucial basis for the research described in this study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 75 today we live in a digital age in which access to the internet, new technologies, and new services is rapidly growing. as young people become ever more active in the online environment, they are increasingly exposed to external influences, creating a “need for the state, stakeholders and other key persons in a child’s life to ensure that the child is protected against possible harm” (national council for children’s services, 2010, p. 14). as a result, some countries have developed strategies and policies to protect children online by limiting the collection and use of personal information about children by the operators of internet services and websites. one important law designed to protect children is the children’s online privacy protection act (coppa) in the united states (federal trade commission, 1998). widespread internet usage makes such policy frameworks essential for protecting the vulnerable, especially children. however, hannah (2022) and andrews et al. (2020) stated that, even though coppa has been around for 20 years, protecting children’s privacy online faces “challenges with ensuring verifiable parental consent and keeping up with emerging technology” (p. 11). in europe, the european union established the safer internet plus programme to promote safe use of the internet, mostly by monitoring and filtering undesirable content that might negatively influence children’s psychological or moral development (hasebrink et al., 2009). the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc; 1989) established that children have the right “to be protected from abuse or exploitation [and] to have their privacy protected” (santos pais & bissell, 2006). in discussing the aging of the crc, veerman (2010) pointed out that the rights of children need to be recognized, that children can participate in their own protection, and that there is a need to focus on prevention of, and response to, child abuse, neglect, violence, and exploitation. data protection in africa as users and companies increasingly rely on the internet to transmit and store private information, governments and other stakeholders all over the world are expected to have put in place policies and mechanisms that protect children. deloitte (2020) reported that well over half of african countries have some form of legislation, either in place or in development, governing the privacy and security of personal digital data (p. 5). in kenya, the data protection act was passed in 2019 to protect against the misuse of online data (deloitte, 2021). the act maintains that “every data controller or data processor shall ensure that all personal data is processed lawfully, fairly, and in a transparent manner in relation to any data subject" (republic of kenya, 2019, part iv, 25b). as well, the government has in place the kenya computer incident response team coordination centre1 (ke-cirt/cc) whose goal is to report cybercrime criminal incidences experienced online. this is a collaboration between government agencies and international organizations, and has a designated section within the kecirt to handle children’s complaints relating to cybercrime (okuku et al., 2015). 1 https://ke-cirt.go.ke/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 76 additionally, some countries in africa have put in place data protection authorities (dpas; deloitte, 2020), a type of agency that oversees the application of a country’s data protection laws. deloitte (2020) characterized the use of dpas “in countries such as ghana and mauritius as being more robust due to recent action taken or fines issued for non-compliance with relevant personal data protection legislation” (p. 8). in senegal and tunisia, meanwhile, “there have not been any reports of particularly robust dpa activity” (deloitte, 2020, p. 8). the creation and application of dpas throughout africa generally has been similarly inconsistent (deloitte, 2020). the legislative environment is also varied. in the nigerian constitution, section 8 of the child rights act provides for children’s right to privacy, and section 23 of the cybercrimes act 2015 punishes child pornography; it also criminalizes cyberbullying. in rwanda, the rwanda child online protection policy is designed to mitigate against those risks and harms and deliver a framework that meets children’s needs and fulfils their rights while enabling them to navigate the digital environment safely and confidently. however, in many african countries where such policies exist, including kenya, they have not been implemented effectively or efficiently (deloitte, 2020; greenleaf & cottier, 2018; okuku et al., 2015) and do little to strengthen children’s safety online. technopanic? steinberg (2017) indicated that as parents share information online about parenting, they “shape their their children’s digital identity long before these young people open their first e-mail” (p. 839). such exposure without the children’s consent ignores their right to privacy and continues to affect them as they grow up. steinberg further observed that: parents act as both gatekeepers of their children’s personal information and as narrators of their children’s personal stories. this dual role of parents in their children’s online identity gives children little protection as their online identity evolves. a conflict of interests exists as children might one day resent the disclosures made years earlier by their parents. (p. 839) are such worries about the practice of sharing children’s pictures online just “technopanic”? wheeler (2015) explained technopanic as an unreasonable fear of what technology might bring to society, including such common problems of internet use as exposure to pornography and other undesirable content, the danger of contact with pedophiles, cyberbullying, and sexting (sending sexually explict photos and texts). wheeler pointed out that these are all issues of concern to those responsible for protecting children. in the current study, “technopanic” means a moral panic that occurs due to the rapid emergence of internet usage globally, especially among children. this study therefore aims to assess the benefits and risks of sharing children’s pictures and information online — whether by parents or other caregivers, or the children themselves — to examine whether concerns raised about the practice reflect a real risk or are mere technopanic. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 77 methodology this article began as a paper presented at the 4th regional parenting conference: embracing technology for safety of children in care settings, which took place in malawi in october, 2017 (tuikong, 2017). i employed a desktop review of the published literature in the subject area at the global and regional levels, and also with specific regard to kenya. this was significant for making comparisons and developing a broad understanding of the views of other scholars. the study designs that had been used in the reviewed literature included quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. published studies were preferred under the assumption that they are likely to be of a higher quality than those in the grey literature. available and accessible literature was reviewed until the saturation point was reached — when no new information or themes were observed (randolph, 2009). google and scopus were used to search for studies with the terms and phrases “publishing children’s pictures online” and “children and online risks”. google scholar returned 837,000 hits on articles related to the phrase “children and online risk”, and the phrase “publishing children’s pictures online” returned 693,000 hits. scopus search on “publishing children’s pictures online” returned 2,640,000 hits. the first few pages of the google search, google scholar, and scopus results contained the most relevant articles. of these, i selected and read 79 peer-reviewed articles, and identified 52 that addressed the research question. thus, 52 published full articles were accessed, downloaded, and reviewed for the study. during data analysis, the collected literature was analyzed based on themes emerging from reviewed literature that were similar to the themes earlier identified for the study. some of the themes used included the benefits and risks of sharing children’s photos and information online, and policies in place to protect children online, and the existing gaps. findings this section describes the numerous benefits and risks that arise from sharing children’s pictures online that emerged from the reviewed literature and from policy frameworks for sharing children’s pictures online. risks of sharing children’s pictures and information online a study was conducted by tejedor-calvo and pulido-rodríguez (2012) to examine the challenges and risks of internet use by children in spain and the united states. the study found that 44% of children in spain had at least one experience of feeling sexually harassed on the internet in 2002. in the united states, a 2010 survey of 4,400 students found that 20% suffered from cyberbullying. the high frequency of these behaviours shows the need to take measures to protect the children. a study conducted in nigeria by nkordeh et al. (2017) to examine the impact of social media platforms focused on children in primary schools. the research showed that children spent much of their time chatting, sharing photos, and searching for current movies and pictures. one of these, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 78 sharing photos, entails the risk that unauthorized people may access the images. this increases the danger of children being exposed to sexting and other unwelcome contacts. kamaku and mberia (2014) sought to examine social media's effect on the incidence of sexual activity among secondary students in kenya. a descriptive case study design was used. the study found that most secondary school students have access to mobile phones and the internet, and that heavy usage of social media can lead students to engage in sexual activity. they may share pictures with their colleagues, and hence risk exposure to sites and people who take advantage of their innocence. similarly, kimemia and mugambi (2016), in a study of public secondary students in meru county, kenya, examined whether social media exposure influenced the teenage pregnancy rate, and established that pupils’ access to social networking sites was high, and was focused on sexually explicit music, images, and videos, and on sexting. of 283 participants, 31.8% felt that sexting on mobile phones was the social media usage that most influenced the rate of teenage sex, followed by social networking sites (26.1%), and the internet in general (18.2%; p. 4596). using a correlational research design, wangamati et al. (2018) conducted a study to examine communities’ perceptions of factors contributing to child sexual abuse vulnerability in kenya. participants included school-enrolled (ages 12–16) and unenrolled (ages 14–18) minors, as well as adults. the study revealed a general tendency among children as well as adults to use their smart phones to access erotic material. in 10 of the 12 adult fgds conducted by wangamati et al., participants were of the opinion that these sexually explicit materials could encourage children to engage in sexual activity at an early age. o’neill (2015) used the term “digital kidnapping” to designate a serious concern linked to posting children’s pictures and information online. brosch (2016) described this as “a phenomenon where strangers steal baby photos and repost them across the internet as if the child was their own” (p. 227). this can lead to a new online identity based on the child’s picture, with a new name and a new life story (brosch, 2016). sharenting may also expose children to the risk of being mocked online. parker (2013) reported on a secret “mean girls” facebook group of mothers who were posting derogatory comments on photos of children from other facebook accounts, making fun of the children they deemed “ugly”, including physically challenged children. posting children’s photos and information starting in infancy may mean that a significant digital footprint has been created by the time adolescence is reached. a child’s digital footprint is a permanent part of their online reputation: what is posted online about the child can never be entirely erased (holloway & green, 2017, p. 15). parents rarely post their children’s pictures or videos online with malicious intent. however, they may not always have contemplated how the information they share could be understood or reframed by others, particularly when the stories or photos are in some way embarrassing or inappropriate (brosch, 2016). they may also not understand that they cannot know or control where the information they post will end up (brosch, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 79 2016): someone could easily copy the photo, tag it, save it, or otherwise use it without the original poster’s knowledge. it is technically easy to copy photos online, edit or alter them as desired, and then distribute them to other sites or publications. finally, content that parents post online now may not be seen as appropriate in the future (brosch, 2016). benefits of sharing children’s pictures and information online many parents find benefit in the practice of sharing photos of and information about children online: kumar and schoenebeck (2015) described facebook as a “modern day baby book” that helps “new mothers enact and receive validation of ‘good mothering’" (p. 1302). indeed, brosch (2016) stated that “parents post online an enormous number of pictures to chronicle almost every moment of their children’s lives”, and gave results from a study by avg technologies in 2010: “on average, children acquire a digital identity by the age of six. but in many cases, these online practices start even before the birth of a child, when expectant mothers share sonogram images of their unborn children” (p. 226). wamuyu (2021) affirmed the idea that online pictures can provide a memorial record as the ease of posting photos of children during sports events and celebrations such as birthday parties enables these occasions to be recorded and shared with loved ones. as brosch (2016) and steinberg (2017) pointed out, children’s photos shared online help them review past events. additionally, when work situations, marriage away from one’s ancestral family, or immigration keep family members apart, sharing photos and information on digital platforms can provide a means of keeping family and friends updated. thus, pictures and information on social media sites can help unite family members who live far away from each other (kumar & schoenebeck, 2015), easing the burden of separation. sharing children’s photos and information online invites interactions, “likes”, and comments from other parents and friends online. for modern parents, social media sites can offer “a unique opportunity to exchange experiences and happiness about their parenthood or search for help with parenting issues” (brosch, 2016, p. 227). children, too, want interaction and feedback with their peers and friends. dyer (2018) maintained that, among children in canada, internet use promotes communication and enables positive interactions and stronger friendships with others from diverse backgrounds. akram and kumar (2017) found that internet use was beneficial for children in pakistan, promoting interaction between children and, in turn, increasing the sharing of educational materials and enhancing group projects. when children share information with their peers for clarification and discussion, the comments they receive can boost their confidence and help them improve their social skills. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 80 discussion the reviewed literature confirms that internet exposure can make children vulnerable to sexual harassment, and that some have experienced cyberbullying, as tejedor-calvo and pulidorodríguez reported in 2012. their findings agree with those of wangamati et al. (2018), who stated that one significant risk of posting photos of children on social media is the attention they may get from sexual predators. kamaku and mberia (2014), in a study that sought “to establish how the respondents’ engagement in sexual immorality had been modeled by social media” (p. 420), were concerned that internet use, and sexting in particular, encouraged students to engage in sexual activities while young. a later study by kimemia and mugambi (2016) found that nearly a third of the public secondary students who participated in their survey felt that sexting on mobile phones was the social media usage that had the most influence on the rate of teenage sex. nkordeh et al.’s (2017) study found that, although the internet can be a place of education, few of their participants used it that way, instead spending much of their time chatting, taking photos, and searching for current movies and pictures. the authors felt that, overall, the internet had a negative impact on the reading habits of the students they surveyed. akram and kumar (2017) took the opposite position in maintaining that internet use enables children to conduct research and facilitates the sharing of educational materials for learning. the literature review found that parents may create the digital identities of their children long before the children have had a chance to establish their own presence on digital platforms. often they begin posting pictures of their children at birth, or even before, on multiple social media platforms (brosch, 2016). steinberg (2017) confirmed that parents form their children’s digital identities by sharing their pictures and information online from an early age. children’s pictures and details posted to the internet remain online permanently and can be misused. holloway and green (2017) noted that a child’s digital footprint remains part of their online reputation and can never be entirely erased. wangari (2016) agreed that content posted online can easily be stolen and re-used for unintended purposes; moreover, one can lose control over the posted content, which can remain online in different forms. the study results indicate that content posted online may be interpreted differently than intended, leading to children being ridiculed (brosch, 2016; parker, 2013). for example, online commentators may demean a child as “ugly” (parker, 2013). the family online safety institute (2015) took a different perspective, focusing instead on children’s embarrassment about photos that they themselves regarded as inappropriate. content posted on social media sites can become a “modern day baby book,” providing a record of the child’s life history (kumar & schoenebeck, 2015). steinberg (2017) and brosch (2016) agreed that children’s photos shared online help them later to have a view of past events. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 81 it is evident that social media connect families and friends, enabling them to follow each other’s progress, share their experiences, and even resolve outstanding challenges (kumar & schoenebeck, 2015). these findings agree with brosch’s (2016) view that social media offer opportunities to share parenting challenges. children’s confidence and self-esteem improve as a result of interaction and feedback from online peers (akram & kumar, 2017). similarly, phyfer et al. (2016) indicated that increased communication with online friends leads to increased knowledge, creativity, and confidence. as the national council for children’s services affirmed in 2010, it is vital for the kenyan state, stakeholders, and other key actors in a child’s life to ensure that the child is protected against possible harm. in constructing the framework for the national child protection system for kenya, the council (2011) reiterated that the existence and application of appropriate laws and policies can help protect children from violence and exploitation and ensure the delivery of “prompt and co-ordinated action … to prevent further occurrence” (p. iii). on balance, this study’s findings agree with marcovitz (2012) that technopanic over sharing children’s pictures is unwarranted, since measures can be put in place to reduce the risks. wheeler (2015) took the general view that concerns over safety on the web and around mobile phone use, especially for children, tend to be exaggerated. summary of knowledge gaps the literature reviewed exhibited dissimilar results. the reviewed studies take a variety of perspectives — global, regional, and kenyan. examining studies from different contexts was essential for making comparisons and comprehensively understanding other scholars’ perspectives. it becomes apparent that children from the global north behave differently from their peers in the global south in regard to online activities due to their different levels of technological exposure. while some studies have indicated that sharing images of children online can have a positive impact, and others have claimed a negative effect, few have compared the benefits and risks of using the internet, especially for children. moreover, scant information is available in the particular context of kenya. it is hoped that the current study goes some way towards addressing that gap. conclusion the literature makes clear that the online presence of children and the posting of their personal content exposes them to a variety of risks, such as sexual harassment and cyberbullying. it is necessary that parents and teachers develop mechanisms and strategies to address these. available techniques include: (a) the use of privacy settings to protect children’s information, (b) alternative ways of sharing pictures, (c) protocols on the use and sharing of children’s photos in schools, (d) avoiding the use children’s names along with images, and (e) turning off location settings on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 82 devices used to share pictures online. the application of such methods seems preferable to giving in to technopanic and making the decision to not publish children’s photos online at all. although policies for the protection of children online have been widely implemented in some regions, such as the united states and europe, some african countries have yet to develop them at all. in other african countries, including kenya, the implementation and enforcement of such policies is not yet fully realized. these policy gaps must be corrected and frameworks put in place to ensure that children are protected on all fronts. perhaps the main finding of this literature review is that there remain large gaps in available scholarship concerning the benefits and risks of sharing children’s pictures online. many of the studies reviewed were limited in geographical scope, and need to be undertaken on a wider scale. with regard to online culture, similarities and contrasts between regions with different cultures need to be investigated. the impacts on risk of the age and gender of children whose pictures are shared online, whether by themselves or by others, also warrants further study. finally, literature reviews like the present study need to be complemented by a range of empirical investigations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 72–87 83 references ahn, j. n., hu, d., & vega, m. 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(2010). the ageing of the un convention on the rights of the child. the international journal of children’s rights, 18(4), 585–618. doi:10.1163/157181810x522360 wamuyu, p. k. (2021). social media consumption among kenyans: trends and practices. in p. k. wamuyu (ed.), analyzing global social media consumption (pp. 88–120). igi global. doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-4718-2.ch006 wangari, n. (2016). dangers of posting your child’s photos online. the saturday standard. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sunday-magazine/article/2000187114/dangers-of-postingyour-childs-photos-online wheeler, s. (2015). learning with ‘e’s : educational theory and practice in the digital age. crown house. wojniak, j., & majorek, m. (2016). children and ict european initiatives and policies on protecting children online. universal journal of educational research, 4(1), 131–136. doi:10.13189/ujer.2016.040116 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918856 pain and the unspoken emotion: shame howard bath abstract: anger, fear, and sadness are frequently described emotions that are experienced by many young people in care, but there is another common emotion that is less often named and understood. shame — the deep sense of not belonging, of being defective or deficient in some way, of feeling unlovable — is a painful and pervasive social emotion that also involves our thinking processes and sense of selfworth. it has been described as a “pit of despair” that “envelops” many young people in care, a toxic force that drives behaviours we struggle to understand including some aggression and self-harm. referencing nathanson’s compass of shame, this article looks at some common coping strategies as well as masks or proxies of shame including the so-called “impostor” phenomenon – even the “drive for normality” described by james anglin in 2002 could be seen as an attempt to escape from shame’s isolating clutches. strategies for helping young people understand and cope with shame, including the fostering of healthy connections and the judicious use of words, are then explored. keywords: shame, child protection, child welfare, trauma, compass of shame, residential care howard bath phd provides a range of consultancy services for child protection and youth justice services, across australia and internationally, through allambi care, 28 fraser parade, charleston, nsw, australia. email: howard.bath@allambicare.org.au mailto:howard.bath@allambicare.org.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 127 there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. zora neale hurston (1942/1996, p. 176) there are many painful emotions experienced by young people in the care and protection system. grief, anxiety, depression, numbness, and even terror are just some of those listed by anglin (2002) in his classic study of residential care. but there is one troubling emotion that is less frequently identified, namely shame. it is often omitted from those lists of emotions that are so common in elementary school classrooms; it is not often identified or named by parents, carers, teachers and other mentors when they interact with young people; and it is rarely mentioned by the young people themselves. although shame affects all of us at times and has been studied and written about for a long time, it is much more likely to be a consideration in counselling and adult mental health settings than in services such as child welfare, child protection, or youth justice. yet this emotion is known to be a central driver of many challenging behaviours, such as aggression and self-harm (gilligan, 1996); it is sometimes experienced as a “bottomless pit of despair in which the self is lost” (siegel, 2012, p. 327); and it has been suggested that young people in the care system are “enveloped” in it (hughes, 1997, p. 3). in contrast to guilt, which is a sense that we may have done a specific “bad” or “wrong” thing, shame is the sense that somehow we ourselves are defective or deficient in a fundamental way. it is a deep sense of not being good enough, of not measuring up, of being damaged goods, of not belonging, of being unworthy, of feeling unlovable. it is commonly attached to themes such as personal appearance or attractiveness, including racial background, height, weight, and skin colour; issues related to competence, including social skills, ethics, values, and empathy; sexuality and intimacy; power and social efficacy; and personal beliefs or religious identification (nathanson, 1994, p. 316). shame is a social emotion: it is generated when we perceive or experience ourselves in a social context, in relation to others — our families, peers, communities, and even countries. brené brown (2012), a researcher and author of several best-selling books, defined shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (p. 69). the building blocks of shame nathanson (1994) suggests that brief shame experiences are common because shame (and humiliation, a closely-related construct) is a “built-in”, highly aversive affect that occurs “whenever desire outruns fulfilment” (p. 138). it operates from early in infancy when positive drives, expectations, or bids for attention are thwarted. a small infant may orient towards its international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 128 mother, expecting a response. the mother may be distracted and fail to respond. the infant experiences a “jolt”, “shock”, or “burst” of shame (p. 141) which triggers distress. usually the caregiver will immediately repair the disconnection because she or he empathises with the infant and does not like either the infant’s emotional pain or their own. as we get older we all experience these brief “cognitive shocks” or “bursts” of shame or humiliation when a social expectation or bid for connection is blocked or ignored. for example, when we are trying to explain something and the listener glances down at their watch. the jolt is such that we might feel the need to immediately apologise for taking the person’s time. it is the emotion generated in that school prank where someone gestures to shake your hand, and as you reciprocate they turn away straightening their hair as if it was never their intention to acknowledge you. and remember that common school experience of the two appointed captains picking players for their scratch game of basketball? as the respective captains pick their team members in turn, starting with those perceived to be the most capable, an ever-diminishing group of potential players is left — not good enough, unwanted, shuffling with downcast eyes, jolted with shame and perhaps internally attempting to rationalise it away (“well, basketball’s not my thing anyway”). shame is not necessarily a destructive or negative emotion and the brief “shocks” can highlight the need for connection and the imperative to belong. it has a powerful positive role in bonding us with our close attachment figures, integrating us into social groups and, especially, reintegrating us when things go wrong. according to louis cozolino (2016), “appropriate shame supports development of conscience, deepens our empathic abilities, and allows us to have mutually supportive relationships” (p. 122). a step up from brief jolts of shame are those experiences in which we feel humiliated in a social context — perhaps when we are ignored or publicly criticised, when our ideas are ridiculed or our wishes overridden. or it could be that some aspect of our appearance, ability, ethnicity, or belief system is referred to sarcastically or in a joke and others giggle in agreement. as galling as these everyday experiences tend to be — and such painful shame memories can last a lifetime — with positive social support and validation we can usually recover our emotional equilibrium: the acute social pain dissipates, and we get on with life. but when such shame experiences are frequent and unresolved we start to expect rejection and exclusion. shame begins to colour our lived experience and we are at risk of internalising a sense of being deficient, different, and isolated from our peers. this can have an insidious and corrosive effect on our sense of self; in such cases the shame becomes “toxic” (silvan s. tomkins in demos, 1995) and chronic (deyoung, 2015). it has now evolved into a painful, complex, and often destructive emotion that involves troubling feelings, a fragile sense of self-worth, and negative self-talk. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 129 shame and the maltreated child the experience of shame has long been recognised as a common outcome of the abuse and neglect of children. dan hughes (1997) described traumatised children in the care system as being “enveloped by shame” (p. 3) and struggling to free themselves from this pervasive sense of being different in a “less than” sense. liz murray’s (2010) biography breaking night describes her fraught journey from a drug affected, profoundly neglectful home life, to academic success. here she is reflecting on her time in elementary school: in ways that i couldn’t quite put my finger on, the other kids seemed far more together than i was, in the sense that they were actual kids.… [i felt] scattered, full of holes. different. it was the feeling that i was different that gnawed at me in the classroom, pressing me deeper into my exhaustion.…i was always grateful for the end of the day, when i could finally go. (p. 59) later in the book she describes her sense of being “different” to “everyday people”: …on the train, the smart students … the functional families, the people who went away to college — they all felt like “those people” to me. and then there were people like us: the dropouts, welfare cases, truants, and discipline problems. different. (pp. 248–249) many maltreated children experience what cozolino (2016) calls “core shame”, which results from early experiences of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. the impacts of this early maltreatment become embedded in a range of developmental processes, affecting many aspects of one’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social well-being, including self-image and sense of selfworth (cicchetti, 2013; cook et al., 2005). cozolino (2016) described core shame as a “deep emotional experience of being ashamed of who and what you are … an inner certainty of being a defective person combined with the fear of this truth becoming public knowledge” (pp. 122–123). the pain of core shame stimulates “the same brain regions activated by physical pain and fear” (p. 128), and is so aversive that we must find ways to avoid, disguise, or bury it. for some it is not outright maltreatment per se, but a chronic lack of parental attunement (perhaps because of depression or substance misuse) that results in children’s needs and feelings being ignored and their bids for communication being missed. a chronic lack of adult attunement, validation, and reciprocity is also the lot of children raised in other settings such as some boarding schools or hostels where expressions of sadness, anxiety, or yearnings for parents and home may be suppressed by fears of “being shamed or humiliated by peers, older pupils and staff” (sanderson, 2015, p. 54). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 130 for children whose feelings, wishes, and emotional needs are chronically neglected or suppressed, cozolino (2016) suggested that their “sense of self is experienced as fundamentally defective, worthless, and unlovable” (p. 122). he went on to observe that: …the absence of adequate parenting is interpreted by their young brains as an absence of their own value. the belief is, “if i were worthy of love, my parents would have given me what i needed.” (p. 123) this deep sense of unworthiness is apparent in the words of many graduates of the care system when they reflect on their lives. the academic and author john seita spent much of his childhood in foster care and residential treatment. here he is reflecting on visiting the homes of school friends in the local community: i always felt different. not good different; not unique-in-a-positive-way different; not proud different as in marching to my own drum; but shameful different. i felt as if i was somehow less in nearly every way than my peers. (bath & seita, 2018, p. 39) trauma and shame are intertwined. at the heart of the early relational trauma that many of our young people have experienced is a sense of disconnection and isolation, a defining feature of shame. bessel van der kolk (2014) put it like this: “the essence of trauma is feeling godforsaken, cut-off from the human race” (p. 335). coping with shame shame is one of the more painful emotions because it arises when those most foundational of human needs, the need to feel safe and the need to belong, remain unmet. because it is so painful, we are compelled to find ways to avoid it if possible, to manage it when we must, and, if necessary, to neutralise it. donald nathanson (1994) described what he called the “compass of shame”, identifying as the compass points the four characteristic ways people cope with toxic and chronic shame (see also elison, lennon, & pulos, 2006). within the compass of shame we find a range of pain-based behaviours. the compass of shame withdrawal: starting at the north point of the compass, nathanson (1994, pp. 315–325) observed that withdrawal is one of the characteristic ways of managing shame — removing oneself from the social interaction, not engaging verbally, turning away, hiding from others. if this becomes habitual and characteristic it can evolve into serious depression and despair because we all need social connections. attack self: this is the eastern point of the compass (nathanson, 1994, pp. 326–334). withdrawal takes us away from socially toxic interactions but isolation and loneliness are also painful. this can sometimes be relieved by people derogating themselves in abusive or manifestly unequal relationships; they signal, “i live willingly with the shame of being lesser than you, but i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 131 have guaranteed that you are unlikely to attack me and will not reject me” (p. 330). the propensity to “attack self” may also take a more literal form in the shape of physical self-harm like cutting, bruising, or burning one’s body. some may also deal with shame and self-loathing through extreme tattooing, the insertion of objects under their skin, or engaging in painful and risky physical activities (scaer, 2005, pp. 89–90). avoidance: at the southern point of the compass are various means to avoid, override, or mask the pain of toxic shame (nathanson, 1994, pp. 336–359), including resorting to alcohol or drugs, promiscuous sex, or extreme risk-taking. many discover that shame, along with fear, is “soluble in alcohol” (nathanson, 1994, p. 356). avoiding shame can also be achieved by other more socially appropriate defensive strategies such as an intense involvement in “doing good or looking good”; a “public self may emerge at these times to avoid the dreaded state by meeting the needs of others” (siegel, 2012, p. 328). such self-sacrificial actions may be praised by others but can become problematic because they may be compulsive, may lead to a lack of authenticity and the emergence of a “false self”, and do not deal with the underlying feelings of shame. another form of avoidance is joining with others who feel excluded and who represent an alternative or “new normality” — a subcultural group that defines itself by being different, whether in philosophy or belief, values, appearance, dress, behaviour, or a combination of these. the person avoids shame by identifying with the new social group and its norms. this may involve a healthy alternative identity or a problematic and ultimately destructive one, as in the case of many gangs. attack others: this is at the western point of nathanson’s (1994) compass. where the other strategies are not palatable or workable for an individual, or where they have discovered how powerful aggression can be, attacking others (pp. 360–377) can provide immediate results and temporary relief from the pain of shame. it provides proof that you are more powerful and competent than you feel. attacking others can take myriad forms, from the use of an army to desolate and subjugate a country, or the use of fists or weapons to harm another, through to a “contemptuous sneer” (see nathanson, 1994, p. 366–367), or, more recently, removing a person from your social media “friends” list. it can also involve acts of vandalism and desecration. although the majority of those who struggle with feelings of shame do not resort to violence, many school shootings do appear to be perpetrated by those with painful experiences of social exclusion. shame and social exclusion are also common themes in the histories of the socalled “lone-wolf” terrorists and suicide bombers. james gilligan (1996), a prominent psychiatrist and commentator on violence in the usa, observed: i have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo the “loss of face”… the emotion of shame international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 132 is the primary or ultimate cause of all violence whether towards others or toward the self. (p. 110) increasingly, social media platforms are providing a means for people to attack others under the cloak of anonymity. cyberbullying and trolling can provide a form of redress for perceived shaming by others and also an illusion of power and control. disguises of shame some emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness are relatively easy to identify, name, and respond to when observed in others; shame, on the other hand, is difficult to detect, and more rarely named (deyoung, 2015, ch. 1; nathanson, 1994, p. 16).given its pervasive nature, it is more challenging to address. shame comes in many guises (nathanson, 1987); here, i discuss a few of the most common. the quest for normality james anglin (2002) found that the drive or quest to feel and be perceived as normal was a prominent theme in the thinking of young people in residential care. in mainstream society we tend to value uniqueness; we admire those who are distinctive, the trail blazers and the innovators; we fear being merely “normal”. but it is interesting that so many children and young people in care do not quite see it this way. here are quotes from young people reflecting on their in-care experiences: once i began to realise what normal people do and compare myself to them, i learned to lie to myself and others about who and what i was. everybody wants to be normal, whatever that is. (bath & seita, 2018, pp. 75 & 105) young people with such feelings have often been raised by people who are not their natural parents: they may live with unrelated peers, they may move frequently between caregivers, they may have to meet regularly with case managers, and they may not have extended family they can interact and identify with. many go to special schools that also reinforce their “less than” evaluations of themselves. these young people are acutely aware of so many things that mark them out as being different to those they perceive to be “normal” peers. in her autobiography, the glass castle, jeanette walls (2005) writes about her upbringing in a chaotic, neglectful, peripatetic family. feeling abnormal is a theme throughout as she recounts numerous frightening, perplexing events — and even humorous ones — as the family wanders around the southern states. in one instance, her sister is invited to attend a summer camp and returns a changed person: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 133 she burst into the living room, duffel bag over her shoulder, laughing and belting out one of those goofy summer-camp songs kids sing at night around the fire.… she positively glowed as she told me about the hot meals and the hot showers and all the friends she’d made. she’d even had a boyfriend who kissed her. “everyone assumed i was a normal person”, she said. “it was weird.” (p. 218) as a young youth worker, i remember the sense of shame and abnormality our young people used to feel when they were driven around in a minibus with the details of both the residential facility and the donor organisation emblazoned on the side panels. they naturally felt like exhibits, objects of pity or curiosity. even when we removed the donor details, they felt uncomfortable being dropped off at school with a group of others. we negotiated to drop them off a block away so they could arrive at school on foot, singly or in pairs, and thus appear to be “normal” kids. the strong desire to feel and be perceived as normal could be interpreted as an escape from shame because, in a fundamental sense, to be normal is one’s passport to belonging. dr john seita, social work professor and former young person in foster and residential care, tells the story of being sent from his residential placement to basketball camps at a university in order to hone his promising skills in the sport. these camps were successful for john, in part because he was athletic and took to the game, eventually winning a basketball scholarship. however, in john’s mind the greatest benefit of the camps was that he started to feel like a “normal” person; he was no longer john the orphan in care, but john the basketball player, a normal member of the community (j. seita, personal communication, 28 june, 2014). impostor phenomenon the impostor phenomenon (also known as the impostor syndrome) was first identified in 1978 with a focus on the experiences of high-achieving women (clance & imes, 1978), although it clearly affects both men and women. it describes the deep sense of being undeserving that some people experience when they are successful. they may feel like frauds, and feel that their success is due to mere luck or chance and that they are unworthy of their achievements. as with shame itself, those affected may also experience a range of negative emotions, including anxiety and depression, and may tend to disengage or “aim low” rather than pursue success in their activities or careers. this phenomenon represents more than a lack of confidence. it is a deep sense of being unworthy and fraudulent that saps motivation and healthy ambition — at its worst it can lead to self-sabotage. young people enveloped in shame are particularly prone to experiencing the impostor phenomenon and this “impostor” theme can be found in the biographies of many of those from abusive or neglectful backgrounds who have beaten the odds. liz murray (2010) recalled the time she found herself accepting a lift in a car belonging to what she perceived to be a “normal” family. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 134 she could not enjoy the experience because she remembers thinking to herself “at any moment i might get caught, my presence discovered as fraudulent” (p. 273). another high-achieving survivor of a stressful, abusive, and neglectful upbringing, tara westover (2018), described a turbulent childhood and adolescence in her autobiography, educated. when she finally broke free of her suffocating survivalist and rigidly fundamentalist family at 16 years of age, she attended a regular community school and gradually discovered a talent for academics. eventually she found herself attending a course at cambridge university but struggled to accept that she deserved to be there. breakfast the next morning was served in the great hall. it was like eating in a church, the ceiling was cavernous, and i felt under scrutiny, as if the hall knew i was there and i shouldn’t be. (p. 271) her early encounters with her professors were coloured by that same deep sense of unworthiness: “i’ve been teaching in cambridge for thirty years”, he said. “and this is one of the best essays i’ve read.”… i was prepared for insults but not for this. professor steinberg must have said more about the essay but i heard nothing. my mind was consumed with a wrenching need to get out of that room.… i could tolerate any form of cruelty better than kindness. praise was a poison to me; i choked on it. i wanted the professor to shout at me, wanted it so deeply i felt dizzy from the deprivation. the ugliness of me had to be given expression. if it was not expressed in his voice, i would need to express it in mine. (p. 277) a young person’s reluctance to believe in or to promote their obvious skills and talents, to join in group activities, to apply for awards and scholarships, or their tendency to withdraw when on the brink of success, may well be a reflection of the impostor phenomenon at work along with its emotional engine, shame. decoding shame shame-related symptoms and behaviours deyoung (2015) has observed that “our troubled clients protect themselves from feeling chronic shame with a stunning variety of emotional symptoms and behaviours” (p. xiii). the quest for normality and the impostor phenomenon are just two examples of these guises. the behaviours described in nathanson’s compass of shame, including substance abuse, self-harm, withdrawal, and aggression, are also examples of common behaviours that may be indicative of shame-related processes. other responses and behaviours that may be indicative of shame include “seeking-toplease, arrogance, and grandiosity” (sanderson, 2015, pp. 99–100). cozolino (2016) identifies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 135 others including, in a school context, “maladaptive perfectionism, reduced pride in response to success, fear of negative evaluation and intense shame in the face of failure” (p. 123). because those who experience shame also struggle with emotions such as anger, fear, and hopelessness, we can often focus on these more obvious emotions and miss the underlying emotional driver behind them all. words and shame then there are the challenges in finding words for shame. apart from the fact that even raising the topic of shame may arouse troubling feelings and resistance, it is difficult to grasp the phenomenon conceptually, to describe it and to help young people understand it. although the word “shame” is not used by most children and young people, “code” words and phrases can suggest that shame may be the underlying painful emotion. here are some statements that hint at their emotional source: i’ll never be able to do that. why would i audition for the play? i don’t want to go to the party. no one would want me for a friend. i feel like an outcast. i’m not clever/smart/pretty enough to do that. but there may also be more confronting comments like: who does he think he is, i’ll show him! i’m not going to let anyone push me around. they deserve what’s coming to them. in isolation, any of these might represent a lack of confidence, low self-esteem, or even a healthy assertiveness, but where such words along with common shame-related behaviours become consistent themes, shame may be lurking. dealing with shame behaviours as coping there is no silver bullet for dealing with shame, but the research and clinical literature gives us some solid pointers. awareness of the ubiquitous nature of shame and its different guises, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 136 particularly amongst young people in care, is a good starting point. it involves a willingness to accept that many challenging symptoms and behaviours may well be coping strategies rather than “bad” or “manipulative” behaviours — that they may indeed be pain-based behaviours. as bloom and faragher (2013) have pointed out, “the things we call ‘symptoms’ or ‘behavioral problems’ are the best solutions our clients have been able to come up with to help them manage unendurable feelings.” (pp. 175–176). this is echoed by felitti and anda (2010), lead researchers for the hugely influential adverse childhood experiences (ace) studies. they have observed that many of the adverse health outcomes among people who have experienced chronic early adversity could rightly be understood as resulting from efforts to cope with shame: our most intractable public health problems are the result of compensatory behaviours such as smoking, overeating, and alcohol and drug use, which provide partial relief from the emotional problems caused by traumatic childhood experiences … which are lost in time and concealed by shame, secrecy and social taboo. (p. 86) healthy connections shame is a social emotion representing the loss of connection. for our young people, this loss of trust and interpersonal connection is seen as one of the most significant outcomes of their exposure to early trauma (baker & white-mcmahon, 2011; bath & seita, 2018, ch. 5; freyd, 1996; purvis, cross, dansereau, & parris, 2013). seita and brendtro (2005) suggest that many such young people have become “adult wary”. it stands to reason, then, that healthy connections must be at the heart of our response. deyoung (2015), who developed her therapeutic strategies for shame around this imperative, observed that “shame is a relational problem; it has relational origins and it desperately needs relational attention” (p. xiii). young people in care need carers who actively seek to re-establish trust by being trustworthy (honest, reliable, and available) and who find ways to establish warm, healthy connections. in her summary of the resilience research, bonnie benard (2004) found that a defining feature of young people who were able to overcome early adversity was that they were able to connect with adults such as teachers, youth workers, foster carers, and other mentors in relationships marked by “trust, warmth, availability, and kindness” (p.xx). these relationship qualities however, were not enough. benard found that those young people characterised as resilient had mentors who communicated that they believed in the young people, who gave them hope, vision, and motivation to succeed. moreover, they also ensured that there were opportunities to succeed, to lead, to actually experience success. examples of such healthy relationships are often found in the memoirs of those who journey from childhoods characterised by adversity and risk to success in their various careers (e.g., murray, 2010; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 137 westover, 2018). in her review of the factors that underpin resilience, luthar (2006) concludes that “resilience rests fundamentally on relationships” (p. 760). there are many publications and therapeutic strategies that explore ways to establish and build on healthy connections. these include brendtro and du toit (2005); garfat and fulcher (2012); purvis, cross, dansereau, and parris (2013); and seita and brendtro (2005). giving shame a voice if shame is the “unspoken emotion” it makes sense that giving it a voice will be a central part of any therapeutic process, and this is indeed the case (see, for example, deyoung, 2015). sanderson (2015) notes that “in not being able to give voice to shame individuals are forced to suffer in silence, which intensifies shame and the need to mask it” (p. 13). she goes on to observe: it is only when clients are given a voice with which to break the silence and secrecy surrounding shame that they can be released from its crippling effects. this together with compassion and empathy, is the most powerful antidote to shame. (p. 14) the therapeutic unmasking of shame is best left to the counselling room. for those who interact with young people where they live, learn, and play, the focus should be on understanding and providing acceptance and support. the first need is to attend and attune to the behaviours and words of our young people; then, where it is appropriate, one can help them find words for their feelings. recent research by lieberman’s group at the university of california, los angeles (burklund, creswell, irwin, & lieberman, 2014; lieberman et al., 2007) has found that the process of consciously labelling troubling emotions, by others or by the clients themselves, results in a reduction in emotional arousal. being able to stimulate the language centres of the left brain seems to moderate excitation of the threat-sensitive amygdala. in other words, feelings of emotional pain can be relieved by the judicious use of language. in fact, this “affect labelling” proved to be more efficacious in taming amygdala arousal than more formal cognitive behavioural therapy techniques such as “cognitive reappraisal” (burklund et al., 2014). the word “shame” itself does not always need to be used with children or young people. in fact, its use in itself may sometimes engender further anxiety and shame. even with some adults in treatment, deyoung (2015) noted that the word “shame” may never be spoken explicitly (p. xiv), but we can still find acceptable words to describe their experience. for young people in care, finding words to express feelings of shame may look something like this: sometimes you feel like you don’t belong in that team. you worry that people will laugh at you. you really don’t feel good about yourself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 138 it makes you feel that you are not as clever as other kids. you don’t want them to know that you don’t live with your mum. you feel like hurting them because of the pain they caused you. of course, this also provides the opportunity for positive affirmation and support, and a gentle challenging with alternative, more positive scripts, but only when the young person feels understood and accepted. in time, and with the development of trust, the young people themselves will gradually feel comfortable enough to describe their own inner worlds. with chronic and core shame, deeply ingrained feelings and self-talk can be highly resistant to change. as cozolino (2016) observes, trust is necessary if young people are going to accept a healthy version of reality, and “they are going to make you work very hard to earn their trust” (p. 126). it will take resolve and a relentless commitment to both establishing trust and to positive and validating messaging to succeed in the face of challenging pain-based behaviours. in his masterwork on trauma, bessel van der kolk (2014) observed, “while trauma keeps us dumbfounded, the path out of it is paved with words” (p. 232). conclusion shame is often a hidden, unspoken emotion, difficult to understand and harder to identify and name than many others. yet it is a defining burden for so many young people in our care, protection, and youth justice systems. there are many challenging pain-based behaviours that have been linked with the experience of shame and efforts to contain and manage it. with an understanding of the pervasive and corrosive effects of toxic shame, we can develop empathy in place of anger or outrage, ensure that we avoid the use of secondary pain responses (anglin, 2002, p. 55), and provide words for the feelings to help address the needs of our young people for insight, emotional self-management, and connection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 126–141 139 references anglin, j. p. 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(2018). educated. london, uk: hutchinson. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0145935x.2013.859906 microsoft word t. derksen journal version sa/jaed.doc 326 the influence of ecological theory in child and youth care: a review of the literature teri derksen abstract: the purpose of this literature review is to explicate the meaning of ecological theory and trace its influence in child and youth care. the review focuses on the work of urie bronfenbrenner and explores how his early ideas have resonated through descriptions of the field, in efforts to prepare practitioners for professional practice, and in actual practice itself. the review concludes by questioning how bronfenbrenner’s work could continue to inform child and youth care practice, particularly in the areas of policy and community work. since the 1990s, efforts have been made across north america to define, formalize, and professionalize child and youth care practice in north america (krueger, 2002; mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2002). one of the key initiatives in these efforts has been the north american certification project or nacp (mattingly et al., 2002) that identifies foundational attitudes for child and youth care professionals and defines necessary competencies in the following five domains for professional practice: professionalism; cultural and human diversity; applied human development; relationship and communication; and developmental practice methods. within the applied human development competency domain, emphasis is placed on child and youth care practitioners being “…well versed in current research and theory in human development with an emphasis on a developmental-ecological perspective” (mattingly et al., 2002). ecological theory, in particular the pioneering work of urie bronfenbrenner, has been influential in the field of child and youth care. ecological theory not only has deep and far reaching roots in the field, but also has the potential to influence new directions and development in child and youth care. the goal of this literature review is to investigate the vital link between ecological theory and child and youth care. the review explores the following questions: (a) what is ecological theory?; and (b) how has ecological theory influenced child and youth care practice? it also challenges us to consider the ways in which ecological theory could continue to influence child and youth care practice particularly in the areas of policy and community-based work. literature search this literature review was conducted using the university of victoria’s databases academic search primer, eric, psych info, social work abstracts, web of science, social service abstracts, psychology, psych articles and sociology. in addition, google 327 scholar and the table of contents from 1998 to 2008 for the journals child and youth care services and child & youth care forum were searched. key phrases such as ecology of human development, ecological theory, and child and youth care and key words such as bronfenbrenner, children, family, and community were used. in the event of unwieldy search results, searches are normally limited to the last eight years. however, given the significant emergence of ecological theory in the 1970s limiting searches in this way was avoided. although child and youth care draws on knowledge from many disciplines, efforts were made to include only literature specific to child and youth care, the subject that is the focus of this paper. search results identified a number of texts and in these cases individual chapters were used in addition to peer-reviewed articles. what is ecological theory? historical context according to tudge, gray, and hogan (1997), the term ecology was coined in 1873 by ernest haeckel, a german zoologist and evolutionist. tudge et al. (1997) define ecology as, “…the study of organism-environment interrelatedness” (p. 73), and although the term originated in biology other disciplines such as geography, sociology, anthropology, and economics have incorporated ecological approaches. the origins of the study of human development in relation to the environment can be traced to schwabe and bartholomai’s research of neighourhood influences on children’s development in germany in the 1870s (tudge et al., 1997). tudge and colleagues go on to acknowledge that many scholars since that time have contributed to the development of ecological and contextual approaches to human development but that the perspectives of these scholars have “…never been at the forefront of psychology” (p. 75). indeed what tudge et al. (1997) and cole (1979) point out is that ecological approaches, which were more descriptive in nature to understanding human development, emerged in a scientific climate that was attempting to explain human behaviour through quantitative empirical reductionist experiments. as cole (1979) states, “what has been lost in our textbook accounts of the history of psychology is the fact that a great many other scholars who were around when psychology embraced the laboratory were not especially moved by the new enterprise” (p. vii). this dichotomy between descriptive and explanatory psychology had scholars from both movements in the early 20th century engaged in discussions of the “crises” in psychology (cole, 1979; tudge et al., 1997). according to cole (1979), urie bronfenbrenner was one of a small group of scholars dedicated to overcoming this “crisis” and developing “…a discipline that is both experimental and descriptive of our lives as we know them” (p. ix). bronfenbrenner (1979) condemned developmental psychology of the time as “…the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time” (p. 19). bronfenbrenner has been described as a pioneer who has made outstanding contributions and influenced the work and writing of many scholars in the study of the ecology of human development (barnes, katz, korbin, & o’brien, 2006; brendtro, 2006; cole, 1979; moen, 1995; pence, 1988; lerner, 2005). 328 bronfenbrenner’s work has also been influential in the field of child and youth care and it is this influence that will be the focus of the remainder of this paper. bronfenbrenner – an introduction bronfenbrenner (1979, 1995) points out that it was his experiences growing up on the premises of a state institution in upstate new york, situated on over 3,000 acres of farmland and natural landscapes that planted the seeds for his ecological concepts of human development. his father, a neuropathologist with both a medical degree and a ph.d. in zoology, was a significant influence as bronfenbrenner (1979) states his father “…would alert my unobservant eyes to the workings of nature by pointing to the functional interdependence between living organisms and their surroundings” (p. xii). his mother was also an influence as he recounts memories of his early childhood in russia where his mother would speak reverentially of “great psychologists” (bronfenbrenner, 1995, p. 600). later in life, bronfenbrenner (1979) credits his work in cross-cultural contexts such as small rural communities in the u.s., canada, western and eastern europe, the u.s.s.r., israel, and the people’s republic of china as influential in two significant ways. first, by examining lives in these various cultural contexts he witnessed different environments producing differences in human nature, as he states “…the process and product of making human beings human clearly varied by place and time” (bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. xiii). second, work in these various cultural contexts drew his attention to the ways in which public policies created particular living conditions, which ultimately influenced human development. bronfenbrenner went on to become professor emeritus of human development and psychology at cornell university and a child psychologist who was world-renowned and highly respected (brendtro, 2006; lerner, 2005). in 1994, cornell university’s college of human ecology life course center was renamed the bronfenbrenner life course center in his honour (cornell university college of human ecology, 2009). bronfenbrenner was honoured by the american psychological association in 1993 as one of the world’s most distinguished scientists. he coauthored, authored, or edited over 300 articles or chapters and 14 books. in addition, he co-founded the head start program in the united states, an early intervention program designed to prepare children for school success (brendtro, 2006; vanderven, 2006). brendtro (2006) observes that “…before bronfenbrenner, psychologists, sociologists, educators, anthropologists, and other specialists all studied narrow aspects of the child’s world” (p. 163). bronfenbrenner’s ecology of human development ties together and acknowledges aspects of all of these fields of study with human development in context at its core (brendtro, 2006, bronfenbrenner, 1979). as bronfenbrenner (1979) states, “the ecology of human development lies at a point of convergence among the disciplines of the biological, psychological, and social sciences as they bear on the evolution of the individual in society” (p. 13). urie bronfenbrenner died in 2005. 329 from an ecology of human development to a bioecological paradigm – an overview the contributions of urie bronfenbrenner span over 60 years (lerner, 2005), with some of the basic ideas of his ecological theory traced back to a series of articles written in the 1940s (r. b. cairns & b. d. cairns, 1995; bronfenbrenner, 1995). by the 1970s, bronfenbrenner began to explicitly articulate his model for understanding human development as the “ecology of human development” or “development in context” (bronfenbrenner, 1988). he declares that although he is often credited as the originator of this perspective, he is not. rather, he acknowledges the influence of many scholars such as kurt lewin, lev vygotsky, george herbert mead, jean piaget, sigmund freud, and others and suggests that the significance of his contribution is the manner in which he conceptualized these ideas in a systemic form (bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1988). this “…new theoretical perspective for research in human development” (bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 3), is outlined in his groundbreaking book, the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design, which was published in 1979 and is “considered by all scholars of human development a watershed contribution to the understanding of human ontogeny” (lerner, 2005, p. xiii). the notion that development was influenced by the environment was familiar and commonplace in science at the time according to bronfenbrenner (1979). however, he argued that despite this common understanding little attention was paid to research and theory on environmental influences on human development. bronfenbrenner’s theoretical perspective was new in the way in which it conceptualized the developing person, the environment, and the interaction between the two. as bronfenbrenner (1979) states, there “…is a marked asymmetry, a hypertrophy of theory and research focusing on the properties of the person and only the most rudimentary conception and characterization of the environment in which the person is found” (p. 16). he further offered a solution to this asymmetry through his theoretical perspective of the ecology of human development defined as: the ecology of human development involves the scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation between an active growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives, as this process is affected by relations between these setting, and by the larger contexts in which the settings are embedded. (p. 21) bronfenbrenner (1979) conceptualized the settings and larger contexts in which the settings are embedded as a set of nested structures or systems, with the microsystem defined as “...a pattern of activities, roles, and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person in a given setting with particular physical and material characteristics” (p. 22), at the innermost level. in his initial theoretical concepts, bronfenbrenner (1979) underscores the phenomenological nature of the microsystem and all the levels within the ecological model, when he points out the significance of the environment as it is perceived by the developing person as what matters for development and behaviour. 330 in his subsequent writings, bronfenbrenner (1988) points out that his earlier emphasis on the significance of the phenomenological nature of development neglected salient objective conditions and events occurring in the developing person’s life. he highlights the significance of belief systems actualized in the behaviour of individuals as they interact, cope, confront, alter, and create the objective conditions and events in their lives. this shift in thinking is evident when bronfenbrenner (1979) adds to thomas’ dictum that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (p. 23), a companion principle to “real situations not perceived are also real in their consequences” (bronfenbrenner, 1988, p. xiv). the mesosystem, which is the next level of the model and along with the microsystem has the most direct influence on the developing child, “…comprises the interrelations among two or more settings in which the developing person actively participates…” (bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 25). the next two levels, which have more indirect influence on the developing person, have been coined the exosystem and macrosystem. the exosystem “…refers to one or more settings that do not involve the developing person as an active participant, but in which events occur that affect, or are affected by, what happens in the setting containing the developing person” ; the macrosystem “…refers to consistencies, in the form and content of lower-order systems…that exist or could exist, at the level of the subculture or the culture as a whole, along with any belief systems or ideology underlying such consistencies” (bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 25). fundamental to these nested systems is the interconnectedness between them, as bronfenbrenner (1979) argues what happens between these systems can be as influential to development as what happens within them. for example, he points out that a child’s ability to learn to read will depend upon not only the lessons the child learns in school but also on the nature of the ties between the child’s home and school. it was only a few years after the ecology of human development was published that bronfenbrenner (1988, 1995) began to question his original theoretical concepts as outlined in the 1970s and alter his original ecological model. he was gratified at the shift he witnessed over time from experiments in “strange places” like laboratory settings to more commonplace approaches studying children in real life settings (bronfenbrenner, 1988). barnes et al. (2006) comment: what has changed in the past few decades is the acknowledgement by a number of disciplines concerned with child and family development, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychiatry and social policy, that parents and children occupy systems beyond the family system, that they need to be understood in context, and that their environment makes a difference to their health, well-being and progress. (p. 1) lerner (2005) notes that what concerned bronfenbrenner (1988) was that the pendulum had swung too far toward context and that his original ecological framework and science at the time did not adequately examine the development of the individual. bronfenbrenner (1995) states, “in place of too much research on development ‘out of 331 context’, we now have a surfeit of studies on ‘context without development’.” (p. 616). in bronfenbrenner’s 1988 foreword to ecological research with children and families: from concepts to methodology, he states that his original theory was imbalanced in its emphasis on the environment to the neglect of equal emphasis on the developing organism and the result has been research that has offered “…new knowledge about the complex structure of an environment conceived in systems terms and the bidirectional processes operating both within and across its constituent subsystems” but that has, nonetheless, offered “far less new knowledge about the evolving complex structure of the developing person” (p. xvii). lerner (2005) points out that bronfenbrenner recognized his theory would be incomplete until he included in it the levels of individual structure and function (biology, psychology, and behaviour) “fused dynamically with the ecological systems he described” (p. xiv). bronfenbrenner and colleagues ceci, crouter, and morris worked for over a decade to integrate the developing person into the ecological systems he first described in 1979’s the ecology of human development, with the result being what is now referred to as the bioecological model of human development (bronfenbrenner & ceci, 1994; bronfenbrenner, 2005; lerner, 2005). bronfenbrenner (2005) emphasizes the evolving nature of the bioecological paradigm for the study of human development and within this newly formulated model defines development as “the phenomenon of continuity and change in the biopsychological characteristics of human beings both as individuals and groups”. he goes on to declare that this “…phenomenon extends over the life course across successive generations and through historical time, both past and present” (p. 3). moen (1995) states that the bioecological paradigm, described as the person-processcontext-time (ppct) model “attends to the interplay between (a) characteristics of the person and (b) the social context in affecting (c) developmental processes (d) over time” (pp. 4-5). despite bronfenbrenner’s prolific writing and the evolution of his original ecological paradigm to a bioecological model, the only references to bronfenbrenner in the child and youth care literature reviewed was limited to his groundbreaking 1979 book, the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. what follows is an attempt to explicate the influence of bronfenbrenner’s work in the field of child and youth care. what is the influence of ecological theory on child and youth care? within the child and youth care literature reviewed the influence of urie bronfenbrenner’s theoretical perspective on the ecology of human development is evident (ferguson, pence, & denholm, 1993a; krueger, 2000, 2005; maier, 1991; mattingly et al., 2002; phelan, 2003; radmilovic, 2005; vanderven 2006; white 2007). clearly, his ideas have resonated within child and youth care and based on the literature reviewed ecological influences, as conceptualized by bronfenbrenner, can be seen in descriptions of the field, efforts to prepare practitioners for professional practice and in practice. 332 ecological influences – in descriptions of the field a developmental-ecological perspective frames child and youth care practice across north america and in europe, and is evident in widely accepted descriptions of the field (ferguson et al., 1993a; mattingly et al., 2002; european bureau of the international association of social educators, 2006). in north america, the following broad based description of child and youth care given by ferguson et al. (1993a) is now widely accepted (see also krueger, 2002; mattingly et al., 2002) and clearly incorporates key concepts from bronfenbrenner’s seminal 1979 book: professional child and youth care practice focuses on the infant, child and adolescent, both normal and with special needs, within the context of the family, the community, and the life span. the developmental-ecological perspective emphasizes the interaction between persons and the physical and social environments, including cultural and political settings. (p. 12) social educators in europe, essentially the european counterpart to child and youth care practitioners in north america, also pay particular attention to the influences of ecological context on development and attempt to integrate the community through social education. social education is defined as, “the theory about how psychological, social and material conditions and various value orientations encourage or prevent the general development and growth, life quality and welfare of the individual or the group” (european bureau of the international association of social educators, 2006, p. 378). across north america and within europe, descriptions of child and youth care practice are consistent with bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological paradigm that acknowledges the significance of varied contexts on the development of the child. child and youth care has also been conceptualized by canadian scholars in various models such as the umbrella model, the cube model, the ecological onion model, and the web model (ferguson et al., 1993a; white, 2007), which have to varying degrees all been influenced by bronfenbrenner (1979). the umbrella model developed in 1993 was the first and illustrates the broad scope of child and youth care practice, the various settings where child and youth care practice takes place, and the various levels of training and educational programs that are available to prepare practitioners to work in the field (ferguson et al., 1993a). the cube model was an extension of the umbrella model that depicted the three-dimensional interaction between practice settings, age and development of the target population, and core generic practice functions. the onion model, developed in 1991 (ferguson et al., 1993a), was the first model that explicitly drew on the work of bronfenbrenner. ferguson and his colleagues state the onion model “…reflects an ecological perspective, wherein consideration is given to the reciprocal interactions between human development and the multiple environments in which it occurs” (p. 9). in the onion model, bronfenbrenner’s (1979) nested interacting ecological systems were depicted as layers of an onion, with each layer representing the various systems within the child’s ecology such as the family, community, and culture. the cube model is embedded in the onion model to “…show the interactions of the three 333 vectors within and across a variety of systems that provide an ecological context” (ferguson et al., 1993a, p. 10). jennifer white in her 2007 article, knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care, offers a web model of child and youth care. white’s model (2007) moves away from ecological systems being represented as concentric circles, which she argues is limiting in that it isolates contextual influences, and uses instead the metaphor of a web to “…depict the active, intersecting, embedded, shifting and asymmetrical qualities of everyday practice” (p. 241). in the web model community, political, institutional sociocultural, interpersonal, and organizational influences create a dynamic context for a praxis-based approach to child and youth care practice. although the onion and web models are the most explicit in their use of bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecology of human development, the models clearly illustrate the broad scope of child and youth care work across various ecological contexts, the interaction and intersections between these systems, the significance child and youth care workers place on contextual influences on children and youth, and the ability of practitioners to work in the child’s natural environment. as ferguson et al. (1993a) state, “the ability to move easily within and across systems is one of the unique characteristics of the child and youth care profession” (p. 11). ecological influences – in preparing for practice these models, which illustrate the centrality of an ecological perspective in child and youth care, provide not only visual descriptions of the field but also shape curriculum within child and youth care education and training. as early as 1979, the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria adopted an ecological perspective (r. ferguson, personal communication, november 3, 2008), upon which the curriculum of the school is based (kuehne & leone, 1994; ferguson et al., 1993a). current accreditation and certification efforts within the field will also contribute to the continuation of an ecological perspective in child and youth care. in 1990, the child and youth care education consortium, which represents post-secondary educational institutions across north america, was formally established (ferguson et al., 1993a) and in 1991, the british columbia child and youth care education consortium was formed (r. ferguson, personal communication, november, 25, 2008). currently, these groups are working to establish accreditation for post-secondary education programs in child and youth care. in addition, as indicated earlier in the paper, core competencies for child and youth care professionals across north america have been articulated and a developmental-ecological perspective has been identified as one of these core competencies (mattingly et al., 2002). this competency document is guiding efforts to establish certification for practitioners in the field. through these efforts at accreditation and certification, the ecological perspective will become even more deeply embedded in efforts to prepare child and youth care practitioners for the field. as ferguson, pence, and denholm (1993b) state, “…an ecological perspective is central to the continuing development, understanding, and promotion of the field of child and youth care” (p. 282). 334 vanderven (2006) traces the patterns of career development in child and youth care and uses bronfenbrenner’s micro, meso, exo and macro system framework to identify the skills required at each level of practice. for example, at the microsystem level, which is the child’s most immediate environment, practitioners need to be highly skilled in direct caregiving, environmental design, and activity programming, to name a few (vanderven, 2006). at the mesosystem and exosystem strata, practitioners are involved in indirect work with children and more direct work with adults. vanderven argues that these levels require radically different skills than at the microsystem level and include policy design, organizational, coordination, financial administration, and political skills. vanderven further suggests that work at the macrosystem level requires the ability to “…influence global attitudes and viewpoints about a culture or subculture...” and that this is accomplished by very few individuals, who have not typically started their career paths in group care of children (p. 244). vanderven (2006) argues that practitioners at each level are required for effective care in children’s services and longevity in the field may be accomplished by facilitating personal and professional development through these levels of practice. while it is beyond the scope of this paper to conduct a thorough comparison of vanderven’s (2006) work to the nacp competency document (mattingly et al., 2002), it would however be interesting to explore the ways in which the skills articulated by vanderven, especially those at the macrosystem and exosystem levels, are reflected in the nacp competency document. ecological influences – in practice child and youth care practice requires practitioners to work within and across the varied ecological contexts that influence children and youth. bronfenbrenner’s influence on child and youth care practice is evident in the ways in which practitioners navigate these varied terrains. his influence can also be seen in some of the literature on family work and research in cyc. a key theme in the literature reviewed is the significance of interactions between children/youth and those who care for them (bronfenbrenner, 1979; krueger, 2000, 2002; maier, 1991). maier (1991) in his exploration of basic foundational concepts in child and youth care practice, argues that “there is a repertoire of substantive care tasks underpinning child and youth care work” (p. 394). he traces a paradigm shift in how care is conceptualized, from care-taking to care-giving to care-interactions, which he describes as having a reciprocal nature as opposed to one directional nature as was found in earlier conceptions of care. maier builds on this theme of reciprocity as he suggests that child and youth care practice has shifted away from psychoanalytic, educational, and behavioural approaches to an “interactional/attachment orientation” which, he points out, has been influenced by “contemporary thinking” and bronfenbrenner. maier (1991) goes on to opine that “an interactional/attachment orientation recognizes that basic to human development is the existence of assured closeness (attachment) to another person…” and that attachment is formed through “…ordinary daily care interactions” (p. 395). 335 ferguson et al. (1993a), krueger (2000, 2002, 2005), phelan (2003), and white (2007) also focus our attention on the relational nature of child and youth care practice and the significance of the “complex nature of daily interactions” (krueger, 2002) in practice. maier (1991) argues that the significance of attachment for human development is congruent with the perspectives of a number of theorists, bronfenbrenner being one of them. bronfenbrenner (1979) underscores the significance of reciprocal activity occurring within dyadic relationships for development and learning in the following hypothesis: learning and development are facilitated by the participation of the developing person in progressively more complex patterns of reciprocal activity with someone with whom that person has developed a strong and enduring emotional attachment and when the balance of power gradually shifts in favor of the developing person. (p. 60) in practice, bronfenbrenner’s ecological paradigm has not only influenced the daily interactions between child/youth and practitioner but also the practitioner’s efforts to work across the various ecological contexts that are significant in children’s lives. for example, krueger (2000, 2005) points out that youth workers not only directly work with youth in their environments but that their presence in other ecological contexts such as family and community can change these systems. radmilovic (2005) acknowledges the influence of bronfenbrenner in her argument that systemic change is necessary in order to support and sustain change in individuals. as vanderven (2006) states, “…to significantly influence the quality of human services delivered to children requires a comprehensive ecological approach that can influence each of the environmental systems that impinge on children and affect their lives” (p. 254). phelan (2003) in his article on a child and youth care approach to working with families suggests that bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems provide another lens to view the family and a useful tool for assisting family members in understanding what he calls “mutual influence processes” (p. 6) that occur within the microsystem and mesosystem. clearly, phelan (2003) has been influenced by bronfenbrenner. however, given bronfenbrenner’s (1986) interest in the ways in which interfamilial processes are affected by extrafamilial conditions, including conditions in meso, exo and chrono systems, it is surprising that phelan’s (2003) conceptualization is limited to the microsystem and mesosystem only. it is also surprising that within the child and youth care literature search, phelan’s article was the only one that emerged on family work in child and youth care that referenced bronfenbrenner. bronfenbrenner has also had a significant influence on research on human development, including research carried out by scholars in child and youth care (brendtro, 2006; pence, 1988). as indicated earlier in this paper, bronfenbrenner (1979) criticized traditional psychological research carried out in laboratories for its study of strange behaviour in strange situations with strange adults and, according to brendtro (2006), he “…tipped the balance of the research agenda toward naturalistic studies” (p. 165). an example of bronfenbrenner’s influence on research in child and youth care 336 can be found in the edited volume, ecological research with children and families: from concepts to methodology (pence, 1988). pence explains that the volume emerged from the victoria day care research project, which “…sought to better understand the impact of the interaction between care giving and family microsystems on children’s development” (p xxii). pence (1988) further points out that despite that the fact that contributions in the book are diverse in their range of interests and approaches to ecological research, they share an awareness of the interactive nature of behaviour and development in proximal and distal social systems, the complex nature of naturalistic research, and more meaningful descriptions of behaviour. conclusions ecological theory has clearly influenced child and youth care practice and within the field the groundbreaking work of urie bronfenbrenner must be appreciated. this literature review has explored bronfenbrenner’s influence on widely accepted descriptions of the field, efforts to prepare individuals for practice, and within practice. there is much more to ecological theory than simply understanding that children are part of a nested system of ecological contexts. ecological theory also pays particular attention to the ways in which reciprocal interactions between these systems influence development. in addition, ecological theory informs the more minute interactional and attachment formation processes that occur between children/youth and child and youth care workers. the review has also revealed some of the ways in which ecological theory has influenced family work and research in child and youth care. a number of questions emerge as a result of this literature review. first, as noted earlier, the influence of bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory, which is a more current formulation of his ecology of human development paradigm, was not evident in the child and youth care literature reviewed and, as a result, the writer is left wondering how bronfenbrenner’s more recent concepts could influence the field. second, how might bronfenbrenner’s work influence current efforts within child and youth care to focus more intentionally on policy as it relates to children and youth? given bronfenbrenner’s (1979) argument that analysis of social policy is critical in developmental research as it illuminates aspects of the environment including ideological assumptions found at the macrosystem level that are critical for human development, this question is certainly worth exploring. finally, for child and youth care practitioners working to support children, youth and families, what kind of change do we need to create in community contexts, how can we create this change, and in what ways can ecological theory inform our efforts? 337 references barnes, j., katz, i., korbin, j. e., & o’brien, m. (2006). children and families in communities: theory, research, policy and practice. west sussex, uk: john wiley & sons. brendtro, l. k. (2006). the vision of urie bronfenbrenner: adults who are crazy about kids. reclaiming children & youth, 15(3), 162-166. bronfenbrenner, u. (1979). the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bronfenbrenner, u. (1986). ecology of the family as a context for human development: research perspectives. developmental psychology, 22(6), 723-742. bronfenbrenner, u. (1988). foreword. in a. r. pence (ed.), ecological research with children and families: from concepts to methodology (pp. ix-xix). new york: teachers college press. bronfenbrenner, u. 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(1991). an exploration of the substance of child and youth care practice. child & youth care forum, 20(6), 393-411. mattingly, m., stuart, c., & vanderven, k. (2002). competencies for professional child and youth work practitioners. journal of child and youth care work, 17, 16-49. moen, p. (1995). introduction. in p. moen, g. h. elder, & k. luscher (eds.), examining lives in context: perspectives on the ecology of human development (pp. 1-11). washington, dc: american psychological association. pence, a. (1988). conclusion. in a. r. pence (ed.), ecological research with children and families: from concepts to methodology (pp. 222-226). new york: teachers college press. phelan, j. (2003). child and youth care family support work. child and youth services, 25(1-2), 67-77. 339 radmilovic, s. (2005). the capacity to change and child and youth care practice: a program example and framework. child & youth care forum, 34(2), 127-139. tudge, j., gray, j. t., & hogan, d. m. (1997). ecological perspectives in human development: a comparison of gibson and bronfenbrenner. in j. tudge, m. j. shanahan, & j. valsiner (eds.), comparisons in human development: understanding time and context. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. vanderven, k. d. (2006). patterns of career development in child and youth care. child and youth services, 28(1/2), 231-257. white, j. (2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child & youth care forum, 36(5), 225-244. teri derksen has been a child and youth care practitioner since 1986. she has worked, primarily with adolescents, as a front-line worker, program administrator and community development worker in the non-profit sector and in municipal recreation and social planning. she is currently completing her m.a. in child and youth care and working as a sessional instructor with the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria and child and youth care programs at vancouver island university. her interests are focused on the importance of communities and organizations in child and youth care practice. october 5, 2000 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 396 young people’s experiences in youth-led participatory action research for hiv/aids prevention keiko goto, jennifer tiffany, gretel pelto, and david pelletier abstract: as part of a project in the unicef-initiated “what every adolescent has a right to know” (rtk) program, qualitative interviews were conducted with youth (13 to 21 years of age) who were reached through a youth-led participatory action research (par) project. the interviews were conducted with both urban and rural participants in a caribbean country where potential exposure to hiv/aids represents a significant threat to young people’s health. the purpose of the study was to examine how a truly youth organized par effort was perceived by the adolescents who were reached through the project. the results suggest that the central role played by youth researchers (the par community leaders) created a mode of participation that facilitated the collaboration of at-risk and marginalized youth. the type of engagement created was distinct from modes of participation fostered when adults alone worked with youth. keywords: youth, hiv/aids, participatory action research acknowledgements: this study was supported by the mario einaudi center for international studies, the graduate school and the division of nutritional sciences at cornell university. the authors would like to thank the participants and staff of the unicef rtk initiative for their support. keiko goto, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is associate professor at the department of nutrition and food sciences, california state university, chico, 400 west first street, chico, california, u.s.a., 95929-0002. phone: (530) 898-6767, fax: (530) 898-5586, e-mail: kgoto@csuchico.edu jennifer tiffany, ph.d. is director of hiv/aids education at cornell university, ithaca, new york, u.s.a., 14853. phone: (607) 255-1942, fax: (607) 255-8562, email: jst5@cornell.edu gretel pelto, ph.d. is graduate professor at the division of nutritional sciences, cornell university, ithaca, new york, 14853. phone: (607) 255-2608, fax: (607) 255-1033, e-mail: gp32@cornell.edu david pelletier, ph.d. is associate professor of nutrition policy at the division of nutritional sciences, cornell university, 212 savage hall, ithaca, new york, 14853. phone: (607) 255-1086, fax: (607) 255-1033, e-mail: dlp5@cornell.edu mailto:kgoto@csuchico.edu� mailto:jst5@cornell.edu� mailto:gp32@cornell.edu� mailto:dlp5@cornell.edu� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 397 practitioners and investigators in the field of health promotion frequently employ participatory approaches. there are various types of participatory approaches, such as participatory action research (par) (kemmis & mctaggart, 2000), community-based participatory research (cbpr) (minkler & wallerstein, 2003), participatory rural appraisal (pra) (chambers, 1994), and participatory learning and action (pla) (blackburn & holland, 1998), all of which promote the participation of local people, communities, and organizations. par has been defined as “systematic inquiry with the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied, for purposes of education and taking action or effecting change” (green et al., 2003, p. 419). par is also employed to transform practitioners’ theories and practices in particular local settings (kemmis & mctaggart, 2000). research projects that involve interventions directed to young people increasingly promote youth participation in order to more effectively learn about and address issues that affect the lives and health of youth (powers & tiffany, 2006; maglajlic & tiffany, 2006). this paper examines a specific aspect of participatory action research with youth, namely, the perceptions of the marginalized and at-risk youth participants who were reached through being involved in a youth-led project. the project was part of an initiative undertaken by the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef) to address the challenge of preventing hiv/aids in young people. the program, entitled “what every adolescent has a right to know” (rtk), was initiated by unicef to promote the prevention of hiv/aids in youth and was implemented in 14 countries in various parts of the world (unicef, 2002). it sought to ensure that young people not only received accurate information, but were also empowered to make informed choices (unicef, 2002). participatory action research was identified as an approach that would enable youth leaders to be involved in planning and implementing the research, and to bring in other adolescents from the community. as a technical partner, a cornell university team, consisting of the four authors of this paper and other researchers, provided unicef with technical assistance regarding participatory action research (par) and the right to know (rtk) project. this report is drawn from the experiences in one of the rtk country par projects in which youth peer educators (16 to 22 years old) from various previously existing youth organizations became par researchers. with support from adults, including project managers at youth-serving organizations, unicef, and the cornell team, the youth researchers conducted par with other youth from the community – 13 to 21 years olds who were potentially “at risk” for hiv/aids and/or who were not reached by other youth programs. in this paper, participants in the latter group are referred to as “sharing team members” whereas the primary participants (the peer-educators) are referred to as “youth researchers”. the cornell facilitators introduced the concepts and techniques (described in detail later) of participatory action research (par) in the context of the rtk project during the first rtk orientation workshop for youth researchers and project managers. young people’s roles as researchers, not educators, were emphasized during the workshop. with support from adults, youth researchers developed their research questions, as well as lists of priority groups that they had wanted to reach for youth-led par research. they recruited sharing team members through international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 398 churches, summer camps conducted by their youth organizations, programs for street/working children, and their own personal networks. the youth-led par research sessions took place one weekend at the residential setting. youth researchers conducted research with sharing team members by using visual and youth-friendly par tools. the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects on the “sharing team members” of their involvements with the “youth researchers” through analysis of data gathered during interviews conducted by university researchers with the youth. the effects of participation on the youth researchers themselves have been previously published (goto, pelto, pelletier, & tiffany, 2010). background in this section we briefly review the range of experiences that have been previously documented for participatory action research, particularly in projects that are directed toward youth. to date, these analyses have been undertaken from the perspective of scholars who have sought to understand the nature of participatory research projects. such analyses provide important background for examining and interpreting the experiences of the youths we present in this paper. different degrees or modes of participation have been observed in participatory projects. a review of such projects reveals a wide diversity in the power relationships between external investigators and the community, including between adults and young people (hart, 1997). gibbon (2000) developed “modes of participation” in order to examine both the relationships between practitioners/researchers and local people/participants. modes of participation, which vary from “manipulation” and “co-option” to “delegated power” and “collective action”, describe different types of relationships between local people and outsiders (gibbon, 2000). power relationships between the community and outsiders can shape the mode of participation (leurs, 1998). outsiders may manipulate or impose their own agenda and hinder the quality, type, and sustainability of participation. in the case of young people’s participation, hart (1997) developed the concept of a “ladder of participation” to describe the relationships between children/youth and adults in projects. degrees of participation vary from “manipulation”, “decoration”, and “tokenism” to “child-initiated, shared decisions with adults”. hart revealed the different modes of participation in the case studies and argued that one cannot assume that young people are willing to participate until a commitment is made to value their contribution. to date, the par literature describes a number of studies in which young people were involved essentially in the role of “informants”, rather than being actively involved in generating and interpreting data as well as planning and implementing actions. a lack of clarity about roles and decision-making in par by different stakeholders in a project has been identified as an issue (flicker, 2008). another feature that affects our ability to interpret the literature on young people’s experiences in par projects is that they are often treated as a homogeneous group, and the diversity within the group is not explored. very few empirical studies have examined youths’ experiences in relation to different modes of participation and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 399 their distinct impacts. methods study participants and data collection this qualitative study was conducted in a caribbean country where the first author served as a technical advisor during the rtk project. toward the end of the project we, university researchers, conducted in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with 17 sharing team members, 21 youth researchers, and 12 adult project managers in order to understand their experiences in youth-led participatory action research. the main objective of the interviews was to learn about sharing team members’ experiences, including what went well, challenges encountered, experiences and perspectives they shared with the youth researchers, whether sharing team members gained something through their experience in par, and how sharing team members would like to use (or were already using) their experience, talents, and/or ideas with their peers to address the issues they identified in the context of rtk. separate interview guides for sharing team members, youth researchers, and project managers were developed with support from unicef staff and the cornell rtk consulting team. all the participants gave oral consent and were guaranteed strict confidentiality. the consent procedures, as well as the interview protocols, were designed to enable them to feel comfortable, regardless of their personal life circumstances (e.g., living on the street, dealing with family conflicts, or being hiv-positive). all the youth researchers, 11 of the managers, and the majority of 10 of the sharing team members were interviewed twice to further probe their perspectives on sharing team members’ participation in youth-led par. interviews lasted between 30 and 90 minutes and they were tape recorded. the study protocol was reviewed and approved by cornell university on human subjects. the first author’s role in providing ongoing technical assistance also enabled her to conduct in-depth participant observations. numerous meetings and activities, such as youth-toyouth par training, were observed and documented, and field notes were developed based on her observations, reflections, and exploration of issues as they arose. data analysis the interviews were transcribed and coded for themes, based on the principles of grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1998). the transcripts and field notes developed by the first author were shared with and reviewed by the other authors. atlas/ti, a qualitative data analysis software program, was used for data analysis. both pre-identified and newly identified themes were examined and compared across the interviews. in addition, preliminary findings based on the interviews were shared with unicef staff and some of the study participants in order to increase the rigor and trustworthiness of the results (lennie, 2006). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 400 results four themes dominated the interviews and are particularly helpful for understanding factors associated with sharing team members’ participation in the rtk project. we review them in the following sections, with an emphasis on the sharing team members’ responses. youth researchers’ roles in fostering participation of “at-risk” youth during the interviews, young people repeatedly stated that everybody participated and elaborated on their perspectives about how the process encouraged participation. all sharing team members who were interviewed said that they felt “comfortable” because they were working with other youth. sharing team members spontaneously identified various aspects of the youth researchers’ actions that helped them to feel engaged and comfortable. these included efforts to ensure fair participation, informal settings with many icebreakers, and encouraging interactions with other sharing team members, all of which were viewed as factors that facilitated the creation of a comfortable environment. as the par research was conducted in a residential setting, the youth researchers and sharing team members spent time together after dinner talking or doing recreational activities, which also helped them to get to know one another better. as previously reported (goto et al., 2010) the youth researchers respected the local knowledge that emerged from sharing team members. sharing team members discussed their thoughts, feelings, experiences, and knowledge about issues including drugs and violence in relation to their own lives. project managers also recognized that young people understood so much about hiv/aids and knew how to use condoms. those young people know so much. they are street smart. they can educate others. (project manager) thus, many sharing team members felt their opinions and experience were respected and appreciated by youth researchers and project managers during the par research, which made them feel “comfortable”. some sharing team members stated during their interviews that their experience of sharing their knowledge, ideas, and values made them feel good about themselves, and that learning built up their self-esteem. furthermore, some of them mentioned that sharing their knowledge, ideas, and values with other youth helped them think about their own lives and the lives of others. one of the sharing team members said that the most rewarding experience for him in rtk was “to listen to different opinions, especially about people with hiv/aids”. youth researchers’ roles as educators youth researchers’ roles as educators also appeared to support the active participation of the sharing team members. the sharing team members felt they benefited from the information they gained during the par research sessions. although the primary purpose of the par sessions with the sharing team members was to identify issues for future actions and contextual factors that needed to be taken into consideration in the development of actions, the interviews with the sharing team members revealed that from their perspective the sessions also had a direct educational component. this was especially the case among youth whose motivation to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 401 participate in the par research was to learn about hiv/aids issues. during the interviews, they stated that if they hadn’t been part of the rtk, they wouldn’t have had other means for gaining access to information about hiv/aids. all the sharing team members said that they had learned a great deal about hiv/aids during the par process. in addition, the word “knowledge” was used in a broad way across our interviewees. it [knowledge] is not just information. it’s about life skill sessions, self-esteem building, personal development. so, it’s not information in a vacuum. it is information about everything, life skill, self-esteem, everything because all of them affect their behavior. (project manager) related to the matter of education, the youth researchers noted the benefits of youth-to-youth communication. for example, one of them said: young people are more comfortable getting information from other young persons because when trained persons come, they can be judgmental. we have professionals that are very judgmental. “you should not be having sex, you should go to church.” it is better to train young persons. (youth researcher) the knowledge about hiv/aids that the sharing team members gained through par seemed to provide them with confidence in becoming educators themselves. most of them mentioned that they planned to share or were sharing what they learned in rtk with their peers and/or family members. i can use my knowledge at school. also i could use it to teach others of my friends. we have student counselors at my school and i am one of them. i could use it with the students i see or to teach the other counselors so they can help other students. (sharing team member) some sharing team members focused on the link between knowledge, self-confidence, and the feeling of wanting to help others. in rtk, we learned a lot, and it makes you feel like you can become a good person. i don’t want my friends to get hiv/aids. (sharing team member) if you have knowledge, you have self-confidence. you feel better about yourself. you don’t feel shy. so, you can go out and say boldly if you have factual information. (sharing team member) in sum, we learned from the interviews that many, of not most, of the sharing team members participated in par in order to learn more about hiv/aids. they perceived that gaining factual knowledge, especially biomedical knowledge about hiv/aids, helped them develop self-confidence and self-esteem. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 402 the uses of visual and youth-friendly research methods focusing on critical thinking both youth researchers and sharing team members raised the idea that the visual and youth-friendly par tools that were employed by the project fostered dialogue among youth and enhanced participation levels. some of the project managers stated that the par approach provided youth who were not inclined to reading and writing or those who were not outspoken with the opportunity to articulate their ideas through par tools, such as drawing and mapping. one sharing team member noted: the most rewarding experience, for me, was drawing. it was fun. i loved the group work. everybody was contributing to it. (sharing team member) some youth researchers noted that tools such as “condom mapping” could stimulate a further discussion when the sharing team members presented their maps in front of the others. at first, they [sharing team members] think mapping is about drawing roads. but, when we explain to them, like, “you know, mapping is to find out more than one thing,” what they [sharing team members] are saying is, “ok, it is hard to get condoms at the convenience store, at the gas station.” but they [sharing team members] start thinking, “why? why is it?” and then, they feel like, if they [store employees] are older persons, they will want to question you at first, and younger persons, they are more open. (youth researcher) through active participation by the sharing team members, youth researchers learned that street condom vendors, instead of professional health service providers, actually could teach others how to use a condom. they also discovered that their organizations needed to sensitize the service providers for program changes. another discovery from the analysis was that the process of sharing values, ideas, and experiences led some of the sharing team members to think about others and to understand what others are going through. some sharing team members explicitly connected the sharing experience, their acquired knowledge about hiv/aids and self-confidence with the feeling of wanting to help others. although this cannot be generalized to all the sharing team members in rtk, individual actions such as talking to friends and family about hiv/aids, described by some of the sharing team members, were apparently sparked by newly gained knowledge, selfconfidence, awareness of others, and the desire to help others. youth-led par training by an egalitarian organization in many cases the role of sharing team members remained that of “research participants”. their subsequent action after their par experience was limited to talking to friends and family about hiv/aids – communicating at the individual level. on the other hand, the youth researchers from teen aids network (pseudonym), one of the participating youth organizations, perceived par as “an empowering process” and believed that anybody could become a researcher. they asserted that the researchers’ role should not be confined only to “selected youth” and they sought ways to entice sharing team members into greater involvement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 403 specifically, they conducted youth-led par training, which provided the sharing team members, who were initially research participants or informants, with the opportunity to become “par researchers”. thus, the youth-led par training significantly contributed to redefining the lines between “the researchers” and “the researched” among youth, and facilitated individuals’ awareness of their own capabilities as researchers and change agents. youth leaders target marginalized people. i don’t think it should be like that. get them to work as some of the youth leaders. i believe that they [marginalized people] enjoy facilitating. (youth researcher) the continued and enhanced participation of sharing team members as par change agents at teen aids network demonstrated the power of youth-led par training to contribute to sustainability and longer-term changes based on par activities. sharing team members who joined teen aids network shared their excitement of becoming par researchers. you can talk to people in the community, friends, family, to teach them about hiv/aids and safe sex. (sharing team member) the opportunity to engage in more par activities was not available to all sharing team members involved in the rtk project described in this report. some organizational cultures were not open to the engagement of at-risk and marginalized youth as change agents. many youth researchers, sharing team members, and project managers from youth organizations other than teen aids network believed that only “selected youth” should represent the other youths, and that this was sufficient to ensure that a “youth voice” would be heard. several sharing team members expressed disappointment during their interviews that they hadn’t been invited to take part in rtk activities, other than the residential sessions where they served primarily as informants. some specifically stated their frustration at not becoming par researchers involved in ongoing rtk activities and in other community change efforts. the subtle power issue regarding who was expected to become a change agent and who was to remain a research “informant” was, to a large degree, obscured in rtk due to the general emphasis on “youth participation” and the assumption that youth researchers could represent “young people”. discussion the par literature describes a number of studies in which young people participated in research only as “informants” not as “researchers”. these are cases where their involvement was limited to brief episodes, rather than providing longer-term opportunities to develop their capabilities and sense of voice (prilleltensky, nelson, & peirson, 2001). to the best of our knowledge, rtk is one of the few projects that fostered youth-led par training and one of the few contexts in which the dynamics of youth-led par involving other youth have been examined (maglajlic & tiffany, 2006). the current study suggests that effectively introduced par tools may have not only enhanced the participation of sharing team members, but also may have facilitated individual actions by sharing team members. a primary finding from the interviews with the community youth who were reached by the youth leadership is that the experience of serving as sources of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 404 information in a participatory action research project was one in which they felt their opinions and life experiences were respected and appreciated. according to their own perceptions and reflections, this had a number of effects: it furthered self-confidence; it made them feel “comfortable” and it helped them to feel “good about themselves”. this finding corresponds to hart’s (1997) arguments about the association of participation and self-confidence in par activities with children and youth. the results also suggest that the participation of sharing team members was enhanced through youth-to-youth communication about hiv/aids information. sharing team members enjoyed learning about information related to hiv/aids from other youth in a safe environment, instead of from parents or health authorities. in addition to gaining factual knowledge, especially biomedical knowledge about hiv/aids, this knowledge acquisition also contributed to the development of self-confidence and self-esteem. thus, par was not only a vehicle for effective discussion and dissemination of information related to hiv/aids, but was also a source of personal development. in addition to gaining factual information about hiv/aids, the results suggest that sharing team members were able to critically reflect on their lives in relation to hiv/aids using par as an opportunity for dialogue with their peers. youth researchers created contexts where sharing team members could share their experiences, ideas, and values with other participants. in freire’s pedagogy, to know means to intervene in one’s reality (freire, 1973). it can be hypothesized that dialogue and critical reflection that contextualized the factual information about hiv/aids helped the young people to internalize it, to understand what it meant for them, and to act upon their newly-found knowledge. as other studies suggest (chambers, 1994; hart, 1997), our study found that par can be accessible to young people with diverse backgrounds and characteristics. in rtk, par provided young people with the opportunity to articulate their ideas through drawing, mapping, and other tools that do not require strong literacy or verbal communication skills. similar to “edutainment” approaches used in a study for hiv prevention in thailand (w. fongkaew, k. fongkaew, & suchaxaya, 2007), our study shows that peer education using participatory tools holds potential for health education. while the interviews with both youth researchers and sharing team members revealed many positive aspects of youth-led participatory action, the study also illuminates many of the challenges faced while implementing participatory projects. the par tools that were employed by the youth researchers did not foster participation by all sharing team members. this may be due to inexperience on the part of the youth researchers about how to foster and promote critical discussions that lead to new insights on the part of participants. our observations of the sessions suggest that the youth researchers themselves were more comfortable when the discussion emphasized biomedical aspects of the issues rather than social aspects. our study also addressed power relations within the community of youth that may have influenced the modes of participation in the rtk project. heterogeneity of the community has been identified as a factor affecting participation of certain groups within the community (leurs, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 405 1998). there exist power imbalances of access, information, class, and expertise (e.g., literacy) among different groups, which may influence modes of participation. the issue of differential participation in community health projects has been a subject of continuing concern. there is evidence that health interventions tend to reach those who are better off, better motivated, and better educated (gillies, 1998). in our study, the youth peer educators who became the youth researchers probably fall into the category of better educated and certainly better motivated. it is difficult to determine, with the data we have available, whether the sharing team members fully represent the most marginalized youth, but there is reason to believe that many, if not most, were living in difficult circumstances. nonetheless, it is essential to remain sensitive to the fact that intervention strategies based on practitioners’ preconceived notions of “marginalized youth” may neglect heterogeneity in youth and reach only a small number of them. thus, “youth participation” must be more clearly defined and monitored over the course of a program, especially as it is a central concept in youth development and in hiv/aids prevention among youth. conclusion the importance of youth participation in interventions that address issues that affect them is increasingly recognized, as is the idea that youth peer educators are important change agents (powers & tiffany, 2006; maglajlic & tiffany, 2006). in this study we sought to examine the effects on youth who were at risk of exposure to hiv/aids of being involved in a youth-led participatory action research project. based on the comments and points they made during the course of in-depth interviews, we conclude that the benefits of participation went beyond the acquisition of knowledge to include positive effects on self-confidence and, in some cases, an interest in reaching out to others. moving from a focus on the community participants to the youth leadership, we suggest that the par approach employed by one of the community groups, the teen aids network, can serve as a model for reaching youth who otherwise would not benefit from conventional health interventions. the rtk project provided youth with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the concept of par and to modify modes of participation in their par approach. however, effective uses of par at the organizational level may not take place unless the project provides enough support for the possibly slow process of learning about and developing expertise in conducting par (maglajlic & tiffany, 2006). in rtk, sharing team members from teen aids network had the opportunity to receive youth-led par training to become change agents and subsequently take action collectively. this relied on the emergence of a youth-adult partnership (zeldin, petrokubi, & camino, 2008) and demanded support from project managers, unicef officers, and cornell researchers. apart from the youth who were engaged with the teen aids network, the sharing team members who were involved in the other rtk teams did not have the same supports and opportunities for continued engagement in health programs. paul (1998) has argued that one to two years are required for individuals to obtain sufficient understanding and self-confidence to become fluent in using participatory tools for effective collective action and community change. nurturing young people to become “par change agents” requires a longer time frame, an understanding of the developmental needs of youth, and commitment at the organizational and program levels as well as support from the donor community. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 406 figure 1 summarizes the process of sharing team members becoming active change agents as youth par researchers. we conclude that the use of youth-led par with other youth in specific organizational contexts can promote the sustainability of the par approach as well as young people’s empowerment through health promotion projects. at the same time, we recognize significant challenges in the application of youth-led par, particularly with respect to follow-up interventions and sustainability within organizations that do not yet possess a strong foundation for promoting youth empowerment. academic researchers and practitioners who are committed to par principles play important roles in defining and clarifying “youth” participation, as well as in facilitating linkages between young people’s needs and health interventions, and in developing organizational contexts that are hospitable to young people as they discover their capabilities as change agents. figure 1: from informants to change agents: empowerment process of sharing team members egalitarian characteristics of youth organization individual sharing team members empowered through youth-led par participation in youth-led par high comfort and participation levels sharing knowledge, values, and ideas through educational activities the uses of visual and youth-friendly research method internalization of scientific knowledge increased critical thinking and self-esteem institutional (e.g., unicef) and adult support participation in youth-led par training further community action as youth par researchers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 407 references blackburn, j., & holland, j. (1998). who changes? institutionalizing participation in development. london: intermediate technology publications. chambers, r. (1994). the origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. world development, 22(7), 953–969. flicker, s. (2008). who benefits from community-based participatory research? a case study of the positive youth project. health education & behavior, 35(1), 70–86. fongkaew, w., fongkaew, k., & suchaxaya, p. (2007). early adolescent peer leader development in hiv prevention using youth-adult partnership with schools approach. journal of the association of nurses in aids care, 18(2), 60–71. freire, p. (1973). education for critical consciousness. new york: seabury press. gibbon, m. (2000). partnerships for health: a way of working with women’s groups to improve community health in rural nepal. in a. cornwall, h. lucas, & k. pasteur (eds.), accountability through participation: developing workable partnership models in the health sector. ids bulletin, 31(1), 57–63. gillies, p. (1998). effectiveness of alliances and partnerships for health promotion. health promotion international, 13(2), 99. goto, k., pelto, g., pelletier, d., & tiffany, j. (2010). “it really opened my eyes”: the effects on youth peer educators of participating in an action research project. human organization, 69(2), 192–199. green, l. w., george, m. a., daniel, m., frankish, c. j., herbert, c. p., bowie, w.r., et al. (2003). guidelines for participatory research in health promotion. in m. minkler & n. wallerstein (eds.), community-based participatory research for health (pp. 419–428). san francisco: jossey-bass. hart, r. (1997). children’s participation: the theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care. new york: earthscan. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (2000). participatory action research. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 567–605). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. lennie, j. (2006). increasing the rigour and trustworthiness of participatory evaluations: learning from the field. evaluation journal of australasia, 6(1), 27–35. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 396–408 408 leurs, r. (1998). current challenges facing participatory rural appraisal. in j. blackburn & j. holland (eds.), who changes? institutionalizing participation in development (pp. 124– 134). london: intermediate technology publications. maglajlic, r., & tiffany, j. (2006). participatory action research with youth in bosnia and herzegovina. journal of community practice, 14(1/2), 163–181. minkler, m., & wallerstein, n. (2003). introduction to community based participatory research. in m. minkler & n. wallerstein (eds.), community based participatory research for health (pp. 3–26). san francisco: jossey-bass. paul, b. (1998). scaling-up pra: lessons from vietnam. in j. blackburn & j. holland (eds.), who changes? institutionalizing participation in development (pp. 18–22). london: intermediate technology publications. powers, j. l., & tiffany, j. s. (2006). engaging youth in participatory research and evaluation. journal of public health management and practice, 12(6) (nov./dec. supplement), s79–s87. prilleltensky, i., nelson, g., & peirson, l. (2001). the role of power and control in children's lives: an ecological analysis of pathways toward wellness, resilience and problems. journal of community & applied social psychology, 11(2), 143–158. strauss, a. l., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef). (2002). what every adolescent has a right to know. new york: author. zeldin, s., petrokubi, j., & camino, l. (2008). youth-adult partnerships in public action: principles, organizational culture and outcomes. washington, d.c.: the forum for youth investment. retrieved june 11, 2011 from http://www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/files/youthadultpartnerships.pdf http://www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/files/youthadultpartnerships.pdf� the nature and development of young people’s social capital: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 134 the nature and development of young people’s social capital: transitions, co-presence, shared interests, and emotional connections lisa smylie abstract: this paper presents findings from a study that explored the nature of social capital and how it is developed by young people. in-depth interviews with young people in canada, aged 16 to 19 years, explored the development of networks of social capital as well as the changing nature of these networks over time. narratives suggest that networks of social capital change in response to changing circumstances, transitions through life stages, and changing identities. they indicate also that social capital develops in networks in which there is regular face-to-face interaction, shared interests, and shared emotional experiences. keywords: social capital, mechanisms, social networks ethics and consent: this research was approved by the research ethics board of the university of windsor. lisa smylie, ph.d., department of sociology, anthropology and criminology, university of windsor, 401 sunset avenue, windsor, ontario, canada, n9b 3p4. telephone: (613) 762-5917. e-mail: smylie1@uwindsor.ca mailto:smylie1@uwindsor.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 135 over the past several decades, social capital has firmly established itself in the social science lexicon. based on the work of pierre bourdieu (1986), james coleman (1988, 1990), and robert putnam (2000), social capital is generally conceived of as a positive feature emanating from social interaction. unlike personal economic capital (financial resources) or human capital (acquired education, technical credentials, or skills), social capital refers to resources embedded within the structure of people’s relationships which can be leveraged to achieve desired ends (e.g., educational attainment, employment). these resources can include socially held knowledge, values or norms, and networks of reciprocity or trust. notwithstanding the widespread application of social capital in a number of disciplines, including political science, economics, sociology, education, and health sciences, the concept has been critiqued for its lack of definitional clarity (fine, 2001); lack of relational clarity to other forms of capital (arrow, 1999; fine, 2002); and the lack of a distinction between its components (e.g., social solidarity, trust) and conditions of its development (portes, 1998). furthermore, traditional theoretical models of social capital have been critiqued for their conceptualization of youth as passive recipients of social capital within familial and community relationships with adults. youth studies researchers have suggested that social capital, as it was conceived by the “theoretical fathers”, was not conceptualized from the perspective of youth; that elements of social capital, such as civic participation (e.g., voting), are largely adult-oriented and necessarily exclude youth because of their age; and that youth are assumed to be passive recipients of social capital visà-vis the family and are further assumed to not form social capital amongst themselves, independent of adults (leonard, 2005; morrow 1999a, 1999b; schaefer-mcdaniel, 2004). more recent social capital theorists have attempted to address these limitations by adding conceptual clarity and exploring the agency youth have in developing social capital themselves in their own relationships, as well as the mutual impact they have on adults’ social capital (leonard, 2005; morrow 1999a). in particular, a growing body of research has attempted to uncover the nature of social capital for young people (bassani, 2003; gillies & lucey, 2006; holland, reynolds, & weller, 2007; jarrett, sullivan, & watkins, 2005; leonard, 2005; morrow 1999b, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2003; seaman & sweeting, 2004; weller, 2006). this research has explored the sources and forms of young people’s social capital from their own perspectives rather than imposing understandings from an adult viewpoint. family and peer groups have been cited as central sources of young people’s social capital. the emergent youth-centred literature points to the key role that interaction with parents – particularly mothers (morrow, 1999b) – and siblings (gillies & lucey, 2007; leonard, 2005; morrow, 1999b; seaman & sweeting, 2004) play in forming social capital. the intensity and quality of relationships appear as significant conditions for the development of social capital. within both the family and peer group network, youth articulate their social capital to be in the form of social support (someone to talk to and to share things with), information, guidance, and companionship. school has also been discussed in this literature as a key site for social capital, though with mixed salience. some studies suggest that school is a place where young people develop close bonds with friends, receive support and help from teachers and other mentors (morrow, 1999b). others suggest school may be a potential site for bullying and feelings of alienation, for example in not being respected by such authority figures as teachers (morrow 2001b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 136 participation in formal community activities has also had mixed salience in youths’ experiences of social capital. morrow (1999b, 2005) found that many youth have reported limited participation in formally organized leisure and community activities, as a result of limited overall self-efficacy and being devalued by adults in the community. other research suggests that specific leisure activities and community organizations have been important sources of social capital for youth, including information, expansion of social networks, encouragement, motivation, a sense of identity and belonging, and emotional support (dworkin, larson, & hansen, 2003; eccles & barber, 1999; holland et al., 2007; jarrett et al., 2005; leonard, 2005; morrow, 2003; weller, 2006). these studies highlight the diverse forms that participation takes among youth including art clubs, sports teams, school councils, leadership groups, and ethnic clubs and the alternative ways that youth are engaged within their broader social contexts. in a similar vein, informal modes of volunteering are important for fostering social capital by building social networks of support, assistance, advice, and information. informal modes of volunteering which may lead to the development of social capital include helping neighbours and/or community members without pay (morrow, 1999b), adopting a cause such as building a skate park in the community, and fundraising (weller, 2006). while several scholars have recently extended social capital theory to youth, there is room for further elaboration and definition of the concept as it relates to young people. to date, youth social capital studies have focused on young people up to the age of 16 years and there has been little attention to the nature of social capital for youth as they transition to adulthood, particularly as they approach the age at which they can be considered “full” citizens and as they acquire more freedom and mobility. work is needed to understand whether and how social capital changes during these important transitions. this is particularly salient given the fact that young people’s circumstances and surroundings change very rapidly as they continually (re)form identities and networks while moving through this life stage (cairns, leung, buchanan, & cairns, 1995). additionally, little research has explored how social capital is formed in the course of routine daily interactions. little is known about the processes and conditions under which social capital is formed by youth in family, school, peer, and community contexts. this paper adopts from traditional conceptualizations the idea that social capital is generated in the routines of everyday social interaction (bourdieu, 1986) by examining the everyday activities of young people and how social capital is developed in these routine contexts. the paper also draws upon the work of randall collins (2004) as a framework for understanding the development of social capital within youths’ social networks. in his theory of interaction rituals, collins provides a micro-social framework of the causal mechanisms of situations and interactions through which variations in solidarity, morality, norms, beliefs, and values are produced. insights from this interaction ritual chain theory are used to highlight everyday interactions in the lives of youth that produce social capital through face-to-face reciprocal contacts, common interests, and emotional connections. based on qualitative data collected with youth in canada, aged 16 to 19 years, the paper uses descriptions of routine social interaction articulated by youth and the concept of emotional energy between individuals and groups within these interactions, to explore the ways in which social capital is generated by youth. this paper elaborates on the foundations of existing youth social capital research, similarly grounded in young international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 137 people’s own perspectives of their relationships, by exploring on young people’s understanding of social capital and their practices in relation to it. the research framework in order to capture young people’s own perspectives and understandings, a qualitative methodology was employed using semi-structured in-depth interviews with youth. interviews were conducted in the winter of 2007 in an area of central canada. the region includes an urban core, as well as several surrounding towns and rural county. the economy in the region consists of manufacturing, tourism, and education. over 20% of the area’s population is foreign-born and visible minorities comprise nearly one-quarter of the population. these characteristics make the region desirable for conducting exploratory research since it provides access to a diverse sample of youth. given the exploratory nature of the research, non-probability, purposive sampling of youth aged 16 to 19 years was initially used to capture differing perspectives or “multiple realities” by increasing the diversity of the sample (berger & luckmann, 1967; strauss & corbin, 1990, pp. 177–193). the lines of diversity along which youth were recruited were informed by the youthcentred social capital literature as dimensions of difference in youths’ social capital. these included gender (morrow, 1999b, 2003), ethnicity and race (morrow, 1999b), rural or urban residence (farrell, taylor, & tennant, 2004), and age (morrow, 1999b). participants were recruited through their connection with community agencies, or their use of virtual networking sites such as facebook and myspace. snowball sampling was then used among these youth and continued until saturation was reached. eighteen young people comprised the final sample for this study. the sample was split relatively evenly among males (8) and females (10). the ages ranged from 16 to 19 years with five 16 year-olds, four 17 year-olds, five 18 year-olds, and four 19 year olds. the majority of participants were living in the urban core (9), with fewer in the peri-urban (6) and rural (3) outskirts. the sample consisted predominantly of youth identifying either as white/caucasian or from european backgrounds (13), though there was some representation from the black (1), east asian (2), and south asian (2) communities. three of the youth were born outside canada. the majority of the participants (10) lived in two-parent families with siblings; however, the sample also included an only child with two parents (1), youth living in a single-parent home with siblings (5), and those living independent of their parents either alone or with friends (2). the majority of participants were in school full-time and many had part-time jobs as well. only one participant was out of school and in the labour force full-time. the semi-structured interview protocol was guided by the existing youth-centred social capital literature. youth were asked to identify key relationships and groups in their lives, to describe the nature of those interactions, how the relationships developed and changed over time, and the tangible benefits of the relationships and of group memberships. the analysis was carried out solely by the author. nvivo, a qualitative software package (qsr international, 2001) was used to assist the analysis and to manage the verbatim interview transcripts and emergent themes. the first stage of the analysis entailed sorting and coding all of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 138 the material from the transcripts that fit under the broad notion of social capital. the second stage involved a process of discovery in which the text was read for themes and concepts related to the nature of youths’ social relationships and to the forms and sources of social capital. analytic memos and notes were kept on themes and concepts as they emerged, including any text that contradicted the patterns and/or those that provided alternative interpretations. the data used to support arguments presented below reflect the themes found across the corpus of text. excerpts presented are verbatim from the interview transcripts in order to preserve the language of the youth, with only the names of people and places altered to maintain anonymity. the pseudonyms used for participants were chosen by the youth themselves. youth transitions and changing networks of social capital the narratives from the participants of this research point to the fluid and changing nature of the social networks from which youth mobilize social capital. as youth move through various stages of life and (re)formulate identities, their social networks likewise transition. studies have examined the changing nature of young people’s relationships among family, peers, and community as they move through key stages of life, such as transitioning from high school to university (holland et al., 2007), or transitioning into the workforce (raffo & reeves, 2000). participants in this study described the changing nature and importance of specific social relationships as they experienced life transitions and changing identities. phoebe: in england my best friend, i’m still friends with but it’s hard to live so far away and they don’t have any concept of life here. and so much has changed because you figure our life would change so much that a lot of my friends over there have changed like they all moved on and are older…. plus when we went to high school we kinda grew apart too. we didn’t have any classes together. and since we got older things have kinda changed. phoebe (16 years) recognized that her changing circumstances – namely moving to a different country, and transitioning from elementary school to high school – altered her existing relationship with a close friend. similar experiences were articulated with respect to participation in leisure activities and groups. for example, isaac (18 years) discussed how he was not as involved in leisure activities at the time of our discussion as he had been in the past. he gave the following rationale: isaac: um, as of like now i’m not too involved cause i’m just trying to transition into the university. like ah… pretty booked up on a lot of labs and lectures and um, with a parttime job on the weekends. so that’s kinda not too much time for myself. but ah, in the past… ah, during the summer i, ah, volunteer… for the gardening program… ah, i’ve been pretty involved with, um, with the environmental side of things. isaac’s transition from high school to university and his attempt to acclimatize to the workload and class schedule prevented him from participating in volunteer organizations and causes that he had been involved in previously. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 139 transitions through life stages were not the only catalyst for changing social networks. the (re)formulation of identities and experimentation with various lifestyles was identified by some youth as the reason for altering social networks. for example, britney (19 years) discussed how she had a friend who was very important to her, but with whom she very rarely spoke at the time of the interview. when asked what had led to this change in their relationship she responded with the following description: britney: um, at the end of grade 12, she got into a very huge party phase. and she was wasted every night and like slutting around [laughing]. and i don’t know, i just didn’t want to hang out with her anymore…. we all kinda…this is going to sound mean but we always kinda talk about the one friend. and i don’t know… just they realized how much she changed and we don’t like the way she is. in this narrative we see that britney’s former friend was engaging in behaviours that britney and other friends in the peer group did not want to participate in. as a result, the composition of the social network was altered. in addition, the identities of the girls remaining in the group were strengthened. according to schaefer-mcdaniel (2004), a sense of belonging and identity form a significant part of the conceptual framework of young people’s social capital. as articulated by some of the youth in this study, identities are constantly being (re)constructed which has implications for the (re)formulations of peer groups and social capital. the social capital available to both the female rejected by the group, as well as the remaining group members, was altered as a result of the changing nature of this social network. these narratives provide examples of how individual networks of social capital can change over time among youth. youth’s networks, from which social capital accrues, are quite fluid insofar as they exhibit significant dynamism and adaptability in response to changing circumstances and the changing biographies of youth. youth are constantly reformulating networks and making new friendships as their circumstances change and as they transition through various stages of life. the formation of sources of social capital in routine daily interactions in describing their daily routines and social interactions, the participants in this research highlighted three characteristics as important to the development of social capital: face-to-face interaction, common interests, and, in particular, the experience of an emotional connection with the individuals or groups with whom they interact in family, peer, and community contexts. face-to-face interaction in their descriptions of the people most important to them and on whom they could rely, and how these relationships developed into significant ones, participants described the necessity of face-to-face interaction. almost all of the participants stated that spending more time with significant other(s) provided the foundation for developing important, strong relationships that they could draw on. for example, jessica (19 years) discussed at length her relationship with a group of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 140 friends that lived together in a house on her street. when probed as to whether she was always as close to them as she is now, she responded: jessica: no actually, ah, they lived in residence last year and that’s when i met them. like through a friend. and then that friend that we both knew, she lives out in [the county] so she’s not that close, but we [the rest of the group] were closer so we’d all hang out more and that’s how we became more closer. similarly, in a discussion about how she developed the close friendships with a group of school peers, sarah (19 years) said: sarah: i met through my…well most of them through my ex-boyfriend. well, we became mutual friends, especially like the people that come here now [referring to the university she attends] that we, the more the time we spend again we all got closer. face-to-face interaction, as described by the youth, creates a sense of solidarity and identity tied to the relationship. many youth described losing a shared identity and feelings of solidarity, key elements of social capital (putnam, 2000), and a diminished significance to relationships in their lives when face-to-face interaction was no longer possible. for example, in her explanation of why her former “best friend” was no longer someone she relied on, felt close to, or would claim as a significant person in her life, phoebe stated the following: phoebe: in england my best friend, i’m still friends with but it’s hard to live so far away… like i can still talk to her but it’s probably more now just general conversation rather than like [pause] we used to. in a similar vein, when asked to elaborate on why his family is not important to him and why he feels he doesn’t turn to them, ching (16 years) suggested: ching: well, as you can see we’re never home with each other, you know…. but like we never see each other. my mom comes home at 9:00. and i’m out and stuff a lot. as described by the youth above, face-to-face interaction appears to be a necessary condition for the generation of social capital for young people. these findings support previous research results suggesting that relationships in which youth develop forms of social capital, such as emotional support, material aid, or information channels, are those in which they have regular face-to-face contact (browning & soller, 2014). the youth suggested that face-to-face interaction contributed to a strong relationship, a sentiment best articulated by sarah: “... the more time we spend again, we all got closer”. nevertheless, the increased use of communication technologies and social media (e.g., email, instant messaging, cellular phones, video conferencing), particularly among youth, raises the question as to whether this face-to-face interaction is necessary to produce social capital, or whether emerging forms of technology might be suitable substitutes. previous research has suggested that communications technologies, including social media, are key in developing social capital in relationships that transcend place and geography, particularly for rural and disadvantaged youth (clare, meek, wellens, & hooley, 2009; ellison, steinfeld, & lampe, 2007; kavanaugh, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 141 reese, carroll, & rosson, 2005; lam, 2014). while the youth in this study showed a clear and strong preference for face-to-face interaction with both family and friends, they did make reference to the use of distance media to overcome physical separation and to maintain their social networks in some instances. though there were no questions pertaining to the use of the internet in the interview protocol, some youth expressed the feeling that technological forms of communication became particularly important for them as a means to maintain their relationships with other youth or with an absent parent. as ashley (17 years) stated: ashley: he [her father] actually... his job, like he transfers his job will move him all the time and he’s in georgia right now. so i don’t know, it’s just that...he’ll e-mail. so he’s always there, even though he’s not physically here. britney further elaborated how she gets support from her cousin in an adjacent city: britney: every time i do have a problem i’ll send her an e-mail. like if it’s an e-mail, she’ll reply the same day. that’s how i approach her pretty much because she’s not with me all the time. though the youth in this study showed a willingness to rely on distance media to keep in touch with friends and family, relationships maintained in this way were not discussed with the same significance as relationships involving regular face-to-face contact. instead, the interaction appeared to involve bare utilitarian, mundane communication, limited to “catching up” on the state of each other’s social lives: jessica: it can help keep you in touch with people that moved far away or whatever that you don’t get the chance to see very much, but it’s also kind of a way to [pause] not see that person…and…which obviously, seeing them in person would probably be a lot better. you can actually interact. so it has its pros and its cons. these narratives suggest that face-to-face interaction is a key element of the process through which social capital is generated by youth. relationships identified by the youth as the most important for social capital were those in which they had regular face-to-face contact with other parties. in the absence of this face-to-face interaction, the youth described their relationships as being weakened, and/or not at all important sources of social capital. though they demonstrated a propensity to rely on distance media to maintain social ties, the narratives of the youth in this study suggest that it is not an adequate substitute for face-to-face interaction. common interests central to the process through which youth foster social capital is the development and awareness of common interests between youth and the individuals with whom they build their social capital. the youth in this study described many common interests with those they identified as significant sources of social capital for them, including meeting for meals, playing sports, attending a sporting event, shopping, watching television shows, or attending music concerts: sarah: so saturday mornings i would bowl. and there was this one girl my age named “catherine” and we hung out every saturday and we would bowl. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 142 jessica: um, we usually share a lot of the same things. we’re all in debt and we all have not the greatest relationship with our family. just life experiences we have i guess in common…. we like to do the same things, we all really like music, like movies, same shows…i think it’s important and having things in common…. we got to, ah, concerts together. it’s important to have things in common. in playing sports, watching television shows with others, eating a meal, or attending concerts, these participants were part of a group with common interests. these objects became symbols of the group and formed a basis for individual and group identity, as well as group solidarity, both key elements to the formation of social capital (putnam, 2000). these common interests among group members and their translation into shared symbols, produces a level of inter-subjectivity, a recognition of where one fits in the group and what distinguishes oneself as a member of it. emotional connections the participants pointed to a third element in the process of social capital development, namely intense emotional connections to the individual and/or group. previous literature has pointed to the importance of psychological attachment or emotional engagement in developing and sustaining social relationships (brehm & rahn, 1997; dworkin et al., 2003; reay, 2004; rhodes, 2004; stanton-salazar, 2001). the youth in this study described having an intense emotional connection in their social encounters with people they identify as significant in their lives. many of the youth remarked on the emotional “highs” experienced with these individuals. for example, when speaking of how her girl friends make her feel when she is with them, sarah indicated: sarah: well, it’s excited because there’s like always new stories and it’s, like, it’s not really boring. i feel like i said before i feel refreshed because you can get everything off your chest so it’s like [sighs and loosens shoulders]. or [pause] how else do i feel? [long pause] i don’t know i’m just excited because we always have fun. [emphasis added] similarly, when probed as to why he joined intramural volleyball at his university and how he feels when he is with his teammates, brock (19 years) responded: brock: i love it! it’s a lot of fun and the social aspect. like it’s fun to play and to be with your friends….exciting and [pause] i guess comforting. [emphasis added] these emotional connections were sometimes expressed in the youths’ narratives in the form of gestures, such as cheering. in her description of what gives her a sense of belonging to her dance group, phoebe evinces such gestures: phoebe: when you achieve something. whether it be we get a high score in a competition or you finish a routine that no one liked it and it seemed impossible, we’ll all celebrate and we’ll all hug each other like “we did it!”. we feel together. we accomplished something as a team. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 143 the face-to-face interaction and common interests shared with others contribute to the emotional connection experienced by these youth. these emotional connections need not always be positive ones. there were instances where youth discussed solidarity being fostered within an emotionally “negative” climate. for example, jessica described how she and her fellow team members experienced feelings of injustice, cruelty and lack of respect as a result of the actions of team coaches. as described by jessica below, team members pulled together as a group, and gained a sense of solidarity in the face of this perceived mistreatment: jessica: there’s just little things like administration and the coaches and um, just crap that you shouldn’t have to deal with…but we do. and so sometimes i’m thinking, why am i spending so much time…but i think mostly what’s keeping me there is the girls on the team because we’ve got so close. also, i think that i’m afraid that if i do quit…also i don’t want to quit cause i don’t want to feel like i’m just leaving them behind…. we hang out a lot…as a team. likewise, ashley described a home environment of “negative” emotional energy as her sister suffered from anorexia and her parents divorced, with constant fighting and feelings of sadness and hopelessness. this intense “negative” emotional energy, however, resulted in an increase of solidarity among family members to help her sister recover from her illness: ashley: it’s just like i saw the pain, like i wanted to be there for her kind of thing. so i kind of, i don’t know we just got closer because like we’d open up to each other. but when she was going through it, i didn’t want anything like…she was just like crazy…. we lived in the same house like, um, we’d be in the same room and we wouldn’t say one word to each other. and if she was saying something to any one of our family members, she’d be yelling like “i don’t wanna eat”…. and then after when she realized she did have a problem…then we started like…she just started opening up to me and we became closer. the fact that a sense of belonging and solidarity was fostered within a climate of negative emotional energy suggests that it may be more the intensity of the emotion, rather than the form, that is important in the development of social capital by youth. discussion this paper explored the nature of social capital for youth and the mechanisms through which youth develop social capital. the accounts of social capital from participants in this study emphasized the fluid nature of their social networks as they moved through various stages of adolescence. youth described the changes in their social networks as they transitioned from grade school to high school, from high school to post-secondary education, and into the workforce. they also described changes in social networks and the reformulation of identities during this period. in response to changing circumstances, transitions through life stages, and changing identities, youths’ social networks demonstrated dynamism and adaptation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 144 this paper also explored the conditions under which social capital is developed in everyday interactions. in their attempts to construct meaning in their everyday interactions, the participants in this study described three factors as important conditions in which social capital was created: regular face-to-face interaction, common interests, and emotional connections. these descriptions highlight micro-level processes underlying the generation of social capital that closely resemble the components articulated in randall collins’ (2004) interaction ritual chain. collins argues that corporeal co-presence, a mutual focus of attention, and emotional effervescence are characteristic of daily interaction that give an individual identity and purpose, without which people could not be readied for activity and resources could not be marshaled (p. 15; p. 235). his theory suggests that in routine daily interactions, individuals physically gather together (corporeal co-presence) and acknowledge a common undertaking (a mutual focus of interest or attention). almost all of the participants stated that spending more time with individuals provided the foundation for developing important relationships upon which they could draw for assistance, advice, or emotional support. even among youth in this study who frequently used electronic communications to maintain contact with individuals, face-to-face interaction, articulated as “hanging out” or spending time together, was critical in creating a sense of solidarity and identity tied to the relationship. the importance of face-to-face contact was further confirmed by participants who described losing a shared identity, feelings of solidarity and diminished significance of the relationship when face-to-face contact was no longer possible. sharing common interests was also an important condition in the development of social capital as articulated in the narratives of the youth in this research. in watching television with friends, playing video games, or attending music concerts, the youth felt part of a group with common interests. these interests became symbols for the group and formed the basis for individual and group identity and solidarity. the common interests produced recognition among the youth of where one fits in the group and what distinguishes oneself as a member of it. the essence of collins’ theory is that individuals are attracted towards some types of relationships and away from others on the basis of “emotional energy”. encounters that have a high degree of shared emotional energy or “effervescence” are formative experiences that result in an immediate sense of group solidarity, shared symbols of social relationships, and shared standards of morality (collins, 2004, p. 45). applied to our understanding of social capital, collins’ concept of emotional energy may shed light on why social capital within certain relationships is mobilized by youth, while in others it is not. in their narratives, the participants provided numerous examples of how strong emotional connections within the social relationship led to the development of social capital in the form of social support, shared norms and trust. these included both positive and negative emotions, as in teammates sharing exceptional accomplishments or feelings of mistreatment. while the youth social capital literature has not yet recognized emotion as a key explanatory concept in the development of social capital a retrospective analysis of early studies suggest further investigation of this concept may be useful in further understanding social capital and its role in the lives of young people (see, for example, morrow, 1999a, 1999b; gillies & lucey, 2007; weller, 2006). the findings from this study build upon our understandings of young people’s social capital by exploring the nature of social capital during this life stage and how it is developed. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 145 narratives of the participants in this research suggest a theory of the development of social capital by youth in which, not unlike collins’ interaction ritual chains, bodily co-presence, a mutual focus of attention (common interests), and a shared emotional energy, are processes of daily interaction in which networks of social capital are developed. this enhanced understanding is but one small step forward and many questions and challenges remain for future research on the social contexts of young people. first, the findings suggest that social capital is renegotiated among youth in specific circumstances and cannot be approached as a static resource. researchers examining social contexts, such as family, school, or community, and their relation to various outcomes for youth, including health, academic achievement, or involvement in crime, must consider the transitions of individuals in and out of numerous social capital networks over time. second, further research exploring the impact of structural conditions on the development of social capital among young people is warranted. how does age, gender, or area of residence structure the possibilities youth have to develop and maintain social capital within families, schools, peer groups, and communities? this research is required in order to better understand the nature of social capital and its development. finally, though there is a large body of literature examining the impact of social capital on various outcomes such as health, academic achievement, involvement in crime, or employment, few studies examine the mechanisms through which young people mobilize their social capital to certain ends. understanding how relationships are developed and key elements of mobilizing networks of social capital will be critical for the development of effective policies to improve the lives and respond effectively to the needs of young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 134–149 146 references arrow, k. j. 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(2006). skateboarding alone? making social capital discourse relevant to teenagers’ lives. journal of youth studies, 9(5), 557–574. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713684372 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.2005.00524.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/yd.75 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1367626042000238703 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13676260600805705 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918852 managing pain in residential care: a developmental analysis heather modlin abstract: this article explores the presence of pain in residential programs for children and youth. the challenges associated with acknowledging and interpreting the behavioural manifestations of this pain — for the young people and for frontline practitioners — are discussed and interpreted through a constructivedevelopmental lens. the notion of the organization as a holding environment is reviewed, with a key focus on the role of the supervisor in absorbing the pain, providing emotional containment, supporting practitioners “where they are”, encouraging reflection, promoting developmental growth, and maintaining a stable presence. implications for the organization are reviewed. keywords: child and youth care, residential care, constructive-developmental theory, pain, pain-based behaviours, meaning-making heather modlin phd is the provincial director of key assets newfoundland and labrador, 495 water street, st. john’s, nl a1c 6e1. email: heather.modlin@keyassetsnl.ca mailto:heather.modlin@keyassetsnl.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 46 the word care finds its origin in the word ‘kara’, which means to lament, to mourn, to participate in suffering, to share in pain. to care is to cry out with those who are ill, confused, lonely, isolated, and forgotten, and to recognize their pains in your own heart. to care is to enter into the world of those who are broken and powerless and to establish there a fellowship of the weak. to care is to embrace affectionately those who may be touched by hostile hands, to listen attentively to those whose words fall on deaf ears, and to speak gently with those who are used to harsh orders and impatient comments. to care is to be present to those who suffer and to stay present, even when nothing can be done to change their situation. (nouwen, 2017, p. 193) the manifestation of pain in residential care: pain-based behaviours of young people and child and youth care workers pain of the young people children and youth are often placed in residential care because the challenging nature of their behaviours makes it difficult for them to live in a family home. these behaviours can be aggressive, destructive, or disturbing (frensch, cameron, & adams, 2003; whittaker & pfeiffer, 1994) and may include running away, self-harm, suicide attempts, verbal escalation, and physical assaults (seti, 2007). underlying the behaviours of young people in residential care are almost always histories of severe trauma, often in the form of one or more of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and neglect (brendtro, 2004; raychaba, 1993; van beinum, 2008). these young people have experienced years of humiliation, degradation, chaos, threat, and fear; often they have been “incubated in terror” (perry & szalavitz, 2006). the lifetime of hurt and pain that they carry with them is reflected in their behaviour (anglin, 2002). as so eloquently stated by crenshaw and garbarino (2007, p. 160), “this deep reservoir of unrequited sorrow is the smoldering emotional underbelly to the violence.” unfortunately, front-line child and youth care practitioners are not always equipped to adequately respond to the behavioural manifestations of this underlying pain or to the emotional underbelly itself. in anglin’s (2002) study of group care environments, he observed that there was a significant focus by the staff on the behaviours of the young people and not enough time spent on attending to the underlying feelings. rarely “did careworkers acknowledge or respond sensitively to the inner world of the child” (p. 163). anglin’s findings are not isolated. in a study examining the high percentage of young people in the child welfare system that end up in youth corrections, finlay (2003) described group homes as “gateways to custody” (p. 16) because of the pervasive focus on behaviours and punitive responses. andre cazabon’s documentary wards of the crown (2006) relayed the experiences of several young people in canada who had lived in group homes and subsequently transitioned out of care. a theme that emerged from all of the young people international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 47 about their experiences in group care was that the staff were unable to meet their emotional needs. a quote from one of the young people, which has been used extensively in promotional materials for the video, says “love is inappropriate in a group home”. pain of child and youth care practitioners while the pain of the young people is not always acknowledged, it is even rarer to acknowledge the pain of the staff. a significant percentage of individuals entering the child and youth care field carry with them their own trauma histories (phelan, 2009) and are susceptible to being triggered by the behaviours and underlying emotional distress of the young people (anglin, 2002). working in the midst of young people’s distress and turmoil can take its toll on practitioners (kahn, 2005) even in well-functioning teams (anglin, 2002; smith, 2009). being exposed to the pain of individuals who have been victimized can leave practitioners at risk of developing secondary or vicarious trauma (collins & long, 2003; figley, 1995) and compassion fatigue (seti, 2007), the symptoms of which can include extreme helplessness, victim blaming, emotionally distancing oneself from clients, over-identification with clients (collins & long, 2003), anxiety, depersonalization, and pessimism (osofsky, putman, & leiderman, 2008). in residential care, practitioners are not just exposed to the traumatic stories of the young people, they are exposed to the behavioural manifestations of their trauma as well. this adds an extra layer of complexity to the work that is often overlooked. as stated by mattingly (1981), “no matter how skilled and sophisticated the worker, a kick in the shins, broken glasses, an insult, and a child’s lack of progress are all assaults on self-esteem which threaten workers’ perceptions of their helping ability” (p. 154). the expectation that child and youth care workers should always know what to do or how to respond in the most challenging of situations is referred to by andersonnathe (2010) as “the myth of supercompetence”. when practitioners experience moments of “stuckness”, of not knowing what to do, they can become mired in self-doubt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy (anderson-nathe, 2010). interpreting behaviours and acknowledging the underlying pain through a constructive-developmental lens according to anglin (2002), “the manner and degree to which the pain is responded to is one of the key indicators of the quality of care in a residence as experienced by the youth” (p. 168). it is critical, therefore, to have an understanding of why and how some child and youth care practitioners struggle with this task, and how they can be supported to respond more effectively. why do some people in an organization appear to be constantly challenged by the job while others appear to more easily adapt to the demands placed upon them? why do some practitioners “burn out” after only a few years in the field while others can work in the same environment for 20 years without experiencing any signs of burnout? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 48 constructive-developmental theory one of the reasons, perhaps, why individuals are impacted differently by the same amounts of pain, in the same environment, may be related to their developmental capacity to let go of the pain, or to acknowledge it, or to recognize who owns the pain. kegan’s (1982, 1994) constructivedevelopmental theory is a useful lens through which to explore this further. constructive-developmental theory pertains to the ways in which we are constantly constructing and making meaning of our experiences. our meaning-making is impacted by what we can see, are aware of, can take control over, and assume responsibility for (kegan, 1982, 1994). as we develop in mental complexity, the balance between what we are subject to (embedded in) or can perceive as object (separate from self) continually undergoes a process of transformation. constructive-developmental growth results in a more complex way of seeing, experiencing, and understanding oneself and the world (kegan, 1982, 1994). according to kegan (1982), our meaning-making evolves progressively over the course of the lifespan through six qualitatively different constructive-developmental orders, or systems, with each order having its own distinct conception of the world. two of these orders, socialized and self-authoring, are most prevalent in adulthood and will be briefly reviewed in the next section. socialized: at the socialized order of consciousness, the self is embedded in the relational realm. individuals at this stage have developed the capacity to internalize and identify with the values and beliefs of their social surround and are able to subordinate their own interests on behalf of this greater loyalty. individuals at the socialized order can engage in abstract thinking and are able to reflect upon their own needs, wishes, and interests through internal dialogue about themselves (kegan, 1982, 1994). the views, opinions, and feelings of others can be brought into the self and they can put the needs of others ahead of themselves in order to remain connected (strang & kuhnert, 2009). the cost of this newly emerged developmental capacity, however, is that individuals with this meaning system are now subject to the expectations of others. individuals at the socialized order do not just have relationships, they are their relationships. they view the world through their relationships and experience difficulty separating their own sense of self from the values, beliefs, and judgments of significant others (kegan, 1982, 1994), who are perceived as sources of authority and co-constructors of the self (popp & portnow, 2001). individuals with a socialized mindset have little tolerance for ambiguity (popp & portnow, 2001). they need a clear sense of what is expected of them by others and feel a strong obligation to meet those expectations. criticism is experienced as destructive to the self, because the orientation is toward a sense of belonging and connection (kegan, 1994). self-authoring: within the self-authoring meaning-making system, individuals move beyond being subject to the expectations of others and develop an autonomous self. they no longer international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 49 are their relationships, they have them. they have developed the capacity to differentiate the self from others, and others from their points of view. individuals at the self-authoring order have the ability to regulate and evaluate their own values, goals, and interpersonal connections, and to transcend their own needs and those of others in accordance with their own personal, internal value system (kegan, 1994). influential others are no longer viewed as co-constructors of reality (lahey, souvaine, kegan, goodman, & felix, 1988) and those at the self-authoring order have developed the capacity to not assume responsibility for others’ responsibilities (drath, 1990). dealing with pain to cope with the emotional demands of the job, child and youth care workers are often provided with specific skills training, educated on the importance of self-awareness, and coached on the need to identify their “triggers” — primarily so that they will not get drawn into power struggles with the young people, or engage in counter-aggression. while this may be helpful, it presupposes that practitioners have the ability to identify their emotional response to the young person as separate from the young person — and this requires a particular way of knowing (and type of self-awareness) that they might not yet have developed. this speaks specifically to the possible impact of practitioners’ developmental capacity on their experiencing of and ability to cope with their own and the young peoples’ pain and pain-based behaviour. the capacity to manage pain may be related to the ability to think complexly. according to kegan (1994), “the demand that we be in control of our issues rather than have our issues control us” (p. 133) is a demand for a self-authoring system of meaning-making. having the ability to transcend our own needs and focus on the needs of the young people requires that we first have the ability to separate our own needs from the needs of others. this is only possible, from a constructive-developmental perspective, if one has developed the capacity to do this — which would only occur when one is making meaning at the self-authoring order. providing skill-based training on dealing with aggressive behaviour, for example, will not do much to address the fundamental problem if the demands of the job exceed one’s developmental capacity to meet them. the concepts taught in training will simply be interpreted through the individual’s existing logic. the capacity to reflect on, dwell in, and cope with the pain of self and other: developmental influences, interpretations, and challenges the author conducted an exploratory study to look at whether kegan’s (1982) constructivedevelopmental theory may be a useful framework through which to view the practice of child and youth care in residential care and, in particular, the experiences of child and youth care workers in the context of their organizational environments (modlin, 2018). one of the research questions asked participants to identify the primary challenges they experienced in their roles, and how they coped with these challenges. in this study, kegan’s constructive-developmental theory was used as an analytic tool to examine what the child and youth care profession is asking of practitioners international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 50 and to consider the fit, or misfit, between these demands and the mental capacities of the practitioners. methodology the study was conducted in two stages. first, 99 participants completed the professional quality of life scale (proqol; stamm, 2010), work environment scale (wes; moos, 2008), and leadership development profile (ldp; torbert & livne-tarandach, 2009). the results of these measures are reported elsewhere (modlin, 2018). from the initial pool, 18 participants (from five organizations, across three geographic regions) were selected for subject-object interviews (soi). the soi is specifically designed to elicit data on a person’s “unselfconscious epistemology” (lahey et al., 1988) or meaning-making capacity. at the beginning of the soi, participants were presented with 10 probe words intended to arouse strong thoughts and emotions. the probe words usually used are anger, anxiety, success, change, important to me, overwhelmed, proud, joy, challenged, and strong stand. to align the soi with my research questions, i added the word “pain” and substituted the phrase “supported” for “strong stand”. the words were presented on index cards, and participants were given 20 minutes to recall experiences conjured up by each word and write down their responses. these cards remained with the participants as a prompt to help them recall their experiences and were for their use only. i instructed participants to restrict the experiences to those from their current work environment. i began each interview by asking participants to select the card with which they would like to start. once participants were finished talking about the content generated by this card, they were asked to select the next card. this process continued until the interview ended. the goal of the soi is to access the meaning-making structure underlying the participants’ descriptions of their experiences. the fundamental question a subject-object analysis answers is: “from where in the evolution of subject-object relations does the person seem to be constructing his or her reality?” (lahey et al., 1988, p. 10). the way to identify the underlying meaning-making structure during a soi is to look for what people can and cannot take a perspective on. specific types of questions have been developed to get at an individual’s meaning-making structure during the soi. these primarily include variations of “why” and “how” and questions that probe for extremes. the rationale for using these types of questions is that if the right questions are asked, one can find out, for example, “not why they are angry, but how the self must be constructed to experience the particular violation the speaker expresses” (lahey et al., 1988, p. 290, underlined in original text). the soi has demonstrated construct validity as evidenced by “high degrees of consistency among alternative forms of the measure, different domains of experiencing, different test items and different psychological themes” (lahey et al., 1988, p. 368). inter-rater reliability in studies using the soi has ranged from .75 to .90 (kegan et al., 2001). additionally, the soi is capable of distinguishing 21 distinct epistemological positions and subsequently provides a more refined set of discriminations between any two stages than found in kohlberg’s moral judgment interview or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 51 the washington university sentence completion test (lahey et al., 1988). the soi has also demonstrated the capacity to capture gradual changes in an individual’s constructivedevelopmental level in the expected direction over time (lahey et al., 1988). test-retest reliability has been demonstrated with correlations of .82 (spearman coefficient) and .834 (pearson’s r), both significant at the .0001 level (lahey, 1986). inter-item consistency, with a correlation of .96, was documented by villegas-reimers (1988). the soi can only be used by researchers who are familiar with kegan’s constructivedevelopmental theory and trained in conducting and assessing sois. to address this, i completed a training course through minds at work with associates of robert kegan on conducting and scoring the soi and engaged in additional individual sessions with one of the trainers. for this study, all interviews were scored by a second scorer. a benefit of the soi is that it can also be used to explore other areas during the interview and can be analyzed separately for content as well as structure. the soi is ideally suited for research that seeks to explore participants’ understanding in a particular area. i conducted an expanded version of the soi to assess the meaning-making systems of participants, and also to gather information about how they cope with and experience the demands of the job and themselves in the job, and the influence of the organizational environment. specific questions related to my areas of inquiry were embedded into the soi and added to the end of the interview. questions were designed to reveal the developmental differences in participants’ experiences and the ways in which they made sense of these experiences. using the theory as a backdrop to the demands of the job provided new clues about potential sources of stress or difficulty for child and youth care workers that have not been previously identified or clearly articulated. there were differences in responses from participants who were at the socialized and self-authoring orders, and those who were transitioning between the two. coping with pain at the socialized order individuals at the socialized order, when asked what were the most challenging aspects of their job, identified dealing with personal attacks from the young people, dealing with conflict, and dealing with ambiguity. having to deal with young people who were angry and aggressive, and their associated pain, was identified as a very challenging aspect of their role. the biggest challenge was not, however, the physical act of dealing with these behaviours; it was the personal toll it took on the practitioners themselves. this is illustrated in the following dialogue, in which a participant talked about how depressing it was for her to be continuously threatened and sworn at by the young people: and let’s face it. you’re cursed at a lot during the day and you’re threatened a lot during the day, and you just don’t feel very good. i mean, nobody wants to be cursed at. and after a while, it doesn’t matter how many times that everyone says, “oh, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 52 don’t take it seriously.” if you’ve been cursed at for basically off and on for 12 hours or something like that, then it’s pretty hard not to take it personally. at the socialized order, individuals experience others as responsible for their own emotional reactions to them and are therefore captive to the other to change how they feel. an individual making meaning at the socialized order “cannot actually set things right by herself. things will be set right when her inner psychological life is happier, but her inner psychological life is not an ‘object’ under her control” (kegan, 1994, p. 122). for individuals with a socialized mindset a personal attack is not experienced as an interruption in the relationship, it is experienced as an interruption of the self (kegan, 1982). those who were socialized tended to focus on their own pain, although the pain of the young people was referenced in these conversations. one of the participants, for example, expressed awareness that the young people’s behaviour was “not about her”. she tries to remind herself of this when she encounters a difficult situation. however, information she has received in training and from her supervisor about not personalizing the young people’s behaviours has been interpreted through her socialized consciousness and often leaves her feeling worse. “not personalizing” requires an emotional self that one has control over. at the socialized order, the self is embedded in the relational realm. although this practitioner described valiant efforts to separate her reactions from the young people, it appeared that she cannot yet fully generalize to her practice what she has been taught. that generalization would require that she be able to step back and create some distance from the situation in which she is embedded (berger, 2002). the ultimate goal for individuals at the socialized order is to be “in alignment with … a value creating surround” (kegan, 1994, p. 171). because those who are at the socialized order are embedded in the interpersonal, incidents and events that disrupt this alignment, such as being verbally attacked or mired in conflict, can be experienced by the socialized individual as a disruption of the self. coping, therefore, requires much more than just exercising a set of skills. coping with the many insults to self that socialized participants reported experiencing on the job requires a rebalancing of the relational equilibrium or a shift to a new way of knowing. from a constructive-developmental perspective, individuals at the socialized order do not have the capacity to “regulate or subordinate” the claims others make on them; they are regulated by others (kegan, 1994). when socialized practitioners are personally attacked by or engaged in conflict with a young person, for example, they see the young person as responsible for their (the practitioner’s) emotional reaction to the attack. individuals at the socialized order are unable to assume responsibility for their own feelings in response to a perceived insult. instead, they would perceive the other as “making them mad”, or “making them feel bad”. “a person can only take responsibility for that which she actually is able to know responsibility can be taken” (lahey et al., 1988, p. 15). without the personal authority to see that they can be responsible for their own reaction, and in control of their own feelings, socialized practitioners can be placed in an untenable international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 53 position — the very source of their distress, as they experience it, is also the source of their relief from the distress. for the socialized individual, the “looming failure to preserve a collection of irreconcilable experiences may be experienced as a difficulty holding himself together” (kegan, 1994, p. 167). this sets up a dynamic in which practitioners, without their own internal system that can mediate and regulate their experiences, may regularly encounter situations in which: 1. they feel like they are falling apart. 2. they have no way to put themselves back together. the only viable coping options, from the perspective of the socialized individual, are assistance from an “other” that can serve to mediate the impact of the distressing event, or escape from the situation that is causing distress. socialized participants discussed the urge to “check out” or “get away” when they were faced with situations that they found extremely challenging. this took many forms, one of which was disengaging from the young people. one participant, while talking about how she copes with young people swearing and yelling at her, expressed the following: i guess the best thing to do is try to shut down as much as possible so that you’re not offering anybody, you’re not offering yourself as a target. and disengage and try to find something that’s …. appeal to your teammate. if it’s a teammate that you know quite well, say, “i can’t do it with so and so today because they’re just not responding to me. they don’t like me or maybe they’ve never liked me period and they’re just not giving me any slack at all. so can you deal with johnny today and i’ll deal more with the kitchen work?” or something like that. this participant expressed that when she reached her “breaking point”, she needed to get out. if she could not physically leave the home, which would be her preference, she would escape in her head or “mentally disengage”. as she put it, “you look for whatever relief you can find.” when asked what happened when she couldn’t get any relief, she said, “well, it’s very draining. it’s very soul draining. it’s very disheartening. you can’t find someone to relieve you. it’s just really difficult, that’s the only way i can describe it.” other socialized participants also expressed that they felt overwhelmed when they did not get the opportunity to get away on their own. at the socialized order, individuals do not have the capacity to “fix” the damage done by another in the context of the relationship — this is outside of their control. their only option to re-establish their relational equilibrium is in the hands of the other (usually a dysregulated young person). in the absence of this, they do what they have to do to escape the discomfort or “get relief”. in some cases, this showed up in attempts to control the work schedule. some participants tried to minimize the amount of time they would have to spend international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 54 with particular young people, preferring to work late evening or overnight shifts. others used sick leave or vacation time. denial was another form of escape, albeit psychological, described by some socialized participants. in describing how she deals with young people being aggressive towards her, a participant articulated that she does not personalize the behaviour, yet rather than deal with it directly, she pretends it didn’t happen: i’ve been called everything under the sun, but i guess you just go back the next day and you pretend like that didn’t happen, because i’m very empathetic. so, if someone snaps at me or a young person loses his mind and calls me every name that they’ve ever heard i think, “why? did i do something?” or was it, you know what? their mom didn’t show up that day, there was no call and no — i just try to get to the root of why and i guess not focus on, not make it personal. because most of the time, it’s not. so i just don’t let that get me down and if you bring it back every shift, then you’re never going to make any progress. you’re going to be reliving that over and over and then you’ll dwell on those things all the time. interviewer: yes. how are you able to not bring it back? participant: sleep helps me and even if it’s in the back of my mind i just fake it, so i make it. i put on a happy face and ask how their day was and pretend like it didn’t happen, unless they want to have a conversation about it or they bring it out and sometimes they’ll apologize out of the blue. sometimes they won’t; sometimes just moved on like it never happened and that’s okay too. i just don’t know if there’s a particular way or anything that i do cognitively to bring it back. i just don’t. while the notion of going into a new shift with a “fresh approach” is not reflective of any particular developmental order, it is the use of this approach to avoid dealing with unpleasant situations that reflects meaning-making at the socialized order. this participant was aware that she “should not personalize” the behaviour of the young person. however, for individuals making meaning with a socialized mindset, telling them not to personalize rude or vulgar comments from the young people can be “interpreted as an invitation to be colder, more callous, even indifferent, or to take up a position of greater distance in relation to the other” (kegan, 1994, p. 126). the tendency to “pretend” the incident didn’t happen illustrates this distancing. she does not bring up the incident, she waits for the young person to raise it — thereby keeping any potential resolution of the situation in the hands of the young person. participants at the socialized order generally described coping in one of two ways: by attempting to remove themselves from the distressing situation, or by relying on support from others. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 55 coping with pain at the self-authoring order participants who were self-authoring identified being witness to the pain of the young people and the staff as a challenging part of their role. one participant shared the way in which front-line practitioners “take on” the pain of the young people: i think a lot of that … stuff i talked about, like the pain stuff is … you did take a lot of this. you see their emotional suffering and … i notice with empathy, you wanted to be careful. you don’t want to just directly experience all that stuff to yourself. this individual is able to reflect on the experience of absorbing the young people’s pain with some distance from the relationship. he recognizes that he has control over how emotionally involved he can become, and the ability to extract himself as needed. another self-authoring participant, while talking about the impact of seeing the young people in pain, relayed the following: pain … i’ve been assaulted a lot in this job. especially between the crisis response stuff. but pain, i think the first thing i thought of is the pain that you see on the kids’ faces. how hard that is to watch. i think everyone that works in youth care is empathetic. it’s almost like when they feel that pain, you feel it too. so, like dad doesn’t turn up to contact. or they are embarrassed at school because they are not allowed to go on an excursion and everyone else is. or whatever it is, you, i think more so than your own stress or physical pain from assaults or whatever, it’s more watching the kids go through pain that is really hard about this job. interviewer: what’s the hardest part of that? participant: when you can’t change it. yeah. so, i mean, when kids can’t go home. or when parents don’t turn up to contact. in her description, this participant reveals that she has the capacity to feel empathy for the young people without taking on their pain as her own. this is evidence of a self-authoring construction. another participant, working in a supervisor role, talked about the challenge of seeing the staff in pain: when you take it, you take it with you, like you take it, you breathe it day in and day out, and if you don’t do anything about it then it has real implications … compassion fatigue. it’s been very hard so seeing the pain, understanding it, knowing where the young people and families are coming from and also where the staff are coming from, and then like, i think some of the things i’ve struggled with the most is actually seeing a change in the staff. these amazing, wonderful people who do amazing work and you see their personalities change … but in the same way that you can’t make a young person, you can’t do the treatment, we also can’t save the staff. that’s often time the really hard part and you see it happening and you do your initial supervisions, you do your group supervisions, you do your international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 56 informal chats, you do your check-ins, but you can’t stop it, and you have no control over it, so you provide the information, you provide the resources, you give them the pamphlets, you set up those kinds of things, but it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be okay. although challenged to deal with the pain of others, for self-authoring participants the challenge was not internal but was related to having empathy, and providing support, for the individuals who were in pain. they are able to do this because they were no longer embedded in the interpersonal. as stated by kegan (1994), when the self … is bigger than those co-constructions and thus no longer identified with them the source of its own sense of continued well-being and integrity is not limited to its life within the shared reality of the relationship …. but if we neither identify with the internal registering of how the other feels nor ignore it, but are able instead to be in relationship to it, then we do not leave off caring for the other, we leave off being made up by our caring. we become able to do something with our caring for the other. (p. 126). dealing effectively with emotional pain requires an ability to acknowledge and move towards that pain (kahn, 2005). individuals who are self-authoring demonstrated the capacity to engage in this level of engagement, whereas those who were socialized identified moving away from others’ pain in order to cope with their own. the role of the supervisor in the provision of a holding environment: absorption, containment, support, challenge, and continuity one of the key principles underlying constructive-developmental theory is that development is a lifelong process that occurs through ongoing interaction between an individual and the psychosocial environment (kegan, 1982). kegan refers to the psychosocial environment as a holding environment, a term originally conceptualized by winnicott (1965) to describe the importance of the caregiver’s physical and psychological holding in supporting an infant’s development. according to kegan (1982), holding does not only occur during infancy and it can include broader psychosocial contexts such as those comprised by co-workers, classmates, and friends. individuals experience a succession of holding environments in their lifetime, and, for adults, the workplace is one of these holding environments (kegan, 1994). from a constructivedevelopmental standpoint, the holding environment provides a balance of support and challenge to individuals that acknowledges where they are and facilitates movement to the next developmental order. without adequate holding, individuals may have difficulty dealing with situations in which there is a mismatch between their meaning-making system and the demands of the environment, and they do not experience developmental growth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 57 coping with the demands of the job, for individuals at all developmental orders, occurs within, and is influenced by, the organizational context. as stated by kegan (1982), “our wellbeing (or lack of it) is as much as anything a reflection on the quality of those most intimate ‘supports’ which, from the point of view of our current evolutionary truce, are confused with ourselves” (p. 193). providing adequate holding to employees across developmental orders can be a tricky balance. “environments that are weighted too heavily in the direction of challenge are toxic; they promote defensiveness and constriction. those weighted too heavily toward support without adequate challenge are ultimately boring; they promote devitalization” (kegan, 1994, p. 42). in my research study (modlin, 2018), the psychosocial elements of the organizational environment, consisting of co-workers, supervisors, and managers, were referenced repeatedly by participants. the importance, and type of, support required by each of these groups varied depending on the developmental order of the participant. holding socialized practitioners at the socialized order, individuals look outside of themselves for answers and solutions and rely on expert authority to assist with decision-making. all participants in the study who were making meaning at the socialized order reported relying heavily on direction and guidance from their supervisors to help them cope with the demands of the job and, in some cases, to help promote growth. supervision needed to be accepting and non-judgmental, and to provide a “safe place” where participants could talk about what was bothering them and receive constructive feedback and praise from supervisors. when asked what would happen without the support and supervision they received, participants did not mince words. their responses included: “that would be horrible. i would probably leave. i don’t know how you could do it if you weren’t supported. it would be very hard. it would, like, mentally would be a lot harder.” “i don’t know. i don’t think i’d last. to be honest, i don’t think i can do it all on my own. i think i would, i’d probably get dragged down or burn out quickly.” one individual disclosed that she would “probably use a lot of sick leave, honestly, because i mean, that sucks”. another participant stated, “that’s where a lot of burnout would probably come from if you’re not supported.” in describing what the ongoing support meant to her, she said, “the world. that allows me to go home to my own children at night and function as a normal human being.” socialized participants also highlighted the importance of being noticed, acknowledged, and validated by senior management. this need to be seen is consistent with kegan’s (1982) contention that, to be responsive, a holding environment (in this case the organizational environment) must recognize and support individuals at all orders of development and recognize them for “who they are”. being acknowledged by senior management was identified by some participants as crucial to their own view of themselves as important and valuable employees. without receiving that external acknowledgment individuals with a socialized mindset have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 58 difficulty knowing how they are doing. in the midst of dealing with challenging situations with the young people, the absence of any external guidance leaves these practitioners feeling defeated. in addition to support from supervisors and management, all participants at the socialized order, and those who were transitioning from socialized to self-authoring, cited support from their co-workers as pivotal to their ability to do the job. this aligns with their reliance on external resources and embeddedness in the interpersonal realm. holding self-authoring practitioners the self-authoring system is able to “relate to one’s interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal states rather than be made up by them” (kegan, 1994, p. 176). for self-authoring participants, coping was related to their ability to perform their jobs to their own standards. unlike at the socialized order, those who are self-authoring are able to subordinate multiple or contradictory demands to a supervening principle, their own internal system of governance, which can regulate the demands (kegan, 1994). when feeling overwhelmed, rather than automatically relying on others for direction, all self-authoring participants talked about their need to take control of the situation. instead of being shaped by outside events, self-authoring individuals have an internal system that “reconstructs and regulates them according to its own way of determining value” (kegan, 1994, p. 173). when participants who were self-authoring did get triggered by something, they had the capacity to recognize what was happening and take control of their reaction. one participant identified that in these types of situations, he needs to “stop and think, breathe for a minute like … this is why i’m feeling this way. i need to get past that and then deal with whatever it is that’s just been said”. in a similar vein, another participant described taking control of her own self-care, stating, “i hope that at this stage, i’ve learned some individual internalized coping skills. i have a really good support system and self-care plan for myself.” unlike individuals at the socialized order, those who are self-authoring use relationships as a means of enriching their own understanding and experience — the process of working together provides a broader context for articulating, discussing, and challenging their own thoughts and ideas (kegan, 1994). all participants who were self-authoring talked about support in terms of having someone they could go to as needed, to vent or bounce ideas off. although the form of supervision and support that self-authoring participants identified needing was different than for socialized participants, their responses to the question about not having any support were very similar. organizational implications of the study just as child and youth care workers must provide holding for the young people in their care, so too must the organization provide holding for the practitioners. interpersonal interactions between individuals of varying developmental capacities within an organization can help to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 45–62 59 broaden the perspectives of all employees, challenge them to experiment with new ways of thinking and behaving, and become a catalyst for growth (kegan et al., 2001). if the demands of child and youth care practice in residential care require self-authoring capacity and most practitioners enter the role at the socialized order, there is potential for considerable mismatch between the job demands and practitioners’ capacity to meet them. when residential programs are set up on models that are over the heads of most practitioners working there, they may be destined to fail. the staff can become frustrated and confused, not understand what is expected of them, and, in the absence of clear direction and support, respond to the young people based on instinct and “common sense”. program drift and unsafe practice can occur. a supportive climate with a supervisor that is in tune with employees’ developmental needs may buffer the demands of the job by providing practitioners with the necessary resources to effectively deal with the young people’s challenging behaviours and pervasive pain, while an unsupportive climate may compound the challenges presented by the young people. a focused effort to provide socialized practitioners with the guidance, support, and acknowledgment they require, for example, can help ensure that the external source of authority to which they are aligned is not the young people. with an understanding of, and strategic focus on, transformational growth, the environment can provide the external supports needed for individuals to do the job effectively from their own meaning-making systems, while also promoting development to 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(1965). the maturational process and the facilitating environment. new york, ny: international universities press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.03.009 the youth village: a multicultural approach to residential education and care for immigrant youth in israel international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 224 the youth village: a multicultural approach to residential education and care for immigrant youth in israel emmanuel grupper abstract: migration, which has increased in the age of globalization, elicits a range of responses from the host countries, ranging from passive tolerance to active support of the newcomers. these responses affect many aspects of public life, most notably education, and the way immigrant youth are being either included or excluded. residential care, which is known to be a powerful social instrument, is often used by societies for solving complex problems of children and young people. while many countries consider residential care an alternative of last resort, in israel, these structural features of residential care institutions have been used for supporting young immigrants experiencing difficulties during the most crucial stage of the cross-cultural transition process. this paper presents the youth village, a unique israeli residential educational model, highlighting the great potential of residential education and care programs for coping with the challenge of successfully integrating migrating youth. however, residential care methods and concepts are changing a lot and this influences how residential care programs are working with immigrant youth today. keywords: immigrant youth, multicultural, youth society, youth village, residential education, residential care, youth at risk, integration, inclusion emmanuel grupper, ph.d. is dean, school of education & society, jerusalem academic center-lander institute, and senior lecturer, department of child and youth care, beit berl academic college, p.o. box 34353, jerusalem 91343, israel. e-mail: emmanuel.grupper@gmail.com mailto:emmanuel.grupper@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 225 migrating populations migration has increased worldwide since the late 1980s. the reasons people leave their country of birth are varied, as are the reasons they choose their host country, and these strongly affect cross-cultural transition (gibson, 2001; suarez-orozco, 2007). broadly speaking, migrants can be divided into displaced populations, labor migrants, and immigrants. displaced populations are, for the most part, refugees, people who decided to leave or were forced to do so because of war or political changes. among recent examples are people who left the former yugoslavia during the war of the 1990s, or those who escaped ongoing civil war in sudan, the republic of congo, and the civil war that led to the genocide in rwanda. labor migrants, who comprise the most frequent category, are people seeking better job opportunities with the hope of improving their quality of life and that of their families, and usually view the time spent out of their country as a temporary phase. among contemporary examples are turkish “guest workers” in germany (jockenhovelschiecke, 1994), and moroccans and other maghreb citizens to western europe (fargues, 2011). when such migration is illegal, the problems are compounded, as they are when children are sent by their families to these host countries on their own as unaccompanied minors who later apply for refugee status. labor migrants are not always willing to integrate culturally. they expect to gain concrete benefits from the host country, with the idea of returning to their native country after earning and saving enough money (de vroome, coenders, van tubergen, & verkuyten, 2011). immigrants are individuals who plan their transition from one country to another, following a deliberate decision. very often, they have a real desire to integrate in the new culture and make it their new homeland, as do immigrants to canada, the united states, australia, and israel. despite this desire, the adaptation process is accompanied by a great deal of ambivalence on the part of both the immigrants and the receiving society, as the immigrants are emotionally connected to their native culture and to their native language. at times, as in the case of french-speaking communities in canada, the immigrants try to change the host culture to approximate their culture of origin (di tomasso, 2012). the israeli situation of jewish immigration to the country is unique because of the traditional, age-old concept of the “ingathering of exiles in zion” (peres & lizika, 2008). jews, who were exiled from the land of israel by the romans in ad 70, always cultivated the desire to come back to their land, and in the beginning of the 20th century, the zionist movement acted to build a new independent jewish state. a linguistic manifestation of this ideal and ideology is the hebrew term for immigration to israel – aliyah (ascension), and an immigrant is an oleh (or olah in the case of a woman) – ascender. however, the terminology is only one part of a complex reality. thus, during the massive immigration of a million people from the commonwealth of independent states (cis) to israel in the 1990s, the immigrants chose to settle in segregated enclaves is some cities, as they had done in brighton beach in brooklyn, new york in the 1980s (al-haj & leshem, 2000; schmitter-heisler, 2000). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 226 host societies' attitudes toward migrant populations the adaptation process of migrant people is strongly influenced by the attitude of the host culture and the message it conveys to newcomers (bhatnagar, 1981). bhatnagar defines three main categories describing interaction modalities between host societies and immigrant groups, on a continuum from assimilation to integration (figure 1). figure 1. bhatnagar’s continuum i-----------------------------------i--------------------------------------i assimilation adjustment integration assimilation refers to the host society’s expectation that newcomers completely adopt the norms, language, traditions, and values of the host society, eventually becoming indistinguishable within the host society, forgoing their native language and culture (greenman, 2011). assimilation assigns the newcomers with complete responsibility for their adaptation. the host society adopts a passive role while the newcomers are expected to assimilate and “disappear in the crowd” of the host culture as rapidly as possible. adjustment refers to the process through which newcomers learn to live in a modicum of harmony with the new environment and their old culture, a co-existence of the old values and traditions with the new ones. the host society does not expect a complete disappearance of the culture of origin, but, like assimilation, adjustment is entirely assigned to the newcomers, provided it does not interfere with the prevailing culture. while this orientation allows individuals to achieve adjustment at a personal pace, it could bring about self-imposed segregation. thus, migrant populations continue to live their traditional lives in their own areas, without making any effort to learn the language of the new society and to integrate in the new culture. such immigrant enclaves can be found in the netherlands where large populations of people from suriname reside next to the big cities, in france where some suburbs are mainly populated by migrants from north african countries, and in the turkish suburbs of berlin. the adjustment model carries many problems and tensions between newcomers and veteran citizens living close to them, especially in poor neighborhoods. integration implies adjustment of both newcomers and natives. although newcomers will have to do most of the adjusting, some changes on the part of the host culture will be required. integration implies a multicultural society that considers the contribution of minority groups to be no less valuable than that of the majority members (eisikovits, 1995a). therefore, the norms and habits of a host society with an integration orientation cannot remain unchanged after the many new members it absorbed have added their imported cultural input. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 227 since the 1990s, israeli immigration policies could serve as a good example for an integrative, culturally pluralistic model (bardach, 2005; eisikovits & beck, 1990; yakhnich, 2008). the policy has been based on three principles: cultural pluralism in integration, utilizing the socializing force of informal settings, and social transaction. the first principle is the application of a culturally pluralistic model in integrating immigrant youth. an example, being first applied in residential care youth villages, is the celebration of segd, a holiday celebrated by ethiopian jews only. this holiday, which was virtually unknown in israel prior to the immigration from ethiopia, had been first incorporated into the official school year (shitrit, 2006) in residential programs where these young people were integrated. later on it was adopted in all israeli schools and finally, in 2008, a law was adopted by the israeli knesset (israeli parliament) declaring the segd an official holiday recognized by the state. during the same period many cultural adaptations were made to incorporate the culture of immigrants from russia: a russian theatre was established and 13 new symphonic orchestras were created. russian parents were not always satisfied with the level of science studies in israeli schools and opened afternoon schools with pedagogical methods used in the cis. last but not least, in order to have more influence on decisionmaking processes they set up a political party which is represented in the knesset by 12 representatives – 10% of all mps (feldman, 2007). all these changes could not have happened in israel in the 1950s, when a strong assimilative orientation prevailed. the genuine will to integrate jewish immigrants in an open and globalized world could be done successfully only within a pluralistic attitude that implies a readiness of the host culture to change during that process. residential education and care as a preferred social instrument for absorbing migrant youth residential education and care for educating children and youth at risk has been on the decline in many industrialized countries over recent years (trede, 2008), one reason being the stigma attached to any kind of institutionalized setting. today’s orientation shows a preference for community-based programs, with residential care considered a last resort used only when all other interventions have failed (frensch & cameron, 2002). in addition, the ever-increasing cost of treating a child in a residentialcare therapeutic program is encouraging policy-makers to look for less expensive solutions, even though their effectiveness has not always been proven (eurochild, 2010; grupper, 2002; knorth, harder, zandberg, & kendrick, 2008). another principle applied in dealing with youthful immigrants’ integration in israel is using the high socializing potential of informal socialization agencies – youth movements (which are prevalent and popular) and youth villages, special communityoriented residential education and care programs. empirical evidence has shown that youth villages have a great potential for enhancing immigrant youth’s absorption and for facilitating their integration in the host society (benbenisty & zeira, 2008; davidsonarad, 2010; kahane, 1986; kahane & rapoport, 1990; kashti, grupper, & shlasky, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 228 2008). the assumption is that “living in school” in group-care settings is profitable for all adolescents who take part in these social interactions, including native israeli adolescents who join such programs because of family problems or a lack of resources in their local communities. these young people, whose schooling competencies are at an average level, or even less, could benefit from the interaction with new immigrants while introducing them, through daily contact, to their native-born peers’ norms and behavior. these social-transactions are the third principle for the model of multicultural and heterogenic youth society in the youth villages. although israel has also experienced some decrease in residential care (from 14% in 1990 to 10% in 2008), it is still largely used for young people aged 12 to 18 from a wide range of cultural and social backgrounds. the underlying rationale for youth villages is based on kahane and rapoport’s (1990) analysis of informal socialization agencies. accordingly, opting for a structured organization of children’s lives in residential education and care programs, allows these children to experience a kind of “moratorium”. this is important for every adolescent (erickson, 1955) but especially crucial for immigrant youth during their initial period in the new country. in israel, about 15% of students aged 4 to 18 are immigrants. of these, over 14% aged 12 to 18 are educated in a variety of residential schools of the youth village type (ben arie, kosher, & cohen, 2009). residential education and care in israel the relative number of children and young people in residential education and care institutions in israel is higher than in any other country, as many immigrant adolescents are placed in residential schools in order to complete their secondary education. these educational settings are particularly sensitive to the needs of multicultural youth populations. while numbers vary from one period to another, the general features have not changed significantly since the creation of the state of israel in 1948. the 586 residential programs in israel are home to 67,240 children and youth aged 3 to 18, representing 4 % of the overall population of children. in the 12 to 18 age group the rate was 14% in the 1990s and 10% in the first years of the 21st century (national council for children’s wellbeing, 2008). in a survey conducted in the last decade of the 20th century among 22 member countries of the federation international de communautes educatives (fice), israel being one of them, no other country had such a high proportion of children in residential care programs (gottesmann, 1991). a recent study encompassing children in alternative care in 32 european countries (eurochild, 2010), reflects the same tendency. it can be roughly estimated that around 1% of children are taken into extra-familial care across the european union (eu). this proportion varies between countries – in latvia 2.2%, in sweden 0.66%, and in romania 1.6% which is far less than the israeli figures. there are five categories of residential institutions in israel – educational, rehabilitation, therapeutic, post-psychiatric, and crisis intervention shelters (schmid, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 229 2006). educational residential programs are supervised by the ministry of education, and a state-recognized high school is usually an integral part of the facility. rehabilitation, therapeutic, post-psychiatric facilities, and crisis intervention shelters are supervised by the ministry of social welfare. for the most part, these institutions do not include a school on the premises, and the residents are placed in local schools in the nearby community. the vast majority (85%) of children and young people are placed in educational residential schools. this is a unique type of educational youth village, a care model that is neither a rehabilitation center nor a boarding school, but a place where young people are “living at school” (arieli, kashti, & shlasky, 1983). the youth village attempts to serve both educational needs and provide rehabilitation for those requiring it by creating a stimulating environment that can empower each young person (grupper, 2008). in this kind of residential school, there is a tendency to bridge the gap and find appropriate educational and rehabilitative solutions for a large range of young people. among the young people who are being educated in youth villages are new immigrants who are in the midst of their cross-cultural transition process, children and youth who are in need because of family and social problems, young people seeking a second chance after having failed in local school, and young persons who have gone through an emotional crisis. the most popular settings for immigrant youth are educational residential schools, which have a school on the premises. most of the residents are adolescents in the 12to 18-year-old age group, of whom two-thirds are immigrants. these immigrant adolescents include over 2,000 students who came to israel on their own to study with the intention of remaining in the country, and for this population, the residential school must serve as a “first home” in israel. these young people add to the diversity of the overall youth society in the residential schools, and contribute to making the life of all young people in such youth communities highly different from a classical treatment-oriented residential care institution. among the students in youth villages, some 10% to 15% required professional emotional guidance, care, or even therapy, which they received on an individual basis, while all other aspects of their life are lived as part of a completely normative environment. table 1 presents the overall composition of the residential education and care field in israel, including those for overseas students. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 230 table 1. israeli children and adolescents in residential education and care programs (excluding disabled children placed in other types of residential care programs) type of residential program number of establishments number of children in care non-religious residential education and care youth villages 70 15,800 youth groups in kibbutz 7 600 children's homes 65 6,000 maritime schools 6 800 residential schools focused on sports 6 650 residential schools focused on arts or other specific educational tracks 27 1,000 religious residential education and care religious youth villages 28 7,400 youth groups in religious kibbutz 6 180 religious children's homes 18 1,850 high school (yeshiva) for boys 158 14,900 high school (ulpana) for girls 56 7,360 religious residential schools with specific educational tracks 26 6,350 other kinds of residential program youth protection residential programs 39 850 residential programs with special education schools 32 2,000 family home units 42 1,500 total 586 67,240 (source: national council for children’s wellbeing, 2008) the reasons for high demand for residential education and care in israel in 1953, the knesset passed the law for public education. in recognition of the various ethnic and religious groups, the law enables individuals to choose their preferred form of schooling for their children. the jewish population has the choice of co-ed state schools, state-religious schools (some of which are co-ed, others separate for boys and girls, which add religious studies to the state-school curriculum), and ultra-orthodox (haredi) schools, all of which are separate for boys and girls. in these schools, financed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 231 and supervised by the ministry of education, the language of instruction is hebrew. the arab population has its own schools, also financed and supervised by the ministry of education, where the official language of instruction is arabic. the focus of this paper is on immigrant youth. therefore, the arab population in israel is beyond the scope of the present discussion. in both the jewish and arab sectors there are a small number of private schools, but the majority of children attend state-funded public schools. among religious schools, and particularly among the ultra-orthodox, schools are divided by sex. girls who attend religious schools learn general studies and religious studies, while those for boys are mainly focused on religious studies. many of the religious schools are residential schools, a fact which bears on the discussion of residential care in israel. in israel, residential education and care is less stigmatized than elsewhere, and residential schools are perceived as normative and educative alternatives. all partners involved – practitioners, policy-makers, administrators, children, and parents – view the range of residential alternatives as a continuum, with the elite boarding schools on one end and the residential crisis intervention centers on the other. this means that there are multiple possibilities for children and young people to “move” along the continuum and choose, from among the different types of residential models, the one that best suits their needs at every particular stage of their education. figure 2. the continuum of residential education and care models religious youth villages youth villages focused on sports agricultural youth villages residential treatment centers boarding schools for elite populations residential schools focused on arts group homes crisis intervention centers the israeli youth village: an educational residential model the prototype of the leading israeli educational residential institution is the youth village. like many other revolutionary movements (bronfenbrenner, 1970), the zionist movement, in its initial phase, largely used group-care methods in order to educate youth maritime residential schools international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 232 toward its new social challenges (figure 3). this education began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with zionist youth movements in europe, and these later formed the community model of the kibbutz (kashti, 2000). the kibbutz movement, which represented a new way of voluntarily chosen community life, provided the model for the creation of youth villages, based on shared living of youth and adults in a small and integrated educative community (grupper, 2008; arieli & kashti, 1976). figure 3. israeli youth village model boarding schools for elite children and youth populations residential treatment centers for populations of children and youth in high risk situations and in need of rehabilitation heterogeneous multicultural youth populations creating the youth village’s society international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 233 most countries have two distinct models of residential education and care settings for children and young people, rehabilitation schools and schools for the elite. the first focused on the rehabilitation needs of populations of children and young people who are at high risk, such as school dropouts, those excluded from mainstream schools, delinquent youth, and children and young people with problematic family backgrounds and severe emotional problems. the second are specialized educational residential schools that cater to elite groups of children and young people, for example, the public schools in the united kingdom (kahan, 1994). these are prestigious educational institutions with well-defined programs, aiming at maintaining the predominance of elite groups in society (lambert, 1975). such specialized boarding schools exist in many countries: maritime schools, military schools, preparatory programs for prestigious higher education establishments, religious boarding schools, etc. these two different types of residential education and care programs make use of the common structural features of residential programs that can offer a well-structured and relatively closed environment, which create the potential to rehabilitate and empower children and young people (arieli & kashti, 1976; eisikovits, 1995b, 2008; grupper, 2008). at the core of this residential model is a heterogeneous and multicultural composition of the youth community. the youth village maintains a balance between normative students who need residential care because they are immigrants in the midst of cultural transition, and israeli-born students who need residential education and care because of family problems, and provides both groups with a real chance to enter the social mainstream. in residential schools where there is enough heterogeneity of the youth society, the ellipse is located in the middle of the diagram (figure 3). in those youth villages where there is a preponderance of youth at high risk, the heterogeneity diminishes and the ellipse is directed toward the treatment-oriented residential care models. in these cases, the educative and open model has difficulties in producing social integration results. it is claimed (kashti et al., 2008) that the current situation in israel, when fewer immigrants are arriving in the country and the youth society of part of this network is losing its heterogeneity, might in the long run be harmful to the functioning of the youth villages. the youth village model is based on the socializing power of a cohesive community, with kibbutz community life as its ideal. bronferbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory, according to which children’s development is not influenced only by the microsystem, could serve to analyse and explain the elements of the youth village model. in addition to the micro-system, bronferbrenner lists other influences, as a result of people acting in broader circles which he calls the meso-system and exo-system. even more important are influences by persons acting on the macro-system level, and the development of a child is the end product of all these different activities. indeed, in the youth village the entire environment participates in the educational process, including those who interact face-to-face with the child on the micro level and also those acting on the other ecological levels. this ecological concept can be applied at different levels, in every youth village as an autonomous entity, and also at the youth village as part of a larger national network. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 234 the israeli residential education and care settings are organized in a relatively large network which allows each institution to act autonomously, while enabling the network as a whole to set general educational orientations and apply across-the-board policy changes. a current example of such policy change has been taking place since the early 2000s, with parental involvement increasing in residential schools or in more specialized residential care programs (grupper & mero-jaffe, 2008). historically, residential staff tried to minimize children’s contact with their families (gottesmann, 1988). it is now universally accepted that this approach is wrong and harmful for all children, most particularly for immigrant youth (klap, 2008). therefore, decision-makers, researchers, scholars, and people in the media, all acting at the macro-system level, have shaped public opinion and workers’ attitudes toward accepting school-parent interaction. program planners and policy-makers, staff training programs, supervisors, and program directors, all acting on the meso-systems and exosystems, are developing concrete programs that can be applied by direct-care staff in their daily work at the micro-system level. consequently, parents are now invited to share activities with their children. among these activities are dynamic joint child-parent weekly workshops, inviting parents to prepare a meal their child and his/her group, participating in joint children-parents summer camps, having “family days” in the residential school several times a year, inviting parents to celebrate festivities in the residential school – from their child’s own birthday to celebration of national holidays. these activities, some initiated by local staff or directors, others by supervising agencies like the ministry of education, are successfully reshaping youth village norms and procedures, and creating a completely different ecological environment for children in residential education and care in israel. creating a sense of belonging to a community young people and adults living together can create a united community. this, in a way, puts into action jones et al.’s (1986) concept of quality residential care being defined as: “living together as a profession”. in residential communities where children and adults live together, the prevailing atmosphere is of a group of people having common goals in living together, which is instrumental in avoiding the negative effects of a “total institution” (goffman, 1962). the fact that young people live together and are supervised 24 hours a day in a well-designed environment is a very powerful stimulation for them to achieve behavioral changes. this is especially true for detached youth. however, these behavioral changes are achieved through endless discussions and open negotiations between young people and staff members and by modeling on the part of the staff, not by authoritative discipline. this implies that the relationships between youth and adults are symmetric, rather than the kind of relationship developed in programs operating under the “medical model” (anglin, 2002). this kind of environment is particularly important for migrant young people who are looking for clues to overcome their marginal status which is the starting point in their cross-cultural transitional process. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 235 in order to enable every member of the community to feel at ease, the community is based on pluralistic and multicultural values. the youth population is composed of new immigrants from varied cultural backgrounds: ethiopia, the cis, europe, north america, and latin america. other members of the community are israeli-born adolescents who come from the geographical and socio-cultural periphery. creating a sense of belonging (brendtro, brokenleg, & van bockern, 1990) in such a community is possible only if staff members apply a true and genuine culturally pluralistic attitude, which can happen only if the prevailing atmosphere emphasizes the importance of every individual finding their place in such a community. as an example, we can present the integration of ethiopian youth in such youth communities. many of these young people came to israel in the 1980s without their parents, and the youth villages were, in many respects, their first home in israel. in order to give them the feeling that they are fully accepted by the community, and enable them to feel the sense of belonging, some of their cultural traditions were incorporated by the community as a whole. in keeping with the idea that although youth villages are part of a network, each has the autonomy to seek ways to meet the needs of its residents, it is important to add that these changes were the initiative of creative youth villages’ directors. these directors – who are educators and not solely administrators – felt that the young immigrants from ethiopia did not feel themselves at home among their peers in the youth village. therefore they looked for a substantive cultural element of the newcomers’ culture such as celebrating holidays like the segd, unknown to jewish society until the arrival of ethiopians to israel (shitrit, 2006) and make it a big event for the entire village population, youth and adults alike. primacy of education over treatment the israeli residential model is based on the principle of normalization, and the aim is to give the young person in the residential school the feeling of being in a “normal” educational setting. thus, a normative school is a central part of the residential program and the educational success of every child is a primary target of the whole staff. this is not easily achieved. diverse support systems, both during and after school hours, are used to help children succeed in their studies. although the school is part of the mainstream secondary school system (and not part of the special education school system), it has to develop special tracks and methods. the residential school must also train its teaching and educational staff through in-service-training programs to deal with a wide variety of students, and enable every child to experience success. this objective, to help all youth villages’ children to be successful in their studies, is supported by a systematic study about graduates of youth villages (benbenisty & zeira, 2008; zeira, 2009). the kind of orientation that gives priority to the success of children in their schooling requires that in the everyday decision-making process, educational considerations be given priority over therapeutic considerations. although the children often have special emotional needs and the interventions of social workers, psychologists, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 236 or even psychiatrists are focused on these individual needs, they should not interfere with the overall atmosphere that deliberately emphasizes education over therapy. empowerment of children and staff as a major challenge in order to realize the ambitious educational challenges presented here, every activity has to convey a message of empowerment. the staff must make every effort possible to ensure that children should experience success in whichever activity they are engaged, be it scholastic, sports, artistic endeavors, working on the farm, or vocational training. special importance is attached to involving youth in self-governance activities in the various aspects of the residential school’s daily life. empowerment of youth is also gained through their active enrolment in leadership activities through which they experience responsibility taking, and also the rewards of successfully accomplishing different kinds of social activities. these include volunteer work in neighboring communities such as helping elderly people, coaching young children, and performing in ceremonies and festivities of the larger community. these diverse activities build the positive self-image of young people and can also have an important impact on reducing the negative stigma, and even creating a positive public opinion, toward members of the residential youth community. involving difficult and undisciplined young people in these kinds of activities is not an easy task. however, it can be realized successfully if youth are given the opportunity to experience an atmosphere which enables a genuine “moratorium” (erickson, 1955). the unique setting of the youth villages has a great potential of creating a “fostering moratorium” for young people living in residential schools, and also for their care takers (grupper & eisikovits, 2000). the residential care staff the issue of residential direct-care workers and the training they require has been the subject of debate among practitioners, decision-makers, and researchers alike (jones et al., 1986; grupper, 2002; romi & grupper, 2011; kobolt & deklava, 2008). in many european countries, full professionalization process has occurred, with france taking the lead in the 1960s. a survey on this issue, undertaken by fice in 1986, resulted in the social pedagogue in europe: living with others as a profession (jones et al., 1986). the very title of this survey suggests the problems of this specific task and the particular way that professionalization has taken shape and progressed. living together with others as a profession means that there is a way to look at everyday issues – among them nutrition, healthcare, emotional attention, educational support, sports, and storytelling – in a skilled way, not just by using intuition and common sense (ligthart, 1993). the challenge is to educate residential workers to be “reflective practitioners” (schon, 1983), while facing a contrasting tendency of seeing such care activities as resembling parental care, which in the eyes of the public does not require professional training. the point that the neediest children receive services from the most poorly trained workers, who live with them for long and intense hours in unstructured periods of time, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 237 has been highlighted frequently (shamai & moyal-butwin, 2012). gottesmann (1987) went so far as to state that a residential direct-care worker is: “the tragic hero of residential education and care” (p. 87). currently, many countries have moved from the para-professional model toward diverse patterns of professional training for direct-care workers, either in pre-service training in universities or in specialized schools such as the german fachhochschoole (university for applied sciences), or by systematic on-the-job training. in canada, the university of victoria opened a special school for child and youth care, and other universities are offering special undergraduate or post-graduate programs in child and youth care (romi & grupper, 2011). the main model locates such workers as general practitioners who have a holistic responsibility toward children in their care and for whom they serve as case managers. in israel, great efforts have been made to provide training programs for residential workers, most of them involving on-the-job training. several academic colleges such as beit berl offer undergraduate programs toward a degree in youth work, and since 2012 also graduate programs. some courses are geared specifically for practicing residential care workers, and their work is credited as part of the practicum program. while to date there is no legal requirement to employ only trained personnel, workforce statistics concerning residential direct-care workers show that more than 50% of new workers nowadays have a university diploma in social science. policy-makers and directors of schools are working together in order to find ways to empower residential staff and supply them with professional development of competencies and skills that will help them do the job with the students in a successful way. while professionalization of residential care staff has brought about many positive effects (kobolt & dekleva, 2008), it has also increased dramatically the cost of maintaining a child in residential education or care institutions, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of placements available in many western countries (everychild, 2011; knorth & van der ploeg, 1994; trede, 2008). in israel, a careful analysis of the situation has been conducted in order to find the right balance between developing staff members’ professionalism while maintaining the cost of residential care at a reasonable level (grupper, 2003). new trends in residential education and care in israel, as elsewhere, residential institutions are bound to modify themselves according to broader social changes. the main changes in the israeli residential network are focused on three major areas: 1. higher priority to school achievements. major efforts have been made to guarantee youth in care optimal opportunities to achieve educational success in their schooling, as such success is conceived as a key element in providing better opportunities for them as adults. 2. involving parents in their children's education. it is now recognized that parents, even the most vulnerable ones, should be treated as full partners in their children’s education and care (klap, 2008). this is not always easy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 238 to achieve in residential establishments that used to operate as closed systems. today, however, due to the importance attached to the family, there is a major effort for residential staff to incorporate this policy change into everyday life for children in their care. 3. better collaboration with neighboring communities. most residential youth villages were established in rural and isolated areas, and the nearby community did not play any role in their functioning. with the overall growth in israeli population, many of these once isolated villages are now on the outskirts of urban or suburban communities, and interface with their educational and social services. instead of viewing community-based programs and residential programs as contradictory, they are now thought of as complementary services. new collaborations between residential institutions and communities are gradually being developed, among them new models such as half-way houses and extended day programs that care for children without having to separate them completely from their family and community. conclusion the residential education and care network in israel was, and still is, a very important social instrument for coping successfully with complex educational and social challenges. in an immigrant society that is constantly receiving migrant populations from different cultural backgrounds, this is a major challenge. residential programs have proved to be highly instrumental in achieving successful social integration of immigrant youth (berry, 2006; eisikovits, 2008). they have also proven to be an important asset in reintegrating detached youth in high-risk situations. the ethos of community life, practiced in israeli youth villages, where young people and their educators live together, creates optimal opportunities for developing young people’s sense of belonging, first to the inner peer-group circle, later to the youth community, and, hopefully, leading them toward adulthood as people who feel committed and emotionally belonging to their family, community, and to society at large. such educational challenges cannot be achieved by educational establishments which are “total institutions” (goffman, 1962). following barnes (1991), we believe that successful group-care programs should function as “greenhouses” rather than “warehouses” and, as such, the israeli youth village model can be seen as such an empowering vehicle. the “greenhouse” idea implies that in the future, the residential education and care network in israel and elsewhere, will gain enough public support and sufficient resources in order to empower new generations of multicultural young people. we believe that residential programs should not be seen as the “last resort” but, on the contrary, the preferred option for those who need it and can take best advantage of it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 224–244 239 references al-haj, m., & leshem, e. 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(1976). residential settings as social organizations. in y. kashti & m. arieli (eds.), residential settings: socialization in powerful environments (pp. 9–37). tel aviv: daga (hebrew). title: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 52 family matters: a strengths-based family resiliency perspective toward improving the health of young women experiencing homelessness vanessa oliver and robyn leblanc abstract: the fostering of resilience in young people is based on a variety of social, cultural, and political factors that impact their interactions with and in the community. through analysis of life history narratives of young women experiencing homelessness, this research links resilience not to traits inherent in individual young people, but to sustained social support. we emphasize the importance of key familial relationships as they relate to the development of resilience in young people. this research shows that positive connections within family, broadly defined to include families of choice and extended family networks, are vital to supporting young people experiencing homelessness. we also pay particular attention to the implications of family and resilience in the lives of aboriginal young women experiencing homelessness, recognizing the significance of decolonization, cultural identity, and indigenous world views in the success and stability of aboriginal young people. this article argues that policy approaches to youth homelessness should address and eradicate policies that have a history of perpetuating culture erasure and the continuation of colonization. in order to enhance resilience, youth require a multi-systemic approach that provides support in the form of family reconnection, which acknowledges and respects a broader definition of family, moving beyond the nuclear family to extended family members, families of choice, and supportive communities. keywords: youth, homelessness, family, aboriginal people, resilience, canada vanessa oliver, ph.d. is an assistant professor of youth and children’s studies, wilfrid laurier university. 73 george street, brantford, ontario, canada, n3t 2y3. telephone (647) 281-6263. e-mail: voliver@wlu.ca robyn leblanc is a graduate student in the department of sociology, york university, 2060 vari hall, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada, m3j 1p3. e-mail: leblancr@yorku.ca mailto:voliver@wlu.ca mailto:leblancr@yorku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 53 resiliency theory originally emerged from the fields of behavioral psychology and epidemiology, where it focused mainly on the individual and on children in particular. early theoretical work defined the resilient child as “the rare child who endures hardship and emerges as a competent and effectively functioning individual”; children who epitomized this definition were often referred to as “invulnerable”, “stress-resilient”, “invincible”, or as “super kids” (neiman, 1988, p. 18). these early conceptions, and specifically these labels, demonstrate a particular lack of attention to social structures and institutions, overemphasizing individual responsibility and obscuring the fact that none of us are invulnerable or invincible. that said, however, attention to the positive outcomes experienced by young people in difficult situations was a constructive step away from biomedical research that concentrated its focus on pathology and negative behaviors (kidd, 2007; vanbreda, 2001). that is why in this paper we subscribe to ungar’s (2007) definition of resilience: “[r]esilience is the outcome from negotiations between individuals and their environments, to maintain a self-definition as healthy” (p. 87). ungar’s ecological view of resilience recognizes the import of a variety of social, cultural, and political factors that impact the ability of a young person to be resilient. in other words, resilience is fostered in the individual through her or his interactions with and in the community, including the ability of that community to provide the necessary resources and supports (libório & ungar, 2010). because our work focuses on young women experiencing homelessness, this ecological context becomes even more salient when thinking about how to nurture resilience and resistance in young people living in exceptional circumstances. in the case of aboriginal girls, the concept of resistance is integrally related to resilience insofar as aboriginal peoples have resisted the impacts of colonialism and eurocentric ways of knowing to secure, maintain, and grow their communities, and to retain indigenous knowledge. this way of thinking about resiliency recognizes that homeless youth do not exist in a bubble – that context matters. where one is and has been, what resources one has access to, and a variety of socio-historical factors (such as colonization) are much more telling than individual personal traits that are said to be innate rather than structural. we have seen through the course of this research that all of these young women possess forms of resilience, and that those who are the most resilient are also the ones who have the most social support. resiliency is not rare; it is nurtured and created in supportive communities comprising a number of social actors. placing the emphasis on strength and capacity-building allows researchers and practitioners to move beyond “at risk” discourses of homelessness, which have been largely responsible for stigmatizing particular youth, families, and communities; individualizing collective responsibilities; and perpetuating racism and stereotypes. this is particularly true for aboriginal women and girls, as tuhiwai smith (2002) argues: “colonization is recognized as having had a destructive effect on indigenous gender relations which reached out across all spheres of indigenous society” (p. 24). smith (2003) also emphasizes that the economic and political success of the colonial enterprise relied on the subjugation of indigenous women. legislation, discourse, and popular culture representations such as pocahontas, marginalized indigenous women through hyper-sexualization, exoticism, and violence rooted in structural mechanisms. these forms of violence have been “perpetrated on aboriginal bodies throughout canada’s history, a colonial violence that has not only enabled white settlers to secure the land but to come to know themselves as entitled to it” (razack, 2002, p. 129, emphasis in original). the present-day effects of these ideas and policies are evidenced in the growing number of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 54 missing and murdered aboriginal women, and the lack of official response from the justice system (native women’s association of canada, 2010; native youth sexual health network & families of sisters in spirit, 2013). thus, particularly for aboriginal young people, discourses of risk tend to obscure the fact that young people are placed at risk by social and political structures – marginalization does not happen by accident (danforth, 2013). from an ecological perspective, then, nurturing resilience means collaboration in and with communities that are culturally-based, faith-based, service-based, and support-based – including institutions of health care, social service, and education provision. this type of strategy should not be viewed as a “pick yourself up and dust yourself off” or “pull up your socks” approach to resilience, which creates further vulnerability by stressing personal responsibility for circumstances that are, in fact, outside of the individual’s control (schwartz, 1997). instead of thinking simply about individual young people who are experiencing homelessness, we need to be thinking about more dynamic and complex processes that assist or impede young people’s abilities to resist and persevere in the face of adversity. individualizing approaches fail to recognize that resilience is not a quality inherent in some young people but not in others. in making an assumption that all young people’s stories include elements of resistance, and in maintaining the belief that narrative, as a social construct, can be reconstructed and improved upon, young people and their supporters can create narratives of strength and resistance rather than narratives of risk. indeed, multiple studies have found that significant relationships with other people have the greatest impact on resilience (walsh, 2012; jordan, 2013; williams & merten, 2014). these relationships take many forms – kinships, intimate partnerships, mentors, service providers, and social workers, to name but a few – but the key components of these relationships are a belief in a young person’s potential, and holistic support and encouragement of their goals (walsh, 2012). this paper will focus in particular on the role of key familial relationships as they pertain to the creation and maintenance of resilience among the young women who participated in this research. because half of the participants in this work self-identified as aboriginal people, we will pay particular attention to the implications of family and resilience for aboriginal young women. method this research uses a qualitative, multiple-case study approach to analyze the life history narratives of eight young women experiencing homelessness, in order to investigate the factors that they perceive to have impeded or facilitated their ability to access health and social services, and how these factors have influenced their overall health and well-being. for the purpose of this research, health-seeking behavior is the search for access to health services and healthy situations that enable young women to treat illness and preserve wellness (oliver, 2013). their life narratives explain how these young women define their own health, what health issues they are experiencing, what services they use in seeking to care for themselves, and the factors they perceive to have influenced their access to health services. this research was conducted in toronto, ontario, canada. life history interviews were completed with eight young women recruited from shelters, and from street visits to those who were not sheltered. life history methodologists believe that gaining insight into the lives of particular individuals allows for the understanding of broader communities and, by extension, for the partial explanation of broader social conditions (cole & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 55 knowles, 2001). in so doing, relations of power and dominant discourses that may have been otherwise obscured become clearer (oliver, 2013). life history employs particular methods to achieve its ends, the most important of which are in-depth semi-structured interviews, followed by thematic interpretation, analysis, and theorization (cole & knowles, 2001). life history research is not just simple information transfer, but rather narrative work that requires attention to detail, context, and collaborative constitution between storyteller and listener (gubrium & holstein, 2009). the interviews generally took four to six hours, spread out over several sittings, the amount of time necessary to complete full life-history interviews (leavy, 2007). an interview protocol outlined questions that traced the young women’s life histories in chronological order; however, participants often talked about their lives in non-sequential order as one experience triggered another that may have occurred earlier or later in the life course. this research also used participant observation when young women allowed us to shadow them through their days (patton, 2002). these observations provided data that demonstrated the amount of work that the young women put into meeting their daily needs, as well as the daily realities of life in the shelter or on the street. the young women interviewed here represent racial and sexual diversity, and range in age from 15 to 21 years, mirroring the heterogeneity of the population. four of the young women who participated self-identified as aboriginal, two selfidentified as non-aboriginal women of colour, and three self-identified as lesbian or bisexual. most of the young women struggled with mental health issues and all but one were survivors of physical or sexual violence. all of the young women demonstrated exceptional resilience in the face of homelessness. at the end of the final interview, each participant was asked to complete a demographics form. the demographics of the eight young women are presented in table 1. upon completion of the interviews, all transcripts were transferred into qualitative data management software, nvivo. coding and analysis of data commenced using the constant comparative method outlined by strauss and corbin (1990). a preliminary coding framework of relevant themes garnered from the literature was developed prior to conducting the interviews. after the interviews took place, the coding framework was revised to incorporate themes generated through an adaptation of the constant comparative method (taylor & bogdan, 1998). this type of coding involves the development of codes that describe respondents’ stories in their own words. as codes were developed, they were applied and compared to newly collected data and modified as necessary. descriptive codes were then combined to develop theoretical or analytical themes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 56 table 1 demographics of the participants participant age ethnicity sexual orientation education danika 21 west indian heterosexual some university radha 19 south asian mostly heterosexual grade 12 jean 20 ojibwe lesbian grade 12 savannah 19 native canadian heterosexual grade 12 arielle 20 congolese heterosexual some high school faith 17 métis mostly lesbian grade 10 raven 16 caucasian/native mostly lesbian grade 9 erin 15 caucasian heterosexual grade 8 note: all names in the first column are pseudonyms chosen by the participants for their own protection. families resiliency research has demonstrated that strong connections and caring relationships between children and adults both inside and outside the home cultivate resilience in adolescence (werner & smith, 1992). in an examination of personal support systems, the family has also been shown to be an important factor in preventing young people from engaging in practices that can be harmful to their health and development. as this research will show, connections to extended family members in cases where immediate family members are abusive or absent are understood as vital to many young women experiencing homelessness (rew & horner, 2003). walsh (2012) advocates a family resilience approach which builds what she calls “relational lifelines” to improve resilience through exchanges and relationships with the kinship network. extended family and familial social networks can be of critical importance in supporting homeless young people, providing financial and/or emotional support. creating resilience in this way becomes an interactive process that works differently for different youth. some young people have weak or no attachment to their parent or parents of origin, but maintain strong attachments to family other than their birth parents, while others have complex, but workable relationships with their birth parents. the most introspective of the participants, danika, had an enormous degree of empathy for the other women living in the shelter, even those who bullied her. although she was often demure and shy, her determination to change her circumstances was fierce. danika, a university student who was living independently in the shelter after her parents lost their jobs and became unable to afford adequate nutrition and housing for the family, discussed her nightly phone calls with her mother and the complex, but crucial, relationship they have: i talk to my mom every night.… you know they were good, they loved me, we were close.… god, i love them, but they just disappointed me so many times. it’s so hard. it’s so hard to deal with it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 57 having left her family home due to her parents’ struggles with poverty and unemployment, danika realized that her family connection was sustaining her, even though her parents could not financially support her. the structural inequities facing her parents and creating poverty need critical recognition, and should be recognized as centrally responsible for danika’s situation. nonetheless, danika was one of the most resilient women we talked with, managing to balance her university degree requirements, a part-time job, and an often chaotic life in the shelter. radha was an award-winning writer who planned to write her own life story into a novel after graduating from university. she was in her last year of high school and living in the shelter after her parents divorced and her mother became depressed. despite her separation from her parents, she admitted: i think it’s easier because i know to some degree my parents are still there. i’ve always wondered if i could find the strength or the willpower to just completely shut them out of my life. i don’t know if i could. again, although the relationship was complex and strained, radha was still aware of the ways in which even a partial relationship with her parents created a scaffolding of support. while the process will inevitably be context-specific, it is worth noting that family relationships remain hugely important to the success and stability of the young women in this research. given the nature of homelessness, many people assume that homeless young people do not have ties, or do not care to have ties, with their families; however, this is rarely the case (oliver, 2013; winland, gaetz, & patton, 2011). although many of the young women in this research come from abusive homes, their extended families or kinship networks are not a part of – and are often a refuge from – the abusive situations. although commonly employed in the policy arena, narrow definitions of family that support a traditional and conservative view of family as consisting of those inside a nuclear family unit are hugely limiting, and fail to account for the wide range of personal connections that exist outside of that definition, be they extended biological families or families of choice (quinless, 2013; ajandi, 2011). grandmothers, in particular, were often discussed as beloved and supportive, providing safe spaces for their grandchildren in times of need (mccaffrey, 2010; sands, goldberg-glen, & shin, 2009). savannah was self-possessed and had a knack for storytelling, which she attributed to growing up in a storytelling culture. she was an young aboriginal woman who was living in the shelter after years of struggling with abusive partners and chronic substance use. she spoke confidently and laughed easily. savannah often discussed her grandma as her primary source of support, and her grandmother’s home as the place she most considered her own: anyways, my grandma, around wintertime, my grandma took me to live with her for about a couple weeks, just to get away from london. and then, i was doing good, i was staying away from doing all that stuff. … yeah. with my grandma … that’s my home. when her substance use or intimate relationship issues became too overwhelming, savannah relied on her grandmother’s support to regroup, reconnect, and restabilize. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 58 raven was an avid anime fan whose enthusiasm and laughter were contagious. she grew up in rural ontario where she struggled with homophobia and transphobia at school and at home. raven also relied on her grandmother as a source of non-judgmental and supportive care when her mother rejected her lesbianism: “nana, can we come live with you….” and she’s like, “yeah, that’s fine that’s fine. it’s okay, i love you and i love your girlfriend,” and stuff like that. so, that was cool.… she didn’t care how we were, she didn’t care that we were lesbians together. she didn’t care. she was actually quite happy. clearly, nurturing these relationships and providing support for sustaining these familial connections is one critical piece of supporting young women in healing and in transitioning out of homelessness. a recent evaluation of an innovative program at toronto’s eva’s initiatives that works to reconnect youth experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness with their families and communities, demonstrates that although strengthening connection to family is often part of the solution, this approach to youth homelessness is largely ignored in canadian policy responses (winland et al., 2011; elze, 2012). instead, policy responses have largely assumed that family is not or should not be involved, that the family is part of a young person’s past, but not part of her or his future (winland et al., 2011; fitzgerald, 1995; barker, 2014; la haye et al., 2012). while family reconnection is not appropriate or advisable in every case, families are often key members in the support systems of young people, as the eva’s initiatives family reconnect project shows, and self-sufficiency might be better achieved through these reconnections. faith, a young woman who grew up in rural ontario, experienced homophobia and sexual violence from an early age. she was well organized and responsible, which made it possible for her to live independently on very little income with her partner, raven. as faith’s relationship with her aunt illustrated, extended family members have an important role to play in encouraging healthy decision-making: i’d promised my aunt, which is the only person in my family i’ve ever looked up to, she’s only 24, so she’s not that much older than me. i promised her that i would live straight and not ever do shit like that, and i kept my word to her. in other words, youth can still be independent while being supported in their transition by the family members with whom they have positive attachments. the evaluation of the family reconnect program demonstrates that this approach is working and suggests that governments and policy-makers should provide more support for this type of programming. family and the aboriginal context cultural identity has been singled out as a critical factor in the study of resiliency in youth (h. i. mccubbin, a. i. thompson, e. a. thompson, elver, & m. a. mccubbin, 1998). individuals who are members of racialized groups that have been stigmatized or oppressed have a particular stake in the construction of resiliency theory. maintaining a healthy cultural identity requires that cultural strengths and histories be acknowledged and positively recognized (mccubbin et al., 1998). heavyrunner and morris (1997) argue that when cultural values are nurtured in children, children are better able to develop self-confidence and are better equipped international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 59 to face challenges. in a colonial society that can be particularly racist and hostile to aboriginal young people, having a strong and positive cultural identity can assist in maintaining self-esteem and a sense of belonging. more recent work in resilience studies is speaking to the ways in which resilience is constructed differently in different contexts and locations. for example, as a result of colonization in countries around the world, resistance to cultural hegemony and cultural erasure are important points in maintaining and sustaining resilience for people who have been marginalized and oppressed by systemic racism and discrimination (libório & ungar, 2010; walia, 2013). as simpson (2004) argues, decolonization requires “recovering and maintaining indigenous worldviews, philosophies, and ways of knowing, and applying those teachings in a contemporary context represents a web of liberation strategies indigenous peoples can employ to disentangle themselves from the oppressive control of colonizing state governments” (p. 1). part of this decolonization effort also means that concerted attention needs to be paid to differences in family functioning in conversations about resilience, creating a “culturally negotiated interpretation” of what resilience means and how it is created (simpson, 2004, p. 328). this culturally and historically mediated negotiation and understanding of resilience certainly applies to aboriginal people on turtle island (north america). many indigenous models of parenting and family believe that each person has a relationship and a responsibility to the children in the community around them, whether those children are biologically related to them or not (baskin, 2013; blackstock & trocme, 2005). family, then, takes on a broader, more inclusive definition that encompasses extended family, such as grandparents and aunts, and also the larger community in which a child is raised. given these holistic indigenous world views, there is no stigma attached to living with people who are not one’s birth parents or parents of origin (blackstock & trocme, 2005). as baskin (2011) points out, living with extended family or in different households at different times has been seen as the norm rather than the exception. indigenous world views are highly salient in the discussion of resiliency when allying with aboriginal youth who are experiencing homelessness. recent reports suggest that aboriginal people comprise 15% of the homeless population in toronto, and that many of these people are youth (golden, currie, greaves, & latimer, 1999; baskin, 2013). this number constitutes a vast overrepresentation given that statistics canada (2008) shows that only 4% of the national population identify as aboriginal. the number of aboriginal people experiencing homelessness may well be higher than the 15% reported, as accurate counts are difficult to obtain with the transient and hidden nature of homeless populations, and given that numbers are largely counted from the shelter system, which only accounts for a specific type of homelessness. for aboriginal youth, home and its definition are complicated by the dislocation and relocation of aboriginal people in colonial canada. from the theft of aboriginal lands, to forced relocation onto reservations, to residential schools, to the continued neo-colonial government policies in place today, the concept of home is one that must be considered within this cultural and historical context of attempted cultural genocide and forced assimilation. the indian act, which was passed in canada in 1876, inscribed a number of sexist rules and regulations into legislation. although the act has been oppressive to all aboriginal people, experts have outlined the ways in which it is and has been particularly damaging for aboriginal women (bourassa, mckay-mcnabb, & hampton, 2004; anderson, 2010; sikka, 2009). prior to 1985, under the indian act, indian women who married non-indian men were stripped of their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 60 status and band membership, also depriving their children of “official” cultural recognition (bourassa et. al., 2004; anderson, 2010). colonial policies eliminated matrilineal inheritance, so that women were unable to own or inherit property, and again, these repercussions were passed down to their children (anderson, 2010; downe, 2006). further community breakdown and forced family dissolution were also direct results of the residential school system, which removed aboriginal children from their families, their communities, their languages, and their cultures. likewise, during the so-called “60s scoop” in the 1960s, child welfare agents removed aboriginal children from their families placing them with non-aboriginal families, in most cases completely severing ties between the child and his or her home community (blackstock & trocme, 2005). department of indian affairs statistics indicate that over 11,000 status indian children were placed for adoption between 1960 and 1990 (blackstock & trocme, 2005). today, there are more aboriginal children living in state care than there were at the height of the residential school years, creating what is called the “millennium scoop” (beaucage, 2011). for aboriginal girls, the outcomes of this colonial, cultural, and familial erasure are manifold. intergenerational relationships between grandparents, parents, and children were, and continue to be, severed; traditional kinship models based on community or extended family care have been largely ignored or dismissed by euro-western child welfare workers and legislation; and children have been moved around and placed into state care (anderson, 2010; downe, 2006). as a result, aboriginal girls are more likely to be incarcerated, are more often sexually exploited, and are more likely to experience racism, discrimination, and violence than are nonaboriginal girls (blackstock & trocme, 2005; downe, 2006; sikka, 2009; walia, 2013). the young women participating in this research traced their own experiences and relationships to colonial structural violence. when savannah talked about her grandmother, who was her greatest source of strength and connection, she saw how the history of residential schools impacted her family: all [my grandma] likes to do is like stay at home, watch her soap operas and go to her senior classes and go to bingo. and i’m happy for her to actually go and do something, because there was times she went through depression and like she would just like … it was to the point where she would just think of something and cry. resilience situated in this context of attempted cultural erasure takes on important meanings, while hundreds of years of resistance and community strength paints a more complex picture still. considering what creates, maintains, and sustains resilience in aboriginal young people requires a decolonization lens that simultaneously keeps an eye on years of oppression, while staying focused on the strengths, resistance, and self-determination inherent in aboriginal identities. reclaiming, owning, and practicing cultural traditions are key pieces of nurturing resilience in aboriginal young women experiencing homelessness. as savannah said, “i want to stay close to my native people. they give me something that other people can’t. they just understand me better and make me feel stronger.” the role of government services in contributing to the physical and psychic homelessness experienced by too many aboriginal young women is central to the discussion of colonization and neo-colonialism, aboriginal youth, family resilience, and homelessness. talking about the role of family in young people’s resilience means critically analyzing the structural, social, and political factors that work to disrupt aboriginal families in the first place. as children have been international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 61 removed from their communities, little attention has been paid to the structural risk factors that make it difficult for families to cope: intergenerational trauma, poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing conditions, and poor sanitation infrastructure. the policy that currently bolsters child protection work, directive 20-1 (aboriginal affairs and northern development canada, 2012), operates from a perspective that advocates the best interests of children, but does so from a narrowly-defined, eurocentric understanding of families and, especially, the nuclear family unit. the directive has been criticized for emphasizing child removal and placement instead of providing resources that would support communities to care for children at home (blackstock & trocme, 2005; macdonald & ladd, 2000). indigenous world views also seek to nurture the child, but do so through the assistance of the larger community, all of whose members can serve as a child’s family (rutman, field, jackson, lundquist, & callahan, 2005). extending from the residential school mentality, child protection has become an arm of the colonial machine. from the 60s scoop that took children from their home communities and placed thousands of aboriginal children in the care of nonaboriginal families, to present day policies that fail to recognize the self-determination and advocacy of aboriginal communities, child protection has removed children from their homes rather than providing adequate, sustainable, and self-determined social and financial supports that would allow communities to care for their children (baskin, 2013). jean was an amazing singer with a powerful imagination and a history of constant upheaval in the child welfare system. jean’s experience illustrates the impact of this disconnection from her home community: i liked living on the res. not in the home how it was when my mom had me, but how it was when my grandma had me. when i left there i went to places with non-aboriginal people. it was a lot different. they didn’t really understand me and i acted out. and then i couldn’t be in foster care anymore so i had to go to a group home that was even worse. all of the aboriginal young women who were part of this research had been involved in the child welfare system at some point in their life history. unfortunately this experience resonates with a great deal of research that shows that many aboriginal youth (estimated at between 25% and 50%) who experience homelessness enter the shelter system following negative experiences with foster care or group homes (maclean, embry, & cauce, 1999; lindsey, kurtz, jarvis, williams, & nackerud, 2000; public health agency of canada, 2006; baskin, 2013). as baskin (2013) argues, in foster homes, which through the lens of colonialism are thought to be better for children than their homes in the community, aboriginal young people are removed from their cultures, their languages, and their traditions, as well as from their families, essentially divorcing them from critical pieces of their identity. child welfare has undermined indigenous ways of knowing at the expense of aboriginal children and their families (blackstock & trocme, 2005). when various levels of government effectively outlaw indigenous forms of parenting, investing non-aboriginal people with the right to remove children, we see the continuation of colonization. families and young people are denied opportunities to foster resilience in the face of cultural erasure and misidentification. as we have shown, families are critical players in supporting young people in their transitions out of homelessness and into independent living. when children are removed from their families, not to mention told through racist, eurocentric policies and discourses that those families and communities are somehow international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 62 lacking, it should come as no surprise that aboriginal youth are overrepresented in the homeless population. creating, maintaining, and sustaining resilience in aboriginal young people means supporting them to connect with their families and cultures; it means decolonizing the system that perpetuates the injustice of removing aboriginal children from their communities; it means ensuring that aboriginal young people are proud and aware of the strengths, resistance, and determination of their people. developing first nations child and family services agencies has been a step in this direction, and blackstock and trocme (2005) argue that these agencies have been very successful at ensuring children are cared for in the community whenever possible, and when placement outside of the community is required steps are taken to ensure the child has access to cultural and linguistic services and to family whenever possible. (p. 17) bill 210 amended the ontario child and family services act in 2006 to move off-reserve child protection in this direction, focusing on family-centered care that involves extended family and community solutions rather than those that place children in the care of complete strangers (legislative assembly of ontario, 2006). the amendment also underscores alternative conflict resolution strategies and planning for permanent care to occur through the extended family or through adoptions within the community, rather than outside of it (beaucage, 2011; baskin, 2013). strengthening families, which serves the end goal of creating resilience, requires processes of decolonization that first recognize the impacts of colonization and undo the systemic discrimination that is built into the very fabric of the social policy landscape. this requires that the definition of family be extended to include forms of family that may fall outside of eurocentric expectations; however, the effort must extend beyond simple redefinition to integrate and privilege aboriginal world views, aboriginal decision-makers, and aboriginal communities (blackstock & trocme, 2005). despite years of assimilationist policies, aboriginal people have fought for and maintained their right to self-determination. aboriginal young people have a right to this history of resistance and strength on which they can build their identities, their self-esteem, and their resilience (anderson, 2010; downe, 2006). conclusion decades ago, coleman (1988) argued that the most important thing we can do for children is to link them into the social fabric. applying a strengths-based approach to youth homelessness, combined with a decolonization and social justice mandate to youth’s issues of housing, financial support, food insecurity, health, and employment, would allow for genuine support rather than simple assistance. the implementation of this approach, however, would be problematic and difficult in a system that is increasingly problem-oriented and tending to identify youth by their criminal behavior, mental illnesses, and estrangement from the formal education system (lindsey et al., 2000). a more positive approach would enable youth and the people who work with them to focus attention on the familial and community assets that would help fortify youth and support them in being better able to deal with their challenges. resiliency research provides a framework for social change that, beginning in youth, could be a source of support throughout the life course. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 63 families (broadly defined), communities, and well-allocated, sustainable social resources are all factors that create and sustain resilience. familial ties are crucial to the positive trajectories of youth experiencing homelessness; however, these ties require support, flexibility, and an awareness that family reconnection cannot be successful without sustainable support and programming that caters to these needs, framing them within their historical and social contexts. thus, multi-systemic approaches are necessary to facilitate resilience and foster familial relationships (walsh, 2012). such approaches would require coordination between ministries, between service providers, and between and within communities; moreover, they would require genuine engagement with, and respect for, indigenous world views. without genuinely listening to, and actually hearing, these young women’s stories, we are neglecting their strengths and their everyday assets. hearing stories provides researchers and clinicians a window to locate what ungar (2007) has called “narratives of resilience”: positive self-constructions that are concealed beneath survival behaviors and chaotic environments (p. 90). young women are more than capable of defining their own strengths and weaknesses, and of attributing those to social locations, personal strengths, cultural traditions, and life histories. one way that resilience is negotiated and strengthened is through a young person’s ability to access culturally safe resources, coupled with the larger community’s ability to provide the necessary resources in socially just ways (libório & ungar, 2010). resilience does not inhere in some young people and not in others. resilience is grown, strengthened, and nurtured in supportive communities that are attentive to and support the needs of extended families and families of choice. through these relationships young people experiencing homelessness resist, reconnect, and re-envision the possibilities for achieving their goals and ambitions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 52–67 64 references aboriginal affairs and northern development canada. 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(2014). linking community, parenting, and depressive symptom trajectories: testing resilience models of adolescent agency based on race/ethnicity and gender. journal of youth and adolescence, 43(9), 1563–1575. doi: 10.1007/s10964-014-0141-8 winland, d., gaetz, s., & patton, t. (2011). family matters: homeless youth & eva’s initiative’s family reconnect program. toronto: the canadian homelessness research network press. http://iog.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/may-2009_trafficking_of_aboriginal_women-1.pdf http://iog.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/may-2009_trafficking_of_aboriginal_women-1.pdf https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/rt-td/ap-pa-eng.cfm text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0107 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hyp.2003.0042 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0586-3_15 family matters: a strengths-based family resiliency perspective toward improving the health of young women experiencing homelessness vanessa oliver and robyn leblanc method conclusion references microsoft word 08 barbaric_cultural.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120086 “barbaric” cultural practices: culturalizing violence and the failure to protect women in canada deepa mattoo and sydele e. merrigan abstract: the introduction of bill s-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, in 2015 garnered major critical attention across canada. amid an already tense climate of anti-immigrant sentiment in the post-9/11 era, the title chosen for the bill by the conservative-led government catalyzed xenophobia, perpetuated the “us versus them” rhetoric, and culturalized violence. while originally touted as an opportunity to enhance protection for girls and women against the “foreign” horrors of polygamy, early and forced marriage, and “honour”-based killings, bill s-7 instead fanned the flames of xenophobia on a mass level, failed to protect women, and, in fact, created higher risk of harms for women who are victims of genderor family-based violence. in this commentary, we provide an overview of bill s-7, the amendments to legislation made as a result of its passing, and some of its many problematic elements. we address the barriers to disclosing violence in racialized communities and subsequently provide suggestions on how to effectively address genderand family-based violence in canada in an effort to support survivors and prevent further harm. keywords: forced marriages, immigrant families, precarious status, cultural racism deepa mattoo mba, ll.b is the executive director of barbra schlifer commemorative clinic, toronto, and adjunct professor at osgoode hall law school, 4700 keele st, north york, on m3j 1p3. email: dmattoo@schliferclinic.com sydele e. merrigan mph is a research associate in the faculty of human and social development, hsd building, room a102, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria bc v8p 5c2. email: sydelemerrigan@uvic.ca note: correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to mandeep kaur mucina, school of child and youth care, human and social development, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8p 5c2. email: mmucina@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 125  in 2014, the federal government of canada introduced bill s-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act (henceforth, bill s-7), which criminalized participating in and supporting “barbaric cultural practices” such as early, forced, or polygamous marriage and “honour”-based violence1 (zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, 2015). the conservative-led government made several statements in support of the legal changes enacted under bill s-7. for example, joan crockatt, conservative member for calgary central, felt the bill provided “strong action to protect women and girls” in canada and would keep immigrant women and girls from being “hampered … by discriminatory cultural practices and barbaric cultural practices”2 and to protect victims of crime (crockatt, 2015). despite the broad protection it sought to afford, public discourse focused narrowly on the specific experiences in racialized3 communities. while the stated purpose of the bill sounded noble, the criminalization of these practices had the potential to become a tool to further target and over-police racialized communities, perpetuate negative racial stereotypes, and push survivors and those experiencing violence further underground (shalabi et al., 2015). in the context of bill s-7, women who need protection from familial or gender-based violence, or are survivors of it, may be discouraged from coming forward to disclose their experiences as it may increase the risk of punitive measures, such as criminal sanctions or deportation, for their own family or community members. ultimately, bill s-7 further endangered the very people it claimed to protect. the conservative administration that tabled bill s-7 claimed that in addition to protecting women and girls from violence, the bill would ensure that the canadian government was at the forefront of efforts to respond to those suffering from violence, and to meet the needs of those most vulnerable to it. critical to the discussion of responding to and protecting women from familial and gender-based violence, but almost entirely absent from house debates and public discourse, were preventing violence and learning from survivor input. the work of many feminist organizations and relevant literature on these issues demonstrates that the most effective preventive tools involve a multisectoral approach coupled with an intersectional education strategy (mattoo & sekhar, 2012). further, the knowledge and expertise of racialized survivors need to be at the forefront of these measures and included in debates about how to address violence against racialized women (johnson & kapoor, 2013; shalabi et al., 2015). unless this is undertaken, state attempts to address violence against racialized women deteriorate into colonialist postures (e.g., 1see olwan (2013) for more information on “honour-based” violence and “honour” crime. 2the “barbaric cultural practices” referenced in bill s-7 are situated on a larger continuum of gender-based and family violence. for more information, see mucina (2018), shalhoub-kevorkian (2002), and welchman and hossain (2005) as cited in vishwanath & palakonda (2011). 3in this article, the term “racialized” refers to “all people that are non-caucasian in race or non-white in colour” as defined by the canadian observatory on homelessness (n.d.). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 126  white “saviour” complex; lodhia, 2016) that further undermine women’s rights and dignity, and reinforce existing power differences between mainstream white and racialized communities. when bill s-7 was passed in june 2015, its unfortunate title and its narrow focus drew considerable critical public attention and alarmed anti-racist, feminist, and community activists across canada. they felt that, rather than highlighting the issue of gender-based and familial violence and the need to prevent violence against women and girls, the bill implicitly encouraged divisiveness, stigmatization and denigration of racialized communities and cultures, and the continued masking of the realities of cultural communities. the emphasis on the bill’s divisiveness, the cultural ignorance of the conservative-led government that tabled the bill, and the stigmatization of racial communities was clear in house of commons debates on march 23, 2015 (aubin, 2015) and elsewhere in public discourse during that period. in the following work, we outline the changes made to legislation as a result of bill s-7, and the justification for these changes. we critically explore the problematic elements of the bill such as the title, the redundancy of legislative amendments, and the pairing of “barbaric practices” with culture. we offer insight into how the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act and amendments to related legislation failed to protect women and girls, and instead harmed and increased the risk of harm for those it claimed to support. we then identify the barriers to supporting survivors and provide some practical suggestions for effectively addressing familyand gender-based violence in canada as needed steps in managing and preventing these multidimensional and complex issues on canadian territory. amendments to legislation in its final approved version, bill s-7 amended existing legislation to create new legal measures and create new criminal offences. several amendments were made to the immigration and refugee protection act (irpa), the civil marriage act, the criminal code of canada, the prisons and reformatories act, and the youth criminal justice act. overall, these changes were presented as having the objective of strengthening existing initiatives meant to provide support, protection, and services for immigrant women and girls specifically and, generally, for all newcomers to canada (government of canada, 2014a). some of these initiatives included the creation of a working group, educational pamphlets, and a voluntary royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) online training module (government of canada, 2014b). other changes included:  polygamy was added to the inadmissibility criteria under irpa to enable the exclusion of permanent residents and temporary residents if they practise polygamy;  amendments to the prisons and reformatories act and the youth criminal justice act to support the use of a peace bond in cases of suspected fm or early marriage; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 127   a national legal requirement of “free and enlightened consent” was included in the civil marriage act as well as a new national minimum age for marriage of 16 years4;  to prevent early marriages and fms several measures were introduced: o a new specific court-ordered peace bond to be used when there is suspicion that one of these offences would be committed; o confiscation of passports to prevent a child from being taken out of the country to facilitate an fm;  amendments to legislation also made it a crime to: o officiate or solemnize a marriage knowing that it is in contravention of federal law; o celebrate, aid, or participate in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that one of the persons being married is doing so against their will or is under the age of 16 years; o attempt to remove a child from canada with the intention of undertaking an act that would be considered an offence if committed in canada. changes were also made to the criminal code which limited the defence of provocation5 so that it would no longer apply in so-called “honour” killings and many spousal homicides. narrowing the provocation defence limited its use to cases in which the conduct of the victim could be shown to constitute an indictable offence under the criminal code carrying a punishment of five years or more in prison6. problematically, the conservative government chose to retain the underlying premise of provocation whereby a rage-induced sudden loss of self-control could result in murder, while only changing what types of behaviour would be considered valid triggers of this loss-of-control response7. 4interestingly, canada is not a signatory to the united nations convention on consent to marriage, minimum age for marriage and registration of marriages, 1962 whereby state parties were required to take legislative action to set a minimum age of marriage. in most of the signatory nations the minimum age of marriage is 18 or more. 5provocation is a partial defence that only applies in charges of first or second degree murder. it is “partial” in that it reduces a murder conviction to manslaughter, but does not completely eliminate criminal culpability. it applies only to killings that result from a sudden loss of self-control arising from the criminal behaviour of the deceased. see fitz-gibbon (2014) for a detailed explanation of the provocation defence. 6this changed the long-standing definition of a provocation from “a wrong act or insult that is of such nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of self-control” to “conduct of the victim that would constitute an indictable offense … punishable by five or more years of prison” (criminal code, 1985, s 232[2]). the basic idea was that the victim had to have committed a serious crime against an accused for them to be able to argue that they were provoked into killing. see proctor (2019) and fitz-gibbon (2014) for more information. 7an early use of the provocation defence was in cases involving homophobic and gender-based violence. for example, if a man killed his wife upon discovering her in the act of adultery, this was seen as a sudden, heat-ofpassion crime — less blameworthy than premeditated murder and undeserving of the death sentence (which was in effect when the defence was developed). no similar doctrine existed for a wife who found her husband in bed with another woman. given that the death penalty was abolished in canada and because of the discriminatory aspects of the original use of the provocation defence, some argue that the provocation defence should be removed from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 128  culturalizing violence the paternalistic and colonial underpinnings of bill s-7 were evident in a government of canada news release indicating that the aim of the bill was to warn immigrants coming to canada to leave behind cultural practices that are “incompatible with canadian values” (government of canada, 2014a). the amendments associated violence against women and girls with immigrants and minority cultures, which were deemed “barbaric” in comparison to the presumably “nonbarbaric” culture of mainstream canadians. such sentiments were echoed in statements by ministers and officials such as that of chris alexander, the then citizenship and immigration minister of canada (government of canada, 2015): despite our best efforts and intentions, the reality is that some immigrant women can and do face violence or abuse. with the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, we are sending a strong message to those in canada, and those who wish to come to canada, that we will not accept the practice of cultural traditions that deprive individuals of their human rights. our fair and generous immigration system will not extend to those who would carry out barbaric cultural practices on canadian soil. alexander demonstrated a regressive understanding of culture; however, he was not alone in his beliefs. similar sentiments about the illusion of cultural inferiority of immigrants versus the superiority of the dominant eurocentric culture in canada were reinforced by other members of cabinet, as exemplified by the words of peter mackay, the former minister of justice and attorney general of canada (government of canada, 2015): our government is committed to ensuring that women and girls have the freedom to control their own destiny. in canada, we value cultural diversity, but we are sending a strong signal that certain cultural practices that victimize vulnerable women and girls, including forced marriages and so-called “honour” killings, will not be tolerated in this country. i am pleased that our legislation is standing up for victims and gives us more tools to address these serious crimes, to provide women and girls a more secure future. in this context, a woman’s right to safety and protection from violence became associated with specific cultural groups and acquired racialized undertones, instead of being seen as rights for all women, with the violence being condemned in and of itself. this is an example of what scholars describe as the dividing line between the so-called “civilized” and the so-called “barbaric”: the state is seen as the “saviour” of minority women who require “saving” from their own families, communities, and cultures (abu-lughod, 2002, 2006; haque, 2010; razack, 2007). indeed, many aspects of bill s-7 reflected the impulse to culturalize violence against racialized women by criminal code of canada altogether. see grant and parkes (2017) for a thorough history and assessment of the provocation defence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 129  portraying racialized groups as the sole perpetrators of violence. when translated into legislation, such racist ideologies endanger minority and immigrant families and their communities and impede access to the supports and services that are vital for violence prevention (haque, 2010). in bill s-7, the complexity of violence against women — which is entangled in a web of social, economic, cultural, patriarchal, and political factors (crenshaw, 1991; gonçalves & matos, 2020; sokoloff, 2008) — was reduced to the perceived cultural backwardness and barbarism of immigrants and minority communities in canada. problematic elements of bill s-7 issues with the short title introduced amidst an intensifying climate of perceived attacks on racialized women and their families, bill s-7 was received with widespread trepidation among community workers, service providers, and social justice advocates. many practitioners, allies, and survivors organized to draw mass attention to the systemic racism and colonial ideologies that were encapsulated in the title “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act”. first, the term “barbaric” created a clear division between the so-called “backward” and opposing “modern” cultures. the backward– modern binary is reminiscent of the treatment of indigenous communities throughout canadian history: similar racist narratives were used against indigenous communities to perpetuate similar racist legislation, narratives, and negative stereotypes surrounding indigenous traditions, cultures, and practices; the effects continue to be seen in current canadian policy and legislation (switlo, 2002). these and other binaries (e.g., insider–outsider, minority–majority) target specific racialized and marginalized communities, are pervasive within canadian society and history, and further perpetuate racist homogenized myths. the title was strongly condemned by senator mobina jaffer who introduced a private member’s bill (bill s-210) to change the title soon after bill s-7 was passed (smith, 2017).8 central to her argument was the inappropriate pairing of the terms “barbaric” and “cultural”, which, instead of condemning the wrongful nature of the actions considered “barbaric” regardless of any connection to specific cultures, ultimately removed agency from the perpetrators of these actions (smith, 2017). the implication was that these practices are integral to certain cultures and these cultures are ultimately “barbaric”. indeed, it was challenging to look past the title because it was, in itself, deeply harmful for communities to be labelled “barbaric”. green party leader elizabeth may criticized the legislation, noting that it had a “bumper-sticker title” (para. 5), calling it “appalling” (para. 6), and seeing it as a tactic to “fan the flames” (para. 5) of regressive cultural beliefs in some groups (payton, 2015a). 8see details in: canada. parliament. house of commons. debates, 41st parliament, 2nd session, vol.149, issue 99, november 26, 2014. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 130  something worth noting is that the choice of title was made by the conservative-led government in a climate where other xenophobic legislation and policies were being put forward, and there was an overall rise in racial intolerance in canada, especially towards racialized women. some examples include the intense debate surrounding whether or not muslim women could wear the niqāb9 during canadian citizenship ceremonies (macdonald, 2015; payton, 2015b). critics of that administration noted that it was engaging in a dangerous, xenophobic game by “grandstanding on an issue that involves a tiny minority of devout muslim women in the country” (coyne, 2015; maloney, 2015). further, the same administration announced an initiative to set up an rcmp telephone “tip line” where canadians could report any “barbaric cultural practices”, ignoring the existing phone lines for reporting criminal behaviour in canada: 911 for emergencies and local police lines for non-emergencies (andrew-gee, 2015). this initiative received heavy criticism charging that it was divisive, xenophobic, and fear-mongering. existing measures in legislation bill s-7 presented complex challenges in its text, not just in its title. much of the dissent it provoked came from social workers and law practitioners with years of experience working with survivors of early marriages or fms, so-called “honour”-based violence, and other forms of familial and gender-based violence. in discussions of bill s-7, whether in the general public or among former conservative administration members who supported the bill, there was a widespread failure to acknowledge that many of the changes were unnecessary or redundant given existing legislation. for example, at the time the bill was introduced, polygamy was already a criminal offense in canada (criminal code, 1985, sec. 293) and the power to arrest and charge polygamists was well established, albeit underused (e.g., bountiful),10. bill s-7, however, made explicit that the focus was on the polygamy practices of immigrants, and immigrants alone. further, the rationale for additional legislation surrounding polygamy was unclear given that the practice did not, and still does not, appear to be a widespread problem in canada. additionally, the violence addressed in the bill involved a multitude of breaches of human rights laws and forms of discrimination against girls and women, all of which were already illegal under the canadian human rights act. for example, fm and early marriage are recognized internationally as violations of human rights as they involve the breach of the right to choose when, if, and whom to marry. in canada, early marriage is one that involves someone under the age of 16, as such individuals cannot legally consent to marriage. fm is also considered human trafficking, a contemporary form of slavery punishable under canadian legislation. the contexts within which these crimes arise may involve breaches of a person’s right to bodily autonomy and freedom from violence, and these too were already punishable in canada. 9a niqāb is a veil usually covering the face and body and is a highly visible manifestation of being a muslim woman in the west. see zempi (2016) for more information. 10bountiful is a fundamentalist breakaway commune in southeastern british columbia led by winston blackmore, who had an alleged 25 marriages that took place between 1975 and 2001. see more in omand (2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 131  another issue concerning existing legislation surrounded the definition of fm, which failed to consider the full context in which fm arises. fm often involves emotional abuse and manipulation, physical or sexual violence, unlawful confinement, and abduction. since the free and full consent of one of the parties is lacking, this type of marriage was already illegal and punishable by the criminal code (1985) in canada at the time bill s-7 was tabled. member of parliament lysane blanchette-lamothe (2015) repeated the words of canadian criminologist madeline lamboley, who had studied the criminalization of fm in her doctoral research: “canada is not without means to face this issue already, to the extent that it is possible to intervene legally under the criminal system to sanction reprehensible actions that arise in a large number of situations in forced marriages (threats, aggression, sexual assault, kidnapping, confinement, false marriages, extortion, intimidation, battery, murder, attempted murder, and so on).” it is evident from parliamentary debates that expert advice from dr. lamboley and other professionals in the field was not incorporated into further amendments of the bill. criminalization despite the existence of applicable criminal laws, survivors of the type of violence addressed by bill s-7 (e.g., fm) rarely disclose their experiences of violence to police and other enforcement agencies since their families are not only the perpetrators of the violence, but often the only social support of the survivors (sabbe et al., 2014). this tension makes it difficult for survivors to approach law enforcement for help, as pursuing criminal action against their perpetrators would isolate them from their support system. at the time that bill s-7 was passed, canada was not the only country to have implemented criminalization of fm, which had already been criminalized in norway in 2003, austria in 2006, belgium in 2007, and denmark in 2008 (sabbe, 2014). although many countries have now criminalized fm, the effectiveness of criminalization on preventing fm and protecting girls and women is unclear. part of the issue is that fms are often conducted privately or in secret, and may never be officially registered, making it challenging to identify and report fm (global justice initiative, 2012). another issue is that it is difficult to determine whether a person was forced into marriage, except in cases of non-consensual marriage induced by physical force. the overwhelming majority of fms are the result of psychological coercion (global justice initiative, 2012; sabbe et al., 2014). those against criminalization of fm argue that, overall, the consequences of criminalization for their families and communities deter those experiencing violence from coming forward (clark & richards, 2008). in fact, a large majority of fm perpetrators are family members and survivors have expressed concern about getting family members “into trouble and wanting to protect their families regardless of their own victimization. … [survivors] indicate that they would be hesitant to seek outside assistance if this would result in criminal consequences for family members” (anis et al., 2013, p. 28). interestingly, there has not been a single reported case of anyone charged and prosecuted for fm in canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 132  rather than encouraging victims to seek support, access services, reduce risk of further violence, and move towards a path of recovery from their fm, criminalization pushes them deeper underground (clark & richards, 2008). survivors and frontline service providers have made it clear that most people in the criminal legal system and many involved stakeholders are neither trained to manage the complexities of fm nor sensitive towards survivors’ needs: these workers may lack, for example, trauma-informed training, adequate knowledge of available support services, and cultural knowledge and sensitivity (sapoznik evans, 2017). unfortunately, in many cases where survivors disclose their story to authorities, they face discrimination and feel targeted and stigmatized by justice actors. moreover, it has been observed that criminalization has the potential to lead to further targeting and overpolicing racialized communities (e.g., racial profiling, carding; see giwa et al., 2020; tanovich, 2006). survivor input early in debates, it was clear that in the creation of bill s-7 there was little, if any, input from survivors of gender-based and familial violence. ironically, members of the government that tabled the bill claimed to have listened to “actual victims” when, in reality, the only known consultations completed were carried out in private with individuals unknown to the public who had been handpicked by the administration, and were not explicitly identified as “victims” or survivors (blanchette-lamothe, 2015; menegakis, 2015). as a result, many of the changes enacted under bill s-7 did not consider survivor impact; in fact, some of the changes had the potential to increase the risk of violence to survivors. for example, if a woman experiencing violence applied for a peace bond, under bill s-7 they would have to appear in court with the perpetrator. alternatively, a third party could apply for a peace bond on the survivor’s account; however, the perpetrator would still receive notice of the application. in either event, the survivor may be at increased risk of harm if she and the perpetrator reside together. if the applicant is underage, to expect them to manage this process and navigate the criminal legal system without the support of their family, who may very well be the perpetrators or involved in perpetuating violence, is highly unrealistic. furthermore, in seeking support and safety, a survivor may risk the deportation of her own family — her support system — and other adverse consequences within their community. through consultation with survivors, the federal government could have made concrete changes to bill s-7 that would have better supported others experiencing violence. for instance, they might have learned that, as with any other gender-based and family violence issue, the most important and effective measure to combat violence is to provide public education and to raise awareness among professionals, from teachers and service providers to lawyers, lawmakers, judges, immigration officials, foreign affairs officials, and law enforcement officers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 133  understanding early and forced marriage something that appeared lost in parliamentary debates of bill s-7 was a detailed definition of fm and the distinctions between consensual and non-consensual marriage. the issue of early marriage and fm is subject to many misconceptions, the most common being that there is no difference between fms and arranged marriages. in reality, arranged marriages, which are common in many communities, require a collective decision of families, a clear choice, and, crucially, the free consent of the parties getting married. on the other hand, a forced marriage is a form of violence and an abuse of human rights. it is a practice in which a marriage takes place without the free consent of the individuals getting married. forced marriage can happen to anyone; of any gender, of any age. (chokshi et al., 2010, p. 3) such definitions of fm have evolved from extensive discussions and debates in the literature and the work of civil society organizations around the globe. unfortunately, there was minimal discussion of the importance of definitional distinctions among those in support of bill s-7; in fact, there appeared to be a misunderstanding of what constitutes fm. madeline lamboley, the expert who had conducted an in-depth examination of criminalization of fm in canada explained that, as a society, we do not know the extent of the problem of fm and questioned the function of criminalization as a solution to a phenomenon that is so poorly understood here (blanchettelamothe, 2015). the issue of fm, like many other issues related to family and gender-based violence, is complex. it is commonly perceived by the canadian mainstream as a particular cultural practice, which amounts to a denial of accountability from the larger society. not only is this an issue that must be addressed within canadian culture, but it has become the subject of public and political debate on a global level (bendriss, 2008; sabbe et al., 2014). while fm is often regarded as a common practice among immigrants from south asia, the middle east, and certain parts of africa, it occurs in many cultures and faiths while yet being condemned by most communities and religions (bendriss, 2008). in fact, “every major faith condemns the practice and requires freely giving consent for marriage, as does the law in most states” (dostrovsky et al., 2007, ch. 1, sec. 1.1). the reality remains that fm occurs across intersections of race, religion, geography, socioeconomic status, and class (crenshaw, 1991; gonçalves & matos, 2020). survivors from a wide variety of backgrounds have been forced into matrimonial arrangements by their families under false pretences or through physical abuse, emotional abuse, and exploitation (bendriss, 2008; dostrovsky et al., 2007). however, it is common that individuals facing fm are marginalized on a number of intersecting levels relating to race, income, immigration status, and language, and face significant barriers to equality (chokshi et al., 2010). this marginalization contributes to the conditions leading to fm and other familial violence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 134  the definition of fm in bill s-7 is broad and vague, which makes it unpredictable and challenging to apply in practice. the changes to legislation in bill s-7 did not consider the fact that crimes involving extortion, assault, or kidnapping could already be prosecuted as such under the criminal code, whether or not an fm was contemplated. contradiction in the act protecting girls and women was the articulated goal of bill s-7; however, the changes made in it go against the federal obligation to protect the rights of all women. it made significant changes to immigration law, prohibiting sponsorship for anyone who is, or intends to be, practising polygamy with another person who is also in canada. this particular clause prevents many vulnerable women from entering canada at all. further, if an individual did come forward and disclosed past or ongoing family violence, criminal sanctions or deportations could result in vulnerable children losing their parents or caregivers, and possibly their entire support systems. the prevalence of polygamy is extremely low in canada. if a woman has been forced into a polygamous marriage abroad, are she and her children inadmissible to canada? this and similar questions highlight the bill’s contradictions with respect to its stated overall goal of protecting girls and women. discussion barriers to addressing violence in work with survivors of gender-based and family violence, especially in cases of fm and “honour”-based violence, there are a number of policy restrictions and legal and social barriers to addressing these issues. these barriers and gaps include but are not limited to:  lack of protocols at an institutional level: there is a lack of training programs for relevant public officials including law enforcement, local administration officers, and those working in other fields involving the protection of girls and women. training may include identifying early warning signs, risk assessment, safety and action planning, education about rights and responsibilities, resources and assistance to connect survivors with appropriate services, and offering non-judgemental and empathetic support. lack of knowledge may lead to bias and misunderstanding, and compromise efforts to help.  jurisdictional issues: across jurisdictions there are various and conflicting civil, religious, and customary laws relating to marriage. there are many factors that affect the ability to support survivors and punish perpetrators including plural legal systems that are inconsistent with international obligations, basing the minimum age of marriage on the age of criminal responsibility, the age of sexual consent, or the onset of pregnancy or puberty.  lack of trust between communities and authorities: there is reluctance on the part of victims to disclose information related to familial and gender-based violence; this may stem international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 135  both from concern over stigma and from the fear that the family will learn of the disclosure. criminalization of early marriage or fm may deter victims, especially those from immigrant or minority communities, from coming forward, particularly if it may result in criminal prosecution and imprisonment of family members. this highlights the need to accompany legal reforms with awareness-raising efforts for families and communities.  cultural racism and stereotyping of the issue: when considering culture in relation to women’s rights and gender-based violence, one must avoid the decontextualized evocation of stereotyped roles that pits an idealized western culture, with its focus on the individual, against foreign practices that are conceived as alien. such culture-based conceptualizations of gender-based violence obscure the complexities of women’s lived experiences of violence, resulting in the exclusion from state protection of women who have experienced multiple forms of marginalization. in the context of violence against women, we have observed that this confusing use of the notion of “culture” bypasses supporting equitable protection from abuse and instead creates a hierarchical model in which some are in need of more protection than others. moreover, cultural stereotyping of gender-based violence and women’s experiences with violence across cultures creates barriers for diverse women when they attempt to access services. for example, survivors may avoid accessing services when they feel that to do so will support or contribute to stereotypical conceptions of their culture. when women do attempt to seek services, service providers may exhibit bias in screening mechanisms, risk assessment, and the type and level of assistance offered.  complexities related to the immigration and refugee process: as with the issues surrounding lack of trust between communities and authorities, disclosing familial violence may affect the citizenship, sponsorship, and independence of women who experience this violence. citizenship and immigration canada must commit to updating policy exemptions for survivors of familial violence, including fms, and provide exemptions from conditional permanent residence in fm situations. alongside these barriers, the societal context makes it difficult to address fm due to the compounding effect of the intersections of social and economic position, regressive immigration policies, xenophobia, racism, heterosexism, homophobia, and poverty. combatting violence while gender-based and family violence are multifaceted, complex issues to address, specialist services have made consistent recommendations that take into account input from front-line service providers and survivors in order to prevent violence against girls and women in racialized communities. first and foremost, there is a need to focus on prevention, and not the prohibition that was a central tenet of bill s-7. criminalization and stringent immigration policies will not protect girls and women from experiencing violence; instead, they make it more difficult for victims to come forward while offering little or no protection in return (sabbe et al., 2014). while legislative efforts are undoubtedly important, it is critical to ensure that interventions are available international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 136  that directly support the health and wellness of vulnerable individuals who are at risk of, or are survivors of, gender-based and family violence. beyond legislation, education and awareness-building are well known to be the most effective preventive tools for such violence. education in this context involves extensive, ongoing training for all invested stakeholders. a coordinated, multisectoral approach is essential to support the wellbeing, health, and safety of women. service providers with a direct and indirect role in supporting victims, such as local authorities, police, the judiciary, teachers, community groups, mental health professionals, and social workers, would benefit from additional culturally appropriate education and training concerning the different types of gender-based and familial violence and how to respond appropriately. this includes trauma-informed services, risk assessment, and safety planning within a framework that is survivor-centric and takes account of the complex reality of violence, immigration status, racial identity, sexuality, gender identity, and other complexities that survivors must continue to negotiate while getting support. considering the cultural ignorance evident in the debates surrounding bill s-7, it is clear that political leaders would also benefit greatly from this education. implementing these recommendations would demonstrate a commitment to bring about real change and provide appropriate support for survivors. concluding thoughts there are considerable challenges in managing the complex environment in which family and gender-based violence occurs; however, bill s-7 fell very short of its goal of protecting women and girls. the title of the bill, in itself harmful and hurtful to racialized communities, was an early indication that the act and the amendments it embodied would fail the very people it sought to support. the cultural aspect of the practices condemned in bill s-7 further fanned the flames of the cultural divisiveness that was increasing in the years leading up to its introduction. bill s-7 was quietly passed with no additional training, educational, or funding programs to further its purposes. lack of such programs not only creates potential harmful contexts in which disclosures may be made and hinders early identification of violence but also makes it challenging to track the effectiveness of the law in attaining its proclaimed purpose of offering greater protection and support to vulnerable women and girls (sheppard, 2000). women must not be forced to choose between living with danger in their homes and putting their or their family members’ immigration status in jeopardy (sheppard, 2000). moving forward, there are many suggestions that could be made to address family and genderbased violence as well as to support survivors of such violence. above all, we suggest that implementation of best practices such as educating and raising awareness within the immigration, law enforcement, health, and education sectors is essential to protect women and girls from violence. in addition, it is crucial to incorporate monitoring mechanisms into training and educational programs in order to understand how to develop and adapt programming to better suit the needs of survivors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 137  overall, bill s-7 was a futile effort to protect girls and women of racialized groups in canada. it failed to support survivors who have experienced or are experiencing violence, and it failed to acknowledge and address the complexity of the intersectionality of familial and gender-based violence. in this article, we stand for survivors of familial and gender-based violence, whose voices have told us time and time again that they will not come forward if it means criminal sanctions or deportation for their own family. we must continue to ensure that survivors and not perpetrators are at the centre of these discussions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 124–142 138  references abu-lughod, l. 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(2016). ‘it’s a part of me, i feel naked without it’: choice, agency and identity for muslim women who wear the niqab. ethnic and racial studies, 39(10), 1738–1754. doi:10.1080/01419870.2016.1159710 zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, sc 2015. c. 29. https://parl.ca/documentviewer/en/41-2/bill/s-7/royal-assent exiting gangs: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 5 exiting gangs: examining processes and best practice within an alberta context leslie macrae-krisa abstract: gangs and gang-related crime have been an increasing concern in alberta in recent decades. gang exit strategies have been identified in the alberta gang reduction strategy (government of alberta, 2010) as a key activity in reducing gang-related violent crime and violence in the province. the purpose of this article is to explore available academic and gray literature on gang exit to support the development of gang exit interventions in the province. findings from the review point to the diversity and complexity of gang involvement and membership, and the consequent need for multidimensional approaches to gang exit. exit programs must address the root causes of membership, and identify and address barriers to pro-social activities. the complexity of gang membership also requires a strategic approach to programming that includes single case management, intensive training, and targeted outreach, as well as multiple systems involvement. importantly, as alberta moves forward with its gang reduction strategy, systematic, comprehensive research studies on the “gang problem” in alberta and its associated impact on the community are vital for the development of effective intervention strategies. keywords: gangs, alberta, gang exit, gang exit processes, gang exit strategies leslie macrae-krisa, m.a. is coordinator of alberta-based research projects for the canadian research institute for law and the family. contact details: 226 cimarron blvd, okotoks, alberta, canada, t1s 2e5. e-mail: ldmacrae@ucalgary.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 6 gangs and gang-related crime have been an increasing concern in alberta in recent decades. though there are few recent and comprehensive studies of gangs in alberta, intermittent statistics made available in the past decade point to the increasing presence of a variety of criminal groups engaging in a range of criminal activities. the 2002 canadian police survey on youth gangs reported the emergence of youth gangs in calgary dating back to 1985 (astwood strategy corporation, 2003), though major organized crime groups have a longer history. the 2005/2006 annual report of the criminal intelligence service of alberta (cisa) revealed the presence of major motorcycle gangs, as well as asian-based organized crime groups, aboriginal organized crime groups and street gangs, and some european organized crime groups (criminal intelligence service of alberta, 2006). the cisa also reported that gangs and organized crime groups are present throughout the province, including urban and rural communities and on reserves. the major activities of these groups relate to the drug trade and resulting violence between groups. the cisa also reports gang-related activity in correctional institutions, which often transfers to communities once inmates are released. the 2009/2010 annual report of the alberta law enforcement response teams (alert) confirms the continued presence of organized crime groups and street gangs in communities across the province (alberta law enforcement teams, 2010). statistics canada (2008) reported that in 2008, calgary had the highest per capita rate of gang-related homicides among the 10 largest metropolitan areas in canada. in 2010, the government of alberta developed the alberta gang reduction strategy: “a comprehensive, strategic approach to addressing the challenge of gangs in alberta through the efficient use of existing resources and support of community partnerships” (government of alberta, 2010, p. 5). the strategy was developed in response to the increasing presence of gangs and gang violence in alberta. the goals of the gang reduction strategy are twofold (government of alberta, 2010, p. 8): 1. to reduce gang-related crime and violence in alberta; and 2. to strengthen efforts to develop an integrated, comprehensive, and sustainable approach to gang suppression. the strategy lists a number of awareness, prevention, and intervention elements to meet these goals, one of which is to develop strategies for individuals wishing to exit gangs. it recognizes that few intervention programs to support gang disengagement exist in alberta communities, particularly those with a significant gang presence. the strategy recommends that intervention programs be designed for community-based and correctional (custodial, community supervision) settings to ensure that gang members have numerous opportunities to disengage. importantly, it recommends the development of intervention strategies in aboriginal communities to provide alternatives to gang membership for aboriginal people (government of alberta, 2010). gang exit strategies have been identified in alberta’s gang reduction strategy as a key activity in reducing gang-related violent crime and violence in the province. given the presence of gangs in alberta and the identified need to develop strategies to support disengagement, it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 7 important to ensure the effectiveness of future initiatives. therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the available academic and gray literature on gang exit. first, the factors that lead to gang membership will be briefly explored. second, the factors and conditions that prompt the decision to leave a gang will be examined, as well as the social and cognitive processes that define disengagement. finally, the services and supports required by gang members to effectively exit will be studied, and best practices for disengagement will be proposed. defining gangs and gang intervention a discussion of gangs and gang intervention first requires definitional clarification. the term “gang” presents ongoing issues given the range of definitions that have been used by academics, government, law enforcement, and corrections, indicated by considerable discussion in the literature (e.g., aldridge, shute, ralphs, & medina, 2011; goodwill, 2009; gordon, 2000; schram & gaines, 2007; spergel, 1992). as gordon (2000) observed, groups are often termed “gangs” even though members do not define themselves as such. “gang” broadly encompasses a diverse set of criminal groups – from low level street gangs to highly organized criminal organizations. the criminal code of canada (section 467.1) adopts a broad definition of organized criminal groups, referring to a “criminal organization” as a group that is composed of at least three people and has the purpose of committing serious offences that may result in direct or indirect material benefit to the members or group as a whole (criminal code, 1985). as documented in a report on organized crime by the criminal intelligence service of canada (2010), perceptions of criminal organizations by law enforcement have shifted over the past 25 years from a view of highly organized, hierarchical, culturally homogenous groups to one that includes more loosely structured, heterogeneous groups. gangs and gang intervention must be understood in the context of this diversity. mellor, macrae, pauls, and hornick (2005) and gordon (2000) offer multi-dimensional frameworks that address a number of key aspects: activity, organization, motivation to join, recruitment, and importantly, exit strategies. chettleburgh (2007) notes that leadership, common colours, territory, and title are also characteristics to consider in the classification of canadian gangs. the typologies define a broad range of groups, from non-criminal friendship groups, to street gangs, to structured criminal organizations. mellor and colleagues (2005) observe that the more criminally involved the gang, the more dangerous and difficult it is to exit. a number of approaches are used to reduce gang involvement and activity. as discussed by the government of canada’s national crime prevention centre (ncpc) (2007), responses to gangs generally fall into three categories: prevention, intervention, and suppression. prevention programs “typically focus on discouraging children and youth, especially those at high risk, from joining gangs” (ncpc, 2007, p. 2). on the other hand, intervention programs “generally target active gangs and gang members” while suppression programs “usually involve specialized gang units (typically led by the police and/or criminal prosecutors) that target gang members and their illicit activities through aggressive enforcement of laws” (ncpc, 2007, p 2). naturally, it is optimal for community strategies to focus efforts on child development, decreasing risk factors, and promoting protective factors from a young age in order to prevent gang membership. as discussed by totten (2008), “it is less costly and more effective to prevent youth from joining gangs than it is to support a member to exit a gang” (p. 8). however, the fact remains that current international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 8 gang activity is facilitated by membership, and opportunities to disengage gang members must also be explored and addressed to reduce the impact of gangs in communities. often referred to as tertiary prevention programs, strategies for gang exit typically involve two elements: an understanding of the level of difficulty in disengaging from a gang, and a strategy for implementing an exit plan (mellor et al., 2005). as totten (2008) elaborates in his examination of youth gang programs in canada, “tertiary prevention targets gang members and recruits directly to rehabilitate or incapacitate [them], address the needs of victims, and provide exit strategies and support to leave and remain out of gangs” (p. 8). mellor and colleagues (2005) stress that exiting a “gang” often involves a difficult process, regardless of the level of organization, involvement, and criminal activities but point out that for more organized crime groups, “there is often the need for relocation, police protection for the ex-gang member as well as their family, and a multifaceted support network of police, community, and family support” (p. 11). for the purpose of this paper, a “gang” will be considered generally to include criminal groups and organizations, street gangs, and youth gangs. the discussion regarding intervention will focus on tertiary prevention, or strategies that focus on supporting gang members in their decision to exit gangs. understanding gang entry to determine effective strategies for supporting gang disengagement requires an understanding of why individuals join gangs. a range of theoretical perspectives from sociology, criminology, and psychology (e.g., heath, 2000; herrmann, mcwhirter, & sispas-herrmann, 1997; howell & egley, 2005; klein & maxson, 2006; spergel, 1992) have been proposed. spergel’s (1992) review of nine gang studies posits that generally, there are two sets of theories used to explain the gang involvement. the first is related to poverty and opportunity, focusing on the availability of legitimate employment and opportunities and the appeal of the economic opportunities that criminal groups may provide. the second perspective discussed by spergel (1992) is the classic theory of social disorganization, which posits that social change and the resultant disorganization lead to a weakening of social controls and the need for alternatives to mainstream sources of socialization. these alternatives are found in gangs. while these two perspectives were predominant in the literature at the time of his review, spergel (1992) concluded that neither alone effectively explains the gang phenomenon it its entirety. forms of hirschi’s social control theory have also been used to explain gang membership. social control theory posits that, “abnormal or defective relationships can lead to a lack of emotional attachment to both family and society” (heath, 2000, p. 18). the lack of attachment to family and community leads to the failure of pro-social values and norms being transferred to youth. the lack of emotional attachment leads to a lack of care and concern for others – and to the tendency to commit deviant acts. gang membership may be a conduit for this type of activity. other theories used in the literature view gang membership in terms of psychological and cultural processes. herrmann and colleagues (1997), in their study of juvenile gang involvement, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 9 examine gang membership from the perspective of self-concept, arguing that low self-esteem and poor self-concept is alleviated in the emotional bonds created in gang membership; however, findings suggested that low self-concept does not completely explain gang membership. scott and ruddell (2011), in their examination of female gang membership, offer a more complex psychological theory, considering status, peer relationships, a sense of community, social support, and acquisition of material needs. they also highlight feminist perspectives, explaining gang membership as empowering, a means to resist dominant stereotypes, and as a safe refuge from often abusive circumstances. klein and maxson (2006) adopt a social-cultural approach, demonstrating that an “oppositional culture” may form among collectively marginalized or victimized gang members, which proves very difficult for intervention strategies. howell and egley (2005) examine gang involvement from a developmental perspective, offering that certain risk factors present at particular stages of development create pathways to gang involvement. this perspective, developed from thornberry and krohn’s (2001) interaction theory, incorporates both structural variables and more discrete process-related variables – social, familial, and community factors (e.g., poverty, discrimination, family violence, exposure to violent crime in the community) – that influence gang membership indirectly by negatively affecting pro-social bonds, and increasing vulnerability to anti-social influences. testing of this model has revealed considerable support. existing theoretical perspectives offer diverse explanations for gang entry. arguably, an integrated approach that incorporates structural, social, and individual processes is most likely to be effective in understanding gang entry. ultimately, the understanding created through the lens of an integrated theoretical approach will be most effective in developing proper strategies for gang disengagement. risk factors for gang entry the study of gang entry has also considered a number of risk factors. as observed by howell and egley (2005): “knowledge of risk factors for youth gang membership has grown exponentially during the past decade” (p. 334). generally, risk factors for delinquency have been considered as belonging to five general domains: individual, family, peer, school, and community (howell & egley, 2005; maxson, whitlock, & klein, 1998). when considered in the context of gangs, risk factors have been shown to span all five risk factor domains, have a cumulative effect, and enhance the likelihood of gang membership if present in multiple developmental stages (howell & egley, 2005; maxson et al., 1998). it is important to note that risk factors do not exist in isolation, but rather interact and reinforce one another over time. further, maxson and colleagues (1998) caution that many of the risk factors for gang involvement are also effects of, or reinforced by, gang membership. factors in the individual domain relate to demographic characteristics, behaviour, mental health, and attitude. studies have shown that mental health issues, particularly depression and low or delinquent self-concept (e.g., self-esteem, competence), are significantly related to gang involvement, particularly among youth (herrmann et al., 1997; maxson et al., 1998; totten & dunn, 2011). gangs also fulfill a need for respect not found in pro-social circles (ward & bakhuis, 2010). maxson and colleagues’ (1998) study of street gangs revealed that gang international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 10 members often experience more stressful life events and perceive more barriers to future success. a negative attitude toward the justice system (scott & ruddell, 2011; ward & bakhuis, 2010) and mainstream social institutions (bracken, deane, & morrissette, 2009; scott & ruddell, 2011) is also a common risk factor, with gang members being more likely to be involved in serious and violent crime and to have longer criminal careers (scott & ruddell, 2011; totten & dunn, 2011). there is a complex relationship between gang membership and substance abuse. individuals may be lured to the gang by the economic opportunities associated with the drug trade and ultimately become addicted themselves (katz, webb, & decker, 2005), while others may join the gang as a way to support their existing addiction (ward & bakhuis, 2010). either way, addiction and substance abuse issues often begin and/or are reinforced by gang membership (katz et al., 2005; scott & ruddell, 2011; totten & dunn, 2011). family factors include those related to consistency, attachment, violence, poverty, abuse, or exposure to substance abuse. gang members often model substance abuse and criminal behaviour in their families (totten & dunn, 2011; ward & bakhuis, 2010). studies have shown that individuals are more susceptible to gang involvement when they have criminal family members, and particularly if they have gang-involved family members (aldridge et al., 2011; maxson et al., 1998; totten & dunn, 2011; ward & bakhuis, 2010). in addition, inconsistent monitoring and supervision have been linked to gang membership (aldridge et al., 2011). when families fail in their role to provide support and stability, individuals may feel alienated, finding support in gangs (spergel, 1992; ward & bakhuis, 2010). sexual abuse has also been identified as a path to gang membership (totten & dunn, 2011). peer factors are of particular importance, given the peer-related attraction to gangs. by definition, gang members socialize with negative peers and often get in to trouble with their friends (maxson et al., 1998; scott & ruddell, 2011). however, the cohesive and supportive nature of a gang addresses feelings of isolation and a need for belonging (badger & albright, 2003; spergel, 1992; vigil, 1988; ward & bakhuis, 2010). as discussed by hastings, dunbar, and bania (2011), a key feature of criminal youth organizations is that they are a collective solution to shared issues. substance abuse is often a source of cohesion among the group (scott & ruddell, 2011; spergel, 1992). however, maxson and colleagues’ (1998) study of street gang youth revealed that gang members are more likely to denigrate their friendship group, and acknowledge that they are negative influences. this low attachment to their peers may provide opportunity for intervention. factors in the education/employment domain often relate to school attachment, educational and occupational opportunity, aptitude, and economic factors. badger and albright’s (2003) study of aboriginal youth suggested a lack of attachment to school was one reason why youth enter gangs. maxson and colleagues (1998) found that street gang members were more likely to miss school and have negative perceptions of teachers. in evans and sawdon’s (2004) study of a gang exit strategy in toronto, youth were shown to have multiple barriers to employment, including low educational attainment, negative perceptions by the community and employers, poor employability, and school failures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 11 community factors may include exposure to criminal activity, community disorganization, and lack of community attachment. a number of studies have found that gang members had previously been exposed to high levels of gang violence in their neighbourhood or community, as well as the greater presence and accessibility of guns (maxson et al., 1998; scott & ruddell, 2011; ward & bakhuis, 2010). badger and albright (2003) suggest that feelings of disenfranchisement from the community may lead aboriginal youth to join gangs. in addition to risk factors in these five domains, it has been argued that foundations to gang membership often lie in the presence of social structural issues, such as colonization or discrimination. ward and bakhuis’ (2010) study of gang membership in south africa revealed that the structural inequalities resulting from the apartheid may be at the root of gang involvement. in canada, colonization and the residential schools legacy have been discussed as a precursor to aboriginal gang involvement (bracken et al., 2009; grekul & larocque, 2011). variations in gang entry a general discussion of gang entry must be qualified by acknowledging the variation in risk factors by gender, ethnicity, and gang type. gordon (2000), in the greater vancouver gang study, distinguishes risk for gang involvement by different criminal groups. for those who join “wanna-be” groups – loosely structured groups of young people who engage in impulsive criminal activity – the group meets unmet emotional needs such as a sense of belonging, a need for family, etc. gordon (2000) distinguishes “wanna-be” groups from street gangs, the members of which tend to be older, feel more marginalized due to poverty, discrimination, and unpleasant family lives, and be involved primarily due to peer group attraction. finally, criminal business organizations tend to have adult membership, attracting members with the appeal of a social and cultural bond, addressing feelings of ethnic and cultural marginality. members tend to be more educated and less economically disadvantaged, with the organization providing economic opportunities. loss of income is a barrier for disengagement (gordon, 2000). gender is an additional factor that must be considered. totten’s (2008) examination of youth gangs suggests that a majority are male; consequently, research on risk factors for gang involvement and activities tends to focus on males. however, available literature from canada and the united states suggests that gang membership among females is increasing (scott & ruddell, 2011). female gang members tend to join gangs later and leave earlier (spergel, 1992), display lesser bonds to the group, and play a secondary role (spergel, 1992; totten, 2008). in addition, they are often sexually exploited and treated poorly (grekul & larocque, 2011; hoang, 2007; scott & ruddell, 2011). female gang members have often experienced victimization, including sexual abuse (hoang, 2007). ethnic diversity in gang membership canadian research has examined specific risk factors for aboriginal gang members. the available literature discusses a number of structural level risk factors, such as poverty and disproportionate involvement in the child welfare, social welfare, and criminal justice systems, with the legacy of colonization as the foundation (bracken et al., 2009; goodwill, 2009; grekul & larocque, 2011). goodwill’s (2009) study of aboriginal ex-gang members identified a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 12 number of “critical incidents” related to gang entry among aboriginal men, including the following: • engaging in violence and association with delinquent activities; • family members involved in gangs; • viewing gangs as a family or support system; • going to prison; • admiring the gang lifestyle; • depending on the gang; • gaining respect; and • reacting to authority. characteristics of gang entry are further distinguished for aboriginal women. scott and ruddell’s (2011) study of 337 incarcerated female gang members showed that one-half of the sample was aboriginal. grekul and larocque (2011), in their study of gang-involved aboriginal women, argue for a social injury perspective of gang entry by aboriginal women, rather than the liberation perspective that has been posed by some. interviews with front line professionals and a small sample of current and former gang members revealed a number of issues commonly observed among female aboriginal gang members, including: unresolved trauma; grief, loss, and damaged relationships, particularly in families (e.g., family violence, substance abuse, loss of a family member); and intergenerational issues, including sexual abuse. gang membership often fulfills the need for protection and belonging experienced by many alienated and marginalized aboriginal women (grekul & larocque, 2011). ngo (2010), in his thorough examination of criminal gang involvement among immigrant youth in canada, reveals risk factors for gang entry unique to new canadians. he suggests that the families of immigrant youth are often vulnerable in various ways prior to immigrating to canada, or youth are impacted by their parents’ histories prior to immigration. this vulnerability often stems from poverty, extreme violence, and brutality in their home countries (ngo, 2010). upon arriving in canada, youth experience a “gradual disintegration of their interaction with their families, schools and communities” resulting in “crises of identity and belonging” (ngo, 2010, p. 115). conflict between their home culture and dominant culture often contributes to the growing detachment from parents, as many are either strict or neglectful parents, familial substance abuse or mental health issues, negative influences from older siblings, or familial criminality. gang-involved immigrant youth often struggle in educational pursuits, including english proficiency, learning disabilities, and disrupted school experiences. further, they live in impoverished, high-crime neighbourhoods, often lacking attachment to their communities. this leads immigrant youth to gravitate toward socially disconnected peers, followed by social cliques, and finally, criminal groups or gangs. gang exit: theories and processes as decker and lauritsen (2002) observe, “most analyses of gang involvement focus on becoming a gang member rather than discontinuing membership” (p. 51). hastings et al. (2011) caution that there is “little consensus on why and how youth leave a gang, or on what types of programs work to help accomplish this successfully” (p. 2). the criminal desistance literature international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 13 has been used to provide insight into gang exit, discussing the significance of marriage, employment, parenthood, and other life course events (decker & lauritsen, 2002). however, given the relationships formed in gangs, the needs fulfilled, and the repercussions often associated with leaving a criminal group or organization, a specific focus on the available literature on exit theories and processes is warranted. researchers have attempted to explain why and how gang members decide to disengage from the group. theories of age and maturation have been predominant in the literature (decker & lauritsen, 2002; hastings et al., 2011; vigil, 1988). hastings and colleagues’ (2011) comprehensive review of the gang exit literature suggests that gang membership is usually temporary, that most members leave eventually, and that exit is associated with maturity and life course events – marriage, employment, parenthood, etc. however, as decker and lauritsen (2002) note, the role of maturation may depend on how entrenched the member is in the gang. hastings et al. (2011) also observe that gang members often have a strong motivation to escape violence, with a number of studies suggesting that gang exit is associated with the experience of violent incidents (decker & lauritsen, 2002; hastings et al., 2011; ngo, 2010; totten & dunn, 2011). totten and dunn’s (2011) evaluation of an intervention program for aboriginal gang members revealed that members often leave after surviving a vicious attack or losing a friend or close gang associate. ironically, though violent gang initiation (e.g., “beating in”) and “mythic violence” mark gang entry, the real experience of violence is often a turning point for disengagement (hastings et al., 2011). just as the experience of gang entry varies along gender and ethnic lines, so too does the experience of gang exit. a small number of studies have examined why female gang members exit their gangs. hoang (2007) suggests that though maturation may be one of the leading reasons why men leave gangs, “maturing or transitioning out of gang can be a difficult process for females because there are social and economic pressures that serve as barriers to exiting gang life” (p. 32). women may be limited in their social and economic opportunities, and be hesitant to access social assistance upon leaving the gang for fear of their children being apprehended. studies have suggested that women are more likely to cite parenthood as a reason to exit the gang than male gang members, though findings are mixed (fleisher & krienert, 2004; hoang, 2007; varriale, 2006). grekul and larocque’s (2011) study of female aboriginal gang members provides further insight. the authors explain that aboriginal women in gangs work a “double shift” – being sexual objects, caregivers, and bearers of children in addition to doing the work of the gang – transporting drugs, recruiting women for prostitution, etc. it is because of this that they may have “more incentive to leave an ‘organization’ that does not treat them well in the first place” (p. 153). grekul and larocque (2011) further suggest that intervention efforts “should capitalize on the dire straits that many gang-involved girls find themselves” (p.153). according to the authors, these situations may include childbirth, jail sentences, or involvement of child welfare. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 14 goodwill’s (2009) study of perspectives of aboriginal ex-gang members in the western provinces of canada examined key “critical incidents” related to gang exit for aboriginal men. among these critical incidents were: • the opportunity for legitimate employment; • accepting support from a partner or family; • the opportunity to help others exit and desist from gang life; • the desire to stay out of jail and accept responsibility for family; • avoiding alcohol; • participating in aboriginal traditions; • experiencing native brotherhood; • accepting offers of guidance and protection; • acknowledgement of the consequences of gang membership; and • learning self-control. ngo’s (2010) study of gang-involved immigrant youth suggests that, in addition to the experience of gang-related violence or death, immigrant youth also may experience “cognitive maturity and religious awakening” that encourages their disengagement (p. 99). betrayal by peers was also cited as a turning point for gang disaffiliation. notably, gang members who have disengaged rarely cite justice system involvement as a reason for exit. as observed by decker and lauritsen (2002), most cite “gang experiences and social processes, rather than institutional commitments” as reasons for leaving (p. 61). finally, researchers suggest that some gang members simply just leave their gang for no particular reason (bovenkerk, 2011; decker & lauritsen, 2002). regardless of the specific reason for leaving their gangs, studies suggest that individuals must be ready for it in order for them to be successful (totten & dunn, 2011). on an individual psychological level, general theories of criminal desistance may offer some insight into gang exit. giordano, cernkovich, and rudolph (2002) suggest a theory of cognitive transformation, stressing that cognitive shifts occur when an individual chooses to desist from crime, and that agency is a key factor in this shift. external environmental factors are what giordano et al. (2002) label as “hooks for change” – occurrences in an individual’s life when a person chooses to desist from crime. grekul and larocque (2011) effectively argue that a similar theoretical perspective may be applied to the process of desistance from gangs, given evidence that individuals tend to make the decision to leave gangs after key life events occur – “hooks for change” leading to cognitive transformation. bovenkerk (2011) adds that the process of disengagement involves attitudes and behaviour. goodwill’s (2009) study of aboriginal gang members suggests that members experience a number of positive outcomes that reinforce the process of gang exit. these include: • accountability – particularly to family and children; • resistance to gang life – including crime, violence, and substance abuse; • living a new life – experiencing a shift in the way they live their day-to-day lives; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 15 • independence – no longer being dependent on the gang financially, mentally, emotionally, and socially; • healing – mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically; and • maturity – acknowledging that gang life is temporary. ngo (2010) suggests that self-determination and family support often facilitate gang exit for immigrant youth. immigrant youth invest heavily in education and maintaining employment as they exit criminal groups, and re-engage in the community by participating in community activities and accessing community services. of particular importance is community mentorship and investment in religion. the cognitive decision to leave the gang must be accompanied with certain physical or logistical changes. decker and lauritsen (2002), bovenkerk (2011), and canada’s national crime prevention centre (2011b) suggest that gang members sever ties with their gang by moving to a different city. self-report by aboriginal gang members (totten & dunn, 2011) echo this assertion, suggesting that separation from other gang members helps the exit process. decker and lauritsen (2002) also discuss the implications of leaving prison gangs, which they suggest is more difficult than leaving street gangs given the closed system of the prison. part of the process of exiting the gang involves addressing barriers to disengagement. some of these barriers may come from within the gang. as decker and lauritsen (2002) observed in their study of gang members in st. louis, “most active gang members strongly expressed the belief that one can never leave the gang” despite having known members who had left (p. 61). the entrenched notoriety of being unable to leave a gang – often due to an underlying threat of violence or death – is likely a significant barrier to the cognitive transformation associated with the decision to exit. vigil’s (1988) study of exit from chicano gangs in los angeles discusses being “beaten out”, a ritual that marks an individual’s exit through violence. though the available literature does not discuss this ritual to any degree, the fear of violence accompanying a gang exit has been noted as a challenge to gang exit (decker & lauritsen, 2002; totten & dunn, 2011). external hurdles also present challenges to disengaging gang members. both hastings and colleagues (2011) and decker and lauritsen (2002) note that social barriers, such as the “gang” label, perceptions of the individual as a gang member, and stigma of previous gang membership, limit opportunities as well as an individual’s ability to leave the gang. in addition, long-term gang membership may have limited the individual’s ability to acquire marketable skills for the workforce, thereby limiting the gang member’s options for employment if he or she decides to leave. this in turn may result in the benefits of staying in the gang outweighing the consequences of being a gang member. studies have attempted to determine key points at which gang members may be open to intervention (decker & lauritsen, 2002; hastings et al., 2011). a critical point for early intervention is when a youth is affiliated with a gang, but not a gang member (decker & lauritsen, 2002). intervention has also been suggested to be effective when a youth is involved with a gang, but early in their criminal career – first arrest, or when charges are for minor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 16 offences (decker & lauritsen, 2002; hastings et al., 2011). hastings and colleagues (2011) also suggest that a youth’s first custodial sentence may also be a critical point for intervention. it is evident that exit points are largely related to contacts with formal institutions, particularly the criminal justice system. as discussed previously, the child or social welfare systems may be possible exit points for women. this suggests the need for formal institutions to be prepared as potential points for intervention. however, decker and lauritsen (2002) and hastings and colleagues (2011) suggest that interventions may be effective prior to formal contact with these systems, that is, when individuals are involved or affiliated, but have not had justice or social system contact. this suggests that grassroots community agencies, such as shelters or youth centres, may serve as important entry points. for women, given the interpersonal violence they experience, women’s emergency shelters may also be engaged. best practice in gang exit programs knowledge of the processes of gang entry and exit provide a foundation for determining best practice in gang exit strategies. as previously discussed, the needs and processes associated with gang exit vary by level of involvement in the gang, as well as the type of gang an individual belongs to (bovenkerk, 2011; decker & lauritsen, 2002). bovenkerk (2011) suggests that those involved in criminal youth gangs or street gangs are often impoverished and lack ties to conventional institutions; interventions must therefore focus on building social capital. however, for those involved with organized crime, the members’ issues are related less to social capital and more to a lack of positive relationships and changing criminal values. it is important that interventions consider the type of criminal organization the person is involved with – and the needs fulfilled by that organization – in developing an effective exit strategy. there may also be implications for the level of protection required by an individual, given the danger associated with exiting some criminal organizations (mellor et al., 2005). a number of authors (hoang, 2007; scott & ruddell, 2011; totten, 2008) stress that risk and protective factors unique to males and females must be considered when developing any intervention. given that males compose a large majority of gang membership, specific interventions for female gang members are often inadequate. hoang (2007) suggests that as a consequence, female gang members experience “multiple marginality” due to limited opportunities – both social and economic. scott and ruddell’s study of canadian female gang inmates suggests that the number of women in prison with gang affiliations has doubled between 1997 and 2000, outpacing male gang members. therefore, there is a demonstrable need for gang intervention, both in prison where gang membership tends to undermine rehabilitative efforts and also in the community. as hoang (2007) articulates: “programs that do not capture gender differences may result in services that inadequately or ineffectively address the needs of females” (p. 31). ethnic differences must also be considered in formulating gang intervention strategies, as the literature suggests such differences engender unique experiences with regard to both entry and exit. a number of researchers have suggested that any interventions for aboriginal communities must incorporate aboriginal values and traditions (bracken et al., 2009; grekul & larocque, 2011; national crime prevention centre, 2011b; theriot & parker, 2007). badger international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 17 and albright’s (2003) study of perceptions of gang membership in saskatchewan suggested a number of potentially effective alternatives to gang membership for aboriginal youth, including structured activities, non-competitive activities, affordable sporting activities, cultural camps, traditional aboriginal pursuits, cultural activities and ceremonies, the presence of role models, the development of parenting skills and parental support, employment opportunities, and having basic life needs met. sensitivity to gender and ethnic differences may be extended further to aboriginal women. as previously discussed, aboriginal women have a number of unique risk factors associated with the legacy of colonization, poverty, family dysfunction, and abuse. scott and ruddell’s (2011) study revealed that female aboriginal gang members have higher measureable risks and needs than non-aboriginal offenders, and that low motivation to change is difficult to overcome. grekul and larocque’s (2011) examination of female aboriginal gang members suggests a number of structural issues that must be addressed, particularly including a lack of long-term housing for those who are being released from prison. the authors note that without stable housing, there is a greater risk of returning to the gang. further, given low levels of education, grekul and larocque argue that empowering aboriginal women with education may reduce dependence on the gang lifestyle. finally, the notable lack of programming aimed at aboriginal women (e.g., detoxification and rehabilitation services, affordable housing) poses a significant threat to positive outcomes for aboriginal women attempting to exit gangs. grekul and larocque (2011) suggest a number of key features for effective interventions, including: increased support and services for women and their families (e.g., addiction, financial, child care, recreational); protective programs for women leaving gangs to ensure their safety; support for the children of women who choose to disengage, particularly those that must enter treatment; the importance of the professionals delivering the programs developing “positive, trusting, and respectful relationships with their clients” (p. 148); the effectiveness of mentoring, and demonstrating that women will not be alone; and, finally, sharing circles – healing through restoration (e.g., community support, empowerment through sharing, etc.). ngo’s (2010) research on immigrant youth at high risk for gang involvement suggests a practical framework for supporting immigrant families, developed based on feedback from community stakeholders and gang-involved youth. the framework supports a collaborative approach to supporting immigrant families, ensuring the coordination of various agencies, sectors, and communities. it incorporates a set of principles that involve “a positive sense of identity, equity, multi-sectoral involvement, coordination and collaboration, multiple approaches on the part of youth services, addressing multiple needs with multiple interventions, and timeliness and responsiveness” (ngo, 2010, p. 101). the framework promotes the development of a positive identity toward a healthy sense of belonging in the family, school, and community – considering issues specific to immigrant youth and their families. ngo’s suggested framework considers the path that youth take to gang membership, exit, and community reintegration, and includes home, school, and community-based strategies. overall, hastings and colleagues (2011), in their comprehensive examination of gang exit, argue that just as gang entry is a multi-dimensional process, so too is gang exit, and that any strategy or intervention must also be multi-dimensional. further, given the needs fulfilled by the gang, interventions must meet or exceed the options or incentives offered by the gang while international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 18 eliminating the negative consequences attached to gang membership. exit programs must address the root causes of membership – identified risk factors related to individual, family, peer, community, and school domains – as well as provide legitimate alternatives to fulfilling basic physical and social needs. hastings and colleagues (2011) also stress that identified barriers to pro-social activities (education, training, employment) must be addressed, as well as the absence of supportive relationships, challenging activities, and sense of belonging provided by the gang. overall, these authors suggest a number of critical elements for youth gang interventions (p. 9): 1. providing a safe place to go; 2. individual counselling and cognitive-behavioural development; 3. education, training, and job opportunities; 4. peer mentoring; 5. addressing social determinants of health (e.g., health, mental health, substance abuse, family counselling, life skills, system supports, basic needs); and 6. suppression. the complexity of gang exit and the unique needs of different groups require a strategic approach to programming. studies and evaluations (e.g., hastings et al., 2011; evans & sawdon, 2004) suggest a number of critical elements for a comprehensive gang intervention strategy. first, essential to interventions is single case management, involving thorough intake and assessment to determine level of risk and develop an intervention plan that is tailored to the needs of the individual. ongoing case management is also important to monitor progress and modify service delivery as required. second, intensive life skills training and personal development, involving group programming, workshops, and mentoring, are important to address behaviour patterns and develop skills that allow one to function away from the gang. finally, targeted outreach involving outreach workers engaging gang members in the community, providing referrals and resources, is an approach that has been effective in disengaging gang members from the lifestyle. a number of authors (aldridge et al., 2011; spergel, 1992) stress that unidimensional strategies are not effective, particularly those that are purely justice oriented. multiple sectors must be engaged to provide outreach, counselling, and opportunities for education, training, and employment. hastings and colleagues (2011) as well aldridge et al. (2011) observe that given the complexity of gang membership and exit, and the multiple systems involvement of many gang members, it is often most effective to offer a multi-agency service delivery model so that all needs are addressed (hastings et al., 2011). this may include law enforcement, justice agencies, housing, educational institutions, employers, social and child welfare, and other local grassroots organizations. conclusion given the growing concern with gang-related activity in alberta, it is important to develop effective strategies to support gang disengagement. thus, the purpose of this article was to explore the available literature on gang exit processes and strategies. as spergel (1992) observes: “gang behaviour is diverse, changing, complex, and requires a variety of data collected over time to adequately understand its genesis and development” (p. 131). complex individual, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 19 family, peer, school, and community factors influence gang members and their ability to disengage. further, different processes lead to membership in different types of groups (gordon, 2000). interventions must therefore consider the population they are targeting to ensure proper supports and services are provided. any discussion of best practice in gang interventions must be done in the context of a firm understanding of the problem. one of the greatest challenges alberta will face as it moves forward with its gang reduction strategy is the lack of systematic, comprehensive research on the “gang problem” in alberta and the associated impact on the community. thus, it is important that alberta continue to explore the complexion of gangs in the province as a necessary precondition to the development of proper intervention and exit strategies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 5–23 20 references aldridge, j., shute, j., ralphs, r., & medina, j. 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(2010). intervening in children’s involvement in gangs: views of cape town’s young people. children and society, 24, 50–62. doi: 10.1111/j.10990860.2009.00195.x international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 www.search-institute.org developmental assets and sexual and reproductive health among 10to 14-year-olds in northern uganda peter c. scales, maura shramko, and kim ashburn abstract: there is a need for research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (srh) to further clarify the broader developmental context of very young adolescents who are generally neglected in srh research in developing countries. programs can then address these factors: (including quality of family, school, and peer relationships, commitment to learning, and various social competencies), thereby broadening valid intervention targets and increasing program effectiveness among vulnerable youth. in this study, cross-sectional survey data measured the extent of developmental assets (youths’ individual strengths and social relationships and opportunities) and concurrent srh outcomes among a stratified random sample of 941 very young adolescents (10 to14 years old) in northern uganda. we hypothesized that youth with higher levels of assets would have better srh. mean developmental assets level was barely adequate. however, as predicted, youths with higher levels of the assets were more likely to have accurate hiv knowledge, accurate condom knowledge, the ability to access srh services, supportive relationships in which srh issues can be discussed, and were more likely to have the intention of delaying sexual intercourse or using condoms. the asset–srh health linkage was stronger for girls than for boys. the findings suggest a potential utility for promoting individual and social assets, such as positive relationships and opportunities, commitments to learning, and social competencies, as a strategy for promoting srh among very young adolescents in a developing country setting. keywords: sexual and reproductive health, adolescents, uganda, developmental assets, developmental relationships peter c. scales, phd (the corresponding author) is a senior fellow at search institute, minneapolis, mn. mail: 940 chestnut ridge road, manchester, mo 63021. email: scalespc@search-institute.org maura shramko, mpp is a doctoral candidate at the university of arizona in the department of family studies and human development, tucson, az, and at the time of writing was a research associate at search institute, minneapolis, mn. e-mail: mshramko@email.arizona.edu kim ashburn, phd is a senior research officer at the institute for reproductive health, georgetown university, washington, dc. e-mail: kaa22@georgetown.edu mailto:scalespc@search-institute.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 46 early adolescence, from ages 10 to 14, is a critical transition period in young people’s lives. during this period, the influence of broader ecological contexts (e.g., family, schools, neighborhoods) can lessen or heighten exposure to risk-taking behavior, and interventions that strengthen both individual and social assets in those contexts can be especially effective. yet, the age group is “relatively neglected,” overlooked by many international adolescent health programs (igras, macieira, murphy, & lundgren, 2014; world health organization, 2010). the evidence base for supporting adolescent sexual and reproductive health (srh) programs internationally tends to focus on 15to 19-year-olds, and narrowly on standard demographic srh data, or family planning services (chong, hallman, & brady, 2006; save the children and women’s refugee commission, 2012; sommer, 2011; who, 2010). many of these previous studies fail to capture factors in the wider context of adolescents’ lives, such as gender norms and family support, that also influence srh and behavior, particularly among very young adolescents, aged 10 to 14. there is little research that explores very young adolescents’ knowledge and awareness of their physical changes during puberty, their rights and responsibilities, or the effect of gender norms. even less focus is given to their self-efficacy, commitment to learning, social competencies, and other developmental assets, or the relationship of those assets to their srh. in the context of hiv, unwanted pregnancy, and other risks to srh, it is coming to be recognized that a broader context that names “social” and “human” assets (e.g., social networks, trusting relationships, self-esteem, control over decisions) is important in addressing srh challenges (amin et al., 2013; amin & chandra-mouli, 2014; blum, astone, decker, & chandra-mouli, 2014; erulkar, 2014; svanemyr, amin, robles, & green, 2015). thus, particularly in lowerand middle-income countries, research on adolescent srh is urgently needed that further clarifies the broader developmental contexts young adolescents experience, and which help shape their srh outcomes. research that is more ecologically oriented can broaden potentially valid intervention targets and so increase program effectiveness. present investigation the current study addresses these gaps by examining the internal strengths and ecological contexts of support that very young adolescents experience in northern uganda, and how these are related to srh variables. by examining the role of social contexts, the study also brings to attention gender-based differences in social norms (e.g., acceptance of violence against women) that are critical environmental influences on the srh decisions young people make. we hypothesized that youth with higher levels of internal strengths and ecological supports (developmental assets, defined further below), would report better srh outcomes. by accenting broader social contexts and gender issues, this study is relevant to adolescent srh in developing countries in general, and for sub-saharan africa and uganda in particular. throughout sub-saharan africa, girls face disproportionate srh risks relative to boys, including gender disparities in hiv/aids prevalence, girls being more likely to engage in high-risk sex (having had sex before age 15, or multiple partners, or last partner was casual), and the interconnected issues of child marriage and childbearing. at the same time, girls in sub-saharan africa, and younger girls especially, have fewer social assets than boys (reliable peer networks, safe spaces in the community to gather and meet friends, and access to media and messaging). these lower levels of social capital appear to be linked to risky sex, forced sex, and lower levels of hiv prevention (amin et al., 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 47 nearly half of uganda’s population is under 15, and nearly one-quarter (23%) of young females have their first intercourse by age 15 (uganda ministry of health, 2004). although statistics are not available for ages 10 to14, hiv/aids among women aged 15 to 29 is the leading cause of death in sub-saharan africa, accounting for 58% of all deaths in that age group (lloyd, 2006). in uganda, only 19% of females aged 15 to19, and 42% of males in that age group report using any form of modern contraception, including condoms, regardless of whether the intercourse takes places inside or outside or marriage. one result of this pattern is that young women are four times more likely than young men to be infected with hiv (croce-galis, 2005). social norms in uganda also continue to perpetuate genderbased violence against women, which exacerbates and contributes to the other risks to young women’s srh in uganda (mulumba, 2011; naker, 2005). investigating how individual and social assets may promote better srh outcomes is potentially significant for promoting positive youth development and gender equality, both in uganda and elsewhere. theoretical and research background on developmental assets in this study, we use developmental assets as a measure of individual and social assets. the assets framework is situated within the broader field of positive youth development (pyd), that is defined by an ecological (not only intra-individual) perspective (e.g., bronfenbrenner & morris, 1998), and by focusing on the strengths in youths’ lives (not only on their deficits) (e.g., damon, 2004; lerner, brentano, dowling, &anderson, 2002). within pyd, a number of frameworks have gained both scholarly and applied traction in recent years, naming and measuring elements of person and context that promote positive growth. these include the risk and protective factors approach (catalano, berglund, ryan, lonczak, & hawkins, 2004); the 5 cs — confidence, competence, character, caring, and connection (pittman, irby, & ferber, 2001; which lerner et al., 2005, defined as leading to a sixth c, contribution); the five “promises” of the america’s promise alliance (2006); the personal and social assets framework of the national research council (eccles & gootman, 2002); and the developmental assets framework of search institute (benson, leffert, scales, & blyth, 1998). the assets framework has become the most frequently-cited pyd approach in the literature and has been used in research, program development, and community mobilization in at least 60 countries worldwide (benson, scales, & syvertsen, 2011). broadly, the assets encompass developmental relationships, opportunities, values, skills, and self-perceptions that research shows are strongly related to children’s and youths’ well-being, including school grades, positive emotions, and levels of purpose, violence, and civic engagement (benson et al., 1998; see also benson, scales, hamilton, & sesma, 2006; pekel, roehlkepartain, syvertsen, & scales, 2015; scales, benson, leffert, & blyth, 2000). research with youth and young adults from developing and conflict or post-conflict countries, such as a usaid-funded study in bangladesh, honduras, jordan, and rwanda (scales, roehlkepartain, & fraher, 2012), has found that higher levels of developmental assets are associated with better outcomes in the areas of workforce development, education, health (including accurate hiv knowledge), conflict mitigation, and civic engagement. the effect sizes of these associations are substantial, ranging from medium to high. similar results have been found by other researchers utilizing different pyd measures similar to the developmental assets. for example, the more protective factors youth have, such as bonding to school, the better they are in virtually all outcomes studied (catalano et al., 2004). similarly, america’s promise alliance (2006) reports that the higher young people score on measures of five asset-like variables (the five promises), such as having caring international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 48 adults and opportunities to make a difference, the more positive their academic, psychological, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes. social assets include the areas of support, empowerment, boundaries & expectations, and constructive use of time; individual assets encompass commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity, as shown in table 1. the assets framework captures the individual level as well as the broader ecological, relational contexts of young people’s lives (e.g., social or peers, family, school, community). this conceptualization allows for a holistic understanding of child and youth well-being, and is unique in its comprehensiveness. in a review of 244 studies of adolescent srh in developing countries, mmari and sabherwal (2013) found that most risk and protective factors studied were focused on the individual, and that only in the last 10 years have family influences been emphasized as well. those researchers concluded that the school, community, and neighborhood level has largely been ignored in such studies, a conclusion echoed by amin et al. (2013). the assets framework used in the current study measures developmental relationships and opportunities at the school, community, and neighborhood level that have been overlooked in previous international srh research, as well as the individual and family variables more commonly included. thus, it is conceptually more wide-ranging and has more relevance to broader evidence-based positive youth development than any other approach to studying adolescent srh in developing countries. previous research with u.s. samples of adolescents aged 12 to 18 has yielded two key findings relevant to the current study. first, the more developmental assets youth have, the less likely they are to engage in sexual intercourse, or to do so without contraception (benson, scales, roehlkepartain, & leffert, 2011). second, specific assets help promote positive adolescent srh outcomes. for example, three assets — restraint, positive peer influence, and time at home — predict 19% of adolescent sexual intercourse (leffert et al., 1998). kirby, laris, and rolleri (2007) undertook a rigorous review of 83 studies of curriculum-based sex and hiv education programs using quasi-experimental or experimental designs. their review included 18 studies from developing countries (including kenya, namibia, south africa, tanzania, and zambia), with the curricula focusing on individual assets such as planning and decision making, and resistance skills. two-thirds of programs reviewed had strong effects on preventing high-risk sexual behavior or promoting hiv and pregnancy prevention among youth (kirby et al., 2007). yet, the linkages of broader developmental assets and srh outcomes for young adolescents have not been well-explored in non-u.s. samples. for example, a save the children girls’ empowerment program for young rural girls in bangladesh was found to increase developmental assets by an average of 22% across two years of program cohorts (scales et al., 2013). however, the program did not include other outcome measures to link with the change in assets. in contrast, the research results we report here serve to: (a) identify developmental assets that can be used to evaluate adolescent health programs, and that may have special relevance for reducing gender disparities in srh in developing countries; and (b) provide program and policy implications for improving the well-being of young people, such as providing greater social support for both boys and girls. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 49 method the study used a cross-sectional design to measure the relation of developmental assets to adolescent srh, consisting of a one-time administration of a 30–45 minute survey, which contained questions on developmental assets and adolescent srh attitudes and behaviors. the survey was given to girls and boys aged 10 to14 years in gulu district in the northern region of uganda. the region was selected because of the ongoing activities of the research team and in-country partners in this area. approval was received from the office of the district education officer, municipal education officer, and the uganda national council for science and technology institutional review board (irb). a smaller pilot study of 128 youths in the same age group was undertaken to validate the instrument in this population and test survey administration procedures. interviewers (12 male and 12 female) were from northern uganda. all were fluent in english and luo, and had extensive knowledge of the social, cultural, and political context in the region. the interviewers also had particular expertise in working with very young adolescents, as well as training in social work, counseling, and psychology. all interviewers received instruction by trained research staff in research ethics, protecting human subjects, and child protection, as well as study objectives, the data collection instrument, and administration procedures. the team worked with bilingual interviewers (english and luo) to translate the search institute’s developmental assets profile (dap) survey. a bilingual luo language expert in uganda who did not participate in the original english to luo translation prepared a back translation. final versions of all tools, in english and in luo, received irb approval before final study implementation. sample recruitment gulu district education officials provided a list of primary and secondary schools, which were the sampling frame for selection of schools and students for inclusion in the survey. schools were stratified by type of school, primary and secondary, and rural and semiurban location. within each stratum, schools were randomly selected to obtain a sample representative of the student population. interviewers then contacted the school principals to explain the purpose of the study and to request permission to recruit students. within each selected school, individual classrooms containing students in the desired age group were systematically selected. study interviewers visited the selected classrooms to explain the study and invite students to participate. students were given participation cards that allowed them to indicate whether they were interested in participating by circling “yes” or “no”. interviewers left the classroom while students completed the participation cards to minimize any pressure to participate the students may have felt. all participation cards were collected by the teacher. by using the cards neither the teacher nor other students knew who wished to participate and who did not. those students who expressed an interest in participating provided informed consent to the interviewer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 50 all students in the selected classrooms who met eligibility criteria were selected until the desired sample size of about 1,000 students was achieved.1 in collaboration with school administration and teachers, informational events for parents were organized, and all parents of students in selected classrooms were invited. the parent events provided oral and written explanation of the study — its purpose, risks, and benefits. after participation in the event, parents were asked to indicate via consent form whether they would allow their child to participate. only students whose parents so consented were invited to participate. no youth declined participation, nor did any parents. however, a small number of parents (fewer than 10%) did not return signed consent forms by the deadline, and as a result those few youth did not participate. all the students appeared keenly interested and excited to participate in the survey. it is difficult to say whether any student felt pressure, perhaps from their peers, to join the study, but the research team was very careful to emphasize that students were free to decline participation and that there would be no negative consequences for doing so. sample characteristics a total of 941 girls and boys aged 10 to 14 were administered the luo dap and srh items. no surveys were lost due to data cleaning. the young adolescents came from 14 primary and secondary schools in northern uganda. the final sample included 12% age 10, 15% age 11, 20% age 12, 29% age 13, and 24% age 14. by grades, 84% were in primary school, and 16% in secondary. the sample comprised 52% females and 48% males. a majority reported their religion as catholic (69%), and the great majority reported their tribe as acholi (90%). a substantial majority of the children’s families were struggling financially. more than a third of these 10to14-year-old youth (36%) reported that their families had difficulty affording even basic necessities, and another 40% said that they could manage the necessities but no more. about 20% said that their families could sometimes afford to make special purchases, while just 3% said that they could buy whatever they wished. families in the northern region of uganda are primarily of the acholi ethnic group. traditionally farmers and livestock herders, acholi families live in compounds composed of small homes housing parents and immediate family members, sons and their wives, grandparents and aunts and uncles, children and grandchildren. few in rural areas have formal employment. during the protracted 23-year civil war ending in 2008, communities in the region were heavily affected by violence and unrest. nearly 2 million people were displaced into camps during the height of the conflict, including about 90% of the acholi people (gelsdorf, maxwell, & mazurana, 2012). the war deeply affected social relationships, leaving many without the support of parents or elders to guide or provide for them. this likely has an effect on young parents who have limited role models for parenting young children. according to one report citing analysis of the uganda demographic and health survey (udhs) 2010 data, “youth in the north are the poorest in the country with the lowest rates of education; the highest student-to-teacher ratios; the worst access to schools; the 1 for 80% power with an alpha of .05 and an estimated effect size of .20, a total sample size of 788 was needed (per calculators at www.danielsoper.com/statcalc3/calc) if we wanted to compare two groups (by asset level, boys with girls, etc.). we then also added margin for loss of surveys due to data cleaning over incomplete surveys, suspicious response patterns, and so forth, a concern that was especially key given the young age of the participants. http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc3/calc international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 51 lowest percentages in wage employment; and the lowest rates of skills training” (international youth foundation, 2011, p. 52). approximately 33% of households are headed by females in the northern region of uganda. measures the measure of developmental assets was search institute’s developmental assets profile (dap) survey. the dap is a 58-item survey in which youths report their experience of individual and social assets across the multiple ecological contexts of their lives. the survey was originally designed for young people aged 11 to 18. it has been administered to more than 600,000 youths and young adults in the united states and internationally since its development in 2004. all dap items are answered on the following scale: not at all or rarely (0 points), somewhat or sometimes (1 point), very or often (2 points), extremely or almost always (3 points). each scale can thus have a mean ranging from 0 to 3, and scale scores from 0 to 30 are obtained by then multiplying the mean score by 10. the total dap score is the total level of assets experienced by young people, encompassing both the individual and social assets. scores range from 0 to 60 and are derived by adding the score for individual assets (0–30) to the score for social or ecological assets (0–30). the total dap score is the most widely used measure of individual and social assets in the world, and has been found to be reliable and valid among both american youth (search institute, 2005), and among samples of youth from more than two dozen other countries in north america, south america, europe, africa, the middle east, and asia (scales, 2011; scales et al., 2013; scales et al., 2012). in the current study, the total dap score had an alpha reliability of 0.94. twelve of the 15 subscales had alphas ≥ 0.70. only the total dap score was used in the current analysis. for some analyses, youths are divided into four levels signifying better or worse experience of developmental assets. youths with scores from 0 to 29 are considered to be very vulnerable, from 30 to 41 vulnerable, from 42 to 51 adequate, and from 52 to 60 good. measures of adolescent srh included constructs such as knowledge of puberty, pregnancy risk, and hiv; communication with parents and other trusted adults, peers, and siblings about puberty and physical changes during adolescence, and about hiv and other sexually transmitted infections; health care access; and puberty-related gender norms. measures were drawn from (a) previous institute for reproductive health (irh) measures used in uganda; (b) previous measures developed for a usaid-funded study of developmental assets among youths and young adults in bangladesh, honduras, jordan, and rwanda (scales et al., 2012); and (c) measures created for this study. the srh measures were either single-item scales, or were intended to be indexes rather than unidimensional scales; thus, internal consistency reliability is not a meaningful indication of their quality (see scales et al., 2008 for more). table 1 provides sample items from the dap and srh measures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 52 table 1 sample items by scale scale sample item developmental assets profile (dap)a support i seek advice from my parents; i have a family that gives me love and support. empowerment i feel valued and appreciated by others; i am given useful roles and responsibilities. boundaries & expectations i have adults who are good role models for me; i have a family that knows where i am and what i am doing. constructive use of time i am involved in creative things such as music, theater, or art; i am spending quality time at home with my parents commitment to learning i enjoy reading or being read to; i have teachers who urge me to develop and achieve. positive values i am developing respect for other people; i tell the truth even when it is not easy. social competencies i am sensitive to the needs and feelings of others; i plan ahead and make good choices. positive identity i feel in control of my life and future; i am developing a sense of purpose in my life. srh measuresb accurate knowledge about puberty boys have their first ejaculation between the ages of 10 and 14. accurate knowledge about pregnancy risk can a boy get a girl pregnant on any day of her menstrual cycle? accurate knowledge of hiv risk can people get hiv/aids from mosquito bites? condom exposure and knowledge agree or disagree: a condom can prevent pregnancy. ability to access srh services i know where to go to get an hiv test. supportive relationships: girls only in the last 3 months, have you talked to anyone about how to take care of yourself during your period? supportive relationships: boys only during the last 3 months, have you talked to someone about how to take care of yourself once you start having wet dreams? equitable gender attitudes it is equally important for girls to go to school as it is for boys. intended sexual behavior if you ever have sex before marriage, would you use a condom? aanswered on 4-point response scale: not at all or rarely, somewhat or sometimes, very or often, extremely or almost always bmost answered on a strongly agree-strongly disagree scale. some yes-no. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 53 results extent of experiencing developmental assets figure 1 shows that a majority of youth in this sample (61%) reported “adequate” or “good” levels of developmental assets. nevertheless, the mean total dap was just 44.43 out of a possible 60, interpreted as barely “adequate.” means for the other scales (not shown) also suggest that these ugandan youth have a barely acceptable level of developmental relationships, opportunities, and internal strengths in their lives, with higher levels in their families and schools, and in their positive attitudes about learning. figure 1. percentage of northern uganda young adolescents (10–14 year olds), by total dap score quartile, n = 941. extent of experiencing concurrent sexual and reproductive health outcomes in terms of pubertal development, this sample was in the early stages. just 33% of girls said they had had their first period, and only 20% of boys had had a nocturnal emission or wet dream. a slight majority of the girls, 55%, said they could manage the issues around having their periods, but only 37% of boys who had had wet dreams said they understood what was happening. nearly one in five girls who had had their period (19%) said they had missed three or more days of school as a result. most of these youths did not talk with anyone about these experiences. for the srh indicators, binary scoring (a youth “has” or “does not have” the outcome) was used instead of continuous scoring (means) to report the prevalence of these indicators. binary scoring was used for two reasons. first, the multi-item srh measures were not intended to function as scales, but as indices. means for groups of items that are not meant to be scales do not have the same meaning as measures of central tendency derived from groups of items that do have adequate internal consistency and “hang together” as scales. also, some of the srh measures were single items only, whose means would not then be based on as much information as the means from multi-item measures. second, differing response options were used for different measures, both multi-item and single item measures. thus, means on the raw responses could not properly be compared with each other. standardized means were used in some analyses, such as analyses of variance, to enable comparing results on measures with differing response options. but standardized means, by 7% 33% 36% 25% very vulnerable vulnerable adequate good international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 54 definition having a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1, cannot communicate the prevalence of an indicator in units that are meaningful for that indicator. for these reasons, binary scoring was used. the cutoffs to determine whether a youth had or did not have a sr indicator were based on scoring algorithms developed by search institute. in general, these cutoffs require a response on any response scale that is equivalent to averaging an “agree” on a 4-point “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” scale, across the items that make up that measure. the validity of this approach has long been demonstrated, as these cutoff levels have been shown to significantly differentiate levels of youth well-being on numerous academic, socialemotional, psychological, and behavioral outcomes, across widely diverse samples (benson, scales, & syvertsen, 2011; scales et al., 2008). table 2 shows the percentage of the sample that met the criteria for having the srh outcomes. of eight key srh outcomes, young adolescents in this sample did not meet criterion levels for having two of them (accurate knowledge about pregnancy risk, and supportive relationships for both girls and boys). moreover, only small to moderate majorities (57%–65%) meeting criterion levels were observed for five other outcomes (equitable gender attitudes, accurate knowledge about puberty, ability to access srh services, condom exposure and knowledge, and intended sexual behavior). for the remaining srh outcome, knowledge of hiv risk, 73% met the criterion. it is worth noting that 77% of the participants state that they will use a condom if they do have sex before marriage. this figure can be interpreted both positively, and with some concern. on the one hand, three in four of these very young adolescents say they intend to take a major step toward hiv prevention, by using a condom. on the other hand, nearly one in four did not express this intention, which suggests there is still work to do to increase the intended use of condoms and lower the risk of hiv infection. table 2 also shows the frequency of these outcomes by gender. girls were better off than boys on most of the outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 www.search-institute.org table 2 percentage of northern uganda young adolescents with srh outcomes, total and by gender srh outcome criteria for outcome percent full sample, n=941 girls, n=487 boys, n=454 accurate knowledge about puberty correctly answers three of four knowledge questions 62 72 51 accurate knowledge about pregnancy risk correctly answers three of four knowledge questions 47 51 33 accurate knowledge of hiv risk answers false that hiv can be transmitted by mosquito bite 73 76 70 condom exposure and knowledge answers true to condom can prevent pregnancy, and can prevent hiv 65 62 68 ability to access srh services answers four of five questions in the direction of agreeing they can access various srh services 63 67 60 supportive relationships talks with adults and friends about changes in adolescence, feelings, and romantic relationships 24 24 12 equitable gender attitudes answers five of six attitude questions in the direction of supporting equality between males and females 57 65 49 intended sexual behavior expects to delay sex until marriage, and to use a condom if having sex before marriage 58 63 52 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 www.search-institute.org association between developmental assets and srh measures due to limited empirical evidence linking personal and social assets with srh outcomes for very young adolescents, we first looked at the correlations between the srh outcomes and developmental assets, then conducted analyses of variance, and logistic regressions. all analyses converged on similar results, and so we report here only the logistic regressions. level of assets (the two highest levels, adequate and good) were used to predict having the srh outcomes. the results in table 3 show the odds of youth at the adequate or good level of assets having the srh outcomes, as compared to youth at the very vulnerable or vulnerable levels (column 2), and the odds of youth at the good level having the outcomes, as compared to all other youth (column 3).b these results suggest considerable support for our hypothesis. specifically, youth at the two highest asset levels are significantly more likely than youth at the lowest two levels to have three of the outcomes (accurate hiv knowledge, access to srh services, and intended sexual behavior). in addition, youth at the highest asset level, good, are significantly more likely than youth at all three of the other asset levels to have four of the outcomes (accurate hiv knowledge, accurate condom knowledge, supportive relationships for girls and boys, and intended sexual behavior). the practical meaning of the results is more evident in these logistic regressions than in other kinds of analyses. for example, boys at the good assets level have twice the odds of having supportive relationships as all other boys (expb of 2.02), and youth at least at the adequate level of assets are 87% more likely (expb of 1.87) to have accurate knowledge about hiv, and 98% more likely (expb of 1.98) to have the intention to delay sex until marriage or to use a condom. such differences can be expected to give rise to corresponding differences in the sexual and reproductive health of these adolescents. additional analyses (available from the authors) showed that the assets–srh linkage was stronger and more pervasive for girls. for example, of 38 significant correlations between the eight asset categories and eight srh outcomes, 14 were significant for both males and females, but 16 were significant for girls only (especially puberty knowledge, and confidence in accessing srh services), compared with 8 significant for boys only. commitment to learning and social competencies were each significantly correlated with 7 of the 8 srh outcomes. b these are the unadjusted odds, not accounting for variables such as gender or age within the 10to 14-year-old range. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 57 table 3 odds of uganda 10to 14-year-olds having sexual and reproductive health outcomes at adequate or thriving levels of developmental assets assets level: expb (p)a adequate-thriving b thrivingc accurate knowledge about puberty 1.30 (.057ns) 1.24 (.180ns) accurate knowledge about pregnancy risk 0.93 (.574ns) 1.01 (.938ns) accurate knowledge of hiv 1.71 (.000) 1.87 (.001) condom knowledge 1.18 (.293ns) 1.57 (.012) ability to access srh services 1.34 (.035) 1.27 (.136ns) supportive relationships: girls (n=118 have the outcome, versus 369 do not) boys (n=56 have the outcome, versus 398 do not) 1.41 (.125ns) 1.71 (.081ns) 1.78 (.013) 2.02 (.019) equitable gender attitudes 0.81 (.121ns) 0.78 (.106ns) intended sexual behavior 1.98 (.000) 1.75 (.000) aexpb expresses the odds of youth having the outcome if they have either an adequate or thriving level of assets, or a thriving level. for example, youth with either an adequate or thriving level of assets are 71% (an expb of 1.71) more likely than other youth to have accurate hiv knowledge, and youth at the thriving level are 87% more likely (expb of 1.87) to have accurate hiv knowledge than all other youth. bn=510 at the combined adequate + thriving levels, versus 373 combined challenged + vulnerable. cn=232 at the thriving level, versus 711 combined at the adequate, vulnerable, and challenged levels. limitations amin et al. (2013) note that the most vulnerable ugandan girls typically are out of school and married. our study involved unmarried girls in school, and so did not represent the most vulnerable youth. this sample’s girls were relatively advantaged by being unmarried and in school, even though their gender alone in a developing country puts them in a disadvantaged class. our participant age range of 10 to 14 covers uganda grades p5 to p7. in p5, 63% of girls are enrolled in school, but by p7, the number has dropped to just 32% (unicef uganda, 2015). nevertheless, the relation of higher asset level to better concurrent srh speaks to the potential value of building youths’ developmental assets in reducing the vulnerability of young girls in uganda, especially those girls who have been forced to marry early and leave school. in addition, we measured concurrent and not prospective outcomes. this study’s findings must be replicated in a longitudinal study for cause–effect conclusions to be drawn. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 58 however, they also are consistent with findings from an earlier study of developmental assets and youth well-being in developing or post-conflict countries. in that study, higher levels of assets (measured using the dap survey used in the current study) were significantly correlated with various concurrent workforce development, education, health, violence prevention, and civic development outcomes among more than 3,000 older youths and young adults in bangladesh, honduras, jordan, and rwanda (scales et al., 2012). conclusion this study looked at the link between developmental assets — developmental relationships, opportunities, values, skills, and self-perceptions of youth — and sexual and reproductive health outcomes among very young adolescents in uganda. we hypothesized that higher levels of developmental assets would be linked with better concurrent srh outcomes. the majority of the findings supported our hypothesis. we found that most youth did not meet or barely met cutoffs for having srh outcomes. however, youth with higher levels of developmental relationships, opportunities, and internal strengths had more accurate knowledge about condoms, more accurate knowledge about hiv risk, more perceived ability to access srh services, more supportive relationships in which they could talk about feelings and what happens during puberty, and lower intentions to engage in risky sexual behavior. in addition, girls were more likely than boys to have most of the srh outcomes, with the exception of accurate knowledge of and exposure to condoms, where boys were slightly ahead. these findings highlight the need to ensure programs are sensitive to the differential vulnerabilities of girls versus boys. for example, even in our relatively advantaged sample, in which both the girls and boys were in school, boys had more limited social support for talking about srh issues, a difference that should be addressed. promotion of developmental assets may be especially important to girls, being significantly related to their confidence in accessing srh services, an association not found among the boys. other strategies for interventions are also suggested by the data, such as: • working with parents to improve their ability to provide support for their children, and to respect, set, and monitor appropriate boundaries. • providing human rights-based programming that promotes community engagement and encourages youths to become involved in community service and action. • employing activities which provide youths with opportunities to learn and develop new skills. • establishing linkages with caring adults in schools, communities, and other institutions to increase social support for youths. • reinforcing policies that keep boys and especially girls in school, and enable them to learn social skills such as communication and refusal skills, because commitment to learning and social competencies were the most pervasively significant asset categories correlated with srh outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 59 developmental assets level was not linked to more equitable gender attitudes. because the assets tap a variety of social competencies, including skills for avoiding risky situations, and positive values, such as equality and social justice, we anticipated that higher assets level might be linked to more equitable gender attitudes. the mixed results for equitable gender attitudes may be a result of ambiguous gender-related norms in uganda, which do teach youth that girls’ education is important, but still reinforce the idea that violence against girls is acceptable (mulumba, 2011; naker, 2005). gender-based violence is common in northern uganda (uganda bureau of statistics and icf international, 2012). thus, even those very young adolescents with high levels of developmental assets live in a society that exhibits both rigid gender norms in general, and, specifically, socially-sanctioned norms of violence, making those norms especially hard to overcome. even though assets were not correlated with gender attitudes, there was a significant gender gap, with girls 35% more likely to have equitable attitudes than boys. although our data do not speak directly to this point, we concur with igras et al. (2014) and who (2010) that broader contexts beyond the individual are crucial for significant change in gender norms to occur. it might be that even for youths with good levels of social assets from family, school, and community, more explicit discussion in all those contexts about dealing with and changing those negative gender norms will be necessary for transformation of those norms to occur. special attention to helping boys’ attitudes become more equitable is also suggested by our results. our study’s most critical finding was that, for both girls and boys, higher levels of assets were related to greater intentions to abstain from intercourse and to use condoms when engaging in sexual activity. developing valid srh measures for very young adolescents is a challenge. most either are not sexually active or are unwilling to admit being so; further, between ages 10 and 14, there are large variations in the biological and psychological determinants of srh, and in life circumstances affecting srh choices. the fact that higher levels of developmental assets were related to less risky sexual behavior intentions for both girls and boys at this young age suggests both the potential relevance of broader developmental assets to srh programs, and that the assets may be a protective influence for both genders. in addition, higher assets were related to girls’ (but not boys’) greater confidence in accessing srh services that can maintain their well-being. this suggests both that the survey content may have been especially salient to girls, and that building developmental relationships, opportunities, and internal strengths therefore might be a mechanism that helps reduce disparities in srh that disproportionately affect young women in sub-saharan africa. these results from uganda are quite similar to the results of a large u.s. study of middleand high-school students, showing as in our study that higher developmental assets levels were significantly associated with abstinence from sexual intercourse, and with use of contraception among those who did report having intercourse (benson, scales, roehlkepartain, et al., 2011). the cross-cultural similarity of these associations suggests the robust validity of the connection between assets and less risky developmental paths of sexual and reproductive behavior. in the current study, the consistency of results underscores this connection. higher assets levels were significantly correlated with greater knowledge of puberty, pregnancy risk, hiv risk, and confidence accessing srh services. all of these are mechanisms that promote adolescent sexual and reproductive health. moreover, odds ratios showed that these srh differences by asset level were meaningful in terms of effect size. the size of these differences based on developmental assets level can translate into consequential differences in the srh of these young adolescents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 60 thus, with a few exceptions (notably, the mixed findings for equitable gender attitudes, which can largely be explained by strong gender-linked norms in uganda), the majority of our findings suggest a potential utility for promoting developmental relationships and opportunities for youth. the results also suggest the value of promoting positive commitments to learning and a variety of social competencies and values as an additional strategy for improving srh among young adolescents in a developing country setting. the robustness of these findings in cross-sectional correlational research suggests a likelihood of observing the same link with longitudinal research designs. usaid’s youth development policy (u.s. agency for international development, 2012), in common with the u.k.’s department of foreign and international development, who, and the united nations population fund, calls for such investment in building youth’s developmental assets — their developmental relationships and opportunities, and their internal values, skills, and selfperceptions — to be part of a broad strategy for promoting positive youth development in developing countries. such a strategy could address a range of specific desired outcomes, in srh and other domains. the current study’s results offer additional evidence for the potential utility of such policies for promoting and enhancing young people’s well-being worldwide. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 61 references america’s promise alliance. 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(2008). promoting equal developmental opportunity and outcomes among america’s children and youth: results from the national promises study. journal of primary prevention, 29 (2), 121–144. scales, p. c., roehlkepartain, e. c., & fraher, k. (2012). do developmental assets make a difference in majority-world contexts? a preliminary study of the relationships between developmental assets and international development priorities [final report to united states agency for international development and education development center]. minneapolis, mn: search institute. search institute. (2005). developmental assets profile: user manual. minneapolis, mn: author. sommer, m. (2011) an overlooked priority: puberty in sub-saharan africa. american journal of public health, 101(6), 979–981. doi:10.2105/ajph.2010.300092 svanemyr, j., amin, a., robles, o. j., & greene, m. e. (2015). creating an enabling environment for adolescent sexual and reproductive health: a framework for promising approaches. journal of adolescent health, 56, s7–s14. uganda bureau of statistics (ubos) and icf international inc. (2012). uganda demographic and health survey 2011. kampala, uganda: ubos and calverton, md: icf international. uganda ministry of health. (2004). national adolescent health policy in uganda. kampala, uganda: ministry of health, reproductive health division. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12187-011-9112-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2010.300092 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 45–64 64 unicef uganda. (2015). situation analysis of children in uganda 2015. kampala, uganda: ministry of gender, labour, and social development, and unicef uganda. u.s. agency for international development. (2012). youth in development: realizing the demographic opportunity. washington, dc: usaid. world health organization. (2010). the sexual and reproductive health of young adolescents in developing countries: reviewing the evidence, identifying research gaps, and moving the agenda. report of a who technical consultation, geneva, november 4-5, 2010. geneva, switzerland. developmental assets and sexual and reproductive health among 10to 14-year-olds in northern uganda peter c. scales, maura shramko, and kim ashburn present investigation theoretical and research background on developmental assets method sample recruitment sample characteristics measures results extent of experiencing developmental assets extent of experiencing concurrent sexual and reproductive health outcomes association between developmental assets and srh measures limitations conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 778–781 book review quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges (2014) roy i. brown and rhonda m. faragher, editors reviewed by james cairns james cairns, m.a., is a researcher and counsellor who is committed to providing opportunities for marginalized voices to share their experiences. e-mail: jcairns@uvic.ca in quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges, editors roy i. brown and rhonda m. faragher (2014), focus on what they characterize as the emerging field of quality of life (qol) research that has been developing within studies focusing on intellectual and developmental disabilities (i&dd). brown and faragher show that the research enhances our understanding of qol and family quality of life (fqol), and helps us to see that we can utilize this information in the development of policies and practices that align with the principles of qol to enhance the lives of not only those individuals with a disability, but of people in general. they hope to provide both a reorientation of the ways in which we approach life’s challenging problems and demands, and a framework for dealing with these, with a particular focus on families with members who have disabilities, their helpers, and their service providers. mailto:james%20cairns%20%3cjcairns@uvic.ca%3e international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 778–781 779 this engrossing volume contains over 300 pages and consists of five sections and 17 chapters (not including a final section of acknowledgements) on the broad topic of qol and intellectual disability. section one provides theoretical perspectives on qol. section two offers an overview of how to apply this body of theory within educational settings. section three focuses on the topic of families and qol. section four invites the reader to discover other social contexts in which to apply knowledge about qol. section five ends the text with two chapters focusing on conclusions drawn from the assembled new knowledge. the theoretical overview provided in section one of the book provides the reader with an important introduction both to the history of qol and fqol, and to their relationship to the field of i&dd. this section helps to acknowledge how much the field of disability care has changed throughout the years. we have come a long way from the old practice of institutionalizing individuals with a disability, to more modern approaches that aim to create accessible opportunities for such individuals within mainstream environments. in this section, the writers do an excellent job of recognizing the positive steps that have been taken; however, they also show that much change is still needed. an important point discussed here is that the life expectancy of persons with i&dd has lengthened considerably (probably due to improvements in care) and that recognizing the improved survival rate of persons with disabilities is vital. the extension of life brings with it numerous impacts for the individuals, their families, and the supports that they require. as the writers in this section point out, a qol focus can have its greatest impact when adopted by the human services organizations that interact with individuals with a disability and their families. a qol focus leads to the organizations working with the families within a supportive framework that does not exclude the family from the treatment process. by way of introduction, many subsequent chapters provide a recap of some of the information about qol and its history that is presented in this first section. since much of my own research and work experience falls within the field of education, i was most interested in reading section two and its focus on the applications of qol in education. the beginning of this section provides a historical overview of qol in the field of education, showing that, unfortunately, not much research on qol has been conducted in this field due to the relative newness of these ideas. it also shows that access to schools for individuals with an intellectual disability has been uneven at best. with the introduction of the un’s convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, however, schools are beginning to make some of the many needed changes. given the relative lack of access to education for persons with disabilities, a strong focus in this section is on the empowering of individuals with a disability to face the challenges that they encounter on a daily basis. the authors call on both parents and teaching staff to view the support of educational opportunities for persons with disabilities not as an additional duty, but as a core part of their responsibilities. section three enters deeply into the discussion of fqol. this section is a significant reminder to families that their qol matters: a good fqol is necessary for building an effective plan of support for their disabled family member. the contributors to this section also show that recognizing the importance of fqol is relevant to human services organizations that need to understand the substantial value that fqol has for the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 778–781 780 effectiveness of their work with individuals with a disability. while the authors in this section of the book recognize that many organizations are beginning to increase the involvement of the whole family in the treatment of disabled family members, evaluations of these inclusive and holistic family-based approaches are unfortunately not provided. as a researcher, and youth and family worker, i found this section to be highly informative both with respect to the work that needs to be done in the education realm and the knowledge that already exists in the disability field. this section highlights the complex conditions and demands that families face, the interventions that are presently being utilized, and the much-needed work that remains to be done. by far the longest part of this book is section four, which covers in its seven chapters a wide range of applications for qol and fqol within different social contexts. depending on the reader’s circumstances, one may find some chapters more applicable to one’s own situation than others. taken as a whole, this section serves as an excellent reminder of the many barriers faced by individuals with a disability, and as a good source of information about what is being done to find multiple ways to overcome these barriers. i will focus here on just two of the chapters, chapter 9: enhancing the quality of life of marginalized populations through employment, and chapter 14: quality of life and older-aged adults, that spoke most directly to my own knowledge and experience. as noted earlier, individuals with an i&dd are experiencing greater life expectancy, and with longer life comes a need to participate more fully in the social world. many of these people are underemployed or unemployed. chapter 9 focuses on this important topic, but also provides techniques for creating inclusive work environments. this chapter also serves as a reminder that employment can lead to a better life and that we all have common ground in this regard. chapter 14 builds on the topic of longer life expectancy, focusing on older adults. this chapter, like the one on employment, does not focus exclusively on individuals with a disability, but affirms the universality of the aging process, that our cognitive abilities will certainly change and may well recede. with that in mind, the chapter underlines the importance of continuing to strive to maintain qol in the face of these challenges. in the conclusion, we are again reminded that there is still much work to be done. the two chapters in this section present areas that need to be further recognized within the framework of qol. these chapters focus on the importance of the individual, of families, and of service organizations, but also examine the significance of their intersections with society, and especially with its laws and policies. also reviewed are the barriers to social and community inclusion that may result from philosophical, economic, and political forces. placing a discussion of these difficulties in the conclusion may seem like a negative way to end a text, but balance is provided with a positive discussion of inspiring ways to promote social and community inclusion. it is important that we recognize that there is still much work to be done, especially with regard to social policy, law, and governance, and the ways in which these can play a part in creating change. as the editors themselves acknowledge, no book can offer an overview of each and every intervention that exists to enhance both individual and family qol. however, this text does succeed in providing us with an overview of a number of different international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 778–781 781 interventions that can be applied to individuals with an i&dd, their families, and beyond. i would have preferred that the book include personal stories from individuals with an i&dd. the work that we do with these individuals is intimate, and while this text, with its heavier focus on quantitative data and opinions of professionals, is informative, it does leave out the personal touch. that said, i believe strongly that roy i. brown and rhonda m. faragher are to be commended for their efforts to offer an encompassing text on the emerging topic of qol and its relationship to individuals with a disability, their families, and the professionals that support them. this book can help contribute towards creating positive changes in today’s society. it is not enough for any of us to focus on meeting only our own needs; we do better collectively when we focus on everyone’s overall quality of life. on that subject, this text is full of important questions, answers, perspectives, interventions, research, and innovations. it is equally suited to readers who jump into a particular chapter of interest and those who read from start to finish. i offer my sincere appreciation not only to the editors, but also to the many contributing authors for their time and efforts in researching this important topic and presenting their findings in a readable fashion. now that we have the text, it is up to all of us to use it as we work together to create changes in each of our environments of influence. reference brown, r. i., & faragher, r. m. (eds.). (2014). quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges. new york, ny: nova science. book review quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges (2014) reviewed by james cairns reference international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646-661 the relevance of non-colorblind talk between white women and non-white children in the united states: a discussion tracy l. robinson-wood abstract: the social construction of race in western, and particularly american, contexts has contributed to white people not having to think about the personal meaning of being white and not needing to understand the relevance of race in the lives of people of color. the implications of this racial dynamic are considered in light of american demographic data documenting that the majority of mothers of black and white biracial children are white women. a number of american national and international research studies and literature reviews from britain, canada, and new zealand that investigate white women’s experiences mothering non-white children are reviewed. the majority of the research on interracial families emphasizes black and white families as they represent the largest racial groups. this demographic trend will frame the current discussion. historical dimensions of race in america are discussed, including the social construction of race, which has implications for the content of racial socialization messages transmitted by white mothers to their non-white children. an overview of cultural forces that contribute to colorblind talk between white mothers and their non-white children is provided. keywords: interracial families; white mothers; biraciality; racial socialization; racism; whiteness tracy l. robinson-wood, ed.d. is a professor in the department of applied psychology, bouvé college of health sciences at northeastern university, 360 huntington ave., boston, massachusetts 02115. e-mail: tr.robinson@neu.edu mailto:tr.robinson@neu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 647 never in the history of the united states have there been so many white women mothering non-white children, through adoption and by birth. black and white biracial children are products of both marital and non-marital unions. since the repeal of miscegenation laws in 1967, black and white marriages have been on the increase in a post-1960s civil rights movement era. nearly two-thirds of black and white marriages are between black men and white women (u.s. census bureau, 2011). between 1990 and 2010, this dyad saw a 132% increase in biracial births. the black woman-white man dyad, a much smaller group, saw a 152% increase in biracial births in the same period (b. hamilton, personal communication, january 11, 2013). as shown in tables 1 and 2, the majority of black and white biracial people have white mothers. table 1 child births to white women and black men 1990 2010 1990-2010 37,661 87,469 132% increase note. data obtained from the division of vital statistics via personal communication from b. hamilton, january 11, 2013. table 2 child births to black women and white men 1990 2010 1990-2010 11,818 29,835 152% increase note. data obtained from the division of vital statistics via personal communication from b. hamilton, january 11, 2013. over nine million people, nearly 3% of the u.s. population, report more than one race (humes, jones, & ramirez, 2011). the largest multiple-race category and the one that increased most between 2000 and 2010, is white and black, with 1.8 million people. between 2000 and 2010, the two or more races population increased 32% total, whereas the u.s. population grew 10% (jones & bullock, 2012). of the nearly 4 million children born in the u.s. each year, 77% were to white women (martin et al., 2012), and most of these were monoracial. in interracial relationships between white and non-white, gendered and racial patterns are seen. biracial black and white children are most likely to have a white mother and a black father. the majority of eurasian children have an asian mother and a white father. among native people, who have high rates of biraciality and multiraciality, in particular with white people, there are similar numbers of white women and native women mothering biracial and multiracial native children (robinson, 2001). latinos (people from latin america and other parts of the latin diaspora), can be of any race and skin color, and are currently 17% of the u.s. population, or 51 million people (ennis, rios-vargas, & albert, 2011). during the 2010 census, more than half (54%) of latinos identified as white. for varying reasons, some latinos racially identify as white on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 648 census form, even though this might not match the way they routinely self-identify in daily life. such complicating factors can make racial meanings difficult to interpret. the united states census contributes to this difficulty by categorizing people from northern africa as white, despite the variety of skin-color hues, from white to dark brown, among people from egypt and other parts of the african continent (hixson, hepler, & kim, 2011). historically, the experience of women mothering children who are phenotypically different from themselves is not new. black women have a long history of raising children with a different skin-color hue. white male slave-owners subjugated black slave women, with whom they had mulatto (black and white) children. black women also functioned as surrogate mothers in their forced roles as caretakers of white people and their children. by reason and motivation, black women have been compelled to examine the implications of race and skin color in their interactions with both white and black children (hurtado, 1989). in america, both prior to and since its inception in 1776, normalcy, privilege, and power have been ascribed to white maleness. in contrast, black women, due to systemic forces of racism, sexism, and classism, continue to be disproportionately represented among those at the bottom of the income and occupational hierarchy. even among highly educated black women, discourses situate black graduate students and faculty as less intellectually competent than white people (robinson-wood et al., in press). race, gender, and class discrimination are interlocking sources of oppression, privileging some while disadvantaging others (landry, 2007); this explicates the chronic economic, educational, physical, and mental health disparities that prevail today among black women. race has grandmaster status and as such, has the power to eclipse achieved identities while imposing a melanin tax on visible black women (robinson-wood, in-press; thomas, 2004). black parents prepare their children to move through a world that is racially unjust and treats black people according to socially-constructed devaluations of non-white skin; the black women and men those children become have acquired survival skills, such as interrogating race and understanding its importance in daily negotiations (rodriguez, mckay, & bannon, 2008). historical and contemporary dimensions of the social construction of race the identity challenges that exist for biracial and multiracial people are rooted in historical conceptions of color; in particular, for black people, any european bloodline was negated due to “the one-drop rule” (gillem, lincoln, & english, 2007). the one-drop rule emerged in the southern united states during slavery and vilified any visible trace of african ancestry. the onedrop rule was traditionally and, in the era of jim crow segregation, legally, understood as disallowing a white identity, regardless of physical appearance, to anyone who had at least 1/32 black ancestry. white people had the most social power and privilege, followed by mixed-race people, who were often light-skinned blacks, while darker-skinned blacks had the least social power and privilege. despite educational and work privileges extended to them, mulattos were considered black due to hypodescent, which refers to the process wherein mixed-raced individuals are assigned to the group with less social status (e.g., the black mother during slavery). these inequities emanated from patriarchy and created division in the black community that exists to this day (robinson-wood, 2013). ironically, between 2000 and 2010, the south, in spite of its history of a defiant stance against the federal order requiring previously segregated public schools to admit black school children, legalized bans against black and white interracial marriage, and the racial terror and violence of the ku klux klan, saw a 49% increase in the population of two or more races (jones & bullock, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 649 racial inequities are experienced in multiple ways. one clear example is demonstrated by goldsmith, hamilton, and darity (2006, 2007), who, after controlling for productivity-linked characteristics, discovered greater gaps in wages between darker-skinned blacks and whites than between lighter-skinned blacks and whites, that is, black people with lighter complexions earned more money than darker-skinned blacks. colorism is an intraracial system of inequality in which the allocation of privileges and disadvantages is based on skin color (hunter, 2002, 2005;wilder & cain, 2011; ward, robinson-wood, & boadi, in press). colorism is a problem that exists today (ward, robinson-wood, & boadi, in press). it refers to internalized bias and favor for a distinct set of phenotypical characteristics that include lighter skin, eurocentric facial features (e.g., aquiline nose, thin lips), and “good” hair texture (e.g., hair that is long and straight or wavy, rather than tightly coiled or kinky). this type of social categorization supports an ideology in which being light is valued over being dark; colorism shapes perceptions of who is attractive, intelligent, and desirable (burton, bonilla-silva, ray, buckelew, & hordge, 2010; hall, 2010). despite declines in the blatancy of jim crow racism, racism is pervasive and continues to exist in covert and sophisticated ways (bobo, 2011; sue, 2010). race correlates with neighborhood type, renter or home ownership status, the home’s worth, the marital status of the adults in the home, infant mortality, longevity, poverty, and incarceration rates (hamilton, goldsmith, & darity, 2009). in 2010, black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated (drake, 2013). compared to the general population and to whites, in particular, black people have lower levels of wealth and higher never-married rates. the poverty rate for black people is nearly three times that of non-hispanic whites, at 27% compared to 9.6% (u.s. census bureau, 2013). poverty rates are 27.2% for native people, 23.5% for latinos, and 10.5% for asians. poverty has far-reaching consequences. social and economic prospects are worse for children who grow up poor. people who are poor experience more chronic health problems, live in crowded conditions, contend with noise, are more likely to be injured on the job, and are more vulnerable to obesity and violence. there is also greater social isolation in high-poverty neighborhoods. people have limited neighborhood services. moreover,, given that class influences the geography and demography of neighborhoods, homogenous social networks perpetuate the recycling of the same information (dominguez & arford, 2010; dominguez & watkins, 2003). when white people voluntarily segregate themselves from blacks, the process is referred to as white habitus. here, white solidarity is promoted, as is people’s positive view of themselves. a consequence is a distorted view of black people and limitations on the development of meaningful cross-cultural relationships between white and black people (bonilla-silva, goar, & embrick, 2006). after controlling for education, tremendous economic discrepancies exist between black and white people, with past and contemporary racism accounting for much of the disparity (darity et al., 2006). while both black and white americans believe in equality, white americans, more than black americans, support the belief that blacks are as well off as whites in terms of jobs, incomes, health care, and schooling (smedley, stith, & nelson, 2003). compared to white people, black and white biracial people tend to be younger, have lower median incomes for men and women, higher poverty rates among children and the elderly, higher never-married international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 650 rates, and less likelihood of home ownership (jones, 2005). thus, the racial and social profiles descriptive of black americans extend to black and white biracial people. in all aspects of society, racism is embedded and has shaped the lives and actions of white men and women (frankenberg, 1993), including the lives and actions of white women who mother black and white biracial children. becoming personally aware of white privilege, and of the subtle and overt ways in which white women in interracial families are affected by racism and whiteness, is work that relies on social networks and sustained connection to others, in particular people of color (britton, 2013; spanierman, todd, & anderson, 2009). when biracial children do not have sustained interaction with healthy communities of color, where the child is provided opportunities to learn accurate information about and practice his or her culture, how are race and ethnicity, as identity components, nurtured and developed? is the white parent aware of the relevance of black culture in the child’s life? racial socialization research has been conducted with a variety of ethnically and racially diverse u.s.born families, including asian, latino, and native american, as well as with immigrant families. the transmission of families’ beliefs, values, and practices to their children are reflected in the native language being spoken, the preparation of native foods, and observation of native traditions (hughes et al., 2006). historically, the majority of racial socialization research has focused on black american families (frabutt, walker, & mackinnon-lewis, 2002; rodriguez et al., 2008). to prepare children to live with cultural pride as well as to live in a world where racial inequity predominates, black parents have long engaged in racial socialization practices. in doing so, they have talked to (i.e., lectured) their children about how to survive and thrive in a society where race matters. such messages are delivered in conversations about the type of clothing to avoid so as not to be seen as unkempt and lazy, stereotypes that have assailed black and other people of color, how to interpret blatant racism so it does not destroy a child’s sense of self-worth, and offering explanations as to why it is important to stay in school so that one can “make something of oneself.” thomas (1999), a black woman, gave an example of racial socialization. her parents told her “she would have to work twice as hard as her white peers to be successful and not to be frustrated by that challenge” (pp. 35–36). black parents deliver humanistic messages along with racial content due to the daunting task among black parents of helping children contend with racial inequality. researchers have found that racial socialization strategies that focus primarily on racial barriers are associated with negative outcomes whereas cultural pride, an aspect of racial socialization, may have a positive effect on children’s behavior (rodriguez et al, 2008). rollins and hunter (2013) employed a quantitative methodology in their analysis of maternal race and racial socialization messages. there were 73 biological mothers of biracial children in their sample, which was taken from a 1991 public-use subsample (wave i) of the longitudinal maryland adolescent development in context study. forty-two percent of mothers identified themselves as black, 40% as white, 11% were asian, 4% were latin, 1.4% were american indian, and 1.4% identified as other. nearly 1,500 families with a 12or 13-year-old child attending public school were in the original sample. rollins and hunter (2013) identified three approaches to racial socialization from their thematic analysis of mothers’ racial socialization messages. these approaches were labeled promotive, protective, and passive. with promotive racial socialization, mothers emphasize equality and encourage a color-blind international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 651 worldview. there is no preparation for or direct teaching about racial discrimination. a protective racial socialization approach prepares children for racial discrimination. children are given a sense of self as a member of a racial group and are taught to stand up for their rights but to be respectful. mothers characterized by a passive racial socialization approach either do nothing to prepare their children for discrimination or did not answer the question posed by the interviewer. racial socialization approaches did not vary by maternal race; however, mothers of black and white biracial children engaged least frequently in silent racial socialization messages. rollins and hunter (2013) concluded that black parents of biracial children may be more aware of the role that skin-color hue plays in society whereas parents of non-black biracial children (e.g., eurasian or latino) may not have encountered negative racial experiences with their child. parents of african descent seemed to have awareness of their children’s racialized experiences, an awareness that may not have been present among parents of racially ambiguous children. these racial differences in awareness may largely be due to the fact that within sociallyconstructed discourses of race in america, whiteness is normative and safe whereas blackness is threatening and non-standard (robinson-wood, 2013). white people tend not to be: (a) watched while shopping; (b) perceived to be a threat or dangerous when walking down a street; (c) concerned, when relocating to a new neighborhood, that neighbors will think of them as bringing the neighborhood down; or (d) worried that people will regard them as lazy, incompetent, or unqualified. these are unearned privileges associated with an immutable characteristic of white skin (mcintosh, 1988). granted, the year of mcintosh’s work is dated but the content of her message is, unfortunately, relevant and timely in the 21st century. the relevance of non-colorblind talk social constructionist theory maintains that society plays a role in the production and perpetuation of understandings about the world (gergen, 1985). racialized discourses are also socially produced (robinson-wood, 2013). weedon (1987) defined discourses “as ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. they constitute the ‘nature’ of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern” (p. 105). because discourses tend to be subtle, yet pervasive, they hold enormous power. people may be unaware of their location within and proximity to discourses. location means “identifying where one resides in this society on a continuum from privilege to oppression in relation to various contextual aspects of the self, such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and class status” (vasquez & magraw, 2005, pp. 66–67). for example, verbian (2006), in her examination of racialized discourses in feminist and multicultural literature teaching and learning, acknowledged the importance of canadian research that explores the lived experiences of white women who, like she, are mothers to black and white biracial children. referencing the research literature, she acknowledged that white birth mothers of black and white biracial children are subjected to familial discourses about their sexuality and maternal competence and are publicly scrutinized in ways that white women within monoracial heterosexual unions are not. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 652 several dynamics tend to favor the use of non-colorblind talk by white women: • first, interrogating blackness and whiteness against the backdrop of a racially stratified society, as opposed to colorblindness, may help white mothers assist their children with negotiating race (robinson-wood, 2011; twine, 2010a). according to neville, spanierman, and doan (2006), colorblindness is defined as the “denial, distortion, and/or minimization of race and racism” (p. 276), and is a dominant racially-based framework used to justify and explain away racial inequalities in the united states. the view that “race should not and does not matter” (neville, lilly, duran, lee, & browne, 2000, p. 60), appears admirable and seems to embrace multiculturalism. however, ignoring race distorts the reality of racism and upholds the status quo. • second, colorblindness appears to protect white people from recognizing and addressing racial inequalities in society, alleviate cognitive dissonance, and encourage inaction, while preserving the privileges that many white people receive from the current system (neville et al., 2000). thus, colorblindness differs vastly from racial literacy, and may keep white mothers from developing the skills that could help their black and white biracial children navigate a world where race and skin color matter. • third, white people have limited understanding about the effects and consequences of race, whiteness, and racism on their lives (bonilla-silva et al., 2006; britton, 2013; pinderhughes, 1989), as well as on the lives of people of color. as a function of growing up in a culture where race tends not to designate whiteness, white women have not been required to interrogate, unpack, and personalize the meaning of whiteness for themselves. • fourth, race tends to be a fragile and fractured topic between black and white people, particularly in the united states, due primarily to the history of legal enslavement of black people by white people, which established a system of white superiority and black inferiority that still manifests today. the fugitive nature of race discourages open talk about race and instead encourages "not seeing" race. • fifth, racial status (racial categorization and designation, typically based on phenotype, over which people do not have control) and racial identity development (one’s cultivated racial awareness and consciousness of colorblindness) are distinct concepts. • finally, ethnically and racially similar groups function as a protective buffer, and include racially diverse, allied kin, and social networks in interracial families where race is a construct in which people are aware of its power to impact one's lived experiences (darity et al, 2006; dominguez & watkins, 2003; twine, 2010a). mothers have considerable influence on children’s expressions of racial identity (miville, constantine, baysden, & so-lloyd, 2005). as such, informed, open, and clear (non-colorblind) dialogue about race and racism between white mothers and their non-white children could foster a child’s grasp of race as a social and personal construct that impacts people’s lives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 653 review of the research on white mothers of biracial children a range of phenotypical expressions exists among biracial children from visibly white, ambiguous, to black. black and white biracial children may present as phenotypically different (e.g., lighter in skin color, hair color, and eye color) from their monoracial black peers (gillem et al., 2007). through interviews, biracial and multiracial adults have described encounters with racism that happened while they were growing up. being asked, “what are you?” was common (miville et al., 2005). among biracial youth in particular, a need exists for dialogue about race (herman, 2004; schwartz, 1998). it is not that biracial and multiracial people in the general population are more dissatisfied, unhappy, or uncomfortable with their racial identity. being mixed-race creates unique challenges (shih & sanchez, 2005). udry, li, and hendrickson-smith (2003), in their analysis of add health data, taken from a large representative national sample in the united states, compared mixed-race adolescents to single-race adolescents. the authors concluded that teens identifying with more than one race were at a higher health and behavior risk when compared with teens identifying with one race. the stress of identity conflict may explain this risk. the racial identity development of biracial youth is more complicated than for monoracial peers. some biracial children are psychologically conflicted about choosing one racial identity over another based on their phenotype, their neighborhood, or, in the case of divorce, the race of their custodial parent (poston, 1990). o’donoghue (2004) observed that the majority of the 11 white women she interviewed from the east and northeast of the united states, including new england, could identify their ethnic lineage but “did not consider it a major factor in their socialization” (p. 74). women had not considered to any great extent how their lineages contributed to their enculturation. white mothers who do not attach importance to their ethnic identity or racial awareness, may not regard race and ethnicity as salient to rearing their mixed-race children. to assess racial identification, brunsma and rockquemore (2001) conducted research with 177 white and black biracial people from two colleges located in a large mid-western city. the majority of respondents (56%), irrespective of skin-color hues, defined themselves as “ambiguous though most people assume i am black.” a majority also considered themselves to have border identities—they understood themselves as neither black nor white but as exclusively biracial, an identity that was not validated by others. most border biracial participants experienced the world as black people not as white people. although more multiracial identities may be available to black and white biracial people (brunsma, 2006; roth, 2005), and may be a function of racial socialization experiences, socially constructed racial meanings appear to be an enduring feature of the united states (omni & winant, 2006). in a later study, rockquemore (2002) conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 16 black and white biracial individuals who were taken from a larger research sample of participants from the american northeast, the south, and the mid-west. she found that more of her biracial interviewees were raised by white women than by black women. the biracial adults who had been raised by white mothers frequently reported being aware of their white parents’ explicit racism and experienced their mothers’ racist views of their black father. rockquemore’s biracial participants also reported experiencing negative interactions with monoracial black people. biracial women were more likely than biracial men to report negative interactions. socially constructed and often negative valuations about skin color, body size, and eye color international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 654 typified the content of these encounters. some biracial women in this study gave evidence that they had internalized negative messages about black people who were generally described as unemployed, ill-mannered, and substance abusers. the implications of this research are that the existence of intimate relationships between black men and white women is not evidence of an evolved racial identity on the part of the latter, nor of distance from dominant racialized discourses (e.g., blacks are lazy and less intellectually capable compared to whites). research on white women mothering non-white children has been conducted in britain, canada, and new zealand. these countries are similar to america concerning the presence of racially and ethnically different people, including a large presence of african people from the african diaspora in canada and britain. colonialism, involving first nation indigenous people, is contained in each country’s narrative, which means power, privilege, and patriarchy are consistent themes, irrespective of the political, historical, and ideological differences across these western bodies. tribal people have undergone ethnic cleansing and trauma; their cultural ways of living, languages, land ownership, and humanity have come under attack. in america, the legacy of colonialism is palpable and prominent, reflecting cultural violence, the highest of poverty rates, genocide, and educational and health-related disparities among first nation indigenous people. twine (2010a) conducted an extensive ethnography of more than 40 white british mothers in relationships with men of african descent. she also interviewed black partners, friends, and extended family members. her work introduced the concept of racial literacy which refers to “discursive, material, and cultural practices in which parents train themselves and their children to recognize, name, challenge, and manage various forms of everyday racism” (p. 8). twine found that white women in interracial families who had racial literacy skills were different from those who did not, with respect to: (a) racial composition of friendship networks as children and adults; (b) informal education from friendship networks and experience in antiracist political groups; (c) exposure to overt racism and immersion in multicultural communities as children; (d) relationships with black women; and (e) the racial consciousness of the children’s black father (p.259). in a different study (twine, 2010b) taken from a subset of another study, twine identified discourses regarding white women who co-exist in relationships with black men as: (a) sexually adventurous; (b) an economic and social asset due largely to the symbolic nature of her white skin; and (c) a cultural threat to the black family. speaking from a british context, britton (2013) discussed the importance of uncovering whiteness in interracial families, given the construction of whiteness as normative and imbued with privilege, while being invisible. by uncovering whiteness, the impact of race and racism for all members of interracial families can be examined and better understood. robinson-wood (2010) conducted 28 semi-structured qualitative interviews with white mothers of biracial children in the united states and in new zealand, and found that in both countries, there were study participants who initiated conversations about race with their children, although such initiation of race discussions was the exception and not the norm. whereas some of the white mothers in the study minimized discussions about race, others avoided the topic. the talks that these white mothers primarily engaged in with their non-white children did not emphasize race but focused on citizenship, success, respectability, coming from a good family, getting a good education, being a good person, and possessing self-worth. the children of these mothers were encouraged to believe that they were just as good as anyone else. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 655 although not the entire sample, there were american and new zealand mothers who took part in this study that reported being silent about race and attributed their silence about race to multiple forces: (a) a desire to protect children from the painful reality of racism; (b) not knowing how to talk about race; (c) waiting for the appropriate time to discuss race; (d) children’s young age (all children in the study were at least five years of age); (e) children’s silence about race, which for some mothers, translated into the insignificance of race as a topic; and, (f) not perceiving race to be a topic that required discussion. a parent’s silence about race and racism will not protect a child from experiencing racism (robinson-wood, 2010). when children’s responses to, or meaning-making from, racial name calling, discourses, or the fact that brown and black people are more likely than white people to serve food in the cafeteria, clean bathrooms, or be incarcerated, are not talked about, children are left vulnerable. they are vulnerable to discovering, perhaps painfully on their own, the structural inequality of race in america. summary america and the world are experiencing a biracial baby boom. although biracial and mixed-race identities have existed in the black community for centuries, for the first time in the history of the united states, white women are mothering the majority of biracial black and white children. in addition, there are increasing numbers of black women mothering children from unions with white men. the largest “two or more races” group noted in the 2010 census consists of white and black biracial people. despite the growing reality of interraciality across gender and race dyads, race and racism continue to structure economic and social opportunities, including quality of medical care, educational access, residential type, longevity, and income. race and racism also impact psychological functioning and explicate the lingering nature of racial inequality between black and white people in america. being mixed-race creates unique challenges (herman, 2004; shih & sanchez, 2005). as well, the racial identity development of biracial people is more complicated than for monoracial youth. children benefit from parents who have racial literacy, shaped through interactions with people of color, and are able to interrogate race against the backdrop of a racially stratified society, particularly as it pertains to their children’s negotiations with contestations of racial identities and position within a race status hierarchy (twine, 2010a). due largely, however, to the social construction of whiteness in america, white people often lack understanding about both the effects and consequences of race and racism on their own lives and on the lives of people of color (pinderhughes, 1989). not surprisingly, lack of insight into race and racist attitudes have been documented among white women, including those in intimate relationships with black men and who mother children conceived from these unions (rockquemore, 2002).intimate relationships with black men do not denote white women’s proximity to or attitudes about racism. moreover, previous research has revealed that race-related dialogue initiated by white mothers of biracial youth is the exception, not the norm (robinsonwood, 2010, 2011). talks have centered primarily on success, respectability, social capital (e.g., coming from a good family), getting a good education, being a good person, and possessing selfworth. these messages are transmitted in black families but for most black parents, racial injustice has been central to racial socialization messages. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 656 conclusion the relevance of white women talking directly and openly about race with their black and white biracial children was discussed in light of the social construction of race in western, and in particular, american contexts, that support white people not having to think about the personal meaning of being white. clearly, the conversation about race has always been important. it is especially important now that, for the first time in the history of america, the majority of black and white biracial people have white mothers. for most white people, including women who are mothering biracial black and white children, not having to interrogate race, not uncovering whiteness, or choosing to racially segregate one’s residential location and interpersonal relationships from black people are consequences of white privilege. that said, black and white biracial children, particularly children who appear visibly black, are vulnerable to experiencing forms of racism similar to their monoracial black peers. children look to their mothers, who, as white women, have had a different set of racial realities in comparison to their children. learning that one’s children are targets of discrimination because of the color of their skin can trigger feelings of powerlessness, sadness, and rage among white mothers. such feelings, however, do not translate into the tools to skillfully converse about racism. research is needed on the impact of whiteness and racism on all family members within interracial families. unpacking whiteness to include white latinas and native women, who are phenotypically white, would allow researchers to investigate the intersections of white skin with ethnicity. not to disentangle race from ethnicity contributes to phenotypically white women being treated as monolithic and ethnically caucasian. in addition, research to ascertain similarities and differences in racial socialization messages transmitted by black women in interracial black and white families, compared to white women in interracial black and white families, would be beneficial. in order to engage in informed, open, and honest talk about race with black and white biracial children, racial literacy is critical for white women. racial literacy is cultivated through interpersonal relationships and psychosocial work with racially different people where racial meanings are explored, experienced, and contested. for most white people, working collaboratively with people of color to discover white privilege and reshape racial identity is work that has not been required given the social construction of whiteness, which seems to coincide with and is in support of colorblind talk and the minimization of race. biracial black and white lives matter. non-colorblind talk between white mothers and their black and white biracial children attests to this realization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646–661 657 references bobo, l. d. 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(2011). teaching and learning color consciousness in black families: exploring family processes and women’s experiences with colorism. journal of family issues, 32, 577–604. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192513x10390858 the relevance of non-colorblind talk between white women and non-white children in the united states: a discussion tracy l. robinson-wood review of the research on white mothers of biracial children summary conclusion references microsoft word 09 should_feminists.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120082 should feminists stop talking about culture in the context of violence against muslim women? the case of “honour killing” sherene h. razack abstract: the violence, scale, and power of anti-muslim narratives circulated on the internet and elsewhere continue to have considerable impact on feminist antiviolence initiatives. i examine contemporary responses to “honour killings” with particular reference to the palestinian, indian, and north american contexts, reflecting on how anti-violence advocates negotiate the terrain of culture in the case of honour killings. i ask whether the focus on culture has an impact on how courts and society view violence committed by muslim men (and sometimes women) against muslim women and girls. i suggest that cultural details contribute little to an enhanced legal understanding of the crime simply because this is not their primary purpose. instead, the cultural details are part of a pedagogy that conveys a message of the racial and cultural superiority of the dominant society and a corresponding inferiority of muslim cultures. we should therefore always talk culture with the greatest of restraint lest the racism that accompanies culture talk inhibit our understanding of the violence and limit our capacity to respond to it. keywords: honour killings, anti-violence initiatives, race, culture sherene h. razack phd is distinguished professor and penny kanner endowed chair at the university of california at los angeles, department of gender studies, box 951504, 1120 rolfe hall, los angeles, ca 90095-1504. email: sherenerazack@ucla.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 32  this article considers the question “should feminists stop talking about culture?” in cases of violence against muslim women. although i have been wary of “culture talk” for some time, and not just in the context of muslim women, the question is particularly pertinent with respect to muslim women in view of the widespread marking of muslim cultures as more patriarchal and violent towards women than other cultures. practices that are associated with some muslim communities, such as forced marriages, honour killing, and compulsory veiling, are often regarded as religious in origin and a feature of muslim life everywhere. the marking of islam and muslims as barbaric has considerable geopolitical resonance, installing a colour line where islam stands as the antonym to western modernity. feminists concerned with violence against women are often divided on the question of what violence has to do with culture. to consider culture is often to fall headlong into the racist argument that muslims are barbaric. on the other hand, it is difficult to avoid culture talk altogether, not only because there is such an appetite for anti-muslim racism but because it is necessary to consider the culturally specific ways in which violence against women occurs if we are to devise effective anti-violence strategies. in what follows, i attempt to thread my way through the culture debates of the past few decades, beginning with my own work to identify where the difficulties lie in talking culture before turning to feminist considerations of honour killings in palestine and india, and finally to canada. the culturalization of violence in looking white people in the eye (1998), i showed that violence against racialized women (including indigenous women) was repeatedly culturalized in the courts and in other contexts: that is, the violence was attributed to the extreme patriarchies of non-european cultures. a focus on culture has the effect of producing white men as better than other men — as less patriarchal, or not patriarchal at all — and obscuring the fact that white women encounter considerable violence from white men. importantly, cultural explanations work to obscure colonialism or white supremacy. racialized women become objects to be saved, typically by white women. as racialized women, our role in this scenario is to assist the state and white anti-violence professionals and activists with understanding our own violent cultures, thus serving a sort of native informant role that is often the only one available to us. even those of us writing about culture from an anti-racist perspective often can only enter the fray as native informants of some kind (razack, 2000, 2001). our native informant role affects how we understand violence in our own communities, leading us to focus on cultural specificities at the expense of other factors. in ongoing work on violence against racialized women, i asked, “what gives narratives of sexual violence against south asian women their power in the west?” and found that the answer was always the same: a full-blown orientalism. south asian feminists were themselves telling a codified story about violence that mimicked the colonial one. that is, we told a story of our tribal, premodern culture full of abusive husbands, fathers, and mothers-in-law as inherently violent and argued that south asian women had to be assisted to live the free, autonomous, lives of our white international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 33  sisters. it seemed that we could find no other frame for our stories of violence. when we tried to tell a more complicated story of violence, we could not easily strip away the allure of exotic details, such as the burning of women with hot oil. such culturally specific details made the harm vivid but provided only part of the story. films about violence against south asian women, for example, often chose the cultural lens, weaving exotic images into a story of culturalized violence and neglecting to consider how racism affected the story of violence. saris blowing in the breeze provided a more memorable image than white men in suits making immigration laws (razack, 2003). in the post 9/11 period, when muslim communities are widely stigmatized and under surveillance, discussions of violence against racialized women are overdetermined by the figure of the muslim, something i wrote about in casting out (2008). i began to see that i had to think more about neoliberal and racial governmentality, tracking how new modes of governance, and the subjectivities they produced and sustained, relied upon the narrative of saving muslim women from their men and communities. muslim women’s stories about violence are getting harder to tell since they give so much grist for the mill of anti-muslim racism and indeed, for anti-muslim wars and military occupations. below i offer two contemporary examples of discussions of violence against racialized women. these examples, from palestine and india, involve racialized groups telling their own stories of violence against women as originating in culture. as will become clear, to culturalize violence against women is to foster a global regulation of racialized societies through the idea that such societies are deeply patriarchal and require the guidance of the west, and sometimes bombs, to enter modernity. the story of the west as civilized versus the east as barbaric travels to nonwestern societies where those who view themselves as more secular and modern than their “tribal” counterparts are able to produce themselves as modern through the bodies of women who encounter patriarchal violence. although these accounts from the east appear to be an internal discussion about violence against women they are in fact transnational discourses, as i show below, that maintain the characterization of the west as civilized and the non-west as barbaric through the idea of muslims as exceptionally violent towards women. attitudes towards honour killing: a middle eastern example in november of 2012, the palestinian rap group dam released a music video on the topic of honour killing (dam, 2012). the video depicts the story of a young woman who is murdered by her brother and father and then buried. as abunimah (2012) reported in the electronic intifada, the video has a specific legal context: in the occupied territories, legal provisions that treated perpetrators of honour crimes leniently had been officially cancelled in 2011; however, dam asserted that the decree imposing the cancellation was not being effectively enforced (para. 3). abunimah stated that between 2004 and 2006 in the occupied territories there were 32 cases of “honour killing”; in 2009, there were 13. abunimah speculated that harsh economic and social conditions contributed to violence against women. dam maintained that they wanted to protest international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 34  lenient laws about honour killing wherever they existed in the arab world, and most of all they wanted to send a message to all arab communities that killing women was not acceptable (abunimah, 2012). the video was funded by the united nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, which promoted it enthusiastically. it is instructive to examine internet responses to the dam video. while fans of dam congratulated the group that palestinian men were at last taking on the issue of violence against women, others criticized dam for showing palestinian women as lacking in agency and as desiring individual freedom, especially the freedom to have things. noting that the video came at a time of the fierce attack on gaza, two professors at new york’s columbia university, abu lughod and mikdashi (2012), suggested that dam seemed to have forgotten “the gritty and complex realities of life on the ground in the places they know” (para. 3). the two scholars charged that the video “operates in a total political, legal, and historical vacuum” (para. 5). they also stated that, in offering such a simplistic analysis of honour killings, dam had succumbed “to an international anti-politics machine that blames only tradition for the intractability of (some) people’s problems” (para. 3). other critics, such as nadera shalhoub-kevorkian and suhad dahernashif (2012), argued that feminists should not assist the state to culturalize violence. they reported that their research in colonized palestinian society showed that insisting that the violence is about culture makes it hard to enlist family and community in anti-violence strategies on the ground in israel. further, within israel, palestinian women cannot count on the state for help. there are few shelters or arabic-speaking police or community workers, and the police often support the most patriarchal segments of the community. providing specific examples of effective antiviolence strategies developed by palestinian women’s groups themselves, they make clear that an approach that demonizes the community not only promotes racism, but does little to solve the problem of violence. nafar, nafar, and jrery (2012), the members of dam, rejected two main points of the argument advanced by abu lughod and mikdashi (2012). first, israeli colonialism is not relevant to a consideration of honour killings because they also happen in places outside israel and in noncolonized parts of the arab world. second, to address what dam clearly views as a problem internal to arab society, it is not necessary to consider how the non-arab world will react. as dam insisted, “when we write songs, we do not sit and think, “what would america or israel think of this?” (para. 4). indeed, they felt it was especially crucial then, at the time of the arab spring, for arab societies to “dispense with concerns over how we may be read (particularly by the west)” (para. 12) and to turn their critical gaze inwards. they rejected the idea that un sponsorship had influenced their message. as they put it: “dam is addressing an arab audience in arabic. we can speak to our own communities without being worried about how others will abuse it” (para. 9). as this exchange reveals, the discussion about honour killings turns on culture versus context. on one side are those who maintain that the political, social, and historical context is important because we must examine what enables patriarchal violence to thrive, and what might help to end international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 35  it. this side also stresses that culturalizing the violence causes racism and colonialism to thrive. on the opposite side are those who insist that culture and tradition are the culprits and that the best way to challenge the source of the violence is to focus on them exclusively. those who take this latter position, as dam did, do not regard it as necessary to consider the wider conditions of communication and what others might think outside the arab world. it is noteworthy that in this view the internal and the external are neatly separated. what is foreclosed is the possibility that honour killing is also a narrative that circulates, producing along the way modern and premodern subjects and doing specific political work both internally and externally. dam explicitly refused to consider how the united nations functions as a mode of governance and thus how a seemingly unexceptionable goal — exposing violent muslim men and helping imperilled muslim women — is also part of a governmentality (nafar, nafar, & jrery, 2012). the group seemed to have not considered the work of feminists who have shown how the empowerment of women and the improvement of their lives are manipulated by governments. for example, one way this is achieved is through the idea that strengthening civil society in the middle east requires teaching women how to deal with their violent men. “the focus on civil society”, zakia salime (2011) wrote, “aims in fact to diminish the role of political players, notably the islamist dissent” (p. 226); it requires that women be portrayed as victims of tradition and invites reformers to separate good muslims from bad muslims, with the latter then becoming objects of state surveillance. as abu-lughod and mikdashi (2012) noted, the abstraction of women from their social, political, and historical contexts fragments palestinian society and purges it of ongoing colonial struggle. salime (2011) further noted that feminists who ignore the vital role of civil society as a site of neoliberal governmentality, and as impetus for initiatives like the u.s. war on terror, become part of this mode of governance. our task as feminists is to consider how to avoid this effect as we pursue anti-violence strategies. the honour killing narrative in india inderpal grewal (2014) offered an indian example of how the honour killing narrative behaves as a travelling narrative. grewal’s article locates the honour killing narrative in western anthropology where it first referred to a form of masculine power that is based on reputation. the term came to characterize traditional societies as opposed to modern ones, and was linked to the subordination of women and, ultimately, to violence against women. muslim cultures receive a disproportionate share of attention in this regard. importantly, grewal showed that in one set of arguments by western scholars, muslim cultures are presumed to be unchanging: even when muslims become part of the diaspora, they are seen as remaining faithful to the concept of honour and all its attendant effects for women. however much they vary in detail, honour killing narratives have in common the notion that “modern” societies are not honour societies. white north american violence against women cannot therefore ever be described as having to do with notions of honour. patriarchy, grewal concluded, has been “outsourced” to the premodern non-west; western violence against women is blamed on individual behaviour, not on culture. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 36  honour as a crime of culture rather than a crime of patriarchy has a specific trajectory in contemporary media accounts. the patriarchy from which it comes is generally assumed to be non-western, with some exceptions such as italy (giuffrida, 2019) where the honour crime narrative has also circulated. it is rare that europeans are considered to engage in honour killing and any examples are taken to indicate the last vestiges of a culture that has already modernized and moved beyond its tribal past. as in the dam video, the archetypical honour-killing scenario requires a young woman who wants to be modern in conflict with a patriarchal, traditional family (abu lughod & mikdashi, 2012; grewal, 2014). feminists, no less than other commentators, participate in the circulation of the narratives of honour killing as a crime of culture. what work does the honour narrative do in india? grewal (2014) reported that newspapers in delhi were full of stories of honour killing (using that term), typically involving young people or women murdered for crossing caste lines to marry. interestingly, grewal found that articles about honour killing had increased dramatically over the previous decade. prior to 2005, very few publications referred to honour killing when violence against women was discussed. grewal urged us to examine the role of the media in order to understand the work that the honour killing narrative does in the non-west. (the fact that the indian media use the specific term “honour killing” reveals the western origins of the narrative.) in india, the honour narrative marks the distinction between a modern, enlightened india and a tribal, premodern pakistan or the india of rural patriarchy and poverty; in this narrative, patriarchy is “outsourced” to pakistan and to rural areas and is thought not to be a feature of modern india. the narrative also takes on the gloss given to it by hindu nationalist groups to foment anti-muslim hate by accusing muslim men of luring hindu girls (grewal, 2014). the role of law in the honour crime narrative is revealing: grewal (2014) pointed out that there is a call for special penalties for honour killing but not for rape. one important repercussion of the focus on honour killing is the lack of attention to economic and property issues as part of the context of the killing. as grewal (2014) stated: neither the legislature nor the courts are anxious to deal with these questions of property and rights, so that “honor killings” and the outrage expressed against the media, remains a way to increase the power of the media and the law and order apparatus through new legal statutes rather than addressing the ways in which violence takes multiple forms. (p. 184) i am particular taken with grewal’s (2014) closing argument: for violence that is ongoing, caused by multiple factors and their convergences, honor killings produce an easy upper caste and class and racial and developmental answer to the crime. viewer becomes detective in the western television genre of the crime show, or the police, in the bombay cinema tradition, and particular cultures are criminalized in order to bring closure to the crime. (p. 185) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 37  i like the image of honour crime reportage inviting the public into a crime show drama. here the honour crime serves as lurid entertainment. we need to think seriously of the way in which stories of honour killing produce a rush of superiority, precisely the kind of “frisson” i described happening in european debates about honour killings (razack, 2008, pp. 107–144). in the canadian context, which i discuss below, the cultural narrative produces whites as civilized and non-whites as barbaric. whites feel a similar excitement about their own superiority as nonmuslim urban indians do in grewal’s example. honour killing in canada: two examples in december of 2007, in toronto, canada, 16-year-old aqsa pervez was killed by her 57-yearold father, a taxi driver originally from pakistan. the media concluded that aqsa had been killed because she refused to wear the hijab and this detail quickly drew the public to the conclusion that “islam did it”. indeed, two feminist scholars of muslim origin articulated this position: haideh moghissi and sharzad mojab (2008) suggested that pervez’s death was due to “religious justification [and] islamic moral codes of conduct” (para. 3), and attributed the influence of “imported orthodox imams” (para. 6) to a canadian multiculturalism that permits “cultural ghettos” (para. 4). their line of argument here is an uncomplicated one that concludes that governments should be alert to the risks of listening to conservative voices in muslim populations and should find ways to weed out religious extremism. other feminist scholars however, resisted a cultural narrative and insisted that context matters a great deal in this case, and that religion and culture could not be understood outside of social, political, and historical contexts. in an article published in 2010, eve haque argued that, as a member of a second or “homegrown” generation, aqsa provoked national anxieties about canada as a tolerant multicultural nation. these anxieties were resolved in the media through a presentation of aqsa’s murder as the result of muslim failure to integrate into the modern, tolerant, enlightened nation of canada, while aqsa’s father was seen as having returned our kindness with cruelty and violence. haque showed how canadians were tutored in the belief that they were a civilized nation betrayed by an unscrupulous muslim migrant whom they had generously taken in. as part of her argument that a cultural argument facilitates racism, haque (2010) reported that the media made frequent use of photos from aqsa’s facebook page showing a teenager in full makeup who sometimes wore a hoodie;media accounts emphasized that aqsa “just wanted her freedom” and “led a double life” between her patriarchal family and a more enlightened canadian community (haque, p. 86). the media turned to researchers of colour who reported that teenaged girls such as aqsa often feel split between modern and traditional cultures and only long to fit in (haque, p. 88). some columnists, such as italian canadian rosie dimanno of the toronto star, recalled their own strict fathers and how, in an earlier time, given their fathers’ religious beliefs, they too would have been beaten for dressing the way that aqsa did; they portrayed their cultures as having emerged into modernity while muslim cultures had not (haque, p. 92). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 38  haque (2010) mined the media accounts for details that might interrupt this simple cultural story. she found that aqsa’s family of 11 led an impoverished life, all living in one apartment. she reported claims by shelter workers that minority girls and women had difficulty accessing shelter services owing to racism, and that such services were badly underfunded; indeed, many health care services were cut altogether, as were immigrant services in general, including employment, mental health, and family counselling. haque pointed out that aqsa’s teachers knew that she often had bruises on her arm but did not report the possibility of child abuse. few observers asked the teachers what they had tried to do and why their efforts failed. at the time she was killed, immigrant communities like the one to which aqsa belonged were experiencing heightened racism and surveillance along with severe economic marginalization, and, significantly, in contradiction to arguments about integration, the second generation was faring even worse than the first: these are conditions in which patriarchies thrive (haque, 2010). it is certain that the media’s emphasis on canada as a multicultural haven with a culture that aqsa desired to explore ignores a seamier side of immigrant reality, a reality that should push us to question what really produced aqsa’s tragic situation. instead of understanding aqsa as merely trapped in her culture, we have to imagine her, her family, and her community negotiating migration, culture, school, and nation. in this framework, aqsa is an active agent who creatively negotiated the dress codes and norms of her social group in school; to reach her, we would have had to appreciate this wider context, resisting the urge to linger on her culture and instead exploring the many places of stress in her life and how she might have been helped at multiple sites in multiple ways. in its emphasis on context rather than culture, haque’s analysis parallels the one offered by abu lughod and mikdashi (2012) for the palestinian situation. as compelling as the analyses of haque (2010) and abu lughod and mikdashi (2012) are, (and these are analyses that once aligned with my own), they share an important elision: it is hard to find the extremely violent father in the above accounts, and even harder to find his religion, culture, and community. put another way, we see racism more easily than we see patriarchal violence. i believe that feminist analysis that stresses the social, political, and the historic has to find a place for ultraviolent men and families, a place that neither exceptionalizes nor exonerates them. this is not only so that we do not leave the impression that such men ought to be exonerated but, more importantly, so that we are able to examine what strategies would be effective for dealing with violent, ultra-patriarchal men. how to achieve these goals is unclear, but a promising direction that i outline below is to consider what role culture plays in anti-violence work and service provision in comparison to the role it plays in the courts. here it is crucial to note that canadian courts have dealt quite well with recent cases of violence against women in which culture has been raised as an issue, as discussed below in the case of the shafia murders. the perpetrators received life sentences. the issue is not, therefore, one of leniency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 39  the shafia killings those of us who shared haque’s (2010) analysis about the stresses placed on poor immigrant families received a shocking comeuppance when an even more horrific “honour killing” occurred, this time in a family where poverty was not an issue. the wealthy shafia family, originally from afghanistan, emigrated to montreal, canada in 2007 under the investor program. the new arrivals included businessman mohammad shafia, his second wife, tooba mohammad yahya, their daughters zainab, sahar, and geeti, their son hamed, and three other children; first wife rona muhammad omar joined them a few months later. in 2009, mohammed shafia, together with his eldest son and second wife, premeditatedly murdered his three teenaged daughters and his first wife (whom he had been passing off as his cousin). shafia appeared to believe that the three girls had dishonoured him by having boyfriends. it is hard to fit shafia into the scenario described by haque (2010). in an exhaustive account of the crime, the journalist michael friscolanti (2012a, 2012b) reported that shafia was not poor and did not seem particularly religious. indeed, shafia described himself as a target of the taliban because his family was a liberal one. he did not impose the veil on his family; the girls’ styled hair and make-up ironically helped to persuade school authorities that they were not at risk from a muslim fundamentalist patriarch. shafia did, however, often express views about honour and had on more than one occasion demanded the kind of obedience and control common to violent patriarchs of all cultures. in a wiretap, he can be heard saying of his dead daughters, “may the devil shit on their graves”, a comment he explained as a reaction to seeing revealing photographs of his daughters for the first time (friscolanti, 2012a). not surprisingly, the shafia killings led to a racial media spectacle (see, e.g., the books of journalists schliesmann, 2012 and tripp, 2012). schliesmann (2012) concluded that the shafias, and in particular mohammed shafia, “were clearly not prepared to adapt to the secular society they were living in” (p. 59). service provision in the shafia case the shafia girls tried to get help, from strangers, social services, police, and school authorities: all made attempts to help the girls. notably, the first wife had few options for seeking help because the shafias held her passport and she had no direct contact with canadian society. the police, teachers, and social workers who knew of the difficulties in the family seem to have been puzzled by the situation and were not able to determine what could be done about it. what might have stopped shafia, his son, and his wife from carrying out the murders? how could the victims have been protected? authorities were seriously impeded when the girls retracted their statements, as victims often do. one wonders why these professionals seemed not to consider two classic features of family violence — that the stories victims tell in the presence of the abuser differ from those they tell when the abuser is not around, and that spouses and family members are often complicit in the abuse. would better training in overall violence prevention have helped? or should more afghan-specific strategies have been developed? what should these professionals have known about aspects of afghan culture? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 40  for well over a decade, mojab (2012) has argued strongly that it is necessary to focus on culture. in making her argument, mojab returned to a point often made in her work, accusing postmodern feminists of practising a cultural relativism when they insist on posing questions about the context in which culture unfolds. rejecting the idea that honour killing should be understood in the same vein as domestic violence, mojab argued that it is important to understand the special cultural features of honour killings in order to develop early warning systems that alert us to the possibility that an honour-based crime may be impending. one challenge in keeping culture uppermost is the difficulty of holding both cultural difference and the sameness of patriarchal violence in one’s analysis. the cultural angle seems to inhibit hard thinking about the nature of violence against women and girls, dulling feminist impulses honed over several decades of antiviolence initiatives. feminists should know, for instance, that powerful, controlling men have more opportunities to commit violence against women with impunity than do less powerful men. we also tend to absolve the state when culture is our focus, never critically examining its role in the shafia case, whether at the site of law or service provision. i suggest that the power of the cultural difference narrative blocks critical thinking. affectively, it invites us to feel superior rather than to think critically. this affective state also discourages service providers and institutions from asking the question, “what do i know and not know about a particular cultural context, given my own subject position?” the trial: what’s culture got to do with it? amidst these details, is there a case for feminists to talk culture and honour killing and, if so, where should this be done, and to what end? in the shafia case, the prosecution applied to admit expert evidence on culture into the trial, arguing that the motive for the murders was the preservation of the family’s notion of honour. the prosecution further argued that to understand motive the court would benefit from the help of dr. shahrzad mojab, who had studied honour killing in turkey and iran and who could speak to the relationship between culture, religion, patriarchy, and violence against women. as stated in her majesty the queen v. shafia (2012), when considering the crown’s application to allow the expert evidence of dr. mojab, justice r. l. maranger drew on case law to say that dr. mojab would be able to provide the court with “evidence of a phenomenon that exists in a foreign culture” (p. 4). in pretrial hearings, the court heard testimony from wiretapped conversations where mohammed shafia was heard denouncing his daughters as “treacherous” and saying that “nothing was more dear to me than my honour” (p. 6). despite the risk that a jury provided with expert testimony will rely on it to the point of abdicating its own fact-finding role, in this case, the judge declared that evidence about honour in certain societies would help the court to understand why the shafias acted as they did, stating: “the concepts of honour, family and gender dynamics within middle eastern and east asian communities is knowledge that is outside the scope of a typical canadian jury” (p. 7). the defence argued that dr. mojab was biased since she was a committed feminist, an argument the judge rejected. when the defence followed up by arguing that mojab’s evidence would in fact be an argument for seeing the crime as an honour international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 41  killing, the judge agreed and ruled that dr. mojab’s testimony be limited to the generic. she would not be allowed to discuss the specifics of the shafia case. as we can see, from the beginning, expert testimony about honour killing is assumed to be testimony that would help a canadian court to understand foreignness, a frame that makes it hard to dislodge the culturalizing of violence and the making of the colour line. mojab herself has written of her realization after the fact that her testimony produced this effect. in an article published in 2012, mojab wondered what the jury actually learned from her testimony: reflecting on my experience, i remain doubtful of the success of my educational and advocacy roles in explicating the complexity of honour crimes within the court setting. through the process of testifying and cross examination, my intellect was culturalized; my iranian origin — my shared language and culture with the perpetrators — became more prominent than my knowledge of the topic. (mojab, 2012, p. 119) her shared culture with the perpetrators was used to undermine her expert status even as the defence sought to show that she did not know anything about afghan culture, having done her research on the kurdish community in turkey and iran, and not in afghanistan. the undue emphasis on culture, she concluded, “potentially contributes to the culturalization of the honour crime; it primordializes, stigmatizes, and demonizes the community, and eventually contributes to outright racism” (mojab, 2012, p. 119). after the trial, mojab continued to fight the racism that is a usual feature of honour killing discourses. in december 2011, she published a short article relating that while she was on the witness stand the crown asked her to read a passage from a united nations commission report that was openly racist (it described an arab proverb that “a man’s honour lies between the legs of a woman”). mojab noted that the media took these to be her own words, and she felt compelled to distance herself from the assumption, reiterating that honour has nothing to do with arabness. the shafia case, and mojab’s reflections above, raise an important consideration: is “talking culture” in a courtroom doing the same work as “talking culture” with respect to service provision? without the cultural details, could the court have understood and appropriately condemned the killings? my response is a cautious yes. i am encouraged by a criminal lawyer who noted that the shafia trial was a standard run-of-the-mill murder trial (frank pappas, quoted in monique muise, 2012). the cultural details were unimportant given the overwhelming evidence that brutal murders had been committed. law provides a “tryst” what, then, is the work that the honour killing narrative is doing in the shafia trial? i suggest that in a criminal trial of this sort, the cultural details contribute little to an enhanced legal understanding of the crime; indeed, this is not their primary purpose. instead, the cultural details international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 42  are really part of a pedagogy, intending to convey to canadians a message of their racial and cultural superiority with respect to the accused. the media collaborates in this endeavour, as grewal (2014) showed for india and as dana olwan (2013) has shown for the shafia trials. inside the courtroom, the privileged status of jurors, lawyers, and judges, who are often steeped in an understanding of muslim cultures as barbaric and are likely to be operating with a culturalist understanding of violence, is reinforced by the racial thrust of the honour crime message; culture talk simultaneously creates two types of subject: superior white or white-aspiring subjects whose national belonging is confirmed, and abject racial or cultural others who are outsiders to the nation. in the courtroom context, the latter group includes not just defendants in honour killing cases, but experts on culture, as mojab recalled of her own experience. law must be understood in this context as providing what anthony farley (1997) so accurately described as “the tryst”, whereby a white public can consummate its longing for black humiliation. feminists calculating the conditions of communication need to keep a close watch on the production of the colour line, especially its affective dimensions. crown attorney laurie lacelle explained to the jury that the four victims simply wanted their freedom, which shafia withheld from them (friscolanti, 2012a, p. 40). the idea of honour would have bolstered this argument but was not necessary; without it, the case could have certainly been made that shafia was an extremely controlling man, even able to control his son and his wife to the point of getting them to collaborate with him in murder. in the end, justice maranger sentenced the shafias to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. judging from the only quotation from his sentencing remarks that was repeated by journalists, justice maranger seemed, however, to rely on the cultural argument: it’s difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, and more honourless crime…. the apparent reason behind these cold blooded, shameless murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour, a notion of honour that … has absolutely no place in any civilized society. (quoted in blatchford, 2012; see also friscolanti, 2012b; greene, 2012; jiwani et al., 2012) getting out of the legal culture bind reflecting on the shafia trial, canadian scholars are increasingly aware of the necessity to consider racism when exploring what culture has to do with violence against women. there is a small but growing scepticism about whether cultural debates should take place in the law at all. in an issue of criminal law review devoted to the shafia trial, for instance, anna korteweg (2012) noted that honour killings are comparatively rare in canada (10 to 15 cases in a decade, as compared to the 60 women killed per year by partners or ex-partners). maintaining that we nonetheless need to understand the patterns of violence that lead to honour killing, korteweg noted that since honour killing becomes a sign of immigrant backwardness we must begin by taking “seriously” the politicization of the crime. even the invocation of the term “honour killing” conjures racist imaginaries and is therefore problematic from the start. the risks notwithstanding, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 43  kortweg advised that we consider honour killing “as a particular form of gendered violence that unfolds at the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and immigrant receiving societies’ cultural, social, political, and legal practices” (korteweg, 2012, p. 138). such gendered violence should be considered “part and parcel not of a ‘foreign’ influence, but of contemporary social life in immigrant-receiving countries” (korteweg, 2012, p. 138). immigrant life is not something that can be untangled from foreignness, however, and this is especially true when the immigrants concerned are muslim. unless the analysis of contemporary social life includes a focus on how white supremacy operates in all women’s lives, muslim women will simply be seen as the kind of women who suffer from patriarchy more than other women do. as i argued in looking white people in the eye, we cannot keep gender abstracted from all other social relations (razack, 1998, p. 96). korteweg (2012) suggested navigating the risk of culture talk by avoiding culture in the courts but considering it in service provision. she proposed that courts should condemn honour crimes using a language of gender inequality rather than a language of cultural difference. for example, a court discussion of the abuse of a child’s trust does not need cultural specificity. korteweg added that we are too drawn to legal answers to the problem of violence; there is often a “misplaced belief in punishment as deterrence and in reified notions of canadian and, by extension, non-canadian cultures … [and] a corresponding disinterest in what happens in non-legal environments” (korteweg, 2012, p. 159). a second contributor to the canadian law review’s special issue on the shafia trial, lori beaman (2012), also insisted on a broad framework of gendered violence, noting that all forms of gendered violence share many similarities, perhaps the strongest argument yet that we have little cause to dwell on the cultural specificities of the violence and the inevitable racism that doing so unleashes. beaman’s (2012) argument is shared by homa hoodfar and yasmin jiwani (2012), who proposed the use of shalhoub’s term “femicide” rather than “honour killing” to capture the shared terrain with other forms of gendered killing. these scholars have little to say about what we do with the elephant in the room — culture — although their approaches seem to suggest that we should step away from it yet also maintain a pretence that the elephant is not actually there. sidestepping culture may be difficult to do when there is so much invested in the spectacle of racial inferiority. service provision what would strengthen our capacity as feminists to remain fully contextual and to keep a wary eye on white supremacy? it seems clear that law is not the main place to do this work. when we turn to other domains, in particular service provision (police, schools, social work), anti-racism is difficult to operationalize. for example, fournier, the editor of the special issue on the shafia trial in criminal law review, noted that all public agencies closed their files on the shafia children one month before their deaths (fournier, 2012, p. 111). a major study by the quebec human rights and youth rights commission indicates that “racial profiling and insensitive intervention policies pervade the police and governmental actors in the education system and in the youth protection system” (fournier, 2012, p. 112). in other words, racism is rife. the study suggested cultural international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 44  awareness workshops with professionals. however, unless such training were to be entirely enveloped in an anti-racist approach designed to help majority groups examine their own assumptions about themselves and racial others, it is unlikely that the workshops’ focus on culture would be useful. having been an anti-racist trainer for much of my preacademic life, and noting how discussions of non-western patriarchal violence seem to result in all workshop participants, both white and non-white moving unthinkingly into the white saviour role, i am sceptical about the value of any training of professionals on issues of culture that lacks a strong anti-racist component. conclusion in canada, every five days a woman is killed by an intimate partner and sometimes her children are slain too (statistics canada, 2018). some of these crimes are premeditated and some are not; some involve the complicity or at least the inattention of others and some do not. perhaps those cultures that live more communally produce the anomaly of the crime having several perpetrators, but this fact changes nothing about who gets killed and how many. we need most of all to ask what is the difference that cultural difference makes and in the asking, we cannot forget the one thing that all patriarchies produce: a proportion of violent, out-of-control men, and sometimes families, who do their killing of women in culturally specific ways. a small shift in our thinking is all that is needed to change our perspective on honour killing. in the conventional view, a focus on honour pre-empts most other considerations. for example, sheema khan (2013), a muslim journalist who wears the hijab, wrote about the shafia murders in an article for the globe and mail, a canadian newspaper. in khan’s account of the crime: 1. the women were killed by shafia “to preserve honour”. 2. in shafia’s view, the girls had become “too western”. 3. honour killings are increasing. (the term as used in the article refers to murders by non-western immigrants, principally muslims, and is treated like a disease that they carry with them.) 4. there is a call for a national strategy targeting immigrant communities, a strategy that is in the first instance legal and policy based: “prevention, protection and prosecution”. 5. muslim men and muslim communities are engaging in anti-violence strategies. there is another way to frame these events, however. what if the script were changed from the beginning? 1. the women were killed by a violent and controlling father who was able to convince his son and his second wife to be a part of his schemes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 45  2. as new immigrants, the girls did not know where to turn. their efforts to get help at school or from the police failed owing to a number of factors, some of them bureaucratic and some of them due to racism. other factors related to how well professionals were trained and able to handle cases of gender violence in general, as well as specifically in minority families with extremely controlling men. 3. we need to consider anti-violence strategies as they concern teachers, social workers, and police. (once a crime has been committed, the legal system seems to work well.) 4. immigrant communities need to launch their own anti-violence campaigns. 5. we could craft a national anti-violence strategy that considers how women are killed in a variety of circumstances and identify the multiple sites of violence prevention. singling out honour killing in non-white communities seems to be a methodologically unsound decision. 6. as we do all of the above, we need to build critical consciousness of the ways in which power operates, and particularly how subjects are produced through culture talk. in effect, we need to reflect on the production of knowledge and the terms and conditions of communication that leave us with the idea that muslim cultures are more barbaric and violent than others. in sum, culture talk often takes us in the direction of racism and away from a more holistic understanding of why women and girls are killed. in all likelihood, feminists cannot stop talking about culture entirely but it would be a good start to abandon the term “honour killing” altogether because it invariably takes us to a place where we consider muslim cultures to be more violent than others. we would be better able to understand violence and what might prevent it if we refused to indulge in racism and focused more intensely on the pervasiveness of violence against women and on specific strategies to stop violent and controlling men. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 46  references abu lughod, l., & mikdashi, m.. 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(2019, march 18). italy accused of restoring honour killing defence after lenient femicide rulings. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/18/italy-jailterms-reduced-men-killed-wives-femicide international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 31–48 47  haque, e. (2010). homegrown, muslim and other: tolerance, secularism and the limits of multiculturalism. social identities, 16(1), 79–101. doi:10.1080/13504630903465902 her majesty the queen v. shafia, 2012 onsc 1538. jiwani, y., hoodfar, h., & dwivedi, s. (2012, january 31). should we call it ‘honour killing’?: no. it’s a false distancing of ourselves from a too-common crime: the murder of females yes. it is an accurate term for an atrocious act, something we need to recognize and fight. the montreal gazette. https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montrealgazette/20120131/281831460623735. khan, s. (2013, january 30). let’s work together to prevent crimes of honour. globe and mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/lets-work-together-to-prevent-crimes-ofhonour/article7975778/ korteweg, a. c. (2012). understanding honour killing and honour-related violence in the immigration context: implications for the legal profession and beyond. canadian criminal law review, 16(2), 135–160. moghissi, h., & mojab, s. (2008, january 9). of ‘cultural’ crimes and denials. znet. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/of-cultural-crimes-and-denials-by-haideh-moghissi/ mojab, s. (2011, december 29). honour killings and the myth of “arabness”. the mark news. http://www.themarknews.com/articles/7884-honour-killings-and-the-myth-of-arabness mojab, s. (2012). the politics of culture, racism, and nationalism in honour killing. canadian criminal law review, 16(2), 115–134. muise, m. 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(2012). without honour. the true story of the shafia family and the kingston canal murders. harper collins. a context of domestic violence: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 147 a context of domestic violence: learnings for prevention from the calgary filipino community lana wells, debb hurlock, marichu antonio, vic lantion, rida abboud, caroline claussen, and liza lorenzetti abstract: there is a lack of interpretive research in the domestic violence literature and, in particular, within an ethnocultural context. interviews were held with four filipina women in calgary, alberta who had previously been in violent relationships, in combination with a referral group of key informants with leadership and knowledge of community issues related to domestic violence. by adopting a phenomenological approach to the research, it was hoped that new understandings of what is identified in clinical paradigms as the “risk” and “protective” factors associated with domestic violence would be unearthed. this research study is at once exploratory and informative and is intended to contribute to the development of a province-wide plan to address and prevent domestic violence through the brenda strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence at the faculty of social work, university of calgary. keywords: domestic violence prevention, ethnocultural communities, filipino, phenomenological approach and domestic violence acknowledgements: we gratefully acknowledge our research participants, women and men from the filipino community in calgary, who bravely stepped forward to share their stories and insights with us. without you, this research would not be possible. this project was made possible through funding from the centre for criminology and justice research (ccjr), which contributes independently produced, evidence-based research in the study of criminal and social justice issues and the promotion of safe communities. lana wells, msw is the brenda strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence at the university of calgary, 2500 university drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2n 1n4. e-mail: lmwells@ucalgary.ca debb hurlock, ph.d. is a research consultant in calgary, alberta. her area of expertise is communitybased research. e-mail: dhurlock@creativetheoryconsulting.com marichu antonio is the executive director of the ethno-cultural council of calgary. e-mail: marichu.ethnoculturalcouncil@gmail.com vic lantion is the community programs manager of the ethno-cultural council of calgary. e-mail: vic.lantion@ecccalgary.com rida abboud is a ph.d. candidate at the factor-inwentash faculty of social work at the university of toronto. e-mail: rida.abboud@utoronto.ca caroline claussen, m.a. is a research consultant in calgary. e-mail: c3inc@shaw.ca liza lorenzetti, msw is a social worker and ph.d. student at the university of calgary, with over 20 years experience in domestic violence prevention. e-mail: lakoren@ucalgary.ca mailto:dhurlock@creativetheoryconsulting.com� mailto:marichu.ethnoculturalcouncil@gmail.com� mailto:c3inc@shaw.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 148 canada’s long history of immigration has created a diverse cultural mosaic. in 2006, the largest ethnocultural communities in canada consisted of members from south asian, chinese, african-canadian, and filipino backgrounds (statistics canada, 2006). the diversity within the canadian population warrants the attention of researchers (wells, abboud, & claussen, 2012) so that the voices and experiences of all canadians can be acknowledged and considered in the creation of programs and social policy. according to statistics canada (2010) projections, by 2031: • between 25% and 28% of the population could be foreign-born. • between 29% and 32% of the population could belong to a visible minority group, as defined in the employment equity act. this would nearly double the proportion reported by the 2006 census. • the fastest growing visible minority communities, due to immigration and births, are south asian, chinese, black, filipino, arab, and south east asian. as reported in the 2004 general social survey on victimization, visible minority women report lower five-year rates of spousal violence than non-visible minority women. moreover, self-reported rates of spousal violence declined for visible minority women between 1999 and 2004, whereas they remained stable for other women (statistics canada, 2010). it should be noted, however, that these lower rates could be attributed to the fact that the general social survey is conducted in english and french, and may in fact under-represent the actual rates of domestic violence in communities where women cannot participate due to language barriers (public health agency of canada, 2008). brownridge and halli (2002) reported that immigrant women from developing countries had the highest prevalence of intimate partner violence (ipv) in canada, followed by canadian-born women, and thirdly, immigrant women from developed countries who exhibited the lowest rates of domestic violence. in the united states, population-based, epidemiological research also suggests that immigrant women in particular have lower rates of domestic violence incidence than their american-born counterparts (yoshihama, 2009). however other community-based investigations have documented high partner victimization rates among immigrant women (gupta, 2009; yoshihama, 2009). evidently, it is difficult to gauge in existing literature the actual extent and prevalence of domestic violence in ethnocultural communities. despite the lack of accurate information on the rates of domestic violence in ethnocultural communities, the fact that immigrants, refugees, and visible minority communities are a growing segment of the canadian population provides a rationale for the development of culturally-responsive prevention strategies (lorenzetti & este, 2010; smith, 2006). definitions unfortunately, social science research tends to blend or aggregate broad “racial” categories, regardless of ethnicity, immigration status, or country of origin (yoshihama, 2009). while the term “ethnocultural communities” is used throughout this paper, it is important to acknowledge that it is often used interchangeably with “visible minority communities”. visible minorities are, according to smith (2006): “persons, other than aboriginal peoples, who are noninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 149 caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (p. 5). although many ethnocultural communities have multi-generational canadian identities, this study focuses on the intersecting issues presented by the participants’ experiences of migration to and settlement in canada, as well as other identity constructs. research indicates that being foreign-born or “native”-born, intersected by belonging to a visible minority community, has a significant impact not only on acculturation but on the experiences of domestic violence in host countries (see ahmad, driver, mcnally, & stewart, 2009; grewal, bottorff, & hilton, 2005; gupta, 2009; guruge, khanlou, & gastaldo, 2010; kasturirangan, 2008; sharma, 2001). by definition, an immigrant is an individual who has acquired legal status to reside in canada, including permanent residents, visitors, and students (smith, 2006). the broad category of immigrant, utilized frequently in domestic violence prevention literature, does not distinguish or highlight one’s migratory experience (lorenzetti & este, 2010 ). for example, “refugee” is also a legal resident in canada, although their premigratory experiences may have been quite different from that of other immigrants. domestic violence risk and protective factors in regard to areas relevant to prevention, the literature points to a number of domestic violence risk and protective factors that are particular to the experiences of visible minority and/or immigrant women. the consequences and implications of engaging in the immigration process are important when considering the risk and protective factors of domestic violence (jolly & reeves, 2006; tutty, giurgiu, traya, weaver-dunlop, & christensen, 2010). moreover, the experiences of visible minorities in canada, as it relates to exposure to discriminatory practices, racism, employment and housing marginalization, settlement and acculturation, can also impact domestic violence as either a cause or effect. it is imperative that the migration experiences and migrant status of women be taken into account, and that the experiences of all “women of colour” not be generalized. recent immigrants and refugees, although possibly also members of visible minority groups, face particular contextual circumstances that may pose as risk and protective factors for domestic violence (gupta, 2009; jolly & reeves, 2006). these circumstances may include: marginalization in the workplace, social isolation, immigration status, or trauma and stress as a result of home country conditions. for example, a canadian study by lorenzetti and este (2010) highlights the multiple impacts of war, state violence, or other forms of trauma, including forced migration, on refugee women’s experiences of resettlement and domestic violence. visible minority women, who may or may not be foreign born, contend with being labelled the cultural “other” in canada. in the context of domestic violence and visible minority women, there is a need for a nuanced analysis about how the experiences of these women are defined by their status as racialized and nationalized others. for example, this sort of analysis exposes how the cultural values of women in ethnocultural communities may be at odds with dominant north america society and culture, for example with respect to the importance of family preservation over individualism and the desire for independence (almeida & dolandelvecchio, 1999; sharma, 2001). thus, prevention efforts that espouse a particularly eurocentric feminist and/or self-empowerment approach, as defined by a dominant ethnocentric paradigm and directed toward ethnocultural communities, may be lost in translation (kasturirangan, krishnan, & riger, 2004; kasturirangan, 2008). as stated by sharma (2001): international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 150 [feminist battered women’s movements]... leads to conflict between fulfilling one’s own needs and satisfying the needs of others. although this struggle is also experienced by white battered women, it is more intense for immigrant and racially visible battered women because of their strong connections to their racial and ethnic heritages. (p. 1412) this understanding would also shed light on why immigrant and visible minority women may hesitate to report abuse and/or leave abusive situations. a woman’s disclosure of domestic violence can lead to a rejection from her intercultural support network, thrusting her into a mainstream culture that does not accept her “otherness” (kasturiangan et al., 2004; sharma, 2001; smith, 2006). an understanding of the family structures, including extended family, of immigrant and/or visible minority women may also shed more light on the factors leading to or preventing domestic violence (tutty et al., 2010). social networks in immigrant and ethnocultural communities can be key to protecting the family from a variety of social ills, including domestic violence. such networks often provided instrumental, informational, emotional and psychological support (guruge et al., 2010; kasturiangan et al., 2004; sharma, 2001). however, many women leave these forms of social networks in their home countries to face smaller, sometimes non-existent social supports, which propel them into domestic violence vulnerability. tamil participants in a study conducted by guruge et al. (2010) note that even if there are family members in canada, the values that may have structured the perceived or expected support have changed due to the influence of an individualistic society. interestingly, in the same study, women who had their own family members in canada felt more protected from violence in the household. however, when they did not have their own family members nearby but were in close proximity to their husbands’ family members, there was an increase in both the husbands’ power over their wives and abuse from the extended family. finally, several studies (guruge et al., 2010; jolly & reeves, 2006; kasturiangan et al., 2004; smith, 2006) report that many women find it stressful to the family unit when their husbands and other men from their community experience racism and discrimination in the workplace and in mainstream society, usually in the form of under-employment and/or a lack of accreditation of their foreign credentials. regardless of whether driven by patriarchal ideological values or not, this downward financial and professional mobility, with a perception that it is beyond their control, leads to a loss of social status at home and in the community. guruge and colleagues (2010) state: our findings, along with those of a number of previous studies, show that postmigration factors operating at the macro-level of society, including economic insecurity resulting from non-recognition of professional/educational credentials, workplace deskilling and racial/ethnic discrimination – added to the patriarchal pressure for men to meet family and social responsibilities – pushed men to self and family-destructive behaviours. (p. 110) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 151 it is important to note that the immigration process has a significant impact on immigrant men as well. for example, research indicates that refugee men who flee their homelands after witnessing torture, war, political imprisonment, and other forms of violence may exhibit violent behaviours as a means of solving problems, dealing with their own trauma and stress, and expressing their feelings of disempowerment and loss of control (gupta, 2009; guruge et al., 2010; lorenzetti & este, 2010). a study by gupta (2009) highlights that men reporting premigration political violence exposure were over twice as likely to report any past-year partner violence perpetration. research background and approach the brenda strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence at the university of calgary was created to lead and facilitate an initiative called “shift: the project to end domestic violence”. shift is a community-based project aimed at significantly reducing and eventually ending domestic violence in alberta. the name shift represents the spirit of this initiative aimed at creating transformational change using a primary prevention approach to stop the first-time victimization and perpetration of domestic violence. in short, primary prevention means taking action to build resilience and prevent problems before they occur. in order for shift to be successful, it is necessary to work with citizens, community organizations, and experts to gather information on the scope of domestic violence in calgary and in other alberta localities. generating a more comprehensive understanding of the risk and protective factors of domestic violence, particularly with respect to immigrant, refugee, and ethnocultural communities, is a critical part of this work. in examining the diversity trends for calgary, the largest immigrant source country is currently the philippines1 , with india in second place (city of calgary, 2009). there is a need to better understand domestic violence and the opportunities for its prevention for members of the city’s largest immigrant source country. the following research study presents findings from a sample of individuals from the filipino community in calgary. research approach with the filipino community the researchers engaged in two-hour individual interviews with four research participants. the research was approved by the university of calgary ethics board. the interviews took place over one month in february 2011 with four filipina women, all of whom had experienced domestic violence within the past five years. the interviews were held at a nonprofit organization in calgary where the ethno-cultural council of calgary is located. all research participants were recruited through the ethno-cultural council. the four women who participated in the research chose pseudonyms: red, jennifer, shine, and jocelyn. red’s and shine’s experiences of domestic violence predominantly occurred while living in the philippines, yet its impact reverberated while they settled in calgary. jocelyn and jennifer married canadian caucasian men in calgary and their experiences of domestic violence began while living in calgary. in using a phenomenological approach, each interview with the filipina women was 1 in 2008, there were 1,907 immigrants landing in calgary from the philippines. this represents a 27.1% increase from 2007 (city of calgary, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 152 thematically analyzed and interpreted as an individual narrative. according to flyvberg (2001), analyzing the information in this way “produces precisely the type of context-dependent knowledge which makes it possible to move from the lower to the higher levels in the learning process” (p. 71). given the contextual factors to consider when conducting research with (a) the filipino community, and (b) the topic of domestic violence, it was critical to work with ethnocultural community leaders who understood the cultural nuances of the community. having a community liaison – the executive director of the ethno-cultural council of calgary, who shared the information about the research study and circulated the recruitment notice – assured the filipino community that the research was ethical, safe, and intended to help build the capacity of the community. this approach draws on the tenor of engaging in community-based research that honours the community organizations that already work in the field of domestic violence, yet are seeking research to better understand how to end it. domestic violence is a taboo topic within the filipino community, and it would have been very difficult to engage people in qualitative research without having a respected connection to a leader in that community. the lived experience of domestic violence the capacity to articulate new meanings about domestic violence is derived from a deep history of research, practice, and theories of domestic violence and social change. research in domestic violence and prevention has been primarily informed by “structural processes” (denzin 1984, p. 487) that shape and influence violence. these structural analyses tend to be more commonly found in the clinical and social science paradigms of criminology, social work, social justice, and psychology. turning to the lived experience of violence of four filipina women constitutes exploratory research and is unique in the field of domestic violence research; it is intended to offer and invite different kinds of questions and ways of thinking about how domestic violence is rendered. to understand the phenomenon of domestic violence it is important to understand what happens within the lived experience of violence, and to recognize that the topic itself comes with a history, and predominant ways of being seen. there is a desire for a renewed understanding of domestic violence that can occur by engaging unique research methodologies that will inform prevention work differently, for the purpose of transformational social change. in order to build a renewed understanding of the risk and protective factors for domestic violence within the filipino community, this study used a phenomenological approach. moran (2000) states that the “enduring influence of phenomenology is the manner in which it steadfastly protected the subjective view of experience as a necessary part of any full understanding of the nature of knowledge” (p. 21); in the case of this research, the subjective view constituted a full understanding of domestic violence in the context of the first-hand experience of filipina canadians in calgary. a phenomenological approach enabled the researchers to describe the phenomenon as it appears in the lives of these filipina women. thus, descriptions about domestic violence were not imposed before the phenomenon had been understood from within (moran, 2000). this enabled a discovery-oriented approach to understand the interior experience of violence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 153 supporting the lived experience: conversations with filipino men in order to support the findings gleaned from the interviews with the key informants, the second part of this research study was a focus group with men from the filipino community who are community leaders. this referral group of key informants reinforced the learning from the interviews. filipino men who had directly perpetrated violence were not willing to participate in the research2 . thus, in order to elicit male filipino perspectives on domestic violence, the focus group was held comprised of seven filipino men who are community leaders and provide informal support to men who have either perpetrated violence, or been victims of violence. the focus group was facilitated by a male filipino member of the research team as the filipino men were not comfortable or willing to talk with one of the female researchers. findings domestic violence is a process, not an event in talking with the four filipina women, the researchers quickly learned that the experience and topic of domestic violence could not be extracted and dissected from their lives. it is contextual; it is a living process that is compounded, negotiated, contested, and mitigated by a variety of influences. so, to understand domestic violence, there is a need to understand the women, to hear their life stories and how violence weaves through them. the researchers were reminded that domestic violence is not an event, it is a process; it is an experience that weaves through people’s lives daily. there are moments and experiences that may propel a person to change and, as one participant explained, it is also something that “you just live with”. it is naïve for researchers to think that interviews could extract or pull out the topic of domestic violence from the lives of participants. in each individual narrative, as the participants began to talk about their migration process to canada, they wove their experiences of domestic violence throughout the interview. the researchers quickly realized that the way in which the research participants were talking about their experiences of family, of being filipina women, of work, and of their migration process to canada, revealed that domestic violence was a process threaded through all facets of their lives. what motivates change for a person experiencing domestic violence? how does a person choose renewal amid her own rooted history? for the interview participants, their renewal of a violence-free life was for multiple reasons: it was one’s roman catholic faith; or the inspiration and love of one’s children; or attending a local gym and finding the athlete she once was; or a 2 the original intent for this research was to conduct individual interviews with filipina women and filipino men. however, due to the apparent discomfort of men in discussing this topic and therefore the inability to recruit participants, a filipino male member of the research team suggested that we engage with a referral group of key leaders who had knowledge of community issues related to domestic violence. “one of the factors that is most often said to affect the access, gathering and analysis of information is ‘gender’, another factor is ‘ethnicity’” (fortier, 1998, p. 48). the researchers considered this encounter as a learning opportunity for research with ethnocultural communities, yet, at the same time agreed with fortier (1998) in not wanting to identify gender and ethnicity as “fixed social categories, but rather…lived differently in different contexts…and rather than identifying how gender and ethnicity affect the research process, we need to examine how they are negotiated” (p. 49). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 154 friend telling her that she is worth it, and beautiful; or returning to meaningful work; or her physician, saying “it’s time to go for your own safety”. what are the vulnerabilities that may precipitate domestic violence? this was not an easy question for the participants to answer, particularly when not wanting to essentialize certain aspects of filipino culture as “risk factors” for violence, yet also needing to understand what commonalties existed for filipina women that may have precipitated domestic violence. further, what factors contribute to their survival? for the filipino culture, it is essential to take into consideration the pre-departure experiences of people in their country of origin. how is violence expressed in the philippines? what are filipino norms for gender roles? how equitable are the political and economic structures? we look to particular ethnocultural experiences of violence, and in the case of this research informants from the filipino community, to produce new social knowledge about preventing domestic violence. rather than situate violence within ethnocultural communities, we look to them to tell us something new about violence that will inform, or possibly mitigate prevailing forms of discourse. to see and hear something new, we need to ask something new, and ask different people about their experiences of violence. women’s work and filipina women: a process of meaning-making amidst the violence i give up my work and then you see, i give my resignation. – participant #1 my job is the only one who is supporting me. – participant #2 all four women, while living in either the philippines or canada, were the financial support for their husbands; two of the women supported their husbands while living in the philippines, the other two participants financially supported their husbands while in canada. the participants emphasized the cultural role of filipina women to be the central caretaker of families in all facets of life, from the domestic to the financial. when they had to give up working, as one participant did to care for her in-laws’ rural plantation, they felt that their own career goals were disregarded and invalidated. for another, when the violence was consuming her life, she still had her work to give her a sense of purpose and dignity. in this sense, work was explained as both confining and liberating, a movement from their private lives to feeling strength in their public lives. for one participant, it became the eventual means for her total independence, and influenced how she redefined family for herself: number one is because i changed my goal from family first. because i don’t have a family now. [my daughter] has her own life. i don’t live with [my ex-husband] any more. so my goal is [to move] from family first to work first because my work, my job is the only one who is supporting me. well i have friends, i have my family, but when it comes to financial i don’t want to depend on anybody. i don’t wanna go and move back to my brother-in-law…so my job is first. based on the narratives of the four filipina women, work and training programs provided meaningful experiences that motivated them to not live in violent relationships. the meaning of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 155 work in the lives of women experiencing domestic violence may also be informed by the psychotherapeutic paradigm of finding a reason to live. this emerged from frankl’s (1984) work, in which he developed a psychotherapeutic paradigm of logotherapy to explain how some people continue to live and create meaning in life in spite of profound trauma. for one participant, work was a saving grace and involved returning to professional work in an urban centre as the context within which she experienced her “turn” from the violence in her life. two other participants met and fostered friendships with women through the work context, who they turned to in their moments of need; it was these confidante friendships that provided the opportunity for the externalization of their struggles. another participant worked in a women’s shelter and although support was offered to her, and she was involved in training to recognize violence, she still was unable to leave a highly violent relationship or seek support within her work context. however, through work she met someone she felt she could call when she decided to leave. one easter sunday, this participant experienced a traumatic episode of violence by her husband, in which she was taken to an emergency department and later admitted to the hospital for her injuries. she called her one friend: but i don’t have anyone here at that time. i was so new in this office too, and she became my friend right away. that was the only number i knew. she was the only person i knew. because i had to call her not too long ago and suddenly the number came to my mind. i dialed that number, it was easter sunday too. fortunately she was home, and all she said was “where are you?” and i said, “i’m in the hospital”, and i just started to cry. then she said, “you don’t have to talk, i can just be here on the phone, it’s okay”. because i didn’t want any – i didn’t want her to come. this research contributes to an exploration of the meaning of work in the lives of filipina women and how it may be both a limitation that creates vulnerability to violence, or how professional work, as in the case of the latter participant, is life saving. the relationship of migration, settlement and domestic violence all four women had varying reasons for why they wanted to leave the philippines. a common, general thread is that they wanted a better life. had a family member not sponsored them, most filipina women migrated through the live-in caregiver program implemented in canada in 1991. this program brings in thousands of filipinos to canada every year (jiwani, 1997)3 3canadian immigration policies have differential impacts according to gender, with research suggesting that some programs create vulnerabilities for human trafficking (oxman-martinez, & hanley, 2001). two immigration programs in particular leave women vulnerable to trafficking: the fiancée’s visa and the live-in caregiver program (lcp). for trafficked women arriving with such legal immigration documents, exploitation generally begins after they enter the country (andrew, 1998). the result is a cycle of threats and abuse of all kinds: working for less than minimum wage, forced debt, violence against the trafficked individuals and/or their families (oxman-martinez, & hanley, 2001). . one participant commented that she wanted to come to canada to get away from an abusive husband and canada was perceived to offer a better life: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 156 philippines doesn’t have much to offer, like especially when you don’t have the education or something. and it’s hard to get jobs there; even if you get a job, like i had a job, i could live, um, i could live within my means and just live with what we had, but then we wanted something better. for two of the participants, leaving the philippines was a way out of domestic violence. once in calgary, however, the unaddressed impacts of the violence in their lives while in the philippines positioned them with a particular vulnerability for further violence. one of the participants stated that her father’s violence was a motivating reason for her decision to come to calgary: but then, i also decided to come over [to calgary] because my dad has been abusive to my mother since we were little. we have seen him batter my mother, knocked her down on the floor, took her to the hospital, bruises all over her and this is like almost every night, every night. my father, if my mom would be late for 15 minutes because of the traffic, he would think that okay, you’ve been having sex with another man.…so i’ve seen my father abuse my mom so much since i was little, all the way since i left canada and when they followed us here, he was still abusive but verbally not physical. so we threatened our father, if you do this you are going to be confined to foothills hospital. violence was present in another participant’s extended family. her mother-in-law came to stay with the participant and her family because her father-in law was abusive, yet they never spoke about it. she reflected on the time her mother-in-law came to stay with her briefly, and how, it is one of those things, that you just have to bear: “although you’ve already been abused, but still we go on…yeah we have to bear with it…so that’s why when i was there, that’s why i’ve been suffering, because i realize that i’ve been abused for how many years”. when her motherin law stayed with her, she began to realize that she too was being abused. vulnerability for violence: family and employed caregiving approximately 5,000 women per year have come to canada to work as “live-in” domestic workers under the government’s 1981-1992 foreign domestic movement program, and the current live-in caregiver program, and a large number of these women are from the philippines (hodge, 2006). in 2011 alone, more than 5,200 visas were issued for live-in caregivers, with the majority being from the philippines (statistics canada, 2011). one of the research participants was sponsored by her extended family and once in calgary, she was the caregiver for her extended family that was very abusive. she did not see a connection between her previous violent husband and the domestic violence of her extended family. for this participant, there was a feeling that she “owed” her extended family for sponsoring her and that she was subsequently “owned” by them. one interview participant noted that they were “holding me in the neck. like controlling me and everything i do”. she continued to share how she felt mistreated by them: i felt like i was a slave too, ’cuz i would do everything for them, cook for them and clean the house and they would come home and eat and relax and that was okay with me. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 157 because i just wanted to get it over with, i don’t want to fight, but then they would not be pleased. they would never be pleased. like i would cook and they would say something, “oh this is too salty” [laughs], like little things like that. it is ridiculous. as the abuse was perpetrated by family members, this participant felt an entrenchment of guilt: “i’m torn between leaving and not leaving because i’m thinking, “oh these are my dad’s sisters, this is my grandma”. it was a hard decision, i stayed for more than two years there.” the social norms and political, cultural, and economic structures of a home country can significantly inform and change how a woman’s migration process can be a positive or a further violating experience (jolly & reeves, 2006). two of the interview participants were live-in caregivers when they arrived in calgary. one of them was a caregiver for an extremely oppressive and emotionally violent extended family that occasionally also resorted to physical violence. the other was initially a caregiver for her extended family, but was subsequently told to work for a non-familial employer in lethbridge. her new employers treated her with constant suspicion that she was stealing small material things. she felt vilified for things that she did not do, to a point where she decided to leave. the traditions of religion and culture as harmful and supporting this research set out to begin discerning and understanding the factors that create situations that exacerbate people’s vulnerabilities to violence. in this research, particular vulnerabilities began to emerge, yet when we looked at the whole of the women’s lives, we learned that some of those vulnerabilities were also the supports or “protective factors”. all four women stated that they were strong roman catholics, the dominant faith in filipino culture. to varying degrees, all of them felt that their faith supported them through the violence. a patriarchal interpretation of roman catholic religion positions women as subservient to their families, to be constant caretakers. this was highlighted by the participants, as religion did perpetuate the entrapment of the women, and also contributed to them remaining in the abusive relationship. as one participant reflected, it is difficult to discern between what part of the violence is accepted tradition, and what is not: “how do you know that you already need help compared to what is traditional… some traditions tell you that that’s okay, that’s part of it”. in the moments when another participant questioned whether she should leave, she commented that she would return to her faith and ask her god what to do, and she believed he wanted her to stay and follow her husband: how could i go? i have my baby, but oh “okay, lord…i don’t know”. i’m asking again, i just, i have faith in the lord. i have a big faith first of all. i honour the lord first, that is my guidance….so i’m always, i’m always “yes lord, yes lord, i will follow my husband, i will be a good housewife, okay”. yet, dedication to faith and family are also an integral support for healing. one participant confided in a pastor who offered support and another participant who was very religious talked about how important friends were in helping her heal: “we’re all roman catholic. so if it helps them to go to church, if it helps to pray, then that’s good too. i think it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 158 helped me too”. for a third participant, when she and her husband participated in couples for christ, it temporarily helped, although the domestic violence later emerged again. findings from the focus group as noted previously, the filipino male focus group was comprised of seven filipino men who are community leaders and provide informal support to men who have either perpetrated violence, or been a victim of violence. the focus group was facilitated by a male filipino member of the research team given that filipino men were not comfortable or willing to talk with one of the female researchers. the men talked about the unique ways that domestic violence emerges between couples in the filipino community because of the strong, often patriarchal traditions of family, and a deeply rooted roman catholic religion. they stated that most domestic violence occurs in families that have been separated – one spouse is living in canada and one in the philippines – and how the separation can often lead to infidelity. one participant noted, “for a husband or a wife, seeing oneself as the victim of infidelity, it’s normal to commit violence in the family. again, as i said, it’s always the children who are the victims of this kind of violence”. the filipino men spoke of adjustment to the cultural norms of canada, which is perceived as more permissive, contributing to seduction and infidelity on the part of their filipina wives. infidelity was discussed at great length as a precipitating factor of domestic violence. one declared: our cultural values as filipinos, the only thing that a husband or wife would commit that is that is not forgivable is infidelity. that’s the culture in our place in the northern part. so i mean your wife can tell you anything, everything: i will not cook for you, i will not care for you, as long as you will not commit infidelity, still ah, cling to her. but there’s only one thing you should not commit. it’s infidelity. the group participants did not however, use this issue as a justification for domestic violence. rather, they commented that because of the length of time it takes for a spouse to be sponsored, when they do finally arrive, often he or she may discover the “spouse or their husband is cohabituating with someone else”. migration and the impact of precarious employment as vulnerability for violence the filipino men discussed the impact of menial and precarious work in canada, and how this is a significant stressor that may precipitate domestic violence. part of the stress is the “culture shock” of arriving in calgary and only being able to obtain a “menial” job after being a professional in their home country. several studies point to the tremendous amount of stress to the family unit when husbands and other men from the community experience racism and discrimination in the workplace and in mainstream society, usually in the form of underemployment and/or lack of accreditation of their foreign credentials (guruge et al., 2001; jolly & reeves, 2006; kasturirangan et al., 2004; smith, 2006). this is one of the stressors of the migration process and the reality of the employment and lived experience of many filipinos in calgary, as one focus group participant explains: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 159 they settle with working menial jobs and because they are not used to it, when they come home they are a bit stressed and, you know, here’s [where] the finger pointing comes in, blaming each other, “why did you, you know, force me to come here? i had a good job there”. so you know the pressure mounts. the men discussed the need for “pre-departure orientation” sessions for men and women leaving the philippines that realistically describe the experience of being a temporary foreign worker, and a live-in caregiver. secondly, they identified the need to have information, both before departure and once in calgary, about domestic violence and the supports available to address behavioural challenges within a relationship when settling in calgary. a filipino participant noted that prior to departure people are like “captive customers”, thus it is an ideal time and place to offer the information. this may also help to mitigate the romanticized notion of canada being a “graceland” and thereby preparing migrants for a more realistic settlement experience in canada. discussion although the sample size for both groups was small, it is difficult to summarize the rich, in-depth experiences shared in this study without seeming to reduce their complexity or impact on the lives of the participants. however, there are several poignant themes that should be highlighted in order to promote understanding, inform discussion, and further the aim of violence prevention in the community. experience of work and domestic violence there is a need for further interpretive research to better understand the meaning of work in the lives of filipina women who experience domestic violence. grossman and chester (1990) argue: less attention has been given to the phenomenological experience of work for women; that is, studies that focus on how women view themselves as workers, how they experience their work and the meaning they make of it in the context of the rest of their lives. (p. 2) “work outside the home” was a central motivator for change for the four filipina women. however, work can hold many meanings, and for the four filipina women in this research, it held a double meaning. on the one hand, gender roles are to a great extent socially defined as within the home. filipina women, like the following taiwanese women: were taught how to do housework and cooking, and how to manage family life. they were not allowed to have strong opinions, as they were wives, and they had been told to believe that within a marriage their husbands and children were their whole life – that is to say, they had no rights as individuals in marriage….the woman should selflessly supply her husband and children with all she could. (williams & yu, 2006, p. 64) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 160 on the other hand, work outside the home was life saving, particularly for one participant. given this small sample size, this research theme could benefit from greater investigation into what role work plays in the lives of filipina women who have experienced domestic violence. gendered migration and domestic violence many filipina professionals migrate to work as caregivers because of unemployment and poverty in the philippines and a lack of financial resources necessary to become an immigrant in canada (constable, 1997). further to this, that a filipina woman is to be “mindful of the wellbeing of her family, primarily parents but also dependent siblings, fulfills one of the dictates of philippine femininity. she is a dutiful daughter both in terms of the family and the philippine state, which has calculated the export of gendered labour into its development policies” (barber, 2000, p. 402). jolly and reeves (2006) discuss the consequences of such policies: experience shows that migration can provide new opportunities to improve women’s lives and change oppressive gender relations – even displacement as a result of conflict can lead to shifts in gendered roles and responsibilities to women’s benefits. however, migration can also entrench traditional roles and inequalities and expose women to new vulnerabilities as the result of precarious legal status, exclusions and isolation. (p. 1) the cultural contexts that are layered into experiences of domestic violence make it difficult to settle on any unifactoral explanation (guruge et al., 2010). understanding the home country’s economic and political contexts and cultural identities of gender may significantly inform our ability to understand how violence shows up in intimate relationships and may inform how we can best respond to it and support diverse communities: this way of seeing migration from a development perspective is key to understanding the ways that violence occurs that is different than canadian women who are not immigrants. there are still gaps in theory, policy and practice to see migration as gendered and developmental. international migration theories have failed to see gender specific migration, and in failing to see this, have subsequently failed in recognizing pre-departure domestic violence. the migration process is filled with possibilities, and hope for a better life, but for some filipina women it can mean precarious legal status, abusive working conditions, social isolation and exclusion, and particular health risks and discrimination. (jolly & reeves, 2006, p. 3) much attention is given to the socially defined roles of women, and in particular, ethnocultural women immigrating to canada. however, there is also a need to understand the socially defined roles and cultural identities of men immigrating to canada. often the ethnocultural and socially defined roles of gender conflict with gender roles in canada. limitations although this study generated valuable learning with respect to risk and protective factors within one community, the findings cannot be generalized due to only four interviews being conducted. additionally, we were unable to recruit men from the filipino community who had international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 161 actually perpetrated violence. our contacts within the community were very clear that men were not willing to openly discuss their experiences. in hindsight, the chosen methodology was perhaps not conducive to generating discussion around such a sensitive topic for either women or men in the very short time frame available. when working with men and women from newcomer communities in the future, we believe that a more participatory, conversational type of process would generate greater success in recruiting participants. meeting with a set group over a period of three or four weeks could allow participants to gain trust with both the researchers and other participants, and could perhaps allow a fuller exploration of the process of violence. while this would entail a longer data collection process, we believe the results would be worth it. conclusion and recommendations there are several intersections between the interviews with the women and the focus group with the men; therefore the discussion and implications of the research is integrated to demonstrate and re-emphasize the interconnected and manifold nature of domestic violence. further, the focus of the discussion can also be used to inform the provincial prevention and intervention strategy for domestic violence being informed by the brenda strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence. in regard to practice, there is a further need to address the gendered migration and cultural context of domestic violence. this may include: 1. developing more complex settlement services that support the economic, social and family health of new canadians during their transition to canada, in order to avoid significant stresses that may contribute to family violence; 2. ensuring that the staff of live-in caregiver resource centres can assist caregivers with information and legal support with respect to issues of domestic violence; and 3. ensuring that key contacts within the individual’s settlement country be provided at pre-migration orientation and upon arrival. from this research, we learned that natural and/or cultural networks in canada are key supports for domestic violence victims, and can therefore be positioned as strong protective factors within the community. in addition to educating formal settlement services and programs on risk factors and protective factors for domestic violence, greater effort is needed to leverage the existing formal and informal leaders or support workers within the community. this strategy would create a “community-made” solution preventing of domestic violence that captures the specific cultural contexts at play. this strategy would also include further consultation with particular faith communities and leaders to engage them in a lead role in prevention. specific to the filipino community, additional research is needed to understand how the migration stressors of temporary foreign workers and live-in caregivers impacts migrants and may be significant risk factors for domestic violence. future research that explores these “individualist factors” would be immensely valuable to understanding whether some women and men who migrate may be more vulnerable to domestic violence, and why. offering post-arrival international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 147–165 162 orientation on migration stressors and gender equality may be one way of providing additional support in this area. finally, based on discussion with both the women and the referral group, there is a need to conduct further research into policies that may create and/or exacerbate vulnerabilities to domestic violence. certain federal government initiatives, such as the live-in caregiver or temporary foreign workers programs, may create or exacerbate vulnerabilities through the forced separation of families for lengthy periods of time (hodge, 2006). reducing the time required for sponsorship would greatly support family stability and could be one way of reducing risk for domestic violence. the migration process can have a profound impact and may facilitate or perpetuate vulnerabilities for violence in the lives of female and male newcomers. jolly and reeves (2006) argue that: theory, policy and practice that link gender equality concerns with migration from a development perspective are rare. migration is still primarily seen as the corner of the state and migration as a development issue is only just emerging, with limited attention being paid to gender. 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(2009). appendix b: literature on intimate partner violence in immigrant and refugee communities: review and recommendations. in s. novick (ed.), intimate partner violence in immigrant and refugee communities: challenges, promising practices and recommendations (pp. 34–62). princeton, nj: robert wood johnson foundation. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100309/dq100309a-eng.htm� http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100309/dq100309a-eng.htm� http://www.ucalgary.ca/resolve/reports/2010/2010-04.pdf� http://www.ucalgary.ca/resolve/reports/2010/2010-04.pdf� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 smudge this: assimilation, state-favoured communities and the denial of indigenous spiritual lives vanessa watts abstract: this paper will examine how the transformation of indigenous places has interrupted the inheriting processes of indigenous communities. the primary contention of this inquiry is that the spirit world for anishnaabeg is place-based. amidst colonialism and the introduction of christianity during contact, the spiritual lives of humans, nonhumans, and therefore place were damaged. the ability of we indigenous peoples to inherit elements of our cosmologies amidst these transformed, industrialized places has also been compromised. issues of material, spatial, and spiritual disembodiment as related to localized, ceremonial practices will be explored. specifically, meaningful ceremony versus “boardroom smudging” will be examined as it relates to the assimilationist agenda of the state. keywords: spirituality, materiality, place, locatable knowledges vanessa watts, ma is a full-time lecturer in the indigenous studies program at mcmaster university, hamilton hall room 103/f, mcmaster university, hamilton , on l8s 4l8. e-mail: wattsv@mcmaster.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 149 the survival of indigenous peoples and our traditional practices is generally measured on a scale of demise versus adaptability (vizenor, 2008). regarded historically as a doomed race, it is still surprising to many that we continue to exist at all. the quandary of this circumstance is usually resolved in the demonstrated ability of indigenous peoples to adapt. adapting to the ongoing theft of our lands, continuing to practise our traditional ceremonies despite intense missionizing operations throughout our territories, and so forth. this politics of adaptability are reminiscent of coulthard’s (2007) politics of recognition — the reconciling of indigenous peoples to the settler state’s processes of domination. this paper will interrogate how anishnaabe1 spiritual practices have been abstracted and evacuated from place in a continued effort towards the assimilation of indigenous communities. i will undertake this examination in two lines of inquiry. firstly, the spiritual violations present in the indian residential school (irs) system will be discussed and framed as a method of inscribing a new, assimilated identity onto indigenous children. i argue that displaced forms of christianity that were central to the british colonial project and perpetuated colonialism through making universalist claims are incommensurate with place-based anishnaabe spirituality. the attempted disembodiment of place from its spiritual life through forced christianization contributes to a denial of indigenous ceremony, thereby interrupting the process of inheriting. in turn, this dislocation has fostered an environment wherein the politics of adaptability (assimilation) are intensified. as canada attempts to transition to a less explicitly violent relationship with indigenous peoples, the indigenous ceremonial practices that were once proscribed during the irs era are currently not only allowable, but engaged with. thus, my second line of inquiry will address more contemporary functions of indigenous ceremony as they relate to assimilationist goals of the state. i explore the effectiveness of anishnaabe ceremonial life amidst colonized places, specifically in industrialized, urban communities. this discussion problematizes the assumption that our process of inheriting is amenable to the challenges produced by colonialism, thereby resulting in so-called reconciled communities. my contention is that residential schools and urban centres are significant material fabrications of colonialism, both of which accelerate an assimilationist agenda, and both of which are actively produced in contravention of indigenous spiritual relationships. the inheriting 1 the anishnaabe are one of the largest nations in north america. anishnaabe homelands include territories in the provinces of ontario, manitoba, and saskatchewan, as well as in the american states of michigan, wisconsin, and minnesota. the anishnaabe include the ojibway, algonquin, odawa, chippewa, and saulteaux peoples (see minnesota historical society, 1973). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 150 of transformed, colonial places interrupts our ability as anishnaabeg2 not only to communicate with all aspects of community (including the spirit world), but may actually transform our spirit world. it is therefore necessary to trace how anishnaabe spirituality is understood, and how it is subsequently considered both deniable and welcome by the state. place and inheritance in anishnaabe cosmologies it should first be noted that the canadian colonial project has always relied on the disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples from their territories which, in turn, eradicates senses of community. i aim both to situate traditional anishnaabe understandings and protocols within the pre-colonial mind3 (hill, 2012), and to examine the consequences of violent interruptions to these traditional understandings and protocols. indigenous peoples across turtle island4 have always maintained protocols that negotiated how newcomers would be incorporated into society, which included the sharing practices of distinctive indigenous knowledge, as well as members of one nation living in another nation’s land. while the implications of forced relocation and urbanization cannot be underestimated, i intend to trace place and inheriting as situated5 realities. secondly, anishnaabe spirituality varies from place to place. multiple anishnaabe territories across turtle island exist and therefore spiritual practices are differentiated in terms of the landscape of place (various clan systems, ceremonies, rituals specific to elements of that territory, etc.). as well, anishnaabe spirituality may be differentiated in terms of how and why ceremonies are practised. the complex nature of this spirituality is emblematic of how place and the relationship with place are both particular and nuanced through anishnaabeg communities. this paper will not explicate the nature of differences among these layers of anishnaabe spirituality; rather, it refers to anishnaabe spirituality as a function, which is central to our cosmologies. colonial mapping in canada has attempted to sever the spiritual and material relationships between inhabitants of place. in this attempted severing, the understanding of place has been perverted into a resource-based relationship with land. coulthard (2010) provides a crucial re-centring of place and its scope: it is a profound misunderstanding to think of land or place as simply some material object of profound importance to indigenous cultures (although it is this too); instead it ought to 2anishnaabe refers to the nation of peoples; anishnaabeg refers to the people belonging to this nation. 3 the “pre-colonial” mind concerns the act of understanding indigenous concepts and traditions in a non-reflexive frame, that is, not informed or reflected by and against colonialism. 4 turtle island refers to the continent of north america. many anishnaabeg refer to turtle island when speaking of their homeland because of the sacred place the turtle holds in creation stories. 5 i use the term situated in identifying localized knowledges (see haraway, 1988). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 151 be understood as a field of relationships of things to each other. place is a way of knowing, experiencing, and relating with the world – and these ways of knowing often guide forms of resistance to power relations that threaten to erase or destroy our senses of place. (p. 79) the field of relationships that coulthard (2010) refers to, i argue, is a mechanism of inheriting. place, then, is the material and non-material space of inheriting. it is also reinforces the notion of how communities are structured: community is a network of tacit relationships anchored in particular geography and knowledge systems. place is both birth and inheritance. according to anishnaabe beliefs, humans are of the land. the land is our first mother, and first woman (simpson, 2011). she is not a myth, or a story. she is our history and our material, biological mother. therefore we are of her. our materiality, spirits, minds, and emotions are all interconnected and share a material connection to land. in this birth, we (and other beings) inherit throughout our lifetime. place includes stories, histories, meaning, territory (land, waters, rocks, air), humans, non-humans, the spirit world, protocols, and governance systems (johnston, 1987). it is the basis for our cosmology and how we relate within a society. when we bury our children’s placentas in the earth, it is both a recognition and introduction of this new being to place. when we bury our people at the end of a lifetime, they return to the land and become part of the process of inheriting through their bodies and their spirits. all new beings carry the knowledge of beings before them. the relationship we have to place is also one that we have with ourselves. when place is altered, we are altered as current and future inheritors. if this altering is a form of disembodiment, what we can bestow is limited to what we have adapted against. the spirit world inherits as well. it is the receiver of our prayers, offerings, and communication. for example, in the smudging ceremony(or simply, “smudging”),6 which involves the burning of sage as a purification cleansing ritual so as to cleanse the person’s mind, spirit, body, and emotions of negative energy, we are asking the spirit world and the spirit of the sage itself to aid in our emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental cleansing. the sage that is burnt is materially cleansing these parts of ourselves. the spirit world is engaged in ceremony with us through the usage of sage, and correspondingly the spirit world can also affect us and other beings through dreams, signs, and ceremonies. this shared affectual relationship is both accommodated by place and embodied in place — the basis of which is reciprocity. for many anishnaabeg, our spirituality is essentially tied to place as are the spirits of our ancestors (both human and non-human). we conduct ceremony for them, and they conduct ceremony for us. place is a space of exchange, which invites the question: in the presence of a reciprocal and interdependent relationship, when place is altered, is the spirit world altered as well? 6 smudging is a purification ceremony anishnaabeg have always practised, but is not limited to the anishnaabe. it is also a common practice in some other indigenous cultures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 152 in order to begin to understand our spirituality, it is essential to examine how nonhumans are engaged within anishnaabe societies. firstly, non-humans are active agents who founded society (benton-benai, 2010). they are not separate from the political, the social, the private, or the public. animals, the sky world, the water world, the plant world, the rocks, the spirit world — all pre-existed humankind (benton-benai, 2010). they are not species and elements reacting to instinct. rather, these worlds represent sophisticated, functioning, selfgoverning societies. these societies have ethical structures, and inter-species treaties and agreements. further, they possess the ability to interpret, understand, and implement. human beings were the last to arrive on earth, according to our creation story (benton-benai, 2010). as founders, non-humans directly influence how humans organize themselves into a given society. the emergence and subsequent inclusion of human beings into society was negotiated through councils of non-human beings. for example, in one understanding of anishnaabe clan systems, the fish clan represents the intellectuals, teachers, and scholars (benton-benai, 2010). the identification with this clan among humans was not merely based on the observation of fish traits. rather, this relationship was determined by fish themselves — an agreement to regard human beings as kin, and vice-versa. it follows that we as anishnaabeg are extensions of the very land we walk upon, and therefore have an obligation to maintain communication with it. the nature of this obligation also cautions us that if we do not care for the land, we run the risk of losing who we are as anishnaabeg. smudging is one aspect of this communication and obligates us to use material elements of place for this exchange, and affirms the embodied relationship we have to place. if we accept that as anishnaabeg we are of the land, and that land is alive, then it follows that our thoughts, systems, and understandings of the world are essentially tied to place. it is not just a physical displacement that is risked through continued dispossession of lands: our ability to think, act, and govern also becomes compromised. colonialism has disrupted our ability to communicate with place and has endangered agency amongst indigenous peoples (cajete, 2000). during the initial period of colonization of indigenous territories on turtle island, christianity and capitalism were fundamental in transforming our many places. place was (and is) confronted with a form of diminutive agency wherein non-humans have been considered to be non-rational and non-spiritual, and by european estimation, so were we (smith, 1999). over time, through assimilationist tactics and violence, our own ability to act and converse with non-humans and other humans became compromised. the consequences of this extend beyond losing a form of indigenous identity or worldview and how it is practised — it has resulted in a violation of land’s intentionality. place and inheriting in relation to the spirit world can be understood through the story of how nenaboozhoo created the spirit world. storyteller isaac murdoch (2014) of serpent river first nation retells this story. nenaboozhoo was born of a human woman whose father was the spirit of the western wind: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 153 nenaboozhoo noticed that all those spirits were just roaming endlessly in the sky, and thought, “i think i know what to do.” noticing that a turtle was pouting by a rock, nenaboozhoo said, “why don’t you do me a favour, you’re so beautiful and you’re so gifted, why don’t you bring me some nice beautiful stones from the edge of the lake ’cause i want to use them.” the turtle was mad because when nenaboozhoo was creating the earth he didn’t include turtle, so turtle was jealous and he felt left out. as the turtle was at the edge of the lake, nenaboozhoo grabbed him and threw him far out into the lake. the turtle was very angry and swam to the bottom and sat right in the middle of the lake. when that turtle came up for air nenaboozhoo shot his arrow at it, and of course that arrow hit that shell and when it did, startled turtle and all that mud that was on that turtle’s back and tail flipped up into the sky. and they say it created jibiiy miikan, the sacred path in the afterlife that went from east to west. the mud that was on turtle’s back and tail had come from nenaboozhoo’s grandmother nokomis’s medicine that was all scattered at the bottom of the lake. it was her medicine that got flung right across the sky. nenaboozhoo knew that, and said, “here is a sacred trail and to finish this i’m going to make a place for those who departed.” nenaboozhoo walked down the path that goes from east to west, and at the end he created the spirit world. they say he was there for a long time creating everything and he made it very beautiful, even more beautiful than the earth, they say. all of the rocks were gorgeous, the trees, the animals and their colours were absolutely pure. so that’s how the spirit world came to the anishinabe, and they say that when someone passes away, their spirits go through the eastern door, and they travel south and out the western door. and they say that his brother, the brother that was born as a black stone, wanted to look after that place up there. so nenaboozhoo told his brother “i will send you there, and that will be your place to look after.” (p. 10) nenaboozhoo is part human and part spirit. he is regarded by anishnaabeg as aiding in creation. weaver’s (1997) discussion on polycentrism among indigenous communities is helpful in understanding the implications of the above story and the possibility of multiple spirit worlds. these multiple worlds are indicative of each cosmology as being universally held to local places. each cosmology had a sacred right to its own existence and was to be respected by descendants of other cosmologies. this dynamic of respect and interdependence can be applied to the spirit world as well. in the story of nenaboozhoo, we are told that he created the spirit world where the wandering spirits of the territory could be organized and continue to live, finding new purpose. if we apply weaver’s (2007) claim that there are multiple cosmologies belonging to particular territories, then we must also consider that there are indeed multiple spirit worlds that are locatable and accessible through distinctive places and particular cosmological beliefs. a multiplicity of worlds does not preclude meaningful interaction or exchanges between them; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 154 rather, multiple spirit worlds have their own beginnings and internal processes that are particular to territory or place. further to weaver’s (2007) point, the multiple points of centrism or spirit worlds would be created out of material places. for nenaboozhoo, he used a turtle, the lake, mud from the bottom of the lake, and an arrow to create the spirit world. all of these elements are familiar and locatable for the anishnaabeg. in addition, nenaboozhoo’s powers are born of both a human (his mother) and the western wind (his father). this power manifested itself into a place where spirits (including those of humans) could go after experiencing death (walking through the western doorway). finally, the story of nenaboozhoo tells us that after walking jibiiy miikan (the sacred path into the spirit world), rocks, waters, trees, plants, and animals are found within it. therefore, there is a sacred relationship that human beings have with these companions of place during our time here, and they continue and translate into the western stage of life: death and beyond. the main contention of this reality is that spirit resides in the material bodies of all companions, including ourselves. given that nenaboozhoo tells us the spirit world is a direct consequence of the material and physical aspects of place, it must therefore also be true that the spirit world has the potential to be constantly affected by the circumstances and happenings of the material world. the beings of the spirit world can experience the feasts we hold for them in this world and the ceremonies we conduct for them, and they too give to us through ceremony, dreams, songs, art, shapeshifting, and so on. this fluid exchange is not without more dangerous impacts, those impacts being the ones that result outside of acts of gratitude, generosity, and calls for aid. the spirit world receives all that we offer and is affected by place continuously, not solely from one pure moment in its time of inception (dei, 2000). since colonization began, we have been witness to rampant destruction of place, and some of us have become contributors to this destruction. if we know our spirituality can be located on the earthly plane, to what extent can we now access the spiritual, given the damage to place amidst colonialism? disembodiment the colonization of indigenous places has corrupted, and continues to corrupt, the reciprocal relationship of bequeathing and inheriting between all worlds and their communities: spirit, animal, human, rock, sky, water, winged, and plant. foreign religious influences have been particularly destructive to this inheriting process. the massive violations against indigenous peoples and territories by christian nations during the time of conquest without a sense of godly purpose would have been considered the epitome of savageness by these nations, to be sure. furthermore, the conquering of peoples, places, and spirits was rationalized as a design of sacred obligations. the usage of christian institutions and doctrine to facilitate the colonial imperative (wealth through dominion over land) was considered a marker of being civilized (wilson, 2000) — even of divinity. stephen riggs, an ohio-born missionary to the sioux from 1837 to 1883, stated: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 155 as tribes and nations the indians must perish and live only as men! with this impression of the tendency of god’s purposes as they are being developed year after year, i would labor to prepare them to fall in with christian civilization that is destined to cover the earth. (berkhofer, 1972, p. 7) the export of christian doctrine from europe to the “new world” demonstrates that not only was christianity abstracted from its original place, but that it was a christian duty to christianize non-christian places. christians are instructed to: “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (mark 16:15–16, english standard version). the doctrines of christianity are transportable because its divine nature is spiritual — and the spiritual is thought to be unconstrained by place. it is not only transportable, but valued as inherently good; as something that should be sought after and spread throughout the world. the implications for dispossession of indigenous lands are not subtle. the reasoning for non-located spirituality serves to not only transform indigenous lands into christian ones, but to disconnect us from our cosmologies. i do not contend that the many religious denominations of christianity do not hold particular places as holy or sacred; bethlehem and jerusalem are just some of the places that are regarded in this way (mazumdar & mazumdar, 2007). however, the transportable nature of these denominations is not commensurate with the cosmological view of indigenous places. deloria (2003) writes: just as the temporal world religions find a place for sacred sites, so spatial religions deal with the passage of time and the increasing complexity that it brings to human societies by attached stories to the sacred places … the hazard that appears within the spatial conceptions of religion is the effect that missionary activity has on its integrity when it tries to leave its homeland. can it leave the land of its nativity and embark on a program of world or continental conquest without losing its religious essence in favor of purely political or economic considerations? are ceremonies restricted to particular places, and do they become useless in a foreign land? (p. 69) deloria (2003) questions not the validity of christianity itself, but rather the efficacy of a religious system once it has been transported to a foreign land. so, if we can briefly suspend the context of colonialism or the violent effects that christianity as a system has had on indigenous communities, and question the stability of a substantive belief system outside of its sacred places, the effectiveness and purposefulness of this system is called into question. the stories inherent in christian doctrine therefore become historical references to foreign places when distributed to unknown worlds. the vastness of the “new world” was mistakenly perceived by european newcomers as an unpeopled wilderness, a virtual garden of eden. the categorization of indigenous peoples as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 156 “sub-human” further legitimized the europeans’ view of the colonization of land and its inhabitants as progressive and necessary (smith, 1999). indigenous peoples and their spiritual lives were viewed as similar to the land itself — terra nullius. in a blog post examining the violence against missing and murdered indigenous women, sayers (2015) referenced this idea, claiming that the female indigenous body is perceived by settler society as existing in a perpetual state of terra nullius. if we take this comparison and apply it to the spiritual lives of indigenous peoples at the time of contact, they would be viewed in the same way as territory was — empty and ripe for spiritual fulfilment. this view was operationalized not only in mass-missionary operations during the settlement of canada, but also in the forced conversions of indigenous peoples in exchange for food, shelter, and education (wilson, 2000). for example, industrial schools and day schools, which were in operation before and during the formalized residential school system, were afflicted with violence, forced labour, sexual and physical abuse, or — at the very least — negligence (canadian broadcasting corporation, 2013). the irs system, which was funded by the federal government and overseen by various churches,7 isolated children from their families and communities. attendance of indigenous children at these schools from ages 4 to 16 was mandatory under law (chansonneuve, 2005), and children were vulnerable to continued abuses for years on end in many cases. the effects of these schools still continue today in the intergenerational impacts on residential school survivors and their families (chansonneuve, 2005). the churches were empowered by the state to carry out a policy of aggressive assimilation under the canadian government. the continued presence of distinctive peoples or “indians” as defined under the law created fiduciary, and thus, economic, obligations of the state that were thought to impede both progress and further access to land. former superintendent of indian affairs, duncan campbell scott, was empowered to oversee the irs system. his objective was to acculturate indigenous peoples, so that any uniquely held relationship to the land (legal or cosmological) would be dissolved. scott stated: i want to get rid of the indian problem. i do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.… our objective is to continue until there is not a single indian in canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no indian question, and no indian department. (titley, 2011, p. 50) the policy of aggressive assimilation entrenched within the irs system would only be considered successful if the targeted population of indigenous children would continue to participate in a process of de-localized inheritance beyond the schools themselves. this would 7 the churches empowered to oversee residential schools included roman catholic, anglican, methodist, presbyterian, and united. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 157 include the erasure of a spiritual relationship to place. within this process, the ability of indigenous peoples to inherit is oriented not to place, but rather to a dislocated, normalized mimicry. notes from the legislative assembly of the province of canada describe how the “indian problem” is properly a lack of whiteness: the chief obstacles to the advancement of the race are … their ignorance or imperfect knowledge of the language, customs, and mode of traffic of the whites; and that feebleness of the reasoning powers, which is the necessary consequences of the entire absence of mental cultivation. (canada, 1847, appendix t) the assimilation of indigenous peoples by the state was a failure for many reasons, one of them being that ancient processes of inheriting that pre-existed contact could not be easily replaced by a mocked-up identity. our inheritance extends beyond the transmission of knowledge as told in stories; it is the material extension of and reintegration of place. this is not a trivial process, and is a consequence of our very existence as human beings. assimilation continues to be a failure of inheriting — a god-trick borne out of the arriving settlers’ desire to create indians in their own image. residential schools did not emerge solely out of the racist intent to “kill the indian in the child” (chansonneuve, 2005), or even to instil a core value system predicated on white christian values. attempts to assimilate indigenous children during the irs era have changed to other, less obvious forms than the pronounced removal of children from their places. take, for example, the capitalistic approach to viewing land as a resource exploitable for profit, devoid of spiritual characteristics. milloy (1999) argues that the teaching of industry, and specifically agriculture, was considered by churches running the residential schools to be essential to “breaking aboriginal spirituality” (milloy, 1999, p. 53). teaching indigenous children to tend crops and livestock fostered a different understanding of how they might relate to land. the residential school system not only introduced a counterintuitive misuse of place, but resulted in a violent severance of spiritual exchange between children and places. this severing is highlighted in the following story, also retold by isaac murdoch (2014), about a young anishnaabe boy from serpent river, ontario: now i’m going to tell you a little story. in the spanish residential school, there was a young boy that died of chicken pox. they say he had lumps on his face and he passed away. so on serpent river they took that small child and wrapped him in birch bark and they buried him at the old village site. in that old village, there’s a big graveyard there, and they wrapped him up in birch bark and they put in him in a shallow grave. but the people in spanish at the residential school said, “no, he was baptized we have full rights to that body, under god’s authority, under someone’s authority”. they went back to that old indian burial site and they dug up his grave and they took it back to spanish and put him in an unmarked grave and of course that’s where the grave is now. the fact the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 158 people from spanish stole the body from the grave and put the body in another grave is not unique or strange, because they probably did that all the time. what makes this story unique is they actually documented everything that happened with the family, with the burial, with everything. the french person wrote what he saw down, he said, “when we arrived at the graveside the anishnaabe were dancing at the grave” and they said ‘that they were celebrating the life of the young person, and that they were dancing in circles around the grave’”. on the grave, on top, they had made a little wigwam made out of birch bark and inside that wigwam they had placed food inside. on the west side of the grave they had a fire, and they said that they were cooking on the fire. the ritual of dancing around the grave would last for 10 to 15 minutes, then stop, they’d eat, tell stories then the dance would start again. so, when the residential school people went up to this grave and said, “we have to take this grave.” the anishnaabe said, “you can’t bother the body because it’s travelling, it’s going west, it’s going home”. that’s what he recorded them saying. “the residential school people said, “we have no choice” and the anishnaabe said, “if you bother it, maybe nenaboozhoo will get mad at you”. of course the french people from the residential school laughed, because they felt like they were the boss of everything i guess and at that time they probably really were. the residential school people, started to dig the grave, and again they recorded everything, and what they said was that when they started to dig the grave, the mother was crying at the bottom of the lake. at that gravesite it goes down and there’s a lake at the bottom. the anishnaabe said that the residential school people couldn’t understand why she was crying so hard because her son was going to go to heaven and not hell. so of course they took the body and they unrolled the birch bark, and what they found inside the birch bark were supplies. they found dried meat, they found dried berries, they found a little knife, they found a candle, they found a little axe, and moccasins and the boy was painted red. the residential school people had to clean the boy up, they couldn’t just bury him like that and so they actually took the body back to spanish and they washed the paint off the boy and the put in him a suit of some sort, and they put him in an unmarked grave, and the parents never knew where he was buried. when you listen to that story, it’s a very tragic story right? the tragedy is not just the fact that the boy was stolen from our gravesite, but our way of life, how we looked at the spirit world, was also stolen too. because now all those little boys, obviously their family believed that there was a spirit road that went from east to west, that was taken away from them. (p. 11–12). the burial rites identified in the story above are anchored in the material and create a point of access from one world to another. the material belongings that the young boy would take with him in his westward walk are not reducible to symbolic representations. this violation, not only in undoing the rites of this young boy in his death, but in his entrance into another international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 159 world, is a place-based experience. from the removal of the birch bark to the denial of sustenance to him, all participants in this process are deprived of their ability to be agent. this deprivation, couched in a salvation narrative (i.e., that the boy is worthy of a christian burial) is reflective of the arrogance inherent in assimilationist practices. the christian rites that were imposed are a form of post-mortem acculturation, an act to de-situate this young boy’s materiality and immateriality, thus interrupting the ability of the spirit world to inherit him. in one sense, the spirit world itself experiences its own strain. how do elements of the spirit world accommodate these injustices, similar to the ones identified in this story? the spiritual lives of indigenous peoples and places were violated during the residential school system era. the hundreds of thousands of stolen children from their families were also stolen from their place of communication with the spirit world. arthur ron mckay, a survivor of sandy bay indian residential school, spoke of his experience in becoming an altar boy to “try their way”. he recounts: that’s how i lost all my … beliefs, traditional things that i knew from my grandfather, the songs that he tried to show me because i knew some songs before i left for school and i forgot all about those songs, traditional songs, sun dance songs, even when i was younger, that young i knew and i knew how to do all the little things that the medicines, he used to pick. by this time then i was going back on the last years, i forgot all about those. (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015, p. 88) stories like arthur ron mckay’s are not uncommon amongst residential school survivors. many survivors have been able to reconnect to their traditions, but many have not. the place-based role to bequeath and subsequently inherit within families was also stolen, at least temporarily. this fractured dynamic is still present today, as exemplified in the intergenerational effects on survivors and their families produced out of residential school trauma (chansonneuve, 2005). given the efforts under colonization to disembody the spiritual lives of indigenous places for the purposes of state-sponsored assimilation, it is crucial to examine the consequences of these impacts. playing indian? in the article from which the excerpt below is taken, winnipeg free press journalist mary agnes welch (2012) details historical injustices indigenous people have been forced to endure by the state. it is through this account that she is able to reconcile the impatience she regularly felt when attending events that were opened with a time-consuming traditional smudging ceremony: the aboriginal ceremonies where sage or another traditional medicine is burned in a little bowl and passed around so everyone can waft the smoke over themselves … it’s for purification, and it’s a solemn, slow, peaceful, pungent ritual.… if you’re a self-important international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 160 journalist juggling two other stories who only plugged the parking meter for an hour, the whole thing can make you antsy, especially if the smudge is prolonged by prayers in cree or ojibwa by an elder and a drum circle song or two. (welch, 2012) in welch’s (2012) original estimation, smudging is a time-consuming and annoying practice. she convinces herself (and presumably, her primarily non-indigenous audience) that the smudging ceremony should at least be tolerated, given that it is a practice that should not have survived at all. in obliging this type of practice, welch (2012) concludes: “so, now that i’ve learned some of the history and how a culture survived against government policies designed to overwhelm it, i’ll put a little extra money in the meter, settle in for some drumming and the smudge and say miigwetch8.” (welch, 2012). in this case, ceremony is analogous to indigenous peoples themselves — how can it/they still be practised/alive? what is most significant about her statement is the recognition of indigenous ceremony as central to functions of indigenous governance and politics, while paradoxically insignificant to any matters of importance. welch (2012) echoes the frustrations of settler society more generally; indigenous ceremonial practices are viewed as inferior in their design and function, and yet are an obligatory part of achieving socalled multicultural tolerance. in our current times, place does not exist in purity. it may never have, but certainly in pre-contact times, place was closer to how anishnaabe stories portray its original design, and existed as a self-determining agent. this does not mean a pre-contact state is equal to a pure or innocent state. rather, place was powerfully engaged with the spirit world, and we as humans were situated in a place of reverence towards this power as opposed to being predatory gatherers of it (johnston, 1987). it is important not to oversimplify, or imagine that anishnaabe peoples (and indigenous peoples generally) were exempt from dissent or irresponsibility. there were wartimes, corruption, and immoral acts, and there are many stories in many nations that describe such events. however, violations against place were considered punishable, not something to be celebrated as progress. borrows (1996) re-tells the story of nanabush (nenaboozhoo), in which the deer nation denies the anishnaabe access to them for hunting purposes. the anishnaabe had violated a former agreement with the deer nation by disrespecting the bodies of the deer, thus acting without respect or integrity. for anishnaabeg, our intellectual capacities were operationalized differently because of historic agreements between humans and non-humans, and thus the intrinsic tie to the place and the spiritual life of it. it is important not to criticize or pathologize the reasons why some anishnaabeg (and other indigenous peoples) may not practise traditional ceremonies in this context. rather, it is critical to understand the function that ceremonies continue to have in relation to assimilation. from a colonial perspective, ceremony continues to be regarded as a polarizing practice. 8 “miigwetch” is an anishnaabe term and translates into an expression of gratitude or, “thank you”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 161 indigenous ceremonies were banned by an amendment to the indian act in 1884 (canada, 1884). for almost three-quarters of a century, ceremonies were forced underground, to be practised quietly until this ban was lifted in 1951 (canada, 1951). it was believed by the canadian government that these ceremonies were uncivilized and pagan (milloy, 1999). yet, canada found these “uncivilized” rituals to be so threatening that it forbade them. despite the decriminalization of ceremony, which ostensibly might appear to encourage restoration of indigenous traditional practices, i argue that the allowance of place-based ceremony was strategic in institutionalizing assimilation further as evidenced by other amendments to the indian act made at that time. for example, first nations communities were granted permission to take the federal government to court over land disputes in 1951 (canada, 1951). subsequently, the federal government created the specific and comprehensive land claims process, wherein indigenous communities could enter into negotiations with federal and provincial governments to resolve treaty violations or unsettled land so long as they agreed to the extinguishment of aboriginal title (alfred, 2009). the ability to inherit amongst indigenous peoples was redefined under a neoliberal rights-based system. this re-identification was, and is, a process of diluting place-based obligations as cultural rights accorded by the state. places that were once regarded as sacred became paved over or private property. indigenous peoples had been relocated to reserves, and the traditional territories that we once had access to were, and are, increasingly privatized and environmentally corrupted. how has ceremony transitioned and adapted to this new reality of place? oftentimes, indigenous ceremonial practices are thought of as both a decolonizing act as well as an indigenizing one. that is, by participating in our ceremonies we are becoming more connected to our traditional protocols as indigenous peoples, which consequently makes us less colonized. this reembodiment does not exist in a vacuum. as simpson (2004) argues, indigenous knowledge is increasingly becoming a provocative point of accessibility for settler governments and corporations to more expediently gain access to indigenous lands and resources. for instance, the study of traditional ecological knowledge (tek) is premised on the notion that indigenous peoples, globally, have a distinctive and intimate relationship with the knowledge of indigenous territories as it relates to sustainability (mcgregor, 2004). simpson (2004) cautions against the increasing trend of institutionalization of tek. she warns that while the recognition of the value inherent in indigenous knowledge systems can be productive in terms of sustainability, this recognition also risks making tek vulnerable to the resource-based desires of the state (simpson, 2004). ceremony in this sense, represents just another function of multiculturalism, a cultural right to be allowed by the state rather than serving as the basis for independent societies. it is regarded as something interesting, mystical, and by some accounts, akin to witchcraft (federici, 2006). as welch (2012) demonstrates, ceremony is something that can either be appreciated or detested, but it is not considered threatening to state power. in another sense, if we as indigenous peoples practise ceremony in its most meaningful places, in the most reverent way, and act to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 162 implement the consequent messages sent from place, we would surely be regarded as terrorists by the state. when anishnaabeg participate in ceremony at its most powerful (i.e., allowing place to communicate to us), we are acting against the settler state agenda of silencing or extracting place. ceremony in this way would emphasize our obligation to protect not only what is left of our cosmological manifestations, but try to restore place to its original place of dignity. this type of restoration in the eyes of settler states is tantamount to a threat against the political, economic, and sovereign will of the nation. the inviting of indigenous ceremonial practices into statist spaces extends beyond a socalled agenda of tolerance. these types of invitations represent a working towards assimilated, indigenous communities that reflect statist ideals. anderson (2013) provides an analysis of indigenous peoples citing hall’s (1993) discussion on identity that is helpful in this discussion; anderson claims that hall’s use of “essence” and “becoming” is helpful in understanding the complexities of indigenous identity in urban centres. essence in this context refers to the common “cultural codes” and “frames of reference” which inform cultural identities. hall (1993) also argues that these essences are in a state of “becoming”; cultural identities do not exist in a fixed past, but are sensitive to an ever-changing present and future (anderson, 2013, p. 49). thus, identity is constantly emerging amidst common and historical categories. anderson (2013) finds these two seeming paradoxes to be helpful in his discussion on identity amongst indigenous urban peoples: the authenticity of an indigenous person should not be measured in terms of an ostensibly more authentic “reserve” identity. that is, the identity of indigenous peoples living on lands reserved solely for “indians” under the law should not be considered more authentic than those indigenous peoples living in urban centres. while this argument may be appropriate in explicating how indigenous identities are shaped amidst urbanization and colonial processes of ascribing indigenous membership, i find this same reasoning raises problems when applied to indigenous ceremonies practised in colonial contexts. take for example, the idea that indigenous ceremony may be viewed as potentially transformative in terms of colonial practices. that is, the practice of indigenous ceremonies amidst colonial operations might combat the potentially destructive effects of colonialism. similar to simpson’s (2004) contention about tek, i argue rather that the institutionalization of ceremony at state and corporate levels is an exercise in the attempted disembodiment of ceremony from place. in 2007, former premier gordon campbell was instrumental in the british columbia treaty process, a comprehensive land claims process that would ultimately extinguish aboriginal title over indigenous lands. campbell was pictured in the vancouver sun newspaper, alongside former governor of california arnold schwarzenegger, blanketed with “ceremonial first nations blankets” at an economic summit in vancouver (vancouver sun, 2011; canadian broadcasting corporation, 2007). in ottawa, indigenous ceremonial practice with government bureaucrats has become commonplace. in 2012, at a summit aimed towards “resetting the relationship”, national chief shawn atleo of the assembly of first nations and prime minister international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 163 harper were being smudged together by an elder. prime minister harper stated that several aboriginal uprisings led to the need to reset the relationship between aboriginal peoples and the state, and this would include bringing communities fully into canada’s economy (postmedia news, 2012). less than a year later, the idle no more movement in canada arose, an indigenous movement that critiqued the corporate and anti-environmental processes that prime minister harper planned to employ to bring indigenous communities and lands into canada’s economy. mohawk scholar taiaiake alfred (1999) writes on the problem of co-option: “the complexity of indigenous-state relations gives agents of the state many opportunities and mechanisms to move indigenous leaders away from their communities, politically and ideologically, and towards the state.” (p. 74) i argue that the co-option of indigenous ceremonies is purposeful, and designed to construct a more conciliatory form of access to indigenous lands. from an historical conflation with witchcraft to a more contemporary association to access, the practice of indigenous ceremonies in colonial settings symbolizes a permissiveness that was never granted. i term this trend of state-legitimated ceremony as “boardroom smudging”. boardroom smudging is emblematic of tolerance of indigenous ceremony versus meaningful engagement in ceremony’s intentions. we know that ceremony is place-based, and is a method of exchange between humans, non-humans, and the spirit world. the act of ceremony outside of traditional places (for example, in colonial spaces such as boardrooms), can still be meaningful, but could also be a measure of disembodiment (the corruption of the spiritual life of place). this disembodiment is further intensified when it is used for purposes counter to spiritual processes. when the state engages in indigenous ceremonies with indigenous peoples to gain further concessions from place (e.g., extracting resources), both place and ceremony become increasingly damaged. this not only compromises meaningful communication with the spirit world (which is affected by the exercises of place), but also can authorize false notions of spiritprompted engagement and subsequent blessings. is there a complicity in engaging our ceremonies in neoliberal efforts to illegally dispossess us of our lands? does smudging before entering into a land claim negotiation or an oil sands development venture decrease impacts to place, or does it fulfill the colonial fantasies of terra nullius? aldred’s (2000) discussion on authenticity is helpful here. her commentary on the interaction of vizenor’s (1999) “nostalgia” (non-indigenous peoples longing to be a part of an indigenous authentic spirituality) and deloria’s (1998) assertion that authenticity is necessary to tie indigenous peoples to a material place, serves to provide a critical analysis on the emergence of new-ageism and “playing indian”. perhaps this notion is cloaked in assimilation when practised at a state level, wherein indigenous ceremonies are disguised as tropes of diversity. while aldred’s (2000) discussion concerns the occurrence of non-indigenous peoples “playing indian”, i question the potential of indigenous ceremonies themselves to become vulnerable to this notion of “playing indian”. indigenous ceremonies carry an inherent ability to effect change. while i agree that our ceremonies do not rely on (and can certainly resist) colonial efforts, i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 164 would argue that the dislocation of ceremony materially from place could produce a transmogrification of ceremony, therefore resulting in a contravention of place’s intentionality. does this use (or misuse) of ceremony subscribe to the ever-emerging politics of adaptability where we, as indigenous peoples, are aiding in the design of a space of dispossession? the many traditional indigenous creation stories throughout the world speak to our locatable and material arrival out of place itself. it is dangerous to assume that our most sacred and traditional histories, stories, and teachings adapt into a state of natural reveal amidst violence, as hall (1993) might argue. that is, because place has adjusted or transformed through colonial force, the so-called inevitability of this forced relationship may be viewed as naturally adaptive. to practise our ceremonies amidst constraints produced out of colonialism, while understandable and even necessary to some extent, should not be confused with an evolving state of adaptability or unencumbered resilience. as we can see from the story of nenaboozhoo, the inhabitants of the spirit world and their method of communication with human beings and other non-humans are intrinsically tied to the elements of place. this teaching, and the many others from indigenous places around the world, are at risk of becoming transformed themselves, and risk a reflexive relationship with colonialism rather than place. there is no question that ceremony can be powerful wherever it is practised. it is also understood that beneath concrete lies dirt, rocks, and other original inhabitants. the assertion that place is therefore as dignified and powerful as it can be (underneath department stores and gas stations) is problematic. for instance, the assertion that anishnaabe ceremonies are so powerful that they can withstand the counter-cosmological transformation of place implies an acceptance of this violence. the evacuation of our spiritual, material relationships with land serve the colonial fantasies of who we are supposed to be: something interesting to watch, something that does not impact expediency. adaptability is a distraction. the more we adapt, the more we distract from place and what we “become”; that is, our essence as in a state of reveal against external forces (i.e., colonialism). in turn, as humans we are at risk of allowing our ways to become permissive in the continued colonial transformation of place. while this assertion may be comforting to those of us who can no longer access those places to practise ceremony, it is not true resolve; rather, it is resignation to a forced adaptation, not the natural ability of communities to reveal themselves amidst external forces. therefore, it is not that our ceremonies are not strong enough to adapt and still wield change amidst concrete, rather it is they should not be taken for granted as natural in the colonial transformation of place. when we engage ceremony in the state’s agenda, are we then “playing indian”? perhaps we are producing an inheritable nostalgia for place that vizenor (1999) references, a nostalgia that is borne out of a disembodied sacredness. this is exactly the kind of “aboriginal” that canada wishes us to be, and has been training us to be since the introduction of the fur trade, residential schools, and the mall. if we play indian, indigenous communities’ place becomes a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 165 function of commodification, and ceremony risks becoming bequeathed as a naturalized metaphor of this nostalgia. conclusion as cindy blackstock (2011) notes, there are more indigenous children currently in the child welfare system than were in irs during the height of the residential school system. as of 2013, almost 15% of the national population of children in care (or approximately 27,000 children) are aboriginal (assembly of first nations, 2013). as discussions surrounding how to make this system more equitable and culturally appropriate for indigenous children and their families occur, it is imperative to consider the impacts on indigenous identities that are material, spiritual, and tied to territory. almost 60% of the national aboriginal population resides in urban areas, and this proportion will no doubt continue to increase (statistics canada, 2011). this trend prompts the need for further discussion in terms of how our cosmologies and their ties to places are considered: are these ties real or an abstracted cultural construction? continued material productions of colonialism that are reflective of an evacuation of indigenous cosmologies from place might produce the conditions for continued assimilation rather than the renewal of the spiritual lives of place’s now-cemented constituents. what do we inherit for our families and from places? the story of nenaboozhoo creating the spirit world not only produces a belief system, or basis for ideology. when understood with the remembrance that anishnaabeg are extensions of the land, place is also a function of inheriting. this process of inheriting is dependent on locatable places in its transmission. the introduction of a dislocated religious system was damaging to this process of inheriting. the spiritual lives of the inhabitants of place were the target of severing in order to transform and redefine place itself as empty and spiritually void so as to convert elements of place to both colonial and christian constructions. this disembodiment served to not only create wealth amongst christian nations, but suppressed communicative, relational exchange between the original inhabitants of place. the irs system was particularly violent in physically and spiritually severing children from their relationship with place in order to impose an alternative, christianity-oriented, resource-based history with place. inheriting amidst the perverse collaboration between church and state was an exercise in transposition — the hopeful (and ultimately failed) inheritability of an assimilated identity. despite the damage done to place, ceremony is powerful; it too has the ability to transform. our ceremonies are sacred descendants of place; colonialism is a descendent of nowhere. it is counterproductive to coalesce these contradictory belief systems. embodied, locatable spirit worlds are dependent on elements of place. if elements of place are the object of state-oriented extractive and de-spiriting processes, meaningful ceremony will always be constrained. boardroom smudging in these contexts can be described as a subdued international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 166 communication with the spirit world that contributes to constructed, state-favoured indigenous communities. the forced colonization of peoples and lands does not produce a natural, evolving reveal amongst inhabitants of place. this would conjure a fallacy of adaptability wherein colonialism is validated as natural and unavoidable, like the changing of the seasons. the danger lies in producing (not revealing) permissive societies that are not determined by place’s intentions, but rather are motivated to help solve the state’s “indian problem”. residential schools maintained, and urban spaces continue to maintain, a dynamic of severing with respect to indigenous ceremonial practices. in the former they were denied, and in the latter they are invited. and yet, in both circumstances, indigenous ceremonial practices are devalued; they are de-situated, disembodied, and removed from place. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 148–170 167 references aldred, l. 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(2012, august 23). learning to love the smudge. winnipeg free press. retrieved from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/learning-to-love-the-smudge234935121.html wilson, j. (2000). the earth shall weep: a history of native america. new york, ny: grove press. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/learning-to-love-the-smudge-234935121.html http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/learning-to-love-the-smudge-234935121.html smudge this: assimilation, state-favoured communities and the denial of indigenous spiritual lives vanessa watts place and inheritance in anishnaabe cosmologies disembodiment playing indian? conclusion references exploitation or empowerment? adolescent female domestic workers in uganda international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 561 exploitation or empowerment? adolescent female domestic workers in uganda victoria flavia namuggala abstract: women’s participation in public employment spaces has emerged with new modes of domestic gender hierarchies, especially in the global south. a new direction in child labor, especially in the domestic sphere, negatively affects female children. drawing from a larger study that examined the experiences of employers and employees in domestic spaces, this article examines experiences of live-in adolescent female domestic workers, commonly referred to as “house girls”, in kampala, uganda. data were collected using qualitative methods that included individual interviews and life stories. study findings reveal competing narratives pointing to both empowerment and exploitation of house girls. using a feminist intersectional approach, i focus on gender, age, and location to trace the opportunities, challenges, and agency of the house girls. using the household as the basic unit of analysis, i foreground the voices of house girls as they tell their lived experiences and survival strategies. my central argument is that domestic workers make a crucial contribution to the effective participation of women working outside the home. i conclude that sustainable empowerment of workers, both domestic and outside the home, hinges upon changes and transformations at the household level. keywords: house girls, domestic work, domestic workers, intersectionality, empowerment, exploitation victoria flavia namuggala is a ph.d. student in the school of social transformation at arizona state university, p.o. box 876403, 240 e. orange mall, wilson hall 125, tempe, arizona, u.s.a. 85287-6403. she is an assistant lecturer in the school of women and gender studies, makerere university, kampala, uganda. e-mail: victoria.namuggala@asu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 562 in examining domestic work in uganda, this article focuses on adolescent live-in female domestic workers. from a general overview of global trends in domestic wage employment, i narrow down to reflect african regional perspectives, and then concentrate on the specifics of experiences in the private working space of domestic work in uganda, using the case of kampala. this background sets the context for the theoretical framework, study design, and methods. following that is a presentation, discussion, and analysis of findings on house girls’ involvement in domestic work, the experiences encountered, and the survival strategies they adopt in these private spaces. in the last section, i present the recommendations and conclusion. domestic work in the global context currently there are at least 53 million domestic workers worldwide, 83% of whom are women (international labour organization [ilo], 2013). tens of millions of women and girls are employed as domestic workers in private households (negusei, 2013). while such female domestic employees play a crucial role, “[t]hey are among the most exploited and abused workers in the world” (human rights watch, 2010). experts in transnational labor relations have noted that due to the high unemployment in sending countries, “over 60 million women predominantly from poor countries constitute a mobile labor force especially in the middle east, europe, canada and the united states” (hawkesworth, 2006, p.14). adolescent female domestic workers in uganda, as demonstrated in this article, provide a valid example of domestic workers who have been heavily disadvantaged, exploited, and oppressed. i argue that their subordination is largely anchored in the intersecting position of gender, age, class, and location that adolescent domestic workers occupy. according to the international labor organization’s domestic workers convention (ilodwc) no. 189, domestic work is understood as “work performed in or for a household or households”. clause 1.b states that the domestic worker is “any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship” (ilo, 2011). the ilo categorizes domestic workers into various groups, including: full-time or part-time; employed by a single household or by multiple households; residing in the household of the employer (live-in worker) or living separately (live-out); and transnational domestic worker or in-country domestic worker. this article focuses on live-in domestic workers in uganda. africa has an estimated 5.2 million domestic workers with a 70% female composition; however, in a region where “almost everyone has a domestic worker” (ilo, 2013), that estimate is probably low. in sub-saharan africa, 65 million children are involved in child labor and among the domestic workers, nine out of ten are girls. in uganda, about six million people are employed as domestic workers (platform for labor action, 2008). this paper further emphasizes that with the intersection of age and gender for house girls comes increased susceptibility to subordination, exploitation, and oppression, rendering them more liable to verbal and physical abuse, but also to emotional, sexual, and economic manipulation. uganda has the world’s youngest population with over 78% less than 30 years old (population secretariat of uganda, 2013). in africa, youth account for 60% of the unemployed (ighobor, 2013). such unemployment has resulted in rural–urban migration (mukwaya, bamutaze, mugarura, & benson, 2012) and urban-centered domestic work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 563 characteristics of domestic work in uganda domestic work in uganda has many commonalities with domestic labor patterns in the rest of eastern africa. however, it also has distinguishing features. while this brief section discusses both common and particular aspects of domestic work in uganda, i accord special emphasis to the distinguishing features using the case of domestic workers in kampala. in uganda (and the rest of eastern africa), there has been a mass movement of people from the countryside to urban centers in search of employment since 2002. in 2013, the chairman of the national planning authority of uganda, wilberforce kisamba-mugerwa, noted that while uganda’s population is still 85% rural, there are signs that rural–urban migration rates are increasing, especially among youth. the job-seekers include many young women who, due to a lack of marketable skills and negative social attitudes towards women working outside the home, find employment in housework, hence the label “house girls”. although the concept of a house girl applies to all female domestic workers irrespective of age, the majority of house girls are young women, most often adolescents below the age of eighteen. the use of “house girls” as a popular term for domestic workers reflects the preponderance of female children in the domestic work sector; however, there are also houseboys. while feminization of labor is not new globally, childhood feminization is more prevalent in the developing world. domestic work in uganda follows this pattern. the increase in the number of domestic workers in uganda is linked to a number of factors including the increasing number of women in formal employment (atieno, 2010). this aligns with other global experiences. for instance, the transformation of the economy from manufacturing to service industry in the united states increased women’s participation in employment outside the home (eitzen & baca zinn, 1992). in their examination of domestic work in britain, gregson, and lowe (1994) realized that demand for domestic help emerged primarily from middle-class households with both parents working full-time. women’s increased public involvement provides opportunities but also challenges, such as increased workloads through the “triple shift” (wallace, 1991) that occurs when public employment is added to the reproductive and community roles women play. women have devised strategies to cope with the increase workload, the most outstanding of these being the use of house girls. this seems to be in agreement with norma alarcón’s (1990) challenge of the binary model of subject formation: whilst referring to cultural settings in which race, gender, and class relations are a central organizing principle of society, alarcón states that, “one may also become a woman in opposition to other women” (p. 6). women employed outside the home struggle to become successful by pursuing changes in social constructions that will elevate them to a higher class. yet, at the same time, they re-inscribe other women (in this study, adolescents) into typical traditional roles, moreover with exploitation, subordination, and poor working conditions. as other feminist scholars have noted, “women can be complicit in the exploitation and oppression of other women” (fonow & cook, 2005, p. 2225). it is thus clear that employment outside the home for women does not necessarily undo the gender division of labor but may rather exacerbate class inequalities and exploitation among women. globalization has contributed greatly to labor mobility and commodification of the care economy (sassen, 2002). this has changed domestic work relations. in uganda, increased labor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 564 migration has facilitated the employment of adolescent female youths as live-in domestic workers, due to their lack of other employment skills. domestic work is enslaving yet at the same time empowering. some participants termed this double-sided encounter an “indispensable evil”. domestic workers play a crucial role in the success of women employed outside the home by relieving them of domestic chores and providing increased time for formal employment. while it has been largely regarded as a gender-neutral process, globalization has affected men and women differently by producing “new modes of gender power and disadvantage” (hawkesworth, 2006, p. 2). for instance, it has resulted in a new form of poverty that is not only feminized but also largely age-specific. due to the gross human rights abuses involved, domestic work has been referred to by some human rights advocates as a “contemporary form of slavery” (shahinian, 2010). despite such connotations, house girls often lack alternative employment, and must rely on domestic work as an important source of income. this article contributes to knowledge about labor relations in general and specifically about child labor in the domestic sphere, using the case of adolescent live-in domestic workers in kampala. i analyze how gendered power relations play out between ugandan female employers and employees in the domestic sphere, while situating this dynamic in the global setting. i assert that domestic workers are “a long-ignored but significant sector of the workforce” (nisha & becker, 2012, p.1). while strategically centering age, i further argue that the household is an important unit influencing socio-economic development and empowerment (especially for women) in uganda. in analyzing its role in social organization, tickner (2005) argues that domestic work should not be treated as “a personal, private issue or one to be understood solely in terms of relations between employers and their servants, but one that serves the state’s goal of providing the good life for certain class[es] of citizens through oppressing others” (p. 2181). sustainable economic growth and empowerment for women would thus necessitate transformative change at the household level. domestic help: a necessity for women with families who work outside the home the factors discussed in this section are specific to women with children, living in kampala and working outside the home, who were the focus of the study. the same factors may, however, apply to other categories of women, or even men, who employ house girls. while discussing the factors that create an unceasing demand for house girls, this section draws connections between findings from the present study and related literature. in uganda, the maintenance of the family household, especially through “reproductive” roles including child upbringing, cleaning, and food preparation, has over time been the social and cultural responsibility of both the nuclear family and extended relatives including grandparents, siblings, cousins, nephews, and nieces, among others (kyomuhendo & mcintosh, 2006). due to urbanization and the capitalist economy, however, the role of the extended family has changed. alterations in the social setting have undermined the importance of the extended family, shifting the responsibility of taking care of family members onto the mothers (aryee, 2005). it is also true that ideologies of motherhood and caring provide a primary argument for domestic work, as gregson & lowe (1994) noted. this is because, in the gender division of labor in uganda, reproductive roles are largely the responsibility of women, while men go out to the public sphere to earn income. the construction of men as the breadwinners dates back to the colonial period, when men were specifically taken up for wage employment while women international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 565 provided the unpaid domestic labor. as social and economic transformations create places for women to work outside the home, they have not simultaneously transformed the domestic sphere to involve men more actively in domestic roles (romero, 1992). women have taken on new employment roles in addition to the traditionally expected roles, which increases the workload to a level that is not easily accommodated. in an analysis of career-pursuing mothers in kenya, njung’e (2014) asserts that such women are now away from home for most of the day and relegate the nurturing of their children to domestic helpers. to help maintain their newly achieved positions, women in formal employment employ house girls (aryee, 2005; atieno, 2010; muasya, 2014) to perform domestic chores at minimal pay. romero (1992), in agreement with other feminist scholars, notes that hiring a female to take over domestic responsibilities from another female is a form of exploitation for economically less-privileged women. domestic work in uganda is therefore largely a woman-to-woman phenomenon. such a system does not challenge the patriarchal nature of society but rather changes the identity of the women involved in this role. it should be noted, however, that this does not rule out the fact that men use domestic workers, and that men and boys also work as domestic workers. while employment outside the home is in many ways a positive trend for women, this development also has negative consequences (hawkesworth, 2006). waylen (1996) suggests for instance that neoliberalism’s promotion of free market and anti-state policies have produced “development in reverse for much of the third world” (p.34). making a specific reference to women, hawkesworth (2006) further emphasizes that while “development strategies may help expand capitalist markets and foster economic growth, they also heighten the economic responsibilities of individual women, magnifying their burden as providers for family subsistence” (p.14). haung & yeoh (1996), in their study of domestic work in singapore, observed that public employment for women is “a solution which generates its own sets of injustices and further entrenches gender politics” (p.489). this is also true for uganda. uganda, like many developing countries globally, lacks adequate childcare services and centers, especially in the cities. many of the upcoming support initiatives are private ventures with little government involvement. this lack of affordable childcare spaces creates a high demand for house girls. although daycare has advantages, including training children in speech, social etiquette, and physical education, and providing ample space, toys, and time to play, enrollment is very expensive, costing between 500,000 to 700,000 ugsh per academic school term (three months)1. the costs of transportation to and from the center, and of providing basic supplies such as diapers, which are borne by the parent, add to the financial burden. a house girl earns between 20,000 and 50,000 ugsh per month. as women with children move to working outside the home, the only affordable option for them is to hire another female who has been socialized and trained to take care of children. this explains why few houseboys are employed: they are socially expected not to perform household chores that are considered women’s roles. the use of house girls was more difficult before the improvements in communications technology that make monitoring possible. women employers noted that they could call home to talk to both the house girl and the children, giving instructions about running the home 1 at the time of the study, the exchange rate for one u.s. dollar was 2,530 uganda shillings (1 usd: 2530 ugsh). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 566 (including what and how to cook) and about giving medication to the children when necessary. similarly, the house girls used the telephone to contact the employers about issues that would arise during the day, including emergencies. one employer explained: i don’t even know how things would be without these cheap telephone calls. i can load 500 ugsh and i am set to go for the whole day. i can find out how my boy is doing. hearing his voice helps me settle at work since i am sure he is doing fine. he is my firstborn … just made one year last month. as a woman, you know what that means … one of the positive developments privatization has brought to uganda is in communications. competing telecommunications companies undercut each other’s prices, offer promotions such as free calls, and give percentage discounts depending on the time of the call, giving users an opportunity for increased, cost-effective communication. all the households involved in the study had a home phone that could be used to reach the house girl at any time. improved communication was also noted to have eased interactions with family members and friends in the villages when recruiting house girls. through the use of services like mobile money2 transfer, employers could also send money to people in the villages to facilitate transportation of house girls; house girls would use the same service to send money to their families back home in the villages. these mobile money services have positively impacted communities by bridging the gap between rural and urban settings. additionally, mobile money minimizes the chances of robbery and petty theft, including pickpocketing, since individuals do not carry cash on hand. theft and pickpocketing are very common, especially during the festive season, a time when house girls as well as other people travel back home for holidays. these services also save house girls any transportation expenses that would be incurred by travelling to their village to take money back to their dependants. in addition to being relatively cheaper and more conveniently accessible than other forms of money transfer, such as bank accounts, mobile money is fast, and reaching the intended recipients within minutes. despite the wide usage, it should be noted that mobile money services are not free of challenges. lack of proper identification is one major concern noted by the house girls. uganda has not had a national identity card system until recently, in 2014, when the task to provide nationals with identity cards was launched (state house of uganda, 2014). adults use voters’ identification cards for purposes of identification. house girls, however, could not be issued with voters’ cards since the majority were below the legal age of 18. study design and method this article is based on a study focusing on full-time live-in domestic workers in kampala that was conducted out of personal interest in 2012 after encountering several negative media portrayals of house girls. despite these portrayals, house girls continued to move to kampala in search of employment, and employers continued to hire them. this ongoing demand for and supply of domestic workers’ services suggested that house girls had an important role in 2 mobile money is a tool that allows individuals to make financial transactions using cell phone technology (jack & suri, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 567 the lives of the employers. it is this role that the study intended to explore by asking questions like: why do adolescents outnumber other age groups engaged in domestic work? what roles do house girls perform in the household? what are their experiences? how is demand for and supply of domestic workers sustained? theoretical framing this study was informed by feminist epistemologies that appreciate theorizing from lived experience. the knowledge produced comes from the actual day-to-day experiences of groups of people who have traditionally been excluded from contributing to academic knowledge (collins, 2000). such theorizing provides an alternative conceptualization to the dominant view by centering previously neglected experiences and voices, thus moving margins to center (hooks, 1994). house girls’ perspectives have been silenced in the media in favor of those of the employers. this article therefore prioritizes the experiences of house girls more highly. i acknowledge the problems involved in speaking for others (alcoff, 1991–1992), hence the use of direct quotes from house girls in this article. i also hold that there is no objective social reality about house girls, but rather multiple constructions that are socially based. perceptions about and experiences of house girls are local, specific, and dependent on the individuals and groups having them. in the study, i apply the understanding that “realities are always under construction by social actors” (baxter & babbie, 2004, p. 298) and thus have multiple standpoints and perspectives that are context-specific (harding, 1993). the standpoints are not singly identified but are, rather, intersectional (crenshaw, 1989; mccall, 2005). the intersectionality approach appreciates that race, gender, class, sexuality, age, and location, among other identities, are mutually constitutive and reinforce each other. in this study therefore the simultaneous occurrence of gender, age, and class took precedence given the location of the study and thus formed the basis for understanding the house girls’ experiences. an intersectional perspective of reality opposes the single categorical analysis frameworks that would in this case favor one of gender or age or class. intersectionality also challenges additive models that would in this case analyze gender and age. analysis largely dependent on gender misses intra-group differences and how various cultural and social contexts, including religion, influence marginalization. understanding intra-group dynamics of women dominating other women was critical for this study, hence the application of intersectionality as a tool of analysis. intersectionality further acknowledges social location and argues, in agreement with standpoint theorists, that the most marginalized have an epistemic privilege over the privileged (harding, 1993). collins (2000) uses the example of black domestic workers to demonstrate that their understanding of reality is more objective than their employers’ because the domestic workers must understand both their position and their masters’ in order to survive. in the case of this study, house girls are the most marginalized, and thus their experiences provide an alternative understanding to the dominant construction and the negative portrayal of domestic work especially in the media. because house girls embody the “outsider-within” identity (collins, 1999) within the domestic working space, they conceptualize reality differently from their employers. following such epistemological grounding, i centered the voices and understanding of the house girls. study population, sample, and analysis participants included 30 employers and 30 employees. employers, women ranging between the ages of 26 and 43, were working outside the home in both formal and informal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 568 sectors. formal employment in this study consists of government employees and individuals working in corporate companies and non-governmental organizations. the informal sector comprises the self-employed who are locally referred to as “business women”. in both groups of employers, the women worked away from their homes during the day for at least five days a week. house girls interviewed ranged between 14 and 17 years old. out of the 30 house girls interviewed, five had left paid domestic work either for marriage or to take other jobs including food vending and tailoring. although they were not working as house girls at the time of the study, they had previous experience that they were willing to share. the house girls were identified through their employers and the house girls, in turn, led me to the five former house girls through a snowball sampling method (atkinson & flint, 2004). snowball sampling was necessary because the house girls were hard to make contact with in the private homes where they worked. the interviews lasted between two and four hours since participants continued to perform their chores throughout the interview process. interviews were conducted during the day between nine o’clock in the morning and four o’clock in the afternoon; this scheduling facilitated a more comfortable environment for sharing information as the employers were not at home. permission for audio recording of the responses was obtained from the participants. to facilitate total anonymity, no photographs were taken during the research and numbers identified the individual interview responses by house girls. for purposes of presentation, pseudonyms were added and are used throughout this article. while a friendly environment was created for comfortable knowledge sharing, i would like to note that an accurate production of the actual story of the house girls is not possible because of the choice these participants make about what to share. this is in agreement with jackson and mazzei’s (2012) statement that “data is partial, incomplete and always being re-told and re-membered …” (p. 3). data analysis the study research questions guided the design and analysis process. i listened to the data several times and organized it by question; however, new themes continued to emerge. these included coping strategies and agency of house girls. these new themes were coded and incorporated into the previous ones. themes were then grouped into larger categories. connections and patterns were identified within and among the categories; how they impact each other is shown in this data analysis section. the three major themes are: the factors explaining house girls’ involvement in domestic work; the experiences they encounter in that working space; and the survival methods they employ. generalizations are avoided; instead, specific examples and quotes are used. factors explaining female adolescent involvement in domestic work the factors influencing adolescents’ involvement in domestic labor are many. in most cases, the decision to take work as a house girl has little to do with individual preference, but is grounded in ongoing social crises in uganda, especially in the rural areas. the feminization of domestic work, on the other hand, is socially constructed, especially in the gendered division of domestic labor that places a heavy work burden on women. heyzer & wee (1994) referred to this as the “genderised mode of labour substitution” (p.39). the individuals performing the roles change, but not the system: the inequality continues unchallenged by society since the women international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 569 involved are in their expected places. as women who are employed outside the home withdraw from domestic roles, they are replaced by lower-class women; social norms remain intact. besides the demand for domestic help, there are various push and pull factors that draw girls into domestic work. poverty is one major motivation for becoming a domestic worker. all the house girls interviewed were from poor rural households where domestic work was regarded as a potential avenue for economic improvement. their families could not afford education for their children, therefore, most of the girls had only finished the primary education freely provided by the government through the universal primary education program. girls’ limited education is partly a result of the cultural construction that privileges boys. during the interview with betty, she mentioned that her parents told her to leave school in order to work and send money for her brother’s school fees. poor performance also exacerbated girls’ dropping out of school. some of the girls mentioned that they were not performing well in school. following guidance from parents they left school to look for survival alternatives that were less engaging intellectually. domestic work, which does not require sophisticated training, provided a valid option. in some instances, the girls’ poor academic performance was apparently itself a product of a disadvantaged family background. fifteen-year-old nakato, for instance, noted that her poor performance was not because she was less intelligent but because she lived with a stepmother who made her miss school frequently in order to do chores at home. even on the days she attended school, she had to first carry out so many chores that she arrive late and fatigued for her classes, impairing her concentration and thus her academic performance. beyond the family structure, there are other structural factors leading to the use of adolescent domestic labor. institutional limited acceptance and support for sexually active youth forms a good example. this has resulted in youth having limited access to contraceptives, leading to unwanted pregnancies. with the criminalization of abortion, and the stigma and moral disqualifications attached to it, girls in this position may have no alternative but to drop out of school and work to support their children. many are below the age of 18 and legally children themselves, though already parents. since such “child mothers” have no qualifications, domestic labor is often their sole viable option. child mothers complained of neglect by their children’s fathers (some of whom were also adolescents) as well as anger and disappointment from their parents. these factors contributed to the girls’ inability to leave domestic work despite experiencing mistreatment and exploitation. the failure on the part of families and government institutions, including hospitals and schools, to provide youth-friendly reproductive health services, has thus played a role in sustaining the supply of domestic workers. structural limitations also come into play in the controversies surrounding child labor. one participant in the study, aida, had been orphaned by aids; her situation speaks to the dilemma child labor raises especially in developing countries like uganda. bourdillon (2006) realizes that some people justify employing children as “a route to providing orphans with means of livelihood” (p. ix) especially given the high rate of hiv-related deaths. the prevalence of adult hiv in uganda is 7.2%; between 1 and 1.2 million children have been orphaned by the epidemic (unaids, 2012). besides high prevalence of hiv/aids (nolen, 2008), insurgencies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 570 like civil wars, especially in the northern part of the country (cheney, 2007; mulumba & namuggala, 2014; soto, 2009), also account for loss of parents. these orphaned children need to be supported to survive. aida noted that when her parents died she was stranded with no school fees, protection, or family members willing to help her out. her involvement in domestic work therefore was a survival strategy. she explains, “i had nothing! not food or even friends to talk to. life was so hard … i was on my way to live on the streets when i was offered domestic work. even with a stranger, it was good.” while providing a means of livelihood is a praiseworthy goal, it does not justify the maltreatment female orphan children face working as house girls. when is alleged help really help? and who is helping whom? based on the narratives shared by participants in this study, i might argue that, on balance, it is the orphans that are helping their employers. bourdillon (2006) further clarifies that although children are of necessity permitted to work in the african social setting, unregulated domestic work can result in forced and compulsory labor, detrimental to the health and safety of the children. the house girls interviewed in this study expressed overwhelmingly negative experiences, and we might reasonably suppose that unequal power relations would make their experiences more devastating than those of the employers. such a conclusion, however, does not mean it is easy for the employers. they also reported challenges, which this article does not explore. peer pressure: some children were constrained and lacked alternatives to working as a house girl, but for others, it was their own choice. as in all situations, especially those involving teenagers, peer influence played a role. the house girls reported knowing friends who went into domestic work due to peer influence and the urge to earn money and live in the city. they noted that girls in the village did not understand how hard it is doing domestic work. jokingly, namuli mentioned that “…because they see us on christmas, smartly dressed and smiling, they think it is all good in kampala. no one tells people in the village what really happens in daily life.” this is the case for migrant workers generally (see margold, 1995). returning home accords status that no one is willing to forego by telling the truth of the humiliation and dehumanization they go through. the house girls look forward to the festive season at christmas, saving money all through the year to go home and enjoy the time with family and friends. the preceding discussion presents the reasons why house girls participate in domestic work. i now proceed to examine their experiences in the domestic spaces of employment. despite the variance in factors explaining their involvement in domestic work, house girls underwent relatively similar experiences, many of which involved exploitation and abuse. house girls’ experiences in the domestic working space house girls’ experiences are personal. they cannot, however, in most cases individually decide either to join or even opt out of domestic work. it usually takes family decision-making for a girl to get involved in domestic work and most employers prefer using girls whose families they know. this guards the employer against unfortunate incidents such as neglect of the children in care, and theft. in the identification and hiring processes for domestic work, the idea of “collectivism” in relation to the individual is emphasized (wane, 2011). african feminists clarify that due to collectivism, the group is given precedence over the individual and, most importantly, decisions made by the community affect the individual (chilisa, 2012; nnaemeka, 2004; wane, 2011). this is because african communities are relational. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 571 mistreatment and poor living conditions: house girls experienced poor living conditions pertaining to basic needs like bedding and food. trapped in an unequal power relation, the house girls lamented being treated as lesser humans who are not intelligent and lack common sense. they were yelled at and called by vulgar names by some employers. one participant described her bedding: i sleep down in the sitting room. i have a small old mattress [one inch by demonstration] and a sheet for covering myself. at times it gets so cold that the bed sheet without a blanket is not enough to keep me warm. i was told [by the employer] i would buy myself bed sheets and a blanket from my savings. i have, however, not saved yet to be able to buy them… (kate, 12/14/2012, kampala) while explaining food-related challenges, another house girl had this to say: i eat a different type of dish from my boss and her children, yet it is me who makes all the dishes. isn’t that funny? am i not a human being as well? i take beans and posho much of the time while they take matooke [plantain] with fish and meat most of the time. i eat from the verandah [which also serves as the cooking area] as they eat from the sitting room. i then wash the dishes after they have eaten. i don’t like that, i feel bad but with no choice (kutesa, 12/10/2012, kampala). it is hard for house girls to speak out on such issues since they are socialized never to spill family secrets to the public. they are taught to refer to their employers as aunties, which is meant to create a sense of family union. the house girls are thus expected to consider themselves part of the family and therefore suffer in silence. silence has been identified as one of the major factors heightening domestic violence. this explains the constant call for “breaking the silence” (uganda women’s network, 2012). breaking the silence needs to stretch beyond male-to-female violence to include female-to-female violence, especially in domestic spaces. spiritual infringement: restriction of religious freedom can exacerbate the power imbalances. many people regard religion as an important aspect of one’s identity, giving perspective and a sense of belonging. africans have been described as “notoriously religious”, with each society having a specific “set of beliefs and practices …” (mbiti, 1990, p.3). employers forcing house girls to practice another religion amounts to humiliation, domination, disrespect, and failure to appreciate differences. employers position themselves as all-knowing and assert that their religious beliefs are superior to those of the employees. this facilitates erasure of alternative narratives while emphasizing universalist religious beliefs in the household space. betty revealed: we have to go to church every sunday for a full day to the pentecostals [locally referred to as “abalokole”] but i am a catholic. aunt/employer does not allow me to go to the catholic church. she always says a lot of bad things about the catholic faith and she wants to change [convert] me. she forces me to pray every night in a pentecostal way … (12/ 15/2012, kampala). besides attempting to convert house girls, some employers forced them to participate in activities contradicting their religious beliefs. one muslim house girl had this to say: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 572 …as a muslim, i don’t eat pork, leave alone seeing or even touching it. they know that i am a muslim but they buy it and i am supposed to prepare and cook it for them... at times it’s the only sauce available so i go without food… i am only waiting for a chance to get another job and then i leave. it is too much for me. i would handle anything but this is too much! (shifah, 12/12/2012, kampala). she added that her employer did not allow her to put on the islamic wear (hijab) since she believed that would cause the house girl to sweat a lot, perhaps creating a bad smell. sexual exploitation and harassment. sexual exploitation is also largely explained by power imbalances. the case provided by nakato suggests that she acceded to the sexual relationship. it is important to understand, however, that the unequal power relationship, coercion, limited exposure, and lack of options, contributed to the concession. many of these young women were coerced into sexual relations and forced to become involved with the male relatives in the household. nakato (after obtaining assurance of confidentiality) had this to say: my boss’ husband knows her program for the day. he drops her off at [the] office and the older children to school then [he] comes back home without her knowledge. he demands sex from me. i resisted for some time but he threatened to make me lose my job. uncle [husband] said every house girl does it. he also promised to rent for me a house in case i got pregnant so i accepted, but i know it is bad. (12/15/2012, kampala) nevertheless, some of the girls were willing participants in such liaisons and, in the case of kisakye, might even have the support of their parents: when i left home, aunt [sister to her father] told me i could also use this opportunity to find a man from the city since i had reached marriage age. when aunt’s [employer] husband came to me, he said he wanted to marry because i was very hard working so i accepted. i treat aunt well because i know it is her husband. this relationship has helped me a lot. i am now treated better and one time aunt wanted to chase me but uncle [employer] defended me. my family knows about the affair… (12/16/2012, kampala). employment documentation and specifications. none of the house girls interviewed had a binding contract stating how much they were to earn and the terms of service. as a result, employers could exploit the house girls, especially by paying them less than originally agreed. employers who broke the agreement often gave such reasons as lack of satisfaction with a house girl’s performance, and mishandling of household property like cutlery and glassware. some house girls were paid as little as 20,000 ugshs (10$) per month. nansamba, who had worked for two years said: when i came [direct from the village] she said i did not know what to do so she had to take time and train me in urban life. she would therefore give me 20,000shs and after getting impressed with my performance, she was to increase my pay to 40,000shs per month. i have now spent two years and she is paying me 30,000shs. it is really unfair but i have not yet succeeded in getting a new job. i would like to earn more because i also have a child back home to take care of … (12/ 18/2012, kampala). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 573 it is worse for house girls who are relatives to the employers. the house girls noted that relatives are expected to behave as part of the family although they were rarely treated as such; thus they embody the outsider-within identity. house girls who are related to the employers were sometimes paid in kind with used clothing, shoes, and medical care, with no monetary remuneration involved at all. in the absence of binding contracts, house girls work under a lot of pressure, uncertain of what will happen day by day. while the employers complained about abrupt departures by the house girls, the house girls stated that employers do not give any warning at all relating to dismissal, leaving house girls in a constant state of fear of losing their jobs. confinement and restriction of movement. house girls face challenges on many levels, including personal, family, and communal. at the personal level, domestic workers are generally required to seek permission to move outside of the home compound. such restrictions however, can extend beyond the compound to the level of not visiting families for years. this is consistent with becker’s (2013) observation that “isolation in private homes leaves [domestic workers] at particular risk of exploitation and violence” (p.2). while most girls said they were only allowed to go home over christmas (i.e. once a year for a couple of days), one said she had gone up to three years without visiting her family, although she could keep in touch by means of occasional phone calls. some house girls were refused permission by their employers to attend important family gatherings, including weddings and funerals. namusoke, who was raised by her grandmother following the loss of her parents to hiv, had this to say: when my grandmother died, i received a phone call from the village. i also called my boss and talked to her about it. well, she said sorry but then asked, “what are we going to do with the kids? now that she has died, you need to work even harder because you have no one to lean on”. i felt bad indeed but she had been keeping all my salary promising to give me a lump sum in december when going for christmas. i did not have money to go home so i missed my grandmother’s burial (12/22/2012, kampala). it is not only unfortunate but also inhuman that such important functions and memories, which can never be replaced, are denied to these young women. in addition to the pain they go through with their employers, the girls may be blamed by their families and communities for failing to be present at family events, as well as for not making monetary contributions while they are working. they may be termed selfish and ill mannered. restrictions on movement were, however, not entirely blamed on the employers, even though they played a great role. house girls acknowledged that going home meant spending money on transportation and shopping. nakanwagi who came from mutukula, on the border of uganda and tanzania, noted that a round trip to her home cost 60,000ugshs (not including food bought on the way), yet she earned only 40,000ugshs. frequent trips home in this case would not be a good idea given the high expectations at home. postponing home visits enabled maids like nakanwagi to save some money. many of the experiences discussed above relate to the heavy workload. all the house girls complained about the workload, as well as the harsh working conditions. some girls talked about waking up at five o’clock in the morning, working with no breaks, and staying up past midnight every day. sixteen-year-old nakabugo, while taking me through her typical day, had this to say; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 574 i do everything! i wake up around 5 a.m. and make breakfast for everyone, i prepare the kids who go to school so that when aunt wakes up they have already had breakfast and [are] ready to go. they leave home at around 7 a.m. when they leave, i start cleaning up the house just in case any visitor comes to find it clean. i then wash the clothes and as they dry i start the lunch preparation so that when the little boy comes back home at 1 p.m, food is ready. i then resort to the dishes, the compound, ironing …(12/15/2012, kampala). adaptation and strategies used by the house girls domestic work presents challenges for both employers and employees. michel foucault states that where there is power and oppression, there is inevitably resistance too (rabinow, 1984). house girls are not merely passive victims. rather, they stage resistance and persistence for their survival. anzaldua (1987) described the survival tactics as a “skill that is developed by marginalized people whose well-being is often dependent on the good will of others” (p.38). in this article it refers to the skills house girls develop to resist the oppression they experience. sandoval (1991) referred to such resistance as “oppositional consciousness”, which is politically effective in challenging dominant power structures and hierarchies. in response to minimal pay, house girls mentioned that they “made a difference” from their bosses in cases where they are sent to the shops or markets to do any grocery shopping. that is, they escalated the prices of goods without the realization of their employers in order to keep the balance for themselves. accepting intimate relations with employers’ relatives, friends, and neighbors is another survival strategy, albeit one that brings with it such risks as exposure to hiv/aids and other sexually transmitted diseases. i have discussed house girls’ keeping money with the employer as disadvantageous to them, especially when the money is not repaid. however, when the employer proves trustworthy, it has served as a good strategy for house girls to accumulate larger sums. such arrangements have enabled some house girls to make investments in their own villages during the christmas holiday. nansamba noted that she had bought two pigs in the village, which, after siring some piglets, would be sold to help see to her children’s needs. some former house girls had used such savings to train in practical skills. a girl who learned sewing, for example, could start her own business as a tailor. conclusion the foregoing discussion highlights ways in which women can turn against each other due to the patriarchal social construction. i have largely discussed a relationship between women differentiated only by socio-economic class and age. domestic workers and their employers, the majority of whom are women, continually pose challenges for each other, yet each is important for the existence of the other. domestic work has facilitated a reconstruction of gender hierarchy and power for women working outside the home, and largely disadvantaged domestically employed women. all participants (employers and employees) agreed that domestic work relationships require much patience; for the house girls, they also require sacrifice and determination. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 575 i observe a need for consciousness raising especially among the house girls. as hawkesworth noted, it is very difficult as outsiders to raise new issues, shape the agenda, and adopt new alternatives as courses of action. the marginalized themselves need to be given what collins (1990) referred to as “a self-definition” (p. 224). this can only be done through consciousness raising, especially in regard to their rights as workers. house girls can frame their own agenda through consciousness raising and alliance building with other community members who acknowledge the oppression involved in domestic labor. domestic work can no longer be treated as a private issue if human rights violations are to be minimized. feminist epistemologies assert that marginalized peoples’ perspectives on the world around them are different and superior to those of the dominant group (collins, 1999). rosser (1992) adds that people oppressed by class have a more comprehensive view of reality and that the “standpoint of the oppressed comprehends and includes that of the dominant group” (p. 542). house girls’ epistemic position as the marginalized provides a uniquely positioned understanding. in addition, a house girl’s outsider-within identity gives her a perspective available to no one else (collins, 1999). it is such knowledge that house girls produce that can foster social change and transformation. for this reason, this article has centered on their experiences as a way of exploring new knowledge on domestic labor relations in uganda. domestic workers have a wide and varying range of concerns, from immediate to longterm. for instance, while some domestic workers wanted to be paid on a monthly basis, others preferred having their money kept for the whole year. while some wanted to be allowed to go home more often, others had no family to which they could return. it would therefore be wrong to force a universalization of the experiences of domestic workers despite their common background of marginalization. such people have multiple experiences given their different social and historical locations. i have emphasized that the intersection of gender and age for the house girls creates a more challenging experience given the socio-cultural construction in uganda that marginalizes not only women but also children (chenney, 2007). despite this multiple oppression – largely based on gender, but aggravated by age and class – house girls do not restrict themselves to the victim role. they are agentic, having survival tactics that enable them to navigate the exploitative system set up through the household structure. above all, i agree with other scholars that domestic work sets a new challenge for feminism in examining further the differences incorporated in the category “woman”. although women’s ability to work outside the home is empowering, it has created a new form of inequality that demands immediate attention. it is critical to specify which woman such employment empowers, and the consequences this presents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 561–580 576 references alarcón, n. 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(1996). gender in third world politics. buckingham, uk: lynne rienner pub. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-481-2 exploitation or empowerment? adolescent female domestic workers in uganda domestic work in the global context characteristics of domestic work in uganda domestic help: a necessity for women with families who work outside the home study design and method theoretical framing study population, sample, and analysis data analysis factors explaining female adolescent involvement in domestic work house girls’ experiences in the domestic working space adaptation and strategies used by the house girls conclusion references microsoft word 07 deconstructing_mainstream.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220669 deconstructing mainstream discourses of child and youth development as it connects to sexualized violence against children kylee lindner and doris kakuru abstract: this article reviews literature on survivors of child sexual abuse (csa) who were preschool-aged when the abuse occurred, and applies critical discourse analysis to reveal power relations within this field of research. utilizing themes of narrative theory, this article demonstrates how the current discourse has promoted a single story of developmental trajectories marred by entrenched deficits. the reviewed literature often utilized definitive language in describing a narrative of damage that not all survivors identify with. we critically examine this narrative as an expression of power that risks misrepresenting a large group of people. additionally, we recommend that future research promote a discourse of multiple stories in which survivors have agency to author their own stories. keywords: sexualized violence, child sexual abuse, csa, survivor, narrative, development, research. kylee lindner ba (corresponding author) is a master’s candidate in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: kyleelindner@gmail.com doris kakuru phd is an associate professor in, the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 170 sexualized violence is a term that encompasses acts of rape, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, non-contact unwanted sexual experiences, and stalking (breiding, 2015). research in this field is still in its early stages and hamby (2014) argued that further study in this area could positively impact preventive measures. hamby went on to state: “systematic study led us from the view that intimate and sexual violence are rare acts committed by a deviant few to understanding that they are distressingly common events that touch large swaths of the population” (p. 150). unfortunately, a precise estimate of how many people have experienced child sexual abuse (csa) is difficult to derive, given the self-reported nature of the crime (tejada & linder, 2018). however, in canada, it is estimated that 55% of police-reported sexual offences involve a child or youth; in 2012, approximately 14,000 such cases were reported (cotter & beaupré, 2014). however, as collin-vézina et al. (2013) highlighted, there is a discrepancy between the low rates in official reports of csa and the high rates in self-reported csa. collin-vézina et al. went on to suggest that “this problem is often referred to as the phenomenon of the ‘tip of the iceberg’, where only a fraction of csa situations is visible, and a much higher proportion remains undetected” (p. 2). despite discrepancies, cases of child sexualized violence remain far too common: according to tejada and linder (2018), “the center for disease control has found that approximately 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are victimized by csa by the age of 18” (p. 1833). statistics on preschool-aged survivors of csa are even more sparse. however, tejada and linder (2018) argued that this age group should not be dismissed from the research; they estimated that approximately 35% of csa victims in the united states are less than 7 years old. despite the large number of survivors in this age group, very few studies have examined it specifically (charest et al., 2018a, 2018b; collin-vézina et al., 2013; hébert et al., 2013). rather, research examining adults has been widely covered in sexual abuse research (hébert et al., 2013). additionally, research suggests that a preschool child’s response to and experience of csa will undoubtedly differ from that of an older child (cohen & mannarino, 1993, p.117). to address the imbalance in the literature, this paper will focus on preschool-aged children and will examine how outcomes of abuse are understood and applied. as mentioned above, research has revealed the substantial reach of child sexualized violence. however, through our research, we have encountered a common theme of medicalizing survivors’ experiences to validate a study’s importance. for example, murray (2015) demonstrated the severity of this issue in terms of the outcomes of abuse, stating that women with a history of sexualized or domestic violence “are at an increased risk for physical, emotional, and psychological symptomatology (laffaye et al. 2003; world health organization); increased fear, concern for physical safety, and ptsd symptoms (black et al.)” (p. 271). moreover, the literature describes the developmental trajectory of child survivors as entrenched with deficits. under this view, the likely results of sexualized violence in childhood are post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and sexually deviant behaviour, among many others international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 171 (bonvanie et al., 2015; fergusson et al., 2013; sigurdardottir & halldorsdottir, 2018; tejada & linder, 2018). although these outcomes are presented with the intention of shedding light on the seriousness of the issue, we wonder to what degree the ongoing pathologization enacts power over survivors, and ultimately denies them the agency to construct their own narratives. we center our research within the belief that language is not neutral, and that research is an expression of politics and power. we concur with coates and wade’s (2007) belief that “speech may be free but the means of making one’s self heard and having one’s position given credence are not equally available to all” (p. 511). we interpret this to mean that those of us with the power to make ourselves heard have a responsibility to uphold the truths of those who have been silenced in the discourse that we present and promote. we are curious whether the exploitation of survivor hardship reinforces both stigma and shame and ultimately uses their individual stories to drive a discourse that problematically confines them within a single narrative. in other words, does the current discourse limit survivors to a story of hardship and inevitable deficit? are there stories that could be highlighted to emphasize alternative scenarios for survivors? utilizing narrative theory, we conducted a systematic review on the general discourse of child survivors of sexual abuse as it relates to language and identity in child and youth development. throughout this review, we will be highlighting the limitations of the current literature, particularly as it relates to children from 0 to 5 years old. additionally, we will be deconstructing the language and general discourse that currently pervades this field of research, with an emphasis on finding multiple narratives. methods the methods we chose to employ reflect our epistemological belief in the idea of multiple realities that uniquely interact with our histories to create our understanding of the world we live in. as interpretivist and critical scholars, our research explores the damage narrative that is perpetuated in relevant research and literature and highlights how this narrative is an expression of power. to achieve this stance, we have utilized themes of narrative theory to frame our data collection. our inquiry is rooted in critical discourse analysis (cda) methodology and document review methods. cda was chosen because it focuses on shifting the social structuring of semiotic diversity and the productive semiotic work, where semiosis refers to all forms of meaning-making. in other words, it is concerned with both structure and action. cda analyzes texts that are considered politically or culturally influential to a given society (weiss & wodak, 2007). however, cda methods are broad in nature. huckin (1997) argued that cda can be characterized “as an approach or attitude toward textual analysis rather than as a step-by-step method” (p. 87). further, scott (1990) described documents as socially situated products that must be studied as such. this suggests that reviewing documents can reveal socially constructed meanings that go far international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 172 beyond a neutral exchange of words. therefore, we have utilized cda to frame our inquiry and interpret the reviewed texts. a systematic review was the selected method for this paper, adapting the suggestions of droogan and cullum (1998) to fit its purpose and scope. scholarly, peer-reviewed studies of qualitative, quantitative, or combined methods were included in this review if they fulfilled the following criteria: • published in canada • published in the last 15 years • examined developmental outcomes of csa • included specific data on preschool-aged children studies were identified using a systematic search of electronic libraries, including google scholar and the university of victoria’s mcpherson library database. keywords included “child sexual abuse”, “preschool children”, “outcomes of abuse”, and “development”. additional searches included “impacts of abuse”, “child sexualized violence”, and “csa”. these terms were searched in combination to yield relevant results, and studies were included if they met all or most of the outlined criteria. theoretical orientation an important aspect of this study was to generate in-depth perspectives of preschool survivors of csa, which are largely missing from the literature. currently, our knowledge is often limited to individual stories of hardship, which is to ignore the complexities of csa, including the fact that some survivors do not experience adverse symptoms (collin-vézina et al., 2013). academic accounts of sexualized violence utilize narratives of damage to justify the importance of their research (woodiwiss, 2014). however, woodiwiss troubled this use of damage narratives, arguing that csa is morally wrong regardless of physiological symptoms or damage (p. 149). rather than focusing on damage, we have utilized narrative theory to emphasize the importance of highlighting the complex experiences of survivors. the current literature on sexualized violence consistently pathologizes survivors and medicalizes their experiences, which ultimately blurs the human experience. we approach this research with the hope that we can contribute to a shift in this dominant discourse and support a narrative that is indicative of the multiple human experiences of survivors. reynolds (2020) argued that an activist-informed approach to suffering centers around witnessing, whereby practitioners “situate personal suffering in its sociopolitical context and resist the individualisation and medicalisation of suffering” (p. 347). in congruence with the process of witnessing over pathologizing, huang hoon et al. (2018) highlighted a ted talk given by chimamanda ngozi adichie in 2009 on the danger of being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 173 limited to a single story. this refers to the idea that “as humans we get caught up in one narrative about the world and therefore fail to appreciate the full complexity of the people and the phenomena that surround us” (huang hoon et al., 2018, p. 98). this is an idea that has particular application to the phenomenon of sexualized violence and the stories of its survivors. results the initial search produced over 6,000 articles matching at least one search term. from these, 231 articles were selected because they related to at least one combination of terms. the results were further narrowed down through reading abstracts to identify compatibility with the outlined criteria. ultimately, 15 articles were chosen for review based on their relevance to the study, all containing some combination of the outlined criteria (see figure 1). of the 15, six were quantitative, three were mixed methods, and six were qualitative (including five literature reviews). the results of the systematic review are displayed below in table 1. figure 1. csa literature review selection 720 results identified through uvic database. 5460 results identified through google scholar database. 3 articles identified from previous literature review. 5949 results excluded through addition of key terms. 234 potentially relevant articles. 15 articles selected for review. • unrelated date (145) • unrelated country (66) • duplicates (5) • unrelated population (3) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 174 table 1. literature review results study findings strengths limitations amédée et al. (2019): canada design: quantitative measures: trf (teacher report form) erc (emotion regulation checklist) participants & sample size: educators of 283 children (m = 8.89 years) and 60 children in comparison group. csa was moderately correlated to emotion regulation competencies (r = −0.25, p < 0.05), withdrawal (r = 0.26, p < 0.05), and social problems (r = 0.29, p < 0.05). teachers had no knowledge of participants’ csa histories, and thus gave more objective analysis. there is no way of knowing if the comparison group did not have csa history. additionally, a single informant approach can limit results. bonvanie et al. (2015): the netherlands design: quantitative measures: ysr (youth self report) participants & sample size: at baseline t1 2230 youth, at t4 1680 youth. participants were school-aged children (m = 11.1 years) in 5 different municipalities of the northern netherlands. sexual abuse significantly predicted a higher level of functional somatic symptoms (fsss) during adolescence when adjusted for age, type of questionnaire, and socioeconomic status (ses). contact sexual abuse predicted a higher level of fsss while no significant association of non-contact sexual abuse with fsss was found. large population cohort. the prevalence of fsss found in this study was similar to previous studies. the variable fsss was composed of a spectrum of fsss. the hierarchic sexual abuse scale used in this study reduced the loss of information. fsss were prospectively assessed, which reduced the chance of report bias. analyses were adjusted for ses and symptoms of anxiety and depression. the effect of sexual abuse on fsss was not adjusted for other types of abuse. due to the questionnaire format, it cannot be ruled out that some fsss were actually medically explainable symptoms. cale & lussier (2016): canada design: mixed methods measures: cts (conflict tactics scale) csbi (child sexual behaviour inventory) marlowe-crowne scale participants & sample size: multisampling strategy included 311 children (aged 3–5 years); 21 in the at-risk clinical sample, 206 in the at-risk community sample, 111 in the comparison sample. 27 children were eliminated due to study criteria. growing up in a household where there is sexual coercion between the parent figures was, of all aggressive behaviours, uniquely associated with inappropriate sexual behaviours among children as young as 3 years old. children who experience difficulties inhibiting one form of unacceptable behaviour towards others, such as aggression, are also likely to experience difficulties inhibiting others, such as sexual behaviours. although in some ways a narrow geographical scope is a limitation, localized information can also be valuable; as here, it can offer longitudinal studies in an area that does not get much attention. this study can serve as an initial step toward a clearer understanding of sexual development. the sample was limited to one country, and had a relatively small size, so generalizations should be made with caution. findings were dependent on retrospective recall. it is also possible that victims of sexual coercion are more sensitive to sexual behaviours and may notice them more. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 175 study findings strengths limitations charest et al. (2018a): canada design: mixed methods measures: sociodemographic questionnaire for parents attachment story completion task for children asct q-sort cbcl (child behaviour checklist) for parents to evaluate participants & sample size: 258 children aged 3.5–6.5 (m = 4.46 years), who had been sexually abused and their nonoffending parents were recruited from two specialized intervention centers. the comparison group containing 133 children was recruited from daycare centers and kindergarten classes. more disorganized attachment representations at t1 were associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms at t2. children’s capacity to develop adequate strategies and effectively cope with stressors may be impaired by the occurrence of csa. to date, this is the first study to examine the association of csa with attachment and behaviour problems. the longitudinal design provided a unique perspective on the potential effects of attachment representations on csa victims’ behaviour problems over a 1-year period. the study had a comparison group and a large sample size. children’s behaviour problems were only evaluated by a parent; a multi-informant approach might be more accurate. social and emotion regulation competencies that could have been informative regarding other underlying mechanisms were not considered in the models. there was a high level of attrition in the csa group. charest et al. (2018b): canada design: mixed methods measures: story completion task macarthur story stem battery translated to french participants & sample size: 391 children aged 3.5–6 (m = 4.46 years), with 258 children who had been sexually abused and their non-offending parents recruited from from two specialized intervention centers and 133 children in the comparison group recruited from daycare centers and kindergarten classes. sexually abused preschoolers presented significantly higher levels of hyperactivation and disorganization in their stories compared to non-abused children. although there was a higher prevalence of csa in mothers of abused children relative to mothers of nonabused children (42.9% vs. 11.3%), no differences were found in terms of child attachment representations. the inclusion of a comparison group allows for stronger conclusions regarding the profiles of preschool victims of csa. the sample is of considerable size, which increases statistical power and enhances the generalizability of the findings. it is not possible to assess whether children’s attachment representations were present before csa or instead resulted from it. the study lacked a reliable way of assessing mothers’ previous victimization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 176 study findings strengths limitations collin-vézina et al. (2013): canada design: qualitative review based on previous research. csa is a major risk factor in the development of mental health problems, affecting both the current and future wellbeing of victims. considering that many victims continue to go undetected, the roots of these mental health problems may also be unrecognized. we should prioritize the development of strategies to address the barriers to disclosure and reporting. to prevent csa, global preventive approaches targeting personal, family, and societal conditions need to be explored and validated. the authors offer an adequate synopsis of information that is typically challenging to find in one place. the authors do not report their methods. for example, they do not say what databases they searched, or the time frame they looked at. ensink et al. (2017): canada design: quantitative measures: cdc (child dissociative checklist) cbcl (child behaviour checklist) csbi (child sexualized behaviour inventory) participants & sample size: mothers of 138 sexually abused children aged 2–12 (m = 6.5 years), and mothers of 152 children in the control group participated in the study’s data collection. the csa group was recruited from specialized services. the control group was recruited through flyers distributed in the community. csa was associated with lower family incomes, maternal education level, and different family structure (mother divorced or single). there were no significant differences between the effects of intrafamilial and extrafamilial abuse in terms of dissociation, internalizing, externalizing, and sexualized behaviour difficulties. also, no significant differences between the effects of penetrative and non-penetrative abuse were found. the study offered a relatively large sample that included mothers of both male and female sexually abused children in a young age group. the reliance on parent reports of observable symptoms of dissociation can be considered a methodological limitation considering that shared method variance may have artificially inflated the relationships between various measures reported by parents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 177 study findings strengths limitations hébert et al. (2013): canada design: quantitative measures: press (preschool symptom self-report) completed by child cbcl (child behaviour checklist) completed by parent participants & sample size: 59 sexually abused children aged 4–6 years old (m = 5.03 years) and their non-offending parent were recruited from specialized intervention settings; 66 children in the comparison group were recruited from daycares and kindergartens. sexually abused preschoolers are more likely to struggle with feeling unloved, self-image, worrying, fatigue, sadness, socialization, and psychomotor deficit. ancovas controlling for family structure revealed that caregivers of sexually abused children reported higher levels of both internalized and externalized behaviour problems; for instance, 42.9% of sexually abused children reached clinical levels of internalization, while only 1.5% of nonabused children did. this study included a comparison group; allowing for stronger conclusions. additionally, it utilized a selfreport measure, which may amplify agency in abuse survivors. sample size, while comparable to other published studies, was small and did not allow sufficient power to conduct gender-based analyses. the sample was limited to families that sought services or were identified and referred to services by cps agencies or police authorities. hébert et al. (2014): canada design: quantitative measures: quebec’s youth romantic relationships survey participants & sample size: data were collected among 694 youths enrolled in secondary 3 to 5 through a onestage stratified cluster sampling of 34 quebec high schools. 573 participants were female, while 121 were male. a significant proportion of youth had experienced csa (15% in girls and 4% in boys), with girls more likely than boys to report sexual trauma. many teenagers who were victims of sexual abuse displayed ptsd symptoms (25.5%). data suggest that older teenagers were more likely to display clinical levels of ptsd symptoms. girls were more likely to achieve clinical levels of symptoms of intrusion, avoidance of stimuli related to the trauma, and hyperarousal. the study utilized a large sample size and included both male and female participants. the design of the study didn’t allow for the exploration of sequencing of intervening variables. the measures evaluating social support used were based on a rather limited set of indicators and did not disentangle important factors that may have influenced the role of sibling support. also, it did not explore the interplay among gender, resilience, and support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 178 study findings strengths limitations langevin et al. (2015): canada design: quantitative measures: erc (emotion regulation checklist) completed by parents and educators mssb (macarthur story stem battery) completed by children participants & sample size: a total of 127 children, their non-offending parents, and their teachers participated. there were 62 children in the csa group and 65 in the comparison (non-csa), all aged 41–79 months (m = 57.7 months). both parents and educators reported lower emotion regulation competencies in sexually abused preschoolers, especially boys, than in non-abused children. the narrative task completed by the children also revealed lower emotion regulation competencies in sexually abused boys. this study utilized a multiinformant approach. the coding system designed for the purposes of this study is quite innovative as it allows researchers to assess children’s inner emotion regulatory processes in a playful context. the number of missing evaluations from educators in the sa group is relatively high. furthermore, the small proportion of boys in the sample limits the statistical power and generalization of the findings. lindert et al. (2013): germany design: qualitative review based on previous research. abuse occurring in childhood may become apparent at any time during the life course. pooled estimates suggest at least a doubled odds ratio (or) for depression and for anxiety related to sexual abuse, and a smaller but still significant increase in or for anxiety related to physical abuse. the authors offer an adequate synopsis of information that is typically challenging to find in one place. abuse experience was reported retrospectively in all of the studies included in the metaanalysis. the study was also restricted to original research studies reporting adjusted ors. there were no detailed data on such important aspects of abuse as frequency, duration, and severity. paolucci et al. (2001): canada design: qualitative review based on previous research. csa is associated with the development of ptsd and depression, as well as with suicide, sexual promiscuity, the victimperpetrator cycle, and poor academic performance, regardless of victim age, gender, or socioeconomic status. the authors offer an adequate synopsis of information that is typically challenging to find in one place. additionally, the analysis covers a considerable amount of literature. results are limited to major journals. additionally, it is difficult to differentiate between ptsd and depression symptoms. sanjeevi et al. (2018): united states design: qualitative review based on previous research. csa continues to be a social problem of high relevance to clinicians, given its high national and global prevalence rates and its associations with negative adjustment in survivors across the world. clinicians need to be aware of how risk and resilience factors may manifest differently across cultures, and provide culturally educated services to survivors. the authors are contributing to an understudied aspect of csa. knowledge of how abuse consequences arise across cultures remains limited; the amount of literature reviewed was correspondingly minimal. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 179 study findings strengths limitations sigurdardottir & halldorsdottir (2018): iceland design: qualitative phenomenological case study participants & sample size: data were collected from one female csa survivor. the study found that csa has physical consequences for the body, namely fsss. it was also noted that health care providers failed to recognize and validate the survivor’s lived experiences. the authors offer in-depth data and do so utilizing the voice of a csa survivor, providing a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of the physical health consequences of csa. results cannot be generalized as the study consisted of only one participant. tejada & linder (2018): united states design: qualitative review based on previous research. preschool-aged victims of csa are particularly at risk of experiencing adverse impacts on their health and development, among them: (a) dissociative symptoms; (b) sleep problems; (c) emotion regulation deficits; (d) ptsd symptomatology; and (e) behaviour problems. the authors are contributing to an understudied aspect of csa. the authors did not explore why some children experience particular consequences and others do not. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 180 discussion interestingly, only six of the 15 reviewed articles collected data directly from survivors. only one of those, by sigurdardottir and hallorsdottir (2018), directly utilized quotes to amplify a survivor voice. there was a consensus in the articles that sexual abuse has negative consequences on the development for children, including preschool-aged children. tejada and linder (2018) stated that, “overall, the research shows that children who are exposed to sexually traumatic events are likely going to experience permanent, long-term, and/or short-term effects to their development” (p. 1837). nearly all studies reported that children will experience mental health challenges either immediately after the abuse or later in life. other outcomes of abuse that were commonly reported were dissociative symptoms (collin-vézina et al., 2013; ensink et al., 2017; hébert et al., 2013; tejada & linder, 2018), and emotion regulation challenges (amédée et al., 2019; langevin et al., 2016; tejada & linder, 2018). additionally, functional somatic symptoms (fsss) were mentioned in two articles (bonvanie et al., 2015; sigurdardottir & hallorsdottir, 2018). mental health outcomes all the reviewed articles highlighted mental health consequences as an outcome of csa. according to oddone paolucci et al. (2001), “the results are clear; csa is associated with the development of ptsd and depression, as well as with suicide, sexual promiscuity, the victim– perpetrator cycle, and poor academic performance, regardless of victim age, gender, or socioeconomic status” (p. 33). lindert et al. (2013) specified that ptsd, anxiety, and depressive symptoms may develop at any time over the lifespan for csa survivors, suggesting that csa can affect one’s development at any time. although we don’t deny that adverse outcomes are a possibility, the utilization of definitive language by these authors implies that survivors are bound to a damage-centered developmental trajectory. schulz (2014) analyzed language used by professionals in family court, reminding us that one’s beliefs can be implied through discourse without being explicitly stated, and went on to argue that how and what is being said is evidently a form of power. taking that view, when authors use definitive language, they exert power over survivors’ stories and limit them to one possibility, that of their development and identity being marred by entrenched deficits. ultimately, this can mean neglecting a group of survivors who might not identify with the dominant damage narrative. dissociation dissociation refers to “a complex psychological and neurophysiologically based process characterised by disruptions in and fragmentation of the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, body awareness and perception of the self and of the environment (american psychiatric association, 2013)” (ensink et al., 2017, p. 117). collinvézina et al. (2013) stated that, in the few studies that focus on preschool-aged children, high international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 181 levels of dissociation were documented. the literature on csa developmental outcomes suggests that dissociation could be a key factor in the development of adverse csa effects. although ensink et al.’s (2017) study offers useful data for the development of intervention strategies, we observed that they utilized third-party evaluators (mothers of csa survivors) for their data collection. this is a common practice in csa research, but we would be curious to know to what extent survivors themselves identify with the idea of dissociation. additionally, a witnessing stance would question how dissociation might be a necessary act of resistance to the abuse. reynolds (2020) described resistance as “all of a person’s or people’s responses against abuses of power and oppression, and the many ways that they maintain their dignity and move towards justice” (p. 353). emotion regulation difficulties according to amédée (2019), “emotion regulation competencies refer to one’s ability to modulate his/her emotional response in a manner that is appropriate for the context” (p. 1078). emotion regulation difficulties were highlighted by multiple studies, each of which identified sexually abused preschoolers as more likely to experience challenges in regulating their emotions. in other words, children who have experienced csa are more likely to exhibit externalizing or internalizing behaviours. langevin et al. (2015) suggested that the development of one’s socioemotional capacity is contingent upon adequate emotion regulation, going on to argue that if this aspect of development is not targeted in preschool csa survivors, it could lead to psychopathology. amédée (2019) further suggested that difficulties with emotion regulation can lead to behaviour problems, ptsd symptoms, and peer victimization. functional somatic symptoms bonvanie et al. (2015) defined fss as symptoms that are not well explained by or attributed to an underlying pathology; those symptoms may include pain, stomach aches, headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and fatigue. the idea that the body responds to trauma through these symptoms was of particular interest to us as our research focuses on an age group in which memory and language are not yet fully developed. sigurdardottir and halldorsdottir (2018) argued that there is no real distinction between mind and body because the brain, nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system work in coordination with one another, demonstrating this through an in-depth case study of a csa survivor named anne. anne provided a timeline of her many experiences of csa and the physical symptoms she experienced, including chronic ear infections, mumps, ovarian cysts, loss of sight and hearing, and eventually ovarian cancer. the timeline of these afflictions hints at possible connections between sexual abuse and the victim’s subsequent physical health and development. this study was unusual in that it was the only document to amplify the voice of a survivor and offer personal insights into the need for health care providers to validate lived experiences and connect them with holistic health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 182 alternative stories it is clear that the reviewed studies identified many negative consequences of csa. however, collin-vézina et al. (2013) did briefly mention alternative stories: “despite overwhelming evidence of deleterious outcomes of csa, it is commonly agreed that the impact of csa is highly variable and that a significant portion of victims do not exhibit clinical levels of symptoms” (p. 4). sanjeevi et al. (2018) seemingly shared this view and suggested that negative outcomes and symptomatology are not inevitable. additionally, oddone paolucci et al. (2001) illustrated definitive language in their descriptions of different beliefs within the field of csa research. the authors suggested that some researchers argue the impact of csa has been vastly overstated while others “contend that victims of csa experience numerous detrimental effects and disturbances” (p. 18). this stance seemingly reduces the experience of sexualized violence survivors to either damaged or symptomless. we challenge this either–or stance and suggest that research should include multiple stories through first-person narratives. this challenge is rooted in our concern that when we make definitive statements about the trajectory for csa survivors we risk misrepresenting a group of people that we intend to help. although collin-vézina et al. (2013) and oddone paolucci et al. (2001) identified that not all survivors experience adverse effects, the authors failed to embrace this fact as part of the narrative surrounding csa survivors. we wonder whether the continuous amplification of the single dominant narrative propels survivors toward negative outcomes. it’s important to note that we are not denying the potential harmful effects of csa; rather, we ask that this not be the only thing we look for in survivors of sexualized violence. sigurdardottir and halldorsdottir (2018) shared a similar sentiment in stating that there have been only minimal attempts to study the lived experiences of survivors, and arguing that researchers should focus on gathering in-depth information on survivors’ lived experiences. missing voices a notable trend in the reviewed literature is the lack of survivor voice. several studies collected data from caregivers and teachers rather than from those who actually experienced the underlying incidents — the survivors. only one article — sigurdardottir and halldorsdottir’s (2018) — featured survivor voice through qualitative design; it, however, was solely focused on the negative health consequences of one participant’s experiences of csa. an excerpt from amédée and colleagues’ (2019) study illustrates this issue by summarizing a general attitude toward csa survivors that the reviewed literature helps perpetuate: “relying on teachers’ evaluation may represent a better alternative than using children’s perceptions of their own social difficulties. as such, blanchard‐dallaire and hébert (2014) found that sexually abused children tended to report fewer difficulties than their teachers [do]” (p. 1086). this view not only takes away agency from survivors, but also depicts the power dynamic and continuous pathologization entrenched in csa research and literature. ultimately, it denies survivors the agency to decide how they have responded to violence. our argument aligns with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 183 gildea (2020), who stated: “our reliance on discursive language and normalized expectations of wellness constructed predominantly by professionals who … have not had the ground ripped out from under them, cannot be expected to provide adequate structures of meaning-making to society or to survivors” (p. 13). limitations of the literature as mentioned earlier, the exact number of csa survivors or prevalence of csa is nearly impossible to determine; nor, due to a variety of barriers, is the experience of survivors generalizable. most articles on csa contain the following limitations to their research: stigma, selection bias, and a lack of information sharing. first, murray et al. (2015) defined stigma as “a mark of disgrace associated with a person, circumstance, or quality” (p. 272), then went on to argue that victims of sexualized violence are subjected to several forms of stigma, including “blame, ‘black sheep of the family’ role, discrimination, isolation, labeling, loss of power and status, secrecy, separation, shame, social exclusion, and stereotypes” (p. 272). this tendency to stigmatize victims’ experiences can result in a fear of reporting instances of abuse and a hesitancy to share experiences as a research participant. the second limitation researchers highlighted is the idea of selection bias. with society influencing our perception of survivors of sexualized violence as somehow defective, it is easy to understand why people are uncomfortable sharing these experiences. research should consider the extent to which the reliability and comprehensiveness of csa data is affected by inconsistencies in reporting. is there a certain type of person who reports sexualized violence, or a certain kind of person who is responsive to surveys? what about the experiences of those who are not comfortable sharing this information? this is a large body of knowledge that we are attempting to conceptualize without all the necessary information. a further limitation of research into csa is the lack of information-sharing. although this is probably intended to protect the privacy of participants, it feels unethical to know how widespread sexualized violence is but fail to ensure that the public understands the severity or intricacies of the problem. with a greater quantity of open data sources, researchers could more easily build upon existing knowledge and further advance our understanding of sexualized violence. when considering preschool-aged children in csa research, there is an added layer of challenge. language and memory capacities are still developing in young children; therefore, most reports of abuse are delayed, and thus rely heavily on the recall of survivors (goodman et al., 2019). these challenges have often been used to discredit the allegations made by survivors later in life; on the other hand, many researchers have argued that emotional events improve memory recollection in that emotional or traumatic memories are typically remembered with more clarity than non-emotional events (arntz et al., 2005; goldfarb et al., 2018; goodman et al., 2019). with this in mind, it is important that researchers value and uphold retrospective accounts of csa, as survivors may not have the capacity to come forward until later in life. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 184 conclusion the results of this study showed that survivors of csa can and sometimes do experience negative consequences on their development throughout the lifespan. charest et al. (2018b) stated that, “according to the developmental psychopathology framework, adverse childhood experiences, including child sexual abuse (csa), may alter the course of normal development in children” (p. 471). with regard to adults, sanjeevi et al. (2018) suggested that “csa has been associated with various aspects of [impaired] adult social functioning, such as parenting, relationship satisfaction, and relationship adjustment” (p. 628). all articles suggested that survivors will experience elevated rates of ptsd and depression, while some also mentioned added risk for suicide (collin-vézina et al., 2013; hébert et al., 2014; lindert et al., 2013; sanjeevi et al., 2018; tejada & linder, 2018) and risky or age-inappropriate sexual behaviour (cale & lussier, 2016; collin-vézina et al., 2013; langevin et al., 2015; oddone paolucci et al., 2001). several other outcomes were additionally identified, including dissociation, emotion regulation difficulties, and fsss. these largely negative outcomes paint a picture of seemingly inescapable hardship and deficit for survivors of csa. however, the research does show that adverse effects are not inevitable for all csa survivors, which raises the question of whether research that pathologizes and medicalizes experiences of sexualized violence implicitly denies alternative stories. additionally, the reviewed literature did little to amplify the voices of survivors: only one of the 15 articles provided in-depth data collected directly from a survivor. several studies utilized third-party evaluators, such as parents and teachers, to assess the outcomes of csa in cases with which they were familiar. through focusing on language and identity, it has become apparent that we don’t actually know much about the identities of csa survivors beyond the challenges they are likely to face throughout the lifespan as a result of the abuse. utilizing narrative theory with a cda approach has effectively illustrated the power relations of csa research, and ultimately has demonstrated that instead of survivors having agency over their own narratives, that agency is assumed by practitioners, family members, and researchers. the current climate of csa research uses definitive language that presumes a developmental trajectory and identity without the participation of survivors, problematically placing researchers in a position of power. we argue that, despite the young age at which the csa occurred, survivors have the right to author their own stories, whatever those may be. this systematic review has important implications for practice in that it reveals that the information provided by the literature on csa does not typically come directly from the source. practitioners should be mindful of this and offer opportunities for survivors to speak to the entirety of their lived experiences, not only those aspects that highlight the negative consequences of csa. in congruence with this idea, sigurdardottir and halldorsdottir (2018) suggested that further research should include more in-depth case studies that draw on larger samples of survivors. we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 185 recommend that future studies give greater weight to retrospective accounts by csa survivors. in other words, future research should include first-person narratives of adults who experienced sexualized violence in early childhood. although the validity of retrospective research has sometimes been questioned given the presumed uncertainty of survivor memories, several researchers maintain that emotional events are in fact often remembered with great clarity (arntz et al., 2005; goldfarb et al., 2018; goodman et al., 2019). based on this review, we recommend that future research prioritizes first-person narratives of survivors to amplify their lived experiences and shift the discourse to include survivors’ knowledge and diverse experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 169–189 186 references amédée, l. m., tremblay-perreault, a., hébért, m., & cyr, c. 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(2014). beyond a single story: the importance of separating ‘harm’ from ‘wrongfulness’ and ‘sexual innocence’ from ‘childhood’ in contemporary narratives of childhood sexual abuse. sexualities, 17(1/2), 139–158. doi:10.1177/1363460713511104 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 72 exploring influences on mental health after interpersonal violence against women cathy carter-snell and sonya l. jakubec abstract: women who have experienced intimate partner violence or sexual assault are well known to have extremely high rates of mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, as well as high rates of chronic illness, re-victimization, and suicide. the purpose of this in-depth analysis of the literature was to determine the relative impact of selected risk and resilience factors and the quality of existing evidence. the analysis of risk and resiliency pertaining to mental health impacts was guided by a social-ecological model, examining individual, relationship, community, and societal influences. an improved understanding of these factors and the quality of evidence underlying them can inform future research and interventions aimed at preventing or reducing the mental health impact of these crimes, and point to a direction for more inclusive examinations of the literature. keywords: interpersonal violence, mental health, women, social-ecological model, critical literature review acknowledgements: the authors would like to acknowledge funding support for this project from the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university. cathy carter-snell, rn, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is associate professor, advanced specialties in health, mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, westmount campus, calgary, alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. e-mail: ccartersnell@mtroyal.ca sonya l. jakubec, rn, is a ph.d. candidate, a community mental health nurse, and associate professor of nursing at mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, westmount campus, calgary, alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. e-mail: sjakubec@mtroyal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 73 it is estimated that at least half of women have been sexually assaulted at least once by age 16 (johnson, 2006) and that 45% of women over 16 years have experienced physical and/or emotional violence from a male in a relationship (federal provincial, 2002). the long-term consequences of these intimate forms of violence are devastating for the individual as well as for their families and the community, and place a significant burden on society. both intimate partner violence and sexual assault result in extremely high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), depression, substance abuse, and suicide. these consequences, particularly ptsd and substance abuse, place women at further risk of vulnerability to re-victimization. women are three times more likely to develop ptsd and depression than men (acierno, resnick, kilpatrick, saunders, & best, 1999; foa & street, 2001). one of the numerous factors thought to explain this significant difference has been the more intimate nature of the traumas women experience, including intimate partner violence (ipv) and sexual assault (carter-snell & hegadoren, 2003). an example of this may be seen when comparing rates of ptsd after various traumas. ptsd may develop in at least half of women after sexual assault (gielen, mcdonnell, o’campo, & burke, 2005), which is two to three times higher than for any other trauma including those involved in other crimes, motor vehicle collisions, or even disasters (foa & street, 2001; kessler, davis, & kendler, 1997). these high rates are of great concern as when women develop disorders such as ptsd, their symptoms are more severe and more difficult to treat in comparison to men (gielen et al., 2005; kessler et al., 1997). the presence of these mental health disorders is a concern not only for the woman, but also for her family and the community. children who have a parent with depression or ptsd have a higher risk of developing these disorders (johnson, palmieri, jackson, & hobfoll, 2007; norris & feldman-summers, 1981; poortinga, lemmen, & majeske, 2007). experiencing adverse childhood events such as having a parent with substance abuse issues, witnessing parental ipv, separation, or the death of a parent promotes an increased risk of developing substance use or chronic health issues later in life and even criminal behaviour (chartier, walker, & naimark, 2010; waldman, perlman, & cinotti, 2011). women who have been sexually assaulted, in relationships or otherwise, have rates of health care utilization as much as four to five times higher than non-assaulted women and higher rates of chronic disease, particularly if they have mental health effects such as ptsd, depression, or substance abuse (max, rice, finkelstein, bardwell, & leadbetter, 2004). prevention of interpersonal violence or its effects is therefore an issue of great importance not only to the individual but also to the family, community, and society. a number of factors have been identified in the literature as contributing to either risk or resilience for specific mental health problems. a preliminary review of the literature revealed varying types of risk factors and impacts, as well as diverse measures for some of the impacts. in a 1999 meta-analysis of ipv and mental health problems, prevalence rates of ptsd and substance use disorders were found to be varied, due largely to methodological differences, including sample populations, sample size, and measurement. regardless, in this study the positive association between these mental health problems and ipv was found to be consistent (golding, 1999). similarly strong associations were found in meta-analyses of risks for ptsd after various forms of trauma including ipv and sexual assault in women (brewin, andrews, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 74 valentine, 2000; ozer, best, lipsey, & weiss, 2008) and between sexual assault or abuse in children and adolescents (trickey, siddaway, meiser-stedman, & serpell , 2012). these authors also found difficulties in measurement instruments used, risk factors identified, and heterogeneity of samples. we therefore do not have a clear picture of the relative impact of these factors on risk and resiliency to mental health disorders after sexual assault or intimate partner violence. it is important to understand these factors before we can explore the interaction of factors and work toward effective prevention of adverse mental health effects with women who experience interpersonal violence. the purpose of this review was to critically analyze the literature related to factors affecting mental health after two forms of interpersonal violence – intimate partner violence or sexual assault. this information will be used to guide future analyses and theory testing on risk and resilience with an aim to find ways to promote resilience to mental health effects of intimate violence against women. the objectives for this review were to identify the following among women who have been sexually assaulted or sustained intimate partner violence: • types of risk/resilience factors (individual, relationship, community, or societal) that may be associated with subsequent mental health effects • impact of the risk/resilience factors on mental health outcomes • quality of the existing evidence theoretical framework a social-ecological model (krug, mercy, dahlberg, & zwi, 2002) has been used widely to understand violence and violence prevention. the model continues to be developed and refined but emphasizes the importance of looking at violence prevention from multiple perspectives: individual, relationship, community, and societal. individual factors, such as biological or genetic factors, age, personal history, or other factors unique to the individual, may influence women’s risk or resilience to mental illness. the nature of the relationship between women and their partners, family members, neighbours, and colleagues is also consequential to their risk or resiliency. mental health impacts of intimate forms of violence must also be addressed in the community as well as the cultural, social, and political contexts, including the structural inequalities of the wider society within which intimate forms of violence exist. the interaction of multiple systems on the mental health outcomes of victims has also been recognized (campbell, dworkin, & cabral, 2009). examples included individual factors such as biological and genetic factors, characteristics of the assault (for instance, injuries or relationship to the assailant), and substance use. additionally, this review examined mental health impacts at the micro-system level such as family and friends, meso-system factors such as legal, medical and mental health or crisis care systems, and macro-system factors such as societal rape myths, as well as the chrono-system factors such as sexual re-victimization and history of other victimizations. some of the mental health impacts of particular concern in these reviews were post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidality, substance use, and self-blame. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 75 the preliminary range of risk and resilience factors we speculated for the review is summarized in table 1. it was anticipated that this would be modified slightly as we proceeded through the literature if different terms were used for similar concepts. the mental health or illness outcomes used at the outset are summarized in table 1. table 1. outcomes of interest mental health mental illness psychological well-being resiliency coping self-esteem/perception acute stress disorder or symptoms post-traumatic stress disorder or symptoms mood disorders or depression somatization eating disorders drug, alcohol, or other substance abuse methods this comprehensive review and analysis of the literature was shaped by our framework on social-ecological theory, related to factors that contribute to risk and resiliency in mental health outcomes after intimate forms of violence, and the level of available evidence. a comprehensive, critical literature review can be seen as: “a systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners” (fink, 2010, p. 3). the methods we included in our review were: establishment of inclusion criteria; a strategy to search for available literature; and the evaluation of level of evidence. the available evidence was also organized within categories of individual, relationship, community, and societal risk and resiliency. additional factors were added to the categories selected for data organizing until no new factors emerged. literature search strategy we conducted a broad search of the literature to determine the types of probable risk and resilience factors described in the literature and their impact. electronic databases were searched for published literature that included both a risk or resilience factor and a mental health outcome after women experienced either intimate partner violence or sexual assault. multiple electronic databases, including pubmed, the cumulative index for nursing and allied health literature (cinahl), and psycinfo, were used. keywords used for the search were chosen from mesh headings or search headings consistent with each of the risk or resilience factors identified in the ecological model. additional articles were obtained by hand searching the table of contents from key journals that had included at least five “gold standard” articles in the initial search. there were no restrictions placed on the date ranges or languages. examples of search phrases included: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 76 • coping and ptsd or depression or mental health or psychological outcomes • support and ptsd or depression or mental health or psychological outcomes inclusion criteria abstracts of the retrieved articles were reviewed to check if they met the inclusion criteria of this review. the inclusion criteria were the research studies that: (a) used and described systematic research methods; (b) examined mental health outcomes of women monarchal age or older; and (c) were considered in relation to at least one factor that may contribute to risk or resilience to the mental health outcome. quality of evidence understanding the quality of available evidence is important to enable informed interventions as well as to identify areas requiring further evidence. levels of evidence have been described in numerous sources (rich, 2005). the categorization chosen for this review are those described for use in the oxford centre for evidence based medicine (sackett, 1996) as shown in table 2. table 2. levels of evidence 1a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (rcts) 1b individual rcts with narrow confidence intervals 1c all or none case series 2a systematic reviews with cohorts & homogeneity 2b cohort study & low quality rct 2c outcomes research (audits, ecological studies) 3a systematic review of case controlled studies 3b case controlled study with non-consecutive cohorts 4 case studies, poor cohort case controlled studies 5 expert opinion without explicit critical appraisal results a total of 2,116 english language articles were identified through a combination of electronic databases, informal contacts and searchers for known key authors, and hand searches of tables of contents of key journals. the abstracts of the retrieved articles were reviewed to check if they met the inclusion criteria of this review. a total of 1,196 articles were rejected as they either did not meet the review criteria (580) or were duplicates (616). a subset of 920 articles was selected for a full review. an additional 820 were not included because they did not meet all of the search criteria (exposure, risk factor, or outcome) or were not available at the time of publication. a final sample of 100 articles was used for the review. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 77 quality of the evidence all of the studies identified were cohort studies, mostly retrospective in nature, reporting the rates of mental health consequences in relation to the existence of identified risk or resilience factors. this would make them level 2b at most. convenience samples were predominant, although a few cohorts were compared to control groups of non-assaulted women. sample sizes were generally moderate to large size (i.e., 100 to 500) and involved women or mixed gender samples of people who had been abused or assaulted, some of whom were in the community; others were in shelters or under police protection orders. there were a few studies in which very large samples were used from population surveys and data were extracted from a subgroup which reported abuse. the reviews represented a wide variability of populations, relative to age (e.g., university age, adolescent), ethnicity (e.g., south asian, african-american, hispanic, and italian women), and recruitment sites (e.g., universities, safe houses/shelters, particular clinics for women with hiv, drug and alcohol services, pre-natal clinics or legal services). each of these studies had relatively small, non-comparable samples, limiting the generalizability of findings. systematic reviews are considered to be level 2a. a few systematic reviews were located for ptsd in adults (brewin et al., 2000; ozer et al., 2008) and adolescents (trickey et al., 2012) but the sample included multiple forms of trauma rather than just ipv or sa. only one systematic review was focused on a single trauma, that of ipv (golding, 1999). all reviewers described difficulties with inconsistency in samples, in measures, and in outcomes across studies. outcomes studied the most commonly studied mental health outcomes across both types of violence were the diagnoses of ptsd (53 studies) and depression (57) followed by anxiety (23). there were nine studies that looked at distress as an outcome, which had not been previously described in our outcomes, and eight that looked at self-esteem as a mental health outcome. all other mental health outcomes were discussed in between one and nine studies. a number of studies included subscales of ptsd as well. only one study cited a resilience score as an outcome (schultz, roditti, & gillette, 2009). individual risk factors a) coping individual factors associated with risk or resilience for mental health effects for both intimate partner violence and sexual assault are shown in table 3. one of the key individual risks identified was coping skills with 33 studies having measured these risks, fairly equally between ipv and sa studies. coping as a risk factor for mental health effects was found to be examined in a variety of ways with differing variables. among the concerns emphasized in the research related to personal coping skills as a risk factor for mental health effects following ipv were: learned helplessness, alcohol as a coping international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 78 mechanism, disengaged coping, and self-blame. learned helplessness was also found to increase the risk for ptsd (bargai, ben-shakhar, & shalev, 2007). increased risks for alcohol dependency as a maladaptive coping mechanism were described (bergman, larsson, brismar, & klang, 1989; ullman, filipas, townsend, & starzynski, 2006). what is referred to as disengaged coping was associated with increased depression and decreased self-esteem (griffing, lewis, chu, sage, jospitre, madry, et al., 2006). disengagement also relates to social withdrawal that was found to increase ptsd; increased engagement was predictive of more positive mental health (taft, resick, panuzio, vogt, & mechanic, 2007). finally, one’s perception of poor coping ability was linked to increased trauma symptoms (gorde, helfrich, & finlayson, 2004). table 3. individual risks individual risks intimate partner violence (ipv) sexual assault (sa) age young: more suicide, perhaps more depression, substance abuse, & severe ptsd. older: more ptsd if threat to life. young: more ptsd if < 18 yrs old. older: more effects if self-blame. race caucasians: more ptsd/ depression, more negative effects from negative disclosure reactions vs. asians. more effects if less involvement in cultural activities. more risk of drug/alcohol abuse for minority victims. history of prior mental illness more depression/ptsd & marijuana dependency. prolonged recovery. prior adult sexual assault (sa) more dysfunctional coping, lower selfesteem. more self-dysfunction, psychological problems, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, ptsd. childhood sexual assault (csa) more anxiety, depression, somatization, ocd, substance abuse if csa. indeterminate effect on ptsd, more risk of adult victimization if ptsd and csa history. health/illness more depression/suicide with ipv if hiv positive. more psychiatric problems if hiv diagnosis related to sex work. coping skills more ptsd if learned helplessness, male domination, decreased resilience scores. more depression if disengaged/ avoidance coping. no effect from religious coping. more ptsd if sa acknowledged. more distress with self-blame, not labelling as sa, maladaptive beliefs, negative religious coping or more avoidance. better recovery if decreased self-blame, thought positively, had positive religious coping. education/ marriage higher education: less psychological consequences/ depression and anxiety or married. no effects of education, marital status. acknowledgement and labelling were studied as coping-associated risks in a variety of ways, all demonstrating differing risks to mental health following sa. in two studies, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 79 acknowledgement of sa was found to increase ptsd symptoms and decrease distress (littleton, axsom, breitkopf, & berenson, 2006), and another study found the same ptsd effect but no effect on distress if sa was acknowledged (littleton, 2007). an increase in alcohol abuse was found when sa was not labelled (mcmullin & white, 2006), and these authors also found there to be no difference in well-being whether sa was labelled or not labelled. self-blame was found to have an effect with several studies identifying increased distress (koss, figueredo, & prince, 2002; koss & figueredo, 2004), ptsd (dunmore, clark, & ehlers, 1999), and depression (frazier, 1990) with self-blame. there was an increase in short-term psychological effects identified if self-blame was compounded with authority involvement (elizabeth, notgrass, & newcomb, 1990). decreasing self-blame was found to help recovery (koss & figueredo, 2004). religious coping and beliefs had an impact on sexually assaulted women. the presence of positive coping resulted in lower levels of depression and trauma symptoms, as well as higher levels of well-being (ahrens, abeling, ahmad, & hinman, 2010; fallot & heckman, 2005). conversely, negative beliefs such as seeing an assault as god’s punishment, were associated with increased trauma symptoms (fallot & heckman, 2005). religious coping was not found to impact mental health in a sample of african-american abused women (reviere et al., 2007). thinking and beliefs played a role in the risk of coping found in the available research. maladaptive beliefs in particular played a role in increasing distress (koss, figueredo, & prince, 2002), as did withdrawal or avoidance forms of coping that also contributed to increased depression and ptsd (frazier & burnett, 1994; littleton, 2007). resiliency factors were minimally present in the literature, however increased adjustment was found to take place in women who took precautions and thought positively (frazier & burnett, 1994). moreover, those who practiced a form of wishful thinking were found to have decreased risk for ptsd with positive distancing (valentiner, foa, riggs, & gershuny, 1996). positive coping decreased the risk of suicide attempts and substance abuse (ratner, 1993) and these strategies warrant further clarity and investigation. b) individual factors: a focus on previous childhood abuse / csa another important individual risk identified in the literature was previous childhood sexual abuse (csa) or childhood physical assault (ca) with 22 studies having identified this as a risk for mental health outcomes among women experiencing ipv. factors of particular concern included the child’s relationship to the abuser, the severity of abuse, and witnessing parents assaulting each other. results suggest a significant link between csa and depression (lewis et al., 2006), ocd, anxiety and ptsd (avdibegovic & sinanovic, 2006), and the use of disengaged coping for women experiencing ipv. this disengaged coping style both predicted increased depression and decreased self-esteem (lewis et al., 2006). it appears the above coping risks are of consequence to the population also exposed to the risk of previous childhood abuse and csa. the interactive compounded effects of multiple risk factors appear of particular importance to this group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 80 c) individual factors: a focus on age and prior illness studies on age showed variable results. a few large studies implicated younger females to be at higher risk of mental illness. a national survey of teens in abusive relationships showed younger women had higher risks of suicide, substance abuse, re-victimization, and lower selfesteem (ackard & neumarksztainer, 2002). a sample of 148 women in shelters showed that younger women had higher rates of depression, suicide, and greater ptsd severity (sarasua, zubizarreta, echeburua, & de corral, 2007). older victims had more severe ptsd if there was a threat to life (sarasua et al., 2007). by contrast, age was not found to be a significant factor in the development of depression, suicide, or anxiety in a study that involved a sample of 406 abused women in the community (afifi et al., 2009). studies of age among sa victims also yielded mixed results and smaller samples. one large state-wide study cited increased ptsd if the assault happened before age 18 (masho & ahmed, 2007) and another indicated no significant impact of age on ptsd, suicide, or depression among a sample of 68 women in bosnia (loncar, medved, jovanovic, & hotujac, 2006). self-blame, related to the coping risks above, was found to be particularly present in older victims of sa, with older women experiencing increased negative short-term mental health effects (elizabeth et al., 1990). histories of mental illness and illness or disability were risk factors identified in the literature. in a national probability sample of over 3,000 women, a prior history of mental illness was found to increase depression, ptsd, and substance abuse for sa victims (acierno et al., 2007). overall, there were very few outcomes with more than one study with similar measures or instruments. one of these was the outcome of substance abuse after sexual assault (kaukinen & demaris, 2005; reviere et al., 2007; thompson et al., 2003; ullman et al., 2006). sexually assaulted women who had histories of childhood sexual abuse were found to be significantly more likely to have substance abuse issues. single studies also suggest women have higher risks of anxiety disorders, mood disorders, avoidance, anxiety, and ptsd if abused as children in addition to sexual assault as an adult, when compared to women who had no childhood abuse. the impact of prior life-threatening trauma on the fear level of current sexual assault patients was only examined in one study (ullman, filipas, townsend, & starzynski, 2007). fear levels were significantly higher after the sexual assault if the woman had experienced a prior life-threatening event. certainly, with both ipv and sa, prior sexual assault and csa were of consequence to a number of outcomes, including depression, substance abuse, and a range of anxiety disorders including ptsd. it is not just the individual risks that contribute to these mental health outcomes. many overlapping and discrete relationship and community/societal factors are of consequence to risk and resilience for women experiencing interpersonal violence. the impact of relationship and community factors is shown in table 4. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 81 relationship & community factors the relationship factors studied included mainly the type and severity of violence and impact of available supports, some of which were related to community and societal beliefs. the major findings have been summarized in table 4. table 4. relationship & community risks risk intimate partner violence sexual assault psychological violence more ptsd, asd, depression symptoms, alcohol use than with other types. more depression and ptsd with frequent stalking, harassment. more depression and ptsd if threats used in older women. more psychological effects if more controlling behaviour, more ptsd/fear if threat to life. physical and sexual violence more mental health days, eating disorders, suicidal ideation/or attempts, ptsd, depression, anxiety, somatization. psychological: more ptsd, asd, & depression. more drug use if used force. more psychological outcomes if life threat, controlling behaviour. severity of violence more negative psychological outcomes, depression, ptsd, anxiety, & suicide. more psychological consequences. physical injury more depression, anxiety, somatization, asd, & ptsd. more ptsd. timing of violence recent/continuous: more effects, depression, & anxiety. more frequent: more symptoms, ptsd (less ptsd if stopped). effect on depression indeterminate. more anxiety if > one sa. informal social support negative response/less support: more psychological symptoms, ptsd, depression, distress. positive response/support: less mental illness, distress, more self-esteem and resilience scores. negative response/less support: more psychological effects, ptsd. positive response: no effect. formal support indeterminate effect of using tangible supports, no effect of seeking shelter on anxiety or depression. increased psychological effects if more authority involvement. legal & medical professional impact better psychological outcomes and wellbeing if satisfied with system/outcome, and treated positively. police & health care negative reactions: more depression, anxiety, ptsd. report to police or no prosecution: more negative effects. health care: more negative effects if no hiv information or pregnancy prevention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 82 the nature of the relationship between the victim and offender was not examined in the ipv studies reviewed, although the actions of offenders (e.g., stalking) were considered. among sexually assaulted women, however, ptsd symptoms were more likely if women knew their assailants (gutner, rizvi, monson, & resick, 2006; lawyer, ruggiero, resnick, kilpatrick, & saunders, 2006) and were less likely to recover from their ptsd symptoms if the assailant was a stranger (gutner et al., 2006). women were more likely to have psychological effects if the assailant was a military co-worker (gutner et al., 2006). effects on military victims included depression, substance abuse, and alcohol abuse. the impact of other key relationship and community factors in the review are also shown in table 4 above. a) type and severity of violence the type of violence was found to be a key factor impacting mental health. psychological violence such as the use of coercion or threats was associated with more ptsd symptoms across local and national studies (coker et al., 2002b; demaris & kaukinen, 2008; dutton et al., 2006; kocot, 2001). also seen were increased symptoms of acute stress disorder (asd) (dutton et al., 2006) and depression (dutton et al., 2006; coot, 2001). symptoms of depression and ptsd were greater among women in shelters if they had experienced more frequent stalking (mechanic, uhlmansiek, weaver, & resick, 2000; mechanic, weaver, & resick, 2008). sexual assault in the context of ipv was associated with greater mental health impacts than was physical assault (demaris & kaukinen, 2008; taft et al., 2007). the combined effects of sexual and physical violence were notable for women. victims of ipv who sustained both sexual and physical violence had more reported leave from work for reasons related to mental health (martin et al., 2008), ptsd (demaris & kaukinen, 2008; weaver et al., 2007), and eating disorders (ackard & neumarksztainer, 2002). sexually assaulted women who also sustained more physical force were found to have more drug use following the assault (winfield, george, swartz, & blazer, 1990). the severity of violence was not uniformly defined or described, but in general women had more negative psychological outcomes after “severe” ipv. the consequences included more negative mental health symptoms in both a south asian population (kyu & kanai, 2005) and north american women seeking protection orders after partner stalking (logan & walker, 2009). women in national surveys who had experienced severe ipv were found to have more depressive symptoms (dale et al., 2009) and more ptsd (demaris & kaukinen, 2008). ptsd was also found among a survey of pregnant women with severe ipv (martinez-torteya, anne bogat, von eye, & levendosky, 2009). in contrast, among women in shelters there was no relationship between distress and severity of ipv (humphreys, lee, neylan, & marmar, 2001). higher danger scores for women in shelters were associated with more depression, anxiety, and suicide (sato-dilorenzo & sharps, 2007). severity of the assault was also associated with negative psychological outcomes in sexual assault victims and more negative reactions from others (ludermir, schraiber, d'oliveira, frança-junior, & jansen, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 83 more severe assaults would be expected to result in injury. the presence of physical injury was described as a risk factor for negative mental health consequences in both ipv and sa populations. there were higher rates of depression, anxiety, and somatization in college-aged victims of dating violence (amar & gennaro, 2005), increased acute stress disorder and ptsd in women involved in the court system for ipv (dutton, goodman, & bennett, 1999), and ptsd in those women seeking help at shelters (mechanic et al., 2008). sexually assaulted women who sustained “physical injuries” had more risk of ptsd (acierno et al., 1999; bownes, o’gorman, & sayers, 1991; winfield et al., 1990). the impact of genital injuries on women’s mental health was not described. b) supports available the responses of informal support people such as friends or family had significant impact on the mental health outcomes for both victims of ipv and sa. after ipv, women from both shelters and in the community demonstrated more mental health problems if there were limited social networks available or the support was negative (kerouac, taggart, lescop, & fortin, 1986; lee & hadeed, 2009). this lack of support resulted in increased distress (borja, callahan, & long, 2006), increased anxiety and depression (carlson, mcnutt, choi, & rose, 2002), and both ptsd and depression (carlson et al., 2002; dunmore et al., 1999; lee & hadeed, 2009). this effect was found in caucasian populations in particular (dunmore et al., 1999; lee & hadeed, 2009). in contrast, social support as a construct was not found to be a contributing factor on mental health among a group of african-american women (kocot & goodman, 2003). these same authors, however, did find an increased risk for ptsd if women received mixed advice or poor advice such as remaining in the relationship. the opposite effect was also found for women after ipv– more positive social support was associated with better psychological outcomes. a national survey indicated decreased mental illness with more positive support (coker et al., 2002a), and smaller studies also found less distress (humphreys et al., 2001), as well as fewer mood disorders and increased resilience scores (schultz et al., 2009). additionally, decreased rates of depression were found if women received more family support (mcguigan & middlemiss, 2005). the impact of negative support is similar for women after sexual assault to that after ipv. if women received negative reactions after sa, they had increased psychological symptoms including ptsd (ullman, 1996; ullman et al., 2007; ullman, townsend, filipas, & starzynski, 2007). the results are less clear if women receive positive support or reactions after sa, however. positive support was not found to increase psychological outcomes in one study (ullman, 1996) but other researchers (littleton et al., 2006) found that increased social support was linked to increased self-esteem and, thus, positive outcomes. formal support services can also adversely or positively impact the mental health of women (i.e., the type of response received from police or health care professionals). victims who were satisfied with their legal involvement and perceived some control over the process had better mental health outcomes (herman, 2003), and found the court processes especially helpful to their well-being if received positively by court personnel (bell, perez, goodman, & dutton, 2011). women whose spouses were arrested had higher levels of ptsd unless their partner had a higher stake in conformity – a willingness to change (demaris & kaukinen, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 84 some sexually assaulted women reported not seeking formal support as they feared the contact would result in worsened emotional responses or be harmful (patterson, greeson, & campbell, 2009). repeated studies with sexually assaulted women reveal that if women perceived negative responses from police or health care professionals, they had increased negative psychological outcomes including depression and anxiety (campbell, 2005), with more than 80% stating they felt worse after seeking help from either police or health care personnel. sexually assaulted women also had worse outcomes if they received incomplete treatment such as lack of pregnancy prevention or information on hiv risks (campbell, wasco, ahrens, sefl, & barnes, 2001). discussion we completed a comprehensive and critical literature review to identify the types of risk and resilience factors (i.e., individual, relationship, community, or societal) that may be associated with subsequent mental health effects for women who experience interpersonal violence (i.e., sexual assault and intimate partner violence). although a large number of studies were identified, it is recognized that the review is unlikely to be exhaustive of the literature given the review criteria and the large diverse set of risk and resilience factors. we do believe, however, that the literature is representative of the key concepts studied and the current state of the evidence. in our review, the key risk factors for mental health problems after ipv included a history of csa, the use of avoidance coping, receiving negative reactions or support, and having experienced psychological violence or sexual violence, especially if combined with physical violence. the role of threats and fear may be linked to the finding of increased ptsd if the violent spouse was arrested and had less desire to conform: these women were likely to be fearful for their lives when the spouse was released. key factors in resiliency included the availability of positive support systems (i.e., informal and formal), higher education, marriage versus cohabitation, and having some control over the legal process. women who had been sexually assaulted were at higher risk of mental health problems if they used avoidance coping, had maladaptive beliefs such as self-blame or negative religious coping, if they sustained physical injury, or experienced negative reactions to disclosure. resiliency to mental illness was enhanced with positive religious coping but the impact of other forms of positive support was not clear. the total number of studies with measured outcomes and risk factors was somewhat modest despite the large number of studies that initially seemed to be eligible for this review. despite the large number of risk and resilience factors and outcomes in the social-ecological model, we found relatively few articles for each factor or outcome. there were a significant number of articles which were unavailable at the conclusion of the review although they had been requested. in particular, there were few studies available relating to community or societal factors for our review. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 85 the quality of the existing evidence was also of concern in our review. the studies were all cohort studies and mostly level 2b. cohort studies are to be expected in violence research as randomized controlled trials are not possible. despite these limitations, the presence of multiple smaller studies across different populations with similar findings strengthens the generalizability and confidence in the results. this is further strengthened by the results of related systematic reviews in which trauma types were mixed. for instance, factors such as education, previous trauma, and childhood adversity were more consistently identified as risk factors for ptsd across trauma types in a systematic review (brewin et al., 2000), which is consistent with and supportive of the findings in this review. the severity of violence as a risk factor found in our review is consistent with the dose-response relationship between battering and mental health problems such as depression, ptsd, and substance abuse in another systematic review (golding, 1999). implications for practice in total, more articles dealt with risks for adverse mental health outcomes than resiliency factors. professionals can do little with these risk factors (e.g., prior trauma, severity of violence) after the assault has occurred other than to identify the person as high risk for mental health effects. effective secondary prevention of adverse mental health consequences depends upon the identification of resilience factors. this would allow the professionals to draw on these strengths to promote client agency, and to shape interventions in a manner informed by evidence. an example would be to help the individual to reframe events to reduce self-blame, or to identify individuals or agencies that may provide positive reactions and supportive resources. many of the studies used different assessment tools for the calculation of the outcomes, further limiting the ability to synthesize the results quantitatively. a mixed analysis is recommended for the subsequent systematic review – combining meta-analyses of two or more similar studies and a descriptive analysis of the factors. these findings are important for future research; attempts should be made to replicate studies with similar methods and instruments so that we can begin to approximate the effects of the factor on larger populations (drotar, 2010; lindsay & ehrenberg, 1993). although the results of this review assist in identifying effects of various risk and resiliency factors for mental illness, the relative influence of each and interactions between factors are not identifiable with a critical review of this nature. assessing the available evidence, however, will ideally identify areas for further examination and programmatic attention of the various risk or resiliency factors and the presence of mental illness in women after violence. the information from this review can then be used by justice and health care professionals to guide their actions when working with women after violent events to prevent the development of mental illness and its consequences and perhaps to promote resilience to these effects. it is hoped that dissemination of the results will help reduce women’s risks of adverse mental health effects and further involvement in the health care and justice systems. future directions for research include replication of the research concepts, a full systematic review on selected key risk or resilience factors, and development and testing of a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 86 theoretical model looking at the interaction of these factors. further work is also required on interventions that are anticipated to reduce risks of mental illness. these findings will help inform design and testing of research aimed at prevention of adverse mental health consequences. one example would be measuring the mental health impact of education programs for the community, police, and health professionals related to use of responses such as psychological first aid and positive responses to disclosures. another suggestion would be evaluating the effectiveness of the findings in identifying individuals at 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(1981). factors related to the psychological impacts of rape on the victim. journal of abnormal psychology, 90(6), 562–567. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=med2&an=7320325 ozer, e. j., best, s. r., lipsey, t. l., & weiss, d. s. (2008). predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder and symptoms in adults: a meta-analysis. psychological trauma: theory, research, practice, and policy, s(1), 3–36. doi: 10.1037/1942-9681.s.1.3 patterson, d., greeson, m., & campbell, r. (2009). understanding rape survivors' decisions not to seek help from formal social systems. health & social work, 34(2), 127–136. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=psyc&an=2009-05905-006 poortinga, e., lemmen, c., & majeske, k. (2007). a comparison of criminal sexual conduct defendants based on victim age. journal of forensic sciences, 52(6), 1372–1375. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=psyc5&an=2008-18065-002 ratner, p. a. (1993). the incidence of wife abuse and mental health status in abused wives in edmonton, alberta. canadian journal of public health, 84(4), 246–249. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 97 reviere, s. l., farber, e. w., twomey, h., okun, a., jackson, e., zanville, h., & kaslow, n. j. (2007). intimate partner violence and suicidality in low-income african american women: a multimethod assessment of coping factors. violence against women, 13(11), 1113–1129. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=medl&an=17951588 rich, n. c. (2005). levels of evidence. journal of women's health physical therapy, 29(2), 19– 20. sackett, d. l. (1996). evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. british medical journal, 312, 71–72. sarasua, b., zubizarreta, i., echeburua, e., & de corral, p. (2007, august). psychopathological profile of battered women according to age. psicothema, 19(3), 459–466. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=emed8&an=17617986 sato-dilorenzo, a., & sharps, p. w. (2007). dangerous intimate partner relationships and women's mental health and health behaviors. issues in mental health nursing, 28(8), 837–848. doi: 10.1080/01612840701493535 schultz, p., roditti, m., & gillette, m. (2009). resilience, social support, and psychological disturbance in hispanic women residing in a battered women's shelter on the u.s./mexico border. hispanic health care international, 7(4), 224–230. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=emed9&an=2010015277 taft, c. t., resick, p. a., panuzio, j., vogt, d. s., & mechanic, m. b. (2007). coping among victims of relationship abuse: a longitudinal examination. violence & victims, 22(4), 408–418. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=medl&an=17691549 thompson, k. m., crosby, r. d., wonderlich, s. a., mitchell, j. e., redlin, j., demuth, g., et al. (2003). psychopathology and sexual trauma in childhood and adulthood. journal of traumatic stress, 16(1), 35–38. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=med4&an=12602650 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 98 trickey, d., siddaway, a. p., meiser-stedman, r., & serpell, l. (2012). a meta-analysis of risk factors for post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents. clinical psychology review, 32(2), 122–138. retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=gatewayurl&_method=citationsearch&_ur lversion=4&_origin=ebscohofedsrf&_version=1&_piikey=s0272 7358%2811%2900187-5&md5=2b4ead9d0fff7a71301d5067801eef9e ullman, s. e. (1996). social reactions, coping strategies, and self-blame attributions in adjustment to sexual assault. psychology of women quarterly, 20(4), 505–526. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=psyc3&an=1996-06926-003 ullman, s. e., filipas, h. h., townsend, s. m., & starzynski, l. l. (2006). correlates of comorbid ptsd and drinking problems among sexual assault survivors. addictive behaviors, 31(1), 128–132. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=medl&an=15899554 ullman, s. e., filipas, h. h., townsend, s. m., & starzynski, l. l. (2007). psychosocial correlates of ptsd symptom severity in sexual assault survivors. journal of traumatic stress, 20(5), 821–831. doi: 10.1002/jts.20290 ullman, s. e., townsend, s. m., filipas, h. h., & starzynski, l. l. (2007). structural models of the relations of assault severity, social support, avoidance coping, self-blame, and ptsd among sexual assault survivors. psychology of women quarterly, 31(1), 23–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2007.00328.x valentiner, d. p., foa, e. b., riggs, d. s., & gershuny, b. s. (1996). coping strategies and post traumatic stress disorder in female victims of sexual and nonsexual assault. journal of abnormal psychology, 105(3), 455–458. waldman, h. b., perlman, s., & cinotti, d. a. (2011). adverse childhood experiences affect later life well being. exceptional parent, 41(2), 27–29. retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip,url,cookie,uid&db=rzh &an=2010930315&site=ehost-live international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 72–99 99 weaver, t. l., allen, j. a., hopper, e., maglione, m. l., mclaughlin, d., mccullough, m. a., & brewer, t. (2007). mediators of suicidal ideation within a sheltered sample of raped and battered women. health care for women international, 28(5), 478–489. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=medl&an=17469001 winfield, i., george, l. k., swartz, m., & blazer, d. g. (1990). sexual assault and psychiatric disorders among a community sample of women. american journal of psychiatry, 147(3), 335–341. retrieved from http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?t= js&news=n&page=fulltext&d=med3&an=2309952 the paradox of the individual international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 458 the paradox of the individual janet newbury abstract: with the rise of neo-liberalism has come the assumption that the individual is the locus of action. paradoxically, our heightened focus on the (generic) individual has led to universalized notions of individuality, sifting out of view the particular dimensions of experience that differentiate us from one another, rendering each (unique) individual invisible. in this article, the dynamics through which social processes are being increasingly individualized are called into question, and alternative constructions are offered. when subjectivity and ethics are reconceptualized, new paths for ethical engagement as non-unitary subjects begin to emerge. these are taken up in relation to human service practices, and some collectively-oriented approaches to practice are presented. keywords: contextualize, ethics, human service practices, individualism, neo-liberalism, subjectivity acknowledgements: i would like to thank the community economies collective, all those working at what was formerly the centre for citizenship and public policy at the university of western sydney, and particularly katherine gibson, for pushing my thinking in new directions as i studied alongside them in 2012. i would also like to acknowledge the social sciences and humanities research council for financial support, and the reviewers of this article for valuable feedback. janet newbury, ph.d. works for the powell river diversity initiative, and is an instructor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: newburyj@uvic.ca. mailto:newburyj@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 459 individualism pushed to the extreme breeds horror. (rosi braidotti, 2006, p. 46) when researchers and practitioners insist on contextualizing human service practices and attending to social conditions, this is sometimes interpreted as contrary to the overall aims of these professions. whether coming from the perspective of a child and youth care practitioner, community worker, health care provider, mental health professional, social worker, or early childhood educator, is the bottom line of our work not the well-being of the individuals we encounter? i agree that it is. but i also maintain that attending too squarely to individuals can lead us away from this aim, in ways that are potentially damaging to them and to others. therein lies the paradox of the individual. in this article, i will unpack this paradox. i see great value in critically engaging with the conceptualizations that inform practice, and in the following pages will adopt a largely social constructionist approach to subjectivity in order to consider how we might engage differently with children, youth, families, and communities (see gergen, 1994). i will begin by outlining some of the theoretical influences that have informed my developing understandings of what ethical subjectivity can look like. i will then consider the promising implications for practice that come when we allow ourselves to resist the powerful current of individualism that pulls us, and instead consider ourselves and each other to be mutually constitutive and ever-changing. individualism: limiting possibilities for ethical subjectivity i would imagine most readers are quite familiar with what is meant by individualism, as it is an underlying assumption of nearly all aspects of modern society. the individual as the basis of our social systems, laws, rights, understandings of development, beliefs about success, and related practices is something that is so pervasive it feels natural. on what other basis would we organize our world? and why would we even want to consider other possibilities? yes, individualism is well-understood. it is the critique of individualism that could perhaps use some fleshing out. being so deeply enmeshed in an individualistic world view in nearly all of our activities, we may spontaneously resist rustles of other possibilities. but, for me, although (admittedly) it takes extra effort to hear and make space for these resistant voices amidst the chorus of individualizing certainty, it is well worth it. the space that is being opened up by distant and disparate advocates is inviting and – once steps are taken to enter into it – can be experienced as more promising and more pragmatic than the limiting one we seem so reluctant to step outside of. the notion that individuals exist is not what i am calling into question here. what is of concern is the “extent to which people … address persons as causes of behaviour and thereby ‘individualize’ them” (nollman & strasser, 2007, p. 85). nollman and strasser remind us to take note “that this process is inherently social and interactive from the beginning” (p. 85). although this kind of decontextualized individual agency is now a taken-for-granted assumption for many, it is a relatively recent understanding of the subject, and has been linked with the political discourse of neo-liberalism (braidotti, 2006; carmody & carrington, 2000; howard, 2007; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 460 teghtsoonian, 2004; winegard & winegard, 2011). according to howard (2007), “[i]n neoliberalism, individuals are interpreted as rational and self-interested beings who seek material advancement, while rejecting public or social intervention into their lives. this paradigm equates individuality with freedom” (p. 3). taking hold during the enlightenment (taylor, 2007) and strengthening with neoliberalism (braidotti, 2006), the idea of individuals as discrete, bounded beings who are selfdetermined and self-serving can thus be understood not as a reflection of empirical reality, but as a construction that serves particular functions (gergen, 1994). importantly, calling the individual a construction does not mean there are no material effects or that we – as subjects who understand ourselves largely in these terms – do not have experiences on their basis. on the contrary, it is the fact that such a construction serves the “purpose of capitalist industrial economy” at the expense of the well-being of citizens and the planet that causes such concern for many of these thinkers (braidotti, 2006, p. 244). in particular, braidotti (2006) notes two core objections to the unitary subject of individualism: its anthropocentrism and its universalism. in relation to the former, she argues first that this is a representation that contradicts our experiences as “embodied and embedded entities” (p. 132). she and others (see abram, 1996; gergen, 2009; merleau-ponty, 1964) note that our physical and psychic selves are constituted via ongoing relations with other human and non-human entities. at a minimum, we consume them, and they us. there is, from this perspective, no in-between space, but only a series of simultaneous and constant “transpositions” from one mode of being to another. if this experience of being relationally constituted is another plausible subjective construction, then what are the implications of “individualizing” these dynamic processes? that is, what happens when we distill their meaning down to the level of the individual actor, and respond to them as such? i will return to this question shortly. braidotti’s (2006) second objection to the construction of the subject as a unitary individual is its universalism. her concern is, in part, captured by derrida (1995), who suggests that when the focus is placed on the “generic” individual, the “unique” individual can disappear completely. derrida’s call was for a deep attentiveness to the particulars of each situation or individual or encounter in the pursuit of more just ways of engaging with each other and the world. levinas (1982/2003), too, refuses to universalize the subject, and is instead committed to what happens in each unique encounter with an unknowable “other”. braidotti (2006) shares these concerns, and is explicit in her extension of them to the non-human world. she says: a sustainable ethics for a non-unitary subject proposes an enlarged sense of interconnection between self and others, including the non-human or “earth” others, by removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism. this … implies a new way of combining self-interests with the well-being of an enlarged sense of community, which includes one’s territorial or environmental interconnections. (p. 35) the enlarged sense of community to which she appeals is not about extending universalized notions of the good and ethical more broadly. it is about recognizing our unique international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 461 and particular encounters with “others” that exist outside of what might currently comprise our conceptual community. an important critique of braidotti’s work, however, comes from critical race scholars who observe that while she acknowledges we are “embodied and embedded” (p. 132), she seems to downplay the disparities of experiences among us when it comes to the effects of our embodiment. radhika mohanram (1999), for example, makes an important distinction between the intellectual concept of nomadic subjectivity advocated by braidotti and the very real barriers to the realization of this experience for some people and not others. to illustrate her point, mohanram observes: [a] lot of black women cannot be perceived beyond the body. the literal aspect of nomadism – the ease of and the right to mobility – is reserved for women with strong passports. women with weak passports are normally confined within their borders. (p. 82) mohanram (1999) notes that although braidotti strives for fluidity of the subject, she nonetheless “disregards that at some level the material reality of the body also fixes it racially, culturally, and socially” (p. 82). although perhaps not sufficiently addressed in her theories of subjectivity, braidotti (2006) acknowledges the inequities at play in the current world order and the fact that vulnerability is always in play within power relations. she observes that “the difference between the winners and the losers of the present economic world order is that winners only put their money on the line, while the losers risk their bodies” (p. 53). braidotti’s position, however, is that in fact all bodies are on the line already, despite current dynamics that may obscure this fact. she invites us all to embrace the reality of our vulnerability in order to set the stage for different ways of conceptualizing the subject such that interconnectedness might better be recognized and embraced, which might in turn flatten the inequities to which mohanram draws our attention. in this sense, braidotti’s notion of non-unitary subjectivity might be better understood as a projection of possibilities, rather than a description of current arrangements. to illustrate the shift braidotti (2006) is inviting – and to allow for a more elaborate extension of it to better address the diversity among even human experiences – consider human rights. within neo-liberal individualism, rights can be universalized, replicated, and extended; indeed, they were constructed with that in mind. however, farmer (2005) suggests that universally “applying” rights enables us to overlook inequities that precede them, using them as a way to treat everyone “the same”, rather than working towards more equitable conditions (which may realistically require preferential treatment of some). in this way, rights can be taken up in ways that maintain the status quo, rather than alter it. todd (2008) agrees that conceiving of the subject in universal terms can lead to a counterproductive use of the concept of rights in that it restricts, rather than enhances, freedoms. she asserts that “freedom, which is so central to rights, … exists in the i’s capacity to respond to the other” (p. 63). discourses of rights that are constructed on the basis of universal notions of the individual subject limit the potential of actual individuals to experience the freedom that one might think would come via rights. instead, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 462 unique individual disappears amidst the abstractions. todd promotes a reworking of the concept of rights so that they can be contextualized, responded to, and creatively engaged with. this, she argues, would facilitate freedom for actual – not universal – subjects. the example of rights illustrates how individualizing the subject leads to anthropocentric and universalized notions of subjectivity. this, in turn, can create constrained conditions not only for present-day individuals, but also for those who inherit our increasingly individually-oriented institutions and practices. the trouble with individualization a moment ago i posed the question: what happens when we distill the meaning of dynamic social processes down to the level of the individual actor, and respond to them as such? this process can serve as a definition for what i am referring to when i use the term “individualize”. it is a verb, which describes the way we conceptually locate agency within the construction of the individual subject, largely eliminating social conditions from consideration when it comes to why things happen, and how things can happen differently. i acknowledge that the term is sometimes used differently by others (see, for example, yeatman, dowsett, fine, & gursansky, 2009) to describe more client-centred approaches to practice. i appreciate these ideas and see value in client-centred practice. but i am using the term “individualize” to help focus my attention on the process by which individualism becomes normalized. i believe that by focusing on the process, the fact that this norm is constructed through certain discursive practices can be highlighted. this awareness can enable us to consider other potential processes, which might lead us toward more relational and contextual conceptions of the subject. these new conceptions, in turn, can significantly inform human service practices, which involve encounters with “other” subjects. i am not alone. others have taken up the term individualization similarly in various areas of study and practice, and have demonstrated how doing so can make space for different ways of engaging. for instance, carmody and carrington (2000) challenge the reductionist process of individualization in relation to the prevention of rape and other sexual violence. they say: while we recognise that responsibilising victims and individualising offenders is consistent with wider global shifts in social policy calling upon individuals to manage their own risk, we argue that the increasing reliance on such neo-liberal social policy is especially problematic in preventing rape. (p. 341) rather than locating problems and solutions within individual offenders (and victims), carmody and carrington’s approach to sexual violence prevention looks at how to cultivate ethical sexual subjects. they resist the notion of men as “natural” predators and women as “natural” victims in order to provide more options for both men and women when it comes to creating a culture of ethical sexual encounters. options for men open up beyond “getting” sex, and options for women beyond “resisting” violation. instead, both are able to engage in negotiations around meaningful and pleasurable sex. this also helps move outside of the heteronormative discourses that so often accompany violence prevention work, and opens up a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 463 multitude of healthy sexual possibilities. the focus of this work is thus on “how” sex is negotiated, not on “what” sex is. similarly, richardson and reynolds (2012) resist “the individualization of injustice and the privatization of pain” (p. 6) in the context of community work. they argue that discursively placing the locus of change inside individuals is, in fact, one of the means by which injustices and pain persist because it prevents us from addressing the conditions which, in part, generate these experiences. as a concrete example, they “are critical of the individualization of ‘burnout’ and the limits of ‘self-care’ which lays the burden of an unjust society on the backs of individual workers” (p. 7). as an alternative metaphor, reynolds (2011) has suggested that community workers do not burn out, but they are “blown up” by the injustices they experience through isolation, unsupportive working conditions, and the spiritual pain that comes when workplace responsibilities (such as surveillance, diagnosis, and documentation) contradict an underlying ethic of solidarity with clients. resisting this requires more than “self-care”; it can involve the creation of communities of support across various disciplinary or other identity lines (see denborough, 2008). when workers and other community members collaborate and support each other (rather than, as is so often the case, compete with each other for “scarce resources”), conditions change, which in turn effectively diminishes the experience of being “blown up”. what both of these examples highlight is the ethical requirement to extend notions of subjectivity beyond the individual so that more possibilities for change can be rendered intelligible. individual workers and individual service recipients will never be able to effectively respond to the complex dynamics in which both exist in isolation. as long as the responsibility for change lies on the shoulders of conceptually disconnected individuals, we will find ourselves coming up short when trying to provide real and hopeful alternatives for those who are struggling. but perhaps if we could conceive of the subject in terms that better reflect our mutuality, our understandings of agency will also be transformed. it is to some of these possibilities that i will now turn. alternative constructions if not as an individual, then how might the subject be conceptualized? drawing from a range of relational theorists (including buber, 1923/1970; levinas, 1982/2003; and foucault, 1972), contemporary thinkers offer alternative constructions of the subject that contribute to rich possibilities for ethical engagement. while the concepts and vocabularies used by these theorists and activists differ slightly, i experience their ideas as mutually supportive. indeed, there seems to be a collective (albeit amorphous and diverse) conceptual shift away from atomistic notions of the individual taking place. all of the contributors from whom i now draw are working towards pulling into our consciousness additional elements of our being: those which are obscured by the individualizing processes described above. a relational subject the western conception of the individual self has run its course. the view of the private self as the source of art and literature, practical decisions, moral deliberation, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 464 emotional activity, and the like is no longer viable – not only on conceptual grounds but in terms of the societal patterns it invites. (gergen, 1994, p. 181) kenneth gergen (1994, 1999, 2009) has been a central figure in the conceptual shift of the subject from an individualistic entity to a dynamic, relational construction. as the above quote indicates, this shift is seen as necessary not only because an individualistic understanding of the subject inadequately represents our complex experiences of being, but also because it limits possibilities for ways of engaging in and enacting a society worth living in. understanding the subject as a relational construction, on the other hand, allows for more dimensions of experience to be taken into consideration when it comes to how decisions are made, what kinds of behaviours are exhibited, and how we might go about pursuing certain goals. indeed, the “individualization” of what gergen (1994) opts to represent as relational processes “sustains a cultural system of individual blame” (p. 110). when this occurs, the only possible route for change seems to come through individual action. however, when the relational view of the subject is embraced, doors open when it comes to possibilities, because – as braidotti (2006) says –“‘we’ are in this together” (p. 36, emphasis in original). (braidotti seeks to emphasize the contested nature of the terms ‘we’ and this that necessarily comes about when subjects are not understood as static, singular entities). a relational subject is one that is constituted by and constitutes those with whom it relates. thus, echoing the voice of buber (1923/1970), there is no “i” outside of the relation; the “i” continues to grow and morph, depending on the relationships in which it finds itself. this disperses the onus for change, of course, onto all of us. a situated subject although often understood in terms of interpersonal dynamics, “relationships” need not be interpreted anthropocentrically. the relational perspective extends (or at least can extend) to all human and non-human interactions. for example, drawing from merleau-ponty, abram (1996) calls attention to the ways even our physical selves develop in response to the material world in which we live. butler (2004) emphasizes corporeal vulnerability as an important dimension of relational subjectivity, and one that can help cultivate a shared sense of responsibility – even on a global level. and rose (2008a) argues that we need new “ways of understanding ourselves from within a relational ontology that is also an ecology” (p. 163). clarke (2005) facilitates this conceptual shift by speaking of “the situation” as the unit of analysis, rather than an individual or its “context”. the situation, according to clarke, is inclusive of all human and non-human dimensions of what is happening – including among them temporal, spatial, discursive, and relational dynamics. this means the subject can never be removed and understood in isolation, but must be seen as always “embodied and embedded” (braidotti, 2006, p. 132). by conceptualizing the subject as situated, the concept of an “in-between” space that exists somewhere outside of the “self” or the “other” vanishes. rather than asking questions about that space, then, rose (2008b) invites us to consider this: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 465 how would our questions be framed if we turned the focus away from the in-between space, whether atomistic or founded in connectivity and entanglement, in order to ask questions about the relational field of connectivity within which selves are entangled? … to focus on the field we have to lift our eyes from the page and turn them toward the living world. we are invited to think about pattern rather than space, and this means thinking about time, rhythms, organization, and the interplay of difference and similarity. (p. 110, emphasis added) here, rose is inviting an experiential understanding of subjectivity – one that relies on multiple senses and occurs in time and space. abram (1996) has encouraged us in a similar direction, reminding us both of the qualitative richness that comes when we allow more dimensions of experience to inform our imaginations and the quantitative expansion of possibilities for new forms of action that can be embraced by a situated subject. all of these authors insist that the opportunities that present themselves with this reconceptualization can support us in forging more ethical paths, as the emphasis is on dynamics, rather than states of being. when we cease to see ourselves as isolated from one another and instead see ourselves as always engaged in patterns of relating, then our responsibility to one another is heightened. this is significant for me, and is why i do not want to overlook the paradox of the individual within human service practices, but believe there may be value in wading further into it. a nomadic non-unitary subject embracing both the relatedness and the situatedness of this alternatively conceptualized subject, braidotti (2006) proposes “a nomadic eco-philosophy of multiple belongings” (p. 35). this, she suggests, can offer a richer foundation for ethical engagement in an uncertain world. the subject she envisions is one that can better respond to the complicated world we have created. in addition to viewing the subject as relationally constituted and situationally embedded, then, she posits that it is also non-unitary and nomadic. by doing so she aims to take into consideration the multiple belongings and constant flows of transformation that characterize the subject of the 21st century. in very literal ways – with things such as genetically modified foods; organ transplants from other species; globalized travel, communication, and trade; online communities; sexual realignments; cyborg technologies; and transnational identities – we can no longer identify ourselves in unitary terms. to conceptualize the subject as an individual and to privilege the concept of independence in the face of such realities begins to seem absurd. braidotti (2006) argues, however, that deliberately incorporating these complexities of life into conceptualizations of the subject can enable us to imagine a life for which the “i” is not the centre. and this, she says “is actually a sobering and instructive process. this is the very start for an ethics of sustainability that aims at shifting the focus towards … positivity ...” (p. 40). ethical ways of being abram (1996) points out that generalist notions of ethical conduct are also a product of current cultural realities. to speak of right and wrong in general terms without attaching them to particular events that occur in a time and a place would be meaningless within the traditional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 466 context of the navajo, for instance. for them, processes of discernment would necessarily be informed by particular contextual realities, not by universalized concepts such as rights and laws. as described in the previous discussion, the individualization of complex social phenomena has, on the one hand, meant that our gaze shrinks to the level of the individual at the expense of broader political, cultural, and economic considerations. at the same time, by decontextualizing individual experiences, we universalize our understandings of the individual. in this way, the paradox of the individual can be acutely felt. but when alternative conceptualizations of the subject are embraced, this tendency to universalize has to be revisited. if the subject is not understood as a discrete and unembedded individual, but rather as relational, situated, nomadic, and non-unitary, then a universalized approach to how to ethically engage with each other (including non-human “others”) ceases to make sense. the question then becomes: on what basis can ethical conduct be pursued? this is significant when it comes to human service practices, which – as stated previously – involve intimate encounters with unknowable others. if my interest is in supporting the well-being of children and families, for instance, how can i ethically engage in my practice if i conceptualize the subject in non-unitary and nomadic terms? reconceptualizing ethics is a significant step towards answering this question. ethics of disruption if we, as subjects, are amorphous and continuously being constituted by (and constituting) that with which we relate, then everything we do is potentially disruptive. each small action – including the choice not to act – will alter other non-unitary subjects in unpredictable ways. deborah bird rose (2008a) embraces this possibility, and uses it to inform what she conceptualizes as an ethics of disruption. our responsibility lies not in whether we engage – which is something we clearly cannot opt out of – but how. by being intentionally disruptive, we can actively resist the modernist tendency to nail things down and eliminate mystery. the word “intentionally” is key here; of course we will disrupt, but an ethic of disruption requires close attention to how we do it. rose (2008a) notes that given the current cultural commitment to certainty and singularity, “wild” and disruptive concepts and experiences seem almost inevitably to be “tamed” despite themselves. she even remarks on the possibility that she unwittingly does this within her own writing when she says: i worry about whether my words really are sustaining the respect for the awesome which so characterized my aboriginal teachers’ approach to the living world, or whether my words are opening gaps wherein the awesome can be tamed. probably they do both, and perhaps this is one of the great tensions about wanting both to respect difference and to communicate across difference: the attempt opens possibilities for both disruption and domestication. (p. 158) an ethic of disruption, then, is deeply reflexive. it attends not only to what an action does or even to its consequences, but to what it continues doing once it has engaged with, been taken international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 467 up by, and inevitably been altered by the nomadic subjects with whom it interacts. this means responsibility does not start and stop with the individual. an ethic of disruption knows no such boundaries. an ethic of sustainability above, braidotti (2006) was quoted as saying the thought of a life without “me” at the centre is “the very start for an ethics of sustainability” (p. 40). taking the non-unitary subject as a starting place, the codependence of different species (and entities) not only becomes conceivable, it “reiterates the importance of grounded, situated and very specific and hence accountable perspectives” (p. 123). this does not mean “anything goes”, as is so often the response. it simply means that judgement cannot come without considering the particular dimensions of each unique instance. since the world is constantly undergoing transitions big and small, judgement can only come after the fact, not before. the reason “sustainability” is the concept through which this ethic is realized, is because of both its temporal and affirmative nature. in terms of its temporal nature, an ethic of sustainability draws our attention to living time and space. it requires that we think beyond ourselves and beyond the now – in all directions (past, present, future, and laterally). but it also provides openings for thinking differently about what is possible in the now, as we “think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable” (braidotti, 2006, p. 201). in this way, the future can inform the present, bringing about the possibility of new realities. in this sense, its affirmative nature is also explicated. when thinking in terms of sustainability, creative or generative power is activated. particularly since the subject is understood as non-unitary, “sustaining” anything automatically implies constant change. in this sense, an ethic of sustainability is creative and affirmative; it involves the deliberate, ongoing, and responsive cultivation of that which is being sustained. thus, according to braidotti (2006), “ethics is a matter of experimentation, not of control by social techniques of alienation” (p. 214). absorbing the ethic of disruption and the ethic of sustainability together, it becomes clear that from the perspective of the nomadic subject, ethics is understood as a process which is highly reflexive. an ethic of solidarity from this perspective, ethics can also be understood as a process that is shared. if the individual subject is not an adequate conceptualization to encompass our complex subjective experiences, then individual responsibility will not be adequate to describe how ethics can be enacted. carmody (2005) offers ways of collectivizing ethical conduct, which shift the emphasis from rigid “codes” of behaviour to processes of negotiation. drawing largely from foucault’s notion of “the care of the self”, carmody suggests “the care of the self is intimately linked with ethics and that ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection” (p. 469). when subjectivity is understood in the relational terms described above, then ethics cannot be an individual exercise or achievement. instead it is a negotiation, which moves among care of the self, care of the other, and reflection. and of course this is necessarily ongoing, since international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 468 the mutually constitutive nature of “self” and “other” render the two terms almost moot. ethics is thus collectivized. richardson and reynolds (2012) also promote a collectivized notion of ethics, which they articulate as an ethic of solidarity, described as follows: solidarity speaks to the interconnections of our collective movements towards social justice, and in resisting oppression. profoundly relational understandings of solidarity have been credited to different indigenous elders. lily walker, an australian aboriginal women’s leader, describes solidarity beautifully while speaking to nonaboriginal activists at a land rights protest: “if you come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. but if you come here because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us begin” (walker cited in sinclair, n.d.). (p. 9) in this sense, an ethic of solidarity requires an understanding that all actions are disruptive, and we have an ethical obligation to be deliberate about how we disrupt. it also embraces the multi-directional nature of influence among non-unitary subjects, which means we cannot exert influence in predictable directions as individuals. rather, we must engage in shared efforts through partnerships of mutual negotiation. stated differently by rose (2008a), “one part of the whole, say the human part, cannot effectively engineer the whole, because the whole will always be greater than the part can understand” (p. 159). an ethic of solidarity takes this as a starting place and recognizes the transformative potential of engaging as a part of the (never fully known) whole. this is therefore not about creating tight-knit, exclusive communities of support that rely on shared identities. rather – embracing the nomadic subject – an ethic of solidarity accepts the likelihood that allegiances will also always be in motion. richardson and reynolds (2012) explain: our solidarity can be imperfect and fluid; we're not invested in perfect relationships of unity or cohesion. we look for points of connection, and spaces where we can back each other up authentically. … our impermanent allegiances are based on situational and timely concerns that bring people together for moments of sacred collision and cooperation. (p. 9) an ethic that is based on disruption, sustainability, and solidarity is an ethic that can engage non-unitary subjects. how might this differently inform the way human service practices are taken up? taking up and travelling with these ideas braidotti (2006) surmises that “a non-unitary vision of the subject, combined with an ethic of sustainability, allows us to bypass the habit that pathologizes self-destructive practices ... it also generates new and more complex forms of compassion or deeply shared affinity in others” (p. 223). if this is the case, then the implications of these ideas regarding international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 469 how human service professionals engage in practice may be profound. at times, highly individualized practices may be precisely what are called for in order to work in the best interest of actual subjects. i believe the conceptualizations of subjectivity and ethics articulated above can, in fact, help us when discerning when that is the case. this is not about privileging the collective over the individual (or vice versa), it is about understanding them as one and the same. so for example, although carmody’s (2005) work involves the cultivation of ethical sexual subjects, there are obviously times when unethical sexual behaviour takes place. if someone has been sexually violent or has experienced sexual violence, then attending to that unique individual’s needs is of utmost importance. this does not contradict notions of nonunitary subjectivity or ethics of solidarity. in fact, such relational concepts can heighten our sense of responsibility, and our ability to respond, when we encounter others in such situations. this perspective allows for the fact that the cultural shifts towards which carmody and others are striving involve developing different ways of engaging as and with individuals. that said, if we resist the tendency to completely individualize acts of sexual violence, but understand them also as significant manifestations of misogynistic dimensions of our cultural and political reality, then dynamic, shared notions of subjectivity and ethics can add new (not replace existing) dimensions of responsibility in such situations. in this way, we can take up and travel with the ideas explored thus far in order to resist the tendency to individualize our understandings of why things happen, and how they can happen differently. doing so may help us develop collectively-oriented practices which can contribute to the creation of conditions in which actual individuals’ desires, gifts, and needs can more readily surface and be engaged with in all their particularity. prevention prevention is often developed in highly individualized terms. sexual violence prevention, for instance, overwhelmingly involves teaching girls to “avoid” risky situations, and (to a lesser extent) working with offenders after they have committed a violent act (carmody & carrington, 2000). suicide prevention often places the onus on friends and family of potentially “suicidal” individuals to recognize and respond to what are understood as indicators (morris & white, 2010). addiction prevention efforts often centre teaching about drugs and encouraging right choices, largely overlooking “social determinants of health” (saul, 2005, p. 6; see also newbury & hoskins, 2008). such individualized approaches to prevention do not achieve great rates of success, and it has been argued that this is the case because they overlook the dynamics that contribute to the prevalence of the experiences prevention efforts aim to address (see kwee, 2007; neuhaus, 1993; and truan, 1993). refusing to individualize these phenomena, what might be done differently in the face of painful experiences? how can prevention efforts be informed by notions of non-unitary subjectivity and an ethic of solidarity? according to carmody (2003), the prevention of sexual violence becomes more achievable when we dedicate ourselves to “promoting its opposite: the inculcation of ethical sexual practices” (p. 200). this is an effective illustration of the “affirmative” nature of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 470 braidotti’s (2006) ethic of sustainability. by engaging people – of various ages, genders, and sexual orientations – in processes through which they can collectively explore what ethical sexuality involves, the conditions in which sexual violence takes place are dramatically altered. her work with young people, the military, football teams, and others, has thus far indicated that when people learn to negotiate sexuality, the burden of prevention becomes collectivized, leading to very promising (and sustaining) outcomes (m. carmody, personal communication, march 7, 2012). this collective work contributes to ontological shifts on individual levels, as well as cultural shifts within, for instance, schools, organizations, and sports teams. in this way, the subject cannot be understood in discrete, unembedded terms, as she or he is changed by and in turn changes through relating. relational work in the fields of suicide prevention (kral, wiebe, nisbet, dallas, & okalik, 2009; morris & white, 2010) and addiction prevention (newbury & hoskins, 2010) offers similar findings. when individual pathology is the central focus of prevention efforts, relapse and further suffering can follow. but when collectively cultivating conditions that foster well-being is prioritized, the pain and isolation that may lead individuals towards either suicide or addiction can be diminished. when people are supported to experience less isolation and stigmatization, experiences with violence (bostock, plumpton, & pratt, 2009), rates of suicide (haas et al., 2011), and the prevalence of addiction (truan, 1993) can be reduced. thus pursuits for just and healthy conditions on a collective level can be deeply meaningful when working to prevent individual suffering. prevention from this perspective may take many forms: a community resource centre that fosters informal supportive relationships can serve important preventive functions; a community radio which gives people opportunities to engage in public matters, learn skills, and develop a sense of belonging can also function preventively. a community garden that nourishes people, provides a sense of responsibility, and can even be the source of income can be a very significant preventive measure. these shared initiatives do not overlook the individual; they simply refuse to individualize their pain. by fostering conditions of inclusion, support, and belonging – which are well known to enhance well-being for adults and children alike (mcknight, 1995) – actual individuals can chart the space in which they might shine. community development these ideas support the role of community development as a potentially significant component of human service practices. whereas such practices are often primarily identified in terms of interpersonal intervention, there is a strong case here for intervention of a different kind. if subjects are mutually constitutive and locally situated, and if ethics involves disrupting existing patterns that contribute to pain and suffering with an emphasis on fostering solidarity, then it stands to reason that meaningful intervention can take place at a number of levels. for instance, albanese (2010) notes how our current neo-liberal climate is contributing to the development of increasingly individualized understandings of such a complex phenomenon as child poverty. there has been a shift in public discourse towards increasingly targeted interventions that focus on so-called at-risk populations. using the term “at risk” as a descriptor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 471 of certain groups decontextualizes their struggles, and shifts responsibility to individuals when it comes to addressing what is clearly a global economic and political issue. similarly, teghtsoonian (2004) observes patterns of increased depression, particularly among women, that coincide with the rise in neo-liberal policies and practices. she observes that even though isolation and stress are experienced as a result of highly social processes, they are increasingly interpreted as individual problems (i.e., individualized), which increases the burden on individuals when it comes to altering these patterns (providing limited options such as medication and counselling). in relation to both child poverty and women’s depression, our altered conceptualizations of the subject and ethics can make space for community-based avenues through which positive change can be pursued. asset-based community development (kretzmann & mcknight, 1997) is one approach to community change that builds on the affirmative possibilities highlighted by braidotti’s (2006) ethic of sustainability. rather than beginning with needs (i.e., deficits), this is an approach to change that takes existing assets (i.e., strengths) as a starting place. by identifying assets, the resources with which they can be extended are mobilized, thus addressing needs indirectly by cultivating their opposite (as suggested above by carmody). such an approach also incorporates rose’s (2008a) reminder that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. whereas individually, all members of a community will have some strengths with which alternatives can be pursued, taken together their assets will always be greater and can be more feasibly employed. asset-based community development can be engaged with in any number of ways. one example of how it has been taken up is through the work of the community economies collective. this is an international group of academic and community activists who have opened up the concept of economy to include all the diverse activities that fit within the definition of “the production and distribution of goods and services” (healy, 2010, p. 500). they intentionally highlight “the interdependence of all who produce, appropriate, distribute and consume in society” (cameron & gibson-graham, 2003, p. 153). doing so allows the assets that children and women contribute to a community to become visible, valued, and supported. to see how this can play out, consider the hypothetical case of a working mother who is struggling with anxiety and depression as a result of feeling stressed and isolated. if she chooses to seek support, the identification of her unique individual strengths may be an effective starting place (macarthur, rawana, & brownlee, 2011). but stopping there can still individualize her experience, and the responsibility for mobilizing those strengths remains largely on her shoulders. if, instead, she is understood as a relational, situated, and non-unitary subject and an ethic of solidarity is embraced, then a more dynamic and relational approach to change can come to light. if her personal strengths are considered along with other resources and assets around her, new possibilities can emerge, leading eventually to the construction of less constraining conditions. her stress and isolation could in turn be lessened, thus alleviating her experiences of anxiety and depression. a community economies approach to this situation could enhance the cultivation of concrete supports and opportunities for connection for this woman. from this perspective, things like school lunch programs, government-subsidized childcare or an informal childcare collective, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 472 universal parental leaves, higher minimum wages, and other initiatives that sustain all citizens (and that particularly serve preventive functions for those currently deemed “at risk”) are accounted for as assets to the community economy, not liabilities. such community-level changes could significantly lessen this working mother’s sense of isolation and increase her ability to find meaningful and practical supports in her community, both of which would have positive implications for the anxiety and depression she is experiencing. if the well-being of the people we encounter is the bottom line of the various human service professions, then widening our gaze to the level of the community is crucial. any approach that is decontextualized misses significant opportunities for making meaningful changes within the very conditions where children and families live, and runs the risk of increasing the burden of responsibility on already overwhelmed individuals. in this way, interventions that are collective in nature can be seen to have profound impacts at the individual level. returning to the earlier discussion of ethics – which involve disruption, sustainability, and solidarity – this new understanding of economy is a way of bringing situated and reflexive approaches to discernment into practice. as cameron and gibson-graham (2003) point out, “[i]n the diverse economy we … are forced to inquire into the specific conditions of any economic activity before we can advocate or oppose it” (p. 153). thus, community development from this more contextualized perspective requires ongoing deliberations, not up-front decision-making. as such, it is something that invites engagement among non-unitary, relational subjects. and as doherty and carroll (2007) suggest, we need to “think of ourselves as citizens, not just providers, as people engaged in partnerships with other citizens to tackle public problems” (p. 225). policy but how does such collective deliberation take place? if this approach embraces a “dual focus on individual change and social reform” (malekoff, 2010, p. 6), then how are (relationallyconstituted, always situated) individual subjects to engage meaningfully in such collective processes? how can an ethic of solidarity be enacted at a community level or even a policy level? carson and lubensky (2010) observe that: a healthy democracy is marked by willing and active public participation. it may end with voting, but the public should also be involved from the start in framing the choice ideas. in addition to attracting interested public participants, evidence is required that the deliberative nature of the engagement is held up to democratic ideals. but, … this is quite difficult to operationalize. (p. 45) in this regard, dynamic conceptualizations of both subjectivity and ethics are helpful, in that they can serve as reminders that this cannot be about “finding” structures that work and institutionalizing them in any fixed or final way (sen, 2009). there needs to be a way to account for the relational and situated nature of what is being called for here, and a way of folding in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 473 reflexive processes that can facilitate the form of ethical engagement that is required when deliberation is to take place after (not before) the fact. how can this be realized? human service practitioners can be considered to be well positioned, in some respects, to facilitate such relational ways of engaging with matters of policy. for instance, although mitchell (2011) notes a “systemic resistance” to meaningful partnerships, particularly when it comes to youth (p. 521), he insists that it is the responsibility of those who work with youth to persevere in altering the status quo by reconceptualizing youth as competent – and engaging them as such. this means resisting a patronizing model of service which is hierarchically organized and instead recognizing the tremendous societal and personal benefits that come with meaningful youth participation in social action such as, in mitchell’s case, health policy development. as another example, malekoff (2010) strategically uses group work in order to engage in advocacy in his social work practice. he reports that engaging youth and adults alike as advocates when it comes to the matters that affect them most is a significant avenue through which both individual and social change can occur. this can involve a wide range of practices, including, as malekoff notes: [d]emystifying the issues and educating group members (staff, board, community, and consumer/clients), creating talking points and protest letter templates for communicating with legislators and public officials, and developing a story to tell that would make the issues interesting and important to people that needed to be reached. (p. 5) importantly, although he works in the field of social work, this is very much a collaborative approach to practice, where efforts are engaged in with clients, not on their behalf. this kind of advocacy can have profound impacts on many levels simultaneously, one of which is the attitudinal shift among policy-makers themselves when it comes to seeing citizens as agents in their own right, rather than simply recipients of services. such shifts in the collective imagination can in turn enable institutions to be differently organized. this sets the stage for the possibility of public participation (not just consultation) at various stages of decision-making (lenihan, 2012). the contextualized approach being advocated here requires that the unique circumstance people are facing at particular moments in time need to make their way into policy discussions. since ethical discernment cannot take place before the fact, then constant negotiation and reflection needs to be part of policy-making processes. lyn carson (2011) offers some ways this can be better incorporated into existing democratic systems. she points out that in order for collective processes to be effective, information cannot travel in only one direction. it is not enough for governments to disperse information to the public, nor is it enough for individual citizens to simply present their perspectives to government. it is important for all parties to be exposed to the diverse range of perspectives on a particular issue and to have opportunities for dialogue with each other. it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 474 only with such a process that we can shift from rigid identity positions around public matters and allow for our nomadic subjectivity to be engaged by the myriad realities at play. carson outlines, for example, how to run a world café dialogue, and notes that it can serve as a model for collective deliberation in which “participants [do] not have a problem shifting their focus from atomized self to social community” (p. 13). she emphasizes the importance of having a diverse group of participants, including people who are in decision making positions as well as those who are not. this enhances the likelihood of cross-pollination of ideas and increases the transformative potential of the process. such a process acknowledges the concrete lived experiences people have as “individuals”, while at the same time embracing our non-unitary subjectivity and taking a solidarity approach to ethical engagement. making facilitated public deliberation processes an integral part of public life means individuals need not bear the burden for change in isolation, but subjects (in all our multiplicity) do bear responsibility when it comes to engaging in these practices. public deliberation can be one avenue for collectivizing our experiences – and the means by which new experiences can become possible. contextualizing care i began by noting that sometimes efforts to contextualize human service practices are seen as a step away from prioritizing the well-being of individuals. i can see how it might be seen as such, and i do not want to argue that thinking contextually is somehow a “way out”. as braidotti (2006) advises that, “given the complexity and paradoxes of our times, there cannot be only one political frontline or precise strategy” (p. 134). nothing is invulnerable to corruption, so vigilance is needed, regardless of the approach taken. that said, i do maintain that the tendency to focus our gaze narrowly on individual hardships can inadvertently erase from our view some of the important contextual realities at play that can inform ethical practices. when such realities are eliminated from consideration, it becomes all too easy to universalize our understandings of what is (and what can be) on the basis of individual experiences. then, the locus of change becomes the individual him or herself, and the burden they bear is only heightened. when we do this – when we base our practices on the notion of some generic individual – that is when i fear we really lose our way, and our ability to “meet” the actual human subjects we encounter through our practice is at stake. there is great promise in refusing to individualize our understandings of social processes. reconceptualizing the subject as a non-unitary, nomadic subject highlights our interconnectedness, and reconceptualizing ethics as something that must be engaged with anew in each and every moment heightens our responsibility to the other. i believe such shifts in perception can contribute to the cultivation of prevention practices, community development, and approaches to policy-making that are promising in that they can generate new realities. i agree with richardson and reynolds (2012) who insist that if we are not working with an ethic of solidarity and a commitment to justice at the centre of all we do, “we risk replicating dominance and causing harm to our clients and community members” (p. 4). developing more nuanced understandings of both subjectivity and ethics can help us stay close to this commitment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 458–478 475 references abram, d. 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(2011). the awful revolution: is neoliberalism a public health risk? retrieved february 2, 2012 from http://www.opednews.com/articles/3/the-awful-revolution-is-n-by-benjaminwinegard-110415-653.html yeatman, a., dowsett, g. w., fine, m., & gursansky, d. (2009). individualization and the delivery of welfare services: contestation and complexity. new york: palgrave macmillan. http://www.opednews.com/articles/3/the-awful-revolution-is-n-by-benjamin-winegard-110415-653.html� http://www.opednews.com/articles/3/the-awful-revolution-is-n-by-benjamin-winegard-110415-653.html� a decade of disconnection: child care policies in changing economic times in the canadian context international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 252 a decade of disconnection: child care policies in changing economic times in the canadian context patrizia albanese and ann rauhala abstract: this article brings together findings from two studies that focus on child care in canada. the first maps the coverage of child care over the first decade of the 21st century in four canadian daily newspapers. it shows that the voices of children, mothers, and child care providers are virtually absent from policy discussions. the second study, which remedies the parental invisibility identified by the first study, relies on interviews with mothers of young children in two jurisdictions with distinctive approaches to child care – the provinces of ontario and quebec. this article looks at the impact on gender roles, identities, and relations of the rise in women’s non-standard, service-sector employment and compares the complex task of creating and managing formal and informal nonparental child care in rural and semi-rural communities in the two policy jurisdictions (ontario and quebec). it seeks to understand the ways in which the neo-liberal reconfiguration of local economies affects the experiences of employed, non-urban women with young children – mitigated or exacerbated by provincial policy – through documenting the strategies that mothers adopt to face new, increasing challenges when negotiating this family-market-state nexus. this paper focuses on unique challenges some rural mothers encounter and the strategies they develop to address their changing child care needs. it also shows how absent these realities are from the coverage of child care in canadian newspapers. the paper argues that high quality child care should be a national priority for healthy child development and better family outcomes. keywords: child care, media coverage/newspapers, gender, canada, quebec patrizia albanese, ph.d. is a professor of sociology at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, canada, m5b 2k3. telephone: (416) 979-5000, extension 6526. e-mail: palbanes@soc.ryerson.ca ann rauhala, ph.d. is a professor in the school of journalism, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, canada, m5b 2k3. telephone: (416) 979-5000, extension 6403. e-mail: arauhala@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 253 it seems easier to find doggy daycare than it is to find adequate care for young children in this country. we have come to accept that dogs need “social” interaction with other animals when we are at work, but somehow do not appear to believe the same to be true for young children. we seem to know what is needed to raise healthy pets, but what about healthy children? our national – limited and misnamed – “universal child care benefit” assumes that a stay-at-home parent/mother is the best provider of care, given that the funds allotted to eligible families cannot cover the cost of any type of nonparental care (more on this below). while having a stay-at-home parent/mother caring for children may be the best situation for some children, it is not feasible for most canadian families today. the current economic climate, coupled with the rise of neo-liberal policies and the retrenchment of the welfare state, mean that more people, especially women/mothers, are working for pay in increasingly precarious jobs. more parents are working multiple part-time jobs, doing shift or contract work, or are self-employed, and even then, struggling to make ends meet (larochelle-côté & uppal. 2011; galarneau, 2010). as a result, there is a growing need for affordable, high-quality, non-parental child care at precisely the time that the national government has quashed all discussions and initiatives surrounding the creation of a national child care strategy. the facts are clear: canadian parents say they need affordable, high-quality child care governed by solid social policies. that is exactly what most parents don’t have. as a result, families struggle and children suffer out of sight of most canadians, as parental voices are reflected in neither federal policy nor public discourse. let us consider the case. this paper brings together findings from two studies. in the first study, we draw upon our joint project on the digitally available media coverage of child care between 2000 and 2007 in four canadian dailies.1 the second study involves interviews with mothers of young children in two policy jurisdictions with very different approaches to child care, on either side of the ottawa valley in ontario and quebec.2 the interviews with mothers highlight the constant need and worry faced by mothers in their quest for affordable, accessible, high-quality child care. the newspaper study, using digitally available news stories, maps the coverage of child care and child-care policy in this country to determine whether and when the needs of mothers are deemed as a subject worthy of news coverage. both projects remind us of the importance of having strong and sound social policies that support children and families – especially in light of changing economic circumstances. need for child care with the rise of women’s non-standard employment a recent canadian labour force survey revealed that there were employment gains in professional, scientific and technical services, in accommodation and food services, in public administration and in agriculture; while manufacturing posted a notable decline (statistics canada, 2013). while this may seem cause for celebration, in support of the view that we are seeing growth in the knowledge-based economy, the flip side is that for 1 funded by the ryerson university interdisciplinary research fund. 2 funded by sshrc, standard research grant, 2008-2011. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 254 the past three decades, a fundamental restructuring of the canadian economy, driven by global economic change, has seen the decimation of what were once well-paid, unionized manufacturing jobs. while it is true that the share of employment accounted for by knowledge workers has increased in all regions, and that knowledge workers have become “a highly-prized commodity”, it is also well documented that we are seeing a bifurcation of jobs and earnings in the rapidly growing service sector (hughes & lowe, 2000). that is, by 2011, while some three-quarters of canadians worked in the service sector, of the 10 broad occupational categories, the sales and services category was the largest, where the retail sector alone employed 11.5% of the country’s paid workers (statistics canada, 2013). statistics canada also noted that among the 500 occupations listed in the national household survey, the most common occupation for women was retail salesperson, accounting for 4.7% of all employed women, followed by administrative assistant (4.0%), registered nurse/psychiatric nurse (3.4%), cashier (3.3%), and elementary school and kindergarten teacher (2.9%) (statistics canada, 2013). similarly for men, the most common occupation was retail salesperson, accounting for 3.3% of all employed men, followed by transport truck driver (2.9%), retail trade manager (2.5%), carpenter (1.7%), and janitor, caretaker and building superintendent (1.7%) (statistics canada, 2013). as a result of these trends, instability and inequality in family earnings have grown since the 1990s (morissette & ostrovsky, 2005). some have argued that the negative trends of the 1990s, including high unemployment, slow economic growth, and the rise in part-time employment (at the expense of full-time work) were reversed in recent years (cross, 2007). on the other hand, other sources reveal that while unemployment rates have improved since the 2008 recession, they continue to fluctuate (employment growth slowed in 2013), and not all parts of the country have shared equally in the improvements (bernard & usalcas, 2014; statistics canada, 2014). the relatively well-paid manufacturing sector remains one of the weakest of the economy (statistics canada, 2013). most economic gains have occurred in western canada, and especially alberta, while ontario has been hard hit by reduced activity in manufacturing, and in the auto industry in particular (akyeampong, 2007; statistics canada, 2014). as noted above, more canadians are (involuntarily) working part time – often multiple part-time jobs – temporary (contract, seasonal, or casual) jobs, shift work, or are self-employed, and struggling to stay afloat. according to statistics canada, in 1980, the ratio of household debt to personal disposable income was 66%. by 2011, that ratio surpassed 150%, meaning that households owed more than $1.50 for every dollar of disposable income (chawla & uppal, 2012). how does that affect child care? with widespread worker displacement (white, 2003), an increasing proportion of families find themselves relying on individuals holding multiple jobs and/or having multiple incomes per household. while women’s growing labour force participation rates may be rooted in their rising levels of education and their greater desire for economic independence, families increasingly depend on two incomes to make ends meet. this trend is not new. women have been entering the labour force in large numbers since the end of world war ii, but there are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 255 differences today that make child care a crucial concern. while fertility rates remain low (with a slight increase in recent years), the proportion of women with young children in the labour force has, for the most part, been increasing steadily. by 2009, almost 73% of women with children under the age of 16 living at home were in the workforce, as were 66.5% of mothers with young children under the age of 6 (ferrao, 2010). what is different now is that more women, especially women with young children, need and want to enter the labour force, yet not all can or do, at least not without assuming additional challenges related to finding non-parental care for their children. roy (2006) notes that one of the most striking differences in women’s rates of participation in the labour force across the country has been among women with at least one child under the age of 6. in alberta, the participation rates of women with children under the age of 6 actually fell in 2005 (from 67.9% in 1999 to 64.9%), in sharp contrast to almost all other provinces, except manitoba, that showed increases (roy, 2006). with alberta’s economic prosperity, more albertan families may be in the position to afford one income and more stay-at-home mothers, yet in 2004 the province also had only 47,959 child-care spaces for the 163,400 mothers with preschoolers (roy 2006). by contrast, quebec families used child care more, since more spaces were available and they were charged less. as a result of available care, quebec women’s labour force participation rates went from being the lowest in the country, well below the canadian average in 1976, to surpassing the national average in 2005 (roy, 2006). for most families with young children – except perhaps some in quebec (more on this below) – child care remains one of the largest expenses of raising a child, and this has had an impact on the number of women who can and do enter the labour force, subsequently also affecting women’s experiences when they try to balance paid work and family responsibilities. not only are there more women with young children seeking to enter the workforce, but there is also a recent surge in the number of preschoolers. statistics canada has reported that the population of children aged 4 and under increased 11.0% between 2006 and 2011, making this the highest growth rate for this age group since the 1956 to 1961 period during the baby boom (statistics canada, 2012). of these children, most lived in dual-earner, two-parent families and required some form of non-parental care. that said, ferns and friendly (2014) reported that in 2012, there were fulland parttime, centre-based child care spaces for only 22.5% of canadian children under the age of 6 – a slim increase from the 21.8% in 2010. this predicament is even worse for children under the age of 12, where only 20.5% have a regulated space, and even then, there is considerable variation across provinces. just as spaces are limited, they are also prohibitively expensive. in 2011-12, ferns and friendly (2014) note that provincial/territorial funding allocations to regulated child care totalled $4,016,815,891, with quebec accounting for 60% or $2,392,649,000 of this amount (more on reasons for this below). according to a report of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd), the cost of centre-based child care is most expensive for working couples in english-speaking countries including canada, along with portugal and switzerland (immervoll & barber, 2005). the study found that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 256 in these countries, out-of-pocket expenses for couples with two young children can consume as much as 20% to 40% of the family budget for the year. in canada, child-care expenses cost families between 27% and 42% of household income, making it among the most costly of oecd countries (immervoll & barber, 2005). according to ferns and friendly (2014), in 2012, the canada-wide median monthly fee for infant care was $761; for toddler care, $696; and for pre-school aged care, $674. the lowest fees for infants – $152 per month ($7 per day) or $1,824 per year – were paid by quebecois parents, while the highest fees – $1,152 a month or $12,516 per year (i.e., more than average university tuition) – were paid by ontario parents (ferns & friendly, 2014). these variations in costs and availability are the result of the absence of a national policy and of the patchwork of policies that criss-crosses the country. child care policy in canada, ontario, and quebec more than 35 years ago, canada published the findings of the royal commission on the status of women (1970). the document forcefully declared the need for a universal, affordable child care program as a stepping stone toward women’s equality. in the decades since, promises of a national child care strategy have come on and off political agendas with few concrete results (albanese, 2011a). even when the discourse around child care shifted to a more child-centred social investment strategy, demonstrating the contribution of quality child care to child development, children’s rights, and even economic development (see abner, gordon, kaestner, & korenman, 2013; hübenthal & ifland, 2011; warner & prentice, 2013), canadians have seen few improvements in child care policy (friendly, beach, & turiano, 2002; friendly, beach, ferns, & turiano, 2007; friendly & prentice, 2009; organisation for economic cooperation and development [oecd], 2004, 2006; scherer, 2001). canada – and this is true for ontario – has been classified as a “liberal welfare state” (esping-andersen, 1990), which relies on the free market rather than solid state support to families through generous social programs. canada’s family policies are for the most part limited, targeted, and often not very family-friendly. quebec’s social policies, on the other hand, are closer to a social democratic model (baker, 2006; krull, 2007; albanese, 2011b). since the mid-1990s, quebec began transforming its policies, introducing more feminist-informed programs aimed at integrating paid work and family, promoting gender equity, and reducing family poverty (albanese 2011b; roy & bernier, 2007; jenson, 2001). one of the province’s major policy reforms came in 1997, when it introduced $5 per day (increased to $7.00 per day in 2004) child care for children using care at least 3 days a week, regardless of family income and employment status (albanese 2011b; government of quebec, 2003, 2006; albanese, 2006; tougas, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b; bégin, ferland, girard, & gougeon, 2002). since the late 1990s, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments appeared to have been making progress toward improving access to quality child care across the country. see the national children’s agenda in 1997 (national children’s alliance, 1998; government of canada, 1997); the federal/provincial/territorial early childhood international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 257 development agreement in 2000 (government of canada, 2001); the multilateral framework on early learning and child care, 2003 (child care canada, 2003), as well as the 2005 agreement between the quebec and federal governments (government of canada and government of quebec, 2005). the multilateral framework (child care canada, 2003) built upon agreements reached between federal, provincial, and territorial governments on early childhood development, and was intended to guide new investments in regulated early learning and child-care programs, particularly for children under age 6. its prime objective was to support the participation of parents in employment or training by improving access to affordable, quality child care. ministers responsible agreed to the framework in 2003, and by 2005 the federal budget announced a national early learning and child care initiative. the liberal budget committed $5 billion, to be spent nationally over five years, with $700 million paid into a third-party trust in the 2005 budget year. the provinces were given the flexibility to draw on these funds, while a framework for quality programs was being developed (government of canada and government of quebec, 2005; government of canada, 2004). however, after the 2006 national election, the federal conservative minority government replaced the funding commitments of their liberal predecessors with their “universal childcare benefit” which gives families $100 monthly (before tax) for each child under the age of 6 years, and professes to provide parents with “more choice in child care” (conservative party of canada, 2006; government of canada, 2006; ballantyne, 2008). as a result, in most of the country child care spaces remain expensive, in short supply, and are perceived, both privately and publicly, as the individual (and as we have seen, invisible) responsibility of parents. literature on child care coverage in the media despite child care’s extensive economic and political implications, and its importance in relation to women’s equality and rights, there is scant research assessing how the media in canada covers this issue. research done in the united states has revealed a paucity of news coverage of child care there and we are no better off in canada (see dorfman & woodruff, 1999; mcmanus & dorfman, 2002). kunkel, smith, suding, and biely (2002) analyzed news coverage of child welfare issues in 12 american newspapers and four national television networks. the study found that 90% of stories were about youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect. other categories of child welfare, child care among them, were almost invisible (see davis 2003; cottle, 2003; de swert & hooghe, 2010). canadian researchers have on occasion turned their attention to press coverage of child care. for example, theriault (2006) analyzed the national post’s coverage by focusing on its december 2004, series “the nanny state”. theriault argued that the series was an illustration of conservative opposition to the liberals’ proposal to implement a national program. he concludes that the newspaper presents an inaccurate portrait of the proposed child care system as a massive, top-down, government-run program. meanwhile, rinehart writing in policy options (2007) and canadian journal of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 258 media studies (2008), argued that media coverage of child care during the 2006 federal election was “shallow and lacking in critical analysis” (2007, p. 48). like rinehart (2007, 2008) we were interested in how child care was written about in canadian newspapers, but we were especially focused on knowing who was used as sources and how they were used, as well as how child care issues were framed, particularly during canadian elections, when child care policy seems to have been a key election issue (rauhala et al., 2012; albanese et al., 2010). here is a brief overview of what we found by collecting and analyzing coverage over a significant 7-year period. between 2000 and 2008, canada had an unprecedented four federal elections (see table 1). in two of these, given the flurry of advocacy work and federal-provincial negotiating, child care was a key issue, as outlined in party platforms and campaigns. child care seemed to be a special focus of attention in the january 2006 federal election (see table 1). table 1 federal election dates and length of campaigns general election start of campaign (yyyy.mm.dd) election day (yyyy.mm.dd) length of campaign (days) outcome 40th 2008.09.07 2008.10.14 37 conservative minority 39th 2005.11.29 2006.01.23 55 conservative minority 38th 2004.05.23 2004.06.28 36 liberal minority 37th 2000.10.22 2000.11.27 36 liberal majority source: constructed from parliament of canada (on-line) project 1 our study of how mainstream media covered child care focused on four newspapers chosen for their relative prominence in canadian journalism and for their distinctive ideological flavours. research assistants combed through digital records, searching for the terms “childcare”, “child care”, “daycare”, “day care”. we sampled the national post and the globe and mail, which claim to serve a national audience, and the toronto star and ottawa citizen, which are thought to exert influence beyond their geographical reaches. each of these exhibits an ideological position. the toronto star (owned by the torstar corp.), has a history of advocacy for social justice and is regarded as liberal or left of centre. the globe and mail (owned by ctvglobemedia inc.), maintains that its readers are the “key decision-makers of canadian households, businesses and governments” (globe and mail, 2010) and is regarded as centrist. occupying the right side of the political spectrum, the national post has been labelled a right-wing, highbrow broadsheet that caters to the political and corporate elite (greenberg, 2000). it is owned by postmedia network inc., also parent company of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 259 ottawa citizen (canadian newspaper association, 2008). the citizen claims that along with its website, half a million residents of canada’s capital peruse it each week. the team searched each paper for january 2001, to work out recording, coding, and sampling issues. the co-investigators and assistants developed a set of rules and guidelines for including and discarding stories. for example, the team decided to exclude letters to the editor – since they do not necessarily reflect a paper’s stance, but to keep editorials since they do – and include articles in which one of the four search terms appeared in the first to fifth paragraphs and also once elsewhere in the rest of the body. we identified and collected all articles about child care from 2000 to 2007, recording the stories’ headline, word count, and placement. spreadsheets of eligible articles were analyzed to determine the total number of articles for 2000 through 2007 (see table 2). table 2 number of articles per year, 2000-2007, for four major canadian newspapers year globe star post citizen total 2000 49 96 87 60 292 2001 47 40 46 29 162 2002 39 56 42 30 167 2003 56 75 60 50 241 2004 43 83 73 57 256 2005 56 99 121 110 386 2006 137 159 142 123 561 2007 71 119 61 77 328 total 498 727 632 536 2,393 we have seen a steadily growing need for affordable child care in canada. so we wondered whether this growing demand for non-parental care coincided with growing attention to child care in major canadian dailies. we found that coverage was scant, except for during elections. in fact, child care moved in and out of the spotlight, migrating around the pages of four major dailies, often international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 260 virtually disappearing. except for during elections, we deduced that newspaper editors deemed child care of little relevance to readers. figure 1. quantity of articles about child care in major canadian newspapers. once we had collected data on overall coverage and assembled accessible spreadsheets of every article published in the four dailies from 2000 to 2007, we were able to drill deeper, to examine the framing used, the sources who were interviewed, and the ways in which the coverage reflected the ideological tenor of the publications. we asked: • how has child care been framed – women’s issue/family-oriented; market issue; institution-oriented (teghtsoonian, 1993, 1995) – in two newspapers during the 2004 and 2006 federal elections? • which sources (who) have been used and how have they been used across the two papers and over the two elections? we hypothesized that: • the toronto star would be the more progressive/democratic/womanfriendly paper compared to the national post. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 261 • more female (parent, politician, and activist) and “expert” sources would be used in the star, compared to the post. we (hoped) expected that mothers would be reflected in and used as key sources in news stories, especially during election campaigns (gidengil & everitt, 2003; gidengil et al., 2005; gidengil et al., 2006). we did not find this to be the case. we also found that child care was not written about as a women’s issue. women were rarely asked or quoted. the argument for child care as a women’s right/issue was rarely raised. male first sources outnumbered female first sources in both newspapers, in both time periods, yet the star had more female first sources (2 female first sources in 2004; 4 female in 20056) than the post (0 female first sources in 2004; 4 female in 2005-6). it was not surprising to find that the terms “women” and “mother” appeared in far fewer stories than the term “parent” or “family” in both newspapers, during both election campaigns (table 3). table 3 number of newspaper stories including at least one mention of various terms star, 2004 post, 2004 star, 2005-2006 post, 2005-2006 # % # % # % # % total stories during campaign 14 16 43 60 “woman” 5 35.7 4 25.0 5 11.6 13 21.7 “mother” 3 21.4 2 12.5 10 23.3 8 13.3 “parent” 6 44.4 9 56.3 25 58.1 41 68.3 “family” 7 50.0 5 31.3 55.8 55.8 35 58.3 “choice” 0 0.0 8 50.0 48.8 48.8 26 43.3 again, interestingly, the gender neutral term “parent” appeared in 68% of post stories in 2005-6, compared to the term “mother,” which appeared in 13.3% of stories and the term “woman” which appeared in 21.7% of stories in the post in the 2005-6 campaign (albanese, rauhala, & hache, in press). the relative absence of mother’s views on child care was also evident when we analyzed which category of sources was cited first in news stories. we found that the most cited “experts” on child care in the 2005-6 election were politicians. parents were cited as first sources in less than 10% of news sources in all four papers. • first source: politicians made up the bulk of first sources in each of the four papers:  69.35 % of stories in the citizen,  66.67 % of stories in the star,  57.58 % of stories in the globe, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 262  51.11 % of stories in the post. • parents were first source cited in:  9.09 % of stories in the globe,  8.89 % of stories in the post,  7.69 % of stories in the star, and  6.45 % of stories in the citizen. pro-child care advocates fared worse: 0 as first sources in star; 6.67% of stories in post; 6.06% of stories in globe; and 1.61% of stories in citizen (albanese, rauhala, & hache, in press). overall, we found that child care is ignored by media, except at a few key points in time and despite its obvious economic weight. when it is covered, stories overlook parents as key sources of information. further, despite our expectations, even a more “left-wing” publication failed to capture the views of parents, women, and mothers, precisely at a time when precarious work made child care a necessity for an increasing number of canadian families. in sum, parental voices are reflected in neither federal policy, nor in public discourse, rendering invisible a desperate scramble for services that is detrimental to their health and to the well-being of their children. project 2 to help fill some of the gaps in what we see and know about parental needs surrounding child care, the second project includes first-hand accounts from mothers with young children who relied on non-parental child care in parts of rural ontario and quebec. in the summer of 2009, albanese conducted 55 interviews – 22 in quebec and 33 in ontario – with mothers of young children living and employed in the ottawa valley. this was a non-probability purposive (and snowball) sample of employed mothers working in and around two economically stagnant, small urban centres near the ontario/quebec border, in the ottawa valley. the interviews were conducted in english in the women’s homes, a community centre, or neighbouring locales, in renfrew county, ontario, and the outaouais, in pontiac county, quebec. all the women – who responded to ads placed in child-care centres, social services agencies, in local newspapers and radio, or heard through word of mouth, and volunteered to participate – were employed or near the end of a maternity leave and soon returning to paid work. these women, on both sides of the border, were employed in the service sector, as a lab technician, a freelance journalist, camp counsellor, in retail sales, in customer service call centres, in office management, child care, health care, and other social and public services. all but one woman in quebec was either married or living common-law. six of the women in ontario were raising their children on their own (and/or with the help of extended family), while the rest had male partners. all but one interview (at the mother’s request) were tape recorded, and about one hour in length. albanese asked about women’s employment history/background, and the impact that they believed that their paid work had on their household work, and their personal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 263 relationships. she asked mothers about whether and how their roles and responsibilities at home, at work, and their overlap have changed with paid employment; and about who cares for their children, where, and at what cost. she also asked them who manages their child-care arrangements, and about how some of them manage child care in light of their own and/or their partners’ non-standard jobs and changing work schedules and shifts. the interviews in both ontario and quebec show that women are not actually free to choose whether to take employment outside their homes. the ottawa valley, like other parts of the country, has been spiralling into “economic crisis” for a number of years, with the decline of relatively well-paid, male-dominated jobs in the wood products and lumber industries. increasingly, families rely on women’s (at times low-waged) employment to make ends meet. in both jurisdictions, employed mothers were forced to make considerable sacrifices to balance work and child care. in fact, many mothers had to bend and stretch, skip lunch, lose wages, take on challenging shifts, reduce the number of hours they work, etc. to meet the challenges and demands associated with “balancing” paid work and child care. in both ontario and quebec, mothers (rarely fathers) were almost solely responsible for finding and managing the care of their children. low-fee child care in quebec was certainly used and appreciated by mothers accessing care. having the lower fee child care in quebec made working part-time and still making ends meet possible for many mothers. that said, despite some changes in the gender division of labour outside the home, gender roles within the home changed only slightly. one quebec mother who worked three part-time jobs, and was married to a farmer and lived on their farm, reported that she relied on her mother, mother-in-law, and two adolescent babysitters, on top of using $7.00 per day child care, so that she could work on weekends and before and after her child care centre was open. she, like some other mothers interviewed on both sides of the provincial border, did not rely on her husband to help with child care or its management. this woman’s story also exemplified the experiences of many other quebecoise mothers interviewed who either worked multiple part-time jobs or shift work in another way. that is, while child-care spaces in regulated, low-fee centres were available to them, the hours of operation (including family/home child care) were often inadequate to fit their work schedules and needs, forcing many to rely on networks of informal care, on top of the $7.00 per day child care. further, in both rural ontario and quebec, mothers travelled long distances to juggle paid work and child care. in ontario, both formal and informal child care was expensive. while many of the regulated child care spots in renfrew county, ontario, were subsidized (about 70%, albanese was told), many of the women interviewed were ineligible to receive subsidies, lost their subsidy for various reasons, or simply, and most commonly, could not find a subsidized spot in their own or in neighbouring communities. many families in ontario pay a great deal for both the (scarce) regulated spaces and (most common) unregulated spaces. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 264 for example, one mother in ontario admitted: right now we’re paying almost $1,000 a month, in child care, like that’s a mortgage ... we don’t qualify for subsidies, but we’re still paying student loans. my husband and i make good money; and had we not had, you know, all those student loans, we’d be fine but, still it’s very hard when you can’t qualify for subsidy, but at the same time, you need quality care for your child. (2-008) many of the women interviewed in renfrew county had their child(ren) in “lessthan-ideal” and often expensive unregulated care arrangements [“you get what you get. if the person is good with your kids, good; and if not, well...” (2-026)]. even unregulated home care arrangements cost mothers more than $30 and $40 per day. cost was a common answer for many when identifying the greatest challenge of meeting child care needs. one mother stated: well, i think number one for me is financial. ’cause daily, i sort of sit back and think: is this really worth it in the end, you know? it’s almost comes down to a quality of life kind of thing, because you know we’re driving all the time, and we’re not really making that much money, and you know, maybe i should just be staying at home with my kids. but how can we, financially, as a family, do that? ’cause we can’t. that’s the point. (2-021) a mother of four who was originally from quebec, then moved to ontario, and finally returned to quebec, in part because of the cost of child care, confided that when she lived in renfrew county, ontario: and so i had a babysitter and i paid her, i forget what i paid her a day, but when it worked out, i made like $11 a day; and that didn’t take into account driving there...the price of gas last summer...so i just had to keep reminding myself that it was short term, you know. but basically, last summer i worked for free, so i don’t know how people in the [region] who are making minimum wage can afford anything...i might as well have quit. i might as well not work, but i needed to work, and i really loved my job, like i still go back once a week to my old job to see everyone. like i absolutely loved it, so, i had to do it, but i’m not going to do it to lose money, i’m not going to work 80 hours a week, or 80 hours in two weeks, to be in the hole. (1-005) she added that once she moved to quebec from ontario, and got access to $7.00 per day child care: i was able to go from full-time work to part-time work...and yeah, we have the same amount of disposable income. and like i went from you know making a decent wage, to less, because you make less money here [in quebec], and like i lost $5 an hour [doing the similar work]. and um, so i was able to work less hours for less pay, and still have the same amount of income. (1-005) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 265 in other words, her move to quebec, which gave her access to $7.00 per day child care, allowed her to choose to work fewer hours, spend more time with her children, and still manage to financially support her family. in ontario, the cost of child care made this impossible, even when she worked longer hours at higher wages. another mother expressed great frustration at the cost of child care in ontario. she explained that the hardest thing for her was “being tired at the end of the day, and then having that portion of my pay cheque have to go to pay for the child care” (2-031). she felt she worked hard, for long hours, with little to show financially after deducting the cost of child care. beyond the high financial costs associated with having children in child care, there were other obstacles as well. when asked about some of their biggest challenges, many turned to their struggle with actually making child care “work” – and managing their care arrangement on a daily basis. for example, when asked about their biggest challenges, mothers offered these comments: one mother had to stitch together a patchwork of care arrangements to keep her job. she admitted that the most important factor for her daughter was consistency, something she lacked at the moment: just consistency, having quality care that’s consistent. i’d love to be able to switch her to part time, but i don’t like doing the switches. i think it’s hard on her. i would like to just be able to keep her in one spot, and know that she’s happy and know that she’s safe and being cared for the way we want her to be cared for...being able to transition, maybe even in the same environment, so we’re not going to three different place, you know...but i don’t know when that’s going to be. (2-008) . those “fortunate” enough to have found an adequate child care arrangement worked extremely hard to make sure that it remained available and functioning. the situation got even more complicated when this precarious and delicate daily balancing act was disrupted by the illness of a child or child-care provider (not one mother mentioned her own illness as causing a problem). clearly, canadian “society” and the canadian state’s family policies are still not adequately addressing the needs of employed mothers. without wider family-friendly policies in place, when children got sick, mothers were sent scrambling. some mothers admitted having to lie to employers, others described how they mobilized networks and resources to manage this all-too-common crisis. i: her dad’s in ottawa, so he’s not here to help. i think the biggest challenge is when she’s sick, or hurts herself. they’re very, very strict at that daycare – like any kind of temperature, or fever, i have to be picked up right away. so i do miss a lot of work for her being sick. i would say that’s a huge challenge, ’cause then i don’t get paid. (2-007) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 266 ontario’s social policies clearly do not reflect the needs of women and families. mother scrambled, often in distress, to manage paid work and family responsibilities, including child care. while allowing them to stay employed, some mothers’ child care arrangements were a source of almost constant stress. balancing paid work and family responsibilities wore some mothers thin and forced others into desperate situations. for example, after the interview, one mother mentioned in passing that she sometimes sends her daughters to bed fully dressed, so she is ready to quickly leave the house in the morning. another mentioned that some of their meals are eaten in the car on the way to the “sitter’s” (breakfast) or on the way back, at the end of the day (some light suppers). many spoke of the challenges coordinating it all: getting out the door. making sure that everybody’s prepared. making sure i’m prepared for work. making sure they’re all prepared for school. you know making sure that i’ve had breakfast before i make it to work.... (2-030) just trying to squeeze it all in one day. i guess just trying to be on time. trying to be organized. trying to take care of me and my two boys. it’s like dressing myself three times, feeding myself three times [laughs]. (2-018) things that have changed. i definitely have a lot more stress as far as home preparation that has to be done in order to get out in the morning…the difficulty of child care, like it has changed our life quite a bit. (2-020) the problem is clear: children and child care are treated as private matters and individual lifestyle “choices”. children are not seen as socially valuable and mothers continue to disproportionately bear the weight of social reproduction. mothers sacrifice a great deal, including sleep, having more children, working the number of hours they wanted or needed to work, etc. some in tears, others in frustration admitted: we don’t want to have any more [children] because of money, because of space, because of the amount of time it’s taken away. now he’s [her son] going to be growing up with no brothers and sisters and it’s hard on him because he never has anybody to play with at home or on the weekends. you know, it’s always us, it puts that extra demand on us again to have to be his little buddy, or his friend, you know. (2-020) it was just hard for me when i was in the classes. i would have 6 hours maximum of sleep. and i tried to complete all of my assignments during the week so that i could have the weekends off [to spend with her children]. (2-010) i had to give up a really great job because i didn’t have child care...i couldn’t afford to pay rent, pay a babysitter, and continue working that job...i was actually offered the supervisor [position]...and i’d be in charge of it all, and it entailed shift work; and i could not do it. i had to give it up...it was really difficult. (2-029) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 267 with too few social supports in place, while working extremely hard to make it all come together, far too many of the women sounded defeated because of the situation they found themselves in, and no doubt, this affected their children. for example, three mothers shared the following: i’m no longer at work in the network. i recognized my limits, and with a bit of reservation, i have withdrawn my volunteer activity... i just have to know my limits. i’m tired. i’m exhausted. and, i keep telling myself this is temporary, and i’m not the first one that has gone through this...but i’m living it now and i’m having difficulty. (2-009) i’m kind of worried about it [finding paid work and affordable child care] because i don’t know if i’ll be working. i’m hoping i’ll be working. i don’t really want to go back on assistance, go through all this hard work for a year [taking courses at a local college] and just end up falling back to where i was. it’s hard. i don’t want to be working at walmart or mcdonald’s. that won’t be enough to pay for day care, and that’ll be shift work. i’m not really looking forward to it. (2-018) so even though his wage isn’t that much more than mine .... he wouldn’t jeopardize his job for anything, it would be mine that would take the back seat. i just don’t see that being the right choice either. (2-019) balancing paid work and child care is a big challenge for many women in this country, and especially for women living outside of quebec (despite shortcomings in quebec policy). the women interviewed, especially those in ontario, sacrificed their relationships, their careers, and their well-being. some mothers shed tears in frustration, some shook their fists in anger; some shrugged their shoulders in defeat. the child-care predicament these women find themselves in has resulted in a great deal of stress and worry, which inevitably affects their children’s well-being. most mothers interviewed recognized this but felt that the sacrifices that they made were short-term, until their children entered the formal school system. they also knew that if they remained outside the labour force for the years that their children needed child care, their job prospects diminished and their diplomas, degrees, and credentials could be considered out of date or obsolete. they acknowledged that not working for pay was not an option, as it would result in increased, and possibly long-term, financial strain if not ruin on their families. this, they knew, would harm their children even more. conclusion families increasingly depend on women’s wages to make ends meet. as a result, despite some changes in gender roles and expectations, mothers continue to be seen as the ones primarily responsible for making child-care arrangements and juggling to “balance” paid and unpaid work. women with young children need child care but the limited number of regulated spaces that do exist remain expensive and out of reach for most mothers. mothers, especially outside of quebec, face many challenges, daily, when international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 268 trying to manage their families’ child-care needs. without a doubt, as noted above, this stress and frustration negatively affected the lives of their children, but the alternative was not an alternative at all. not working for pay would put many families in economically precarious positions – doubly disadvantaging children. the solution is obvious. mothers need affordable, accessible, high-quality child care that will allow them to better balance paid work and family responsibilities. the well-being of canadian children depends on it. despite this growing reality, coverage of this issue in canadian daily newspapers is scant, except during federal election campaigns when political parties were using the child care debate as a wedge issue. we found that child care seldom occupied the spotlight, and often virtually disappeared off the pages, despite the daily challenges faced by many canadian families. the voices and stories of canadian families and mothers were rarely featured in news stories even though many need and favour a publicly funded child-care system. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 252–274 269 references abner, k., gordon, r., kaestner, r., & korenman, s. 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(2003). retraining programs for displaced workers in the post-industrial era: an exploration of government policies and programs in canada and england. compare: a journal of comparative and international education, 33(4), 497– 506. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000842390000247x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00622.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305792032000127784 essay: the impact of youth-adult relationships on resilience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 328 the impact of youth-adult relationships on resilience michael ungar abstract: distinguishing between population-wide strengths and processes associated with youth resilience, this paper shows that engaging and transformative youth-adult relationships exert the greatest impact on youth who are the most marginalized. this pattern of differential impact demonstrates that the factors that contribute to resilience, such as engagement, are contextually sensitive. for youth with the fewest resources, engagement may influence their life trajectories more than for youth with greater access to supports. case material and research that shows the link between resilience and engagement of youth with adults is discussed as a way to show that resilience is not an individual quality, but instead a quality of the interaction between individuals and their environments. the benefits of youth-adult partnerships are realized for marginalized youth when specific conditions that promote interactions that contribute to resilience are created. keywords: resilience, adult-youth partnerships, marginalized youth, youth engagement michael ungar, ph.d. is the killam professor of social work and co-director of the resilience research centre at dalhousie university, 6420 coburg road, po box 15000, halifax, nova scotia, canada, b3h 4r2. e-mail: michael.ungar@dal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 329 tak-yan emigrated to northern california from china with his mother and stepfather when he was 3 years old. it was shortly after the family had settled that tak-yan’s father was jailed for a violent crime and his mother began to drink heavily. tak-yan was eventually removed from his mother’s care and spent the next five years in a series of foster and group homes. once returned to his mother, he suffered severe emotional neglect and eventually turned to delinquent peers for support. a night in jail and a six-month probation order when he was 15 caused tak-yan to reconsider his life. at about this same time, tak-yan was contacted by an outreach worker from a church-sponsored community organization with strong links to takyan’s ethnic community. that worker recognized tak-yan’s potential and provided him with opportunities to participate in community activities, including efforts to support younger children who were just beginning to get in trouble with the law. the mentorship and the opportunity to make a real contribution were both attractive to tak-yan who quickly changed peer groups. while tak-yan was motivated to change, it was the structure provided by a court order, coupled with the opportunity for mentorship and recognition from adults that created the conditions that facilitated a change in his life course. furthermore, tak-yan’s identification with his outreach worker and realistic opportunities to find a powerful identity as one who helps others were crucial factors in tak-yan’s self-description of his resilience. in tak-yan’s case, there was an easily identifiable set of protective factors that were responsive to the types of adversity he faced. it is this interaction between an individual child’s risk exposure and engagement in emancipatory relationships with adults that is the focus of this article. a social ecological understanding of resilience despite decades of resilience research, there continues to be ambiguity in how to define and measure positive development in contexts of adversity. part of the reason is that there has been confusion describing the difference between a strength or asset that benefits an entire population regardless of whether risk factors are present, and protective and promotive factors and processes that respond to specific risks (wright & masten; 2006; ungar, 2012). in the first instance we talk about strengths contributing to well-being; in the latter we talk about resilience under conditions of adversity. the distinction can be difficult to make because a strength (e.g., the engagement of young people in relationships with adults through transformative collaborations) may benefit all youth to some degree whether they are at risk or not. this same strength (engagement with adults) for a child like tak-yan, will, however, exert a greater impact when that child has few other ways to cope with adversity (abrams & aguilar, 2005). in this regard, a strength such as youth engagement can exert a differentially larger impact on the developmental outcomes of marginalized young people. the distinction between a strength in one context and a factor that contributes to resilience in another depends upon (a) the amount of stress the individual is exposed to (higher levels of stress make the likely impact of engagement even greater), and (b) the amount of change that can be expected in a child’s life trajectory. therefore, typical of many factors that increase resilience, youth engagement is a protective factor against psychological and social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 330 problems in circumstances where young people experience adversity, but is less influential when risk is low (shernoff & schmidt, 2008). this pattern of differential impact shows that the factors that contribute to resilience are contextually sensitive and therefore difficult to identify without assessing the real-world barriers children experience to psychosocial development (thomlison, 1997). a social ecological understanding of resilience is meant to address this problem. resilience is understood as more than a set of individual competencies under stress: the higher the level of adversity children experience, the more they benefit from resources that facilitate successful pro-social forms of coping such as an empowering relationship with a caring adult. it is the optimal functioning of the young person’s environment that is the most important factor in deciding children’s resilience rather than the specific capacities of children themselves (ungar, 2011b). as takyan’s life story shows, without the opportunity to take advantage of a healthy environment, a child will use maladaptive forms of coping to maintain well-being. while recent theorizing has suggested that resilience is the interaction between individuals and their environment, the tendency has been to emphasize that both are equally influential on developmental outcomes. herein lies one of the reasons for problems conceptualizing resilience. in better-resourced environments, individual talents are likely more influential on developmental outcomes because the child’s personal expression of competency has many opportunities to be noticed. for less stressed individuals, the person and the environment may count equally because the environment is rich with resources and the individual has many different opportunities to succeed. however, when stress is much higher and risk factors accumulate, the environment is often impoverished. for the child to succeed and have her talents recognized, her environment must provide an exceptionally effective protective factor (such as an engaging adult who cares about the child’s success) in order to counteract the negative effects of a socially toxic home, school, or community. while personal qualities still matter, they matter much less when they have no special place for expression. in other words, under conditions of great adversity, it is the quality of the environment that makes it possible for a child to succeed rather than the child’s talents. this, then, is why a relational factor such as the engagement of young people with adults can account for far more of the variance in developmental trajectories among stressed youth than individual factors. without the relationship, individual capacity would lie dormant, or manifest as maladaptive forms of delinquent and disordered behaviour typical of individuals who cope in dangerous environments (kurtines et al., 2008). a social ecological interpretation of resilience provides a way of understanding this complex pattern of influence that families, schools, and communities have on the processes promoting resilience that children like tak-yan use to survive. the importance of youth-adult relationships in contexts of risk, relationships are crucial to mitigating the negative impact of toxic environments. resilience, the capacity to overcome adversity, is facilitated by those who engage with the child (masten, 2001; rutter, 2012). to illustrate, yates, egeland, and sroufe (2003) showed through their 25-year longitudinal study that it is necessary to appreciate the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 331 interactional processes that lead to greater resilience during a child’s development. these processes begin early, they argue: [t]he successful negotiation of early developmental issues provides a foundation for the process of resilience among disadvantaged youth. this process originates in early transactional exchanges between the child and her or his caregiver that scaffold the child’s developing capacities for adaptive emotion regulation, social engagement, and positive expectations of the social world and of the self. (pp. 257–258) these exchanges, however, do not need a strong child to succeed. in the case of children who have been badly neglected, such as romanian orphans adopted by well-resourced families in britain, it was the sustained capacity of the caregivers and professional supports that created conditions for even the most vulnerable of these children to achieve developmental gains (barke, 2006). while one could argue that each orphan had the capacity to grow, the real potential to stimulate this growth lay dormant while the child was in the orphanage. it was changes to the environment, not changes to the child, which best accounted for better than expected outcomes. engagement, however, is not chosen by the child as a pathway to resilience in all instances. instead, as wyman (2003) has observed, children may accurately appraise their situations as dangerous and perceive adults as unreliable, resisting their influence. to maintain their well-being children withdraw emotionally from adults who approach them with offers of help. this pattern of hidden resilience (ungar, 2004), or what is wrongly perceived as maladaptive coping, speaks to the need to understand the complex interactions between children and their environments. it is for this reason that resilience can be defined as the individual’s ability to navigate to resources, as well as the capacity of the individual’s environment to provide resources that protect the child in ways that are meaningful (ungar, 2008). unless the child is empowered to negotiate for what he needs, the resources that are provided are unlikely to be used (bottrell, 2009). it is for this reason that adults who engage children in processes that let them be heard and empowered in the design of their care plans are likely to help children maximize the benefit of the relationship. as wyman (2003) explains, “processes that are beneficial to children in one context may be neutral, or even deleterious, in another” (p. 314). in contexts where children experience limited access to resources, the provision of a relationship that is transformative and empowering may successfully counter a negative life trajectory (lerner & overton, 2008). in particular, as delgado (2006) shows, creating opportunities for youth to become leaders benefits the disadvantaged child the most. caution is required, however, when describing the nature of youth-adult relationships that contribute to positive developmental outcomes. in a study of 500 middle-class families in the united states (jones & schneider, 2009), it was shown that parents could have a positive influence on school outcomes when they involved themselves in activities with their children that were not focused on improving educational performance (weekend camping trips were more predictive of adolescents’ school performances than reviewing homework assignments with them). overly protective parenting that was too controlling of children’s choices was associated with lower grade point averages among adolescents, while indirect academic pursuits such as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 332 sharing an activity together, especially those done with a mother, actually had a positive impact on school performance. furthermore, the quantity of time parents spent with their adolescent was not related to school performance either. instead, it was the quality of the interactions, and the coaching parents provided youth on life choices, the expectations they conveyed for school completion, and the undertaking of family activities outside of school that predicted school achievement. while the sample in the 500-family study was not a population facing extreme adversity, the findings support the notion that factors that predict positive youth development involve relationships with caregivers that are matched to children’s needs rather than imposed on them by adults who think they know best. research such as this has shown remarkably similar results to that of a study by ungar, liebenberg, armstrong, dudding, and van de vijver (2013) of 497 multiple service users, all of whom were children experiencing adversity. in that study, it was not the quantity of services, but the quality of relationships between a single service provider and youth that was most predictive of functional outcomes like school engagement. resilience, as measured by the child and youth resilience measure-28 (ungar & liebenberg, 2011) was the mediating factor between service quality and engagement in pro-social activities. here, youth-adult relationships that were attentive to the needs of young people, engaged their voice in decisions affecting them, encouraged negotiation rather than the imposition of pre-selected interventions, and sustained equal participation when reasonable to do so, were all contributing factors to young people experiencing benefits from these relationships. contextual and cultural specificity the nature of these relationships, however, is contextually and culturally specific. patterns of interaction that produce healthy outcomes are best investigated using methods that encourage the discovery of unnamed processes that contribute to resilience. for example, a study of positive deviance done by diaz (2010) of young latina women who, despite numerous risk factors for an early pregnancy (e.g., an older boyfriend and a mother who had had a child when young) were enrolled in university and had avoided pregnancy, found several factors that predicted their success as outliers among their peers. while it was initially thought that these girls would have had better access to sexual health education or talked more frequently about sex with their mothers, in fact neither pattern was observed. qualitative interviews showed that a number of communication practices were responsible for the women’s success, almost none of which related directly to their sexual behaviours. among the protective practices identified were: • parents emphasized the importance of finishing school to their daughters. • parents set clear expectations regarding work and home, and in-class and out-of-class activities in consultation with their children. • parents emphasized the benefits of extracurricular activities and having clear goals for the future. • each young woman had the support of a trusted male member of her family or community who provided affirmation and guidance. • when talking about a potential pregnancy, mothers emphasized the gains to be achieved by delaying pregnancy rather than describing pregnancy as a failure. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 333 it is worth noting that the unconventional practice of talking very little about sex and much more about school was a contextually specific strategy employed by adults to engage these young women in their education. arguably, the youth-adult relationship was strengthened through the positive focus and future orientation of the interactions. these examples suggest that youth will engage with adults in constructive patterns of behaviour that promote well-being when adults offer themselves as resources in ways that young people value. in this sense, the youth-adult relationship becomes a resource promoting resilience when it is made available in ways that respect the young person’s negotiations for a level or type of support that matches her understanding of what she needs. facilitating youth-adult partnerships the benefits of youth-adult partnerships are realized for marginalized youth like tak-yan when conditions are created that promote interactions that contribute to resilience (they help youth navigate and negotiate more effectively). as zeldin, camino, and mook (2005) explain, “youth engagement in traditionally adult roles has the potential to maximize youth sense of community while concurrently ensuring that youth have the opportunity to be active agents in their own development and to enhance the social organizations in which they live” (p. 122). zeldin et al. identify six managerial guidelines that create conditions that promote positive development among at-risk youth. adapted to the present focus on resilience and reflecting the research, the following processes that make youth-adult relationships transformative through engagement can be identified: • gain clarity and consensus on the purpose of including youth in decision-making processes in their families, schools, and communities. • mobilize and coordinate a group of diverse stakeholders so that youth are assured of advocates who can support them in their choices. in addition to youth as participants, adult stakeholders are also needed to mobilize support and avoid decisions being ignored. • create favourable organizational narratives about the advantages of including youth voices in decision-making processes. it is important that families, schools, and communities develop a positive attitude towards youth engagement and document anecdotal evidence for its effectiveness. • construct explanations for why youth should have a say over the decisions that affect them. • affirmatively address issues of role and power while acknowledging the asymmetrical power between youth and adults. work to find solutions to balancing this power while still providing youth with the structure and support they require to make good decisions within their means. • institutionalize new roles for youth and make these the norm through mandated structural changes to families, schools, and communities. each of these strategies positions the adult in a more equal relationship with the youth they are trying to engage. if successful, the evidence cited earlier suggests that the result will be an increase in a young person’s social capital and access to the resources that predict resilience when facing adversity (ungar, 2011a). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 334 conclusion the value of transformative youth-adult relationships is that they offer the most vulnerable youth a resource for well-being. when these relationships facilitate access to prosocial expressions of personal talents, the result is likely to be adaptive behaviour among youth who face multiple risk factors. in this sense, these young people’s resilience is the result of the quality of their engagement with adults and not a personal trait. this shift to a social ecological understanding of resilience avoids blaming young people who resort to maladaptive behaviour to survive. instead, we see that it is the ability of their families, schools, and communities to make relationships with adults available that determines children’s success. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 328–336 335 references abrams, l. s., & aguilar, j. p. 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(2005). the adoption of innovation in youth organizations: creating the conditions for youth-adult partnerships. journal of community psychology, 33(1), 121–135. 10 park lane international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 65 soccer casuals: a slight return of youth culture steve redhead abstract: this essay reports from a long-term research project1 which interviewed participants in a post-war u.k. youth culture called “casuals” about all aspects of its history, especially the styles of music and fashion and its connection to british soccer spectatorship from the late 1970s to the present day. original interview and ethnographic material from the project is presented and discussed, and situated within a context of the sociology of youth culture in general and soccer fandom in particular. the essay suggests some theoretical and methodological signposts for the future study of youth culture whilst outlining some specific aspects of the research conducted. this new work on youth culture also rethinks earlier work on rave culture and football hooligan subcultures in the light of appreciation and critique of such work in various recent youth subcultural theory debates. the research reported on here mapped the history of the “moments” of the birth of casual in the late 1970s and the coming together of the football hooligan and rave subcultures in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the later remixing, recycling and “mash up” of these moments in a present in which “pop culture” is said by some to be “addicted to its own past” (reynolds, 2011). keywords: casuals, soccer hooliganism, youth culture, youth subculture, fashion, music, hooligan memoirs, independent publishing acknowledgements: thanks to our research team, especially to graduate students ben horne and simon penny, for their rigorous work on the project, and all the many participants who generously gave their time to be interviewed. steve redhead, ph.d is professor of legal studies, faculty of social science and humanities, university of ontario institute of technology (uoit), 2000 simcoe street north, oshawa, on, canada, l1h 7k4, (905) 721-8668. steve.redhead@uoit.ca mailto:steve.redhead@uoit.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 66 casuals and youth culture casual history, or history of the casual, in many ways, is a missing key to some of the persistent problems in the study of the international history and sociology of youth culture, especially in post-war britain. “casual” as a youth culture effectively started in the 1977-1978 soccer season (allt, 2004, 2007) yet it is still a youth culture which is rarely featured in the global output of academic work on youth culture and youth subculture (gelder, 2007; jencks, 2005) almost 40 years later. nevertheless, occasionally, it is briefly discussed; for example, bill osgerby, in a sweeping overview of youth in britain since 1945 (osgerby, 1998, p. 161), notes correctly that although “in their celebration of conspicuous consumption the casuals appeared to embody the free market ethos” of the thatcher government, “casual style”, beginning in the late 1970s just before margaret thatcher became prime minister, was “more complex than a straightforward endorsement of the ‘enterprise culture”’, a phrase recently resurrected in political discourse when u.k. prime minister david cameron led his coalition government into downing street in may 2010. casual youth culture and its relationship to soccer hooligan violence since the late 1970s has featured prominently in the overtly “pulp” soccer hooligan memoirs published by independent companies such as milo books situated in the north west of england. as the publisher of phil thornton’s classic account of this youth culture, a book entitled casuals: football, fashion and fighting: the story of a terrace cult (thornton, 2003), milo books’ owner pete walsh astutely pointed out in the course of the research project which we conducted (all following quotations are from the research project transcripts): the casual movement has been underestimated in british style culture, starting as it did outside the gaze of the fashion media, who did not pick up on it for several years – i think the new musical express may have been the first mainstream publication to allude to it in a story about the liverpool fanzine the end. chronicling this movement is extremely difficult because there is little material of record; it is all personal reminiscence, which is notoriously unreliable. even decent early photographs are hard to come by. phil thornton did a very good job of pulling different strands together and of charting the progress and changes the fashions underwent. the remixing and recycling of casual youth culture is widespread. one of the best ethnographic accounts of “scally” culture – what became better known as casual youth culture over the subsequent years – is in awaydays, the debut novel of kevin sampson (1998), the exmanager of merseyside band, the farm (most famous for their international chart hit all together now). awaydays is based “fictionally” around a group of tranmere rovers soccer “lads” in the late 1970s called the pack but written with unerring sociological accuracy. a film version of awaydays, directed by pat holden, was released in 20092, complete with a highly evocative post-punk soundtrack by the likes of echo and the bunnymen, joy division, magazine, and ultravox, and the “cult” novel itself was republished with a new cover to coincide with the film’s release as a dvd. the previous year, in 2008, a “cool modernist” (redhead, 2011) artistically produced second edition of dave hewitson’s autobiographical casual memoir the liverpool boys are in town: the birth of terrace culture came onto the marketplace, designed by the eleanor suggett studio and published by liverpool’s bluecoat international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 67 press. in addition, a long awaited anthology of the end fanzine, originally edited by peter hooton, singer in the farm (allt, 2007; redhead, 1991a, 1991b), and widely regarded as the bible for the widely labelled “scally” culture in the 1980s, was scheduled to be published by bluecoat press as part of the city of liverpool’s year as europe’s capital of culture, or “culture of capital” as nicky allt (2008) smartly satirised it. the history of casual youth culture, and its connection to football hooligan violence (zatich & de leeuw, 2010), also has pervasive contemporary interest on numerous internet website forums and some parts of the research project monitored these sites (redhead, 2010a, 2010b). this was predicated on the idea that the connections between various forms of subcultural literature (fanzines, e-zines, internet forums, websites, social networking sites, book memoirs, films, videos, photos) and youth cultures like casuals need to be taken seriously within contemporary studies of youth culture. sub-culture: conversations from a research project i want to now quote some further interview transcripts from the research and suggest some theoretical and methodological signposts for the study of subculture, whilst also outlining some key aspects of the research conducted. this research work into british youth culture also rethinks earlier work on rave culture (redhead, 1990, 1993a, 1993b; anderson & kavanaugh, 2007; osgerby, 2004, pp. 87–92) and soccer hooligan subcultures (mclaughlin & redhead, 1985; redhead, 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1997a, 1997b, 2000, 2004; redhead, wynne, & o’connor, 1997; osgerby, 1998) in the light of appreciation and critique of such work in recent youth subcultural theory debates (blackshaw & crabbe, 2004; blackman, 2005; hesmondalgh, 2005; bennett, 2005; greener & hollands, 2006; hall & jefferson, 2006). the research shows that although casual as a youth culture or youth subculture disappeared from the mainstream media gaze for a time, there remain elements or traces of such “real” youth cultures and youth subcultures today, often in hybrid guises. the argument is that there is something of a comeback (or “slight return” as i call it, borrowing from the title a version of jimi hendrix’s voodoo chile from the 1960s) of casual youth culture – initially seen by commentators and the media as a transient, postmodern youth culture – in the 21st century (redhead, 2008b, 2008c, 2010a, 2010b; thornton, 2003) and a possibility now of reconstructing, through careful and rigorous research, a long-term history of casual youth culture. casual youth culture in britain, as has already been emphasised, began in the late 1970s, after the heyday of skinheads and mods (daniel & maguire, 1972; jefferson & hall, 2006; healy, 1996; osgerby, 1998; hewitt, 2000; hewitt & baxter, 2004). indeed, skinhead and other pre-casual youth cultures pervaded much of the initial parts of the interviews we conducted for the research project. chris brown, author of a bristol rovers soccer fan memoir steeped in the context of 1970s skinhead music and fashion (brown, 2000), which was later considerably revised in a new edition with a new title (brown, 2009), claimed to our interviewer that it was indeed the music and fashion, rather than football gang fighting, that secured his original book contract: i set out to write my memories of the 1970s – music, fashion and the behaviour that went with it. that’s what i was doing week in and week out – football hooliganism. first international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 68 i got talking to skinhead times (st) publishing, george marshall. george marshall’s a bloke who’s not interested in making money. i offered it to him and he bit my hand off. but you never see their books in the shops. so i reconsidered. i sent off the complete manuscript to random house, milo books, and hodder headline. they all said they’d do it, within a few weeks. i’ve learnt. they all say this. they might take months. then it just never happens. then a bloke i work with left a message on my answer machine. “there’s a publisher wants to publish your book”. that was john blake. he was a music journalist back in the 1970s. he was interested in the music. casual youth culture is still pervasive in british culture today, characterised by interest in particular “labelled” clothing, footwear, and general attire, and occasionally crossing the trajectory of so-called “chav” culture, the burgeoning underclass “white trash” of tabloid legend where the british working class is ritually “demonised” (jones, 2011). stories of casual youth culture are overwhelmingly male and white but there are some signs that this is changing to include popular memory of, for instance, british asian football casual culture (khan, 2010; burdsey, 2008). casual, long lasting and internationalised, has in fact been far from the transient youth culture predicted since the 1980s by some postmodern sociologists and criminologists, and many media outlets. merseyside was the birthplace of what became casual youth culture quickly followed by manchester and then london, and eventually most other towns and cities in the u.k. i concentrate mainly on our original research material relating to manchester and merseyside in the north west of england. the personal reminiscences of interviewees presented here are evocative and memorable but also controversial partly because of the nature of “oral history” research in youth culture studies. although the “truth” of memoirs and memories has been often debated, writer and milo books publisher pete walsh argued to us that: as for accuracy, it’s impossible to say, as i wasn’t there. but i do think all of my published authors have made efforts to put across reasonably balanced accounts. out and out bragging doesn’t work well in these books; they get laughed at. the research presented here provides material for reflection and correction of previously mistaken assumptions. it adds to a rough popular memory (brabazon, 2006) around sport sociology, cultural studies, youth culture, and the sociology of subcultures. it further identifies events and figures however partially, so that more sustained ethnographic, participant observation, work can be undertaken in future (redhead, 2008b, 2008c, 2010a, 2010b). as pete walsh, media trained and a working journalist for many years, also said to our researchers: academia is or should be concerned with rigorous analysis by the standards of that particular discipline. but you cannot exclude first person accounts from that. they might be self-serving or “narcissistic” but they contain a wealth of vital material not available elsewhere. the history of casuals, and their relation to soccer hooligan gangs, is built up through our myriad interviews in the research project. as pete walsh’s milo books proclaimed when initially releasing perry boys (hough, 2007), a memoir of the “casual gangs of manchester and salford”, in 2007: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 69 the perry boys are one of the great untold stories of modern youth culture. they emerged in the pivotal year of 1979 in inner-city manchester and salford, a mysterious tribe of football hooligans and trendsetters united by a new fashion. their only counterparts at the time were the scallies of liverpool, who became their biggest rivals both on and off the terraces. as a young follower of manchester united, ian hough witnessed first-hand how the bootboys of the infamous red army were slowly usurped by a small but fast-growing group of unlikely-looking pretenders. they sported fred perry polo shirts (hence the name), lee cords, adidas stan smith trainers and wedge haircuts. with their eclectic soundtrack and appetite for amphetamine-fuelled excess, they would transform their city into the clubbing and style capital of the country. (cover blurb, hough, 2007) manchester, then, had its “perry boys” and merseyside had its “scallies” – and london, as can be seen below, eventually had its “chaps”. these were ostensibly, to the insiders at least, “glamorous hooligans”3 but they were frequently involved in soccer gang violence and vandalism as a result of their fashion style, fierce territoriality, and obsessive soccer fandom. ian hough has written a subsequent casual memoir for another independent publisher, pennant books (run by former west ham united hooligan cass pennant), called perry boys abroad (hough, 2009). as a former manchester united casual with a long personal memory, he agreed to be one of our interviewees for the research project. as hough (2007) recalls in his first memoir: the nameless thing as it became known eventually mushroomed outwards from the north west of england. i have seen it writ by another, namely andy nicholls in his book scally, that tottenham brought the first cockney teams up in the early casual days to goodison park, everton’s ground on merseyside. i agree 100% with this picture. tottenham came to old trafford in green windjammers, doc martens and skinheads in late october 1981, in the league cup, and then we played them again in mid-april 1982 in the league and there they all were, in ellesse and tacchini trackies, black guys sporting gold and top training shoes…leeds and tottenham were properly the first lads to formulate a semblance of style outside the north west but the rest blundered along soon enough. (p. 116) as he told our research interviewer, hough’s personal motivations for writing his two books about casuals were complex: when i first bought a computer and discovered the internet, i would surf for all kinds of stuff i didn’t think i’d find. i was always amazed when i found info on obscure bands or bizarre scientific sub-sects, etc. one thing i really struggled to find any decent info on was that specific time period between 1978 and 1982 when football hooligans in the north west adopted the soul boy look. being caught up in the middle of it, i felt there was definitely a story to tell. as time went by i’d read stuff like john king’s the football factory and bill buford’s among the thugs. when milo started knocking out the newer stuff, i read scally by andy nicholls and tony o’neill’s books, and even they hadn’t gone into extensive detail on the subject. nicholls seemed bored by it and o’neill was in prison during that time. i really had no idea that it was taking on such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 70 momentum in the u.k., as i live in the states. i discovered dave hewitson’s the liverpool boys are in town and finally i’d found someone who knew the history and cared enough to write a book about it. it was dave that put me onto the 1980s casuals web forum. the very first time i went on the forum, i just sat and tapped out a mad load of pyschobabble about scaly, knobbly, leather, suede and lambswool creatures with multi-coloured trainers and razor sharp claws that attacked each other outside train stations and football grounds. hough reported to our interviewer that he used this “pychobabble” to develop these patchwork memories of casual culture into his first book, entitled perry boys: much of those first few posts on 1980s casuals were pasted verbatim into perry boys. i was doing a toxicology degree at the time, and i would use a computer lab at university to log and bang out these epic tales of bacteria and slime and how this gleaming new look has suddenly hatched from the sediment at the bottom of the irwell and the mersey. the lads on the forum lapped it up and dave encouraged me to keep going. milo were interested from quite an early stage and i just kept extending it and sending pete walsh updates. finally on my birthday, in october 2006, i was now onto a masters in immunology, and my wife phoned me at the lab. she read out an e-mail from pete saying they’d decided to go with it. i hit the ceiling and spent the next two months on a biochemical high. i also dropped out of college to become a writer, for better or worse. gave up a potential career as a drug analyst to be a hooligan authority, but i prefer to think of myself as a social historian. i wanted to tell manchester’s story as opposed to the well-known merseyside version. ultimately i felt a responsibility to tell the tale of how, incrementally, a nightclub oriented trend trickled onto the football terraces and changed hooliganism forever. i’ll always be grateful that my involvement in football hooliganism and manchester’s dark side enabled me to become a published writer. i have always been a writer, but i never dreamed it would happen because of something like this. i’ve always considered the perries as something important, and it needed detailing. i unravel it a lot more in the sequel, perry boys abroad, and there is still so much more to tell. hough, as we have seen, regards himself as a social historian of casual youth culture and its intimate connection to soccer hooliganism. many of the other interviewees in the project felt the same about their “hit and tell” memoirs. it is possible, through the various memoirs and memories collected in this research, to situate football casuals in a youth subcultural timeline from the scuttlers in manchester and salford (davies, 2008) of the late 19th century through teds, rockers, mods, and skinheads of the 1950s and 1960s and suedeheads, rastas, rude boys, bowie boys and girls, and punks of the 1970s until they join up with b-boys, acid teds, and ravers in the “acid house” years of the late 1980s and early 1990s (osgerby, 1998, 2004; redhead, 1990, 1991b). in the present, dominated by cyclical pop time (redhead, 1990) and “retromania” where pop culture is addicted to its own past (reynolds, 2011), these subcultural styles are constantly recycled in various media forms, apparently eternally. casual youth culture began as a “post-mod” (hough, 2009; hewitt & baxter, 2004; hewitt, 2000; elms, 2005), post-skinhead subculture in the 1977-1978 football season in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 71 britain, initially in the north west of england, arguably first on merseyside. by the time of widespread debate about “soccer style wars” (mclaughlin & redhead, 1985) on the eve of the 1985-1986 soccer season in britain, several years of growth of specifically football casual culture had meant that a majority of professional league teams’ fans in britain could boast their own casual firm, or very often, multiple casual firms – essentially hooligan gangs based around the locality of fandom around a professional football club. ian hough told our interviewer that he respected what had already been written by phil thornton (2003) and was inspired to write up his memories, and the casuals’ obsessive-compulsive relationship with fashion, music, and soccer: phil thornton’s a great writer and [his book] casuals covered certain aspects of a certain time. featuring virually every region in britain through the 1980s obviously led to the book’s popularity, as everyone wanted to read their bit. i really enjoyed the first three chapters of casuals, dealing with the 1977 to 1980s period. by 1983 i was into the scruff look – invented by some of the original perries in prestwich at least a year earlier, if not before that – and had gone off on a space trek under the influence of cannabis, acid and speed. we were listening to paisley underground music from the u.s. like the rain parade, plasticland and dream syndicate. i wasn’t much interested in reading about someone discovering the culture in 1984, or what they were wearing in 1986, etc. by 1986 i was banging about israel and egypt in a pair of shorts and sandals with the british urchins who’d flew off to the kibbutzim and ended up on construction in the cities. getting dressed up for the football was a distant memory, obscured by wild drug trips. there was a psychedelic mountain range between the mid and early 1980s, and it had been fun and frightening to surmount. i can be a terrible snob about these things – because i am fascinated by beginning and becoming – and this thing began and became in my backyard. casuals mentions nightclubs where “posses” engaged in dancing contests. i remember there were a good few lads into the casual scene, right into the late 1980s, and they frequented all the clubs, but i don’t remember any of them taking it that seriously. for hough and many other interviewees in our project the minutiae of the history – bizarre to the outsider – were what mattered to the insider. there were some claims made in casuals that seemed like total nonsense though. pete hooton says he and his scouse mates met some millwall fans in newquay in 1977 and they were all wearing the same clothes – lois jeans matched with adidas stan smith trainers. i mean, what are the chances of that? it would be like finding a kangaroo on one of jupiter’s moons. stan smiths came in at the end of 1979 in both manchester and liverpool as testified by robert wade smith who worked for adidas at the time and described how a “phenomenal 2,000 pairs” of the white leather shoe were sold in the run-up to christmas 1979. that said, hooton’s account of hillsborough is very moving, especially how he describes it sinking in that all those people they’d seen “unconscious” on advertising hoardings were actually dead. phil saxe was the best contributor to casuals. he was at the head of several fashion waves and he even mentions the first time he ever saw mods in manchester, in 1964. the mods he describes were wearing knitted long sleeved polo shirts, which were to prove the longest lived aspect of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 72 whole thing. several specific items of clothing united liverpool and manchester in a single distinctive fashion at the turn of the 1980s. chief among them were the adidas cagoule and the peter werth long sleeved knitted polo (often in burgundy). manchester’s perries had been wearing peter werth with the thin hoops for years. it just seemed to complement the wedge hairstyle and the rest of the costume. phil thornton, also one of our contributors to the research project, objected to some of hough’s projections about casual subcultural history, especially the erasure of the crucial black and white youth cultural links in the history of the casuals. as he told the research team, he was: not sure where he got the dancing competition thing from as i don’t think i mention such a thing although i definitely remember one of our lads entering and winning a dancing competition at a local club. i interviewed him for the hip hop bit in casuals as he started as a scally then really got into hip hop around 1984 and went on to launch the u.k. chapter of the rocksteady crew with another runcorn lad who was also a scally then became a b boy. a similar split happened in manchester circa 1984. the mainly black gangs who hung round the arndale escalators dressed the same as white kids until the likes of jd-sports opened and the b-boy style took over, which was a retrogressive step really. the white kids were then dressing down in flared cords, golfing jackets, marks’s crew necks, etc which i cover in the book, and which i personally participated in and regard as the pinnacle of the whole scally/casual/perry subculture. as for peter hooton’s claim re: stan smiths/millwall, i can only print what he told me – i think south london have indeed always been ahead of the game in the capital and there’s a photo of a typical soulboy with a punkette on the king’s road in chris sullivan’s punk book and he’s wearing a rockabilly-type shirt, straight jeans and boating shoes. with a different haircut he could well have been a proto scally – also northern soul saw wedges round the same time. anyway, hough seems to have personal scores to settle for some reason and seems to have disappeared after 1985 so probably missed the subtle mutations after he decided “it was over”. there’s a book to be written about the whole retro scally scene in merseyside from 1983 to 1987, for example, and the manc scene from perrys to the happy mondays’ lacoste phase could also work as a separate book or essay. for ian hough, the historical origins of casual youth culture are deep and detectable, and required many of the casual subculture memoir books, such as his own two memoirs, to set the record straight. as he emphasised to our interviewer: we never called it anything, and the only word we had for it was “boys”. it was the same in a few places, or else they called themselves “dressers” or “trendies”. quality clothing has always been the same: a template based on trial and error and what works and looks best. working class people very often are left to work things out on their own, and that’s what we did. that nameless fashion was really just working class lads discovering this fact “en masse”. we learnt something that wealthier people already knew and we hammered it to death. you don’t forget something like that, whether you continue to wear the clothes or not. not many writers have accurately depicted the emergence of the “nameless thing”. some have exaggerated when it happened, but only international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 73 with regard to football. its true origins go way back to the 1950s and 1960s, to beatniks and mods, and on to soul boys, perries and finally the sportswear crowd that caught on across britain. these scenes all had their pilot fish and core players, people who innovated and moved on once it became popular. it’s all the same thread, a torch passed from one generation to the next. mod clothing, soul music, grafting, snide merchandising, brand marketing – all played their part in shaping it. i suspect it was more dependent on dictation from the fashion cognoscenti than people like to admit, but the bowie-perry-designer overlap from 1979 into mid-1982 was the purest form, the pinnacle. all the conditions were ripe and we literally made it up as we went along, based on gut feeling. the deeper you dig, the more you find. it’s hard to know where to draw the line. for hough, geographical and historical origins are crucial in making sense of any youth culture, especially casual youth culture with its “ever changing moods” and styles of trainers, haircuts, or tops: my point was that the north west was what it was really all about, not somewhere else. everyone else copied the look and the concept, and as such were products of mimicry not innovation. that said, once people started on the case, they often arrived at the same conclusions and had the same tastes. it took a decade or more for the look to become something inside manchester. from the northern soul boys (the original perry boys) of 1970 to the bowie crowd of the mid-1970s, they were a kind of rare mod who you were lucky to see once in a blue moon. the soul-mod look became the bowie thing around 1975. between 1975 and 1979 mancunians were gradually acclimatised to this oddly normal looking form of hipster-hooligan. side parted wedge hairstyles, baggy small collared shirts, pleated “peg” like trousers or jeans that tapered toward the bottom and sensible shoes weren’t what the media was describing as a hooligan outfit, but we knew better. in the papers it was all glam rock flare boys in star jumpers. as the soul crowd matured and settled down, these “bowie perries” became the elders. when brand marketing (umbro replica football kits, adidas t-shirts and sports bags, etc.) became more popular than quality marketing (i.e., well known and respected mod gear), then younger kids around the scene wanted training shoes and tracksuits as much as small collar shirts and boat shoes. the domestic turn towards branding whetted the appetites of those who found lacoste, fila, and top of the range adidas wear on the continent. it wasn’t simply scousers going to europe and coming back with forest hills in 1066 or whenever they claim it was. hough reveals the hyper-local rivalry between manchester and merseyside, only 40 miles apart but since the late 1970s the base of the fiercest (frequently ultra-violent) rivalry in british soccer fandom, that between manchester united fans and liverpool fans, and to a lesser extent manchester city fans and everton fans. for hough, casual youth rivalry was intertwined with the inter-city enmity: it was a process that once set in motion was inevitable. manchester had been at it for years before the sportswear thing hit. i think liverpool lacked our perry pedigree, but they had a punk-bowie look all their own, which happened to include narrow trousers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 74 and wedge hairstyles. they went bananas when they discovered the high-end continental clobber and they invented the football casual as a result. scousers exploded in a couple of years from almost nothing, but manchester arrived via ten years of subtle mutations. the results were the same in both cases, and the liverpool look provoked a reaction in the subconscious manc mind. those first years, from 1979 to 1982, were the height of it. it was a secret. only we and the scousers knew anything about it. most people will say liverpudlians hit the terraces in proper numbers as a real hooligan movement before manchester did, and that would be true. the media were hopelessly out of touch with it, and this created a cloaking effect around the north west. there were no nationwide chainstores or tv stars championing the look. it was a working class thing embedded in the football terraces. with all due respect, these lads had a great sense of style but were light years away from penetrating the middle class media fortresses that could have spread the word much earlier. it was all communicated via football matches and curious lads who went shopping in manchester and liverpool, eager to learn more about the movement. when you consider that a lot of these boys were behaving violently towards each other, it’s a wonder anything was communicated at all. most of the words between them probably amounted to abuse regarding fashion sense. that means something when you’re a teenager, so it caught people’s attention. three years must be the time it takes for a finished product to make its way across the country using such primitive means of dissemination. eventually the elitist, secret world of casual youth culture became an “international style” in the 1980s; “everyone” of a certain age, it seemed, suddenly wore casual style ubiquitous trainers, labelled clothing, and moulded, gelled (male) hairstyles. our interviewee ian hough had initially intended his social history of the hidden original “subculture” of casuals to “just focus on the early 1980s but ended up extending it into the rave era of the late 1980s and 1990s, which initially felt like a separate thing”. the casual youth culture overlapped in these years with a range of illegal activities in the “underground economy” of the u.k. (sugden, 2002, 2007) from soccer violence, using and dealing recreational drugs, through gun running, planning heists, organising ticket touting and horse racing scams, to the routine “bunking in” (entering free) to stadiums and “jibbing” (jumping trains without paying) train rides all over the world (blaney, 2004; allt, 2007, pp. 1–9; hough, 2009). as ian hough told our interviewer, one of the books at the edge of the football hooligan memoir genre “nailed” this world of “grafting”. the book was by manchester united fan colin blaney, a self-confessed grafter and soccer hooligan: that was grafters by colin blaney, i loved grafters, partly because blaney was from north manchester and i knew his world, but mainly because he summed up so many aspects of our thing beyond football. i’ve always thought that the casual look was symptomatic of bigger things than football, and grafters went into all the slang words, the thieving lifestyles and fashions that changed from the 1970s into the 1980s. i grew up with lads like blaney and they are wild boys, make no mistake. but their sense of cool was years ahead of its time, and some of the more recent stuff colin has written is pure brilliance. he basked in the real underground scene in the neighbourhood, as we all did to some extent. the gangsters, the pubs, the accent and slang, and the fashions, all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 75 were crucial pieces in the north manchester jigsaw. grafters is like a high speed ride through it all. sociology of youth culture: a slight return the research project which i have briefly reported on here contains some insights for the “sociology of youth culture”, especially the diverse disciplines of cultural studies on the one hand and criminology on the other, and their specific respective sub-disciplines of postsubcultural studies and cultural criminology; moreover, sub-disciplines which have a growing literature surrounding them on these issues. a considerable rethinking of the concept of youth culture and subculture, as if we are now “after subculture” (bennett & kahn-harris, 2004) or “beyond subculture” (huq, 2006), or even beyond “post-subculture”, has taken place over the last decade (blackman, 2005; greener & hollands, 2006). for instance, originally, the now defunct centre for contemporary cultural studies (cccs) produced seminal work at the university of birmingham in the 1960s and 1970s (hall & jefferson, 2006; hebdige, 1979). the “birmingham school” as it became known is infrequently given its due but much of its critique of earlier work on youth culture and youth subculture remains pertinent today. a second edition of its classic collection of essays on youth subcultures in post-war britain, first published in 1976, the very year before causal youth culture emerged in the united kingdom, was put out in 2006. resistance through rituals re-emphasised the pioneering nature of the work whilst also coming to terms with more recent approaches such as postmodernism (hall & jefferson, 2006, pp. xix–xxi) and postfeminism (hall & jefferson, 2006, pp. xxiv–xxv). the early work on soccer hooligan subcultures at the centre for contemporary cultural studies by writers like john clarke (hall & jefferson, 2006, pp. 80–83) linking skinheads (daniel & mcguire, 1972) to soccer hooliganism and the “magical recovery of community” was always exemplary. the origins of the “concept of subculture” in the chicago school criminology (jencks, 2005; blackman, 2005) of the early part of the 20th century risk being erased as new generations of scholars emerge in a new century, and new subcultures such as emo – a label derived from emotional punk (simon & kelley, 2007) – as well as older subcultures like goth (brill, 2008) and soulboy, especially northern4 soul (wilson, 2007), present themselves for sustained new ethnographic and theoretical analyses in studies of “subcultural style”5. as one of our correspondents mischievously put it, “scally emo anyone?”6 . the manchester institue for popular culture (mipc) research centre, which ran at manchester metropolitan university from 1992 to 2006, at least initially, attempted to constructively revise the cccs work and, especially, apply new theory to new, emerging subcultures, including football casuals. in fact, the emergence of “clubcultures” and “postsubculture” in this work (redhead,et al., 1997) as fresh concepts, the subsequent re-imagining of the figure of the “post-subculturalist” by david muggleton (redhead et al., 1997), and the development of a sub-discipline of post-subcultural studies rapidly gained pace (muggleton, 2000; muggleton & weinzierl, 2003; bennett & kahn-harris, 2004; greener & hollands, 2006) by the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. a symposium held in vienna, austria shortly after the turn of the millennium in 2001 entitled “post-subcultural studies: new formations within popular culture and their political impact” (muggleton & weinzierl, 2003, p. 3) helped to kickstart this new international sub-discipline which became rather uneasily situated at the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 76 intersection of criminology, socio-legal studies, sociology, and cultural studies later in the decade. the discussion of contemporary youth culture literature and the rise and fall of subcultures also illuminates the general state of the sub-discipline of cultural criminology (katz, 1988; redhead, 1995; ferrell & sanders, 1995; ferrell, hayward, morrison, & presdee, 2004; presdee, 2000, 2004; young, ferrell, & hayward, 2008; hayward, 2004; zatich & de leeuw, 2010). further, it also touches upon theories of subculture, youth culture, and popular culture overall, an amalgam i once labelled, with heavy irony, “popular cultural studies” (redhead, 1995, 1997b; redhead et al., 1997). in a recent series of debates, a binary division between subcultural theorists and post-subcultural theorists has appeared (greener & hollands, 2006; blackman, 2005). for some theorists such as blackman (2005) and bennett (2005), a general postmodern subcultural theory has been identified in these debates which includes postsubcultural theory drawing on such theorists as jean baudrillard (pawlett, 2007; merrin, 2005; redhead, 2008a). some work on subculture, rave, and football hooliganism has been seen, in some ways misleadingly, to be part of this cluster of postmodern subcultural theory (hollands, 2002; chatterton & hollands, 2003; greener & hollands, 2006; blackman, 2005; bennett, 2005) where youth styles are perceived to be “depthless, transitory and internally fragmented” although, as the present essay demonstrates, both the theoretical endeavour and the subcultures themselves have proved to be rather more enduring. significantly, work on casuals or soccer hooligan subcultures has not featured in this rethinking of subculture in post-subcultural studies, or in the sub-discipline of cultural criminology (redhead, 1995; ferrell & sanders, 1995; ferrell et al., 2004; presdee, 2004), though related studies of contemporary rave culture have figured strongly (presdee, 2000; muggleton & weinzierl, 2003, pp. 101–117; bennett & kahn-harris, 2004, pp. 65–78; gelder, 2007, pp. 64–65; nayak & kehily, 2008, pp. 56–59). perhaps the reason for this omission is that little sustained sociological and anthropological theorising and rigorous academic ethnography of casual subcultures has been conducted over the last 30 years. this essay, and the research project in general reported on here, partly repairs such gaps. what the research project reported on here provides, as has been seen in this essay, is a possible cultural criminology supplement for post-subcultural studies. methodologically it allows academics to add events, conversations, stories, language, and colour to a history of youth culture which was already partly written at the time in the 1970s and 1980s, but which has many roots in soccer fandom even today. also it stimulates the possibility of repairing the black holes in knowledge of casual youth culture within post-subcultural studies and cultural criminology to provide what i have labelled elsewhere (redhead, 2008b, 2008c, 2010a, 2010b) as a “post-subcultural criminology” of youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 77 references allt, n. 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(2010). fighting with images: the production and consumption of violence among online football supporters. in k. hayward & m. presdee (eds.), framing crime: cultural criminology and the image. london: routledge. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 65–82 82 endnotes 1 the larger research project mapped the entirety of soccer hooligan gangs of britain from the 1960s to the present day – partly through the development of a research archive of individual soccer hooligan memoirs by various publishers from 1987 to the present day. the research project collected nearly a hundred football hooligan memoirs from this period in book form, ranging from the well written to the barely literate. the latest of these memoirs is on millwall (woods, 2011). they are still being published, if only occasionally. 2 in the same year, 2009, there was also a cinematic remake of alan clarke’s 1980s “realist” tv drama the firm. the firm was directed by the football factory film director nick love and could easily have been dubbed the football factory 2 given the continued concentration on certain aspects of london casual style, whereas awaydays highlights the nuances of casual culture on merseyside in the late 1970s. 3 glamorous hooligan is actually the name of a bradford dance culture duo formed in the 1990s comprising enzo annechinni and dean cavanagh (aka dj sal). dean cavanagh, who contributed “mile high meltdown” to sarah champion’s anthology of “fiction from the chemical generation” (champion, 1997), became the writing partner of trainspotting author irvine welsh (redhead, 2000, 2008d) – see for example welsh and cavanagh, 2007. 4 in 2010 a feature film called soulboy directed by shimmy marcus was released which “fictionally” but faithfully reconstructed the “northern” or “northern soul” scene in britain in the 1970s. 5 berg, for instance, recently commissioned a new international book series called subcultural style body style, queer style, punk style, fetish style are forthcoming from berg. 6 author of casuals, phil thornton, a manchester united soccer fan living on merseyside, pointed out to me in correspondence for the research project that such new subcultures as “scally emos” do exist but they are not in the purview of the so-called journalists of style culture (in the u.k., usually london-based) who pervade the british and indeed international media. thornton, inspired by print fanzines like sniffin glue, the end, herb garden, and boys own (redhead, 1991b, 1997a), has been prominent for many years in taking the fanzine concept to the internet through e-zines; see for instance, www.swinemagazine.co.uk. http://www.swinemagazine.co.uk/� microsoft word 08 family_professionals.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220658 family professionals’ attitudes and stance-taking on post-divorce fatherhood: a qualitative attitude approach leena autonen-vaaraniemi abstract: this article examines divorce professionals’ attitudes and stances in response to common criticisms of how they deal with divorce outcomes for fathers, according to which men are discriminated against in negotiations on the custody and living arrangements of their children. the study applied the relatively new qualitative attitude approach, and hence a further aim was to test its fitness for studying attitudes. eighteen finnish family professionals who worked with divorce cases — social workers, psychologists, district court judges, and lawyers — participated in semi-structured interviews in which they discussed claims designed to be provocative. the family professionals were found to show both collective, shared attitudes and diversity in attitudes and stances. the participants strove to position themselves as gender-neutral and as promoters of equality between mothers and fathers, and thus in accordance with the ideal of a good professional. the divorce professionals argued that their overriding aim was to secure the wellbeing of children. the method revealed some attribution bias, manifested as victim blaming, where fathers themselves were in part held accountable for the gendered post-divorce situation. the results highlight potential areas of cooperation between different types of divorce professionals that could lay a foundation for improving services and support for divorced parents and children. keywords: divorce professionals; divorce; fatherhood; qualitative attitude approach leena autonen-vaaraniemi phd is a university lecturer in social work at the faculty of social sciences, tampere university, pori unit, pob 181, 28101 pori, finland. email: leena.autonen-vaaraniemi@tuni.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 57 divorce is claimed to erode fatherhood. although divorced and nonresident fathers are more involved with their children nowadays than in the past (amato et al., 2009; andreasson & johansson, 2019; forsberg & autonen-vaaraniemi, 2017), it has been noted that many children lose their fathers when parents split up (kalmijn, 2015; kruk, 2010). in many western countries, while joint legal custody has become more prevalent and post-divorce dual residence arrangements for children are gaining ground, residential fathers and sole father custody have remained low. in the nordic countries, north america, and the flanders region of belgium, for example, custody is granted to mothers in about 80% of divorce cases and children mostly live with their mothers after parental separation (hakovirta & rantalaiho, 2011; meyer et al., 2017; sodermans et al., 2013). the societal debate on men and fathers has highlighted the unequal position of men in divorce suits. men’s rights activist groups in both north america and europe have claimed that men are treated unjustly in negotiations on the custody, maintenance, and living arrangements of their children (autonen-vaaraniemi, 2010; rosen et al., 2009, p. 514). some studies on discrimination against men (e.g., malmi, 2009; nathanson & young, 2006) and on the role of cultural gender stereotypes in professionals’ decision-making on post-divorce child custody (costa et al., 2019) have pointed out that one of the obstacles to sole father custody is the overly defensive position taken by women divorce professionals on the mother’s right to her child. it has been suggested by others (e.g., davidson-arad et al., 2003; fix & johnson, 2017, pp. 1845–1849) that there seems to be a tendency to prefer maternal over paternal custody and that a gender bias exists in divorce professionals’ custody recommendations and in judicial decisions. in societal debate, and in studies like the present one, it is argued that authorities’ decisions are often guided by attitudes, beliefs, and myths related to perceptions of “good” mothering. as indicated above, the automatic continuance of active fatherhood and the father–child relationship after divorce is not self-evident. the emergence of the “new” caring fatherhood, the growing involvement of fathers in family life, and the importance of the post-divorce father–child relationship for a child’s well-being have been acknowledged (e.g., lamb & sagi, 2014), a point of view i share. however, the caretaker role of the father continues to be frequently perceived as less important than that of the mother. divorce professionals may have conflicting and ambiguous interpretations of the complex issue of the child’s best interests and the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood in this familial context (crawford & bradley, 2016). hence, post-divorce fatherhood, one of the sites of dispute noted by attitudinal scholars (billig, 1987/1996), is the topic of this article. professionals are generally expected to orient to and conform with legislation and with the expertise acquired through their education and training (e.g., aarto-pesonen & tynjälä, 2017). however, legislation cannot provide clear-cut guidelines for all professional activities and in any case must leave some discretionary leeway. similarly, the expertise acquired during professional education and training cannot provide models for every possible situation in professional work that entails complicated decision-making about or assessment of people’s life situations (mattison, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 58 2000; nouman et al., 2016). this study starts from the assumption that divorce-related professional work includes dealing with situations for which ready-made solutions cannot be derived from legislation or education. in such complex situations, attitudes may be of significance, and hence their examination is justified. previous research on the work practices of social and mental health professionals (e.g., cook & gregory, 2020; mattison, 2000; sjølie et al., 2013) and divorce professionals (e.g., nouman et al., 2016) supports this approach, underlining that in their work professionals also draw on their tacit knowledge, including their experiences, emotions, and attitudes. to summarize, divorce professional work is a social, and thus interactional, occupation and, like all family life concerns, inherently an ethical undertaking. it is important, therefore, to consider norms, values, emotions, and attitudes, both in carrying out and in evaluating the success of this type of work (see also banks, 2020, pp. 3–6). attitudes of professionals dealing with divorce when organizing their children’s future daily lives, divorcing parents may have encounters with a wide range of professionals. recent years have seen an increase in professional services and support for families and parents in cases of divorce (cox et al., 2021). the societal and legislative context of divorce has also changed in many western countries, with the advent of gender-neutral parenting and divorce laws, no-fault divorce legislation, and the prevalent use of mediation services in custody disputes (baitar et al., 2013). however, empirical research on divorce professionals’ work with parents remains scarce (baitar et al., 2013, p. 546), while research on their attitudes to parenting is almost nonexistent. the attitudes of professionals in other domains — indeed, attitudes in general — have been widely studied using conventional quantitative methods, such as the likert scale (e.g., brasaite et al., 2016; thomas, 2011), whereas qualitative research is scarce (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 16–17). attitude studies have mainly relied on statistical methodology, in which attitudes are defined as measurable components and explored by scale-based methods, and in which the data are often collected by attitudinal surveys. in these studies (e.g., thomas, 2011), the term “attitude” refers to the participant’s positive or negative stance on a socially significant issue. however, we still know very little about the kinds of argumentation and reasoning underlying divorce professionals’ attitudes to parenting. in surveys with large samples, divorce work has to some extent examined attitudes, perceptions, views, and beliefs regarding professionals’ roles and practices among, for example, lawyers, judges, mediators, mental health professionals, and child custody evaluators (e.g., arroyo & peek, 2015; baker, 2007; bogoch, 2008; kneer & bourgeois-gironde, 2017; sanders et al., 2015; taylor, 2004). studies on how professionals view their expertise and professional role in divorce cases have pointed to the existence of professional boundaries and competition in the judicial and mediation contexts. for example, bogoch and halperin-kaddari (2007) found that while lawyers reported that their domain of divorce practices was being encroached on by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 59 mediators, therapeutic professionals saw mediation as a new field of expertise that could compete with that of legal professionals. one of the central aims of research on divorce professionals’ attitudes and perceptions has been to assess the usefulness or effectiveness of various parenting programs, parenting classes, parenting coordination, and mediation in supporting post-divorce parenting, assisting high-conflict parents in dispute resolution, and promoting child well-being in cases of divorce. the findings of such studies (e.g., bogoch, 2008; sullivan & burns, 2020; taylor, 2004) suggest that divorce professionals mainly have positive attitudes about the usefulness of parental support methods. the need to increase professionals’ awareness of parenting programs, mediation, and the importance of networking have also been highlighted in these studies. the relationship between parenting agreements — where the post-divorce child custody and child care arrangements have been settled by parents — and divorce professionals’ attitudes to parenting has been one topic of research interest. the focus has been on what kinds of post-divorce parenting agreements best support children’s well-being. previous findings (e.g., baitar et al., 2013) indicate tensions and differences between professionals in their stances on parenting agreements, especially with respect to the primary caregiver. for example, baitar et al. (2013) found that lawyers mostly viewed shared parenting agreements positively, whereas mediators were more skeptical about them. they also found that the outcomes of professionals’ divorce work practices may lead them to support maternal custody agreements or agreements where children live mainly with their mother after divorce (p. 554). supporting post-divorce parenting that best ensures children’s well-being has been the overriding aim of professionals’ divorce-related work and is also a legislative norm in many countries (andreasson & johansson, 2019). in contrast, some research on divorce professionals’ work in high-conflict divorce cases has dented the ideal of co-parenting by raising questions about the harm suffered by children as a result of intimate partner violence and parental alienation (nielsen, 2017), which also create challenges for divorce professionals. in this context, researchers (e.g., baker, 2007) have examined professional custody evaluators’ beliefs, opinions, and knowledge on concepts of intimate partner violence and parental alienation in child custody proceedings. according to the results of these studies, professionals who identify intimate partner violence and parental alienation include them in their decision-making and assessment concerning children’s custody and living arrangements. as suggested by others, (e.g., sanders et al., 2015), custody evaluators’ beliefs and views on the prevalence of intimate partner violence and parental alienation in divorce tend to exhibit a high level of value bias, and instead of recognizing these problems they place considerable value on cooperative parenting. recent gender-sensitive research on divorce professionals’ attitudes is also scarce. the few studies available have focused on the role of stereotypical attitudes in divorce professionals’ decision-making and assessments pertaining to post-divorce child custody and living arrangements. some scholars (e.g., davidson-arad et al., 2003; kneer & bourgeois-gironde, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 60 2017) have found evidence of a gender bias favoring maternal primacy and maternal custody after divorce. studies have shown that traditional social norms and gender role models in which the mother is considered the “natural” caretaker of children continue to influence divorce professionals’ decision-making and are reflected in family law systems (braver et al., 2002; nouman et al., 2016). these implicit cultural gender stereotypes may help explain the asymmetry in child custody decisions that favors maternal primary custody over sole father or joint custody (bogoch & halperin-kaddari, 2006; costa et al., 2019; crawford & bradley, 2016). however, the findings on gender bias in professionals’ divorce-related work remain conflicting and inconclusive. in sum, these studies have revealed tensions between stereotypical attitudes and egalitarian commitments in divorce professionals’ work. findings on divorce professionals’ attitudes on parenting are also mixed. some studies have found that women social workers are more likely to take the mother’s side in custody disputes and that social workers tend to recommend maternal custody to the court in divorce cases (e.g., cohen & segal-engelchin, 2000; davidson-arad et al., 2003; nouman et al., 2016). other studies, in contrast, have found that women social workers support fathers (e.g., arroyo & peek, 2015, p. 148). to some extent, the positions adopted by practitioners appear to be linked to their own gender (baum, 2016; kullberg & fäldt, 2008). methodology research questions and main concepts this study extends attitude research by systematically examining the attitudes and stances of family professionals who deal with divorce in their work. as noted earlier, the attitudes of divorce professionals have mainly been studied using quantitative methods, whereas qualitative research is scarce (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 16–17). the present study contributes to filling this gap by employing the relatively new and formal methodological approach of qualitative attitude research (peltola & vesala, 2013; vesala & rantanen, 2007a) in examining family professionals’ attitudes on post-divorce fatherhood. in qualitative research, unlike in quantitative research, an attitude is not regarded as an individual characteristic or inclination. instead, an attitude is defined as the valuating activity of an individual in social argumentation, especially when commenting on controversial issues (billig, 1991, pp. 143–145). another area of interest is the actor positions or roles that are adopted when valuations are made (vesala & rantanen, 2007a). here, the term “family professional” is used to refer to persons educated to work with parents and families, and who implement family-related expertise in their work (vuori, 2001, p. 14). family professionals’ work, such as in divorce cases, is done in many kinds of institution, and thus transcends institutional and organizational boundaries. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 61 the research questions were: 1. what kinds of attitude do family professionals have concerning post-divorce fatherhood, and how do they justify their views? 2. how useful is the qualitative attitude approach in studying family professionals’ attitudes to post-divorce fatherhood? the study thus had two main aims: first, to investigate the attitudes, argumentation, and justifications of family professionals with respect to post-divorce fatherhood; and second, to contribute knowledge on the value of applying a qualitative attitude approach (peltola & vesala, 2013). the research data consist of interviews with family divorce professionals, such as social workers, psychologists, district court judges, and lawyers. the rationale for examining these professions with their different training backgrounds and different roles in divorce work is to find out to what extent the professionals share attitudes and reasoning. owing to this focus, the analysis is not based on comparisons between specific professional groups, but on an approach that transcends organizational and occupational boundaries. instead of examining professional domains and competitive expertise, some scholars (e.g., bogoch, 2008; bogoch & halperinkaddari, 2007; taylor, 2004) suggest shifting the focus to cooperation and networking between divorce professionals. knowledge on multiprofessional expertise in divorce work is needed to improve services for divorced parents and children. this study aligns with these objectives and offers a new research perspective on divorce work. qualitative attitude approach the qualitative attitude approach is a formal methodological approach for studying attitudes that includes methods for generating and systematically analyzing argumentative interview talk (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 31–44). it has previously been applied in some studies within various disciplines (e.g., pesonen et al., 2013). the starting points of this approach lie in rhetorical discourse analysis, which draws on the research of michael billig (1987/1996, 1991) and on the theoretical research tradition, which stresses the contextuality and relationality of social interaction, language, and experience (bateson, 1972; goffman, 1974/1986; israel, 1979). according to vesala and rantanen (2007b), the qualitative attitude approach links rhetorical social psychology, which studies the use of language and argumentation, and the study of attitudes and values (pp. 31–44). billig (1991) stated that an attitude is defined as the valuating activity of an individual in social argumentation, in which the individual places herself or himself in a relationship to social reality (pp. 143–145). as vesala and rantanen (2007b) pointed out, the principles of the qualitative attitude approach assume that attitudes are social in nature: they are communicative phenomena related to interpersonal relationships and interaction through which the individual and the socially and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 62 culturally shared world become intertwined. attitude is a relational concept and an entity in an interactional event. thus, an attitude is a phenomenon in which an individual valuates an object in some way (pp. 31–38). billig (1987/1996) stated that attitudes are constructed in “the sphere of justification and criticism”; for him, attitude also refers to “viewpoint or position in contested issues” (p. 2). compared to traditional attitudinal surveys and scale-based methods, the advantage of the qualitative attitude approach is that it enables information to be captured on the construction of attitudes and related argumentation. in addition to studying attitude differences between individuals, the qualitative attitude approach enables the investigation of collective, shared attitudes (peltola & vesala, 2013). in this study, the qualitative attitude approach reveals the reasoning employed by professionals working with divorcing spouses. the benefit of applying this method is that it enables family professionals to present and justify attitudes and positions to postdivorce fatherhood that transcend their occupational boundaries. the study also indirectly allows the voices of men and fathers critical of the work of family professionals to be heard. thus, the approach facilitates bringing different parties into dialogue. data collection the research data comprise interviews with 18 finnish family professionals working with divorce cases, including social workers, psychologists, district court judges, and lawyers. two of the interviewees were men and 16 were women. about half of the interviewees had worked in the domain between 5 and 10 years, and half for over 10 years. the social workers, psychologists, and lawyers were contacted through a municipal family affairs unit in a large urban locality in finland. these units serve families in matters concerning the investigation and confirmation of paternity, custody agreements, living arrangements, access to children, and child maintenance. they also provide support and guidance during and after divorce. upon request by a court, the unit’s social workers compile reports to facilitate decisions on child custody, living arrangements, and access rights. the district court judges were contacted through the district court in the same urban locality. permission for gathering data was obtained from the relevant authority in the city administration. the interviews were conducted in finnish. each lasted 50 to 80 minutes and was recorded and transcribed. the excerpts in this article were translated to english by michael freeman. following the qualitative attitude approach of generating the study data with the help of argumentative material (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 31–44), i collected the data using the argumentative interviewing method combined with semi-structured interviews. in line with the sites of dispute posited by attitudinal scholars (billig, 1987/1996), post-divorce fatherhood is considered an example of a contested issue that must be argued for. my aim was to construct provocative claims regarding the position of fathers in divorce proceedings, their encounters with divorce professionals, and the impact of gender in these situations. to formulate the provocative claims, i drew on the dominant cultural discourses on post-divorce fatherhood that are contained international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 63 in popular written material. i collected this material focusing on divorced fathers with the help of keywords and sentences such as “divorced fathers/fatherhood”, “fathers and divorce”, and “discrimination against fathers in divorce”. the material was gathered from an academic databank, newspapers, and the internet. i formulated provocative statements based on letters to the editor in print media, study guides, textbooks, and the internet pages of a men’s activist group targeted at divorced men. the provocative claims concerned discrimination against fathers, the favoring of mothers, and the actions of divorce professionals in divorce proceedings. i presented the interviewees with 22 claims on post-divorce fatherhood with the aim of eliciting valuations and stances that could be interpreted as attitudes. i then selected the eight claims in the data that generated the richest and most diverse set of stances and justifications held in common by the family professionals. owing to limitations on space and the data-driven nature of the analysis, which was based on close reading, it was not possible to include more than these eight claims in this report. the eight claims were framed as follows: 1. in divorce, the man ends up in a weaker position than the woman. gender equality is not achieved in divorce situations or in custody disputes. 2. in the event of divorce, the children are automatically awarded to the mother. the father is saddled with maintenance and has right of access. the divorced father is deprived of his children on unfair grounds. 3. women workers and mothers speak a similar language, which is why they understand each other well in divorce-related issues. men, on the other hand, are not linguistically as adept as women. 4. it is easier for women workers to identify with mothers, particularly if they are mothers and divorced themselves. 5. unlike mothers, fathers are not considered responsible parents and capable of running daily family life. a mother must be a really bad mother and a father a true super-father if the decision on who should have custody is to deviate from the norm. 6. men don’t know how to present themselves as good fathers. 7. only male professionals can understand men’s and fathers’ feelings in divorce proceedings. 8. in divorce issues and custody disputes, family professionals hardly ever listen to men, but instead listen to women and mothers. before starting the interviews, i informed the participants that i would be using provocative claims on the positions of fathers and the actions of divorce professionals in divorce proceedings compiled from popular written material in order to elicit their views and stances on these claims. as the interviews were conducted by generating discussion based on provocative claims, i also international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 64 asked the participants about their own ideas on gender roles and notions of gender and told them that they could comment freely on the theme in question. data analysis according to vesala and rantanen (2007a), the starting point of the qualitative attitude approach is that attitudes are examined as phenomena that can be identified in argumentation. the interest is in what people are valuating when asked to comment on things, especially on controversial issues. attitudes consist of the object of valuation, the stances taken, and the accounts and justifications related to the stances. valuation is understood as a process or as doing (stancetaking), producing attitudes. the concept of attitude implies a phenomenon that is to some extent stable. another point of interest is the actor positions or roles that are adopted when valuations are made. the social and cultural context in which the attitudes are expressed is also studied (vesala & rantanen, 2007a). to capture these different aspects, attitudes are studied with the help of argumentative material. in this study, the analysis was data-driven; in other words, the definitions of the attitudes of the informants arose from the process of analyzing the data. stances and related justifications were identified from the transcribed interviews by comparing their differences and similarities. thus, the data were not assigned to predetermined classes such as those used in likert scales (vesala & rantanen, 2007a). first, i searched the interview data for speech indicating stance-taking and justifications related to the provocative claims on post-divorce fatherhood, one claim at a time. while some participants partially accepted and some reflected on the claims, most rejected them. stances were also justified in various ways. one participant might present multiple justifications for a stance on one claim, and the same justifications might be presented for stances on several claims. moreover, different justifications might be used at different points during the interview. i also found similar, shared stances and justifications by the family professionals in response to some provocative claims. for closer analysis, i selected clusters consisting of the shared stances and their justifications that were the most prevalent in the data. further, to thematically structure and classify these clusters, i grouped them into larger entities by comparing the differences and similarities between the stances and their justifications and the factors linking these. the themes were thus conceptualized as patterns of shared meaning across these specific items. as described above, the data revealed considerable variation in the family professionals’ ways of valuating post-divorce fatherhood. my analysis yielded two main themes: the first was intertwined with attitudes, and the other was based on the positions taken. these main themes differed in that the attitudes theme focused on the family professionals’ stances and justifications relating to how they resisted taking certain attitudes in their work (presented via provocative claims), while the positions theme concerned larger frames, where stances and justifications were constructed from specific viewpoints, and where the content and issue level were of central importance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 65 i noticed when analyzing the data that the family professionals largely avoided the question of parental gender in their work. instead, they mostly emphasized the importance of treating parents equally irrespective of gender. in the next section, i report the findings on each main theme under separate headings that summarize the family professionals’ responses to the eight provocative claims on post-divorce fatherhood. thus, the first part of the findings section presents the results on the attitudes theme, in which professionality manifests as a way of screening for biased attitudes and drawing attention to clients’ attitudes. the second part of the findings section presents the findings on the positions theme, which include considering the child’s best interests, everyday-life parenting experiences, and respecting client diversity. both parts present the participants’ stances and justifications in response to several of the provocative claims about post-divorce fatherhood. in the data excerpts used to illustrate the analysis, participants are identified by a number appearing next to their professional designation. in the concluding section, the results are discussed in relation to the literature on the topic, and the usefulness of the qualitative attitude approach is assessed. findings results intertwined with attitudes professionalism as a way of screening for biased attitudes in the main theme related to attitudes, all the family professionals (18/18) responded to the provocative claims on discrimination against fathers in divorce-related work by invoking professionalism — their professional skill and expertise. this was the most frequent justification in my data. the participants argued that professional skill means encountering parents equally irrespective of gender. their guiding principle, grounded in professionalism, is to treat mothers and fathers equally in matters related to agreements and disputes in divorce. education and work experience were argued to be the foundation of professional knowledge and to underlie the participants’ rejection of biased attitudes. the family professionals’ attitude to parenthood thus appeared to be gender-neutral: if we think about custody disputes here, then in my opinion one can’t say that parents are somehow in an unequal position, or that fathers are in a worse position than mothers, but yes they are treated, at least i for my part i try to treat them equally. (district court judge, 8) of course we treat clients evenhandedly so that both [parents] can express their own viewpoints with no prior expectations or prejudices that one is better than the other, i don’t identify this in myself at least, nor in my colleagues in this unit. (social worker, 18) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 66 the participants emphasized the importance of treating parents equally irrespective of gender. this line of argumentation can be interpreted as a “politically correct” stance, as the participants are likely to believe that there are politically correct responses to the deliberately provocative claims made in the interview and thus actively produce these. moreover, by striving to position themselves as gender-neutral and as promoters of equality between mothers and fathers, the participants may also want to appear to conform to the ideal of a “good” professional. the family professionals argued that the potential of each parent to act in a custodial capacity is assessed equitably and openly. in their arguments based on professionalism, the participants stated that both parents are listened to and efforts are made to elucidate the viewpoint of each irrespective of gender. the participants saw it as their responsibility to assess parents’ competence to act as care-givers and child-raisers, rather than it being the parents’ task to “prove” their capability to act as father or mother in the best interests of the child. this argument is illustrated in the following extract: if you’re a skilled professional then you’ll get the information, or anyway you should be able to somehow find out about the situation without either of them having to really market their [parenting skills]. (social worker, 10) in connection with the notion of professionalism, the interviewees also mentioned their experience, accumulated during their working careers, which helped them not only to understand the experiences of fathers and men in divorce cases but also developed their capacity for empathy: i think now that the work experience i have, having met quite a number of divorced fathers, i have been able to enter that world, know how fathers may experience those issues. (social worker, 4) the stated impact of the family professionals’ diverse working careers and educational backgrounds on how they encountered clients conflicted with the idea of professionalism as a mechanism for screening for biased attitudes and treating parents equally. some of the family professionals (3/18) conceded that a worker with little work experience may become too emotionally engaged in a client’s situation and side with one of the divorcing parents, as described in the following extract: it’s true that in social services, child welfare, the family counselling center, we have people at different stages of their careers and from different educational backgrounds, and of course mothers may receive support from each other in how to defend themselves, maybe better than fathers can among themselves, so it’s entirely possible that this sort of imbalance exists in some cases, and then you get to read about it in the papers, but at the outset the situation is not fundamentally so unequal. (psychologist, 15) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 67 the family professionals argued that encountering parents equally means adopting a conscious stance and distancing oneself sufficiently from the client’s situation. thus, the argument based on treating clients equally underlines the idea of professional neutrality and rationality. in the informants’ statements invoking professionalism, professional knowledge was presented as a means of monitoring oneself for biased attitudes and as the basis for treating parents equally in divorce situations. this emphasis on gender neutrality has also been noticed in previous studies on professionals’ attitudes (see, e.g., vesala & rantanen 2007b, 36–37). impact of clients’ attitudes some of the family professionals (12/18) countered the provocative claims by invoking clients’ attitudes. with respect to divorce-related work, these professionals argued that clients’ views on discrimination against fathers derived from the clients’ own preconceived assumptions and attitudes: i think it depends on their [parents’] prior expectations, i mean what ideas they have when they come here. and otherwise too, i think it’s about what their attitude is. like if, say at the outset they think that fathers shouldn’t have the children and that in a divorce the children will always stay with the mother. then they come here and that’s how they agree about it then. (social worker, 13) so if, for example, the father says, like, no one’s going to listen to me anyway, it’ll be the mother who gets custody, as always, then you won’t really get anywhere because you’ll not be able to find out about the things that actually determine which parent would be the better custodial parent. (district court judge, 17) in the above responses, clients are viewed as harboring the notion that the mother will automatically be preferred as the custodial parent. decisions on child custody and living arrangements may be left up to parents when they have a shared adherence to the traditional idea that the mother should be prioritized as the custodial parent. these responses also include the belief that the parents have often agreed, before meeting the family professional, that the mother will have custody of the children: as practitioners we don’t automatically assume that the children should live with their mother, but it’s true that a great number of people coming here together to agree about residence, access, and maintenance, they share the assumption that the children will stay with the mother. (social worker, 7) i have myself encountered the assumption that the children will stay with the mother, you do notice that whenever couples come here for the first time then somehow, it really surprises me when any of them have planned anything different. it’s a surprise, so i suppose that is the automatic assumption that everyone starts out with. (psychologist, 11) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 68 one of the arguments used by the family professionals invoked the attitude of client fathers who believe that the man will not, in any event, be awarded residential custody. the father then relinquishes the children to the mother. the interviewees pointed out that men do not generally understand their importance as fathers and may only become aware of the significance of fatherhood in the event of divorce. in the stances rejecting the statement about bias, some fathers were viewed as excessively passive in discussions on post-divorce child custody and living arrangements. the interviewees argued that the fathers themselves should speak up for their rights and be more active in divorce-related disputes. this could be interpreted as a kind of victim blaming: i’m sure there are those [men] who are unable to see their own importance as fathers to the extent that they’d have the courage to speak out about it, i’m sure things could be better in that sense and i’m sure that even after the divorce you can sometimes see that the fathers somehow disappear from the lives of their children, so sometimes this may also be because they don’t realize their own significance. like how important they are for their children and how extremely important it would be for them to be involved in their children’s lives. (social worker, 16) i have experienced quite a lot of men belittling their own meaning for their child, or they belittle or somehow haven’t quite realized, understood how important they are for the child. (psychologist, 11) as i just said if you don’t present any claims you won’t get a favorable decision either. and i suppose that in a great many cases the fathers are passive, the fathers go along with things, that is, they themselves consider it’s better for the children to live with their mother than with their father. (district court judge, 8) by invoking client attitudes, the family professionals are shifting attention away from their own beliefs and attitudes to those of the parents. the interviewees thus shifted some of the responsibility for decisions on child custody and living arrangements onto the parents. the above excerpts can also be interpreted as stances on the part of the professionals. their statements can be seen as exhibiting an attribution bias that manifests in victim blaming, where fathers are partly held accountable for what has happened to them: fathers don’t get to live with their children after divorce as often as mothers do, and it’s their own fault for not standing up for themselves. results on positions taken the primacy of the child’s best interests in the theme relating to positions taken, all the family professionals (18/18) countered the provocative claims that fathers are discriminated against and mothers favored in divorce proceedings by raising the issue of the child’s best interests. this was the strongest position taken in the data by the family professionals. the participants pointed out that the main goal of their divorce-related work is to safeguard as good a life as possible for the child and the continuation of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 69 the child’s daily routines post-divorce. the family professionals considered that in divorce agreement and dispute situations, matters related to the child must be settled based on the child’s needs and well-being. the child’s best interests also provided the weightiest argument when assessing matters affecting custody. the participants described how they assess which of the parents would better serve the child’s best interests. the uniqueness of children’s situations, the great diversity of families, and attempts to find a solution tailored to the child in question were all emphasized. the child’s age is a further consideration. participants invoking the child’s best interests pointed out that deciding about custody is not a matter of preserving gender equality in parenting. questions about gender equality between divorcing fathers and mothers were secondary when assessing the child’s best interests: it’s the child’s best interest that we work for. you mustn’t turn this into a gender equality issue. it’s the child’s best interest that is crucial. … it’s just an unfortunate fact that you can’t split the child in two. and it doesn’t mean that one parent would be a bad parent if the other is recommended to have custody. because when there’s a dispute and the parents themselves can’t reach an agreement about these things, which is of course really sad, that the parents themselves cannot decide about their own children, so then we need the viewpoint of an outsider and it’ll be for the judge to decide. the matter will have to be settled one way or another, and that doesn’t make the other parent any worse. (social worker, 18) for instance, how much time a child will spend with each parent cannot be decided based on quantifiable evenhandedness: it’s not about equality between the parents, it’s about the child’s future, that the child’s life should continue as well as possible, as far as it’s possible after a divorce. (social worker, 14) the family professionals argued that the child’s best interests were most effectively secured by continued parenting. this stance presupposes two parents who are capable of cooperating and maintaining a relationship with the child after their divorce. in the best scenario, the parents will support each other and ensure the child’s continuing relationship with the noncustodial parent. they will also be flexible in their daily practices and modify their agreed responsibilities according to the child’s needs. co-parenting after divorce might even make the family more workable than it was before the divorce: what it is, it’s that afterwards the parenting should sort of be, that the child will need both parents also after their divorce. the problem is, how should the parenting, how will you manage it together when you don’t live under the same roof? (psychologist, 12) if the parenting works well after the divorce, then it might happen that the one with custody gets into great — say they fall seriously ill or there’s an unexpected crisis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 70 or something, then it’s not as if you couldn’t change things. or you sometimes notice that the children need different — that there’s a need to change, that it’s actually better for one of the children to live alone with one of the parents, the father for instance. now that’s not often spoken about in public, but it does happen a lot. or say that a child has a hobby that takes up a lot of time, and the other parent continues to take care of that. there’s really quite a lot of parenting that is shared in very concrete terms. sometimes it can even improve the family situation and at best they can become more functional. (social worker, 10) while the family professionals conceded that the concept of the child’s best interests is multifaceted and ambiguous, its meaning remained rather nebulous. emphasizing the child’s best interests can be interpreted as a “politically correct” response to the provocative claims made in the interview. it can also be seen as supporting professionals’ striving to position themselves as “good” family professionals in divorce cases. the primacy of a child’s well-being is also culturally a widely shared — indeed essentially uncontested — value. in the above excerpts, the continuity of parenthood is constructed as harmonious and cooperative. however, little consideration was given to the possibility of intimate partner violence or parental alienation. according to previous studies, the continuity of parenthood and a parent’s ability to engage in undisputed co-parenting are key factors supporting a child’s well-being after parental separation (forsberg et al., 2018; nielsen, 2017). however, the principle of the child’s best interests is vague, and determining it in the course of a life-changing situation like divorce may be difficult (smithson et al., 2015, pp. 620–621). prolonged custody disputes, sometimes extending over several years, complicate assessments of the impact of the parental relationship (nielsen, 2017). one is prompted to ponder why the child’s best interests are simplistically seen as secured by parental cooperation. sometimes, for example, the child’s best interests might be better served by living with one parent in a family environment free of conflict and violence. the significance of everyday-life parenting experiences the family professionals (12/18) also responded to the provocative claims about discrimination against fathers and maternal primacy in divorce cases by appealing to parenting experiences in everyday life. the argumentation was based on both client parents’ experiences as told to the professionals and on the latter’s own experiences with the division of parental work in everyday life and with the parent–child caring relationship. the participants’ stance-taking was rejective and, to some extent, based on their gendered roles. the interviewees justified their stances by referring to how the daily life of the family had been shared between the parents before the divorce and included issues such as the breadwinner role, the division of daily household tasks, and child care: in cases where the mother has practically run the household during the marriage, i think it’s pretty certain that in most of those cases the decision will be that the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 71 children will remain with their mother, and the father will go along with that. of course, then, in families where both parents have actually shared the daily routines and looked after the children equally, then in such cases i suppose the father will present claims and i think then the question of daily routines won’t even come up in concrete terms in the court decision. (district court judge, 8) if the father has been very much involved in the child’s life even before the divorce and care has been shared and daily care, meals, and the rest have been shared in terms of how much time it takes and the father then sticks to his guns, then i’d say it … will not lead to anything like that [discrimination against fathers in divorce proceedings]. (psychologist, 15) although the “new” caring fatherhood, in which the father is emotionally and closely connected to his child and devoted to caring for the child (andreasson & johansson, 2019), was mentioned in the family professionals’ interview talk, their stances were also based on the continuity of traditional, gendered parenting roles: a mother who had been a child’s primary caretaker before divorce would continue to be the child’s primary caretaker care afterwards. in this situation, the participants mostly seemed to consider living with the mother as serving the best interests of children. the participants justified this stance with the argument that they assessed the adequacy of parents’ experiences caring for and raising their children. they reasoned that parents have firsthand experiential knowledge of everyday-life parenting and hence know best what solutions will serve their child’s best interests after divorce. parents also self-assess their parenthood capability: well, we don’t make the decisions, it’s the parents who do that. it’s a process in which they themselves assess their own capabilities and we also help them to understand what daily life involves and sort of help them discuss it. then they’ll think about it together, what it will mean for the children. (social worker, 4) the family professionals thus shifted the responsibility for post-divorce solutions onto the parents, who in an ideal situation resolve disputes based on their experiential knowledge of everyday parenting, leaving the professional in a more minor role. by arguing that the divorcing parents themselves should decide on the custodial and living arrangements that would be best for their children, the professionals were emphasizing the importance of parental responsibility: in these disputes about children, you often get a feeling of powerlessness, that you won’t be able to find a solution that’s good for the child, because we can’t force the parents to agree. or we can’t force the parents to follow any given pattern, and we can’t force them, anyone, oblige anyone to seek any kind of treatment, or to deal with the divorce as such. so if the parents themselves can’t see it, there’s not much the professionals can do about it. (lawyer, 9) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 72 the family professionals also justified their stances by invoking their personal family backgrounds and life histories. they argued that, irrespective of their gender, their personal experiences of everyday-life parenting helped them to understand the father’s position and experiences in divorce. the professional’s own parenting history thus served as a mirror in encounters with fathers and helped to transcend the professional–client boundary: if your client’s family is the kind of family where the father is more the custodial parent and the professional’s own family is similar, then i would believe that this kind of judge, maybe even in these kinds of divorce proceedings, is able to see the father’s situation somehow differently, i could at least imagine this. because one anyhow in a certain way can view the situation through oneself, if one were to be in such a situation. … it’s rather a question of what the person’s own experience is, regardless of gender, about who looks after the children. and in our family it might perhaps have been the father. so i may be a bit more analytical because of my being a professional and the other person may not be, and that may be reflected in that i, for instance, am able to think of the father as a fully potential custodial parent. (district court judge, 17) it’s the case that we are shaped by our own experiences, but professionality is still the thing that gets you beyond these, that you are not a prisoner of your own experiences. it’s not about my being a woman here or like that. there’s no way that i could think for example that as the mother of a boy i would relate to men, to the gender of my own son, that in a sort of way, that i would belittle him, that he would somehow be less capable of some things than my daughter. (social worker, 18) these research results on the significance of everyday-life parenting experiences support those of earlier studies showing that professionals’ encounters with their clients are informed by their own cultural knowledge, perceptions, and experiences of family and parenthood (e.g., sjølie et al., 2013). this leads one to ask how far professionals allow their personal experiences to influence the way they structure clients’ life situations. for example, astor (2007), who has studied divorce mediators’ work, suggested that the neutrality is an impossible goal. she concluded that it is nevertheless important that professionals try to identify and understand the impact on their work of their own family background, values, personality, culture, and professional history (pp. 230– 236). respecting client diversity on the theme of positions taken, the family professionals (15/18) also countered the provocative claims that fathers are discriminated against and mothers favored in post-divorce agreement and dispute situations by referring to the great variety in clients’ life situations. the participants pointed to the diversity of clients, to the different ways of divorcing, and to the diversity of parents, children, and families: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 73 people divorce in so many ways, there are just as many ways [of] divorcing as there are families. (social worker, 4) divorces are so different, every divorce is individual. when you do this work, you are able to see divorce as an overall situation from the viewpoint of both parents. (social worker, 3) these stances and their justifications were based on respecting the diversity of clients’ family life situations. respecting the diversity of gender was explicitly mentioned in some participants’ (6/18) accounts: because one sees here so large a spectrum of men and women, that one meets people who are on the surface very calm and for whom it’s very hard to see that some very difficult process is going on and then there are both men and women who are totally broken. (psychologist, 11) the lack of attention given to gender in talking about client diversity is interesting, as gender is commonly understood as an element of diversity. it is possible that the professionals were evading referring to parental gender in their justifications for this claim. respecting clients’ life situations meant emphasizing the effects of divorce on parents and children. the family professionals justified their stances by saying that in divorce there are usually no winners, only losers. thus, both parents and their children often experience some kind of loss of the nuclear family ideal after divorce. parenthood in this context should not, therefore, be seen as a question of equality between mothers and fathers: so everyone loses, both the parents and the children, they definitely lose something in a divorce, and some of them will lose more and others less, but you can’t see it as a gender equality issue. (social worker, 14) the interviewees underlined, above all, the importance of recognizing the uniqueness of each child’s situation in divorce cases, and hence of taking differences between children into account. the best interests of the child is a broader issue than the relative ranking of the mother and father: and there are many other things linked to this, like the decision about who the child will live with, it’s not always based on which one is the better parent so to speak, but rather if you start out from thinking about this particular child and this particular family, which would be a wise solution so to say, then that will involve other things as well. so that both parents would continue to be present in the child’s life. (psychologist, 12) according to the above excerpt, the decision on a child’s living arrangements after divorce need not necessarily be based on an assessment of which parent is likely to provide the child with the best everyday life. this contradicts the argumentation based on professionalism discussed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 74 earlier, where the family professionals saw it as their responsibility to evaluate parents’ competence to act as the carers and raisers of their children. in the family professionals’ view, their professional work was based on respecting client diversity. they justified this by saying that, owing to the differences in clients’ family situations and the differences between divorce cases, they needed to treat each divorce situation as unique and seek tailored solutions or appropriate models to resolve divorce-related disputes. in contrast to previous studies that have concluded that social and health care systems do not adequately recognize the diversity of the divorce situations of parents and children (e.g., nielsen, 2017), the present results show that family professionals do consider client diversity important in their work. conclusion this study examined the stances taken by family professionals in response to common criticisms about how they deal with fathers in divorce cases. the study also tested the usefulness of the qualitative attitude approach in exploring the attitudes of family professionals. interviews in which participants were presented with provocative claims facilitated the generation of argumentative data, and the approach provided tools for its systematic analysis. the results show that the interviewed family professionals seemed mainly to avoid talking about parental gender in regard to their divorce-related work. they rejected the provocative statements asserting that there is discrimination against fathers in divorce proceedings and that gender has a role in divorce outcomes. instead, they emphasized the importance of treating both parents equally. the family professionals strove to position themselves as gender-neutral and as promoters of equality between mothers and fathers, thereby conforming to an ideal of a good professional. this could be interpreted as reflecting the shared parenting discourse in finland, which may in turn hide the inequality between mothers and fathers in everyday family life and hence also in family professionals’ work with parents (vuori, 2009).the criteria based on the family’s everyday division of labor and the parent–child care relationship before divorce that the family professionals reported using in assessing parenthood and the child’s best interests in divorce situations may reproduce gendered parenting and traditional gender roles. this result parallels earlier findings (e.g., solsona et al., 2020) suggesting that parents’ post-divorce family practices and child care responsibilities are affected by the gender roles that prevailed during their marriage. these results of my study support also previous findings on the complex interplay between the dominant cultural gender discourses and the dedication to egalitarianism of divorce professionals (bogoch & halperin-kaddari, 2006; vuori, 2009). in this study, the stances taken by the family professionals were hierarchical: the child’s best interests outweighed gender equality between parents. previous studies (e.g., crawford & bradley, 2016) have also indicated that the overriding aim of divorce professionals is to secure the wellbeing of children. however, the meaning of the child’s best interests remained rather nebulous in the reasoning of the present group of family professionals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 75 the family professionals’ responses to the provocative claims on the unequal position of fathers in divorce cases referred not only to professional factual knowledge and references to legislation and norms but also to the individual professional’s family background and personal experiences of parenting. these results are in line with previous research results showing that legislation and guidelines alone do not offer complete solutions to the complicated situations of divorcing parents and their children. in addition to education and professional expertise, tacit knowledge based on divorce professionals’ everyday life experiences and emotions is needed (cook & gregory, 2020; mattison, 2000; nouman et al., 2016; sjølie et al., 2013). the results obtained by combining a qualitative attitude approach with the argumentative interview technique to study family professionals’ responses to claims of bias in their decisionmaking on post-divorce fatherhood reveal both the method’s potential and its challenges as a tool for researching this and other topics. the approach revealed both the collective, shared nature of the attitudes of the various divorce professionals — social workers, psychologists, district court judges, and lawyers — included in this study and the variation in their stances and justifications. instead of focusing on the construction of professional boundaries and competition between experts in divorce cases (bogoch & halperin-kaddari, 2007), my research results highlight their shared attitudes as potential points of cooperation between different types of divorce professionals, which could be utilized to improve services and support for divorced parents and children. thus, the results of this study open up a new perspective on professional practices in the field of divorce. the method also revealed some attribution bias — manifested as victim blaming — where fathers themselves were in part held accountable for the prevalence of the gendered post-divorce situation in which children live mainly with their mothers. the participants’ stances citing clients’ attitudes and parental responsibility in deciding the post-divorce custody and living arrangements of their children may have the effect of favoring maternal custody. although fatherhood is supported by legislation and social politics, and despite the professional interest and concern shown towards fathers during the last few decades, especially in the nordic countries (vuori, 2009, pp. 48–50), my results suggest that the continuity of the father–child relationship after divorce is not automatic but rather remains a contested issue that must be negotiated and argued for (andreasson & johansson, 2019). limitations of the qualitative attitude approach emerged during this study. it is hard to know to what extent the interviews captured family professionals’ true attitudes on post-divorce fatherhood and to what extent they were instead giving “politically correct” answers to the provocative interview questions. people are also aware of social perceptions and the role of attitudes in constructing their impressions of themselves (billig, 1987/1996; vesala, 2005); for example, this is often the case when interviewing professionals (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 42–51). this may explain why the interviews in my study produced attitudes that were related to the participants’ roles as representatives of their professions, as well as the way in which the attitudes were constructed in social interaction and argumentative communication. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 56–81 76 it must also be borne in mind that speech as such does not necessarily convey objective information about the reality outside it (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, pp. 38–49). we cannot know how the family professionals actually encountered divorced fathers in their work. it may also be asked to what extent the family professionals’ attitudes and positions taken were typically finnish phenomena and thus culturally and locally constructed. however, in accordance with the principles of the qualitative attitude approach, argumentation was examined as an example of the phenomenon being studied (vesala & rantanen, 2007b, p. 14). my results confirm the idea that, as part of human communication and interaction, attitudes and positions are essentially constructed as phenomena that are manifested in argumentation (billig, 1987/1996). the fact that the interviewees reported that men do not generally understand their importance as fathers and may only become aware of this in the event of divorce indicates a need for further research on men’s experiences of their roles and identities as fathers at different phases of the family life course. research on support and services targeted to men and fathers facing various life crises is also called for. the importance of supporting fatherhood via family policies and services is essentially a matter of gender equality in the sense that not only men themselves but also mothers and children would benefit from more father involvement in everyday family life. my research results showing the existence of shared understandings and attitudes between different types of divorce professionals indicate the potential for cooperation between them aimed at improving services and support for divorced parents and their children. this finding supports the view of some scholars (e.g., saini et al., 2012) that collaboration between family professionals is essential for effectively assisting families throughout the divorce process. shared resources and expertise may strengthen multiprofessional cooperation and prevent interprofessional competition and entrenching of professional boundaries, which can lead to inconsistency in services for divorced parents and their children. high-conflict divorce cases, prolonged custody disputes, intimate partner violence, and parental alienation are experienced by family professionals as especially burdensome and resource-demanding in their divorce-related work (e.g., nielsen, 2017; 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(2009). men’s choices and masculine duties: fathers in expert discussions. men and masculinities, 12(1), 45–72. doi:10.1177/1097184x07306720 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 quality of life in pediatric cancer survivors: a new contribution including the goal concept fabienne lemétayer, jean-baptiste lanfranchi, and pascal chastagner abstract: the present study focuses on quality of life in children survivors of cancer through the filter of self-regulation by goals. in this respect, the model of dupuis and its operationalization by missotten through the child quality of life systemic inventory (qlsi-c©) makes it possible to identify the regulation processes (state, goal, speed, rank), in order to distinguish between children survivors of cancer and their healthy peers, as well as identifying the impact of these processes on anxiety and depression symptoms. fifty children survivors of cancer, aged 8 to 12 years, answered three questionnaires: the qlsi-c©, the state-trait anxiety inventory – child (staic), and the child depression inventory (cdi). their responses were compared with those obtained from 50 healthy children of the same age. partial least squares discriminant analysis (pls-da) was used to show that the process that best differentiated the two groups pointed to a regulation through goals and priorities. results revealed too that these processes were particularly apparent in 8 of the 20 life domains examined. moreover, of the four processes, state is the best predictor of depressive symptoms. children survivors of cancer do not view their lives and plans in the same manner as their healthy peers. however, their different strategies of regulating goals and priorities do not result in more depressive symptoms than in their healthy peers. the question of whether more demanding goals and priorities are necessarily a source of well-being remains to be determined. keywords: quality of life, goals, childhood, cancer survivors, pls-da acknowledgment: we sincerely thank the ligue nationale contre le cancer [french national league against cancer] for its financial support. fabienne lemétayer (the corresponding author) is a professor in the apemac [epsam] research unit, laboratory ea 4360, university of lorraine, île du saulcy bp 30309 57006 metz, cedex 1, france. e-mail: fabienne.lemetayer@univ-lorraine.fr jean-baptiste lanfranchi is an associate professor in the apemac [epsam] research unit at the university of lorraine, metz, france. e-mail: lanfranchi@univ-metz.fr pascal chastagner is a professor in the pediatric oncology department at the nancy university hospital hôpital de brabois, rue du morvan, 54511 vandoeuvre-lès-nancy cedex, france. e-mail: p.chastagner@chu-nancy.fr mailto:fabienne.lemetayer@univ-lorraine.fr mailto:lanfranchi@univ-metz.fr mailto:p.chastagner@chu-nancy.fr international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 710 this study examines the quality of life of school-age children survivors of cancer with a new assessment tool, the child quality of life systemic inventory (qlsi-c) (missotten, etienne, & dupuis, 2007). the major purpose of the study is to identify the processes and life domains in qlsi-c that are most likely to differentiate children survivors of cancer from healthy children, and to reveal the impact of these processes on anxiety and depression symptoms. although there are various forms and degrees of severity, cancers during the pediatric period invariably have repercussions on the personal lives of the children. in addition to diverse alterations of the state of health, they interfere with daily life activities such as attending school, and can impact the children’s growth and development. pediatric cancers also affect the family and social lives of those afflicted, due to the progressive nature of these cancers and because they can be particularly debilitating. each year, about 1,500 children in france, that is, one out of 700 from birth to age 15, are afflicted with cancer, whether it be a hematological malignancy like leukemia, which accounts for about 30% of cancers in children, (guyot-goubin & clavel, 2009) or a solid tumour, like a brain or bone tumour, which account for a further 20% (désandes & lacour, 2009). to this day, cancers during childhood remain of great concern. however, advances in medical treatments, surgery, and bone marrow transplants often enable pediatric oncologists to delay or divert a fatal outcome and, in many cases, even bring about remission (recovery) (sommelet, 2009). over the past three decades, the odds of recovery have been steadily rising, improving the prospects of up to 80% of childhood patients. however, pediatric cancer treatments are not mere routine. they remain painful and protracted (4 to 8 months), and usually involve uncomfortable or invasive procedures such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and cell grafts. these treatments have manifold undesirable side effects: fatigue, hair loss, nausea and/or vomiting, fragility of the skin and digestive tract, susceptibility to infection, obesity (from cortisone use), and painful episodes regularly requiring the prescription of prophylactic drugs (pain medications, transfusions, antiemetics, antibiotics, etc.). children and families may receive psychological counselling if there is non-adherence to treatment or difficulty in coping with the disease. some side effects are reversible upon discontinuation of treatment, but in some cases long term quality of life may be seriously impaired. chemotherapy can be responsible for physical after-effects including hearing, endocrine (e.g. stunting), and dental damage (oberfield & sklar, 2002) while radiation therapy can result in cognitive impairments (moore, 2005; sommelet, 2009). surgical mutilations such as amputations are rare, but when they occur, they significantly affect not only movement but also body image. and yet, children survivors of cancer endeavour to return to the life they had before they became ill. most of the time, the key step is going back to school, the place where they live their daily lives, have their friends, and develop. returning to school is a symbol of their recovery and future, whereby afflicted children and especially those in remission regain their status as normal children like any other (lemétayer, 2007). how does the post-cancer period impact the quality of life of these children once they return to school? what processes and life domains might account for differences in quality of life? for around twenty years, research into measuring quality of life in pediatric cancer has continued to expand (klassen, strohm, maurice-stam, & grootenhuis, 2010). some tools international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 711 have been developed specifically to quantify the impact of cancer and cancer treatments on the daily lives of children in remission from cancer, based on answers provided by the children themselves; for example, the minneapolis–manchester quality of life instrument (mmql) (bhatia et al., 2004), the pediatric quality of life inventory (pedsql) (varni, burwinkle, katz, meeske, & dickinson, 2002), and the pediatric quality of life (pedqol) (calaminus, weinspach, teske, & göbel, 2000). it is difficult to summarize concisely the results obtained in the literature following childhood cancer, due to the different criteria used in the studies: the age of participants (who may range from small children to young adults), the cancer type studied (from a specific type of cancer to a set of cancers), the impact of the family, et cetera. thus, according to some accounts in the literature, quality of life after childhood cancer may be relatively satisfactory (eiser, vance, glaser, & galvin, 2003; löf, winiarski, giesecke, ljungman, & forinder, 2009; zebrack, yi, petersen, & ganz, 2008); in others it may be found to have deteriorated significantly, as in the study by langeveld, grootenhuis, voute, and de haan (2004) where 12% of children in remission from cancer presented post-traumatic stress disorder. conversely, the common feature of these metrics is that they operate with a notion of quality of life that prioritizes the measurement of the individual's current situation. this approach appears to have been suggested by the definition of quality of life proposed by who (1994): quality of life is defined as an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value system in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations and standards and concerns. it is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person's physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, and their relationship to salient features of their environment (in bowling, 2001). therefore, while each of the above instruments has relevance for assessing and measuring the quality of life of children survivors of cancer, they have a common shortcoming in that the goals of life are not addressed. because an individual's perception of his or her ability to achieve valued goals is likely to have an impact on his or her current quality of life, however, research with a different orientation is also required. for this reason, in this study we prioritize the definition of quality of life proposed by dupuis, which fully incorporates the concept of goals: “quality of life, at a given time, is a state that corresponds to the level attained by a person in the pursuit of hierarchically organized goals” (dupuis, perrault, lambany, kennedy, & david, 1989). the notion of goals, as understood here, refers to mental representations of a desired state (carver & scheier, 1990). this notion also includes affects and behaviours: “a cognitive image of an ideal stored in memory for comparison to an actual state; a representation of the future that influences the present; a desire (pleasure and satisfaction are expected from goal success); a source of motivation, an incentive to action” (cochran & tesser, 1996, in street, 2002). for about thirty years, the study of the importance of personal goals in the life of the individual has figured prominently in the literature. for example, goals have been described as powerful predictors of satisfaction with life (brunstein, schultheiss, & grässmann, 1998; emmons, 1996), self-esteem (crocker & park, 2004), emotional wellbeing and physical health (wrosch, scheier, miller, schulz, & carver, 2003b), and as an important factor in quality of life (wrosch, scheier, carver, & schulz, 2003a). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 712 in this study, the quality of life of children in remission from cancer will be assessed using a generic tool, and the results compared with the general population, focusing our analysis on the gap between the goals valued by the child and the assessment of the probability of reaching these goals. this perspective is located within the behavioral selfregulation model developed by carver and scheier (carver, 2004; carver & scheier, 1998; scheier & carver, 2003) according to which “progress towards a goal reflects the action of a feedback loop” (carver & scheier, 2009). this notion of the dynamic feedback process is itself largely inspired by cybernetics control theory, especially the “test operate test exit” (tote) model of miller, galanter, and pribram (1960). in the carver and scheier model, negative feedback means that the behaviour of the individual has led to a reduction in the gap between a state and a goal (moving nearer to the set goal), while positive feedback signals an increase in the gap between a state and a goal (distance or avoidance of a goal) (carver & scheier, 1998). however, the authors then add a second feedback loop to their model: evaluation of the speed of progress toward a goal, to measure the effects on the emergence of affects. indeed, carver and scheier claim that speed of progress toward a goal can be compared to a reference value (desired speed) and, depending on the progress, different emotional consequences would result. a speed of progress below the reference value would favour negative affect, characterized by such feelings as anger, frustration, and sadness. conversely, a progress speed higher than a reference value would create positive affect, with feelings such as enthusiasm and excitement (carver & scheier, 2009). we shall now discuss a final dimension borrowed from carver and scheier. this is management of priorities in terms of goals. this notion is considered by the authors to be an important indicator in assessing the difficulty that an individual has in disengaging from a valued goal that proves inaccessible. difficulty in disengaging from a prioritized goal without an alternative is likely to cause anxiety and depression affects (carver & scheier, 1981; champion & power, 1995; mcintosh, 1996). as with carver and scheier's behavioural self-regulation model, the quality-of-life measurement model proposed by dupuis incorporates goals theory; relevant concepts include the discrepancy between a state and a goal, notions of speed of progress towards the goal, and management of priorities as indicators of negative feelings. dupuis, taillefer, rivard, roberge, and st-jean (2001) aim to explain the reasons for the “ill-being” or the “well-being” of the individual who is genuinely engaged in achieving his or her life goals (cf. figure 1). for these authors, whether one is in a condition of ill-being or well-being depends primarily on the comparison between the current situation and the desired situation, the goal. thus, when there is no difference between the two situations (gap=0), the person tends to be satisfied with their quality of life. conversely, if there is a gap between the current situation and the goal (gap>0), two situations are possible: either a negative feedback loop or a positive feedback loop. when the feedback is negative, it means that the child's behaviours1 cause the child to feel that he or she is close to the objectives (reducing the gap) thus increasing satisfaction. however, when the feedback is positive, the child's behaviours are counter-productive and the child feels that he or she is moving away from the objectives, widening the gap, and leading to a deterioration in quality of life that is likely to produce frustration or anger or symptoms of depression. this type of loop indicates a deteriorated quality of life. 1 here, behaviour means both self-regulated behaviour (e.g., coping) and other-regulated behaviour (e.g., parental expectations). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 713 figure 1. theoretical model of qlsi‒c. dupuis, taillefer, rivard, roberge and st-jean (2001). aside from the influence of this perceived gap between the current state and the goal, the tensions or dissatisfactions endured also depend on the speed of achieving the goal and the importance of the goal for the individual. elicker et al. (2010) have shown that, for young adults, a low perceived speed toward achieving an academic goal is a source of dissatisfaction. in addition, the importance of the goal is likely to exacerbate the negative effect of the low perceived speed. according to the literature, the importance attributed to one goal or a few goals, as the only springboards to happiness and well-being, is likely to cause depressive symptoms if the person cannot envisage alternatives. the individual who has fewer important goals considered as sources of wellbeing is at more risk of obsessing about failure to either achieve these goals or to disengage from them (street, 2002; street et al., 2004). what is the current state of research in children survivors of cancer? to our knowledge, there has been no research on the simultaneous influence of the gap, the perceived speed, and the importance of goal in children survivors of cancer. yet, should we assume, as suggested in the model of dupuis et al. (2001), that a child will feel more tension if quickly reducing the gap between a state and a valued goal proves to be difficult? in this regard, the child quality of life systemic inventory (qlsi-c) (missotten et al., 2007) has proven to be a particularly interesting new instrument in that it allows the simultaneous measurement of multiple cognitive and emotional processes, as well as the assessment of contents linked to quality of life. qlsi-c is primarily intended for children from 8 to 12 years. it is a selfadministered, global, and subjective tool, and includes a generic module comprising 20 life domains (such as sleep, relations with mother, and school), with the possibility of adding a specific module for six domains related to the individual situation of the child. finally, a notable feature of this model lies in the possibility of taking into account the individual goals of the child. qlsi-c has the advantage of operationalizing the intensity of these processes through four different scores in 20 life domains: 1. the state score provides information on the current condition of the child. 2. the goal score provides information on the child’s expectations for each life domain. 3. the speed score indicates the speed in moving closer to or further away from the goal. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 714 4. the priority score depicts the degree of importance of the goals to be achieved. for dupuis et al. (2001), it is the combination of these measurements which, by means of the weighted gap (wg) score, provides information on the child’s quality of life. the wg score corresponds to the gap between state and goal by life domain, as weighted by the speed of improvement or deterioration of each domain and the priority of the domain. thus the wg score reflects a (state minus goal) deviation, moderated by speed and priority: wg = (state – goal) x speed x priority however, when it comes to highlighting possible psychic shifts, the question must be addressed as to whether wg alone should be relied on for differentiating between children survivors of cancer and healthy children of the same age. with this perspective in mind, our study’s first objective was to identify, among the six processes involved in qlsi-c, that is, state, goal, gap (state – goal), speed, priority, and wg ([state – goal] x speed x priority), those most suitable to discriminate between these two groups of children. our second objective was to identify the life domains that would enable these two groups of children to be distinguished. finally, among the factors discriminating the two groups, the aim was to identify the processes that are more predictive of anxiety and depressive symptoms. method participants the study sample comprised 100 children aged 8 to 12 years divided into two groups: • group 1: 50 children survivors of cancer, median age = 9.5 years; σ = 1.34; min. 8 – max. 12; 50% boys and 50% girls. the children in this group were recruited in the pediatric oncology department of the nancy university hospital (eastern france). • group 2: 50 healthy children, median age = 9.6 years; σ = 0.50; min. 9 – max. 10; 44 % boys and 56% girls. the children in this group were without any serious health or family problems. all children were enrolled in the mainstream school system in the lorraine region. most of the children (60%) were from homes whose head of household was a blue-collar worker or pink-collar worker while 29% of the children had at least one parent who was a white-collar or knowledge worker. for 5% of the children, the head of household was a craftsperson, tradesperson, or farmer. finally, 6% of responses did not indicate this criterion or could not be categorized. the two groups of children did not differ significantly in relation to the distribution of heads of household: blue/pink collar workers versus white/knowledge collar workers (n = 89; χ² (1) = 2.75, ns). the characteristics of the children survivors of cancer are listed in table 1. due to the small size of our sample, coupled with the heterogeneity of data such as past cancer, the type of treatment received, the aggressiveness of the disease, and the stage of cancer at diagnosis, it was not possible to select and incorporate these data into the quality of life measurement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 715 table 1 characteristics of the children survivors of cancer median min. max. age when diagnosed 4.6 years 4 months 9 years age at first interview 9.5 years 8 years 12 years treatment duration solid tumours (n=36) heamatologic malignancies (n=14) 6 months 3 years 0 months 3 months 1.2 years 3.3 years number of years since end of treatment 4 years 2 months 10 years relapses (n=3) (solid tumours) 23 months (after end of treatment for 1st cancer) 6 months 2.1 years all of the children in the study volunteered to participate with their parents’ approval (signed informed consent document) and responded to different questionnaires. the study also underwent an ethics review and received official approval from the comité de protection des personnes est iii [east iii person protection committee]. the research project was registered under the reference numbers no. 2009-a01379-48 – no. cpp 10.02.05. self-reported measurements separate measurements of quality of life, anxiety, and depression were made. the child quality of life systemic inventory (qlsi-c) (missotten et al., 2007) is used to measure quality of life in school-age children. the questionnaire consists of 20 life domains (see table 2). table 2 life domains of qlsi-c qlsi-c life domains 1. sleep 6. physical appearance 11. relations with siblings 16. sports activities 2. food 7. bedroom 12. relations with friends 17. extracurricular activities 3. pain 8. relations with grandparents 13. opinion people around me have about me 18. autonomy 4. health 9. relations with mother 14. school 19. obedience to authority 5. clothes 10. relations with father 15. school results 20. tolerance of frustration qlsi-c is used to assess the gap between the children’s current situation (step 1) and their personal goals (step 2) for the 20 life domains, each of which is rated in comparison to an ideal situation. the perceived requirement of the goals is then evaluated based on a dynamic of approaching or moving away from the goals (step 3). the deviation is then weighted based on the importance given to each life domain (step 4) (see table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 716 table 3 processes (involved in, targeted by) qlsi-c processes of the qlsi-c state information about the current situation of the child. score  current situation satisfactory [qol ]. goal information about the desired situation. score  high expectations [qol ]. speed (s) information on the speed of approaching or moving away from the goal. score  strong feeling of improvement [qol ]. priority (p) information on the importance level among life domains. score  weak importance of the domain. gap (g) distance to go to achieve a goal  (state – goal) score  short distance [qol ]. weighted gap (wg) mean distance between state and goal, weighted by speed and priorities  (state – goal) x s x p score  short weighted distance [qol ]. figure 2 is a summary of the various measurements performed. figure 2. different steps in qlsi‒c. in the circle, solid line = state and dotted arrow = goal the psychometric properties of the qlsi-c were satisfactory (α = .86 for state; .92 for goal; .71 for gap) (etienne, dupuis, spitz, lemétayer, & missotten, 2010).). the state-trait anxiety inventory for children (staic-state) (spielberger, edwards, lushene, montuori, & platzek, 1973) was used in its french translation (turgeon & chartrand, 2003). this scale assesses the transient anxious responses to specific situations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 717 (anxiety as trait or situation). it is designed for children aged 8 to 13 years. the children selfassess their condition by selecting the phrase that best describes how they have been feeling in the last few days. this “i feel…” scale includes 20 items, rated from 1 (neutral) to 3 (maximum intensity). the total score is obtained by summing the rating for each item, and may vary from 20 to 60. the higher the score, the higher the anxiety. the psychometric properties of the french version of staic were satisfactory (α = 0.88). the child depression inventory (cdi) (kovacs, 1985, 1992) was employed in its french translation (moor & mack, 1982 in bouvard, 2008). this tool is used to test for and assess the presence and intensity of depressive symptoms. it includes 27 items. each child is asked to choose one of three statements, corresponding to three levels of severity (0–neutral to 2–maximum intensity). according to kovacs (1985, 1992), this scale can be used with children aged 8 to 17 years. the psychometric properties of the french version of cdi were satisfactory (α = 0.70). the total score is obtained by summing the rating for each item, and can vary from 0 to 54. the higher the score, the greater the depressive condition. statistical methods a partial least squares discriminant analysis (pls-da) was carried out to identify those among the 120 variables measured in a qlsi-c test (20 domains x 6 processes) that were the most likely to distinguish between the two groups of children. pls-da is a highly appropriate method when there is a large number of correlated to highly correlated predictors (vif > 5), and when the number of predictive variables (x) is greater than the number of observations (pérez-enciso & tenenhaus, 2003). it is based on the same calculation principles as the univariate pls regression but with a dichotomous variable y (wold, sjöström, & eriksson, 2001). this analysis leads to a first grouping of x predictors within mutually orthogonal t factor components while simultaneously maximising the covariance with the y variable. consequently, when the goals of the analysis are the discrimination and the reduction of the number of dimensions, it seems preferable to use the pls regression rather than principal component analysis (barker & rayens, 2003). the study of the contribution of each x variable to the t components and the differentiation of y1 and y2 is carried out by calculating a variable importance in projection (vip) score. this score is used to ultimately reduce the number of predictors in a second analysis. herein, a vip > 1 rule was applied, which is commonly accepted in the literature for selecting the most adequate predictors (chong & jun, 2005). finally, the q² criterion, obtained by cross-validation, is a cut-off criterion for the number of t components necessary and sufficient to predict the y variable (tenenhaus, 1998). the q² criterion must be positive and increase by at least 0.05 to allow the addition of a new t component to the prediction equation of y. thus, in conjunction with r² which expresses the model’s goodness of fit or discriminant power, q² is a measurement of the predictive ability of the model. finally, once the y variable is regressed on this new set of t components, this relation can either be commented directly or one can calculate the number of regression coefficients for each initial x variable that constitute these t components. we chose the latter option for this study. the validation of the model was investigated in two ways. first, the correct and incorrect classification rates of the 100 participants were established using a confusion matrix. second, the r² and q² values obtained in our study were compared to those obtained by randomizing the inclusion of the 100 subjects into one of the two groups (drawing without replacement). hence, 200 ytest variables were collected and pls-da analyses were repeated for each variable. through this permutation test procedure, proposed by pérez-enciso and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 718 tenenhaus (2003) in their own studies, we wanted to establish whether it was possible to obtain in random manner r²test and q²test values superior to ours (r²obs and q²obs) and, especially, with what frequency. by considering that the distributions of r² and q² under the null hypothesis were approximated by the sets of r²test and q²test values, a model would be declared valid if the frequency was below the usual unilateral threshold of 2.5%. results the data collected from the staic and cdi questionnaires will first be examined, before presenting the pls-da results. all analyses were performed using the xlstat (addinsoft, 2011) software. anxio-depressive scores as indicated in table 4, the critical threshold for staic is a score above 30 (spielberger et al., 1973). the results show that 62% of children survivors of cancer described themselves as being significantly more subject to anxiety than their healthy counterparts, including 12% with an anxiety score above 40. table 4 anxiodepressive scores samples cancer survivors (n=50) healthy (n=50) m σ m σ test-t* staic mean score 32.6 4.5 30.5 4.6 p=.011 critical threshold> 30 (spielberger et al., 1973) score > 30 62% 44% cdi mean score 11.2 6.2 10.5 5.9 ns critical threshold ≥ 19 (kovacs, 1985, 1992) score ≥ 19 18% 10% *t-test (unilateral threshold; p < .025) for cdi, the critical threshold is a score above 19 (kovacs, 1985, 1992). results show that children survivors of cancer were more likely to present a depressive condition (18%), although the difference between the two groups of children did not reach significance. pls-da results a primary pls-da analysis conducted on the 120 variables led to the elimination of 71 variables with a vip < 1. in the second analysis, only one significant t1 component was extracted by cross-validation (q²obs = 0.282) taking into account the 34.5% (r²obs) variance in the dichotomous child group criterion (children survivors of cancer vs. healthy children). given that the second component t2 had a negative q²obs (-0.171), no other component was able to improve the capacity to predict which of the two groups a child belonged to. the purpose of table 5 is to examine the ability of the processes and domains to predict whether the subjects belonged to one of the two groups. of the 49 variables retained, 7 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 719 were related to the child’s state, 17 to goal, 2 to speed, 9 to priorities, 9 to gap, and 5 to weighted gap. the processes were expressed in 17 of the 20 domains examined, whereas the analysis failed to retain the mother, siblings, and friends domains. in table 5, the first two columns respectively refer to the standardized regression coefficients and the standard error obtained by the jackknife resampling method. the correlation between each predictor retained and the dichotomous variable (coded 1 for children survivors of cancer and 0 for healthy children) is provided in the third column by calculating the point-biserial correlation coefficient (pbcc). the fourth column indicates the relative contribution (rct) of each variable in differentiating the two groups as a percentage of r²obs by applying the following formula: rct = (β x pbcc / r2obs) x 100 thus, for variable b01 (goal_sleep), rct = (0.042 x 0.372 / 0.345) x 100 = 4.5%. this product measurement is one of the putative estimates of the importance of each predictor in this regression equation (nathans, oswald, & nimon, 2012). the sum of rcts being 100%, it also is used to calculate an rct for each process in the last column by aggregating the rcts of the predictors belonging to the same process. table 5 pls-da results variables β se β pbcc rct rct/processes g01 goal_sleep 0.042*** 0.006 0.372*** 4.5 56.9% g02 goal _food 0.042*** 0.010 0.373*** 4.5 g03 goal _pain 0.025*** 0.007 0.226** 1.6 g04 goal _health 0.036** 0.016 0.326*** 3.4 g05 goal _clothes 0.048*** 0.008 0.427*** 5.9 g06 goal _appearance 0.050*** 0.008 0.448*** 6.5 g07 goal _bedroom 0.023 0.022 0.206*** 1.4 g08 goal _grandparents 0.039*** 0.012 0.354*** 4.1 g09 goal _father 0.028*** 0.010 0.252*** 2.1 g10 goal _people/about me 0.036*** 0.012 0.321*** 3.3 g11 goal _school 0.025 0.017 0.220*** 1.6 g12 goal _school results 0.024** 0.010 0.214*** 1.5 g13 goal _sports 0.022** 0.010 0.193** 1.2 g14 goal _extra activities 0.028* 0.017 0.248*** 2.0 g15 – goal _autonomy 0.036* 0.007 0.323*** 3.4 g16 goal _obedience 0.037** 0.014 0.333*** 3.6 g17 goal _frustration 0.049*** 0.005 0.444*** 6.4 p01 – priority_sleep -0.029*** 0.011 -0.262*** 2.2 15.0% p02 priority _food -0.030*** 0.012 -0.271*** 2.4 p03 priority _health -0.029*** 0.010 -0.257*** 2.1 p04 priority _clothes -0.021 0.019 -0.186** 1.1 * p<.10. ** p<.05. *** p<.01. ga = gap (state minus goal) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 720 table 5 pls-da (continued) variables β se β pbcc rct rct/processes p05 priority _grandparents -0.031*** 0.007 -0.281*** 2.6 p06 priority _father -0.021** 0.011 -0.187** 1.1 p07 priority _school -0.027** 0.012 -0.244*** 1.9 p08 priority _school results -0.019** 0.009 -0.166 0.9 p09 priority _frustration -0.016 0.010 -0.145 0.7 ga01 gap_food -0.023 0.017 -0.209*** 1.4 12.9% ga02 gap _pain -0.022** 0.010 -0.201** 1.3 ga03 gap _clothes -0.028* 0.017 -0.250*** 2.0 ga04 gap _bedroom -0.030*** 0.010 -0.270*** 2.4 ga05 gap _siblings -0.022** 0.010 -0.193** 1.2 ga06 gap _sports -0.021 0.018 -0.189** 1.2 ga07 gap _extra activities -0.021* 0.011 -0.189** 1.2 ga08 gap _autonomy -0.021 0.019 -0.187** 1.1 ga09 gap _frustration -0.021** 0.010 -0.209*** 1.2 st01 state_appearance 0.021 0.018 0.193** 1.2 6.9% st02 state_father 0.024* 0.014 0.217** 1.5 st03 state_people/about me 0.015** 0.006 0.133 0.6 st04 state_school 0.021*** 0.007 0.185* 1.1 st05 state_school results 0.020*** 0.006 0.179* 1.0 st06 state_obedience 0.021** 0.010 0.192* 1.2 st07 state_frustration 0.010 0.010 0.088 0.2 wg01 – wg_pain -0.022** 0.010 -0.195* 1.2 5.7% wg02 wg_clothes -0.024* 0.014 -0.219** 1.5 wg03 wg_bedroom -0.018** 0.009 -0.165 0.9 wg04 wg_siblings -0.018*** 0.006 -0.161 0.8 wg05 wg_autonomy -0.022** 0.011 -0.196* 1.2 s01 speed_grandparents 0.015** 0.008 0.138 0.6 2.6% s02 speed_frustration 0.027* 0.014 0.246** 2.0 * p<.10. ** p<.05. *** p<.01. wg = weighted gap (state minus goal x s x r) based on the 49 variables retained, the processes that contributed the most to r2obs = 34.5% mostly referred to the goal, and to a lesser extent to priority and gap (state – goal). these results also show that children survivors of cancer had less demanding goals than healthy children (56.9% of r²obs), that they attached less importance to the life domains retained by their peers (15.0% of r²obs), and finally, that they perceived they had less distance to go to reach their goals than the healthy children group (12.9% of r²obs). the other variable types, namely state, weighted gap, and speed, yielded a far weaker contribution: between 6.9% and 2.6% of r²obs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 721 upon aggregation of the 49 variables as a function of the 17 available domains and after calculation of the rct for each of these domains, eight of the variables appeared to moderately contribute to the r2obs (see table 6). clothes, tolerance of frustration, food, physical appearance, relations with grandparents, sleep, autonomy, and health were the domains in which children survivors of cancer differed the most from healthy children. an r²obs contribution score below 5% was observed for the following domains: relations with father (4.7%), bedroom (4.6%), school (4.6%), pain (4.2%), obedience (4.2%), way friends talk about me (3.9%), school results (3.4%), extracurricular activities (3.1%), sports (2.4%), and relations with siblings (2%). table 6 domains contributing most to r² domains contribution in relation to r2 clothes 10.6% tolerance of frustration 10.4% food 8.3% appearance 7.7% grandparents 7.2% sleep 6.7% autonomy 5.7% health 5.6% others (10 domains) < 5% quality assessment of the pls-da table 7, by means of a confusion matrix, provides the results of the classification procedure obtained by applying the discriminant function on the entire population sample, upon which 81% of the children were correctly classified. this percentage was much higher than the percentage obtained “by chance alone”, that is, 50% with two groups having an equal number of subjects. table 7 confusion matrix pred. obs. cancer survivors healthy total % correct cancer survivors 37 13 50 74% healthy 06 44 50 88% total 43 57 100 81% however, it should be noted that the discriminant function was far more efficient in healthy children (88% correctly ranked children) than in children survivors of cancer (74% correctly ranked). the healthy children group was thus more homogeneous than the group of patient survivors of cancer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 722 finally, analysis of the results obtained by randomizing 200 ytest variables was used to attest that obtaining the r²obs and q²obs levels by chance was difficult to achieve in the present study. none of the 200 q²test were above the q²obs (with a frequency lower than 0.5%) and only one rtest in 200 was higher than the r²obs (frequency lower than 1%). table 8 provides a sample of the descriptive statistical data regarding these indicators. table 8 descriptive statistics of q²test and r²test q²test r²test no. of draws 200 200 minimum -0.399 0.070 maximum 0.120 0.353 1st quartile -0.181 0.121 median -0.097 0.160 3rd quartile -0.044 0.196 mean -0.116 0.164 std. deviation (n) 0.100 0.052 influence of the 49 variables used in the pls-da on depression (cdi) to see how the 49 variables selected in the pls-da were able to explain the anxiety and depression suffered by the children, two pls analyses were carried out. first, we regressed the staic score on these 49 qlsi-c variables and then reproduced the same analysis with the cdi score. it turned out that only the cdi score could be predicted by these variables due to a q²obs greater than 0 (q²obs = 0.394 with two t components selected and 21 variables at the end). indeed anxiety, measured through the staic, could not be effectively predicted from this same batch of variables (q²obs = -0.006). accordingly, we then only specified the results for the depressive symptoms. hence, following a first analysis with all 49 starting predictor variables, a second analysis was performed with the 21variables having a vip > 1. two extracted t components then enabled 55.5% (r²obs) of the variance in responses to the cdi to be taken into account. table 9 shows, in the same order as in table 5, the results of this pls regression. only the pbcc heading was replaced by pcc to denote pearson's correlation coefficient among the variables selected from the qlsi-c and the cdi score. these results suggest that the factors differentiating the groups of children are only partly the source of their depressive symptoms. indeed, it is no longer the goals that are first here but the states experienced by the children in six life areas (56.4% of r²obs): the more the child is dissatisfied with his or her current relationship with authority (st06), with school or with school grades (st04 & st05), in his or her reaction to the way others talk about him or her (st03), and his or her management of frustration (st07), the more he or she confirms depressive symptoms associated with states. this pattern persists, but less decisively, when considering differences relating to food (ga01), frustration (ga09), clothes (ga03), and sport (ga06) with a contribution of 18.4% to r²obs: the more the child perceives a significant gap in these fields, the more this tends to contribute to depression. finally, only three out of eight goal variables have a significant link with the cdi (6.4% of r²obs): the more the child has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 723 demanding goals2 regarding food (g02), health (g04), and appearance (g06), the more these can contribute to symptoms of depression. by contrast, undemanding goals related to school (g11 & g12), sport (g13), autonomy (g15), and even authority (g16) have the joint effect of accentuating depression complaints (11.0% of r²obs) but are not significantly related to depression. other variables such as the weighted deviation relative to the child's room (wg03), priorities in relation to grandparents (p05), and school results (p08) have an insignificant minor influence (7.8% of r²obs). table 9 pls regression of depression (cdi) on qlsi-c variables variables β se β pcc rct rct/processes g02 ‒ goal_food -0.148*** 0.036 -0.158 4.2 17.4 g04 ‒ goal_health -0.092** 0.043 -0.076 1.3 g06 ‒ goal_appearance -0.095*** 0.034 -0.095 0.9 g11 ‒ goal_school 0.029 0.066 0.239** 1.3 g12 ‒ goal_school results 0.064 0.050 0.284*** 3.3 g13 ‒ goal_sports 0.066 0.042 0.302*** 3.6 g15 – goal_autonomy 0.052 0.080 0.259*** 2.4 g16 ‒ goal_obedience 0.012 0.042 0.197* 0.4 p05 ‒ priority_gd‒parents -0.052 0.058 -0.220** 2.1 2.5 p08 ‒ priority_school results -0.013 0.058 -0.185* 0.4 ga01 ‒ gap_food 0.146*** 0.051 0.304*** 8.0 18.4 ga03 ‒ gap_clothes 0.064** 0.029 0.225** 2.6 ga06 ‒ gap_sports 0.071* 0.037 0.221** 2.8 ga09 ‒ gap_frustration 0.125*** 0.036 0.221** 5.0 st01 ‒ state_appearance 0.101 0.069 0.338*** 6.1 56.4 st03 ‒ state_people/about me 0.141*** 0.044 0.395*** 10.0 st04 ‒ state_school 0.108*** 0.022 0.394*** 7.7 st05 ‒ state_school results 0.144*** 0.017 0.438*** 11.4 st06 ‒ state_obedience 0.176*** 0.063 0.502*** 15.9 st07 ‒ state_frustration 0.108*** 0.032 0.270*** 5.3 wg03 ‒ wg_bedroom 0.124 0.091 0.240** 5.3 5.3 * p<.10. ** p<.05. *** p<.01. reminder: wg = weighted gap (state‒goal x s x r) 2 remember that the more demanding the goal, the lower the score of this variable (see table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 724 discussion the aim of the present study was to identify the processes and life domains of the child quality of life systemic inventory (qlsi-c) that best enabled the differentiation of children survivors of cancer from control healthy children, in order to assess the extent to which these differentiating factors are also involved in anxiety and depression symptoms in these groups of children. the results obtained yielded a number of key elements. first, qlsi-c was well able to differentiate the two groups of children as highlighted by the fact that children survivors of cancer and their healthy counterparts differed in 17 of the 20 life domains. second, the capacity for qlsi-c to differentiate between the two groups does not result, as first assumed, from the interaction of processes being assessed through weighted gap calculation [wg = (state – goal) x speed x priority]. according to dupuis et al. (2001), weighted gap is predominant in qlsi-c, since this is basically the interactive process for measuring quality of life. however, in the present instance, this interactive process was not the best differentiation indicator between the two study groups. third, our study highlights the fact that the processes that best discriminate between the two groups of children are first, the demands that the children place on the satisfactory achievement of their goals, and, less importantly, the priority given to these goals. in a nutshell, goals are involved in behaviour control in that they produce intentions to achieve the goals through personal effort (brandtstädter, 2009). however, when goals are set too high, or are perceived as unattainable, it remains possible to disengage oneself from them and to commit oneself instead to other goals that are more achievable or more important (carver & scheier, 1998; wrosch et al., 2003a; wrosch, miller, scheier & brun de pontet, 2007). at this stage, the role of goals can be two-fold. on the one hand, having goals appears to be a strong predictor of satisfaction in life (brunstein et al., 1998; emmons, 1996). nevertheless, unachievable goals can become a source of dissatisfaction (brandtstädter, 2009; brandtstädter & rothermund, 2002). in this study, children survivors of cancer differed from their age-matched peers by their less demanding goals (for an identical state). this means that, like their peers, these children are committed to pursuing goals, but that their goals are more within their reach and easier to achieve than those expressed by healthy children. in this way, children cancer survivors can seem even more flexible and resilient than healthy children. because there are fewer obstacles to achieving their goals, children survivors of cancer have less need to manage frustration than healthy children. the question remains, therefore, how can this tempering of goals be explained in children who are former cancer patients? to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies in the literature that have investigated the tempering of life goals during the pediatric period, let alone in children survivors of cancer. based on the data collected from studies on adults (wrosch et al., 2003a; wrosch et al., 2003b), we could assume that children survivors of cancer would perceive undemanding life goals as more secure and predictable, more conducive to maintaining emotional balance. additionally, these more realistic goals would also allow an easier mobilization of control, endurance, and planning processes, which may lead to greater overall achievement than if more demanding goals were adopted. finally, this study shows that qlsi-c can also be used to differentiate the two groups of children based on life domains. of the twenty life domains assessed in the qlsi-c, eight domains differentiated the two groups, especially for the processes of goals, priorities, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 725 gaps:. clothes, tolerance of frustration, food, physical appearance, relations with grandparents, sleep, autonomy, and health. as shown herein, practitioners supporting childhood cancer survivors should increase their awareness of these eight life domains. qlsi-c data show that survivors of childhood cancer do not perceive their lives and life plans in the same manner as their healthy peers. however, is this better or worse? while our results do not explain the level of anxiety-state of the children, it seems, by contrast, that depressive symptoms are predominantly fed by the factor-state in which they see themselves in relation to their adjustment to the demands of the school environment in terms of work, discipline, and relationships with others. but this factor-state only determines a slight difference between the two groups of children (rct < 7%). accordingly, the experience of a serious disease does not entail a perception that one is worse through a more degraded state than healthy peers. here, regulation by goals, priorities, and gaps has less power to explain depression, probably because the state measurement is a proxy variable of the measurement of depression. what the results do show us, still in the study of differentiation between healthy children and children survivors of cancer, is that less demanding goals, among children survivors of cancer, are particularly effective in protecting against depression in the areas of food, appearance, and health but not necessarily in other areas. but everything also depends on the path taken between the current state and a demanding goal: too big a gap remains a source of suffering (higgins, bond, klein, & strauman, 1986). these results indicate that children who have had a serious illness should be regarded as regulating their goals differently from ordinary children, without these strategies necessarily making them more vulnerable to depression. however, the influence of these factors on the development of well-being, especially the process of goals and goal priorities, still needs to be researched, particularly insofar as they relate to positive psychology measurements (self-esteem, vitality, and general life satisfaction) to see if the various strategies of children who have had to live with a chronic disease are really triggers for the development of well-being. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 709–729 726 references addinsoft. 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(the voyager project, toronto) abstract: this paper explores the concept of belonging as it relates to the transitional experience of young people attempting to realize their educational aspirations. the voyager project is a social innovation program that sees peers who grew up in government care reach out to and mentor other young people in and from care, with the objective of encouraging them to pursue their educational aspirations. a theoretical examination of the concept of belonging and affiliation are woven together with reflections by the program participants on their experiential knowledge. implications for emancipatory practice methods are explored. keywords: youth engagement, emancipatory practice, belonging, stigma, shame, oppression, social capital, voice kim snow, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, m5k 2p6. e-mail: ksnow@ryerson.ca s. h., k. s., k. j., d. o. a., and m. p. are members of the voyager project. mailto:ksnow@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 382 crown wards are canadian children deemed by the courts to be in need of protection and ordered to be made permanent wards of the state. worldwide concern has been noted about the well-being of many young people as they transition from care services, and studies have consistently documented that many former crown wards experience adult outcomes that are poorer than their community peers (cashmore, paxman, & townsend, 2007; courtney, piliavan, grogan-kayor, & nesmith, 2001). the voyager project is a social innovation strategy that engages current and former crown wards in both systemic and individual advocacy, with the hope of increasing access to post-secondary training and education. the project is based “on a youth-to-youth model that used targeted supports, engagement measures, research activities and an advocacy agenda to improve educational outcomes” (snow, 2013, p. 20). this paper is written in collaboration with five members of the voyager project. these four male and one female co-authors volunteered to explore the topic on behalf of the larger group, and all were interested in publishing their ideas to help practitioners and funding agencies have a better understanding of the need for young people to have a place or places of belonging. it was agreed that the first author, a professor and the voyager project director, would write about what is known about the concept of belonging, and that all would record their individual thoughts, which would then be dealt with in this theoretical discussion. we held several group discussions about the concept of belonging and during the same period the co-authors were also engaged in developing a multi-media treatment that explored the concept. each submission was edited simply for clarity by the first author, and the co-authors reviewed these edits and the context in which the submission was contained in the order of arguments, to ensure that their thoughts were well understood and that the edits didn't misrepresent their points. the co-authors’ comments appear in block quotations or with quotation marks but are not otherwise cited. recognizing the presumptive stigma that has potential impact on the co-authors, the decision was made to not attribute specific statements to their individual authors and to indicate the names of the co-authors by use of initials. it is hoped this will allow the co-authors the choice to claim their authorship of this published article or not, depending on their needs and interests. the first author places the discussion and the co-authors’ contributions within the context of the theoretical literature in order to bring to light the practice imperative of belonging. by considering the group discussions and carefully examining the co-authors’ submissions for linguistic markers, points of emphasis, and common arguments, the article weaves together youth-expert voices with the empirical literature about belonging. the intent of this discussion is to speak to the fundamental need to belong by using theory to reflect on the writing of young people with experiential knowledge about belonging within the context of crown wardship status. belonging the concept of belonging has been discussed throughout the ages, yet – perhaps not surprisingly – a consistent definition of the concept has been elusive (miller, 2006). common international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 383 elements of attempts to give conceptual definition include a sense of ease, a sense of being not the other, and a place within which one has achieved a sense of mastery of the routines (may, 2011). belonging is associated with survival and as a universal “longing” associated with human attachment (bowlby, 1969; bronfenbrenner, 1979). maslow (1943) placed belonging third in his hierarchy of needs, indicating that it emerges only after the realization of more basic needs. identity formation is associated with belonging (charles cooley, sigmund freud, and william james). social bonds are also inseparable from belonging (scheff, 1990). there is a long history of belonging being seen as a person-centred concept connecting the individual to the social (blumer, 1969; mead, 1934). symbolic interaction theory conceptualizes the sense of self as constituted in relation to others. it is through interactions with others that we learn the codes of behaviour needed to gain the insider knowledge necessary to master the unwritten rules and routines of a social network. bourdieu’s (1977) theory of habitus situates belonging within the structural norms and forms of capital accrued through knowing the language, rules, routines, and rituals of social networks. one is advantaged through the social capital afforded to one who belongs. theoretical explorations of not-belonging or what some term unbelonging (see, for example, christensen, 2009) have also been associated with alienation (marx, 1844/1932), “othering” (riggins, 1997), and stigmatizing identity pegs (goffman, 1963). such conceptual complexity may be why some of the co-authors struggled at first to describe what it means to belong. our group discussions left a sense that belonging becomes most apparent in its absence. one co-author expresses this sense of not belonging by contrasting the experience of belonging in sports teams with the feeling of not belonging in a foster placement: personally, without sports, as a child i was convinced that i did not belong. on my sports teams, there was something about wearing the same jerseys, training together and the desire to win as a collective that felt like home. my home did not reflect where i played with my teammates as it was quite filled with procedures. my home was a foster home that had everything a normal home had; yet, it was just not the same. maybe i felt this because it was the third home in as many months. studies have identified the stigmatizing impact of being a recipient of social institutions in general and being in foster or group care specifically (goffman, 1961; samuels & pryce, 2008; snow, 2008). sociologist erving goffman outlined the symbolic interactional impacts on behaviour and identity formation that are a function of the presumptive identity peg of the stigmatized other. an identity peg is a presumed identity that is assigned to an individual based on role or association (goffman, 1963). riggins (1997) explained the process of “othering” as an outcome of dichotomizing an ideal that results in the stigmatized other, a process that leads to marginalization. several of the co-authors commented on their experiences of having had the identity peg of a “foster kid” (goffman, 1963). one co-author wrote about the experience in school and observing the reactions of others when learning that he was in foster care: mention in a class full of young people that you're a “foster kid” (you can't use the word crown ward because people haven't become accustomed to the proper terminology) and the whole class freaks out like it is something you can catch. teachers offering you international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 384 special treatment or harsher punishments depending on their mindset; then comes the guidance counselling and the rules around friends coming over and things. ha! talk about the exact opposite of belonging. it is noted that there is a presumptive identity peg associated with being in care. zygmunt bauman is a distinguished professor and sociologist who has written extensive social commentary on our postmodern society and the structural mechanisms of social exclusion. in an exploration of identity, he discussed the enforced identities of the stigmatized. he notes that it is “a universally resented and feared predicament” to have a presumptive identity (bauman, 2004, p. 39). this stigmatizing identity peg is omnipresent and one has to anticipate the emotional impacts of its detection. another co-author noted that being in foster care impacted on feelings of not belonging and commented on needing to decide if disclosure was appropriate in interpersonal interactions: i feel sometimes that i do not belong with some of my friends as i choose not to disclose my background and situations that i have been through that differentiates my experiences from theirs. i feel as if i will be judged negatively or that i am somehow lacking something in my life. it would feel even worse should they somehow feel sorry for me. the same co-author goes on to contrast this with the powerful feelings of being freed of the identity peg through commonality and finding a sense of belonging in the voyager project where everyone was, or had been, a crown ward: i feel it is something that i keep as a secret, being a former youth in care because it is very different from the “usual” person's background. it is a powerful thing knowing that you can be comfortable in who you are in a space and having the freedom from being judged by experiences that have forever changed you and in which you had no control. i feel a sense of family and acceptance and openness that i do not feel i have in other spaces. belonging is an essential need the co-authors convey in their writing that it is a powerful experience to feel that you belong, and several assert that it is a universal need that helps people thrive. the language in their writing makes liberal use of words that evoke emotion and lexical markers that convey an authoritative argument that belonging is essential to growth. affinity and affiliation. the co-author who earlier described his observations of schoolmates learning he was a foster child makes a clear argument that young people in care have an essential need to belong. his arguments are supported by a comprehensive review of the published findings of personality and social psychological research related to belonging, which found support for the hypothesis that it is an essential human need (baumeister & leary, 1995). this co-author argues that the government, as the parent, needs to fund programs to help crown wards meet this basic need: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 385 belonging is the unconditional sense of acceptance. for many crown wards being accepted means more to them than other ideals. programming where crown wards are allowed to be open with other crown wards can provide a safe space that is a key for the acceptance piece. in my opinion, any type of crown ward programming, no matter what the attendance, should be funded. as people we need human connection. to some, these programs are the hub for that human connection because we are or were a ward of the crown and together we are, in a sense, one big family. growing up as a crown ward in a rural town with limited programming, i can appreciate the programs that do exist. now living in toronto and attending meetings with the voyagers office, i finally have a chance to experience honest human connections where being a crown ward is the norm. the program allows me to express my feelings around situations and allows me to be open, to share my experience in the system without any fear of being judged. the expression markers of evidentiality refers to lexical and/or grammatical devices used to convey attitudes of degrees of certainty towards knowledge (chafe, 1970). the use of first person pronouns conveys a message of certainty and authority (coulmas, 2003). the use of evidential verbs expressing power and confidence is clear in the writing (for example: “i finally have...”; “i spent most of...”; “i was one of...”; “it is a...”; and, “i feel i...”). each of the coauthors wrote with evidentiary markers and wrote comments replete with emotional phraseology when describing the profound nature of the experience of belonging. parts of the comments are repeated here for illustration of the use of syntax markers such as first person pronouns and emotional phrasing to assert a passionately held belief in a statement: • “i finally have a chance to experience honest human connection.” • “personally, without sports, as a child i was convinced that i did not belong.” • “i was one of the founding members.... i feel deeply attached to this program.” • “i feel a sense of family and acceptance and openness that i do not feel i have in other spaces.” • “i feel i belong because i feel free to be myself.” the descriptions of finding a place of belonging make use of powerful phrasing and word choices representing freedom (free, acceptance, openness), a sense of place (one of the founding members...; i belong[ed]...; honest human connection...), and something longed for and worth protecting (openness that i do not feel i have in other spaces...; without sports...i did not [feel i] belong[ed]; i finally have a chance...). they are stated with a high degree of certainty. the impacts of affiliation are profound, with associated intra-psychic, social, and structural consequences. through belonging, individuals find a sense of self within the collective and this provides a platform for individual and collective agency. belonging is motivational. in an often-cited study of classroom belonging, goodenow (1993) found an association between belonging and school achievement. the findings are confirmed in a study by hamm and faircloth (2005) that determined peer groups have an impact on belonging and school achievement. the co-authors also point to motivation gained from belonging to a space that fostered interactions with others in similar situations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 386 the next co-author expresses the powerful feelings evoked and the confidence gained through acceptance. belonging facilitated learning, evoked positive feelings, and engendered a sense of citizenship: belonging is also the factor in life that helps you move forward. no matter what the group you belong to, it makes people feel good about themselves. i feel that i belong to the voyager because i feel free to be myself and i like talking and learning about the issues of the day and how to balance my money. i learn how to be a good positive member of society. the following co-author explains that belonging is something that inspires hopes and dreams. it prompts him to want to be involved and inspires him to improve his life: in voyagers, just being around makes you want to improve your life and do better because everyone is in that same mindset so progress is inevitable, and because you're surrounded by people with hopes and aspirations, you get to see their dreams and then you want to become successful too. when you're in a group full of so much positivity, you want to be involved and you want to surround yourself with these types of people because they honestly make you feel better about yourself and that makes you want to do something for yourself. in voyager, you don’t need to be afraid because of your colour or sex or creed, all you need is to want to better yourself and help others to do so too. this is a movement i'll belong to for a mighty long time. the co-author who earlier spoke of people presuming their identity speaks to the growth that is enabled in a place of belonging. from this shared identity, strength was gained that emboldened them to strive for their aspirations: seeing other youth in care work so hard to improve themselves motivates me to do the same. being a voyager is a very important part of my life because as i grow within myself, i can also be there for someone that has been through a difficult experience or is currently going through experiences. this gives me confidence to continue to work hard knowing that i am not the only one that is striving to become a better person. thus belonging is both fundamental to being human and it is also essential for enabling agency. through a sense of belonging, identities are formed, confidence is bolstered, and individuals gain footing from which to launch into new network connections. discussion the practice imperative of belonging fostering a sense of belonging within children’s service communities is theoretically informed practice that builds on best practices in attachment-focused developmental child and youth care. as the co-authors argue and the theoretical literature supports, belonging is a fundamental human need. caring organizations need to actively consider the ways in which the organization meets children’s basic need to belong. in particular, we must understand the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 387 specific need for belonging for those children and youth who are permanent wards of the state (united nations, 1989). belonging as social capital. the concept of social capital originates in the work of pierre bourdieu (1977/2012) in france and james coleman (1988) in the united states. social capital refers to the knowledge, language, association, affiliation, and cultural and other assets that produce instrumental, functional, and expressive benefits to individuals and groups. individuals and groups are advantaged through social capital by means of mechanisms such as insider language, social networking, and cultural competence. social network theory helps us understand that individual identities and social and economic indicators are strengthened by the ability to gain insider status within a range of social networks (granovetter, 1983). insider knowledge and competence is a form of social capital (piselli, 2007). building strong social networks for crown wards ideally occurs in the context of foster, kin, and advocate relations. however, when young people transition from government care, unlike their community peers, the transition is determined by age-based regulation rather than developmental maturity (provincial advocate for children and youth, 2012). when natural networks are disrupted, are non-functional or inaccessible to the young person, then social network development is needed to assist young people in their transitions from care and to help them build social capital. belonging and marginalization. for members of the voyager project, the intersectionality of social divisions such as gender, class, and ethnicity is enmeshed with the identity peg of being a foster kid (crenshaw, 1989; snow, 2008; yuval-davis, 2007). this stigmatized identity peg causes a presumptive identity, which in turn shapes interpersonal interactions and impacts on identity formation. young people growing up in care need opportunities to shed the apprehension of having one’s identity peg discovered through opportunities for pro-social peer interactions with affiliate incare groups. with such groups, young people can build confidence and gain skills that will enable them to cross social networks. by actively promoting peer-centred places of belonging as transitional supports for young people leaving care, the care system encourages former crown wards in acquiring social capital and provides reinforcements for forming new connections across a range of social networks (snow & mann-feder, 2013). conclusion this paper joins a chorus of calls to reorient transitional services for youth leaving care away from preparing for independence and towards promoting interdependence and interconnection as indicators of a successful transition into emerging adulthood (propp, ortega, & newheart, 2003; samuels & pryce, 2008; snow, 2013; snow & mann-feder, 2013). through belonging, individual and collective agency is fostered and social capital is developed. as such, belonging is a key enabler of emancipatory approaches to youth engagement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 381–390 388 references bauman, z. 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(2007). intersectionality, citizenship and contemporary politics of belonging. critical review of international social and political philosophy, 10(4), 561–574. reviewing the evidence on educational inclusion of students with disabilities differentiating ideology from evidence” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 358 reviewing the evidence on educational inclusion of students with disabilities: differentiating ideology from evidence arthur limbach-reich abstract: this article draws on a review of literature on inclusion taking into account the different origins of the concept and shedding light on standpoints from some nonenglish-speaking countries. the analysis shows a lack of coherence in defining inclusion. ethical principles and scientific considerations about inclusion are often mixed. finally it is often disregarded that, if the concept of inclusion is subsequently re-thought, this implies a crucial change in education policy. contrary to the expectations of the experts in inclusion, there is only little reference to empirical research that confirms the expected positive effects of inclusion. this article is based on an oral presentation given at the fice congress, “ways toward inclusion – a challenge for all of us!”, held at berne, switzerland, october 8 to 12, 2013. keywords: education policy, evidence-based, heterogeneity, inclusion, integration arthur limbach-reich, ph.d., institute for research and innovation in social work, social pedagogy and social welfare (iriss), research unit inside, and associate professor in educational science and psychology at the university of luxembourg campus walferdange, route de diekirch bp 2, l-7220 walferdange. telephone (352) 46 66 44 9225. e-mail: arthur.limbach@uni.lu mailto:arthur.limbach@uni.lu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 359 the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd, 2006) led to inclusion becoming a highly debated topic of research and field of discussion all over the world, in particular in relation to the education of children and young people. the concept of inclusion gave rise to the hope that exclusion would be overcome and everyone would be able to enjoy full participation in mainstream education and society. the objectives of inclusive education and education for all infuse modern education policy. considering the euphoric state of expectancy, it is important to look at the inherent tensions in the implementation of inclusion that emerge from elements of ambiguity: definitions of inclusion within the field of disability often lack semantic clarity and ignore prior scientific conceptualisations. embedding inclusion in a human rights approach based on empirical evidence may be misleading. the notion of inclusion is doomed to failure if it does not recognise necessary changes in educational and social systems. to achieve sustainable and successful inclusion, these tensions have to be analysed and adaptations found. it should be understood that this is not a pledge against inclusion, but rather a serious reminder to pay attention to the myths, pitfalls, and tensions involved in its implementation. the crpd states that, “states parties shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning” (crpd, 2006, p. 16). this raises the question of how to determine “inclusive” and what an “inclusive education system” actually is, or should be. inclusion: conceptual opacity some authors are concerned that inclusion is in danger of degenerating into an empty buzzword. the discourse about inclusion has taken an ominous turn, creating a myth of inclusion that does not enlighten but rather camouflages the reality of students with disabilities. the inflationary use of “inclusion”, the re-labelling of existing approaches as inclusive ones, and the devaluing of “integration” in favour of inclusion are more likely to be a result of popular trends than of substantial changes in scientific analysis or educational practice. inclusion seems to be a multifaceted term, or a buzzword with widely varying ideas and concepts behind it, remaining nebulous and vague (aefsky, 1995; ahrbeck, 2011; dunne, 2008; ebersold, 2009; feuser, 2013; gillig, 2006; hinz, 2002; lindsay, 2003; michailakis & reich, 2009; reiser, 2003; sander, 2002; sierk, 2013; weber, 2004; wocken, 2009). summarising the recent use of the term “inclusion”, doubts arise in relation to a clear and sound comprehension and common basis regarding its meanings (bernhard, 2012). etymology of the terms “inclusion” and “integration” to reduce opacity and achieve more clarity about the concepts, it is worth taking a look at the etymological roots of the basic terms. “integration” stems from the latin “integer”, meaning “untouched”, “unscathed”, and in a wider sense, “honest”. “integration” depicts a process, dealing with the recovery of intact, healthy conditions. the word “inclusion” can also be traced to latin: “includere” (includo) originally meant “being within”, but also “imprisonment”, or “to be incarcerated”. this is almost the opposite of its contemporary meaning. van der locht (2008) demonstrates the use of inclusion in this sense by noting that in the middle ages the term referred to people voluntarily shutting themselves away in abbeys and excluding themselves from the world. with reference to this historical fact, van der locht (2008) questions the positive meaning of inclusion today. in any event, both terms have now become an integral part of international discourse (markowetz, 2007; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 360 plaisance, 2010) and both are based on a historical and cultural meaning different from contemporary use. the neglected sociological viewpoints the starting point for the development of “inclusion” as a scientific term, however, lay in sociology. talcott parsons’ (1951) structural functionalist approach indicates that inclusion is a process inherent in modern societies. in reference to theoretical work by durkheim, marshall, pareto, weber, and others, he considers inclusion to be the dynamic developmental process of incorporating groups or individuals into a given social system. driven by an evolutionary tendency towards ever-improving adjustment and growth, social systems tend to include formerly marginalised individuals or groups, provided they have developed skills that contribute to the functioning of the system. “upgrading processes may require the inclusion in a status of full membership in the relevant general community system of previously excluded groups which have developed legitimate capacities to ‘contribute’ to the functioning of the system” (parsons, 1966, p. 22). here, inclusion refers to the historical assignment of basic civil rights to more and more sections of the population (“full citizenship for negro americans”, parsons, 1965), irrespective of race, gender, or ethnicity. within his model, parsons did not embrace the question of disability or handicap. herbert striebeck (2001, p. 85) concluded his analysis of disability within the approach of parsons: “it is evident that parsons faces a lot of problems in finding a place for disabled persons in his functionalist model. in particular, deviant behaviour is basically an unwanted incident. ... actually, disabled or deviant persons do not fulfil any function in sustaining the system.” (translation by the author). luhmann’s theory of society and inclusion in line with the sociological conceptualisation of inclusion, luhmann embraced a distinct theory of society and functional differentiation. following luhmann, contemporary societies are structured by functional subsystems that fulfil particular roles in society. recently, schirmer and michailakis (2013) have portrayed an exhaustive discussion of the luhmannian approach, so i will limit myself here to the core assumptions about inclusion. in luhmannian terminology, exclusion and inclusion are not normative concepts per se, with exclusion always bad and inclusion always good. a value judgement on inclusion or exclusion strongly depends on the functional subsystem and its performance role. being included in a functional subsystem such as the economy, education, law, science, etc., means being recognised as a communicative address, that is, a bearer of a role in this functional system. such systems have their own operative codes (payment versus no payment in the economy, grades versus no grades in education, lawful versus not lawful in justice, true versus false in science, etc.). subsystems follow their own particular routines regarding decision procedures on membership, based on specific behavioural expectations or capabilities. inclusion, according to luhmann, does not apply to the individual as a whole person. nobody is fully included as a person, but rather inclusion refers to those parts of his or her psychic system considered relevant to the system. following the luhmannian theory of inclusion, a student is included in the educational subsystem in regard to his or her academic capacity, learning behaviour, and progress in passing exams. to stay in (inclusion) or to drop out (exclusion) of the educational subsystem depends first and foremost on school-related performances seen as essential in maths, language, and other relevant subjects. disability (lack of academic capacity) may consequently lead to exclusion. exclusion from one system accompanies inclusion in another. being included in the functional subsystem of the economy implies being excluded from the educational system by passing compulsory school age. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 361 prisoners are included in the legal system (as a detainee) and excluded from the political system (on the electoral roll). exclusion from the mainstream educational system (regular schools) may result in inclusion in special educational needs schools. sociological versus educational viewpoints inclusion in the educational system does not determine participation in mainstream schools or in special educational units (see the broad sense of inclusion in the world health organisation’s world report on disability, 2011). moreover, inclusion in luhmann’s terms has no direct link to non-discrimination, equality, or full and equal enjoyment of all human rights. despite being included in the educational system, only those students with high grades (versus low grades) are given the opportunity to begin higher education. schirmer and michailakis (2013) conclude their consideration of the lumannian approach: “neither can one simply assume that exclusion is bad and inclusion good nor is exclusion per se the problem and inclusion the solution” (p. 17). most destructive to inclusion terminology in education is the societal function that emerges from luhmann’s system theory: the societal function of the educational system is to allocate and select students as human resources for further education and to provide highly employable persons for the labour market. inclusion may help some students with disabilities by offering them reasonable accommodation in the hope that they will then fulfil the needed performance indicators and achieve good grades. on the other hand, an inclusive educational system that merely recognises individual developmental reports and abolishes all grades and common educational standards is in danger of being downgraded, with subsequent institutions inventing new selection criteria or procedures according to their own interests and objectives. summarising the sociological understanding of inclusion, it becomes obvious that the conception according to parsons and luhmann is far removed from the notion of inclusion in education or inclusive education. disability is only mentioned briefly, but in general does not really matter. both parsons’ and luhmann’s approaches do not support the idea of educative inclusion or education for all in the sense of the pedagogical view of inclusion. apparently there is only little exchange of ideas between sociology and educational sciences (weber, 2009, p. 4; dammer, 2012, p. 365). the sociological perspective depicts inclusion as being dependent on societal factors, which are challenged by implementing inclusive education. “social inclusion” (2002) and “active inclusion” (2008) concepts developed by the european union in accordance with neo-liberal economic policy stress first and foremost the individual adaptations demanded within the labour market (euzeby, 2010). the individual has to be more “flexible” and “employable” in order to be included. the ultimate purpose of programmes on inclusion for disadvantaged or disabled persons is to turn them from tax user to tax payer. the eu strategy between 2010 and 2020 for people with disabilities highlights the elimination of legal and organisational barriers that exist for people with disabilities and proposes timely support and special screening for the early identification of special needs. but behind the proposed adaptations lies the expectation that afterwards the person with disabilities will be able to sell his or her capacity to work in the same way as a non-disabled worker. thus unfair conditions, enduring discrimination, persisting unemployment, and exclusion from the mainstream labour market will fall almost exclusively under the responsibility of the individual. inclusion enters education within recent international discourse, inclusion is understood solely in the sense of acceptance, participation, and integration. the issue of educational inclusion can first be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 362 identified in the work of comenius (1592-1670). in his didactica magna (great didactic), he demanded that everything should be taught in-depth to everyone (omnes omnia omnino). in contemporary language, his approach implies inclusive and integrative thoughts. zimpel (2008) demonstrates how this command became diluted over time, with “everyone” coming to mean “every normal or standard student”, “everything” becoming “socially useful matter” and “teaching” meaning any form of instructing or reinforcement. feuser (1999, 2002) returns to comenius’ postulate and relates it to the domain of disability, reformulating his approach to inclusive education: inclusive education is a framework of learning that attempts to teach everything to everyone and within which everyone is invited to learn supported by the help he or she needs. inclusive education educational definitions of inclusion can be traced back to the canadian context. stainback and stainback’s (1988) conception of an “inclusive school” is often cited: “an inclusive school is one that educates all students in the mainstream... every student is in regular education and regular classes... providing all students within the mainstream appropriate educational programs... any support and assistance they and/or their teachers may need.... an inclusive school is a place where everyone belongs, is accepted and supports and is supported by his or her peers and other members of the school community in the course of having his or her educational needs met” (stainback & stainback, 1990, p. 3). saloviita (2005) captured the three key principles of inclusion in a nutshell: the education of all students in mainstream, regular classes with appropriate educational programmes, and acceptance and support for everyone. initiated by the unesco conference 1990 in jomtien (thailand), inclusion became well known internationally and spread quickly following the salamanca statement (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation [unesco], 1994), which introduced the term “inclusion” in rethinking special needs education. the charter of luxembourg (1996) stated that inclusive education adapts to the needs of the individual. even within the salamanca framework for action on special needs education (unesco, 1994) there is no precise definition of inclusion, but several assertions are highlighted as guiding principles: “schools should accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions. this should include disabled and gifted children, street and working children, children from remote or nomadic populations, children from linguistic, ethnic or cultural minorities and children from other disadvantaged or marginalized areas or groups” (p. 6). pupils with special educational needs should have access to regular schools providing a child-centred pedagogy meeting their needs: “regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all; moreover, they provide an effective education to the majority of children and improve the efficiency and ultimately the cost-effectiveness of the entire education system” (unesco, 1994, p. ix). in contrast to the international acceptance and adoption of inclusive education, the concepts remain unclear. “however, in the same way that jomtien provided a broad framework with little guidance on implementation but failed to adequately spell out the mechanics of how to achieve education for all children, salamanca has led to a divergence of views and a lack of clarity on implementation” (miles & singal, 2010, p. 8). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 363 inclusion: the climax of a developmental process inclusion is frequently presented using intuitive pictures or figures, with coloured points highlighting the dynamic process of inclusion (kastl, 2012). originating in preliminary studies by bürli (1997) and sander (2004), inclusion emerges within a developmental process in the education of pupils and students with disabilities. starting with exclusion, children with disabilities are refused by the educational system. they are not covered by any educational system and they are not permitted to participate in compulsory education. separation is characterised by the fact that children with disabilities are now obliged to go to school but are placed in a separate or special system without links to mainstream education. integration permits pupils and students with disabilities to participate in mainstream education within the conditions and regulations of the regular school. they have to adapt more or less to the existing system. support and assistance should enable them to perform like non-disabled classmates. bürli defines inclusion as the unconditional participation of all children in the educational system, which has to be changed dramatically in order to be able to meet the needs of all children in one school for all (bürli, 2009, p. 28). an exemplary depiction of this phased model in the case of luxembourg was published by limbach-reich (2009a, 2009b). diagrams using symbolised disabled and non-disabled students to demonstrate the progression within the model are very popular. such diagrams can be found on the german wikipedia site and are replicated widely in scientific articles and popular presentations as “smarties diagrams” (kastl, 2010). the red points in the diagram represent non-disabled pupils while the blue, green, and yellow points stand for disabled pupils. exclusion could be seen as a situation in which some pupils have no access to the school system at all. separation stands for two different school systems (the mainstream and special needs systems). integration opens mainstream schools for pupils with disabilities, creating special units or classes. figure 1. inclusion smarties, (see kastl, 2010) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 364 following the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) standard, a school system is integrative if 40% of all children with disabilities participate in regular schools (ahrbeck, 2011; lindmeier, 2009). the oecd criteria for inclusion are fulfilled if 80% of disabled children go to regular schools. but one may well ask, what about the other 20%? the 80% definition denies the philosophy of inclusion that states: all pupils are different and all pupils are equal. inclusive education facilitates individual support for everybody and everybody is warmly welcome in the classroom (booth & ainscow, 2002; feuser, 2002; hinz, 2002; stainback & stainback, 1988, 1990). major doubts arise in the case of disability. some differences such as gender, colour of skin (race), or religion do not have the same degree of impact on school organisation or pedagogical programmes as intellectual disability or severe disorders; they do not need curricular modifications or reasonable adaptations and are not linked to the same undesirability as intellectual disability or behavioural and emotional disorders. kastl (2012) makes the criticism that the figurative illustrations (“inclusione theme con variazoni ‘smarties model’”) of inclusion seem to eliminate disabilities immediately by putting students together. the figures neglect impairments as a persistent condition and give false hope for the remediation of disability by inclusion. inclusion: a school for all building up an inclusive educational system and establishing inclusive schools requires schools to be organised and function in favour of inclusion. benchmarks of inclusion, which are frequently picked up and drawn on for implementation in education, have been published by booth and ainscow (2002). ainscow and césar (2006) focus on improving schools and developing inclusion based on experience with inclusion policy in the united kingdom. they enfold a typology of ways of thinking about inclusion. starting with the common assumption that inclusion is primarily about educating disabled students, they plead for a rejection of the special educational view of inclusion and the categorisation of disabled or not disabled, having special educational needs or not having such needs. in their view, all categorisation undermines inclusion by identifying groups eligible for special educational support outside mainstream classes. picking up the notions from the u.k. context, boban and hinz (2003) reject the so-called two groups theory (disabled and non-disabled students) and call for a diversity approach that perceives all differences as equal (see also prengel, 2001). developing the “school for all” and “education for all” refers to special schools existing in the u.k. and elsewhere, which select students by religion, gender, or disability, for instance. inclusion underpins a comprehensive school approach and encourages global efforts to enhance the participation of vulnerable groups in education. finally, the authors allude to inclusion as a value-driven, principled approach, afflicted by tensions arising from efforts to develop inclusive practices in schools (ainscow, booth, & dyson 2006). inclusion is often discussed with regard to learning disabilities, but less so against the background of severe disabilities or behavioural disorders. michailakis and reich (2009) emphasise the barriers and contradictions of the concept “one school for all”, considering severe cognitive, emotional, or behavioural disabilities in the context of the swedish school system. drawing on sociological system theory, organisational rationalities, and individual classroom interactions, they indicate several dilemmas that cannot be resolved. “the real problem with the idea behind – one school for all – is not that it is difficult to implement, but it contains a false promise” (michailakis & reich, 2009, p. 37). the false promises concern the expected cascade of inclusion, which is anticipated to follow the placement of children with disabilities in one school in one classroom. “one school for all and the vision of a cascade of inclusion are illusionary” (p. 41). being in the same classroom does not guarantee international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 365 being warmly accepted; the performance-related grade system impedes full inclusion, as students with disabilities are not included in the same way as their classmates without disabilities; and in the context of school organisation, inclusion requires more and more differentiation to provide the needed support, meaning that labelling processes persist. finally, as discussed above, the societal role of the education system forces schools to deliver grades. without a change to the importance attached to grades, the “one school for all” approach encourages more and more efforts to help students. experiences from the luxembourg context indicate that included pupils lose more and more leisure time to educational support or remedial education. they are at risk of being overburdened and overextended (ramponi, 2010). in spite of all efforts, some children with disabilities who have been included in regular primary schools drop out later on and restart in special educational schools, while not all children with disabilities who remain in regular primary education over the whole programme acquire the intended competences (limbach-reich, 2013; marx, 2009). inclusion in non-english-speaking areas the use of the term “inclusion” was relatively unknown in non-english-speaking europe until the 1990s. the official french and german versions of the crpd (2006) use “insertion” and “integration” respectively for “inclusion”. in france, the act on equity and the human rights of persons with disabilities (2005) did not mention the term “inclusion” (plaisance, belmont, vérillon, & schneider, 2007). ebersold reported in 2009 that the term “inclusion” has gradually come to replace the former french terms “insertion” and “intégration”. in germany, early attempts to open mainstream schools for children with disabilities came under the political banner of “integration” (deutscher bildungsrat, 1973, p. 15). the evaluation of an important programme on the inclusion of pupils with disabilities in mainstream primary schools in hamburg at the end of the 1980s continually used the term “integration” (wocken, antor, & hinz, 1988). in the german-speaking countries the first definitions in relation to pupils with disabilities in education indicated that “integrative pedagogy” was the “general education of all children, playing, learning and working together with a common aim in joint activities at their respective levels of development, in accordance with their current perceptual thinking, cognitive skills and competences within the zone of proximal development” (feuser, 1995, p. 168, translation by the author). this definition of the term “integration”, published by georg feuser, anticipates contemporary conceptualisations of inclusion. the essence of feuser’s conception is the need for adaptations and changes in the educational system. inclusion that does not acknowledge this awareness of integration is referred to by feuser as the “inclusion lie”; he calls the neglect of necessary changes to existing structures in school organisation and policy “inclusionism” (feuser, 2013). integration is not seen as a one-dimensional mission to make the student suitable for the school but as a multi-dimensional undertaking by the whole educational system to meet the needs of all students, even those with disabilities, in one classroom. other authors (e.g., hinz, 2002, 2011) assume that inclusion is a substantial advancement, resolving the problems integration could not fulfil. inclusion focuses on the termination of the two groups theory (disabled versus non-disabled pupils) and advocates the perspective that all are different and all are equal. all forms of separation or selection should be abolished. within the german-speaking scientific community, inclusion/integration terminology and its implications are a vibrant bone of contention (ahrbeck, 2012; biewer, 2001; boban & hinz, 2003; bonfranchi, 2011; eberwein, 1970; feuser, 2012, 2013, frühauf, 2011; hinz, 2002; jantzen, 2012; sander, 2002, 2006; wocken, 2009, 2010). wocken distinguishes ten different international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 366 relationships between integration and inclusion and finally pleads for a synonymous use and understanding of both terms, visible in the “inclusion/integration” notation (wocken, 2009). inclusion and disability definition inclusion and inclusive education as presented by the salamanca statement do not exclusively deal with disabilities, but refer to the whole spectrum of diversity. in contrast, inclusion research focuses on disabilities and disorders. in a similar way to inclusion terminology, it is worth taking a look at disability in the context of inclusion. in 1973 the american act on rehabilitation, which was a guiding principle for many national and international views on disability, defined a person with disability as “any person who: 1. has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities, 2. has a record of such an impairment, or 3. is regarded as having such an impairment. (as cited in palley, 2009, p. 42) the first who model of disability – international classification of impairments, disabilities and handicaps (icdih), 1998 – referred to the same linear biological-based perspective. terminological modifications and a new definition arise from the icdih ii or icf model (who, 2001), which explains disability as a complex situation depending on health conditions, functioning, activity, and participation in interactions with each other and with individual personal and environmental factors. the un-crpd (2006) fosters a new paradigm on disability without providing an explicit definition, referring to the so-called social model of disability. disability is seen as depending less on individual impairment than on environmental factors, including social situations that hinder the person from participating in all parts of society and enjoying their civil rights. despite the social view on disability, the model does not constructively define health conditions, disorders, or disability. according to the criticism of dsm-5 by allan frances (2013), the arbitrariness increasingly appears to define health conditions, psychosocial idiosyncrasy, or challenging behaviour as a disability. in line with both the social model and the inclusion perspective on disability, the icf model should show the following characteristics. figure 2. disability, icf, and constructivism international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 367 the triangles indicate that the more severe a health condition is, the more disability diagnoses agree. the less restrictive diagnostic procedures in dsm-5 and, more frequently, diagnosis undertaken as a response to intervention programmes implemented to foster inclusion have the tendency to identify (stigmatise) more and more children as “disabled”, that is, with such learning disabilities as dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysphasia, dyspraxia, sensory integration disorder, problems with motor co-ordination, non-verbal learning disorder, visual perceptual/visual motor deficit, central auditory processing disorder, dysgraphia (learning disabilities association of america, 2014). one of the consequences of these tendencies may be that more severe forms of disability move out of the spotlight of inclusion. with each diagnosis, the level of extra tuition, additional lessons, and special educational offers rises and concerns emerge that pupils will be overloaded and stressed by educational support. a radical resolution of this dilemma would be to stop all categorising or diagnosing in the classroom. slee (2004) argued that inclusive education grounded its original radical meaning in the rejection of medical and psychological explanations of educational difficulties. although this argument is reasonable, it is important to be aware of the impairments of the individual in order to better understand their difficulties and strengths, and to provide effective educational support. in relation to the view on disability, it is also important to clarify the conception and perception of a “normal pupil” in education. frameworks on inclusion rarely delineate their idea of pupils or students in inclusive schools. wevelsiep (2012) points to some blind spots in inclusive education when looking at the pupil or student. inclusive education draws on potential positive developments that could be realised within inclusive schools and assumes that all pupils with or without disabilities are eager to learn and willingly participate in all learning opportunities. they interact, accept, and warmly welcome each other irrespective of any diversity aspects. “everyone is felt to be welcome at this school” and “students help each other” are the first two items in the booth and ainscow (2002) index on inclusion. in contrast, empirical findings indicate that disabled pupils in inclusive settings may experience blaming and mobbing (michailakis & reich, 2009). inclusion: intermingling of approaches in addition to the fuzziness of the concepts “inclusion”, “regular school”, and “disability” there is a problematic rationale for inclusion in combining ethical requirements, human rights issues, cost-effectiveness, and empirical evidence. each of these pillars for inclusion should be examined thoroughly. regarding inclusion as a human right, suggested by both the salamanca statement (1994) and the crpd (2006), raises some questions. as farrell (2000) argued that the primordial right should be the right to have “good education”, how are human rights affected if the best fit is special education? the second question emerges from the right of parents to decide. if there is no alternative, what can be decided? if inclusive education is a human right, are all special schools (e.g., religious schools) a violation of this human right? if inclusion is a human right, what does that mean at the level of secondary and tertiary education for those students with intellectual disabilities? the right of inclusion for students with intellectual disabilities at universities remains hard to implement. the inherent logic of the educational system with performance-related graduation in modern western societies contradicts the right to be fully included for all students at all levels of education. the economic argument, that inclusion is more cost-effective, bears the risk of cutting individual support or remedial education programmes by transforming existing two-track systems into an inclusive system. conflicts in funding and assumption of costs are emerging (greiner, 2014). human rights and ethical positions in the implementation of inclusive education may be relegated to second place in times of financial crises and austerity policy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 368 the ethical dimension sets out the general obligation to open all schools for pupils with disabilities, justified by the assumption that regular schools with an inclusive orientation provide the desired outcomes (abolishing discrimination, providing qualitative education, social inclusion, etc.). what about the ethical rationale if the premises do not apply? the ethical dimension is also problematic as it postulates effective education for the majority of children. this raises the question: what about the minority? in particular, concerns have been expressed for children with severe intellectual disabilities (speck, 2011). mainstream education may be reconsidered in light of the fact that almost all included pupils with severe intellectual disabilities drop out of mainstream education (frühauf, 2011). inclusive education: empirical findings the expectation of effectiveness and evidence still lacks empirical data, analyses, and meta-analyses of inclusion and non-inclusive settings. the available data on inclusion does not provide a consistent picture on inclusion outcomes. results differ between different disabilities and different outcome aspects and do not confirm the “one size fits all hypothesis”. the who’s world report on disability cited controversial findings: “slightly better academic outcomes for students with learning disabilities placed in special education settings; higher dropout rates for students with emotional disturbances who were placed in general education; better social outcomes for students with severe intellectual impairments who were taught in general education classes” (who, 2011, pp. 211–212). the volume of international scientific literature on inclusion based on empirical research has grown since the salamanca statement and was recently boosted by the crpd (2006). an interpretation of the research results is complicated by: • the opacity of inclusion terminology; • the very small number of efforts to verify treatment fidelity; • the divergent measurements of inclusion outcomes (affective: self-efficacy, achievement motivation, social development, academics, reading, mathematics, etc.); • the examination of pupils with handicaps (different forms and different degrees of disability) or non-disabled pupils in inclusive settings; and • the fact that only a very small number of studies are based on random controlled trials. therefore results should be interpreted with care. the following compilation of empirical evidence about inclusion almost exclusively refers to reviews and meta-analysis from the last decade. lindsay (2003) reviewed studies on inclusion dating back to 1990 and did not find enough evidence to confirm the general advantage of inclusion: “there have been a number of studies that have reviewed the evaluation of inclusion. overall, these reviews cannot be said to be a ringing endorsement. (...) these overviews, reviews, and meta-analyses fail to provide clear evidence for the benefits of inclusion” (lindsay, 2003, p. 6). kavale and mostert (2003) also report mostly mixed results. while some positive outcomes have been found, there is also evidence of negative consequences for students with disabilities, including poor self-concepts, inadequate social skills, and low levels of peer acceptance. in 2007, lindsay again reviewed the literature and weighed the overall evidence delivered by more than 1,300 studies published between 2000 and 2005 as not providing a clear statement for the positive effects of inclusion: “the evidence from this review does not provide a clear endorsement for the positive effects of inclusion” (lindsay, 2007, p. 2). in the same year, kalambouka, farrell, dyson, and kaplan published their analysis of the effects of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 369 inclusion on non-disabled classmates in the united states, stating that the great majority of the studies found positive or zero effects: “overall, the findings suggest that there are no adverse effects on pupils without sen of including pupils with special needs in mainstream schools, with 81% of the outcomes reporting positive or neutral effects” (kalambouka et al., 2007, p. 356). begeny and martens (2007) carried out a literature review of english-language articles on inclusionary education in italy based on italy’s long experience (beginning in the 1970s) of including almost all students with disabilities in regular schools. in their summary based on 19 inclusion studies and intervention trials, they found that very little research has directly scrutinised italy’s inclusion practices and outcomes: “the general results of the inclusion studies revealed that survey participants tended to view inclusion practices favourably, but the experimental studies demonstrated that educating students either fully or partly outside the general classroom had a positive impact on these students across the majority of dependent measures evaluated” (begeny & martens, 2007, p. 89). ruijs and peetsma (2009) reviewed the literature on the effects of inclusion on disabled and non-disabled students over a decade (1999 to 2009) identified by systematic research on digital databases (e.g., psycinfo, eric). the researchers found it difficult to draw a clear conclusion from their data. some studies find positive effects, while others find negative or no effects. their secondary findings on the factors influencing the results (differences in the support available, the ways students were included, variance within schools, and the differential effects of inclusive education on individuals) are interesting. the authors close their article by sounding a note of warning: when designing inclusive education it is important to avoid negative results for specific groups of students (ruijs & peetsma, 2009, p. 78). hattie’s (2009) huge meta-meta-analysis of learning outcomes, based on englishspeaking publications over more than a decade, rates mainstream education and nonsegregation as a mediocre positive factor for learning with an effect size of about .28: a slightly weaker effect than homework (.29), but higher than summer school programmes (.23). the mitchell report (2010) portrayed research evidence on inclusion based on different resources (teachers, principals, parents, students), mostly from english-speaking countries. the report concludes cautiously that “the evidence for inclusive education is mixed but generally positive, the majority of studies reporting either positive effects or no differences for inclusion, compared with more segregated provisions” (mitchell, 2010, p. 141). in their review of international experience with the integration and inclusion of children and adolescents with down syndrome from 1970 to 2010 (53 studies from 12 different countries), de graaf, von hove, and haveman (2012) concluded that in regular education such pupils acquire more academic skills and are fairly accepted by peers in regular classes: “from our review it can be concluded that regular placement of students with down syndrome, i.e. education in regular classroom with individual support to some extent, yields a better development of language and academic skills, even after the effect of selective placement has been taken into account” (p. 70). however, adolescents with down syndrome show less peer interaction and are less often seen as a best friend. one of the first and most famous studies of inclusion in germany refers to two longitudinal evaluations of integrative primary schools carried out in hamburg between 1991 and 1996. one of the main findings was that “the variation in children’s achievements and in their emotional-social conditions are determined more strongly by differences effective on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 370 level of individual classrooms than by the affiliation to a specific system (integrative versus traditional elementary schools)” (katzenbach, rauer, schuck, & wudtke, 1999, p. 567). klemm (2010) summarises empirical findings about different educational interventions, comparing inclusive and separate settings, based mostly on germany, austria, and switzerland. inclusive settings score more highly on academic performance for students with learning disabilities. in some studies either no differences could be found between inclusive and separated settings or mixed effects are reported: “the review of the available studies (also comparing the studies of klemm and preuss-lausitz 2008a and 2008b) leads to the conclusion that pupils with special educational needs in inclusive settings show a significant advantage in performance compared with separated settings” (klemm, 2010, p. 24, translation by the author). ellinger and stein (2012) mostly reviewed studies of students with emotional, behavioural, and learning disabilities. the authors conclude that there is no homogeneous set of results, and criticism emerges about the success of inclusion in general. martschinke, kopp, and ratz (2012) found, contrary to the expectations from prior research, that pupils with intellectual disability in mainstream first grade do not show a significantly lower selfconcept, nor are they mentioned last in rank orders on social relationships. hennemann and colleagues (2012) see benefits for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural disorders in using an adapted training tool in a general setting. huber and wilbert (2012) conclude their empirical trial on 463 children placed in general education classrooms as corroborating an increased risk of social exclusion; however, in some classes exclusion did not follow. with regard to luxembourg, only a few studies exist that analyse inclusion and special needs education. in her report for the european agency for development in special needs education (eadsne), englaro (2001) mentioned only two research studies on inclusion in luxembourg so far: pull (1998) and chapellier (1999). pull focused on historical, theoretical, and conceptual questions about inclusion in luxembourg. a discrete empirical investigation was realised by chapellier in 1999. his mixed method approach focused on the experiences of teachers and special education professionals with inclusion. for both methods, qualitative interviews with focus groups and a quantitative study based on a standardised questionnaire, the majority of statements about inclusion are positive. in 2005, a qualitative study by the commission consultative des droits de l’homme (ccdh) summarised from expert interviews that there is no common vision on how to realise inclusion in luxembourg and parents feel disregarded or forced to agree to the recommendation of the school. the national information and consultation office for persons with disabilities (info-handicap, 2013) summarises anecdotal statements, evaluation reports and acts on inclusion in luxembourg. statistical analyses about inclusion in luxembourg show that there are notable movements towards inclusion, but some data give cause for serious concern. despite the ratification of the un-crpd in 2009, the number of students educated separately continues to rise in luxembourg (ministry of education, childhood and youth, 2014). the exclusion index has remained at the relatively low level (less than 1%) over the last decade, but the years following the signing of the crpd in luxembourg have shown exclusion rising slightly, and over 100 pupils with disabilities or special needs are still educated outside the country (see limbach-reich, 2013). however, given the large number of studies with their different scopes and the wide range of findings, it is very hard to summarise evidence for inclusion. the research cannot confirm that inclusion has a dominant and mainly positive effect for all children with disabilities, with positive effects on both academic outcomes and psycho-emotional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 371 dimensions and without negative effects on non-disabled classmates. on the other hand, many positive effects could be found and negative effects are in the minority. special attention should be devoted to differential effects based on the kind of disability, age, and factors outside the “included not included” dichotomy. one of the pitfalls of inclusion may be that it works but not for all, not at all times and not in all settings. conclusion differentiating ideology from evidence in the field of inclusion, one of the most striking findings is: neither conceptualisation nor empirical evidence on inclusion are homogeneous and they do not make a convincing case for the abolishment of all separative approaches in education. inclusion in a sociological view is not positive per se, and exclusion is not always bad. implementing inclusion has to take into account the functional role of the educational system. inclusion in education requires changes in school systems and society. policy should not include students first and then hope that the system will change. under the prevailing circumstances, some students with or without disabilities may not profit from inclusive settings. in particular, students with severe learning disabilities may need a pragmatic mixture of inclusive education and special needs education. jennessen and wagner (2012) presented a framework on inclusion within an inclusive comprehensive school, involving a large scale of inclusive and separating options. crucial for the success of education is that beyond the mainstream paradigm the individual situation (needs and strengths) should be decisive for the educational arrangements, and circumstances outside the school should be taken into account. finally, shared teacher education including disability topics and inclusive education should be guaranteed. if the aim of international human rights approaches and national policies is that all students receive their instruction in general education settings, then the overarching goal should be to develop an inclusive society that redefines the function of education and school and endorses inclusive or non-inclusive education depending on empirical evidence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 358–378 372 references ainscow, m., & césar, m. 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(2010). die inklusive schule (l‘ecole inclusive. inklusioun ass eist gutt recht. justification concept programme – objectifs). conférence epi 19.10.2010 luxembourg. wocken, h., antor, g., & hinz, a. (eds.). (1988). integrationsklassen in hamburg. erfahrungen, untersucbungen, anstrengungen. solms-oberbiel: jarick. zimpel, a. f. (2008). alle können alles lernen. gegenstandsanalyse als grundlage für didaktische selbstorganisation. behindertenpädagogik, 47(3), 299–309. http://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/ http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/ http://www.hans-wocken.de/ ‘commodifying’ children: the impact of markets in services for children in the uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 275 “commodifying” children: the impact of markets in services for children in the united kingdom1 stephanie petrie abstract: this paper is concerned with the impact on children’s health and wellbeing resulting from the move from the welfare state to welfare markets and explores the political trajectory that stimulated this sea change in u.k. welfare. two services, child protection and children’s day care, are examined to highlight how the separation of purchasing services from providing them have “commodified” children who have become objects with a use-value in commercial exchanges in internal or external markets. the paper concludes with an overview of the impact of “austerity” policies that exclude many children from welfare markets entirely and considers the consequences for the children of the u.k. keywords: united kingdom, welfare state, welfare markets, child protection, day care, austerity stephanie petrie, ph.d., c.q.s.w., h.c.p.c., is honorary senior research fellow at the school of law and social justice, university of liverpool, eleanor rathbone building, bedford street south, liverpool, united kingdom, l69 7za. telephone: +44-151-794-3015. e-mail: spetrie@liverpool.ac.uk 1 united kingdom refers to the countries of england, scotland, wales, and northern ireland. great britain refers to england, scotland, wales, and their associated islands. britain refers only to england and wales and associated islands. the british isles is a geographical term referring to the islands of great britain and ireland including their 5000+ small islands. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 276 it has been argued for some time by legal and medical ethics theorists that children have been “commodified” in relation to the transnational trade in adoptable children, surrogacy, and cloning (baird, 1996; yngvesson, 2002; shuster, 2003; spar, 2006). recent controversies in australia about commercial surrogacy and the welfare of children conceived for payment have now generated widespread concern (the telegraph, 2014). it is easy to see in relation to these market transactions how children have acquired a use-value and are commodities in commercial exchanges. this paper argues, however, that the shift from the welfare state to welfare markets in the united kingdom also commodified children. services are no longer underpinned by the legislative principle of universal benefits of right. this principle has been replaced by laws and policies designed to target those most “in-need” in a context where legislative barriers to state provision have been enacted and out-sourcing to the “for-profit” sector encouraged. the “needs” of children have been codified in assessment templates in order to be quantified, costed, and contracted within a given timescale. it is not surprising, therefore, that children in welfare markets became objectified, problematised, and passed from provider to provider without continuity. in short, they have become commodities with cost/revenue implications. evidence is now emerging that the consequences of distributing services in this way at a time of economic recession exclude many children in need from welfare markets entirely. child poverty has increased exponentially (national children’s bureau [ncb], 2013) and a deficit model of children has emerged as the dominant reason why some were not treated humanely or protected from abuse and exploitation (matthews, 2014; rochdale borough safeguarding children’s board [rbscb], 2013). these children are, in effect, discarded as having little social value. this paper will explore the political trajectory that has shaped the economic character of welfare in the u.k. and led to the demise of the welfare state and imposition of welfare markets before exploring in detail the operation of markets in child protection and children’s day care services. evidence emerging about the state of the nation’s children will follow. the paper will conclude by considering the implications for the future health and well-being of children in the u.k. from the welfare state to welfare markets the post-world war ii (wwii) political settlement of the late 1940s in the united kingdom was designed to resolve social antagonisms and form the basis for societal harmony; it became known as the keynesian welfare state (burden, cooper, & petrie, 2000). the welfare state was brought about by a series of acts stimulated by the beveridge report (beveridge, 1942) and influenced by the economist john maynard keynes who argued for an economy managed by government through state expenditure in order to ensure full employment and protect citizens from the boom and bust cycles of “free markets”. a high level of state-provided universal health and welfare services – from cradle to grave – paid for through taxation was part of this post-war settlement. most of the legislation came onto the statute book between 1945 and 1950 during the first post-war labour government. nevertheless when the conservatives returned to power in 1951 they were also committed to keynesian full employment and the welfare state – a post-war consensus in which welfare policies were “beyond” party politics. the political commitment to a high level of collective societal responsibility for all children led to comprehensive child nutritional and health services whatever parental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 277 circumstances. children were conceptualised as social assets upon which the future well-being of the nation would be founded. substantial research had shown that poor nutrition and low income correlated with educational underachievement and school-based provision (alongside the wider nhs and fiscal benefits) was established to alleviate this problem. for example, within a short time following the end of wwii, all children received in school free milk, meals, and additional nutritional additives and had the benefit of school medicals, dentists, and nurses. although there were many debates about the differentiation of roles and responsibilities within and between the nhs and other public sector services and some key reorganisations, particularly following the seebohm report of 1968, all major political parties supported the welfare state for many decades notwithstanding significant critiques from the right and left (friedman, 1962; williams, 1989). the concept of collective responsibility for children began to be undermined, however, from the early 1970s, when some universal state services for young children were, for the first time, regarded as unnecessary. margaret thatcher, as education secretary in the government of edward heath, removed free school milk from the over-sevens in 1971 in order to meet government pledges on tax cuts. the advent of the first thatcher government in 19792 ushered in an increasing change in political attitudes as to the role of the state in promoting the health and well-being of children. the post-war economic boom ended in the 1970s and the new right gained power under thatcher in part due to a sustained economic, political, and moral critique of the welfare state (burden et al., 2000). the welfare state, it was alleged, created welfare dependency and led to costly, inefficient public sector services to the detriment of all citizens. consequently, compulsory competitive tendering (cct) by local authorities (local government bodies) became mandatory in 1981 for such services as rubbish collection. under cct (now transformed into best value and social value by subsequent legislation in 1999 and 2012), state providers had to compete for state contracts with suppliers from the private and third sectors and a similar model was finally imposed on health and welfare services for adults by national health service and community care (nhs and cc) act 1990. a new law for children, the children act (ca) 1989, was being implemented at the same time and was designed to unify all children’s legislation, apart from adoption, under the same principles, orders, and courts. the overriding principle was that the child’s welfare should be the paramount consideration in any court proceedings affecting their welfare (part i). a new concept of “child-in-need” (part iii, section 17) was to be the passport to state provided or purchased services and the state acquired a duty to enable provision by others – at that time understood to be aimed at increasing the role of the third sector as the activities of the “forprofit” sector in children’s services at the beginning of the 1990s was negligible. the ca 1989 did not impose by statute the same market requirements on local authorities as the nhs and cc act 1990, but the political, organisational, and resource context influenced the way in which the legislation was implemented. consequently many local authorities simply organised children’s services along the same lines resulting in an increase in the role of private sector, internal and external markets between assessors of “need” and providers of services, and the introduction of cost considerations at the individual level when professional assessments of need were made. the ideological position of the new right then in power, informed by neo-liberal economics, created the conditions which ensured that the market framework, imposed on services for adults by the nhs and cc act 1990, would also emerge in services for children despite there being no legal duty to do so. the impact on 2 thatcher governments: 1979-1983; 1983-1987; 1987-1990. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 278 services for children of this paradigm shift consolidated when neo-liberal economic ideas began to dominate the national and local political landscapes of all major political parties. the landslide victory of new labour under tony blair3 in 1997 brought an increased commitment to markets in the public sector. as spokesperson for new labour in 1998, peter mandelson stated that the mission of new labour was to “move forward from where margaret thatcher ended” rather than dismantle her government’s policies (burden et al., 2000, p. 251). new labour’s project for welfare, framed within a market paradigm, was the redistribution of opportunity rather than income, with a focus on citizen responsibilities as well as citizen rights. the state was to be a commissioner and regulator of services rather than a provider and government strategy was to impose on local authorities a complex, heavily monitored framework of performance indicator targets for children combined with the availability of significant funding programmes such as sure start (glass, 1999) for community-based preventive services. the extension of markets into the public sector and management by performance indicators led to a positivist approach to the assessment of children’s needs. using targets created a process of objectification by codifying and quantifying “needs” against which children were, and indeed are, ranked and prioritised, thus turning children in contractual terms into commodities (petrie & wilson, 1999; petrie, 2010). the commodification of children, with all the attendant consequences of inflexible, impersonal, fragmented, and shortterm services, has become entrenched with the subsequent growth of “for-profit” sector service provision. since 2010 this has been accelerated by a seismic shift in political configuration, with the first coalition government in post-war times (between the conservatives and liberaldemocrats), and “austerity” policies following the global economic crisis that began in 2008. financial speculation and the subsequent collapse of the housing market in the united states in 2006 caused a global credit crunch affecting many countries. in response “austerity” policies have been adopted by the u.k. among others, and the entirety of the european union is now facing political and economic turmoil affecting its very future as the impact of “austerity” bears down on country populations (petrie, 2013b). notwithstanding the fact that public sector expenditure on health and welfare had not caused the economic recession in the u.k., “austerity” politics have ensured the reduction of state spending above all other considerations. the policies and legislation of the coalition government have reduced the level and comprehensive nature of the welfare benefits system and imposed major cuts to local authority budgets. since the 1980s public sector provision affecting children has been systematically reduced by transforming the welfare state into a framework of welfare markets initiated by an explicit political agenda (scott-samuel et al., 2014). in part this has been due to a shift in political ideologies regarding the balance between the state and parents’ responsibilities for child welfare. the main thrust, however, has been neo-liberal economic ideology. the evidence shows that the consequences for many children have been disastrous as the role of local authorities has been limited to commissioning rather than providing children’s services and private sector enterprises have increased their market share: the way out-sourcing has been done in the last couple of decades has created a major problem. it has left the government buying services in a market and using contracts 3blair governments: 1997-2001; 2001-2005; 2005-2007. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 279 that are far too heavily weighted in favour of the companies they are buying from, and their shareholders. (williams, 2012, p. 4) stability and consistency in relationships are essential for any human being, especially children, at times of change and trauma. yet the demise of what has been termed the “helping relationship” in human services has become evident as markets in health, welfare, and education have grown (petrie, 2013a). children have become commodities in transactions between the state and providers as the contractual implications of cost and revenue supersede any individual needs for continuity and stability a child may have. the move from the welfare state to welfare markets and the dominant role of the “for-profit” sector in service provision has commodified children in contractual exchanges and can be seen when child protection services and children’s day care are examined. protecting children harm for children has to be understood as a spectrum. at one end of the spectrum are extreme and prolonged harms, often leading to death, that are indicative of a total depersonalisation of a child and these are fortunately rare. at the other end of the spectrum serious harms can be caused to a child as a result of situational stressors – harms that are unlikely to reoccur if the stressors are removed. in fact in the u.k. child deaths from adult abuse have remained remarkably static for the last 30 years. while annual statistics fluctuate a little, the longer-term pattern has been fairly stable at 100 to 150 child deaths per year from cruelty (national society for the prevention of cruelty to children [nspcc], 2001; laming, 2009). nevertheless, during the last three decades there have been a series of public inquiries into shocking child deaths from abuse. learning gained from inquiries and research in the 1970s and 1980s led in part to the children act 1989 that overhauled and consolidated all legislation for children apart from adoption. one intention of the ca 1989 was to ensure that child protection services were not solely concerned with the detection or prevention of immediate harms to children. as noted earlier, being assessed as a “child-in-need” under section 17 of the act is the legal passport to state provided or purchased services and places a statutory duty on local authorities to provide a range of community-based services in order to safeguard the welfare of children. statutory child protection services provided by the state operate within the purchaser/provider split of welfare markets; child protection workers are primarily concerned with assessing whether or not abuse has occurred and determining if the state should intervene to remove a child from their family. if removal is not appropriate, support may be given in the community to prevent abuse. for children in the community living with their families, the legal concept of a “childin-need” already became a rationing device by the late 1990s. if a child did not meet the formalised criteria of being a “child-in-need”, including a need to be protected from abuse, they did not receive services, either purchased or provided for by the local authority. the contractual framework inevitably made cost the primary consideration for local authorities and the denial of services was a key factor in several appalling child deaths from abuse at the beginning of the new millennium, notably that of the seven-year-old immigrant child victoria climbié (johnson & petrie, 2004). the laming inquiry into victoria’s death criticised local authorities for using the “child-in-need” assessment process as a rationing mechanism: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 280 the use of eligibility criteria to restrict access to services is not found in either legislation or in guidance and its ill-founded application is not something i support. only after a child and his or her home circumstances have been assessed can such criteria be justified in determining the suitability of a referral, the degree of risk, and the urgency of the response. (laming report, 2003, p. 13) even if the state has intervened to remove a child, however, the operation of the market determines that other workers take responsibility for purchasing and monitoring outof-family placements. although the involvement of the “for-profit” sector was minimal at the end of the 1990s, the sector is now the major provider of residential and foster placements (williams, 2012). placing children in care settings and the involvement of other social work/ social care personnel often means a child will experience many key workers during their care history. the operation of the market mechanism in child protection, despite the best efforts of committed workers, commodifies children as services are designed to conform to the purchaser/provider model and organisational requirements. short-termism is endemic leading to a lack of consistency and stability for children in care as they are moved from their home area, often moving placement many times, in order to deliver, “profit, in vast amounts, into the hands of those whose primary interest is profit” (williams, 2012, p. 31). a child’s optimal development and safety requires an individualised response to their individual needs that is consistent over time but, as evidence shows, market mechanisms mean that stable, long-term helping relationships are difficult to achieve. local authorities are currently struggling to meet even minimal statutory child protection duties and the latest report from the national society for the protection of children (nspcc) states that child protection systems are “buckling under pressure” (jutta, bentley, miller, & jetha, 2014, p. 4) because budget levels for local authorities in the u.k. in 2012/13 were approximately the same as they were in 2006/7 despite the increase in referrals and concerns. a recent survey of 600 social workers and managers revealed that more than 80% said that the thresholds for intervention have risen since 2012/13 as a result of budget cuts in their area (pemberton, 2013). the response in april 2014 by the department of education to child protection services in crisis was to propose privatisation. in june 2014, due to concerted resistance from professionals, academics, and charities, these proposals were abandoned and profit-making organisations will now be barred from core child protection work. worryingly, there are now very few services in the community for children living with their families in order to safeguard their welfare and avoid statutory intervention. the impact of public sector cuts as a consequence of “austerity” policies has meant that many local authorities in the u.k., particularly in the impoverished north and midlands, have ceased funding discretionary services and are attempting to meet statutory responsibilities with rising poverty and diminishing resources (hastings et al., 2013). for example, liverpool has to cut £156m ($281m ~ can) from its budget over three years. the local authority plans to axe 300 jobs, reduce adult services by £46m ($83m ~ can), children’s services by £16m ($28m ~ can) and increase council tax by 1.99% (british broadcasting corporation [bbc], 2014). voluntary and community sectors are also suffering cuts as public sector budgets have been slashed. the national council of voluntary organisations (ncvo) projects that public funding for the sector could be £1.7 billion lower in 2017/18 than it was in 2010/11 and could even be as much as £2.1 billion if the public sector cuts are passed on disproportionately, as has happened to date (ncvo, 2013). it is not surprising that the nspcc has identified a rise in harms to children caused by neglect: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 281 neglect is much more prevalent in serious case reviews than had previously been understood (we found neglect in 60 per cent of the 139 reviews from 2009–2011). (brandon, bailey, belderson, & larsson, 2013, p. 7) this same period, of course, coincided with the economic crisis affecting the u.k. and indeed the correlation between child poverty and child welfare is well understood. the financial and housing circumstances of many families with children have steadily deteriorated since the recession began, and it is not surprising that the rise in child poverty and food bank applications correlates with the rise in assessments of child neglect (ncb, 2013; cooper & dumpleton, 2013). the collective approach to safeguarding the welfare of all children in the united kingdom enshrined in the welfare state has been eroded and child protection services in a market economy failed to protect some children from abuse and death because the rationing mechanisms deployed excluded them from contracted services. child protection services are now struggling to meet the most basic of statutory duties, let alone support children in the community through long-term, stable, and consistent helping relationships. children’s day care is also distributed through flawed market mechanisms but with different systemic failings. cost, availability, and accessibility have become increasingly problematic as day care for children is now primarily a service to facilitate parental employment rather a service for children’s development. children’s day care policies and legislation initiated by new labour and progressed by the current coalition government rest on the assumption that fewer children live in poverty if their parents are employed. in addition, changes to fiscal benefits have ushered in a new system of compulsion and sanctions, and have meant that the demand for children’s day care has increased. in this policy context children are simply barriers to parental employment and have to be placed in whatever provision is available so parents can enter the labour market and avoid benefit sanctions. although current regulations are supposed to protect lone parents from sanctions if they can’t find day care or need to work school hours, these regulations are confusing and poorly understood (finn & casebourne, 2012). children’s day care has always been provided by a mixed economy and traditionally the main providers have been childminders who are mainly women working in their own homes. the involvement of the larger scale and franchised “for-profit” sector in this service area, however, has increased alongside the demand generated by welfare reform, increased under-employment, and low wages. the most recent government survey (brind et al., 2014) reveals that 61% of full-time group day care is provided by the “for-profit” sector and about 30% by the third sector. holiday care is also mainly offered by the “for-profit” sector. although childminders remain significant providers, the average numbers of hours they offer per week are only 16 in term-time and 22 in school holidays. they are also least likely to work in areas defined as “deprived”. schools offer some part-time preschool places during term-time. consequently under half of all local authorities in 2014 had stimulated enough day care for working parents with big differences between local authorities. by november 2013, less than 60% of eligible two-year-olds had been allocated their free part-time nursery place in 37 local authorities. of these spaces, 25 were in london with suitable care for 12to 14 year-olds being hardest to find (rutter & lugton, 2014). there is evidence that less than 50% of all local authorities have sufficient day care for the under 2s, 5to 14-year-olds, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 282 disabled children (day care trust/ family and parenting institute, 2013). as a result of the market economy of day care, therefore, the cost/revenue implications for providers have meant that children with additional needs, who are older or who live in certain areas, are less likely to access provision. parents who are sufficiently affluent can purchase individualised care at home from nannies or pay premium prices for specialised programmes for older children, whilst parents with low income face extra difficulties. employers are reluctant to offer hours that fit school timetables, term times or additional closures, let alone offer workplace flexibility to respond to a child’s illness or other need, and it’s especially difficult for those working at weekends or evenings. it has been estimated to cost the u.k. economy nearly £100m in lost working days as parents take sick leave to care for their children and 12% of those surveyed had given up employment entirely because of difficulties in finding suitable provision (rutter & lugton, 2014). examples from a small qualitative study undertaken with lone mothers in liverpool (ahmad, lance jones, petrie, & reith, 2010) reveal how parents struggle to meet the needs of their children when policies define them primarily as barriers to employment: this day i couldn’t get no one to mind them ... i rang up work and she said unless you come in we’re going to sack you and i thought “right better go in” so i said to my eldest, who was twelve, “don’t touch anything”, i did all their butties and everything and i went to work…all day i was nearly sick thinking they could set the house on fire or anything so i walked out of work, went to the jobcentre and went to the adviser and said “listen, i’ve left the job, i’ve left my kids in danger, they could set the house on fire or anything because i’ve gone out to work and .. i don’t care you can stop my money”. (c2, p. 30) it is especially hard for parents when children don’t want to go to the only service on offer: after school club ... the kids didn't want to go to that. they were unhappy, which made me unhappy and i wasn't happy going to work, because they were unhappy. (b7, p. 13) parents are clear that children’s needs are overlooked in the fiscal benefits system now in place: are you assessing the needs of the child in all this – it seems to have been forgotten along the way, being at home with a child is so discredited, the whole system conspires against single parents. (a6, p. 10) even when parents have sufficient income to negotiate the market and find suitable placements, they pay substantially more than their eu counterparts for day care. for example, sending a two-year-old to nursery for 25 hours a week costs £109.89 ($201.87 ~ can) whilst the office of national statistics shows that the average weekly expenditure for food is £56.80 ($104.34 ~ can) and transport £64.10 ($117.75 ~ can) (rutter & stocker, 2014). most parents buying full-time day care contribute 20% to 30% of their gross income and since 2009, day care costs have risen 27% (rutter & stocker, 2014). notwithstanding regulation by the state, children’s day care is primarily subject to market forces that have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 283 spiralled costs for those lucky enough to find provision: a nursery place now costs 77% more in real terms than it did in 2003, whilst earnings have stayed still (rutter, 2013). so although day care of all kinds (including after-school and holiday care for older children) is primarily perceived as a service for parents to enable them to enter the workforce and escape poverty, the cost of placing their children in the limited provision available impoverishes many working households and may not meet the needs of their children. the new regime of benefit sanctions for parents who leave or refuse paid employment and the lack of choice of provision clearly shows that children, in policy terms, are viewed primarily as parental belongings to be placed in whatever provision is available or left home alone if there is no provision. from the welfare state to welfare markets: commodifying children the first part of this paper outlined the approach to the welfare of children enshrined in the post-wwii welfare state in the u.k. the underpinning principle of universal benefits of right led to a high level of collective responsibility for all of the nation’s children who were constructed in policy terms as future social capital. from the 1980s, a sea change took place with policies and legislation enacted by successive governments in order to establish a market economy in welfare. in part this was due to moral concerns about state intervention in family life and stimulated a rebalancing of responsibilities between the state and parents for the well-being of children. another major stimulus, however, was the increasing dominance of neo-liberal economic ideas. replacing universal state provision with a market economy in welfare was promoted as the most effective way to safeguard scarce state resources and ensure those who really needed services received them. state provision became residual and the primary role of local authorities became one of commissioning and regulating with their expenditure monitored by government through performance indicator targets. i have argued above in relation to child protection and day care services that one consequence of markets in welfare has been to objectify and commodify children. for services to be contracted within a given timescale “needs” have been codified in assessment templates in order to be quantified and costed turning children into cost/revenue commodities. since the 1990s as a result of outsourcing, the “for-profit” sector has become a major provider of services for children such as residential care, foster care, and group day care, with state provision under pressure such as child protection services being threatened with privatisation by government. although there is as yet no comprehensive data there are strong indications that outsourcing is costly and the standards of some contracted services are poor (williams, 2012). evidence now indicates that the situation has worsened for large numbers of children excluded from welfare markets altogether as a result of the u.k. government’s “austerity” policy responses to the global recession including large-scale public sector cuts. statistics show that parental employment does not protect children from poverty. the government’s social mobility and child poverty commission have revealed an enormous rise in poverty among working families. by 2011/2012 twice as many children lived in poverty in working households than in workless households. furthermore, income levels rather than hours of work are the best predictor of child poverty as full-time work is not a sufficient guarantee of evading poverty (gregg, 2014). although since 2011 the overall number of people in employment has been going up this has masked the problem of underemployment. more people wishing to work full time are working part time, sometimes with several part-time jobs, or are on “zero hours” contracts as this is the only employment available (bell & blanchflower, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 284 refusal of service by a local authority despite evidence of “need” has recently been legitimised. the legal definition of “child-in-need” (section 17, ca 1989, the passport to state provided or purchased services) does not offer clear operational guidelines and is dependent on legal precedent. laming’s (2003) liberal interpretation of “a child-in-need” in the climbié inquiry has been firmly rejected in 2014. the latest judgement (mn and kn v london borough of hackney) confirms that “in need” does not mean children who are objectively in need as decided by a court but children whom the local authority has assessed as being “in need” (campbell 2013). clearly at a time of severe public sector cuts this decision will inevitably exclude many from services and already the health and well-being of children invisible in the market economy are being severely compromised as emerging evidence shows. the state of the nation’s children: beyond markets the rise in the unequal distribution of income and wealth in the united kingdom since the 1980s has led to an unprecedented increase in child poverty (ncb, 2013). it has been estimated that by 2015 almost 7 million of the nation’s 13 million youngsters will be living in homes with incomes judged to be less than the minimum necessary for a decent standard of living and 90% of families will be worse off in 2015 than 2010 (reed, 2013). the distribution of wealth is highly unequal, with the top 10% owning 100 times more than the bottom 10%. moreover, those families most likely to be disadvantaged are of black african or bangladeshi ethnic identity, lone parents (mostly women), and muslims (rowlingson, 2012). the health of poor children is now being dramatically undermined by food poverty and inadequate housing. despite the u.k. being one of the richest nations in the world, there has been a huge increase in applications to food banks by families with children (aldridge & mcinnes, 2014; duffy, 2014; cooper & dumpleton, 2013). food banks are not provided through welfare market contracts but by the informal sectors, including church and voluntary organisations. the most common reasons for applications to food banks are as a result of incorrect, delayed, or reduced benefit payments or benefit sanctions (cooper & dumpleton, 2013). the unemployed are now defined in legislation and policies as requiring coercion through sanctions including reduction or removal of benefit whether or not they care for children; although, the government’s own evaluation of the new benefit system suggests major operational flaws (oakley, 2014). public health experts (taylor-robinson et al., 2013; ashton et al., 2014) have raised many concerns about food poverty. in particular, the number of malnutrition-related admissions to hospital has doubled since 2008-09. figures from the institute for fiscal studies also indicate a decrease in calories purchased and substitution with unhealthier foods, especially in families with young children. alongside the well-documented rise in food bank referrals, this leads them to argue this is: a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventive action …. access to an adequate food supply is the most basic of human needs and rights. we should not allow food poverty in the uk to be the next public health emergency. (taylor-robinson et al., 2013, p. 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 285 those who have recourse to food banks also rely on cheap food and cheap food is often contaminated food. the food standards agency (2014) has found that 59% of supermarket chickens carry campylobacter, the commonest cause of food poisoning in the u.k. that is particularly dangerous to the very young, the elderly, and those with additional ill-health. however the primary consequence of poor diet in contemporary times in affluent societies is obesity and childhood obesity is of special concern. evidence shows that the prevalence of obesity in children is closely related to deprivation (national obesity observatory [noo], 2013) as cheap food is nutritionally inadequate whether it is “junk” or “convenience” food. in either case, commercial sector food producers target poorer families, and children in particular, through low-cost products, advertising, and incentives (campbell, 2014). there are other indicators of concern regarding the nation’s children. although infant, child, and adolescent mortality has declined substantially and continues to decline, rates are significantly higher than in many other european countries and there are marked inequalities in death rates across the u.k. (wolfe, macfarlane, donkin, marmot, & viner, 2014). children in the u.k. are more likely to die before they reach their 5th birthday than any other western european country except malta (wang et al., 2014). the u.k. rate of 4.9 per thousand is double that of iceland, the best in europe, where rates are only 2.4 per thousand. poverty and deprivation together with cuts in welfare are directly linked to deaths of younger children (wolfe et al., 2014) and rates of suicide amongst young people have not declined and remained high (wolfe et al., 2014). there is some evidence to suggest that child murder by parents who then attempt suicide also rises at times of economic downturn (walklate & petrie, 2013). poor health is also caused by inadequate housing. in the u.k. housing has been a recognised public health issue since the mid-19th century. since the 1980s there has been a diminution in state-provided housing and a rise in home ownership as a result of the housing policies of successive governments. now the consequences of the global recession that began in 2007/08 and subsequent “austerity” policies have had a disastrous impact on the housing conditions of many people in the u.k. redundancies, the casualisation of labour, and low wages have exposed many homeowners to personal financial catastrophe and mortgage repossessions. for those in rented accommodation there is substantial evidence from reviews by the united nations and even the department for work and pensions that the so-called “bedroom tax” has exacerbated – and not alleviated – housing problems (rolnik, 2013; department for work and pensions, 2014). from the first of april 2013, if a tenant is assessed by their local authority as having one or more spare bedrooms (two children aged 10 years or under regardless of gender are now expected to share a room) housing benefit is no longer granted for the full rent. reductions in housing benefit are quite substantial and average £14 per week ($25.70 ~ cad) for one bedroom and £25 per week ($46 ~ cad) for two. families have to choose between reducing their income substantially by remaining in housing and a locality familiar to them, or moving into accommodation that is often substandard and sufficiently far away from their old neighbourhood that children have to move school. in 2013, women in an urban area in liverpool spoke with passion about how the “bedroom tax” was destroying their community. for example, a key local figure was a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother with many family members living locally. they said “her house is never empty” yet she has been assessed as having two spare bedrooms and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 286 unless she pays an additional £25 a week will have to move. there are no smaller properties in the area. they said: what politicians don’t understand about liverpool is intergenerational support between the community. move a grandmother out and who will pick up the kids? families support one another. strip them of their pride, take everybody’s dignity and pride from them – it’s a slow tortured death. (personal communication, june 19, 2013) there are increasing numbers of threeand four-bedroomed properties that are now hard to let and, together with the rising costs of private sector rents, have led to greater numbers of families living in substandard, overcrowded accommodation. in addition to the consequences of poverty some children are excluded from services because their identity has made them targets of specific policies and legislation. politicians respond to the dominant discourse in the u.k. that places blame for diminished state services on the influx of immigrants rather than the unethical and in some cases criminal behaviour of banks and financial enterprises that caused the global financial crisis and triggered “austerity” policies (gowan, 2009). during the second reading of the recent immigration bill in the house of lords it emerged that the definition of “child” was linked to birthplace and length of residency in order to exclude many children. lord roberts of llandudno raised one of many concerns: i also suggest that this house must review the bill’s current definition of who counts as an asylum-seeking child. a number of clauses seek to limit the definition to those who are british-born or who have been here for seven years or more. worryingly, this excludes most asylum-seeking children, many of whom come here as teenagers. (house of lords debate, 2014) it has been shown, however, that immigrants from the european economic community (eec) between 1995 and 2011 contributed 4% more into the fiscal economy than they received (dustmann & frattini, 2013). between 2001 and 2011 immigrants from outside the eec paid into the system 2% more than they took out, which is astonishing when considering the united kingdom was running an overall budget deficit during this period. the authors conclude: our analysis thus suggests that – rather than being a drain on the uk’s fiscal system immigrants arriving since the early 2000s have made substantial net contributions to its public finances, a reality that contrasts starkly with the view often maintained in public debate. (p. 27) nevertheless immigrants and their children remain particularly singled out for exclusion as is evident in the limitations to accessing free health care now the immigration act 2014 is law. furthermore, despite promises made in 2010 by the coalition government to end the much criticised treatment of child asylum seekers, conditions for them at heathrow airport remain appalling. inhumane arrangements are made for their deportation including deporting those reaching 18 years before their education is completed (independent monitoring board [imb], 2013; matthews, 2014). other children are making up for the shortfall in market provision by undertaking caring duties for family adults. there is a well-researched correlation between low financial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 287 resilience among citizens – in other words debt and poverty – and ill health. this includes mental ill health as well as suicide and addictions, and physical ill health including obesity, malnutrition, and diseases associated with poor nutrition (wilkinson & pickett, 2009; stuckler, basu, suhrcke, coutts, & mckee, 2009; dorling, 2011; stuckler & basu, 2013). in effect the greater the gap between the affluent members of a society and the poor, the greater the incidence of ill health. these consequences not only affect the health of adults but place caring duties on children too. the office of national statistics (ons) data released in 2013 (hounsell, 2013) reveal that nearly a quarter of a million children aged 18 years or under in england and wales are caring for a relative and this has increased by one-fifth since 2001. about 23,000 young carers are under nine years. young carers are more likely to live in lowincome families, miss school, underachieve educationally, and have a long-term illness, disability, or special educational need than their peers. the burden carried by these children is in sharp contrast to the intended principles of the national health service, established when the economic circumstances of the u.k. at the end of world war ii were even more precarious than at present. in a statement to the house of commons on the 9th february 1948, aneurin bevan, secretary of state for health said: we ought to take pride in the fact that, despite our financial and economic anxieties, we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world – put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration. (house of commons debate, 1948) other children become invisible because their behaviour has led to their ejection from services, as they are perceived solely in deficit terms. over 10,000 children and young people a year run away from care and many remain unprotected and exploited (all party parliamentary group [appg], 2012). it is estimated that 65% of residential homes for children and two of the three biggest foster placement providers are now run by the private sector (williams, 2012). third sector organisations have largely withdrawn from competitive bidding for state contracts for services for troubled children as awards are granted to those providers whose costs are insufficient to provide a quality service. charities initially supported services through additional funds generated by charitable giving, but this has not proved sustainable in the long run (williams, 2012). despite the belief that reducing state provision and introducing “free market” principles into the public sector would deliver services that were “economic, efficient and effective” (burden et al., 2000, p. 52), provision by the private sector has not reduced state expenditure. an average of £200,000 ($361,579 ~ can) per child in care, per year, is spent on residential placements yet these children are three times more likely to run away than other children (appg, 2012). the recent scandals of child sexual exploitation in rochdale highlight how easy it is for these runaways to continue to be treated as commodities, although this time in sex not welfare markets (rbscb, 2013). the rbscb inquiry report (2013) highlights how children were discussed in deficit terms by all agencies involved: there are repeated comments made to and about the young people based on a view that it was within their power to “keep themselves safe”. a similar frequently made comment was in relation to the young people “engaging in risky behaviour”, suggesting that this was something they could chose not to do. (p. 70, 4.4.59) despite the fact these children were in and out of residential care and other services, ultimately they were deemed to be the architects of their own difficulties and outside any contractual obligation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 288 conclusions the dismemberment of the welfare state began during the thatcher governments and has continued apace under every government since then. this has meant the underpinning foundation of policies and legislation has moved away from the principle of universal benefits of right to market mechanisms designed to target those considered most deserving and sanction those judged socially irresponsible. the increased emphasis on targeting those most “in need”, welfare markets, contracts rather than grant aid for the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors, and increasing numbers of state contracts awarded to the “for-profit” sector has ensured children have acquired a use-value in commercial exchanges – in other words they have been commodified. the combination of welfare markets and public sector cuts, however, have created conditions whereby some children are no longer commodities with cost/revenue implications for the state and service providers, but in some instances are deemed to have no value at all. welfare markets have failed children. the recent report by the national children’s bureau (2013) compares findings to its first report in 1969 and concludes that the situation today for children is no better than 50 years ago and is, in some respects, much worse. in particular, child poverty has increased by 1.5 million and children living in deprived areas are much more likely to be obese, suffer accidental injuries, and have less access to green space and play. the economic crisis that engulfed britain was not caused by public sector expenditure; nevertheless it is the public sector that has had to bear the cost with dire consequences for many children. stuckler and basu (2013) conclude that “austerity” policies are not only harmful to the health of the citizens, but that the policies themselves are founded on ideology not economic evidence. nevertheless, “the greatest tragedy of ‘austerity’ is not that it has hurt our economies ... [but] is the unnecessary human suffering that ‘austerity’ has caused” (p. 141). there is a further dimension to the socio-political characteristics of the u.k. that is likely to fundamentally affect the dominance of neo-liberal economics and welfare markets in the future resulting from the devolution of scotland, wales, and northern ireland. the scottish parliament, welsh and northern ireland assemblies were established in 1999 in order to devolve some powers and decentralise government. although the main fiscal powers’ relation to welfare benefits has been retained by national government, many responsibilities concerning health and welfare have been devolved to the three countries. since 1999 it has become apparent that the social policies of these countries especially towards children, and notwithstanding their limited economic resources, are very different to those in england. for example in wales, public sector developments have been influenced by the beecham report (2006) that signalled an intent to move away from markets in public sector services on the grounds of principle and practicality toward a “citizen model” (beecham report 2006, p. 5). scotland has abolished university tuition fees and prescription charges and although the recent referendum did not allow the country to achieve full independence from the u.k., the scottish parliament remains determined to offer an alternative to “austerity” policies and invest in public spending (scottish government, 2014). indeed, political agreement has now been reached between all parties that scotland will acquire greater control over tax and revenue expenditure. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 289 whether the current differences in policy direction between the countries forming the u.k. will begin to converge or continue to widen will be critical as the scale and depth of divisions between citizens, localities, and political representatives, in a nation as small as the united kingdom, are major causes for concern for the future of our children. children are the first to bear the brunt of whatever socio-political and economic systems are in place but have no influence, either as voters or as part of lobby or pressure groups, over decisions that affect their lives. children have not only become individualised commodities in welfare markets but have also become the collateral damage of the “austerity” economy in the u.k. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 275–294 290 references ahmad, s. b., lance jones, g., petrie, s., & reith, l. 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(2002). placing the ‘gift child’ in transnational adoption. law & society review, 36(2), 227–256. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/11006524/legal-situation-of-surrogacy-explained.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/11006524/legal-situation-of-surrogacy-explained.html text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1741659013493917 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(14)60497-9 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1512176 factors influencing demand for domestic servants in oyo state, nigeria international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 521 factors influencing the demand for domestic servants in oyo state, nigeria oludayo tade and adeyinka a. aderinto abstract: the employment of domestic servants is a common phenomenon in nigeria, where vulnerable children are internally trafficked to work as domestic servants in affluent urban households. while scholars have investigated the push factors aiding the demand for child domestic servants in west africa, attempts to understand the dynamics underlying the demand are scarce. hence, this study investigated factors that propel demand for domestic servants in oyo state. the data were generated using both the quantitative and qualitative methods. the results show three categories of employers: newly married women, married women with grown-up children, and isolated widows and grandparents. the demand is driven by role dualism, workload, and the need for companionship. the incipient decline in the extended family structure of social exchange system (fostering) and preference for “outsiders” rather than family members justify the demand for and use of domestic servants. the study recommended welfare programmes targeted at demanding households and an intervention strategy for the trafficked children. keywords: trafficking, oyo state, welfare, family, demand oludayo tade, ph.d. teaches at the department of sociology, university of ibadan, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria. e-mail address: dotad2003@yahoo.com adeyinka a. aderinto, ph.d. is professor of criminology at the department of sociology, university of ibadan, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria. e-mail address: aderinto@yahoo.com mailto:dotad2003@yahoo.com� mailto:aderinto@yahoo.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 522 the use of adolescents in domestic service is prevalent in urban centres across africa (okafor, 2009). the international labour organization or ilo (2002) estimates that there are 48 million children in sub-saharan africa who are economically active in the 10to 14-yearold age group, representing 20% to 30% of the children, a higher percentage than anywhere else in the world (adamassie, 2003). the economic work of children often correlates with poverty (aderinto, 2000; adamassie, 2003) and poverty is widespread in africa. according to the bureau of international labour affairs (1998), children in domestic service constitute the most common form of urban child labour in developing countries. these children work in cottage industries, mechanical workshops, and in private homes as domestic servants (hodges, 2001). most of these children, including those in domestic service, are victims of trafficking (okafor, 2009; tade, 2010). as a part of the global community, nigeria is not insulated from the scourge of child trafficking. it is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. within nigeria, women and girls are trafficked primarily for domestic servitude and commercial sex. boys are trafficked for forced labour in street vending, agriculture, mining, stone quarries, and domestic service. religious teachers also traffic boys, called almajiri, for forced begging. women, girls, and boys are trafficked from nigeria to other west and central african countries, primarily gabon, cameroon, ghana, chad, benin, togo, niger, burkina faso, and the gambia, for the purposes listed above. benin is a primary source country for boys and girls trafficked for forced labour in nigeria’s granite quarries (united states department of state, 2009). the united nations international children’s education fund (unicef, 2006) and the international labour organisation (2003) estimated that about 15 million children in nigeria between 10 and 14 years of age were working in the informal economy. of these working children, 40% run the risk of being trafficked for forced labour, six million do not attend school, and two million work more than 15 hours per day. this contradicts the prescriptions of the minimum age convention no.138, convention no.182, and the worst forms of child labour convention, which state that children younger than 15 can only be employed in domestic service or home-based work and are not allowed to work for more than 8 hours per day. according to a study conducted by unicef (2004), one-third of the trafficked persons end up in forced labour and another third in domestic work. nigeria, thus, ranks among countries of the world where slavery and involuntary servitude thrive, with children being used as domestic servants and prostitutes (united states department of state, 1999). nigeria’s 2003 child rights act also criminalises child trafficking, although only 20 of the 36 states have enacted it (tade, 2010). article 35 of the child rights acts (cra) focuses on the prevention of child trafficking for any purpose or in any form. it stresses that the trafficking of a child for exploitative purposes, whatever the means used, should be considered a crime. the phenomenon of house-help is highlighted in the amendment to the national agency for the prohibition of trafficking in persons (naptip) act of december 15, 2005. this amendment specifically provides that no child (persons under the age of 18) should be used in domestic service outside his or her family. the essence of this provision is to fortify the rights of the child as provided in the child rights act and to ensure full mental and physical development of the child. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 523 the basic presumption of the law is that a child trained within the family environment will be faithfully cared for, while the one outside the family environment may be exposed to abuse, deprivation, and exploitation. despite these lofty provisions and their ratification by nigeria, children are still being brought from the rural areas to the urban centres under the pretext of finding job opportunities which are not available in the rural areas. these children, who ordinarily should not be engaged in labour, are brought from rural areas to work as livein domestic servants. in many cases, they are internally trafficked from rural to urban areas (ilo, 2002). olútáyò (1994) asserts that many people in nigeria do not consider child labour as a problem because it is widely believed that it is a process of socialisation of the children. fostering, which is seen as “a strategy that redistributes the costs and benefits of child bearing” (isiugo-abanihe, 1994) is a long-standing tradition across africa. as wusu and isuigo-abanihe (2003) observe, erstwhile strong family ties have been under considerable stress in the past decade, as various child-fostering practices no longer enjoy general acceptance in the communities and the cost of raising children is becoming the sole responsibility of biological parents. the fading of fostering practices has made financially dependent households and their wards susceptible to traffickers’ “tricks”; adolescents are released to be used as domestic servants in urban households (tade, 2010). more adolescents are procured from deprived rural households by agents driven by economic motives and transported across long distances to work in urban households (okaba & okolie, 2004; tade, 2010). the problem is that children in domestic service are marginally addressed in research in nigeria owing to their obscurity. a unicef study claims that children working as domestic servants/labourers have experienced some of the worst cases of abuse (unicef, 2006). although earlier researchers, including coser (1973), have predicted that domestic service would become a less visible occupation with capitalist penetration, domestic service is arguably among the fast-growing occupations in both industrialising and industrialised nations (ehrenreich, 2000). it is a virulent offence against human rights, which has mostly been treated as a subset of irregular migration. it is, however, drawing the attention of policymakers as a labour issue involving “supply-demand” dynamics, and requiring data collection and policy appropriation (international organization for migration [iom], 2005). the “hidden” nature of the home environment makes it easy for child labour to go unrecorded (ilo, 1994). of the children enduring the worst forms of labour, the less visible are children in domestic service. the social implications of subjecting children to domestic work are numerous and have inimical effects on the development of the nation. victims may suffer physical and emotional abuse, rape, threats against self and family, and even death. isolated from friends and family, they work for long hours. for them, educational opportunities are very rare. when they fall ill, they lack proper attention. in short, children in domestic service endure what international labour organization (2002) describes as hazardous or intolerable conditions. their working in these conditions with little pay connotes child rights violations (unicef, 2006). the literature is saturated with studies on children trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation (altink, 1995; iom, 1995; bertone, 2000; international labour organisation/international programme on the elimination of child labour [ilo/ipec], 2001; lazaridis, 2001; onyeonoru, 2003; kelly, 2005; laczko, 2005). these researchers highlight the push factors on the supply side. the scope of these works is rarely extended to other forms of exploitation, especially on the invisible children in domestic service. there is, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 524 therefore, the need to expand research to look beyond cross-border trafficking to other areas including internal child trafficking where knowledge is currently very limited. employing children as domestic servants has a negative impact on the labour market, as it contributes to an irretrievable loss of human resources. forcing children to work at an early age and subjecting them to long hours of work per day may deny them access to education, which is necessary to break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy that favours clandestine migration (okereke, 2002). domestic workers experiencing hard-working days may be objects of sexual exploitation in the household and can receive harsh treatment with life-threatening injuries (unicef, 1997). ibadan is among the major cities in south-west nigeria where children brought from other parts of the country are employed in domestic servitude (united nations educational and scientific organization [unesco], 2006). eleven out of the 33 local government councils have been designated as child trafficking endemic. lutz (2002) has predicted that technological progress would eliminate the need for assistance from humans in households. this is an illusion in the face of practical reality. in nigeria, documented information about the factors influencing the demand for domestic servants has yet to be fully explored. a way to check the use of adolescents as domestic servants is to dissect the propelling factors. this study, therefore, examines the components of household demand for domestic service in oyo state, southwestern nigeria. context of child trafficking in nigeria in the last two decades, there has been an increase in the internal trafficking of nigerian women and children. many people are trafficked from rural communities – oyo, osun, and ogun states in the south west; akwa ibom, cross river, and bayelsa states in the south south; ebonyi and imo, in the south east; benue and kwara states in the north central – to cities such as lagos, ibadan, kano, kaduna, calabar, and port harcourt. trafficking to these regions is predominantly for exploitative domestic work, farm labour, and prostitution (unicef, 2006). in nigeria today, the rate of child abuse has assumed a worrisome and alarming proportion (semenitari, 1998) attracting the attention of the federal government in its establishment of the national agency for the prohibition of traffic in persons (naptip) in 2003. child abuse has degenerated into a form of slave trade. according to ariyo (2001), the phenomenon of child trafficking for forced labour or compulsory labour is growing so fast that most countries in africa fit into one of the categories as sender, transit, or receiving countries. persons are trafficked for prostitution, and to work as domestic servants, bus conductors, and street traders. they are exploited in agricultural work, brass melting, stone digging, and scavenging. urban migration and poverty have saturated the labour market, especially the informal market, and led to the systematic reduction of the cost of labour. as a result, cheap labour in the informal sector, particularly domestic labour, grew as the economic crisis forced every member of the family to work outside their homes to sustain family finances (unicef, 2006). although endowed with rich natural resources and extensive human resources, nigeria has not developed the necessary technological, industrial, managerial, and political know-how to pull its resources together in a sound economy to take care of the basic needs of its population. as a result, poverty and hard living conditions are prevalent, affecting children in particular. the severe economic and social deprivation has made poverty rampant in, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 525 especially, third world countries. the situation in nigeria has reached an alarming stage, as more than 45% of the population live below the poverty line, while 67% of the poor are extremely poor (central bank of nigeria, 1996). the nigerian economy has made the situation worse for the children of the poor, whose parents have either lost a job or suffered a dramatic decline in income (olukoshi & aminu, 1990). problems such as malnutrition, high infant mortality, and overcrowding have been exacerbated, as many families are pushed below the poverty level, even as a small class of people profited from the crisis. worse still, many parents have to leave their children to their fate. these children may have to find out a living for themselves. the hope of continuing education or working abroad, traditional migration patterns of labour within the country, and the practice of children being loaned or sent to better-situated family members to be raised, have contributed to the increasing rate of child trafficking for domestic service (unicef, 2006). the outcome of this is highly visible in nigerian cities with the employment of children in various child-labour activities. the practice of child labour in nigeria has become one of the nation’s most pressing problems. young children are placed into homes to serve as domestic servants; their wages may be collected by their sponsor (olateru-olagbegi, 1997; tade, 2010). scholars have also demonstrated how children become domestic servants and are seconded to trade at strategic spots by their employers or foster parents (isamah & okunola, 2003). however, the exact number of those involved is not known owing to the fact that the cases are not reported to the authorities and are shrouded in highly secret networks (tade, 2010). young women are trafficked within nigeria and to other west african countries (such as cameroon, gabon, guinea, mali, and côte d’ivoire) for domestic work, sex work and street vending. children from nigeria’s southern and eastern states are trafficked to cities in the north and west and to other west african countries for exploitation as domestic servants, street hawkers, and forced labourers. although the nigerian government has developed several mechanisms to address the issue of trafficking, especially for sexual exploitation abroad, little or no attention is being paid to domestic trafficking including the other forms of exploitation in nigeria. this has contributed to increased suffering and exploitation in a sector that is hidden from the sight of the public, an invisible parade of the most inhuman forms of exploitation in history. children working in domestic service are invisible and difficult to survey by social welfare officers. most of these children are in their teens, while some barely above 9 or 10 and are mostly serving as domestic servants in the households of higher educated persons or wealthy businessmen. various forms of child labour activities are found throughout the informal sector in nigeria, particularly in the cities (hodges, 2001). these children engage in three broad categories of work: markets and streets, cottage industries and mechanical workshops, and domestic service in private households. the above review shows that the empirical study of the plight of these children trafficked into domestic service has been limited to the supply side. therefore, there is a need to understand the demand side of the equation and to fill in the knowledge gap. research setting: ibadan ibadan is the capital of oyo state, nigeria. oyo state with the label “the pacesetter state”, came into existence as a consequence of state creation exercises embarked upon since international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 526 independence in 1960. the western region was one of the three regions created by the macpherson constitution of 1954, which introduced a high level of autonomy for the regions. the western region government was headed by the late chief obafemi awolowo, the first head of government and later premier. the region attained internal self-governance in 1957 as a prelude to the political independence of the country in 1960. the old western region was reduced to the present entity called oyo state with its capital in ibadan after several other states were carved out of it. founded in 1829, ibadan was, until 1970, the largest city in subsaharan africa. ibadan, at a time, was settled at oja’ba, a site very near mapo hill. the people of ibadan were successful warriors who needed the hill, which afforded them better defence. ibadan has been an important administrative centre since colonial times. it was the capital of the old western region from 1946 to 1967; the old western state, 1967 to 1976; and oyo state, 1976 to date (afolayan, 1994). according to the 2006 census, oyo state has a population of 5,591,589, with male and female populations of 2,809,840 and 2,781,749, respectively. it has a growth rate of 3.4% (federal republic of nigeria, 2007). apart from the issue of the predominant occupations in ibadan, which include trading, agriculture, craftsmanship, and engagement in formal public and private sectors, ibadan was chosen for this study because of its status as the destination of many trafficked children (unesco, 2006). the core population of ibadan is yoruba, but its population has always been ethnically mixed and is becoming increasingly so. although industry is less developed in ibadan than in lagos or kano, there are many traders and artisans, which service many needs of the city (okafor & amayo, 2006). ibadan also has nigeria’s first university, the university of ibadan, which contributes a significant intellectual, professional, and artistic profile to its economy. there are notable ethnic and class variations. in summary, ibadan encapsulates so many characteristics of modern nigeria (guyer, denzen, & agbaje, 2002; agbaje, 2002). methods the study adopted a mixed approach of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. this involves mixing both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. mixing different methods strengthens and reveals various aspects of empirical reality and defuses the shortcomings of using a lone method in a research study (cresswell, 1999). moreover, social phenomena are so complex that different kinds of methods are needed to enhance understanding of these complexities (greene & caracelli, 1997). the research adopted sequential exploratory design. this strand of mixed method design prioritises qualitative over quantitative data. the intent was to first explore the factors underlying the demand for domestic servants in households. this exploration was helpful, as it facilitated the development of a survey questionnaire for a larger population of respondents. the survey was both openand close-ended. to select our sample size, ibadan south west, ibadan north east and ibadan north local government areas (lgas) were chosen purposively. the oyo state anti-trafficking committee categorised these lgas as recipients of children used for domestic service (tade, 2010). a combination of methods was used to select respondents for the study. mixed methods sampling involves the selection of units or cases for a research study using both the probability sampling and purposive sampling strategies. qualitatively, the snowball method was used to reach 15 demanding households. based on a household survey, 15 households were randomly selected from the three lgas (5 from each). each of these lgas was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 527 clustered into three neighbourhoods based on the socio-economic status of inhabitants. for instance, in ibadan north, bodija, bashorun, and agodi were the selected neighbourhoods, while odo-ona, oluyole, and adeoyo were selected from the ibadan south west local government. in each locality, employers were reached through the help of neighbourhood informants. we relied on the familiarity of informants to identify households where domestic servants were employed. after reaching the first employer, other employers were located through the snowball method. stratified purposive sampling was used to identify private and public organisations in selected localities. copies of the questionnaire were given to women working in banks, government parastatals, schools, hospitals, law firms, and women in broadcasting. out of the 800 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 528 were returned. of these, 140 indicated having domestic servants and were used primarily for this study. the questionnaire probed into the job status of women, with particular attention to whether they started paid employment before or after marriage, time of closing at work, and the reasons for working. we also probed into husbands’ support for working wives (the coping strategy for husband disapproval, husbands’ occupations, and locations), reasons for engaging domestic servants, and preference for the third party (relatives). in all, 15 in-depth interviews (idis) were conducted. we also utilized the information obtained from five key informants (community leaders and welfare officers). the interviews were mainly conducted in specific institutional settings, like offices, churches, houses, and recreation centres. the informants sometimes accompanied the researchers to the respondents’ preferred interview settings1 to assure our respondents that the interview was purely for academic purposes and not to coordinate their arrest2 . interviews conducted outside respondents home were carried out as agreed to by the respondents. each respondent was contacted through referrals and venues were arranged for the interview. the in-depth interview guide probed into: workload at work and household levels; job status and nature of job; husbands’ disposition to the engagement of domestic servants; preference for relatives and family size. the interviews were conducted with a digital audio recorder which facilitated the download of the recorded conversation onto the computer for editing. the audiotaped interviews were then transcribed to enhance accuracy, dependability, and the integrity of the data analyzed. thus, because the audiotaped recordings – not the transcripts – are the data, a methodical listening to and reviewing of the recorded interactions was done to make details visible in order to reach agreement. stop-checking of the transcribed tapes was done to ensure the trustworthiness and validity of the interviews. the texts selected for transcriptions were considered because of their analytical contributions to the study. owing to the nature of the topic under investigation, a listening guide was adopted in order to read the reflexively constituted narratives, relational narrated subjects, and 1 interviews were conducted in the environments chosen by respondents where they thought they could freely express their opinions. also, getting employers to interview on the topic was tedious except when conducted in preferred settings. however, the researcher still had the opportunity of visiting the respondents in their households after a level of confidence was established. 2 in nigeria, the national agency for the prohibition of traffic in persons (naptip) criminalises the employment of persons under the age of 18 as domestic servants outside their immediate family environment. arrest and conviction attracts n100, 000 fine or imprisonment for a period of five years (see section 10, subsections d & e of the naptip amended act, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 528 constructed and critical subjects. first identified were basic elements of narrative analysis, such as recurring words, themes, events, chronology of events, protagonists, plot, subplots, and key characters. the next stage in the analysis was to attend to the way in which the subjects spoke about themselves and the parameters of their social world, taking into consideration how the respondents change personality from the use of “i”, “we”, “you”, or “it”, which could demonstrate varied meanings with respect to perceptions of the self (stanley, 2002). thirdly, the respondents’ narratives were also considered as relational, looking for social networks. this is in line with somers and gibson’s (1994) notion of “analytic rationality”, where all narrated subjects are understood as intrinsically relational and as part of networks of relations. after all the sorting and consequent content analysis, respondents’ narratives were then reproduced accurately. descriptive statistics was employed to analyse the quantitative data, while the qualitative data were content analysed. results socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents table 1 presents the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. most of the working women (91.5%) fell between ages 20 and 50 years, an age range where a lot of women would be working and might require the services of domestic servants. as the women pass 51 years of age (8.5%), the need for company may become a necessity. as regards ethnic distribution of the respondents, the yoruba populated the study, representing 84.7%, perhaps because of the research setting, which is predominantly a yoruba state. the igbo were 6.1% while edo had 4.2%. other ethnic groups had only 5.1% of the distribution. on income distribution, 16.9% earned between n10,000 to n20,000 monthly, while 27.1% earned n51,000 and above. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 529 table 1: socio-demographic profile of the respondents age frequency percent 20-30 73 13.8 31-40 217 41.1 41-50 193 36.6 51 and above 45 8.5 total 528 100 ethnic yoruba 447 84.7 igbo 32 6.1 edo 22 4.2 others 27 5.1 total 528 100 income 10,000-20,000 89 16.9 21,000-30,000 123 23.3 31,000-40,000 87 16.5 41,000-50,000 86 16.3 51,000 and above 143 27.1 total 528 100 education primary school 2 0.4 secondary 61 11.6 tertiary 413 78.2 others 52 9.8 total 528 100 religion catholic 40 7.6 protestant 85 16.1 pentecostal 315 59.7 islam 69 13.1 others 19 3.6 total 528 100 marital status married 457 86.6 consensual union 14 2.7 widowed 25 4.7 separated/divorced 32 6.1 total 528 100 type of marriage monogamous 433 94.7 polygamous 24 5.3 total 528 100 children 1-2 163 35.6 3-4 244 53.3 above 4 51 11.1 total 528 100 length of marriage (years) 1-2 28 6.2 3-5 61 13.5 6-10 110 24.3 11-15 89 19.7 above 15 164 36.3 total 528 100 source: survey, 2011 regarding education, 78.2% of the participants had tertiary education, 11.6% had secondary education, while 0.4% had primary education. this implies that the majority of the respondents were literate enough to make well-informed decisions. besides, most of the working women were pentecostals (59.7%), 16.1% were protestants, 13.1% were muslims, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 530 while the catholics were 7.6%. a large percentage of the women were married (86.6%), while 13.4% were either in a consensual union, widowed, separated, or divorced. also, a greater proportion (94.7%) had a monogamous marriage while 5.3% had polygamous marriages. the distribution by number of children revealed that 53.3% of the respondents had between three and four children, 35.6% had between one and two children, while 11.1% had more than four children. about 36.3% had been married for 15 years and above, 24.3% had been married for between 6 and 10 years, while 19.7% had been in conjugal relationship for below 5 years. types of employers and reasons for hiring domestic servants the study identified three categories of employers of domestic servants. they are classified based on the family phase and structure: 1. starter family type: this type comprises the newly wedded and those with immature children who need extra care and are working. this type involves the first and second phases of family cycle. 2. transiting family type: this is in the third phase of family cycle. the families have children who are grown up who could take up responsibility. 3. mature families: this category occupies the fourth and fifth phases of family cycle. it is composed of pensioners, families with adults, widows, and working women who are grandmothers. the starter household. one of the desires of newly wedded women in contemporary nigerian society is to ensure strong bonding relationships with their husbands at the outset of their marital life3 apart from these, employers prefer a master-servant relationship. interviews with employers revealed that beating a relative and subjecting him or her to ill treatment could threaten the family bond and solidarity. the cultural obligation attached to having a relative has also affected the fostering practice in nigeria. according to the respondents, the demands of having fostered children are enormous, especially if the fostered child is an orphan. such a child needs care and must be pampered. over-labouring such a child could create further emotional trauma. the household is then burdened, rather than being relieved. hence, a paid domestic servant who could be treated . they would prevent early intrusion in any form (family, friends or any other third-party interference). getting pregnant and being employed bring the simultaneous challenges of keeping the home while fulfilling work demands; the ability to perform domestic chores and work effectively becomes problematic. hence, the woman who initially considered the presence of a third party in her home as repulsive may have a second thought. the couples basically mull two options over: inviting a relative to assist or getting a domestic servant who can be paid. the former option is rejected because of the cultural obligations attached to having a fostered child. also, the starter household ruminates on keeping their domestic affairs away from family members which can only be guaranteed by a servant who in not a relative. 4 3 young couples cherish intimacy in their marriage and so have been found to distance themselves from members of their extended family. according to the whims and caprices of the employer 4 this means being subjected to all sorts of inhumane treatments. respondents said they could use the domestic servants “anyhow” because he or she is being paid to render a service. this is practicable in nigeria because the practice is hidden from the public glare. the domestic servant is at the mercy of her employer. while the agent is interested in exploiting the child for money, the employer is interested in the labour exploitation of the domestic servants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 531 is favoured. thus, for the starter family, the pretext for demanding domestic servants is workload created by role strain. this was captured by an employer: well, the reason is not far-fetched, the way the country is going now, and one person working is not enough to sustain the home. so you find out that we women, too, are working and our working is not just limited to one, you find us doing extra businesses, like for me i make “sobo”. for me to go to work in the morning, i have to leave by 7:00 a.m. because i have to do school runs, get back home 5:30 p.m. or 6:00 p.m., i’m fatigued. apart from that, i personally don’t like kids coming with me to the office except if it is exceptionally necessary. so, most of us who have kids in the same school have a routine arrangement for our children. somebody does the school run (takes the children to school) in the morning and another person does the school run (pick the children up) in the afternoon back home. the essence is for the children to have somebody to stay with them at home in the afternoon and the person can take care of them and then, of course, when i get back from work at least some part of the dinner is ready or totally ready. cleaning of the house, washing the clothes, etc., if one has to do it on a weekly basis, you find out that you are spending more than if you have somebody in-house that is able to do most of these things and, of course, you are paying a monthly wage to the person. (idi, female, bashorun) age is a contributing factor to household demand for domestic servants (tade and aderinto, 2011). human needs are, to a certain extent, age specific. hence, the needs of newly married women differ from those with grown-up children. owing to their youthfulness, newly married women take up paid employment which may create pervasive systemic dilemmas for them in fulfilling expectations as mother, wife, and worker. a respondent stated the following in an in-depth interview session: i never liked the idea of bringing in a third party into my house because i found it difficult to want to open my family to outsiders but when we started bearing children and i have to go to work, i had no choice other than to secure an extra hand to help with the domestic demands. (idi, female, bodija) location of the husband’s job may also influence the demand for a domestic servant. we found that women complained of boredom whenever their husbands leave for their work stations outside the state. they may return home on a monthly basis considering cost. durkheim discusses the effects of mechanical solidarity in modern industrial societies. it reduces the “conscience collective” where people think of themselves as “i” not as “we”. hence, people live in community but with limited interaction. they also live far away from their relatives once married. a respondent recounted: for somebody like me who does not have her husband around and unfortunately the last born of my family [meaning she cannot go and bring a relative to stay with her again], i need somebody to talk to at my level and somebody who can give me a second opinion no matter how childish it might sound. there must be somebody around who i can brainstorm with, not me alone. (idi, female, bodija) nigerian men, by virtue of tradition and associated social and cultural factors, have profound influence on their wives and on decisions about family life. patriarchy and patrilineal traditions place men at a dominant position in the society and family (isiugo-abanihe, 2010). consequently, some men disapprove of their wives working outside the home. this is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 532 because women in contemporary society still bear extensive responsibilities for care of the household and children. as scanzoni (1978) avers: the wife’s role, although theoretically significant, has not revealed its prime import in any direct linkage to the larger society. whereas the husband’s behaviour is significant in both the occupational and the conjugal settings, the wife’s has been generally significant only within the latter. (pp. 1–2) from an african point of view, mothering has traditionally been located within the domestic spaces of home and family. women who take up jobs are, therefore, seen as challenging the existing norms and assumptions surrounding their mothering role, with serious implications. èrínoshó (2005) claims that a wife and mother who works must be withdrawing from the care of her home and children time and attention which they are really in need of. hiring domestic servants becomes a safety valve to help muddle through multiple roles. in his classic essay, merton (1957) notes that: the notion of the role-set reminds us, in the unlikely event that we need to be reminded of this obstinate fact, that even the seemingly simple social structure is fairly complex. all societies face the functional problem of articulating the components of numerous role-sets, the functional problem of managing somehow to organise these so that an appreciable degree of social regularity obtains, sufficient to enable most people most of the time to go about their business of social life, without encountering extreme conflict in their role-sets as the normal, rather the exceptional, state of affairs. (p. 111) cognisant of the cultural and social expectations and the need to accomplish observable social regularity and order in the domestic sphere, women negotiate with their husbands to reduce the “burden of roles” by outsourcing some tasks. the view of the respondent below captures this: at that time...i was left alone once he travels. i was desperate at having someone who i could be chatting with in the house apart from the fact that she has to sweep the floor and wash plates. my husband runs a private business and i was already working as soon as i finished my service year. the work became too much. how can you say i should wash the plates, clean the house, prepare the food, etc. the housework is not easy for women. one needs assistance. even though i had not given birth, i still had a lot to do and still must go to work. (idi, female, mobil) the number of children and their ages become critical factors in deciding whether to hire domestic servants or not. the domestic task increases with the number of children; the age determines the attention that is required for the child(ren). pregnant wives also risk miscarriage when burdened with work. this may necessitate the need for assistance. the reason was that i was pregnant, creating the need for somebody to start taking care of the children. all along, i have sisters and another relative living with me but they have all left for school. their absence created a vacuum and when i took in (became pregnant), it was obvious that i needed somebody to assist me so i will not cause complications by overworking. i already have three children and you know international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 533 what that implies with their ages, and my work and husband to care for in the house? (idi, female, university of ibadan) the quantitative data (table 2) corroborates the findings of the qualitative data. the respondents were asked to give reasons for engaging domestic servants in their households. performance of domestic chores and duties were the main reasons for the demand for domestic servants. the analysis of the responses showed that 63.6% of the working women hired domestic servants to perform household chores/domestic work/washing/cleaning of the house, while 24.1% employed domestic servants to care for their children. inundated by role-strain, households adjust structurally to accommodate a childcare facility when the mother is not around. since there is no welfare package for working women in nigeria to reduce their workload, engaging domestic servants may be a veritable option. further, the intensified economic slump has made the money that women earn vital to household survival. domestic activities could be time consuming and energy sapping. thus, it may be difficult for women to effectively cope alone with the multiple tasks without assistance. thus, the yoke of domestic labour on women has far-reaching consequences for all spheres of their lives. table 2: reasons for engaging domestic servants reasons frequency percent child care 33 24.1 house chores/domestic/house care 76 55.5 washing/cleaning 9 6.6 run errands 9 6.6 cook 2 1.5 driving 1 0.7 for assistance 7 5.1 total 137 100.0 source: survey, 2011 the intermediate household. unlike among those in the age range of 21 to 30 years, demand for domestic servants is lower among working mothers between 31 and 50 years owing to the presence of grown-up children who can help with the workload. they constitute families in transition, as they have children who could take up some responsibilities. however, it was found that transitioning households are more likely to outsource domestic duties, which become more complex tasks as the children grow to attend schools while the parents are absent owing to the nature of their work. this is, however, evanescent. the need resurfaces as soon as children leave for school or set up their own family through marriage. the attention of the household is shifted from tendering the baby to nurturing the grown-ups through enrolment in educational institutions. the children do not return home early to perform domestic chores, as they continue with after-school lessons. hence, the mother returns from work tired and with unfinished domestic chores. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 534 women in the work force are today expected to bring to their jobs all the energy, talent, and motivation that employers have long expected of men, in addition to a willingness to work full time, and a readiness to perform tasks that often require putting the needs of the employer over and above those of the family. okafor and bode-okunade (2003) contend that employers in nigeria demand from their employees total loyalty without modifying work schedules for any gender including working women. these pressures co-exist with demands at home from husbands and children who clamour for attention to their needs. as a result, the ambitious and conscientious employee, wife, and mother may find herself caught in a web, a classical case of role conflict in which she is pulled in opposite directions. this is so because while the social and economic characteristics of modern living have changed, the economic roles of housewives, compelling them to engage in work outside the family, and the traditional expectations regarding their conjugal and maternal roles have rarely changed to account for their new traditional roles. hence, while a career husband may do little more than his formal occupational demands, the housewife combines both the burden of occupation and the housework, which is neither economically recognized nor statistically accounted for. the mature household. the need for companionship is the essential factor propelling widows, pensioners, and the aged to request the services of domestic servants. the type of residence pattern which modern families have adopted (to live far away from their parents) further heightens the need for companionship. another reason is difficulties faced by the elderly in performing certain seemingly difficult domestic tasks. the aged among the respondents lamented that most of their children were grown up. they reported that they were either married (families of procreation) or living far away from their families of orientation. the domestic servant, therefore, becomes necessary as a panacea to survive before their children and wards come around. a respondent put it this way: i think domestic servants are better, especially for older people when their children have left. older people hire domestic servants when their children are no more around in order not to feel lonely, not necessarily because of the household tasks. they may not be doing bigger tasks. for instance, the one i have with me now in-house is pregnant and she decided on her own to come because she believes that the husband would not be able to provide all that she needs before she puts to bed. i think that is the reason she decided to work as house-help. all she does is to go to the husband to get money for the antenatal care. i don’t think there is anything important this one can do for me other than to keep me company in the house. in another 15 minutes, she may be sleeping, she is not doing anything big per se, but she enjoys staying here and we do things together. so, it is very necessary for the elderly to have at least one or two for companionship not because of any other motive. so i understand what the government is saying but that is what we call necessary evil. we need them except if government wants to deceive themselves. in the olden days, older people lived among family members but that is no longer the case nowadays. even the ibo people don’t go home anymore. many of them who retired in u.i. have houses in ibadan. they said they don’t know anybody there. so, nobody wants to go home, since they don’t go home frequently. but when the children go, what will happen to them [parents]? so they need people to stay with their parents. the federal government should realize that they are going to grow old. (idi, female, bashorun) most women in this category are above 50 years of age where the burden of loneliness is more heightened. they may even be widows and left alone in a large house, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 535 which has implications for their health. this is a departure from the cultural past. in traditional african society, the aged resided with their families and were adequately cared for. the family has been the safest haven for the aged. its ties have been the most long-lasting and, on them, the aged have relied for greatest security. the respondents however, reported that modernisation has obliterated this traditional norm, hence the elderly are isolated. the need for companionship explains man’s desire to live in groups and avoid isolation or solitude. the presence of domestic servants may not be anchored by this group on a strong need for task performance but for social interaction. according to a 72-year-old widow and retiree: i think domestic servants are better for older people when their children have left. older people hire domestic servants when their children are no more around in order not to feel lonely, not necessarily because of household tasks. (idi, female, bashorun) cost the financial capacity of households is critical to the demand for domestic assistance. the ability to pay for outsourced domestic assistance increases with the increase in monthly income of the employers of domestic servants. financially cozy households will effortlessly be able to subcontract domestic activities. people who earn more than n51,000 and above per month are more likely to employ domestic servants than other categories of income earners. this is because employers pay between n5,000 and n6,000 ($40) to hire a domestic servant. owing to the dwindling economic fortunes and poverty in nigeria, paying for domestic servants may be difficult for those earning below n51,000. the qualitative data further revealed that household earnings are considered important when hiring domestic servants. this view was well captured by an employer: yes, i need an extra hand in the house to help me take care of my little baby while i go to work but we also have to look at the economic implications of bringing in an extra hand. for instance, my husband earns n36,000 monthly, while i earn n26,000 monthly. thus, i need to engage myself in other buying and selling in order to meet additional needs of the family like that of paying for domestic servants. (idi, female, adeoyo) the employers further spoke about the amount of money being “charged” by agents per domestic servant: in those days, i was paying as low as n400 naira to my domestic servant. but nowadays, we pay from n4,000 to as much as n7,000 to get house-help. and then you will have to pay for an extra month to represent money for conveying the domestic servant from wherever state. (idi, female, 54 years, apata) the contribution of women to the household production becomes important to complement husbands’ inputs. as a result, most husbands (87.7%) supported their wives’ decision to work to supplement their earnings to keep the home going because of the economic situation, while others work for self-actualisation. this concurs with earlier findings that women’s economic contribution to household income improves the economic well-being and standard of living of the household (martin & roberts, 1984; kamerman, neumann, waldvogel, & brooks-gun, 2003; james-burdumy, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 536 intermittent work-related travels of household heads could have profound effects on the social regularity of households. such travels bring strain into the demands of both family and work commitments. earlier studies call this “intermittent husband syndrome” (morrice, taylor, clark, & mccann, 1985; rigg & cosgrove, 1994), which involves the spouses and children of workers who are often away from home. men are more likely to embark on work travels if there is security from their wives to take care of the home. husband factors sixty percent of the sampled working women said their husbands supported their decision to work, while 40% said their husbands did not support their decision to work. this implies that a husband’s support for his wife’s work affects the demand for domestic servants. husbands’ approval for wives’ work may be as a result of the anticipated input derivable from the work. close to 60% of the working women stated their decision to work was mainly driven by economic factors, to earn a living and support their husbands in the home management. the performance of the gendered roles is germane to the maintenance of order in the home. the outsourcing of domestic duties becomes a coping strategy in homes where working mothers are stretched between salaried jobs and culturally prescribed roles without supportive husbands. typical household tasks, such as kitchen work, care for the children, the fetching of water, ironing, washing, and weeding are fundamental to proper household functioning. conversely, households where husbands assist in performing domestic duties may not see the need for a domestic servant. most respondents (70.3%) indicated that their husbands assisted them in the performance of domestic duties. assistance from husbands may result from time allocations between the partners. another possible explanation for such assistance could be partners’ contributions to the sustenance of the home. gershuny, godwin, and jones (1994) claim that household tasks are allocated on the basis of the amount of time available to each partner. thus, if men do little work in the home, it is because their time is taken up in paid employment, sometimes referred to as the “breadwinner trap” (baxter, 1992, p. 166). husbands earning high incomes are considerably less likely to do housework than husbands earning lower incomes. “the best predictor of a husband’s assistance with housework is his success as an income provider”… “the higher the wife’s status, relative to her husband’s, the more likely she is to work outside the home and the more likely he is to perform tasks in the home” (j. ericksen, yancey, & e. ericksen, 1979, p. 311). theoretical framework and further discussion of findings the preference theory helps to explain the various choices women make with respect to the kind of childcare facility preferred, following the kind of activity (work) they (women) are involved in. this is because childcare is within the purview of women. hakim (1996, 2000, 2002) used this theory to explain women’s choices between work in the home and work in the market and to predict the future patterns of these choices. although developed to explain patterns of female employment, its applicability to men is not limited. the theory has four tenets: 1. the world has changed in ways that give women in postmodern societies real choices about how they combine employment and family; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 537 2. given freedom to choose, women make different choices; 3. women’s heterogeneous preferences and priorities create conflicting interests between groups of women; and 4. these groups of women differ substantially in their responses to employment and family policies and conditions. hakim (2000) argues that men’s preferences and priorities are more homogeneous than those of women, which gives men an advantage in negotiations over work and family choices, and, ultimately, accounts for the continued success of patriarchy. but women, according to preference theory, are not simply buffeted by social structures and patriarchy; rather, they decide on and pursue their own agenda. women and men can only realize preferences if the goals they prefer are available to them. hakim (2000) argues that the main determinant of women’s heterogeneous employment patterns and work histories is heterogeneity in their preference for differing combinations of family work and paid employment. she adds that women have genuine choices about how they wish to live; there are no constraints limiting or forcing their choices; and moreover, the lifestyle choices of women are now more important than the constraints associated with social structure, class, or other macro-level influences. hakim further classifies women into three categories based on their work-life preferences: 1. home-centred women, for whom children and family life are the main priorities throughout life; 2. adaptive, non-career-oriented women who wish to combine work and family or who have unplanned careers; and 3. work-centred women, for whom employment or the equivalent is the main priority in life. home-centred and work-centred women are said by hakim (2000) to be characterized by a “consistent commitment to their chosen life-goals”; work-centred women are frequently childless but may also have children, as men do “as an expression of normality, and as a weekend hobby” (p. 164). adaptive women are a highly diverse group and include those who may not marry or marry only late in life. although such women may work full time throughout their lives and achieve high-level career success, “their adaptiveness comes from a lack of commitment to a career from the start” (p. 166). in categorizing women into work-centred, family-centred, or adaptive, hakim (1996) argues that employment careers are centrally important for only a minority of women. today, among university graduates, more than half of adult women accept the sexual division of labour and treat market work as an additional secondary activity to be fitted in with the demands of domestic life. however, it does not follow that this pattern of behaviour is unconstrained. all women face constraints in making decisions about their lives. all nontrivial decisions have opportunity costs as well as real costs. moreover, to say all women encounter constraints does not render the existence of barriers to genuine choice empty or banal. some women have substantially better chances of overcoming constraints and, hence, of living as if they faced no constraints. mcrae (1993) argues that the constraints facing women in choosing how to balance market work and family work, or to forgo one in favour of the other, tend to fall into two categories: normative and structural. into the former, according to mcrae, come women’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 538 own identities – their “inner voices” – gender relations in the family, and husband’s/partner’s attitudes. perhaps, the most immediate structural constraints affecting mothers’ choices are job availability and the cost and availability of childcare, but the outcomes of different social origins also curtail choice more sharply for some women than for others, acting either through poor educational qualifications, early pregnancy, poor health, or culture. in applying this theory to the study, the trichotomisation of women with repect to preferences in lifestyle choices becomes paramount in influencing whether a household may make a request for a domestic servant. adaptive mothers may still prefer the presence of house-helps to fill their gap when away to work. besides, women may use domestic outsourcing as a tool to negotiate and secure their husbands’ approval to engage in paid labour. the results of this study have shown that demand for domestic servants is influenced by work status of the woman, workload, childcare considerations, financial cost, a supportive husband, and the need for companionship. the findings are attributable to the incursion of women into salaried jobs, driven by economic considerations. this domain (public), hitherto regarded as an exclusive preserve of men in nigeria (at least in the cultural definition of breadwinner) has seen visible female presence (tade, 2010). according to onyeonoru and fayankinmu (2005) and onyeonoru (2005), the number of working women and working mothers was on the increase. otite and ogionwo (1979) estimated that half of nigerian working women would be wives and mothers. the beijing declaration of 1995 affirms countries’ commitment to the inalienable rights of women to participate in all spheres of life including economic domain. economic growth and development is greatly dependent on a number of factors, especially for an economy like nigeria, which has witnessed various levels of decline in growth of some sectors. notwithstanding the international declaration on the rights of women, the performance of domestic duties is still held constant. hence, working women negotiate the employment of a domestic servant to reduce the stress of formal employment. the finding on how workload can influence the demand for domestic servants is consistent with the literature. van der lippe (2007) notes that balancing work with family has become one of the most important issues for families. she posits that, with both spouses having paid jobs, difficulties arise as to who is responsible for the domestic and caring duties at home. at the other end, organizations want full loyalty from their employees. owing to the escalation of time in the family and workplace (epstein, 2004), most women feel torn between the two sectors because job expectations and parenting standards have become more demanding (daly, 1996; moen, 2003). hochschild (1997) notes that modern workplaces force their employees to spend more time at work than at home, such that work becomes home and home becomes work. the implications of these work-home conflicts are time pressure, fatigue, burnout, and health problems (macdermid, 2005). coser (1973) describes households and workplaces as greedy institutions. during family formation and career mobility, paid work and domestic work demand time and energy (glass & camarigg, 1992). the greater the time demands of paid and domestic work, the more employees experience work-family conflicts (voydanoff & kelly, 1984). one way to combine paid and domestic work is by outsourcing domestic chores and caregiving (van der lippe, 2007). hence, domestic outsourcing is a rational escape from a work-family quagmire. hutton and giddens international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 521–545 539 (2000), in their discussion of the impact of globalization on the modern family, note that “the growth in personal household services is the result of the emergence of two-earner households who have to buy in services because the woman is not at home” (pp. 5–6). the findings can also be anchored and explained by functionalist role theory. a “role” refers to a set of societal expectations on an individual. by unspoken consensus, certain behaviours are deemed “appropriate” (e.g., looking after the home by women) and others “inappropriate” (abandoning domestic duties for paid employment in african settings). for example, it is appropriate for a woman in an african setting to take up her prescribed mothering and wife roles. abandoning these traditionally prescribed roles is negatively sanctioned. sociologists speak about different kinds of roles (gendered or cultured). in africa, the social role of a wife and mother is both gendered and culturally defined and sanctioned. fundamental to the role theory is the emergence of role strain upon working mothers. this role pressure may arise when there is a conflict in the demands of roles, such as work demands versus household demands and tasks. by taking up jobs outside the home, working mothers deny members in the domestic sphere (husband and children) the traditionally prescribed attention and care which they are really in need of. hence, working mothers may negotiate with their husbands to get a third party (a domestic servant) to assist in the performance of domestic chores and childcare which may be suffering because of her job demands. thus, hiring a domestic servant becomes a safety valve for women who face conflict between achieved and ascribed social roles. conclusion owing to the stiffening economic realities in nigeria, women have become active economic partners in households. such labour dualism affects the effective performance of female roles in modern households in either sphere. the categories of employers (the aged, the newly married, and the transitional households) in the study indicate that household needs are associated with specific phases of the family cycle. the need for companionship rather than performance of domestic chores was accentuated by the aged rather than the newly married. employers’ age, income, type of marriage and length, ethnic and marital status are associated with the demand for domestic servants. households engage domestic servants for the performance of domestic chores to reduce workload, and prevent isolation of the 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(2003). family structure and reproductive health decision-making among the ogu of southwestern nigeria: a qualitative study. african population studies, 18(2), 27–45. owing to the nature of the topic under investigation, a listening guide was adopted in order to read the reflexively constituted narratives, relational narrated subjects, and constructed and critical subjects. first identified were basic elements of n... microsoft word 07 queering_praxis.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120344 queering cyc praxis: what i learned from lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant student experiences in canada nancy marshall abstract: this exploratory autoethnographic study, undertaken by a white straight cisgender child and youth care practitioner, seeks to understand the experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in canada. it highlights the nuances of creating safe spaces for young people who experience harm due to the intersections of systemic racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and homophobia. the overarching finding of this study reveals a culture of silence. queer newcomer, refugee, and immigrant youth in canada are often reluctant to disclose or explore their queerness due to their fears of discrimination and violence. this fear exists notwithstanding the pride canada takes in its efforts to protect lgbtqi+ rights. inspired by findings from interviews with two women, one who supports lgbtqi+ newcomers, refugees, and immigrants to canada, and one who researches policy affecting all canadian refugee experiences, i utilized a self-reflexive deep-dive approach to learn about the events and policies that have shaped lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students’ access to postsecondary education in canada. central findings in this study point to barriers emerging from homonationalism, colonization, religion, culture, race, white-centred gay–straight alliances in schools, and immigration policies pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity expression (sogie). these findings problematize the white, westernized, liberal, out-and-proud policies that child and youth care practitioners are accustomed to. keywords: queer theory; feminism; political self-reflective praxis; postcolonial contexts; decolonizing cyc practice; lgbtqi+ refugee, newcomer, immigrant student experiences acknowledgments: i would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many researchers, child and youth care practitioners, family, and friends who have supported my work on this project. i thank the reviewers and editorial staff of the ijcyfs for their efforts in helping me make this project possible. i thank tanitia munroe and her team of researchers for their inspirational work that has been invaluable to me in my growth as a white child and youth care practitioner. i thank my professor, roopa trilokekar, for her guidance and encouragement to publish my work. finally, i thank my participants for their time and energy in educating me and providing me with resources needed for my journey out of heterocisnormativity. i dedicate this paper to lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students who, out of necessity, remain silent about their identities and traumas — i want to let you know that i am listening. nancy marshall is a phd candidate in education at york university, keele campus, 4700 keele street, toronto, on m3j 1p3. email: nancymar@yorku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 171  prior to this special issue of the ijcyfs, it seems few scholars in the field of child and youth care (cyc) have explored the idea of queering our care. this is surprising given that queer theory and queer activism have flourished in academic and justice-oriented social service fields in north america for close to 30 years, since the height of queer activism in the 1990s (berlant & warner, 1995). admittedly, if anyone had asked me how i might queer cyc before embarking on this study, i would have had nowhere to begin, given my uninformed privileged place of “heterocisnormativity” (lee, 2018, p. 61). it was not until i dedicated myself to intentional and focused learning from the critical perspectives of cyc scholars working to disrupt oppression and normativity in our field that i came to realize there is much more to cyc practice than what was taught to me in school. this realization led to my undertaking the personal and professional research journey that i describe here. i made this journey in response to calls from colleagues asking cyc educators and cyc practitioners (cycps) to engage in a more politicized and historicized cyc praxis with young people (amponsah & stephen, 2020; igbu & baccus, 2018). igbu and baccus (2018) argued that “an intentional relational cyc praxis must call on the profession and practitioners to name and discuss white heteropatriarchal supremacy” (p. 62). the emphasis on praxis — applying theory and knowledge to our practice skills — resonates strongly with my renewed sense of cyc responsibility as a white straight cisgender and non-disabled settler with european colonial roots, who, after more than 10 years of practice, has only recently begun to notice the harmful impacts of my lagging cyc education. for me, this important journey is what queering cyc is about. my answer to the call to engage in a more politicized and historicized cyc praxis is long overdue and i take inspirational cues from other white cisgender cycps and scholars who have already begun to respond (see, e.g., gharabaghi, 2017; hillman et al., 2020; mackenzie, 2020; skott-myhre, 2017; vachon, 2018). using an autoethnographic approach, i discuss the personal and professional insights i derived from writing a short graduate study paper on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other non-heterocisnormative (lgbtqi+)1 newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in canada, many of whom are racialized. inspired by the black queer cycps and educators currently leading the research in this area (see munroe et al., 2018a, 2020), i aim to answer the following research question: how do newcomer, refugee, and immigrant student experiences inform me as a white straight cisgender cycp supporting multiply marginalised young people? 1the ‘+’ sign following the acronym lgbtqi is an increasingly common symbol in the english language to represent many diverse and evolving queer identity terms. while lgbtqi+ is not wholly representative of queer identities in other languages and cultures; as an english speaker and author, i use it throughout this paper for convenience and clarity (see social protection & human rights, 2015). i will also use the term “queer” interchangeably with lgbtqi+ to represent the vastness of queer identities globally. i have intentionally left out “two-spirited (2s)” as this refers to north american indigenous community members, as opposed to the newcomers, refugees, and immigrants who are the focus of my analysis (see khaki, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 172  the objectives of this study are twofold: (a) to uncover the white colonial roots of queer intolerance that continue to oppress lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in canada; and (b) to share how a personal self-reflexive learning journey can help minimize biases that impede the ethical care of marginalized young people. i begin with my inspiration for this research topic followed by key conceptualizations of queering, along with the historical, political, and theoretical contexts that shape lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant experiences in canada. i then provide a detailed description of my research approach, including a reflexive analysis of self discoveries, which i offer in conversation with data collected from two professionals in the fields of lgbtqi+ newcomer and immigrant support and refugee research. i conclude with implications for practice and thoughts on the potentials for queering cyc practice. an inspired process my focus on lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant student experiences was first inspired by the research of my school-based cyc colleague tanitia munroe and her team, which included a panel of black queer youths. shortly before beginning my study, i had listened to an interview (munroe et al., 2018a) in which munroe and her team discussed research aiming to dismantle nonfinancial barriers for black queer students transitioning from high school to postsecondary education (pse) in canada. at the time, i was beginning an important personal and political journey out of heterocisnormative thinking in cyc practice that is now documented in a paper co-authored with two cyc colleagues shadan hyder and matty hillman (see hyder et al., 2019). shadan, matty, and i had become aware of a growing schism in our field between academia and practice, one articulated by thom garfat in a listserv on cyc-net as “a growing reality gulf between ‘those who are doing’ and those who are ‘thinking about the doing’ ” (cyc-net, 2010, 11th paragraph from the end). this schism continues to be discussed at professional gatherings, at conferences, and in publications (hyder et al., 2019; loiselle et al., 2012; vachon, 2020). tanitia and her research team, along with countless others leading work in the area of politicized praxis, have helped me to understand the false dichotomy between the academic “thinking” and the practical “doing” elements of our work. i now confidently align myself with cycps who bring critical theory to critical practice — those who do the practical work of supporting young people through intentional, theory-driven, political praxis (loiselle et al., 2012). background the politics of queering while this study maintains a focus on the experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in canada, my learning from these experiences extends beyond the lgbtqi+ community. in its adjective form, the term “queer” is commonly used as an umbrella term for 2slgbtqi+ identities (khaki, 2018). as a verb, “to queer” connotes both a theoretical and practical critique relevant to the field of cyc: “to queer” means to reveal, contest, and resist the normative structures that underlie many human oppressions, including those that lie outside the realm of sex and gender politics (vachon, 2020). but before the term “to queer” expanded beyond international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 173  lgbtqi+ communities and research, berlant and warner (1995) explained that an important goal of queering was to aspire to create more open and accepted “queer publics” that could “afford sex and intimacy in sustained, unchastening ways” (p. 344). largely, this advocacy for queer publics, which emerged as a response to the injustices underlying the aids epidemic of the 1990s, offered a way of “bringing a queerer world into being” — a world that would respect the safety and belonging of all genders and all orientations in regard to loving one another (berlant & warner, 1995, p. 344). indeed, vachon (2020) noted that the kinds of care found in the queer histories of the hiv/aids era hold value for cyc practice, particularly when we reflect on how queer communities came to look after each other at a time when no one else seemed to care. this is a form of community care that, in many ways, mirrors the relational work we do in the life spaces of young people (garfat & fulcher, 2016) who often have nowhere else to turn (e.g., those in residential care, youth juvenile detention, shelters). on a broader scale, queering has long been formulated through an intersectional lens. for example, the late reverend sheikh ibrahim farajaje, a much-loved and well-respected queer theologian, professor, and spiritual leader throughout the rise of queer activism and scholarship (hamilton, 2020), defined queering as a way of “continually and simultaneously considering all of our own intersectionalities including … race, class, gender, … environmental issues, animal rights, sexualities, spiritual practices” (farajaje as cited in khaki, 2018, 4:02). in a similar vein, alex wilson, indigenous professor and scholar, has called for queer reflection through traditional indigenous land-based knowledge as a way back to precolonial anti-discrimination: “when you’re on the land, all the socially constructed hierarchies around gender, around sexual orientation, around race, or around class disappear. the land engenders itself and we engender it” (wilson & laing, 2018, p. 134). wilson’s land-based education offers a solution to the “epistemicide” that not only cut off indigenous people from the land, but cut off everyone from the knowledge that all belong (wilson & laing, 2018, p. 133). queering in these ways brings humanity back to its roots before the onset of modern colonialist projects of human categorization based on ideas rooted in power dominance, capitalism, racialized political policies, and conformity to white heterosexual european norms (lugones, 2010). ultimately, queering reminds us that there is “an invisible heteronormativity” underlying our politics, professions, and knowledge (berlant & warner, 1995, p. 348). rooted in layers of history and politics on a global scale, this heterocisnormativity creates innumerable barriers for marginalized young people in canada and all over the world. the intersections of race and queerness in canadian schools despite the diversity in canada, black queer newcomers continue to experience “triple times the difficulty” than their white queer counterparts due to racism and colonial oppression (karlene williams-clarke as cited in munroe et al, 2018a, 18:55). for this reason, queer racialized students are often forced into cultures of silence that protect them from abuse, torment, and even death (cruz, 2008). research on racialized newcomer, refugee, and immigrant student experiences is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 174  still in its early stages in canada. to my knowledge, munroe and her colleagues (2018a, 2018b, 2020) were the first to discuss the complexities of newcomer, refugee, queer, and trans identities from the perspective of cyc in educational settings. in education research, the intersections of racism, structural inequalities, and attitudinal barriers have been identified as key factors limiting the success of all black and other racialized students in canadian schools, regardless of whether they are newcomers or not (james & turner, 2017). other studies, such as the seminal report on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in canadian schools, every class in every school (taylor & peter, 2011), found that lgbtqi+-identifying students with racialized backgrounds experience more barriers than their white peers due to the intersections of their sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, poverty, and cultural norms. the added layers of precarious newcomer status, complicated immigration processes, and adjustments to new communities compound the challenges for racialized newcomer students to canada (see munroe, et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2020). religion and cultural norms can contribute to a culture of silence among black and other racialized queer students who fear reprimands and isolation from their communities, families, and peers if they come out as queer (cruz, 2008; munroe et al., 2018b, 2020; taylor & peter, 2011). taylor and peter (2011) also found that lgbtqi+ youth of colour were 14% less likely than their white peers to know “lgbtq” students who were “out” and 17% less likely to know of supportive staff members and teachers (p. 21). in fact, heteronormative religious and cultural ideologies (e.g., those stemming from right-wing christian and islamic fundamentalism) can be powerful silencers of queer rights in public education. this was evidenced in 2018 in ontario when lessons on lgbtqi+ sexuality were removed from an updated sexual education curriculum (alphonso, 2018; cbc news, 2019; levinson king, 2015; munroe et al., 2020). in canadian schools, this form of silencing results in a lack of visible minority students, whether in queer–straight alliances (qsas) across the country, or in localized initiatives like toronto’s safe and positive spaces2 (munroe et al., 2018b, 2020). sadly, the whiteness of these spaces purported to be safe for queer students exacerbates the exclusion of queer students of colour (munroe et al., 2018b). furthermore, munroe (2018a) noted that the experiences of black queer and trans newcomers in particular tend to be “silenced and invisible” (12:45). this is unacceptable given that three quarters of newcomers seeking services in urban areas like toronto are racialized (munroe et al., 2018a). additionally, 60.2% of first-generation canadians and 29.8% of second-generation canadians are visible minorities (statistics canada, 2011). some students feel postsecondary schools are more inclusive than high schools for black and other racialized queer students (munroe et al., 2018b). however, college and university campuses also struggle with racism, homophobia, transphobia, and stigma within white heteronormative school climates (ecker et al., 2015; patrick, 2014). in fact, a recent canada-wide survey found that 2“safe and positive spaces” is a toronto district school board initiative: https://www.tdsb.on.ca/elementaryschool/beyond-the-classroom/safe-and-positive-spaces international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 175  queer student centres vary greatly across canadian pse campuses and often lack the supports that students from different backgrounds require (ecker et al., 2015). histories of colonial heterocispatriarchy long histories of colonial “heterocispatriarchy” (lee, 2018, p. 63) are directly responsible for the challenges lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students face in canada. colonially imposed sodomy laws, stemming from long-standing relationships between state and religion, have worked to surveil and criminalize queerness around the world for centuries (ahmed, 2015; blake & dayle, 2013; gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2018; mendos, 2019; murray, 2014; nicol, 2014). a history of capitalism has further contributed to the heterocispatriarchal legacy of queer oppression by placing value on heterosexual patriarchic family norms (lee, 2018; lorde, 1984; lugones, 2010). this power-driven colonial history of criminalizing same-sex relations and queer identities was enforced over 400 hundred years ago by british colonialist powers (and french colonialists, although to a lesser extent3) in countries throughout asia, africa, and the americas (nicol, 2014). in other countries, such as those with a muslim-majority population, men in positions of power have propagandized heteronormative interpretations of religious texts such as the quran (ahmed, 1992; khaki, 2018). these interpretations continue to perpetuate harmful views of queerness in several canadian immigrant communities today (levinson king, 2015). there are close to 70 countries worldwide where lgbtqi+ identities are persecuted by law, and in 12 of these countries, queer sexual relations are punishable by death (mendos, 2019). immigrants from all of those countries reside in canada with varied newcomer, refugee, and generation statuses (statistics canada, 2019). canada as a “safe haven” of course, lgbtqi+ newcomers, refugees, and immigrants to canada also experience discrimination due to the cultural, familial, and religious norms that afflict even countries where the persecution of queer identities is not official policy. many countries, including canada, do not criminalize same-sex relations or gender identities, yet homophobic and transphobic violence persists (ecker et al., 2015; gamble et al., 2015; munroe et al., 2020; taylor & peter, 2011). the global history of queer intolerance sparked by british and french colonial conquests had a profound effect in canada. canada’s mission to “civilize” indigenous people through the residential school system was rooted in colonial heterocisnormative religious values dating back to 16th-century europe and is responsible for the erasure of queer acceptance in indigenous communities (wilson & laing, 2018; woods & yerxa, 2016). the same values are responsible for suppressing ancient traditions of queer acceptance in commonwealth countries globally (human rights watch, 2008; nicol, 2014). indigenous scholars (see wilson & laing, 2018) and queer activists (woods & yerxa, 2016) have begun to unveil indigenous histories of queer acceptance. yet, as alex wilson pointed out, it can be “a delicate topic to discuss” when elders 3see human rights watch (2008) this alien legacy for a complete history in brief: https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british-colonialism international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 176  and other indigenous community members have internalized heteronormative values that deny queer rights (wilson & laing, 2018, p. 134). indeed, it is ironic that descendants of heteronormative white colonial settlers in canada now celebrate queer pride while in the historically queer-accepting indigenous communities, it is necessary to fight for queer rights and belonging (woods & yerxa, 2016). this cruel irony plays out in former british colonies around the world while present-day britain enjoys a reputation of upholding queer rights (ahmed, 2015; mendos, 2019). when it comes to newcomers who are seeking asylum, canada too takes pride in its reputation as a safe haven for lgbtqi+ refugees (gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2018, 2019; murray, 2014). nevertheless, queer asylum seekers continue to face barriers to successful settlement, including access to housing, education, employment, financial stability, and acceptance of refugee claims (gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2019; munroe et al., 2020 murray, 2011). one of the most significant barriers for lgbtqi+ refugees is the basis of claim form (immigration and refugee board of canada [irb], 2018a; immigration.ca, 2013), a requirement that asks claimants to prove the legitimacy of their claim within 15 days of arrival4. queer and trans refugees often have trouble producing such evidence becuase in their countries of origin, any indication of their true gender identity or sexual orientation had to be hidden (bielski, 2017; dearham, 2017; gamble et al., 2015; laviolette, 2009; mulé & gates-gasse, 2012; murray, 2011, 2014; rehaag, 2008). a further barrier, bill c-31 (protecting canada’s immigration system act, 2012), was intended to protect canada’s immigration system from false refugee claims through a list of 42 designated countries of origin that were — unjustifiably in my view — deemed adequate protectors of human rights and freedoms and therefore not eligible for asylum claims related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (sogie; gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2018; mulé & gates-gasse, 2012; smith, 2012). fortunately, canada has since “removed all countries from the designated country of origin list” (government of canada, 2019). however, rigid homonationalist constructions of who qualifies as an “authentic refugee body” (murray, 2014, p. 29) continue to linger in the public consciousness. improvements to the lgbtqi+ refugee claimant process have included new guidelines that help immigration and refugee board of canada (irb) officers understand the harm sogie claimants encounter due to intersectional marginalization and unrealistic requirements that they prove their queerness through the basis of claim form (government of canada, 2017; irb, 2018b). the new guidelines were “inspired and informed” (government of canada, 2017, para. 3) in part by the seminal work of nicole laviolette (2009), a law professor and researcher who was dedicated to dismantling barriers for sogie refugees. they address the unique barriers sogie claimants face when cultural, religious, and family backgrounds contextualize queerness in ways that do not conform to some irb officers’ understanding of lgbtqi+ expressions of identity 4due to the impacts of covid-19, the basis of claim forms have been granted temporary extensions at the time of this writing (see “practice notice on the temporary extension of time limits for filing the basis of claim form”: https://irb.gc.ca/en/legal-policy/procedures/pages/practice-notice-temporary-extension-boc-form.aspx) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 177  (irb, 2018b). according to the guidelines, irb officers are now trained to understand the “nonlinear process” of refugee claimants’ diverse understanding and acceptance of their own sogie, which can differ widely from westernized understandings of what it means to be queer (irb, 2018b, section 3, para. 1). however, human rights organizations have declared that these improvements are not enough: many queer migrants continue to fear rejection of their sogie claims by the irb and seek entry to canada through other means, such as temporary work and study visas, which can be difficult to obtain (gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2019; mulé & gates-gasse, 2012). additionally, many migrants who are eager to flee but do not have the resources to obtain a visa, nor the resources to make the long trip to canada, are forced to live in limbo in refugee camps close to their home countries (amuke, 2015). the impact of covid-19 is not likely to diminish for long the influx of new immigrants to canada. recently, the government of canada pledged to open its borders to over one million refugees and newcomers over the next 3 years (harris, 2020). immigration terminology in canada as this study is focused on newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students to canada, it is important to clarify the terminology that defines their experiences. in canada, the term “newcomer” or “recent immigrant” refers to a person who has arrived in canada within 5 years of the latest census count (statistics canada, 2010). refugees (also “convention refugees”5) are those whose refugee claims have been officially accepted by the irb, while “refugee claimants” are still awaiting decisions on their claims (gamble et al., 2015, p. 12). recent immigrants can also be holders of temporary resident visas (trvs), which include student and work permits (lee, 2019). in official statistics, first-generation immigrants include not only newcomers and refugees, but also canadians born outside of canada to canadian parents (statistics canada, 2011). secondgeneration immigrants are defined as “individuals who were born in canada and had at least one parent born outside canada … third generation or more refers to people who are born in canada with both parents born in canada” (statistics canada, 2011, p. 3). theoretical context vachon (2020) invited cycps to queer our care work: to “consider a queer cyc imagination” (p. 64) — an imagination that he argues can open possibilities for thinking and doing our work differently, perhaps more politically, within the cyc ethic of “making moments meaningful” in the “minutiae” of young people’s everyday life events (garfat & fulcher, 2016). i aim to queer my own practice by making connections between (micro) moments with young people and (macro) systems of politics that influence their lives. to do this, i aspire to what amponsah and stephen (2020) referred to as “an informed allyship” of action led by the communities i aim to support (p. 10). as a white straight cycp, i am grateful to the cycps who have taught me that an informed allyship requires a historicized and politicized theoretical grounding (amponsah & stephen, 2020; 5“convention” refers to the un convention relating to the status of refugees (un refugee agency, n.d.) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 178  igbu & baccus, 2018). for this paper, i draw on queer and feminist postcolonial thinkers who have thought deeply about the ways in which modern nation-states create precarious conditions for citizens through rigid notions of legitimate citizenship based on heterocisnormative conformity (butler, 2009; butler & spivak, 2007; lugones, 2010; puar, 2013). these frameworks are concerned with the “dynamics of power” and “why some forms of sexual life are so much more possible than others, and why some seem to embody the unthinkable and even the unlive-able” (butler, 2009, p. iv). puar (2013) explained the power maintained by white westernized nations through a lens of homonationalism, a concept that recognizes modern and illusive “progress for gay rights … built on the backs of racialized others” (p. 337). homonationalist rhetoric creates a binary of “us” versus “them”: a way of othering queer outsiders who do not seem to “fit” white westernized views of queerness (murray, 2014; puar, 2013; white, 2013). for example, visions of a monolithic homophobic islam are socially constructed as somehow more deviant than the homophobia found in white westernized nations (puar, 2013). meanwhile islam, a religion already subjected to xenophobic white european supremacist views of “oriental backwardness” (said, 1978, p. 43), is richly diverse, and not the inherently queer-phobic religion many have made it out to be (khaki, 2018). in the middle east and elsewhere around the world, centuries of british and french colonial conquests have suppressed queer sexualities for the purpose of colonial capitalist gains that thrive on white heteronormative family values (lee, 2018; lugones, 2010). i further look to a queer of colour analysis (munroe et al., 2020) to disrupt the deeply problematic notion of whiteness “as the entry point into goodness”, which has been constructed through centuries of white colonial european oppression (amponsah & stephen, 2020, p. 7). this history reminds us that we cannot do our work solely from the dominant white neoliberal perspective manifested in the out-and-proud advocacy embedded within queer rights discourse across canadian and global societies (munroe et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2020). rather, we must unsettle “white settler privilege in practice” (mackenzie, 2020, p. 96) as we learn to respect the silence that queer newcomers and immigrants rely on for survival (cruz, 2008; munroe et al., 2020). the oppression of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students is rooted in a historical colonial racism that falsely generalizes non-westernized subjects as dangerous, strange, and uncivilized “others” (blake & dayle, 2013; lorde, 1984; lugones, 2010; said, 1978). through a lens of queer and feminist politics, subjects who are falsely constructed to be dangerous, strange, or uncivilized based on their non-conformity with white heterosexual norms are more accurately depicted as positive and necessary resisters of “the coloniality of gender” (lugones, 2010, p. 746). reframing stigmatized notions of non-westernized and non-heteronormative subjects in this way is fundamental to queering cyc practice. reframing young people’s “dangerous” behaviours as forms of resistance is not entirely new to cyc practice (see, e.g., brockett & anderson-nathe, 2016). however, reframing stigmatized notions of “strange” or “queer” into sources of pride for racialized newcomer, refugee, and immigrant queer young people is perhaps a new and important endeavour for our field. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 179  i apply these queer and feminist postcolonial frameworks to my previous self-reflexive work using the feminist maxim “the personal is political” (see hyder et al., 2019). i extend my work by taking note of amponsah and stephen’s (2020) reference to audre lorde’s (1984) important advice: “reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside [ourselves] and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. see whose face it wears. then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” (p. 113). reaching inward to challenge our own inner biases is a necessary step toward restructuring the normative hegemony of cyc practices wherein white straight cisgender cycps may “non-consciously” commit microaggressions due to the privileges they hold (vachon, 2018, p. 15). queer, feminist, and postcolonial frameworks join the personal with the political in ways that help me understand how to truly make moments meaningful for the young people i support. through this project, my own way of reaching inward was operationalized through autoethnography. methodology an autoethnographic approach autoethnography involves the application of critical self-reflexivity to qualitative research — “stories of/about the self told through the lens of culture” (adams et al., 2014, p. 1). the inclusion of self in autoethnographic research is political: it aims to disrupt the colonialism reproduced by and through more traditional research methods that have historically represented cultures without critical reflection on power imbalances between the researchers and the often marginalised communities they study (adams et al., 2014). for the purposes of this paper, i applied an autoethnographic lens to a qualitative research assignment i completed in the winter semester of 2019 for a graduate course in the faculty of education at york university. the assignment required us (the students in the graduate class) to seek further understanding of postsecondary student experiences that were distinctly different from our own. we were given the choice to either interview postsecondary students directly or to interview organizations and student centres that supported student success. i chose to interview staff members from organizations that supported or researched lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students’ access to pse in canada. i found that this assignment aligned with the social justice aims of self-reflexivity in autoethnography, which encourage researchers to “interrogate the intersections between self and society” and “the personal and the political” (adams et al., 2014, p. 2). as a result, two distinct research phases unfolded. in phase one, i used a semistructured qualitative interviewing method with each participant to gain their unsolicited insights, which were based on their positionality and expertise about pse access for queer newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in canada (creswell, 2013). in autoethnographic research, this can be referred to as a “topical interview” approach that works to either confirm or counter the researcher’s own understanding of the research area (adams et al., 2014, p. 54). in phase two, i applied an autoethnographic analysis to the interview data for the purposes of determining my inner professional growth out of heterocisnormative cyc practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 180  unlike many autoethnographic researchers, i did not engage in the direct ethnographic style of community fieldwork before interviewing my participants (e.g., collecting notes and observations). however, i had been employing an autoethnographic “keeping notes” approach (adams et al., 2014, p. 3) for years, both in my fieldwork as a cycp and as a budding academic interested in exploring my white cyc fragility (vachon, 2018). i had typed notes and handwritten journal entries to draw from for self-reflexive analysis. by adding the element of self-reflexivity to this work, i aimed to reveal the ignorance that can accompany one’s place of privilege and power in society, something that is particularly important for white straight cisgender colonial settlers in canada to come to terms with. recruitment to recruit participants in phase one, i used a convenience sampling approach (lavrakas, 2011). based on my literature review and prior community contacts, i emailed six organizations and centres across canada that i knew employed workers who would have experience and knowledge about queer newcomer, refugee, and immigrant experiences and who i thought might be interested in speaking with me. in my message, i stated that i was undertaking research for a term paper on the inclusion of newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students who identified as lgbtqi+, and that i thought their organization could provide invaluable insight. i stated that my aim was to investigate and increase advocacy for the inclusion of these students who face myriad barriers. in total, two individuals from two organizations agreed to participate in this study. one agreed to a 45-minute face-to-face interview and the other responded asynchronously via email discussion. my choice to recruit staff members rather than students was informed by my having learned, through my literature review, that lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students are often silent about their experiences due to fear of discrimination, abuse, and isolation (cruz, 2008; munroe et al., 2018b, 2020; taylor & peter, 2011). i further understood that lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students to canada are an extremely vulnerable group. i felt that an interview process with these students would require much more relationship-building and trust than i would be able to offer as a graduate student completing a short research assignment. ethics ethics approval was acquired through the human participants review sub-committee at york university, which conforms to canadian tri-council research ethics standards. participants in the study consented to having their comments and recommendations included in future publications and presentations that could better inform graduate students, researchers, and student service professionals about the diverse experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students in pse. i provided participants with an opportunity to review their contributions to my analysis in each phase of the study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 181  participants both participants were in positions of managerial leadership in their organizations. the first participant i interviewed (in the face-to-face 45-minute interview) was a black jamaican immigrant to canada who identified as queer and female. the second participant was a white canadian researcher who identified as female but did not disclose her sexual orientation. throughout this article, the participants will be referred to by the pseudonyms “addy” (from organization a) and “bailey” (from organization b) to protect their anonymity. the organizations they worked for were different in scope of service, practice, and focus. addy worked for an organization that directly supported 2slgbtqi+ communities with an additional focus on supporting lgbtqi+ newcomers, refugees, and immigrants. bailey worked at a university centre for refugee studies and research. data analysis after collecting data from each of my interviewees, i conducted more targeted reviews of the literature and of my own personal notes documenting my journey in political self-reflexive practice. i organized my findings using an autoethnographic thematicizing approach, which encouraged me to pause, reflect, and connect important personal and professional learning to my collected data (adams et al., 2014, p. 68). i repeated this thematicizing several times over until i was satisfied that i had invited enough vulnerability within myself to effect lasting personal change (adams et al., 2014) in moments of my practice with young people. i was drawn to this process of analysis as i felt it aligned with the cyc tenet in relational practice of “making moments meaningful”, which asks cycps to utilize everyday moments in their relational practice with young people to create opportunities for growth and positive change (garfat, 2016, p. 2). the results that follow detail moments of reflexivity interwoven with knowledge gained from my research participants. findings but, it’s ok to be queer here! throughout my cyc career, i have taken pride in my relational work with young people. even on days when i felt my interventions and moments with young people had gone awry, i commended myself for learning from my mistakes. i believe in equal rights and i have striven to denounce racism, ableism, and homophobia in the spaces where i work. i often volunteered at gay pride events in my community and participated in qsa and safe and positive spaces events at the school where i was employed. on more than one occasion, i had supported queer and questioning students in their coming out process with the aim of relational safety; i took care to check in with the “co-created space” (garfat & fulcher, 2016, p. 16) between myself and them with the aim of ensuring that they perceived me as a safe and non-judgemental person. i introduced them to activist voices from queer rights movements and was proud when i could assure them that, for the most part, it is safe to be queer here in 21st-century canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 182  i was therefore stunned to learn of the lack of safety in safe and positive spaces within canadian schools where black queer students “are targeted” (munroe et al., 2018b, 4:00). despite my years of experience supporting lgbtqi+ students, i did not know that black queer students, more than their white counterparts, avoided designated safe spaces at school. i wondered how black students could be more at risk of isolation and abuse than white students. did it have something to do with religion? with culture? was it possible that black communities are generally less queer-friendly than white communities? (this particular thought scared me — just thinking it made me feel i was racist.) despite my limited education in history and global politics, i knew that some countries had extremely homophobic policies and criminalization laws, and that some of these were african and asian countries from which many newcomers to canada have emigrated. yet i had not spent much time reflecting on these issues or how they might impact the students i work with. one of the first discussion points in my interview with addy centred on these issues as she commented on her experience supporting queer people from jamaica and the caribbean who were at risk of abuse and isolation in canada: this is a very heavily catholic community that doesn’t recognize queerness as something that is acceptable, and that’s brought here as a cultural norm to canada even though they are now supposed to be in a place where hate and rejection is not acceptable…. they largely live in the closet because of their catholic communities. people are only “out” here in these walls [gesturing around the lobby of the organization where she worked]. once they leave this space, it [queerness] is not a thing for them — they are not permitted or allowed. addy’s comments confirmed my assumption that the apprehensions experienced by queer newcomer and immigrant students were rooted in religion. what i did not know was that it was not a matter of religion alone. through further research, i learned that colonialism plays a large role in complicating the history of homophobia in countries around the world. commonwealth laws, such as the 1864 offences against the person act of jamaica6, have been established through centuries of colonial power concerned with bringing heteronormative nuclear-family norms into law as a way of regulating sexual acts for the purposes of moral civilization and economic benefit (blake & dayle, 2013; lee, 2018). in fact, much of the global colonial spread of legally imposed homophobia and transphobia began in india in 1861 with the implementation of section 377 of the criminal code by the british lord macaulay (see human rights watch, 2008), which had its roots in king henry viii’s buggery act of 15337 (nicol, 6https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/natlex4.detail?p_lang=&p_isn=73502&p_classification=01.04 7https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-buggery-act-1533# international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 183  2014). in the context of the caribbean, these laws were perpetuated in christian missionary projects to civilize african slaves in preparation for colonialized caribbean life (blake & dayle, 2013). in a country like jamaica, where the majority of the population are of african descent, such “civilizing” missions had a great impact. historically, same-sex marriages were accepted and seen as contributing to economic stability in parts of africa; lesbian partnerships in the former kingdom of dahomey provided one example of this (lorde, 1984). thus, it is possible that african slaves brought over to jamaica in the 18th and 19th centuries to serve the aims of western capitalist modernity (blake & dayle, 2013) were robbed of their queer-friendly heritage in the name of colonialism and assimilation. before learning this history, i knew intuitively that queer intolerance could not simply be a matter of culture, religion, or race, but i lacked the essential knowledge that would tell me precisely why. i began to understand the deep-seated roots of colonial heterocispatriarchal oppression and how seriously it impacts the lives of queer newcomer and immigrant students in canada. my ignorance of white heterocispatriarchal queer oppression globally was a form of internalized racism; this ignorance allowed me to practise from a place of heterocisnormative privilege under the flawed assumption that other cultures were inherently more homophobic than my own. addy continued to discuss the consequences that religious belief systems can have on queer newcomers to canada, particularly when they are courageous enough to express their gay pride alongside their canadian peers. she explained that international students, for example, risk losing everything when they enjoy their new-found freedom of expression on queer-friendly campuses: they run out of money because their parents found out they were queer — they are caught up in the power of being out in canada and their parents find out through social media or other people who snitch on them and they no longer get their school fees paid. i have heard horror stories of parents coming here to physically harm their children. research on the experiences of queer international and immigrant students in canada is emerging. patrick (2014) found that queer international students are often relieved to be able disclose their queerness here in canada after hiding their identities in their home countries. queer international students who transition from high school to pse in canada often find that college and university campuses are the first places they feel comfortable expressing their identities (munroe et al., 2018b). however, these students still face immense risks; canadian pse queer student support centres have yet to develop adequate supports specific to the unique challenges confronting queer international and immigrant students (ecker et al., 2015). after the interview with addy, i tried to recall the many qsa and safe spaces events i had participated in during my school-based cyc career. i could not remember there ever being black students in attendance. cannary, a black queer lesbian member of munroe’s (2018b) research team, offered an explanation: “often queer people who are of different nationalities feel like they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 184  have to choose between their queerness and their racial identity” (munroe et al., 2018b, 30:05). as an immigrant herself, cannary explained that she could not speak freely about her identity if she wanted to be accepted and loved by her family. clearly, many black queer and newcomer students did not feel safe expressing their queerness here, and were in a quandary: they either suffered in silence or risked dangerous consequences by coming out. as i learned about these experiences, i reflected that, up until this point in my career, i had been practising a “more traditional liberal homonormative lesbian/gay studies approach” (vachon, 2020, p. 67) that did nothing to address the challenges queer newcomer and immigrant students faced. i recalled how all that i had learned about lgbtqi+ issues came from textbooks taught by white straight cisgender teachers. i had been missing the deeper “queer critiques” that extend beyond pink t-shirts and rainbow-coloured triangles (vachon, 2020, p. 68). a queer of colour critique has taught me that silence is a survival skill for many students and that my out-and-proud advocacy risked putting these students in danger (munroe et al., 2020). i reflected on moments i had shared with lgbtqi+ youth, thinking i was supporting them with my message, “it’s ok to be queer here!” were any of them newcomers? had i put any of them at risk of harm in my efforts to care? it really is a colonial thing my deep dive into the colonial roots of queer oppression continued as i exchanged emails with my interviewee bailey in february of 2019. bailey raised concerns about regressive changes to sexual education in ontario: so, lgbtq students face barriers because of the retrograde move by the government to revert back to the 1998 curriculum, which does not acknowledge, teach, or promote inclusion of lgbtq students. as an ontario-based cycp in schools, bailey’s concerns were not new to me; however, i realized there was much more that i needed to learn about the historical roots informing the conservative government’s 2018 decision to rescind the updated and more progressive sex education curriculum that had been introduced by the liberal government several years earlier (cbc news, 2019). i recalled my own frustrations with this “retrograde move” and the conservative promise of more consultation with the curriculum’s opponents, identified as “mainly faith groups and socially conservative family organizations” (alphonso, 2018, para. 4). less than a year prior to this repeal, i had supported a male-identifying middle eastern muslim newcomer student at the high school i worked at. he was joyful, bright, and full of energy. he was also quite vocal about his nonacceptance of gay rights, which he told me came from his family’s culture and teachings from the quran. this was my first experience working with a student who was so openly anti-queer in a school that prided itself on affirming lgbtqi+ rights and identities. the fact that he was muslim reinforced my internalized bias that islam was a homophobic religion. my experiences with this student, coupled with bailey’s concerns about the lack of lgbtqi+ inclusion in sex education curricula, prompted me to dig further into the history behind religious queer intolerance. it also helped me to unpack my own islamophobic assumptions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 185  i remembered reading about some muslim immigrants to canada who had been quite vocal about their opposition to the updated sex education curriculum. i reviewed the media coverage and found an article detailing some handwritten letters in arabic that had circulated in the greater toronto area (levinson king, 2015). one letter claimed, “it will teach gay-trans propaganda starting in grade 1 [age 6]. destroy the idea of gender, natural law, heterosexual family normalcy” (levinson king, 2015, para. 7). the importance of protecting “heterosexual family normalcy” was what my student had tried to explain to me earlier that year. because i felt my relationship with this student was good, we had often engaged in difficult dialogues about queer rights and homophobia at school. on one occasion, i came to tears listening to him engage in homophobic jokes with classmates. when he later apologised, i understood that he was likely grappling with the conflicting messages he was receiving at school and from his community. due to his effeminate manner, i had also been wondering whether he was questioning his own sexual identity. i had empathy for what he might be going through but had not challenged myself to learn more about islamic perspectives on lgbtqi+ rights and freedoms. after my exchange with bailey, i reviewed notes from an elective undergraduate course on women and gender in islam that i had taken. i had learned that there were false stereotypes regarding women in islam and wondered whether there were also falsely constructed histories of anti-queerness. i searched the assigned text, women and gender in islam (ahmed, 1992), for evidence of queerness in islam’s history. i discovered that islam’s reputation as a monolithic antifeminist and anti-queer religion was unjust and unfair in many ways and that colonialism played a major role in constructing this history of islam. ahmed (1992) explained that in the ancient middle east (circa 6000 bce and into the 2nd millennium bce), many cultures worshipped female goddess figures within societies that elevated the status of women. some feminist theories have suggested that over time the decline in women’s status, along with the eventual “decline of the goddess” (p. 13), were the consequences of emerging labour market needs that commodified women’s reproductive means into the “property” of men for capitalist gain (p. 12). the rise of islam in the 7th century adopted the patriarchal practices of monotheistic religions already in place, which assigned a male pronoun to one god; islam, among other religions, effectively displaced a polythiest religion in the middle east that worshipped three goddesses and a varety of family structures that were not limited to patriarchal family customs. ahmed noted that “mesopotamian, persian, hellenic, christian, and eventually islamic cultures each contributed practices that both controlled and diminished women”; each culture “borrowed the controlling and reductive practices of its neighbours” in ways that viewed the female body as “exclusively biological … a sexual and reproductive being” (p. 18). according to ahmed’s account of the history, when islam conquered middle eastern and mediterranean regions, it assimilated “the scriptural and social traditions” of existing cultural norms into “the corpus of islamic life” (p. 4). ahmed provided one example of “how easily and invisibly scriptural assimilation could occur”: in its account of the creation of humankind, the quran does not mention international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 186  whether the man or the woman came first or stipulate that eve was born of adam’s rib; yet, traditionalist translations in islamic literature written after muslim conquests do depict eve as “created from a rib” (p. 4). ahmed’s feminist perspective of this history provides evidence of how patriarchal interpretations of religion, including (but not limited to) islam, became culturally entrenched to serve the purposes of male dominance and capitalist colonial power that had been emerging for centuries. male members of muslim societies became primary interpreters of some of the more vague passages in the quran and did so through a heteronormative patriarchic lens that valued male-headed households and heterosexual family norms. for decades, queer muslim activists have pushed back against heteronormative readings of the quran. in a tedx talk on queer muslim perspectives, gay muslim refugee and lawyer el-farouk khaki (2018) explained that when the quran’s message of peace is interpreted through patriarchy and power, it is often used to justify hate against muslim lgbtqi+ people. khaki described this as a form of “spiritual violence and spiritual abuse” (4:31) that he had struggled with in childhood until he learned to resist the message that “you can’t be gay and muslim” (1:30). as an activist and human rights lawyer in toronto since the early 1990s, khaki has promoted an inclusive and accepting islam with evidence from the quran that depicts allah as a queer-affirming and accepting god of all people regardless of “our social location, our physical location” (9:35). to make his argument, khaki cited evidence of mukhannathun (effeminate men) in muhammad’s quarters (3:10) and the fundamental principle of tawhid, “the unicity of god” (9:15). khaki interpreted tawhid in the context of chapter 50, verse 16 of the quran to mean “we are all interchangeable as human beings” (9:33). through this lens, khaki defined social and physical locations as “arbitrary distinctions” (9:38). his view aligns with indigenous perspectives on the importance of queering land-based education, which understand arbitrary hierarchal categorizations of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class as modern colonially constructed concepts created for economic and capital gain (lugones, 2010; wilson & laing, 2018). looking back, i wonder how i might have used this knowledge in my interventions with the muslim student i supported. i am grateful for the motivation bailey gave me to finally confirm what i thought could be true but needed to investigate further: islamic and muslim ways of being in the world can be as queer-affirming as any other culture and religion. furthermore, violent heterocisnormative practices present in middle eastern nations are rooted in religious and cultural practices that existed long before the rise of islam. ironically, these practices shape the western colonial powers that appear to be queer-friendly today. in our email exchange, bailey stated that there is “plenty of related potential for discrimination, exclusion, and hate without sogi [sexual orientation and gender identity] curriculum promoting equality, inclusion, and legitimacy.” i found myself reflecting on how the education system can effectively promote “equality, inclusion, and legitimacy” while also respecting young people’s religious and cultural belief systems. as a white cycp who does not observe any particular faith, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 187  i know it is not my place to educate muslim students on the history of their own religion, particularly when i have only begun to scratch the surface of this long and complex history. it is important i take the lead from my black and brown colleagues who try to ensure that newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students gain access to information about their sexuality in school curricula (munroe et al., 2020). i also know that an important first step in promoting queer rights and inclusion in education is to equip myself with the knowledge needed to become an informed ally to these communities (amponsah & stephen, 2020). europe’s history, my history, of colonial supremacy has decimated human rights through its imposition of white european values and deprecation of anyone who presents as an outsider to traditional white heteronormative and patriarchic norms (blake & dayle, 2013; lugones, 2010; puar, 2013; said, 1978). it really is a colonial thing, and it is my responsibility to understand this. prove it! the following two sections of analysis relate specifically to queer newcomer and refugee students in canada. both addy and bailey identified sogie refugee issues that have unsettled my image of canada as a safe haven for queer newcomers and immigrants. i begin with bailey’s explanation of why sogie newcomer and refugee issues are such an important area of research in canada: a man is under threat of the death penalty in iran if he is found … having sex with another man; others are tortured or persecuted in other ways until they have to leave. where can they go and how they are welcomed (or not) are important questions … and canada often excludes sogi asylum seekers as much as it accepts them. with my limited knowledge of refugee issues in canada, i wondered what could be exclusionary about canada’s policies protecting such vulnerable asylum seekers. following bailey’s recommendation, i reviewed seminal research in the area of canada’s sogie refugee laws (see, e.g., laviolette, 2009; murray, 2011, 2014; rehaag, 2008). i learned that queer asylum seekers in canada experience a disproportionately unfair “burden of proof” compared to claimants seeking refuge from war, violence, and other types of oppression (laviolette, 2009, p. 454). the burden of proof identified by laviolette (2009) is the basis of claim form (irb, 2018a; immigration.ca, 2013), formerly called the personal information form (pif), that requires claimants to narrate evidence of their need for asylum within just 15 days of their arrival in canada (bielski, 2017; gamble et al., 2015). for sogie claimants from countries where queerness is not tolerated, or is even criminalized, the task of proving their queerness becomes impossible, since they have had to hide their identities to survive (dearham, 2017; gamble et al., 2015; laviolette, 2009; mulé & gates-gasse, 2012; murray, 2011, 2014; rehaag, 2008). to complicate matters, the canadian definition of what it means to be queer can differ from definitions of queerness in other cultures. for example, queer terminology, along with queer lifestyle choices, activities (sexual or otherwise), and social norms, will be different depending on which country a refugee comes from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 188  (murray, 2011; rehaag, 2008). thus, claimants are caught in a dilemma: whether to be honest about lacking the kinds of proof that would satisfy a canadian adjudicator’s notion of queerness, or whether to create a credible narrative of queerness, even though the process of “becoming” canada’s version of queer may not feel genuine to their own experiences (murray, 2011, p. 131). either way, they risk not being believed by the irb and having to return to their home countries (laviolette, 2009; murray, 2011, 2014; rehaag, 2008). in 2017, the irb announced improvements to reduce the burden of proof after examining “the harm individuals may face due to their non-conformity with socially accepted sogie norms” (government of canada, 2017, para. 2). however, lack of evidence for lgbtqi+ eligibility continues to be a significant barrier for many claimants, particularly those from countries with the strictest criminalization laws (lee, 2018). when i discussed the improvements to the sogie claim process in my interview with addy, she explained that the changes had had little impact on the newcomers she supported: the [pif] changes in 2017 have not changed anything — they [sogie refugees] purposely forget their experiences and this is difficult for the irb because there is no proof … there is this idea of not being queer enough. it must be physical, based on stereotypical ideals. i found examples of purposely “forgetting” and “not being queer enough” in several studies. murray (2011) detailed the experience of a woman from st. lucia who forgot to include on her form an incident in which a man threw a rock at her while calling her a “sodomite”, which resulted in her getting stitches. although this was a significant piece of evidence that could have helped her claim, the trauma associated with the incident caused her to block it from her memory. she had remembered the incident by the time of her hearing, but was prohibited from recalling it “since it wasn’t in her pif” (p. 132). in another example, i learned that it is common for a gay man from africa to pretend to be heterosexual by marrying a woman and having children, because that is the only accepted way of having a family in many african countries (gamble et al., 2015). finally, i found graphic accounts of the “physical” proof needed to satisfy the irb. for example, it is not uncommon for claimants to be asked intimate details about their sexual past. in one study, an irb adjudicator asked: “ ‘when was the first time you had sex?’ … ‘how did you feel?’ … ‘tell me, because i wasn’t there. tell me.’ ” (dearham, 2017, p. 11). learning of the ways in which queer asylum seekers to canada have to prove their sexual identity, relive their traumas, and “become” canada’s version of a credible queer person has helped me recognize the extent of my heterocisnormative privilege. it is difficult to imagine telling a complete stranger, within 15 days of arriving in a strange country, the intimate details of your personal life, sex life, and past traumas. moreover, even if sogie claimants are successful in proving their lgbtqi+ identity, they can wait years for their permanent resident status, which hinders their ability to get access to services such as formal education. addy explained: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 189  a lot of people take the free entry-level english courses that are offered but end up doing dishes or bartending or something because they have other factors that intersect such as race and language skills, gender, identity … indeed, newcomers to canada scramble to find adequate means to support themselves as they wait for the necessary temporary resident visas to work and attend pse in canada (munroe et al., 2020). meanwhile, they face racism and homophobia as they attempt to prove their worthiness to stay in canada (gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2019; munroe et al., 2020; murray, 2014). they are often told that the pse credentials they acquired in their home countries are not transferrable to canada, or that, for trans-identifying newcomers, their credentials are unacceptable because the name on their documents does not match their perceived sex or current name (munroe et al., 2018b, 2020). such burdens of proof, placed disproportionately on the shoulders of queer newcomers, exemplify bailey’s concern that canada excludes sogie asylum seekers as much as it accepts them. are they really refugees? for several years prior to this project, i had engaged in heated debates with people who believed that large numbers of newcomers take advantage of liberal policies to “fake” their way into canada. sadly, i lacked the knowledge and details to justify what i felt to be true: there is no such thing as an illegitimate or fake refugee. after learning about the struggles sogie refugees encounter when trying to prove their queerness, i can understand why people think refugees are “faking it”, because they often are — just not for the reasons people think. rigid and unjust immigration policies have given sogie refugees little choice. in our interview, addy explained that queer migrants “must come from their country of origin through treacherous paths, so they find ways to fake their way in”. addy explained that “faking their way in” meant that queer migrants are often forced to find creative ways to avoid dangerous and precarious immigration routes and refugee camps, particularly if they are from countries with strict and violent anti-queer policies. countries like uganda, for example, enact strict regulations that prevent lgbtqi+ citizens from safely emigrating or seeking refuge (gamble et al., 2015). thus, queer migrants are often forced to falsify documents and to find the financial means to obtain the proper temporary resident visas (trvs) in any way they can, although these bring no guarantee of stability in the destination country (lee, 2019). indeed, lee’s (2019) study revealed that, despite success in securing trvs, many lgbtqi+ newcomers to canada live precariously; barriers due to racism, xenophobia, and cisnormative policies prevent them from finding stable work and study opportunities, and they live in constant fear of deportation once their visas have expired. for global south migrants who cannot find the means to obtain trvs, fleeing to the closest refugee camp with the support of a human rights organization often becomes the only viable option (gamble et al., 2015). unfortunately, this route is neither safe nor reliable, causing many queer migrants to avoid this option if at all possible. the envisioning global lgbt human rights canadian research team (gamble et al., 2015) detailed the story of ugandan refugees who fled to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 190  the neighbouring dadaab refugee camp in kenya when the ugandan government passed its shortlived (bbc, 2014) anti-homosexuality act in 2013. these ugandan lgbtqi+ citizens arrived in dadaab, a place meant to be a temporary first point of safe asylum, only to suffer “homophobic attacks” by administration officers and other camp residents (gamble et al., 2015, p. 10). not only did these refugees live in miserable and violent conditions, but they also lived without much hope of safe or smooth resettlement. the extent of this problem was well-documented by the united nations refugee agency (unhcr), which found that there were “13 million refugees spread across the world — with over 586,000 in kenya as of may 2015 — and that only 100,000 of the global refugee population can be resettled annually” (amuke, 2015, para. 8). addy explained that, for some refugees, the only alternative to the arduous immigration paths described above is the international student visa — a popular trv option for many queer newcomers to canada, even those from countries deemed less dangerous and more tolerant of lgbtqi+ rights and freedoms (gamble et al., 2015; mulé & gates-gasse, 2012; murray, 2014). prior to my interview with addy, i had learned that the increased desirability of trvs for queer and trans migrants to canada was due, in part, to the implementation in 2012 of the controversial bill c-31, which enacted a “designated country of origin” (dco) practice that erroneously classified 42 countries around the world as safe for lgbtqi+ citizens, thus preventing many sogie asylum seekers from making a refugee claim (smith, 2012; murray, 2014). in fact, bill c31 was “profoundly unsafe” because it denied sogie refugees their right to protection from countries that did not criminalize same sex relations per se but that discriminated against lgbtqi+ citizens in other violent and oppressive ways (mulé & gates-gasse, 2012, p. 20). fortunately, in 2019, bill c-31 was found to be in contravention of the canadian charter of rights and freedoms and was finally rescinded (government of canada, 2019, para. 2). at the time of my interview with addy in april of 2019, bill-c31 had not yet been rescinded. addy explained that despite its aim of deterring false asylum claims from presumably “safe” dcos, bill c-31 did not succeed in deterring lgbtqi+ newcomers in need of asylum: bill c-31 has had no impact, people are still making it here but are very creative in ways they get here and how.… they have done their research and that is why some are here as an international student and not a refugee. although addy did not specify what she meant by newcomers getting here in “creative ways”, i had read stories of international students falsifying their income and other documents as necessary in efforts to prove they had sufficient funds for studying abroad (lee, 2019), which can amount to over $10,000 per year of study8. indeed, all trvs require proof of substantial finances (gamble et al., 2015; lee, 2019), absence of a disqualifying criminal record9 (lee, 2019), and a clean bill 8see https://www.immigration.ca/financial-requirements-for-international-students-to-study-in-canada 9https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/inadmissibility/overcomecriminal-convictions.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 191  of health, including the absence of hiv/aids (white, 2013). this means that queer refugees escaping countries like uganda, where same-sex acts are criminalized, would, at minimum, face complications in obtaining a trv if they had ever been convicted of engaging in such an act. similarly, anyone with hiv/aids would need to either forge their medical records or try their luck at a sogie asylum claim, which, as i explained earlier, may force them to fabricate evidence to “prove” they are queer. all of these examples reveal the circumstances in which queer newcomers find it necessary to “fake” their way into canada. the more i learned, the more ashamed i became of just how little i knew about the resiliency of queer newcomers who manage to come to canada to build a new life. i now had a better understanding of how policies like those underlying bill c-31 developed within the context of what murray (2014) referred to as the “genuine/authentic versus fake/bogus refugee discourse” in the canada refugee system, which draws on narrow presumptions “to determine who does and who does not qualify as a refugee” (pp. 25–26). this discourse influences the complex system of “forced-migration” whereby lgbtqi+ asylum seekers are structurally sorted into multiple precarious immigration categories, blurring the lines between newcomers and refugees (lee, 2019, p. 77). two separate newcomers may both be fleeing persecution and violence from their countries of origin due to their sexual orientation and identity expression, yet one could qualify as refugee and the other as an international student or temporary worker. i further reflected on how queer and trans migrants who arrive via the “treacherous paths” that addy had described bore the burden of “proving” their queerness within two weeks of arriving. to avoid this, many queer asylum seekers overcome tremendous hurdles to become an international student. the question of whether they “fake” their way in, or whether they are really refugees, becomes a moot point — some newcomers may not fit canada’s narrow definition of a sogie refugee, but are certainly worthy of protection. as a white straight cisgender cycp aiming to become an informed ally, i am again grateful for the knowledge to finally verify what i felt to be true but could not adequately explain: there is no such thing as an illegitimate or fake refugee. it is critical that cycps supporting queer newcomers to canada gain knowledge of immigration policies that not only raise barriers to entry but also create unnecessary stigma associated with the “fake refugee” discourse. i am reminded once again of my privileged place of heterocisnormativity and how easy it would be to remain ignorant and silent on these issues. more than ever, i am reminded of my cyc responsibility to learn all i can about the communities i support. can’t we just work with the children? because this project began as a graduate term paper focused on the experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant pse students in canada, much of what i discussed with addy and bailey pertained directly to considerations for institutions, teachers, and school-based practitioners. while deciding which considerations to include (too numerous for one paper), i was reminded of the listserv on cyc-net (see cyc-net, 2010) that had, at the time of this study, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 192  sparked a lot of my thinking on the need to politicize my own cyc practice (see hyder et al., 2019). i was reminded that several participants on the listserv had shared concerns that the new political jargon of our field — words like “postmodern”, “mutual liberation”, and “intricacies of embodiment” — was perhaps unnecessary and too “hard to understand” (cyc-net, 2010, para. 2). one respondent agreed that he had “no idea what those words mean” and concluded, “i guess we’ll just work with the children” (para. 8). in 2010, when the listserv was posted, i would have agreed with this respondent. now, with the knowledge i had gleaned from addy, bailey, and the many critical cyc scholars calling for more politicized, historicized, and critically self-reflexive cyc practices (amponsah & stephen, 2020; igbu & baccus, 2018; loiselle et al., 2012; mackenzie, 2020; vachon, 2020), i understand that a historicized and politicized praxis is necessary if we hope to make moments meaningful for young people in truly ethical ways. if that work includes jargon, so be it. while i agree that academic jargon can, at times, be complicated and pose barriers to the accessibility of necessary discourse, i believe it is our responsibility to learn the jargon and engage with it when we can. i can no longer justify simply “working with the children” when i know that jargon can help improve our care of marginalised young people. i will first attempt to illustrate my point, without the use of jargon, by noting addy’s recommendations to help postsecondary institutions create safe spaces on their campuses: institutions that do have gsas [gay–straight alliances] must be reminded that some of these students will not come out. they are working and going to school with their country people who might “out” them to their families, so they are not going to walk into a rainbow-coloured room and say “hey, i am from beirut and i’m a queer guy” … provide broad supports so that i can pass by a table on any day and grab a leaflet that isn’t rainbow-coloured — that can tell me what i can do as a queer person to get help without having to come to one of your meetings or stand in the middle of campus … because that is going to label me. addy’s suggestion for broader, more inclusive supports echoed suggestions from school-based youth workers, like tanitia munroe, who have identified that entering a so-called “safe space” can be dangerous for many students. munroe recommended that, “everywhere should be a safe space … not just a small room tucked in a corner” (munroe et al., 2018b, 4:27). i fear that without a historicized knowledge of the impacts of colonial queer oppression, cycps will benevolently practice the same out-and-proud rainbow-coloured versions of queer rights that they are accustomed to (vachon, 2020). while it is true that out-and-proud policies have served an important function in establishing queer rights in canada, i feel these practices are perhaps now best viewed as apolitical neoliberal versions of queer rights that place queer newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students at risk of harm in this modern society that has been organized through colonialized heterocisnormative aims (lee, 2018; lugones, 2010). it is important for cycps to understand the jargon of historicized knowledge: terms like “heterocisnormative violence” caused by “the coloniality of power” (lee, 2018, p. 61) can help us to mitigate the perpetration of further harm in the physical spaces where we work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 193  it is further critical for cycps and educators to reflect politically, and with intention, on our professional places of privilege. this became clearer to me after addy expressed her frustration with some pse institutions that have done outreach with the queer community: they found the queerest person they could find, and i also find that offensive. just send anyone. they [queer students] need to know that no matter who you speak to, you are going to be safe.… the admissions staff do not have to be queer for them to help you. addy’s advice contrasts with the call to hire more queer cycps (particularly queer black cycps) who can mitigate the risk of isolation in canadian schools (munroe et al., 2018b). at the same time, addy’s comment has helped me to understand that white cycps cannot get a “pass or a get out of jail free card” when it comes to issues of white colonial supremacy (skott-myhre, 2017, p. 12). we certainly cannot expect to get a pass because the jargon is just “too hard to understand”. i conclude this section with some final recommendations from bailey relating to queerinclusive sex education curricula in schools: all teachers must be required to teach the curriculum or ask for a different class to teach; this cannot be optional content, depending on the faith or views of the teacher.… other sogi kids and community leaders/resources should be part of school learning. this final recommendation reminded me how important it is for educators to set aside biases, assumptions, and prejudices in order to genuinely uphold the rights of queer-identifying students. it also reminded me how important it is to take the lead from black and queer community members, to centre their needs, and to listen “across difference” so that we do not create atmospheres of insincere, uninformed, or performative eurocentric allyship (amponsah & stephen, 2020, p. 10). this work can only be done when we take time to learn the social-justice-oriented and politicized jargon such as “lgbtqi+”, “queer” (adjective) and “to queer” (verb), “cisgender”, “sogie”, “neoliberal”, and so on. we cannot shy away from this important politicized work. discussion limitations it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. my findings do not reflect the lived experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students directly. rather, they reflect my own views, experiences, and opinions as well as those garnered in conversation with two cisgender female participants, only one of whom is black and queer. nonetheless, i feel that consideration of the factors that led me to further study and reflect on these issues from the positionality of my participants’ expertise would be of value to cycps and cyc educators who are exploring ways to grow out of heterocisnormative practices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 194  implications for cyc practice in education knowledge of colonially influenced religious interpretations of queerness is integral to the cyc responsibility of supporting lgbtqi+ young people from all nations, backgrounds, and religions. as homonationalist discourses reproduce false narratives of “backward” and “uncivilized” nations in africa, asia, and the global south (lee, 2018, p. 63), false constructions of cisgender muslim male sexuality (khaki, 2018; puar, 2013) have also justified what edward said (1978) described generally as feelings of “european superiority over oriental backwardness” (p. 15). of course, this superiority complex applies not only to socially constructed images of asia, but also to other continents around the world, such as the construction of a monolithic “homophobic africa” (lee, 2018, p. 63). knowledge and understanding of this history will not only work to reduce racism and xenophobia in our communities, it will provide avenues for cycps to work toward an “informed allyship” (amponsah & stephen, 2020, p. 10) that is genuine in its striving toward the decolonization of our care practices. conclusion i have attempted to articulate the ways in which it is important to practise cyc within the context of the politicized and historicized influences that shape the experiences of lgbtqi+ newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students to canada. i believe that this can be done through a queering of cyc that involves an intentional political praxis of decolonization. similar to other white cyc settlers, i have come to realize that we “cannot just theorize about liberation and decolonization but must embody it, starting with ourselves” (mackenzie, 2020, p. 82). in many ways, i see myself embodying in my work the 25 decolonized, historicized, and politicized cyc characteristics listed by garfat and fulcher (2016): “meeting them where they are at”, “reflecting”, “rituals of encounter”, and so on. such “intricacies of embodiment” are integral to our work (cycnet, 2010, para. 2). finally, if we are to trust that there once was a wholeness to humanity before the hierarchal constructions of gender in the idealized vision of the white westernized man (lugones, 2010), and before the capitalist agendas of power and domination (wilson & laing, 2018), then the decolonial mission is a valuable one. for cycps, one way this can be done is through centring the resilience of queer newcomer, refugee, and immigrant students and through listening “for what is not being said” (cruz, 2008, p. 67). if we learn to listen to their silence and do our own politicized self-reflexive work, we will disrupt invisible heteronormative structures in cyc practice. we can learn to queer our practice for the betterment of all. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 195  recommended resources vancouver-based rainbow refugee is a grassroots program to help settle queer and trans refugees: https://www.rainbowrefugee.com/. its efforts are documented in the national film board’s someone like me, a beautiful portrayal of the challenges faced by refugees and the volunteers who try to support them: https://www.nfb.ca/film/someone-like-me/. founded in canada in 2006 to address violence against lgbtqi+ people worldwide, rainbow railroad received charitable status in canada in 2013, and in the united states in 2015. for information on how to support refugees in your area, visit https://www.rainbowrailroad.org/. for resources and ways to support queer and trans newcomers, ontario cycps can visit toronto-based the 519: https://www.the519.org/, and province-wide rainbow health ontario: https://www.rainbowhealthontario.ca/. for insightful articles on queer and trans refugee issues, and more, visit refuge: canada’s journal on refugees: https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/about. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 196  references adams, t. e., holman jones, s., & ellis, c. 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(2014). real queer: “authentic” lgbt refugee claimants and homonationalism in the canadian refugee system. anthropologica, 56(1), 21–32. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/544740 nicol, n. (2014). no easy walk to freedom [film]. intervention video inc. https://vimeo.com/87912192 patrick, e. s. (2014). investigating the experiences of queer international students. [master’s thesis, university of western ontario]. western libraries. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2155/ puar, j. (2013). rethinking homonationalism. international journal of middle east studies, 45(2), 336–339. doi:10.1017/s002074381300007x international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 201  rehaag, s. (2008). patrolling the borders of sexual orientation: bisexual refugee claims in canada. mcgill law journal, 53, 59–102. https://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/wpcontent/uploads/pdf/2501487-rehaag.pdf said, e. w. (1978). orientalism. routledge & kegan. social protection & human rights. (2015). lgbtqi+. https://socialprotectionhumanrights.org/key-issues/disadvantaged-and-vulnerable-groups/lgbtqi/ skott-myhre, h. (2017). seeking a pass: white supremacy and cyc. cyc-online, 220, 12–17. https://cyc-net.org/cyc-online/jun2017.pdf smith, d. (2012, february 27). analysis: unpacking the latest refugee reform bill. xtra magazine. https://xtramagazine.com/power/analysis-unpacking-the-latest-refugee-reform-bill32794 statistics canada. (2010). canada’s ethnocultural mosaic, 2006 census: definitions [cat. no. 97-562-xie2006001]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97562/note-eng.cfm statistics canada. (2011). generation status: canadian-born children of immigrants [national household survey; cat. no. 99-010-x2011003]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhsenm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011003_2-eng.cfm statistics canada. (2019). immigration and ethnocultural diversity highlight tables: ethnic origin, both sexes, age (total), canada, 2016 census – 25% sample data. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/hltfst/imm/table.cfm?lang=e&t=31&geo=01 taylor, c., & peter, t. (2011). every class in every school: the first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in canadian schools [final report]. egale. https://egale.ca/awareness/every-class/ un refugee agency. (n.d.). the 1951 refugee convention. https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugeeconvention.html vachon, w. (2018). child and youth care fragility. cyc-online, 232, 14–19. https://cycnet.org/cyc-online/june2018.pdf vachon, w. (2020). queering child and youth care. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 11(2), 61–81. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs112202019519 white, m. a. (2013). ambivalent homonationalisms: transnational queer intimacies and territorialized belongings. interventions, 15(1), 37–54. doi:10.1080/1369801x.2013.770999 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 170–202 202  wilson, a., & laing, m. (2018). queering indigenous education. in k. w. yang, e. tuck, & l. t. smith (eds.), indigenous and decolonizing studies in education: mapping the long view (pp. 131–145). routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429505010 woods, m. k., & yerxa, m. (2016, june 3). two soft things, two hard things [documentary]. mkw productions. https://twosofttwohard.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 doi: the institutional dimensions of oppression: examining the gender-related ideological factors associated with violence against girls at the legal and political level julie ada tchoukou abstract: the problem of violence against girls in nigeria has attracted scholarly attention from a number of empirical and theoretical vantage points. this scholarship is vitally important. it has helped thrust feminist and other anthropological discourse into an arena of anti-violence work with significant impacts on, and repercussions for, girls in nigeria. however, despite systemic change over the past years, the problem of violence against girls in nigeria — as in africa generally — persists. a consensus has emerged in the literature that cultural and social norms are relevant to the persistence of violence against girls in nigeria. without understating that relevance, this article analyses the problem from a different perspective. cultural, religious, ethnic, and social norms have figured increasingly in the conceptual frameworks of both international and national institutions, distracting attention from the ways in which ideologies confronting girls are actually embedded within organisational structures of control. important as it may be to understand the ways that these norms have given rise to violence against girls, it is also vital to investigate the techniques through which violent practices are maintained despite the changing nature of nigerian society. using a critical legal studies approach, i argue that any solution to violence against girls must focus as much on institutional change as it does on social transformation. exploring violence against girls from this perspective opens up an “institutional complex”, revealing a legal and political system that serves as a tool used by the government and the political elite for consolidating power and legitimising discriminatory principles as traditional values. keywords: violence against girls, gender-based violence, human rights, critical legal studies, nigeria, africa julie ada tchoukou phd is an assistant professor at the faculty of law, common law section, university of ottawa, fauteux hall, 57 louis-pasteur private, ottawa, on k1n 6n5. email: jadatcho@uottawa.ca 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221030 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 11 gender-based violence (gbv) is a problem affecting millions of girls and women, cutting across culture, religion, socioeconomic class, education, age, and other forms of diversity (kapoor, 2000). it is a human rights issue that can manifest itself physically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. this form of violence is regarded by many as one of the most prevalent and pervasive of human rights violations, and one of the most pernicious, denying women and girls equality, security, self-worth, and the right to enjoy fundamental freedoms. an overview of the international repertoire of responses to violence against women reveals that the magnitude and universality of gbv, together with its impact on the rights of women and girls, has received worldwide attention in both advanced and developing communities. the many studies and analyses on the incidence and prevalence of gbv that have been reported reveal the alarming global extent and impacts of this form of violence (e.g., ellsberg et al., 2008; walker, 2012). while this article is relevant to violence against girls throughout all of africa, i pay special attention to nigeria. the problem of violence against girls in nigeria has been discussed at length in the literature. major findings of studies (e.g., harwood-lejeune, 2001; singh & samara, 1996; walker, 2012) provide data on childhood violence including prevalence by region, female perceptions of violence and its effects, the socioeconomic class of perpetrators, risk factors, and perceived long and short-term impacts. as well as empirical studies, research has provided theories and tools to be used in measuring and monitoring improvements in the regulation of violence against children (e.g., fawcett et al., 1996; okemgbo, 2002; oyediran & isiugo-abanihe, 2005). this scholarship is vitally important. it has launched feminist and other anthropological studies into an arena of anti-violence work with far-reaching repercussions for girls who experience violence in nigeria: some studies have included petitions for legal reform (e.g., jimoh et al., 2018; oyediran & isiugo-abanihe, 2005; un women, 2019; walker, 2012), and the widespread attitudes and beliefs that support violent behaviour against girls in nigeria have been challenged (e.g., berg & denison, 2012; gbv sub sector working group, 2017). these efforts are yielding results. surveys and studies are providing more information about the prevalence and nature of the abuse (e.g., jimoh et al., 2018; ashimi et al., 2015; garba et al., 2012). however, despite a growing focus on modes of intervention, the incidence of violence in nigeria continue to rise steeply, an indication that the problem is in the ascendant and requires urgent attention (national population commission of nigeria, 2015). while building on the foundational works of earlier researchers, this article takes a different perspective on the problem. a consensus has emerged from the literature that cultural and social norms are particularly relevant to the persistence of violence against girls in nigeria. for example, social and cultural factors influence the persistence of violent practices like female infanticide, forced feeding, female genital mutilation, child marriage, breast ironing, various nutritional taboos, and son preference, with its implications for the status of the girl child. without understating the relevance of those norms, i am of the view that cultural, religious, ethnic, and social norms have figured increasingly in the conceptual frameworks of both international and national institutions, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 12 distracting attention from the ways in which ideologies confronting girls are actually embedded within organisational structures of control. the mystification of cultural norms as an unchangeable and deeply rooted concept conceals the true exclusionary and silencing practices of the nigerian state. in this way, any campaign to address the causes of girls’ experiences of violence becomes a fight against an established, ancestral, inherited — and consequently unchangeable — social process. and so, while acknowledging that violence against girls may indeed originate from culture, religion, ethnicity, and social norms, one cannot use them to explain the techniques through which violent practices are sustained. exploring violence against girls from this perspective opens up an “institutional complex” — the system of ruling practices that order societies (smith, 2005) — revealing a legal and political system used as a tool by the government and the political elite for consolidating power and legitimising discriminatory principles as traditional values. i contend that any solution to violence against girls must focus as much on institutional change as it does on social transformation. despite the range of factors that could play a role in sustaining violence against girls, there is little reason for the prevailing ideas of culture and gendered practices in nigeria to remain unchanged and unchallenged. an-na’im and hammond (2000) asserted that the state, with its “juridical sovereignty, extensive powers and relatively much larger resources”, is a crucial element in the context of cultural transformation (p. 29). it is my view that many of the major abuses of girls and women occur as a result of political and legal institutions, and that the perennial problem of violence against girls in nigeria can thus be connected to the way legal and political institutions have consolidated power. i use a critical legal studies (cls) approach to analyse the institutional dimensions of violence against girls in nigeria. cls is a theory that puts in place a different conception of law, one based on the premise that law is an apparatus of social, economic, and political domination. such a conception suggests a different view of society and informs a practice of politics. a fundamental concern in cls is the need to unravel the ideologies of legal institutions. the ability of the law to advance development in children’s rights is a key theme in this article. i consider law to be a primary tool of such development, especially in post-conflict and postcolonial societies like nigeria. in my view, the current approach to the problem of violence in nigeria suffers from a narrowing of our vision as to what law is and what it can become, undermining our ability to make use of law as a tool in addressing this issue. as such, i use cls to challenge specific aspects of the nigerian legal framework. this approach is pertinent to my research because, while there has been progress in some parts of that framework, other parts have lagged. taking account of the context of violence and the fact that the application of law in a pluralistic society like nigeria poses additional problems, far-reaching political measures and creative application of the law are required to properly address the normative foundations fuelling violence against girls. it is important to acknowledge the unique positioning of girls as marginalised by both age and gender. i consider girls in this context as marginalised within the classification of children as female and within the classification of women as children. this “intersectional marginalisation” is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 13 evident in the fact that i sometimes refer to girls as women and sometimes as children (lal, 2008, p. 328). for example, in certain regions in nigeria, once a girl is married, even though she may be only 12 years old, her childhood is transformed. as lal (2008) explained, the “possibility of spontaneity and discovery that befits the stage of girlhood is erased” (p. 322); a new sense of responsibility and maturity is placed on her because of marriage, but at the same time, the agency, independence, and capacity for autonomy that this newly married woman could be expected to possess is limited by virtue of her age. the merging of the adult and the child implies that the child bride is “merely the shadow of a woman” who, due to her age, “can do nothing of her own” (p. 325). therefore, this article, although focusing on the girl-child, extends the gender debate to the “figure of the girl-child/woman” (p. 322), a figure that finds increasing attention within communities in nigeria. i begin by providing a brief overview of the nigerian legal framework, with a particular focus on the relationship between federal and state law and the role of informal systems. next, i discuss ideology in patriarchal societies, and nigeria in particular, briefly highlighting the role of cls in this analysis. i then examine both the legal and political dimensions of oppression and external systems of control that account for the continued oppression of girls in nigeria. in each dimension, i pay close attention to structures of power shaping the dynamics of change in the lives of girls. throughout, i regard law as, to a significant extent, a power institution participating in legitimating processes that advance male dominant ideas. the texts of a nation’s laws are powerful: they are utilised repeatedly, reiterated by judges, and referenced by lawyers while constructing our sense of what is just and right (meijer, 1993). a later section, “law as an apparatus of transmission of beliefs”, focuses on analysing the capacity of law to validate dominant social and power relations in ways that come to be seen as normal and unchanging: cultural hierarchies and relations of subordination become acceptable to those who are persistently disadvantaged. in nigeria, statutes, policies, and ideological assertions are created and executed on several levels. federal, state, and local governments reflect different policies and different sets of interests that merge and conflict with regard to particular issues. in nigeria, the federal and state governments pursue parallel yet often conflicting policies, differentially expressed and operationalised depending on the interests to be protected (pittin, 1991). policy at the federal level appears accommodating to the interests of women, given the inclusion in the constitution of sections prohibiting sex discrimination. this, however, must be weighed against other aspects of law that are associated with control over women and girls. the nigerian framework allows violence against girls to occur, too often with impunity. at the state level, laws are rarely neutral in either text or application; instead, they display a focus on gender as part of identity. statements by members of the political elite reveal ideological continuity in the way women are perceived in the private and public spheres of knowledge production. we will see how the state openly participates in this process through language and content of legislation and other political practices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 14 my ultimate focus is on the capacity of the state to enhance, protect, and promote the rights of girls. if a life free of violence requires protection provided by the state, then the state must assist girls in realising their needs and aspirations. understanding the legal framework for child protection in nigeria nigeria is a federation consisting of 36 relatively sovereign and equal states, with each having an independent legislature (amah, 2017). governance is divided into three levels: federal/central, state/regional, and local. each level possesses legislative competence to enact laws within the confines of the legislative list designated in the constitution.1 the legislative list is structured into three categories. the first relates to matters within the exclusive legislative powers of the federal government, which makes laws through the national assembly. the second relates to matters within the concurrent legislative powers, where both federal and state parliaments may equally exercise legislative powers through the state houses of assembly.2 the third group concerns matters over which only state houses of assembly may exercise authority, referred to as “residual” legislative powers because they are not specifically allocated to any level of government.3 states’ residual powers affect matters that are within neither the exclusive competence of the federal legislature nor the concurrent powers of both federal and state legislatures (ogunniyi, 2018). the federal parliament is incapable of legislating on matters falling within states’ residual powers (ogunniyi, 2018). the practical effects of this framework on girls are numerous. for example, due to obligations emanating from the 1989 united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc) and the 1990 african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (acrwc), the nigerian national assembly enacted the child rights act of 2003 (cra) in accordance with a constitutional requirement that all international conventions be “domesticated before they can create domestic legal obligations” (nwauche, 2015, p. 423). the cra was, and remains, a major piece of reforming legislation addressing the rights of children in nigeria and their need to be protected. 1 with reference to sections 4 and 7 of the constitution of the federal republic of nigeria, 1999, the supreme court in attorney general of the federation and minister of justice and attorney general of lagos and commissioner for justice, sc. 340/2010 declared that the federal government lacks the constitutional powers to make laws outside its legislative competence, which are by implication residual matters meant for the state assembly. 2 issues on the exclusive legislative list include state creation; customs and excise duties; creation of banks; defence; citizenship; diplomatic and consular relations; external affairs; extradition; and nuclear energy. see generally the 1999 constitution, second schedule, part i (legislative powers). concurrently shared powers include legislation relating to electricity and the establishment of electric power stations; health care; archives and public records of state governments; and the establishment of educational institutions. see the constitution, second schedule, part ii (extent of federal and state legislative powers). 3 it should be noted that the term “residual” is not expressly mentioned in the constitution but has been used to refer to state legislative powers. unlike the 1995 draft constitution, which specified a state legislative list, the 1999 constitution has no such list. however, all matters not identified in the exclusive federal, concurrent, and the local government lists come under the jurisdiction of the states. see section 4(2) & (3) of part i second schedule of the nigerian constitution; section 4(4)-part ii second schedule of the nigerian constitution; lagos state v federation of nigeria (2003) vol. 35 w.r.n. 1.s.c. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 15 however, the constitution classifies child rights matters as residual, falling within the exclusive legislative powers of regional governments. this gives regions complete responsibility and authority to make laws relevant to their specific situations. as a result, before the cra becomes applicable within an individual state, the state must explicitly adopt it by enacting a child rights law (crl). states are not under an obligation to adopt the cra; however, most have done so (nwauche, 2015). this implies that children, especially girls, have limited rights and protections within states that have not ratified the cra. for example, child marriage regulation is a contentious issue in nigeria, which has the largest number of child brides in africa. although the practice is widespread in nigeria, child marriage is particularly prevalent within muslim communities in northern nigeria, where girls as young as 8 or 9 are frequently married (unicef, 2018). the problem of child marriage is positioned within a disputed legal terrain since the age of marriage and the age of consent for sex have strong ties to the ethnoreligious nature of the state (bunting, 1999). nigerian lawmakers have debated and grappled with marriage customs for decades because religious and cultural constituencies consistently resist efforts to proscribe child marriage. the cra prohibits child marriage; however, cultural and religious norms are used to justify changes in the definition of “child” within the crl of most islamic northern states. for the cra, a child is a person under 18 years, but legislators in those states have accepted the view that “in islam, there is no age that marks childhood” (braimah, 2014, p. 481). a child’s maturity is generally established by “signs of puberty such as menstruation, the growth of breasts and pubic hair” (braimah, 2014, p. 481). for example, although section 15(1) of the jigawa state child rights law of 2006 prohibits child marriage, it defines a child in section 2(1) as a person below the age of puberty. this suggests that a child as young as 10 years who shows signs of puberty will be deemed suitable for marriage. the problem is exacerbated by item 61, schedule ii to the 1999 constitution, which effectively removes customary and islamic marriages from federal legislative competence. the result is that laws enacted by the national assembly will have “no effect on the formation, amendment and dissolution of marriages under islamic law and customary law” (fayokun, 2015, p. 464). section 262 of the constitution also grants the sharia court of appeal the right “to decide any question of islamic personal law [for muslims] … including the validity or dissolution of [a] marriage … guardianship … will or succession”. while on the surface, the enactment of the cra makes a strong political statement of the need to protect children from violent practices, in reality, culture, religion, and the plurality of laws in nigeria pose several problems for child rights enforcement. in my analysis, i frequently use the terms customary law, islamic law, and customs. these terms are not interchangeable. the legal system of a typical african state is pluralistic and comprises african customary law, religious law (especially where there is a significant muslim population), and received law (common law or civil law depending on the colonial history; ndulo, 2011). customary law is the body of law derived from the local customs and usages of various ethnic groups (ndulo, 2011). precolonial law in most african states was customary in character, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 16 having its sources in the practices and customs or traditions of the people (ndulo, 2011). customary law is ethnic in origin; it usually operates in the area occupied by the ethnic group and only covers disputes in which at least one of the parties to the dispute is a member of the ethnic group (oba, 2011). islam was common in nigeria by the end of the eighteenth century and later emerged as state law in the kanem–bornu and sokoto caliphates, which now constitute northern nigeria (doi, 1984). there is no official definition of islamic law in nigeria; however, the islamic law applicable in northern nigeria is the maliki school (oba, 2011). nigeria is divided by ethnoreligious differences, so reforms that attempt to deal with crossethnic matters in accordance with the more inclusive ideals of human rights are not easily sustained. tribal divisions, the basis for most state policies, have not erased the goal of human rights realisation for women and girls, but keep it on the horizon, never quite realised. the nigerian constitution recognises plurality and sets the limits for human rights protection. in fact, constitutional provisions are now used to claim ethnic and religious privileges.4 the 1999 constitution does not explicitly declare nigeria to be a secular state. section 10 only prohibits both states and the federal government from endorsing any religion as state religion. nonetheless, the sharia as adopted by northern states has extended the jurisdiction of islamic civil law courts into criminal matters, created islamic criminal codes, and affected a wide-ranging set of islamic social policies intended to manage the socioeconomic lives of muslims (paden, 2005). disagreement over secularism in nigeria takes place within an enduring debate over how the state might balance the recognition of the country’s ethnic and religious pluralism with the desire to reduce regional conflict (kendhammer, 2013). despite an insistence on separation of religion and state, to the extent that nigeria constitutionally identifies itself as part islamic, the state at times has allowed a special role for islam. as a result, religious groups, specifically christians and muslims, tend to view themselves as a source of authority at least equal to the state, and they perceive issues of religion and state as issues involving competing systems of law or sovereignties (kendhammer, 2013). the challenges of pluralism are not unique to nigeria; many african states struggle with identifying ways to sustain the cultural heritage reflected in customary and religious norms and institutions while attempting to also function as modern democratic states (see ada tchoukou, 2020b). some of modern-day africa’s struggles emanate from a forceful colonial amalgamation of diverse ethnic groups into one “centrally administered territory” (ubi & ibonye, 2019, p. 148). consequently, ethnicity has generated conflict that continues to condition law and politics in african countries (ubi & ibonye, 2019). 4 in chapter ii under the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy, the state is enjoined to provide facilities for, among other things, religious life. see section 17(3) of the 1999 constitution; the supreme court of nigeria held in a.g. ondo state v a.g. federation & 35 ors [2002] 9 nwlr (pt.772) 222 that the word “state” in the “context of the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy includes the federal, state and local governments, as the case may be”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 17 ideology in a patriarchal society post-independence african states are widely characterised as patriarchal, but this is usually regarded as resulting from inherited colonial systems that excluded women or from the exclusionary nature of state formation (mama, 1995, p. 39). chazan (1989) ) put it this way: women have neither played a significant part in the creation of the modem state system on the continent, nor have they been able to establish regular channels of access to decision-makers. state policies toward women have, as a result, exhibited varying degrees of discrimination and coercion. (p. 186) it is beyond the scope of this article to analyse the roles of women in contemporary african states or the involvement of women in the formation of modern nigeria. instead i take the more direct approach of considering the ways in which current state practices are gendered and exclusionary. it can then quickly be seen how law is fundamentally conceived from a traditionally masculine point of view, which in turn impacts the regulation of violence against girls. identifying law as a “gendering terrain” allows an understanding of inconsistencies in law’s engagement with girl children (smart, 1992, p. 29). the ways in which law shapes society’s evaluation of women and girls is thus particularly important to the issue of violence against girls. shaheed (2002), in her study of women’s identity formation in the muslim world, noted that for women, who often serve as the “repositories of culture, the issue of identity is crucial” (p. 63). in explicating gender-related political manoeuvring within asian nations, agarwal (1988) contended that, in order to “legitimise its own position and policies regarding women” (p. 14), the state focuses on “institutional and ideological contradictions” in order to advance a specific gender ideology: it sets itself up in opposition to a prevalent ideology, or mediates between rival ideologies. i would suggest that in the nigerian context, although the different levels of law and policy regarding gender are neither coordinated nor necessarily coherent to the same degree that agarwal found for asia, they are systematic in encouraging the domesticity of women and girls (pittin, 1991). the reality experienced by women and girls is not represented in the governing ideology; rather, their perspective is dominated by men’s views. therefore, “when women decide to expand their space as women by rejecting and redefining the roles previously designated for them, they are in fact challenging more than the contours of their own lives” (shaheed, 2002, p. 63). women and girls’ empowerment both challenges and is challenged by cultural, legal, and political norms. matters of direct significance to women and girls’ desire to redefine the conditions of their lives include: how a girl’s identity is created; who defines it; how understandings of gender fit into definitions of community and those of a communal and individual self; and the interaction between these definitions at the local, regional, and federal levels of government in nigeria. as previously stated, while resting upon ideas regarding law and society, cls prompts a critique of law and legal ideology that proposes possibilities for transforming society (munger & seron, 1984). cls scholars recognise a link between legal ideology and class relations. they demonstrate that legal doctrine does not always signify progress, nor an equal allocation of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 18 benefits and burdens of social life, nor a reasonable solution to conflict (munger & seron, 1984). instead, law legitimises existing social structures and the class relationships within them by representing and protecting particular interests. therefore, while today it seems that the longstanding calls for reform of the nigerian legal system to ensure adequate protection of girls (e.g., ashimi et al., 2015; braimah, 2014; fayokun, 2015; jimoh et al., 2018; nwauche, 2015) have led progress in the law, in this article a critical lens is used to analyse the nature and effects of the changes that have been made and the prioritisation of a specific framing of the problem of violence against girls. using cls, i analyse legitimating structures within the society by unravelling the ideology of legal institutions within nigeria as applicable to girls. this makes it possible to approach the problem of violence through a focus on coexisting institutional frameworks and the roles they play in shaping girls’ experiences. the core ideology within legal institutions has had a great impact on dominated classes, particularly on women and girls. a focus on how the law embodies ideologies that support the production and reproduction of violent and discriminatory practices within homes reveals that the oppression experienced by girls within homes does not derive exclusively from family, cultural, or social life. i argue that not only internal systems but also powerful explicit rules embedded within discriminatory legal institutions permit the various expressions of violence against girls. internalised gender oppression in nigeria is institutionalised and systemic. in nigeria, the state is not monolithic. diverse policies and ideas are presented and pursued at different political levels, for specific and distinct political purposes (pittin, 1991). we will see how the state occasionally presents conflicting policies and ideologies between, and sometimes within, levels of government, with adverse consequences for women and girls. across jurisdictions, intervention on violence against girls is couched in different terms, with a variety of justifications and with women and girls sometimes having to adjust to shifting ideological positions. the cls idea that certain features in legal discourse impede fundamental change is also useful to the analysis in this article. as reflected below, the body of laws in nigeria, especially in personal and family law, structures women and girls’ everyday lives and determines what is possible at the personal, community, and national levels, and what is not. whether formal or informal, laws expressly or implicitly project an ideal for society (shaheed, 2002). i view law in nigeria as a source of alienation and oppression, and also as an instrument used in maintaining societal power structures that inhibit the progressive eradication of violence against children. i use the cls approach of thinking critically about the language of law and the relevance of power structures to contend that laws are framed with specific social ends and that the oppression experienced by girls at the family and social levels is grounded in law. law as an apparatus of transmission of beliefs in nigeria, there are different ways of depicting the various interests that law tries to satisfy. that the country’s law is gendered is evident from a reading of its constitutional and legislative international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 19 provisions, as well as from political statements made by men in power. it can be seen that legal discourse features a sexual division not only in terms of what the law authorises through its provisions and procedures, but at the deeper level of what conceptual structures the law embodies. the provisions in the texts i refer to privilege certain actors over others and prioritise authoritative male ways of knowing. my aim in this section is to “deconstruct law as gendered in its vision and practices” and to highlight how patriarchal beliefs embedded in legal thought and legal reasoning affect the regulation of violence against girls (rifkin, 1980, p. 83). we will see that there have been state efforts at law reform, but these have suffered from rather obvious inconsistencies. it remains a fact that legal discourse in nigeria exemplifies a male standpoint and institutionalises male interests. it cannot envisage a “subject in whom gender” is not a decisive attribute; it cannot contemplate such a subject (allen, 1987, p. 30). consequently, instead of inquiring into how “law can transcend gender” in the nigerian system, the more productive question posed in this article is, “how does gender work in law and how does law work to produce gender?” (smart, 1992, p. 34). consideration of this question will encourage a view of the law as a system that not only produces gender difference but also validates the oppression of women and girls. this section is devoted to an investigation of the incoherence of certain legal ideas and views and to exploring the implications of these contradictions for girls in nigeria. i am concerned with the ways in which legal rules promote a systematic domination of women and girls by providing an aura of certainty that facilitates the rationalisation and reproduction of violence against girls. while recognising that some genuine achievements have been realised in rights protection, these only serve to mask a less auspicious reality for girls in nigeria. constitutional language at independence, most african states inherited constitutions containing provisions safeguarding human rights to varying degrees (an-na’im, 2001). there was, however, no reason to assume that their new leaders, lacking nuanced understanding or practical knowledge of democracy or constitutional rule, would soon forget the lessons of authoritarianism and oppression learned from colonisers (an-na’im, 2001). since most british colonies in sub-saharan africa gained independence in quick succession between 1955 and 1965, the colonial office in great britain engaged vigorously in the process of drafting the new constitutions (bond, 2017). the socalled “third wave of democratisation of the 1990s” sparked a trend of constitution making and remaking throughout africa, and nurtured hopes for a modern era of constitutionalism, respect for human rights, and good governance (fombad, 2013, p. 6). according to bond (2017), the language of these constitutions had many similarities, suggesting that the constitutional provisions were primarily drawn from patterns familiar to the departing colonial power, and thus reflected assumptions not characteristic of african societies. a number of these drafting similarities appeared in the bill of rights provisions. the drafters of these post-colonial constitutions grappled with balancing individual rights with the protection of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 20 rights of minority groups. these constitutions contained some protection of fundamental rights, such as freedom from discrimination, but contained exclusionary provisions that exempted customary law from the purview of the constitution. as such, these modern african constitutions failed to address the several human rights abuses integral to customary laws and practices, especially those marginalising women and children (fombad, 2013). therefore, contrary to what many expected, the constitutional entrenchment of fundamental rights, especially the nondiscrimination provisions, has not provided a solid foundation for the protection of women and girls. for example, according to chapter ii, section 17(1) of nigeria’s constitution (1999), the state’s social order is founded on the ideals of “freedom, equality and justice”. however, the relief these provisions ostensibly provide is eliminated by the constitution itself in section 6(6)(c), which states that the provisions of chapter ii of the constitution are mere policy guidelines and not justiciable5. the supreme court of nigeria, in okogie v the attorney general of lagos state (1981) reinforced this non-justiciability. this was also echoed in ag ondo v ag federation (2002) when the court held: no court can enforce the provisions of chapter ii until the [national assembly] has enacted specific laws for their enforcement … they remain mere declarations, they cannot be enforced by legal process … it is for the executive and the legislature, working together[,] to give expression to them through enactment. thus, they can be made justiciable through legislation. (p. 222) to state that a country’s constitution is gendered means that its impacts on women and men are unequal or disparate (irving, 2017). in nigeria, an intimation of the unequal treatment of women and girls under the law can be found in the masculine language and grammatical expressions used in the constitution. while vocabulary and linguistic expressions of gender are not the focus of this article, one cannot ignore the legal implication and discriminatory potential of the ideologies projected by the exclusive use of masculine words. an example is the recurring use of male-only pronoun references for all nominated and appointed public offices in the executive, judicial, and legislative arms of government in nigeria. in fact, a total of 480 male pronoun references were used, with no examples at all of a female pronoun reference (ezeifeka & osakwe, 2013). for example, section 131 of the constitution states: a person shall be qualified for election to the office of the president if — (a) he is a citizen of nigeria by birth; (b) he has attained the age of forty years; (c) he is a member of a political party and is sponsored by that political party; and (d) he has been educated up to at least school certificate level or its equivalent. 5see the case of oronto douglas v shell petroleum development company limited, [1999]. apart from section 42, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of sex, the constitution contains no specific and substantive provisions on the protection of women’s rights. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 21 even though it is unlikely that gendered language in a constitution would be interpreted literally to exclude women today, it remains symbolic of a view that women are of secondary status in nigerian society. according to smith (2005), texts, particularly written texts in law, are used within institutions to regulate almost every aspect of life, and are thus important in producing a certain “generalization and standardization of people’s doing” (p. 167). as much as one would like to regard gendered constitutional language as a mere remnant of history, its adoption has important implications for the ideology embedded in the constitution. to what degree should a constitution “speak to the members of its community” (irving, 2017, p. 63)? although judicial interpretation can be more moderate than the bare words would suggest, reframing the text in more carefully chosen words could reduce negative outcomes for girls. a constitution that seems to speak only or mostly to men can lead to harmful assumptions about the roles, qualities, and capacities of women and girls, and runs the risk that such assumptions will be embedded in the consciousness of girls. for example, the recurring use of male pronouns for office-holders, including the president and vice president, can be taken as indicating that women are neither qualified for nor expected to occupy such positions (ezeifeka & osakwe, 2013). the effect of this ostensibly harmless representation on the consciousness of a girl-child who encounters this text at school may be significant. first, it may impress on her consciousness the belief that her identity as an individual is not acknowledged; and second, it may lead her to repress any desire to aim for high public office, since she has been trained from an early age by the school system and by the “constitution to think of such positions as the exclusive preserve of males” (ezeifeka & osakwe, 2013, p. 687). nonetheless, nigeria’s constitutional text holds promise for addressing the subordination of women and girls. many amendments to the constitution have been made in the 21st century to correct provisions of law that limit women’s rights and relegate them to powerless positions in the private sphere. human rights provisions guaranteeing non-discrimination and recognising gender equality have progressively addressed the rights of women and girls. the constitution has also come to recognise and provide better prospects for the protection of children. moreover, nigeria’s legal foundations and case law reflect an eagerness for the next step in the development of judicial equality for women. for example, the courts have reformed some discriminatory practices. in ukeje v ukeje (2014), the court found unconstitutional an igbo customary law that denied female children the right to inherit the estates of their fathers. in addition, numerous court decisions uphold the idea that the best interests of the child should be given paramount consideration in decisions affecting children. the cases of williams v williams (1987) and odogwu v odogwu (1992) are landmark cases touching on the best interests principle. section 1 of the child rights act, which defines this principle, is applied in cases of custody, divorce, and the division of property. nigeria’s equality jurisprudence, having already come so far for women and children and bearing such promise for the future, is inspiring. however, these laws and legal institutions were developed from systems originally designed, implemented, structured, and interpreted exclusively by men (jackson, 2017), and reflect the concerns that grew from their personal experience, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 22 overlooking or masking the consequences for women and girls. for example, section 26 of the constitution confers the right of citizenship on any foreign woman who is married to a male citizen but denies such right to a foreign man married to a female citizen. of particular concern are two neighbouring provisions: section 29(4)(a), which specifies that “full age means the age of eighteen years and above”; and section 29(4)(b) stating that “any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age”. during a review of the 1999 constitution, the senate committee in july 2014 voted to remove section 29(4)(b) because it validates child marriage; however, upon deliberation, the senate reversed its position and retained this paragraph (fayokun, 2015). despite the progress that has been made, it is thus apparent that there remain enormous obstacles to applying constitutional rights in a meaningful way that will advance the lives of girls. the state’s idea of and approach toward gender profoundly shapes the power of the constitution to change gender-based inequality in law and society. my inference is that the male subtexts concealed within sections like 29(4)(b) are not accidental but are integral to the ideologies fuelling the continual perpetration of violent practices against girls (ada tchoukou, 2020). through provisions like section 29(4)(b), law is used as a tool to bring into being specific forms of division by constructing identities to which girls become tied or associated (smart, 1992). the same forces that determine women’s status relative to men in culture and society also determine the nature of constitutional guarantees of equality and how vigorously they are interpreted and implemented (mackinnon, 2012, p. 5). other legal provisions in relation to women and girls, the inclusion in the constitution of sections that, for example, prohibit discrimination based on sex must be related to other aspects of law and policy. powerful oppressive discourses in legislation exist alongside the equality provisions in the constitution, imposing constraints that render good intentions ineffective. the laws referred to in this section are created and implemented at both the federal and state levels. their overall direction is the maintenance of an ideological affirmation of women and girls as wives, mothers, and helpmates to men (pittin, 1991). the policies they embody ensure a strong intergenerational thread of cultural continuity, one that emphasises the subordination of women and girls. in this section, we also see that gender roles are not limited to the realms of culture, family, and interpersonal relationships. we will see that the construction of gender is visible even in areas where the state claims universality and neutrality — for example, in labour and criminal laws. the different statutes analysed here regulate different facets of the social environment. as smith (2005) would predict, even though each regulates a disparate field, these texts speak the same language, and the meanings attached to them trigger a multiplicity of events within the social setting. their capacity to transcend but not disrupt the evolving nature of cultural and social processes across disparate local settings in nigeria is key to its peculiar force (smith, 2005). like campbell and gregor (2004), i am of the view that once we fully understand the notion that power is entrenched in written materials, and in organisational actions around legal texts, we will begin international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 23 to see how individuals at separate sites are bound together to act in concert. these texts will usually be generated by individuals working in a specific institutional context. for example, a text written by a policymaker sitting in an office in abuja, nigeria is activated and reproduced by other people, each performing their different duties, such as politicians, judges, news agencies, local activists, and so on. in this way, we can understand how the legal system organises “its workers to think about[,] and act” in ways that produce, the experiences of girls (smith, 1987, p. 11). we can also understand that some of the processes, although “carried out locally, were organized at state, national and even cultural levels” (wilson & pence, 2006, p. 202). this inherently leads us to a reconceptualisation of, and provides a different way of reflecting on, the numerous violent practices perpetrated against girls. in understanding how legal texts function as constituents of social relations, my interest in this article is in explicating legal texts as creating an active social process (smith, 1990). these statutes exclude certain experiences from the realm of legislative concern and reflect certain organisational interests as the dominant interest (campbell & gregor, 2004). for example, section 118 of the police act states that “married women are disqualified from enlisting in the police”. section 121 also provides that “women police officers shall as a general rule be employed on duties which are concerned only with women and children”. section 124 of the same act states that “a woman police officer who is desirous of marrying must first apply in writing to the commissioner of police for the state police command in which she is serving, requesting permission to marry…”, while section 127 states that “an unmarried woman police officer who becomes pregnant shall be discharged from the force and shall not be re-enlisted except with the approval of the inspectorgeneral”. the presence of gendered provisions within policy regulating the police force, an agency of the executive arm of government, evidences a specific ideology that encourages disregard for women and girls’ experiences while privileging a masculinised way of knowing (ada tchoukou, 2020). the constructions of gender in the police act facilitates a specific idea of womanhood, an idea that shapes the experiences of girls. according to smith, textual materials generally present themselves as “sources of information about something else, rather than as a phenomenon in their own right” (smith, 1990, p. 120). therefore, even though the police act has no direct correlation with violence against girls, its approach shares a presupposition represented as “part of an active process of dialogue” between the external and the internal. for example, this dialogue is evident in the correlation between child marriage and gender in nigeria. marrying girls early is preferred because it is then easier to teach them to be submissive socially, economically, and sexually to their husbands, to stay focused on bearing children, and to take up other domestic roles (mohl, 2015). by marginalising and excluding women and emphasising the role of men in this sector, the police act thus reinforces similar ideologies embedded in the practice of child marriage. these sections of the police act also have significant social consequences that include depriving impoverished families of a source of economic support. for example, demographic indicators suggest that the economics of parenting in nigeria elevate the rate of early marriage. some scholars have contended that within poor settings, child marriage is a strategy to alleviate parents of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 24 expenses and obligations of raising a girl (e.g., otoo-oyortey & pobi, 2003; erulkar & muthengi, 2009). therefore, the police act provisions that limit employment to only unmarried women and mandate the discharge of pregnant unmarried women increase the economic vulnerability of women and girls. other gendered provisions include section 55 of the labour act barring women from employment at night except as nurses. section 55 provides that “no woman shall be employed on night work in a public or private industrial undertaking or in any branch thereof, or in any agricultural undertaking or any branch thereof”. subsection 2 states that “subsection (1) of this section shall not apply to women employed as nurses”. this provision seems to be protective of women by accounting for the unequal reality they face since they are at greater risk of experiencing violence if commuting at night, but its purpose and effects are also paternalistic in keeping women in subordinate roles. laws like the labour act generate frameworks and hierarchies of workplace rights that can easily be manipulated to the detriment of women and girls. another example is section 360 of the criminal code, which makes the indecent assault of women a misdemeanour punishable with a two-year prison term, as opposed to the three-year prison term for indecently assaulting a man, which is a felony under section 353. in addition, even though section 218 of the criminal code punishes by life imprisonment any person who has unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of 13, and with two years imprisonment if the girl is above 13 but under 16, unlawful carnal knowledge is held not to include “sexual relations by a man with a girl under sixteen to whom he is married”. although this law purports to protect girls under 16, it nullifies that protection by recognising child marriage. political speech politics in nigeria generates policies that affect people in every aspect of their lives. as already highlighted, the social, legal, and political worlds are constitutive of a multiplicity of power relations that help produce certain ideologies through their activities and practices (chunn & lacombe, 2000). the question is: who promotes the endless reproduction of oppressive practices and social perceptions of women and girls? it is in the differences between written laws and policies and what is verbalised through public speech that one can see the actual policy trends towards women and girls. in this section, i focus on political speech, and try to connect the political world to the experiences of girls within society. this will lead to a realisation of how the legal and political arenas are organised in terms of gendered meanings within which cultural and social institutions are constructed (harding, 1986). devaluing women at the institutional level makes the mistreatment of girls likely at the cultural and social levels. the more state officials publicly devalue women and girls, the greater will be the degradation experienced by women and girls locally. this is strongly reflected, especially on days celebrating women, in the public statements of some male nigerian political actors regarding women’s participation in politics. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 25 on international women’s day in march 2018, gudaji kazaure, a member of the nigerian house of representatives from jigawa state in northern nigeria, argued against calls for more political opportunities for women in nigeria (oak tv, 2018, 0:44): it is good to give women opportunity, but not too much…when we give them opportunity at home and outside, they will capture everything, mr. speaker. if you consider, mr. speaker, almost 60-70% of my votes is from women. so, if women understand this thing very well, they will vote us out. if one woman contests in your constituency, they will say, “let’s go and support our sister”, they will vote for her, and you will come here one day, and you will be found out that all is women in this chamber. and, seriously, if women become 60-70% in this chamber, they will mess up, mr. speaker, because when they go zig zag, we are the ones who straighten them. we are the ones controlling them. that is why god said they should come under us. we will marry them, and they will serve under us. to see how much ideological effect is produced by such statements, they should be understood in terms of an active process of organising society premised on the control of women. this statement limits and excludes women’s participation and perspective with the conclusion, “they will serve under us”. it seeks to establish hierarchical social norms between men and women that would render any legislative reform on violence ineffectual. another striking example of such discourse occurred at a 2016 press conference with the german chancellor angela merkel, when nigeria’s current president, muhammadu buhari, reacted with displeasure to a question about criticism of his government’s performance by his wife, aisha buhari (alonge, 2016). the video embedded in alonge’s article shows buhari saying of his wife that, “she belongs to my kitchen and my living room, and the other room” (0:05). such thoughtless public statements contribute to narratives used by public officials and political leaders to shape public attitudes and perceptions towards women and girls. there is a striking consistency between associating women with the private domain and the gendered nature of violence against girls. by limiting women’s roles to the family environment, the political discourse consistently positions women as caretakers and custodians, in contrast to state documents that promise equality and freedom from gender discrimination. we observe something similar in statements made by prominent public figures attempting to justify their marriages to underage girls. in defending his marriage to a 13-year-old girl, senator ahmed sani yerima of northern nigeria, aged 49, was quoted as follows: nigeria has uncountable problems and none of them is early marriage.… as a matter of fact, early marriage is the solution to about half of our problems.… for those who wonder if i can give my daughter(s) out in marriage at the age of 9 or 13, i tell you honestly, i can give her out at age of 6 if i want to.… this is because international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 10–31 26 i am a muslim and i follow the example of the best of mankind, muhammed … (mabai, 2013, para. 3) a focus on men’s language as exemplified in the above statement reveals much about women’s place in nigeria. the statement reflects a power dynamic that shapes constructions of meaning around marriage to the exclusion of women and girls. statements like these create a “false consciousness” that is used to manipulate and obscure reality for the public while maintaining existing power relations (ada tchoukou, 2020). the language and vocabulary of powerful politicians signals the use of gender relations and the gender partitioning of the household to preserve male dominance. their statements generate influential interpretations of women and girls’ roles while defining masculine power. in this way, we see that the legislation described in the preceding section emphasises, supports, acts on behalf of, and protects specific interests. the law is an arena in which men’s interests are actively constructed and protected (smith, 1990). the public speech of state authorities is simply one platform for the reproduction and reinforcement of a male-oriented value system that encourages the production and reproduction of violence against girls. conclusion this article has presented violence against girls in terms of ideological understandings at the legal and political level. i have argued that the law, despite appearances, is not a neutral entity; instead, it often reflects the ideology of society’s dominant group, while maintaining existing power structures that assist in reproducing violence against girls. to me, the problem of violence against girls is one of the male domination that is evident within political and legal institutions. from the dynamics operating in nigeria, therefore, violence against girls is not a problem with straightforward solutions. legal and political institutions continue to serve as an apparatus of domination that accounts for the continued oppression of girls in nigeria. far-reaching political measures and creative application of the law will be required to properly address the normative foundations fuelling violence against girls. it would be both mistaken and counterproductive to view the challenges facing girls in nigeria as derived exclusively from culture, religion, or their social identity. such a view only hinders an understanding of structural inequities and diminishes the efforts of activists striving for change within their communities, usually at the cost of their freedom if not their lives. it also obscures the various social and political forces that are often in conflict with one another. institutional structures of power shaping the dynamics of change in the lives of girls 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(2006). u.s. legal interventions in the lives of battered women: an indigenous assessment. in d. smith (ed.), institutional ethnography as practice (pp. 199– 226). rowan & littlefield. cases ag ondo v ag federation [2002] 9 nwlr (772) 222 sc. odogwu v odogwu [1992] 2 nwlr (pt 252) 539. okogie v the attorney general of lagos state [1981] 2 nclr 337 sc. oronto douglas v shell petroleum development company limited, [1999] 2 nwlr 591 ukeje v ukeje [2014] lpelr-22724 (sc). williams v williams [1987] 7 nwlr (pt 252) 187. the international journal of child, youth and family studies has been a player in the on-line, open-access publishing scene for the international journal of child, youth and family studies has been a player in the on-line, open-access publishing scene for two full years now. as 2012 dawns, we continue our tradition of showcasing original scholarly works on a wide range of topics in the broad area of child, youth and family studies. the diversity of interests and topics and the interdisciplinarity of our contributors is a testament to the richness of this burgeoning field of study. with this volume, our international scope is more visible than ever with contributions from finland, the united kingdom, iran, and canada. the articles compiled for this volume include empirical investigations, theoretical contributions, practice accounts, and brief reports. topics include: home/workplace balance in finland, the “soccer casuals” youth culture in the u.k., depression and interpersonal relationships among youth in tehran, community work based on social justice in canada, new perspectives on addiction services for youth in british columbia, and managing child care needs in a changing canadian economy. one thing is clear in all these articles: the lives of children, youth, families, and communities can neither be adequately understood, nor ethically responded to, in the absence of a commitment to social justice that requires a deep understanding of the ways in which structural, political, economic, and historical forces actively shape the emergence of social problems among children, youth, and families. despite the daunting challenges we all face, this volume offers much reason for hope. what a refreshing way to begin a new year! – jennifer white and sibylle artz, co-editors international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 171 introduction to the special issue on alternative pathways in education for disenfranchised children and young people in the australian context marnee shay, ann morgan, jo lampert and deborah heck marnee shay (corresponding author) is a lecturer in the school of cultural and professional learning at queensland university of technology, kelvin grove, brisbane. email: ms.shay@qut.edu.au ann morgan, phd, is staff formation and professional learning coordinator across four flexi schools in the youth+ schools network, po box 498, red hill, qld 4059, australia. email: ann.morgan@youthplus.edu.au jo lampert, phd is an associate professor schools in the faculty of education at queensland university of technology, kelvin grove, brisbane. email: j.lampert@qut.edu.au deborah heck is an associate professor, education/portfolio leader, postgraduate and higher degrees by research (hdr) programs at the faculty of science, health, education and engineering, university of the sunshine coast, queensland, australia. email: dheck@usc.edu.au mailto:ms.shay@qut.edu.au mailto:ann.morgan@youthplus.edu.au mailto:ann.morgan@youthplus.edu.au mailto:lampert@qut.edu.au mailto:dheck@usc.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 172 this special issue explores alternative pathways in education for disenfranchised children and young people. the papers presented are from australia and canada. the issue aims to contribute to a growing field of study around the provision of education programs to underserved youth, and to recognise the contributions of scholars, educators, practitioners, and young people whose voices have been under-represented. alternative education is the umbrella term used in the literature that describes models of education operating outside conventional schooling. these approaches range along a continuum. they include models focused on changing young people to fit the dominant education paradigm through to models that aim to change the provision of education to meet the needs of young people (te riele, 2007). many young people internationally are disenfranchised from education. they experience multiple challenges that limit their access and engagement in education. the promotion of neoliberal agendas in education that narrowly determine the “success” of students based on outcomes related to how they perform on high stakes tests has resulted in the disenfranchisement of young people globally (lingard, sellar, & savage, 2014). in australia, young people who are over-represented in alternative education include those who have experienced a range of complexities such as: poverty; homelessness; substance misuse; domestic and family violence; generational unemployment; involvement in the criminal justice system; involvement in the child protection system, foster care, or both; special needs; and mental health issues. young people who are refugees, lgbtiq1, first nations, or speak english as an additional language are more likely to engage in alternative education pathways. the emergence of a critical mass of young people who have disengaged from schooling has resulted in rapid expansion of the alternative education sector. in australia the need for education alternatives for young people who have been disenfranchised has resulted in an increasing number of programs with differing aims and features (te riele, 2014). accompanying the expansion of programs is an emerging body of research. common perspectives adopted in research to date can be summarised in three general areas: research portraying young people’s experience and viewpoint; research foregrounding program features, typologies, and program evaluation; and research presenting a critical perspective on sociological, ideological, political, and policy issues impacting upon young people’s experiences in education (morgan, 2013). while alternative education research is an emerging field, there is a plethora of education research on pedagogy and practice that remains centred on mainstream contexts and discourses. this focus on mainstream settings has left a wide gap in the corpus of research on practices in alternative school settings. scholars such as lampert and burnett (2015) outline the importance of having informed, reflective, and well prepared educators in schools that are in lowsocioeconomic or high-poverty areas. many alternative schools and programs are situated in 1 lgbtiq — lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, or queer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 173 low-socioeconomic communities. therefore, more research is needed to examine effective teaching and learning practice with disenfranchised and marginalised youth, to understand whether this practice differs in mainstream and alternative education settings. recent research in this emerging sector has focussed on specific aspects of pedagogy that have proven to be effective for re-engagement of young people who are disadvantaged by mainstream education systems (mills & mcgregor, 2013; shay 2015, 2016). a shift that we have observed, and that is reflected in papers in this special issue, is a growing sense of confidence regarding what this context has to offer mainstream education settings. this shift is based on research highlighting the breadth of practice experience that can inform and revitalise new approaches to engagement and inclusion of young people in any education setting (mills, mcgregor, baroutsis, te riele, & hayes, 2015; morgan, pendergast, brown, & heck, 2014, 2015; shay, 2015). this issue presents some of the emerging trends in research. the notion of how work in this sector can positively influence systemic change that enhances learning outcomes for young people is a strong theme. the areas of trauma informed practice, relevant and meaningful pedagogy, and a focus on staff professional development and wellbeing are included. mechanisms at play in flexible learning settings: options to inform practice in mainstream school systems in the first two papers of this special issue, zyngier, black, brubaker and pruyn, and mills and mcgregor, offer overviews of the diverse range of alternative and flexible programs within mainstream schools and those offered in independent special assistance schools and standalone programs. while the authors of both papers consider effective features of this rapidly expanding education sector, they emphasise the unique aspects of practice that could inform mainstream contexts in working with disenfranchised young people. they “speak back” to systemic issues that remain as barriers to the inclusion of disenfranchised young people in mainstream education contexts. the papers explore the lessons learnt from flexible and alternative programs and highlight strategies that may also support young people in mainstream settings before they experience failure and exclusion. the papers consider specific insights from research conducted in this sector that offer proactive options and strategies for inclusion of disenfranchised young people. three conceptual headings are used by zyngier et al. to synthesise research on alternate “pull-out” programs and how these contribute to students’ sense of efficacy with respect to their learning, wellbeing. and pathways. through these concepts, zyngier and colleagues address: programs’ sustainability — their stickability; programs’ effectiveness in terms of whether their stated outcomes are achieved — their transformability; and how programs might be reproduced successfully in other locations — their transmittability. the authors offer recommendations for future practice and a challenge to wider school systems to prioritise prevention and early intervention to support the needs of vulnerable students. they argue that changes by broader international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 174 school systems and teachers within them must be informed by the perspectives of young people who are disengaged from schooling. mills and mcgregor present two case studies of flexible learning programs in queensland showing two different models of alternative schooling — one an independent special assistance school and the other an annex model of alternative provision sponsored by a local high school. the data were drawn from a larger study of alternative education provision in queensland involving 12 case study schools in differing locations across the state. once again, an emerging objective identified in this paper is to use what is happening in the growing field of flexible education provision to inform, in a positive way, the practice of mainstream schools when dealing with vulnerable students. youth-centred relational pedagogy: trauma-informed practice key insights into youth-centred relational pedagogy are emerging through research on different ways of working with young people in alternative and flexible learning options in australia. in particular, growing interest in the benefits of trauma-informed practice and its significance for young people who have experienced failure and exclusion from mainstream educational contexts is starting to be addressed in education research. this special issue highlights the importance of trauma-informed education and practice. the third and fourth papers describe trauma-informed teaching approaches in two contrasting settings. brunzell, stokes and waters present the implementation of a trauma-informed positive education (tipe) approach to classroom teaching with flexible learning teachers. an underlying focus of the study reported in this paper is the practice strategies that teachers in “traumaaffected flexible learning settings” can employ to enhance young people’s regulatory ability. they contend that, as young people increase their ability to self-regulate, their potential to achieve successful learning outcomes is enhanced. through this positive approach to engagement, teachers can identify specific practice strategies to implement in their classrooms. the strategies are related to four sub-themes: rhythm; self-regulation; mindfulness; and deescalation. in contrast, gribble and english offer insights into the significance of trauma-informed practice through a case study that explores the benefits of home education. in australia, significant numbers of children and young people are in out-of-home care. the authors challenge the view that formal or mainstream education offers the best support for these young people. gribble and english argue that good educational outcomes and recovery for children and young people in out-of-home care can be achieved effectively through home education. they assert that home education offers a low-stress environment and individual learning that more effectively addresses the complex needs of children and young people who have experienced the impact of trauma from abuse, neglect, and maltreatment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 175 research focussing on the experiences and perspectives of multidisciplinary staff working in alternative and flexible learning programs the final three papers of this special issue, which explore alternative pathways in education for disenfranchised children and young people, provide a shift in focus towards the work and learning of multidisciplinary staff in these settings. educators’ experiences with disenfranchised young people influence their professional judgement in relation to pedagogy, professional learning, and the underpinning philosophy that shapes practice. to address the needs of disenfranchised young people, multidisciplinary staff in alternative settings frequently explore responsive forms of education provision that are relevant and meaningful. talbot and hayes provide a phenomenographic analysis of the experiences of teachers in alternative schools as they engage young people through inquiry-based pedagogies. the sustainability of this approach is considered in light of the various challenges and demands experienced by teachers as they adopt this pedagogy. the experiences of staff are highlighted as they navigate the inherent tensions associated with balancing the needs and interests of young people with staff capacity, program resources, and the challenge of demonstrating learning outcomes. related to the wellbeing needs of staff in alternative education, wandell outlines a proposed pilot study of a gratitude practice program. in this paper, wandell draws on her considerable practice experience in flexible learning contexts in the field of positive psychology to address the problem of staff burnout. professional learning designed for staff wellbeing is identified as an important preventative strategy in the context of alternative and flexible learning options as staff require the capacity to deal with high levels of complexity. wandell’s proposed pilot study highlights the diverse range of necessary skills that have the potential to enhance staff wellbeing, and their capacity to engage positively and responsively with disenfranchised young people. the final paper in this special issue of the ijcyfs features research conducted in australia and canada. vadeboncoeur and vellos identify and elaborate on a specific quality of student–teacher relationships commonly encountered in this sector. framed as the principle of accept and build, it enables students to “imagine and create new social futures” in and through relationship with staff. challenging the stereotypical labelling that regards alternative education as providing a “second chance” for marginal students, the authors argue that reciprocal, two-way relational work is in fact central to teaching and learning regardless of the context — alternative or mainstream — in which it occurs. the experience of intentionally focussing on the quality of student–teacher relationships in this sector offers new and different insights into engagement and inclusion of those who commonly experience failure and exclusion in mainstream schools. this special issue would not have been possible without the assistance, support, and trust afforded to us as guest editors by the editor of the ijcyfs, professor sibylle artz, and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 176 school of child and youth care at the university of victoria in british columbia. we would like to acknowledge aunty denise proud, who accompanied us on a study tour to canada. through aunty denise's wide range of international contacts, she was instrumental in connecting us with professor artz. in gratitude we also acknowledge the additional support provided through the mentoring relationships with associate professors jo lampert (queensland university of technology) and deborah heck (university of the sunshine coast), who were also on the team of guest editors for this special issue. the generous contribution of dr. megan kimber, qut, through her expertise in copyediting, is gratefully acknowledged. we acknowledge the support we have received from practitioners — those who do the day-to-day work in alternative settings. finally, we honour the young people and their families/carers who continue to inspire our commitment to research and practice in this dynamic field of alternative pathways in education. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 171–177 doi 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615716 177 references lampert, j., & burnett, b. (2015). teacher education for high poverty schools. dordrecht, netherlands: springer press. lingard, b., sellar, s., & savage, g. (2014). re-articulating social justice as equity in schooling policy: the effects of testing and data infrastructures. british journal of sociology of education, 35(5), 710–730. doi:10.1080/01425692.2014.919846 mills, m., & mcgregor, g. (2013). re-engaging young people in education: learning from alternative schools. oxon, uk: routledge. mills, m., mcgregor, g., baroutsis, a., te riele, k., & hayes, d. (2015). alternative education and social justice: considering issues of affective and contributive justice. critical studies in education. online publication, 21 october, 2015. doi:10.1080/17508487.2016.1087413 morgan, a. (2013). different ways of being educator: a sociocultural exploration of educator identity and development in practice, in a system of non-traditional flexi schools (unpublished doctoral dissertation). griffith university, brisbane, australia. morgan, a., pendergast, d., brown, r., & heck, d. (2014). the art of holding complexity: a contextual influence on educator identity and development in practice in a system of alternative ‘flexi’ schools. reflective practice: international and multidisciplinary perspectives, 15(5), 579–591. doi:10.1080/14623943.2014.900020 morgan, a., pendergast, d., brown, r., & heck, d. (2015). relational ways of being an educator: trauma-informed practice supporting disenfranchised young people. international journal of inclusive education, 19(10), 1037–1051. doi:10.1080/13603116.2015.1035344 shay, m. (2015). the perceptions that shape us: strengthening indigenous young people's cultural identity. in t. ferfolja, c. jones-diaz, & j. ullman (eds.), understanding sociological theory and pedagogical practices (pp. 93–105) melbourne, australia: cambridge university press. shay, m. (2016). reimagining indigenous education through flexi schooling. in d. bland (ed.), imagination for inclusion: diverse contexts of educational practice (pp. 116–127). oxon, uk: routledge. te riele, k. (2007). educational alternatives for marginalised youth. australian educational researcher, 34(3), 53–68. te riele, k. (2014). putting the jigsaw together: flexible learning programs in australia (final report). melbourne, australia: the victoria institute, victoria university. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.919846 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2016.1087413 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2014.900020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2015.1035344 introduction to the special issue on alternative pathways in education for disenfranchised children and young people in the australian context marnee shay, ann morgan, jo lampert and deborah heck ann morgan, phd, is staff formation and professional learning coordinator across four flexi schools in the youth+ schools network, po box 498, red hill, qld 4059, australia. email: ann.morgan@youthplus.edu.au mechanisms at play in flexible learning settings: options to inform practice in mainstream school systems youth-centred relational pedagogy: trauma-informed practice research focussing on the experiences and perspectives of multidisciplinary staff working in alternative and flexible learning programs references introducing fice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 353–357 353 introducing fice (fédération internationale des communautés educatives) david c. lane david c. lane is honorary life president, fice-international, wakefield, united kingdom. e-mail: dcl@davidlane.org what is fice? the development of fice provides a fascinating window on the way that politics, economics, and social conditions have changed over the 70 years since the end of the second world war. in a brief foreword it is only possible to describe trends and give selective examples, and no offence is intended to national sections, presidents, and other fice officers who are not mentioned by name. for a full history of fice see children, families and care: reflections on the first sixty years of fice by robert shaw (shaw, 2008). when fice was founded, many countries had suffered major devastation, and, as always, children and young people were some of the main casualties of the conflict, through personal injury, loss of family members, or the trauma of their experiences. millions were displaced, orphaned, or separated from their families, and all sorts of systems, including children’s villages, were set up to cope with the large numbers of needy, often disturbed, children. how were the professionals who had to care for these children to cope with their problems? one way was to share thinking and provide support through international links, and this led to the founding in 1948 of fice. for those who do not know of fice (usually pronounced fee-say), it is an international professional association for those who work with children, young people, and their families. at its foundation the letters stood for the fédération internationale des communautés d'enfants (in french), but by 1982 this description was inadequate for the range of services provided by members, and the name was changed to fédération internationale des communautés educatives (in english international federation of educative communities), broadening the remit but carefully preserving the initials. fice’s sister organisation, aieji, (now referred to as the international association of social educators) was formally created in 1951 in the french sector of western germany, to focus on social education/pedagogy. fice’s focus has been primarily on extra-familial care – the ways that children and young people are looked after when their own families can no longer care for them. it has therefore at times been viewed as an organisation focusing on residential child care, but its remit has always been broader, and it has always been flexible in accepting new ideas while at the same time continuing to champion quality residential care for children. mailto:dcl@davidlane.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 353–357 354 changing challenges the second world war may now seem a long time ago, but throughout the years since its end, new challenges have continually come forward for people working with children and young people, and fice has continually helped its members to find ways of creating innovations and combating problems. throughout fice’s early years the cold war dominated european politics. despite this, representatives from many eastern european countries continued to attend fice events, with the child care professionals often accompanied by their political minders. despite the strictures, a dialogue was maintained, and in 1987 fice was awarded the title of peace messenger by the united nations in recognition of the hard work put in by delegates from both sides of the iron curtain. in the 1990s conflict in the former yugoslavia caused major disruption and loss of life. in the aftermath, fice again took up its role of peace messenger, organising camps for young people from the new countries to come together, learn about each other, and make friends, hopefully helping to overcome the bitterness and tensions caused by the fighting. more recently there have been problems such as the growth of substance abuse, child trafficking, greater awareness of the sexual abuse of children, refugee children, unaccompanied minors, and the challenges posed by the internet. how fice works fice was originally set up under the auspices of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (unesco), which provided the initial funding for the organisation. however, no long-term funds were made available after the criteria for funding had been tightened at the third unesco conference in beirut in 1948. among the criteria for receiving funding was the existence of national sections. these were created through the statutes adopted at the 1950 fice congress in lyons. fice was the victim of both opposition and misunderstanding and, though it received some grants from unesco, it did not gain regular funding until fice was given consultative status in 1954. unesco provided modest core funding for 30 years, but following the withdrawal from unesco of the united states in 1984 and the united kingdom in 1985 resources were targeted on developing countries and fice lost its grant. until 1998 the pestalozzi foundation provided a secretariat and some funding but this was tapered off. fice international was also able to obtain some funding for special projects from the european union but has often had to rely on personal donations, grants, membership fees, congresses, and projects. the prime movers when fice held its first conference at trogen in switzerland were elizabeth rotten and bernard drzewieski. for many years, fice’s president was rené de cooman and french was the dominant language. in 1970 the statutes were changed to limit the term of office of the president to three terms of two years each and louis françois, who had first come into contact with the founders of fice as a school inspector and had remained in close touch with the organisation, became president. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 353–357 355 for the last quarter of the 20th century, german-speaking countries took a stronger role with professor tuggener from switzerland as president and the pestalozzi foundation funded franz züsli as general secretary. when thomas mächler took over the pestalozzi role, he became fice secretary general, working with dr. steen lasson of denmark and robert soisson of luxembourg as successive presidents. these were the first presidents whose mother tongue was not one of the three fice languages. dr. steen lasson, supported first by franz züsli and then by thomas mächler, embarked on a programme of encouraging lapsed members to rejoin, encouraging eastern european countries to continue or join after the fall of the berlin wall, and seeking new members in, for example, japan and south africa to join. the latter initiative ultimately led to the first fice congress in any african country. robert soisson, while continuing in dr. steen lasson's footsteps, put more emphasis on updating the constitution and strengthening contacts with european and international organisations including the european union and unicef. the dutch took the lead at the start of the 21st century when theo binnendijk was president and the office was in amsterdam. under monika niederle’s presidency the administrative base shifted to austria, with andrew hosie of scotland as secretary general. he has been succeeded by bettina terp of austria. currently, the administrative office and the president, dashenka (dasha) kraleva, are from bulgaria, based in sofia. in recent decades, the presidents and secretaries general have been supported by successive treasurers, richard joubert of france and rolf widmer of switzerland, and by a number of vice-presidents, who have often taken on specific responsibilities, such as anton tobé of the netherlands, who supported new national sections in south-eastern europe, martti kemppainen of finland, who worked with russia and the baltic states, and søren hegstrup of denmark and dr. emmanuel grupper of israel, who have edited publications such as this special issue of the ijcyfs. the strength of fice over the years has lain in the national sections who comprise the federal council. most of these are from europe and, over the years, almost every country in europe has been represented, though the strongest national sections providing the most consistent support have been those of austria, denmark, france, germany, the netherlands, and switzerland. other countries outside europe have also played significant roles, such as canada, israel, south africa, and the united states, but attempts to expand further across the world have had limited success. from the start fice has worked in three official languages – english, french, and german – and meetings and congresses were interpreted. depending upon the dominant group at the time, these languages took their turns as the main medium, but increasingly in recent years, english has become the standard language, reflecting changes in other aspects of international communication. fice has been fortunate in having long-serving interpreters, helga stefanov and christine karner, who have become well acquainted with the terminology and concepts used in the care of children and young people, and have provided continuity by staying with the organisation longer than any of the serving officers. the national sections that make up fice have, of course, been varied, reflecting the sizes, cultures, and economies of their respective countries. luxembourg, for example, is very small but comparatively wealthy, and it has always had an active organisation, known as ance. germany has perhaps had the most consistently influential and best-organised international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 353–357 356 association. by contrast, a number of individual americans and canadians such as carol kelly and jim anglin have played significant roles in fice internationally, but their respective political systems of states and provinces has made it difficult to set up a north american network. in some countries, individuals have attended to maintain contact with the international scene; in others, professional associations have acted as the fice national section while some government agencies or “quangos” (quasi-governmental societies) have fulfilled the role. in the earlier years special arrangements were often made to fund the attendance of delegates from eastern europe, and this remains a problem for those who wish to participate from weak currency countries. these examples are only given to show the diversity of membership, and the structure of fice has had to accommodate these differences. it is encouraging that at any one time there have been perhaps 30 or 40 countries in which fice has been active. as in any organisation, fice has had its highs and lows. on occasion it has seemed as if it would break up or come to an end, but individuals and associations have always come forward to renew its programmes of activities, maintaining the same aims and values, thus demonstrating that fice is fulfilling a real ongoing need. fice’s strengths fice has never been a rich organisation, perhaps reflecting the status of the professions involved (mainly social work and child and youth care/social pedagogy) and services for children. while some national sections have made major financial contributions to events and projects, fice has essentially relied upon a massive amount of voluntary support, with members giving of their time and personal resources to participate. why should they do this? because of fice's strengths; here are six: • travelling to congresses and federal council meetings in other countries, members have come across new ideas, which they have been able to translate into their own countries, perhaps adapted to changing circumstances. the latest plan is to introduce the south african model of isibindi safe play parks into syria for the thousands of traumatised displaced children there. • sometimes, it may not be a matter of picking up new ideas, but of realising that professionals in other countries do things differently, with different ranges of concepts. it is only recently, for example, that social education/pedagogy has been introduced into the united kingdom, and u.k. delegates for many years found social pedagogical thinking a stimulus and challenge. • fice has organised international congresses since its inception. there have been 48 major congresses, as well as numerous expert seminars, such as the series run by the alpsrhine group in the 1990s. attended by several hundred delegates, these congresses have provided major opportunities to network and meet people (sometimes from one’s own country!). • fice has published a large number of books over the years, in various languages. the main official publications have appeared in english, french, and german, but the national sections have of course put out their journals and books in their national languages. for many years in the 1990s, fice also published a bulletin, mainly edited first by meir gottesman from israel and later by robert soisson from luxembourg. fice currently has an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 353–357 357 editorial board, and this publication is part of a long tradition of sharing good professional thinking and best practices. • fice has provided the opportunity for people to come together in partnerships and set up projects of all sorts – visits to each others’ countries, placements for students, work in areas of great need such as romania after the fall of the ceausescus, exchange trips for children and young people, or working parties on issues such as the drafting of the malmö declaration in 1986, or the approval of an international code of ethics for child and youth care workers in 1997. some projects have been initiated by the federal council, but most have been devised by partnerships between national sections, sometimes as equals and sometimes with one better resourced national section helping another. there are too many examples to list here, and i apologise if i have failed to mention one that a reader considers an important historical milestone. • last but not least, meeting other delegates twice a year at the federal council meetings over the decades has provided the opportunity to develop not only working partnerships between colleagues but also friendships. this is important not only because of the personal enjoyment of meeting acquaintances time and again, but also because of the trust it engenders between individuals and countries. those of us who were present when meir gottesman, an outstanding long-term israeli delegate, retired will not forget his gracious speech in which he mentioned how he valued his friendship with gerhard haag, the distinguished german representative, despite having lost many of his family in the extermination camps. such friendship is invaluable in helping the human spirit overcome the horrors of history and build towards international peace. in conclusion by comparison with many other international bodies, fice is modest in size and financial resources, but its impact over the last seven decades has been considerable, and its influence has been visible in many countries. the u.n. title of peace messenger was well earned, and today’s fice is continuing on the same track. fice is still developing, maintaining its original vision and purpose, trying to extend its network and create new contacts. in the last two years, fice national sections have been created in kenya and ethiopia, and eventually a regional african fice platform will be the next step, together with south africa. in latin america, a national section has been created in brazil. in europe the ukraine national section was recently created. in australia a new member has joined, extending the fice network to this part of the globe. contact has also been established with japanese professionals involved with residential care with a view to creating a japanese fice national section in the near future. this publication is yet another useful addition to the many books and bulletins which fice has published over the years, and it demonstrates that fice is still moving forward, with new creative ideas to improve the quality of services for children and young people. reference shaw, r. (2008). children, families and care: reflections on the first sixty years of fice. stoke-on-trent, uk: trentham books. demographic trends and crime in the province of alberta international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 24 demographic trends and crime in the province of alberta gillian stevens, timothy hartnagel, dave odynak, and jasmine brazil abstract: we present forecasts of crime rates in the province of alberta, canada for the decade 2010 to 2020. the results suggest that rates of all types of crime in the province will drop between 2010 and 2020, largely because of the aging of the population. our forecasts of crime rates rest on three projections of the age-specific and gender-specific composition of the population using sets of assumptions about fertility, mortality, and net migration. we then estimate the rates of total crime, violent crime, property crime, and other crime by taking the age composition of the projected populations into account and presuming that the age-specific crime rates observed from 2006 to 2009 remain constant. keywords: crime rates, population projections acknowledgements: we thank the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university for supporting this research, staff members of statistics canada for help in the procuring and preliminary preparation of the data, and paul joose of the university of alberta for help in the preparation of the manuscript. gillian stevens, ph.d., the corresponding author, is the executive director of the population research laboratory and professor of sociology at the university of alberta, 1-62 hm tory building, edmonton, alberta, canada, t6g 2h4. e-mail: gillian.stevens@ualberta.ca timothy hartnagel, ph.d., is professor emeritus in the department of sociology at the university of alberta, 1-62 hm tory building, edmonton, alberta, canada, t6g 2h4. he is a specialist in criminology and has published widely in academic journals and books on causes and correlates of crime. e-mail: tim.hartnagel@ualberta.ca dave odynak, m.a., is a research analyst in the population research laboratory and has over 20 years of experience in quantitative and statistical computing analysis and database management at the prl. he has collaborated on numerous prl projects involving population forecasting, census enumeration, and survey data collection. e-mail: dodynak@ualberta.ca jasmine brazil, b.a., has worked in prl as a research assistant since 2010. she is currently a student in the sociology graduate program at the university of alberta. e-mail: jbrazil@ualberta.ca mailto:gillian.stevens@ualberta.ca� mailto:tim.hartnagel@ualberta.ca� mailto:dodynak@ualberta.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 25 the canadian economic demographer david foot (1996) famously declared, “demographics explain about two-thirds of everything” (p. 2). although the specifics of this claim are debatable, it is undoubtedly the case that demographic variables strongly affect many aspects of society, including criminal behaviour. because crimes are committed disproportionately by older adolescents and young adults, overall crime rates are very sensitive to the relative numbers of adolescents and young adults in the population. scholars have demonstrated that the rise and fall of crime rates in the late 20th century are largely explained by the changing age composition of the american and canadian populations (e.g., steffensmeier & harar, 1991). after the turn of the 21st century, crime rates in canada declined. for example, the crime severity index (csi) – offences weighted by the severity of sentences handed down by criminal courts – was 22% lower in 2009 than in 1999. the property crime rate and the non-violent csi have also declined steadily since 1999. in particular, the crime severity index in the province of alberta, canada, declined 6% (dauvergne & turner, 2010). in this paper, we construct three demographic projections of the population of the province of alberta and then use these projections to provide forecasts of the trends in three types of crime into the next decade. demographic factors and crime age, gender, and race are among the most powerful and robust individual-level predictors of rates of criminal offending and victimization. evidence consistently indicates that young people, males, and members of disadvantaged minorities are at a higher risk of becoming offenders and victims than children and older people, females, and members of advantaged groups respectively (see south & messner, 2000, p. 84; blumstein & wallman, 2006; hartnagel, 2009). age criminologists have typically explained the relationship between age and crime in terms of age-graded variation in individuals’ experience of informal social controls, and their social positions, over the course of their lives (laub & sampson, 2001). various authors have argued that adolescence is a time of transition between childhood and adulthood and difficulties in making this transition create a variety of problems, of which crime is one expression (nettler, 1984; hartnagel, 1998). as youth move into the adult age range and their social status and integration increase, the personal costs of crime borne by individual youth also increase: they now have more to lose. youth acquire added stakes in conforming behaviour as they begin to occupy social roles and acquire material goods that would be jeopardized by criminal behaviour. as individuals become more socially integrated into relationships, groups, and organizations, they become more dependent on the social rewards of conformity and a reorientation of the costs and benefits of crime is likely to occur (laub & sampson, 2001). in addition, research suggests that salient life events such as leaving school, entering the legal labour market, and marrying, all of which are heavily age-dependent, decrease the likelihood of criminal behaviour (loeber & leblanc, 1990; laub & sampson, 2001). the effects of age-specific experiences of social control and age-graded events on individuals’ commission of crimes lead to a strong and statistically important relationship international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 26 between age and crime. statistics from a variety of years and jurisdictions uniformly indicate a higher prevalence of crime among young persons compared with other age groups. for example, chart 1 shows the age distribution of persons in canada accused of crime in 2009. the percentage of persons accused of crime increases from early adolescence to young adulthood and then generally declines. in 2009, age-specific rates for those accused of crime were highest among 15to 20-year-olds, with the peak age at 17 years (dauvergne & turner, 2010). chart 1: persons accused of crime by age, per 100 000 population, canada, 2009. adapted from dauvergne and turner, 2010. it is true, however, that the relationship between age and crime varies slightly according to the type of crime being considered. the commission of some crimes appears to peak at slightly different ages, and rates of some types of crime decline more quickly with increasing age than other types (steffensmeier, allan, harer, & streifel, 1989). for example, criminal offences where the majority of accused in 2008/2009 were 35 years of age or older included criminal harassment (59%), other sexual offences (59%), prostitution (59%), and sexual assault (57%) (thomas, 2010). some crimes, including embezzlement, fraud, and gambling do not conform to the general pattern and peak later in the life cycle (steffensmeier & allan, 1991). braithwaite international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 27 (1989) has pointed out that white-collar crimes, which are committed by persons of high occupational status, peak later in life because most people under 25 have yet to attain occupations that provide the opportunities to commit these crimes. the relationships between age and crime vary only slightly across most types of crime. because younger adults are consistently overrepresented among criminal offenders for almost all types of crime, changes over time in the overall crime rate reflect, at least in part, changes in the age composition of the total population (steffensmeier & harer, 1991; wellford, 1973). the larger the proportion of young adults in a population the higher the crime rate in that population. thus the general decline in crime rates since the early 1990s coincided with a decrease in the proportion of persons aged 15 to 24 (savoie, 2002) although ouimet (2002) pointed out that improved employment opportunities could also have played a role. two other canadian studies reported the changing age composition had a significant impact on the decline in homicide rates (leenaars & lester, 2004; sprott & cesaroni, 2002). other studies investigating additional factors suggest that the impact of the relative size of the population aged 25 to 34 was neutralized when the effects of unemployment, inflation, and per capita alcohol consumption were controlled (bunge, johnson, & balde, 2005). carrington (2001) forecast the levels of crime in canada for 2000 to 2041 based on the 1999 age-specific crime and victimization rates, population age structure projections to 2041, and the assumption that age-specific crime rates will not change in the future. his overall conclusion was that all types of crime would decline because of the aging of the population. gender men are much more likely than women to commit crimes. explanations for the genderspecific pattern have focused on differences in socialization (lanctôt & leblanc, 2002). for example, some scholars argue that females are more constrained by moral evaluations of conduct than are males (mears, ploeger, & warr, 1998) or by internalized values (heimer, 1996). hagan, simpson, and gillis (1979) claim that boys are socialized to greater independence and risk taking and are, therefore, freer to experiment with deviant conduct. in addition, girls face stricter social controls, are rewarded for compliance and dependence and so have fewer opportunities to experiment with delinquency. the traditional division of labour between the genders further limits women's opportunities to engage in many forms of criminal conduct while providing more opportunities for males. because of the strong differences between men and women in the commission of crimes, the ratio of men to women has often been included as a control variable in macro-level criminological research (see, e.g., messner & sampson, 1991; barber, 2000; altheimer, 2007, 2008). however, it frequently exhibits null effects on rates of violent crime (messner & sampson, 1991), perhaps because societies do not vary significantly in their gender ratio (fox & piquero, 2003). race race is also a strong predictor of criminality, at least in the united states, although its effect is not as strong as age or gender (tonry, 1995). canadian research on race and crime is very limited because race-specific information is rarely collected by the criminal justice system. the information that is available suggests that certain racial minorities, particularly blacks and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 28 aboriginals, are overrepresented in the correctional system relative to their proportion of the population. one factor that may contribute to this overrepresentation is the age composition of the aboriginal population. the high-risk age group for homicide and other violent crime is 15 to 24, and this age group accounted for 17% of the aboriginal population in 2001, compared with 13% for the rest of the population (brzozowski et al., 2006). overall, canada’s aboriginal population is younger than the non-aboriginal population because of higher fertility rates among aboriginal women. in the 2001 census children 14 years of age and under accounted for 33% of the aboriginal population, compared with 19% within the non-aboriginal population. the proportion of the aboriginal population under 15 years old is higher than this national average in saskatchewan, manitoba, alberta, and nunavut; this may contribute to higher crime rates in these regions as this group moves into the high-risk age range for crime (gannon, mihorean, beattie, taylor-butts, & kong, 2005). demographic projections and forecasts of crime in alberta age, gender, and race are strong predictors of crime among individuals. in the aggregate, however, gender is less important because the sex-specific composition of a population remains quite stable over the course of a decade. our population projections (and crime forecasts) would be more nuanced had we been able to obtain or estimate the appropriate demographic and crimespecific data for visible minority groups in alberta. unfortunately, these data are not available for the province of alberta. we therefore used detailed age-specific and gender-specific data to project the population of alberta from 2010 to 2020, and then applied age-specific crime rates to these projections to forecast trends in crime from 2010 to 2020. demographic projections the components of population growth or decline over time are births, deaths, and net migration. projections of a population into the future rest on the attributes of the starting or base population, and assumptions about what will happen to fertility, mortality, and net migration into the future. there are several approaches to projecting populations but the most accurate approach for projections into the near future is to decompose the total base population into specific age groups in time t, and then to project the age-specific counts one year into the future using the following equation: pi,t+1 = pi,t + mi,(t-t+1) di,(t-t+1) + b0,t+1 • pi,t+1 refers to the count of the population aged i at time t; • pi,t refers to the count of the population aged i at time t; • mi,(t-t+1) refers to the number of (net) migrants aged i entering the population during the interval t to t+1; • di,(t-t+1) refers to the number of deaths occurring to individuals aged i during the interval t to t+1; • b0,t+1 refers to the number of births during the interval t to t+1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 29 the counts of births, deaths, and (net) migrants occurring in the interval can be generated from assumptions about birth and death rates and levels of migration during the interval. in all cases, the results refer to alberta’s permanent population and do not include temporary workers. the base populations and the estimation of births, deaths and net migration the characteristics of the base populations for the province of alberta were obtained from statistics canada’s cansim tables (statistics canada, 2011). age-specific fertility rates were calculated for single ages using alberta health and wellness estimates of birth rates for women aged 15 to 49 in 2009 living the province of alberta (government of alberta, 2011). the life expectancies for males and females were obtained from alberta health and wellness and age-specific death rates for females and males were obtained from the 2001 detailed life tables for the province of alberta (statistics canada, 2006). migration statistics for alberta were derived from statistics canada tables and published statistics from alberta finance and enterprise (government of alberta, 2010). in the base population figures for the province of alberta, the levels of net migration are based on agespecific and gender-specific counts from 2006 to 2009. we used four years of data on migration to smooth out year-to-year fluctuations. the net migration figures include net migration from interprovincial and international sources but do not include estimates of non-permanent resident migrants. assumptions underlying the three series we generated three series of population projections from 2010 to 2020 for the province of alberta. the three projections rest on three different sets of assumptions about fertility, mortality, and net migration. one series is based on assumptions that tend to produce higher population growth over time (labelled the “high” series); the second series presumes stability in levels of fertility, mortality, and migration (the “medium” series); while the third series is based on assumptions that tend to produce lower levels of population growth (the “low” series). in general, levels of fertility were assumed to remain fairly stable and below the replacement level of 2.1 births for all three series with only slight differences between the high, medium, and low series. life expectancy was also expected to remain quite stable in this period for all three series. levels of net migration, on the other hand, were allowed to vary dramatically across series. the high, medium, and low series for the province were constructed using the application of the assumptions about fertility, mortality, and net migration (as described below) to age-specific data for each year to produce the age-specific and gender-specific population counts for the following year. although the three population projections were prepared using the component agespecific rates of the total fertility rate (i.e., age-specific birth rates), and life expectancy at age zero (i.e., the age-specific death rates) along with age-specific estimates of net migration, the table lists the total fertility rate (tfr) and life expectancy at age zero (e0) because the tfr and e0 are summary measures of the age-specific matrix of age-specific fertility and mortality rates respectively. the total fertility rate (tfr), which is the weighted sum of the age-specific birth rates for women aged 15 to 49, can be interpreted as the average number of births a woman will bear under the prevailing regime of age-specific birth rates. the life expectancy (e0) is the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 30 weighted sum of person-years lived that is generated by a prevailing regime of age-specific death rates and can be interpreted as the average age at death. table 1 shows that for the “high” population projections, the tfr decreases only slightly from 1.88 to 1.80 births per woman, and that the life expectancies (e0) for males and females increase by a total of about a half a year between 2009 and 2020. in addition, this series assumes that net migration increases by 10% a year between 2012 and 2020. table 1. summary of assumptions underlying the high, medium, and low population projections for the province of alberta. population projection series range high tfr 1.88 to 1.80 e0 males 78.52 to 79.38 e0 females 83.21 to 83.78 net migration increases 10% annually after 2012 medium tfr 1.88 to 1.80 e0 males 78.52 to 79.38 e0 females 83.21 to 83.78 net migration same as 2009-2010 low tfr 1.88 to 1.80 e0 males 78.52 to 79.38 e0 females 83.21 to 83.78 net migration decreases 20% annually after 2012 population projections and changes in the age structure chart 2 shows the changes in the age composition of the total albertan population under each of the high, medium, and low series of population projections. the chart focuses on the changes in the sizes of key age groups. for example, the top set of lines shows the changes in the number of 20 to 29 year olds under the high, medium, and low projections respectively. in the medium series, the number of young adults declines during the interval 2010 to 2020. because migrants are disproportionately young adults, the number of young adults increases if levels of net migration are high and positive, and decreases if levels of net migration are negative. the next three lines, which refer to the three projections of retirement-age populations aged 65 and over, lie almost on top of one another. the projected numbers of elderly people are not affected by changes in fertility and are affected little by variation in levels of mortality or migration. the lines all slope upwards because of the aging of the baby boom cohorts over the interval. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 31 meanwhile, the numbers of adolescents subsides slightly and then recovers over the interval for all three projections. (there is little change across the interval because the number of young adolescents during the interval is hardly affected by fertility, mortality, or migration.). the numbers of older adolescents, those aged 18 and 19, slide slightly downward under all three series of projections. there are therefore two main conclusions about changes in the age structure of the albertan population during the interval between 2009 and 2020. first, the numbers of older albertans increases substantially no matter what the assumptions are about fertility, mortality, or migration during the interval. second, the number of young adults remains fairly stable or increases slightly if net migration is presumed to be high, and drops if net migration remains stable at 2006 to 2009 levels or decreases. chart 2. numbers of albertans in selected age groups in high, medium, and low population projections. forecasting crime rates: methodology the main goal of this research was to forecast crime rates for 2010 to 2020 for alberta. our general approach was to construct a series of population projections for the province, assume that age-specific rates of crime remain constant, and then to multiply the age-specific rates of crime by the age-specific numbers of people in the projected population. the sum of the products over age is the estimated total crime rate for the province in the specified year. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 32 the data for the age-specific rates of crime were provided in customized special tabulations produced by the canadian centre for justice statistics (ccjs) at statistics canada. the crime data refer to counts of persons charged and the total age-specific populations between 2006 and 2009 for total criminal code offences (excluding traffic offences), and the three major types of crime (violent crime, property crime, and “other” crime) for alberta. the population data in these tabulations were based on police servicing areas that report incidents, accused persons, and persons charged data to the ccjs. (according to the ccjs, about 99% of the population of the province is covered by the police servicing areas). discussions between the authors and ccjs personnel concerning the most appropriate aggregating of the data resulted in the following age categories: 12 to 17, 18, 19, 20 to 24, 25 to 29, 30 to 34, 35 to 39, 40 to 44, 45 to 49, 50 to 54, 55 to 59, 60 to 64, and 65 and over. the implication of this selection of ages was that forecasted populations also had to match the above listed age groupings. to smooth annual fluctuations, the data were pooled over the years 2006 to 2009 to yield average counts and rates. chart 3, which is based on data from the special tabulations provided by the ccjs, shows the age-specific rates (per 100,000 population) of persons in alberta charged for total crime, violent crime, property crime, and all “other” crime. the graph displays the expected relationships between age and crime with much higher rates for older adolescents and young adults followed by a steady decline in the rates referring to successively older age groups. chart 3. persons charged by age and type of crime: alberta, 2009. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 33 however, this graph, which is based on the data in the special tabulations, refers only to persons charged and not to incidents of crime. the actual number of crime incidents is unknown because not all crime incidents are reported to the police or discovered by them. the incidents appearing in the uniform crime reports issued by statistics canada include only those known to the various police jurisdictions and reported to statistics canada. furthermore, only a percentage of these incidents result in arrests, and only a percentage of those persons arrested are charged. the age of offenders is only available for incidents resulting in an arrest or charge. the data on persons charged therefore severely understates the number of crime incidents. to address this shortfall, we obtained uniform crime report aggregate statistics from cansim for all of alberta for the four categories of crime and compared them to the persons-charged file provided by the ccjs. table 2 shows the ratios of total counts of incidents (from ucr data) to the weighted sum of age-specific counts of persons charged (from the ccjr data) by type of crime for alberta. table 2. ratios of total counts of incidents to the sum of age-specific counts of persons charged by region and crime category, 2006 to 2009. year violent crime property crime other crime total crime 2006-2009 2.48 7.16 2.04 4.01 multiplying the persons-charged counts by the ratios in table 2 results in a more realistic estimate of incidents of crime. the crime rates (by type) for each series of projected populations for each specific year “t” were therefore estimated as in which ct refers to the overall crime rate in year t for the specific category of crime and region, “ratio” refers to the appropriate ratio from table 2, pi refers to the number of people in age category i in the projected population, ci refers to the age-specific crime rate, and p refers to the total population. demography and crime in alberta, 2010 to 2020 figure 1 presents the forecasted total criminal code crime rates for the years 2010 to 2020 under the three population projections of high, medium, and low change for the province of alberta. in this and subsequent figures the rates of crime are displayed on the vertical dimension, the years on the horizontal dimension, and the starting point is the specified crime rate averaged over the years 2006 to 2009. the shapes of the curves in figure 1 indicate substantial forecasted decreases in the total crime rate between 2010 and 2020 under all three population projections. the forecasted rates under each of the three population projections are very similar for the years up to 2015 but then begin to diverge. while all three series of rates decline in subsequent years, the decline is greatest under the low projection series, somewhat less in the medium series, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 34 least under the high series. by 2020, the forecasted crime rates range from 9,305 per 100,000 people to 9,708 per 100,000 people across the three population projections. figure 1. rates of total crime under three population projections for alberta. figure 2 shows the forecasted violent crime rates to the year 2020 under the three population projections of high, medium, and low change for the province of alberta. there are sizeable decreases under all three population projections. again, the decrease is greatest under the low population change projection, somewhat less under the high population change projection, with an intermediate-sized forecasted violent crime decrease under the medium population change projection. from the starting point of the average violent crime rate of 1,768 per 100,000 population for the years 2006 to 2009, the forecasted rates under each of the three population change projections are very similar for the first several years, but start to diverge noticeably in the year 2015. while the rates under all three population projections continue to decline to 2020, the forecasted violent crime rate under the high population projection does so to a lesser degree (to 1,642 in 2020) while the forecasted rate under the low population projection continues a fairly steady decline to a low of 1,577 per 100,000 population in 2020. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 35 figure 2. rates of violent crime under three population projections for alberta. the same general pattern is visible in figures 3 and 4, which display the forecasted property and other criminal code rates, respectively, to the year 2020 under the three population projections. the forecasted property crime rates under the three population projections are quite similar for the first few years in the series but begin to diverge around the year 2015. for the low population projection the forecasted property crime rate decreases from a high of 6,785 per 100,000 population at the starting point to a low of 5,980 per 100,000 population in 2020. under the high population projection, the forecasted property crime rates decline from the high of 6,785 per 100,000 population to a low of 6,226 per 100,000 in 2020. the forecasted rates for the medium population projection are again intermediate between the low and high projection series. figure 4 presents the same pattern of forecasted rates for “other” criminal code violations. these forecasted rates decrease from 1967 to 1,728 per 100,000 population under the low population change projection, to 1,768 under the medium projection, and to 1,809 under the high projection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 36 figure 3. rates of property crime under three population projections for alberta. figure 4. rates of other crime under three population projections for alberta. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 37 discussion there are several main insights to draw from these forecasts of crime rates in alberta from 2010 to 2020. the most important is that most crime rates are likely to decline for the province between 2010 and 2020. this forecasted decline occurs under three different population projections, each presuming different, although plausible, levels of fertility, mortality, and migration. in the population projections, the numbers of young adolescents increases slightly under all three projections, the numbers of older adolescents remain fairly stable, and the numbers of young adults decline under the medium and low population projections. because crimes rates are sensitive to the age composition of a population, the projected declines in the absolute numbers of adolescents and young adults depress the forecasted crime rates in the province between 2010 and 2020. a second insight is that our forecasted decreases in crime for the province, into the near future, suggests a continuation of recently observed trends. our forecasted decreases in the various types of crime rates in the province of alberta are also consonant with carrington’s (2001) forecast of declines in crime rates in all of canada from 2000 to 2041. he concluded that all types of crime, particularly those typical of younger aged groups such as breaking and entering, and robbery, will decline as the canadian population ages. the major categories of violent, property, and other criminal code offences that we have forecast include, of course, a number of specific offence types. some of these specific offences may respond differently to demographic changes. for example, as the population ages, fraud may also increase. in addition, as foot (1998) pointed out, an aging population contains more potential crime victims because it has more people who own something worth stealing. carrington (2001), who forecasted rates of several specific offences, concluded: rates of particular types of crime are related to their age profiles: crimes such as robbery, break and enter and other indictable property crime, and drug offences, which are characteristic of teenagers and young adults, are forecast to decline somewhat faster and farther; whereas crimes such as sexual assault, criminal code traffic offences, and miscellaneous offences against the person, which are more characteristic of older adults, are forecast to decline less. (p. 348) it is possible, then, that the general crime categories forecasted in the present paper may mask some differences in the likely future rates of some specific offence types. the focus on the entire province of alberta also masks the possibility of variation across regions for several reasons. first, the non-metropolitan areas of alberta are home to several large aboriginal reserves and communities. we lack data on the aboriginal status of persons charged and are therefore not able to forecast their specific crime rates, but it is very likely that they are disproportionately involved in certain crimes relative to their proportion of the population. laprairie (1992, 1996) has described the breakdown of traditional social relations and controls in some aboriginal communities contributing to the disproportionately high rates of crime and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 38 violence. however, it is also the case that the aboriginal population is younger on average than the non-aboriginal population. according to the 2006 census of canada (20% sample), the median age of alberta’s total population was 35.8 years while the median age of alberta’s aboriginal population was 24.8. our population projections thus account, at least in part, for the possibility of relatively higher crime rates among the aboriginal population in alberta. a second reason that our focus on the entire province of alberta may mask important variation across regions in forecasted crime rates concerns the impact of migration. our population projections took into account the overall impact of interprovincial and international in-migrants and out-migrants, many of whom are young male adults. however, migrants tend to settle in specific locations rather than being uniformly spread out across a province. in the case of alberta, many migrants settle in the non-metropolitan areas of the province to take advantage of the employment opportunities provided by the oil and gas industries. more detailed research focusing on differences among regions suggests that crime rates may increase in the nonmetropolitan areas of alberta (see stevens, hartnagel, odynak, & brazil, 2011). it is important to recall that this exercise in the forecasting of crime rates has been based upon selected demographic variables. demographic changes are not the only – or even the strongest – contributor to crime rates; other variables occurring during the same time period as these demographic changes can have important effects on crime (fox & piquero, 2003). as carrington (2001) has pointed out, predicting future crime would require knowledge of future levels of all other variables thought to affect crime, as well as a model of how they impact on crime. various social and economic factors and criminal justice policies are quite likely to have a continuing impact on crime through time. lafree (1999) identified numerous factors likely to affect crime rates over time including economic stress, family disorganization, drug markets, changes in routine activities of everyday life that affect the opportunities for crime, as well as such features of public policy as various policing initiatives, incarceration rates, education, and welfare programs. it is likely that crime rates in the upcoming decade in alberta will reflect many of these factors along with shifts in the demographic composition of its population. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 24–41 39 references altheimer, i. 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(1973). age composition and the increase in recorded crime. criminology, 11(1), 61–70. demographic factors and crime age gender race demographic projections and forecasts of crime in alberta demographic projections the base populations and the estimation of births, deaths and net migration assumptions underlying the three series we generated three series of population projections from 2010 to 2020 for the province of alberta. the three projections rest on three different sets of assumptions about fertility, mortality, and net migration. one series is based on assumptions that... population projections and changes in the age structure forecasting crime rates: methodology demography and crime in alberta, 2010 to 2020 discussion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918857 researching pain — re-searching the researcher: pulling back the curtain on the inner life and anxiety of the investigator james p. anglin and angela scott abstract: seldom do researchers comment on or discuss in their publications the impact of their research on themselves, nor do they explore the impact of their emotions on their research data gathering or findings. the authors provide excerpts from two of their own research studies to illustrate some of the personal dimensions which they, along with george devereux, claim are central and significant in the process of social science research. we suggest that is it is important to introduce new researchers to the psychoemotional dimensions of the researcher’s own experiences in the research process in order to both sensitize them to potential research findings (often hidden), and prepare them for the possible (even likely) impacts on themselves as researchers, professionals, and human beings. keywords: researching pain, embodied knowing, research anxiety, pain-based behaviour james anglin phd is professor emeritus in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, bc, canada. he can be reached at #78, 1255 wain road, north saanich, bc, canada v8l 4r4. email: janglin@uvic.ca angela scott ma currently practices as a child, youth, and family therapist at the victoria child abuse prevention and counselling centre, #210 – 1175 cook street, victoria, bc, canada v8v 4a1. email: angela.scott@vcapcc.com mailto:janglin@uvic.ca mailto:angela.scott@vcapcc.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 143 a note on style the authors of this article have chosen to write in an informal style, using their first names rather than their last names, and avoiding such traditional phrases as “the first author” and “the second author.” we do this for two reasons. first, it seemed awkward and stilted to us to write in this manner, given our subject matter. second, impersonal language seemed to belie the very heart of our argument, namely that social science researchers are necessarily and importantly involved in their research in very personal ways. we hope readers will not be unduly put off by our use of first names, and that this informal style may even be experienced as more appropriate to our subject and theoretical position. as well, the spellings used in the source publications from which the prefaces are abstracted are left as they were in the originals. jim tended to use english spellings (e.g., realising, analyse), while angela used american spellings (e.g., analyzing). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 144 this article is not the one we initially planned to write. we were going to report on the study that angela undertook for her master’s degree while at the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria (scott, 2016), and that was used also for a report by the two of us to the british columbia ministry of children and family development (anglin & scott, 2016). however, as we began to discuss this article, we realized how both of us had been deeply moved and intimately impacted, in different ways, in our research studies with young people with lived experience in care who suffered from profound and ongoing psychoemotional pain. as we talked, we were aware how researchers are affected in quite profound ways by their research engagements, especially with people who have experienced complex trauma. however, researchers typically refrain from mentioning any of this in their research reports and articles, except perhaps for occasional fleeting comments in their prefaces. for example, in his book children’s homes, david berridge stated in the acknowledgements section: “i am particularly grateful … to the children for re-living and recounting some of the pain which they and their families had endured and which we can hardly begin to understand” (berridge, 1985, p. vii). it is evident that the experience of pain and its effects on the children made a significant impression on the senior researcher and his research team; however, the children’s pain experiences are not explored in the study, nor is the word pain ever used again in the book. presumably, the framework and method for berridge’s research study did not bring forward this aspect of the daily life of the children’s homes, and as a result the research focused much more on the children’s behaviours and behavior management issues experienced by the staff. in a review of selected publications on residential group care for young people, those that were practice-oriented as well as more formal research studies, glossing over experiences of pain (both of the children and the researchers) appeared to be common practice (anglin, 2002, pp. 133– 151). when jim was on sabbatical in the united kingdom in the 1980s, he spent many joyous hours in bookshops, and during one foray into a favourite haunt, he stumbled upon from anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences by george devereux (1967). over the years, the core message of this text has continued to resonate; it is one of the few books we have found that explores deeply the phenomenon of the impact of social science research on the researcher herself or himself. devereux’s thesis is the following: in short, behavioral science data arouse anxieties, which are warded off by a countertransference inspired pseudo-methodology; this maneuver is responsible for nearly all the defects of behavioral science. (p. xvii) the behavioral scientist cannot ignore the interaction between the subject and observer in the hope that, if he [sic] but pretends long enough that it does not exist, it will just quietly go away. (p. xviii) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 145 in our minds, devereux, in referring to the researcher’s reaction as “anxiety”, is using a more psychoanalytic term for the researcher’s own “pain-based behaviour”, which is often, but perhaps not always, in response to the pain and pain-based behaviour of the subjects of the research. this article seeks to pull back the curtain on both the challenges and potential transformations for researchers inherent in the processes of social science research, and especially research with persons living with deep and profound psychoemotional pain as the result of experiencing complex trauma. in jim’s study, some of the core findings of the research emerged from paying attention to what has been termed embodied knowing (heshusius & ballard, 1996, ch. 1) or tacit knowledge (polanyi, 1966, 2009). in angela’s study, she was led to some deep resolutions within her personal psychoemotional and family life. in keeping with our intention to explore the experiential dimensions of researcher engagement with subjects, and the implications of these experiences for both the nature and selfimpacts of the research findings, we will share the personal reflections that we included in the reports on two of our own studies. the first excerpt is abstracted from the book jim published in 2002 that utilized the grounded theory method (glaser & strauss, 1967) to develop a theoretical framework for what constitutes a well-functioning group home for young people removed from their families. over a 14-month process of data gathering, jim visited — at various times of day and night — 10 residential group facilities for young people, immersing himself in the daily life of the homes, the children, the workers, and the child welfare system in british columbia. after many months of interviews, conversations, and observations, it became evident that responding to pain (both the children’s and their own) was the core challenge for group home child and youth care workers. it was this realization that led to the emergence of the concept of “pain-based behaviour”, and its naming (anglin, 2002, pp. 107–121). angela was an experienced practitioner when she began her master’s degree in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria in british columbia, canada. after many years of contemplating what she could do to be a better child and youth care practitioner and advocate for young people in the child welfare system and residential settings, she decided it was time to further her knowledge and education, so she applied and was accepted to the master’s program in child and youth care. when she came to the university, she immediately sought out jim to be her supervisor as she knew we had a shared experience in direct residential practice. we had many discussions about our experiences working in residential care and the child welfare system. fortuitously, we became aware of a funding opportunity and we were successful in receiving support to study the linkages between three elements of the child welfare system in british columbia: the process of removal of children from their families, placement transitions while in care, and the children’s experiences of historical and system-related trauma (scott, 2016). over the course of her study, angela interviewed 20 young people (ages 19 to 25) who had lived in care for at least 2 years. as will be evident in her own words, she also was impacted profoundly by this research engagement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 146 we will now present the prefaces from both our research studies. following these verbatim excerpts, we will explore what we understand to be their significance and some implications for the roles and responsibilities of researchers in relation to self-awareness and self-disclosure. pain-full prefaces first, the preface from “pain, normality, and the struggle for congruence: reinterpreting residential care for children and youth” (anglin, 2002, pp. xvii–xviii): discovering the heart of darkness when you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, i tell you – fades. the inner truth is hidden (…). but i felt it all the same… marlow, in heart of darkness by joseph conrad (1990, p. 30) this study of group homes for children and youth has been a true voyage of discovery. yet it took a vivid and startling dream to help me to penetrate the “mere incidents of the surface” and to discover a disturbing but largely hidden truth. i am walking across a snowy and frozen landscape. i am admiring the beauty of the snow-laden evergreen trees and the light patterns on the curves of the snow mounds between the trees. i am traversing a wide and flat expanse of snow, surveying the scene with an inner sense of curiosity and tranquility. suddenly, i find myself falling downward, and i realise that i have broken through some thin ice. i had been walking across a frozen body of water without realising it. my entire body is plunged into the frigid water, and air bubbles are streaming from my mouth as i gasp at being submerged and unable to breathe. then i wake up, still feeling the after-effects of a shock-like reaction in my body. (field note; november 13, 1999) it did not take long to link this dream experience to my [then] recent experiences of visiting several group residences, and in particular my conversations with one staff member. it was immediately clear to me that the cold water in the dream represented pain, and that the frozen landscape represented the busyness of daily routines that covered over the pain underneath the surface of group home life and work. and while this “inner truth” of pain had remained largely hidden from my conscious understanding for many months, i realised, like marlow in conrad’s heart of darkness (1990), that i had “felt it all the same” (p. 30). during the days immediately before this dream experience, i had been making intensive visits to three homes. in between visits, i had interviewed a number of residential workers and supervisors. on several occasions, i woke up very early in the morning with vague visceral sensations of discomfort in reaction to what i had been experiencing. but this disturbing dream was the most profound “wake up call” that i had yet experienced. it seems that what had finally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 147 “dawned on me”, at a somatic level, was an experience of “embodied knowledge” (benner & wrubel, 1989, p. 42) in which i had grasped the meaning of the situation directly (not abstractly) as a result of being personally engaged. in an interview the day before the dream, a relief staff member had described the hurt and anger of the residents, and i now realised that her comments had begun to work on me at a preconscious level. in our conversation, she had said: it was a place for little kids to be. they came in with a lot of hurt and anger, and the teenagers do as well, and you are dealing with a lot of repercussions of their anger, so there’s little opportunity to get into the head of the child and make a difference with their emotions. (…) the staff was always there. but there was so much time taken up in behaviours, and dealing with behaviour, and trying to have the home run smoothly. in other words, “let’s make our beds”, “let’s go to school”, “let’s get our homework done”, “let’s have our supper”, “let’s all clean up”. there was so much time needing to be involved in having it all run smoothly, that even though staff were always there, for discussion, and “how are you feeling about this?”, “what’s happening?”, “talk to me about it” – and a lot of that happened – it wasn’t enough to make an impact on behaviour change. (big house, hillside and parke street relief staff member.) analysing the dream reminded me of a book of articles that i had read several years before entitled rivers of pain, bridges of hope (davis, 1987). when i returned home from the week of site visits to the valley agency group homes, i pulled the book from my shelf and looked through it again. one of the first themes woven into davis’ discussion of residential group care was victor hugo’s story of les misérables, and there were several references made to “darkness of the heart” (davis, 1987, pp. 6-8). davis says towards the end of his discussion, “at the micro-level, residential establishments often – rightly – go through their own revolutions when the ‘darkness’ becomes intolerable for both clients and staff” (1987, p. 8). apropos to the reference to “revolutions”, i had heard from the same relief staff member quoted above that a “riot” had occurred at one of the group homes several weeks before my arrival. residents locked staff in the office, broke windows, and “trashed” the kitchen and other parts of the house. the police had to be summoned to restore order. the words and images shared by this worker along with my direct participation in the homes had made a deep impression on me, and awakened some insights that burst forth in the powerful dream experience. to this day, several years later, the dream images and the memories of the rapid process of interpretation that took place in the minutes after waking up early on that february 13th morning are readily accessible to me. further, the phrase “heart of darkness” from davis’ writing echoed the title of joseph conrad’s famous novel which i had not previously read. i did read it soon after this incident, and thus this haunting notion has since that time quite aptly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 148 captured for me the deep and pervasive pain that i discovered, and after the dream further explored, lying at the heart of the residential care experience for both residents and staff members. as the framework that emerged from this research study will make clear, responding to pain and pain-based behaviour is the major challenge for carework staff in group care settings. and as residential child and youth practitioners, we would do well not to allow ourselves to become distracted by “the mere incidents of the surface”, to seek to discern the inner truth of the pain hidden within the daily reality of group home life and work, and to find ways to guide the young residents and ourselves out of the heart of darkness and into a collective sense of normality. to do so requires nothing less than a ceaseless striving for appropriate consistency, reciprocity, and coherence throughout our child and youth care practice. it is this struggle for congruence in service of the children’s best interests that provides the unifying theme for the creation of a nurturing and healing extrafamilial environment – a true “home for the heart” (bettelheim, 1974). j.p.a., victoria, canada “we don’t feel that love”: getting research “on track” angela felt compelled to write a preface for her thesis that shared aspects of her own journey over the course, and as a result, of her research study. she did not intend this to be included in the ministry report, but both her supervisor (jim) and the ministry research director urged her to keep it in the report, as it was a powerful statement and insight into the impact of this kind of research on the researcher, revealing often over-looked aspects of the research process itself. we include this preface here as the second example of the inner life and anxiety of the investigator in such pain-related studies. it illustrates the importance of recognizing and acknowledging, in an explicit and fulsome way, how the process of social science research often (if not always) is also a process of “re-searching the researcher.” my clients…continue to teach me what we all need to learn—that life can be brutally hard and simply beautiful, that we are stronger than we know (or might wish), and that the human heart shines most brilliantly when it is engaged and shared. (mahoney, 2003, p. 11) this study on the retrospective reflections of bc former youth in care on their experiences of removal, transitions and trauma has inspired a journey of my own self-discovery and introspective contemplation on the processes of doing research. as a métis woman, novice social science researcher, child and youth care worker, mother, wife, friend, advocate, adversary, and carer, the dynamic and shifting elements of my social, professional, and personal roles often collide in spaces of tension. during this study what emerged was acceptance for my need to balance the tensions, acceptance that remaining in tension allows me to deeply and critically question my self, perspectives, privileges, values, beliefs, and biases in my research, writing, and practice. the purpose of this reflection is to explore the tensions that emerged during this study. this will be discussed in two integral ways: firstly, i will reflect on the process of interviewing, analyzing the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 149 voice data, and writing this research report; and secondly, i want to acknowledge how this research project personally inspired me to search out my own family roots. the process of interviewing participants was challenging in many ways. as a child and youth care worker, graduate student, and clinical counselling intern, there were often times during the interviews when i had to hold back from reacting or responding to the participants. i have been educated and trained to be supportive of those with whom i work. sitting and just listening, allowing them space to share their stories with me evoked so many tensions, feelings and thoughts. i am not suggesting that as researchers we do not respond or be transparent in how we interact with participants; rather, this is a reminder that sometimes we just need to listen, be quiet, and open to allow others the time, place and emotional space to share their stories, insights, and experiences. sitting, listening, and taking in someone else’s pain, was more difficult than i can articulate. this happened throughout the interviews, but during one in particular i had to step back and process how this young indigenous woman’s story affected me. what she told me was painful, for her and for me. hearing someone else describe so many of my own deep, dark, painful, and lonely early life experiences made me feel like i was breathing in her pain, socked in my chest and straight to my heart. this is not because i have not heard life stories or experiences like my own before; particularly in my area of work, i have too often heard these stories and ones that i found much more painful than my own. what made this experience different was knowing that i had to sit in that tension and listen, knowing this was about her expressing her painful story to someone she does not know. i could not tell her that i had experienced so many of the same things, nor could i put on my counselling hat and ask reflective questions. i just needed to listen and absorb. further, i felt an internal sense of dissonance between myself as a privileged métis woman and graduate student, asking a first nations woman about her life in care. after this interview, i felt overwhelmed—was i doing the right thing? would i be able to express the meanings in my writing? what about my privilege as a researcher? what about my privilege as a métis woman, who has light skin and lives in the tension of being of mixed ancestry? how can i approach this research in an ethical and socially just manner? i called my committee member on the phone, a woman whom i deeply admire and hoped would be able to understand what i was trying to process. in our conversation she reminded me that this research study was not a fixed end, that i could continue this work, and that i could continue to carry the tension of my identity and these stories into my future work. from that point on, i approached the interviews and this study in a different manner: it became not just about loss, grief, and pain, but also about love, hope, and future possibilities. it was not about taking apart or deconstructing the voices and stories of the participants; it was about presenting and amplifying them, coalescing their meanings. interviewing is a process, one that i found to be immensely engaging and problematic. as i was sitting and listening to the participants’ stories, all of my senses were consciously heightened. i could smell the rain outside, the stale pizza boxes, and the coffee that had just been brewed. i could hear the sounds on the street, the pouring rain, people talking in the hallway, and the voice of the participant reverberating over all the sounds and reaching straight through to me. i could see international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 150 the room, fluorescent lights, the shadows, and the furniture—and i could see them, and as we looked in each other’s eyes it was in that moment i would know some of the pain, loss, love, and hope they were expressing to me. with all my senses engaged it was powerful, and their stories became embodied, they became tangible, and alive. but now came my worries: how could i ever express on paper the power of these moments? without having been in this room, with all senses imminently engaged, how could someone else feel the meaning that was expressed? i believe we are feeling, sensing, relational, and holistic beings, our memories and experiences are so often enmeshed with our bodily senses. i worried (and still do) that in a textual document, the living, breathing, impact of their stories would be diluted in some way. i made a mistake: i assumed that the interview process was going to be the most emotionally difficult part of this research study, and then came the analysis. i transcribed all the interviews, approximately two hundred pages of rich textual data on the life experiences, stories, narratives, perception, insights, and ideas of 20 young people who i had come to greatly respect and admire. further, i felt protective of them and their life stories, and had great difficulty imagining how i could ever break down what they said into sections, parts or quotes. i started with a thematic analysis of the data, i developed global themes, organizing themes and basic themes— there were so many different themes. i met with my supervisor, and being the grounded theorist that he is, he asked a question that would change my entire perception of the data and the manner in which the report would be written. i had told him about all the themes, showed him the data maps i had created and the many quotes that i had sorted. he then asked if there was one central, overarching category or theme, something that connected all the data. i did not know how to answer that question, i left his office in some kind of existential haze. i spent three days re-reading all the transcripts and all i could see was a multitude of diverse experiences, though many were related. then on that third day, i became frustrated, i could only see all the data at once, i was not able to break them down or centralize them, and i needed a break and decided it was time for a walk. i live in a beautiful place, close to the lake and surrounded by the forest, and walking always clears my head, so i headed to the train tracks behind my house. i stepped onto the tracks and could hear and feel the crunch of the rocks and wood beneath my feet, i could hear the birds, and i could smell the crisp winter air. my thoughts were running through my head, so many themes, and so many experiences. i then realized maybe i was looking at the data the wrong way, maybe instead of seeing what was there, i need to look for what was not there. what was missing? then, as the colloquial saying goes, a “light bulb went off” in my head, though maybe it was more like one thought shattering all the others, breaking through the darkness. there it was, what was missing—love. i stopped walking, and stood there silent. is it love that is missing in their experiences of being in care? i turned around and headed home, back to the transcripts, and i spent the rest of the day re-reading their stories. there it was, or for that matter, was not, and in one participant’s transcript he perfectly stated what youth in care are missing—“we don’t feel that love.” i had to go to my supervisor and explain what i was conceptualizing: i assumed he would international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 151 think i was out of my mind. our meeting went well; we poured through the data and the descriptions of love, and we both agreed this was a core category, but now this meant a shift in methodology, it was now a grounded theory approach. the next two months were also emotionally difficult, as comparative analysis is, at times, painstakingly slow and methodical. it was time to write the final report; this process has taken many memos, drafts, and revisions. it has also been emotionally painful at times; i did not assume that editing would be this psychologically disruptive. i believe the most difficult thing, what has kept me awake at night and what is the crux of my worries, is my belief that there is no possibility that i could ever be able to convey the meanings that were shared by the participants; that i could ever write in a textual document the embodied meaning of some of their life stories and experiences that were conveyed to me in the interviews. i did not want to leave any of their stories behind, i did not want to lose the power of their words, and i did not want to dishonour their life experiences in any way. i have done my best, with the help and support of my supervisor and committee members, to convey exactly what was voiced by the youth in this study. i know that i will carry the tension, weight, and power of these young people’s stories with me in all my future work. i have been critically engaged throughout this study, while interviewing, writing, and thinking about how to present the insights and perspectives of those who so generously shared some of their life experiences with me. during the past year of working on this research project i have also gone through my own process of self-discovery. in particular, the participants inspired me to seek out my family history that has been missing. i do not know my biological father, and i know very little about my métis family history in fort qu’appelle, saskatchewan. now, this may not be the place or space to divulge my own painful story, but sharing how the participants’ stories impacted me is fundamentally important if i am to be as transparent as possible in the research process. further, i want to express that doing research affects us, it can be painful and inspiring, and it can push us to deeply reflect on who we are and to do better work. i searched for my family history, and i found my lineage, those family names that bring together my genealogy and our historical imprint on our homeland of saskatchewan. sadly, i also found out that my biological father passed away last summer. the situational irony is certainly not lost on me, nor is the impending flow of guilt that i had waited too long to find him. but i was not ready, for the past 30 years i have wondered what happened to him, and i was not ready to know until after i had experienced this process over the past year. my biological father and i will never have the chance to meet again, to find closure, or possibly to have developed a new relationship. and i am reminded of one of my favourite quotes: “it’s being ripped from love that causes the wound in the first place and its only love in the end that heals it” (wagamese, 2009, p. 13). losing a loved one or a loving connection is never easy; it can be brutally painful, yet in all those dark moments there may be some light. maybe we have the love of our friends, extended family, children, community, or our pets—love can be found again, it can be re-established, it can grow out of dark places, and it can offer us a chance to heal. my hope for those who so generously agreed to participate in this research study is that they know they inspired at least one person to re-establish a loving connection that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 152 was once lost, i may not have found it in the way i imagined or dreamed it could be, but i am eternally grateful for the journey and the chance to utilize the love that i have in my life to heal the wounds of my past. in deep gratitude, angela scott discussion and implications for each of us, as the authors of these prefaces, reading over these excerpts years later (in jim’s case, after almost 20 years), we vividly remember the experiences described. this intensity of emotion seems important to examine and understand, both in relation to its implications for undertaking rigorous social science research as well as for equipping researchers to be prepared for the challenges and opportunities they will likely encounter. the growing literature on indigenous research methodologies (e.g., absolon & willett, 2005; carrière & richardson, 2017; kovach, 2009; smith, 2002) does consistently address the issue of the intersection of researcher and research subject experiences. on researcher preparation, kovach (2009) stated, “the term researcher preparation describes the experiential aspect of the research. it is about process. there are aspects of this research approach that required preparation and choices grounded in inward knowing that arises from personal experience” (p. 49). while it will not always be possible to predict specific impacts, asking researchers (especially students and novice researchers) to explore their personal histories relevant to the research topic may make the process of inquiry more reflexive and transparent. for example, carrière begins her article reporting on her research into the adoption of métis children with a section on personal location in which she discloses her own métis roots and adoptee status (carrière, 2017, p. 77). while jim’s preface offers an account of how a nighttime dream (a nightmare, actually) led to key research findings, angela’s explores how a flash of insight while walking on railway tracks led to not only her core findings but also deep personal insight and change; both involve the researcher’s deep emotional engagement in the research process and with the study participants. for angela, her engagement with the pain of the young interviewees, and her willingness to explore her resulting personal tension and pain, led to both more understanding of their lives (being removed from family and living in care) and some profound psychoemotional resolutions in her own personal and family life. kovach (2009) weaves her own journey of personal, communal, and spiritual re-discovery throughout her account of exploring research epistemologies and methodologies in search on indigenous ways of knowing and inquiry. interestingly, paralleling jim’s experience, she recounted “paying attention to my dream life” (2009, p. 180) and journaling during her data gathering and analysis. we realize that both of our stories (in concert with much indigenous writing) are raising some very fundamental issues and challenge some longstanding tenets of social science research. what about the pursuit of objectivity and dispassionate scientific research? does allowing the feelings and emotions of the researcher to enter the research process bias the research process and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 153 even risk invalidating the findings? our position parallels that of devereux, namely that “the behavioral scientist cannot ignore the interaction between the subject and observer in the hope that, if he [sic] but pretends long enough that it does not exist, it will just quietly go away” (devereux, 1967, p. xviii), and that ignoring this dimension leads to significant “defects of behavioral science” (p. xvii). we would maintain that following a clear and rigorous research method and process provides the context for considering the researcher’s own responses both as data, in their own right, and as pathways to deeper insight into the lived experiences of research subjects. in the grounded theory literature, such insight is encompassed in the notion of “theoretical sensitivity” (glaser, 1978). at the same time, angela felt wary (and to a degree still does) about sharing her personal reflections even though they are now published and available to anyone who accesses her thesis on the internet. why? because it was so raw and vulnerable for her, and because this research study had affected her deeply as some of the young people’s stories were also hers. their experiences were parallel to her own: she too had experienced many similar losses. angela has spent many years in her practice and in her learning being taught that it is not acceptable to be a “wounded healer”, or to be familiar or too close with our “clients”; instead, we are to be objective in our views, research, and practices. if she were to be transparent and open about her experiences, what would others think of her? would they believe she was not a good practitioner? could this affect her career and livelihood? would people question her ethics, her ability, and her capacity in child and youth work? it is likely that some people do, but she knows why she is committed to this work, and what it means to her and — more importantly — to those with whom she works. by becoming more aware of her own background and the significance of the experiences she has carried with her, angela knows she is better able to empathize and respond effectively to children, youth, and families struggling and in pain. in keeping with this commitment, she needed to critically reflect on how her research study affected her, just as she needs to reflect (critically and deeply) daily on how her practice affects her and those with whom she works. in addition to the indigenous writing previously cited, there is a stream of european and north american social science literature on these issues that can be traced back to dilthey’s explorations of “human studies” (rickman, 1976). in more recent times, his explorations are reflected in discussions of “human inquiry” (reason & rowan, 1981), “naturalistic inquiry” (lincoln & guba, 1985) and “researching lived experience” (van manen, 1990). the purpose of this article is not to resolve these very large issues, but rather to raise them and underline their significance for research on, and researchers engaged in, the lived experiences of human beings. this seems to us to be especially important for research in child welfare and child and youth care work that will almost always involve psychoemotional pain. on the basis of our research experiences in the two studies presented here, we believe that students and beginning researchers in the social sciences need to be introduced to the psychoemotional dimensions of the researcher’s own experiences in the research process in order to both international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 154 sensitize them to potential research findings (often hidden), and prepare them for the possible (even likely) impacts on themselves as researchers, professionals, and human beings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 155 references absolon, k., & willett, c. (2005). putting ourselves forward: location in aboriginal research. in l. brown & s. strega (eds.), research as resistance: critical, indigenous and anti oppressive approaches (pp. 97–126). toronto, on: canadian scholars’ press. anglin, j. p. (2002). pain, normality and the struggle for congruence: reinterpreting residential care for children and youth. new york, ny: routledge. anglin, j. p., & scott, a. (2016). “we don’t feel that love”: retrospective reflections on the experiences of removal, transitions and trauma from former youth in care (report). victoria, bc: ministry of children and family development. berridge, d. (1986). children’s homes. oxford, uk: blackwell. carrière, j., & richardson, c. (2017). calling our families home: métis people’s experiences with child welfare. vernon, bc: jcharlton. devereux, g. (1967). from anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences. paris, france: mouton & co. glaser, b. g. (1978). theoretical sensitivity. mill valley, ca: sociology press. glaser, b. g., & strauss, a. l. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory : strategies for qualitative research. chicago, il: aldine. heshusius, l., & ballard, k. (eds.). (1996). from positivism to interpretivism and beyond: tales of transformation in educational and social research (the mind-body connection). new york, ny: teachers college press. kovach, m. (2009). indigenous methodologies: characteristics, conversations, and contexts. toronto, on: university of toronto press. lincoln, y. s., & guba, e. g. (1985). naturalistic inquiry. beverly hills, ca: sage. polanyi, m. (2009). the tacit dimension. london, uk: routledge. (original work published 1966). reason, p., & rowan, j. (eds.). (1981). human inquiry: a sourcebook of new paradigm research. new york, ny: john wiley and sons. rickman, h. p. (ed.). (1976). dilthey: selected writings. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 142–155 156 scott, a. (2016). “we don’t feel that love”: retrospective reflections on the experiences of removal, transitions and trauma from former youth in care (master’s thesis). university of victoria, victoria, bc. smith, l. t. (2002). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london, uk: zed books. van manen, m. (1990). researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. london, on: althouse press (university of western ontario). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 245 self-treatment vs. recreational motives: differentiating nonmedical use of prescription drugs among youth whitney d. gunter, erin j. farley, and daniel j. o’connell abstract: nonmedical use of prescription drugs has become a serious social problem among american youth. two general categories of motives for the nonmedical use of prescription drugs include self-treatment and recreational use. this study assesses differences between nonmedical prescription drug users based on their self-reported motivation for using prescription drugs. data come from more than 11,000 11th grade students in delaware public schools. analyses indicate significant differences in prevalence, correlates, and consequences on nonmedical use of prescription drugs based on motivation for use. analyses reveal that, among those students who reported non medical use of prescription drugs, those who are using for recreational purposes are significantly more likely to engage in other risk behaviors, such as using other illicit substances and engaging in violent behavior. keywords: prescription drug abuse, self-treatment, substance use note: the data used in this research were collected by the university of delaware center for drug and alcohol studies as part of a study supported by the delaware health fund and by the division of substance abuse and mental health, delaware health and social services. the views and conclusions expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the university of delaware or the sponsoring agencies. whitney d. gunter, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor of sociology at western michigan university, 1903 west michigan avenue, kalamazoo, michigan 49008-5257, u.s.a. e-mail: whitney.gunter@wmich.edu erin j. farley, ph.d. is a senior research associate at the center for court innovation, 520 8th avenue, 18th floor, new york, new york 10018, u.s.a. e-mail: efarley@courts.state.ny.us daniel j. o’connell, ph.d. is a scientist at the university of delaware center for drug and alcohol studies, 257 e main st., suite 110, newark, delaware 19716, u.s.a. e-mail: oconnell@udel.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 246 nonmedical prescription drug use (nmpdu) is recognized as a serious social problem among youth and young adults in the united states. substance use data collected by monitoring the future (mtf), a national surveillance survey, provides relevant information on trends and current prevalence rates of substance use among youth and young adults. mtf tracks four general categories of prescription drugs for nonmedical use (stimulants, pain relievers, tranquilizers, and sedatives). according to mtf trend data reports, past-year use of nonprescribed prescription drugs among american 12th grade students has remained quite stable since 2007 (johnston, o'malley, bachman & schulenberg, 2011). in 2011, 15 percent of 12th grade students reported having used a prescription drug without a prescription in the past year, while 22 percent reported having done so at some point in their lives (johnston et al., 2011). while it is somewhat reassuring to witness a stabilization in youth abuse of these categories of prescription drugs, emergency department admissions reporting the nonmedical use of prescription drugs is a serious reminder that the negative consequences remain a serious problem. according to the drug awareness warning network, emergency department admissions involving pharmaceutical use (includes prescription medicine, over the counter or dietary supplement) has increased from 2004 to 2008, increasing by 81 percent to nearly a million visits per year (substance abuse and mental health services administration [samhsa], 2011). despite these alarming statistics, however, there exists only a small body of research from which to understand this type of substance user and that, in turn, limits the ability to propose effective policy recommendations. the objective of the research study is to examine nmpdu among youth by utilizing a large sample of 11th grade students. these data are utilized to examine key questions regarding the nonmedical use of prescription drugs, including a focus on gender differences and the relationships between motivation, source of prescription drugs, other drug use, and non-violent and violent deviance. youth prescription drug abuse sources as nmpdu among youth began to attract greater attention, both from media and researchers, attention has been directed at discovering the source of prescription drugs for nonmedical use. prior research focusing on the nonmedical use of stimulants has demonstrated that diversion is a major method access, with students giving, trading, or selling their prescribed drugs to other students (mccabe, teter, & boyd, 2004; poulin, 2001). it is not surprising that researchers have found that as prescription rates increase, so too does the rate of nonmedical use (zacny et al., 2003). few studies have examined the sources of prescription drugs among youth. the extant research has found adolescent users largely rely on friends and family as a source for nonmedical prescription drugs (boyd, mccabe, & teter, 2006; levine & coupey, 2009; schepis & krishnan-sarin, 2009). buying or stealing drugs, using a drug dealer, and relying on one’s own prescribed medication were other notable sources for nmpdu (levine & coupey, 2009; schepis & krishnan-sarin, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 247 motivations existing research has largely compared non-users, prescribed users, nonmedical users, and those who report both prescribed and nonmedical use (combined use). examining the research findings regarding these categories of prescription drug use, one can confidently state that the nonmedical use of prescription drugs is significantly associated with other substance use. significant associations have been found between nmpdu and cigarette use, alcohol use, binge drinking, marijuana use, cocaine, lsd, other psychedelic drugs, barbiturates, tranquilizers, heroin, and other illegal drug constructs (boyd, mccabe, & teter, 2006; herman-stahl, krebs, kroutil, & heller, 2006; mccabe, boyd, & teter, 2005; mccabe, boyd, & young, 2007; mccabe et al., 2004). after determining that nonmedical usage of prescription drugs is a significant risk factor for other substance use, the looming question to ask is why this connection exists. what are the purposes of misusing prescription drugs among american youth? as one might expect, the motivations can and often do vary based on the original purpose of the drug. studies have found, for example, that certain motivations are tied to a particular type of prescription drug, such as using sedatives without a doctor’s prescription to help fall asleep or using stimulants without a doctor’s prescription to help concentrate (boyd, mccabe, cranford, & young, 2006; boyd, young, grey, & mccabe, 2009). despite a logical and sometime observed difference in motivations for use, only a small portion of the studies examining nmpdu account for different motivations for use when examining correlates and consequences of prescription drug abuse. prior examination of motivations typically separated nonmedical prescription drug users into two categories: recreational users (i.e., use to get high), and self-treaters (i.e., use to treat pain). studies have also accounted for users of prescribed medications and those who engage in nmpdu for both reasons. notably, this research has found that recreational users (also referred to as sensation seekers) were significantly more likely than self-treaters to report alcohol, marijuana, and other drug use (boyd, mccabe, cranford, & young, 2006; boyd et al., 2009). in addition, a recent study examining the sources of prescription drugs for recreational use among rural adolescents also found a very strong relationship between use for recreational reasons and the use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana (levine & coupey, 2009). consequences research has also demonstrated a significant relationship between nmpdu and various problem behaviors or risk and protective factors. focusing on delinquent behaviors and risky behaviors, research by mccabe and colleagues (2005) found high school seniors who reported the nonmedical use of pain relievers in the past year were more likely to report skipping at least one day of school in the past month, getting suspended or expelled, attending a party at least once a week, buying illegal drugs at school, as well as reporting that most or all of their friends smoke marijuana. work by boyd and colleagues (2009) also revealed sensation seekers were more likely to gamble and report sexual activity than self-treaters, prescribed medical users, and non-users. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 248 gender differences research has found a number of significant differences by gender. though some research has found females are more likely to report higher rates of nonmedical use of opioids (e.g., boyd, mccabe, & teter, 2006), other studies have higher reports among males (e.g., mccabe et al., 2005). one of the more consistent findings is the higher rate of prescribed medical use, nonmedical use, and combined use of stimulants among males (mccabe et al., 2004). gender differences have also been found in regard to motivations. females are more likely to report selftreatment and males more likely to report recreational use and addiction as motivations for the nonmedical use of prescription drugs (boyd, mccabe, & teter, 2006; boyd et al., 2009). in addition, males were more likely to purchase nonmedical prescription drugs or acquire them from a physician while females were more likely to report stealing medications or getting them for free (boyd, mccabe, & teter, 2006; schepis & krishnan-sarin, 2009). the current study while the current body of research improves our understanding of nmpdu among adolescents, the patterns between nmpdu, demographic variables, and various risk factors still need to be better understood. prior research has a number of limitations that include focusing on one single type of prescription drug, analyzing data with small sample sizes, and using one general category for nmpdu. comparisons between non-users, prescribed medical users, and nonmedical users have significantly contributed to understanding the current state of nmpdu. however, additional research has demonstrated that there are significant differences among users who are subsumed under the nonmedical category. some pressing issues remain regarding nmpdu among youth, including: 1. the source of these drugs, where users gain access to them; 2. the reasons some youth misuse prescription drugs, their motivations; and 3. with respect to substance use and deviance, the risk or protective factors associated with the nonmedical use of prescription drugs. the current study attempts to address these various issues, utilizing a large sample of american 11th grade students to examine the relationships between gender and motivational differences, and their association with prescription type, source, deviant behaviors (both nonviolent and violent) and consequences with regard to the education and legal systems. data and methodology the data used in this study come from the delaware school survey (dss), which is administered annually by the university of delaware center for drug and alcohol studies to students in all delaware public and public-charter schools. this study uses data from 11th grade students in 2006 and 2008. these years were selected because they include questions about motivations for using prescription drugs. in both years, a census of 11th grade students was attempted. some classrooms (fewer than 15%) were randomly selected to participate in a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 249 different survey instead, and were excluded from the sample. otherwise, classrooms were surveyed in a method designed to survey all 11th grade students present and willing to participate. in 2006, 5,728 11th grade students were present on the day when their school was surveyed. fewer than 2% of students chose not to participate or were asked not to participate by their parents, resulting in a total sample of 5,636 students. in 2008, 5,891 11th grade students were present and fewer than 3% chose not to participate or were asked not to participate by their parents, resulting in a total sample of 5,757 students. combined, the two years provide a sample of 11,393 11th grade students, representing approximately 98% of students present when the classrooms were surveyed. overall, the sample is 51% female and 49% male. with regard to race, the sample is 57% non-hispanic white, 26% non-hispanic black, 8% hispanic, and 9% other or mixed. measures the nonmedical use of prescription drugs was assessed by identifying participants who reported using at least one prescription drug without a prescription in the past year. this measure was created using questions that ask about the non-prescription use of three types of prescription drugs, including: (a) sedatives/tranquilizers (“downers, tranqs, barbs, xanax to get high”); (b) pain relievers (“painkillers, oxycontin, codeine, percocet, tylenol iii to get high”); and (c) stimulants (“ritalin, adderall, strattera, cylert, or concerta without a prescription”); also in 2008 only, (“prescription uppers, diet pills, etc. to get high”) and specific drugs (oxycontin, codeine, tylenol with codeine, percocet, percodan, vicodin, darvon, darvacet, endocet, xanax, somas, ritalin, adderall, strattera, albuterol, other asthma medication, or other prescription drug not prescribed). after filtering for only those participants who responded positively to at least one of these categories or drugs for past year usage (as well as providing a motivation for use, as discussed below), the sample was reduced to 2,254 participants. this reduced sample is used in all analyses, except when a comparison is made to the general population. motivations for nonmedical usage of prescription drugs were measured using the following item: “for the times when you have used prescription drugs without a prescription, please indicate how often you used them for each reason listed below”. response options included: to relieve pain; to treat infection, allergies, illness; to have fun or get high; to add muscle, strength, endurance; to increase concentration; to relieve depression/anxiety; and to lose weight. for the analyses performed in this study, these variables have each been recoded as dichotomous indicators for past year use for each reason (e.g., used to relieve pain in the past year). these variables were further recoded into mutually exclusive categories of self-treatment only (combining pain relief and treating infections/allergies/illness), recreational use only (to get high), both self-treatment and recreational use (multi-purpose use), and neither category. this particular definition of self-treatment use refers only to the treatment of physical ailments (e.g., use to relieve pain). because the emphasis of this study is on comparing self-treatment use versus recreational use, most analyses will exclude cases that reported neither self-treatment nor recreational use.1 1 these “other purpose” users accounted for 21.7% of users and included a variety of other motivations, including using prescription drugs for mental health, increasing concentration, weight loss, and increasing muscle. these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 250 several variables directly related to the nonmedical use of prescription drugs will be examined, including the specific prescription drugs being used and the source for obtaining drugs without a prescription. the measures for which drugs are being used are based on the same categories and drugs used in filtering the sample to include only the nonmedical prescription drug users, which includes prescription painkillers, adhd medication, downers, and prescription uppers. to determine the source of the drugs, participants were asked this hypothetical question: “if you wanted to get prescription drugs without a prescription, where would you get them? (mark all that apply)”. this question was asked as a hypothetical so as to allow relevance for non-users. here, however, the sample is filtered to include only users, and therefore should act as a proxy for their actual source. the sources provided in both years included: “from my friends or other kids i know without paying for them”; “from my parents or other adults (with their permission)”; “sneak them from my parents or other adults (without them knowing)”; “as part of a rave or party”; “from an internet site”. both years also included a drug dealer option, but in 2008 it was split to separate adult dealers from other children selling or sharing. for this reason, the following categories come only from the 2008 sample: “from someone under age 21 who sells them” and “from someone over age 21 who sells them”. other substance use was measured by asking about past year cigarette, alcohol, marijuana, over-the-counter (drugs to get high), hallucinogen, inhalant, cocaine/crack, street upper, ecstasy, and heroin use. past year delinquency was measured by asking students how often they: carry a weapon other than a gun, take some kind of weapon to school or to a school event, take part in a fight where a group of your friends are against another group, hit someone with the intention of hurting them, cheat on a test, steal something from a store without paying for it, and damage or destroy property that does not belong to you. additional exploratory variables were measured by asking how often the participant: skips or misses classes (not the whole school day) without permission, gets suspended or expelled from school, participates in a gang or gang activities, and gets arrested. responses were measured with a multiple point scale and recoded into dichotomous variables indicating simply whether or not the respondent participated in a particular behavior in the past year. analytic strategy the purpose of this research is to provide a descriptive comparison between nonprescribed medical and recreational users of prescription drugs. therefore, the analyses conducted are bivariate in nature and use chi-square tests to determine significant differences. as will be more fully discussed with the results, there are significant gender differences among the motivations for using prescription drugs. because boys and girls engage in risk behaviors to differing degrees, this may bias comparisons because motivations also differ by gender. in order to eliminate this bias, as well as other potential gender differences, analyses will be performed separately for male and female participants. categories of purposes appeared less frequently than recreational and self-treating purposes (see table 1). to maintain focus and provide richer specificity, the analysis of these “other purpose” cases, which would require additional or alternative analyses, are beyond the scope of this study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 251 the analyses will begin with an examination of motivation type, as well comparisons by gender. next, further analyses will consider the context of the non-prescribed prescription drug use with respect to which types of drugs participants are using based on their motivation, as well as examining how the motivation is related to the source of the drug. finally, analyses will be presented that explore potential correlates between risk behaviors and prescription drug use, and how this relationship is affected by motivation. results the results for the gendered analyses of motivation for use are presented in table 1. for both males and females, the three most prevalent motivations for use were relieving pain, getting high, and treating infection. within these three most common categories, several significant gender differences do emerge. specifically, prescription drug using males are significantly more likely than using females to use prescription drugs to get high, while females are significantly more likely to use them to relieve pain. the third most common category, treating infection, had roughly equal male and female prevalence. gender differences also emerge in less common categories, with males significantly more likely to use prescription drugs for adding strength and increasing concentration and females more likely to use them for treating depression or for losing weight. table 1: self-reported motivations for using prescription drugs by gender (percentages) males (n=1008) females (n=1216) total relieve pain 54.5 59.3 57.1*_ treat infection, allergies, illness 34.1 37.3 35.9__ have fun or get high 55.3 48.2 51.4** add muscle, strength, endurance 11.6 4.0 7.4** increase concentration 26.3 21.8 23.8*_ relieve depression/anxiety 15.4 22.8 19.5** lose weight 6.3 12.7 9.8** condensed categories: self-treatment 24.5 32.6 28.9** recreational 19.0 16.9 17.9__ combined 33.7 29.7 31.5*_ other purpose 22.7 20.9 21.7__ * p < .05 ** p < .01 as previously discussed, these categories were then merged into mutually exclusive categories for further analysis. this is necessary because participants were asked to mark all motivations that apply, which they appeared to have done with an average of two motivations per international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 252 respondent (the sum of all categories equal 205%). reducing these into mutually exclusive categories removes this large amount of overlap in the groups. the most prevalent category is both medical and recreational use, with males significantly more likely to identify with this multi-purpose subgroup. the second most common category is medical only, with a significantly higher proportion of female users in this subgroup. the next most common motivation was for neither medical nor recreational use, and the least common motivation was purely for getting high. the analyses of drug use and source by motivation are presented in table 2. for the prescription drug of choice, users with medical, recreation, and both motivations mostly appear to use painkillers. recreational and multi-purpose users were significantly more likely to use prescription painkillers in comparison to those using for purely medical reasons, yet all three groups were very likely to be using painkillers as at least one of the prescription drugs being used. other categories of drugs, including adhd medication, downers, and prescription uppers, were less common. as with painkillers, however, individuals using for recreational or multipurpose use were significantly more likely to report use for each of these other categories. moreover, the gap between medical only and other types of users becomes wider for these less common drug categories, with recreational and multi-purpose users between two and four times as likely to use in comparison to medical only users. these differences between motivations are evident for both males and females alike. table 2: type of rx use and source of rx by motivation and gender (percentages) males females selftreatment (n=247) recreation (n=192) multipurpose (n=340) selftreatment (n=396) recreation (n=205) multipurpose (n=361) what they use: rx painkillers 75.3rm 85.3sm 91.7s 75.5m 71.7m 92.5s adhd medication 24.9rm 49.5s 50.0s 19.1rm 54.9sm 42.8s downers 8.2rm 49.2s 48.5s 9.7rm 48.0s 45.6s rx uppers 4.4rm 12.9s 17.0s 3.4rm 13.9s 17.5s where they get them: friends 40.1rm 64.6s 60.7s 45.7rm 78.5s 71.3s parents with permission 26.7rm 3.6sm 8.6s 40.2rm 5.9sm 15.6s parents without permission 16.2 21.4 20.2 19.2m 23.9m 35.7s at a party or rave 5.3rm 12.5s 14.9s 6.6rm 13.7s 17.0s via the internet 1.2 0.5 2.4 1.0 1.5 0.8 dealer under age 21 23.5rm 51.7sm 70.4s 24.9rm 60.8s 57.0s dealer over age 21 13.9rm 33.3s 42.2s 17.5rm 36.3s 17.5s s significantly different from self-treatment users (p < .05) r significantly different from recreational users (p < .05) m significantly different from multi-purpose users (p < .05) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 253 with regard to the source of prescription drugs, there is substantial variation based on the different motivations for use. specifically, those using for medical purposes are significantly less likely to be getting the drugs from friends, at a party, or from a dealer. they are also less likely to get them from a parent without permission, though that difference is only significant for females, which is largely driven by female multi-purpose users being much more likely to be taking drugs from parents without permission. conversely, medical only users are significantly and dramatically more likely to be getting the drugs from their parents with permission. in comparison to recreational users, male medical users are more than seven times as likely to be getting the drugs from their parents, and female medical users are more than six times as likely to have parents as their supplier. the proportions of multi-purpose users getting drugs from their parents are between these two extremes for both genders, and only significantly different from medical users indicating more similarity to recreational users. finally, very few users report getting their non-prescribed prescription drugs over the internet, with no significant differences found. the final set of analyses, examining risk behaviors and other deviant behaviors by motivation, is presented in table 3. as a reference for what constitutes normal prevalence, the overall percent of 11th grade students engaging in each behavior is also presented, but is not included in the statistical analyses for significance. for substance use, multi-purpose and recreational users tend to be similar for most substances and for both males and females. the only significant jump between these two seems to be for over-the-counter (otc) use, in which multi-purpose users are significantly more likely to be using, and for marijuana use among females. otherwise, recreational and multi-purpose users are consistently and significantly more likely to be using various substances, including cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, inhalants, cocaine, street uppers, and ecstasy, in comparison to medical users. heroin was the only substance for which there is not consistent significance across motivations, likely due to its very uncommon use. all three categories of prescription drug users are consistently more likely to be using substances than the general population. however, medical users are typically closer to the normal prevalence rate than the other motivation groups, and are even statistically equal to the general population for the more hardcore drugs. table 3: risk and deviant behaviors by motivation and gender (percentages) males female general pop selftreatment (n=247) recreation (n=192) multipurpose (n=340) general pop selftreatment (n=396) recreation (n=205) multi purpose (n=361) non-rx substance use: cigarettes 23.5 32.4 rm 74.7s 69.8s 22.7 29.2rm 74.0s 67.0s alcohol 65.8 80.1 rm 98.4s 99.1s 66.7 75.0rm 97.5s 98.0s marijuana 38.4 46.3 rm 90.1s 92.2s 34.0 38.1rm 90.6sm 83.0sr otc to get high 9.0 18.5 m 23.7m 35.3sr 10.6 25.0m 24.3m 39.4sr hallucinogens 5.0 9.0r m 30.7s 31.1s 2.0 1.3rm 15.7s 16.1s inhalants 3.1 5.3r m 15.5s 19.1s 2.9 3.6rm 15.8s 19.2s cocaine/crack 3.2 5.3r 18.0s 20.5s 1.9 2.8rm 14.2s 12.1s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 254 m street uppers 1.9 0.8r m 13.8s 15.7s 1.8 2.3rm 13.7s 13.0s ecstasy 1.7 2.9m 6.3 10.7s 1.2 1.8rm 7.3s 8.5s heroin 0.8 0.8m 2.1 3.7s 0.2 0.5 0.5 1.7 non-violent deviance: cheated on test 55.5 65.8 rm 80.0s 76.8s 49.6 57.7rm 70.3s 68.3s shoplifted 23.0 30.1 rm 54.2s 55.8s 15.5 19.8rm 46.3s 40.4s vandalized property 29.7 43.9 rm 58.7s 60.9s 10.9 16.2rm 28.2s 36.0s violent deviance: carry weapon 22.2 32.5 m 40.2m 53.7sr 6.4 11.9m 9.8m 20.3sr take weapon to school 8.7 13.0 m 15.8 20.8s 3.0 4.9 4.5 8.1 group fighting 19.6 26.1 rm 38.6s 42.6s 8.3 12.8m 16.7 19.2s hit someone 29.1 45.2 m 51.7 63.4s 19.3 28.2m 27.5m 44.9sr other risk factors: skipped school 39.0 46.7 rm 68.9s 74.2s 35.1 43.5rm 65.4s 68.7s suspended / expelled 13.7 15.4 rm 32.1s 29.8s 8.1 9.6rm 18.0s 18.9s gang membership 7.5 9.6m 17.2 24.6s 2.2 4.0 5.9 7.0 arrested 6.8 11.3 m 19.8 21.1s 2.8 2.3rm 7.8s 8.2s s significantly different from self-treatment users (p < .05) r significantly different from recreational users (p < .05) m significantly different from multi-purpose users (p < .05) with regard to the source of prescription drugs, there is substantial variation based on the different motivations for use. specifically, those using for medical purposes are significantly less likely to be getting the drugs from friends, at a party, or from a dealer. they are also less likely to get them from a parent without permission, though that difference is only significant for females, which is largely driven by female multi-purpose users being much more likely to be taking drugs from parents without permission. conversely, medical only users are significantly and dramatically more likely to be getting the drugs from their parents with permission. in comparison to recreational users, male medical users are more than seven times as likely to be getting the drugs from their parents, and female medical users are more than six times as likely to have parents as their supplier. the proportions of multi-purpose users getting drugs from their parents are between these two extremes for both genders, and only significantly different from medical users indicating more similarity to recreational users. finally, very few users report getting their non-prescribed prescription drugs over the internet, with no significant differences found. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 255 on measures of non-violent deviance, similar patterns can be observed. specifically, there are significant differences between users based on their motivation for using, in which recreational and multi-purpose users are more likely to engage in cheating, shoplifting, and vandalism than medical only users. moreover, this appears to be true for both male and female prescription drug users, and all categories of users are more likely to be engaging in the behaviors than the general population. for violence, recreational users are statistically similar to medical users unlike for other indicators. however, individuals with multiple motivations are again significantly more likely to engage in each type of behavior, with one exceptions based on gender. specifically, there are no significant differences for taking a weapon to school for females. otherwise, multi-purpose users are consistently and significantly at higher risk for violence. the final area of analysis involves risk factors potentially related to using prescription drugs without a prescription. as with most previous analyses, the results here indicate that recreational and multi-purpose users are more likely to report having skipped school, been suspended or expelled, belong to a gang, or been arrested. these differences by motivation are all significant, except for arrest among males and gang membership among females. in comparison to the general population, medical users are only marginally more likely to report having engaged in or experienced these potentially related risk factors. discussion with prescription drug abuse stable but historically high among american youth (johnston et al., 2011) and consequences on the rise (samhsa, 2011), it is vital to more fully understand the factors surrounding the use,of prescription drugs without a prescription and consequences arising from such use. though prior research has paved the way for a better understanding, much remains to be fully examined. of relevance to the present study are the under-explored motivations for using medications without a prescription. using data from a random sample of american youth, this study examined the correlates of prescription drug abuse with an emphasis on differences based on gender and motivation for using the non-prescribed prescription drug. the results indicated that males are more likely than females to be using non-prescribed medications for recreational purposes, while females are more likely to be using them to relieve pain. those who were self-treating tended to be using painkillers, while the recreational users were likely to be using multiple types of prescription drugs. in terms of the sources of the drugs, peers were the most common response regardless of the motivation, but more often so for recreational users. the internet was not a noteworthy source regardless of gender or motivation. finally and perhaps most noteworthy, the recreational and multi-purpose users were much more likely to be engaging in other risk behaviors than the self-treaters. of course, it should be noted that these data come from self-report surveys. as such, it is quite possible that inaccurate or untruthful responses could be present in the data. given the high usage rates and prevalence rates for other risk behaviors, though, it would appear that students did not shy away from reporting deviant behavior given the anonymous nature of the survey international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 256 design. moreover, the survey included a fake-drug to screen out dishonest participants2 and also is checked for inconsistent answers. though the possibility of dishonesty remains, it seems unlikely to be a pervasive or noteworthy problem. there is also a bias in the statistics presented here, as students who drop out of high school are not included in the sample. though this may result in underestimating the population statistics, it does not undermine the validity of the comparisons across groups by motivation. these findings, particularly those relating to risk behaviors connected to prescription drug abuse suggest that recreational and multi-purpose users are the youth at greatest risk. to be sure, self-treating youth are, indeed, more likely to engage in risk behaviors than the general youth population. moreover, their use is still illegal and could result in negative medical outcomes. nevertheless, their increased risk of engaging in the behaviors studied here pales in comparison to the differences for those with recreational use at least partially in mind. the implications of these findings are twofold. first, policy creators and those engaged with youth should note the distinct differences in the motivations for use. though both recreational and self-treating uses are prohibited and troubling, the former is more strongly related to other risks. thus, different strategies should be used when addressing drug problems with youth depending on the motivation involved. second, future research should similarly take these implications into account and design studies that recognize the differences by motivation. recreational use and self-treating use have distinct correlates and consequences, and should not be treated as the same category of use. benefit would also be gained from a more in-depth analysis of the causes and predictors of prescription drug abuse with an emphasis on the differing motivations. 2 less than one percent of the sample is lost through this, and these cases are not included in the response rate calculation (i.e., they are considered non-valid responses and treated the same as if no response were provided). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 257 references boyd, c. j., mccabe, s. e., cranford, j. a., & young, a. 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(2003). college on problems of drug dependence task force on prescription opioid nonmedical use and abuse: position statement. drug and alcohol dependence, 69(3), 215–232 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 2: 245–258 259 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 581 revolutionary love: cyc and the importance of reclaiming our desire kathleen s. g. skott-myhre and hans a. skott-myhre abstract: as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the question of what we do and why we do it as cyc workers cannot be ethically separated from the lived suffering, social and cultural marginalization, and direct oppression of the young people with whom we engage. the fundamental question is whether we accede to the demands of an ever more indifferent and brutalizing system of abstract economic rule, or respond with new forms of value, ways of living and caring for one another. this article will propose a framework of revolutionary love in partial response to these questions. the article will present a theoretical framework for a politics of child and youth care premised in the post-marxist writings on love and capitalism in the work of gille deleuze, felix guattari, and antonio negri. keywords: capitalism, desire, child and youth care, deleuze and guattari, love kathleen s. g. skott-myhre, psy.d. is an assistant professor in the college of social sciences psychology department at the university of west georgia, 1601 maple street, carrollton georgia, u.s.a., 30118. email: kskott@westga.edu hans skott-myhre, ph.d. is an associate professor of child and youth studies at brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. email: hskottmy@brocku.ca mailto:kskott@westga.edu mailto:hskottmy@brocku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 582 the question of feelings and sociality if the field of child and youth care is centered on the development and nurturance of relationships, then it might well be argued that a defining aspect of our work must engage the realm of affect and emotion. certainly, for those working on the line in the day-to-day interactions between young people and adults in the countless institutional and quasi-institutional settings where we encounter young people, there is no more disruptive or rewarding aspect to what we do than the expression of feelings. indeed, the functional capacity of a given program or classroom is often centered on the management and manipulation of emotionally-driven interactions between all of the people involved, both young and older. such a web of affect and emotion comprises a kind of dynamic ecology with all of the features of the more familiar biological environmental ecologies. felix guattari (2005) makes this point, when he reminds us that our very survival depends not just on our ability to manage the biosphere in which we live, but also the delicate and complex ecologies of our socially constituted consciousness and interwoven affective connectivity. he argues that the three ecologies (social, environmental, and conscious) are deeply interdependent. without a healthy biosphere, human life would be severely challenged at the very level of survival. however, human consciousness plays a powerful role in shaping the physical environment in which we live. the way that we deploy our thoughts and creative capacities determines what we produce and how we produce it. our rationality and reason give us the possibility of assessing the impacts of our behaviors on the biosphere. to the degree that we are capable of seeing clearly and accurately the ways in which our creative activities positively or negatively impact the web of life, upon which we are dependent, we are able to flourish in concert with each other species. guattari (2005) argues that both the biosphere and forms of social consciousness can sustain similar kinds of ecological damage that can weaken both the physical biodiversity and resilience of our social capacities. he makes the case that just as the physical environment has suffered degradation, so has the world of thought and sociality. in terms of the physical environment, the historical period that encompasses the development of industrial capitalism and the european colonial project has produced massive shifts in the environment that include the loss of significant degrees of biodiversity and an increase in the level of substances that are toxic to living organisms. the shift from industrial capitalism to the current mode of virtual global capital has been marked by an alarming escalation in levels of pollution, unsustainable increases in human populations, and resulting levels of consumption that have shifted weather patterns in ominous and troubling ways. guattari argues that these negative developments have been matched in the arenas of human sociality and our capacity for creative thought and consciousness. he asserts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 583 that key modes of sociality such as solidarity, universes of fraternity, sociability, neighborhood, human warmth, and inventiveness might well be listed on the endangered species list of thought and praxis. we would argue, that these modes of sociality are key to the work we do with young people and that if they are threatened under the current mode of capitalist economy, then this becomes a political issue of significant importance to child and youth care theorists and practitioners. desiring production the question of affect is crucial here. it is through our mutual emotional connections and affiliations that we construct our relations. and it is through our affective encounter with the world that we form the capacity for thought and, through the combination of thought and feeling, our very ability to be creative and to produce our world together (spinoza, 2000). this is what deleuze and guattari (1983) refer to as desiring production. in this sense, desire is not premised in lacking anything, as in the desire to acquire that which we don’t have. instead, desiring production is the desire to act, to create, and to produce. such desire, deleuze and guattari (1983) argue, is the foundation of all forms of human creativity and hence all forms of human sociality. what is in crisis, then, in our human social ecologies, is the ability to freely engage our desire. it is marx (1978) who reminds us that capitalism appropriates not just our laboring bodies, but also our modes of thought and how we come to see the world. althusser (1971) called this ideology and argues that what we come to think of as common sense is actually the world given to us by the dominant logic of our age. pignarre and stengers (2011) call the ability of capitalism to convince us that the logic of the dollar is the logic of life, a form of sorcery. they propose that capitalism’s ability to appropriate the fabric of social and emotional production is premised in the ability to have us believe that the logic of capitalism is eternal. that is to say, that rampant individualism, selfishness, the money sign as the primary driver of society, and a radical disregard for future consequences, is intrinsic to human thought and behavior. pignarre and stengers suggest that capitalism would have us believe that capitalist logic is simply the way things have always been, will always be, and there is no real alternative to capitalism. guattari (2005) refers to this as the logic of “ignorance and fatal passivity” (p. 34). to counter such a logic, pignarre and stengers (2011) suggest that we need to develop a counter-sorcery, an alternative common sense, if you will. if capitalism holds us in a trance that denies any form of living except subjection to its logic and domination, then to break the trance, we must access an experience powerful enough to wake us up to the reality of our creative capacities. as marx (1978) powerfully informs us, we must come to understand that we produce the world in our material and actual interactions. to understand the contradiction here, it is important to remember that capitalism is a system of abstract signs, such as money, that doesn’t produce anything substantive. as negri (1996) tells us, to survive and expand, capitalism must appropriate our living creativity and transform it into the abstraction of money. this is a sleight of hand through international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 584 which capitalism convinces us that what we do is worth merely what can be measured in money. the trick can work only if we cooperate in the illusion. the magic trick can be seen for what it is and a new mode sociality engaged, only if we seize back our own desiring production. capitalist appropriation of our social lives we would argue that it is through fields of engagement, founded in human relationships, such as child and youth care, that desiring production can be engaged and put to work. to do this, it is important to challenge the ways in which the abstract system of capitalist value has inveigled itself into the very fabric of our social lives. in its most recent iteration, capitalism has gone beyond dominating and controlling our bodies so that we are willing to subject our physical creative capacities to the regimes of the factory. under the current mode of production, it is our very ability to think and to interact that has become the object of capitalist subjectification. we have replaced the physical tedium of the factory for the mind numbing tedium of the call center. in this shift, capitalism has begun to appropriate our capacity for communicating, socializing, caring, and thinking together. as hardt and negri (2009) have pointed out, this has infected our workplaces through the new technologies of social networking. in our own field, we can see an emphasis on the importance of teams working together smoothly and managing the affective, emotional components of our work together. indeed, a child and youth care worker’s evaluation may well include commentary on how well you interact with your teammates and how well you control your negative affects. you might need to take courses on anger management, either for yourself, or so you can manage the feelings of the youth with whom you work, or even your fellow team members. it has become important that you learn to be happier at work. to evidence satisfaction with your employment is now part of your responsibilities. it doesn’t matter how well you work with young people and families, getting along with your teammates and management becomes a central task. having good social skills and effectively communicating with others become central to your evaluation. it is important to note that many of the responsibilities of managing the affective relations of the workplace fall to women, as that group that has traditionally been responsible for these functions in the home. as they move from the home into the workplace, they are expected to transfer nurturance and caring from their family to their co-workers (skott-myhre, 2015). of course, one might argue that good social skills, communication, and teamwork are essential elements of good child and youth care work. however, it is not the skill sets themselves that are at issue. it is their appropriation to the ends of the system of value that is capitalism. to be a good team player means to avoid friction, disruption, disobedience, and resistance to command. to effectively communicate means to seamlessly disseminate the messages and instructions of the institution. to care for others means to make sure that they are happy, which translates into compliance with the corporate dictates of what looks like emotional satisfaction. one should demonstrate how pleased one is to work here. our teams must care for each other in such a way that we all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 585 are working as one joyful productive unit. it is, as hardt and negri (2009) put it, a corruption of our social and emotional capacities, or as guattari would have it, a degradation of our social, emotional, and intellectual ecologies. to the degree that the above-mentioned corruption and degradation have infiltrated our work, it turns our intended goal of deploying relationship as a life affirming force into a copy that turns on itself. in this turning, our desiring production, as emotions, thoughts and sociality, becomes frustrated and blocked. this blockage can cause an overwhelming sense of frustration, futility, and impotence. our very ability to care for one another is turned into a pale shadow of its truly revolutionary potential and is diverted to the needs of the abstract addiction that is capitalism. is it any wonder that under such circumstances, we experience epidemic levels of burnout, anxiety, and depression (smullens, 2012) or that we turn away from our central work of creating productive social relations with the young people we encounter and instead put our energies into becoming “professionals”? the obstacles to our desiring production close off our access to affect based in actual material relations. instead of being able to come together to discuss the ways that our workplace impinges on our freedom to work with young people and each other in socially relevant ways, we are left with a severely diminished set of possible conversations about discipline, control, trauma, diagnosis, and so on (see mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2010). if we do discuss our emotions, it is within the framework of our own separate and individual struggles. seldom do we have a conversation as a “team” about the common experiences we share of anxiety, depression, and impotence. if we do, such conversations tend to center around our own individual limitations, traumatic histories, or lack of social/emotional competence. indeed, most of the conversations about emotions are decidedly managerial. we discuss how we might manage our feelings in the workplace rather than what social and material conditions might be at the root of our discomfiture (hardt & negri,2009; koeske & koeske 1989). feelings such as love, solidarity, and affectionate caring for young people are often carried on as if they were an aside and not the primary impetus of our work. if we engage with powerful feelings such as love, we are frequently dismissed as overly sentimental or not seriously engaged in the clinical practice of behavioral change. in fact, robust positive affects such as love are mostly discussed in the framework of a problem, such as a transgression of what is considered to be a professional boundary or as a dangerous engagement between co-workers who are erotically or romantically involved. of course, there is always the issue of an erotic or emotional relationship, or a fantasized relationship between a young person and a worker. in short, conversations about powerful emotions such as love are held within the framework of threats to the institution or as a disciplinary issue. here again, our emotional capacities, even those with a positive valence, are regulated and controlled by institutional and professional parameters, rather than constituted by the actual relations between those doing the work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 586 self-care and boundaries the institutional management of powerful emotions in our work is relegated to the questions of self-care and boundaries. we are warned not to let our feelings have too much impact in the workplace. love, but not too much. care, but with boundaries. protect yourself from your engagement with other living humans because they can compromise your professional positioning and your smooth functioning as a good worker. be sure to remain in full control of your feelings at all times. if you need help with this, the institution will provide workshops, trainings and even outside help to assist you in using your capacity for relationship to the benefit of the institution. the training we receive, both culturally and professionally, in the paradigm of the psychological individual supports these institutional frameworks. the idea that our emotions reside within us and are our responsibility, promotes the belief that we must be in control. if we experience negative or dystonic affects, it is because of some lack on our part. if we are anxious, worried, or depressed, it is because we have not learned to manage the traumas and vicissitudes of life, or perhaps we are suffering from a biological or chemical imbalance. the solution to such dilemmas is either to learn to manage our feelings through the application of reason and rationality, or to seek to have our biochemistry altered by the pharmaceutical/medical industry. in this, there is no opportunity to discuss the pervasive commonality of these affects. the fact that most of us are experiencing these dystonic affects and that maybe such affects are not simply the effect of a dysfunctional individual psychology or biology is hidden from view and excluded from discussion. if we could talk about our experiences together, we might discover that such feelings could be a response to a dysfunctional social system as we have suggested above. if we were to have these discussions, then we might well think about our programs not as amalgams of individual psychopathology shared to varying degrees by young people and adults, but as collectivities premised in what we hold in common. we might consider our programs from the perspective of an emotional milieu where feelings happen between people, not within people. in this, our discussions might center on how we as a group could set and produce the emotional temperature of our program. the focus would move from the management of individual emotions, to exploration of how our common experiences might inform our understandings of what is happening to us collectively within the institutions where we work. the emotional temperature of a program would be understood as responsive to an ever shifting, complex, and specific mix of personal history, social hierarchies, physical environmental constraints, and institutional norms and behavioral expectations. in short, our programs would become premised in the practical application of the idea that we think and we feel, and we act collectively. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 587 accessing our desire we argue, that the vehicle for making this kind of shift lies in our ability to access our desire. this kind of desire, as noted above, is not premised in any kind of lack. indeed, deleuze and guattari (1983) point out that lack is the driving engine of capitalist rule. it is through the idea that something is always missing from our lives, that we are deficient in some way, and that capitalism can create us as subjects who consume. deleuze (1992) makes this case when he argues that under global capital, we are controlled by our credit reports. our credit reports are, of course, based on the degree to which we successfully manage debt. under the current system, we are encouraged from all sides to expend more than we have for things that are sold to us, as though they were the answer to our dystonic sense of alienation and impotence. such a social system is premised on an ongoing perception that there is never enough, but if we keep accumulating, someday we will win the lottery and be secure and in command of our destiny. deleuze calls this a system of infinite deferral in which our goals are always deferred and unattainable. for example, no degree, diploma, or training program will assure us secure ongoing employment. as soon as we become certified professionals, the requirements change or the job category literally disappears. this set of contradictions and antagonisms functions through the logic of what deleuze and guattari (1983) term the paranoid pole of production. this mode of production restricts social capacities and movements by overdetermining them according to pre-set patterns of meaning. such meaning is not derived from the actual lived experience of life rather through “an absolute system of belief…permanently fixed and exhaustively defined by a supreme authority, figure-head, or god” (holland, 1999, p. 3). such authority operates from outside the material realm and derives its absolute rule from its universal coding of living force. capitalism over-codes the rich and infinitely variable flows of life into the singular form of the money sign. since the money sign is both an arbitrary and abstract form absolutely separate from life, when the value of living things is measured according to money they will invariably come up short. in other words, there will always be a sense of lack driving human beings to try to attain more of an ever shifting and abstract sign that is ultimately alien to their interests. we can see this capitalist over-coding in the work we do when a program puts “financial survival” as measured in grant dollars and funding over the actual needs of living staff and children. indeed, this is the discourse that tells us that there is not enough money for schools, medical care, decent housing, and the like, yet there is more than enough money for wars, mansions, and yachts. it is the language of austerity in which the well-being of stock markets and national economies are given more importance than the subsistence needs of living species, human and other. this story of lack, where there is never enough, frames our desires as inevitably frustrated by definition. the alternative definition of desire is derived from within the lived experience of the actual material realm. it is founded in the living force of life itself, which is infinitely creative and always collective. there is nothing abstract about it. it operates through production from the smallest atomic particle to the largest cosmic configuration of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 588 galaxies and dark matter. it operates, as guattari has suggested, continuously as a series of interwoven ecologies. in this sense, our human desires are never built upon abstraction, but out of our literal idiosyncratic capacities as singular bodies in combination with other bodies to produce webs of actions and thoughts. deleuze and guattari (1983) tell us that we never speak, write, think, or act in isolation. all of our thoughts and actions are premised in relationship. this is the source of our desire as the collective force to act and produce. deleuze and guattari propose that we are all working together all the time. each of us in our own productions is composed of all the people and elements we have and will encounter. we lack nothing because we have all of the force of the cosmos available to us. we are a crowd. who is our crowd? the idea of life force, of course, takes us back to the question of relationship in child and youth care. who is our crowd? it is simply all of us. it is everyone we encounter during our work together. this is the reason that it is so important to the systems of domination to keep us isolated, fearful of each other, and insecure about our capacities for production. if we actually accessed our crowd from within the work we do, child and youth care would become a powerful set of activities indeed. however, it is not simply the youth and adults we encounter physically in our day-to-day work. although we may be separated by geography, time, and differences in culture and social practices, in a globalized world, we now all operate as a kind of community. with access to the internet and increased flows of human beings and other species across, what can only be called, the mythical borders of the nation state, the idea that any of us operates in isolation is patently ridiculous (hardt & negri, 2009). indeed, whether we know it or not we are involved, quite literally, in the three ecologies of environment, thought, and consciousness that guattari described. our modes of desiring production are constantly bringing the future into being. this is happening at the level of a child and youth care program within its own physical parameters, and it is also happening in all the global interactions on the internet and other social media that staff and young people access daily. the question is: what future is to be called forth? which form of desire will define who we are to become? it is to this end that the force of life and desire, as played out in the relational work in child and youth care, becomes forcefully political. and it is here that the question of desire as affective force can be re-engaged. if, as we noted above, relationships are driven and produced through affective and emotional resonance, then desire as productive force flows along trajectories of feeling. perhaps, in our work, one of the most powerful passionate resonances not driven by lack is what we might call political love. given our description of the mechanisms of capitalist domination and emancipation through our desiring production as a collective project, we might well define political love as the creation of new forms of community that serve the common desire of us all. if this were the case, then our relational task as child as youth care workers would shift from the registers of lack and control towards experimentation with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 589 the force of living desire. in other words, we would shift our work away from attempting to manage and control young people and, instead, work with them on developing new ways to perceive the world and our place in it. through this, we might explore alternative methods for developing joint capacities for creativity. as social and cultural innovators, we could possibly seek out new configurations of identity premised in our fresh encounters with our “crowd”. abandoning lack to search for this new identity, we would need to abandon lack in all its variations and codes. the regimes of traditional psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry with their focus on dysfunction, diagnosis, and developmental over-coding would be abandoned in favor of models of desire and the unconscious premised in the richness of our collective force working together for a common purpose. as guattari (2010) points out, perhaps we have the unconscious we deserve already pre-structured and over-coded with the language of lack and deficit. alternate models of unconscious desire rooted in the earliest pre-structural writings of freud (1997), the schizoanalytic writings of deleuze and guattari (1983), or the work of the psychiatric hypnotist milton erickson (erickson & rossi, 1980) might form a new framework for how we could move away from ourselves and our subjectivity. in these writings, we might be able to find a way to think about our relationship with young people and each other, premised in the ways we could connect collectively through our common experiences and modes of creative expression (krueger, 2005). we could explore the contingent production of our mutual modes of who we are constantly becoming rather than engaging in the archeological exercises of exploring the trauma of who we have been. such an investigation would not be framed by pre-existing frameworks developed by disciplinary experts, but premised in material and contemporary tangible sets of relations not transcendent abstraction. this would require that we abandon the intoxicating effects of abstract codes and idealist aspirations in favor of the sobriety of actual encounter. hardt and negri (2009) tell us that this kind of work is the fundamental political task. to develop new modes of subjectivity and consciousness as the primary driving impetus for our work reconfigures the field of child and youth work away from complicity with the dominant system of rule and towards what hardt and negri (2009) propose as love as revolt. love hardt and negri (2009) tell us that love, in this sense, is not love as traditionally imagined within the dominant sphere of social coding that is capitalism. such love is neither passive nor spontaneous. this love is not bounded by the binary world of the couple, the stifling confines of the family, or the paranoid configurations of the nation, the people, or the community. indeed, hardt and negri propose that we seek to love those most alien to us first, in order to expand the field of love as far as we can. this is love of the crowd as those closest and those furthest away. implied here, is the idea that love does not simply happen to us, as if it were an event that mystically arrives from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 590 elsewhere. we must actively love in the same way we actively create our lives and ourselves together from all the elements available. in this sense, love operates as a connective flow between guattari’s (2005) ecologies. love is that which connects thoughts, consciousness, and the physical environment in each moment. love is “an action, a biopolitical event, planned and realized in common” (hardt & negri, 2009, p. 180). to love in this way is not simple. it requires thoughtful reflection and bold experimentation. to attempt our work as the kind of love that revolts against the strictures and dominant codes of our profession and discipline is both dangerous and, we would argue, necessary. while some might reason that this kind of political work is outside the scope of child and youth care, we would maintain that, as a relationally derived field ostensibly dedicated to the well-being of young people, it should be its central function. we contend that the stakes are high. if we are to ethically engage in the care of young people, then it is hypocrisy of the highest order to suggest that life as it is lived today under global capitalism is something to which young people should accommodate. there is no caring for anyone, much less young people, under the current system of value. if we are to take seriously our mandate of care, then a new mode of life that is attentive to the needs of actual living beings and a celebration of their capacities needs to be explored, and an alternative system of value implemented. the idea that things can go on for human beings without serious negative repercussions is fast becoming an obvious delusion. if we love the young people that we encounter in our work and ourselves, then we must open the field of child and youth care to actual fields of struggles and sets of relations. while this sounds like a daunting and somewhat ominous task, with potential career ending possibilities for any child and youth care worker reckless enough to attempt it, there are both comfort and revolutionary force in accessing our crowd. it is in discovering and experimenting with those in our crowd that we might become fearless through the force of love. by seeking out those young people and fellow workers who are searching for alternate ways of thinking and being, we begin to create something else. this is, after all, how child and youth care and youth work came into being in the first place. while we may venerate the founders of the field now as established and recognized elders, they were deviants and rebels. we would suggest that the roots of any true field of relational work are always driven forward by those with nothing left to lose; those who are so profoundly dissatisfied with how human beings are being treated that they are driven to find new ways to work. in our drive to become respectable, we have lost some of this spirit over the past decades. we are calling for its return. revolt the force of such revolt, however, is not to be found in the single radical leader any longer. we must now seek our collective force together through the power and resilience of all living things. it is not enough to mount a radical platform and a set of brand-new slogans. our time calls for social experimentation in new modes of life. we must find ways to break the hold of capitalist coding on our ability to think. our international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 591 consciousness is saturated with the structures and old congealed forms of thought and perception. these outmoded perceptions need to be broken and ruptured to open new modes of perception. there are groups of young people across the planet experimenting in precisely these ways. one need only think about the involvement of young people in the community gardening movement, the anti-globalization demonstrations, occupy, the recent global response to the shooting of young black men in the united states, the students who are putting their lives on the line in mexico and hong kong, the youth work protests in the united kingdom over cuts in services to young people, young people’s involvement in idle no more and the aboriginal fight for sovereignty, as well as groups such as femen and pussy riot among many others. our field needs to be in touch with these movements and with these experiments, rather than seeking the solace of old age in the bourgeois senescence of professionalism. it is also time to rethink our relations with other bodies and species. we can no longer imagine that care for young people can be restricted to their bodies and minds alone. it is a travesty to call what we do care, when we thoughtlessly allow the young people we care for to be subjected to the worst kinds of environmental pollutants, psychical, emotional, and physical. to say we care and then do nothing about the loss of biodiversity that will severely impact on the health and well-being of the next generation is irresponsible in the extreme. it is time to acknowledge that the web of living ecologies has grown to include humans, non-humans, and post-humans. the world of virtual technology can no longer be ignored. the three ecologies that guattari argues need to be integrated cannot hold humans at the center. our field needs to be rethought within the realities of the 21st century with all of its political and revolutionary imperatives. we contend it is love as revolt that allows for the maximum exploration and expression of these imperatives. if we are to care for young people in the way that we have just described, then we need to investigate not what love is, but what it can do. if love is the connective force through which we find our maximum capacity for mutual and singular productive creativity, then it is through all of our relations that the new world can emerge. this love is not particular to our individual experience, but is related to who we are not yet. love as care between us allows for the opening of experimental spaces where we can become more than what the dominant system tells us we are. explorations of multiple forms of identity and configurations of our desires become the order of the day for our work together. if there is no lack, then we are free to open ourselves generously without restraint. we can give of ourselves in full expenditure without the anxiety and fear of running out of ourselves. since we are not restricted as a particular subject but related concretely to all of creation, we can freely explore that which we hold in common. hardt and negri (2009) tell us that what we have in common is everything. however, we don’t own it and it doesn’t own us. instead, it composes us and we compose it. these collective interests drive love as a connective force as they manifest in radical idiosyncratic difference in each moment and through the thoughts and acts of each body. in this, love is creative force manifested as radical difference. it is our desire, our love, and our alterity that creates the world. it is important to remember that systems of domination only take over what life has created. if we are to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 592 care for young people, it is imperative that we work to retake the force of our desire and the ability to create the world as an affirmation of living force. after all, perhaps love and desire connect the inherent force of life with the idiosyncratic capacities of each of us. if our field of child and youth care were to take the world of affective connectivity seriously, then we could access the possibility of living life as it is without mediation, subordination, or domination. through seizing our desires as our own field of exploration and experimentation, we might be able to break down the barriers of exclusion, discipline, codes of loyalty, and cultural or social affiliation that separate and divide us. this could open our work as a site of mutual transformation where we can confront the struggles, contradictions, and antagonisms that form our current lived reality under capitalist rule. some might claim that this is too idealistic, but we are not proposing, in the end, a particular form of society. what we are suggesting is that we open our relations to the kind of experimentation that both challenges current modes of subjugation and leads to new worlds and new people. this is already happening across the planet in a proliferation of minor revolt. the question becomes: what is the role of child and youth care in the emerging world of the 21st century? will we be scrambling to please the regimes of dominance and control and calling it care, or will we be courageous enough to open new pathways that affirm the possibilities for living ecologies of care? it is an open question, yet one that will be answered by who we choose to become together. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 581–594 593 references althusser, l. 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(g. h. r. parkinson, ed. and trans.). oxford: oxford university press. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918853 an evidence-based program model for facilitating therapeutic responses to pain-based behavior in residential care martha j. holden and deborah e. sellers abstract: children and young people in residential care have often lived lives saturated with loss, neglect, rejection, and traumatic experiences. children express the pain of trauma in various ways, namely pain-based behaviors manifesting in ways that often leave their care givers confused, frustrated, frightened, angry or exhausted. for residential caregivers to respond to children and young people in a consistent and therapeutic manner, residential environments must provide an ethos of respect, caring, and trust, creating a safe place for children and staff to live and learn together. this paper describes the children and residential experiences (care) model, its implementation, and evidence for its effectiveness. care is a trauma-informed, principle-based, multi-component program designed to enhance the social dynamics in group care settings and help agencies create a living environment that provides developmentally enriching experiences for children in their care. by incorporating the care principles throughout all levels of the organization and into daily practice, the care program model has been shown to improve the capacity of staff to establish positive developmental relationships with the children in their care, offer developmentally enriching experiences and a “sense of normality”, and create cohesion and congruence throughout the organization. through consistent and predictable compassionate and responsive interactions with adults, as well as opportunities to overcome challenges and to experience successful learning opportunities, children can grow, develop and thrive. keywords: residential child care, therapeutic residential care, trauma-informed care, evidence based programs, group care martha holden ms (corresponding author) is the project director of the residential child care project at the bronfenbrenner center for translational research at the college of human ecology at cornell university, 35 thornwood dr. ithaca, ny 14850. email: mjh19@cornell.edu deborah sellers phd is the director of research of the residential child care project at the bronfenbrenner center for translational research at the college of human ecology at cornell university, 35 thornwood dr. ithaca, ny 14850. email: des256@cornell.edu mailto:mjh19@cornell.edu mailto:des256@cornell.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 64 addressing pain-based behavior in residential care imagine a child falling off a bike, feeling pain, and seeing the blood running down her leg. she screams in pain, cries, and throws the bike into the ditch. no reasonable adult would walk over and yell at the child for throwing her bike and tell her that the bike will be taken away from her as a consequence. seeing the blood and understanding the physical pain the child is experiencing, most caring adults would provide a comforting and supportive response (e.g., close physical proximity and help with getting the bike back home) as well as tangible aid (e.g., clean and bandage the cut). in addition, the adult might soon motivate the child to get back on the bike and avoid making the same mistake that resulted in the fall. providing comfort and a safe haven when hurt, and helping children overcome their fears, meet challenges, and learn from experience are responses that help children grow and develop. by overcoming adversity and making sense of their pain and emotions, children become stronger. when children are experiencing psychoemotional pain and scream in pain, cry, or throw something, they are sometimes punished by the adults responsible for caring for them. this is the pattern of behaviors and responses for many children in care who have experienced trauma, loss, and separation. without an apparent trigger or cause, they may be experiencing psychoemotional pain and expressing it with pain-based behaviors (anglin, 2002). without the tangible or physical evidence of what is causing the behavior, sometimes adults are not in tune with the pain the child is experiencing. no child should be punished for behavior that is a result of pain — either physical or emotional. that is inflicting pain on top of the pain they already feel, which only increases the damage. the ability to deal with children’s psychoemotional pain without inflicting additional painful experiences on them is one of the biggest challenges for caregivers and therapeutic residential care. the children children enter the child welfare system for a variety of reasons, including parents that are unwilling or unable to care for them, abuse or neglect in their homes, and violence and poverty in their communities. although these children are most often placed in foster or kinship care, children with serious developmental concerns or behaviors that put them “at risk” at home or in the community are often placed in residential care or end up in the juvenile justice system. many of these children are on developmental trajectories that place them outside of social norms, such as antisocial, homeless, delinquent, or poor mental health trajectories. when compared with the general population, the population of young people living in residential care has a disproportionately high rate of emotional and behavioral problems (burns et al., 2004) and is at high risk of experiencing poor developmental outcomes throughout the life course. in addition to experiencing parental maltreatment and other forms of trauma, children in residential care often have a history of unsuccessful placement in foster care (zinn, decoursey, george, & courtney, 2006), and a host of other risk factors that impair their healthy development (ryan & testa, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 65 to ameliorate the risk of poor developmental outcomes, children typically receive some form of treatment by professional clinicians to address specific behavioral and emotional problems while in care. equally important is their need for healthy developmental and normalizing experiences throughout the day as well as protection from experiencing additional trauma, negative and defeating life situations, and other toxic experiences. in residential care, children need to experience a therapeutic milieu that supports their rehabilitation (james, 2011) and provides them opportunities to grow, develop and thrive. providing a therapeutic milieu during the time that children are not in individual clinical care — the “other 23 hours” (trieschman, whittaker, & brendtro, 1969) — requires a program model that helps residential staff understand the impact of trauma on a child’s development, how to respond to the pain-based behavior caused or triggered by trauma, and how to provide trauma-informed care. all activities, routines, expectations, and interactions should be designed taking into account the impact of overwhelming stress and trauma on a child. the purpose of care thus, the purpose of therapeutic residential care is to provide a safe place for children to experience caring relationships, learn new skills, and develop a sense of normality, including the everyday small pleasures of life we all cherish. a therapeutic milieu offers children some breathing room, a respite from the stress and overwhelming challenges that they experience in their homes, schools, and communities. the child is surrounded with adults who act as teachers, empathizers, coaches, defenders, advocates, and mentors to help support and protect them as well as assist them in developing and practicing necessary life skills. by providing opportunities for normal developmental experiences and support to children in their attempts to “catch up” in areas where they are lagging, therapeutic residential care can enhance the child’s opportunities for achieving normal developmental outcomes (hawkins-rodgers, 2007; maier, 1987, 1991). this is best accomplished by providing a well-designed and nurturing developmental setting where children can develop a core set of assets (mcneely & blanchard, 2009) such as competence, self-efficacy, relationship skills, emotional regulation, and empathy. this requires active support, carefully orchestrated opportunities to practice and learn psychosocial skills, and intentional interactions with caring, informed, authentic, and engaged adults. providing a safe place to breathe and practice new skills supported by competent and caring adults helps children to thrive and realize more of their potential. the challenge this is not an easy task. many children enter therapeutic residential settings with negative ideas of the people and the place based on past experiences. they walk in the door hostile, or perhaps withdrawn, with little optimism or hope of being successful, being cared for, or being capable of thriving in the environment. this is not a surprising position considering the cumulative effect of their life experiences that have left them alone, rejected, sometimes feared and often fearful, and in care but not cared about. the challenge is to provide a robust developmental setting filled with supportive and empathic adults providing positive and appropriate developmental life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 66 experiences, including time for play and having fun together, that prepare them to meet life’s challenges as well as take opportunities to expand their learning. the active ingredient the child–adult relationship is commonly recognized as the key to providing effective interventions. the quality of that relationship has been described as “the active ingredient on which effectiveness of all other program elements depend” (li & julian, 2012, p. 163). studies, both empirical and those representing the voice of the child, continually indicate the importance of positive and supportive worker–child relationships (harder, knorth, & kalverboer, 2013; izzo et al., 2014; lester, goodloe, johnson, & deutsch, 2018; moore, moretti, & holland, 1997). this relationship not only provides a safe haven for children when distressed, but provides the secure base children need to seek out new experiences and take on new learning and challenges. most children, when feeling threatened and experiencing fear and distress, naturally respond by turning to a trusted adult for assistance. engaging with responsive, caring, and competent adults helps children learn to deal with and manage overwhelming emotions. children develop and thrive by turning to adults who provide support and comfort when they experience distress; in this way children learn to self-regulate and cope with these emotions. these adults also provide a secure base that allows children to be free to engage in growth opportunities (feeney & collins, 2015). unfortunately, children with histories of interactions with inadequate, uncaring, unresponsive, or abusive adults have abandoned the strategy of depending on adults for assistance and have developed other maladaptive or ultimately self-defeating responses. they have developed patterns of pain-based behaviors and responses such as aggression, rigid and inflexible behaviors, withdrawal, impulsive outbursts, and self-injury. at the core, the child’s environment should be and feel safe — the adult–child relationship is linked to perceptions of safety (moore, mcarthur, death, tilbury & roche, 2017). this is also critical to ensuring that the child feels safe and secure and is willing to seek out adults for assistance when distressed. these same adults also are key to motivating children to learn new skills and practice a new way of being. they provide the encouragement and security children need to move outside their comfort zone and take on new challenges (feeney & collins, 2015). providing a safe and therapeutic environment filled with responsive adults and opportunities to meet and overcome challenges, learn new skills, engage in meaningful and satisfying relationships and experiences, and find some joy in their daily lives is the core of therapeutic residential care. we will now offer an overview of the children and residential experiences (care) program model and discuss the care implementation process before presenting some of the evidence of effectiveness including impacts on selected pain-based behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 67 the care program model and its implementation the care model if children are to thrive, they need to have predictable, engaging, responsive, compassionate, secure, purposeful, and stimulating experiences on an ongoing basis. this enormous challenge can be accomplished by creating a culture and living environment that provides developmentally enriching relationships and experiences and a “sense of normality” (anglin, 2002; li & julian, 2012). care is designed to accomplish this task. by incorporating six evidence-informed principles (see table 1) and three key processes (reflective practice, datainformed decision-making, and participatory management) throughout all levels of the organization and into daily practice, an ethos develops that supports and expects developmental relationships in a trauma-sensitive environment (holden, 2009; izzo et al., 2016; nunno, smith, martin, & butcher, 2017). table 1 care principles that guide agency-wide programming programming in residential care settings needs to be… rationale relationship based positive relational experiences with caregivers help children form healthy internal working models of adult–child relationships and build their capacity for healthier relationships. trauma informed trauma histories influence children’s programming needs and their abilities to meet expectations and participate in activities. developmentally focused children’s life trajectories improve when caregivers provide opportunities for normative developmental experiences and adapt their expectations to meet each child’s unique needs. family involved children benefit when caregivers understand and adapt to families’ cultural norms and beliefs, and promote active family involvement. competence centered opportunities for children to practice problem solving, coping skills, and other life skills allow children to develop greater self-efficacy, social competence, and capacity to manage life circumstances. ecologically oriented children’s opportunities for growth and development increase by adapting key features of the physical and social environment to support their successful engagement. the care principles serve as an organizing framework that enables the organization to realign or reallocate resources, to set priorities, and to create a culture that helps children grow and develop through enhanced interactions focused on strengthening attachments and relationships, building competencies, adjusting expectations to account for children’s developmental stage and trauma history, involving families in the child’s care and treatment, and enriching dimensions of the environment to create a more therapeutic milieu (holden, 2009). high-expectation messages, respectful interactions, reflective dialogue, collaboration, and flexibility are practiced throughout the organization. care offers a set of principles and processes to guide practice by training and supporting all staff to use their relationships, creativity, and professional judgment in creating international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 68 enriching experiences for children. this approach cultivates personal investment on the part of staff members and serves to reduce the sense of being constrained or controlled by bureaucratic rules. staff are able to respond with more sensitivity to emotionally distressed children and painbased behavior. with the focus on the developmental relationship as their primary therapeutic tool, staff are better equipped to diffuse momentary situations that could otherwise culminate in dangerous or destructive outcomes. potential crisis events become opportunities to work together with the children to make sense of their feelings and find other ways to cope with their emotions. the relationship becomes a source of support when children are feeling alone, angry, fearful, or overwhelmed. children learn to go to staff when they are feeling stressed and are flooded by emotions and see staff as a source of support and strength (feeney & collins, 2015). at the same time, as staff learn to understand and apply developmentally and trauma-sensitive approaches, they create fewer situations where children feel frustrated or angry. the environment becomes less chaotic, more predictable, and feels more normal to all involved. organizational congruence and collective efficacy to create a true therapeutic milieu, the children need to have a consistent, congruent experience regardless of the individual staff member or activity. the organization itself must provide the culture, climate, and underlying philosophy that creates the safe haven, the relief from stress and burdens, the motivation to engage and stay engaged even when it is difficult, and the desire to recognize and seize opportunities for growth. children and staff alike need to feel cared for and about, and appropriately challenged to grow, develop, and thrive. the care model honors the true complexity of residential work and strives to help staff develop their abilities and achieve the necessary growth mindset (dweck, 2008; kegan & lahey, 2009) to deal effectively with such complexity. care organizations create “holding environments” that allow staff to be reflective and to examine and develop insights about their experiences (kahn, 2005). by working in alignment with the six principles and building a developmental relationship, staff are able to be genuine within their individual relationships with children and, at the same time, provide a consistent, predictable environment for the children. a key dimension of this alignment is recognizing and responding proactively to pain and pain-based behaviors; their own as well as the childern’s. implementing the care model cornell consultants collaborate with agency leaders and an agency care implementation team to implement the care model. this 3to 4-year systematic undertaking involves reorienting agency practices around the six evidence-informed principles of the care model (see table 1). for most agencies, this reorientation of practices requires changes in theoretical perspectives, organizational norms, and role expectations. the role of the care consultants is to help build capacity within the organization to implement and sustain the care program model in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 69 a manner that helps the organization achieve its mission. every organization implements care in a slightly different manner based on its mission, clients, and primary tasks. the implementation is a collaborative process. agency leaders make decisions about how, when, and where to do what, with input from the care consultants. care consultants do not tell agencies what they should or should not do. instead, they coach and counsel agency leaders in how to apply the care principles to their decisions and actions. the relationship between the cornell team and the agency is based on the care principles and practices (e.g., using high-expectations messages, respectful interactions, open and reflective dialogue, collaborative decision-making, and flexibility based on the agency’s zone of proximal development; vygotsky, 1978). the development of a care implementation team is an essential implementation activity. the role of the implementation team, which includes agency leadership, supervisors, and key training and clinical staff, involves developing an implementation plan, allocating adequate resources, creating a process for collecting data and using the results to help guide the implementation process, adjusting policies and procedures, job descriptions, and integrating the principles within their own work. in addition, the members of the implementation team provide support for frontline supervisors so that they can model and mentor staff as they incorporate the care principles into their practice. the team also builds structures and processes that facilitate application of the care principles and their eventual integration into the agency culture. the leadership and implementation team attend a 4-day leadership retreat to develop the initial implementation plan and learn more about the care model. selected agency staff (care educators) are prepared to deliver the 5-day manualized training to all staff. care consultants provide quarterly on-site technical assistance (ta) visits to work with the implementation team and other agency staff. ta activities include observation and feedback, training and coaching for front-line supervisors, developing routines for reflective practice, and addressing organizational barriers to creating a more therapeutic milieu. when the care implementation process is 18 to 24 months in, or when all staff have been trained in care and other major milestones in the care implementation plan have been achieved, a midterm leadership retreat is scheduled. the care midterm leadership retreat is devoted to assessing progress with the implementation of care through review of the observations of the care consultants during the midterm visit, the results from care surveys administered in advance of the retreat, the administrative data addressing key goals or desired outcomes of care implementation, and the use of the care fidelity tools. at the midterm retreat the care fidelity tools guide examination of care implementation to date and help generate action plans to accomplish components of implementation that need additional attention and effort. in most organizations, full implementation of care is achieved towards the end of the 3 to 4-year initial implementation process. as with any intervention, however, maintaining and sustaining fidelity of care implementation requires on-going attention. many agencies choose to continue their relationship with cornell consultants who help to facilitate the on-going attention to implementation fidelity through annual visits. in addition, a community of practice has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 70 developed among organizations that implement the care program model. cornell staff facilitate regional and national events as well as on-going certification of, and additional training for, care educators, supervisors, and leaders. approximately 4 to 5 years after initiating care implementation, agencies are offered the opportunity to apply for care certification. to do so, a care fidelity assessment visit is scheduled to determine if the agency has met the certification criteria. prior to the visit the agency administers the post-implementation surveys, completes a self-assessment, and compiles selected administrative data to assist in assessing the fidelity and impact of care implementation. two cornell consultants make a 2to 3-day on-site visit that includes interviews, focus groups, observations, and a care leadership meeting day to process all data, observations, and review the care fidelity tool. the written results of the assessment visit are reviewed by the cornell care certification committee to make certification recommendations. if the agency has not met the certification criteria, concrete recommendations for improvements will facilitate the agency’s effort to improve their implementation of care and meet the certification criteria. figure 1. care theory of change. evidence supporting the effectiveness of the care model the care theory of change the care theory of change (toc; see figure 1) articulates the pathways through which care is expected to improve the socio-emotional and developmental outcomes for children (holden et al., 2010; holden, anglin, nunno, & izzo, 2014). as outlined in the toc, intensive agency-wide training sessions and a variety of technical assistance activities are expected to help personnel at all levels of the facility learn how to enhance interactions with children by consistently using the care principles (see table 1) to guide those interactions. the toc further indicates international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 71 that when staff–child interactions are enhanced as outlined, children develop more positive perceptions about themselves and their relationships and interactions with staff. these perceptions are ultimately expected to contribute to improving children’s social and emotional well-being and to reducing critical incidents involving pain-based behaviors (e.g., runaways, assault, and restraints). the addition of ongoing consultation is expected to help direct-care staff internalize the principles and thus incorporate them more readily and to help supervisors motivate and support their staff around the use of care principles. the toc also guides evaluation efforts. a 5-year quasi-experimental evaluation included examination of the impact of care on staff knowledge and beliefs, adult–child interactions and relationships, and child behavior (izzo et al., 2016). in addition, a single agency interrupted time series used 12 years of data to examine the impact of care implementation on restraint rates (nunno, smith, martin, & butcher, 2017). results from both of these studies are summarized below. quasi-experimental care evaluation a rigorous evaluation of the care program model was conducted with funding from the duke foundation. agencies in north carolina were invited to participate in a quasi-experimental, waitlist trial through presentations to a statewide association of group care agencies, letters sent directly to eligible agencies, and word of mouth. to participate agencies had to (a) serve primarily children referred by social services, (b) be licensed by a state agency, (c) be willing to be placed on a 12-month waitlist, and (d) have no previous exposure to the care program model. sixteen agencies agreed to participate, including seven which were part of a larger parent organization with campuses across the state. each campus was treated as a separate entity. of the 16 agencies, one became ineligible due to a change in their target population, one discontinued due to change in administrative priorities, and one closed before implementation began. though random assignment to the first or second cohort would have been ideal, various considerations necessitated a quasi-experimental design rather than a randomized group trial. ultimately, six agencies participated in the first cohort, which began implementation in 2010, and seven agencies participated in the second cohort which began implementation in 2011. figure 2 depicts the design of the study. data collection included anonymous staff and confidential child surveys completed annually for 4 years in cohort 1 and 5 years in cohort 2. (as noted above, care implementation takes place over a 3-year period.) the first annual survey served as the baseline for cohort 1 and the pre-baseline for cohort 2. the staff survey included the organizational social context instrument (glisson & hemmelgarn, 1998) as well as questions about the respondent’s current practice, knowledge, beliefs, and demographic characteristics. the child survey included questions about the child’s relationship with and attachment to the staff, as well as gender and race. in addition, the agency provided individual client characteristics (e.g., type of placement and length of time at the agency) and agency-wide counts of the behavioral incidents (aggression toward staff international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 72 or peers, property damage, runaways, and self-harm) that occurred each month for the duration of the study. figure 2. quasi-experimental wait-list design of care evaluation staff reactions to the care training: staff reactions to the care training were examined in surveys completed at the end of the 5-day care training. of the 501 staff who completed post-training surveys, 85% reported the level of the subject matter to be “just right,” and 95% or more considered the presentations, student workbook, group discussions, and the overall program to be “good” or “excellent”. more than 90% of participants reported that they plan to (80%) or already (10%) use the material in their jobs and that they definitely (45%) or probably (47%) know the material. figure 3. percent of knowledge questions answered correctly by cohort and time. staff knowledge and beliefs: across the 13 participating agencies and the 5-year duration of the study, 701 staff members contributed a total of 1488 completed surveys. the survey included 13 questions that assessed knowledge about care. figure 3 reports the average percentage correct international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 73 on the knowledge assessment by cohort and time point. most staff were trained during the first 12 months of implementation so the primary increase in knowledge occurred over that time period. the staff survey also included a series of items designed to assess childcare beliefs, particularly reliance on rules and consequences (e.g., if you change the expectations or relax the rules, it will be harder to maintain compliance later) and extent of flexibility (e.g., make it clear that the homework must be done before going to school tomorrow. then give him a choice about doing it now, or waking up early to do it before school). implementation of the care program requires less reliance on rules and consequences and increased flexibility. changes in beliefs that occurred during the first year of implementation are presented in figure 4 (izzo & smith, 2016). more detailed analyses of changes in staff knowledge and beliefs are currently underway. flexibility reliance on rules and consequences figure 4. changes in staff childcare beliefs. child perceptions of relationship quality: as noted above, the child survey was administered annually in all 13 agencies by a member of the cornell research team. across the 13 participating agencies and the 5-year duration of the study, 933 children completed 1264 surveys. the average length of stay was 6.7 months, so relatively few children completed more than one survey. about 55% of respondents were male and 37% were non-white. the average age was 14.5 years. just over half of the children were placed in the agencies through the child welfare system. for one-third of the children, residential care was their first placement, 23% had one previous placement, and 23% had two or more prior placements. the placement history of 22% of the children completing surveys was unknown. table 2. child perceptions survey: six scenarios for measuring quality of relationship with staff type of scenario sample item when you needed help: they tried to understand what i wanted. during recreational activities: i felt that they enjoyed spending time with me. when you misbehaved: listened to me to try and understand why i acted that way. during routine day-to-day life: gave me privacy when i needed it. when you were feeling upset: talking with them made me feel better. how staff deal with your family: respected my family or loved ones. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 74 in the child perceptions survey, the sum of responses to 33 questions measured the quality of the relationship with staff as perceived by the respondent. the respondent was asked to rate how often the staff interact well with them in six scenarios listed in table 2. the wording of the five response options varied slightly by scenario but in general represented frequency ranging from never to every day or never to always. as depicted in figure 5 (izzo & smith, 2016), child perceptions of the quality of their relationship with staff improved during the implementation of care. additional analyses are underway to assess whether and how agency and child characteristics influence these perceptions. figure 5. youth perceptions of the quality of their relationships with staff. behavioral incidents: as with most agencies in the united states, licensing and accreditation regulations required every agency in the study to complete a written report for any incident involving substantial risk of danger to a child or staff member. these behavioral incidents indicate behavioral dysregulation and thus, in aggregate, represent a marker for the broader pattern of interaction between children and staff. for example, staff who learn how to set developmentally appropriate expectations will create fewer opportunities for children to feel frustrated or angry when they are unable to meet expectations. similarly, staff that understand and respond with more sensitivity will be better able to diffuse momentary situations that might otherwise culminate in dangerous or destructive behaviors that would require formal documentation. consequently, a decrease in behavioral incidents — verbal threats or physical aggression towards staff, verbal threats or physical aggression towards peers, an act or threat of self-harm, property destruction, and attempted or completed runaway — during the care implementation period relative to baseline would indicate improved interactions and relationships with staff. as reported by izzo et al. (2016), agencies provided monthly counts of each type of incident and the average number of children each month so that per capita rates could be computed. 56.2 56.7 54.7 60.9 56.6 53.6 62.3 62.0 12mpre baseline 12m 24m 36m yo u th -a d u lt i n te ra ct io n q u a li ty stage of care implementation cohort 1 cohort 2 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 75 interrupted time series regression models that controlled agency characteristics and accounted for the nesting of incidents within agencies were used to compare the trends during baseline to those during care implementation while controlling for agency characteristics (e.g., cohort, organization social context profile). for all five types of incidents, there were significant decreases in incident rates of 4% to 8% per month for cohort 1. for cohort 2, the trends were different than cohort 1 for aggression towards peers and self-harm. figure 6 illustrates the modeladjusted estimates for the frequency of incidents per child over the entire 4-year study period for the three outcomes that were consistent across cohorts. figure 6. estimated rates (and 95% confidence intervals) of behavioral incidents. single agency interrupted time series given the well-known challenges of evaluating organizational-level interventions (e.g., murray, 1998), the interrupted time series (nunno, smith, martin, & butcher, 2017) provides a compelling alternative, particularly if data are available for substantial periods of time both prior to and after the implementation of the intervention (cook, campbell, & shadish, 2002). the waterford country school (wcs) in connecticut has collected the number of restraints per month for over 20 years. the frequency of restraints is considered a meaningful indicator of interactional quality because the use of restraint typically represents a staff–child interaction that resolved unsuccessfully. at wcs, care implementation began in january 2009, so the monthly restraint rate, the number of restraints per month divided by the average number of children per month, was available for 72 months prior to and 72 months after the start of care. the restraint rate was available for three different wcs programs: residential, shelter, and day school. application of interrupted time series regression methods (shadish, kyse, & rindskopf, 2013) yielded the estimated restraint rates depicted in figure 7. note that the residential restraint rate declined substantially during the 6 years after the implementation of care began. indeed, the residential restraint rate continued to decline and, as of september 2018, has been zero for at least 12 months (william martin, personal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 76 communication). though substantially lower than the restraint rate in the residential program, the restraint rate for the shelter population also showed a significant decline. for day students, a different trend was detected during the implementation period. the restraint rate increased for about 30 months, then reversed and declined for the remainder of the study period. the results for the day students illustrate the benefits of on-going careful collection and monitoring of a measure that matters. wcs staff recognized the relatively sharp increase in the day student restraint rate, reflected on possible causes, and implemented a plan of action based on the care principles. though it took a number of months, the day student restraint rate eventually declined substantially. figure 7. estimated restraint rates for three programs at waterford country school. month is centered at january 2009, the beginning of care implementation. summary and conclusions in sum, a growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of the care program model, a fact that is acknowledged in the scientific rating of 3 (promising research evidence) for care in the california evidence-based clearinghouse (http://www.cebc4cw.org/program/children-and-residential-experiences-care/detailed), where care is listed under both the higher levels of placement and the alternatives to long-term residential programs topics. in addition, a recent review of organization-wide, trauma-informed care models in out-of-home care settings found the design of the care evaluation, as reported in izzo et al. (2016), to be the only one of seven studies that met inclusion criteria to have moderate rather than high risk of bias (bailey et al., 2018). the care evaluation also addressed nearly all of the recommendations for the measurement, analysis, design, and reporting of evaluations of trauma-informed organizational interventions in purtle’s (2018, p. 13) systematic review. http://www.cebc4cw.org/program/children-and-residential-experiences-care/detailed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 77 as noted earlier in this article, more and more literature recognizes the crucial importance of the relationship between children and staff in the residential care setting. in essence, the care program model provides a principle-based compass for improving all relationships within the organization. leaders and supervisors support their staff by modeling the care principles in their relationships with all staff, from direct care to upper management to maintenance and other support staff. the care training, including regular refreshers and time for reflection, combined with this support from leaders and supervisors, provides direct care staff with the opportunity to develop the capacity to both respond effectively to pain and pain-based behavior and help children and adolescents to practice and learn new life-skills and coping mechanisms. the milieu becomes therapeutic in that routine daily activities become opportunities for achieving the small successes that reduce pain-based bahaviors and eventually lead to accomplishing developmental milestones and enhancing a sense of normality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 63–80 78 references anglin, j. p. 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(2006). a study of placement stability in illinois [chaplin hall working paper]. chicago, il: chapin hall center for children. retrieved from http://www.tndev.net/mbs/docs/reference/child_welfare_system_national/chapinhalldoc ument_1.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.08.010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/j007v15n03_01 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1524838018791304 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2004.05.007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032964 http://www.tndev.net/mbs/docs/reference/child_welfare_system_national/chapinhalldocument_1.pdf http://www.tndev.net/mbs/docs/reference/child_welfare_system_national/chapinhalldocument_1.pdf microsoft word 06 parental_beliefs.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220659 parental beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions: reexamining the factorial structure of two measures and their discriminant validity carlos carona, helena moreira, and ana fonseca abstract: the display of negative emotions scale and the social consequences of negative emotions scale are two understudied questionnaires that assess parents’ emotion beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions. therefore, the aims of this study were to ascertain the factorial structure of both questionnaires, to reexamine the internal consistency of each instrument’s scales, and to assess the ageand gender-related discriminant validity of the measures. the two questionnaires were administered by a web-based survey to a sample of 253 portuguese mothers with children of elementary school age (6–12 years). a twofactor solution (expression of submissive emotions, expression of dominant emotions) was preferred for the first questionnaire, and a single-factor solution emerged for the second questionnaire. both measures revealed good internal consistency, but while the former was able to identify gender differences, the latter discriminated between age groups. the simultaneous use of these questionnaires is recommended for an informative assessment of parents’ beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions. keywords: emotion beliefs, parents, children, emotional expression, questionnaires carlos carona phd (corresponding author) is a researcher, clinician, and lecturer at the centre for research in neuropsychology and cognitive-behavioral intervention, faculty of psychology and educational sciences of coimbra university, rua do colégio novo, 3000-115 coimbra, portugal. email: ccarona@fpce.uc.pt helena moreira phd is a professor in the faculty of psychology and educational sciences of coimbra university, rua do colégio novo, 3000-115 coimbra, portugal. email: helena.tcmoreira@gmail.com ana fonseca phd is a post-doctoral researcher at the centre for research in neuropsychology and cognitive-behavioral intervention of coimbra university, rua do colégio novo, 3000-115 coimbra, portugal. email: ana.fonseca77@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 83 humans hold a large number of beliefs about the world and themselves that are essential for making sense of the world’s complexity and adapting to the challenges of life. beliefs about emotion shape our interactions with the world, by informing the constant emotion-related decisionmaking that people engage in (ford & gross, 2019). parents’ beliefs about emotions affect their children’s emotion socialization by motivating parental reactions and assisting the integration of apparently disparate aspects of the parent–child relationship (gottman et al., 1996). emotion beliefs can be rather general but can vary across subordinate features (ford & gross, 2019), such as: specific emotions or valence (e.g., anger, fear, sadness; negative or positive emotions), specific emotion channels (e.g., expressive behaviors), specific contexts (e.g., at home, at school), and specific targets (e.g., belief about the self, specific other, or generalized others). nelson and colleagues (2012) developed two questionnaires intended to assess parental emotion beliefs about the display of negative emotions by their children and the perceived social consequences of that expression. critically, these are the only published measures focusing particularly on parental beliefs about negative emotions1 (cf. halberstadt et al., 2001; halberstadt et al., 2013) across the aforementioned subordinate features of emotion beliefs. in the original study, both measures revealed good internal consistency and a single-factor structure (nelson et al., 2012). however, those findings have not been reexamined and additional analyses on their psychometric performance have not yet been performed. given the fact that maladaptive expression of negative emotions is a core facet of emotion dysregulation (mclaughlin et al., 2011), gathering evidence for the reliability and validity of the assessments of those parental beliefs will likely improve the scope and effectiveness of psychological interventions targeting emotion regulation difficulties in youths. child emotion regulation and parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions emotion regulation comprises the internal and external processes involved in initiating, maintaining, and shaping the occurrence, intensity, and expression of emotions (thompson, 1994). poor emotion regulation has been proposed as a transdiagnostic feature related to different forms of psychopathology, including psychopathologies of children and adolescents (ehrenreich-may et al., 2014). moreover, adaptive expression of negative emotions (e.g., anger, fear, and sadness) has been conceptualized as one dimension of the higher-order construct of emotion regulation, along with emotional understanding and cognitive emotion management (mclaughlin et al., 2011). accordingly, maladaptive expression of those negative emotions has been linked to internalizing and externalizing psychological problems in youths (zeman et al., 2006). 1the first measure devised by halberstadt, dunsmore and colleagues (2001), “parents’ beliefs about negative emotions”, was never published. later, working with other colleagues, halberstadt and dunsmore (2013) developed “parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions”, which covered the most general dimensions of parental emotion beliefs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 84 parents’ beliefs about emotions derive from their own developmental history and are linked to parenting practices that affect children’s adjustment outcomes via both adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation (morris et al., 2007). these emotion beliefs influence the regulation applied to parents’ emotions (intrinsic emotion regulation) as well as their children’s emotions (extrinsic emotion regulation; ford & gross, 2019). specifically, parents’ attitudes and beliefs regarding children’s expression of emotion — whether they avoid or accept expression of negative emotions — are of the utmost importance in patterning children’s long-term emotional style (malatestamagai, 1991). there are currently few psychometric measures to assess beliefs about emotion, and the existing instruments often neglect the subordinate features of emotion beliefs (e.g., valence, channels, contexts, self vs. others), which limits their clinical and research utility (becerra et al., 2020). when reviewing the literature in their quest for “a multifaceted questionnaire assessing parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions” (p. 1197) that would be “applicable across ethnicity and gender” (p. 1196), halberstadt and colleagues (2013) noted that, apart from an unpublished questionnaire (halberstadt et al., 2001), there were only two measures specifically assessing parents’ beliefs as distinct from their behaviors. both of those measures had been developed by nelson and colleagues (2012) to evaluate parents’ emotion beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions. nelson and colleagues’ first emotion belief questionnaire resulted from a considerable adaptation of matsumoto’s (1993) previous work on ethnic differences in emotional expression and was intended to assess parents’ acceptance of their children’s “display of negative emotions” (nelson et al., 2012, p. 22) across multiple contexts (e.g., alone, with family, with other children). following an initial one-factor solution (60% of total variance explained), exploratory factor analysis (efa) further suggested a two-factor solution (dominant negative emotion and submissive negative emotion), with cronbach’s alphas of .87, .97, and .96 attesting to the good internal consistency of each subscale and the overall scale, respectively (nelson et al., 2012, p. 27). complementarily, the second emotion belief questionnaire targeted “the social consequences of negative emotions” (p. 27), as perceived by parents in their children expressing such emotions. nelson and colleagues (2012) developed the measure ad hoc for addressing the research questions under examination, with a single factor structure obtained from efa (49% of total variance explained), and a cronbach’s alpha of .73 indicating adequate internal consistency for the overall scale (p. 28). despite the contributions of these exploratory analyses, a detailed description of the theoretical rationale and of the results for the suggested factor structures was not reported, and those findings have not been replicated elsewhere. moreover, none of the instruments was proven to detect gender differences, and the focus of the study was mothers of 5-year-old children, which precluded the analysis of discriminant validity for age groups. when reexamining the internal structure (i.e., the dimensionality) of an understudied measure in larger and wide-ranging samples, efa is preferable to confirmatory factor analysis for two reasons: first, it does not require clear predictions as to which factors exist, or how they relate to variables and to each other; and second, it allows the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 85 detection of unexpected, though substantially meaningful, factors influencing subsets of items or unexpected cross-loadings, which may be overlooked in confirmatory analyses (flora & flake, 2017; gorsuch, 1997). the current study the display of negative emotions scale and the social consequences of negative emotions scale are two understudied questionnaires for assessing parents’ emotion beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions. in order to address the abovementioned research gaps regarding their psychometric properties, the present study aimed to: (a) ascertain the factorial structure of both questionnaires, through efa; (b) determine the internal consistency for each instruments’ scale(s); and (c) assess the discriminant validity of the measures for identifying age and gender-related differences in mothers’ beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions. no specific predictions were made for the first two objectives. in the assessment of discriminant validity, it was hypothesized that mothers would report stronger beliefs about the acceptability and the social consequences of expressing negative emotions (especially in the presence of others) for boys than for girls, and for older children (preadolescents) than for their younger counterparts (early elementary schoolers). the current study comprises a sample of mothers of children of elementary school age, thus expanding the age range of the sample used in the original study (mothers of 5-year-old children). this is informative because, during elementary school years, patterns of emotion regulation become more stable and stylized. the development of more sophisticated cognitive and verbal skills enables greater complexity in conceptualizing and verbalizing ideas about emotions, as seen in children’s conscious awareness of experiencing simultaneous, mixed emotions (cole et al., 1994). from early elementary age to preadolescence, the influence of social interactions, such as the reactions of others (particularly parents and peers) to one’s emotions increasingly contributes to the internalization of emotions about emotions (e.g., youths are more like to express an emotion if a supportive reaction is expected), as well as to a matured understanding of display rules (cole et al., 1994). specifically, there is some evidence for a gender socialization of emotion, with emphasis on boys suppressing their sadness and girls inhibiting anger expression, because of less positive expectations about obtaining a supportive response for these emotional displays (zeman et al., 2006). methods participants the sample for this study comprised 253 portuguese mothers of school-aged children (6–12 years). the mother’s mean age was 40.64 years (sd = 4.61, range = 25–53). most of the mothers (87.0%, n = 220) were married or in a common-law relationship; the remainder were single, divorced, or widowed. most mothers were currently employed (89.3%, n = 225) and had completed higher education (68.0%, n = 172). household income reported included 15.8% (n = international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 86 40) below 1000€, 56.1% (n = 142) between 1001 and 2500€, and 28.1% (n = 71) above 2500€. most mothers lived in an urban area (81.8%, n = 207). mothers with more than one child in the specified age range were instructed to select one child to base their answers on. about half of all the mothers (53.4%, n = 135) responded to the questionnaires based on their experiences with their daughters, while 118 answered based on their experiences with their sons. the children’s mean age was 8.71 years (sd = 2.05, range: 6.0–12.0). to compare mothers of younger and older children we divided the sample by a school-related transition: 61.3% of the sample were early elementary schoolers (6–9 years old, n = 155) and the rest were preadolescents (10–12 years old). while 40.7% of the mothers (n = 103) had only one child, 59.3% had more than one child (n = 150, 2–6 children). procedure inclusion criteria to participate in this study were: (a) being a mother of a school-aged child (6–12 years old), (b) being 18 years old or older, and (c) being able to read and understand portuguese. sample collection occurred between may and july of 2019. participants were invited to participate in the study through social networks (e.g., facebook), both through unpaid crossposting and through paid boosting campaigns. the web-based survey was hosted by limesurvey. the study’s consent form was presented to all participants before they started the survey, explaining the purpose, recruitment criteria, the participants’ roles (e.g., voluntary participation), and the researchers’ roles (e.g., guarantee of confidentiality). those who consented to participate in the study (by clicking on the option “i understand and accept the conditions of the study”) were given access to the assessment protocol. all procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee, and with the declaration of helsinki and its later amendments for research involving human participants (world medical association, 2013). the study was approved by the ethics committee of the faculty of psychology and educational sciences of coimbra university. after obtaining authorization from their original authors, both questionnaires used in this study were translated to portuguese through a forward-backward translation procedure. they were first translated independently by two of the authors of this study (a. fonseca & h. moreira), who were familiar with the concepts and terminology of the topics covered by the questionnaires and fluent in portuguese and english. the two translated versions were reconciled to obtain the portuguese version of the questionnaires. in a second step, the portuguese versions were back-translated into english by a third researcher not familiar with the questionnaires. the two versions (original and back-translated) of each questionnaire were compared to achieve a comprehensible and conceptually consistent portuguese version. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 87 measures sociodemographicdata sociodemographic (e.g., age, marital status, educational level, professional status, household income, residence, number of children) and child (e.g., gender, age) data were collected through a self-report form. emotion beliefs: display of negative emotions this self-report questionnaire includes 20 items. as in nelson et al.’s (2012) study, mothers were asked to rate how acceptable they believed it was for their children to display negative emotions (anger, fear, sadness, and crying) in different contexts (when alone, with family, with other children, in public, and with an authority figure); the items were answered on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much; p. 27). higher scores were indicative of a greater acceptance of the child’s display of negative emotions (nelson et al., 2012, p. 27). emotion beliefs: the social consequences of negative emotions as in nelson et al.’s 2012 study, this self-report questionnaire assesses the extent to which mothers believed there were negative social consequences associated with the display of negative emotions. it comprises five items: (a) when my child shows anger, people may view my child as aggressive; (b) people will not like my child if my child shows his/her negative emotions; (c) if my child shows fear, people may think my child is a “scaredy-cat”; (d) when my child shows sadness, he/she may seem weak or “soft” to others; (e) if my child shows negative emotions openly, other people might give him/her fewer opportunities for success in life. items were answered on a 6-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree; p. 27). higher scores were indicative of a perception of more negative social consequences for the child’s display of negative emotions (nelson et al., 2012, p. 28). statistical analyses statistical analyses were performed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss, version 22.0; ibm spss, chicago, il). descriptive statistics were computed for sample characterization. item descriptive statistics and distributions were first computed to examine the items’ characteristics. absolute values of skewness above 2 and absolute values of kurtosis above 9 represent severe violations to a normal distribution (schmider et al., 2010). to explore the factorial structure of both scales, efa using a principal component analysis (pca) with an oblique rotation (direct oblimin) were performed, as we expected the factors to correlate. data was checked for suitability by inspecting bartlett’s test of sphericity and the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). factor extraction was defined through kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalues ≥ 1) and the visual inspection of the scree plot. the relevance of retained factors was assessed by considering the total variance explained, the greatest simple structure, and the factors’ appropriateness in relation to the intended factor structure (costello & osborne, 2005; tabachnick & fidell, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 88 the analysis of the internal consistency of both scales was assessed using cronbach’s alpha. item-total correlations and “cronbach’s alpha if item deleted” were also computed. finally, discriminant validity was examined considering child’s gender and age-group differences. multivariate analyses of variance (manova) followed by univariate analyses of variance and an independent samples t test were computed to examine differences between the display of negative emotions scale and the social consequences of negative emotions scale. effect-size measures are presented for all comparison analyses (small: η2 ≥ .01, d ≥ 0.20; medium: η2 ≥ .06, d ≥ 0.50; large: η2 ≥ .14, d ≥ 0.80; cohen, 1992). results preliminary analyses the range of scores for all items of the display of negative emotions scale was 1 to 4, suggesting that each response option in each item was selected by at least one participant. the average item scores were mostly above 3, except for the first five items, whose average scores ranged around 2 (data not shown). skewness (ranging from -1.84 to 0.56) and kurtosis (ranging from -0.84 to 2.72) values showed that the items did not reveal severe violations of the normal distribution (schmider et al., 2010). the range of scores for all items of the social consequences of negative emotions scale was 1 to 5, with the average item scores ranging around 2 (data not shown). skewness values ranged from 0.137 to 0.950, while kurtosis values ranged between -1.23 and -0.027, suggesting no severe violations of the normal distribution (schmider et al., 2010). exploratory factor analyses concerning the display of negative emotions scale, the results of the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure (kmo = .92) and of bartlett’s test of sphericity (x2190 = 5824.61, p < .001) confirmed the sample’s adequacy for a pca. both the kaiser extraction criterion (eigenvalues > 1) and the observation of the scree plot suggested a three-factor solution that explained 74.89% of the variance. the rotated solution (direct oblimin) is presented in table 1. in the three-factor solution, the first factor comprised 12 items with high factor loadings (> 0.78), and explained 56.74% of the variance. items in this factor refer to the acceptability of expression of submissive emotions (fear and sadness) in the presence of other people (other children, family, public, authority figures). the second factor comprised five items and explained an additional 12.29% of the variance. items in this factor (loadings on the factor > 0.72) concern the acceptability of expression of dominant emotions (anger) by children. the third factor comprised three items, representing the acceptability of the child’s expression of negative emotions when alone. however, the items in this factor also present high loadings in one of the other two factors (see table 1) and this factor only explained 6.13% of the variance. therefore, a new pca was computed forcing the extraction of two factors. the two-factor solution explained 68.76% of the variance. the first factor, expression of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 89 submissive negative emotions, comprised 15 items representing the perceived acceptability of the child’s expression of submissive emotions (fear and sadness) in different contexts and explained 56.47% of the variance. the second factor, expression of dominant negative emotions, comprised five items assessing the perceived acceptability of the child’s expression of dominant emotions (anger) in different contexts, and explained 12.29% of the variance. therefore, the twofactor solution was retained for subsequent analyses. concerning the social consequences of negative emotions scale, the results of the kaisermeyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy (kmo = .74) and of bartlett’s test of sphericity (x210 = 608.28, p < .001) confirmed the adequacy of the sample for a pca. both the kaiser extraction criterion (eigenvalues > 1) and the observation of the scree plot suggested a one-factor solution comprising the five items of the scale and explaining 61.1% of the variance. the five items presented high loadings on the unidimensional factor, ranging from 0.62 (item 1) to 0.84 (item 3). internal consistency concerning the display of negative emotions scale, both factors presented good levels of internal consistency (α > .89), and all items showed moderate to very strong correlations with the total score of the respective factor (r = .47–.91). no significant improvements in the internal consistency of the factors were found if any item was removed. with respect to the social consequences of negative emotions scale, the unidimensional scale presented a value indicating good internal consistency (α = .83) and the items showed moderate to strong correlations with the total score (r = .47–.72). no significant improvements in the internal consistency of the total score were found if any item was removed. discriminant validity: child’s gender and age-group differences table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of both scales as a function of child’s gender and child’s age group (6–9 years old vs. 10–12 years old). a significant multivariate effect of gender in the display of negative emotions scale was found (pillai’s trace = .026, f2,250 = 3.33, p = .038, η2 = .026), with univariate tests showing differences in both the submissive (f = 5.73, p = .017, η2 = .022) and dominant (f = 3.99, p = .047, η2 = .016) factors. these results showed that the expression of both submissive and dominant emotions is perceived by mothers as more acceptable in boys than in girls. no significant differences as a function of child’s gender were found in the social consequences of negative emotions scale (t251 = 1.42, p = .156, d = 0.18). with regard to child’s age group, no significant multivariate effect was found in the display of negative emotions scale (pillai’s trace = .003, f2,250 = 0.34, p = .713, η2 = .003). however, significant age-group differences were found in the social consequences of negative emotions scale (t251 = -3.22, p = .001, d = 0.41). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 90 table 1. emotion beliefs: display of negative emotions scale — factorial solutions extracted from exploratory factor analyses 3-factor rotated solution 2-factor rotated solution emotion belief factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 1 factor 2 it is acceptable for children to: 1. show their anger when they are alone. .723 .528 .737 2. show their anger when they are with their family. .815 .815 3. show their anger when they are with other children. .901 .901 4. show their anger when they are in public. .899 .897 5. show their anger when they are with authority figures (e.g., a teacher). .828 .825 6. show their fear when they are alone. .397 .853 .503 7. show their fear when they are with their family. .783 .782 8. show their fear when they are with other children. .850 .874 9. show their fear when they are in public. .814 .834 10. show their fear when they are with authority figures (e.g., a teacher). .837 .850 11. show their sadness when they are alone. .636 .788 .709 12. show their sadness when they are with their family. .846 .827 13. show their sadness when they are with other children. .931 .925 14. show their sadness when they are in public. .925 .919 15. show their sadness when they are with authority figures (e.g., a teacher). .925 .913 16. cry when they are alone. .653 .721 .716 17. cry when they are with their family. .840 .815 18. cry when they are with other children. .885 .871 19. cry when they are in public. .875 .867 20. cry when they are with authority figures (e.g., a teacher). .882 .866 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 91 table 2. descriptive statistics of the two emotion beliefs measures (discriminant validity) display of negative emotions scale the social consequences of negative emotions scale dominant submissive m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) child’s gender female (n = 135) 2.36 (0.72) 3.26 (0.75) 2.37 (0.90) male (n = 118) 2.58 (0.76) 3.44 (0.67) 2.21 (0.85) child’s age group 6–9 years old (n = 155) 2.49 (0.75) 3.35 (0.73) 2.16 (0.84) 10–12 years old (n = 98) 2.41 (0.74) 3.34 (0.71) 2.52 (0.89) discussion this was the first study to systematically report an examination of the factorial structure of the only two existing measures to assess parental beliefs about their children’s expression of negative emotions, namely the display of negative emotions scale and the social consequences of negative emotions scale. the study also gathered critical evidence for the reliability of both instruments and for their distinct psychometric performance in identifying differences in parents’ emotion belief patterns related to their children’s age and gender. overall these findings establish preliminary construct validity for the two measures and attest to their reliability and discriminant validity. contrary to nelson and colleagues’ (2012) initial findings, when reexamining the factorial structure of the first questionnaire addressing parents’ beliefs of acceptability about their children’s display of negative emotions, a three-factor solution emerged. according to ford and gross (2019), the resulting three factors apparently depicted an internal structure crossing the subordinate dimensions of emotion valence (i.e., submissive vs. dominant, fear/sadness vs. anger) and interpersonal contexts of emotion expression (i.e., alone vs. in the presence of others). altogether the three factors accounted for nearly 75% of the total variance. nevertheless, given the significant cross-loadings in the items pertaining to the subscale on the acceptability of the child’s expression of negative emotions when alone, a two-factor solution was ultimately preferred, comprising the dimensions of “child’s expression of submissive emotions” and “child’s expression of dominant emotions”. this factorial structure straightforwardly portrayed the construct under assessment along the subordinate facets of emotion valence (i.e., submissive vs. dominant), and roughly explained 69% of the scale’s total variance. in any case, the three-factor and the two-factor solutions accounted for a greater proportion of variance than that reported in the original study for a one-factor solution, which explained 60% of the total variance. it is noteworthy that the submissive–dominant distinction in emotional expression has been corroborated in a series of previous studies (e.g., eisenberg et al., 1991; nelson et al., 2012), thus highlighting its theoretical interest for understanding emotional expression styles and behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 92 regarding the factorial examination of the social consequences of negative emotions scale, the observed results are aligned with the single factor solution that was reported in the original study (nelson et al., 2012). however, the amount of total variance explained was once again greater in our study (approximately 61%) than in the one previously reported (49%). the unidimensionality of this scale suggests that those socially embedded emotion beliefs are not valence-specific in appraising children’s expression of negative emotions. this ultimately suggests that this measure assesses beliefs that directly target parental fears and concerns related to decreased social rank as a consequence of their children’s expression of negative emotions. the second aim of the study was to determine the internal consistency of the instruments. the display of negative emotions scale presented cronbach’s alphas of .97 and .89 for the subscales of “child’s expression of submissive emotions” and “child’s expression of dominant emotions”, respectively. the social consequences of negative emotions scale revealed a cronbach’s alpha value of .83. these results are in substantial agreement with those reported in the original exploratory study (nelson et al., 2012), except that the reliability coefficient for the second measure was higher than the one previously observed (α = .73). bearing in mind that classical test theory views an observed response as resulting from the interaction of true score and error, the internal consistency values observed in our study are indicative of the reliability of both instruments, in the sense that their items seem to be measuring the same construct. finally, the study sought to examine the discriminant validity of the emotion beliefs questionnaires between child’s age groups and genders. the observed results were disparate for each measure: on the one hand, the display of negative emotions scale was able to discriminate between genders, with mothers being more accepting of the expression of both submissive and dominant emotions when the child was a boy; on the other hand, the social consequences of negative emotions scale discriminated between age groups, with mothers of preadolescents perceiving more threatening consequences from their children’s expression of negative emotions than mothers of children in early elementary school. altogether these findings are supportive of the discriminant validity of both measures, even if suggesting a distinct psychometric performance for each in the domains of age and gender. our first set of results partially challenges previous literature on gender-related display rules stating that boys are expected to show fewer internalizing emotions (e.g., sadness and anxiety), and are given more freedom to express externalizing emotions (e.g., anger) than girls (brody, 1999). however, it bears noting that emotional development theorists have argued that boys seem to have higher reactivity and arousal levels, and lower language ability and inhibitory control than girls; therefore, in childhood, boys may be less able than girls to downregulate negative emotions, and thus more likely to express them (brody, 1999; chaplin, 2015). this biologically modulated developmental trend may explain the seemingly disparate findings of our study, as regards mothers’ greater acceptance of the expression of negative emotions when their child was a boy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 93 on the topic of the second set of results in the assessment of discriminant validity, our findings are convergent with previous reports pointing to an increased independency in emotion regulation processes from childhood to adolescence (zeman et al., 2006). therefore, in comparison to mothers of younger school-aged children, mothers of preadolescents may hold stronger beliefs about the unintended social consequences (e.g., social put-down, being left out) of the emotional expression of anger, fear, and sadness, because they may be differentially concerned about the attainment of developmental tasks related to autonomy, which are intuitively related to improved chances for their children to achieve happiness and success (cf. seiffge-krenke & gelhaar, 2008). despite its contributions to improving current understanding on the psychometric assessment of parental emotion beliefs, this study has a number of limitations. first, the sampling frame relied exclusively on online procedures, thus excluding those mothers with the lowest levels of digital literacy, and those who, through lack of interest or opportunity, do not use social media at all. second, our study’s sample was embedded in the western european cultural context, which may impair its external validity by limiting the generalizability of findings. the exclusive focus on negative emotions may be regarded as another limitation, given the importance of positive emotions in facilitating coping and developmental adaptive processes (folkman, 2008; frederickson, 1998). we are less concerned about this limitation, however, because there is no extant instrument that simultaneously addresses both parental beliefs at their superordinate level (e.g., acceptability and controllability) and valence-specific scores (e.g., positive and negative); this situation calls for a complementary and tailored use of the existing measures (cf. becerra et al., 2020). our study nevertheless has important clinical implications. one is that it attests to the reliability of two brief measures that can be easily administered and interpreted in clinical routines aimed at consolidating a parent–child approach to psychological interventions in child mental health. the findings from this study also shed a different light on the identification of gender-related differences in mothers’ acceptability of their child’s expression of negative emotions. overlooking these differences in clinical practice may hinder opportunities to increase parental psychological flexibility. moreover, we recommend that the display of negative emotions and the social consequences of negative emotions questionnaires should be used complementarily, not only because each measure seems to detect unique developmental differences, but also for identifying the parents’ fear-related beliefs that may underlie their emotion beliefs about the acceptability of their children’s expression of negative emotions. finally, since beliefs about emotion have been shown to be mechanisms of symptom change, the therapeutic change of parental beliefs about children’s emotions may contribute to the development of more adaptive emotion regulation repertoires (ford & gross, 2019), especially in the treatment of children’s emotional disorders involving both internalizing and externalizing problems (ehrenreich-may et al., 2014). future research may now move on to testing theoretically grounded, hypothesis-driven competing models through confirmatory factor analysis. using that preferred statistical procedure for the advanced assessment of construct validity, the unidimensionality of the social consequences of negative emotions scale may be ascertained, and the suggested factor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 94 solutions for the display of negative emotions scale can be comparatively examined (e.g., three-factor vs. two-factor vs. bifactor models). the longitudinal study of both scales will be required to document their test-retest reliability (temporal stability). an important point is that sampling for future studies would desirably include both mothers and fathers to assess parental concordance in the reported beliefs about their children’s emotions. finally, more research is needed to distinguish parental beliefs from parenting behaviors, and to eventually explore the directionality of the associations between those two constructs. data availability statement: the data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 82–97 95 references becerra, r., preece, d. a., & gross, j. j. 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(2006). emotion regulation in children and adolescents. journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics, 27, 155– 168. doi:10.1097/00004703-200604000-00014 microsoft word 09 patriarchy_other.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120087 patriarchy and the “other” in the western imagination: honour killings and violence against women kelly amanda train abstract: the purpose of this article is to explore the pedagogical challenges of teaching university-level, feminist, anti-racist courses that examine how eurocentric patriarchal practices of male violence against women within canadian society are normalized and obscured through the concept of honour killing. i argue that the normalization of western structures and practices of patriarchy reproduces racism, sexism, and classism by focusing attention on the “otherness” of nonwestern forms of patriarchy. honour killings are rendered as distinct from other forms of male violence against women on the basis that they are seen solely as a product of non-western cultures and religions and not as part of a spectrum of forms of male violence against women practised by all patriarchal societies in western and non-western countries. keywords: woman abuse, honour killings, male violence, otherness, patriarchy, eurocentrism kelly amanda train phd is contract lecturer in the department of sociology, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on, m5b 2k3. email: ktrain@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 144 over the last 20 years, i have taught a sociology course on family violence at a large university in the heart of downtown toronto, canada. the university’s student body is ethnoculturally and racially diverse, consisting of new and first-generation immigrants from multiple ethnic, racialized minority, and religious backgrounds; a small number of indigenous students; and some white ethnic minority students who are second and third generation canadians, as well as white students of anglo-saxon christian background whose families have lived in canada for three generations or more. yet each time i have taught this course, my male, female, trans, and non-binary students, whether canadian-born or of non-western origin, have often assumed that non-western cultures are “more patriarchal” than western ones. students of all ethnicities and religions (including female muslim students) use the examples of “honour killing” — the murder of a female family member to restore the family’s honour — and other non-western patriarchal practices to “prove” this point, making the claim that the west is less oppressive and abusive of women and therefore less patriarchal than “other” cultures. i am interested in how white canadian students come to see the so-called “ethnic” forms of male violence as culturally specific — as products of culture rather than patriarchy — and do not see themselves or their own experiences of male violence as implicated within this framework. i am also interested in how female students of colour, in particular those of non-western origin and, above all, those from islamic backgrounds, look at the patriarchal practices of islamic cultures as fundamentally different from — “more patriarchal” than — those of the west. until it is pointed out to them, white female students tend not to make the connection between patriarchal practices and the male violence that is part of their everyday experience. instead, western forms of male violence against women are regarded as individual acts, as instances of specific men’s behaviour. violent and aggressive male behaviour towards women is often excused as “rational” or “legitimate”, and women often blame themselves for doing or not doing something that creates a situation that leads to male violence against them (fong, 2010a). michael kaufman (1987) asserted that male violence against women is an expression of male domination. bell hooks (1984) argued that male violence and domination of women is rooted in larger western philosophical beliefs of hierarchal rule and linked to all acts of violence between the powerful and the powerless. she further asserted that men are likelier than women to perpetrate violence as they have greater social, political, economic, and legal power. western patriarchal forms of violence against women may go unnoticed or unrecognized as male violence. verbal, emotional, psychological, and financial violence can be unmarked and invisible, but they are embedded in western cultural forms of male violence that are part of normalized and expected male behaviour through western hegemonic masculinity. often, students do not recognize non-physical forms of male violence as male violence at all. even when they do, it is again seen as the particular behaviour of individual men. in contrast, verbal, emotional, psychological, and financial, as well as physical, violence perpetrated within muslim families and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 145 communities is viewed as primarily a problem of islamic cultures, and not of patriarchy or as occurring on the wider spectrum of male violence against women. as anna korteweg (2014) argued, honour killings become a sign of “immigrant backwardness” rather than being understood as one of the many forms of family violence. this paper is an initial exploration of the research questions: how do we look at specific examples or particularized contexts and recognize that honour killings occur on a spectrum of male violence against women without falling into dominant or hegemonic, orientalist, imperialist, or racist discourses? how can we frame a discussion about cultural specificities of male violence against women without resorting to problematic racist discourses? how do we unpack and deessentialize the concept of culture? how do we understand patriarchy as culture and not as separate from culture? my pedagogical approach is to develop critical knowledges in students’ minds towards family violence, so that they come to understand that difference is not simply a benign fact but a phenomenon that must be understood as an outcome of historical processes of conflict, struggle, and power relations comprising both domination and resistance (mohanty, 1994). the challenge is to get students to recognize that women of colour are not a homogeneous group who have been victimized by their traditions, cultures, and religions, but rather are subjects of various struggles in history that have been shaped by the relationship of cultural imperialism, culture, and patriarchy (mohanty, 1994). the pedagogical challenge also involves bringing students to acknowledge a more nuanced understanding of how violence against women in western societies reflects historical processes of eurocentric patriarchal practices that have shaped male violence against women in the west as systemic rather than individual. i argue that the normalization of western structures and practices of patriarchy reproduces racism, sexism, and classism by focusing attention on the “otherness” of non-western forms of patriarchy, thereby creating an “us” versus “them” dichotomy in which non-western patriarchal practices are considered a product of “culture”, while western forms of patriarchy are considered to be devoid of “culture”. honour killings are rendered as distinct from other forms of male violence against women: they are seen solely as a product of non-western cultures and religions and not as part of the universal spectrum of male violence against women. instead, western legal institutions are seen as promoting a just society that guards against the acceptance of woman abuse. non-western forms of woman abuse are presented as “barbaric cultural practices” of traditional societies in opposition to the so-called neutral and objective or “culture-free” western judicial institutions and laws (korteweg, 2014). this article attempts to unpack and challenge how the western gaze represents the cultural particularization of male violence against women through honour killings as a symbol of muslim otherness. it highlights how discussions of honour killings need to take into account the larger context of male violence against women. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 146 defining male violence against women within the legal systems of western societies, family violence is typically prosecuted under general laws governing violence and abuse (department of justice, n.d.). such prosecutions are usually limited to violence that is easily recognizable and intelligible within a framework of “evidence” and “proof” — in other words, violence that can be verified through its physical manifestations. the collection of statistics regarding family violence in the west revolves around charges laid in cases where there are physical manifestations of abuse or where a physical assault is witnessed by police or other observers. in all patriarchal societies, including the west, non-physical forms of male violence against intimate female partners are pervasive: verbal, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and financial forms of violence, as well as criminal harassment and stalking (canadian women’s foundation, 2018). western women often do not recognize these non-physical forms of male violence against women as violence; instead, they rationalize and internalize them as patriarchal practices. traditionally, the gender socialization of girls and women within all patriarchal societies required women to adhere to the social construction of femininity and be passive and submissive to male authority and men in general. over the last fifty years, this has begun to evolve in the direction of greater equity. nonetheless, the continuing association of women with the private sphere means that women are socially constructed as responsible for not only the physical performance of domestic labour, child care, and elder care, but also for the emotional work of creating and maintaining a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere in the home (armstrong & armstrong, 2010). women internalize these expectations, and therefore feel it is part of their gendered role to quell male aggressions by creating a tranquil home environment (armstrong & armstrong, 2010; fong 2010a). when that fails, they blame themselves, or are blamed by others — extended family members, friends, neighbours, or the public at large (fong, 2010a, 2010b). physical violence against women perpetrated by western men is viewed as the aberrant behaviour of those particular men (fong, 2010b). yet when violence against women, whether physical or non-physical, is perpetrated by muslim men, it is viewed in the western imagination as the product of a violent culture (islam) that embraces “barbaric” cultural practices (korteweg, 2014). thus, honour killings and other forms of shame-related violence are not viewed as part of the spectrum of male violence against women. moreover, male violence against women in immigrant communities or from muslim cultures tends to be overreported in the media, as discussed in the works of abu-lughod (2013), jiwani (2010). and razack (2008); such reports reinforce an “us” and “them” divide where the west is produced as a “civilized” culture based on law and muslim cultures are produced as “barbaric”. the concept of “honour killings” is used both in the west and abroad to reify the racialization and stigmatization of muslim communities as inherently violent and abusive towards women (korteweg, 2014). this binary essentialist construction of culture allows the patriarchal structures embedded in western cultures to be obscured, and canadians to feel morally superior, especially when this image is reinforced through international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 147 the racist notion of canadian institutions and organizations “saving” muslim women from the “barbarism” of their own cultures (razack, 1998). honour-related violence can take complex and multiple forms, ranging from spreading rumours (substantiated or not) about the behaviour of women in the family (e.g., their sexual “impropriety”), to various forms of domestic and family violence, forced marriage, and “honour killings” (korteweg, 2014). honour-related violence operates within a gendered hierarchy of seniority: elders, both men and women, are involved in planning the process of restoring a family’s honour; however, it is usually a younger male who is charged with the duty of performing this violence (korteweg, 2014). the murders of women by male partners or ex-partners in western families are given less attention in the media than honour killings, and are often normalized or treated as aberrations specific to particular males. sometimes, as in honour killings, these murders of western women are planned. for example, the abuser who expects that his wife will try to leave may purchase a weapon with the intention of using it to kill her if she does so. according to the canadian women’s foundation (2018), “rates of [police-reported] violence against women vary widely across canada” (p. 2). at the same time, based on statistical data regarding police-reported woman abuse, there are specific groups of women that tend to be at greater risk of violence, including indigenous women, younger women between the ages of 15 and 24, women with disabilities, and ethnocultural minority women (burczycka, 2018; conroy, 2019; women and gender equality canada, 2020). immigrant women are less likely to report their experiences of physical and sexual violence to the police (canadian women’s foundation, 2018, p. 7). these women tend to be economically dependent on their abusers, to lack the language skills necessary to report the violence, and to lack knowledge of the community services available to help them do so; as well, they may fear revictimization and possible deportation (canadian women’s foundation, 2018, p. 7). for immigrant families, the processes of immigration and settlement create conditions of social and economic upheaval that make woman abuse more likely. it is not unusual for immigrants to lose their accustomed social and economic status in the community as their foreign credentials are no longer recognized after immigration. for some immigrant families, financial survival depends on wives gaining employment outside the family and community. this change in the family dynamic may result in men feeling a loss of patriarchal power and a diminished sense of masculinity, facilitating a rise in domestic violence (korteweg, 2014). because “honour-related” gendered violence is seen as embedded in non-western cultures, the family violence created in immigrant families from the instability of immigration processes becomes confused with it. in western families, when economic downturns and unemployment result in significant increases in domestic violence cases (canadian women’s foundation, 2018, p. 3), including those associated most recently with the covid-19 pandemic (allen & jaffray, 2020; statistics canada, 2020), the violence is often seen as individualized or legitimized and is not recognized as embedded in western patriarchal cultural practices and processes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 148 there were approximately 73,400 cases of woman abuse reported to police in canada in 2016 (burczycka, 2016), and approximately 78,852 cases of police-reported woman abuse in canada in 2018 (burczycka, 2018). in 2009, statistics canada estimated that fewer than 22% of intimate partner abuse cases were reported; the vast majority were not. according to a statistics canada report, the rate of police-reported intimate partner violence fell by 12% between 2009 and 2018 (burczycka, 2018). however, it must be kept in mind that the rate of domestic violence is believed to be much higher than official case counts indicate; in 2014, an estimated 70% of spousal violence was not reported to the police (statistics canada, 2016). in over 80% of cases of spousal abuse and intimate partner violence, women were the victims of men (burczycka, 2018). similarly, in 2014, 7 out of 10 people who experienced family violence were women and girls (statistics canada, 2016). avakame and fyfe (2001, as cited in fong, 2010b) noted that when women of colour report abuse, their experiences are taken less seriously by authorities. the cultural particularization of male violence against women culture is not monolithic or essentialist. as korteweg (2014) stated, “culture gives meaning to practices, including practices of violence” (p. 187). we live our lives through cultural meanings, practices, and processes. all forms of violence are culturally informed, and violence experienced by the dominant groups in society becomes the normative practice to which laws and policies are designed to respond (korteweg, 2014). the west does not view itself as “having culture” but rather as being able to be shaped and reshaped by rational laws, policies, and procedures to solve social problems. in contrast, immigrant cultures are regarded as lacking a rational basis (razack, 1998, 2008). as edward said (1979) wrote, the idea of european superiority situated in opposition to the “backwardness” of eastern societies is reproduced globally through the hegemony of european ideas. thus, the symbol of honour killings is used to reassure western women that western societies have values and rights that can protect them, while eastern societies are shaped by tradition and culture that oppresses women and encourages their abuse (korteweg, 2014). in the case of honour-related violence, the family’s honour is embodied in the women who are the property of the family; the honour belongs to both the men and the women of the family. honour is really about a system of morality whereby women’s behaviour symbolizes the boundaries of what is acceptable and the social reputation of the family, which are rooted in patriarchal gendered power relations (korteweg, 2014). while westerners tend to associate honour-related violence with non-western cultures, they find other explanations for patriarchal violence in their own society. anna korteweg (2014) argued that “while ‘honour’ might no longer be a justification for violence against women in western countries, ‘passion’ is still very much alive as a cultural explanation” (p. 189). for example, in rape and sexual assault cases, defence counsel and the media often cite the woman’s behaviour — what she was wearing, or what she was doing — as the basis for legitimizing patriarchal violence (korteweg, 2014). incidents of western patriarchal forms of gendered violence that are viewed as crimes of “passion” are seen as individualized, and often involve victim-blaming in the process of normalizing and rationalizing western cultural practices of male violence against women (korteweg, 2014; see also johnson & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 149 dawson, 2011). the concept of “honour-related violence” serves to justify seeing gendered violence and femicide as inherent to non-western cultures while obscuring western cultural practices of gendered violence. discussions about honour killings that reinforce the cultural particularization of male violence and woman abuse obscure how honour killings are part of the spectrum of male violence against women. honour killing, dowry murder, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation are all used in the western imagination to demarcate so-called “traditional” or non-western societies from western societies. as sherene razack (1998) argued, such discourse and imagery presents the “problem” as islam. central to this racist discourse has been what razack (2008) referred to as “the imperilled muslim woman”, “the barbaric muslim man”, and “civilized” western society; in the western imagination, the muslim woman is a passive, vulnerable object and the target of violence perpetrated by the barbaric and savage muslim man. according to this discourse, the muslim woman requires saving from her ethnic and backward culture by civilized western society since she is viewed as vulnerable and prone to experiencing violence (abu-lughod, 2013). the image of the veil, especially, has come to symbolize in the western imagination the “helpless”, “passive”, and “oppressed” muslim woman (jiwani, 2010; razack, 1998). both jiwani (2010) and razack (1998) pointed out that the images of the veil and the niqab not only can be used to promote western superiority, but also operate as symbols to remind western women that they are less oppressed than their eastern counterparts. these images are also used to mask western patriarchal forms of woman abuse, domestic violence, and the killings that sometimes result, and to obscure how “honour killings” are part of the spectrum of male violence against women that is embedded in all patriarchal cultures, western and eastern. for example, i have often encountered the claim from western students that, although western women are subject to physical and sexual violence in relationships, it is usually specific to a particular man, and not due either to all western men or to patriarchy in western culture. western female students often argue that they are less oppressed than their non-western peers and that western society is less patriarchal because they are free to choose what to wear and how to express themselves and their sexuality through their clothing and their actions. in return, i will ask the class: what happens when western women express their sexuality and wear “revealing” clothes? what happens when western women act in ways that express their sexuality? are verbal shaming, belittling, name-calling, rape, physical assault, and honour killings not all part of the same spectrum of male violence against women? when western women challenge western forms of hegemonic masculinity by violating so-called “acceptable” forms of female modesty and sexuality in these ways, are they not subject to male violence in diverse ways? racist discourses and imagery surrounding western superiority also cannot help but influence islamic female students to regard their own lived experiences within their families and communities as fundamentally different, because of their islamic culture, from those of their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 150 western counterparts. at the same time, the image of the west as being less oppressive of women is also absorbed by muslim students. in one of my classes recently, a female muslim student argued that, under islamic law, the role of the husband is to be the protector and authority in the household, while the role of the wife is to be the homemaker, obedient to her husband. the student further argued that under these principles of sharia law, the husband legally has the right to beat his wife for transgressions of his authority, and to participate in killings of female relatives for damaging the honour of the family. in the student’s mind, this was an example of how male violence against women is intrinsic to islamic culture. yet there are multiple interpretations of the quran and sharia law that clearly argue that husbands do not have the right to beat or kill their wives (ahmed, 1992). my interest is in getting the students to think about how male violence against women is not specific to a particular religious or ethnic cultural group, but rather is differentially expressed in multiple ways in all patriarchal cultures, including the west, where it is normalized, rationalized, and obscured. i responded to the female muslim student’s argument by questioning the class about gender roles in the west. what is the role of husbands, male intimate partners, and male family members in western families? what about the role of wives? i also asked the class about western patriarchal marriage traditions, such as giving away the bride and taking the husband’s last name, and what these traditions symbolize in terms of male ownership of women in the family. i asked my class about what western men do when they feel that they have been undermined or had their authority challenged by their female partner, and whether western women are allowed to react the same way towards their male partners in the same circumstances. do traditional attitudes that continue to prevail in western cultures assume that males have sole total control and authority over the family finances even when their female partners contribute significantly to the family economically? although such conservative assumptions remain, these family dynamics are gradually evolving towards greater gender equality. in asking these questions, as well as many others, i used the occasion as a pedagogical moment to draw the class’s attention to how western patriarchal practices are normalized and obscured, while “other” non-western patriarchal practices are viewed as barbaric and violent. after all, the concept of “honour” is based on patriarchal cultural productions of women’s expected modesty, morality, and monogamy that are specific to a particular community, yet these productions are used to police and regulate women’s bodies, sexuality, and behaviour in all patriarchal communities everywhere. even so, eurocentric ideology is so powerful that it is able to convince western and non-western women that western patriarchal forms of violence simply do not exist. female muslim students in my class have often accepted eurocentric ideas that the west is “less oppressive” of women, demonstrating both the power of eurocentric discourses and western narratives, and the influence of their own lived experiences within their families and communities. as sherene razack pointed out to me (personal communication, september 21, 2013), female students from islamic cultures see their experiences of patriarchy as culturally specific to muslim families and communities, since that is their reality. they live their experiences of male violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 151 against women through their experiences of being muslim and through non-western patriarchal cultural practices. it is important to note that muslim women and girls in canada live their everyday lives negotiating their identities and experiences between canadian society and their immigrant families and communities. perhaps the racist discourses and images surrounding muslim women are intended to “deculturalize” (razack, 2008) and “civilize” them through forcible assimilation by the adoption of western clothing and forgoing adherence to the muslim faith and religious practices. in the western imagination, muslim women can be “saved” from their patriarchal and violent islamic cultures through assimilation into western society and extracting themselves entirely from islamic culture (razack, 2008). even if muslim women did elect to live outside their communities, as this concept requires, they would remain subject to racist, patriarchal, state practices. after all, western states often fail to protect western women from abuse, domestic violence, and the killing that sometimes results. a muslim women who leaves her community exposes herself to greater danger from racist, sexist, state practices and policies, and cannot turn to her family and community for safety, security, and refuge from society at large. the production of muslim men and women as “uncivilized”, albeit in different gendered forms and ways, requires the suppression of the western colonial past. european peoples in the western colonial past inflicted sustained violence on the original inhabitants of the colonized lands. in the canadian context, first nations populations bore the brunt of this violence, including their decimation from exposure to european diseases, forcible conversion to christianity, residential schooling, impoverishment, and many other colonial and state policies of violence, some of which continue to the present day (dyck, 1997; frideres, 2016; stephenson, 1999). european colonial violence was also imposed on societies throughout the east. by erasing the western (or canadian) colonial past, and rewriting western (or canadian) history, an image is created of europeans “saving” colonized “savage” and “barbaric” peoples by bringing “civilization” to them (lawrence, 2002; stephenson, 1999). against this backdrop, it is easy for the west to view male violence against women as a specifically non-western phenomenon. zine (2012) wrote that the western media discursively produces all male violence against women within islamic families as “honour killings”. for example, two cases in canada — the murder of aqsa parvez and the multiple murders of women in the shafia family — were reported in the western media as “honour killings”1. yet cases in which western forms of woman abuse end in murder are viewed, not as manifestations of western patriarchal culture, but as the individualized acts of particular men. rather than understanding both the parvez and shafia family cases as examples of male violence against women in general, the media focused on the idea that 1aqsa parvez was killed in december 2007 at the age of 16 by her father, reportedly for refusing to wear the hijab (cbc news, 2010; mitchell & javed, 2010). the first wife and three daughters of the shafia family were killed by the husband/father, son, and second wife for wearing western dress and dating (bbc news, 2018; national post, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 152 the women were victims of islam and their racialized minority, ethnic culture. as one news report stated of the shafia case: “the judge said the murders were committed in the name of a ‘notion of honour that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society’ ” (harris, 2019, para. 6). zine (2012) argued that, in the western imagination, islamic culture bears even more responsibility for the deaths of these women than the family members who carried out the crimes. by emphasizing islamic culture, media accounts concealed the connections between the parvez and shafia family cases and western patriarchal practices of male violence against women. the western imagination sees islam and its traditional cultural practices, not patriarchy, as responsible for these deaths. as abu-lughod (2013) wrote, “honour killings” operate in the western imagination as a comforting fantasy that empowers the west and reaffirms the belief in western superiority for those who subscribe to it. she also pointed out that in some contexts, the category of “honour killings” allows a westernized elite in some muslim communities to differentiate themselves from their working class and poor counterparts in order to access new opportunities in society and gain upward social mobility. the reality is that male violence against women is normalized and ubiquitous in all patriarchal societies regardless of religion, ethnicity, or culture. cultures that emphasize “honour” do not have a monopoly on such violence (abu-lughod, 2013). western patriarchal cultures normalize male ownership of women and their bodies, and legitimize the use of violence against women who “dishonour” them by challenging their decisions, giving attention to another male, or failing to be monogamous, even in the event of rape (fong, 2010a, fong, 2010b, johnson & dawson, 2011). as sherene razack (2008) noted, the abuse and killing of muslim women for suspected or actual “immoral” behaviour — marital infidelity, demanding a divorce, flirting, receiving phone calls from men, failing to serve a meal on time, or “allowing” herself to be raped — is viewed in the western imagination as a type of crime rooted in the “backward” religious and cultural practices of islam. razack (1998) had previously argued that such crimes are no different from the abuse and killing of western women that stem from western patriarchal cultural practices of violence against women in intimate partner relationships, and other domestic violence. i would argue that the regulation of women’s bodies, sexuality, morality, monogamy, and modesty is central to patriarchal societies everywhere, across both western and non-western cultures. abu-lughod (2013) pointed out that families and communities in the east and west carry out the policing of women’s bodies in different ways. it is a misunderstanding to view a particular type of male violence against women as specific to some communities only, and as due to culture; the complementary misunderstanding is to view male violence in other communities, most notably in the west, as a product of individual actions only, unrelated to cultural meanings or practices (abu-lughod, 2013). in the classroom context, my attempts to apply and explain a more nuanced understanding of male violence against women often tend to be thwarted by systemic eurocentrism and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 153 culturalized racism of the west. white female students remain convinced that their experiences of white male violence are specific to particular white men. both white students and students of colour, on the other hand, remain convinced that violence in muslim families is specific and inherent to muslim culture. in my approach to teaching family violence, i aim to develop critical knowledges that are more than an acknowledgement of and engagement in notions of difference. rather, students must come to understand difference in a more complex manner, as a site of struggle, conflict, and resistance located in asymmetrical historical power hierarchies of western patriarchal domination and non-western resistance (mohanty, 1994). to develop this approach, it is necessary that non-western voices not be reduced to a single authoritative voice purported to speak for all non-western women. at the same time, it is necessary to convey that western and non-western women share historical spaces and exist in asymmetrical power relations that shape their lives in multiple interconnected ways (mohanty, 1994). children, youth, and honour-related violence according to the 2014 general social survey in canada, one third of canadians aged 15 and over — about 10 million people — reported experiencing one or more forms of child abuse in their lifetimes, including physical or sexual abuse by an adult or witnessing violence by one parent or guardian against another adult in the home before age 15 (burczycka & conroy, 2017). although for both western, canadian-born children and youth and for non-western, immigrant children and youth exposure to family violence is common, the practices implemented to help them in these situations reflect western cultural norms only. western institutions such as schools, social services, settlement offices, and shelters do not necessarily understand the particularities of “honour-related” gendered violence. for instance, social workers are taught to use particular practices for dealing with family violence between parents and daughters, practices that are embedded within western cultural norms of individual autonomy and that may be misinterpreted by immigrant parents. calling a father to a meeting at the school to question him about why he is threatening his daughter may create a situation where the honour of the family is perceived as damaged, leading to a heightened risk of violence (korteweg, 2014). offering an immigrant woman or female youth space in a women’s shelter may inadvertently heighten her sense that she has damaged the family honour, or that she can never return home because her family considers that she has violated their honour (korteweg, 2014). these cases demonstrate that institutional practices and policies for dealing with male violence against women, including “honour-related” violence, do not lend themselves to a one-size-fits-all approach. rather, such practices and policies need to be situated within the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which the violence occurs. the policies that do exist are inevitably imbued with western cultural norms and western family forms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 154 conclusion culture is a dynamic process, constantly shifting and transforming. culture is how we make sense of the world: we understand our lived experiences through our culture. violence against women is structural, institutional, and systemic. it is embedded in all patriarchal cultures and religions. we understand and experience our lived realities of violence against women through the particular forms and practices of our cultures. these structures of violence are shaped by patriarchy, as well as by class, gender, poverty, immigration status, and state processes, together with family, community, and religious structures. when i teach classes on family violence, i remind students that all patriarchal cultures include elements that endorse and allow for male violence against women. there is no patriarchal culture that is not oppressive of women. different patriarchal cultures simply have different forms and ways in which male violence against women is practised, legitimized, rationalized, and allowed. regardless, all of these forms end with the abuse and, too often, the killing of women. i also remind students that, in the western imagination, non-western women are routinely depicted in racist and sexist ways. these images of non-western women are produced through the western media to symbolize the “helplessness” and “inferiority” of non-western women and the “backwardness” of their non-western cultures (abu-lughod, 2013; razack, 2008; see also the western media coverage of the parvez and shafia cases such as mitchell & javed, 2010; cbc news, 2010; bbc news, 2018; national post, 2018). these images simultaneously remind western women that they are “less oppressed” than their eastern counterparts and distract them from the fact that woman abuse and domestic violence are part of everyday experience for many. such images dehumanize and disempower non-western women by portraying them as helpless, vulnerable, and in need of “saving” by western feminists. when western feminists deny agency to non-western women, they risk reoppressing and revictimizing those women and reproducing them as objects of racist, sexist discourse. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 143–157 155 references abu-lughod, l. 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(2012). unsettling the nation: gender, race, and muslim cultural politics in canada. in j. zine (ed.), islam in the hinterlands: muslim cultural politics in canada (ch.1). university of british columbia press. stepping up: a peer-to-peer dating violence prevention project on a post-secondary campus international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 100 stepping up: a peer-to-peer dating violence prevention project on a post-secondary campus d. gaye warthe, patricia kostouros, cathy carter-snell, and leslie m. tutty abstract: the purpose of the stepping up project was to develop, implement, and evaluate a peer-facilitated dating violence prevention program for post-secondary students. phase i of the program focused on recruiting and training student peer facilitators, adapting the curriculum for a post-secondary population, developing the evaluation measures, ethics clearance, and establishing community partners and an advisory committee. phase ii included recruiting participants, implementing stepping up and completing pre, post, and follow-up measures. to consolidate learning the students then completed prevention projects and presented them to the university campus community. repeated evaluations showed that students had increased knowledge about dating violence and resources and these changes persisted over time. use of peers as facilitators and community partner involvement contributed to success. challenges included scheduling the weekend, the time commitment for facilitators and participants, and project resources. stepping up is compatible with an academic setting with benefits for both the students and the institution. keywords: dating violence, post-secondary students, prevention, education, peer training acknowledgements: this particular project was funded through the centre for criminology and justice research (ccjr) and the united way of calgary and area. d. gaye warthe, msw, ph.d., (the corresponding author) is an associate professor and chair of the department of social work and disability studies at mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary, alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. e-mail: gwarthe@mtroyal.ca patricia kostouros, ph.d. is an associate professor, department of child and youth studies at mount royal university. e-mail: pkostouros@mtroyal.ca cathy carter-snell, rn, ph.d. is an associate professor, department of advanced specialties in health at mount royal university. e-mail: ccartersnell@mtroyal.ca leslie m. tutty, ph.d. is a professor with the faculty of social work at the university of calgary, 2500 university drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2n 1n4. e-mail: tutty@ucalgary.ca mailto:gwarthe@mtroyal.ca mailto:pkostouros@mtroyal.ca mailto:ccartersnell@mtroyal.ca mailto:tutty@ucalgary.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 101 the stepping up project was created as a pilot peer-facilitated dating violence prevention program for post-secondary students at a western canadian university. warthe and tutty’s (2008, 2010) research has addressed the importance of student-to-student interaction since young people tend to approach their peers when in need of assistance. peers who understand the dynamics of dating violence can make appropriate referrals, thereby intervening to reduce dating violence in people’s lives, and on their campuses. the following examples are based on true incidents related to post-secondary students who experienced dating violence or had a connection to the dating violence project described in this article. the names and facts have been altered by using pseudonyms and changing other identifying information such as age and gender. these examples serve to illustrate the nature of dating violence on post-secondary campuses and the importance of peer-facilitated programs. tracey is a 20-something student peripherally involved with the university student association. tracey had been approached by a fellow student, jennifer, who was aware that tracey knew of resources for students in need. jennifer had bruises on her arms and face and explained that her boyfriend, who was also the son of her landlord, had physically abused her. tracey immediately referred jennifer to the campus resources and followed up with her over the next few days. jennifer is safe, in a new residence, and is thankful that someone knew what she needed. tracey felt confident that she had intervened appropriately because she had seen the community prevention projects created by participants in the stepping up program. these projects were part of a campus awareness campaign in relation to dating violence prevention and intervention delivered by participants and peer-facilitators of stepping up. tracey had spoken with peer-facilitators about the project, during the campaign, and had gained awareness about the appropriate resources, on campus and off, for dating violence intervention. david, a 20-something young man and a peer-facilitator in the stepping up project, was approached by a professor seeking to learn more about the project. david’s professor was aware of the statistics having seen a play that the peer-facilitators had performed for faculty members. david’s professor wondered how to intervene when students showed signs of intimate partner violence, especially being aware of the precariousness of dual relationships between faculty and students on post-secondary campuses. he supported the rationale of having students talk with their peers about dating relationship problems. dating violence consists of the application of force or control by at least one member of an unmarried or non-common-law couple, and may include emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, or sexual forms of coercion. sexual assault is any non-consensual contact of a sexual nature. sexual abuse is repetitive sexual assault (warthe & tutty, 2009). north american studies reflect that as many as 76% of women and 85% of men attending post-secondary institutions experienced physical, psychological, or sexual violence in romantic or dating relationships (amar & gennaro, 2005; forbes & adams-curtis, 2001; simonelli, mullis, elliott, & pierce, 2002; smith, white, & holland, 2003). in january of 2008, and again in 2010 at this particular western canadian university, warthe and tutty (2008, 2010) added questions on dating violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 102 to the national college health assessment survey (ncha), that were answered by a randomly selected sample of students. in both 2008 and 2010, approximately one in three undergraduate students at this specific campus had experienced some form of dating violence within the 12 months preceding the survey: 9% of women and 4.8% of men in 2008. in 2010, 11% of women and 6% of men had been stalked and 14% of women and 10% of men disclosed having been emotionally abused in the previous 12 months. the consequences of dating violence can be life changing and even fatal (campbell et al., 2003). studies specific to dating violence recognized the consequences of emotional, physical, and sexual violence, and noted decreasing academic performance or career achievement, substance use, unhealthy weight control behaviours, risky sexual behaviours, mental health disorders, pregnancy, chronic health diseases, post-traumatic stress, suicidal ideation, and the risk of violence in future relationships (amar, 2007; amar & gennaro, 2005; danis & anderson, 2008; mcfarlane et al., 2005; silverman, raj, mucci, & hathway, 2001; straus, 2004; straus & savage, 2005; walton-moss et al., 2003; warthe & tutty, 2009). a study at this particular university showed that female students having recent experiences of violence were more likely to disclose depression, anxiety disorder, substance abuse problems, and at least one attempted suicide within the same period (warthe & tutty, 2009). surveys completed at this campus showed that students who disclosed dating violence were also at greater risk of sexual violence including sexual touching, attempted penetration (i.e., vaginal, oral, and/or anal), and sexual penetration against their will (warthe & tutty, 2009, 2010). post-secondary students are at particular risk of dating violence for a number of reasons. given that one of the developmental tasks at this age is to find a life partner (arnett, 2004; erikson, 1985), there is more potential for pressure to be in a relationship and a greater likelihood of more intimate relationships than in high school populations. in addition, johnson (2006) reported that adolescents and young adults are in the age group likely to experience the highest rates of violence and the most serious forms of violence including sexual assault, stalking, serious spousal assault, and spousal homicide in intimate partner relationships. while there is much to say about the theoretical underpinnings related to the prevalence of such rates, the focus of this article is on the development and implementation of a dating violence prevention program for a post-secondary campus. the prevalence and consequences of dating violence among post-secondary students highlighted the urgent need to develop and implement dating violence prevention initiatives appropriate to this age group. in spite of overwhelming evidence that prevention programs are necessary, evaluated dating violence prevention programs for post-secondary students are largely absent from the literature (danis & anderson, 2008; tutty et al., 2005). purpose the stepping up project focused on implementing and evaluating a peer-facilitated program to prevent and reduce the incidence of dating violence among post-secondary students at this particular western canadian university. the key research questions were related to two areas: (a) were there changes in attitudes and behaviours, post-program? (b) how effective was the program? based on limited data and the researchers’ experiences and knowledge in the area international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 103 of intimate partner violence, three main research questions were developed specific to the stepping up program: 1. are there changes in students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours or behaviour intent regarding dating violence and resources available? 2. what factors affected the students’ satisfaction? 3. what aspects of the program require modification? despite the significant risks and consequences of dating violence suggested previously, there is a notable gap in the resources and knowledge related to dating violence among post-secondary students (warthe & tutty, 2008). existing dating violence prevention programs that have been evaluated are for younger populations and do not include content related to sexual violence aimed at a post-secondary population. the need for dating violence prevention in the post-secondary setting is further heightened by the lack of availability of such programming for junior and senior high school students as noted in one canadian study (warthe, hoffart, & cooper, 2004). post-secondary students are entering into university settings with limited knowledge about dating violence. governmental and community initiatives on family violence and bullying have addressed either couples living together (e.g., spousal abuse, domestic violence), or acts of bullying or relational aggression between children or teens. there is a need for a primary prevention program specific to young adults (warthe et al., 2004). the goal of primary prevention is to stop violence before it occurs. the questions of when and with what population to insert prevention programs are central to prevention efforts. it may be possible to prevent, and potentially drastically reduce, the incident rate of violence in future and long-term relationships, as well as to mitigate the consequences from prior abuse if youth and young adult relationship violence is addressed (wolfe et al., 2003). according to warthe (2011) the links between family violence and dating violence highlights the need to focus prevention efforts on adolescents and emerging adults as they commence dating relationships. it presents an effective and efficient approach to preventing future intimate relationship violence. however, it is important to note that based on the experience of adolescent prevention programs, brief one-time information sessions are not likely to change attitudes that support violence and prevent violent behaviour over the long term (tutty & bradshaw, 2003; tutty et al., 2005). prevention activities that are part of a continuum provide for the repetition of information using diverse formats, in different contexts, reducing the likelihood of “erosion of knowledge” (legge, josephson, hicks, & kepron, 2004, p. 75). given the argument presented above related to the need for programs for post-secondary students at the dating stage, this particular project, stepping up, was unique as a dating violence prevention program with the potential to prevent abuse by addressing both risk and resiliency factors. the project had a strong evaluative component and involved students not only as participants, but also as peer-facilitators and as advising partners actively addressing curriculum development and evaluation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 104 project design the stepping up project is a prospective longitudinal study, with repeated measures of behaviours, knowledge, and attitudes toward dating violence before and after participation in a dating violence prevention project. stepping up is based on making waves/vague par vague (making waves), developed in new brunswick in 1995 for high school students and was developed in collaboration with women’s shelter programs in new brunswick. those involved in the new brunswick women’s shelters had a desire to impact the youth of their community in order to decrease violence at a younger age (tutty, 2010). making waves is supported by canada’s department of justice (department of justice, 2003) and has been identified as producing long-term changes in participants’ attitudes and experiences related to dating violence (cameron et al., 2007; tutty et al., 2005; tutty, 2010). making waves comprises an interactive weekend workshop with a drama presentation and discussion groups, followed by completion of a community violence prevention project related to dating violence in the months following the weekend program. the weekend workshop content addressed healthy relationships, forms of dating violence, gender stereotypes, media influences, issues of power and control, and skill development (cameron et al., 2007). the making waves violence prevention project is conducted in the participant’s community and is aimed at supporting attitude and behaviour change and increasing awareness of violence in the community. particular strengths of the program, in addition to attitude and behaviour changes, include peer facilitation and follow-up projects by participants. making wave follows a particular model for selection and training of peer-facilitators not described in this article, since we were unable to follow the same precise model for this project. peer facilitation, combined with community support, is a key factor in prevention especially if the materials are made relevant to the participants’ context (casey & lindhorst, 2009). the additional expectation of a community project may help students integrate and consolidate learning in addition to benefiting the larger community. designed for a high school population with a lack of information on sexual violence limited the possibility of choosing the making waves program for post-secondary students (tutty, 2010). the social-ecological model of prevention was chosen as a guiding framework for this project leading to curriculum modifications and structure (centre for disease control, 2007). this model is used by both the world health organization and the centre for disease control as an effective method by which to address primary prevention. the stepping up project addressed the four components of the ecological model: individual, relationship, community, and society. examples of these components as applied to a dating violence prevention curriculum include the following: 1. individual – vulnerability (e.g., self-esteem, gender, incapacitation with drugs/alcohol), self-protective behaviours, risks; 2. relationships – healthy relationships, power and control, conflict resolution; 3. community – sources for seeking help, role of bystander or peers (i.e., social responsibility); and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 105 4. society – the role of myths (e.g., relationships or sexual assaults) and gender stereotypes (e.g., masculinity). these components were also incorporated at a program delivery level. the program was aimed at facilitating changes in individuals and their relationships. the community was actively involved, with a number of advisory members and project partners. their involvement demonstrated the commitment of the university and the external community to the prevention of dating violence and the willingness to seek social change. development of a critical mass of people with awareness and capacity related to dating violence prevention, coupled with the use of peer group facilitators, has the potential to effect wider social change. the stepping up project was supported by other ongoing and planned initiatives that were aimed at promoting social change. this included the biannual survey of students at this western canadian campus on the incidence and prevalence of dating violence, “turn off the violence” activities each november, and the development of credit curriculum on violence and violence prevention through the lifespan. there are also long-term opportunities for the development of screening protocols for counselling and health services and workplace policies supporting students, staff, and faculty dealing with current issues of domestic violence. all of these activities contribute to social change and to a culture that supports such violence prevention initiatives as stepping up. external community involvement was strong as well. approximately seven external agencies, (in addition to internal campus supports), became involved in the project, either as advisory members or as partners. partners were more actively involved by participating as peerfacilitator trainers and content experts for the development of module content and for peer support during the weekend delivery. community partners took an active role in supporting the peer-facilitators, as well as providing access to their services if required by students. advisory members were invited to provide feedback early in the project and assisted the researchers in linking the materials being delivered to what was being expressed in the community with respect to needed prevention and intervention. both partners and advisory committee members represented a range of dating violence and sexual assault services and expertise both within the campus and the broader community, and included student representatives. this project was divided into three phases: development, implementation and evaluation, and revision. phase i: development the development phase of the stepping up project included recruitment and training of 16 peer-facilitators, the development of curriculum and evaluation measures, and engagement of the advisory committee and community partners (described later in this article). prospective peer-facilitators were invited to one of several information meetings hosted by the researchers. to increase the likelihood that peer-facilitators would have the skills and attitudes consistent with the project, faculty were asked to identify and refer appropriate students to the information meetings. during the initial meeting, interested students were asked to complete an application indicating availability on pre-scheduled dates, and interest in dating violence. as noted, 16 students declared an interest in the role and their availability on the designated training dates and one student indicated interest in assisting with the play. students were predominantly from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 106 social work and child and youth studies programs, in addition to single members from nursing, sociology, psychology, theatre, and open studies. curriculum development and training of the peer-facilitators occurred simultaneously and reflected a process orientation. using the module categories utilized by making waves, with an additional module on sexual relationships, students were asked to brainstorm what topics or issues might be included in the module. from the expansive lists that were developed, students identified the top two or three issues relevant for post-secondary participants. peer-facilitators, community partners, and researchers all participated in this process with the partners and researchers in the role of consultants. this first training exercise required six hours and included discussions on myths, types of abuse, gender roles, communication barriers, safety, consent, attribution of responsibility, and resources. this session was facilitated by the researchers and included both small (3 to 4) and large (16 to 20) group discussions. additional training included a full day with the national coordinator for making waves/vague par vague (making waves) from partners for youth inc., who demonstrated activities and exercises used in making waves and time spent with a forensic nurse who developed a peer-facilitated initiative in new orleans called girls not gone wild. both of these sessions included opportunities for the peer-facilitators to express their ideas and thoughts on what had been presented and to ask questions of the consultants. modules were developed based on the issues and priorities identified by the peer-facilitators in the training. the evaluation framework and measures were developed and funding was solicited for phase ii of the project. the dating relationship scale (warthe, 2011) and the knowledge attitude, and behavioural intentions (kabbi) (adapted from the making waves project), and the module evaluation survey comprised the measures used in the project. community members were asked to participate in the project through the advisory committee and were given an early opportunity to provide input on the model and modules being developed. phase ii: implementation and evaluation this pilot was designed to accommodate a total of 60 undergraduate students with an even division of women and men. this number was based on the number used consistently in the making waves program. a group of 60 provides 15 participants in each of the concurrently run modules. students 18 years of age and older were eligible for inclusion in the pilot project. recruitment of student participants began as soon as ethical clearance was obtained from the university’s human research ethic board (hreb), in december 2010. information on the stepping up project and opportunities to participate were provided to all students at this campus using existing communication strategies such as the intranet, through program advisors, student societies (e.g., sociology student society, psychology student society) and through the campus student association. the peer-facilitators also took an active role in encouraging their peers to participate. the majority of the students attending the pilot were from programs and faculties that actively supported the stepping up project. for some students, such as those from social work international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 107 and child and youth care counselling, rewards were offered for attendance; specifically, hours spent on the project counted towards training and/or credit for volunteer activities. the stepping up project held its first pilot prevention weekend january 28 to 30, 2011. as with the making waves program, the weekend included a drama presentation on the friday evening, a full day of workshops (modules) on the saturday, and a half day on sunday to begin the planning process for community prevention projects. participants, with the support of the assigned peer-facilitators, completed the community prevention projects in april when they were displayed to the campus community. a variety of community projects consisted of such items as brochures, games, or t-shirts. each student had a nominal budget to spend, which assisted in the completion of the project, and several students formed groups that allowed their funds to go further and assist in accountability for completion. the eight-month follow-up evaluation was completed in october 2011 and early results have been tabulated. phase iii: revision as this article was in preparation, phase iii was underway and will incorporate the feedback provided by community partners, peer-facilitators, and the researchers’ own understanding of needed changes. completion of phase iii of this project is expected in the fall of 2012. results initial registration for the stepping up weekend was 50 undergraduate students at the western canadian university campus. however, competing demands and a severe snowstorm resulted in decreased participation. stepping up participants were asked to complete measures prior to participation in the prevention weekend, january 28 to 30, 2011. each respondent developed their own unique identifier to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. respondents completed the dating relationship scale (warthe, 2011), and the kabbi. participants, who had not completed the measures online prior to the weekend, completed them at registration. demographics. in total, 30 students completed all, or part, of the dating relationship scales. respondents were predominantly women (66.7%), single (70%), aged 19 to 57 years (43% less than 24 years; 33% 25 to 29 years), and 36% identified as belonging to diverse communities (63% white). almost half of all respondents had experienced at least one type of abuse or violence in one or more previous relationships with 48% reporting being the victim of verbal and emotional abuse, 33% physical abuse, and 30% sexual abuse. when asked about experiences of witnessing or being the recipient of abuse as a child or adolescent in their home, 48% indicated that they had witnessed violence between adults as children. module evaluations. participants were asked to complete evaluations after each of four modules. the four modules were rated on five-point scales with very positive results (table 1). module ratings range from 4.52 to 4.71. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 108 table 1. module evaluations in the module evaluations, participants indicated that they liked: the opportunity to talk with others, the peer-facilitators, videos that were used in the modules, learning about resources, and the role-plays. participants recommended more time for each module (without increasing the length of the weekend), more discussion, less role-playing, different videos, and the need for concrete tools. knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour/behaviour intent (kabbi). participants completed the kabbi prior to and immediately following the prevention weekend. among those who completed both the pre and post kabbi (n = 11), mean scores improved for knowledge in all key areas, with large effect sizes particularly for knowledge of community domestic violence resources, sexual assault resources, knowing how to intervene, and personal boundaries (table 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 109 table 2. kabbi pre and post knowledge scores the kabbi was repeated at a point eight months following the stepping up prevention weekend and the increases in knowledge that were noted immediately following the stepping up prevention weekend were sustained up to the eight-month interval on almost all parameters. the largest differences between the period before the workshop and eight-month interval include the warning signs of abuse, interventions to reduce dating violence, healthy versus unhealthy sexual relationships, how to intervene if one witnesses or learns of dating violence, personal strategies to reduce dating violence, community resources to assist with dating violence, and community resources to assist with sexual violence (table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 110 table 3. kabbi pre, immediate post, and eight-month knowledge scores there were strong changes in almost all areas of knowledge after the workshop and related to key areas of dating violence: healthy relationships; sexual relationships; gender and media stereotypes; and boundaries and communication. these changes persisted across the eightmonth period. levels of agreement/disagreement to specific measures within each of these modules supported the awareness and attitude changes, although in many instances these were not complete changes from disagreement to agreement or vice versa. rather, these changes indicated level of intensity within the same category. limitations. a key limitation to the data analysis and findings was only being able to obtain nine respondents at the eight-month follow-up. students were sent an e-mail reminding them of the survey and where it was located on-line. this low response rate at eight months could reflect bias in that, potentially, only those who experienced changes after the weekend event responded to the questionnaire. the magnitude and direction of the change, however, was similar to the immediate post measures in which we had 15 respondents, suggesting we may see similar results. paired t-tests were not conducted as there were only nine respondents. another limitation is the self-selection of the participants. a number of these students had been victims of dating violence in some form, as evidenced by disclosures during the workshop. although we observed increases in knowledge, the students may have had sufficient pre-existing knowledge such that significant changes in direction were not to be expected with respect to the questions related to knowledge and attitudes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 111 peer-facilitator feedback to answer the research question, “what aspects of the program require modification?” we turned to the peer-facilitators for feedback; in addition, we maintained our own records as researchers. the researcher records were our own considerations of the process: what we thought worked or did not work, and our own challenges and strengths that we brought to the process. while both researchers and peer-facilitators claimed overall and general satisfaction with the program, there were particular aspects that require modification. feedback from peer-facilitators was gathered during a focus group meeting at which 10 of the 15 facilitators were present. during this focus group peer-facilitators spoke about both positive and challenging aspects of the stepping up project. in general, these facilitators experienced a great deal of personal fulfilment and gratification from having been involved with the project. for example, one particular facilitator stated, “it was an amazing experience and worth all the hard work”. indeed, it was hard work for all involved, therefore, the feedback gathered will assist with future planning. the general themes for modification relate to time, practice, and preparation. time. the extent of time commitment is highly relevant to the post-secondary students. this concern about time related to both the peer-facilitators and the participants in the weekend program and the follow-up action plans. the peer-facilitators were concerned that they did not have enough time to adequately prepare the module activities, as one noted, “we spent a lot of time before we knew which module we were working on and then less time after we knew which module we were working on”. in other words, we spent a significant amount of time up front generating the content for the entire program, but less time on individual module and activity development. these peer-facilitators also expressed the challenge that all group facilitators face, that being the issue of time as it relates to group processes. in particular, several peer-facilitators noted the lack of time during the module delivery for group process. for example, said one, “how can we get a really important message across in this amount of time? i don’t think there was enough attention paid to how these people were going to process this information; to have enough time that they need to talk about how that information impacted them”. this sense that time was slipping away led to some to wonder about their skills and knowledge of group facilitation. they noted that the confidence the researchers had in their ability to lead a group assisted with their self-confidence: “i think the encouragement and continued e-mail encouragement and confidence in us was huge, because i don’t think we would have done what we did without that confidence in us”. we recognized early in the project that if we were to have a successful group we needed to take some responsibility as the leaders in maintaining the momentum, as well as boosting their self-belief as competent facilitators. further in this regard, the researchers thought that adequate time had been set aside for program development, which involved the inclusion of the national coordinator of making waves. students found their time with the coordinator to be invaluable and expressed appreciation for her knowledge and assistance, “j___ being there really helped, we could picture international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 112 what it could look like and get all the information ready to go”. while time had been dedicated to content development and module activities, it became clear that the peer-facilitators needed significantly more time for developing their individual modules. therefore, peers continued to meet at times that were convenient to their particular groups to complete the module development activities. as researchers, we each connected to different groups to assist with activities and to discuss issues of time as it related to the group process. we understood that these students were invested in the stepping up project, however we thought it was important to act as a link to create some accountability to the project since students could easily become weighed down by other priorities. based on this feedback and our own reflections about how the project unfolded, we agreed that, in order to assist with module development and activity planning, more full-group sessions were needed. for example, when the making waves national coordinator, presented to the peer-facilitators, she demonstrated a number of potential activities that the peers could use in their modules. an entire day was dedicated to describing making waves and demonstrating activities. all peers stated that this was invaluable, with one stating, “i think the most helpful part for me was j___ being here, just to get an idea of how it’s going to look”. another entire day was dedicated to module preparation with the coordinator’s assistance. however, several of the peer-facilitator groups had difficulty with their own decisionmaking process and, therefore, needed significantly more time to decide what they wanted to do in their own modules. several groups appreciated what had been shared from making waves, but wished to modify those activities to be more conducive to the post-secondary population, and needed time and space to do so. future implementation of the stepping up program will involve more time on the part of the researchers for teaching and modelling group process and decision-making. for example, while the facilitators did manage to meet and create appropriate module content and activity, scheduling a meeting became a challenge once they went their separate ways. their dedication to this project was clear as demonstrated by their ability to fulfill their mandate; however, the researchers could have made this smoother by scheduling more group time upfront for both development and practice. the researchers, having visited the feedback from peer-facilitators, think it would be wise to set aside time during the training process, while we are available, for module planning and are, therefore, considering adding two more days to the training. practice and preparation. as the peer-facilitators commented on how the lack of time impacted their own sense of self as skilled group leaders, they began to recognize that preparation and practice would have assisted with their efficacy in this regard. as one said, for example, “we should have had a run through where everybody gets to practice and it would just build confidence”. as noted by corey and corey (2006), becoming an effective group facilitator includes particular competencies which assist in the success of a group program. in the preparation for the peer-facilitators, the researchers set aside the recommended time for content development, module activity development, and a final meeting at which the facilitators shared their ideas for their particular module with the other peer-facilitators and the researchers. however, that final meeting was only half a day long, with limited time for alterations or adjustments to the module activities and no time allotted for the peers to practice facilitating their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 113 groups. corey and corey (2006) have noted several concerns for beginning group facilitators such as worry about mistakes, how to get started, and whether they have the knowledge and skill to handle what might emerge. had there been time for a dry run with the peer-facilitators, we may have been better able to respond to their needs thereby increasing their confidence. in addition, during the focus group several commented that, had they had the time to practice with each other, feedback could have been shared in a safe environment prior to the event. as one individual noted, “we would have felt comfortable if we’d done a run through of the weekend, to give critical feedback to each other about the videos, or the exercise and activities.” the need for preparation and practice was highlighted during the event, particularly during one module when the very first question led to a personal disclosure of abuse, “i didn’t expect it to happen so quickly because in our group the first thing, the first person shared a heavy, intense self-disclosure and i was just not prepared.” the peers who facilitated that particular group felt unprepared for this level of disclosure. during the focus group they disclosed feeling as though they had let some of the participants down since they were unsure about how to process these disclosures in the session. although the peer-facilitators had neither expected nor prepared for many disclosures, the student participants from the weekend event stated that the disclosures were a positive aspect of the program. therefore, these researchers have noted the importance of assisting peers with skill development as it relates to the receiving of disclosures in a group context, recognizing, however, that such disclosures are neither encouraged nor related to the purpose of the program. during the weekend event, the making waves representative commented that such disclosures were not typical and not encouraged in their high school program. nonetheless, disclosures may be more appropriate in post-secondary populations. the students were highly engaged and verbal throughout the entire weekend. given that most of the participants seemed comfortable with the disclosures, it may be that the facilitators simply need more preparation about the unpredictability of group process. in sessions prior to the weekend, the researchers could have acted as participants and had the facilitators practice managing certain group dynamics. it may be that given the amount of time we had spent with the facilitators, that we had become comfortable with their skill level, but had not remembered what it is like to facilitate a group for the first time. because the majority of the facilitators were from human service programs, we may have made assumptions about the skills developed through their own program courses. one group facilitation course is not likely to plant deep-seated confidence. in the future, we would ensure that there is time set aside to practice facilitating their modules. prevention projects. the undergraduate student participants continued to meet in small groups with their peer-facilitators post-program to plan and implement prevention projects for the campus community. projects include posters, t-shirts, bookmarks, buttons, brochures, and radio advertisements. at the end of the weekend, most participants expressed excitement about engaging in awareness projects for their campus. however, much like any weekend retreat, people are excited during the event, but a return to their busy stressful lives, particularly as students, means these added duties may fall to the wayside. regardless, many students remained involved and created small cohorts and worked together to produce these projects. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 114 two peer-facilitators were assigned to oversee, monitor, and maintain contact with the weekend participants to assist with project completion. the other peer-facilitators worked along with the groups to assist in completing the projects and communicate with the researchers as necessary. the peer-facilitators described this as the most challenging aspect of the program, with one observing, “it was frustrating trying to get a hold of group members and then it was stressful too because i wanted it to be successful.” listening to them at the focus group describe the process for completing the projects, we had visions of herding cats. feedback about the project aspect of the stepping up program as compared to the making waves community projects focused on the differences in the populations. the peerfacilitators were clear that university students may not appreciate the added stressor of this expectation. said one, “making waves [community projects] may not work for university. students are socially different; they are developmentally different. this is extra-curricular, so if you have a big paper due or something worth marks that’s always going to take priority.” while we believe these awareness-building projects are vital for the campus community, there may be ways to structure the projects to lighten the load, such as providing a list of achievable ideas from which to choose. discussion changing the beliefs and attitudes of abuse and violence held by both university undergraduate students and faculty members is a long-term process. conflicting demands on peer-facilitators’ and participants’ time made it challenging for all of the students to engage in all aspects of the project. for students in social work and child and youth studies, faculty recognized the value of the project and helped to support student involvement through a variety of creative strategies such as credit towards practicum/field placement hours for time spent involved in the stepping up project. the focus of the project became the development of peer-facilitators as group leaders and the context of the curriculum rather than specific content of the curriculum for each module. this was a notable difference between making waves and stepping up for post-secondary students and was later confirmed by the national coordinator of making waves. however, the large improvements in self-reported knowledge from students who completed the pre, post, and follow-up kabbi surveys suggested that providing an opportunity for participants to talk about the content areas is important, even outside of specific or standardized curriculum content. the number of observed self-disclosures was also greater than expected. this could reflect the design of the program, that a number of the participants knew each other, or that the previous experience of abuse was a factor in self-selection. the positive support for the weekend length and the knowledge gains of participants provided strong support of a peer-facilitated model given the busy lives of students and the challenges of them finding three days over a weekend to participate. this also suggests the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 115 importance of giving students an opportunity to discuss these topic areas and consolidation of learning through the community prevention projects. limitations of the weekend included the number of students who participated (i.e., weather was a significant issue, greatly cutting attendance at the last minute), an overrepresentation of student participants from one program, and access to funding to support both the immediate and long-term evaluations. the students were predominantly from two programs already familiar with abuse issues (social work and child and youth studies) and more than half received credit for hours attended. this may have had an effect on the positive nature of the results, although the difference in kabbi scores would suggest they were not all as familiar with the key issues as anticipated. the availability of long-term funding that extends from the development through an eight-month follow-up evaluation is also a potential limitation. the stepping up researchers were able to secure funding to support all phases of the project; however, continuous funding from one source is always the ideal. areas to consider in the future concern the time allocated for training peer-facilitators, the timing of the prevention weekend, and added training specific to responding to disclosures. discussions on training methods, the need for specific content objectives, and how to encourage faculty from other programs to support student involvement will be ongoing. a second pilot is planned for september 2012, pending funding, and will incorporate the current findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 100–118 116 references amar, a. f. 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(2003). dating violence prevention with at-risk youth: a controlled outcome evaluation. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 71(2), 279–291. stepping up: a peer-to-peer dating violence prevention project on a post-secondary campus purpose project design time. the extent of time commitment is highly relevant to the post-secondary students. this concern about time related to both the peer-facilitators and the participants in the weekend program and the follow-up action plans. the peer-facilitators were... these peer-facilitators also expressed the challenge that all group facilitators face, that being the issue of time as it relates to group processes. in particular, several peer-facilitators noted the lack of time during the module delivery for group ... this sense that time was slipping away led to some to wonder about their skills and knowledge of group facilitation. they noted that the confidence the researchers had in their ability to lead a group assisted with their self-confidence: “i think the ... practice and preparation. as the peer-facilitators commented on how the lack of time impacted their own sense of self as skilled group leaders, they began to recognize that preparation and practice would have assisted with their efficacy in this regar... however, that final meeting was only half a day long, with limited time for alterations or adjustments to the module activities and no time allotted for the peers to practice facilitating their groups. corey and corey (2006) have noted several concern... discussion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 how care is negotiated between a young carer and a parent experiencing mental illness and addiction renee aeyelts, sheila marshall, grant charles, and richard young abstract: this study explores the negotiation of care between a young carer and her parent experiencing mental illness and addiction. the bulk of research on young carers explores children’s caring work and the associated risks for carrying out caring work. usually overlooked are the highly complex relationships between disabled or ill parents and their children who care for them. using contextual action theory to frame this case study, we examine how a young carer and her mother negotiated care across a period of several months. keywords: young carer, caring work, disability, parent–adolescent relationship, negotiation renee aeyelts, msw is at the school of social work, university of british columbia. this study is based in large part on her msw thesis. e-mail: renee.aeyelts@gmail.com sheila marshall, phd is at the school of social work, university of british columbia. e-mail: sheila.marshall@ubc.ca grant charles, phd (the corresponding author) is at the school of social work, university of british columbia. e-mail: grant.charles@ubc.ca richard young, phd is at the department of educational and counselling psychology and special education, university of british columbia. e-mail: richard.young@ubc.ca mailto:renee.aeyelts@gmail.com mailto:%3cgrant%20charles%3e%20grant.charles@ubc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 66 this study explores the negotiation of care between a young carer and a parent experiencing mental illness and addiction to illicit drugs. the experiences of parents and young carers have been examined largely in isolation from one another. indeed, the literature on young carers tends to paint a picture of a carer-dependent dichotomy when in reality young caring is part of an interdependent and reciprocal relationship (charles, 2011; charles, stainton, & marshall, 2012). this is a critical omission in our understanding of families in which there are young carers. without an understanding of the reciprocal nature of the relationship it is too easy to pathologize the child, the parent, or both, and fail to recognize that even in times of significant stress family members can still be involved in healthy interactions. in an effort to fill this gap in the literature, this case study attempts to answer the question of how care is negotiated between a young carer and a parent receiving care. it has been estimated that just under 12% of young people in canada provide significant caregiving in their families (charles, marshall, & stainton, 2010). aldridge and becker (1993) define young carers as anyone under the age of 18 years who is a primary caregiver in the family due to parental illness, disability, or addiction. this definition has been expanded recently to include the phrase “beyond what would be normally culturally expected” (charles, stainton, & marshall, 2010, pp. 83–84) in order to reflect cultural differences in the expectations of young people’s contributions to family well-being. although some level of caring is encouraged throughout childhood as a healthy part of development, young carers take on a more significant level of caring in order to try to ensure the continued functioning of the family (aldridge & becker, 1999; charles, stainton, & marshall, 2008, 2009). it is important to note, however, that the presence and degree of disability or illness in a family does not automatically lead to children within the family taking on a caring role; rather, young caring is often triggered by a combination of a disability or illness in a family member with a lack of adequate support from other family members and the community (ramtulla, charles, & marshall, 2012; thomas et al., 2003). the duties of the carer vary according to individual circumstance, but typically include one or more of emotional support, domestic work, personal care, assistance with health care such as changing dressings, and providing financial assistance to the family (charles, stainton, & marshall, 2012; moore, 2005). mental illness, addiction, and care while there are a number of reasons why familial circumstances give rise to children’s involvement in parental care (charles et al., 2012; stamatopoulos, 2015), this study involved a family with maternal mental illness and addiction. for women with a mental illness, mothering can be a normalizing life experience (nicholson, sweeney, & geller, 1998). many mothers with mental illness experience difficulty dealing with both children's needs and managing their own illness (obadina, 2010). however, many find also that being a parent is an important aspect of their identity, fundamental to their sense of self (oyserman, mowbray, meares, & firminger, 1999). while their condition may negatively influence how they parent, it is important to note that much of their parenting would be considered typical (bjorgvinsdottir & halldorsdottir, 2014). it is rare for a parent, no matter how badly struggling, to completely abdicate parental responsibilities (charles, stainton & marshall, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 67 research available on drug addiction and parenting focuses largely on the negative effects on children and the problems faced by the parent (barnard & mckeganey, 2004; moore, mcarthur, & noble-carr, 2011). children, for example, are seen as being at risk for having problems developing healthy relationships and for misusing substances themselves (barnard & mckeganey, 2004; mckeganey, barnard, & mcintosh, 2002). the increased use of problematic substances by parents is associated with harsher forms of discipline, decreased supervision, and less involvement in the children’s lives (kandel, 1990). this being said, it is important to note that addiction often occurs in cycles of recovery and relapse (barnard & mckeganey, 2004), and that the relationship between parents and their children thus changes depending on where the parents are in the cycle. studying a parent–child dyad over time can provide a better understanding of how care changes over time between cared-for parents and their caregiving children. in this case, the study was conducted over a 12-month period. in situations where there is parental mental illness or addiction, the responsibilities of the parent and young carer are often blurred, and may shift depending on the needs and state of the parent (kahng, oyserman, bybee, & mowbray, 2008; pakenham & cox, 2015; walmsley, 1993). this can result in episodes during which either more or less care is required. as a result, the relationship between the young carer and the parent continues to be negotiated depending on the parent’s current state (oyserman et al., 1999). in a time of parental health-related difficulties, a young carer may take on far more caring work than when the parent is doing well and the requirement for caregiving is reduced. as such, the caring process is fluid, responding to the parent’s current state of need. it is this fluidity in the negotiation of care that is missing from current research. the interdependent and reciprocal nature of the caring relationship within the family needs to be acknowledged and explored in order to develop appropriate services, procedures, and policies to nurture and support these relationships (aldridge & becker, 1999). theoretical and methodological approach the theory used for this study is contextual action theory. valach, young, and lynam (2002) describe contextual action theory as a language used to explore the applied tasks which humans engage in during everyday life. this language is shared and used to describe what individuals are doing in a common environment (valach et al., 2002). contextual action theory views actions as goal-directed and intentional (young et al., 2006). actions are organized into three different levels: goal setting, strategies, and operations (valach et al., 2002). in the case of the young carer and parent dyad, a goal may be to keep the family intact with the strategy of having the child take on caring responsibilities. “operations” refers to the ability to adapt to altered circumstances, such as a change in the parent’s level of need. each of these levels can be explored in more depth to extract the finer details of what motivates the actions. contextual action theory accommodates the ways actions are linked or joint between two or more socially related people. within joint action the three levels of behavior (goal setting, strategies, and operations) are present for both the individual and group. the dyad may share the goal of keeping the family together, although, in addition, there may be different sub-goals and organizational steps for each participating individual. the behavior and regulation of the dyad is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 68 believed to be communicated between participants who organize actions and sub-goals to move towards the highest shared goal (valach et al., 2002). an important feature of contextual action theory and the related protocol, qualitative action-project method (young, valach, & domene, 2005), is that the actions observed between members of a dyad or larger social group are the unit of analysis as opposed to the individuals themselves. although individual actions are observed, the qualitative action-project method focuses on the joint actions in a dyad (marshall, zaidman-zait, domene, & young, 2012) such as that of young carer and parent. in joint action, the actions of each participating individual intersect with and are largely guided by the present environment (valach et al., 2002). young carers and parents can be seen engaging in joint actions over time, which contributes to the construction of the parent–child relationship. furthermore, actions are believed to be “energized” or set in motion by emotional processes. these processes are present throughout the progress of action (valach et al., 2002). the child’s and parent’s emotional process of love and loyalty towards the family can be seen as motivation for involving a child in caregiving responsibilities. energizing of the action is mostly required at the beginning of action or when changes occurs (valach et al., 2002). contextual action theory was chosen for this particular case study as it allowed for the identification of a parent’s and child’s goals and their steps to reach those goals, thus making it possible to identify how the dyad negotiated care. action theory was a useful way to collect, organize, and code the data after which a modified approach, content analysis, was used to identify how care was negotiated. method this case study attempts to answer the question of how care is negotiated between a young carer and a parent receiving care. the data for this case study were drawn from a larger study on career-development projects of adolescents and their parents. secondary analysis was conducted with data from a single dyad and their social supports. the dyad was identified as a parent being cared for by an adolescent by the research team conducting the larger study on career development. the mother self-identified as being addicted to illicit drugs and experiencing depression. in any relationship there is negotiation regarding the degree of reciprocity or “give and take” between the two people. this negotiation is ongoing and is largely influenced by the conditions and circumstances of the dyad. a within-case analysis allowed for an in-depth study of the negotiation of care between the young carer and her mother. the details of this particular dyad are not the key feature of this case study. rather, the process of negotiating care is the focus, as little is known about the topic among families with young carers. understanding of the negotiation process is enhanced by attending to the complexity of a single case (stake, 1995), whereas information about interpersonal dynamics might otherwise be missed in a larger crossanalysis of multiple dyads. gaining an understanding of the negotiation of care is a beneficial first step before pursuing larger scale comparisons. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 69 the protocol for the original study involved four phases of data collection and analysis. the first phase consisted of observations of parent–adolescent conversations and video recall interviews. the second phase included member checks regarding initial analysis of the data from the first phase. the third phase consisted of brief bi-weekly telephone interviews for a period of approximately six months, and the fourth phase was a talking circle with the parent–adolescent dyad and the identified social supports they invited into the research. interviews, conversations, and talking circle were digitally recorded and then transcribed. the transcriptions were checked against the recordings for accuracy. participants participants for the larger study, which involved an examination of joint careerdevelopment projects, were recruited via broad-based poster and newspaper advertising. a joint career-development project involves sets of goals and actions negotiated between parents and an adolescent in regards to the young person’s educational and occupational future. potential participants contacted the research team who then conducted a quick telephone interview to determine if the interested family met the study’s participation criteria, which required dyads to include both an adolescent between the age of 13 and 16 and one legal parent or guardian. parent–adolescent dyads were invited to bring up to four family members and/or social supports to the final interview. participants were briefed about confidentiality and any risks involved in participating in the study before signing consent and assent forms. sample the original sample comprised 11 parent–adolescent dyads and 17 individuals who were their social supports. all but one adolescent were attending school at the time of the study; the grade range was 8 to 10. parents were between the ages of 32 and 47 and of varied marital status. a mother–daughter dyad was selected for the current study. the daughter was 14 years of age and attending school. the mother was 34 years of age and experiencing depression and drug addiction. the daughter had been involved with substances at one time and had been in a treatment program, but at the time of the study reported that she was not using. certain details of the dyad and their supports are excluded from the description of the participants to prevent revealing their identities. data collection and analyses phase 1. the first phase began with an orientation and rapport-building period. in this interview, dyads were encouraged to think about the adolescent entering adulthood and his or her future. participants were then asked to converse, without the researchers present, about topics that had emerged in the first part of the interview until they felt the conversation had naturally ended. on average these conversations lasted 16.47 minutes. the conversation of the dyad described in this study was 14.02 minutes in length. directly after this conversation, each participant reviewed the video recording of the conversation with an interviewer without the other participant present. participants were asked to recall the thoughts and feelings they experienced during each one-minute segment of the recorded conversation. video recall interviews lasted an average of 34.69 minutes for parents international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 70 and 32.03 minutes for adolescents. the video recall interviews of the mother and daughter in this study were 48.24 and 26.21 minutes long, respectively. phase 2. data from phase 1 were analyzed to develop two individual narratives and one joint narrative. the narratives were developed through analysis of the individual and joint goals and the actions used to reach those goals (referred to as functional steps) that were identified by the research assistants. the narratives summarized each participant’s goals and the functional steps taken. each dyad met with the researchers to review the narratives. and was given opportunities to discuss any changes they felt were required. phase 3. the following six months was a monitoring period. an interviewer phoned the adolescent and parent separately every two weeks to ask about changes in the family’s joint project, whether any activities relating to the project had occurred, and whether there were any feelings associated with those activities. phase 4. at the end of the monitoring period, a talking circle interview was conducted for each dyad. participants were invited to bring up to four individuals they identified as being supportive in the context of the project. in this case, each brought one person to the final interview. the talking circle began with one of the researchers providing an overview of the narratives derived from phase 2, and proceeded with a discussion of the joint career-development project that was the focus of the overall study. the talking circle also provided an opportunity to debrief participants about the experience of being a part of the study. all the data collected for the young carer dyad was re-analyzed for the current study. the first conversation was coded using the original study’s coding template and each participants’ goals and functional steps were determined for each minute of the dialogue. the same was done with the final interview, which included the goals and functional steps of the supports brought in by the participants and the two talking-circle facilitators. a content analysis was then used to identify the goals and functional steps in relation to when and how care was being negotiated. care was broadly defined as support of the other’s physical, emotional, or developmental needs. the data from the six-month monitoring period was used to gain a better understanding of the family’s context. results phase 1 in the initial joint conversation, the parent and adolescent were asked to discuss the adolescent’s career development and what support she received. minute-by-minute analysis of this conversation revealed the mother and daughter were alternating the focus of discussion from the mother’s care of the daughter (in the form of support and guidance) to care of the mother by the daughter. the dialogue began with the daughter taking charge of the conversation by asking, “so mom, how was your last relapse?” the daughter’s initial goal for the conversation was to discuss her mother’s recent relapse. the mother answered with little hesitation and discussed her feelings and progress for a full minute before the subject changed. this initial joint action demonstrated the daughter’s ability to steer the conversation and gain information from her mother. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 71 the conversation transitioned from talking about the mother’s progress since her last relapse to how the two participants supported each other. the information presented by both mother and daughter indicated the reciprocal nature of the relationship as both participants discussed examples of how each supported the other. they talked about how the mother supported her daughter: daughter: you get me…involved in extracurricular activities. mother: i, um, always know where you are now too. the daughter then expressed humor about the number of things her mother helped her become involved in. when asked what she did for her mother, the daughter expressed anger that her mother would assume she does little to support her and she gave the following examples: i come home when you need me and i’ll talk to you if you’re feeling depressed or feel like going to use yadayadayada. i work on my steps [12 steps] with you, i’ll go out with you. i don't know yadayadayada (laughing) i basically i help you out when you tell me to help you out. the daughter continued to take charge of the conversation by asking her mother what she would do if she (the daughter) were ever to relapse. the mother used exaggerations (e.g., “i’d kill ya”) to emphasize the fact that she would be upset, which she then followed with a serious discussion about her daughter’s future: you have dreams. and you — you drugs can’t be a part of those dreams. drugs is for people who don’t have dreams. you know … drugs is for people who don’t have a future. right? they — they get high off of that instead of life. you know you — you can get high off of life. you have a future. right? you have a good chance of really making something really big out of yourself. the mother had taken control of the conversation and the reciprocal nature of the relationship was once again revealed as she took on a clearly more powerful role. the mother’s conversation also demonstrated her ability to maintain her parenting status while dealing with a mental illness and recovery from addiction. the daughter remained quiet while her mother talked. the mother further demonstrated her parenting role by discussing her daughter’s personality and how it compared to her own. the daughter asked about what type of person she (herself) was and the mother used hand gestures to indicate they were both independent rather than conforming to others around them, and said, “ you’re a lot like me. and you know [cough cough] so you know that [cough cough] – let me put it this way… i get you things to head in any direction you want. right?” the dialogue transitioned into the mother explaining how drugs had negatively affected her life as a method to deter her daughter from following the same course. the daughter interrupted her mother to describe how it is the two support each other, which reinforces the idea international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 72 of both young caring and reciprocity: “we support each other by always being there when one of us needs us.” while discussing how the mother supported her daughter, the daughter mentioned her need for time alone. the conversation went back and forth with each participant presenting her case. it was evident that the mother’s need for support from her daughter sometimes infringed on her daughter’s time to herself: daughter: i’m just sitting alone in my room and you come in there and i’m like — go away — you don’t support me. mother: but i want to talk. daughter: i don’t! in the final portion of the dialog the mother initiated the topic of discussion regarding the daughter’s career options and choices. the mother asked questions about her daughter’s career choices and about hypothetical situations with the goal of helping her daughter gain a deeper understanding of the careers in which she has expressed an interest. this initial conversation between mother and daughter contains examples of both participants acquiring control of the conversation and caring for the other. as would be found in a reciprocal relationship, both participants took turns controlling the conversation and expressing care. thus, the analysis of this conversation reveals how the mother and the daughter took on both carer and dependent roles at different times in their relationship. phases 2 and 3 the purpose of phase 2 in the original research investigation was to present the joint career project. the joint project initially identified by the research team and subsequently agreed upon by the dyad was: “it appears that the mother and daughter are currently working on who the daughter is becoming.” the mother and daughter agreed with the joint project identified for them. in this case the joint project involved helping the daughter to reach her aspirations for an acting and singing career. during the phase 2 interview, the mother reported that she had relapsed and was going to a rehabilitation center for a four-week stay. the telephone monitoring began after the mother returned home. during the six-month telephone monitoring period the mother and daughter were telephoned every two weeks. calls were staggered so that the mother and daughter were not called at the same time. additionally, two researchers were assigned to the dyad so that the mother and daughter were not interviewed by the same researcher. the mother and daughter were each successfully contacted three different times. these interviews provided information about the family in the period between the second and final interviews. in each of the daughter’s telephone interviews, she described what she was doing to follow her career aspirations. when asked about how she and her mother had been moving towards her career goals, the daughter mentioned helping her mother, reporting, “i try and help out as much as i can.” this statement may indicate the daughter taking on a caring role. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 73 indication of the mother’s caring role was also given when the daughter described her birthday party, which the mother had helped to organize. the daughter also had started to compose a writing contest entry about her mother as an inspirational female in her life. the mother described, in each of her telephone interviews, how proud she was of her daughter for doing well in school and for doing so much around the home without having to be told. she also described how much she needed her daughter in her life, indicating the receipt of care from her daughter. the mother reported having provided guidance and care for her daughter through supporting her in extracurricular activities and ensuring she completed homework before going out with friends. although the telephone interviews did not furnish sufficient in-depth data to justify substantial conclusions, they did provide insight into the dyad’s ways of caring for one another. phase 4 the final interview’s topic of discussion was again the daughter’s career development, but unlike the first interview each participant brought a support person with them. two facilitators were also present. the final interview was in the form of a talking circle, which began with a facilitator explaining how the talking circle worked followed by each participant introducing themselves. the support person whom the mother brought to the research started the talking circle by discussing how he had supported the mother in her recent relapse and his involvement in helping others around him. the circle continued with the mother talking about her daughter but quickly digressed when she began to talk about her own relapse, which occurred two weeks before the final interview. the mother’s inability to talk about anything other than her own current situation as opposed to the care of her daughter, paired with the information provided about her relapse and depression, indicated a time of struggle with her mental illness and addiction. the daughter was silent while the mother spoke. at one point the daughter left the room saying she needed to use the washroom. after approximately ten minutes of the mother talking about her own situation, the facilitator attempted to bring her back to the subject of her daughter saying, “i haven’t heard you mention [daughters name] in the last 5 or 10 minutes.” from this point the mother was able to discuss the daughter again but chose to focus on a story about the daughter not listening to her instead of discussing the topic of care and support. the facilitators then intervened by suggesting they move on to the next participant, the support person the daughter brought to the circle. the daughter’s support person explained that the daughter had supported her in her own times of need and that the daughter called her when things were not good at home, such as during her mother’s recent relapse. at that point the mother interrupted the discussion to state that her daughter often helped others with their problems and to explain how her daughter evolved into that role: “she was a leader for the longest time and she started to be a follower in the second semester of grade 7 and now since she’s back in recovery she’s taken on that leader role again…” this statement by the mother demonstrates that even in her state of high need for support to manage her mental illness and addiction recovery, she had knowledge about her daughter’s development and the ability to describe it. the facilitator asked the mother about the support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 74 person the daughter had invited to the interview and the mother described her daughter’s relationship with her friend and how she supported it: “[friends name] is at my house …[friends name] is a good kid and i know that she’s not going to go the drug way so you know it’s a positive relationship.” the facilitator asked the daughter’s support person for more information about their relationship. after the friend’s response, the mother discussed her daughter’s singing career and her interest in interior design, once again demonstrating her ability to support and care for her daughter: she also has an opportunity to make the demo, another demo but she hasn’t wrote out a song or memorized a whole — a whole song and so i’ve been you know nailing her about that and for months … i’ve been telling her ’cause this is her dream, right? at the facilitator’s suggestion, the talking circle then moved on to the daughter. she answered the facilitator’s questions about the support person she brought to the interview, but then fell into an argument with her mother on being asked to stop digging in her bag. the mother and daughter argued about the bag with the mother gaining little ground and the daughter disregarding most of what the mother said. the mother then turned the conversation to the topic of the daughter’s self esteem, which the daughter was reluctant to discuss. the members of the talking circle discussed the daughter’s relationships with boys and although it was off topic, this again demonstrated the mother’s ability to show concern for her daughter: she was saying in front of everybody, “i’m ugly”, and i’m like, “[daughters name] you’re not ugly”, … so she’s really down on herself and you know it’s — it’s been hard for me to hear my daughter say that cause i think she’s beautiful. the conversation then veered off topic for several minutes until the facilitator redirected the focus to the topic of the support persons the mother and daughter brought along to participate in the talking circle. both mother and daughter discussed why they chose to bring their support persons with them to the interview. the mother discussed how her support person helped her. the mother’s description was expressed in similar terms to the daughter’s description, in the initial interview, about how she supported her mother. the parallel between the daughter’s and the support person’s caring responsibilities reinforces the idea of the daughter’s caring role in the relationship. at this point, the mother again began to talk about her own situation. the facilitator acknowledged her story but redirected the focus to the daughter’s social support person when an opportunity arose. the daughter’s social support person discussed her family life and her own mother’s situation and the talking circle ended with the mother interrupting and telling a story she had heard that she found comical. throughout this final interview the mother frequently steered the conversation towards herself and, despite the facilitators’ efforts, she had great difficulty maintaining a discussion regarding care of her daughter. compared to the initial interview where a more reciprocal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 75 relationship was observed between mother and daughter, the daughter said little during the later conversation and the mother displayed her struggle with mental illness and addiction. the daughter’s reluctance to speak during the talking circle makes it difficult to gain an understanding of how much care she was providing for her mother in the latter’s state of high need. the daughter’s actions seem to suggest a non-verbal form of negotiation, with the daughter sending a message to her mother through her silence and through leaving the room. this case points to two significant findings: the mother’s and daughter’s ability to negotiate care and the reciprocal nature of their caring relationship. in both instances of recovery and relapse the mother was able to maintain some form of parenting and care for her daughter, although it varied significantly in detail. the daughter discussed the care of her mother in her time of recovery but said little of the care in the mother’s time of relapse. this is an example of the ebb and flow of caregiving, demonstrating the shifting amount of care and how it is negotiated. the importance of reciprocal negotiation processes in this relationship illustrates the need to routinely consider these processes when evaluating the relationship dynamics between parents and young carers. a moment-in-time assessment would likely only capture one side of the parent–child interactions and as such give a false impression of the dynamic features of the relationship. discussion this study explored the negotiation of care between an adolescent carer and her mother. the findings are discussed in two sections: the first covers how care was negotiated in the first interview, and the second compares the interviews with one another. although some level of care and responsibility is encouraged for healthy adolescent development, the emotional support present in this dyad goes beyond what would normally be seen in a parent–child relationship. in this case, emotional support is present in the form of the daughter being available for her mother when the latter is feeling depressed or feeling like using drugs. the daughter’s expression of her desire for time on her own is consistent with reported negative effects of young caring, as many young carers report a lack of time to themselves (cree, 2003). it is revealed in the initial conversation that the mother–daughter relationship is reciprocal in nature, in accordance with the findings of aldridge and becker (1999), as the two participants each discuss the support they give one another. the daughter’s opening question at the beginning of the conversation about her mother’s relapse can be seen as an example of the daughter taking a more adult-like role in the relationship. in combination with the mother’s description of how she supports her daughter and the daughter’s description of their mutual support, it also demonstrates a bidirectional caring relationship. mother and daughter both receive and give care. this does not, however, impinge on the mother’s ability to maintain her parenting status. walmsley’s (1993) findings regarding parents with disabilities who still retain control over their children while relying on them for care recur in the findings of this case study. in this particular case, the mother is very involved in her daughter’s life and in organizing her extracurricular activities, while at the same time relying on the daughter’s support to help in her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 76 own recovery. this again demonstrates the bidirectional nature of the relationship. receiving support from one’s child does not mean that the relationship is unidirectional. a parent can be both a recipient and a provider of care. findings from the first conversation and the talking circle challenge stereotypes of parenting inadequacy (banks et al., 2001) that currently exist regarding parents of young carers. too often in the existing literature, young caring is seen as unidirectional, with the young person giving but often not getting support (charles, stainton & marshall, & 2012). this ignores the fluidity of the relationship that can occur between the parent and the child. for example, in the talking circle, the mother expresses some of the difficulties she has parenting, the difficulty she has controlling her children, and her need for time to herself. at the same time, the mother also demonstrates, especially in the initial conversation in phase 1, her ability to care for and support her children as well as negotiate that care with her daughter. these findings demonstrate the mother’s ability to parent her child while in relapse and recovery. the findings also help counter the stereotypes associated with young caring and parenting and, as such, challenge the stigma that is frequently attached to parents with a mental illness or addiction. in supporting families where young caring is occurring, grant, repper, and nolan (2008) recommend a family-centered approach. a family-centered approach assesses and responds to the needs of the parent and the child rather than focusing on, in this case, either the mother or the young person separately (charles, stainton & marshall, 2012). the approach acknowledges the individual yet interconnected needs of each family member. a better understanding of parents’ abilities, the dynamic nature of the caring relationship, and the on-going negotiation process could potentially help develop family-centered supports and make the caring relationship a more positive experience for all involved. as aldridge (2006) argues, the entire family needs to be involved if supports are to be effective. as mentioned earlier, many interventions and supports that are currently available for young carers assume that the child is highly vulnerable and the parent is incapable of parenting. it is clear from looking at the findings of negotiation of care from this dyad that both mother and daughter have strengths and weaknesses. it is the complementary nature of their strengths that makes their relationship work. focusing on just one side of the relationship would exclude an important aspect needed to properly support those involved in the caring relationship (ali, krevers, sjostrom & skarsater, 2014). the distribution of power in parent–child relationships is typically viewed as being vertical, with the parent holding power over the child (kuczynski, marshall, & schell, 1997; russell, pettit, & mize, 1998). the findings from this dyad are an example of how in fact both partners have power. this demonstrates a bilateral model of parent–child relationships (kuczynski, 2003). for example, during the negotiation of care the daughter has power when asking about her mother’s relapse, but this does not diminish the power the mother has over her daughter regarding things such as support and extracurricular activities. power in the negotiation of care is being shared but not cancelled out as both participants retain power over the other. this again reinforces the idea that the caring relationship is more fluid and complex than is depicted in much of the young carer literature. since data were collected through separate phases spaced several months apart, negotiation of care can be seen across time. in the first conversation the mother was in a state of recovery from illicit drug use; in the second she had recently relapsed; and in the final interview international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 65–80 77 she displayed a number of struggles, such as her difficulty in discussing the care of her daughter. this fluctuation affected the level of care provided by the daughter. this can be seen in the talking circle by the lack of discussion of how the daughter cared for her mother, as the mother dominated the conversation. in the initial conversation it was the daughter who discussed how she supported her mother. in the final interview the daughter said little unless prompted with questions. no data were collected from the daughter about her silence during the talking circle. nonetheless, there was a clear change in how care was negotiated during recovery (phase 1) and relapse (phase 4). one might speculate that a parallel process was at work between the mother’s state of need and her daughter’s response. when the mother’s needs were slightly lower, as in the first conversation, the daughter was able to respond — indeed, the care appeared reciprocal. when the mother’s need increased significantly by the final interview the daughter may have felt overwhelmed and pulled back. taken together, the processes appear parallel: reciprocity engendered reciprocity, but when the parent’s needs grew overwhelming the daughter withdrew. understanding the cyclical pattern of addiction and mental illness would be a great asset for interventions and support services assisting families with young caring relationships. this is the first study of this type involving a young carer and her parent. however, much of what was seen is already known in the context of parent–child relationships in that it involves the negotiation of boundaries between the two parties. in this case the negotiation is complicated by the role reversal that occurs at times between the mother and her daughter. while this influences how the boundaries are negotiated, it is important to note that renegotiation of boundaries is a developmental process that inevitably occurs between parent and child as the young person grows towards adulthood. it should also be noted that, as this is a single case study, the participants’ awareness that they are taking part in a study on negotiation could have had an influence on how they perceived or enacted their roles in the process. this needs to be taken into account when evaluating the results. as such the findings of this study can only be seen as a starting point for further research regarding young caring and the negotiation of care. previous research tends to portray young carers as passively taking on the role. this study challenges that view by revealing important information about the reciprocity of the young caring relationship as well as the fluidity and 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(2005). the action-project method in counselling psychology. journal of counseling psychology, 52, 215–223. how care is negotiated between a young carer and a parent experiencing mental illness and addiction mental illness, addiction, and care theoretical and methodological approach method participants sample data collection and analyses results phase 1 phases 2 and 3 phase 4 discussion references microsoft word s. kouri journal version sa jaed.doc 227 claiming the self scott kouri abstract: the article applies a critical analysis to multiple conceptualizations of the self with the aim of deepening the theorizing of self in child and youth care discourse. postmodern and jungian psychology perspectives are used to contrast and offer alternatives to the dominant definitions of self in scientific psychology. the possibility of uniting these two alternative approaches is explored in terms of cyc praxis, and in return, postmodern and jungian psychologies are used to vitalize and expand the theorizing related to the most elusive and stretched concept in cyc, the self. in the online classrooms of the university of victoria’s school of child and youth care, i am challenged to integrate my self into the matrix of the program’s discourses and curricula. in doing so, however, i am confronted by the realization that some of the narratives and theories related to what i call my self fall outside the discourse of the school. with the reassurance and hospitality of those in the field, i have decided to share my journey in the spirit of shared inquiry. the current article applies a critical analysis to multiple conceptualizations of the self with the aim of deepening the theorizing of self in child and youth care (hereafter cyc) discourse. postmodern and jungian psychology perspectives are used to contrast and offer alternatives to the discourse of self in scientific psychology. the possibility of uniting these two alternative approaches is explored in terms of cyc praxis, and in return, postmodern and jungian psychologies are used to vitalize and expand the theorizing related to the most elusive and stretched concept in cyc, the self. the self in child and youth care praxis the self is a highly touted concept in cyc discourse. garfat and charles (2007) claim that “it would be an understatement to say that self is central to child and youth care practice” (p. 1). self is the context of cyc work, a way of being, and the essence of the helping relationship. the association for child and youth care practice (2002) maintains that the self is foundational to cyc but cautions that “to make effective use of self in practice one must first be aware of and able to articulate the nature of the self” (p. 23). the self, however, is not theoretically grounded in cyc literature. personal accounts and perspectives of the self are valued while at the same time the word is used seamlessly across texts. there appears to be a tension in cyc between essentialist views of the self and those emerging from constructivist or relational positions (fewster 2001; garfat & charles, 2007; ricks, 1989; white, 2007). maintaining this tension in the reflexive searching for the self is what i consider the quintessence of cyc praxis. 228 so who am i as a practitioner? where does my knowledge come from? how is it used? these abiding self-oriented questions, rather than their contextually specific answers, propel cyc praxis. the inquiring attitude which transforms practice into praxis is set within the discourse of cyc which defines praxis as knowing, being, and doing in context, or, the integration of theory and practice manifested in the application of selfunderstanding (white, 2007). contrasted to contemporary ideas of practice, praxis is a more risky, free, and value laden form of action (smith, 1999). in part, this is due to the relationships the two concepts have to theory. smith argues that the classical view of theory is rule-based and in a domineering position vis-à-vis practice, whereas white contends that in praxis, words, actions, discourses, and experience merge in a union of theory and action. praxis calls for an embodied, contextual, and narratively informed approach to practice: a reflexive self in action. as a novitiate practitioner in a relatively young field, i am constantly motivated to articulate what and how i know. this inquiring and responsible attitude is crucial because cyc praxis situates me in a critical and problematic relationship with the dominant discourses of my culture. rejecting the majority view that the complexities of human service can be conceptualized and measured in standardized forms and delivered by a homogenous group of practitioners, cyc praxis uses a web metaphor to appreciate the “active, intersecting, embedded, shifting and asymmetrical qualities of everyday practice” (white, 2007, p. 241). articulating my epistemological stance, therefore, is central in the development of a richer and more open view of practice, as well as important for the development of the field. it is my intention to dig deeper into (or construct from a postmodern perspective) the nature of the self and explore various trends in self discourse. i begin with a poststructural analysis of the deficit discourse in scientific psychology and lead into jungian psychology as a promising perspective for defining the self in cyc. i believe that integrating postmodernism and jungian psychology into a personal framework for practice is tantamount to the mixing metaphors, shifting narratives, and striving for meaning that constitutes scholarly praxis (jones, 2003b). discourse, a brief introduction the leap from language to discourse is an attempt to critically situate knowledge in relation to history, politics, and power (law & madigan, 1998). for foucault (1979), language is a binding social force which constitutes the world for the language user and maintains power positions within society. language systems, such as psychology, psychiatry, and sociology, operate as discursive regimes that privilege normative systems of thought and action. as these discursive practices are elaborated and disseminated socially, their power is extended (gergen, 2007). law and madigan (1998) argue that a modernist interpretation of language treats phonetic utterances as reflecting the reality which they represent. along with this relationship between words and reality comes the “expert” who is knowledgeable and controls the language forms. contrary to this view is a poststructural analysis of discourse 229 that emphasizes the specific actions that relate to institutionalized ways of talking. discourse situates all claims to knowledge in relation to institutionalized rhetorical frames. foucault (1980) argues that truth is produced by restraint and linked in a circular system of power relations. therefore, no essential truths, realities, or structures exist; there is only discourse and relationships to and within it. a culture creates psychological realities through the interpretation of specific discourses while also re-enacting or recreating those discourses (madigan, 1998). cultural knowledge claims are therefore internalized and reproduced in social interactions and truths become living discursive actions which are situated in interpersonal relationships rather than handed down from above. alternative constructions of reality are therefore subjugated through the practices of speaking enacted at an interpersonal level. in order to illustrate the above discussion, i would like to explore the advent of the diagnostic category of attention deficit disorder (add). embedded in the discourse of western psychiatry, the construct and meaning of add has become a dominant narrative or truth regarding the behaviour of a large number of children (law, 1998). narrative practitioners such as ian law and stephen madigan (1998) argue that the discourse of pathology disseminated by the psychiatric community has the effect of rendering subjects passive and dependent. add is located within a decontextualized, debilitated, and deficient individual, while the ability to solve the problem resides with the medical community and pharmacology. the discourse of psychiatry, therefore, provides a frame of reference for interpreting experience, attributing meaning, and providing or prohibiting certain forms of action (law, 1998). labelling certain forms of behaviour has become a power base and control mechanism for service delivery with tremendous political and economic implications (fewster, 2002). scientific psychology, as an institutionalized way of knowing, has emerged from history as the dominant voice regarding the self and its attributes and functioning. social constructionist kenneth gergen (2007) emphasizes the political significance of the relationship between psychology and culture and concludes that all authority regarding issues of the human interior, including the individual subject’s claims to self-knowledge, have been usurped. cultural concern is now warranted as the discursive practices of scientific psychology transmit knowledge to the public to influence policy, silence alternative discourses, and sell merchandise. scientific psychology, discourse of deficits gergen (2007) historically situates discourses of the self and relates them to their function within relationships and society. beginning from the greek precept to “know thyself” gergen trails the metamorphic concept of the self to its modern formulations in scientific psychology. he shows that throughout history and into the present, definitions of the self are employed as stratagems for subcultures, such as psychology, which compete for discursive authority. a culture’s dominant discourse, including its definition of self, can therefore be considered as made up of interconnected systems of language, none of which can be regarded as separate or unique. from this seemingly unitary position, a discourse functions to create a normative framework which mediates social 230 relationships and delineates the matrix of activity, while sub-discourses compete and produce incompatible versions of reality (law & madigan, 1998). within this dynamic interplay of our culture’s discourse, psychological science has achieved a colonial position in relation to other knowledge claims. as the language constructs of scientific psychology now guide the living traditions of society, they work to limit the influence of diverse traditions and language systems. power relations and discursive colonization in psychology includes control of academic literature, research resources, university positions, and insurance coverage. in terms of self-definition, the image of the deficient, defective, or problem-saturated person holds currency (gergen, 2007). the scientific paradigm has overshadowed other voices in 20th century psychology, with functionalism and structuralism leading the way in therapy contexts (law & madigan, 1998). structuralism argues that the mind and meaning systems of a client are latent and discoverable through an analysis of external behaviours. functionalism contends that behaviours are a response to earlier causes and serve a purpose within a system. both approaches rely on expert knowledge and language, as well as the administration of power to determine access, treatment, rules, resources, and information. as such, the medical model can be said to have colonized family therapy. the language of the deficient self now characterizes persons, problems, families, and relationships in terms of lack and inadequacy. our society is quickly losing alternative forms of interpretation, self-definition, and action. we are losing our terminologies and grassroots vernacular and metaphors for understanding our experience (gergen, 2007). take, for example, the loss of our spiritual or romantic frameworks: we are being prescribed drugs for apathy and depression where once a religious discourse of guilt prescribed spiritual consultation and a relationship with god; being hung up on a girl, having the blues, and loving sex are now translated into obsession, depression, and addiction. gergen (2007) argues that the language of deficits is also a language for moral and political control. he claims that classifying morally and politically neutral experiences (such as sadness or lethargy) as mental illnesses contributes to a process of pathologizing behaviours which are not socially acceptable. more potently, thomas szasz (2007) set out in the 1960s to show that mental illness was simply a label for socially disapproved behaviour. for 50 years he has advocated for gay rights in the face of a discourse that pathologized, diagnosed, and proposed cures for homosexuality. poststructural analysis contextualizes the use of language historically, politically, and in terms of power. foucault (1980) describes discourse in terms of what can be thought and said, by whom, and with what authority. discursive practices therefore establish, reflect, and construct prevailing power relationships inside and outside of therapy. while representing all institutionalized ways of talking, discourse also expresses what has not and cannot be said. at the same time, discourses themselves are established, reflected, and constructed by social dynamics and individual selves. it is this dialogical process which complicates the static notion of self with which i began this exploration. 231 the historic trend of psychology to provide a vocabulary for the public to understand themselves in relation to institutions has achieved a level of ubiquity and social persuasion (gergen, 2007). as psychological discourse becomes prevalent and available for the construction of everyday experience, symptoms serve as cultural models with which individuals can identify. meaning-making is generally situated in relation to dominant discourse which discounts or pathologizes unique and individual accounts of reality (madigan, 1998). scientific psychology has successfully provided deficit terms for interpreting events and social relationships. not only are terms such as depression, schizophrenia, dysfunctional family, lack of intimacy, communication problem, and personality disorders based on deficit language, they position the experience in a dependent relationship to help and change (law & madigan, 1998). the practice of attributing undesirable behaviour to deficiencies of self is now a dangerously widespread practice. socially acceptable behaviours are treated as psychological norms and variant behaviours are labelled undesirable and tied to mental illness (szasz, 2007). not only does the discourse of deficiency delimit conceptions of self, it acts as a means of moral and political control. biased categorization of behaviours, thought processes, and emotions are used by individuals and families to make sense of their experience to the disqualification of personal or local knowledges. nikolas rose (2007) states: as lay systems of meaning have become bound up with medical thought, medical languages, no matter how technical, have become infused with cultural meanings. medicine thus makes us what we are by reshaping the relations of meaning through which we experience our worlds. (p. 701) alternative views christopher hauke, in his book jung and the postmodern (2000), argues that not only does the existence of a conceptual and social system, which includes expert knowledge and authority, exert pressure on individuals, but it also decides who the clients are in terms of their deviant rationalities, discourses, and language games. hauke parallels the marginalization of alternative rationalities to the disenfranchisement of the unemployed and remarks that “in a culture where material consumption is viewed as highly rational behaviour, ‘insanity’ and poverty often go hand-in-hand” (p. 265). a pluralistic and postmodern alternative to the disempowerment of minority rationalities is proposed in a reading of jung which positions “abnormal psychology as integral to the individual soul, to our culture and to the world” (p. 280). furthermore, and in concert with the social constructionist outlook proposed by gergen (2007), an overblown focus on the psychotic individual fails to appreciate the cultural function of psychosis and its embedding in cultural contexts. in an attempt to connect across difference with respect and compassion, doane and varcoe (2006), two nursing professors in british columbia, propose viewing families, nursing, and culture relationally. rather than locating behaviours or problems in people or families, the authors suggest thinking “of the hard spots as arising when particular families and particular nurses in particular situations experience differences between them” (p. 15). locating these “hard spots” dialogically opens the door to 232 opportunities and strengths within the family rather than problematizing the family from an expert position. the positing of this relational approach necessitates inquiring into the experience or concerns of the family as well as the practitioner’s experience and concerns. knowledge is viewed as embedded within personal belief systems as well as situated within a social context where eurocentric values and attitudes dominate. in responsive relationships, difference becomes an opportunity to connect and learn more about the diversity of human experience. hailing from the fields of cyc and education, dahlberg, moss, and pence (1999) critique the globalization of the western individualistic paradigm from a postmodern perspective. the universalizing of developmental theory and western pedagogy has had devastating effects on traditional cultures worldwide. the majority world, however, has not stood idly by but has infused into western philosophy an “uncertainty about certainty” (p. 165), which draws attention to the relationship between knowledge and power. this is echoed in hauke (2000) who uses reflexivity and a multicultural agenda to challenge and undermine the rational discourses within which his postmodern arguments get articulated. these recognitions of diversity promote the values of difference, subjectivity, and situated definitions of health, sanity, family, practice, and rationality. dahlberg, moss, and pence (1999) conclude that although there is a worldwide movement to reconnect with cultural beliefs and practices, which are nonetheless interested in accessing resources and institutions from the dominant society, there is also a powerful trend to synthesize the modern and postmodern that situates useful knowledge relationally and is based on a spirit of inquiry. constructivist perspectives if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? although constructivism encompasses a vast family or grouping of theoretical perspectives, vance peavy1 contends that they are all useful antidotes for positivist approaches to methodology, epistemology, and human service. in general, therefore, constructivist perspectives are in line with a growing number of disciplines that are moving forward into a postmodern and postindustrial world. raskin (2002) depicts the postmodern era as accentuating the creation, rather than discovery, of knowledge and identities. in this paradigm, knowledge, identity, and truth are socially negotiated, contextually situated, and more interpretational and interpersonal than essential. constructivists can be divided along the lines of their views concerning the existence of an external reality (raskin, 2002). epistemological constructivists argue that there is an external reality, but that humans can only have knowledge of that reality through their constructions of it. on the other hand, hermeneutical constructivists do not believe in the existence of an observer-independent reality. social constructionism, considered by raskin as a hermeneutical constructivism, avoids the notion of an isolated knower and generally differentiates itself from constructivism on that point. for social constructionists, individual psychic life is primarily relational, conversational, and embedded in social practices. the self for social constructionists is therefore fluid, 233 fleeting, and without a stable essence; the self changes in relation to social circumstances and multiple selves can exist within an individual as they simultaneously respond to multiple contexts. each version of the self is a construction and therapy is intended to help persons create various self-constructions (raskin, 1999). as described above, the social constructionist, kenneth gergen (2007), argues that dominant discourses of the self contribute to the institutions that hold power in this society and marginalize competing traditions. as an alternative, he proposes a critical psychology which promotes radical and alternative ways of inquiry. the dismantling of hegemony within psychology is viewed as an act of denunciation towards the widespread oppressions and injustice in modern society. in terms of the self, gergen’s critical perspective claims that all mental constructions are in principle without decidable referent and therefore discursively indeterminable through empirical study. psychology is shown to be unable to infer or define the self outside of its location in discursive practices. gergen’s poststructural analysis of the scientific psychology text is convincing as he unmasks many of the sustaining metaphors within modern conceptualizations of the self. jones (2007), however, argues that when deconstruction is aimed at ideological unmasking, the critic forfeits critical distance and habitually interjects an alternative ideology. this trend is evident in gergen who proposes a socially constructed view of the self after disputing the modernist paradigm. jones, on the other hand, strives at a reconstruction of meaning for modernist texts, such as jung, and attempts to translate these views of the self back into postmodern psychology. the jungian self it is interesting for me to think that as postmodern critiques are increasingly being levelled against discursive hegemony in culture, and especially psychology, the door is being opened to the one psychologist whose discounted voice resonates most clearly with postmodern and cyc agendas. this trend is further amplified by the plurality of voices on the post-jungian stage, including those labouring to reconcile jung’s modernism with his postmodern trends (jones, 2003a; hauke, 2000). although an account of the diverse threads in post-jungian thought and their interweavings with the postmodern is not within the scope of this article, i will use some of jung’s classical ideas about the self as a jumping off point for my engagement with postmodernism and cyc praxis. as early as the 1900s, in his doctoral dissertation and work at the burgholzli psychiatric hospital, jung used the concept of teleology, or the purposive, to help his clients find meaning and value in their experience. jung did not pathologize, rather he searched for the goals towards which symptoms or psychological experience was moving the client. teleology, as a basic point in jung’s epistemology, explores the purpose and aims of phenomenon as they relate to individual goals in development (papadopoulos, 2006). jung’s teleology contested aristotle’s fallacy of final causes and posited instead an explanatory framework more comparable to a systems theory perspective (jones, 2003b; mcdowell, 2001). in contrast to developmental theories which posit that 234 symptoms are the result of failed attempts at normative development, jung (1928) proposes that symptoms are manifestations of an urge towards self-realization and the maturation of the unique personality. from jung’s epistemological point of view, “knowledge is in the very process of generating itself” and “involves the locating of oneself on the pathway along which teleology is unfolding as a lived experience” (papadopoulos, 2006, pp. 30-31). complete knowledge of symptoms and behaviours are therefore impossible as they are always related to future goals, purpose, and meaning. jung conceived of these particular goals as a sense of purpose or the unfolding of the self. in his earlier writings, jung used the term individuality in place of the self. later, he conceptualized the self as both the center and totality of the psyche, encompassing both conscious and unconscious elements (colman, 2006). the self in jungian psychology represents totality, self-realization, equilibrium, and the principle of orientation and meaning. polly young-eisendrath and james hall (1991) claim that in jung’s work the “self can refer to the notion of inherent subjective individuality, the idea of an abstract center or central ordering principle, and the account of a process developing over time” (p. 5). the self as a process of psychological development, rather than a structure, function, or content of the psyche, leads to an appreciation of the dynamics of the psyche as a whole and reflects a general shift in jungian psychology (main, 2008). colman (2006) accentuates “the intimate link between the self, as the essence of individuality, and individuation as the process by which that individuality may be realized” (p. 153). the self as an ordering and centering of the process of individuation is, therefore, in pursuit of wholeness and meaning. the application of the core jungian concepts of self, individuation, and teleology depends on the view that the individual’s psychological experience is real. the postulation of psychic reality contends that all experience is primarily psychic and that the mental states, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings of individuals are facts. jung, although criticized by many as esoteric and mystical, is not exceedingly interested in the objective existence of gods, spirits, or ufos; rather, he is interested in the psychological meaning these subjective experiences have for the individual. a jungian perspective focuses on how an individual’s psychic experience is moving them towards a more whole and meaningful existence. it is of interest for me to see the similarity between (a) the social constructionist’s argument that narratives are reality directed and woven into the fabric of life rather than fictions imposed upon reality (freeman, 1999, 2007), and (b) the definition of psychic reality in a critical dictionary of jungian analysis as the awareness that “one experiences life and its events in terms of narrative truth rather than historical truth” (samuels, shorter, & plaut, 1986, p. 117). to summarize and prepare for what is ahead: jung affirms the meaning and importance of subjective and contextualized psychological experiences and searches for their underlying purposive or teleological direction. these psychological meanings propel the self-structuring of the psyche and the processes of individuation. 235 the whole self in the union of opposites the title of this section is borrowed from lucy huskinson’s (2004) study of the thought and personalities of jung and nietzsche. in her book, huskinson not only elaborates how these two psychologists used the term self, but also compares each definition from the perspective of the other. similarly, i believe a great deal of light can be shed on the current investigation by looking at social construction and critical theory from a jungian perspective, and vice-versa. this interpretive task is seeking to bridge the two worlds through praxis. on the one hand, jung is “paradigmatic of the grand-theory era” (jones, 2003a), while on the other, he esteems the importance of what he called “the personal equation” noting that every theory arises out of the personal psychology of the theorist thereby precluding claims to final truth (hauke, 2000). analytic psychology generally pertains to an intra-individual psyche that is projected outwards to create culture, myth, and language. jung posits the direction of energy as moving from within the individual towards objects and imbuing them with significance and meaning. from this perspective, the postmodern trend can be seen as a psychological attending-to which is significant and meaningful for many individuals. it can also be considered as a compensatory position for the lack of meaning that individuals have found in modern culture. using the postulates of psychic reality and the primacy of the psychological, an individual in analysis is encouraged to explore the meaning of postmodernism and its symbols. social constructivism, conversely, primarily pertains to the supra-individual power structures manifest in social discourses, which are internalized into people’s private discourses (jones, 2003a). what is taken to constitute selfhood (doing, saying, and feeling) could be shown to originate in language-enabled social processes. language therefore is the connector between meaning, power, and knowledge. from this perspective, jungian psychology, and psychology generally, is itself a cultural discourse. our self is embedded in the cultural discourses of our day and therefore retains no essence or center of meaning. claiming the self “a clash of doctrines is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.” whitehead (1967) it should be evident by this point that i consider local definitions of the self as valid, interesting, and full of meaning. in my understanding, this appreciation is supported by the multi-voiced character of cyc, jungian psychology, and postmodernism. in this section, i will briefly survey common areas among postmodernism, cyc, and jungian psychology that hold promise for me as an individual, scholar, and cyc practitioner. this work is an opening gambit for a fuller exploration of the incorporation of jungian analysis in cyc contexts. 236 cyc theory pulls from a variety of orientations in the definition of self. garfat and charles (2007) summarize that the self is the lens through which we perceive and interpret, while at the same time it is the sum of all our aspects and more. on the one hand, self is contextualized, situated in relationships and constructed within social discourse, while on the other hand, the self is the unique and essential or core of the personality. jones (2003a) argues that tarrying to formulate a theoretical position between the modern and postmodern runs the risk of placing oneself in the crossfire between the two. larner (2003), on the other hand, suggests an ethics of hospitality that invites all to engage in a constructive “both/and” dialogue in therapeutic discourses and approaches. he uses the term “paramodern” (p. 215) to place the modern and postmodern side by side, arguing that holding the tension between different perspectives opens the door to diversity of theory and practice. the school of child and youth care promotes divergent thinking on psychotherapeutic orientation and values the integration of multiple views in the creation of a personal framework for practice. ricks2 argues that a theory guides thinking, allows us to be intentional, and helps organize ideas in order to communicate. the jungian model has provided definitions and constructs that i use to create, communicate, and practice. it is interesting to balance the master-narrative critiques that lyotard (1984) levelled against modernist theory building with the pluralistic point of view expressed in jung’s belief that every theory reflected its author. furthermore, theory, in a cyc praxis framework, is a dynamic process that includes self and others in the creation of knowledge and the application of that knowledge in practice. gerry fewster (2001), a leading self theorist in cyc, blends essentialism and social constructionist theory in his articulation of how a self develops. he primarily situates the self relationally, but contends that an essential or core aspect of himself reveals his divinity and place within the whole. he uses the language of postmodern science (chaos theory, quantum theory, and complexity principles) to hint at the potential of a self with limitless potential and connectedness. for fewster, the core or authentic self finds expression and development in relationship with other authentic selves. when these relationships are unsupportive or unavailable, however, the core self is lost and a socially negotiated self becomes prominent. this socially constructed self is seen by fewster as illusory or false and dependent on the expectations of others for motivation. this description of the self is an excellent example of how cyc practitioners and scholars must create their own definitions of self based on their experience, context, and beliefs. fewster’s (2001) conceptualization of the self is a helpful example of how modern and postmodern ideas need not be understood as contradictory, but can both inform the ways we make meaning of our selves in praxis. it is interesting to know that fewster mentions at least two core jungian ideas, the shadow and individuation, in his theory of himself. in remarkable similarity to our praxis approach in cyc, jung emphasized the personal characteristics and development of the analyst over her technical or medical expertise (samuels, shorter, & plaut, 1986). jung is perhaps the first psychologist to acknowledge the emotional involvement of the analyst and require a training analysis for 237 those wishing to practice. moreover, jung conceptualized analysis as a dialectical and relational process in which the analyst was as much “in” therapy as the client (samuels, 2006). the involvement of the analyst at such a personal level has been taken by some analysts to include the woundedness of the healer and the therapeutic value of the client’s ability to help the analyst (sedgwick, 1994). analysis accelerates the process of individuation through the co-creation of knowledge within an interactive and mutually validating relationship. jung is shown here as a forerunner to therapeutic alliances, mutuality, and praxis. in terms of methodology, jungian, cyc, and social constructionist perspectives show concern for the “continuities and discontinuities of human life at the level of the person and personal meaning, rather than statistical regularities at the level of aggregates or reduction to performances in experimental procedures” (jones, 2003a, p. 367). following this belief, discursive analysis of the self is similar to jungian theory in that it cannot be verified in a scientific sense. the postmodernism of foucault suggests a valuing and recognition of “local” knowledges or alternative descriptions, which are extensively silenced through the disqualifying discourses of the majority (madigan, 1998). paralleling the recognition of individual narratives, jung’s thesis of the reality of the psychic experience elevates his clients “psychotic irrationality” to a level of meaning and coherence (hauke, 2000). fewster (2002) draws on personal and professional experience in a complete refutation of the diagnostic categories of the american psychological association’s dsm-iv. the dedicated cyc practitioner takes up a seemingly postmodern analysis of the consensuality, objectification, and power related to standard categorizations of families and youth. epistemologically, all three discourses value the contextual and co-constructed nature of knowledge. methodologically, such attitudes manifest as participant action research, integrative approaches, intersectional analysis, and collaborative and qualitative inquiry. in practice they translate to a collaborative, relational, and strengths-based approach. strengths-based practice holds that a client is the expert about their life and as such should have an active part in assessments, goal setting, and the determination of goal achievement (steven, 2007). it is my contention that the client-centered and relational approaches found in cyc are resonant with the jungian principles of teleology and psychic reality. teleology is a lens through which all experience and behaviour can be seen as oriented towards a purpose. these purposes are generally considered by jungians as movements towards goals of individuation or the developmental process of the self (colman, 2006). the concept of psychic reality conjointly privileges a client’s construction of experience over an objective or expert explanation. in both cases, the meaning of behaviour is contextualized within an individual’s psychological system and informs a client-centered strengths-based approach. when theorizing about the self, the late social constructivist and professor emeritus at the university of victoria, vance peavy1, employs a spatial metaphor as an alternative for the traditional view of the self. the author emphasizes the individual’s meaning-making in relationships rather than in the context of an ecological system. he suggests digging deep into the layers of semantic and social space for meaning. this view 238 reflects jung’s hermeneutic approach to an individual’s subjective psychology and jennifer white’s (2007) constructivist and hermeneutic approach to cyc praxis. while peavy puts forward a multiple-self view that is at odds with jung’s more unitary conceptualization, i do, however, find that there is a resonance with jung’s complex theory, which “rests on a refutation of monolithic ideas of personality” (samuels, shorter, & plaut, 1986, p. 33). the considerable difference lies in jung’s view of the autonomy of these entities and peavy’s ideas of the self being relational and narrated. colman (2006), however, argues that there is not a great contrast between constructivist and essentialist viewpoints of the self since most jungians would agree that the self depends on a particular context for its realization. in the practical realm of youth work and counselling in general, peavy argues for practitioners to resist the idea that they must be objective towards other people. rather, he proposes that practitioners become reflexive towards themselves in order to deconstruct the assumptions and bias which underlie their practice. as mentioned above, jung emphasized the importance of a training analysis for practitioners to become aware of their own self before engaging with others. furthermore, the jungian principles of psychic reality resonates with sibylle artz’s (2000) suggestion that listening carefully to how clients see the world and themselves supports an attitude of inquiry rather than one plagued by assumptions. through critical reflection on social conditions that influence subjectivity, practitioners are able “to accept partiality, multiplicity, randomness, incoherence, and uncertainty” (artz, 2000, p. 54). further, hoskins (2003) discusses how listening is the essential step to knowing anything about an individual’s relationship to culture, without which, action remains unproductive. both hoskins and artz agree that by keeping the complexity of experience in the foreground, practice remains effectual and grounded in relationships. aston (2008) proposes a feminist poststructural model when dealing with information and discourse. she argues that by analyzing personal experiences, practitioners can help individuals choose what discourses to integrate into everyday practices. how dialogue occurs between client and practitioner becomes even more important when there is intent to challenge oppressive myths and stereotypes. applying this analysis brings the client’s subjectivity and agency to bear on some of the dominant discourses with which they engage. a feminist poststructural approach locates individuals as interactive in relation to discourse, with the ability to challenge and possibly change their own circumstances and the circumstances of others. this approach illustrates the possibility of working dialogically with the self to influence discourse on both a personal and social level. ricks and bellefeuille (2003) argue that through an unceasing inquisitive stance and a suspension of knowing, ethics therefore become a lived experience situated and created in the context of the relationship. moreover, garfat and ricks (1995) position the self as the driving force behind understanding, processing, and acting in the resolution of ethical dilemmas. like jung, the authors support a view of the self as the mediator of experience and the basis for acting ethically in relationships. ricks (1989) describes the self in terms of configurations within temporal dimension that manifest as thoughts, feelings, and acts. these positions are postures of the self and are “bottom line statements of one’s being or the essence of who one is” (p. 39). furthermore, ricks contends that 239 “these constructions of one’s reality…are constructed from one’s reality and they serve one by maintaining that reality” (p. 39). again in ricks we see the interweaving of an essentialist and constructivist view of the self. the tension in cyc between the modern and postmodern opens the door for individual practitioners to apply their self in the development of theory and action. in this paper i have integrated the essentialism of jung with a constructivist attitude to highlight avenues for future research in cyc theory. bringing these threads together, anglin3 conceives of the ethical practitioner as one who works with theories that lend themselves to being integrated into their authentic, genuine personality. taking these tensions out into the field of cyc, praxis emerges from the web of theory, action, and self. coming full circle “we cannot wait for perfect theories nor do we want them. we’re in process. theory is as alive as ethics, we breath life into it, we don’t want to give birth to dead theory.” (reynolds, 2010) in the spirit of postmodernism, cyc praxis, and jungian psychology, this paper has submitted a personal exploration and account of self in reflexive action. i have maintained multiple ways of knowing which is considered as a central strength in cyc praxis (white, 2007) and have used the jungian interplay of opposites to be the very energy fuelling my work. this article is a symbol of my individuating self in praxis and articulates a local narrative 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(2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child & youth care forum, 36(5), 225-244. doi:10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 whitehead, a. n. (1967). science and the modern world. new york: the free press. young-eisendrath, p., & hall, j. (1991). jung’s self psychology: a constructivist perspective. new york: guilford press. endnotes 1 peavy, v. (speaker). (n.d.). applying constructivist theory in cyc 205: applying change theory in child and youth care practice (course content audio file). victoria, bc: university of victoria. retrieved april 3, 2009, from http://owl.uvcs.uvic.ca/movies/cyc301/peavy.mp3 2 ricks, f. (speaker). (n.d.). the significance of theory in cyc 205: applying change theory in child and youth care practice (course content audio file). victoria, bc: university of victoria. retrieved october 20, 2008, from course electronic blackboard. 3 anglin, j. (speaker). (n.d.). the humanistic approach in cyc 205: applying change theory in child and youth care practice (course content audio file). victoria, bc: university of victoria. retrieved february 17, 2009, from course electronic blackboard. scott kouri is an undergraduate student in the school of child and youth care at uvic and a director of the c. g. jung society of victoria. he has been working with the fairfield community association’s child and youth programs for five years. his short term goals include completing a masters in cyc and developing a counselling practice that integrates postmodern and analytic psychology theory. uvic thesis template international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 home environment factors and ecd exposure predict school entry and grade progression: a study from a peri-urban community in central uganda, africa jolly p. tumuhairwe nyeko, alan pence, and gordon e. barnes abstract: this retrospective study of 535 households with 8-year-old children focuses on factors that can influence age-appropriate school entry and subsequent grade-level progression. the households included in this research are from a peri-urban community near kampala, uganda. data were collected mainly from primary caregivers. the study examined the influence of family variables, home environment, stressful life events, and exposure to early childhood development (ecd) services on both age at school entry and educational grade level. given the relative lack of african studies of this size and nature, descriptive and correlational analyses, as well as a regression analyses, are included in the findings. from the regression analyses, three major findings emerge. first, family structure (intact vs. other) and educational level of the caregiver are important variables in predicting children’s enrolment in ecd, age of entry into school, and grade level in school. second, whether the child attended ecd or not, the child’s age at ecd enrolment, and the type of ecd attended are significantly related to school attendance, that is, if currently in or out of school and grade level achieved in school. third, stressful life events in the household are significantly related to the grade-level progression of children in school. keywords: home environment, ecd exposure, school entry jolly p. tumuhairwe nyeko (phd) is the chief executive officer of action for children, plot 110, lutaaya road, p.o. box 25417, kampala, uganda. e-mail: jnyeko@yahoo.com alan pence (phd) is a professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p. o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2, canada. e-mail: apence@uvic.ca gordon e. barnes (phd) is a professor emeritus in the school of child and youth care, and a scientist emeritus at the centre for addiction research of bc, p. o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2, canada. e-mail: gbarnes@uvic.ca mailto:jnyeko@yahoo.com mailto:apence@uvic.ca mailto:gbarnes@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 663 children’s entry into school at appropriate ages and their successful progression through the primary grades are strong predictors of later life opportunities and successes, and while this finding has been documented most consistently in minority (developed) world settings, there is mounting evidence that this is also the case in the majority (developing) world (arnold, bartlett, gowan, & merali, 2006; grantham-mcgregor et al., 2007; malmberg, mwaura, & sylva, 2011; martinez, naudeau, & pereira, 2012; njenga & kabiru, 2001; richter, foster, & sherr, 2006; walker et al., 2007). children in resource-constrained communities in africa are growing up with limited opportunities for education and other basic necessities like health services and adequate nutrition (aidoo, 2008; grantham-mcgregor et al., 2007; irwin, adams, & winter, 2009). the care, development, and education of these children is highly dependent on their primary caregivers and is greatly influenced by community factors, such as the social, spiritual, and material supports available to them. young children from birth to 8 years old, the period typically referred to as early childhood (arnold, 2008), are likely to be the group most impacted by home environment characteristics (richter, 2010). however, some researchers, including irwin et al. (2009) in their work for the joint learning initiative on children and aids, show that welldesigned early childhood development (ecd) interventions can result in higher educational attainment and can counteract home factors that predict poor outcomes (arnold, 2008; martinez et al., 2012; myers, 1992). given what the literature notes, we therefore focused our retrospective study on factors that can influence the age of school entry and grade level progression of children. we hypothesized that the most disadvantaged children, those who live in households with such life stresses as the absence of one or more parents or a personal connection to a disease such as hiv/aids, would be at greater risk of both enrolling in school later than the appropriate age (age 6, according to uganda policy) and not advancing successfully. additionally, we examined the influence of family variables and exposure to ecd services on the educational entry and transitions of young children. context and terms of our study data for the study were collected from 535 eight-year-old children and their primary athome caregivers in the peri-urban parish of kyanja, near kampala, the capital city of uganda. the data presented in this report are based on the caregiver-reports component of this study. the home environment influences considered in the study include the effects of hiv/aids, family migration, parental separation, job losses, and deaths from various causes. we also examined the impact of ecd exposure, which included enrolment in ecd, age at enrolment, and category of ecd centre in which the children were enrolled, either formal or non-formal. formal ecd initiatives in this study refer to pre-school or pre-primary centres that mainly focus on school readiness (numeracy and literacy) for children aged 3 to 5 (prochner & kabiru, 2008). non-formal ecd initiatives are associated with the provision of care for children while caregivers work outside the home, but in the case of this study that care also included some international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 664 numeracy and literacy skill development along with social skills development, health and nutrition supports, and programs for parents. non-formal ecd initiatives in uganda are often operated by not-for-profit organizations, which is the case for this study. indeed, all of the nonformal programs in kyanja are operated by the non-profit organization action for children (afc). the home environment in this study refers to sociodemographic variables that are likely to be associated with the education and development of young children in the home, such as: family structure (whether children live in families with both of their birth parents or in other arrangements that include living with a single parent, other family members, or caregivers not biologically related); age, gender, and education of the primary caregiver; total number of children in the home; number of orphans in the home; number of children aged 8 in the home; number of children in the home that are enrolled in ecd; number of children in primary school; the presence of hiv/aids in the household; divorce or separation of parents; family migration; loss of employment; death of parent(s); illness of parent(s); and lack of school fees. the term “primary caregiver” in this study refers to the person in the household who is engaged in providing the day-to-day care and nurturance of the child. these caregivers may include parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and other related individuals. a pictorial representation of the hypothesized relationships between the main variables included in this study is provided in figure 1. on the left-hand side of this model are the sociodemographic characteristics of the child and the parent, and aspects of the home environment such as life circumstances (living with parent vs. not living with parent) and life stressors. at the intermediate level of this model is the child’s exposure to early childhood education. the education outcome variables are shown at the right-hand side of this model. method research design three quantitative research designs were considered before selecting the approach for this study: a cross-sectional study, a longitudinal panel study, and a retrospective study. these designs have varying advantages and disadvantages with reference to understanding child transitions in kyanja parish. the design selected here was primarily a retrospective design, with some features adapted from longitudinal studies such as the dunedin longitudinal study (e.g. caspi et al., 2002). the dunedin study utilized a community sample and a birth cohort, and obtained data from multiple reporting sources. the concept of combining a community study/ birth cohort strategy with a retrospective study led to a useful and efficient design. for example, when using a retrospective approach, all of the data can be obtained at once. because the children participating were all of the same age (8 years old in this case), the need to modify questions according to age group or control for age in the data analyses is eliminated. the community sampling design can also address a large cohort, and makes it easy to obtain data from both children and caregivers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 665 home environment education variables figure 1. sociodemographics, ecd exposure and school outcomes. ecd exposure enrolment age at enrolment category of ecd school attendance in or out of school grade in school children variables gender hiv status caregiver variables age gender education level life stress events f il t t (i t t th ) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 666 retrospective study designs have been used before to obtain information on students’ home environments in relation to their academic performance. for example, in a retrospective study of eighth graders and their family structure in the united states, kurdek and sinclair (1988) studied the school performance of 219 students with a mean age of 13.84 years (sd = 0.58). these researchers obtained information on students’ end-of-year grades in relation to their home environment and found that students from two-parent nuclear families had higher end-of year grades than students in either mother-custody or stepfather families. whereas kurdek and sinclair (1998) were interested in the performance of the children in terms of end-of-year grades, the current study interest is the progress of children in relation to enrolment, repetition, and grade promotion. further research showing the value of retrospective research is provided by yancura and aldwin (2009), whose well-designed retrospective assessments yield valuable data about childhood experiences. retrospective research designs have also been found to be particularly useful for examining the link between adverse early childhood experiences and later outcomes (cf. clarkson freeman, 2014). however, researchers such as yancura and aldwin (2009) caution that retrospective self-reports can be influenced by individual characteristics such as age, gender, and physical health status. retrospective accounts seem to work best when concrete information is being gathered, and reports are verified by using multiple response sources. procedure after consultation with kyanja parish officials, all households in the parish were visited to determine which households had children aged 8 years old. the children were from different home configurations, with 72% living with parents, 14% with grandparents, 13% with other relatives, and 1% with non-relatives. the households in which some of the children lived were affluent with regard to size, type, and location; others lived in low-income settings in which families of six or more might be crowded into dwellings of a single room. the study included children of 8 years of age regardless of whether these children had attended an ecd centre, and whether they attended primary school. children who were unable to respond to the questions due to illness were excluded. the primary caregivers were selected regardless of their relationship to the children. both female and male primary caregivers were selected for interviews. the caregivers were asked about all children below 18 years old under their care in the home but the interview focused on the children who were 8 years old. the data were obtained by interviewing respondents in person. the child interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes while the caregiver interviews lasted approximately one hour, or more if there were additional children in the household who were cared for by the same caregiver. the results in this report are based on the caregiver responses only. in each village of the parish, approximately 59 households were included in the study and a total of 1070 interviews with 535 children and 535 caregivers were obtained. three households withdrew from the study after signing the consent form. the collected data were cleaned, removing incomplete questionnaires. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 667 measures the data collection process used a structured interview based on an adapted version of the home screening questionnaire (richter & grieve, 1991; brockington et al., 2001) derived from the home observation for measurement of the environment (home) scale (bayley, 1969 quoted in richter & grieve, 1991; elardo & bradley, 1981) and adapted for south africa by richter and grieve (1991) to gather historical data on children and their caregivers. for the richter and grieve (1991) study, the home screening questionnaire (hsq) was translated from english into the local languages, sizulu and setswana, and back to english for cross-checking. the interviewers had to be language-flexible in the face of a multilingual south african community. while richter and grieve (1991) used the scale for infants, the hsq was translated into local languages, giving an example of a translation into a local african language. the scale was adjusted to suit children of 8 years in the same way that totsika and sylva (2004) adjusted the hsq to suit ages 3 to 6 years in their study on the early childhood home environment. in kyanja, the common language of the community is luganda, the native language spoken in the central region of uganda. the questionnaire was translated by an expert translator into luganda, and back-translation into english was employed to ensure that the content had survived translation intact. however, as kyanja is semi-urban, some questionnaire forms in english were available for respondents who preferred them. through open and scaled (likert) and closed (yes/no) questions ,the interviews gathered details about the events that took place in the children’s lives from birth to 8 years. the first page of the interview schedule contained instructions for the interviewer and for the respondents. the instructions were reminders extracted from the training for the researchers that was held three weeks before the survey. they included such items as being observant in case the respondent felt uncomfortable and wanted to stop the interview, and in case there were questions the child or caregiver felt uneasy about answering. caregiver interview the caregiver interview collected basic information on the demographics of the caregiver, the demographic and life circumstances of the child, the child’s ecd involvement, and the child’s entry and progress in the school system. the caregiver demographic questions gathered information about: gender (male, female), highest education level (1 = no education, 2 = primary level, 3 = secondary level, 4 = postsecondary level), and relationship to the child (1 = parent, 2 = grandparent, 3 = elder sibling, 4 = other). the child demographic questions gathered information about the child’s gender (male, female), who the child lived with (e.g., both parents, mother, father, grandparents, other), and age when they came to live in their current home (if not living at home with their parents). the household life circumstances questions addressed the occurrence of parental loss for either one or both of the child’s parents, and other family life stressors, including divorce of parents, separation of parents, remarriage of parents, destruction of the family home, family international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 668 migration, and loss of employment. when descriptive statistics showed that most of the children had suffered no stressors or only one stressor, a decision was made to construct a dichotomous variable with 0 being no stressor, and 1 being one or more stressors. further home environment questions addressed the possible effect of hiv/aids on the household. these questions were concerned with whether a child had lost a parent due to hiv/aids, whether a current family member was affected by hiv/aids, whether the child had been tested for hiv/aids, and whether results of this test had been positive. the caregiver interview also addressed the child’s involvement in ecd programs including the year of and age at ecd enrolment, time spent in ecd (less than 6 months, 6 months to 1 year, 1 year to 2 years, more than 2 years), and the type of ecd program. to determine the type of program, the respondent gave the name of the program, and the researchers, who were familiar with the programs, classified it as either formal or informal based on the proportion of structured activities included. the child’s school progress was also addressed in the caregiver interview with questions concerning enrolment in school (yes, no), and current grade level (primary 1, primary 2, primary 3, primary 4). if there was more than one 8-year-old child in the household, the caregiver answered the questions for each child and the responses were recorded on a separate form for each child. data analysis strategy the study data analysis strategy involved three levels: descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate. in the descriptive analysis, frequencies for all of the variables used in the study were examined. the second level of analysis involved conducting bivariate analyses to determine if significant correlations existed between the home environment variables and ecd history, and the dependent variables, including school attendance and grade level in school. in the third level of analysis, multivariate analyses were conducted to determine which variables predicted children’s school attendance (not in school vs. in school) and the level of education attained (grade in school). for the first multivariate analyses, logistic regression was utilized to predict school entry versus non-entry. all of the significant caregiver variables that predicted school attendance in the bivariate analyses were included in this analysis. the order of entry for the predictor variables in this model was informed by the theoretical model shown in figure 1. sociodemographic and home environment predictors were entered first and the ecd exposure variable entered next. this order of entry allowed for the testing of a possible mediated relationship where some of the first-level predictors might be mediated through their influence on ecd exposure. results the second multivariate analyses used linear regression to predict the grade level attained in school. the same strategy for selecting predictors and ordering the entry of variables that was employed in the previous model was also applied here. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 669 to begin, we conducted a simple descriptive analysis of the children’s and caregivers’ demographic variables. there were 455 households with children aged 8 years old, but because there were some households with more than one child, the number of completed caregiver questionnaires was 535. the sample was composed of n = 449 (83.9%) female caregivers and n = 86 (16.1%) male caregivers, and n = 265 (49.5%) female children and n = 270 (50.5%) male children. out of the 535 caregiver responses received, 54 were taking care of two children each aged 8 years, 11 were caring for three children aged 8, and one respondent had five children aged 8 years of age. the rest of the respondents, n = 389 (73%), had one child aged 8. seventy two percent of the caregivers were aged below 40 years, 25% were 40 to 60 years of age, and 3% of the caregivers were above 60 years old. ecd exposure according to caregiver reports, the number of children that had ever been enrolled in ecd was n = 512 (95.7%) compared to n = 23 (4.3%) who had never been enrolled. the caregiver reports indicated that the number of children that were enrolled in the formal ecd centres was n = 455 (88.7%) compared to n = 58 (11.3%) enrolled in the non-formal ecd centres operated by afc. school entry and grade level according to the caregiver reports, the majority of the children, n = 516 (96.4%), were in school, with the highest percentage of enrolments in primary 2, n = 162 (31.4%), followed by primary 3, n =121 (23.4%). the rest of the children were enrolled in primary 1, n =109 (21.1%), primary 4, n = 65 (12.6%), and or were still in ecd, n = 43 (8.3%). an 8-year-old would normally be in primary 3, but school grade results show that 60.9% of the children are below that grade, while 12.6% are above, either in primary 4 or higher. stressful life events caregiver data indicated that n = 369 (69.8%) reported no known major stressful life events in the household, while n = 160 (30.2%) reported having a stressful life event in the household. this question was only asked of the caregivers. the type of stressful life events reported ranged from death of a parent, n =55 (10.3%), to family migration, n = 47 (8.8%). other stresses that were noted were divorce or separation, n = 14 (2.6%), and loss of a job, n = 3 (0.3%). caregiver reports on family structure in the children’s households revealed that n = 456 (86%) had both parents alive, while n = 18 (3.4%) had both parents dead. others, n = 56 (10.6%), had one parent alive. the majority of the children lived with their birth parents, n = 386 (72.3%), while others, n = 79 (14.8%) lived with grandparents, or in other arrangements. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 670 hiv/aids in the household in relation to hiv/aids in the household, n = 504 (95.1 %) of the caregivers reported no presence of hiv/aids in the household, while n = 26 (4.9%) reported there was a person in the household with hiv/aids. the person reported to be with hiv/aids was usually a parent, n = 13 (39.4%), followed by other people in the household, n = 12 (36.4 %). the siblings reported to be living with hiv/aids were n = 8 (24.2 %). on whether the children had been tested or not for hiv/aids, the results showed that the majority, n= 474 (89.4%) had never been tested, while n= 56 (10.6%) had been tested. out of those tested, n= 48 (85.7%) were found negative, while n= 8 (14.3%) were positive. and of the children that tested positive, n= 6 (75%) were receiving anti-retroviral treatment, while n= 2 (25%) were not receiving the treatment. correlation results from the caregiver reports the correlation results based on the caregiver measures are presented in table 1. this analysis showed that exposure to ecd was correlated with school attendance, r = .35 (p ≤ .001), signifying that the children exposed to ecd were more likely to be in school. in addition, the children living with birth parents were more likely to be in formal ecd centres than non-formal centres. the caregiver education variable also correlated positively with formal ecd involvement, r = .15 (p ≤ .001). further, children who enrolled in ecd at an earlier age were more likely to be in higher grades than those who enrolled at a later age, r = -.30 (p ≤ .001). table 1 significant correlations between sociodemographic/home environment variables and children’s education outcomes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1.ecd exposure 2.enrolment age 3.ecd category 4.school attend. -.35** 5.grade -.30** 6.caregiver age -.18** 7.caregiver education .15** .12** .17** 8.life stress -.18** -.18** -.16** .16** -.16** 9.family structure .15** -.38** -.28** ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). the education level of the caregiver was found to be correlated with the children’s school status enrolment, r = 12 (p ≤ .001), and grade level in school, r = 17 (p ≤ .001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 671 stressful life events in the household were negatively correlated with school attendance, r = -.18 (p ≤ .001). the households that reported the presence of a stressful life event were more likely to have children out of school. similarly, stressful life events in households were negatively correlated with grade level, r = -16 (p ≤ .001). children living in households that experienced stressful life events were more likely to be in lower grades, and not to have been exposed to ecd, as stressful life events were negatively correlated with exposure to ecd, r = 18 (p ≤ .001). regression results from the caregiver reports in the first regression model, the technique of hierarchical logistic regression analysis was used to predict the dependent variable of school attendance (0 = not in school vs.1 = in school). the order of entry for the predictors in this model was informed by the theoretical model shown in figure 1. the sociodemographic and home environment predictors, that is, family structure (both birth parents vs. other), education level of caregiver, and household stressful life events (not present vs. present) were entered in the first block, while ecd enrolment was added in the second block. the results of this analysis are shown in table 2. table 2 hierarchical logistic regression of children’s home environment factors with school status (caregiver reports) block 1 block 2 or or (95% ci) or or (95% ci) caregiver demographics/ home environment family structure 1.30 (0.50-3.20) 1.23 (0.45-3.36) education level 2.06* (1.05-4.06) 1.94* (0.92-4.11) life stress 5.02** (1.83-13.74) 3.53* (1.21-10.31) ecd history ecd exposure .08*** (0.03-.23) model χ2 20.66 38.68 negelkerke r2 .14 .25 *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001. in the first step of this model, the sociodemographic domain predictors contributed significantly in the prediction of school attendance (χ2 (3, n = 529) = 20.66, p < .001), and the nagelkerke r2 statistic indicated that 14% of the variance in school grade level was explained. the hosmer and lemeshow goodness of fit test indicated that the model adequately fit the data (χ2 (6, n = 529) = 3.32, p <.77). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 672 caregiver education level and household life stress were the two significant predictors of school enrolment. children having more educated caregivers and lower household life stress levels were more likely to be attending school. in the second step of the logistic regression analyses, the ecd enrolment predictors were added. this block of predictors contributed significantly to the model (χ2 (4, n = 529) = 18.03, p < .001), with the nagelkerke r2 statistic indicating that 25% of the variance was explained. the hosmer and lemeshow goodness of fit test indicated that the model adequately fit the data (χ2 (6, n = 529) = 6.82, p < .34). caregiver education level remained a significant predictor and ecd enrolment was also significant. specifically, school attendance was associated with higher caregiver education and ecd enrolment. the final model was significant (χ2 (4, n = 529) = 38.68, p < .001) with the nagelkerke r2 showing that 25% of the variance was explained. in the second regression model, hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to test the multivariate relationships between the predictors of family structure (intact with both biological parents vs. other), caregiver education level, household life stress, and grade level attained in school according to the caregivers’ reports. this strategy allowed testing for possible mediated relationships. in this stage of analysis the significant predictors in the model, that is, family structure, education level of caregiver, and household life stress, were entered in the first block, while ecd exposure and age at enrolment were entered in the second block. the results of this analysis are presented in table 3. table 3 linear regression of children’s home environment factors with grade in school (caregiver reports) block 1 block 2 β β caregiver demographics/ home environment family structure .05 .03 education level .15*** .16*** life stress -.11* -.13** ecd exposure age at enrolment -.30*** ecd enrolment -.01 r2 change .04*** .09*** r2 total .13*** *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001. in the first block of the regression analysis, the sociodemographic and home environment predictors, that is, family structure and household life stress, only explained 4% of the variance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 673 the only significant predictor was the education level of the caregiver, β = .15 (p ≤ .001) and it explained 4.4% of the variance. when the second block of predictors was entered, an additional 9% of the variance was explained with caregiver education level remaining significant β =.16 (p ≤ .01), and age at enrolment also significant β = -.30 (p ≤ .001). the higher the educational level of caregivers, and the earlier that children enrolled in ecd, the higher the grade level that was attained by the children involved. these predictors together explained 13% of the variance in the grade level attained. discussion the major findings from this study are: • family structure is an important variable in predicting children’s participation in ecd and school attendance. • educational level of caregivers is an important variable in predicting children’s participation in ecd and school attendance. • ecd history (attendance at ecd, age at ecd enrolment, and category of ecd) is significantly related to school attendance and grade level in school. • stressful life events in the household are significantly related to school attendance. characteristics of caregivers the educational attainments and life experiences of caregivers appear to play an important role when it comes to children’s access to education. for the children who participated in this study, living with their biological parents was significantly correlated with both enrolling in ecd and entering primary school at an earlier age than children living with non-birth-parent caregivers. however, the education level of the caregiver, for both birth parents and non-birth parents, was also significantly correlated with access to ecd and achievement of a higher grade level in school for the children. our study showed that the higher the education level of the caregiver, the greater the likelihood that the children were in school and in higher grades, while the reverse was also observed. this supports what we found in our review of previous research highlighting the important association of the level of education of caregivers with children’s school enrolment and attendance (unicef, 2010; irwin et al., 2009; nampijja et al., 2010). ecd attendance our study also indicates that children who attended ecd were more likely to be in school than those who never attended ecd. this result is consistent with a number of studies in the majority (developing) world (birgit, 2011; engle, dunkelberg, & issa, 2008; fabian & dunlop, 2007; bernard van leer foundation, 2006; brown & biryetega, 2004; njenga & kabiru, 2001), which found that ecd promotes or encourages children to enrol in school. proponents of ecd attendance (woodhead & moss, 2007; garcia, pence, & evans, 2008) assert that ecd creates a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 674 bridge between home and school and can strongly influence children’s enrolment in school. the positive contribution of ecd to school enrolment is made all the more apparent in our study by the finding that children who had attended ecd were more likely to be in school than children who were not exposed to ecd, despite the presence of stressful life events. this suggests that ecd enrolment is not only a bridge to further education but may well be a protective factor in the face of life stresses. formal and non-formal ecd this research has revealed that the majority of children in the study had been enrolled in formal ecd centres and that these children were in higher grade levels at school. this finding indicates that children who attended formal ecd centres had higher chances of enrolling in primary school and maintaining a progression to higher grades than did children attending nonformal ecd centres, although caregiver, family, and home factors interacted with these results. school grade level the study revealed that grade level was strongly predicted by ecd attendance. children who had enrolled in ecd and had completed at least two years were in higher grades than those who did not. while the results of this study have pointed to home environment stressors, parent education, and age at ecd enrolment as factors that predict school attendance and grade level, further research is needed to establish more factors influencing children’s grade levels, such as the influence of poverty, which was not specifically addressed in this study. age at enrolment one of the study’s findings is that children who enrolled in ecd at an early age, that is, at two or three years, (35% of all participants), were more likely to be in higher grade levels. enrolling early and staying longer, sometimes up to four years, was found to result in more consistent and larger positive effects on schooling participation and grade level. stressful life events in the household stressful life events had a negative impact on children’s enrolment in both ecd and school. the death of a parent had the strongest effect, and probably contributed most to the measured impact on the education of the children. it is also notable that parental death was most frequently from hiv/aids-related causes (25%). hiv/aids while caregivers reported hiv/aids as a major cause of death in the households, the presence of hiv/aids in the households at the time of the study was low, with only 5% of households reporting its presence. in this study, we found no negative correlations between school enrolment, school progress, and hiv/aids. the findings of this study are not consistent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 675 with assertions that children affected by hiv/aids have difficulty accessing educational services (richter et al., 2006; hunter & williamson, 1994), but confirms studies by unicef (2010) and kasirye and hisali (2009) who concluded that while in the past hiv/aids-affected children may have missed school, sub-saharan africa countries have made significant progress towards achieving consistent levels of school attendance. instead, the presence of life stressors in general, not necessarily hiv/aids alone, was a stronger predictor of age at school enrolment. the reason may be that children in households facing stressful life events are more likely to be mobile, migrating from one household to another (oleke, blystad, moland, rekdal, & heggenhougen, 2006). engle et al. (2007) assert that interventions for young children affected by hiv/aids, such as access to community-based child care and other forms of care, have not been rigorously assessed. our study contributes to the research on access to ecd services and its effect on children’s educational outcomes. it provides an assessment of ecd provision in lifestressed households directly affected by hiv/aids, and shows that ecd increases school attendance and progress even when dealing with hiv/aids. strengths and limitations of the study one of the major strengths of this study is the very high participation rate achieved in the large sample of households. the study design and its implementation ensured that no 8-year-old child in the parish was left out. there are, however, limitations to this study. first, the data were gathered only from participants that were found to be at home. the majority of the caregivers found at home were females as the males were often working outside the home. moreover, the data set did not include other possible predictor demographic variables such as income and employment, nor were other issues considered such as culture, tribe, or ethnicity. the study did, however gather relevant sociodemographic data such as age, gender, and education level. future research that integrates advanced multivariate inquiry would be beneficial to understanding the broader picture of caregiving, parenting, and education in relation to life stressors and socioeconomic challenges such as limitations in income. limited data are available on transitioning of children over time from home to ecd, to school, and within school (athanasiou, 2006; arnold et al., 2006). a longitudinal study that follows a cohort of children over time could provide a broader range of data with which to examine the relationships between the home environment and educational participation. such data could expand the discussion of the impact of the home environment and life stressors on education. even though data were collected in only one peri-urban parish, it is believed to be representative of certain other parishes in uganda, and can be applied to other similar settings. while the study has some limitations, they have minimal adverse effects on the findings. these limitations could be investigated in future research to augment and expand the kinds of studies so far undertaken and therefore help to build a larger, more diverse, and more relevant literature on the young child in africa. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 676 summary and conclusion as noted in the opening of the discussion section, our study showed the important contribution of the home environment to predicting a child’s transition from home to ecd and to school. further, our study has implications for government policies and priorities. based on our findings we suggest that family-centred policies and programs that address the importance of early childhood development will improve children’s well-being while reinforcing the home environment’s capacity to deal with stressful life events. interventions to promote ecd are costeffective investments to ensure that children are prepared for educational opportunities, thereby achieving the millennium development goals of ensuring enrolment for both girls and boys (engle et al., 2007; unesco, 2000). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 662–679 677 references aidoo, a. a. 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(2009). stability and change in retrospective reports of childhood experiences over a 5-year period: findings from the davis longitudinal study. psychology and aging, 24(3), 715–721. http://www.bernardvanleer.org/ http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/unicef_annual_report_2010_en_052711.pdf rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568206062943 rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-6886-2 rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511711879 rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(199122)12:2%3c88::aid-imhj2280120202%3e3.0.co;2-q rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1475-357x.2003.00073.x rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(07)60076-2 rcorder text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016203 home environment factors and ecd exposure predict school entry and grade progression: a study from a peri-urban community in central uganda, africa jolly p. tumuhairwe nyeko, alan pence, and gordon e. barnes method the caregiver interview collected basic information on the demographics of the caregiver, the demographic and life circumstances of the child, the child’s ecd involvement, and the child’s entry and progress in the school system. results discussion strengths and limitations of the study summary and conclusion references parameters of public policy change international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 295 parameters of public policy change toba bryant abstract: research has identified a wide range of factors that influence the health of children and their health as adults. key among these are early childhood conditions, care, and education, housing security and income security. a number of indicators have been developed to measure the health of children such as the incidences of infant mortality and low birth weight. in international comparisons with other rich countries, canada ranks poorly. these health outcomes are not inevitable but are shaped by the quality and distribution of a wide range of social determinants. public policies shape access to and quality of the social determinants of children’s health (sdch). because the sdch are amenable to public policy, it is important to understand public policy and the public policy development process in order to promote policy change. yet few health practitioners who work with children consider or understand how the public policy development process works. this article examines three models of public policy development: pluralism, policy paradigms, and political economy. it will be argued that of the three models, political economy, with its focus on the role of political ideology and power distribution, provides the most compelling explanation of the public policy development process and provides means to bring about policy change to improve the health of children. keywords: public policy, social determinants of health, political economy, pluralism, policy paradigms toba bryant, ph.d. is an assistant professor at the faculty of health sciences, university of ontario institute of technology, 2000 simcoe street north, oshawa, ontario, canada, l1h 7k4. telephone: (905) 721-8668, ext. 2697. e-mail: toba.bryant@uoit.ca mailto:toba.bryant@uoit.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 296 multiple factors influence children’s health and well-being. indeed, much research shows that conditions of early life influence health throughout the lifespan (bartley, blane, & montgomery, 1997; ben-shlomo & kuh, 2002 ; benzeval, dilnot, judge, & taylor, 2001; hertzman, 2001). this special issue highlights a number of these factors. in particular, the social determinants of children’s health (sdch) – housing security, income security, education and care, among others – that significantly shape the health of children and their health as adults. many indicators of children’s health have been developed to compare nations’ efforts to improve children’s health. in these comparisons, canada ranks below other rich nations (howlett, ramesh, & perl, 2009; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011, 2013). as two examples, canada’s infant mortality is almost 5/1,000 live births, with a rank of 27th among member countries of the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) and its low birth weight rate of 6.2/100 gives it a rank of 13th. canadian research shows that while the incidence of infant mortality and low birth weight is highest in low-income urban neighbourhoods as compared to higher income urban neighbourhoods in canada, even in these wealthy areas rates are higher than for children in many other developed countries (raphael, 2010). these poor health outcomes for children are not inevitable. rather, the health of children is tied to the quality and distribution of a wide range of sdch in canada and other countries. these sdch include household income, housing quality, food security, and other resources that are available to families. all of these factors are influenced by public policy. changes to the sdch through public policy can influence – increase or reduce – these and other sdch. few child health practitioners consider – or understand – how politics and the public policy development process shape children’s health. biomedical understandings of health continue to dominate public policy discourses concerning the health of populations. in addition, medical, nursing, and allied health professions training tends to have little instruction on public policy and how such policy shapes health. this contributes to a narrow emphasis on clinical health care by professions that usually precludes consideration of the broader determinants of the health of populations in general and children in particular. a similar situation exists for those concerned with promoting child health through social work and psychology-related activities. health is seen as being a characteristic of individuals, which can be influenced through clinical and community practice. there is a need to move the discussion of children’s health to a higher level that focuses on how public policy shapes the sdch. the public policy literature provides a broad range of models that can be used to analyse the prospects for improving the sdch. such an analysis also provides clues as to how these issues can be moved onto the public policy agenda to create positive conditions for children’s health (mintrom & vergari, 1996). yet, these models are rarely considered in discussions of how to bring about public policy change to improve children’s health. this article will explore the potential contributions and limitations of three key models of the public policy process: pluralism, policy paradigms, and political economy. the analysis will consider how they can be applied to bring about policy change to improve the sdch. pluralism international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 297 is concerned with the activity of interest groups as they try to shape public policy. policy paradigms examines the role of knowledge in shaping different types of public policy. political economy considers politics and economics as shaping public policy. each model represents a different level of analysis. it will be argued that of the three models, political economy offers the most cogent analysis of the conditions and factors that influence children’s health and offers the best prospects for policy change to improve the health and well-being of children. at the same time it should prove useful for reducing the profound health inequalities that exist among children in canada and elsewhere (raphael, 2015). public policy and public policy change as determinants of children’s health this special issue highlights some of the diverse factors that influence children’s health. the articles in this issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies especially illustrate the importance of public policy in influencing children’s health and i mention just three of these. petrie (2015) shows how the increasing marketization and commodification of children and youth in the united kingdom and in other wealthy countries has led to increased poverty and food insecurity for households with children. this has occurred as a result of the encroachment of the market economy into public services such that children and youth essentially become commodified themselves. these changes have material implications for their health and well-being. for example, daycare in most countries has become increasingly subject to market forces and is therefore not available to modest and low-income households. albanese and rauhala (2015) argue that children, mothers, and child care providers tend to be missing from public policy discussions about daycare. yet, high quality child care is critical to healthy child development and children’s readiness to learn when they begin school. rattle (2015) talks about the planning process and how it can neglect the health impacts of such developments upon children. what do models of policy change say about moving these issues onto the public policy agenda? yet, public policy discussion of children’s health is dominated by issues focused on health care. other dimensions of health – such as sdch and reducing health inequalities among children – are seldom considered. some of this may be attributable to the lack of awareness of practitioners – similar to the situation amongst most canadians -concerned with children’s health about public policy and its role in shaping children’s health outcomes. practitioners also tend to be unaware of the importance of politics and how political ideology shapes public policy decisions made by governments (see raphael, 2015). public policy theories can provide insights into the public policy development process and the factors affecting the public policy process. these include the role of politics and political ideology and how they influence public policy outcomes. these insights can be applied to bring about policy change to improve the sdch. but what exactly is public policy and why is it important for understanding the sdch? public policy is a plan or procedure for action or inaction by government to address a problem or related set of problems (pal, 2006). public policies are based on a set of values about international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 298 appropriate goals and beliefs about how best to achieve those aims. policies are also considered guides for action or inaction. deciding not to take action is also a public policy decision. it retains the status quo rather than bringing about change on an identified issue. decisions to act or not are embedded in the ideological commitments of the government of the day. their ideological beliefs and values determine which issues they will prioritize and the policy instruments that will be used. the literature identifies a wide range of factors that can influence whether a government decides to act or not act to address a problem (howlett et al., 2009). these factors include previous policy decisions in a given policy area, external factors such as international crises (e.g., financial crises or wars), pressure from civil society organizations or movements, or demographic and other changes in a population. demographic or other population shifts are especially important and can lead to the identification of necessary new services or programs to meet health and social needs in a community. for example, identifying a growing population of preschool children may lead government to develop programs and services for early childhood education and care, such as day care, full-day kindergarten, and establishing neighbourhood paediatric clinics. similarly, an increased incidence of childhood diseases for which vaccines were available (e.g., measles or chicken pox), could inspire a government to implement a vaccination program to protect children from these diseases. health issues are complex and a government’s decision to take action – or not – is fundamentally shaped by its ideological commitments. ideological commitments are ideas and beliefs about the type of problems that will be addressed and the policy solutions that will be devised to mediate identified issues. this usually centres on whether government or a private agency will provide a service or program. this is the essence of the public versus privatization debate that so frequently dominates canadian public policy discussions (council of canadians, 2007). public policy process models can provide lenses by which to understand and explain different elements of the public policy process and motivations for governments’ action or inaction. most models of public policy also consider policy change, but policy change represents a particular focus in the political science literature (mintrom & vergari, 1996). policy change usually signifies a new course of action to address an issue identified by government and/or others as having negative outcomes for a particular population or the population as a whole. not all public policy models are concerned with the impact of politics and political ideology in shaping policy change outcomes. an important distinction among models of public policy change is that between consensus models of public policy and conflict models (brooks & miljan, 2003). consensus models conceive the policy-making process as a rational process by which various interest groups compete to influence a more or less neutral state to implement specific forms of public policy. in contrast, conflict models of public policy-making emphasize the role of political ideology and power in shaping public policy decisions (coburn, 2010). these models explicitly consider how public policy creates various forms of inequality as a result of differing balances of power among the state, the market, and civil society in the public policy process (see raphael, 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 299 models of public policy change pluralism pluralism is one of the dominant policy approaches to examining middle ranges of public policy in north america. the model was developed in the united states in the early 20th century (howlett et al., 2009). it is a consensus model of policy change in that it focuses on the competition among interest groups and their activities as significant influences on a more or less neutral state’s making of public policy. interest groups are therefore the key unit of analysis in pluralism. it conceives society as consisting of a plurality of interest groups. since the complexity of governance in modern society precludes direct participation by individual citizens, citizens join groups to advocate for their concerns. an early pluralist theorist argued that, “society is nothing other than the complex of the groups that compose it” (bentley, as cited in howlett et al., 2009). individuals can belong to a large number of interest groups, which can cooperate with other groups to advocate on a particular issue and specific public policy changes (howlett et al., 2009). for example, a parent may belong to an organization that advocates for a national child care program, to an organization that advocates for more responsive health care, as well as to one that call for fairer taxation. pluralism considers politics as the process by which competing interests and groups come together to achieve agreed-upon public policy outcomes. the role of the state is to mediate the competition among diverse interest groups and to then make a public policy decision. critics identify the implicit assumption that all groups, regardless of their policy positions, will have their voices heard by government (mclennan, 1989). pluralists deny that this is the case, and claim that they recognize that interest groups vary in their influence which depend on the financial and other resources available to them (howlett et al., 2009). the concept of inequality in influence and power is underdeveloped in pluralism. there remains a pervasive sense that all citizens and citizen organizations can present their ideas to government and receive a fair hearing (mclennan, 1989). for example, it is believed that groups with ideas for improving children’s health can expect that government will hear and may act on their recommendations. in addition, implicit in this model is a neutral and benevolent state that arbitrates among competing interests. the state is considered to weigh all the evidence it receives – through a rational process – and arrives at a decision to benefit the entire community. previous research has identified that governments tend to filter out views that differ from their own (bryant, 2003, 2004). indeed, governments’ decisions are very much shaped by their ideological commitments and the politics of the moment. as a result, governments are not always motivated to address the needs of marginalized populations and this is especially the case in regard to issues that include the sdch (bryant, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 300 policy paradigms the policy paradigms model is one of a family of policy change models referred to as learning models. these models posit that governments learn as they adjust policy goals or methods in response to previous experience and/or new information about an issue (hall, 1993). learning is frequently associated with past policy experiences. a primary aim of the policy paradigms model is to identify different patterns of policy change and the learning process associated with each policy change pattern (hall, 1993). the policy paradigms model considers how the role of new knowledge can lead to incremental change or radical policy change that involves a significant shift in policy goals and objectives. the model focuses on the role of experts such as policy analysts inside and outside government and the knowledge and expertise they bring to the public policy process. a paradigm refers to the framework of ideas and standards within which policy-makers work (anderson, 1978). this framework identifies policy goals, the type of instruments to be used to achieve policy goals, and the type of problems that can and will be addressed by government (hall, 1993). in short, a paradigm is a world view that guides action, in this case in the public policy arena, and can result in particular sets of outcomes or approaches to addressing social and health issues. central to the paradigms model is the typology of policy change consisting of three orders (hall, 1993). first-order change refers to routine or minor policy changes such as increasing the number of neighbourhood after-hours paediatric clinics to complement regular health care services. second-order change refers to a change in policy instruments to achieve a policy goal. for example, in an effort to deter youth from taking up smoking, a municipal government might develop public service announcements (psas) warning about the negative impact of tobacco products on health. the intention of such psas is to encourage youth to voluntarily decide not to smoke. if evidence shows that this voluntary measure has not worked, a government may opt to raise taxes on tobacco products as an involuntary measure to change their behaviour (hall, 1993). studies have found that youth are price-sensitive and that tax measures can be effective in discouraging smoking and may even contribute to smoking cessation (ding, 2003; thomas et al., 2008). neither first-order nor second-order change involves change in the overall goals or objectives of a policy area. the overall goals and objectives of a policy area remain the same. both patterns of policy change involve incremental or minor changes to public policy. third-order change refers to radical policy change in which the overall policy goals and objectives change, as does the discourse related to the “received paradigm” (hall, 1993). it is paradigmatic change that involves redefining the central issues of a public policy area. for example, the health policy paradigm could shift from a biomedical approach to a sdch approach to children’s health, which may involve shifting the broad dimensions of public policy. this could involve changing the parameters by which workplaces operate such as promoting inter-sectoral bargaining, easing the means by which workplaces can be unionized, or requiring the provision of benefits to part-time employees. in other words, change occurs in the instrument settings, the policy instruments to be used, and in the policy goals and objectives. another international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 301 example of paradigmatic change would be a shift from allowing privatized social and health service provision to one requiring the state to provide services. the formation of the welfare state in advanced political economies such as canada after the second world war signified a shift from residual social provision to significant state financing and provision of social and health services, and in the economy (teeple, 2000). the shift from one paradigm to another occurs can be a result of recognition of growing anomalies related to the received or dominant policy paradigm’s ability to meet needs. such a perception can necessitate a shift to a new policy paradigm. hall argues that the shift to a new paradigm is driven by politics in that governments recognize a need to respond to these needs (hall, 1993). governments may experiment with differing policies, but usually it is outright policy failures that contribute to a shift in a policy paradigm. hall focuses on the role of experts and expert knowledge to the exclusion of other important actors and groups who attempt to influence the public policy process. hall’s policy paradigms approach is also a rational model of policy change. his model as initially presented does not sufficiently consider how politics leads to policy shifts (bryant, 2013). the role of politics in the model appears to be limited to politicians deciding which policy paradigm will prevail in a debate between the dominant and new paradigms. this decision is based on the merits or weight of the scientific evidence supporting each paradigm. the policy paradigms model is also a middle-level model in that it is concerned with the role institutions play in structuring public policy change. this means that institutions can impede policy change in that already established public policy paths will tend to be followed. this tendency is termed path dependency in which public policy set at an earlier point in time tends to influence future public policies (pierson, 2000). to overcome such inertia requires not only evidence of the limitation of established public policy but also the means of impressing these arguments upon policy-makers. in a recent article, hall addresses some of the limitations of his model as initially articulated (hall, 2013). he notes that the impetus for the shift to neo-liberal policies in the 1980s was the occurrence of the oil crisis of 1971, which led to increased unemployment and inflation in most developed economies. this in itself did not lead to public policy change such as the shift to market-driven economic paradigms. rather these developments were buttressed by coordinated attacks by the corporate sector on state intervention – through regulation and redistribution – in the economy. as a result, deregulation and privatization were enabled as were declines in trade union power through government legislation. the explicit recognition of the role that power and influence can play in pubic policymaking are more consistent with the concerns of political economy and provide the basis for a structural analysis of politics and political ideology in shaping policy change outcomes. nevertheless, hall continues to believe that the public policy development process is essentially rational and based on considered evaluations of both old and new knowledge and previous public policy experience. the political economy model, however, argues that important public policy decisions are driven more by the raw politics of power and how these interact with the ideological commitments of the government of the day. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 302 political economy political economy is primarily concerned with how political ideology and power operate to shape the distribution of social and economic resources in a society (armstrong, armstrong, & coburn, 2001). a key component of this perspective is that politics and economics are closely related and influence public policy development (coburn, 2004; esping-andersen, 1990). esping-andersen’s welfare state typology exemplifies a political economy approach. it considers ideas and institutions – and public policy that emanate from these – as stemming from societal arrangements that are powerfully shaped by historical traditions. the primary features of welfare regimes are the extent to which the state intervenes in the economy to ensure equity in the distribution of material and social resources to citizens, and the role of the state, the market, and the family in economic and social provision. this approach conceives politics and economics as fundamentally related. to a large degree, the state’s role is strongly shaped by the degree of class mobilization (esping-andersen, 1990). this occurs because the loyalties of the working and middle classes directly shape the forms by which the economic and political systems function. the different loyalties shape the formation and maintenance of welfare state regimes. esping-andersen distinguishes between social democratic, conservative, and liberal welfare states, which helps explain public policy development on the social determinants of health in the post-world war ii era. these different welfare state clusters are not inevitable, but have been shaped and moulded by ideologies of governments that are informed by the politics of political parties. social democratic regimes provide the most generous and comprehensive health and social benefits to citizens (esping-andersen, 1990). this includes comprehensive public health care, access to unemployment insurance during periods of unemployment, job retraining for workers who have lost their jobs, and national day care programs, among others. it emphasizes state provision of social and economic benefits, and equality and universality in the provision of social and economic services and programs. for example, day care is equally available to all families with preschool children regardless of family income. the state is a key institution in these regimes. examples of social democratic regimes are the nordic countries: denmark, finland, norway, and sweden. these welfare states are considered highly redistributive and decommodified which means that citizens are less reliant on their incomes to access services and other necessities of life. the conservative welfare regime emphasizes the family as the primary source of support and the use of social insurance schemes that are usually tied to employment (esping-anderson, 1990). these welfare regimes are less decommodified compared to social democratic regimes and have higher tolerance for social stratification. examples of conservative regimes are germany, france, belgium, the netherlands, and switzerland. finally, liberal regimes are the least decommodified welfare states (esping-andersen, 1990). social and health services and programs tend to be targeted to specific populations identified as disadvantaged. the market is considered the most important institution, and freedom from government is an important guiding principle. canada, the united states, the united kingdom, australia, and new zealand are identified as liberal welfare states. liberal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 303 welfare states have minimal decommodification. in terms of children’s health and well-being, canada provides a public-private mix of early childhood education and care. there is no national day care program, but a range of for-profit and non-profit day care programs. subsidized day care spaces are available for low-income households, but so few of these are provided that it is difficult for parents, especially mothers, to acquire paid employment. similarly, in some canadian provinces, municipal public health departments provide dental care to children in lowincome households until 18 years, but not to the parents of these children. in contrast, free dental care is provided to children in the social democratic welfare states (olsen, 2010). thus, a political economy approach presents a critical analysis that explains how some groups in society profit at the expense of others. it explicitly links neo-liberalism – an ideology of the market (coburn, 2000; teeple, 2000) that promotes free enterprise and freer trade between countries – to reductions in the welfare state during the 1980s. the value-added of a political economy approach – as compared to pluralism and policy paradigms – is a welfare state analysis which explicitly considers the impact of state intervention upon the sdch. essentially, esping-andersen’s identification of three types of welfare regimes assesses government intervention in the economy. social democratic welfare states are the engaged in managing the economy and providing generous state supports; liberal welfare states much less so. neo-liberalism, with its preference for the market as a key institution, has had its strongest effects in these liberal nations and have contributed to little action being taken on the sdch (raphael, 2014). implications for children’s health of the three models of policy change, political economy provides the most compelling analysis of the current state of the sdch in canada. it emphasizes how political ideology that favours the market – and politics – shapes policy change outcomes. governments become unwilling to create public policy that will redistribute economic and other resources to the most vulnerable in the service of the sdch. government also resists instituting programs that will impact the sdch as these require increasing public revenues, a public policy approach at odds with the increasingly dominant neo-liberal political agenda of reducing taxes and minimizing governments’ role in the day-to-day lives of citizens (coburn, 2004). to counter these developments, children’s health advocates must work strategically to achieve policy changes that will promote public health and knowledge of the sdch. traditional activities of meeting with cabinet ministers responsible for health policy and opposition parties must be maintained. these meetings will call for public policy initiatives that will improve child health and well-being and this is especially important for the most vulnerable households. child health advocates must identify and promote public policy objectives of ensuring that resources and services such as early childhood care are available to all households with young children. these objectives must also include protecting housing and food security for all. in other words, it requires advocacy on the various dimensions that ensure child health and well-being from birth such that all children have the best possible start and opportunities to learn, thrive, and become contributing citizens. these activities will try to convince policy-makers to institute these public policy approaches (wright, 1994). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 295–307 304 the insights of the policy paradigms approach suggest that there will be resistance to public policy that substantially changes the goals and tools by which public policy is made. it will be necessary to provide evidence of the shortcoming of current public policy approaches and to present alternative approaches. institutions such as government will resist such third-order change. such resistance may also be countered by some of the methods suggested by the political economy approach. the insights of the political economy approach suggest that these public policy advocacy activities attempting to change governmental approaches to public policy also require buttressing by powerful political and social movements that will force policy-makers to institute these public policy directions (wright, 1994). this is especially the case in liberal welfare states such as canada where the business and corporate sectors traditionally have had greater influence on public policy-making than other societal sectors. these political and social movements such as advocates for a national child care program and campaign 2000, which advocates for an end to child and family poverty, must create a groundswell of support for public policy that supports the sdch. this can occur through building coalitions or supporting political parties that put forward such approaches (brady, 2009). such outcomes are certainly more difficult to achieve in liberal welfare states than in other nations, but the history of canada is replete with such successes in areas such as universal health care and public pensions (rachlis, 2007). indeed, the opposition federal new democratic party (ndp) has announced its commitment to institute a universal affordable child care system in canada upon its election in 2015 (new democratic party of canada, 2014). it has also pledged to address the social determinants of health through public policy action (new democratic party of canada, 2013). this will occur only if the public comes to support such initiatives and the ndp either achieves power or other political parties recognize this groundswell and also come to support such initiatives. building support for these and other initiatives that will strengthen the sdch and provoke governmental responses is what building political and social movements is all about. conclusion understanding the policy change process is critical to bringing about public policy that will improve and maintain the health and well-being of all children by strengthening the sdch. this paper has examined pluralism, policy paradigms, and political economy for their insights into bringing about desired public policy change. of the three models, policy paradigms and political economy draw our attention to the role of the political ideology of the government of the day and the influence of the business and market sector in shaping policy change outcomes. the practical implications of this assessment are that advocates for children’s health must think strategically and become 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(1994). the class analysis of poverty. in e. o. wright (ed.), interrogating inequality (pp. 32–50). new york: verso. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2586011 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tc.2007.023911 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 409 the baby dumping phenomenon in nigeria: a study on the perception of market women in ibadan usman adekunle ojedokun and ewere nelson atoi abstract: baby dumping is one of the most common forms of child abuse in nigeria. although this practice is not new, its current frequent occurrence and the negative implications it has on the babies concerned, however, makes it a serious social problem that requires urgent attention. against this background, this paper examines the patterns, causes, and consequences of the baby-dumping phenomenon in nigeria. one hundred (100) market women involved in the study were selected through a quota sampling technique. in-depth interview and focus group discussion were the methods employed for data collection. data interpretation was done through content analysis and ethnographic summaries. findings showed that the phenomenon of baby dumping is complex in nature: multiple factors were identified as responsible for its occurrence and it was recognized to have a wide range of social and health implications on the dumped babies. this study advocates for an urgent shift from the current reactive approach to more proactive planning to effectively curtail the problem. keywords: baby dumping, nigeria, social problem, causes, implications, market women corresponding author: usman adekunle ojedokun, p.o box 23144, university of ibadan post office, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria. e-mail: kunleusman84@ymail.com usman adekunle ojedokun is a ph.d. candidate at the department of sociology, university of ibadan, nigeria. he specializes in the sociology of crime and deviance. ewere nelson atoi is a ph.d. candidate at the department of religious studies, university of ibadan, nigeria. he specializes in the philosophy of religion and ethics. e-mail: atoiewere.nelson@yahoo.com mailto:kunleusman84@ymail.com� mailto:atoiewere.nelson@yahoo.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 410 baby dumping1 is one of the most common forms of child abuse in nigeria (adesiyun et al., 2010; adewale, 1988; akani & erhabor, 2006; okeahialam, 1984). although this problem is a worldwide phenomenon (cesario, 2003; gheorghe, banner, hansen, stolberg, & lynnerup, 2008), its current frequent occurrence in nigeria and the negative consequences it has on the babies concerned makes it a serious social problem that requires urgent attention. the worrisome nature of this social problem is exemplified by the large array of media reports of cases of dumped babies recorded in different parts of the country (okwuofu, 2012; olonilua, 2011; ajewole, 2011). despite the fact that the international convention on economic, social and cultural rights of the child of 1976, the united nations convention on the rights of the child of 1989, the unesco world declaration and plan of action on the child of 1990, and the unicef’s annual reports on the state of the world’s children have all advocated the right of every child to a fulfilling and enriching life, children still suffer from different forms of abuse in nigeria (aderinto, 2007); baby dumping is one of the most serious forms of child abuse that has, over time, remained pervasive in the country. although, there are no available national statistics on the recorded cases of dumped or abandoned babies in nigeria, occasional state reports from different parts of the country indicate the alarming rate at which this criminal act is being perpetrated. for instance, the register of the child care unit of the oyo state ministry of women affairs, community development and social welfare in ibadan indicates that a total of 114 cases of dumped and/or abandoned babies were recorded between january 2009 and february 2012, compared to 84 cases that were recorded between january 2006 and december 2008. similarly, in a related development, the special adviser to the lagos state government on youth and social development recently revealed that lagos state in 2011 recorded 497 cases of abandoned babies dumped in different streets of the state (okoje, 2012). also, the kebbi state committee on hisba (social welfare) recently claimed that it recorded over 50 cases of abandoned babies in various locations across the state, between october and december 2011 (kabara & gulma, 2012). the current upsurge in the incidence of baby dumping in nigeria is a clear departure from nigerian or african traditional socio-cultural values that attach great importance to child bearing and child rearing, where childbirth is normatively expected of every family, and where a child is considered a treasure that is passionately desired. nigerians believe that it is very important for a man and for a woman to have children because they represent a symbol of wealth and ensure the continuity of the family’s descent (zeitlin, 1996). oyewumi (2003, as cited in frimpong-nnuroh, 2004) argues that motherhood occupies a special place in african cultures and societies, because it serves as the essential building block of social relationships, identities, and society as a whole. the birth of a baby was, and is still not only a family event but a celebration of the whole community (maposa & rusinga, 2012). 1 this is a criminal act which involves the discarding or throwing away of babies by their parents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 411 baby dumping becomes problematic because it is unethical and grossly violates the dignity and sanctity of life of the most vulnerable members of the society. this act contravenes the nigerian child right act of 2003 which stipulates that no child should be subject to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and it equally contravenes section 34(1) of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of nigeria, which states: “every individual is entitled to the respect of the dignity of their person, and accordingly, no person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman degrading treatment”. despite the perennial occurrence of incidents of baby dumping in nigeria and the attendant public outcry it usually generates, this social problem, however, has yet to command sufficient scholarly attention in nigeria. this study was therefore conceived to increase the state of knowledge on this problem. objective of the study the objective of this study is to examine the perception of market women on the patterns, causes, and consequences of baby dumping in nigeria. literature review the practice of abandoning a baby shortly after birth has always existed and its motives depend upon the social norms of a specific geographic region at a given point in time (cesario, 2003). sherr, mueller, and fox (2009) consider the intriguing phenomenon of abandoned babies as one that has widespread social ramifications and one which is often subject to social change and circumstances as a result of cultural variation and social conditions. baby dumping, according to modie-moroka (2011), involves leaving a child where they may or may not be found by others. the practice is amongst the most heinous and inhumane of crimes in any jurisdiction in this world (abdul rahim, zainudin, & mohd. sheriff, 2012). ssendi (2012) contends that baby dumping breaches all fundamental parental roles of providing nurturance, protection, and guidance to one’s offspring during the most vulnerable stages of their lives. philpot (2006) opines that babies abandoned at birth will face the problem of lifetime uncertainty about their identity and genetic heritage; the act is a demonstration of the reality of domestic violence and poverty which women experience. philpot further faults the stereotypic perception that it is only women that abandon their children because men also do abandon their children. marks and kumar (1996), however, observe that whereas both mothers and fathers may be guilty of these acts, in the majority of cases women are the likely perpetrators. drescherburke, krall, and penick (2004) described women involved in baby dumping as generally lacking in emotional maturity, problem-solving abilities, and adequate coping skills. bradley (2003) identifies reasons for killing and/or discarding infants to include extramarital paternity, rape, illegitimacy, incestuous relationships, and perceiving the child as an obstacle to personal achievements. mohamed, ali, s. baig, and f. baig (2010) attribute the causes of rampant incidents of baby dumping in malaysia to unwanted pregnancies, rapid urbanization, poor parenting control, and peer influence. hubbard (2008) observes that young mothers may abandon their babies because they may feel overwhelmed by the idea of parenthood or may have difficulty coping with the drastic physical and emotional changes associated with giving birth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 412 in a study on urbanization and related socio-economic problems conducted in ibadan by the central bank of nigeria in 1999, baby and/or child abandonment was reported to have featured appreciably among the crimes being committed in the ibadan area. odunsi (2003) attributes the problem of baby dumping in nigeria to the fallout of the country’s strict abortion laws, which criminalize the act of terminating pregnancy. thus, people faced with the problem of unwanted pregnancies abandon their newborn babies in various unimaginable places. adedoyin and adegoke (1995) similarly observed that traditional african values emphasizing chastity have been eroded and the adoption of “permissive” western cultural attitudes to sexual issues is leading to teenage pregnancies and the eventual abandonment of babies after delivery. akani and erhabor’s (2006) study conducted between 1999 and 2003 on 140 abandoned babies in port harcourt, nigeria, indicates a strong relationship between infectious diseases and baby abandonment. the study revealed a high prevalence of hiv infections among rescued babies; the overall prevalence of hiv was 13.6%. they further assert that many of the abandoned babies are thought to be babies of hiv seropositive mothers who, for fear of stigmatisation, discrimination, and the burden of caring for an hiv-positive child, abandon their babies. famuyiwa’s (1997) study on abandoned babies in lagos, nigeria, indicates that there was no significant monthly variation or sex difference in abandoned babies, and the classification of sites of abandonment based on perceived chances of the victim being rescued revealed that the high-risk sites, which included refuse dumping grounds or beneath bridges, bushes, and railway lines, accounted for 16.8%, while the low-risk sites, which were mainly busstops, houses, police posts, and public toilets accounted for 83.2%. famuyiwa further opined that his data suggests that the intention of the majority of parents in the cases considered was not to put their child’s life in serious danger. methodology the study is purely exploratory and qualitative methodology was principally adopted for the purpose of data collection. in-depth interview and focus group discussion methods were employed for the collection of primary data, while secondary data was obtained through the review of textbooks, journals, nigerian newspapers, and relevant internet materials. a random sampling technique was adopted for the selection of three (3) popular markets within the ibadan metropolis, while a quota sampling technique was adopted for the selection of one hundred (100) market women. the women were chosen based on the previously established quota, which considers marital status, religious affiliation, and ethnic group. both single and married market women, who were adherents of islam and christianity, were involved, and a conscious effort was made to include respondents from different ethnic backgrounds to help make the study representative. in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 market women, while 10 different sessions of focus group discussion of seven participants were conducted with the market women. at the analysis stage, tape-recorded data was transcribed and interpreted through content analysis and ethnographic summaries. content analysis was used to explore and interpret the emerging patterns in the collected data and ethnographic summary was employed to further enhance data interpretation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 413 research setting and study population the study was conducted among market women in three selected popular markets in ibadan. the markets include the bodija, oja-oba, and sango markets. ibadan is located approximately on longitude 3051 east of the greenwich meridian and latitude 70231 north of the equator at a distance of about 145 kilometres northeast of lagos (tomori, 2008). the population size of ibadan rose to 1,829,300 in 1999 at a growth rate of 1.65% from 1963, and increased to 2,550,593 in 2006 at a growth rate of 3.4% (national population commission of nigeria, 2007). ibadan was used for this study because it is one of the nigerian cities where the problem of baby dumping is rampant (central bank of nigeria, 1999). market women constituted the study population because they are a group of people from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds; hence, their overall perceptions facilitated a significant insight into the phenomenon of baby dumping. their selection also stems from the fact that an open-market place is one of the known locations where babies are frequently dumped in nigeria. results and discussions patterns of baby dumping in nigeria findings revealed that nearly all the respondents agreed that there was no clear-cut difference as to which sex (male or female babies) is more at the risk of being dumped. the general consensus was that babies of either sex could be dumped by unwilling and/or frustrated parent(s). similarly, the perception of the market women as to which of the parents is more culpable for perpetrating baby dumping shows that most of the market women agreed that either of the parents could perpetrate the act, and that such action could sometimes be jointly taken by both parents. the majority of the interviewees and participants in the focus group discussion, however, perceived mothers as more culpable. they claimed that since the act of baby dumping is often more perpetrated by commercial sex workers and young unmarried ladies in the society, the fathers of such abandoned babies may be unaware that such women were pregnant, and consequently may be unaware of their acts of baby dumping. although, this finding seems to corroborate marks and kumar’s (1996) submission that mothers may be more culpable for baby dumping, the opinion of the market women is, however, subject to debate because in nigeria, individuals who perpetrate the act of baby dumping are not often discovered. this opinion of the market women may have been strongly influenced by the stereotypic patriarchal ideology that, from time immemorial, permeates nigerian society, and which has consistently labeled the womenfolk as a “weaker sex”, lacking the strong capability to withstand difficult and demanding challenges. women are often blamed for the ills of society because their male counterparts are viewed to be stronger and more courageous. with regard to preferred locations where babies are often dumped, respondents identified locations including: riverbanks, refuse sites, pit toilets, open-market places, roadsides, mosque or church premises, and bush paths. it was also observed by adesiyun et al. (2010) that abandoned babies in nigeria are often sighted in gutters, by the side of rivers, on debris, or in pit latrines. most of the market women, however, claimed that the choice of location depends on the intention of the baby dumper. it was mentioned that baby dumpers (i.e., parents involved in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 414 act of baby dumping) who desire the survival of their babies always dump them at relatively safe locations where they can easily be found and rescued, while those who have the intention to kill frequently dump their babies at unsafe and dangerous locations where chances of survival are very slim. this was clearly reflected in the following statement by one of the discussants in a focus group discussion (fgd) session: those babies thrown inside pit toilets and near riverbanks are usually dumped there to die, while those dumped at roadside, trade fair centre, hospital premises and religious centres are usually dumped in these locations so as to be rescued by nearby people. it all depends on the intention of the dumper. buttressing the above, another discussant said: there is this river called odo agadagbudu in beere-mapo area of ibadan, where pigs are reared. heartless mothers usually abandon their babies in this location so that pigs could feed on them. (fgd, market women, oja-oba market) this finding clearly established a strong connection between locations where babies are dumped and the intention of baby dumpers towards the survival of the abandoned babies. the majority of the market women asserted that babies are more often dumped by their parents out of frustration rather than out of the desire to get them killed. this is why, according to them, dumped babies are more frequently found in relatively safe locations such as hospital premises, open-market places, roadsides, and church or mosque premises, where they can be easily discovered by people nearby. this corroborates famuyiwa’s (1997) study, where he observed that the intention of the majority of the baby dumpers in the cases considered was not to put the child’s life in serious danger. another unique revelation that emerged in the study is the practice of some baby dumpers to migrate from their city or town of residence to another part of the country where they are unknown, for the purpose of perpetrating the act. a large proportion of the participants submitted that some baby dumpers usually migrate from their immediate environment to another town or city during their gestation period, while others often travel with their babies to neighbouring towns with the intention of leaving them behind. worthy of mention is the case of a teenager narrated by one of the respondents: sometimes ago, a teenager came all the way from oyo town to ibadan to dump her baby at the market junction in ojoo area of ibadan metropolis. the child was, however, rescued by some good nigerians, who took her to the oyo state ministry of social welfare. a week later, the lady was forced back to ibadan by her parents to retrieve the baby. on getting to the area, she was taken to the police station by people in the neighborhood from whom she requested information on her daughter. (idi, market woman, sango market) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 415 since some baby dumpers prefer to commit the crime far away from their town or city of residence to avoid detection, it therefore means that foundlings2 may not necessarily come from the immediate environment, where they are discovered. the study further established that the act of baby dumping is most often committed late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, when chances of detection of perpetrators are very low. this clearly indicates that baby dumpers always try to evade detections when engaging in the act because they are aware of the unethical or criminal nature of their action and the subsequent punishments it will attract from other members of the society. causes of baby dumping in nigeria multiple factors were perceived by the market women as responsible for the problem of baby dumping. factors identified in various comments and responses of the participants include: poverty, gender inequality, modernization, prostitution, infidelity, and physical disability. poverty resulting from the current unfavourable economic condition being experienced by nigerians was identified by nearly all respondents and discussants as a very strong factor responsible for the incidence of baby dumping in the country. they argued that in any nation where the majority of the citizenry are poverty-ridden, as is the case in nigeria, criminal acts like baby dumping remain inevitable. a common response given by the majority of the participants is this: what do you expect in a country where government is insensitive to the plight of the common man on the street? parents, who can hardly afford one square meal daily may be desperate enough to abandon their offspring out of frustration. (fgd, market women, bodija market) according to omotola (2008), about 70% of the nigerian population lives in abject poverty. the scourge of poverty in nigeria is an incontrovertible fact, which results in hunger, ignorance, malnutrition, disease, unemployment, poor access to credit facilities, and low life expectancy, as well as a general level of human hopelessness (abiola & olaopa, 2008). although nigeria is the largest oil producer in africa, it is a politically unstable and an economically underdeveloped country with about 67 million nigerians in poverty out of an estimated population of about 100 million (alayande & alayande, 2004). for instance, at least four out of every 10 nigerians live in absolute poverty of less than n320 per month (the value of $2.50) (okunmadewa, 2002). this clearly shows that the high level of impoverishment being experienced by the majority of nigerians plays a significant role in the problem of baby dumping in nigeria. another contributory factor to the occurrence of baby dumping in nigeria perceived by the market women is the pervasive problem of gender inequality generally being experienced by nigerian women. the majority of the participants in the focus group asserted that nigerian cultural practices, which institutionalize gender inequality by socializing wives to be economically dependent on their husbands, make men hold domineering power over womenfolk. they perceived this type of cultural arrangement to be unhealthy for women, because some wives and their offspring routinely suffer total neglect from their husbands, especially in such 2 this is another term for dumped or abandoned babies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 416 situations where the husbands have more than one wife. the neglect which some wives suffer may lead to their impoverishment, which may be so severe to the extent that many consider the dumping of their babies as part of the solution to their problem. a participant in one of the focus groups asserted: some unfortunate women whose husbands have more than one wife are routinely neglected with 3-4 children by their husbands. how do you think such women will cope without any substantial means of livelihood? women in this kind of situation may be compelled to dump their babies. (fgd, market women, oja-oba market) the above response is typical of the respondents. the perception of the market women that gender inequality plays a strong role in the problem of baby dumping in nigeria shows that the actions of some husbands also forces some wives to perpetrate the crime, and it further supports the view that the patriarchal nature of the nigerian society places some nigerian women in a precarious position. this is consistent with philpot’s (2006) claim that child abandonment says much about the realities of domestic violence and poverty which women experience. the patriarchal nature of the nigerian society enables men to dominate women (aina, 1998). modernization was also perceived by the market women as causing baby dumping in nigeria. the market women claimed that the high level of modernization currently being experienced in nigeria is fast eroding the power of family as an institution to effectively socialize the younger members of the society into conforming adults. the respondents believed that due to modernization, nigerian youths now shamelessly engage in some behaviours that were considered deviant in the traditional nigerian society. they attributed the rise in the incidence of baby dumping in nigeria to the large-scale involvement of nigerian youths in premarital sex, which usually results in unwanted pregnancies. consequently, youths who are not psychologically and emotionally prepared for the demands of parenthood may resort to dumping their babies. the age of sexual debut in nigeria is decreasing as more young people engage in premarital sex and have multiple sex partners (olayinka & osho, 1997; adedoyin & adegoke, 1995). similarly, the transformation of nigerian society from a predominantly traditional setting to a modern one was also viewed as playing a significant role in the lifestyle of nigerians. a large proportion of the respondents claimed that the advent of foreign religions (christianity and islam) has regrettably led to the massive erosion in the importance and respect attached to values and ethics of african traditional religion, which was once an effective informal social control mechanism. they argued that unlike the scenario that plays out today, the occurrence of antisocial conduct like baby dumping was at the remotest level of possibility in traditional nigerian society, because of the potency and swiftness with which oracular institution and ancestral spirits punish non-conforming members of the society. a respondent explained: the act is very rampant today, because people now believe that redemption from any sinful act could be done through prayer and penance. (idi, market woman, bodija market) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 417 the above submission indicates that market women believed that baby dumpers hide under the virtues of god’s love and mercy for sinners as emphasized in both christianity and islam to perpetrate the act of baby dumping, while hoping that the god of love and mercy will forgive them when they ask for forgiveness. however, the god (olodumare or chukwu) emphasized in african traditional religion, together with his theocratic ministers such as sango and ogun among the yoruba or amadioha, and agbala among the igbo, are presented to the people as supernatural entities that will punish anyone who engages in antisocial conduct. thus, due to the effectiveness of the informal social control mechanisms in the traditional nigerian society, people are always conscious of their actions. further, modernization has introduced significant social change to nigerian society, and this is widely experienced in the family, as well as economic, political, and religious institutions. the transformation of nigeria from a predominantly traditional society to a modern one has contributed both positively and negatively to the development of the country. the negative effects of modernization on nigerian society have also been noted by nwabuisi (2000), where it was observed that the core traditional values in nigeria have been debased in the modern era. prostitution is another key factor given as promoting the phenomenon of baby dumping in nigeria. it was categorically stated by the majority of the interviewees and discussants that commercial sex workers are responsible for the incidence of baby dumping in nigeria. they claimed that commercial sex workers, by virtue of their kind of business, stand the risk of unwanted pregnancy and that they could find it difficult to procure abortions due to the fact that the nigerian abortion law criminalizes it. this is in line with odunsi’s (2003) observation that baby dumping in nigeria is fallout of the strict abortion law being practiced in the country. they opined, however, that where illegal abortion is possible, perceived potential medical complications envisaged by medical practitioners could compel pregnant commercial sex workers to carry such pregnancies to term, but with the intention of throwing away the resultant offspring after birth. this point is clearly reflected in one of the fgd sessions, where a discussant claimed that: prostitutes are guilty of baby dumping in our society; because of their sinful way of life they are usually pregnant without knowing the individuals responsible for it. since they lack the fear of god, they throw away their god-given babies. the above statement was corroborated by another discussant: prostitutes who have the intention to abort but were warned by medical practitioners that it could lead to severe complications are forced to keep their pregnancy. thereafter, they throw away such babies, because it will disturb their business. (fgd, market women, bodija market) another major factor closely linked to prostitution by some of the discussants is the act of infidelity on the part of some married women, which sometimes results in unwanted pregnancy. consequently, this often prompts them to engage in the act of baby dumping as a way of keeping their secret, and thereby safeguarding their marriage. this practice was claimed to be especially common among housewives whose husbands are always away from home as a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 418 result of the nature of their job. this observation was beautifully captured by one of the discussants at one of the fgd sessions: where i live in the barrack, most military personnel usually go on official missions abroad; whenever they are away, some of their wives usually engage in extra-marital affairs, which sometimes lead to unwanted pregnancy. some of them give birth and throw the babies away to cover their secret. (fgd, market women, sango market) the above finding corroborates the submissions of mohammed et al. (2010) and bradley (2003) that unwanted pregnancy, infidelity, and illegitimacy are among the causes of baby dumping. a very unique factor highlighted as contributing to the incidents of baby dumping in nigeria by some of the interviewees is the issue of physical disability in children. various comments and discussions with interviewees revealed that children born with noticeable physical disabilities are sometimes dumped and/or abandoned by their parents as a way of avoiding “perceived shame and mockery” such babies could attract to their family. in one of the interviews conducted, a respondent has this to say: in my village, do not ask me where, because i will not tell you, people with physical disabilities are very hard to come by because, it is more or less a customary practice that if you give birth to a baby with an incurable disease, you throw such away. (idi, market women, sango market) the above comment shows that children living with perceived “incurable” ailments or illness are at the risk of being dumped and/or abandoned by some short-sighted parents, who consider individuals with special needs as lacking in prospects. this discrimination of individuals with special needs was equally stated in a report of the centre for law enforcement education of nigeria (cleen) (2004), where it was observed that people with disabilities are the least cared for, and they experience widespread discrimination from their families and the nigerian society in general. this finding supports akani and erharbor’s (2006) study that established a connection between hiv infection and incidents of baby dumping in port harcourt city in nigeria. the observation of this study that multiple factors contribute to the problem of baby dumping in nigeria contrasts the stereotypic and generalized view of drescher-burke et al. (2004) which suggests that women involved in baby dumping are generally lacking in emotional maturity, problem-solving abilities, and adequate coping skills. this study revealed that baby dumping is a problem that cannot be adduced to a single causal factor or to a particular parent, because fathers also do perpetrate the act. perceived consequences of baby dumping all participants involved in the study agreed that the phenomenon of baby dumping has a wide range of socio-ethical, health, and psychological consequences on nigerian society. this act is believed to have negative implications on the dumped babies, the perpetrators, and the society at large. baby dumping was viewed as one of the worst cases of child abuse. it was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 419 described by all the participants as disrespect for the sanctity of human life. interviews held and fgds conducted revealed that dumped babies often endure life-threatening conditions as they are in most cases subject to harsh weather conditions, dumped in dangerous unhygienic environments, and are exposed to the attacks of predatory animals and insects, such as pigs and soldier-ants. a market woman in one of the fgd sessions explained thus: by the time those babies are kept at the riverbank or in refuse dumps, they are exposed to attack of pigs and soldier-ants, who will feed on them; those thrown inside pit toilets do not usually survive. another discussant interjected: a child abandoned at night has a slim chance of survival because of the cold weather condition he or she may have been exposed to throughout the night. (fgd, market women, bodija market) these responses, which are typical of the respondents, indicate that treatment meted out to dumped babies and the degrading conditions that they are subject to usually have severe health implications. baby dumping frequently results in death or severe bodily injury to the children concerned. this negative health implication of baby dumping on the abandoned baby is clearly demonstrated in a case reported by adesiyun et al. (2010), where an abandoned baby girl was found in a polythene bag already infested with maggots in the city of ilorin in kwara state, nigeria. another negative effect of baby dumping mentioned by the majority of respondents is that the act deprives babies of genuine motherly love and strong parental affections, which are necessary requirements for their psychological well-being and emotional stability. there was an agreement among the discussants that the rejection suffered at a very tender age by the dumped babies will negatively affect them later in life. a respondent put it this way: this is sheer wickedness meted out to helpless babies. they are denied access to motherly care and parental affection. (idi, market woman, oja-oba market) this is in consonance with ssendi’s (2012) observation that child abandonment breaches all fundamental parental roles of providing nurturance, protection, and guidance to one’s offspring during the most vulnerable stage of their lives. additionally, the market women believed that dumped babies will most likely suffer social stigma and discrimination as a result of the rejection they are made to suffer at the earliest stage of their lives. nearly all the market women interviewed suggested that dumped babies stand the risk of being subjected to ridicule by members of their immediate environment, who may have access to information on their past. this likely social stigma or discrimination was believed to be a strong contributor to developing low self-esteem and an inferiority complex on the part of the dumped babies. this submission of the market women is a reflection of the african culture that places strong emphasis on the ancestry or lineage of individual members of the society. this observation was also made by philpot (2006), that a baby abandoned at birth faces a lifetime of uncertainty about their identity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 420 and genetic make-up. there is no gainsaying in the fact that baby dumping has negative impacts on the physical, mental, emotional, and psychological well-being of the babies involved. findings also revealed that the market women unanimously agreed that baby dumpers will be punished for their misdeed. while some of the market women viewed parents who dumped their babies as attracting the natural anger of god, because their action constitutes a gross violation of his moral laws and ethical codes, others claimed that several unimaginable curses rained on perpetrators of this act by members of the public go a long way in negatively impacting on their lives. as one respondent explained: those involved in such practice will never go unpunished; they will definitely be punished by god. even if god did not punish them, nemesis will catch up with them. by the time such women get married and desire children, they will be unable to conceive. (idi, market woman, bodija market) it was noted by another market woman that: several curses rained on the perpetrators with emotional laden voice by members of the public will no doubt shatter their lives. (idi, market woman, sango market) some of the likely punishments to be suffered by the culprits were identified to include barrenness, lifelong spinsterhood, affliction with smallpox, and mental illness. what informed the above responses of the market women is the strong influence their cultural norms and values have on them. in africa, it is a generally held belief that no criminal act goes unpunished. this is noted in the work of awolalu and dopamu (1979), where they submitted that the gods of the african belief system are gods of justice; whoever contravenes the moral values of the society receives instant punishment. also, a large proportion of the participants claimed that nigerian society also suffers the negative effects of baby dumping, because the act continuously leads to the loss of potential human resources that could otherwise contribute significantly to societal growth and development in the nearest future. furthermore, members of the society who witness incidents of dumped babies, were believed to directly or indirectly suffer psychological and emotional anguish from the episode. a discussant in one of the fgd sessions captures this view in her statement: such an act definitely has a negative impact on the society because one is psychologically traumatized when one stumbles on pigs and soldier-ants feeding on a dumped baby. (fgd, market women, oja-oba market) this psychological and emotional anguish pointed out by the market women as being experienced at the sight of an abandoned baby was believed to be mostly suffered by those members of the society who have desired a child for a very long time, but have not been able to conceive. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 421 recommendations the perception of the market women in this study on the phenomenon of baby dumping in nigeria shows that the problem is complex: multiple factors were identified as contributory to its occurrence and it was equally believed that any desperate parent can commit the act, regardless of marital status, or the gender of the concerned child. besides, not all parents who dump their babies commit the act willingly; some actually perpetrate it out of frustration and/or their inability to cope with the circumstances in which they find themselves. factors identified as responsible for the incidence of baby dumping include: poverty, gender inequality, modernization, infidelity, prostitution, and physical disability. some of its perceived consequences on the dumped babies are: (a) it frequently results in untimely death and severe bodily harm on the babies involved; and (b) the act also tends to cause emotional or psychological distress to the dumped babies in the form of social stigma and discrimination that they may experience as a result of their unknown family ancestry. in nigeria, it is the government agencies, particularly the ministry of social welfare and community development, in collaboration with recognized homes for motherless babies that have over time been at the forefront of providing care and protection for dumped babies. however, their effort is basically reactive in nature; this is because their approach does not in any way prevent the incidence of baby dumping, but rather only provides care for dumped babies rescued alive. hence, to effectively curtail this problem in nigeria, some fundamental issues need to be taken into consideration: 1. the nigerian government must demonstrate more commitment towards poverty alleviation in the country because the current unfavourable economic condition being experienced by nigerians forces some desperate parents to dump their babies as a result of their inability to care for them. hence, a significant improvement in the standard of living of the citizenry will go a long way in combating this problem. 2. similarly, the current state of abject poverty suffered by the majority of nigerians can be alleviated through the resuscitation of the once-cherished nigerian cultural norm that encourages social solidarity among members of the society, particularly the extended family and kinship system, in the form of communalism and collectivism, which have been debased by neocolonialism and capitalist economy ideologies that promote individualism. through this cultural practice, distressed members of the society, who may wish to engage in the act of baby dumping as a result of their impoverished condition, will desist from it. 3. nigerian women need to be more empowered by the government as way of addressing the problem of gender inequality currently being experienced by them. the patriarchal ideology that currently permeates the nigerian society must be revisited. married couples should be more enlightened on the advantages of family planning and the use of contraceptives. also, inter-spousal communication should be encouraged and womenfolk should be given more opportunity to express themselves on issues relating to their family size and other reproductive matters. this will go a long way in reducing the occurrence of unwanted pregnancy, which sometimes leads to the act of baby dumping. 4. the nigerian abortion law should be re-examined. sections 228-230 of the criminal code that criminalize abortion in nigeria should be repealed. this is to give women carrying unwanted pregnancies the opportunity to procure legal abortions. this will no doubt help to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 422 reduce the problem of baby dumping, because unwanted pregnancy is better terminated, rather than keeping it and thereafter discarding the resultant baby after birth. 5. there is also a need for more sex education of youths and teenagers on their need to abstain from premarital sex. since the age of modernization is gradually reducing the age of sexual debut in nigeria, teenagers and youths must be carefully and consistently enlightened on the dangers of premarital sex; this will help safeguard them from engaging in risky behaviour that may lead to unwanted pregnancy. this may consequently help to reduce the occurrence of baby dumping. 6. unwilling mothers, most especially pregnant teenagers, should be provided with emotional and moral supports, so as to encourage them to be physically and mentally prepared for the responsibility of motherhood. this will encourage them to accept their babies, rather than trying to get rid of them through the dumping act. 7. parents and caregivers of physically challenged babies must be encouraged on the need to accept and care for their children, rather than view them as a source of shame or mockery that need to be discarded. similarly, hiv/aids-infected mothers and their babies should be loved and supported rather than being stigmatized and discriminated against; this is because hiv/aids-infected babies are sometimes dumped by their mothers out of frustration and discrimination suffered from other members of the society. 8. members of the general public should be continuously sensitized on the consequences of baby dumping and the need to desist from it. this value reorientation should be championed by the print and electronic media houses, relevant non-governmental organizations, and religious leaders. this may help discourage prospective baby dumpers from perpetrating the act. 9. government should establish more foster and motherless babies’ homes, where unwilling mothers, especially commercial sex workers, can anonymously give up their babies for adoption without resorting to dumping them in unhygienic and dangerous locations. 10. stiffer punishment should be meted out to any offending parents caught in the act of baby dumping. this will no doubt serve as a deterrent to others who may wish to do the same. 11. this study has clearly established that the baby dumping phenomenon in nigeria is considered by the market women to be a serious problem with multiple causes and is perceived to have severe negative consequences on nigerian society in general and the dumped babies in particular. it is therefore proposed that the problem of baby dumping in nigeria needs to be holistically addressed to ensure its effective control in the society. the nigerian government and other concerned stakeholders should be more committed towards combating it, by making an urgent move from the current reactive approach to more proactive planning to address the fundamental issues responsible for its continued occurrence in the society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4: 409–425 423 references abdul rahim, a., zainudin, t., & mohd. sherrif, a. 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(2012). abandoned newborn babies in kampala, uganda. unpublished master’s thesis, department of health and society, university of malmo, sweden. tomori, m. a. (2008). ibadan metropolitan area and the challenges to sustainable development. ibadan: macos urban management consultancy. zeitlin, m. (1996). my child is my crown: yoruba parental theories and practices in early childhood. in s.harkness & m. super (eds.), parents’ cultural belief systems: their origins, expressions, and consequence (pp. 407–427). new york: guilford press. more equal than others: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 331 more equal than others: the discursive construction of migrant children and families in canada lara di tomasso abstract: as borders become increasingly porous to the flow of global capital, human beings entering countries like canada are routinely criminalized. on august 13, 2010, the canadian navy escorted the mv sun sea, a ship carrying 492 men, women, and children from sri lanka, to a canadian forces base on vancouver island. many months later, people remained imprisoned. the racialization, criminalization, and detention of migrant children and families in canada poses a direct challenge to the notion of canadian multiculturalism, as well as purported commitments to the rights of children. this paper seeks to critically engage with dominant narratives surrounding the arrival and treatment of the 492 men, women, and children aboard the mv sun sea in order to unmask and explore the multitude of discourses required to normalize the criminalization of people’s bodies. keywords: canada, migrants, racialization, critical multiculturalism, discourse analysis lara di tomasso received a ba in political science from mcgill university in 2003, and is currently completing her master’s in child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. email: lara.dito@gmail.com mailto:lara.dito@gmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 332 on august 13, 2010, the canadian navy escorted the mv sun sea, a ship carrying 492 men, women, and children from sri lanka, to a canadian forces base on vancouver island. months later, people remained imprisoned in british columbia, including women and children. this paper seeks to critically engage with selected texts that illuminate some of the dominant narratives surrounding the arrival and treatment of the 492 men, women, and children aboard the mv sun sea. the public comments sections of two online articles from the canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc) website will be used as sources for discourse analysis. the intention is to use this paper as an opportunity to unmask and explore the multitude of discourses required to normalize the construction of migrants’ bodies as illegal and justify the detention of (certain) children and families. what might this exploration reveal about other(ed) childhoods and families in canada? as child and youth care professionals, how might we position ourselves in order to better support children and families in this rapidly changing and contradictory context? the canadian context before embarking on an examination of the canadian public’s reaction to the arrival of tamil migrants in july 2010, it is imperative to consider the context into which the migrants arrived. the following sections will address how discourses of national security, multiculturalism, and neo-liberalism intersect with processes of racialization. this will be undertaken with the recognition that all of these elements are inextricably bound together in complex relationships and cannot be separated out from one another. racialization racialization describes a dynamic process whereby race is constructed and negotiated according to systems of power in specific temporal contexts and places. i use this term as an intentional alternative to conceptualizing race as static, and based primarily on phenotype. notions of whiteness and discourses of racialization are fluid, and always changing over time and in relation to others. once we become aware of this process, race is no longer knowable simply through phenotype or country of origin, but rather through a complex process involving power and collective meaning making. in white settler societies such as canada, whiteness is not racialized but normalized and thus rendered invisible. citing the work of john gabriel, jiwani (2006) refers to this as the power of exnomination, or the power not to be named. this creates the backdrop against which the “other” is created by dominant society (jiwani, 2006). therefore, racialization is a process of constructing a hierarchy of identities through distinctions between “us” and “them”. racialization and canadian multiculturalism multiculturalism serves to both shore up and mask processes of racialization in several important ways. multiculturalism is official policy in canada, and constitutes an important part of the nation’s collective imaginary. drawing from the work of eva mackey (1999), collective or national imaginary refers to how national identity is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 333 imagined, or conjured, through the stories that the nation and its citizens tell themselves. the canadian government frequently reiterates that canada is defined through the way in which it welcomes, tolerates, and accommodates people from all over the world. canada’s citizenship and immigration minister, jason kenney, stated in a speech at the university of western ontario, “one of the unique things about canada …is that we probably have the strongest pro-immigration consensus in our political system of any comparable country. … at the same time we have this tradition, as i mentioned, of embracing diversity, grounded in our historic, i would say british liberal imperial, tradition of pluralism…” (kenney, 2009). it is worth noting that in this speech, and in other government proclamations regarding canada’s unmatched hospitality and benevolence, statistics reflecting how many migrants reside in canada are listed off, as though the sheer presence of migrants in large numbers is evidence enough of colourblind canadian hospitality. very seldom, if ever, do narratives of multiculturalism address the racialized nature of poverty, prison populations, and children in government care. these realities are in fact antithetical to multiculturalism discourse. multiculturalism is envisioned as, “an ongoing process that includes comfort with, and support and nurturance of people from various cultures …” (hoopes, 1979, as cited in robinson, 2000, p. 3). however, pacini-ketchabaw, white, and armstrong de almeida (2006) argue that the intention behind multicultural policy is to facilitate more thorough assimilation into the dominant culture by inviting people to feel secure in their ethnic origins (p. 104). multiculturalism has become the primary lens through which canadians understand issues of diversity. it has influenced the design of “culturally sensitive” curriculum from preschool to university and has informed cultural sensitivity training in the workplace. multicultural language is itself rooted in ideological constructions of racialized communities, and serves as a vehicle for racializations (bannerji, 2000). official multicultural policy relies on the “us/them” binary described above as it posits an imagined core canadian culture against various multicultures (bannerji, 2000). the underlying concepts of official multiculturalism are not complex enough to permit an understanding of people’s nuanced identities. bannerji (2000) asserts that non-white immigrants are hardened into groups by a system that needs them to be organized as such so that policies can then be designed to target institutionally recognized communities. this leads to race itself becoming culturalized (razack, 1998, as cited in jiwani, 2006, p. 14). within this paradigm, the culturalized are perceived to be ruled by culture, while whiteness, which is not culturalized, assumes the ability to rule oneself, but enjoy culture (brown, 2006). within multicultural discourse, canadian culture is conceived of as normative, hegemonic whiteness (pacini-ketchabaw et al., 2006). the confusion of “canadianness” with “whiteness” is entrenched in colonial mythologies about the presumed white, european origins of “real canadians”. the conflation of race and culture reinforces hegemonic whiteness by perpetually relegating racialized people, including aboriginals and canadian-born citizens, to subjectivities ulterior to “canadian”. brown (2006) posits that liberalism is imagined as the bridge between those who rule international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 334 themselves, and those who are ruled by culture in western societies, whereby liberalism itself is not recognized as being a cultural production (pp. 20–21). the distinction between those who rule themselves and those who cannot is a dangerous one. it can be mobilized to justify invasive and violent policies that target communities perceived as being confined within culture, and thus deemed in need of such interventions “for their own good”. tolerance language is integral to canadian multiculturalism discourse, which masks systemic inequality and racism in several important ways. first, notions of tolerance and decency are absorbed into the national identity and become understood as distinguishing values of the nation (anderson & taylor, 2005). this necessarily positions “othered” nations, cultures, and people as lacking these values, and potentially as incapable of possessing them. secondly, liberal multiculturalism puts forth a discourse of colour-blindness that constructs racism as aberrational or, more precisely, as the symptom of individual pathology (pacini-ketchabaw et al., 2006). lastly, multiculturalism contributes to the authorship of powerful cultural mythologies about equality of opportunity and access to power. as a consequence, systemic barriers to substantive equality are ignored and socially constructed conditions like poverty become ontologized (bannerji, 2000). it is important to consider kamboureli’s (2000) observation that canadian society is currently experiencing “multicultural fatigue”. this fatigue stems from dominant society’s assumption that multiculturalism has fulfilled, if not exceeded, its mandate (kamboureli, 2000). this assumption is rendered visible in the type of brazen impatience and indignation displayed during the reasonable accommodations debates in québec, canada in 2007, where one of the common refrains was that québecers had reached the limits of their tolerance and felt that it was time to put their collective foot down and reassert their own cultural values. this manifested itself in the development of a document, which all new immigrants to the province are obliged to sign, promising to respect québec’s essential values. racialization and security discourse one of the key features of the present canadian socio-political landscape, which serves to delineate the ways in which dominant culture constructs race and conceptualizes issues of migration, is a preoccupation with national security. what and who canada believes itself to be, who canada believes itself to be threatened by, why, and measures undertaken in the name of protection, all shape a security discourse that has far-reaching implications for how race, diversity, and migration are widely understood. since september 11, 2001, racialized stereotypes have been mobilized to construct muslims, arabs, and south asians (and all those who fit these stereotypes) as suspects through a security discourse that serves to criminalize their communities (smolash, 2009, p. 746). “this ‘enemy’ position within security discourse is understood in the national imaginary as essentially outside the ‘us’ of canadian identity” (smolash, 2009, p. 754). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 335 since 2001, we have seen individual rights trampled, and the intensification of violent state interventions directed at specific communities, such as increased detentions and deportations. these forms of sanctioned state violence are racialized in that those targeted are predominantly the “them” constructed through mainstream discourse. racialization and neo-liberalism neo-liberalism is both constituted by and constitutive of dominant north american cultural values and perceptions. in contemporary canadian society, it seems as though it is possible to assign everything – and everyone – a quantitative value. it has become increasingly difficult to make the case for afore-considered basic social services without including a quantitative assessment of anticipated economic outcomes. abu laban and gabriel (2008) succinctly state, “…there is increasing emphasis on the economic or potential economic contributions of individuals as the sum worth of a person” (p. 52). neo-liberalism ties into processes of racialization in several important ways. first, as with other culturally entrenched western discourses, neo-liberalism focuses on the individual as a separate, agentic unit. success (wealth) is the product of hard work, and failure (poverty) is attributable to personal shortcomings. second, as roberts and mahtani (2010) assert, neo-liberalism both contributes to the production of racialized bodies and modifies the ways in which race functions (p. 248). they point out that neoliberal policies disproportionately impact racialized populations, and then work to ensure that, “racial identity and racism is subsumed under the auspices of meritocracy” (p. 253). in other words, neo-liberal discourse perpetuates the falsehood that wealth and power deservingly go to those who merit them through hard work. therefore, the myth of meritocracy, another of the powerful stories that constitutes the canadian national imaginary, works to render invisible issues of power, privilege, oppression, and processes of racialization. the rise of neo-liberalism has had a direct impact on canadian immigration policy. while the purpose of immigration policy has always been to exclude people, the neo-liberal emphasis on finding skilled labour emphasizes gender, class, ethnic, and racial biases and hierarchies (abu-laban, 1998). there is immense pressure on immigrants to rapidly become “productive” members of society. it is important to note that concurrent with the rise of neo-liberalism, there has been “profound and lasting deterioration” in the kind of economic success experienced by immigrants prior to the 1980s (picot & hou, 2003, grant & sweetman, 2004, both as cited in biles, burstein, & frideres, 2008, p. 7). higher than ever percentages of newcomers experience low incomes, and poverty in canada is increasingly concentrated in racialized migrant communities (access alliance, 2007). in a survey conducted on the intersection of poverty, race, and access to health care among racialized children in toronto, the access alliance multicultural community health centre found that racialized children constituted 75% of all children in low-income households. furthermore, the low-income rate was highest for children who had recently arrived in canada (access alliance, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 336 detention, deportation, and nation building the arbitrary lines that we know as borders delineate the spaces within which state sovereignty is performed. colonial powers drew these lines, and current colonial powers enforce and manipulate them. it is important to understand detention and deportation as both preventive and punitive technologies that play a role in constructing and legitimizing citizens and countries (pratt, 2005). the state-imposed violence exerted through the detention and deportation of migrants (jiwani, 2006) is intended to deter would-be migrants as much as it is a mechanism of control over canada’s borders. pratt (2005) explains that because overly racist and ideological grounds for exclusion have been de-legitimized through the human rights language of past decades, detention and deportation are presently explained through discourses of crime and security. as discussed above, the post-9/11 mentality of imminent and perpetual threat has given rise to a context wherein preoccupations with crime and security act upon refugee claimants in dangerous ways (pratt, 2005). canada’s refugee system has shifted its focus from offering safe refuge to asylum seekers, to keeping canada safe from “deceitful” and “dangerous” refugee claimants. justified in this way, the technologies of detention and deportation become understood as inevitable and predictable consequences to perceived violations of state sovereignty (de genova & peutz, 2010). migration across space challenges the very existence of present-day conceptions of bounded, sovereign nation-states. skott-myhre (2008) asserts: the nation state for example would like to portray itself as a well-contained and bounded space. it wants to suggest that its borders are well established and clear. the immigration services, laws, and regulations imply tight control over the flow of bodies between states, and yet we know that the nation state is in fact porous; that bodies flow across borders in huge waves on immigration and exodus. (p. 82) the policing of borders then, and the employment of tactics such as detention and deportation, are produced by and through ideas that constitute what “canada” is. the exclusionary practices of immigration regimes worldwide are a form of legalized discrimination, which through exclusion, justify the continued existence of the anachronistic concept of the nation-state (de genova & peutz, 2010). finally, detention and deportation inherently constitute migrants as guilty of having perpetrated some sort of crime. smolash (2009) suggests that, “the visibility of punishment by state power produces the guilty body, at once creating a particular identity and creating public knowledge of the visible clarity of guilt” (p. 750). the above sections elucidate how public perception of migrants is shaped in part by the punitive acts undertaken by the government against them, as well as through converging discourses of racialization, national security, multiculturalism, and neo-liberalism. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 337 refugee claims in canada contextualized of the estimated 43.3 million displaced people worldwide in 2009 (united nations high commission for refugees, 2010), 33,161 people claimed asylum in canada that same year (citizenship and immigration canada, 2010). every day, people arrive at land borders and airports in canada and claim asylum. there is no queue for refugee claimants, and no orderly bureaucratic process expected to be undertaken in their country of origin. the refugee claims of the 492 tamil migrants aboard the sun sea in july of 2010 represent 2% of the total number of asylum claims registered in canada that year (canadian council for refugees, 2011). most refugee claimants are processed at a land border or airport, and then directed towards a community agency that provides housing and basic services. this is mentioned intentionally in order to emphasize that the wholesale detention of the tamil passengers of the sun sea is an anomaly in the canadian context that requires deconstruction. furthermore, the canadian government insists that it does not officially detain migrant children, it simply allows children to accompany their parents into detention (j. will [lawyer], personal communication, february 9, 2011). in section 60 of the immigrant and refugee protection act (irpa), “it is affirmed as a principle that a minor child shall be detained only as a measure of last resort, taking into account the other applicable grounds and criteria including the best interests of the child” (department of justice canada, 2001). which children then are guaranteed that their best interests will be protected, and their rights upheld? it certainly does not seem that the best interests of the children from the mv sun sea were considered when their families were automatically detained upon arrival. refugees are considered under international law as having fled persecution, and refugee claimants are thus entitled to a fair evaluation of their claims. canada is a signatory to the 1951 united nations convention relating to the status of refugees, and its 1967 protocol. the convention defines a refugee as a person who, “owing to a wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” (united nations high commission for refugees, 1951/1967). for the purposes of this article, it is important to differentiate between accepted refugee and refugee claimant status* . the term refugee claimant refers to someone whose claim is still under review. refugee status describes someone whose claim from within canada has been accepted by the immigration and refugee board (irb), or someone who has been preselected from another country to settle in canada. the terms refugee claimant and migrant will both be used in this paper, and are not intended to totalize the identities of the people who arrived on the sun sea. the usage of these terms refers simply to their legal status in the eyes of the canadian state and reflects terms used in public discourse. * a discussion of permanent resident status will not be undertaken, as the focus of this paper is the families aboard the mv sun sea, who claimed asylum upon arrival. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 338 methodology: the media as a site of analysis the media provides a rich site for analysis. smolash (2009) argues that mass media texts are the most popular form of contemporary storytelling in our culture (p. 749). as seen above, the stories that nations tell about themselves distinguish them from other nations (anderson, 1991, as cited in mackey, 1999). therefore, as greenberg and hier (2001) argue, the media serves as a means for society to tell and retell their most basic myths. eventually, many of these myths become accepted truths about the supposed identity of the nation and its citizens. the centrality of stories and myths to nation building cannot be overlooked. what might these “stories” tell us about the ways in which children and families are being constructed in canadian media, and within the canadian imaginary? whereas several canadian scholars have analyzed the discursive construction of racialized migrants in media text, some of whom are cited in this discussion (greenberg & hier, 2001; jiwani, 2006; smolash, 2007, 2009), the following analysis will focus on the comments sections, which appear beneath two online news articles. public comments offered in response to online news stories offer a glimpse of how people are forever involved in the co-authorship of powerful cultural narratives. discourse analysis is “a method and a theory ‘for studying language in its relation to power and ideology’” (fairclough, 1995, as cited in pacini-ketchabaw et al., 2006, p. 100). the relevance of engaging in discourse analysis as human service professionals is to become aware of, and challenge, how the world, ourselves, and the people with whom we work are brought into existence through language in ways that are taken for granted. i elected to use comments posted on the canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc) website, as the cbc enjoys country-wide distribution, and also because it presents itself as being reflective of canadian national identity, and i was particularly interested in articulated perceptions of canada’s national imaginary as explored above. it is important to mention that the comments cited below were submitted anonymously, which may have encouraged more aggressive and violent postings. equally as important to mention is that the cbc monitors comments posted, and reserves the right to remove content that violates its specified “netiquette”. under article iv in the “submissions” section of the cbc website’s terms of use, it states that observing the rules of cbc netiquette means that users do not, “post or transmit any submission that promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual, could be harmful to minors, harasses or advocates harassment of another person” (canadian broadcasting corporation, 2011). it is also instructive to reiterate that comments are posted in response to the media text itself and/or other comments, and in some instances, take up dominant state-driven discourses on migration. thus the comments should not be understood as having emerged in a vacuum. greenberg and hier (2001) emphasize that “…the possibility of reader participation in collective problematization depends largely on the normative-emotional context and the ability of the text to amplify those aspects thought to have resonating international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 339 qualities” (p. 566). kamboureli (2000) argues that the media is incapable of telling complex, non-linear, contradictory stories and therefore tends to construct narratives of controversy (p. 89). while recognizing that the content of the articles may have influenced the narratives that emerged in the comments section, i am going to focus exclusively on the comments. one of the interesting advantages of using this particular site for analysis is the ability to note how many subsequent readers agreed or disagreed with the comment posted. i will track this in the discussion that follows by indicating how many readers had voted “for” or “against” selected comments at the time when the articles were accessed in december 2010. discourse analysis a the article entitled, “tamil migrant ship heading for b.c.” appeared on july 16, 2010 on the cbc website (cbc news, 2010, july 16). it was based on information that the sri lankan government had provided to the colombo sunday observer about a ship heading towards canada. the sri lankan government claimed that there were tamil tigers on board the vessel (as of march 2011, the canadian government claimed to have found cause to deport only one person for apparent links to the tamil tigers). i deliberately chose a news story that preceded the boat’s arrival in order to illustrate that even with extremely limited information about the people on the ship, respondents to the article reacted strongly, and at times aggressively. also noteworthy is the fact that the term “illegal migrants” appeared in this story, one of the first articles covering the ship. while i will now attempt to analyze each discursive construction separately, i am cognizant that many of the comments weave various discourses together. 1. tamil migrants pose a threat to canada and canadians. pratt (2005) writes, “refugees’ real identities [are] presumed unknown, their credibility always suspect, and their links with criminality, security and fraud continually reconstituted” (p. 3). the people aboard the sun sea were constituted as threats in various ways. one person wrote, “…we can get ready for more terrorists being paid by us to live and train in canada ...” (163 for, 14 against). this comment contains the “us/them” binary so often evoked in conversations about migration. the “us” refers to the canadian imaginary, against which otherness is juxtaposed (jiwani, 2006). this comment also draws on resonant images of the deceitful and freeloading migrant described by pratt (2005). another individual posted, “this is the greatest country in the world, and we have to accept another boatload of terrorist trash” (25 for, 2 against). combined with the dehumanization of everyone on the ship is a particular brand of canadian nationalism. given the ways in which specific racialized groups are constructed as terrorist threats in canada (smolash, 2009), this brand of nationalism is inflected with notions of racial superiority. razack (2009) argues that in the context of a perceived perpetual threat, security and securitization both depend upon and produce race hierarchies (p. 15). secondly, the people aboard the sun sea were constituted as threats to canada’s white settler national imaginary. despite being censored by the cbc, many of the postings were overtly racist. one person wrote, “i am glad i lived many years [sic] when canada was full of canadians not the drips i see every day now, they don't even speak international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 340 our language in public …” (23 for, 0 against). this respondent claims to “see” these drips every day, thereby constructing “them” as discernible by appearance, or by the languages that “they” speak in public. this comment reveals the presumed colonial, white european origins of “real canadians”, and the reader’s strong self-location as belonging to the collective “we” who speak “our” language. the following comment seems to be calling for a limit on the number of migrants that canada accepts from majority world countries: “this country is now officially a joke. nice precedent you set last time immigration officials, now this will never stop. maybe it will stop when 3/4 of canada's population is of third world origin?” (422 for, 37 against). this comment reveals the dual assumptions that the majority of canada’s population originates from “first world” countries, and that this majority needs to be protected. this comment also illustrates the expectation that the immigration system, and its technologies of deportation and detention, should be used to set precedents for other racialized would-be migrants. finally, the migrants aboard the sun sea were criminalized and positioned as threats to canadian law and order. one person demanded, “why should these illegals get in but hard working law abiding europeans with lots to offer get turned away at immigration everyday while east indians, koreans, chinese and other illegals get the red carpet. enough is enough” (42 for, 3 against). what is interesting about this comment is the way in which this person defines illegal and legal. legality and illegality are not depicted as legal statuses determined through due process of law, but are ontologized – carried within and on the body. several comments linked what they perceived as legal forms of immigration with europeans, while racialized people were associated with illegality, queue jumping, and fraud. another person claimed, “…just like all the haitians we took in after the earthquake, i wonder how many of them are criminals that will only contribute to the raise [sic] of violence and crime in the neighbourhoods of montreal??” (43 for, 1 against). the idea that migrants carry criminality and illegality on their bodies was a pervasive sentiment in the postings, and is part of a broader discourse that criminalizes racialized bodies and positions them as enemy others (smolash, 2009). as hall (1978) astutely pointed out, “labeling an activity, person, or group of persons as ‘criminal’ is often part of a broader strategy of repression and control, only some aspects of which belong to the exercise of crime-prevention and control in any normal sense” (as cited in mirchandani & chan, 2002, p. 15). given the pervasive construction of tamil migrants as threats, it is perhaps not surprising that some people called for military intervention in the name of protecting canada’s borders. one person wrote, “use whatever force is necessary to defend canada's border from illegal entry attempts” (121 for, 7 against). over 10 postings disconcertingly called for the canadian military to attack the ship. one responder wrote, “our navy should be dispatched to the boarder line. if the ship crosses it shoot a few rounds across the bow and force it to turn around” (150 for, 9 against). another reasoned, “a boatload of illegal tamils will cost the taxpayers $10m + a torpedo goes for how much?” (35 for, 7 against). jiwani (2009) urges us to recall that racial hierarchies are not created strictly through the practices of government security apparatus or local police forces, but are practiced by the wider public. the above comments illustrate how security discourses have been internalized, taken up, and adopted by individuals to form powerful international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 341 narratives that end up constituting widely accepted “truths”. security discourse plays a central role in shaping canadians’ perception of migrants as threatening invaders, and in so doing, prompts canadians to desire and defend policies that make it more difficult for migrants to enter and stay in the country. security discourse also positions canada as “the victimized subject of violent ‘otherness’: the subject under threat of invasion, the subject whose sovereignty is being undermined and the subject who is being blackmailed and abused by illegal entrants” (parr, 2005, p. 284). citing brodie, razack (2009) emphasizes that while security discourses change over time, the citizen-state security relationship is bound to a racially inflected sense of nationalism (p. 816). 2. tamil migrants are fraudulent refugees. tamil individuals and families aboard the sun sea were also constructed as fraudulent queue jumpers. demonstrating an almost complete ignorance of the immigration and refugee claims process, one commentator wrote, “as canadians we grow up believing in fairness and waiting our turn. bogus refugees violate canadian social norms by not waiting their turn and line jumping ahead of highly skilled workers who can and will be productive members of canadian society”. this comment blends a discourse of canadian benevolence and civility with neo-liberal notions of what it means to be a productive member of society. believing in fairness, and waiting one’s turn are ontologized as canadian. the other, the bogus refugee, is denied belonging to the canadian “we”, and by extension, denied access to the articulated values. sarah ahmed (2010) writes, “‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bogus asylum seekers’ are those who are ‘not us’, and in not being us, endanger what is ours” (p. 1) as legitimate subjects of the nation. within this discouse, productivity is linked concretely to skilled workers status, another way for people to enter canada. furthermore, by constructing refugee claimants as manipulative frauds, the migrants’ justified claims to a better life are preemptively delegitimized. by positioning them as frauds – people who drag their children across the sea in a cramped boat for ostensibly no reason – they are othered in a way that renders them unknowable to “us”, we canadians. when one person on the site suggests that the tamil families should have gone through the “proper” channels, another responds, “somehow that type of logic doesn't work with certain cultures...”. here, respecting the law is reduced to a cultural trait. as razack (1998, as cited in jiwani, 2006) points out, race is often culturalized. following this logic, respect for the law and the ultimate ability to integrate into the canadian context then becomes dependent on one’s race. the positioning of tamil migrants as fraudulent refugees discursively constructs canada and its citizens as victimized subjects, which has several important consequences. first, it renders the past and present of canadian nationhood, rooted in colonial aggression and racialized exclusion, inaccessible through dominant discourse. writing about the australian context, which has striking parallels to canada, anderson and taylor (2005) assert that settler-society anxiety regarding invasive and threatening refugees originates in the unreconciled colonial origins of the nation. they write, “indigenous dispossession is both the foundational act that secured white sovereignty and the residual effect that continues to disturb it” (p. 465). second, the framing of the state international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 342 and its citizens as victims, “demands symbolically an agent who can respond to the crisis decisively” (greenberg & hier, 2001, p. 575). thus, adopting a victimized subjecthood contributes to the strengthening of the nation-state. 3. tamil migrants and neo-liberalism. neo-liberal discourse constructs the migrant (particularly the refugee claimant) as a drain on the system. this discourse was visible in many of the comments posted in response to the cbc article. one person wrote, “i hope your taxes are paid up ’coz they'll be needing a lot of welfare and medicare” (145 for, 7 against). as roberts and mahtani (2010) assert, neo-liberal policies disproportionately impact racialized, economically vulnerable people, and then effectively blame those same people for their reliance on the system for survival. one person asserted, “most of these immigrants are functionally illiterate in their own language and we expect them to be productive members of canadian society. for every one we take in there are 10 more who will be sponsored under the family class.” the neo-liberal emphasis on individual agency and the simultaneous depoliticization of social issues greatly impacts public understandings of migration. at the macro-level, systemic production of migrations is rendered irrelevant within available public discourses (sharma, 2004). the conditions that propel migrants from their countries of origin are often assumed to be unrelated to canadian foreign and economic policy, or global systems of power that favour the west. these popular misconceptions thus “support a discourse in which the north’s humanity is defined through its ‘benevolent’ acceptance of immigrants and refugees” (folson & park, 2004, p. 13). sharma (2004) argues that the host as benevolent and passive agent echoes historic claims to the white man’s burden, and ties the notion of progressiveness to whiteness. 4. tamil migrants and benevolent multiculturalism. tolerance discourse, characteristic of liberal multiculturalism, also appeared in many of the comments posted. as explored in the above section concerning tolerance language in self-proclaimed “multicultural” societies, anderson and taylor’s (2005) assertion that tolerance is adopted as a distinguishing characteristic of multicultural societies featured prominently in the responses to this article. kamboureli’s (2000) concept of multicultural fatigue also surfaces in the responses. the following comment incorporates both of these elements: “i was raised with canadian values of politeness, tolerance, acceptance. even i can't stand these types of stories anymore. i've totally lost my patience and sympathy” (154 for, 10 against). brown (2006) asserts that the notion of tolerance, as it is employed in modern liberal-democratic societies, constructs the objects of tolerance as undesirable or deviant by virtue of having to be tolerated. those who tolerate choose to do so, and this power of choice paves the way to superiority through benevolence (brown, 2006, p. 14). tolerance language also makes use of words like “sensitivity” and “respect” to negotiate political solutions to issues of diversity, which brown (2006) argues is a dangerous practice of depoliticization that reduces issues of social justice to sensitivity training. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 343 discourse analysis b i also chose to analyze the comments posted in response to the article, “tamil migrant children start school in b.c.”, which appeared on the cbc online website on september 27, 2010 (cbc news, 2010, september 27). i was curious to explore whether migrant children were being constituted differently than adults through dominant discourse. this article reiterated canada’s official position concerning the detention of child migrants, which states that children themselves are never officially detained, but rather accompany their parents into detention facilities. at the time that this article was written, 54 children were being held at the burnaby detention centre under the care of approximately 25 mothers, and the article announced that 41 children had begun classes and early childhood development programs (cbc news, 2010, september 27). after a traumatic three-month journey at sea, the education district’s director of instruction emphasized that the children felt safe in the detention facility, as evidenced by their joking and interacting with one another (cbc news, 2010, september 27). 1. guilty parents, innocent children, and canadian benevolence. what is most striking in looking at the comments to this news story is the discrepancy between how children and parents were each constructed through dominant narratives. the same discourses that racialize and criminalize children’s parents were cited in tandem with dominant western discourses on childhood to mobilize narratives of canadian benevolence. one comment read, “we cant criticize the govt for providing education to innocent children”. while discourses of racialization and neo-liberalism also constructed children in similar ways as their parents, children were repeatedly constructed as innocent. in this context, discourses on the innocence of childhood served to further position migrant parents as guilty perpetrators. canadian benevolence in this context then is interpreted, in part, as the responsibility to help and “protect” innocent children from their parents. one comment argued, “the children still are not responsible, nor should they be punished for the actions of their parents” (9 for, 42 against). another pleaded, “can we not agree that at least the young children are innocents here? even if these were the children of terrorists – which nobody has proven they are – would that not be all the more reason to give these children the benefit of an education while their parents are detained so that they can break the cycle?” another individual posted, “it is these kinds of moral standards that assures canada does not disintegrate into the hell holes that so many countries have become for their people. we give up our humanity we give up what has kept canada strong and alive” (13 for, 66 against). canada, the nation, and canadians are once again positioned as benevolent. however, articulated in the above comments about children and parents is an imperative for the state to step in and take charge of these children, to help these children break the cycle, and save them from the hellholes that their countries have become. the implication here is that these parents are guilty of something, and that this guilt can be passed down to their children unless the canadian state intervenes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 344 several people went further and claimed that parents were intentionally using their children as a means to stay in canada. comments such as these were not uncommon, “…in this case children are the tools to get naive canadians stuck and caught by sympathy” (19 form 3 against) and “ …canada should not allow the tamils to use their children as a means of justification to live in canada” (25 for, 3 against). again, this discourse dehumanizes parents by assuming that they are using their children as props for personal gain, instead of having brought their children to canada because they are tied to one another through the bonds of loving family relationships. 2. migrant children and neo-liberalism. discourses of neo-liberalism also seemed to apply differently to children. while parents were positioned as drains on the system, children were more likely to be considered wise investments in the future. one person wrote, “although it is costing me money, i am glad that i, as a canadian, am helping these children” (511 for, 377 against). what might be at work behind the construction of children as innocents, and wise investments, while their parents are constructed as dangerous, criminal, and fraudulent? ahmed (2004) examines how to be moved by the suffering of some others, in this case the innocent child, is also to be elevated into a place that remains untouched by other others (whose suffering cannot be converted into my sympathy or admiration). so it is not a coincidence that it is the child’s suffering that touches the nation. the child represents the face of innocence; through the child the threat of difference is transformed into the promise or hope of likeness. (p. 192) what ahmed means in referring to the promise of likeness is mixed-raced hybridity, which the nation fetishizes and loves as a reflection of its imagined self – a tolerant and benevolent nation. ahmed (2004) explains, “in other words, the nation remains an agent of reproduction: she (the child) is the offspring of multicultural love for difference” (p. 137). 3. racialized migrants as a threat to the canadian imaginary. finally, several comments drew from discourses of racialization, which simultaneously positioned racialized migrant children as “others” and asserted canadian identity as one rooted in hegemonic whiteness. the following comment illustrates these discourses in disturbing clarity: i mean think about the country we all love, the canadians who built this great nation, and the slow decay of the invisible majority over the preferences of the visible minorities. think about what we as a christian nation are losing. what we as a majority are giving up for the benefit of affirmative action and multiculturalism. the essence of canada will dry up and die if something isn't done to reinforce canadian values… (115 for, 9 against) this comment constitutes racialized migrants and all racialized people as a direct threat to canadian values. smolash (2009) articulates the effects of racialization when she international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 345 writes: racialization shapes how human bodies are perceived, and, to echo foucault, inscribes meaning on the human body, marks the body with a particular value. the identities of those who enter into a racialized discourse are reconstituted by these inscriptions; for instance, immigrants who leave home communities, in which their identity may be the norm, and become racialized within canada, are transformed by this migration in space and in raced identity. (p. 747) processes of racialization are complex, and as smolash points out, inscribe people differently in different contexts. conclusion the narratives explored in the comments above, framed within discourses of racialization, multiculturalism, national security, and neo-liberalism, have significant implications for child and youth care practitioners. the online comments illustrate how dominant discourses can intersect and converge to dehumanize children and families. in child and youth care, how might we resist complicity in the replication of oppressive practices with children and families? while i do not have a simple, prescriptive answer, i believe that pedagogy, particularly education in the human services, needs to move away from discourses of multiculturalism and tolerance towards a critical, activist oriented analysis of power and oppression in “multicultural” canada based on social justice. i also propose that theory can serve as an extremely important starting point. as a tool, theory can be used to unmask the powerful narratives that normalize the everyday violence perpetrated against many of people with whom we work. “in particular, theory can provide a positive ideology in its ability to seek out the problems that a text poses and test the new innovative possibilities such questions put forward” (parr, 2005, p. 294). some questions have sprung from the problems that these media comments highlighted for me: who has access to constructions of the good parent, the right type of childhood, and the loving family? how does constructing parents in the ways explored above affect children and families? and finally, what do children, youth, and families know about these processes, and how might they be navigating, exploring, and challenging otherness and othering practices? these are complex questions that require fluid, context-based, and flexible responses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 331–348 346 references abu-laban, y. 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(2010, june). 2009 global trends: refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, internally displaced and stateless persons. retrieved from: http://www.unhcr.org/4c11f0be9.html http://www.unhcr.org/4c11f0be9.html� pediatric procedural pain management: a review of the literatur international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 569 pediatric procedural pain management: a review of the literature kristy petovello abstract: research in the last two decades has revealed the complex nature of pain and has thereby improved the understanding, treatment, and management of pediatric pain by health care practitioners. however, a significant gap between knowledge and practice still exists. pediatric pain remains under-managed. several themes emerged in this literature review as factors influencing adequate pain management. these include: outdated beliefs about pain management; inconsistent use of evidence-based interventions; difficulties assessing children’s pain; and the role of the values and beliefs of caregivers and practitioners. the literature indicates a high risk of deleterious consequences of undermanaged pediatric pain, linking early health care experiences to later health-seeking behaviours. implications for practice are considerable. recommendations include: an individualized “3-p” approach combining pharmacologic, physical and psychological strategies; collaborative approaches eliciting expertise from caregivers and health care professionals across multiple disciplines; and utilizing interventions before, during, and after procedures. keywords: pediatric, acute pain management, hospital, procedure, long-term implications, intravenous. kristy petovello is an ma candidate in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. she is also a certified child life specialist, working at the victoria general hospital, #1 hospital way, victoria b.c., canada, v8z 6r5. email: kpetovello@gmail.com. mailto:kpetovello@gmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 570 pediatric pain management is a broad, complex topic that spans multiple disciplines. considerable research and systematic reviews have been conducted across north america to address the management of pain in children. the last two decades in particular have brought substantial developments to the understanding of pediatric pain and its treatment (kennedy, luhmann, & zempsky, 2008; young, 2005). the world health organization (who) and many international professional pain societies advocate that optimal pain management is not only good, ethical practice, but also a fundamental human right (buscemi, vandermeer, & curtis, 2008). while there has been a marked increase in the understanding and treatment of pediatric pain, reviews of the literature show a significant gap in transferring this knowledge to standard clinical practice (twycross, 2010; young, 2005). this paper offers a review of the literature regarding children’s experiences of acute procedural pain, the impact of pain on children, factors affecting pediatric procedural pain management in hospital settings, and implications for practice. the body of research on specific pharmacological interventions to manage procedural pain is extensive, and to cover all of it is beyond the scope of this review. literature was obtained through the cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature [cinahl], medline, web of science, psychinfo and google scholar databases. the keywords searched were: pediatric, acute pain management, hospital, procedure, long-term implications, and intravenous. peer-reviewed, north american, scholarly articles were selected. the examined literature contained information gathered through qualitative and quantitative methodologies via chart audits, interviews with practitioners, caregivers, and children, and systematic evidence-based practice reviews. the search spanned literature over the last 20 years. members of the “pain team” at the stollery children’s hospital in edmonton, alberta were consulted regarding relevant research in the field. myths regarding children and acute pain the literature traces current pediatric pain management practices back to multiple historical myths surrounding children and their experiences of pain. the american academy of pediatrics/american pain society (aap/aps) (2001), kuttner (2004), and olmstead, scott, and austin (2010) state that although research has disproven many of these myths, the following beliefs continue to subtly influence children’s experiences of pain, as well as the responses to children’s pain by caregivers and health care professionals: 1. infants do not have nervous systems sufficiently mature enough to experience pain. 2. pain is not life threatening and has no long-term effects. 3. children will get used to pain. 4. children have no memory of pain. 5. children’s explanations of their pain experiences are unreliable. 6. opioid analgesics are dangerous and children may become addicted. 7. if children can be distracted or active they are not in pain. 8. if children say they are in pain, but do not appear to be in pain, the pain need not be treated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 571 9. there is a correct amount of pain for a given injury. 10. pain builds character. children and acute pain while considerable research has been conducted regarding pediatric pain management and progressive practices do exist, the literature shows a profound gap between theory and practice. stevens et al. (2011) found in their review of eight canadian pediatric hospitals that more than 75% of the children in the sample underwent painful procedures in a 24-hour period, 78% of these children received some type of pain management intervention, but only 25% of the interventions were specifically linked with a painful procedure. pain is considerably more complex than a predictable reaction to sensory stimulation (czarnecki et al., 2011). an individual’s reaction to painful stimuli is influenced by their perception of pain and mediated by a host of proximal and distal factors such as age, developmental stage, emotional state, temperament, culture, previous experiences, type of procedure, coping skills, environment, and responses of caregivers and practitioners (blount, piira, cohen, & cheng, 2006; czarnecki et al., 2011; kuttner, 2004). regardless of the illness or reason for the medical procedure or intervention, it is widely recognized that even the most “minor” procedures can cause significant distress, fear, and pain (young, 2005). common procedures such as needle injections for immunizations, drawing blood, intravenous cannulation, or intramuscular medications tend to be the most frequent, painful, and dreaded procedures that children encounter (blount et al., 2006; blount, piira, & cohen, 2003; kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2006; mcmurtry, noel, chambers, & mcgrath, 2011). fradet, mcgrath, kay, adams, and luke (1990, as cited in blount et al., 2003) discovered 50% of children who go through venipunctures experience “moderate to severe distress or pain” (p. 217). despite documentation that these procedures are highly painful and feared by children, and empirical evidence demonstrating the pain-relieving efficacy of topical anesthetic agents for needle injections, these interventions are frequently not utilized (aap/aps, 2001; blount et al., 2003; czarnecki et al., 2011; melhuish & payne, 2006; young, 2005). researchers have historically relied on adult perceptions to explain children’s pain experiences, so research delving into children’s personal accounts of pain is limited (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004, 2006). the qualitative data provided by kortesluoma and nikkonen’s (2004) study of 4to 11-year-olds’ experiences of venipunctures for blood sampling provides insight into children’s perceptions of pain. one of their primary findings was the clarity with which these children were willing and able to talk about their pain experiences. children primarily used sensory words to describe their pain, and metaphors to explain their experiences such as, it felt “like fire inside”, “like something moving in my body”, or “like someone would tear my skin off or try to take pieces out of it” (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2006, p. 220). the use of metaphors demonstrates the complexity of children’s pain and the difficulty inherent in making the intense and subjective experience understandable to an outsider. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 572 age was recognized as a consistent key contributor to children’s experiences of pain in kortesluoma and nikkonen’s (2006) study and elsewhere in the literature (blount et al., 2003; czarnecki et al., 2011; young, 2005). kortesluoma and nikkonen (2004) found that children’s fears were related to their developmental understanding of their bodies and the effect of procedures on bodily function. many children stated they were afraid they would bleed to death during blood sampling procedures, and feared bodily mutilation or permanent cosmetic damage. age also impacted children’s perceptions of the purpose of pain. younger children frequently believed pain to be a form of punishment or a consequence for misbehaviour, a misconception unintentionally perpetuated by the comments of caregivers and professionals linking desired behaviour to the avoidance of a painful experience (kuttner, 2004). stotts et al. (2004, as cited in czarnecki et al., 2011) studied 412 patients undergoing similar procedures and found that younger patients reported higher levels of pain before and after the procedure but no difference in pain intensity was reported during the procedure. kortesluoma and nikkonen (2004) advocate that optimal communication and assessment of pain occurs when professionals’ assumptions about children’s developmental ability to understand and express their pain are accurate. kuttner (2004) thoroughly outlines the impact of developmental stages and common fears and misconceptions within each stage on children’s pain experience, fear, and anxiety. additional procedures identified as extremely painful by children were suturing, the removal of sutures, the resetting of fractures or dislocations, iv insertions, post-operative treatment and therapeutic interventions, and the side effects of medication (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2006). children rated their pain as exceptionally high when the experience differed from pre-procedural explanations. children also reported that seeing the blood intensified their fear and pain; in contrast, they stated that covering up the blood or injury helped alleviate the pain (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2006; kuttner, 2004). role of fear the relationship between children’s fear and pain is difficult to disentangle: as one increases, the other follows suit (noel, mcmurtry, chambers, & mcgrath, 2010). health professionals report that the presence of fear makes assessing a child’s pain more difficult, especially with younger children who do not have the cognitive ability to differentiate between the two states (melhuish & payne, 2006). throughout the literature, many professionals refer to pain and fear or distress interchangeably. like pain, fear is multifaceted, and is influenced by a variety of internal and external factors. self-report tools have been created in an attempt to measure fear, but mcmurtry et al. (2011) and kuttner (2004) found little consistency in the use of these tools in hospital systems. these tools also offer mixed reliability when a child is experiencing intense fear and pain concurrently. the literature suggests that multidisciplinary interventions implemented to manage pediatric pain are most effective when they consider and address the child’s fear and pain. in their assessment of pain management strategies, the american academy of pediatrics/american international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 573 pain society (2001) concluded that opportunities for alleviating or decreasing pain exist beyond immediate procedures. they are present before, during, and after procedures, and are broader than pharmacological techniques alone. these strategies will be discussed later in this review. page and blanchette (2009) advocate that self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to manage his or her pain, is a crucial component of understanding and alleviating pain. fear develops from feelings of powerlessness and lack of control; thus, interventions that increase self-efficacy, power, and control serve to decrease fear and perceptions of pain, building the capacity to cope with future frightening scenarios (pate, blount, cohen, & smith, 1996). role of memory current understanding of memory in relation to children and painful procedures has improved and evolved exponentially. a well-known landmark study by taddio, katz, ilersich, and koren, (1997, as cited in von baeyer, marche, rocha, & salmon, 2004) challenged the notion of infant memory recall for painful procedures and the impact of pain on infants. this study demonstrated that newborn infant boys circumcised without anesthesia demonstrated greater distress during their 4 to 6 month immunization injections than infant boys circumcised with anesthesia. an additional study by the same researchers (as cited in von baeyer et al., 2004) compared infants of mothers with diabetes and infants with non-diabetic mothers. the infants whose mothers had diabetes displayed more intense pain reactions to the preparation of the skin for heel lancing and during the procedure itself. this study raised awareness that painful experiences are “remembered” from early infancy and impact future reactions to painful events. research has continued to demonstrate that although children may have no conscious memory of early pain experiences, the noxious stimuli can permanently change neuronal circuits in the spinal cord that process pain, leading to lower pain threshold or central sensitization (blount et al., 2003; czarnecki et al., 2011; fitzgerald, 2005). literature suggests that children can accurately recall details about painful experiences but this recollection is also susceptible to distortion (steward & o’connor, 1994). younger children are particularly susceptible to memory distortions since their understanding of reality and fantasy is somewhat blurred (kuttner, 2004; von baeyer et al., 2004). noel and colleagues’ (2010) investigation (through observation and qualitative interviews) of children’s memory of painful procedures demonstrated that how painful experiences are remembered powerfully impacts future reactions to medical procedures – in later childhood and potentially following them into adulthood. they suggest that for some children, memories of the painful procedures may be as important as the initial experience itself. once an exaggerated memory of a painful procedure develops, it is a statistically significant predictor of pain and distress in subsequent procedures. fear, distress, and pain may have an impact on memory storage. children who experience more pain and distress during medical procedures have fewer resources available to accurately store and “encode” the experience into their memories, thus leading to poorly organized or fragmented memories (noel et al., 2010). additionally, newcomer, craft, hershey, and askins international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 574 (1994, as cited in noel et al., 2010) noted that increased distress and cortisol levels may affect the hippocampus, influencing memory formation and recall. distorted memories have powerful implications. they develop because of age-related developmental fears and misconceptions, the physiological impact of the distress, or because the negative memory is an accurate account of what occurred. further evidence is cited supporting the value of eliciting recollections of children’s memories as a means to anticipate reactions to painful procedures and help children create a more accurate understanding of the experience (kuttner, 2004; von baeyer et al., 2004). [v]on baeyer et al. (2004) noted that situational factors may influence children’s memory of procedures. one situational factor was the choice of words used by adults when asking children to draw out their memories: typically a yes-no format, open-ended questions, or specific “wh” questions such as “where did it hurt”, “when did the hurt go away”, etc. are utilized. “wh” questions were found to be the most reliable. children demonstrated a preference toward the affirmative, frequently responding with “yes” when asked a yes-no question and were unable to provide information to open-ended questions. some success has also been documented with the use of props or encouraging children to draw pictures to depict their pain experiences (kuttner, 2004; von baeyer et al., 2004). badeli, pillai, craig, giesbrecht, and chambers (2000, as cited in von baeyer et al., 2004) tested the accuracy of children’s recall of their pain over time. they found children could accurately recall previously reported pain intensity on a pain scale over a period of months and years, but it is unclear if they were remembering their pain experience or pain scale rating. how caregivers and professionals talk with children during an event also influences the memory of the experience (von baeyer et al., 2004). during procedures, responding to children by articulating specific coping behaviours and directions to utilize these behaviours, rather than responding with apologies and comfort, builds capacity to cope with subsequent procedures. these positive coping behaviours are then stored in their memories, available for recollection at a later date (blount et al., 2003). additionally, when adults assist children to recall specific, concrete, positive aspects of the procedure when completed, they reframe the event with positive memories and continue to promote future coping skills and efficacy. cohen et al. (2001) studied the effect of psychological and pharmacological interventions on children’s expectations and recollections of painful procedures and determined that it is possible for non-pharmacological interventions to positively impact children’s memory, even if the intervention was “unsuccessful” during the immediate procedure. health care professionals, in their study, employed interventions to decrease children’s pain and distress during venipunctures. when compared with the control group, the interventions did not affect the children’s immediate self-report of pain. however, they did achieve the creation of a “buffer” against negative exaggerations of pain that occurred in a control group of children not given the interventions. therefore, even when the non-pharmacological intervention does not appear effective in alleviating children’s immediate distress, it may have important and long-term effects for future experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 575 role of caregivers the literature has identified a number of important ways that caregivers influence children’s pain experiences: presence during procedures (blount et al., 2003); transference of values and beliefs regarding pain (kuttner, 2004); ability to assess their child’s pain (blount et al., 2006; kuttner, 2004); and as discussed above, shaping memories to focus on positive or negative aspects of the pain experience (cohen et al., 2001; von baeyer et al., 2004). hospital cultures have shifted dramatically in the last decade and a family-centred model is widely practiced, allowing and encouraging caregivers to be present during many painful procedures (kuttner, 2004). the literature demonstrates an overwhelming preference on the part of both children and caregivers for the caregivers to remain with the child during painful procedures (blount et al., 2003; kuttner, 2004; young, 2005). the value of this presence is well researched, and the reported effect varies, possibly depending on caregiver anxiety levels and coping skills, and health professionals’ interactions with the caregiver (blount et al., 2003; steward & o’connor, 1994; young, 2005). blount et al. (2003) reviewed studies evaluating a caregiver’s impact during procedures and found that caregiver behaviours accounted for 53% of the variance in child distress behaviour; children accompanied by anxious caregivers displayed more pain and distress than children accompanied by less anxious caregivers. blount and colleagues identified specific caregiver behaviours and communication patterns likely to facilitate coping during painful procedures and those likely to promote increased distress. these will be highlighted further in the review. page and blanchette (2009) discuss the impact of caregivers’ feelings of inefficacy in dealing with their children’s pain on the child’s confidence to manage the pain, increasing the distress and pain experience. the literature outlines how caregivers enabled or prepared to reinforce their child’s coping strategies during procedures have a more positive impact on children’s coping than unprepared or coached caregivers (blount et al., 1997; cohen et al., 1997, both as cited in blount et al., 2003). literature supports caregiver presence during painful procedures but highlights the role of health care professionals in coaching and guiding caregivers to engage in behaviours that promote coping. caregiver internal beliefs and attitudes towards pain influence how children express their pain and the treatment strategies children accept from the medical team. these values influence caregiver assessment of children’s pain, and the coping behaviours they encourage children to utilize during the pain experience (kuttner, 2004). kuttner examines how children internalize messages about the purpose of pain from their caregivers’ verbal and non-verbal messages. for example, encouraging children to cooperate with medical requests to avoid injections or painful procedures may achieve immediate behavioural results but send a message that painful procedures occur because of misbehaviour and/or punishment. the difficulties of assessing a child’s subjective experience of pain are well documented (blount et al., 2006; young, 2005) and will be discussed in a later section of this review. the review by the american academy of pediatrics/american pain society (2001) identifies the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 576 unique role of caregivers in providing valuable contextual information to augment a child’s selfreport and help professionals interpret pain behaviours. the literature offers mixed reports regarding the reliability of caregiver reports, but the consensus among researchers is that caregiver input provides the context necessary to understand pain, and to predict pain and coping behaviours (blount et al., 2003; young, 2005). manne, jacobson, and redd (1992, as cited in kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004) emphasized the difference between professional and caregiver attention to children in pain. where professionals attended to children’s general distress behaviour, caregivers attended to the subjective interpretations of the pain as indicated by deviations from their typical behaviour. for example, professionals may perceive that stoic children are in less pain as their general distress is minimal, but a caregiver may observe stoicism as an unusual demeanour and perceive that fear may be hindering their expression. the impact of pain impact on children the literature clearly indicates that pediatric pain is under-managed and that unmanaged pediatric pain has detrimental short-term and long-term consequences for children (aap/aps, 2001; buscemi et al., 2008; czarnecki et al., 2011). the literature suggests that younger children may be at a greater risk for long-term effects, as are children who experience repeated painful procedures (buscemi et al., 2008; czarnecki et al., 2011; fitzgerald, 2005). contrary to the historical myth, there is ample evidence that children do not get used to pain (aap/aps, 2001; buscemi et al., 2008; noel et al., 2010). clinical research and developments have disproven myths surrounding premature infants’ experience of pain in the neonatal intensive care unit in the last decade (krauss, 2001). studies show, in addition to infant’s remembering pain experiences, repeated painful procedures or other noxious stimuli may permanently alter the neuronal architecture, pain sensitivity, and processing of pain by an infant’s developing brain (blount et al., 2003; czarnecki et al., 2011; fitzgerald, 2005; young, 2005). assessing long-term effects of inadequate pain management is difficult, given the myriad of extraneous factors that could confound the results and the ethical irresponsibility of withholding known pain management interventions (young, 2005). in addition, experimentally inducing pain, although previously practiced (lebaron, zeltzer, & fanurik, 1989, as cited in young, 2005), is ethically questionable. it is suggested that perhaps the pain response in subsequent procedures is the most significant indicator. post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) symptoms have been used as a measure of long-term effects. hobbie, stuber, meeske, wissler, rourke, and ruccione (2000, as cited in blount et al., 2003) identified that one-fifth of young adult survivors of childhood cancer (a disease requiring treatment regimes of frequent, invasive, and painful procedures) had diagnosable ptsd. the relationship between pain memories and future painful procedures has been discussed above but the literature also links the development of debilitating conditions such as needle phobia to early negative experiences with needles (noel et al., 2010). willemsen, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 577 chowdhury, and briscall (2002) note that needle phobia is quite common, prevalent in 2% to 4% of children and adults. the etiology is multifaceted and requires further research but many articles and studies indicate that needle phobia is a learned behaviour, traced to one adverse experience with needles in a medical or dental context (kuttner, 2004; noel et al., 2010; willemsen et al., 2002). ost (1991, as cited in willemsen et al., 2002) found that 52% of individuals with needle phobia had a direct negative reaction to personal procedural experiences and 24% linked their fear to witnessing another child have an adverse experience. willemsen et al. (2002) question the contentious issue of gently restraining children for medical procedures indicating that needle phobias do not stem solely from the pain in the medical procedure but also the fear and trauma intricately linked to excessive restraint (taddio, et al., 2010). pate et al. (1996) explored the relationship between adult fear, pain, and coping effectiveness and childhood medical experiences and temperament. young adults in their study completed a medical experience questionnaire (designed by pate et al.) and the dimensions of temperament scale, (windle & lerner, 1986, as cited in pate et al.). regression analysis was utilized to determine the relationship between adult fear, pain, and coping effectiveness, and childhood medical experiences and temperament. the results demonstrated that childhood fear, pain, and coping effectiveness during painful procedures were significant predictors of adult experiences. further, this study identified that childhood pain accounted for greater variance than fear and temperament. behaviours seen in these young adults with adverse childhood medical experiences were excessive fear, pain, decreased coping strategy effectiveness, and avoidance of medical situations. the avoidance of medical situations ranged from avoiding medical procedures, avoiding doctor visits, and refraining from entering hospitals. some of these adult behaviours come at large economic costs to society (buscemi et al., 2008; kuttner, 2004). early childhood appears to be a critical period for the development of medical attitudes and behaviour. weisman, bernstein, and schechter (1998) studied the effects of inadequate analgesia for painful pediatric procedures. their anecdotal experience and qualitative study demonstrated that inadequate analgesia for young children undergoing painful procedures might diminish the effect of adequate analgesia in future procedures. these children may anticipate that their next procedure and pain experience will be similarly negative. if their fear is greater, an increased amount of analgesia may be needed to calm their anxiety and control the pain. older children with the cognitive ability to understand that medication given during subsequent procedures would reduce pain responded more positively. the authors stressed that if and when analgesic interventions are used, it is crucial that sufficient quantities to adequately manage the pain be utilized from the start. olmstead et al. (2010) noted that when children experience pain, the stress hormones released from their body may cause increased heart rate and blood pressure, weakened immune systems, and possible delay in healing. sleep cycles are affected, and valuable energy needed for growth and healing is stolen to cope with pain (czarnecki et al., 2011). with a delay in healing there is also a risk for prolonged hospitalization. research shows that prolonged hospital stays international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 578 have the potential to cause multiple adverse reactions, trauma, and pain for children (kuttner, 2004; thompson & stanford 1981). impact on caregivers and professionals the impact of children’s pain extends beyond the child; kennedy et al. (2008) emphasize the impact of children’s pain on their caregivers. individuals observing a loved one receiving a painful stimulus may also experience a degree of pain response, for example increased heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety (kennedy et al.). caregivers in kuttner’s (2004) studies stated that feelings of helplessness and the necessity of depending on strangers to relieve their child’s pain were excruciating experiences. this helplessness, especially when the pain is perceived to be under-managed may exacerbate caregivers’ anxiety, which in turn impacts children’s anxiety, fear, and pain. a child’s pain becomes intimately experienced as the caregiver’s pain. literature stresses the valuable role of parents in assessing and interpreting children’s pain and coaching behaviours that promote coping for the child and also themselves (kuttner, 2004). olmstead et al. (2010) suggested that the pain experiences of a child might place additional stress on the hospital system and health professionals. in addition to a potentially prolonged hospital stay, procedures with a highly agitated and fearful child are more time consuming and involve more staff members than procedures with less fearful and anxious children with effective coping strategies (kennedy et al., 2008). health care professionals also report that performing painful procedures on fearful and anxious children is particularly challenging. nagy’s (1998, as cited in kennedy et al.) comparative study of patient pain effects on nurses found morale was lower among nurses working on units with frequent painful procedures, and has been linked to perceived challenges to images of themselves as alleviators of pain. factors influencing pain management given the multitude of literature stressing the necessity of managing pediatric pain, the important question is this: why is procedural pain not being managed more effectively? just as a child’s experience of pain is subjective and impacted by multiple social, emotional, and environmental factors, the literature identifies numerous factors that make managing pediatric pain difficult. assessment a frequently identified barrier to treating children’s pain is the ability to accurately understand the level of pain children experience (blount et al., 2003; young, 2005). pain is assessed through self-report, behavioural observation, physiological measures, or a combination international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 579 of these means (aap/aps, 2001). comprehensive, reliable, evidence-based measurement tools have been developed and are well researched in the literature (blount et al., 2006). a complete review of these assessment tools, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. given that pain is a subjective experience it is very difficult for an outsider to understand another’s pain experience. for this reason the literature suggests that when available, self-report is the “gold standard” for measuring pain (aap/aps, 2001). the age at which children can accurately report their pain varies in the literature and is in all likelihood impacted by the pain vocabulary and previous experiences of the children across the studies. the consensus among prominent professionals in the field is for health care professionals to utilize a combination of self-report tools and behavioural observations for assessment with young children. researchers have demonstrated that children as young as 3 years old have the ability to identify, locate, and describe specifically salient pain sensations when given appropriate tools and guidance (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004; kuttner, 2004). the most common scales are numeric or pictorial. numeric scales ask children to ascribe a numeric value from 1-10 to their experience of pain. pictorial scales offer a thermometer or various face images and ask children to choose one that accurately represents what they are feeling (young, 2005). however, these measures do not provide a means to distinguish between pain and emotional states such as anger, sadness, anxiety, and fear (blount et al., 2006). kortesluoma and nikkonen (2006) highlight the prominent use of metaphors by children to express the pain they were experiencing. they argue that perhaps the inanimate images on the scales fail to recognize the complexity inherent in describing one’s pain experiences. kuttner (2004) has demonstrated success interpreting children’s drawings of their pain. the literature recognizes a need for further research into the area of incorporating children’s drawing into assessment strategies (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2006). observational measures refer to adults’ assessment of children’s overt behaviours. pain behaviours such as facial expressions, crying, kicking, verbal protests, and the need for restraint are observed and scaled to correspond to pain levels (young, 2005). kortesluoma and nikkonen (2004) found frequent discrepancy between nurses’ observations and children’s reports, which raises the question “when measures disagree, which one is to be considered valid?” (blount et al., 2006, p. 32). the aap/aps (2001) point out that one danger in preferring adult observation over children’s self-reporting is the assumption that a “stoic or well behaved” child is not actually in pain. numerous factors influence their outward expression of pain. kuttner (2004) and the aap/aps (2001) advocate for the crucial role of caregivers and others who know the children well to interpret pain behaviours in relation to their typical behaviour rather than solely relying on comparisons of typical procedural responses. physiological monitoring measures individuals’ heart rate, vagal tone, blood pressure, and cortisol. these measures may be particularly valuable with infants and children with special needs but are cautioned throughout the literature to be used as corroborative data (taddio et al., 2010; young, 2005). while these appear to be a more objective and valid measure of distress, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 580 some argue they are time consuming, costly, invasive, and introduce extraneous distressing factors that may affect the reliability of measurement (blount et al., 2006). practitioner values and beliefs research exploring the attitudes of health professionals regarding pediatric pain management is plentiful and presents a general consensus: health professionals’ values and beliefs influence the treatment of children’s pain (melhuish & payne, 2006; twycross, 2010; young, 2005). the literature shows that current values still run the risk of being influenced by the historical myths highlighted at the beginning of this discussion. one attitude directly linked to these myths is that if a child can be distracted or active they are not in pain. studies have found that distracting oneself from the experience of pain and shifting one’s attention to more pleasant stimuli is a positive coping strategy, not an indication that the pain has subsided (kuttner, 2004). literature illustrates the positive impact of distraction strategies as a nonpharmacological intervention during procedures, especially when used alongside pharmacological techniques such as topical anesthetic to address the pain (blount et al., 2003; czarnecki et al., 2011; uman, chambers, mcgrath, & kisely, 2008). as professionals observe the private and subjective experience of a child in pain, it is perceived through their professional, yet subjective, lens. the results of brunier, garson, and harrison’s (1995) study (as cited in kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004) into nursing attitudes revealed 44% of nurses in the study accepted a doctor’s assessment of a child’s pain over the child’s self-report. goodenough et al. (1997, as cited in kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004) also highlighted the discrepancy between the self-reports of children and the reports of practitioners, noting that professional assessments often underestimate the intensity of the experience of pain. kuttner (2004) and blount et al. (2003) counter this belief demonstrating that a child’s selfreport can be accurate when given appropriate time and tools, and must be attended to in order to counter the potential consequences of under-managed pain. melhuish and payne (2006) discerned that professional beliefs about pain management do not always coincide with actual behaviour in practice. their study demonstrated that professionals believed infants and young children felt more pain and distress with venipunctures than older children. in practice, however, they used a topical anesthetic cream 24% less often for the younger children than with the older group. nurses reported pressure to “get the procedure over with quickly” (p. 22) and did not have time for the cream to take effect. health care practitioners in czarnecki et al.’s (2011) report noted that co-worker knowledge of a “better way” to perform procedures created a barrier to pain management. alternatively, walco, cassidy, and schechter (1994) found that professionals have withheld particularly effective analgesics with young children because the children’s fear of the needle and intramuscular injection was so great. additionally, according to qualitative studies by hamers, huijer, halfens, and schumacher (1994, as cited in kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004), nursing staff responses to a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 581 child’s pain were influenced by children’s medical diagnoses. if the diagnosis was serious, they were more likely to assess the pain as more severe. fears regarding the safety and efficacy of analgesic interventions also impact pain management (olmstead et al., 2010). although research has demonstrated the safety of various analgesics and guidelines abound (krauss, 2001), the literature demonstrates a gap in front-line staff consistently applying this knowledge to current practice (czarnecki et al., 2011; twycross, 2010). twycross (2010) linked this gap to the possibility that staff do not necessarily understand the rationale behind pain relieving strategies. studies have demonstrated that some nursing staff determined a doctor’s order of “prn” or pro re nata pain relief to mean “as little as possible”, rather than “when necessary” (kortesluoma & nikkonen, 2004). melhuish and payne (2006) identify that often those professionals providing direct care have the most misconceptions about pain management. cohen et al. (2001) revealed that professional biases about interventions (such as topical anesthetic creams) or psychological interventions (such as distraction) might influence the effectiveness of these pain management techniques. as coaches and role models for children and caregivers, health care professionals send valuable messages that may influence caregivers’ acceptance of interventions and children’s willingness to engage (kuttner, 2004). research highlights the important role of professionals as coaches to facilitate successful coping behaviour in children and caregivers during procedures. blount et al. (2003) found caregivers and professionals continually cue one another about how to helpfully interact with the child and encourage success. studies indicate that children’s distress is much lower when communication and cooperation between health professionals and caregivers is high, and when they effectively coach the children to use behaviours that promote coping. conflicting perceptions about the goals of pain management and of pain relief also impact how children’s pain is managed. burokas (1985, as cited in olmstead et al., 2010) reported that 16% of nurses reported a management goal of complete pain relief, and 23% reported a management goal of pain relief to a level that allowed children to be “functional”. burr (1993, as cited in melhuish & payne, 2006) identified a perception that a “usual amount of pain” exists for a given procedure and hamers et al. (1994, as cited in melhuish & payne, 2006) reported beliefs among practitioners that some pain should be allowed, since the children were in the hospital. environment the literature suggests that the hospital environment plays an important role in children’s experiences of pain, both how they experience pain and how their pain is treated (kuttner, 2004; thompson & stanford, 1981; young, 2005). young (2005) described the emergency department as “chaotic, noisy and frightening for young children” (p. 165). this environment potentially increases children’s distress before they experience a painful procedure making their pain more difficult to assess, and adding to their general distress and trauma. children’s responses to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 582 unfamiliar environments vary, especially one as hectic and novel as a hospital. therefore, their expression of pain may be subdued or heightened in response to the new environment (thompson & stanford, 1981; young, 2005). another factor to consider when treating children’s pain is the influence of witnessing the experience of others. the impact of vicarious fear through witnessing the distress of another is well documented (willemsen et al., 2002). observing or hearing other children’s distress and expressions of pain may increase children’s experiences of distress, fear, and pain. young (2005) also discusses the impact of environment on staff, citing that many feel rushed and justify “holding [a child] down and quickly performing procedures as the most compassionate alternative available” (p. 165), rather than embracing evidence-based comfort measures (czarnecki et al., 2011). melhuish and payne (2006) also noted that the pressure imposed on health professionals by the health care system to perform procedures quickly often contradicts their values of providing pain management strategies. gimbler-berglund, ljusegren, and enskar (2008, as cited in czarnecki et al., 2011) found nurses cited one barrier to effective pain management as a lack of time before procedures to administer medication or pain management interventions. additionally, professionals in ellis, sharp, newhook, and cohen’s (2004) study expressed that a lack of communication and coordination between practitioners in ordering, implementing, and supporting children through procedures hindered their ability to utilize effective pain management interventions. the literature identifies organizational factors as barriers to adequate pain control. research has demonstrated the value of pain teams comprised of multidisciplinary professionals with specialized knowledge in the area of pain management but not all hospitals have these teams and systemic complications delay referrals to these teams when they do exist (blount et al., 2006). if pain management is to be a priority, which the world health organization has determined to be a fundamental right, twycross (2010) suggests that organizational structures must undergo a massive change in attitude, culture, policies, and practices. given the potential for long-term effects of poorly managed pain in children, research demands the notion of “cost” be re-examined (young, 2005). olmstead and colleagues (2010) note that many health care systems lack support for nurses to pursue up-to-date evidence-based knowledge to inform their practice. twycross (2010) suggests a need to revisit course content in training or to provide additional education to close this gap. given the crucial role of adult attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, and values towards pediatric pain management and new research in the field, ongoing education for practitioners and community members working with children in pain appears crucial (aap/aps, 2001). ethics the discourse surrounding pain management poses a number of ethical questions, and many state that under-management of pain in children challenges the fundamental ethical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 583 responsibilities of health care professionals (czarnecki et al., 2011; olmstead et al., 2010). the literature recognizes the complexities surrounding pediatric pain management but stresses that health professionals have an ethical responsibility to apply current research findings to pain management practices (buscemi et al., 2008; olmstead et al., 2010). walco et al. (1994) suggest that the principle within responsible medical care to “do no harm”, presents an ethical conflict since pain has been proven to be harmful to children. brennen et al. (2007, as cited in czarnecki et al., 2011) stated, “the unreasonable failure to treat pain is viewed as an unethical breach of human rights” (p. 101). while pain management is complicated and an immense task, the literature presents a united position that children have a right to have their pain managed effectively. implications for practice recommendations for improvements to pediatric pain management are plentiful. recommendations for specific analgesic guidelines are beyond the scope of this review, though the literature does stress the evidence-based support for utilizing analgesics to treat pediatric pain, dispelling myths of opioid dependency (buscemi et al., 2008; krauss, 2001). the literature recommends that effective pain management be based on a “3-p” approach, combining pharmacologic, physical, and psychological strategies, and the expertise of health care professionals from various disciplines to address the multiple dimensions of the pain experience (aap/aps, 2001; taddio et al., 2010). the review by stevens et al. (2011) of canadian hospitals indicated inconsistency in the incorporation of multidisciplinary approaches to pain management. interventions were embraced but the prevalence of documented combined strategies was very low. taddio et al. (2010), in their review of this “3-p” approach, clearly outline a series of approaches to pain management for hospitals to consider that do not require the expenditure of additional resources. walco et al. (1994) and pate et al. (1996) recognize that while the total eradication of pain may not be realistic, strengthening children’s and caregivers’ capacity to cope is crucial to combatting potential deleterious consequences. the literature supports this stance promoting cognitive behavioural therapy or other psychological approaches as a complement to pharmacological interventions, topical or analgesic (blount et al., 2006; kuttner, 2004; page & blanchette, 2009; taddio et al., 2010). as this review has shown, children’s pain experience is directly influenced by their fear and anxiety. thus the american academy of pediatrics/american pain society (2001) maintains that the key to managing procedural-related pain is anticipation. much has been written about the value of procedural preparation (blount et al., 2003; gaynard, wolfer, goldberger, thompson, redburn, & laidley, 1998; kuttner, 2004; thompson & stanford, 1981). cohen et al.’s (2001) study of children’s expectations and memories of acute distress found that children do not necessarily experience comfort when informed they will receive an intervention to target the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 584 distress. additionally, research into preparation programs has proven that information alone is not effective (page & blanchette, 2009). children’s reports in the qualitative study of kortesluoma and nikkonen (2006) stress the importance of providing accurate information about what a child will experience, rather than stating whether or not it will hurt. gaynard et al. (1998) and kuttner (2004) offer detailed explanations of thorough, age-appropriate preparation strategies. preparation can combat potential exaggerated negative memories of procedural pain. as anxiety and distress decrease, children have more focused resources to encode the event accurately and create more positive memories to draw from in the future (noel et al., 2010). clinical reviews and studies (blount et al., 2006; taddio et al., 2010) recognize a number of coping-promoting behaviours that professionals and caregivers can embrace during procedures that cause the most distress to children (i.e., needles). taddio et al. (2010) advocate that to reduce pain and distress during injections children should not be placed in a supine position but seated or held by a caregiver in a secure yet comforting position. literature suggests that excessive restraint may increase distress, anxiety, and perceptions of pain (kuttner, 2004; taddio et al., 2010; young, 2005). taddio et al. (2010) also recommend the use of topical anesthetic creams prior to injections. the research reviewed here in general argues that the most effective way to reduce the distress of children and caregivers during procedures is to equip them with knowledge and new ways to promote success (pate et al., 1996). caregiver and professional behaviours that promote coping during procedural pain have been identified as strategies that are individualized to match a child’s temperament, concretely redirect children to utilize individualized coping strategies, or refocus attention from threatening or painful aspects of the treatment to something more positive. adult behaviours such as apologies, reassurance, empathetic statements, or commands to “relax” have been found to be unhelpful (blount et al., 2006; kuttner, 2004). empirical evidence has emerged regarding the role of the mind-body connection and the experience of pain (evans, tsao, & zeltzer, 2008; kuttner, 2004). various alternative methods of focusing on the mind’s ability to reduce symptoms have surfaced, particularly hypnosis, music therapy, and thought-stopping practices. blount et al. (2003) state that although these strategies have been practiced for a number of years, few evidence-based studies demonstrating their efficacy in pediatric pain in a hospital setting exist. some research suggests that a possible role exists for these strategies in pediatric pain management, though further research is required to gather empirical evidence to establish their effectiveness (evans et al., 2008). uman et al. (2008), however, completed a thorough systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of psychological interventions for managing pediatric needle-related procedural pain and distress, and found hypnosis, cognitive behavioural therapy, and distraction received the most positive support for their effectiveness. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 585 limitations of the literature while gathering information for this literature review, several gaps in the literature were noted. uman et al. (2008) identify their study as the most comprehensive meta-analysis reviewing psychological interventions for the management of pediatric procedural pain to date. when conducting the meta-analysis, these authors noted that individual studies referenced and resourced throughout the literature have markedly different sample sizes, methodologies, and outcome measures making them very difficult to compare. uman and her colleagues also indicated that many studies in the area of pain management were not random controlled trials, and thus did not have the same stringent criteria to qualify for inclusion in the meta-analysis. while the results of this meta-analysis are consistent with previous reviews by blount et al., (2003) and individual trials, uman et al. (2008) advocate for more randomized controlled trials to contribute empirical evidence for the use of psychological and non-pharmacological interventions for pain management. although the literature gathered for this review described a variety of methodologies, the articles or reviews did not embrace mixed research designs. for example, the reviews of canadian hospitals conducted by stevens et al. (2011) and taddio et al. (2010) collected data via chart audits, while studies such as those conducted by pate et al. (1996), blount et al. (2006), and kortesluoma and nikkonen (2004), consisted of data collected via interviews and observations. few studies offer a combined methodology, which may offer a more accurate depiction of practice, values and beliefs, and children’s experiences. conclusion the topic of pain and pain management in children is complicated. the current literature is comprehensive and plentiful, making a succinct review difficult. knowledge of the multitude of influences on a child’s experience of pain and the impact of that pain experience has increased exponentially in the last two decades. these insights and developments have given professionals effective tools to more competently manage children’s acute pain. despite the expansive growth of knowledge and the development of effective evidence-based strategies to manage pain, a distinct gap between knowledge and practice remains – what we know is not being implemented effectively. the multiple reasons for this gap have been explored but perhaps the greatest barrier lies with continued acceptance of outdated views of pain, despite evidence indicating the folly of such beliefs. supportive guidelines, protocols, and new strategies have been developed but professionals’ attitudes and the culture of hospital systems must adapt to address the right of children to have their pain recognized and effectively managed. with the ever-increasing demands on the health care system, utilizing cost-effective intervention strategies is increasingly imperative. despite faulty beliefs that pain management interventions must be costly, taddio et al. (2010) espouse concrete pharmacological and psychological interventions to reduce venipuncture pain at minimal additional cost to the system. they argue the small costs accrued are likely to be offset by “shortened duration of procedure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 586 [due to decrease in children’s distress and struggle] and faster recovery time” (p. 6). taddio, soin, schuh, koren, and scolnik (2005, as cited in kennedy et al., 2008) compared the success rate and duration of iv cannulation procedures among pediatric patients with topical anesthetic and with a placebo. in addition to managing the pain of the needle insertion, procedures were completed with a higher success rate and within a shorter time frame. thus in addition to the short-term and long-term impact on children and caregivers, pain management interventions are also important practices within the hospital system that save money and time. pain management interventions advocated by the aap/aps (2001) are those that anticipate pain and distress, and combine pain management strategies with preparation for children and caregivers to increase behaviours that promote coping. effective pain management strategies are multidisciplinary, proactive, anticipatory, and formed to meet the assessed needs of each pediatric patient. the potential ramifications of poorly managed procedural pain are staggering and the obligation to improve practice is evident. the effective management of pain is, after all, a fundamental human right. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 569–589 587 references american academy of pediatrics/american pain society (aap/aps). 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(2005). pediatric procedural pain. annals of emergency medicine, 45(2), 160–170. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 a pilot program to promote mental health among asianamerican immigrant children and their parents: a community-based participatory approach tsu-yin wu and joohyun lee abstract: a mixed-methods study evaluated the perceived effectiveness of a brief, community-based parenting intervention for asian immigrant families in the united states. a community sample of twelve parent-child dyads (consisting of both foreignborn and u.s.-born children) participated in four-week long psychoeducational workshops on the mental health issues facing asian-american immigrant families, and effective parent-child communication. the effectiveness of group assertiveness training on the child participants’ social competence was also evaluated. participants reported improved psychosocial functioning upon the conclusion of the workshop. qualitative feedback from the parents highlighted the efficacy of an integrated approach, predicated on group psychoeducation and in-session interventions designed to improve parent-child communication. clinical implications and directions for future research are provided. keywords: asian, psychological well-being, culture, parent-child relationship acknowledgement: this project was supported by the w.k. kellogg foundation. we are extremely grateful to the asian-american immigrant children and parents who participated in the workshops and provided invaluable input. also we would like to thank dibya choudhuri, ellen koch, and hsiao-wen lo, who provided expertise in the design and implementation phase of workshops, and alethea helbig, who provided editorial assistance with earlier drafts of the manuscript. tsu-yin wu (the corresponding author) is a professor in the school of nursing, eastern michigan university, 328 marshall, ypsilanti, mi 48197. e-mail: twu@emich.edu joohyun lee is a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at eastern michigan university, 341 science complex, ypsilanti, mi 48197. e-mail: jlee71@emich.edu mailto:twu@emich.edu mailto:jlee71@emich.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 731 more immigrants move to the united states each year than to any other nation (martin & widgreen, 2002). in 2009, over 37 million foreign-born individuals were estimated to be living in the united states (u.s. census bureau, 2010), and immigration is thought to account for more than 40% of population growth in the nation (rong & preissle, 2009). although considerable research has been devoted to examining the impact of immigration (e.g., berry, 2001; berry & sam, 1997; leu et al., 2008), most immigration research has historically focused on adults, with considerably less attention afforded to youths (aronowitz, 1984; berry & sam, 1997). the significant and growing proportion of immigrant children in the united states (u.s. census bureau, 2000) has prompted a number of scholars to address this gap in the literature (e.g., berry & sam, 1997; fuligni, 2001; le & stockdale, 2008; rumbaut & portes, 2001). the reduction of health disparities in immigrant and racial or ethnic minority children, who are often from immigrant families, has been a topic of growing interest to researchers and u.s. policy makers (kataoka, zhang, & wells, 2002; snowden, masland, libby, wallace, & fawley, 2008; yeh et al., 2002). however, most existing research focuses on disparities in mental health among hispanic and african-american children (brach & fraserirector, 2000; huang, caughy, genevro, & miller, 2005; lara, gamboa, kahramanian, morales, & hayes bautista, 2005), with far fewer studies focusing specifically on the asian-american population (huang, calzada, cheng, & brotman, 2012). popular characterizations of asian-american children as a “model minority” (yu & vyas, 2009), underpinned by the group’s high rate of academic achievement (schneider & lee, 1990), may have inadvertently contributed to the scarcity by perpetuating the notion that asian-american children are psychologically resilient despite the disadvantages associated with their migrant or ethnic minority status. this view is further perpetuated by documented lower rates of behavioral and health problems among this group (kim & chun, 1993; nguyen et al., 2004; yeh et al., 2002), but findings remain mixed with some studies reporting higher rates of internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression within this population (chang, morrissey, & koplewicz, 1995). given that asian americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the nation, projected to comprise 8.2% of the total u.s. population by the year 2060 (u.s. census bureau, 2012), it is imperative that researchers better understand the discrepancies in published studies. examining the few extant studies focusing on asian-american children may shed some light on the mixed findings of past research. for example, huang and colleagues’ (2012) secondary data analysis of the early childhood longitudinal study-kindergarten class (eclsk) found that asian-american children had higher levels of internalizing disorders and lower levels of interpersonal relationship skills relative to white children. they also found that asianamerican children were less likely to be in good physical health when compared with white children, but this disparity was only evident among children of asian immigrant parents and not in children of u.s.-born asian parents. these findings suggest a within-group health disparity (u.s.-born vs. immigrant) among the asian-american youths. chan (2003) further stressed the importance of considering contextual factors when examining the asian-american population. he argued that the “model minority” label is predicated on the assumption of homogeneity and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 732 does not take into account the disparities between those who have been in the country for decades and recent migrants. the inherently disruptive nature of immigration may predispose asian-american children to a wide range of psychological difficulties, including depression and anxiety (padilla & duran, 1995; pumariega, rothe, & pumariega, 2005). the psychological difficulties may also be amplified by risk factors unique to ethnic minority groups, such as racial discrimination (leong & okazaki, 2009). discrimination by peers can be particularly stressful given the importance of positive peer acceptance among this age group (grossman & liang, 2008; yeh & inose, 2002), and this may increase the risk of developing mental health problems. indeed, shrake and rhee (2004) found that perceived discrimination was a significant positive predictor of both internalizing and externalizing disorders among young korean americans, and the prevalence of problem behaviors was strongly associated with the adolescents’ perceptions of racial discrimination. intergenerational conflict is another construct that has received increased attention within the literature on asian-american families (park, kim, chiang, & ju, 2010). immigrant children adjust to a new culture at a faster pace than their parents (birman & trickett, 2001), and the resulting acculturation gap is believed to contribute to the development of parent-child conflict (suárez-orozco, 2001). that is, conflicting cultural orientations (e.g., interdependence vs. independence) may strain the parent-child relationship (park et al., 2010), which, in turn, may lead to deleterious psychosocial outcomes such as delinquent behavior (choi, he, & harachi, 2008), poorer life satisfaction (phinney & ong, 2002), and depressive symptoms (ying & han, 2007). the relative de-emphasis on affectionate and open communication among asian families (le, berenbaum, & raghavan, 2002), largely rooted in the high value placed on maintaining harmony in asian culture (kim & kim, 2001), may further aggravate these negative outcomes (park, vo, & tsong, 2009). our team previously conducted a focus-group pilot study of challenges and concerns related to racial discrimination and bullying among asian-american immigrant families. the focus group findings confirmed that asian-american children and adolescents (particularly those from immigrant families) often experienced racial discrimination and bullying by their peers. as an example, one participant reported that their son is often bullied by his classmates as he “eats stinky food.” participants also confirmed the presence of parent-child conflict within their households. the conflict was described as a sense of alienation and estrangement that was attributed to generational and cultural differences. for instance, a filipino parent described how disciplinary techniques may be a source of contention within immigrant households: i think one concrete example though of what could become a problem… you know, cultural values is one thing; but i think it’s the parenting styles that has gotten to be a little challenging. we were raised in the philippines. i was whacked. i became okay. my dad used his belt, but i was okay. it was expected. it was part of my discipline growing up. the adolescents i see in our clinic, it’s a threat, what you are going to do, on the butt. … [they say] i’m going to call child protective services, and that’s very difficult for someone who was raised in the philippines. their child was born in the philippines, we bring them here, all of a sudden they are around people who are very into child protective services stuff; that started to become such a problem. the balance has to be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 733 there. i don’t know how you address it in schools but that’s a disparity in itself. the discipline that you were known to have and what is in american society today. discussions with a korean-american youth pastor revealed that this cultural gap may lead to the breakdown of communication between parents and their children: … so later on they realize there’s no point in me talking to my parents and they don’t talk to their parents. they talk to their friends. their friends have the worst advice. let’s do drugs. let’s go party. then they go into areas that i could consider depression or whatever and their school grades drop. their parents get down on them. they don’t know what is going on. their parents put them on adhd meds or whatever meds. that’s kind of the story of most of them. the child and adolescent participants also reported perceived communication barriers with their parents. one filipino participant remarked, “we had a problem with our parents’ tunnel vision like ‘our culture is the right way’ and that’s the only way.” another korean child participant concurred, “it was more like, they are never going to get it. my experience as a korean american and the world that i was shown here in america was not the world that they were shown.” the current study aimed to address the above-documented challenges facing asianamerican families. difficulties arising from the process of immigration and acculturation can be particularly challenging for children as they face the complex tasks of identity formation and cultural group affiliation (suárez-orozco & qin, 2006) as well as negotiating any intergenerational conflict that may arise in their household. as such, the standard of care for psychological services must encompass both the risk and the protective processes relevant to the asian-american population. to this end, we evaluated the efficacy of parent-child dyad workshops designed to promote effective parenting practices and self-regulatory skills. the interventions drew from several principles grounded in asian parent-child relationships and relevant asian or asian-american mental health literature. first, in light of the conflict that often accompanies parenting in intercultural contexts (park et al., 2010), the workshops provided parents with an opportunity to share their parenting experiences in small groups. this was implemented to develop a greater understanding of the common parental challenges in asianamerican households. second, the workshops included brief psychoeducational programs, which were provided to both the parents and their children. this was done because culturallyinfluenced beliefs about the etiology of mental health and behavioral problems are often responsible for the observed racial or ethnic disparities in mental health service utilization by children (yeh et al., 2005). finally, given the effectiveness of social-skills training programs in reducing peer rejection among ethnic minority children (lochman, coie, underwood, & terry, 1993), child participants were provided with assertiveness training. method participants the current study used a convenience sample and the sampling was purposeful in that the selected cases met predetermined criteria of importance (patton, 2001). the criteria for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 734 participation included: (a) parents with an immigrant background; (b) parents who self-identified as being of asian descent; and (c) consent from the parent-child dyads for their participation in workshops. participants were recruited from flyers, recruitment ads in local ethnic newspapers, and word of mouth. twelve dyads (child and parent) who identified their country of origin as being part of asia attended the workshops. the analysis from subculture demographics revealed five chinese (42%), three japanese (25%), one south korean (8%), one vietnamese (8%), and one taiwanese american (8%) family dyad. one parent-child dyad chose to identify as “other” (8%). although the ratio of male to female child participants was equal, it was skewed in favor of females (58%) among the parents. the participant children’s ages ranged from 6 to 11 with a mean age of 7.8 (sd = 2.08). four child participants were u.s.-born. the most common language spoken at home was chinese (50%), followed by japanese (25%), korean (8%), vietnamese (8%), and other (8%). parents’ levels of education were: some college (9%), bachelor’s degree (9%), master’s degree (45%), and doctoral degree (36%). procedures the workshops, developed and implemented by an interdisciplinary team that consisted of professionals from psychology, counselling, social work, and nursing, were conducted from july 13, 2013 to august 17, 2013. however, due to various scheduling conflicts among the families, attendance was inconsistent. informed consent and assent forms were provided to the parent-child dyads before the start of the study. participants were told that the purpose of the study was to investigate the immigration experiences of asian-american families in an effort to improve this population’s mental health literacy. they were informed that the study would involve attending presentations, engaging in small-group activities, and completing questionnaires. the voluntary nature of their participation was also acknowledged, and the parent-child dyads were informed that they might discontinue participation at any time. participants were also told that the workshop sessions would be audio-recorded, and that the recordings, as well as their questionnaire responses, would remain confidential and only be used for research purposes. potential language barrier issues were addressed by recruiting bilingual project staff versed in the participants’ native languages. translated versions of the research instruments were provided. parents were given a $25 gift card upon the conclusion of the project. the empowerment workshops were held in a local library in a midwestern u.s. city; workshops were attended by immigrant or first-generation american children (age 6–11) and their parents. pre-intervention and post-intervention outcomes were measured through both quantitative and qualitative evaluation forms completed by the parent-child dyads. the empowerment workshops consisted of four 90-minute weekly interventions. at the start of each session, parents and children split up into two groups to participate in a parentor child-specific program. the two groups reconvened at a later time for a group discussion. the first week was devoted to introductions and providing the parents with the treatment rationale. each of the remaining weeks included a brief psycho-education segment, followed by a session focusing on a different domain or skill (e.g., parent-child relationship building, assertiveness skills training, and anxiety management). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 735 during the first workshop, participants completed the following pre-intervention measures: (a) demographics questionnaire (parents); (b) school performance measure (parents and children); and (c) psychosocial outcome rating scale (parents and children). the revised children’s manifest anxiety scale-2 (child participants) was administered before the start of the second session. in week two, the workshop covered anxiety. in separate groups, the parents were provided with information on how to recognize anxiety in their children, and the child participants were provided with tools and tips for identifying the symptoms and signs of anxiety. upon reconvening, a group facilitator provided brief didactic instructions to the parents on how best to approach the issue of anxiety (and other psychological difficulties) with their children. the third workshop revolved around assertiveness and social skills training. first, the parents and children were separated into two groups for about an hour. the parents disclosed their children’s reports of conflict and bullying in school. the group facilitators then shared ways that parents could help their children by modeling effective communication techniques to deter bullying. the children, in their workshop, first viewed a short clip depicting a challenging social situation. the group leaders then elicited suggestions on how one could defuse this situation. this was accomplished by implementing role-playing exercises to model assertive communication skills. the child participants also completed the children’s action tendency scale preand postintervention to evaluate this workshop’s effectiveness. the fourth workshop focused primarily on improving parent-child relationships. parents, in their group, first disclosed concerns about the potential barriers to a positive parent-child relationship. these barriers, in turn, were addressed by the group facilitators via brief psychoeducation segments (e.g., how anxiety may impact a child’s relationship with his or her caregivers) and role-playing exercises (e.g., encouraging parents to implement reflective listening skills). child participants, likewise, were encouraged to disclose any concerns about their relationships with their parents. after the completion of these small group discussions, the parent-child dyads reconvened for a debriefing session. each dyad then completed the postintervention measure (psychosocial outcome rating scale). the parents received a $25 gift card for their participation in the study. measures demographic questionnaire. a demographic questionnaire was developed and distributed to the parent(s)/legal guardian(s) of the child participants. the measure included eight items assessing the following variables: (a) respondent’s relationship with child participant; (b) age; (c) level of education; (d) gender; (e) place of birth; (f) language spoken at home; (g) child participant’s age; (h) child participant’s gender; and (i) child participant’s birthplace. psychosocial outcome rating scale. an outcome rating scale was developed for this study. this four-item measure was distributed to both the parent(s)/legal guardian(s) and the child participants preand postworkshop. the measure was designed to provide a broad overview of the respondent’s general psychosocial functioning (personal well-being, social satisfaction, etc.). ratings were provided on a visual-analogue scale and the format of the scale corresponded to participant characteristics. for child participants, the scale was anchored by a “sad” face (score of 0) and a “happy” face (score of 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 736 children’s action tendency scale (cats). the cats (deluty, 1979) is a 39-item selfreport measure designed to assess assertive, aggressive, and submissive behavior in children. the instrument provides 13 vignettes of children in conflict situations. each of the 13 situations is followed by three response alternatives presented in a paired-comparison format. for each of the pairs of alternatives the child is asked to select the one that best describes how he or she would behave. the number of aggressive, assertive, or submissive alternatives a respondent chooses constitutes his or her aggressiveness, assertiveness, and submissiveness scores, respectively. the paired comparison format allows for the assessment of the relative strength of each response against the other two. scores on each dimension can range from 0 to 26. cats’ reliability was demonstrated through its acceptable split-half reliability and testretest values. the split-half reliability coefficients for the aggressiveness, assertiveness, and submissiveness subscales were 0.77, 0.63, and 0.72, respectively (deluty, 1979). test-retest reliability over a four-month interval was 0.48, 0.60, and 0.57 for the aggressiveness, assertiveness, and submissiveness scores (deluty, 1979). the observed reliability estimates are rather modest but reflect the measure’s intent to assess state, as opposed to trait, tendencies. concurrent validity was established through the measure’s significant correlation with a measure of self-esteem and peer and teacher rating of interpersonal behavior (deluty, 1979). furthermore, the scale is able to successfully discriminate between samples of clinically aggressive and normal children. revised children’s manifest anxiety scale-2 (rcmas-2). the rcmas-2 (gerard & reynolds, 1999) is a 49-item measure that assesses the level and nature of anxiety in children and adolescents. in addition to providing a global level of anxiety symptoms, rcmas also evaluates anxiety on three dimensions: (a) physiological anxiety; (b) worry or over-sensitivity; and (c) social anxiety. as well, the scale provides a validity scale (defensiveness subscale) to control for social desirability biases. participants respond to each item using a yes-no format, with higher scores indicating higher levels of the construct being assessed. reliability was established on several fronts with generally acceptable psychometric properties (gerard & reynolds, 1999). school performance measure. a pre-screening measure was developed to evaluate the parent/legal guardian’s domains of concern with respect to his or her child’s academic functioning. this 7-item self-report measure was comprised of yes or no choices and open-ended questions. the items assessed the parent/legal guardian’s perception and observation of the child’s academic behavior and performance (e.g., “has your child ever expressed any worry or concern with going to school? provide examples.”) an alternative measure was developed for the child participants. this 9-item self-report measure comprised open-ended questions and a visual analogue scale, which used smiley faces as its two anchor points. the items assessed the child’s general view towards, as well as experiences in, the school setting (e.g., “how do you feel about school?”; “tell us about the last time you felt sad at school.”) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 737 results all the data were entered by a trained research associate and double data entry was completed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss-paswversion 18.0.3) to ensure the entered data were as correct and as clean as possible. appropriate scales and subscales were computed prior to data analysis and statistical analyses were performed using the spsspasw. quantitative analysis means and standard deviations of the employed scales are presented in tables 1, 2, and 3. table 1 comparison of means (standard deviations) on psychosocial outcome rating scale: parents & children subscale session: pre-test session: post-test m sd n m sd n t df p-value parents personal wellbeing 4.24 1.17 5 4.49 .44 6 -.53 9 .61 family and close relationships 4.65 .22 5 4.27 .97 6 .85 9 .42 work, school, and friendships 4.03 1.62 5 4.50 .48 7 -.74 10 .47 general sense of well-being 4.55 .29 5 4.06 .73 7 1.41 10 .19 children personal wellbeing 3.19 .90 7 3.56 .50 6 -.90 11 .39 family and close relationships 3.11 .89 7 3.60 .43 6 -1.24 11 .24 work, school, and friendships 2.85 .94 7 3.63 .40 6 -1.89 11 .09 general sense of well-being 3.11 .76 7 3.78 .32 6 -1.69 11 .12 the preand post-tests showed improved scores in all domains of psychosocial functioning (i.e., personal well-being; family and close relationships; work, school, and friendships; general sense of well-being) for both the child and parent participants (table 1). the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 738 children, on average, reported a low level of overall anxiety (m = 9.13, range = 0–21; table 2). one participant, however, reported a clinically significant level of social anxiety (t-score = 60). using cats, paired-samples t-tests revealed no significant differences between the pre and post-intervention conditions (table 3). interestingly, the mean self-report scores of both the assertiveness and aggressiveness subscales were elevated in the latter condition while the level of submissiveness was decreased. table 2 means, standard deviations, and range for revised children’s manifest anxiety scale (rcmas) scale m (sd) range total rcmas score 9.13 (8.15) 0.00-21.00 physiological anxiety subscale 2.88 (1.81) 0.00-5.00 worry subscale 3.88 (3.91) 0.00-10.00 social subscale 2.38 (3.02) 0.00-8.00 defensiveness subscale 5.13 (2.36) 2.00-9.00 table 3 paired samples t-tests comparing means of children’s action tendency scale (cats) and subscales measure m (sd) range t df p-value time 1 assertiveness subscale 21.67 (3.51) 18-25 -1.00 2 .42 time 2 assertiveness subscale 22.00 (3.61) 18-25 time 1 aggressiveness subscale 3.33 (4.93) 0-9 -1.73 2 .23 time 2 aggressiveness subscale 4.33 (4.16) 1-9 time 1 submissiveness subscale 13.67 (2.51) 10-16 0.87 2 .48 time 2 submissiveness subscale 12.67 (0.58) 12-17 note. time 1 = pre-workshop; time 2 = post-workshop qualitative findings open group discussions offered an opportunity for participants to share general concerns and comments relevant to their experiences in the u.s. participants were also encouraged to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 739 provide feedback regarding their time in the workshop. the three prevailing themes that emerged during these discussions were: (a) increased insight into parent-child relationships; (b) academic concerns; and (c) perceived benefits from workshop participation. insights on parent-child relationships. the parents indicated that they gained increased insight into parent-child relationships from participating in the workshop. this included increased empathy for their children’s inner experiences as well as a greater appreciation for proactive communication skills. one parent, as an example, recounted that “listening” as opposed to “criticizing” resulted in greater openness and disclosure from their child. the parents also engaged in a discussion of the potential problems associated with the increasing intergenerational cultural gaps with their children. the difference in language mastery, in particular, was highlighted as a factor that aggravated this gap. one parent remarked: that is my big concern because if we move here, her english is not as good as we expected and her chinese also is imperfect. i don’t know whether it makes sense for us to move here because we lose on both sides. parents also reported ambivalence regarding their ability to successfully facilitate their children’s cross-cultural transition. this ambivalence, in part, was attributed to the stressors in their own environment. for example, one parent noted that the cumulative stresses associated with their workplace impeded their ability to communicate effectively with their child. academic concerns. the open group discussion also revealed issues relevant to the children’s academic experience. parent participants first acknowledged the difficulty with effectively monitoring their children’s academic progress. one parent explained that it was often hard to interpret the test results used in the u.s. educational system as he was “accustomed to the kind of tests in my country”. other prevailing concerns revolved around a lack of parent-teacher communication. lack of english fluency prevented some parents from attending school functions and being actively involved in their children’s academic careers. the issue of language competency also extended to the children. several children remarked that they “do not talk as much” in classroom settings due to poor english proficiency. perceived workshop efficacy. both the parent and child participants were asked to reflect on their experiences participating in the workshop. the parents noted that the open-group discussions were particularly helpful as they normalized the hardships associated with parenting. they also expressed appreciation of the workshop segments that provided specific, tangible strategies to cope with stress and anxiety (e.g., relaxation exercises). parent-child role-playing exercises, designed to promote effective communication techniques, were highlighted as beneficial as well. one participant remarked: she tell(s) me (a) lot of things happen but did not know what exactly happened, and i did not give her okay (and say) this is right, you did this right, you did this wrong, most times, criticizing….. (i applied) what i learned recently, so i tell her ‘tell me what happened’ so i – it works. she gradually tells me what happened. the workshop’s efficacy was also echoed by child participants. one child remarked on the utility of practising assertiveness and conflict resolution skills with the workshop leaders. general international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 740 emotion-regulation skills, ranging from anger management to stress reduction techniques, were deemed to be helpful as well. discussion this study sought to evaluate the efficacy of parent-child dyad empowerment workshops for asian-american immigrant families. workshop content was guided by findings from a previous focus group pilot study, and from relevant bodies of literature, regarding risk and protective factors associated with the mental health disparity of asian-american immigrant children; these include acculturative stress, mental health beliefs, intergenerational conflict, quality of parent-child relationship, interpersonal difficulties, and racial discrimination (huang et al., 2012; leong & okazaki, 2009; nguyen & anderson, 2005; park et al., 2010; yeh & inose, 2002; yeh et al., 2005). qualitative evaluation data demonstrated evidence of the workshops’ efficacy. in particular, the increased use of proactive communication skills (e.g., active listening) by parents with their children led to greater parent-child relationship satisfaction. a prominent theme that emerged from the parents’ post-evaluation was the importance of addressing intergenerational cultural gaps with their children. more specifically, several parents raised concerns that the cultural gap will widen as their children enter adolescence and young adulthood. they remarked on the utility of the workshop that provided strategies and information centered on this issue which they could apply later on. similar findings were consistent with current literature that implicates intergenerational cultural gaps as a key contributor to parent-child conflicts (choi et al., 2008; kim, chen, li, huang, & moon, 2009; tsai-chae & nagata, 2008). lastly, several parent participants reported that one of the major benefits of their participation was decreased feelings of isolation after learning of other families who encountered problems similar to their own. qualitative feedback from child participants also highlighted the workshops’ efficacy. for example, the child participants reported greater use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as a greater understanding of an assertive communication style. the preliminary results from quantitative evaluation data highlighted the potential efficacy of culturally-informed interventions. for instance, both parent and child participants reported higher levels of satisfaction within a wide range of psychosocial domains (e.g., personal wellbeing, quality of family relationship, and academic or occupational functioning) upon the conclusion of the workshop. in addition, the effectiveness of intervention was demonstrated by an increase in child participants’ understanding and use of assertiveness skills following an assertiveness training module. however, the preand post-intervention differences on these measures were not statistically significant, perhaps due to the relatively small sample size. nonetheless, the results are still promising and attest to the potential utility of these interventions in promoting proactive communicative behaviors. interestingly, the current study observed a higher, albeit still non-significant, level of aggressiveness after the assertiveness workshop. this was an unexpected finding that may be due to the influence of cultural backgrounds on communication styles. for instance, assertiveness may be more likely to be confused with aggression among individuals whose culture places a premium on interpersonal harmony (markus & kitayama, 1991). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 741 lastly, the present study found a negligible level of anxiety within the child participants. a follow-up examination of the measure subscales, on the other hand, revealed that some children reported clinically significant levels of rumination and social anxiety. thus, it is crucial that assessment of anxiety symptoms in children cover a wide range of domains. this issue may be particularly important for asian-american children as they are at a greater risk for internalizing disorders and social anxiety when compared to white children (huang et al., 2012). limitations although the current study offers some promising findings, certain methodological limitations warrant discussion. first, the study’s reliance on self-report measures is problematic. although visual-analogue and translated scales were introduced to circumvent potential language competency issues, self-reports are still susceptible to numerous biases (e.g., social desirability). the generalizability of the results is further limited by the relatively small study sample and nonexperimental study design and recruitment method. type ii error and the lack of a randomized controlled design limited this study’s ability to draw conclusive causal inferences about the employed interventions. furthermore, participants were recruited through convenience sampling from local community organizations and through word-of-mouth. this may have resulted in a selection bias. lastly, the sample was skewed to better-educated parents. this may have further limited the generalizability of the results to more diverse populations, including those that are less educated and are of low socioeconomic status. implications and future research our study contributes to the existing body of research addressing the health disparities among asian-american immigrant children in a number of ways. parental and child interventions, such as the one described in the study, are needed to address the unique stressors faced by immigrant families of asian descent. given that intergenerational cultural gaps were a prominent concern raised during the open group discussions, future studies and interventions may benefit from increased focus on this construct. for instance, assessing the parents’ and their children’s cultural orientation for any notable cultural gaps may be useful in developing a more comprehensive method of intervention. extant research also suggests that children may acculturate at a faster rate than their parents (buki, ma, & strom, 2003). as such, future studies should continue to evaluate the impact of this disparity in differing age groups with a larger sample size. based on the findings of our study, health professionals may benefit from implementing interventions that encourage parental involvement in school settings. more specifically, strengthening parent-teacher communication in an effort to ensure that relevant issues are addressed in classroom settings may make the intercultural adjustment process easier for children. moreover, it may be useful to work with educators and parents to help them recognize potential cultural differences in the symptoms of anxiety and other disorders among children. lastly, although the present study demonstrated promising findings, attempts should also be made to broaden the participant pool and use multi-format and multi-method reports to increase the validity and reliability of the collected data. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 730–745 742 references aronowitz, m. 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children and their parents: a community-based participatory approach tsu-yin wu and joohyun lee method results discussion limitations implications and future research references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616090 youth mentorship as neoliberal subject formation matty hillman abstract: this paper critically analyzes how youth mentorship discourse in north america supports hegemonic and normative values of patriarchy, gender role expectations, and negative youth stereotypes. utilizing critical discourse analysis, i identify and make explicit the additional agendas present in youth mentorship programs. through an examination of the language and rhetorical devices used to promote youth mentorship programs, multiple elements of discourse are identified as supporting the inculcation of youth with neoliberal values such as competition, entrepreneurism, and self-regulation. the implications of this analysis suggest the continual and increasing presence of neoliberal and corporate capitalistic values in the once publicly funded welfare state. keywords: youth mentorship, neoliberalism, critical discourse analysis, child and youth care matty hillman is an ma student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: mattyhillman@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616090 mailto:mattyhillman@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 365 this paper critically examines both the implicit and explicit discourses found in wellknown youth mentorship programs firmly established in north america. utilizing a critical governmentality lens and borrowing from critical discourse analysis (cda; fairclough, 1992), i examine text material that promotes youth mentorship programming. i demonstrate that, wellintentioned as these programs may be, in actuality they support oppressive discourses such as patriarchy and gender role expectations. furthermore, due to the recent increasing presence of corporate and private interests in the field of positive youth development, i argue that it has become an emergent goal of the mentorship programming movement to promote the values and characteristics of the business-savvy neoliberal citizen. considering the dominance of western developmental psychology discourse in child and youth care literature and practice (pacini-ketchabaw, 2011), and the increasing embrace of neoliberal practices in many western liberal democratic states (kennelly, 2011), identifying and making explicit the intersection of these two hegemonic elements is important and timely. in critical youth studies it is imperative that we examine the values that are being promoted as necessary for successful youth development, and ask whom those values primarily benefit and what additional agendas are being fulfilled. one of the main goals of this paper is to draw attention to how youth mentorship programs support normative development of the youth they serve in the hope of producing competent, productive, and healthy young people. through this process, these programs are asked to assist with the creation of ideal neoliberal citizens primed to support the values of a western-eurocentric, capitalistic state. this paper aims to highlight the problematic nature of neoliberal influence on youth mentorship programming, and show that it leads to an overemphasis on individualized models of development, and a disregard for the widespread structural inequalities found in north america. two widely known and well-recognized organizations, boys to men and big brothers big sisters (bb/bs), and the mentorship models they espouse, are examined in this paper by way of text-based discourse retrieved from their promotional materials and websites. offering both community and school-based mentorship programs, these organizations claim to match thousands of youth with adult mentors yearly in countries across the globe. the strong north american presence and growing international reach of these programs makes them both relevant and appropriate for critical examination. a critical analysis that seeks to problematize, probe, and critique societal assumptions does so in the spirit of emancipation from the predetermined outcomes for youth development that are desired by those in authority. as will be shown in this paper, many of these desired youth outcomes support gender and class stratification and have been constructed not by the youth themselves, but by authoritarian institutions with vested interests. through inquiry and an exploration of implications, a more socially just and reflexive practice of helping others can be achieved. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 366 finally, it is worth noting that this paper provides only a partial perspective on youth mentorship programming, charting the desired outcomes for youth as based on two programs’ promotional literature. this is not to dismiss the possibility that youth and youth mentors, through their shared values and emerging relationships, may have the opportunity to resist the neoliberal values promoted by these programs. the neoliberal context neoliberalism comprises a set of economic theories, policies, and political practices that seek to liberalize free markets through economic deregulation, elimination of tariffs, and cuts to social and health services (kennelly, 2011). with regard to its effects on the self, neoliberalism promotes an environment that values individualism, self-responsibility, and freedom of choice in employment and identity formation, as well as traits of self-monitoring and self-surveillance (phoenix, 2003). however, these apparent freedoms and traits come at a cost. the core neoliberal value of competition has been widely critiqued as normalizing oppression, creating individualistic and victim-blaming practices that promote the view that what happens to one is the product of individual choices autonomously made (phoenix, 2003); the presence and effects of structural inequalities in the life trajectories of individuals are minimized or ignored. furthermore, due to its widespread acceptance as a philosophy of our time, neoliberalism often acts as an insidious form of social control, effectively regulating individual citizens by subtle persuasion rather than direct threat (rose, 1999). neoliberal policies and ideologies have been described as a form of governmentality with pervasive influence, and a range that “reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices of the empire” (brown, 2005, p. 38). under neoliberal influence, education policy is designed to produce citizens ready to seek individual success in the modern global economy; and it aims to give students a complex set of skills imbued with the tenets of autonomy, choice, and competition (mitchell, 2003). when such educational policy is coupled with the western construction of young people (ages 13–21) as dependent, irrational, and in need of guidance (skott-myhre, 2008), educational programs infused with neoliberal values proliferate. these programs are formulated with the intention of influencing these citizens-in-themaking with the “specific qualities and characteristics that are desirable to the nation-state” (kennelly, 2011, p.4). given the pervasive nature of neoliberal governmentality in multiple aspects of a young person’s life, youth mentorship programs can be viewed as a form of developmentally based curriculum designed not only to engage young people with role models who will guide, teach, and inspire, but also to enclose young people in a normative framework infused with state-supported ideals. theoretical orientation in the work of foucault (1972), discourse is considered to be a sequence of signs that assign meaning to and among objects, subjects, and statements. elements of discourse may take international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 367 the form of ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and practices that are grouped together as they share a similar force or act together in a similar way. discourses can be related to power through rules of inclusion and exclusion — they construct not only the understood truths of our times but also how, where, and who is privileged to speak to them. discourses shape society and at the same time are shaped by it; economic, social, and cultural ideologies and policy are moulded by these discourses. pioneered by norman fairclough, ruth wodak, teun van dijk, and others, critical discourse analysis (cda) emerged in the late 1970s from the university of east anglia and has since become one of the most well-known and influential branches of discourse analysis (blommaert & bulcaen, 2000). in cda, institutional, political, gender, and media discourses as related to struggle and conflict are analyzed, with specific emphasis on the relationship between language and power (wodak & meyer, 2001). because these structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, control, and power as manifested in language can be opaque (wodak, 2011), cda systematically analyzes discourse to identify and make transparent various processes that can be viewed as hegemonic and oppressive, such as democratization, commodification, and technologization (fairclough, 1992). because cda seeks to identify and make explicit the often hidden discourses and hegemonic power structures in society, it is a strong theoretical framework for unpacking the implicit normative discourses found in youth development programming. often, in modern society, the opaque agendas and discrete forms of regulation that governments and others in positions of power use to keep the status quo are not fully evident or knowable: in the foucauldian understanding of the state, individual subject discipline and societal control often occur through covert means (kennelly, 2011). thus, governmentality moves beyond directly observable policies and legal decisions to include a variety of authorities over subjects of the state, including self-discipline. in other words, the options that evolve to be considered thinkable for specific subjects also ensure the legitimacy and ongoing survival of the state, in its current conceptualization (kennelly, 2011). rose (1993) has further expanded on this concept of governmentality by identifying the insidious nature of many of the disciplinary apparatuses of the modern nation-state. rather than applying overt forms of domination, current neoliberal governance seeks to regulate the choices that citizen-subjects view as available to themselves. no longer governed by authoritarian political rule, the subject is expected to become self-governing by internalizing the primary tenets of neoliberalism such as competition and self-responsibility. the neoliberal state enlists institutions such as schools, families, and youth mentorship programs to instill these tenets and assist in the creation of the self-governing subject, who in turn is expected to uphold and legitimize the actions and values of the nation-state. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 368 developmental youth programming in a neoliberal world in order to foreground the prescriptive nature of youth mentorship programs, it is necessary to review the rise of the developmental psychology model in child and youth care discourse, and its intersection with the individualistic values of the neoliberal state. skott-myhre (2008) reminds us that “young people in western societies are defined by developmental psychology as incapable of fully producing a core self capable of full rationality, and as a result, lack the maturity necessary to make reasonable decisions about their lives” (p. 13). valuing objective observation and measurement of chronological human development, developmental psychology applies a linear and sequential process to the lifespan. this contributes to a discourse that conceives of young people as proto-adults, requiring guidance and support to successfully navigate the development process. this idea of progression in competence and maturity as one ages has been associated with a discourse that models ideal-typical citizen-subjects as those who are knowable, known, docile, and productive (burman, 2008). throughout the process of moulding the citizen-subject into someone who can navigate the current challenges of global capitalism, the developmental psychology model of normative human development is constantly influencing and being influenced by social, political, and cultural institutions (pacini-ketchabaw, 2011). elements such as individualism, esteem, purpose, boundary, and assertion are present in the prevailing discourse as desirable and even required elements of healthy youth development in an increasingly individualistic and competitive world (skott-myhre, 2008). when dominant notions of normative development view young people as still developing into fully functioning, productive, and responsible adults, a perceived need is created for adultdriven interventions. youth programs grounded in these developmental theories interact with prevailing social, cultural, and political norms to provide guidelines for the creation of productive and healthy adults. in youth rising? the politics of youth in the global economy, sukarieh and tannock (2015) state, “the youth developmental framework is the most important conceptual model for thinking about and working with that ever expanding segment of our population that we have collectively come to define as youth” (p. 19). the authors go on to outline some of the more well-known and widely embraced developmental models of youth programming such as “the five cs: competence, character, confidence, connection, and caring” (lerner, 2004), as well as benson’s (1997) 40 developmental assets that are required for healthy youth development. the specific competencies, assets, or other standardized forms of evaluation or support offered by these and other development frameworks are secondary components to the more pervasive notion of the “successful” adult individual the programs strive to create — a resourceful and resilient young person, equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to prosper and flourish in our complex and globalized world. specifically, positive youth developmental discourse aims to promote neoliberal ideals, particularly those pertaining to personal qualities of young citizens, such as personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and entrepreneurialism (sukarieh &tannock, 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 369 critical discourse analysis of current trends in youth mentorship the following sections of this paper will review the aforementioned youth mentorship programs, boys to men and bb/bs. following a brief examination of youth mentorship statistics and the various forms that programs can take, i will investigate, through a cda lens, several areas of youth mentorship discourse, including the use of specific language and rhetorical devices such as risk management and critical window, and the intersection of youth mentorship and corporate capitalistic interests. through deeper analysis it becomes clear that additional agendas, such as the production of a narrowly defined ideal citizen-subject, and the persistent support of problematic youth stereotypes, are embedded within these programs’ desired outcomes. youth mentorship programs have seen an increase in popularity and prominence in the last decade (dubois, portillo, rhodes, silverthorn, & valentine, 2011). in the united states, the national mentoring partnership (mentor) currently posts research data claiming that over 4.5 million of today’s youth will receive some form of structured adult mentorship while growing up (national mentoring partnership [mentor]: “about mentor”, 2016). mentorship programs take many forms, and embody a large variety of philosophies. many programs aim solely to support healthy development by providing adult mentoring relationships for youth, while others have more focused goals relating to areas such as education and employment (saito & blyth, 1992). whatever models are applied in the hundreds of mentorship programs currently running in north america, their resource and promotional materials will unsurprisingly promote the positive impact the presence of an mentor may have on the development of a young person, as exemplified by passages like this one from mentor’s website: research confirms that quality mentoring relationships have powerful positive effects on young people in a variety of personal, academic, and professional situations. ultimately, mentoring connects a young person to personal growth and development, and social and economic opportunity. yet one in three young people will grow up without this critical asset. (mentor: “mentoring impact”, 2016) furthermore, normative youth development is frequently contrasted with a narrative of troubled, delinquent, and criminalized youth as a phenomenon stemming from the absence of caring and responsible role models. this binary of possible outcomes is strengthened because youth can be identified as becoming, or proto-, citizens. they are “potentially normative and potentially pathological, unfinished products whose indeterminacy provokes the anxiety inherent in this chrono-social category of adolescence” (elman, 2014, p. 2). of course this understanding of young people supports positive youth developmental programming, and youth mentorship especially. the resulting message becomes: youth fortunate enough to find themselves in the presence of a caring, successful, and supportive adult are more likely to become one themselves, while young people left to their own devices constitute a threat to the social order of the nation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 370 with centres in north america, europe, and south africa, boys to men offers school and community-based programs that match fatherless teenage boys with adult men for weekly discussion groups and outdoor adventure programs. promoting what are seen as traditional american values, boys to men shares roots with boys’ town, a boys’ orphanage founded by roman catholic priest edward j. flanagan in 1917. further to this stance, an article on the boys to men website attempts to invoke the moral authority of the president of the united states: it’s organizations like boys to men that president obama wants to focus on in light of the racial police-community turmoil happening in ferguson, missouri after the shooting death of teenager michael brown – organizations that highlight the importance of guidance and education. (cusato, 2014) the big brother big sister model (bb/bs), which is focused solely on providing adult– youth mentoring relationships, is perhaps the most well-known program design and has been referred to as a model of “best practice” in youth mentoring (tierney, grossman, & resch, 1995). the canadian chapter of this organization is widespread, with locations in every province as well as the yukon territory, and with over 188 local agencies operating in over 1,000 communities (bb/bs canada, “corporate sponsorships”, n.d.). risk language the concept of risk has been described as ubiquitous within human service discourse of late modernity (spence & turnbull, 2011). risk-based language is especially prevalent in youth programming, where it is primarily used to describe the target service-user. this is certainly the case with youth mentorship programs. recruitment materials often proclaim the opportunity that mentors have to “make a difference” for “troubled” or “at risk” youth in their community. this saviour-themed promotion can be found juxtaposed with fearand problem-based language that highlights the perceived consequences not only for youth who do not receive structured guidance through a mentor relationship, but for society as a whole. this attitude of multiple constructs of risk applied to developing youth is not surprising. young people are seen as concurrently filling the roles of victim and of perpetrator, on the one hand vulnerable to their own choices and biological development, and on the other pathologized as a primary source of current and future social problems (spence & turnbull, 2011). discourses that depict adolescence as a time of universal psychological and biological crisis regard adolescent bodies as perennially unstable and a problem to be managed, while avoiding the classification of youth as an identity category, akin to and affected by identity categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and also affected by cultural and political agendas (elman, 2014). young males above all are seen as exemplifying the trope of the unsupervised youth as a social risk. when this discourse is coupled with either anecdotal or statistical information regarding the proliferation of fatherless boys or out-of-wedlock births, an environment primed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 371 for mentorship intervention is created. the boys to men mentorship program is perhaps the definitive example of youth mentorship programming applying a fear-based and problemsaturated discourse through promotional material, with over-generalized statements such as: “the number of boys growing up without fathers in their lives has reached epidemic proportions”, and “high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births have created a generation of fatherless boys” (boys to men: “the problem”, n.d.). this exhibition of the increased rates of fatherless boys, when connected to the website’s plethora of statistics linked to social issues such as “90% of homeless children are from fatherless homes”, and “85% of children with behavioural disorders come from fatherless homes” (boys to men: “the problem”, n.d.), contributes to western discourse regarding the preferred structure of families and communities in multiple ways. first, linking crime, incarceration, and homelessness with fatherless young men suggests mutually exclusive possible social outcomes for male youth, with the desired outcome being almost exclusively dependent on the existence of a positive fatherly role model in a boy’s life. the message emerges that boys lucky enough to find themselves growing up in the idealized setting of a western family, including the presence of both a mother and a father, are much less likely to face these future struggles. such messages construct a family model comprising a narrow view of normative family values and structure, effectively pathologizing, or even connecting criminality to, any family dynamic that falls outside of this hegemonic discourse (e.g., single-parent families and non-heteronomative parental dynamics). furthermore, framing successful male development as a task for a capable father or male mentor implies that adults of other genders may not be suitable for this task. although a comprehensive account is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to acknowledge that men, as fathers, have often been utilized as an apparatus of a system of state control based in traditional moral values. miller (2006) draws attention to a myriad of u.s. federal programs and reforms aimed at combating fatherlessness, including the responsible fatherhood act of 2001. this act provided funds for individual states to create media campaigns in support of two-parent families and responsible parent education. in addition to considering fathers an integral part of the idealized north american family unit, the state actively supports traditional gender roles through a welfare provision system that focuses on a “father as provider” archetype. even the united states, a nation known for providing substantially less state support to families than do other advanced capitalistic countries, has been identified as having a two-tiered, gendered, welfare state: one tier, “welfare”, is targeted on the problems of families, serves mainly women and is stingy and intrusive, and another, “social security,” is targeted on the problems resulting from labor markets (e.g., retirement), serves (retired) wage-earning men, and offers more generous benefits and honorable treatment. (orloff & monson, 2002, p. 64) additionally, western neoliberal values of responsibility and individuality are baldly expressed on the boys to men website. unsupported, speculative, and hyperbole-laden claims international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 372 such as “the most important factor of whether a boy will thrive or struggle during his teenage years is determined by the quality of the male role models in his life”, and “the most at-risk boys have the most dysfunctional male role models” (boys to men: what we have learned, n.d.), overstate the importance of a male presence in overall childhood development and life success. again, the unspoken but underlying message is that many of society’s issues (e.g., massive increases in rates of incarceration, and a rise in homelessness and unemployment) stem from the lack of father and son familial relationships. therefore, the breakdown of the traditional western family structure is blamed for the declining quality of life for many in north america and simultaneously given responsibility for counteracting that decline. however, such constructed narratives neglect the intersecting structural factors that affect child development including social and class location, income, racism, and educational opportunities and quality. furthermore, on the individual level, such narratives encourage mentors and service providers to take pride in engaging in a charitable and philanthropic activity, but do not encourage critical self-reflection about how they may directly or indirectly be supporting oppressive social structures like sexism, racism, classism, and heteronormative expectations. in the narrative found within this mentorship discourse, the emerging issues of our times, “conditions included, but not limited to, increasing economic stratification, impending threats of environmental devastation, mass global migration, and such supranational threats as terrorism” (kennelly, 2011, p.5), are mostly ignored. instead, the overarching ideology of mentorship discourse is that individual and familial strength equates to economic and social well-being for both the individual and nationstate. when youth mentors and mentees are inculcated with a belief system that holds the individual and family unit solely accountable for their success or failure, systemic inequalities that affect individual and family outcomes are less likely to be recognized, further entrenching structural oppression. critical-window language the boys to men website identifies a “critical window” in middle school (ages 11–13) when intervention in a fatherless boy’s life is needed, since “a teenage boy beginning his journey to manhood with no man to guide him will likely lose his way” (boys to men: the critical window, n.d.). this section states that a teenage boy without an emotionally available or present father within three years of his 13th birthday is all but guaranteed to succumb to internalized anger from reflections such as, “why should i care? nobody else does”; the site continues the tone of unease by stating, “fatherless boys are far more likely than boys with fathers to drop out of school, abuse drugs or alcohol, go to prison or join a gang” (boys to men: the critical window, n.d.). it is hardly surprising that this youth mentorship program utilizes a “limited window of opportunity” framework, considering the developmentally informed discourse applied by the current positive youth development movement. this discourse is well aligned with neoliberal political and economical ideals since “certain social concepts of developmental time hold considerable political force within … the arena of political economy” (skott-myher, 2008, p. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 373 45). a progressive stage-based approach to development has been shown to not only support but also mirror the product-oriented values of late capitalism. wasiak (2011) points out that some of the best-known child development psychologists of the mid-twentieth century, such as piaget and erikson, may have gained influence and popularity through society’s misinterpretation of their theories as being aligned with the standardized and product-driven industrial environment of the time. in other words, a capitalistic society seeks not only a successful finished product, but an understandable step-by-step method of arriving at one. for example, erikson’s (1950/1993) popular childhood and society suggests that successful resolution of each life stage dilemma is required prior to progression to the next stage of development. wasiak (2011) concludes that the popularity of erikson’s theory is related to its similarities to the large-scale industrial ideology of the time, with an emphasis on linear, stable, and outcome-focused development. unfortunately, simplifying the ideas of these theorists often overemphasized the importance placed on the finished product over that of the process needed to arrive there. piaget’s theory of cognitive development, which posited an ultimate stage of thinking for a child to obtain, may have been especially vulnerable to appropriation and misunderstanding, considering the political economy and hegemonic subjectivity of the time (wasiak, 2011). reflecting on this understanding of developmental psychology paralleling industrial capitalism, the use of critical-window language in western mentorship programming becomes more understandable. relying on research and dominant discourses that identify a sequential process to a young person’s development, youth mentorship programs will likely search for a “make-or-break” point beyond which the opportunity to intervene with maximum effectiveness is lost. by using critical-window language to identify a limited opportunity to intervene and successfully redirect a youth’s developmental trajectory, a sense of urgency is created. the juxtaposition of this timeline with statistics indicating what can be expected of youth who are not mentored in a timely manner bolsters the alarmist promotional approach employed by this program, and further supports growth in mentorship programming and of the positive youth development movement. with such a large number of young men represented as being in need of mentorship, such a small window of time for reaching them, and such dire possible consequences for failing to do so, the claimed value of the framework is further increased. the purported critical window for intervention in the youth mentorship model coincides with the youth-subject’s imminent entrance into the world of consumerism and employment. sukarieh and tannock (2015) remind us that “there has been a long and close relationship between youth and the different stages of capitalism throughout history” (p. 33). commencing with the first wave of industrialization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the concept of youth was supported through labour recruitment practices adopted by textile factory owners that targeted young, single women. to entice these young women into the gruelling working conditions found in the factories and to reassure their families that they would be safe and provided for, recruiters often framed the experience as similar to family life, offering dormitory-style accommodations and paternalistic supervision. as dublin (1981) and other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 374 scholars have pointed out, youth labour recruitment practices and an ethic of corporate paternalism resulted in the creation of normative adolescent labour experiences for young women. this environment of an ageand gender-based community helped facilitate a cultural identity and social relations for young female employees. it also fostered a new-found sense of freedom and independence for some women. despite long arduous hours and six-day work weeks, “mill girls” were able to engage city life together, frequenting evening concerts, and reading groups, and so on. furthermore, although wages were meager and the bulk was often sent home to support families, some women found themselves with a small discretionary income. this new-found financial independence from the patriarchal authority of family homes has been identified as the birth of youth-oriented consumer culture (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). the practice of targeting youth as a distinct population to draw on as a pool of cheap, compliant labour has continued into the modern period. in the capitalist economy, youth function as a “reserve market of labor” (marx & engels, 1848/1998), as evidenced by the rise of lowwage, low-skill service economy positions that began in post-war north america and subsequently spread around the world (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). advances in technology, suburbanization, the large-scale entry of women into the workforce, and the “baby boom” population growth all contributed to retail and restaurant employers specifically targeting youth as cheap and disposable temporary labour (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). concurrent with mid-century youth labour recruitment was the construction of youth as consumers in capitalistic society. following the end of the second world war, businesses sought to anticipate, cater to, and shape changes in youth consumer tastes (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). some scholars have even argued that the concept of “teenager” as we know it today was invented as a demographic category for marketing targeted goods and services (palladino, 1996). youth cannot escape the hegemonic discourse of capitalism that pushes individuals to construct their social identities and the meaning of life through the collection and consumption of material goods (jansiz, 2014). considering the key roles youth have played, and continue to play, as employees and consumers in the capitalistic world, the importance of timing in the mentorship program model becomes salient. the critical window falls within the age range when north american youths are approaching the legal age for employment. therefore, the involvement of adult role models who are viewed as successful participants in the employed world can play a critical role in promoting capitalistic values to the youth they mentor. this is key to the further growth and existence of a capitalistic nation, for under capitalism, the subject must be turned towards the business of money making (skott-myher, 2008). because youth consumerism, like adult consumerism, is closely linked with waged earnings, continued growth requires that the number of employed youth also continues to grow. the disposable income afforded to employed youth is necessary for sustained growth of the youth-oriented consumer culture. by instilling the virtues of the productive neoliberal citizen in youth approaching the age of employment, as well as contrasting this with an alternative narrative of undesirable tropes involving incarcerated and homeless international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 375 youth, a future generation of employed and consuming citizens is generated. the “critical window” is, in reality, not a limited chronological space for addressing what are perceived as inherent vulnerabilities of youth, but a key opportunity to instill the neoliberal values of financial independence and materialism in those on the cusp of becoming employable, consumer citizens. the business of youth mentoring the boys to men website makes explicit reference to the importance of capitalistic ideals and fiscal returns vis-à-vis the youth development movement in an area titled “the financial cost”. this section presents statistics regarding the yearly cost to taxpayers in the united states for the total number of men incarcerated ($75 billion), and the individual cost ($1.7–$2.3 million) of “a boy leaving high school to enter into a life of crime or drug abuse” (boys to men: “the problem”, n.d.). having previously suggested a link between a lack of role models in the lives of young men and increasing incarceration rates, these references to monetary costs aim to evoke additional support for the vital importance mentorship plays in citizen development and social control within the nation-state. the underlying messages presented on this webpage might be paraphrased as follows: • a breakdown of the traditional north american family dynamic has resulted in an abundance of male youth finding themselves without father figures. • these directionless men are to be considered solely responsible for the erosion of america’s national unity and quality of life through drastic increases in crime, poverty, and homelessness. • these social ills have created an enormous financial burden to be shouldered by the taxpayer, therefore substantial effort needs to be invested in mentoring young men lest they become liabilities to the nation’s economy and social order. the bb/bs website is equally clear in their position regarding the financial advantages mentored boys can bring to the state. neoliberal ideals of employment, self-regulation, and independence are presented as predictable outcomes for young people paired with mentors through this program: “what if … every child in canada finishes high school, goes to college or university, gets a job and gives back to their community?” and “the program strives to … encourage leadership and independent thinking” (bb/bs: big brothers mentoring, n.d.). additionally, in the mentor recruitment section, the site applies language that commodifies young people as possible assets and resources to the community and nation-state: “whether it’s in the form of time or money there is no more important investment we as individuals can make than in helping our nation’s children realize — and share — their full potential” (bb/bs: about us, n.d.). statements regarding program outcomes and youth attributes promoted through the bb/bs program such as, “the program strives to … instill trust and self-confidence in order to make healthy decisions” (bb/bs: big brothers mentoring, n.d.) can be considered part of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 376 resiliency discourse found in positive youth development programming. the concept of resiliency — the characteristics and conditions that enable certain youth to persevere though adverse circumstances — can be adopted for various political agendas and has been identified as well aligned with the neoliberal, individualist framework of social conformity (canavan, 2008). because of its focus on individual strength, resilience ideology can be attractive to anyone wishing to shift attention away from structural inequalities and injustices and centre responsibility for youth development on the individual, family, or community (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). overemphasizing resilience brings the danger of becoming blind to the various forms of structural inequality (socio-economic, gender, ethnicity, disability, and location-based) and their consequences (canavan, 2008). furthermore, since welfare-state funding is contingent on the perception of children and youth as vulnerable and in need, resilience arguments can subvert such claims. in sum, resilience discourse emphasizing the strengths, maturity, and confidence of youth is prized by neoliberal society as grounds for pulling young people into the workforce and undermining the traditional entitlements of welfare-state provision (sukarieh & tannock, 2015). in addition to soliciting donations and volunteers at the individual level through its website, bb/bs solicits partnerships with corporations in canada. in their “corporate sponsorship” section the organization describes itself as “one of the most well-known and respected brands in the charitable sector” and “an integral part of the canadian social fabric” (bb/bs: corporate sponsorships, n.d.). furthermore, the website promises that, through association with the bb/bs brand and by accessing their substantial geographic reach, partnership with the charity will “influence consumer choice and increase sales and profits” (bb/bs: corporate sponsorships, n.d.). these narratives openly suggest the financial benefits of allying a charitable organization with the profit-driven business sector, exposing an agenda of leveraging consumer sentiment by connecting altruistic qualities with corporate north america. conclusion in this paper i have demonstrated, through a critical discourse analysis of promotional text materials, that some of the most well-known and respected youth mentorship programs found in north america serve to promote neoliberal values. as part of a positive youth development movement that has emerged in the last twenty years, these programs seek to support the successful development of the young neoliberal citizen-subject. the directive nature of these programs is problematic for several reasons. the programs disproportionately target marginalized populations, and the personal qualities and attributes the programs desire to instill in young people are narrow in scope, and in support of capitalistic corporate agendas. additionally, in their unwavering support of individualistic values and self-responsibility, the discourses examined in these programs’ promotional material distracts from or ignores the systemic and structural inequalities found in the lives of young people, disparities that are particularity relevant to the most marginalized and often-targeted youth populations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 364–380 377 programs such as bb/bs and boys to men utilize a hegemonic discourse that both implicitly and explicitly supports normative subject formation in the interest of maintaining the status quo. throughout the recruitment material, description of program outcomes, anecdotes, and statistical information found on their websites, these youth mentorship programs actively promote normative youth stereotypes, traditional family structures, consumerism, and a capitalistic work ethic. i do not wish through this critical analysis to indicate that programs of this nature apply these values in a completely insidious way, nor that the youth they serve do not possess a degree of autonomy in their ultimate development. instead, it is the very foundation of how north america, and more generally the “global north”, has come to understand human development that has created value in the qualities these programs promote. the prevalent and hegemonic nature of western developmental psychology permits only a limited degree of deviance in what is conceived as normative youth development. therefore, the values and ethics promoted in youth mentorship discourse originate from a much deeper setting than the written material found within individual programs. international journal of child, youth and 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(2001). methods of critical discourse analysis (1st ed.). london, uk: sage. http://www.mentoring.org/why-mentoring/mentoring-impact/ youth mentorship as neoliberal subject formation matty hillman the neoliberal context theoretical orientation developmental youth programming in a neoliberal world critical discourse analysis of current trends in youth mentorship risk language critical-window language the business of youth mentoring conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 516 moving towards an integrated approach to youth work education patti ranahan, natasha blanchet-cohen, and varda mann-feder abstract: this article will discuss a working model of an integrated approach to youth work, developed in the context of the new graduate program at concordia university in montreal, canada. considering an array of competing and contradictory conceptual frameworks that inform youth work, this model proposes blending diverse traditions while incorporating both community youthdevelopment approaches and clinical models of intervention. illustrated as a tree, we identify guiding principles: a developmental perspective, an ecosystemic approach, collaborative relationships, a rights-based approach, and the ethical and reflexive principle. implementing an integrative model of pre-service training requires consideration of how teaching and learning are carried out in the program. experiential learning activities, collaborative evaluation, a realignment of the teacher and learner roles, and the challenges of applying an integrated approach are examined. keywords: youth work, child and youth care, pre-service education, graduate education patti ranahan (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montreal, quebec, canada, h4b 1r6. e-mail: patti.ranahan@concordia.ca natasha blanchet-cohen is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montreal, quebec, canada, h4b 1r6. e-mail: natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca varda mann-feder is a professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montreal, quebec, canada, h4b 1r6. e-mail: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca mailto:patti.ranahan@concordia.ca mailto:%20natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 517 young people’s lives are increasingly complex. globalization, an uncertain socioeconomic climate, and new developments in technology have changed the developmental context for adolescents (kehily, 2007). for example, young people today are engaged in digital spaces and may face new challenges, such as cyber-bullying and sexting (korenis & billick, 2014; smith et al., 2008). in the face of high unemployment they spend longer periods in post-secondary education, which leads to an extended transition to adulthood (arnett, 2000). more mental health concerns are diagnosed amongst young people today, and suicide rates are high (pelkonen & marttunen, 2003; shaw, fernandes, & rao, 2005). incipient efforts to recognize young people as citizens in the community and encourage youth participation in a variety of forums, such as in policy development or as research collaborators, provide opportunities for young people to engage in their communities in new ways (blanchet-cohen & brunson, 2014). the context of adolescent development has thus shifted and consequently requires new and diverse ways of educating youth work professionals in pre-service youth work1. in particular, there is a need for an educated workforce whose members bring a high level of theoretical and applied knowledge of current research to their interventions in work with young people. while there is a well-established network of college programs to train child and youth care professionals and youth workers across canada (charles & garfat, 2009), there are few university programs and even fewer graduate programs specific to youth work (shek & wai, 2008). however, a shift in the legislative context in many provinces has resulted in a renewed preoccupation with quality control and a call for licensing and accreditation (stuart et al., 2012). university programs are needed to prepare youth workers who can take on leadership roles, as supervisors, program managers, and policymakers. designing advanced educational programs becomes a daunting task given the increasing array of conceptual frameworks, often mutually incompatible or contradictory, that informs youth work (kia-keating, dowdy, morgan, & noam, 2011). the purpose of this paper is to present an integrative approach to youth work education that draws on the diverse strengths of clinical, psychoeducational, and community-based approaches to best meet the complex demands of serving young people in the present day. in the first section, we provide a rationale for an integrated approach via the critical exploration of dichotomies that have characterized the literature of youth work and the allied helping professions. the second section presents our proposed model of integrative youth work education, which draws on clinical, psychoeducational, and community-based understandings of practice with young people. we then define the principles that guide the development of the program. lastly, in the context of teaching and learning in the program, we identify the implementation and integration challenges 1 we are using the term “youth work” as an overarching term to describe the professional fields of child and youth care, youth work, and youth studies. the focus of our paper is presenting a model of education. as such, it is not the intent of our paper to discuss and delineate the specific differences between these fields of study and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 518 that must be addressed if a youth work program that will ultimately respond to the needs of young people today is to be developed. building on limitations of discourses in the literature an integrated approach to youth work stems from an analysis of the limitations of the binary positions that have dominated the literature of youth work, as well as the helping professions more generally. below we provide a brief review of these opposing discourses that have served as conceptual frameworks for intervention with young people: health versus illness; prevention versus treatment; and protection versus participation. for each we discuss the inadequacy of monolithic approaches, and the need to view the positions taken by these discourses as part of a continuum, rather than as discrete points. health versus illness health and illness are often viewed as conceptual opposites (sadegh-zadeh, 2000). historically, health has often been characterized as no more than an absence of illness. sadegh-zadeh (2000) suggests that this “naive normalism” perspective on health is pervasive in medical schools where “health is normality and diseases are abnormalities” (p. 606). the concept of health can evoke a range of disagreements, as it may involve medical, social, economic, or spiritual components (larson, 1999). several scholars propose instead a wellness model that considers the multiple influences and contexts in which “health” is experienced (xenakis, 2010). a wellness model focuses on health promotion and “progress toward higher functioning, energy, comfort, and integration of mind, body, and spirit” (larson, 1999, p. 125). lindsey (2008) further suggests that a concept of health within illness helps practitioners focus more on an individual’s capacities than on problems or deficits. youth work practice – especially in north america – has typically reconstructed a dichotomous view of health and illness such that youth work is a service only offered to either high-risk youth or young people meeting certain criteria of illness, such as conduct disorder or depression. for example, suicide risk assessment in youth work demonstrates the health–illness dichotomy whereby youth are only served or referred to crisis supports if deemed “high risk” according to a set of predetermined questions (ranahan, 2011). yet suicide risk (or illness) is fluid, dynamic, and a “messy problem” (white, 2012) that depends in part on time and context. as such, responding to suicidality in youth also requires other approaches, such as the application of relational knowledge (ranahan, 2013) and life-affirming activities (kouri & white, 2014). thus there is a need to expand youth services “beyond a single-problem behaviour focus [i.e., illness] and for considering program effects on a range of positive and problem behaviours [i.e., wellness]”, including the need for “interventions that involve several social domains” (catalano, berglund, ryan, lonczak, & hawkins, 2004, p. 101). the traditional dichotomy between health and illness is thus misleading for youth work practice; what is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 519 required instead is a holistic view of youth development and wellness across different domains or contexts. prevention versus treatment a second dichotomy that has traditionally influenced approaches with youth is the positioning of prevention efforts as separate from treatment initiatives. prevention science as an emerging framework in youth work (society for prevention research, 2004) has often been presented as conceptually distinct from treatment. rather than focus on high-risk populations and efforts to reverse dysfunction, prevention strives to build resilience in young people generally. prevention, whether universal (benson, scales, leffert, & roehlkepartain, 1999) or targeted for youth who are seen as at risk (ungar, 2005), engages with communities in creating optimal conditions for young people, and operates according to principles of social justice. this approach mitigates the risk of stigmatizing and pathologizing young people, which is more likely to occur when the focus is on treatment (hinshaw, 2005). critics of the preventative approach have expressed the concern that placing too great an emphasis on prevention can be misleading. ignoring the existence of disorder can have devastating consequences for families and communities. once negative behaviours are internalized over time, however, treatment efforts often do not succeed (mann-feder, 1996; mcwhirter, mcwhirter, mcwhirter, & mcwhirter, 2007). ultimately, there is evidence to support the benefits of both prevention and treatment (weisz, sandler, durlak, & anton, 2005). approaches that consider prevention and treatment as complementary options are most likely to be effective. protection versus participation a third, related debate is that between the proponents of participation and those advocating protection as central to work with youth (adams & chandler, 2004; dumbrill, 2003). systems of care for young people, in an attempt to ensure acceptable quality of life for all youth, have tended to operate in ways that emphasize protection (dupuis & mann-feder, 2013). youth protection legislation in canada, for example, stresses the vulnerability of children and youth and the need for expert intervention, but the young people themselves often have little say in determining their best interests. however well-intentioned, the emphasis on protection can lead to a paternalistic and top-down approach, a perspective that accords with the longstanding view that children are inherently vulnerable and lack agency (lansdown, 2005). protection by its very nature can be disempowering and even coercive, resulting in decisions that can be detrimental to young people’s well-being. on the other hand, there has been an increasing emphasis on community-based and rights-based approaches to working with young people, which stress the right to participation and the development of a youth voice as a necessary component of responsive and empowering systems of program and service delivery (perkins, borden, & villarruel, 2001). young people are negotiating an increasingly complex transition to adulthood, and managing a world that is largely unknown to adults, and so need to be involved as active agents in decisions affecting their lives. as actors, young people can contribute to their communities, and youth work can international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 520 become part of creating supportive opportunities. balancing protection and participation concerns is integral to implementing the fundamental rights set forth in the un convention on the rights of the child (lansdown, 2005). agencies that deal with youth and families have been working to make the shift from controller to partner (adams & chandler, 2004). getting beyond debate there have been recent efforts to get beyond these debates, especially in relation to the growing influence of strength-based approaches to youth work with all young people, regardless of their level of disadvantage (kaplan, skolnik, & turnbull, 2009). one thing seems clear: given the complexity of current times and the challenges faced by young people today, finding solutions requires creativity, versatility, and flexibility. rigid adherence to one approach to the exclusion of the other must limit the capacity to be effective. one of the most time-honoured findings of developmental science is that “goodness of fit” is an important precondition for strategies that improve adjustment in young people (redding & britner, 2000). unduly favouring prevention over treatment, and participation over protection, or concentrating only on high-risk populations while ignoring the concerns of normative groups, deprives youth workers of a diversified and flexible tool kit. moving towards an integrative youth work approach responding to the current context of youth work education, the divisive debates in the literature, and the present-day challenges young people face, requires an approach that incorporates multiple perspectives and the exercise of many practical skills that youth workers can utilize across a broad range of clinical and community-based settings. furthermore, youth work pedagogy must reflect the nuances and challenges that workers will encounter in their future practice. in this section, we introduce a working model of an integrative youth work approach that is guiding curriculum development in our graduate diploma in youth work program at concordia university. the diploma, which was initiated in 2014, was designed to prepare students for a range of professional roles working with youth. it was developed in response to a need expressed by the anglophone youth-serving agencies in montreal and the local colleges that provide certificate programs. in addition, legislation passed in quebec, canada, in 2009 (government of quebec, 2009) requires that youth workers pursue graduate education and be licensed as professionals before they can perform the full range of functions required in certain job titles in the public sector, especially those at a supervisory or managerial level. thus, the graduate diploma in youth work at concordia university was developed in consultation with local agencies whose mandates ranged from residential and foster care to family preservation and counselling for youth in the community. using an illustrative image, we will first outline the various elements of the model and then present the guiding principles, which draw upon theories and perspectives from psychoeducational, community-based, and clinical understandings. after presenting our international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 521 integrative model for educating youth workers, we discuss the features and challenges of teaching and learning within the program. an overview of the model illustrations can useful in depicting the intersections of perspectives, theories, principles, and practice that are woven into an integrative youth work education program. illustrations that have been used to represent practice by youth work scholars include the web in white’s (2007) praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care, and the onion in ferguson’s (1991) depiction of an interactive model of child and youth care education. in the collaborative discussions that resulted in the development of our integrative model, we were drawn to the image of a tree with its roots (see figure 1), which seemed to represent the linkages between our existing knowledges and our emerging ideas for youth work education. while a tree may be considered from several separate aspects (e.g., roots, ground, branches, leaves), each element relies on and is interwoven with the next part. the nourishment obtained by the roots from the ground influences the development and health of the branches and leaves. an integrative model of education requires acknowledging the interconnectedness of each part or element. a tree also represents growth and ongoing development, which requires sustenance and a suitable climate. we anticipate revisiting and revitalizing the approach as we learn with our students over the coming years; thus, new roots may need to be established, new branches launched, and new skills produced as we learn from implementing the program. as our understanding currently stands, the roots represent the theories we draw upon that inform the discipline of youth work. for the purpose of our integrative approach, this consists of developmental and psycho-educational theories, community youth development theory, and clinical theories about the nature of resilience, risk, and psychopathology. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 522 figure 1. an integrative model of youth work education. the ground represents the scope of the discipline of youth work that may be realized under different forms (e.g., child and youth care, youth development) and adapted to the needs of individual nations and circumstances. the ground binds the discipline and, consequently, the profession, together. the tree trunk represents guiding principles that are specific to our integrative approach to youth work education. as presented below, the principles that have emerged as central to our model are the need for: (a) a developmental perspective (knowledge about lifespan); (b) an ecosystemic approach (consideration of contexts); (c) collaborative relationships (how we work with youth); (d) a rights-based approach (one that recognizes right-holders and duty-bearers); and (e) ethics and reflexivity (work that is informed by codes and critical application). the tree branches illustrate the range of practice contexts in which youth workers are engaged (e.g., residential, community programs, schools, child welfare), and the leaves symbolize the practical skills that youth workers use as part of their work with young people, families, colleagues, and organizations. for example, these would include skills in communication, documentation, and the application of intervention strategies, as well as the vital capacities to develop relationships and foster favourable environments. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 523 the theories that inform an integrative approach youth work can be enriched by the adoption of a range of approaches to support growth and change in young people. theories as diverse as psychodynamic theory, behaviour modification, cognitive behaviour modification, and reality therapy have come in and out of favour in the literature, as have a range of specialized models of residential care (james, 2011). decades of outcome research in other helping professions, such as counselling and psychotherapy, have amply demonstrated that no one approach is best for all, and that skillful integration is vital in human services work. this recognition has been made in social work, where “[t]he case for integration is simply that it is in effect a form of malpractice to approach the client within one theoretical perspective when it is scientifically known that the truth is more complex and the therapeutic options are broader than those encompassed by any one theory” (wakefield & baer, 2008, p. 23). the discipline of youth work the ground holds the roots and tree in place yet certain types of soil give rise to different types of growth. spence (2008) suggests that there has been difficulty “in reaching any lasting consensus about what youth work is” as funding bodies and political agendas require youth workers to conform to the intellectual fashion of the day(p. 5). white (2011) posits that absolute definitions of youth work or child and youth care should be resisted; yet it must be acknowledged that there are common elements in what constitutes the discipline (or ground) of youth work. in ireland and the united kingdom, youth work has tended to involve informal education where the curriculum is based on enhancing young people’s personal and social development as they engage in voluntary relationships with youth workers who respond flexibly to youth’s needs (davies, 2010; harland & morgan, 2006; merton et al., 2004; spence, 2008). in north america, less emphasis has been placed on the educational and voluntary elements of youth work practice, and more on the importance of relationships, professional self-awareness, and the use of self in practice (fewster, 1990; krueger, 2011). for example, freeman (2013) offers the following definition of youth work: developing relationships and creating environments that engage young people and promote the optimal development of their capacity as human beings is the center of child and youth care. (p. 100) the importance of youth work practice occurring in the context of the young person’s daily life, or “lifespace”, is also a key feature found in the north american literature (gharabaghi & stuart, 2011). in quebec, youth work has its roots in “psycho-education”. youth workers in the province with specialized training in this unique approach are referred to as “educateurs”, symbolizing the emphasis on re-education in practice with young people (arseneault, begin, bluteau, & pronovost, 2012). many of the features of psycho-education are similar to those found elsewhere in north american youth work literature. the notion of practice occurring within the lifespace of a young person, as described in psychoeducation literature, is a case in point. arseneault and colleagues (2012) note that “all forms of psychoeducative intervention are carried out within an individual’s everyday life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 524 setting and within a pre-determined context” (p. 4). further, the use of self in practice is understood in psycho-education as the “human component of intervention” with the psychoeducator bringing “his or her own personal history, strengths and weaknesses” (p. 5). thus the discipline of youth work, or the ground of the tree in our integrative model, nourishes the notion of youth work as educative, voluntary, and relational, where practice occurs in the everyday lives and contexts of young people towards the goal of promoting optimal development. guiding principles as stated above, the guiding principles in our model are a developmental perspective, an ecosystemic approach, collaborative relationships, a rights-based approach, and ethics and reflexivity. the trunk of the tree, fuelled by its roots and nourished by the soil of the discipline of youth work, represents these principles. a developmental perspective. youth work’s earliest origins reflect the importance of developmentally-informed methodologies for working with young people. historians note that the birth of youth work coincides with the discovery of childhood as a distinct life stage, which brought with it a recognition of changing issues and needs at different points in the lifespan (charles & gabor, 2006). henry maier (1987), one of the founding theoreticians of north american youth work, noted that, “helping professionals need to relate to and work with children and adolescents as developing beings” (p. 1). basing youth work practice on notions of development means that at the heart of every interaction, there is an appreciation of individual differences and levels of readiness. rather than imposing rigid norms, youth work that takes developmental knowledge into account can promote individualization. developmentally informed practice strives to create age-appropriate contexts for optimal development while cultivating the potential of each young person based on realistic expectations. as stated by phelan (2008) “it is only through … truly understanding the world from the youth’s developmental perspective, that strengths and skills become visible” (p. 74). an ecosystemic approach. the ecosystemic principle considers that youth are shaped by their environment. as identified by bronfenbrenner (2005), several systems impact a young person’s development; most immediately, the microsystem, which includes the activities and relationships closest to the young person and with which a young person has direct contact. the surrounding layer, the mesosystem, refers to the connections and interactions between two or more elements in the microsystem. lastly, there is the macrosystem, which deals with society’s ideologies, including culture, social, economic, and political ideologies. the macrosystem indirectly impacts the young person. an ecosystemic principle also considers development to be interactive and transactional (sameroff, 2010), taking into account the interconnectedness between individual and context. young people are not only influenced by their environment, but actively involved in their own development, constructing knowledge, skills, attitudes, and understandings in response to their situation. this in turn can modify their environment. a young person’s development is not an innate pathway that can be traced linearly as a function of the attainment of some specific stage of development (hutchby & moraninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 525 ellis, 1998). rather, it results from a complex interplay of each individual’s unique characteristics with the environment. interventions with young people should focus on both internal and external factors as well as the interaction between them. the collaborative relationship. the notion of relationship has held a primary position in youth work literature. phrases such as “relationship-based work, having relationships, doing relationships, being in relationship, and relational practice” are common in youth work discourse (gharabaghi, 2014, p. 6). relationship has been defined as a youth worker’s “job” (martin, 2002, p. 116), as “the glue that holds our work together” (rodd & stewart, 2009, p. 4), as the intervention itself (stuart, 2009), and as the overall general purpose of youth work practice (krueger, 2005). youth workers use a relational model of practice to engage young people (johnson, buckley, crane, & leebeck, 2013) and describe such engagement as “being with” (ranahan, 2013) or “being there” (batsleer, 2008), whereby youth workers are active participants in the relationship. further, some scholars have not shied away from discussing love in youth work practice (see smith, 2011; ranahan, 2000) or focusing on the youth worker’s self in relationship with the young person (garfat, 2008). the youth work relationship is further delineated by the collaborative nature of the engagement. collaboration is crucial as youth voluntarily enter the relationship and have the opportunity to shape the work, participate in the decisions, and be involved in the youth work process (harland & morgan, 2006). drawing on principles of youth development, the relationship between the youth and the youth worker includes “building on assets to promote social competence, encouraging youth voice, and empowering [youth] to make positive changes” (bradshaw, brown, & hamilton, 2008, p. 211). youth freely enter and end relationships with youth workers as they choose, and youth workers must be flexible and creative in finding solutions to the challenges faced by young people (harland & morgan, 2006). youth workers need to actively minimize the imbalance of power and authority in adult–youth relationships (davies, 2010). discourse in child and youth care and youth work literature has shifted from working for to working with those served, emphasizing the principle of collaboration (hoskins, 2011). further, the collaborative element in our model also draws attention to the need for youth workers to act as partners with each other and in their interactions with professionals from other disciplines. findings reported by schneider-munoz (2000) suggest that when youth workers take a collaborative caregiving approach, young people’s development and progress in social growth is supported. collaboration has been defined as “[a]n active and ongoing partnership, often between people of diverse backgrounds, who work together to solve problems or provide services and share experiences” (hammick, freeth, goodsman, & copperman, 2009, p. 205). while we recognize that more research is needed on the benefits of interprofessional collaboration in [youth work] practice (morrison & glenny, 2014), the values of togetherness, partnership, and sharing are key elements of our collaborative principle in the integrative model of youth work education. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 526 a rights-based approach. this approach entails abiding by human rights principles, including those identified in the united nations convention on the rights of the child. integral to a rights-based approach is acknowledging that young people are rights-holders, and that those in positions of responsibility (including state and non-state actors) have a duty to recognize and enable these rights. with regard to implementing programs for young people, four dimensions have been considered central to the approach (blanchet-cohen & bedeaux, 2014; unicef, 2004): 1. universality and equality: the requirement to apply programs holistically to all young people, regardless of gender or ethnicity. 2. participation: recognizing program recipients as subjects of their own rights, placing an obligation on duty-bearers to give due consideration to young people’s views. 3. collaboration: stakeholders work together to effectively form an intersectoral response to the political and social context of issues instead of developing narrow sectoral programming. 4. accountability: duty-bearers have obligations to act in the best interests of young people. in addressing key systematic obstacles that prevent people from exercising their rights, a rights-based approach marks a shift away from needs-based and welfarist approaches to youth intervention. it is also consistent with a strength-based approach to interventions, rather than a deficit-based approach that emphasizes people’s deficiencies. a rights-based approach has been found to be more effective and empowering for young people regardless of the level of intervention (ife, 2009). the need for ethics and reflexivity. the ethical and reflexive principle considers the interplay between professional and personal identities, roles, and values of youth workers. the topics of reflexivity and ethical practice are frequently taken up in literature pertaining to the helping professions including youth work (freeman, 2013; gharabaghi, 2008). ethics may be primarily discussed in regards to professional codes of ethics, as in mattingly’s description (1995) of the process leading to the draft of a code of ethics for child and youth care practice in north america. this code of ethics has served in part to further the delineation of child and youth care as a “profession” (krueger, 2002). in quebec, psychoeducators also have to abide by the code of ethics for their profession in order to be licensed. in addition to local legal requirements, we recognize that our understanding of ethics needs to extend “from codes, conduct, and cases to include commitment, character and context” (banks, 2009, p. 5). banks posits that commitment refers to being mindful of the professional and personal motivations, values, and passions that draw individuals to youth work. character requires youth workers to self-examine who they are professionally as well as personally. context necessitates the youth worker’s acknowledgement of the web of relationships, politics, policies, responsibilities, perceptions, and emotions involved in youth work practice. due to the relational, complex nature of youth work, practice can be viewed as subjective (roberts, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 527 emotionality is inherent in youth work practice, and “[t]he assumption that we can separate off our emotional from our rational, our personal from our professional selves is a modernist conceit” (smith, 2011, p. 190). as such, reflective practice is indispensable to youth work; being ethical and being reflexive go hand-in-hand: “a code needs to encourage youth workers to think ethically through whatever situations they face, and to talk together about them, and to give them the tools to do that” (sercombe, 2010, p. 58). in our approach to youth work education, the capacity to critically evaluate the impact of one’s interventions is an additional dimension of reflexivity. in this way, the skills required to function as a “scientist-practitioner” are indispensable in that field-based problems are dealt with “… by validating practice-generated knowledge through testing … reapplying and reassessing them” (vanderven, 1993, p. 276). part of the ethical responsibility of well-educated youth workers is to evaluate the impact of their interventions. the practice contexts and skills needed in youth work the branches in the model of integrative youth work education represent the various sites of youth work practice. sites of practice may include residential care, foster homes, family preservation, hospitals, schools, youth centres, child welfare, and government or community organizations offering youth services or programs. the latter range from highly structured programs (e.g., ymcas and camp programs) to looser, youth-led organizations, including social entrepreneurship initiatives (blanchet-cohen & cook, 2014) that take place in more informal settings. in these varied contexts, youth workers encounter young people whose histories may include involvement in criminal activity or the sex-trade, experiences of abuse or neglect, mental health concerns, or disruptions in parent–youth attachment. in order to contribute to the development and well-being of these young people, youth workers creatively employ a variety of skills. for example, youth workers are required to be person-centred, supportive, and flexible in their approach, and to use a range of listening and influencing skills (harland & morgan, 2006). further, youth workers need to use these skills to engage young people and develop relationships with those who may not have family or social supports (johnson et al., 2013). the association for child and youth care practice identifies five domains of competencies: professionalism, cultural and human diversity, applied human development, relationship and communication, and developmental practice methods (mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2010). an integrated model further emphasizes the need to engage in systems-level work (mann-feder & litner, 2004) and to develop the skills to work at the individual, group, and organizational levels. this is needed to foster social interactions and group activities, as well as to create favourable environments for youth empowerment (blanchet-cohen & brunson, 2014). strategic boundary spanning, role-changing, and systems-level interventions are particularly relevant to the goal of responding to the complexity of young people’s lives in empowering ways. thus, skills required in youth work practice are diverse and dependent on the sites of practice, the contexts of engagement, and the complexities of emergent and dynamic practice (fusco, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 528 teaching and learning within the youth work program youth work education needs to prepare students with both “theoretical and practice knowledge and abilities” (bessant, 2007, p. 47) and develop “reflexive, critically conscious, praxis-oriented practitioners” (white, 2007, p. 242). teaching and learning in an integrated approach should parallel the characteristics of practice (shaw & trites, 2013). educators model skills such as effective engagement and advocacy. ward (2013) explains that congruency between teaching approaches and expected learner outcomes is important: [i]f i wanted [child and youth care] students to emulate a responsive, strength based approach that recognized signs of resilience in children in practice, i needed to ensure that the teaching principles i was employing in my relationships with students and within the classroom experience, were congruent with this way of thinking. (p. 53) experiential learning activities, such as case-based approaches, offer “meaningful pedagogical encounters in the classroom” that provide teachers and learners the opportunity to grapple with the complexities of practice (sanrud & ranahan, 2012, p. 234). as such learning activities unfold in the classroom, educators demonstrate critical thinking, problem solving, facilitation, and advocacy in processing the learning activity with the students. it is through this modelling of youth work skills that the complexities and characteristics of youth work practice are “made explicit” (shaw & trites, 2013, p. 13). modelling youth work skills also requires educators to design activities that meet the learning needs of the students. just as it is necessary for youth workers to assess their interventions, ensuring that they are responsive to the unique needs of the youth, family, or community, pedagogical approaches must also consider the diverse group of learners present in the classroom. creative learning activities where students engage in authentic helping experiences stimulate the learner’s capacity to understand, empathize, and connect to a youth’s experience of being “helped”. in 2012, ranahan et al. described a learning activity in which child and youth care students were engaged as helpee and helper in a class assignment. the assignment was designed to support students’ understanding of the experience of being helped, including feeling vulnerable, exposed, accepted, and understood, while also appreciating the complexities of being a helper. as helpers, students faced the challenges of completing case files, and being present, reflexive, and engaged even in times of uncertainty and anxiety. ranahan et al. suggest youth work education requires opportunities for students to take risks, to commit to a learning process rather than an isolated task or assignment, and to engage in embodied learning activities that evoke emotional, physical, and psychological experiences. an integrated approach to youth work education that encompasses principles of rights-based approaches, reflexivity, and collaborative relationships must also realign the teacher–learner role. thus the youth work program draws on the notions of empowerment within critical literacy theory. mcdaniel (2004) posits that empowerment shifts the teacher–learner roles whereby “teachers learn and learners teach” (p. 474). this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 529 approach moves beyond the “banking” model of education (mayo, 2004, p. 44), such that knowledge is not simply transmitted from teachers to learners, but co-created through collaboration (gee, 2007). further, through a shifting of roles and a collaborative learning approach in the classroom, students feel empowered to fully engage in the learning experience by adopting a critical stance instead of simple compliance. students begin to understand and be aware of “the sociocultural reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality” (freire, 1970, p. 65). students are encouraged to question, critique, and analyze their learning experience and relationships with educators in the program in a reflexive manner. for example, students are provided with an opportunity to process their learning experiences in the program at the close of each semester in an open format. this provides new learning for educators and results in shifts and modifications to the youth work program, which consequently becomes a coconstructed program. implementing a graduate-level education program that reflects an integrated approach to youth work will also require paying attention to sequencing, and the proper quantity and balance of practice and theory. vanderven (1993) has pointed out that effective integration of theory and practice is central. she called for a reciprocal process whereby one “begins with experience, which is then conceptualized into practice theory, then ‘from the top down’ which relates this theory to other relevant empirical knowledge and theories, and then applies this new theory to determine to what degree it is effective” (p. 274). engaging with theory and practice in a continuous way will prepare students to become responsive and intentional practitioners (buchroth & parkin, 2010). experiential learning to process and inform theoretical knowledge will optimize student learning, reflecting the vision of classic thinkers in education such as john dewey, david kolb, and kurt lewin (mann-feder & litner, 2004). we are also aware that the integration of a range of theories and intervention methodologies requires more than just familiarity with the various approaches. integrative programs in the human services work towards clearly articulating the ways in which a range of approaches are linked and blended. as documented in other disciplines, various methods of integration are available to the practitioner: eclecticism (where several theories are blended intentionally); theoretical integration (where one theoretical approach forms the basis for incorporating useful elements of other theories); or technical eclecticism (where a range of techniques from different theoretical orientations are employed) (castonguay & goldfried, 1994). in our case, we are creating assignments and activities that will require our youth work students to explore various approaches to integration. we also are planning shared assignments across courses so that links between diverse content areas can be made explicit and form the basis for this exploration. consistent with other professional programs, our graduate program emphasizes internships as central for students to apply theoretical knowledge to youth work practice, and acquire skills in a real-world context. we are developing relationships with a range of youth-serving organizations, which serve both normative and at-risk populations, provide prevention or treatment, and intervene with both groups and individuals. one challenge is that sites for internships will reflect the current field and the range of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 530 approaches represented locally, but may not allow for students to learn about the approach to youth work that we are developing. therefore it will be critical to work with sites that have the breadth and depth to support our vision as well as the openness to explore ways of adopting a more integrated approach to youth work in their organizations. a similar point can be made with respect to licensing requirements that may not necessarily reflect an integrated approach. in practice, this translates into entry requirements that may be unidimensional, so that the scope of our curriculum could be difficult to fit into current criteria for licensing. a challenge will be to work with the licensing bodies to change the criteria so that these new approaches are recognized. future directions as bessant (2012) stated: youth work students need to be exposed to all the various types of knowledge … to recognize the value of the various interests that inform their work and the work of others, as well as the different kinds of research drawing respectively on the empirico-positive, hermeneutic and critical traditions. this matters if we are interested in reflective practice. (p. 62) we have developed an integrative approach to pre-service youth work education to prepare practitioners to be informed, reflexive professionals who are able to respond to the complexities of current-day youth work practice. our integrative model of youth work education endeavours to balance the competing dichotomies present in the literature, such as prevention versus treatment, by moving beyond debate and integrating knowledges from various domains. drawing on clinical, psycho-educational, and community-based approaches, and considering a global and local understanding of the discipline of youth work, we identified key principles that guide our integrative approach to education and the contexts and skills required for effective practice. in order to reflect on this experience and contribute to the field of youth work more generally, it will be important to evaluate our program using different methods, both to assess student learning and the outcomes of their training in the long term. we are currently examining diverse approaches to program evaluation so that both qualitative and quantitative data can assist us in refining and improving our integrative approach to youth work education and in sharing this knowledge with our academic colleagues in the future. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4): 516–538 531 references adams, p., & chandler, s. m. 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experience when adopting a child transracially, specifically from china and korea. data from in-depth interviews with 17 parents revealed the essence of their experience as embedded in family relations distinctive at various stages of the adoption process. prior to adoption, transracial adoptive parents possessed well-established ideas about the family and parenthood, which enhanced their commitment and sense of ownership throughout the adoption process. while meeting the child and developing a relationship, parents experienced a complicated mixture of emotions, including tension, anxiety, guilt, and grief. the results also offer further insight into the perspective of american caucasian parents regarding the cultural socialization of their children. the lack of knowledge and resources regarding the adopted child’s birth culture influenced the parents, often resulting in feelings of helplessness. keywords: transnational-transracial adoption, parenting, culture, phenomenology soyeon park, ph.d. is assistant professor, department of child and adolescent development, san francisco state university, 1600 holloway avenue sci 392, san francisco, california, u.s.a., 94132. e-mail: park@sfsu.edu mailto:park@sfsu.edu� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 480 trends in adoption in the united states have changed over the years. according to the national data, there are 1.7 million adoptive households, and 2% of all u.s. children live with at least one adoptive parent (kreider, 2008). specifically, international adoption has increased radically in the u.s., creating more multicultural families and contributing to racial and ethnic diversity in the country. as the number of u.s. children available for adoption has declined and the processes of domestic adoption are slow and legally complex (kent & mather, 2002), more adoptions today are international and transracial (u.s. citizenship and immigration services, 2003). transracial adoption is the practice of placing a child into a family of a race or ethnicity that differs from the child’s birth family (simon & altstein, 1996; vandervort & sanoshy, 2009). it typically involves european american parents adopting children of color. indeed, 95% of all u.s parents who adopted children internationally in 2000 were white (u.s. bureau of the census, 2000). although families can adopt children of different ethnic backgrounds through various forms of domestic adoptions, such as foster care and stepchildren from interracial marriages, the majority of transracial adoptions in the united states remain international adoptions (lee, 2003). of the young children adopted annually from over 100 countries, three-quarters are from only six countries, and the top three primary adoption countries are china, russia, and south korea, which together made up 57% of all international adoptions in 2001 (evan b. donaldson adoption institute, 2002). the largest number of transracial families created by international adoption involves white parents and asian children. nearly 60% of all children adopted internationally between 1971 and 2001 came from asian countries (evan b. donaldson adoption institute, 2002). the census 2000 special reports showed that about half of the foreign-born adopted children were born in asian countries (kreider, 2003). south korea has been the primary country for u.s. adoptions in the past. more than 110,000 children were adopted from south korea between 1955 and 2001, representing 37% of all u.s. international adoptions in 1990 and 10% in 2001 (evan b. donaldson adoption institute, 2002). china has recently become another primary country for international adoptions. the statistics show that over 64,000 chinese children were adopted by american families between 1999 and 2010 (u.s. department of state, 2010). many researchers have studied the impact of the adoption of asian children into white american families with the primary focus on either the outcomes or the racial/ethnic identity development of adoptees (lee, 2003). various aspects of transracial adoption need further investigation, including the contextual nature of adoption (palacios & brodzinsky, 2010). in particular, it has been difficult to find studies that capture and reflect adoptive parents’ perspectives through their narratives. little is known about these adoptive parents’ experiences throughout the transracial adoption process and how they interpret, conceptualize, and renegotiate their family lives (ishizawa, kenney, kubo, & stevens, 2006). given that most adoptive parents have been european international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 481 american and more than half of internationally adopted children come from asian countries, more research on transnational-transracial adoptive parents is important to gather further knowledge of their lived experiences embedded in their own unique and individual context. therefore, this study seeks an in-depth understanding of adoptive parents’ perspectives regarding the process of transnational-transracial adoption and parenting. the following research questions guided the study: 1. what are caucasian parents’ experiences with transnational-transracial adoption? 2. how do caucasian parents conceptualize their parenting and their relationship with their transnationally and transracially adopted child in a cultural context? transnational-transracial adoption and parenting becoming a parent is a rewarding yet challenging task. for adoptive parents, parenthood can be even more complex and multilayered as different distinctive issues confront adoptive parents and their children at each stage of the family life cycle (brodzinsky & pinderhughes, 2002). even for biological parents, the transition to parenthood is a period of normative crisis in which substantial adjustment occurs due to increased daily stress. becoming an adoptive parent places more demands on the individual and the couple than just those of a new parent because of the unique challenges. examples of adoption-related tasks parents address include deciding to adopt, adjusting to adoptive parenthood, discussing the adoption and the birth family with their child, and supporting their child’s positive self-identity. particularly, the uncertainty associated with the adoptive waiting period, which can be from a few months to several years, adds more complexity to the transition to parenthood. issues and challenges may also emerge after adoption and not many parents are prepared for post-adoption problems. in the study by mckay and ross (2010) for example, canadian adoptive parents indicated that they had not anticipated the challenges they had to face during the post placement period. furthermore, parents who adopt a child from an ethnically different country may experience dynamic and complex family circumstances. when adopting a child across national borders, parents have to raise a child already placed outside of his or her own cultural context. as transnational-transracial adoption cannot be separated from a multicultural family context, parents will need to develop a new identity of their own. mccarthy (1999) found that parents who adopted a child internationally developed multiple identities as parent, adoptive parent, and international adoptive parent connected to the child’s birth culture. parents whose children were different from them in appearance were more likely to identify with and use more cultural practices that connected them to their child’s birth culture. all families experience various life stages that affect all members of the family. in the case of transnational-transracial adoptive families, each family member faces additional tasks at each life cycle stage. one of the significant challenges most transracially adopted children encounter is developing their ethnic identity as they grow up in the culture of their adoptive parents (lee, 2003; lee, yoo, & roberts, 2004). many parents realize it is important for their transracially adopted children to understand and appreciate their own cultural origin for healthy growth and development and encourage their children to develop a bicultural identity (friedlander et al., 2000). research shows that parents who more actively promoted discussion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 482 and exploration of race and culture within the family had children with more positive psychological adjustment and outcomes (simon & roorda, 2000). engaging adopted children in cultural exploration and activities may not be an easy task. in general, transracial adoptive parents’ racial socialization practices decrease over time (deberry, scarr, & weinberg, 1996), partly due to the fact that transracial adoptive families often live in a community that does not have easy access to their child’s birth culture. in research done by feigelman and silverman (1983), many adoptive parents of koreans encouraged their children to learn about their ethnic heritage, and yet only 17% of these families lived in communities with substantial numbers of koreans. this lack of resources and access to the child’s birth community can negatively affect the cultural competencies of transracial adoptive parents and the incorporation of the child’s birth culture into family life. many transracial adoptive parents do not have sufficient knowledge about their adopted child’s culture, so one of the primary strategies for exposing the child to his or her culture is to have contact with the child’s birth community. cultural exposure will be limited if the family lives in a predominantly white neighborhood. adoptive parents may have more difficulty promoting enculturation of their children as well as developing their own cultural competency as parents when there is a lack of relevant resources. transnational and transracial adoption is a relatively uncommon way to achieve parenthood and as such, it may mean a lack of specific role models and resources. adoptive parents may not develop realistic expectations and their own clearly focused child rearing plans if they don’t have enough information and knowledge about the culture of their adopted child. research also shows transracial adoptive parents have differing views on race. parents often show racial ambivalence by embracing both color-blind ideology and racially specific choices (kubo, 2010). shiao, tuan, and rienzi (2004) found that parents who adopted children from asian countries often internalize existing racial stereotypes, such as the model minority myth of asian americans, and believe that asians assimilate more easily to mainstream white culture compared to black children. some parents apply spiritual beliefs and values that often use a color-blind approach when describing their multicultural family that includes an asian born child (crolley-simic & vonk, 2011). the social constructivist approach guides this study in its attempt to understand the phenomenon of transnational-transracial adoption through true voices of the research participants. social constructivists believe that people construct knowledge so as to make sense of their lived experiences, and thus, the meaning-making activities of groups and individuals around social phenomena are of central interest (lincoln & guba, 2003). this approach assumes that all meaningful reality is socially constructed, and the essence of shared experiences can be fully narrated (crotty, 1998; marshall & rossman, 2006). transnational-transracial adoption has a great effect on not only the adopted child, but also the adoptive parents. knowledge, expectations, and meanings that these parents possess prior to transnational-transracial adoption are thus reconstructed, and negotiated as they live their new experiences. such constructs are deeply embedded in the perspective of each person. therefore, in addition to our empirical findings regarding adopted children’s outcomes and development, it is vital also to accumulate further understanding of the transnational-transracial adoptive parents by listening to their individual stories and their personal interpretations of that experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 483 methodology a qualitative research methodology is an appropriate approach when studying issues of context, dynamic processes, and the subjective perspectives of individuals (marshall & rossman, 2006; rossman & rallis, 2003). the foci of this study were caucasian parents’ experiences with and perceptions of their transnational-transracial adoption. among various qualitative methods, phenomenology was chosen because this study was meaning oriented and expressly interested in the essence and structure of a specific experience (merriam, 1998; patton, 2002). phenomenological studies seek to understand the deep meaning of an individual’s experiences and how he or she articulates these experiences (rossman & rallis, 2003). the primary source of knowledge this study sought was the participants’ own descriptions and interpretations of their experience with transracial adoption. transnational-transracial adoption, the central phenomenon of this study, was explored in order to gain a new understanding of what common experiences these participating parents shared. participants the data were collected from 17 qualitative interviews with 9 mothers and 8 fathers in 9 transnational-transracial adoptive families. more specifically, these families adopted a total of 11 children from china or korea. of this group, 7 chinese children were adopted by 6 families, whereas 3 families had adopted a total of 4 children from korea. for those couples who had adopted more than one child, the second adopted child came from the same country. all children from china and two of the four korean adoptees were girls, with only two adopted children being boys. although generalization is not the fundamental goal of qualitative studies, an appropriate sample size that allows findings to be confirmed has always been a key issue to address. phenomenology involves the close study of a relatively small number of participants who have all experienced the phenomenon under investigation. usually this group ranges between 5 to 25 individuals with 10 participants considered to be a reasonable size (creswell, 2007). speziale and carpenter (2007) suggest that 10 to 15 participants is adequate to provide rich descriptions of a phenomenon. kvale and brinkmann (2009) note that, in most interview studies, the interviews tend to total around 15. the number of participants in this study, therefore, was deemed to be appropriate and sufficient for the particular research method chosen for this study. participants were recruited through criteria-based, purposive sampling. all participating parents had experienced the central phenomenon and expressed their interest and willingness to invest the necessary time to complete interviews (moustakas, 1994). the major criterion was (a) the participants had adopted a child from china or korea, two primary countries for international adoption, and (b) their own ethnicity is caucasian. other demographic criteria, such as reasons for adoption, the number of adopted children, age of the participants or their adopted children, and the length of post-adoption time, were not considered in the selection of participants because the primary focus of the study was on whether the participants had experienced the actual phenomenon. therefore, detailed demographic information was not gathered as part of the data international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 484 collection process although most participants did naturally describe the specific contexts and backgrounds of their transnational-transracial adoption experience during the interviews. all participants in this study were heterosexual, married, and caucasian. they were each at various stages as a transnational-transracial adoptive family, ranging from 1 month to 10 years of time spent with their adopted child. out of the total 9 families, 3 families had had at least one biological child prior to adopting a child internationally. with the exception of one family, both the mothers and the fathers were interviewed to gain full perspectives from both parents. each interview was handled separately, and the unit of analysis was one of the individual, not the couple. data collection and analysis upon irb approval, 5 participants were recruited through a local child care center in rural new england. the remaining 12 participants were recruited through snowball sampling. all 17 participants were interviewed face-to-face by the author. the interviews were arranged by e-mail or phone and took place at a location convenient for the participants, such as their home, office, or a local coffee shop. the length of the interviews varied from 50 to 100 minutes. there was no compensation provided for participation. participants received and signed an informed consent form at the beginning of the interview. open-ended questions were used for the interviews, beginning with family history and the context for adoption. participants were encouraged to illustrate their stories in their own words and probing questions followed, when necessary. fathers received more probing questions, as their answers tended to be short and refer to their wives for more information. interviews with the fathers were also relatively shorter in duration than interviews with the mothers. during both the interviews and the later analyses, i practiced bracketing by setting aside my own knowledge or preconceived ideas and biases about transnational-transracial adoption so as to understand the phenomenon through the perspectives of the participants who experienced it (mouskatas, 1994). i audiotaped all interviews and consequently, two external transcriptionists transcribed the recordings verbatim. i reviewed the initial transcripts by listening to all the tapes and correcting any perceived errors. data analysis of the study followed several precise steps informed by moustakas’ (1994) modification of the stevick-colaizzi-keen method, which was suggested by creswell (2007). as a first step, i wrote a researcher narrative prior to the interviews, describing my own personal perception of transnational-transracial adoption. next, after reading the transcribed data closely several times, i began to highlight significant statements, sentences, or quotes that appeared important for understanding the participants’ experiences. i then clustered the meanings into themes to achieve phenomenological reduction (marshall & rossman, 2006). through this analysis process, i was able to extract 152 significant statements that i later grouped into 26 meaning units. special attention was paid to develop a structural description to connect the identified meanings and explain the ways in which the experiences happened. trustworthiness and the rigor of the study were both enhanced through a bracketing of the researcher’s biases as well as a triangulation of the data collected by reframing, repeating, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 485 and expanding the questions asked during the interviews. this process allowed the data to be examined in different ways (rossman & rallis, 2003). field notes and a reflective journal were also used to offer multiple data sources. further, all analyses and findings were shared with another colleague in the same field for peer debriefing to enhance the data verification. findings a phenomenological analysis of the 17 interviews revealed several themes after synthesizing and clustering “the invariant meaning units” (moustakas, 1994, p. 122). most participants described their experience chronologically as it related to the actual process of adopting a child. they incorporated reflections and interpretations of that experience while narrating it. the experiences of adoptive parents were distinctive at each phase of the process – deciding and planning for adoption, meeting and bringing the child home, and lastly, establishing a relationship with the child that was associated with the adjustment to the new family structure. in the following section, the essence of the transnational-transracial adoptive parents’ experiences, as described and interpreted by the study participants, is portrayed in a chronological manner that captures their unique experiences at each phase of the process. in the presentation of the results, all participants are identified by gender and number, such as mother #1 and father #1. the identical number indicates that the interviewees belong to the same family. all names referenced by the participants during their interviews were replaced with pseudonyms, and descriptions such as “the child” and “the spouse” were then added in parentheses next to each pseudonym. aspiration for parenthood: planning for adoption commitment to parenthood the study’s transnational-transracial adoptive parents had various individual circumstances and different reasons for adoption. however, they shared a common experience – the persistent, hardworking, and complicated process to achieve the parenthood they dreamed of having. participants expressed their strong motivation for and investment in becoming a parent. although the participants who had experienced infertility chose adoption as an alternative way to become a parent, there were also several participants who had a desire to adopt at an early stage in their marriage, regardless of their own fertility. in addition, participants’ interpretations of parenthood and adoption often connected to their own childhood and family backgrounds. one parent stated, “i always wanted to adopt because it was just a culture that i had grown up with. my grandmother, who lived next door to me, had six kids of her own ’cause everybody had huge families” (mother #5). starting a “family” and having a “family” meant a lot to all participants in this study. the concept of family was understood within the paradigm of parenthood, which could only be fulfilled by having a child. without a child, that paradigm was incomplete. bringing a child to a couple was crucial for them to feel wholeness and completeness as a family. one father shared his thoughts as, “we talked about the desire to have a family, i mean, to have children and that was an important part of early conversations” (father #7). this perspective was supported by another father’s statement: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 486 it’s a family. when you have two kids, you know, you’re a family, when you have three kids, it’s really a family…. it makes you feel like, “wow, this is really a family. this is what a family should be.” sitting around, all having dinner together and everyone is being pleasant and enjoying dinner, it’s so nice. there’s just nothing else like it. (father #5) all mothers had a definite desire for motherhood from the very beginning of, or even prior to, their marriages, which made adoption a natural option, as evidenced by statements such as, “i always knew i wanted children” (mother #6) and “i think somehow i had this seed in my mind that if i can’t, i mean i knew if i didn’t get pregnant, i knew i would adopt” (mother #9). fathers also believed in the importance of family, but it seemed that the mother’s desire was more influential. when one spouse was more devoted and committed to parenthood compared to the other, the adoption decisions were not easily made. one mother addressed the conflicts she had experienced with her spouse regarding the adoption decision. she shared her experience in that it had required more effort to convince her husband. this father’s perspective was not included in this study because he didn’t participate in an interview. shortly before we got engaged, we were talking about children and he told me that if for any reason i couldn’t have children, he wanted to be clear with me that he did not want to adopt…. i said, “i don’t have any reason to believe that i can’t have children, but i can’t sign a contract or promise you that if we don’t get pregnant, then there’ll be no kids. i mean i want to be a mother and i hear what you’re saying, but if that happens we’ll just have to deal with it then, because i can’t promise that.” (mother #9) this mother faced further conflicts when the couple was experiencing infertility after getting married. she kept after her husband until they finally decided to adopt a girl from china: he was very clear he wouldn’t, doesn’t want to adopt and i was very clear that i wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world…. i said to him, “what i want more than anything else is to be a mother. and you have what you want and now you’re standing in the way of me getting what i want.” (mother #9) sense of ownership and control transnational-transracial adoptive parents appear to have very specific beliefs and plans about their family structure and relationship. anxiety and fear associated with the inability to gain full ownership as a parent often stems from their strong sense of commitment to rearing a child and establishing a family. most of the parents in this study explained that they had made their decision to adopt internationally partly due to the fear of a possible future involvement of biological parents in a domestic adoption. one mother shared her concerns, “people will adopt in this country and then months later or years later, the biological parents come back and they claim. and the judges always seem to favor the biological parents and then families are ripped apart” (mother #7). another parent confirmed the same view, “i had no interest in getting an american baby, because [of] the one percent chance that the parents change their minds and you lose the kid, right? that’s never going to happen with a chinese kid” (father #6). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 487 the adoptive parents’ decision-making processes were also affected by their desire to own and control the process and outcome. the final decision for international adoption and selection of the specific country was based on the participants’ well-structured ideas and concepts in terms of what type of family they wanted to have. it was important for the participants to be able to avoid an uncertain timeline and all unknown factors that could significantly affect their plans. the following statements exemplify these considerations: for domestic adoption, most birth mothers want contact, and they want letters and pictures for 18 years. and don [the spouse], in particular, had a really hard time with that and just said, i’ll never feel like this child is my own if i have to report back every year…. this agency in florida, they literally told us, “you can get a phone call, like tomorrow, that a baby is being born and in 48 hours it’s gonna be your baby.” like no notice. no notice at all. and i just said, “there’s no way. i can’t.” (mother #3) in the domestic program, what they would do is they gather information on us as a couple, and then they presented it to perspective birth mothers who were looking for placement of infants…. there’s no real timeline that we can count on. it could be for five years and [we] never end up with a child or it might be five weeks….we waited to have children to start with, and then we went through this long period. we felt certain urgency. we wanted to have children while we still could have the energy to keep up with them. (father #1) for parents who already had their own child, it was particularly important to keep and maintain the harmony of the current family structure intact. hence, the decision to adopt was based on the availability of a child who had the desired characteristics, such as gender, age, and health. participants in this study began with a wide range of options and became more selective as they learned the available options that met their criteria. it became “kind of like a process of elimination” (mother #3). the following excerpts show how the pre-established ideas of transnational-transracial adoptive parents about family connected to their decisions: i had two sons and i just always wanted a daughter… i was sort of really reluctant to adopt domestically from this country… it takes years and years and years to get a small child, i didn’t want to adopt a child who is older than the children i already had. i wanted to keep the birth order of the children the same. (mother #4) we knew we wanted to have two children and we wanted to participate in a program that we would be able to do again because we had, at that point, made the decision that we’d like both of our children to be born in the same country, so that we could really focus on their heritage and learn about that. (mother #1) the long-awaited moment: meeting the child tension and anxiety accompanied by emotional and physical reactions. participants provided detailed and vivid descriptions of their memories related to the moment they first met their child. parents who chose to adopt a child from china were required to go to china to take the child home. one parent recalled, “it was an eye opening experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 488 that’s a whole another world, definitely. and it’s a very emotional experience. i mean, really. it’s very tough emotionally, to take a person out of their culture and out of their world” (mother #5). for adoption from korea, parents did not need to go to the country since there was an escort program. an assigned adult accompanied the child on the flight from korea to the united states, and the adoptive parents then met the child at the airport. in both cases, the participants experienced intense physical and emotional tension. parents interpreted their reactions as stemming from not knowing what to expect. for the parents who travelled to china in particular, their anxiety was significant, given that they were in a foreign country and having to handle a language and social system with which they were not familiar. in the words of one couple: we were incredibly anxious, and we didn’t eat breakfast. we were hanging in the hotel lobby first thing in the morning, just waiting. i remember clearly, she [the spouse] was just sitting quietly. she was dealing with her stress, and i couldn’t sit still. so i’m walking around the lobby, i’m walking outside…. it was a strain. we were nervously excited, um, and it was quite emotional. (father #4) my husband and i both dealt with it differently, but i was really swallowing. i was having to keep bottled so much up in me, and then i, between the jet lag and that, i went through a lot, and i never experienced anxiety here in the united states, so i didn’t know what was going on, but i had incredible dehydration, inability to swallow and that was all physical signs of the anxiety, combined with jet lag problems and lack of sleep. in china, [on] the whole trip i went through that and of course i’m feeling terribly guilty because i can’t be physically there for her [the child] or my husband. (mother #4) although parents adopting a child from korea did not have to travel to the country, their experience of meeting their child was also intense, as supported by many participants’ statements such as, “i was pretty nervous. not knowing what to expect, it certainly was an emotional moment” (father #2). another father used an analogy, “i don’t know what it’s like to see my wife giving birth and having a newborn, but i imagine that it would be similar. it was quite something” (father #1). whether their emotion was a positive excitement or nervous anxiety, all participants experienced a strong tension. welcoming a child into the family for the first time is a private matter, but usually it takes place in a very public place for adoptive parents. one father shared that, “somebody walks up to you and hands you a baby… i think that would be kind of challenging itself, but the fact that you’re doing it in a busy international airport was just odd” (father #3). similar emotional experiences were evidenced in other parents’ comments: i was extremely emotional when we knew the plane was there, i was very teary. i think that the wait and thinking about all that we had wanted for so long and to really have that come to fruition. it was just really overwhelming, and i was anxious. i was very anxious. (mother #1) we saw on the board that the flight had landed, and then we saw all the people coming off and off and off. and we waited and waited and just, she wasn’t there… and there are a lot of babies coming off, too. is that her? and it was awful. my physical reaction was, i had to go to the bathroom. i kept saying like, “oh my god, i have to go to the bathroom now”… i didn’t want to miss it. and then i’d run back and, you know, but when she international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 489 came, it was like i immediately knew… i just started to cry. we just, i just started to cry. i didn’t even know what to say. there she is, you know. i just couldn’t, i just couldn’t believe, there’s that baby in the pictures, there she is and she’s here now. (mother #3) grieving alone, grieving together. adoption involves many emotions, especially the sadness and compassion that comes from various kinds of loss. throughout the process of adoption, particularly at an early stage, these parents experienced a grieving process to some extent. it occurred in a variety of forms and involved many people who are part of the context. when the adopted child is older, the emotion that child brings can be substantially influential, which makes the initial adjustment more difficult. one father graphically illustrated it by stating: about 4:30 in the morning, she was in her bed sobbing. and i got up with her and that was how we started our life in america. and she was going on and on in chinese, she was telling me, “take me back to the airport, put me on a plane, send me back to china.” and she was just sobbing and going on and on in chinese, she didn’t want to be here. she wanted to go home, and i cried with her and, and that morning she, she actually allowed me to comfort her after we were crying together, and she sat in my lap and just hugged me and cried for an hour and a half, and she snapped out of it and, and really never went there again. um, but, you know, that’s how we started our life together here. (father #4) one couple, in separate interviews, described how such grief could be reflected in their later interaction with the child: she [the adopted child]’s out of the blue and said, “i hope no one takes me away.” so, she remembers what happened. she remembers, and she probably remembers less and less details. if she saw the face of her mother and father that raised her, she’d probably recognized them. (father #5) she [the adopted child] came straight out and said to me, “mom, is anyone gonna have to take me away?” now, for a two-year-old to be asking me that, it’s just heartbreaking that this would even be part of her psyche. it was, it was so ingrained. it affected her so much that it just stayed with her for a very long time. (mother #5) adopting a child may affect other members of the family as well. when parents already have their own child before adoption, it becomes natural that this child is also made a part of the whole process. one mother shared a story about how her biological daughter, who was a preschooler, tried to make sense of the adoption process and how she grieved for the loss of the imagined boy whom she thought would be her younger brother: we told cristina [the biological child] that she was gonna get a brother, ’cause that’s what they told us. and when we got the referral, it was a girl… she had named her baby brother. she named him oliver. i think in her own mind, she had started to envision a life with her brother. and then she actually got pretty upset and said, “who’s gonna take care of oliver?” like, “who in korea is gonna take care of oliver?”, and then we had to explain. “well, there is no oliver”, you know. (mother #3) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 490 this same mother added another post-adoption episode: “one morning, anna [the adopted child] was lying on the bed just screaming, crying. cristina was there, ‘mommy, my sister’s sad for her foster mother. she’s crying for her foster mother’, she said” (mother #3). parents’ empathy and grief may expand to other significant people in the child’s preadoption period. imagining the part of that child’s life in which they were not included appeared to bring strong emotions to adoptive parents. the following statements juxtapose these parents’ experiences: we spoke to his [the adopted child’s] escort through an interpreter, and she just kept telling us about how everybody was so sad when he left… i don’t know that i was feeling sad, i felt so compassionate, wanting to really be able to say to his foster mother, “thank you so much” for the interim care that she had given… his life really didn’t start when he came home to us. so it was very, very emotional when he came home. (mother #1) they make you write a dear birth mother letter, which was probably the hardest part of going through all of this, i made don [the spouse], i said, “you have to write it. i can’t, it’d be too upsetting to me to write the dear birth mother letter, you write it and then i’ll add to it.” (mother #3) moreover, meeting adult adoptees or listening to other people’s adoption stories often brings new emotions to adoptive parents through empathy. one mother shared her experience: we just went to a korean culture dinner. it was run through our agency, and we met with korean adult adoptees, and you hear their thoughts about getting to meet their birth parents or their foster parents. it was intriguing and heartwarming. i mean, it’s emotional, i wouldn’t say that it’s really sad for me to think about it. in some ways it is. because there is, in part, there’s some grief that goes along with it, for all of us. (mother #1) adoptive parents also experienced grief when their relationship with their adopted child was different from what they had pictured. being rejected by the child in particular, had a significant effect on these parents. when there was much anger and rejection from the child, parents seemed to experience even stronger emotions, a mixed feeling of sadness, disappointment, and guilt. i was prepared for much more crying and sadness, which she really didn’t, she just was angry…you know that she’s hurting and you feel terrible about what she’s going through, and you feel terribly guilty…. how can i take this child away from where she seems to be so happy? i knew she had no choice in it… she’s really outgoing and real social. and she would go to another american… it was just deliberately, i think, trying to be hurtful or trying to test us, go on their lap and just be like “see, that person’s better than you are.” so, that kind of rejection really hurt me, and i had to keep it inside. it really bothered me. i wasn’t prepared for that, i was prepared for a lot more clinginess. (mother #4) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 491 goodness of fit: relationships in the making the multifaceted culture of the family prior to adoption, all participants considered the multicultural aspect of the family they would create by adopting a child transnationally and transracially. however, it appeared that more concrete thoughts and experiences occurred after they began their lives with the adopted child. when the parents interpreted their home culture and the multicultural aspects of their family, it did not involve a simple asian and caucasian dichotomy. in many cases, adoptive parents already had their own element of cultural diversity, and the new culture of the adopted child that was added to the existing structure, resulting in a more complex environment. the following statement exemplifies a jewish mother’s interpretation of the complex culture in her adoptive family: it’s important to me that she, along with her chinese identity, has the jewish identity…. i think of our culture as having three cultures. in some ways, almost a fourth, but a little, i think of us here, um, american, we’re jewish, and we’re german-jewish, which is, with judaism there, you know, german-jewish has its own stuff and i increasingly think of us as chinese. (mother #9) many adoptive parents emphasized that there were already various cultural components within their family prior to transnational-transracial adoption. the following excerpt indicates this adoptive parent’s acknowledgement of diverse cultures that existed in his family: i’m jewish. jane [the spouse]’s not. her mom is from france. christianity is a very, very strong element to the french social culture, the whole foundation, a lot… i have these things called “life lessons” just general good ideas, do the right thing… so, you have a lot of philosophy, and you have a lot of superstition in chinese culture. we’ve been going to the chinese culture day, we do something chinese now. (father #5) his wife supported his perspective in a separate interview: we’re a multicultural family anyway. andy [the spouse] is jewish. his grandfather was a rabbi… so we have traditions from both of our families that we always did anyway. and, now that we have shirley [the adopted child], now [we] do chinese new year, you know. we just added more to traditions to the ones we already had. (mother #5) situated between confidence and helplessness. transnational-transracial adoptive parents tried to understand and learn about their adopted child from the information they had. all parents in this study described themselves as committed, competent, and confident parents. however, in establishing a relationship with their adopted child, they experienced difficulties in applying their own parental knowledge and strategies. upon the child’s arrival, parents felt that they needed to catch up with their child promptly. the process included emotionally bonding with the child as well as improving the child’s health when they felt the child “really was behind with everything” (mother #6). most international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 492 parents wanted to form their attachment quickly and even felt a sense of urgency, which was well expressed in the following statements: i feel like the bonding is really coming along, but it’s not there. i would never tell anybody that it’s normal… i feel like a sense of urgency, ’cause i feel like the bonding attachment has to be pretty good before she hits teenage. (mother #4) when issues and problems with the adopted child were present, parents randomly attributed them to the individual child’s characteristic or cultural differences. one father commented, “i don’t know if this is common for a lot of asian cultures, or just china, or just this family, but there didn’t seem to be affection” (father #5). parents often felt confused and unsure of their approach, resulting in a sense of failing and helplessness, because they “didn’t always know what to do or were feeling not successful” (father #8). even for the experienced parents who had raised their own biological children, parenting became a challenging task that required new skills and practices as one mother claimed, “my mission as a parent is really big right now” (mother #8). one parent commented that he had to consciously remind himself that he needed to be proactive and be loving and caring to overcome the confrontational circumstances when “there was a lot of anger and resentment”. he described it as, “we just showered her with love and not that that was always easy because, with her anger, she would pull us into confrontational kinds of situations” (father #4). in the relationship with their adopted child, many parents perceived adoption as a vulnerable factor and treated the child in special ways. this was more explicit in their early relationship. the following statement exemplifies this experience: i was very careful in choosing my words and very careful with my expressions and even my facial expressions, very careful to not scare her. i actually treated her differently than my other kids [biological children] because i wanted to make sure that i didn’t scare her, knowing she was already scared…now she gets treated like everyone else. (mother #5) in the area of parenting related to enculturation of the child, transnational-transracial adoptive parents had less confidence and acknowledged that they had only limited knowledge about their child’s birth culture, as evidenced by one mother’s statement, “i’m not korean, i’m not gonna feel comfortable doing that [teaching korean culture to the child]. it’s not my culture and how dare i represent what korean culture is. like, who am i to do that?” (mother #3). while all parents had a sincere desire to encourage their adopted child’s exposure to his or her birth culture, they did not have concrete plans for doing so. parents hoped that this cultural learning would happen naturally when the child showed more interest. one parent commented, “he [the adopted child] does occasionally show some interest in korean culture, but not a whole lot. so we tried to do some of that [cultural activities], but over the past several years it’s just, you know, tried less and less” (mother #1). transnational-transracial adoptive parents did not want to “force” cultural engagement if they did not observe a strong interest from the child. cultural activities incorporated by the adoptive parents into the home were limited to books, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 493 food, and holiday celebrations. one mother admitted, “i can’t deny the fact that we’re raising our children on some level as american children” (mother #7). participants addressed their awareness and expectations of possible obstacles and challenges in the future that related to transnational-transracial adoption, including a child’s racial identity. one father mentioned, “even if she wasn’t chinese, just the fact that she’s adopted, you have very common adoptee problems. that’s the way it is, and when you adopt a child from another culture, there will be more” (father #8). one mother also shared, “i’m worried about her waking up one day and she says, ‘what’s the deal? why am i in this situation? what happened? what, why, why me?’ and it’s going to be tough” (mother #5). seeking alternative role models whose ethnicity is the same as that of the adopted child was a common strategy among transnational-transracial adoptive parents. parents who adopted more than one child from the same country intended to support the child’s connection to the birth culture by having a sibling who came from the same ethnic background. that way, if there was something that they were “not getting as american parents, or adoptive parents, somehow they [siblings] could work with each other” (mother #1). discussion the findings of the current study confirmed that caucasian parents’ experiences regarding transnational-transracial adoption are grounded in multiple contexts. parents who participated in this study appeared to possess well-established ideas about the family and parenthood prior to adoption. however, transnational-transracial adoption challenged the parents’ previous conceptualizations of family and parenthood and complex emotions arose surrounding how to bond with the adopted child. one of the primary reasons for deciding to adopt a child internationally was “feeling safer in international adoption” (jacobson, 2008, p. 37) because the parents could avoid the possible involvement of the birth parents. the parents’ desire to keep their own family intact and protected by avoiding domestic adoption was later replaced by a complicated mixture of emotions including tension, anxiety, guilt, and grief as they met the child for the first time and established an initial relationship. previous research has indicated that adopted individuals experienced loss and grief-related emotions (brodzinsky, 2011). the results from this study imply that adoptive parents experience mirrored emotions. more studies to capture adoptive parents’ experienced feelings should be added to the current literature on transnationaltransracial adoption. transnational-transracial adoptive parents attempt to make sense of their experience and develop socially constructed meanings through interacting and negotiating with their family members, friends, neighbors, and community. for example, parents in the current study had various perspectives regarding understanding and interpreting the multicultural aspect of their family, from color-blindness to authentic multicultural understanding, which seemed to change over time and be influenced by others. one father mentioned, “one of susan [the spouse]’s friends said, ‘oh, you all look so white.’ and i just thought that was strange, i don’t know what that means, i didn’t know how to take” (father #3). given that both race and ethnicity are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 494 socially developed and maintained concepts and that racial identification in particular tends to reflect power relations between whites and people of color (cornell & hartmann, 1998), comments on race imposed by other people can influence adoptive parents’ ideas of their own transnational-transracial family. the color-blind approach was emphasized when parents tried to pay full attention to the individual child they had adopted and understand their family as a focused unit. one father claimed, “i rarely think twice about his being korean, you know. he’s just my son” (father #2). for some parents, transnational-transracial adoption made them more aware of diversity issues in society. one parent illustrated how transnational-transracial adoption directly influenced family relationships with his biological children so as to promote and practice diversity: bringing lin [the adopted child] into that, for us, has been kind of walking the walk that goes with the talk and now, in every way promoting that with our kids and this whole idea of cultural diversity and understanding differences and really reaching out beyond our comfort zone… so we’re able to actually have some interesting cultural conversations that we couldn’t have had, just from the presence of lin. (father #4) throughout the adoption process, the parents reconceptualized their definition of family, which also shifted the paradigm for their own identity as parents. one mother noted that both parents and children needed to revisit their ethnic identity to become a harmonious family: we have this tri-cultural family, and i’m saying to her [the adopted child], i adopted you and you didn’t have a say in it, i brought you home, i converted you…you were born there, i’m bringing you here, and i’m asking you to become american and jewish. so i feel like, by virtue of my having adopted you, it’s not just that i’m gonna make sure you know something about where you came from, but i’m gonna become somewhat chinese. and if you can be jewish, then i can be chinese. (mother #9) despite the fact that all parents in this study expressed their intention to incorporate and maintain the culture of the adopted child, there was ambivalence about which aspects of culture they can keep. their approach was close to “cultural tourism, the selective appropriation and consumption of renovated cultural symbols, artifacts, and cultural events as a means of constructing identity for adopted children” (quiroz, 2012, p. 528). this is also due to limited support systems and role models for embracing their child’s birth culture. although the parents in this study had a wide range of social support networks available, most undertook parenting practices with little or no contact with the child’s birth community. this lack of knowledge and resources regarding the adopted child’s birth culture influenced the parents in this study, producing feelings of helplessness. this is consistent with the previous research that implies that limited resources, along with the perception of asians as being more accepted and assimilated (ishizawa et al., 2006; shiao et al., 2004; zhang & lee, 2011), can influence transnationaltransracial adoptive parents. they may then downplay their adopted child’s race and culture (bergquist, campbell, & unrau, 2003; vonk, lee, & crolley-simic, 2010). the findings drawn from this study can be linked to a few suggestions about practice in supporting and working with transnational-transracial adoptive families. first, it is important to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 495 acknowledge that adoption is a lifelong process and transnational-transracial adoptive parents may encounter their own psychological stressors unique to adoption. long-term, ongoing counselling that can mitigate the negative effects of adoptive parents’ emotional issues, especially during the “post-adoption” stage, are needed. adoption agencies can either house such services or develop the infrastructure to help adoptive parents navigate available resources in their local communities. creating informal networks of adoptive parents who may share many aspects of transnational-transracial adoption (e.g., child’s age, country, gender) can be also facilitated by adoption agencies. second, comprehensive training sessions in culturally competent parenting strategies and cultural socialization should be provided both before and after adoption. when transracialtransnational adoptive parents live in a less diverse neighborhood and there is limited contact with people who are from the same cultural background as their adopted child, it is especially critical to ensure that there are sufficient resources for adoptive parents to learn the child’s culture. programs that connect adoptive families with adult adoptees or recent immigrants from the country of the adopted child would be beneficial. finally, practitioners who directly work with transracially adopted children and their families should treat each adoptive family individually in order to increase open communication and effectively relate with the family. by encouraging transnational-transracial adoptive parents to reflect on their unique family context and deepen multicultural understandings, practitioners and parents together can identify and locate appropriate services and resources for the adoptees’ healthy growth and development. conclusion the present study attempted to explore caucasian parents’ perspectives regarding transracial adoption. by providing rich descriptions of the phenomenon, the study attempted to capture the essence of transnational-transracial adoptive parents’ lived experience in the context of both culture and socially constructed meaning. these parents’ reflections of their adoptive experiences offer valuable information to the literature for understanding the complexity of transnational-transracial adoptive parenthood and its relationship to cultural and ecological contexts. the presentation of these interviews indicates that caucasian parents have unique experiences throughout all phases of transnational-transracial adoption. the meanings behind establishing a multicultural family by adopting a child internationally are socially constructed as well as embedded in the existing family relationships and the parents’ views on the family, parenthood, and culture. one of the valuable aspects of this study was that it provided unique insight through interviews with both mothers and fathers (with the exception of one family). although the analysis was individual-based, it is important to note that all eight couples tended to share similar stories or episodes to illustrate their experience. they often included their perspectives of the other spouse with direct quotations. it is natural that memorable incidents and unique moments influence both people in this circumstance. however, it may also be the case that meanings and interpretations of the experience emerge and are further refined through social co-construction since couples experienced the phenomenon together. bergquist, campbell, and unrau (2003) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 496 reported similar research findings, indicating mothers and fathers are similar in their perceptions about their experiences with transnational-transracial adoption. further research that includes adoptive couples as a unit of analysis, or investigates the perspectives of fathers more closely, will add valuable knowledge to the current literature of transnational-transracial adoption. the findings of the present study must be understood within its limitations. first, the participants resided in a rural area of new england, which is less diverse compared to other parts of the united states. although this study intended to focus implicitly on transnational-transracial adoptive parents who may not have easy access to diverse cultures, various ecological contexts that influence transnational-transracial adoptive parents must be carefully considered when interpreting the findings of this study. second, transnational-transracial adoption is common among gay and lesbian couples, but this study only included heterosexual, married couples. therefore, the results here should be interpreted within this limitation as gay and lesbian parents’ experiences with transnational-transracial adoption might be substantially different. in order to explicate the full phenomena of transnational-transracial adoption, future research should explore parents’ perspectives further by including the voices of various types of transnational-transracial adoptive families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 479–499 497 references bergquist, k. j. s., campbell, m. e., & unrau, y. a. 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(2009). special issues in transcultural, transracial, and gay and lesbian parenting and adoption. in e. p. benedek, p. ash, & c. l. scott (eds.), principles and practices of child and adolescent forensic mental health (pp. 197–214). washington, dc: american psychiatric publishing. vonk, m. e., lee, j., & crolley-simic, j. (2010). cultural socialization practices in domestic and international transracial adoption. adoption quarterly, 13(3), 227–247. zhang, y., & lee, g. r. (2011). intercountry versus transracial adoption: analysis of adoptive parents’ motivations and preferences in adoption. journal of family issues, 32(1), 75–98. http://factfinder.census.gov/� http://adoption.state.gov/about_us/statistics.php� ethnic diversity and youth offending: an examination international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 166 ethnic diversity and youth offending: an examination of risk and protective factors lorne d. bertrand, leslie d. macrae-krisa, meghan costello, and john winterdyk abstract: this study examined risk and protective factors for criminal reoffending behaviour among a group of canadian young people who had committed at least one substantive criminal offence in the past and fell into one of four ethnic groups: (a) canadian born, parents canadian born; (b) aboriginal/métis; (c) first or second generation immigrant, caucasian; and (d) first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background. risk and protective factors were classified into five domains: individual; family; peer; school; and community. consistent with previous research, the findings did not reveal many instances where statistically significant differences existed in the presence of risk and protective factors across ethnic groups; however, significant differences that were observed were across a wide range of variables. the implications of the findings within the context of previous research in this area are discussed. keywords: youth offending, ethnic diversity, risk factors, protective factors acknowledgements: this research was funded by the centre for criminology and justice research at mount royal university, the alberta law foundation, and the city of calgary. lorne d. bertrand, ph.d. is senior research associate at the canadian research institute for law and the family, university of calgary, suite 510, 1816 crowchild trail nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2m 3y7. e-mail: lbertran@ucalgary.ca leslie d. macrae-krisa, m.a. (the corresponding author) is coordinator of alberta-based research projects at the canadian research institute for law and the family, university of calgary, suite 510, 1816 crowchild trail nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2m 3y7. e-mail: ldmacrae@ucalgary.ca meghan costello is a student in the justice studies program at mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary, alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. email: mcost606@mymru.ca john winterdyk, ph.d. is a professor in the department of justice studies, mount royal university, 4825 mount royal gate sw, calgary alberta, canada, t3e 6k6. telephone: (403) 440-6992. e-mail: jwinterdyk@mtroyal.ca mailto:lbertran@ucalgary.ca mailto:ldmacrae@ucalgary.ca mailto:mcost606@mymru.ca mailto:jwinterdyk@mtroyal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 167 the government of alberta’s (2011) crime prevention framework identifies risk factors as personal or environmental conditions that increase an individual’s chances for criminal involvement. protective factors are identified as factors that improve an individual’s life while reducing the risk for criminal involvement. given the unique challenges faced by immigrant, refugee, and aboriginal youth, variations in risk and protective factors are expected among canadian youth offenders belonging to these ethnic backgrounds. however, as discussed by wortley (2003), information and research on ethnic minorities in canada is difficult to obtain due to canada’s “informal ban on the release of race-based crime statistics” (p. 101). canadian research in this area, particularly research comparing the risk and protective factors among different ethnicities, is scarce making it difficult to achieve a canadian-based perspective on the factors leading minority youth to criminal involvement. the alberta crime reduction and safe communities task force (2007) identified the following five major risk and protective domains that are important to consider when examining offending behaviour among youth: individual; family; peer; school; and community. factors in the individual domain include demographic characteristics, attitudes toward crime, history of deviant behaviour, substance abuse, aggression, impulsivity, and mental health issues. included in the family factors domain are the presence of familial criminality, family violence, family management and supervision, and family breakdown. factors in the peer domain include degree of involvement in pro-social extracurricular activities, peer association, and gang involvement. the school domain includes factors related to school attendance, behaviour, and achievement, and the community domain considers level of community attachment and organization. risk factors among aboriginal youth substance abuse has been identified as an individual risk factor that is predominant among youth offenders. as choi, harachi, gillmore, and catalano (2005) observe: “substance abuse has been found to be associated with violence, delinquency, academic underachievement, and school problems” (p. 506). research suggests that there is a particularly high rate of substance abuse among aboriginal youth offenders (rojas & gretton, 2007; yessine & bonta, 2009) and that offending patterns seem to be affected by increased alcohol or drug use (bonta, laprairie, & wallace-capretta, 1997). furthermore, the presence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd) in the aboriginal population is another individual risk factor that is highlighted by rojas and gretton (2007). family and community factors also play a major role in the lives of most aboriginal youth. rojas and gretton (2007) list a number of family and community factors that increase the risk of criminal involvement for aboriginal youth. there is a significant likelihood of aboriginal youth being subject to high rates of child abuse in their homes and communities, while also growing up with unstable living conditions. due to the close-knit structure of aboriginal families and communities (particularly for those who live on reserves), child abuse is a sensitive matter that is often not properly dealt with because of perceived repercussions and negative sentiment from the community (rojas & gretton, 2007). high rates of caregiver inconsistency have also been suggested as a risk factor (rojas & gretton, 2007; yessine & bonta, 2009). on average, aboriginal youth are likely to experience at least three changes in their primary caregivers during childhood. however, there are no findings that suggest that this is a significant detriment to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 168 aboriginal youth (rojas & gretton, 2007). while western culture would state that inconsistent living conditions are a risk factor for youth, aboriginal culture emphasizes reliance on extended family and community members. thus, having multiple caregivers may be a sign of strong familial and communal support rather than a risk factor for aboriginal youth. when evaluating the risk factors that are specific to aboriginal youth, the history of aboriginal people in canada cannot be overlooked. the residential schools that were put in place by the government of canada in the 19th and 20th centuries caused disconnect between aboriginal people, their culture, and their families. bracken, deane, and morrissette (2009) suggest that the intergenerational trauma that resulted from the residential schools era, combined with racism and structural barriers – for example, poor housing, negative stereotypes, and poor educational opportunities – often result in marginalization among aboriginal youth. the peer support, interaction, status, and protection that gangs provide make gang involvement an attractive option for those who are struggling with self-identity and are having difficulty connecting with their aboriginal culture (bracken et al., 2009). school and educational risk factors are also apparent among aboriginal youth offenders. rojas and gretton (2007) state that aboriginal youth are: “on average, between two and three years below their academic education” (p. 274). additionally, aboriginal youth typically achieve a lower level of education when compared to non-aboriginal youth (bonta et al., 1997; rojas & gretton, 2007). also highlighted is the increased likelihood for aboriginal youth to have a learning disability or mental disability limiting their ability to achieve higher education (rojas & gretton, 2007). protective factors for aboriginal youth discussions of protective factors for aboriginal youth have been oriented toward addressing those factors perceived as risk factors. for instance, while research suggests that a highly influential individual risk factor among aboriginal youth is substance abuse, reducing substance use and misuse among aboriginal youth may, in turn, reduce the likelihood of criminal involvement. in addition, while rojas and gretton (2007) state that caregiver inconsistency and life instability are generally associated with an increased risk for criminal involvement, it may be that multiple caregivers are a protective factor among aboriginal youth. though it remains unknown whether having multiple caregivers is a risk or protective factor, the value placed on the role of the extended family in aboriginal communities could support the latter. regarding school and educational factors, rojas and gretton (2007) stress the importance of addressing individual challenges in order to adapt lessons to help youth achieve academic success. given the high incidence of learning disabilities, mental health issues, and fasd among aboriginal youth offenders, a specialized approach to ensuring educational success is essential. choi et al. (2005) suggest that increasing positive relationships within each of the five domains for risk and protective factors – individual, family, peer, school, and community – will improve the sense of belonging and identity among individuals, and reduce the likelihood of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 169 criminal involvement. this is particularly true for aboriginal youth offenders who are involved with gangs. bracken et al. (2009) describe a united way program in winnipeg, manitoba that aims to help gang-involved aboriginals stop their criminal lifestyles while still maintaining their sense of pride and belonging. ogijiita pimatiswin kinamatwin (opk) is a program working with gang members newly released from custody, “who wish to leave the criminal activity of the gang, but without necessarily leaving the gang” (bracken et al., 2009, p. 68). opk provides work experience and educational/counselling sessions to each participant to help them establish a “legitimate lifestyle” while they continue to discover their cultural identity. risk and protective factors among immigrant and refugee youth for the purposes of this study, immigrant youth were defined as first and second generation immigrants or refugees who were either born in another country and moved to canada (first generation), or whose parents were born in another country and moved to canada before having their children (second generation). a small body of canadian literature has examined risk and protective factors among immigrant groups. risk factors for immigrant youth previous research suggests that individual risk factors are very dependent on where an individual youth has immigrated from. many immigrants, as described by wortley (2003), do not understand canada’s justice system and end up unintentionally in conflict with the law (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). additional individual factors that rossiter and rossiter (2009) have identified include: “poor interpersonal skills, the use of violence to solve problems...a lack of personal and cultural identity, and a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness” (p. 417). family poverty is a substantial risk factor for immigrant youth in canada. many parents of immigrant families work multiple jobs in order to support their families, resulting in a lack of supervision of their children (goodman & ruggiero, 2008; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). there is also a high rate of addiction (e.g., to alcohol, drugs, and gambling) and family or domestic violence among new immigrants (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). this unstable and unsupervised living environment often leads to youth involvement in criminal activity for financial gain and, subsequently, lower school attendance and achievement (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). similarly, living in an impoverished community is also viewed as a risk factor for these immigrant youth (goodman & ruggiero, 2008). communities that are not well established to support multicultural populations leave immigrant youth with a lack of safe and affordable housing, limited after school programs, sports teams, and activities, and a lack of positive relationships and role models (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). while research does not support the statement that immigrant youth are more involved in criminal activity than non-immigrant youth, it does support the finding that immigrant youth are more susceptible to recruitment into gang involvement (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). in fact, approximately 82% of gang members identify as visible minorities and as either first or second generation immigrants (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 170 immigrant youth are faced with multiple challenges and new experiences every day, so much so that many immigrants set their education as a lower priority than other factors: “the academic challenges that immigrant children face are often exacerbated by individual, family, peer and community factors that may leave newcomer youth vulnerable to victimization or recruitment to engage in illegal activities” (rossiter & rossiter, 2009, p. 412). english as a second language (esl) students are more likely to fail to complete high school and drop out of school because they do not have access to the necessary supports (goodman & ruggiero, 2008; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). many schools and teachers are ill-prepared to deal with esl youth and the parents of these youth do not have the education or knowledge to assist them with homework (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). many youth end up falling through the cracks of the education system as a result (goodman & ruggiero, 2008). protective factors for immigrant youth some individual risk factors for immigrant or refugee youth stem from a lack of knowledge of the canadian criminal justice system (wortley, 2003). in order to address this risk factor, wortley suggests that two steps be taken. first, potential immigrants should be educated about canadian law as they proceed with their immigration application. secondly, all recent immigrants should be informed and educated about how their cultural traditions and customs may lead to conflicts with the law (wortley, 2003). additionally, rossiter and rossiter (2009) state that immigrant youth who have a stronger sense of cultural identity and belonging have increased resilience and are less likely to engage in criminal activity. this sense of belonging may come from strong family and community ties or religious affiliation; a feeling of general acceptance from peers will also foster this sense of belonging (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). rossiter and rossiter (2009) further stress the importance of family and communities as protective factors for immigrant youth. research suggests that youth who have strong family structure and who receive support, attention, and supervision from their parents and extended families are less likely to be involved in crime (choi et al., 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). similarly, involvement with church or community groups also acts as a protective factor for immigrant youth. such involvement continues to foster a sense of belonging and purpose (choi et al., 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). comparable to other protective factors, peer and school factors that are thought to limit the likelihood of criminal involvement in immigrant youth primarily relate to establishing a sense of belonging and providing support. youth who engage in inter-cultural peer programs may be less at risk for involvement with the justice system (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). in addition, youth who have educated parents who encourage school attendance and involvement in school activities are also less likely to come into contact with the justice system (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). overall, protective factors for immigrant youth are strongly focused around education, belonging, and family or community involvement and support. consistency and social acceptance of cultural differences also assist in limiting the likelihood of criminal involvement among immigrant youth (choi et al., 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 171 the present study the purpose of this project was to conduct an exploratory study of the similarities and differences in risk and protective factors for crime among an ethnically diverse sample of youth offenders. the project used data collected for a previous study on youth offending, serious habitual offenders, and justice system response in calgary, alberta (macrae, bertrand, paetsch, hornick, & degusti, 2009) to identify unique risk and protective factors among aboriginal youth, first and second generation immigrant and refugee youth, and other ethnic groups. methodology participants a cohort of 103 youth in calgary with various levels of involvement in the youth justice system was selected from the macrae et al. (2009) study. participants belonged to one of three offending groups: 1. one-time offenders (n = 42) this group included youth having one substantive (i.e., criminal code; controlled drugs and substances act) offence or incident of which he or she had been found guilty1 (with no subsequent charges pending). 2. chronic offenders (n = 41) this group included youth having five or more substantive (i.e., criminal code, controlled drugs and substances act) offences or incidents of which he or she had been found guilty. 3. serious habitual offenders (shos) (n = 20) serious habitual offenders were identified through the calgary police service’s serious habitual offender program (shop). shop identifies youth at risk of a career of crime through a multidisciplinary resource team, and provides access to resources in order to help them be successful members of society. these youth are monitored regularly by the calgary police service. using data available on country of birth, parents’ country of birth, and ethnicity, the sample was categorized into the following groups: (a) canadian born/parents canadian born (n = 52); (b) aboriginal/métis (n = 15); (c) first or second generation immigrant (caucasian) (n = 13); (d) first or second generation immigrant (other ethnic background) (n = 13). some youth (n = 10) had missing data for some of these variables – two one-time offenders, six chronic offenders, and two shos. further exploration of these cases revealed that this was often due to the fact that these youth did not know one or both of their parents. given that the purpose of this study was to draw comparisons among ethnic groups, these youth were removed from the sample. therefore, the total sample size was 93. due to the small sample size, data from the three offending groups were not analyzed separately. 1 incident was defined as all charges pertaining to the same person and having the same date of offence. administration of justice incidents (e.g., breaches, failures to appear) were not counted as substantive incidents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 172 data sources life history interviews were conducted with all 93 youth between july 2006 and july 2007. interview questions covered seven main topic areas: basic facts (i.e., demographic, familial); community (i.e., community characteristics, feelings of safety); school (i.e., school status, experience); social life (i.e., friends, activities, delinquency); offending history (i.e., contact with the criminal justice system); gangs (i.e., knowledge and experience of gangs in calgary); and future (i.e., goals). the interviews were conducted in person at the city of calgary youth probation offices and the calgary young offender centre. probation file reviews were conducted for each youth interviewed with the exception of one youth whose probation file could not be accessed. a probation file review form was developed following a preliminary examination of probation files. the form included demographic, familial, social, and offending information. file reviews were conducted at city of calgary youth probation offices. results the relationship between the youths’ ethnic background/immigration status and several factors related to the five domains identified in the literature (i.e., individual, family, peer group, school, and community) were examined. statistical relationships between factors and ethnic background/immigration status were examined using chi-square analyses; while statistically significant findings are highlighted, trends that were apparent but did not attain traditional significance levels are also discussed. individual factors domain several variables falling into the individual factors domain were examined to determine their relationship with immigration status. the majority of the youth in the sample were male (89.2%). while there were no significant gender differences across the four immigration groups, the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group had the highest proportion of female youth (15.4%), while the native/métis group had the lowest proportion of females (6.7%). across all groups, equal proportions of youth were employed at the time of the interview (49.5%) and not employed (50.5%). while not statistically significant, youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were least likely to be employed (30.8%) and youth in the canadian born/parents canadian born group were most likely to be employed (55.8%). the relationship between alcoholand drug-related variables and immigration status was also examined. the presence of substance abuse issues was significantly related to immigration status (x2(3) = 16.2, p < .001). over two-thirds of the total sample (70.3%) reported having substance abuse issues. while over three-quarters of the youth in the canadian born/parents canadian born (78.4%), native/métis (78.6%), and first or second generation immigrant, caucasian groups (76.9%) had substance abuse issues, only 23.1% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group had substance abuse issues. the majority of youth in all groups reported that they had had five or more alcoholic drinks on one occasion (94.6%), had used illegal drugs (92.5%), had bought illegal drugs international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 173 (83.9%), and had sold illegal drugs (59.1%). however, there were no significant differences between the various immigration groups on these behaviours. table 1. ever engaged in property-related delinquent behaviour by immigrant status delinquent behaviour immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % damaged/destroyed property on purpose no yes total 11 41 52 21.2 78.8 100.0 3 12 15 20.0 80.0 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 7 6 13 53.8 46.2 100.0 25 68 93 26.9 73.1 100.0 broken into a house2 no yes total 27 25 52 51.9 48.1 100.0 2 13 15 13.3 86.7 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 46 47 93 49.5 50.5 100.0 ever stolen something from a place/person no yes total 3 49 52 5.8 94.2 100.0 1 14 15 6.7 93.3 100.0 2 11 13 15.4 84.6 100.0 3 10 13 23.1 76.9 100.0 9 84 93 9.7 90.3 100.0 stolen something worth less than $50 no yes total 9 40 49 18.4 81.6 100.0 6 8 14 42.9 57.1 100.0 4 7 11 36.4 63.6 100.0 2 7 9 22.2 77.8 100.0 21 62 83 25.3 74.7 100.0 stolen something worth more than $50 no yes total 11 38 49 22.4 77.6 100.0 2 12 14 14.3 85.7 100.0 5 6 11 45.5 54.5 100.0 2 7 9 22.2 77.8 100.0 20 63 83 24.1 75.9 100.0 stolen car or motorcycle no yes total 22 27 49 44.9 55.1 100.0 4 10 14 28.6 71.4 100.0 6 5 11 54.5 45.5 100.0 5 4 9 55.6 44.4 100.0 37 46 83 44.6 55.4 100.0 stolen something with a group of friends no yes total 14 35 49 28.6 71.4 100.0 2 12 14 14.3 85.7 100.0 3 8 11 27.3 72.7 100.0 3 6 9 33.3 66.7 100.0 22 61 83 26.5 73.5 100.0 source of data: youth offender interview. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. 2 x2(3) = 10.7, p < .05. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 174 the proportions of youth who reported ever engaging in several property-related delinquent behaviours are shown in table 1. only one of these behaviours differed significantly across the four immigration status groups. one-half of all youth (50.5%) had broken into a house; individuals in the native/métis group were most likely to have engaged in this behaviour (86.7%), while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have done this (30.8%). almost three-quarters of the overall sample (73.1%) reported that they had damaged or destroyed someone’s property on purpose. almost all youth stated that they had ever stolen something from a place or person (90.3%), with youth from the canadian born/parents canadian born group (94.2%) and the native/métis group (93.3%) most likely to have done this, and youth from the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group least likely to have done this (76.9%). just over one-half of all participants indicated that they had ever stolen a car or motorcycle (55.4%); youth from the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group (44.4%) and the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group (45.5%) were the least likely to have stolen a car or motorcycle while youth in the native/métis group were most likely to have done this (71.4%). almost three-quarters of all individuals (73.5%) had stolen something with a group of friends. table 2 indicates the proportion of youth in each immigration status group who reported ever engaging in several person-related delinquent behaviours. none of these behaviours differed significantly across the groups; however, some patterns are worthy of note. slightly over onehalf (53%) of all youth indicated that they had taken or tried to take something from someone by force or threat of force; the proportion ranged from 33.3% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group, to 64.3% of youth in the native/métis group. a substantial majority of all youth (83.9%) reported that they had ever harassed, threatened, or bullied someone. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 175 table 2. ever engaged in person-related delinquent behaviour by immigrant status delinquent behaviour immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % taken/tried to take something by force/threat of force no yes total 23 26 49 46.9 53.1 100.0 5 9 14 35.7 64.3 100.0 5 6 11 45.5 54.5 100.0 6 3 9 66.7 33.3 100.0 39 44 83 47.0 53.0 100.0 harassed, threatened, or bullied someone no yes total 9 43 52 17.3 82.7 100.0 1 14 15 6.7 93.3 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 1 12 13 7.7 92.3 100.0 15 78 93 16.1 83.9 100.0 threatened someone with a weapon no yes total 18 25 43 41.9 58.1 100.0 4 10 14 28.6 71.4 100.0 2 7 9 22.2 77.8 100.0 8 4 12 66.7 33.3 100.0 32 46 78 41.0 59.0 100.0 assaulted or hurt someone no yes total 8 44 52 15.4 84.6 100.0 2 13 15 13.3 86.7 100.0 2 11 13 15.4 84.6 100.0 0 13 13 0.0 100.0 100.0 12 81 93 12.9 87.1 100.0 assaulted/hurt someone with a weapon no yes total 18 25 43 41.9 58.1 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 4 7 11 36.4 63.6 100.0 5 8 13 38.5 61.5 100.0 31 49 80 38.8 61.2 100.0 assaulted someone with friends no yes total 16 28 44 36.4 63.6 100.0 2 11 13 15.4 84.6 100.0 4 7 11 36.4 63.6 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 26 55 81 32.1 67.9 100.0 with a group of friends, fought with others no yes total 20 32 52 38.5 61.5 100.0 2 13 15 13.3 86.7 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 3 10 13 23.1 76.9 100.0 29 64 93 31.2 68.8 100.0 source of data: youth offender interview. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 176 when asked if they had ever threatened someone with a weapon, 59% of all youth stated that they had. participants in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were most likely to have threatened someone with a weapon (77.8%), while youth in the in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have done this (33.3%). a substantial majority of youth in all groups indicated that they had ever assaulted or hurt someone (87.1%), and slightly less than one-third (61.2%) stated that they had assaulted or hurt someone with a weapon. when asked if they had ever assaulted someone with friends, approximately two-thirds (67.9%) stated that they had; this behaviour was most common in the native/métis group (84.6%). when asked if they had fought with others with a group of friends, the prevalence of this behaviour ranged from 61.5% in the canadian born/parents canadian born group to 86.7% in the native/métis group. youth probation files contained considerable information regarding participants’ mental health status and any mental health diagnoses that they had received; these findings are summarized in table 3. several of these characteristics differed significantly across the immigration groups. almost one-half of all youth (47.1%) had ever had a psychological assessment; 76.9% of youth in the native/métis group had received an assessment, followed by 58.3% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group, 44.9% of youth in the canadian born/parents canadian born group, and only 9.1% of participants in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group. the majority of all youth (84.7%) had received counselling, ranging from 54.5% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group to 100% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group. table 3. mental health characteristics of youth by immigrant status mental health characteristics immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % ever had a psychological assessment2 no yes total 27 22 49 55.1 44.9 100.0 3 10 13 23.1 76.9 100.0 5 7 12 41.7 58.3 100.0 10 1 11 90.9 9.1 100.0 45 40 85 52.9 47.1 100.0 ever received counselling3 no yes total 4 45 49 8.2 91.8 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 0 12 12 0.0 100.0 100.0 5 6 11 45.5 54.5 100.0 13 72 85 15.3 84.7 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 177 diagnosis of mental health problems4 no yes total 23 29 52 44.2 55.8 100.0 4 10 14 28.6 71.4 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 43 49 92 46.7 53.3 100.0 depression5 no yes total 38 13 51 74.5 25.5 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 6 6 12 50.0 50.0 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 68 21 89 76.4 23.6 100.0 learning disability no yes total 42 9 51 82.4 17.6 100.0 11 2 13 84.6 15.4 100.0 10 2 12 83.3 16.7 100.0 13 0 13 100.0 0.0 100.0 76 13 89 85.4 14.6 100.0 attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder6 no yes total 32 19 51 62.7 37.3 100.0 6 7 13 46.2 53.8 100.0 5 7 12 41.7 58.3 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 55 34 89 61.8 38.2 100.0 conduct disorder no yes total 34 17 51 66.7 33.3 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 8 4 12 66.7 33.3 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 63 26 89 70.8 29.2 100.0 fetal alcohol spectrum disorder7 no yes total 50 1 51 98.0 2.0 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 9 3 12 75.0 25.0 100.0 13 0 13 100.0 0.0 100.0 84 5 89 94.4 5.6 100.0 anger issues no yes total 44 7 51 86.3 13.7 100.0 11 2 13 84.6 15.4 100.0 8 4 12 66.7 33.3 100.0 13 0 13 100.0 0.0 100.0 76 13 89 85.4 14.6 100.0 sources of data: youth offender interview and youth probation file review. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. 2 x2(3) = 11.7, p < .01. 3 x2(3) = 14.2, p < .01. 4 x2(3) = 14.2, p < .01. 5 x2(3) = 8.4, p < .05. 6 x2(3) = 8.6, p < .05. 7 x2(3) = 10.7, p < .05. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 178 just over one-half of the total sample had received a diagnosis of mental health problems (53.3%); this ranged from 7.7% of participants in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group to 71.4% of youth in the native/métis group. almost one-quarter of the total sample had received a diagnosis of depression (23.6%); a depression diagnosis was most common in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group (50%) and least common in the native/métis and first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background groups (7.7% each). the prevalence of a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (add/adhd) also differed significantly across immigration status groups. while the overall prevalence of an add/adhd diagnosis was 38.2%, when examined by group, the prevalence ranged from 7.7% for youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group to 58.3% in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group. finally, the prevalence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd) also differed significantly across immigration status groups; however, the overall prevalence of fasd was quite low (5.6%), so this finding should be interpreted with caution. the results indicated that 25% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group had a diagnosis of fasd, compared to 7.7% in the native/métis group, 2% in the canadian born/parents canadian born group, and 0% in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group. family factors domain several potential risk and protective family factors were examined in relation to participants’ immigration status. table 4 presents the findings for family characteristics. a significant relationship was found between having a history of being in foster care and immigration status. almost one-third of the total sample (29%) had a history of foster care. native/métis youth were substantially more likely to have been in foster care (60%) than were youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian (30.8%), the canadian born/parents canadian born (25%), and the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background groups (7.7%). whether youth had ever run away from home was also significantly related to immigration group. over two-thirds of participants in the total sample (68.8%) had run away from home; youth in the canadian born/parents canadian born (76.9%) and the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian groups (76.9%) were most likely to have run away while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have run away from home (38.5%). just over one-quarter of all youth reported that their parents were currently married (28.3%); however, there were no significant differences across groups on this variable. similarly, one-quarter of all participants stated that they were living with both parents at the time of their interview (25.8%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 179 table 4. family characteristics of youth by immigrant status family characteristics immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % marital status of parents married other2 total 14 37 51 27.5 72.5 100.0 3 12 15 20.0 80.0 100.0 5 8 13 38.5 61.5 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 26 66 92 28.3 71.7 100.0 current living arrangements at time of interview both parents other3 total 12 40 52 23.1 76.9 100.0 3 12 15 20.0 80.0 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 5 8 13 38.5 61.5 100.0 24 69 93 25.8 74.2 100.0 contact with child welfare no yes total 26 26 52 50.0 50.0 100.0 6 9 15 40.0 60.0 100.0 4 9 13 30.8 69.2 100.0 7 6 13 53.8 46.2 100.0 43 50 93 46.2 53.8 100.0 history of foster care4 no yes total 39 13 52 75.0 25.0 100.0 6 9 15 40.0 60.0 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 66 27 93 71.0 29.0 100.0 history of residence in group home no yes total 26 26 52 50.0 50.0 100.0 9 6 15 60.0 40.0 100.0 5 8 13 38.5 61.5 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 48 45 93 51.6 48.4 100.0 ever run away from home5 no yes total 12 40 52 23.1 76.9 100.0 6 9 15 40.0 60.0 100.0 3 10 13 23.1 76.9 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 29 64 93 31.2 68.8 100.0 sources of data: youth offender interview and youth probation file review. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. 2 “other” includes never married/common law, separated, divorced, and widowed. 3 “other” includes one parent/siblings, extended family, foster/group home, independent/partner, incarcerated, and other. 4 x2(3) = 10.3, p < .05. 5 x2(3) = 8.2, p < .05. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 180 just over one-half of all youth reported having contact with child welfare (53.8%); while not statistically significant, participants in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were most likely to have had child welfare contact (69.2%) while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have had contact with child welfare (46.2%). finally, when asked if they had ever lived in a group home, almost one-half of the entire sample indicated that they had (48.4%). table 5 presents the relationship between the exposure to various adverse family experiences and immigration status. the only variable that differed significantly across groups was whether there was criminal involvement by immediate family members of the youth. onefifth of all youth reported criminal involvement by family members (19.8%). youth in the native/métis group were most likely to report criminal involvement by family members (42.9%) while no youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group reported this. while not statistically significant, youth in the native/métis group were substantially more likely to have been exposed to domestic violence (78.6%) than were youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group (30.8%). over one-third of youth had a history of being physically abused (36.3%). youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were most likely to have experienced physical abuse (53.8%) while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have been physically abused (15.4%). a total of 16.5% of all youth had confirmed or suspected sexual abuse; the prevalence of sexual abuse ranged from 35.7% of youth in the native/métis group to 7.7% in each of the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian and the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background groups. table 5. exposure of youth to various adverse family experiences by immigrant status family experiences immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % domestic violence no yes total 22 30 52 42.3 57.7 100.0 3 11 14 21.4 78.6 100.0 6 7 13 46.2 53.8 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 40 52 92 43.5 56.5 100.0 substance abuse no yes total 24 27 51 47.1 52.9 100.0 6 8 14 42.9 57.1 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 11 2 13 84.6 15.4 100.0 49 42 91 53.8 46.2 100.0 physical abuse no yes total 30 21 51 58.8 41.2 100.0 11 3 14 78.6 21.4 100.0 6 7 13 46.2 53.8 100.0 11 2 13 84.6 15.4 100.0 58 33 91 63.7 36.3 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 181 emotional, mental or verbal abuse no yes total 34 17 51 66.7 33.3 100.0 10 4 14 71.4 28.6 100.0 10 3 13 76.9 23.1 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 66 25 91 72.5 27.5 100.0 sexual abuse no yes total 43 8 51 84.3 15.7 100.0 9 5 14 64.3 35.7 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 12 1 13 92.3 7.7 100.0 76 15 91 83.5 16.5 100.0 criminal involvement by immediate family member(s)2 no yes total 43 8 51 84.3 15.7 100.0 8 6 14 57.1 42.9 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 13 0 13 100.0 0.0 100.0 73 18 91 80.2 19.8 100.0 sources of data: youth offender interview and youth probation file review. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. 2 x2(3) = 9.4, p < .05. peer group factors domain two factors within the peer group domain were significantly related to immigration status: whether the youth was involved in lessons in dance, music, hobbies, or other non-sport activities (x2(3) = 8.9, p < .05) and whether they reported that they were a gang member at the time of the interview (x2(3) = 8.0, p < .05). however, only three youth in the entire sample indicated participating in lessons, so this finding should be interpreted with caution. two of these three youth were in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group, while the other youth was in the native/métis group. with regard to the gang membership variable, 14.4% of youth in all groups were gang members at the time of the interview. participants in the native/métis group were most likely to be gang members (33.3%), followed by youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group (23.1%) and the canadian born/parents canadian born group (10.2%). no youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were gang members at the time of the interview. one-half of all the youth (50.5%) indicated that some of their friends were gang members. although not statistically significant, native/métis youth were most likely to report that their friends were members of a gang (66.7%) while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian (46.2%) and the canadian born/parents canadian born (46%) groups were least likely to report this. over one-third of all participants reported having ever been a member of a gang (37.8%). school factors domain table 6 presents the relationship between several school factors and immigration status. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 182 table 6. school-related characteristics of youth by immigrant status school characteristics immigrant status total canadian born, parent(s) canadian born native/métis 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, caucasian 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, other ethnic background1 n % n % n % n % n % school status at time of interview2 attending not attending total 30 22 52 57.7 42.3 100.0 9 6 15 60.0 40.0 100.0 10 3 13 76.9 23.1 100.0 13 0 13 100.0 0.0 100.0 62 31 93 66.7 33.3 100.0 considered dropping out of school3 no yes total 9 21 30 30.0 70.0 100.0 5 4 9 55.6 44.4 100.0 3 7 10 30.0 70.0 100.0 5 8 13 38.5 61.5 100.0 22 40 62 35.5 64.5 100.0 ever been suspended from school3 no yes total 7 23 30 23.3 76.7 100.0 0 9 9 0.0 100.0 100.0 1 9 10 10.0 90.0 100.0 2 11 13 15.4 84.6 100.0 10 52 62 16.1 83.9 100.0 ever been bullied in school no yes total 31 21 52 59.6 40.4 100.0 6 9 15 40.0 60.0 100.0 7 6 13 53.8 46.2 100.0 9 4 13 69.2 30.8 100.0 53 40 93 57.0 43.0 100.0 ever been in fights at school no yes total 7 45 52 13.5 86.5 100.0 2 13 15 13.3 86.7 100.0 1 12 13 7.7 92.3 100.0 0 13 13 0.0 100.0 100.0 10 83 93 10.8 89.2 100.0 ever taken a weapon to school no yes total 29 23 52 55.8 44.2 100.0 5 10 15 33.3 66.7 100.0 6 7 13 46.2 53.8 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 48 45 93 51.6 48.4 100.0 ever used a weapon at school4 no yes total 17 5 22 77.3 22.7 100.0 7 3 10 70.0 30.0 100.0 5 1 6 83.3 16.7 100.0 4 0 4 100.0 0.0 100.0 33 9 42 78.6 21.4 100.0 gangs at school no yes total 26 24 50 52.0 48.0 100.0 9 5 14 64.3 35.7 100.0 6 6 12 50.0 50.0 100.0 8 5 13 61.5 38.5 100.0 49 40 89 55.1 44.9 100.0 sources of data: youth offender interview and youth probation file review. 1 “other ethnic background” includes middle eastern, hispanic, african, mulatto, and asian. 2 x2(3) = 9.3, p < .05. 3 these questions were only asked of youth who were currently attending school. 4 this question was only asked of youth who had ever taken a weapon to school. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 183 the only variable that differed significantly across groups was school status at the time of the interview. two-thirds of all participants (66.7%) were attending school at the time of the interview. all youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were attending school, compared to 76.9% of youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group, 60% of native/métis youth, and 57.7% of participants in the canadian born/parents canadian born group. the majority of youth who were attending school at the time of the interview reported that they had considered dropping out of school (64.5%), and the substantial majority of all youth who were attending school reported that they had ever received a school suspension (83.9%). when asked if they had ever been bullied in school, 43% indicated that they had and almost all youth (89.2%) reported that they had been in fights at school. when asked if they had ever taken a weapon to school, almost one-half of all participants indicated that they had (48.4%). native/métis youth were most likely to have taken a weapon to school (66.7%), while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have done this (38.5%). just over one-fifth of participants who had taken a weapon to school reported that they had used it (21.4%). this ranged from 30% of native/métis youth to no youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group. when asked if there are gangs at their school, 44.9% of all participants indicated that there are. community factors domain four community-related variables were examined in relation to participants’ immigration status: feelings of safety in the community; ever carried a weapon in the community; ever used a weapon in the community; and whether there are gangs in the community. none of these factors were found to be significantly related to the youths’ immigration group. the majority of participants reported that they feel safe in their community (80.6%). when asked if they had ever carried a weapon in their community, 44.1% of youth indicated that they had. just over one-half of native/métis youth and youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group (53.3% and 53.8%, respectively) had carried a weapon in their community. youth in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to report carrying a weapon in their community (30.8%). youth who had carried a weapon in their community were asked if they had ever used it, and 55% stated that they had. youth in the canadian born/parents canadian born group were most likely to state that they had used a weapon in their community (63.6%), while participants in the first or second generation immigrant, other ethnic background group were least likely to have used a weapon (33.3%). finally, just over one-half of all participants stated that there are gangs in their community (51.1%). youth in the native/métis group were most likely to report gangs in their community (80%), while youth in the first or second generation immigrant, caucasian group were least likely to state that there are gangs in their community (38.5%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 184 discussion a number of canadian and american authors (e.g., choi et al., 2005; powell, perreira, & harris, 2010; wortley, 2003) have emphasized the importance of examining risk and protective factors among ethnic and immigrant populations. given canada’s unique ethnic diversity, canadian research in this area is imperative to ensure appropriate and effective policy and program development. this study contributes to a small but growing body of literature in canada attempting to address the root causes of crime and victimization among these populations. risk and protective factors when examining these risk and protective factors by ethnic and immigrant groups, a number of notable patterns emerged. overall, the analyses did not reveal many instances where statistically significant differences in occurrence existed between the groups. though the small sample sizes may be partially responsible, the findings are in line with rojas and gretton’s (2007) observation that minority and non-minority youth generally display the same or similar risk factors. however, those factors that were found to vary significantly by immigrant group are important to note, and in line with the literature. the literature suggests a particularly high rate of substance abuse among aboriginal youth offenders (rojas & gretton, 2007; yessine & bonta, 2009), which was confirmed by the analyses. in addition, the literature also suggests a high incidence of mental health issues among native and métis youth, which was confirmed in the analyses, with native and métis youth having the highest incidence of a mental health diagnosis. however, while native and métis youth were most likely to have a mental health diagnosis, they were not as likely to have received counselling. native and métis youth were most likely to possess a number of other individual risk factors related to delinquent behaviour. the incidence of property crimes, particularly theft, was often highest among aboriginal youth, with this group being significantly more likely to break into a house. findings related to family risk factors for aboriginal youth were also in line with the literature. the analyses demonstrated that native and métis youth were among the most likely to have a history of child welfare involvement, particularly foster care placement. this is consistent with the findings in the literature related to caregiver inconsistency (rojas & gretton, 2007; yessine & bonta, 2009). though the literature also suggests that multiple caregivers among extended family is an important value in aboriginal culture, the involvement with the child welfare system that is evident among this sample of native and métis youth indicates that extended family may not be predominant in their lives. exposure to family violence and familial substance abuse, as well as having family members with criminal involvement, were also more common among the aboriginal youth in the sample, consistent with rojas and gretton’s (2007) findings. in addition, though the differences were not significant, native and métis youth had the highest incidence of suspected or confirmed sexual abuse in the sample. bracken et al. (2009) discuss the generational impact of residential schools, and the role this legacy plays in gang involvement among aboriginal youth. the desire for support and acceptance on the part of aboriginal youth offenders, who frequently live in poverty and lack international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 185 family support, is often fulfilled in gangs. the study results support this hypothesis, with aboriginal youth being most likely to be involved with gangs, and significantly more likely to be gang members at the time they were interviewed. further, analyses revealed that 80% of native and métis youth report the presence of gangs in their community, the highest of all groups. the low incidence of involvement in extracurricular activities suggests that native and métis youth are not finding support and acceptance in pro-social ways. this, combined with the findings related to familial risk factors, suggest support for bracken et al.’s (2009) assertion. future research is needed to more closely examine the interaction between family risk factors, poverty, and gang involvement. the available literature also cites poor educational attainment as a possible risk factor among aboriginal youth offenders (rojas & gretton, 2007). findings from the current study support this suggestion, with the native and métis youth being significantly less likely than immigrant youth to be in school at the time they were interviewed; however, native and métis youth were also less likely than youth in all other groups to consider dropping out. the native and métis youth in the sample struggled with behavioural issues in school, being more likely than youth in other groups to be suspended and use a weapon at school. however, native and métis youth also had the highest incidence of being bullied in school. the combination of these factors suggests a negative spiral in the educational experience of native and métis youth, and potentially, a cycle of learned helplessness. findings of significant risk factors among native and métis youth are coupled with the low incidence of various protective factors. although the differences were not statistically significant, native and métis youth were the least likely to have married parents. they were also the least likely to be living with both parents at the time of their interview. native and métis youth also had a very low incidence of involvement in extracurricular activities. though native and métis youth were found to be significantly more likely to display certain risk factors, first or second generation caucasian immigrant youth and first or second generation immigrant youth of other ethnic backgrounds displayed some of their own unique risk and protective factors as well. findings from the study reveal that with regard to individual risk factors, caucasian immigrant youth are slightly more likely to engage in the use and exchange of illegal drugs, and are substantially more likely to have substance abuse issues than immigrant youth of other ethnic backgrounds, 77% versus 23%. furthermore, while caucasian immigrant youth had slightly higher rates of delinquent behaviour involving property damage, immigrant youth of other ethnic backgrounds had higher rates of theft under and over $50. this may indicate support for the hypothesis that immigrant youth from certain backgrounds commit economic crimes due to poverty and/or the absence of supervision and structure; however, more information on these factors is required to conclusively identify these relationships. the literature also suggests that the use of violence to resolve issues is a risk factor among immigrant youth (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). findings from the current study revealed that immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds had the highest rate of assault (100%), while caucasian immigrant youth had the highest rate of threatening someone with a weapon. with regard to mental health, though there is little information in the literature, the current study revealed some notable patterns among immigrant youth. immigrant youth from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 186 other ethnic backgrounds were the least likely to receive a psychological assessment, have a mental health diagnosis, or to have had counselling, with these findings being significant. in contrast, all immigrant caucasian youth had received counselling and were among the most likely to have had a diagnosis of mental health problems, particularly depression, adhd, and fasd. though it is difficult to draw conclusions about this difference, it may be explained by differences in cultural norms and values regarding mental health. future research is required to clarify mental health issues as a risk factor among immigrant and ethnic minority youth. regarding family factors, the literature has cited family poverty and a lack of parental supervision as possible risk factors for immigrant youth (goodman & ruggiero, 2008; rossiter & rossiter, 2009). though information regarding family poverty was not available, analyses of available family factors revealed that youth in both immigrant groups were slightly more likely to have married parents and to live with both parents at the time of the interview, but that these rates were still quite low – less than 40% for both variables. immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds were significantly less likely than all the other groups to have a history of foster care, and less likely to have had a history of residence in a group home or any contact with child welfare. they were also significantly less likely to run away from home than caucasian immigrant youth, who had the highest rate among the groups. the greater likelihood of intact families and attachment to homes for immigrant youth from other backgrounds points to a possible protective factor. however, the rates of intact families are still quite low among all groups, which points to the potential for unsupervised time, and ultimately, the opportunity to offend. in addition, immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds were most often the least likely to experience abuse in their families, and were significantly less likely to have family members involved in crime. the findings were similar for caucasian immigrant youth, though the rate of criminal involvement by family members was significantly higher for these youth. the literature warns of the high propensity for gang involvement among immigrant youth given the cultural isolation they may experience and their desire for acceptance and belonging, citing that approximately 82% of gang members are visible minorities (rossiter & rossiter, 2009). rossiter and rossiter (2009) contend that a cultural disconnect may arise among immigrant youth, and peer influence may overcome familial influence. the findings related to peer factors from the current study reveal some interesting findings in this regard. immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds were second to native and métis youth in being the most likely to be gang members at the time of their interview. approximately half of the youth in both immigrant groups had friends who belonged to a gang. though gang membership was relatively low among immigrant youth, the risk is present, particularly given findings related to extracurricular activities. though immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds had the highest rate of involvement in organized activities, and were significantly more likely to be involved in non-sport activities and lessons, the rate of involvement in organized activities was only slightly over one-third, and only two youth were involved in non-sport activities. as suggested by rossiter and rossiter (2009), involvement in pro-social groups and activities often protects youth from the allure of gang involvement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 187 with regard to school risk factors, the literature suggests that immigrant youth may face greater educational challenges than other youth, perhaps due to cultural differences and challenges in other areas of life, as well as the possibility of having english as a second language (rossiter & rossiter, 2009; goodman & ruggiero, 2008). findings from the analyses revealed that immigrant youth were significantly more likely to be in school at the time of the interview as compared to canadian and native/métis youth, with all of the immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds attending school. however, other school risk factors were present that may suggest educational struggles. caucasian immigrant youth were the most likely to consider dropping out of school, followed closely by non-caucasian immigrant youth, and both groups were more likely than canadian youth to have been suspended. youth in the immigrant groups also had the highest rates of getting into fights at school. thus, though immigrant youth seem to demonstrate a willingness to attend school, which may act as a protective factor, findings would suggest a lack of attachment and behavioural issues. finally, with regard to community factors, the literature suggests that strong ties to and involvement in the community among immigrant youth acts as a protective factor (choi et al., 2005; rossiter & rossiter, 2009), fulfilling the sense of belonging that could be satisfied by gang involvement. though the findings from analyses of community factors are mixed, a majority of immigrant youth from other ethnic backgrounds reported feeling safe in their communities, whereas caucasian immigrant youth were the most likely to feel unsafe. just over half of caucasian immigrant youth carried a weapon in the community, compared to a third of immigrant youth of other ethnic backgrounds. under half of both groups reported gangs in their community. though few conclusions can be drawn from findings related to community, the literature suggests that increasing community protective factors decreases the propensity for crime. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 1: 166–188 188 references alberta crime reduction and safe communities task force. (2007). keeping communities safe: report and recommendations. edmonton: government of alberta. bonta, j., laprairie, c., & wallace-capretta, s. (1997). risk prediction and re-offending: aboriginal and non-aboriginal offenders. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 39(2), 127–144. bracken, d. c., deane, l., & morrissette, l. (2009). desistance and social marginalization: the case of canadian aboriginal offenders. theoretical criminology, 13(61), 61–78. choi, y., harachi, t. w., gillmore, m. r., & catalano r. f. (2005). applicability of the social development model to urban minority youth: examining the relationship between external constraints, family socialization, and problem behaviours. journal of research on adolescence, 15(4), 505–534. goodman, a., & ruggiero, v. (2008). crime, punishment, and ethnic minorities in england and wales. race/ethnicity: multidisciplinary global perspectives, (2)1, 53–68. government of alberta. (2011). alberta’s crime prevention framework. edmonton: government of alberta safe communities secretariat. macrae, l. d., bertrand, l. d., paetsch, j. j., hornick, j. p., & degusti, b. (2009). a study of youth reoffending in calgary. prepared for the alberta law foundation. calgary, ab: canadian research institute for law and the family. powell, d., perreira, k. m., & harris, k. m. (2010). trajectories of delinquency from adolescence to adulthood. youth & society, 41(4), 275–502. rojas, e. y., & gretton, h. m. (2007). background, offence characteristics, and criminal outcomes of aboriginal youth who sexually offend: a closer look at aboriginal youth intervention needs. sexual abuse: a journal of research and treatment, 19(3), 257–283. rossiter, m. j., & rossiter, k. r. (2009). diamonds in the rough: bridging gaps in supports for at-risk immigrant and refugee youth. international migration and immigration, 10(4), 409–429. wortley, s. (2003). hidden intersections: research on race, crime, and criminal justice in canada. canadian ethnic studies, 35(3), 99–117. yessine, a. k., & bonta, j. (2009). the offending trajectories of youthful aboriginal offenders. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 51(4), 435–472. microsoft word 17 youth_leaving_care.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202020049 support for youth leaving care: a national research study, india kiran modi, lakshmi madhavan, leena prasad, gurneet kalra, suman kasana, and sanya kapoor abstract: this paper is a condensed version of a study entitled “beyond 18: leaving child care institutions — a study of aftercare practices in five states of india”, conducted and published in 2019 by udayan care, a charitable organisation, with support from unicef india and tata trusts. this research involved the participation of care leavers, government functionaries, duty-bearers, and civil society practitioners. it found that upon turning 18, youth transitioning out of child care institutions to independent life in india experience many challenges, such as securing housing and identity documents; accessing education, skill development, and employment opportunities; and garnering psychosocial support. this study also showed that absent or inadequate aftercare support during transition increases care leavers’ vulnerabilities to homelessness, unemployment, substance misuse, and ruptured social relationships. it also found that continued aftercare support is necessary to foster independent living skills in these young people and enable their reintegration into mainstream society. while exploring the continuum from child care to aftercare, the researchers developed the concept of a “sphere of aftercare”, comprising eight domains of support that are considered essential for a successful transition. the study revealed a lack of transition planning at the level of child care institutions and functionaries and a general lack of understanding of the holistic aftercare needs of youth throughout the eight identified domains. the study also found an absence of clarity about stakeholders’ roles; a lack of data management with regard to the number of youth leaving care, leading to inadequate budget planning; and a lack of adequate monitoring mechanisms to assess care leavers’ outcomes. in light of this study’s findings, policy reforms and ways of developing robust aftercare programmes are recommended in relation to policy, practice, and law. keywords: aftercare, care leaver, india, transition, youth acknowledgement: permission to reprint this material has been granted by dr. kiran modi, the corresponding author. we gratefully acknowledge this permission. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 161  kiran modi phd (corresponding author) is the founder and managing trustee of udayan care, a-43, chittaranjan park, new delhi – 110019, india. email: kiranmodi@udayancare.org lakshmi madhavan ma is a project officer at the national institute of mental health and neuro-sciences, hosur road, bengaluru – 56002, karnataka, india. email: lakshmimadhavan@live.com leena prasad llb is the assistant director (advocacy, research, training) at udayan care, a-43, chittaranjan park, new delhi – 110019, india. email: leenadivansh@gmail.com gurneet kalra phd is senior coordinator (research and advocacy) at udayan care, a-43, chittaranjan park, new delhi – 110019, india. email: gurneet.kalra89@gmail.com suman kasana ba is pursuing a masters in public policy from the national law school of india university, bengaluru, karnataka, india. email: smnkasana@gmail.com sanya kapoor is a final year law student at amity law school, f-1 block, amity university campus, sector 125, noida, uttar pradesh 201303, delhi, india. email: sanyakapoor2809@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 162  it is indisputable that a safe and functional family is the keystone for ensuring a child’s optimum development and harmonisation with society at large. the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc; 1989), which has been ratified by the government of india, recommends that every effort be made to avoid separation of children from their parents until separation is clearly in the best interest of the individual child (article 9). additionally, the united nations guidelines for the alternative care of children (ungacc; 2009) has prescribed two guiding principles for children living in any alternative setting: the “principle of necessity” and the “principle of suitability”; these attempt to ensure that only those children who absolutely need alternative forms of care are considered for and placed in alternative care contexts, and that those contexts are the most suitable to their healthy and holistic growth and development (united nations general assembly, 2009). in india, as in many other countries, owing to numerous circumstances such as parental death, poverty, abuse, disasters, and armed or internal conflicts, children are separated from their birth families and are often forced to grow up in alternative care settings meant for children without parental care, where they become the responsibility of the state. the key instruments governing child care and aftercare in india are the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act 2015, its model rules 2016, and the revised integrated child protection scheme (cps; ministry of women and child development, 2014), which together provide an overarching legal framework for child care and aftercare support for children in need of care and protection in alternative care settings as well as for children in conflict with law. in the indian scenario, in the absence of robust foster care and other family-based care models, child care institutions (ccis) remain the most sought-after option for the care and protection of children without parental care. the term “cci”, as mentioned in the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act (2015), can include any of the following: “children home, open shelter, observation home, special home, place of safety, specialised adoption agency, and a fit facility, recognised under this act, for providing care and protection to children, who are in need of such services”, on a short-term or long-term basis. ccis are intended to address the overall needs of targeted children in an age-appropriate manner (udayan care, 2017). aftercare is provided to a young person who exits formal care at 18 years of age and who is then called a care leaver (cl). he or she has transitioned out of child care to start the journey towards independent living and social integration, and for whom a comprehensive set of services across different domains of life must be provided. it is pertinent to note here that, for children growing up and residing in ccis up to the age of 18, a robust ecosystem to support them in the aftercare phase is lacking, despite pronounced laws on the kind of aftercare support they should be getting (dabir et al., 2011). the transition from protected living as a child in a cci to independent living as an adult requires substantial support in the form of aftercare to enable selfreliance. aftercare, as a vital component of the continuum of care, is crucial for cls if they are to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 163  realise their true potential and become contributing members of society. due to lack of adequate preparation and requisite transition planning at the ccis, and non-implementation of the aftercare programme, these youth are usually among the most socially excluded and vulnerable people in society (dutta, 2017). this paper is an attempt to capture the situation of cls and aftercare approaches as they currently exist in india; to highlight the gaps in policy, law, and practice on aftercare; and to suggest a workable pathway forward. globally, many studies describe the challenges of children in institutions, the struggles of transition to independent life, and the transition’s impact on cls (akister et al., 2010; doucet, 2018; meade & mendes, 2014). unfortunately, in india, one cannot find much empirical evidence regarding those challenges and struggles. only a few standalone studies, from districts, states, and facilities, have been conducted, most of them are qualitative in nature; furthermore, most studies do not explore the multiple dimensions of aftercare (atluri et al., 2018; dutta, 2016). our intensive research in several states revealed that there is a clear lack of documentation on aftercare in india; on this basis, udayan care initiated a study on aftercare in collaboration with unicef and tata trusts that aimed to build empirical evidence with a view to influencing the practice of aftercare and improve outcomes of cls in india. the research was titled, “beyond 18: leaving child care institutions — a study of aftercare practices in five states of india.” this report explained the conditions and experiences of children and aftercare youth in india. it also highlighted some recommendations made by different stakeholders themselves, and attempted to capture conditions and circumstances faced by cls and existing aftercare approaches in order to highlight the existing gaps in aftercare policy, law, and practice and suggest a workable pathway forward. it also places a strong emphasis on the need for collaborative and coordinated efforts between different stakeholders to ensure no cl is left behind. in its conception, the beyond 18 study kept in view three interrelated dynamics: the critically important nature of aftercare services for the rehabilitation of cls; the inadequate availability of aftercare infrastructure and support in certain indian states; and the nearly total absence of empirical data regarding their annual numbers, leading to inadequate budget planning, as well as difficulty understanding the nature of challenges and opportunities faced by young adults in need of aftercare support. this was based on our literature review, where studies stated the lack of infrastructure and support for the cls (rutman & hubberstey, 2016), the importance of rehabilitative services for cls (trout et al., 2014), and the absence of enough evidence regarding the challenges being faced by the cls (murray & goddard, 2014). this research brought together a much bigger universe of cls and stakeholders from five different states of india, than did earlier indian studies, and also generated both qualitative and quantitative evidence on multiple aspects of aftercare. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 164  literature review: the transition from child care to aftercare and then the larger world a gradual and supported transition out of alternative care settings is the key to ensure that young adults “aging out” of the system prosper in their lives as they move forward (modi et al., 2018). this transition, if not adequately planned and implemented, is bound to bring about a host of difficulties. the transition to aftercare and then independence requires youth to have emotional stability, functional skills, and financial independence (montgomery et al., 2006). however, a lack of positive adult interaction from consistent carers limits cls’ ability to develop personal confidence and key social skills (modi et al., 2016). there is also definitive research showing that the basic tenets of education are compromised in the ccis, leading to negative impacts on students’ educational progress and related developmental outcomes (browne, 2017; legal center for foster care and education, 2008). further, poor academic performance leads in the long run to outcomes such as unemployment and low wages, making it difficult for young people to earn a decent livelihood (torrico, 2010; united nations world youth report, 2020). studies of the mental health of cls have consistently shown that self-stigma and social stigma impact their access to mental health services (villagrana et al., 2017). it has also been found that self-stigma affects an adolescent’s self-identity, self-efficacy, and interpersonal relationships. this influences self-sufficiency once youth leave care (villagrana et al., 2017). therefore, support in the forms of free counselling, guidance, interventional support, psychological assessment services, and crisis management support from designated mental health professionals has been recognised as vital to successful transitions (gutterswijk et al., 2020). cls also need constant guidance in developing life skills, knowledge about their legal rights and responsibilities, and training on how they can nurture their own personal development through self-care and prosocial behaviour (browne, 2017). analysis of the aforementioned studies shows that aftercare is an important final stage in the continuum of care, as it ensures smooth rehabilitation and reintegration of children in need of care and protection and of children in conflict with the law as they step into adulthood (doucet, 2018). policy and legal framework for aftercare international framework ungacc provides comprehensive guidance on minimum standards for aftercare services (ungacc, 2009). it urges agencies and facilities to have a clear policy aimed at preparing children and youth to be self-reliant and to acquire social and life skills by giving them educational and vocational training opportunities, and access to social, legal, and health services, along with financial support. it also expects the agencies to take into consideration a youth’s gender, age, and maturity; to provide counselling and support throughout the process of transition from care to aftercare — notably to avoid exploitation; and to encourage the public and private sectors to employ such youth by providing the necessary incentives (mori et al., 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 165  national policy framework the constitution of india and various laws and policies laid down over the years have reiterated the government’s commitment to safeguarding the rights of children. the national policy for children, 2013 refers to “child protection” as one of its priorities and recognises vulnerable categories of children who are in need of intervention. however, the national policy does not explicitly recognise the vulnerabilities of children leaving ccis and the need for aftercare (ministry of women and child development, 2013). later, the national policy for youth 2014 was developed, which specifically recognised that, “there are a number of youth at-risk and marginalised youth who require special attention in order to ensure that they can access and benefit from the government programmes” (ministry of youth affairs & sports, 2014, p. 66). it also acknowledged “youth in institutional care, orphanages, correctional homes and prisons” as a vulnerable group, but none of the policies specifically addressed the needs of cls (ministry of youth affairs & sports, 2014, p. 67). to link the policy objectives to actionable programmes, the national plan of action for children (npa) was formulated in 2016. it prioritised “providing adequate and appropriate infrastructure and ensure safety and security of children in all residential care facilities … established under domestic laws” (ministry of women and child development, 2016, p. 12). however, the npa also did not make any specific reference to children leaving institutions on attaining majority. the national policy for on skill development and entrepreneurship 2015, (ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, 2015) aims to meet the challenge of skilling training at scale with speed, standard (quality), and sustainability, and provides an umbrella framework to for skill development. additionally, there are schemes initiated by the government that provide subsidies and scholarships for higher education, all of which can be accessed by the cls (national policy for on skill development and entrepreneurship, 2015, pp. 29, 32). national legislative framework juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act, 2015 and model rules, 2016: in the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act 2015 (jj act), section 2(5) stipulates that, “ ‘aftercare’ means making provision of support, financial or otherwise, to persons, who have completed the age of eighteen years but have not completed the age of twenty-one years, and have left any institutional care to join the mainstream of the society” (p. 2). further, section 46 urges the state to provide financial support to children leaving a cci at 18 years of age “in order to facilitate child’s re-integration into the mainstream of society” (p. 24). the procedures and processes are further defined in the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) model rules 2016 (jj rules), which are more operational in nature. they state that children leaving institutional care at the age of 18 “may be provided aftercare till the age of 21 … and in exceptional circumstances, for two more years on completing 21 years of age” (p. 196). state governments international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 166  must make an aftercare programme and provide funds for children in aftercare, which must be transferred directly to their bank accounts (p. 195). services to be provided under the aftercare programme are clearly defined. child protection scheme: the cps that came into effect in 2009 and was revised in 2014 (ministry of women and child development, 2014) is the vehicle for financing and implementing the jj act. the scheme outlines the criteria for the selection of aftercare organisations and the delivery of aftercare services. under this scheme, aftercare is rudimentarily funded through the aftercare organisation at the meagre monthly sum of rs. 2000 (27.40 usd) per transitioning youth. under the cps, the budgetary support that states can seek for aftercare programmes ranges from rs. 15 lakhs (20,560 usd) for states with less than 15 districts, to rs. 45 lakhs (61,663 usd) for states with more than 30 districts (ministry of women and child development, 2014, p. 55). child protection machinery and roles: in india, child welfare committees (cwcs), juvenile justice boards, or the children’s courts can order a youth to receive aftercare from the ages of 18 to 21 years or, if required, 23. they are also mandated to review the effectiveness of the aftercare support extended and monitor the progress of every youth. the state child protection society (scps) is responsible for developing programmes for aftercare and maintaining a database of aftercare organisations. the district child protection unit (dcpu), which has primary responsibility for the implementation of the cps in each district, develops aftercare-related databases and referral directories at the district level to share with the scps. planning for transition and rehabilitation: section 39(1) of the jj act, 2015 refers to the child’s individual care plan (icp) as the basis for the rehabilitation and social integration of any child who is being released from an institution, irrespective of their age. the icp is defined in the jj rules, 2016 (p. 176) and includes components of release and restoration, follow-up, and social mainstreaming. the icp has a component on a pre-release report, to be prepared 15 days before release, that includes the rehabilitation and restoration plan for the youth (p. 263). it also has a post-release plan but with a focus on restoration to families (p. 264). services: the services provided under the aftercare programme (as provided by cps and jj rules, 2016) may include: community group housing on a temporary basis …; provision of a stipend during … vocational training or scholarships for higher education …; arrangements for skill training, and placement … through coordination with national skill development programme, indian institute for skill training and other such … programmes; provision of a counsellor to stay in regular contact … to discuss their rehabilitation plan; provision of creative outlets …; arrangement of loans and subsidies for [those] aspiring to set up entrepreneurial activities; and encouragement to sustain themselves without state or institutional support. (p. 195) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 167  also, cls are encouraged to move out of the group home to stay in a place of their own. moreover, rule 83(4) allows the juvenile justice fund to be used for providing lump-sum subsistence support to cls. it can also be used for providing aftercare facilities and entrepreneurship funds to cls for starting up small businesses. whilst policy and law clearly recognise the need for aftercare through a range of services, the lack of systematic preparation for aftercare, the paucity of resources, the low number of functioning aftercare organisations across the districts, and a lack of understanding of roles and responsibilities amongst functionaries result in a situation where very few of these services actually reach cls (dutta, 2017). research methodology children exiting ccis on attaining adulthood need extended support in the form of aftercare. thus, study of the present ecosystem of aftercare practices is crucial, not only to develop an understanding of the cls’ situation, but also to develop strategies to support youth leaving care (bhargava et al., 2018). to this end, udayan care’s national aftercare study researched the current aftercare practices in the states of delhi, gujarat, karnataka, maharashtra, and rajasthan. this study considered the three interrelated aspects of aftercare: the nature of aftercare services for rehabilitation of cls, the inadequate availability of aftercare support and infrastructure, and the lack of data regarding challenges faced by these cls. design the present study followed a mixed method approach with a descriptive research design that uses both the quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry in tandem. participants’ demographics table 1 provides an overview of how many cls in each state participated, when the research was conducted, and how many key informant interviews (kiis) took place in each state. table 1. research overview state total cls period of research kiis delhi 55 february–april 2019 10 gujarat 84 november 2018–may 2019 20 karnataka 108 april–december 2018 14 maharashtra 107 april–october 2018 20 rajasthan 81 september 2018–april 2019 20 note. cl = care leaver; kii = key informant interview. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 168  care leavers participants in the beyond 18 study were children in need of care and protection who had attained the age of 18 years and had exited a cci in one of the five states under study. a total of 435 cls who had grown up in a cci and were older than 18 years of age were contacted. a stratified convenience sampling method was used for conducting the interviews, based on the cl’s age, sex, and type of cci (government or non-government). the process of selection of respondents involved the following steps: step 1: the research team approached governmental and non-governmental organisations (ngos) engaged in aftercare and child care services, as well as the local dcpu and cwc members, to obtain names and contact details of young adults who fulfilled the criteria noted above. step 2: respondents were stratified based on their age (18–21 years, 22–25 years, and 26 years and above), their sex/gender, and the type of cci they had lived in (governmental or ngo) with an aim to have proportionate representation wherever possible. the sample comprised 55% male cls and 45% female cls. there was a state-wise variation in the gender composition, with maharashtra having a significantly higher representation of males. all the cls within the ambit of this study were between the ages of 17 years and 30 years, with 72% in the age group of 18 to 21 years; only one cl was 17 years of age. a little less than half of the cls had resided in government-run ccis. those cls who had received aftercare service or support on one or more occasions from a state government or an ngo-run aftercare programme were designated “aftercare receivers”. key informants for a more complete understanding of aftercare in the state, along with cls, the research team brought together a sample of 84 key informants (kis), both male and female. as it was important to look for a wide variety of viewpoints and experience, kis included representatives of various ccis (governmental and non-governmental), aftercare providers and programme managers, social workers, case workers, practitioners, experts, policy-makers, activists, and scholars in child and youth protection. another set of perspectives was provided by state officials: representatives of the department of social justice and empowerment and of the department of women and child development, cwc members, juvenile justice board members, district child protection officers, state child protection officers, district women and child development officers, child welfare officers, and probation officers. data collation and collection the study used a diverse set of tools for data collation, indigenously developed, with an interwoven mechanism of triangulation for better understanding of the lives of the cls and the views of the stakeholders engaged in aftercare. an inception consultation was held at the initial stage of the research in each state to develop an understanding of the situation and collate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 169  secondary data. these workshops provided information that was critical in adapting the research to each state. this was also used as an opportunity to conduct three focus group discussions (fgds) in each state. round-table meetings with stakeholders were organised again in each state towards the end of the study, to share the draft findings of the study and seek input on the recommendations. certain other tools, such as structured interviews of cls, in-depth interviews for case studies, and semi-structured and open-ended kiis, were also used extensively. the tools were finalised, and content validated during the pilot-testing phase by a team of researchers, analysts, statisticians, and experts from the field. data collection was completed by the state documentation teams through individual in-person interviews in different locations such as coffee shops, their places of accommodation, and public parks. table 2 below provides an overview of the tools employed for data collection. table 2. tools employed for data collection tool stakeholder description structured interviews cls this interview schedule was developed by udayan care’s multidisciplinary team of experienced practitioners with inputs from unicef state teams and state implementation partners, and international and indian research scholars specialising in aftercare research. the probes were crafted keeping in mind the sensitivities of the cls. questions with the potential of triggering any negative emotions were reworded or removed. in-depth interviews for case studies cls in-depth interviews were designed covering areas pertinent to cls including separation, trauma, neglect, life in ccis, opportunities and challenges in their present lives, and their perceived success or failure. the cls chosen for case studies included young adults in different life situations: successful, moderately successful, or struggling. semi-structured interviews were conducted. to analyse the case studies, mike stein’s categories of “moving on”, “survivors”, and “strugglers” were used (stein, 2012). semi-structured and open-ended interviews kis semi-structured interviews were used to elicit candid responses from these professionals regarding their opinions of the existing aftercare framework. the kiis were administered in-person, by email, or by phone. focus group discussions the fgd guide was developed for cls and with kis. the proceedings of the fgds consolidated the research team’s understanding of the complex and interdependent challenges of aftercare provision. note. cci = child care institution; cl = care leaver; ki = key informant; fgd = focus group discussion. ethical approval and limitations the research protocol, along with the current study’s design, methodology, and tools, were approved by the suraksha independent ethics committee through its committee for scientific review and evaluation of biomedical research. this research does present certain limitations, such as inability to access cls who did not receive any aftercare support, inability to sample cls international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 170  from rural locations, non-inclusion of cls with special needs, and lack of available documentation in the public domain. sphere of aftercare — the study framework the research team undertook a secondary review of various frameworks for delivering aftercare in other countries. combining these existing frameworks with our practice-based understanding, developed through udayan care’s years of experience in dealing with aftercare, and the pilot study in delhi, the team evolved a framework for approaching aftercare comprehensively: the “sphere of aftercare” (see figure 1). this is a comprehensive set of principles relating to rehabilitative support and services for cls transitioning out of care. the sphere of aftercare framework divides the scope of aftercare support and services into eight interdependent domains in which cls may require support if they are to successfully transition out of care into mainstream society: housing, independent living skills, physical health, educational and vocational skills, social support and interpersonal skills, financial independence and career, emotional well-being, and identity and legal awareness. since each state is unique in its policy approach and the present state of aftercare varies, the study does not attempt to consolidate data. instead, the focus is to bring out common trends that indicate where learning is needed or where a gap needs to be filled. it also brings forth the outliers or the deviations in specific states that call for more concerted intervention. figure 1. the sphere of aftercare international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 171  it is posited that if a cl is to achieve independence and social reintegration, none of these domains can be ignored. as cls transition out of care, they may require support and services under one or more of these domains depending on their unique needs and aspirations. the sphere can serve as the guiding principle for assessing cls’ needs and developing aftercare programmes. the sphere of aftercare framework was used in the construction of interviews and questionnaires; the resulting data were then subjected to qualitative analysis. additional themes were identified based on conventional methods of qualitative analysis. quantitative data was processed with the help of the statistical package for social sciences (spss). descriptive statistics, frequencies, and crosstabulations were used for analysing the data. thereafter, tables, charts, and graphs were prepared. indexing a composite score for each of the eight domains was computed to develop a domain index. each of these eight domain indices consisted of anywhere between three to 18 polar questions that could be answered either “yes” or “no”. a positive answer was assigned a score of 1, while a negative answer was assigned a score of 0. a respondent’s domain index score was the average score for the selected questions. depending on their domain index score, each cl was categorised as having an “unsatisfactory”, “neutral”, or “satisfactory” score for that domain. further analyses and correlations were conducted on the domain index scores and their categorisation. the scores for each of the eight domains were added and averaged out to give the overall aftercare quality index (aqi) for each cl. additionally, two more indices were developed for the transition planning phase that precedes aftercare and is the preparatory period at cci before transitioning. these two indices capture the childhood experiences and skill development of cls before leaving the cci at 18 years. results and discussion with the objective of understanding the status of aftercare in india, this study was conducted across the five states of delhi, gujarat, karnataka, maharashtra, and rajasthan. each of these states is unique not only from the perspective of its overall policy framework but also with respect to the status of the state’s implementation of the jj act, the institutional care services it provides, its history of aftercare services, and its further initiatives to design and deliver aftercare services to cls. further exploration of this topic is not within the scope of this paper; interested readers are referred to the main report1 (udayan care, 2019). the major finding of the study shows that upon leaving their ccis at 18 years, and faced with living independently in the outside world, many of our participants did not receive adequate aftercare support and struggled to adjust to the transition. the study findings also indicate that 59% of cls were not aware of aftercare services and other welfare schemes that they could have accessed. the analysis of access to aftercare and welfare services further revealed that, while 1https://www.udayancare.org/research-and-publication/research-studies-and-papers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 172  around 73% of all cls received aftercare services in at least one of the domains of the sphere of aftercare, more than a quarter (27%) of the cls did not receive any form of aftercare support. the following section reports on the quantitative findings from interviews with 435 cls from the five states, as well as the qualitative data obtained through 84 kiis with different stakeholders, 12 fgds and 23 in-depth case studies across the five states. life in cci to explore the life of the cls in the ccis, two indices, the ccis life experience index and the skill development index, were considered. the cci life experience index is a composite score that factors continuity of education, association with family, stability or instability through multiple placements, and feelings of empowerment, as well as involvement in the planning of one’s future life. overall, only half (51.5%) of all cls had a satisfactory cci life experience index score, with 58% of cls from ngo-run ccis, but only 45% of cls from government-run ccis, reporting a satisfactory score. additionally, we found that the cci life experience index was positively correlated to all eight domains in the sphere of aftercare. therefore, we show that children who have had positive experiences in the ccis are likely to fare better in most domains of aftercare. a composite cci skill index score for three groups of skills — job readiness and vocational skills, independent living skills, and interpersonal skills — was computed, based on whether children in ccis received any training, either hands-on or through workshops. about 37% of cls had an “unsatisfactory” cci skill index score, indicating that cls gained only minimal skill training during their stay in the cci. karnataka had the best score for skill training as only 43% of the cls had an unsatisfactory score, whereas rajasthan had the worst score with 99% of the cls reporting an unsatisfactory score. an analysis of the findings in regard to the sphere of aftercare shows that while the ccis are intended to serve as a refuge to protect the cls, they fail to prepare them to establish links with society by harmonising their needs and wants with the rest of society, as opportunities for exposure are limited. more than three-quarters of the cls left the ccis before the age of 20, while 17.5% stayed beyond that age. cls living in the cci after the age of 18 years included 28% (n = 98) of the respondents from rajasthan and 30% (n = 84) of those from gujarat. in delhi, 51% of the cls left their cci at 19 years. extended stays in the ccis are authorised by the cwcs; in most cases, they are allowed because the youth were still pursuing school education, and a change in residence was deemed not to be in their best interest. a majority of our participating cls had been placed in more than two ccis during their stay in care. cls stated that this instability had not only disrupted their education but also hampered the process of relationship building with peers and cci staff. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 173  housing the first and foremost area in need of attention for youth who are leaving care is housing, without which cls will be unable to establish themselves as independent adults in society (trout et al., 2010). aftercare services and support are envisioned in law as a form of non-institutional care, but have largely been implemented as a form of institutional care. this experience of remaining institutionalised post-care can be understood through the words of one of our participating kis, who told us that: aftercare as per jj act is a programme but it has been implemented as an institution and that is opposed to the concept of aftercare programme. living together in groups, doing everything on their own, managing daily chores, and to have a mentor just for guidance will make them independent. living in a structure or in organisations which are closed door, a youth cannot learn. how do you expect a bird to learn to fly in a cage? less than half of all the respondents across states received housing support under aftercare. from the perspective of overall aftercare services received, only 61% of all aftercare receivers received housing support. the proportion of aftercare receivers (88%) with a “satisfactory housing index” was higher than the non-receivers (75%), reinforcing that aftercare services are helpful in the transition and adjustment of cls to adult life. the stakeholders participating in the study suggested that non-institutional housing is key to both the integration of cls into society and the development of their independent living skills, and that institutional aftercare facilities can serve only as a midpoint for the cls to transition to independent life. using independent group homes that have shown promise as a model and formalising similar practice into policy is supported by most stakeholders. the current jj act and rules do not provide any mechanisms for according recognition to ngo-managed aftercare homes. however, the stakeholders shared that stigma and insensitivity among citizens make it difficult to establish group homes and obtain rental housing. besides this, there are no guidelines for semi-regulated accommodation and group housing. the gender disparity that exists in the provision of housing facilities for cls also requires attention. there are presently only two aftercare homes for girls, one each in delhi and maharashtra. the female cls in the other states had nowhere to turn except temporary shelters built for the homeless, or “swadhar greh”2, which are homes for destitute girls. this is an eyeopener for all of us as the situation is grave and calls for provisioning of temporary housing support options for those cls struggling with housing. 2the indian government website explains that, “the ministry of women and child development is implementing the swadhar greh scheme which targets the women victims of difficult circumstances who are in need of institutional support…. the scheme envisages providing shelter, food, clothing and health as well as economic and social security for these women.” https://www.india.gov.in/spotlight/swadhar-greh-scheme international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 174  independent living skills as international studies have stated, starting to live independently is a challenge for any young person and a considerably bigger challenge for cls who have had a constrained life in the controlled setting of a cci and have little or no family support (everson-hock et al., 2011). andrea (2018) observed that young people who have received long-term group care in residential homes have significant difficulties when it comes to independent living. insufficient preparation for this transition has been proven to be detrimental to cls’ future possibilities. stepping out from the comfort zone of the cci to the world requires independent living skills. the importance of these skills is captured here in the words of a stakeholder: we should start by the age of 12-13 years to train children in basic activities of daily living. maintaining their own hygiene, cleaning their rooms, managing expenditure on grocery, and using public transport, etc. early learning and socialisation will make them confident to manage life outside ccis. skills deemed important for the cls are: nutrition and health, cooking, first aid, disaster management, household management (taking care of belongings, hygiene, and financial management), and exercise and recreation. the independent living skills index was calculated by considering whether cls had acquired these skills, either through training or hands-on experience. however, we found that the participants in our study appeared to have experienced a deficit in the development of independent living skills as part of the transition planning. our study revealed that two out of every three cls were unprepared with respect to independent living skills as evidenced by their unsatisfactory independent living scores. table 3. independent living skills scores score n % unsatisfactory 73 66 neutral 93 8 satisfactory 43 26 total 435 100 for example, three out of five cls had not acquired cooking and household management skills. it was also found that gender had an impact on the amount of independent living skills training received, including through aftercare services, with about 14% more female cls reporting having received such training than male cls, both while in cci and after leaving. we believe that these findings are indicative of stereotypes related to gender roles, wherein cooking and household management are assumed to be a female’s role. commenting on this, one of the cls stated: as an idea it (aftercare) is very good, as it provides the boys who do not have any support a place to stay, and also an opportunity to work towards their own settlement. but there is very little guidance. at present, the staff are the sole international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 175  decision makers, and the inputs of the boys are not considered. i don’t have any large expectations. they must consider us as important and they must have faith in us, that we can do anything and everything as per the decisions pertaining to our life. cls in karnataka fared better, with more than 50% rated satisfactory on the independent living skills index. this could be because a substantial number of children living in ccis in karnataka had families and were placed in the cci to improve their educational prospects. the regular access of these children to family environments may have boosted their independent living skills. it was also understood from the findings that the cls were not allowed to make decisions for themselves during their stay in the cci, depriving them of the chance to acquire independent living skills. social support and interpersonal skills children without parental care and residing in institutional care for most of their childhood have limited exposure to the larger community, which deprives them of opportunities to build social and interpersonal skills (modi et al., 2016). children in ccis are not accustomed to family relationships and it is therefore important that they enjoy long-term relationships with caregivers, which is not possible when their stay in cci includes multiple placements. the development of social relationships and interpersonal skills becomes extremely important for cls in their transition towards becoming active members of society, yet almost half of the cls faced an inability to maintain relations with parents (if there were any), and more than 40% of the cls requested training on basic social skills. the social support index was calculated by factoring in the various relationships that cls were able to maintain and whether they had acquired certain interpersonal skills such as: conflict resolution; effective communication; leadership, trust, and team building; an understanding of legal rights, responsibilities, and moral duties; ego-resiliency and self-esteem; and gender neutrality and inclusion. unfortunately, 46.7% of all cls had an unsatisfactory score on the social support and interpersonal skill index. figure 2 provides an overview of the level of aftercare support received by the cls. figure 2. level of aftercare support received by cls international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 176  one of the cls stated that, “people outside don’t really understand us, and we too don’t trust the people outside.” a need for peer social-support networks, access to information and services, and for opportunities to socialise and celebrate together was clearly visible in our findings. figure 3 provides an outline of the social skills training received by the cls in ccis and after leaving ccis. figure 3. social skills training received care leavers networks: the cls experienced stigma from society, and this discouraged them from connecting with people in their neighbourhoods, colleges, and workplaces. besides this, the ccis were often disconnected from the community, and thus unable to interact with it. with this in mind, the stakeholders highlighted the importance of peer social-support networks, access to information and services, and opportunities to socialise and celebrate together. forming such groups could provide safe spaces for cls to discuss their issues, and they could act as selfadvocacy groups. mentorships: our findings also suggested that cls could gain social exposure and better integration with the community through mentorship by individuals and by collaborating with professionals and corporations. this would help in facilitating their access to a wider community and subsequently engender mutual acceptance by both sides. one of the stakeholders plainly stated this need for mentorship: “since the youth has not lived in a family, how would they understand the concept of familial or romantic relationships? for a happy married life, they require proper pre-marriage counselling, where mentors can really counsel and guide them.” physical health and emotional well-being a study conducted by university of maryland, baltimore, revealed that many cls are reduced to homelessness or living in poor, unhygienic environments upon departure from their child care home or foster home (barth, 1990; center for evidence-based management, 2014). we have found a similar phenomenon in indian settings when the cls have to secure an accommodation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 177  within a limited budget: to maintain the upkeep of their hard-won accommodation is an additional source of stress in their lives. as a result, cls’ risk of experiencing problems with physical health is quite high. the physical health and emotional well-being of the cls, though often neglected by practitioners, were significant domains of aftercare in our current study. the components of physical health include access to health care, availability of caregivers, access to funds for treatment, and coverage under health insurance schemes. some of the major findings with respect to the physical health of cls are that 23% of cls did not receive long-term caregiving during illnesses, and that 78% of cls did not have health insurance. moreover, the study revealed that 86% of cls in delhi, 63% in rajasthan, and 54% in gujarat faced emotional distress that made them sad or tense. state-by-state statistical overviews of emotional well-being and physical wellbeing are provided in figure 4 and figure 5 respectively. figure 4. emotional well-being index by state figure 5. physical health index by state international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 178  as reported by one participant, a member of the maharashtra aftercare association of pune, “poor mental health affects other aspects of adult life. some cls pick up jobs but leave them the next day” as they are not ready to cope with the new pressures of working life. we found that over 61% of the cls faced recurring emotional distress and 22% of the cls sought professional help. our findings reprise those of barn (2010), who noted that any challenges faced by cls, such as unwillingness or inability to continue their education, failure to keep a job, difficulty in forging or maintaining relationships, and so on are rooted to some extent in their poor emotional health and lack of resilience. additionally, we found that mental health status did not differ between aftercare receivers and non-receivers, indicating a general lack of focus on building emotional resilience among cls in order to increase their capacity to deal with stressful situations. our study found that cls face consistent stress and worry, mainly focused on their uncertainty about their futures. while a majority of the cls face emotional distress, we also found that only a small proportion (about 22%) seek professional help to address these issues. a female cl shared that she was concerned that she might be developing depressive symptoms as she is unable to sleep and prefers to isolate herself from her friends. in her words, “lack of guidance and financial support has greatly impacted my mental and physical health.” this therefore led us to the understanding that the focus of the stakeholders has to be rooted in providing adequate support for uplifting the emotional and physical well-being of cls. education and vocational skills the present educational status of the cls — the level and quality of their educational and vocational skills — is the cumulative outcome of the education they received at the cci and during aftercare, and has a considerable impact on different domains of their life. internationally, for children and youth, it is common to change schools multiple times while in alternative care (zetlin et al., 2004). however, these multiple changes result in frequently interrupted education, and have an impact on students’ educational progress (zetlin et al., 2004). in fact, students can lose 4 to 6 months of academic progress with every change of school. given the poor academic performance that comes with frequent changes of school, coupled with improper guidance, children readily lose interest in school, start to find their studies a burden, and often forego secondary education altogether. poor academic performance leads to negative long-term outcomes such as unemployment or low wages, making it difficult for the young people to earn a suitable livelihood (torrico, 2010). as previously noted by torrico (2010), if educational and vocational skills have not been acquired before leaving care, integration into the post-care world becomes much more difficult. it is therefore of concern that our study found that 40% (n = 174) of all cls could not complete their schooling. what is even more worrisome is that 6% (n = 24) of all cls across the five states had not gone beyond primary education. among the stakeholders participating in our study the understanding was that there were few options available for those who wanted to develop international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 179  vocational skills, leaving little space for cls to explore skills in accordance with their interests and aptitudes. those who showed an academic inclination were limited by the paucity of financial support for higher education and skill development (naccarto et al., 2010). the difficulty of finding funders either for academically average students or for expensive courses such as aeronautical engineering and medicine pushes cls towards cheaper alternatives in their educational and vocational pursuits. of all the cls across the five states, 21% did not receive their preferred type of education in the ccis, which compromised their ability to achieve their full potential and explore life options accordingly. the education of cls was further impacted during the transition to aftercare, as 34% of cls had to discontinue their education at that time. a stakeholder summarised the educational situation of cls: children coming from vulnerable backgrounds do not know the importance of education and therefore they should be prepared at an early age, say 12 to 13 years onwards. they get admission in schools, but they are not able to adjust as the admission is not age appropriate. they often have to be in a class with small children. for example, there is a girl who is 19 and is in class 11 and the other one again 19, studying in class 10 and another has completed class 12 at 21 years of age.3 as this quotation suggests, remedial education is a neglected aspect of aftercare. cls would benefit from vocational training courses suited to their interests and abilities. good quality education and vocational skills can be transformative in nature, but their lack can adversely impact not only the future financial independence but also the quality of life of cls, and can further increase their vulnerability in the absence of parental figures and strong community ties and relationships (valset, 2018). financial independence and career studies abroad have found that the financial status of an individual contributes importantly to not attaining aspirations and to quality of life (fritz & van knippenberg, 2017). financial independence is crucial for cls if they are to live independent and comfortable lives once reintegrated into the community. not only does lack of financial resources deprive them of basic amenities, but many cls could fall through the cracks and disappear if left unsupported financially (mares & jordan, 2012). our study found that 48% of cls did not have an independent source of income, that 93% of the earning cls were in salaried jobs, and that 7% of cls were self-employed. overall, 38% of the cls were not able to cover their living expenses with their present income. 3in india, the usual age of child in 10th grade is 15 years, 11th grade is 16 years, and 12th grade is 17 years. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 180  the study further showed a gender disparity in the financial area: 45% of the female cls had an unsatisfactory financial index score compared to 33% of the male cls. this shows that financial independence and security were far lower among female cls than male cls. our findings show that cls, especially females, generally have low financial literacy and little access to financial services, as well as an inability to manage financial crises. a gender disparity that limited female access to jobs and self-employment was also observed, primarily because of a lack of career guidance and absence of opportunities to acquire relevant employability skills during their stay in cci or aftercare. more females (63%) than males (36%) reported not having an independent source of income even though a considerable percentage of the girls had completed class 12 (i.e., graduated from high school). our findings echo those found in previous research; for example, see bhargava and colleagues (2018). identity and legal awareness citizenship and identity are basic rights. they establish that an individual belongs to a nation and they allow access to the various services and benefits available to citizens; thus, they are important for the survival of an individual. absence of legal documents of identity and citizenship can lead to confusion and exclusion from governance processes and to increased vulnerability (karandikar & charegaonkar, 2019). although legal literacy is an area that is often not considered a significant part of a cl’s life, it is important for cls to be aware of their legal rights and identity. therefore, the study documented and analysed the cl’s level of legal awareness and identity. findings on this domain show that 55% of all cls had not received any information regarding their legal rights and responsibilities during their stay in the cci and only 33% of the cls were aware of their right to receive aftercare under the jj act. given the lack of availability of formal guidance, it may be a long struggle to achieve legal awareness for cls but that is essential to ensure their integration as citizens of the state. key learnings key learnings regarding the life of cls in ccis, and their transition out of care emerged from the study’s findings. first, the child protection system (ccis, cwcs, and dcpus) is presently underprepared to handle transition, and thus the cls are not well prepared for transitioning out of care at 18 years. stakeholders — including cci staff, cwcs, dcpus, and aftercare providers — have a limited conceptual understanding of what is involved when cls transition out of care, are unclear about extending the concept of continuum of care through aftercare, and thus are impaired in their capacity to plan and implement aftercare. besides this, the collected data from several indepth interviews showed that, within the child protection system, there is an absence of coordination and convergence with other systems such as health, education, and urban affairs. institutionalisation has an impact on the education and skills attained by cls. acquisition of independent living skills by cls in cci and in aftercare is low and is impacted by gender biases, and by the nature of the care provided at the cci. data from the interviews indicated that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 181  vocational skills were prioritised over higher education: the children were “pushed” towards it in an attempt to get settled in life during their limited time in care. the ngo-run ccis have been seen to provide more skill training than government-run ccis in various skill areas, demonstrating the possibility of better planning for skills as part of alternative care. as our findings show, unprepared transitioning out of care has a negative impact on the emotional well-being of cls, and there is a greater negative impact on the emotional well-being of female cls than male cls. abrupt transitions lead to stressful situations as cls struggle with finding accommodation and securing finances, and with matters relating to their physical, mental, and emotional well-being (barn, 2010; meade & mendes, 2014; vacca, 2008). many participants reported that, during the transition phase, they experienced symptoms of clinical depression, anxiety, stress, and even suicidal tendencies. institutionalisation also has a strong impact on the adult social life of the cl in aftercare. in agreement with previous studies, as mentioned earlier, our findings show that children who are deprived of opportunities to develop stable and continuous attachment relationships due to their limited number of social relationships and poor quality of contact with their caregivers have difficulty with social relationships, and their ability to develop a support system for themselves is negatively impacted (gunnar et al., 2000). this study revealed conclusive trends on aftercare practices across the five states along with a glimpse of the existing diversity of aftercare practices in the states. the overall problems and challenges faced by cls are quite similar across states, indicating that the overall policy provisions for aftercare need strengthening, and that there is a need for a robust machinery and human resources for delivery of aftercare services. the next section sets forth recommendations for policy and for implementation of aftercare. recommendations our literature review and our research established that lack of aftercare support for cls hampers outcomes of adult life across the eight domains of the sphere of aftercare, whereas adequate support positively impacts outcomes. our findings reinforce the interconnectedness of the different domains in the sphere of aftercare, and hence the need to establish a far more comprehensive aftercare programme than exists today. first of all, the effective implementation of the existing policies and law would bring about a transformation in aftercare. implementation of the jj rule 25, which mandates state governments to develop an aftercare programme with clarity on provisions of aftercare, is requisite. since practice is informed by the legislative framework with respect to the issue, it is imperative that the government makes changes in the policy and legislative framework governing aftercare. specifically, cls should be recognised as a vulnerable category under the national youth policy 2014 and national policy on skill development and entrepreneurship, 2015. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 182  moreover, certain changes should be made in the existing jj act 2015, jj model rules 2016, and cps to make aftercare more comprehensive, such as:  the expansion of the definition of aftercare so that children who turn 18 and leave foster care, group foster care, and other alternative care options are also entitled to aftercare support;  the introduction of mandatory transition planning for all children living in ccis who are 14 years and older;  the development and implementation of an individual aftercare plan for every cl; and  the provision of at least one support centre for cls in every district to provide such services as a range of development, settlement, and advancement choices, referrals, and access to information. we also propose the establishment of a grievance redressal system for cls, with a simultaneous increase in investment on aftercare. budgetary norms under cps should be increased from rs. 2,000 per month per child to a range of rs. 8,000 to rs. 10,000 per youth per month. additionally, we believe that there is definitely a need to develop support centres for cls need to ensure that adequate support is provided across all the domains of the sphere of aftercare. starting with housing, states should promote the availability of a balanced mix of institutional and non-institutional housing supports for aftercare across districts in the state. for physical and mental health, the cls should have easy access to health services, subsidised medical services, specialised counsellors for therapy, and health insurance via the pm-jay (national health protection scheme). with regard to educational and vocational skills, cls should be provided with requisite support, guidance, and counselling to make academic and skill development choices based on their needs and aspirations. for this purpose, we recommend that there should be improved coordination among the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship and the various schemes for skill development and education that are being developed at the state and national levels. further, building an effective communication network to coordinate the provision of aftercare between various ministries at the union level, and departments at the state and district levels, along with aftercare service providers such as ccis, ngos, community-based agencies, and corporations, is a critical step in developing the provision of aftercare services in the country. regarding the legal awareness domain, the national legal aid services authority (nlasa) should ensure that adequate assistance is provided to cls in legal documentation, legal awareness, and provision of legal aid. furthermore, in order to secure financial independence and careers for the cls, workshops should be organised where cls can explore opportunities for training and career enhancement. while conducting the research, it became evident that stakeholders across the child protection cadre had gaps in their conceptual understanding of aftercare as a continuum of care. a clear understanding of this concept should thus be imparted to the stakeholders — cwc members, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 160–187 183  dcpu staff, inspection committees, cci caregivers, aftercare officers, and all the other child care functionaries. this could be accomplished by organising training for capacity building that fosters understanding of what constitutes the continuum of care. an urgent recommendation is the strengthening of the voices of cls themselves. for the cls to develop the needed social support and interpersonal skills, we recommend that every cl have individual mentors to provide guidance in making life choices throughout transition and to be a stable source of emotional support. the collectivising of cls into support groups and networks will provide another layer of support, where cls can become contributors, and older cls can mentor younger cls. technologies like mis, social media, and text applications have the potential to organise cls into a collective aimed at peer support and could be optimally used to benefit cls. models already exist at nascent stages. these should be supported and strengthened by state governments; successful models could then be replicated in other states. conclusion in spite of legal regulations provided for the establishment and functioning of the ccis and aftercare programmes, the goal — the smooth transition of the cl from a cocooned life in the cci to life in the real world — seems far from being achieved. the study has shown that a comprehensive aftercare programme can have a transformative impact on the lives of cls by reducing the struggles faced in transitioning out of care. it is important to understand the nature of the challenges faced by cls in the domains of physical health, emotional wellbeing, social support and interpersonal skills, independent living skills, housing, identity and legal awareness, financial independence and career, and education and vocational skills. the financial allocation for aftercare is inadequate to provide comprehensive aftercare services to children who exit ccis; therefore, states need to review their financial planning, funding allocations, and utilisation strategies for aftercare. a programme of change under which existing laws are implemented effectively and harmonised with the recommendations suggested here will ensure the availability of aftercare services to youth exiting ccis. our hope is that this will lead to the cls becoming true wards of the state, and bring the earliest 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(2017). perceived self-stigma in the utilization of mental health services in foster care and post foster care among foster care alumni. children and youth services review, 85, 26–34. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.10.040 a sample article title international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 68 stress: personal matter or family affair? intraand inter-individual relationships between stress, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition miriam reiner, christina niermann, fabian krapf, and alexander woll abstract: individual health behavior, which is determined by individual motives, emotions, and cognitive processes, is embedded in a social environment. one of the most important social environments is the family. according to family reciprocal determinism, stress perceived by one family member becomes part of the family environment and may affect interactions within the family, as well as the health behavior of all family members. this study investigated 214 families, each represented by a mother, a father, and one of their children. the aim of the study was to examine intraand inter-individual relationships between perceived stress and three health behaviors: physical activity, leisure-time sedentary behavior, and food consumption. the results indicate that individually perceived stress is related to individual health behavior as well as the health behavior of other family members. however, these relationships vary among family members. the inter-individual analyses revealed that this effect is strongest for the relationship of mothers’ stress to other family members’ health behavior. investigating the link between perceived stress and health behavior from a family perspective may be useful for understanding the relationship between stress and health. keywords: family, stress, health behavior, physical activity, leisure-time sedentary behavior, nutrition acknowledgments: we thank pd dr. habil annegret mündermann and sven henrich for their writing assistance, matthias rabel and lukas bernhart for their help in data collection, and james belsey for proofreading this manuscript. we acknowledge support by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgesellschaft) and open access publishing fund of the karlsruhe institute of technology. the authors declare no conflict of interest. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 69 miriam reiner, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a scientific researcher at the department of sport and exercise science, university of stuttgart, allmandring 28, 70569 stuttgart, germany. telephone: +49 711 68563168. e-mail: miriam.reiner@inspo.uni-stuttgart.de christina niermann, ph.d. is a scientific researcher at the department of sports and sports science, karlsruhe institute of technology, engler-bunte ring 15, 76131 karlsruhe, germany. e-mail: christina.niermann@kit.edu fabian krapf is a ph.d. candidate and research associate at the department of teachers education, university of konstanz, universitätsstraße 10, 78457 konstanz, germany. e-mail: fabian.krapf@uni-konstanz.de alexander woll, prof. ph.d.. is head of the department of sports and sports science, karlsruhe institute of technology, engler-bunte ring 15, 76131 karlsruhe, germany. e-mail: alexander.woll@kit.edu mailto:miriam.reiner@inspo.uni-stuttgart.de mailto:christina.niermann@kit.edu mailto:fabian.krapf@uni-konstanz.de mailto:alexander.woll@kit.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 70 health behavior is determined by personal factors such as motivation, cognition, and emotion. furthermore, perceived stress is assumed to affect individual health behaviors, such as everyday dietary intake and physical activity (laugero, falcon, & tucker, 2011). perceived stress is presumably related to unhealthy behavior. for instance, stressful situations may lead to lower levels of physical activity, more time spent on sedentary behavior, and unhealthy nutrition (mouchacca, abbott, & ball, 2013). however, with regard to physical activity, results cited in the literature are inconsistent (stults-kolehmainen & sinha, 2014). according to bandura’s social cognitive theory (sct), individual behavior, like perceptions, emotions, and motivation, emerges through the reciprocal interactions between person, behavior, and environment (bandura, 1989). therefore, perceived stress, which arises from interactions between personal, behavioral, and environmental factors, could affect individual physical activity and leisure-time sedentary behavior (going jogging versus watching tv), food choice (eating fresh cooked meals versus eating fast food), and the individual’s environment (no fruit for the entire family because of lack of time for grocery shopping) (bauer, hearst, escoto, berge, & neumarck-sztainer, 2012; campbell & crawford, 2001; reis, collins, & berscheid, 2000; repetti, wang, & saxbe, 2009). also, reciprocal determinism implies that the individual and his or her behavior are affected by the environment and by other persons within this environment (baranowski, 1997; taylor, baranowski, & sallis, 1994). the family is a person’s most important social context, with close, intensive, and long lasting interactions (taylor et al., 1994). the purpose of this study is first, to examine how perceived stress is related to a person’s health behaviors, particularly physical activity, leisure-time sedentary behavior, and food choice; and, second, to examine how the perceived stress of one family member is related to the health behavior of other family members. family reciprocal determinism bandura’s concept of a triadic reciprocal determinism (bandura, 1989) can be expanded to the family level, referring to the model of family reciprocal determinism (baranowski, 1997). according to this theoretical framework, the individuals, with their specific attributes, that is, their cognitions, motives, and behavior, interact with each other continually over a long time period. the individuals and their interactions are part of a shared family environment; therefore, the family consists of individuals and the higher-level family environment. all family members influence this environment with their individual attributes and in turn, while they are living in the family environment and interacting with each other, they are influenced by these interactions and the environment. extending the sct to the family level offers a new perspective on the link between stress and health behavior. for instance, a person’s perception of stress may not only affect his or her own health behavior but also the family environment and through close reciprocal interactions the health behavior of other family members (mcalister, perry, & parcel, 2008). consequently, a person’s health behavior is affected not only by his or her own perceived stress but also by the perceived stress of other family members. according to the model of family reciprocal determinism, two factors could be considered: (a) direct influences through face-to-face interactions between the family members, and (b) indirect influences via the family environment (baranowski, 1997; baranowski, perry, & parcel, 1996; westman & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 71 etzion, 2005). in the latter case, a family member who experiences stress can affect and alter the shared family environment, which in turn affects other family members. an example of a direct influence on health behavior would be a decrease in children’s physical activity when parents are too busy to take the children to activity lessons (bevan & reilly, 2011). a change in the shared environment, such as lack of healthy food because of insufficient time for grocery shopping, would be an indirect influence on health behavior. (bauer et al., 2012; campbell & crawford, 2001; reis et al., 2000; repetti et al., 2009). correlates of stress: individual physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition according to sct, perceived stress and health behavior are connected on the intrapersonal level. a recent review (stults-kolehmainen & sinha, 2014) has identified inconsistencies regarding the effect of perceived stress on physical activity. for individuals reporting stress, 123 studies showed a reduction in physical activity, 29 studies an increase in physical activity, and 34 studies no relationship or conflicting results regarding physical activity. these inconsistencies may be explained by the fact that, for some people, stress and a lack of time lead to less physical activity, while others use physical activity as a coping strategy for managing stressful situations and regenerating lost resources. higher perceived stress has been related to more time spent on sedentary behavior, especially on watching tv (johansson, johnson, & hall, 1991; laugero et al., 2011; wijndaele et al., 2007). however, to date the reason for this phenomenon is largely unknown. laugero et al. (2011) suggested that stress may reduce the desire for physical activity and thus increase the likelihood of sedentary behavior. healthy nutrition in relation to perceived stress can be described in terms of the choice between core foods (essential foods) and non-core foods (superfluous foods) (johnson, van jaarsveld, & wardle, 2011). higher perceived stress has been associated with less frequent consumption of core foods and more frequent consumption of non-core foods (bauer, neumark-sztainer, fulkerson, hannan, & story, 2011; kandiah, yake, jones, & meyer, 2006; oliver & wardle, 1999; wardle, steptoe, oliver, & lipsey, 2000). possible explanations for these findings include the fact that time pressure may lead to changes in meal-preparation routines and that consuming a mostly non-core takeout meal saves time (bevan & reilly, 2011). moreover, perceived stress may lead to reduced self-control with regard to food choices and food quantities, which will tend to promote a higher consumption of non-core foods (groesz et al., 2011; torres & nowson, 2007). correlates of stress: the physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition of others perceived stress has been shown to affect environmental aspects related to health behavior, such as the family food environment (bauer et al., 2012). bevan and reilly (2011) conducted qualitative interviews with 17 mothers during an eight-month period to capture their perceptions of daily challenges regarding the nutritional and physical activity practices of their children. stress caused by lack of time resulted in the use of fast food for family meals and a restricted engagement in children’s physical activity (e.g., driving to lessons); stress caused by the financial situation of the family resulted in a limited budget for physical activities and healthy nutrition; and stress caused by the perceived safety of the children resulted in restricted activities outside the home. hence, the perceived stress of one family member appears to affect the health behavior of other family members. however, to the best international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 72 of our knowledge, no other studies are available that take an inter-personal approach with direct relationships between the family members, and hence the inter-individual influences between the perceived stress of one family member and the health behavior of other family members are still largely unknown. while the theoretical framework of family reciprocal determinism postulates reciprocal interactions between individuals, their behavior, and their environment, the presented empirical results are based on the assumption that perceived stress affects health behavior. therefore, perceived stress is explored in this study as a predictor variable for individual health behavior, as well as for the health behavior of other family members. the present study we propose that including the family context in the concept of a triadic reciprocal determinism between person, behavior, and environment (bandura, 1989) will increase the understanding of the interrelationship between stress and health behavior. figure 1 illustrates these presumed reciprocal interactions within the family environment according to sct. the health behaviors shown for each family member are physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition. the objective of this study was to research in an explorative way the intra-individual and the inter-individual interactions between perceived stress and health behavior within the family. based on the reviewed literature, we hypothesized: (a) that stress perceived by an individual affects his or her health behaviors: in particular, physical activity, leisure-time sedentary behavior, and the consumption of core and non-core foods; and (b) that stress perceived by one family member affects the health behavior of other family members. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 73 figure 1a. schematic illustration of intraindividual (grey boxes) and inter-individual (arrows between family members) effects between perceived stress and health behavior, according to social cognitive theory (sct). figure 1b. schematic illustration of the intra-individual (grey box) and the interindividual (arrows between the family members) effects of perceived stress of other family members on the health behavior of the child, with examples. methods data source this study was conducted as a part of the multidisciplinary project “eatmotive” funded by the german federal ministry of education and research. students of 11 german secondary schools and their parents were invited to join the study. members of the research team visited the students in their classes. the students were given a short introduction on the background and aims of the study. furthermore, they received a set of three questionnaires, one for themselves as well as two for their parents. additionally, the students were told that each of the family members should fill out the questionnaires by themselves. other than the child who was visited during class, and his or her parents, no other family members were considered for the survey. of the 319 families who returned the questionnaires, all 214 twoparent families with complete sets of questionnaires were included in this study (table 1). the excluded families either were single-parent families (n = 50) or did not return questionnaires for all three family members (n = 55). written informed consent was obtained from the parents of the participating children. participants were given detailed instructions at the distribution of the questionnaires according to the ethics guidelines of the german psychological society (deutsche gesellschaft für psychologie & berufsverband deutscher psychologinnen und psychologen, 2005). the study protocol was agreed on by a multidisciplinary expert panel of scientists involved in the eatmotive project. the study conformed to the declaration of helsinki international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 74 and the ethics guidelines of the german psychological society. all data were analyzed anonymously. measures perceived stress. three subscales of the reliable and valid trierer inventory for chronic stress (tics) (petrowski, paul, albani, & brähler, 2012; schulz, schlotz, & becker, 2004) were used for assessing different sources of stress for parents within the preceding three months. the applied subscales were: work overload, social overload, and social tension. work overload was assessed with eight items capturing stressful situations at work, for example, “i have too many tasks to perform”; social overload was assessed with six items referring to social worries and demands, for example, “i must frequently care for the wellbeing of others”; and social tension was assessed with six items relating to the perception of social conflict, for example, “i have unnecessary conflicts with others”. all three subscale scores were summed to a total stress score of perceived chronic stress (table 1). the chronic stress during childhood scale (“chronischer stress im kindesalter” or csik) (richartz, hoffmann, & sallen, 2009) was used for assessing different sources of stress in children. the applied subscales were: school overload, social tension, and lack of time. school overload was assessed with eight items about perceived difficulties in school, for example, “school is difficult for me”; social tension was assessed with five items about the perception of social pressure due to a certain behavior, for example, “i have conflicts with others because i speak up for myself”; and lack of time was assessed with three items about perceived stress due to time-related stressors, for example, “i have too little time for friends and hobbies”. all three subscale scores were summed to a total perceived chronic stress score. all participants rated all items on a five-point likert-scale with respect to how often they had experienced a certain situation within the preceding three months. the ratings were 0 (never), 1 (rarely), 2 (sometimes), 3 (often), and 4 (very often). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 75 table 1. characteristics of perceived stress (sub)scale m sd cronbach’s α reference value t df p mother overalle 35.222 12.749 .93 work overloada 16.441 6.606 .93 10.000 14.163 210 <.01 social tensionb 6.213 3.771 .88 6.000 .853 210 .392 social overloadb 12.558 4.868 .84 7.800 14.098 207 <.01 father overalle 35.387 12.717 .92 work overloada 16.256 6.966 .94 9.600 15.395 210 <.01 social tensionb 5.591 3.310 .89 6.200 2.658 207 <.01 social overloadb 12.324 4.953 .85 7.100 15.391 210 .01 child overalle 19.903 7.503 .72 school overloada 11.559 5.688 .71 8.700 7.019 194 <.01 social tensionc 5.901 3.296 .71 4.100 7.788 202 <.01 lack of timed 2.373 0.947 .63 2.240 2,032 208 .04 note. m = mean; sd = standard deviation. asum of 8 items. bsum of 6 items. csum of 5 items. dsum of 3 items. eno reference values for the sum of subscales of the trierer inventory for chronic stress. physical activity. physical activity of parents and children was captured using two items. in accordance with a guideline of the world health organization (2010), the number of days with at least 30 minutes (parents) or 60 minutes (child) of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during a normal week and during the last week were recorded, and the mean of both scores was calculated (prochaska, sallis, & long, 2001). in addition, a modified version of the “godin leisure time physical activity questionnaire” (godin & shephard, 1997) was applied. the total time (minutes per week) spent on light, moderate, and vigorous activities was recorded and divided by seven to calculate the average time (minutes per day) spent on moderate and vigorous physical activity (mvpa). the energy expenditure was calculated from the intensity of the activities by multiplying the weekly frequency of vigorous, moderate, and light activities by the factors nine, five and three, respectively (godin & shephard, 1997). this value, which we call the “weekly activity index”, corresponds to the metabolic equivalent of tasks (met), reflecting the energy expenditure spent on vigorous, moderate, and light activities. the time per week spent on either moderate or vigorous physical activities was combined. these measures of physical activity allow examination of the effects of three dimensions of physical activity: overall frequency during the week, which reflects the extent to which habitual physical activity is part of the individual’s lifestyle (prochaska et al., 2001); time spent on mvpa (godin & shephard, 1997), which is considered very beneficial for health (dishman, washburn, & heath, 2004); and weekly energy expenditure (godin & shephard, 1997). sedentary time. the amount of time spent on leisure-time sedentary activities was assessed by asking parents and children how much of their leisure time they spend on a typical day on the following sedentary activities: watching tv; reading books, magazines, or newspapers; playing games on a computer or games console; spending time on the computer or internet; and other sedentary activities. participants provided separate information for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 76 weekdays and weekends. mean daily sedentary time was calculated by adding the daily sedentary time for weekdays and weekends and dividing by five days for weekdays and by two days for weekends. the same formula was used to calculate mean media consumption time, which is time spent watching tv, playing games on a computer or games console, or on the computer or internet. food consumption. mother, father, and child separately completed a food frequency questionnaire (winkler & döring, 1998). on a seven-point likert scale, ranging from 0 (never) to 6 (several times per day) each participant rated how often specific food items were normally consumed. the answers were recoded to calculate an index representing the frequencies of consumption during the week according to the german nutrition society (2013) using the following scale: 0 (never/once per month or less/several times per month); 1 (once per week); 3 (several times per week); 7 (daily); and 14 (several times per day). ten items of the food frequency questionnaire were selected and the given ratings were summed up to a core food index, which included muesli, salad, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and fish, and a non-core food index, which included chocolate, sweets, cakes, and salty snacks. the selection of food types was made on the basis of the guidelines of the australian national health and medical research council (cashel & jeffreson, 1995). according to these guidelines, core foods comprise types of food that are part of a healthy diet; in contrast, non-core foods reflect an unhealthy diet (bell, kremer, magarey, & swinburn, 2005; johnson et al., 2011). educational level. health behavior is associated with personal educational level (baum, garofalo, & yali, 2006; cutler & lleras-muney, 2010) and with the educational level of other family members (chen & li, 2009). therefore, it was necessary to include the personal educational level as a covariate in the analyses of health behavior. education level was assessed by asking for the highest graduation level. using the german tripartite school system, the categories ranged from “no qualification” to “university-entrance diploma (abitur)”, and were categorized into “low educational level” (no graduation, or hauptschule), “medium educational level” (realschule and lower work-related graduation), and “high educational level” (higher occupation-specific graduation and gymnasium). data analysis empirical model. intra-individual effects are defined as the perceived stress of one person and its effect on that individual’s health behavior. inter-individual effects are defined as the perceived stress of one person and its effect on the health behavior of another person. intra-individual and inter-individual effects were analyzed using multivariate linear regression models. all analyses were controlled for the educational levels of the mother and father by including the educational levels as covariates in the multivariate linear regression models. statistical analyses were performed in spss for windows version 21.0. statistically significant results were based on the standardized beta-coefficients of the multivariate linear regression models. the significance levels for all statistical tests were set to .05 (*) and .01 (**). results with p-values below .10 (+) were interpreted as nearly significant results. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 77 results perceived stress the largest stress contributors in children and in parents were school and work overload, respectively (table 2). mothers, fathers, and children perceived significantly more stress in all subscales than the reference group, as shown in table 1 (petrowski et al., 2012; richartz et al., 2009). children with lower educational levels reported more overall stress and stress due to school overload and lack of time than children with medium or high educational levels. our findings were: • overall stress: mlow = 24.7; sdlow = 8.1; mmedium = 21.3; sdmedium = 7.2; mhigh = 19.2; sdhigh = 7.1; f(2,175) = 5.8; p < .001; • stress due to school overload: mlow = 14.6; sdlow = 5.5; mmedium = 13.1; sdmedium = 6.0; mhigh = 11.1; sdhigh = 5.4; f(2,179) = 5.1; p < .001; • stress due to lack of time: mlow = 2.5; sdlow = 1.2; mmedium = 2.0; sdmedium = 1.0; mhigh = 2.4; sdhigh = 0.9; f(2,192) = 3.1; p = .053). health behavior as seen in table 2, only 7.5% of the children, 20.1% of the fathers, and 22.3% of the mothers met the who guidelines of at least 30 minutes activity per day for adults and at least 60 minutes activity per day for children on at least most days during the week (world health organization, 2010). children spent 45 minutes, mothers 31 minutes, and fathers 36 minutes on mvpa (table 2). children spent approximately five hours per day on sedentary activities after school on weekdays and at least seven and a half hours per day on the weekend. media consumption (tv, pc, internet, and games consoles) accounted for the largest amount of sedentary activity. these sedentary times are in accord with the german subsample of the health behavior in school-aged children study 2009/2010 (hbsc team germany, 2011a, 2011b; kolip, klocke, melzer, & ravens-sieberer, 2013). in contrast, parents spent about three hours per day on sedentary activities on weekdays and four hours per day on weekends. time spent with media consumption was lower for parents than for children; however, fathers spent more time with media than mothers did. children consumed more non-core foods than their mothers and fathers. however, most families ate non-core foods at least several times a week or even daily. health behaviors, especially time spent on sedentary activities, were associated with educational level: persons with higher educational levels had slightly healthier behaviors, with more physical activity, less sedentary time, and more frequent consumption of core foods (data not shown). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 78 table 2. descriptive statistics (m and sd) of the subject characteristics. category subcategory child mother father m sd m sd m sd age girls (n=126) 14.1 1.4 45.0 4.4 47.7 6.9 boys (n=85) 14.5 1.9 educational level low 12.2% 17.8% 24.4% medium 14.2% 41.1% 18.8% high 73.6% 41.1% 56.8% working status full-time 15.5% 89.3% part-time 67.6% m=19.8h sd=7.0h 2.8% m=22.0h sd=8.1h not working 16.9% 7.9% physical activity frequency during the week (days/week) 3.9 1.6 4.4 2.0 4.7 2.1 time with mvpa (min/day) 45.1 31.8 31.1 29.9 36.2 48.4 weekly activity index (met) 51.1 26.1 44.9 24.2 45.3 25.5 leisure-time sedentary behavior (min/day) time with sedentary behavior weekday 297.9 216.3 184.2 120.6 187.6 116.8 time with sedentary behavior weekend 450.7 369.5 239.6 142.1 252.4 137.5 media consumption weekday 174.8 164.4 109.9 111.2 120.3 105.9 media consumption weekend 276.8 316.1 133.8 117.7 157.6 108.0 nutrition (average servings/day) core foods 17.1 9.2 19.0 8.2 15.2 8.3 non-core foods 9.6 9.7 7.1 7.2 7.5 7.6 note. for physical activity: frequency during the week (days/week), the range is 0–7 days. media consumption is minutes per day spent on tv, pc/internet, or computer/console games. core foods are salad, vegetables, fruit, muesli, dairy, and fish; non-core foods are chocolate, cake, salty snacks, and sweets. m = mean; sd = standard deviation. intra-individual effects of perceived stress on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition children. in children, physical activity was not related to overall perceived stress (table 3). however, children spent less time on moderate-to-vigorous activities if they were stressed due to school overload (table 4). more overall stress went along with more time spent on sedentary activities and media on weekdays (table 3). while higher stress due to school overload was associated with higher media consumption on weekdays, stress due to lack of time reduced the time spent with sedentary activities and media consumption on weekends (table 4). the perceived stress of children was not related to the consumption of core and non-core foods (table 3, table 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 79 mothers. overall, perceived stress of mothers did not affect their physical activity behavior or their consumption of core and non-core foods (table 3, table 4). however, if the mother was more stressed due to work overload and social tension, she consumed core foods less frequently. in contrast, in the case of stress due to work overload, she consumed non-core foods more frequently, but when she was stressed due to social tension, she ate core foods less frequently (table 4). fathers. perceived stress was not associated with physical activity; however, the father spent less time on sedentary behavior on weekdays when he was stressed due to work overload (table 4). as with the results for mothers, the father consumed less core foods if he was stressed due to work overload; however, he did not consume more non-core foods. he consumed non-core foods more often if he was stressed due to social overload (table 4). inter-individual effects of perceived stress on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition child. the child was less frequently physically active and had a lower weekly activity index if the mother perceived higher overall stress (table 3) and more stress due to work overload (table 4). in contrast, only higher stress due to work overload of the father was associated with more frequent physical activity of the child (table 4). moreover, the child spent more time on sedentary behavior on weekdays if the mother was stressed due to social overload. the more overall stress the mother perceived, the less core foods and the more noncore foods the child consumed (table 3). mother. perceived stress of the child and the father did not significantly affect the physical activity or the nutrition of the mother. the more stress overall (table 3) and stress due to school overload (table 4) the child perceived, the more time the mother spent on sedentary behavior on weekdays and weekends. in contrast, higher perceived stress overall (table 3) and stress due to work overload (table 4) of the father went along with the mother’s lower sedentary time on weekends and lower media consumption on weekdays and weekends. father. perceived stress of the child and the mother did not significantly affect physical activity of the father. however, the father spent more time on sedentary behavior and with media on weekdays and weekends if the child was stressed overall (table 3) and stressed due to school overload (table 4). in contrast, when the mother perceived more stress due to social tension, the father spent less time with media on weekdays (table 4). moreover, higher perceived overall stress (table 3) and stress due to work overload (table 4) of the mother was associated with lower consumption of core foods by the father. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 80 table 3. effects of perceived stress (overall) on health behaviors—multivariate linear regression analyses variable person overall perceived stress model values child mother father f r² physical activity frequency during the week (days/week) child -.066 -.256** .094 2.371* .042 mother -.034 .001 .149 .861 .026 father -.060 -.010 -.132 .755 .023 time with mvpa (min/day) child -.023 -.133 .131 1.273 .009 mother .024 -.141 .085 .622 .026 father -.074 -.009 .097 1.014 .040 weekly activity index (met) child .002 -.259** .057 1.991 .037 mother -.015 -.001 .011 .196 .009 father -.089 .059 -.032 .253 .012 leisure-time sedentary behavior (min/day) time with sedentary behavior weekday child .181* .138+ -.005 2.822* .051 mother .226** .056 -.049 2.124* .033 father .246** -.031 -.120 6.363** .137 time with sedentary behavior weekend child .040 .019 .011 .853 .025 mother .212** .001 -.117+ 2.282* .037 father .164* -.023 -.041 3.531** .070 media consumption – weekday child .158* .102 .022 2.991* .056 mother .149+ .106 -.127* 1.744 .022 father .295** -.009 -.054 6.901** .149 media consumption – weekend child -.012 -.047 .034 1.792 .023 mother .154+ .128 -.163* 2.525* .043 father .189** -.001 -.040 5.093** .108 nutrition (average servings/week) core foods child -.034 -.135* -.007 1.571 .017 mother -.079 -.118 .085 4.110** .086 father -.001 -.194* -.012 2.053 .031 non-core foods child .097 .131+ -.029 1.031 .031 mother .025 .072 -.023 .604 .012 father .019 -.080 .084 1.765 .022 note. standardized beta coefficients; significance levels: +p < .10 *p < .05; **p < .01; model values: df = 6; covariate: all results were controlled for personal educational levels of mothers and fathers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 81 table 4. effects of perceived stress (different sources of stress) on health behaviors—multivariate linear regression analyses variable person child mother father model values schoo l overload social tensio n lack of time work overload social overload social tensio n work overload social overload social tensio n f r² physical activity frequency during the week (days/week) child -.068 .023 .001 -.223* -.068 .026 .218* -.127 -.026 1.286 .019 mother .049 -.099 .131 -.171 .149 .088 .157 -.078 .088 1.291 .018 father -.127 .081 .228** -.003 .031 .019 -.120 .021 -.021 1.327 .021 time with mvpa (min/day) child -.102* .107 -.045 -.137+ -.014 -.066 .112 -.072 .153 1.142 .010 mother .034 -.017 .005 .126 -.143 -.184+ -.165 .247+ .057 .809 .074 father -.045 -.003 .127 -.042 .070 -.013 .202 -.090 .028 .819 .070 weekly activity index (met) child -.045 .080 -.034 -.300* .026 -.019 .140 -.078 -.019 1.118 .010 mother -.067 .047 -.075 -.176 .190 -.035 -.063 .088 -.049 .3773 .039 father -.156 .104 .053 -.054 -.008 .134 .123 -.130 -.041 .445 .048 leisure-time sedentary behavior (min/day) time with sedentary behavior weekday child .134 .098 .003 .023 .241* -.124 -.019 .014 -.006 1.991 * .060 mother .269* * -.029 -.049 -.155+ .189+ .021 -.022 -.099 .047 1.624 .039 father .161* .116 -.079 -.015 .040 -.116 -.240* .078 .161 3.388 * .133 time with sedentary behavior weekend child .031 .032 -.172* .058 .029 -.122 .058 -.073 .020 1.185 .012 mother .245* * -.020 -.147+ -.100+ .138 -.056 -.124* .000 -.045 1.956 * .058 father .215* * -.058 -.075 -.079 .088 -.063 -.048 .004 -.025 2.012 * .061 media consumption weekday child .159* .037 -.018 .011 .151 -.025 -.039 .000 .053 1.717 .044 mother .139 .021 -.015 -.033 .103 .053 -.132* .047 -.093 .953 .061 father .209* * .139 .019 -.022 .150 -.198* -.124 -.016 .147 3.812 * .153 media consumption weekend child .003 .012 -.167* .055 -.057 -.088 .051 -.084 .070 1.382 .024 mother .152+ .012 -.036 .043 .047 .063 -.128* .035 -.139 1.131 .025 father .261* * -.073 .017 -.028 .143 -.140 -.084 -.004 .059 2.991 * .114 nutrition (average servings/day) core foods child -.056 .030 .084 .019 -.104 -.095 .116 -.010 -.132 1.313 .020 mother -.051 -.049 -.016 -.243* .244* -.176* -.101 .199+ -.006 3.071 * .119 father -.008 -.026 -.024 -.263* .116 -.077 -.236* .243* -.016 1.957 * .060 non-core foods child -.079 .256 .009 -.185+ .300* * .081 -.094 .085 -.061 2.324 * .080 mother -.022 .074 .020 .317* * -.287* .050 .174 -.091 -.137 1.766 .047 father .026 -.002 -.070 .007 -.076 -.043 .061 -.025 .067 .912 .059 note. standardized beta coefficients; significance levels: +p < .10 *p < .05; **p < .01; model values: df = 6; covariate: all results were controlled for personal educational levels of mothers and fathers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 82 discussion the objective of this study was to explore whether individual perceived stress is related to the health behavior of other family members. based on the model of family reciprocal determinism it was assumed that an individual’s perceived stress affects both the interactions with others and the shared family environment and therefore is related to the health behavior of other family members. the results of this study support the assumption that there are intraas well as inter-individual relationships between perceived stress and health behavior. intra-individual effects of perceived stress on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition in agreement with previous studies (bevan & reilly, 2011; johansson et al., 1991; michels et al., 2012; wallis & hetherington, 2009; wardle et al., 2000), perceived stress affected the time spent on sedentary behavior and the consumption of core and non-core foods for all family members. the effects of individually perceived stress on the different health behaviors varied between family members and with regard to the sources of stress. greater stress due to work overload was associated with less time spent on sedentary activities, and especially on media consumption, for all family members. it has been shown that time spent on sedentary behavior increases the risk of developing obesity, certain coronary heart diseases (chomistek et al., 2013), and diabetes mellitus type 2 (proper, singh, van mechelen, & chinapaw, 2011). greater stress due to work overload is associated with a “positive” health effect, the reduction of sedentary time. this may be caused by longer working hours away from home. in contrast, greater stress due to social overload was associated with slightly more time spent on sedentary activities during weekdays for mothers. sedentary activities, such as watching tv, have been discussed as a coping strategy for recharging depleted resources (heikkilä et al., 2013; park & iacocca, 2014). hence, more time spent on sedentary activities could be a way of coping with stress (baumeister, bratslavsky, muraven, & tice, 1998). overall, perceived stress was not related to either mothers’ or fathers’ nutrition, which is not in agreement with results of other studies (zellner et al., 2006; zellner, saito, & gonzales, 2007). for instance, zellner et al. (2006) reported gender differences in the relative consumption of core and non-core foods during and after stressful situations. dietary restrained eating, which is mostly found in women, plays an important role (wardle et al., 2004; zellner et al., 2006). women, especially those who report being dietary-restrained eaters, presumably react with an overeating of non-core foods during and after stressful situations because of a loss of self-control under stress (wardle et al., 2004; zellner et al., 2006). in contrast, men do not seem to change their consumption of core and non-core foods when they perceive stress (zellner et al., 2007). considering the different sources of stress shows a more complex picture: for both parents, stress due to work overload was associated with lower consumption of core foods and stress due to social overload was associated with more frequent consumption of core foods. opposite effects were found for non-core foods: for mothers, higher perceived stress due to work overload was associated with more frequent consumption of non-core foods, whereas stress due to social overload went with less frequent consumption. these relationships may be caused by work overload and longer working hours international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 83 resulting in less time and lower motivation for preparing healthy meals (bevan & reilly, 2011). other studies have indicated that work stress leads to fewer whole meals and more frequent snacking during working times (bevan & reilly, 2011; oliver & wardle, 1999; tryon, decant, & laugero, 2013; wallis & hetherington, 2009). in our study, perceived overall stress did not affect physical activity in any of the family members, which is in agreement with results of the review by stults-kolehmainen and sinha (2014). in contrast, other studies have indicated that greater perceived stress is related to less time spent on physical activity (aldana, sutton, jacobson, & quirk, 1996; kouvonen et al., 2005; kouvonen et al., 2013; laugero et al., 2011; ng & jeffrey, 2003). to date, the mechanism of how specific aspects of individually perceived stress are linked to individual health behaviors is poorly understood. one possible pathway connects depleted individual resources in stressful situations (muraven & baumeister, 2000) with resulting reduced selfcontrol with regard to being physically active or resisting eating non-core foods. watching tv or consuming non-core foods are activities that require less self-control and may be coping strategies to recharge the individual’s resources (steptoe, 2007). however, physical activity has also been discussed as a possible coping strategy (azizi, 2011; balantekin & roemmich, 2012; rostad & long, 1996). the standard deviations in parameters describing health behaviors were very large, indicating large individual differences. reactions to stressful situations presumably vary between persons, and hence it is reasonable that one person uses physical activity as a coping strategy for stress while another person uses leisuretime sedentary behavior as a coping strategy (azizi, 2011). a similar phenomenon of personspecific changes in eating behavior, either overeating or under-eating, appears during or after stressful situations or periods (balantekin & roemmich, 2012; oliver & wardle, 1999; roemmich, lambiase, lobarinas, & balantekin, 2011). further research integrating individual coping strategies is necessary to clarify the relationship between perceived stress and health behavior. moreover, the results emphasize the importance of considering different sources of stress. inter-individual effects of perceived stress on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and nutrition in this study, we also considered how the perceived stress of one family member may affect the health behavior of other family members. based on the results of this study, three main aspects of this interrelationship could be identified: the important role of the mother, the parent dyad, and the role of the child. the important role of the mother. perceived stress of the mother affected the health behavior (especially physical activity and the consumption of core and non-core foods) of the other family members, especially the child. according to the literature, the mother is mostly responsible for health-related behavior within the family: preparing family meals or going grocery shopping is commonly the duty of mothers (bevan & reilly, 2011; devine, connors, sobal, & bisogni, 2003; tinsley, 1997) and mothers seem to act as guards to protect and advise on healthy living (beets, cardinal, & alderman, 2010). currently, this role seems to remain predominantly the mother’s, even though mothers now work away from home more often (bauer et al., 2012; beagan, chapman, d'sylva, & bassett, 2008; jabs et al., 2007; lake et al., 2006). hence, individually perceived stress of mothers could affect intra-familial interactions and organizational arrangements in such areas as driving children to activity lessons, going grocery shopping, and preparing meals. bevan and reilly (2011) postulated international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 84 that lack of time is one of the most serious barriers mothers have to overcome. it appears likely that mothers, especially if they are working, risk being overwhelmed by the many tasks that must be carried out in order to manage daily family life (lundberg & frankenhaeuser, 1999). the resulting lack of time could be a contributor to the negative association between perceived stress and health behavior within the family. to overcome these problems, a better balance of family and career for working mothers and a more equitable division of responsibilities and housework between the parents seems warranted (martín-fernández, de los ríos, cazorla, & martínez-falero, 2009). the parent dyad. the results of our study indicate that the perceived stress of one parent affects the other parent’s behavior, especially regarding leisure-time sedentary behavior. for instance, higher perceived stress of the father is associated with less time spent by the mother on sedentary behavior on weekends and with media on weekdays and weekends. domestic division of housework could be responsible for these effects (beagan et al., 2008). perceived stress of fathers mostly correlates with more time spent working away from home and a greater work-family conflict (adkins & premeaux, 2012; beaujot & andersen, 2007). more time spent away from home inhibits an equitable division of housework between the parents. as a result most of the responsibility for family-related tasks falls on one partner (baxter, 2000). in turn, the mother having to complete more tasks leads to a higher perceived stress, as there is less time for leisure-time sedentary behavior or other stress-relieving activities (bevan & reilly, 2011), which fits the framework of family reciprocal determinism. the role of the child. greater perceived overall stress and stress due to school overload of the child was associated with more sedentary behavior of both parents. there are several possible reasons for this relationship. time spent on sedentary behavior includes time spent on diverse inactive behaviors such as sitting or reading. hence, a possible reason for the longer time spent on sedentary behavior for the mother could be that she supports the child in doing homework or studying with the child (hoover-dempsey et al., 2001). interestingly, greater perceived stress due to school overload of the child was associated with the father spending more time with media on weekdays and weekends. there is no obvious explanation for this phenomenon, and it is possible that other parameters such as the educational level account for this relationship. health behaviors and perception of stress were related to the educational levels of the family members. for instance, the descriptive results of this study indicated that the child’s perceived stress is related to the type of school attended. the educational level of the child was in turn related to the educational level of the parents: the higher the educational level of the parents, the higher the educational level of the child. furthermore, the lower the educational level of the person, the more time the person spent on sedentary behavior and with media. hence, it seems feasible that educational level acts as a moderator of the intra-individual relationship between perceived stress and health behavior. further research that takes the educational level into account is warranted, with regard to: (a) the family itself, (b) the processes within the family system, and (c) the effects of one family member on the family system. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 85 the above results are consistent with findings that emphasize that the family is an important social environmental context that shapes the individual’s health behavior (ball & timperio, 2006; la guardia & patrick, 2014). therefore, taking into account such an interindividual perspective could enrich research into health behavior. limitations and conclusions in this study, we assumed one direction of influence. however, the theoretical framework implies reciprocal interactions. the other direction, health behavior affecting perceived stress, may be significant as well. to verify directions, longitudinal studies with a cross-lagged-panel design would be necessary. parents and children report significantly more stress in all subscales than the scalespecific reference groups. various factors might play a role. the reference values are from the year 2003 for parents and 2009 for children; the significant differences in the stress report indicate a change in the perception of stress during the last few years. for parents, stress seems to have increased during the last few years (cohen & janicki-deverts, 2012). for children the increase in the perception of stress may be a result of school reforms in the german school system. perceived stress and health behavior were considered as stable parameters. however, these variables may change depending on the specific boundary conditions. thus it would be interesting to investigate, perhaps with a day-to-day diary study, intra-individual short-term variations in stress perception and their effects on health behavior. the relationship between one person’s perceived stress and someone else’s health behavior is more complex than assumed in this study (de vriendt, moreno, & de henauw, 2009). including individual and family-level mediators and moderators, such as individual habits and attitudes, and the family health climate (niermann, krapf, renner, reiner, & woll, 2014), would be beneficial to further investigate with this new perspective of linking perceived stress with family environment and the health behavior of other family members. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to link perceived stress with health behavior on the individual level as well as between individuals within a family. bandura’s social cognitive theory (bandura, 1989) and its expansion to the family level by baranowski (1997) and taylor, baranowski, and sallis (1994) represents a useful theoretical framework for describing inter-individual relationships between stress and health behavior within a family. further research within this framework is necessary to gain more insight into the interactions between individuals and environment and to develop a testable theoretical model. the results of our study indicate that individually perceived stress is related to individual health behavior as well as the health behavior of other family members. furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of distinguishing between different health behaviors – such as core and non-core food consumption, and physical activity and sedentary behavior – and different sources of stress: family, work or school, and personal conflicts. the consideration of the family environment, including other family members, enriches previous results and adds a new perspective on the link between stress and health behavior. more insight into the interaction between individuals and their shared environment is important for the development of intervention programs. above all, interventions that aim to improve the health behavior of children and adolescents should integrate the family, and should aim to improve family-level variables such as the family health climate (niermann et al., 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 68–92 86 references adkins, c. l., & premeaux, s. f. 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(1998). validation of a short qualitative food frequency list used in several german large scale surveys. zeitschrift für ernährungswissenschaft, 37, 234–241. world health organization. (2010). global recommendations on physical activity for health. geneva, switzerland: who press. zellner, d. a., loaiza, s., gonzalez, z., pita, j., morales, j., pecora, d., & wolf, a. (2006). food selection changes under stress. physiology & behavior, 87(4), 789–793. zellner, d. a., saito, s., & gonzales, j. (2007). the effect of stress on men's food selection. appetite, 49(3), 696–699. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2006.08.001 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/pl00007377 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2006.01.014 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2007.06.013 miriam reiner, christina niermann, fabian krapf, and alexander woll figure 1a. schematic illustration of intra-individual (grey boxes) and inter-individual (arrows between family members) effects between perceived stress and health behavior, according to social cognitive theory (sct). methods table 1. characteristics of perceived stress results table 2. descriptive statistics (m and sd) of the subject characteristics. table 3. effects of perceived stress (overall) on health behaviors—multivariate linear regression analyses table 4. effects of perceived stress (different sources of stress) on health behaviors—multivariate linear regression analyses discussion references microsoft word 04 piety_transgression.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120083 piety, transgression, and the feminist debate on muslim women: resituating the victim-subject of honorrelated violence from a transnational lens this article has previously been published in signs: journal of women in culture and society, 41(1) (autumn 2015), pp. 55-79 and has been reprinted with permission. amina jamal abstract: while i strongly endorse anti-imperialist feminist attempts to uphold devout muslim women’s gendered agency, i am concerned that these arguments fail to disrupt the intransigent association of freedom, particularly individual freedom, with secularism, and communitarian restraint with islam. it is not surprising, therefore, that victim-subjects of honor-related violence, whether in a secular state such as canada or an islamic state like pakistan, are discursively installed within the universal secular sphere and reevicted from the religious and cultural community. i propose the notion of transgressive piety rather than the dichotomy of secular society versus pious community within which to problematize gendered muslim subjects. the transgression of ritualistic and institutionalized practices is associated with practices termed sufism. muslim feminists may use the idea of transgressive piety to offer faith-based support to those gendered subjects whose transgressive acts, appearance, or practices define them as legitimate targets of family, community, or state-based violence. in so doing, we may also challenge doctrinaire and narrow definitions of the muslim ummah, the all-encompassing and transcendent community of muslims. keywords: muslim women, feminism, piety, secularism, honor violence acknowledgement: this research was enabled by a standard research grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc). i also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. this article is reprinted with permission from a. jamal (2015), “piety, transgression, and the feminist debate on muslim women: resituating the victim-subject of honor-related violence from a transnational lens”, signs: journal of women in culture and society, 41(1), pp. 55–79. copyright © 2015 the university of chicago. doi:10.1086/681771 amina jamal phd is an associate professor in the department of sociology at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: amina.jamal@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 50  situated at the representational nexus of islam, secularism, and feminism, the victim-subject of the “honor crime” embodies the power to mediate the relationship between state and community, secular and religious, local and global as well as issues of individual freedom versus communitarian constraint. critical race scholar sherene razack (2007) emphasizes the significatory potential of the racialized and gendered victim of honor-related violence in recounting a lecture by norwegian anthropologist unni wikan. while the primarily white western academic audience seemed suffused with anger and tears by wikan’s visually eloquent presentation of the body of a beautiful young kurdish woman murdered by her muslim immigrant father, razack was alerted to “the productive power of … ideas that install the civilized european and enable the practices of surveillance and regulation” (p. 4) of muslims in a post-9/11 world. like many postcolonial muslim feminists concerned with challenging violence at the multiple levels of family, community, civil society, and state, razack (2007) has struggled with the question of how to confront violence against racialized women without further deepening what she theorizes as “the colour line between modern white subjects and pre-modern non-white subjects” (p. 5). cognizant of the imperialist gesture underlying wikan’s activism, razack questions the effectiveness of canadian muslim women’s feminist struggles for their gender and sexual rights when these struggles deploy the secular language of women’s rights as human rights or invoke the secular state. she concludes: “when the war on terror in the west requires imperilled muslim women and dangerous muslim men as a central part of its conceptual apparatus, as anti-imperial feminists we become obligated to pursue anti-patriarchal strategies within rather than outside our communities, the difficulties of doing so notwithstanding” (p. 29). razack’s concerns are relevant to discussions of honor-related violence against muslim women whether in a secular state such as canada or in a self-identified islamic state like pakistan. mainstream feminist movements in both societies rely on state-directed and legalistic strategies to eliminate violence against women. postcolonial scholars, especially feminists of muslim background, challenge mainstream feminism by offering community-based instead of stateoriented responses.1 an emergent strategy is to reinstate alternative modes of subjectivity and agency for muslim women, thereby questioning the secular trajectory of transgression/resistance as self-determination by contrasting it with the self-affirming potential of the communitarian and the religious. muslim women’s devotion to their families, community, and islam; their willing adoption of practices such as the hijab and niqab; and their self-defined ideas about honor, freedom, and respect are proffered to challenge imperialist narratives of their victimization. while strongly endorsing such anti-imperialist sentiment and attempts to construct alternate accounts of muslim women’s gendered agency, i am concerned that these arguments fail to disrupt 1critical queer scholars express similar concerns about global lgbt activism that ignores the interrelations of imperialism, racism, and islamophobia in the justified concern for gay muslims (see massad, 2002; puar, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 51  the intransigent association of freedom, particularly individual freedom, with secularism and communitarian restraint with islam, particularly in the context of honor-related violence. the complexly textured balance of individual rights versus community rights that is integral to islamic tradition is subsumed within the communitarian framing of honor that undergirds both hegemonic and oppositional discourses. once embraced by the secular state and rights-based feminism as martyrs for individualized freedoms, victim-subjects of honor crimes are discursively installed within the universal/secular and are figuratively reevicted from the religious/cultural community.2 otherwise useful, the framework of secular individual-feminism-state versus pious womancommunity offers no space for the adequate representation of the victim-subject of honor killing. indeed, it becomes conceptually constitutive of the gendered subject who is deemed to be sexually transgressive because of a perceived failure to live up to the standards of honor, chastity, and moral responsibility that critical muslim scholars have found to be empowering for the majority of women in their case studies. my understanding of honor/shame-related violence or honor crime draws on the work of lynn welchman and sara hossain (2005), who refer to a variety of manifestations of violence against women including ‘honor killings,’ assault, confinement or imprisonment and interference with choice in marriage where the publicly articulated ‘justification’ is attributed to a social order claimed to require the preservation of a concept of ‘honor’ vested in male family and/or conjugal control over women and specifically women’s sexual conduct: actual, suspected or potential. (p. 4) it is worthwhile to emphasize that the majority of feminists and male muslim religious leaders in both muslim-majority and muslim-minority contexts concur that honor-related violence has no religious sanction within islam (ali, 2001; globe and mail, 2012), but the honor discourse lurks in all projects that construct the gendered muslim body as the preeminent signifier of religious purity or decline. to recognize and resituate victim-subjects in hegemonic constructions of honor and to speak the truth of individual transgression to politico-religious power is a cultural and political project. as a way to recenter the victim-subject of honor/shame-related violence who is punished for her putative transgressive subjectivity, i call for a faith-based embrace of the idea of women’s transgressive agency as a possibility of action within rather than against islamic tradition. transgression, as i will discuss below, is an important notion for poststructuralist theory’s attempts to challenge the inherent heteronormativity of modern culture. contemporary scholars have theorized transgression in deeply reflexive ways that extend its possibilities beyond conventional understanding of exceeding “the limits set by a commandment, or law or convention” (jenks, 2003, p. 2). here i invoke this notion in its uniquely specific association with the tradition 2of course, as talal asad (2003) has argued, what constitutes secularism and the secular as epistemic categories or political projects may differ from context to context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 52  of islam that has pervaded south asian muslim subjectivities since at least the thirteenth century, especially those associated with the practices termed sufism. 3 this tradition affirms the importance of the quran and the prophetic tradition, and it encompasses multifarious modes of embodiment, bodily practices, dress, and so on. yet sufism is ultimately devoted to spiritual cultivation and eschews any straightforward association of piety with ritualistic practices, bodily expression, or sartorial appearance. for my discussion, some important aspects of this tradition are its insistence on unsettling the seemingly evident epistemological duality of piety and sinfulness and replacing it with an ontologically ethical notion of human perfection that is defined primarily by the experience of earthly or divine love; its disdain for all projects of self-formation that seek to discriminate between pious self and sinful other; its skepticism toward self-proclaimed religious and moral leaders; and, stemming from all these, its potential for an intimate and private notion of morality that may not be subject to public surveillance or penalty. although there are significant divergences within the doctrines and practices associated with sufism, a fundamentally shared idea is the rejection of all binaries such as creator/created, divine/human, self/other, good/evil, and sacred/profane. this has often led to charges of transgression being leveled against prominent sufis by proponents of doctrinaire and legalistic islam.4 indeed, the desire to surpass the worldly limits of the social, the religious, class, gender, and so on has a long and entrenched standing in islamic traditions of sufism, and many saints’ hagiographies and islamic mystical poetry approvingly recount such attempts by highly revered and intensely loved saints and mystics (kugle, 2007; kadri, 2012). recently, some scholars have theorized the gender-transgressive and feminine-affective potential of sufi narratives and poetry as well as women’s religious performances at shrines and sufi ceremonies.5 this scholarship adds further gloss to the more expansive work on south asian women’s cultural and ritual performances, which highlights transgressive sexuality as a common trope of songs and ditties sung by women or enacted through dance and performances at weddings, childbirth, and other life passages (raheja & gold, 1994; narayan, 1997; naheed, 2009). also, queer muslim scholars in south asia seek to retrieve the homoerotic aspects of sufi poetry from elite attempts to sanitize and desexualize this islamic heritage.6 drawing on sufi-oriented islamic understandings of the body as the site of divine immanence and the conduit for divine blessing, it is possible to imagine a pious subjectivity even where 3on sufism, see jalal (2002), metcalf (2005), schimmel (2006), kugle (2007), and shaikh (2012). i use the term “sufism” with caution, as i am aware of the great diversity that it flattens out among those associated with this tradition. for a good discussion of the difference between sufism as an orientalist concept/construct and as a practice of muslims, see ernst (2006). 4for example, see the discussion of the killing of sarmad, one of the well-known sufi martyrs of love, in azad (1910/2006). 5see abbas (2002), hegland (2003), werbner (2003), kugle (2007), shaikh (2012), and yaghoobi (2012). 6for a good discussion of sufism’s unique approach to the body and its difference from other muslim traditions in this respect, see kugle (2007). for some interesting efforts on the part of queer scholars and activists to reclaim south asian sufi traditions, see kidwai (2001), vanita and kidwai (2001), and shaukat (2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 53  agentive acts or practices appear to be contrary to theological or doctrinal accounts of the islamic or pious. thus, i argue that gendered muslim subjects may engage in actions that are often read as secular or un-islamic, but these transgressive acts cannot unthinkingly be assumed to signify a disengagement from islam or the muslim community, just as no given act or outward practice can be construed as a verification of religious purity. the notion of transgression as muslim women’s pious agency not only disrupts the conceptual secular/religious divide but is a strategy for interrogating narrowly defined muslim subjects that are being produced within the ummah (religious community) due to contemporary reworking of islam’s founding discourses.7 “although they appear to make reference to clearcut distinctions, transgressions are manifestly situation-specific and vary considerably across social space and through time,” according to chris jenks (2003, p. 2). broadening jenks’s argument, we may similarly trace the mutability and context-specific character of the concept of honor and bring to light contemporary performances of honor-related violence that are appearing in response to newly contrived notions of transgression in specific cultural and national situations. like many muslim societies, pakistan and pakistani diasporic communities have become conflicted sites for a variety of cultural, political, and military struggles, most notably doctrinal struggles over authentic/religious and inauthentic/cultural practices, an intense proxy war between iran and saudi arabia for leadership of the muslim world, and the us-led war on terror in iraq, afghanistan, and pakistan. the entanglement of these conflicts with secular and religious patriarchies, media consumerism, globalized capitalism, and intensified economic and cultural disparities in both first and third-world contexts is facilitating the spread of wahhabism — a set of narrow and doctrinaire interpretations and practices of islam — that has created new categories of religious minorities and produced new kinds of blasphemers, sinners, adulterers, and deviants.8 deepening the insights afforded by substantial feminist critiques of the complicated interrelation of gender, bodies, and nationalisms and the propensity of such hegemonic projects to engender various forms of violence against women, the idea of transgressive piety offers muslim feminists a strategy to dislodge the concept of honor that underlies discourses of cultural authenticity and religious consistency in patriarchal projects.9 muslim feminists may offer faith-based accounts of those gendered subjects whose transgressive acts, appearance, or practices define them as legitimate targets of family, community, or nation-related violence. 7see barlas (2002), hasan (2002), abbas (2005), ernst (2006), and hoodbhoy (2009). 8wahhabism is associated with the ideology of the kingdom of saudi arabia. its founding ideologue, muhammed ibn abdul wahhab, considered muslims who believe in the intercessionary power of the prophet muhammed or who seek saintly mediation, as do most south asians, to be idolaters and thus guilty of apostasy (see, e.g., nasr, 2006, pp. 81–117; kugle, 2007, pp. 282–284). 9the literature on gender, sexuality, and nation is too extensive to cite. however, some founding texts that are particularly relevant to my discussion include ahmed (1992), yuvaldavis (1997), haddad and esposito (1998), and rouse (2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 54  since i am not a scholar of islamic studies or theology, it is important to emphasize that i advocate the idea of transgressive piety not as a fatwa or as a theological resolution of a political social problem. rather, i propose this as a discursive tool that critical transnational feminists may draw upon to open a space within the religious and the islamic — not in opposition to it — whereby we could problematize (bacchi, 2012) though not construct gendered subjects, even those who appear to be engaged in “dishonorable” quests for cultural, social, or sexual freedom.10 in the following sections, i will first review some instances of “honor crimes” that initiated public discourses of secularism versus islam in seemingly disparate but culturally and politically intertwined societies, canada and pakistan; i will then examine some postcolonial feminists’ attempts to challenge dominant discourses and representations of the honor crime. while maintaining the anti-imperialist and postcolonial impulse, i will problematize the erasure of the victimized muslim woman in the current interaction of hegemonic and oppositional discourses. finally, as a discursive and political strategy out of this conundrum, i will present the idea of transgressive piety as a constitutive element of muslim subjectivity that has been undermined due to the ascendance of reformulated notions of piety and sinfulness, the worldly and the divine, by contemporary modernist movements often referred to as islamist.11 always already secular: victim-subjects in canada and pakistan the convoluted interlinking of gender and sexuality, subject and nation, and secularism and islam became evident in canada in response to two recent events that were widely characterized as honor crimes. on december 10, 2007, aqsa parvez, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, was murdered in her family home in mississuaga, ontario. according to the agreed statement of facts, aqsa was choked to death by her brother waqas and her father, muhammed parvez. on the day of the murder, aqsa’s distraught mother, anwar jan, told police that aqsa was killed because she “did not listen” to her father. anwar jan reported that her husband had told her that aqsa had shamed him in the eyes of his community: “my community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. this is my insult. she is making me naked.”12 10noteworthy muslim scholars who have challenged imperialist representations of islam and also patriarchal interpretations of islamic texts include amina wadud (1999) and asma barlas (2002). i make a different argument here, since these scholars call for a redefinition of piety and sinfulness rather than an erasure of their constitutive boundaries. 11i use the term islamist, as do many other scholars of contemporary islam, to refer to movements for reform and revival that emerged in many muslim societies during the later colonial era in the twentieth century. in pakistan, these movements tend to offer ideological support to extremist and militant groups even though they themselves engage in democratic political processes. 12r. v. muhammad manzour parvez (father) and waqas parvaz (son), agreed statement of facts. published by the globe and mail, june 16, 2001. http://www.scribd.com/doc/33096133/parvez-case-agreed-statement-of-facts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 55  as indicated by the plethora of news reports, articles, and academic papers as well as court records, aqsa had been experiencing conflict and violence in her family over her style of dressing, her desire to stop wearing hijab, her lack of privacy at home, constraints on leaving the house, and surveillance by family members at school. there were a number of meetings mediated by the school, and on occasion aqsa had stayed in a shelter, as arranged by the school counselor. in the days leading to the murder, aqsa had spent some time at the home of a friend, whose mother had also tried to negotiate a truce between her and her parents. eventually, aqsa was picked up by her brother while waiting for the school bus and taken home, where she was killed by her father and brother. aqsa’s father placed a 911 call to police, telling them he had killed his daughter using his hands (haque, 2010).13 in a more recent event, on june 30, 2009, three montreal-based teenage afghan-canadian sisters — zainab, 19; sahar, 17; and geeti, 13 — along with their stepmother, rona amir mohammad, 52, were found dead in a car, drowned in a canal during a family outing to kingston, ontario. they were deemed to have been murdered by the girls’ father, mohammad shafia, 58; his second wife, tooba yahya, 42; and their son hamed, 21. each was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. prosecutors deemed the murders to be honor killings based on witness testimonies, wiretapped family conversations, and circumstantial evidence, including recorded cell phone calls, intercepted communications, internet searches, and computer records. the trial revealed a history of conflict, and at times violence, between the older girls and their father over clothes, boyfriends, schoolwork, and social behavior, leading to occasional intervention by school authorities and social workers. according to the evidence, angered and frustrated by his inability to control his daughters, mohammed shafia, along with tooba and hamed, had engineered the drowning of the nissan car driven by zainab with the others as passengers. throughout the trial, the shafia parents maintained their innocence, insisting that the deaths were due to inexperienced driving on the part of zainab, who was alleged to have commandeered the car while the parents slept in their motel room. mohammed insisted that the deaths were accidental and a punishment from god for the girls’ own bad behavior (ctv news, 2012). as in previous matters related to muslim women in the west, the representations of these events in national media, popular culture, and social media websites were overwhelmingly cast in the familiar trope that razack (2007) has encapsulated and expounded as “the imperilled muslim woman, the barbaric muslim man and the civilized european” (p. 29). the victims were represented as rebellious muslim women brutally thwarted in their desire for secular freedom. even though a group of imams issued an important public condemnation of honor killing as unislamic, the perpetrators and their families were represented as muslims who were determined to conform to religious and cultural dictates. yasmin jiwani and homa hoodfar (2012) point out that the media persistently referred to the family’s afghan cultural background and made connections with their religious affiliation, “suggesting that the murders were motivated by cultural and 13see http://www.scribd.com/doc/33096133/parvez-case-agreed-statement-of-facts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 56  religious beliefs” (p. a15). in contrast to the pervez family, who were low-income immigrants mostly alienated from dominant canadian culture, the shafia family defied the conventional representation of economically or culturally stressed immigrants since they were prosperous, westernized in appearance, not ostensibly religious, and well integrated into canadian society. yet the media continued to uphold the clash of secular civilization against islamic medievalism (jiwani & hoodfar, 2012). 14 indeed, the media coverage of the shafia trial could easily be described in the same terms in which critical race scholar eve haque (2010) deplores the representation of aqsa pervez’s murder — that it “contained all the elements of an increasingly familiar narrative about gender, religion and multiculturalism in the west” (p. 79). in placing these narratives and representations against my work in pakistan, i am struck by the mirroring of these representations in some recent spectacular instances of violence against women, which though not “classic” cases of honor killing were nevertheless publicly justified in a manner that rehearsed the conventional arguments related to honor and the preservation of a social order as theorized by welchman and hossain (2005).15 one of the cases that mobilized the most contentious discussions of islamic versus secular and feminism versus national community in pakistan recently was the case of mukhtar mai. mukhtar mai, a poor rural woman from southern punjab province, was gang-raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council acting at the behest of a powerful tribe, the mastois, to avenge their sense of dishonor due to her brother’s overtures to a mastoi woman (bbc news, 2005a, 2005b). her decision to publicize the incident and seek justice from the state, instead of committing suicide as expected after this retaliatory dishonorment, became an international news story, forcing the provincial government to respond. in 2011, after nine years of legal battles, five out of the six men she accused were acquitted by the supreme court of pakistan — a decision that shocked and disappointed many pakistanis, especially human rights activists (daily times, 2011). fearing for mukhtar mai’s life, pakistan’s human rights forces and feminist groups protested the supreme court decision and appealed to the government to protect mukhtar against her powerful opponents. the public discourse, as evinced in the press, television, and online social media, manifested the usual dichotomization of individualistic progressives versus communitarian religious conservatives. a more recent event related to community or national honor in pakistan was the attempted killing of sixteen-year-old schoolgirl malala yusufzai. deemed to be an act of terrorism, the attack on malala was condemned in pakistan as contrary to islamic injunctions; however, the taliban drew upon a puritanical interpretation of cultural and religious tradition to justify their attack, 14see http://www.scribd.com/doc/33096133/parvez-case-agreed-statement-of-facts 15sadly, honor crimes of the “classic” type (i.e., killing, mutilation, burning, or maiming of women) are too numerous to recount and may be examined by a casual monitoring of urdu and english-language newspapers; the daily news bulletin of the urdu-language television channel geotv, which is available in canada; and reports printed regularly by aurat foundation, shirkat gah, the human rights commission of pakistan, and other ngos. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 57  accusing malala of dishonoring pashtun culture, the national interest, and islam (ehsan, 2012; dawn, 2013). initially eliciting public sympathy in pakistan, both mukhtar mai and malala were accused by patriarchal and misogynist forces, mostly affiliated with politico-religious groups but also some representatives of self-identified liberal political parties, of trying to solicit western sympathy and money through freedomor justice-seeking behavior (maqbool, 2013; shah, 2013). both women have since been repositioned in contemporary pakistani media and in some first-world-based postcolonial accounts as agents and tools of western imperialism.16 their willingness to accept lifesaving support from imperialist and liberal sources has compromised their victim status. indeed, emergent critiques of malala, including some postcolonial feminist discussions and liberal nationalist ones, resonate uncomfortably with the advice of syed munnawar hussein (2011), the leader of pakistan’s major politico-islamist party, jamaat-e-islami, who has declared that when there is no honorable means of vindication, islam enjoins “dishonored” females — such as rape victims — to accept their victimization silently and await justice in the hereafter. it is of course futile to suggest that islamist politics have produced honor-related violence in pakistan, since many forms of violence against women have existed in south asia for a long time, as they have in all societies. however, women’s groups and feminist scholars have recorded the close link between state and nonstate violence against women, cultural groups, and religious minorities and the rise of puritanical versions of islam.17 it is particularly noteworthy that notions of honor and shame have substantially been transformed in pakistan due to intensifying class, sectarian/ national, rural/urban, tribal/civilized, western/islamic, and other differences that, as inderpal grewal (2013) notes, tend to inhere in the construct of honor everywhere. these changes are widely traced to the top-down policy of islamization of law and society imposed by general zia ul haq, military dictator of pakistan from 1977 to 1988. general zia and his politico-religious allies were economically and ideologically supported by saudi arabia and the united states in exchange for pakistan’s role in the us–soviet proxy war fought from 1979 to 1989 in afghanistan.18 zia’s islamization program resonated with the saudi state’s version of islam and systematically undermined more fluid south asian cultural and religious traditions. indeed, feminist scholars khawar mumtaz and farida shaheed (1987) pointed out that a noticeable social change for women was the pervasive idea that not only male members of one’s own family but any man was now obliged to reprimand a woman for her public appearance or behavior. after three decades of the systematic promotion of such attitudes and policies, it is not difficult to understand that in pakistan, very diverse acts of violence are now being enacted in the name of honor of the family, the community, the nation, or simply “islam.” the attack on malala, a body 16for some of this debate, see hirschkind and mahmood (2002), bbc news (2005b), manchanda (2012), zia (2012), guardian (2013), and shah (2013). 17see mumtaz and shaheed (1987), saigol (2011), zaidi (2011), and zakaria (2012). 18see asghar khan (1985), weiss (1986), mumtaz and shaheed (1987), and ahmed (2002). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 58  covering schoolgirl; the killing of western-educated punjab governor salman taseer in january 2011; and the murder of pakistan’s only christian parliamentary minister, shahbaz bhatti, in march 2011, were all justified by the perpetrators, by many community members, and by mainstream politico-islamist parties and sections of the media as violence related to the honor and the shame of the community.19 sayed zaidi (2011) relates contemporary notions of honor and religious extremism in pakistan to colonialism, nationalist politics, modernization and development, regional issues, and us-saudi-pakistani politics in afghanistan. he points out: everyone who is a member of the group which perceives that it has had its collective honor violated closes ranks, and anyone not adhering to the philosophies of the group is considered an outsider, apostate, murtid [renegade], kafir [disbeliever] or infidel. (zaidi, 2011, p. 9) thus, even though islam does not tolerate honor killing, some muslim groups muddle the already diffuse lines between faith, community, and nation to secure their ideological interest. in their analysis of politico-islamists and militant groups, first-world-based postcolonial feminists sometimes conflate these groups’ political anti-americanism with anti-imperialism, though in fact forces such as the jamaat-e-islami and the taliban seek to replace imperialist or western hegemony not with social justice but with other kinds of oppressive hegemonies (abou zahab, 2002; nasr, 2002; saigol, 2011). in the following section, i will examine some postcolonial feminist challenges to dominant representations of honor crimes. i propose that in our quest to dismantle the hegemony of western secular thought, postcolonial feminist scholars may inadvertently legitimate other hegemonies within islamic and muslim societies that may be socially and politically detrimental to the most vulnerable groups in these societies. they have done this due largely to their singular engagement with western scholars’ and media’s unitary focus on mainstream politico-islamist projects, thereby creating a counterdiscourse that may be overly communitarian. secular exclusions and religious inclusions in a groundbreaking essay on honor, shame, and violence against young muslim women, “seductions of the honor crime,” lila abu-lughod (2011) decries the prominence given to the honor crime in the west since the late 1990s, when women’s rights became part of the united nations agenda. she undertakes an exhaustive review of texts, including fiction, popular literature, scholarly work, and reports of ngos (nongovernmental organizations) in many contexts, and traces the ubiquity of representations that relate honor killing to primordial notions of honor deemed to be prevalent in some societies, especially muslim ones (p. 33). like many other postcolonial scholars, abu-lughod rightly draws attention to the violence of poverty, migration, state secularism, western cultural dominance, racism, and other aspects that are ignored when 19malala now lives and studies in the united kingdom, where she was sent for treatment by the government of pakistan. the taliban have publicly renewed their intention to kill her (crilly, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 59  muslim women’s victimhood is blamed solely on muslim men, the muslim community, islamic texts, and muslim culture.20 she attributes the dominant discourse on honor-related violence to liberal critics of the honor crime in western contexts and the westernized elite in non-western contexts. she laments that these pose a problem for feminists: “defined as the killing of a woman by her relatives for violation of a sexual code in the name of restoring family honor, the honor crime poses perhaps more starkly than any other contemporary category the dilemmas of feminist scholarship and rights activism in a transnational world” (abu-lughod, 2011, p. 17). abu-lughod points out that muslim women’s agency is undermined and their collective experiences of family and community are simplified in dominant representations of the honor crime in western societies and among westernized elite, including feminists, the state, and ngos. to counter these representations abu-lughod describes the understanding of honor that she developed through her ethnographic work among women in the egyptian awlad ‘ali bedouin tribe in the late 1970s. abu-lughod (2011) argues that rather than patriarchal restrictions, women’s regulated behavior may be understood as part of “systems of morality, secular or religious, [that] are constraining; the idea is that they make people better than they would otherwise be” (p. 21). as evidence, she draws attention to studies that reinstate muslim women as subjects who are proud to bear muslim identity and piety, even if the burdens of embodying these identities are painful or constraining (mahmood, 2005; asad, 2011). in situations where young muslim women’s actions point to a clear and wilful rejection of the norms of piety and modesty imposed by their cultural or religious communities — asqa pervez, the shafia sisters, and, one may add, malala — anti-imperialist feminists posit their transgressions against the seductive effectsof a racist secularism.thus, muslim schoolgirls in canada, france, and the united states who resist adopting the hijab or who, like malala, desire to pursue secular education are implicitly cast as agency-lacking subjects who have succumbed to the hegemonic western culture or who are unable to resist the racist oppression of the society in which they must live (zine, 2008; haque, 2010; ehsan, 2012). while these strategies certainly clear a discursive space for the “pious” muslim woman, they construct normative boundaries that restrict and undermine expressions of those practices, desires, and clothing that stray outside these bounds. indeed, such discursive practices may foster a dichotomy of pious and transgressive that the gendered agent is able to successfully master only through the persona that jasmin zine (2008) has described as the “pious muslim girl” (p. 40). in her study of schoolgirls in an islamic girls school in toronto, zine found a variety of discourses about islam, the role of schooling, and muslim femininity among the students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members (p. 40). however, zine was concerned to find “a salient archetype for young muslim women to model themselves upon” that she terms the “pious muslim girl as guardian of public honour” (pp. 40–41). she points out that this image prioritizes 20see mahmood (2008), haque (2010), abu-lughod (2011), asad (2011), and bakht (2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 60  and promotes a set of cultural expectations regarding behavior, dress, and activities for young muslim girls that are deemed to be in accordance with islamic norms and religious requirements. she explains, “the issue of izzat, or honour, is a salient component of the discourse of piety” (p. 41), according to which young muslim girls must abide in order to uphold the honor and reputation of their families and the school. although zine notes important instances of girls’ subversion of the established order, she emphasizes that dominant expectations of behavior become normative and regulate muslim women in what she describes as the “public performance of piety” (p. 41) at school, in public places, on buses, and so on. zine notes that a similar regime of regulation has been observed in studies conducted among muslim schoolgirls in the united kingdom, where young women’s behavior, attitudes, and clothing were deemed to signify the honor of family and community. zine concludes, “the regulation of muslim girls through this paradigm of honour and piety occurs as the result of puritan beliefs that women’s bodies create fitnah, or discord, as the result of sexual enticement” (p. 41). zine’s insightful analysis suggests that attempts to uphold muslim women’s pious normative femininity against secular normative femininity, while politically commendable, dodge the relationship of desire, sexuality, violence, and transgression with piety and community; this interrelationship is integral to any serious attempt to conceptualize family, community, society, and state-based violence against muslim women, indeed all women. it is important to bring to light other performative aspects of muslim women’s religious subjectivity — moral or immoral — that are obscured both in secular/hegemonic notions of primordial honor and in postsecular, postcolonial affirmations of community. transgressive piety: alternative relationships of individual and community the close relationship between transgression and religion has been explicated by michael taussig, and its potential to disrupt repressive social and cultural boundaries, especially those between normative and deviant sexuality, has been amply explored and asserted by postmodern scholars, notably georges bataille and michel foucault (taussig, 1998; jenks, 2003). taussig (1998) argues that while mainstream religions today seek to eliminate it, transgression animates religion emotionally and intellectually by opening a “charged” space (p. 350) of bodily, visual, musical, narrative experience that may be unrepresentable yet awe-inspiring, empowering, stimulating, and sacred. for taussig, bataille and foucault signal such a space in their engagement with the notion of transgression. indeed, transgression is a compelling motif of much poststructuralist thought and, according to jenks (2003), is closely tied to a claim of ontological sovereignty that is neither depersonalized nor universalized but that muddles epistemological binaries (e.g., good and evil) and enables transcendence of existing power structures. transgression therefore carries cultural, social, and political significance not only for abstract social subjects but also for concrete physical bodies, though not all of these bodies, according to an important insight from flavia monceri (2012), may be similarly motivated by the nietzschean will to transgress that animates poststructuralist discussions. in its political usage, monceri further differentiates transgression from dissent in that the latter seeks legitimacy and recognition within international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 61  the existing order (i.e., those who conform) while to transgress is an “individual exercise of power to construct rules and establish them as norms, a power having no need to be recognized by those who conform in order to be legitimated” (p. 31). indeed, for monceri, transgression is “an unintended outcome emerging from reproducing practices differently” for a variety of reasons and therefore it is a feature of our everyday interactions as each of us, in individualized ways, use our received knowledge and information to achieve our purposes (p. 38). monceri presents the example of the disabled body or the intersex body, which must alter existing norms because of its uniquely concrete physical form. we may make a similar case for a disabled muslim body’s inability to perform ritual prayer in the prescribed way (p. 34). monceri’s insights allow us to see transgression in unintentional dissent and individualized acts such as aqsa’s teenage bodily rebellions, malala’s determination to study, or mukhtar mai’s rejection of the suicide “option.” in diverse contexts and for different purposes, all these individualized acts subvert patterned ways of acting, and in doing so “they also let transgressive practices emerge, as possible and viable alternatives to codified ways of doing things in everyday life” (monceri, 2012, p. 38). within the sufi tradition, and the islamic tradition generally, it is possible to argue for dissent and transgression as a mode of acting that contains exoteric and esoteric meanings. many of the nondiscursive or postdiscursive dimensions that link transgression with the sacred are familiar to muslims through islam’s mystical traditions, or sufism: mystery; ecstasy; the sensory; secrecy and unveiling; illumination; the importance of sound, music, and poetry over speech; and above all its ability to disrupt the binary relationship of self and other, power and resistance. in some of islam’s more esoteric but widely popular mystical orders we may also find some nondiscursive and postdiscursive aspects of excess explored by foucault (1997) in “a preface to transgression”: body-changing rituals, the use of drugs and alcohol to aid stimulation, and spectral performances, all of which have been the target of puritanical groups.21 it is pertinent to point out that south asian muslim history is replete with examples of sufi saints who relinquished temporal aspects of the shariah “to discover in this abandonment an expression of love and passion through the physicality of the body” (kugle, 2007, p. 221). pious muslims may act not in dissent of the divine but to disrupt the boundary between human and divine, exposing a dispersion of the divine in every being, including the erotically represented earthly beloved. such acts always include a potential to alter the existing worldly social or political order. islamic mystics, saints, scholars, poets, and writers have conceptualized the emancipating potential of the transgressive act from a spiritual perspective drawing on several mystical traditions, above all the idea of wahdat ul wujud (oneness of being) associated with the twelfthcentury andalusian mystic muhyiddin ibn arabi (1165–1240) and the tradition of ishq/eshg (love) associated with the thirteenth-century turko-persian mystic poets jalal ad-din muhammad rumi 21see, e.g., mumtaz and shaheed (1987), saigol (2011), zaidi (2011), kadri (2012), and zakaria (2012). for a good discussion of sufi approaches to the body in south asia, see kugle (2007, pp. 181–264). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 62  (1207–1273) and farid ad-din abu hamid muhammad attar (d. 1190). 22 the subjectivity associated with these interlinked traditions is eloquently described by claudia yaghoobi (2012): oftentimes, the sufi’s profane love, representing the heavenly, guides him/her to transgress the earthly boundaries and to reject the status quo. this is the moment when the sufi faces the kristevan zenith of subjectivity; that is the sufi wayfarer deand reconstructs her/his self, emerging as a new subject able to cross earthly boundaries with the means of divine love. (p. 90) yaghoobi uses poststructuralist feminist ideas, especially julia kristeva’s (1987) ideas about gendered subjectivity and judith butler’s (1996) theories of gender and performativity, to critically revisit the poetry of the persian mystic fariduddin attar, wherein she locates a persistent theme of human diversity, inclusiveness, and justice. in relation to islamic mysticism, it is important to underscore, as yaghoobi does, that whereas for foucault sexual transgression is important for its potential to mark a nondiscursive space of liberating profanity in a world devoid of all limits, this is different from the islamic mystic’s breaching of limits. foucault’s aim is ultimately to find a postsecular and postreligious sexual subject that does not need the constitutive binary of self/other, mind/body; islamic mystics seek to transcend body and soul (annihilation/fanaa) in the imperative to reach final immersion (resurrection/baqaa) in the spiritual oneness of being. where the poststructuralist and the islamic overlap in the worldly sense is in the search for justice beyond the normative boundaries of a given secular or religious episteme. regardless of the historical and geographical context, the notion of transgressive love invoked in esoteric or popular islamic mystical poetry presents a challenge to the truth claims and power of institutionalized religious and political authority that interjects between the believer/lover and the divine/beloved. indeed, south african islamic feminist sadiyya shaikh (2012) upholds the ideas of ibn arabi as imbued with “possibilities for engaging fundamental questions of human value and existence in a manner that has profound implications for understandings of gender difference and equality” (p. 217). in particular shaikh finds “radical alternatives” to dominant images of patriarchal theology when she approaches ibn arabi with the help of post-enlightenment feminist intellectual theories and her own “embodied twenty-first-century understandings of islam” (p. 119). shaikh sees ibn arabi’s sufism as brimming with possibilities not only for individual, privatized experiences of spirituality but for larger collective invocations that might be imbued with contemporary ideas and issues of social justice and gender equity (pp. 217–228). the emancipatory impulses of sufism, while never fully implemented in social, political, or cultural life in muslim societies, nevertheless kept alive the virtues of tolerance, nonviolence, and pluralism. they also helped to restrain the punitive impulse of islamist legalist and doctrinaire 22some idea of rumi’s embrace of wahdatul wujud and his effect on south asian mysticism can be gauged from william chittick (2007). martin lings’s (1975) classic text what is sufism? remains one of the best expositions of the seemingly transgressive but esoteric spirituality of divine oneness, or wahdat-ul-wujud. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 63  forces, which sometimes impounded muslim identity from groups that did not share the dominant sunni scriptural interpretation or prescribed punishment for those they deemed transgressive, such as homosexuals, musicians, dancers, and ordinary sexual subjects. these emancipatory impulses were the ground for activist invocations of transgressive subjectivity on the part of the muslim philosopher muhammed iqbal (1877–1938) in the anticolonial nationalist struggle and the south asian poet faiz ahmed faiz (1911–1984) in a disempowering postcolonial social and political order.23 in pakistan, at least until the 1980s, the force of saints’ teachings and sufi ideas upon the majority sunni hanafi tradition of islam (metcalf, 2005; schimmel, 2006; kugle, 2007) allowed a degree of ambiguity in matters of the pious and the sinful, enabled tolerance of liminal spaces for transgression, and, most important, deferred the question of who is to identify and punish the sinful acts of fellow muslims.24 these traditions are threatened by the ascendance of rigid and legalistic practices termed salafism (emulation of pious ancestors) or wahabbism in the agendas of politico-religious parties and islamist movements.25 salafism, inspired by the doctrines of the thirteenth-century islamic scholar taqi ad-din ahmad ibn taymiyyah, is also the inspiration for many types of islamic feminism and piety movements that have been observed in societies as widespread as canada (zine, 2008), egypt (mahmood, 2005), indonesia (rinaldo, 2008), and pakistan (ahmad, 2009; jamal, 2013). deploring the veneration of ibn taymiyya among many self-proclaimed antiimperialist muslims, muslim legal historian sadaqat kadri (2012) describes ibn taymiyya’s ideas as “quasi-totalitarian” (p. 143). kadri considers ibn taimiyya’s ideas as central to the struggles among muslims that eventually transformed the shariah from a set of divine guidelines for the self-cultivation of the believer into an institutionalized code for discriminating pious self and sinful other. 26 this departs from the individual/community relationship modeled on an intimate, empathic interrelationship of individual believer and immanent divine rooted in quranic tradition. kadri illustrates this through an anecdote passed down by sufis in iraq that recounts a witty exchange between an eleventh-century mystic and the divine: “‘oh, abu al-hasan!’ god had boomed. ‘do you want me to tell people what i know about your sins, so that they may stone you to death?’ ‘oh, lord,’ he had whispered back. ‘do you want me to tell people what i know about your mercy, so that none will ever feel obliged to bow down to you again?’ ‘keep your secret,’ came god’s conspiratorial reply. ‘and i will keep mine’” (p. 128). 23in his poem “doa,” faiz (1986) uses the idea of kufr (disbelief/dissent/transgression) as a possibility for revitalizing muslim agency against an oppressive order. 24for a solid discussion of the islamic injunctions on reforming and reprimanding errant muslims by fellow believers, see cook (2000). i have discussed this relation of individual, community, and state relationship in my own recent book (jamal, 2013). 25see cook (2000), nasr (2002), ernst (2006), kugle (2007), kadri (2012), and shaikh (2012). 26kadri (2012) states that five hundred years of islamic legal documentation can prove that ottoman courts imposed a stoning to death only once in their history (p. 142). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 64  a similarly nuanced muslim subjectivity oriented toward divine mercy rather than apocalyptic wrathfulness is reflected in the extensive work of south asian historian ayesha jalal, who stresses that islam indeed provides for personal faith. according to jalal (2001, 2002), unlike the dualistic relationship of individual and society in western humanism, muslims emphasize the maintenance of a just balance between individual and community, and this has been subject to multiple and diverse interpretations over time. rejecting a purely doctrinal approach that would highlight the communitarian aspect at the expense of the individual, jalal (2001) demonstrates the existence of a strong individual self-consciousness in outstanding muslim figures of pre-1857 india. such a subjectivity, according to jalal, is subsumed in wide-ranging assumptions about a collective islamic ethos — assumptions that, i propose, are evident in both imperialist representations of muslims and contemporary projects aimed at moral reform of the islamic community. jalal’s insights militate against normative accounts of pious muslim women’s agency based on communitarian understanding alone, since these can delegitimize other practices and traditions of islam.27 from the lens of transgression as a mode of islamic piety rather than in opposition to it, feminists may construct different narratives about imperialism, gendered violence, and islam. we could begin by rejecting the singular construction of muslim women that is integral to hegemonic projects and agree with shaikh (2012) that despite many common elements, the unity of islam is “mostly accompanied by myriad diversities” (p. 5). arguing that muslim women are multiply positioned and multiply interpellated subjects who live their faith in complex and heterogeneous ways, we could uphold seemingly transgressive acts of temporal subjects while not automatically rendering them as devout or spiritual. instead of judging muslim women through communityimposed notions of honor and respectability, we could argue that while many women may willingly embrace normative modes of dressing and acting, others may disdain authoritative prescriptions without forfeiting community or islam. while drawing attention to the civilizational discourse that undergirds many instances of “saving muslim women” (abu-lughod, 2002, p. 785), muslim feminists may refuse to exonerate the taliban on the basis of their sociopolitical conditions of possibility and instead offer unstinted support to malala for continuing a long-held tradition of flouting authoritative prescriptions for genderor class-specific performance (ehsan, 2012). following the lead of canadian muslim leaders in vociferously condemning honor killing as unislamic, postcolonial canadian feminists could embrace aqsa and the shafia sisters as victims of bad faith on the part of family and society. such a narrative would situate their girlish indiscretions not within a discourse of secular versus religious and western society versus muslim family but as the enactment of desires that may lead a teenage girl to breach customary boundaries whether 27islam in south asia is profoundly shaped by chishti sufism, which was introduced to the subcontinent by the muslim mystic moinuddin chishti in the twelfth century ce. the chishti order, which originated in afghanistan, is distinguished by its emphasis on beauty, love, and tolerance and its disdain for all forms of arrogance in matters of faith. millions of south asians of all genders, classes, and creeds visit the shrine of moinuddin chishti in ajmer, india, each year to participate in music, singing, and bodily performances that mark the urs, or the celebration of the death anniversary of the mystic saint. for an account of the sufi chisti tradition, see ernst and lawrence (2002). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 65  by wearing bangles and makeup in a small village in pakistan or by defying family dress codes in toronto.28 in addition to accounts of muslim girls’ and women’s loyalty, their sense of propriety, and their painstaking efforts to live up to a shared moral code with their paternal families, we could also provide evidence of the multitude of instances recorded by feminists when parents, families, and community members act to protect the honor and reputation of sexually transgressive individuals. for example, nafisa shah (1997) demonstrates that not all elements of tribal communities are vindictive against “dishonorable” women but that tribal, spiritual, and local government functionaries may play an important role in protecting victims (p. 255). indeed, the published memoirs of mukhtar mai indicate that against the cast of powerful warlords, corrupt policemen, and complicit local authorities she was supported by her parents, especially her father, in rejecting the customary “honorable” option of suicide in the face of gang-rape and in challenging her abusers (mukhtar mai & cuny, 2006). she also recounts the role of the local mullah, who publicly condemned the incident in a friday prayer sermon (pp. 23–28), and the judge who gave her a fair and supportive hearing (pp. 41–42). while offering insights into the circumstances of immigration, underemployment, and exploitative class, race, and cultural contexts of migrant muslim families, feminists need not present extenuating circumstances for the violent behavior of some muslim men, since nothing can truly extenuate violence against women. we can be critical of imperialist feminist gestures that appropriate the bodies of dead muslim women to consolidate the western civilized subject, as ably problematized by razack, while also being vocal about politico-religious appropriations of the bodies of living muslim women who want to be both individual subjects and members of family and community. conclusion as a linguistic construct, transgressive piety may sound near-blasphemous to ordinary muslims in today’s pakistan, but very few, elite or poor, would fail to respond to its appeal when couched in the poetry of the sixteenth century iconoclastic mystic bulleh shah: tere ishq nachayan kar ke thaiyan thainyan re [your love stirs me to dance in wild abandon].29 in one of the dense ironies of transnational capitalism, the relationship of salafism and sufism is being reworked in contradictory ways due to the complex interactions of islamophobia, salafism, and islamic mysticism with the imperatives of the war on terror, economic and cultural consumerism, and multinational corporatism. 30 in pakistan, the timeless poetry, music, and 28see http://www.scribd.com/doc/33096133/parvez-case-agreed-statement-of-facts. 29bulleh shah is renowned for rejecting the ritualistic piety of local religious leaders. this lyric refers to an incident when he put on ankle bells and danced to appease his beloved male mentor (translation mine). in so doing, bulleh shah crossed all the boundaries of gender, piety, class, and caste. some of the most popular poems and songs of sufi masters are part of the normal oral repertoire of their admirers, as is the case with bulleh shah in pakistan. for some renderings easily accessible in north america, see khan (2012). see also https://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/tere-ishq-nachaya-bulleh-shah/ 30see ernst (2006), kugle (2007), shaikh (2012), and shaukat (2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 66  dancing that are constitutive aspects of transgressive mysticism are being recovered from their traditional settings — shrines and saints’ tombs — and reworked into musical hits that are circulated by transnationally available private tv channels on shows sponsored by multinational companies such as coca-cola. in the background of daily suicide bombing attacks, insidious talibanization, and multiplying fatwas about morality and piety, the popular tv program cokestudio enables young pakistani artists to invoke transgressive islamic experiences that continue to be affectively familiar to muslims despite the spectacular emergence of salafism.31 islam and muslims, like all social collectivities, are diversely constituted, complexly textured, multiply understood ways of being in the world, ways of being that are imbued with manifold possibilities for both liberation and oppression rather than a unitary and homogenous “community” or “identity” to be defended and upheld. the significance of transgressive piety for muslim social, political, and perhaps legal scholars is that it keeps open the question of what is sinful and what is devout by emphasizing the pitfalls of righteous arrogance that entails moral disciplining by one another, by religious vigilantes, and by the theocratic state. by taking the onus of disciplining and punishment of “morally deviant” or “sinful” subjects away from the individual, the juridicoreligious apparatus, and the state, it offers the possibility for a more egalitarian basis for community. there is a need for all muslim subjects to be able to claim a more empathic relationship with their communities and their faith than allowed by patriarchal and punitive notions of self, community, and divine. 31see http://www.cokestudio.com.pk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 12(1): 49–72 67  references abbas, h. 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(2008). honour and identity: an ethnographic account of muslim girls in a canadian islamic school. topia, 19, 35–61. doi:10.3138/topia.19.35 family and youth vulnerability to suicidal behaviour international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 70 family and youth vulnerability to suicidal behaviour in first nations: a comparison of reserve and non-reserve groups michel tousignant, nathalie morin, livia vitenti, antoine bibaud de serres, and arlene laliberté abstract: family factors can influence vulnerability to suicide in the general population as well as among aboriginal communities. this research compares first nations families living in three contexts – on a reserve, in a small town, and in a metropolitan area – to verify if children on a reserve appear to have higher family vulnerability, as indicated by a measure of negligence/indifference. an interview was conducted with three non-random samples of quebec first nations parents. the first sample was selected from a reserve, the second from families living in small towns near a reserve, and the third from two metropolitan areas. the negligence score was based on the criteria of the childhood experience of care and abuse interview. aboriginal families from the metropolitan areas obtained a lower rate of negligence than the reserve group, with an intermediate rate for the small town group. however, rates were high in all three settings. informants from groups outside the reserve perceived the reserve as presenting more challenges to raising children than where they lived. vulnerability of children is likely to remain high in this reserve in the near future. initiatives that have the intention of empowering parents should be undertaken at the family level. prevention should also focus on ecological factors such as housing, continuing education, and job creation, as well as family intervention. keywords: first nations, suicide prevention, parental behaviour acknowledgement: this research was funded by the canadian institutes of health research of canada (grant san 79157). we thank all the participants from the first nations families who have contributed to this research. we also want to thank the following persons: alex cheezo, jean papatie, alexandre auger, danielle rousselot, felipe benedet maureira, alain janelle, élisha laprise, and remi castonguay. michel tousignant, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of psychology and the center for research and intervention on suicide and euthanasia, university of quebec in montreal, postal box 8888, station centre-ville, montreal, quebec, canada h3c 3p8. e-mail: tousignant.michel@uqam.ca nathalie morin, m.ps., research associate, center for research and intervention on suicide and euthanasia, university of quebec in montreal. e-mail: morin.nathalie.3@uqam.ca livia vitenti, ph.d., post-doctoral fellow, unesco chair in bioethics, university of brasilia, brazil. e-mail: lvitenti@yahoo.com.br mailto:tousignant.michel@uqam.ca mailto:morin.nathalie.3@uqam.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 71 antoine bibaud de serres, b.ps., doctoral student, department of psychology, university of quebec in montreal. e-mail: antoine.bibaud@gmail.com arlene laliberté, ph.d., regular professor, department of psychology and psychoeducation, university of quebec in outaouais, campus st-jérôme, quebec, canada. e-mail: arlene.laliberte@uqo.ca between 1995 and 2000, we collaborated on suicide prevention initiatives in first nations communities where the suicide rate was rapidly rising for individuals aged 18 to 35 years. discussions with senior members of the community and education administrators born in the community pointed to the family as a risk factor for suicide. the team then applied for a grant on the theme of suicide prevention and the family. during the planning period, it was decided not only to study families living on a reserve, but to compare them with two other groups – families living in metropolitan areas and families from small towns. the idea was first to produce as accurate a portrait as possible of how parents were actually coping with child rearing on a reserve and to see if the situation was more or less favourable outside the reserve. a brief analysis of the epidemiology of suicide in aboriginal communities will introduce the topic. then, the evidence relating family factors to suicide will be presented, followed by statistics from welfare agencies on first nations. in canada, the latest complete national statistics on suicide among first nations (government of canada, 2006) indicated that the suicide rate for first nations was 24 per 100,000 in 2000. this was twice the rate of the general canadian population. the rate among first nations men 15 to 24 years of age, was 126 per 100,000, compared to 24 per 100,000 for canadian men of the same age. suicide rates also vary significantly among first nations communities, as illustrated for british columbia by chandler and lalonde (1998). in quebec, a systematic review from the coroner's office of all cases in five targeted villages from the atikamekw and anishnabe regions showed that for the 25 years of the period from 1986 to 2010 the number of suicides was almost one per year in three of the locations. in 2010, each of these villages had a population of 1,200 to 1,800. for the cree, innu, and mohawk groups, where suicide is certainly much lower, data are scant. family factors have been associated with suicide both in aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups. there is some evidence that a history of family adversity is associated with suicidal behaviour among adolescents (wagner, 1997). in a study using regression analysis, poor care from both parents was related to suicidal behaviour in a high school population; however, only a father’s poor care was associated with suicidal behaviour in a college population (tousignant, bastien, & hamel, 1993). in a large european survey, suicide attempts among french women were associated with having an authoritarian mother, and in spanish men with having an overprotective mother (kovess-masfery et al., 2011). brent (1995), the most quoted author in the field of adolescent suicide, concluded that parental psychopathology is associated with adolescent suicide, and presented evidence suggesting a link with parental adversity. a high score on measures of neglect and abuse was found in two-thirds of an adult suicide sample from quebec (zouk, tousignant, séguin, lesage, & turecki, 2006). this mailto:antoine.bibaud@gmail.com mailto:arlene.laliberte@uqo.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 72 is twice the rate of a control group of individuals who died as a result of road accidents. a new york study of youth suicide reported that parental psychopathology, especially depression in mothers and anti-social behaviour in fathers, was a predictive factor (gould, shaffer, fisher, & garfinkel, 1998). similarly, a large danish study observed that suicide in a group 35 years of age and younger was associated with a history of psychiatric treatment in the mother (stenager & qin, 2008). however, a study on suicide and schizophrenia failed to find any difference in parental adversity during childhood between a suicide group and a group under treatment with no history of suicide attempts. nonetheless, the rates of parental negligence were high in both groups (tousignant et al., 2011). regarding first nations suicide, high family adversity during childhood was found in 24 cases out of 28 consecutive adult cases in four quebec communities, (laliberté & tousignant, 2009). many cases suffered multiple types of adversity, with psychological abuse in 23 cases, physical abuse in 13, and sexual abuse in eight. unfortunately, due to a high rate of suicidal attempts, or serious suicidal ideation among local youth, it was impossible to form a comparison group. a further analysis of this study revealed that 40% of male cases had a brother who had also died by suicide. in contrast to this finding, no single instance of two brothers having died by suicide was found in a quebec group of 70 suicides (zouk et al., 2006). this aggregation of suicides among brothers in first nations might be due to genetic factors, shared family environment, or both. family has often been mentioned as a risk factor for aboriginal suicide, but the evidence is incomplete. the review by kirmayer et al. (2007) quoted many reports that showed a high incidence of traumatic family events in the aboriginal population, especially relating to the residential schools period. however, in the absence of case-control studies only circumstantial evidence exists that these events relate to the high rate of suicides or suicide attempts in some communities. yet, two of the seven suicide prevention guidelines produced by the consulting group target the family: (a) interventions on children and young people involving the family, and (b) training community mental health workers in individual and family counselling. a similar argument proposed in australia suggests a link between disempowerment of families and the rise of suicidal behaviour in their children (tsey & every, 2000). summarizing theories proposed to interpret aboriginal suicide in australia, hunter and milroy (2006) concluded that all theories concur that “vulnerability” to suicide is linked to developmental factors and, thus, to those historical forces that have impacted on the environment of family life. finally, one study reported evidence of family adversity associated with youth suicide attempts in an inuit community of northern quebec and the two associated factors were a history of physical abuse (in the family or outside) and having a parent with an alcohol or drug problem (kirmayer, malus, & boothroyd, 1996). in conclusion, there is some evidence that family adversity is associated with youth suicidal behaviour among aboriginal peoples. the main source of data on the prevalence of abuse and negligence in families living on reserve in canada comes from the child welfare system. a review has indicated a large overrepresentation of aboriginal families in this category, both in canada and in the united states (trocmé, knoke, & blackstock, 2004). in some canadian provinces, 80% of children in out-of-home care were aboriginals; an estimated 76,000 aboriginal children in canada were in out-of-home care from 2002 to 2004, representing an increase of 70% over the five previous years. this study also showed that disclosures to the social services were more likely to be substantiated by a professional in aboriginal than in non-aboriginal families. according to the authors, this higher rate in aboriginal cases cannot be attributed to the professional biases only. in the regression analysis, the number of residential moves and unsafe housing were the two variables explaining the greatest variance in the difference in substantiated cases in the aboriginal group. one explanation for the high international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 73 rate of aboriginal children in the child welfare system proposes that during the residential schools period a high percentage of the generation who are now parents or grandparents suffered a long separation from family as well as multiple forms of abuse within residential schools; these individuals were deprived of learning from positive parental role models and thus could not act as positive role models for the next generation (royal commission on aboriginal peoples, 1996). two studies have assessed parental behaviour in aboriginal samples. the use of the nursing child assessment teaching skills, an observation instrument to measure parent-child interaction at an average age of 1.5 years, was used on a sample of american indian mothers from various socioeconomic levels and these mothers had more positive interactions with their children than a group of non-aboriginal mothers (seideman, jacobson, primeaux, burns, & weatherby, 1996). their parental style was also different, more non-verbal and more observational. a comparative study with the same instrument conducted among low-income families in edmonton, alberta did not produce significant differences between aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups, but the scores in both groups were below the 10th percentile (letourneau, hungler, & fisher, 2005). in summary, a cautious position would consider family adversity as a likely risk factor for suicide since some evidence points in that direction, both from studies of the general population and from studies of aboriginal peoples. the goal of the present study was to compare how parents were coping with child rearing on a reserve and in two first nations samples living outside reserves in order to determine if children were experiencing more family adversity in the reserve setting. some complementary information was obtained regarding motives for leaving the reserve for individuals who had migrated, and how parents in this category evaluated life on the reserve compared to life off the reserve with respect to raising children. method sampling metropolitan group (n = 40) because no list of aboriginal families outside reserves exists, the metropolitan sample was a sample of convenience. of the 40 informants, 27 were recruited in the greater montreal area and 13 in the greater quebec city area. the task was difficult in montreal, where approximately 7,000 residents of aboriginal origin are scattered over the metropolitan area. aboriginal associations were contacted, mainly through the centre d’amitié autochtone de montréal (native friendship centre of montreal) and the university of quebec association of aboriginal students. these associations did not work directly with families. we also used the snowball technique with the first respondents. in quebec city, a team member of innu origin helped identify numerous informants. small town group (n = 15) the definition of small town has been borrowed from statistics canada and refers to a city with a population of more than 2,000 but not integrated into a metropolitan area, which is defined as a city of more than 100,000 integrating many municipalities. the towns covered were la tuque, joliette (atikamekw) as well as val d’or and its vicinity (anishnabe). in these locations the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 74 aboriginal families knew each other and the snowball technique as well as recruitment through local organizations were used. reserve group (n = 12) introducing a research program on a reserve can require many months. for this reason, the research was limited to a single village in the anishnabe territory. one difficulty to recruiting on the reserve was the fear that the interview program was related with the child welfare services. in the years leading up to and including the time of the interviews, there had been many suicides and reported suicide attempts on this reserve. selection criteria each informant was responsible for at least one child under the age of 18 years and was a permanent resident of the geographical milieu to which he or she was assigned. all informants were registered as indians according to the indian act of canada. socio-demographic characteristics the majority of the metropolitan group was of innu origin (n = 22), mostly from quebec city. other represented nations were anishnabe (6), atikamekw (4), micmac (3), mohawk (2), and inuit (1). the small town group was evenly distributed between atikamekw and anishabe. apart from a single cree informant, all informants on the reserve were anishnabe. two-thirds of the metropolitan group had completed high school (11th grade in quebec) or a higher degree. in the reserve and small town groups, half had completed high school or earned a higher degree while half had not completed high school. however, according to census data on the reserve selected for this study, only 20% had completed high school. the reserve group had the highest number of biological children, 3.6, compared to 2.23 for the metropolitan group and 3.0 for the the small town group. instrument the interview was introduced as an informal exchange about the ways aboriginal parents were coping with their children. the first section focused on family of origin and quality of the relationships with the parents. informants were asked to describe life at home during their childhood years. for those who had left a reserve, some questions focused on the reasons for and circumstances of leaving the community. the second section focused on the actual family. the central part of the questionnaire focused on how the parent was coping with rearing children, both in the present and in the past. an effort was made to introduce the questions in a neutral way and to gather concrete examples of daily life in order to obtain a reliable portrait of family life and avoid general statements. the interview covered the main domains of the ceca’s negligence/indifference scale and questions pertained to activities such as helping the child with school, caring for health problems, providing supervision, providing a minimal structure for daily life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 75 (meals, bedtime), and using services to solve problems. particular attention was given to the parent’s capacity to get involved in the child’s development as opposed to passively coping (or not coping) with daily problems. the interviews were analyzed with the nvivo software program which classifies corresponding sections of interview transcriptions into defined themes, for example “grandparents” or “cultural identity”. a central task was to score negligence/indifference in the parent-child relationship. to this end, we borrowed the criteria of a validated instrument, the childhood experience of care and abuse interview or ceca (bifulco, brown, & harris, 1994) which the first author had used in other studies. although we did not ask all the questions contained in the ceca because we were not using all the scales, we did use many of the original instrument’s questions relating to child care. the material obtained provided concrete illustrations of daily parental behaviour and was adequately explicit to score the negligence/indifference scale. the coding was based on the corpus of examples from the original authors which includes many instances for each level of the negligence/indifference scale. scores range from 1 to 4, with 1 being the most severe. a score of 1 (severe) corresponds to high or severe negligence/indifference and a score of 2 (moderate) corresponds to moderately severe negligence/indifference. both these highest scores of severity are usually reduced to one category for the analyses. numerous studies have demonstrated that these scores are associated with vulnerability to depression at the adult stage (brown, craig, harris, handley, & harvey, 2007). characteristics of a score of 1 are, for instance, a high level of violence in the family, placement of children in foster care, or leaving children alone overnight. in one example, the mother who had recently given birth had been drinking during her pregnancy; her three other children had been placed in a foster home. there was both physical violence and a lack of food in the home. a score of 2, or a moderate negligence level, is also considered detrimental to the child’s development. one example includes a mother and father who lived together with their two children, 5 years and 20 months. the mother had little support from her partner who drank heavily and did not provide support for childcare tasks such as accompanying a sick child to the hospital. there was no regular schedule for home activities; the mother did not like cooking and regularly ate at her own mother’s house. the household hosted parties that lasted three days during which time the mother didn’t sleep. however, in this household there was no violence. scores of 3 indicate some negligence and scores of 4 indicate none at all. an example of a score of 3 (some) is a woman who had children and a boyfriend not living with her. she raised the children in poverty, engaged in therapy to gain greater control of her life, and finally obtained a job as an assistant social worker. despite her many problems, she found resources to help her with family life. a score of 4 (none) usually reflects parents who take active responsibility when problems with children arise and behave proactively. for example, one mother rated 3 (some) when, as an adolescent, she had her first child and received no support from the father. later, she had two more children and received good support from her new partner. she used her resources in order to face problems, and completed both an undergraduate degree and a master's degree while raising two pre-schoolers. at this time she rated a score of 4 (none). we saw other examples where a parent scored positive for negligence in the first stage of parenthood, but the situation had sufficiently improved at the time of the interview to attain a score of 3 or 4. in these cases, we decided to code the negative score corresponding to 1 or 2 to reflect the fact that at least international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 76 one of the children had been at risk, having lived for a significant period in a state of parental negligence. complementary information on family life on the reserve in general was obtained through a first nations project assistant who lived on the reserve, interviews with professionals and agents working in the community (such as the police and the schools directors), focus groups with exstudents of residential schools, and the local advisor committee. procedure most interviews were completed at the home of the informant by a team of two psychology students and two anthropologists. two first nations students did the recruiting. the informant received a small financial compensation. the coding of the interview results was done by the first three authors using consensus. on average, interviews lasted 1.5 hours. ethical considerations the project was approved by the ethical committee of the university of quebec in montreal. the canadian tri-council guidelines for research with aboriginal peoples were applied (canadian institutes of health research, natural sciences and engineering research council of canada, and social sciences and humanities research council of canada, 2010). a formal approval was provided by the chief and council of the reserve. there was also an advisory committee from the reserve composed of seniors and members involved in social services. this committee met with the team twice a year to guide the research orientation and assist in the transfer of knowledge. results the central focus of this paper (table 1) compared parental negligence or indifference in the three residential groups. there was a small but significant difference favouring the metropolitan group compared to the reserve group (x2 = 4.48 ; df = 1 ; p < .05). the negligence scores for the informants’ family of origin are approximate since, in some cases, there was insufficient material to support assignment of a code. a few informants simply mentioned, without elaboration, that “people were drinking all the time” or that “my childhood was miserable”. we believe that such statements refer to serious negligence, but the supporting information is too vague to confidently assign a code. the statistics provided are exploratory and approximate regarding the level of adversity in the family of origin – no statistical tests were conducted on these data. the family situation may be improving in the metropolitan group compared to their family of origin, but the evidence is not as clear in the other two groups and there is no statistical evidence because the section of the interview on the family of origin was too superficial. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 77 table 1. presence of negligence towards children in the informant’ s family of origin and in his present family family metropolitan small town reserve (n = 39)1 (n = 15) (n = 12) present positive 19 (49 %)2 10 (67 %)2 10 (83%) some/none 20 (51%) 5 (33%) 2 (17%) origin positive 27 (71%) 10 (67 %) 12 (100 %) some/ none 11 (29%) 5 (33%) 0 (0%) 1 one missing value 2 five families in the metropolitan group and two in the small town groups scored positive on negligence in the past years but not at the time of the interview. table 2. problems spontaneously reported in the history of the actual family metropolitan (n = 39)1 small town (n = 15) reserve (n = 12) violence sexual violence 0 1 2 extreme negligence 0 0 2 marital violence 6 2 2 other violence 0 0 3 suicide 0 2 2 any type of violence 6 4 8 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 78 addiction problems alcohol 18 9 11 drugs 10 3 3 gambling 0 0 0 1 one missing value _____________________________________________________________________ from the interviews, we recorded the number of times various types of violence were mentioned (table 2). instances of violence were higher in the reserve group (8/13 or 61%) than in the metropolitan group (6/40 or 15%); the small town group was in the intermediate position (4/15 or 27%). problems with alcohol were almost universal on the reserve (11/13 or 85%), much lower in the metropolitan group (18/40 or 45%), with the small town group (9/15 or 60%) again falling in between. the context of migration can provide important information about families from the nonreserve groups. high geographical mobility was present in both groups. in the metropolitan group, only seven informants were born in a large city; three of these had lived on a reserve for more than a year during childhood. more than 80 % (28) had spent at least half their childhood on a reserve. finally, of the 31 informants born on a reserve in that group, more than half (17) had moved to a small town before settling in a metropolitan area. a majority of informants (11) from the small town group were also born on a reserve – three had lived in a city at some point, and three had moved back to the reserve at some point. of the 11 informants with data from the reserve, five had always lived on the reserve, four had lived in a small town, and two in a metropolitan area. the main conclusion from these statistics is that there is high residential mobility in the first two groups, and that the reserve had a strong influence on informants’ lives. the reasons for leaving the reserve were varied. as shown in table 3, the most frequently stated reason in both groups was to complete education. all these informants had settled permanently in their new environment and had no intention of returning to the reserve in the near future. the second most frequent reason, also in both groups, was to escape adverse conditions of family life on the reserve: for example, escaping from an aggressive partner, avoiding falling back into heavy drinking, or protecting one’s children. the third and fourth reasons mentioned by 40% of the metropolitan group related to accompanying a parent when the informant was still a child, accompanying a spouse who had decided either to study or work, or to join family members living outside the reserve. to summarize, migration was motivated more by “pull” factors than by “push” factors in the terms used by the immigration literature. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 79 _____________________________________________________________________ table 3. reasons for leaving the reserve metropolitan group (n = 34)1 small town group (n = 8) education 13 3 escape a situation 7 2 accompany a spouse 6 0 accompany a parent 5 0 work 2 1 specialized health care 1 0 status problem 0 1 1 seven missing values in each of the two groups 3 2 0 0 1 0 1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 80 limitations of the reserve metropolitan small town reserve social problems 19 7 5 lack of supervison 11 3 5 danger of sexual abuse 7 1 2 absence of privacy 7 2 2 insecurity 0 3 3 lack of work 4 1 1 womenʼ s status 3 1 1 burden of confidences 3 1 1 leadership 2 0 2 family support 8 0 3 traditional life 5 1 2 freedom of children 4 0 3 social development 0 0 3 table 4. perceptions of the challenges and strengths of the reserve and the non reserve environments with regard to raising children1 strengths of the reserve 1 more than one answer per informant ____________________________________________________________________ another important interview theme was comparing perceptions of the three groups in terms of what environment (reserve or city) was perceived as better for raising children. table 4 lists the problems and advantages participants reported for each setting. this information can help to interpret possible differences in parental behaviours among the three groups. in all three groups about half of the informants mentioned the numerous social problems (particularly alcohol and violence) as the main liability of living on a reserve and raising children there. the second biggest liability of the reserve (mentioned by one-third of all informants) was the general lack of children’s supervision by their parents, meaning that non-supervised children could have a negative influence on their own children in terms of socialization to drugs and alcohol. though mentioned by only one-fifth of informants, family support was reported as the main strength of living on the reserve. the other two most positive characteristics were the strength of traditional life (though some informants emphasized that they were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 81 referring to life in the forest and not to life on the reserve), and the freedom of children to play on the streets without parental supervision, meaning that traffic was not a danger and that passers-by would keep an eye on children. discussion family adversity we will first look at the evidence that family adversity is a risk factor for youth aboriginal suicide. the existence of suicide clusters among brothers, and the high level of family adversity during childhood could support either a genetic or an environmental explanation (laliberté & tousignant, 2009). another clear result from that study was that the rate of severe parental negligence was found to be very high in a series of 30 first nations suicides. there was, however, no control group in that study. the problem is that suicide is a rare event and when suicide is frequent enough to launch a study in a community, suicidal behaviour and ideation are also found to very high, making it almost impossible to form a non-suicidal control group (not to mention a non-suicidal clinical group). nevertheless, with the knowledge currently available many authors and aboriginal community leaders, both in canada and australia, agree that we should target the family environment in suicide prevention strategies. to summarize the results of this study, despite the low number of informants in the reserve group, cases of negligence/indifference were statistically lower in the metropolitan group than in the reserve group. more than a third (36%) of the metropolitan group was classified positive on negligence in the period immediately preceding the interview, compared to a rate of negligence of 82% in the reserve group. however, the presence of negligence/indifference was high in all three groups compared to other surveys in youth populations where it is generally below 20% (tousignant et al., 1993). keeping in mind that the situation is somewhat better in the metropolitan group, we can nevertheless conclude that a high number of children in all three groups will be vulnerable to mental health problems and suicidal behaviour as they grow older. the following story illustrates the improvement of life after migrating to the city. at the time of the interview, eulalie wanaban (not her real name) had a 10-month-old daughter and a non-aboriginal partner who held a good job. at 18 she had left the reserve to live with a sister, and at 20 moved to another town. at 22 she was drinking heavily and was pregnant; the father was absent. she was on drugs and alcohol during the first years of her son's life but she wanted a better life for him. at 25 she underwent a religious conversion and stopped consuming drugs and alcohol. at 32 she met her future husband. at the time of the interview, both held jobs and were involved with the child’s activity. she had a 15-year-old nephew living at her home as well as two nieces during summertime. the statistics of the local centre jeunesse (child welfare services) corroborates the high rate of negligence on the reserve. about 40% of the children in that village had experienced an out-of-home placement at some time during their childhood. this is much international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 82 higher than the canadian average for aboriginals. furthermore, a child on that reserve had about a 70% chance of being reported to the child welfare services before reaching the age of 18. the results obtained on the reserve should be put into perspective. although the presence of negligence/indifference indicates a high-risk situation for a child, negative experiences were not necessarily a daily experience. as stated in a previous study on family and first nations suicide, when the parents were not drinking, the family situation was often perceived as positive and the informants provided an idealized image of their parents (laliberté & tousignant, 2009). this portrait contrasts with case studies from the general quebec population where the abuse or negligence was reported as more systemic and associated with chronic personality problems in the parents (zouk et al., 2006). these rather gloomy statistics regarding family life on the reserve obscure some positive counterbalancing elements. as shown in both this study (see table 4) and in a national survey (the first nations information governance centre, 2012), the family is still the strongest source of support to individuals. although a high number of families are in distress, they are not as isolated as those in the general population scoring high on negligence. the fact that placements within the family are increasing (rather than outside the family or community) indicates that family solidarity is strong on reserves. despite historical trauma and major challenges for families, there are many resilient families to be found. the following story of a couple from the reserve illustrates the negative/positive cycle of family life and the presence of resilience in the middle of adversity. before their union, both partners had tremendous difficulties with children from separate unions. all their children had been placed in care. at the time of the interview they had a threemonth-old child, and they had stopped drinking in order to provide him with positive and effective care. they had both started to do volunteer work with seniors, and the mother planned to return to school. the father worked full time outside the community, but complied when asked to take care of the child. family members came to the home to help the mother. the interviews suggest two explanations for the overall lower levels of negligence/indifference in the metropolitan group. first, there might be a selection factor at work as people exposed to lower levels of negligence/indifference leave the reserve to seek a better quality of life through employment or education. the other explanation may lie in the separation from a violent partner. in this regard, there were several crosscultural couples in both the metropolitan group and the small town group, but not in the reserve group, likely due to the small number of persons from the same first nation background available for a second union. ecology of the family the more positive portrait of the metropolitan group may be partially explained by environmental factors. the ecology of the family can be an important buffer to other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 83 problems. in families where negligence was present, children had the advantage of external sources of protection compared to children on the reserve. in these families, school appeared to mitigate the negative effects of the home environment, much more than for the reserve group, by offering the child more supervision and structure. the city school seems to better integrate the child academically and to increase the probability of high school completion. this is a general impression that needs to be validated by more systematic analysis. this tentative conclusion is in no way intended to be critical of the quality of reserve schools. on the contrary, the staff of the reserve schools visited during this project were highly competent and their achievements remarkable. for adolescents on the reserve the high school environment is also challenging. a young person with academic interests may be rejected by his or her peers. as well, they are exposed to numerous youth suicide attempts, and even to the occasional suicide. a possible initiative to help children in reserve schools would be the introduction of mental health promotion programs. one team within our program developed a culturally-adapted intervention based on art therapy and philosophy for children. this program, named nokitan ii, was run on a trial basis in wemotaci. its objective was to help children express their feelings and learn tools to negotiate solutions rather than act out their feelings (rousselot, 2009). another observation of family ecology in the metropolitan area was that children were less directly exposed to community violence or to disturbances from drunken visitors in the home. it seemed easier to maintain a calmer home environment in the big city than on the reserve, even in cases of negligence. a sub-group of families with negligence in the metropolitan area was formed by single mothers, who were socially isolated and feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed by the complex adaptation to urban life. in this sub-group, there was generally no violence, alcohol abuse, or intrusion by undesirable visitors. collateral effect of migration one likely effect of the migration from the reserve is the drain of members with a higher interest in education who might have positively contributed to the community. though the migration trend is not (at the moment) demographically important, it should be a consideration when assessing the social capital of a reserve. on the other hand, in the reserve group, many informants had lived outside the reserve. when they migrate back to their community, they could possibly bring the advantage of their experience of dealing with the non-aboriginal world. but, on the whole, the net migratory balance seems negative for the reserve. limitations of the research the convenience nature of the three samples is likely to introduce biases. in this study, it was possible to document that the reserve sample included informants with a higher than average education for their community, where rarely more than five students graduate from high school annually. due to fear that information would get back to welfare services, there was also a mistrust on the reserve regarding interviews on parentchild relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 84 in the absence of a list of first nations members living in small towns and metropolitan groups, it is difficult to assess the degree of representativeness of our samples. families with children were not easy to identify and reach, and the snowball technique is the only one we could use in these circumstances. therefore, it is difficult to assess the generalizability of the results. besides, the montreal area covers many first nations groups, unlike the reserve and small town groups. the composition of our samples reflects the heterogeneity of the population and the difficulty of doing this type of research. lessons for prevention the level of family distress on the reserve selected for this study is still quite high, and the present generation of children is likely to carry increased vulnerability for suicide. although this problem is widely acknowledged, the solutions are complex and need to focus simultaneously on many targets. the goal of this paper was to describe family life in three geographical settings. from interview information we can suggest the nature of the needs of some families, but it is difficult to extrapolate which interventions are most likely to diminish negligence. meanwhile, some reserves are experiencing an acute crisis situation and we must propose concrete actions even given the partial knowledge available. consequently, guided by the interviews and drawing on six years of field experience of life on reserves, we will offer some tentative guidelines for intervention. we are aware, however, of the lack of evidence – both from the results and from our knowledge of the literature – that these recommendations will decrease suicidal behaviour. one small step towards diminishing negligence would be to work to reduce the number of births to adolescents, but this issue is sensitive and should be introduced with great care. these early births appear to lead to more placements compared to births later in life. several interviews clearly showed that mothers did very well with the later-born children, but they ran into serious difficulties at adolescence with their first-born child. for this type of prevention, birth control or abortion are not solutions easily acceptable to the culture, still strongly influenced by catholicism. strategies should be proactive rather than repressive and provide adolescents with goals and a sense of meaning for their future life (catalano hawkins, berglund, pollard, & arthur, 2002). services and programs on reserves in quebec are usually high, and one author used the concept of “overmedicalization” to describe his observations (roy, 2009). in the reserve under analysis, the social welfare personnel was as large as in the nearby town with a population of about 40,000. prevention programs were plentiful and some families simultaneously dealt with numerous service providers. the challenge was to better coordinate social service actions, to define the goals to be achieved with the family, and to encourage parent participation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 70–88 85 alcohol and drugs are a serious handicap to positive parental behaviour, and negligence is associated with long periods of parental intoxication. spontaneous reports of alcohol problems within the family were very high on the reserve. there were also many violent incidents during these intoxications. initiatives should be taken to protect the children during these periods, with refuge homes for victims of violence and abandonment. protection of children is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing communities in crisis. social services and the justice system should use culturallyadapted interventions with the support and collaboration of the most respected members of the extended family (tousignant, morin, & vitenti, 2013). excellent guidelines have been proposed for nearly two decades, but with little effect on controlling violence in communities (native women’s assciation of canada, 1994). another intervention is to provide parents opportunities to become more involved with their children. prevention programs will probably attract the more motivated parents, but not necessarily parents most in need. a review of the literature has shown that successful programs are those that centre on issues proposed by the parents and focus on concrete behaviours (tousignant & sioui, 2009). one original initiative observed on the reserve was a school director who asked fathers to come to the school to help her control their children’s behaviour. solutions should not only target parental behaviour, but should contribute to increasing the quality of life in homes. providing employment would improve the selfesteem of parents, structure parents’ time, and structure their living habits. crowding and the quality of housing is also a chronic problem that needs urgent action as seen in trocme et al. 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(2000). evaluating aboriginal empowerment programs: the case of family well-being. australian and new zealand journal of public health, 24(5), 509–514. wagner, b. m. (1997). family risk factors for child and adolescent suicidal behavior. psychological bulletin, 121(2), 246–298. zouk, h., tousignant, m., séguin, m., lesage, a., & turecki, g. (2006). characterization of impulsivity in suicide completers: clinical, behavioral and psychosocial dimensions. journal of affective disorders, 92(2/3), 195–204. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1943-278x.2010.00002.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/424545 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-842x.2000.tb00501.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.121.2.246 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2006.01.016 family and youth vulnerability to suicidal behaviour in first nations: a comparison of reserve and non-reserve groups abstract: family factors can influence vulnerability to suicide in the general population as well as among aboriginal communities. this research compares first nations families living in three contexts – on a reserve, in a small town, and in a metropo... keywords: first nations, suicide prevention, parental behaviour michel tousignant, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of psychology and the center for research and intervention on suicide and euthanasia, university of quebec in montreal, postal box 8888, station centre-vil... e-mail: tousignant.michel@uqam.ca nathalie morin, m.ps., research associate, center for research and intervention on suicide and euthanasia, university of quebec in montreal. e-mail: morin.nathalie.3@uqam.ca livia vitenti, ph.d., post-doctoral fellow, unesco chair in bioethics, university of brasilia, brazil. e-mail: lvitenti@yahoo.com.br antoine bibaud de serres, b.ps., doctoral student, department of psychology, university of quebec in montreal. e-mail: antoine.bibaud@gmail.com arlene laliberté, ph.d., regular professor, department of psychology and psychoeducation, university of quebec in outaouais, campus st-jérôme, quebec, canada. e-mail: arlene.laliberte@uqo.ca between 1995 and 2000, we collaborated on suicide prevention initiatives in first nations communities where the suicide rate was rapidly rising for individuals aged 18 to 35 years. discussions with senior members of the community and education adminis... a brief analysis of the epidemiology of suicide in aboriginal communities will introduce the topic. then, the evidence relating family factors to suicide will be presented, followed by statistics from welfare agencies on first nations. in canada, the latest complete national statistics on suicide among first nations (government of canada, 2006) indicated that the suicide rate for first nations was 24 per 100,000 in 2000. this was twice the rate of the general canadian population. th... family factors have been associated with suicide both in aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups. there is some evidence that a history of family adversity is associated with suicidal behaviour among adolescents (wagner, 1997). in a study using regressio... brent (1995), the most quoted author in the field of adolescent suicide, concluded that parental psychopathology is associated with adolescent suicide, and presented evidence suggesting a link with parental adversity. a high score on measures of negle... regarding first nations suicide, high family adversity during childhood was found in 24 cases out of 28 consecutive adult cases in four quebec communities, (laliberté & tousignant, 2009). many cases suffered multiple types of adversity, with psycholog... family has often been mentioned as a risk factor for aboriginal suicide, but the evidence is incomplete. the review by kirmayer et al. (2007) quoted many reports that showed a high incidence of traumatic family events in the aboriginal population, esp... the main source of data on the prevalence of abuse and negligence in families living on reserve in canada comes from the child welfare system. a review has indicated a large overrepresentation of aboriginal families in this category, both in canada an... two studies have assessed parental behaviour in aboriginal samples. the use of the nursing child assessment teaching skills, an observation instrument to measure parent-child interaction at an average age of 1.5 years, was used on a sample of american... in summary, a cautious position would consider family adversity as a likely risk factor for suicide since some evidence points in that direction, both from studies of the general population and from studies of aboriginal peoples. the goal of the present study was to compare how parents were coping with child rearing on a reserve and in two first nations samples living outside reserves in order to determine if children were experiencing more family adversity in the reserve sett... method sampling metropolitan group (n = 40) because no list of aboriginal families outside reserves exists, the metropolitan sample was a sample of convenience. of the 40 informants, 27 were recruited in the greater montreal area and 13 in the greater quebec city area. the task was difficult i... small town group (n = 15) the definition of small town has been borrowed from statistics canada and refers to a city with a population of more than 2,000 but not integrated into a metropolitan area, which is defined as a city of more than 100,000 integrating many municipaliti... reserve group (n = 12) introducing a research program on a reserve can require many months. for this reason, the research was limited to a single village in the anishnabe territory. one difficulty to recruiting on the reserve was the fear that the interview program was rel... selection criteria each informant was responsible for at least one child under the age of 18 years and was a permanent resident of the geographical milieu to which he or she was assigned. all informants were registered as indians according to the indian act of canada. socio-demographic characteristics the majority of the metropolitan group was of innu origin (n = 22), mostly from quebec city. other represented nations were anishnabe (6), atikamekw (4), micmac (3), mohawk (2), and inuit (1). the small town group was evenly distributed between atika... two-thirds of the metropolitan group had completed high school (11th grade in quebec) or a higher degree. in the reserve and small town groups, half had completed high school or earned a higher degree while half had not completed high school. however... the reserve group had the highest number of biological children, 3.6, compared to 2.23 for the metropolitan group and 3.0 for the the small town group. instrument the interview was introduced as an informal exchange about the ways aboriginal parents were coping with their children. the first section focused on family of origin and quality of the relationships with the parents. informants were asked to describe... the central part of the questionnaire focused on how the parent was coping with rearing children, both in the present and in the past. an effort was made to introduce the questions in a neutral way and to gather concrete examples of daily life in orde... a central task was to score negligence/indifference in the parent-child relationship. to this end, we borrowed the criteria of a validated instrument, the childhood experience of care and abuse interview or ceca (bifulco, brown, & harris, 1994) which... the coding was based on the corpus of examples from the original authors which includes many instances for each level of the negligence/indifference scale. scores range from 1 to 4, with 1 being the most severe. a score of 1 (severe) corresponds to hi... characteristics of a score of 1 are, for instance, a high level of violence in the family, placement of children in foster care, or leaving children alone overnight. in one example, the mother who had recently given birth had been drinking during her ... an example of a score of 3 (some) is a woman who had children and a boyfriend not living with her. she raised the children in poverty, engaged in therapy to gain greater control of her life, and finally obtained a job as an assistant social worker. de... complementary information on family life on the reserve in general was obtained through a first nations project assistant who lived on the reserve, interviews with professionals and agents working in the community (such as the police and the schools d... procedure most interviews were completed at the home of the informant by a team of two psychology students and two anthropologists. two first nations students did the recruiting. the informant received a small financial compensation. the coding of the interview... ethical considerations a formal approval was provided by the chief and council of the reserve. there was also an advisory committee from the reserve composed of seniors and members involved in social services. this committee met with the team twice a year to guide the resea... results the central focus of this paper (table 1) compared parental negligence or indifference in the three residential groups. there was a small but significant difference favouring the metropolitan group compared to the reserve group (x2 = 4.48 ; df = 1 ; p... the negligence scores for the informants’ family of origin are approximate since, in some cases, there was insufficient material to support assignment of a code. a few informants simply mentioned, without elaboration, that “people were drinking all th... 2 five families in the metropolitan group and two in the small town groups scored positive on negligence in the past years but not at the time of the interview. _____________________________________________________________________ from the interviews, we recorded the number of times various types of violence were mentioned (table 2). instances of violence were higher in the reserve group (8/13 or 61%) than in the metropolitan group (6/40 or 15%); the small town group was in the... the context of migration can provide important information about families from the non-reserve groups. high geographical mobility was present in both groups. in the metropolitan group, only seven informants were born in a large city; three of these ha... the reasons for leaving the reserve were varied. as shown in table 3, the most frequently stated reason in both groups was to complete education. all these informants had settled permanently in their new environment and had no intention of returning t... _____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ another important interview theme was comparing perceptions of the three groups in terms of what environment (reserve or city) was perceived as better for raising children. table 4 lists the problems and advantages participants reported for each setti... though mentioned by only one-fifth of informants, family support was reported as the main strength of living on the reserve. the other two most positive characteristics were the strength of traditional life (though some informants emphasized that the... discussion family adversity we will first look at the evidence that family adversity is a risk factor for youth aboriginal suicide. the existence of suicide clusters among brothers, and the high level of family adversity during childhood could support either a genetic or an envi... to summarize the results of this study, despite the low number of informants in the reserve group, cases of negligence/indifference were statistically lower in the metropolitan group than in the reserve group. more than a third (36%) of the metropolit... the following story illustrates the improvement of life after migrating to the city. at the time of the interview, eulalie wanaban (not her real name) had a 10-month-old daughter and a non-aboriginal partner who held a good job. at 18 she had left the... the statistics of the local centre jeunesse (child welfare services) corroborates the high rate of negligence on the reserve. about 40% of the children in that village had experienced an out-of-home placement at some time during their childhood. this ... the results obtained on the reserve should be put into perspective. although the presence of negligence/indifference indicates a high-risk situation for a child, negative experiences were not necessarily a daily experience. as stated in a previous stu... these rather gloomy statistics regarding family life on the reserve obscure some positive counterbalancing elements. as shown in both this study (see table 4) and in a national survey (the first nations information governance centre, 2012), the family... the following story of a couple from the reserve illustrates the negative/positive cycle of family life and the presence of resilience in the middle of adversity. before their union, both partners had tremendous difficulties with children from separat... the interviews suggest two explanations for the overall lower levels of negligence/indifference in the metropolitan group. first, there might be a selection factor at work as people exposed to lower levels of negligence/indifference leave the reserve ... ecology of the family the more positive portrait of the metropolitan group may be partially explained by environmental factors. the ecology of the family can be an important buffer to other problems. in families where negligence was present, children had the advantage of e... another observation of family ecology in the metropolitan area was that children were less directly exposed to community violence or to disturbances from drunken visitors in the home. it seemed easier to maintain a calmer home environment in the big c... collateral effect of migration one likely effect of the migration from the reserve is the drain of members with a higher interest in education who might have positively contributed to the community. though the migration trend is not (at the moment) demographically important, it sho... limitations of the research the convenience nature of the three samples is likely to introduce biases. in this study, it was possible to document that the reserve sample included informants with a higher than average education for their community, where rarely more than five stu... in the absence of a list of first nations members living in small towns and metropolitan groups, it is difficult to assess the degree of representativeness of our samples. families with children were not easy to identify and reach, and the snowball te... lessons for prevention the level of family distress on the reserve selected for this study is still quite high, and the present generation of children is likely to carry increased vulnerability for suicide. although this problem is widely acknowledged, the solutions are co... the goal of this paper was to describe family life in three geographical settings. from interview information we can suggest the nature of the needs of some families, but it is difficult to extrapolate which interventions are most likely to diminish n... one small step towards diminishing negligence would be to work to reduce the number of births to adolescents, but this issue is sensitive and should be introduced with great care. these early births appear to lead to more placements compared to births... services and programs on reserves in quebec are usually high, and one author used the concept of “overmedicalization” to describe his observations (roy, 2009). in the reserve under analysis, the social welfare personnel was as large as in the nearby ... alcohol and drugs are a serious handicap to positive parental behaviour, and negligence is associated with long periods of parental intoxication. spontaneous reports of alcohol problems within the family were very high on the reserve. there were also... another intervention is to provide parents opportunities to become more involved with their children. prevention programs will probably attract the more motivated parents, but not necessarily parents most in need. a review of the literature has shown ... solutions should not only target parental behaviour, but should contribute to increasing the quality of life in homes. providing employment would improve the self-esteem of parents, structure parents’ time, and structure their living habits. crowding ... a positive transition into adulthood and parenthood is a key to strengthening new families. young parents need education to find job opportunities in order to secure a place in our globalized world. on the reserve, the outside world is not always perc... references 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(2006). characterization of impulsivity in suicide completers: clinical, behavioral and psychosocial dimensions. journal of affective disorders, 92(2/3), 195–204. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 275 a proposed pilot study of a gratitude practice program to increase gratitude among educators: the first step towards exploring the potential of gratitude practice to increase work engagement and buffer against and decrease burnout jasmin wandell abstract: burnout in educational settings is an international issue. drawing on practitioner experience in flexi schools for disenfranchised young people and the methods of positive psychology, this paper outlines a gratitude practice program (gpp) as a proposed intervention to address burnout within flexi schools. the proposed intervention comprises a full-day workshop and 10 weekly group coaching sessions that aim to develop gratitude practice among teachers. the intention of the paper is to consider the gpp’s capacity to increase gratitude and the potential benefit of the program to participants. this proposed pilot study will be delivered to 14 educators in a single school. a pretest-posttest, multi-method design of evaluation will be presented and discussed. the gpp’s capacity to increase gratitude will be evaluated utilising a gratitude questionnaire. a focus group will be used to ascertain the benefit of the program. it is predicted that the gpp will increase gratitude and will be found beneficial by participants. the potential of the gpp to increase work engagement is discussed in terms of future studies. this proposed pilot study offers a practical intervention that can potentially address the real-world problem of burnout in alternative educational settings. keywords: gratitude, work engagement, burnout, gratitude practice jasmin wandell, ma is head of campus at gympie flexible learning centre, youth plus, 2 bowen lane, gympie 4570, queensland, australia. email: jasmin.wandell@youthplus.edu.au mailto:jasminewandell@youthplus.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 276 this proposed pilot study of a gratitude practice program (gpp) was developed as part of a master of applied positive psychology that i was completing for professional development as a leader of a flexi school reengaging disenfranchised young people. the proposal was informed by nine years’ experience, seven in leadership positions, within the flexi school setting. it combines the knowledge and experience of working in the field, with the science of positive psychology. flexi schools aim to re-enfranchise young people through holistic education. the young people who attend flexi schools often have layers of complexity in their lives resulting from trauma, neglect, poverty, generational unemployment, homelessness, substance abuse, and mental illness. due to social, economic, structural, and operational factors, young people attending flexi schools have often experienced exclusion and failure in conventional school settings (morgan, pendergast, brown, & heck, 2014). the learning centres are staffed with multidisciplinary educators including, but not limited to, teachers, social workers, youth workers, and student support workers. collaborative practice among the diverse professionals in this setting is key to achieving positive outcomes for young people with complex needs (edwards, 2004). however, flexi schools can be a challenging environment in which to maintain staff well-being. the staff at flexi schools are responsible for creating a safe learning environment that provides innovative academic education as well as, social, emotional, physical, and wellbeing programs and support. staff are often challenged by what can feel like competing multiple demands. for example, in a single day staff can be required to support a young person who is suicidal, to facilitate classes on and off site, and to be constantly supporting young people to negotiate safe and respectful ways of engaging with each other. these demands can lead to ongoing emotional strain. positive psychology (pp) became a recognized branch of psychology in 1998, presented as an initiative by martin seligman (duckworth, steen, & seligman, 2005). pp is the scientific study of the optimal conditions for individual, group, and organisational flourishing (gable & haidt, 2005). pp aims to broaden the understanding of well-being from clinical psychology’s perspective of relieving suffering to a more complete view, encompassing the factors that increase happiness (seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005). over the past 15 years there has been significant growth in size, reach, impact, and breadth of the field of pp: for example, rusk and water’s (2013) quantitatively study, analysed data from 1992 onwards and found there were 216 citable pp-related journal documents in 1992 compared to 2,300 in 2011 (rusk & waters, 2013). this growth has led to different pp topics being investigated across a diverse range of disciplines (rusk & waters, 2013). seligman and csikszentmihalyi (2000) offer an introduction to pp in a special journal issue in the american psychologist. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 277 positive psychology provides a new perspective when addressing real world problems by focusing attention on cultivating the desired phenomena, rather than fixating on what needs to be mitigated. utilising this perspective, this proposed pilot study aims to explore gratitude practice as a means to addressing burnout through focusing on building work engagement. this paper will provide a literature review of burnout and work engagement. the outcomes of gratitude practice applied in varied contexts will also be presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of gratitude practice in promoting factors of optimal functioning. thus, the transferability of gratitude practice as a pathway to foster work engagement in the flexi-school setting is worth exploration. finally, an overview of the proposed pilot study will be provided. burnout chronic stress leading to burnout in education is an internationally recognised issue. burnout is defined as a prolonged response to stress in the workplace (maslach, 2003; maslach & goldberg, 1998). more precisely, burnout is conceptualised as a multidimensional model operationalised as emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and inefficacy (maslach & goldberg, 1998). emotional exhaustion represents the dimension of the basic stress experience; it gives rise to feelings of being overextended and depleted of resources. depersonalisation often develops in response to emotional exhaustion and refers to a negative detached response to aspects of work. inefficacy has been shown to develop either as a consequence of or in parallel to the dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. inefficacy (reduced personal accomplishment) refers to feelings of incompetence and reduced productivity at work (leiter & maslach, 2004; maslach, 2003; maslach & leiter, 2008). numerous international studies on burnout in the education setting highlight an ongoing concern (brouwers & tomic, 2014; demir & kara, 2014; khani & mizaee, 2015; park & lee, 2013; ventura, salanova, & llorens, 2015). specifically, the detrimental effects of burnout include: physical and mental illness of the educator requiring treatment; a decrease in teaching quality and student outcomes; and negative job performance indicators including absenteeism, staff turnover, and a decrease in productivity and effectiveness. burnout affects the educator, students, and the school as an organisation (kyriacou, 1987; mancini, wuest, vantine, & clark, 1984; maslach, schaufeli, & leiter, 2001). studies of the predictors of burnout provide insight into what areas interventions need to target to be effective. leiter and maslach (2004) evaluated six areas of worklife as a model to understand the organisational context of burnout. this model suggests that workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values mediate burnout. the greater the misfit between these six areas of worklife and the individual, the greater the likelihood the individual will burnout. leiter and maslach’s (2004) cross-sectional analysis drew on a large sample size of 8339 participants, across five countries and included nine different occupations. these findings were supported by longitudinal analysis with a different set of participants (leiter & maslach, 2004). consistency of the psychometric data of the areas of worklife scale “across a variety of occupations, organisation settings, national contexts and language” support the six areas of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 278 worklife as a mediating model to burnout (leiter & maslach, 2004, p.125). leiter and maslach’s (2004) model highlights the complexity of the development of burnout as the relationship between the six areas of worklife and burnout could not be explained by a simple additive model. furthermore, contrast among findings indicates that an individual’s relationship to burnout may be unique to the perspectives they bring, the position they hold, and their personal characteristics. therefore, interventions fostering best fit between the individual and the six areas of worklife may buffer against burnout. the job demand-resources model (jd-r) also offers insight into developing effective interventions against burnout. jd-r proposes that the interaction between job demands and the job resources can explain the process of burnout. in this model, job demands are defined as the physical, psychological, social, and organisational aspects of work that require sustained effort; and job resources are defined as the physical, social, physiological, and organisational aspects that may be functional in achieving goals; reducing job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs; or stimulating personal growth, learning, and development (demerouti, bakker, nachreiner, & schaufeli, 2001). the jd-r model is supported by numerous empirical studies (bakker & demerouti, 2007). of particular interest is the buffering effect of job resources on burnout. bakker, demerouti, and euwema’s (2005) study of 1012 employees of a higher education institute demonstrated that job resources including autonomy, receiving feedback, social support, and high-quality relationships with their supervisors buffered against burnout beyond the strain of job demands. therefore, interventions that increase job resources may be a viable pathway to combating burnout. work engagement with the emergence of positive psychology (pp), research into burnout has turned to its antithesis, “work engagement”. pp focuses on the elements that build individual, community, and organisation flourishing (carr, 2013). work engagement focuses on the positive qualities of the individual’s interaction with work. early on, in the conceptualisation of work engagement in academia, maslach and leiter (1997) defined work engagement as the opposite ends of the burnout dimensions, exhaustion–energy, depersonalisation–involvement, and inefficacy– efficacy. more recently, work engagement has been conceptualised as a distinct concept, rather than the polar opposite to burnout, that is related negatively to burnout and defined as “a persistent, positive motivational state of fulfillment in employees that is characterized by vigour, dedication and absorption” (schaufeli, slanova, gonzalez-roma, & bakker, 2002, p. 74). in this context, vigour refers to high levels of energy and mental resilience; it sits on the opposite end of a continuum of energy to exhaustion. dedication is characterised by a strong involvement in one’s work and sits on the opposite end of a continuum of identification to depersonalisation. based on schafeli et al.’s qualitative study, absorption, defined as being fully engrossed in one’s work, is included despite not being the opposite of inefficacy (as cited in schaufeli et al., 2002). this paper utilises work engagement operationalised as “vigour, dedication and absorption” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 279 (schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). work engagement is a viable path to combating burnout and is worth further investigation (bakker, schaufeli, leiter, & taris, 2008; leiter & maslach, 2004; maslach, 2003; schaufeli et al., 2002). fostering work engagement may be a viable pathway to alleviate burnout. kern, waters, adler, and white’s (2014) evaluation of 153 school employees’ well-being demonstrated that “well-being factors predicted health, life and job outcomes independently of negative emotion” (p. 507). thus, interventions targeted at building on strengths may obtain results above and beyond reducing negative affect (kern et al., 2014). furthermore, engaged workers are happier and healthier than non-engaged workers (bakker, 2009). schaufeli, taris, and bakker’s (2007) large study of 2164 participants from a wide range of occupations found significant health benefits for engaged workers. this study operationalised well-being as perceived health, overall life satisfaction, and absent days due to sickness and demonstrated that work engagement was positively related to perceived health and life satisfaction, and negatively related to absent days. schaufeli et al.’s (2007) inclusion of objective indicators (reported absent days) strengthens the findings in this study as subjective measures may be distorted (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). furthermore, schaufeli, bakker, and van rhenen’s (2009) study adds support for the expectation that engaged workers have less frequent absent days than disengaged workers. however, schaufeli et al.’s (2009) longitudinal study also highlights the complexity of the related constructs of work engagement through the jd-r model. job resources are negatively related to absentee frequency but not duration, while job demands in burnout are positively related to absentee duration (schaufeli et al., 2009). thus, work engagement is related to healthier and happier workers, but factors of burnout may need to be considered as well when developing interventions to promote work engagement to its potential. additionally, engaged workers are more resourceful, leading to further engagement and buffering against burnout. job resources are an antecedent to work engagement (sarti, 2014). schaufeli et al.’s (2009) study adds significant value to this concept, with evidence that work engagement may be self-maintaining through job resources. moreover, schaufeli et al.’s (2009) finding of the presence of gain cycles adds further value to bakker et al.’s (2005) discovery of the buffering effects of job resources against burnout. schaufeli et al. (2009) found that high work engagement predicted an increase in resources a year later, which predicted further engagement at the end of that year. extending on bakker et al.’s (2005) work, bakker, hakanen, demerouti, and xanthopoulou (2007) provide additional evidence of the buffering effects of job resources in the educational setting by exploring job resources effects on the relationship between pupil misbehaviour and work engagement. bakker et al. (2007) found that five job resources, including supervisor support, organisational climate, innovativeness, and appreciation, moderated the impact of pupil misbehaviour on work engagement. thus, interventions increasing engagement may buffer against educator burnout and be self-maintaining. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 280 furthermore, engaged workers perform better (bakker, 2009). bakker, demerouti and verbeke’s (2004) study, involving 146 participants, revealed that job resources were related to extra-role performance. that is, autonomy, social support, and the high possibility of professional development were positively related to pro-organisational behaviour. likewise schaufeli et al. (2007) demonstrated a positive relationship between work engagement and job performance where job performance was operationalised as in-role performance, extra-role performance, and innovativeness. an example of the outcomes of engaged workers is empirically demonstrated in a study by salanova, agut, and peira’s (2005) involving 342 employees from 58 hotels and 56 restaurants. their findings indicate that employees who perceived available resources were more engaged, which related to higher levels of service climate. the positive association between resources, engagement, and service climate was also true at the group level and in turn was positively related to collective customer performance appraisal. implementing the gpp in flexi schools would provide empirical data to determine whether work engagement would also be positively associated to student appraisals. together, these studies demonstrate the value of job resources’ effect on job performance through work engagement. this paper will further the knowledge on work engagement by addressing the imperative calls to focus on interventions targeting engagement (maslach, 2003; sonnentag, 2011). job and personal resources offer a pathway to fostering work engagement. xanthopoulou, bakker, demerouti, and schaufeli’s (2009) longitudinal study of 163 participants found strong empirical support for a reciprocal model linking job resources, personal resources, and work engagement. additionally, hakanen, perhoniemi, and toppinen-tanner (2008) found support for positive gain spirals between resources and work engagement. that is, resources at time one predicted work engagement at time two, and reciprocal gain spirals were evident over time. therefore, interventions aimed at increasing resources are a viable pathway to increase work engagement and may initiate a sustaining, broadening, and building relationship between resources and work engagement. the practice of gratitude may offer a pathway to foster work engagement (wood, froh, & geraghty, 2010). experiencing the emotion of gratitude: leads to high levels of positive affect, low levels of negative affect, and life satisfaction (polak & mccullough, 2006); is associated with relationship formation and may play a significant role in building and maintaining relationships (algoe & haidt, 2009; algoe, haidt, & gable, 2008; gordon, impett, kogan, oveis, & keltner, 2012); is central to pro-social behaviour (bartlett & desteno, 2006; grant & dutton, 2012; mccullough, kilpatrick, emmons, & larson, 2001); creates an upstream reciprocity flowing from one individual to the next to influence the organisation (chang, lin, & chen, 2012); is significantly correlated with job satisfaction (waters, 2012); is incompatible with resentment (roberts, 2004); and fosters resilience (fredrickson, 2004). acts of gratitude are related to: emotional catharsis, generating reciprocity and a “flow-on effect” of engaging in further grateful actions (waters & stokes, 2015); improved relationships, increased resilience, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 281 improved coping, decreased depression, and a general optimistic perspective (howells & cumming, 2012); and positive transformation (howells, 2014). the outcomes of gratitude practice foster the antecedents of work engagement suggesting gratitude may be a pathway to work engagement. outcomes of gratitude practice figure 1. broadening and building in a workplace. specifically, gratitude practice may increase work engagement and buffer against burnout through increasing job resources, personal resources, and fostering the six areas of worklife. the formation and maintenance of positive relationships has been identified consistently as an outcome of gratitude practice (algoe & haidt, 2009; algoe, haidt, & gable, 2008; bartlett & desteno, 2006; howells & cumming, 2012; mccullough et al., 2001). positive relationships are associated with an increase in numerous resources including: improved cognitive performance (ybarra et al., 2008); physical and emotional support leading to improved recovery from illness positive emotions positive emotional climate positive relationships social capital learning & development ethical climate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 282 or loss in the workplace, and increased commitment to the organisation (lilius et al., 2008); psychological safety and learning behaviours (carmeli, brueller, & dutton, 2009); interpersonal helping with work tasks (venkataramani & dalal, 2007); and upward spirals of trust and cooperation (ferrin, bligh, & kolhles, 2008). positive emotions are also consistently identified as an outcome of gratitude practice (howells & cumming, 2012; polak & mccullough, 2006). according to the broaden-and-build theory (fredrickson, 2001), positive emotions broaden one’s attention and build one’s cognitive, social, psychological, and physical resources. positive emotions are associated with broadening and building positive relationships that lead to productive and supportive teams (sekerka, vacharkulksemusk, & fredrickson, 2012). the broadening and building effect of positive emotions on positive relationships continues to foster job resources, including: a positive emotional climate, creating social capital, and fostering learning and development (fredrickson, 2003); and, meaning and purpose in one’s work and an ethical climate (arnaud & sekerka, 2010). these resources reinforce the experience of positive emotions and continue to broaden and build as demonstrated in figure 1. though further research is need to see if this is generalisable to flexi settings, it is expected that the benefits of positive emotions are boundless (sekerka et al., 2012) and will continue to build job resources and foster positive developments in areas of worklife. figure 2. reciprocal relationships between resources, work engagement, and the individual. the upward spirals of reciprocity evident from gratitude practice (chang et al., 2012; waters & stokes, 2015) and then subsequently from positive emotions (fredrickson, 2001), suggest that the practice of gratitude may be self-maintaining in fostering job resources. further, individual resources job + personal work engagement gratitude practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 283 the reciprocal relationship between job resources, personal resources, and work engagement, together with the reciprocal nature of gratitude and its outcomes, suggest that gratitude practice may be self-sustaining in maintaining work engagement (hakanen et al., 2008; see figure 2). these same resources may also contribute to a better job-person match by contributing positively to the six areas of worklife. the possible contributions the outcomes of gratitude could make towards the six areas of worklife are outlined in table 1. table 1 contributions the outcomes of gratitude may make towards the six areas of worklife outcomes of gratitude six areas of worklife (leiter & maslach, 2008) control: perceived capacity to influence work, exercise autonomy, and gain access to resources workload: job demands reward: monetary, social and intrinsic rewards are consistent with expectations values: the underlying ideals and motives for doing the work community: quality of social interaction fairness: perception of fair decisions and respect amongst colleges. positive relationships positive relationships are associated with high levels of trust. high trust levels may suggest an increase in autonomy. further positive relationships lead to an increase in resources. positive relationships lead to social, psychological and physical resources. resources buffer against the effects of work demands. positive relationships are associated with increased commitment to work. positive relationships may positively influence values through the development of positive emotions. positive relationships are high quality relationships respect and fairness are elements of a positive relation. positive emotions positive emotions may positively influence control through the development of positive relationships. additionally, positive emotions lead to an increase in resources. positive emotions lead to social, psychological and physical resources. resources buffer against the effects of work demands. positive emotions foster individuals to find meaning and purpose in their work. positive emotions foster individuals to find meaning and purpose in their work. positive emotions promote positive relationships positive emotions promote supportive teams. it may be expected that fairness and respect are required for this. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 284 conceptualising gratitude practice this proposed research project will draw upon rusk, vella-brodrick, and waters’ (2015) conceptualisation of appreciative functioning as a complex dynamic system, wherein they define a system as “a set of regular interacting components that work together” (p. 20). further, they propose that gratitude and gratefulness (appreciative functioning) are a complex dynamic system with multiple interacting components. the lack of a perceived agent is the distinguishing feature between gratefulness and gratitude (rusk et al., 2015). that is, gratefulness can be triggered by materialistic goods, activities, and religion (gordon, musher-eizenman, holub, & dalrymple, 2004), while gratitude is triggered by the “perceived agency of a benefactor” (rusk et al., 2015, p. 11). howells (2012) argues that gratitude must involve an action of expression. for example, you can be grateful for the plants in your garden but unless you act on this from a place of gratitude, such as watering the plants with a sense of thanks, then you will not experience the full effects of gratitude. however, waters and stokes (2015) contend that the emotion of gratitude (gratefulness) is a valid and central component. drawing from these perspectives, gratitude will be operationalised as emotion-gratitude and action-gratitude that interacts at an interpersonal, transpersonal, and intrapersonal level. specifically, emotion-gratitude can be defined as a state of feeling grateful (emmons & mishra, 2011), it can be felt in response to a human benefactor (interpersonal) or a spiritual or worldly entity (transpersonal), but is experienced internally (intrapersonal); while action-gratitude is defined as a behavioural response expressed towards someone (interpersonal) or something (transpersonal; howells, 2012). together, emotiongratitude and action-gratitude are conceptualised herein as gratitude practice. the proposed pilot study this proposed pilot study consists of a gpp to build resources and contribute to the six areas of worklife in order to increase work engagement and buffer against burnout experienced by educators working with disenfranchised young people. the gpp builds on the existing literature on gratitude interventions to develop a holistic, individualised approach. this approach incorporates two key elements: • gratitude practice sits within context. that is, it incorporates and builds upon the individual’s understanding of gratitude. for example, lay people’s definition of gratitude varies and is influenced by their cultural backgrounds (morgan, gulliford, & kristjánsson, 2014). their cultural also influence how individuals engage with interventions and the effectiveness of interventions (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). additionally, individuals may benefit from customising gratitude to suit their needs (waters & stokes, 2015). • gratitude practice is, specifically, the habitual performance of exercising gratitude. empirical evidence suggests the practice of gratitude can develop the momentary feeling of gratitude (state gratitude) into a more permanent disposition (trait gratitude) via the consolidation of neuron pathways (rusk & waters, 2015). further, trait gratitude is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 285 positively correlated with life satisfaction and negatively correlated with burnout (chan, 2011). thus, through the practice of gratitude, the benefits may be accessible to those with and without trait gratitude. ultimately the gpp furthers the knowledge of how gratitude influences people by showing how it can be taught to those in central roles, such as educators (carr, 2013). figure 3. conceptual model. the aim of this research project is to develop a gratitude program that increases work engagement and simultaneously buffers against and decreases burnout in multidisciplinary professionals working with disenfranchised young people. by conceptualising gratitude practice as a complex dynamic system, the objective is to activate the full potential of gratitude’s qualities through exercising gratitude to build resources and foster the six areas of worklife to promote “vigour, dedication and absorption” (schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74) and to buffer against and or reduce exhaustion, depersonalisation and inefficacy (see figure 3). the first intention of this proposed pilot study is to establish whether the gpp increases gratitude. the second intention is job resources areas of worklife gratitude practice: emotion and action gratitude leads to… relationship formation and maintenance upward reciprocity spirals positive emotion work engagement burnout key buffering promoting flourishing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 286 to determine whether the participants find it beneficial and enjoy the program. thus, the proposed pilot study provides a foundation to explore the potential benefits of gratitude practice. overview of approach the approach to developing and delivering the gpp draws on the existing literature on gratitude practice in education. to gain greater understanding of the phenomena of gratitude, howells and cumming (2012) delivered two one-hour workshops with the aim of conceptualising gratitude, acquiring strategies to apply gratitude, and exploring the application of gratitude in the classroom. in order to further understand the phenomena of gratitude in education, howells (2014) delivered a two-and-a-half-day workshop aimed at developing gratitude practice. the first day of the workshop involved conceptualising gratitude, and drew on scientific findings about gratitude and the participants’ individual understandings of gratitude (howells, 2014). the focus on the second day was on developing strategies that were relevant to, and exploring the challenges associated with, the practice of gratitude (howells, 2014). participants were then invited to practise gratitude with their class daily and to buddy up with another teacher for support. building on the knowledge gained by howells (2014) and howells and cumming (2012), the gpp involves a one-day workshop and ten subsequent one-hour group coaching sessions delivered weekly. the combination of a workshop and the coaching sessions will help participants meet the challenges that may be experienced with conceptualising gratitude and its paradoxical nature of causing feelings of indebtedness (howells, 2014). it aligns with the suggestion that interventions of longer durations increase the likelihood and magnitude of wellbeing outcomes (sin & lyubmirsky, 2009). to this end, the gpp workshop will involve four key components: conceptualising gratitude from the participant’s perspective; exploring the challenges and caveats of gratitude; examining both gratitude as a complex dynamic system and the benefits of gratitude; and finally, providing an overview and invitation to explore a way forward with gpp. method the content of each component of the gpp workshop is grounded in the literature of gratitude interventions in the education setting. the sequence, aim, content, and structure of the gratitude practice workshop is illustrated in table 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 287 table 2 gratitude one-day workshop workshop sessions aim of the session and justification content structure session 1 conceptualizing gratitude – part 1 (90 minutes) 1. develop an appreciation for the different definitions of gratitude. 2. expand individuals understanding of gratitude. 3. develop a shared understanding of participants context. component one acknowledges that individuals have varying conceptualizations of gratitude and that there are further differences between cultures (morgan, gulliford & kristjánsson, 2014). additionally, component one sets the foundation to ensure that the gratitude practices that are formulated in subsequent coaching sessions are embedded in context (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). reflection and discussion around the following questions: 1. what does gratitude mean to you? 2. when do you feel gratitude? 3. how does it feel? 4. how do you express gratitude? think-pair-share (tps) 1. participants reflect individually on the questions. 2. participants partner up and share their reflections with each other. 3. participants form a small group and share their reflections – identifying the similarities and differences. then share findings with all participants. tps is a cooperative learning strategy that provides and supports conceptual understanding of a topic through increasing critical thinking (kaddoura, 2013). tps supports increased participation and processing of information (fitzgerald, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 288 session 2 challenges and caveats of gratitude (30 minutes) 1. develop an awareness of the challenges and caveats associated with gratitude. despite the association with the negative feelings of indebtedness and obligation, recent studies have shown it is inconsequential to the gains from gratitude practice and that gratitude practice may in fact reduce this experience (howells, 2014; waters & stokes, 2015). share information and invite discussion. 1. gratitude can be associated with feelings of ineptness and obligation (gulliford, morgan & kristjánsson, 2013; howells, 2012). 2. one does not need to feel grateful all of the time (howells, 2012; howells & cummings, 2012). 3. there may be times when it is inappropriate to feel and express gratitude (howells, 2012; howells & cumming, 2012). whole group approach: facilitator shares the information as outlined in the content and invites participants to partner up and share examples of when this may be the case. finally participants will be invited to share examples with the whole group. face to face discussions that allow people to connect purpose and meaning for the conversation to their learning are associated with increased learning outcomes (bliuc, ellis, goodyear, & piggott, 2010). purpose and meaning may be cultivated by providing the opportunity for participants to possibly share personal experiences one on one. session 3 the practice of gratitude – conceptualizing gratitude (part 2) and exploring the benefits of gratitude (60 minutes) 1. develop an understanding of gratitude practice as a complex dynamic system involving emotion and action gratitude. 2. explore the outcomes of gratitude in relation to well-being, work engagement, and student outcomes. howells (2012) identifies that teachers are often motivated when they can see their work will contribute to improved student outcomes. 1. discuss gratitude practice as a complex dynamic system incorporating emotion and action gratitude as described in the paper. 2. discuss outcomes of gratitude, including well-being outcomes, links to building resources, work engagement, and burnout as described in the paper. 3. explain that students can benefit the same as the staff from gratitude and can increase learning outcomes (froh and bono, 2011; howells, 2012). whole group approach: share the findings from studies mentioned above. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 289 session 4 overview and invitation (60 minutes) 1. understand the coaching component of the gpp. 2. identify who would like to be involved. sin and lyubomirsky (2009) found that self-selected participants benefited the most from interventions. due to the flow-on effect and upstream reciprocity effect of gratitude those who do not participate in the gpp may still benefit. furthermore, group coaching is only effective if participants are willing (brown & grant, 2010). 1. explain the commitment of the coaching program as mentioned above. 2. stipulate it is professional development and delivered during work hours. 3. invite people to participate in the program. whole group approach: explain the process and time commitment of the coaching program as mentioned above. small group approach: participants to read and complete a plus, minus, interesting chart (pmi) to help participants evaluate the value of gratitude and their interest in committing to the program. encourage participants to discuss. ask participants to identify their interest at the end. pmi is a tool for examining and evaluating ideas (de bono, 2014). it requires three columns to be drawn up on a page and labeled plus, minus, and interesting. participants then add their thoughts to the columns. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 290 the 10 coaching sessions will utilise brown and grant’s (2010) group model of practice that was developed specifically for group coaching. group stands for five phases: • goal: identify what the group would like to achieve from each session. • reality: develop awareness of the current situation and its impact on the goal. • options: identify and assess available options. • understanding others: connect to a shared understanding through deep observation of internal responses to what is being discussed. • performance: develop individual and group action plans. the group model (figure 4) is used for the first session and is then followed by the re-group model (figure 5) that allows for review (r) and evaluation (e) of the previous coaching session. the group model is designed to be flexible, allowing the coach to provide a participant-centred approach. therefore, the participant’s goals, challenges, and insights drive the coaching sessions (see figure 6 for the action-plan template). the benefits of group coaching evident in the research literature include improvement in self-awareness, communication, collaboration, individual and team performance, and transformational learning (anderson, anderson, & mayo, 2008). the group model provides a framework to develop individual and group goals that take into account a system’s environment, thus fostering change at the individual, group, and organisational levels (brown & grant, 2010). context and participants employees at a flexible learning centre (flc) will be invited to participate in this pilot program. the flc is a secondary education setting for young people who are disenfranchised from education. young people who attend the flc have often experienced complexities in their lives including education, social, psychological, legal, and developmental issues (edmund rice education australia, 2013). kyriacou (2001, p.27) associates higher rates of burnout with teachers serving in “deprived” areas. the flc’s philosophy of education is that all staff are educators, and have valuable skills and knowledge to contribute to the education of the young people (morgan, brown, heck, pendergast, & kanasa, 2012). from this perspective, the pilot will invite the whole staff of fourteen educators, to participate — five teachers, one social worker, three youth workers, two teacher aides, one student support worker and two auxiliary staff. the program will be offered as professional development and held during work hours. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 291 figure 4. group coaching template based on the group coaching model (brown and grant, 2010). group coaching session session no. 1 date: coachee: pre-session information gathered about the group from workshop: checklist questions session notes goal what do you want to achieve this session in relation to developing gratitude practice? how would you like to feel afterwards? what would be the best use of your time? reality how have things been going? what has worked? what hasn’t worked? options what are some possible strategies and options for expressing gratitude? what has worked in the past? what haven’t you tried yet that might work? understanding others what is your view on the best option? what did you understand by his or her view? what was your internal dialogue when you were listening to that? can you integrate the broader group perspective? perform what is the most important thing to do next? what can be learnt? what might get in the way? who will be able to support you? how will you feel when this is done? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 292 figure 5. re-group coaching template, based on the re-group coaching model (brown & grant, 2010). re-group coaching session session no. date: coachee: pre-session notes: checklist questions session notes review & evaluate review and evaluate the progress and implementation of the action steps from the last session. how did you do with the action steps from our last meeting? goal what do you want to achieve in this session in relation to developing gratitude practice? how would you like to feel afterwards? what would be the best use of your time? reality how have things been going? what has worked? what hasn’t worked? options what are some possible strategies, options of expressing gratitude? what has worked in the past? what haven’t you tried yet that might work? understanding others what is your view on the best option? what did you understand by her view? what was your internal dialogue when you were listening to that? can you integrate the broader group perspective? perform what is the most important thing to do next? what can be learnt? what might get in the way? who will be able to support you? how will you feel when this is done? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 293 figure 6. action-plan template (grant, 2012). evaluation the effectiveness of the gpp will be evaluated using a multi-method approach in a one group pre-test and post-test design. the effectiveness of the pilot program will be assessed by two key indicators: • an increase in gratitude amongst participants; and, • the participants’ evaluation of the program as beneficial to them. participants will be asked to complete the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) prior to the workshop and then again at the end of the program. the gq-6, shown in figure 7, has good psychometric properties, is founded on gratitude as a disposition, and the six items seem to relate to gratitude and gratefulness (mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002; rusk et al., 2015). thus, it is expected to tap into both emotionand action-gratitude and may provide insight into individual shifts in gratitude over the program. action steps coachee must also write down their own action plan. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. how confident are you in completing these action steps? 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 not confident very confident of doing all the of doing all the action steps action steps international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 294 figure 7. the gratitude questionnaire-6 (gq-6; mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002). at the end of the gpp participants will attend a focus group. focus groups are an effective way to collect qualitative data about participants’ understandings and opinions, and to demonstrate “how people make collective sense of their individual experience and beliefs” (marks & yardley, 2004, p. 49). as the intervention involves group coaching and thus is a relational form of learning and development, a focus group method to collect data is appropriate. the aim of the focus group is to determine how beneficial the gpp was for participants. the schedule involves key questions guiding the discussion (figure 8). the dialogue from the focus group will be recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed according to the emerging themes using two coders for interrater reliability. the gratitude questionnaire using the scale below as a guide, write a number beside each statement to indicate how much you agree with it. 1. strongly disagree 2. disagree 3. slightly disagree 4. neutral 5. slightly agree 6. agree 7. strongly agree ___ 1. i have so much in life to be thankful for ___ 2. if i had to list everything that i felt grateful for, it would be a very long list. ___ 3. when i look at the world, i don’t see much to be grateful for. ___ 4. i am grateful to a wide variety of people. ___ 5. as i get older i find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have been part of my life history. ___ 6. long amounts of time can go by before i feel grateful to something or someone. (items 3 and 6 are reverse scored) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 295 figure 8. focus group key questions. discussion this proposed pilot will provide a set of data unique to the flexi setting. based on previous studies on gratitude, as noted above, it is anticipated that an increase in individual scores on the gq-6 from pre-test to post-test would occur; however, the data will require further research to confirm or contrast the outcomes. this program is modelled on existing gratitude programs that found participants benefited from the reciprocity of gratitude between giver and receiver (howells, 2012; howells & cumming, 2012). the reciprocal nature of gratitude is expected to manifest through the gpp and may partly explain an increase in gratitude. furthermore, the aim of the explicit coaching of gratitude is to increase awareness and strategies to apply gratitude with the intention of increasing gratitude (brown & grant, 2010). previous studies have shown that educators have found the practice of gratitude beneficial (howells, 2012; howells & cumming, 2012). it is predicted that participants may experience improvement in relationships with staff, young people, and others; improved wellbeing; and an improved work environment (howells, 2012; howells & cumming, 2012). the potential outcomes are further supported by chan’s (2010) gratitude intervention study of 88 school teachers demonstrating that gratitude is positively associated with personal accomplishment and negatively associated with exhaustion and depersonalisation. together, these findings suggest the gpp may be evaluated positively by participants, if the outcomes are generalisable to the flexi setting. however, participants may experience challenges. previous gratitude programs have identified that participants struggle with the caveats of gratitude, including the need to express gratitude all the time and the appropriateness of expressing gratitude (howells, 2012; howells & cumming, 2012). based on the recommendations of howells (2012), incorporating ongoing coaching sessions in the gpp may help address these challenges. furthermore, recent studies focus group key questions 1. what did you think of the program? 2. what did you enjoy about the program? 3. what did you find challenging about the program? 4. think back to before you started this program, the work environment, your well-being, and your relationships with staff, young people and others. compare that to the present. can you describe any changes? 5. what will you take away from this program? 6. of all the things we discussed, what was the most important? 7. have we missed anything? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 296 have shown that these caveats may be inconsequential compared to the gains from gratitude practice (howells, 2014; waters & stokes, 2015). this proposal has potential to contribute to the development of gratitude interventions for educators. studies on the benefits of gratitude in the school environment have found that gratitude enhances positive emotions and pro-social behaviour (freitas, pieta, & tudge, 2011; froh, bono, & emmons, 2010) and is associated with improved self-efficacy, positive behaviour, and satisfaction with school (weber & ruch, 2012). however, according to howells (2014), only four studies, including her own, have focused on teachers’ gratitude. the pilot program provides a foundation for establishing an empirically sound intervention to build gratitude among educators, and has the potential to enhance understanding of the benefits of gratitude. furthermore, the development of the gpp may have pertinent and practical benefits through indirectly increasing work engagement and buffering against burnout. chan and hui’s (1995) findings suggest that an increase in resources mediates work engagement and buffers against burnout above and beyond job demands. it is expected that gpp may foster the development of resources, as gratitude is associated with relationship formation (algoe & haidt, 2009; algoe et al., 2008; bartlett & desteno, 2006; howells & cumming, 2012; mccullough et al., 2001) and positive emotions (howells & cumming, 2012; polak & mccullough, 2006). furthermore, there is a reciprocal relationship between resources and work engagement (hakanen et al., 2008; see figure 2). thus, this pilot program has the potential to provide a foundation for empirically exploring the implications of gpp on work engagement and burnout. limitations a major limitation of this pilot study is the ability to identify the causation of the positive effects. while it is expected that it will be the gratitude practice that is activating the positive change, there are numerous research artifacts that could threaten the validity of the study, including participation in group sessions, interaction with others, and being involved in a study (strohmetze, 2008). for example, it could be questioned whether or not positive emotions experienced from the relationships formed during coaching sessions are the active component. however, because gratitude is defined as a concept distinct from positive emotions (mccullough et al., 2002) the gq-6 may clarify this potential confounding factor. further investigations limiting the potential research artifacts are also needed. a limitation of qualitative methods is the element of human interpretation. “data collection is influenced by the knowledge level, experiences, biases and perspectives of the researcher, as well as by what information the participants are willing and able to provide and what sources of data are available to the researcher” (downe-wamboldt, 1992, p. 315). thus, the data collected through the focus group is influenced by both the researchers and the participants. agreement reliability is one of the most pertinent forms of reliability in a qualitative approach international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 297 (downe-wamboldt, 1992). this study aims to limit the researcher bias through interrater reliability, with two raters independently coding the same data. finally, the small sample size of this pilot provides limited data. the focus of this study is to determine if the gpp increases gratitude and is beneficial to participants. while the study may indicate the program is successful, replications of this study would allow the findings to be generalisable to the greater population. future directions if the gpp is found successful in increasing gratitude and is found to be beneficial to participants, the next stage of investigation would be to further explore the effectiveness of the gpp with a larger number of participants. an increased sample size would add credibility to the findings. the flc in which the proposed pilot will be implemented is a part of a larger network of 18 flcs across australia working towards enfranchising young people through liberating education. this network of schools provides a significant sample size to further investigate the efficacy of the gpp in settings conducive of high burnout. a specific point for further investigation is to explore how gratitude practice influences work engagement by investigating its effects on job and personal resources and on the six areas of worklife. understanding the relationship between gratitude practice and resources and the six areas of worklife may validate the conceptual model shown in figure 3 and explain the pathway of influence between gratitude and work engagement. conclusion the proposed research project represents an important step in developing an effective intervention to increase work engagement and buffer against and decrease burnout among multidisciplinary professionals working with disenfranchised young people. developing a program that increases gratitude and is beneficial for participants would directly provide wellbeing outcomes for the individual and indirectly provide well-being outcomes for others they interact with including other staff and young people. thus, this research provides the foundations for a program that may address international concern about burnout by increasing work engagement through gratitude practice. however, as this proposed study is only a pilot, further investigations are needed. due to the small sample size the findings of this study should be viewed with caution. the potential of the gpp relies on further studies with larger sample sizes, specifically exploring the relationship between gratitude practice and work engagement. nevertheless, the development of the gpp has potential to address a real-world problem in a low cost, realistic, and manageable time frame. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 275–306 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615722 298 references algoe, s. b., & haidt, j. 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(2008). mental exercising through simple socializing: social interaction promotes general cognitive functioning. personal and social psychology bulletin, 34(2), 248–259. doi:10.1177/0146167207310454 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167207310454 a proposed pilot study of a gratitude practice program to increase gratitude among educators: the first step towards exploring the potential of gratitude practice to increase work engagement and buffer against and decrease burnout jasmin wandell burnout work engagement outcomes of gratitude practice conceptualising gratitude practice the proposed pilot study overview of approach method context and participants evaluation discussion limitations future directions conclusion references introduction international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 347 introduction to the special issue on inclusion emmanuel grupper, james p. anglin, and anna katharina schmid, guest editors this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (ijcyfs) is dedicated to a most important and current subject – inclusion – as an answer of social educators and many other social agents to one of the most crucial social phenomena of our time: namely, social exclusion. we are witnessing around the world incidents of aggression and violence that are sometimes attributed to the effects of exclusion, either at an individual or more collective level. our social and economic structures appear designed to exclude all too many from the benefits and fruits of society. the african concept of “ubuntu” (“i am a person because of other persons”) seems very relevant here. how do we share spaces, resources, opportunities, and create a sense of belonging across our many differences and contexts? inclusion was the theme of a world congress of the international federation of educative communities (fice), held in bern, switzerland in october 2013. most of the articles in this special issue are based on presentations made at that congress. we would like to thank all contributors for formalizing and revising their presentations with input from our editors for this special issue. additionally, we would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of carol kelly and varda mann-feder to the review process. finally, we are also most thankful to the co-editors of the ijcyfs, drs. sibylle artz and jennifer white, for inviting us to contribute this quite unique special issue related to the work and history of fice international. emmanuel grupper, ph.d. is vice-president fice-international, and associate professor at the school of education and social studies at the ono academic college, 104 zahal st., kiryat ono 5545173, israel. telephone: (972) 526426225. email: emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il james p. anglin, ph.d. is full professor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700 stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: janglin@uvic.ca anna katharina schmid, d. phil. is board member of fice switzerland and lecturer at the school of social work, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8037 zurich, switzerland. telephone (41) 58 934 88 6 1. e-mail: anna.schmid@zhaw.ch mailto:emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il mailto:janglin@uvic.ca mailto:anna.schmid@zhaw.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 348 the articles gathered together here reflect the major shift nowadays in the way professionals tend to look on these processes of social exclusion and the responses to them. we are under no illusions about the current state of affairs. all such issues and proposed solutions are actively contested and debated, with little sense of unanimity on any dimensions. thus, the articles in this issue offer important information and perspectives for us to consider as we advocate for the active inclusion of excluded and marginalized children, youth, families, and communities throughout the world. in the past, we have tended to focus on the inner characteristics of people suffering from the effects of social exclusion, trying to find there reasons why certain individuals and groups have not successfully integrating into society. today, we tend to focus much more on the larger social context that has brought about tragic situations of people suffering social exclusion. in israel, for example, this shift is reflected in a change of terminology. in the past, we referred to “weak populations” while nowadays the term used is “weakened populations”. the difference is very significant. the new terminology is shifting the focus to social circumstances that have caused the “weakening” of these individuals and groups, that have excluded them from the mainstream of society. the selection of articles in this special issue reflects this more sociological understanding and perspective, and the attitude of professionals that focuses more on changing social structures (such as classrooms, living arrangements, social services, and societal responses) and empowering children, young people, families, and communities suffering from social exclusion, helping them succeed through social inclusion processes. the first article is an overview of the history of fice-international, and especially of its evolution and growth in more recent years. fice was formed in response to the devastating effects of the second world war on young people in europe, but it has developed into a more truly international organization that now links individuals and organizations on most continents of the world. david lane, an honorary life president of fice, has made many significant contributions to fice over his long involvement, including supporting a variety of fice publications. we are pleased and honored that he has contributed this perspective on the nature, history, and strengths of this unique organization. david lane’s overview provides some context for readers new to this international organization, the only one that focuses primarily on the out-of-home care of young people, broadly defined to include all forms of residential and foster care. as lane notes, fice has continued to respond to the needs of young people affected by conflicts in many parts of the world, and including more recently young people affected by the devastating impact of hiv/aids in africa. this unique gathering of individuals and national groups continues to expand into new countries and continents, and its networking of expertise, information, and mutual support is likely to gain even more influence as more countries in the “majority world” discover the important contributions to be made by professional social educators/social pedagogues/child and youth care practitioners. the second article, by arthur limbach-reich of luxembourg, reviews the evidence on educational inclusion of students with disabilities, differentiating ideology from evidence. dealing with various aspects of the inclusion concept, with special focus on its relevance to education, the analysis shows a lack of coherence in defining inclusion. ethical principles and scientific considerations about inclusion are often mixed. the concept of inclusion gave rise to the hope that exclusion would be overcome and everyone would be able to enjoy full international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 349 participation in mainstream education and society. the article is not intending to be a pledge against inclusion, but rather a warning to be aware of the myths, pitfalls, and tensions involved in its implementation. the inflationary use of “inclusion” in recent discourse and the devaluating of “integration” in favor of inclusion are more likely to be a result of popular trends than of substantial changes in scientific analysis or educational practice. the structural functionalist approach indicates that inclusion is a dynamic developmental process of incorporating groups or individuals into a given social system. limbach-reich elaborates on luhmann’s functional system theory and especially his conclusion: “neither can one simply assume that exclusion is bad and inclusion good nor is exclusion per se the problem and inclusion the solution”. special focus is given to the notion of inclusion in education, addressing the luxembourg charter (1996). inclusion underpins a comprehensive school approach and encourages global efforts to enhance the participation of vulnerable groups in education. a discussion is presented about the use of the term inclusion in non-english speaking areas such as french and german speaking communities. some data are presented about attempts to evaluate the success of inclusive processes. the studies do not give a clear-cut picture. they could be summarized by stating that inclusion works but not for all, not at all times, and not in all settings. the third article by jennifer davidson presents a challenging question: what has changed in the last ten years in the situation of children’s and young people’s rights? the author does not give a direct answer; however, she elaborates how important changes at the international policy level, namely the 2009 united nations guidelines for the alternative care of children, have the potential to engender lasting effects on the most vulnerable children and young people placed in out-of-home care facilities. as one of the leaders of the “moving forward” project, aimed at enhancing the implementation of these guidelines, davidson presents an informed and broad perspective on this topic. the underlying assumption of her article is that proper implementation of these guidelines should enhance social inclusion processes for young people who need alternative care. this is closely related to the de-institutionalization movement that considers every institutional placement as negative. some proponents even go further and claim that institutional care is a kind of exclusion by itself. on the other hand, the guidelines acknowledge that family-based settings, and good quality residential care facilities, could respond optimally to children’s needs and, in particular, to their desire of being socially included. the u.n. guidelines remind us that children need stability for their healthy development; so frequent changes in care settings must be avoided. for stability to be achieved, the range of options must first be available, then thoroughly assessed against the child’s needs, and reviewed as the placement progresses. the fourth article, written by a multicultural group of experts from germany and canada – wassilis kassis, sibylle artz, stephanie moldenhauer, istvan geczey, and katherine rossiter – deals with aggressive behaviors of children and young people in a comparative study between several countries. this cross-sectional study on family violence and resilience was done with a large sample of 5,149 middle school students from four european countries (austria, germany, slovenia, and spain); 34% (1,644 students) reported that they had experienced violence in their families, with 23% reporting physical abuse by parents, and 17% reporting that they had witnessed physical spousal abuse. the basic assumption of the authors is that environmental exposure of children to violence in the family home has long-term consequences. therefore, the study of resilience among children who were raised in violent families is of great importance. the study proposes a new international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 350 theoretical framework for resilience, namely, resilience as a non-dichotomous concept. kassis and colleagues suggest that resilience should be categorized in terms of levels, based on differences in the severity of violence that individuals have been exposed to. the three levels of resilience proposed are: “resilient”, “near-resilient”, and “non-resilient”. the authors also expand their definition of resilience to include the absence of problem behaviors in adolescents who have been exposed to violence in their families. the ultimate conclusion of the authors is that the level of family violence burden and accumulation of risk factors are central to resilience status and should therefore be the prime target for prevention and intervention planning. the finding that children who had been exposed to domestic violence are at risk of being violent themselves might, in turn, contribute to their exclusion from mainstream society. therefore, their resilience status becomes a crucial element in their opportunities for inclusion. the next series of articles describe ways social care agencies in different countries are using their resources to help young marginalized youth cope successfully with the challenges of inclusion. the article by isa guará and dayse bernardi outlines important recent developments in fice-international’s newest national section, fice-brazil. the government and nongovernmental organizations in brazil have been dramatically re-fashioning the legislative and policy context for out-of-home services for children and adolescents in that country, and neca (núcleo de estudos da criança e do adolescente – center for the study of children and adolescents) has been playing a key role in linking policy and practice in service of the rights of children and their best interests. guará and bernardi outline the complex changes underway, focusing especially on new social and familial integration policies, procedures, and practices. among the major violations of the rights of children and adolescents who are in a vulnerable situation in brazil are the fragility of the support and security on the part of family and community and the low education level of children and adolescents, which is detrimental to their future social and economic inclusion and negatively impacts their emotional and social development. many children and adolescents still live in environments in which they are subjected to different forms of domestic and sexual violence and are in a state of material and emotional abandonment. many are on the streets. social and familial inclusion has become the heart of the social welfare and protection system in brazil. all efforts and legal measures seek to strengthen biological families in regaining their protective capacity so they can take back the children who have moved away from their space of affection and protection. the challenge now is to develop new education and training programs to prepare social educators and agencies to more effectively align with the espoused principles of children’s rights and well-being. an article written by a group of experts from switzerland, clara bombach, renate stohler, and hans wydler, deals with farming families as foster families. they present the findings of an exploratory study on “care farming” in switzerland. care farming in europe is heterogeneous and many aspects have not yet been researched. in switzerland, the first studies examining the practice of placing children and adolescents with farming families, which originated in the 19th century, were published only a few years ago. the quality of family placement organizations (fpo) has been a matter of concern for some time now, as there are no national quality standards. introduced by an overview of care farming in europe and swiss foster care, the results of a study are presented on the context and importance of care farming and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 351 attitudes and working methods of child and adult protection authorities and fpos. the child’s well-being and fit with the foster families is considered important for placement but explicit indications for an agricultural setting were not considered. interest on the part of farming families is considerable but only some are considered suitable by the fpos. the skills required of foster families were not assessed as qualitatively better or more frequently present in agricultural settings than in others, and a possible lack of supplementary services and sources of danger in rural areas, amongst other factors, were mentioned. the authors make the argument that more research on foster care and care farming in switzerland is needed to ensure its quality, including systematic analyses of experience-based knowledge and the perspectives of the children and adolescents concerned. andrea rácz contributes a discussion of social exclusion in hungary from a child protection perspective. poverty, number of children, educational attainment, limited access to quality educational opportunities, ethnicity, stress-related psychosomatic symptoms, and a lack of positive social relations on the part of children seem to be interrelated, with the education system further increasing social differences. of all children, 10% are considered at risk and not quite 1% are in long-term care (60% foster care, 40% residential care homes). aftercare is provided for young adults raised within the protection system, including counselling services up to age 30. those leaving foster care show higher educational attainment and thus better chances for employment than those from residential care. integration is hampered in both cases as ties with the family of origin often have not been maintained. many of those in institutional care show symptoms of anxiety; 30% of those in residential care and 10% of those in foster care having considered suicide. of all care leavers, 40% are unemployed. the author emphasizes that more research is needed, as professionals find themselves without methods for preparing children for an independent life that would make their inclusion possible. she recommends improved support for families and a modernization of residential institutions to be more therapeutic and effective regarding education, citing necessary competencies for professionals and relevant topics for training curricula. she strongly advocates protagonism, describing the children’s home children’s parliament run by fice since 2011, and concludes with a call for reducing poverty, eradicating extreme forms of child exclusion, and fundamentally changing services which today still contribute to poverty and reproduce exclusion. the contribution of susanna hoikkala and martti kemppainen focuses on the phenomenon of running away from children’s residential care in the finnish context. the article begins by contextualizing the children’s residential care system in finland and the study carried out. the second part focuses on empirical findings and the final section discusses the implications and offers concluding remarks. reasons for out-of-home placements are manifold. they are quite often related to the problems of coping in everyday life, parenting skills, and parents’ substance abuse and/or mental health problems. on the other hand, some issues can be related to the child’s own behaviour and/or psychological well-being, such as self-endangering behavior by substance abuse. a child may have difficulties at school and/or problems with friendships. in some cases, a child’s absconding from a familial home is the main reason for a placement. in such cases children have a history of multiple runaways before entering alternative care. in the finnish welfare system, residential care is understood as a last-resort form of alternative care and its aim is to secure children’s well-being, development, and safety. the authors emphasize the need to implement more inclusive and consistent practices as well as more explicit cooperation between authorities. the importance of children’s peer relations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 347–352 352 also needs to be taken more seriously within residential care services. these findings are discussed bearing in mind the following critical question: what is the point of child welfare if it fails to serve children and safeguard their well-being and health during the out-of-home placement? the concluding article, written by renate stohler and milena gehrig, focuses on young adults who do not have stable accommodation or a daily structure, and whose transition to a self-sustained, socially integrated adulthood is at risk. framed by a literature review on education, employment, and housing, they present an evaluation study of one out of just a few institutions of its kind in switzerland: a home for young adults without stable accommodation, who can neither live with their family nor independently and do not want to live in residential care or in a foster family. they find that most of its residents have unstable biographies with regard to housing and education, as well as a history of psychological problems and substance abuse. the programme is successful for those who have a daily structure and are independent and willing to change their situation, but fails those who do not strive to change their situation, suffer from psychological problems or drug addiction, have never worked before, have hardly any social network, or have repeatedly dropped out of other programmes. the authors recommend a combined approach of independent living and integration in the labor market, individualized programme duration, the strengthening of selfcompetence and social networks and inter-institutional cooperation in the areas of education, employment, and social assistance. this article raises the fundamental issue of matching services, even to those who may resort to strategies that do not agree with the rules of the institution, thus stimulating thinking about what constitutes services that are truly accessible and inclusive. in conclusion, the editors believe the diverse set of articles in this special issue has much to offer to those interested in expanding their appreciation of the notions, processes, opportunities, and challenges of inclusion within an international and historical perspective. overcoming exclusionary policies and practices and implementing inclusive programmes is of critical importance to today’s children, youth, families, and communities. it is also vital to creating a future characterized by equity and social justice for all. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 456 the prevalence of stuttering, voice disorder, and speech sound disorders in preschoolers in shahrekord, iran omid mohamadi, mohammad rahimi-madiseh, and morteza sedehi abstract: the inability to communicate easily and clearly can have far-reaching debilitating effects, not only in childhood, but throughout a lifetime. the aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of stuttering, voice disorder, and speech sound disorders in persian preschoolers in shahrekord, iran. information about 1,387 children ages 5 to 6 was obtained via face-to-face screening and assessment. the total prevalence of speech disorders was 17.1%. the prevalence of stuttering was 1.5%, while 13.4% had a speech sound disorder, and 2.2% had voice disorder. the prevalence of stuttering was higher in males (2.2%) than females (0.7%); of speech sound disorders was higher in males (17.4%) than females (9.1%); and of voice disorder was higher in males (2.6%) than females (1.6%). the prevalence of stuttering and speech sound disorder was significantly different according to gender and positive family history. the prevalence figures revealed that a considerable number of preschoolers with speech disorders were missed in parents’ and teachers’ reports. those children required more intensive communication support than they were receiving. therefore, classroom teachers should work with speech and language pathologists to identify and assess preschoolers with communication disorders, and to develop intervention strategies. keywords: stuttering, speech sound disorder, voice disorder, preschoolers acknowledgements: the authors wish to thank all preschool centers in shahrekord for their collaboration in conducting the survey. this study was supported by the deputy for research of shahrekord university of medical sciences and health services, shahrekord, iran. omid mohamadi (the corresponding author), paramedical college, shahrekord university of medical sciences, shahrekord, i.r. iran. email: omohamadi8@gmail.com mohammad rahimi-madiseh, pediatric nursing at shahrekord university of medical sciences, shahrekord, i.r. iran. email: m_rahimi7@yahoo.com morteza sedehi, statistics and epidemiology at shahrekord university of medical sciences, shahrekord, i.r. iran. email: sedehi56@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 mailto:omohamadi8@gmail.com mailto:m_rahimi7@yahoo.com mailto:sedehi56@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 457 determining the prevalence of communication disorders in children is important, both for planning appropriate interventions for affected children, and for proving the effectiveness of those interventions. here, prevalence is defined as the “proportion or percentage of cases in a given population at a specified time” (law, boyle, harris, harkness, & nye, 2000, p. 166). because the inability to communicate easily and clearly can have a debilitating effect on an individual’s social and emotional well-being, not only in childhood, but in adulthood as well (baker & cantwell, 1987), early identification of speech and language disorders and timely intervention are needed if the negative consequences of these disorders are to be averted (ramey & campbell, 1984). as young children go about their lives with their families, in their day care centers or schools, and in their communities, the adequacy of their speech and language skills determines whether they can communicate effectively with adults and peers (harrison, 2007). as mckinnon, mcleod, and reilly (2007) pointed out, “defining and describing communication disorders remains an inexact science because we lack clear and empirically derived definitions, cut-off points, and classification systems.” (p. 5). consequently we lack a robust evidence base for identifying and managing speech and language disorders (reilly, douglas, & oates, 2004). however, it is clear that pre-school intervention is needed, as lifelong problems can result when childhood speech and language disorders are not addressed (law, boyle, harris, harkness, & nye, 1998). stuttering is a speech disorder that affects the rhythm and the continuous flow of speech. its manifestations include “repetitions of syllables, part or whole words or phrases; prolongation of sounds; or blocking of sounds” (craig & tran, 2005, p.41).yairi and ambrose’s (2005) screening study of more than 3,000 preschool children revealed a 2.43% stuttering prevalence with no racial or ethnic differences. karbasi, fallah, and golestan (2010) reported an estimate of 1.2% for stuttering in persian primary school students. the prevalence of stuttering may vary greatly by age group, “from a high of approximately 1.4% for children 2 to 10 years of age to a low of roughly 0.37% for adults 51 years or older” (johnson, 2007, p. 5). soleimani, mohammadi, khasaei, and ertiahi (2010) did not find any cases of stuttering in their study of 600 iranian primary school children. mckinnon, mcleod, and reilly (2007) provided a somewhat lower estimate of 0.33% for stuttering in children from kindergarten to grade 6. johnson (2007) noted that: stuttering often develops in the preschool years and may resolve spontaneously, but may also persist throughout the lifespan. individuals who stutter may be subject to negative stereotypes and be restricted in their social and vocational activities (kroll & beitchman, 2005). (p. 6). as hooper (2004) explains, “according to ramig and verdolini (1998), voice disorders are generally characterized by an abnormal pitch, loudness, and/or vocal quality resulting from a disordered laryngeal, respiratory, and/or vocal tract functioning” (p. 320). karbasi et al. (2010) http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 458 reported a prevalence of 0.47% for voice disorder in persian primary school students. boone and mcfarlane (2000) stated that about 7% of school-aged children experience continuing voice disorders; other studies estimate 6% to 10% (boyle, 2000). soleimani et al. (2010) obtained an estimate of 1.1% for voice disorder in iranian primary school children. in an evidence-based study that reviewed the different methods used to describe voice disorders, oates (2004) emphasized that confusion with regard to etiology and diagnosis makes prevalence studies more difficult. young children may exhibit problems in learning to pronounce various speech sounds correctly. a speech sound disorder (ssd) does not usually have an identifiable cause, such as a sensory (e.g., hearing), structural (e.g., cleft palate), or neurological (e.g., cerebral palsy) problem. as johnson (2007, p.4) noted, “children with speech sound disorders show a slowed rate of speech acquisition, but often follow a relatively typical sequence of sound development (shriberg & kwiatkowski, 1994)”. bowen (2011) stated that: dodd (1995, 2005) proposed a model with psycholinguistic underpinnings that is based primarily on linguistic profiling and speech subtypes. in it, specific speech subtypes are matched to discrete areas of psycholinguistic difficulty or breakdown that are “testable” or “differentially diagnosable”. it embraces four subtypes that can occur at any age or stage of speech development, plus cas [childhood apraxia of speech]. they are: phonological delay … consistent deviant phonological disorder … inconsistent speech disorder … articulation disorder … childhood apraxia of speech. (section 4). foy and mann (2012) suggested that students with ssd are also at risk for reading disorders, while skebo et al. (2013), under the subheading reading skills and students with ssd, noted that “these students may have difficulty forming the phonological representations needed to acquire the speech sound system for spoken language and later for decoding (lewis, avrich, freebairn, hansen, et al., 2011)”. the majority of children (75%) referred to speech and language pathologists (slps) for assessment have speech impairment (i.e., ssd; mullen & schooling, 2010). drawing on law et al.’s (2000) summary of pre-1997 prevalence studies of speech sound disorders, johnson (2007) noted that there were “no studies for children younger than age 5. median estimates of prevalence for 5-, 6-, and 7-year old children were as low as 2.3% and as high as 14.5%, probably reflecting the varied methods for identifying cases.” (p. 4). campbell et al. (2003) reported a prevalence of 15.6% for ssd in 3-year-old children in a large, diverse community sample. shriberg, tomblin, and mcsweeney (1999) obtained an estimate of 3.8% for 6-year-olds. karbasi et al. (2010) reported an estimate of 13.8% for ssd in primary school students in yazd, iran. as noted by johnson (2007), “mckinnon, mcleod, and reilly (2007) used a conservative identification procedure that yielded an overall prevalence of 1.06% for ssd in 10,425 australian school children from kindergarten to grade six.” according to shriberg et al. (1994), “the lower prevalence rates at older ages are consistent with evidence that ssd may http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 459 resolve over time” (p. 4). soleimani, mohammadi, khasaei, and ertiahi (2010) reported a prevalence of 10% for articulation disorders in primary school children in kermanshah, iran. to obtain accurate prevalence data for a particular speech disorder requires both an accepted definition of the disorder and a reliable method of diagnosis (law et al., 2000). as johnson (2007) notes, “lifespan prevalence data are valuable in understanding the natural history, course, and prognosis of these disorders. prevalence estimates also allow for assessment of possible risk and protective factors.” (p. 2). ultimately, we need accurate prevalence figures across the lifespan for speech disorders. mcleod and harrison (2009) stated that: identification of children with speech and language impairment becomes particularly critical around age 4–5 years, when parents and teachers consider their children’s readiness for formal schooling. when able, diagnosis and intervention by a speechlanguage pathologist (slp) is also sought at this time to ensure that the children will be maximally successful in their future educational and social endeavours. (p. 1214) the current study presents prevalence data for stuttering, voice disorder, and ssd and its subtypes in persian-speaking preschoolers in shahrekord, iran, where most of the 380,000 inhabitants use persian as their common language. knowing the prevalence of preschoolers with speech disorders will assist with the planning of early intervention programs in iran. method participants a total of 1,387 children, 706 boys (50.9%) and 681 girls (49.1%), were recruited as participants using a census method. these children participated in a descriptive cross-sectional study in shahrekord in 2015. data collection was conducted over a period of four months, from october to january. the children were from 34 preschool centers and ranged in age from 5 years and 2 months to 6 years and 3 months, with the majority (97%) being between 5 years and 3 months and 6 years. the males and females did not differ by age. none of the children were on medications when they were tested, and all had met developmental milestones at age-appropriate levels. children who had been diagnosed with other disorders such as hearing loss, mental retardation, neurological deficits, visual and physical impairments, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders were excluded from the study. the parents and guardians of all the children had previously given consent for the records to be used for research purposes. the following information was collected for each child: date of birth, gender, birth order, maternal education level, hand dominance, and positive family history for speech disorders. procedures data collection was conducted with face-to-face screening and diagnostic tests. during screening, the children were asked to describe what was happening in three picture stories, and to read a poem that they had learned. each of the three stories had four sequential pictures, taken http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 460 from books for children ages 5 to 6. this screening tool was administered directly to each child during a 30-minute screening session. after screening, all children who showed signs of stuttering, voice disorder, or ssd were assessed by an slp. the slp used the persian version of the stuttering severity instrument-3 (ssi-3) for children who might stutter, the persian phonetic information test for children who might have ssd, and the persian version of the consensus auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice (cape-v) for children who might have a voice disorder. the ssi-3 is one of the most reliable tools for measuring stuttering. bakhtiar, seifpanahi, ansari, ghanadzade, and packman (2010) assessed the reliability of the ssi-3 for preschool persian-speaking children who stutter. the persian translation of ssi-3 has acceptable interjudge and intrajudge reliability (bakhtiar et al., 2010). the ssi-3 comprises three weighted sections: (a) frequency, (b) duration, and (c) physical concomitants. a conversation of at least 300 syllables between each child suspected of having a speech disorder and his or her parent or guardian was recorded. the slp then observed these videos to determine each child’s actual frequency of stuttering. to obtain the duration score, at least 10 instances of stuttering were timed with a stopwatch to the nearest tenth of a second, and the duration of the longest three events was averaged. the last section required the slp to rate each child on the presence of nonspeech behaviours: (a) distracting sounds, (b) facial grimaces, (c) head movements, and (d) movements of extremities. the slp rated each observed behaviour on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (none) to 5 (severe and painful-looking). the scores from the three subsections were totalled to create an overall score for each child. the slp used the persian phonetic information test to detect disordered pronunciation of sounds in preschoolers suspected of having ssd. the 2013 study by ghasisin, ahmadi, mostajeran, moazam, and derakhshande showed that the phonetic test meets validity and reliability requirements and is sufficiently accurate to be used in the diagnosis and assessment of ssd in children. a booklet of pictures is used for the phonetic information test. the slp and the child sat in a calm environment, and the slp asked the child to name the pictures. the child’s speech samples were recorded and then assessed by the slp. in order to diagnose voice disorder in suspected preschoolers, the slp used the persian version of cape-v, which was assessed for validity and rater reliability by salary majd et al. in 2013. the slp recorded voice samples of the child repeating six persian sustained vowels, repeating six specially designed sentences, and conversing. the first task was for the child to say each vowel in his or her typical voice as steadily as possible until asked to stop, normally within 3 to 5 seconds. this was repeated three times. in the second task, the child either read the sentences one at a time from flash cards, or, if reading was a problem, the slp read the sentence and the child repeated it. in the third task, the child responded to questions asked by the slp, with the aim of having at least 20 seconds of speech to analyze. a score was then given for each vocal attribute. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 461 data analysis data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss), version 16.0. descriptive statistics were used to determine the prevalence of speech disorders as recorded via direct assessments. a chi-square test was used for data analysis of qualities variables representing qualities. we considered differences significant at p < 0.05. compliance with ethical standards the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. the study has been approved by the ethics committee of shahrekord university of medical sciences. all procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the shahrekord university of medical sciences research committee. for each child in the study, informed consent was obtained from a parent or guardian. the parent or guardian gave written informed consent for the publication of any identifying details (name, date of birth, birth order, maternal education level, and other information about the children) that were deemed essential for the scientific purposes of this study. results overall, 21 children were identified as stuttering, 186 were identified as having ssd, and 30 were identified as having voice disorder (see table 1). the combined prevalence of speech disorders in this population was estimated to be 17.1%. table 1 prevalence of speech disorder by type speech disorder frequency prevalence in the population (n=1387) stuttering 21 1.5% voice disorder 30 2.2% speech sound disorder 186 13.4% total 237 17.1% the impact of variables on prevalence figures gender. table 2 shows the prevalence of speech disorders by gender, with 11.5% of males and 5.5% of females having speech disorders. the pattern of prevalence of stuttering and ssd differed significantly according to gender, with a higher prevalence of stuttering (p = .025) and ssd (p < .001) in males than in females. there was no statistically significant difference in prevalence of voice disorder between males and females (p = .204). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 462 table 2 prevalence of speech disorders by gender speech disorder male female p total stuttering 16 5 .025 21 speech sound disorder 125 61 < .001 186 voice disorder 19 11 .204 30 total (frequency) 160 77 237 % of total population (n=1387) 11.5% 5.5% 17.1% subtypes of ssd. table 3 shows the prevalence of different subtypes of ssd. the most common subtype was articulation disorder (ad; 7.6%). children with ad were unable to produce alveolar, bilabial, and glottal phonemes, most commonly in the pronunciation of /s/ and /z/ sounds (7.2%) and least commonly in the pronunciation of bilabial and glottal sounds (0.1%). another subtype of ssd identified was phonological delay (pd; 5.8%). children with pd had phonological processes characteristic of children younger than their age. table 3 prevalence of ssd subtypes type of phoneme subtype of ssd prevalence total percentage number alveolar (t,d,l,n,s,z) ad 7.4% 55.3% 103 bilibial (b,p,m) ad 0.1% 0.5% 1 glottal (h,?) ad 0.1% 0.5% 1 postalveolar (j,ch,zh,sh) pd 2.8% 20.9% 39 velar (k,g,ŋ) pd 1.4% 10.2% 19 uvular (q,x) pd 0.7% 5.3% 10 labiodental (f,v) pd 0.9% 6.9% 13 total 13.4% 100% 186 positive family history. table 4 shows the prevalence of speech disorders by positive family history (pfh). the prevalence of stuttering and ssd was higher in children who had a positive family history for these disorders compared with all other children (p = .000). table 4 prevalence of speech disorders by positive family history speech disorder number of children with pfh number of children without pfh p prevalence in the population (n=1387) stuttering 11 10 < .001 1.5% speech sound disorder 17 169 < .001 13.4% voice disorder 1 29 .774 2.2% total 29 208 17.1% http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 463 maternal education level. table 5 shows the prevalence of speech disorders by maternal education level. the maternal education level did not make a significant difference in the prevalence of speech disorders. table 5 prevalence of speech disorders by maternal education level speech disorders illiterate and primary school secondary and high school higher education p total stuttering 1 12 8 .388 21 speech sound disorder 30 88 68 .419 186 voice disorder 8 12 10 .734 30 total (frequency) 39 112 86 237 % of total population (n=1387) 2.8% 8.07% 6.2% 17.1% hand dominance. table 6 shows the prevalence of speech disorders by hand dominance. statistically, the frequency of speech disorders was not related to hand dominance. table 6 prevalence of speech disorders by hand dominance speech disorder right handed left handed p stuttering 19 2 .744 speech sound disorder 173 13 .716 voice disorder 28 2 .764 total 220 17 birth order. table 7 shows the prevalence of speech disorders by birth order. statistically, the frequency of speech disorders was not related to birth order. table 7 prevalence of speech disorders by birth order speech disorder first to third fourth or higher p stuttering 21 0 .709 speech sound disorder 182 4 .687 voice disorder 26 4 .646 total 229 8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 464 discussion it is important to note that a large proportion of preschool children in iran have speech disorders, which may be associated with adverse, long-term outcomes that impact on individuals, families, and communities. according to mcleod and harrison (2009): considerable variability has been noted in studies of prevalence in speech [disorders] … the reasons for this variability include the definition of what constitutes a case, the severity and type of communication impairment that is included in the definition, the nature of the surveyed population, and differences in methodological procedures (law et al., 2000; pinborough-zimmerman et al., 2007). researchers have relied on three primary diagnostic methods: parent report, teacher report, and direct assessment by an slp or trained research assistant. (p. 1214) the aim of the current study was to determine the prevalence of stuttering, voice disorder, and ssd in 1,387 preschoolers by direct assessment. the prevalence of speech disorders in this population was estimated to be 17.1%, which was higher than in investigations reported by karbasi et al. (2010) on primary school students in yazd, iran (14.8%) and by soleimani et al. (2010) on primary school children in kermanshah, iran (11.2%). a large part of this difference is due to the higher prevalence of lisp disorder (a subtype of articulation disorders that is characterized by bad pronunciation of /s/ and /z/ sounds) in the current study (7.2%). another major difference is related to the higher prevalence of voice disorder among the children in the current study (2.2%). more detailed research would be required to determine whether cultural and regional differences or other factors are causing the higher prevalence of lisp disorder and voice disorder. the total prevalence of speech disorders found in our study (17.1%) was higher than that found in three australian studies: jessup, ward, cahill, and keating’s 2008 study of 308 children 5 to 6 years old (8.7%); mckinnon et al.’s 2007 study of 10,425 children 5 to 12 years old (1.51%); and keating, turrell, and ozanne’s 2001 study of 12,388 children 0 to14 years old ( that 1.7% of children had childhood speech disorders). similarly, the national survey of children’s health (united states department of health and human services, 2003) found a prevalence of 4.4% for 5,071 american 8-year-olds. one probable reason for the higher prevalence in the current study is the differing methodologies employed. typically, studies that use parent or teacher reports only (e.g., keating et al., 2001), teacher reports followed by direct assessment (e.g., mckinnon et al., 2007), or telephone surveys (e.g., united states department of health and human services, 2003) will report lower prevalence figures than studies that use only face-to-face screening and assessment (e.g., the current study). another likely reason for the higher prevalence figure in the present investigation is the age range of the children. the present study has much in common with the 2001 study by okalidou and kampanaros that reported the prevalence of communication disorders in children in greece to be 14.4% to 18.7%. both studies collected data on a nearly equal number of children: the okalidou and kampanaros study http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 465 reported on 1,113 children; the present study on 1,387 children. the children in okalidou and kampanaros’ study were slightly younger (kindergarten children) than those in the present study (preschoolers, aged approximately 5 to 6). in the present study, no significant association was observed between speech disorders and maternal education level, hand dominance, or birth order (tables 5, 6, and 7); this finding agrees with the findings reported by karbasi et al. (2010). overall, the estimated prevalence of specific speech disorders in the present study was higher than that of many previous investigations. the estimated prevalence of stuttering in the present study was 1.5%. this is higher than the prevalence reported by craig and tran’s 2005 study of 12,131 participants 1 to 99 years old (0.72%); by mckinnon et al.’s 2007 study of 10,425 australian children 5 to 12 years old (0.33%); and by van borsel et al.’s 2006 study of 21,027 children 6 to 10 years old from regular schools in belgium (0.58%). the prevalence of stuttering was higher in children with a positive family history for this disorder compared with all other children (table 4); this finding corresponds with the studies of kraft and yairi (2011) and karbasi et al. (2010). in the present study, the estimated prevalence of voice disorders (2.2%) was lower than the reported prevalence from akif kilic, okur, yildirim, and guzelsoy’s 2004 study of 617 school-aged children in turkey (30.4%); and from duff, proctor, and yairi’s 2004 study of 2,445 african american and european american children 2 to 6 years old (3.3%); but higher than the reported prevalence from mckinnon et al.’s 2007 study of 10,425 australian children 5 to 12 years old (0.12%). the estimated prevalence of ssd in the present study (13.4%) was higher than the prevalence of ssd reported by: mckinnon et al.’s 2007 study of children from kindergarten to grade 6 (1.06%); shriberg et al.’s 1999 study of 6-year-old children (3.8%); keating et al.’s 2001 study of 12,388 children 0 to14 years old (1.3%); and beitchman et al.’s 2001 study (6.4%); but much lower than the 43.9% reported in dudley and delage’s 1980 study. again, these discrepancies may be due to differing methodologies employed and the age ranges of the participants. the prevalence of ssd was higher in children with a positive family history for this disorder compared with all other children (table 4); this finding agrees with previous investigations by campbell et al. (2003); fox, dodd, and howard (2002); and harrison and mcleod (2010). there are well-recognized differences in the reported incidence of stuttering at different ages, with a higher prevalence rate (1.44%) reported for younger children, and a lower rate (0.53%) for adolescents (craig, hancock, tran, craig, & peters, 2002). data from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies suggest that ssd and stuttering decrease with age (yairi et al., 2005). studies that have acknowledged the decreasing incidence of communication disorders with age include craig and tran, 2005; keating et al., 2001; harasty and reed, 1994; and kirkpatrick and ward, 1984. in the present study, the ratio of males to females with ssd was 2.04:1. this significantly higher prevalence of ssd in males is similar to the findings of other studies of (a) the prevalence of ssd: keating et al., 2001; beitchman et al., 2001; aithal et al., 1985; (b) the age of acquisition of speech sounds: dodd, holm, hua, and crosbie, 2003; mccormack, harrison, http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 466 mcleod, & mcallister, 2011; smit, hand, frelinger, bernthal, & bird, 1990; and (c) the risk factors for ssd: campbell et al., 2003. in this study, the ratio of males to females with stuttering was 3.2:1. this result was within the range of results reported by bloodstein’s 1995 summary of studies, with ratios from 2.2:1 to 6.3:1; and lower than mckinnon et al.’s (2007) ratio of 7.5:1. there are many reports in the literature of gender differences in development, with an increase in major psychosocial differences emerging with increasing age (e.g., prior, smart, sanson, & oberklaid, 1993). conclusion to summarize, 13.4% of the 1,387 preschoolers in this study were identified as having ssd, 2.2% were identified as having voice disorder, and 1.5% were identified as having a stutter. identification occurred initially via face-to-face screening and was confirmed by evidence from speech-language pathology reports. the pattern of prevalence of stuttering and ssd was significantly different according to gender and positive family history. birth order, maternal education level, and hand dominance made no significant difference to the pattern of prevalence across the three speech disorders. the data revealed that many preschoolers with speech disorders required more intensive communication support than they were receiving. classroom teachers should work in consultation with speech and language pathologists to identify and assess preschoolers with communication disorders and to develop intervention strategies. as well, any collaborative team working on constructing educational programs for children with speech disorders in the wider educational community would benefit greatly from the inclusion of a speech and language pathologist. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 456–471 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 467 references aithal, v. 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(2006). prevalence of stuttering in regular and special school populations in belgium based on teacher perceptions. folia phoniatricaet logopaedica, 58(4), 289–302. yairi, e., & ambrose, n. a. (2005). early childhood stuttering. austin, tx: pro-ed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2013/12-0015) http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/icpsr04691.v1 the prevalence of stuttering, voice disorder, and speech sound disorders in preschoolers in shahrekord, iran omid mohamadi, mohammad rahimi-madiseh, and morteza sedehi method participants procedures data analysis compliance with ethical standards results the impact of variables on prevalence figures discussion conclusion references a welcome message from the editors a welcome message from the editors dear readers, we take great pleasure in welcoming you to our new journal, international journal of child, youth and family studies. we have created this publication with the intention of providing a space for the generation of knowledge, dialogue, critique, debate, and collaboration among an international community of child, youth, family and community practitioners and scholars. the immediacy of e-based publication makes it possible for us all to be fully connected to each other and to developments in our field and to be directly involved in ongoing knowledge construction. our journal is independent of corporate demands and the overlay of profit-making and profit-taking and we can therefore invite you to be full participants in the creative process that we are undertaking together. our vision is to create a high-quality publication that will be relevant, challenging, thought-provoking, and inclusive of a diverse range of voices and perspectives, including graduate students, academic researchers and scholars, policy-makers, and child, youth and family serving practitioners. we welcome original research, theoretical contributions, reviews of the literature, critical commentaries, case studies, book reviews, and works-inprogress. we are extremely pleased that our inaugural journal offering: international journal of child, youth and family studies, volume one, number one and number two, edited by guest editors, michel vallée and tullio caputo from carleton university’s department of sociology and anthropology, will appear simultaneously as two special electronic issues and a hard copy book entitled, reflecting on crime prevention and youth justice in canada. the book can be ordered directly from our web site upon the electronic publication of both journal issues. it is our intention from time to time, to offer guest edited special issues as books as well as journal offerings. we do this in order to support access and diversity in the ever narrowing corporatized world of academic publication. we are delighted that you are joining us as readers and hope you will also join us as contributors. sibylle artz, ph.d jennifer white, ed.d international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 218 trauma-informed flexible learning: classrooms that strengthen regulatory abilities tom brunzell, helen stokes, and lea waters abstract: this study explores the implementation of the first of three domains, increasing regulatory abilities, within a trauma-informed positive education (tipe) approach with flexible learning teachers as they incorporated trauma-informed principles into their daily teaching practice. trauma-informed teaching approaches have particular relevance for flexible learning settings, and can help meet the complex needs of students who have experienced violence, abuse, or neglect. this paper proposes that redressing a trauma-affected student’s regulatory abilities should be the first aim in this developmentally-informed tipe pedagogy. drawing from research with nine teachers working in trauma-affected flexible learning settings in a large metropolitan region, this study employs a qualitative appreciative inquiry action research methodology to explore the use of tipe perspectives with their students. under the domain of increasing regulatory abilities, four arising subthemes hold particular application for teacher practice and planning: rhythm; self-regulation; mindfulness; and de-escalation. these four subthemes are positioned as promising pathways to increasing regulatory abilities in students as they strive toward successful learning outcomes. keywords: trauma-informed classroom, flexible learning, regulatory abilities, student management, classroom strategies tom brunzell (corresponding author) is a phd candidate at the university of melbourne graduate school of education, 5th floor, 100 leicester street, parkville, vic 3010. email: tbrunzell@student.unimelb.edu.au helen stokes, phd is a senior research fellow and senior lecturer at the youth research centre at the university of melbourne graduate school of education. email: h.stokes@unimelb.edu.au lea waters, phd is the gerry higgins chair in positive psychology and the director of the centre of positive psychology at the melbourne graduate school of education. email: l.waters@unimelb.edu.au mailto:tbrunzell@student.unimelb.edu.au mailto:h.stokes@unimelb.edu.au mailto:l.waters@unimelb.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 219 within alternative and flexible education pathways, there is growing concern about the impact of childhood trauma on students and the subsequent impact on successful learning and classroom engagement. working from a trauma-informed pedagogy, teachers can meet the learning and behavioural needs of students who are trauma-affected (bloom, 1995; downey, 2007; wolpow, johnson, hertel, & kincaid, 2009). this study contributes to pedagogical debate within the context of flexible learning classrooms and the argument for the inclusion of developmental perspectives (milbourne, 2009; te riele, 2007). however, trauma-informed practice models require further research to better understand how teachers incorporate and apply these strategies in their classrooms with trauma-affected students. such understandings contribute to flexible learning settings by positioning the classroom as a daily therapeutic milieu intervention, in which the environment itself promotes post-traumatic healing and growth (perry, 2006). this study uses the trauma-informed positive education (tipe; brunzell, stokes, & waters, 2015) approach, which embeds trauma-informed pedagogy within a positive education strengths-based paradigm (waters, 2011). a tipe approach positions learning within a dualcontinuum model of mental health (i.e., addressing one’s deficits and building on one’s strengths are two specific and differentiated pathways for intervention) in order to address domains of healing and of growth in trauma-affected students (keyes, 2002; keyes & annas, 2009). classroom pedagogies and student management are enhanced for trauma-affected students if teachers seek to directly redress the disrupted capacities (e.g., regulatory abilities and relational attachment) that have been compromised by traumatic stressors; and nurture learning experiences that allow students to identify and build upon their strengths (brunzell, waters, & stokes, 2015). the first domain of tipe, repairing regulatory capacities, is the focus of this qualitative study, which gathers evidence from an investigation with nine teachers participating in an appreciative inquiry action research methodology (ludema & fry, 2008; zandee & cooperrider, 2008) that cycles teachers through six stages to discover, dream, design, act, observe, and reflect when using trauma-informed positive education interventions with their students. literature trauma-affected students trauma is consensually defined as an overwhelming experience that undermines the individual’s belief that the world is good and safe (berry street victoria, 2013). the american psychiatric association (apa; 2013) advises that directly experiencing, witnessing, or learning about trauma can lead to traumaand stress-related disorders such as reactive attachment disorder, disinhibited social engagement disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), acute stress, and adjustment disorder. children who experience traumatisation may have a severely international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 220 compromised ability to regulate their body’s stress or arousal responses, which is the result of the impact of trauma on key neurological and psychological systems (coade, downey, & mcclung, 2008; downey, 2007). in addition to impacting a child’s regulatory abilities, trauma’s impact on the developing brain can significantly impair a child’s ability to form a healthy attachment to the primary care-giver; and thus compromises the child’s capacity for creating and maintaining healthy relational bonds (van der kolk & mcfarlane, 1996). trauma-affected students may experience ongoing difficulties within the classroom resulting from daily classroom stressors, such as new learning, physical and cognitive delays, and behavioural expectations that trigger their already dysregulated arousal responses (brunzell, waters, & stokes, 2015). the impact of childhood trauma on biological, psychological, and social disorders can have devastating outcomes on a young person’s ability to learn in educational settings. in large epidemiological studies of adults who underwent adverse childhood experiences (aces) in their youth, individuals who experienced aces are 2.5 times more likely than those who did not report aces to experience problems in school, such as having lower achievement assessments, being at risk for language delays and difficulties, being suspended or expelled more often, being designated to special education, failing a grade, and dropping out of mainstream education (anda et al., 2005). adverse childhood experiences due to trauma from abuse or neglect have significant and potentially devastating effects on effective classroom learning and connections to future education or vocational pathways. a trauma-informed positive education response trauma-informed pedagogical approaches are required to address the special and complex needs of trauma-affected students (bloom, 1995; downey, 2007; wolpow et al., 2009). although teachers are not therapists, they often find themselves acting as front-line traumaworkers for young people who do not have access to clinical care (brunzell, waters, & stokes, 2015). perry (2006) suggests that the classroom is sometimes the most consistent and stable place in a trauma-affected student’s world and must be seen as a therapeutic milieu wherein the structured environment itself is the most consistent and effective intervention. a synthesis of extant understandings within the trauma-informed teaching and learning literature supports the current study. brunzell, stokes, and waters (2015) found that existing trauma-informed education models focus on two major themes: (a) repairing regulatory abilities and addressing the dysregulated stress response; and (b) repairing disrupted attachment capacities through the nurturing of strong student-teacher relationships. both of these themes hold potent implications for teaching and learning within the trauma-informed therapeutic milieu of the classroom. repairing regulatory abilities within the classroom context can occur when teachers create learning environments designed for co-regulatory experiences (e.g., side-by-side interactions with a well-regulated teacher); self-regulatory capacities (e.g., opportunities for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 221 students to monitor and practice self-regulatory strategies); working with difficult emotions (e.g., understanding one’s stress triggers and strategies to shift emotions); and encouraging individualised strategies for managing student behaviour (e.g., empowering the student to create self-strategies pre-emptively and throughout the school day). two regulatory pathways can be employed in trauma-informed classrooms: (a) cortical mediation (i.e., top-down regulation) whereby a student can effectively direct their own regulation; and (b) improving the body’s ability to self-regulate (i.e., bottom-up regulation) whereby a student is given multiple opportunities to increase the body’s regulatory rhythms, thus resetting their baseline arousal responses in order to fortify parasympathetic nervous system capabilities (australian childhood foundation, 2010; cole et al., 2009; perry, 2006). repairing disrupted attachment styles refers to repairing the ability of students to form strong relationships. attachment refers to an enduring relationship with another person (e.g., parent, carer, teacher, friend) that enhances soothing, comfort, pleasure, or safety (ludy-dobson & perry, 2010). attachment is a core developmental task for healthy maturation and aidsthe formation of self-protection strategies in the face of perceived threats or danger (baim & morrison, 2011). in trauma-informed classroom practice, it is paramount that the student-teacher relationship be a safe conduit to learning; and that student-student peer relationships fortify safety and belonging within the learning environment. teacher-student relationships which emphasise teacher empathy, warmth, genuineness, and non-directivity yield positive student outcomes (cornelius-white, 2007). students often benefit from the feelings of connectedness and belonging they experience in the classroom, feelings that help them cope with healthy stressors (e.g., learning something new) within the classroom (roffey, 2013; stewart, sun, patterson, lemerle, & hardie, 2004). two approaches included in trauma-informed learning pedagogies — repairing regulatory abilities and repairing disrupted attachment styles — both have an emphasis on healing. while this healing approach is a critical part of trauma-informed classroom practice, these two domains can be further enhanced by integrating a strengths-based perspective. this argument is based on keyes’ two-factor theory which recognises that building mental health requires more than addressing deficits of ill-being (keyes, 2002; keyes & annas, 2009). moreover, the two-factor theory can be used to argue that since trauma-informed education must teach students in ways that both heal weaknesses and build strengths two different trajectories of learning are required (magyar-moe, 2009). a student who struggles in the domains of regulation or relationship may show promise in other areas that can then be developed as strengths of character and capability. healing and growth are two perspectives that can assist teachers in understanding students and their developmental needs. trauma-informed positive education (tipe; brunzell, stokes, & waters, 2015) is informed by positive psychology. positive psychology is the study of wellbeing, human strengths, and optimal functioning (gable & haidt, 2005); it aims to foster the two conditions of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 222 wellbeing: feeling well and doing well (jayawickreme, forgeard, & seligman, 2012). the tipe model enhances understandings of trauma-informed pedagogies by building on regulatory capacities and relational attachments to also emphasise teaching practices that foster positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (seligman, 2011) as psychological resources for vulnerable students. one goal of the tipe model is to assist teachers to promote this set of classroom-based interventions in a developmentally aligned way by increasing student capacity within regulatory abilities, which fortifies the development of strong classroom relationships, and leads to student readiness to increase psychological resources in their areas of strength. this links to understandings of hierarchical brain organisation in that the lower parts of the brain govern the body’s regulatory tasks; the limbic system mediates relational and emotional capacities; and the neocortex is the seat of higher-order thinking (perry, 2006; 2009). the tipe model emphasises classroom intervention principles that build regulation (lower brain), strengthen relationships (limbic system), and prepare the student for the learning of psychological strategies such as resilient thinking and leading with character strengths (neocortex). using the tipe model, teachers may assist trauma-affected students to nurture the necessary healing and growth for successful learning, while providing significantly more intervention pathways for classroom adaptation to meet specific student needs. alternative and flexible education alternative and flexible learning settings strive to educate students who are no longer in mainstream schools. in the australian context, many alternative education programs have been established in the last 20 years, in part to address the political pressure to increase school retention (wilson, stemp, & mcginty, 2011). mcgregor and mills (2012, p. 843) identify the concept of alternative education as being firmly rooted in the “progressive tradition” of education. te riele (2014) notes that these programs, which may be referred to as alternative education, second chance education, or reengagement programs, attempt to meet the needs of students from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., trauma-affected, low socio-economic, indigenous, rural areas), who are disproportionally represented in alternative education. this paradigm of education has given rise to a general “blurriness” in both the terms that are used to describe the sector and the sector’s education contexts, services, and outcomes (aron & zweig, 2003, pp. 20–21). as of 2014, there are over 900 flexible learning programs educating over 70,000 students each year in australia (te riele, 2014). te riele (2007, p. 54) argues that this has created a “bewildering array” of initiatives, specialist units, flexible learning options, and curricular models established by state departments and community service organisations. while these options may provide promising pathways, many of them are working in isolation. this sector has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 223 been labelled confusing, inefficient, unstable, and lacking a shared framework (cole, griffiths, jane, & mackay, 2004; te riele, 2007). despite the multiple alternative education options for many communities, there are surprisingly few examples of pedagogical approaches (milbourne, 2009). te riele (2007, p. 55; 2014) argues that pedagogical responses in flexible learning contexts should take developmental perspectives, rather than framing students via their deficits where often, the term ‘youth at risk’ has connotations of deficiency and minority status. such developmental approaches should originate from a student’s strengths and surrounding systems of support. alternative or flexible learning options are necessary to provide viable education pathways for at-risk students who are often blamed for a lack of motivation or irresponsibility (aaltonen, 2012). te riele advocates changing the approach, rather than problematising the student; and that developmental perspectives can empower all children through whole-school change. best practice depends on the mix of a number of factors and variables. pedagogical factors include teaching practices and learning experiences that are consistent, structured, and clearly defined; relationship-based teacher-student interactions; student-centred curricula that encourage diversity and creativity, and facilitate positive outcomes; and flexible assessment protocols and procedures (stokes & turnbull, 2011). we contend that using the tipe model provides a pedagogy based on a developmentallyinformed approach that has previously not been applied in flexible learning settings. as shown, the tipe model is based on three sequential and synergistic domains. the first domain, repairing regulatory abilities, is the focus of this study, in which teachers explore developmentallyinformed regulatory strategies for students within trauma-affected flexible learning cohorts. method the present study draws on the investigation and first findings of a larger, longitudinal study of the developmentally-informed, hierarchical tipe model. the aim of this first study is to show the action research outcomes of the first 13 weeks of intervention which corresponded to the first 13 weeks of the academic calendar. within the tipe model, the domain — increasing regulatory abilities — is theorised as the first area of pedagogical focus when establishing teaching and learning routines in a flexible learning classroom. due to limitations of time-frame and reporting, this study focused on increasing regulatory abilities as the intervention concern for teachers in the first quarter of their school year as they worked with trauma-affected students in a flexible learning unit. design a longitudinal (13 week) qualitative design was used. located within a constructivist paradigm of qualitative interpretivist research, this design is an adaptation of participatory action research: appreciative inquiry action research (ludema & fry, 2008; zandee & cooperrider, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 224 2008). in this approach, the embedded researcher and the research participants are both situated and reflexive, working towards democratic and practical knowledge (reason & bradbury, 2006); the inquiry is qualitative and interpretative which privileges teacher self-reflection and meanings (kemmis & mctaggart, 2000); and the exploration is in keeping within the positive psychology paradigm focus on growth and increasing positive psychological resources (ludema & fry, 2008). sample the qualitative research data were collected in a school (kindergarten through year-12) in a growing outer-metropolitan suburb. although the total student population in this school is large (1900 students), the school has supported a flexible learning unit on-site that caters specifically to secondary students (aged 12–17) who have disengaged from the mainstream cohort. this school was selected based on teacher-reports of increasing numbers of trauma-affected students in both the flexible learning unit and mainstream student populations. this judgment was also supported through the school’s psychologist, wellbeing teams, and the school’s involvement with child protection services, youth justice, and refugee and newly arriving families. the school reports 42% of students have a language background other than english (south east asian, middle-eastern, african and polynesian languages); and 42% of families are in the lowest quartile for socio-economic status. the nine participants (n = 9), all classroom teachers between 23 and 38 years of age, were seven females and two males. they ranged in years of teaching experience from one to six years. only three teachers had been teaching for more than four years. at this time of this study, the flexible learning unit was in its second year of operation. procedure permission to conduct the research was granted through the university of melbourne human ethics advisory committee and the state government victoria department of education and training prior to the research being conducted. the procedure includes a series of longitudinal interviews conducted with the nine participants. interviews for this study were conducted over a thirteen-week period. participants each took part in three interviews, conducted as group interviews. interviews, conducted face-toface with participants, were audio-recorded and fully transcribed. in addition to participating in group interviews, each teacher completed two reflective journal entries based on prompts such as: “reflect on and describe a specific students(s) that was particularly impacted by the changes you made in your classroom.” journal entries were included in the data analysis procedures outlined below. data analysis data analysis was performed through an adaptation of qualitative content analysis: interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa, smith 1996). framed through an ipa perspective, the procedure for qualitative content analysis included a fluid and iterative data international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 225 reduction sequence, in which transcriptions of interviews were collected for reading and rereading; data reduction occurred through the categorisation of themes and patterns (open coding); coherent categories were created and compared to patterns, interrelationships, and matching themes back to data (axial coding); and broad subthemes were determined in order to structure the framework for analytical discussion (selective coding) (miles & huberman, 1984). nvivo qualitative data analysis software was used to support the sorting and categorisation of interview and journal transcriptions. table 1 outlines the qualitative content analysis and data reduction. table 1 data analysis and framework conceptualisation coding procedures theme 1 theme 2 theme 3 theme 4 open codes • assign preliminary codes • compare the data across articles and reorganise codes when necessary rhythm brainbreaks heartrate physical activity patterned and repetitive yoga self-regulation tools stress defining stress stress in body mindfulness breathing noticing being present, centred, and grounded de-escalation escalation maps calmer students safety plans axial codes • examine relationships between codes • categorise codes into themes • match themes back to data rhythm self-regulation mindfulness de-escalation selective code • core variable that includes all data in set repairing regulatory abilities results and discussion according to the tipe model, the first priority of teacher focus is to ensure a predictable classroom environment that nurtures strong regulatory capabilities for trauma-affected students. as such, the present findings and discussion maintain specific focus on the first tipe domain, increasing regulatory capacities within students. these qualitative data are from the first 13 weeks of the school year, and thus represent the first developmental tipe task of a teacher with a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 226 new group of students at the start of the academic year: establishing a regulated classroom of strong student (self-)management to set clear expectations for safe and successful learning. from the appreciative inquiry action research data, four subthemes describe teachers’ learning about creating, implementing, and reflecting on classroom interventions that potentially regulate trauma-affected students for effective learning: rhythm, self-regulation, mindfulness, and deescalation. findings within each of these four subthemes will be explored in the following discussion. rhythm as a specific focus for classroom action research, teachers narrowed their practice to three strategies that incorporated rhythm throughout the school day: (a) proactively using rhythm in the form of “brainbreaks”; (b) applying rhythm as a form of triage intervention to address heightened or resisting students; and (c) specifically focusing on heart rate as a rhythmic form of body regulation. trauma and chronic stress exposure for children can have significant impacts on the body’s ability to regulate the arousal response, including the basic body functions of blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate. children who have experienced acute trauma may have a resting-heart rate that far exceeds the desired 60 to 80 beats per minute as a result of continuous activation and re-activation of their stress response systems (perry, pollard, blakely, baker, & vigilante, 1995; perry & szalavitz, 2006). effective classrooms that help students to build stamina for self-regulation can employ ‘bottom-up’ regulation opportunities to give students opportunities to physically strengthen their body’s capacity to regulate (acf, 2010; cole et al., 2009). first, teachers learned about, then designed, short-burst opportunities for students to physically regulate. they named these brainbreaks. brainbreaks were both time-tabled in lesson plans and called on in an impromptu manner when teachers judged that students were unable to concentrate or their students were showing decreased capacity for effective learning in a given lesson. sometimes teachers introduced these brainbreaks after transition from lesson to lesson or coming in and out of the classroom during the day. brainbreaks lasted between two and five minutes and incorporated physical movement including: “silent ball” (e.g., a game where a ball was thrown from student to student, using nonverbal cues such as eye-contact and hand gestures; students compete as a class to beat their prior score of successful ball-passes without the ball dropping to the floor); clapping call-and-response games; brain gym physical activities (dennison & dennison, 1989); and mindfulness breathing exercises or visualisations (see following section). one example of using physical rhythm as a form of regulation within a studentintervention was presented by a teacher who explained that, when disruptive students are asked to leave the classroom, this teacher employs a strategy of using physical rhythm as a form of regulation before directly talking to the student or asking the student to express themself international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 227 verbally. once removed from the classroom, the teacher walks the student directly to the sport oval. the teacher recounts: i gauge on the way to the oval what their pace is. so when we get to the oval, i get how heightened they are. sometimes i will take control, and i will set the pace for them and say, “i think you need to get a few things out of your system.” but then once i sense them drop a notch, i let them take their pace because then they can self-regulate better. so i gauge their levels. and that’s if i know the student well. here, the teacher is adapting the principles of rhythmic regulation to behaviour intervention in a heated moment with a student who is struggling with emotional regulation. within the action research discussions, teachers acknowledged that lecturing students on their behavioural choices did not promote the desired effects. often, these kinds of lectures elevated both the stress-arousal of both teachers and students. instead, teachers tried strategies such as these to reinforce a sense of physical rhythm when students presented symptoms of restlessness or frustration. additionally, this teacher is employing relational attachment principles, remaining side-by-side with the student in order to co-regulate the student by matching or directing the student’s rhythms (crittenden, 2008). within the subtheme of rhythm towards increased regulation for trauma-affected classrooms, teachers also learned about the specific effects of trauma-exposure on heart rate. they brainstormed ways to teach students about their own heart rates, how to measure heart rate in a variety of ways, and to notice the effects of heart rate throughout the day and in specific situations. one teacher reflects: i mean they’re right on-board with doing their heartbeat. they love that and in numeracy they’re graphing them. they get that when your heart rate is up, you’re stressed out and so on. within their discussions, teachers noted the importance of using heart rate as a rhythmic strategy in a proactive way. accurately measuring one’s heart rate requires a certain amount of careful attention, which might be hard for the student to access in a heated moment of behaviour triage. in order that students should frame their learning about heart rate in a positive and proactive way, the teachers agreed that they would not use heart rate on such occasions. rather, they introduced the concept within wellbeing, numeracy, and science contexts, which they aim to refer back to for the rest of the school year. the theme of rhythm can be seen in adaptations that incorporate brainbreaks, use physical activity proactively and as triage, and teach about heart rate. teachers voiced value in re-visioning student struggles in regulation as opportunities to increase the frequency of bringing a strong sense of rhythm to their pedagogical practice. in this way, rhythm as a form of intervention can frame student-teacher interactions to better decrease the arousal response, build international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 228 stamina for learning, and nurture the body’s capacity for sustained concentration. teachers can apply this suggestion by planning these classroom interventions in a regular and predictable way. likewise, these data suggest that, when used as an intervention strategy, teachers will want to build consistent expectation for physical, rhythmic, and relational contact when resistant students require one-on-one attention to regulate and return to the classroom. self-regulation the second subtheme arising from the data was self-regulation. specifically, the explicit teaching of self-regulation to students in two forms: teaching students about their own stressresponse with strategies to shift their arousal; and using specific self-regulation tools to help students identify their own ability to self-regulate and identify their readiness for learning. within the initial meetings of the action research cycle, teachers were exposed to the literature on self-regulation and the stress-response, with particular focus on the adverse developmental effects of trauma on the child’s stress-response. the trauma-informed literature suggests that self-regulation can be defined as the domains of sensory processing, executive functioning, and emotional regulation (hughes, 2004, 2006; perry, 2006; bath, 2008). an important aspect of self-regulation learning for adolescent students is psycho-education. teachers shared that students needed more knowledge on specific regulation of their own stress-response and prior to this action research, they had not taught or discussed these lessons with their students. thus, in the action research planning and reflection meetings, teachers were provided with materials (based on the above studies) and participants incorporated their own ideas along with the group’s suggestions to best embed learning about self-regulation and the stress response into their curricular unit plans. the following reflection comes from a group interview: it’s been quite interesting and fun to get the kids to be able to articulate their physical responses to stress, and what it looks and feels like to them. we’ve focused a lot on the body with questions like, “what are you physically feeling or noticing in your bodies?” and yes, the stress triggers … and drawing pictures of where on their physical bodies they feel their physical response. they’ve loved doing that. these teachers continued to describe their particular adaptations of the stress-response research to their classroom curriculum including: student brainstorming on the stressors most relevant to student experiences; the effects of stress on the body; specific student reflections on experiencing stress; and different coping strategies both in and out of school. teachers reflected that they were able to connect the students’ learning responses to other areas of the curriculum, notice improvements in their cohort’s readiness to learn, and increase their knowledge about individual students themselves (e.g., their triggers, their stressors, and environmental threats/supports). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 229 due to the enthusiastic responses of the students, teachers saw value in taking academicinstruction time to teach students about self-control in the face of stressors and adversity. they voiced throughout the interviews that students did not have, and desperately needed, strategies for coping with stressors throughout their day. teachers also experienced a dialogue opening between students and teachers about topics that had not been previously a part of the classroom domain. teachers saw great value in this dialogue as a way to encourage student voice and student advocacy for their own needs within the classroom setting. another area of self-regulation was the use of self-regulation tools within the classroom. one such tool was a self-regulation rubric which allows students to self-identify where they are on a ready-to-learn scale. one teacher discussed her classroom ready-to-learn rubric that coordinated emotional states with colours. her students each had their name on a moveable icon to place or move during different time-points throughout the day. their teacher recounts: with self-regulation, initially the boys couldn’t even tell when they were angry. so we talked about being angry, what behaviours they showed, how they felt, and now they’re able to actually self-regulate and say, “i need to get out, i need a drink.” once the boys are ready, i will go around one at a time and ask where they are, and accept their answer no matter what. here the teacher is emphasising both the importance of unconditional positive regard (rogers, 1961) and attachment (bowlby, 1971; crittenden, 2008) as a regulatory strategy as the students enter the classroom. her willingness to “accept their answer no matter what” expresses a patience and desire to encourage the students to express their affective state, along with their self-perceived readiness for learning. she continues: in our classroom, we made a “ready-to-learn” chart where students place themselves in the morning. sometimes, one of the boys wants [his name card] placed off the chart. okay, that’s fine, i’ll put it on the wall next to the chart until you’re ready to actually articulate how you’re feeling. this teacher reflected that she is ready for the potentially disruptive answer (e.g., the student has placed himself off the rubric chart) and allows the icon to be placed off the chart; then reinforces the expectation by moving the icon when the student begins to regulate and shows learning readiness. even if i don’t ask them, i’ll sometimes find they’ll take their name and will have repositioned their name card on the rubric by 10 o’clock. they’ll tell me, “miss, i want the shift or i want it moved into the red zone or the blue zone.” this quote illustrates the teacher’s reflection on the importance of using tools like this self-regulation rubric in a consistent and predictable manner. this suggests that once the students international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 230 in this class came to understand and to employ such tools, they recognised and sought positive attention when they were ready to shift their icon into a new regulatory zone which signalled increased readiness to learn. mindfulness the third subtheme arising from the data was mindfulness. coding in this subtheme clustered around labels such as: breathing, noticing, present, centred, and grounded. activities that teachers developed or adapted for their specific classroom contexts included introducing mindfulness concepts through brainbreaks or through short mini-lessons. within tipe, mindfulness is positioned as a specific pathway towards mind-body regulation (e.g., autonomic nervous system control of the parasympathetic branches) that in turn can improve attuned communication (hassed, 2008; siegel, 2009; thompson & waltz, 2007), cognitive functioning, and emotional regulation (waters, barsky, ridd, & allen, 2014). after learning about these clear benefits for students and their classroom learning, teachers discussed how mindfulness crosses over to foci such as rhythm and self-regulation; and they hoped to interweave these concepts to increase student understanding throughout the school year. the initial mindfulness classroom adaptations included: teaching about the benefits of focussing attention on a single point such as their breath; listening to the sounds of the classroom; or short visualisations of a favourite location (e.g., the comfort of their own bedroom, a beach or forest). additional activities within this suite of mindful minibreaks included visualisations around colours, emotions, gratitude; and bringing mindfulness to simple actions such as conversation, walking, or playing games (brunzell et al., 2015). in a recent evidence-based review, waters et al. (2014) discuss the statistically significant effects of mindfulness and meditation interventions in schools and conclude that meditation positively increases student success by increasing cognitive functioning and emotional regulation. however, their review was conducted in mainstream student samples, and there are few studies on teaching and learning mindfulness in the context of trauma-affected or flexible learning classrooms. these data suggest that teachers have to introduce mindfulness in a purposeful way to establish clear classroom expectations of mutual respect and safety; and to explain the benefits of mindfulness practices in relation to the daily stressors of secondary school and life beyond. in the current study, the teachers mutually agreed that incorporating mindfulness was the beginning of a journey. they voiced commitment to the idea of mindfulness as an intervention worth pursuing throughout the balance of the school year, and hoped to co-create strategies for whole-group and individualised student need. due to its flexibility and multiple uses, teachers felt that teaching mindfulness held great potential for some of their students with severe regulatory challenges — once they were able to get student buy-in and establish safe and respectful routines. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 231 de-escalation the fourth and final subtheme arising from the data was that of de-escalation. within their action research groups, teachers assisted students to de-escalate by specifically (a) learning about de-escalation, (b) creating and using de-escalation maps, and (c) designing individualised safety plans with and for students. in the context of the tipe classroom, de-escalation refers to a suite of mindsets, strategies, and interventions that instil a strong self-regulatory student capacity. put simply, encouraging a calm, ready-to-learn affective state is the goal of these interventions. the present data suggest that teachers, as classroom mediators, have a great deal of agency in this regard. teachers set the tone and must model de-escalation when student adversity arises in the classroom. teachers reflected that their own escalation can definitely escalate a student in a negative way. a teacher can make proactive steps towards de-escalation by creating a calm, routine, and predictable environment; consistently monitoring and identifying aroused stress states; and implementing interventions to maintain optimal states (brunzell et al., 2015). employing such strategies for classroom de-escalation fosters nuanced understandings of individual student needs and specific triggers or arousal stress responses. in the action research planning meetings, teachers discussed their own strategies to properly assess a difficult situation: maintaining a calm demeanour, leading with empathy, and offering choices. they also discussed the triggers that trauma-affected students can bring to the classroom. these triggers often have nothing to do with the teacher, and students can enter the classroom angry and upset about situations outside the school or in the past. teachers also shared how understandings of de-escalation improved their knowledge of particular students and how they can best learn. one teacher explains a specific adjustment for a student below: after finding out [a specific student] becomes stressed during most classes, i provide him with stress balls, goo and his required toy that makes him safe. this teacher continued to explain that learning about, and implementing, de-escalation strategies has allowed her to notice and adjust stress-management strategies for students. as shown above, creating a differentiated safe-space for students to learn helps to de-escalate the entire cohort to stay on track for successful learning. i have one particular student for whom it is a struggle just to sit down and have a conversation with him, and he said, “i just want my own space.” so coming from a traumatic background, he’s very distracted all the time, he’s very anxious, and you can tell that by his movements. [the co-teacher] said, “this is your table, this is your space, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 232 you can go there whenever you like. we’ll give you your own books; this is your space.” this has stopped the whole class from being off task because of this one student. teachers reported that this, in part, gave students ownership within the classroom — something that the teachers had not previously considered until speaking individually with the student. figure 2. example of escalation map. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 233 one particularly helpful tool in the cluster of de-escalation strategies was the use of escalation maps. this simple one-page tool allows students to draw a line on a continuum to represent moments in their school day when they feel escalated and de-escalated, and to record why they felt a shift in their escalation, perhaps pinpointing a particular event that occurred (brunzell et al., 2015). teachers shared their use of the maps and student responses when referring back to the maps throughout the day: using the de-escalation and escalation maps, the kids can graph where they’re at through their day and how they’re feeling; it’s worthwhile because they straightaway realise, “oh, this is the time of day that i’m always stressed and i don’t want to be here, and this is the time of day where i’m happy or relaxed.” teachers shared that tools like the escalation map assist in getting students to articulate information (e.g., their triggers, their emotions, outside contextual factors) that they may not share in daily student-teacher exchanges. additionally, the tool gives valuable insight for setting up the classroom for optimal learning in a side-by-side relational manner. in addition to escalation maps, teachers discussed the value of safety-plans. a safety-plan within a tipe classroom is an individualised plan, co-created with the student which details: (a) the times when the student feels escalated; (b) the triggers or reasons for escalation that the student identifies; (c) words or actions that the student will share with the teacher when escalation occurs; (d) word or actions that the teacher can give to assist de-escalation; (e) strategies that the student determines will be helpful for de-escalation or calmness. the teachers agreed that the strategies must be determined with the student, and included only if the teacher deems the strategy as appropriate for use in the flexible learning unit setting. strategies within the safety-plans at this flexible learning unit included: taking a short walk, requesting a friend for a brief talk, getting a drink of water, reading in the back of the classroom, using a fidget toy, listening to music on headphones, or seeking assistance from another adult. the plans were created on either forms created by the teachers or individual cards created by the students themselves and kept near or in the students’ desks. as mentioned above, a key benefit of creating safety-plans with students is alerting the teacher to particular self-identified triggers of the student. one teacher reflected that one of her students was able to articulate how he wanted to be treated in his safety-plan, even when he experiences rapid emotional dysregulation. she explains below: well, for some students, it’s getting them to identify: “i do like to be on my own when i’m angry. please don’t follow me. leave me alone, or please go away and let the other staff de-escalate the situation.” so it’s getting them to understand themselves; and without it we wouldn’t know what triggers them, we wouldn’t know how to help them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 234 this teacher’s reflection is a reminder that often, trauma-affected students may not be able to communicate what they need or how best to support them. throughout the action research, an ongoing discussion with teachers centred on how trauma-affected students have come to see themselves as failures in the classroom. in doing so, teachers shared how they believe this sense of failure masquerades as aggression, resistance, or refusal within the classroom. the quote above may also be interpreted as a reminder that students value being asked about what works for them; and once they answer, they have invited the teacher into a closer relationship — in itself a powerful form of regulation (crittenden, 2008) — which helps them to take on the challenges required for new learning. conclusion this paper explores the perspectives of teachers participating in an appreciative inquiry action research process in order to learn and to embed the first domain of the tipe model, increasing regulatory abilities ,within trauma-affected flexible learning cohorts. particularly within flexible learning settings, teaching pedagogies must address the previously unmet developmental needs required for effective classroom learning. the results of this study reveal how teachers integrated their own learnings about increasing regulatory capacities. the results emerged through four subthemes: rhythm, selfregulation, mindfulness, and de-escalation. throughout this study, teachers incorporated interventions that showed promising classroom practice such as: strengthening the rhythms of students’ bodies through brainbreaks, awareness of heart rate, and “bottom-up” physical regulation; increasing self-regulation through the use of psycho-education and tools for student self-monitoring; introducing and practicing mindfulness at various points in the school day; and placing particular focus on de-escalation in the classroom environment through the use of student-friendly tools and strategies. throughout the action research process, teachers reflected and actioned classroom interventions to promote an increase in student regulatory abilities and an increase in their own abilities to manage classroom behaviours. this study provides the basis for future investigation for the tipe approach within flexible learning settings as teachers strive to meet their students’ needs for both healing and growth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 218–239 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615719 235 references aaltonen, s. 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(2008). appreciable worlds, inspired inquiry. in p. reason & h. bradbury (eds.), handbook of action research (2nd ed., pp. 190–198). london,uk: sage. trauma-informed flexible learning: classrooms that strengthen regulatory abilities tom brunzell, helen stokes, and lea waters literature trauma-affected students a trauma-informed positive education response alternative and flexible education method design sample procedure data analysis results and discussion rhythm self-regulation mindfulness de-escalation conclusion references from there to here: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 546 from there to here: using photography to explore perspectives of resettled refugee youth jody lynn mcbrien and rebecca day abstract: because refugee numbers are much smaller than those of other immigrant populations in the united states, researchers frequently group refugees with other immigrants in their studies. however, due to the traumatic circumstances that most refugees face prior to their arrival, they require separate consideration. we chose the medium of photography to help newcomer refugee students express themselves beyond their current capacities in english, and we used the students’ photographs as catalysts to interview them about their resettled lives in the united states. through this process, we discovered themes central to the students’ lives, and ways in which they were working to reconcile important past and present elements, such as family, friends, cultures, and aspirations. bronfenbrenner’s (1986) ecological theory provides a useful frame for exploring these students’ processes of acculturation. their photos, and their commentaries, provide critically important information for teachers, social service providers, and others working with refugee youth. keywords: resettled refugees, acculturation, ecological theory, photography acknowledgements: the authors wish to thank the university of south florida office of research for the internal grant award that partially funded this research project. they would also like to acknowledge the generosity of a local organization’s refugee program staff that provided months of support. jody lynn mcbrien, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor of education at the college of education, university of south florida, sarasota-manatee, 8350 north tamiami trail, b322, sarasota, florida, u.s.a., 34243. telephone (941) 359-4635; fax (941) 359-4887. email: jlmcbrien@sar.usf.edu rebecca day received her msw at the university of south florida and currently works as the mental health liaison at the public defender’s office, 6th judicial court of florida. email: rebeccaday@wearthehope.org mailto:jlmcbrien@sar.usf.edu� mailto:rebeccaday@wearthehope.org� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 547 interviewer: what do these photos tell me about your life in america? n., 16-year-old female student, liberia: that my dream will come true. annually, only about one percent of the world’s refugee population is permanently resettled in a new country. out of a reported 98,800 refugees receiving third-country resettlement in 2010, the united states resettled 73,293, with the largest numbers coming from iraq, burma, and bhutan (martin, 2011). children under the age of 18 represent about 47% of all refugees, with 11% under the age of 5. although the united states permanently resettles more refugees than all other countries combined, the numbers are small in comparison to all immigrants resettled yearly. for instance, in 2011, there were a total of 1,062,040 people who obtained legal permanent resident status (monger & yankay, 2012). of that number, 113,045 were refugees, or 11.6% of the total figure. (the number of refugees differs from united nations figures; department of homeland security figures include some who arrived in earlier years). thus, it is perhaps not surprising that many researchers who examine issues affecting school-age immigrant children include refugee children. given traumatic backgrounds that frequently include war, torture, and other violent events, refugee children incur needs for support beyond other immigrant peers. many refugee families learn only a handful of english phrases prior to their arrival in the united states (bebic, 2009). cummins’ (1981) research with immigrants indicated that conversational skills are generally acquired within two years, but it takes five to seven years for students to reach academic fluency. thus, it is difficult for newly arrived refugee youth to express their complex thoughts about resettlement in english. to understand the acculturation experiences of recently arrived refugee youth, we asked 17 refugee students from three counties in florida, the state that currently resettles the largest number of refugees (florida department of children and families, 2012), to record their impressions of life in the u.s. using digital cameras. specifically, we asked the students to take photos that capture daily experiences since resettlement. we then interviewed the students about photos that they chose to discuss, asking them what the photos said about their lives, and we had them choose their top three favorite photos to be framed for public exhibitions. we also asked the participants to write two essays: one about their experiences coming to the united states; and another about what they want to do with their newfound freedoms, based on a question posed at the end of a u.s. citizenship and immigration services film. our purpose was to explore the interests, concerns, and challenges of recently resettled refugee youth through the catalyst of photography. we hoped to learn about ways in which these refugee youth were adapting to their lives in florida. it was also our intent to provide the students with multiple forums to give voice to their feelings, needs, and aspirations, pictorially and verbally. the opportunities came through workshops, interviews, and public displays of the photos. our data collection included 2,650 photographic images, 17 individual interviews with the refugee students, two focus group interviews with the students, 27 essays written by the students during photo workshops, one focus group with some parents of the students, eight international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 548 refugee staff interviews, and four media interviews with students based on their photography. these numerous and diverse sources of data have taught us much about refugee youths’ preoccupations, interests, cares, and daily lives. photography as a research tool photography has served as the basis for understanding segments of the population, including refugees, in other studies (armstrong, 2005; gallo, 2002). it has also been used to give a public voice to populations who are typically marginalized. perhaps the most famous example is the documentary born into brothels (briski & kauffman, 2004). the film chronicles the lives of several children born to prostitutes in calcutta and the photos they take of their lives in the brothels. briski also founded kids with cameras, a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower children in marginalized communities. other projects and studies on the role of photography in refugee research have concluded that art serves as a catalyst to increase communications and authentic voice, and to bring out themes of hope. in 2000, the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) held a public exhibition of 88 photos taken by refugees in azerbaijan. the concept for the project came from staff of the magazine azerbaijan international, who “realized that refugees could tell their own story better than any outsider could” (azerbaijan international [ai], winter 2000). the united nations press officer for the event, vugar abdusalimov, commented that “the beauty of the exhibit is that one can see a glimmer of hope in so many of the photographs” (ai, winter 2000). yohani (2008) used photography as an intentional intervention designed to help refugee children recognize their feelings of hope. similar to noland (2006), yohani noted that reflection on the photos brought about an increased positive self-awareness for some of the participants. hope was a theme we found in interviews about the refugee youths’ photographs, as well as in their essays. del valle, mceachern, and sabina (1999) utilized art therapy to learn about the experiences and concerns of cuban refugee children who entered the united states by raft or after being detained at the guantanamo naval base. children recounted stories of seeing relatives killed by sharks, drowned, or shot by government officials. their writing included themes of sadness about leaving friends and family, as well as happiness to find freedom in the united states. kirova and emme (2006) also examined the experiences of immigrant children entering school in a new country for the first time. the photos taken by these english language learners served as the non-linguistic vehicle for them to tell their stories. they concluded that photography is a way of capturing experiences that are not readily accessible through language. brekke (2003) asked nine asylum-seekers in sweden to photograph their day-to-day experiences to study activities and coping strategies that could be useful once the refugees were resettled. he found that photography served to begin a reflective process on the part of the participants, making interviews more fruitful. the use of the photos made the participants more at ease and they improved the balance between the researcher and the informants, as the photographers were the experts about their own pictures. as we will discuss, students in our project seemed at times surprised by the images they captured in their everyday photos, and reflecting on them caused the participants to draw some new conclusions about their lives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 549 theoretical frameworks much current research on refugee children has a strong focus on challenges of acculturation (roytburd & friedlander, 2008; shriberg, downs-karkos, & weisberg, 2012; trickett & birman, 2005). acculturation is defined as the “process by which individuals change their behavior and attitudes towards those of the host society” (barona & miller, 1994, p. 155). researchers have explored this adaptation to a new culture and described various nuances in the process. for instance, berry (1974) described four potential pathways to cultural adaptation: assimilation (renouncing one’s native culture in order to adopt the views and behaviors of those in the dominant culture); separation (a preference for preserving one’s own culture while rejecting that of the new society); marginalization (in which one embraces neither the homeland culture, nor that of the new environment); and integration (in which components of native and new cultures are embraced). gibson (1998) described a strategy she termed “accommodation and acculturation without assimilation” (p. 623) in which voluntary immigrants choose to add to their native heritage by acquiring new cultural tools. portes and zhou (1993) posited the theory of “segmented assimilation” to explain three adaptation theories (a “straight line” pattern of upward mobility, a combination of upward mobility and ethnic solidarity, or a downward spiral into poverty), depending on social, political, and economic factors. the combined work of these and other researchers of cultural adaptation indicate that the process is complex, and that a host of factors create a myriad of potential outcomes. the “stages” of acculturation do not typically occur in a linear manner: daily contrasting experiences and settings of acceptance, rejection, support, and limitations can cause refugees to welcome cultural change one day and cling to their home culture the next. children face the immense challenge of realigning their sense of identity to incorporate components of their host culture while maintaining some connection to their native roots. a critical factor for children is the amount and types of social support and services they receive and whether they ultimately feel welcomed or rejected by members in their host society (mcbrien, 2005; stewart, 2011). one of many ways refugee agencies and other social service providers are helping refugee children is through media of creative expression and art therapy. research by rousseau, lacroix, singh, gauthier, and benoit (2005) outlines the importance of pairing a verbal and nonverbal means of expression. this allows children the opportunity to express themselves through two different means and minimize the language barrier. therefore, the pairing of photography and written words can be compelling when working with refugee youth. considering ways in which social frameworks can help or hinder cultural adaptation and identity formation, bronfrenbrenner’s (1986) ecological systems model postulates that individuals are a product of multiple environmental realms, and each aspect of that environment has an effect on a person’s development. the theory addresses five different levels: the microsystem, which focuses on the people and settings that have an immediate impact on the child (and on whom the child can most have an impact); the mesosystem, which explains interrelationships among settings (e.g., between home and school); the exosystem, those that have an indirect effect on the child (such as a parent’s workplace); the macrosystem that includes the aspects that make up an individual’s culture and customs; and finally, the chronosystem that allows for an analysis of chronological development not only within individuals, but also in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 550 environment, and the interplay between the two. for refugees, obvious examples would include life transitions such as events causing them to flee from their homelands, the loss of family members and friends, and beginning over in new countries and cultures. the theory highlights the different environments that can have an impact on a child’s development and demonstrates the reciprocal nature of each level (yohani, 2008). for instance, a family’s cultural values can affect the way in which parents and children interact with the workplace, schools, friends, people of the opposite sex, etc. thus, the theory addresses the complex issues of acculturation through a systems perspective. methods because we were trying to understand the meaning and nature of refugee youths’ experiences as resettled refugees in the u.s., we chose qualitative research methods (strauss & corbin, 1998). funding allowed us to select 18 students, six from each of three counties in florida. one dropped out of the study, and we allowed a young primary school student to be part of the photo project and workshops, but we did not include data from her photos or interviews. students were chosen based on recommendations from our community partner that offered programs for refugee youth. staff members chose students who displayed characteristics of high participation in programs offered to refugee youth by the agency. students represented the following countries of origin: albania (n = 2), burma (1), colombia (4), cuba (4), liberia (3), sudan (2), and vietnam (1). this country range is representative of the refugee population in west central florida. the students had lived in the u.s. between three months and four years at the beginning of the project. the median time in the united states was 25 months and the average was just under 26 months. the ages ranged from an 11-year-old boy from liberia to the oldest, a young burmese man who was 17. however, the median age was 14, and the average age was 13.7. in focus groups with community partner staff, we determined the organization of our meetings with the participants. for our first meeting, we included parents to go over informed consent, handed out the digital cameras, and explained their use, engaging spanish, vietnamese, and burmese interpreters as necessary. we gave the students an exercise in using the cameras and took them outside to practice techniques. a month later, we asked the students to bring their cameras to the community center where we downloaded the photos and interviewed students individually. while students were waiting to be interviewed, they wrote essays about “coming to america” included in our data analysis. they worked with professional and highly trained amateur photographers who volunteered to assist the participants with photography skills. at a third session, students chose their three favorite photos to be framed and exhibited, first at a public city gallery, and then at a university. they were again assisted by volunteer experts in photography, as well as interpreters when needed. while waiting, the students watched a new u.s. citizenship and immigration services film. the end of the film poses the question, “what will you do with your freedom?” which participants addressed in an essay. at this session, we told the students that they could keep their cameras. three months later, the students and their families were invited to the opening of the photo exhibit at a city gallery. over 200 people attended the opening event. six months after the opening of the city exhibit, we held a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 551 final pizza party for the participants and their families in which we returned the framed photos to them and held focus group interviews with the 10 students in attendance (four had moved out of the area with their families, and three were unable to attend). we used strauss and corbin’s (1998) open-ended coding approach, allowing themes to emerge from the data rather than beginning with a prescriptive list of expected codes. we believed this would be a better way to discover the settings and topics of most importance to the participants. however, we also acknowledge that we were likely to be influenced by our research interests in the students’ adaptation to life in the united states. to reduce bias, we coded independently, and we asked a refugee staff member and two of the student participants to respond to our findings. we also relied on techniques described by strauss and corbin (1998) to reduce bias. these included “giving voice” to our participants and rendering their own words as much as possible in our findings (p. 43). we also used multiple viewpoints and data, in terms of collecting data over different times and in different places; talking with staff as well as students; and using photos, interviews, and essays as we categorized themes. we compared what we found to conclusions suggested by the research literature mentioned above. we conducted numeric and interpretive content analyses on the data (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). with transcribed interviews and essays, we used weft qda, an open source tool for qualitative text analysis to code discrete categories and search for instances of key terms corresponding to themes we found in photos and those that correspond to issues of youth acculturation. for example, we searched 14 words related to “family” (including parent, mother/mom, father/dad, brother, sister, cousin, grandmother/grandma, grandfather/grandpa) and found 404 references in at least 22 of the transcribed documents. words relating to education (school, education, learn, student, college, university) totaled 168 references in at least 23 documents. other important key terms are included in the following table: table i: key term searches in interviews and essays key term total references total documents family-related words 404 22 aspiration-related terms 212 23 united states/u.s./america 196 22 education-related terms 168 23 friend 105 22 change 58 20 home 35 18 language 29 18 the top themes recorded in the photos were friends, family (and celebrations, most commonly with family), nature and art, and school and education. the subjects have a direct relationship to systems levels described by bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986). many photos fell into multiple possible codes, such as pictures of family and friends at a celebration, or photos of nature taken during outings. linguistic explanations delivered through interviews and essays, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 552 interwoven with the photographic themes, included concern for and appreciation of family, importance of friends (and missing homeland friends), awareness of homeland dangers, acculturation challenges, and hope. it was not possible to create a mutually exclusive matrix of domain categories depicted in photographic, written, and oral data, as can be seen in table ii. for example, photographic examples coded as “culture” included images such as flags, traditional meals, and religious symbols. most photos of “celebrations” could have been included with culture, as they included birthdays, weddings, and graduations. some participants used photos they took of nature as metaphors to discuss changes in their lives. some ambitions were related to education. far from fixed, static categories, we interpret the major themes that arose from the data as fluid and multilayered; thus, the numbers are rough approximations. table ii: codes by theme major themes in photographs in interviews and essays family 320 404 friends 444 105 culture 204 220 education 209 168 celebrations 249 30 outings 228 - aspirations - 212 nature 158 - reflections on life changes - 58 limitations in the section that follows, we will report our findings from interviews, essays, and the themes found in photo images taken by the students. we acknowledge several limitations. first, the primary researchers were not well acquainted with the participants. positivist perspectives remain dominant along with the belief that personal distance is best for acquiring “objective” results (cohen et al., 2007, ch. 1). however, given the contexts of fear and uncertainty in the lives of refugees, issues of trust are considerable, and access to authentic information may only be achieved once relationships are established between researchers and refugee participants (miller, 2004). thus, some of the interview material may not always have been as detailed or rich as it could have been were the students more familiar with us. we used several procedures to compensate for this problem. first, we gained access to the students through an agency and personnel who were well acquainted with and trusted by the students and their families. second, the project took place over a nine-month time period; thus, there was a sense of stability created for both students and parents. we created a fun atmosphere for the students that allowed them to feel relaxed and safe by including food, activities, and peer conversations. the participants were allowed to take their cameras on field trips that were organized by the refugee agency if they chose to do so (such as to zoos, amusement parks, and the beach). we had not only the photos, but also interviews and essays of the students for data. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 553 we also held interviews with caseworkers to ask about ways in which they noticed changes in the students as a result of participating in the photo project. as a second limitation, it became clear that our participants did not take every picture that we downloaded from their cameras. in one case, a student told us that he had his mother take the camera to her place of work where nearly 50 photos were taken. we eliminated those from the study. in other cases, however, participants asked others to take photos because they were of interest to the participant him or herself. these include photos of the participant. thirdly, we are aware of external factors that could have influenced the participants’ comments and essays. the youth were certainly aware that they were part of a small group chosen for the project, and they could have been trying to please the adults and caseworkers involved with the project. the whole notion of “freedom” is problematic, as the u.s. citizenship documentary projects a very pro-american stance and value system regarding the concept of freedom. however, all of the youths’ comments were not positive or happy, as noted in the findings, so we believe we have captured many genuine concerns as well as acculturation progress amongst the population with whom we worked. finally, as with most qualitative studies, our research is not generalizable. we worked with a small number of refugee students who were selected by criteria (middle school and high school youth that the refugee staff believed would be responsible with the cameras and follow through on the project). the criteria of responsibility, one we believed essential as we were distributing cameras valued at over $100, necessitated excluding youth whom refugee staff felt would be less likely to complete the project. this criterion may have excluded youth having more difficulties adapting than those chosen for the project. however, our participants included refugee youth who experienced acculturation difficulties, noted by self-report, interviews with staff, or interviews with parents. though we did not specify criteria based on gender or country of origin, we were fortunate to have an equal number of males (n = 9) and females (8), nearequal numbers from the three counties served by the refugee agency, and a fairly representative distribution of the refugee population in the area by country of origin. findings in the following sections, we exemplify major themes as depicted in the photographs, interviews, and essays. the themes depict not only people and places that are important components of children’s microsystems, but also ways in which the system layers interrelate. theme one: family in difficult times, family is the most important source of peace and joy. people are not unlike trees – they grow wherever wind takes their seeds and they develop strong roots on good land. c., 14-year-old, liberia (photograph of an extensive tree root system) the greatest number of references from the photos, interviews, and essays combined related to family members. nineteen out of 50 photos chosen for framing included family international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 554 members as subjects or referred to family in captions. a 13-year-old male participant from liberia chose family scenes at home for all his framed photographs. each included his mother and younger sister. he chose them because of smiles in the picture, “the way my mom is looking”, “the way my sister is trying to climb up my mom”. one photo, a picture of his sister looking at a photo album on his mother’s lap, notes the contrast of current and missing family members. he said, “i like this picture because my little sister was looking at a picture of someone she has never seen before and she knew who it was the first time she saw him. it was my dad in africa”. this reflection suggests a bond with his missing father, as he imagines his 3year-old sister recognizes him despite no prior knowledge. eleven of the refugee youth specifically mentioned sadness due to missing family members who were still in their homeland or killed in violence. a 14-year-old male student from albania told of how, when he was just 6, his father died in his arms after being shot to death. a 14-year-old male from colombia related every image discussed during his interview to missing grandparents whom he longed to see again. a 15-year-old girl from sudan talked about an older sister in africa who was going to give birth and her sadness at not being there for the event. a recently arrived 12-year-old female student from cuba cried when she said that her father, siblings, and grandparents were still in cuba. her photos, however, were filled with hopeful subjects: a birthday party with family and new friends, a church celebration, and a school celebration at which she won an award. the participants, through their tears, pauses, and indications of discomfort, indicated deep emotions about family members who remain important people in their lives. most of the youth were unable to remain in touch with missing relatives, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes due to lack of technology in the home situations. though these people are missing from the closest developmental systems’ layers of these youths’ lives, they play an important role through memory. brothers and sisters were frequent subjects of photos and interviews. the 14-year-old male from albania had younger brothers, and during the interview he talked about guiding them: interviewer: so, you tell him things he needs to know? a: yeah, like read or do homework for the future so he can get a good job. others took photos of brothers or sisters with their friends, at celebrations (such as graduations), and at outings. most comments about siblings were ones of pride or guidance (especially with younger siblings). photos of celebrations, such as birthdays and weddings, were frequently associated with family. interestingly, even though some of these depicted major transitions in the lives of some participants (such as quinceaños), only one, the graduation of a sibling, was chosen for framing and public exhibition. a related subject, outings, though photographed less than celebrations, was chosen more frequently for framing. in analyzing this point of data, we determined that it may not, in fact, reflect something about the participants’ preferences. even though the youth made the final selections on framing, we could not rule out some interference with selections as staff would make occasional persuasive comments while viewing photo images with participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 555 theme two: friends h., 16-year-old female, talking about a photo she took of two flowers: when i look at the two flowers side by side it’s like i remember my friends. they were always by my side. interviewer: in the philippines? h: yes. dr: what would you like to say to them? h: that no matter what happens, we’ll be still friends. by far the largest number of photographs taken were of friends, either at school, birthday parties or other celebrations, or outings organized by the refugee center. seven of the framed photos included pictures of friends. given that past interviews with refugee youth (mcbrien, 2009) indicated that they befriend primarily other international students, it was interesting that so many photos showed great ethnic and racial diversity in friendships. for example, many photos included hispanic or black refugee students with white students. photos with friends were captured at playgrounds, athletic fields, beaches, amusement parks, and classrooms. describing his diversity of friends, a 12-year-old male from colombia said, “[the photo] shows different types of friends. i mean, there is the little one, the tall one, the red-haired one, and the one that’s turning [hair] colors”. later in the interview he stated, “you change countries, you change friends, you see new stuff, different stuff”. interview comments also described missed friends from the students’ homelands. the 17year-old male from burma, while looking at a photo of himself with friends at a st. petersburg, florida beach, remarked that it reminded him of friends left behind in burma: h: i miss it very much and sometimes i feel if they were here how it would be nice. interviewer: who do you think of and miss from burma? h: my childhood friends who used to play with me. i miss my friends. interviewer: yes. do you get to talk to them on the phone? h: i don’t even know where they are now. similarly, a 14-year-old male from colombia commented on how a photograph he took reminded him of missing friends: interviewer: what are some feelings that you have when you look at this picture? l: my friend when i was in colombia in my school and that he looked just like him. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 556 interviewer: do you ever see that friend anymore? do you hear from that friend or how he is doing? l: no. it makes me sad. this combination of gratitude for new friends and sadness at missing old friends was a frequent theme in the interviews. a 16-year-old female recently resettled from cuba said she thought of her cuban girlfriends as “friends forever” though she was unable to be in touch with them. several staff members noted how the photo project helped their young refugee clients process this life change. for instance, one woman, in discussing her 16-year-old cuban client, said, when she started taking pictures, she became more aware of this country’s opportunities and realized she has the opportunity for a new start. she realized things aren’t so bad here. for example, she would see in her pictures, oh, look at my friends; oh, we are having a good time! though the numbers were not as high as those for peer-aged friends, many youth took photos of staff members from the refugee organization. one student framed a photo of himself with his caseworker, commenting that her tutoring helped him receive the best grade in his class on a test. other comments in interviews of the youth and their parents indicated much gratitude for the many ways that refugee staff helped the students and their families, for example as school liaisons, tutors, mentors, and family assistance providers. theme three: cultures 14-year-old q. describes a photo he took of a shiny car wheel rim that is reflecting the outside environment: “in america, the rims matter more because they attract attention to your car and what you have.” we grouped several subcategories together that reflected participants’ discussions of culture. they included comments and photos about their native cultures and u.s. culture, and comparisons they made between the two. these photos and comments indicate students’ relationships at the macrosystem level (bronfenbrenner, 1979). captions of 20 photos students chose to frame directly addressed cultural issues. several students took photos of tv screen shots including news about their homelands. most notable were photos taken in may 2008 of the cyclone that killed hundreds in burma by h., the 17-year-old burmese refugee. h. chose not to discuss these photographs. however, during much of his interview he talked about friends and family left behind. h. spoke and wrote comparatively about freedom, education, and miscellaneous cultural differences. for example, during a field trip to a florida beach, h. took many photos of sunbathers. when asked about it, he queried in response, “why are these people ‘torturing’ themselves by lying in the hot sun?” this habit was completely unfamiliar to him, and it seemed a foolish thing to do. in his essay about freedom, h. wrote, first of all i will talk about education. i cannot study in my country even if i want to, because of financial problems. even if i have money i cannot study with the people who are rich and who are different with my religion. but in america i can study freely with different status, different religion and different race. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 557 h.’s family was struggling with finances, unemployment, and difficulties learning english. but he remained hopeful about new opportunities in comparison to his life in a thai refugee camp. some students, in comparing their lives in the united states with their native countries, indicated their awareness of mortal danger from which they fled. twelve-year-old r. from colombia wrote about how she could now play outside without fear of kidnapping by guerillas. thirteen-year-old o. from liberia wrote that he would like to use his newfound freedom to be educated so that he could return some day and “stop the killing and the raping, especially the war happening right now”. awareness of these violent crimes by so young a child indicates his personal trauma. o. indicated his awareness of political strife in his essay: “one of the presidents was mad because he wasn’t elected to be president. a president was shot by another president so that’s why the people declared war”. twelve-year-old c. from cuba took many photos of the gulf during a cloudy day. he frequently stated, “it is better to travel by plane”. he talked about his grandfather, who made a perilous journey by raft seeking asylum in the united states. other students were taken by the uniqueness of american culture. ten-year-old s. from liberia framed a photo of himself in a petting zoo. his caption stated, “in liberia, you don’t have to pay to go and see animals”. burmese h. took a photo of a large beach playground stating, “i’ve never seen a playground like it before”. seventeen-year-old y. from sudan took a photo of a truck carrying crates of oranges and commented, “in sudan the trucks carrying the oranges aren’t so large. here they are so big and colorful”. other comments on american culture recognized the role of materialism. many of the students took photos of their family or friends standing in front of their cars. q., the photographer of the car wheel rim, took a photograph of a gas station sign advertising the cost of gas at $3.95. he stated that the rising cost was preventing him from getting to friends’ houses, because his parents could not drive him, given the expense. his 13-year-old brother, n., took photos of their older brother’s jet ski. q. also noticed instances of american culture that struck him as positive benefits unheard of in his native albania. for instance, his youngest brother needed surgery on one of his legs. q. took pictures of the wheelchair and commented in a media interview that wheelchairs were uncommon in albania because of the economy. he took photos of handicapped signs, stating that people did not care about these challenges so much in his native country. about his photo of a school bus, q. discussed its central importance in his life. other students took photos, frequently with nature themes, that relayed contrasts between their former and current lives. for instance, 16-year-old h. from vietnam took several photos of morning glories. she said the flower was different from morning glories in the philippines, and added, “my life in the philippines was different from here”. a photo that we chose to advertise the public photo exhibitions was of a ripple in a pond reflecting the surrounding trees and sky. its artist, 16-year-old o. from cuba, captioned it, “disturbance: surprising of the change in my life”. she compared the ripple to major changes in her life right after her quinceaño in cuba. her mother left for the united states, they were separated for a year, she changed schools, and then she was reunited with her mother in the u.s. she left behind friends and other family members. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 558 theme four: education interviewer: so, looking at these kids [photo taken of university students] because they are doing well makes you think you are going to do well. why do you think they are good role models for you? n., 15-year-old, liberia: i feel it because i’ve seen them, i’ve looked at their pictures… as noted in table ii, education was the fourth overall major theme depicted in photographs and discussed in interviews and essays. nine of the photos students chose to frame had to do with school scenes. reflections in photos, interviews, and essays related both to the students’ former education experiences (prior to entering the united states), current schooling, and future aspirations. these descriptions involved ecological layers of the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem. some photos were of school objects – buildings, grounds, buses. fourteen-year-old n. from cuba selected school-related subjects for all three of his framed choices. in his photo captions, he wrote, “it’s about the circle of my life…my school, where i made friends and relationships; this hallway is the passageway to my life”. half of his interview focused on his feelings of connection to his school. sixteen-year-old h. from vietnam chose to frame a photo of one of her vietnamese friends in an english for speakers of other languages (esol) classroom. she explained that her friend, who knew little english, was working hard. seventeenyear-old h from burma, also discussed photos he took in his esol classroom. he explained that he had never done projects (such as molding a clay pot) before coming to his florida school. in photos, interviews, and essays, he emphasized his joy at the opportunity to become educated, despite struggling with english. many photos of friends were taken in school – in classrooms, playing fields, and school celebrations. school was clearly connected with making new friends, as were events coordinated through the refugee services organization (such as picnics, beach, and theme park outings). through these photos and the participants’ comments, we found frequent indications of the students addressing macrosystemic culture and acculturation issues. for example, h. from burma discussed his desire to learn english so he could communicate with students in his classes. indications at the mesosytemic level often involved school celebrations, such as school awards or graduation. these photos depict parents along with friends of the participants and their parents. people together in the photos typically represent several cultures brought together, noted through race, ethnicity, and sometimes clothing. future educational aspirations were depicted and discussed by many students who attended a field trip to a local university where they were met by current undergraduates. fifteenyear-old n. from liberia chose to frame a photo she took of university students on this field trip. on her label for the photo exhibit, she wrote, “these are my friends who go to university of __. when i graduate from high school i’ll go to a university myself to become a scientist”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 559 theme five: reflections on life changes quotes from h., 16-year-old female student from vietnam [about one of her photos of a large bridge over water]: in the beginning when it starts i don’t know very much of america; it is like the bridge. i couldn’t see how beautiful it is when i first saw it. and when i slowly go over it then i see. sometimes just when i take pictures i realize that what a great thing is to be here that i don’t see every day. an especially important finding was our participants’ reflections on changes in their lives, both because of the positive comments (in contrast to psychopathic research findings) and because of the sophistication of their observations, both positive and negative. in this category, we found that a number of participants used metaphors based on photographs to explain their resettled lives. thus, they utilized concrete images to explain abstract concepts. these concrete images included ponds, bridges, paths, trees, flowers, and school images. two students took pictures of paths or walkways, using them to describe pathways to their futures. fourteen-yearold c. used the metaphor of trees and roots to describe the power of family, suggesting their ability to “transplant” – “they grow wherever wind takes their seeds” – and maintain a commanding presence and importance: “they develop strong roots on good land”. sixteen-yearold h. from vietnam took many photos of a bridge in the gulf and talked about how it represented ways of viewing her life. she spoke of different perspectives, depending on where she was when she viewed the bridge. she also discussed a flower representing her life: “from the beginning it was a small bud and later on it blooms to become a beautiful flower”. not surprisingly, some changes were not so positive. in our final group interviews with the participants, we asked them what they would like u.s. students and teachers to learn about them. the following is an excerpt from one of the focus group conversations: interviewer: what would you like to tell students in your school? student: be more friendly. sometimes we speak to some of them [u.s. students] and they like say go away from me because they think we are like animals, like we don’t know how to be a person. interviewer: how did they treat kids in school if you don’t speak the language or if you come from another country? student: bad. i don’t know – if there is a new kid, everyone goes and picks on them. student: sometimes the teacher thinks we don’t like to do our work. but if they gave us work and we didn’t understand it, we couldn’t do it. so sometimes they think we don’t do work because we don’t want to or we are just lazy. in this theme we found clear recognition of life changes, and within that, participants’ challenges with discrimination as well as their belief in positive growth and educational opportunities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 560 theme six: hope/aspiration finally, i can see the happiness of life after i came here and i know how life is precious. therefore, i am very glad to be here in america. 17-year-old h., burma as we have explained in describing earlier themes, participants were open about their personal losses and sadness regarding their separation from homeland family and friends, awareness of past personal life danger, and current issues with language and prejudice. thus, we found the numerous references to hope and future aspirations an important theme. q. from albania said he wanted to become an orthodontist because he could make “a lot of money and help my family”. twelve-year-old c. from cuba wrote, “i want to become a lawyer so i can help children all over the world like this [refugee] program does”. fifteen-year-old n. from liberia wrote, “what i am going to do is to change the world? i will like to help the community, make them find answers to their problems and encourage them to speak out”. interviews with staff members and caseworkers at the refugee organization suggested an additional finding: involvement with the photo project was related to positive changes in the students’ lives. the caseworker for a 10-year-old male participant from liberia said that he began as a “shy, quiet boy…whose older brother can be abusive”. she noticed that m. became “more confident and powerful because he had this camera and knowledge”. the caseworker of n., a 14-year-old from cuba, stated that he began as a reluctant participant, explaining that his parents were in the process of a divorce and that he had “actually been suicidal earlier in the year”. she went on: “he took a picture of me and said that the camera was making memories of ‘the people who love me’. he became very excited about the project as time went on and is doing much better”. another staff member who worked with n. stated that he had been “very depressed” and “barely talked to me”. she also described a transformation in his outlook: “now it’s like we’re friends! he talks to me all the time. now he’s looking forward to the future…”. h., the 17-year-old burmese refugee, had lived in a primitive thai refugee camp since infancy. at our first workshop, he struggled to receive translations via a cell phone while he tried to make sense of a digital camera. his caseworker said that through an interpreter, his father commented, “my son’s not smart enough. maybe we should just go home now”. in the end, h. took some of the best photos in the group in terms of artistic quality. the director of the refugee youth program noted his improvement: in the second session when we did the first writing assignment he struggled to get out a couple of sentences on why he came to america, but in the last session when it came to what would he do with his freedom, i watched him as i was in and out of the room and he painstakingly worked at it for almost an hour to come up with a full page of what freedom meant to him. it was so focused on education, and he was determined to do it himself. he’s a young man who has so much against him, and continues to make strides. she commented that h’s father was critical of him, and his large family had financial fears. these events create negative situations at the microsystem and exosystem layers of the ecological systems model. both the director and the caseworker believed that his participation in the photo project raised h’s self-esteem and his family’s regard for him. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 561 though not poorly regarded by family, 16-year-old h. from vietnam led a restricted life, according to her caseworker, and was not allowed to partake in extracurricular activities. she aspired to become a pharmacist and a photographer. she was a good student who received good grades, but according to her caseworker, “she sometimes feels like ‘a bird in a cage’ because she has so many school and family obligations. i was pleased that h’s family allowed her to go for walks to take pictures of the flowers with her camera. … this has been a good opportunity to have social time with her peers”. discussion the purpose of our research was to learn more about the acculturation of refugee youth in the united states using the medium of photography to see what they valued, what concerned them, and how they felt as they engaged with a new culture and lifestyle. our methods fell within a research literature recognizing the value of photography in expressing views that students are sometimes unable to verbally express, sometimes because of current inabilities with the dominant language. as q. from albania said in an interview, “what i’ve learned from this photo project is that you can also show yourself with the camera, with pictures. you don’t have to just say with words. you can also say things with a picture and explain to others”. we also recognize artistic expression as a medium capable of delving into emotions and concerns that might otherwise remain unsaid (brunick, 1999; kirova & emme, 2006). one of many examples came from 14-year-old c. from colombia. every photo he discussed, no matter what the image, caused him to recall the grandparents he longed to see again. we found high replication between our research and previous work. similar to brekke (2003), we found the use of photography a helpful catalyst in facilitating the communication process. our interviews revolved around the students’ photos, and we asked them to select the photos they wanted to discuss in hopes of learning more about their chief concerns and interests. along with noland (2006), we found that asking students to take photos from their day-to-day lives allowed the participants to “speak for themselves” and to reflect on daily occurrences in a way that increased their own self-awareness. a caseworker identified this point clearly when she stated, “they realized so many things through the pictures and how things look. the pictures helped them to notice details that they weren’t aware of before. they became more aware of their environment and settings and feeling better about their lives here”. del valle, mceachern, and sabina’s (1999) research with cuban refugee children revealed the children’s awareness and fears of the dangers through which they passed as they traveled to the united states on rafts. likewise, our participants recalled dangerous and traumatic incidents in their lives as they worked with photography. kirova and emme (2006) found that photography helped their recent immigrant participants capture ideas and feelings that they could not yet express in a new language. similarly, we found that many of our participants used photographs to express sophisticated abstract concepts, such as life changes, diverse perspectives, and aspirations through the use of nature photography and metaphors. finally, most of the participants in our photography research project described multiple expressions of hope, echoing the sentiments of abdusalimov (ai winter, 2000) and the conclusions of yohani (2008). she wrote: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 562 hopefulness as a subjective element of experience can be key in a child’s ability to engage in meaningful activities that in turn contribute to psychosocial development. the implied links between hope, engaging in meaningful activities, and personal growth in bronfenbrenner’s theory suggest that hope may also assist with adjustment processes in the aftermath of or during stressful life experiences. (p. 312) yohani also found that parent responses to their children’s involvement in arts-based interventions were positive, increasing the relationship between parent and child at the microsystems level. we were only able to interview three parents; thus, our data is more anecdotal than comprehensive, so we did not detail it in our findings section. however, each parent expressed pride at their children’s photographic expressions. they also had high praise for the youth program and wished to see this project replicated for other refugee children. applying bronfenbrenner’s (1986) ecological systems model to our project, we found connections particularly at the microsystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem levels of interaction. most frequent were data exemplifying relations between participants and their friends/peers, family, schools, and the refugee program. photos showed positive situations, but interviews also turned up discussions of negative peer and teacher misunderstandings. family photos were positive, as were most of the interviews. however, interviews with participants and staff also brought up critical and restrictive parental examples as well as family crises (divorce, unemployment, financial concerns, strict cultural practices). most students expressed positive feelings towards education, but there were also comments about difficulties with english. mesosystem interactions surfaced in photographs and interviews in instances such as traditional foods and meals, religious practices, and cultural celebrations such as quinceaños. and the chronosystem level of influence appeared as participants referred to the events that caused them to become refugees as well as the results of becoming refugees. these instances included war, deaths, the loss of family members and friends, and economic hardship. as we consider acculturation theories in light of our research, we find evidence of assimilation and integration from berry’s (1974) framework. our participants want to blend in with their u.s. peers. simultaneously, they have pride in their native cultures and take part in traditional cultural events as seen through their photographs. considering portes and zhou’s (1993) theory of segmented assimilation, we observe these participants engaged in the combination of upward mobility and ethnic solidarity. most participants spoke of school and education as a way of achieving economic and social goals. they spoke of these successes as ways of helping their families. and their desire to be reunited with missing family members and returning one day to their native countries indicated solidarity with their cultural origins. ultimately, what did we learn about the acculturation process with this small group of refugee youth in west central florida? we discovered several important themes through a qualitative process of deriving themes from discrete data categories. one, we learned that they are influenced by considerable pain: the loss and inability to be in touch with family members and friends from their native countries; the trauma of death, war, separation, and ongoing uncertainty in their homelands; and discrimination and personal/economic uncertainty in their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 563 current lives. these associations occurred frequently in the majority of interviews with the students. eisenbruch (1988) termed this grieving both personal and cultural bereavement. in his work on social adjustment for refugee children, he stated that effective programs respect the native cultures of refugee children and allow them ample time to adjust and learn the language of their new country. eisenbruch argued that rapid acculturation could negatively affect children’s ability to complete their grieving process and claim their cultural identity. second, we observed remarkable determination in our participants. they expressed their beliefs in education to lead them to promising careers. they spoke of their desires to contribute to social justice. they remarked on their desires to return to their homelands and to see lost family members. thus, it is important not to reduce one’s response to refugee children down to a simplistic deficit model of psychopathology. the students in our study struggled with grieving and the impacts of trauma. but they also showed high indications of resilience, particularly when offered the outlet of creativity and support resulting from the photo project. as mentioned in our limitations section, some positive student commentary may have resulted from their desire to please, fears of saying or doing something “wrong”, and the influence of a pro-u.s. agenda, as illustrated by a united states government documentary. third, we noted their appreciation for the opportunity they had received by gaining refugee status in the united states. they commented on the importance of the freedom they gained. several wrote about their desire to participate in national elections after becoming u.s. citizens. they recognized that their opportunities included the chance to have an advanced education. they realized that their new lives protected them from dangerous situations such as kidnapping, rape, and war that were common in their homelands. finally, we saw indications that the photo project itself resulted in positive changes in the lives of the participants. as noted by staff in the refugee youth program, some participants went from depression to hopefulness, or from negative attitudes to a belief that their lives in the united states were better than they had imagined. throughout the workshops and activities (beach, amusement park, zoo outings, etc.), we saw positive interactions amongst the refugee students. the director told me that one of the participants told her he did not know there were other refugees in similar situations prior to engaging in the refugee youth program activities. this indicates how isolated many of these students are in their respective schools, and how important a refugee youth program is to their well-being. implications for practice and research one clear result from our research is that teachers and social workers need to be aware of the unique circumstances that refugee students face as they attempt to acculturate into american society. although the majority of photos taken by the children indicated hopefulness and optimism, there was also a strong undercurrent of the trauma many children experienced. the youth in our study wrote about and discussed rape, guerillas, war, killing, and the dangers of family members traveling by sea to get to america. they are aware of and have confronted instances of death, torture, and the loss of family and friends, as well as the common immigrant experiences of coping with language and cultural changes. these traumatic instances are never far from their minds. they had a sense of political situations as well as the violence that was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 564 occurring in their homelands. yet, they indicated remarkable resilience in their wish to achieve their hopes and aspirations, especially given support from programmatic opportunities. thus, it is critically important for educational institutions to be in touch and cooperative with social entities that offer refugee students opportunities to express themselves and to avoid entrenchment in immediate problems faced by their families, such as economic hardships. because most teachers are not trained in professional responses to trauma, it is important for school administrators to create and provide successful links between teachers and mental health providers who understand the refugee experience (szente, hoot, & taylor, 2006). areas with refugee populations tend to have agencies with departments that directly serve refugees. they may have adult refugees who act as liaisons between schools, homes, and community providers (mcbrien & ford, 2012). our research has shown that photography can be a powerful medium when working with children, especially those who have a limited understanding of the culture and language. it offers a non-verbal form of expression and can also encourage verbal and written communication as the students reflect on the images. we believe that an increased use of art therapy should be explored when working with refugee youth. the issue of trauma is not only a concern with refugee children, but within the family system as well. our research indicated the strong presence of family in the lives of these 17 children. their individual interviews alluded to the stressors and sadness with which their parents were struggling. additionally, children are at the mercy of parental decisions, often based on inadequate information, about ways in which to relieve economic burdens. as an example, the 17-year-old burmese male who showed much progress as a result of his participation in the photo workshops was not able to attend the final celebration meeting. this was because his father made a rapid decision to move the family based on information he received about work at a meatpacking facility in texas, without consulting with the refugee staff in florida who could have advised the family about the potential negative consequences of such a move. thus, both research and practice must continue to work in an ecological systems framework, given the consequences that occur at the microsystemic level among family members. another finding outside the scope of this article involves the detailed comments from over 200 teachers who attended workshops based on this project. a large number commented that they were unaware of the differences between refugees and other immigrants, and that they did not know if they had refugees in their classes. for reasons intended to protect immigrants and refugees, u.s. school administrators are not allowed to inquire about students’ classifications, other than determining whether or not they are in need of english language assistance. while we applaud the importance of protecting students, we recognize problems inherent in this policy, given that it leaves educators unaware of the potential traumatic experiences with which some of their students may be coping. to overcome the problems of this policy, we recommend getting to know students well. when teachers have international students, it makes sense to find out their countries of origin. based on that information, it is easy to learn about the circumstances of those countries, given the instant information available online. knowledge of these circumstances can help teachers to be cognizant of potential cultural issues and traumas students from certain countries may have faced. taking the time to learn more about students from other countries can also help them to feel supported. refugee students have reported feeling isolated by both u.s. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 4.1: 546–568 565 peers and teachers (mcbrien, 2011; mosselson, 2007). offering encouragement can help them to gain confidence and feel welcomed in school. additionally, we learned that a project such as ours not only helps the participants towards self-knowledge, it can also enlighten those working with them. in an exit interview with the refugee youth director, she noted the following about how her staff had grown as a result of the project: it’s so easy for this to get focused in on the work, and we’ve got paper work to do, and we’ve got deadlines to meet, we’ve got all these things to do. so you sometimes lose touch a little bit. but coming and sitting and listening to the kids, sitting with them while they were writing their essays, and listening to them talk about the quotes, what was in their pictures, the staff was moved. several of them got very emotional about some of the stuff that the kids were talking about. i got phone calls late at night, e-mails on the weekend. it made a big impression on them. ongoing research can benefit everyone working with refugee students, especially research that moves away from psychopathological models to ones of growth and success. in spite of their encounters with trauma and the ensuing potential for ptsd and other psychological distress, refugee youth ought not be viewed through a deficit lens. many exemplify great resilience and are successful academically and socially (mcbrien, 2009). continuing issues of worldwide political and social unrest result in ongoing refugee needs that seem to change only with respect to which nations are presently experiencing such tumult. at the time of this writing, the united states anticipates more arrivals from iraq (a result of the recent war) and burma (due to its repressive government). frequently, people become refugees because of their desire for freedom and human rights, or because of something as unchangeable as their racial or ethnic status. the social 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(2008). creating an ecology of hope: arts-based interventions with refugee children. child and adolescent social work journal, 25(4), 309–323. this is the first special conference issue to be published by the international journal of child, youth and family studies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 125–127 125 introduction to the special conference issue jennifer white and veronica pacini-ketchabaw, guest editors this is the first special conference issue to be published by the international journal of child, youth and family studies. it brings together keynote talks, a roundtable conversation, peer-reviewed conference papers as well as a book review. most of the contributions included here were featured at the child and youth care in action iii conference, leading conversations in research, practice and policy, which took place in victoria, british columbia, april 28 to 30, 2011. as the co-chairs of this conference, it gives us great pleasure to introduce this special conference edition of the ijcyfs. we organized the conference to create a space for critically engaged conversations that would extend and challenge learning in our field. we thought that having these conversations was more pressing than ever given the unprecedented and wide-ranging demands we face in our work with children, youth, families, and communities. this conference attempted to engage with this complexity through such questions as: • can the current conceptual tools and language of child and youth care critically engage with the multiple and competing demands that practitioners, policymakers, and researchers encounter in their everyday work? • what are the restrictions and exclusions of contemporary conversations in child and youth care? • how can we open up the field of child and youth care so it does not limit our horizons and restrict our imaginations? • how do we decide on the value and relevance of our work? • what do we need to grasp the complexities we encounter in everyday practices? • can child and youth care embrace the intricacies of embodiment and our everyday relationships with the non-human world? • what kinds of new languages and related practices can be mobilized in our work with children, families, and communities? • how can we engage in a culture of critique in child and youth care and, simultaneously, work with children, youth, and families experiencing difficulties? with these questions in mind, we opened possibilities for a wide range of themes to be explored at the conference, including: • child and youth care identities: professionalism and beyond • the intricacies and complexities of practice • innovative approaches to working with children, youth, families, and communities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 125–127 126 • critical, postmodern, feminist, queer approaches to working with children, youth, families, and communities • postcolonial, decolonizing, indigenous approaches to working with children, youth, families, and communities • quantitative and qualitative approaches to child and youth care research • assessing quality in work with children, youth, and families • neo-liberal demands of everyday work with children, youth, families, and communities • perspectives on bodies and embodiment in work with children, youth, and families. • narrative approaches to child and youth care • pedagogical encounters • global perspectives in working with children, youth, families, and communities • community-level practices these questions and themes inspired the articles in this journal issue. as each of the contributions to this special issue attest, there are many overlapping conversations going on in the field of child and youth care (cyc) today. collectively, they reveal a growing, dynamic, and contested field that is expanding in multiple directions. several of the conference sessions raised important questions about the borders of cyc and the implications for a unified professional identity. other sessions drew our attention to voices and perspectives that have largely been missing from the mainstream cyc literature, urging us to pay closer attention to the effects of our knowledge and practice frameworks. drawing on multiple scholarly resources and intellectual traditions, several conference papers showcased the range of research, practice, and pedagogical innovations underway in cyc today. we begin this issue with the roundtable discussion, conversations on conversing in child and youth care, which features the voices of sandrina de finney, kiaras gharabaghi, j. n. cole little, and hans skott-myhre in dialogue with each other. this piece is rather unconventional in that it attempts to retain the conversational and emergent quality that characterized the interactions these four authors had with one another during and following the conference roundtable. we think it provides a great example of how our differences can become creative sites of ongoing exploration. next we present the two keynote addresses delivered at our conference. the first is from sibylle artz, whose talk was intriguingly titled, dis[s]curse[if] challenges: professional conversations in child and youth care in fluid modernity. in this highly stimulating keynote, artz shared some of the stories of youth who participated in her research. the voices of youth were then set against the language of practice captured in official websites, newspaper stories, and media releases on the topic of youth crime and aggression. the second keynote session, courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling, was delivered by jin-sun yoon, who relied on the metaphor of the “elephant in the room” to directly confront the difficult issues of racism, homophobia, and colonialism in our field. the energetic and powerful response to her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 125–127 127 talk suggests that this might be an area where further exploration and dialogue could prove fruitful. the conference papers are presented next, beginning with daniel scott’s article in which he critically reflects on processes of cyc identity development and suggests that the field must avoid “a ghetto of exclusivity”. then, drawing on the work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari on bodies, vanessa clark eloquently theorizes her own art practice/research as political and ethical action. next, cait mcmillan, carol stuart, and jennifer vincent describe the results of an innovative study that examined youth perceptions of cyc practitioners within an alternative school setting. heather sanrud and patti ranahan then describe a case study approach to preparing cyc practitioners that could be adapted for other higher education classroom settings. johanne saraceno, like yoon, then engages in unpacking the colonial routes/roots of professional child and youth care and, in turn, presents possibilities for socially just decolonizing praxis. jeff smith, also employing deleuze and guattari’s philosophy, presents examples of practice in which musical improvisation becomes a way of deterritorializing dominant understandings of therapeutic practice. lynda phillips and ann cameron follow, presenting their work which seeks to document the lived experience of childhoods without decontextualizing meaning using a range of tools and modalities. kathleen skott-myhre challenges child and youth care to rethink the relational aspects of care. drawing on feminist theory, she challenges us to de-centre humans as the primary player in a relation. hans skott-myhre outlines further challenges to professional child and youth care by tracing the ways in which residential care can be conceptualized as a machinic social diagram that maps the relations of children and adults. in the last conference paper, lara di tomasso focuses critical attention on the treatment of migrant children in canada based on a discursive analysis of a range of government, media, and public narratives and texts. the special issue concludes with rebecca raby’s review of the book, child and youth care: critical perspectives in policy, practice and pedagogy, published by ubc press in 2011. we believe that this journal issue is about openings in cyc practice, research, and theory. it’s about possibilities and new directions. the articles present many questions, at times re-articulating the field and at times reconfiguring the theme of the conference. the questions are not always new but they are always renewed. what is certain is that there is not a single story in the papers. the stories, though, are multilayered and always intertwined. we hope that the openings, possibilities, questions, and stories that emerge from this collection of articles provoke and move readers to reflect upon their own constructions, ethics, and politics of cyc. microsoft word 09 fostering_connections.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220656 towards a more comprehensive understanding of fostering connections: the trauma-informed foster care programme: a mixed methods approach with data integration maria lotty, eleanor bantry-white, and audrey dunn-galvin abstract: foster carers require high-quality training to support them in caring for children with trauma-related difficulties. this paper describes a mixed methods approach that was applied to evaluate the complex intervention fostering connections: the trauma-informed foster care programme, a recently developed trauma-informed psychoeducational intervention for foster carers in ireland. a quantitative outcome evaluation and a qualitative process evaluation were integrated to capture a comprehensive understanding of the effects of this complex intervention. a convergent mixed methods model with data integration was used. coding matrix methods were employed to integrate data. there was convergence among component studies for: programme acceptability, increased traumainformed foster caring, improvement in child regulation and peer problems, and the need for ongoing support for foster carers. this research provides support for the intervention suggesting the importance of its implementation in ireland. the integrative findings are discussed in relation to effects and future implementation. keywords: foster care; trauma-informed care; evaluation; mixed-methods acknowledgement: dr. maria lotty is the author of fostering connections: the trauma-informed foster care programme, which was informed by this study. this work was supported by tusla child and family agency, ireland, and by university college cork through the excellence scholarship award. maria lotty phd (corresponding author) is a senior coordinator (health and social care) and a lecturer at university college cork, adult continuing education, the laurels, western road, cork, ireland. email: maria.lotty@ucc.ie eleanor bantry-white phd is director of the master of social work & postgraduate diploma in social work studies programmes at university college cork, school of applied social studies, william thompson house, university college cork, o’donovan’s road, cork, ireland. email: e.bantrywhite@ucc.ie audrey dunn-galvin phd is co-director of early years & childhood studies, university college cork, school of applied psychology, enterprise centre, north mall, cork, ireland. email: a.dunngalvin@ucc.ie international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 2 according to tusla, the national agency responsible for child care services, in 2019 in ireland about 1 child in 200 below the age of 17 was in alternative care (5,916 children; tusla child and family agency, 2020). the reasons for their initial placement in care, and for remaining in care, were neglect (38%, 36%), child welfare concerns (36%, 40%), emotional abuse (12%, 12%), physical abuse (10%, 7%), and sexual abuse (4%, 3%; tusla child and family agency, 2020). resource deficiencies exist in ireland both for children in foster care and for foster carers (mcelvaney & tatlow-golden, 2016). it is often the case that children have difficulty accessing treatments specific to their needs, despite high levels of attachmentand trauma-related difficulties (mcnicholas & bandyopadhyay, 2013). in keeping with internationally recognised standards of best practice (coru, 2019), the foster care system in ireland is managed by professionally trained social workers assigned to child protection and fostering teams, which are predominantly governed by tusla (lotty, 2021). social workers have the responsibility for recruiting, screening, and assessing potential foster carers, and providing ongoing support and training (lotty, 2021). there is no national training policy (irish foster care association & tusla, 2017); therefore, training varies from area to area and is dependent on local resources and expertise. foster care services in ireland operate in the context of an under-resourced and overstretched service which is reflected in a lack of evidence-based training for foster carers and of supports to meet children’s needs, such as access to therapeutic services (lotty et al., 2021a). considering both the many stresses on foster carers of children who have experienced trauma, and the low availability of resources, fostering connections: the trauma-informed foster care programme (hereafter fostering connections), a psychoeducational intervention for foster carers, was systemically developed in ireland (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020). fostering connections seeks to support foster carers by increasing their capacity to provide trauma-informed care (tic) to children and families involved in the child welfare system, thus reducing the children’s trauma-related emotional and behavioural difficulties (lotty, 2021). fostering connections represents a new departure in the state provision of support to foster carers in ireland; this research is the first mixed methods evaluation of the programme. a study that examined the level of need of children and young people (n = 4272) in the care of the illinois child welfare system reported that many had experienced complex trauma that included neglect and family violence (kisiel et al., 2009, pp. 148–149). in response to these challenges, a number of trauma-informed interventions and treatments have emerged (black et al., 2012). a distinction must be made between specific trauma-informed treatments delivered by clinicians and interventions by non-clinicians. outside a formal clinical setting, trauma-informed interventions can be carried out by practitioners and carers, including those with roles in social work, social care, therapeutic caregiving, residential care, education, and community work (lotty, 2019). the three “pillars of tic” — central components of these types of interventions — were first identified by van der kolk (2005) and later by bath (2008). as described by bath (2008), they are (a) developing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 3 the child’s sense of safety, (b) promoting trusting carer–child relationships, and (c) teaching the child self-regulatory strategies and coping skills. the tic approach, which aims to provide a focused and effective intervention for children and their families who have experienced trauma, is based on a wider holistic biopsychosocial approach, rather than on approaches that are purely psychosocial (lotty et al., 2021b). tic focuses not only on children but also on their caregivers and those who seek to support them, that is, those who work directly with children and families. it recognises that all of these groups are affected by both primary exposure to trauma, and secondary exposure from caring for or working with children and their families that have experienced trauma (lotty, 2019). tic also goes beyond understanding the effects of trauma in that it emphasises the need for the child welfare system to apply that understanding in daily practice within the culture of organisations and within interagency partnerships. tic is underpinned by a set of practice principles: safety, choice, trustworthiness, collaboration, and empowerment (elliott et al., 2005; substance abuse and mental health services administration, 2014). tic seeks to ensure that these principles consistently underpin social work practices at all stages (levenson, 2017), which serves to support both the provider and survivor in experiencing “physical and emotional safety” (safety), ensuring they are “provided a clear and appropriate message about their rights and responsibilities” (choice), maintaining “respectful and professional boundaries” (trustworthiness), sharing “a significant role in planning and evaluating services” (collaboration), and creating “an environment that allows individuals to feel validated and affirmed with respects to all contact with the service” (empowerment; institute on trauma and trauma-informed care, 2015). it is well established that many children in the foster care system have suffered multiple and prolonged experiences of abuse prior to entering the system (greeson et al., 2011) and have difficulties in their neurobiological, psychological, emotional, social, and cognitive development, as well as often having poor mental and psychological health outcomes (tarren-sweeney et al., 2013). foster carers are often supported to care for children and young people with complex needs through psychoeducational programmes (benesh & cui, 2017). tic psychoeducational programmes for foster carers are a growing area of practice in which support for foster carers is drawn from a biopsychosocial theoretical model (bath & seita, 2018) based on a multidisciplinary integration of neurobiology, trauma, attachment, and resilience research (blaustein & kinniburgh, 2018). lotty, bantry-white, et al. (2020) described the core features of these programmes as (a) understanding the impact of trauma on children, (b) understanding the impact on the caregiver of caring for children who have experienced trauma, and (c) developing skills that address trauma impact through remedial relationships. psychoeducational programmes for foster carers are complex interventions that by their nature require development and evaluation to be approached using several methodologies (craig et al., 2008). the medical research council (mrc) framework for the development and evaluation of complex interventions recommends taking both quantitative and qualitative approaches in the evaluation stage (craig et al., 2008): a quantitative approach to assess intervention effectiveness, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 4 and a qualitative approach to evaluate the intervention process. the mrc framework recognises the limitations of experimental studies when considering the development and evaluation of complex interventions (penkunas et al., 2020). whilst randomised controlled trials (rct) are considered to be the gold standard of intervention evaluation, as a singular approach they limit the evaluation of complex interventions. they cannot provide needed data on how complex interventions work and how contextual issues may influence intervention impacts. process evaluations, however, can provide valuable data to complement an effectiveness study. process evaluations may illuminate how the intervention was implemented, how it works (or does not work), and the influence of contextual issues, all of which could contribute to optimising intervention impacts (moore et al., 2015). process evaluations are not viewed as replacing an effectiveness study. thus, the mrc advocates that “wherever possible, evidence should be combined from different sources that do not share the same weakness” (craig et al., 2008, p. 980). therefore, a mixed methods approach aligns with the mrc framework (farquhar et al., 2011). research that evaluates psychoeducational interventions aimed at foster carers is scarce (kaasbøll et al., 2019). examples of rigorous research are limited (festinger & baker, 2013). this may be due to research being primarily produced through small-scale evaluations, which may be reported to governments rather than in academic articles (kaasbøll et al., 2019). existing research is primarily focused on effectiveness studies (kaasbøll et al., 2019), which have reported mixed results (festinger & baker, 2013; solomon et al., 2017). in a recent review that examined the effects of tic psychoeducational programmes for foster carers and adoptive parents, the inclusion criteria were met by 15 studies, all published between 2009 and 2020, reflecting that this is a growing area of practice (lotty et al., 2021b). however, overall, lotty et al. (2021b) report that evidence to support tic psychoeducational interventions is limited, albeit with some suggestion that these interventions may increase caregivers’ capacity to provide children with tic and reduce children’s trauma-related difficulties. the weakness of evidence was reflected in mixed findings, diverse designs and measures, and methodological weaknesses across the studies. the inclusion of qualitative approaches in evaluations is more likely to illuminate the reasons behind negative results and promote successful refinement of interventions (festinger & baker, 2013). there are some examples of qualitative evaluation studies reported separately (hewitt et al., 2018; robson & briant, 2009). there are also some examples of mixed methods evaluations, but data integration was not described (conn et al., 2018; gibbons et al., 2019). we have been unable to identify any mixed methods evaluation studies that explicitly described the data integration and integrated findings of a psychoeducational intervention for foster carers. the fostering connections intervention fostering connections is a manualised trauma-informed psychoeducational intervention. it was facilitated by two trained practitioners and one trained foster carer over 6 weeks (6 sessions of 3.5 hours each) in a community setting; the intervention was delivered to two cohorts in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 5 september and october 2017 (lotty, bantry-white, et al. 2020). the content is cumulative, based on information on trauma, attachment, fostering resilience, and collaborative working (lotty, 2019). the format is based on experiential exercises, videos, demonstration role-play, discussion, and at-home exercises with limited slides. foster carers received a toolkit and a homework copybook (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). the toolkit was developed as a resource for foster carers to refer to during and beyond the programme. it contained information presented in each session, practical tools to support the foster carer, links to videos used, and resources (e.g., websites, book lists) to support ongoing learning. the homework copybook was a reflection journal that participants were asked to complete after each session with guided exercises to reflect on their learning in relation to the child or children they were caring for. fostering connections aims to develop foster carers’ understanding and knowledge of trauma impact and to develop effective strategies to promote restorative relationships with children. this, in turn, aims to reduce the children’s trauma and attachmentrelated difficulties within the context of the irish care system (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). fostering connections was evaluated by using the two elements identified by the mrc framework: (a) assess effectiveness, and (b) evaluate the process (craig et al., 2008). this framework was selected as it supports the development and evaluation of complex interventions extensively used in health and social care contexts. the first element was addressed by undertaking a quasi-experimental study that assessed the effectiveness of fostering connections to increase foster carers’ capacity to provide children with tic and in turn to reduce children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). the second element was addressed by a qualitative study that completed a process evaluation (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020) that examined how the programme was experienced by foster carers and facilitators and how the experience could inform future programme development and implementation. three core processes outlined by the mrc guidance on process evaluations were explored. these were: (a) programme implementation (how the programme was delivered), (b) the change process (how intervention activities and participants’ interactions with them generated change), and (c) contextual issues (how external factors to the programme could impede or strengthen the effects of the intervention (moore et al., 2015). based on the research position taken by lotty (2019) that the contribution to empirical knowledge is of prime importance in this research, the quantitative data was conceptualised as the primary database. to preserve the distinct methodological and paradigmatic integrity of each method, the integration of quantitative results and qualitative findings occurred after data were analysed and results identified (onwuegbuzie et al., 2009). the qualitative study collected data — the secondary dataset — supporting and overlapping that of the quantitative study. by employing a mixed methods approach, the integration of findings aimed to produce more extensive analysis and a more robust evaluation study of fostering connections than would have been possible using either approach alone (creswell & plano clark, 2011). the findings from the quantitative study and the qualitative study were compared to assess how they related to each other. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 6 in this paper, we present the integration of findings from each study using a mixed-methods approach (figure 1), the first mixed-methods evaluation of fostering connections. taken together, our findings provide a comprehensive evaluation of the fostering connections intervention. our study also contributes to the research literature by detailing our data integration methodology. introduction to mixed methods design a convergent mixed methods model with data integration (curry et al., 2013; fetters et al., 2013) was used (figure 1). the findings from two component studies, a quantitative outcome evaluation and a qualitative process evaluation, were integrated using a triangulation protocol (farmer et al., 2006). data were integrated from two respondent sources, foster carers and facilitators, with the aim of strengthening the overall evaluation, similar to other studies (heslehurst et al., 2015). the foster carers participated in both component studies and the facilitators participated in the qualitative study only. the findings of each study have been reported separately elsewhere (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020; lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). findings were integrated into a single study based on all available data that were likely to strengthen the overall study (gorard & taylor, 2004). here we summarise the findings of the component studies, and then the findings of the integration of the component studies in line with the recommendations of the triangulation protocol (farmer et al., 2006; o’cathain et al., 2010). ethical approval was granted by both the social research ethics committee in university college cork and by the tusla ethics review group. method of integration of the component studies the triangulation protocol used coding matrix methods to integrate the data, following six key steps (farmer et al. 2006, o’cathain et al., 2010): step 1. sorting: this process involved preparing the data for integration. the findings from each dataset were reviewed and sorted by comparing the identified key themes (results and findings) from each dataset to identify similarities and differences. step 2. convergence coding: convergence matrix methods were used to compare identified similarities and differences. the convergence coding scheme was guided by farmer et al. (2006), o’cathain et al. (2010), and similar research (heslehurst et al., 2015). it was defined as: • convergence: full agreement between both sets of results. • complementarity: findings suggest complementary information on the same issue. • silence: themes arise from one component study but not the other. • dissonance: there is disagreement between the datasets. in applying this coding scheme, it was determined whether there was convergence (agreement) based on the meaning and prominence of the theme and also on the coverage and specific examples of the theme. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 7 step 3. convergence assessment: an overall assessment was carried out on the level of convergence between the two component studies in relation to each theme. step 4. completeness assessment: for each identified theme, the combined finding was assessed for completeness by evaluating the differences in nature and scope of what each component study brought to the combined finding. step 5. researcher comparison: the three authors compared assessments of convergence and dissonance, reaching agreement on triangulated findings. step 6. feedback: a summary of the triangulated results was presented to the stakeholder group on may 16, 2019. feedback and comment were invited from the stakeholder group members, and the nuances of the mixed methods approach were explored. the stakeholder group members discussed the research results and felt that they reflected local practices, contextual influences, and the implementation of the programme during the study period, reinforcing the validity of the results. figure 1. flowchart showing convergent mixed methods model note: quant = quantitative, qual = qualitative. integration and interpretation of research components • methodological triangulation (quant + qual) • respondent triangulation (foster carers and facilitators) • triangulation protocol: convergence coding matrix methods study 1: quantitative evaluation (n = 79) quant study 2: post-intervention qualitative study (n = 27) qual + aim: to complete an early stage evaluation of the fostering connections intervention from all available data (convergent mixed methods model) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 8 study 1: quantitative evaluation study methodology the objective of the quantitative study (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020) was to assess intervention effectiveness through testing four research hypotheses (three primary and one secondary) that reflected the following research questions: when foster carers receive fostering connections, do the outcomes include: • increased knowledge of trauma-informed fostering? • increased tolerance of the child’s misbehaviour? • an increase in their fostering efficacy? (fostering efficacy refers to foster carers’ confidence in their capacity to care for children in foster care, who often have traumarelated difficulties.) • a reduction in children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties? the quantitative study also reported findings from a satisfaction questionnaire that was administered post-intervention. a longitudinal non-randomised quasi-experimental study design with a control group was used. quantitative data were collected over four time-points (time 1, before the intervention; time 2, on completion; time 3, at 16 weeks post-intervention; and time 4, at 15 months post-intervention) to measure the degree of change occurring over the course of the intervention on the predefined outcomes. foster carers were recruited from the irish national child welfare agency in two geographical sites in the south of ireland in may 2017 (n = 128). following assessment for eligibility, 79 foster carers were included in the study. a broad recruitment strategy was applied as fostering connections is targeted at all approved foster carers. participants were allocated to either the intervention group or the control group according to the geographical area in which they resided. this strategy was employed to reduce the risk of contamination from the intervention group to the control group and to make attending the programme more accessible for intervention participants. the study comprised 79 foster carers (intervention group = 49, control group = 30). the 79 foster carers reported on 121 children. the average age in both groups was 49 years. the majority of participants were female (81%, n = 64), in a relationship (82%, n = 65), irish (92%, n = 73), and were general foster carers (67%, n = 53). demographically, the intervention group was roughly similar to the control group: education levels (completed secondary school: 51% vs. 46%), number of birth children living at home (1–2 children: 53.1% vs. 36.7%), income levels (20k–50k: 44.9% vs. 55.2%), and the number of years they had been fostering (3–5 years: 36.7% vs. 23.3%). differences in the groups were found for their residence and the number of children that they fostered. those in the intervention group were more likely to live in an urban location (55.1% vs. 23.3%; p = .006). it was more common for one child to be fostered in the control group (56.7%); in the intervention group, fostering two children was more common (59.2%; p = .009) (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 9 measures the knowledge and beliefs survey (kbs) is a 33-item self-report measure designed to assess beliefs and attitudes related to caring for children who have experienced trauma (murray, 2014). the kbs has three separate scales: trauma-informed parenting, tolerance of misbehaviour, and parenting efficacy. it was administered at all four time-points of the study. the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq), a short 25-question behavioural screening questionnaire that can be completed by carers (goodman et al., 2001), assessed children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties. the sdq has five subscales: four that assess emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and peer relationship problems, which together generate a total difficulties score; and one to assess prosocial behaviour. the sdq also contains eight questions on the impact of an intervention using a likert scale. the study used two of these questions. intervention participants were asked: how helpful did you find the intervention to be in other ways — for example, by providing you with more information or making your child’s problems more bearable? all participants were asked: are your child’s problems worse since the last questionnaire? the sdq was administered at all four time-points of the study. only the intervention group participants completed the satisfaction questionnaire (n = 46) which was administered at time 2. analysis a two-way mixed anova was conducted to investigate if there were changes across the four time-points (baseline, immediately post-intervention, 16 weeks post-intervention, and 15 months post-intervention) and, if so, whether the changes differed significantly between the intervention and control groups. group, time, and the interaction of group by time (group*time) were included as fixed effects in the model. the interaction of group*time tested whether changes over time differed significantly between the intervention and control groups; these were of the most interest in this study. if the interaction was found to be statistically significant, post-hoc pairwise comparisons between the intervention and control groups were performed at each time-point separately. post-hoc comparisons between time 4 and time 1 were also performed for each group. the effect size of the interaction was measured using partial eta squared (η2; lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). using cohen’s guidelines, 0.01 was considered a small effect, 0.06 a medium effect, and 0.14 a large effect (cohen, 1988, pp. 284–287). descriptive statistics were calculated and the means and standard deviations were reported for the nine questions on the satisfaction questionnaire that were rated on a 5-point likert scale. all statistical analyses were performed in ibm spss statistics (version 24, ibm corp, armonk, ny, usa). a separate dataset containing cases and identification numbers relating to each child was used to facilitate statistical analysis of the sdq questions on the impact of the intervention. frequencies were then calculated and reported with regard to participants’ responses on the likert scale for each question. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 10 quantitative results primary outcome results the quantitative results indicated that foster carers who attended fostering connections had improved scores on knowledge of trauma-informed fostering, tolerance of child misbehaviour, and fostering efficacy, supporting the primary outcome hypotheses. scores improved on the traumainformed fostering scale of the knowledge and beliefs survey (kbs), suggesting that foster carers’ trauma-informed fostering increased following the intervention. the interaction of group*time was statistically significant (f [2.43, 155.32] = 8.916, p < .001), with a medium effect size (0.12), indicating that changes in the trauma-informed fostering score over time differed between the intervention and control groups. scores improved on the tolerance of misbehaviour scale of the kbs, suggesting that foster carers’ tolerance of child misbehaviour increased following the intervention. the interaction of group*time was statistically significant (f [2.57, 164.21] = 4.55, p = .007)], with a medium effect size (0.07), indicating that changes in the tolerance of misbehaviour score over time differed between the intervention and control groups. scores improved on the fostering efficacy scale of the kbs, suggesting that foster carers’ fostering efficacy increased following the intervention. the interaction of group*time was statistically significant, (f [2.68, 171.20] = 10.08, p < .001), with a large effect size (0.14), indicating that changes in the fostering efficacy score over time differed between the intervention and control groups. for all primary outcomes, the interaction of group*time was statistically significant demonstrating that changes over time differed between the intervention and control groups. at all intervention time-points, foster carers in the intervention group had significantly higher (better) mean scores than foster carers in the control group. for two outcomes, the effect size was medium (trauma-informed fostering: 0.12, tolerance of misbehaviour: 0.07) while for the third outcome, the effect size was large (fostering efficacy: 0.14; lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). secondary outcome results the quantitative results showed that there was a reduction in observed child emotional and behavioural difficulties, supporting the secondary outcome hypothesis that these problems would be reduced by the intervention. regarding time 4 versus time 1, foster carers in the intervention group reported a reduction (i.e., improvement) in mean scores and the foster carers in the control group reported an increase (i.e., worsening) in mean scores. foster carers in the intervention group reported a significantly higher reduction (i.e., improvement) in mean scores than did foster carers in the control group for total observed child emotional and behavioural difficulties over the course of the study (f [3, 177] =3.385, p = .034), with a small effect size (0.05). there was variation in the results of the subscales on the sdq. two of the subscales indicated small and medium effect sizes (hyperactivity = 0.05; peer problems = 0.07). for the secondary outcome, the effect size was small (sdq: 0.05). compared with british norms, the children had higher mean scores (youthinmind, n.d.) in the emotional and behavioural difficulties subscales (emotional, conduct, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 11 hyperactivity, and peer problems) and lower scores on the prosocial subscale at baseline (lotty, dunn-galvin, et al., 2020). results of intervention impact questions the questions on intervention impact from the sdq results demonstrated that, for more than 91% of foster carers who participated in the intervention, fostering connections was beneficial in terms of supporting their care of the children at all time-points post-intervention. moreover, the intervention group reported higher rates of improvement in the children’s problems than did the control group at each post-intervention time-point (time 2 = 44.6% vs. 15.7%, time 3 = 58.9% vs. 42.2%, time 4 = 57.2% vs. 50.0%). results of the post-intervention satisfaction questionnaire foster carers reported a high level of satisfaction with the intervention. intervention design, content, the foster carer facilitator’s contribution, and emphasis on developing skills were all deemed satisfactory. the same was true for aspects of the intervention experience: group facilitation, learning methods, and feeling comfortable in the group. high rates of attendance (88% attended at least 5 of the 6 sessions) were also seen. foster carers reported that receiving the intervention earlier in their fostering career would have been more beneficial and some suggested compulsory attendance. foster carers also reported the need for follow-up training. as teachers are important players in the foster care system, participants felt that teachers should receive training, since trauma awareness in teachers would help to support children in foster care. study 2: qualitative study methodology the qualitative study (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020), which explored how the fostering connections intervention was experienced by foster carers and facilitators, followed the mrc’s guidance on process evaluations (moore et al., 2015). thus, this study was concerned with dimensions of (a) implementation, or how the intervention was delivered; (b) the change process, or how intervention activities and participants’ interactions with them generated change; and (c) contextual issues, or how factors external to the intervention, such as ongoing supports for facilitators and follow-up training, could impede or strengthen the intervention's effects (moore et al., 2015). all foster carers and facilitators that were involved, either as participants or in the delivery of the programme, were invited to participate in the focus groups. the term “facilitators” refers here to all facilitators (foster carers and practitioners) who delivered the programme, as well as facilitators-in-training who observed the programme. in october 2017, three post-intervention focus groups were carried out: two foster carer groups and a facilitator group. the groups were of one-hour duration. a sequence of semi-structured open-ended questions was asked that sought to understand how the programme was implemented, the process of change brought about by the programme, and contextual matters that could support future implementation of the programme. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 12 foster carers were invited to respond to questions on whether they had prior expectations of the programme, how they experienced the programme, the rewards and challenges of attending, and how they had applied this learning to their fostering. facilitators were invited to respond to questions on what their expectations of the programme were, how they experienced the programme, the challenging aspects of facilitating, and how they felt foster carers experienced the programme. they were also invited to express how they thought foster carers would apply their learning from the programme and if there were any areas they could identify in the programme that they felt needed improvement (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020). the discussion was recorded using a digital voice recorder and transcribed verbatim. gender differences, whether participating as a couple, and fostering type (general and relative) were represented in both foster carer groups. the three focus groups comprised 21 participants, and written feedback was received from another six. of the 27 total participants, 17 were foster carers and 10 were facilitators. the four male participants were all foster carers. three foster carers were kinship carers. thematic analysis was used to analyse data (braun & clarke, 2006). all data were uploaded to nvivo 12 plus software, which was used for data storage, coding, and theme development (lotty, bantry-white, et al., 2020). qualitative findings four main themes were identified in the study: (a) facilitating the reflective process, (b) transformative learning, (c) the carer–child relationship, and (d) sustainability. the findings are summarised here under the following headings: implementation of the intervention, the process of change, and future intervention development and implementation (lotty, bantrywhite, et al., 2020). implementation of the intervention the findings showed high rates of satisfaction with the intervention (design, content, and learning methods). the content and methods included discussion groups, videos, experiential exercises, and demonstration role-play. foster carers were pleased that quotes were used from actual foster carers and that the case studies used in the intervention were developed from local foster carers’ experiences. the homework copybook and the toolkit were also identified as useful to support learning. participants expressed approval of the practical orientation of the intervention, the experiential group-work format, sharing experiences, and being emotionally engaged with the material, which they felt was facilitated by a feeling of psychological safety in the group. the contribution of the foster carer facilitator was viewed as an essential component of the intervention. foster carers felt it would have been beneficial if they had been able to attend the intervention sooner in their fostering careers and the majority expressed a desire to make the intervention compulsory for foster carers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 13 the process of change foster carers who attended the intervention appear to have undergone a process of change. this involved a reflective process that led to transformative learning (mezirow, 1990), which supported a better understanding of tic. the reflective process also led to changes in the carer– child relationship. the children benefited from their foster carers adopting a more trauma-informed approach, resulting in a reduction in the children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties over the study period. this change process is described in three stages: (a) the reflective process, (b) transformative learning, and (c) the carer–child relationship. the reflective process: the carers engaged in a reflective process that was facilitated by the use of experiential learning methods in a group work milieu. the reflective process was mediated by four elements recognised as: reflection on experience, emotional engagement, being able to understand the child’s experience (seeing through the child’s eyes) and sharing with the group (stories shared). a feeling of safety and containment within the group work setting was experienced by foster carers. the reflective process was identified by participants as an important stage in the change process, which led to transformative learning. transformative learning: foster carers underwent a process of transformative learning that reoriented unsupportive frames of reference to enable the carers to become more reflective and open to change. this was instigated by engagement in a reflective process in which they critically appraised their beliefs and perceptions about the children’s difficulties. the transformative learning had three elements, identified as: reframing their experiences, changing their mindset about the children’s experiences (to a trauma-informed perspective), and increasing their confidence as foster carers. this confidence was associated to a sense of hopefulness about the children’s future and feeling the skills they had learned made them better equipped to care for the children. thus, the qualitative findings suggest a pathway from transformative learning to changes in the carer–child relationship. the carer–child relationships: foster carers adopted a more trauma-informed approach in their interactions with the children. this involved responding in calmer and reflective (less reactive) ways to the children’s behaviours that they had found challenging, and becoming more focused on developing a supportive relationship with the children. foster carers described changing their approach to responding to challenging behaviours, creating more opportunities to connect with the children through positive experiences, and communicating with the children in more positive ways (such as bringing more humour to these interactions). the qualitative findings suggest the existence of a pathway from foster carers responding to the children in more traumainformed ways to positive changes in the children themselves. the foster carers described the children as being generally calmer and more communicative, along with exhibiting improved behaviour (including playing well with friends). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 14 future intervention development and implementation the qualitative findings suggest that some contextual issues need to be addressed to sustain these changes and to support future implementation of the intervention. supports for foster carers, facilitators, and training for stakeholders in foster care were highlighted. foster carers need ongoing supports such as social worker support, follow-up training, and support groups. foster carers felt that receiving the intervention earlier in their fostering career (after the approval stage) would have been helpful. the majority of participants in the study expressed a wish to make the intervention compulsory for foster carers. attending as a couple was seen as an added benefit by those who did so, as they were likely to support each other’s learning through shared experiences and ongoing discussions. supports are also required for facilitators to enhance the implementation of the intervention. facilitators identified the need for support in preparing the intervention, coping with the emotional impact of the delivery of the intervention, managing the level of disclosure in the group, and balancing other work commitments. participants (both facilitators and foster carers) highlighted the need for more collaborative practices between social workers and foster carers. these were identified as ensuring that foster carers receive all relevant information on the child and that foster carers’ views are represented in child planning meetings. participants felt that tic training would also be beneficial for other professionals who play a role in supporting children in foster care to ensure consistency of approach. findings integration of results: studies 1 and 2 the integration of the quantitative (study 1) and qualitative (study 2) component studies identified four metathemes: acceptability of fostering connections, trauma-informed foster caring, child progress, and sustainability. following the steps described above in the method of integration section, the integration focuses on the levels of convergence, complementarity, dissonance, and silence between the two studies in relation to each theme. metatheme 1: acceptability of fostering connections there was convergence found across the studies in the acceptability of the intervention. convergence was found in subthemes of intervention relevance, intervention experience, and attendance. see table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 15 table 1. convergence coding matrix for metatheme 1: acceptability of fostering connections metasubtheme study 1 (quant) (satisfaction questionnaire and attendance rate) study 2 (qual) convergence assessment 1. intervention relevance high satisfaction was reported with design, content, foster carer facilitator’s contribution, and emphasis on skills in the intervention. high attendance rates were recorded. foster carers and facilitators described high satisfaction with design and content. quotes and case studies based on local experiences, foster carer facilitator’s contribution, and emphasis on skills in the intervention were highly acceptable to carers. convergence 2. intervention experience high satisfaction was reported for the overall experience. learning methods, experiential exercises, case studies, facilitation, and feeling comfortable were indicated as important factors in foster carers’ experience of the intervention. participants described high satisfaction with the intervention experience; they valued experiencing emotional engagement through videos, case studies, experiential exercises, and sharing of stories in the group. they also liked engaging with the reflective homework and toolkit. foster carers described feeling safe to engage in the group. convergence 3. attendance foster carers reported that receiving the intervention earlier would have been beneficial and that attendance should be made compulsory. foster carers felt that attending the intervention earlier would have been beneficial. the majority felt that all foster carers’ attendance should be compulsory. convergence metatheme 2: trauma-informed foster caring there was convergence and silence found across studies for trauma-informed foster caring. convergence was found in the subthemes of tic knowledge, tic attitude, and increased confidence. silence was found across studies in fostering reflection and tic carer–child interaction, which were not examined in the quantitative study. the qualitative study illuminated the changes that foster carers made in developing their capacity to be reflective about fostering. as noted above, this reflective process involved the dimensions of reflection on past experiences, emotional engagement, being able to see the child’s perspective (seeing through the child’s eyes) and sharing in the group (stories shared) during the intervention. the qualitative study also illuminated ways that foster carers changed in their interactions with the children: they became more aware and regulated in responding to child misbehaviour and were motivated to create connecting opportunities that would promote positive carer–child relationships. see table 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 16 table 2. convergence coding matrix for metatheme 2: trauma-informed foster caring metasubtheme study 1 (quant) (experimental study) study 2 (qual) convergence assessment 1. increased tic knowledge increased knowledge of trauma-informed fostering was reported in the intervention group compared to the control group. foster carers and facilitators described an increase in understanding and awareness of the impact of trauma on children and on caregivers of traumatised children. foster carers described a process of reframing existing knowledge to a tic perspective. convergence 2. increased tic attitude increased tolerance of child misbehaviour was reported in the intervention group compared to the control group. sdq (impact question 1) reported high rates of child problems being more bearable at times 2, 3, and 4. foster carers described how they had changed their “mindset”. they described a shift in their thinking from a less tolerant, personalising, and judgemental stance to a more reflective, empathetic, and trauma-informed understanding of child behaviour. convergence 3. increased fostering confidence increased fostering efficacy was reported in the intervention group compared to the control group. participants described foster carers feeling more confident and hopeful. confidence was linked to feeling more equipped to provide care. convergence 4. fostering reflection not applicable participants described foster carers engaging in a reflective process silence 5. tic carer– child interaction not applicable foster carers described interacting with the children more calmly and creating more connecting experiences. silence metatheme 3: children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties there was convergence and complementarity across studies in relation to child progress. convergence was found in the level of need, fostering time, improving children’s regulation, and peer problems. there was complementarity across studies regarding improvement in problems the children were experiencing: the quantitative study reported that child problems had improved generally; the qualitative study reported that foster carers saw improvement in children’s communication and behaviour. see table 3. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 17 table 3. convergence coding matrix for metatheme 3: children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties metasubtheme study 1 (quant) (experimental study) study 2 (qual) convergence assessment 1. level of need the children had higher mean scores than the national (british) norms in difficulties subscales and lower scores on the prosocial subscale at baseline. participants described the children the foster carers were caring for as having high levels of difficulties. convergence 2. changes over time foster carers in the intervention group reported improvement in child outcomes at time 4 only compared to the control group (sdq scale). owing to the children’s difficulties, facilitators felt that it would take time to see changes in them. convergence 3. improved child regulation foster carers in the intervention group reported a higher reduction in child hyperactivity over the 15-month study period than those in the control group. foster carers described changes in the children in terms of the children being calmer overall. convergence 4, improvement in peer problems foster carers in the intervention group reported a higher reduction in child peer problems over the 15-month study than did those in the control group. foster carers described improvement in playing with friends. convergence 5. improvement in child problems for sdq impact question 2, the intervention group reported the children’s problems had improved compared with the control group at times 2, 3, and 4. foster carers described their feeling that the children were communicating more and that their behaviour had improved. complementarity metatheme 4: sustainability in relation to sustainability, there was convergence, complementarity, and silence across studies. convergence was found in the subtheme of supporting foster carers. complementarity was found in the subtheme of training for stakeholders in foster care. silence was found in the subtheme of supporting facilitators. see table 4. table 4. convergence coding matrix for metatheme 4: sustainability metasubtheme study 1 (quant) (satisfaction questionnaire) study 2 (qual) convergence assessment 1. supporting foster carers foster carers indicated they needed follow-up training to support their learning. foster carers and facilitators described the need for ongoing support and training to sustain their learning. convergence 2. training for stakeholders foster carers indicated training in tic was needed for teachers. foster carers and facilitators described the need for those working in foster care to receive tic training. complementarity 3. supporting facilitators not applicable facilitators described their need for supports to aid their facilitation of the intervention. silence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 18 integrated results a summary of the integrated results is presented in table 5. table 5. summary of integrated results metatheme convergent results (quant = qual) complementary results (quant + qual) silent results (quant) acceptability 1. intervention relevance 2. intervention experience 3. attendance trauma-informed foster caring 1. increased tic knowledge 2. increased tic attitude 3. increased fostering confidence 4. fostering reflection 5. tic carer–child interaction children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties 1. level of need 2. fostering time 3. improved child regulation 4. improvement in peer problems 5. improvement in child problems sustainability 1. supporting foster carers 2. training stakeholders 3. supporting facilitators limitations the data were obtained through self-reported measures only, which is a limitation of the study and entails potential validity problems (barker et al., 2002). in this case, the data relied on perceptions of foster carers and facilitators only. this study’s potential bias in self-reporting could arise from the participant’s relationship with the child, with the agency, and with the researcher; previous experience of fostering; and perspective on tic. future studies should include reports from other perspectives such as those of teachers and social workers. this study also did not include children’s views. given the possible burden imposed on children by involving them in early-stage intervention research, relying on foster carers and facilitator reports seemed to be a less problematic route. however, including children as participants will be considered for future research. it is possible that using additional methods such as observation would have yielded a deeper understanding of the programme. the collection of both forms of data (quantitative and qualitative) overlapped. data were gathered in the qualitative study between time 2 and time 3 of the experimental study. this was necessary to capture the participants’ experience of the intervention. waiting until after time 4 (15 months post-intervention) to collect data would probably have reduced participants’ recall of intervention experiences and might have reduced the level of participation in the study. however, the timing of the qualitative study may have introduced bias. the lead researcher (lotty) was both the intervention developer and the lead facilitator of the intervention. thus, allegiance bias posed a risk when interpreting and reporting findings (munder et al., 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 19 the differences in data type limited the level of integration that was practical. the datasets differed in their purpose, type of data, and content; thus, the nature and coverage of the findings identified in each component study also differed. the two respondent sources (facilitators and foster carers) in this research were drawn from one foster care service, which likely meant that they had some shared understandings at the outset regarding foster care. this too could be criticised as methodologically inappropriate (bazeley, 2009). however, similar to other studies, we took a pragmatist approach in this research with the aim of eliciting a more comprehensive understanding of the intervention in one foster care service by using two different respondent sources (heslehurst et al., 2015). the lack of dissonance could have reflected the difficulty in fully integrating the two datasets (quantitative and qualitative) owing to their marked epistemological differences (heslehurst et al., 2015). the use of mixed methods has been criticised in this regard (brannen, 2005) as dissonant findings are likely to be important in increasing understanding and programme implementation. nevertheless, a comparison was achieved guided by a triangulation protocol (farmer et al., 2006). this provided a framework to organise and interpret the two component datasets. silent themes highlighted gaps in the quantitative study where data could have been gathered using measures on carer reflective functioning and caregiving behaviour. filling in these gaps will be considered as a goal for future research, which could enable a more complete integration of findings and a better understanding of the process of change brought about by the programme. discussion we have described a mixed methods evaluation of the fostering connections intervention. our findings have identified metathemes that cut across methods and data sources, thus enhancing the credibility and transferability of the findings. effects of the intervention our research indicates that the intervention was highly acceptable to foster carers. participants identified the foster carer facilitator, who added their experiences of the local context to the intervention, as an important factor for the acceptability of the intervention, consistent with other studies (murray et al., 2019; sullivan et al., 2016). this could be an indication that providing irishbased foster care research that is culturally sensitive is more likely to result in successful implementation of such interventions. our research found corroborating evidence in the areas of tic knowledge, change in attitude, and fostering confidence — all core elements of traumainformed foster care — to suggest that fostering connections may be an effective intervention for increasing foster carers’ capacity to provide children with tic. the qualitative study found that changes in attitude were associated with an increase in empathy for the child. increased empathy for children has been associated with positive caregiving (padilla‐walker & christensen, 2011), more resilience in foster carers (geiger et al., 2016), and successful placements (oke et al., 2013). the qualitative study also expanded findings that indicated foster carers increased their confidence in fostering. qualitative findings linked increased fostering confidence to feeling more equipped international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 20 to care for foster children and, in turn, to an increased sense of hopefulness about the children’s future. this aligns with herbert and wookey’s (2007) study, which also found that foster carers’ upskilling was associated with increased self-confidence in foster carers. silence was found in the quantitative study for the themes “tic carer–child interaction” and “fostering reflection”. the silence on these themes suggests that our use of quantitative measures left gaps where these outcomes could have been examined. the qualitative study identified tic carer–child interaction as an important component of the change process, providing information on how foster carers interacted with the children in more trauma-informed ways. the integrated findings suggest that this change was underpinned by increased tic knowledge, tic attitude, and fostering confidence, as well as the enhanced skills foster carers learned in the intervention, which included managing trauma-related behaviours, non-directive play, connecting activities, and attunement and communication skills. the qualitative study suggested that an increase in fostering reflective capacity (awareness and regulation) also underpinned these changes. foster carers “fostering reflective” capacity, also referred to as “mentalising”, was reported to have increased in similar psychoeducational interventions for foster carers (adkins et al., 2018; selwyn et al., 2016; staines et al., 2019). this increase enabled the foster carers to reflect more on both the needs of the children and their own needs as caregivers in the context of caring for children who have experienced trauma. the intervention encouraged foster carers to avoid reactive responses and develop a more reflective caregiving (mentalising) approach that involved reflecting on what was happening within the child (internal world of the child) and what was happening in their interactions with the child (interpersonal child–carer space). it is well established that positive carer–child interactions serve to build children’s emotional regulation and secure attachment (fonagy et al., 2007; schore & schore, 2008; siegel, 2015). best practice for children with trauma history centres on enhancing the child–carer relationship (shonkoff et al., 2012) as it aims at reducing the impact of trauma (van der kolk, 2015). our results indicated that many children in this study were experiencing serious developmental difficulties, consistent with other studies (cousins et al., 2010; goemans et al., 2018). our study found corroborating evidence on improvement in the children’s difficulties over the 15-month study period, a longer time frame than the intervention, suggesting the intervention had a latent effect. consistent with other research, achieving improved outcomes in children in foster care necessitates substantial commitment on the part of foster carers (lindhiem & dozier, 2007). our results suggested improvement in the children’s regulatory capacity and peer problems over the study period, perhaps because foster carers who participated in fostering connections had increased their capacity to provide children with tic. the provision of tic involved foster carers providing co-regulatory and positive relational experiences to the children over the study period. complementary evidence was found in the improvement seen in the children’s problems. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 21 these were reported as general improvements in the quantitative study and, in the qualitative study, particular improvements in the areas of communication and behaviour. the intervention specifically targeted children’s regulation based on research strongly showing that trauma such as abuse and neglect impact children’s developing stress-regulatory system, resulting in difficulty regulating emotions (perry et al., 1998; vanderwert et al., 2016). challenging behaviours are linked to emotional dysregulation (cole et al., 1994). thus, by targeting children’s regulation through the foster carers’ capacity to provide co-regulatory experiences, the intervention aimed to support improvement in children’s behaviour. when children experience a feeling of safety and security in the foster carer–child relationship, this is also likely to alleviate trauma-related difficulties (rayburn et al., 2018) and reduce disruptive child behaviour (wojciak et al., 2017). supporting future implementation given that the quantitative study did not seek to gather data on contextual issues, we found surprising results on how to sustain the changes the foster carers had made. foster carers offered this data themselves in the open-ended question on the post-intervention satisfaction questionnaire. this reflected that they felt these were important issues to express. our research found that there is a need for foster carers to receive ongoing support and training in order to sustain the changes they make. in the qualitative study, complementary evidence was found that training is needed for stakeholders, which suggests that there is a need for a parallel intervention to address the gaps in practitioner knowledge and skills in the application of tic. parallel practitioner training in tic would likely encourage more consistent and aligned social work practices that reflect a greater understanding of the role the foster carer plays in children’s lives (rodger et al., 2006). the qualitative study highlighted the importance of facilitators receiving training before running the intervention, and supervision and support during the intervention. the role of the facilitator has been identified as an important change agent in the success of intervention implementation (harvey et al., 2002) and thus requires appropriate support. the study has several implications for future research. its results contribute to the small but growing body of evidence in favour of providing tic psychoeducational programmes for foster carers. however, more research is necessary to support the effectiveness of fostering connections. silent themes highlighted gaps in the quantitative study where data could have been gathered on carer reflective functioning (mentalising) and caregiving behaviour. examining these outcomes is likely to add value to future research, enabling more complete integration of results and better understanding of the process of change brought about by the intervention. the study also highlights the need to develop a parallel practitioner intervention. we conclude that fostering connections is likely to make an important contribution to the provision of training for foster carers in ireland, supporting foster families caring for children with trauma-related difficulties. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 1–29 22 references adkins, t., luyten, p., & fonagy, p. 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(n.d.). british means and standard deviations for the 5–15-year-old sample as a whole. https://www.sdqinfo.org/norms/uknorms.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 “this is my responsibility”: parental experience of former soviet union immigrant parents in israel liat yakhnich abstract: this qualitative study focuses on the parenting experience of immigrant parents from the former soviet union (fsu) in israel. seventeen in-depth open interviews with fsu immigrant parents were conducted. all participants had been living in israel between one-and-a-half and five years and had adolescent children aged 11 to 17. the central theme that emerges from the interviews is the participants’ sense of parental responsibility, which is based on four central components: control, involvement, discipline, and parental guidance. immigration challenges the participants’ abilities to fulfil their responsibilities as parents by exposing them and their children to cultural differences in child-rearing practices and language difficulties. pressures of work and learning to live in a new culture may lead to a lack of emotional and physical availability to their children. participants try to cope with these challenges by maintaining child-rearing practices used in the fsu. many parents report this means of coping as unsuccessful and feel helpless and uncertain in tackling new parental dilemmas posed by immigration. keywords: parenting, immigration, parenting styles, parental responsibility liat yakhnich, phd is a lecturer in the youth development department, beit berl academic college, beit berl 49905, israel. e-mail: liatyakhnich@yahoo.com mailto:liat%20yakhnich%20%3cliatyakhnich@yahoo.com%3e international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 2 since 1989, israel has absorbed over a million immigrants from the former soviet union (fsu), who now constitute approximately 15% of the israeli population (horenczyk & ben-shalom, 2006). in recent years the rate of immigration from the fsu has fallen to about 8,000 immigrants per year; however, this is still the largest immigrant group in israel. the children of fsu immigrants account for approximately 5% of all minors in the country (cosher, ben-arie, & cohen, 2011). fsu-origin children and adolescents have generated considerable interest among israeli researchers during the last two decades. studies of this group reveal a relatively high incidence of distress and adversity, as well as of problematic and even risk-taking behavior (cosher et al., 2011; edelstein & bar-hamburger, 2007; horowitz & brosh, 2011; mirsky, 2012). these phenomena are generally attributed, at least in part, to changing parent–child relationships and the decreasing influence that immigrant parents have on their children (mann, 2004; horowitz & brosh, 2011; edelstein & barhamburger , 2007; yakhnich & teichman, 2015). as immigrant families’ adaptation involves coping with multiple stressors in various aspects of life, immigrant parents‘ psychological wellbeing, functioning, and ability to interact positively with their children may be challenged (yakhnich, 2008). some additional factors that potentially affect fsu immigrant families are generally low socio-economic status, increased divorce rates and large number of single-parent households, and loss of the support of grandparents who stayed in the fsu (kosner, roer-strier, & kurman, 2014). given that the majority of studies examining immigrant parent–child relationships are focused on immigrant children’s adjustment, it would be of special interest to examine the effects of migration and transition on immigrant parents. therefore, the aim of this study is to explore fsu immigrants’ parenting experience in a period of adaptation and cultural transition. parenting parenting is defined as the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood (davies, 2000). the parental role is based on a special interpersonal relationship characterized by practically unlimited commitment, responsibility, and emotional and physical nurturing (cohen, 2007). studies on parenting point out its paradoxical characteristics: for many parents it is a source of joy and self-realization accompanied by pleasure and intense emotional experiences; however, parenting is also related to low levels of personal wellbeing and satisfaction, and to high levels of stress and anxiety (galatzer-levy, mazursky, mancini, & bonanno, 2011; jokela, kivimaki, elovainio, & keltikangas-jarvinen, 2009). one significant aspect of parenting that has received wide attention in the literature is parenting style. baumrind (1978) first described three parenting styles characterized by various levels of parental acceptance and control: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. the authoritative style is based on high levels of parental acceptance and control. authoritative parents set realistic demands and expectations for their children, while accepting them and meeting their needs. they explain their demands and strive to achieve internalization of behavioral rules and limits. the authoritarian style is also based on a high level of control; however, authoritarian parents prefer discipline over acceptance. their childrearing practices are punitive and restrictive. the permissive style is based on low control and high acceptance levels, and is characterized by having few behavioral expectations for the child. later, an additional neglectful parenting style was added to the model. it is based on low levels of both control and acceptance, and is characterized by lack of parental involvement in children’s lives (maccoby & martin, 1983). studies consistently point to the advantages of authoritative parenting as manifested in children’s adaptive behavior, academic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/physical_fitness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/emotion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/intellectual_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/child http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/infant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/adult international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 3 success, psychological maturity (rinaldi & howe, 2012; steinberg, elmen & mounts, 1989), emotional autonomy and leadership skills (kudo, longhofer & floersch, 2012). however, the effectiveness of parenting style depends on the cultural context and on how it is perceived by the child. for example, authoritarian parenting is associated with notions of care and love in many cultural groups (dwairy & dor, 2009). the issue of parenting styles is particularly relevant to the present study, as immigrant parents’ adaptation is closely connected to the parenting approaches characteristic of their culture of origin and their congruity with parenting practices existing in the host society (roer-strier & rosenthal, 2001). major differences between child-rearing goals and methods accepted in the home culture and those prevalent in the host society may lead to family conflict, deepen the gaps between immigrant parents and their children, and increase parents’ sense of disorientation and distress. a variety of factors influence parental functioning, wellbeing, and satisfaction. one of the main factors known to have a negative influence on parental functioning is stress (farmer & lee, 2011; waylen & stewart-brown, 2010). when parents are cognitively and emotionally exhausted, their parental functioning is impaired, and they are less able to mobilize effort, attention, and support for their children (browne, meunier, o’connor, & jenkins, 2012). a wide range of life events may cause parental stress. immigration, common in contemporary society, is one of these: it involves coping with multiple stressors, such as employment, language, housing problems (yakhnich, 2008), and exposes the immigrants to high levels of mental and physical distress (ritsner, modai, & ponizovsky, 2000). parenting adolescents the transition to adolescence confronts parents with new developmental goals and challenges, as their children distance themselves from parental influence and devote an increasing proportion of their time to interactions outside the family (collins & laursen, 2004). yet, parental involvement is viewed as an important determinant of youth’s normal development. as the parent–adolescent relationship undergoes renegotiation and adolescents seek more autonomy, the nature of the involvement may change. parents are expected to reduce involvement in strategies that may be perceived as intrusive and to increase involvement in strategies that promote youth’s independence and decision-making ability (bhargava & witherspoon, 2015). a central characteristic of adolescence is youth’s tendency to challenge parental authority, leading to higher levels of family conflict. most such conflict revolves around everyday family matters and indicates adolescents’ desire for autonomy and independence (moed et al., 2014). conflict is seen as evidencing a transformation from unilateral to more mutual relations of young adulthood; in the context of warm, accepting relationships, it is considered to be adaptive for development (yau & smetana, 2003). it should be noted that adolescent–parent conflict may reflect the emphasis placed by western culture on independence and achievement of personal goals, and that in collectivist cultures it may be comparatively muted (yau & smetana, 2003). despite high levels of interpersonal conflict, maintaining high-quality relationships with family has important implications for adolescents’ mental and physical health (ehrlich, hoyt, sumner, mcdade, & adam, 2015; kahn, holmes, farley, & kim-spoon, 2015). parent–adolescent relationship quality is significantly influenced by such parenting practices as warmth, responsiveness, positive reinforcement, behavioral control, and openness in communication (kahn, et al., 2015; kearney & bussey, 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 4 parenting and parent–child relationships in immigration a wide body of literature examines the link between immigration, parent–child relationships, and immigrant children’s and adolescents’ adaptation. immigrant parents’ psychological distress was found to predict their children’s mental health problems (ravenssieberer, erhart, gosch, & wille, 2008; sowa, crijnen, bengi-arslan, & verhulst, 2000), while their failure to learn the new language is believed to negatively affect their authority and their ability to influence their adolescent children (portes, fernandez-kelly, & haller, 2009). parenting practices employed by immigrant parents have been recognized as a significant factor that affects their children's functioning: parental strictness and monitoring were found to be associated with lower sexual risk (killoren & deutsch, 2014) and greater academic success (liew, kwok, chang, chang, & yeh, 2014) for immigrant adolescents, especially when counterbalanced by autonomy support. harsh parenting was related to immigrant children’s emotional and behavioral problems (belhadj kouider, koglin, & petermann, 2014), while a low level of parental monitoring and parent–adolescent communication difficulties were associated with youth alcohol consumption (walsh, djalovski, boniel-nissim, & harel-fisch, 2014). an often-mentioned phenomenon in the context of parent–child relationships in immigration is role reversal. this concept describes a situation in which children adopt adult roles before they are physically or emotionally ready to handle them, while their parents behave as though helpless (kosner, et al., 2014). the greater adaptability of children and adolescents allows them to adjust to a new social environment, embrace new norms and values, and acquire the host language faster than their parents. as a result their role repertoire in the immigrant family is likely to expand (mirsky & prawer, 2003; ponizovsky, kurman, & roer-strier, 2012). at the same time, the feelings of loss and bereavement that often accompany immigrant parents’ adjustment may impair their ability to meet their children’s needs and lead to parent–child role confusion (mann, 2004). there are two main types of adult roles that immigrant children may adopt: instrumental roles that involve taking responsibility for functional tasks, and emotional roles that require the child to meet the parent’s social-emotional needs (jurkovic, 1997). in a qualitative study performed on a sample of fsu immigrant adolescents in israel (roer-strier & kurman, 2009), multiple roles assumed by them within their families were identified: language broker, family administrator, emotional supporter, and so on. most studies in the area of role reversal focus on situations in which an adverse circumstance such as disease or divorce has hindered parental performance and led to role change. ponizovsky et al. (2012) and kosner et al. (2014) believe that role reversal in immigrant families is a distinct phenomenon, initiated by the need to deal with practical issues. as such, it may differ from role reversal caused by parental pathology or weakness and need not have an inherently negative impact on the immigrant family. accordingly, role reversal has been found to have a complex influence on immigrant adolescents’ wellbeing and functioning, both negative (e.g., high distress, low self-esteem) and positive (e.g., gaining independence, life-experience) (kosner, et al., 2014; oznobishin & kurman, 2009; trickett & jones, 2007). role reversal may be very dramatic for fsu jewish immigrant children in particular, as they were typically not encouraged to be autonomous in the fsu and were given almost no family responsibilities besides school performance (roer-strier & kurman, 2009). immigrant families with adolescents often face not only the usual complexities of this developmental stage but additional challenges arising from immigration. although in this situation family can be a source of support for its members, the pressures of immigration may http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=killoren,%20sarah%20e. http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=deutsch,%20arielle%20r. http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=belhadj%20kouider,%20esmahan http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=belhadj%20kouider,%20esmahan international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 5 impair relations and increase conflict (dwairy & dor, 2009; mirsky ,2012). while the immigrant adolescent is involved in the process of maturation, the parents struggle to form a new self-identity in the host country. in this context, parents may perceive an adolescent’s distancing and striving for autonomy as a threat to their ego integrity (mann, 2004). conflict may stem as well from cultural differences between parents and youths. immigrant family members live in two cultures: the ethnic-heritage culture and the new culture of the host society. since these cultures may not endorse identical values and may not allow adolescents to pursue the same behavioral patterns, immigrant families may experience substantial intergenerational differences and high levels of intergenerational disagreement and conflict (kwak, 2003; mirsky, 2012). rigid adherence to old values on the part of the parents may undermine their parental authority and leave youth without effective adult protection, guidance, or support (mirsky ,2012). in general, immigrant parents’ adaptation is closely connected to parenting styles characteristic of their culture of origin. according to roer-strier and rosenthal (2001), parents hold an image of the “adaptive adult” that reflects their ideal representation of how their children should be as adults, and they organize their child-rearing practices accordingly. this image is influenced by the parents’ culture of origin and undergoes adaptations during immigration. usually, the image of the adaptive adult held by immigrant parents has aspects that are considered adaptive in their country of origin, as well as aspects they perceive as probably adaptive in the host society. there is a broad literature that examines parent–child relationships in the context of immigration, generally emphasizing the effects of these relationships on immigrant children’s social and psychological adjustment. however, studies that focus mainly on immigrant parents and their own experiences are surprisingly scarce. immigrant parents experience a variety of adjustment stresses and are exposed to new and unfamiliar parental tasks, while having limited social support. this may challenge their ability to cope with tasks of parenting, increase their distress, and reduce their self-esteem and functioning. immigrant parents’ adjustment takes place in the context of raising children in a new cultural environment. given the great importance of the parental role in the individual’s life, believing in one’s own ability to be a successful parent is necessary to normal adjustment. costigan and koryzma (2012) found immigrant parents’ parental efficacy (the belief in their ability to be competent parents) to be significantly correlated with their psychological adjustment. immigrant families from the fsu in israel as a rule, immigrant families from the fsu are small, with one or two children. partially for this reason, parents stress the importance of education and invest effort and resources in their children’s studies (yakhnich, 2010). the importance of children’s education is also related to the nature of jewish identity in the fsu, characterized by academic education as a central component (lerner, rapoport, & lomsky-feder, 2007). despite their general rejection of the soviet regime, as well as major social changes taking place in the fsu, the majority of immigrant parents were raised and socialized mainly according to collectivist norms. traditional soviet pedagogy encouraged child-rearing methods designed to foster such values as obedience and group-mindedness. violation of these values could justify punishments in the form of parental withdrawal of love and privileges (shor, 1999). http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=rapoport,%20tamar http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=lomsky-feder,%20edna international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 6 in a study focused on fsu immigrant parents’ patterns of handling children’s misbehavior, it was found that the most common option suggested by the respondents was talking to the child. the most common disciplinary method was setting restrictions, including isolating and ignoring the child. the frequency of respondents who suggested verbal threatening and corporal punishment was low (shor, 2000). however, in his earlier study, shor (1999) reported that corporal punishment was found to be an acceptable disciplinary method among fsu immigrant parents, and that there was a high level of agreement about which methods were appropriate. shor also found that conditional love was viewed as a suitable educational method; for example, parents would withdraw their affection from a misbehaving child. the image of the adaptive adult among fsu parents often includes such characteristics as self-discipline, conformism, personal modesty, diligence, and academic excellence (yakhnich, 2010). accordingly, the parent’s role is perceived as authoritative (and sometimes as authoritarian), educative, and didactic; it includes responsibility both for setting clear norms of behavior and for enforcing them. although immigrant parents tend to maintain the adaptive adult image and the parental role accepted in their culture of origin, in time they may adopt new roles and images as a result of their interaction with the host society (strier & roer-strier, 2005). this can result in undesirable changes in patterns of parenting, such as an abrupt transition from an authoritarian parenting approach to a highly permissive one. such sudden transitions may leave the child confused, undermine the parent’s authority, and reduce parental involvement and supervision (yakhnich & teichman, 2015). during adolescence, fsu parents usually expect to maintain close relationships with their children, while limiting their independence and exercising a high level of parental control. parent–adolescent relationships are often characterized by high involvement, protectiveness, and demands for obedience and self-restraint (leipzig, 2006; slonim-nevo, shraga, & mirsky, 1999). dwairy and dor (2009) argue that the gap between the fsu immigrants’ parenting style and the permissive character of israeli society in general may create difficulties for their adolescent children. immigrant family relations might be challenged by losing the support of grandparents that stayed in the fsu (kosner et al., 2014). families in eastern europe (including the fsu) traditionally relied heavily on help from grandparents who often took responsibility for dayto-day childcare (nesteruk & marks, 2009). maintaining significant intergenerational connections is very important for immigrant parents from this region. however, geographic distance significantly challenges this goal, and parents have to become more independent and self-reliant. in spite of technological advances in communication and travel (nesteruk & marks, 2009; saxena & sanders, 2009) immigrant parents struggle to keep their extended families physically and emotionally close. present study in this study i aimed to examine fsu immigrants’ parenting experiences in the context of cultural transition. the majority of studies that examine the influence of immigration on parent–child relationships emphasize the effect of these relationships on immigrant children’s adjustment, while studies that focus mainly on immigrant parents and their own experiences are relatively scarce. understanding the experiences of parents is crucial to understanding the experiences of their children, especially in immigrant families where so much of the adjustment and functioning of children is involved with their parents’ adjustment (crosnoe & filigni, 2012). creswell (2007) believes that qualitative methodology is best for describing, exploring, and understanding a participant’s subjective experience in its real-life context. in this study using qualitative methodology seems appropriate, as it can shed http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=saxena,%20divya http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=sanders,%20gregory%20f. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 7 light on parents’ life experiences and help the reader empathically share them, as well as reveal new data that were not assessed by previous quantitative research (roer-strier & kurman, 2009). furthermore, qualitative methodology is claimed to be especially valuable in studies examining culturally embedded issues (cui, 2015). using qualitative methodology in this study will allow a deeper understanding of immigrant parents’ realities and promote the ability to design prevention and intervention activities for the benefit of immigrant families. method this is a qualitative phenomenological study that “describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a phenomenon and reduces these experiences to a description of their universal essence” (creswell, 2007, p. 57). the aim of this study is to describe the meaning of the parenting experience in cultural transition. participants seventeen parents (14 mothers and 3 fathers) of children aged 11 to 17 participated in the study. the participants ranged in age from 32 to 47. all came from different families: no couples were included. the majority were married, but three were divorced, one was single, and one was a widower. all had either one or two children, except for one who was the mother of three. all participants had immigrated from the fsu (seven from russia, four from ukraine, two from belarus, three from central asia, and one from latvia) and had been living in israel between one and a half and five years. their main reason for immigrating was concern for their children’s future in their countries of origin, while additional factors such as economic difficulties, political instability, and family reunification were also mentioned. all but three had left their parents in the fsu. ten had academic degrees, but most were employed in blue-collar jobs after immigration. the majority perceived these jobs as temporary, and hoped to find better positions in the future. the participants mostly described their socio-economic status as middle-low, though more than half estimated their economic situation to have improved after immigration. all but two struggled with language difficulties and felt unable to sufficiently communicate in hebrew: their close social networks consisted solely of russian-speaking immigrants. as mentioned above, three fathers participated in the study. they were generally less verbally forthcoming than the mothers; they used shorter sentences and fewer examples, resulting in shorter interviews. yet, their level of participation and the issues they raised didn’t differ from those of the mothers. procedures i approached local representatives of the ministry of immigrant absorption in two northern cities and asked their help in locating immigrant parents of adolescent children aged 11 to 17 who had immigrated from the fsu during the last five years. the representatives contacted the parents and asked permission to pass their names on to me. having received this initial agreement i telephoned the parents to introduce myself and the aim of the study. dates for interviews were set with the parents who agreed to participate (17 out of the 23 parents initially contacted). the interviews were held at participants’ homes at a time that was convenient for them. the in-depth open interview technique was used (kvale, 1996). the means to access a subject’s experiences range widely, from open-ended, unstructured approaches to highly structured protocols with preset questions. the open interview is a relatively unstructured international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 8 approach applied in ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology that may use an evolving set of questions, such that later participants may respond to quite different queries from those put to earlier participants (knox & burkard, 2009). sometimes only a first, topicintroducing question is asked and the remainder of the interview proceeds as a follow-up and expansion on the interviewee’s answer to the first questions. such an approach is more concerned with being attuned to the participant than with necessarily following the same path for all respondents (kvale, 1996). the interviews started by presenting the aim of the study and assuring the interviewees of anonymity. participants were invited to talk about their families in the context of immigration (“please, tell me about your family’s decision to come to israel.”). this was the starting point of all interviews, and the interviewees themselves chose how to continue the conversation. when they finished their stories, if necessary, they were asked to delve deeper into their relationships with their children and their parenting experience. i didn't use preset questions, but attempted to address particular issues: the participants’ perception of parenting, the way this perception was affected by immigration, parent–child relationships after immigration, parent’s coping with a changed way of life, and so forth. interviews were conducted in russian (the participants’ and my own native language) and lasted from 50 to 120 minutes. all interviews were recorded and later transcribed. field notes were written during the interviews and later incorporated into the data. interviews were held until saturation had been achieved: from about the twelfth interview on, the central themes raised by the participants kept recurring, indicating that the themes were authentic to parenting experience in immigration (creswell, 2007). all participants were informed as to the voluntary nature of the study. their personal information remained confidential and was not disclosed to the representatives who initially contacted them. each interview was given a serial number. thus, the participants’ names didn’t appear in the transcripts. the names and the numbers were kept in a separate document, assuring the interviewees’ anonymity. data analysis the data were read and reread several times. during the first reading i identified “significant statements” that could enhance my understanding of the participants’ experience of their parenting during immigration, a process moustakas called “horizontalization” (1994). these statements were grouped into clusters of meaning, such as “the parent believes that involvement is a key component of parenting”, and “the parent feels that not knowing hebrew damages her ability to exercise parental control”. these clusters were then reorganized, while identifying the central themes that emerged from the interviews. for example, the theme of “perception of the parental role” was composed of subthemes of “education towards discipline”, “parental control”, and more. the subtheme of “education towards discipline” was further divided into the following components: “the purpose of discipline”, “the results of lack of discipline”, and “discipline as preparation for adult life”. when the list of themes was ready, i reread the interviews to ensure that the statements were properly understood and that no significant statements were left out. the themes served as a basis for describing parenting experience in immigration, while identifying common experiences (the essential structure) and creating a cohesive story (creswell, 2007). in my writing i used the technique of “constructing a document within a document” (ayalon & sabar ben-yehoshua, 2010) using data analysis as an initial draft for the results chapter. in a process of observation and interpretation, i de-emphasized some themes, emphasized others, and drew connections between various themes. finally, i wrote “the story” based on an integration of the research findings and the available theoretical material. during the analysis i used the original russian transcripts and then translated the results into english. this way the analysis was not affected by potential translation inaccuracies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 9 credibility to measure the performance level of qualitative research, lincoln and guba (1985) suggest using the term trustworthiness to replace the concepts of validity, reliability, and generalization used in quantitative research (shkedi, 2003). trustworthiness may be achieved by keeping the chain of evidence for each step in the research, analyzing the data in several stages, and writing the final report as a “rich description” using interviewees’ quotations (shkedi, 2003). in this study, i fully documented all the interviews and the context in which they were carried out. all stages of the analysis were documented separately, enabling a return to every stage, as well as to original narrations. the results section presents the interviewees’ perceptions by making extensive use of their own words. the technique of constructing a document within a document contributed to the study’s trustworthiness by reducing the gap between the coding process and the writing of the research results (ayalon & sabar ben-yehoshua, 2010). finally, i consulted another experienced qualitative researcher, who served as an external expert, commenting on and analyzing the data and the emerging themes (creswell, 2007; lincoln & guba, 1985). my personal background on issues relevant to this study should be addressed. at age 13, i immigrated to israel from the soviet union; i also have children. thus, i’ve experienced both the challenges of immigration in adolescence (like the participants’ children) and of parenting. during the interviews, as well as in the process of data analysis, i recognized several common issues and concerns that occupied not just the participants but me and my family. i believe my personal background helped the participants to feel more comfortable during the interviews and helped me to better understand and appreciate their experiences. at the same time, i strove at all times to distinguish between their perspectives and perceptions and my own. results parental responsibility analysis of the interviews yields a variety of themes related to parent–child relationships. during the interviewing stage, it became apparent that all the participants’ stories shared a central theme: parental responsibility. all the participants described the parental role as entailing great responsibility; indeed, the very decision to have children makes the parents responsible for raising and educating them. one of the most meaningful expressions of parental responsibility is the parent’s obligation to make decisions affecting the children and their future (perälä-littunen & böök, 2012). the participants’ decision to emigrate to israel was based on the belief that emigration would ultimately be beneficial for the children. thus, it not only reflects their parental responsibility but even adds to it, as they feel responsible in turn for the children’s post-emigration adjustment. v., a mother of a 14year-old girl, described her feeling of responsibility: to be a parent is first of all responsibility. if you created a person, you are obliged to create the conditions in which she can grow into a healthy, strong human being. she didn’t ask to be born, i have borne her for myself, i have to take responsibility and raise her. especially since bringing her here was my decision, my responsibility. the issue of parental responsibility is reflected in the participants’ perceptions of the essence of the parental role. immigration challenges their ability to fulfil their responsibility international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 10 as parents. their attempts to cope with this challenge are often accompanied by a feeling of helplessness. who is the responsible parent: components of good parenting when participants discussed their responsibility as parents, mostly in general terms such as “to raise them well”, i asked them to specify the elements of parental responsibility and the characteristics of a responsible parent. the participants focused on four key components of responsible parenting: control, involvement, discipline, and parental guidance. control. “control is obligatory”: one component of parenting mentioned by the interviewees is the need to control what happens in children’s lives, including their behavior and their social lives. control is exercised mainly through communicating with children, expressing interest, and making them understand the importance of involving parents in their lives. five parents reported that their children resist their efforts to control them, and described how they try to “squeeze out information by all means”. to justify the necessity of control, interviewees used examples of parents who have not exercised enough control, which produced negative consequences: even if she is angry with me, control is obligatory. i know many parents who start working in five jobs only to earn more, and then … they don’t need this money any more, because the children go off the straight path. i have always known her friends and their families. if jana goes to sleep over at a friend’s house, i always ask: “who is the father? who is the mother? where do they live?” i know everything. (s., mother, children ages: 13, 17). control gives parents a sense of mastery, of having “a finger on the pulse”, and is perceived as an expression of real interest and concern for the child. involvement. “i have to listen”: another component of good parenting is involvement in the child’s life, as expressed by the parents’ accessibility and readiness to listen. nine parents spoke of accessibility and listening as a way of meeting their child’s emotional needs: “they should turn to me, tell me, and i have to listen, to help. they are still kids, but they have problems that they need to share” (k., mother, 11, 15). these needs are intensified by the child’s age: “adolescents — they have their moods. and i see she needs more attention, she needs me to be more patient with her, she needs someone she can trust” (l., mother, 14); and by loss of social networks during the immigration: “it’s very important not to let him become isolated, to be alone with his problems. he has no friends. he doesn’t have anyone to talk to, only us” (i., mother, 16). five participants who raised the issue of involvement perceived it as an additional means of control: “i teach her: ‘the first person you must come to is your mother’. i believe children need to consult their parents first. only this way will the parents know what’s going on with their children” (s., mother, 13, 17). this perception of listening and closeness to the adolescent as the means of exercising parental control may explain the fsu immigrant adolescents’ tendency to report their parents as less warm and more controlling, compared to their israeli peers (dwairy & dor, 2009). discipline. “life will not caress you”: the issue of discipline emerges in most interviews as an area in which no compromises should be allowed. discipline is perceived as an educational means of preparing the child for adult life, responsibility, and normal functioning: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 11 everybody has obligations: mother has to prepare food, keep house, she has to do that, whether she likes it or not. father has to earn a living, it’s his duty. and the child has to get used to her duties from the beginning, gradually.… (o., mother, 12). imposing discipline is seen as the parents’ responsibility: parents who don’t do it are failing in their role. i., mother of an 11-year old daughter, considered lack of discipline to be an essential fault in the process of moral education, one which leads to unwanted developmental outcomes: there has to be discipline. it is forbidden to let children do whatever they want, so they will grow and become adults who hear only themselves, their own wishes, they will not want to work. children have to be accustomed to discipline from an early age. imposing discipline is based on perceiving adult life as a challenge that children have to be prepared for. being too spoiled will damage children’s ability to cope with life. this perception reflects the life experiences of the parents themselves. v., who had raised her 14year-old daughter alone from birth, said: sometimes i think my daughter had no childhood, i never coddled her. i always tell her, “maybe i am angrier with you than necessary, maybe i should praise you more, but life is hard, it rarely caresses you. life mostly hits you. that’s why. parental guidance. “to distinguish between black and white”: another parental role regarded as important by the participants is parental guidance. parents are perceived as the people who know their children best and, hence, are able to identify their tendencies and skills. based on their own life experience, parents can guide children towards desirable directions that suit these tendencies. guidance is needed in the area of studies, spending leisure time, choosing hobbies, and so on. without such guidance, children may choose an unwanted course of life: “they don’t always know how to choose properly. this is the role of the parents — to guide them to the right path, help them understand what’s black and what’s white” (o., mother, 12). if parents do not guide their children, they leave them prey to unwanted influences, as a., mother of a 17-year-old daughter explained: “a child… someone influences her in any case. if not parents, who? friends are not always suitable, teachers don’t always really care. if parents have no influence — children are always influenced by someone else”. parents emphasized that their modes of thought should not be forced upon children; instead, the guidance process should be suited to the child’s personality and wishes: they have to find something they want, something that appeals to them, draws them. one should not nag all the time: you have to, you have to … a child should want to paint a picture, to compose a tune … if the child doesn’t want to, nothing will come out (k., mother, 11, 15). difficulties in fulfilling parental responsibility in immigration so far i have described the central themes that emerged from the discussions about the parental role. these themes represent some of the universal challenges in parent–adolescent relationships, but at the same time are shaped by the participants’ cultural background and reflect their varied personal ideals of the responsible parent. but what happens to this image in cultural transition? do parents succeed in applying their beliefs about optimal parenting to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 12 the reality of their present lives? three central themes emerged in this context as factors influencing immigrant parents’ ability to fulfil their parental responsibility: lack of emotional and physical (practical) availability, language difficulties, and cultural gaps in perceptions of child rearing. lack of availability. “we have no time for them”: most (13) participants reported being too occupied to pay attention to their children, and that the key factor taking up their time is work. most of them mentioned that they work many more hours than they used to before immigration and thus have much less time to spend with their children: “the whole life is at work. we have no time for them” (v., father, 12). the limited time available for parents to spend with their children is seen to exact a toll on their relationships. due to her workload, k. (mother, 11, 15) sensed a growing distance between her and her children. when she tried to initiate common activities, she felt they were not interested: “they forgot how it is to spend time with me. it bothers me”. the burden imposed on some parents may blind them to their children’s emotional difficulties. e. (mother, 17) recalled the moment she found out her daughter had been skipping school for several months: it was like thunder on a bright day. i couldn’t imagine this would happen to my daughter … in fact, i didn’t have time for her. i was working, studying — i had so much to do. maybe there were moments i didn’t listen to her because i was too busy with my own affairs. long working hours, being paid by the hour, a confining organizational culture, and stress make parents’ work more demanding and impair their ability to pay attention to their children (roeters, van der lippe, & kluwer, 2010). most participants in the study were engaged in non-professional work, earned minimal wages paid on an hourly basis, and were afraid of losing their source of income. participants who worked in jobs that suited their training were employed mostly in small businesses, and felt dependent on their employers. economic hardships, together with the kind of work the parents were engaged in, produced stress that constrained their involvement in their children’s lives. in addition to long working hours, the parents reported lack of emotional availability for their children. adaptation difficulties, language problems, and coping with change diverted their energies and directed their coping efforts away from their children. k. (mother, 11) described the time it took her to pull herself together and be available for her son: i find it very hard. only now did i get to him (her son). it turns out he is the last one, at the end. i tried but it didn’t work … i was not emotionally available, not at all. he demanded so much, i didn’t have so much to give. i felt he got into me with a spoon, dug in me, and i had nothing to give him anymore. k. felt exhausted, empty, and emotionally overwhelmed, which made it hard for her to pay attention and support her son. language difficulties and language mediation. “mom, you better shut up”: all parents reported that their children started speaking hebrew and were able to engage in social interaction sooner than their parents. most participants (11) said that their children react negatively to their language difficulties. some children were ashamed when their parents spoke hebrew: “they tell me: ‘mom, you’d better shut up, don’t talk. mom, you’re dumb’. they are ashamed. it’s a joke, of course (laughs)” (s., mother, 13, 17). parents’ mistakes in hebrew made some children become angry and react aggressively: “she yelled at me: ‘you international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 13 don’t know how to talk! say nothing!’ she was angry because i didn’t speak correctly”. e. (mother, 17) also laughed as she described her daughter’s reaction. a. described the feeling of helplessness when speaking with her 17-year-old son: he got really upset with me: “can’t you say a simple thing?” i didn’t know how to answer. maybe he is used to me having always helped him. now he sees i am powerless, i don’t understand what is wanted from me. the aggressive and humiliating reactions described above are not characteristic of parent–child relationships accepted in the fsu (walsh, shulman, bar-on, & tsur, 2006). moreover, they contradict the participants’ own perceptions of parenting as presented above. nevertheless, the participants’ tone, laughter, and choice of words in describing children’s reactions, suggest an attempt to turn the theme into a joke and belittle its meaning. i felt that being perceived by their children as weak, incapable, or “dumb” hurts the parents and sets a new challenge for which they had developed no other coping mechanism. some children helped their parents with translations. the parents’ and children's attitude towards this language mediation was complex. l. described her 14-year-old daughter as a counselor, a defender, and a role-model for her mother: she says: “tell me, i’ll tell everything instead of you”. she also tells me: “mom, sit home, learn hebrew”. she explains to others: “she can’t do it like you, it’s hard for her”. sometimes i feel younger than she is. i listen to her, learn from her. four parents felt that their children’s help serves as a positive stimulation that strengthens their self-esteem: “i think it makes them very happy — ‘i know better than dad’. i think it makes them proud” (a., father, 14, 17). however, in most families the parents’ dependence on their children’s help led to conflicts, antagonism from the children, and frustration for the parents. v. (mother, 14) described it as follows: when i ask her for help, she may tell me: “i don’t understand”. and that’s it — i am left without an answer: “please read at least a few words, only so i understand what it is about”. sometimes she yells at me: “do you know any other kids who do this?” in russia i didn’t depend on her, there they speak russian.… a complex picture emerges from the participants’ words. language mediation is perceived as having a potential of strengthening the child, but at the same time of putting him or her in a dominant position in relation to the parent. language gaps and mediation challenged the parent’s influence and responsibility and aroused a wide spectrum of emotional reactions among participants, which led to a reconstruction of parent–child relationships in their families. cultural differences in perceptions of child rearing. “there is no such thing in russia”: the participants, whose perception of parenting is based largely on control and discipline (as mentioned above), reported experiencing a large gap between this perception and what they deemed to be accepted ways of child rearing in israel. most (14) parents portrayed israeli education as lacking in discipline — “the children here are not really being educated.” — and thought more highly of russian education. they perceived israeli parents as unable to set limits, compromising, and not guiding their children’s choices, as described by a. (mother, 17): i see young children eat restaurant chips. this is not appropriate food for children, but they eat it. and the mother, instead of taking the plate away, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 14 indulges him. this is a borderline situation of democracy. there is no such thing in russia. maybe it’s a bit aggressive, maybe it’s a kind of pressure, but judging by the results … judging by results, parents perceived israeli children’s behavior as unacceptable. they noted their lack of respect towards the elderly; unbridled, impulsive behavior; lack of consideration for others; and so on. they said it’s easy to identify children of russian origin by their more polite and restrained behavior. while most parents clearly prefer familiar ways of child upbringing, four expressed ambivalent attitudes and were able to see advantages and disadvantages in the different educational approaches. e. (mother, 17) demonstrated this ambivalence metaphorically: pupils in lower grade classes here write with pencils — they may erase and rewrite. this teaches children not to be afraid of making mistakes in life too. in russia they write with pens. and if you wrote with a pen, made a mistake and then corrected it, there is a “stain”. there they are afraid to make mistakes. here they feel they can do anything; on the one hand, this is an advantage. they are not afraid to make a step forward. the disadvantage is that everything is allowed. sometimes it looks like boorishness, kind of permissiveness. they believe they are allowed everything. they don’t accept “no” for an answer. participants felt that their children had begun to absorb influences from the israeli environment. the principal change occurred in the areas of discipline and respect for adults’ authority: “the first thing she learned here: ‘it’s a free country. i do what i want.’” (a., father, 14, 17). participants reported that their children now spoke less respectfully, disregarded parents’ authority, argued, did not comply immediately with their demands, and so forth. these changes often led to conflicts between parents and their adolescent children as well as to confusion and a sense of helplessness among the parents. coping with children’s changing behavior children’s faster adjustment often creates cultural gaps between them and their parents, thus enhancing intergenerational conflict. the conflict is expressed in changing intergenerational boundaries, undermining of parental authority, and the parents’ fears of losing the child to the new culture and of change in general (baptiste, 1993; walsh et. al., 2006). research participants chose to cope with change mainly by attempting to preserve traditional ways of education. four parents expected their children to go on behaving in the way accepted in the fsu, even at the expense of their social integration: when we saw the local children, the first thing my husband said: “our children should not become like that”. i want them to grow with certain principles, even if they will be different from other children — at least we won’t be ashamed of them (i., mother, 16). one way of maintaining behavior patterns prevalent in the fsu is encouraging social contacts with russian-speaking peers. these contacts are perceived as a means of learning “normal” behavior and a defense against unwanted influences. some parents were simply satisfied with the fact that their children had “russian” friends, while others initiated and guided their children in shaping their social networks, like v. (mother, 16): “when she goes out with her girlfriends, i always tell her: ‘take s.’ i want her to have this kind of influence”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 15 another way parents tried to maintain authority and traditional education was persuasion, ranging from attempting to explain their demands to open conflict and coercive use of their parental power. n. (father, 12) described the range of his reactions when his sons did not obey him: there, i used to tell them once and that was it, everything was done. and here — “we don’t want to, wait, later”. like a dead end. i explain: “we are parents, we know what’s right. when you grow up, you’ll live your own way. now, you do this and that”. it doesn’t work. then i raise my voice, i’m angry. so far we have overcome this; i don’t know what will happen later on. i’m afraid it will be problematic. n. immigrated to israel one and a half years ago and understood that his way of managing conflict with his children would lose its efficacy in the future, but he had no other tools to cope with the change. six other parents who were more experienced in parenting in cultural transition understood that in order to cope with the new situation they had to undergo a change too, but found it hard, like l. (mother, 17): i was told i have to change, there it was different — here it’s something else. one should learn to look differently at things. i think i will not succeed in looking at things differently. i take it close to heart, i get irritated. i don’t know what will be. a feeling of uncertainty about the future emerged from n. and l.’s words. neither could foresee how they would cope with the expected changes in their children’s behavior. they are not alone in this experience. problems of erosion of parental authority and discipline are often mentioned in studies dealing with parenting in immigration (nesteruk & marks, 2011; strier & roer-strier, 2005). immigrant parents from asia, eastern europe, and south america often report difficulties in educating their children given what they see as eroded obedience and respect towards adults in western countries. in this study, the loss of parental authority and the lack of tools for effectively coping with children’s changing behavior aroused in some parents a feeling of helplessness: “i don’t know what to do, but i can’t just do nothing. this is my daughter, it is my responsibility, but i don’t know what to do” (e., mother, 17). the issue of parental responsibility emerged again, but in the context of the difficulty in fulfilling it and being a responsible parent. three parents admitted to having agreed to the interviews in order to allow themselves to think aloud about what’s happening to them: “this is why i agreed to participate in the study — i wanted to open this chapter of my life. because from the minute i arrived here until today, i have tried not to analyze it” (k., mother, 11). about half of the parents asked me for direct advice about the right ways of coping or tried to find out about the help they can get to cope with their parenting difficulties: when we spoke on the phone, i immediately thought about asking you, maybe it is possible to talk to someone professional? sometimes it’s hard, i don’t understand, don’t know, i don’t have enough tools. maybe there is a program for children, someone to talk to them… (k., mother 11, 15). most participants felt that they did not know how to deal with the parental challenges they faced. they realized that educational methods based solely on control and discipline have limitations in their present reality. even those who found no fault with such methods understood that they needed to change in order to maintain a good relationship with their children, but they didn’t know how to bring about the change, or whether they would be able to do so. however, only half of the parents raised the possibility of getting professional help international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 16 in coping with these challenges, and only one admitted to having already sought it. it should be noted that participants who asked for advice or expressed interest in getting help were provided with information on relevant services available in their community. discussion the aim of this study is to examine fsu immigrants’ parenting experiences in the context of immigration and cultural transition. the findings are based on 17 in-depth open interviews with immigrant parents of adolescent children. adolescence represents an important phase in the individual’s development that involves a broad range of physical, emotional, and cognitive changes. these changes have significant impact on parent– adolescent relationships (babore, picconi, candelori, & trumello, 2013). as adolescents mature and seek autonomy, they increasingly challenge their parents’ decisions and authority. accordingly, conflict between adolescents and their parents is a common phenomenon that is generally considered to serve an adaptive role in family relationships (moed et al,. 2014). disagreements between parents and adolescents are thus to be expected during this developmental stage, creating many challenges that may not be specifically immigrationrelated. however, the difficulties presented in this study were perceived by the participants as resulting particularly from the immigration and adaptation experiences coupled with challenges of adolescence, and not from the adolescence phase itself. during the interviews several themes essential to the participants’ parental experience emerged: parental responsibility and its components, difficulty in fulfilling parental responsibility in immigration, and feelings of helplessness and uncertainty that accompany the need to cope with children’s changing behavior. the participants’ perception of parenting was largely based on the concept of parental responsibility. this responsibility generally serves as the emotional glue in parent–child relationships (perälä-littunen & böök, 2012). it is further strengthened during immigration, when parents feel that bringing their children to israel makes them responsible for their adaptation and functioning. the participants’ perception of parental responsibility was based on four components: control, involvement, discipline, and guidance. these elements point to participants’ preference for an authoritative–authoritarian parenting style (baumrind, 1978): statements regarding behavior control, education towards self-discipline, and guiding children’s choices clearly emphasize the control component. parental involvement through listening, as well as attentiveness to the child’s wishes and personal characteristics, point to the importance of the acceptance component in participants’ parenting. the literature consistently points out the advantages of authoritative parenting compared to other styles (kudo et al., 2012; rinaldi & howe, 2012). the authoritarian style, in contrast, is negatively viewed in western literature due to its correlation with such traits as lack of self-responsibility, low self-esteem, and extreme obedience (sartaj & aslam, 2010). however, there are researchers who claim that the effectiveness of a parenting style depends on the cultural context in which the family lives, and in some cultures children may enjoy optimal developmental outcomes due to other, non-authoritative parenting styles (dwairy, 2004; garcia & garcia, 2009). the participants’ tendency to form a parenting style that ranges between authoritative and authoritarian is compatible with their cultural background, and their perception that normative parenting in the fsu entails full parental authority (slonim-nevo et al., 1999; walsh et al., 2006). yet the encounter between this parenting style and the child-rearing practices prevalent in israel confronts the participants with complex challenges and the need to revise their way of thinking about parenting. it should be http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=moed,%20anat http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=liew,%20jeffrey international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 17 remembered, however, that most of the youth in the study were preadolescent when they lived in the fsu, thus the parents’ preference for a particular parenting style may be affected not only by cultural background, but by children’s maturation as well. after immigrating to israel, parents find it difficult to fulfil their parental responsibility. due to long working hours, they lack time to pay attention to their children (roeters et al., 2010), and the adjustment hardships they encounter often leave them emotionally unavailable to their children. these factors have a detrimental effect on their parenting. many parents report that their enforced lack of availability leads to distancing on the part of the children, and a feeling of missing out for the parents themselves. it is possible that the participants’ tendency toward authoritarian child-rearing practices is partially a product of their new reality, as their exhaustion and overload don’t leave much space and patience for parental acceptance, nor for exploration of alternative approaches. another factor that tests participants’ parental responsibility is language difficulties. these difficulties cause shame and anger in some children, expressed in verbal aggressiveness towards the parents. some participants tend to belittle the meaning of the phenomenon and relate to it with humor. humor helps to reframe uncontrollable events and promotes coping with the stress that accompanies them (folkman, lazarus, pimley & novacek, 1987). in conflict situations humor can temper and even end the conflict (norrick & spitz, 2010). many parents feel powerless in situations that challenge their hebrew language skills, and their children’s reactions sharpen that feeling. relating to the events described in a humoristic manner makes them seem less serious and diminishes their threat to the parents’ authority. many parents report that children help them with translations. immigrant children often become language brokers for their families, translating the new language when needed (jones & trickett, 2005). this brokering usually includes the interpretation of cultural norms and practices, so that children become cultural mediators as well. some participants perceive language mediation as a positive factor strengthening the self-esteem of the child, while others perceive it as a negative factor that increases their feeling of helplessness and dependence on children. language brokering has been considered a stressor and a burden for an immigrant child, but at the same time as a factor having a variety of cognitive, emotional, and social benefits (ponizovsky et al., 2012). some studies describe the advantage of language mediation in terms of high academic achievement (acoach & web, 2004), selfconfidence (buriel, perez, de ment, chavez, & moran, 1998), cooperation with family members, and closeness to parents (dorner, orellana & jiménez, 2008). other studies point to high levels of depression, anxiety, and somatic complaints among mediating children (weisskirch & alva, 2002), and low self-esteem and confrontations with parents concerning mediation (oznobishin & kurman, 2009). interviews yielded a complex picture in which language mediation is perceived as possibly benefiting the child but also as raising his or her status at the parents’ expense. the rather negative experience related to language brokering that was found in this study may be explained by cultural characteristics of parenting. as noted above, the participants mostly preferred an authoritative–authoritarian parenting style. language brokering may increase children’s dominance in their relationships with their parents, thus impairing immigrant parents’ authority (oznobishin & kurman, 2009). another factor relating to parental responsibility that caused difficulty for the participants was the cultural gap between their perception of child rearing in their culture of origin and their perception of child rearing in israel. the parents experience israeli childrearing practices as setting no limits, encouraging inconsiderate behavior, and turning parents into passive people who give in to their children’s caprices. the participants’ children, after international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 18 being exposed to the educational perceptions prevalent in israel, tend to adopt unacceptable behavior patterns. parents are especially troubled by behaviors that lead to disparaging their authority and eroding discipline. cultural transition challenges immigrant parents’ parenting perceptions and requires them to engage in continuous cultural negotiation in which some traditional parenting components will disappear, some will be maintained, and some will be reinforced from generation to generation (choi, kim, pekelnicky, & kim, 2013). participants describe a complex process in which they try to find a balance between their perception of parenting and education and the demands of their new reality. most of them try to maintain traditional education patterns (authoritative–authoritarian parenting), even at the expense of the child feeling conspicuous or out-of-place among peers. preservation efforts are expressed in the participants’ strict following of cultural components of parental responsibility, such as discipline and control, maintaining rules of behavior that were prevalent before immigration, and encouraging social contacts with children who speak russian. many parents understand that in order to maintain a close relationship with their children, they will have to change, but experience this change as threatening and are not sure whether they will be able to accomplish it. these experiences arouse feelings of uncertainty and helplessness in some parents, thus undermining their sense of parental efficacy. parental efficacy is defined as one’s estimation of one’s ability to be a competent and successful parent (coleman & karraker, 2003). it is a focal component of parenting and is connected to a general sense of self-efficacy and positive affect (coleman & karraker, 2003) as well as to supportive parenting and limited use of inefficient disciplinary means (slagt, deković, de haan, van den akker, & prinzie, 2012). in order to cope with feelings of helplessness and undermined parental efficacy, some participants considered the possibility of getting professional help. some parents turned to me during the interviews with direct requests to advise them on appropriate ways of coping, or asked whether there were professional services that could help them and their children. only one mother had already sought professional help concerning relations with her adolescent daughter. in spite of feeling helpless and uncertain, most interviewees did not mention at all the possibility of getting professional help. fsu immigrants’ reluctance to turn to psychosocial services is generally attributed to a basic difference between such services in fsu and in western countries, lack of trust in the establishment, fear of stigma, and so forth (leipzig, 2006). as a result, immigrant parents who experience difficulties in relations with their children are left alone with their problems and try to cope with the means at their disposal, means that are often limited and unsatisfactory due to the lack of availability, language difficulties, cultural gaps, and other problems. the participants tended to report mostly negative effects of immigration on their parenting. only two parents reported that there had been a positive shift in their relations with their adolescents following immigration; both perceived this shift as resulting from changes in the family structure after arriving in israel (distancing from over-involved grandparents and getting support from the extended family). these findings support the notion that immigrant families may experience more difficult intergenerational relations due to greater cultural distance between the adolescents and their parents, as compared to non-immigrant families (kwak, 2003). crosnoe and fuligni (2012) point out that historically it was believed that immigrant children and their families were found to be struggling on many key indicators of wellbeing; however, several recent studies suggest that, despite the many obstacles, immigrant children and families are in fact doing better than native-born children and http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=kim,%20hyun%20jee international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 19 families. while the extant literature provides evidence for both perspectives (crosnoe & fuligni, 2012), this study supports the former. the study was conducted in the israeli social context and based on interviews with immigrant parents from the fsu. some of the findings are unquestionably specific to the israeli-russian cultural encounter (e.g., perception of effective parenting, specific childrearing practices, willingness to get professional help). however, its insights are highly relevant to those who work with immigrant families in other immigration-receiving countries. despite the diversity of immigrant populations, and of hosting societies, immigrant parents around the world encounter many common challenges and experiences (turney & kao, 2009). the parental image of the adaptive adult, as well as child-rearing practices that are significantly influenced by the parents’ culture, undergo substantial changes during immigration (roer-strier & rosenthal, 2001). the parenting style that was formed in the country of origin and was practised in the family until immigration may come in conflict with parenting practices accepted in the new country, creating intergenerational difficulties for immigrant parents and their adolescent children. immigrant adolescents’ exposure to different and sometimes conflicting norms and values by various socialization agents (e.g., school, parents) may impair their school functioning (chandler, argyris, barnes, goodman, & snow, 1986) and even lead to inconsistency in value priorities across distinct life contexts (daniel et al., 2012). as to immigrant parents, cultural differences in parenting confront them with complex challenges in fulfilling their parental responsibility as they perceive it. the conflict is further intensified by parents’ adaptation difficulties that make them less available for their children, and language deficiency that puts them in need of children’s language mediation (jones & trickett, 2005), as well as by changes in children’s behavior following immigration. the parents are engaged in a continuous process of cultural negotiation and change (choi et al., 2013) that may threaten and undermine their sense of parental efficacy (coleman & karraker, 2003). this study supports already existing knowledge on immigrant families’ adaptation with regard to such issues as cultural differences in parenting practices, loss of parental authority, and parent–child cultural distance. its unique contribution lies in recognizing the significance of parental responsibility as a crucial factor in immigrant parents’ adaptation, refining its key elements and culture-specific characteristics, and documenting the challenges faced by parents while struggling to fulfil their responsibility in cultural transition. the study illustrates the conflict between the “old” and the “new” induced by exposure to new social norms and by inevitable changes in youth’s behavior, and demonstrates how this conflict is experienced by the parents and impacts their sense of parental efficacy and wellbeing. a significant advantage of this study is its phenomenological nature that allows for in-depth and empathic understanding of immigrant parents’ reality. summary fsu immigrants constitute a large minority group in israel (17% of the israeli population). as a result, public social and educational services stress the development of culturally-appropriate intervention practices, including the employment of russian-speaking professionals, in order to address the needs of this population. the israeli ministry of education operates a variety of programs aimed at promoting immigrant students’ integration into the education system, and provides their families with mediation and translation services and counseling (israeli ministry of education, 2013). the israeli anti-drug authority organizes parents’ groups for russian-speaking parents with an emphasis on developing parenting skills and preventing risk-taking behaviors (israeli anti-drug authority, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 20 immigrant parents’ needs are also addressed by social and psychological services at the municipal level. as well, help and support are offered to newcomers by non-profit immigrants’ organizations, such as the immigrant parents forum association that operates the family assistance program. this program provides guidance for immigrant parents whose adolescent children are involved in crime (yakhnich & teichman, 2015). service providers and professionals working with immigrant parents, both in the public sector and through ethnic associations, should consider the issues that have emerged in this study. most importantly, immigrant parents in need should be identified as early as possible, since most of them will not spontaneously ask for help. the assistance, whether administered individually or in groups, should focus on increasing flexibility in immigrants’ parenting styles according to changes occurring in their children’s behavior. this may be done through activities aimed at raising parents’ awareness of their parenting styles, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of existing styles in dealing with children’s behavior, and helping to adapt their parenting to families’ contemporary needs. parallel sessions that assist the youth in understanding their parents, as well as joint parent–adolescent meetings, may be highly helpful. early intervention may prepare parents for future changes and reduce their sense of helplessness. supporting immigrant parents and meeting their emotional needs may lessen their sense of being overwhelmed and make them more available to their children. service providers should help distressed parents to clarify priorities and organize their time, while raising their awareness of children’s needs and emphasizing the importance of parental involvement. helping parents overcome language difficulties may reduce their dependence on children’s language mediation, thus strengthening parental status and authority. finally, child protection services should be aware of the conflicts and challenges facing immigrant parents. parental exhaustion, confusion, and a sense of helplessness may increase the likelihood of child neglect and abuse. limitations and future directions this study has certain limitations. first, the study sample was relatively small, and only parents who gave their consent participated in the study. the experiences of the parents who refused to be interviewed may have been different, possibly even more complex and difficult. their refusal may have stemmed from not wishing to talk about issues that raise feelings of frustration. therefore any generalizations need to be made carefully. second, the participants vary in the length of time they have lived in israel from one and a half to five years. i felt that parents with longer residencies had had more opportunities to reflect on parenting in immigration: their children had undergone more thorough socialization in israeli society and the gap between children and parents was greater. future studies should narrow the range of residence duration in the host country, and provide information about the social, cultural, and economic conditions faced by the participants. this will enable the researchers to focus on a more homogeneous sample. the third limitation is that only a few fathers participated in the study. the couples i contacted decided for themselves which parent would be interviewed, and most chose the mother. there was no difference in fathers’ and mothers’ level of participation or in the issues they raised; however, future research should focus on each group separately. finally, as a large part of immigrant adolescents’ adaptation takes place within the educational system, it would also be of interest to explore the connection between parenting and adolescents’ school experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 1–26 21 references acoach, c. l., & webb, l. m. 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(2003). adolescent-parent conflict in hong kong and shenzhen: a comparison of youth in two cultural contexts. international journal of behavioral development, 27(3), 201–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2006.00134.x “this is my responsibility”: parental experience of former soviet union immigrant parents in israel parenting parenting adolescents parenting and parent–child relationships in immigration immigrant families from the fsu in israel present study method participants procedures data analysis credibility results parental responsibility who is the responsible parent: components of good parenting difficulties in fulfilling parental responsibility in immigration coping with children’s changing behavior discussion summary limitations and future directions references microsoft word 07 editor_intro.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120230 introduction to special issue: “youth transitions to education and employment: a mobilities perspective” angèle smith and nicole power abstract: this special issue focuses on the geographical and spatialized mobilities related to youth transitions to post-secondary education and employment. the “mobility turn” in social sciences in the last decade recognizes that life is increasingly organized and shaped by mobilities (and immobilities) across varying spatial and temporal scales. yet these mobilities have only recently been examined and theorized as central to understanding the complexity and diversity of young people’s experiences. the collection of articles in this special issue presents a multiplicity of young people’s relationships to mobilities, particularly as they pursue post-secondary education and employment. the papers are concerned with: (a) the motivations for and expectations of imagined mobility (the innumerable reasons why youth choose, or are compelled, to move or stay), whether focused on the outmigration or inmigration of mobile youth; (b) the lived experiences that youth have in their mobility practices (focusing on multistranded relationships between places of origin and destination, or recognizing the temporality of that mobility); and (c) the value that these youth mobility studies have for policy issues and policy recommendations. the papers in this issue are case studies concerned with youth mobility prior to the covid-19 pandemic. they use qualitative and quantitative methods, representing interand cross-disciplinary approaches from anthropology, sociology, education, communication, and rural development studies. they derive from a collaboration through the on the move partnership, an 8-year interdisciplinary research initiative with a key focus on young people’s employmentand education-related geographical mobilities in canada. keywords: youth, mobilities, transitions, education, employment, precarity angèle smith phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor and chair of anthropology, university of northern british columbia, 3333 university way, prince george, bc v2n 4z9. email: angele.smith@unbc.ca nicole power phd is a professor in the department of sociology, memorial university of newfoundland and labrador, 230 elizabeth avenue, st. john’s, nl a1c 5s7. email: npower@mun.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 2  youth transitions to post-secondary education and employment have been the subject of a large body of research. yet while geographical and spatialized mobilities are related to such transitions, these mobilities have only recently been theorized and examined as central to understanding the complexity and diversity of young people’s experiences. the “mobility turn” (cresswell, 2010; faist, 2013; sheller & urry, 2006) taken by youth scholars reflects in part a broader interest in mobilities as a central factor of contemporary life. as cresswell (2006, 2010) and others have pointed out, it is not that spatialized mobility is new; rather, the mobility turn reflects the observation that life is increasingly organized and shaped by the mobilities of some and the immobilities of others across spatial and temporal scales. robertson, harris, and baldassar (2018) developed a “mobile transitions” framework to examine the unique character of young people’s relationships to mobilities. rather than conceiving mobilities as a linear pathway to adulthood via education or employment, these authors pay attention to “the multiplicities of youth mobilities and transitions” and propose a framework that focuses on three “ ‘domains’ of transition — economic opportunities, social relations and citizenship practices” (pp. 209–210). in canada and globally, young people are pursuing post-secondary education and training at higher rates than previous generations did (statistics canada, 2017b). at the same time, young people today are experiencing high unemployment rates and increased precariousness (foster, 2012; morissette, 2016; statistics canada, 2017a), and this is especially true for rural regions experiencing high rates of outmigration of youth (foster & main, 2018). in this context, governments, employers, and communities are interested in the relationship between young people’s mobilities and their education and employment. this special issue focuses on youth transitions to education and employment, taking a mobilities perspective. the youth mobility literature examining education and employment has focused on a number of key concerns. the first relates to the motivations for and expectations of imagined mobility — the innumerable reasons why youth choose (or feel compelled) to move or stay. these reasons can be economically driven, or shaped by family members and community as active agents influencing the identity and actions of the youth. their motivations and expectations might also be shaped by institutions, such as universities that represent potential opportunities (brannen & nilsen, 2007; carling & collins, 2018; caviezel et al., 2018; cuzzocrea, 2018; glick schiller & salazar, 2013; kellerman, 2012). or, the youth might be influenced by place-based attachments that can mediate their mobility practices (jones, 1999; ní laoire, 2001; norman & power, 2015). studies of motivations and expectations can focus either on the outmigration or the inmigration of mobile youth — where youth are leaving from or where they are moving to. for rural youth scholars, primarily in the united kingdom, canada, australia, and nordic countries, outmigration has been a main focus (e.g., bjarnason & thorlindsson, 2006; drozdzewski, 2008), often examining the relationship between the rural community and youth outmigration. youth mobility studies focusing on inmigration are interested in youth’s motivations and expectations in moving to a destination place — perhaps to attend an international university or to work at a tourist site international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 3  (e.g., cairns, 2010; hall & williams, 2010; o’reilly et al., 2019; sheller & urry, 2004). such research examines the representation of these places and the imagined experiences of moving to, living in, and studying or working in them. whether studying outmigration or inmigration, youth mobility studies are concerned with questions about the roles of family (e.g., baldassar & sala, 2017; holdsworth, 2013), community, and place (e.g., prince, 2014) in shaping the varied motives for and expectations of moving for educational and employment purposes. the second key concern involves the lived experiences that youth have in their mobility practices. imagined expectations of mobility can be quite different from the lived experience, causing tensions that are best examined through three approaches to mobility experiences (van geel & mazzucato, 2018). the first approach uses the “mobility paradigm”, which recognizes that the study of mobility allows for understanding the daily lived experiences that shape identity, belonging, and a sense of place (faist, 2013; sheller & urry, 2006; van geel & mazzucato, 2018). it is through mobility that complexities and sometimes conflicts of social and material realities are negotiated. the mobility paradigm in youth studies focuses on how mobilities affect the realities of youth on the move, shaping their experiences and thus their self-development and sense of selfidentity (ball & moselle, 2016; cairns; 2014; robertson, cheng, et al., 2018). the second approach within this second key concern of understanding the tension in the lived experience of mobility recognizes the multistranded relationships between the traveller’s place of origin and place or places of destination, drawing on the transnational approach to mobility (de jong & dannecker, 2018; glick schiller et al., 1995; levitt, 2009; yoon, 2014). these relationships cut across social, economic, political, and cultural domains in various ways. travellers maintain ties between where they are coming from (origin or home) and where they are going (destination). this kind of translocal experience of mobility is navigated across different domains and across different social spaces (appadurai, 1995; brickell & datta, 2011; freitag & von oppen, 2010; greiner & sakdapolrak, 2013; hannerz, 1998). this approach questions how the translocal experience affects the agency, identity, and self-development of mobile youth, as well as their interactions and relationships. both the mobility paradigm and the transnational and translocal approach observe the “transcultural capital” of mobile youth, which is concerned with the value and social relationships derived from mobility (calzada & gavanas, 2018; glick schiller & meinhof, 2011; meinhof & triandafyllidou, 2006). the third approach within this second key concern of studying the tension in the lived experience of mobility recognizes the experiential dimension of time in mobility, including nonlinear time, rhythms of mobility, and different cultural understandings of time (cwerner, 2001; griffiths et al., 2013; marcu, 2017). the temporally informed approach to mobility examines how time interconnects with aspects of geographic mobility, such as what relationships are formed and in what ways; how time considerations shape the patterns of mobility; and how time impacts the sense of self, and self-development, agency, and identity. this approach appreciates that it is better to understand the complex mobility of youth as a process rather than as an event. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 4  thus, while there is clearly agency in the real lived experiences of youth mobility, these experiences are often fraught with challenges, tensions, insecurity, fragility, and precarity. butler (2004, 2010) and others (e.g., carbonella & kasmir, 2014; kasmir, 2018; neilson & rossiter, 2008; standing, 2011) have explained precarity as the social marginalization of global forms of exploitation that shape the infrastructure and ideology of employment and education, and, we would add, even shape the concept of youth itself. precarity, therefore, is fundamentally political. it is not surprising then that the third key concern in youth mobility has to do with policy issues and policy recommendations (coles, 2005; hahn-bleibtreu & molgat, 2012; molgat & taylor, 2012). the articles in this special issue highlight these key issues and approaches in a collection of case studies using qualitative and quantitative methods and applying both interand crossdisciplinary approaches from anthropology, sociology, education, communication, and rural development. they originate from collaboration through the on the move partnership1, an ongoing 8-year interdisciplinary research initiative that examines contexts, patterns, processes, and consequences of employment-related geographical mobility on workplaces, workers and their families, and communities in canada (dorow et al., 2017). young people’s employmentand education-related geographical mobilities have been a key focus for on the move. the case studies presented in this issue focus on youth mobility prior to the covid-19 pandemic. in “how important is a school? examining the impact of remoteness from a school on canadian communities’ attraction and retention of school-age children”, karen foster, hannah main, and ray bollman examine the outmigration of youth from rural communities. they focus on the distance to public schools as a key determinant and motivation for the mobility of youth and their families. they focus on the impacts that school closures have on the community and community services. in doing so, they present two standpoints that connect schools discursively with mobilities. the first standpoint argues for keeping underattended schools open in order to avoid more families choosing to leave the community. the second standpoint concedes that school closures are a reasonable result of past population decline. studying the population change of school-age children in canadian census subdivisions indexed by distance to the nearest school, the authors examine the correlation between the school-age population in a community and proximity to a school in that community. a community school and place attachments are key mobility motivations for choosing to stay or to leave. in “beating broke by getting out? examining the relationship between personal debt and community outmigration”, alyssa gerhardt and karen foster also look at motivations and expectations of mobility as they examine the role of personal debt in young peoples’ decisions to stay in or leave their current communities. scholarship on young people’s geographical mobilities tells us that young adults move away from their childhood communities for a complex mix of motivations: economic “push–pull” reasons, relationships, aspirations, attachments to place, 1www.onthemovepartnership.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 5  identity, and belonging. yet, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to an issue that is a vital concern for many young adults today: personal debt. the authors hypothesize that being young and in debt increase a person’s likelihood of moving away from peripheral regions and test this hypothesis using data from a 2019 survey of atlantic canadians. their findings suggest that there is good reason to examine in greater detail the role of debt in youth mobilities. in “the complex mobilities of rural versus urban youth: mobility into and out of the parental home and one’s community”, e. dianne looker examines the options facing rural versus urban youth as they negotiate complex mobilities while moving into adulthood. specifically, looker looks at the links between geographic mobility in and out of one’s home community, and mobility in and out of the parental home. leaving the parental home is clearly a process rather than an event, and for many it is subjective and ambiguous. many youth return to the parental home for varying lengths of time, with more rural than urban youth following this pattern, which reflects the often limited educational and work options in rural areas. having the option to return gives youth an additional way of dealing with the challenges of these complex mobilities. this complex process of leaving and returning highlights the experiential dimension of time in mobility and emphasizes the multifaceted relationships between mobile youth’s places of origin and destination. unlike the other articles, “precarity, agency and unsustainability: the mobility of young adult tourism workers in banff national park, canada”, explores effects of inmigration rather than outmigration. angèle smith focuses on young adults who travel to, work, and live in the rocky mountain resort destination of banff national park in western canada. this work-related mobility often marks the first, or at least an early, work experience for the young person. it is an experience impacted by two primary factors. the first factor is that the jobs are in the tourism industry, and are therefore precarious. the second factor focuses specifically on the place and community of banff and how national park regulations, and circumstances and attitudes in the town of banff, shape the particular conditions of precarity and workers’ degree of agency within the tourism industry there. while the motives and agency vary amongst young adult tourism workers, these two factors influence the precarity and instability of their mobility and work experiences. this can shape their work experience knowledge both negatively and positively. this highlights the importance of using the mobility paradigm to explore the experiences and realities of youth on the move and their sense of self-identity and agency amidst precarity. in “ ‘(im)mobile precarity’2 among young people in newfoundland and labrador”, nicole power also examines the relationship between work-related mobilities and precarity, focusing on the experiences and subjectivities of poor and working-class youth living in the province of newfoundland and labrador, canada. in a context of broader regimes of mobility associated with resource extraction and labour market volatility, young people without formal qualifications move 2(im)mobile precarity is a term that martin et al. (2019) use to describe the relationship between mobility and precarity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 6  around for work and education, and, as they do so, incur debt, experience housing insecurity, and live precarious lives. as a result, youth expressed a disorientation or uncertainty regarding decisions about work, education, and mobility, and developed a pragmatic approach to work as a way to make a living rather than a pathway to a meaningful life. the paper argues that the structure of local labour markets, and of education and training, cheapen youth labour, which has implications for their capacity to live independent lives. these papers speak to the challenges, tensions, insecurity, fragility, and precarity that impact the motivations and expectations surrounding, and the lived experiences of, youth mobility. as such, not only do they contribute to the growing literature on youth mobility and mobile transitions to education and employment, but they may also serve to inform a variety of policy issues in this area. the discussions of the economic, social, and political motivations affecting mobility (personal debt, availablility of local community schools, and so on), the process and rhythm of leaving and returning, and the tensions between the imagined experience of youth mobility and the lived reality that mobile youth actually encounter could all be of value to policymakers concerned with youth outmigration and inmigration as they transition to education and work. in the context of the current global pandemic that has severely curtailed mobility, for some more than others, and has had a profound impact on young people (statistics canada, 2020), the insights in these articles offer direction to decision-makers interested in addressing the disproportionate employment and educational impacts on young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 1–11 7  references appadurai, a. 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(2014). transnational youth mobility in the neoliberal economy of experience. journal of youth studies, 17(8), 1014–1028. doi:10.1080/13676261.2013.878791 “i’m lucky” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 83 “i’m lucky” . . . to have found child care: evoking luck while managing child care needs in a changing economy patrizia albanese and tanya farr abstract: this research1 looks at the impact of the rise of women’s non-standard, service sector employment on gender roles, identities and relations, and compares the complex task of finding and managing formal and informal non-parental child care in rural and semi-rural communities in two policy jurisdictions (ontario and quebec) in the ottawa valley. it seeks to understand the ways in which the neo-liberal reconfiguration of local economies impact on the experiences of employed, non-urban women with young children – mitigated by provincial policy decisions – through documenting the strategies they adopt to cope with challenges when managing this family-market-state nexus. this paper specifically focuses on mothers’ use of the notion of “luck” in describing how they found and managed their unique child care needs. luck, in the psychological literature, is often treated as either an external, unstable, and uncontrollable cause, or an internal personal attribute. this paper shows that its use and invocation in response to questions about finding and managing child care has to do with gendered perceptions of control and power(lessness) over social circumstances related to geography, government policies, and changing, and at time precarious, economic/labour market circumstances. keywords: precarious employment, family policies, child care, mothering, luck corresponding author: dr. patrizia albanese, department of sociology, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on, m5b 2k3, palbanes@ryerson.ca patrizia albanese, ph.d. is associate professor in the department of sociology at ryerson university. she teaches research methods and the sociology of childhood. she is author of children in canada today (oxford, 2009) and child poverty in canada (oxford, 2010) and coauthor (with white and wyn) of youth & society (oxford, 2011). tanya farr was an undergraduate student in the department of sociology at ryerson. she is currently pursuing graduate studies. mailto:palbanes@ryerson.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 84 in the brave new world of work, ulrich beck (2000) noted that the collapse of the welfare state, the increased individualization of economic risks, and the growing precariousness in job tenure, are part and parcel of a new “political economy of insecurity”. transformations in the organization of work contribute to insecurity, job stress, and growing levels of work-family conflict, owing to long hours and lack of control over working time (thomas, 2009). this paper works to uncover the impact of the rise of this insecurity, job stress, and lack of control on the gender roles, identities, and relations of employed mothers managing formal and informal nonparental child care in rural and small-town (rst) communities in two policy jurisdictions, namely ontario and quebec. it asks: what are the strategies mothers adopt to cope with the daily challenges they face when navigating a changing rst family-market-state nexus? over the past three decades, the restructuring of the canadian economy and residual welfare state, has contributed to worker displacement, increased insecurity and alienation, family earnings instability, increased reliance on multiple jobs, and growing inequalities (bezanson & luxton, 2006; bezanson, 2006a; silver, shields, & wilson, 2005; morissette & ostrovsky, 2005; luxton & corman, 2001; hughes & lowe, 2000; cheal, 1998; woolley, 1998; luxton, 1998; macdonald, 1998; corman, livingstone, luxton, & secombe, 1993; luxton, rosenberg, & arat-koc, 1990; luxton & maroney, 1987). privatization, welfare state retrenchment, and global economic restructuring have been at the centre of this (pearson, 2007; stinson, 2006). the gendered outcomes of this restructuring at national and international levels have been profound, with mothers bearing a disproportionate share of the cost of social reproduction (bezanson, 2006b; mcdaniel, 2002; o’connor, orloff, & shaver, 1999; bakker, 1996). pearson (2007), for example, noted that with a growing number of women in paid work, “the increasing informalisation of employment…has left the majority of the female workforce outside regimes of welfare and social protection at the very historical moment when they have taken a vanguard role” (p. 736). recent scholarship has begun to expose the multiple ways in which the changing nature of paid work continues to be gendered (kessler-harris, 2007, p. 273), yet with only some exceptions (see leach, 2009), the impact of economic restructuring on the lives of rural women in canada has not been the focus of much attention. women and work in changing non-urban environments and economies: census data reveal that “rural canada is in trouble” (reimer, 2007, p. 3) as the population of rural areas and small towns grew by only 1% between 2001 and 2006. this is well below the national average (5.4%). trade in natural resources remains a key feature of these communities, but finding employment outside the primary sector has become essential for non-urban residents (leach, 2009; reimer, 2007; nurse, 2007; alasia, & magnusson, 2005; leach & winson, 1995). palmer (1994), for example, wrote about the capitalist recolonization of the “backcountry” made possible through changing communication technologies. authors like ibbitson (2005) have condemned small-town canada for being a colonialist cultural relic: conservative, static, and monocultural. on the other hand, while limited (cummins, 2005) some research on gender roles, identities, and relationships in contemporary non-urban economies has shown that rural restructuring and change is a growing reality; and that this change has had a profound impact on rural women’s paid and unpaid labour (leach, 2009; miewald & mccann, 2004; sachs, 1996; fitchen, 1991). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 85 rural economies have been negatively affected by global economic shifts. at the local level, these shifts have been characterized, first, by moves away from farming towards manufacturing, and later, away from manufacturing towards service sector employment (leach, 2009; fitchen 1991). dependency of rural areas on the state for some of the better paid service jobs (education, health services, local bureaucracy and related state services) has also tended to make rural areas vulnerable to state retrenchment and downsizing (leach, 2009). what remain then, are lower-paid, service sector jobs (for example, see fitchen, 1991, on rural upstate new york). this has had implications and repercussions on gender roles and relations. whatmore (1994) showed that changes in rural production, reproduction, and consumption have reshaped gender relations, and that women’s caring labour at home directly influences their capacity to take on paid work outside the home. heather, skillen, young, and vladicka (2005) focusing on the social reproduction of patriarchal subjectivities in rural communities mapped women’s triple responsibility for the survival of farm, family, and community, accentuated by agricultural and health care restructuring in alberta. similarly, american research by miewald and mccann (2004) documented the impact of the declining male-dominated mining industry in the appalachian coalfields, and the increase in femaledominated service jobs, which produced a series of struggles between men and women over appropriate gender roles relating to waged work and household work, in turn, negatively influencing social relations. leach’s (2009) research in ontario’s north wellington county showed that despite first holding and then losing similar jobs in manufacturing, men and women had different experiences and outcomes following the rural economic restructuring. some feminist researchers have argued that women’s invisibility actually increased as their workloads changed (whitzman, 2006; heather et al., 2005; johnston, 1998)2 . at the same time, rural restructuring has forced many women to become more creative in their strategies for meeting their own and their families’ physical, emotional, and economic needs (mckinley wright, 1995). research is making it increasingly clear that rural restructuring has resulted in limited employment opportunities for women, further away from home, with few options when it comes to child care (albanese, 2009; mckinley wright, 1995; fitchen, 1991). leach and winson (1995) explained that following job losses in rural manufacturing in southern ontario, men were more likely than women to find skilled work, typically requiring long commutes. in contrast, due to family responsibilities, women were limited to seeking work in limited, micro labour markets closer to home (leach & winson, 1995). this was both similar to and different from the experiences of women and families in the upper ottawa valley, in ontario and quebec. the upper ottawa/outaouais was hit by cuts and job losses in the male-dominated forestry and logging industries even before the recent economic crisis hit other parts of canada (albanese, 2009; human resources and skills development canada, 2005; statistics canada, 2002, 2005; dufour, 2002). the recent economic crisis simply made matters worse, where, for example, by december 2009, monthly lumber production in sawmills decreased 14.3% compared to the same month the previous year. production declined by 9.7% in one month alone, between november and december 2009 (statistics canada, 2010a). while this may be good international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 86 news for environmentalists, it spells the loss of some of the higher paying jobs across all industries in canada. for example, in 2008, average weekly earnings of those working in the forestry and logging industry were $935.84 (or $21.87 per hour), well above average weekly earnings of those in educational services ($862.64) and health care and social assistance ($743.94), both of which, not surprisingly, are female-dominated industries (statistics canada, 2009a and 2009b)3 . job losses in the forestry and logging industry were slightly offset by gains in some service sector jobs, where average weekly earnings are low: by comparison, average weekly earnings in retail trade were $475.17 or $13.09 per hour (statistics canada, 2009a, 2009b). customer service call centres, and other non-unionized, low-wage paying employers have emerged to set up shop near the border in ontario, to tap into a relatively cheap, often bilingual, feminized labour force (see akeyeampong, 2005). rising need for non-parental child care with the rise of women’s service and nonstandard employment: while fertility rates have been declining across canada, they are still higher in rural areas compared to urban centres (malenfant, milan, charron, & bélange, 2007) and the proportion of women with young children in the labour force has been increasing steadily. by 2005, 81% of women ages 25 to 54 were in the labour force (marshall, 2006; luffman, 2006), as were 71.9% of mothers with young children (roy, 2006). their average time spent on paid and unpaid work also increased (marshall, 2006). this coincides with the rise of neo-liberal governance, and the undervaluing and reprivatization of social reproduction (albanese, 2007; bezanson, 2006a; stinson, 2006; gill & bakker, 2003; perrons, 2000). with cuts to public expenditure and privatization, “good jobs” for women are being replaced with insecure, low-waged employment (stinson, 2006; statistics canada, 1998). in the ottawa valley, this has coincided with the loss of well-paid, male-dominated jobs forcing a growing proportion of families to depend on the wages of women for subsistence. this has also resulted in women being forced to enter or re-enter the labour force soon(er) after the birth of a child, which inevitably has required them to find some form of non-parental child care. a growing proportion of canadians are working rotating or irregular shifts (vanier institute of the family, 2010; albanese 2009; williams, 2008). the 2005 general social survey revealed that by that year, some 28% of the 14.6 million employed canadians (a total of 4.1 million workers) worked shifts – something other than 9 to 5 (williams, 2008). men made up 63% of full-time shift workers, while women made up 69% of part-time shift workers (vanier institute of the family, 2010). while some claim to be “choosing” shift work to help balance work and family obligations, canadian research has shown that shift workers report lower levels of satisfaction with their “work-life balance” compared to those working 9 to 5 (williams, 2008; see jacobs & gerson, 2001 on challenges balancing paid work and family life), and many find that the hours of operation of child care centres and some home daycares do not coincide with their actual, often rotating and shifting, child care needs (albanese, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 87 child care policy in canada, and in quebec and ontario: canada, as a whole, has been classified as a “liberal welfare state” because it relies on the free market rather than generous state support to families and social programs (esping-andersen, 1990, 1999, 2003). canadian family policies, for example, are for the most part, limited, targeted, and not very “family-friendly” (o’connor et al., 1999). but due to canada’s jurisdictional complexity, one of its provinces, quebec, is closer to a social democratic model in its policy intents and generosity (baker, 2006; krull, 2007; albanese, 2011). since the mid1990s, quebec has been transforming its once patriarchal and later pronatalist policies (see albanese, 2011), towards more feminist-informed programs aimed at integrating paid work and family, promoting gender equity, and reducing family poverty (roy & bernier, 2007; jenson, 2001; paquet, n.d.). a simplified family allowance was introduced to complement the federal national child benefit (roy & bernier, 2007). quebec’s income tax laws were reformed, removing parents’ refundable tax credit for child care expenses (the federal one remains), when it introduced $5.00 per day (increased to $7.00 per day in 2004) child care for children using child care at least three days a week, regardless of family income and employment status (government of quebec, 2006; albanese, 2006; government of quebec, 2003; tougas, 2001a, 2002a, 2002b; bégin, ferland, girard, & gougeon, 2002). it introduced full-time, full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds and for four-year-olds living in “at-risk” neighbourhoods, and expanded school daycares at a reduced fee ($5.00 per day per child; later $7.00) for school-aged children in need of beforeand after-school care (albanese, 2011; japel, tremblay, & côtè, 2005), such that by 2005 there were 1,613 daycare services in quebec schools, resulting in 81% of public elementary schools offering them (commission on elementary education, 2006; tougas, 2001b). quebec also negotiated its withdrawal from the national ei maternity and parental leave benefits program to offer its own system with two options to parents (effective january 2006), both with more equitable eligibility criteria and more generous replacement rates than the national plan (albanese, 2011; ministère de l’emploi, de la solidarité sociale et de la famille, 2007; phipps, 2006). at the same time – in the late 1990s and early 2000s – the federal, provincial, and territorial governments were making progress towards improving access to quality child care across the country (through the national children’s agenda in 1997, the federal/provincial/territorial early childhood development agreement in 2000, and the multilateral framework on early learning and child care, 2003; also see government of canada and government of quebec (2005). however, after 2006, the federal conservative minority government replaced past funding commitments with their own “universal childcare benefit”, which gives families $100 monthly, before tax, for each child under age six, and professes to provide parents with “more choice in child care” (government of canada, 2006). as a result, in most of the country child care spaces remain expensive and in short supply such that between 2001 and 2004, close to 60% of all spaces created in canada were in quebec, further resulting in 43% of all children registered in daycare in canada being in quebec (roy, 2006). since 2006, expansion of child care has slowed, with spaces being available to less than 20% of newborn to five-year-old children, at fees ranging from $600 to $1,200 per month (see beach, friendly, ferns, prabhu, & forer, 2009; friendly & prentice, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 88 ontario set off on its own path after 2006, making some changes to its early learning programs. a new comprehensive early learning plan for ontario was set in motion following the june 15, 2009 release of what came to be known as the “pascal report” or the “premier’s report on early learning” (pascal, 2009). it called for, and indeed we are seeing, the establishment of full-day learning for fourand five-year-olds in ontario, which started in some schools in september 2010. there are plans for beforeand after-school programs for school-aged children, and further recommendations for the development of new or enhanced quality programs for younger children (through networks of child and family centres), and an enhanced parental leave program by 2020 (for details, see pascal 2009). none of this, however, was in the works when interviewing for this project began in late spring, 2009. this paper looks at mothers’ responses to questions about how they fulfill and manage their child care needs in parts of rural and small town ontario and quebec, in the midst of a whirlwind of change and insecurity. project approach and methodology the “distribution of paid work and caring work is inequitable” (perrons, 2000, p.105; kessler-harris, 2007), and increasingly so with economic globalization (stinson, 2006, 2007; pearson, 2004; bakker, 1996). feminist political economy contends that the weight of economic and state restructuring disproportionately burdens women. it calls for political mobilization that articulates how global production depends on the labour of women, stressing that the division of labour in reproductive work still puts the bulk of household responsibilities on women (pearson, 2004; macdonald, 1998). using this framework, this project sought to better understand the ways in which neo-liberal reconfigurations of non-urban economies have affected the lives and gender roles of employed, non-urban women with young children, and the strategies and networks they have adopted to cope with these changes. i [first author] conducted 55 interviews – 22 in quebec and 33 in ontario – with mothers of young children currently living and employed in the ottawa valley. this was a nonprobability purposive sample of employed mothers working in and around two economically stagnant, small urban centres near the ontario/quebec border, in the ottawa valley4 . the interviews were conducted in english in the women’s homes, a community centre, or neighbouring locales, in renfrew county, ontario, and the outaouais, in pontiac county, quebec. i zigzagged the region, travelling some 5,000 kilometres, over a three-month period, in the summer of 2009 to conduct the interviews. all the women who responded to ads placed in daycare centres, social services agencies, in local newspapers and radio, or heard through word of mouth, and volunteered to participate in the study were employed or nearing the end of their maternity leave and soon returning to paid work. all the women, on both sides of the border, were employed in the service sector, as a lab technician, a free-lance journalist, camp counsellor, in retail sales, in customer service call centres, in office management, child care, health care, and other social and public services. all but one woman in quebec were either married or living common-law. six of the women in ontario were raising their children on their own (and/or with the help of extended family), while the rest had male partners. all but one interview (at the mother’s request) were tape recorded, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 89 and approximately one hour in length. i asked about the women’s employment history and background, and the impact that they believed their paid work had on their household work, and their personal relationships5 . i asked the mothers about whether and how their roles and responsibilities at home, at work, and their overlap have changed with paid employment; about who cares for their children, where, and at what cost; about who manages their child care arrangements; and about how some of them manage child care in light of their own and/or their partners’ non-standard jobs and changing work schedules and shifts. the interviews were transcribed in the fall of 2009 and the winter of 2010, and data analysis began in earnest, when some themes and patterns were identified and compared. the interview transcripts were analyzed through open coding (strauss & corbin, 1990). this involved reviewing the transcripts line by line, uncovering a wide range of concepts and patterns. we then mapped out similarities and differences across and within the two groups (i.e., mothers in ontario and quebec). open coding, the next phase in the analysis, resulted in a large number of descriptive codes including the daily challenges faced by mothers, seasonal variations in their work and family responsibilities, the role of extended family and informal social networks, and the ongoing unequal and gendered expectations around domestic division of unpaid work within their households, almost regardless of their male partners’ employment status. interestingly, closer analysis, through axial coding, resulted in the emergence of a common theme across a range of open codes. an unanticipated pattern in the responses was the recurring mention of how “lucky” mothers felt when they actually found and were able to, relatively speaking, successfully manage adequate child care arrangements. mothers in both ontario and quebec evoked “luck”, at times referring to very similar things, and at other times in relation to quite diverse factors and sets of experiences unique to their geographic and economic circumstances. the psychology and sociology of luck: in the psychological literature (e.g., weiner et al., 1971), luck has been treated and perceived as an external, unstable, and uncontrollable cause, or as the property of individual people (i am lucky or unlucky). other researchers distinguish luck from chance, where luck is treated as a personal attribute, more external than chance, and where chance is viewed as a property of the environment (fischhoff, 1976). researchers who have explored the role played by superstitious thinking have suggested that these beliefs develop in individuals with a need for control, in an attempt to overcome perceived uncertainty in their surroundings (see wiseman & watt, 2004; irwin, 2000; jahoda, 1969; malinowski, 1948), as a coping mechanism following traumatic experiences (irwin, 1992; ross & joshi, 1992), or among those with lower life satisfaction (wiseman & watt, 2004). this is not unlike how religious people may explain god’s involvement in the outcome of situations. attributions to god/gods have been used to examine achievement motivation, helping behaviour, and coping with stressful life events. several studies in this area have identified a relationship between individuals’ locus of control and attributions to god/gods (see p. mallery, s. mallery, & gorsuch, 2000; also see campbell, 1996). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 90 according to rotter’s (1966, 1982) social learning theory of personality, perception of control increases when events are thought to be determined primarily by the individual’s own actions. it would follow then that those who attribute their success to their own actions are also more likely to perceive they are in control of aspects of their lives. or, perhaps even more likely, those who actually have more control over situations are more likely to perceive themselves as more successful due to their own abilities, rather than to luck or other external factors. conversely, those with little control over their social circumstances may be more likely to attribute success and positive outcomes to chance or luck. not surprisingly, some have found that gender is also at play here. research shows that young athletes, for example, often show gender differences in sport attribution, with males attributing their success to controllable or stable factors such as their own ability and effort (see li, lee, & solmon, 2006), while female athletes attributed their success to uncontrollable or unstable factors like luck and social support (robinson & howe, 1989; rudisill, 1988; vealey, 1986)6 . this was not unlike some of the responses of graduate student mothers who attributed their success to luck (lynch, 2008), or marion elliott koshland’s description of her choice of career in immunology, in her autobiographical piece in the annual review of immunology (koshland 1996), or of norwegian 14and 15-year-old female students who were more likely than male students to believe in the importance of luck over ability in their educational efforts and success (manger & eikeland, 2000). similarly, in their study of attributes contributing to success, försterling, preikschas, and agthe (2007) found that female participants more often explained the success of attractive women by invoking luck rather than ability; however, when the stimulus person was male, women attributed his success to ability rather than luck, especially when he was attractive. rather than explain gender differences in attributions to luck using evolutionary theories, as some psychologists like försterling et al. (2007) have done, it may be more fruitful to seek explanations for women’s reference to luck to factors connected to lack of or limited control and power. for example, fredriksen (2005) makes it clear that “luck stands in opposition to control and not to causation” (p. 535). he adds that “to say it [a thing] happens by luck is only to say that we do not fully control these mechanisms” (p. 536)7 . according to ronald dworkin (2000), people’s fates are determined by their choices and their circumstances, which in turn are shaped by both their personal resources (qualities of the mind and body) and impersonal resources (parts of their environment that can be owned and transferred, like land, raw material, etc.). dworkin (2000) also distinguishes between “option luck” (the deliberate choice to take risks) and “brute luck” (unforeseen risks) and argues that in a just society, the impact of brute luck should not be reflected in the distribution of resources. but of course, it inevitably always is. within the luck literature, kim (2010) critically assessed dworkin’s work, focusing on gender inequality generated by the gender division of labour and unequal expectations and responsibility for child care, and its impact and relationship to paid work8. like many feminist scholars, kim (2010) makes the case that the gendered social structure generated by the gender division of labour is not “a case of bad brute luck” (p. 81), explaining that equality and justice are aspects not of the “natural order” but of long-standing human arrangements that are by no means gender neutral (see also kessler-harris, 2001; acker, 1990; stansell, 1987; lerner 1986). many feminists have shown that states create and reinforce international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 91 gendered legislative agendas and social policies that codify unequal social relations and norms (kessler-harris, 2001; o’connor et al., 1999; walby, 1997). this limits women’s participation in society, including their options when it comes to paid work (kessler-harris, 2001), but also undervalues the enormity of women’s caring work, which left unaddressed as it has been, hollows “victories” in the labour market (folbre, 2001; cockburn 1983,1985). in this paper we unpack and attempt to understand two interconnected findings: 1. our unexpected finding that many women in this study invoke the notion of luck when they describe how they have found and managed their daily child care arrangements; and 2. the reality that many of these women work very hard to do this in the midst of challenging geographic and social circumstances marred by economic insecurity, and limited, expensive, and at times inadequate options when it comes to child care. we believe these factors have a great deal to do with government policies and (in)action. we further believe that the use of the notion of luck and chance reflect the limited control and power these women have over their family responsibilities, workplace and broader economic circumstances, and provincial and federal family policies. we found both similarities and differences across the two provincial jurisdictions. findings a quebec/ontario difference – rural ontario mothers lucky to have family as the main/primary child care providers: in the midst of job losses in the relatively well-paid, male-dominated forestry sector in ontario and quebec – resulting in increased reliance on women’s employment – the notion of “luck” spontaneously surfaced in a strikingly large number of interviews. a number of mothers in both ontario and quebec said they were “lucky” or that a family member who could be counted upon to act as “back-up” caregiver in emergency situations was a “godsend” (more on this below). not surprisingly, though, due to limited access to affordable, regulated child care spaces in rural ontario – creating a need to find alternative, private, unregulated care on a regular, daily basis – more mothers in ontario relied on family members to act as their children’s main or primary caregiver while the mothers worked for pay. for example, ontario mothers invoked luck or godsend in the following comments: • yeah, so thank god i had family here. my sister sort of took over the caregiving role while i was able to work. i need to work. so, so that’s where we’re at now. thank god she [her daughter] goes to school in september, but then it’s the staggered bell and only every other day, and...she [her sister] does lots of things with her [her daughter], and it’s family, so it’s a lot easier. she [sister] comes here so it makes it so much easier for morning routine. (ontario mother, 2-024) 9 • she’s [her mother-in-law] just up the road here. two minutes up the road. i feel really lucky because i have that around me to start back to work like i’m one of the lucky ones. (ontario mother, 2-032) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 92 • the only thing i’m having a hard time with is i’m back at work. i’m working two days a week. i know i could work more. i know there’s the work here, but i can’t put her in daycare until she’s a year and a half. um, for the first time my partner’s mom is watching her. i’ve never had that kind of help before. so she’s watching her two days a week for me, which is a total godsend because it’s family, you know. you can’t ask for anything better than that, but she also works. (ontario mother, 2-034) • we got um...my husband’s [parents] are both retired so they’re a godsend. (ontario mother; 2-008) the limited access to affordable, regulated child care in rural ontario forced some women to turn to family members for care; and they considered themselves lucky to be able to do so. this reliance on extended family, and feeling lucky to have them around, underscored a number of interesting things, particularly in the ontario context (there was less need to call upon family on a regular basis in quebec because of $7.00 per day child care). first, it demonstrates – on the ground, through women’s lived experiences – what feminist analyses of social policy have long argued (see o’connor et al., 1999; eichler, 1997): that in canadian social policy (with, to a certain extent, the exception of quebec), children continue to be perceived and treated as personal lifestyle choices and the individual responsibility of parents and their extended families. the state, especially in ontario compared to quebec, provides few supports to families with young children, forcing many to rely on private arrangements for care. these rural ontario mothers did not see themselves as entitled to state assistance as citizens, as was the case in quebec, but instead felt “lucky” to have extended family around to help care for their children on a regular and/or daily basis because of inadequate social policies. having said this, most of the women interviewed, in both ontario and quebec, did not have extended family living nearby. many rural nuclear families, like other modern families, live a considerable distance from other family members; and in many cases, the children’s grandparents are themselves employed and unable to help out. contrary to conservative assumptions about the role (extended and nuclear) families should play in the care of children (teghtsoonian, 1993, 1995), relatively few women interviewed had parents living nearby, and only some of those parents/grandparents could easily take time off work, or were retired and in relatively good health. those who could count on extended family – this was especially visible in ontario – felt “lucky” to have geography and family circumstances on their side. a quebec/ontario difference – rural quebec mothers lucky to have family to fill gaps not covered by state-subsidized care: in quebec, all the mothers i interviewed had access to and were using $7.00 per day, state-subsidized child care. but this did not stop the requirement to call upon friends and family to assist with routine pick-up and drop-off from home daycares or larger centres. it was not uncommon for the quebec mothers and their partners to be doing shift work. often, centre hours of operation did not coincide with changing shifts and variable work schedules of either one or both parents (see jenson, 2009, for a discussion of the limitations of quebec’s programs). on those days, mothers found themselves scrambling to find someone to fill the gap, to pick up their child before the centre closed in the evening, or drop off their child at the centre before a parent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 93 returned from a night shift. one quebec mother working in health services, in two locations some 50 kilometres apart, said: • it’s a really challenging time; again we’ve really been lucky with both of our parents, because they basically take her [her daughter] on the days when i’m not coming up here; so like, on the monday, uh, i’m either home or i’m working here...and tuesdays we come here, she stays overnight at my in-laws so that wednesday morning when i work in [a neighbouring town] i don’t have to drive her up. (quebec mother, 1-006) mothers in ontario also worked shifts, as did their partners; however, because ontario mothers were much more likely to have private arrangements with family members or sitters (and were less likely to have centre-based care), this came up much less often in the ontario context. mothers in ontario who worked shifts often worked hard and paid dearly to make private and more flexible arrangements (part-time, late night, weekends, etc.) with family members and other caregivers to suit their child care needs in a changing and precarious labour market. a quebec/ontario similarity – child care in emergency situations: mothers in both rural ontario and quebec invoked luck when they spoke about how they managed child care “emergencies”. mothers in both ontario and quebec who had regulated centre or home-based child care struggled to find “back-up” care when their child was ill and the centres required the child to go or stay home. when describing these kinds of situations, mothers spoke of being lucky to have the arrangements that they had. for example, when one quebec mother received a call from her child’s daycare centre saying that her son was ill and needed to be picked up, she said (an ontario counterpart echoed the sentiment): • i was lucky and fortunate, because my mother called to tell me that she was taking the day off...he, he was sick again, and oh no, i can’t take a day off. i know i’ve got three meetings. like, i’m meeting with three people today and if i reschedule, i’m going to be too squeezed somewhere else within my week. so i said i can’t miss today. and if you take them to daycare when they have either diarrhoea or fever, they eventually call you back and you have to go get him. so, i just called my mom up and i was very lucky, she’s like, five minutes away. and she’s like, “oh you made my day. it’s okay. i’m going to go spend the day with my little coco bear” and i’m like, okay good. i was lucky. (quebec mother, 1-002) • i mean the odd time if my mom has been able to get the day off work when she’s [her daughter] been sick, then she’s taken her, instead of me having to leave work. but yeah, thank god for them [her parents]. i don’t know what i would do. (ontario mother, 2-007) it was interesting, and striking, that despite male job losses and supposed changes to gender roles, women often counted on other women – mothers and sisters – before they turned to their male partners for the emergency or temporary care of their children. for evidence of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 94 slow pace of change, see fox (2009) and walzer (1998). interviews revealed that some fathers were contributing to their children’s care by either picking up or dropping off children at daycare, but for the most part it was still mothers who made the arrangements, managed the schedules, and instructed their partners or female friends and relatives who helped fill the gap on a regular basis or in child care emergencies. a quebec/ontario similarity – waiting lists: luck was often also invoked by mothers, in both rural ontario and quebec, when waiting lists – a problem identified by some mothers on both sides of the border – were the topic of discussion. in some of these instances, the situation was especially dire but mothers still considered themselves lucky. for example, in one case, the woman’s daughter’s daycare centre, located in the ontario town where she lived [town a], informed her that it was closing. she was given a three-month notice to find alternative care, and somehow managed to find a daycare centre not far from her workplace that would take her daughter, though this was in a town many kilometres from her home [town b]. while this seemed ideal, it still proved to be a challenge because on the weekdays when she did not work, she was still obliged to drive her daughter to the new daycare in order to maintain her space. she nonetheless said: • we lucked into… i don’t know if it’s because we’re not subsidized that we were able to get a spot, i don’t know, i don’t know. but i think probably we were just lucky… there was a handful of us that needed to find care and it just happened that i work in [town b] so it was okay for us to be able to do that. and maybe some of the other people that were in [town a], you know, don’t have a job in [town b] to bring their child to daycare. so it was just luck; luck of the draw, i think. (ontario mother, 2-008) in another case, a quebec mother put her name on a waiting list when she found out that she was pregnant for the first time. sadly, this woman spoke of being lucky to get a spot in a daycare centre in a town located in the opposite direction from her workplace, after she had miscarried twice. she told me: • it’s tough to get into daycare, so wherever you get a spot you go. [interviewer: did you put your name on a waiting list at different centres?] i’ve actually miscarried twice before her, and my name was still on the lists from the first pregnancy, and i still hadn’t gotten a spot. so we were lucky to get a spot. and when it came, we ran, because i work, uh, i work about 15, i work about 20 minutes away from the daycare; so, i work 13 kilometres in one direction, and daycare is 12 kilometres in the other direction. (quebec mother, 1-008) more differences – ontario mothers more lucky (and less supported?): there were many similarities in the use of the notion of luck on the two sides of the border when mothers spoke about waiting lists and having personal support they can count on. there were also differences. it was striking but not surprising to see a disproportionate number of mothers in ontario – where child care and family policies are less generous – mention being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 95 lucky in regard to a much broader range of factors and circumstances. mothers in ontario mentioned being lucky in relation to the location of their homes compared to their workplace (rurality and long commutes compound this problem), having understanding employers or husbands, having found “good (enough)” private child care arrangements or providers, having “manageable” schedules or routines, qualifying for a child care subsidy (due to the very high cost of care), living in rural communities, and even having a “good” or “easy” child. these women thought themselves lucky in regard to a wide range of circumstances that, for the most part, they worked very hard to manage on a daily basis. despite a general lack of control over workplace hours and conditions, about half of the mothers in the ontario sample felt they were lucky to have understanding employers. there were cases where women (and not their husbands) lost hours or days of work, and their day’s pay, due to their child’s health and day care centres’ justifiable policies around illness – part of the individualization of economic risk – but still considered themselves lucky to have understanding employers or workplaces. for example, one single mother said the following: • her [daughter’s] dad’s in ottawa, so it’s not like he’s here to help. i think the biggest challenge is when she’s sick, or hurts herself. they’re very, very strict at that daycare, like any kind of temperature, or fever, they have to be picked up right away; so you know, i do miss a lot of work, for her being sick and stuff like that. so, i would say that’s a huge challenge, ’cause then i don’t get paid…[and that’s] at least once a month, ’cause i mean kids at that age…at least once a month. i mean, when she first started, like she was sick all the time, like, all the time…i’m really lucky. if i had a normal job where i had to be there to answer the phones, or greet customers, i don’t know how i would do it. (ontario mother, 2007) another said: • i talked with my executive director and was able to flex my time. i was very fortunate. yeah, so i only had to sort of, um, like i worked over my lunch hours, and i came in a little bit earlier, and you know, kind of worked it out that way. but it wouldn’t have worked out for long that way because i have meetings, i have other things, you know. (ontario mother, 2-002) some mothers in ontario sacrificed their pay and/or careers, took odd shifts, worked fewer hours, worked through their lunch hour, or worked in low-paid jobs, in order to be able to manage their children’s needs and balance the inevitable work-family conflict that results from lack of social supports, individualization of risk, and a residual liberal welfare state. all of this was obvious in the following examples: • i’ve been very lucky that was part of my employment arrangement that they paid me a very low salary and i got to take advantage of their summer camp. (ontario mother, 2-021) • for the company that i worked for in the city, a lot of times we worked late. i’d work until you know, 6:00 o’clock at night, sometimes 6:30 p.m., go in on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 96 saturdays or sundays or whatever, and after i had kids, i worked like 8:15 a.m. till 4:15 p.m. and that was it. but, i’m lucky because the company that i worked for in the city was flexible with my time. i didn’t have to start right at 8:00 a.m.…if i wanted to i could come in at 8:30 a.m. it didn’t really matter, as long as i put in my time after that. (ontario mother, 2-023) • it’s very exhausting, and i was off on sick leave. the last thing i needed was to find another daycare. and so i’ve gone back to work full-time, but i’m debating going to 90% hours…it’s an option for me at work. that’s why i’m very lucky, that they will do an altered work schedule because there’s enough people now. but my benefits are a big thing to me, and i can’t go less than 80% because i won’t have my long-term disability, which is a big thing for me as well, especially now. (ontario mother, 2-023) • like, we’ve bounced back and forth between five different people [caregivers] and we’ve been doing this all summer. so i was fortunate to apply for a morning rotation which i got and it will start in a couple weeks. so i’m very soon going to be moving to 7:00 a.m. till 11:00 a.m. shifts and, um, so my husband…but now the school hours have changed. (ontario mother, 2-028) • i could have had my name on the list as a casual [worker] or something, so that would have been beneficial for me. i don’t know, i think the whole just trying to get into the daycare system and trying to figure it all out now [is difficult]...i have a month to figure out if i qualify for subsidy, and if i can get the right days that can coordinate with my boss... luckily she’s been absolutely fabulous, and we’re all moms here so it works out that, you know, one mom takes her kids on thursdays [referring to a unique part-time, rotating child care arrangement] because it’s over there near her house, you know, so that works out well that way. (ontario mother, 2-034) • well, i was lucky. i was subsidized for most of the time ’cause my pay just wasn’t, yeah, so i was lucky that way, i didn’t pay anything. (ontario mother, 2024) these women spoke of luck but were resigned to accepting low wages, changing shifts, casual employment, and cuts to or extension of their (paid) work hours. this appeared to be the result of the precariousness of their household finances and job tenure, and tenacious gendered expectations about carework being women’s work, regardless of their partners’ employment status (men still for the most part only “helped out”). most spoke openly about lack of opportunities, lack of flexibility and choice, and having to take whatever was available, close enough to home, to make ends meet. one mother said: • i was working 5:00 till 9:00 in the evening and so that was very difficult you know, because i was never home and i’ve been doing this rotation for the past year so i’m never home at meal times, at supper time, or to… [interviewer interrupts: is that five days a week?] …no, a lot of times i work sevem days a week because they’re four hour shifts. so in order to build your hours and get a decent paycheck you’re almost there every day…that was difficult, very difficult. (ontario mother, 2-028) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 97 another said: • i looked for other jobs and a lot of the places were like, oh it depends on the day, if we see that it’s not busy, we’ll send you home; so things like that…”. (ontario mother, 2-027) for many of these women, jobs were scarce, options were limited, conditions were less than ideal, and salaries were low. nonetheless, many mentioned how lucky they were to have what they did. some of the mothers in ontario also considered themselves lucky when, through private arrangements (usually in unregulated care situations, also part of precarious, low-waged feminized employment), they found “understanding” caregivers, or caregivers who, while not offering healthy lunches, provided their children with a great deal of affection, or while not providing a stimulating environment, offered a safe and/or flexible child care arrangement, etc. in other words, “lucky” meant tolerating less than ideal care situations. moreover, while expressing how lucky they were over some aspect of their child care arrangement, a number of mothers admitted or implied they feared “rocking the boat” and losing their current private arrangement. for example, some ontario mothers stated the following: • i was very lucky to be able to negotiate, at one point, i took a week off and...i said [to the private child care provider] we have never taken a family vacation, i would like to arrange with you that i pull her out for a week, and i don’t pay you for that week. is that something that you’re flexible with? she did make that arrangement with me last year, and i think that’s on the basis of our solid relationship that we’ve worked on...i don’t think i’m going to do it this year, simply because...she has been very good to keep her once or twice a little extra, and i, i think i may do it next year. it was recently enough that i don’t want to do it again right now, uh, she has been very flexible for me lately and i’m going to need a little bit of flexibility from her going into this new position so i’d rather leave that open. (ontario mother, 2-006) • the kids love her because she’s fun, you know, and she does play with them, they love her kids. but they fight with her kids. like, she’s a lot of fun for the kids and i’m very lucky, like she does my laundry, she makes the beds, she runs the dishwasher – for which she is well paid. i’ve lucked out. like, she is worth it. but then other things need to change. (ontario mother, 2-023) [authors’ insertion: in this case, the caregiver did not enforce house and dietary rules set by the parents, but mother does. as a result, this mother was told by her own children that they wish the child care provider was their mother instead, because she is “fun” and lenient/permissive.] • i pulled him from there [authors’ insertion: a terrible child care arrangement where her infant son was one of over 27 children cared for in an unstimulating, private home setting] because the nature of my work [authors’ insertion: she works in child and family service delivery]. i was like okay, i’ll find something, in the meantime you’ll be with me, and i think it was maybe a few weeks later i found my saviour – an older couple, never had children of their own, and all she ever did from the point she was 18 was raise other people’s children in the village so, and, unbelievable, loved them. probably not the ideal food, lots of tv as well, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 98 but she loved him, and he learned how to speak, he learned how to play, he was outside all the time and, um, pumped up on a lot of sugar, but you know what i’m willing to balance, i don’t care, i don’t care, but the key is that they care [for him]. (ontario mother, 2-025) • so i do a lot of juggling to minimize the impact on work, and fortunately the caregiver that we have, she has a very close friend who also babysits children in her home...she was able to kind of wedge my child in temporary arrangement as backup, so basically, if my sitter is unavailable she calls her friend and says can you take her...i did kind of have to force that a little bit in the beginning, but now with the other caregivers also, they know i’m no problem, i always pay on time, i always show up when i’m supposed to show up, there’s no issues. (ontario mother, 2-006) • i took that first month off and, um, i didn’t have confirmation that the daycare was in place. so it wasn’t until approximately the last week, and so i was getting more and more stressed. anyways, she did get into the daycare, and it is a fabulous daycare, they just are so child and family centred, and i was really fortunate because i had subsidy at first. so i had full subsidy, however then [due to government policy changes] i went from having full subsidy to going to a 400% increase... i went from one month not having to pay, to then having to pay $400 plus dollars. (ontario mother, 2-002) as families increasingly relied on mothers’ employment, it became clear that some ontario mothers i interviewed found themselves scrambling, negotiating, tolerating, compromising, and paying relatively high fees – individually and privately managing workfamily conflict – in order to have something in place for their children. in this part of rural ontario, often due to the great distances between paid work, child care centres, and home, licenced child care spaces were limited and very expensive when subsidies were not available. that said, each of the mothers above expressed how lucky they were to have what they did. many of the women interviewed in quebec experienced major job losses in the lucrative, male-dominated forestry sector, and themselves worked long hours with rotating shifts, often in low-waged jobs. but quebec family policies, with more state-funded social supports including low fee child care, created a bit of a buffer from the growing economic precariousness. one mother who was born and raised in quebec, then lived and worked in ontario for a time, and then returned to quebec said: • i worked there [in ontario] for eight years and i had three kids in the span of four years and two months. so i had three children and i needed daycare because there’s senior kindergarten. there [kindergarten in ontario] it’s part-time, whereas ours [in quebec] is full-time. so i had to have daycare five days a week for three kids, and because one was, you know, young, one was a different fee – [for] the youngest. so, going back to work after her, i paid every two weeks, $1,094; and my pay every two weeks for 80 hours of work was $1,075. so working 80 hours, i lost $20 bucks. so then we had our name on a list here [in quebec] for two years before we moved. when our name got on the top of the list, they phoned me to say, “are you moving yet?”, and we say, “no”, and she’d international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 99 go “okay” and give it to the person under our name and she just left me at the top…and then we were finally, like my husband had to get a job that allowed us to move, so once he got a job that allowed us to move, we moved…so i was able to go from full-time work to part-time work…and we have the same disposable income. i went from making a decent wage, to less, because you make less money here [in quebec]; like, i lost $5.00 an hour…[but] i was able to work less hours for less pay and still have the same amount of income. (quebec mother 1-005) this woman’s experiences may lead some to wonder whether quebec’s generosity merely subsidizes gendered low wages (see albanese, 2006), but the alternative in ontario seems worse. quebec’s social policies have contributed to significant increases in women’s labour force participation rates, particularly since the introduction of low fee child care (see roy, 2006). they have also kept some families in, or allowed them to return to rural quebec, as the above example shows. it also left this mother with more time to spend with her children, at a time when many mothers, due to long work hours, odd shifts, and long commutes, complained about not seeing their children. discussion and conclusions these interviews showed that increased individualization of economic risks and the growing precariousness in job tenure are part and parcel of a new “political economy of insecurity” (beck, 2000) in the ottawa valley. worker displacement, increased job insecurity, family earnings instability, and increased reliance on multiple jobs, as described by many other canadian researchers including silver et al. (2005), morissette and ostrovsky (2005), luxton and corman (2001), and hughes and lowe (2000), were a mounting reality for families on both sides of the ottawa valley. the region’s job losses in the male-dominated forestry industry (statistics canada, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a, 2010b) have had a significant impact on families’ financial stability, placing increased importance on women’s paid work and income. families on each side of the quebec/ontario border found themselves struggling to manage child care arrangements that were often unsatisfactory. despite this, mothers spoke of feeling fortunate or lucky to have what they did. in quebec, most references to being lucky or fortunate were connected to having (mostly female) friends and relatives available to assist with accessing the current state-subsidized, low fee child care system (government of quebec, 2003, 2006), that offers service of variable quality, during “regular business hours” (typically 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) to parents who often worked variable shifts (vanier institute of the family, 2010; williams, 2008). among the interviews with mothers living in ontario, there were more references to luck related to actually finding, paying for, maintaining, and managing their child care needs – not surprising given the considerably less generous family policies found there. a disproportionate number of the ontario mothers i interviewed considered themselves “lucky” for a wider range of, at times, less than ideal situations they found themselves in. most of these mothers were actually “unlucky” to find themselves living and working in a province international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 100 with relatively few policies, programs, and services in place to help them balance paid work and family responsibilities. we found that many of the things women felt fortunate about were outside of their control (fredriksen, 2005). rather, these were in the hands of policy-makers, or were part and parcel of unequal household relations and roles in a changing and precarious labour market (p. armstrong & h. armstrong, 2010; fox, 2009; luxton, 2009; kim, 2010). like li et al. (2006), robinson and howe (1989), rudisill (1988), vealey (1986), lynch (2008), koshland (1996), manger and eikeland (2000), and försterling et al. (2007), we found that most of these women worked very hard and creatively to make child care “work” so they could contribute to household finances. nonetheless, they attributed their efforts and successes to luck rather than ability. most of these women, in their own way, worked around and through the obstacles placed in front of them to find and maintain child care for their children. due to limited social supports to families and the high cost of care, many women in ontario that i spoke to sacrificed their own careers in order to do this – working part-time, losing part of their pay, taking low-waged jobs or pay cuts, working through their lunch hour, accepting undesirable shifts, and/or allowing their husband’s work to come first. more often than not, these women had higher levels of education than their male partners, and some had previously (but no longer) worked in well paid and stable jobs. yet still, some considered themselves “lucky” to have anything at all when it came to child care. in the face of long-standing policies and practices that continue to exclude and exploit women in paid work and at home (kessler-harris, 2007; o’connor et al., 1999), one should not be surprised to find that when women do “manage” against great odds, some may be left feeling lucky indeed. but clearly more needs to be done to disrupt and destabilize social policies that reinforce traditional patriarchal power and roles. in sum, we found that mothers’ invocation of “luck” in responses to questions about finding and managing child care was often part of gendered perceptions and realities related to control and powerlessness over social circumstances associated with geography, government policies, and changing or at times precarious economic/labour market circumstances. the child care “situation” and child care policies affecting mothers living in this part of rural quebec are still less than ideal, particularly when child care hours of operation do not coincide with shifting work schedules. nonetheless, the interviewed women in quebec were better off than those in ontario. employed mothers living in ontario can now hope, given recent ontario government commitments to early learning (pascal, 2009), that some of their current challenges with finding, financing, and managing their child care needs will be better met. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 101 references acker, j. 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(1998). work and household transactions: an economist’s view. in d. cheal, f. woolley, & m. luxton (eds.), how families cope and why policymakers need to know (pp. 27–56). ottawa: canadian policy research networks & renouf publishing co. endnotes 1 this project was made possible through funding from the social sciences and humanities research council, standard research grant (2008–2011). 2 johnston (1998) noted that rural canadians produce 40% of gnp but receive only 10% of services in health and education. 3 between 2005 and 2009, manufacturing sales in both ontario and quebec saw a sharp decline. in quebec, manufacturing sales dropped from $139,556.4 million in 2005 to $128,2787.3 million in 2009, while in ontario they dropped from $303,607.2 million to $223,257.4 million in 2009 (statistics canada, 2010b). 4 i was interviewed by two reporters for two different regional newspapers (one in ontario and one in quebec), where i described the project, had my contact information, and asked for study international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 83–111 111 participants. i also placed a radio ad in a non-for-profit french and english community radio station in quebec. i posted flyers at local child care centres, at and through two agencies (centres de petit enfance/cpes in quebec), and at organizations that were frequented by both licensed and unlicensed home daycare providers. i was granted permissions to post information about the study and my contact information on a child and family services website. through the site and its connected listserv, the study information circulated through various networks across renfrew county. i returned mothers’ calls and set up appointments for interviews throughout the region. the mothers in quebec were bilingual, so all 22 interviews were conducted in english. 5 eichler and albanese (2007) use the term “household work” to include both housework and care work. 6 one exception that runs counter to past studies is hendy and boyer’s (1993) work, which found that female triathletes downplayed the importance of luck. 7 for a number of reasons, this paper will not include a detailed discussion of luck egalitarianism – the view about distributive justice found among egalitarian and political philosophers, which assumes that social inequality is the result of both luck/arbitrary influences (misfortunes in genetic makeup or outcomes of accidents, for example) and the consequence of conscious options/personal choices. for a detailed discussion see baynes (2008), kaufman (2004), dworkin (2002), otsuka (2002), and anderson (1999). 8 there is large body of feminist literature documenting and analyzing gender inequality in paid and unpaid work. for canadian literature, see p. armstrong and h. armstrong (2010), fox (2009), and luxton (2009). 9 interview id numbers starting with “1-” represent mothers living in quebec; those starting with “2-” represent mothers living in ontario. the women’s names, names of their children, and the names of towns, communities, and employers have either not been included or have been changed to maintain confidentiality. introduction to the special issue on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 181–185 181 introduction to the special issue on the political economy of children’s health toba bryant and dennis raphael, guest editors abstract: a political economy approach to children’s health considers how the economic and political systems of a jurisdiction influence the public policies that shape children’s health. it moves beyond the concrete and observable to look at the societal structures and processes that distribute the material and social resources to families and children that can either support or threaten children’s health. this special issue presents a number of articles from canada, norway, the united kingdom, and the united states that show how profoundly important these issues are to understanding and acting to improve children’s health. as such, these articles provide a useful counterpoint to prevailing notions of children’s health, which all too often are focused solely on the creation and delivery of services and attempts to change health-related behaviours. while these other issues are important, it is essential to identify and act to modify the too-frequently neglected structures and processes of society that create the public policies that shape the essential social determinants of children’s health. keywords: children’s health, political economy, social inequalities, health inequalities, public policy, social determinants of health toba bryant, ph.d. is an assistant professor at the faculty of health sciences, university of ontario institute of technology, 2000 simcoe street north, oshawa, ontario, canada, l1h 7k4. telephone: (905) 721-8668, ext. 2697. e-mail: toba.bryant@uoit.ca dennis raphael, ph.d. is a professor of health policy and management at the school of health policy and management at york university, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada, m3j 1p3. telephone: (416) 736-2100, ext. 22134. e-mail: draphael@yorku.ca mailto:toba.bryant@uoit.ca mailto:draphael@yorku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 181–185 182 this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (ijcyfs) focuses on what critical social scientists call the “story behind the story,” the societal economic and political structures and processes that shape the health of children. it is increasingly recognized that the health of populations and the health inequalities that exist amongst these populations are shaped by what the world health organization (who) calls the social determinants of health. the who (2015) defines the social determinants of health: the social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. these circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels. despite conceptual and empirical work on the social determinants of health and increasing acceptance of their importance by researchers and health advocates, there has been virtually no penetration of the concept into public policy activity in canadian and american jurisdictions. this lack of penetration is apparent at the federal, provincial/territorial and state, as well as municipal levels. this is especially troubling as it is becoming clear that the primary mediators between societal structures and processes and their translation into the social determinants of health are public policies. public policies directly affect the distribution of the social determinants of health, which then go on to shape the health of children. more disturbing is that these social determinants of health apparently go on to affect children’s health as adults even if the quality of the social determinants of health they experience improves during their adolescence and adult years. people who work directly with children, both in clinical settings as well as in agency and community settings, have a critical role to play in identifying and advocating public policies that improve the quality and equitable distribution of the social determinants of health. most immediately they need to recognize that social determinants of health play a consequential role in shaping clients’ needs and designing appropriate services to respond to these needs. additionally, those who work with children are in the best situation to advocate for public policies that will improve the living circumstances that both children and their parents experience. service providers need to become involved in having their voices heard as advocates for public policy that promotes, rather than threatens, children’s health. unfortunately, like most citizens, many service providers do not understand the public policy process and how public policies are made. they lack understanding about how to advocate and work the political system to help bring about such policy change. moreover, awareness of the importance of having a social determinants perspective on children’s health is frequently lacking. and some, not unlike many citizens, are thoroughly disengaged from politics. we are of the firm belief that knowledge about the social determinants of children’s health and political advocacy will be more effective when advocates have a more mature understanding of the forces that drive public policy-making in canada and elsewhere. it has become apparent that arguments stating the obvious, such as the benefits for children, families, and communities of high quality affordable child care, seem to have little resonance among policy-makers in canada, for instance. part of our goal is to make explicit why this may be the case. the answer may be in the different levels of influence and power that different sectors – corporate and business, organized labour, civil society – have when issues of public policy arise. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 181–185 183 put simply, nowadays in canada, the u.k., and the u.s.a., children and their families, especially those who are economically vulnerable, appear to have virtually no influence on the development of public policy. this appears to be less the case in norway. the answer to this state of affairs is the building of political and social movements consisting of service providers, parents, and other concerned citizens that will literally force public policy-makers to address these issues that shape the health of children. the political economy approach serves many of these purposes. a political economy approach makes explicit the structures and processes that shape public policy. these include competing sectors such as the corporate and business sectors, the organized labour sector, and civil society. if the imbalance amongst these sectors becomes too great then public policy in the service of the majority of canadians becomes less likely. what is needed is a movement that rectifies these imbalances in such a manner that public policy is made in the service of children’s health rather than threatening children’s health. we believe in action that will make children’s health a priority for governments and societies. hopefully the articles in this special issue on the political economy of children’s health will assist in this task. overview of the special issue the articles this special issue is organized in three sections: concepts and processes; public policy, children’s services and children’s health; and moving towards action. in the first section, dennis raphael’s article, the parameters of children’s health: key concepts from the political economy of health, provides an overview of concepts from the political economy approach and places these into a model of how power and influence in society come to shape the social determinants of children’s health, and eventually the health of children themselves. he makes the argument that current imbalances in power and influence have contributed to the rather mediocre portrait of children’s health in canada. stephen bezruchka’s article, early life or early death: support for child health lasts a lifetime, provides an exhaustive presentation of the processes by which living conditions come to shape the health of children. he goes on to document how these effects then persist to shape their health as adults. the article provides a timely counterpoint to the dominant discourse that making or not making “healthy choices” are at the root of health and illness. bezruchka then provides recommendations for providing the conditions that will support the health of children rather than threaten it. as the title of their article, opening the second section, states, anca gaston, sarah edwards, and jo ann tober find that maternity leave and child care arrangements during the first 12 months of life are associated with children’s development five years later. importantly, they situate their study and findings within the context of canadian public policy developments regarding maternal leave. most mothers take some leave but few had access to licensed child care. those unable to take leave saw their children doing less well at age 5. implications for public policy are provided. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 181–185 184 patrizia albanese and ann rauhala in their article, a decade of disconnection: child care policies in changing economic times in the canadian context, report on two studies of media coverage and women’s experiences of child care in canada. in the first project, they analyse media coverage of child care issues with particular attention to the extent to which women’s voices are presented in media reports on child care. the second project presents the voices of mothers of young children on the difficulties finding appropriate child care for their children. stephanie petrie’s article, “commodifying” children: the impact of markets in services for children in the united kingdom, explores the marketization of children’s services and its impact on children’s health and well-being in britain. in tracing the shift from the welfare state to welfare markets, she specifically discusses the political trajectory that led to this radical change in u.k. welfare. she concludes with an overview of the impact of austerity policies that exclude many children from welfare markets, and the implications for all children in the u.k. in the third section (moving towards action), toba bryant’s article, parameters of change: public policy models and processes, identifies the main approaches for making sense of how public policy is made. understanding the assumptions of each approach is especially important as these models may or may not be appropriate for promoting specific forms of public policy in particular political and economic environments. bryant concludes that the political economy approach towards public policy changes accurately captures many of the key issues associated with promoting children’s health in canada and elsewhere through public policy action. in his article, health impact assessment, municipal development practices, and children's health, robert rattle creates a compelling portrait of how municipal planning decisions can come to shape children’s health. he provides details of how a re-siting of a hospital from a downtown to suburban area can have multiple effects upon children’s health, most of them negative. rattle makes the case that municipal planning activities are a source of children’s health but assessing the health impacts of these activities is frequently overlooked. the article provides an argument for instituting health impact assessments of public policy activities that are not currently seen as having any impacts on children’s health. elisabeth fosse and marit helgesen’s article, how can local governments level the social gradient in health among families with children? the case of norway, considers how municipalities can reduce social inequalities among families with children. in contrast to the current situation in canada, the u.k., or the u.s., the norwegian national government has introduced a number of policies to reduce health inequalities, to be accomplished by a health in all policies approach. municipalities are responsible for the implementation of these policies. using mixed methods, fosse and helgesen examine the extent to which norwegian municipalities have implemented public health and health promotion policies that can reduce the social inequalities that lead to health inequalities among families with children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 181–185 185 the implications the articles in this volume make explicit what is normally left implicit: public policy has a profound effect on children’s health. these public policies range from those most obviously related to children’s health such as child care and the provision of social services to those less commonly considered such as municipal planning and poverty prevention. since the making of public policy is shaped by prevailing political ideologies and the influence of powerful sectors, it is important to make explicit what these ideologies and forces may be. once identified, such barriers can be responded to in the service of creating public policy that promotes children’s health, rather than threatens it. . conclusion the aim of this special issue is to transform the reader’s way of thinking about children’s health and the means by which it can be promoted. the articles contained within this special issue move beyond the obvious and observable to explore the less frequently examined societal structures and processes that shape the social determinants of health. if readers gain a new appreciation of these larger forces shaping children’s health and the means of overcoming barriers to promoting children’s health, then we will have been successful in our aim. at the end of the day, the effects of the social determinants of children’s health require us to consider what kind of society we want, that is, how nurturing and supportive of children our societies will be. this will require political will on the parts of governments to invest in programs and services that support all children. this is occurring in norway. it is not occurring in canada, the united kingdom, or the united states. reference world health organization. (2015). social determinants of health. retrieved from http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/. microsoft word c. macpherson journal version sajaed.doc 

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 community engagement, child welfare, and domestic violence service agencies colleen macpherson abstract: although coordinated community responses to domestic violence are widely encouraged in the literature as a best practice approach, collaboration between multiple domestic violence response service agencies and government systems is often not achieved. because of the fragmentation of domestic violence services, this literature review examines community engagement in general and the need for coordination between child welfare agencies and women serving anti-violence services in particular. the skills and strategies necessary for community engagement are explored along with the historical relationship between the two service streams. also included is a review of the barriers to collaboration between child welfare and women serving agencies along with recommendations to overcome these hurdles. by way of summation, a discussion is provided on how information learned through this review process may be applied to practice for child and youth care practitioners and others who take up the difficult task of responding to the complex needs of families experiencing domestic violence. significant social problems cannot be resolved by any one agency: they require the collaboration of multiple agencies. when problems arise, a single agency can address only the symptom itself, but when efforts are coordinated among agencies, the underlying problem can then be addressed. (banks, dutch, & wang, 2008, p. 877) much of the literature with respect to communities’ responses to domestic violence speaks to the need for multiple service agencies and government systems to collaborate in developing appropriate and effective interventions for families who experience domestic violence: interventions that balance support for victims with accountability for perpetrators (banks, dutch, & wang, 2008; banks, landsverk, & wang, 2008; echlin & osthoff, 2000; featherstone & peckover, 2007; friend, 2000; malik, ward, & janczewski, 2008; mancini, nelson, bowen, & martin, 2006; moles, 2008; pennell & burford, 2000; schechter & edleson, 1995; spears, 2000). but as mancini et al. (2006) state, “unfortunately, although communitywide responses to ipv (intimate partner violence) are strongly encouraged, they are rarely obtained” (p. 206). further, although community resources exist for families experiencing domestic violence, they are rarely organized in ways that are user friendly and easy for clients to access, especially if families have boys older than 14 years of age. clients face the daunting task of negotiating between disparate and uncoordinated agencies when seeking help for domestic violence (hardcastle, wenocur, & powers, 1997; friend, 2000). 

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 in this literature review, the relationships between child welfare agencies and women serving domestic violence agencies will be explored (women serving agencies include transition homes, stopping the violence counselling programs, children who witness abuse programs, court advocacy and victim assistance programs). the literature review begins with a broader look at the definition of community engagement and then narrows its scope to information about the engagement between child welfare and domestic violence agencies. the focus only on one relationship within the wider context of the multiple relationships involved in a coordinated community response is not intended to communicate to the reader a belief that comprehensive and coordinated community responses for domestic violence (including many service agencies such as the police, courts, victim assistance workers, and multicultural workers) are insignificant. rather, it is suggested here that the unresolved strain between these two particular groups has been a significant barrier to collaboration between the two service streams and an obstacle to their individual involvement in a coordinated community response; therefore, a coordinated community response is unlikely to be achieved without first building bridges between these two agencies. this literature review seeks to answer the following questions: what are the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary for community engagement, in particular for engagement between women serving agencies and child welfare? how has community engagement between the two groups been used in the past? what are the barriers and cautions to engagement? what are the common themes that are revealed in the literature with respect to engagement between child welfare and women serving agencies and, finally, how can the information learned through this review process be applied to child and youth care practice? methodology this review was conducted using the databases sociological abstracts, academic search premier, women’s studies international, psycinfo, and the environmental index. also employed were: medline and social work abstracts. the search terms used were (child welfare or child protection or family services) and (family violence or domestic violence or assault* or antiviolence) and (agenc* or service* or program* or initiative*) and (relationship* or collaborat* or inter-agenc*).1 further searches were conducted using google scholar to seek advice from government agency publications regarding collaboration between child welfare – in particular the ministry of children and family development (mcfd) – and community support agencies. articles that focus on the collaborative relationships between child welfare and anti-violence agencies were included in this literature review; articles that covered in-depth definitions of the harm to children from exposure to domestic violence were not. this review is based on the premise that the harm from exposure to domestic violence is now widely accepted in both service streams and is well documented in the literature. it is acknowledged that a detailed analysis of the dynamics of domestic violence and the harm to children is beyond the scope of this review. 



























































 1 credit for the article searches (excluding google scholar) belongs to the staff at the university of victoria’s infoline. 

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 defining community engagement/collaboration community engagement as defined by the north american certification project (nacp) (mattingly, stuart, & vanderven, 2002) is listed as part of the broader domain of “developmental practice methods” (p. 30). according to this document’s competency standards, professional child and youth care practitioners are competent in the skill of engaging communities when they can demonstrate the following activities: • access up-to-date information about service systems, support and advocacy resources, as well as community resources, law, regulation, and public policy. • demonstrate the ability to initiate, create, and sustain collaborative relations with other organizations and persons. • facilitate client contact with relevant community agencies. since those competencies that speak to engagement with families and individuals are listed in separate sections of the document, it is assumed that community engagement is considered a separate and distinct, but equally important skill set for caring for families within their contexts. others have also identified community engagement as a fundamental activity of human service professionals in their efforts to support the development of families (butcher et al., 2003; hardcastle et al., 1997; hashagen, 2002; midgley & livermore, 1998; skotnitsky & ferguson, 2005; tastsoglou & miedema, 2003). atherton, hashagen, garratt, and west (2002) state that community planning (engagement) is a process of public, private, and voluntary agencies coming together under one vision to streamline, integrate, and improve service delivery. in addition, these authors acknowledge that the key aspect of successful community collaboration is sensitivity to the needs and concerns of all parties involved. atherton et al. (2002) also suggest that collaboration rarely occurs spontaneously, but rather flows from some form of intentional development, and point out that some collaborators will be motivated to become involved in the efforts immediately, while others will need time and encouragement to actively participate. as well, skotnitsky and ferguson (2005) argue that collaboration between service agencies is essential in building a community’s capacity to meet the needs of its members. as mancini et al. (2006) point out, “the shared responsibility and collective competence that emerge from community members banding together can become a powerful and ongoing positive influence on the quality of community life, including the relationship between intimate partners” (p. 204). they argue for active, collaborative interventions to prevent domestic violence and indicate that the legal reforms (mandatory charging for perpetrators and recognition in child welfare legislation that exposure to violence may constitute child maltreatment) that have taken place over the last two decades in north america have not been sufficient to prevent domestic violence. this suggests the need for cultural and community reforms. consequently further sections in this literature review will focus on the cultural differences between child welfare and women serving agencies and ways to bridge the divide. defining the need for engagement and collaboration between child welfare and women serving agencies moles (2008) notes that until recently child protection agencies did little to intervene or to support women and children when violence was being perpetrated against the mother. in 

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 addition, davies and krane (2006) note that “recent recognition of the effects of domestic violence on children has given rise to calls for collaborative interventions between arenas of child protection and domestic violence” (p. 412). davies and krane define a child’s exposure to domestic violence as more than directly witnessing violence toward their parent, usually their mother. for these authors, exposure also includes being witness to the aftermath, including the arrest of the perpetrator, being threatened, being used as pawns, or even being kidnapped and taken hostage. friend (2000) states that ucla’s domestic violence/child abuse initiative operates on the premise that “domestic violence is child abuse” (p. 258). moreover, several authors note the overlap between child maltreatment and wife assault and estimate that 30% to 60% of men who batter their partners also abuse their children (findlater & kelly, 1999; malik et al., 2008; nuszkowski et al., 2007). this statistic highlights the need to increase communities’ capacity to respond to domestic violence and the need for collaboration between the efforts of those protecting children and those advocating for women who have experienced violence at the hands of their partners (schechter & edleson, 1995). schechter and edleson (1995) pose the question, “can we really help or protect children if we ignore the mother?” (p. 1). canadian and american child welfare agencies are developing policies and procedures with respect to collaborative efforts of both service groups (cory, abijaoude, baldwin, bernt, & mortensen, 2008; findlater & kelly, 1999). given that six out of ten canadian provinces have legislation that clearly defines a child’s exposure to domestic violence as grounds for needing protection, it is essential for groups addressing domestic violence to work together to ensure that families’ service needs are met, according to echlin and osthoff (2000). they state, “what is clear, however, is that women and children are suffering both by the perpetrators of abuse and as a result of inadequate societal protection” (p. 211). nuszkowski et al. (2007) argue that because domestic violence has detrimental effects for both victims and communities, the onus of responsibility should not be borne by just child welfare agencies or agencies providing relief from domestic violence to women and their children. a collaborative community-wide effort is warranted. these authors, like many others, are calling for a shared commitment to ending violence within families despite any tensions caused by the different mandates of child welfare and women serving agencies, and for an end to an approach that positions the protection of children and the protection of women against one another. schechter and edleson (1995) have noted since 1994 that the most difficult cases that challenge child welfare and domestic violence agencies are the cases they share together, cases in which the father is using severe violence against the mother and children or where mothers and children are living under the threat of further violence even though the father is no longer in their lives. often, the legacy of the violence lives on in the mother’s or children’s behaviour, manifested as teen violence toward the mother, the mother’s coercive or physical punishment of the children, and/or mental health and addiction issues of either the mother or children. in june of 2000, a partnership of british columbia provincial organizations submitted a discussion paper to the former ministry of children and families that outlined critical issues faced by women and children who were victims of, or exposed to domestic violence (ministry of children and family development, 2004). the results from an ensuing consultation process between provincial ministries including the ministry for children and families, the attorney general, and health and women’s equality indicated that mothers, youth, and children were not utilizing the available safety, counselling, and medical resources due to their reluctance to 

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 become involved with these government ministries. community service agencies provided the explanation for this reluctance to seek help and support: some ministry interventions were compromising women’s and children’s safety instead of ensuring it (ministry of children and family development, 2004, p. 19). an outcome of the consultation process was a call for a collaborative effort between private and public stakeholders in domestic violence prevention to develop best practice approaches for child protection interventions in situations where mothers were the victims of domestic violence (ministry of children and family development, 2004). further outcomes of the consultation process were the development of the following documents: best practice approaches: child protection and violence against women (ministry of children and family development, 2004); and child protection and violence against women: a curriculum for child protection workers (cory et al., 2008). numerous authors have emphasized the belief that a collaborative approach to interventions with families experiencing domestic violence is the optimal way to achieve safety for women and children and accountability for the offender (banks, dutch, & wang, 2008; banks, landsverk, & wang, 2008; government of british columbia 2008; featherstone & peckover, 2007; malik et al., 2008; ministry of community services, 2005; pence & shepard, 1999). with respect to the experiences of aboriginal women, a collaborative approach to domestic violence may be even more significant as aboriginal women in canada experience three times the amount of spousal violence than non-aboriginal women and are eight times more likely to die from that violence (ministry of community services, 2005). jessica ball (2007) states that, “most communities in canada today maintain an individual-centered and nonintegrated approach to family and children’s services” (p. 3). this is particularly troublesome in first nations communities, as ball points out that services are often not even located in the communities themselves. the services are distanced administratively, culturally, socially, and geographically from the people they are meant to serve. despite the general consensus in the literature that a coordinated collaborative approach is the most effective response in ensuring safety and accountability, there are many barriers to this practice. “understanding how to manage the problem of family violence at the community level, however, has been significantly more difficult than acknowledging the need to do so” (malik et al., 2008, p. 934). barriers and cautions as noted above, the literature indicates that there are multiple ideological, systemic, and individual barriers to engagement between child welfare agencies and women serving agencies. traditionally there has been little cooperation between child welfare and women serving agencies to collaboratively develop safe and effective responses and interventions for families experiencing domestic violence. numerous authors refer to the strained relationship between the two agencies (friend, lambert, & shlonsky, 2007; echlin & osthoff, 2000; findlater & kelly, 1999; malik et al., 2008; schechter & edleson, 1995). findlater and kelly (1999) state, “mistrust was common, noncooperation the rule” (p.167) and go on to note the tendency of each type of agency to find fault with the other. additionally, they point out that in general, child protection workers traditionally believed that domestic violence workers advocated exclusively for women’s safety, while domestic violence workers believed that protection workers privileged children’s safety to the exclusion of women’s. evidence of this unhelpful positioning is echoed by friend et al. (2007), malik et al. (2008), and moles (2008). moles notes that domestic violence agencies traditionally have shown a reluctance to engage with child welfare agencies 

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 due to a perception among women serving agency staff that child protection workers were unable or unwilling to be sensitive to abused mothers and the challenges they face in keeping themselves and their children safe. fortunately, there is also evidence provided by schechter and edleson (1995) that these perceptions are slowly giving way to a desire for the two groups to work together to end violence within families. malik et al. (2008) note that the seemingly conflicting mandates and roles of child welfare and women serving agencies can be made worse by the fact that child welfare agencies are funded and governed by the state while domestic violence agencies are usually non-profit societies and have far fewer financial resources at their disposal. in addition, women serving agencies grew out of the grassroots feminist advocacy movement when traditional government systems failed to protect women (malik et al., 2008). the tension caused by this failure to protect women is still evident in the relationships between the two kinds of service agencies. in addition to the disparate focus of the two agency types, there are also opposing views within the agencies of who is the primary victim: the woman or the child (friend et al., 2007). friend et al. (2007) refer to these differing views as a kind of “culture clash” and point out that service providers may be so immersed in their own systems, ideology, and missions that they are unable to embrace a more holistic and collaborative approach to caring for women and children (p. 345). the traditional child welfare view of domestic violence has been that domestic violence is symptomatic of stress and marital conflict and the ensuing interventions deemed appropriate reflected these notions: couples therapy and/or individual counselling (friend et al., 2007). these interventions have been criticized by women serving agencies as putting the women and children at greater risk as the power imbalances between perpetrator and victim are played out in couples counselling while offenders are not held accountable for their purposeful use of violence. as friend (2000) notes, the way a problem is framed is fundamentally important, as it will inform the ways in which we will respond to the problem. friend et al. (2007) point out that another barrier between child welfare and women serving agencies is the lack of effective interventions for men who use violence against their partners, and suggest that, “it does little good to identify a problem for which there is little solution” (p. 352). most domestic violence workers are aware of the lack of programs to which a child protection worker can refer men so that they can learn accountability. some believe the lack of resources for perpetrators is a reflection of the willingness of government funders to allow domestic violence to continue to be a women’s problem rather than a social justice issue that is owned jointly by government and society and by women and men. featherstone and peckover (2007) argue that the lack of attention to the perpetrators of domestic violence by the community and child welfare, as evidenced by the lack of interventions and services for violent fathers, also creates a barrier between child welfare agencies and women serving agencies. these authors express the concern that the lack of focus on violent fathers ultimately results in women being “expected and left to manage violent men’s behaviour and the consequences of such behaviour” (p. 195). they further argue that society is missing out on opportunities to engage with violent fathers, which does not serve the support or protection needs of mothers and children. this is particularly concerning, considering the challenges faced by the criminal justice system in securing convictions for such fathers and in mandating them to attend violence treatment programs. it is also important to note that few violence treatment programs focus on violent men’s fathering or their everyday involvement in their families. women serving 

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 agencies know all too well the negative impact that a violent father can have on the lives of his children and their mother (featherstone & peckover, 2007). mancini et al. (2006) note there are numerous attitudes and societal norms that reinforce domestic violence including the notion that intimate partner violence is private or even deserved by the victim. historically, it has been a common experience for women to be blamed by child welfare workers for both their own victimization and their “failure to protect” their children from their partner’s violence (friend, 2000). these attitudes and norms have led to women serving agencies taking up the challenge to protect women (and their children) from systems that have failed to do so, including child welfare and the criminal justice system (banks, dutch, & wang, 2008; moles, 2008). banks, dutch, and wang (2008) state that collaboration requires “change across multiple agencies and across multiple levels within those agencies” (p. 878). they further point out that child welfare and women serving agencies are already overtaxed, and identify the following systemic barriers to engagement between the two service groups: lack of consensus between the agencies with respect to best practice approaches and philosophies, lack of communication between agencies, lack of commitment and support from senior management, lack of strong leadership, and lack of adequate resources, time, and training. as with other authors, banks, dutch, and wang also identify the negative stereotypes held by individual workers toward potential colleagues in other agencies as barriers to collaboration, e.g., all social workers are punitive and all domestic violence workers are radical anti-establishment feminists. malik et al. (2008) state that concerns regarding client confidentiality are also barriers to engagement between child welfare and women serving agencies. domestic violence workers are often worried that revealing domestic violence to child welfare workers may inadvertently trigger punitive actions toward the non-offending mother, that is, to the mother being blamed by the child protection worker for the violence or the mother being accused of failing to protect her children. as further barriers to collaboration between different kinds of agencies, malik and colleagues also point to concerns about power sharing between agencies, the lack of authority faced by domestic violence workers in the collaborative process, and the possibility that the goals of each agency may have the potential for causing harm to either child or parent. finally, the beliefs of individual workers have been identified as barriers to engagement between child welfare and women serving agencies. an individual’s beliefs with respect to the oppression of women, the role of mothers, the best interests of children, and the accountability of men have been recognized by echlin and osthoff (2000) as potential obstacles. as they state, “the variations in attitudes, awareness, laws and practices result in fragmented responses to women and children exposed to women abuse” (p .210). the review of the literature revealed three significant cautions for those considering increasing engagement and collaboration between child welfare and women serving agencies. friend et al. (2007) argue that their review of the literature indicated that many, if not all, interventions used by child welfare workers and domestic violence workers do not eradicate violence and therefore if violence cannot be stopped altogether perhaps a harm reduction approach might be more effective. a harm reduction approach is defined by pennell and burford (2000) as “a set of strategies designed to encourage individuals to move toward an ideal (no violence) or to at least mitigate the harm caused to themselves and others if the behaviour 

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 continues (safety planning)” (p. 357). friend et al. (2007) offer the caution that although child welfare agencies, including mcfd, are currently utilizing community-based harm reduction approaches such as family group conferencing, very little has been written about a harm reduction approach to domestic violence. they surmise that this is due to the double-edged sword of child protection interventions that embrace a harm reduction approach: children are sometimes left in unsafe situations while removal of a child causes its own kind of harm. a second caution is offered by davies and krane (2006). in the quest to develop collaboration between child welfare and women serving agencies, the mother’s experience may be lost and that without including the mothers in the collaborative process, the potential is there to further disempower and overburden mothers who are already struggling to care for and protect their children. these authors further note that the absence of the mothers in the process can reinforce the problematic practice of mother blaming. the third caution offered by davies and krane (2006) is a warning to both child welfare and women serving agency workers with respect to pressuring a woman to leave or to stay with a violent partner, as there are significant risks associated with each course of action: there is a direct correlation between wife assault and child abuse when the family stays intact, versus the increased risk of homicide and assault toward a woman when she leaves a violent partner. both sets of risks must be addressed with safety planning (p. 416). skills and strategies despite the barriers to engagement between child welfare and women serving agencies, there is considerable common ground between the two groups that provides a fertile environment for growth. although traditionally child protection workers have focused attention either on creating safe environments for children within their families or removed them, while women serving agencies have provided safe havens and programs for women and their children, both agencies have the promotion of safety as their bottom line (pennell & burford, 2000). some authors in the current literature suggest alternative community-based child welfare responses to domestic violence (carrillo & carter, 2001; english, wingard, marshall, m. orme, & a. orme, 2000; pennell & burford, 2000). pennell and burford (2000) point out that “with rising demands on child welfare, workers need to consider new options, including strategies that promote a collaborative effort of family, community and government. family group conferencing (fgc) integrates efforts to advance child and adult safety and strengthens family unity while expanding its meaning” (p. 131). fgc is a process that brings together families, child welfare workers, and community support people (including women serving agency staff) to develop a plan to resolve abuse, neglect, and violence. before the plan is implemented, it must be approved by the child welfare agency to ensure that it promotes child safety. although english et al. (2000) found alternative community-based collaborative strategies such as the voluntary fgc program to be useful for families at lower risk of child abuse and neglect associated with domestic violence, they also warned that such voluntary strategies will not increase child safety if there is not an obvious recognition by the families of the risks and a clear articulation of the motivation to change (p. 387). 

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 hardcastle et al. (1997) argue that the most effective case management model for child protection workers includes referral and collaboration with community services including domestic violence agencies. the authors also note that in order for the engagement between child welfare and community service agencies to be effective, the influential aspects of the relationships between the two groups should be taken into account. the factors that influence collaborative relationships are identified as power balances, rules of information exchange, and individual and group ideologies that include values, beliefs, and feelings (halseth & lo, 1999). other authors suggest cross-training between the two service groups as essential for bringing these differences between agencies’ mandates, policies, and practices into prominence (coben, 2007; government of british columbia, 2008; cory et al., 2008; findlater & kelly, 1999; ministry of community services (2005); moles, 2008). findlater and kelly (1999) posit that, “domestic violence service providers need to be educated about the child welfare system and issues of child abuse and neglect while child welfare workers need to understand issues of domestic violence. and they need to work together to keep children and their mothers safe and hold perpetrators of family violence responsible for their behaviour” (p. 168). cross-training accomplishes this outcome in addition to ensuring that workers do not have false assumptions and expectations of what agencies can and should achieve. cross-training also elucidates that child and adult safety is a common goal of child welfare and women serving agencies and the best way to promote child safety is to ensure the mother’s safety; the shared goal is then translated into shared practice. skotnitsky and ferguson (2005) argue that ideal learning takes place when people are actively involved in exploring a given challenge together. findlater and kelly (1999) also point to the importance of developing cross-training curriculums and best practice approaches and policies similar to the document, best practice approaches: child protection and violence against women, created by multiple community service agencies and the ministry of children and family development (2004), and the document, child protection and violence against women: a curriculum for child protection workers, written by cory et al. (2008). in support of the cross-training strategy, nuszkowski et al. (2007) found that child welfare workers who received training on domestic violence were less likely to use interventions that actually decrease the safety of women and children, such as referrals to family preservation programs or couples counselling. in addition, the findings of these authors indicate that child welfare workers were less likely to believe that the women benefited from the abuse, that woman abuse is justified, or that mothers were failing to protect their children when partners used violence toward them. as well, child protection workers recognized women’s fear of losing custody of their children to violent fathers as a barrier to leaving relationships with violent partners. moreover, nuszkowski et al. (2007) found that child welfare workers were more disposed to engage with violent fathers by referring them to specialized treatment programs. this reflects featherstone and peckover`s (2007) notion that it is critical to women’s and children’s safety to engage with violent fathers. although nuszkowski et al. (2007) strongly argue for cross-training between child welfare and women serving agencies, they comment that independent operations are the norm for both agencies and therefore developing policies that support collaboration and engagement is likely the most significant influence to collaborative initiatives like cross-training, and ongoing consultation and communication between the two groups. in other words, engagement between the two groups is not likely to succeed without the support of the leadership of the two types of agencies. 

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 banks, dutch, and wang (2008) articulated the most comprehensive list of skills, attributes, and strategies required by front line workers and management for effective interagency collaboration: • significant investment of time and resources; • awareness and acceptance of an incremental approach to change between the collaborating agencies; • agreed-upon timetable for change; • joint projects that link shared goals into practice; • ability to share resources for joint projects including administrative support and extra time allotted to staff to implement projects; • recruitment of staff with the appropriate knowledge and skills (child protection and domestic violence); • appropriate support and supervision for staff; • willingness to monitor and evaluate services provided; • well-defined roles and responsibilities; • clear lines of accountability; • effective communication between all levels within agencies and between agencies; and • “institutional empathy”, which the authors define as the understanding of the context and environment that informs the other agencies’ practice with women and children. in addition to skills and strategies that can be adopted between agencies to increase their collaboration, professionals can advocate for societal, legislative, and policy changes that will result in more effective collaborative responses to domestic violence. echlin and osthoff (2000) list the following as strategies to enhance collaboration: • defining woman abuse as a societal problem; • increasing awareness of both child welfare workers and domestic violence workers of the harm done to children from exposure to domestic violence; • developing consistent policy for child welfare agencies that will enhance child safety by supporting the non-offending parent and holding the perpetrator accountable for their use of violence; • advocating for changes to family relations legislation (child custody and access) and child protection legislation to mirror the experiences of women and children related to violence and abuse; • cross-training between child protection and domestic violence agencies; and • advocating for a criminal justice system that holds perpetrators responsible for stopping their violence against women. the review of the literature also revealed some broad suggestions for strengthening community capacity to prevent violence against women and children. these suggestions include supporting community-based services, educating the community, promoting women’s economic security, providing support to aboriginal women, collaborating with the health care system, cross-training between all stakeholders including community service agencies, child welfare, criminal justice systems, and health care systems (ministry of community services, 2005). 

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 schecter and edleson (1995) observe that the best collaboration occurs between child welfare and women serving agencies when there is an agreement that keeping mothers and their children together is the best outcome in most cases. the authors challenge child protection and domestic violence workers to become allies rather than competitors in keeping women and children safe. in addition, malik et al. (2008) suggest developing a climate of inclusion where power is shared equally between child welfare and women serving agencies as a strategy for overcoming the barriers to collaboration between the two groups. this writer is sceptical that equal power-sharing will or should occur as only child welfare agencies currently have the legal mandate and responsibility to ensure child safety and would be held accountable by the public should harm come to a child once an intervention had been initiated. although both agencies share the philosophy of and moral responsibility for protecting women and children, they do not share equal legal responsibility. conclusions and discussion there is a wealth of literature that defines the need for and the barriers to collaboration between child welfare and domestic violence agencies including the historical development of tensions between the two service streams; there is far less information on overcoming these barriers. the problem has been clearly defined, the solutions warrant more exploration, particularly with respect to providing coordinated and culturally sensitive services for aboriginal women. although much of the literature recognizes that tensions exist between child welfare and domestic violence agencies, only one article named the tensions as “hostility” between the two groups (findlater & kelly, 1999). as a child and youth care practitioner who has worked in both service sectors, this writer believes that “tensions” is a euphemism for the animosity that can occur between workers of the different agencies. this writer suggests that this hostility is the single greatest barrier to collaboration between the two agencies and that extending the olive branch is a crucial first step in developing effective partnerships to meet the needs of women and children who have experienced violence within their families. it is highly improbable to expect co-creation and collaboration with regard to violence and abuse interventions if the collaborating parties themselves are behaving in ways that are less than cooperative and congenial. in addition, “before collaborative interventions can succeed, the complexities inherent in the issues facing mothers living with domestic violence must be addressed” (davies & krane, 2006, p. 421). cross-training between the two service groups as suggested by this literature review would accomplish that first step to successful collaboration. furthermore, featherstone and peckover (2007) suggest that missing the opportunities to engage with violent fathers does not serve the support or protection needs of mothers or children. much more work is needed in this direction. these are the beginning points for collaboration and can be taken up by any worker regardless of the context in which they work. further words of wisdom by alan pence (2003) are offered to practitioners wishing to collaborate in order to develop communities’ capacity to meet the needs of its members in the following passage: over the years, i have come to believe that “not knowing” and not taking the lead in a child and youth care situation can be one of the most effective ways to proceed. this is not to say that a professional should not possess knowledge, nor be prepared to bring such knowledge to an interaction, but it is a caution to wait, to let your “professional 

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 soul”, your “en-trained impulse” be still. and perhaps in that stillness, in that space between your knowledge and the other’s, something other than your idea and perhaps something other than the other’s idea will begin to take shape, fed by forces neither can claim but both can appreciate. (p. 317) these words reflect this writer’s notion that the most important strategy for collaboration between child welfare and women serving agencies is not a strategy at all but rather an attribute of the individual workers: the humility and courage of one to fully embrace the experience, knowledge, and skill of the other. there are many opportunities to build collaborative practice upon the foundation of common ground between child welfare and women serving agencies: a shared belief in safety, the empowerment of non-violent parents, accountability for perpetrators of domestic violence, and the disruption of the transmission of family violence from one generation to another (moles, 2008). 

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 references atherton, g., hashagen, s., garratt, c., & west, a. (2002). involving local people in community planning in scotland. london: community development foundations publications. ball, j. (2007). centering community services around early childhood care and development: promising practices in first nations. unpublished manuscript. banks, d., dutch, n., & wang, k. (2008). collaborative efforts to improve system response to families who are experiencing child maltreatment and domestic violence. journal of interpersonal violence, 23(7), 876-902. banks, d., landsverk, j., & wang, k. (2008). changing policy and practice in the child welfare system through collaborative efforts to identify and respond effectively to family violence. journal of interpersonal violence, 23(7), 903-932. butcher, j., howard, p., labone, e., bailey, m., groundwater, s. s., mcfadden, m., et al. (2003). teacher education, community service learning and student efficacy for community engagement. asia-pacific journal of teacher education, 31(2), 109-124. carrillo, r., & carter, j. (2001). guidelines conducting family team conferences when there is a history of domestic violence. san franscisco: family violence prevention fund and the child welfare policy and practice group. coben, j. h. (2007). training, co-training, and cross training of domestic violence and child welfare agencies: reply. families in society, 88(4), 35-41. cory, j., abi-jaoude, a., baldwin, m., bernt, l., & mortensen, j. (2008). child protection and violence against women: a curriculum for child protection workers. victoria, bc: ministry of children and family development. davies, l., & krane, j. (2006). collaborate with caution: protecting children, helping mothers. critical social policy, 26(2), 412-425. echlin, c., & osthoff, b. (2000). child protection workers and battered women's advocates working together to end violence against women and children. journal of aggression, maltreatment & trauma, 3(1), 207-219. english, d. j., wingard, t., marshall, d., orme, m., & orme, a. (2000). alternative responses to child protective services: emerging issues and concerns. child abuse & neglect, 24(3), 375-388. featherstone, b., & peckover, s. (2007). letting them get away with it: fathers, domestic violence and child welfare. critical social policy, 27(2), 181-202. 

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 findlater, j. e., & kelly, s. (1999). reframing child safety in michigan: building collaboration among domestic violence, family preservation, and child protection services. child maltreatment, 4(2), 167-174. friend, c. (2000). aligning with the battered woman to protect both mother and child: direct practice and policy implications. journal of aggression, maltreatment & trauma, 3(1), 253267. friend, c., lambert, l., & shlonsky, a. (2007). from culture clash to new possibilities: a harm reduction approach to family violence and child protection services. brief treatment & crisis intervention, 7(4), 345-363. government of british columbia. (2008). keeping women safe: eight critical components of an effective justice response to domestic violence. victoria, bc: critical components project team. halseth, g., & lo, l. (1999). new voices in the debate: the quesnel women's resource centre and sustainable community development. forestry chronicle, 75(5), 799-804. hardcastle, d. a., wenocur, s., & powers, p. r. (1997). community practice: theories and skills for social workers. new york: oxford university press. hashagen, s. (2002). models of community engagement. edinburgh: scottish community development centre. malik, n. m., ward, k., & janczewski, c. (2008). coordinated community response to family violence: the role of domestic violence service organizations. journal of interpersonal violence, 23(7), 933-955. mancini, j. a., nelson, j. p., bowen, g. l., & martin, j. a. (2006). preventing intimate partner violence: a community capacity approach. journal of aggression, maltreatment & trauma, 13(3), 203-227. mattingly, m., stuart, c., & vanderven, k. (2002). north american certification project (nacp): competencies for professional child and youth work practitioners. journal of child and youth care work, 17, 16-49. midgley, j., & livermore, m. (1998). social capital and local economic development: implications for community social work practice. journal of community practice, 5, 29-40. ministry of children and family development. (2004). best practice approaches: child protection and violence against women. victoria, bc: author. ministry of community services. (2005). community guide for preventing violence against women. victoria, bc: author. 

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 moles, k. (2008). bridging the divide between child welfare and domestic violence services: deconstructing the change process. children & youth services review, 30(6), 674-688. nuszkowski, m. a., coben, j. h., kelleher, k. j., goldcamp, j. c., hazen, a. l., & connelly, c. d. (2007). training, co-training, and cross-training of domestic violence and child welfare agencies. families in society, 88(1), 35-41. pence, a. r. (2003). thoughts on promoting capacity in support of child well-being. child & youth care forum, 32(6), 313-318. pence, e., & shepard, m. (eds.). (1999). coordinating community responses to domestic violence: lessons from duluth and beyond. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. pennell, j., & burford, g. (2000). family group decision making: protecting children and women. child welfare, 79(2), 131-158. schechter, s., & edleson, j. l. (1995). in the best interest of women and children: a call for collaboration between child welfare and domestic violence constituencies. protecting children, 11(3), 6-11. skotnitsky, l., & ferguson, e. (2005). building community capacity with non-profit boards in the inner city. canadian journal of urban research, 14(1), 32-53. spears, l. (2000). building bridges between domestic violence organizations and child protective services. harrisburg, pa: national resource center on domestic violence. tastsoglou, e., & miedema, b. (2003). immigrant women and community development in the canadian maritimes: outsiders within? canadian journal of sociology, 28(2), 203-234. colleen macpherson has been a child and youth care practitioner since 1996. she has worked as a front-line crisis support worker and family support worker in the non-profit sector. she is currently employed as a child protection worker with the public service and is completing her m.a. in child and youth care at the university of victoria. she is the recipient of a university of victoria fellowship and recently received a sshrc joseph armand bombardier canada graduate scholarship to complete her thesis research which explores child welfare responses to the parenting behaviours of men who batter. colleen’s interests are focussed on enhancing both child welfare responses to families requiring support and intervention for domestic violence and collaboration between the private and public sectors. overall themes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 349 book review: child and youth care: critical perspectives on pedagogy, practice, and policy (2011) alan pence and jennifer white, editors reviewed by rebecca raby rebecca raby, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of child and youth studies, brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. e-mail: rraby@brocku.ca child and youth care: critical perspectives on pedagogy, practice, and policy is an edited collection that importantly contributes to critical, postfoundational analyses of child and youth care. child and youth care covers a broad, multifaceted range of professional practice that is powerfully positioned to reproduce and/or challenge singular truths and social inequalities in work with young people and their families, thus pointing to the importance of critical reflection. contributors to this collection are primarily faculty and graduate students from the department of child and youth care at the university of victoria, canada, who also share a wealth of practical experience in the child and youth care field. these authors draw on a range of theoretical approaches including postmodernism, poststructuralism, governmentality studies, postmarxism, queer theory, feminism, and postcolonialism. the chapters link such theory to personal teaching, research experiences, and literature review to draw attention to, and problematize, features of modernist practice in child and youth care. mailto:rraby@brocku.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 350 three dominant themes emerge across most chapters. first, there is concern with the process of professionalization of child and youth care, a process that seeks legitimacy and status but also creates boundaries around what is considered acceptable knowledge and what is not. this theme is particularly well-addressed in brooke alsbury’s chapter on professionalization in canada’s north. the concern with professionalization relates to the second broader process of categorization, evaluation and normalization, elements that contribute to reproducing “the centre” and “the other”. kathleen kummen’s chapter concludes this volume with a particularly cogent analysis of such governmental processes regarding school readiness. thirdly, there is a strong, consistent concern with individualizing practices that hold young people and their families solely responsible for their own difficult circumstances while neglecting the broader context. as jennifer white quotes from judith butler: “to take the self-generated acts of the individual as our point of departure in moral reasoning is precisely to foreclose the possibility of questioning what kind of world gives rise to such individuals… what social conditions help to form the very ways that choice and deliberation proceed?” (p. 38). the contributors counter that those working in child and youth care must recognize and seek to address wider inequality, prioritize context, attend to the effects of their practice, and listen more closely to young people and their families. these authors then propose alternative approaches to child and youth care provision. this collection is organized into four sections. the first section sets the stage for the rest of the book by raising questions about some fundamentals of child and youth care professional practice: modernism, developmentalism, and codes of ethics. it opens with a preface by alan pence who outlines his personal movement from scientific modernism and professionalization towards critical, postmodern thinking. this preface is followed by an inviting introduction by alan pence and jennifer white which provides initial explanation of how the dominance of modernist ideas in much child and youth care work is challenged through critical, postfoundational views which foreground power, privilege, and diversity. they caution that one paradigm does not replace the other; rather, they seek a both/and position that engages with modernist and postmodernist ideas. in chapter 1, j. n. little embraces feminist, poststructural, postcolonial, and relational approaches to complicate the binary between academic and practitioner. little highlights the overlaps and connections between the two sides of this binary in her everyday work activities to ultimately recommend a theoro-practivist model which holds together the three elements of child and youth care that little considers imperative: theory, practice, and activism. little’s chapter embraces the multidisciplinary history of child and youth care, challenges essentialist theorizing, and advocates activist teaching and methodologies. little covers a lot of ground in this chapter to contend that there is significant room within child and youth care for multiple philosophies and differences. veronica pacini-ketchabaw challenges the use of developmental theories as facts in child and youth care in chapter 2. she argues that while it is important to teach developmental approaches, such education needs to address the historical context of developmentalism to decentre it. she then provides some of this context. the developmental paradigm comes under scrutiny, for example, for its western assumptions, its colonial links, and its role in the ordering of disciplinary societies through classifying universal stages of development and ideal outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 351 drawing on gilles deleuze, pacini-ketchabaw argues that alongside the disciplinary society, developmentalism is part of the current “society of control”, which requires flexible subjects who are continually monitored and self-monitoring based on ever-changing evaluating criteria. pacini-ketchabaw echoes hans skott-myhre’s call that we rethink subjectivity to embrace our own creative productions and to challenge closures – thus decentring basic assumptions of developmentalism. jennifer white’s chapter 3 scrutinizes the development of standard codes of ethics as part of professionalism. white argues that mainstream codes of ethics in child and youth care present ethics as clear-cut, detached and technical, focus on the individual rather than oppressive circumstances, formulate only on a blatant understanding of harm, and assume a clear separation between clients and professionals. white counters that child and youth care practice is much more complex on the ground, for “what is considered to be good and right in one context might be quite different in another” (p. 37). in white’s practice with suicide prevention, she finds that the standard codes of ethics fail to consider the broader context leading to the contemplation of suicide and how a practitioner may need to actively address this context. rather than considering a code of ethics as a neutral, technical tool, white contends that ethics should be understood as discursive practice that makes room for social justice. the second section of this collection draws together three chapters on gender and gender inequality in child and youth care work. chapter 4 by jonathan morris nicely reviews current poststructural feminist work in child and youth studies that focuses on children’s gender performance and deconstructs the male-female binary as a heterosexualizing practice. judith butler’s work on performativity figures prominently in this chapter as morris considers how gendered discourses constrain and enable. morris draws on collective biography used in a graduate course to explore students’ first engagements with awareness of developmental and gender narratives. the stories illustrate the complexities of gender as it produces subjects who embrace but also attempt to resist the unequal gender binary that so powerfully defines us. morris argues that feminist poststructural analysis is relevant to child and youth care not only because it foregrounds the problematic role of gender in developmental expectations of children’s competency, but also children’s active participation in gender construction, regulation, and disruption. chapter 5, by sandrina de finney, elicia loiselle, and mackenzie dean, reviews the growing area of girlhood studies as it is relevant to minoritized girls. the authors argue that dominant discourses of girlhood and minoritization processes both problematically position certain girls as outsiders and others as privileged insiders. this chapter includes compelling quotations from the field to illustrate. for example, girl-centred programming often reproduces a normative femininity that can be deeply alienating to girls who identify as masculine. the chapter also examines experiences of aboriginal, racialized, and disabled girls that exacerbate their marginality. as with many of the authors in this volume, de finney et al. argue that child and youth care practitioners need to understand girls in context and to also consider how they themselves might be pathologizing minoritized girls. these authors advocate programming for minoritized girls that helps them to name and challenge the inequalities that they face. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 352 in chapter 6, b. denise hodgins considers how father involvement initiatives conceptualize fatherhood. while there are many forms of fatherhood across time and cultures, hodgins finds that what is considered an involved father in north america tends to draw on dominant, western ideas that prioritize emotional and financial family support. this chapter includes a detailed, ambitious history outlining how traditional, middle-class conceptualizations of mother and fatherhood have emerged and predominated. the unifying thread of this history is a focus on fathers as providers. meanwhile, current initiatives seek fathers’ participation yet often position them as support persons while naturalizing mothers. furthermore, programs portend to include diverse fatherhoods but are often framed within western assumptions and neglect to consider specific challenges, such as those faced by aboriginal, immigrant, and refugee fathers. the contributions in the third section of the book invite more emotive, personal engagements to expand inclusive child and youth care. brooke alsbury’s chapter 7 reflects on the process of professionalization after her own skills were not recognized on an extended visit to nunavut. professionalization brings status for some by recognizing only a certain body of skills and knowledge. alsbury is particularly concerned to note that professionalization can undermine local wisdom when cross-cultural practices and interpersonal relations are not recognized. alsbury instead values practice-based evidence from local contexts, and thus multiple, competing sources of evidence. she would like to see a shift towards understanding the young people and families child and youth care serves as co-experts to further prevent rigid professional boundaries. to alsbury, such practices are congruent with child and youth care values of inclusion and collaboration. chapter 8 problematizes the “helping industry” for homeless youth. mark l. kelly considers factors in the life of a street youth named daze to challenge the predominant tendency in the helping professions to concentrate on individual responsibility and choice over structural circumstances and context. kelly also worries that youth work can contribute to, and even benefit from, street involvement: outreach is frequently linked to mainstreaming youth, for example, which in turn reinforces their marginalization. kelly is concerned that such practices neglect to consider the contribution of street youth to arts, culture, sport, and politics, but struggles to balance this contribution with his fears for young people on the street. kelly thus reflects on his own outreach experiences, noting the influence of neo-liberal ideals on his practice and raising numerous self-reflexive questions. in chapter 9, janet newbury considers loss as an experience that can move people from individual blame towards recognition of situational context and shared oppression because it reminds us that our lives are interconnected. newbury notably draws on judith butler’s more recent work on communal loss to contend that loss can be a pivotal political experience leading to activism. for example, newbury describes a workshop with gerry oleman of the reservation school survivor society who talked with human service professionals about the profound loss connected to residential schools that has also fostered hope and connectedness. the workshop led participants to move away from individualizing theories to relational and contextual approaches in their work. newbury is critical of positivist, evidence-based practice, which is premised on seeking standard, clear answers. she counters that our understanding is always international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 353 partial, that unpredictability is acceptable, and that we thus need to listen more and presume less. loss helps us do this by illustrating commonalities between individuals and populations. the final section of this book looks at policy discourse in relation to child and youth care. in chapter 10, lorinda stoneman reviews canadian policy developments in relation to young offending. stoneman traces youth justice from the 1600s to today with a focus on how delinquent youth have been treated and understood. this history begins with young people being treated much like adults and punished individually, moves gradually towards an understanding of children as needing unique protection, and then shifts again in the late 20th century towards current debates about whether young people should be treated as victims or as accountable when up against the law. stoneman is concerned that present demonization of youth, advocacy for greater punishment, and blaming of marginalized people for social ills reinforce social stratification and oppression. the remainder of stoneman’s chapter shifts towards a more governmental analysis, arguing for instance that processes such as youth risk screening may seem objective but are not. the last substantive chapter of this book (chapter 11) turns a critical eye onto the idea of school readiness, an idea central to current early years and education services. kathleen kummen is concerned that the use of readiness creates a singular story privileging some children over others. standard ways of measuring readiness are used to identify children, or communities of children, who are not school ready and then to introduce interventions. kummen draws on social constructionism to challenge this, suggesting that what seems like static knowledge of readiness is really created, contextual, and partial. building on chapter 2, kummen suggests that developmentalism in particular has shaped a narrow, universalizing, and specifically western definition of normal which “privileges one way of understanding childhood over another” (p. 205). to illustrate, kummen focuses in on three micropractices that act as “regimes of truth” in british columbia in relation to the early development instrument (edi) used by kindergarten teachers to assess readiness. kummen illustrates how children, parents, and even entire communities are monitored, classified hierarchically, and face possible intervention based on their conformity to developmental standards. while kummen argues that school readiness as an idea is not inherently bad, she challenges its singular story as there is a diversity of learning pathways to a range of possible futures. overall, the chapters in this volume tackle diverse and crucial questions regarding child and youth care. each individual chapter ambitiously covers a lot of ground: most review modernist practices, refer to postfoundational theories, link to personal or research experiences, and offer compelling, though sometimes underdeveloped, alternatives. while it is difficult to review current practice, evaluate that practice, and offer alternatives in short chapters, i would have loved to learn more, for example, from little on participatory action research methodologies, from kelly on the idea of a third space or middle ground in outreach to street youth, and from kummen on what it means to consider a teacher a co-learner. similarly, the compelling ideas of some chapters would have benefited from more concrete examples. i would like to have heard more specifically from alsbury about how professionalization undermines the relevant expertise of people in the north. similarly, concrete examples of father involvement initiatives would have bolstered hodgins’ contribution, while de finney et al.’s chapter 5 on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 349–354 354 minoritization of girls could have helpfully referenced current, innovative programs that support girls in challenging inequalities. pence and white have tried to balance between a minimalist editorial role which allows contributors to speak directly to the reader and a more intensive one that provides an organizational metanarrative. while they balance between these approaches nicely in their introduction, a more detailed explanation of critical postfoundational perspectives would have been a logical and welcome addition, particularly as the collection covers such diverse, but occasionally uneven, theoretical ground. also, while the book’s theoretical stance importantly resists concrete definitions, a more detailed introduction to the profession of child and youth care would help less familiar readers to enter into this engagement. the collection would have benefited from a heavier editorial hand in general. there is quite a bit of repetition between chapters, for example, and the sectional organization of the articles was not always clear or well explained. certain chapters that would have fit very well together, for example, were far apart in the text. notably, white’s chapter 3 on ethics could have been paired with alsbury’s chapter 7 on professionalization, and pacini’s-ketchabaw’s chapter 2 on developmentalism linked with kummen’s chapter 11 on school readiness. such minor concerns aside, child and youth care: critical perspectives on pedagogy, practice, and policy presents a number of valuable contributions that together offer readers a strong, theoretically grounded collection that thoughtfully engages with, and importantly troubles, key components of child and youth care. this collection challenges child and youth care practitioners to reflect on their practices, and raises vital questions for students to consider as they enter the field. many chapters in this volume are also relevant well beyond child and youth care; the questions they raise inform developmental psychology, the sociology of childhood and youth, and child and youth studies more broadly. the un convention on the rights of the child: a transdisciplinary tool for democratic citizenship education international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 494 constructing critical citizenship with young people: alternative pedagogies shannon a. moore and tyler gegieckas, luisa marval, hailey mccauley, and sarah peloquin abstract: the authors present theoretical and empirical arguments for adopting the united nations convention on the rights of the child (or crc) to renew the teaching of citizenship to young students from a social justice standpoint (giroux, 2003; giroux & searls-giroux, 2004; mitchell, 2010; moore, 2008; smith, 2007). the paper draws its analysis and conclusions from a descriptive, exploratory study with key participants from a 2009 rally hosted by nobel nominee, child rights activist, and founder of free the children, craig kielburger. four of the paper’s co-authors were senior elementary students initially chosen as interviewees for the investigation and subject to traditional research protocols for minors. during data collection, however, their status shifted reflexively to include their contributions – not as objects under study or subjects of the interviewer’s questions – but as co-constructors of new knowledge. relative to the dominance of their teachers and other adult groups “engaging” their participation, this new status allowed a deeper exploration of the meanings they attached to active citizenship through an innovative dialogue (see kellett & ward, 2008; kellett, forrest, dent, & ward, 2004; also devine, 2002). through participatory lenses embedded within crc principles, particularly article 12, the analysis transcends traditional disciplinary silos to offer a critical and transdisciplinary alternative pedagogy. keywords: citizenship education, u.n. convention on the rights of the child, transdisciplinarity, critical pedagogy shannon a. moore, ph.d. is director, centre for women’s studies and associate professor in the department of child and youth studies at brock university. tyler gegieckas, luisa marval, hailey mccauley, and sarah peloquin were all 14year-old high school students from the niagara region of ontario at the time of writing. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to dr. shannon moore, department of child and youth studies, brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. contact: smoore@brocku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 495 constructions of citizenship and democracy are being reshaped in this generation through the influence of social media as a political instrument. this development was acknowledged during the 2008 election of barack obama as president of the united states, and during the early months of 2011 through grassroots uprisings aimed at toppling regimes across various locales in north africa and the arabian peninsula (beginning in tunisia, egypt, yemen, and bahrain, along with libya and syria at time of writing). closer to home, canadian federal and regional elections demonstrated an unpredictable trajectory as young people organized themselves through non-partisan “vote mobs” (freeland, 2011). from this historic perspective, we present an argument for greater social justice and inclusion for young people through the adoption of the united nations convention on the rights of the child within citizenship curricula in canada. while the country ratified the treaty more than two decades ago, the canadian senate describes it as an untapped human rights pedagogy and, as a result, children and young people as “silenced citizens” (senate of canada, 2007). such a development could foster a more inclusive yet critical dialogue for and with young people to encourage political engagement and more experience in governing relations. this argument assumes that participatory democratic traditions such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from violence, the rights to health care, peaceful assembly, and to vote work when exercised in the best interests of all citizens in contrast to social exclusion or oppressive regimes of power (see similar arguments by moosa-mitha, 2005; morgan & streb, 2001). in addition, it includes the implicit understanding that “a theory of power is central … to any analysis related to children’s experiences” (devine, 2002, p. 303). finally, this assumption has not overlooked the current contested status of citizenship for first nations and aboriginal peoples in this country (who were not “given” the vote until the 1960s), or that of sexual, ethnic, religious, physically-challenged, or cognitively-challenged minorities. epistemological lens it is clear in much of the human rights literature to date that theorists frequently integrate concepts related to democratic citizenship with human rights or their violation (donnelly, 2000; douzinas, 2006; hawkins, 2009; see also mitchell, 2010; o’byrne, 2003). this paper was premised on a similar assumption that the two are inexorably linked, both positively and negatively, through human relationships. however, as devine (2002) maintains: if children’s citizenship is to be taken seriously education for and into education must have at its core the development of political literacy among children through active decision-making and participation in all aspects of scholarly life. (p. 318) from a rights-based perspective, young people have yet to experience their voices being heard in education, health care, or politics all that often (senate of canada, 2007). engaging young people democratically as co-constructors of knowledge was inspired by the approaches introduced by educator mary kellett at the centre for childhood development and learning (chdl), open university, england. currently director of the children’s research centre, kellett maintains that empowering children to execute international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 496 research on issues that matter to them should be a central objective since they are experts about issues within their own lives (kellett et al., 2004; see also http://childrens-researchcentre.open.ac.uk/; kellett & ward, 2008; mauthner, birch, jessop, & miller, 2002). through this approach, the current co-authors’ voices became an integral theoretical thread woven throughout the analysis of other findings along with this account since, as levison (2000) has also argued, “considering children as agents can lead to different conclusions and policy recommendations” (p. 125). this was not without some degree of consternation within the lead author’s institutional research ethics board1 participation rights are very important within a societal context where adult authority and power is absolute. children’s role as citizens and understanding and awareness of democracy, is determined by the extent to which their participation rights are respected. participation rights support a sense of belonging and inclusion but more importantly teach children how they can bring about change. (p. 149) with its historically bound notions of formal procedures to do with coercion and ethical dilemmas, and an aim more to do with the avoidance of litigation than with how one might deal with reflexivity and change on the ground (see also mauthner et al., 2002). our approach is counter-hegemonic to many contemporary research practices since “just as gendered perspectives have historically been ignored due to women’s lack of power relative to men, so children’s perspectives have been overlooked due to their lack of power vis-à-vis adults” (levison, 2000, p. 126). as smith (2007) also observes: despite an abundance of new millennial rhetoric associated with implementing the principles and provisions of the crc (1989), young people are less well-represented in canada’s educational, legal, policy, or legislative arenas than is the case for their contemporaries in many u.k. and european settings (mitchell, 2003; mitchell, 2010; moore & mitchell, 2010; osler & starkey, 2005; senate of canada, 2007). we agree with freeman (1992) that it remains important to include children’s rights with social justice and “with other rights movements (women, civil rights etc.) … [since] ‘rights’ enables one to talk in terms of ‘entitlements’” (freeman, 1992, p. 41) and the power relations orchestrating traditional pedagogies. as authors, we contend this process begins with knowledge about children’s rights, and particularly young people’s right to participate and have a voice in decisions on matters that impact them – especially in areas pertaining to research. ontological lens the paper has been written from the standpoint of critical pedagogy first espoused by educator paulo freire (1970) and, thus, takes up a transdisciplinary approach to 1 this study was reviewed by brock university’s research ethics board (moore/mitchell 08-289) with preliminary findings presented at the international journal of the arts and sciences conference in aix-enprovence, france june 11, 2010. http://childrens-research-centre.open.ac.uk/� http://childrens-research-centre.open.ac.uk/� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 497 childhood studies (moore, 2006). giroux (2003) contends that “educators need to develop a politics and pedagogy that combine the modernist legacy of social justice, equality, freedom, and rights with late modern concerns with difference, plurality, power, discourse, identities and politics … elements of a democratic postmodernism” (p. 54). following on from giroux’s perspectives, as a critical theorist the lead author reconstructs the pedagogical as political and the political as pedagogical (freire, 1970) by directly including concerns expressed by young people regarding participatory citizenship, and integrating both disciplinary and professional lenses identified in the literature as “transdisciplinary” (nicolescu, 1999, 2002). the prefix “trans” simply means to go beyond; hence, “transdisciplinarity is simultaneously an attitude and a form of action” (klein, 2004, p. 517) that fosters dialogue among specialists with a recognition of multiple new sites and forms of knowledge creation (see also kincheloe & mclaren, 2005; moore & mitchell, 2008). it is, in the same instance, that which is between, across, and beyond all disciplines in that it fosters a unity of knowledge about our world (nicolescu, 2005). the lead author emphasizes that this transition to transdisciplinary thinking and critical pedagogy occurred before entering the academy and after 15 years of front-line counselling practice with young people and families in canada, scotland, and england within mental health, education, youth justice, and out-of-home care settings. the transdisciplinary approach is also congruent with hyslop-margison and thayer’s (2009) contention that contrary to the reproductive model of citizenship education, a citizenship education based upon [freirean] critical pedagogy considers society and citizenship as dynamic, fluid, and contestable constructs where fundamental social change is both imaginable and practically possible (p. 2). arguably, transdisciplinarity is also a significant new ontological standpoint in the context of global citizenship because it has often been adopted by multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary pedagogues (shultz & jorgenson, 2009). nicolescu (2005) furthers this argument: the transdisciplinary education, [also] founded on the transdisciplinary methodology, allows us to establish links between persons, facts, images, representations, fields of knowledge and action to discover the eros of learning during our entire life. the creativity of the human being is conditioned by permanent questioning and permanent integration. (p. 14) this world view allows a new form of knowledge creation in canadian research contexts since studies of childhood and citizenship education have most often been conducted from top-down perspectives (howe & covell, 2005; senate of canada, 2007). through transdisciplinary thinking, we find a “unity in diversity and diversity through unity” (nicolescu, 2005, p. 1) that is cogent when considering parallel pedagogical implications of the local in the global, and global in the local moment. co-construction of knowledge with young people and engaging young people as co-researchers are examples of this type of critical knowledge creation. it is well-established that individual subjects are experts in their own lives and “insiders” (kellett & ward, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 498 as we leave this section, it is emphasized once again that any notion relative to a just and more inclusive “citizenship” for aboriginal peoples across canada must remain bracketed as a separate but integrally related investigation clearly transcending the exploratory scope of this project (see also canadian aboriginal news, 2009). in this, we concur with kincheloe’s (2008, as cited in malott, 2008) observations that the vast majority of north americans: are absolutely unaware they are using native land – it is just not part of western consciousness – that we are on native land … it seems rather obvious [even though nobody seems to think about it] that a central dimension of any critical pedagogy has to deal with the subject of indigeneity, and it is something very few critical scholars are aware of or interested in. (pp. 153–154) for a more in-depth discussion, stasiulis (2002a) outlines the contours of this national amnesia and its harvest of contested notions of citizenship inherited from canada’s colonial past through to its present-day “treaty federalism and treaty citizenship” (pp. 369–370). methodological lens the original study was framed by this research question: what are some of the critical issues for young people as they attempt to exercise their rights to participatory citizenship in canada and beyond? contributions were made by the co-authors of this paper in response to the question after attending a youth rally held at brock university in may, 2009. be the change: a niagara-wide youth leadership conference on global citizenship was hosted by the campus free the children action group (see www.freethechildren.com) which is formally affiliated with the larger organization established in canada in 1995 by then 12-year-old craig kielburger. sixteen years later, free the children has become an international non-governmental organization (c. kielburger & m. kielburger, 2006). the brock university chapter succeeded with a twoyear fundraising drive to co-host the rally, and this included successfully collaborating with a group of 15 high school students employed by the regional public health authority (http://www.niagararegion.ca/news/nov1820102.aspx). the may, 2009 event was attended by over 500 elementary, high school and university-aged delegates, each motivated to hear craig speak and to participate in workshops on themes of global citizenship and activism (dickson, 2010). as an organization, free the children was founded on social justice principles and based upon social entrepreneurship wherein critical citizenship is enacted as a process/activity, and where social values of local and global change are generated by young people themselves. there are four common themes shaping social entrepreneurship that distinguish these activities from corporate enterprise. 1. emphasis on “social goals” as opposed to economic gains; 2. the social activist role played by the social entrepreneur; 3. elements of entrepreneurship and innovation; and, http://www.freethechildren.com/� http://www.niagararegion.ca/news/nov1820102.aspx� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 499 4. creating and using economic profit as a means to solve the social problem rather than as an end in itself. (trivedi, 2010, p. 68) co-founder of free the children, marc kielburger, underlines the philosophy of free the children: “if we can give people the opportunity to make choices that support a more sustainable lifestyle, it is possible to do and generate profits. in fact, that classic win-win is the very cornerstone of the entire social economy” (as cited in wingrove, 2010, march 20, p. f6). discussion: towards an alternative pedagogy the following section draws further upon relevant literature and citations are interspersed with the co-authors’ written accounts of their observations from the conference and their reflections on the research question. historically, childhood theories have been shaped by adultist political, ideological, and disciplinary perspectives that have silenced young people by constructing them as docile citizens-in-waiting (raby, 2005; mitchell, 2010; moore & mitchell, 2008, 2009; stasiulis, 2002a, 2002b). as highlighted in the introduction, traditional approaches to citizenship pedagogies in canada also adopt this cognitive and developmental psychology orientation towards civics curricula (see, for example, howe & covell, 2005, p. 123). today, critical pedagogues are urging educators (and other adults in authority) to also value the critical capacities of young citizens and to understand that educational sites are vital spaces in which to affect social struggles positively (giroux, 2008). from the standpoint of freirean pedagogy, a critical discussion of children’s human rights in the classroom offers educators and students new potential for enacting a dynamic citizenship, one that at the same moment recognizes formal political status as it engages in democratic teaching and learning relations (see also ben-arieh & boyer, 2005; devine, 2002; stasiulis, 2002a, 2002b; tomaševski, 2006). this shift towards valuing young people’s contributions in shaping educational and democratic participation in the classroom and in civil society is reinforced by the organizing principles of the crc, rather than traditional approaches that treat young people as citizens-in-waiting. the treaty offers a framework for this type of alternative approach towards teaching democratic traditions premised upon article 42 to “make the principles of the crc widely known” to young people, educators, and policy-makers alike. indeed, during a 2002 interview with one of the treaty’s 1979/89 u.n. and nongovernmental negotiators, mitchell (2005) found this text was conceived by consensus and added in late going as an “international compliance indicator” (pp. 324–325; see also un general assembly, 1994). as giroux (2008) explains, “dialogue, thoughtfulness and critical exchanges” are fostered when we understand that education is “more than an investment opportunity” and that “citizenship is more than conspicuous consumption, learning is more than preparing for a job” (p. 65). co-author tyler gegieckas reinforces this shift towards international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 500 newer constructions of citizenship and towards more participatory expressions of “engagement”. ever since i was a little kid, i was always told that i couldn’t do anything. tyler don’t touch that, tyler don’t do that. over and over. but global citizenship is something that i’m not going to be told no … global citizenship means to me that somebody is willing to make a difference and take a stand. somebody that instead of buying needless things, sponsors somebody from a different county who is less fortunate. somebody instead of letting kids pick on somebody sticks up for that person. every little thing helps and makes you a global citizen … i think people these days are too concerned with their own personal issues … who cares if you don’t have a dress for a movie, what we should be caring about is whether people have enough to eat in places all over the world. now a global citizen cares about that … i am a global citizen and have already started doing things. similar to giroux’s arguments and tyler’s observations, hyslop-margison and thayer (2009) contend that “our role in education is not to prepare students for a new economic reality designed by others, but to prepare them to shape social reality in more progressive and socially just sorts of ways” (p. x). education is seen as the cornerstone for understanding and experiencing citizenship rights (moore, 2008; moore & mitchell, 2008; tomaševski, 2006) since basic knowledge of civic, social, and political rights is the most basic human right of all (also arendt, 1970; freeman, 2007). moosa-mitha (2005) extends this analysis further: children’s difference from the adult “norm” assumed of citizens in liberal models of citizenship results in overlooking children’s citizenship rights through a construction of children as “not-yet-citizens”. alternative models of citizenship that centre on “difference” of social identities such as gender, race sexuality, class, and so on, offer possibilities of defining citizenship in ways that take their rights and status as citizens seriously on the basis, rather than the exclusion, of their identity as children. (pp. 369–370) such criticality permits the uncovering of expressions of active citizenship within institutional power relations. educational sites, particularly for young people, have emancipatory potential and pedagogues have the potential to mentor autonomy, political agency, and social change. nevertheless, as giroux (2003) argues: [m]any educators have failed to take seriously italian marxist antonio gramsci’s insight that “[e]very relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship” with its implication that education as a cultural pedagogical practice takes place across multiple sites as it signals how, within diverse contexts, education makes us both subjects of and subject to relations of power. (p. 64) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 501 hannah arendt underscored this argument when she petitioned us to understand education as linked to democracy and the power to prepare our children to take responsibility to renew a common world (as cited in giroux, 2010, p. 1). co-author luisa marval affirms this optimistic notion that instilling hope for change and appropriating the tools necessary for greater social justice can nurture critical citizenship: if we open our minds and our hearts to others, it will almost naturally follow that our actions will be those of a global citizen … we should never underestimate the importance of simply educating others about global issues and ways of becoming involved … no matter how young or old we are, there are innumerable ways to make a difference. however, this doesn’t mean that each of us must go overseas to build houses. we have to start in our own communities. global citizens value diversity, are aware of and want to abolish social injustice and they care for fellow humans as well as human rights and dignity. i strongly feel that we should see differences as a strength and not weakness and that we should celebrate differences. after all, we all have different styles, traits and characteristics, even without our own culture, so why shun diversity? concerning social injustice, a global citizen works hard to eradicate cruelty, unjust laws and practices and to provide freedom and justice for all. human rights and equality are other relevant issues that global citizens must be aware of. all humans should be treated equally regardless of their sex, colour, religion or race. as the old proverb says, “no human is more human than another human.” for much of the past half century, canadians have enjoyed an international reputation as being human rights champions through their founding membership in the united nations (united nations international children’s emergency fund [unicef], 2009) and as early promoters of the crc (mitchell, 2000, 2005). this claim is no longer tenable since the current political dynamics in the nation and the actual experience of exclusionary forms of citizenship for those under the age of 18 clearly reflect successive governmental violations through ideological misinterpretations (see howe & covell, 2005, 2007; mitchell, 2010; united nations committee on the rights of the child, 1995, 2003). generalized fears of young people in canada have been coupled with “dominant western notions of childhood that fetishize innocence and attribute passivity and incompetence to children” (stasiulis, 2002b, p. 507). this ideological and political stance propels adultist institutions to favour power and control over participation (moore & mitchell, 2009; mitchell, 2010; see also scraton, 1997). although still widely misunderstood by childhood academics and advocates alike (mitchell, 2010), serious efforts to implement the crc in canada could still have a: profound impact on real children’s lives … children’s rights are being pushed to the side and even violated … one only needs to take a brief survey of the issue of child poverty, or the situation of aboriginal or special needs children to realize that this is true. (unicef, 2009, p. 14) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 502 co-author hailey mccauley confirms this argument as she describes the way – from her perspective – children’s rights, citizenship, and social justice relate: i have a voice, i have a right, i have freedom but there are so many children out there that don’t have a right and don’t have their voices heard when they should. just knowing some child out there, any age, is working instead of playing, having fun and enjoying their life and may have never gone to school, so they can’t read or write. it’s unfair and i want to help change that. even if i can only do something small, i know it can and will make a big difference in somebody else’s life. i want to help make a difference because i am fortunate, there are so many children that don’t have anything when i have so much. i have clean drinking water, yet so many people out there don’t. there is so much poverty everywhere, even in my own local community, it’s so unreal and heartbreaking. i just can’t sit back and do nothing. i want to help, i want to make a difference, and i want to be the change. today, young people form the largest generation yet seen, and are at the epicentre of a world that has changed in unimaginable ways, particularly over the past two decades (unicef, 2009, p. 63). young people can offer creative solutions as they analyze challenges from their fresh points of view, as co-author sarah peloquin expresses in the following: when you hear the words “global citizen” you probably think, “i am a global citizen because i live on earth”. a global citizen is simply … someone who lives on the earth. whereas an active global citizen is someone who not only lives on earth but truly tries to make it a better place … in a way this is a lot like being an active global citizen because the world is filled with problems and we are reminded of that everyday but most of the time we just choose to close the door on them. i wasn’t all that aware of being an active global citizen until i started hearing both of my teachers use the saying … “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.” this really got me thinking by making me realize that since i wasn’t involved in helping the world’s problems i was part of them. young people often seek opportunities to experience how local initiatives can contribute to meaningful change – a change that for many starts with the community through small acts, as sarah peloquin describes above. this process of creating space for the voice of young people to effect meaningful change begins with restructuring adult-child power relations. as devine (2002) has also concluded: “providing children with access to a greater range of authoritative resources … would enable them to see that their voices really count, paving the way for a more active citizenry of children now as well as into their future adult years” (p. 318). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 503 concluding thoughts if we accept that knowledge of human rights is the most basic right of all, then education about human rights as a necessary prerequisite to a just civil society becomes an obvious inference. human rights and citizenship are indelibly linked: the expression of human rights is a dynamic of citizenship that enacts citizenship as a formal legal status denoting belonging to a group (ben-arieh & boyer, 2005; stasiulis, 2002a, 2002b). this paper offers an exploratory analysis of citizenship pedagogy through a social justice lens. the authors present an argument for starting with knowledge of the convention on the rights of the child to establish an alternative pedagogy to the traditional top-down adultist perspectives so typically found in canadian classrooms. this was facilitated through transdisciplinary thinking and the engagement of a group of young people in canada as co-constructors of knowledge. over the past two decades, it has been consistently documented that the majority of canadian students of any age know little to nothing about their human rights, as articulated within the crc (senate of canada, 2007; also howe & covell, 2005; mitchell, 2005; mitchell, 2010; moore & mitchell, 2010). that most ministries of education have chosen not to make the teaching of human rights to young people compulsory in their provincial curricula is a direct violation of crc article 42, and furthermore, contravenes key elements of the rights to education found in articles 28 and 29 (united nations committee on the rights of the child, 1995, 2003). indeed, many young people only hear about their convention rights for the first time in post-secondary institutional venues such as the be the change conference. full realization of the citizenship rights of young people simply is “not there yet” in practice (see unicef, 2009, p. 14). in canada, as in many countries that have ratified the crc, power relations impede young people from active engagement as critical citizens capable of enacting solutions due to their less well-developed maturity. these power relations are impacted further by adultist ideologies of childhood: standardized developmental trajectories; child as future investment; child and young person as incompetent, innocent, vulnerable, or deviant (moore & mitchell, 2010). kellett et al. (2004) contend that, “from a rightsbased agenda, the perspective of children as social actors places them as a socially excluded minority group struggling to find a voice” (p. 330). they further observe: “articles 12 and 13 of the uncrc require that children should be informed, involved and consulted about all activities that affect their lives” (p. 329). as shultz and jorgenson (2009) argue: this [kind of] education is a call to change the way things are done; to strive toward education at its best that is based on inquiry, critical thinking, and deep engagement that results in changes in learning, action, and both local and global social conditions. this education does not belong to any one faculty or discipline or to either formal or non-formal education but should be embedded within each in ways that extend and support the work of global citizenship education. (p. 2) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 504 the active participation of young people is an essential requisite to citizenship, and this sensibly may be nurtured through engagement in decision-making within educational contexts. the reinterpretation of traditional adultist power relations could be facilitated within an education that includes the human rights of young people for policy-makers, educators, and all levels of students, in conjunction with meaningful responses to the views and participation of young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 494-509 505 references arendt, h. (1970). on violence. new york: harcourt brace and co. ben-arieh, a., & boyer, y. (2005). citizenship and childhood: the state of affairs in israel. childhood, 12(1), 33–53. canadian aboriginal news. 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(2010, march 20). marc and craig kielburger's do-gooding social enterprise. the globe and mail. retrieved from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/marc-and-craig-kielburgers-do-gooding-socialenterprise/article1506256/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/marc-and-craig-kielburgers-do-gooding-social-enterprise/article1506256/� http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/marc-and-craig-kielburgers-do-gooding-social-enterprise/article1506256/� references escaping purity: lessons for child and youth care from religion and spirituality international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 187 escaping purity: lessons for child and youth care from religion daniel g. scott abstract: by taking up the suggestion of michel serres (1991) to use the history of religion to study change processes, this paper explores the development of the field of child and youth care (cyc) and its current state of change. it draws on karen armstrong’s (2001) portrayal of the history and development of fundamentalism across religious traditions to serve as a mirror for this reflective exercise, calling on cyc to risk the complexity of a self-reflective critique in moving forward to the next stage of development professionally and academically. keywords: fear, fundamentalism, practices, change daniel g. scott, ph.d. is associate professor and director at the school of child and youth care in the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. email: dgscott@uvic.ca this paper is a reflection on child and youth care (cyc), broadly understood, that uses the habits of reflexive practice while drawing on a different perspective from outside the field to consider the developmental phase of cyc, its possible direction, and the implications suggested through the reflective exercise. child and youth care in north america is a relatively new field focused on professional practice in the care of children, youth, and families in a variety of contexts, supported by academic diploma and degree programs, particularly in canada. it is currently establishing mechanisms for accreditation and professional certification. it would be recognized under other identity markers in other parts of the world, closely related, for example, to the field of social pedagogy in europe and social care work in the united kingdom. the paper brings together observations, felt experiences, and personal responses – a being with – that have arisen working in a context where cyc is much discussed, mailto:dgscott@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 188 commented on, debated, and defended. it is concerned about the current (and perhaps permanent) identity-making process and the establishing of orthodox claims and beliefs in cyc. i offer an assessment of the “state of the union” for consideration by practitioners and scholars. attending to context i begin with derrida’s insight (1988) that there is nothing outside of context: a correction to his often cited idea that there is nothing outside of text. in a new field it is important as context is not always written or coded – textualized – in deliberate conscious ways and, therefore, cannot always be based on citations. the textual record is itself a careful construct of shared ideas and approaches that are the accepted doctrines and ideas of the field. there are other contextual traces that are often non-verbal or, when verbalized, unconscious of their complexity and implications. cyc, as a context, is complicated and so, i use one of the field’s own practices, reflexivity, as a tool that offers a sensible approach for my assessment. it appears to me that in the process to name and claim identity there is currently some shared disquiet. some of the collective anxieties in cyc surface in conversations, in online postings, and in discussions about the field over coffee. as it is a new field, it is not uncommon for some colleagues to feel and say that their place and contributions as cyc workers and practitioners are unrecognized. there is a parallel concern that cyc will disappear, to be subsumed under other names. the following are some of the “hearsay” comments from students in and post their practicum experiences, from recent graduates finding their way in professional settings, from longer-term practitioners, and occasionally from academics: • we see ourselves and our field as under-acknowledged – this feedback often comes from graduates working in the field who sense that their way of working and their perceptions of what is required in a given situation are ignored or undervalued; • our workers often feel isolated and their identity as cyc threatened – they get professionally labelled by titles that do not name them as cyc workers, most commonly as social workers, a brand name that has become de-capitalized and generic in popular parlance but always carries for cycers the older professional identity brand; • our beliefs, values, and practices are not recognized as vital for the care and well being of children, youth, and families – our graduates speak of feeling like junior members of interdisciplinary teams, even if they have the most contact with and knowledge of clients being reviewed; • our beliefs in things like strength-based, ecological practice are under threat – they are no longer perceived as our exclusive domain. moreover, they now also appear to be under threat from critics within our own ranks who wish to challenge these truths of practice and critique such central tenets as developmental theory. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 189 this partial list echoes the fears and anxieties that need to be considered for their impact on the direction of the field and for the responses they engender both individually and collectively. another development a second form of cyc knowledge and language i am adapting for the purposes of this reflection comes from developmental theory that i extend to institutional settings. i have worked in a number of institutional contexts in my lifetime, some new, young, and fresh (a theatre commune, a retail business), some in a more adolescent stage of their institutional development (several different universities, the cbc), and one well on in its organizational life cycle (a mainline christian church). i draw on my experiences in those contexts for guidance to the field of cyc. in looking at the current cyc context, i consider it to be somewhere in mid-adolescent development. this is a time when identity matters and when choices about direction are being made. let me clarify that i am using the term “institution” in a loose way to encompass many contexts where institutional characteristics can be identified. all the sites, from commune to university to churches to professional disciplines like cyc have structure, have an ongoing life form, have people who identify as belonging to the site, and maintain forms, policies, and practices that are recognizable as being part of their identity. institutional structures tend to persist over time, tend to preserve themselves, and normally work to protect their collective identities through a variety of mechanisms. as a colleague once joked: from movement to monument to mausoleum, that is, from a lively or inspired beginning to gradual stasis and the decline of activity and vitality, to becoming a memory with a grand past. in the political world, this is the movement from revolution and grassroots uprising through civilization, to empire and decline, to historical ruins, to visit as tourists. a further trigger for this reflection comes from michel serres’ (1991) rome: the book of foundations in which he explores the myths, processes, and structures of culture and knowledge to articulate foundations. he suggests that one way to understand history and change processes in cultures would be to look at the history of religion and its institutions as they have been around for such a long time, longer than other institutional structures1 . change happens in them slowly, often very slowly. change in religious institutions may move at a glacial or even tectonic plate pace and because of the slow speed, they offer centuries-long views of their processes and therefore, insight into how change happens in institutional life, and how institutions develop, for better or for worse. living, as i do, in an active earthquake zone it is possible to imagine that sudden change can have a devastating impact but even so, it takes time for pressure to build to a cataclysmic shift. earthquakes that cause massive change are rare. geological changes are usually long slow processes. serres’ book implies that foundations are not solid but fluid, in motion, and subject to shifting and change, even if taking centuries to achieve. 1 serres refuses all citations in his work and it is a practice i lean towards. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 190 about the title before proceeding into the reflection, an explanation of the title “escaping purity” is in order. i confess, that since this exploration draws on religion and religious ideas, that i am not a fan of purity or claims that anything we do or construct can be completely clean, unadorned, or unmixed. calls to purity are not infrequent in religious settings. purity, as a concept, is entangled with ideas of cleanliness and chastity: something is pure if it is free “from mixture of any kind” (geddie, 1968, p. 892), “clean, winnowed or unadorned”. in its early latin form purus(n) it meant, as a legal term, unconditional, absolute or, curiously, subject to no religious claims (traupman, 1966/1995, p. 347). in light of the rest of the argument that follows, i note the implication that religion makes things impure and complicated. in my world, ideas, institutions, and people are admixtures: messy accumulations that are of interest precisely because they are not pure. claims to and pursuit of purity make me anxious because they seem, ultimately, to exclude everything but themselves. the pure cannot possibly mix with anything impure because such an encounter would automatically soil the pure by making a mixture. being pure or aspiring to purity seems to be a false and impossible labour with rather dark implications as it must be exclusionary. claiming to have exceptional knowledge or know-how about a belief or practice creates exclusion as it creates a special form of inclusion for only those in the know, and consequently, exclusion for those who do not know. my reaction against purity may be a shadow from my time working in an institutional church setting where i have witnessed the harm done by strident calls to purity in communities. i prefer the messier middle, with complexity and compromise part of the mix. john caputo (2006) deconstructs the word community in an etymological exercise in which he points out that community may have origins in the latin word communis (meaning common) but that that word comes from com – munis meaning com – with, munis – fortifications from munire: to fortify (p. 268). a community, in his reading, is a fortified space, a defensible site that has those who are inside and safe, and those who are outside and potentially dangerous. a community is a bounded space of limited belonging if we accept caputo’s etymology. in this paper i do. i am attempting to make clear that whether cyc is seen as a field, an institution, or a community or set of communities, the challenge remains: it is a site where there is the potential of inclusion and exclusion. it is a site in process that has to engage the tensions of change and shifting identity. in the curriculum of our education programs, we teach change theories and discuss identity formation so we have insight to bring to bear on the same issues at the collective level. beginning the reflection i have already claimed that child and youth care, as an institutional site, is developmentally somewhere between early adolescence and early adult life – overall a young institution in a stage of development where identity is important and still being formulated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 191 as a young institution, cyc may be able to learn from some of the struggles of older institutions. in what follows i will draw on serres’ suggestion to pay attention to religious contexts, to reflect on what i see in cyc, raise some concerns, and point to some trends and their implications. it was evident in recent debates about the field – the focus of much conversation around the 2011 cyc in action conference at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria – that identity is a tension point. following a call for papers posted for the conference, there were a series of online postings in response that appeared on cyc-net members forum around the year-end of 2010 that demonstrated some of the borders and divides about identity. there were strong claims being made about what counts as cyc and what cyc is claimed to be as practice, theory, and research. there were comments in the postings that claimed that some ideas and approaches were really cyc and others were suspect with the unfortunate additional implication that some people were not really cyc, not in the community, and dangerous to the well-being of the field as it is known and claimed by members who see themselves as inside the community and keepers of its “true” purpose and identity. i want to note that my thinking about this paper and the issues i care about preceded the exchanges on cyc-net but those comments came to exemplify my concerns about the maturity and direction of our field; how we represent and claim identity in cyc; and our beliefs about ourselves, our work, our professional practices, the place of theory, the role of research, and what shapes the field now and into the future. a clarifying point is necessary. there are no institutions that are singular in their perspective or approach. religious institutions are and have been myriad, multiple, complex, and conflicted: not only under a meta-title like islam, judaism, or christianity is there neither unity in religious contexts nor purity of self-definition or purpose, but even in subsectors like sunni, orthodox, or catholic there are complexities, divisions, sectarian variations, and frequently disagreement. religious institutions are marked by differences, variations, and uncomfortable divisions. these are common dynamics in all institutions and may be necessary. in some contexts that dynamic is allowed to remain as a tension that produces vitality and ongoing change. in others, it leads to endless degrees of fragmentation and smaller and smaller sectioning (sects) divided by increasingly more particular claims and, so-called, critical issues. in church settings, i have witnessed verbal and emotional battles over things such as women or gay clergy, use of resources, and attempts to change familiar practices or ritual texts that lead to quite ugly and damaging divisions. in the worst cases historically, divisions inside major faiths have led to violence and slaughter: witness the inquisition, witness the intersectarian violence currently in islam where religious pilgrims have become targets for bomb attacks. violence between religions has produced similar horrors and slaughter. the list here is long and stretches from past to present in unceasing frequency. the crusades, and the subjection of indigenous ceremonial practices, languages, and culture, by both christianity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 192 and islam in the americas, africa, and asia have much in common. conquest has many forms and empires have often relied on state-sanctioned belief systems to subdue and manage populations. the result in religious contexts has not been unity, and certainly not compassion, but rather fragmentation, mistrust and, in spite of attempts to hold to singular claims and perspectives, continued dispersal and disagreement. in my observation, in healthy institutions with more open attitudes, diversity breaks out and vitality results. there is always a danger that trouble may ensue and, in my experience, it is frequently led by those who claim new or different perspectives as being unacceptable, not understandable, dangerous or evil, and not really what “we” are. many names or accusations can be used to exclude change in whatever form it appears and to vilify those who promote new ways of thinking, being, or doing. a tool for reflection i turn now to karen armstrong’s (2001) book entitled, the battle for god: a history of fundamentalism, as it presents an overview of political and religious conflicts in christianity, islam, and judaism over the last several centuries and offers a perspective on change processes in religious contexts. armstrong sets up a number of tensions that i think are worth noting and may be useful for understanding growing pains in cyc. i will use her arguments about contemporary religious contexts as a mirror for understanding cyc. in doing so, i am précising her arguments into a manageable form for this reflection. a central issue in armstrong’s book is how people manage the dynamic between two aspects of their culture. first is their mythos, that is, the legends, stories, and beliefs about who they are and what that means for them (a matter of core identity). in most religious settings it includes a sense of being special people who have been called to a special way of life. sometimes it means a belief that they have a divine revelation to offer to the world, making them responsible to make the world better, to save it, or judge it. mythos, armstrong argues, is over against what she calls the logos, that is, the rational, structural practices of making and managing communal life, politics, economy, and the playing out of practices that deal with the mundane. it is never a strict duality of either/or but always a complex interaction and dynamic shifting of whatever inclination receives the most energy and attention2. her greatest concern is what can go wrong when the two are confused and mythos is turned into logos, that is when mythic ideas or principles become literal, defined by specific practices, and are treated as fact and hard reality rather than the soft, intuitive, imaginative, and inspirational roles they would normally play. similarly, trouble occurs when logos takes on the attributes of a mythos, that is when logic becomes myth and believers believe they have no myths but only cold hard truth3 2 i am summarizing an argument armstrong develops over several chapters complete with detailed examples from various traditions. in a pure form modelled on correct practices and that they have some obligation to enforce that knowing and their ways on others. the sets of strict practices must be followed precisely (and without question) in order for the community to maintain its borders and identity. armstrong claims a necessary balance as essential for a healthy community and community relationships (as well as relations 3 serres (1991), for example, claims the myth of science is that it has no myths. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 193 among communities). it appears that the confusion of mythos and logos has dire consequences. in looking at the growth of fundamentalist communities across religious traditions, that she argues have confused mythos and logos, armstrong names some common community identity markers that produce fundamentalist responses. she describes the qualities of communities that feel themselves to be under stress or threat from mainstream culture and its practices as follows: • they feel isolated; • they feel like an unacknowledged minority; • they feel their true identity and beliefs are not recognized or valued; • they feel what they believe in and practice is under threat of disappearing; • they feel marginalized. this list worries me as it echoes many of the qualities that i identified earlier as markers of the current “sense-of-self” that is part of the cyc context as shared unofficially within the family, inside the confines of the safety of the community. armstrong asserts that communities of believers who find themselves in a threatened position have similar reactions. she sees fundamentalists across traditions as being alike not different: a fundamentalist islamist and a fundamentalist christian are alike in more ways than they are different. she identifies a process in which communities under threat, including those actually under political and social repression, turn in on themselves. when they have a sense of inferiority, they huddle together, in hiding or in isolation. over time, in response to a desire to survive and protect the special beliefs and/or practices that they have, they hone those beliefs or practices into exacting forms that must be strictly followed in order to be identified as belonging to the true believers (turning mythos into logos). because the beliefs are valuable and vulnerable, requiring protection, the threatened communities develop a more militant stance that becomes increasingly aggressive toward others who do not agree or will not practice their real way or, as it is seen from within the community, the true way. it can get ugly because ideas under threat can evolve in such a way that the mythos/logos confusion happens and the framework of beliefs demands such a degree of purity that enemies of true belief multiply and come to include fellow believers who do not believe in precisely the right way. there may be a claim to a mythic past as the basis of the new purified doctrine. a certain rigidity sets in and calls from either inside or outside the community to re-examine assumptions or ask for change increase the sense of threat and resistance which in turn increases the conditions that compel a turn to more fundamentalist thinking and the divides increase. traditions that try to preserve themselves by insistence on purity of belief or practice become generators of conflict and hostility. enemies multiply and sometimes the enemies are those who are close at hand and close in beliefs. so in religious conflicts sunnis kill shia, protestants slaughter catholics, the orthodox stone reformers. the pattern repeats across cultures and epochs. religious history cannot hide its violence. a similar violence can be seen in contexts in which different international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 194 religions occupy the same geographical territory, the partition of india after independence being an example at one attempted solution to separate conflicted believers that is still producing inter-religious conflict, now coated with nationalism. armstrong claims that in this process communities are responding from fear: driven by worries and anxieties about identity and beliefs, language and practices. fear-driven responses move incrementally and steadily toward violence. she traces the movement from disagreement to debate to assault in each of the fundamentalist movements in each of the major religious traditions. this is not a journey we want to duplicate in cyc. i find her analysis sobering as i have worked in religious contexts, seen and felt the belief-based violence that claims a kind of righteousness in its attack mode. i have friends who have been decimated by true believers who disagreed with them over matters of practice, sexuality, or leadership. it does not matter what the claim is, what matters is the consequence of cruelty and the hurt, damage, and destruction it can cause. armstrong is quite clear when she points out that if a religious community or collection of believers violates their primary claims – love, peace, unity – in defending themselves, they betray their core beliefs. she notes how, in the subtle shifts of their own claims, they select particular pieces of their core or sacred texts to promote and justify resistance to change and eventually to support exclusion and violence. their beliefs are reinforced by self-referential texts that only acknowledge the received wisdom of their existing beliefs. there are significant issues of congruency and integrity at stake in the loss of core beliefs that are being defended by violating them. this may be especially confusing when the language used is the shared language of the institutional context that is twisted to promote exclusion. it is relatively easy to identify the kind of language used in religious contexts to mark real believers and, therefore, also to mark those who are not, who do not say the same things or use the right language. in our case, to claim “that is not real cyc” is laced with assumptions that there is such a thing, that it is known, and that those who know can tell what it is. there is also an assumption that the tacit insider knowledge makes such judgments accurate and a “true believer” (hoffer, 1951) will be able to discern who is legitimately cyc and who is not. in the mirror cyc is still young; it is a field that has had a persistent inferiority sense in its early stages of development. we are sometimes in a defensive posture against the persistent marginalization and attacks on our expertise. we take great offence at being called something other than cyc workers. we want our expertise and skills in practice to be noted and named as ours. using armstrong’s theory as a guide, we, as a field, have to be astute about how we deal with change, how we mature our ideas, how we allow our practices to acknowledge the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 195 wisdom of others, and how we manage doubt and inquiry arising from within that questions our true and cherished beliefs. i worry when i attend cyc events and they feel to me like religious gatherings i have attended in the past with a self-congratulatory air and a kind of pious superiority. i worry that we are being seduced to a form of purity in our mythos that we have superior insight and that there is a cyc way that must be adhered to, without question, and that there are a limited number of ways to understand and enact that way – our way. this unfortunately implies that there are only a certain number of people who know how to do and be cyc properly, a select few who are “real cyc”. when i first joined the school of child and youth care faculty, a graduate student accused me of not really being cyc because i had never worked in a group home or residential care setting. my years of theatre, community and church-based youth work, parent education, and youth worker training meant nothing. there was a defining limit to “real” cyc and i was not in it. exclusionary practice seems to me to be a violation of one of our critical tenets of strength-based practice: including and building on what is. for our practice to be effective, it has to be congruent at all levels (anglin, 2002), including our relations with one another. to my way of thinking, hoping to inspire change in our clients means that to be congruent we have also to be open to change and being changed personally and collectively. if we ask for self-awareness and reflexivity, we need to demonstrate both in our ways of working and relating. another turn there is another danger that lingers in the confusion of mythos and logos and that is a rather naïve dismissal of logos as armstrong describes it. through a form of enthusiasm and commitment to beliefs – a mythos – critical sensibility is set aside. claims are made and one is expected not to have a critical view of them. if someone believes something to be true, it must be. mythos is writ large and impenetrable. belief is evidence. alternate or contradictory interpretations are not to be considered, nor are suggestions of doubt allowed. claims that are being made are surrounded with an aura of mystique and wonder, as if insider knowledge and practice must not be challenged. the exclusion of critical faculties reduces ideas and concepts to whatever beliefs or claims are being made. new ideas, critiques, and re-examinations cannot be permitted to threaten the existing mythos. it is a concern that simplistic claims may be potentially dangerous if they are not tested or adapted to a range of contexts that may be complex and complicated. enthusiasm and ecstasy are not a good basis for practice that can be responsive and responsible to multiple contexts. practice needs a better and more thoughtful foundation than “i believe”. armstrong is adamant that there needs to be a balanced dynamic of logos and mythos. it is not a solution to the difficulties of one kind of approach to opt entirely for the other. as a discipline, child and youth care still has, as many adolescents do, moments of untempered enthusiasm and conviction. this is part of a developing field’s maturation but all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 196 claims need to be reconsidered, critiqued, and reconceptualized. the field of child and youth care needs to have critical thought for it to provide insight into work with people of all circumstances, contexts, and beliefs. research and theory need to support and inform practice. tradition and existing knowledge and practice are not enough. a field develops and matures when it is willing to examine and reconsider, that is, to be reflexive of its own practices and knowledge. it is not enough to be keen and eager, to say that if only others would listen to us, and use our approach, the world would be different and children would be saved from all manner of difficulties. my anxieties multiply when our stance sounds like the fervour that stirs in fundamentalism. growing a field is a complicated process that will include disagreement and conflict. final remarks it is important for cyc, as the field matures, that we avoid the confusion of mythos and logos as much as possible and be cautious in our claims, as well as contextually aware and astute. can we reconsider our position that we have unique claims on ideas like relational practice or strength-based approaches? can we accept that we do not have some magical capacity and that our insights into the lives of children, youth, and families are not exclusive? can we understand we are not the only practitioners in the world who work relationally? what are the strengths we can build on? what can we change to improve practice? what theories can help us hone our work and develop it to the next stages of maturity and expertise? i am not dismissing the insights and good practice of our history and field but in moving forward we must not retreat into a ghetto of exclusivity trying to protect territory by falling into fear-based motifs and forms. how do we stay open, learning as we go? how do we continue to be responsive and adaptable rather than claiming we have already arrived and have the answer? how do we critique our own ideas and not feel that we must defend and protect them from change? one of the great strengths of cyc has been its interdisciplinary history that has drawn on a number of fields, borrowing and adapting ideas to weave a way of practice. can we persist in being open to ideas from other places that will enrich us even as it forces us to alter our ways and some of our ideas? how are we to maintain an ethos of care and compassion in our work of reflective practice as we let our collective identity evolve? we need to practice care and compassion with one another so that we do not make each other into enemies. the history of religions shows that disagreements within a community are far more destructive than attacks from the outside. we cannot afford to back into the future admiring our past, our claims, and our special insights. we work in challenging, difficult times and places that require us to be, do, know, become in the moment based on the rich combination we have as heritage in research, knowledge, beliefs, compassion, and practices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 187–197 197 references anglin, j. p. (2002). pain, normality and the struggle for congruence: reinterpreting residential care for children and youth. new york, london: the haworth press, inc. armstrong, k. (2001). the battle for god: a history of fundamentalism. new york: random house publishing group. caputo, j. d. (2006). the weakness of god: a theology of the event. bloomington & indianapolis: indiana university press. derrida, j. (1988). limited inc. evanston, il: northwestern university press. geddie, w. (ed.). (1968). chambers’s twentieth century dictionary. edinburgh: w. & r. chambers, ltd. hoffer, e. (1951). true believer: thoughts on the nature of mass movements. new york: harper and row. serres, m. (1991). rome: the book of foundations. (f. mccarren, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. traupman, j. c. (1995). the new college latin & english dictionary. new york, toronto: bantam books. (original work published 1966) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321289 report from the field the power of first voice advocacy: rallying lived expertise to support equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care in canada melanie doucet, ashley bach, and marie christian abstract: this report describes a national lived experience advocacy movement generated by the work of the national council of youth in care advocates to support equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care in canada. the emergence of the national council at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic is presented, as well as the ongoing progress and achievements in advocacy and best practice efforts at the national and local jurisdiction levels. this article, by three members of the national council, is the first to provide an account of the process associated with national lived experience advocacy mobilization by and for youth in care. keywords: youth in care, youth aging out of care, care leavers, transition to adulthood, child welfare, advocacy, lived experience, first voice advocacy, activism, evaluation, standards, child welfare, child welfare reform melanie doucet phd is a former youth in care who is now adjunct professor at the mcgill school of social work, 550 sherbrooke ouest suite 100, tour est, montreal, qc h3a 1b9. she is also a senior researcher and project manager at the child welfare league of canada, and a member of the national council of youth in care advocates. email: melanie.doucet@mcgill.ca ashley bach is a first nations former youth in care and advocate and an ontario representative member of the national council of youth in care advocates. email: ashley.dawn.bach@gmail.com marie christian (corresponding author) is a former youth in care, program director at voices: manitoba’s youth in care network, and a manitoba representative member of the national council of youth in care advocates. email: marie@voices.mb.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 132 young people who are placed in the mainstream child welfare system often experience displacement due to family separation and disconnection from their culture and communities of origin (doucet, 2020b). at the age of majority, the social and cultural isolation they experience is often compounded by financial difficulties, as most are forced to transition to adulthood abruptly without the family and social supports that are available to their peers who were not in the system (rutman et al., 2007). this is due to provincial and territorial child protection legislation across canada mandating child welfare agencies to release youth from their care at the age of majority. in canada, approximately 10% (6,700) of the youth in care population “ages out”1 of the child welfare system annually (flynn, 2003). however, it is highly likely that this unofficial national figure underestimates the number of youth who exit care given that many provinces and territories do not publicly report this data and that there is no national database tracking this information (doucet & mann-feder, 2021). these legislated age-based service cut-offs do not represent youth’s sense of readiness for the transition to adulthood, and have been shown to lead to negative outcomes, including disproportionate risks of homelessness, unemployment, poverty, undereducation, mental health and addiction issues, involvement in the criminal justice system, and early parenthood (beaupré & flynn, 2014; doucet, 2020b; gaetz et al., 2016; goyette & blanchet, 2022; schaffer et al., 2016). most young people gradually take on adult responsibilities with the financial and emotional support of their families. today, young people are taking longer to transition into adulthood than previous generations (doucet, 2020b); as of 2011, 43% of canadian youth between the ages of 20 and 29 were still living with their parents (statistics canada, 2011). socioeconomic and demographic shifts over the last 50 years have led to a developmental period that has been termed “emerging adulthood” by arnett (2004). during this transitional phase, young people from 18 to 29 are afforded time to explore their roles in larger society and develop interdependent relationships with their support networks (arnett, 2004; laut, 2017; molgat, 2007). this is not the case for youth in care, who abruptly lose formal supports from the state when they reach the age of majority, regardless of their readiness or their emotional and financial needs (rutman et al., 2007). due to mandated age cut-offs in child protection legislation, youth in care are forced to exit the system at 18 or 19 and are tasked with adult responsibilities without the support of family, friends, or community. child protection legislation, policy, and practice have not kept pace with the social and economic changes that have made it much more difficult for young people to live independently (gaetz et al., 2016; nichols et al., 2017). 1 “aging out” refers to youth who have reached the age of majority and are no longer eligible for child protection services. although it is a label that is not applied to youth in the general population, it is a term that most people who are or have been in care understand, and is widely used in the literature. “aging out” is in quotation marks throughout this article to denormalize the term. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 133 for youth in care, the covid-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic impacts are intensifying an already perilous transition to adulthood. a recent quebec-based study showed that the pandemic has reduced access to housing, with nearly half (45%) of youth experiencing housing instability after leaving care (goyette et al., 2020). it has also exacerbated risks linked to mental health problems: 39% of youth leaving care report mental health problems, compared to 5.7% of the youth population in the province (goyette et al., 2020). while many jurisdictions implemented emergency measures and temporary moratoriums on youth transitions out of care during the pandemic, it is clear that the conditions in place prior to and during the pandemic are not producing positive outcomes. as canadian governments and society enter a phase of pandemic recovery, it is crucial to also ensure a just and equitable pandemic recovery for young people in care. lived experience as expertise child welfare policy and practice can often be disconnected from the lived realities of the people it impacts, resulting in minimal systemic change (abrams et al., 2016). to counter this systems-centred approach, youth in care must be empowered to define their own goals and milestones for success based on their lived experience and the unique context they are transitioning from. the systems who have served them must consider those with lived experience as viable experts and contributors to child protection social policy — especially to programs and interventions pertaining to their transition to adulthood — as opposed to being treated as outsiders on the margins of an adult society (doucet, 2020b). youth-centred approaches can be supported by investing in advocacy and mentoring opportunities, involving youth in and from care in the policymaking and reform processes, and engaging them as co-researchers through emancipatory and social justice research approaches (blanchet-cohen et al., 2013; dupuis & mann-feder, 2013). established at the beginning of the pandemic in response to collective concerns for youth “aging out” of the child protection system, the national council of youth in care advocates comprises members of provincial and territorial first voice advocates2, youth in care networks, and key allies from across canada. the national council also comprises a diverse membership, including black, indigenous, and people of colour with lived experience in the child protection system from across the country. at the start of the pandemic, the national council was successful in most jurisdictions in securing temporary moratoriums or interim emergency measures to allow youth to remain in their placements and/or continue to receive supports past the age of majority. however, the national council stressed that a return to the pre-pandemic status quo should not be an option and that youth in care also need and deserve a “new normal”. as noted in the 2020 summary report a long road paved with solutions: ‘aging out’ of care reports in canada (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2020), over 75 reports centring on youth in care and the “aging out” process have been published since the late 1980s, amounting to over 435 concrete recommendations for change to child protection policy and 2 first voice advocates are people with lived experience in out-of-home child protection system placements who advocate for change in their communities and jurisdictions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 134 practice as it relates to the transition to adulthood. these reports were published by national, provincial, and territorial youth in care networks, provincial and territorial child and youth advocates, private foundations, community-based organizations, and researchers from across the country. multiple reports have called upon governments to work together, in collaboration with local stakeholders and people with care experience, to develop and implement national standards figure 1. the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care from doucet and national council of youth in care advocates (2021, p. 30). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 135 for transitions to adulthood for youth in care. in addition, the 2019 report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (mmiwg) called upon all levels of government and child protection services to reform laws and obligations with respect to indigenous youth “aging out” of the system. their call includes ensuring lifelong support networks for youth in care, and providing opportunities for education, housing, and related supports3. advocating for equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care working with current and former youth in care across canada, doucet and the national council of youth in care advocates (2021) researched, developed, and validated the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care (see figure 1). the first of their kind in canada, these equitable standards provide a solid foundation for key stakeholder action and accountability across all jurisdictions, as well as within and across sectors. the equitable standards are presented across eight transition to adulthood “pillars” that define the areas in which youth in care need support to ensure a successful transition to adulthood. for each pillar, several required key supports are presented as actionable items to ensure that jurisdictions, organizations, and frontline workers are meeting the outlined standards. in october 2022, after numerous consultations with over 200 key stakeholders from across sectors (i.e., government, community, academia, private) and within sectors (i.e., frontline service delivery level, regional or agency level, policy and legislation level), doucet and the national council of youth in care advocates (2022) released the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care evaluation model. the evaluation model is an accountability and quality assurance tool that provides a step-by-step approach for those who work with young people in the mainstream child welfare system, whether from within or across sectors, to assess their fidelity to the equitable standards and develop a concrete action plan to meet them over time. the evaluation model also takes into account the need for collaboration and integration of supports and services for youth in care, as the feedback gathered during the consultations with key stakeholders indicated that much of the support and service delivery is implemented in a siloed approach across sectors. the evaluation model was developed to be applicable to all key stakeholders, regardless of level of responsibility for youth in care supports and services. for instance, each required key support4 provided under each of the eight transition to adulthood pillars is assessed for its full equitable implementation, and for the degree of collaboration and integration between responsible 3 see call for justice 12.11 of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (2019). https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/calls_for_justice.pdf 4 each pillar has several key supports. for example, educational and professional development has 15: high school graduation; secondary level education mentorship and supports; school stability; post-secondary applications; full post-secondary supports; post-secondary scholarships, grants and bursaries; peer navigation; secure career path; ongoing learning needs assessments; ongoing specialized learning supports; cultural learning opportunities; alternative hands-on learning; employment training and supports; lived experience income opportunities; and community volunteering opportunities. (pillar 2: educational and professional development, in doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2022). https://www.cwlc.ca/post/equitable-standards-for-transitions-toadulthood-for-youth-in-care-evaluation-model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 136 key stakeholders. in addition, those who do not hold responsibility for the implementation of a particular key support are still held accountable for advocating with youth in and from care for the support to be implemented in an equitable way (see figure 2). figure 2. three major elements of the equitable standards evaluation model from doucet and national council of youth in care advocates (2022, p. 2). the evaluation model shifts accountability for a successful transition to the systems that serve youth in care rather than placing the onus on youth, and focuses on a shared responsibility for positive youth-in-care outcomes among all key stakeholders and sectors. each key support associated with each of the eight transition to adulthood pillars is assessed on a colour-coded 4-point likert scale measuring fidelity to the goal of equitable support provision (see figure 3), providing an opportunity for key stakeholders to assess their progress towards meeting the equitable standards, and to take steps to improve their service delivery for youth in care (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2022). figure 3. equitable standards evaluation model fidelity scale from doucet and national council of youth in care advocates (2022, p. 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 137 the key supports listed in each pillar module of the evaluation model are provided as a starting point to establish minimum guaranteed supports and services that need to be in place before a young person from care can fully transition to adulthood — a minimum threshold that has been nonexistent to date across all jurisdictions in canada. while the goal is for key stakeholders to reach this minimum threshold of guaranteed supports and services in the medium term, longer term efforts must focus on raising the bar and continuously striving for excellence in service and support delivery for youth in care. in addition, stakeholders should continue adding new key supports based on the evolving needs of the youth in care population and emerging research and best practices (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2022). the impact of national first voice advocacy since the release of the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care in the fall of 2021, the national council of youth in care advocates has met with provincial, territorial, and federal ministers; directors; child and youth advocates and ombudsmen; policy advisors; senators; and members of parliament to advocate for meaningful systemic change. as a result of national and local advocacy efforts, some jurisdictions have extended the moratoriums and have already begun implementing longer-term systemic change. for instance, the british columbia ministry of children and family development made permanent the emergency measures that were put in place during the pandemic for youth in care, and have begun a reform process to support youth transitions up to age 27 (government of british columbia, 2022). the ontario ministry of children, community and social services is also currently in the process of developing a readiness framework for transitions to adulthood for youth in care, which aims to support young people to transition out of care when they feel ready (government of ontario, 2021). the new brunswick department of social development is currently developing the child and youth wellbeing act, standalone legislation that aims to modernize portions of the family services act and that incorporates a childand youth-centred approach to supports and interventions (government of new brunswick, 2022). in addition, indigenous services canada (isc; 2022) has begun implementing its phased-in post-majority care services reform initiative, which includes supports for on-reserve first nations youth in care up to age 25. isc cites the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care as a framework for this reform process. since the release of the equitable standards evaluation model in october 2022 (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2022), the national council of youth in care advocates has been focusing its advocacy efforts on getting key stakeholders to commit to piloting the evaluation model over the next year. this will entail a baseline assessment of the fidelity of existing resources, programs, supports, and policies to the equitable standards, and the development of a concrete action plan to meet the standards over time. this action plan is to be developed with the involvement of youth in care and is to be released publicly by the end of 2023 to showcase transparency and accountability to the youth in care community. so far, several government and community-based key stakeholders have committed to completing the equitable international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 138 standards evaluation process, including the new brunswick department of social development, and prince edward island child and family services as it pertains to its new yes pilot program for transitioning to adulthood. the work of the national council of youth in care advocates also entails engaging with the media to raise public awareness on the issues youth “aging out” of care in canada face, and putting pressure on political leaders to take action. the national council has been featured in several prominent media pieces since it began its advocacy work at the start of the pandemic, including cbc radio nova scotia (2020), ctv news (press, 2020), the globe and mail (bains, 2021), cbc news new brunswick (cave, 2021), cbc news manitoba (lam, 2021), indiginews (klukas, 2021), radio-canada toronto (2021a; 2021b), the vancouver sun (cordasco, 2021), and cbc radio quebec (2022). opinion pieces were featured in the conversation (doucet, 2020a) and policy options (doucet & gouin, 2020); these focused on advocating for moratoriums for youth “aging out” of care during the pandemic and for amnesty on cerb repayments5. members of the national council of youth in care advocates have also been engaging a wider audience of caregivers, practitioners, policy decision-makers, advocates, academics, and students via expert panels, conference presentations, online webinars and workshops, and guest lectures in university classrooms. in addition, a public letter-writing campaign to members of parliament and members of legislative assemblies in support of the equitable standards was undertaken in december 2021, with letter templates provided on the child welfare league of canada (cwcl) website6. local impacts of advocacy work in ontario and manitoba the work of the national council of youth in care advocates spans the country, with provincial and territorial representation from british columbia, alberta, manitoba, ontario, quebec, new brunswick, the northwest territories and the yukon7. the descriptions below of the local impacts of advocacy work were written by two representatives of the national council, one from ontario and one from manitoba. 5 during the covid-19 pandemic, some young people who had “aged out” of the child welfare system and were no longer in government care received funds through the canada emergency response benefit (cerb) program, as did many others. due to bureaucratic mix-ups over the eligibility of applicants, some recipients were not actually entitled to these funds and are now being asked to repay them. 6 the cwlc is a national, membership-based charitable organization dedicated to promoting the safety and wellbeing of young people and their families — especially those who are marginalized and systemically oppressed. the cwlc is one of the two key ally organizations of the national council of youth in care advocates (the other being a way home canada), and is currently the lead organization for the equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care and a just pandemic recovery project (2021-2023). 7 view the full national council of youth in care advocates membership here: https://www.cwlc.ca/canadiancouncil international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 139 ashley bach (ontario), first nations former youth in care and advocate my advocacy efforts are usually focused on first nations youth in and from care, many of whom fall under the federal first nations child and family services8 (fncfs) program administered by indigenous services canada (isc). while these efforts are not quite local, my involvement with the national council has had a positive impact on my local efforts. i presently work as a freelance consultant on first nations child welfare issues, combining my lived experience as a first nations foster child with my knowledge base in first nations rights and child welfare. over the past year and a half, i have found the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care report (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2021) useful to share with the organizations and advocates that i’ve worked with, including national indigenous organizations and first nations provincial and territorial organizations. in my experience, the report has been well received in the field and by key decision-makers. more specifically, my collaboration with the national council’s advocacy efforts for moratoriums on youth leaving care during the pandemic helped to lead isc to pause the practice of “aging out” first nations youth in care who are funded under the federal fncfs program. as it became clear that the pandemic was not going away, the national council continued to put pressure on isc through advocacy letters to key decision-makers and meetings with isc officials. subsequently, isc extended their moratorium. furthermore, in budget 2021 the government of canada acknowledged the issues first nations youth in care face by committing $118.7 million of increased funding for the fncfs program, with one purpose of the funding being to “permanently ensure that first nations youth who reach the age of majority receive the supports that they need, for up to two additional years, to successfully transition to independence” (government of canada, 2021, chapter 8, 8.19). the national council’s persistent and continuing advocacy in this area has also influenced isc to further improve their policies. the isc website now states that, under the fncfs program, first nations youth will be able to receive post-majority supports and services if they are under 26 (or the eligible age limit set by applicable legislation in their province or territory, whichever is higher). the isc website cites two reports10 that i have been involved in as informing the activities (the post-majority supports and services) that are eligible for this funding: the national council’s equitable standards report and the children back, land back report (fayant & bach, 2021), 8 https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1100100035204/1533307858805 9 https://www.budget.canada.ca/2021/report-rapport/p3-en.html#chap8 10 under the heading “funded costs”, the isc website states that, “eligible activities under post-majority support services are based on needs of the youth or young adult. the below examples are informed by equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care and children back, land back.” https://www.sacisc.gc.ca/eng/1650377737799/1650377806807 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 140 which was partially informed by my work on and knowledge of the equitable standards report (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2021). marie christian (manitoba), program director at voices: manitoba’s youth in care network young people in and from care deserve — and, in fact, have — the right to be heard on what is working and what needs improvement in the child welfare system. as neveu (2020) stated, “by respecting [the young people], we think of them as relatives and ask ourselves if this was our life circumstances what would we want and how can we make that happen in a safe way” (p. 30). however, there is currently no formal structure in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the services and supports from a lived experience perspective, both during and after care. because provinces and territories have responsibility for the child welfare system, there is no national legislation and no national standards for service delivery, which leads to inconsistencies across canada in supports and resources offered to young people transitioning from care. by welcoming the voices of lived experience experts, systems also gain opportunities to improve outcomes for young people transitioning from care in ways that are grounded in their lived realities: there is reciprocity inherent in restructuring the system in ways that centre the lived experience of the young people it serves. the contemporary mainstream child welfare system is the not-so-distant cousin of the colonial practices of residential schools and the sixties scoop — implements that were created for the assimilation of indigenous peoples into mainstream culture. in manitoba, 90% of children and youth in the child welfare system are indigenous (first nations, métis, and inuit), a highly disproportionate rate given that indigenous children only make up about 26% of the youth population (manitoba advocate for children and youth & first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba, 2021). this higher rate of child welfare involvement “reflects the larger structural inequalities, systemic racism, current child welfare policies, and the legacy of the residential school system and sixties scoop” (manitoba advocate for children and youth & first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba, 2021, p. 10). although awareness and understanding of the colonial structure that underpins the mainstream child welfare system has increased, it will take intentional and meaningful systemic changes to create a system that is truly centred on the well-being of children, youth, and their families. as of march 2020, there were 9,849 children and youth in care in manitoba, the highest rate per capita across canada (manitoba families, 2020). of all the children and youth in care, “70 percent are permanent wards, 3 percent are under a voluntary placement agreement, and the remaining 27 percent are children in care under a temporary legal status where reunification with families is the primary goal” (manitoba families, 2020, p. 74). the legal status of children in care in manitoba impacts the supports and services they are eligible to receive when they reach the age of majority at 18. as of march 2020, the government of manitoba reported that 811 young people were on post-majority extensions of care under the agreements with young adults (ayas) program, which extends care and support services for young people who were permanent wards international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 141 until they turn 21 (manitoba families, 2020, p. 79). the 30% of youth in care who do not have permanent ward status are ineligible for continued supports and services past the age of majority. in manitoba, our child welfare system is divided into four authorities in the hopes of providing culturally appropriate care for indigenous children and youth. each authority is governed by the child and family services act (1985) and the regulations manual (department of families, 2022), and although these provide “the mandate for services to youth aging out of care, the legislation does not place specific duties upon authorities and agencies to ensure that youth leave care in circumstances that will ensure positive outcomes for them” (mcewan-morris, 2012, p. 13). during the consultations held with stakeholders this past spring, we found that there are many kind and compassionate workers doing their best to create supports and trainings that may benefit young people as they transition from care, but there is no consistency across the authorities, and no reporting or accountability required for the services they provide. consequently, as mcewanmorris (2012) reported, “in the absence of consistent practice policies and standards, case planning decisions are often left to the discretion of caseworkers and supervisors to determine the level of transition planning that will be offered to young people leaving care” (p. 27). conclusion the equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2021) is a practical framework for the development of antioppressive, anticolonial, and equitable practices. since the equitable standards were developed by and for youth in care and were validated by young people in and from care across the country, we have been able to release a framework that reflects the current experiences and needs of young people as they transition out of care. our hope is that this work will continue to make an impact through the equitable standards evaluation model, an evaluation framework that can be implemented across canada and would provide a holistic accountability process for meeting the needs of youth in care and improving their outcomes as they transition to adulthood. all young people with care experience deserve a standard of support and services that minimizes that risk of additional traumas such as “aging out” into homelessness, and launches them into a healthy, secure, and interdependent adulthood. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 142 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(2021a, march 3). moratoire sur la décharge des jeunes pris en charge par les services sociaux [ici toronto, l’heure de pointe toronto/windsor avec alison vicrobeck]. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/l-heure-de-pointetoronto/episodes/516310/rattrapage-du-mercredi-3-mars-2021/14 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 131–146 146 radio-canada toronto. (2021b, october 8). dans la mosaïque avec gabrielle sabourin (segment starts at 6 mins, in french only). https://ici.radiocanada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/dans-la-mosaique/episodes/575873/rattrapage-duvendredi-8-octobre-2021/13 rutman, d., hubberstey, c., & feduniw, a., & brown, e. (2007). when youth age out of care: where to from there. final report based on a three-year longitudinal study. research initiatives for social change unit, school of social work, university of victoria. https://www.uvic.ca/hsd/socialwork/assets/docs/research/whenyouthage2007.pdf schaffer, m., anderson, l., & nelson, a. (2016). opportunities in transition: an economic analysis of investing in youth aging out of foster care. fostering change. https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/opportunities-transition-economic-analysis-investingyouth-aging-out-foster-care statistics canada. (2011). living arrangements of young adults aged 20 to 29 [cat. no. 98-312x2011003]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-312-x/98-312x2011003_3-eng.cfm international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221136 reflections on networking dynamics to address violence against children in tanzania annah kamusiime, lydia belinda sandi, and doris kakuru abstract: this article is based on a study conducted to understand the functionality and connectivity of existing networks and their impact on the prevention and response to violence against children (vac) in east africa. we adopted an exploratory qualitative approach in which a bottom-up purposive selection of study participants was used. data were collected using focus group discussions with grassroots actors, interviews with network leads at the grassroots district and national levels, and vac network funders. the study was carried out in tanzania’s dar es salaam region in three districts (kigamboni, temeke, and ilala) and eight wards. our findings show that because the nature of vac is complex and multidimensional, efforts to respond to it also exhibit these qualities. depending on the goal, networking takes various forms, and vac networks can have unspecified lifespans. vac networking results from strategic decision-making that yields many benefits, including a stronger voice and visibility, enhanced impact, and potential efficiency. however, networks also encounter bottlenecks that negatively impact their goals. this is an indication that vac network actors ought to be more reflexive regarding the space they occupy in the network and intentionally pursue strong relationships among actors and networks. keywords: children, civil society networking, collaboration, violence against children, violence prevention, youth annah kamusiime ma (corresponding author) is a phd candidate at the institute of social studies of the erasmus university rotterdam and the director of programs at nascent research and development organization, p.o. box 25382, kampala, uganda. email: annahkamusiime@yahoo.co.uk lydia belinda sandi ba is a senior researcher and director at the centre for research and development (ceredev), p.o. box 110297, dar es salaam, tanzania. email: belinda.makawia@gmail.com doris kakuru phd is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 144 violence against children (vac) is increasing globally due to many factors, and has even been recently accentuated by the covid-19 pandemic. violence is an almost daily reality for large numbers of children and women alike in tanzania (ministry of health, community development, gender, elderly and children [mohcdgec], 2016). a survey conducted in 2009 found that nearly one in three girls and one in seven boys experience sexual violence before turning 18 (united republic of tanzania, 2011, p. 2). the legal and human rights centre (2018) revealed that vac incidents increased from 4,728 in mid-2017 to 6,376 by mid-2018; sexual violence was reported as the major form of abuse in all districts, followed by physical and psychological violence (p. xxxviii), and neglect/desertion (p. 173). a recent study by the education advocacy organization hakielimu (2020) emphasizes that reported cases of vac increased in tanzania from 2014 to 2018 (p. 26). many of the children who participated in the study had experienced psychological (60.9%) or physical (87.9%) violence (pp. 1–2), and at least 3 in 10 girls and 1 in 7 boys had experienced sexual violence (p. 15). according to martínez (2017), many schoolgirls experience sexual harassment from teachers, as well as from “bus drivers and adults who often ask them for sex in exchange for gifts, rides, or money, on their way to school” (pp. 10–13). girls in the study had often not disclosed these experiences, reporting that they “do not know how to do so, do not trust that their concerns will be addressed, or they fear retaliation from teachers” (martínez, 2017, p. 71). child forced marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting (fgm/c) are harmful cultural practices that perpetuate violence and gender inequality, violating the rights of girls and even causing permanent disability in some cases (avalos et al., 2015, p. 642). in some communities, as many as 70.8% of the girls have experienced fgm (national bureau of statistics & icf macro, 2011). in addition, children with disability continue to be discriminated against, and while the practice has decreased, it is still the case that some children with albinism are killed in tanzania because of misconceptions, including the belief that ritual murders will bring riches and prosperity (unicef, 2021, p. 42; human rights watch, 2019). vac is, therefore, multidimensional and complex. addressing it requires concerted efforts from actors with different competencies and strengths at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. tanzania has been applauded for its heavy investment in government-led violence prevention and response partnerships and collaborations (bissell, 2015, p. 12). one notable collaborative undertaking followed the 2011 review of the national survey on vac in tanzania when an interministerial group was created to develop an interdisciplinary and decentralized response plan. this resulted in the establishment of more robust child protection systems and a 5-year costed national plan of action to end violence against women and children 2017/8-2021/2 (npavawc; mohcdgec, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 145 the tanzania npavawc provides a systematic framework that emphasizes interconnected ventures involving many stakeholders. these include government, civil society organizations, faith-based organizations, national and international non-governmental organizations (ngos), and development partners. tanzania has recorded some progress in terms of the enactment and operationalization of relevant policies and laws. the government has rolled out child protection systems to local government authorities, equipped child protection teams at the district and village levels, enhanced the capacity of vawc frontline workers, and established child labor committees to monitor workplaces. other measures include the establishment of a national child toll-free helpline, a national multisectoral committee on prevention and response to vawc, and a police gender and children’s desk (pgcd) at police stations throughout the country. despite these vac prevention and response measures, the national statistics remain alarming. recently, investigators have examined the prevalence, context, and health outcomes of vac (vagi et al., 2016), its impact (hillis et al., 2017), possible remedies (lachman et al., 2020; martin et al., 2021), and existing interventions (reuben et al., 2022; wangamati et al., 2022). although some research has been carried out on community-based child protection mechanisms in tanzania (e.g., reuben et al., 2022), there is still limited understanding of the dynamics of civil society networks and connections at different levels as well as the advantages of networks, and the challenges they face, in regard to vac prevention and response. extensive research has been conducted on civil society networking generally without focusing on vac. for example, van stapele et al. (2019) described the benefits of collaboration, including the fact that it amplifies the voices of small organizations. networking also helps organizations achieve legitimacy and funding, thereby prolonging their survival (johansen & leroux, 2013). according to mizrahi and rosenthal (2001), collaborations or coalitions can potentially “revitalize their communities to create opportunities to influence larger social agendas” (p. 75) as well as cultivate and deepen working relationships among diverse groups. although gajda (2004) elaborated on the importance of trust and healthy connections among network members, recent work (e.g., shawar & shiffman, 2021) shows that collaboration can be marred by competition among partners. leroux and goerdel (2009) contended that not-for-profit organizations that operate in highly competitive contexts have to decide how much time to invest in networking versus service delivery. while some research has been carried out on vac in tanzania and on networks generally, there has been little analysis of the dynamics of vac-focused collaborations. this paper presents our reflections on the dynamics of networking for vac prevention and response, and the advantages and challenges associated with vac networking in tanzania. it draws on a larger study (civsource africa, 2021) conducted to understand the functionality and connectivity of existing networks and their corresponding impact on the prevention and realization of children’s rights in east africa. we use the concept of collaboration to explore how joint endeavors contribute to vac prevention and response. we follow scholars like gajda (2004), who advised that “there is an ever increasing need for individuals, educational authorities, governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, community networks, and business groups to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 146 come together to address the complex issues that confront our society today” (p. 67). gajda (2004) agreed with other scholars (e.g., austin, 2000; calabrese, 2000) when she asserted that “individual entities can pool scarce resources and duplication of services can be minimized … [and] common interventions can be developed” (p. 67) to increase efficiency. whereas collaboration can connect fragmented nodes and systems to address multifaceted social concerns like vac, gajda felt that its definition remains “somewhat elusive, inconsistent, and theoretical" (p. 66), noting that it has been described diversely as “working together”, “joining forces”, “working in partnership”, “pooling resources”, “acting as a team”, and “cooperating” (p. 68). we question and continue to draw on this fusion of attributes to make meaning of how different actors function within a network arrangement in tanzania’s context to respond to and prevent vac. theoretical framework in this article, we draw from sociological institutionalism (drori et al., 2009), which explains the formation and operation of organizations. we perceive organizations, groups, and networks as existing within a larger social environment that influences their strategies and plans. the networks are embedded in societal institutions that operate at the different levels of the child protection ecology, starting with the smallest institution — the family — and proceeding through the community, national, and global levels. the dynamics within these institutional structures sometimes affect networks and groups through coercive processes. the sociological institutionalism theory explains these coercive processes in the form of national legal actions (formal government rules, laws, and policies) and normative controls in the environment (informal rules and norms). our analysis of networks was further informed by the view that vac actors are not only influenced by the wider environment but also have room to construct preferred ideas and pursue group interests (jepperson, 2002). we applied sociological institutionalism to examine how children’s rights networks are influenced by the different systems, policies, rules, regulations, and norms in which they operate. we further borrow from network theory (borgatti & halgin, 2011), which articulates how the interaction between a network structure and its processes generates outcomes for the network as a whole. borgatti and halgin (2011) used information flow as an example of the processes that generate outcomes. we find information flow relevant to our analysis of the dynamics in tanzania’s vac network functionality, particularly knowledge-sharing. borgatti and halgin (2011) also described the network theory of networks, which arises when network processes include other network phenomena, such as when existing ties between two actors change and cause other network members to choose sides. lizardo and pirkey (2014) agreed that network outcomes are the culmination of previous relational dynamics and the connection mechanisms between present network structures. we applied network theory to analyze vac network dynamics, including the benefits and challenges of vac networks in tanzania. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 147 methodology study design and sites the study adopted an exploratory qualitative research approach (stebbins, 2001). we conducted the study in the dar es salaam region between 2019 and 2020 in three urban districts — kigamboni, temeke, and ilala — and eight wards. kigamboni is a new, well-planned settlement primarily occupied by middle-income people. the area has undergone significant changes in recent years, prompted by the announcement of a series of large-scale property development projects as well as the opening of the kigamboni bridge in 2016, which has improved accessibility to the peninsular northwest part of kigamboni significantly. as kigamboni is a new district that has been the focus of substantial development, we were guided by the perspective that efforts concentrated on economic and infrastructural growth may sometimes come at the expense of social development, including addressing vac. to examine this idea, we explored the vac prevention and response efforts that were in place. the population of temeke district are primarily swahili people who hold strong islamic beliefs and ideologies and typically earn low incomes. their unique mix of social, cultural, and economic characteristics made them a particularly well-defined group for studying joint vac prevention and response efforts in the area. ilala is an administrative district in dar es salaam. as a business center, it is commonly referred to as “downtown dar”, and most of the city’s commerce, banking, and national offices are located there. it is also part of the city center, with congested residential areas like buguruni, with its informal or unplanned settlements. ilala was selected for the study because of the mix of activities that take place there involving people from many locations, and to provide a multidimensional awareness of the dynamics of networking for vac. study participants we used a bottom-up approach to select study participants. using purposive and snowball sampling, we first identified vac actors at the grassroots level who led us in turn to those at the district level. at the grassroots level, study participants comprised crucial community actors in vac such as local leaders (parish chiefs, religious leaders, elders, local council representatives), headteachers, child protection officers and probation and community development officers, and representatives of community-based organizations and associations. the participants who provided key informant interviews were at the district level or higher. at the district level, we selected members from different networks and key district officials. similarly, at the national level, we included representatives of national umbrella organizations that support actors at the district and grassroots levels. we also included funders of vac networking activities and those referenced at different levels of the research. the participants, therefore, included network leads, hosts, and chairs at the district and national levels. the donors were only those who were currently funding or had previously funded vac interventions through the participating networks. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 148 data collection methods a desk review on the functionality of networks and networking was carried out to help conceptualize study issues, identify literature gaps, and identify existing networks (published by civsource africa, 2021). the review enabled us to map out relevant organizations and individuals for inclusion in the research. we then designed and pre-tested the data collection tools — the focus group discussion (fgd) guide and interview guide — which sought perceptions of how vac networking is practised in tanzania. primary data were collected using fgds and in-depth interviewing conducted in person and on the telephone, and some participants received followed-up emails. fgds were conducted at the grassroots level with individuals who were key community influencers and community leaders. the fgds were incorporated into the study process to generate qualitative data to give deeper insight into vac networking at the grassroots and identify key vac actors and networks at the district and national levels. interviews were used to collect opinions from district and national level participants and from participating donors. all fgds and interviews were audio-recorded for proper data interpretation, analysis, and management. the interviewers recorded initial impressions and interpretations as field notes based on the interview process, which provided further cues during data analysis. we also collected secondary data during the document review phase. data management and analysis all data were stored using dropbox, a file hosting service, in a folder accessible only to members of the research team. after each interview or fgd, the audio files were uploaded into the project dropbox. thematic analysis was done using an iterative approach (glaser & strauss, 1967). all audio files were transcribed into text, cleaned to remove identifiers, coded, and categorized into emerging themes based on the study objectives. the coding process was managed using nvivo (version 11) qualitative data analysis software. arguments were checked to make sure they were supported by relevant literature on related research. to achieve trustworthiness, members of the research team took field notes and engaged in peer debriefing (connelly, 2016). further, we engaged in data and researcher triangulation (curtin & fossey, 2007). for example, we used a variety of data sources to diversify the viewpoints of different participants. additionally, the research team members held regular meetings to compare and crosscheck the consistency of information gathered at different times, by various means, and from multiple sources. ethical considerations before the commencement of the study, ethical clearance was obtained from the commission for science and technology (costech). permission to conduct the research was granted by the regional administration and local government office, the tawala za mikoa na serikali za mitaa (tamisemi), to confirm that our study did not subject participants to any harm. full, informed written consent was obtained from all fgd and interview participants, and their anonymity was protected throughout the data storage and reporting processes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 149 findings conceptualization of networking in the study, we use “networking” to mean all forms of joint effort that come together with a specific goal — here, responding to vac — whether within formal relationships or informally, as long as it is for mutual benefit. in this diverse understanding of networking, the network actors are of different kinds. they include individual persons, groups of people, registered organizations, unregistered organizations, government institutions, academic institutions, and development partners. participants explained networking using the analogy of the woven nest of an african weaverbird, in which it is difficult to determine a starting or ending point; we adopted their description of networking as “an intertwined and complex process”, one that crisscrosses intricately, as described by kakuru, kamusiime, kibukamusoke and colleagues in this issue (p. 115). relatedly, waddock (2002) described networks as a collection of organizations that come together to solve complex problems that typically cannot be solved by one organization acting alone. based on our analysis of participants’ responses, we categorized networks as either formal (structured) or informal (unstructured). in the next section, we present an analysis of how complex networks organize to respond to vac in tanzania. dynamics of network connectivity encircled efforts around children: a key objective of the study was to find out how networking to address and respond to vac is practised. the different stakeholders who participated in this study mentioned child protection and the welfare of children as the primary motivations for their involvement in vac networks. in networking efforts, the child is the link connecting vac actors at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. our analysis of the network relationships reveals that grassroots network actors have the most direct connections with the child. in contrast, umbrella organizations or networks work through their civil society partners to reach the child (see figure 1). similarly, many interventions are implemented directly by single organizations working together with government and community members. vac networking happens between government bodies, umbrella organizations, ngos, donors, community volunteers, and individuals. however, although individuals, community volunteers, and some representatives of ngos and government bodies do interact with children, they do not necessarily involve them in networking activities. our data, therefore, shows that vac networks happen around children but not with children. an fdg participant explained the non-involvement of children in vac networks using the analogy of a bird’s nest: “just as a bird builds a nest to protect its young ones, so too do child protection actors form networks to protect children without their involvement.” in figure 1, children are the targets of interventions and decisions made by a range of actors: there is little room for children’s active voice in networking activities. however, organizations do engage with children when delivering programs and interventions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 150 figure 1. relationship map for vac actors in tanzania unspecified vac network lifespan: the longevity of a network depends on many contextual factors that determine the duration of its activities and influence; therefore, the lifespan of vac networks in tanzania is variable. our discussions with vac actors revealed that they engage in both short-term (temporary) and long-term collaborations. short-term collaborations occur from time to time when established organizations, individual children’s rights activists, and networks form ad hoc coalitions to achieve limited or even one-off objectives, such as celebrating a special day like the day of the african child, or putting on a fundraising gala for a cause like autism. on the other hand, many collaborations are structured to require a long-term commitment by their members. examples of long-term collaborations include the tanzania police female network (tpfn), mtandao wa elimu (tanzania education network), menengage tanzania (met), christian council of tanzania (cct), and kigamboni community center (kcc). sometimes long-term collaborations start with a short-term goal but the result is a lasting network. community volunteers ngos umbrella organizations government bodies, e.g. police, hospitals donors peers, parents, teachers, religious leaders international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 151 our data show that commemorating global and national events engenders one-off collaborations between vac actors of various kinds, including organizations and individuals. for instance, the global action week for education normally brings together many partners who have worked together on an ongoing basis and new ones who add value to the event. other events include the campaigns on zero-tolerance for gender-based violence (gbv), the 16 days of activism against gbv, and sikukuu ya mtoto wa kike (day of the girl child). during such events, partners contribute their strengths to influence stakeholders. for example, to mobilize the public, the hakielimu (right to education) organization uses media, the femina hip network uses its social media, and other networks like met and children’s dignity forum (cdf) communicate with their large memberships. strategic public–private networking: our findings show that some organizations strategically network with government bodies to pursue a vac policy reform agenda. such strategic coalitions usually address contextually complex policy issues such as adolescent sexuality education and child marriage. for example, some participating police officers noted that they had formed strategic alliances with the ministry of home affairs, mohcdgec, and other professionals from the health, social welfare, and justice systems, as well as children’s rights organizations, to boost vac prevention and response efforts. the police are among the vac frontline responders who occupy a privileged position in the child protection domain. we also found that some organizations that belong to a vac network will collaborate with actors (organizations or individuals) who may not belong to any network to strategically address a specific vac concern. these can be either long-term or short-term collaborations. our analysis shows that such actors who strategically collaborated were typically members of several networks. joint project implementation: we established that some networks engage with other networks in writing grant proposals and implementing joint projects. each partner takes on a function based on its core competencies and specializations. for example, a project addressing the risks of early pregnancy and improving access to justice for victims was implemented by cdf, the tanzania women lawyers association (tawla), the msichana (girl) initiative, and the tanzania media women’s association (tamwa). the cdf raised awareness among parliamentarians, the tawla trained police officers, tamwa led media advocacy campaigns, and the msichana initiative trained clinic officers and mobilized children’s and women’s groups to work as advocates. network-to-network collaborations: collaborative efforts may be undertaken between networks that operate in different geographical areas or that have ideological differences but share key beliefs and values. for instance, during the district interviews we found that on some occasions, bakwata, the national muslim council of tanzania, has engaged in advocacy and training with the christian council of tanzania (cct). participants explained that this interfaith networking or collaboration happened because there was a need for religious-based networks to join in efforts such as campaigning for child protection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 152 joint resource mobilization and sharing: the work done by vac network actors requires resources, including funding, for networking activities, office premises and management, public engagement and advocacy, and project implementation. we asked network leads about vac network funding options and found that many donors fund individual organizations and consortia to engage in child protection work. our data reveal that even when collaboration is not explicitly stated as a funding requirement, collaborative efforts have received more positive results than solo endeavors in the vac funding landscape. in addition, vac networks with a large membership and those comprising reputable child-focused organizations tend to have a competitive advantage in winning donor trust and grants. therefore, the findings suggest that funders and donors take into consideration the perceived impact on the sector when reviewing funding proposals submitted by networks. additionally, donor funds have been shrinking over the years, which has led to increased competition for funding. in this context, joint resource mobilization is a preferred strategy since a proposal from a network has more political weight than one that comes from an individual or organization working alone. synergy building: in responding to vac, rather than “reinventing the wheel”, networks tend to take advantage of opportunities already established by other actors, such as grassroots-level investments in training community volunteers and other community resource persons. for instance, we found evidence that a team of community volunteers from the kigamboni district who were trained by the collaborative network met were able to support other projects because of their newly acquired skills. similarly, vac networks exploit their members’ connections with government departments, community members, and donors to implement their interventions. the benefits of collaboration to further understand the dynamics of vac networking, we sought network leads’ perspectives on its benefits. vac networking is driven by the desire to achieve a common goal, such as having a stronger voice, greater influence, better resource mobilization, increased visibility, or joint learning. vac networks whose membership includes influential international organizations or those with many members have the visibility needed for the success of advocacy programs. for example, the tanzania education network successfully lobbied the government for a more significant quality assurance budget and a supportive grading system for girls’ education. the tanzania ending child marriage network worked to change the girl child marriage law in the country from a minimum age of 15 years to 18 years. the girls not brides campaign was conducted in 2016 as a collaboration between several networks: the priority for entrepreneurship network (pen tanzania), cdf, save the children, hope for young girls, umati, plan international, and the msichana initiative. one participant stated: we started this coalition since we noticed a strong need for increased awareness about the harmful nature of early child marriages. we have advocated for policy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 153 reform to end child marriages and support unmarried children and girls at risk from 15 to 18 years. this is our great success. we have also strengthened the collaboration of all organizations dealing with ending child marriages. (interview, network lead) our findings show that vac networks strategically work in partnership to advocate for policy changes, taking advantage of the resulting larger numbers and greater influence. in addition, participants noted that vac is a complex and multidimensional problem and addressing it requires a holistic, collaborative approach. a network lead observed: as you know, children’s rights are a broad subject; we believe that improving children’s education will reduce vac, especially in school. improving education goes with many aspects, such as providing a comfortable environment at schools, like classrooms, toilets, teacher training, providing books, and many others. therefore, one organization can’t do everything alone. (interview, network lead) ngos, individual activists, and professionals also form coalitions because of the increased visibility that comes with a larger organization, which in turn helps to enhance the visibility of their own work. as one of the community volunteers noted, “for sure, if we were each working on our own, it would be hard to be known” (fgd participant). being visible is essential to being identified by other stakeholders for possible partnerships. apart from enhancing the visibility of networks and their work, vac networking is used as a strategy to mobilize resources and improve the accountability and quality of child protection initiatives. another way that vac networks are beneficial for responding to and preventing vac is that individual actors who join a network can then more easily coordinate — usually virtually — to track and apprehend perpetrators or follow up on reported cases. the interconnectedness presented by networking ensures efficiency in responding to vac, saving time, money, and other resources. networking, therefore, provides the synergetic benefits required for delivering holistic prevention and response in vac practice. additionally, the different vac network actors leverage each other’s professional skills and competencies in individuals’ and organizations’ areas of focus. the study participants indicated that managing vac requires network actors with varied abilities, such as knowledge of children’s rights, psychosocial competencies, and healthcare skills, that may not be found in one organization. furthermore, networks comprise organizations focused on different thematic areas. some we encountered were child marriage, corporal punishment, child labor, sexual violence, and children’s rights generally. hence, networking facilitates the availability and consolidation of a repertoire of skills that would be unlikely to occur together in a single individual or organization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 154 since vac network actors consolidate their competencies, experiences, connections, funds, and resources, they reap enhanced performance and efficiency. this is particularly important for policy advocacy, as one of the participants commented: it is difficult for one voice to influence law or policy reform. each one has their power and levels of influence which when added together have a stronger voice that is likely to bring success. (interview, network lead) our findings, therefore, show that networking is associated with strategic decision-making by different stakeholders. coalitions are based on who is better suited to contribute to the common cause: network partners are selected based on the nature of the violence the network focuses on and the expertise the potential partner is expected to share. our findings imply that one individual or organization can be a member of several networks for different reasons. challenges faced in vac networking despite the advantages of networking, our data revealed that formal network members are sometimes suspicious of each other’s motives. in order to attract funding, each organization in the network will compete with the others to show that its contribution is more deserving of financial support. this limitation in their ability to share knowledge and learn from each other’s experiences regarding vac prevention and response is a challenge that some networks are unable to avoid. a related challenge is that of inadequate communication. the interviewed network leads noted that they have little or no access to reliable forms of communication within their networks and that network members have limited contact outside of formal meetings and events; this leaves some smaller network members unsure whether more influential organizations or network members are benefiting at their expense. these findings show that a lack of reliable communications systems and strategies creates distrust between smaller members and more prominent ones, which can lead to bickering and disharmony. we found that vac networking activities are prioritized by neither networks nor donors. our analysis shows that network actors prioritize other activities, especially interventions that provide support directly to their beneficiaries, thus making networking a secondary or supplementary activity. the interviews with district vac network leads revealed that some networks rely on individual champions who keep bringing forward the advantages of networking. when such champions are not present, the network suffers. in one of the interventions, known as kuwa mjanja (be clever), three partners set out to implement an intervention aimed at training health workers and volunteers to educate and mobilize parents and adolescents. when the first partner withdrew from the collaboration, and then another, the only remaining partner could not sustain the intervention. one of the network leads we interviewed said, “some people become more active than others in one way or another such that when they are not around, the network doesn’t work effectively.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 155 some networks go through a period of quiescence between projects that negatively impacts the sustainability of vac prevention and response work. this arises because most networks anchor their vac interventions within projects and have no specific networking agenda or budget to sustain general vac networking activities. networking is seen not as a permanent function but rather as a tool to be deployed when necessary to achieve specific goals. discussion this paper set out to assess how vac prevention and response collaborations happen and the benefits and challenges of such collaborations. previous studies that investigated vac in tanzania did not focus on the dynamics, importance, or challenges of networking. this study could be particularly pivotal in a context where only formal networks are recognized in child rights policy, programing, and research at the expense of informal networks and their beneficiaries — the children. using an exploratory qualitative approach, and drawing on sociological institutionalism as described by drori et al. (2009), we analyzed the perspectives of network actors, leads, and donors at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. we found that vac networks are formed for a variety of reasons, and that collaborations exist between organizations and institutions, including state and non-state actors. our results show that while vac collaborations bring substantial benefits, they also face multiple challenges, such as competition for funds between network actors and a lack of effective communication channels. vac itself is a complex challenge that affects different children in different ways, and multiple strategies and actors are thus needed to address it. together for girls1 is an example of a global partnership working in tanzania to end vac, with a focus on sexual violence against girls. their work is based on the understanding that a problem of this magnitude cannot be solved by one actor or one sector working in isolation. our findings agree with raman et al. (2021), who also recognized the importance of building alliances. besides together for girls, other actors in the vac landscape — for example, the international society for the prevention of child abuse and neglect (ispcan), the international society for social pediatrics & child health (issop), and the international pediatric association (ipa) — have also learned that addressing abuse requires building effective partnerships (raman et al., 2021). one of the partnerships we found in tanzania is the global partnership to end vac. tanzania has joined the global partnership as a “pathfinding country” — a country whose fight against vac is guided by inspire2 strategies. inspire emphasizes the need to engage in intersectoral and 1 together for girls is a partnership that brings together more than 20 national governments, civil society organizations, united nations’ entities, development partners, and the private sector to improve violence prevention, healing, and justice. 2 inspire stands for: implementation and enforcement of laws; norms and values change; safe environments; parental and caregiver support; income and economic strengthening; response services provision; education and life skills (world health organization, 2020). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 156 coordination activities while illuminating the roles of multiple sectors in coming together to develop an integrated platform of concerted actions to end vac (butchart & hillis, 2016). consistent with this view, our findings reveal that joint efforts offer holistic solutions to preventing and responding to vac, which agrees with raman et al.’s (2021) assertion that collaborative efforts benefit by drawing from different actors’ expertise and experience, and that it is important to ensure that interventions complement and synergize with other actors at different levels. interdependent and conjoined efforts offer possibilities for tackling vac on multiple fronts. a global report by know violence in childhood (2017) recommends that addressing vac take place on as many different levels as possible, be it family, community, or institutional levels, and using various means: changing laws or norms; working in different settings with a range of actors; including children, parents, and teachers in the effort; and so on. we concur with bissell (2015), who contended that addressing vac requires the involvement of actors in many fields, like health, child protection, education, social welfare, and justice. drawing from our findings, we argue that such multidimensional strength is unlikely to be found in a single actor but rather requires alliances in which each partner contributes its wealth and expertise. even smaller organizations are able to contribute their strength and amplify their voices within a consortium. our findings are consistent with van stapele and colleagues’ (2019) statement that “working in collaboration amplifies the voices of isolated community-based organizations and makes it louder” (p. 17). such conjoined voices and efforts are critical for successful vac prevention and response efforts. analysis of our findings shows that the importance of multilevel and multisectoral collaborations is well acknowledged in the literature and by our participants. what is missing is an understanding of the importance of informal networks in vac networks. informal networks are not recognized by governments, a factor that impairs their effectiveness (jepperson, 2002). the promising results of collaborative efforts notwithstanding, our findings indicate that networking can give rise to difficulties of its own. therefore, our study results cannot confirm mizrahi and rosenthal’s (2001) findings, particularly that collaborations deepen working relationships among diverse groups. our participants felt that network partners are sometimes suspicious of each other and may therefore lack the transparency necessary for sharing key information and acquiring knowledge, partly because partners in the same network or working group are often competing for the same resources and for visibility. our study findings agree with those of shawar and shiffman (2021), who found that some actors compete for the position of the most influential actor in the field of vac in order to gain control over the agenda and be credited for their contribution. this creates rifts in the partnerships and fosters mistrust, leading to a loose and unproductive collaboration. as gajda (2004) emphasized, “without a basis for trust and healthy interpersonal connections between people, strategic alliances will not have a solid foundation on which to stand” (p. 69). our results further support the ideas of leroux and goerdel (2009) and johansen and leroux (2013) in regard to the dilemmas faced by nonprofits operating in competitive environments where international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 157 they are compelled to make strategic decisions to prolong their survival. for instance, the tanzanian child protection ecology “coerces” networks to make strategic decisions regarding how much knowledge is shared. this defeats a key purpose of network formation and confirms that networks are not static. rather, they are dynamic products of actors’ agency. hence, in agreement with lizardo and pirkey (2014), who asserted that networks do not exist independently of actors, our findings suggest that vac networks in tanzania are the product of individual and organizational strategic responses to changes in the child protection ecology. there is also a potential for clashes and tensions to arise among different actors regarding which form of vac prevention, and which strategies, to employ. this finding corroborates shawar and shiffman’s (2021) call for attention to the multiplicity of available entry points for addressing vac. these entry points may emphasize prevention or remediation, law enforcement and prosecution, health education and health programs for social change, corporal punishment, sexual violence, humanitarian action, and so on. indeed, shawar and shiffman (2021) asserted that sometimes “there exist disagreements about which types of violence should be prioritized” (p. 416). the scramble for power, resources, influence, and visibility may not favor the achievement of shared vac networking goals. despite sustained discourse on the importance of child participation in decisions about matters of importance to them, our study found that children are not involved in vac networks, and neither are they consulted. study participants used the analogy of an african bird that builds a nest to protect her family members without their involvement to underscore that network actors can form effective vac networks without the direct participation of children. although this was a surprising finding, we contend that, for our participants, such a localized understanding of the child protection context is pivotal for decolonized theorizing about vac networks. conclusion this paper is based on a study aimed at understanding the functionality and connectivity of vac networks and their impact on the realization of children’s rights in east africa. in this paper, we focused on how vac prevention and response efforts are connected at different levels, and the benefits and challenges of networking in tanzania. the complex challenges that vac networks must strategically navigate impact network longevity, membership, functionality, and activity. our findings imply that structural factors and actors’ agency combine to influence not only benefits and challenges for vac networks, but also strategies for longevity. for example, actors use joint resource mobilization, public–private networking, joint project implementation, network-tonetwork collaboration, and synergy-building strategies to enhance their visibility and influence, win donors’ trust, and boost their child protection efforts. the practice of networking around children, rather than with children, is part of the localized conceptualization of child protection and is an essential issue for future research. questions about how to resolve some of the challenges that diminish the benefits of vac networking persist. future research could investigate the best international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 158 practices for knowledge-sharing between networks operating in a competitive setting. vac network actors should intentionally build more supportive relationships and strive for consensus as critical ingredients in successful child protection efforts. a key focus should be on achieving mutual goals while maintaining separate identities and contributing according to each partner’s greatest strength. acknowledgements we are grateful to all our participants at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. we acknowledge nascent rdo uganda for hosting the study. we are further thankful to the reference group (agnes m. wasike, dr. lina digolo, joel k. kiiya, jacqueline asiimwe, katie davies, and krista riddley) for providing overall quality assurance; and to dr. lina digolo for further reviewing the first draft of the manuscript. finally, we thank catherine mugabo for extensive administrative support and the wellspring philanthropic fund through civsource africa for funding the research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 143–162 159 references austin, j. e. 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(2020). violence against children [online]. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-children youth victims, competent agents: a second opinion on sexual victimization trauma international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 450 youth victims, competent agents: a second opinion on sexual victimization trauma anne-marie grondin abstract: michel dorais’ (2009) don’t tell: the sexual abuse of boys showcases the testimonials of 30 males who experienced sexual abuse in their youth. though insightful in its challenge to normative readings of child sexual abuse (csa), dorais’ compilation remains limiting in that victims’ experiences are continually (re)framed through the medicalized lenses of trauma and pathology, while young victims are represented as having been developmentally “damaged” as a result of their experiences. using a postructural/discursive approach to ground my analyses, i argue that dorais’ work parallels dominant csa discourses, which pathologize already heavily stigmatized individuals, efface counter-narratives, essentialize trauma as an inherent and immovable attribute, and constrain the ability of former victims to transcend their victimization. this maintains these victims “in” trauma through the discourse of the trauma “in” them. finally, i offer an alternative reading of the claims put forward by dorais and his research participants to highlight young people’s own positions of power contra adult sexual aggressors and thereby draw out youth resistance. i do so in an effort to sketch out the beginnings of a framework that does more than pay lip service to the recognition of young people’s agency. keywords: child sexual abuse, trauma, medicalized discourses, subjectivities, power, resistance anne-marie grondin is a ph.d. candidate in the department of sociology, queen’s university, d431 mackintosh-corry hall, kingston, ontario, canada, k7l 3n6. email: 6ag25@queensu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 451 certainly, our recollection of the past is made up of so many choices, avoidances, shortcuts, and imaginings that the story we each make of our life is necessarily subjective and adapted, more or less consciously, to the individual’s subsequent evolution. no one escapes this process: in recalling our past, we select and we reinterpret. (dorais, 2009, p. 178) in many respects reminiscent of james messerschmidt’s (2000) seminal research on the complex and gendered dynamics of sexual victimization, michel dorais’ (2009) don’t tell: the sexual abuse of boys is focused on the experiences of 30 canadian males who were sexually victimized as children and/or adolescents, some of whom later went on to perpetrate sexually coercive acts1 . the nuanced and intricate stories presented in dorais’ work complicate the lumpall category of “sexual abuse”. they also underscore that sexually coercive acts need seldom be physically violent to be considered nonetheless forced. furthermore, don’t tell disputes dichotomized oppositions of “pure victim” and “depraved perpetrator” by citing the cases of several young victims who later reproduced their experiences through fantasy or forcible sexual encounter. by focusing on the experiences of young males, dorais, like messerschmidt, demystifies the idea that sexual violence is a “women’s problem” and further documents linkages between sexual identity formation and understandings of gender. dorais’ contribution to research on young people’s sexual victimization is valuable, particularly by virtue of his challenge to normative understandings of sexual abuse. as he contends, one such challenge offers the possibility of a more “comprehensive and complex awareness of [a] phenomenon [that] is still embryonic” (2009, p. 4). however, dorais’ compilation remains limiting in that victims’ past and present experiences are continually (re)framed through the medicalized lenses of “trauma” and “pathology”, while victims are represented as having been developmentally “damaged” as a result of their experiences. in this paper, via a discursive approach (potter, 1996; potter & hepburn, 2008), i examine dorais’ work as representative of the dominant sexual victimization trauma narrative circulated and reinforced through the medical paradigm. using poststructuralism to ground my analysis, i demonstrate that these same discourses can have totalizing effects, in that they often constrict how we understand child sexual abuse (csa), its victims, and its repercussions. throughout, i consider the extent to which the medical paradigm, and particularly the concept of trauma, is helpful for victims. to be very clear about my aims, i do not intend to single out and disparage dorais’ work, nor am i inclined to do away with the concept of trauma entirely, to deny that csa can engender 1 of the 30 participants interviewed for dorais’ research, 15 of them were between the ages of 16 and 25 at the time of the interview, and 15 were aged 25 to 44, an average of 24.5 years of age for the group. all the testimonials cited in dorais’ research thus consist of participants’ recollections of the past. dorais includes sexual touching, removal of clothing, and sexual relations between people of different ages and power in his definition of csa. all participants were younger than 15 years old when first victimized. the majority (2/3) were victims of a relative, and 1/3 were abused by people who were known to the victim and/or his family. all were victimized by male offenders, most of whom were adults, and some of whom were adolescents older than the victim (2009, p. 6). all participants’ names were modified by the author to preserve their anonymity (p. x). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 452 harmful effects, or to argue that conceptualizing csa as a medical issue is entirely problematic. the medicalized trauma model was, after all, of signal importance in drawing public attention to the harmful effects of sexual victimization during the 1970s, when csa was still a fairly unexposed problem (davis, 2005). i employed this same model to facilitate therapy for csa victims and offenders when i worked as a clinical practitioner a few years ago. it was at this time that the nascent beginnings of my critique took shape. though the inventory of symptoms associated with trauma often helped my clients make sense of the experiences they described, at other times, my clients resisted being described as traumatized, or even as victims. these latter instances left me with doubts as to the value of the services i was providing, and with the feeling that by reworking young people’s narratives into the framework of victimization trauma, i was in fact doing my clients a disservice. as i later discuss, a recent personal encounter with the trauma narrative led me to further weigh the pros and cons of the medicalized approach. again, while i found it was a helpful organizational framework, i also felt that the trauma diagnosis i was handed hampered my ability to (re)consider past experiences through another lens than that of pathology. accordingly, though the objective of this paper is to contemplate the “dark side” of discourses typically accepted as categorically helpful for former youth victims, i neither deny the material reality of child sexual abuse nor believe csa discourses to be, inversely, conclusively unhelpful. i will argue, however, that dominant csa discourses can also pathologize already heavily stigmatized individuals, efface counter-narratives, essentialize trauma as an inherent and permanent attribute of the subject, and reinforce anachronistic understandings of children as incomplete. in these subtle ways, csa discourses, and the medicalized model they buttress, constrain the ability of former victims to transcend their victimization, maintaining them “in” trauma through the discourse of the trauma “in” them. diagnosing “the problem” haslam (2005) describes “medicalizing” as the process through which something somatic is pathologized (deemed abnormal) and essentialized (assumed to be an intrinsic property). similarly, to “psychologize” is to ascribe dysfunctionality to an element of the psyche. as i read it, psychologization is a subset of medicalization, in that psychological experts (those who psychologize) are often described as doctors of the soul or spirit. furthermore, so-called psychological abnormality is often detected not only through behavioural, but also physiological, irregularity. csa discourses can be characterized as medicalizing in that they judge victimization and its aftermath as necessarily dysfunctional, while essentializing the loci of trauma as within victims’ bodies and minds. sexual victimization is also frequently associated with medical (including psychological and psychiatric) illnesses and syndromes, and thus can be described as a problem that is “medicalized” (conrad & barker, 2010, p. s74). as a search of the key words “child sexual abuse” on scholars portal reveals, csa is indeed associated with a broad range of somatic, psychological, and behavioural conditions: depression, suicide, and anxiety (kimonis et al., 2010; paolucci, genuis, & violato, 2001), drug use and other addictions (cohen et al., 2010; wilson & widom, 2010), as well as a host of disorders (becker, stuewig, & mccloskey, 2010; silberman, 2010; vrabel, hoffart, ro, martinsen, & rosenvinge, 2010) and psychopathologies (cutajar et al. 2010; shenk, noll, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 453 putnam, & trickett, 2010), amongst other symptoms, deficits and illnesses2 . csa victims are said to experience such repercussions to varying degrees (yancey & hansen, 2010), but all victims are considered traumatized in some way (davis, 2005). the unequivocal equation of csa with trauma has a lot to do with the framework through which young people are conceptualized. historically, and following the work of such pioneers as freud, erikson, and piaget, the dominant approach to theorizing childhood and adolescence has been that of developmental psychology (albanese, 2009). within this approach, young people are “in becoming”: over time and through biological stages, they gain increasing cognitive, emotional, and physical capacities. prout and james (2008) describe developmental psychology as “an evolutionary model [wherein] the child developing into an adult represents a progression from simplicity to complexity of thought, from irrational to rational behaviour” (p. 10). later developmental theorists have built on this body of work to theorize that young people learn from their surroundings, integrating lessons from their experiences as they progress though developmental stages (for instance bandura, 1977). according to these tenets, compared to adults young people’s ability to process information is limited, both in quantity and quality (qvortrup, 2004). as not yet fully matured beings, they have neither developed themselves sexually, nor acquired the capacity to understand sex (finkelhor, 1979). the idea that csa “corrupts” young people’s development follows logically. when young people are exposed to sex, they are precociously exposed to “adult” knowledge, and their “normal” development is interrupted as a consequence. moreover, as the logic goes, young people – children especially – are too cognitively, emotionally, and physically immature to engage in adult sex because they have not developed the necessary competencies or faculties. consequently, csa is always considered both damaging and traumatic (grondin, in press). the range of conventional avenues for redress, compared to the scope of possible aftershocks, is much more restrictive. though there exist several types of csa therapies and interventions, each falls within the realm of medical expertise (deblinger, heflin, & clark, 1997; gertie & natascha, 2010; taylor & harvey, 2010), including the “‘psy’ disciplines” (snider, 2003). of course, not all csa victims seek professional help. nevertheless, even outside therapy post-victimization behaviour is often medicalized. that is, heedless of its character, how a young person behaves after having been abused – withdrawing or seeking support, blaming oneself or the perpetrator, characterizing the incident as positive or negative, expressing oneself through anger or sublimation – is invariably designated within dominant discourses as “coping” (cantoncortez & canton, 2010), a term coined by “psy” experts in the 1960s to describe reactions to distress (snyder, 1999, p. 6). to sum up, the dominant csa “story” is infused, at various levels, with determinations of dysfunctionality and irregularity or abnormality typical of the knowledges produced within the medical realm3 2 for a more comprehensive review, see kendall-tackett, williams, & finkelhor, 1993; see also schultz, 2001. , including the “psy” disciplines (foucault, 2003). 3 i use “medical”, here and in discussions of csa discourses throughout, in the broadest, most indiscriminate sense to refer to frameworks where the knowledge claims of medical experts – that csa unequivocally causes physical and/or psychological unwellness, for instance – tend to be treated as self-evident. i use this category as an ideal type to bring into relief its most acute discursive effects, but also recognize that it is not uniform. in point of fact, foremost amongst its critics are theorists who, following lacan, employ psychoanalysis to flip the logic of medical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 454 discourses of help, discourses of harm the knowledge claims mentioned above have doubtless been useful. for one thing, by drawing attention to the breadth of possible consequences of csa and the implications for young people, the urgency of these discourses sensitized various publics to a problem that, as previously mentioned, had traditionally been socially concealed. what is more, these discourses have proliferated to the extent that, today, professionals can rely on a growing field of research to help alleviate the suffering of csa victims. as snider (2003) argues, however: knowledge claims and expertise always work to the advantage of some and the detriment of others, strengthening some parties and interests while weakening others. those with power to set institutional agendas, with superior economic, political, social and moral capital, are therefore able to reinforce and promote certain sets of knowledges, while ignoring, ridiculing or attacking others. (p. 355) as i will later discuss, power, in the poststructuralist sense, does not only reside with those in power; rather, it reaches “each point of the social body” in multifaceted ways (foucault, as cited in lotringer, 1996, p. 210). all the same, as the quote illustrates, particular interests keep dominant discourses in circulation, and these engender both positive and negative outcomes at all times. whose interests are served by and who benefits from dominant csa discourses are perhaps more complex questions than might initially be apparent. many would undoubtedly agree that these discourses side with victims and their plight, in that they reflect a desire to help victims name what afflicts them, and propose strategies for redress. however, victims and their needs are not homogenous, and the medicalized framework can also work against certain victims, for instance by disregarding narratives which are inconsistent with favoured medical explanations. bearing the cloak of expertise, the claims advanced through such explanations (the threat of permanent damage, for instance) render any challenge to dominant discourses difficult. the challenge is even greater for young people, as they tend to lack the social and material capital to legitimate their own claims (prout & hallett, 2003). thus, while medicalized csa discourses can be understood, on the one hand, as a set of progressive insights which promote the well-being of some youths, on the other hand, they might also be understood as detrimental to those youths whose knowledge claims conflict with said insights, and who are consequently dismissed. the metaphor of the double-edged sword aptly encapsulates the poststructural paradox of progress: “empowerment and disempowerment, liberation and subjection, are two sides of the same coin. no discourse ought to be so complacent as to assume its immunity from producing both positive and negative, constraining and enabling, effects” (angelides, 2004, p. 162). setting aside, for analytical purposes, the well-recognized utility of medicalized csa discourses, i will, claims on its head (campbell, 2004; kristeva, 1995). moreover, critical social scholarship including feminism and poststructuralism permeates several modern-day therapeutic and psychological approaches (etherington, 2005; seu & heenan, 1998; white & epston, 1990) seeking to counteract the challenges addressed in this paper. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 455 in what follows, take up the challenge of deliberating the constraining effects of these same discourses. several foucault enthusiasts have discussed the individualizing and at times pathologizing effects of modernist “expert” sciences, including medicine and the “psy” disciplines (garland, 2001; rose, 1990, 2010; snider, 2002). individualizing effects are those which situate the genesis of a problem and accompanying solutions within the individual. of course, pundits would be quick to point out that contemporary csa discourses work to blame the offender, not the victim. at the same time, however, prevention efforts are increasingly geared towards discerning patterns in victimization to help experts identify those who are most “at-risk” (lalor & mcelvaney, 2010), thus situating the source of the problem, at least in part, with at-risk youths. as evidenced in the previous section, having suffered trauma csa victims are also considered at risk for a variety of other troubles: relational, emotional, developmental, sexual, psychological, and social. these new problems are believed to emanate from the trauma, and more precisely, from the traumatized at-risk self, which becomes the primary site of future monitoring, discipline, and governance (ericson & haggerty, 1997). thus, one constraining effect of dominant csa discourses is that they open up possibilities for intrusive intervention and regulation. a subsidiary effect is that by constituting all victims as traumatized individuals, csa discourses ascribe abnormality as an inherent characteristic of these individuals, which – much like a “label” or “master status” (becker, 1966) – becomes as much an identity as an explanation of everything. the traumatized individual is reinscribed, in essence, as pathological or damaged. in poststructural parlance, csa trauma discourses shape subjectivities, and in turn, these subjectivities shape how we speak of and experience the self (butler, 1990; foucault, 1973). though the damage can be mitigated (through therapy or by developing adequate “coping mechanisms”, for example), it can never be completely repaired as it lies, dormant or active, within. as such, the pathological essence of the victim is imputed to all future conduct, choices, and misfortunes. this is problematic for two main reasons. most obviously, the assignment of a pathological identity adds to the stigma already found in being a victim of csa. additionally, constituting the subjectivity of the victim in one such way imposes a pernicious constraint on young people’s ability to transcend experiences of victimization, sentencing them to perpetual victimhood. constituting young people as traumatized victims both affixes to them a new identity and naturalizes the discursive process through which they are constituted (foucault, 1981). as a result, it conceals possibilities for the creation of new narratives and of alternative more empowering subjectivities by underscoring the weaknesses of the damaged self rather than its strengths. left with few alternatives, csa victims are susceptible to a re-evaluation of their lives through the lens of trauma, further entrenching their newly constituted identity in the process. as such, the formation of the trauma identity can be understood as “interactionally constituted” (holstein & miller, 1990, p. 104). method implicit in the concept of interactional constitution is the idea that identities are formed through the meanings derived from situations, interactions, or events, rather than stemming from the situations, interactions, or events themselves. for the purpose of this discussion, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 456 distinction lies in viewing sexual trauma identities as outcomes of socio-cultural, historical, and relational interpretations of victimization, and not, as contended in dominant csa discourses, as the direct and indisputable products of victimizing incidents. to study interactionally constituted identities thus invites researching how meaning – or, for foucault (1978), knowledge – is produced, an approach firmly rooted in the long-standing interpretivist/constructionist tradition (berger & luckmann, 1966; denzin, 2001; garfinkel, 1967; goffman, 1983; sartre, 1963) and its derivatives (barthes, 1994; derrida, 1967; edwards, 1997; fairclough, 1989; potter, 1996). accordingly, poststructuralists study discourse, or the sets of “practices that are composed of ideas, ideologies, and referents that systematically construct both the subject and objects of which they speak” (hesse-biber & leavy, 2011, p. 238). more specifically, discourse analysis involves observing how texts and talk create and reproduce culturally-embedded meanings to position subject identities in particular ways (edley & wetherell, 1997; nikander, 2008). discourse analysis comprises an array of techniques and methods, some more sophisticated than others. in conducting research for this paper, mine was to read text – dorais’ (2009) don’t tell: the sexual abuse of boys – to “try to pin down [its] key themes and, thereby, to draw a picture of the presuppositions and meanings that constitute the cultural world of which the textual material is a specimen” (perakyla, 2008). my analyses focused on two layers of text within dorais’ work. i began with an analysis of long passages and quotes taken from dorais’ transcripts and reprinted in don’t tell, to assess how dorais’ participants made sense of their victimization experiences and their lives in the aftermath – how they, in other words, constituted themselves using the cultural scripts that were available to them. in a meta-analysis of sorts, i then examined how the author interpreted his participants’ responses to underscore, first, that knowledge claims are subjectively assembled; and second, that these claims are reflective, but also (re)productive of dominant discourses. in what follows, i present the results of my analyses by drawing out which discourses were used to make meaning of csa, and how they are kept in circulation and reinforced. borrowing from poststructural insights, i also discuss the disempowering/constraining effects of these same discourses to offer a “second opinion” on the narrative of sexual victimization trauma. finally, i offer an alternative reading of the claims advanced by dorais and his participants to highlight the mutability of meanings associated with csa, and to emphasize youth resistance and agency. don’t tell … damned if they do, damned if they don’t michel dorais’ (2009) don’t tell: the sexual abuse of boys provides a working example of the interactional process through which traumatized subjects are constituted. dorais’ aim is to answer the following questions: how are male victims of sexual abuse affected by it? how much does the trauma affect their learning and emotional development? what are the consequences of such sexual abuse on their future behaviour, their sexual orientation, and their sexual development? (p. 3) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 457 implicit in these questions are several assumptions: first, that sexual victimization necessarily engenders particular repercussions; second, that victims are invariably traumatized as a result; third, that there exist pre-ordained developmental paths which can be offset by trauma; and fourth, that the traumatic “damage”, once rooted in the individual, will rhizomatically extend its grasp to all aspects of the victims’ identity, indefinitely. in asking these questions, dorais aims to provide an organizational structure for the themes he surveys. however, we might think of his questions as also providing a different kind of structure, a framework through which to read csa as a medical problem and its victims as inherently traumatized. as in the literatures reviewed above, dorais assumes male csa victims are suffering from a host of somatic, behavioural, and psychological forms of trauma as a result of their victimization including “fear, anxiety, negative self-image and low self-esteem, abuse of alcohol and drugs, violence” (2009, p. 4), cognitive dissonance (p. 82), insomnia (p. 94), hypervigilance, claustrophobia, and other “psychosomatic discomforts” (p. 95). all of the above are considered undesirable, unhealthy reactions caused by csa alone, rather than by factors preceding sexual victimization. for instance, in recounting his tumultuous past, “pascal” describes how he was: pushed around from one place to another when i was little. my grandmother looked after me when i was born. after i was two, i lived with different relatives for about five years, but i never stayed in one place more than about a year. then i was in foster homes. that’s when i found out my real mother wasn’t who i thought she was. they’d always told me my aunt was my real mother. in other words, i thought my mother’s sister was my mother. i didn’t know who my father was, either. i still don’t know. i always thought it was my uncle. but no. i realized my mother and the whole family were lying to me. (2009, p. 10) though the passage hints at several reasons why pascal might be distrustful of adults, his issues with trust and intimacy are described as stemming from his sexual victimization alone (p. 14). this suggests that the scars left by sexual victimization trump all prior experiences, inscribing themselves as an altered traumatized state and thus transforming the identity of the child so that the self is re-envisioned accordingly. illustrating this same point, “matthew” describes how his childhood was punctured by the death of his father and of the grandmother who raised him, as well as by being abandoned by his stepfather (dorais, 2009, p. 54). he was later abused by another father figure, his best friend’s father, whom he describes as a “role model” who betrayed him: “after that experience, i didn’t trust men at all. i lost my ability to trust” (p. 55). matthew, like pascal, attributes his lack of trust to his sexual victimization. without discounting matthew’s interpretation, we might consider the source of his distrust as stemming instead (or as well) from having been disappointed by various men in his life. this in no way nullifies matthew’s understanding as mere fiction, but rather draws attention to the historical, cultural, and social situatedness of his account. specifically, the examples above speak to the ubiquitousness of the framework used to make meaning of csa. they also demonstrate how subjects incorporate csa discourses and co-constitute their subjectivities in the process. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 458 this is not to say that discourses are always adopted uncritically. importantly, the narratives of some csa victims contradict dominant discourses. for example, “james” recalls that: it wasn’t rape. i didn’t see it as rape. (…) it was when the police came to school to question me that the affair took another turn. the police told me the old man was putting young boys in touch with other men who wanted sex with them. at that point, it hadn’t gotten that far with me. the police said they wouldn’t let me go if i didn’t talk. it took a few hours before i capitulated. (…) [i]f it happened, it just had to happen. maybe that’s why i’m no longer bothered by it. it’s as though it didn’t happen to me. it’s passed. it’s finished. that’s all. i needed him, and he needed me. (dorais, 2009, pp. 90–91) in other words, james understands his experience as a mutual exchange or trade, rather than a top-down imposition of will. contra the trauma model, he neither believes he has suffered an aftershock, nor does he understand the present through the lens of his past “victimization”. in acknowledging that he framed the incident as abuse under coerced police questioning, james also demonstrates that he was able to move between frameworks, to shift discourses, in accordance with the expectations that were placed on him. as such, james’ example highlights how subjectivity is discursively constituted, by people, and within social interactions. the example further emphasizes how dominant knowledge claims are circulated, and why – in this instance, by molding james’ narrative into an account better suited to the organizational needs of an institution which relies on victim/offender and innocent/guilty binaries to exist. that the police were able to detain james until he provided them with what they considered a suitable account also underscores why it is often difficult (though not impossible) to reject dominant accounts. ultimately, james’ story will have been re-narrated and simplified through institutional tools for reporting crime as one fitting the parameters of dominant csa discourses. his case illuminates how subject positions and accounts cannot be separated from “those assumptions and practices that exclud[e] considerations of difference” (scott, 1991, p. 777). certainly, it is no secret that history is made up of the claims of a select few – the voices of those who are heard – or so the famous quote suggests. yet james’ case goes beyond exemplifying who is heard; it is also about what is heard. indeed, dorais reads his participants’ sometimes ambivalent reactions as symptomatic of csa trauma. for dorais, ambivalent reactions equate to psychological mechanisms of denial or minimization which themselves are indicative of the degree of harm inflicted on victims’ psyches (2009, p. 96). in other words, dorais pathologizes narratives which are inconsistent with authoritative knowledge claims, as well as the individuals who attempt to resist the traumatized victim identity, by recasting ambivalence as a negative consequence of csa. in this sense, former victims are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t; irrespective of their personal interpretations, they are (re)construed as damaged individuals. beyond the abnormalization of people, the medicalization of post-abuse behaviours also pathologizes an array of actions, which otherwise could be understood if not as “healthy”, then certainly as “mundane”. for instance, dorais reads conformity as a reaction to an abusive past. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 459 when csa victims conform to particular social scripts, he explains, it is either to deny having been abused (2009, p. 149), or to erase any “mark” (i.e., trait or patterned behaviour) believed to have paved the way for the abuse to occur (p. 150). similarly, the development of certain qualities in adulthood, such as assertiveness or skepticism, is understood as “a more positive integration of past traumatic experiences” (p. 96), rather than a simple acquisition of particular traits over time. likewise, newfound interests in art are recast and psychologized as “sublimation” (p. 96). in sum, the every action, interest, or motive of a former victim is understood as a by-product of trauma and a “coping strategy” (p. 137). if the goal is to help young victims to move on, the present analysis suggests that, by uncritically adopting medicalized csa discourses, we, like dorais, may be going about it illogically. indeed, by reading trauma into the narratives and everyday actions of former victims, we invite victimization experiences to endlessly permeate all future aspects of their lives, rather than help them to overcome it. as i demonstrate next, this is a consequence of using the trauma model as the explanation of everything, and of essentializing trauma as a blemish affixed to the individual, one which imprints a permanent scar. soiled forever in her overview of the history of the concept, leys (2000) discerns two main theories of trauma. mimetic theorists, freudian psychoanalysts among them, posit that trauma is an unconscious distressed response. trauma, in this sense, stems not from distressing experiences, but from an internal psychological process. in contrast, anti-mimetic theorists depict trauma as the record of an external event dissociated, at least for some time, from memory. thus, while the mimetic theory situates the locus of trauma within the individual, anti-mimesis traces it back to a particular event (pp. 8–10). as leys explains, the anti-mimetic theory was founded on the critique that mimesis is an overly deterministic theory, one that depicts the subject as consciously absent from trauma, and therefore lacking sovereignty. by relocating the source of trauma in an external circumstance, anti-mimetic theorists recognized traumatized subjects instead as “passive sovereigns” at odds with a distressing ordeal (p. 10). though the distinctions outlined above might suggest irreconcilability between the two theories of trauma, both nonetheless inform contemporary conceptualizations of csa aftershocks for victims. on the one hand, csa is understood to produce psychological reactions within the individual, most notably in its association with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) and dissociation (for instance, simon, feiring & kobielski mcelroy, 2010). dorais (2009) highlights several such forms of trauma in his discussions of cognitive dissonance (p. 81), memory suppression, and amnesia (p. 95). on the other hand, trauma is also believed to emanate from the external event or assault itself. as previously discussed, csa in itself is considered so traumatic as to minimize anteceding distress, or even to reconstitute youths who deny having been harmed as victims. the idea that the anti-mimetic theory offers further autonomy in its constitution of the subject is, i would argue, questionable. whether its source is located internally or externally, the concept of trauma – though not always conceived as an unconscious dysfunction of the psyche – ascribes abnormality both to the individual and to the individual’s life. for instance, dorais (2009) often depicts young victims as altered beings, negatively transformed at their cores by csa, be it in the modification of “the essential dimension of individual stability” (p. 4, emphasis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 460 added), the sexualization of their thoughts, affect, and behaviour (p. 45), or other hindrances to their development (p. 110). moreover, he describes former victims as “inevitably affected” (p. 136) by adverse repercussions of csa characterized as both transformative and long-lasting, if not permanent: “after the abuse they were never the same” (p. 137). these examples demonstrate how the application of dominant csa discourses, which fix trauma as an inescapable and transformative consequence, shapes and pathologizes young victims’ subject identities. the epitaph i selected was taken from dorais’ don’t tell. in it, the author suggests that we narrate our lives based on interpretations of past experiences, and these channel how we make sense of our “subsequent evolution” (2009, p. 178). in foucauldian terms, our “ontology of ourselves,” otherwise conceptualized as our personal “histories of the present,” centres on the “condition[s] under which we, as individuals, exist and what causes us to exist in the way that we do” (mills, 2004, p. 25). through this process, we draw on discourses to understand how particular conditions have impacted who we are, and internalize the judgments embedded within these discourses to assess ourselves and our experiences (foucault, 1985). how we speak of and experience ourselves in the present and future is thus heavily influenced by selective, subjective interpretations of the past and the discourses which inform them. for csa victims, the interactionally constitutive process of interpreting oneself via the lessons of dominant discourses entails accepting oneself as traumatized, in other words as negatively transformed or damaged. several of the testimonials in don’t tell evidence this last point. for one, “paul” believes his sexuality to be “abnormal” as a result of his victimization, leading him to conclude: “i’m not like other people” (2009, p. 135). the transformation is sometimes perceived as deceptively furtive, its manifestation a constant, looming threat, as for “bruno” who likens trauma to “a time bomb in your head. you never know when it’ll go off” (p. 127). often, the transformative effects of trauma are believed to percolate to all aspects of life: “the boy’s whole life is at risk of being centered around the invading trauma” (p. 111), as per the perception of “jimmy” that “all the problems i’ve had are due to [my abuser], to what he did to me” (p. 38). moreover, it is believed that the damaging effects of the transformation/trauma “will continue to unfold long after the abuse has ended” (p. 168), and will “often worse[n] over time” (p. 81). while, on the one hand, the narratives highlighted above may be understood as helpful in that they provide former victims with a means of ordering their storied experiences, they are, on the other hand, unconstructive in their prospective pessimism. indeed, extending dorais’ contention that csa victimization generates in many youths feelings of having been “soiled forever” (2009, p. 92), i would argue, based on the above narratives, that csa trauma discourses can foster identical effects. without discounting the idea that “[csa] trauma can leave scars that cannot be erased” (p. 33), this is to suggest that discourses of trauma are themselves permanent scars, working in tandem with the traumatic event and/or distressed responses to keep victims “in” trauma through the trope of the trauma “in” them. setting aside the discussion of possible disciplinary effects which trauma discourses, like any other so-called expert discourse (foucault, 1977), might incite, my focus is instead to underscore, as per poststructuralist tradition, the productive effects of such discourses, those which create and reinforce “traumatized” subject identities and how these are embodied. thus, while the trauma narrative may have emerged out of a desire to explain and address the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 461 repercussions of csa, the conceptualization of trauma as inescapable, inherently transformative, permanent, and all-encompassing entrenches, rather than suppresses, trauma for young victims. of course, this critique of the trauma model can be extended beyond my own application to cases involving adults. as i argue next, however, pathologizing csa discourses have particularly pernicious effects for young people. specifically, the fated ruin associated with csa trauma reinforces perceptions of passive helplessness, a condition already problematically associated with being young. just another word for “incomplete” sociologists of childhood call attention to the problematic partition of constructed adult/child and related binaries: complete/incomplete; experienced/innocent; active/passive, and so on (danby & farrell, 2004; qvortrup, 2004; wyness, 2006). prout and james (2008) argue such binary understandings impose on youths comparative deficits, wherein they “are regarded as immature, irrational, incompetent, asocial and acultural with adults being mature, rational, competent, social and autonomous” (p. 13). this deficiency model takes root in developmental psychology (burman & stacey, 2010). as earlier discussed, developmental psychologists use as their foundational premise the idea that youths develop emotional, cognitive, and physical capacities as they “progress” through particular, age-based stages. before reaching adulthood, youths are thus considered “in progress”, but lacking. their developmental shortfalls are used in a variety of domains either to proscribe activities considered too complex for their limited capacities, for instance voting or driving a licensed vehicle, or to enforce activities believed to help them along their development, such as going to school. for youths, the deficiency model imposes on them a state of postponement. they are, as qvortrup (2004) argues, fated to wait “to become adults; to mature; to become competent; to get capabilities; to acquire rights; to become useful; to have a say in societal matters; to share resources,” (p. 267). in the meantime, their development relies on an array of factors mostly beyond their control, or stimuli to which they are exposed but which they cannot govern, again because they are construed as incompetent to do so. like other sociologists of childhood, james and prout (2008) argue that structural conditions, and not innate limitations, are what render youths more vulnerable. powerlessness, vulnerability, dependency, and helplessness are not, as popularly conceived, in-built, but are instead resulting consequences of the widespread and institutionalized treatment of youths as such. in other words, the constitution of young people as limited or deficient in discourse ensures in practice that constraints will be placed on their actions, limiting in turn their ability to acquire knowledge and experience autonomously, and abnormalizing the knowledge and experiences to which they are “prematurely” exposed (angelides, 2004). if csa discourses work to keep victims passive and fated to succumb to the effects of their traumatized state, so do developmental “youth” frameworks, in that these constrain our ability to recognize youths – and youths’ ability to recognize themselves – as socially competent agents. instead, young people are conceptualized as passive recipients of things done “to” them, biologically or through social interaction (albanese, 2009, p. 27). csa and trauma are fitting examples. far from proposing a reactionary reversion to seeing young people as willing initiators of sex with adults, i mean only to argue that, by situating youths “outside” of power and agency, predominant discourses of csa, trauma, and youth reaffirm regulatory determinations of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 462 incompetence and resulting feelings of helplessness. for, in combination, these sets of discourses equate sexual victimization with developmental impairment, young people with incompetence, and trauma with devastation, leaving former victims to face very daunting prospects. in pursuit of more enabling discursive constitutions, sociologists of childhood have privileged viewing young people as competent and autonomous agents, valuable for who they are in the present, as opposed to who they are to become (freeman & mathison, 2009, p. 7). their approach is consistent with poststructuralist, and particularly queer, deconstructions of age categories, through which “concepts such as knowledge, consent, and power as they have been articulated through the linear and sequential logic of age stratification” are re-examined (angelides, 2004, p. 167). key to this project, of course, are foucauldian theorizing on power. reframing the paradigm: seven tales of resistance strategic games prior to foucault’s work, power was by and large conceptualized as that which differentiates the “haves” from the “have-nots”. read in this way, power is “repressive” in that it seeks to impose a degree of coercion from the top-down; one obtains power by successfully repressing one’s opponent in a zero-sum game. consider, for instance, how csa has been framed as a problem of power imbalance. adults – the haves – are seen in these cases as imposing their wills and desires onto youths – the have-nots – suppressing young people’s own volition in the process (grondin, 2010, p. 136). according to foucault (as cited in faubion & rabinow, 1984), viewing power in this way is problematic, not because it is entirely inaccurate, but because it is incomplete in its explanation of how power operates: in defining the effects of power as repression, one adopts a purely juridical conception of such power, one identifies power with a law that says no – power is taken, above all, as carrying the force of a prohibition. now, i believe that this is a wholly negative, narrow skeletal conception of power, one that has been curiously widespread. if power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? what makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. it needs to be considered as a productive network that runs through the whole social body. (p. 120) in the context of the present discussion, what is important to retain from this passage is the idea that power is productive of knowledge, discourse, and as foucault argues elsewhere (1977, 1978, 2003), subjectivities; for, if individuals are able to reconceptualize themselves as particular kinds of subjects through discursive assemblages, if their identities are in fact interactionally constituted, then they are able, in this sense, to exert power in the same way as do “experts” driving the process of discursive formation. for victims of csa, the difference between productive and repressive conceptualizations of power lies in recognizing that they, too, possess certain resources and strengths, and that they are able to wield certain degrees of power, irrespective of their age stratification. moreover, the idea that subject identities are produced through discursive power, and particularly the notion that those “subjected” to discourses are co-conspirators in the constitutive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 463 process, intimates that subjectivities are fluid, and emphasizes the agential capacities of subjects to choose a referential framework. without denying that some frameworks hold more currency at particular times and in certain contexts than others, as does the csa trauma model in the west at the moment, such an anti-essentialist reading of the subject reminds us that discursive constructions are mutable, that there are myriad subject varieties, and that these are constantly in flux. in other words, we can never be “finished” products, products of a single experience, or products of any one kind. accordingly, former csa victims are much more than the by-products of their victimization/trauma, much more, in fact, than simply victims. in light of this, a more empowering support for former victims might entail emphasizing the sum of their experiences as having shaped them in multifaceted ways, as well as their ability to move between and through their own assortment of subject identities. foucault’s work on power is helpful in yet another regard. in the first volume of the history of sexuality (1978), he argues resistance is a vital dimension of, and necessary condition for power. what would prompt the need to impose repressive forms of power, or even the need to produce particular subjects, he asked, if not for the threat of resistance? for foucault then, “resistance is ‘written-in’ to the exercise of power,” a notion which “move[s] away from viewing individuals only as passive recipients” (mills, 2004, p. 40). accordingly, foucault argues power is not an entity which can be possessed, lost, or lacking, but rather an economy of relations, of “forms of resistance against different forms of power” (as cited in dreyfus & rabinow, 1983, p. 211). in other words, power consists of a set of “strategic games between liberties” (foucault, as cited in bernauer & rasmussen, 1988, p. 19). as kitzinger (2008, pp. 170–173) documents, young people often deploy a wide range of tactics to resist their aggressors, including fighting back; saying no; running away; articulating threats; feigning indifference, climax, even nosebleeds; limiting physical contact; manipulating; lying; crying; and/or yelling out. to liken csa to a mere game would unquestionably be remiss, but the point is that even sexually abusive relations can be understood as negotiated strategies blurring the line between offence and defence, as a series of multiple, overlapping, and complex exchanges between two parties. to argue that young people can resist abusive situations does not imply that they are fairly matched to their opponents. furthermore, young people’s liberty to resist does not guarantee success in their efforts. however, by conceptualizing power in this way, we can begin to move away from framing csa as a problem of absolute dominance, a model which reinforces the idea that young people are always dominated (and therefore helpless), and which re-enacts domination by silencing acts of resistance. moreover, the simple act of recognizing resistance can have empowering effects, as it allows former victims to reconstitute their subject position through a new narrative of agency. this, in turn, opens up space for stories outside dominant discourses to emerge, and for these stories to be recognized and validated as legitimate knowledge/discourses. indeed, dominant frameworks are themselves dominating when they are imposed in a totalizing fashion. put otherwise: a system of constraint becomes truly intolerable when the individuals who are affected by it don’t have the means of modifying it. this can happen when such a system becomes intangible as a result of its being considered a moral or religious imperative, or a necessary consequence of medical science. (foucault, as cited in lotringer, 1996, p. 327) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 464 the process of drawing out narratives of resistance, power, and agency is crucial to counter the determinism which characterizes the dominant csa paradigm and to modify the constraining effects of establishing trauma as a necessary, devastating, and unshakeable medical/psychological aftershock. such narratives can provide former victims with the above-mentioned “means of modifying”, or of de-sedimenting, totalizing discourses. seven tales of resistance a poststructuralist approach to the question of power acknowledges the positioned expertise of various “knowers”, including young people who position themselves outside dominant discourses. a poststructuralist re-reading of james’ narrative, which i cited earlier, would require us to recognize his perception that he neither experienced victimization nor trauma at the hands of an older man with whom he engaged in sexual relations, and to validate this knowledge as a conceivable truth. one such reformulation not only enfranchises james as an agent, it also makes visible the contestability of dominant discourses, thus leaving these open for challenge. privileging young people’s interpretations also allows us to unpack how identities are socially and interactionally constituted. for instance, “dennis” states: didn’t so much see what had happened to me as an abuse. i considered it to be a homosexual relationship between and adult and a child. it’s only recently that i’ve come to see it as abusive (…). i bear him a grudge now. that probably signifies that it really was abuse. (…) however, it’s maybe less the abuse part of it than the homosexual part of it that affected me most in the end. (in dorais, 2009, p. 101) dennis’ testimonial highlights the mutability of his subjective understanding. he appears to shift between understanding himself as a victim and a non-victim who questions his sexual identity. he partly dismisses the latter understanding, which goes against dominant csa discourses, as a faulty recollection, and finds proof of his victim status in the feelings he has towards his aggressor at present. though the two interpretations might appear at odds with one another, together, they reflect different facets of dennis’ construed identity, which he is free to draw on to make sense of his own experiences as he sees fit, without having to judge which one is “right” or “wrong”. similarly, “bruno” and “justin” (in dorais, 2009, pp. 125–126 and 153–154 respectively) alternate between positioning themselves in and outside of victimization discourses. both recount having had several sexual encounters with older men, but only consider some of these as abuse. the idea that comparable situations can be perceived so differently points to the variability of interpretations of these acts, and challenges the notion that exposure to adult-child sex necessarily results in trauma. if taken in good faith, such discrepant narratives provide hope for a future absent of permanent scarring. excavating storied resistance from narratives of victimization can further trouble essentializing trauma discourses. sometimes, victims’ strengths emerge in spite of their learned passivity with aggressors, as with “jimmy”: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 465 i obeyed my father. (…) i didn’t like him touching me but (…) i had to allow myself to be abused to be worth talking to. (…)as soon as i felt stronger, more confident, i began to be less respectful towards him to yell and scream my head off as he used to do. (…) he said: “obey me. i’m your father”. i replied: “a father doesn’t behave the way you do”. (in dorais, 2009, p. 35) as this testimonial highlights, young people can develop and yield strengths to resist their aggressors. on the one hand, these strengths can be understood as acquired despite coercive circumstances, as a sign of resiliency. on the other hand, we might think of them as by-products of the same circumstances, as resources developed specifically to combat coercion, and thus, as positive outcomes of adversity. at other times, young people’s resistance can halt the victimization entirely, as it did for “matthew”: i got away from him, i ran outside. i hid in the cabana in the garden. he negotiated with me to get me to come out (…). i asked him to drive me home and he did, trying to put things right with me the whole way home. (in dorais, 2009, p. 55) and also for “pascal”: on later occasions he saw that i was resisting. he distanced himself from me. he didn’t speak to me as he had done before, he didn’t take me out anymore. (p. 11) if we were to put further emphasis on accounts of resistance such as the ones exemplified above, we could begin to reframe csa narratives as empowering discourses. through these new discourses of agential resistance, we could begin to reclaim subjectivities of passive and traumatized victims as competent agent identities. earlier, i suggested that trauma, as an explanation of everything, invites itself to permeate all aspects of former victims’ lives. assuming the logic of my contention makes sense, the same argument would also apply here. that is, by reading resistance into young people’s narratives and actions, we can incite empowerment to trickle into various realms, including recollections of the past, understandings of the present, and future projections. we can, in other words, call on discourses of resistance to produce more enabling effects. conclusion the medicalized model of csa trauma is both widely acknowledged and generally valued as a progressive framework that brings us closer to understanding the “truth” about csa victimization. though this model may well do justice to the experiences of certain victims, others situate their experiences outside the dominant narrative, as secondary analyses of michel dorais’ don’t tell (2009) demonstrate. what i have sought to do in this paper is to think critically about the effects of using discourses of trauma in a totalizing way. as i have argued, doing so can entrench trauma as a symbolic but permanent scar for former victims. like other medicalized discourses, the trope of the damaged csa victim rests on assumptions of dysfunctionality and unwellness; it essentializes trauma as an abnormality of the individual that foreshadows further dysfunction throughout and in all parts of life. consequently, the dominant framework both impedes young people’s ability to transcend their victimization and reinforces feelings of passive helplessness already embedded within “youth” and “victim” discourses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 466 having said this, the trauma model is not entirely unhelpful. as i was writing this paper, i was, somewhat ironically, diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). once i got past the initial surprise, i felt a tremendous sense of relief, as though, suddenly, so many things in my life made sense. the diagnosis provided me with a way to neatly categorize and explain my actions. it also provided me with a guide to understanding myself. i even used it to justify some of my more notorious fiascos, failures to launch, and other disappointments. eventually, however, i began asking myself: “is this all i am? was i suffering from traumainduced detachment, when all these years i thought i was being strong?” i felt foolish. i began revisiting my successes, interpreting each anew as early indications of an impending implosion. moreover, i started to worry that the patterns i newly understood as brought on by my condition would be, at this point, so firmly established as to close off hope for a total recovery. as i went back to the paper, struggling to mediate between my theoretical critique and my personal feelings, i realized the proverbial proof of the pudding. though my newfound traumatized subjectivity was helpful in certain regards, it also explained away those elements of myself that i was proud of, the strengths i believed i could fall back on, as nothing more than embodied side effects of my traumatized disposition. returning to angelides’ (2004) contention that no discourse is immune from producing both enabling and constraining effects, i will conclude that the uncritical acceptance of any discourse as wholly beneficial flags that aspects of its productive effects have necessarily been overlooked. to suggest otherwise is to assume that individuals are both homogeneous and static. thus, it may be more constructive to consider what we hope to achieve with particular discourses than attempt to evaluate these from a moral or ethical standpoint. as i have argued in this paper, medicalized csa trauma discourses provide former victims with a set of structured explanations, but these are not comprehensive, nor are they particularly apt at helping young people move beyond traumatic experiences. in contrast, conceptualizing csa as a “strategic game” between two parties, in the poststructuralist sense, creates space to reintroduce young people into discourse as competent agents. it emphasizes resistance, leaves open the possibility for discrepant interpretations, and counters essentialist readings of young victims as invariably damaged. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 450-472 467 references albanese, p. 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(2010). relationship of personal, familial, and abuse-specific factors with outcome following sexual abuse. aggression and violent behavior, 15, 410–421. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 predictors of drinking behaviour among adolescents and young adults: a new psychosocial control perspective angela l. curcio, anita s. mak, and amanda m. george abstract: based on common cause conceptualisations of problem behaviour, we examined whether a revised psychosocial control theory of adolescent delinquency could explain problem drinking among a non-clinical convenience sample of adolescents and young adults. a sample of 329 australian secondary school students (adolescent age groups 13–14 and 15–17, 50.6% female) and 334 australian university students (age groups 18–20 and 21–24, 68.4% female) in canberra, australia participated in an online survey comprising self-reported problem drinking and psychosocial control measures. the revised psychosocial model explained variance in problem drinking with large effect sizes in all four age cohorts. peer risktaking behaviours significantly predicted problem drinking across all age cohorts, and impulsivity was more influential than sensation seeking. while the findings partially support a revised psychosocial control model, psychosocial control risk factors need to be considered along with the broader sociocultural context. this is particularly important in australia where drinking is often considered normative within universities and the general community. keywords: problem drinking, adolescence, young adulthood, development, psychosocial risk factors, theory development angela l. curcio, phd candidate (the corresponding author) is a clinical psychology registrar at the centre for applied psychology, university of canberra, po box 1, act 2601, australia. e-mail: u3011540@uni.canberra.edu.au anita s. mak, phd is a professor at the centre for applied psychology, faculty of health, university of canberra. e-mail: anita.mak@canberra.edu.au amanda m. george, phd is an assistant professor at the centre for applied psychology, faculty of health, university of canberra. e-mail: amanda.george@canberra.edu.au mailto:angela%20curcio%20%3cu3011540@uni.canberra.edu.au%3e international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 82 this article, based on common cause conceptualisations of youth problem behaviours, is concerned with testing the applicability of a model of delinquency in explaining problematic alcohol use among a non-clinical sample of australian adolescents and young adults. for the purposes of this article, the term problem drinking will encompass drinking styles that reflect excessive and hazardous consumption, or result in alcohol-related problems including dependence. problematic alcohol use is a ubiquitous health problem and is especially common among western communities. australian adolescents in particular drink earlier and at higher rates than matched samples in the united states and europe (jonkman, steketee, toumbourou, cini, & williams, 2012; toumbourou, hemphill, mcmorris, catalano, & patton, 2009). this trend appears to extend into young adulthood, with australians aged 18– 24 more likely to drink at harmful levels than older adults (australian national preventive health agency, 2014). emerging research indicates that australian and new zealand university students are more likely to consume alcohol at risky levels than their nonuniversity counterparts (gilchrist, smith, magee, & jones, 2012; kypri, cronin, & wright, 2005). among studies that use an integrated theoretical approach there are more focusing on other problem behaviours, such as delinquency, than there are on alcohol misuse, despite the extent of youth problem drinking (ennett et al., 2008; petraitis, flay, & miller, 1995). common cause conceptualisations of a general deviance orientation, such as problem behaviour theory (jessor & jessor, 1977) and the deviance proneness model (sher, 1991), suggest that shared causes account for youth participation in a range of risk-taking, often illegal, activities. given shared etiological risk factors, it is reasonable to assume that wellestablished theories of delinquency, which consider both psychological and social causes of the phenomenon, could also be useful for explaining problem drinking behaviours among adolescents and young adults. for example, the social development model (hawkins & weis, 1985), initially designed to explain juvenile delinquency and antisocial behaviour, has been successfully applied to adolescent substance use and drinking behaviours (catalano, kosterman, hawkins, newcomb, & abbott, 1996). the social development model combines elements of control theory, social learning theory, and differential association theory to suggest that family, school, peer, and community factors impact upon a trajectory of either prosocial or antisocial behaviour. while there is well-established evidence for the utility of the social development model across ethnic, gender, and regional differences in the united states, the social development model neglects the influence of specific psychological or personality variables in the initiation of delinquency and drinking behaviour. to address these limitations, curcio, mak, and george (2013) and curcio, knott, and mak (2015) identified shared psychological and social risk factors for adolescent delinquency and problem drinking among an australian sample. risk factors included high levels of impulsivity, sensation seeking, and peer risk-taking behaviours, and low levels of empathy, parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours. mak’s (1990) psychosocial control theory of adolescent delinquency comprises most of these factors (sensation seeking and peer risk-taking are the exceptions). curcio, mak and george (2016) subsequently tested, and found support for, a revised psychosocial control international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 83 theory of delinquency among a non-clinical sample of australian adolescents, and successfully applied the adolescent model to young adult cohorts (aged 18–20 and 21–24). an advantage of the revised psychosocial control model of delinquency is that it distinguishes between impulsivity and sensation seeking. impulsivity, or low self-control (duckworth & kern, 2011), comprises ill-considered and rash actions, and often leads to alcohol-related problems by impairing forethought (magid, maclean, & colder, 2007). sensation seeking is different from more traditional conceptions of “rash impulsivity” (dawe, gullo, & loxton, 2004), which is typified by a lack of planning and impulse control. sensation seekers are often able to limit alcohol-related problems by planning ahead and by ceasing to drink once an optimal level of arousal has been achieved (curcio & george, 2011; magid et al., 2007). despite these conceptual differences, impulsivity and sensation seeking are rarely considered separately (curcio et al., 2013; steinberg et al., 2008). this makes interpreting relevant literature on drinking behaviours more difficult as existing measures often reflect both traits when attempting to assess only one (magid et al., 2007). advancing upon the original model, the revised psychosocial control model of delinquency additionally considers the role of peer risk-taking behaviours and its potentially mediating effects. social learning theories suggest that individuals model the behaviours of significant others, often peers (akers, 2009), and social control theories suggest that individuals are likely to attach to similarly risk-prone peers (britt & gottfredson, 2011). over time, young people become increasingly susceptible to peer influence (benson, 2013; curcio et al., 2016; ohannessian, 2011), and those individuals with weakened attachments to traditional social controls, such as parents and school, and those who are less averse to risk, may be more likely to associate with risk-taking peers and adopt deviant behaviours. accordingly, curcio et al. (2016) found peer risk-taking behaviours partially mediated the effects of conventional social control variables of parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours with delinquency. whether such a relationship is also found for problem drinking remains to be tested. given shared etiological causes (curcio et al., 2013; jessor & jessor, 1977), the revised psychosocial control model has potential to explain problem drinking behaviours. figure 1 depicts the proposed revised psychosocial control theory of delinquency and problem drinking. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 84 figure 1. visual representation of proposed revisions to mak’s (1990) psychosocial control theory of adolescent delinquency, including the two additional variables (sensation seeking and peer risk-taking behaviour), an additional dependent variable (problem drinking), and four new developmental cohorts (13–14, 15–17, 18–20, and 21–24 year age groups). the variables that are new to the model are marked with an asterisk. the present study while curcio et al. ( 2016) applied the revised psychosocial control theory to delinquency, it is not yet known whether the new model can explain problem drinking behaviours among a non-clinical sample of adolescents and young adults. age cohorts match those described in curcio et al. (2016) and closely reflect reported trajectories of problem drinking in australia described by roche et al. (2007), beginning around ages 13 to 14, increasing during mid-adolescence (ages 15–17), and peaking in young adulthood (ages 18– 20), before gradually declining (21–24). it is plausible that the revised psychosocial control model would furnish useful insights into problem drinking for all four age cohorts. we set out to test three hypotheses related to problem drinking for various age cohorts of australian youth within the 13 to 24 age range. based on common cause conceptualisations of problem behaviours, we tested the hypothesis that the revised psychosocial control theory would explain a significant portion of variance in youth problem drinking. we further hypothesised that the added psychosocial control variables (i.e., levels of sensation seeking and peer risk-taking behaviours) would explain variance in problem drinking more satisfactorily than do the original psychosocial control variables (i.e., impulsivity, empathy, parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours). based on curcio et al.’s (2016) findings, we additionally explored whether peer risk-taking behaviours mediate the relationships between conventional social controls (parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours) with problem drinking among different developmental stages ranging from early adolescence to emerging young adulthood. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 85 method design and procedure adolescent participants were approached through government and independent high schools and colleges in canberra, australia, whereas young adult students were recruited from a small metropolitan university located in canberra. ethical protocols required opt-in parental consent for government students less than 18 years of age. utilising a cross-sectional convenience sample, voluntary participants aged 13 to 24 completed an online survey. computerised surveys have been shown to limit socially desirable responses by ensuring anonymity (grimm, 2010). participants were offered either 30 minutes research credit (psychology students only) or entry into a draw to win a $150 gift voucher. the study received ethics approval from the appropriate ethical boards prior to commencing. for a detailed overview of the procedure, refer to curcio et al. (2016). participants adolescents. of the 356 adolescents who initiated the online survey, 334 (93.8%) completed it. their ages ranged from 13 to 17 (m = 14.17, sd = 1.30); 50.6% were female. the adolescent sample was further divided into two age groups: 13 to 14 (n = 208) and 15 to 17 (n = 126) to reflect adolescent trajectories of drinking behaviour. young adults. a total of 346 university students aged 18 to 24 (m = 19.92, sd = 1.68) completed the online survey (68.4% female). to reflect trajectories of drinking behaviour common in young adults, the university sample was further divided into two age groups: 18 to 20 (n = 228) and 21 to 24 (n = 118). measures problem drinking. problematic drinking styles were assessed with the 10-item alcohol use disorders identification test (audit; babor, de la fuente, saunders, & grant, 1992). the audit comprises three subscales measuring quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption, possible alcohol dependence, and problems resulting from alcohol use. total audit scores range from 0 to 40, with higher scores reflecting a greater likelihood of hazardous or harmful drinking and possible dependence; a cut-off score of 8 or higher is generally recommended as a classification for hazardous or harmful drinkers (babor, higgins-biddle, saunders, & monteiro, 2001; pengpid, peltzer, van der heever, & skaal, 2013). the audit is useful for assessing hazardous and problematic forms of drinking among adolescents (rumpf, wohlert, frever-adam, grothues, & bischof, 2013) and university students (kypri et al., 2005). table 1 presents descriptive and reliability statistics for the audit total and its subscales. given that participants in the current study were from a general population sample, and many were under the legal age of alcohol consumption in australia, few would reach the recommended cut-off criterion (a score of 8 or higher) for hazardous or harmful drinking (babor et al., 2001; bergman & källmén, 2002). as a result, the audit was calculated as a summed value for hierarchical regression analyses, as used elsewhere (e.g., karyadi & cyders, 2015; krenek, maisto, funderburk, & drayer, 2011; osterman, ribak, bohn, fargo, & sommers, 2009; skule et al., 2014). while the term hazardous (or harmful) drinking is often used in association with the audit, we view total audit scores as reflecting increased likelihood of problem drinking. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 86 psychosocial control variables. original psychosocial control variables comprised impulsivity, empathy, parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours. as indicators of low self-control are thought to highlight trait impulsivity (duckworth & kern, 2011), we assessed impulsivity using the 13-item brief selfcontrol scale (tangney, baumeister, & boone, 2004). empathy was measured by the 6-item empathic concern subscale of the interpersonal reactivity index (davis, 1980, 1983). parent attachment was assessed by the 8-item brief current version of the parental bonding instrument (klimidis, minas, & ata, 1992), which reflects perceived parental care versus rejection, and control versus autonomy. school connectedness was measured by the 5-item school connectedness scale (mcneely, nonnemaker, & blum, 2002; resnick et al., 1997). perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours was assessed by a 10-item scale based on curcio, mak, and knott’s (2015) delinquency checklist. revised psychosocial control variables included sensation seeking and peer risktaking behaviour. we assessed sensation seeking using a subset of six items designed to classify the core aspects of sensation seeking from the zuckerman-kuhlman personality questionnaire (zuckerman, kuhlman, joireman, teta, & kraft, 1993). finally, the same 10 categories of risk-taking behaviours were adapted from the delinquency checklist (curcio, mak, et al., 2015) to assess peer risk-taking behaviours. more details regarding the psychosocial control measures are provided in curcio et al. (2016). statistical analysis missing data. data analysis was conducted using pasw version 22.0 for windows. analyses were conducted at a significance level of α = .05, unless otherwise specified. missing data were under 10% for adolescent samples and 13% for university samples, levels generally considered acceptable in psychological studies (enders, 2003). little’s multivariate test (little & schenker, 1995) indicated that data were not missing completely at random. data were likely missing at random by design (dong & peng, 2013), with variables measured towards the latter end of the online survey missing slightly more data. missing data were treated with direct proration, an imputation method, by calculating the average valid item response for each participant (orr, 1995) where there were no more than 20% of items with missing values for a scaled score. descriptive statistics. table 1 presents descriptive statistics for continuous variables for the four age cohorts, including the audit total score and three subscales (consumption, dependence, and problems). distributions for total audit scores (adolescents only) and for peer risk-taking behaviours were highly positively skewed. research using the audit and its subscales in general populations often results in positively skewed data, as many participants report few alcohol-related problems (bergman & källmén, 2002). for such distributions, it is often suggested to use transformed scores rather than raw data (bergman & källmén, 2002). square root transformations resulted in appropriate skewness statistics for peer risk-taking behaviours, and inverse transformations were used for adolescent audit scores (tabachnick & fidell, 2001). although the audit total is inversely transformed for the adolescent groups, for reporting purposes directions associated with the audit total are not inverse to allow for comparison with obtained results from the young adult groups. table 1 additionally presents cronbach alpha coefficients, which indicated satisfactory internal consistency reliabilities with the exception of school connectedness among the young adults, especially the 21 to 24 age group (alpha < .60). these measures were retained despite lower than preferred reliabilities to explore influences of school connectedness on university students’ drinking behaviours. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 87 table 1 descriptive and reliability statistics for continuous survey scales across age groups scale possible range m sd s cronbach’s α m sd s cronbach’s α m sd s cronbach’s α m sd s cronbach’s α audit total 0-40 .96 4.76 6.71 .97 2.82 6.30 3.53 .93 7.47 6.25 1.23 .85 7.70 7.18 1.33 .88 sqrt audit total 0-7 .28 .94. 4.46 .93 1.40 1.65 inverse audit total 0-1 .91 .24 -2.58 .69 .38 -.60 audit-c 0-12 .40 1.63 5.76 .92 1.44 2.48 1.97 .88 4.41 2.94 .31 .82 4.16 2.85 .34 .77 audit-d 0-12 .23 1.51 7.4 .99 .40 1.60 5.20 .92 .80 1.49 2.8 .67 1.00 1.94 2.84 .82 audit-p 0-16 .34 1.87 6.87 .93 .93 2.57 3.86 .84 2.24 2.82 2.10 .62 2.50 3.33 2.76 .73 impulsivity 13-65 35.48 8.15 .18 .77 37.82 10.05 .22 .86 34.82 8.91 .32 .83 35.47 9.76 .45 .86 empathy 6-30 22.41 4.26 -.30 .68 22.26 4.72 -.60 .79 23.99 4.51 -.74 .82 24.08 4.52 -.78 .80 parent attachment 16-48 37.77 5.60 -.84 .83 36.66 5.65 -.28 .80 37.61 6.03 -.70 .82 37.91 5.87 -.36 .81 school connectedness 5-25 18.12 3.50 -.70 .71 17.05 3.82 -.38 .74 18.76 2.91 -.66 .66 18.79 2.84 -.34 .59 perceived seriousness 10-50 35.95 13.43 -1.03 .98 35.93 10.89 -.77 .96 39.23 7.99 -1.59 .91 40.61 6.63 -1.29 .84 sensation seeking 0-6 3.47 1.70 -.22 .72 3.40 2.06 -.36 .83 3.04 1.89 -.11 .75 3.32 1.77 -.25 .69 peer risk-taking behaviour 0-20 1.40 3.11 4.26 .93 2.96 3.88 1.64 .90 3.21 3.48 1.58 .86 2.62 2.73 1.39 .76 note. sqrt audit = audit total with square root transformation; inverse audit = audit total with inverse transformation; audit-c = audit consumption subscale; audit-d = audit dependence subscale; audit-p = audit problems subscale; sqrt peer risk-taking behaviour = peer risk-taking behaviour with square root transformation. age group: 13-14 (n = 208) age group: 15-17 (n =126) age group: 18-20 (n =228 ) age group: 21-24 (n = 118) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 88 hierarchical linear regression analyses. we conducted separate inter-item correlation and hierarchical linear regression analyses across the four age groups to examine the suitability of the revised psychosocial control framework in predicting problem drinking. a sample size of 112 was required to detect medium-size relationships, based upon green’s (1991) recommendation, n ≥ 104 + m (where m equals the number of independent variables). the recommended sample size requirement was met for 13 to 14 (n = 208), 15 to 17 (n = 126), 18 to 20 (n = 228), and 21 to 24 (n = 118) age groups, suggesting adequate power. for all models, gender was considered in step 1. step 2 comprised variables identified in the original psychosocial control theory, including the personality variables impulsivity and empathy, and the social control variables parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours. to determine whether the revised psychosocial control framework could explain variance in problem drinking beyond that of the original model, the additional variables proposed by the revised psychosocial control framework were added at step 3. these were sensation seeking and peer risk-taking behaviour. mediation analyses. to test whether peer risk-taking behaviours mediated the effects of social control variables (parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviour) on self-reported problem drinking, we performed mediation analyses using preacher and hayes’ (2008) bootstrapping method for each of the four age groups. bootstrapping, a non-parametric resampling procedure, repeatedly samples from the data set and provides a more powerful and accurate empirical estimation of the sampling distribution, from which confidence intervals for the indirect effect are constructed (preacher & hayes, 2008). the subsequent mediation analyses are based on 5,000 samples, within a 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval, as recommended by preacher and hayes (2008). in each set of analyses, gender, impulsivity, empathy, and sensation seeking were included as covariates, as many of these variables showed effects on problem drinking in the aforementioned regression analyses. results descriptive statistics for the current sample, approximately 3.4% of 13 to 14 year olds, 11.9% of 15 to 17 year olds, 39.5% of 18 to 20 year olds, and 36.4% of 21 to 24 year olds were classified as hazardous or harmful drinkers as determined by an 8 or higher cut-off score (babor et al., 2001; pengpid et al., 2013). relative to scale mid-points, participants generally reported lower levels of problem drinking (as reflected by the audit total score) and peer risk-taking behaviours, and higher levels of impulsivity, empathy, parent attachment, school connectedness, perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours, and sensation seeking. correlations table 2 presents the correlations for the total audit and indicators of psychological and social control for adolescent samples aged 13 to 14 and 15 to 17 separately. for the 13 to 14 age cohort, the audit total was significantly correlated with higher levels of impulsivity, empathy, sensation seeking, and peer risk-taking behaviours, and lower levels of parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours. similar relationships were found among the 15 to 17 age cohort, except empathy and school connectedness were not significantly associated with problem drinking. peer risk-taking scores maintained significant inverse relationships with each of the conventional social control variables of parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 89 table 2 correlations among continuous variables for 13–14 and 15–17 age groups 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. audit total .36** .23** -.16* -.36** -.26** .24** .51** 2. impulsivity .32** -.25** -.40** -.46** -.21** .44** .49** 3. empathy -.12 -.30** .07 .15* .32** -.17* -.14* 4. parent attachment -.29** -.38** .13 .51** .18* -.16* -.19* 5. school connectedness -.17 -.42** .21* .47** .21** -.19* -.42** 6. perceived seriousness -.24** -.28** .19* .25** .29** -.23** -.23** 7. sensation seeking .40** .32** -.22* -.28** -.25** -.40** .38** 8. peer risk-taking behaviour .61** .29** -.20* -.38** -.27** -.31** .41** note. the results for 13–14 age group are represented in the top right corner above the diagonal, and the results for 15–17 age group are represented in the bottom left corner below the diagonal. *p < .05; **p < .01. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 90 table 3 presents the correlations for the audit total and psychosocial control variables for the young adult samples aged 18 to 20 and 21 to 24 separately. for both these age cohorts, the audit total was significantly correlated with higher levels of impulsivity, sensation seeking, and peer risk-taking behaviours, and lower levels of perceived seriousness. empathy, parent attachment, and school connectedness were not found to significantly correlate with problem drinking for either of the young adult age groups. table 3 correlations among continuous variables for 18–20 and 21–24 age groups 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. audit total .45** -.01 .00 -.06 -.28** .36** .41** 2. impulsivity .57** -.16* -.20** -.46** -.25** .27** .34** 3. empathy .07 -.20* .07 .09 .06 .08 .04 4. parent attachment -.03 -.25** -.04 .27** .09 -.09 -.01 5. school connectedness -.03 -.46** .07 .26** .15* -.05 -.14* 6. perceived seriousness -.26** -.16 .16 .00 ..01 -.18** -.24** 7. sensation seeking .40** .42** -.08 .01 -.05 -.27** .30** 8. peer risk-taking behaviour .44** .30** -.02 -.10 .04 -.17 .08 note. the results for the 18–20 age group are represented in the top right corner above the diagonal, and the results for the 21–24 age group are represented in the bottom left corner below the diagonal. *p < .05; **p < .01. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 91 hierarchical regression analyses predicting problem drinking table 4 presents summaries of hierarchical regression analyses predicting problem drinking for adolescents aged 13 to 14 and 15 to 17, and young adults aged 18 to 20 and 21 to 24. note that gender, entered in step 1, did not significantly predict problem drinking for any of the age groups. for the 13 to 14 age group, the original psychosocial control variables explained a medium to large effect size (f 2 = 0.27), with impulsivity, parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness significantly predicting problem drinking. the revised psychosocial control variables significantly explained an additional 8% of the variance in problem drinking, a large effect (f 2 = 0.41). school connectedness and peer risktaking behaviours were significant predictors in the final model. for the 15 to 17 age group, original psychosocial control variables explained a medium to large effect size (f 2 = 0.22) with impulsivity and parent attachment significantly predicting problem drinking. the revised psychosocial control model significantly explained an additional 22% of the variance in problem drinking, a large effect (f 2 = 0.64). peer risktaking behaviours was the only significant predictor in the final model. for the 18 to 20 age group, the original psychosocial control variables explained a large effect size (f 2 = 0.39), with impulsivity, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours significantly predicting problem drinking. the revised psychosocial control model significantly explained an additional 8% of the variance in problem drinking, a large effect (f 2 = 0.56). impulsivity, school connectedness, perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours, sensation seeking, and peer risk-taking behaviours were significant predictors in the final model. for the 21 to 24 age group, the original psychosocial control variables explained a large effect size (f 2 = 0.89), with impulsivity, empathy, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviours significantly predicting problem drinking. the revised psychosocial model significantly explained an additional 6% of variance in delinquency, a large effect (f 2 = 1.13). impulsivity, empathy, school connectedness, and peer risk-taking behaviours were significant predictors in the final model. contrary to mak’s (1990) original psychosocial control conceptualisation, and despite non-significant bivariate correlations with problem drinking, a test of suppressor effects revealed that high levels of school connectedness (18–20 and 21–24 year olds) and empathy (21–24 year olds) became significant when considered in conjunction with impulsivity. overall, the additional psychosocial control variables (sensation seeking and peer risk-taking behaviours) significantly predicted added variance in problem drinking across all four age cohorts to a small to medium effect. in terms of total variance, the revised psychosocial model explained substantially more variance among the 21 to 24 age cohort (53%), followed by the 15 to 17 (39%), 18 to 20 (36%), and 13 to 14 (29%) age cohorts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 92 table 4 hierarchical regression analysis predicting problem drinking for adolescent and young adult age groups age group: 13-14 (n = 208) age group: 15-17 (n = 126) b β sr² r² δ r² b β sr² r² δ r² step 1 .01 .01 gender step 2 .21*** .20*** .18** .17** impulsivity .01 .21** .03 .01 .31*** .06 parent attachment .01 -.16* .02 -.01 -.21* .03 school connectedness -.02 -.32*** .07 perceived seriousness -.00 -.17* .02 step 3 .29*** .08*** .39*** .22*** school connectedness -.01 -.22** .03 peer risk-taking behaviour .07 .32*** .07 .15 .46*** .15 age group: 18-20 (n = 288) age group: 21-24 (n = 118) b β sr² r² δ r² b β sr² r² δ r² step 1 .01 .01 gender step 2 .28*** .27*** .47*** .46*** impulsivity .34 .49*** .17 .54 .74*** .37 empathy .37 .23** .05 school connectedness .39 .18* .02 .68 .26** .05 perceived seriousness -.17 -.21** .04 -.20 -.19* .03 step 3 .36*** .08*** .53** .06** impulsivity .26 .37*** .08 .42 .58*** .17 empathy .33 .21** .04 school connectedness .35 .16* .02 .48 .19* .02 perceived seriousness -.13 -.16** .02 sensation seeking .63 .19** .03 peer risk-taking behaviour 1.18 .20** .03 1.78 .24** .05 note. for purposes of clarity, only significant values are reported. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. mediation analyses we used mediation analyses to explore whether peer risk-taking behaviours mediated the effects of social control variables of parent attachment, school connectedness, and perceived seriousness of risk-taking behaviour on self-reported problem drinking for each of the four age cohorts (13–14, 15–17, 18–20, and 21–24 years). significant indirect effects identified were between parent attachment and problem drinking for the 15 to 17 age group, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 93 peer risk-taking behaviour age group 15–17: .48*** and between school connectedness and problem drinking for the 13 to 14 and 21 to 24 age groups1. peer risk-taking behaviours also appeared to partially mediate the relationship between perceived seriousness and problem drinking for the 13 to 14, 18 to 20, and 21 to 24 age groups, although the indirect effects did not reach statistical significance. significant results pertaining to partial or full mediations are depicted separately for the analyses involving parent attachment (figure 2a), school connectedness (figure 2b), and perceived seriousness of peer risk-taking behaviours (figure 2c). figure 2a. mediating effects of the relationship between parent attachment and problem drinking. values are standardised regression coefficients. for the 15–17 age group final model, r² = .40, adjusted r² = .36, f(6, 106) = 11.67, p < .001. *p < .05; **p <.01; ***p < .001. 1 a breakdown of direct and indirect effects of mediation analyses is available from the authors upon request. note that the indirect effects were not significant for a combined adolescent cohort aged 13 to 17. for a combined young adult cohort aged 18 to 24, parent attachment and school connectedness were partially mediated by peer risk-taking behaviours. covariates gender impulsivity empathy sensation seeking age group 15–17: -.23* problem drinking parent attachment age group 15–17: -.13(-.02) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 94 figure 2b. mediating effects of the relationship between school connectedness and problem drinking. values are standardised regression coefficients. for the 13–14 age group final model, r² = .31, adjusted r² = .29, f(6, 184) = 13.92, p < .001. for the 21–24 age group final model, r² = .51, adjusted r² = .48, f(6, 106) = 18.02, p < .001. note: contrary to the original psychosocial control conceptualisation, 21–24 year olds with high levels of school connectedness (rather than low levels of school connectedness) were more likely to associate with risk-taking peers and engage in subsequent problematic drinking styles. *p < .05; **p <.01; ***p < .001. covariates gender impulsivity empathy sensation seeking peer risk-taking behaviour age group 13–14: .43*** age group 21–24: .30*** age group 13–14: -.27*** age group 21–24: .25* problem drinking school connectedness age group 13–14: -.27***(-.17*) age group 21–24: .29**(.22**) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 95 figure 2c. mediating effects of the relationship between perceived seriousness of risktaking behaviours and problem drinking. values are standardised regression coefficients. for the 13–14 age group final model, r² = .26, adjusted r² = .24, f(6, 183) = 10.75, p < .001. for the 18–20 age group final model, r² = .32, adjusted r² = .30, f(6, 212) = 16.87, p < .001. for the 21–24 age group final model, r² = .48, adjusted r² = .46, f(6, 106) = 16.58, p < .001. *p < .05; **p <.01; ***p < .001. discussion the present study aimed to test whether a revised psychosocial control framework of delinquency (curcio et al., 2013) could explain variance in problem drinking across a trajectory from early adolescence to young adulthood. we found partial support for a revised psychosocial control perspective across all four age cohorts. social control variables were found to significantly explain variance in problem drinking, with low levels of parent attachment (adolescents only), low school connectedness (13–14 age group), and perceived seriousness (13–14, 18–20, and 21–24 age groups) all predicting problem drinking. though low school connectedness predicted problem drinking for 13 to 14 year olds, high levels of school connectedness were found to predict problem drinking among university students. this finding reflects the normative nature of drinking on university campuses (kypri et al., 2010), and demonstrates that the revised psychosocial model requires consideration within the broader sociocultural context. impulsivity was found to predict problem drinking for all covariates gender impulsivity empathy sensation seeking age group 13–14: -.12 age group 18–20: -.12 age group 21–24: -.16 age group 13–14: .43*** age group 18–20: .23*** age group 21–24: .30*** age group 13–14: -.19*(-.14*) age group 18–20: -.14*(-.11) age group 21–24: -.17*(-.13) perceived seriousness peer risk-taking behaviour problem drinking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 96 four age groups, with sensation seeking also predicting problem drinking among 18 to 20 year olds. peer risk-taking behaviours, which has both social control and social learning orientations, was found to consistently explain a significant portion of variance in problem drinking across all four age cohorts, mediating some of the relationships between other social control variables and self-reported problem drinking. sensation seeking, impulsivity, and problem drinking. supporting the notion that impulsivity and sensation seeking are conceptually different behaviour types, these two traits were associated with differing outcomes in the current study. unlike impulsive individuals, sensation seekers may be able to limit some alcohol-related problems by planning ahead, such as arranging a designated driver, limiting drinks, and not drinking before exams. individuals aged 18 to 20 years have recently turned the legal age for drinking and may be transitioning to university, a novel social environment with easily accessible licensed venues. individuals with high levels of sensation seeking may be more likely to engage in frequent and heavy alcohol consumption to achieve excitement in such environments (curcio & george, 2011; zapolski, cyders, & smith, 2009). early detection and screening measures could identify those at risk of impulsive or sensation seeking traits, and support the promotion of self-control strategies and encouragement of socially acceptable novel behaviours (e.g., travelling, music, extreme sports). with regard to theory and research, the implication is that the use of two separate measures of impulsivity and sensation seeking is indicated. peer risk-taking behaviours and its mediating effects. peer risk-taking behaviours consistently predicted problem drinking behaviours across all four age cohorts, and partially mediated the relationship between parent attachment, low school connectedness (adolescents), high school connectedness (young adults), and perceived seriousness of risktaking behaviours with problem drinking. it may be that low parental attachment, monitoring, and supervision; disengaging from school (adolescents only); and believing that drinking behaviours are not serious lead to the selection of peers who adopt attitudes and behaviours favourable to drinking, which subsequently increases involvement in problematic drinking styles (e.g., binge drinking at parties, playing drinking games, mixing drinks or drinking shots). this may be particularly prominent for university students who are living on campus with licensed venues and who use alcohol as a means of bonding with peers. these results indicate that peer risk-taking behaviours play an important role in the initiation of problem drinking behaviours. intervention efforts could focus on encouraging positive friendships and conventional activities and promoting pro-social norms within these groups. peer risk-taking behaviours were found to be a strong predictor of problem drinking among young adults, whereas parent attachment was not found to influence problem drinking among older age cohorts. this finding suggests that the influence of parents may deteriorate as one grows older, particularly for university students living away from home. as a result, intervention and prevention efforts aiming at increasing the parent-child bond (e.g., through parental warmth and supervision; ohannessian, 2011) and decreasing the likelihood of associating with deviant peers may be beneficial during early adolescence or pre-pubertal stages. school connectedness and problem drinking. as expected, low school connectedness significantly predicted problem drinking among adolescents aged 13 to 14 years. prior research has found attachment to the school environment protects against barriers to learning such as the initiation of alcohol use or subsequent problematic drinking styles (baker, 2010; catalano, haggerty, oesterle, fleming, & hawkins, 2004). contrary to the psychosocial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 97 control conceptualisation, and despite non-significant bivariate correlations with problem drinking, high levels of school connectedness were found to significantly predict problem drinking among university students when considered in conjunction with impulsivity, suggesting a possible suppressor effect (lancaster, 1999). university is a social environment with licensed premises where alcohol is more readily available and its consumption often used as a means of bonding with fellow students. thus, university may represent a very different social context to high school, where alcohol use is prohibited and illegal. indeed, it is considered normative to drink within the university environment, particularly for those living on campus (kypri et al., 2010). this is reflected by the relatively high audit cut-off scores for hazardous or harmful alcohol use obtained among the young adult cohort in the current study. thus, attachment to university may indirectly affect problem drinking by allowing more concise estimation of other associated risk factors, such as impulsive personality styles and sociocultural norms. from this perspective, an ecological systems approach (e.g., bronfenbrenner, 1979) may be useful, in that it not only considers immediate groups and institutions that directly impact an individual, but also the interaction of social-historical circumstances, cultural contexts, and social systems that may incidentally impact upon an individual’s behaviour. however, interpretation of current results involving school connectedness among university students needs to take into account the less than satisfactory internal consistency reliability of the measure used. empathy and problem drinking. unexpectedly, high levels of emotional empathy predicted problem drinking in the 21 to 24 age group. despite a non-significant bivariate association with problem drinking, empathy became a significant predictor of problem drinking once considered in conjunction with impulsivity, suggesting a suppressor effect (lancaster, 1999). this finding requires replication in further research. similarly, there is a plethora of evidence surrounding risk factors for youth problem drinking that have not been captured within the current study. in addition to the psychosocial control risk factors suggested in the present research, community and neighbourhood factors such as socioeconomic status, poverty, and neighbourhood disorganisation; cognitive factors such as motives for drinking; and temperamental characteristics such as agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility have previously been listed as risk factors for youth problem drinking, among others (e.g., catalano et al., 1996; sher, 1991). future research could focus on designing a parsimonious framework of youth problem drinking that incorporates risk factors from the aforementioned domains. strengths and limitations the current study investigated problem drinking among youth by considering four age cohorts, which allows for a finer-grained understanding of the course of youth problem drinking. second, an integrated theory of delinquency was used to explain problem drinking, which considered both psychological and social causes. third, the current study utilised two separate, conceptually-focused measures of impulsivity and sensation seeking. finally, the study included a measure of peer risk-taking behaviours, a variable of both social control and social learning orientations. peer risk-taking behaviours was found to partially mediate the relationships between conventional social controls with problem drinking in certain developmental stages. incorporating social learning theory with a revised psychosocial control perspective provides a more holistic understanding of the causes of youth problem behaviour, including delinquency and problem drinking. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 98 owing to the cross-sectional nature of the research, causal connections cannot be inferred. future research could test the predictive utility of the revised psychosocial control framework longitudinally, and replicate mediation models using temporal ordering. while the current findings support a revised psychosocial model of problem drinking, the study was conducted in the small metropolitan city of canberra, australia. further, the non-random selection process and the requirement of parental consent for adolescent government students both limit the representativeness of the sample. testing the suitability of the revised model among australia-wide and international samples could provide further support for it. additionally, there were issues pertaining to the reliabilities of the school connectedness measure among university students. while we used a general measure for both adolescent and young adult age groups, an instrument that focuses specifically on university lifestyles may be more appropriate for university students. the current study demonstrated that drinking behaviours vary between the social contexts of high school and university, and future directions could investigate differences between university students who live on campus and those who do not. drinking behaviours among youth in other social-cultural environments (e.g., sports teams and clubs, employment in construction industries) should also be investigated further. while the audit is an internationally recognised measure, it may lack sensitivity among the current population, particularly as many adolescents reported that they had not experienced alcohol-related problems. further, limited information was obtained regarding binge drinking patterns. using the revised model to consider binge and problematic drinking separately, as well as assessing these issues among clinical populations, may reduce issues related to skewed data. considering binge and problematic drinking separately may also be particularly important for determining the unique relationships of impulsivity and sensation seeking with associated alcohol outcomes. conclusions conclusions based upon current findings need to be considered in conjunction with the aforementioned limitations. partial support for a revised psychosocial model of delinquency and problem drinking was found, with broader consideration of social-cultural norms proving particularly important with regard to drinking behaviours. finding similar risk factors for delinquency and problem drinking, two related yet distinct problem behaviours, provides partial support for the common cause conceptualisation of youth problem behaviours (curcio et al., 2013; jessor & jessor, 1977). finding empirical support for the common cause model has important implications for conceptualising the occurrence of multiple problem behaviours, and suggests that delinquency and problem drinking are likely to share causal factors with various other health-compromising behaviours, such as illicit substance use, promiscuous sexual activity, and risky gambling owing to similar etiological causes (jessor & jessor, 1977). however, the ability of the revised psychosocial model to explain additional behaviours may need to be viewed through the lens of relevant social and sub-cultural norms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(1): 81–103 99 references akers, r. l. 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(1993). a comparison of three structural models for personality: the big three, the big five, and the alternative five. journal of personality and social psychology, 65, 757–768. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1037/a0014684 predictors of drinking behaviour among adolescents and young adults: a new psychosocial control perspective angela l. curcio, anita s. mak, and amanda m. george the present study method design and procedure participants measures statistical analysis results descriptive statistics correlations hierarchical regression analyses predicting problem drinking mediation analyses discussion strengths and limitations conclusions references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918854 feel the pain and do it anyway maurice fenton abstract: this article is a reflective account of the process of a social care worker’s professional development over a span of 28-years, primarily working within children’s residential care settings. it charts the author’s journey with regard to his ability to cope with anxiety (pain-based fear) and to live “on the edge” in his professional practice. the author’s personal experience as a young boy of the death of his father is identified as having caused pain-based behaviours for the author until such time as he faced the pain of this loss. the traumatic experience then became an asset in his direct work with children and young people in the role of a “wounded healer”. the article introduces the concept of “vicarious confidence” and its critical role in leadership and supervision. self-care is discussed and the concept of “system-trauma” is identified. the article also discusses the role of magic in social care and links this to neuroscience and brain mri images. the article highlights the positive role pain can play in enabling workers to connect empathically with hurt children and young people and posits that if we are to care authentically then we must be prepared to experience pain. keywords: pain, risk, love, hope, stress, anxiety, vulnerability, empathy, selfcare, confidence, vicarious confidence, supervision and residential care maurice fenton dchild is managing director at integrated children and family services ltd, dun esker, ennistown road, kilmessan, meath, c15we51, republic of ireland. email: tomaurice@eircom.net mailto:tomaurice@eircom.net international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 82 pain is commonly perceived as a most unwelcome thing indeed. but what is this thing we all seek to avoid, minimise, or eliminate from our lives with such dedication and zeal? is it a feeling, an emotion, a psychical thing, a neurological thing, or a spiritual thing, and is it contagious, hereditary, or culturally influenced? one could enter into deep discussion and analysis of ontological and epistemological matters in an attempt to determine just what this thing called pain really is, and if in fact it even exists as we conceive of it and what it means to different people. the oxford dictionary (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pain) offers the following concise definitions: “highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury” and “mental suffering or distress”. it is my current belief that pain, along with some other four-letter words such as risk, hope, and love, holds particular significance in the field of child and youth care work. an investigation of the frequency of usage of these words in the research and academic literature holds potential for illuminating the evolution of the professions of social care and child and youth care over recent decades. adhering to the sociological tradition of unveiling the forces at play in order to learn from them, i undertook a literature search for the four words risk, hope, love, and pain in the published titles within four academic databases covering social care and child and youth care and two highimpact academic journals. the databases were: (a) education and resources in education index (eric subscription); (b) social services abstracts (ssa); (c) economic and social data services (edds); and (d) child development and adolescent studies (cd&as). the two journals were: (a) british journal of social work (bjsw); and (b) children and youth services review (cysr). as seen in figure 1, risk clearly dominates the field, with hope and love closely aligned in their usage, and pain the least used word in the literature. these findings support my practice experience where the concept of risk has become oppressively dominant over the past two decades. there is an unrealistic expectation that by the implementation of better management models, systems, and risk assessments complex situations can be made manageable. dekker (2002) captures this fallacy well by arguing that accidents are no longer perceived as uncontrollable events, but rather as failures of risk management, and behind these failures, dekker argues, there is a person or group who is to be held accountable — even blameworthy. according to this perspective, it is the task of experts to give meaning to these “accidents” and to explain which risk factors were not controlled, when, where, and by whom (fenton, 2015a, p. 272). hope, i believe, is the most powerful positive force in aiding children and young people to recover from prior adversity. love, reflective of its alignment of usage with hope in the literature search, also holds a place of great significance in our work, yet until recent times the word love remained underemployed in the literature. the recent interest is reflected in a special edition of the scottish journal of residential child care (smith, 2016) entitled “love in professional practice”. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 83 source risk hope love pain bjsw 88 9 14 0 cysr 3600 1291 791 309 eric 11072 1352 1171 590 ssa 12747 689 579 729 esds 428 99 8 65 cd&as 8765 416 600 693 total 36700 3856 3163 2386 figure 1. risk. hope, love, and pain literature analysis. there is a growing body of academic literature addressing the use of these words, with professor jim anglin doing the field a great service by introducing the term “pain-based behaviour” in 2002. however, as the literature search revealed, pain remains overwhelmingly marginalised by the dominance of risk. there may be many reasons for this and for the purposes of this article, i shall advance merely one of the possible reasons, again to suggest potential forces at play. i propose that risk is a seemingly objective construct, emerging into the social care and child and youth care fields from the world of commerce. it is recordable, measurable, and quantifiable, which renders it compatible with quantitative research methodologies and the allpowerful randomised control trials, the so-called “gold standard” of research methodologies. love and hope are considered entirely subjective concepts unamenable to quantification and measurement, and thus more suited to qualitative research methodologies. pain, despite its paramount place in medicine, a discipline dominated by quantitative paradigms, remains more aligned with subjectivity than objectivity. it has, to date, eluded efforts to meaningfully and accurately quantify, measure, and record its existence utilising the technological tools of science 36700, 80% 3856, 8% 3163, 7% 2386, 5% risk hope love pain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 84 and medicine. instead, self-reporting assessment tools are used, such as the smiley face pain scale (tomlinson, von baeyer, stinson, & sung, 2010), in which a child or young person indicates which face best matches the level of pain they are experiencing. adults are usually asked to specify a number on a scale of 1 (low pain) to 10 (high pain). because no objective technique for measuring pain is available, both types of scale remain in common use in medical settings worldwide. therefore, from a scientific inquiry stance, risk is well suited to the research task whereas love, hope, and pain are much less so. in an arena where professional status is being sought by social care and child and youth care workers, employing the language of science to further this goal of achieving professional status is more likely to happen. i know i have fallen into this tendency over the years to appear professional, especially to people from other professions. it is good to see the merit of using plain english gain recognition within the health professions1 to combat this pitfall, which also serves to distance professionals from those they serve. pain and risk possess similarities in that they are both most-often perceived in negative terms only. in my view, this is a widespread misunderstanding, and i suggest the analogy of cholesterol to illustrate my position. cholesterol is commonly seen as a negative health indicator for humans whereby high cholesterol is bad for our hearts and low cholesterol is good for us. many people ingest cholesterol medications and food supplements in order to manage their cholesterol levels within what are ever-changing parameters of tolerance set by the medical professionals (nayor & vason, 2016). however, this is only part of the picture as cholesterol is actually vital for human health: the “good” hdl cholesterol offsets the negative effects of the “bad” ldl cholesterol. few people appreciate this distinction with regard to cholesterol just as few understand the benefits of pain and risk as opposed to the solely negative effects attributed to them. this article will consider some of the issues inherent in working with children and young people who have experienced trauma and adversity or are deemed to be “at risk” of experiencing trauma and adversity, and who are therefore being brought into the care system. topics i will discuss include pain, risk, stress, anxiety, vulnerability, empathy, self-care, magic, confidence and vicarious confidence, and the context of residential care. looking back: my growth in understanding pain pain is something that everyone has experienced and thought much about. initially, earlier in my career and life, my position on pain was that it is a bad thing and to be avoided if at all possible. i did, however, recognise that it serves a vital function in alerting the brain of potential harmful occurrences to the body that require action to manage in order to avoid further harm and possible death. also, i recognised the importance of pain with regard to motivation and moral development (fenton, 2016a). still, it was predominantly a negative and unpleasant experience to 1 for example, see a press release from ireland’s health service executive, “plain english guidelines launched”: https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/plain-english-guidelines-launched-communicating-clearly-forhealth-professionals.html https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/plain-english-guidelines-launched-communicating-clearly-for-health-professionals.html https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/plain-english-guidelines-launched-communicating-clearly-for-health-professionals.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 85 be avoided if possible, as who would welcome signs of possible harm or death? but given we all experience pain, this common experience affords a shared language that we can employ to connect with others, especially those currently experiencing pain or exhibiting “pain-based behaviour” (anglin, 2002). seen from this perspective, pain presents a valuable opportunity for empathetic responses for workers attempting to connect with hurt children and young people. whilst the ability to forge good interpersonal relationships is desirable, but often not essential for highly developed professions such as medicine and law, it is an absolute precondition of effective social work practice (chu and tsui, 2008; chu et al., 2009; proctor, 1982; ward et al., 2010). before all others, the core skill required by social work is the capacity to relate to others and their problems. (o’leary, tsui, & ruch, 2013, p. 137) to advance my argument, i will give some background on my thought processes. i recognise that my understanding is constantly evolving and will therefore likely change in the future, so i do not lay claim to any enduring truth. i believe that context is vital to understanding the individual human experience and nowhere more so than in child and youth care work. learning to live “on the edge” in 2015 i wrote a book titled social care and child welfare in ireland: integrating residential care, leaving care and aftercare. one chapter covered my experience as a social care worker working in children’s residential care services over a 25-year span. i summarised the chapter: so, to bring my chapter to a conclusion, it is appropriate for me to give a brief overview of my experience of working with keith [name changed] and others over my years of practice in residential care. this experience has taught me that the most appropriate approach is one where tolerance of risk and uncertainty, use of self and collaborative meaning-making are fundamental to practice. this approach i now regard as “care on the edge” — on the edge because often i was unsure of which way events would unfold with the ever-present possibility for things to go either positively or negatively with very fine and shifting lines demarking one from the other. this, at times, induced stress and anxiety on my part, that growing feeling of impending doom in the pit of my stomach, whilst attempting to outwardly portray a façade of calm and confidence. all the while i would be forestalling the rising temptation to act decisively to alleviate the uncertainty, as such action might be motivated by fear and anxiety and could have made things worse. this was not inaction to avoid conflict, rather inaction to avoid an unpredictable reaction. yet by tolerating the uncertainty and managing the risk things tended to work out well in the end. i have also learned that: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 86 each child is unique and so their needs will be best met at unique and shifting locations along these continuums (of care and need) and so we must be prepared to shift along these continuums with them. (fenton, 2015b) many children in care, especially those in residential care, live “on the edge” — the edge of social and educational exclusion, the system of care within the placement of last resort, the judicial system, crisis and mental ill health, to name but a few. consequently, the worker moving to the edge with them facilitates closer connection and thereby better understanding of their realities. this can then aid in predicting their responses, individually and as a group, and thereby chart the best course of action. there is also the enhanced potential for co-regulation, though in my experience this can be an exhausting space to inhabit due to the reality of the stress and anxiety these young people must live with for prolonged periods of time. that “feeling of doom” in the pit of my stomach, the foreboding that things were about to go very badly wrong, and the feeling of exhaustion at the end of a tense shift, can be ever-present for these young people for prolonged periods of time. understanding and appreciating this makes their willingness to try to cope, with varying degrees of success, therefore all the more remarkable. in sharing experiences with other workers it is abundantly clear that the vast majority also have experienced the “on the edge” dynamic in their work. however, these can be turned to advantage with time, reflection, good supervision and support. in my own case, as the years went by the feelings of anxiety reduced as i became more at ease with risk and uncertainty. i like to think i became less uncomfortable and fearful at the edge as i became more certain that this was the right place to be, but i retained the connection to the feelings i had previously experienced. (fenton, 2015a, pp. 55–57) so, this was my position in 2015 where i was acknowledging the importance of being able to tolerate distress and anxiety, conditions that may be considered mentally painful or “painbased”, and the experiencing of bodily pain in the psychically-induced stomach ache produced by this uncertainty and worry. i was, i believe, beginning to recognise the ability of the worker to tolerate these painful experiences as being critical to the professional development of seasoned care workers who remain working in residential services over lengthy periods of time whilst retaining their motivation and ability to care with authenticity. self-care, empathy, and pain i also wrote about self-care in this book and following publication of the book further developed some of the writing into a model of self-care titled “relationship-based self-care in social care: the sos model” (fenton, 2016b). within this model i identify phenomena such as vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress disorder, vicarious post-traumatic stress, compassion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 87 fatigue, carer burden, and burnout, and identify that i have experienced most of these conditions in my time working in care. i then identify a second parallel range of positive phenomena that afford potential remedies to the aforementioned negative phenomena, all of which occur in the milieu of children’s residential care settings. these are vicarious resilience, compassion satisfaction, self-compassion, and post-traumatic growth. the proposed lesson here is that the daily work itself, undertaken well and with relational authenticity, empathy, and compassion, can play a key role in self-care and the prevention of burnout. however, i also identify a third phenomenon. one that necessitates different responses from the care worker in order to manage their self-care. i term this phenomenon “system trauma”. it is the trauma caused to both workers and children by the deficiencies in many current care systems internationally. however, systems which facilitate practices such as the expectation of individual accountability without sufficient resources can be seen to be dysfunctional. it is entirely plausible to perceive of such systems as posing a real threat of harm to workers. here, the risk of what can be termed “system trauma”, where the lack of support and resources afforded by the system of care is equally, if not more of a reality for workers than vicarious trauma. young people are equally exposed to such “system trauma” within a system which, for example, in 2014, had 405 children waiting for an appointment within our child and adolescent mental health service (camhs) for longer than 12 months (children’s mental health coalition, 2015). (fenton, 2015a, pp. 278–279) system trauma has consequences far beyond the time within which the individual child or young person is exposed to the “care” afforded them. it is a multiplier of trauma and compounds the trauma these children and young people have already experienced, which necessitated their entry into what for them is a dysfunctional system of care. it also sets the stage for future trauma when the child or young person leaves care unprepared and ill-equipped to survive alone, let alone to thrive. thus, system trauma affects the whole of a person’s life, the past, present and future, and underpins feelings of self-rejection and self-harm and self-sabotaging behaviours. within the sos model training course, i utilise a video clip (themedicaleducation, 2013) to demonstrate the importance of avoiding the pitfall of becoming a task-oriented worker in trying to avoid burnout, given that empathic practice requires the sustained experiencing of painful feelings by the worker. this four-minute clip never fails to evoke an emotional reaction in me each time i watch it, despite having watched it dozens of times. it is the segment 90 seconds into the video when trish, a clinical nurse, talks of removing a barrette from a dead girl’s hair in preparation for the parents to see their dead child, and she becomes deeply emotionally affected, with faltering speech, as she recalls the experience. she then talks of how this happened 14 years ago but her ability to retain this feeling of emotional upset and compassion prevents her from becoming a taskoriented professional. she thereby avoids potential burnout, as becoming task-oriented and perceiving people as objects is a known precursor to burnout (schaufeli, maslach, & marek, 1993). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 88 i find this interaction profound as i identify with trish’s emotional reactions to the painful experiences of caring, and i feel connected to her and her medical colleagues in a way i have not previously encountered within the medical professions. we all have shared experiences in caring for others, a language of caring, which includes joy and success alongside pain and failure. (see zaharieva & anglin in this issue for a discussion of “the language of pain”.) the capacity to be in touch with the client’s feelings is related to the worker’s ability to acknowledge his or her own. before a worker can understand the power of emotion in the life of the client, it is necessary to discover its importance in the worker’s own experience. (shulman, 1999, p. 156) so the ability of trish and her colleagues to tolerate these painful feelings, to remain “on the edge” at any given moment in their practice where they may experience such painful occurrences, is critical to retaining their ability to care authentically and in so doing avoid burnout. it is the same in children’s residential care services, and likely in all caring professions, and these feelings of emotional upset we may experience as carers are normal, and do not, as we may privately think, mean we are weak or emotionally fragile. these feelings need to be understood and embraced as positive aspects of the work, and not just as “an occupational hazard, a cost of doing the work” (courtois & ford, 2009, p. 205). we must remember that it is all right, at times, to feel broken, as we can recover and possibly grow from the experience if we understand the phenomenon of post traumatic growth (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013). if we are to connect with and understand the children and young people we support, we will benefit from an empathic understanding of their experiences, knowing what it feels like to them to feel broken by painful experiences. from my practice experience, i remember that, when i was experiencing extreme stress and anxiety, feelings of isolation and aloneness became prominent. i have come to recognise such feelings as warning signs that i am experiencing stress and need to take remedial self-care action. understanding that stress can be an occupational hazard, but that it can be utilised positively, greatly enhances a worker’s ability to practise self-compassion (neff, 2011), which can be invaluable to a worker’s well-being, especially at difficult times. a technique i employ to manage my own self-care, and often in supervision of others, is to focus on the following lines that i keep visible on my office wall. we are each on our own life journey. i am not the cause of this person’s suffering, nor is it entirely within my power to make it go away, even though i wish i could. moments like this are difficult to bear, yet i may still try to help if i can. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 89 (neff & germer, 2018, p. 142) wounded healers: connecting with others through our own pain my second book, titled the stolen child: wb yeats and carl jung — relationship, belonging and compassion in caring for children in care, was also published in 2016. in it i further developed my thinking on the role of pain in social care and child and youth care, employing my experience of the loss of my father as a young boy, two weeks before my 13th birthday, and how this influenced my life and my professional practice, both adversely and positively. i became lost following my father’s death, and for many years engaged in self-sabotaging pain-based behaviours, not knowing why. as one of my closest friends (now deceased) said of me years later, i was the ultimate rebel without a cause. in later years, i came to recognise that i was mostly rebelling against myself for not fitting into this world, which prevented me becoming who i later became and now am. i believe that this is common for children in care, and i can employ my experience of being lost to empathise with these children and young people, in the role of a “wounded healer” as theorised by carl jung (1948/1969, p. 116) when he first referenced the phenomenon of “the wounded physician”. being a wounded healer, as carl jung and sigmund freud themselves were, is not necessarily a deficit in caring professions. for example, jackson (2001) identifies the wounded healer not as a flawed professional, but rather as one whose past experiences can be utilised to better attune them to caring for others. awareness of one’s prior wounds and their influence in the present is challenging; however, it is critical if we are to leverage the potential of attunement and avoid being reactive or merely task-oriented carers whose actions are fuelled by unconscious forces. it was only the passage of time and the support of others that enabled me to find a resolution to the experience of the loss of my father. critically, it was one person, my son, who needed me in a world where i perceived no one else did that enabled me to find my true self (winnicott, 1960/1987). so, i now can utilise this experience of pain to connect with others experiencing such feelings of hopelessness, alienation, and despair, and to have compassion and understanding, often expressed as tolerance and patience, for their behaviours. after all, these behaviours at times mirror some of my own past behaviours in their irrational and self-sabotaging aspects and i suspect, if we all were to truly look into our past, for many other professionals also. as carl jung said, “knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people” (jung, 1973, p. 237). i found that once i began to pull away from these self-defeating behaviours, i had to face the pain that had driven much of these behaviours to avoid re-engaging in them. this meant facing and staying with the pain associated with the loss of my father, a pain i had been avoiding experiencing for many years. this was not a quick process; in fact, to a degree, it remains ongoing to this day. as van der kolk has said, “knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way.” (2014, pp. 95–96) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 90 paradoxically, in attempting to help others, the children and young people and their families i encounter in my practice, i have found that i have benefited personally, oftentimes through vicarious processes. i have gained insight into my own experience through supporting others through their experiences, giving validation to the cliché that “it is in helping others that we help ourselves”. vicarious confidence: creating a holding relationship2 my practice experience has afforded me one of my greatest assets in working with children and young people, teaching me, at a minimum, as much from failure as from success. this learning has, however, not always come easily for me. there is an old saying that sums this up well: “experience is the hardest kind of teacher, it gives you the test first and the lesson afterwards.” one example of this learning occurred when i was a worker in a children’s residential home some years ago. my colleagues and i were attempting to care for three teenage girls who were engaged in a cycle of para-suicidal behaviour, repeatedly ingesting large doses of paracetamol. we spent many shifts in the local hospital with the girls, sitting in uncomfortable chairs throughout the night as they were recurrently admitted following each overdose. they were coming very close to known lethal dosages of paracetamol, and this appeared to be more by chance rather than intentionally on their part, as they appeared unconcerned as to the consequences of the risk they were taking. i had several years’ experience in social care at this stage but had never encountered a situation like this, and i was experiencing real anxiety and fear that one of these girls would take one pill too many and come to grave harm or die. irreversible liver damage was an ever-present possibility. i now know that it was my anxiety that led me to believe that they needed to be removed from the home, making me believe it was too dangerous to keep them there as we could not prevent them accessing and taking these tablets. i will never forget how anxious i felt, so close to the edge (fenton, 2015a, p. 56), beyond which is the abyss from which return unscathed is by no means certain. during this period, it required a lot of thought on my part before reporting for duty for each shift with the temptation to ring in sick being very strong. this was not something i was ever prone to doing but during this time i came close to doing so. during this time, i observed that while my colleagues and i were extremely anxious the manager appeared calm and her demeanour conveyed a sense of control to me in what otherwise felt like a situation that was out of control. i took the confidence i needed to continue working through this period from the manager’s apparent confidence. i followed her direction in the belief that she knew what she was doing and that she had confidence that i, and my colleagues, were doing the right things in how we were attempting to care for these girls and keep them alive. 2 much of the material in this section has been published on the goodenoughcaring.com website at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/the-journal/1a-vicarious-confidence/ http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/the-journal/1a-vicarious-confidence/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 91 as most often happens, the crises abated after some weeks as the cycle ended, thankfully without irreversible harm befalling the girls, and a sense of normality gradually returned to the home. sometime later, when i reflected on this time with the manager in supervision, she told me that this was the worst time of her life and that she too was extremely anxious that someone would die or suffer life-changing consequences. i am forever indebted to her for her honesty and bravery in telling me this as once i realised this was the reality, i was then able to see just how important her façade of confidence was in enabling me, and others, to continue to do our jobs. she internally managed her anxiety and tolerated the uncertainty in the knowledge that, had she not, the girls’ placements would most likely have broken down, resulting in their unplanned discharge from the home — an outcome that has been shown to be deleterious to the developmental trajectory of both staff and young people (ward, 2009; jones et al., 2011). the process whereby i took the confidence i needed from her, i have come to recognise, was vicarious confidence in action and since i recognised it for what it is i have always tried to replicate it in my work with children and young people and when in leadership roles. i have also encouraged others to do likewise, and i believe that this experiential learning on my part is a prime example of the merit of imitation, which is linked to role modelling and identified by van der kolk as “our most fundamental social skill” (2014, p. 112). just as importantly, i have learnt what not to do through the same processes. clearly, this is one of the benefits of practice placements in social care and work professional qualification courses. i also began to see that at the core of social care and work practice is the fundamental necessity to manage our anxiety in caring for traumatised children and young people given how much risk is involved in attempting to care for them, especially during times of crisis. if we do not manage our anxiety, we are prone to making rash decisions motivated by fear, as i was experiencing during this crisis cycle with the teenage girls. the unconscious forces at play can be illuminated by employing the lens of psychoanalytic theory. anxiety and defences against it are central to psychoanalytical theories of personality development (freud, 1926; klein, 1930). menzies lyth (1988), focusing on the nursing profession as we did earlier with trish and her colleagues, examined the role of anxiety and the defences against this anxiety within institutions, for the individual nurse, and within the profession. she identified a range of defences within the nursing structure in hospitals, including:  splitting up the nurse–patient relationship: rotating nurses tasked with carrying out a wide range of functions and tasks prevents them from spending significant amounts of time with the same patient. they may carry out a certain task but not all of the tasks for any one individual patient. this is aimed at diminishing the potential for close relationships forming between patients and nurses and thereby protecting the nurse from experiencing anxiety;  detachment and denial of feelings: the nurses must learn to control their feelings, refrain from excessive involvement, avoid disturbing identifications, and maintain their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 92 professional independence against manipulation and demands for unprofessional behaviour. i have referenced this previously as the “reification of the fabled state of ‘objectivity’” (fenton, 2016a, p. 21), which conspires to promote detachment in order to minimise attachment;  elimination of decision-making via ritual task performance: precise instructions are given to the nurse to perform the array of assigned tasks in a ritual manner, which reduces the need for the nurse to make decisions, as decision-making involves anxiety as to the potential outcome of the decision. menzies lyth, from a psychoanalytical perspective, identified that, “the core of the anxiety situation for the nurse lies in her relation with the patient. the closer and more concentrated this relationship, the more the nurse is likely to experience the impact of anxiety.” (menzies lyth, 1988, pp. 51–55). from a psychodynamic perspective, the avoidance of painful feelings for workers provides a further example of the avoidance implicit in the management and risk models and systems currently dominant in social care and child and youth care practice. this defensive and avoidant function can occur when workers divert their attention from the painful feelings invoked by connecting with the child or young person and focus instead on technology, paperwork, and procedures, which can “sometimes be understood as avoidant or displacement activity which enables practitioners to divert their attention from painful situations they are faced with” (ruch, turney, & ward, 2010, p. 38). additionally, if an adverse event should occur, it can be cast as a systems or treatment failure and not as a failure of any individual worker. similarly, from a medical model perspective: the preservation of life is an organisational imperative that becomes dominant, often irrespective of the quality of life that the patient will have and to the detriment of staff morale whose ability to care and act realistically rather than omnipotently are consequently undermined. since care is a slow process and does not produce the dramatic results desired, it is denigrated as being ineffective, whereas “cure”, which is exciting and offers a defence of omnipotent dential of the chronic nature of the problems being addressed, is idealised. this is also an expression of the professionals’ use of “treatment” as a defence against the inevitable experience of helplessness and failure. (stokes, cited in obholzer & roberts, 1994, p. 122) the question arises as to whether the professions of social care and child and youth care are affected by similar “care” versus “treatment” dynamics and whether some forms of “therapy” or “therapeutic care” are idealised as magical solutions to complex problems. we shall return to the topic of magic further along. in well-functioning children’s residential care homes, attachments and close relationships between workers and children and young people are encouraged (anglin, 2004). thus, from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 93 above-mentioned issues associated with anxiety and relationships, we can see the imperative for frontline workers in caring professions to be supported in their task of forming meaningful relationships with the children and young people in their care, given that this will likely expose them to experiencing elevated levels of anxiety. in my experience, good supervision regularly addresses anxiety as a critical area of self-care and practice. in concluding the vignette with the manager in the children’s home, i came to see that she managed her anxiety better than my colleagues and i did, which meant that the situation was managed as well as such a situation could be. while working in this same home, i also learnt from a skilled colleague the phrase that “sometimes we have to fake it till we make it”, and this rang true with me following the experience with the three girls. i was not feeling confident, anything but, yet by borrowing the manager’s confidence i was able to “fake” my own confidence until the crisis abated and my confidence returned. to this insightful quip, i have added that “nothing succeeds like success, and sometimes we have to fake it till we make it and encourage the children and young people to do likewise”. this is not merely trust by another name and it is more than belief in a person’s potential. it can be argued that trust implies that one believes that someone will do something, but it does not make explicit the expectation of success in these actions, while belief implies an expectation that a person will likely succeed at some future point. confidence implies an expectation of success in the present, and therefore it must be used judiciously, as expectation beyond a person’s ability can be seriously harmful to both children and staff. good supervision is critical here. some further learning about confidence includes the fact that rather than precluding the professional from experiencing vulnerability, confidence is critical in enabling the skilled professional to appropriately utilise and display their vulnerability. the manager i identified earlier clearly demonstrated this in her supervision of me when she showed me her vulnerability by telling me how anxious she had been during this time of crisis. confidence and vulnerability are not opposites; they coexist, meaning that the willingness to accept and appropriately show one’s vulnerability to another is not a sign of weakness, rather, it is a sign of strength and confidence. furthermore, displaying vulnerability is not the same as displaying fear. my practice experience has taught me that just as a child or young person’s display of vulnerability can evoke vulnerability within me, a worker displaying fear can evoke fearful responses from children and young people. these fear-based responses may include aggression, as young people cannot manage the feelings and memories the fear causes them to (re)experience and they revert to inappropriate and unhealthy learned coping behaviours. vulnerability, however, poses much less threat to others than fear and thus, i believe, its appropriate employment can be a highly protective factor for social care workers. in all circumstances, however, the display of a façade of confidence is critical. however, while displaying confidence is critical, this does not mean that one has all the answers or knows what to do in all situations. people are dynamic, and contexts ever-changing, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 94 meaning that new and complex situations arise constantly. we work with human beings and few things in this world are as messy and unpredictable, yet wonderful, as human relationships. nobody can know what the right thing to do is in all situations no matter how experienced or educated they may be. confidence also means that we are able to tolerate uncertainty and unknowing, as we are confident that the answers and the best way to proceed will become apparent, leading to favourable outcomes for both the workers and the children and young people in their care. this much experience can teach us. one of the most powerful phrases i have utilised in my practice is “i don’t know, but…”. this is said with confidence that i, or they, can find the answer or, better yet, that we can find the answer together. i have learnt that you only get so many chances when building trust with children and young people who have experienced adverse childhood experiences. if you tell them something with certainty that later turns out not to be true, trust will be lost and with this their confidence in the worker. both will then be hard to regain. consequently, in instances such as these, “faking it till you make it” is not something i advocate; honesty is paramount. in my opinion, the ability of the worker to tolerate uncertainty is a true measure of their professional development and skill. when i worked as a direct residential care worker, i learnt to be wary when working with shift colleagues who were prone to certainty. often, it was on these shifts that avoidable difficulties tended to arise as these workers were not open to alternative meanings to events beyond what their certainty told them, just as my anxiety “told” me the girls should be discharged in the earlier vignette. they tended to rush to conclusions and decisions and i observed that the children and young people recognised them for this trait. consequently, over time, i became uneasy around people exhibiting a high level of certainty while at the same time i came to recognise the value of curiosity, which induces thinking, in social care. i believe a confident worker is a curious and thinking worker, unafraid to say “i don’t know, yet”. there is also the contentious issue of control in residential child care that bears examination. control, in my opinion, is linked to professionals’ ability (or inability) to manage their anxiety and tolerate uncertainty. it is my belief, based on my experience, that control within residential care for adolescents is largely an illusion, and the higher up the management ladder one goes the more illusory it becomes. a more appropriate way of looking at control is “maintaining a sense of control” (anglin, 2002, p. 176) rather than seeking to be in absolute control. once we accept this and cease trying to achieve control through coercion or reward, we become liberated to achieve what in fact we are seeking, a healthy environment where children’s needs are therapeutically met by staff whose well-being is valued and promoted. by giving away “control” to both staff and young people through empowering and then motivating them, congruence (anglin, 2004) is enhanced. people will, given the right resources within the right circumstances, most often choose to do the right thing, and this is true of residential care services too. thus, by not seeking to control others we are less likely to need to exercise control; this is the great paradox of our current risk management and control hegemonies: by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 95 seeking to control that which we cannot control we actually diminish what we are seeking (fenton, 2016a, pp. 57–58). in other words, our attempts to make things safe make them riskier and the more risk-averse we are, the more dangerous things become (blades, 2016). if we do not meet the needs of adolescents for autonomy and self-determination by empowering them with ageand developmentally-appropriate levels of agency they will either comply with our directives under duress and therefore not internalise the changes we are seeking to teach or impose, or they will reject our authority and through their assertive and non-compliant behaviour take the legitimate sense of agency they seek. if neither of these scenarios unfolds there is the potential for them to seek to have these needs met elsewhere, which can expose them to a host of harms that we, the professionals, can do little to ameliorate, as we have lost their trust and with it any possibility to meaningfully engage with and assist them (fenton, 2016a). embracing pain the ability of workers to tolerate uncertainty and the anxiety (pain-based fear) this induces are critical to their efficacy and well-being; their success or failure in managing this will shape their future within the profession and the type of care worker they become. this experiencing of anxiety mirrors the need for those we care for to learn to experience and tolerate deep emotions as being essential for recovery from trauma (van der kolk, 2014). however, this is no easy challenge as we are vulnerable to the tendency to “prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty” (perry & szalavitz, 2006, p. 55). in the stolen child, while addressing the issue of pain, i made the statement that, while i recognise the existential importance of pain, i take little or no comfort from pain. however, i have thought longer on this statement since the publication of this book and i now recognise that this is not quite accurate. i do, in fact, take some comfort from times of melancholy, prompted by fond memories of departed family or friends. i did acknowledge then that recovery is framed within the ability to experience the full range of emotions, positive and negative, and not merely the elimination of painful feelings, but i did not recognise just how much the experience of painful feelings can actually be a comfort and of benefit. these painful feelings can counterbalance the highs of life; both are needed if we are to truly experience the full range of feelings and emotions in the human condition and interaction with others. it seems we must embrace the full spectrum of human emotions to be fully functioning human beings (rogers, 1965). we cannot cherry-pick the good only, as for each high there is a counterbalancing low, and if we seek to avoid the low we must limit the high also, thereby living limited lives within a limited range of human feelings and experiences. at the same time, i recognise that my ability to sit with painful feelings was not developed whilst i was lost following the death of my father and that it is just such feelings that the children and young people i work with need support to sit with also. as previously identified, it is not a quick or easy journey and may involve lengthy processes wherein two steps forward and one to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 96 three steps back may at times be the reality. it may also be the case that it may be years after we have parted company from these children and young people before they actualise the meaning of the content of the care interactions we had with them. but where there is life there is hope, and there is nothing more important to the lives of children and young people than hope. these processes are very important to bear in mind with regard to responding to pain-based behaviour, as we know that we tend to avoid the recurrence of pain by avoiding the circumstances that led to the initial painful experience — pavlov’s dogs and behaviourism springing to mind. this desire to avoid pain can, then, lead to behaviours that eschew actions that previously led to, or are associated with, past painful experiences. thus, inaction by workers can be seen as a less recognised pain-based behaviour if the motivation, whether conscious or subconscious, is the avoidance of pain. pain affords us a lens through which to interpret both our own behaviours and responses and those of the children and young people we work with, and a language that captures much of what may be missed by risk perspectives. i do not, however, seek to promote one approach or perspective above another as this is the very flaw i identify with dominant paradigms currently. rather, i propose that the critically thinking worker must synthesize all the information available to them and make an informed decision by exercising their professional judgement on what best meets the needs of the individual child or young person with whom they are working, in that presenting context. it may well prove to be the case that there are times when we must “go to where the child has suffered the most — therein lies their greatest potential for growth” (source unknown). in reality, pain has a positive role to play in our lives. we cannot, for example, experience love without pain (van der kolk, 2014), so why would we not take at least some pleasure from pain when it meets positive needs — is this not actually healthy and in our own self-interest? the stolen child includes reference to fairy tales, mythology, and magic, all sources of potential misunderstanding and avoidance. some people cite the frightening nature of many fairy tales and claim that these can be damaging to children as they may make them fearful of life. however, just as with risk and pain, this is but one dimension of fairy tales and fails to recognise the greatest power of fairy tales — hope — which is not recognised in these discourses. fairy tales convey hope through the common theme that monsters and dragons exist but that these can be overcome by children (gaiman, 2016). there is an argument to support the claim that “magic begat science” (fenton, 2016a, p. 57) with, for example, chemistry having emerged from the study of alchemy, astronomy from astrology and pharmacology form herbalism. magic can also be demonstrated to be a real phenomenon in 21st-century social services. stivers (1999) illuminated a dynamic that emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century whereby the role of technology has assumed “magical” status in organisational and business operations. he convincingly argued, and i have witnessed this many international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 97 times in an irish social services context, that when major failings and failures occur the response of the organisations or agencies is to nominate that they are implementing new “systems” that, it is claimed, will ensure that such failures will not reoccur. this is the magical component that stivers references, as these technologically based systems are often unproven in the specific context of the organisation and the failures that have occurred. they may have allegedly worked in different countries or contexts, and, key to this strategy, they will require significant time before they can be evaluated following the announcement of their imminent implementation. gambrill (2012) further identifies another form of magic in which the brain is fooled by what we see, a favourite technique of stage magicians. she identifies how the authority invested in science and technology creates an allure effect, “which can lull our critical thinking skills into quiescence” (p. 329) by influencing cognition. gambrill identifies magnetic resonance imaging (mri) brain scans as a case in point. she argues that mri images of human brains are so convincing to an audience via their association with a “harder science”, such as physics and chemistry, that we unquestioningly place trust and belief in these images and the meaning attributed to them. furthermore, data presented alongside these images are equally persuasive, apparently benefiting from the “allure of credibility” created by the brain image, and are not subjected to the same rigorous critical evaluation as data would otherwise be subjected to. i wonder if to these arguments we might add the staggering mathematics involved in neuroscience, which bamboozles us by its magnitude and complexity, thus causing us to accept these claims as truths as we cannot do the necessary thinking to decipher such large numbers. numbers such as “100 billion nerve cells (and ten supporting glial cells for each of those). each one of those billions of neurons makes between 5,000 and 10,000 connections, producing extraordinarily complex networks” (perry & szalavitz, 2006, p. 120). perhaps, also, we are seduced by our own grandiosity, the complexity ostensibly making us cognitively far superior to any other living organism or indeed computer, so we accept this as truth as it massages our egos and comforts us in an increasingly uncertain world where, for example, artificial intelligence is an emerging reality with anxiety-evoking potential in the event that it is not harnessed safely. in any event, this psychological tendency for brain images and attendant data to dull critical thinking can be summed up concisely with the quip that “when we see a picture of the human brain, we stop thinking”. bruce perry (2016), one of the leading figures in the domain of neuroscience, cautions that neuroscience can only reveal half of the picture of the world of a traumatised child or young person, as it only affords insight into the individual inner reality and not external or environmental and social influences. perry (personal communication, 23/11/2018) further cautions “we humans are so complex that any single frame of reference or perspective will be incapable of capturing all aspects of the human condition. we should resist any efforts to be overly-simplistic or one dimensional in our attempts to understand these complexities.” critical thinking is one of our greatest assets in aiding and protecting children and young people as we ourselves are our own greatest asset in undertaking this task, and we must nurture international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 98 and protect this skill at all times. as jim anglin (personal communication, 28/2/2014) once advised me, “stay curious and question everything”, some of the best professional advice i have ever received. though not offered as an incontrovertible truth, there is food for thought in the quip that “the brain is the most important organ in the body, according to the brain”. conclusion pain, and to a lesser extent love and hope, are poorly understood and undervalued within social care and child and youth care work. perhaps this may be owing to the subjective nature of these concepts, as i have argued in this article, or perhaps it is owing to the historical usage of these words and the imperative for achieving professional status now dominant in the care sector where there is a need to employ the language that demarks the emergent professions of social care and child and youth work from other professions. perhaps contributing to the validity of the latter proposition is the dominance of the term risk, an objective, techno-rational term, within the sector. children are harmed most often within unhealthy relationships with adults and recovery can only occur within healthy relationships with caring adults, which emerge from connections. we are broken within the context of relationships; and we are also healed within the scope of relationships. (hilda nadjiwan, as quoted by dorothy vaandering, 2010, p. 1) if we are to truly aid children and young people to recover from traumatic experiences then we must understand our own pain and the pain of the child or young person, its origins and meaning, and how this pain influences the behaviours and responses of both them and us. we must also understand the dynamics of the interplay of pain-based behaviours and responses between both parties — the pain that exists both within us and between us. however, connecting authentically with these children and young people means we must also connect with their pain and this can be painful for us as we experience their pain both vicariously and first hand in the form of anxiety, uncertainty, and emotional upset. we cannot connect only with the unhurt aspect of the person and ignore their pain-based aspect without our relationships with them being diminished. it is deeply painful and distressing to bear witness to a child so hurt that they “bleed pain”3, as we will undoubtedly do at times over the course of our 3 i wish to thank michael murphy, formerly of the university of salford, for his input and to acknowledge him as the originator of this term. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 99 careers if we are caring authentically. we must become tolerant of this ever-present possibility of encountering pain and continue to connect to these hurt children and young people. this requires us to become competent in managing uncertainty and anxiety and capable of living “on the edge”. “the price of love is the agony of loss” (perry & szalavitz, 2006, p. 90), as i found out early in life with the death of my father, yet i also found out that love offered the pathway to a resolution to this pain through the love for my son. to love is also to care, and clearly, we want and need to continue to care for and build connections with all the children and young people we encounter in our work. therefore, we must accept that we will continue to experience pain and this is not merely the cost of doing the work but also an asset in informing our work. in brief, to authentically care for children and young people we must be prepared to “feel the pain and do it anyway.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 81–102 100 references anglin, j. p. 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(original work published 1960). http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fbf01769775 https://www.celcis.org/knowledge-bank/search-bank/journal/scottish-journal-residential-child-care-vol-15-no-3/ https://www.celcis.org/knowledge-bank/search-bank/journal/scottish-journal-residential-child-care-vol-15-no-3/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kse7ue82ufu http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-1609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-1609 http://shalemnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/rj-monthly-june-10.pdf http://shalemnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/rj-monthly-june-10.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.07.009 microsoft word 06 editor_intro.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120080 introduction to special issue: assimilation, interrupted: transforming discourses of cultureand honour-based violence in canada mandeep kaur mucina and amina jamal abstract: this special issue about race, honour, culture, and violence against women in south asian canadian communities is proffered as an entry point to a wider, multilayered discussion about race, culture, gender, and violence. it hopes to intensify a debate on gendered violence that could tie in with analysis and commentary on individual killings in family-related sites, murders of racialized women and girls in public sites, and other forms of violence against women and girls in society. we encourage readers to consider how to understand the landscape that south asian canadian women and girls are confronting, while also asking critical questions about the wider settler colonial system in which we all participate as we fight gender-based violence. acknowledgements: as uninvited multigenerational immigrants on lkwungen peoples’ territories (mandeep) and anishinaabe, mississauga, and haudenosaunee territories (amina), we affirm our gratitude to the indigenous communities of turtle island on whose traditional land we currently live and work. we acknowledge indigenous communities’ ongoing fight against genocide, their resistance to colonial occupation of indigenous land, water, and other resources, and their struggle to reclaim indigenous governance. we thank the authors who started this journey with us almost eight years ago. our idea was to gather academics, activists, and practitioners who were fighting racist discourses surrounding south asian canadian women and communities while supporting and caring for women and girls who struggle everyday with violence, racism, and sexism. we especially acknowledge farrah khan and deanna ida, whose initial voices, contributions, and editorial support made this issue possible. we would also like to acknowledge the reviewers who provided challenging and supportive feedback to each of the articles, and to recognize their generosity in giving time and support to each of the papers in this collection. we are grateful to the students and research assistants who supported this collection of papers over the years, including sydele merrigan, alina reed, and binish ahmed as well as our editors susan scott, and leslie prpich. finally, we would like to acknowledge the multigendered and cross-cultural victims and survivors of honourand shame-related violence, whose stories serve as resources and sites for collective feminist pain and memorializing. mandeep kaur mucina phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: mmucina@uvic.ca amina jamal phd is an associate professor in the department of sociology at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: amina.jamal@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 2  it was a typical december evening when a group of south asian canadian women from across toronto gathered at the women’s centre on a university campus. many of us knew each other or had encountered each other in various spaces throughout toronto, yet that particular evening we were not concerned with introductions or updates on our lives since we had last seen each other. we came together with a shared concern. we had been called together through a facebook invitation to south asian canadian women who needed to process what had happened earlier that day and the night before. a 15-year-old girl, aqsa parvez, had been murdered by her father and brother at their family home in mississauga, ontario. aqsa parvez’s death was on the front page of every major media outlet. we were stunned by the whirlwind that enveloped the city after her death and needed a place to come together to debrief and process what this all meant and how we would respond personally and collectively. feeling shocked and betrayed by the murder, and fuelled by the fear and anger burning in the back of our throats, we talked about the way her murder was framed in the media. with perverse pride, aqsa parvez’s death was termed toronto’s first honour killing (rogan, 2008) in mainstream media. we were concerned about the impact this framing would have on brown women, the muslim community, and young girls who were already feeling silenced by the racism, sexism, and islamophobia they experienced every day. that day marked a turning point for many of us who had been working with south asian canadian families and communities across the greater toronto area in the gender-based violence sector. we were educators, social workers, community activists, and allies who understood the profound impact aqsa’s death would have on all of us. what emerged from that group came to be known as aqsazine1, a collective of muslim women and girls who channelled their anger, fear, resistance, and creativity into a web-based “zine” that centred the voices of muslim women who were impacted by islamophobia, racism, and sexism. led by farrah khan and carried forward by other south asian canadian women in toronto, the original collective has undergone multiple transformations over the years. yet the work, tears, pain, and fight continue to this day, and the important questions we asked ourselves in the wake of aqsa’s death are refreshed each time a girl or woman experiences shame, exclusion, or violence, or is murdered, in the south asian community in canada. many articles were written in response to aqsa’s death (haque, 2010; olwan, 2014, 2019; weldon, 2010) and about the media’s role in perpetuating islamophobia (jiwani, 2014). we acknowledge the work that has occurred in the past decade to address and engage with the discourses that emerged in the post-9/11 world and after aqsa’s death. nevertheless, we want to shift the focus back to the complex ways racism and gender-based violence intersect when violence in the name of honour shows up in public discourses. this collection of papers brings a new critical approach to the existing literature on honour and shame-related violence and relevant prevention measures. there is a plethora of recent journal 1https://zeedesigns.wixsite.com/aqsazineonline international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 3  articles on this subject in disciplines as diverse as sociology, law, aboriginal studies, religion, immigration and settlement studies, geography, cultural studies, ethics, psychology, social work, and politics. as well, honour-related violence continues to be discussed in global conferences and forums organized by state and non-state actors in north america and europe each year. indeed, discussions of “honour killing” tend to figure as a type of marginal or contextual violence in research and scholarship on youth, children, and families. less discussed, however — as we found in the wake of aqsa’s tragedy — are the problems caused when an incident of gendered violence emerges as a racialized discourse in media, political, and popular forums. such discourse not only implicates the relationship between victim and perpetrator but also acquires the potential to unsettle many other kinds of relationships: intimate, private, and public. this special issue seeks to emphasize the specificity of honour killing as a form of violence that is ultimately related to sexuality and embodied transgression, largely impacting women and girls. it begins from the cognizance that sexual violence against racialized women and girls represents a key site of contestation over rights — state versus community, secular versus religious, local versus global, and individual versus community and group (jamal, 2015; mucina, 2018). as such, racist discourses of culture and immigrant communities not only obscure the role of racialization, state formation, and nation building in constructing notions of civilized selves and uncivilized others, but also limit opportunities for expressions of grief and outrage and claims for community accountability by women and girls in minority ethnic communities. the associated discourses of honour, shame, and violence obstruct opportunities for a wider intercommunity dialogue on the interaction of race, gender, class, and immigration, create new modes of gendered subordination, and deepen historical racial divides between whites and non-whites (thobani, 2000); such dialogues could also become sites for south asian solidarities with black and indigenous struggles. culture, race, violence the invocation of the terms “honour” and “shame” in relation to violence against racialized women and girls is fraught with contestations and contradictions, since the relationship of gendered violence with race and culture that was established through colonialism continues to dominate all local, national, and transnational discussions. under these conditions, an issue on “honour”-related violence is in danger of engaging in what sherene razack, in this publication and in her work more generally (fellows & razack, 1998; razack, 2003, 2004, 2008), calls “culture talk”, often heard in legal responses to violence, which tends to culturalize and racialize the violence. razack notes that culture talk becomes a pedagogy for training different groups of citizen-subjects about their collective cultural superiority or inferiority. indeed, we are painfully cognizant that terms such as “honour killing” and “forced marriage” are taken in western societies as applying only to racialized bodies. the image of women and girls who are “victims” of their culture and the image of “barbaric” men who perpetuate violence because of culture or religion are conjured in the canadian imagination as bodies that need to be civilized and controlled (abu lughod, 2010; haque, 2010; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; mucina, 2018; razack, 2007). in our international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 4  everyday encounters with the media and dominant narratives in the west, we find a type of racism that is disguised in the language of protection and safety; it suggests that honour-related violence is a problem embedded in culture and religion that can only be tackled if racialized families and communities are fully assimilated into western society and have internalized eurocentric values. transnationalism of honourand shame-related violence the coverage of honour-related violence in the media has continued in a steady stream over the years. it has become a basis for changing policies at the governmental level and a focus of funding activity at the nongovernmental level, in addition to fuelling the western popular imagination with images of the orientalist east. meanwhile, global shifts and changes have impacted marginalized and marked bodies across north america: muslim women are targeted for their hijabs, brown men are marked as terrorists or defined as barbarians practising violent religions, and black and indigenous struggles have intensified against their daily encounters with systemic racism and violence. in the context of islam, secularism, and the war on terror, the global construct of honour becomes, in the words of inderpal grewal (2013), “an over determined concept — the preferred term, in many regions, for practices linked to reputation, pride, masculinity, or respectability. honour enables sexual, economic, and political control, through gendered violence and governmentality, and through the protection of women” (p. 15). grewal has used the phrase “outsourcing patriarchy” to recognize the participation of corporate and transnational media in producing and deploying narratives of cultural difference, and has pointed out the varieties of material profits that accrue from such discourses. an important insight from grewal’s notion of outsourcing patriarchy is that it links nations, states, feminist movements, nongovernmental organizations, and capitalist formations across and within first and third world contexts. it also points to the production of class, rural/urban, tribal/civilized, and national/communal differences that inhere in iterations of gendered notions of honour, regardless of whether their thrust is to eradicate honour killings or uphold them (grewal, 2013). we suggest that these transnational flows of essentialist ideas constructed as honour killing need to be situated in the coalescing of post-9/11 eurocentric cultural assertions, widespread islamophobia, and racist notions of muslim inassimilability and also existing and new projects of global militarization, transreligious capitalisms, religious extremism, and patriarchal domination in all contexts. taking a transnational feminist approach to honour killing in canada enables us to explore the kinds of subjects that are produced through the boundary between secularism and islam that is sustained by the honour-killing discourse. we can discern its potential as a hegemonic construct that both divides and connects seemingly disparate sites, localities, and subjects to produce what afsaneh najmabadi (2008) has described as “unavailable spaces’’ or “unavailable intersections” that feminists might crave and that also make particular “speaking as” demands on us (p. 70). for muslim women it is hard to challenge both islamist misogyny and imperialism from the same space, and very often attempts by feminists of muslim background lead them to tread the same ground to which many misogynist muslim groups have previously laid claim (najmabadi, 2008, p. 75). indeed, the discourse of honour killing creates one such “unavailable intersection” in both international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 5  western and muslim majority states. in our attempts to challenge secular conceptions of freedom and resistance that sustain racist narratives of muslim women’s victimhood and drive imperialist projects for their rescue, postcolonial feminists reinstate alternative modes of subjectivity and agency for muslim women that represent them as proud and pious members of their religious communities. to challenge secular or universalist projects for women’s emancipation, lgbtq2ia+ rights, and human rights, critical scholars bring into focus alternative ideas about gendered agency (abu-lughod, 2010; mahmood, 2005) and other conceptions — especially religious and cultural ones — about social collectivity (razack, 2007; spivak, 2005) and emergent transnationally produced local subjectivities (grewal, 1999; spivak, 1996). clearing space for grief and resistance where neither state nor civil society offers an effective resolution to violence against women, postcolonial scholars turn to “community”. one may ask, how is community constructed and upheld outside of the pervasiveness of multicultural discourse that defines it in terms of race, religion, and culture? beyond the processes of regulation imposed by the legal, political, and cultural context of the dominant society, communities have their own practices of power and processes of regulation and disciplining. what avenues can women expect to find within communities without invoking identitarian notions of culture or religion that ultimately bolster the authority of law and the state? how can community-based solutions be effectively developed for the needs of those members who threaten to dismantle the community itself? how can families approach a community for support, guidance, and treatment when that same community may be the source of gendered violence? in this special issue we seek to draw attention to aspects of gendered experience, emotions, and women’s and girls’ agency that are occluded by the notion of “honour killing”, which can sever honour from shame, freedom from oppression, piety from sinfulness, deserving from undeserving, and normal from deviant. how can researchers, practitioners, and feminists offer more complex accounts of racialized women’s subjectivities even as we attempt to dismantle colonial constructions and imperial narratives about the superiority of western secularism, tolerance, and gender equality over barbaric and intolerant “other” cultures and communities? in our attempts to deconstruct the colonial divisions of modernity versus tradition, secular versus religious, and civilized versus barbaric, we also ask, what is society’s accountability towards survivors of honour-based violence — especially those who have been targeted or expelled from the family, community, or nation for their “dishonourable” quest for social, cultural, or sexual autonomy? indeed, gendered subjects — women, queer men and women, and transgendered people — who are targets of family and community violence in a racist context tend to be erased or inadvertently counterpoised to family, community, religion, and culture when critical feminist researchers and practitioners focus only on context and not on the intersecting markers that contribute to the violence they may experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 6  we do not present this special issue as an all-encompassing discussion of violence against racialized women and girls or as a compendium of the varieties of racialized, sexualized, and gendered violence experienced in canada. indeed, this special issue about race, honour, culture, and violence against women in south asian canadian communities is proffered as an entry point to a wider, multilayered discussion about race, culture, gender, and violence. it hopes to intensify a debate on gendered violence that could tie in with analysis and commentary on individual killings in family-related sites, murders of racialized women and girls in public sites, and other forms of violence against women and girls in society. such a debate would explicate, for example, the discursive and material linkages between the high level of media attention towards the deaths of young south asian and muslim women and girls who are victims of “honour killings” (haque, 2010; korteweg & yurdakul, 2010; mucina, 2018) and the glaring lack of media interest in the more than 4,000 indigenous women in canada who have been murdered or gone missing since 1980 (tasker, 2016), whose stories have been silenced by comparison (national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, 2019; native women’s association of canada, 2009). the inadequate recognition on the part of the state and the media of these unsolved murders, deaths, and disappearances of indigenous women is a vital aspect of all discussions related to gender-based violence against women, girls, and lgbtq2ia+ people, if we are to develop a complex, multifaceted, feminist understanding of women and violence. recognizing our own complex entry points into current colonial structures, it is important to acknowledge that our fight against racism and sexism in migrant communities comes at a cost for indigenous communities. racialized immigrants often enter this settler colonial system to gain rights, while resisting and fighting the racism, patriarchy, and sexism they experience from the minute they arrive. yet, to engage the state about access, rights, and acknowledgement is indeed asking for acceptance from a colonial system created through the genocide and dispossession of indigenous people and land (tuck & yang, 2012). how do migrant women and girls converse with indigenous women, girls, and communities who are fighting for sovereignty while dismantling colonial systems of genocide and dispossession? this question has not been fully grappled with in this special issue: these discussions are often on the periphery as we live and engage with colonial systems in segregated community spaces that divide and conquer through “band-aid” solutions. these colonial structures rely on divisions created on the basis of race, class, and gender to maintain white supremacy and settler colonial occupation of unceded lands across the nation. breaking down these pillars of colonialism requires immigrant and racialized communities to confront the allure that comes from emulating white supremacy and gaining privilege through capitalist desires and benefits in the form of funding, rights, and freedom for some but not all. this issue encourages the reader to consider how to understand the landscape that south asian canadian women and girls are confronting, while also asking critical questions about the wider settler colonial system in which we all participate as we fight gender-based violence. so, with humility and acknowledgment of the work our indigenous sisters engage in to dismantle colonialism and uphold their traditional knowledges while surviving the onslaught of violence perpetuated by the state, we take up space international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 7  with this special issue to bring attention to racialized and gendered violence against south asian canadian women and girls. article highlights the authors in this volume speak from and to a wide range of individual and collective experiences and subjectivities, and theorize notions of honour and racialized bodies, and of culture, sexuality, and violence in unique ways. we include academics, community workers, cultural activists, artists, and first-voice survivors who share the complexities of honour-based violence while offering insights into how they worked to address the systems that perpetuate cultural racism towards racialized bodies. as shared in the beginning of this introduction, the seeds planted after aqsa parvez’s death stirred much emotion and action among south asian canadian women and girls in toronto. similarly, many voices in the social service sector stood up against the cultural racism that permeated the conservative government of the day and the policies and practices that emerged. in the post-9/11 world, where those who are brown, muslim, and from the east are often vilified and policed, the authors in this special issue all engage with the systems that perpetuate sentiments of cultural racism against south asian canadians, and invite surveillance of women and girls and their families in that community. all the authors draw on scholarship and research to investigate meaningful questions about the role of culture in honour-based violence and how policies and practices affect south asian canadian girls, women, families, and communities, and ultimately shape the kind of support and services we in the service sector provide to this population. many of the authors are not speaking to child and youth practitioners in particular, but to all state-level actors who work with children, youth, families, and communities, examining our activities as practitioners working in diverse and multiracial contexts across canada. it is time to bring diverse stories to frontline work. for those who are new to discourses about honour-based violence, forced marriage, and how these intersect with gender-based violence, this special issue will ask you to consider a number of questions presented by each author. in the first paper we offer in this collection, mandeep kaur mucina writes from the location of a second-generation punjabi canadian woman living in canada. working with conceptual frames that attempt to dismantle current discourses surrounding honour-related violence, mucina weaves in letters to south asian canadian women and girls and the wider south asian canadian community. her aim is to engage with discourses of honour that have had a silencing effect for women and girls from south asian canadian communities who have experienced honour-related violence. she unpacks some of the ways honour works in the lives of women like her, exploring the polemical pressures they face. on the one end, there is a colonial, racist gaze on the lives of these women, who are deemed to need saving from their “barbaric” cultures; on the other end, there are women and girls experiencing honour-related violence who silence their stories. mucina skilfully complicates honour, called izzat in punjabi; she explores the conventional meaning of honour as a merely oppressive tool and sheds light on its multiple dimensions. she makes a case international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 8  for “coming to voice” and pays special homage to women whose lives have been lost or impacted by honour-related violence and to those who are otherwise affected by it. she ends with a collective letter written by survivors of honour-based violence that speaks to the powerful ways women and girls demand space to express the complex ways they have reclaimed their relationship to izzat and to their bodies as they heal from the trauma of expulsion from their families and communities. sherene h. razack’s article unmasks the powerful ways in which global media operates to crystallize and construct the image of the “barbaric”, “backward”, “violent”, “uncivil” racial “others” who perpetrate violence against racialized women of indian, middle eastern, and muslim origins. razack is cautiously uncertain about the value of a culturally specific understanding of honour-based violence in law. she says, “one thing that all patriarchies produce: a proportion of violent, out-of-control men, and sometimes families, who do their killing of women in culturally specific ways” (p. 44). she examines what she argues is a misplaced emphasis on a legal response in relation to well-known cases of honour-based violence against women, specifically the aqsa parvez murder and the shafia family murders, and instead argues for a community-based response that is multilayered and culturally nuanced. when communicating information pertaining to “honour”-based crimes, razack states that racist “cultural details are really part of a pedagogy, intending to convey to canadians a message of their racial and cultural superiority with respect to the accused” (pp. 41–42). she makes the case that effective anti-violence work would recognize the way that racism and patriarchy intersect. she advocates for social service delivery frameworks that include an antiracist focus and training, which she asserts can produce substantive solutions to converging patriarchies (eastern and western) that are violent towards women. in a reprint of her 2015 article2, amina jamal critiques both eurocentric scholars and postcolonial feminists for reinscribing a dichotomy that renders muslim women as either “modern” secular subjects or “pre-modern” religious subjects. mindful of the racist orientalist gaze, she carefully confronts sexuality-related honour violence against women in canada and pakistan, both theoretically and empirically. she opens the article by presenting critiques of liberal postcolonial feminist and other logics that construct the binary of the “backward”, pious, muslim woman or the “modern” (and more liberal and secular) muslim woman victim-subject. taking a faith-based, though not theological, feminist approach, she unpacks the idea that islam forces sexual repression. included in jamal’s analysis is sexuality-related violence experienced by those of lgbtq2ia+ (nonheteronormative) identities. jamal says that muslim women are situated in locations which crave intersections that are not currently considered in literature and theology. this craving produces what she names “transgressive piety” for those who are struggling to remain in their faith community. she develops this concept by drawing on examples from islamic history, showing that transgression is constitutive of a model of islamic piety and is within rather than outside the faith tradition. the author’s focus on transgressive piety is especially important for 2jamal’s article is reprinted with permission from a. jamal (2015), “piety, transgression, and the feminist debate on muslim women: resituating the victim-subject of honor-related violence from a transnational lens”, signs: journal of women in culture and society, 41(1), pp. 55–79. it appears here for the first time in an open-access journal. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 9  muslim women who do not wish to reject their faith but instead wish to work from within their religious identity to assert their dignity, rights, and sense of belonging. salina abji and anna korteweg ask whether there is utility in a culturally specific understanding of honourand gender-based violence, tracing the shifts in policy from a conservative government concerned with what it termed “barbaric cultural practices” to the current liberal one that erases culture from gender-based violence. the authors take the position that culture does, in fact, play a role within both majority and minority communities, but that it does different work in different contexts and needs to be treated with nuance. they write that culture is about “the everyday meaning-making processes and practices that shape women’s experiences” (p. 84). wendy aujla engages directly with the criminal justice system and how that system understands and responds to honour-based violence, including forced marriages. for the study presented here, she interviewed police officers and civilians in alberta police agencies. using a written vignette of a young woman to illustrate a scenario of forced marriage, she engages in conversations with the police officers and civilians to determine how they would recognize and respond to honour-based violence in their work. aujla’s work unpacks the role of the police in the lives of women, girls, and their families and offers insights for advocates on what constitutes safety in the eyes of the police. deepa mattoo and sydele merrigan provide an overview and critical analysis of bill s-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act of 2015. this act came into effect post-9/11 under a conservative government and helped to shape culturally violent narratives of muslim and immigrant communities in canada and their families. mattoo and merrigan blame a complicity among multiple actors — community, community leaders, family, individuals, institutions, policymakers, and legislators — for perpetuating such violence and provide policy recommendations to address gaps in the service system and other support structures. mattoo and merrigan’s paper emphasizes that the knowledge and expertise of racialized women survivors and activists must be integral to, rather than merely a context for, measures and actions to address violence against women. unless this is done, they argue, state attempts to address violence against racialized women will reiterate the colonial legacy that deprived racialized women of rights and dignity and served to bolster power differences between and within communities. we end with a reflective piece, not research based, that offers more of a conceptual understanding of honour-based violence. kelly train’s paper offers a personal account of working within the education system to engage with postsecondary students on the consideration of culture. train positions herself as a sociology instructor in downtown toronto; she has taught a course on family violence for over a decade. she draws from her years of experience with a diverse group of students in the classroom and from themes that emerged when discussing “honour-based violence” and violence against women in general. she notes that racialized muslim students, as well as white students, see islam and islamic cultures as more patriarchal than the west in terms of violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 10  towards women. at the same time, they view western patriarchal forms of violence against women as less extreme and as the product of individual behaviour, rather than being systemic. train discusses how she unpacks the students’ perceptions with them, asking important critical questions and reminding them that violence against women is found in all patriarchal cultures, including western societies. additionally, she notes, no patriarchal culture can be regarded as not oppressive of women; instead, each applies oppression and violence in its own way. we, the editors, hope these deconstructions and reconstructions of “honour killing” will clear a space for interdisciplinary discussions and debates about racialized and gendered forms of violence that connect the private and public lives of children, youth, families, and communities. we acknowledge the limited and partial nature of our work and thank in advance those researchers, activists, and artists who will take this discussion further in the future. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 11  references abu-lughod, l. (2010). seductions of the “honor” crime. differences: journal of feminist cultural studies, 22(1), 17–63. doi:10.1215/10407391-1218238 fellows, m. l., & razack, s. (1998). the race to innocence: confronting hierarchical relations among women. the journal of gender, race & justice, 1, 335–351. grewal, i. (1999). women’s rights as human rights: feminist practices, global feminism and human rights regimes in transnationality. citizenship studies, 3(3), 337–354. doi:10.1080/13621029908420719 grewal, i. (2013). outsourcing patriarchy: feminist encounters, transnational mediations, and the crime of “honour killings.” international feminist journal of politics, 15(1), 1–19. doi:10.1080/14616742.2012.755352 haque, e. (2010). ). homegrown, muslim and other: tolerance, secularism, and the limits of multiculturalism. social identities, 16(1), 79–101. doi:10.1080/13504630903465902 jamal, a. (2015). piety, transgression and the feminist debate on muslim women: transnationalizing the victim-subject of honor-related violence. signs: journal of women in culture and society, 41(1), 55–79. doi:10.1086/681771 jiwani, y. (2014). a clash of discourses: femicides or honour killings? in m. eid. & k. h. karim (eds.), re-imagining the other (pp. 121–152). palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137403667_7 korteweg, a., & yurdakul, g. (2010). religion, culture, and the politicization of honour-related violence: a critical analysis of media and policy debates in western europe and north america. united nations research institute for social development. mahmood, s. (2005). politics of piety: the islamic revival and the feminist subject. princeton university press. mucina, m. k. (2018). exploring the role of “honour” in son preference and daughter deficit within the punjabi diaspora in canada. canadian journal of development studies, 39(3), 426–442. doi:10.1080/02255189.2018.1450736 mucina, m. k. (2018). daughters of honour: navigating and resisting honour-related violence in the diaspora. federation of community social services of bc research to practice network. https://fcssbc.ca/sf-docs/r2p/2018_mucina.pdf najmabadi, a. (2008). teaching and research in unavailable intersections. in j. w. scott (ed.), women’s studies on the edge (pp. 69–80). duke university press. national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. (2019). reclaiming power and place: the final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 1–12 12  native women’s association of canada. (2009, march). voices of our sisters in spirit: a report to families and communities (2nd ed.). https://www.nwac.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/nwac_voices-of-our-sisters-in-spirit_2nd-edition_march2009.pdf olwan, d. m. (2014). ‘no place in canada’: triumphant discourses, murdered women, and the ‘honour crime’. in a. k. gill, c. strange, & k. roberts. (eds.), ‘honour’ killing and violence (pp. 218–236). palgrave macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137289568_11 razack, s. (2003). a violent culture or culturalized violence? feminist narratives of sexual violence against south asian women. studies in practical philosophy, 3(1), 80–104. doi:10.5840/studpracphil2003317 razack, s. h. (2004). imperilled muslim women, dangerous muslim men and civilized europeans: legal and social responses to forced marriages. feminist legal studies, 12, 129– 174. doi:10.1023/b:fest.0000043305.66172.92 razack, s. h. (2007). the ‘shari´a law debate’ in ontario: the modernity/premodernity distinction in legal efforts to protect women from culture. feminist legal studies, 15(1), 3– 32. doi:10.1007/s10691-006-9050-x razack, s. h. (2008). casting out: the eviction of muslims from western law and politics. university of toronto press. rogan, m. (2008, december). girl interrupted: the brief life of aqsa parvez. toronto life magazine. spivak, g. c. (1996). diasporas old and new: women in the transnational world. textual practice, 10(2), 245–269. doi:10.1080/09502369608582246 spivak, g. c. (2005). use and abuse of human rights. boundary 2, 32(1), 131–189. doi:10.1215/01903659-32-1-131 tasker, j. p. (2016, february 16). confusion reigns over number of missing murdered indigenous women. cbc news. retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mmiw-4000hajdu-1.3450237 thobani, s (2000). closing the nation's doors to immigrant women: the restructuring of canadian immigration policy. atlantis, 24(2), 16–26. tuck, e., & yang, k. w. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1–40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630 weldon, b. (2010). restoring lost “honour”: retrieving face and identity, removing shame, and controlling the familial cultural environment through “honor” murder. journal of alternative perspectives in the social sciences, 2(1), 380–398. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321281 editorial: the transition to adulthood from care in canada varda r. mann-feder abstract: this introduction to the special issue provides an overview of the status of transitions from care in canada. currently, few statistics are collected on youth in and from care and regional disparities contribute to a comparatively low level of services overall, as well as a fragmented approach to policies outlining the rights of those who have grown up in government care. the contributions in the issue exemplify the growing interest in care leaving research and theory building in canada, as well as the significant advocacy provided by care-experienced youth leaders , all of which augur well for the future of care leaving across the country. keywords: transitions to adulthood from care, care leaving, canada varda r. mann-feder phd is a professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, room ve-223, 7141 sherbrooke street w., montreal, qc h4b 1r6. email: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 2 about 6,000 young canadians leave substitute care every year when services end (bowie et al., 2021). indeed, that number may be an underestimate, as neither federal nor provincial governments in canada consistently collect data on youth in and from care (trocmé et al., 2016), and even when data is collected, reporting methods differ (saint-girons et al., 2020). young people in this country are placed into care when their biological families have been judged unable to care for them by the standards of provincial and territorial youth protection legislation. they end up in kinship care, foster homes, group homes, or residential placement, but only until they “age out” of placement services as mandated by age thresholds that are in force in each jurisdiction. while overall statistics are lacking, it has been well documented that canadian youth from care face enormous obstacles as they transition into adulthood. up to 80% of these young people have special needs and face housing insecurity, early pregnancy and parenthood, poor health and mental health, and criminal justice system involvement at much higher rates than their age-mates (kovarikova, 2017). youth from care are half as likely as other canadians to attend post-secondary school (bounajm et al., 2014), and are significantly overrepresented among homeless youth in this country (nichols et al., 2017). every province and territory in canada has its own system of care and its own child welfare legislation (doucet & mann-feder, 2021). the age at which youth can no longer stay in care varies among jurisdictions, as does the extent of available after-care support (van breda et al., 2020). young people leave care in canada between the ages of 18 and 21, and while some are entitled to help well into their 20s, others receive virtually no support even if they have been wards of the state for most of their growing-up years. in this way, the transition to adulthood from care in canada is marked by significant territorial injustice. of concern is that both indigenous young people and visible minority groups are grossly overrepresented in the canadian care systems (bowie et al., 2021); sukumaran, 2021), and canada has been subject to criticism from the united nations committee on the rights of the child for its poor track record in relation to child welfare (bernstein, 2016; bounajm et al., 2014). how does canada compare to other countries regarding youth transitioning from care? in 2019, canada was one of 36 countries that participated in an international comparative survey, conducted by strahl et al. (2020), that documented programs and policies in relation to the transition from care to adulthood. the results were concerning. while canada was the fifth richest country in the sample, regional disparities contributed to a comparatively low level of programs and services overall, and a relatively fragmented approach to policies outlining the rights of careexperienced young people. the majority of the countries surveyed (68%) provided extended care for young people so they can remain in placement until 21 or older. in canada, extended care is only officially possible in newfoundland, in nova scotia, and for some youth in foster homes in quebec (van breda et al., 2020), although there is some evidence of informal arrangements whereby some foster parents keep youth in their homes even in the absence of compensation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 3 likewise, the extent to which care leavers are entitled to transitional housing, education and employment support, and therapy varies greatly across canada, and services and programs are often subject to restrictive eligibility criteria that cannot be met by all youth transitioning from placement (sansone et al., 2020). some other countries in the global north, however, have defined these programs and services as universal entitlements for all who leave care (strahl et al., 2020). these entitlements are increasingly framed as rights and make provisions for a full range of supports and services that youth leaving care need and want, without exclusions or special application processes. in addition, a significant percentage of other countries have adopted legislative frameworks at the federal level to define entitlements for youth leaving care, so that in other places where youth protection is administered on a regional level, as it is in canada, legal frameworks are in place to ensure equity for all care leavers (strahl et al., 2020). the current status of research and publication on transitions out of care in canada in part due to the absence of reliable baseline data on children and youth in care, and the poor level of documentation of programs and services that do exist across canada, there has been little research “on the efficacy of child welfare services … and limited evidence of new policies and programs” (trocmé et al., 2016, abstract). ongoing research tends not to be published in peer reviewed journals: as much as half of the research on transitions to adulthood from care in canada is accessible only through the grey literature (shubert, 2019). while this reflects a strong interest among community-based organizations and government departments in using research to promote better services for youth leaving care, many have documented the need for developing a “research agenda to move the canadian research on youth in and out of care forward in a cohesive fashion” (shubert, 2019, p. 5). to date, much of the advocacy for youth leaving care in canada draws on statistics and findings from the united states and the united kingdom (kovarikova, 2017). at the same time, prior to the early 80s, little attention was paid to youth leaving care in canada (sukumaran, 2021). one hopeful sign is that the number of academic researchers engaging in the study of transitions out of care in canada has grown rapidly over the last 30 years. a summary of 75 reports issued between 1987 and 2020 yielded 435 different evidence-based recommendations for improving outcomes for youth aging out of care in canada (doucet & national council of youth in care advocates, 2020). as of this writing, canada has the largest group of members in the international network on transitions to adulthood from care (intrac; van breda, personal communication, 2022), a 20-year-old consortium that brings together care-leaving researchers from across the world to promote collaboration, dissemination of research, and advocacy in relation to policy and program development (storo, personal communication, 2022). in this issue the development of cantrac, the canadian chapter of intrac, provided the impetus for this special issue. this group of researchers from across the country is actively engaged in knowledge creation in relation to youth transitions to adulthood from care in canada, and it is their work that is primarily featured here. this issue provides an excellent representation of the diversity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 4 of methods currently in use and the range of topics that merit investigation in relation to youth leaving care in canada. the researchers featured here are part of an emerging generation of scholars who are at the forefront of research and advocacy promoting positive transitions to adulthood for youth in care in canada. the issue begins with a literature review by leal-ferman, weight, and latimer that brings together accounts from both the academic and grey literature to summarize the current state of programs and services for youth leaving care in the four largest provinces of canada: quebec, ontario, alberta, and british columbia. the second article, by sundly, keating, effiong, and saif, provides an overview of the neuroscientific and economic analysis that has served to minimize investment in supports for the transition to early adulthood. the authors suggest that findings from neuroscience provide strong evidence for extending substitute care well into early adulthood. in the next contribution, marion, rozefort, and tchuindibi explore, through biographical interviews, the critical role of youth aspirations in promoting educational advancement. they present current research findings regarding interventions that encourage young people in care to invest in their education, in turn promoting better outcomes in adulthood. the fourth article, by keller, builds on the author’s clinical experience with youth from care to document the struggles many face in making good financial decisions, and provides a strong case for developing both more individualized approaches to intervention in relation to financial anxiety, and more research into a domain that has a role in determining multiple levels of well-being in adulthood. turcotte and lanctôt report on a qualitative study that expands our understanding of the stigma faced by careexperienced individuals and documents the strategies they employ to manage this stigma, with significant implications for practice. the following article, from nichols and malenfant, documents young people’s experiences of housing precarity and homelessness and employs an institutional ethnography that explores the lived knowledge of participants regarding various public sector organizations and processes, and makes recommendations for how our overall approach to supporting youth transitions from care needs to go beyond individualizing and consider structural factors. lastly, doucet, bach, and christian provide a report from the field that describes an innovative, canada-wide advocacy initiative by a group of young leaders with lived experience: the national council of youth in care advocates. in a relatively short time, the council has disseminated their equitable standards for transitions to adulthood for youth in care report across the country, with a built-in evaluation model that promotes accountability and quality assurance in relation to policies, programs, and services for youth transitioning to adulthood from care in canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 5 references bernstein, m. (2016). honouring the twenty-fifth anniversary of the united nations convention on the rights of the child: transforming child welfare in canada into a stronger child rightsbased system. in h. montgomery, d. badry, d. fuch, & t. kikulwe ( eds.), transforming child welfare: interdisciplinary practices, field education and research (pp. 3–26). university of regina press. bounajm, f., beckman, k., & thériault, l. (2014). success for all: investing in the future of canadian children in care [briefing]. conference board of canada. https://untilthelastchild.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/5949-success-for-all-br-rev.pdf bowie, a., hamid, j., & murphy, c. (2021). aging out without a safety net: addressing the economic insecurity of young women aging out of the child welfare system. adoption council canada. https://www.permanency.ca/aging-out-without-a-safety-net doucet, m. & mann-feder, v. (2021). supporting equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care in canada [policy brief]. child welfare league of canada (cwlc). https://7f9b59afaf92-41cd-8e6caa2870f170de.filesusr.com/ugd/f54667_c48b4dd596414b2088f9f18ea43407c6.pdf doucet, m., & national council of youth in care advocates. (2020). a long road paved with solutions: ‘aging out’ of care reports in canada (1987–2020). key recommendations and timelines. child welfare league of canada. https://f54667c7-b33a-4709-8cba66716a068b2d.usrfiles.com/ugd/f54667_5affe7ad46fe40448cd15cda8e390e80.pdf kovarikova, j. (2017). exploring youth outcomes after aging out of care. provincial advocate children and youth, ontario. https://cwrp.ca/publications/exploring-youth-outcomes-afteraging-out-care nichols, n., schwan, k., gaetz.s., redman, m., french, d., kidd, s. a., & o’grady, b. (2017). child welfare and youth homelessness in canada: a proposal for action. canadian observatory on homelessness prevention. https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/childwelfare-and-youth-homelessness-canada-proposal-action saint-girons, m., trocmé, n., esposito, t., & fallon, b. (2020). children in out-of-home care in canada in 2019 [cwrp information sheet #211e]. canadian child welfare portal. https://cwrp.ca/publications/children-out-home-care-canada-2019 sansone, g., fallon, b., miller, s. p., birken, c., denburg, a., jenkins, j., levine, j., mishna, f., sokolowski, m., & stewart., s. (2020). children aging out of care. policy bench, fraser mustard institute of human development, university of toronto. https://hdl.handle.net/1807/107931 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 1–6 6 shubert, a. (2019). supporting youth aging out of government care with their transition to college. the organizational improvement plan at western university (no. 100). https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/oip/100 strahl, b., van breda, a. d., mann-feder, v., & schröer, w. (2020) a multinational comparison of care-leaving policy and legislation. journal of international comparative social policy, 37(1), 1–16. doi:10.1017/ics.2020.26 sukumaran, s. (2021). improving outcomes for youth transitioning out of care: an analysis of canada’s transition programs [major research paper, university of ottawa]. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/42640 trocmé, n., roy, c., & esposito, t. (2016). building research capacity in child welfare in canada. child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 10, article 16. doi:10.1186/s13034-016-0103-x van breda, a. d., munro, e. r., gilligan, r., anghel, r., harder, a., incarnato, m., mann-feder, v., rafaeli, t., stohler, r., & storø, j. (2020). extended care: global dialogue on policy, practice and research. children and youth services review, 119, article 105596. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105596 unfilled promise: the differential return of early skills among high risk high achievers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 unfulfilled promise: the differential return on early skills for high-risk high achievers daniel potter and jeremy redford abstract: the early academic skills of children tend to serve as precursors for later academic successes or struggles. being exposed to multiple risk factors early in life (e.g., poverty, unsafe or impoverished neighborhood conditions, and language minority status) is typically associated with having fewer skills at kindergarten entry, but some children come to school from adverse conditions displaying advanced academic skills. in this study, we investigate high-risk high achievers in the united states context (i.e., children who arrive at school [~5 years old] from high-risk environments displaying high-levels of academic skills) to determine if their achievement trajectories remain elevated, like those of their high-achieving peers, or if they take a different trajectory more reflective of their high-risk conditions. we find that across nine years of formal schooling, the average math and reading scores of high-risk, high-achieving students were more similar to the scores of students who were initially medium achievers at school entry and less similar to other high achievers who entered school with fewer early contextual risk factors. our results suggest that early exposure to numerous risks can flatten children’s learning trajectories, even if they present with advanced skills. keywords: early childhood; academic outcomes; social disadvantage; cumulative risk daniel potter (the corresponding author) is a senior researcher at the american institutes for research, 1000 thomas jefferson st, nw, washington, dc 20007. email: dpotter@air.org jeremy redford is a researcher at the american institutes for research, 1000 thomas jefferson st, nw, washington, dc 20007. email: jredford@air.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 671 in the united states, recent federal policies focusing on the benefits of early childhood education reflect an understanding that investment in the early stages of children’s lives produces better life outcomes. indeed, research focused on the american context shows that the differences in the academic skills of children as they begin school are predictive of learning and achievement trajectories throughout elementary-, middle-, and high-school (bodovski & youn, 2012; cheadle, 2008; magnuson, ruhm, & waldfogel, 2007; sabol & pianta, 2012; schoon, bynner, joshi, wiggins, & sacker, 2002). entering school with more advanced skills usually results in continued success, whereas the opposite tends to presage academic struggles (morgan, farkas, & wu, 2009). investigating further this phenomenon, known as academic inertia, research has begun to consider whether the pay-off from early skills varies from student to student or among disciplines. to this end, studies in the united states have found that math skills at kindergarten entry better predict later reading, math, and science scores than do reading skills at kindergarten entry (claessens & engel, 2013). while such findings push researchers and practitioners to assess the types of skills that are emphasized early in school, these results do not consider whether all children benefit equally from early academic success. left unaddressed is the possibility that academic inertia varies not only by skill type, but by “type” of child as well. evidence from international research has drawn attention to differences in early academic skills by poverty status (e.g., walker et al., 2007) and by membership in a racial or ethnic minority (heath, rothon, & kilpi, 2008); both patterns are regularly found in the context most relevant for this study — the american system (fryer & levitt, 2004; robinson, 2013). in the united states, poverty and race/ethnicity minority status serve as proxies for the disadvantaged and high-risk circumstances in which many of these children live. their families disproportionately experience issues with food insecurity, living in unsafe neighborhoods, and underemployment (cook & frank, 2008; slack & jensen, 2002). independent of social class and minority status, such risks contribute to experiences that can set into motion disadvantageous processes that tend to result in children from high-risk homes entering school with underdeveloped skills; these gaps often accumulate over time, which may lead to future social inequality (burchinal, roberts, zeisel, hennon, & hooper, 2006; luster & mcadoo, 2008; raver, 2004; sektnan, mcclelland, acock, & morrison, 2010). yet, not all high-risk children arrive at school with the same set of skills, as some have managed to excel in the midst of their challenging conditions (garmezy, 1993; rutter, 1987). children coming to school from backgrounds typified by large numbers of risks while simultaneously displaying unexpectedly high levels of academic skills are at an intersection of competing forces. in one direction, academic inertia would predict from their advanced academic skills that these individuals would progress along a pathway of success. at the same time, and in the opposite direction, high-risk children are handicapped by their early circumstances, which may be expected to undermine the ability of these children to realize their full academic potential. in this regard, high-risk, high-achieving students, while a unique segment of the student population, nevertheless provide an ideal group for the study of whether early academic skills benefit all children equally. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 672 literature review there is increasing evidence that the skills and abilities children begin school with strongly affect their subsequent educational trajectories (bodovski & youn, 2012; cheadle, 2008; hindman, skibbe, miller, & zimmerman, 2010; mcclelland, acock, & morrison, 2006; sabol & pianta, 2012). this is particularly the case in the united states, where children arriving at school with more skills tend continually to add to their advantage, while underperforming children make progress but never quite enough to catch up (domina & saldana, 2012; klugman, 2012; lucas, 2001). the presence of academic inertia has given rise to studies focused on understanding the factors associated with differences in children’s early academic skills, and prior research has repeatedly highlighted the negative consequences associated with living in environments characterized by multiple risks and social disadvantage (alexander, entwisle, & horsey, 1997; cheadle, 2008; duncan, brooks-gunn, & klebanov, 1994). risk, in studies focused on the american context, is understood as a combination of problematic conditions and negative characteristics of the space in which an individual lives that contributes to an “elevated probability of a negative or undesirable outcome in the future” (masten & gewirtz, 2006, p. 24). according to the cumulative risk literature, individual risks by themselves often do not hinder future achievement; however, risks tend to co-occur, and the more risks a child has, the greater likelihood of negative outcomes. the presence or absence of such risks as poverty, single-parent family structure, or parental depressiveness early in life dictates the circumstances in which an individual lives; their presence burdens children with manifold disadvantages. previous research has shown that children who live in disadvantaged contexts defined by large numbers of risks in their daily lives often experience poorer developmental outcomes (adkins, wang, dupre, van den oord, & elder, 2009; cooksey, menaghan, & jekielek, 1997; schoon, parsons, & sacker, 2004). of particular interest for our study is that these children are more likely to experience academic problems than peers from more advantaged backgrounds (i.e., those growing up with fewer risks) (alexander, entwisle, blyth, & mcadoo, 1988; evans & schamberg, 2009; gerard & buehler, 2004; morales & guerra, 2006). all too often, children exposed to numerous risks early in life enter school less prepared (mistry, benner, biesanz, clark, & howes, 2010), which gives rise to lower test scores and grades during the elementary school years (dubow & luster, 1990; morales & guerra, 2006), more absenteeism throughout compulsory schooling (gutman, sameroff, & cole, 2003), taking less rigorous courses in middle and high school (dauber, alexander, & entwisle, 1996), and higher dropout rates in high school (alexander et al., 1997). the schooling experiences of high-risk children epitomize the troubling academic inertia experienced by students who arrive at school with underdeveloped skills. moreover, recent evidence suggests that not all early skills are equal in their association with later educational success. expanding on earlier research that identified the importance of early academic skills for later educational success, researchers have begun to examine whether all skills have the same benefit over time. for example, claessens and engel (2013) looked at children’s kindergarten math and reading achievement and whether each of these early skills similarly predicted later math and reading skills and grade retention. relatively speaking, they found that early math skills were a much stronger predictor of later educational outcomes, and concluded that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 673 curriculums could maximally benefit children by focusing on math skills early in school. these findings thus complicate the naive idea that universally improving children’s early academic skills would have uniform benefits, because not all skills are rewarded equally. however, even if curriculums attempted to target specific math skills in the early years in order to improve children’s later outcomes to the fullest extent possible, the premise of this reform still hinges on the idea that academic skills will benefit all children equally. it overlooks the possibility that the educational returns on early skills not only vary by skill type but may also vary according to the life experiences of the student (e.g., environmental risk exposure rates). children coming from high-risk environments tend to enter school with underdeveloped academic skills, but this is not always the case. despite their circumstances, a portion of children from high-risk environments enter school with stronger academic skills and find themselves at the mercy of two competing influences (mistry et al., 2010). based on academic inertia, high achievers from high-risk environments would be expected to show greater academic success than lowand middle-achieving peers, as their advanced early skills should be perpetuated over time. however, high-risk high-achieving children come from circumstances that are typically detrimental to the development of academic skills, and these early-life conditions may stunt the growth of their educational skills and achievements. high achievers from high-risk environments are found at a particular intersection of early academic skills and social circumstances, thus offering us a chance to examine whether there are differential educational returns to early academic skills for different groups of students. to this end, we seek to answer the following research question: do early academic skills benefit all children equally, or are there differential educational returns resulting from the children’s varying exposure to environmental risks? method to answer our research questions, we used data from the early childhood longitudinal study, kindergarten cohort (ecls-k). the ecls-k is a seven-wave panel study that collected data from a nationally representative sample of over 20,000 children in the united states who attended kindergarten in the fall of 1998. the study subsequently followed children for nine years, until most children had advanced into the eighth grade (tourangeau, nord, le, pollack, & atkins-burnett, 2006). in the united states, formal schooling requirements vary slightly among states, but generally children are required to attend school between the ages of 6 and 17 years, with instruction offered for kindergarten through 12th grade. consequently, the ecls-k provides data tracing students’ schooling experiences for about 80% of the compulsory schooling period and about 70% of the instructional grade levels offered in the u.s. although we will refer to data collection rounds by grade level, not all children were in the same grade for later waves. for example, while we refer to the final round of collection as the eighth-grade wave, this is the modal grade for students at that time, and a small portion of students were actually in seventh grade or lower or ninth grade or higher. the sample was designed as a three-stage stratified random sample, with students nested in schools, which were themselves nested in geographic areas (usually consisting of counties or a collection of counties). data were collected from the children and their parent, teacher, and school administrator, to provide several perspectives regarding children’s family and educational circumstances. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 674 defining high-risk environment high achievers in order to classify children as coming from high-risk family environments and having high levels of achievement at kindergarten entry, we first categorized children according to their risk level. twenty-one risk factors found in children’s early contexts were identified using parent-reported data. examples of risk factors included poverty status, receiving food stamps, family structure instability, overcrowding in the home, residential mobility, and community gang problems (for the full list of risks, see table 1). each risk was coded dichotomously (1 = risk), and summed to create a total count of children’s risks. the average number of environmental risks children entered kindergarten with was 5.5 (sd = 3.98). based on their total environmental risk score, children were separated into three groups, reflecting high(8 or more), medium(3 to 7), or low-risk (2 or less) levels with about 30% of children classified as high, 30% as low, and 40% as medium. next, we used children’s performance on the fall kindergarten direct-assessment of reading, math, and general knowledge skills to classify students according to their achievement level. we explored categorizing high achievers using several different sources of information (e.g., using teacher-reported information on children’s academic competencies in reading and math). however, none of the different sources produced different results than what is found in the current study. rather than rely on any single subject, we opted to rely on a cross-section of performance, and defined children as “high-achieving” if they scored in the top 40th percentile on all three subject-matter assessments (21%), “low-achieving” if they scored in the bottom 40th percentile on all three assessments (22%), and “medium-achieving” otherwise (57%). finally, our risk-achievement groups were created by intersecting the three-level risk classification and three-level achievement classification, creating a 9-group indicator. the risk-achievement classification indicator was converted to a set of dummy variables for analysis, with high-risk high achievers set as the reference group. there were 319 children identified as high achievers who came from a high-risk environment. reading and math trajectories we wanted to examine whether the achievement trajectories of students varied according to their risk and achievement levels when they began school. to measure achievement trajectories we used children’s performance on their math and reading direct-assessments from kindergarten through grade 8. although reading, math, and general knowledge scores were used to define high-achieving students at school entry, we relied on reading and math to measure academic trajectories, because the general knowledge assessment was only administered in the kindergarten and grade 1 waves of the ecls-k. children’s reading and math skills were assessed using a two-stage procedure. in the first stage, all children received a set of comparably difficult questions, called routing questions. based upon performance in the first stage, children were allotted a second series of questions of high, medium, or low difficulty (with the exception of the final wave, which only had a highand low-difficulty second series of questions). item response theory (irt) was used to calculate a score for each subject-matter assessment at each wave. irt uses the pattern of right, wrong, and omitted responses in combination with information on the difficulty and “guess-ability” of each test question to calculate a probability that a child would answer a particular question correctly. this allows children to receive a subset of all assessment questions, but still receive a robust assessment score, just as if they had provided an answer for every item. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 675 control variables additional variables relating to children’s achievement trajectories that we included were sex, age (in years), race/ethnicity, and first-time kindergartener status. table 2 provides the mean and standard deviation for each of the independent, control, and dependent variables, overall and by risk-achievement classification. time our analysis of children’s academic achievement trajectories requires a variable for time, which measures the interval between the assessment occasions. however, the ecls-k has an unbalanced sample design when assessing students, such that during each collection period students were assessed across a period of nearly three months. students tested later in the collection period had received additional days of academic instruction compared to those tested earlier on. in order to account for this design feature, and calculate an unbiased time-measure, child-specific time-lapse values were computed. the grand mean test date of the spring kindergarten assessment was calculated and then used as the zero point from which the childspecific test-dates from later waves were subtracted. the time variable thus captures variability in the initial assessment date (a child assessed prior to the mean assessment date in kindergarten receives a negative value, and a child assessed after receives a positive value), as well as any difference in the number of days between assessment occasions (the number of days between child i’s assessment occasion in a later wave and the assessment date for spring kindergarten is unique to child i). the unit of measurement for time was originally days, but to provide more reasonably sized coefficients, it was converted into years for analysis. missing values multiple imputation via the ice command in stata (statacorp, 2014) which was used to handle missing values for the analysis (royston, 2007). a total of five data sets were imputed using all of the risk items and the independent and dependent variables in the analysis. that is, individual risks were multiply imputed, and the total risk score was computed using the imputed data file. because of the longitudinal nature of the dependent variable, we imputed the data in the person-file format, and then transposed it to the person-period layout for analysis. in order to assess the sensitivity of our results to the multiple imputation process, we tested the models using listwise deletion, and found substantively similar patterns. analysis to address our two research questions, we used hlm mixed-effect growth curve modeling (fitzmaurice, laird, & ware, 2004; raudenbush & bryk, 2002; singer & willett, 2003). hlm growth curve modeling is particularly suited for our study, because it handles the unbalanced design of our data, and also estimates the association between time-invariant covariates (e.g., risk-achievement classification) and change in a time-varying dependent variable (i.e., reading and math scores). two models each were run for reading and math. model 1 includes only the set of risk-achievement classification dummy variables, in order to provide a baseline estimation of any differences in achievement trajectories that may exist; and model 2 added in the control variables for socio-demographic characteristics to determine whether differences in trajectories reflected other characteristics of children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 676 for the hlm growth curve analysis, children’s time-varying assessment measures were estimated at level 1 (n = 90,485), and nested in children at level 2 (n = 18,097). preliminary analyses revealed a non-linear trend in children’s test scores from kindergarten to eighth grade; therefore, all models contain time and time-sq., its squared term, to estimate the convex functional form of children’s growth in reading and math. since we are interested in children’s trajectories, we have our independent and control variables included in the equations predicting the intercept, time, and time-squared, and include a random-effect for time. the full model is presented below: level 1: yti = π0i + π1i (timeti) + π2i (timeti)2 + eti level 2: π0i = β00 + β01 risk-achi + β0p δi + r0i π1i = β10 + β11 risk-achi + β1p δi + r1i π2i = β20 + β21 risk-achi + β2p δi where, in the level-2 equation, risk-ach is the vector of dummy variables for a child’s riskachievement classification at kindergarten, and δ is a vector of socio-demographic controls. the second level-2 equation estimates the level-1 linear time parameter, π1i, and the third level-2 equation estimates the level-1 squared term for time, π2i. the level-2 equations thus model the interaction between the risk-achievement classification of children at kindergarten and the linear and curvilinear association with their reading and math scores. that is, the models are estimating the variability in children’s growth in academic skills by risk-achievement classification. results table 1 contains the mean and standard deviation for each of the risk items used to create the total risk score, reported for the overall sample as well as separated out by risk-achievement classification. as might be expected, the proportion of children having a particular risk was lower for children classified as low-risk than it was for children labeled as medium and high risk. for children classified in the high-risk environment group, each achievement level was proportionally represented in specific types of risks with a few exceptions. specifically, among high-risk environment students: • high-achievers were less likely to be in poverty compared to mediumand lowachievers (34%, 54%, and 65%, respectively); • high-achieving students were less likely to have a parent working less than full time compared to mediumand low-achievers (27%, 33%, and 41%, respectively); • a lower percentage of high-achieving students lived in an overcrowded house compared to mediumand low-achievers (19%, 30%, and 36%, respectively); • high-achievers were less likely to speak a non-english language at home compared to mediumand low-achievers (7%, 23%, and 26%, respectively). the substantive differences in the proportion of children across these four risk factors suggest subtle variations in the risk profiles of high-risk high achievers relative to their high-risk medium-achieving and high-risk low-achieving peers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 677 table 1. average total number of risks and proportion experiencing specific risk factors, by risk-achievement classificiation mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd total number of risks 5.452 3.980 9.751 1.912 10.461 2.201 10.909 2.354 4.452 1.319 4.839 1.394 5.206 1.374 1.005 0.777 1.179 0.771 1.393 0.705 food security 0.209 0.406 0.368 0.483 0.431 0.495 0.469 0.499 0.124 0.330 0.178 0.383 0.200 0.400 0.019 0.136 0.027 0.162 0.036 0.187 afdc 0.073 0.260 0.160 0.367 0.208 0.406 0.253 0.435 0.005 0.070 0.018 0.132 0.028 0.166 0.000 0.005 0.000 0.017 0.000 0.000 food stamps 0.169 0.375 0.312 0.464 0.442 0.497 0.549 0.498 0.017 0.130 0.067 0.250 0.125 0.331 0.001 0.023 0.002 0.042 0.001 0.022 no home computer 0.467 0.499 0.639 0.481 0.763 0.426 0.815 0.388 0.314 0.464 0.472 0.499 0.604 0.489 0.108 0.310 0.175 0.380 0.253 0.435 free/reduced-price lunch 0.481 0.500 0.702 0.458 0.885 0.319 0.945 0.228 0.260 0.439 0.476 0.499 0.639 0.480 0.046 0.210 0.089 0.285 0.180 0.384 poverty status 0.219 0.413 0.335 0.472 0.540 0.499 0.646 0.478 0.041 0.197 0.114 0.318 0.205 0.404 0.009 0.094 0.007 0.083 0.017 0.128 less than full-time work 0.148 0.355 0.265 0.442 0.325 0.469 0.407 0.491 0.076 0.265 0.093 0.290 0.118 0.323 0.019 0.138 0.012 0.107 0.021 0.143 community tensions 0.284 0.451 0.613 0.488 0.560 0.496 0.528 0.499 0.314 0.464 0.247 0.431 0.222 0.416 0.063 0.242 0.051 0.221 0.065 0.247 community drug problem 0.384 0.486 0.785 0.411 0.750 0.433 0.750 0.433 0.413 0.492 0.341 0.474 0.312 0.463 0.043 0.202 0.074 0.262 0.070 0.254 community gang problem 0.365 0.482 0.789 0.409 0.743 0.437 0.728 0.445 0.389 0.488 0.321 0.467 0.284 0.451 0.050 0.218 0.035 0.184 0.042 0.201 community violence 0.141 0.348 0.401 0.491 0.405 0.491 0.415 0.493 0.070 0.255 0.048 0.214 0.034 0.181 0.000 0.009 0.000 0.007 0.000 0.006 community vandalism 0.210 0.408 0.513 0.501 0.515 0.500 0.498 0.500 0.166 0.372 0.137 0.344 0.113 0.317 0.013 0.114 0.015 0.121 0.002 0.044 community crime problem 0.433 0.495 0.876 0.330 0.827 0.378 0.802 0.398 0.522 0.500 0.408 0.492 0.344 0.475 0.076 0.265 0.055 0.229 0.053 0.225 community safety 0.309 0.462 0.506 0.501 0.548 0.498 0.574 0.495 0.261 0.439 0.274 0.446 0.304 0.460 0.098 0.297 0.107 0.310 0.114 0.318 non-traditional family structure 0.399 0.490 0.753 0.432 0.713 0.452 0.740 0.439 0.337 0.473 0.419 0.493 0.441 0.497 0.047 0.212 0.062 0.241 0.063 0.244 family structure instability 0.102 0.303 0.285 0.452 0.183 0.386 0.134 0.340 0.131 0.338 0.129 0.335 0.085 0.279 0.007 0.081 0.009 0.095 0.002 0.034 residential mobility 0.313 0.464 0.517 0.500 0.456 0.498 0.408 0.492 0.385 0.487 0.343 0.475 0.297 0.457 0.146 0.353 0.137 0.344 0.142 0.350 overcrowdedness 0.191 0.393 0.194 0.396 0.297 0.457 0.364 0.481 0.133 0.339 0.169 0.375 0.233 0.423 0.067 0.251 0.093 0.290 0.120 0.325 non-english language in home 0.121 0.326 0.073 0.259 0.230 0.421 0.262 0.440 0.048 0.214 0.109 0.311 0.182 0.386 0.012 0.109 0.028 0.165 0.034 0.181 hours in non-parental care 0.213 0.410 0.285 0.452 0.288 0.453 0.248 0.432 0.237 0.426 0.254 0.435 0.205 0.404 0.108 0.311 0.121 0.326 0.090 0.287 parental depressiveness 0.220 0.414 0.379 0.486 0.351 0.477 0.371 0.483 0.210 0.407 0.220 0.414 0.230 0.421 0.074 0.261 0.080 0.271 0.088 0.283 n = 4,660 overall high risk, high achieving high risk, medium achieving high risk, low achieving medium risk, high achieving medium risk, medium achieving n = 18,097 n = 319 n = 2,876 n = 2,115 n = 1,421 n = 1,462 n = 2,044 n = 2,846 n = 354 medium risk, low achieving low risk, high achieving low risk, medium achieving low risk, low achieving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 678 table 2 provides the mean and standard deviation for all the variables included in the analysis for the overall sample, as well as by risk-achievement classification. briefly, children who entered school as high-risk high achievers continued to outperform their high-risk lowachieving and high-risk medium-achieving peers in both math and reading; however, high-risk high achievers scored the lowest of the high achievers. that is, high-risk high achievers scored lower than their low-risk high-achieving and medium-risk high-achieving peers in kindergarten, and this gap grew between kindergarten and eighth grade. in fact, by the eighth-grade wave, the average reading and math scores of high-risk high achievers were comparable to the reading and math scores of children who began school as low-risk, medium achievers. these descriptive patterns suggest that high-risk high achievers are able to maintain part of their academic advantage during the elementary and middle school years, especially relative to other high-risk peers who were low and medium-achievers in kindergarten. nevertheless, part of their advantage appears to wane in the later years. next, we examine these relationships in a multivariable framework table 2. mean and standard deviation for reading, math, socio-demographics, family resources, and child's temperament, by risk-achievement classification mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd reading kindergarten 45.61 13.65 56.94 14.34 42.74 9.27 34.89 6.74 58.15 17.00 44.75 9.70 35.76 6.80 59.85 17.53 46.23 10.10 37.33 6.13 grade 1 75.75 23.77 92.97 22.77 69.88 18.09 54.84 15.04 97.18 23.37 74.90 18.69 58.12 15.87 100.64 24.05 78.94 18.80 61.68 15.30 grade 3 124.43 28.47 141.40 22.17 115.96 23.22 95.44 22.37 150.28 20.78 124.95 22.81 101.21 22.96 153.62 19.51 131.83 21.75 108.20 21.61 grade 5 147.44 26.88 161.81 21.33 139.12 22.45 120.22 22.60 171.01 18.67 148.46 21.86 125.98 23.09 173.61 17.43 155.00 20.42 133.38 21.31 grade 8 166.01 28.43 176.63 23.47 156.11 25.44 138.35 25.35 187.26 19.09 167.30 24.12 146.20 26.75 191.28 17.10 175.85 22.04 156.78 23.88 math kindergarten 35.83 11.88 45.88 10.54 33.07 8.66 24.61 6.12 48.32 11.64 35.19 8.59 25.52 6.00 49.54 12.04 37.19 8.59 27.13 5.81 grade 1 60.35 18.02 72.30 15.58 56.36 13.59 44.12 12.71 76.81 15.93 59.72 14.22 45.83 12.44 79.10 16.45 63.46 15.09 48.00 12.34 grade 3 97.11 24.77 111.42 19.08 90.63 20.45 73.64 19.22 118.34 18.49 97.17 20.67 77.41 19.20 121.80 18.17 103.03 20.48 82.06 19.73 grade 5 121.06 25.28 133.67 18.93 114.67 21.84 96.95 22.30 140.70 17.18 121.97 21.47 101.07 22.48 144.10 16.33 128.21 20.28 106.99 22.05 grade 8 138.38 22.65 147.52 17.59 132.06 20.13 117.30 20.92 154.52 15.40 139.27 19.70 121.88 21.40 157.64 14.35 145.78 17.90 128.45 20.29 socio-demographics female 0.49 0.50 0.55 0.50 0.50 0.50 0.47 0.50 0.52 0.50 0.48 0.50 0.45 0.50 0.51 0.50 0.48 0.50 0.44 0.50 age (years) 6.23 0.37 6.43 0.36 6.27 0.38 6.15 0.37 6.38 0.34 6.23 0.37 6.09 0.34 6.32 0.35 6.17 0.36 6.02 0.34 race/ethnicity white 0.57 0.49 0.56 0.50 0.30 0.46 0.19 0.39 0.77 0.42 0.60 0.49 0.43 0.50 0.88 0.33 0.81 0.39 0.73 0.44 black 0.16 0.36 0.22 0.41 0.29 0.45 0.34 0.47 0.06 0.23 0.14 0.34 0.18 0.39 0.02 0.14 0.05 0.22 0.09 0.28 hispanic 0.19 0.39 0.16 0.36 0.31 0.46 0.37 0.48 0.10 0.30 0.18 0.38 0.30 0.46 0.05 0.22 0.08 0.27 0.12 0.33 asian 0.03 0.17 0.02 0.14 0.03 0.17 0.02 0.13 0.03 0.18 0.04 0.19 0.03 0.16 0.03 0.16 0.03 0.16 0.02 0.14 other 0.05 0.22 0.05 0.21 0.06 0.24 0.09 0.29 0.04 0.20 0.05 0.21 0.05 0.23 0.03 0.16 0.03 0.16 0.04 0.19 first-time kindergartener 0.95 0.21 0.92 0.28 0.93 0.25 0.95 0.22 0.95 0.23 0.95 0.21 0.97 0.17 0.96 0.21 0.97 0.16 0.97 0.17 total number risks 5.45 3.98 9.75 1.91 10.46 2.20 10.91 2.35 4.45 1.32 4.84 1.39 5.21 1.37 1.01 0.78 1.18 0.77 1.39 0.71 n = 2,876 n = 2,044n = 1,421n = 319n = 18,097 low risk, medium achieving high risk, low achieving medium risk, low achieving low risk, low achieving n = 354n = 1,462n = 2,115 n = 2,846 overall high risk, high achieving medium risk, high achieving low risk, high achieving high risk, medium achieving medium risk, medium achieving n = 4,660 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 679 table 3 provides results from the hlm analyses examining the association between riskachievement classification and children’s reading and math achievement trajectories from kindergarten through eighth grade. the coefficients presented under the row labeled “intercept” are the estimates for children’s average test scores on the spring kindergarten assessment; the coefficients under the row labeled “time” are the estimates of the annual linear growth in test scores between kindergarten and eighth grade; and the coefficients under the row labeled “timesq.” are the estimates of the non-linear growth in test scores between kindergarten and eighth grade. finally, to help convert the many numbers in these tables to a more readilycomprehensible format, figures 1 and 2 present line graphs of the predicted values for students based upon the reading and math models, respectively. the descriptive statistics reported in table 2 indicated that high-risk high achievers started school with test scores slightly lower than their lowand medium-risk, high-achieving peers, but that small initial difference in test scores grew over time. this pattern is reaffirmed in model 1 in table 3 of the reading analysis. model 2 controlled for a handful of sociodemographic traits that prior research has shown are associated with children’s academic achievement, and have also served as markers of social disadvantage (e.g., race/ethnicity). after table 3. hlm growth curve regression coefficients predicting trajectory of children's reading and math scores, by risk-achievement classification status reading math model 1 model 2 model 1 model 2 b se b se b se b se intercept reference (high-risk, high-achiever) 59.36 *** 1.13 55.14 *** 1.22 46.66 *** 0.81 43.68 *** 0.87 risk-achievement classification high-risk, medium achiever -16.49 *** 1.18 -16.50 *** 1.20 -13.09 *** 0.85 -12.14 *** 0.84 high-risk, low achiever -25.81 *** 1.17 -25.66 *** 1.21 -21.76 *** 0.87 -20.12 *** 0.86 medium-risk, high achiever 1.61 1.25 1.79 1.24 2.74 ** 0.91 2.47 ** 0.89 medium-risk, medium achiever -13.99 *** 1.14 -13.75 *** 1.14 -11.07 *** 0.81 -10.49 *** 0.80 medium-risk, low achiever -24.35 *** 1.17 -23.95 *** 1.19 -20.83 *** 0.90 -19.44 *** 0.90 low-risk, high achiever 4.04 ** 1.20 4.41 *** 1.20 4.10 *** 0.86 3.92 *** 0.84 low-risk, medium achiever -11.96 *** 1.16 -11.47 *** 1.16 -8.85 *** 0.81 -8.39 *** 0.79 low-risk, low achiever -22.45 *** 1.25 -21.72 *** 1.25 -19.45 *** 0.89 -18.24 *** 0.90 time reference (high-risk, high-achiever) 33.40 *** 0.59 30.78 *** 0.64 26.60 *** 0.44 26.52 *** 0.49 risk-achievement classification high-risk, medium achiever -5.52 *** 0.81 -6.57 *** 0.75 -3.33 *** 0.46 -3.69 *** 0.43 high-risk, low achiever 0.09 0.64 -0.94 0.57 -7.16 *** 0.48 -7.76 *** 0.46 medium-risk, high achiever 2.95 *** 0.63 2.06 ** 0.57 1.72 *** 0.45 1.04 * 0.43 medium-risk, medium achiever -7.17 *** 0.64 -7.66 *** 0.61 -1.49 ** 0.46 -2.45 *** 0.43 medium-risk, low achiever -1.56 * 0.64 -2.07 ** 0.59 -6.11 *** 0.50 -7.37 *** 0.47 low-risk, high achiever 2.76 *** 0.62 2.15 *** 0.57 2.59 *** 0.46 1.62 *** 0.44 low-risk, medium achiever -8.61 *** 0.64 -8.48 *** 0.64 -0.04 0.45 -1.39 ** 0.43 low-risk, low achiever -3.96 *** 0.61 -3.81 *** 0.60 -4.81 *** 0.64 -6.46 *** 0.62 time-sq. reference (high-risk, high-achiever) -2.37 *** 0.07 -2.07 *** 0.07 -1.76 *** 0.05 -1.74 *** 0.06 risk-achievement classification high-risk, medium achiever 0.75 *** 0.10 0.82 *** 0.10 0.38 *** 0.06 0.41 *** 0.05 high-risk, low achiever 0.17 * 0.07 0.24 ** 0.06 0.77 *** 0.05 0.81 *** 0.05 medium-risk, high achiever -0.21 ** 0.07 -0.15 * 0.06 -0.15 ** 0.05 -0.09 0.05 medium-risk, medium achiever 0.82 *** 0.07 0.85 *** 0.07 0.24 *** 0.05 0.31 *** 0.05 medium-risk, low achiever 0.28 ** 0.07 0.31 *** 0.07 0.70 *** 0.06 0.79 *** 0.05 low-risk, high achiever -0.21 ** 0.07 -0.17 ** 0.06 -0.23 *** 0.06 -0.15 ** 0.05 low-risk, medium achiever 0.91 *** 0.07 0.89 *** 0.07 0.12 * 0.05 0.23 *** 0.05 low-risk, low achiever 0.45 *** 0.07 0.43 *** 0.07 0.62 *** 0.08 0.74 *** 0.07 control variables no yes no yes *** p < .001 ** p < .01 * p < .05 note: models are weighted to adjust for over-sampling and design effect. socio-demographic variables are child's sex, age at kindergarten assessment, race/ethnicity, and first-time kindergartener status. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 680 controlling for these variables, many of the relationships and patterns from model 1 remained. high-risk high achievers scored somewhat lower on the spring kindergarten reading assessment than their low-risk high-achieving peers, but were statistically indistinguishable from their medium-risk high-achieving peers. however, the linear gains of high-risk high achievers were less each year in reading (30.8 points) than their medium-risk (32.9 points) and low-risk (32.8 points) high-achieving peers. the annual linear gains of high-risk high achievers followed closely the trajectory of low-risk, medium achievers: the annual linear gains of the two groups were statistically indistinguishable. in addition to the linear change in reading scores over time, the models also controlled for non-linear changes (which could take the form of acceleration or deceleration in scores). the coefficient for the non-linear changes was negative, indicating decelerating gains over time (i.e., children are making gains each year, but gaining less than in the previous year). only two other groups of students experienced greater deceleration than highrisk, high-achieving students, and they were children in the medium-risk, high achiever and lowrisk, high achiever groups. while high-risk high achievers may have had the least decelerating gains of all the high achievers, in combination with their lower linear gains they lost ground relative to their other high-achieving peers each year (a separation visible in the top line graph of figure 1). table 3 also includes the results from analyses of children’s math achievement trajectories, and like the results from the reading models, model 1 of the math analyses revealed slight differences at baseline between high-risk high achievers and their lowand medium-risk high achieving peers that expanded over time. controlling for socio-demographic variables did little to change the intercept differences (i.e., differences in the spring kindergarten scores), and the annual estimated linear gain was 26.5 points for high-risk high achievers; 27.6 points for medium-risk high achievers; and 28.2 points for low-risk high achievers. high-risk high achievers were gaining less than their other high-achieving peers over time. in addition to the linear change in math scores over time, the models also controlled for non-linear changes (which could take the form of acceleration or deceleration in scores). the coefficient for the non-linear changes was negative, indicating decelerating gains over time (i.e., children are making gains each year, but gaining less than the previous year). only one group of students experienced greater deceleration than high-risk high-achieving students, and they were children in the lowrisk high-achieving group. in combination with their lower linear gains, high-risk high achievers lost ground to their other high-achieving peers each year in math scores, which resulted in minimal differences at baseline expanding into noticeable gaps by the eighth-grade (a separation visible in the top line graph of figure 2). figures 1 and 2 make visible the unfulfilled potential of the high-risk high achievers. for ease of presentation, the top graph compares the trajectories of high-risk high achievers against their lower-risk high-achieving peers, and the bottom graph compares the trajectories of highrisk high achievers against their other high-risk peers. when compared to their lower-risk highachieving peers, we see a widening gap in reading and math, especially during the later years of elementary and middle school. similarly, the bottom line graphs in figure 1 and figure 2 display a modestly closing gap between high-risk high-achieving students and their high-risk peers, who were either mediumor low-achieving during the later elementary and middle school years. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 681 figure 1. children's predicted reading score trajectories, by risk-achievement classification note: predicted trajectories are based on estimates from model 2 of table 3. hrha = high-risk, high-achiever; hrma = high-risk,medium-achiever; hrla = high-risk, low-achiever; mrha = medium-risk, high-achiever; lrha = low-risk, high-achiever. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 k 1 3 5 8 ir t sc al e sc or e data collection wave high-risk classifications hr ha hr ma hr la 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 k 1 3 5 8 ir t sc al e sc or e data collection wave high-achieving classifications hr ha mr ha lrha international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 682 discussion previous evidence, generated by research conducted in the united states, has established the importance of early academic skills for later educational success (bodovski & youn, 2012; cheadle, 2008; magnuson et al., 2007). while not all skills are propagated to the same extent over time, with early skills being more indicative of later skills in math as opposed to reading (claessens & engel, 2013), it is not clear what other aspects of the children’s lives might also influence academic inertia. in particular, might living in high-risk environments dampen figure 2. children's predicted math score trajectories, by risk-achievement classification note: predicted trajectories are based on math estimates from model 2 of table 3. hrha = high-risk, high-achiever; hrma = high-risk,medium-achiever; hrla = high-risk, low-achiever; mrha = medium-risk, high-achiever; lrha = low-risk, high-achiever. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 k 1 3 5 8 ir t sc al e sc or e data collection wave high-risk classification hr ha hr ma hr la 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 k 1 3 5 8 ir t sc al e sc or e data collection wave high-achieving classification hr ha mr ha lrha international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 683 students’ learning over time, especially for students who begin school with high levels of academic skills? to examine this possibility, we identified groups of children based on the number of risks in their early environments and their performance on direct assessments of their math and reading skills. intersecting these early-life environmental risks with demonstrated academic skills, we identified a group of children who were high-risk high achievers at kindergarten entry, and compared them to the other eight risk-achievement classification groups (mediumand low-risk high achievers, and medium achievers and low achievers at all three risk levels) by examining their reading and math trajectories from kindergarten through eighth grade. our findings suggest that high-risk high achievers have a learning trajectory distinct from those of other groups we tested. compared to their lowand medium-risk high-achieving peers, highrisk high achievers exhibit diminished growth in their test scores over time; however, high-risk high achievers outperformed their peers who entered school from high-risk environments, but were initially either low or medium achievers. these findings align with previous research that has separately examined the ways that early academic skills and early social conditions have long-term implications for children’s achievement, and has shown that they may have opposing effects. high-risk environments tend to be associated with academic struggle, and early academic success tends to continue as children progress through school (e.g., magnuson et al., 2007; schoon et al., 2004). though these conclusions have been repeatedly established, less research has considered the intersection of early high-risk and high-achievement on the long-term trajectories of students, and the implications these competing forces have on children’s elementary and middle school test scores. the reading and math trajectories of a nationally-representative sample of high-risk highachieving students in the united states presented in this study speak directly to these competing forces. in line with prior research (mistry et al., 2010), we find that these children are able to overcome their disadvantaged circumstances and succeed when they might otherwise be expected to fail, and that they continue to perform better than their other high-risk peers. experience of a high-risk context does not automatically equate to academic failure. at the same time, these high-risk high-achieving students were not able to take full advantage of their initial academic success as their gains over time were notably depressed relative to their high-achieving peers who were not subjected to such risky environments. these findings align with the notion that children are capable of adapting to the most disadvantaged of circumstances, but also serves as a reminder that even the resilient are not entirely immune to their context. advanced skills tend to beget additional advanced skills, while fewer skills tend to foreshadow a slower accumulation of skills (claessens & engel, 2013). high-risk high achievers entered school with skill sets that should have continuously propelled them toward future success, and while they did continue to outperform their lowand medium-achieving high-risk peers, their trajectories did not have the same high level of sustained learning gains as their low and medium-risk high-achieving peers. it might be suggested that high-risk high achievers overperformed on the kindergarten assessment, and that their risk-achievement classification was thus incorrect, but this is unlikely to have been the case for the entire group. moreover, despite the depressed trajectory of these children, they did continue to be among the top performers across later waves of the study. it seems likelier to us that high-risk high-achieving children are unable to fully maximize their potential because of the disadvantaged circumstances in which they live. while policies and interventions could be developed to help further the academic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(4.1): 670–688 684 successes of these children, additional research is needed that further identifies the factors contributing to their unfulfilled promise. as policy-makers begin to consider the benefits of investing in early childhood education, they face a lack of evidence about whether boosting kindergarten-entry skills will be enough on its own to sustain students’ growth over the long term and to close achievement gaps. while the current study does not address this issue directly, it does investigate a group of highrisk students who entered kindergarten with advanced skills, and it asks what happens to these students during their early years of schooling. this study informs the debate on early childhood education by looking at an atypical group of children — those living with a high prevalence of risk, yet nonetheless achieving high scores on academic assessments at kindergarten entry. while studying the impact of pre-kindergarten programs was beyond the scope of the present study, investigating this atypical group serves as a warning that early childhood programs serving atrisk students may be insufficient, and that at-risk children may need more support once in school if they are to achieve their full potential. future research that moves beyond some of the limitations of our current study may provide other new insights into high-risk high-achieving students. for example, we concentrate on the risks and achievement levels of students as they enter school. however, further research is needed to understand the impact that exposure to multiple risks over time has on children as they progress through school. additionally, this study only considers academic achievement, which is but a single area of children’s development. other areas of development, such as socio-emotional or physical health, may reveal different patterns and processes linking early well-being to later outcomes, and how these processes vary depending on children’s social circumstances. it is worth noting that we are not the first to find variability in the outcomes of children who experience and then overcome high-risk environments (e.g., kassis, artz, scambor, scambor, & moldenhauser, 2013), and there is evidence that overcoming risks in one domain does not ensure overcoming risks in another (e.g., ungar, 2004). finally, our study only considers students in the american system, and while academic inequalities exist around the world, it is unknown whether the outcomes of high-risk high achievers in the u.s. are indicative of the trajectories and patterns that would be seen in other societal contexts. data from other countries and education systems would provide essential follow-up to this study, and inform the ways in which broader context can impact individual development. despite these limitations, this study provides a further investigation of the consequences of social disadvantage for children’s academic achievement by studying the reading and math trajectories of children according to their risk-achievement classification. we found that highrisk high achievers arrived at school with advanced skills in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge, yet were unable to capitalize on these advanced skills to the same degree as their high-achieving but lower-risk peers. the early social circumstances of these children appear to undermine the advantage that advanced 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(2007). child development: risk factors for adverse outcomes in developing countries. the lancet, 369, 145–157. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118x03257030 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(07)60076-2 unfulfilled promise: the differential return on early skills for high-risk high achievers daniel potter and jeremy redford literature review method results discussion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321285 exploring the relationship between aspirations and educational experiences among quebec youth in residential care who are at the edge of transition to adulthood elodie marion, annika rozefort, and laurence tchuindibi abstract: this article explores the development of aspirations among young people in residential care who are on the cusp of adulthood, and the relationship between their aspirations and their educational experience. we examine the specific aspirations of young people, what shapes those aspirations, and how they interact with their educational experience. this article is based on a qualitative study that aimed to better understand the educational experience of young people in residential care in the canadian province of quebec. biographical interviews were conducted with 35 young people aged 14 to 18. our analysis demonstrates that, while many seem quite able to project themselves into the future, some appear to see their placement situation and its accompanying uncertainty as an obstacle to doing so. it also suggests that educational and professional aspirations can transform young people’s educational experiences and the meaning that they attribute to formal education, as well as influence their intention to pursue further education. finally, our results offer a critical look at how youth construct their aspirations, and demonstrate the importance of providing conditions that allow and encourage youth in residential care to develop and pursue varied aspirations. keywords: aspirations, educational experience, residential care, care leavers elodie marion phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the département de psychopédagogie et d’andragogie, faculté des sciences de l’éducation, université de montréal, 90 avenue vincent d’indy, montréal, h2v 2s9. email: elodie.marion@umontreal.ca annika rozefort ba is a research assistant in the faculté des sciences de l’éducation, université de montréal, 90 avenue vincent d’indy, montréal, h2v 2s9 email: annika.rozefort@umontreal.ca laurence tchuindibi ma is a research assistant and phd candidate in the faculté des sciences de l’éducation, université de montréal, 90 avenue vincent-d'indy, montréal qc h2v 2s9. email: laurence.edith.tchuindibi@umontreal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 48 over the years, studies from canada, the united states, and europe have documented the disparities in educational outcomes (e.g., high school completion) between youth in the general population who have never lived in care or received child welfare services and those who have experienced or lived in out-of-home care (brownell et al., 2015; dietrich-ragon, 2020; flynn et al., 2013; goyette & blanchet, 2019; maclean et al., 2017; snow, 2009). moreover, studies show that youth in residential care have lower educational outcomes than youth in foster care (courtney & hook, 2017; goyette & blanchet, 2019). not only does educational attainment predict better long-term outcomes in earnings and employment for youth in out-of-home care (okpych & courtney, 2014), but it is considered by them to be a pathway towards achieving work and life goals (tilbury et al., 2014). the premise of this study is that educational achievement can make a meaningful difference in the lives of youth in residential care, facilitating their access to employment, improving their living situation, and increasing their social participation. developing aspirations in order to address educational disparities in quebec, canada, many youth enter residential care, after an initial investigation, between the ages of 14 and 17 (esposito et al., 2013). for youth between 13 and 17 and their families, the most common reasons to become involved with youth protection services in quebec include severe behavioral issues, neglect, and psychological abuse, followed by the risk of neglect and physical and sexual abuse (directeurs provinciaux, 2020). the young people received by residential care settings mostly present severe behavioral issues, mental health issues, or substance abuse issues. residential care includes two major types of facility: open facilities, such as group homes that are living environments in the community where services are offered by youth workers who generally do not live there and where youth are able to work and go to school in the community; and closed facilities, such as rehabilitation centres for young people whose challenges may include severe behavioral difficulties, social adaptation problems, and mental health issues. the majority of youth in closed facilites attend special education or specialized programs. it has been documented that multiple factors related to pre-care and care experiences influence the educational outcomes of these young people (marion & mann-feder, 2020). mental health issues, psychological distress, and trauma can impact their educational experience (townsend et al., 2020), as can placement instability (goyette et al., 2021; mcclung & gayle, 2010), and changing schools (garcia-molsosa et al., 2021). indeed, by the time they enter residential care as adolescents, only limited opportunities may be available for state interventions capable of affecting school outcomes and addressing the gaps in educational attainment (berridge, 2007). to understand how to facilitate academic success for these youth, we have considered “educational resilience” — the likelihood of school success despite adverse conditions (strolingoltzman et al., 2016). tessier et al. (2018) have investigated risk and protective factors as predictors of school success on a large sample (n = 3,659) of youth in out-of-home care aged between 11 and 17. they found that female gender, youth educational aspirations, caregiver international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 49 educational aspirations for youth, time with current caregiver, internal developmental assets, and positive mental health were associated with better school success. moreover, encouraging higher educational aspirations among marginalized young people appears to be a common strategy employed by youth programs attempting to address educational and social disparities (tzenis, 2018). numerous initiatives base their activities on the notion that disadvantaged young people can best be helped to improve their educational attainment and progression into employment through programs focused on “raising aspirations”, which are understood to play a key role in shaping young people’s engagement with education and politics (archer et al., 2014). thus the development of aspirations can be considered as a possible way to address educational disparities of young people in residential care. aspirations and transition from care to adulthood: current state of knowledge what do we know about the aspirations of young people in residential care? previous research suggests that despite their placement situation and the uncertainty surrounding it, many young people in residential care have a positive attitude towards their future and put the same amount of effort into creating a better future for themselves as their peers do (tilbury et al., 2009). however, the challenges young people encounter due to their placement in residential care can make it more difficult for them to project themselves into the future through positive, stable, and realistic aspirations (malo & sarmiento, 2010). for others, the uncertainty regarding the duration and the stability of their placement represents an obstacle to their capacity for future projection, as does simply being in a stage of life where all seems unclear and vague (tilbury et al., 2011). also, young people’s aspirations are negatively impacted when they have limited knowledge about what is required to enter a chosen occupation and how to find that information (tilbury et al., 2011). improving conditions in residential care, through paying more attention to what young people are communicating, and providing them with support, encouragement, and greater consideration, seems to help them develop and pursue their aspirations (tilbury et al., 2009). finally, carers must ensure that they support young people’s aspirations while helping them evaluate what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they will need in order to make a successful transition to adulthood (mcmillen et al., 2003). when carers demonstrate that they have high expectations by investing in young people’s education, and give proper support, young people are likely to strive to achieve at school (mendis, 2015). research objective the main objective of our research was to better understand the educational experiences of young people in residential care. as we listened to young people talk about significant elements that have positively or negatively affected their educational experience, one element that stood out was how the development of their aspirations was related to their educational experiences. in this article we explore the aspirations of youth in residential care and how they can contribute to both educational resilience and attainment, which in turn can enhance their transition to adulthood and their future. the general objective of this article is therefore to explore the development of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 50 aspirations in young people in residential care who are on the cusp of adulthood, and how their aspirations relate to their educational experience. conceptual framework and research questions huijsmans et al. (2021) defined “aspiration” as “an orientation towards a desired future”, and explained that “such futures may be individual or collective projects, [and] may refer to more immediate or longer term futures” (p. 3). an orientation towards the future includes imagining possibilities and doubting (huijsmans et al., 2021, p. 3). aspiration is considered to be “a process of young people hoping and imagining what their lives will be like in the future” (tzenis, 2021, para. 1). regarding their development, “aspirations may manifest at the level of the individual, but cannot be reduced to it” (huijsmans et al., 2021, p. 5). their rise and transformation are known to be formed not only by a youth’s individual interests, but also by their biographical past, everyday practices, key life events, interactions with other people (social relations and specific encounters), institutions, and other aspects of their social lives and contexts, such as neighborhoods, schools, family, and popular culture (huijsmans et al., 2021; tzenis, 2021, para. 1). using this conceptual framework, we formulated three questions: • what hopes do young people in residential care have for their their educational, professional, and personal futures, and what do they imagine those futures will be? • what has contributed to the formation — or transformation — of these young peoples’ aspirations over the course of their personal lives and placement histories? • what are the relationships between the aspirations of youth and their educational experiences? this article thus goes beyond simply reporting and describing aspirations. by considering that the construction of aspirations is always anchored in contexts and life histories, it seeks a better understanding of how aspirations are developed by young people in residential care. methodology using a qualitative interpretive method, we carried out biographical interviews in 2021 with 35 young people aged between 14 and 17 who were in residential care in quebec, and were on the cusp of the transition from care to adulthood. our goal was to better understand their post-primary educational experiences (bertaux, 1997). this type of interview is particularly effective for exploring in depth people’s recollections and interpretations of certain social experiences they have had (schwartz et al., 1999). the interviews provided an opportunity for young people to reconstruct their experience based on their own perspectives, with little interference from the interviewer. we gave them the opportunity to look back on their school careers, and to talk about their aspirations for the future, whether academic, professional, or personal. we asked what caused them to have these particular aspirations and how those aspirations were formed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 51 we first transcribed the interviews, then analyzed them, looking at the educational experiences of each young person and constructing a chronological narrative. we noted any elements reported by the young person as having significantly influenced their educational experiences, whether positively or negatively. since “having aspirations” was identified by young people as an element that positively influenced their educational experience, we continued our analysis of the narrative to better understand how and why this was the case. next, we noted the aspirations mentioned and analyzed the narrative to understand how they had developed and for what reasons. that gave us an understanding of the elements that influenced the educational aspirations of our participants, and of young people in residential care more generally. results this section presents results based on the narratives of 35 young people aged 14 to 18. the participants are quoted in this report using pseudonyms. their average age was 15.5, with 40% (n = 14) identifying as female, 57% (n = 20) as male, and 3% (n = 1) as non-binary. among these youth, 46% (n = 16) were in group homes and 54% (n = 19) had been placed in rehabilitation centres. as for their experience with youth protection services at the time of the interview, 57.1% (n = 20) were experiencing out-of-home care for the first time, 20.0% (n = 7) for the second time, and 22.9% (n = 8) for the third time or more. in reporting on their educational background, 42.9% (n = 15) were not behind in school for their age, while 27.5% (n = 9) were one year behind, and 31.4% (n = 11) were two or more years behind. in the first section below, we describe the educational, professional, and personal aspirations of the young people in our study. we also examine the relationship between these different types of aspirations. in the second section, we analyze in greater depth what has contributed to the formation — or transformation — of these young people’s aspirations over the course of their personal lives and placement histories. finally, in the third section, we explore at some length the interaction between the formation of these aspirations and the multiple roles they play in educational experiences. educational, professional, and personal aspirations educational aspirations most of the youth in our study had specific aspirations or goals that they wished to achieve academically. table 1 shows the highest level of education they said they hoped to achieve. most of the young people aspired to pursue post-secondary education. to better capture what they considered to be important, we asked young people about their broad aspirations; 20% (n = 7) either did not refer to educational aspirations or indicated that they did not know what their aspirations were. there were apparent differences between those who did and did not mention educational aspirations. for some participants, the uncertainty surrounding their placement situation prevented them from projecting themselves into the future, with some international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 52 stating that they were unable to plan because they did not know where they would be in the near future. others preferred not to have a plan from a fear of being disappointed. for some, it was educational difficulties or the number of times that they had had to repeat a grade that reduced their motivation. others mentioned the worries running through their heads, such as whether they would be able to complete secondary school, or whether they would be returning to live with family or moving to another placement facility; these anxieties made their futures seem vague and unclear to them. as juliette (participant #13) noted, “before, a few months ago, i wanted to be an architect or a lawyer. now i don’t know. it’s still a blur. i’m at a stage where almost everything is a blur.” this state of confusion made it difficult for juliette to project herself into the future, and thus became a barrier to constructive thinking about her education. table 1. educational aspirations educational aspiration participants not discussed 4 (11.4%) do not know 3 (8.6%) high school diploma 1 (2.9%) equivalency test (e.g., ged) 1 (2.9%) technical or career program (dep) 11 (31.4%) pre-university program (cegep) 6 (17.1%) university 9 (25.7%) total 35 (100%) from what some of the young people told us, we also understood that academic delays and grade repetition played a role in formulating their educational aspirations. as clement (#24) explained: you don’t even need a high school diploma for rap. it doesn’t require any qualification or training. all you need is you. so, i told myself that [school], it’s a big waste of time, and that really demotivated me, then the first time i repeated a year made it worse, when i was held back again, that demotivated me even more, and by the time i was held back a third time, i was just fed up. still other young people preferred not to be too hopeful for fear of being disappointed if they failed to achieve their goals: so yeah, it’s not bad, otherwise i don’t really make plans because i tell myself that if i don’t manage to complete them, i’ll think of myself as a loser and then i’ll be disappointed, so i prefer thinking small. then, if something bigger comes along, i’ll just be happy. (camille, #23) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 53 professional aspirations we examined the young people’s aspirations for their future educational and professional choices. although 20% indicated they were not currently thinking about a career, a large majority of participants (80%) did have a specific career in mind. a wide range of career aspirations were mentioned. table 2 compiles those career aspirations by government of quebec employment field categories1. topping the list was “education, community, and social services” (20%), which focuses on public needs and depends on people with expertise in fields like psychology and sociology. psychologist and special education technician were the most common career aspirations reported for this field. it was followed by “arts, literature, and communication” (14.3%). some participants aspired to work in the arts as a photographer, interior designer, or video game designer. in the “engineering and public works” field (14.3%), some participants wanted to pursue a technical program. in addition, some young people mentioned that they wanted to work in construction or as a mechanic. finally, lawyer was the most popular career aspiration in the “law and public safety” field (14.3%). table 2. professional aspirations employment field aspiration participants do not know 7 (20.0%) business, management, and administration 1 (2.9%) arts, literature, and communication 5 (14.3%) engineering and public works 5 (14.3%) education, community, and social services 7 (20.0%) law and public safety 5 (14.3%) health and medicine 2 (5.7%) other services (hair stylist) 1 (2.9%) other 2 (5.7%) total 35 (100%) multiple personal aspirations in addition to having career and educational aspirations, most of the young people we spoke to told us about their personal aspirations for the future, which encompassed multiple dimensions of their lives: place of residence, possessions, personal stability, relationships, and family structure. we categorized these as two types of personal aspiration. first, we identified general aspirations that are typical of the transition to adulthood; that is, aspirations that any young person in their age 1 https://www.quebec.ca/gouvernement/travailler-gouvernement/travailler-fonction-publique/domaines-emploi/apropos international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 54 group might have, irrespective of whether or not they had been in out-of-home care. the survey participants did not explicitly relate these aspirations to care. we discuss these in the next subsection, “to have a normal life!”. second, we identified aspirations directly related to the placement situation and the future of a young person in care. we present these under “next steps: stability and independence”. to have a normal life! most of the young people in our study, although currently in a placement situation, said they wanted to have a “normal life” and a happy future. for many, this meant making progress in the various areas that make up their lives. the desire to become independent, in the more-or-less long term, was prevalent. they wanted to become financially independent, get a driver’s licence, and live in their own apartment, whether alone, as part of a couple, or with friends. in this respect, many mentioned the importance of surrounding themselves with good people in their relationships and friendships. many mentioned wanting to start a family, either by having children or adopting them. in addition, many young people expressed a desire to make material acquisitions, such as a car or a house, or financial investments through a bank, in cryptocurrency, or in a lucrative business. many also said they wanted to volunteer in community or humanitarian organizations. for example, one young person said they wanted to participate in food and clothing drives to help the homeless, and another mentioned wanting to go on humanitarian missions to help the poor and the sick. next steps: stability and independence in addition to having aspirations for their transition to adulthood that were similar to the aspirations of those not in care, many of the young people also had more specific visions regarding their placement situations. placements typically have a set duration, which, along with the terms and conditions that govern them, is subject to regular review. knowing that close to half (42.9%) of the youths in our study had already experienced two or more placements, and that some of them were approaching the end of care as defined by the youth protection system in quebec (18 years old), they were wondering about their next steps. they pondered questions such as: where will i go? when will my placement end? will i go back to my family? due to the uncertainty of their situations, it was a struggle for some to make projections for their future. of the 35 participants, 7 (20%) either did not discuss educational aspirations at all, or said they did not know what they were. others had ideas of where they would like to go, despite not knowing when it would be possible. for example, 17-year-old carl (#27) said: as soon as a vacancy opens in the [intermediate resource], i’ll be leaving the [rehabilitation] centre.… it could be next week, or the week after, or it could be in two months. so, i’m living more from day to day until i leave here. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 55 this uncertainty seemed to prevent carl from making plans in other areas of his life. he preferred to wait for this life change to be complete before thinking about other things that he wanted to accomplish. it was not just carl: many youths shared their concerns about where they would like to live after their current placement. some hoped to leave the group home — or leave youth protection care altogether — as soon as possible. thus, the placement situation often had a negative effect on educational and personal aspirations. we also saw that a young person’s desire to quickly leave residential care often led to a decision to continue their education. the youths explained that generally they must respect official requirements (e.g., attend and perform well at school, and respect group home rules) and develop certain skills, such as autonomy, to reach their goals. to meet expectations or requirements to leave care, some participants (11, 31.4%) expressed a desire to enter a technical or career program. in quebec, this usually entails a short course (600 to 1800 hours) leading to a vocational diploma (dep). as clarke (#12) told us, “yeah, i want to work in construction, make money that way, and try to invest. start a family. i want to succeed in school and then get my dep and leave residential care as soon as possible.” the construction of aspirations to understand how young people in residential care develop their aspirations in adolescence, we analyzed the thoughts they shared with us. several elements contributed to the development of their educational and professional aspirations. “i’ve got everything planned out!”: the role of formal support and planning we noted that for some youth, formal support and planning played a significant role in the construction of their aspirations, whether they received help from a professional counsellor or from a professional in the care system. some participants pointed to the contribution of an adult who had helped them form a clear vision of their goals, which had influenced the process of developing aspirations. as alix (#19) shared, a guidance counsellor had helped her explore some options: well, with the guidance counsellor, we got a small overview of the professions that interested me, and when we came to psychologist, there were different types. and i don’t know how we got there, but when we looked at industrial psychologist, i was like, that sounds interesting. and it was a fit. claire (#33) pointed out the role that her math teacher had played in providing guidance on potential educational trajectories: i’ve already got everything planned out for my school career. yeah, my math teacher gave us a notebook of, you know, to kind of figure out what we can become later.… she gave us that. so, i was able to see what i wanted to become, you know? now i have plans to go to lionel-groulx college for cegep. then after that, i’m going to go do a bachelor’s degree at laval university. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 56 understanding the pathways to different occupations has encouraged these young people to identify their aspirations and helped them consider the steps they could take, or need to take, to acquire the qualifications they want. for some young people, being placed in the rehabilitation centre gave them the opportunity to take time to look at the future: “yes. i am quite determined to take my future seriously. i have to admit that i wasn’t before i came to the centre. but since i’ve been at the rehabilitation centre, i’ve thought a lot more about the future” (claire, #33). for those experiencing family or personal problems (psychological, behavioral, etc.) in particular, the rehabilitation centre became a space that allowed them to distance themselves from or deal with these problems, so that they could be mentally and physically more available for schooling and for conceptualizing their future. for example, for claire, it was thanks to the support she received in her placement situation that she was able to begin to see her future: i used to have suicidal thoughts and attempted it a few times. so i didn’t really want a future. and now, since, you know, i don’t have suicidal urges any more, now i want a beautiful future for myself — i think about it, you know. i think about it more now that i’m in a much better place emotionally, and i’ve found more things now that my life is going much better. i really started to think about what i was going to do when i grew up, what i wanted to be. “i’ll give it a try!”: the role of relatives and experimentation we noted the influence of interactions, social relationships, and specific encounters in the lives of youth. these could be with relatives, individuals from their primary social network, or any inspiring people that they had met. parents and other family members contribute to the development and pursuit of youth aspirations. not only do they act as role models for their children, but they also provide opportunities for new experiences, thus allowing youth to form their own ideas about the path they wish to take. the following excerpt shows the role played by parents in myriam’s (#34) choice: “well, my mother is a nurse, so that’s something that inspires me. whether you like it or not, your mother will always be your model.” it appears from myriam’s statement that the experience and support of her family network enabled her to choose the career path that she felt was best suited to her. marco (#26) found satisfaction and enjoyment in working in his stepfather’s workplace. he was able to learn about this environment, become interested in it, and consider being a mechanic as a career choice: my stepfather, my mother’s current boyfriend, has his own garage. so, you know, i used to work at his garage sometimes. and you know, at one point, he said to me, “oh, you know, would you like to work here?” i was like, “well, okay. i’ll give it a try. why not?” in the end, i really liked it. so like i was going to do my dep, and for my dep internship, i was going to do it there. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 57 philippe (#9) mentioned that he had abandoned his childhood dream to instead pursue his father’s career path: basically, it was my parents. in the beginning, i wanted to be a professional soccer player, because i loved soccer and being on a team. later, at the age of 16, i stopped playing soccer for a year because i had to go to work, etc. then, i said to myself, let it go. so, i turned to electricity, because that’s what my dad was doing, and occasionally he would teach me little things and i liked it. in contrast, for others it was a desire to escape their family situation, or at least to not reproduce the same pattern, that led them to choose one path over another. for clarke (#12), what was most important was to have a stable financial situation for herself, which she seems to have missed in her childhood with her mother. clarke said, “my mother is in a tough situation and that motivates me to want to make a lot of money. to make sure my children do not experience the same predicament as my mother.” many others mentioned the lack of stability in their lives or the precarious situations in which their families found themselves and the influence of these contexts on their personal and professional aspirations. they mostly hoped to break the cycle and build a more stable situation for themselves and, later, for their families, for those who wanted one. “i want to make a difference!”: specific encounters and the desire to contribute a variety of factors can lead young people in residential care to want to pursue one goal over another. for example, some participants spoke of entering the education and health sectors “to help” or “to make a difference” in people’s lives. some, like clarke (#12), referred to the influence of their own personal lives: because i want to help young people who may have made the same mistakes i did or who, like, have a similar background to mine, you know, i want to help the light bulb come on in their heads that they can change. they also acknowledged that their own experiences had made them aware of their environment. they recognized the importance of the help they had received from professionals who had accompanied and encouraged them. by working in this field, they wanted to help other young people facing challenges similar to their own. for example, camille (#23) explained: … the fact that i was in a centre, and that the people here helped me become a better person. it made me want to go and help people, because so many people need help and they don’t necessarily have the help they need, so i want to get involved. i want to help them. for marjorie (#21), a significant contact made such a difference in her life that she decided to make a difference in the lives of others: i’d say that the idea started to germinate when i entered a youth centre because before, although i’d had social workers since i was little, they would come and go, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 58 and it happened so often that i was like, “oh, there’s no use”, but later i was placed, and i had a social worker for over a year, and i got along really well with her, and i was like okay, but you know there are social workers like them who make a difference, so that’s when i decided to make a difference. “i’ve always been very creative!”: passions, hobbies, and highlighted strengths we identified other personal experiences and individual factors that contributed to the participants’ aspirations, such as long-term interests and hobbies, and sudden events that could prove pivotal for their future lives. another element that emerged from our analysis is the role of identified personality traits and passions in the development of young people’s aspirations. claire (#33) said: i want to work in the arts.… i’ve always been very creative. you know, it’s often said that people who are very emotional have a lot more imagination, a lot more creativity. well, i’m one of those people. i like drawing a lot. i like creation very much. the personality traits and strengths of some participants had clearly influenced their career preferences. some had taken their interests and skills into consideration when making career choices. for example, a number had come to the realization that their goals had been formed in childhood, as was the case with axelle (#20): well, ever since i was very little — since i was very little, like, i really like children. and i see a lot of them here, and, and i don’t know, i’ve always, i’ve always had a facility with children, so i think it’ll be beneficial for me, working there. thus, childhood dreams and related experiences can influence the process of developing aspirations. influence of the media it was clear that the media had influenced the aspirations of a few youth in our sample by exposing them to new opportunities or fields they otherwise may not have heard about. some of the young people we interviewed felt a connection to what they saw on the internet or tv and based their aspirations on that. for example, laura (#8) wanted to be a midwife, based on what she saw on tv: “uh, well i was watching a show when i was in my first confinement, it’s called baby boom, and then it was people helping other people give birth. it looked nice.” marc (#7) said that aspirations came from “looking on the internet”. when asked, “what made you want to go in this direction?”, charlie (#14) responded, “the programs i watched.” the internet and other media appear to influence young people’s aspirations, in the sense that they expose them to a view of what it would be like to work in fields they may not have considered before. the media, programs, and documentaries they consumed provided them with details that helped them better understand the reality of some professions, as well as helping them identify with people they would like to emulate. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 59 elements add up over time for many youths, the combination of several of the elements discussed above formed, confirmed, or transformed their aspirations: several interrelated factors working together can influence how youth develop their aspirations over time. to present an overall view of our results, we have broken down the elements that contributed to the development of our study participants’ aspirations into several categories. it is, however, important to note that for several young people, it was a combination of multiple elements that led them to progressively build their aspirations. to illustrate, this section presents one young person’s journey. it details the contributing elements and how she connected them to explain how she gradually came to develop her aspirations. samantha (#35) was 17 when we met her for the interview. she told us that her aspirations started emerging in her childhood, stating that, “i’ve known it for a long time, really since i was 9 years old. i want to be a hairdresser”. indeed, a meaningful experience with a relative — her grandmother — gave rise to her professional aspirations: yeah. well, when i was 9 years old, my grandmother was getting married, and we had to have our hair done and everything. and i saw how very, very beautiful my grandmother was … so, you know, i was curious. i liked the way my hair smelled, the shampoo, the relaxation, chatting. you know, we often talk. we must be social to entertain our clients and stuff. then it really came to me that i wanted to be a hairdresser. because i like helping people feel good and when they go, “oh, that smells good!” you know? that someone is taking care of their well-being. in addition to the connection with her grandmother, samantha shared her desire to help others feel good and to socialize with them. she also mentioned that she sees her career choice as being consistent with her artistic passion and talent, explaining, “i want to be a hairdresser.… yes. and i am very artistic too. i dance, i sing, i make art. so you know, all of this, also becomes art.” when she was older, an opportunity to enrol in a semiskilled trade training program solidified her choice. she completed an internship that allowed her to explore the field in a more hands-on way and to work with professionals who were able to share their passion with her. she really appreciated this experience and felt very welcome, which encouraged her to continue in this direction: they were very, very welcoming. even the first day, they offered me a free haircut. they took me out for a special lunch to celebrate my arrival, all that. they couldn’t wait for me to get there and everything.… that’s where i want to work in hairdressing. i want to do my dep there because it’s so much fun there. convinced of the career she wanted to pursue, samantha even developed a clear plan to achieve that goal. as she explained: i know that i need a dep, secondary 4 french, math and english. i already have it all planned out. you know, i’m going to — my path, basically, is that i’m going to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 60 go to school at the same time as working in a hair salon, but you know, i’m going to get paid, but i won’t be able to cut or dye hair because i won’t have my high school diploma. you know, i’m going to …. i’m going to continue my education while i help out in hair salons. i’ll be picking up hair, washing chairs, all that. but i’m still going to get paid, so i’ll have some money. and when i’m in secondary 4, i’ll be able to do my dep, and then i’ll really be a hairdresser. relationship between the development of aspirations and educational experiences about 15 of our participants discussed the impact that developing their aspirations had had on their educational experience. our results suggest that the development of aspirations can act as a turning point in young people’s educational experience. among other things, their aspirations helped them to see the purpose of formal education and influenced their level of perseverance. “it’s better that i like it than hate it!”: the influence of professional and educational aspirations on school commitment the development of professional aspirations allowed some young people to find meaning in their education. for example, when asked, “what are the things that matter to you in life?”, marie (#22) answered: now it’s — well, finish my studies and all, do a dep.… each time i go to school, it gives me some self-confidence. and then i tell myself, “in the future, you’ll go there and you’re going to do the job that you’ve always wanted.” some recognized the importance and usefulness of their learning experiences, which motivated them to develop a commitment to their studies, thus increasing their sense of personal efficacy. thomas (#4) said, “my motivation is to be a photographer. i tell myself every day that if i want to be a photographer, i have to study.” axelle (#20) mentioned explicitly that her professional aspirations have made her more motivated: well, i’m much more motivated because i have a better idea of where i’m going in life now. like last year — well when i started grade 10, i didn’t know what i wanted to do. and then i was like, “i will never go far in life”, but now that i know i have a goal, it’s easier to work on. philippe (#9) expressed that recognizing the importance of education helped him to see the bright side when it came to school: i like going to school because i learn new things. i like math, i like certain courses.… i could go to work and then make money. but i figure that if i want to do what i want to do in life, i need to go to school, so it’s better that i like it than hate it. so to motivate myself, i find more positive reasons to go than the possible disadvantages. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 61 we noted that some young people had a positive attitude about their school commitments: they perceived a need to do their best at school to succeed later in life. while describing her motivation to go to school, marjorie (#21) explained: right now i’m going to school, even if i’m done … i still find motivation [to go to school and read] because next year i’ll be in cegep and then i must go to university to do the work i want to do. i still find motivation because i say to myself that at the end of the day, i’m going to do what i want to do with my life. i don’t want to be a cashier at walmart until i’m 60. this positive attitude towards the future was greater for those young people who perceived a need to succeed. they strove to get good marks and be accepted into the program of their choice, and they put strategies in place to achieve their goals. for others, professional aspirations constituted the source of motivation to complete high school. as clara (#17) explained, “i also got motivated because i want to finish high school because i want to have a job, i want to do something, but i want at least to finish high school”. having professional aspirations appears to inspire young people to identify the possibilities and reflect on the resources they need to mobilize to pursue their studies and persevere in academic tasks. “before, i thought that there was only one way!”: how planning a path to achieve professional aspirations influences school engagement the ability to choose a program that matched their skills and interests allowed youth to better tailor their educational experience to their needs and thereby improve their prospects for success. our results demonstrate that knowing that there are different educational and professional opportunities allowed young people to implement processes and plans that reflected their interests, personal characteristics, skills, ambitions, and influences. also, participants planned and prepared their educational pathways based on what they saw as necessary to be accepted into the program of their choice. therefore, they felt more motivated and committed to pursuing their studies, as claire (#33) explained: “in fact i’ve already planned everything about my education.… you need to work, go to school, and do your best. that’s my motivation: i really want to work in this field, i really want to study art.” knowing that they needed to finish certain courses, or that it was possible to obtain educational credits at an accelerated pace to qualify for the career they aspired to, motivated these participants to finish high school. philippe (#9) stated: i want to do a dep in electricity. you need to do grade 10 prerequisite courses … and yes! i am doing well in school. this year, i’ve almost finished my grade 10 english, and i completed my grade 9 two months ago. it really motivates me even more to finish two years of english in one year. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 62 similarly, coming to the realization that higher education is not the only pathway to a qualification or degree appeared to be important for some young people, as shown in guan’s (#2) statement: … learning there is another way to have a job that pays well. instead of going to the university and all of that.… when i found out there was a dep program instead of having to go to university [i was very relieved], before i thought that there was only one way. i didn’t know there was a dep. when guan discovered that it was possible to achieve his goal of a well-paying job by taking a specialized program that provides work experience, it had a positive effect on his motivation to invest in his courses. aspiring to a particular career path not only allowed young people to appreciate their school experience more and motivated them to finish their studies, but these aspirations also allowed them to project themselves into the future and see themselves as happy in a career that suited them. in addition, learning of an alternative path helped moderate the pressure they felt and gave them more realistic expectations regarding their education, which allowed them to focus more intently on learning. discussion the results of our study provide a better understanding of the different ways in which the aspirations of young people in care develop and evolve over the course of their journey, and how these aspirations influence their educational experience. aspirations of youth in care are similar to those of their peers our results reveal the diversity of personal, academic, and professional aspirations the young people in our study had in relation to their futures. ultimately, the personal aspirations of young people in care are quite similar to the aspirations of any young person in their 14 to 18 age group (nsmc, 2010; royer, 2009). in general, the youth in our study all wanted to “make it in life” in their own way, based on what they felt was most important to them as individuals, such as having a family, owning a car, being independent, having a home, and making money. concerning their educational aspirations in particular, the youth in our study had goals (technical, postsecondary, and university studies) that were broadly similar to those reported in other canadian studies of youth in care. an ontario study that documented the educational aspirations of 406 youth aged 18 to 20 who were enrolled in extended care and maintenance (ecm) revealed that the youth aspired to at least a high school diploma and that 52.2% of men and 79.5% of women hoped to attain a college, apprenticeship, or university qualification (flynn & tessier, 2011). in british columbia, “more than two-thirds of youth who had ever been in government care indicated that they planned to continue their education after high school” (turpel-lafond & kendall, 2015, p. 58). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 63 in the narratives of young people, the articulation of their various aspirations differs from one individual to the next. it is relevant to emphasize that each aspiration has a different meaning in the life of each young person. some aspirations are formulated in response to an expectation (e.g., an educator asking a young person to plan a life project to support his or her transition to adulthood), while others emanate directly from the young person (e.g., a dream, a deep desire, or values they hold dear). the distinction we have raised here is also present in the work of baillergeau (2019). her work evokes the paradox of the current context that pushes young people to develop a professional project above all else, when this does not necessarily guarantee a successful social integration in which they find their place and feel fulfilled within it, and are able to make sense of their own experience. thus, for some young people, professional aspirations will take precedence over others, hence the importance of “positioning professional aspirations in a framework of other structuring aspirations that make enough sense to orient day-to-day choices of personal involvement” (baillergeau, 2019, p. 36). relationship between aspirations and educational experience with respect to the relationship between the aspirations of youth in care and their educational experience, our results reveal that for many youth, having professional aspirations helped them envisage a trajectory through formal education. young people verbalized positive effects related to motivation, commitment, and perseverance that allowed them to develop an understanding of “where they are going in life”. thus, the results of our study illustrate that the development of professional and educational aspirations in many young people can be seen as levers that are essential to their academic, personal, and professional success. aspirations can indeed provide “an impetus, capable of inspiring and guiding their daily actions and commitments, both in and out of school” as baillergeau (2019, p. 36) stated. on the other hand, this implies that young people who are unable to project themselves into the future and develop their aspirations are deprived of this impetus, and thus of its positive influence on their school experience. supporting the development of aspirations given the positive influence of aspirations, it is essential to discuss their development in order to help us understand how to better support youth in residential care. first, in agreement with tilbury et al. (2009), our results suggest that support is fundamental to the development of young people’s educational and career aspirations. indeed, support for young people in care from a variety of sources (e.g., mentors, parents, and carers) appears significant in the development of their future-oriented projects (tilbury et al., 2009). the forms of support are also varied: emotional support, encouragement for academic achievement and higher education, information sharing, and advice and guidance all have an influence on the way aspirations are realized. historically, service providers have prioritized the medical, social, emotional, and mental health needs of children and youth in out-of-home care (trout et al., 2008). our results show the importance of providing an environment that sustains the development of aspirations. as stated by stoddart (2012), spending time with youth, building relationships, and understanding their hopes and dreams are known to enhance educational outcomes. moreover, clemens et al. (2017) have shown the importance of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 64 caregivers, teachers, and other professionals engaging with youth and demonstrating an interest and belief in their dreams, aspirations, and struggles. forming aspirations for their future was challenging for some of the young people we met; indeed, one fifth of them felt unable to plan for their education because they did not have clarity in relation to their date for leaving care. adolescents living in out-of-home care have only limited opportunities to develop the sense of personal agency and autonomy that could help them navigate what samuels (2009), in an extension of ambiguous loss theory, called the “ambiguous loss of home” (p. 1229), and could in turn help them to look forward. providing more such opportunities could support them in the development of their aspirations. as dimakosa et al. (2022) pointed out, even for those young people in care who have developed aspirations, knowing how to move from aspiration to realization remains another challenge. the results of their study, which involved seven young adults in ontario who had been involved with child welfare, showed that although the youth had high hopes for their futures, they still faced many obstacles. the researchers also highlighted the confusion of some youth, who had no idea how to approach achieving their goals. in another study, by nsmc (2010), youth expressed a need for help in deciding what to do, what training to choose, and what steps to take to achieve their chosen careers. therefore, as our own results highlight, support in planning is critically important to help youth achieve their goals and make informed choices. in agreement with tilbury et al. (2009), our results demonstrate the importance for some young people of operational support from teachers or career counsellors who help them plan their paths step-by-step and support them in making the program choices that will allow them to pursue their preferred careers. having a specific, practical, actionable plan helps youth develop their potential and motivates them to achieve their goals, whereas a lack of planning can cause youth to worry about the steps they need to take to reach their goals (tilbury et al., 2011). in some studies, many of the participants noted a lack of support and encouragement from their teachers and schools, which limited their capacity to achieve their aspirations and reduced their opportunities to pursue their goals (driscoll, 2013; tilbury et al., 2011). even though their path to achievement is likely to be more arduous than that of their peers (dimakosa et al., 2022), different avenues are available to help young people from placement realize their aspirations (tzenis, 2018). tzenis (2021) suggested that programs in which youth document their plans for their futures should incorporate activities that help them learn to rely on social support and to recognize possible obstacles, such as social barriers. in her 2018 article, tzenis suggested encouraging youth to be reflexive and to take creative action to overcome barriers, highlighting that “while discussing obstacles to aspiration achievement might be viewed as discouraging, the data suggest the contrary” (tzenis, 2018, p. 144). moreover, tzenis (2018) suggested that “activities that address constraints on freedoms related to students’ social identity (as discussed by tikly & barrett, 2011) can bring about opportunities for them to be and do what they consider valuable in the future (sen, 1999)” (p. 144). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 65 finally, for many youth in our study, aspirations and hope for the future emerged from significant experiences such as hobbies, a previous professional experience, and interactions with relatives or inspiring people close to them. some had not changed their plans during their time in care, and several of those participants had gone through a combination of experiences that reaffirmed their future life choices, despite their placement experience and the various changes in their lives. all these elements can inform practices to support youth in care with the development and realization of their aspirations. role of placement setting in developing aspirations it is important to consider the role that placement settings can play regarding the aspirations of youth. some young people reported feeling that they are cut off from “real life” and social relationships during their placement period. thus some young people in residential care feel that they lack options. yet, as stated by baillergeau (2019), “the more adolescents grow up in an environment that offers them a broad social network and a variety of experiences (e.g., travel, various extracurricular activities), the broader the horizon of possibilities will seem” (p. 38). it is therefore necessary to broaden the horizons of young people in care. in kintrea et al.’s (2011) study of secondary students in the united kingdom, 43% of the participants indicated that their activities influenced how they perceived their future and what they wanted to do later. while this study seems to highlight the impact of leisure activities available to youth — activities they enjoy and engage in regularly — others mention the relevance of vocational activities, such as immersion programs. this is reflected in findings from tzenis (2018), which indicate that campus immersion programs allowed youth to better picture the reality of college life and imagine their future lives as college students; many youths in the study stated that they felt more comfortable about entering college after completing the campus immersion program. for some of our participants, the guidance they received during their placement experience had helped them reflect on their future. for others, the placement experience itself had led to a change in their aspirations. indeed, 20% of the youth in our study said they wanted to work in the field of education or in social and community service, with some specifically stating that their own experience in a centre or home had influenced their aspirations. many were grateful for the help they had received and wished to help other young people who might be going through the same thing. these findings are consistent with those of tilbury et al. (2011) as well as baillergeau (2019), which indicate that youth develop not only self-focused aspirations, but also other-focused aspirations — aspirations that will allow them to become agents of improvement for a cause they are sympathetic to, sometimes a cause they share with a group of peers. conclusion the overall objective of this article was to explore the development of aspirations among young people in residential care who were at the edge of transitioning from care into adulthood, as well as the relationship of these aspirations with their educational experience. this study contributes to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 66 the existing literature by highlighting the variety of educational, professional, and personal aspirations held by these young people. it also demonstrates that young people’s orientations towards their futures are grounded in their biographical pasts, shaped by key events, and influenced by ideas about the future that flow from different social contexts, including that of being in residential care. results also show that these aspirations influenced the educational experience of these young people. although previous research has demonstrated that care-experienced youth are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to enrol in post-secondary education and, if they do enrol, are less likely to graduate than are other young adults, our results suggest that developing aspirations can be a positive influence on their educational experience by enhancing their school engagement, an important determinant of educational achievement. in terms of future research, it would be interesting to study practices that have been implemented to support the development of young people’s aspirations, and the repercussions on their level of engagement or perseverance in school. it would also be interesting to consider the roles of gender and intersectionality in the development of these young people’s aspirations, as well as how we support them. comparisons on these topics would also be relevant to exploring the aspirational differences observed among young people who did not experience out-of-home care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 47–70 67 references archer, l., dewitt, j., & wong, b. 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(2021). youth aspirations for higher education. university of minnesota extension. https://extension.umn.edu/youth-learning-and-skills/youth-aspirations-higher-education international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019707 fiction, empathy, and gender diversity: exploring the impact of using a novel in a child and youth care classroom julie james abstract: to better understand how using a novel in a child and youth care classroom impacts empathy in relation to gender diversity, a qualitative study was constructed. data were gathered using an online questionnaire administered to child and youth care practitioner students. these students had engaged with the novel scarborough (hernandez, c. [2017]. scarborough: a novel. arsenal pulp) in a course about foundational therapeutic knowledge. the study sought to identify: (a) what perceptions and emotions were evoked by engaging with the narrative of a young person exploring gender; (b) what, if any, aspects of empathetic connection emerged in relation to this exploration; and (c) what, if any, connections were made to the theoretical material taught in the course. the study incorporated child-andyouth-care-specific and critical social theory frameworks, and theorized about evocative objects and the concept of empathetic distress. the findings suggest that novel-based teaching can elicit from students, or help them express, higher-order empathy in relation to gender diversity, and that a narrative about the struggle to live as one’s genuine self is one possible pathway towards achieving this empathetic connection. additional research is needed to investigate these preliminary findings and to address bias in the existing literature on adult education and the use of fiction. keywords: gender diversity, empathy, fiction, child and youth care (cyc), youth work, teaching methods julie james is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care, ryerson university, 350 victoria st., toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: julie.james@ryerson.ca acknowledgement: i would like to thank alawiya hassan, a child and youth care ma graduate, for help with the research design and recruitment process. i would also like to thank all of the young trans, two-spirit, and gender-diverse people who provide direction and consultation on my various research projects including this one. mailto:julie.james@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 127 engaging in teaching practices that help student practitioners overcome possible biases and develop deeper levels of cognitive and emotional understanding of marginalization can be an important component of child and youth care education. while issues of structural oppression may be taught, and laws and policies may dictate how child and youth care practitioners are to engage with young people, personal bias and a lack of depth of understanding can lead to ineffective or even discriminatory practice with marginalized youth populations (acker, 2017). one underexplored area in the child and youth care educational literature is how to discuss gender diversity in a child and youth care classroom. therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the impact of using a work of fiction in the context of teaching child and youth care students about gender diversity. literature review gender diversity and child and youth care practice gender diversity challenges the concept that gender is rigidly binary and tied to one’s sex assigned at birth. instead, gender is understood to have multiple manifestations that may not be in line with one’s sex assigned at birth, and that may also be fluid and change over time (ehrensaft, 2016; pyne, 2014, 2016; temple newhook et al., 2018; travers, 2018). the gender affirmation model is grounded in the idea of gender diversity, denounces pathologizing gender nonconformity, and works to follow the lead of young people as they reveal their genuine gendered selves (ehrensaft, 2016; pyne, 2014, 2016; temple newhook et al., 2018; travers, 2018). by utilizing the gender affirmative model, the possibilities for expression, affirmation, acceptance, and authenticity open onto a spectrum of gender identities and explorations. gender congruence — whereby one’s internal identity, physical body, and social expression are experienced as being in harmony with one another — is important for health and well-being (ehrensaft, 2016; pyne, 2014, 2016; temple newhook et al., 2018; travers, 2018; travers et al., 2012). however, gender-diverse young people — whose identity does not fit the rigid binary of male or female, or is not linearly tied to the sex assigned at birth, or is fluid — may face significant obstacles in accessing gender congruence: absence of gender-affirming healthcare; lack of strong support from family (including family of origin and chosen family); and the necessity of navigating cis-normative and transphobic services and spaces, such as public spaces, consumer areas, schools, social services, and community services (travers, 2018; travers et al., 2012). for child and youth care workers, therefore, it is important to competently support these young people through understanding and affirming their gender explorations, defending against pathologizing their gender journeys, connecting them to appropriate resources as needed and desired, working with families towards understanding and acceptance, and advocating with them to secure rights and services. research shows that young trans and gender-diverse people who are supported by adults within family systems and in community settings experience dramatically international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 128 greater well-being than those without such supports, including strikingly less suicidality (93% lower, as cited in travers et al., 2012); they also experience depression and anxiety at nonclinically significant levels, and have more self-esteem (katz-wise et al., 2017; olson et al., 2016; pullen sansfaçon et al., 2018; travers et al., 2012; veale et al., 2015). child and youth care practitioners are well-positioned to be among these key supportive adults. however, internalized bias may prevent child and youth care practitioners from embracing or fully understanding gender diversity. the founder of transformative learning theory, jack mezirow (2000), asserted that by working through “disorienting dilemmas” — where, in order to resolve the dilemma, a student is required to question and/or alter their internalized assumptions — deeplyheld perspective shifts can take place. mezirow stressed that empathy is a vital component for meaningful perspective shifts in adult learners, a claim that many scholars working within this theoretical tradition have built upon (jarvis, 2012a; kitchenham, 2008; taylor, 2007; tisdell & thompson, 2007; ziegahn, 2005). it has been asserted that a deep cognitive and emotional connection to conceptual content via narrative engagement can help overcome bias and foster shifts in perspective (jarvis, 2012a; kitchenham, 2008; taylor, 2007; tisdell & thompson, 2007; ; ziegahn, 2005). enacting a sustained engagement in the narrative of a novel may be a particularly effective way of cultivating empathetic engagement and affecting paradigm shifts in students (jarvis, 2012a). very little child and youth care literature has focused on gender diversity overall, and studies that have investigated exactly how engagement with fiction leads to developing transformative empathy are rarer still; there seem to be no studies at all that focus on the specific question of how fiction can help shift internalized perspectives that support gender diversity. fiction-based pedagogy few studies have examined teaching and learning about gender diversity at the university level. the scant literature on teaching about gender diversity within helping professions in universities has predominantly focused on delineating the problem of lack of material about gender diversity and on the changes needed to address it in curricula within social work education (acker, 2017; austin et al., 2016; byers et al., 2019; craig et al., 2017). the limited literature focusing on how these issues apply to child and youth care workers explores how to support young gender-diverse people by focusing on general awareness and terminology (james, 2019; skott-myhre & wagner, 2014), providing ethical care (clark, 2017), examining the roles child and youth care practitioners can play (clark, 2017; james, 2019), developing theoretical frameworks (skott-myhre & wagner, 2014), and detailing lived experiences (skott-myhre & wagner, 2014). education scholarship has demonstrated that fiction can be a powerful tool for cultivating learning that is oriented towards social justice. many educators and researchers have argued that fiction can promote a deeper empathetic understanding of marginalization and improve critical social thinking (tisdell & thompson, 2007, cited in jarvis, 2012b). fiction can provide opportunities for “disorienting dilemmas” that allow readers to imagine an array of possibilities, understand different life experiences, have intense emotional responses, and be led to subsequent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 129 ideological critique (jarvis, 2012b). some transformative learning theory scholars have argued that arts-based techniques, including the use of fiction, can tap into emotionally laden and unconscious psychological conflicts, potentially opening up pathways for empathetic engagement with individuals dealing with structural oppression (dirkx, 2012; jarvis, 2012a, 2012b; lawrence, 2012). other scholars have focused on how fiction can cultivate critical social reflection and empathy. some have argued that fiction can be used as an innovative pedagogical tool for critical reflection by providing narratives that explore complex social issues in detail (gouthro & holloway, 2013, 2018; hoggan & cranton, 2015; jarvis & gouthro, 2019). using fiction in professional practice contexts can prepare students for a variety of difficult experiences clients may face (clover, 2015 as cited in gouthro & holloway, 2018; jarvis & gouthro, 2019). keen (2007) provided a detailed analysis of how the novel can be used to deepen empathy through sustained engagement in evocative narratives. jarvis (2012a, 2012b) found that fiction may override preexisting prejudices through mimicry that induces involuntary empathy. despite the large body of literature indicating the potential power of the use of fiction as a teaching tool, little is known about how it can cultivate empathy. jarvis (2012a) conducted a systematic examination of 325 peer-reviewed articles and concluded, “relatively little adult education literature focuses directly on fiction’s empathic potential, speaking instead about the effects of fiction in a way that only implies it develops empathy” (p. 747). jarvis also noted that “predicting a response or identifying consequential changes in understanding or behaviour is difficult” (p. 744). as a result, jarvis and others have stressed the need to directly examine the relationship between using fiction and empathetic engagement (gouthro & holloway, 2018; hoggan & cranton, 2015; jarvis, 2012a). a few key insights from the above literature review relate to this study. the material on gender diversity specific to child and youth care is very thin (clark, 2017; james, 2019; skott-myhre & wagner, 2014), with no literature at all on effective teaching practices. there is a very rich adult education literature on the potential for using fiction to develop empathetic engagement leading to analytical abilities for critical reflection and internal perspective transformation (gouthro & holloway, 2013, 2018; hoggan & cranton, 2015; jarvis & gouthro, 2019). yet within this literature, fiction’s potential is only implied, with little to no work on how empathy or ideological critique can be cultivated in adult students when using this arts-based technique. literature that discusses using fiction in professional university programs is especially scant. important gaps in knowledge therefore need to be addressed. theoretical framework given the gaps in research, this study applied an open, evocative framework. hoggan and cranton (2015) argued that a fictional work, character, or metaphor can be understood as an evocative object, which may “stimulate readers intellectually and emotionally, concretize abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 130 concepts, and potentially shape the way readers make sense of themselves and their experiences” (p. 8). building on their work, qualitative open-ended questions were constructed, and students’ responses were analyzed to explore what cognitive and emotive elements were evoked in relation to a storyline about a young person exploring their gender. the study’s theoretical approach also stemmed from a desire to understand whether any particularly helpful forms of empathetic engagement emerged from these data. as discussed above, much of the existing research on the use of fiction in social justice education indicates that it is a potentially powerful pathway to empathy, but it is not yet clear how specific forms of empathy emerge from, or are expressed when, engaging with fiction. jarvis (2012a) suggested building on hoffman’s (2000) concept of “empathetic distress” and anger when trying to foster learning oriented to social justice; empathetic distress and anger surface when one becomes deeply aware of issues of oppression that someone else is experiencing, and motivate actions to help alleviate that suffering. within this context, consideration was given to how experiences of privilege and oppression, and the internalization of these experiences, may impact a student’s development of empathetic distress; some may have already found a pathway to empathy, while others may not yet have done so. privilege may impede the development of this type of empathy, oppression may encourage it, and the internalization of both may interrupt it. hoffman (2000) identified five hierarchical and connected ways in which empathetic distress and anger can emerge: (a) mimicry (copying someone’s body language and mannerisms); (b) classical conditioning (automatic and involuntary cognitive and emotional responses that arise from witnessing suffering); (c) direct association (connecting another person’s experiences to one’s own); (d) mediated association (taking direct association a step further by incorporating knowledge about the other person’s character and situation); and (e) role-taking (imagining the emotions and experiences of the person undergoing distress). jarvis (2012a) argued that these elements can be elicited via engaging with fictional narratives, and the first two elements may help readers address their preconceived biases, leading to the involuntary development of empathy towards a marginalized group. the data were mined for all five of hoffman’s elements. finally, in addition to exploring what cognitive and emotional elements were evoked, and what, if any, elements of empathetic distress emerged, the study explored the theories and frameworks taught in a second-year undergraduate child and youth care course about foundational therapeutic praxis. methodology reflexivity and social location as a cisgender, white, academic woman, i come to the work with young gender-diverse people as an outsider with privilege. the privileges i am afforded result from white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, colonization, and neo-colonial practices — the very structures that create systemic oppression for trans and gender-diverse children and youth, as well as for racialized individuals, indigenous communities, and individuals dealing with poverty. given that i have spent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 131 over 20 years working with young people in schools, hospitals, and in the child welfare system, and that many of these young people are negatively impacted by the very systems from which i benefit, i have been grappling with how to effectively use my privilege to challenge these systems. i understand that my role is to access resources, provide my labour, and ensure that the young people are paid for their work. the trans, two-spirit, and gender diverse young people who take the lead on these projects are clear that cisgender people should start to analyze and critique the operation of cis-normativity and transphobia much more pervasively. this study emerged from a desire to interrogate, and help erode, cis-normativity and transphobia. research design and questions the study population included students in a second-year child and youth care class that taught foundational theoretical knowledge for therapeutic engagement. this course used catherine hernandez’s 2017 novel scarborough as a textbook, and applied a series of theoretical frameworks to the book’s characters. one character, eight-year-old bing, who is assigned male at birth, explores elements of gender diversity (wanting to wear lipstick, using nail polish, and performing at school in a pink sequin halter top). in class, the concept of gender diversity and the gender affirmation model were applied to bing’s story. while bing’s ultimate gender identification remained unknown, students were asked to imagine how they would engage with bing to support this exploration. this paper therefore presents the qualitative findings from two open-ended questions on students’ reflections about bing’s gender explorations. responses were assessed for empathetic engagement, as well as reactions to — and the possible incorporation of — gender diversity and the gender affirmation model. the study investigated three overlapping areas. first, it explored what emotional and cognitive elements were evoked by engaging with bing’s exploration of gender. second, the study explored what, if any, elements of helpful empathetic engagement surfaced in relation to engaging with a fictional narrative about a young person exploring their gender. finally, the study investigated possible connections between the concept of gender diversity and the gender affirmation model presented in the course and in bing’s narrative. these examinations were exploratory in nature and were intended to help direct future research. novel-based pedagogy in the classroom in a course on therapeutic foundations in child and youth care practice, a central objective is to develop an understanding of how relational child and youth care practice can take place in the context of understanding the systematic oppression that the field not only often perpetuates, but also often derives support from. in each class, the main concepts of critical-theoretical works (covering, for example, neocolonialism, anti-black racism, and gender diversity) and relational child and youth care practice are presented in overview, then applied to a variety of case studies drawn from my practice, media narratives, television, film, and youtube videos. the students are often asked — individually, in pairs, in small groups, or in the large group — to imagine themselves as this young person’s child and youth care practitioner, and to articulate how the issues international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 132 of structural oppression taught in class would impact their approach to working with this person. in relation to sexuality and gender, the course teaches that binary notions of dimorphic sexed bodies (fausto-sterling, 2000) and the confinement of sexuality to a heterosexual orientation are products of colonial and neo-colonial eurocentric structures that do not reflect the actual spectrum of humanity (dale, 2012; deschamps, 1991; nanada, 1990; roscoe, 1991). sex, gender, sexuality, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, gender-nonconformity, and cisgender terminology were defined in several classes for the students. one class is dedicated specifically to learning about gender diversity and the gender affirmation model. the novel scarborough (hernandez, 2017) was added as a central text to the course in order to provide an ongoing narrative that students could engage with and apply to the course concepts. the novel was written by catherine hernandez, a racialized, queer individual whose works centre the stories of indigenous and racialized young people who experience poverty. one character, bing — an eight-year-old, highly intelligent filipino, assigned male at birth — explores elements of gender nonconformity and expresses an attraction to a male student. throughout the novel, bing displays an interest in nail polish and lipstick that he keeps hidden from other students. his mother, edna, appears to be both supportive and cautious; she notices his interest, at one point asks him to refrain from wearing lipstick at school, and tells him that he appears to be like one of his uncles. ultimately, she helps him coordinate a school performance in which bing sings a whitney houston song and removes his tuxedo to reveal a pink sequin halter top. in this scene, bing expresses joy in revealing their true self, and edna cries tears of relief. it is, however, unknown if bing is identifying as trans or gender-diverse, is exploring gender nonconformity on their way to identifying as part of the lgbtq+ spectrum, and/or is exploring gender with a variety of other possible identification outcomes. in each class, passages from scarborough were utilized to apply the conceptual content taught that day through individual, paired, small-group, and large-group activities. the students’ main paper asked them to choose a young character they felt most compelled by, imagine themselves as a child and youth care practitioner in the novel working with that young person, and apply three theories (at least one child-and-youth-care-specific theory and at least one framework that addresses structural oppression) to the work they would do with this young person. gender-affirming practitioners from a variety of professional backgrounds frequently report encountering types of gender exploration that can lead to a variety of gender identifications (ehrensaft, 2016; pyne, 2014, 2016; temple newhook et al., 2018; travers, 2018). these practitioners have advised that working from a model of gender affirmation, and supporting and following the lead of the young person through this process, helps the young person’s overall wellbeing and contributes to an understanding of their gender identity or identities (ehrensaft, 2016; pyne, 2014, 2016; temple newhook et al., 2018; travers, 2018). the students in the course were therefore encouraged to engage with this part of bing’s storyline from a gender-diverse and gender-affirming perspective, and to consider the ways in which they would support bing through this exploration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 133 throughout each reiteration of the class (at the time of writing, it has been taught eight times), many students expressed a deep engagement with the novel, including feeling love and compassion for each of the young characters. i became interested in how this engagement with a novel in the child and youth care practice classroom was impacting the learning for students in relation to issues of diversity and structural oppression. given my work with gender-diverse young people, i was particularly interested in the impact on students of the explorations of gender nonconformity in bing’s narrative. initially, the study had a preand post-test qualitative design; however, due to restrictions and revisions imposed by the research ethics board, a pre-test was not possible, as approval was not granted until the day before the last class of the semester. at the end of this last class, the study was presented. all 38 students in attendance chose to complete the online questionnaire (about 10 students had left early). data collection and participants an online questionnaire was administered to second-year students of a child and youth care course on foundational knowledge of therapeutic engagement with young people. students were told about the questionnaire on the last day of class, signed an online consent form, and were provided class time to complete it. the questionnaire also included some queries that were not relevant to this analysis. two open-ended questions were specific to this investigation; they focused on reactions to bing’s narrative in relation to his explorations of gender. thirty-eight students engaged with the questionnaire, but not all students answered every question, and many skipped the open-ended questions or provided very brief responses. of the two questions analyzed for this discussion, each had 17 responses that were robust enough for analysis; thus a total of 34 responses were used for this assessment. data were coded via nvivo 12 software using an integrated inductive/deductive methodology. all participants answered “no” to the following question: do you identify as trans or gender-nonconforming? *for the purposes of this study, trans or gender-nonconforming refers to people with a diverse array of experiences and identities, including two-spirit, non-binary, agender, gender queer, gendernonconforming, gender-diverse, gender questioning, transgender, as well as those who identify as men or women but have a history that involves a gender transition (note: this definition was derived from the ontario human rights code). no one identified with this definition of being trans or gender-nonconforming; however, one of the limitations of the question is that it does not capture individuals who are exploring their gender, which could have been solicited in a subsequent question. due to restrictions imposed by the research ethics board, gathering of further demographic data was not permitted. the class had a total of 56 students. these students also had some limited experience in the field, with most having had only one placement and/or a previous volunteer position. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 134 results several overarching themes appeared in responses to the questions assessed for report in this paper: “what are your thoughts about bing’s struggle with his gender identity?” and “is there anything else you would like to share about bing and some of the struggles he may have faced in relation to his gender identity?” across 34 entries, three themes emerged: the importance of living as one’s authentic self, the importance of support, and a desire for social change. all 34 responses included at least one of these themes; 10 included two of the themes; and 5 incorporated all three. many responses also included emotive content: 15 students reported feeling bad for bing, 9 expressed joy for bing, and 16 postulated what bing’s thoughts and feelings were in ways not explicitly described in the novel. each overarching theme involved elements of what was evoked cognitively and emotionally for the students, aspects of empathetic engagement including empathetic anger and distress, and connections to course concepts. theme one: the importance of living as one’s authentic self of the 34 responses, 24 referred to the importance of being able to live as one’s authentic self. these sentiments were directed at bing’s journey; however, five responses also included the more general necessity for gender-diverse individuals to be their true gendered selves, and one discussed the importance of all young people being able to express their genuine identities beyond gender. no respondents questioned the idea of being true to one’s self. many respondents found the idea of a young person’s struggling with revealing who they are, for fear of negative consequences, to be compelling and sad. overall, living as one’s authentic self was expressed as something to be greatly valued, something that bing deserved, and something with which many young people struggle. one respondent wrote, “my thoughts are that it is completely normal, and i identify with his struggles of understanding who you are at such a young age and being afraid of what others would think.” several students empathized with bing’s believing he needed to hide his identity explorations, and articulated what they thought bing was feeling throughout the book: “bing struggled because he felt like if he came to a true understanding of his gender identity, he would disappoint the people he loved the most such as his mom”; “i think he was very scared to reveal any part of his confusion of identity due to the potential judgments he may receive from his peers”; and “bing felt like he had to hide his identity to not make anyone question about it or make him feel weird.” a range of emotions were expressed in the responses coded under this theme. four students referred to feeling bad that bing believed he had to hide his gender-identity explorations: “i think it is sad that he felt he had to hide who he really is because of the fear of what the people in his life would say”; “i felt frustrated for him … because keeping a secret about how you feel hidden from your family, friends, and neighbours is really hard to do, and the fear of opening up … can be paralyzing”; “since he is a young individual, i feel bad for what he is going through and that he should not be ashamed about his gender identity.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 135 five responses coded under this theme indicated that the students felt happy for bing, and each statement was made in relation to moments when bing revealed his gender-identity explorations to others: “it was really cool how it describes his experiences, such as wearing feminine clothes … and how those things that he was ‘not supposed to do’ as a boy really made him feel like himself and happy”; “i am glad that he finally was able to be himself, and the reception he got from his mom and the people within his school when he performed at the talent show”; “the part where bing gets to sing on stage was like a cathartic release for me as a reader since bing is so withdrawn the whole book.” five responses connected bing’s struggle to express his gender-identity exploration to struggles faced by other people, moving beyond gender identity and how individuals may hide their true selves, more broadly, for fear of negative consequences. two examples include: “it takes them [trans and gender-nonconforming individuals] a while and lots of support to express this to people in the public or school, even though it is just about who they are”; and “bing’s struggle is something that i heard many children have or are going through in society because of their fear of not being accepted by their loved ones, the society judging them, or other personal reasons.” while none of the responses included non-support for gender diversity, four referred to the desire to explore the intersections of religion and lgbtq+ identities more broadly. however, even these responses seemed to support lgbtq+ communities: i wish that the faith element had been explored more because there are many of various faiths that are also part of the lgbtq community.… a good novel overall, it showed also that a person’s gender/sexuality is not like the all-encompassing part of them which is usually what it is thought out to be. theme two: the importance of support of the 34 responses, 12 referred to the importance of support for bing and other young people exploring their gender identities. of these, eight referred to bing’s mother’s support of him and his gender-identity explorations, and most of those linked this support to bing’s being able to reveal his gender-identity exploration in public. all responses framed bing’s mother’s support of his gender-identity exploration as positive, and none expressed concern over her encouraging him to explore and express gender diversity. as several students put it, “at such a young age, he was able to identify himself, and with the support he got from his mother, he was able to be free about his identity”; “i think the support that he received from his mother really helped him start to openly express who he is”; “i like how edna was supportive of this exploration although i empathized for bing in the sense that he felt compelled to hide this exploration of his identity from his peers”; “i thought it was really nice that this was included in the novel because it shows a young boy who is having this struggle and how supportive his mother was of it but also ensured his safety”; “his mother is very supportive of him and what he chooses to wear or do; however, other people in his life or in his community may not be as supportive. they may make fun of him or not respect his decision.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 136 students who referred to the positive support bing received also commented on their feelings in relation to this support, using emotional descriptors such as “love”, “joy”, and “happy”. for example, two student participants wrote, “i loved how he had a mother who loved him no matter what and made sure she let him know that she loves him and is there for him always. which in [a] way may have made bing feel a bit at ease”; and “i am happy that bing has a supportive group to fall back on.” three responses mentioned support beyond bing’s mother in somewhat vague terms, and linked this support to bing’s being able to express his gender explorations: “bing had a very accepting and supportive circle of people who let bing continue exploring his identity.” three responses expressed concern that bing did not receive the support he needed, and four went beyond the book to make connections between receiving support and being able to live as one’s authentic gendered self: “i think the conclusion that i am drawing from this is that genderidentity struggles, wouldn’t be much of a ‘struggle’ if the people around you are supportive”; “his identity was not met with extraneous opposition, but it is important to acknowledge that not every trans/n-b person will travel along as similar as bing.” theme three: a desire for social change of the 34 responses, 12 expressed a desire for social change in relation to bing’s journey, as well as for trans and gender-diverse individuals more broadly. a few respondents wrote about the need for more support like that provided by bing’s mother: “[t]he way his mother was so proud of him is something i wish more people would be like, open-mindedness is rare.” a few respondents talked about wishing that it was safer for marginalized individuals to express their inner selves: “i think it is very unfortunate that we live in a world where people are not able to openly express their identity in fear of getting made fun of or bullied.” another participant wrote, i think his character can portray a life many people face with being a young person and questioning yourself while being scared because … you don’t have the family support you need, and your religious background does not agree with your natural desires and expressions. two respondents wished it wasn’t so hard for individuals to be open to themselves about their true identities and feelings: “i wish it didn’t have to be as much of a struggle for youth and adults alike in real life to reflect on their feelings about their gender and their relationships.” four students expressed the need for greater acceptance of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals overall. one student wrote, “i cannot comment on bing’s struggle from his perspective because i have never experienced it. what i can say is that as a society we are not nearly as accepting as we should be of trans individuals.” overall, responses reflected that living as one’s genuine gendered self and/or other marginalized identities is something that should be supported, and that there ought to be greater social acceptance for trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 137 discussion this exploratory study revealed several insights about student engagement with a fictional narrative that included an exploration of gender. an analysis of the first overarching theme — the importance of living as one’s authentic self — revealed several insights relating to the theoretical frameworks utilized in this study. bing’s narrative evoked a range of emotions in students, including negative feelings when bing’s identity exploration was not supported, and positive feelings when it was. questionnaire queries did not ask students to express their feelings, but simply their thoughts and reflections on bing’s narrative, so the fact that many students chose to include their emotional responses suggests that bing’s narrative was evocative and compelling. it also suggests that these students value authenticity in the context of gender diversity, and perhaps also in other areas of identity. the range of the students’ emotional responses mirrored what bing felt or appeared to be feeling at various times throughout the book, suggesting that students had an empathetic engagement with bing’s narrative, at least at the mimicry and automatic response levels described by hoffman (2000). some responses included empathetic extensions beyond the book, which may mean that those students engaged in higher-order empathy of mediated association and/or roletaking. while responses did not refer directly to the theoretical concepts presented in class, the concepts were demonstrated indirectly in several of the responses. for example, empathetic engagement with bing’s journey demonstrates the relational characteristics of “being emotionally present”, valuing “connection and engagement”, and focusing on “love” — all important elements of effective care by child and youth care practitioners (garfat & fulcher, 2011). the acceptance by all respondents of gender diversity and of the importance of living as one’s authentic gendered self, demonstrates the central components of the gender affirmation model (ehrensaft, 2016). regarding the second theme — the importance of support — further insights emerged. the emotions evoked in students when bing did receive support appeared to be fairly strong, with many responses referring to appreciation of his mother’s support by using descriptors such as “very” or “intensely”, as well as terms describing emotions such as “joy” and “love”. this may indicate that students valued support for bing and gender-diverse explorations overall, or that they took on an imagined role of a child and youth care practitioner in the novel — as required by many course activities and the major assignment — and felt relief when care was provided for bing. these emotions mirror how bing could be expected to have felt in relation to the support he received, especially from his mother, suggesting that the students may have been engaging in “mediated association” empathy and/or “role-taking” empathy. responses indicated support for bing’s gender journey and demonstrated adherence to the core principles of the gender-affirmation model (ehrensaft, 2016). these sentiments reflect the child and youth care practice relational characteristics of “love”, “connection and engagement”, “being emotionally present”, and “being family oriented” (garfat & fulcher, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 138 the third overarching theme — desire for societal change — revealed students’ wishes that more compassionate and open-minded people were available to support young people, that it was safer for young people to express their true selves, that young people felt more comfortable exploring their identities — especially in situations in which these identities are oppressed — and that trans and gender-diverse people were better accepted. students appear to have taken their empathetic engagement and applied it more broadly. these responses apply the child and youth care practice characteristics of love and emotional presence to a more general sense of social justice, and further demonstrate central concepts within the gender affirmation model (ehrensaft, 2016). limitations and important considerations the study had several limitations. the dataset was restricted: the material was rich but derived from a small number of entries (n = 34). more data are required to draw comprehensive conclusions. the students who chose to answer the open-ended questions about bing may have been especially compelled by this narrative or already very supportive of gender diversity. data from students who struggle with these questions are needed to ensure a more comprehensive analysis. no respondents reported that they were gender diverse and information from individuals who do so identify is needed in future research. future studies would also benefit from the inclusion of individuals who identify as racialized and gender diverse; these scholars and community members should be included in developing the study, validating data, providing critical conceptual frames, and identifying sentiments not detected by a more privileged, white, heteronormative and cisgender gaze. racialized scholars and community members should similarly be involved in the creation, collection, and analysis of data from racialized students. this study did not address the intersecting social locations and related oppressions that bing faced, such as racism, poverty, and homophobia. the questions included for analysis focused on the idea of struggling with one’s gender identity, thereby possibly influencing how responses were framed, and omitting concepts of joy in gender exploration. the responses reveal support for gender diversity and empathetic engagement with bing’s gender exploration, but one cannot tell if scarborough helped forge a perspective shift towards gender diversity, if such a perspective already existed, or if students who already had this perspective were the ones to complete the openended questions. finally, the frameworks of transformative learning, as well as hoffman’s notions of empathetic development, may be too limited to be meaningfully applicable to all adult learners. there are two important points of consideration regarding engagement in fiction about gender diversity within the helping classroom. first, it is important to note that developing deep cognitive and emotional understanding in relation to gender diversity is one small aspect of being able to competently serve young gender-diverse people. understanding issues of structural oppression and gender affirmation, and awareness of the related resources, are also among the important factors required. this paper therefore offers insight only into how engagement with a novel may impact the development of empathy in relation to gender diversity, with an understanding that further research is required and several more components are needed to develop child and youth care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 139 practice competency in this area. second, engaging in one fictional narrative of a gender-diverse person entails a risk of tokenizing this experience — generalizing this narrative as giving a sufficient understanding of all gender-diverse people, despite great diversity of experiences, social locations, and intersectionality, and, through empathetic engagement, ironically coming to minimize the experiences of gender-diverse individuals. for example, a cisgender reader might come to assert that because they have also experienced not revealing an aspect of their genuine internalized identity, they know, and share a similar oppression with, a gender-diverse person. it is therefore very important to bear in mind that empathy is but one small aspect of child and youth care practice competency in this area, that there is considerable diversity within gender diversity, and that the experiences of marginalization can never be fully known — especially if one is situated in a place of privilege. conclusion this preliminary study revealed that some students experienced the type of empathetic engagement that leads to distress and anger, that some students demonstrated the principles of child and youth care practice relational care and the gender affirmation model — even if they did not articulate these connections, and that some social justice motivations started to emerge. the struggle to understand, be supported for, and live as one’s authentic self may be a key empathetic connection point for students in the context of learning about gender diversity. fictional narratives may be one way of cultivating meaningful empathy along these pathways. more work is needed to investigate these issues, especially regarding how connections to theoretical concepts can and are being made via engagement with fictional material, what elements of empathy are occurring for students engaging with compelling narratives, and how these two elements converge and affect learning about supporting gender diversity. future research about the use of fiction in adult education and its impact on empathy must use broader conceptual frameworks and analysis in order to include the experiences of all learners. the data revealed a study population that was highly supportive, sensitive, and empathetically attuned in relation to a narrative about a young person exploring gender. higher-order empathy was expressed by several respondents; many affectively detected and responded to mistreatment, and there was evidence that students were applying this higher-order empathy more broadly to other social justice contexts. for these students, a perspective shift as delineated by transformative learning theory may not be applicable, and understanding how fiction impacts the development or expression of existing social justice orientations, if at all, may be more appropriate for these learners. such students may have entered the classroom experience with higher-order empathetic pathways already forged. instead of looking at how fiction induces or helps develop these pathways, it may be more appropriate to understand how fiction impacts already existing empathetic skills for such students. while demographic data were not gathered, it is likely that many study participants had experienced some degree of marginalization. the impact of both international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 140 privilege and marginalization on empathetic engagement with fiction in adult learning must be understood. studies on the use of fiction in adult education must incorporate not only how empathy can be developed in privileged learners for marginalized communities, but how privileged learners can engage critically with similarly positioned characters in order to understand their own privilege and its impact on others. studies must examine not only how perspectives shift but how ideologies are forged, and how existing social justice orientations are impacted through engagement with fiction in adult learning. it is important to understand how empathy and fiction interact for students with the same or similar lived experience as the characters, how existing empathetic pathways and engagement with fiction interact, how empathy is translated — or not — across social locations, and how fiction impacts internalized oppression and privilege. the impact of engaging with fiction in this context for students who struggle with bias must be further understood, as well as how that impact intersects with students’ social locations. overall, the literature about adult education and the use of fiction reveals a narrow and biased focus that is both problematic and not applicable to many of the participants in this study. more work is needed in order for these investigations to be inclusive of all learners and critical of social injustice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 141 references acker, g. m. 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(2005). critical reflection on cultural difference in the computer conference. adult education quarterly, 56(17), 39–64. doi:10.1177/0741713605280161 http://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2018/05/06/trans-youth-health-survey/ http://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2018/05/06/trans-youth-health-survey/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713605280161 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 126–145 145 biography dr. julie james is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university. she has worked with young people in education, child welfare, and health care settings for over twenty years. her current research and advocacy work focus on trans and gender-diverse youth-led work aimed at cultivating practices to support gender diversity and inclusivity in health care, education, and community services. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616091 students’ perceptions of schooling: the path to alternate education liane c. pereira and jennifer lavoie abstract: policies governing education in north america have given schools the responsibility of meeting the needs of a diverse student population, including those with emotional and behavioural difficulties (ebd). to balance their need for individualized programs with their right to inclusion in schools, students with ebd may be placed in alternate programs within a mainstream school setting. however, little is known about student experiences leading to this placement or their experiences in these programs. the purpose of this study was to explore youth’s perceptions of the factors that influenced their being placed in an alternate program for students with ebd. six eighth-grade students participated in semi-structured interviews and created a visual map of their school trajectories. an interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa) of the data suggested that their schooling was a tumultuous journey that contributed to their emotional, behavioural, and academic struggles, and to their placement in an alternate school program. students described disrupted school services, lack of supports, a negative school climate, and disengaging instructional strategies as contributing to their difficulties. an understanding of the influence of school context and policy on student behaviour is necessary if we are to improve educational outcomes and properly support child and adolescent development. keywords: alternate education, emotional and behavioural difficulties, ebd, interpretative phenomenological analysis liane c. pereira, phd (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the department of psychology, central washington university, higher education center, building 29, 2400 s 240th, des moines, wa 98198. email: lpereira@cwu.edu jennifer lavoie, med is a doctoral candidate in the human development program in the educational and counselling psychology department of mcgill university, education building, 3700 mctavish street, montreal, qc h3a 1y2. email: jennifer.lavoie@mail.mcgill.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616091 mailto:lpereira@cwu.edu mailto:jennifer.lavoie@mail.mcgill.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 382 school is a crucial component of children’s and adolescents’ social worlds, and is an important venue for the development of interpersonal skills, supportive peer and adult relationships, and positive self-perceptions (nakkula & toshalis, 2006). historically, students with disabilities or high needs have struggled to find the services they require. however, inclusion of all students into mainstream schools and classrooms is a strategy to promote healthy development, engagement, and overall success, and also a legal right. for students with particular emotional and behavioural needs, this right may be upheld through placement in alternate programs. the british columbia ministry of education (2013) characterizes students with serious behavioural and mental health difficulties as requiring co-ordinated inter-service/agency intervention and assessment processes to “manage, educate, and maintain the students in school and in their community” (section e.5, p. 57). for students with such specialized needs, alternate programs have been found to be effective with regard to academic, disciplinary, and socioemotional outcomes (cox, 1999; d’angelo & zemanick, 2009; haughey, 2009; tobin & sprague, 2001; vann, schubert, & rogers, 2001; wisner & norton, 2013). however, research tends to focus on individual factors over a narrow period to determine success. such an approach cannot truly assess whether students are participating in a meaningful manner or achieving excellence in all aspects of schooling, nor can it capture the complexity of their experiences. this study examined students’ perceptions of alternative education by engaging them in reflection on their school experiences as a whole and on factors that contributed to their educational placements. students with emotional and behavioural difficulties emotional and behavioural difficulties (ebd) is an educational designation for students who have high emotional and behavioural needs that are often not adequately addressed in the regular classroom program (quinn & poirier, 2004). the prevalence of ebd designations has been estimated at 1% of the overall student population (lane, wehby, & barton-arwood, 2005; olympia et al., 2004), with approximately 25% of those designations being for girls (trout, nordness, pierce, & epstein, 2003). socioemotional characteristics in general, students with ebd have been described as lacking in social competence skills (cook et al., 2008; desbiens & royer, 2003; gresham, 2000), such as forming and maintaining friendships (al-hendawi, 2012). the designation of emotional disturbance, a subset of ebd, may in fact be determined “more on the basis of social-behavioral difficulties rather than ‘emotional disturbances’ ” (cook et al., 2008, p. 131). students in this category exhibit behavioural patterns that fall outside of societal norms (maclure, jones, holmes, & macrae, 2012), and are labelled with ebd for problems that may in fact be socially rather than emotionally based. indeed, ebd may be viewed as an understandable response to adverse life events and circumstances that is aggravated by systemic issues in the school environment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 383 teachers and parents perceive these students as having more mental health challenges than their peers (hackett et al., 2010); also, these students have a lower self-concept (banks, shevlin, & mccoy, 2012). overall, this suggests that issues with socioemotional development, and particularly the use of poor strategies for managing emotional responses and stress, are important factors in determining which students will be designated as having ebd. behavioural characteristics students who are identified with ebd often have behaviour patterns that are not appropriate for the context (erickson, stage, & nelson, 2006), including violence, drug and alcohol use, disrespectful behaviour, skipping class, and fighting (d’angelo & zemanick, 2009). typically, a student with ebd will exhibit either externalizing behaviours that exist outside the individual, or internalizing behaviours that are directed toward the individual (austin & sciarra, 2010). externalizing behaviour is associated with oppositional tendencies and aggression, while internalizing behaviour is associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety, and isolation (lane et al., 2005). these differences between the profiles of students with ebd can give guidance as to which services and supports should be provided for specific emotional and behavioural needs. academic characteristics students with ebd often have concurrent academic difficulties. in general, they have lower overall academic achievement than their peers (reid, gonzalez, nordness, trout, & epstein, 2004; trout et al., 2003). students with ebd have also been associated with a higher likelihood of disengagement (al-hendawi, 2012) across cognitive, behavioural, and emotional domains (janosz, archambault, morizot, & pagani, 2008; linnenbrink & pintrich, 2003). low levels of engagement have been shown to be one of the primary reasons for skipping classes (fallis & opotow, 2003), and a significant predictor of high-school dropout (christenson & thurlow, 2004). for example, students with ebd have roughly a 50% probability of dropping out of high school (aron & loprest, 2012; kauffman & landrum, 2006), which is significantly higher than the general figure of about 30%, as represented by the united states’ 2010 class (snyder & dillow, 2010). indeed, students with ebd have higher dropout rates compared to students with other types of special educational designations (christenson, sinclair, lehr, & godber, 2001; kauffman, 2001). given that dropout can best be understood as a process that occurs over time (christenson et al., 2001; rumberger, 2011), it is important to offer support to students before they become disengaged and develop a higher likelihood of dropping out. transitioning to high school adolescence is a time of rapid physical, social, and emotional change. milestone events, such as the transition to a new educational setting, can cause turmoil and confusion as students negotiate a new environment with new courses, teachers, friends, peer groups, and social norms. this time of transition is important: students who struggle with such a change have a higher likelihood of dropping out (cohen & smerdon, 2009; curran neild, stoner-eby, & furstenberg, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 384 for students with ebd, the transition is especially difficult because they already struggle with their emotional responses and behavioural patterns, and may not have developed adequate social skills to navigate the transition (cook et al., 2008). they may also struggle with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health problems (hackett et al., 2010). in either case, they have particular needs that must be addressed by the practices and curricula of the school environment. determining how well alternate programs are meeting students’ needs is important for their current and future education. ebd and alternate education the terms “alternative” and “alternate” are used interchangeably to describe a wide range of specialized school programs that offer courses, curriculum, and instructional strategies not generally found in traditional mainstream settings (de la ossa, 2005). alternate school programs exist within the school system as a means of providing students who have specific needs with adaptations and accommodations (lehr, tan, & ysseldyke, 2009; mottaz, 2002). in particular, alternate programs generally provide additional support for social, emotional, and academic needs associated with positive development (farkas et al., 2012), while maintaining students’ meaningful participation in the social activities of schooling. the hope is that placing students with ebd in these alternative programs with fewer students and more intensive support and flexibility has benefits across domains that counter the social detriments of a more restrictive environment. in some instances, this is the case. for example, students with ebd who are enrolled in these programs have better grades, attendance, and self-esteem, and fewer behavioural issues (cox, 1999; d’angelo & zemanick, 2009; haughey, 2009) relative to students with ebd in traditional school programs. although research has focused on individual factors such as absenteeism or lack of engagement (joe, joe, & rowley, 2009), substance use (morone, kilbreth, & langwell, 2001; ross & wu, 1995), and poor mental health (oeseburg, jansen, dijkstra, groothoff, & reijneveld, 2010), this approach fails to capture the broad, complex, and multi-systemic factors that impact students with ebd. creating a space for students’ voices about their specialized needs is of paramount importance for ensuring educational success (cook-sather, 2006; fielding, 2001; levin, 2000; mitra, 2003), especially in alternate educational settings. indeed, research suggests that there is a disconnect in alternate programs between the needs that students perceive they have and the services that they receive (merrell & walker, 2004; streeter, franklin, kim, & tripodi, 2011); unfortunately, relatively few studies provide a detailed account of students’ perceptions (clarke, boorman, & nind, 2011; de la ossa, 2005; phillips, 2013; watson, 2011). understanding students’ experiences is vital because students who have negative school experiences have higher numbers of vulnerabilities as adults, including less education, limited or poor perceived future work life, and less general success (andersson & strander, 2004). determining students’ needs, and the effectiveness of support strategies, is clearly necessary, but should involve the key people involved in student success — the students international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 385 themselves (cook-sather, 2006; de la ossa, 2005; phillips, 2013). this is an important step towards identifying practices and policies that shape their educational experiences, and consequently their educational outcomes. significance of the study the connection between education and well-being is important for understanding the impact of educational practices and policies on schools’ abilities to meet their mandated objectives (fantuzzo, mcwayne, & bulotsky, 2003; knis-matthews, bokara, demeo, lepore, & mavus, 2007). many students with ebd are removed from mainstream school settings (calhoun & daniels, 2008), and may only return to school when a different educational setting becomes available (carroll, 2008). however, students may not have been consulted at any stage of the process or asked about how they can be supported in school. this qualitative study invited students to freely express their perspectives on their schooling, including the transition from traditional school settings to a remedial-focused alternate program. specifically, the emphasis of this phenomenological study is to understand and describe the educational experiences of adolescents enrolled in alternate programs in a large school district in western canada. the focus is to explore eighth-grade students’ lived educational experiences, from kindergarten through their current alternate school program, and uncover their sense of being a student while also contending with educational, emotional, or behavioural concerns that probably contributed to their placement in an alternate program. method phenomenology aims to capture the essence of human experiences, based on the perspectives of those living through the phenomenon and those researching it (moustakas, 1994), primarily through interpretation of participants’ constructed meanings. a phenomenological approach highlights the views of the participants without preconceived notions of how they experience the phenomenon or what those experiences mean to them; instead, understanding comes from an impartial, co-operative relationship between the participants and the researcher (haggman-laitila, 1999). as the students themselves are the most significant stakeholders in their learning and well-being, their constructed meanings and experiences, both positive and negative, are vital sources of information to communicate to educators, administrators, and policy makers. interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa) was chosen as the specific method of analysis for this study. ipa is concerned with exploring the lived experiences of individuals, but it goes more deeply into those experiences by trying to discern their significance as they occur in daily life (smith, flowers, & larkin, 2009). although the recollected details of any experience may become disjointed across time, they will still have a common meaning and significance to the individual. this continuity of meaning fosters reflection, thinking, and feeling as the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 386 individual processes the composite of the moments or details that he or she has unified as his or her experience (smith, 1996; smith & osborne, 2003). study objectives this study aimed to: (a) understand the past and present lived educational experiences of students who have been placed in alternate programs, (b) examine these experiences from a canadian perspective, (c) focus solely on student experiences and perceptions of schooling, and (d) situate those experiences and perceptions within a systemic developmental framework. all procedures were approved by the ethics board of the academic institute of the primary investigator and the target school district. target alternate program the recruitment sites were remediation-focused alternate programs in the target school district. these programs were located on traditional secondary school sites, and provided academic support to up to 12 students, ages 13 to 16, who had not been successful in regular classroom settings. the intended duration of the programs ranged from one semester to three years; at 16, or upon completion of grade 10, students were expected to transition to mainstream programs. the programs offered an adapted curriculum, reduced or flexible schedules, and selfpaced coursework, while also allowing students to participate in some regular classes. students had access to the staff and services at the main school (e.g., administrators, counsellors, career and employment guidance, and extra-curricular activities). participants smith et al. (2009) recommend three to six participants in ipa to best capture the nuances that influence participants’ experiences. all students from three programs were invited to participate in this study. a final sample of six students, ages 13 and 14, who were enrolled for at least 30 days, and began secondary school in the target alternate program, was recruited for this study; all of the participating students came from two of the programs. participants included two boys and four girls who were enrolled in grade 8; two students were repeating the grade. two students were living with two parent-figures, whereas three were living with only their mother, and one was living with grandparents. all participants described living in comfortable homes in secure neighbourhoods, though two also mentioned inadequate food and clothing resources. two students self-identified as minorities, two as caucasian, and two did not include this in their descriptions; school reports described them as caucasian. data collection three data collection methods were selected based on three criteria: their suitability within a phenomenological perspective, the needs of the targeted participants, and the necessity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 387 for managing researcher bias. the methods chosen were visual data/mapping, semi-structured interviews, and field notes and participant observations. visual data/mapping. as prosser (2011) stated, visual data are used in qualitative studies to gather a broad range of participant responses about a particular phenomenon. this method recognizes the struggles that participants might have with writing and speaking tasks. it is a creative approach that provides participants with multiple means of expressing themselves, generating rich data while preparing students to engage in the interview (hall, meyer, & rose, 2012). semi-structured interviews. interviews lend themselves well to qualitative studies and are often employed in phenomenology (lincoln & guba, 1985), as they can help to develop a fuller perspective on the thoughts and feelings associated with events. interviews consisted of four open-ended questions that increased in specificity and sensitivity (kvale, 2007). the primary researcher allowed participants to lead the interview and focus on their most meaningful experiences (biggerstaff & thompson, 2008), while both parties asked questions and offered comments (haggman-laitila, 1999). this type of interview is crucial to the interpretative process of ipa and the management of researcher bias (mcconnell-henry, chapman, & francis, 2011). field notes and participant observations. the principal researcher made several site visits outside of recruitment and data collection times to help her understand the participants’ school environment. this preparation is important for ipa because it focuses on a specific group in a particular context. during all site visits, the principal researcher kept field notes of general and participant observations. these included descriptions of the school and alternate program location, the physical space and classroom organization, and the policies and practices observed in each classroom. procedures each participant attended two or three sessions of varying length, depending on the participant’s verbal expressiveness and schedule. in the first session, participants completed a map of their school journey, representing their past and present educational experiences. in subsequent sessions, the participants answered open-ended questions about schooling and student life. the first session began with snacks, re-introductions, and a review of the study, recording procedures, and informed consent; participants were also asked to select a pseudonym to be used in all communication. next, the school journey map was described and completed. specifically, participants were asked to draw a representation of the school path they had taken including the target alternate school program. they were encouraged to highlight all the key places, events, people, ideas, and feelings that were most important to them. sessions were recorded as participants described their maps and answered clarifying questions. this took approximately 45 to 90 minutes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 388 in subsequent sessions, the primary researcher conducted the semi-structured interviews. each participant answered four open-ended questions, as well as more general introductory questions. sessions ended with a summary, a general inquiry about any further comments (patton, 2002), and a reminder about confidentiality. this took approximately 35 to 75 minutes. data analysis thematic analysis is a fundamental and flexible method of approaching qualitative data and offers guidelines to answering research questions through deliberate and thoughtful analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). the researcher first familiarized herself with the transcribed interviews, reading and re-reading the text for accuracy and initial ideas. this led to initial codes and identifying specific data points that were relevant to each code. the codes were grouped into themes and, again, data relevant to each theme were collected. the themes were reviewed to see if they worked with the initial coded extracts and data set as a whole. the ipa paid particular attention to language in an iterative and inductive process that drew meaning from particular experiential materials (smith et al., 2009). it involved line-by-line analysis of text to identify the relationships among emerging themes in the context of the participant’s world and the researcher’s psychological knowledge. the stages of ipa suggested by smith et al. (2009) that guided this study included multiple readings, initial noting, developing emergent themes, connecting emerging themes, and looking for patterns across cases. results overall, there were some commonalities among the participants’ descriptions of themselves. though many commented briefly on difficulties with in-school concentration or attendance, all participants viewed any academic struggles as temporary and not reflective of their abilities. one major theme identified in capturing participants’ school experiences and their path to an alternate program focused on the instability and insecurity of their schooling. primary theme: schooling as tumultuous the participants described the path of their schooling as disordered and inconsistent. although their recollections were fragmented, they reported clear memories of struggles with upheavals caused by multiple school and staff changes. the untimely school transitions compounded the strain of negotiating the natural changes in schools that are experienced by all students. for these students with emotional and behavioural difficulties, the lack of structure and stability was problematic. when students did manage to anchor themselves in a particular school, they were averse to its climate, which they perceived to be competitive, and rife with inflexible policies and practices. disruptive school experiences. schools can provide stimulation, stability, and support, as well as an education for children. these participants, however, described their school journeys as forgettable, disjointed, and unpredictable. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 389 first, most of the participants had very few memories of early elementary school. payton, aurora, and cole could not remember the names of their schools or many details of their experiences. cole later tried to trace his school path: i think i was there for grade 1. and then in grade 2 i went [pause] no [pause] i went to [school] for kindergarten and grade 2. and then maybe i went to [school] for grade 1.… and then in grade 3 i went to [school].… i don’t know [sigh]. participants’ memories became stronger regarding grade 3 onward, but in general were negative. with each transition came new teachers, principals, classmates, environments, and rules — and participants scrambled to adjust. aurora said, “sometimes i feel like i had to freaking redo a bunch of classes that i shouldn’t have had to do, or grades that i shouldn’t have to do … everybody was so immature. i felt like i was going back in time.” payton once transferred mid-semester and commented, “i was really far behind.… but i catched up on science a little bit and i’m retaking my test. i’m doing my work sheet, so just to get my grades up.” for students who were already having difficulty with the academic and social demands of schooling, multiple transitions only aggravated the strain. social changes, as well as the transition to a new institution, proved difficult for these students. logan described her difficulties in finding friends after changing schools, “i went into the new school in grade 6. but i still didn’t really make friends for a year.” for cole, the social aspects of school were particularly stressful and taxing. he found talking to adults and making connections with peers very difficult, yet wanted to be around people. his most detailed memory was of transferring mid-semester and arriving midway through a class. he expressed appreciation for the social graces of his teachers and classmates in a detailed account of one moment in his school journey. and those small social gestures gave him lasting friendships and stability in his school life, easing the disruption of his school changes. the disarray of participants’ school journeys was exacerbated by their absences due to suspensions, stress, or avoidance. all of the participants except damien had been suspended, and logan described being frustrated during a longer suspension: i wasn’t allowed to go to school for a week. and my friend [name] … she just gave me my homework every day. half the time, i’d be like … i really didn’t want to get behind in my homework. so i’d be on the computer, researching what we were doing.… or i’d be just sitting there. she noted a pattern when school was discouraging of “not really acting the same. i get [pause] i give attitude to teachers. and then i get sent to the office. and then i get suspended. and i end up skipping. and it’s not that great.” indeed, for most of these students, the culmination of this disruptive experience was expulsion, leading directly to their placement in an alternate program. payton was suspended for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 390 “half the month” after a physical altercation, and was eventually expelled and forced to transfer schools. aurora, too, was expelled, reporting that she was so disheartened by on-going bullying that she “punch[ed] the next person who bullied” her. not only did students feel the injustice of being expelled for “self-defense” after their pleas for support were ignored, but they were also excluded from any opportunities to learn. ariel’s wait was much longer: and they just kicked me out and told me i wasn’t going to go back.… and there wasn’t a [alternate program] for a bit. and then i just got kicked out of school [pause] i don’t know. no one helped me. i did nothing for two months. in these participants’ school journeys, academics were already a challenge before the lengthy gaps in instruction due to absences, suspensions, and expulsions. this is not to say that students were rejecting school. five participants mentioned a particular school as a safe haven — this was the anchor and shelter of their school journey that meant all the more to them because the rest of their experience was so tumultuous. responding to the ecology of schools. it may seem that students with social, emotional, and behavioural issues simply lose interest in school. for these participants, their lack of compliance, task completion, and attendance was not disengagement, but a response to an institutional system they found inimical. as students, they were dynamic parts of the complex, diverse, and competitive “ecology” in which they learned and developed. their processing of their position within this system, however, resulted in behaviours that challenged and resisted the very nature of schools. rejecting the school environment. payton exclaimed about one school, “that school shouldn’t even be a school. it should be a private school, the way they treat children there.… i mean, if that was the last school on earth i wouldn’t [go there] … and i care about my grades.” participants’ rejection of schools seemed to be based on an impression built in part from the appearance or reputation of the school. for example, ariel asserted about one school, “i never wanted to go to that school. even in elementary school i knew that was a bad school.” ariel rejected another school because it looked like a “classy” school rather than a “creative school [where] kids had fun… not just gray and blue and green.” similarly, aurora talked about her initial reaction to seeing one school: i felt like i was in a dungeon. bars on the windows. i’d be like, i don’t like this window. because our classroom windows were just plain, you know.… had bars on them … i never will like that school, ever. those first perceptions of certain schools were powerful and enduring, and shaped the participants’ interactions within these imposing environments. struggling to learn and engage. students not only opposed the physical spaces but also the stifling nature of traditional models of education. some participants refused to attend or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 391 comply because they felt they were not being respected. aurora, ariel, and payton would skip the classes with rules or teaching practices they did not like. they had difficulty with the pace of instruction, especially when they transitioned to secondary school where, according to ariel, teachers did not help as much “because they’re worrying about a bunch of other stuff.” she explained the difference: the teachers just didn’t teach me properly. and i didn’t like going there because i didn’t understand it and because the teachers suck at teaching.… the elementary teachers, they like take it slow and make sure you understand it. the teachers don’t even explain it to you in high school.… and i ask for help so much times. i embarrass myself in front of the whole class just to figure out what i need help with and stuff. this difference definitely impacted ariel’s success: “high school was way harder for me to learn things. that’s why i failed like three classes. [in] elementary, i never failed anything.” aurora further described the demands of secondary school, “yesterday we had a review package that we had to finish that day. and then today we have our test. that’s not enough time for some kids to, you know, actually pick up the learning and soak it into their brains.” for aurora the fast pace was even more daunting given the strategies and styles of teachers. she wanted differentiated instruction rather than just, “talking, and talking, and talking [without] anything on the board or anything to show visual learning … they’re just like, one voice. they don’t like form actions or anything.” aurora wanted engaging and varied instructional styles and a meaningful curriculum: it’s getting boring. like, i honestly feel like with science and stuff that i’m just learning the same crap over, and over, and over again.… like the body system. i feel like, okay, i learned that in grade 6, 7, 8. i don’t know, i’ll probably learn more in 9, 10, and 11. cole stressed the importance of “good” teaching and extra help from his high school math teacher. aurora also described her french teacher who “stood out” as positive because she “actually taught us stuff. taught us tricks how to remember things.” participants also commented on the importance of story-telling and personality in teachers. as damien said, a good teacher “puts a lot of personality into what he does and whatnot. i like that. like he’s teaching from the heart.” for these participants, the appropriate teaching style and efforts to support student learning could ease the academic demands of secondary school. coping with competition. participants also questioned the climate of competition and pressure to perform. as payton explained, “it’s more like, you have to be good and you have to be perfect to be at school.” ariel agreed, “like, kids are always pressured to be like perfect, you know. and that’s why a lot of kids are like sad these days, because they’re always pressured to be like perfect.” but as expectations rise and students attempt to meet them, they become overwhelmed. aurora became agitated as she described the pressure to earn certain grades: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 392 having to study so much for those little tests that have so much of your mark, help you pass, it’s stressful. because i mean, you know, you want to get a good grade. you want to pass school. you don’t want to have to repeat a grade. so you’re just having to focus and focus, and focus, and focus. and you have other things on your mind [sigh]. logan also described this experience: it’s just like the pressure of all the homework, or the pressure of all … you want to impress the teacher, so you try to do good. but as you’re trying to do good, you’re kind of not really doing that great because it’s just like you’re worrying about impressing people. but at the same time, you’re kind of failing at it. repeatedly, these participants stressed their motivation to do well and their understanding of the relationship between school and future success, but they also stressed the need to escape the unremitting academic burdens of school. unfortunately, for most participants this ability to escape was lacking in their later school experiences. damien suggested that there is “more freedom [and] they allow you to walk in the halls and whatnot,” but he was frustrated that his primary means of relaxing, playing video games, was restricted. for cole, playing sports at lunch was to socialize and “get out aggression” while aurora and logan used creative arts like drawing, playing music, and singing to escape from the stress of school. still, this was not quite enough for aurora: “god, i so miss recess. i miss having twice a day where you could just go outside and not worry about school. now it’s just once a day.” discussion these participants described schooling as a stressful and disorderly social process that required a significant amount of energy, and demanded their full complement of coping strategies. they stressed that these factors played integral roles in their lack of school success in more traditional settings. these results suggest that students with ebd could better navigate school if their subjective experiences were used to inform practices and policies. maintaining school services participants described having disjointed school journeys that started in primary school, and needing multiple supports for issues in academic, social, emotional, and behavioural areas. however, for students with individualized educational needs, schooling can be marked by numerous shifts and breaks. multiple in-class and outside settings (gregory & cornell, 2009), working with several different adults (gregory & weinstein, 2008), or experiencing a number of school and program transfers, may deprive students of the stability needed to create a sense of community. this is especially problematic for students with ebd who work best with consistent expectations and supports (kauffman, 2001), and who may withdraw when school becomes difficult. in fact, without appropriate support, such students will withdraw from learning (osler, 2006). this self-exclusion may not be a purely individual factor related to student international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 393 maladjustment, but a reaction to environments that disregard rather than recognize “the mundane tyrannies of everyday exclusion — the student who is ‘crying, worrying, refusing to do her schoolwork’ ” (osler, 2006, p. 578). to promote positive development among students with ebd, schools need to provide stability and structure as much as possible. disciplinary practices also contributed to school exclusion, particularly when interim services were not provided. the target programs all had zero-tolerance policies aimed at reducing school violence and drug-related offences and thereby increasing student safety (skiba, 2002; skiba & knesting, 2001). however, the use of these policies has been controversial (dinkes, cataldi, kena, baum, & snyder, 2006; fenning et al., 2012) for resulting in school exclusion, with the excluded youth often coming from disadvantaged backgrounds (bear, 2012; carroll, 2008). indeed, participants’ aggressions did not involve weapons or drugs, yet they were suspended or expelled with no interim services, as has been reported in other studies (pirrie et al., 2009; pirrie, macleod, cullen, & mccluskey, 2011). throughout their schooling, these participants were suspended for fighting, and four were ultimately expelled pending placement in an alternate program, despite being deemed safe enough to return to a mainstream school setting. the adherence to strict disciplinary policies did not appear to be primarily due to safety concerns, and undermined students’ right to education. exclusion imposed with little flexibility maintains unwanted behaviours, and fails to teach more desirable behaviours or to help the student recognize contributing factors (black, 2004; hemphill, plenty, herrenkohl, toumbourou, & catalano, 2014; kohn, 2004; osler, 2006; skiba, 2002). furthermore, suspensions have led to lengthy absences with the onus on the family to find accommodations (carroll, 2008; pirrie et al., 2009; skiba & knesting, 2001). consistent with this research, these participants were excluded from the disciplinary and educational decisions that impacted them, and the reasons underlying their behaviours were not considered or were given little weight. a multi-level perspective of student behaviours could help to inform disciplinary practices and to avoid unnecessary exclusions while teaching students more positive behaviours and interpersonal skills. addressing the school environment participants’ educational performance was negatively impacted due to a mismatch between student needs and teaching strategies. participants experienced schooling as meaningless and disengaging as they struggled to meet the expectations of multiple educators across multiple settings. consistent with the literature, participants emphasized that the key to adjusting to these changes was a supportive and consistent peer group (pirrie et al., 2009), within a positive environment. school climate refers to the safety, discipline, fairness, warmth, and support of the social and physical environment (fan, williams, & corkin, 2011). indeed, school climate has been associated with academic achievement, motivation, and performance (battistich, solomon, kim, watson, & schaps, 1995; griffith, 1999; roeser & eccles, 1998; stewart, 2007), and sense of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 394 school belonging (vieno, perkins, smith, & santinello, 2005). school climate has also been associated with psychosocial factors such as well-being and adjustment (brand, felner, shim, seitsinger, & dumas, 2003; kuperminc, leadbeater, & blatt, 2001), and prosocial behaviour (coker & borders, 2001). when students struggle socially or academically, physical and creative outlets are needed to alleviate stress. when school policies or disciplinary practices deny students these opportunities, they also deny students positive means of coping with stress. in sum, students’ learning and experiences are shaped through their perceptions of their environment (bandura, 2001), and students need positive school settings that provide the physical, emotional, and intellectual safety required to learn and succeed. simply monitoring students does not create a positive school climate (bear, 2012), nor does it take into account the impact of such practices on students (kohn, 2004). often, student voices have not been heard despite students being “able to make a valid and essential contribution to understanding of processes and systems of discipline in school” (mccluskey, 2014, p. 94). students reported that adults do not care about, listen to, support, nor respect students (cornell & gregory, 2008). furthermore, when rules were deemed unfair or unclear, the number of problems related to school order, safety, and discipline increased (fan et al., 2011). kohn (2004) argued that “we should ask not have we done enough to stamp out this behaviour but how can we transform schools into places that meet students’ needs so that students don’t lash out in fury” (p. 38). the interactions between individuals, their environments, and the systemic and sociocultural school factors contributing to and maintaining behaviours should be considered in exploring the experiences of students with ebd. limitations in phenomenological studies, generalization is not the purpose; the nature of an interpretative analysis is subjective, and the reader must take into account the subjective stance of the researcher, the description of the participants, and the context of the study to determine whether the findings are pertinent to their research and applications. the demographic profiles of the participants sample warrant further discussion. there were more females than males included in this study, which differed from the program demographics of approximately two-thirds males. rapport with a female researcher or the nature of the study requiring verbal and creative expressions of personal information may have influenced the responses and analysis. similarly, the final sample represented only two of five programs. the ways in which the unique perspectives of the students from other programs, based on their experiences in different school environments, would have contributed to the findings is unknown. again, the specific nature of ipa, and the small sample, limits the transferability of the findings to other groups and contexts, but the ideas and questions raised can inform further analyses of youth’s schooling experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 381–403 395 future directions students with ebd are entitled to an education commensurate with that of their peers, but achieving this requires a thoughtful approach to education. creating safe and positive school climates to foster positive teacher–student and peer relationships should be given high priority in promoting learning and development. students’ emotional and behavioural struggles may be warranted reactions to hostile interactions and toxic environments, and could be mitigated by systemic changes. just as dropping out is not an event that occurs at a specific moment, but rather the conclusion of a process that includes gradual disengagement (rumberger, 2011), placement in an alternate program is the result of years of struggles in traditional school settings. in taking a broader ecological perspective of student experiences, the temporal components must be considered. to inform policies and practices that positively impact development, interventions should target the early stages of 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(2007). individual and school structural effects on african american high school students’ academic achievement. the high school journal, 91(2), 16–34. streeter, c. l., franklin, c., kim, j. s., & tripodi, s. j. (2011). concept mapping: an approach for evaluating a public alternative school program. children & schools, 33(4), 197–214. tobin, t., & sprague, j. (2001). alternative education strategies: reducing violence in school and the community. journal of emotional and behavioral disorders, 8(3), 177–186. trout, a., nordness, p., pierce, c., & epstein, m. (2003). research on the academic status of children with emotional and behavioral disorders: a review of the literature from 1961 to 2000. journal of emotional and behavioral disorders, 11(4), 198–210. doi:10.1177/10634266030110040201 vann, m., schubert, s. r., & rogers, d. (2001). the big bayou association: an alternative education program for middle-school, at-risk juveniles. preventing school failure: alternative education for children and youth, 45(1), 31–36. doi:10.1080/10459880109599813 vieno, a., perkins, d. d., smith, t. m., & santinello, m. (2005). democratic school climate and sense of community in school: a multilevel analysis. american journal of community psychology, 36(3-4), 327–341. doi:10.1007/s10464-005-8629-8 watson, s. l. (2011). somebody’s gotta fight for them: a disadvantaged and marginalized alternative school’s learner-centered culture of learning. urban education, 46(6), 1496– 1525. doi:10.1177/0042085911413148 wisner, b. l., & norton, c. l. (2013). capitalizing on behavioral and emotional strengths of alternative high school students through group counseling to promote mindfulness skills. journal for specialists in group work, 38(3), 207–224. doi:10.1080/01933922.2013.803504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10634266030110040201 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10459880109599813 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-005-8629-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042085911413148 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01933922.2013.803504 students’ perceptions of schooling: the path to alternate education liane c. pereira and jennifer lavoie students with emotional and behavioural difficulties socioemotional characteristics behavioural characteristics academic characteristics transitioning to high school ebd and alternate education significance of the study method study objectives target alternate program participants data collection procedures data analysis results primary theme: schooling as tumultuous discussion maintaining school services addressing the school environment limitations future directions references microsoft word 07 everyday_resistance.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs131202220660 everyday resistance in making oneself visible: young adults’ negotiations with institutional social control in youth services jenni kallio and päivi honkatukia abstract: this article concerns young adults’ institutional encounters with professionals in the context of youth services. the encounters are analyzed as institutional social control — the practices and mechanisms that steer young people’s conduct in accordance with the normative order. we make visible young adults’ acts of everyday resistance as they negotiate, problematize, and challenge aspects of institutional social control. the data consist of 17 life-course interviews with young adults aged 18 to 24 who visited youth shelters organized by the finnish red cross. participants expressed criticism of the normative expectations and the categorizing and controlling practices that they encountered. however, there is a danger that in the institutional encounters, their acts of everyday resistance are not acknowledged as political agency; instead, stereotypical notions strengthen the interpretation of the young adults as problematic or in need of protection. this lack of recognition may contribute to increased vulnerability of the young people in the institutions that are intended to support them. keywords: citizenship, everyday resistance, institutions, social control, young adults, youth acknowledgment: the research underlying this article was funded by strategic research council at the academy of finland (grant nos. 336548 and 335870). jenni kallio msocsc (corresponding author) is a doctoral researcher (youth research) in the faculty of social sciences, tampere university, tampere, fi 33014, finland. email: jenni.kallio@tuni.fi päivi honkatukia phd is a professor (youth research) in the faculty of social sciences, tampere university, tampere, fi 33014, finland. email: paivi.honkatukia@tuni.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 99 the transitions to adulthood have become increasingly uncertain and problematic for young people, especially the transition from school to work. in many contemporary societies, these transitions appear to involve alarming social problems. brunila and lundahl (2020) contended that a whole “transition machinery”, consisting of various educational and training measures, has been created to tackle these problems (pp. 2–3). young people’s paths to adulthood are shaped by cultural perceptions and normative expectations. in finland, the ideal of early independence and managing one’s own life has a strong influence on youth (myllyniemi & suurpää, 2009); this is supported by the nordic welfare model with such institutional practices as free education and a social allowance system. in 2019, the average age at which finnish young people started to live independently was 21.8 years, while the average age in the european union was 26.2 years (eurostat, 2019). one of the most significant normative expectations for young people is that they will acquire independence through “labor market citizenship” (suikkanen & viinamäki, 1999). this refers to paid work, which, in normative expectations, determines the individual’s possibilities for acting within and attaching to society. in finland, the transition machinery forms part of the social services provided for young adults. these services are based on the nordic welfare model. the central sociopolitical ideal of the model is universalism, where the emphasis is placed on broad and, in principle, equal access to welfare and social services. these are mainly organized by the public sector and maintained with tax resources, but they also foster tight social ties among citizens (esping-andersen, 2013). however, in recent decades, the principle of universalism has been challenged and driven toward restrictions by a crisis in the public economy, the political dominance of the middle class, and by citizens’ expectations (anttonen et al., 2012, p. 187). hence, the transition machinery is expected to be costefficient and to encourage young people to assume responsibility for making choices that will define their futures. from the perspective of this article, the transition machinery includes services, institutions, and professions that relate broadly to young people’s life courses and operate in areas ranging from education, career counselling, and social and youth work, to subsistence and mental health. in these institutional contexts, youth is often depicted as a preparatory phase on the way to adulthood, during which young people are in need of both guidance and discipline. in this article, we analyze the transition machinery as institutional social control and conceptualize it as the practices and mechanisms that steer young people’s conduct in keeping with the wider normative order (cohen, 1985; honkatukia & keskinen, 2018). the aim of this study is to document young adults’ interactions and ability to negotiate with the institutional social order. previous studies have documented challenges that arise in encounters between young people and the services, and they have shown that young people, particularly those in marginalized or stigmatized positions, are often silenced (e.g., atkinson et al., 2003; blackman international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 100 & rogers, 2017). therefore, we examine the nature of the services through the accounts of young adults who have been customers of emergency youth shelters in finland. using the concept of everyday resistance, we analyze the dynamics between the young people’s agency and the institutional social control that imposes limits on their actions (johansson & lalander, 2012, pp. 1085–1086). these dynamics are analyzed in the context of the social and economic structures and ideologies that maintain social order, and that simultaneously tend to create inequalities, normalize marginalization, and create the demand that one take responsibility for one’s own life. first, we review the concept of social control in the institutional context of youth services and discuss how these services guide, and sometimes push, young people toward adulthood and independence in line with normative ideas and expectations. we then present the concept of everyday resistance as a tool for analyzing young adults’ negotiations with institutional social control. after describing our data and methods, we present our main findings relating to the forms of everyday resistance we identified in the young adults’ accounts of their experiences in diverse institutional settings. in conclusion, we contemplate young adults’ possibilities and techniques available to them for acting as citizens. transition machinery as institutional social control as an example of the institutional machinery referred to above, this study focuses on services that support young adults’ transition toward independence. such services are organized by both the public and private sectors and include, for instance, institutions of education, social work, employment, and health; mental health services; and the support given by youth shelters. typically, the social control exercised by these institutions is a mixture of guidance, support, instruction, and compulsion; as such, these services are very different from those serving paying customers, who will choose a service according to their inclination and their ability to pay. the support services we study here fulfil their societal tasks as part of the service network, and therefore, the issue of power is always present in their practices. one classic interpretation of institutional power and social control is provided by erving goffman’s (1961) theory regarding “total, or closed, institutions”. as he notes, these institutions have different societal functions — education, care, protecting and serving the community, and more — but from the perspective of the inmates or patients, the institutional practices and restrictions can lead to the recipients experiencing a “mortification of the self” (goffman 1961, pp. 4–5, 43, 46–48), accompanied by a loss of their normal roles and identities. although most of the institutions dealt with in this article are not “closed” in the goffmanian sense, the positions of the young people in them are structured according to diverse expectations and roles and also according to the judicial competence assigned to the service in question. while the youth services support young people, they simultaneously guide them, more or less explicitly, according to normative ideas and expectations about the course their path to adulthood should take. this occurs in institutional encounters where the range of social control extends from the formal sanctions and restrictions provided by legislation to subtle guidance, appeals to public opinion, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 101 and informal, even internalized, social controls (honkatukia & keskinen, 2018). the ultimate aim is to produce self-directed, educated, employed young adults who can sustain themselves and their families. in a situation where a young adult refuses to follow this normative model, there is a danger that the institutional machinery will turn into a demanding classification and labelling system (mäkinen & halonen, 2017, p. 151). the mandate of institutional social control is based on legislation, international treaties, guidelines, and other normative accounts such as public and institutional discourse. additionally, in contemporary societies, services are routinely characterized and surrounded by records, forms, and reports that make them seem efficient and accountable (campbell & gregor, 2015, p. 36). dorothy smith (1987, 2005) claimed that the design of such institutional texts — the diverse records and reports concerning clients, and the provisions, strategies, and efficiency requirements that define employees’ work — interlocks them into a highly politicized set of categories, concepts, and frames (smith, 2005, p. 118). they nearly always imply the exercise of power and control, which smith referred to as ruling relations. in order for the institutional texts to become lived ruling relations, they have to be activated by the people who process and use them (smith, 1999, pp. 148–151); that is, they must be exercised in the daily practices and encounters of the institutional machinery. thus, for young people dealing with the services, the laws and general guidelines are made concrete in their encounters with professionals — the so-called “street-level bureaucrats” (lipsky, 1980). these will include teachers, social workers, youth workers, and the officials in employment agencies. they, in turn, have power over those who are dependent on their decisions. their capacity to act derives from the institution and from the social relations they both produce and are produced by (smith, 2005, p. 18). their task is to help and support, but it is also to guide the young people in accord with public interest; in addition, they bring their own values to these encounters. their decisions have concrete, material, and social consequences for the lives of the young people concerned (mäkinen & halonen, 2017, pp. 153–154). although there may be extreme situations, institutional social control is generally conveyed in mundane encounters and justified in terms of a wider cultural understanding of the youth using the service. often, the young people are regarded as passive and in need of help, guidance, or control rather than being seen as active citizens: “their need (and indeed obligation) [is to] become productive workers, responsible parents and law-abiding and ‘contributing’ citizens” (davies, 2019, p. 6). in their institutional encounters, young people are often interpreted as either deficient or suffering from a lack of capacity, explained by their immaturity, youth, dependence on adults or support services, or lack of economic independence (lister, 2008; lister et al., 2003). young people are expected to adapt to the requirements of the system, but the system is seldom required to be flexible in responding to the needs of the young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 102 everyday resistance our findings suggest that, in institutional encounters, the mechanisms of social control described above can make it less likely that young adults will be related to as individuals and treated with dignity, and increase the likelihood that they will, in turn, contest this situation with varying acts of everyday resistance. hence, we use the concept “everyday resistance” as a tool by which to understand young adults’ negotiations with institutional social control. in their extensive review, hollander and einwohner (2004) identified two core elements of resistance: a sense of action and a sense of opposition, which together indicate that “resistance is not a quality of an actor or a state of being, but involves some active behavior, whether verbal, cognitive, or physical” (p. 538). in addition to being a social action that involves agency, resistance contains an oppositional relation to power. thus, resistance “occurs in opposition to someone or something else” (hollander & einwohner, 2004, p. 539). in this article, we build on those studies, such as johansson and lalander (2012), that have analyzed young people’s living conditions, lifestyles, and strategies of resistance within their own structural and everyday contexts. we argue that by studying encounters within which resistance occurs, it is possible to make visible and to challenge power relations and societal discourses. we emphasize the significance of institutionalized normative expectations and coercive practices, but we are interested in how they incite everyday resistance rather than in analyzing them as oppressive power relations. in this, we follow weitz (2001), who argued that “we need to more narrowly define resistance as actions that not only reject subordination but do so by challenging the ideologies that support that subordination” (p. 670). this study contributes to the field of resistance studies by emphasizing the relevance and the political aspects of young people’s everyday resistance as a significant practice through which young adults enact their agency while still being limited by institutional forms of social control. as scott (1985) argued, powerless or marginalized people seldom have the opportunity or resources to openly oppose their superordinates. instead, they more commonly engage in mundane and often unacknowledged forms of resistance (scott, 1985, p. 29). acts of everyday resistance are unorganized and are not explicitly tied to a broader ideological criticism. on the contrary, everyday resistance originates from direct concerns in daily life (gilliom & monahan, 2012, p. 405; johansson & vinthagen, 2016, p. 421). moreover, johansson and vinthagen (2020) interpreted everyday resistance as neither uniquely individual acts nor public confrontations with authorities by formally organized collectives but as “the patterns of practices done by individuals or informal gatherings of groups, in which they engage with power relations or the effects of power in their ordinary lives” (p. 3). hollander and einwohner (2004) have mapped the diversity of the behaviors and settings of resistance. they define acts of resistance as individual or collective, and as local or widespread; the level of conscious coordination in these acts may vary. nevertheless, they understand resistance as pursuing some form of change, or sometimes even aiming to diminish change. thus, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 103 it is generally the subordinated or oppressed who are viewed as resisters (pp. 535–536). one of the most fundamental debates about resistance concerns two questions: whether resistance must be recognized by others, and whether it must be intentional (hollander & einwohner, 2004, pp. 533, 539). according to scott (2020, xi), it is the social understanding of events in their context that creates an act of everyday resistance. building on this, in this study intention is regarded as implicit in acts of resistance arising from the actors’ opposition to institutional practices that attempt to support, guide, or restrict them (hollander & einwohner, 2004). in this study, we highlight the perceptions of the actors — in this case, the young adults. even though their intentions are not consistently evident in their accounts or readily apparent to others, several participants acknowledged their targets, directly and openly. the type of resistance can vary from overt resistance to attempted resistance, in which an actor’s intentional act goes unnoticed by both target and observer (hollander & einwohner, 2004, pp. 544–547). for us, it was important to identify the diverse and also the less obvious forms of resistance in the young adults’ narration about their encounters with institutional social control. hence, we believe that for an act to be seen as resistance, it is not necessary for it to aim for any perceivable goal. however, in the long run, even unpredictable or invisible consequences may follow from the those actions. at the same time, the question of effectiveness as part of the young people’s everyday lives is highly relevant since unsuccessful attempts may lead to discouragement and an experience of failure. according to weitz (2001), “the problem with using either effectiveness or intent as definitions of resistance leaves us no choice but to try to assess the nature of the act itself” (p. 670). following this thought, we do not aim to infer the intentions or effectiveness of the participants, but we do try to interpret the young adults’ institutional everyday experiences through their own conceptualizations of institutional social control and of their own everyday resistance. the study highlights the manifestations of acts, intentions, and aims, and the accomplishment of everyday resistance in the young adults’ narrations that reveal the dimensions of social control within which they claim to have tested boundaries and achieved dignity, and show where this occurs within and between institutional structures and dominant cultural logics. by using the concept of everyday resistance, we wish to draw attention to young adults’ mundane strategies, which: allow them to distance themselves from the system that would subordinate them, to express their dissatisfaction, to identify like-minded others, and to challenge others to think about their own actions and beliefs. thus, these everyday, apparently trivial, individual acts of resistance offer the potential to spark social change and, in the long run, to shift the balance of power. (weitz, 2001, p. 670) moreover, we relate to everyday resistance as “acts of citizenship”, which are not always rational, goal-oriented, or activist in nature, but which are, perhaps more often, smaller everyday life-related acts (hiitola et al., 2020). conceptually, everyday resistance resembles the ideas of everyday citizenship or lived citizenship that have expanded on traditional concepts of citizenship to recognize it in more inclusive and mundane ways (e.g., kallio et al., 2020; wood, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 104 everyday citizenship refers to “the lived reality of placing oneself in community”; that is, it refers to those non-formal means of experiencing and expressing one’s place in society, which include interactions with family and friends and the everyday activities of the community (harris et al., pp. 22, 26). thus, the concept of everyday citizenship focuses on the experiences of people who have traditionally been excluded from economic, political, and social esteem (kallio et al., 2020, p. 2), such as young adults. analyzing young adults’ everyday resistance in the context of the transitional machinery means that we understand the process of becoming independent as one in which young adults are supported, guided, and controlled through institutional practices, norms, and processes but in which resistance also occurs. welfare services were significant everyday institutions for most of the young adults who took part in this study. for many, their life courses had included experiences of the services since early childhood, and the services continued to have a substantial impact in their early adulthood as they were now seeking to become independent. we ask: what are the young adults’ possibilities for negotiating their positions and for participating in the services in a way that will support them in their path to independence? how do they perceive space for their own agency under institutional policies? what kinds of acts of everyday resistance do they use to challenge and change the practices of governance within those institutions? data and methods the data were gathered from five youth shelters, run by the finnish red cross1, where young people under the age of 25 can find support, someone to talk to, and a temporary overnight bed if needed. their worries may concern family issues, social relationships, education, housing, or other aspects of independent living. in finland, youth shelters offer free-of-charge services for young people in the bigger cities. in 2020, the five youth shelters helped 6,134 young people with supportive relationships, either in the shelters or online (finnish red cross, 2021, p. 30). the young people applied to the shelter themselves or they were met in youth spaces and shopping malls, and sometimes their parents were also supported. the data consists of 17 semi-structured life-course interviews conducted in spring 2019 with young adults aged 18 to 24. eleven of the participants identified as young women and four as young men. two were in the process of gender transitioning. the informants had a variety of backgrounds, ranging from middle-class families to fragile circumstances involving neglect, abuse, and substance abuse, which included experiences of being taken into care. because the participants were asked to talk freely about their life courses in the interviews, the discussion about their everyday lives in relation to institutional encounters involved just one participant and an interviewer. the interviews took between one and almost two hours to complete. they were audiotaped and transcribed in full (268 pages in total). 1https://www.redcross.fi/our-work/youth-shelters/contact-information/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 105 the aim of the life-course interviews was to explore the young adults’ lives holistically. moreover, we were interested in the “critical moments” that structured the life courses of the young people and played a role in forming their identities (thomson et al., 2002). at the beginning of the interview, each interviewee drew a line that illustrated their life course. based on these drawings, we discussed the significant events in their lives, the people who had been involved in them, and how different relationships and forms of social support had enabled them to belong in their social communities. we also asked about their experiences of institutional encounters; the kinds of support they needed, both in the past and in their current life situation; and their thoughts and hopes about the future. despite these partly predetermined themes, we strove to keep the interviews freeform and to proceed flexibly with the interviewee’s report, respecting the themes and emphases raised by each individual. our guiding principles in conducting the interviews were to provide intensive listening and appreciation for the young people’s participation and life stories. our request for interviewees was conveyed to the young adults by staff from the youth shelters, allowing the shelter workers to consider which clients would be willing and able to talk about their life journeys. the participants were acquainted in advance with the research component, and had the opportunity to ask questions about the study, after which they gave their consent to participate. to express our gratitude and to acknowledge them as persons, we gave them each a 20-euro gift card after the interview (head, 2009, p. 337). the research plan, interview guideline, consent procedure, and other relevant documents were reviewed by the ethics committee of tampere university before the data collection. those young adults who agreed to be interviewed were confident in sharing their life stories, and spoke vividly about their experiences. despite this, our data-gathering method had its limitations. for example, almost two-thirds of the participants were young women, even though roughly half of the clients in the shelters were male. according to our understanding, the staff made every effort to motivate young men to participate, but many declined. due to the low number of young men, it is difficult to assess the significance of gender in our findings. however, the stories did not really differ by gender. criticism of the normative lifestyle, experiences of worthlessness, and attempts to make one’s own voice heard were highlighted in the reports of all genders. the only exception was the experience of institutional control of sexuality, which was reported only by the women. however, our data provide very few opportunities to examine the importance of gender in institutional social control and expressions of everyday resistance, and this should be examined further. moreover, even though the study managed to reach young adults who do not often participate in studies, it is unclear to what extent the life stories of young adults experiencing particular issues such as social anxiety are represented. our approach offered a deep insight into the institutional everyday lives of the young adults, both in the local everyday setting where they lived and experienced life, and in the translocal settings outside the boundaries of their everyday experiences (campbell & gregor, 2015, p. 29). we attempted to identify and analyze the processes and practices that determined their social relations as grounded in their everyday lives, and thus to understand the complex interactions international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 106 occurring in the context of the institutional relations of power from the young adults’ perspective. with regard to everyday resistance, we had to contemplate which version of reality to study: that of the ruling or that of the subordinated. in other words, was our focus to be on power relations and elements of control, or was it to be on individual competence and skills (campbell & gregor, 2015, pp. 48–50)? as youth studies scholars, we committed ourselves to “taking the side” of the young people and to analyzing how social control became visible in their lived experiences and in their institutional encounters. our main aim in the analysis of the young adults’ stories was to identify resistance toward institutional social control. our informants’ accounts of their institutional everyday lives were rich and diverse, making it easy to discern accounts of explicit or implicit resistance. only two interviewees seemed to lack a recognizable history of resistance, and only one felt she had mainly been positively identified by the services. at the other extreme, some felt powerless and were discouraged from acts of resistance by factors such as extreme bodily social control and ubiquitous racism. we used thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) to categorize the data. the analysis started by identifying the most frequently and intensely discussed institutions in the young adults’ accounts, which were those relating to education, working life, subsistence, housing, and social work. in the second phase, we examined the data to identify the young people’s experiences in relation to dimensions of social control. institutions had had significant effects on the life courses of most of the young adults, and many criticized treatments they had been subjected to as coercive, oppressive, and even dysfunctional. moreover, they often described their own reactions toward this kind of institutional social control. this observation encouraged us to proceed with the conceptual framework of everyday resistance and to identify more implicit forms of resistance. at first, we identified and thematized the direct and indirect expressions of resistance from the data, which emerged as both intentions and acts of resistance by the young adults (hollander & einwohner, 2004, pp. 544–547). in analyzing the young adults’ stories in terms of everyday resistance, we inevitably had to devise interpretations for their intentions. some informants explicitly expressed their acts as resistance, such as when they described running away from an institution or keeping silent during appointments. other accounts, however, were mainly recognized as resistance by the researchers. the young adults did not necessarily identify their own behaviors as resistance: at least, they seldom used the term “resistance” explicitly, even though the connection between the act of resistance and the institutional context was evident to us as researchers. thus, especially in these cases, we have favored the interpretation made by the researchers over the informant’s direct expression of an act’s resistance. that is, we as observers acknowledged their acts as resistance based on our interpretation of the power relations in the situations that the young informants described, independent of their own expressed interpretation (hollander & einwohner, 2004). the following findings are structured around the forms of everyday resistance identified. they are categorized according to the three main forms that we detected in the informants’ accounts: withdrawal, breaking the silence, and bodily resistance. of the rich and extensive data obtained, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 107 we have been able to include only a fraction of it within this article. in each section, we present relevant acts of everyday resistance that we identified in the informants’ accounts. withdrawal one of the common means of everyday resistance identified in the data can be described as withdrawal. this is a powerful and visible act compared with many other more subtle forms of resistance identified in the young adults’ accounts. withdrawal may be an act with an intention and goal, or it may involve intentional omission (clarke, 2010), although from the outside it is often described as passivity or laziness. because of the hidden nature of the resistance contained in withdrawal, it is crucial to study the motives and intentions relating to those acts, as has been done in this study. initially, the young adults’ accounts of withdrawal appeared as refusal to comply with the normative expectations of independence and labor market citizenship. the interviewees’ accounts powerfully testify to the existence of normative expectations on young people to proceed directly and efficiently through the various transitions to education, work, independent living, and economic independence. they also indicate how these transitions simultaneously become increasingly complex and unpredictable: young adults nowadays are forced to navigate changing conditions that they have no control over and to manage a future that is obscure, uncertain, and precarious (wyn, 2020, p. 4). moreover, in the name of activating youth policy, pushing young people through effective transitions and into independent living appears to be one of the main tasks of the institutional machinery. as whittaker (2010) stated, the “formal structures of recognition”, such as grades at school, qualifications, and promotions, are appreciated in the transition to adulthood in societies where independence is highly valued. those structures are mainly institutionally organized and performed (pp. 78–79). the informants had internalized many of these expectations and had attempted to fulfil them, but the expectations had created enormous pressures for many, and some felt they had been labelled as deviants for failing to meet them. the most central normative expectation reflected in the informants’ accounts was the importance of a successful transition to education and work. during recent decades, the set of young people known as “neets” (not in education, employment, or training) have been the subject of policy action, social intervention, and public debate. additionally, a wide range of risks, such as poverty, poor health, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, crime, and homelessness have been associated with young people who are outside of education and working life (thurlbycampbell & bell, 2017, pp. 1, 11). in addition to risk management, highlighting the importance of an adequate level of education and paid work relates to concerns about the young people’s attachment to society. the interview data make evident how deeply many of the young adults felt they were surrounded by these institutional texts and political practices and how they had internalized the idea of labor market citizenship as the way to successfully achieve independence, adulthood, and societal membership. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 108 the participants were not criticizing the importance of work as such. rather, based on their own experiences, they claimed that the centrality of the expectation that all young people should be integrated quickly and efficiently into the labor market pressures them and causes anxieties. they believed that only those who conformed with these expectations were viewed as legitimate citizens. from their perspective, society provides too narrow a path to adulthood, ignoring the multiplicity of young people’s lives and individual circumstances that may make it difficult for some of them to follow the expected route from school to working life. they felt that, within the coercive practices of the institutional machinery, they had found no option but to try to comply with the normative path. this was so even for those who felt they were neither able nor ready to fulfil the terms of labor market citizenship. they also explained that, from their perspective, the steering and guidance provided by the institutions was misdirected or ill-timed. this caused them frustration as they experienced failure, official sanction, and “forced new starts”. from their own experience and perspective, the institutional machinery would simply refer them to yet another education or job-related practice rather than identifying their personal needs and resources (e.g., health, or family and peer relationships). instead of being subjected to institutional pushing, the participants wished to be given adequate time and support to reflect on and consider their options: it is very hard to get excited about some work trial if you are from a family, let me say, that your parents have a drinking problem and you have started substance use yourself. and then somebody from social services or from the social insurance institution says that you must go there, or you won’t get any money. that isn’t the help the person needs in that particular moment. they should not be forced into work life, but instead they need something totally different.2 (viivi3, 24) eleven of the interviewees stated that, for them, withdrawal was expressed by not going to school. the participants described the requirements and pressures of managing the normative path for completing their studies and getting a “proper” education. for many, the student counselling service and the other supports offered by the school merely offered advice on degrees and degree programs and did not address their personal needs or ease the pressures they faced. this led to exhaustion and frustration and prompted them to either drop out of school or refuse to cooperate with the school and its services. linnea’s story is a good example of this. at 20, she felt that she had drifted deeper and deeper into her problems without any real support. she described the enormous pressure of trying to cope with the normative training path and make the right choices regarding advanced education. as a pupil, she had achieved excellent success at school, but now, she felt left out and invisible, without adequate support. she would have liked counselling to help clarify her future alternatives, but, above all, she needed time and space to reflect on her choices without pressure. linnea had also suffered from broken social relationships while at school. all this had resulted in depression and 2all participant statements were translated from finnish by the authors. 3all names are pseudonyms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 109 anxiety. finally, in the ninth grade, she had retreated to her home, and after three years away from education, she was only now starting to study online for senior high school: well, in the ninth grade i stopped going to school. i managed to go there for one course, but then, before christmas, i was sick, and then i couldn’t go there any more... and, at the same time, i should have been able to reflect on my future choices. and somehow, even though my grades were nines or tens [scale from 4 to 10], i felt i wasn’t doing enough, that i had no reason to do that [to study]. and then i just studied and didn’t know how to keep things in perspective, how to know what would be enough. (linnea, 20) as scott (2018) emphasized, refusal can be expressed by “saying no” — either with that exact word, or implicitly through acts — or by “not saying”, and thus declining to speak at all. linnea’s account of her decision — “then i couldn’t go there any more” — seems to be a silent withdrawal rather than an explicit refusal. these silent protests constitute a strategy of passive resistance to requests, demands, and expectations (scott, 2018, pp. 13–14). hence, linnea’s silent withdrawal from the institutional encounter she was describing can be understood as an act of resistance. in the participants’ accounts, withdrawal as silence was evident mainly in therapeutic relationships, in clinical practice, and in treatment discussions, in all of which the participants felt left out, outsiders in their own affairs. in institutional encounters, the evaluation is often mediated in textual form (evaluations, reports, etc.), which set aside the needs and personalities of the young adults and objectify them as patients or clients, causing them to feel invisible and neglected. consequently, they are unmotivated to comply with the rules and practices of the institution. when discussing her silence, pinja, 20, described her withdrawal from institutional encounters more explicitly. she was disappointed at the lack of any possibility to influence her own treatment and felt a deep distrust of the system. in consequence, she stopped talking almost completely. additionally, she spoke of attending “pseudo-hearings” where her opinion was ignored or replaced by the views of a health professional or a consultation with her parents, presumably under the assumption that she was problematic and passive and did not want to participate: i don’t recall that much because i wasn’t really talking to anybody at that time. but i remember, when i read some of my old documents, that my parents had gone to see some nurse when i should have also been there, and then the nurse had recorded that, “it seems that she is not even to be asked if she would like to participate”. so they just assumed that i wouldn’t come. (pinja, 20) from the institution’s perspective, withdrawal appears to express insubordination, passivity, or pathology on the part of the young adult. however, we suggest that withdrawal is just one means of everyday resistance, relating particularly to disagreement, distrust, and lack of confidence caused by the ruling relations, and more broadly to the institutional social control enacted by the authorities and by the whole of society. in addition, defining young adults as passive or difficult, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 110 or as people who “do nothing”, may conceal their “small actions” (honkasalo, 2013), such as waiting, forgiving, or processing feelings of bitterness. these small actions are significant as they enable the participants to protect themselves even though they are under the ruling relations, either by adapting or by strengthening their resources and abilities. breaking the silence against institutional neglect in addition to hidden, indirect, and ambiguous resistance, the participants also talked about situations in which they had acted in more overt ways. these acts can be considered the young adults’ means of “breaking the silence”, through which they wished to emphasize their subordinate position, criticize the institutional machinery, or suggest how the system could be altered. according to scholars of critical citizenship, the intention of such everyday acts is political; through them, “subjects become citizens as claimants of justice, rights, and responsibilities” (isin, 2008, p. 18). accordingly, we interpret acts of breaking the silence as politically motivated, overt, everyday resistance, though not individually unique nor politically organized. in breaking the silence, the young adults aim to counter their experiences of institutional neglect, feeling strongly that these restrict their position and rights in their institutional everyday lives as citizens. the participants talked about how they had often experienced being evaluated and categorized to enable the authorities to decide whether to include them in or exclude them from the service criteria. this had occurred through formal documentation, reports, and written evaluations; in other words, through institutional texts (smith, 1999, pp. 148–151; smith, 2005, p. 118). hence, socalled “text-mediated decision making” ensures that the decisions will reflect organizational interests such as efficiency, economy, and order of priority rather than the interests of the young adults themselves. moreover, it also prevents officials from using their discretion and being guided by experience, ethics of care, or shared silent knowledge. instead, they begin to think about their work in the terms they are presented with (campbell & gregor, 2015, pp. 20, 37). we argue that this risks leading to practice-based failures, which, from the young people’s perspective, amounts to institutional neglect. from the young adults’ accounts, institutional neglect can be divided into three types. first, their accounts related to situations in which they did not fit into the categories or service definitions: they were either too old, too young, or were not seen to occupy a particular status that would entitle them to the support they needed. as a result, the services did not recognize their needs, or the division of responsibilities between services remained ill-defined. consequently, the young were at risk of “falling between” the services, and their problems were thus prolonged, accumulated, and exacerbated. for example, veera, 20, talked about her experiences of being defined out of mental health services partly because of her age and partly due to her substance use: i had been in youth psychiatry since eighth grade, but it’s limited to young people under 18 years, so i had to decide where to go next. the option was a therapy sponsored by kela [social insurance institution of finland], but at that time, i was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 111 still smoking dope, so i couldn’t get there. because you have to be three months sober. (veera, 20) second, institutional neglect was evident in situations where the young people’s own view of the support they needed was ignored or remained unidentified. some interviewees described their disappointment at how, as young persons, they felt that their opinions did not matter, even when they had attempted to voice them. the institutional encounters became struggles of expertise in which acts of everyday resistance were used. from the young adults’ perspective, their agency was invalidated by those above them in the institutional hierarchy. this could occur when the institutional process was followed literally, with no attempt to relate empathetically to the young person. anni’s story provides an example of this. anni was a 22-year-old woman with a history of serious disease since childhood. she described how she had managed to get the treatment she needed only by receiving support, both financial and psychological, from her mother. she feels strongly that her own position was subordinated within the hierarchical system of health care: many times as i left the doctor’s appointment, i felt shitty vibes or something; i didn’t get what i needed and wanted. and somehow, i always felt that the doctor and i were on opposite sides, but then it was, however, the doctor, and i was just a young girl. so then, every time, i just left there and thought that ok, everything is not fine with me. and then i would call my mom, crying and saying that i didn’t know what to do. (anni, 22) third, it became clear that labelling young people with a certain status or diagnosis positioned them in a compartment that was convenient for the service system but invalidated their resistance. the experts’ statements enabled even more stringent restrictions and administrative practices, as a result of which the young people were defined in ever more stigmatizing ways and pushed even more to the margins. having the young adults verbalize all this in the research interviews can be regarded as their breaking the silence, and in this way, expressing a form of everyday resistance. for example, ida, 24, recounted that she was stigmatized as a troublemaker at school and was forced to transfer to a special comprehensive school, which she felt was unfair and wrong. she lost all her old school friends and was later heavily bullied at the new school. she described how her entire personality changed due to that transfer. she felt her own agency had been totally suppressed and was still very bitter about what had happened: i’m bitter. i feel bitter because of their choice to throw me away.… i was placed in another school because of being different, being more talkative than others. then … bit by bit, all the cheerfulness shrank away. sometimes i managed to be cheery, but quite often it was just depressing. things went the way they did. just the way i didn’t want them to go. (ida, 24) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 112 later in the interview, ida also talked about using her sexuality, for example, to oppose and to show resistance because she had been forced to change schools. the interviews strongly emphasized the diversity of ways in which the young adults took a societal stand in the kinds of situation described above. six of the young people highlighted creative ways of breaking the silence, such as drawing and writing to express themselves and their thoughts. in addition, their dreams of building, for example, their own artistic career path, appeared to call into question the school career advice, which they described as conventional and narrow and as guiding them toward safe and stable professions that could be achieved only through formal education. furthermore, a few had broken the silence by politicizing their personal lives — for example, by acting as volunteers in an ngo; choosing an ecological or activist lifestyle; or becoming a member of a subculture that promoted action against climate change, criticized infringement of animal rights, or protested racism. although criticism of institutional social control emerged as a key motivator for these acts of “breaking the silence”, solidarity between young people also emerged strongly in the interviews. they felt that by raising their grievances and submitting proposals for improvement, there was the possibility of protecting other young people from facing the same problems. yet, as another form of “breaking the silence”, the participants also showed gratitude to the welfare state that had kept them alive, to certain youth services, and even to individual professionals. as stated above, “breaking the silence” often appeared without its intention being evident. for example, emilia, 20, wanted to participate in the study to express gratitude to the youth shelters. she described the restrictive institutional social control she had experienced elsewhere, but in her interview account she wanted to point out that more respectful and holistic support could change young people’s lives. having received such support herself, she now wanted to break the silence by recounting her own experience in a spirit of solidarity with other young people. additionally, the study gave her an opportunity for covert resistance (hollander & einwohner, 2004, p. 544), thus delineating a path for other young people to more easily find the support they needed: i was wondering if it would be nice to talk somehow about this [the youth shelter]. that, somehow, it has been such a great help to me. so, i wanted to say thanks and bring it out a little. or something. then i found it [the invitation to participate in the research] and wanted absolutely to be involved. at least to tell, how it [support given by the youth shelter] has affected my life. (emilia, 20) the findings suggest that young adults also try to negotiate with institutional social control from within official channels. they had filed complaints and malpractice notices and had provided statements and completed forms to get justice or to get their cases to progress. these means of formal communication with institutions were based on the specific formats of the institutional texts. through these formats, the participants submitted themselves to the logic of the ruling international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 113 relations. for many, their experience had been that they were made invisible in the process of their complaint and were misinterpreted as persons. one example of this came from nikki, 19. they grew up with violent parents who also used a lot of alcohol. the control and restrictions over the children in the family had been so strict that nikki was prevented from enjoying a social life or establishing independence. asking for help or support from the school or from the authorities had been strictly forbidden by the parents. when nikki was still a minor, the situation deteriorated so badly that they dared to search for help by filling out a child protection notification their own behalf. however, the mechanism of institutional rules and categories excluded them from the support they were desperately needing, and also increased the experience of invisibility and neglect they had been submitted to throughout life: i was still under 18, so i thought i would get help from the child protection, where there were already several notifications about us. i don’t know how we avoided them, but anyhow more than one child protection notification had been filed in recent years. i filed a notification for myself because i found my dad very aggressive towards me.… from child protection, they answered, interestingly, that they couldn’t help me. so, that wasn’t their business then, i guess. when i reported that i didn’t have any of my belongings and i was afraid to go home and i would like to have my stuff, so, what could i do? they just said that they couldn’t do anything. (nikki, 19) based on these findings, we argue that, among other means, young adults do use the procedures offered by the institutional system to exercise their acts of everyday resistance, as nikki’s story reveals. even though the institutional machinery is often incapable of categorizing young people beyond its service criteria and the definitions embedded in institutional texts, young people do try to use the system to fight normative expectations and being neglected. these attempts may, however, prove fruitless, and hence, the political nature of these acts remains unidentified, as happened in nikki’s experience. bodily resistance in the data, multiple restrictions relating to a young person’s physical body appear as powerful examples of institutional social control. being defined as sick or healthy is a concrete indication of ruling relations and one of the most essential dichotomic definitions in the young adults’ institutional everyday lives. the participants described their institutional positioning as varying from being “too sick” to being “not sick enough” to fit into the terms and conditions of the institutional machinery. having the correct diagnosis is a crucial criterion for access to mental health services, for example. in addition, some institutions are legally permitted to apply restrictive and coercive bodily practices, such as giving compulsory treatments. these may have critical consequences, not only physically but mentally, and affect the young person’s future expectations and prospects, as is exemplified in pinja’s story. pinja had been placed in several institutions, including child protection, health care, youth psychiatry, and ultimately a closed psychiatric ward international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 114 where she was treated with involuntary electroshock treatments. these led to permanent memory problems that caused her difficulties in studying; when she was interviewed, she was struggling to complete her studies in senior high school: well, that being in the [psychiatric] department was pretty horrible. then that’s when they started the electrotherapy … i went to those treatments for quite a long time, but then their efficiency began to decrease and then finally, well, i still have memory problems. (pinja, 20) in addition to mental health issues, three of the participants emphasized institutional physical controversies relating to gender and sexual rights, which are discussed below. institutional bodily control is connected with spatial control, as well as control of the time and space of the life course, making the young adults’ bodies vulnerable and beyond their own control. from goffman’s (1961) definition of the total institution as “a place of residence and work where a large number of life-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life” (p. xiii), the interconnection of space, time, and body becomes evident. spatial social control involves transferring young people from one space to another, locking them into certain spaces, and excluding them from their everyday social environments (see also goffman, 1961). thus, it is an exercise of power that forces young people repeatedly to reconstruct their social position and self-identity. the most studied expression of resistance is the resisters’ use of their own bodies or other material objects in acts of physical resistance (hollander & einwohner, 2004, p. 535). in the current study, bodily resistance emerged as an important tool for negotiating and challenging bodily, spatially, and temporally restrictive practices, which, by definition, characterize institutions. in the young adults’ accounts, bodily resistance appeared both as an expression of autonomous agency under stifling conditions and as a means of signalling a need for help and support. from the social science perspective, self-harm techniques may be interpreted as a kind of battleground where the person acts out the unique personal self as subjective, and as a self who is socially molded and constrained by the beliefs and practices embedded in society. when a person self-harms, they become thereby the subject of their bodily experience and not simply an object of the other’s experience (mcallister, 2003, p. 182). the young adults’ accounts suggest that bodily resistance, even to the extent of self-harm, can be a technique used by young adults who are attempting to foster their sense of agency. the implementation will vary from editing their outward appearance and style to cutting themselves, controlling eating, and taking overdoses, and can extend all the way to suicide attempts. under restricted and controlling institutional circumstances, taking over one’s own body may be the only perceived solution by which to challenge coercive practices and to take back the power of decision. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 115 bodily resistance can also be a reasonable way of expressing the need for help, especially in the context previously described as institutional neglect. in the young people’s accounts, getting help could require drastic acts, such as attempting suicide. for example, when describing taking an overdose that led to an urgent surgical operation, pinja commented, “nobody expected i would do anything so drastic.” after the episode, she received more attention and affection from her family and relatives and was also guided to youth psychiatry. however, the treatment, specified as temporary, lasted only two weeks; after discharge, her situation soon worsened. thus, self-harm techniques may awaken the social control machinery to respond to a young person’s acute situation but provide only temporary relief. self-harm techniques may also increase the likelihood that the young person will be defined as a problem and considered too difficult to take care of. regarding bodily resistance, the data confirmed research findings that show that young women’s risky sexual behaviors may be either intentionally or unintentionally directed toward oneself in a self-harming manner (see also louhela, 2019). so-called internalized sexual violence can be considered a relational act that can violate one’s bodily integrity as well as harm one’s physical and mental health. within these sexually risky behavior patterns, young women endanger themselves through exposure to various forms of violence, sexually transmitted infections, criminal involvement, and substance abuse (louhela, 2019, pp. 83–85). additionally, based on our data, we suggest that, in the context of institutional social control, those acts can be considered a form of bodily resistance to institutional practices that are experienced as too restrictive or lacking sensitivity to the young person’s needs and situation. the results of a health survey in finnish schools (ikonen et al., 2017) indicate that young people in care face more violence than young people living with one or both parents, and have a five-fold greater risk of experiencing sexual violence. the interviews confirmed this vulnerability among young people in custody and in the circle of other support services. however, our findings suggest that the vulnerability intertwines with risky sexual behaviors as bodily and spatial resistance against the coercive practices and restrictions imposed by the institutions. thus, institutional practices of social control also expose young adults to sexual vulnerability. in the name of protection, young adults’ fundamental need to form social and intimate relationships is often strictly limited by institutional conditions, which in our study are interpreted as institutional spatial and bodily social control. denying the inherent needs of these young adults leads to a violation of norms, such as running away, as well as to secrecy and shame (see also louhela, 2019), which can further deepen their difficulties. the story of 19-year-old aada is an extreme example of multiple forms of institutional neglect where invisibility and the inability of the sectored services to cooperate combined in a devastating way. risky sexual behaviors, which can be interpreted as bodily and spatial everyday resistance, played a crucial role in her history. even though she had an active institutionalized relationship with child protection, a psychiatric department, and the hospital school, when she went missing because she was being held captive and sexually abused, none of these institutions did anything to seek her out. moreover, her needs for safety and security were neglected later in the criminal process. she was terrified when, after international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 116 a police interrogation, she was forced to confront the perpetrator in the courtroom. she felt a lack of empathy from the police and was, on this occasion, neglected both by them and by the court, the two institutions from which she had sought justice and protection: i was in the adolescent psychiatry department and i went out with a guy i met on facebook.… and then, well i remembered that he was a criminal, he told me everything he had done, and i feared him. and i didn’t dare say anything against him. and then he kept me there for a week and raped me.… nobody knew for about a half a year. and then things got worse, and i told my best friend, and they filed a crime report to the police. then i had to see him in court, and he began to send me those threats. and even his mother called me that i should lie in court or otherwise he is going to kill me. so, things worsened a lot. and then there were more suicide attempts and so on. (aada, 19) another form of bodily resistance is resorting to violence. in general, being violent is seldom defined as a social phenomenon; rather, it is viewed from an individual psychological frame that bypasses the variety of social meanings connected to it (honkatukia et al., 2007). additionally, violence is socially connected to stigmatized identities (e.g., goffman, 1963). thus, being labelled as violent means being socially devalued and negatively stereotyped, which can have negative effects on an individual’s perception of self. similarly, in the context of institutional social control, violence tends not to be identified as a form of resistance but rather is characterized as a negative or pathological trait of an individual. in contrast, the young adults we interviewed who described themselves as violent did not connect the violence with their own personality but rather with those social situations in which they had resorted to violent behavior. for example, 21-year-old sara said that violence as a self-harm technique had become a tool to help her control her anxiety, but it had also been the means of fighting against school bullying; thus, it was a means of both defending herself and resisting the school’s inability to stop the bullying: well, i’ve always been, so to speak, having problems with violence and myself. but then i … started to direct it [violence] at myself. but then, when they bullied me, i targeted it … to them. (sara, 21) bodily forms of everyday resistance are also expressed in a more conventional way when one’s outward appearance is used as an instrument of self-expression. one’s appearance provides an opportunity to separate oneself from others and to challenge the prevailing standards, while at the same time asserting one’s membership in a subculture. subcultural membership bonds and their embodied manifestations simultaneously give the participants a sense of being included and respected, and of creating social and bodily spaces of their own. sara, for example, found support and protection in the manga culture-oriented peer group she joined, even though the group members were ridiculed for their appearance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 117 conclusions and discussion the social norms of everyday life are often invisible and do not require much, if any, conscious thought (campbell & gregor, 2015, p. 31). the mechanisms and objectives of institutional social control are exposed mainly when something abnormal occurs. the type of conduct that we have analyzed here as everyday resistance often arises in situations where a young person is labelled a problem. this problem label pushes the young person out of the normative institutional path into the sphere of specific services — for example, child protection or mental health services. however, when the self-determination of the young person contradicts the institutional definitions, this situation may lead to experiences of invisibility and neglect. this study has documented the meanings that young adults confer on their actions in such situations, especially how they oppose labelling and derogatory treatment. we have identified three main narrative ways through which the young adults delineated themes of everyday resistance in their personal experience: withdrawal, breaking the silence, and bodily resistance. the young adults’ accounts of withdrawal arose mainly from their experience that, in encounters in institutions, their needs were interpreted only through the norms of independence and labor market citizenship, while their actual needs for support were left unmet. their withdrawal reflected their frustration, their distrust of the authorities, and their wider need to contest institutional social control over young people in society. in the stories of the young adults discussed above, the withdrawal manifested itself as nonspeaking, leaving school, or refusing care practices, behaviors that caused them to be labelled passive or problematic, according to the particular institution’s interpretation. furthermore, young adults “broke the silence” by showing resistance in more overt and political ways, especially when revolting against the institutional neglect they had experienced. they took a societal stand by politicizing their own lifestyle choices, by showing strong solidarity with other young people, or through art and creativity. these acts can also be interpreted as strengthening their experiences as citizens. young adults’ bodily resistance, in turn, is an important means of contesting the institutions’ bodily, spatially, and temporally restrictive practices. it is an expression of their autonomous agency but also serves as a tool to search for help and support. the study’s main contributions are twofold. first, it gives validity to the complexity of everyday resistance as based on the young adults’ personal stories. the findings reveal that young people’s everyday resistance is a complex phenomenon, and is typically defined in the literature as hidden and informal (e.g., gilliom & monahan, 2012, p. 405). acts of everyday resistance may sometimes be discreet, as in young people’s silent withdrawal from institutional interaction, but they may also be quite striking, as some of our examples of bodily resistance show. moreover, young adults can be very articulate about the motives for their actions, but their intention or purpose is not always obvious. as hollander and einwohner (2004) put it, the acts are observable, yet not necessarily recognized as resistance by the powerful (p. 540). accordingly, there may be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 118 unintended consequences that hamper the resister’s position: if not recognized as resistance, the young adults’ defiant actions may end up supporting the very structures of domination and control that they aimed to resist. interpreting young adults’ nonconforming conduct as everyday resistance offers them a way of being in charge of their own lives under conditions in which their agency has been restricted or neglected. therefore, acts of everyday resistance can be interpreted as acts of citizenship. compared to a more conventional lens, this framework provides a deeper insight into young adults’ aspirations to express a political stand in their everyday lives. some young adults endeavor to foster their sense of agency in order to make a difference in their institutional everyday lives. the study hence challenges the assumption that young people in wounding and fragile circumstances who apply for support from the service network are either passive receivers, unmotivated to improve their lives, or people whose intentions are incorrect, pathological, or destructive. we regard this interpretation as important, in light not only of theories of citizenship but also those of well-being, according to which the extent of one’s participation in decisions and activities that influence one’s life is a significant part of well-being and a necessary condition for human development (allardt, 1993). honneth (1995), on the other hand, suggested that the conditions of identity formation are dependent on the establishment of mutual recognition in close relationships, on being respected in one’s community, and on institutionalized relations that convey universal respect for the autonomy and dignity of other people. the study’s second main contribution relates to the contemporary organization or institutional order of youth services. young people’s accounts revealed how narrowly institutions’ societal tasks are sometimes defined. in our view, this narrow understanding has its roots in the neoliberal shift in the management of welfare states that emphasizes economic efficiency to the detriment of the prior principle of universal welfare provision. austerity, as the main neoliberal policy response, and as an attempt to minimize public services and cut government spending, highlights the responsibility of young people for their own livelihoods. we argue that this shift in welfare state ideology, as discussed by many scholars (e.g., gough, 2017; leskošek & zidar, 2017), contributes to making the institutions incapable of recognizing and responding to the complexity of young adults’ everyday lives as a whole. they are unable to consider holistically the young adults’ complex life histories and situations, and hence bypass questions of health, social relations, family difficulties, discrimination, disadvantaged positions in housing and labor markets, and economic livelihood, all of which are intertwined in shaping young adults’ possibilities for living independent lives. moreover, the study shows that, from the young adults’ perspective, the transition machinery is often seen as a loosely woven network, temporally and spatially fragmented, where their status and social relations vary unpredictably and are beyond their control. despite not being able to make their voices heard, the normative expectations of independence and labor market citizenship still hold them accountable for their own future success. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 119 from the young adults’ perspective, it would be sensible to organize youth services in such a manner that they could respond to the young adults’ lives as a whole and in a more far-sighted way. we suggest that adopting the typology of resistance, as presented by hollander and einwohner (2004, pp. 544–547), could act as an important tool in this matter. sensitively used, the concept of everyday resistance has the potential to make visible new dimensions in young people’s violations of norms in the institutional context. their acts can be explored as expressions of critical everyday citizenship with a more or less conscious attempt to promote the realization of their own rights. applying this interpretation would have the potential to reduce the young adults’ current experiences of inferiority and frustration in their institutional encounters. this would require institutions to develop the ability to compromise in various ways, such as relaxing the boundaries of their services and the conditions controlling access to the service, and less strictly adhering to controlling regulations when it is in the best interests of a particular young person to do so. additionally, our findings emphasize the importance of informal structures of recognition, and thus acknowledge the need and right of young adults to be confronted, heard, and appreciated holistically for the people they are. in the finnish context, a model has been proposed (e.g., aaltonen et al., 2015, p. 130) in which one professional employee would be responsible for a young person’s service package and for considering his or her life as a whole. in light of the ruling relations, the prerequisite for such a course of action would be that the employee would have the opportunity to operate flexibly within the institution’s daily practices, to get whatever information was needed, and to have her or his work recognized as valuable in a cross-governmental manner. this would require a genuine cross-sectoral construction of services, including in terms of their objectives, resources, and remuneration. the successful implementation of such a model would require a strengthening of the resources available to youth services and a challenging of the neoliberal logic of effectiveness. at the time of writing this article, we are conducting a follow-up study among the same young adults we interviewed for this study. according to our preliminary findings, during the covid19 pandemic their institutional encounters have become even more fragmented, and their risk of institutional neglect has increased. in the face of neoliberal austerity politics and calls for contractions of welfare state services, young people seeking help are even more readily stigmatized and left without the support they need. in future studies, it is therefore crucial to critically examine the institutional system’s ability to support young people’s well-being. in the current situation, professionals risk facing a loss of control over their work and over their professional autonomy. they may encounter ethical dilemmas in dealing with the pressures of attempting to follow official guidelines while simultaneously honoring their own professional values and commitments (hughes et al., 2014). this reality facing professionals warrants thorough study to learn more about the structural constraints they experience in supporting young people through increasingly challenging life situations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(1): 98–123 120 references aaltonen, s., berg, p., & ikäheimo, s. 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(2020). introduction. in j. wyn, h. cahill, d. woodman, h. cuervo, c. leccardi. & j. chesters (eds.), youth and the new adulthood: generations of change (pp. 1–12). springer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 307 re-creating social futures: the role of the moral imagination in student–teacher relationships in alternative education jennifer a. vadeboncoeur and renira e. vellos abstract: in this article, we describe a quality of student–teacher relationships that supports re-engagement in alternative education. this quality is based upon the principle of accept and build: a dialectical principle that simultaneously includes both student and teacher accepting what the other offers in the present moment while building new social futures in relation. we argue that this form of relation is both a means and an outcome of moral imagining. the article is in three sections. we begin by providing a brief review of the literature on student–teacher relationships. then, drawing together the literature on moral imagination, we describe and exemplify the principle of accept and build with research from australia and canada. from this perspective, student–teacher relationships can be positioned as developing projects of the moral imagination with implications for the recreation of social futures. although the label of “second chance” is often applied pejoratively to alternative and flexible programs, we argue that this should be viewed as a strength rather than a weakness. keywords: student–teacher relationships, alternative education, moral imagination, social futures, vygotsky jennifer a. vadeboncoeur (corresponding author) is associate professor of human development, learning, and culture at the university of british columbia, 2125 main mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: j.vadeboncoeur@ubc.ca renira e. vellos is a doctoral candidate in human development, learning, and culture at the university of british columbia, 2125 main mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: renira.vellos@gmail.com mailto:j.vadeboncoeur@ubc.ca mailto:renira.vellos@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 308 alternative education has existed for as long as public education, although it is sometimes considered evidence of the failure of individual children and youth or the failure of public schooling. when perceived as a “second chance” at schooling, there is often a stigma attached to the students who attend and the teachers who work with them (vellos & vadeboncoeur, 2013). in addition, there is debate around the role of alternative schooling in contributing to the ongoing failure of the public school system to respond adequately to the needs of students. one view holds that alternatives allow public schools to push out students who are deemed “different” so that public schooling does not need to change to meet the needs of all students (kelly, 1993). while there is little doubt that alternative schools may be “spaces of difference” (vadeboncoeur, 2009, p. 284) and that, together, students and teachers in alternative schools may form “communities of difference” (vellos, 2009, p. 116), our research suggests that a central characteristic of alternative education — offering second or additional chances — may be important for public schooling as a whole, rather than something that should be perceived as a weakness of alternative education. research across mainstream and alternative education is unequivocal in highlighting the significant role of student–teacher relationships: supportive relationships between students and teachers are central to learning, teaching, and education (de jong, 2005; lind, 2013; o’connor & mccartney, 2007). however, much research tends to focus on students as individuals, and measure attributes of individual students, rather than the qualities of the relationship between students and teachers. in our research, we have found that the principle of accept and build helps us to go beyond the label of “supportive,” to better understand what may be a central quality of the relationships between students and teachers. the dialectical principle of accept and build highlights the role of the relationship between student and teacher in creating the dialectical space through which student and teacher work toward accepting what each has to offer in the present, while together building new social futures. our perspective rests on an idea common to two different kinds of relationships: those between infants and caregivers as a dialectic of accept/build (vygotsky, 1934/1987), and those between participants in improvisation as a dialectic of “yes/and” (perone, 2011; sawyer, 1997). in this article, we use the language of accept and build because it describes clearly a central quality in relationships between students and teachers that is significant for enabling students to overcome difficult educational histories and to re-engage in schooling. accept and build relies on the imagination, and specifically, what we are calling the moral imagination, based on the scholarship of lev vygotsky (1933/1967, 1934/1987, 1926/2004) and maxine greene (2000, 2008). both students and teachers must engage in the joint imagining of new relationships, relationships that allow them to participate in the world in new and different ways. here, the moral imagination refers to the dynamic learning, unlearning, and transforming of how we create social relationships with others, how we see ourselves in relationships, how we value our relatedness with others, and how we make decisions regarding international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 309 what it means to become a supportive or empathetic person in relation. imagining and creating relationships is an ongoing project of moral imagining across the life-course (vadeboncoeur, perone, & panina-beard, 2016). as relationships evolve through joint imagining, new social futures for students and teachers are created and recreated. integrating qualitative data from research conducted in both australia and canada, we describe this particular quality of student–teacher relationships — the dialectical principle of accept and build — as a project of moral imagining. this article is divided into three sections. we begin by briefly reviewing the literature on student–teacher relationships both generally and in alternative schools and flexible learning centres. second, drawing on the notion of moral imagining, we describe our own research, in both australia and canada, regarding the qualities of student–teacher relationships, and identify three themes to exemplify the principle of accept and build. third, a discussion concludes this article emphasising that learning and teaching form a joint project of moral imagining for students and teachers across all school settings; one that may be more urgently felt in alternative education. research on student–teacher relationships the significant role of student–teacher relationships is found consistently across mainstream and alternative education contexts, as well as across various forms of research methodologies. key characteristics of student–teacher relationships that make possible supportive learning and teaching experiences include connectedness, relatedness, and engagement. these characteristics are typically studied through surveys and self-reports completed by individual students, which are then generalised to the student population and often applied to the school context, rather than through studies of the relationships between students and teachers (vadeboncoeur & rahal, 2013). student–teacher relationships have also been found to shape engagement in social practices, such as attendance practices, and academic outcomes. in addition, early experiences for children in supportive relationships with teachers have mediating effects for future schooling and these effects are evident longitudinally. in this section, we provide a brief review of this literature. the importance of supportive relationships with teachers is found in the literature across mainstream and alternative schools. in an analysis of the relationships between early school leaving, academic organisation, and social organisation in 190 high schools in the united states, lee and burkam (2003) found that “students stay in school when social relations with their teachers are positive” (p. 386). this finding held even when other factors were taken into account, including the background of students and demographic composition of the school. an interesting related finding was that the potential to have student–teacher relationships was reduced when high schools were over 1,500 students in size, owing, in part, to the anonymity such settings tend to produce. survey research in australia across 52 schools — including state, catholic, and independent schools — was conducted by de jong (2005) to generate best international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 310 practices. of seven principles for best practice, creating positive relationships with students was identified as critical for supporting students and helping them achieve learning outcomes. further, de jong (2005) argued, “teachers should make it their priority to develop positive relationships with their students,” including taking a personal interest in the life of each student, reflecting on the difference between teachers “earning” and “deserving” respect, and using good communication (p. 358). participatory action research conducted by lind (2013) in one alternative high school in canada found that “supportive healthy relationships within the school environment were one of the most important factors in student capacity-building” (p. 462). the significant role of student–teacher relationships for learning and teaching emerges across research designs and methodologies, including longitudinal, quantitative, and qualitative research. the québec longitudinal study of child development (qlscd 1998-2010) monitored more than 2000 children born in 1997 or 1998. children were monitored annually, from the age of 5 months through to 8 years, and biannually from 8 to 12 years of age. data collection was conducted again in 2011 when children were in their first year of high school. monitoring included a range of forms of data collection, including engaging each child in activities to assess development, and working with teachers to assess development and adjustment to the school context for each child. as such, this study was the first large scale survey of student–teacher relationships to consider the perspectives of both students and teachers. the long-term impact of student–teacher relationships for academic achievement was so strong that the authors suggested intervening with children and teachers in order to foster the development of a positive relationship from the beginning of school (desrosiers, japel, singh, & tétreault, 2012). the long-term effects of positive student–teacher relationships that begin in kindergarten, as well as the potential effects of these relationships to mediate future difficulties, has also been established (curby, rimm-kaufman, & ponitz, 2009; pianta & stuhlman, 2004). a quantitative study of teacher evaluation policies and student outcomes in the united states found that the student–teacher relationship protected against student drop out (barile et al., 2012). qualitative studies in the united states, canada, and australia have also provided evidence for the power of student–teacher relationships in mediating the difficulties of previous educational experiences and enabling students to re-engage in schooling (lind, 2013; vadeboncoeur, 2005, 2009; vellos, 2009). along with being linked to improvements in attendance and engagement in alternative programs (vellos & vadeboncoeur, 2015), and academic competence and performance more generally (hughes, gleason, & zhang, 2005; wenglinsky, 2002), student–teacher relationships are linked with feelings of connectedness (hendry & reid, 2000), and relatedness and engagement (furrer & skinner, 2003). according to whitlock (2007), connectedness — as sense of belonging to school and attachment to others — is the strongest protective factor against a number of health challenges and a key contributor to the development of resilience. in research with over 600 children in grades 3 to 6, by furrer and skinner (2003), belonging was described international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 311 as having “an energetic function, awakening enthusiasm, interest, and willingness to participate in academic activities” (p. 158), and relatedness was described as a “buffer against negative emotions, minimizing feelings of boredom, anxiety, pressure, or frustration” (p. 158). these authors suggested that “qualities such as warmth, caring, sensitivity, dedication of attention and time, and emotional availability may be important to the development of secure relationships with adults” (p. 160). further, they emphasised the importance of recognising the interconnectedness of relations between different social partners — including parents, peers, and teachers — and approaching the development of relationships with this social network in mind. our review of the literature on student–teacher relationships establishes the important role that student–teacher relationships play in learning and teaching and also foregrounds two additional points that are less well established. first, the potential of student–teacher relationships derives, in part, from the attachment between student and teacher (lynch & cicchetti, 1997; neufeld & maté, 2005). from this perspective, relationships are bidirectional, thus, both participants in the relationship grow as a result of the relationship. there is little research, however, that attends to the ways in which teachers grow through their relationships with students and little research that documents the student–teacher dyad as a unit of analysis (vadeboncoeur & rahal, 2013). second, it is important to consider how particular student– teacher relationships change over time and through experience, as well as how these relationships may change to reflect differing developmental needs and interests, again for both student and teacher; in effect, to see relationships as changing over time and across contexts (vadeboncoeur & murray, 2014). conceptualising this relationship further — coupling the principle of accept and build with empirical data — is the topic of the next section. accept and build: the moral imagining of relationships the principle of accept and build is grounded in a particular view of human learning and developing: one that recognises that learning and developing are dynamic, relational, and continue throughout life (vygotsky, 1934/1987). emerging from vygotsky’s (1934/1987) theory, learning and developing are processes through which children, young people, and adults change over time; how we change over time is a jointly constructed process with significant social others that is mediated by speech and systems of meaning-making. from this perspective, both student and teacher change and develop in relation and over the course of their lives. in this section, we use empirical data from research in australia and canada to elaborate on the dialectical principle of accept and build in relation to moral imagining. theoretical grounding for the principle of accept and build two aspects of vygotsky’s (1934/1987) work are particularly relevant as theoretical grounding for the principle of accept and build. first, vygotsky emphasised the role of caregivers in imposing meaning on an infant’s actions, well before they may have been intended as meaningful by the infant. infants are born into social worlds and they rely upon caregivers to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 312 interpret their gaze, movements, actions, and sounds as indicative: as indicating a desire for an object or intent for an action, and as attempts at communicating these with caregivers. for example, he described the way caregivers engage with an infant’s movements and accept them as meaningful by building on a movement in the direction of a toy with a response such as, “oh, is it the ball you want? here it is, here’s the red ball, this must have been what you wanted.” caregivers accept the movement of the infant as meaningful and offer an interpretation for the movement; then they build upon and respond as if the meaning was intended by the infant. caregivers often shape their response to the responses offered by the infant. if the infant frowns at the ball presented, the caregiver builds another interpretation of meaning potential and another offer for the infant. second, vygotsky was less interested in assessing what an individual, of any age, could do independently — their actual level of development — and more interested in considering what she or he could do as a result of instruction with another person — their potential level of development. he advanced the concept of the zone of proximal development and emphasised that educators should consider what becomes possible for the learner — whether an infant, a toddler, a young child, a school-age child, an adolescent, or an adult — as a result of joint interaction. more specifically, what becomes possible when the joint interaction engages the learner in his or her zone of proximal development. in each case, the relationship is the context for and creates the possibility for this engagement, rather than a synonym for the zone of proximal development. vygotsky’s theory places an emphasis on the significant role of parents and educators in the learning and developing of children and young people, and provides a rationale for how this relationship works. it is the ability of both participants to do two seemingly paradoxical actions at once: from the teacher’s perspective, accepting and welcoming a young person for what she or he brings to a relationship in the present, while building toward futures that become possible as a result of their joint interaction; and from the student’s perspective, a willingness to accept the teacher’s offer, in spite of previous difficulties in school(s), while contributing, as well, to the building of social futures together. the dialectic of accept and build has been foundational to the work of lois holzman (2009) with young people and adults in both after school and workplace contexts. she argued that improvisation can be seen as a conversational zone of proximal development. it is a space of accepting and building, because the improvisational scene and the act of improvising are created simultaneously. it entails socially shared thinking and feeling. in addition, the action in improvisation is both a meaning-making activity and an activity through which additional meanings are revealed and can, therefore, be reflected upon. other scholars have coupled the notion of improvisation with the zone of proximal development in imaginary play in early childhood education (sawyer, 1997) and with adult learners of english as an additional language (perone, 2011). perhaps one of the reasons why accept and build is so relevant to learning and education is because it honours all participants as they are in the present moment, while acknowledging that they are also in the process of becoming in multiple possible futures that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 313 have yet to be created. for example, the three year old engaging in imaginary play with her sister may repurpose a ball and create a motorcycle to ride, thereby becoming a motorcycle rider (vadeboncoeur, 2016), while the adult learner who builds from the imaginary scene and what their improvisation partner offers, practices using english to gain proficiency as an english speaker (perone, 2011). when the principle of accept and build guides interactions, both participants in the relationship are recognised as developing and dynamic; both participants are recognised as contributing to the relationship in ways that can be accepted and built upon. the principle of accept and build requires the imagination “to disclose a different state of things, to open the windows of consciousness to what might be, what ought to be” (greene, 2008, p. 18). it is imagination that allows children in imaginative play to act as if an over turned chair is a motorcycle or as if a playmate on it is riding the motorcycle. it is imagination that allows young people and adults to engage in the same sort of imaginary and playful practice when they participate in improvisation and, indeed, in any kind of imagining or creating for the future. indeed, and consistent with a vygotskian (1933/1967, 1926/2004) perspective, the imaginary situation that propels play in childhood is an opportunity to practice the imagining and creating that, across the life course, will be used to repurpose objects and actions and create anew (vadeboncoeur et al., 2016). in an academic context, planning the actions to study for an exam, thinking through how to write a paper, or imagining the next steps after high school is completed all require the imagination. in addition, however, it is moral imagining that is required for social relationships, that “allows for empathy, for a tuning in to another’s feelings, for new beginnings in transactions with the world” (greene, 2008, p. 18). when a student imagines whether a teacher can be trusted, when a teacher imagines the previous educational experiences that are described by a student and can empathize — indeed, when any two people begin to form a relationship — it is the moral imagination that enables that beginning and enables a young person to begin again after difficult experiences in school. accept and build: three themes from research in australia and canada this section offers three themes from our research in a flexible learning centre in australia and an alternative program in canada based upon a re-analysis that inquired into how the principle of accept and build may help explain how re-engagement in schooling was mediated. research in australia was conducted with young people and educators over the course of three years at a flexible learning centre in queensland (vadeboncoeur, 2009). data were generated through ongoing observations, audio-taped interviews, field notes, and informal conversations. in november 2004, when 60 students in total attended the flexible learning centre, 17 interviews were conducted with students. a series of interviews were conducted with educators, including teachers, youth workers, and the principal, between 2003 and 2005. research in canada was conducted over a four-month period with young people and educators at an alternative program of 97 students in grades 11 and 12, and drew upon observations, interviews, field notes, and informal conversations, as well as documents (vellos, 2009). audiointernational journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 314 taped interviews with eight students, teachers, youth and family workers, and the lead teacher were analysed thematically (braun & clarke, 2006). from across these two studies, three themes illustrate student–teacher relationships: being seen; recognising the capacity to grow; and co-creating social futures. in what follows, the names for participants are pseudonyms, and the term “flexible program” is used for both the flexible learning centre and the alternative program, and line numbers from interview transcripts are noted. theme 1 — being seen: the students reported that consistently in mainstream settings they were “invisible” and they were not treated as individuals. a key difference between mainstream schooling and their flexible program was “being seen.” indeed, the majority of the young people noted their feelings of relief after leaving mainstream schooling, and an additional sense of relief in finding the flexible program where they re-engaged. when asked about this feeling of relief and why they continued to attend the flexible program, a common overlapping refrain emerged across the student interviews that established this theme: they were “seen.” teachers were able to “see them as individuals” given the smaller class sizes and were able to respond to their different needs, strengths, and interests with time and encouragement. coming from a family who “moved around a lot,” robert said the flexible program was, “just better teachers, smaller classes, get around helping ya a lot” (l26–27). fred, who had been excluded from school and went to a second high school, stated, “i thought it’d be different, but there’s just more kids and less teachers. it’s just … really there were just too many classes and kids to look after” (l13–15). at his flexible program, “there’s smaller classes” and the teachers “focus more on the kids” (l21–22). ann stated that the flexible program: “makes you take more responsibility for yourself … make your own choices … the teachers help you out heaps more … teachers concentrate on you as well as everybody else, instead of just concentrating on a couple of people” (l41–47). in mainstream school, joseph reported, “you’d be lucky to get two minutes of the teacher’s attention,” but he did not take it personally because he saw it happening to other students (l7). he noted, it seemed “natural” in schools for just a few students to receive attention from teachers (l11). the teachers in the flexible program “understand you more” (l37) and “[t]hey trust you” (l64). this feeling of support and trust surfaced from alice’s interview as well; she characterised her flexible program as a “friendly environment,” “not crowded,” and “you don’t get teased” (l26, 40, 42). further, unlike mainstream school, here “teachers have the time to help you, and they are interested in helping” (l54–55, 70). michael said, “i was in a big classroom, needed more attention,” and “teachers couldn’t help me as much as i needed the help. but here they can … smaller classrooms so a teacher can give all the kids the same amount of help” (l8–9, 11–12, 22). being seen was about being visible in a particular way, for example, as an individual with individual needs, strengths, and interests, as opposed to being one of a class of 30 or more students. in this sense, being seen was about seeing difference, which was also noted in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 315 interviews with students and teachers. dee, a student, noted that teachers were able to see and “approach different kinds of students” (l362) and donald, also a student, noted that an important quality of good teachers was their ability to help students who “learn in different ways” (l160). the language of seeing difference, indeed, of expecting to see difference, and of an interest in learning about each student’s differences, surfaced in every interview with teachers across both flexible programs. jim, a teacher, noted his commitment to gaining “a sense of each person” (l453) and his willingness to continue to learn from and about each student. being seen is significant to the principle of accept and build; without being seen, and an overall acceptance of differences between students, students cannot be accepted with the experiences they bring to the program. being seen, thus, is a requirement for acceptance, for acknowledging the present moment as a space to begin. the role of the imagination is “to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard, and unexpected” (greene, 1995, p. 28). further, greene (1995) argued, what “seems crucial is the noticing” (emphasis added, p. 74). theme 2 — recognising capacity to grow: both students and teachers spoke about themselves as dynamic and developing; they also saw this quality in each other. students’ descriptions of mainstream school experiences reflected the imposition of stasis: a label or category that was predictive of future interactions. students noted, for example, experiences of being labelled or categorised in a particular way, experiences with stereotyping, experiences with a lack of expectations, and experiences with attendance and disciplinary policies that also constructed labels. stasis was imposed when the label or stereotype continued to shape the interactions between student and teacher. the theme of mutual development emerged from students’ reports about the teachers in the flexible programs offering “second chances” and being willing to change the environment as needed for students. it also emerged from teachers’ reports about seeing the young people as having the “capacity to grow,” as well as seeing themselves as developing in relation to students and in evolving relationships with students. when asked why she left mainstream school, ann replied simply, “i’ve never left school, i’ve continued schools into [the flexible program]” (l2–3). she had been enrolled in three mainstream schools before arriving at the flexible program. she said the program: for me is a second chance … they give you choices here … instead of telling you what to do they ask you if you want to do it. they ask you to do your work, but obviously, you have to accept the consequences if you don’t. (l32–38) roy stated that his teachers at the flexible program expected him “to learn” and worked with him as needed, rather than expecting him “to know” the material in advance (l31–32). jenny, another student, noted that good teachers are “not gonna give up on you … they’ll always give you another chance … you need as many chances as you need” to learn the material (l197–202). when rebecca was asked what advice she would like to offer teachers and schools, she said, “to give people a second chance … and not be too harsh on them if they do something that’s bad … international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 316 and get to know them before you judge them” (l49–51). several students noted that, once they had been labelled as a certain “kind of student,” their teachers in mainstream schools stopped asking questions and inquiring into problems in school — from the location of assignments to fights with other students — and just imposed consequences without listening to “both sides.” barry, the principal of the flexible program, described this as a situation of “a pattern becoming more important than a person” (l271). for jim, a teacher, the definition of a “good teacher” included offering students understanding, and being fair and listening, as well as giving students “the benefit of the doubt … the chance or the opportunity, the second chance if needed, to succeed” (l438–440). connie, a teacher, intentionally used the language of change with her students, connecting with them about the aspects of their lives that they were happy with and those that they wanted to work on changing. she was careful to walk this path with them, noting her own concerns, difficulties, and moments of personal transformation over time and stated, “even the tiniest change can be a symbol for our own potential to be different” (l76). she paid attention when students mentioned that they “couldn’t do” certain subjects like maths or grammar. her response was to enquire if this was still the case and to remark, “how do you know? what have you tried since that last experience with maths? why don’t you have a go with me and we’ll see if things are different now?” (l81–91). she highlighted the importance of helping students “not believe the things they’ve been told about themselves” (l79), in effect, unlearning what they had learned, as well as coming to see themselves as “having the capacity to grow” (l92). an outreach worker, francie, reported that all the young people that she worked with were different: they had different educational and experiential histories, strengths, needs, interests, worries, and concerns. however, what unified her approach to working with young people was to begin by attending to all of these differences through “building relationships.” francie stated that relationships were not achieved “once and for all,” but that “the very strong and powerful effect” of relationships needed to be tended to in an ongoing way (l149). when “young people have been let down a lot in the past” — including bad experiences in schools and bad experiences with adults, most of whom were teachers — a young person’s response to educators, to adults, seemed warranted given their experiences (l151). her goal was to build relationships and trust and “make sure we deliver on what we say we can help young people with, including accessing this learning environment and … changing the environment if needed and supporting them as they work toward their goals” (l153–155). further, she noted a particular vantage point from which educators viewed students: we see their strengths, strengths that they sometimes don’t even see, and inspire them, they’ve got so much to offer to each other and to us, they need to know we see the benefits of what they can offer together with continuing to learn and grow. (l165) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 317 greene (2000a) argued that there is “something vitally important to education in the idea that the consciousness of growing, becoming different, can be tied to some memory of feelings of wonder, of recognition, that can counteract the feelings of futility” associated with schooling (p. 273). along with connie’s acknowledgement of the importance of sharing her own development in discussions with students, and francine’s recognition that sometimes teachers need to change the school environment to enable students’ access, another teacher, jim, also described his own process of learning and being “willing to improve, and look at other alternative ways of teaching to make sure that the student succeeds” (l456–457). recognising that both students and teachers change in relation to each other enabled both to begin the process of building something new. from this perspective, the flexible programs would be “different places” from mainstream schools and these teachers would be different from the teachers with whom students had had difficult experiences. the students were able to, in a sense, move beyond their previous histories to see potential abilities that had not been seen and futures that were not possible before. most significantly, their engagement was mediated and they were enabled to, in connie’s words, “have a go” (l84). theme 3 — co-creating social futures: throughout the interviews, students and teachers referred to the ways in which their relationships enabled students to learn academic material and life lessons, to access learning opportunities outside the program, and to stabilise their accommodation, employment, and schooling experiences, as well as to remediate relationships with family and community. teachers most often mentioned learning from the students in ways that resulted in “seeing the material differently”, or learning about “the fragmentation of services” that young people experienced in order to help them navigate the systems. students most often commented about learning to think about themselves differently and gaining access to learning and employment experiences. for both students and teachers, each idea mentioned affected the range of social futures that were being co-created. for example, as teachers came to see the material in different ways they co-created additional learning opportunities as options for students for further study. teachers contributed to the mediation of student re-engagement in flexible programs making possible new social futures. a student, joan, recounted the story of her mother receiving a phone call from “the school” telling her that joan had failed so many courses that she was not welcome to return to school. she said, they told her mother, “i was a failure” and i believed them for three and a half years (l6–7). while she was relieved upon leaving the school, “[i]n another way i was sad because i missed out on a lot of schooling … not schooling, really, i was always there, but i was in what they called the ‘planning room’ … so i missed … a lot of class” (l19– 23). segregated from her classmates, without support for her learning differences, joan had learned from school that she couldn’t learn. when her mother located the flexible program, and enrolled her, joan discovered the program was different: “like the teachers give you a chance and they believe in you. they listen to what you have to say” (l39–40). further: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 318 [t]hey take the time to understand … my teachers care. you can do this, or this, or this … they don’t go too fast and then test you and then you get stuff wrong cause you were rushed. … you have the time and help to really learn, then you can learn. (l51–70) her experiences at the flexible program enabled joan to learn that she was capable of learning, a quality holzman (2009) called “that-ness” (p. 83). as a learner, new social futures became possible. for joseph, as well, new social futures became possible because teachers “find out what you want to do and then help you get there … not just getting stuff done, but finding out more about you and then making good suggestions” (l37–44). david, an outreach worker, described his concern with the fragmentation of services created for young people and the difficulty of navigating them. some of the young people he worked with needed accommodation, employment, and education all at the same time. he noted that the majority of young people he worked with were “smart academically, socially, emotionally, and they can look after themselves physically” (l165–166). what they did not have was access to stable accommodation and employment, and without access to this stability, they often lost access to the system of schooling and the credentials that it offered. when he was able to mediate their navigation of these systems to access accommodation and employment, the influence on the young person’s life was astounding: attention to learning and education fell “into place” (l45). for david, participating in this process and “the relationships and the rapport that you build with young people are absolutely life-changing” for participants — educators as well as students (l254–255). a principal, barry, noted that for some of the students, their needs were created from “first and foremost a sense of neglect, a sense of alienation, and in some of the cases i know, this makes sense with their experiences, and there’s a sense of despair about education” (l365–367). this despair, he argued, led to a cycle that was three-fold: feeling that school was too hard; “bumping up against authority figures;” and “constantly being pushed away from the group,” for example, being sent out of class, or expelled from school (l369–370). along with isolation and anger, what young people were learning from school was: i’m not worthy, i’m not wanted, and you’re outside the group. they’re learning that they lack an understanding of this particular community, school, … for some kids, there are deeper concerns about disabilities and these have implications in terms of your ability to fit in the mainstream, and to participate at the level you seem to be required to participate, at the pace, the speed. (l373–377) barry noted that the cycle may begin with a difficult experience, with a sense of isolation, with a feeling of difference, and then once it begins it continues with more isolation and less learning and teaching. he noted that he could see this cycle unfold and had a sense of the limited futures that were being created long before students disengaged. the question about which he was most concerned was how to break this cycle. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 319 at the time of these interviews, the flexible program was trying to break this cycle by building a sense of community in the present, along with mediating access to other communities, including back to mainstream school, to technical and further education programs (tafe), and even to the cultural communities of the young people. barry emphasised that, “none of this works if the curriculum is the driving focus. it only works in this setting, if it’s relational, so … the authenticity of the relationship is paramount for any kind of educational learning to happen” (l496–500). mediating access to educational experiences was one role the alternative program played. a second role was mediating relationships with cultural communities, including creating ways for young people to begin “relationship[s] with elders in the community, both indigenous and non-indigenous … with, you could say, esteemed adults, and reconnect youth to appropriate and relevant role models” (l493–495). for barry, this work was necessary to counter the effects of a fragmented and fragmenting system of services, a system that was undergoing so much change itself that by the time young people sorted out how to navigate it, funding requirements, programs, and the services provided had often changed. one teacher, jim, made a similar argument: that part of the purpose of his relationships with students was imagining with them a sense of community, and sharing with his students the sense that “you belong to this community.” (l271–272). part of the process of building community was responding to students’ strengths and interests and exploring different learning opportunities and teaching methods to engage each student. linda, a lead teacher, noted two important pieces of advice about teaching in alternative settings. first, the curriculum does not exist as something separate from the learner: the curriculum must be created in relation to the learner and the experiences of the learner. from this perspective, the curriculum has to be built with the students and this collaborative work is part of the process of building community. the creation of communities in classrooms and schools, though perhaps “one of the most difficult and yet most essential undertakings in the schools,” may be a method and an outcome of reaching beyond the concrete lived experiences of students and teachers toward a future that is in the process of becoming (greene, 2000a, p. 273). second, she noted that the responsiveness and supportiveness of teachers in flexible programs is a quality that is “really relevant to all teaching” and that this approach likely offers “preventative measures” worthwhile to consider across schools (l128–129). from linda’s experience, mainstream education had something to learn from the kind of student–teacher relationships that were created in the flexible program where she worked. both students and educators emphasised what becomes possible over time as relationships between students and teachers are beginning, building, and becoming more established. the interviews with the students and educators of the flexible programs illustrate the usefulness of examining student–teacher relationships through the principle of accept and build. first, students experienced being seen by teachers who also acknowledged and expected their different needs and interests. second, both students and teachers recognized the capacity to grow international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 320 in themselves and each other. third, students and teachers worked together to create social futures that were enlarged to include new educational opportunities and connections to culture and community. these relationships became possible for both students and teachers as a result of their moral imaginings: it is imagination that “above all, makes empathy possible. it allows us to break with the taken for granted, to set aside familiar distinctions and definitions” (greene, 1995, p. 3). moral imagination allows teachers to accept their students in the present, while knowing them as developing entities, and imagining with them social futures that become possible as a function of evolving teacher–student relationships. the moral imagination also enables teachers to see themselves as transformed by their relationships with students, as learners and educators simultaneously, and as capable of creating futures with students that are more equitable (vadeboncoeur et al., 2016). concluding thoughts what emerges across these flexible learning sites is the attention paid by the participants — both students and teachers — to social relationships, their interest in learning how to relate to each other dynamically and openly, and in so doing, to transform how they engage in schooling. this process is transformative in a number of ways: it allows students and teachers in relation to reflect on and consider what they value in each other and themselves, to consider how they see themselves and who they are becoming and, ultimately, to recreate social futures together. we argue here that what enables relationships based on the principle of accept and build is the moral imagination. it is the moral imagination that enables students to accept, yet again, what teachers have to offer and begin re-engaging with schooling. it is the moral imagination that enables teachers to welcome, respect, and accept each student as she or he is in the present moment, while also seeing beyond what is evident to what becomes possible as a result of their relationship. this sort of relationship is the foundation of educational experiences. education must guide children toward the development of imagination and creativity to make possible “the inner spaces that imagination can open up when it discloses untapped possibilities … alternative realities or ways of being” (greene, 2000a, p. 8). when this occurs, she maintained that: individuals are far more likely to break with the ordinary and the taken-for-granted. visions may appear before their mind’s eye — visions of what might be, what ought to be. experiences of this kind are what direct attention to the deficiencies, the inequities in lived situations; they may, in fact, provoke persons to take action together — to transcend the deficiencies, to transform. (pp. 8–9) from this perspective, the deficiencies noted are not located in the children or the young people with whom we work, but rather in the social institutions we have created, the fragmentation among the services that we provide for them, and our approaches to schooling. this idea provides a reason for why we must grow alongside our students: although we can see international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 321 deficiencies in what has been created, we nonetheless struggle to think outside of these systems. imagining and creating a system of schooling that is more in line with what education could be relies on our commitment to reimagining schooled practices, such as student–teacher relationships, with young people as our guides. it also relies on working together to take action to transform these practices, as well as the institutions within which they occur. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 307–323 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723 322 references barile, j. p., donohue, d. k., anthony, e. r., naker, a. m., weaver, s. r., & henrich, c. c. 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(2002). how schools matter: the link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. educational policy analysis archives, 10(12), 1–30. retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/291/417 whitlock, j. (2007). the role of adults, public space, and power in adolescent community connectedness. journal of community psychology, 35(4), 499–518. doi:10.1002/jcop.20161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2014.955735 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20161 re-creating social futures: the role of the moral imagination in student–teacher relationships in alternative education jennifer a. vadeboncoeur and renira e. vellos research on student–teacher relationships accept and build: the moral imagining of relationships theoretical grounding for the principle of accept and build accept and build: three themes from research in australia and canada concluding thoughts references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs111202019476 factors that promote or hinder a youth in care network: a report from the field amanda keller, melanie doucet, jennifer dupuis, jessica dupuis, and varda r. mann-feder abstract: this report describes the evolution of an independent youth-led organization for youth in and from care in quebec. the emergence of care jeunesse is presented and compared with two other networks in canada. factors that promoted and hindered its development are discussed particularly as they apply to issues outlined in the youth engagement literature. the board of care jeunesse, comprising former youth in care, wrote this article with the participation of a university professor who is an adult ally to the alumni of care movement in quebec. this report is the first publication that provides an account of the processes associated with developing a youth in care network in canada. keywords: participatory action research, youth in care, alumni of care, careleavers amanda keller msc, the founder of care jeunesse, is a phd student in the department of social work, centre for research on children and families, mcgill university suite 106, wilson hall, 3506 university street montreal, qc h3a 2a7, canada. email: amanda.keller@mail.mcgill.ca melanie doucet mis, a former board member of care jeunesse, is a phd candidate and sessional instructor at the mcgill school of social work and a research assistant at the centre for research on children and families, suite 106, wilson hall, 3506 university street montreal, qc h3a 2a7, canada. email: melanie.doucet@mcgill.ca jennifer dupuis msw, a founding board member and current president of care jeunesse, is a clinical activity specialist at le centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux (ciusss) de l' ouest-de-l'île-de-montréal, 6 weredale park, westmount, qc h3z 1y6, canada. email: jennifer_dupuis@ssss.gouv.qc.ca jessica dupuis ba, the treasurer of care jeunesse, is a community & fund development manager at the leukemia & lymphoma society of canada, 740 saint-maurice, suite 602, montreal, qc h3c 1l5, canada. email: jessica.dupuis@lls.org varda r. mann-feder phd (corresponding author) is a professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke street west, room ve 227-3, montreal h4b 1r6, canada. email: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca mailto:amanda.keller@mail.mcgill.ca mailto:melanie.doucet@mcgill.ca mailto:jennifer_dupuis@ssss.gouv.qc.ca mailto:jessica.dupuis@lls.org mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 113 evidence from north american studies over the last three decades demonstrates that care leavers are at a much higher risk of a multiplicity of challenges when compared to youth in the general population. they have higher rates of homelessness, undereducation, unemployment or underemployment, poverty, mental health issues and post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, and early pregnancy or parenthood (daining & depanfilis, 2007; day et al., 2011; koegel et al., 1995; office of the provincial advocate for children and youth [ontario], 2012; pecora et al., 2003; rutman et al., 2007; tessier et al., 2014). international research in other western countries such as the united kingdom (e.g., stein, 2004, 2005, 2006), scotland (e.g., stein & dixon, 2006), france (e.g., stein & dumaret, 2011) and australia (e.g., cashmore & paxman, 2006; mendes et al., 2014; mendes & moslehuddin, 2004, 2006) reflect similar outcomes as those found in the north american context. the literature suggests that these deleterious outcomes are a symptom of the inherent weaknesses of corporate parenting systems, in which bureaucratic organizations provide substitute care, and decision-making is top-down (havlicek et al., 2016). youth in care typically have little say about what happens to them (havlicek et al., 2016) and have historically been one of the most stigmatized and powerless groups of service recipients (mendes, 1998). the 1970s and 1980s saw increased organizing and advocacy in the self-help and consumer movement in social services (mendes, 1998). the consumer movement helped to increase the recognition of the inherent value of consumer participation in shaping the delivery of their own services. this, in turn, helped to promote awareness of youth participation’s crucial role in ensuring accountability for agencies mandated to provide substitute care and youth protection. some authors describe what happened at this time as the beginning of a social movement, one that was intent on eliminating the disempowerment and abuse of young people in care who had, up until that time, “been demeaned and even objectified…. leaving them vulnerable, unprotected and exploited” (evans, 2013, p. 60). this grassroots movement resulted in the establishment of organizations where young people in and from care came together. with the support of adult allies, individuals from government care, and the very agencies in which they had been placed, they set up their own organizations (evans, 2013). the purpose of this article is to document the development of the newest organization led by alumni of care in canada, centre amitié, ressources et entraide pour la jeunesse [friendship, resources and mutual aid center for youth], or c.a.r.e. jeunesse (care). care jeunesse’s journey in quebec reflects the processes associated with the establishment of a youth-led consumer advocacy group in child welfare. despite evidence pointing to the vital role youth in care networks play in the lives of their members and in the evolution of services and policies, there is limited academic documentation about how these organizations develop. it is particularly important to document how local contexts hinder and promote the creation of structures that encourage youth participation and advocacy in child welfare. the alumni of care who constituted the founding board of care jeunesse wrote this article in collaboration with a university researcher who has served as an adult ally to the group since its inception. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 114 what is a youth in care network? organizations led by youth from care are referred to by different names in different parts of the world; for instance, they are termed youth advisory boards in the united states (havlicek et al., 2016), care leavers associations in europe, and youth in care networks in canada (raychaba, 1998). in australia, youth in care networks are lumped in more broadly with consumer advocacy groups (mendes, 1998). youth in care networks provide “a conduit or instrument through which young people can talk about their experiences of being in care, feel supported by peers and professionals and have their opinions taken into account in policy discussions and service delivery” (evans, 2013, p. 63). thus, these organizations serve a dual purpose: they provide opportunities for mutual support and they advocate to change practices and policies in local child welfare systems. recent research evidence documents the success with which youth in care networks have fulfilled both functions. one of the most potent strategies for managing stigma experienced by youth from care is establishing friendship networks with peers who have also experienced placement (roger, 2016). peer support can contribute dramatically to resilience in these young people from care (snow et al., 2013), and create a sense of relational stability (green, 2017). accounts of youth-led advocacy groups in the united states emphasize that “the young people feel almost immediately connected … as part of their family structure” (green, 2017, p. 2). youth in care networks create a space where youth from care can voice their opinions and concerns and lobby for the rights of youth in placement, becoming powerful change agents on a systemic level. research on youth from care mobilization in the united states by havlicek and colleagues (2016) highlighted that “growing evidence suggests that the voices of several state youth advisory boards have been instrumental in turning state policymakers into champions of child welfare reform” (p. 1). describing the impact of care leavers associations in the united kingdom, mendes (1998) noted that these organizations had made “substantial gains in raising the profile of cared for children and securing the attention of those who frame and implement the policy” (p. 64). this is consistent with emerging findings on the overall impact of youth-led organizations, which underscore the benefits to society when young people position themselves to advocate for change (ho et al., 2015). the history of youth in care networks the earliest documented youth in care networks began in 1957 in france, with the establishment of organizations for adoptees (lacroix, 2016). however, it was not until much later that the alumni of care movement took hold in other countries. care leavers’ associations were first established in scotland in 1978, followed by wales (1990), england (1992), and northern ireland (1996). the australian association of young people in care was established in 1993, and since the mid-1990s, the movement has expanded to germany, the netherlands, and many other countries in europe. even though these youth-led organizations are becoming increasingly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 115 widespread, there have been only a small number of published peer-reviewed articles that describe these developments. the alumni of care movement first began in north america in the 1980s. the earliest group to organize was the national youth in care network in canada, which was established in 1985. this organization grew out of a child and youth care conference, where youth delegates met and decided to come together to create a national advocacy group, which changed its name to youth in care canada in 2010 (youth in care canada, n.d.). this consortium is made up of representatives of provincial and community-led networks. youth in care canada is the oldest youth-led organization in canada. its development inspired the first of many youth-run consumer groups in the united states. it also led to the formation of provincial youth in care networks across the country, most of which were in place well before the development of care in quebec. there are currently 50 youth in care networks in canada (youth in care canada, 2018a) of varying sizes and mandates. from coast to coast: examples of pre-existing provincial initiatives in canada youth in care networks in canada provide direct support to alumni of care and have been responsible for lobbying by young people for changes to child welfare policies and practices. in canada, both the legislation related to substitute care and the actual placement agencies are provincially mandated. while a complete history of all the networks in canada is not available, what follows is a thumbnail sketch of two well-established networks in different parts of the country. as with all youth in care networks, these organizations grew out of the unique circumstances and opportunities in their home provinces, and illustrate different models for establishing a youth-led organization. the federation of british columbia youth in care networks1, otherwise known as “the fed”, was established in 1993 as the first provincial network in canada. it came into existence after youth in care who met at a 1992 northern youth reflection conference decided to form a peer-led steering committee (federation of bc youth in care networks, 2016). a year later, the fed secured its first office location as part of a local service organization and established itself as a youth-driven operation dedicated to improving the lives of youth in and from care in british columbia between the ages of 14 and 24. it took several years before professionals began to recognize the fed as a legitimate entity, but by 1996 the network became officially incorporated and independent, separating from its agency partner. by 1998, the fed had developed its website and the first local network in british columbia was formed in kamloops a year later, comprising youth in and from care and their adult allies. in 2000, the kamloops regional office was opened, with a local network in vancouver starting a year later. in 2016, the fed became a registered charitable organization and had gained enough legitimacy to present at the university of british 1 https://fbcyicn.ca/about https://fbcyicn.ca/about international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 116 columbia’s janusz korczak lecture series. since it came into existence, the fed has been very active, focusing on hands-on support and provincial advocacy. the new brunswick youth in care network was established in 2010 through a 5-year funding agreement between the provincial government’s department of social development and an established youth-serving organization, partners for youth2, based in the province’s capital of fredericton (doucet & cormier, 2015). the organization was tasked by the government to begin the development of a provincial youth in care network, and dedicated staff to this project. throughout 2010 a small group of current and former youth in care were recruited through contacts and networking, and these young people formed the first leadership group for the network. in 2011, the new brunswick network mounted its first major project, an arts-based workshop called art attack. this project was planned and facilitated across the province by network leadership members. that same year, the network leadership group was asked by the provincial government to plan the first provincial youth engagement summit in fredericton. the original agency that created the network leadership group also received additional funding to organize the first youth in care hearings in new brunswick, where young people in care provided testimonials to the provincial legislature on their experiences in care. the agency and leadership group collaborated on a report in early 2013 entitled a long road home (new brunswick youth in care network & cormier, 2014), which covered both the outcomes of a 2012 consultation process and the recommendations made at the youth in care hearings in november 2012. in may 2014, the government of new brunswick released a report entitled response to a long road home (department of social development, 2014), in which it responded to all 14 recommendations from the youth in care network’s report. in november 2014, the government of new brunswick declared november 29th, the anniversary of the youth in care hearings, children and youth in care day. the unique situation in the province of quebec: the history of care jeunesse youth-led initiatives to improve the lives of youth in care are not new to quebec. in 1985, the first national youth engagement project in canada took place in vancouver at a conference entitled reflections of being in care, at which youth from quebec participated. as previously discussed, the idea of creating a national youth in care network was a result of this conference. since then, numerous alumni of care from quebec have held positions as members of the governing board of youth in care canada, thus making significant contributions to the alumni of care movement at a national level. at the same time, quebec has always had a different relationship with youth in care canada than the other provinces have had. youth in care canada has operated primarily in english and from an anglophone perspective, which has limited its capacity to connect with quebec, a 2 https://www.partnersforyouth.ca/en/ https://www.partnersforyouth.ca/en/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 117 predominantly french province. quebec also has two parallel youth protection systems that provide substitute care in each official language. thus, not only linguistic barriers to engaging with youth in care canada initiatives, but also the requirement of dealing with two completely separate bureaucracies, made youth organizing in quebec a complicated endeavour. there have been previous efforts to create a youth in care network in quebec through both the french and english systems of care. at one point, one administrative region of child welfare came forward to establish a francophone network in the province; however, for reasons unknown, it never came to be. the english agency in montreal did develop a relationship early on with youth in care canada and participated in meetings over many years towards establishing a provincial network. however, without funding, concrete plans were never formulated. eventually, the agency gave up on the idea of creating a network and instead created a youth empowerment program for youth in placement led by an alumnus of care. this program does not reach out to youth who have already left care, and the youth in the program do not have a role as decision-makers. nevertheless, it offers youth an opportunity to engage with each other over their shared experiences and improve programming internal to english-speaking youth protection services. care jeunesse got its start in 2011. the founder and first president of care, amanda keller, had initially served on the board of directors of youth in care canada. keller met with provincial youth protection officials on various occasions spanning several years while on the board of youth in care canada. during a conference held in winnipeg in october 2010 she was introduced to a director of a young offenders’ program from the french sector of youth protection in montreal. this meeting marked a critical moment in the development of the organization as this director from the care system became a key ally for care, going on to facilitate meetings with various youth protection directors between 2011 and 2013. five agencies did agree to support the development of a network in quebec, and a coalition formed that sponsored an event that brought youth in care and alumni of care together to discuss their needs. despite this high level of interest and engagement, none of the agencies funded the project as planned. the justification was that the province was in a recession and experiencing related budgetary cuts. by 2013, it was clear that there was no political will to provide government funding for a provincial network. however, around the same time, keller met jennifer dupuis, a fellow alumnus of care, who was also interested in establishing a network. after agreeing on the dire need for a youth-led network in quebec, they began to work together as volunteers to officially launch a formal organization. a first meeting took place in the fall of 2013. they recruited a five-member committee, which would meet every three months to discuss the process of forming an organization. it proved challenging to schedule initial meetings because there was no money to cover transportation, meals, or rental space. nonetheless, over the following months, the care committee had its first meetings with anglophone and francophone child protection service agencies in montreal and connected with other provincial networks for advice and guidance. in that first year of community organizing, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 118 keller was introduced to varda mann-feder, a university professor whose program of research focused on aging out of care. she became an adult ally to the group and was able to secure a small grant for a participatory action project, which covered initial expenses of the network. she was also able to provide a central meeting space on campus. in 2013 to 2014, care jeunesse held its first training session for members of the new board of directors, which would prove to be a challenging experience. the training session, offered by a community organization, outlined a traditional business approach to establishing a board of directors. as an example, a key recommendation was that the board of directors comprise professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and executives. this training did not align with the skills or vision of the care board members, who wanted the majority of board members to be alumni of care. finding young adults with care experience who had such specific professional titles seemed unrealistic, and the training discouraged further discussion of the issue. subsequently, the care board took a significant break but ultimately decided to proceed against the recommendations of the trainers and act more in line with care’s original vision. care jeunesse’s next challenge was to decide whether to register as a community-based business or as a non-profit organization. committee members debated this question for many months before settling on registering as a non-profit with the intention of becoming a charity several years into the functioning of the organization. in 2015, care officially registered as a non-profit organization. board members worked on the organization’s values and vision and produced their first membership pamphlet. the organization began to participate in fundraising initiatives, the first of which was supported by local college students who had heard about the mission of care jeunesse. the money from this fundraiser allowed the organization to create and register its first website. in 2015 to 2016, care established a facebook page, finalized by-laws, and began accepting membership applications in earnest. the organization also took on its first student intern, a step that proved invaluable in moving care forward, given the absence of an operating budget. since that time, care has established a newsletter and organized two major fundraising events, both of which were covered by local media. the first holiday parties for youth in and from care were held in december of 2017 and 2018, giving young adults an opportunity to network and enjoy a traditional supper and gifts. since its inception, care has also distributed donated luggage to youth leaving care in the montreal area, and has recently sent luggage to a cohort of youth leaving care in northern quebec. with the help of a volunteer coordinator, care now has a team of enthusiastic helpers, consisting of former youth in care, retired staff from the care system, and concerned local citizens, who assist with events, fundraising, and social media. care currently operates with a very modest budget and relies primarily on a working board of directors who serve on a voluntary basis. care has recently been able to hire its first staff person, a part-time coordinator. it is using this support to organize more events and activities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 119 with its members in and from care. care jeunesse continues to grow. while still dependent on donations to cover operating costs, the organization has become more visible over the last few years. care is gradually gaining legitimacy across the province through various engagement strategies, with the hope of eventually securing sustaining funding from the province. reflections on care’s trajectory like the fed and the new brunswick youth in care network, care jeunesse has rallied youth from care and registered as a non-profit organization. as with other networks, this experience could be characterized as a “roller coaster ride” (youth in care canada, 2018a, p. 3), both in terms of the establishment of processes and procedures, and the search for legitimacy in the larger system. however, unlike either the british columbia or new brunswick network, care began as a grassroots organization initiated by young people. the british columbia and new brunswick networks, alternatively, relied heavily on “adult actors” in the start-up phase (cahill & dadvand, 2018). this is referred to as “youth organizing” rather than “youth-led organizing” and is dependent on the actions of non-youth to promote youth participation (ho et al., 2015). the advantages of building a network through youth organizing are clear: when effective youth–adult partnerships are established, those youth benefit from consistent mentoring and financial support. however, in this model, adult organizers control the nature of young people’s participation and determine the degree to which they are empowered. at worst, this can threaten the independence of the youth in care network and result in tokenism (cahill & dadvand, 2018). due to the hierarchical nature of child welfare organizations in quebec (dupuis & mann-feder, 2013), early initiatives by local authorities to organize a network never produced concrete results. eventually, care jeunesse was set up by youth from care themselves, with no adult initiation, start-up funding, or agency sponsorship. as a result, it has developed relatively slowly. it took five years for the organization to be in a position to hire a staff person, and it was only possible to upgrade the website and promotional materials relatively recently, even though upgrades were needed to increase the capacity of care to reach out to alumni of care. this is similar to what happened in british columbia, where, although they started with an agency partner, it took five years to establish a website and 23 years to register as a charitable organization. this contrasts with the relatively faster evolution of the network in new brunswick, which started from the beginning with considerable government support. care’s inability to secure sustaining funding to date is another factor that has limited the organization’s capacity and speed of growth. it is attributable, in part, to the commitment of the founders to create an autonomous youth-led organization. what has facilitated the formation of care jeunesse? many factors contributed to the initial development of care jeunesse; in hindsight, these appear to be essential to the creation of a youth in care network. for instance, the opportunity to attend youth in care alumni conferences with peers from other parts of the country stimulated the motivation to create a network in quebec. these conferences inspired youth in and from care in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 120 quebec and helped them to recognize that self-organizing could bring the power to influence change. these events also provided opportunities for youth to network with others affiliated with alumni networks across north america as well as with supportive professionals in quebec. they fuelled the drive to mobilize in the early stages of building care. youth conferences do much to promote a youth voice in child welfare, as they expose young people from care to experiences that encourage peer leadership and outreach. however, they also require significant support from local agencies and government on both a provincial and a national level. the stated interest of various government organizations to support youth from care to start a provincial network also helped to solidify the movement in quebec, even though funding was not forthcoming as it has been in british columbia and new brunswick. the support of an agency director was invaluable. youth in care networks need the financial support of the provincial government in order to thrive; however, supportive individuals can do much to foster the emergence of these youth-led organizations even when financial support is not forthcoming. the involvement of a post-secondary educational institution was a critical element in care's initial formation and had the advantage of providing resources from outside the care system. the initial funding from a university helped care defray expenses for the first two years of operation. while the grant was small, it helped to stabilize the organization as an autonomous entity. it offset the initial expenses related to marketing and communications materials and covered administrative and registration fees, parking and transportation, refreshments, and other costs associated with outreach. the board of directors grew and established a stable base of operation at the university. when government funding is not available, it is essential to explore other sources of support such as the academic community engaged in research with care leaving. attracting motivated and talented board members who are alumni of care can be a significant challenge for a new youth in care network. care was extremely fortunate to have found many highly skilled alumni of care who were interested in contributing to the cause of youth in care. the current board consists entirely of youth from care; most board members also have careers and young children. their commitment to the process has been considerable. as care’s visibility and credibility has grown, there have been new opportunities for collaboration with local agencies and an increase in the number of highly skilled volunteers. what has impeded care jeunesse’s progress? multiple issues have impeded care's progress. some of the obstacles were specific to the quebec context, including budget cuts to the child welfare system and the need to function in both english and french in two parallel systems. furthermore, on april 1, 2015, the quebec health and social services system underwent a significant restructuring process in order to cut costs (collinvezina et al., 2015). these cuts limited care jeunesse’s opportunity to be funded by local agencies. unexpectedly, it also created significant delays in furthering care’s mandate, as several managers who had supported care jeunesse or had served as essential contacts left their roles. it was a difficult time to develop partnerships with the government. moreover, following the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 121 reorganization and reassignment of positions, it was even more complicated for care to identify and connect with the appropriate staff members. youth in care networks are subject to the instability inherent in public agencies; ideally, youth in care networks should remain separate while the management of child welfare agencies maintains a vested interest in continuing to work with youth organizations. care jeunesse must operate in two languages. quebec is a province where the official language is french; however, it is a bilingual province with a significant anglophone community. this situation, unusual in north america, requires twice the work: all communication must be executed in both languages. at the same time, it is relatively rare to recruit a fully bilingual volunteer. the translation of all documents, website copywriting, social media content, and promotional materials is time-consuming. it is challenging to operate as a fully bilingual organization with a limited budget for staff. in addition to obstacles unique to quebec, care also faced other problems that are characteristic of what most youth-led organizations face (place, 2013). care began with a lack of training, little knowledge of how to start a non-profit organization, and a limited support network. these factors slowed down the organization's growth significantly. early on, the board of directors encountered difficulties common to a newly formed organization. there was much time spent in circular conversations that produced little movement forward and frustrated most of the board members, who were all interested in bringing about concrete actions for care's membership. fortunately, one of care's founding board members had significant training in project management and was able to use her skills to help the organization to advance. her role was critical as she initiated strategic planning sessions that served in turn to keep board members accountable. care operated without a staff person for years and as a result care initially spent excessive time on what could have been simple tasks, such as scheduling meetings or deciding the allocation of tasks to specific board members. eventually, project management processes were put in place to address such issues. care jeunesse registered initially as a non-profit without access to legal advice. this proved ill-advised: after care took a year to develop care's bylaws using youth in care canada’s document as a template, a lawyer informed the board that there were significant legal differences between provincial and federal bylaws. care’s bylaws were thus not legally valid. ultimately the bylaws had to be revised, and care's registration had to be modified, both of which took months of work and discussion. the board of directors for care jeunesse initially comprised no more than six individuals at any time, all of them volunteers with school, work, and family commitments. it was not possible for six people to meet all the community requests and the legal obligations of a non-profit organization no matter how committed they were to the cause. it was essential to seek and accept the support of other groups or individuals to tackle the considerable workload associated with forming an organization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 122 lessons learned the obstacles care jeunesse faced in its first five years of operation taught us essential lessons related to planning and organization, the need for training, and how to effectively manage partnerships. planning and organization: creating a strategic plan is critical. the starting points for care's operation needed to be the mission, the mandate, the policies, and then the government registration. only after these were in place could we begin to seek out core funding. in hindsight this appears logical, but originally, before the adoption of a critical path, such tasks were not prioritized, and care's initial process was thus disorganized. after a period of trial and error, care eventually found a shared online data storage drive and project management software platform. this was crucial to establishing and formalizing the organization’s procedures. it is especially important in a working board of directors that board members take on only what they can realistically handle. care jeunesse found that slow and steady progress served the organization better than rapid growth. the slow pace of progress has been met with some criticism because the needs are significant, and there are minimal services for care's membership in quebec. yet over-eager volunteers frequently find themselves unable to see projects through to completion. the slow and steady approach helps to prevent burnout, a condition that has already resulted in turnover in the board of directors. training: care jeunesse's board of directors comprises mostly young professionals with limited family supports, many of whom are in school or have small children at home. board members in this phase of life are limited in their capacity to engage proactively in training opportunities that could assist in the organization's progress. in hindsight, care jeunesse would have benefited from skills training early on in areas such as the roles and responsibilities of a youth-led board of directors, website creation and maintenance, fundraising, grant writing, liaising with media, crisis intervention, policy writing, and political lobbying. managing partnerships: a range of local organizations interested in care jenunesse’s mission and mandate helped us grow when we sought their support. we received support from the centre for community organizations (coco), a local non-profit that supports grassroots organizations in quebec. we also received support from regroupement des organismes communautaires autonomes jeunesse du québec [a gathering of quebec youth-serving community organizations] (rocajq), a non-profit that supports youth-serving organizations in quebec. rocajq charged a modest membership fee; initially, however, the benefits of this membership were unclear. therefore, as a result of both budgetary constraints and a lack of understanding of how the organization might be able to support and guide us, care delayed signing up for membership until early 2017. in hindsight, it would have been beneficial to reach international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 123 out to systems of support earlier and ask for more precise communication about partnership benefits. care jeunesse also learned through trial and error that the organization had to establish boundaries and rules around forming partnerships. care jeunesse regularly receives offers of exciting research and fundraising opportunities. however, many of these offers draw energy away from care's strategic plan and mission. it is imperative to be clear about expectations and set limits, so that time is not given to projects that do not advance current objectives. implications care jeunesse has come a long way in its first five years since registering as a non-profit entity in 2015. care has increased its membership base and intensified outreach to both french and english youth in care as they prepare to age out. care continues to gain recognition in the care system and is working steadily towards establishing itself as a visible and influential youthled organization. care’s next hurdles are attaining charitable status and securing a recurring operating budget. care has provided particularly empowering experiences for the young people who have participated directly in its development. the skills they have learned have been invaluable and have taught them that they can rise above difficulties to make changes for other people who have lived similar lives. care jeunesse, unlike some of the other youth in care networks in canada and elsewhere, functioned from the beginning as an independent youth-led organization. while being youth-led is often seen as optimal for youth participation, empowerment (cahill & dadvand, 2018), and effective identification of youth issues (ilkiw, 2010), this autonomy from the child welfare system and adult decision-makers may have come at a price. youth leaders, while passionate about their mission, may not have all the knowledge, skill, and experience to launch an organization effectively. not only is the road to legitimacy longer and more complex in these circumstances, but many youth-led organizations like care have difficulty securing consistent funding and therefore “operate on a very short shoestring” (ilkiw, 2010). the centre of excellence in youth engagement (mccart & khanna, n.d.) stresses the critical importance of both “initiating” and “sustaining” factors in the success of any youth-led initiative. for care, important initiating factors were opportunities to network with youth in care networks from outside quebec, supportive adult allies, and visionary and committed youth leaders. at the same time, the circumstances have not been consistently favourable for sustaining a youth-led organization in child welfare. there have been sequential budget cuts, and successive reorganizations within hierarchical agencies that may not be open to sharing decision-making power with youth and former youth from care. while this raises the question of whether youth-led advocacy can ultimately succeed in our context, it also raises a more complicated and perhaps more important question: are youth-led organizations in child welfare a luxury or a necessity? youth-led groups struggle for recognition (ilkiw, 2010), but are uniquely positioned to create social change and multiple benefits for society (ho et al., p. 53). youth-led organizations hold institutions and systems accountable (ilkiw, 2010). youth-led international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 112–128 124 advocacy groups in child welfare in the united states have been at the forefront of changing legislation that defines entitlements for youth who have grown up in care (green, 2017). furthermore, there are significant growth and leadership 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(2014). a pilot 12-month follow-up study of crown ward transitions: comparison with young people in the general population (unpublished manuscript). university of ottawa. youth in care canada. (n.d.). our story. retrieved from https://youthincare.ca/our story youth in care canada. (2018a). the network connection: a network development manual (part 1). retrieved from https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-networkconnection-a-network-development-manual-part-1.pdf youth in care canada. (2018b). the network connection: a network development manual (part 2). available at https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-networkconnection-a-network-development-manual-part-2.pdf https://youthincare.ca/our%20story https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-network-connection-a-network-development-manual-part-1.pdf https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-network-connection-a-network-development-manual-part-1.pdf https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-network-connection-a-network-development-manual-part-2.pdf https://youthincare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-network-connection-a-network-development-manual-part-2.pdf deconstructing whiteness and coloniality in the human service field: possibilities for socially just praxis in child and youth care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 248 mapping whiteness and coloniality in the human service field: possibilities for a praxis of social justice in child and youth care johanne saraceno abstract: this paper explores how a dominant western ontology rooted in white masculinity and coloniality is embedded in the systems and structures of professional helping in canada. with a critical, post-colonial feminist analysis, this paper locates canada’s colonial history as fundamental to ongoing policies and practices in the human services and child and youth care (cyc). the implications of coloniality for cyc suggest that as practitioners we might consciously engage in deconstructing the theories, structures, and values that shape how we practice. cartographies can assist us in reflexive and deconstructive endeavours. as one maps out the parameters and identifies the existing horizons, one might begin to envision how to then move beyond them. in examining the hegemony of professional helping, the intention is an invitation to work collectively toward models that foreground the social context of problems faced by individuals as well as creative, collective responses. strategies of an engaged solidarity and a model of socially just, decolonizing praxis offer potential sites for affirmative and transformative social change. keywords: whiteness, colonialism, social justice, child and youth care, intersectionality johanne saraceno is a doctoral student and sessional instructor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: jsaracen@uvic.ca mailto:jsaracen@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 249 this paper undertakes a cartography to bring to the surface how a dominant western ontology rooted in whiteness and coloniality is embedded in the systems and structures of professional helping, including child and youth care (cyc). given increasing disparities between the wealthy and the poor, ongoing violence against racialized and gendered minorities, and a non-profit funding model that pits community service agencies against one another in bids for limited resources, this is an important and relevant topic for cyc. the main goal of this paper is to provide a cartography in the hope it will provoke further reading and an intentional engagement to interrogate policies and practices that sustain the current status quo to the disadvantage of many. elements of colonial history are foregrounded in order to highlight and begin to deconstruct how embeddedness in a dominant western ontology has shaped the field of human services. cartographies can be useful for making clear the power structures of society. cartographies can help us to see where we are situated so that we can then consider where we might like to go or how we might direct our energy toward change. in taking up this notion of the cartography, i will map out colonialism, whiteness and white privilege, the relevance and significance of neo-liberalism, and the construction of gender in a canadian context. nevertheless, given the scope of this paper, the complexities of these intersections will be explored to a limited extent. drawing on a range of literature from within and outside of cyc, i also map “professionalism” in the human service sector. this discussion locates cyc and professional helping as products of, and embedded in, a western ontology that privileges the normative values of whiteness and the coloniality of power. as suggested by braidotti (2006), mapping out where we are situated or located provides a useful tool for productive, critical engagement for change. in considering the implications for cyc, i discuss new possibilities for how we think about and enact support to individuals and communities. i discuss implications for shifting ways of knowing, doing, and being in cyc; i draw this term from white (2007) and her conceptualization of praxis as “ethical, self-aware, responsive and accountable action, which reflects dimensions of knowing, doing and being” (p. 226). how can we move across difference toward a model of praxis that seeks social justice through an intentional decolonizing stance and an affirmation of the complexity of life through solidarity? such a shift would benefit from a cartography of the assumptions taken for granted and the values underpinning professional helping in canada today. mapping or making explicit these hegemonic elements of the dominant culture then allows us to begin to examine the places we encounter or embody privilege in our own lives. i invite readers to consider how they might push the edges of their own horizons to contribute to ever expanding possibilities of what might be, so that we can all move toward models that foreground the social context of problems faced by individuals and generate creative, productive collective responses. theoretical orientation i locate my analysis within a hybrid feminist epistemology informed by critical/antioppressive, queer, post-colonial, and post-structural theories. feminist theory is important as gender is still used around the world as a pervasive category of discrimination (cole, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 250 “patriarchy is the practice, phallocentrism the theory; both coincide in producing an economy, material as well as libidinal, where the law is upheld by a phallic symbol that operates by constructing differences and organising them hierarchically” (braidotti, 1991, p. 213). the consequence to this is an entrenched system of male privilege against which any “resistance” or “difference” to the norm is negated. this paper is grounded in an understanding that “hegemonic practices are invisibly built into the ‘grand narratives’ of the dominant culture and are woven into the fabric of our daily lives in ways that make it difficult to uncover, track, resist” (gilmore, smith, & kairaiuak, 2004, p. 280). feminism is polyvocal; there is no one defining perspective of feminism but rather, “many feminisms and feminist standpoints” (maguire, 1996, p. 107). according to haraway (1997), standpoints can be understood as “cognitive-emotional-political achievements, crafted out of located social-historical-bodily experience – itself always constituted through fraught, non-innocent, discursive, material collective practices” (p. 304). femaleness is not a universal experience in that multiple and complex elements such as ethnicity and class shape gender. “feminist post-colonial critique call[s] into question cultural, gender, and racial binaries among others” (schutte, 2007, p. 167). an intersectional lens acknowledges all of these elements as complex, varied, and co-constituting one another (carastathis, 2008). a conscious decolonizing feminist stance recognizes that practices and scholarship are “inscribed in relations of power” (mohanty, 2003, p. 19). “the central issue is the critique of universalism as being maleidentified and of masculinity as projecting itself as pseudo-universal and a critique of the idea of otherness as devalorization” (braidotti, 1994, p. 159). an ongoing challenge for feminist scholars and practitioners is how to make transparent dialectical paradigms while recognizing that we can only do this from within our constrained location (braidotti, 1991). queer theory expands possibilities for thinking about and doing social justice with its emphasis on disrupting dominant norms and creating openings that are more flexible and fluid by “interrogating the historical and cultural positioning of the unified ‘self’ characteristic of the western constitution of the subject” (watson, 2005, p. 68). smith (2010) describes this as making “theory queer, not just hav[ing] theory about queers. for both academics and activists, ‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual” (p. 44). critical feminist and queer theories have sought to foreground male and heteronormative privilege and disrupt “truth, objectivity, and certainty by a focus on ‘regimes of truth’” (lather, 1991, p. 23), making explicit the relationship between authority, power, and taken-for-granted assumptions which constrain the potential for many groups of beings to live vital productive lives. the intention is not to correct or supplant one truth with another but rather to advocate complexity and multiple possible conceptualizations. my vision for social transformation rejoins braidotti (1991) in that “the goal of the process of liberation is not to transform the powerless into the powerful; it aims to surmount the dialectical system in order to arrive at non-hegemonic form of consciousness” (p. 109). the concept of cartographies, according to braidotti (1994), provides “a sort of intellectual landscape gardening” where we can encounter the horizon, take our bearing. in other words, it is important to situate ourselves in the contexts of the structures and constraints and to draw as accurate a map as possible of existing structures, forces, dynamics, and interactions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 251 braidotti (2008) proposes that cartographies act as “politically informed map[s] of one’s historical and social location, the purpose of which is to enable the analysis of situated formations of power and hence adequate forms of resistance” (p. 19). this concept derives from foucault’s (1975) cartographies of power. in this sense, cartographies can provide “alternative genealogies of thought [which] express a form of ethical and political accountability that requires an understanding of one’s specific location” (braidotti, 2010, p. 2). furthermore, this conceptualization also follows from deleuze and guattari who “stressed the importance of immanent analyses of the singular actualisations of concrete power formations” (as cited in braidotti, 2008, p. 19). ultimately, this exercise in mapping power relations and structural dynamics allows us to begin to consider possibilities for different ways of knowing, doing, and being. elements of a western ontology colonial history in this section, i will take inventory of some key concepts of a western ontology or world view and the normative values inscribed in the practices of professionalized helping. an understanding of coloniality and the dominant western ontology is important because it is the hegemonic foundation and power base, contested persistently and daily through varied forms of interpersonal and collective resistance, of canadian structures and institutions, including the human service field and cyc. human service work is inherently colonial; its central goal is to control and discipline bodies and minds (foucault, 1975; skott-myhre, 2004; wade, 1995) colonialism, central to a eurocentric settler world view (razack, 2002), is still relevant to those of us in the helping professions because it is embedded in all contemporary structures and institutions of canadian society, including the law, child welfare, education, psychology, and health. razack (2002) emphasizes that all existing institutions in canadian society evolved through a colonizer/colonized relationship. post-colonial feminist scholars define colonization as “a relation of structural domination and suppression – often violent – of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question” (mohanty, 2003, p. 18) and as “the project of converting the natives to christianity and of drawing colonized populations into european economic and political arrangements … [to] enable these [groups] to benefit from ‘becoming like westerners’” (narayan & harding, 2000, p. 94). economic and social growth in canada “continues to rely on the subjugation and relocation of entire indigenous societies, which sustain a system of chronic poverty, social exclusion, and political and cultural disenfranchisement” (de finney, dean, loiselle, & saraceno, 2011, p. 363). these types of colonizing relationships persist in the institutions of canadian society today, as demonstrated, for example, by the continued overrepresentation of indigenous children in government care and the statistically poorer health outcomes for indigenous people across canada (lavallée & poole, 2010). post-colonial theory, attempts to engage with “issues of identity, history, and culture that are the direct result of the colonial experience” (skott-myhre, 2008, p. 172). post-colonial theory engages critically with: european colonization and its legacy at the material and discursive levels… the conviction that the relationships between the present and the past, the local and the global, [etc.] are much more intertwined and of longer duration than appears in many accounts of social sciences. (venn, 2006, p. 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 252 this lens makes it clear that colonialism is not a thing of the past and continues to operate in the institutions and policies of today. coloniality integrates an explicit analysis of the power of existing social structures and roots in colonial history. the coloniality of power is a concept advanced by quijano (2007) as constituting the crux of the global capitalist system of power. lugones (2007) explains, “what is characteristic of global, eurocentered, capitalist power is that it is organized around two axes that quijano terms ‘the coloniality of power’ and ‘modernity’” (p. 186). the concept of coloniality maps power as a force that colonizes the imagination and co-opts through access to pieces of the power system (quijano, 2007). this concept effectively captures the intersection of colonialism with capitalism and their modernist roots, which underpin the dominant western ontology. the modernist legacy includes the contradictory juxtaposition of “enlightenment ideals of respect, freedom, and equality [against] gender domination, and western domination in the form of colonialism and imperialism” (jakobsen, 1998, p. 4). yet the very social contract that holds that all men are created equal is, in fact, predicated on the subordination of women and the racialized other (pierson, 2005). “‘universalism’ [has] come to dominate a politics centered on the subject of rights, thereby occluding the force of global capital and its differential forms of exploitation from the theorizations of subordinated peoples” (butler, 2000, p. 36). the consequence of this for cyc is that historic political and economic struggles have been categorized into manageable units of individual disease or disorder (de finney, dean et al., 2011; jakobsen, 1998; kivel, 2002; mcknight, 1995; szasz, 2002). capitalism cannot be excluded from a discussion of western ontology and professional helping. in terms of productive social change (braidotti, 2008), callahan and swift (2007), lugones (2007), mclaren (2000), mohanty (2003), and skott-myhre (2008), among others, foreground the importance of considering the intersection of a capitalist economic system with a eurocentric colonial history in mapping out where we are in order to contemplate where we might go next. closely related to colonialism is the neo-colonial capitalist paradigm, neoliberalism. neo-liberalism neo-liberalism, the form that capitalism has taken in the last century, has significantly shaped policies and practices in human and social services and, thus, cyc. neo-liberalism is a political as much as an economic ideology; it has shaped canadian social, economic, and political systems under globalization (callahan & swift, 2007). based on a logic of free market values and globalized economies, it “enshrines values of competition, privatization, individual responsibility, surveillance, and managerialism” (phoenix, 2004, p. 228). callahan and swift (2007) note that under this ethos, economic growth takes precedence over living beings: “economic growth and maximum exploitation of the market are given priority over support and assistance to people ‘in need’ and…require that individuals decrease their demands on the state and simultaneously increase their activities as producers and consumers” (p. 159). neoliberalism, true to its modernist roots, advances the notion that everybody has equal opportunities to succeed whereas, in fact, entrenched systems of privilege facilitate or limit opportunities for mobility and status based on one’s social location in relation to intersections of class, gender, and race, among others. mohanty (2003) asserts that, “the hegemony of neo-liberalism, alongside the naturalization of capitalist values, influences the ability to make choices on one’s own behalf” (p. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 253 229). cultural tools such as education, the media, and corporate marketing have a powerful influence in shaping subjecthood. neo-liberalism is entrenched as a hegemonic world view and thus, “most people have [the sense] that not only is there no other alternative, but that this is the best system ever imagined…inequities are simply swept out of sight” (said, 2000, as cited in phoenix, 2004, p. 228). difference is acceptable in consumable units – furthering the illusions of an equal and just society (braidotti, 2006; jakobsen, 1998). “the phenomenon of globalization accomplishes a magician’s trick: it combines the euphoric celebration of new technologies, new lifestyles… with the complete social rejection of change and transformation” (braidotti, 2006, p. 2). neo-liberalism has profoundly shaped the structures and institutions of western societies, including professional helping and the construct of professionalization. before examining this relationship in more detail, white privilege, another thread of the dominant western world view, will be mapped out. whiteness and white privilege what is the history of “white” identity and “white privilege”? why is this relevant to consider? the concept of whiteness is intimately related to white privilege; white privilege underpins the structures and values of canadian society. whiteness is not only about skin colour but also about access to special privileges. whiteness initially differentiated “european explorers and settlers who came in contact with africans and indigenous people…‘white’ developed as an indication of difference based on skin colour” (skott-myhre, 2008, p. 168). according to kivel (2002), “whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white” (p. 15). who qualifies as white is always a moving target, evolving with migrations of populations, politics, and economic factors. as rodriguez (2000) emphasizes, “race is not a natural, fixed phenomena but rather a social construct whose one constant or guarantee is its changing significance and effects given its evolving historical interaction and intersection with the political” (p. 5). historically, race has interacted with class, gender, and location to shape the structures of north american society (government, education, housing, and health care) through government legislation and policies that have protected and entrenched the advancement of the white, heterosexual, male subject (kivel, 2002; martinot, 2003; schick, 2002). white privilege is charted in our legal code. canadians have only to look at our own government’s indian act to see an explicit example of where white privilege and colonial values entrenched protections for the dominant group through the systemic marginalization and disenfranchisement of entire populations. white privilege “is produced and rationalized as survey lines, deeds, boundaries, purchase prices, and mortgages – signs of ownership and belonging… [it] is also produced relationally against the otherness of original habitants” (schick, 2002, p. 106). rodriguez (2000) demonstrates the complexity of how whiteness operates to sustain privilege and the positioning of the “other”: whiteness has a set of linked dimensions. first, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. second, it is a “standpoint”, a place from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 254 which white people look at ourselves, at others, at society. third, “whiteness” refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. (p. 8) ultimately, whiteness and white privilege are unseen and unknown because of an assumption of normal. the invisibility of a dominant white ontology “colonizes the definitions of other norms, class, gender, heterosexuality, nationality, and so on – it also masks whiteness itself as a category” (dryer, 1988, as cited in harper, 2000, p. 129). throughout the feminist literature, tensions between whiteness and racialization and gender are centred in an attempt to map and dialogue about how to rework these problematic intersections. one way we can begin to map out or increase our awareness of the “colonial construction of whiteness as an ‘empty’ cultural space, [is] in part by refiguring it as constructed and dominant rather than as norm” (fuller, 2000, p. 82). stoler (1995, as cited in skott-myhre, 2008) considers intersections of race and sexuality in regard to “how whiteness is used disciplinarity [and] the ‘cultivation of a european self’ and how this self was ‘affirmed in the proliferating discourses around pedagogy, parenting…’” (p. 171). a willingness to question normalizing discourses in regard to learning and appropriate social behaviour is of particular relevance for cyc and human service practitioners as “much of the current research that underlies policy and evidence-based practice remains euro-western in its subject matter and methodological orientation” (de finney, green, & brown, 2009, p. 161). fee and russell (2007) note that, as canada does not have the same overt history of slavery and violent racialized conflicts as the united states, many canadians believe they are race-neutral. this presents additional challenges for raising awareness and engaging people in dialogue about the embedded nature of white privilege and white values in canadian society. “faced with an activist other, some deny white privilege, asserting that all have equal opportunities now, and others respond with what has been called ‘liberal guilt’” (fee & russell, p. 192). the embeddedness of white privilege is evident in the human services sector where western approaches are presented as “acultural—transcending considerations of culture. however, supposedly acultural models merely privilege western culture” (walker, 2004, p. 532). intersecting with colonial history, neo-liberal capitalism, and white privilege is the construct of gender. in the following section, i will link gender as an important element to consider as interwoven with the concepts explored above. gender and colonialism race, gender, and sexuality are all clearly linked when considering a western ontology through a critical feminist lens (braidotti, 1991, 1994; lugones, 2007; mohanty, 2003; razack, 2002; smith, 2005). “the central issue at stake at this level of analysis is the critique of universalism as being male-identified and of masculinity as projecting itself as pseudo-universal and a critique of the idea of otherness as devalorization” (braidotti, 1994, p. 159). gender is an ever-present construct that crosses borders of race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and ability, among others. according to lugones (2007), “colonialism introduced gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of production, property relations, and ways of knowing. heterosexuality, capitalism, and racial classification are impossible to understand apart from each other” (p. 187). according to smith (2010), “the colonial status quo with its attendant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 255 heteropatriarchy … is the logic that makes the social hierarchy seem natural” (p. 47). a full analysis of the intersections of gender with race, whiteness, and coloniality is beyond the scope of this paper, but this section sketches an outline of how a gendered hierarchy operates in relation to coloniality. intersectionality is a concept that enables us to consider the interplay between multiple aspects of complex subjectivities such as gender, race, class, age, and ability (carastathis, 2008). lugones (2007) adds: intersectionality reveals what is not seen when categories such as gender and race are conceptualized as separate from each other. the move to intersect the categories has been motivated by the difficulties in making visible those who are dominated and victimized in terms of both categories. (p. 192) white settler society has used place and space, including canadian academic institutions and courts of law, to entrench the colonial norms of white, male privilege (razack, 2002). fuller (2000) notes that, “the intimate links between race, gender, and sexuality take place at the level of the body and in a social context of oppressions and privileges” (p. 91). the issue of women’s bodies as sites of violence is pervasive in today’s society; approximately one in three girls, women, and transgendered people will experience sexual assault at some point in their lifetime (sexual assault centre of edmonton, 2009). deer (2009) explains further: rape and sexual violence are deeply embedded in the colonial mindset. rape is more than a metaphor for colonization—it is part and parcel of colonization … for many the oppression and abuse of women is indistinguishable from fundamental western concepts of social order. (p. 150) for women who are also indigenous or racialized, gender intersects to further increase their risk of some form of violence and discrimination under a western ontology (downe, 2005; mohanty, 2003; smith, 2005). smith (2005) emphasizes that resistance to sexualized violence is integral to indigenous women’s quest for sovereignty. several core, intersecting strands of the dominant western ontology have now been charted: embedded values and practices from a colonial history, the dynamics and entrenched systems of white privilege, the very real presence of capitalism and a dominant neo-liberal socioeconomic framework, and the entrenchment of a hierarchically ordered gender dichotomy. the next section will illustrate how these elements are rooted throughout current conceptualizations of professional helping. western ontology, the human services, and professionalism why is this discussion relevant to cyc? western ontology is deeply entrenched in the structures, policies, and beliefs underlying fields of professional helping in canada. canada is a white settler society, which, according to razack (2002), “is one established by europeans on non-european soil. its origins lie in the dispossession and near extermination of indigenous populations [and] continues to be structured by a racial hierarchy” (p. 1). this socio-historic context has significantly shaped our thinking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 256 about social problems and helping. reyes cruz and sonn (2010), emphasize that “as a social science, community psychology is shaped by western academic traditions, discourses and structures that reproduce historical power hierarchies intertwined with the legacy of colonialism” (p. 203). human services work is inherently colonial, with the primary purpose being to control and discipline minds and bodies to “comply with the interests of the nation, the corporation, the family, or the agency… the task of forced assimilation is embedded within the dominant eurowestern paradigm of the helping professions… under the guise of moral goodness and helping” (skott-myhre, 2004, p. 90). psychology, with its influence extending throughout the human services, has played a significant role in the minoritization and marginalization of others as it reproduces hegemonic norms (lavallée & poole, 2010; morss, 1996). wade (1995) notes the “very close and mutually supportive relationship between colonialism and the so-called ‘helping professions’” (p. 168), as demonstrated by residential schools and child welfare, for example. walker (2004) proposes that “cognitive imperialism has been added to the goals of conversion and assimilation of the dominant governing society” (p. 531) and skott-myhre (2008) identifies the human service worker as, “an extension of the colonial or cultural machine [which] is always constituted in relation to the ‘other’” (p. 173). as braidotti (2010) emphasizes, “the critique of universalism and liberal individualism is a fundamental starting point to rethink the interconnection between the self and society in a non-dualistic manner” (p. 410). the above discussion invites further reflection as to why and how we engage in various practices in cyc, the implicit values and beliefs underpinning these practices, and how we can support children and families in the here and now while, at the same time, not blindly (re)producing hierarchical colonial dynamics. the business of helping our helping professions are, in fact, part of a broader system of neo-liberal structures which sustain the privilege and power of those deemed “normal” while all others, with their different ways of knowing and being, are minoritized. the devaluing of other ways of being and knowing is connected to the system of need and deficiency which has given rise to an expansive system of human services that aim to accommodate, assimilate, and rehabilitate all those who are “different” from the mainstream normative standards in all aspects of personal and social life. as we map out specific elements, it becomes clear that professional helping and the human services are embedded within the dominant eurocentric ontology, one in which whiteness, coloniality, capitalism, and gendered oppression constrain possibilities. the structures of professional helping have served to undermine individual and community capacity (gilmore, 2007; hillman & ventura, 1992; kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; rodriguez, 2007). one aspect of this problem is the establishment of government-funded services to those in need through a model of non-profit service delivery. through his analysis, mcknight (1995) asserts that “these models presuppose an individualized definition of client need” (p. 46). gilmore (2007) emphasizes that “non-profits providing direct services have become highly professionalized by their relationship with the state” (p. 45). this, gilmore states, has reduced the parameters of helping and narrowed funding to “program-specific categories and remedies which make staff become technocrats through imposed specialization” (p. 46). though at the present time non-profit agencies indeed provide useful and necessary supports to communities, they can also be viewed as part of the problem of perpetuating social inequities and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 257 impeding social justice. how can we begin to think about models of care and justice that operate through different structures? in what other ways could we make use of resources so that community members’ needs are taken care of while they are also engaged? throughout the literature, professional helping has been critiqued to demonstrate its erosion of the innate capacity for community problem solving and local solutions (gilmore, 2007; kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; newbury, 2010a; skott-myhre, 2005, 2008; szasz, 2002). for example, mcknight (1995) makes explicit the assumption advanced through human service models that the professional, with presumed expertise garnered through formal education settings, “not only knows what [the client] needs, but also knows how the need is to be met” (p. 48). this underlying assumption embodies the paternalism and dominance of the colonial project. this view “defines citizens as people who cannot understand whether they have a problem – much less what should be done about it” (mcknight, p. 48). minoritized populations (racialized, disabled, female, queer) remain the most frequent targets of professionalized and specialized human service interventions (de finney, loiselle, & dean, 2011). individualizing problems and labelling deficits “obscures the conditions that contribute to these problems and in so doing, diverts our attention from insisting on any changes outside of [these] individuals who are already marginalized” (szasz, 2002, p. 22). this is part of the illusion of the neo-liberal global capitalist project – it devolves responsibility for social problems onto individuals while continuing to exacerbate those very social problems. how can we in cyc not consciously “replicat[e] the kinds of dominance we hope to alleviate; accommodating people to lives of poverty, and participating in practices that serve as social control” (reynolds, 2010, p. 2)? benefits of professionalization? the assumption that professionalized helping is better follows the natural logic of a western ontology, with its inherent privileging of hierarchy, power, and a paternalistic stance. professions are characterized by “monopolistic, patriarchal, elitist self-interest groups” (lochhead, 2001, p. 75). furthermore, according to eisekovitz and beker (2001), “the idea that acquiring the structural concomitants of professionalization will automatically lead to better service to clients is an assumption; it is not based on empirical proof” (p. 416). eisekovitz and beker point to the experience of at least one major allied field (social work) to suggest that there is no direct relationship between professionalization and improved services for clients. lochhead (2001) and garabaghi (2008) both assert that professionalizing is counter to the ethic and orientation of most cyc practitioners as it reifies artificial boundaries and disrupts authentic community relationships and networks. mcknight (1995) identifies several structural consequences that exist as a result of professionalization and its focus on individual deficiencies, including the result of a sense of dependency and a loss of knowing how to be in community. “professionals push out the problem-solving knowledge and action of friend, neighbor, citizen, and association” (mcknight, p. 106). hillman and ventura (1992) identify this same concern in their discussion about how the discourses emphasizing and elevating personal growth act as a substitute for meaningful work and satisfying, engaged political involvement: why do we need this ideal of the norman rockwell family, this make believe ideal that’s so rampant in politics and therapy? ...it is keeping an ideal in place so international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 258 that we can show how dysfunctional we all are. it keeps the trade going; this would be ivan illich’s view. we need clients. (p. 14) another structural consequence of professional helping is that it serves to reify existing educational and economic divisions. professional helping has become a thriving economic force with the labelling and identification of individual difficulties prompting the need for specialized education and training of professional helpers, agencies, and offices from which to deliver services, and supervisors and unions to protect the rights and needs of the professional helpers (kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; rodriguez, 2007). “professional efforts to certify work in the service area are stealing jobs away from the poor by putting these jobs in an elite status, requiring the kind of training and education that most poor people do not have [access to]” (mcknight, 1995, p. 99). what are the implications for ethical engagement with our clients and with our communities when our livelihood is dependent on the suffering and disenfranchisement of others? in reflecting on the common threads throughout the literature, it is evident that professional helping and professionalization have limited, if any, actual merit beyond the short term, for supporting individuals and communities to improve or resolve social and health problems. by design, professional helping is set up to position individuals as responsible for their problems and for resolving them. within models of professional helping, there is very little, if any, acknowledgement of or engagement with structural and systemic factors such as the law and social policy, or racialization, poverty, and gender-based discrimination. to engage in transformative social change requires us to challenge professional assumptions and models of helping in cyc and in the legal and socio-political contexts in which cyc operates. implications for policy and practice in child and youth care in order to foreground social justice in cyc praxis, it is necessary to make explicit the focus on individualized problems and work toward community-based solutions to transform the conditions and context of these problems, rather than just treating individual “symptoms”. like braidotti (2006), skott-myhre (2005) proposes that we rethink: the modernist individual subject, as a product of an earlier form of discipline … if we are to utilize psychology as a meaningful tool in the ongoing liberation of human beings from forms of control, dominance, and exploitation within the emerging system of dominance and sovereignty in the twenty-first century. (p. 46) in engaging with an ethic of social justice, what strategies will support the decolonization of ways of knowing, doing, and being? how can we work together for change in a way that is flexible and open to what might be that we cannot know now? until recently, liberation projects embodying mainstream concepts of equality were organized by separate groups (women, gay and lesbian groups, specific racialized or ethnic groups) around discourses of the rights of the individual: multiculturalism and empowerment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 259 beyond multiculturalism and empowerment multiculturalism and empowerment models promote equality among individuals yet have been inadequate at supporting change on a broader social level because they remain embedded and operate within the parameters of western hegemony (jackson, 2007). a multicultural discourse of “embracing difference” too often defaults to essentialized images that inevitably foreground those who represent the dominant traditions or practices of the group, while further marginalizing those who do not fit within the prescribed boundaries (pereira, 2008). furthermore, as noted by fee and russell (2007), because of our less violent and divisive race history when compared to the u.s., canadians “typically represent themselves as tolerant and polite [creating a] mythology of racelessness” (p. 193). this presents a serious challenge to making transparent intersections of racialized and gendered violence and inequity. as rodriguez (2000), quoting mclaren (1997, p. 262), notes: color-blind discourse is not a racial project of benignly looking past race to the person under the skin motif… it is a project set up to “protect” white privilege and power by permitting “white people to construct ideologies that help them to avoid the issue of racial inequality while simultaneously benefiting from it.” (p. 9) the concepts of “empowerment” and “liberation” have limitations for achieving what they set out to do as they are inevitably constituted by a colonial history and a modernist-derived neo-liberal construction of the “individual” as an actor capable of social change (jackson, 2007). for example, freire’s work is built on “assumptions about the individual capacity for change through critical reflection” which ignore that “our life chances may certainly be determined by racism or sexism” (jackson, p. 208) and further contextualized by structural power and economic inequities. mohanty (2003) explicitly interrogates the neo-liberal ideology embedded in this notion that increased consciousness can enable an individual to change the structures of oppression and inequity. this implicit pressure on individuals to ameliorate their life circumstances often results in feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy, and an acceptance that compromise is the best or only way to achieve change for individuals who try to tackle social issues (jackson, 2007) in the face of deeply entrenched institutional structures. it is time to shift from focusing on problems at the margins to centring whiteness and taken-for-granted norms in order to interrogate how these perpetuate social problems. rodriguez (2000) advocates the positioning of whiteness within multiculturalism discourses in order to shift the focus from the “other” and to centre “critical analyses of whiteness as an invisible norm” (p. 3). harper (2000) emphasizes that it is important to consider “issues of power and powerlessness in relation to how racialized identities are produced and normalized” (p. 129). in centring whiteness and foregrounding issues of power, we can better map out the structures and practices that reify forms of discrimination that lead some groups to be overrepresented in our systems of care and justice. critical feminists have struggled to conceptualize issues of social justice in the wake of the disruptions to identity categories through post-structural analysis. lorraine (2007) states that “many feminists share [the] concern that poststructuralist feminist theory’s antifoundationalist wariness of overarching principles does not provide adequate grounding for the kind of social critique necessary for feminist change” (p. 268). lather (2008) raises this tension as well: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 260 “essentialism and identity politics might be bad objects from the vantage point of antifoundational theory, but they are often seen as the only, if not the best, strategy for advancing minority-based claims” (p. 223). wood (1995, as cited in mclaren, 2000) cautions against the risk to social justice presented by post-structural ideas: we should not confuse respect for the plurality of human experience and social struggles with a complete dissolution of historical causality where there is nothing but diversity, difference, and contingency, no unifying structures, no logic of process, no capitalism and therefore no negation of it, no universal project of human emancipation. (p. 153) lather (2008) identifies that a “tension around a realist position that mediates the essentialism of identity politics is a mark of postcolonialism in its use of histories of exploitation to foster strategies of resistance” (p. 222). like braidotti (2006), lather underlines the value in mapping out what is, in order to see how to uncover, track, and resist privilege and structural power to begin to work for change. ultimately, this tension is captured and summarized in braidotti’s (2009) reflection: “how [do we] engage [in] affirmative politics, which entails the production of social horizons of hope, while at the same time doing critical theory, which means resisting the present?” (p. 42). the invitation here is to consider productive strategies for working toward social justice by confronting existing structural inequities, while simultaneously thinking with complexity to conceptualize social change at the level of cultural transformation that eventually takes us beyond rigid identity categories and into new ways of knowing, doing, and being. in order for significant social transformation to occur, it is perhaps time to consider an ontological orientation that moves beyond a focus on human emancipation and makes conscious connections between human, animal, and plant ecologies. all life forms are interconnected (braidotti, 2006; haraway, 2008) and it is the modernist project that has entrenched a hierarchy and disconnection between different categories of beings. a stance of co-implication (mohanty, 2003) also resonates with many indigenous world views, for example the nuu-chah-nulth concept “heshook ish tsawalk” or “everything is one” (atleo, 2004, p. 10). decolonizing practice in contemporary settings, decolonization is the term frequently used to describe the reclaiming of a proud identity by indigenous people who have suffered the ravages of colonialism. with a decolonizing stance and vigilant critical reflection, we can begin to poke at and peel away layers of convention – social and professional practices – to disrupt privilege and make explicit how neo-colonialism continues to operate in normative ways of knowing, doing, and being in professional helping and cyc. decolonization “involves profound transformations of the self, community, and governance structures [and] can only be engaged through active withdrawal of consent and resistance to structures of psychic and social domination… a historical and collective process” (mohanty, 2003, p. 7). the literature suggests that it is time to move away from the dominant conceptualization of “helping” as a benign phenomenon, to think critically and creatively in order to “step outside the frameworks of colonial youth work and engage a different set of ideas, beliefs, and practices” (skott-myhre, 2004, p. 92). the link between solidarity work and decolonization must be explicit and “can only be achieved through ‘self-reflexive collective praxis’” (schutte, 2007, p. 172). as laenui (2000) asserts: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 261 true decolonization is more than simply placing indigenous people into the positions held by colonizers. decolonization includes the re-evaluation of the political, social, economic, and judicial structures themselves and the development, if appropriate, of new structures that can hold and house the values and aspirations of the colonized people. (p. 155) decolonizing praxis is not about substituting a new set of rules or codes but rather mapping out new, engaged methods to uncover, track, and resist these hidden hegemonic normative values and practices. adopting a decolonizing stance demands an openness and willingness to map out coloniality and to dialogue with indigenous and other minoritized ways of knowing, doing, and being in a praxis of solidarity and social justice. this is crucial as “silencing indigenous worldviews has been and continues to be one of the major tools of colonization” (walker, 2004, p. 531). nevertheless, how do we engage authentically with indigenous wisdom and ways of knowing in ways that might benefit new approaches to relating and thus practice, without appropriating or recolonizing this knowledge? a question of justice in her discussion of social service work with marginalized and minoritized people, reynolds (2010) claims “this inherently political work requires an ethic of resistance that takes a position for justice” (p. 5). similarly, newbury (2010a) critiques “the dichotomy between care (as emotional and private) and justice (as rational and public) [as] false. care is justice” (p. 21). this has powerful implications made clear in reynolds’ (2010) assertion that neutrality is not possible; it is in itself an ethical stance not to work for justice. as derrida (as cited in caputo, 1997) advances, “the condition of possibility of deconstruction is a call for justice” (p. 16) and yet he also advanced the idea that one can never be just; “the only thing that can be called ‘just’ is a singular action in a singular situation” (as cited in caputo, 1997, p. 138). this requires that one who seeks to be just must remain engaged, alert, and self-reflexive. what implications does this hold for cyc practitioners? how can we cultivate practices to track how we enact justice (or not) in our work with children, families, and communities? in her call for making social justice explicit in cyc, newbury (2010a) discusses how the social service field conceptualizes its role as helping people to overcome “their” problems (care), which then renders invisible the fact that these are “our” problems. this latter stance, of acknowledged collective ownership of social problems, allows us to begin to think in terms of social justice and productive social change. kivel (2007) differentiates: “social service work addresses the needs of individuals reeling from the personal and devastating impact of institutional systems of exploitation and violence… social change work addresses the root causes of exploitation and violence” (p. 129). it is critical to adopt a praxis of solidarity and social justice to promote concepts that go beyond “service work” or “helper” to open up possibilities for individual healing that are grounded in a broader context of social transformation. as mcknight (1995) states, “human service is only one response to a human condition. there are always many other possibilities that do not involve paid experts and therapeutic concepts” (p. 103). furthermore, it is because of the influence of neo-colonial and modernist concepts of regulation and control of environments that services have evolved with medicalized, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 262 formulaic, and standardized approaches to helping, in turn facilitating the development of experts, but which do very little to mitigate or change the circumstances of individuals struggling amidst the racialized, gendered, and economic inequities of canadian society (scott, 1998). solidarity as strategy an orientation to a praxis of social justice requires that we make explicit the connections between the challenges faced by individuals and collective experiences, given the western hegemony entrenched in canadian social, political, and economic structures. this next section explores strategies and actions to propose some beginning possibilities for mobilizing a socially just praxis. as discussed above, western ontology has strongly shaped existing models of human service which has led to professionalization and regulation which, through specialized technical interventions, have resulted in the growth of the non-profit and professional helping sectors but which have not succeeded in resolving issues of inequity and injustice such as inadequate and unequal access to health, housing, food, and education, or issues of interpersonal violence, mental health, and substance abuse. mcknight (1995) calls for a commitment “to reallocation of power to the people we serve so that we will no longer need to serve” (p. 100). solidarity strategies for mobilizing across identity groups against global capitalist inequities offer some potential for moving beyond “the binaries that structure liberatory struggle [as] ‘us versus them’ and ‘liberation’ versus ‘oppression’ to a multi-centered discourse with differential access to power” (lather, 1991, p. 25). as mohanty (2003) advocates, we must “move away from the ‘add and stir’ and the relativist ‘separate but equal’ (or different) perspective to the co-implication/solidarity one. the solidarity perspective requires understanding historical and experiential specificities and differences” (p. 242). mohanty promotes a feminist solidarity which foregrounds the intersection of gender with colonial repression and white dominance. may (2009) notes “the damage done by identity politics, and [that] it no longer holds the imagination of many… as early as the misnamed ‘anti-globalization’ movement, really an anti-neoliberalism movement, solidarity began to return to the scene in place of ghettoized identities” (p. 2). rancière (1999, as cited in may, 2009) presents an alternate construction of equality to support a solidarity approach to social change: “for liberals, equality is what must be granted and/or preserved by state institutions with regard to citizens. for rancière, equality is what is presupposed by those who act” (p. 9). this alternative provides a “bottom up” view of equality allowing “people [to] act collectively out of the presupposition of their equality, both to one another and to those in [power] that are said to be superior … equality, then, cuts against individualism and toward solidarity” (may, p. 9). mclaren (2000) sees the anti-capitalist struggle as a site of common ground from which to organize “revolutionary praxis and social transformation productively [as in this way] agency is neither limited to nor does it exclude agential spaces of ethnic struggle” (p. 155). this is liberating as it opens up possible ways of being with increased accountability and engagement in everyday life to and with one another as a viable and vital alternative to the current dominant, individualistic culture of self-interest. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 263 socially just praxis praxis is a concept that offers constructive possibilities for a solidarity-focused, decolonizing practice that is dynamic and responsive and mobilized through an ethic of social justice. white (2007) defines praxis as: the integration of knowledge and action (theory and practice … specifically, theory and practice are integrated and one does not precede nor hold greater value than the other (carr 1987). praxis is creative, “other-seeking” and dialogic (smith 1999). it is the place where words and actions, discourses and experience merge… praxis is expressed in particular contexts and thus can never be proceduralized or specified in advance. (p. 226) considering all the elements of this definition, praxis can be viewed as a potentially constructive model for anti-capitalist, solidarity work toward social justice. transformative or liberatory models of praxis strive to engage community members in shifting from an individualized view of an issue or problem to one that is more collective and politicized (de finney, 2007; lang, 2005; reyes cruz & sonn, 2011; reynolds, 2010; skott-mhyre, 2005; wade, 1995; white, 2007). a socially just model of cyc praxis will require an approach that integrates theorization and practice rooted in working and thinking collaboratively with diverse community members (de finney, dean et al., 2011). conscious awareness and a commitment to socially just praxis offer a site of possibility for transforming practice and supporting change at broader levels by connecting those who are currently pathologized on an individual basis to collective endeavours, and supporting meaningful engagement in regard to issues of concern to them. for white practitioners, our everyday interpersonal interactions and habituated responses warrant critical attention. as bordo (2008) writes, “white people, even those who theorize with sophistication about ‘cultural difference’ and the perils of ethnocentrism, are often clueless when it comes to the practical, concrete ways race matters” (p. 410). it is critical that “white settler societies transcend their bloody beginnings and contemporary inequalities by remembering and confronting the racial hierarchies that structure our lives” (razack, 2002, p. 5). here is a further invitation to interrogate instances of (white, male, class, or heterosexual) privilege in our own lives and practice. it can be a painful process requiring courage and compassion for oneself in order to begin the deep and honest examination of the ways in which privilege is reified through how we speak, move, take up space, and the assumptions that underpin our judgements. derrida’s (as cited in caputo, 1997) thinking could be useful with regard to this dynamic and dilemma. like hospitality and justice, the importance and possibility of being conscious of and disrupting privilege, is “sustained by its impossibility” (p. 111). this edge or tension requires us to always be vigilant in our reflexivity and endeavours to map out inequities and our complicity, and to make a commitment to integrate an ethic of social justice in an engaged and vital model of praxis. practitioners must be willing to cultivate an engaged practice of reflexivity: seeing oneself and other, oneself in relation to the other, interrogating assumptions, and remaining open to possibilities. as derrida says “the condition of the relation to the other” is that we can never international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 264 know the other (as cited in caputo, 1997, p. 14). this speaks to the importance of a fastidious practice of reflexivity in relation to interactions with others. as newbury (2010b) states, “selfreflection is at the heart of responsible and ethical practice” (p. 32), and for socially just praxis it is the tool that can help us to uncover, track, and resist hegemonic narratives and practices with intention. post-structural ideas offer some promising possibilities for cyc practice. skott-myhre (2005) envisions a transformation in practice in which “the metaphors of containing/controlling pathology and healing damage give way to an exploration of the potentials of flow and movement… recuperation and recovery of the afflicted ‘self’ would be abandoned in the discovery of multiple identities with infinite alterneity” (p. 48). this resonates with the potential for moving beyond dualistic constructions such as victim/perpetrator, good/bad, and mentally ill/ healthy. analyzing practices at the micro level can be helpful in terms of how to focus our reflections and to further map the effects of coloniality and privilege in professional helping roles. for example, it is also important for practitioners to be conscious of their power in the role of helper (de montigny, 1995), to rename unconventional ways of being as resistance in contrast to “disorders” (wade, 1995), and to draw out strengths in the stories of those with whom they work (anderson, 2004). madsen (2007) invites practitioners to take up the stance of “appreciative allies … a relational stance characterized by respect, connection, curiosity, and hope [and] a way of being that we actively attempt to bring forward in our interactions [with others]” (p. 22). in adopting an ethic of justice and a commitment to a praxis of social justice, it is important to ground post-structural ideas of difference and possibility in an analysis of the coloniality of power which acknowledges the structural and material realities that exist in today’s society under a dominant western ontology. conclusion the field of cyc exists within a broader context of professional helping embedded in a western world view founded in the privileging of capitalism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and whiteness. solidarity in the form of coalitions organized around anti-capitalist resistance, decolonizing praxis, and an ethic of social justice all demand that we continue to map out the ways in which this dominant western ontology underpins the policies and practices of cyc. disrupting hegemonic discourses with indigenous and minoritized ontologies (including feminist, queer, majority world, and non-human) is not just of benefit to indigenous peoples but holds the potential for a productive, liberatory, cultural transformation that would also benefit those who are located outside of the minority represented as the normative subject (affluent, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, male). a commitment to social justice and to a decolonizing praxis necessitates a further commitment to engage in solidarity, to endeavour to disrupt and open to new possibilities the structures and institutions that currently sustain practices of inequity and privilege, and to explore alternative ways of knowing, doing, and being. as well as engaging in collective strategies for change, in the meantime each of us can engage critically with ourselves and the world around us, to interrogate our ways of knowing, being, and doing through critical reflection in order to begin to uncover, track, and resist taken-for-granted values and norms and to cultivate a praxis of social justice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 265 toward unknown (forgotten or ignored) ways of knowing, doing, and being ultimately, this cartography of the dominant hegemonic practices and beliefs embedded in cyc represents but one layer of an overall commitment to justice and search for possibilities for sustainable living that embrace and nurture the complexities and interactions of all life forms. i am inspired to think beyond the bounds of this paper to truly revolutionary social change, which does not hold as an end goal human equality but rather harmonious cohabitation across species (braidotti, 2006; haraway, 2008). opening up to the legitimacy and wisdom of indigenous (as well as other minoritized, queer, and feminized) knowledge that has been historically pushed to the margins offers further possibilities for us to fully engage with the nonhuman world in negotiating more sustainable co-existence for all beings. the emerging post-humanist literature offers possibilities for further deconstructing our western ontology in terms of transgressing normative constructions that have sustained an understanding of human as superior to all others. this is expressed in braidotti’s (2006) statement that “a sustainable ethic for a non-unitary subject proposes an enlarged sense of interconnection between self and others, including non-human or ‘earth’ others, but removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism” (p. 28). haraway (2008) further illustrates this ethic with her example that “ducks deserve our recognition of their nonhuman culture, subjectivities, histories, and material lives” (p. 162). it is daunting yet exciting to consider the possibilities for a transformed world and way of being if we could take up rancière’s idea that “equality is what is presupposed by those who act” (as cited in may, 2009, p. 9) to open up dynamic, interdependent, and creative networks for communication, support, and sustainable living that respect difference and embrace complexity not just across the human spectrum but across species. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 266 references anderson, k. 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(1995). democracy against capitalism: renewing historical materialism. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. comparing the experiences and withdrawal considerations of treatment and regular foster care parents: the canadian perspective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 93 comparing the experiences and withdrawal considerations of treatment and regular foster care parents: the canadian perspective jessica smith, susan rodger, jason brown, laurel pickel, wendy den dunnen, and alan leschied abstract: this study investigated differences in the experiences of canadian foster parents providing regular and treatment foster care and their consideration to withdraw from their position. survey responses from 852 foster parents were analyzed subsequent to separating the participants into two groups based on the primary type of care they provided (regular n = 454; treatment n = 398). results revealed that treatment foster care parents considered withdrawing at a higher rate compared to regular foster care parents. subsequent analysis revealed numerous differences between the two groups regarding foster parents’ experiences in fostering and reasons to withdraw. the results are discussed in the context of increasing concern for a declining number of foster parents with the coincidental increase in the number of children who enter foster care with higher rates of trauma and mental health disorders requiring a treatment response. keywords: foster parents, retention, treatment foster care, regular foster care, child welfare acknowledgement: this study was made possible through funding provided by the canadian child welfare league as part of their every child matters program and the social science and humanities research council. alan leschied, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor in the faculty of education, university of western ontario, 1137 western road, london, ontario, canada, n6g 1g7. telephone: (519) 661-2111, extension 88628. e-mail: leschied@uwo.ca mailto:leschied@uwo.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 94 jessica smith is a graduate of the master’s program in counselling psychology at the university of western ontario. susan rodger, ph.d. is an associate professor in the faculty of education at the university of western ontario and served as a co-investigator in the larger study on foster care in canada. jason brown, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of western ontario and served as a co-investigator in the larger study on foster care in canada. laurel pickle is a graduate of the master’s program in counselling psychology at the university of western ontario and served as a research associate in the larger study on foster care in canada. wendy den dunnen is a doctoral candidate in psychology at the university of ottawa and served as a research associate in the larger study on foster care in canada. alan leschied, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of western ontario and was the principal investigator in the larger study on foster care in canada. the larger study on retention and recruitment of foster care in canada was funded through the child welfare league of canada. jessica smith was funded through the social sciences and humanities research council during the period she worked on this study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 95 merely increasing the number of homes won’t solve the capacity problem: the state needs enough of the right mix of placements. children have different needs; placements have different strengths. if a placement isn’t equipped to meet the needs of a particular child, it is far more likely that the placement will experience problems and request that the child be moved. (roper, 2008, p. 1) the need for foster parents, particularly for children and youth with serious mental health disorders, continues to increase; however, the availability of foster homes continues to decrease. this is especially true for those foster parents with special training in particular. this incongruence has led to considerable research in the area of foster parents’ experiences that relate to retention and recruitment. the motivations of foster parents, their experiences, and challenges are increasingly relevant in aiding organizations, such as child welfare agencies, that are charged with the recruitment of people to care for children who present with varying degrees of trauma as a result of living in conditions that have compromised their safety. motivation and retention of foster parents daniel (2011) provides the most recent study to report that the motivation to foster is wide-ranging but essentially includes: fulfilling a personal need to be needed; a love of children, particularly those who are vulnerable due to their experience living with neglect or violence; joy in watching children grow and helping them in life; an awareness of the shortage of foster homes; and, similar to most all of the previous research on foster parent motivation, daniel cites the overwhelming desire of foster parents to contribute to society. foster parents are often assumed to possess these qualities and characteristics prior to making an application and attending for pre-service foster parent training. with such lofty ambitions to care for vulnerable children/youth and sufficient motivation, what then precipitates a foster parent to withdraw their services? denby, rindfleisch, and bean (1999) developed a scale that examined foster parent retention in the context of satisfaction linked to the challenges of the work, a feeling of competency to handle the needs of the children in their care, and having no regrets about their investment in their foster child. factors influencing the intent to continue to foster highlighted their overall satisfaction, relationship with the sponsoring agency and specific workers, and the nature of being part of the decision-making in regard to the care of their foster child as of particular relevance in assessing foster parent satisfaction. rodger, cummings, and leschied (2006) examined foster parents from southwestern ontario regarding their motivation, satisfaction, challenges, and intent to continue fostering. noteworthy from the rodger et al. study, is the fact that almost twothirds of the foster parents in their sample reported considering withdrawing from their fostering commitment. based on the scale developed by denby and colleagues (1999), five factors emerged from this data. these included the predictors of satisfaction and the intent to continue fostering related to the nature of the relationship with the child’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 96 worker, interacting with the foster child’s primary family, seeing children returned to a bad situation, and losing children they were fond of. while the denby et al. (1999) and rodgers et al. (2006) studies drew on samples of current foster parents regarding why they would consider quitting, rhodes, orme, and buehler (2001) examined differences between three groups of foster parents that included former foster parents. while differences were found between all groups, foster parents who were currently invested in their fostering at the time of the study and who intended to leave reported that their reasons for leaving tended to reflect: health problems; the need to return to full-time work; receiving inadequate financial reimbursement; lacking day/respite care; experiencing problems with the child’s birth parents; anticipating the difficulty in seeing a foster child leave their home; and not having enough say in the child’s future planning. some of the items of concern noted by rhodes et al. pointed to a shift in the concerns of foster parents. first, with dual income families becoming an increasing economic necessity, foster families more commonly reported financial reimbursement as the reason for considering leaving than in past research. second was the reported need for additional training after licensure; foster parents reported feeling increasingly unprepared to effectively respond to the level and nature of the needs of children/youth when compared to foster parents who planned to continue. increasingly complex issues with the children in care. contributing to foster parent considerations for leaving are the changes in the children themselves who are entering the fostering system. trocme et al. (2010), in their most recent summary of the maltreatment data in canada, reported on the increase in the 2008 report regarding children experiencing mental health and behavioural challenges relative to their prior reports. harman, childs, and kelleher (2000) reported in the united states that children in foster care were three to 10 times more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis than children not in foster care. kools and kennedy (2003) found considerable evidence to support the belief regarding increasing challenges in the physical and mental health status of children in foster care. these increasing needs reflected physical health concerns due to neglect and maltreatment, along with children not receiving proper mental health care once entering the foster care system (kools & kennedy, 2003). hebert and macdonald (2009) suggested the same issues arose with canadian foster children, complicated further by the effects of frequent transitioning between homes, a general lack of available medical information, misplaced records, and an absence of available social and educational services. additionally, farris-manning and zandstra (2003) found that children in care display more behavioural problems with higher rates of special needs than in the past. this is relevant since a common challenge and reason for considering leaving fostering is the lack of in-service training. specific areas where training is lacking pertains specifically to fostering adolescents, responding to the needs of sexually abused children, addressing the needs of children from different cultures (rhodes et al., 2001), as well as the specific needs of children with behavioural difficulties (denby et al., 1999). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 97 types of foster care of particular interest to the current study is the type of care commonly referred to as treatment, specialized, or therapeutic foster care. for purposes of simplicity, these various types of care are referred to as treatment foster care, unless otherwise specified by the authors in the reviewed literature. treatment foster care involves caring for children who present with needs that are, by virtue of their nature or degree, unique, and require services beyond usual care. parents are expected to help provide treatment for the children and receive additional training as a result (wells & d’angelo, 1994). children can have physical, medical, and mental health issues requiring special care from these foster parents. by having these types of programs, children can obtain the treatment they need while remaining within a family home environment (reddy & pfeiffer, 1997). children and youth with serious mental health disorders are appearing in greater numbers in the child welfare system, an escalation first documented by clausen, landsverk, ganger, chadwick, and litrowalk (1998) who noted an estimated two and a half times the rate of behavioural and emotional problems for children in foster care relative to a community-based sample of similar-aged children. sullivan and van zyl’s (2008) refinement of this recognition noted that the rate of mental health disorder occurs as a function of age, with children/youth from ages 5 through 12 years showing the highest percentage of identified emotional need. there are numerous reasons why this rate is as high as it is within the child welfare system. the reduced emphasis on residential treatment in the child and youth mental health system has meant that more children with moderate and higher rates of mental health disorders remain in the community, either within their families of origin or in alternate family arrangements such as foster care (sunseri, 2008). there is also the move towards more integration within the systems of care with other community services, such as between child welfare and child and youth mental health (horwath & morrison, 2007; bai, wells, & hillemeier, 2009). this fact has in turn shifted the roles of foster care providers in not only being viewed as part of the front line mental health service delivery system, but also mandated them as moving from what villagrana (2010) characterizes as a shift from “caregiver to gatekeeper” of the broader mental health system. examining the fit between child need and foster care provider. cox, orme, and rhodes (2003) brought a refinement in examining the “fit” between the needs of children and the backgrounds of foster parents in identifying the different factors influencing the willingness of certain foster parents to care for difficult children. they concluded that the issues in relation to the nature and complexity of the needs of the children in care should be considered when targeting the recruitment of foster parents. however, a frequently overlooked consideration in foster care recruitment and retention research and practice relates to the inclusion of an appreciation of the experiences of foster parents who provide particular types of homes such as regular, kinship, treatment, specialized, therapeutic, and emergency care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 98 providing treatment foster care presents unique challenges in the relationships of foster parents with caseworkers, biological parents, and the children. since these specialized foster parents are providing treatment as well as general care, other practitioners and / or community service agencies may be unsure of the nature of their relationship with these specially trained parents (wells & d’angelo, 1994). the demands on treatment foster parents reflect the nature and complexity of the needs of the children they are asked to care for. dorsey and colleagues (2012) recently documented the high rates of trauma exposure in children and youth who reside within treatment foster care placements, concluding that much of the emotional and behavioural difficulties with which these young people present is an extension of such early trauma. while all foster parents extend themselves to care for children who have experienced some form of maltreatment within a structured and nurturing family environment, treatment foster parents will also be responsible for the provision of and support for intensive mental health services. specialized foster parents are also more likely to report they are receiving inadequate support. some parents report resentment toward caseworkers who appear not as committed to the care of the child as they are. problems also arise when caseworkers are not supportive, do not provide information or resources to assist the parents, and do not provide respite care or relevant training and consultation (chipungu & bent-goodly, 2004). the present study the increased demand for fostering in combination with an increasing appreciation for the escalating behavioural and mental health concerns of children who enter foster care adds to the crisis of providing high quality services for these vulnerable children. this descriptive field study examined the experiences of foster parents who selfidentified as providing primarily either treatment foster care or regular foster care across canada as they relate to retention and recruitment. the formal distinction of a treatment versus regular foster caregiver will vary across each province or territory, as this identification will formally reflect policies that relate to specific child welfare jurisdictions. depending on the self-identification of the foster caregiver for this characterization provides the one consistent basis of distinguishing those foster parents who have been designated within their own agency, province or territory as a treatment caregiver. method participants this research was part of a larger descriptive field study of canadian foster parents completed by our research team in collaboration with the child welfare league of canada (cwlc). this collaboration consisted of our research team working with cwlc researchers who approved the overall framework of reaching out to foster parents throughout canada with the questionnaire that was designed by the researchers. data international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 99 collection for this and the larger study was part of the cwlc initiative that has been functioning under the program title every child matters, which, as stated on the cwlc website has been “a three year project dedicated to improving foster parent recruitment, retention and training practices by collecting and disseminating information, tools and best practices from around canada” (child welfare league of canada, 2014). recruitment procedure. every provincial and territorial foster parent association was contacted through cwlc advising them of the study. in turn, each of the provincial bodies contacted each child welfare agency regarding the study. potential participants were invited to respond to a questionnaire, either a paper copy or electronically, regarding their fostering experience. hence, recruitment of the foster parents in maximizing the response rate was facilitated through the cwlc by capitalizing on their links with provincial and territorial foster care associations. in addition, the cwlc’s website contained an information page and link to the survey for consenting participants to access. all submissions by the participants were anonymous. contact with the provinces and territories generated a total of 941 completed surveys that were returned to the research team. since there are no complete centralized provincial or territorial data sources regarding the actual number of foster parents within each jurisdiction, it is not possible to estimate the actual percentage rate of return that the sample size represents. as with other large-scale foster parent studies, the limitation of the current study reflects an absence of appreciation regarding the actual total number of foster parents who could potentially have been involved in the study. canada’s fostering system is comprised of ten provincial and three territorial jurisdictions that separately regulate foster care. within each provincial and territorial jurisdiction, regional services such as child welfare agencies are charged with recruiting and supervising the foster parents for their own area. in the end, there is no formal mechanism to aggregate the total number of foster care providers across canada. participants were separated into two groups based on the inclusion criteria of selfidentifying as providing primarily regular foster care (rfc) or treatment foster care (tfc). for inclusion in the rfc group, participants must have indicated in their responses that they provided one of the following types of care: (a) regular foster care only, or (b) regular foster care and another type of care (including emergency, kinship, relief care, etc., and excluding special or treatment foster care). inclusion in the tfc group required participants to have indicated that they provided one of the following types of care: (a) treatment foster care only, (b) special foster care only, (c) treatment foster care and any other type of care (including regular foster care), or (d) special foster care and any other type of care (including regular foster care). the total number of participants who identified as meeting the inclusion criteria, as noted above, was 852 (89% of the original sample). of these participants, 454 were included in the rfc group (53%) and 398 were included in the tfc group (47%). survey instrument. the survey instrument used in this study was developed by our research team based on the current literature regarding the retention and recruitment literature related to fostering and the common experiences and challenges faced by foster international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 100 parents. it was drawn largely from questionnaires used in previous research by denby et al., (1999) and rodger et al. (2006) with those items that had previously shown the ability to characterize the relevant issues in regard to recruitment and retention. the survey asked a variety of questions related to information on foster parents and their experiences. the first section asked participants about their foster home and history of foster care, including the type of care provided, details regarding which children are approved to be in their home (age/gender), and details regarding the children they have fostered (number of children, age/sex, length of stay). the second section asked for demographic information of the foster parent(s), including sex, age, race, marital status, and highest education level achieved. the third section asked questions related to the foster parent(s)’ biological family, including how many biological/adopted children are in the home, the age range of their children, and source of income. the survey also asked questions regarding the motivation to become a foster parent (4-point likert scale ranging from “not at all” to “a great deal”), and if the foster parent had considered withdrawing from fostering at any time (yes or no) and the reasons for this consideration (4-point likert scale ranging from “not at all” to “a great deal”). the last section involved questions related to the parents’ experiences of fostering, with responses on a 7-point likert scale from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”. demographics. the demographic information reflected the primary parent within the family who completed the survey. for both regular foster care (rfc) and treatment foster care (tfc) parents, 90% of the sample was female. the average age of tfc parents was higher (m = 58.30, sd = 10.51) than rfc parents (m = 52.13, sd = 9.61; t (836) = -5.53, p < .001). no racial differences were found between groups, with 75% of rfc participants and 80% of tfc participants identifying as euro-canadian (caucasian). just over one-third of the sample in both groups (38% rfc, 34% tfc) reported being married. a significant difference was found pertaining to marital status, χ2 (6, n = 847) = 17.53, p < .01. post-hoc standardized residuals revealed that tfc parents reported being single less frequently than would be expected (std. residual = -2.10). with respect to education, over half (57%) of the rfc parents and over two-thirds (68%) of the tfc parents reported college/university as their highest level of education. the majority of families reported at least one parent working, if not both, and the foster parts in each group reported similar employment experience. tfc parents were more likely to report that fostering was their sole source of income along with retirement income (χ2 = 8.11, p < .01). results foster parents’ home and family differences with respect to home and family reflected that tfc parents had been fostering for longer (t (778) = -8.74, p < .001), fostered more children overall (t (548) = -5.34, p < .001), were more likely to have fostered more children at one time (t (846) = -4.85, p < .001), and fostered children for longer periods of time (t (774) = -6.83, p < international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 101 .001) than those providing regular care. tfc parents also had more of their own biological children residing in the home (t (847) = -2.02, p < .001). chi-square analyses were used to analyze additional differences between the two groups with regard to their foster home composition and experiences. differences were found regarding the age of children primarily cared for by foster parents, (χ2 (4, n = 846) = 13.66, p < .01) with more tfc parents caring for children aged 13 and above (std. residual = 2.03). tfc parents also reported fostering, to a greater extent, children with special needs (χ2 (1, n = 846) = 88.68, p < .001) and children considered medically fragile compared to rfc parents, χ2 (1, n = 619) = 52.15, p < .001. standardized residuals were all greater than +/-1.96. with regard to the ages of children placed in care, while both groups of parents cared for infants, toddlers, young children, and latency aged children, tfc parents reported fostering adolescents, χ2 (1, n = 657) = 25.25, p < .001, and young adults, χ2 (1, n = 505) = 10.21, p < .001, to a greater extent. tfc parents also fostered more infants when compared to rfc parents (t (198) = -2.33, p < .05). while most children entering foster care have special needs or have experienced abuse, there are also other ways in which foster children are unique. tfc parents reported fostering more children with physical (χ2 (1, n = 415) = 7.74, p < .01) and behavioural (χ2 (1, n = 647) = 4.89, p < .05) special needs. motivations to foster foster parents were asked to what extent certain conditions contributed to their decision to become foster parents. the conditions with the highest rating reflected that foster parents “wanted to take in children who needed loving parents” and “wanted to save children from further harm”. tfc parents were more likely to endorse that they “wanted to increase household income” than rfc parents (t (761) = -2.82, p < .001). rfc parents “wanted to adopt, but were unable to do so” more than tfc parents, (t (735) = 3.08, p < .001), however this factor was amongst the least endorsed overall. the factor that was endorsed the least for both groups was “wanting to give care as a religious obligation”. withdrawal considerations foster parents were asked if they had considered withdrawing from fostering at any one time. a chi-square test for independence was used to analyze differences in response to this question. a significant difference was found between the groups, (χ2 (1, n = 843) = 15.30, p < .001). post-hoc analyses revealed standardized residuals greater than +/1.96 in two cells. rfc parents reported they had not considered withdrawing more than expected (std. residual = 2.20), and tfc parents reported withdrawing less than expected (std. residual = -2.35). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 102 of those foster parents who had considered withdrawing from their role, the extent to which different situations influenced their decision was considered. responses ranged from 0 (not at all) to 3 (a great deal). of the potential situations influencing withdrawal, the highest-rated reason by the rfc parents was “seeing children sent back to a bad situation” (m = 1.38, sd = 1.25). this was also rated high for the tfc parents (m = 1.42, sd = 1.21), however the highest-rated reason for the tfc parents was “agency red tape” (m = 1.55, sd = 1.22). tfc parents also endorsed this reason significantly more than rfc parents, (t (518) = -1.99, p < .05). other differences included “foster care boarding rates insufficient” (t (518) = -2.92, p < .001), “significant personal loss of a family member(s)” (t (434) = -2.86, p < .001) and “lack of support services such as respite care” (t (513), = -2.37 p < .001), which tfc parents endorsed as reasons for considering withdrawal more than rfc parents. foster parents also had the opportunity to list other reasons for their consideration to withdraw and these reasons seemed to contribute the most for those parents who listed them (m = 1.86 rfc, m = 1.92 tfc). some reasons listed included age, retirement, burnout/fatigue, issues with the agency, and a lack of support or understanding from workers and agency. foster parent experiences foster parents were asked to rate, on a scale from completely disagree (1) to completely agree (7), various experiences they have had while fostering. items were compiled into five categories based on previous research (rodger et al., 2006) with the following results: perceptions of the agency/workers. the experience both groups of parents agreed with the most was not hesitating to call their agency or worker when they had concerns; however rfc parents agreed with this more than tfc parents, (t (716) = 2.17, p < .05). parents providing rfc also agreed more with the statement “agency workers share fully about the background and problems of children whom they ask my family to accept”, (t (811) = 2.22, p < .05). challenging aspects of fostering. numerous differences were found between the groups within the category related to the challenges of fostering. tfc parents identified that boarding rates were insufficient (t (817) = -2.87, p < .001), and that reimbursements for clothing, spending, etc., were insufficient as well (t (810) = -2.39, p < .05) compared to rfc parents. tfc parents also reported more challenges with agency red tape interfering with their ability to foster (t (813) = -2.13, p < .05). parents providing rfc had more challenges with training requirements being met (m = 5.47, sd = 1.81) than tfc parents (m = 5.98, sd = 1.48), t (818) = -4.42, p < .001. additionally, rfc parents did not feel as respected when their family experienced a significant personal loss as tfc parents (t (732) = -2.11, p < .05). confidence, satisfaction, and training. both groups agreed with all of the statements in this category reported in the need for more training and overall levels of satisfaction. no significant differences were found between the groups with regard to this category. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 103 community and the child welfare system. more parents disagreed with these statements than any other category, as the lowest mean was 3.66. overall, few differences were found between the groups. more rfc parents agreed that the child welfare systems responded appropriately to the needs of children throughout their lifespan than did tfc parents (t (779) = 4.59, p < .001). parents providing rfc were also more satisfied with the child welfare system’s ability to assess risk of children in a way that does not penalize biological parents/families for circumstances beyond their control, such as poverty (t (741) = 2.19, p < .05). overall. categorical differences existed reflecting the challenging aspects of foster care (t (769) = -3.70, p < .001) and perceptions of the foster care system and community (t (816) = 2.05, p < .05). the category with the highest mean for both groups reflected confidence and satisfaction (m = 6.31 rfc, m = 6.26 tfc) with no differences, indicating that parents in both groups feel equally confident and satisfied. when combining all means per group, there was no significant difference found, indicating that holistically, parents providing either type of care have similar experiences. however, individual differences exist and were revealed when analyzing the responses separately as described above. summary tfc parents provided foster care for more years, to more children overall and at one time, and for longer periods of time. they also had more children leave their home in the past year. in addition, tfc parents had fostered, to a greater degree, children from other cultures, older children, those with special needs, especially medical and behavioural special needs, and children who had experienced all types of abuse. some differences existed in terms of the motivation to become a foster parent, with tfc parents identifying financial gain as a motivating factor more than rfc parents. although tfc parents endorsed, as a strong motivating factor, wanting to save children from further harm, rfc parents also identified this factor to a greater extent, as well as fostering as an adoption alternative. in addition to these differences, tfc parents considered withdrawing their services more than expected when compared to rfc parents. the reasons foster parents identified for considering withdrawal differed as well, with tfc parents identifying insufficient rates, issues with agency red tape, and a lack of support from workers to a greater degree. with regard to the foster parenting experience, overall differences were found with regard to challenging aspects of foster care and community/agency perceptions, with tfc parents facing more challenges and having more negative perceptions of the community and agency’s role in adequately caring for children. discussion eight hundred and fifty-two canadian foster parents completed a questionnaire related to demographic characteristics, aspects of and experiences with fostering, consideration of withdrawal from their role, and the reasons prompting withdrawal. data were analyzed in an effort to examine potential differences in the views of foster parents international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 104 who provide treatment-oriented care relative to non-treatment, regular foster care parents. key findings included tfc parents having more experience as foster parents, fostering more children at one time, and fostering children for longer periods of time than the rfc parents. these tfc parents also fostered children who were older and were more inclined to be fostering children with physical and behavioural challenges. while the initial motivations to foster were similar, differences were found between the groups in relation to their consideration of withdrawing from their position. tfc parents endorsed consideration to withdraw to a greater degree. reasons more common among tfc parents related to a lack of sufficient funds, agency red tape, and lack of support from workers. relevance to previous research motivations to foster. previous research has shown that foster parents’ motivation to foster children is related to internal variables, most prominently the love of children and altruistic values to help those in need (daniel, 2011; denby et al., 1999; macgregor, rodger, cummings, & leschied, 2006). consistent with previous research, participants in this study rated “wanted to take in children who needed loving parents” and “to save children from further harm” as characterizing the most influential reasons to foster. of importance, in most cases becoming a treatment foster parent requires first providing regular foster care for a considerable length of time. thus, motivations to foster initially relate to becoming a regular foster parent. a difference was found with the current sample of tfc parents endorsing monetary gain as an external motivating factor, although it was rated lower than internal variables, which is consistent with previous research (daniel, 2011; kirton, 2001). more tfc compared to rfc parents had a gross income of under $20,000. additionally, more tfc parents indicated fostering as their sole source of income. while initially a foster parent does not provide treatment care, their lower income could be a motivating factor to begin fostering and later transition into providing treatment care, as the monetary gain is higher. experiences fostering. due to the years of experience required to become a treatment foster parent, as expected, participants in the tfc group had fostered for more years and provided care to more children. as predicted, due to the nature of the work, tfc parents fostered more children with special needs and who had experienced multiple forms of abuse. as previous research outlined, more children are entering care who have experienced a combination of neglect and abuse with multiple special mental health and behavioural needs (kools & kennedy, 2003; farris-manning & zandstra, 2003). clearly, there is a higher demand for parents providing tfc. as would be expected given the mandate of tfc, it is these parents who are fostering the more challenging children. withdrawal considerations. tfc parents endorsed the consideration to withdraw from the foster parent role more frequently when compared to rfc parents. although no past research has examined the differences between these two types of care, it is apparent that foster parents in general consider withdrawing from service at a very high rate. denby and colleagues (1999) found that variables predictive of the intent to continue fostering included overall satisfaction and the readiness to call a social worker in times of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 105 crisis. the current research found that tfc parents hesitated more when calling their worker for support, which according to denby et al., would account partly for their withdrawal consideration. rodger and colleagues (2006) found challenging aspects of care to be predictive of parents’ withdrawal considerations. in the current study, tfc parents encountered more challenges than rfc parents, which would be predicative of their higher rates of consideration to withdraw. although in the current study there were no differences in training experiences between the two groups, rfc parents endorsed the statement “my training requirements were met” less than the tfc parents. this could reflect the current increase in children with special needs being placed in rfc since the capacity within the tfc homes is already overextended and, as a result, children with exceptional needs are being placed in rfc as well. a troubling finding in the current study is that tfc parents report not being fully informed about the children being placed in their care. wells and d’angelo (1994) found this to be prominent within their sample of specialized foster parents as well. by leaving out pertinent information, foster parents not only may be unable to provide the most effective care, but necessary trust between worker and parent may also be compromised. macgregor and colleagues (2006) report that foster parents value this trust and maintaining it is reflected in higher rates of retention. there were additional concerns expressed by tfc parents that are linked to retention. tfc parents reported a lack of support services from agencies that included respite care and insufficient financial reimbursement and boarding rates. rhodes et al. (2001) found receiving inadequate financial reimbursement was linked to a withdrawal of service. kirton (2001) also reported that parents providing care for more challenging children tended to view their financial compensation as low compared to when they fostered less compromised children. this finding is consistent with those reported by rhodes and colleagues (2001) that point to a shift in the motivation to provide foster care that reflects the increasing demand for dual family incomes. although there were no differences between the groups with regard to personal satisfaction, there were differences in reported satisfaction with the community and child welfare systems. tfc parents were less satisfied and did not agree that the child welfare system responded appropriately to children’s needs to the same degree as parents providing regular care. denby and colleagues (1999) reported overall satisfaction to be predictive of the intent to continue fostering. while both groups in the current study rated levels of personal satisfaction and competence equally, tfc parents did have more challenges and dissatisfaction with the overall foster care system. the current study revealed differences between the groups with regard to one factor, the challenging aspects of care, which was the specific factor rodger et al. (2006) found to be most predictive of the consideration to withdraw. the additional factor relating to satisfaction with the community and child welfare system was added to the survey in the current study, which was also an area of discontent for the tfc parents. since the tfc parents scored lower on more factors of satisfaction, including the factor predictive of considering withdrawal, it is reasonable to assume that this could have contributed to the increase in withdrawal considerations for this group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 106 despite the struggles, challenges, issues, and dissatisfactions, foster parents continue to provide care. when asked what motivated them to continue, parents responded that their love of the children was paramount. this finding echoed those of kirton (2001) who noted that despite dissatisfaction with the financial aspects of fostering, parents reported it would not impact their ultimate decision to accept or refuse a placement, and that gaining additional funds would only assist them in providing more effective care. the intrinsic value of fostering due to a love of children, along with other altruistic factors, appears to outweigh the potential financial burden or discontent. implications for child welfare agencies this study investigated foster parents’ motivations, satisfaction, and reasons to consider withdrawing from their role. this information is essential for child welfare agencies to better understand foster parents and the care that they provide to children. the primary motivations to foster have remained stable over time and include the intrinsic motivators reflected in the love for children and wanting to care for those in need (rodger et al., 2006; denby et al., 1999; daniel, 2001; macgregor et al., 2006). what has shifted however, are the reasons for foster parents to consider a withdrawal of their services. retention. it will come as no surprise that those foster parents who are less satisfied in their role will consider withdrawing their services, and child welfare agencies need to be aware of those factors that impact satisfaction and how they can be addressed in order to improve the fostering experience. while both regular and treatment foster parents face more challenges and consider withdrawing from service to a greater degree than in the past, this is even truer for those parents providing treatment foster care. this reflects the increasing number of children presenting with more challenging behavioural and special needs (kools & kennedy, 2003; farris-manning & zandstra, 2003), a lack of respite care, a lack of accurate and complete information being provided about the children being placed in care, challenges in the relationships between parents and agency workers, and underfunding for the services being provided by tfc parents. while these parents do receive higher rates of pay, it would appear that it remains insufficient to provide adequate care. training. considerations for training improvements are common in the foster parent literature. however, when separating the parents by type of care in the current study, a difference in training experiences was revealed. targeting the training strategies to those in need is crucial to improving the quality of care for children. parents providing regular foster care reported their training requirements were met less often compared to the treatment parents. although treatment foster care parents receive ongoing training due to the intensity of care they provide, child welfare agencies should not be overlooking the training needs of parents providing regular care. the positive impact of additional training in regard to retention has been evident for some time, as outlined by price and his colleagues (2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 93–110 107 considerations for future research while the current study is among the first to separate foster parents into distinct groups for analyses, the sample was restricted to current foster parents who have considered withdrawing from their role and does not include those who actually did leave. future research should consider comparing a similar sample of former foster parents who have actually withdrawn. second, there are various types of foster care available across canada beyond the regular and treatment groups in the current study. future research should investigate differences in the experiences of foster parents providing other types of foster care, such as emergency and kinship care, which would further help specify the information child welfare agencies could use to improve recruitment, retention, and training strategies, as well as the care for children. third, there are numerous agencies and services that provide foster care for children in canada. it is currently not possible to estimate the actual number of parents involved in fostering in the country, nor estimate – even within the current sample of parents – what the actual population parameters are. for example, while the current sample of 852 parents is large relative to sample sizes in other studies, it is not possible to estimate what percentage of the total number of foster parents this sample represents and hence will be a limiting factor in generalizing the current findings. effort needs to be made to estimate the actual aggregate number of foster parents that currently provide service in canada. lastly, while there is an awareness of the demand for a variety of foster care providers to meet the range of needs that vulnerable children and youth require, there remains a considerable gap in our knowledge regarding the impact of fostering. turner and macdonald’s (2012) meta-analysis of treatment foster care programs concluded that there was evidence for tfc to be a promising program however, “the evidence is not robust and more research is needed to add to the limited number of studies in this area.” (p. 501). summary notwithstanding the aforementioned limitations, the current study suggests that foster parents’ experiences are not homogenous, and unique and important differences exist within the group of parents who provide different types of care. parents providing treatment foster care foster more children, foster more children with difficult behavioural and special needs, encounter more challenges, and consider withdrawing from their position to a greater extent than foster parents providing regular care. these findings indicate that it would be advantageous for child welfare agencies to relate to foster parents differentially relative to the type of care they provide. no longer can assumptions be made that parents providing different types of care have similar experiences. each group of foster parents has unique experiences that impact their intention to continue or withdraw from their fostering position. international journal of child, youth and family 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(1994). specialized foster care: voices from the field. social service review, 68(1), 127–144. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.01.005 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/604036 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs111202019472 factors that differentiate preadolescents’ perception-change of parental legitimacy laura c. edwards, herbert rodrigues, and kendra j. thomas abstract: whether preadolescents perceive their parents’ authority as legitimate or not depends, in part, on the concerns and issues that they have dealt with before and during their preadolescence. utilizing data from the first and second waves of the são paulo legal socialization study (splss), we conducted one-way manovas to analyze the role of procedural justice and the impact of victimization on preadolescents’ perceptions of parental legitimacy across domains. preadolescents were split into four distinct groups based on their perceptions of parental legitimacy and whether the perception shifted across the two waves of data. the study revealed a significant difference across groups in terms of procedural justice and on preadolescents’ reported victimization levels. the latter indicate that suffering some form of victimization may have resulted in delegitimizing parental authority. the findings broaden the literature on parenting practices in preadolescence and make salient an emerging field of victimization impacting parental legitimacy. keywords: parental legitimacy, victimization, social legalization, procedural justice, preadolescence, parental authority laura c. edwards edd (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor of psychology at taylor university. 236 w. reade ave., upland, in 46989. email: lredwards@taylor.edu herbert rodrigues phd is an adjunct professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at missouri state university, 901 s. national ave., springfield, mo 65897. he is also an associate researcher at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp). email: hrodrigues@missouristate.edu kendra j. thomas phd is an assistant professor of psychology at the university of indianapolis, 1400 e. hanna ave., indianapolis, in 46227. email: thomaskj@uindy.edu mailto:lredwards@taylor.edu mailto:hrodrigues@missouristate.edu mailto:thomaskj@uindy.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 24 why do teenagers observe or break curfews? why do some defer to or protest against authorities? some would argue that the answer is related to whether youth bestow “legitimacy” upon authorities, be they primary caretakers, institutions, or law enforcers (tyler, 2006). it has been suggested that recognition of legitimacy or its lack informs the choices that children, adolescents, and adults make to comply or not with norms and rules (rodrigues & gomes, 2017; thomas et al., 2018; trinkner et al., 2012). while there are documented and expected reasons for a decline in parental legitimacy (pl) in areas of personal domain such as choosing friends or what clothes to wear (darling et al., 2008), there are individual factors that need to be further investigated, such as the role victimization plays in pl (medina & rodrigues, 2019). the importance of understanding pl has captured increased scholarly attention by psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists (e.g., pennington, 2015; tyler & trinkner, 2017). for this inquiry, we adopted tom tyler’s definition of legitimacy used in several works (fagan & tyler, 2005; sunshine & tyler, 2003; tyler, 2003, 2006, 2011; tyler et al., 2014). he posited that legitimacy is the accepted right to rule, and the recognition of that power and of the duty to obey; legitimacy depends on a psychological property of an individual, one that leads to perceiving another’s authority as appropriate, proper, and just (tyler, 2006). in his seminal book, tyler (2006) explained that trust placed in the authority figure and perceived obligation to obey are two fundamental determinants in granting pl. the legitimacy of parental authority is a multifaceted construct and occurs within the developmental context. legitimacy granted to those in authority initially develops in childhood, becomes more complicated during adolescence (tapp, 1991; tyler & trinkner, 2017), and is influenced by multiple variables: family, school, neighborhood, and juvenile justice (darling et al., 2008; fagan & tyler, 2005; thomas et al., 2018; tyler & trinkner, 2017). several of these variables are delineated in urie bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological theory, in which he asserted that not only the immediate settings of family, school, and peers (what he termed the microsystem), and their interrelations (the mesosystem), but also the changing relations between an individual and such environments as social structures, media, and the legal system (the exosystem) impinge upon and impact development. more recently, inquiries into how people acquire beliefs and attitudes about parental authorities have been the focus of multiple studies that command the attention of multidisciplinary scholars worldwide (darling et al., 2008; darling et al., 2005; smetana et al., 2000; smetana et al., 1991; thomas et al., 2018; trinkner, jackson, & tyler, 2017). a review of this literature revealed that central to the discourse of pl is legal socialization, generally defined as the process of acquiring dispositions and beliefs about the law, legal authorities, and legal institutions (piquero et al., 2005; trinkner et al., 2019), and that pl is often studied within the context of legal socialization (tyler & trinkner, 2017). the association between procedural justice, defined as the perception of whether authorities act reasonably and justly during dispute resolution, and legitimacy has received international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 25 significant attention (e.g., darling et al., 2008; trinkner et al., 2012). at the same time, research on how procedural justice and pl develop and decline within younger populations is still being established (durkin, 2016). the present study accedes to the need for more research to be attentive to the familial domain (trinkner & cohn, 2014) and highlights the factors that differentiate the preadolescents’ pl perception-change that can happen during this stage of life. the study also investigates how victimization exposure differentiates the perception of parental authority. the focus on victimization emanated from an analysis of the existing literature that revealed extensive scrutiny of the relationship between victimization and psychological distress, subsequent offending, and clinical issues (boney-mccoy & finkelhor, 1995; chang et al., 2003; flannery et al., 1998; hamby et al., 2011; mrug & windle, 2010; nicholas & rasmussen, 2006; shaffer & ruback, 2002; wilson et al., 2009). despite this plurality of inquiries, we could not find any empirical evidence regarding the impact of victimization on pl. since direct and indirect victimization at home, at school, and in the community can negatively affect preadolescents (hamby et al., 2011; hughes et al., 2015; johnson et al., 2002), both direct and indirect victimization are represented in this inquiry. the research that we are reporting on here drew from a diverse sample collected from a cohort longitudinal study (n = 800, beginning at age 11) carried out in são paulo, brazil. the focus of our study was to understand whether procedural justice and victimization are essential variables in distinguishing pl perception-change in early adolescence. to examine this question, we divided preadolescents into legitimacy perception-change groups based on how their legitimacy attributions crossed the threshold that we calculated (see the method section below) or remained the same from wave i to wave ii. the anticipated groups were those who had lower pl perceptions in both waves, those whose measures of pl perceptions declined from wave i to wave ii, and those who had high pl perceptions in both waves. procedural justice in a younger population tyler and trinkner (2017) explained procedural justice as the judgement made regarding whether those in authority make decisions fairly during interactions and whether all voices are given an opportunity to be heard. according to an earlier study conducted by tyler (2003), procedural justice is linked with legitimacy as it emerges from the perceived fairness of both the enforced procedures and the outcome. developmentally, an understanding of procedural justice begins to form in childhood, is shaped during adolescence, and is influenced by interactions with authority figures; this understanding also influences both moral development and delinquent behavior, and has a long-lasting effect (fagan & tyler, 2005; trinkner & cohn, 2014; trinkner et al. 2019). thus, it is critical to understand which factors differentiate the rise or decline in pl in preadolescence. since there is a call for more inquiries into procedural justice that involve preadolescents (durkin, 2016; trinkner & cohn, 2014), the focus of this article is on procedural justice research that was conducted with younger populations. early research on procedural justice found that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 26 elementary school students recognized the unfairness of outcomes when procedural fairmindedness was violated (gold et al., 1984). almost ten years later, hicks and lawrence (1993), using hypothetical scenarios, developed a scale to measure the importance of procedural justice in the minds of seventh and ninth graders and found that teens consider procedural justice essential. even in preadolescence, the notions of respect, neutrality, fairness, and the desire to feel heard and validated underlie young people’s understanding of procedural justice (cashmore, 2002). more recently, durkin’s (2016) research corroborated both gold et al.’s (1984) and hicks and laurence’s (1993) findings, adding that even younger children (ages 4–8) robustly preferred methods that are procedurally just. being cognizant of factors that differentiate the preadolescents’ perception-change of pl is important, given its influence on compliance and on legitimacy transference, or lack thereof, to other authority figures (fagan & tyler, 2005). procedural justice and parental legitimacy the extant literature on pl has examined variables such as parenting styles, and autonomy domains such as personal, prudential (safety-related issues), and moral development (darling et al., 2007; darling et al., 2005; smetana & daddis, 2002; smetana & metzger, 2005). scholars have also investigated premature rejection of parental authority beliefs (kerr et al., 1999) and resistance to parental authority over what adolescents perceived as personal decisions (smetana et al., 2005). in addition, researchers have investigated pl connection to teens’ drug usage, which revealed the adolescents’ belief that drug usage is a personal issue rather than a prudential one (benchaya et al., 2011; milnitsky-sapiro et al., 2006, nucci et al., 1991; tisak et al., 1994). victimization as evidenced by research (boney-mccoy & finkelhor, 1995; chang et al., 2003; hughes et al., 2015; medina & rodrigues, 2019; shaffer & ruback, 2002; sharkey et al., 2012), there has been a historical focus on understanding the relationship between victimization, maltreatment, and child abuse with maladaptive behavior. with this background in mind, victimization in our study was examined in three areas: home, school, and neighborhood, and included a focus on a range of behaviors by the perpetrator that encompassed treating others cruelly and unfairly (see specific questions under “measures” in the method section below) and considered both direct and indirect impact. home: the research we reviewed showed a robust connection between home victimization and preadolescents coping strategies, psychological trauma symptoms, and antisocial and violent behavior (finkelhor & dzuiba-leatherman, 1994; finkelhor et al., 2005; flannery et al., 1998; hartinger-saunders et al., 2011; turner et al., 2012; wilson et al., 2009). in addition, dishion and mcmahon (1998) provided an empirical rationale for utilizing parental monitoring of children’s whereabouts as a protective factor against victimization in high-risk settings as a way to prevent adolescent problem behavior. in terms of long-term clinical impacts of victimization, nicholas and rasmussen (2006), who focused on children who grew up witnessing parental violence, revealed that abuse and victimization significantly predicted depression and aggression. subsequent studies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 27 confirmed these findings and added the presence of behavioral problems in early adolescence to this list of impacts (mrug & windle, 2010). other studies revealed that vicarious victimization (e.g., witnessing someone being victimized) could be distressing to preadolescents (johnson et al., 2002; moffitt & caspi, 1998; nofziger & kurtz, 2005; rodrigues & gomes, 2017; rosenbaum et al., 2005). overall, it has been established that victimization has multiple adverse effects, such as later delinquencies and substance abuse (aquilino & supple, 2001). victimization is also an early predictor of conduct problems (chang & shaw, 2015). notwithstanding these findings, the literature has not undertaken research on how direct or indirect home victimization informs the rise or decline of pl. school: the consequences of student victimization have long-lasting ramifications. an inquiry with brazilian students (de albuquerque williams et al., 2011) showed that 45% of students ages 11 to 14 experienced school victimization, and 45.3% experienced verbal violence. the study revealed that 89% of the victimized students reported anxiety, sadness, and loneliness, while 38% received a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. hughes and colleagues (2015), utilizing the 2011 national youth risk behavior survey of young people in the united states, revealed that students who experienced victimization were more likely to avoid school and school activities than non-victims. an analysis of the united states 2013 school crime supplement to the national crime victimization survey conducted by the bureau of justice statistics revealed that victims of crime and violence reported fearing harm at school at higher rates than non-victims (lessne et al., 2016). conspicuously, no research was found that studied the role of school or neighborhood victimization on pl. neighborhood: the focus on neighborhood victimization research has primarily been on its role as a precursor of the victim-offender cycle (berg, 2011; lauritsen & laub, 2007). according to berg (2011), who studied the interplay of neighborhood conditions and victimization, “one of the most reliable predictors of violent victimization is violent offending” (p. 13). another focus of inquiry (in the form of violence exposure in poor neighborhoods) that has received notable attention is the focus on victimization’s impact on cognitive problems, as well as the development of antisocial behavior in adolescents (kliewer et al., 2001; wilson et al., 2003). additionally, gibson (2012) sought to understand the influence of the neighborhood on violent victimization among children and adolescents. his research found a relationship between low selfcontrol and violent victimization risk. apart from our inquiries, no research has yet investigated how neighborhood victimization alters pl. such research is particularly relevant in societies with high rates of urban violence and insecurity. despite the diversity of research on home, school, and neighborhood victimization, there is a paucity of scientific evidence about the impact of direct and indirect victimization suffered by preadolescents on pl. truman and morgan (2016) reported figures from the bureau of justice statistics’ national crime victimization survey for 2015, when 1.86% of u.s. residents aged 12 or older experienced a violent victimization (about 5 million occurrences in all). truman and morgan’s figures show that the rate of violent victimization has declined significantly since the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 28 90s. regrettably, victimization levels are still disturbingly high, indicating a need for more studies with a non-clinical and non-legal perspective. we have therefore undertaken this study. method participants and procedure the present study used data collected from the são paulo legal socialization study (splss), a longitudinal panel developed to explore how preadolescents form their perceptions of rules and law, and how they legitimize authority figures. the splss emphasizes the impact of individual experiences with legal and non-legal authorities (center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo, 2016/2017). the initial sample was drawn from the population of students enrolled in the sixth grade, who attended public and private schools in the city of são paulo, brazil. the splss panel consists of 800 students (400 boys, 400 girls, age 11 years, born in 2005, 47% white, 12% black, 27% “pardo” (mixed race), 9% other, 7% not specified), conducted by the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp). our research procedure was in two stages: the selection of schools and the selection of students. according to the brazilian national school census of 2014 (instituto nacional de estudos e pesquisas educacionais anisio teixeira [inep], 2014), 59% of middle school students in the city of são paulo are from public schools, and 41% are from private schools. in order to meet this proportion and also cover all regions of the city we employed the probability proportional to size (pps) method in our first stage, which resulted in 112 schools being selected (skinner, 2016). according to the inep 2014 census, this number covers the school distribution across the city. in our second stage we hired the brazilian institute of public opinion and statistics1 (ibope) to contact the students and collect the data. therefore, after pre-tests and final review, ibope converted the survey questionnaire into the software, survey-to-go2, so the researchers performing the fieldwork could use tablets to conduct the interviews with students. consent forms were obtained from parents of all students who were included in the study. all procedures involving students were in accordance with the ethical standards of resolution 466/2012 (brazilian national health council, 2013). the board of the local research institute, the school of arts, sciences and humanities from the university of são paulo, approved the study. the first wave (2016) full sample included 800 participants, equally divided between boys and girls. the second wave (2017) sample consisted of 750 students (50.13% female; 49.87% male, mean age 11.96, attrition rate 6.5%). the analysis presented here includes only those who completed both waves. 1 http://www.ibope.com.br/ 2 https://www.dooblo.net/products/ http://www.ibope.com.br/ https://www.dooblo.net/products/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 29 our study investigated how interactions with different authority figures shape the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of preadolescents. in order to discuss preadolescents’ perception of pl, we split participants into four groups (see “pl measurement and group classification” below): low pl perception in both waves, high pl perception in both waves, change in pl perception from high to low, and change in pl perception from low to high. the analysis sought to answer two research questions: 1. do the four groups differentiate in parental procedural justice judgements in both the first and second waves? 2. do the four groups differentiate in self-reported victimization levels in the areas of home, school, and neighborhood in both the first and second waves? we hypothesized that parental procedural justice would positively differentiate perception-change toward legitimizing parents, while victimization would help distinguish the delegitimizing groups. measures victimization: measurements of victimization for the splss were based on children and youth victimization research and literature (assis et al., 2013; cardia, 2012; finkelhor et al., 2005; hamby et al., 2005). in order to measure victimization, the survey contained questions about family, school, and the neighborhood. all victimization items were measured on a four-point likert scale (0 = never; 1 = once; 2 = a few times; 3 = many times). the constructs were measured based on the sum of the items in their category (family, school, and neighborhood) in order to capture the cumulative effect of victimization. note that in wave i the participants were asked if they had ever experienced such victimization. in wave ii, they were asked if they had experienced these victimization events since the last questionnaire. therefore, wave ii results should be interpreted as recent victimization. family victimization: the same questions were asked in both waves: “have you seen fights and arguments between adults in your family/home?”; “has a peer at home slapped, punched, kicked, or hit you with an object?”; and “has an adult at home slapped, punched, kicked, or hit you with an object?” school victimization: the same questions were asked in both waves: “have you seen students fighting each other at school?”; “has another student slapped, punched, kicked, or hit you with an object?”; “has an adult at school slapped, punched, kicked, or hit you with an object?”; and “has anyone stolen something from you at school?” neighborhood victimization: participants were asked if they have seen people in their neighborhood selling drugs on the street, being robbed, or carrying guns (without being a policeman), or if they have ever heard a gunshot in their neighborhood. these items were asked in both waves. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 30 procedural justice: the measurements of procedural justice were based on prior legal socialization studies (fagan & tyler, 2005; trinkner & cohn, 2014; tyler, 2011; tyler & blader, 2003). in both waves, participants answered questions about what they believed would happen if their parents found out they did something wrong (e.g., “would they give you the opportunity to express your side of the story?”, “would they listen to all sides of the story, before making any decision?”, and “would they talk to you politely?”). these questions cover essential dimensions of procedural justice such as voice, neutrality, and respect (blader & tyler, 2003; tyler, 2006). the cronbach’s alpha was poor in the first wave (0.52) but increased to an acceptable level in the second wave (0.65). an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on these questions, and they all loaded on the same factor utilizing a maximum likelihood extraction method and a varimax rotation (loading > .35). due to the theoretical grounding of the questions, and the results of the factor analysis, both years of data were interpreted, but caution should be used interpreting the first wave due to the low internal reliability. pl measurement and group classification: participants were asked if their parents were legitimate sources of authority on 10 issues (see table 1). the measurements of pl were based on legal socialization and psychological studies (darling et al., 2007; darling et al., 2008; fagan & tyler, 2005; jackson et al., 2012; trinkner & cohn, 2014). the measures took into consideration the developmental and cultural context of brazilian reality (rodrigues et al., 2017). for this reason, the first wave of data is mostly dichotomous questions (yes/no) due to students’ low literacy rates and difficult in understanding the likert scales, particularly in the poorest areas of the city. the second wave was assessed on a four-point scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree) because participants were older, and researchers believed they would be able to grasp a more complex scale. however, for the longitudinal comparison, the second wave measures were dichotomized with strongly disagree and disagree, indicating “not legitimate” and strongly agree and agree indicating “legitimate”. these 10 areas were averaged in order to establish an overall pl score for each participant at each time point. an averaged score of 1.00 indicates they believed their parents were legitimate sources of authority in all areas. the average was used instead of the sum because participants only had to answer a question if their parents had a rule in that area. utilizing the average ensured that participants’ pl beliefs were not underrated if they did not answer the question. for example, if a participant only answered 8 out of 10 items (because their parents only had eight of the rules), but they believed their parents were legitimate on all of the rules, they would still have a 1.00 average and be in the high pl classification. the upper bound for attributing low pl was an averaged score of 0.80 out of 1.00. this cut-off was based on the frequencies of the variables, selecting roughly the lowest 20% (24.50% in the first wave and 18.10% in the second wave). this cut-off indicates that the participants in the “low” groups had identified at least two areas where their parents had rules to which the participants did not attribute legitimacy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 31 participants were divided into four groups based on how their pl attributions crossed the threshold or remained the same from wave i to wave ii: • high-high: in both wave i and wave ii, participants attributed legitimacy to 9 or 10 areas (out of 10; n = 481). • low-low: in both wave i and wave ii, participants’ averaged scores were below the cutoff (n = 55). • low-high: in wave i, participants’ averaged scores were below the cut-off; in wave ii they were above (n = 127). • high-low: in wave i, participants’ averaged scores were above the cut-off; in wave ii they were below (n = 79). table 1. percentage of participants who answered “yes” on pl for each domain pl issue wave i wave ii clean your room 94.20 96.70 control curfew, homework 94.20 92.40 control media 90.00 90.10 fight with siblings* 89.90 93.40 play in the streets 74.70 86.30 tell the truth 97.60 98.50 cuss words 97.70 96.80 dating 70.80 79.80 drink/smoke 99.10 99.30 control who you hang out with 93.10 93.60 note. *included only participants with siblings (n = 612). procedural justice one-way manovas were conducted on both waves of data to see if there were differences in parental procedural justice across the four groups from wave i to wave ii. these analyses showed a significant difference for procedural justice: f(3, 738) = 5.023, p < .01, η2 = .020. a follow-up pairwise comparison with a bonferroni correction revealed that in wave i, parental η2procedural justice was significantly higher in the high-high group than in the lowlow and the high-low group. for wave ii, parental procedural justice was significantly lower in the low-low group than in the high-high and the high-low groups. see table 2 for descriptive statistics. a discriminant analysis was conducted as a follow-up procedure to understand which variable contributed the most to the differences between groups. the analysis revealed that procedural justice contributed more in wave ii (r = .888) than in wave i (r = .607). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 32 table 2. descriptive statistics of parental procedural justice across pl groups wave i wave ii group m sd m sd n low-low 2.78 0.45 3.57 0.65 55 high-low 2.83 0.41 3.73 0.52 79 low-high 2.87 0.29 3.88 0.31 127 high-high 2.92 0.21 3.88 0.33 481 victimization we conducted one-way manovas on both waves of the data to see to if the three areas of victimization (home, school, and neighborhood) differed across the four legitimacy-change groups. in both waves, the manovas detected significant differences between groups based on their victimization levels: wave i, f(3, 738) = 4.381, p < .01, 2 = .017; wave ii, f(3, 738) = 9.235, p < .01, 2 = .036. overall, those who were in the high pl group in both waves and those who showed increased pl between waves reported lower incidences of victimization compared with the other two groups. a pairwise comparison with a bonferroni correction revealed that for wave i, the significant difference in home and neighborhood victimization was between the high-high and the low-low groups. for school victimization, the low-low group results were significantly different from both the high-high and the low-high groups. for wave ii, the pairwise comparisons revealed that, for home and school victimization, the low-low and the high-low groups were significantly different from the high-high and the low-high groups. these findings indicate that suffering some form of victimization at home or school coincided with delegitimizing family authorities from one year to the next. additionally, the high-high group and the low-low group differed significantly in neighborhood victimization in wave ii. overall, for most variables, the group with the highest victimization was the low-low pl group, followed by the high-low pl group. the only exception was that for wave ii home victimization, the high-low group had the highest level, suggesting that suffering some form of recent home victimization was associated with a decline in pl from one year to the next. descriptive statistics for these findings are provided in table 3. there are visual representations in figures 1 and 2. finally, a follow-up discriminant analysis on wave i victimization variables revealed that neighborhood victimization (r = .713) was most associated with the difference between groups when compared to school (r = -.530) and home victimization (r = .189). we suggest that this analysis indicates that growing up in a more dangerous neighborhood was a differentiating factor for pl perception change in early adolescence. discriminant analysis on wave ii victimization international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 33 revealed that all three types of victimization were important to differentiate the groups, but home victimization was the most important (r = .883), followed by school (r = .672), then neighborhood (r = .364). as well, we note that wave ii speaks to recent victimization, whereas wave i represents events that have occurred at any point prior to wave i; we therefore suggest that recent home victimization was the primary differentiating variable in the perception-change of pl of preadolescents. table 3. descriptive statistics of victimization across waves and legitimacy groups wave victimization context group m sd n i (2016) home low-low 1.8545 1.79936 55 high-low 1.5316 1.52614 79 low-high 1.4409 1.36075 127 high-high 1.2058 1.40284 481 school low-low 3.2545 3.47061 55 high-low 2.4304 1.7591 79 low-high 1.8583 1.89705 127 high-high 2.0042 1.8786 481 neighborhood low-low 2.9091 2.54786 55 high-low 1.9241 2.20589 79 low-high 2.5276 2.41959 127 high-high 2.0083 2.29127 481 ii (2017) home low-low 1.4909 1.91362 55 high-low 1.7848 1.74437 79 low-high 0.9921 1.19852 127 high-high 0.9667 1.33967 481 school low-low 3.1273 2.45745 55 high-low 2.9114 2.00761 79 low-high 2.0551 2.04438 127 high-high 2.0603 1.80927 481 neighborhood low-low 2.9273 2.98052 55 high-low 2.6203 2.68569 79 low-high 2.3622 3.04639 127 high-high 1.9023 2.59744 481 figure 1. means of wave i victimization levels international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 34 figure 2. means of wave ii victimization levels discussion the purpose of the study was to understand whether procedural justice and victimization were important variables in appraising pl perception-change in early adolescence. consistent with previous research (e.g., trinkner et al., 2012), parental procedural justice supported the differentiation of perception-change in positive ways (legitimizing parents), while home, school or neighborhood victimization distinguished the delegitimizing groups. 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h home victimization school victimization neighborhood victimization 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h lo w -l o w h ig h -l o w lo w -h ig h h ig h -h ig h home victimization school victimization neighborhood victimization international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 35 procedural justice and parental legitimacy the importance of procedural justice (the perception of whether authorities act in fair and equitable ways) originated with and has been predominant in legal system socialization research (piquero et al., 2005). in this inquiry, preadolescents’ responses concerning pl supported the procedural justice model of legal socialization (tyler, 2006; tyler & trinkner, 2017). previous studies indicated that the model of legal socialization is significant to understanding how procedural justice impacts the legitimacy of parental authorities (darling et al., 2008); our results corroborated this. the findings were also consistent with two previous longitudinal studies (darling et al., 2007; smetana et al., 2000), which posited that procedural justice is a critical variable in preadolescents’ domain-specific judgements of pl. notably, the findings further establish that procedural justice plays a decisive role with a younger population. the results did not support our expectation that pl would decrease from wave i to wave ii. notably, the results demonstrated that pl did not inherently decrease in early adolescence as our data contained a large group (n = 127) of preadolescents whose legitimacy of parental authority significantly increased from wave i to wave ii. these results were unexpected, as some level of decrease is not only expected but is considered healthy, particularly in terms of personal domains (darling et al., 2008; smetana et al., 2000); the decrease is an expected part of the process of individuation. for example, the results from darling et al.’s (2008) longitudinal study in chile evidenced a deep decline of belief in pl in early adolescence in the personal domain as these young people negotiated autonomy, while smetana et al.’s (2000) study with african-american families indicated a decrease in obedience that was attributed to the normative process of individuation. our results indicated an increase in pl from wave i to wave ii. these variances have several possible explanations: the results of our study may be interpreted from a perspective that focuses on the procedural justice aspect as well as sociocultural issues. darling and colleagues (2008) interpreted the decreased pl in the personal domain as reflecting the expected increase of adolescent autonomy. the 10 pl issues reflected in our study (see table 1) feature a combination of autonomy, moral, and safety concerns of young people growing up in são paulo, a city known for its high crime rate (de melo et al., 2016). perhaps because of safety concerns, as the young people mature in são paulo and become cognizant of security (prudential) issues, they perceive that their desire for increased autonomy is directly opposed to legitimate security concerns; this could contribute to their perception of parental authority as fair even in personal domains. our findings concur with darling et al.’s (2005) assertion that pl is influenced by adolescent autonomy, which is a complex, multidimensional disposition influenced by sociocultural issues. similarly, a more recent inquiry on pl with iraqi, syrian, and palestinian adolescent refugees (smetana et al., 2015) suggested the participants had decreased pl over personal issues but sustained pl on prudential ones. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 36 while our results confirmed that procedural justice was of considerable importance to differentiating pl perception-change even in the younger population and highlighted that pl may actually rise over time rather than decrease, the results also made salient that victimization in the three contexts of home, school, and neighborhood can be a powerful negative influence, which we identify as victimization jeopardy. victimization jeopardy the second focus of our analysis was the impact of victimization (which encompasses both being a victim and witnessing violence) on pl. consistent with what we hypothesized, victimization significantly influenced pl. the results revealed that victimization at all three levels (home, school, and neighborhood) significantly differentiated the legitimacy group. while the findings may seem predictable and common sense, they provide us with previously lacking empirical evidence. children suffer more victimization than adults, and the home environment is not only frequently the source of victimization for children (artz et al., 2014), but also one of the places where children are most likely to witness violence (finkelhor & dzuiba-leatherman, 1994). in this inquiry, recent (wave ii) within-family exposures to victimization emerged as the most important variable to differentiate pl perception-change. if participants reported being victimized at home in the past year, that was the single most important variable to differentiate between pl groups. school victimization was also central to receding pl in both waves. suffering victimization at school served to undermine preadolescents' beliefs about the legitimacy of parents. the results provided an example of the outcome of the intersections between two microsystems, reflecting bronfenbrenner’s (1977) mesosystem in the adolescents’ socialization process. the current research also added a new component to a previous study (hughes et al., 2015), which revealed that feeling unsafe at school impacted mental health, truancy, and academic success. now, it appears that it may also impact pl. neighborhood victimization (seeing people selling drugs, being robbed, or carrying guns [without being a policeman], or hearing a gunshot) had a similar mesosystem effect, as those who suffered the most neighborhood victimization were in the lower pl threshold groups. this finding highlights the potential cascading effect of victimization, revealing that the experience of being victimized may impact how preadolescents perceive and relate to authorities. while it is foreseeable that home victimization would decrease pl, why would victimization at school or in the neighborhood also diminish it? one possibility is that preadolescents may perceive victimization at home, school, or neighborhood as neglect or inability to protect, resulting in decreased pl. parents may be unaware of victimization at school or in the neighborhood, and may be experiencing a loss of pl without knowing why this is happening. when preadolescents move away from or reject pl at such a young age, this may open a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 37 socialization void and reinforces darling et al.’s (2007) finding that adolescents play an active role in the development of their own legitimacy beliefs. our results expand previous findings that both direct and indirect victimization negatively alter children’s perception of pl. johnson et al.’s (2002) research revealed that victimization at home and in the neighborhood, whether direct or witnessed, was a significant predictor of aggression and depression. subsequently, a comprehensive national survey of children’s exposure to violence (hamby et al., 2011) confirmed that such exposure distressed children and is related to a multitude of mental health issues in both childhood and later life. our results expand the focus from the clinical trauma of victimization to the legal socialization of the general population. these findings further indicate that preadolescents delegitimize authorities even when the victimization exposure did not happen at home. thus, our study provides a basis for us to theorize that any form of victimization could propel preadolescents to delegitimize authorities, making pl vulnerable (victimization jeopardy). conclusion implications the implications for parents are multifaceted. while many parents see the decline of pl as unavoidable, our results indicate that the decline may depend more on the lack of procedural justice, which is within parental control. if parents use the hopeful and evidence-based lenses provided by these results to proactively and intentionally implement strong procedural justice practices (i.e., establish effective disciplinary practices with clear, reasonable, and consistent rules), they can prevent or minimize this tendency. the findings from this study could aid school counselors, social workers, and psychologists, among others, in the dissemination of parenting styles that include procedural justice as a socialization practice. this inquiry reveals the importance of understanding that various levels of victimization in multiple contexts are also, tragically, a common variable in child and adolescent development. these findings suggest the centrality of addressing victimization and confirm the importance of a more comprehensive approach to broader domains of victimization. limitations like many other inquiries on adolescents’ beliefs about pl, this study of brazilian preadolescents relies on data drawn solely from preadolescents’ self-reports. while this could be a concern as it does not reflect parental perspectives, it is the preadolescents’ own perceptions that influence their decision whether to comply with parental authority, which is what the researchers are studying. in addition, since the data results reflect a sample from the largest brazilian city, the applicability and generalization of findings to other populations will vary. however, the sample was socially and racially diverse, and findings are embedded in published international scholarship providing a backdrop from which the findings can be interpreted. the information provided allows the reader to conclude whether the findings are transferable to a particular population. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 38 future research the implications of the findings regarding victimization and the premature weakening of pl require further investigation. in addition, a mixed-method study could provide more comprehensive data with which to address the connection of school and neighborhood victimization and contraction of pl and expose who or what is being substituted for the parents in this influential role. future research could also take parental factors into consideration in order to fully understand the dynamics of victimization. funding data used in this study were taken from the são paulo legal socialization study, which was funded by the são paulo research foundation from the 2013–2018 research, innovation and dissemination centers (ridcs) grant (no. 2013/07923-7). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 23–45 39 references aquilino, w. s., & supple, a. j. 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(2009). research review: the relationship between childhood violence exposure and juvenile antisocial behavior: a meta-analytic review. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 50(7), 769–779. doi:10.1111/j.14697610.2008.01974.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.05.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2846659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2019.1587710 http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/652233 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0704_07 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jels.12055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01974.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01974.x interpersonal relationships and depression among adolescents living in tehran’s shelters international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 112 interpersonal relationships and depression among adolescents living in tehran’s shelters katayoon ahangar, mariani mansor, and rumaya juhari abstract: this report explores the connection between interpersonal relationships and depression among adolescents living in tehran’s shelters. a total 103 iranian adolescents from nine governmental shelters in tehran, comprising 69 males and 34 females between the ages of 13 and 15 years, were included in this research. a correlational design was employed in this study and a convenience sampling method was used to select respondents. the results revealed significant negative correlations for depression and difficulties with interpersonal relationships with roommates, classmates, social workers, and guardians. the results of this study will help guardians, social workers, and psychologists to organize intervention programmes that assist with relationship formation as a means for reducing depression among adolescents in tehran’s youth shelters. keywords: interpersonal relationship, depression, shelter, adolescent, beck’s depression inventory (bdi) katayoon ahangar is a ph.d. candidate in developmental psychology, the faculty of human ecology at putra university, malaysia. e-mail: info@katayoonahangar.com mariani mansor, ph.d. is a senior lecturer in the department of human development and family studies, faculty of human ecology at putra university. e-mail: mariani@putra.upm.edu.my rumaya juhari, ph.d. is an associate professor and head of department, department of human development and family studies, faculty of human ecology at putra university. e-mail: rumaya@putra.upm.edu.my depression is one of iran’s most controversial clinical and general mental health issues, with approximately 2% of adolescents before maturity age and about 5% to 8% of adolescents reporting depression in this country (navabi nejad, 2000). according to the iran health institution, the country has 28 million adolescents, and out of this total, two million of them are suffering from depression (navabi nejad, 2000). among those who are experiencing depression, adolescents who live in shelters constitute a particularly vulnerable group. according to alvand (2008), iranian adolescents who are living in shelters are there for a number of reasons: three percent (3%) of these adolescents do not have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 113 parents, 21% have parents who are unable to look after them, 16% have divorced parents, 9% have parents in prison, and another 9% have abusive parents. these young people are almost isolated from the society and their relationships are limited to the five groups of people surrounding them including their classmates, roommates, guardians, social workers, and psychologists. these groups, which in the absence of parents and other family members play a dominant role in the lives of adolescents who live in shelters, are central to our understanding of these adolescents. it is therefore important to understand the relationships between shelter-based adolescents and members of the above-mentioned groups to better understand their effects on adolescents’ depression (bayat, naderi far, bayat, miri, & saeed, 2005). adolescents who live in shelters are not only experiencing the whole spectrum of affective disorders, but are also suffering from serious mental illness (sung, jeffery, & kirchner, 2000). according to sung et al., childhood depression, just like depression in adults, can involve symptoms ranging from normal responses of sadness and displeasure to stressful events, to severe harm caused by clinical depression that may or may not include evidence of mania. important reasons for the increased incidence of depression for adolescents living in shelters are the many deprivations associated with shelter life, for example environmental and community degradation surrounding the shelters, lack of privacy, excessive structure, routine and limited autonomy, as well as other factors like past trauma related to abuse and neglect, experiences with violence, grief and loss, and so forth (bassuk & weinreb, 1994; berne, dato, mason, & rafferty, 1990; huang & menke, 2001). these adolescents should be given particular attention or cared for more carefully, while psychologists, guardians, social workers, educators, and social service agencies who work with this population need to be informed about their particular needs (masten, miliotis, graham-bermann, ramirez, & neemann, 1993). therefore, in view of the statements above, this research was carried out to identify depression among adolescents living in shelters in iran and to discover how the relationships in which these young people are involved play a role in their depression. the research was undertaken with the following research questions in mind: 1. are there any differences in depression among male and female adolescents living in tehran's shelters? 2. to what extent does interpersonal relationship correlate with depression among adolescents in tehran’s shelters? objective • to examine the differences in depression among male and female adolescents living in shelters in tehran. • to examine the correlation between interpersonal relationships (namely the relationships with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians) and depression among these adolescents. depression in shelters zima, wells, and freeman (1994) studied emotional problems such as depression and poor school performance among sheltered children in los angeles. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 114 the objective of their study was to identify children suffering from these problems and determine the relationship between emotional problems and the use of physical and mental health services among 169 school-aged children in los angeles. for this purpose, interviewers used standard measures of depression and behavioural problems to assess the respondents’ answers. the majority (78%) of the children were found to be suffering from depression, were having behavioural problems, or exhibiting poor school performance. only one-third of their parents were aware of these problems, and only 15% of the youth had ever received any mental or physical health care. depression among sheltered children was also studied by wagner and menke (1991). in their study, 51% of sheltered children between the ages of 7 and 12 years were found to have required mental health care for depression. of these, 35% obtained scores that indicated clinical depression or were similar to the scores obtained by a sample of children receiving treatment for depression. navabi nejad (2000) reported that most adolescents living in shelters in iran have poor performance or poor achievement in schools. in addition, they were found to have physical, emotional, as well as social and behavioural problems as compared to adolescents living with families, and most of them have also reported maladaptive behaviour. in particular, these adolescents were found to be more sensitive, depressed, became angry very quickly, and did not care about being approved of by other people in their society. other symptoms of depression included changes in appetite or energy, as well as sleeping much more or much less than usual (o'connor, 2003). further, sayad poor (1993) has shown that the experiences of adolescents living in shelters could strongly affect their adulthood personality and their future life. sayad poor also found that adolescents living in shelters are vulnerable to loneliness, depression, low self-esteem, and drug abuse, indicating that there are problems in both the functioning of sheltered adolescents and the services delivered or provided to them. given the prevalence of mental health and other problems among youth in shelters, research on what can be done to assist them is sorely needed everywhere, but especially in iran where little such research presently exists. theoretical framework this study was based on the human ecological systems theory proposed by bronfenbrenner (2005). in this theory, an individual is placed at the centre of five different systems – the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem – and these different levels have bi-directional influences on one another. ecological systems theory is an approach to the study of the developing human being that emphasizes the interactions and activities among the abovementioned systems, comprehensively expresses the way the people live, and talks about bi-directional effects of people and their environment on each other (matlin, 2008). the microsystem is the closest layer to the child and includes the daily relational interactions experienced by an adolescent. for shelter-based youth, these experiences are mostly relationships with other adolescents or with guardians, psychologists, and social workers attached to the shelter. the correlations between the elements of this system are bi-directional, both toward and away from the adolescents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 115 the mesosystem consists of the immediate community and provides the connection between the structures of the child’s microsystem, for example the connection between the adolescent’s teacher in school and their guardians in the shelter, and so forth. the exosystem consists of the institutional community and includes both formal and informal environments. the welfare services in shelters for adolescents are categorized as the formal environment and the guardians’ social network as the informal environment. the macrosystem is the outer layer of bronfenbrenner’s (2005) structure. it consists of the social and political community and contains a range of influences, such as a shelter’s regulations, cultural issues, customs, and resources. within the macrosystem, the chronosystem is related to an adolescent’s environment and it includes the time dimension. elements of the chronosystem are divided into two categories: internal elements such as physiological changes that happen while an adolescent gets older, and external elements like the time at which an orphaned adolescent’s parents died. adolescents may show different reactions to changes in their environment while they grow up and will be able to identify the influence of these changes on them. in the present study the main focus is on microsystem – the immediate relationships in which the adolescents are participating. adolescents living in shelters are most immediately connected to their classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians; these are shelter-based adolescents’ intimate groups. it is therefore thought that each negative or positive relationship has the potential to have a long-standing effect on the self-confidence and level of mental health of these young people. positive relationships with members of the intimate group will likely help to protect against depression while a negative relationship is likely to increase the risk for depression (berk, 2007). ecological theory also notes that there might be environmental factors that protect the adolescent from being depressed. adolescents living in various shelters in iran, particularly those who are at the risk of increasing depression, often experience many challenges in their interactions with their classmates, roommates, guardians, psychologists, and social workers. at the same time, the ecological theory addresses these variables and recommends a way for researchers to analyze the importance of these variables and determine whether there are environmental variables that increase the possibility of developing depression. definition operationally, the term “depression” refers to feelings of sadness, guilt, worthlessness, past failure, self-dislike, suicidal thoughts, loss of pleasure, crying, loss of interest, tiredness, change of appetite, loss of interest in sexual activity, change in sleep, loss of energy, and low self-esteem. all these terms were measured in this study by responses to the beck’s depression inventory or bdi (beck, ward, mendelson, mock, & erbaugh, 1961). according to this definition adopted in the current study, levels of depression may be normal, mild, moderate, borderline, severe, and extreme. total score levels of depression were: (1-10) where these ups and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 116 downs are considered as normal; (11-16) mild mood disturbance; (17-20) borderline clinical depression; (21-30) moderate depression; (31-40) severe depression; and (40+) extreme depression. operationally, interpersonal relationship is measured based on the relationships with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians with the use of a questionnaire. the interpersonal relationship inventory was developed by the author with the assistance of professor asgari in iran. the interpersonal relationship questionnaires had to be adapted according to the interpersonal relationships of adolescents living in shelters in tehran. the inventory contains 60 items including 5 sub-scales (namely the relationship with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, guardians) and each sub-scale has 12 items. the score for each sub-scale was 12-48. the total score for each sub-scale was divided into two categories (below the mean score was considered poor and above this mean value was considered good). method participants and procedure the sample consisted of 103 adolescents living in tehran’s governmental shelters. each governmental shelter in tehran is responsible for 20 to 25 adolescents from infancy up to age 18. the sample included 34 females and 69 males. out of 41 governmental shelters in tehran, only nine shelters are meant for adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 years, and thus, the convenience sampling technique was employed for this research. the interpersonal relationship inventory self-developed. for the convenience and comprehension of the respondents, the persian language was used for the questionnaire, while beck’s depression inventory (beck et al., 1961) was employed. for the iranian context, this questionnaire was translated into persian by associate professor yekke yazdan doost, rezvan talab, and peyravi (2001) as the first stage of the procedures employed in the present study. in the second stage, a permission letter from the welfare organization to enter the shelters was obtained. after receiving the permission letter, the procedure for data collection was initiated. in the third stage, the interpersonal relationship inventory and beck’s depression inventory were administered among 103 adolescents living in the nine selected shelters in tehran. these adolescents were purposively selected from all adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 years in tehran’s governmental shelters. the questionnaires were distributed to these adolescents by their guardians or social workers who also assisted in the shelters. they collected the questionnaires after 30 minutes. the instruction, presented by the researcher, provided each adolescent with a brief description of the purpose of the study, procedures for filling in the questionnaire, the assurance of the confidentiality of their responses, and the right to withdraw from the study at any time. measurement the interpersonal relationship inventory self-developed. this inventory was employed to obtain a measure of self-reported interpersonal relationship and includes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 117 12 items for each sub-scale and self-rated questionnaire designed to assess the presence of interpersonal relationship among the 13to 15-year-old adolescents. for each of the 12 items, the participants were asked to choose from four answers. the reliability coefficients of these questionnaires were found to range from .74 to .86. in this study, independent variables included five sub-scales (namely the relationships with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians). these variables were measured using the self-developed interpersonal relationship inventory. as previously noted, beck’s depression inventory (beck et al., 1961) was employed in this research, translated to the persian language by yekke yazdan doost, rezvan talab, and peyravi (2001). this instrument was particularly employed to obtain a measure of depression. the beck’s depression inventory includes 21 items and is a self-reported questionnaire designed to assess the presence of depression among adolescents. for each of the 21 items, the participants were requested to choose from four answers. the reliability coefficient of these questionnaires was found to be .89. data analysis as mentioned above in the operational definition of interpersonal relationship, these instruments were divided into five sub-scales, that is, relationship with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians. this study developed a self-report interpersonal relationship instrument. items of each sub-scale were developed from three sources, namely a review of the literature, analyses of psychological tests, and the administration of the two questionnaires – the beck’s depression inventory and the interpersonal relationships inventory – to a population of adolescents aged between 13 and 15 years living in nine selected shelters in tehran. the analyses were conducted to assess the psychometric properties of the interpersonal relationship. as such, two fundamental principles of measurement design, namely validity and reliability, were addressed. the collected data were analyzed in two parts; the first part was a descriptive analysis to report on the frequency, reliability, validity, and percentage of the samples, while the second part was an inferential analysis that included pearson correlation and t-test. the statistical package for the social sciences for windows (spss version 17.0 for windows) was used to analyze the data from the two questionnaires. meanwhile, the statistical procedures were employed to examine the reliability of the beck’s depression inventory, as well as the reliability and validity of the interpersonal relationship inventory and each of its scales. results in order to explore the correlation between interpersonal relationship and depression, pearson’s correlation multiple regression model was used. gender was also included in the analysis. the detailed results of the hypothesis testing are presented here. more importantly, it further explores the scientific significance or insignificance in the mean differences for the categorical variables set along with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 118 continuous variable. the discussion includes results from previous research along with the role of interpersonal relationship on depression among adolescents. table 1 shows that there is no significant difference in the mean scores of depression between male and female participants (t = -1.91, p > 0.05). in particular, female respondents displayed higher level of depression (see table 2). table 1. results of the independent t-test gender n mean sd t p depression male 69 17.01 13.13 -1.91 .06 female 34 22.02 11.13 n = 103 * p ≤ 0.05 , ** p ≤ 0.01 sd = standard deviation table 2 shows that the relationship with classmates r = -.252 and p ≤ 0.01; for relationship with roommates r = -.317 and p ≤ 0.01; for relationship with psychologists r = -.143 and p ≤ 0.01; for relationship with guardians r = -.356 and p ≤ 0.01; and for relationship with social workers r = -.305 and p ≤ 0.01. a multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate how well interpersonal relationship predicted depression among adolescents living in tehran’s shelters. using the multiple regression analysis, a significant model emerged f (5, 97) = 4.53, p < .001. based on this model, about 19% of the variances in depression could be explained by interpersonal relationship variables. table 2. pearson’s correlation matrix: interpersonal relationship and depression interpersonal relationship depression classmates -.252** roommates -.317** guardians -.356** psychologists -.143 social workers -.305** * p ≤ .05 , ** p ≤ .01, n = 103 percentages of depression levels were also examined. the minority of the respondents 31.1% (32) were in the normal range of depression, 14.6% (15) were in the mild range of depression, 16.5% (17) were in the borderline range of depression, 19.4% (20) were in the moderate range of depression, 9.7% (10) were in the severe range of depression, and 8.7% (9) were in the extreme range of depression. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 119 discussion this study reports the relationship between interpersonal relationship and depression among adolescents in tehran’s shelters. each research question is examined separately. there was significant negative relationship between level of depression and relationship with classmates, roommates, guardians, psychologists, and social workers. the results of this study show that adolescents with lower levels of interpersonal relationship have higher levels of depression. since adolescents living in shelters and their guardians are not the same age, they cannot share a common sense of feeling; adolescents barely establish an emotional connection with their guardians, psychologists, and social workers and therefore a close relationship can hardly be established between them. previous research studies have reported an important relationship between depression and peers. peers play a less important role for young adolescents than for adolescents who spend more time with their peers than others (masten, 2005). this study shows that age is not related to depression but gender is. also, female adolescents report a high score for depression compared to male adolescents among this population sample. however, while some research has declared that there is no clear relation between the two variables among adolescents, other research has indicated that age is significantly correlated to depression (bryant, 2008). analyses of age differences in behaviour functioning among adolescents living in shelters found no significant age differences between 6 and 11 years of age (smith, 1995). twenge and nolen-hoeksema (2002) examined the relationship between age and depression among 310 children and adolescents between the ages 8 and 16. considering the correlation between age and gender differences and depression, boys scored a high level of depression at age 12, while girls reported an increasing score of depression from ages 12 to 16. as with previous studies, a majority of girls reported a higher score of depression level than boys (twenge & nolen-hoeksema, 2002). girls often show greater symptoms of depression as a result of negative mood than boys, while in comparison to girls, boys report more symptoms of depression caused by interpersonal problems. moreover, this study found that girls in contrast with boys show depressive symptoms by externalizing behaviours and social problems. the negative mood in girls as a symptom of depression may be characterized by self-criticism and sadness (berg, 2001). ron (2004) declared that adolescents who report lower rate of depressive symptoms developed mechanisms which allow them to deny their primary needs and their desire to be cared for by other people. therefore, they felt depression less than others and also had less sympathy for others. limitations the principal limitation for this study is that depression among adolescents is a very difficult issue to study given the fact that their feelings cannot be easily interpreted. since the information concerning child or adolescent depression may not be obtained directly from observing their behaviour, this information may be a little distorted. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 120 in the current study, the relationships of adolescents living in shelters in tehran are confined to their classmates, roommates, guardians, social workers, and psychologists and they often don't have the chance to communicate with adolescents outside of the shelters. this is another limitation of this study. this research was conducted only in tehran as the biggest city in iran, involving a lot of immigrants from other cities who are located in suburbs with growing populations. out of 41 governmental shelters located in tehran, only nine shelters are responsible for adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 years, with five meant for females and four for males. all nine shelters were included in the present research. the remaining 32 shelters are responsible for children and adolescents below 13 years of age or above 15. a further limitation of the present study involved the sample size of the data collected. the study involved only 103 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15, 34 females and 69 males. future research should have both a larger sample and a less uniform group of adolescents living in iranian shelters. using interpersonal relationship inventory together with a larger sample collection by future researchers may result in fewer problems. furthermore, the unequal number of females and males employed in the current study may constitute another limitation when comparing the two groups. due to time constraints and the high amount of expense incurred in carrying out the research, the researcher selected only the variables that were predicted to have more effects on the level of depression among the adolescents living in shelters, that is, based on age and gender. similarly, the convenience sampling technique was employed for the purpose of this research in iranian society, and thus any generalization of the findings of this study to other iranian cities or even other countries is not possible. implications this research provides empirical evidence to determine the effect of psychological variables on depression among adolescents living in tehran’s shelters. in fact, it provides empirical evidence of the bilateral negative relationship between depression and interpersonal relationships. that is, those iranian adolescents who have lower levels of interpersonal relationships have higher levels of depression. the result of this study will help guardians, social workers, and psychologists organizing intervention programs to reduce the psychological factors which cause an increase of depression. specifically, programs that encourage adolescents to have more friends and interactions with others can help them to be less depressed and improve their interpersonal relationships. moreover, families, especially those involved in problems like divorce, may be able to use the findings of this study to change interactions with their adolescent children. the results of this dissertation also show that there is a significant correlation between independent variables (interpersonal relationship) and level of depression. therefore, guardians should pay attention to the fact that their behaviour with an adolescent can strongly affect them and a better relationship will result in lower levels of depression. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 121 the current study declared that the level of depression in females is higher than that of males and this shows that females are more sensitive. since females compose nearly 50% of iran’s population, paying attention to their mental and emotional needs is of obvious importance. many reasons such as the combination between biological changes and social transitions, as well as a difficult environment, exposes the females to a wide range of problems (berg, 2001). therefore, females are more at risk of developing depression during childhood and early adolescence (o’donnell, 2008). as mentioned previously, females reported more symptoms of depression and therefore, paying attention to their mental and emotional needs is an essential issue and this may result in the improvement of their interpersonal relationship. the findings of this research provides data which can be used to predict depression and therefore can help mental health policy-makers, specifically those policies designed to decrease depression among this population. the governmental bodies funding projects to control and reduce depression can also refer to these findings. moreover, decision-makers in mental health and medical organizations can use the results of this research to establish new programs to control the factors which contribute to depression. finally, our findings declare a correlation between interpersonal relationship and depression. suggestions for future research future research is recommended that uses the results of this study to expand psychosocial variables. this could facilitate the consideration of a greater variety of subjects and social factors. interpersonal relationship was employed to address individual factors in this study and was evaluated by examining relationships with classmates, roommates, psychologists, social workers, and guardians. expanding the range of psychosocial factors could help to narrow the factors that may cause diversity in depression. studying the correlation between interpersonal relationships and depression among iranian adolescents living in shelters is helpful when studying other factors related to members of this population with more serious symptoms of depression. moreover, future studies should reconsider the relationship between depression and background profile. in this way, future researchers can achieve a better vision on the nature of the interpersonal relationships. future research should also entail a larger sample collection and less uniform sample of adolescents in iranian shelters. this could be accomplished through expanding the sample collection to include shelters, orphanages, institutions, etc. by broadening the number of participants in the study, researchers will be able to better generalize the results for a particular population. conclusion in conclusion, this study identified one predictor of depression. however, while age and background profile were not identified as factors, gender has definitely been identified as a predicting factor for developing depression. there was a higher score of depression among female adolescents. these findings recognize interpersonal relationships as an important determinant of depression. moreover, these results provide experimental evidence that interpersonal relationships might affect depression among iranian adolescents living in shelters. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 112–123 122 therefore, the current study has added more empirical evidence to the body of knowledge that will inform practice and guide policy-makers hoping to alleviate depression among iranian adolescents living in various shelters in tehran. references alvand, h. r. 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(2001). association between depression and negative behaviour among heart disease patients. iran journal of clinical psychology and psychiatry, 6(4), 38–44. zima b. t., wells k. b., & freeman h. e. (1994). emotional and behavioural problems and severe academic delays among sheltered homeless children in los angeles county. american journal of public health, 84(2), 260–264. the parameters of children’s health: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 186 the parameters of children’s health: key concepts from the political economy of health literature dennis raphael abstract: in this article key aspects of a political economy approach to addressing children’s health are identified. these aspects include a concern with how power and influence of various societal sectors come to shape the social determinants of children’s health through the creation of specific forms of public policy. these public policies affect children’s health through two primary pathways: shaping the social determinants of parents’ health and shaping specific social determinants of children’s health. these approaches cluster such that a worlds of welfare states approach can illuminate specific aspects of canada’s approach to creating public policies that shape children’s health. implications for promoting children’s health that derive from a political economy approach are presented. keywords: social determinants of health, children’s health, political economy, public policy dennis raphael, ph.d. is a professor of health policy and management at the school of health policy and management at york university, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada, m3j 1p3. telephone: (416) 736-2100, extension 22134. e-mail: draphael@yorku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 187 political economy models of society are concerned with how political ideology and power and influence operate through economic and political systems to create public policy that distributes material and social resources (bryant, 2009). central to this perspective is the idea that politics and economics are intrinsically related and this dynamic shapes public policy development. as applied to understanding health and the determinants of health, a political economy approach draws a direct link between these societal structures and processes, the making of public policy that shapes the social determinants of health, and the health of the overall population and specific groups classified according to social class, gender, age, and race among other characteristics (coburn, 2010). there are a variety of political economy models and in this paper i consider the insights that a critical materialist approach offers (coburn, 2010). such an approach sees public policies that shape health policies as resulting from the organization of society which is itself shaped by the relative balance of power and influence among competing societal sectors. as a result, improving health involves acting upon these societal dynamics (raphael, 2014a). children’s health is directly influenced by the public policies that result from these structures and processes in two ways. the first pathway is through public policy that shapes the living and working conditions of their parents. the second pathway is through public policies that directly affect children and their development. since jurisdictions differ in how their economic and political systems operate, it is not surprising there are differences in the overall health of children from different jurisdictions (innocenti research centre, 2013). figure 1 provides a model of the structures and processes that shape children’s health identified by a critical materialist political economy approach. in the following sections, i describe each of the model’s components and their importance for children’s health. for ease of presentation, i begin with the most concrete aspects of the model, children’s health, and then work my way up to the more abstract concepts of the political economy approach. the purpose is to provide means of making sense of the material contained in this special issue on the political economy of children’s health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 188 children’s health children’s health is usually considered in terms of physical, mental, and social well-being. physical health includes measures of mortality such as infant mortality and mortality prior to age 18, and measures of morbidity such as the presence of various diseases or the occurrence of injury. it can also include functional health or health-related behaviours such as diet or physical activity. mental health includes measures of childhood psychological functioning and coping mechanisms as well as the presence of disorders. social health includes measures of school performance and academic achievement, quality of peer relationships, as well as delinquency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 189 another set of indicators concerns the extent of inequalities among children in a jurisdiction on these and similar measures. the innocenti research centre provides indicators of health and well-being for wealthy developed nations that include many of these and additional indicators that capture the broad dimensions of children’s health and well-being. table 1 provides some of these that were provided in a recent report (innocenti research centre, 2013). analyses are also available for extent of injuries (innocenti research centre, 2001a), teenage births (innocenti research centre, 2001b), mortality by abuse and neglect (innocenti research centre, 2003) and extent of inequalities among children in health and well-being (innocenti research centre, 2010). table 1 how child well-being is measured dimensions components indicators dimension 1: material well-being monetary deprivation relative child poverty rate relative child poverty gap material deprivation child deprivation rate low family affluence rate dimension 2: health and safety health at birth infant mortality rate low birthweight rate preventive health services overall immunization rate childhood mortality child death rate, age 1 to 19 dimension 3: education participation participation rate: early childhood education participation rate: further education, age 15 to 19 neet rate (% age 15 to 19 not in education, employment or training) achievement average pisa scores in reading, maths and science dimension 4: behaviours and risks health behaviours being overweight eating breakfast eating fruit taking exercise risk behaviours teenage fertility rate smoking alcohol cannabis exposure to violence fighting being bullied international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 190 dimension 5: housing and environment housing rooms per person multiple housing problems environmental safety homicide rate air pollution source: innocenti research centre. (2013). child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview, box 1, p. 5. florence: innocenti research centre. the centre’s 2013 report card examined children’s well-being along five dimensions (innocenti research centre, 2013). canada’s overall rank was 17th of 29 wealthy developed nations. it ranks 15th in material well-being, 27th in health and safety, 14th in education, 16th in behaviours and risks, and 11th in housing and environment. numerous analyses show these health and wellness rankings to be strongly determined by children and their families’ living and working conditions. these factors have come to be called the social determinants of health (mikkonen & raphael, 2010). the next section explores how these social determinants manifest within the family context. familial health determinants families’ living and working conditions differ within and across jurisdictions. overall conditions are more favourable in some nations than others (e.g., poverty rates) and variation is greater in some nations than others (e.g., extent of income inequality) (innocenti research centre, 2012). both sets of measures are related to children’s health outcomes. the most obvious manifestations of these differences – important because they predict children’s health outcomes – are familial material circumstances, psychosocial factors including stress experienced by families and coping mechanisms, and health-related behaviours (benzeval, judge, & whitehead, 1995). material circumstances refer to the concrete exposures to health strengthening and health threatening conditions that are associated with income and wealth. income and wealth are important as these provide access to a wide range of material goods such as housing, food, and learning and recreational opportunities, among others. in addition, since income and wealth are associated with spatial segregation, differences manifest in quality of neighbourhoods and the opportunities for education and recreation associated with these neighbourhoods. the amount of crime and threat are also associated with material circumstances (raphael, 2011). these material exposures can have both immediate and long-lasting effects upon children’s health. the latter have been termed latency effects and can result from biological processes during pregnancy and early childhood associated with poor maternal diet and experience of stress (hertzman & frank, 2006). early childhood experiences, such as the experience of numerous infections or exposures to adverse housing conditions, also appear to have immediate and later health effects regardless of later life circumstances. as one example, adverse childhood living circumstances are excellent predictors of cardiovascular disease and adult-onset diabetes during later adulthood (raphael et al., 2003; raphael & farrell, 2002). in response to these material circumstances, families experience differences in a number of psychosocial variables such as stress, sense of efficacy and control, and self-identity. these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 191 come to shape parents’ and children’s health in both the present and future (lynch, kaplan, & salonen, 1997). psychological health-related effects may also result from early experience. a general non-adaptive reaction to stress may be established during early childhood as well as a general sense of hopelessness and lack of control, both of which are important determinants of health (irwin, siddiqui, & hertzman, 2007). the third familial determinant of health is how experience of varying circumstances and the levels of stress associated with these circumstances lead to the adoption of health-supporting or health-threatening behaviours. in the latter case, these behaviours can be seen as coping responses to adverse life circumstances. numerous canadian studies show that children raised in familial conditions of low income, unemployment or precarious employment, poor quality housing, and food insecurity are more likely to take up risk-related behaviours such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and lack of physical activity (health canada, 1999). similarly, adoption of carbohydrate-dense diets and weight gain are also seen as means of coping with difficult circumstances (wilkinson, 1996). the troika of material circumstances, psychosocial processes, and behavioural responses are shaped by what are called the social determinants of health. social determinants of health social determinants of health are the specific economic and social conditions that shape the health of individuals, communities, and jurisdictions as a whole (mikkonen & raphael, 2010). canadian researchers have outlined 14 of these: aboriginal status, disability status, early life, education, employment and working conditions, food security, gender, health services, housing, income and income distribution, race, social exclusion, social safety net, and unemployment and employment insecurity (raphael, 2009). social determinants such as aboriginal status, disability status, gender, and race can be thought of as social locations that do not, by themselves, lead to differing health outcomes, but interact with societal conditions to create particular health outcomes. an emphasis upon societal conditions as determinants of health contrasts with the traditional health sciences and public health focus upon biomedical and behavioural risk factors. since a social determinants of health approach sees the mainsprings of health as being how a society organizes and distributes economic and social resources, it directs attention to economic and social policies as means of improving it. it also requires consideration of the political, economic, and social forces that shape their distribution amongst the population. distribution of the social determinants of health much social determinants of health research simply focuses on determining the relationship between a social determinant of health and health status, so a researcher may document, for example, that lower income is associated with adverse health outcomes among parents and their children. or a researcher may demonstrate that food insecurity is related to poor health status among parents and children, as is living in crowded housing, and so on. this approach says little about how these poor-quality social determinants of health come about (raphael & bryant, 2002). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 192 social determinants of health do not exist in a vacuum. their quality and availability to the population are usually a result of public policy decisions made by governing authorities (graham, 2004). as one example, consider the social determinant of health of early life. early life is shaped by availability of sufficient material resources that assure adequate educational opportunities, food, and housing among others (raphael, 2014b). much of this has to do with the employment security of parents and the quality of their working conditions and wages. the availability of quality, regulated child care is an especially important policy option in support of early life (esping-andersen, 2002). these are not issues that usually come under individual control. a policy-oriented approach places such findings within a broader policy context. the next section considers the public policies that shape the quality and distribution of the social determinants of children’s health. public policy the term social policy is usually used to refer to issues that have direct relevance to social welfare, such as social assistance, child and family policy, and housing policy, but the factors that shape the health of children are affected by a wide range of other public policies that include labour and employment, revenue, and tax policies, among others. these public policy activities are courses of action or inaction taken by public authorities – usually governments – to address a given problem or set of problems (briggs, 1961). governments constantly make decisions about a wide range of issues, such as national defence and the organization and delivery of health, social, and other services. the decisions that are the special concern here determine how economic and social resources are distributed among the population. governments influence this distribution by establishing taxation levels, the nature and quality of benefits – whether these benefits are universal or targeted – and how employment agreements are negotiated. governments are also responsible for establishing housing policies, maintaining transportation systems, enacting labour regulations and laws, and providing training related to employment and education. table 2 shows the interconnections between public policy issues and the social determinants of health in general and children’s health in particular. these public policy decisions that provide equitable or inequitable distribution of the social determinants of health do not exist in a vacuum. they reflect the operation of three primary societal systems: the economic, political, and ideological. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 193 table 2 social determinants of children’s health and their public policy antecedents _____________________________________________________________________________ early life wages that provide adequate income inside the workforce, or assistance that does so for those unable to work, affordable quality child care and early education, affordable housing options, and responsive social and health services education support for adult literacy initiatives, adequate public education spending, tuition policy that improves access to post-secondary education employment and training and retraining programs (active labour policy), support for working conditions collective bargaining, enforcing labour legislation and workplace regulations, increasing worker input into workplace environments food security developing adequate income and poverty-reduction policies, promoting healthy food policy, providing affordable housing and affordable child care health services managing resources more effectively, providing integrated, comprehensive, accessible, responsive and timely care housing providing adequate income and affordable housing, reasonable rental controls and housing supplements, providing social housing for those in need income and its fair taxation policy, adequate minimum wages and social assistance distribution levels that support health, facilitating collective bargaining social exclusion developing and enforcing anti-discrimination laws, providing esl and job training, approving foreign credentials, supporting a variety of other health determinants for newcomers to canada social safety net providing economic and program supports to families and citizens comparable with those provided in other wealthy developed nations unemployment and strengthening active labour policy, providing adequate replacement job insecurity benefits, provisions for part-time benefits and advancement into secure employment _____________________________________________________________________________ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 194 economic, political, and ideological systems economic system the economic system both creates and distributes economic resources amongst the population. since all economic systems in wealthy developed nations are capitalist, market principles – of which profit-making is paramount – have the potential to drive their operations (coburn, 2010). some of the main features associated with the market process that impact the health of children are wage structures their parents experience, benefits available through work, working conditions, and vacation time of their parents, among others (jackson, 2009). it has long been recognized, however, that without state intervention in the operation of the market economy, the distribution of economic resources becomes skewed in favour of the wealthy and powerful (macarov, 2003). in addition, some structures and processes necessary for societal functioning may not be made available at all by the economic system. the welfare state arose because the economic system itself is not capable of dealing with provision of basic societal resources such as education, health care, housing, and other programs and services that provide citizens with resources necessary for well-being (teeple, 2000). what are some of the influences upon how the market economy operates and distributes economic resources amongst the population? political economists speak of the power and influence of societal groups such as the business and corporate sectors, the organized labour sector, and civil society (coburn, 2010). these sectors influence the political system that can manage the economic system through public policy-making (see below). the business and corporate sector has power and influence over the economic and political systems through its control of many economic levers such as its ability to move and invest capital (brooks & miljan, 2003). the organized labour sector usually supports greater redistribution of economic resources through higher taxation on the business and corporate sector, stronger government management of aspects of the workplace such as wages and benefits, and greater provision of supports and benefits through government programs funded by taxes (navarro et al., 2004). the civil society sector gains power and influence to influence the economic system from its ability to influence public opinion and shape public policy through networks of agencies, organizations, and other non-governmental institutions (brady, 2009). political system the political system consists of the organization of the state and its collection of laws and regulations. the political structure can intervene in the operation of the economic system by enacting laws and regulations that affect employment practices and by having governments provide supports and services to the citizenry through programs and benefits. these supports, benefits, and services come from the enactment of corporate and personal taxes, which are usually progressive in that greater proportions of taxes accrue from those with higher incomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 195 there are many specific areas where state activity impacts upon the social determinants of the health of children. working through the making of public policy, these areas include income and income distribution, employment and job insecurity, working conditions, housing and food security, and the availability of health and social services, among others (mikkonen & raphael, 2010). these social determinants of health indirectly affect the living conditions – and health – of children by shaping the living conditions of their parents; in other cases the effect is more direct. one example of a direct effect would be in the provision of differing forms of child care to families (friendly & prentice, 2009). child care can be provided as a universal right or as a commodity that must be purchased. another instance would be whether college and university education is provided to all or must be bought. ideological system finally, the means by which economic and political systems distribute resources are usually justified by dominant discourses on the nature of society and the different roles that the state, economic marketplace, and family should play in providing economic and social security. these different discourses usually involve dichotomies such as socialism versus liberalism, social justice versus economic justice, and communal versus individual responsibility for wellbeing. the socialism versus liberalism dichotomy is well described by wiktorowicz (2010). she points out that liberalism emphasizes personal freedom whereby individuals can pursue their own interests free of coercion by government. governments should intervene only to assure the free market distributes basic resources. in contrast, socialism distrusts the results provided by the market economy and emphasizes that assets should be collectively owned with the benefits of the economic system distributed equitably across the population. in essence, liberalism is concerned with equality of opportunity, while socialism is concerned with equality of result. anglo-saxon nations tend towards liberalism, european nations towards socialism. the social justice versus economic justice dichotomy is concerned with whether there is an inherent right for everyone to receive the benefits available in a society or whether individuals are entitled to only those earned through their participation in the market economy (hofrichter, 2003). not surprisingly, this dichotomy is related to the liberalism versus socialism dichotomy. the business sector usually espouses the economic justice view while the labour sector and frequently the civil society sector favour the social justice view. again, anglo-saxon nations tend towards the economic justice approach while european nations lean towards the social justice view. related to both of these dichotomies is the issue of broad concepts of society and how these lead to action and change in a society. stone (2002) contrasts individualized (market) versus communal (polis) approaches. in the market conception of society, the emphasis is on the individual and the primary motivation for action is self-interest. society is inherently competitive and the source of change is the exchange of material goods through the market economy. by contrast, in the polis view of society the focus is on the community and there is a strong role for public interest in addition to self-interest. while there is competition among international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 196 individuals there is also cooperation in the pursuit of common goals. the building blocks of social action are groups and organizations. the building blocks of change are ideas and alliances rather than material exchanges among individuals. finally the polis model sees the pursuit of the public interest as a source of change. more recently, analysis had been made of the impact of neo-liberalism as a societal doctrine that shapes the distribution of resources. neo-liberalism is an ideology that believes that governments should withdraw from managing the economy thereby ceding more power and influence to the business and corporate sector (coburn, 2010). this has been seen as leading to the skewing of the distribution of the social determinants of health and threatening the health of citizens in general and children in particular. the ideological system is especially important because it shapes the means by which the population comes to understand these issues. if the general public is convinced of the validity of neo-liberal arguments about the primacy of the marketplace over the state, then little can be expected to come from public policies that will manage the economy in the service of children’s health. ideological beliefs of the public are important determinants of whether a jurisdiction comes to address the social determinants of health through public policy action. these ways of thinking about society and the responsibilities for providing citizens with economic and social security come together with the operation of the political and economic systems to shape what has been called the differing worlds of welfare states. form of the welfare state these three aspects – the economic, political, and ideological – come together to create distinctive forms of governance that have come to be called the worlds of welfare approach. in the three worlds of welfare capitalism, esping-andersen (1990) identified three welfare state regimes: the social democratic, conservative, and liberal. as a political economy model, it conceives ideas and institutions – and the public policy that flows from these – as evolving from societal arrangements influenced by historical traditions. the central features of welfare regimes are their extent of social stratification, decommodification, and the relative role of the state, market, and family in providing economic and social security to the population. importantly, the state’s role is influenced by class mobilization, in that the loyalties of the working and middle classes determine the forms by which these systems operate. these differing patterns of loyalties have contributed to the formation and maintenance of these welfare state regimes. the social democratic welfare state (e.g., denmark, finland, norway, and sweden) has been strongly influenced by social democratic ideology and politics. its concern with equality outlines a key role for the state in addressing inequality and providing the population with various forms of economic and social security (saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). its provision of programs and supports on a universal basis is consistent with its goal of reducing social stratification and decommodifying the necessities of life. in essence, the social democratic welfare state strives to provide the means by which one can live a decent life independent of employment market involvement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 197 the conservative welfare state (e.g., belgium, france, germany, and the netherlands) is distinguished by its concern with maintaining stability (saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). historically, governance is by christian democratic parties that maintain many aspects of social stratification, a moderate degree of decommodification of societal resources, and an important role for the family in providing economic and social support. the church played a significant role in its development. an underdeveloped form of the conservative welfare state – the latin (e.g., greece, italy, portugal, and spain) – has been added to esping-anderson’s three regimes by saint-arnaud and bernard (2003). finally, the emphasis of the liberal welfare state (e.g., australia, canada, the united kingdom, and the united states) is on liberty and is dominated by the market and ruled by generally pro-business political parties (saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). little attempt is made to reduce social stratification and its degree of decommodification is the lowest. there is little state intervention in the operation of the economic system. ideological inspiration organizing principle focus of the programmes central institution social democratic liberal conservative latin equality reduce: poverty inequality unemployment liberty minimize: government interventions “disincentives” to work solidarity maintain: social stability wage stability social integration residual: taking care of the essential needs of the most deprived (meanstested assistance) insurance: access to benefits depending on past contributions rudimentary and familialistic universalism social rights resources state needs risks market family and occupational categories source: saint-arnaud, s., & bernard, p. (2003). convergence or resilience? a hierarchial cluster analysis of the welfare regimes in advanced countries. current sociology, 51(5), 499–527, figure 2, p. 503. figure 2. ideological variations in forms of the welfare state international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 198 esping-andersen’s distinction between social democratic, conservative, including latin, and liberal welfare states has much to do with the making of public policy that addresses the social determinants of health. figure 2 shows the basic elements and characteristics of these differing forms of welfare states and their alignment with social determinants of health-related public policy is apparent (raphael, 2013a, 2013b). these differing forms of the welfare state have not come about by accident but are shaped and maintained by ideologies of governing authorities informed by the politics of political parties. this approach is important as it considers how the ideological views of governments shape receptivity to the timing and content of public policies. this model suggests that addressing the social determinants of children’s health through public policy action in liberal welfare states such as canada will require no less than shifting the role of the state. this shift will occur as a result of addressing imbalances in power and influence that at present favour the business and corporate sector. public health activities designed to address the social determinants of health may help facilitate such a shift (brassolotto, raphael, & baldeo, 2014). power and influence of societal sectors at the top of figure 1 are the three key sectors that influence the entire public policy process. the business and corporate sector is centrally placed as it has the greatest potential in capitalist societies – and all wealthy developed nations are capitalist – to shape aspects of economic and political systems, public policy-making, and the quality and distribution of the social determinants of health. it also has the ability to shape the attitudes and values of the public through its creation of ideological discourse – the ways society members come to think about these issues (grabb, 2007). the business sector usually favours less provision of social and economic security and advocates for weakened government management of employment practices, coupled with fewer support programs and benefits, all of which results in less redistribution of income and wealth (langille, 2009; leys, 2001; macarov, 2003). its call for lower taxes – especially for the corporate sector and the wealthy – weakens governmental ability to provide benefits and supports that provide economic and social security to the population (menahem, 2010). the organized labour sector usually supports greater redistribution through higher taxation on the business and corporate sector and the wealthy, stronger government management of the workplace, and greater provision of supports and benefits (navarro et al., 2004). it gains power and influence through the percentage of the population that belong to trade unions and its alliance with governing parties of the left (brady, 2009; bryant, 2009; navarro & shi, 2001). the civil society sector gains power and influence from its ability to influence public opinion and shape public policy through networks of agencies, organizations, and other nongovernmental institutions (brady, 2009). and, of course, the citizenry itself has influence through its ability to elect representatives to governments. the balance of power among sectors differs among nations with resulting impacts on the distribution of the social determinants of health (raphael, 2013b). it has long been noted that public policy approaches of the social democratic nations of denmark, finland, norway, and sweden act such that the distribution of the social determinants of health is more equitable than international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 199 in the liberal nations of australia, canada, new zealand, the u.k., and the u.s.a. (health council of canada, 2010; innocenti research centre, 2005; navarro & shi, 2002). denmark provides a conundrum for a welfare state analysis in that its life expectancy is very low in comparison to other wealthy developed nations. its infant mortality rate, however, is very favourable and there is evidence that it has begun to explicitly address issues of health equity in its public policy (povlsen, karlsson, regber, sandstig, & fosse, 2014). the conservative nations such as belgium, france, germany, and the netherlands fall midway between the social democratic and liberal nations, with the latin states closer to the liberal states. in both the social democratic and conservative nations, consultation and communication among these sectors is common, sometimes institutionalized and sometimes informal (swank, 2002). this is usually not the case in the liberal nations, a situation that is sometimes called “disorganized capitalism” (offe, 1985). implications attempts to improve children’s health can benefit from the insights provided by a political economy approach. the approach specifies that children’s health is shaped by a range of societal structures and processes that act to distribute the social determinants of both children’s and their parents’ health. these structures and processes create specific forms of public policy that provide parents and their children with the economic and social conditions necessary for health. these public policy areas include income and wealth distribution, employment security and working conditions, features supporting early child development, food and housing security, and the provision of health and social services. each jurisdiction will see a differing balance of power and influence among the business, labour, and civil society sectors. these differences in power and influence have a profound influence upon the direction that public policy will take. ultimately, these differences in power – and the resultant distribution of the social determinants of children’s health – are shaped by the politics of a nation. as well intentioned as efforts will be to work directly to influence public policy and strengthen specific social determinants of children’s health through community action and direct service delivery, these efforts may have limited effects. instead, the political economy approach argues that the key goal should be to shape the politics of a nation in the direction of supporting children’s health. this will require controlling the influence of the business sector and strengthening the organized labour and civil society sectors. it will also involve support of, and election of, political parties whose positions are consistent with such an approach. ultimately, the promotion of children’s health requires engagement in the political process with the goal of reordering a society’s economic and political systems such that they provide the conditions necessary for children’s health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 186–203 200 references benzeval, m., judge, k., & whitehead, m. 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(2002). policy paradox: the art of political decision making. new york: norton. swank, d. (2002). global capital, political institutions, and policy change in developed welfare states. new york: cambridge university press. teeple, g. (2000). globalization and the decline of social reform: into the twenty-first century. aurora, on: garamond press. wiktorowicz, m. (2010). evolution of health care policy: deconstructing divergent approaches. in t. bryant, d. raphael, & m. rioux (eds.), staying alive: critical perspectives on health, illness, and health care (2nd ed., pp. 287–308). toronto: canadian scholars’ press. wilkinson, r. g. (1996). unhealthy societies: the afflictions of inequality. new york: routledge. highlight text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13660750310486730 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapro/17.2.189 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/133660750210452143 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00113921030515004 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511613371 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203421680 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 240 helping children with home education: how home education can enable good educational outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care karleen gribble and rebecca english abstract: children who experience maltreatment in their families may be placed in outof-home care. a large, and increasing, number of children are being raised in these settings in australia. the history of maltreatment that children in out-of-home care have experienced results in a variety of educational challenges. it is generally believed that schools are best placed to serve the educational needs of these children. however, there is extensive evidence that schools are unable to facilitate learning success for many children in out-of-home care. this paper argues that because home education can provide a low stress environment and individually tailored learning, it can be an effective method of education for children and young people in out-of-home care. a case study of a homeeducated child in out-of-home care is presented. keywords: complex trauma, out-of-home care, home education, home schooling karleen gribble, phd (corresponding author), is an adjunct associate professor in the school of nursing and midwifery at western sydney university, locked bag 1797, penrith, nsw 2150, australia. email: k.gribble@westernsydney.edu.au rebecca english, phd, is a lecturer in education at queensland university of technology, victoria park rd, kelvin grove, queensland, 4059, australia. email: r.english@qut.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 241 there are a large number of children and young people in out-of-home care in australia (australian institute of health & welfare, 2014). many are in these settings because they have been abused, neglected or otherwise maltreated (australian institute of health & welfare, 2014). it is generally believed that “children and young people in out-of-home care are best supported educationally with formal educational environments by specialist educationalists” (department of family & community services, 2014). this paper challenges this view and proposes that good quality and caring home education settings can help children and young people in out-of-of home care overcome the education deficits that they frequently face. it also proposes that home education settings can assist in these children’s non-educational recovery from the impacts of trauma. we present a case study of alex, a child in out-of-home care whose circumstances were such that he was particularly troubled in school, but some of the disadvantage he faced was overcome by being home educated by a caring foster family. it is important to note what we mean by home education. we follow jackson and allan (2010) and harding and farrell (2003) who define home education as the facilitation of learning from a home base, by the parents, outside of the school system. while the term home schooling is commonly used in north america, in australia and other commonwealth countries, home education is the preferred terminology as it recognises that this approach to learning is often not noticeably school-like. there is limited research into the home education movement in australia, and much of it is confined to stereotypes (cf., english, 2013). morton (2012) argues that perceptions around home education families range from “social ‘misfits’: either ‘tree-hugging hippies’, religious fanatics [to] ‘hothousing’ parents determined that their offspring should achieve academic excellence at an early age” (p. 46). while the community is fragmented, and there is no single home education community in australia, there are some common threads in parents’ decisions to home educate. these include negative school experiences, and a belief in the ability of home education to meet the specific and individual needs of children (english, 2013, 2015, 2016) this choice of home education exists on a continuum with other forms of private education (english, 2013) and is one of a number of options for parents whose children have needs that cannot be catered for in a mainstream school setting. the educational needs of children in out-of-home-care are difficult to meet in mainstream schools, and home education may provide an advantageous alternative. literature review: what do we know about out-of-home care children and their education? fifty thousand children and young people live in foster care in australia (australian institute of health & welfare, 2014) in addition to the numbers living in non-reimbursed kinship care or adoptive families. most children in foster care, and many in informal kinship care or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 242 adoptive families, have experienced maltreatment that has resulted in their removal from parental care (australian institute of health & welfare, 2014). maltreatment is defined as deficient care that includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, and exposure to domestic violence (gilbert et al., 2009). the effects of maltreatment are myriad and profoundly negative (schore, 2001b). when an individual experiences sustained, repeated or multiple traumas, as commonly occurs with childhood maltreatment, complex post traumatic stress disorder (also called complex trauma) often results (cloitre et al., 2009). education of children in out-of-home care in schools most children in australia are educated in mainstream school settings. australian state and territory government policies preference the enrolment of children in foster care in government schools (cf., department of family & community services, 2013) as opposed to non-government schools. however, meeting the educational, social, and emotional needs of children with a history of trauma in schools can be extremely difficult. as a result, these children often do not gain a sufficient education in schools or recover from their traumatic past (australian institute of health & welfare, 2011; berlin, vinnerljung, & hjern, 2011). poor school outcomes for children with a history of trauma include: behavioural and disciplinary problems (zima et al., 2000); and higher rates of suspension, expulsion, absenteeism, truancy, grade repetition, and drop-out (scherr, 2007; townsend, 2012; zima et al., 2000; zorc et al., 2013) than children who have not experienced trauma. up to 68% of children in foster or kinship care in australia have been found to be not meeting literacy or numeracy benchmarks deemed necessary for satisfactory progression at school (australian institute of health & welfare, 2011). furthermore, as many as 40% of children in out-of-home care in australia have declining or continuing low performance in school when compared to minimum benchmarks (australian institute of health & welfare, 2011). once children fall behind educationally, it is difficult for them to catch up, and the disadvantage tends to compound over time (willms, 2014). a report into the educational outcomes for children in out-of-home care in nsw found that many children were “not faring well educationally” (townsend, 2012, p20). the effect of school failure for these children includes an excess risk of suicide, substance abuse, criminality, and welfare dependency when compared with care leavers who obtain a better education (berlin et al., 2011). we propose that poor school outcomes for children in out-of home care are a result of factors associated with a history of trauma. these factors include: • children exhibiting asynchronous social, emotional, and intellectual development resulting in difficulties with peer relationships and learning. • children experiencing poor stress regulation, which affects them negatively in the school environment because this environment can be stressful. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 243 • school attendance having a negative impact on the relationship between caregiver/s and child, adversely affecting their attachment bond and recovery from trauma. the focus of school education on academic learning is not well matched to the needs of traumatised children. traumatised children exhibit asynchronous development children with a history of trauma often exhibit asynchronous development. there can be a wide variation in their social, emotional, and intellectual development (gribble, 2007; oswald, heil, & goldbeck, 2010; perry, 2006; van den dries, juffer, van ijzendoorn, & bakermanskranenburg, 2010) and they often have significant delays across all areas of development (perry, 2006; scarborough, lloyd, & barth, 2009). delayed social and emotional development commonly leads to experiences of bullying in school; as both the victim and the perpetrator (daly & gilligan, 2005; pears, kim, & leve, 2012; vacca & kramer-vida, 2012). it has been suggested (van der kolk, 2003) that traumatised children’s experience of bullying results from their inability to develop and maintain relationships with peers due to misreading of and inappropriate responses to social cues. these children need intensive, often one-on-one, support to catch up in their emotional development, but this is impossible to achieve in school settings (perry, 2006). delayed intellectual development may also be evident in children who have experienced trauma. intellectual delays are expressed as difficulty with attention regulation and executive functioning (holmes, stokes, & gathright, 2014), problems focusing on and completing tasks (aideuis, 2007), poor memory (aideuis, 2007), and delayed language comprehension and expression (sylvestre & merette, 2010). in order to catch up, these children require activities and interventions that meet their needs in each area of development (perry, 2006). traumatised children have poor stress regulation another factor that contributes to the negative school experiences of traumatised children is that they commonly have poor stress regulation. children who have experienced maltreatment have lacked the sensitive care needed for their stress regulation system to develop as it should (schore, 2001b). as a result, their brain reacts abnormally to stress and they may struggle to regulate their emotions (dozier, peloso, lewis, laurenceau, & levine, 2008; van der kolk, 2003). children with a history of trauma have experienced the world as persistently threatening and, as a result, may live in a baseline state of alarm even in environments that are supportive (perry, 2006). when stressful experiences are introduced, children can rapidly move into a state of terror (perry, 2006). for traumatised children, the school environment contains many stressors. these include being asked to undertake a difficult task, making a mistake, loud noises, or rejection by a peer. stressors such as these can overwhelm children with a history of trauma and provoke a fight or flight response (perry, 2006). making mistakes and rejection can be particularly difficult for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 244 traumatised children; they are vulnerable to feelings of shame, humiliation, and unworthiness in response to such experiences (schore, 1998). aspects of the school curricula, such as family tree projects, and mothers’ and fathers’ days can also cause great distress for children (townsend, 2012). when they are in a state of great fear, children are unable to process information, including instructions, and are unable to effectively learn (perry, 2006). as a result of exposure to acutely stressful situations in school, and their diminished ability to regulate stress and their emotions, children who have been traumatised often exhibit withdrawn or disruptive behaviours. however, schools struggle to understand the behaviour and needs of these children, with teachers’ and other school staff’s responses often tending towards the punitive or harsh, further reinforcing the view of children that they are worthless (townsend, 2012). although teacher training programs for helping traumatised children are available (australian childhood foundation, 2009), foster parents, kinship carers, and adoptive parents often have difficulty assisting schools to understand the special needs of their children and how best to manage their behaviour and learning (zetlin, weinberg, & shea, 2010). school interferes with the attachment between caregiver and child attending school can interfere with emotional healing by hindering the development of the attachment relationship between children and their caregivers (gribble, 2007; schofield & beek, 2005). as identified by bowlby (1974) and ainsworth (1973), the relationship a child has with their primary attachment figures is central to their development. a secure attachment allows children to feel safe and to expend their energy on activities other than those necessary for survival, including academic learning (schore, 2001a). development of a healthy attachment is a priority for children in out-of-home care (nsw department of community services, 2006). however, children who have experienced maltreatment at the hands of caregivers are often extremely resistant to developing a relationship with their foster parents, kinship carers, or adoptive parents (dozier, 2005). these children have found adults to be untrustworthy and, to prevent further hurt, will attempt to keep any adult at a distance and seek to sabotage the development of positive relationships (gribble, 2007; schofield & beek, 2005). it can therefore be difficult and time consuming for caregivers to develop healthy attachments with their foster children. this means that the time children spend in school, away from the person with whom they need to build an attachment, as well as the attachment figure’s inability to protect the child from school-based stressors, may affect the child’s recovery. for some children, this can seriously detract from the development of the attachment relationship and therefore from development in other areas, including learning. schools prioritise academic learning over emotional recovery finally, school systems assume that children will learn that they are lovable, valuable individuals who can trust adults to protect them before they start school and so focus on academic learning rather than emotional wellbeing. however, traumatised children have often international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 245 had experiences that have left them feeling that they are unlovable and unworthy (gregorowski & seedat, 2013). unless these underlying beliefs are addressed, traumatised individuals commonly have great difficulty in functioning successfully in society (friestad, ase-bente, & kjelsberg, 2012; strine et al., 2012). recovery from trauma requires sequential, consistent, predictable, patterned, and frequent therapeutic care that avoids stress, provides safety, has a high level of relational activities, responds to the needs of the child, and provides developmentally appropriate experiences and pleasure to the child (gribble, 2007; perry, 2006). this therapy allows the brain to develop regulatory capacity as is evidenced in children’s behaviour and physiology (dozier et al., 2008; perry, 2006). stretched staff, an overcrowded curriculum and other factors that are inherent in modern schooling means that such care is extremely difficult to provide in a school setting. however, this sort of care can be provided in home education settings. home education provides an individualised education for children in out-of-home care a diversity of educational philosophies, pedagogies, and practices underpin individual home education experiences (jackson & allan, 2010); however, what home education approaches hold in common is the ability to tailor learning to meet the needs of individual children. tailoring of learning in home education may occur in regards to content, timing of learning, the educational environment, and the method of delivery of educational programs. individual tailoring means that deficiencies in one area of learning need not impact learning in other areas, as learning opportunities can be provided in ways that mitigate disadvantage (e.g., if a child is a poor reader, the one-on-one nature of home education means that information can be read to the child). it also means that children’s individual learning needs can be identified and education provided based on student capacity and stage of learning, across and within subject areas. progressive modification of learning can occur, and educational opportunities can be taken advantage of at short notice, or delayed or abandoned based upon the child’s needs. children’s interests can be used to facilitate learning. socialisation occurs intentionally, and friendships can be fostered based on similar interests across ages. home education has been found to be effective for children who have a variety of special needs, and a significant proportion of home educated children in australia do have some such need (home education association, 2014). home education of children with many differing needs has been researched: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (duvall, delquadri, & ward, 2004), giftedness (winstanley, 2009), autism spectrum disorder (kidd & kaczmarek, 2010), school refusal (stroobant & jones, 2006), deafness (parks, 2009), multiple severe health problems (obeng, 2010), and intellectual disabilities (reilly, 2007). it has been found that the individualised nature of home education and the absence of problems like bullying means that home education is able to meet the needs of children with atypical skills, knowledge, and needs. the result is improvement in the learning, and the physical and mental health of children with special needs (home education association, 2014; jackson, 2009; kidd & kaczmarek, 2010; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 246 reilly, 2002). children with a history of trauma are, for the same reasons, well placed to benefit from home education. home education can also provide an environment that facilitates recovery from trauma. as previously described, in order for traumatised children to recover they require care that is matched to their emotional development, avoids stress, includes repeated interpersonal activities, and provides pleasure. it is possible to ensure that each of these aspects of care can be provided by home education, as a few examples will illustrate: • the emotional development of the child can be considered in managing peer interactions. peer interactions can be intentional, meaning that children might play with individuals who are of a different age but whose stage of development or interests match theirs. caregivers can coach the child on appropriate responses before, during, and after peer interactions. • stress can be minimised through avoidance of environmental or other triggers that distress the child. providing learning activities that are not too challenging and are delivered at an appropriate rate reduces the risk of children feeling overwhelmed. ensuring that stress is kept at a manageable level allows children to develop adaptive coping strategies rather than be overwhelmed and deploy maladaptive ones. • learning activities can be specifically designed to ensure that they include frequent interaction with the caregiver. caregivers can provide children with on-going praise, encouragement, and affection as they engage in education and so address the relational impoverishment that they have previously experienced. the presence of the caregiver allows children to “check in” for reassurance whenever they need it. • learning can be made pleasurable through choosing educational activities that take advantage of the child’s natural interests and learning style, optimising both the learning and the enjoyment that children derive from the activity the case of alex in what follows, a reflection about alex, a home-educated and deeply traumatised child, is outlined. alex is not his real name. the case study of alex was provided by his foster mother to the first author, who gave expert opinion on his behalf in relation to court proceedings. written consent for use of this case study in this paper was provided by his foster mother, who holds parental responsibility for alex. the western sydney university office of research services confirmed that ethics approval was not required for the use of this case study. alex’s story is one that illustrates the possible redemptive effects of home education as a means of ameliorating trauma in a child whose education had been seriously affected and whose development in all areas had been compromised. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 247 data: one child in care and his story alex is ten years old with a history of severe trauma. in his first 6.5 years he experienced severe physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect; he was also frequently exposed to domestic violence. he lived in a dozen or more placements during that time. alex attended preschool erratically. he started school at 5 years of age in a government school in a class of more than 20 students. in his first term of attendance, he was violent and aggressive. as a result he was forbidden from going on school excursions. in second term, he attended a very small rural government school that had nine students. a teachers’ aide was provided solely for alex, five mornings a week. in the mornings his behaviour was manageable, but in the afternoons it became disruptive and difficult. at the end of his kindergarten year, alex could count to 10 but did not know what the numbers meant. he knew the name of some colours. he could recite the alphabet but could not read any words. he knew no nursery rhymes, could not draw, and would not colour in because he had been told he was bad at it. he did not know basic information about the world such as what rivers, oceans, towns, cities, or the moon were. he had no friends, had not ever attended a birthday party or seen a birthday cake, and did not know how to play. at age 6.5 years alex was placed in permanent kinship care. his foster mother identified that his development was significantly delayed and that he had not met milestones typically achieved by much younger children. for example, he had not achieved object permanence, was not toilet trained, and did not know how to use a knife and fork. she also recognised that the abuse and neglect he had experienced had left him hyper vigilant, constantly stressed, and scared of many ordinary things. he was living in a state of high alert, was underweight as a result of not eating, had extreme difficulty going to sleep, woke many times a night, and was exceedingly reactive to noise. his foster mother decided to home educate him. she felt that home educating alex would give him the best chance of having an environment that would meet his emotional, physical, developmental, and educational needs. she focused on assisting alex to feel safe and to catch up developmentally. enabling developmental catch up was a challenge because his development was so uneven across and within domains. she found that alex required predictability from day to day, that he needed regular physical and verbal reassurance, and frequent physical contact (hugs, caresses, and lap sitting). she discovered that he learnt best through hands-on activities and through experiences such as visiting museums, art galleries, and historical sites. she found that great care was often necessary to create an environment that was not over-stimulating or frightening to alex, and that dimmed lighting and a quiet room (with earplugs) were often needed for him to be able to concentrate. she learnt that, if his stress levels rose, stopping an activity was required in order to prevent him becoming overwhelmed and lashing out with aggressive behaviour. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 248 a large number of health professionals were involved in assisting alex and his foster mother including a psychologist, an occupational therapist, a general practitioner, a paediatrician, an audiologist, and an optometrist. in addition to regular appointments with these professionals, alex also attended riding for the disabled and group therapy sessions during normal school hours. because of the flexible nature of home education, these appointments could be fitted in around his academic learning. alex has now been home educated for 3.5 years. he has mastered important life skills such as toilet training, washing and dressing, and feeding himself properly. he can play, including imaginative play, board games, and construction activities such as with blocks. he can ride a bike and swim. he loves to cook and is enjoying growing food in the garden. alex is testing as below average in academics. he can read at age appropriate level, and his spelling is progressing well, but his comprehension and writing composition are lagging. he loves being read to. in mathematics he is working at one year behind that expected for his age. however, alex is very interested in learning about the world and has a wide knowledge of history, geography, and science, gained mainly through hands-on experiences. he enjoys music and dancing, has been awarded 1st grade in euphonium playing, and is about to undertake the 2nd grade exam. he has a few good friends and a wider circle of children he plays with less regularly. his understanding of object permanence has developed and he can tolerate some separation from his foster mother. many challenges remain for alex and his family. however, he has made enormous progress and his foster mother is of the view that it is doubtful that much of this would have been possible if he had not been home educated. data analysis: looking at alex’s story a thematic analysis of the data presented above about alex’s journey is illustrative. there are several themes that present in the data that show how alex’s education had been affected by his difficult home circumstances. these themes are: (a) the educational deficit cycle and its effect on the child’s achievement in school; (b) the need to form a strong attachment with a permanent care giver; (c) behavioural responses to stress because of previous harm; (d) the need to engage with paediatric professionals; and (e) the need for an individually tailored learning program. each of these themes will be discussed and related to the literature outlined above. there is clearly a cycle of educational deficit stemming from alex’s experiences in and out of out-of-home care. to illustrate, by the end of kindergarten, alex’s numerical development was limited, as he could say the numbers one to ten but failed to understand the reasons for their use, and he was not demonstrating an ability to read any written words. it would appear that, like many children in foster or kinship care in australia (australian institute of health & welfare, 2011), alex was not meeting literacy or numeracy benchmarks for his age. he would need international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 249 special or remedial instruction in order to catch up to his peers; however, the effectiveness of such instruction may be limited (scherr, 2007). further, in an institutionalised educational setting, alex would have been difficult for his teachers to manage. alex was not toilet trained, which would have placed an enormous strain on his teacher. furthermore, he had trouble with object permanence, meaning that separation from his caregivers would have been very distressing, as he may have felt as if they would never return. similarly, he was reactive to noise, which suggests classrooms and playgrounds would have been troubling for alex. in addition, it was stated that alex refused to colour in because he had been told that he was not good at colouring, which suggests that alex experienced difficulties with tasks as a threat to his sense of self that must be avoided. unfortunately, his learning delays would have meant that such threats would have been common occurrences. thus, as townsend (2012) notes, his reactive state to stressors that are common in a classroom, such as challenges with learning and loud noises, would have provoked a fight or flight response in alex. indeed, that alex had been prohibited from attending any school excursions in his first term of kindergarten because of his violence towards others suggests that the school environment was overwhelming for him. it is unsurprising then that his learning in school was so limited and his behaviour so challenging. the text also suggests that alex was suffering from disordered attachment. given his history of severe maltreatment and the large number of caregivers he had experienced, this is not surprising. it is noted that he did not have object permanence at the age of 6.5 years. similarly, the text indicates that he was “hyper vigilant, constantly stressed and scared of many ordinary things” while “living in a state of high alert”. further, alex required “frequent physical contact” and reassurance. each of these problems would pose great challenges to teachers and peers in mainstream school settings, and his needs would be difficult to accommodate. as noted above, schools are often unable to meet the attachment needs of children who have been traumatised. for alex, home education allowed a focus to be placed on his emotional wellbeing, and feelings of safety. because alex and his foster mother were together through the day she was able to provide him with the frequent verbal and physical reassurance that he needed. that there has been some success in this area is evident, as alex now has object permanence and can tolerate separations from his foster mother, and he has been able to develop some close friendships with other children. the text notes that alex suffered a range of problems when dealing with day-to-day environmental stressors. these included the need to avoid overstimulation including too much light and noise and the need for a predictable environment flexible enough to accommodate his needs. as noted above, it can be extremely difficult to meet individual children’s specific needs in school settings (dill, flynn, hollingshead, & fernandes, 2012; townsend, 2012). similarly, traumatised children are often unable to meet the developmental outcomes expected of them in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 250 schools which may lead to further behavioural problems, perpetuating the cycle (forsman & vinnerljung, 2012; scherr, 2007; townsend, 2012; zima et al., 2000; zorc et al., 2013). alex saw a range of allied health professionals including a psychologist, occupational therapist, general practitioner, audiologist and optometrist. in addition, alex attended specialised horse-riding lessons that were scheduled during school hours. this would have presented difficulties for alex had he been attending school as he would have further suffered setbacks from missed classes in order to attend appointments with these professionals. van der kolk (2003) noted that students with a history of trauma have a range of needs that are best served by specialist attention, including the need to learn to regulate emotions, to understand that the world is not permanently threatening (perry, 2006), and to see that they are supported (townsend, 2012). the scheduling of schools may make professional help to ameliorate these issues impossible. as previously noted, alex entered kinship care with significant deficits in learning across multiple domains. in addition to shortfalls in literacy and numeracy, he did not have knowledge or skills that would ordinarily be expected of children his age such as being able to use a knife and fork, being able to play, knowing what the moon is, or knowing nursery rhymes. however, via home education, alex’s foster mother was able to provide learning opportunities that matched his interests and learning needs. she discovered that he learnt best through hands-on learning and through visits to museums, art galleries, and historical sites, and much of his learning could be facilitated through such activities. as a result, alex now has a “wide knowledge of history, geography and science”, and an interest in learning more. in contrast, alex’s opportunity to learn in individually appropriate ways was severely restricted when he was at school because he was prohibited from attending school excursions. home education also allowed alex’s foster mother to focus attention on areas where alex had the greatest deficits. this focus has meant that, while he remains behind in some aspects of literacy and in numeracy, he has progressed in his skills and is continuing to do so. furthermore, at the age of ten, he is able to do much of the important life work that is expected: he can toilet, wash and dress himself, can eat and prepare his own food, is able to play in a developmentally healthy way, and has interests. the text suggests that, for alex, the foster care family’s decision to home educate has helped overcome many of the issues he faced. conclusion in summary, although school is a positive experience for many children, it is often a negative one for children in out-of-home care. many such children lack the basic social and academic skills of their peers, find the academic work of school too difficult, and find peer interactions to be destructive. the school environment can be extremely stressful: it can overwhelm their capacity to cope, resulting in destructive behaviours, ongoing conflict with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 240–256 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615720 251 teachers and students, and reduced learning. these negative experiences can reinforce their preexisting trauma. in contrast, home 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(2013). the relationship of placement experience to school absenteeism and changing schools in young, school-aged children in foster care. children and youth services review, 35(5), 826–833. http://epubs.scu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=theses http://www.cese.nsw.gov.au/images/stories/pdf/2014_ttfm_nsw_report.pdf helping children with home education: how home education can enable good educational outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care karleen gribble and rebecca english literature review: what do we know about out-of-home care children and their education? education of children in out-of-home care in schools traumatised children exhibit asynchronous development traumatised children have poor stress regulation school interferes with the attachment between caregiver and child schools prioritise academic learning over emotional recovery home education provides an individualised education for children in out-of-home care the case of alex data: one child in care and his story data analysis: looking at alex’s story conclusion references microsoft word 10 honour_based_violence.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs121202120084 “honour”-based violence and the politics of culture in canada: advancing a cultural analysis of multiscalar violence salina abji and anna c. korteweg abstract: since 2015, in canada, political discourse on “honour”-based violence has shifted away from highly problematic understandings of “culture” as the cause of violence among racialized, muslim, and immigrant communities. instead, talk of culture has dropped out of the equation altogether in favour of more structural definitions of gender-based violence (gbv). in this article, we ask what gets lost when culture is not taken into account when talking about or trying to understand forms of gbv. drawing from theoretical conceptualizations of culture — defined as “situated practices of meaning-making” that shape all experiences of violence, and societal responses to violence — we argue for a multiscalar approach to culture. to illustrate this framework, we first offer a critical analysis of aruna papp’s 2012 memoir unworthy creature as an exemplar of stigmatizing uses of culture and a key text promoted by the conservative federal government at the time. we then turn to interviews we conducted with service providers serving south asian survivors of gbv in toronto from 2011 to 2013. our analysis illustrates how to talk about culture as a key ingredient shaping multiscalar violence, regardless of whether that violence occurs in majority or minority communities. we conclude with three policy implications for addressing hbv moving forward. keywords: culture, gender-based violence, honour-based violence, south asians, canada salina abji phd (corresponding author) is a sociologist and research consultant in toronto, ontario. email: salina@salinaabji.ca anna c. korteweg phd is professor of sociology at the university of toronto mississauga, 3359 mississauga road, mississauga, on l5l 1c6. email: anna.korteweg@utoronto.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 74  this research investigates how definitions of culture impact efforts to address so-called honour-based violence (hbv) as a form of gender-based violence (gbv). the conservative federal government that held power in canada from 2006 until 2015 approached hbv as a “barbaric cultural practice”, a term also applied to forced marriage, polygamy, and female genital mutilation (zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act 2015). in our previous work, we have shown how such politicized framings of hbv constitute “culture talk” — that is, politicized uses of culture that frame minority communities as backward or as security threats to western nations (abji et al., 2019; korteweg et al. 2013; see also mamdani, 2007; razack, 1994). importantly, culture talk works to undermine rather than increase access to safety and supports for gbv survivors from minority communities (abji et al., 2019; korteweg et al., 2013; see also jiwani, 2005; razack, 2003). more recently, however, public discourse on hbv has shifted. since the liberal party came into power in 2015, the federal government has moved away from talk of culture by, for example, removing the phrase “barbaric cultural practices” from legislation and qualifying references to hbv with the phrase “so-called” — as in “so-called honour violence” — a strategy originally developed by advocates to signal the contested nature of the term (korteweg et al., 2013). in this article, we ask what gets lost when “culture” is rhetorically dropped from discourse directed towards addressing hbv. overall, what we offer is a critique both of stigmatizing culture talk and of more recent attempts to use culture-neutral definitions of hbv. specifically, we argue that the culture-neutral approaches to hbv adopted by the government are a shift in the right direction, in that they address the stigmatizing effects of culture talk to some degree. however, such attempts to “de-culture” violence also obscure how all types of violence (and by extension all responses to violence) are situated in culture. indeed, we suggest that a culture-neutral approach, much like culture talk, closes off possibilities for a comprehensive response to all forms of violence, including gbv. drawing from rich theoretical traditions in the conceptualization of culture (e.g., bourdieu, 1997; geertz, 1973; hall, 1997; swidler, 1986; williams, 1977), we argue for a more nuanced and systemic approach to culture in contemporary approaches to so-called hbv and gbv. in doing so, we draw on a framework that we have developed over the past 10 years, which posits that culture — which we define as “situated practices of meaning-making” — is a key ingredient for understanding and addressing all forms of violence, including hbv (see abji et al., 2019; kortweg et al., 2013; see also siddiqui, 2000). for example, paying attention to culture as situated practices of meaning-making can provide important insights into how the attitudes of antiviolence workers themselves are imbued with cultural understandings of both gbv and freedom from gbv (abji et al., 2019). instead of culture talk or culture-neutral approaches we suggest a third, more nuanced, way of addressing culture that we term “culture as meaning-making”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 75  to illustrate how this view of culture as meaning-making can be mobilized in efforts to address hbv, we ground our discussion in research we conducted in toronto, canada at the height of public debates on hbv (2011–2013). our analysis is divided into three parts. the first illustrates the problematic uses of culture talk during this period, with a focus on aruna papp’s memoir unworthy creature: a punjabi daughter’s memoir of honour, shame and love (papp & kay, 2012). this book was endorsed by then minister of the status of women, conservative member of parliament rona ambrose, as evidence of the “terrors of the ‘culture of honour’ ”. papp subsequently claimed to have influenced the conservative federal government’s framing of hbv as a “barbaric cultural practice” in their 2015 zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act (see abji et al., 2019). we then turn to interviews that we conducted in this time period with 15 service providers who had extensive experience working with diverse south asian communities in the greater toronto area (gta). through our analysis of service providers’ nuanced accounts of the forms of gbv that south asian families were experiencing (including so-called hbv), we highlight the practices of meaning-making — which we would describe as cultural — that underpinned their conceptions of violence. further, we show how the forms of gbv that service providers described were multiscalar, and in so doing, we develop a conceptualization of violence as structured by multiple and intersecting forces of family, society, economy, and the state. in the second part of our analysis, we show how our interviewees rejected stigmatizing uses of culture (culture talk) to describe gbv. we also highlight how problematic uses of culture talk obscured the multiscalarity of violence. in the third part, we discuss the importance of culture as meaning-making for developing policy approaches that take into account the complexities of gbv in a wide range of expressions. to illustrate this point, we conclude the article with three concrete policy implications that this approach to culture suggests for addressing hbv. through this analysis, we offer not only an alternative way to talk about culture, but also one that takes seriously the contexts in which the practice of gbv and hbv are embedded. if we think about cultures as situated processes of meaning-making that have contexts and occur within broader, multiscalar, social structures, this increases the likelihood that responses to violence will succeed. we argue that when we bring culture as meaning-making together with a multiscalar analysis, we are better positioned to address gbv as an issue that affects not only survivors, but their families and communities as well. in what follows, we start by outlining the current literature on hbv and the politics of culture, then turn to our methodology and analysis. understanding “honour”-based violence and the politics of culture “honour”-based violence is typically defined in the literature as a family-initiated, planned response to the perception that a daughter or other female family member has violated the family’s honour in the eyes of the community (sev’er & yurdakul, 2001). although on the surface this definition may seem to offer an objective way to capture a particular form of violence, in the contemporary immigration context such apparently objective definitions of violence are in fact politicized. such definitions also fail to integrate a view of violence as multiscalar, where we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 76  define multiscalarity as the complex intersection of spaces (local, national, transnational) with the multivalent expressions of power (discourse, legality, materiality) that shape life (guimont marceau et al., 2020; laine, 2016). in contemporary accounts that attempt to link hbv to a people’s culture, the multiscalar context and forms of violence that occur are ignored through a process of “racialization”, by which we mean the process of coming to view a group of people as racially marked, with the perceived practices of some members of the group becoming reified (“biologized”, or treated as innate) to mark the entire group as less civilized or less capable of thoughtful action than the groups that form “majority society” (omi & winant, 2014). rather than being understood as one of the myriad forms that familial and domestic violence can take, hbv becomes a sign of immigrant backwardness (abu-lughod, 2011; korteweg, 2014; razack, 2008). in addition, hbv is often erroneously seen as particularly a “muslim problem” (abu-lughod, 2011; zine, 2009). with regard to south asian communities in the canadian context, particularly those in the greater toronto area 1 , we pointed out in earlier work with lisa barnoff and deepa mattoo (korteweg et al., 2013) that violence against women: … has often been publicly understood through highly problematic ideas about culture. media representations of the murders of aqsa parvez in 2007, and the shafia sisters and their aunt in 2009, furthered the racialization and stigmatization of these women’s communities rather than digging deeper into the complexities of the extreme violence they experienced (korteweg, 2012). such popular discussions position “culture” as producing a “backward” civilization in which women have little value other than as the containers of their family’s “honour” (korteweg and yurdakul, 2009, 2010; razack, 2004, 2007, 2008). these uses of culture impede women’s ability to access social, civil, and human rights: research shows that when inequality combines with cultural stigmatization, immigrant women and girls experiencing violence may fail to seek help, risk having their needs misunderstood, face overt and covert discrimination from service providers, or fear being ostracized by their own communities when they try to access services (korteweg and yurdakul 2010; berman et al 2009; moffat et al 2009; dustin and phillips 2008; shirwadkar 2004; raj and silverman 2002; jiwani 2005). (p. 1) in other words, while we do not deny the existence of extreme forms of violence justified by perpetrators in the name of “honour”, we also argue that to be properly considered such violence must be carefully situated within existing structural contexts. 1south asian communities in the greater toronto area (gta) are relatively well established and continue to grow. according to the 2016 census, south asians constitute the largest group of visible minorities in toronto, about 13% of the total population. these communities are highly diverse. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 77  based on the literature and our own prior work in this area, our analytical approach views culture as a key ingredient for understanding and addressing all forms of violence, including gbv. as detailed in abji et al. (2019), we use culture as an analytical category, one that brings into view socially embedded processes of meaning-making in which every act of violence and every response to violence has a multiscalar context. too often the interpretive potential of understanding culture as an analytical category is superseded by the imposition of an uncritical, “commonsense” use of culture as the factor that determines the behaviour of a given community (fischer & dahinden, 2017). we label as “culture talk” such uses of culture to explain violence, in which culture is treated as ossified, ahistorical, and unchanging (see also mamdani, 2007; razack, 2008). the ubiquity of culture talk, with its gendered racializing effects, hinders the efforts of activists and advocates whose hopes of addressing gbv hinge on promoting an understanding of the effect of culture as socially-embedded processes of meaning-making. even raising the issue of culture at all risks activating culture talk. we use the phrase “culture as meaning-making” in order to get at the ways in which culture is dynamic and continually shifting, rather than being a static, deterministic, or unitary force. we draw on work by raymond williams (1977), stuart hall (1997), and clifford geertz (1973), who, in different ways, theorize culture as a continual and complex set of processes through which we come to understand our own subjectivity, our sense of relationship with others, and the relationship between individuals, institutions, and social, political, and economic forces. this understanding of culture as meaning-making is also rooted in various readings in sociology and anthropology, including swidler (1986) and bourdieu (1977), who in their own ways centre processes of meaning-making to understand the structuring force of culture. we are also influenced by volpp (2000), who held that racialized persons are objectified in law “as culture”, while white persons are subjects who “have” culture. as such, culture as meaning-making informs all practices of violence whether perpetrated by majority or minority members of society. moreover, these processes of meaning-making also condition all responses to violence at the individual and institutional levels. by directing analytical attention towards processes of meaning-making we gain additional insight into the multiscalar forces associated with state power, the political economy, and migration regimes that shape expressions of and responses to gbv in all its forms. methodology in our analysis, we draw on the framework we developed and described in earlier publications (see abji et al., 2019; korteweg, 2014; korteweg et al., 2013; korteweg & yurdakul, 2009, 2010). the framework is based in part on research we conducted between 2011 and 2013 during a period of heightened attention to hbv in canada. we conducted qualitative interviews with 15 professionals in the service sector who had long-standing engagements with addressing gbv international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 78  among the various south asian communities of the gta. the research project received approval from the university of toronto’s ethics review board. all but two of the interviews were conducted one-on-one by the first author, who is herself south asian and an activist on these issues. these interviews had an assumption of familiarity and a feeling of ongoing conversation despite this being a first meeting. this changed somewhat for the two interviews where both authors were present, the second author being of white immigrant background. in those cases, interviewees placed more emphasis on explanation to a presumed outsider. while our sample was by no means comprehensive, we tapped into a cluster of people recognized within this community of service providers as key actors in the field. many of them were highly educated with advanced degrees in social work and other fields. almost all had worked in the social service sector for over a decade; some had three decades or more of experience. fourteen of our interviewees identified as women, one as a man. all self-identified as members of the gta’s various south asian communities. the participants in our sample reflected the diversity of south asian communities in the gta more broadly. south asian communities in canada are culturally and linguistically diverse (south asian legal clinic of ontario [salco], 2013). they represent a range of settlement patterns (from newcomers to great-grandchildren of immigrants) and religious communities (including muslim, sikh, hindu, and christian, among others), and vary widely in socioeconomic status. the lives of immigrants, like those of all canadians, are shaped in the intersections of the political, economic, and social forces that structure their experience. we identified interviewees who worked within different communities to gain a richer account of the issues surrounding hbv and gbv. the interviews, which lasted between 1 and 3 hours, were recorded and transcribed. all the interviewees were given pseudonyms. we then conducted two rounds of coding, using the qualitative analysis software nvivo. the first round was largely inductive and alerted us to the tensions around the concepts of culture in the interviewees’ accounts. we then conducted a focused coding to create a more fine-grained analysis of the specific ways in which the interviewees referenced culture. in general, we followed the methodology of the extended case method (burawoy, 1998) and critical discourse analysis (van dijk, 1993; wodak & meyer, 2015) in an attempt to uncover the workings of power through the use of discourse. in addition to the interviews, we conducted an analysis of parliamentary discussion on the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act 2015. the parliamentary sources were analyzed using the same strategies as the interviews, using nvivo to conduct inductive and focused coding.2 we also analyzed the memoir of aruna papp (papp & kay, 2012), a social worker whose book 2this analysis is not directly presented in this article but is part of the larger research project that informs our framework for analysis (abji et al., 2019). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 79  and activism informed the passage of the act. the first author conducted an in-depth analysis of papp’s memoir by hand, focusing on papp’s activation of culture talk to explain violence. in what follows, we start with aruna papp’s memoir (papp & kay, 2012) as an example of culture talk that accompanied the intense public scrutiny of hbv that took place under the rightwing conservative government in canada (2006–2015). we then show how stigmatizing conceptions of culture and an assumption of immigrant backwardness impacted the people we interviewed, who described the challenges of addressing cultural specificities of gbv in a context of racialization and xenophobia. findings talking about culture and violence we were in the midst of conducting research on services to address gbv among south asian communities of the gta when aruna papp, a long-time advocate and outspoken educator/ counsellor, published a memoir chronicling her own experiences as a survivor of what she terms honour-motivated violence (hmv; papp & kay, 2012). titled unworthy creature: a punjabi daughter’s memoir of honour, shame and love, the book was co-authored by barbara kay, a columnist for the conservative national post newspaper, and on its release the memoir received support from within the conservative government. papp defined hmv as a product of ancient cultural traditions that persist among south asian immigrants in canada (see also papp, 2010). she took issue with what she saw as the framing of hmv by multiculturalists as “just an extreme form” (pp. iii–iv) of the domestic violence that was experienced by all women and girls regardless of culture. in her eyes, this framing was fuelled by white canadians’ fears of appearing racist, and ultimately kept victims of hmv from receiving the help they needed to overcome cultural “brainwashing” (pp. 210–211). in may 2012, the minister for status of women at the time, rona ambrose, hosted an official reception to launch the book, stating that “aruna papp demonstrates that the barbaric practices associated with ‘honour’ motivated violence have no place in canada, and that we must reject them using clear language of freedom and equality” (status of women canada, 2012). the book’s front cover, which featured the veiled face of an indian bride looking up and away from the reader’s gaze, was captioned by a written testimonial from minister ambrose that read: “a woman’s courageous witness to the terrors of the ‘culture of honour’ ” (papp & kay, 2012). in 2015, the same government passed the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act; aruna papp claimed to have influenced the title (abji et al., 2019). given the public attention to the book’s release, it was not surprising that papp’s name came up frequently during our interviews with other service providers — papp’s peers — who likewise were actively engaged in the gbv sector. what struck us about these conversations, however, were the clear divergences between the canadian government’s public celebration of papp’s “breaking the silence” about hbv, and the strong concerns and opposing perspectives expressed by the 15 participants in our study, who, like papp, were “insiders” within south asian international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 80  communities of the gta. almost all of our interviewees disagreed with papp’s position: they rejected what they saw as stigmatizing and overly simplistic conceptions of “south asian culture” as barbaric and something that south asian communities suffered from. in doing so, they drew our attention to the ways in which such problematic uses of culture and honour can act as a barrier to social service provision by fuelling systemic racism against south asian and immigrant communities, as well as by limiting the capacity of gbv agencies to effectively address the needs of south asian women experiencing violence (barnoff, 2001; shirwadkar, 2004). at the same time that they rejected such politicized uses of culture, our interviewees also struggled with how to talk publicly about the patterns of violence they witnessed in their work, without resorting to — or having their words coopted by — dominant discourses. indeed, for many of our respondents, this entailed avoiding questions of culture altogether, whether by insisting that “violence is violence is violence” regardless of culture, or in some cases by using the term “community” instead to try and capture what we as sociologists would label “cultural” specificities of violence (abji et al., 2019; korteweg, 2014). our interviewees also showed the importance of paying attention to structural forces. for instance, in our conversations with service providers, we did not start by asking about “honour” killing or hbv, thus providing respondents with the opportunity to provide insights beyond the responses elicited by framings of hbv such as those presented in books like papp’s (papp & kay, 2012). rather, we began our interviews by inviting participants to discuss their own definitions of violence against women. we quickly learned that a significant number of service providers understood such violence as a complex phenomenon — as what we came to call “multiscalar” — in a way that ultimately highlighted the interplay of culture with other social forces. our understanding of gbv as multiscalar was borne out by the attention interviewees gave to the complex intersection of place and space (local, national, transnational) with the multivalent expressions of power (discourse, legality, materiality) that shape life (laine, 2016; morceau et al., 2020). participants brought up various elements of this multiscalar construction of violence. one participant, for example, insisted that we need to expand the very definition of gbv to include structural forms of violence, explaining: i look at poverty as violence, i look at immigration as violence … i look at racism as violence and that healing from that is just as important, and how you do that healing too. (zaina) similarly, another advocate saw violence as something that happens “over the lifetime” and that is structured by social conditions and a multiplicity of power relations: having worked with women who are coming from immigrant communities and experiencing poverty or homelessness, you start to see that race, class, immigration status, sexual orientation — all of those play a role. (diya) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 81  reflecting a trend in understandings of gbv as intersectional (bruckert & law, 2018; crenshaw, 1991; lépinard, 2014), these responses from interviewees illustrate what we call multiscalar violence — violence produced at multiple and intersecting levels — whether as state violence at the local, national, or international levels; as economic violence; or as societal violence. interviewees spoke of women having to deal with the state’s stringent immigration regulations, and referred to increasingly limited social service provisions as a form of state violence; they reported seeing the economic violence many women experience in the form of poverty and exploitation; and they observed that society-wide violence may be produced through both institutional and everyday acts of discrimination. they viewed these forms of violence as intersecting with and shaping the violence individuals experience at the hands of family members. as we will show, the idea that violence does not occur solely at the individual level or within an intimate relationship framed almost all of our conversations (see also abji et al., 2019; korteweg et al., 2013). we will further show that as service providers, advocates, and activists, our interviewees struggled to find ways to act on this multiscalar understanding of violence in their dealings with funders, state agencies, colleagues, and clients. we identified two major obstacles encountered by our participants as they sought to address the multiscalar patterns of gbv observed in the field: the problem of culture and the obscuring of multiscalarity. the problems of culture talk addressing violence: the problem of culture service providers reported that gbv, particularly among south asian communities, was viewed in culturally stigmatizing ways by funders, state agencies, colleagues, and the media. for our respondents, problematic conceptions of south asian culture as monolithic, static, and premodern entailed their own type of violence. in this context, we noticed that many of our participants struggled with how to understand culture in their work, especially with regard to the link between power and culture. on the one hand, in the media and at public events a problematic “culture” has often been presented as an affliction of south asian communities, as evidenced by the positive reception of papp’s book. as we have discussed in greater detail elsewhere (abji et al., 2019), we noted that the people we interviewed rejected such notions wholesale, and in doing so often rejected as well the idea that culture had any impact on women’s encounters with violence. on the other hand, their accounts also demonstrated how culture as meaning-making structured the everyday lives of the women using their services. as we show below, our interviewees struggled with the apparent contradiction between these varying uses of culture in politics, the media, and daily life. to avoid the association between culture and stigmatization or racialization, they would often use the term “community” to capture what we as researchers would describe as cultural meaning-making practices. in this use of community, the interviewees tried to move away from culture talk and its racializing impact. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 82  the price of treating culture simplistically is high. most immediately, the lack of recognition of cultural specificities by mainstream gbv agencies can lead to what one advocate in our study labelled “revictimization” in the form of shelters that are ill-equipped to handle women’s needs: over the last 10 years i have worked with a lot of south asian women … [who] … have termed their experience with those agencies as being violent, if you like, violent in the sense of being oppressed, or of not being given information that could have helped them in a different way…. so for [them] it was better to have lived with the abuser than to be — in [their] terms — to be abused by these other agencies. (sayeeda) such concerns around revictimization pointed to the critical need for more nuanced approaches to culture in antiviolence work, approaches that take seriously the systemic violence inflicted by categories such as “honour” killing and “honour”-based violence, without altogether rejecting recognition of the cultural specificities of violence. in other words, these concerns pointed to a need to move from monolithic culture talk to paying attention to nuanced processes of meaningmaking. addressing violence: the obscuring of multiscalar forces in addition to the stigmatizing and racializing effects of culture, our participants also indicated that the simplistic accounts of culture that are characteristic of culture talk obscured the multiscalar nature of the violence that women confront. this included problems associated with funding and the structural organization of services that address gbv within a system organized around narrow yet culturally dominant definitions of both the perpetrators of violence and their victims. for example, a number of interviewees raised the issue of forced marriage, defined as marriage practices that are enforced without both individuals consenting to the match (salco, 2013)3. in their case descriptions, our participants challenged dominant cultural assumptions about perpetrators and victims that privilege individualistic approaches to gbv. for example, bipasha described dominant approaches to service provision thus: … so it’s kind of … validating the woman’s experience to a certain degree, but it doesn’t really embed it in a sociopolitical, economic context that is this woman’s reality in the end. (bipasha) we capture the multivalent contexts that bipasha and others refer to through our articulation of violence as multiscalar. conventional understandings of domestic partner violence assume one 3it should be noted that forced marriage is not synonymous with arranged marriage. in an arranged marriage, although the match is arranged by the families, the individuals getting married have a choice of whether or not to marry. in forced marriages, the individuals to be married are not given the opportunity to refuse. the “force” deployed may include emotional, mental, or physical forms of coercion (salco, 2013). the issue of forced marriage received significant attention within the communities of the professionals we spoke with. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 83  perpetrator, usually a man, enacting violence in the context of a one-to-one relationship with the victim, usually a woman. however, we learned from the interviews that there may be multiple perpetrators in forced marriage cases including parents, extended family members living here or in other countries, community members and community leaders, and the state itself through its migration regime and the process of criminalization of immigrant communities. that multiscalar forces constrain the possibilities of addressing such cases was also evident: forced marriage cases are often very complex. sayeeda explained that they require the kinds of funding that are not available under funding models that are scaled to the number of women served rather than the hours necessary to help any particular woman. in october 2012, the federal conservative government adopted regulations to combat what they called “fraudulent marriages”, adding constraints upon those who wanted to marry a noncanadian with whom they had been in a relationship for less than two years and with whom they did not have children. under these rules, the new immigrant in the couple was to receive conditional, rather than permanent, residence status and would need to remain in a “conjugal relationship” for at least two years before graduating to permanent residency (bhuyan et al., 2018). such conditional statuses form the basis for increases in gbv. for example survivors may remain in an abusive relationship in order to retain their right to remain in the country, or perpetrators may use fear of criminalization as a tool of power and control (abji, 2016; bhuyan et al., 2018; bhuyan et al., 2014). a number of participants recounted how their attempts to address forced marriage had been misused to inform the regressive “fraudulent marriage” legislation. hansa described how efforts by her and her colleagues to educate mainstream media about forced marriage backfired when information they had provided was used by the state as a pretext for enacting the new restrictions on sponsoring spouses: the issue of forced marriage came about because media was constantly referring to south asian marriages as arranged marriages and so there needed to be an understanding that there is a difference between an arranged marriage and a marriage that is for the purposes of coercion, seduction, and deception.… [now] i am concerned because i know the government has been misusing all of this information…. so instead of saying forced marriage, they come out with the term “fraud marriage” … which is a very serious concern for us, so we have to be very very careful about how we are going to shape the conversation so that the women, the very women that we are trying to help, are not women impacted by any negative reprisals through the new legislative reforms. (hansa) for hansa, speaking out about patterns of gbv within south asian communities had become a risky act within a context of multiscalar violence. in this case, acts of violence were invoked not to address the needs of its female victims but to criminalize and restrict immigration of racialized communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 84  such observations led the people we interviewed to view the patterns of violence among south asian communities as multiscalar and complex. when south asian women turn to the authorities for help, they may encounter structural forms of violence such as having a precarious immigration status that limits their access to supports (abji, 2016, 2018), or they may experience revictimization when accessing a system that misrecognizes their specific needs and ignores the relationships that bind them to family and community. the funding models in effect at the time further undermined those service providers who had a more comprehensive analysis of women’s needs and were willing to consider alternative practices. during the period of our research, funders increasingly focused on services that targeted all women or all victims of violence, and cut back on funds for targeted community-based work. taken as a whole, our findings suggest that effective service delivery requires an understanding of women’s needs as complex, and violence as occurring at multiple levels in society: service-delivery models that aim to address just one aspect of experience without regard to context are certain to fall short. indeed, in an environment where the accounts of papp (papp & kay, 2012) and others who shared her perspective informed a homogeneous view of “culture” — what we call culture talk — that produced racializations of entire communities, having conversations within these communities became more difficult: service providers struggled to recognize needs without contributing to stigmatization and racialization of the communities with which they were interacting. in response to papp’s memoir, its subsequent endorsement by a federal minister, and its impact on legislation, a number of the providers we interviewed observed that such accounts are divisive in the communities that confront the types of violence papp sought to address. as one of the advocates in our study argued, the racializing effect of papp’s account led to calls for a united front in what many perceived as sustained attacks on their community in public and media debates. she felt that this led to a struggle amongst social service providers trying to negotiate these complexities of culture: if we are going to pander to those sensibilities — then we can’t have real conversations — do you know what i am saying? — we can’t have real conversations about, about the authentic needs of women. (bipasha) a number of participants argued that we should not talk about culture at all but rather insist that, in the words of hansa, “violence is violence is violence”, thus universalizing the experience of violence in an attempt to break through the culturally-based stigmatization and racialization of south asian communities. however, the price of this strategy was an inability to articulate claims for a reanalysis of violence against women as complex and multiscalar, in which culture is about the everyday meaning-making processes and practices that shape women’s experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 85  discussion reconsidering culture as meaning-making: alternative approaches the struggles reported by participants might be taken to suggest that all notions of culture in conceptualizing violence against women should be rejected. we argue otherwise. while much of the political response to hbv hinged on particular regressive notions of culture, this does not render the notion of culture useless in addressing hbv. we argue that by understanding culture as processes of meaning-making rather than as a monolithic and deterministic force, we can clarify that culture informs all forms of violence in majority groups as well as minority groups. in short, culture gives meaning to practices, including practices of violence. furthermore, as a process of meaning-making, culture conditions responses to violence on the part not only of individuals but of institutions at the community and state level, including social service agencies, activist and advocacy organizations, government bureaucracies, legislatures, and legal institutions. members of both majority and minority groups within immigrant-receiving societies give meaning to gender relations, family configurations, the immigration experience, and interpretation of religious doctrines in ways that inform hbv at both the individual and institutional levels (berman et al., 2009; raj & silverman, 2002; sev’er & yurdakul, 2001). as we noted in our introduction, an interpretation of hbv as the result of backward, violent cultures informed the 2015 passage of the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. the liberal government elected in late 2015 changed the name of the act (bill s-210), removing the reference to “barbaric cultural practices”; the website of status of women canada changed references to hbv by adding the qualifier “so-called” to indicate its rejection of culture talk.4 however, our findings suggest that such strategies avoid the trap of regarding culture as “backward” only at the cost of embracing the idea that “culture does not matter” and placing hbv under the more general gbv umbrella. our findings indicate that we need to acknowledge culture as meaning-making in order to recognize the influence of multiscalar forces and thus to address the multiplicity of ways in which people experience violence and the consequent lack of a single overarching remedy. in this regard, we have developed two analytical concepts. we use the term “culture talk” to identify processes in which “culture” is used “in essentializing ways that create structural inequalities” (abji et al., 2019; see also mamdani, 2007; razack, 1994). we distinguish this from the patterned practice of “culture-as-meaning-making to understand experiences of and responses to gendered violence across varied communities and social groupings. importantly, culture-as 4at the time of this publication, the federal government has again changed its use of the term hbv. the department of women and gender equality (wage), formerly status of women canada, no longer lists “so-called” hbv at all as a specific form of gbv. there is one mention of “honour” under the category of family violence, where “different types of family violence [can include] harmful practices [such as]: underage or forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, and violence committed in the name of ‘honour’ ” (see wage https://cfcswc.gc.ca/violence/knowledge-connaissance/fv-vf-en.html). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 86  meaning-making centers rather than elides the complex forces that shape experiences of violence” (abji et al., 2019, p. 798). our approach to culture allows us to avoid the universalism of culture talk, which essentializes practices by attributing them to an identifiable group with the effect of excluding that group from the larger polity. culture as meaning-making enables situated knowledge production (haraway, 1988), where the meaning is about how to interpret the multiscalar facets of all acts of violence. through this more nuanced understanding of culture as meaning-making, we can also focus on the need for the more integrated vision of violence as multiscalar that service providers identified. we end by focusing on three specific policies that our interviewees outlined: developing multiscalar models of service provision, recognizing families and communities as complex, and integrating survivor stories. policy implications operationalizing multiscalar models: most concretely, providers discussed the need for risk assessment tools and safety planning guidelines that take seriously multiple perpetrators at the family and community level while also recognizing that the multiscalar violence, including state violence, that women encounter in their daily lives can deter them from seeking out and receiving support. for example, a number of interviewees discussed the importance of providing service as a key component of safety, regardless of immigration status. likewise, providers expressed a preference for collaborative service provision over the existing “silo” approach, which privileges individualistic understandings of gbv and incites competition among agencies, preventing meaningful collaborations. in an effort to describe what this more authentic cross-sectoral collaboration might look like with reference to an individual client, diya asked: what would it mean if we [working across agencies] were actually all sitting around the table, planning on that person’s safety? not looking at our agency, but talking about what would we do so this client gets what she needs and she is safe and her children are safe and wherever she is in the community, she has support? recognizing families and communities as complex sites of individual and collective trauma as well as spaces of healing and resiliency: one of the ways culture talk functions is to portray immigrant families as inherently oppressive to women, and freedom from violence as contingent on leaving the family. however, interviewees suggested that family and community were regarded as meaningful resources in women’s lives. at the same time, because of the multiscalar nature of violence experienced by many women, the idea that the solution lies in leaving one’s family or one’s community obscured the multiple sites of violence that racialized and immigrant women may encounter. the approach of removing women from an abusive relationship is also problematic in that it is based on the premise that multiscalar forces — involving housing, poverty, and immigration law, for example — are not an issue for women. a number of our interviewees suggested the need for models that provide a space for temporary relief from multiscalar violence, something that women were not finding in the mainstream shelter international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 87  system. such an approach recognizes that women are not necessarily going to leave their families or their communities, as these may provide important supports for coping with other sources of racism and oppression. zaina, for example, discussed a need to move beyond “this one-on-one counselling piece” to incorporate art or classical dance as forms of collective healing. she went on to explain: “maybe it’s doing a shelter that’s not called a shelter but, like, it’s called a safehouse where women can use it as a negotiation space — just come and take a moment to breathe and kinda regroup and go back out there.” what would make this new proposed shelter model different is that it begins from the premise that shelter is a temporary reprieve, rather than the current model’s assumption that shelters provide a way out and that women who return to their prior situations have somehow failed. integrating survivor stories: integrating the voices, experiences, and insights of survivors of violence was also put forward by our interviewees as a concrete strategy for addressing the mismatch between gbv service delivery and south asian women’s needs. however, providers cautioned against tokenistic uses of survivor stories. this consideration suggests the use of an intersectional approach, one that recognizes the multiplicity of voices and experiences rather than privileging individual voices as speaking for the collective. referencing papp’s (papp & kay, 2012) memoir, one participant described what she saw as “the danger of that single story” or the notion that “there is only one valid story and that’s mine because it’s my lived experience” (bipasha). another participant described a dvd collection she and her colleagues were putting together that offered a multiplicity of narratives from survivors that consciously focused on their strategies of self-care and community care rather than being a “confessional” of the details of their abuse (isha). instead of approaching survivors’ voices in stigmatizing ways, then, these interviewees sought out approaches that, while recognizing the life histories of survivors as important sources of knowledge and healing, embedded those narratives and perspectives within their larger social and political contexts. this approach to stories suggests the central importance of meaning-making in addressing violence. what links the above three proposals for improving service provision is our interviewees’ underlying commitment toward more fundamental change. one, bipasha, even framed this as a need for a “little revolution”: [to] build resiliency we need to really look at sustainable models of working together and moving beyond silos. really having those difficult conversations about what can we do, do we have access to information, you know, what you are doing, what i am doing, and really, i think it requires a little revolution, to be quite honest. like rethinking the way we do our work and a real amount of solidarity that needs to happen. (bipasha) instead of simply adding special programming for south asian women to the existing institutional organization of gbv service provision, our interviewees favoured an approach that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 88  would encourage challenging the more foundational assumptions of current models, and rethinking gbv more broadly as it affects all communities. conclusion accounts like papp’s (papp & kay, 2012), which reduce the complexities of interpersonal violence to a simplistic explanation that reflects the strategies of culture talk, are perhaps appealing to those with legislative reponsibility for improving the lives of women in canada. similarly, to discount the understanding of culture as meaning-making — as reflected in the terminology that has been adopted by canada’s present liberal government — treats populations as homogeneous and obscures certain experiences. neither strategy allows for a more expansive vision — one recognizing that all forms of violence are culturally informed, in the sense that violence and the responses to it are imbued with meanings rooted in specific positionalities and experiences at multiple scales. instead, the violence experienced by dominant groups in society becomes the norm to which legal and policy efforts respond. western institutional practices, whether legal, educational, or pertaining to the provision of social welfare, are often predicated on notions of “rational” or “objective” assessments of social problems, and the rights and responsibilities attached to membership in society. yet these ideas of rationality and objectivity are themselves cultural in that they do the work of culture as meaningmaking by providing interpretative frames and guides for action. from this vantage point, the linking of immigrants with “culture” becomes moot: it is not a matter of the west having culture, which can be manipulated rationally, and immigrant “others” being culture (brown, 2009). rather, the question is: what are the cultural frameworks that give meaning to a person’s actions, and how are these informed by the forces that correspond to the various identifications that a person might claim: immigrant, judge, teacher, lawyer, woman, man, gay, straight, white, black, brown, or indigenous? from this perspective of culture as fine-grained processes of meaning-making that are informed by their social and political context, patterns of violence can be understood as developing at the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and an immigrant-receiving society’s cultural, social, political, and legal practices — in short, as multiscalar, and given meaning in specific ways. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(1): 73–92 89  references abji, s. 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(2009). unsettling the nation: gender, race, and muslim cultural politics in canada. studies in ethnicity and nationalism, 9(1), 146–163. art practice as possible worlds international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 198 art practice as possible worlds vanessa clark abstract: this paper explores the possibilities of arts practice in early childhood education. building on her master’s thesis, the author presents both a doing – her experimentation with arts practice in two early childhood centres – and an argument: that art may present an opening onto possible worlds. the author builds these worlds in relation to her theoretical framework: an immanent relational materialist onto-epistemology. viewed through this lens, art’s possible worlds have the potential to traverse, mix, and disrupt binaries that maintain marginalized positions. art practice from this intersection of rupture is both intensely creative and deeply political. keywords: art, early childhood education, body, deleuze and guattari vanessa clark is an atelierista (studio educator) for two projects with the unit for early years research and development at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. email: vanessa.vondruska@gmail.com mailto:vanessa.vondruska@gmail.com� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 199 springgay (2008) paraphrases deleuze and guattari in arguing that the body, “neither harbours consciousness nor is it biologically pre-determined, rather it is understood through what it can do – its processes, performances, assemblages and the transformations of becoming” (p. 3). to understand what the body can do, we can start in the middle with deleuze and guattari’s idea of a body without organs (bwo). the bwo is not literally an empty body: it is a body without organization or categorization (grosz, 1994). the bwo is not necessarily the human body (coleman, 2008): it can refer to a plant, an idea, a paintbrush, a sound (davies, 1999). it can refer to any body. this account of the body highlights material and discursive interconnectedness. as an artist, i understand that the artist does not necessarily choose her materials. the materials and the artist are drawn to each other. in my art, i use paint because it excites me, it interests me. i have worked for many years with paint, and we keep coming back to each other, as do i with the paintbrush. when i was young, i never cared much for holding a pen, but i wanted to hold a paintbrush. this body – the paintbrush – and what it was able to do fascinated me. this paper explores what art can do, and how art works (cox, 2011). to explore art means to move with art, not to close art down or capture it. art presents an opening onto possible worlds. viewed in this way: art is something . . . dangerous: a portal, an “access point” to another world of molecular becoming (our world experienced differently). as deleuze and guattari say, this, ultimately, is what makes art abstract, the “summoning” and making visible of otherwise imperceptible forces. (o’sullivan, 2006, p. 50) the systemic structures that govern early childhood education and care (ecec) – the child care licensing regulation, policies and procedures provided by the institution, developmental psychology’s “grand narrative”, and other typical narratives such as behaviourist social learning theories, piagetian constructivism, and vygotskian social constructivism (macnaughton, 2003) – present tensions for the writing of this paper. by exploring possible worlds through a specific theoretical framework, i attempt to traverse these systemic structures. at the same time, i acknowledge that i practice early childhood education in the midst of these tensions, and that this location creates limitations, both for my work and for this paper. building on my master’s thesis (entitled disrupting the all-too-human body through art in early childhood education and care), in this paper i present not only an argument but a doing: my experimentation with arts practice in two early childhood centres in which i set up an ethical-ecological environment for the children and their educators. my purpose is to demonstrate that art may present an opening onto possible worlds, worlds that might traverse, mix, and disrupt binaries that maintain marginalized international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 200 positions. art practice from this intersection of rupture is both intensely creative and deeply political. the paper’s first section, “embodied conversations with materials”, discusses the lens i use: how this research is conceptualized and practiced. in “abstract movements”, i present my theoretical framework. a short description of my method is provided in the section titled “the architect”, which is followed by an analysis of “possible worlds”. concluding thoughts are presented in the paper’s final section, “new possibilities for arts practice”. embodied conversations with materials artists may collect materials for an art piece based on a particular felt connection. sandra meigs, an artist and a professor in the university of victoria’s faculty of fine arts, described her process for a painting she created that was hanging in the vancouver art gallery (meigs, 2011). the process began when she saw a small picture of an old house in a book she was reading. she was captivated by the style of the house. this felt connection grew as she found herself tracking down a university-owned heritage home of the same era and architecture as the picture in the book. she asked the university if she could stay in the home for a few weeks and draw. these drawings then became documentations from which she created paintings. gonzalo lebrija, an artist born in mexico city and living in guadalajara, gave a lecture on his work at the vancouver art gallery. one art piece i was particularly interested in was a map of his travels in madrid on a toaster bike. at various points, when the environment affected him, he would take a picture of what he noticed, along with a picture of the odometer on his bike to document where he noticed it. he said, “the earth became my canvas, and my bike became the paintbrush” (lebrija, 2011). the map was hung as a series of framed images side by side on a white wall. artist and lesbian rights activist laiwan echoed this influence of the nonhuman world. she explained that she collected a large number of bus tickets over a period of about 10 years. when she collected the tickets, she didn’t know she would make them into an art piece; she just really liked them. when she revisited the tickets more than 20 years later, she had the idea to write poetry with them. she wanted to write with something outside of herself, so she used a dictionary to write the poems. her artistic process was about moments, she explained; she wanted to “open up time and space” (laiwan, 2010). she wanted the piece she created to be a body to engage with. lenz taguchi (2010) terms this relationship between human and nonhuman bodies “intraactivity”: intra-activity here relates to physicist terminology and to relationships between any organism and matter (human and non-human). hence, what barad and other material feminists (alaimo & hekman, 2008) are suggesting is that it is not only humans that have agency – the possibility of intervening and acting upon others and the world. rather, all matter can be understood as having agency in a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 201 relationship in which they mutually will change and alter in their ongoing intraactions. (p. 4) in this account, humans are not given ontological primacy over nonhuman bodies. in fact, this distinction breaks down as we look to assemblages and the entanglements between all bodies. i understand both human and nonhuman bodies in assemblages to be “actants”, although with “different types and degrees of power” (bennett, 2010, p. 108). haraway (1992) echoes this problem of power as an issue of semiotics: non-humans are not necessarily “actors” in the human sense, but they are part of the functional collective that makes up an actant. action is not so much an ontological as a semiotic problem. this is perhaps as true for humans as nonhumans, a way of looking at things that may provide exits from the methodological individualism inherent in concentrating constantly on who the agents and actors are in the sense of liberal theories of agency. (p. 331) the problem for me then becomes how to articulate this agency without speaking for the other. here i connect to deleuze and guattari (1987), whose rejection of representation “extends to the theorist, who should . . . speak only on her or his own behalf, and form connections and relays, not represent others” (robinson & tormey, 2010, p. 25). taking the position that the nonhuman world has agency, i speak on my own behalf, as a situated body within my research, about how i am affected and how i affect the entanglement between both humans and nonhumans. my goal is to experiment with ways to connect these ideas with practice, more specifically, arts practice in ecec. similar to lenz taguchi (2010) and her thinking with barad (1998, 1999, 2007, 2008, as cited in lenz taguchi, 2010), the lens i employ in this paper is an ontoepistemology, that is, both ontology and epistemology. theories of one will inevitably extend from the other. i understand ontology “in terms of planes, intensities, flows, becomings, linkages, rather than being, objects, qualities, pairs, and correlates” (grosz, 1994, p. 162). this understanding requires taking, as do grosz (1994), lenz taguchi (2010), and skott-myhre (2008), among others, a deleuzian-inspired ontology of immanence. bodies are constantly affecting and being affected by the bodies around them (lenz taguchi, 2010). the reason it is important to keep a notion of epistemology here is so that we do not fall into an illusion of boundless difference. the idea of epistemology is to know the difference between creative experimentation that breaks apart binaries and codes and merely re-enacting binaries and codes. as haraway (1991) points out, “some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. ‘epistemology’ is about knowing the difference” (p. 12). the lens i have sketched above is an immanent relational materialist ontoepistemology. this paper is situated within the reconceptualist literature in early childhood education, through feminist poststructural and posthumanist theory/practice. in the next section, “abstract movements”, i unfold selected concepts from deleuze and guattari (1987): the body without organs (bwo), assemblage, and haecceity.1 1 nietzsche termed these haecceities “becomings” (cox, 2011), and this paper uses the latter term instead. these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 202 concepts are unpacked not as an effort to get them right, but to see how they can move and flow, and what might make them explode (cox, 2011). abstract movements here the paper takes an abstract shift in my attempt to build possible worlds. by using the term “abstract”, my intention is not to create a binary between abstract and concrete. massumi (2002), paraphrasing deleuze, writes, “the problem with the dominant models in cultural and literary theory is not that they are too abstract to grasp the concreteness of the real. the problem is that they are not abstract enough to grasp the real incorporeality of the concrete” (p. 5). to explore the relationship between abstract and concrete, on march 26, 2011, i went to hear a panel discussion at the vancouver art gallery in which izabella laba, a mathematician, roy miki, an artist/poet, and sandra meigs, an artist/painter, presented on the topic, between concrete and abstract. i was intrigued by what izabella laba said mathematicians do, as it was similar to how i conceptualize what i am doing with the work of deleuze and guattari: “we use the abstract to do things such as build.... [in mathematics] we don’t do anything that is not abstract” (laba, 2011). sandra meigs echoed this view that the abstract and the concrete are the same: “there is no need to separate them. they are both experienced” (meigs, 2011). roy miki recounted his late friend bpnichol’s answer to the question, “what is it like to paint?”; nichol, whose work pages from hell was then showing at the gallery, described painting as like standing in an imaginary house, and seeing an imaginary staircase, walking over to the imaginary staircase and walking up to an imaginary door, opening the imaginary door and seeing an imaginary window, walking up to the imaginary window, and looking out to the real world. (miki, 2011) sandra meigs (2011) says she “truly believes that art is a realm that exists”. in a sense, then, with this paper i am building realms, through art, using the work of deleuze and guattari (1987). the body without organs (bwo) the body without organs (bwo), as deleuze and guattari (1987) explain, “is what remains when you take everything away. what you take away is precisely the phantasy, and significances and subjectifications as a whole” (p. 151). what remains is desire, but in this sense, desire is not a lack (springgay, 2008). desire differs from foucault’s conception of power. desire is a productive force (skott-myhre, 2008) and a magnetic attraction between bodies. a bwo is something that is constructed, in two phases: “one phase is for the fabrication of the bwo, the other to make something circulate on it or pass across it; the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 203 same procedures are nevertheless used in both phases, but they must be done over, done twice” (deleuze & guattari, 1987, p. 152). phase one: experimentation. a bwo is made through experimenting with different assemblages of bodies: ideas, chairs, sounds, my body, your body, and so on. each piece that connects within or on a bwo has different movements, potentials, and affects. experimentation unlocks the potentials of the pieces in/on the bwo. something new is created through this process. bwos are continually made from connections of human and nonhuman bodies, matter, and discourses that then break down (lenz-taguchi, 2010; see also massumi, 2002). deleuze and guattari (1987) warn that some bwos block the flow for connecting new assemblages and becomings. they differentiate between a full bwo, an empty bwo, and a cancerous bwo. the full bwo is able to break apart, form new relations, and continually enter into different assemblages (buchanan, 1997). the empty bwo is built on the destruction of the structure from which it is made. i would argue that an example of an empty bwo would be the often-stereotyped “madness” of artists. the cancerous bwo is one that proliferates and becomes a “majoritarian assemblage”2 ; neo-liberal practices of art making, which have a pre-established goal for the children to do with the materials, enforced on the child by an educator (clark, in press), may be an example. the hope is to create a full bwo where the movements, speeds, and reverberations are productive and allow for the formation of new connections, assemblages, and full bwos (buchanan, 1997). art, the event of art, is not about an essential thinking subject who acts on materials through her body. when an artist meets with paint, she feels the paint, embodies the paint, and becomes with the paint. it is a process with few organizing thoughts; it is more about finding pieces with which to connect and experiment. this process may not hold true for all arts practice, as many artists may view their process differently. the creativity of commercial artists is assembled through the gain of capital, which may be an example of a cancerous bwo (j. smith, personal communication, september 5, 2011). in using the term experimentation, i do not intend to suggest a process devoid of thinking. to make a bwo, we need to take apart the self. the traditional idea of the self, carried forward from descartes, is the idea of an essential thinking subject. in this view, the “i” is the organizer who represents the world through thought (olsson, 2009; williams, 1978). where psychoanalysis says “stop, find your self again,” we should say instead, “let’s go further still, we haven’t found your bwo yet, we haven’t sufficiently dismantled our self.” substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. find your body without organs. find out how to make it. (deleuze & guattari, 1987, p. 151) 2 a majoritarian assemblage, according to grosz (1994), is one that maintains binary aggregates of sexes, classes, and ages that result in fixed identities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 204 in this view, the thinking self is an effect of life (olsson, 2009). thinking and self emerge through encounters between bodies. in this sense, when the body meets with paint, thinking and self emerge with paint. this view contrasts with humanist notions of self where the subject thinks about the paint as an object and the body acts as a means for the thinking subject to represent (clark, in press). each time the artist meets with paint, they meet one another in a new way. the artist can never know in advance what will become a part of the assemblage. mood, ideas, emotions, the room, lights, sounds, smells, people, and other materials all may connect within the artistic process. each body holds the potential to affect and be affected by the other bodies in different ways. bennett (2010) explains that deleuze invented the notion of “absorption” to describe “this kind of part-whole relationship: absorption is a gathering of elements in a way that both forms a coalition and yet preserves something of the agential impetus of each element” (p. 35). assemblage. an alternative view of how parts relate to one another is conveyed by the idea of an assemblage. bennett (2010) explains: assemblages are ad hoc groupings of elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts. assemblages are living, throbbing confederations that are able to function despite the persistence of energies that confound them from within. they have uneven topographies, because some of the points at which the various affects and bodies cross paths are more heavily trafficked than others, and so power is not distributed equally across its surface. (pp. 23–24) what the body of a child can do is understood by what assemblages it partakes in (grosz, 1994). the body is “not the sum of the parts of its assemblages but rather an effect of the assemblage that is not separated from the world” (olsson, 2009, p. 45). the body does not hold rigid boundaries, nor does it cease to exist. the body is both virtual and actual: material-incorporeal. it is the moment of (en)folding in time and space (massumi, 2002). the assemblages, through the event, (en)fold the child’s body. phase two: becoming. an assemblage is a composition of bodies that mingle, resonate, and reverberate with one another (bennett, 2010). the assemblage is relational and opens us to the inbetween. the space in-between is where things fray and undo. springgay and freedman (2009), paraphrasing grosz (2001), write: “contrary to dichotomous relations, in the middle something passes between two terms such that they are both modified putting them to strange new uses” (p. 30). in this way space is heterogeneous and continually multiplying (springgay & freedman, 2009; see also massumi, 2002). experimentation and the connections between bodies actualize the virtual. the virtual is the realm of movement whose force is felt. perceiving the virtual is a becoming (manning, 2008). the idea of becoming requires that we focus on how something “becomes through its relations” (coleman, 2008, p. 186). becomings are relations to the felt force of the virtual. experience is one instance of the world, whereas symbolic life is another. becomings are moments of symbolic creation from experience. arts practice works in this sense as a process of continual movement, force, becoming (cox, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 205 the notion of becoming relates to the ideas of minoritarian and majoritarian assemblages (grosz, 1994). a molar unity is a binary aggregate of sexes, classes, and races, for example. the binary contains both the privileged majoritarian assemblage that gains its meaning from the stability of the binary being acted out and the suppressed molecular assemblage that acts to destabilize the privileged identities. binaries maintain minority positions, whose lines continually act to suppress (grosz, 1994). becomings are escapes from molar unities and “are always molecular, traversing and realigning” them (grosz, 1994, p. 172). the extreme becoming is a complete de-stratification, a becomingimperceptible (grosz, 1994). becomings are perceived through experience, and thus are something to speak about and approach with humility and tension (olsson, 2009). we can describe a becoming by the intensity of its collisions, movements, and reverberations. becomings can also be referred to in terms of their semiotic creations, such as becomingwoman or becoming-child (buchanan, 1997). having sketched my theoretical framework, i shift now to the classroom and describe the ethical-ecological environments i created for the children and the educators in those places. the architect to create a full bwo is to open possibilities for new relations, connections, and assemblages (buchanan, 1997). one way to create a full bwo is through arts exploration. when an artist engages in a creative process, she encounters the materials and the environment. through each “encounter and negotiation”, the potentials of the materials and the environment make themselves intelligible to her through forces and reverberations (kind, 2010, p. 125). artist sylvia kind (2010) contends that each material “holds” different forces, reverberations, and potentials. inspired by her work, i set up an ethical-ecological environment for the children and educators in two different child care centres. i brought in standing plexiglas, brushes, paint, shirts, and a drop cloth. i set up the materials in the classrooms in a way that allowed room for movement, and then invited all to the ethical-ecological environment. the place of art striates experimentation (lenz taguchi, 2010). in this way the plexiglas, paint, paintbrushes, drop cloth, and shirts i brought to each centre, along with the floor, furniture, temperature, light, and any ideas that might connect, suggest both ways of intra-acting and potentials for experimentation. a paintbrush, for example, suggests a way that the hand might hold the brush to best distribute paint on the plexiglas. however, one might also hold two paintbrushes in one hand, no longer optimizing the brush in its intended use, but opening up possibilities for becoming. as educators, we can think with the materials as we create ethical-ecological environments with the children. to think with the materials, we may consider the materials striations as well as potentials for experimentation. to experiment and invent an environment for the classroom requires acknowledging that the direction and revelations of the composition of bodies might be dangerous. bell (2007) argues: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 206 ethics comes consonant with politics (as latour also argues) because each can only be the practice of developing ethical-ecological environments, arrangements and compositions. to invent these is not to be able to direct the entities sustained there, which only by their appearance suggest – and only suggest – the “success” of any retrospectively imagined path of actualization. the impulse to offer optimism might lead one, with grosz, to emphasize the productive role that any entity or composite has or holds as potential (and which only in that particular sense belongs to it), given the environment to sustain its emergence, given the right “inventions”. but such optimism is to be tempered with all the hesitation that arise from acknowledgment that the reverberations of inventions may elaborate themselves in compositions and directions unintended and unwelcome. (pp. 119– 120, emphasis in original) to embark on arts practice in this way takes both presence of body and the ability to critically engage with practice as it (en)folds. we can never predict what possibilities might emerge. in the classroom art explorations described in the section that follows, my body was part of the exploration, and my role in the process emerged through each encounter. i found myself experimenting with the children and introducing materials and directions to support the process. in “possible worlds” i link these ideas to practice by building on the abstract movements i discussed in this section (robinson & tormey, 2010). possible worlds becoming-paper-blood-hands in the classroom justin encounters the red paint and plexiglas as the red paint and plexiglas encounter him. i watch as the plexiglas and justin stand so close to one another that the red paint almost connects with justin’s face. my body-camera stands frozen in anticipation. then the red paint and his finger connect. soon after, his hands connect with the plexiglas, the paint speaking back and marking his hands. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 207 the paint explores justin’s hands as justin’s hands explore the paint. justin encounters not only the paint, but his hands as well. here we might say that the objects of knowledge are actants (bennett, 2010; haraway, 1992). we might introduce the actants as the entanglements and the relation between red paint, hands, and justin. the actants engage in experimentation, among many more bodies within the assemblage. through the assemblage, the forces collide, whereby transformations take place. the bwo, prior to articulation, is desire. desire, for deleuze, “is not an attribute of a desiring subject but is a matter of flows and becomings which traverse the entire social, and indeed material or ecological field. hence, desire is not something ‘processed’ by the sovereign subject but something inter-, suband extra-subjective” (robinson & tormey, 2010, p. 22). all of a sudden, i hear justin say the following words: ah, bloody hands now (.6) they’re paper-bloody-hands (.3) you can call me paper blood hands (.2) ’cuz i got blood all over my hands (.1) call me paper blood hands justin articulates the bwo. the flows, intensities, and non-stratified matters become “call me paper blood hands”. this might be what cox (2011) describes as a moment of symbolic creation from experience. a becoming, perhaps, emerges in relation to the experience and breakdown of the red-paint-hands-justin assemblage. if we attend to the becoming, we might be able to see how the nomadic subject emerges: “call me paper blood hands”. deleuze and guattari put forward this notion of nomadic thinking, a thinking “that has no sedentary and stable place within which to perform its activity. this thinking not only deconstructs codes and habits but actually connects them together in new and unexpected ways” (olsson, 2009, p. 25). robinson and tormey (2010) argue that, “the subject, where it exists, is a product of certain forms of desire, but only one of the possible outcomes of what is termed ‘desiring-production’” (p. 22). this movement of a minoritarian assemblage also forces thought, we might suggest. as hultman and lenz taguchi (2010) explain, “nomadic thinking produces another kind of knowing: knowing of what emerges in-between” (p. 538). here we might be able to see desire as expressed through new ways of thinking (olsson, 2009): the assemblages of becominginternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 208 paper-bloody-hands offering up another world, disfiguring the majoritarian assemblages through which we habitually come to see the world, traversing, mixing, and disrupting such binaries as human/nonhuman, man/tool, self/other. phase one: experimentation ariel-paintbrush-dropcloth-cement floor-plexiglas-paint-camera-lighttemperature-sounds-emotions-vanessa: a bundle of relations come together and connect. drawn to each other through experimentation. exploring what art and bodies can do. my camera-body moves with ariel-paintbrush-plexiglas-paint. pink dots form as bodies connect, making visible imperceptible forces through the event. the assemblage of bodies, a desiring-production, makes its own connections through experimentation. the bodies become different as an effect of their constellations, not a categorical difference to one another; each body becomes different-in-itself. bignall (2007, p. 202, as cited in pacini-ketchabaw & nxumalo, 2010) describes this difference as “internal to a body as it transforms over time” (p. 146). this difference emerges not through imitating other bodies. it is a matter of a body joining into a composition with other bodies: difference is thus caused by connections and relations within and between different bodies, affecting each other and being affected, whether it is viruses, humans or sand. this makes each of these bodies differentiate in themselves, continuously – one singular event after the other. (hultman & lenz taguchi, 2010, p. 529) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 209 we might ask how each body is becoming different-within-itself as an effect of its relations within the composition of other bodies (clark, 2012, drawing from paciniketchabaw & nxumalo, 2010). phase two: becoming the relation between ariel’s body, paintbrush, and paint produces her body as a surface on which the paint can spread and move. ariel’s body (en)folds as a becomingcanvas (s. kind, personal communication, june 23, 2010). in this way, the paintbrush has a voice through its relation within the assemblage. painting “visualize[s] invisible forces” whereby the paint is becoming-sensation (grosz, 2008, p. 81). this is not to suggest that these are the only becomings provoked by these images. to become-with these images through an immanent relational materialist onto-epistemology is to continually (en)fold (lenz taguchi, 2011). each time my body encounters these images, it encounters them in a different way; thus these images present multiplying becomings. expanding the network of connections, we can look at the assemblage of these bodies all together and through the event as becoming-art. at the same moment, the immanent relation between these bodies can transform once again. we can look at the connections between the images and text and my body sitting on a chair, the laptop under my hands, black keys beneath my fingers, the tapping sounds each time my fingers press down on keys, the articles and books piled around my body on the floor, on my desk, and on shelves in front of me, the ideas emerging from among these connections as the space multiplies onwards – all of this, and more – as becoming-research. as o’sullivan (2006) expresses it, “our world consists of moments of becoming, the mingling of bodies, the meeting of forces, a constant interpenetration and interconnection of all phenomena. there is no beginning or end to this process” (p. 56). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 210 new possibilities for arts practice it is an illusion to think that we can work and live only within the creative intensities that arts practice elaborates. with this paper, i am not suggesting that we focus on art merely as a space for creativity, as doing so may blind us to the coded binaries (haraway, 1991) that operate in the classroom. the institution of early childhood and the various theoretical perspectives that govern it machinate possibilities for existing in this coded space. for example, the majoritarian assemblages of developmental psychology produce and maintain formed and fixed binary aggregates of sexes, classes, and ages in the classroom. these fixed individualist identities then create boundaries that separate educator from child, self from other, child from environment, child from child3 . further, the institution of early childhood disseminates policies and procedures wherein the identities of the educator and child are delineated and their bodies regulated in the classroom (macnaughton, 2003). arts practice continues to be inscribed by these transcendent modes of reality that suppress ways of being in the world. yet the possibilities of arts practice are boundless, and this paper has glimpsed only a few. arts practice through the deleuzian concepts of bwo, assemblage, and becoming presents an opportunity for political and ethical action in the classroom – an action to traverse, mix, and disrupt the powerful structures that claim our classrooms, and to open up “lines of flight” (deleuze & guattari, 1987). this paper presents a new problem for early childhood practice, and in particular for arts exploration in early childhood: how to make a bwo, a full bwo that can break apart, form new relations, and continually enter into different assemblages (buchanan, 1997). as we turn our focus to what bodies are doing – how they experiment, assemble, and become – we open to the immanent entanglement of bodies through the bwo, and this allows us to perceive the felt forces of continual transformation and becoming. we cannot know in advance what a body can do or what a body is capable of becoming (springgay, 2008; skott-myhre, 2008). bodies assemble and disassemble as they are machined through desire. lines of flight might be produced through the emergent becomings this paper has explored. minoritarian assemblages of becomingpaper-blood-hands, becoming-canvas, becoming-art, and becoming-research hold potential to traverse and rupture majoritarian assemblages of human/nonhuman, self/other, researcher/data, educator/child, and artist/materials. here the rigid binaries chaining the body may be sloughed off. the body opens to the flow and movement of the virtual. 3 within humanist practices of individuality, children are encouraged to “celebrate diversity” and to tolerate each other in spite of their differences (pacini-ketchabaw & nxumalo, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 198–213 211 references bell, v. 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(1978). descartes: the project of pure enquiry. sussex, uk: harvester press. abstract movements the body without organs (bwo) phase one: experimentation. phase two: becoming. possible worlds becoming-paper-blood-hands phase one: experimentation phase two: becoming international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221114 centering grassroots actors in networking for child protection in east africa doris m. kakuru, annah kamusiime, kylee lindner, and jacqueline asiimwe abstract: violence against children (vac) is both a global and local concern that has resulted in several child protection initiatives by formal and informal networks in east africa. the dominant narrative on networking for vac prevention and response significantly focuses on the functionality of formal networks and ignores grassroots networks. we conducted research to explore the functionality and corresponding impact of diverse networks that work to prevent and respond to vac in kenya, tanzania, and uganda. study participants were vac network leads at grassroots, subnational, and national levels, and network funders. data were collected using interviews, document review, and focus group discussions. we found that scholarly literature illuminates the role of formal networks at the expense of grassroots networks, which are ignored and minoritized in literature. this may contribute to a disparity between the funding of grassroots and formal networks. yet, grassroots network actors are vac first responders and are instrumental in child protection work. we contend that it is vital to center grassroots networks in vac policies, programs, and research in order to achieve sustainable connections between networks, communities, and funders, and to empower communities to protect children from abuse. keywords: violence against children (vac), child protection, grassroots initiatives, community empowerment, networks and networking doris kakuru phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor in, the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca annah kamusiime ma is a phd candidate at the institute of social studies of the erasmus university rotterdam and the programs director at nascent research and development organization, p. o. box 25382, kampala, uganda. email: annahkamusiime@yahoo.co.uk kylee lindner ba is a master’s candidate in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: kyleelindner@gmail.com jacqueline asiimwe llm is the chief executive officer of civsource africa. 18 balikuddembe road, naguru. p. o. box 4310, kampala, uganda. email: jasiimwe@civsourcea.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 89 in this article, violence against children (vac) refers to “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse” (united nations convention on the rights of the child [crc], 1989, art. 19). it is estimated that half of the world’s children suffer from violence each year, resulting in over 40,000 deaths (world health organization, 2020). over the past decades, there have been global efforts to address vac. the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) and the crc both call for the elimination of vac. target 16.2 of the un agenda 2030 for sdgs (un, 2015) focuses on ending “abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children”. additionally, two general comments on the crc, no. 8 and no. 13 (un committee on the rights of the child, 2006, 2011), address the need for children to enjoy the right to freedom from all forms of violence including corporal punishment and other cruel forms of punishment. the african committee on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc; 2017) launched africa’s agenda for children 2040, which promotes ending all forms of vac. within east africa (kenya, tanzania, and uganda), there appears to be evidence of commitment to child protection demonstrated by relevant child-focused legal and institutional frameworks. all three countries are state parties of the crc (1989) and the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (organization of african unity, 1990). the east african region also has a rich and active network of child-focused civil society organizations focused on preventing and responding to vac. networks have been described as coalitions, alliances, communities of practice (cops), collaborations, associations, and partnerships (brinkerhoff, 1999; engel, 1993; mizrahi & rosenthal, 2001; padron, 1991; plucknett et al., 1990; younis, 2017). they are portrayed in scholarly literature as existing in a formal, structured manner and as cross-sectoral collaborations among actors sharing a common concern (brinkerhoff, 1999; cummings & van zee, 2005; engel, 1993; plucknett et al., 1990). they comprise a range of actors — organizations, institutions, and individuals — who build relationships for many reasons, including sharing knowledge and learning from each other’s experience, achieving convergent objectives, and generating synergistic effects (younis, 2017). mizrahi and rosenthal (2001) and younis (2017) used the concept of “coalition”, by which they meant a group of organizations whose members commit to an agreed purpose and to shared decision-making in order to influence external institutions or targets. in such a group, however, each member organization maintains its autonomy. in agreement with these views, the skat foundation resource centre for development (egger, 2004) associated networks with institutionalized partnerships between institutions or organizations, which may even be legal entities. therefore, the dominant conceptualization of networks acknowledges that formal networks are those comprised of organizations registered and recognized by governments. they are often characterized by institutionalization and standardized decision-making procedures. there is, therefore, an institutionalized and structured notion of networks and networking in scholarly literature. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 90 the available literature privileges formal and prominent networks over informal or nonregistered networks and actors. informal networks comprise ties between individuals and groups of individuals who collaboratively work within their communities, families, and family systems to prevent and respond to vac spontaneously in an unstructured manner. cummings and van zee (2005) noted a continuum of increasing formality in terms of structure in which cops are highly informalized and networks are highly formalized, with significant variations in between. in this article, we extend this discourse by exploring the functionality of networks (or coalitions) that are not formal organizations. we follow the broader perspective of networks adopted by zijderveld (2000) as “a set of reciprocal, usually informal, often rather anonymous bonds between actors. they are set up and maintained to promote private interests, and usually lack a fixed, vertical hierarchy of power” (p. 121). thus, we explore individuals operating in all sorts of spaces, the internal influences that exist in networks, how networking happens, and forms of networks that seem to remain unrecognized, undefined, unstructured, and informal. our aim is to center grassroots network actors and their status as frontline responders to vac. past research has discovered that in many communities, grassroots initiatives have significantly supplemented government and ngos’ social protection efforts (see asingwire et al., 2015; awortwi, 2018; awortwi & aiyede, 2017). grassroots vac initiatives assume a strengthsbased approach to child protection and nurture the capacity of families and neighborhoods to address issues at the community level (september, 2006). these initiatives can be seen as a kind of informal networking in which community members join forces to address a common issue. despite the intricate web of overlapping systems, research evidence demonstrates that homegrown initiatives have an inherent sense of community ownership, which may improve interventions as survivors receive relevant and culturally appropriate services that fit with community priorities (castro félix & dupree, 2014). according to wessells (2015), implementing community-driven approaches to child protection is very important, especially since expert-driven interventions decrease community ownership. limited community ownership undermines the cultivation of accountability and trust between child protection actors and community members. it is well documented that survivors of violence typically seek help through informal networks before involving formal networks and resources (goodman et al., 2016; johnson & sloth-nielsen, 2020; kyriakakis, 2014). kyriakakis (2014) examined help-seeking patterns of mexican immigrant women with experiences of intimate partner violence (ipv) and found that survivors were more likely to reach out to informal supports than government establishments. kyriakakis suggested that informal supports could play a vital role in the intervention process for survivors of violence. concerning ipv, goodman et al. (2016) argued that these informal supports and networks generally have more impact than formal organizations. this could be attributed to the cultural relativity and local knowledge of informal, community-based supports (castro félix & dupree, 2014; mcleigh et al., 2017). such grassroots initiatives are being increasingly encouraged by civil society actors as a viable alternative to and support for formal welfare services. awortwi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 91 (2018) discussed the fact that social protection in africa largely depends on non-state service providers and grassroots actors. although these initiatives add significant value, they are not adequately supported and lack the necessary resources to carry out their work (september, 2006). previous researchers have asserted that when not adequately equipped for the task, informal supports can do more harm than good (goodman et al., 2016; spilsbury & korbin, 2013). on the contrary, there is a growing body of scholarly literature that recognizes the importance of informal grassroots networks in supplementing government community development efforts (e.g., awortwi, 2018; castro félix & dupree, 2014; goodman et al., 2016; johnson & sloth-nielsen, 2020; kyriakakis, 2014; walakira et al., 2017). apart from these opposing views, thus far, limited attention has been paid to centering and illuminating grassroots actors’ voices in research, policy, and practice as far as preventing and responding to vac in east africa is concerned. hence, in this paper, our goal is to demarginalize and illuminate the voices of the vac grassroots network in east africa. we discuss the interconnectedness and functionality of informal networks and how their effectiveness could increase with more recognition and support. theoretical framework: community empowerment theory as community ownership is inherent in grassroots initiatives, our study was informed by empowerment theory. page and czuba (1991) defined empowerment as “a multidimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives” (para. 1); it is a process that includes both individual efforts and community involvement (rappaport, 1987, as cited in loizou & charalambous, 2017). we chose to focus on the broader idea of community empowerment. in a study conducted by rowan et al. (2015), participants’ help-seeking patterns were observed in relation to ipv. rowan et al. found that while self-empowerment did not significantly increase women’s help-seeking patterns, community empowerment increased such patterns by 23%, suggesting that informal community supports increase the likelihood that women experiencing ipv will seek help (p. 11). a sense of community can increase the availability of social supports and community networking and can allow community members to act in meaningful roles (christens, 2012). community empowerment can contribute to individual psychological development, community development, and, ultimately, positive social change (christens, 2012). therefore, we situate this article in the concepts of empowerment theory, which holds that empowered individuals can act as vehicles toward better-empowered communities that uphold child protection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 92 methodology study design and participants we utilized an exploratory qualitative research approach (brown, 2006) with various methods of data collection, which generated in-depth perspectives around networking for prevention of vac, including 28 individual interviews, a document review, and 10 focus group discussions (fgds). the study population comprised vac network leads at national, subnational, and grassroots levels. it included individuals involved in vac prevention and response. the specific networks and actors who participated in the research were identified through the document review process and interactions with fgd participants. we collected more secondary data during the process of conducting fgds and interviews. we used a bottom-up approach to select study participants, starting with vac frontline duty bearers and volunteers at the grassroots level. these provided us with information about actors at the district level, who in turn advised the team on national level participants, including their funders. fgd participants were selected using purposive (bernard, 2017; tongco, 2007) and snowball (naderifar et al., 2017) sampling techniques. following tongco (2007), we recruited people who could provide us with information based on their experience and knowledge of vac prevention and response work at the grassroots level. we asked the identified people to refer us to others who were also invited to participate in fgds. the key criteria for inclusion were: being a grassroots actor actively involved in preventing or responding to vac, and residing in one of the study sites. fgd participants included parish chiefs, child protection officers, religious leaders, local council representatives, head teachers, and representatives of community-based organizations (cbos) and associations. individual interview participants were vac network representatives (leads, hosts, and chairs) and vac network funders at the district and national levels. the funders were those who were currently funding, or had previously funded, vac interventions of the participating networks. they were purposively selected based on desk review and fgd data. data collection data collection began with a desk review to locate gaps in the literature and identify existing networks for potential participation in the study. the documents were gathered from both online sources and physical sources. thereafter, we designed the research tools, translated them into local languages, and pretested them in each country. the desk review informed the next phase, in which primary data collection took place. our primary data collection began with fgds at the grassroots level, which we conducted with key community influencers and individuals who are involved in vac prevention and response work every day. fgd group facilitators used a guide that had been developed collaboratively by research team members in the three countries. all fgd participants provided written consent. we audio-recorded the fgd sessions, also with consent, and took field notes. the fgds were used to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 93 generate qualitative data that produced deeper insights into vac networking at the grassroots level. fgds also helped the study identify key vac actors and networks at the subnational and national levels. this was followed by data collection using individual interviews conducted in person and on the telephone, with follow-up email discussions. we obtained written consent from all interview participants before they were interviewed. interview data were audio-recorded with consent and later transcribed. the interviews provided information on how networking happens within the interview participants’ networks, and on vac network funding sources and priorities. table 1 provides a summary of the different categories of study participant. table 1. data sources total number primary data collection methods tanzania kenya uganda focus group discussions 4 3 4 interviews with grassroots network leads 2 3 1 interviews with subnational level network leads 3 3 3 interviews with national level network leads 4 3 3 interviews with vac network funders 1 0 2 data analysis all fgds and interviews were audio-recorded, and access to data was restricted to only members of the research team. the audio files were transcribed and anonymized by members of the research team. data were coded using atlas.ti and nvivo (version 11), then categorized into emerging themes based on the study’s objectives. we chose a thematic data analysis procedure using an iterative approach (glaser & strauss, 1967), whereby data collected from the desk review were analyzed to inform the subsequent fgd phase. similarly, fgd data informed the interview phase. to ensure trustworthiness, all data were handled by at least two research team members who discussed any identified discrepancies in the interpretations until they reached a consensus. all arguments were supported and checked with the relevant literature. we also engaged in peer debriefing to discuss the perceived meanings that the field notes, the data, and the themes conveyed (connelly, 2016). additionally, in an effort to ensure completeness, we engaged in data and researcher triangulation (curtin & fossey, 2007). we accomplished this by diversifying each research team members’ data sources and interpretations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 94 ethical considerations we obtained ethical clearance from research bodies in all three countries (kenya: # 277079; uganda: ss 5124; tanzania: 2020-033-na-2019-439) and ensured anonymity throughout the data reporting and sharing. we removed all identifying data from the transcripts and reports. all of our participants consented to the data collection, recording, and storage procedures. findings conceptualization of grassroots networks and networking throughout our analysis, we explored the issue of networking as a function versus networking as an organizational form. networking as a function means intentionally working together to prevent and respond to vac. networking as an organizational form entails the formalization of networks by fulfilling the requirements of governments such as registration, a physical premises, and a constitution. we found that participants thought networking as a function was more beneficial for child protection. moreover, the findings revealed that while some formal networks may be fully active, others are active only intermittently. they operate effectively when conditions are conducive but go dormant when they are not. for example, some formal networks are only active when they have a funded project. we also encountered some formal networks that were not active at all, but existed in name only. one fgd participant observed that “similar to a netted dwelling of an african bird, ties between networks can be intertwined and messy”. grassroots vac networks were described as interconnected webs involving multiple entities, including individuals such as religious leaders, community elders, social workers, women’s groups, youth groups, local leaders, clan and family heads, community influencers, community-based associations and groups, and staff who link with government institutions to prevent and respond to vac. we found that grassroots actors engage in unplanned collective action based on what is effectively an unwritten child protection code of ethics; they have a spontaneous operating style and no formalized governance structure. our data show two major categories of grassroots network: loosely structured and unstructured. loosely structured grassroots networks these are informal collaborations that lack the qualities of formal networks. for example, they are not registered and have no recognized organizational structures; however, they have a clear purpose, well-demarcated operational areas, and partners. loosely structured networks comprise village child rights committee members who collaborate with local police, community groups and committees, and local government and cbo officers to address vac. such actors are well versed in their child protection mandate and are commonly known as stakeholders (see de bruin cardoso, 2019). within these collaborations, responding to vac follows an informally defined referral pathway that includes all child protection stakeholders in the area. that is, whereas the working relationship between local government child protection officers, cbos, police, local leaders, and individual activists may not be formalized, the referral and reporting structures are relatively international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 95 stable. for example, a local leader of a village or a police officer attached to a specific police post is mandated to serve in their area of jurisdiction. although some elements of formality are absent in loosely structured grassroots networks, their lack of registration status does not mean that they are unfocused or uncontrolled. moreover, grassroots networks are guided by national regulations; for example, legislation that benefits children, as well as the national constitutions of the three countries. such unstructured networks have functionality but no formal existence. these networks are more visible at the grassroots level, whereas formal networks operating at national and district levels are more visible to donors and the public. however, the work of unstructured networks has the potential to create more immediate tangible and lasting impacts than the vac prevention advocacy work and lobbying for vac policy formulation and implementation engaged in by formal networks. while these are important contributions, their impact on grassroots actors is not immediate, but delayed and indirect. our analysis, therefore, shows a discrepancy between networks as a function and networks as an organizational form. unstructured grassroots networks unstructured grassroots networks comprise individuals who collaborate to prevent and respond to vac. this occurs through following an informal referral pathway or a tacit protocol. for example, when a religious leader or a neighbor learns of a vac case, they may report it to the village committee chairperson, the women’s representative on the local council, or the police. whoever receives the report uses their discretion to decide how to move forward expeditiously. individuals in such an unstructured grassroots network only collaborate informally, based on mutual understanding and a shared goal to serve their communities through boosting child protection efforts. the modalities of operation of such an informal network may be implicit — members operate in an impromptu and somewhat random manner — but they are well understood. the relationships and unstructured silent ties among individual community members, families, and community groups serve as the starting point for either responding to violence or attempting to prevent it. when these ties between grassroots actors are absent or poorly maintained, perpetrators of violence may find opportunities in the missing connections to abuse children. our data, therefore, show that grassroots networks are uniquely situated in the child protection landscape. unstructured grassroots networks in the three countries use social cohesion, social capital, and social ties to fulfil their desire to have a positive effect on their communities. the interconnections that exist are based on where one lives in these countries. all three are characterized by high levels of volunteerism, and their vac prevention and response depends on the work of individuals and of groups. between loosely structured and unstructured networks, there might be other types, as yet undefined, along the continuum of informality from highly informal unstructured grassroots networks to loosely structured grassroots networks that display some structured features. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 96 formation of grassroots networks in our quest to understand how networking happens, we started by investigating why and how networks are formed. we found that whereas formal networks at subregional and national levels are formed out of actors’ desire to produce synergies by working together, grassroots networks emerge organically. our findings show that neighbors often network to protect children from violence. unstructured grassroots network actors have a tacit surveillance system to identify potential perpetrators and survivors of vac. hypothetically, for example, if one observer suspects that an adolescent girl is pregnant, it may spark a covert investigation by the neighbors. they may choose not to involve the girl’s parents, especially if it is not clear that they will cooperate. on confirming that the minor is pregnant, the neighbors can alert the police to intervene, since sexual relations involving a person under 18 are prohibited by law. another hypothetical example: if a person in the village were suspected of harboring intentions of defiling a child, neighbors could monitor their interactions to ensure that it did not happen. grassroots network actors also report vac cases to the authorities and provide witness accounts. in such scenarios, the interconnections at the grassroots level usually emerge organically, with many cases of spontaneous collaboration. however, these efforts are not always effective. our data show that in areas where the unstructured grassroots networks are not very strong, some perpetrators are able to bribe their way out of legal trouble: many actors who belong to weak networks also serve as arbitrators in clan and village courts. grassroots network formation can also be driven by individual volunteerism. for example, some communities in uganda have formed child protection committees that oversee establishing children’s rights. in these and other grassroots networks, the actors are sometimes appointed by community members, creating an informal code and underlying trust that implies a strong sense of community accountability. membership in these informal networks is open to those who want to serve and are in good community standing; in some cases, members are nominated by the local leaders. thus, there are high levels of volunteerism and commitment, and these actors view child protection as a calling. analysis of our findings shows that, normally, the pioneer volunteers are people currently raising children or who have grandchildren. their volunteerism is rooted in the spirit of ubuntu — the african concept meaning “humanity” or “i am because we are” (mbiti, 1972). they know that if all children can be protected, their children will also be safe. grassroots vac networks, therefore, are formed out of community reciprocity and connection as a means of child protection. they rely on local knowledge of child protection, which grassroots actors have accumulated over time. grassroots networks also have a contextualized understanding of harmful cultural practices that perpetuate vac and how to interrogate them when necessary. additionally, the formation of grassroots approaches to addressing vac draws on community norms of collective support, with collective resource pooling, investment of time in vac prevention, and response activities providing a bulwark against vac. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 97 our findings reveal that the collective efficacy built by actors in grassroots networks to prevent and respond to vac is guided by shared norms and values, mutual trust, and a willingness to cause a change in their communities. in so doing, grassroots actors endure challenges. for example, they report experiencing pushback from some conservative parents and guardians who still believe that corporal punishment is effective and justifiable. during one of the fgds, a community leader lamented, “some schools and parents still believe in the biblical saying that when you ‘spare the rod, you spoil the child’….” in some communities, grassroots actors report being labelled “child spoilers”. they also report having been betrayed by people who conspire with vac perpetrators to dismiss reported cases. funding for grassroots networks we asked grassroots network actors how they funded their activities and found that they were self-funded. for example, they used their own telephones to network and strategize daily, paid for their own transport to networking meetings and events, and invested a lot of time in doing vacrelated work. additionally, they sometimes sponsored survivors in a variety of ways, such as by purchasing groceries, clothes, and school requirements for neglected children in their communities. although grassroots networks are primarily funded from individual actors’ own sources, a few grassroots networks have received financial and logistical support in the past from government departments or local ngos implementing child protection projects in their areas. for example, at one time terre des hommes and the oak foundation funded loosely structured grassroots networks in east africa. in light of the scarcity of funding for grassroots initiatives, we sought to identify tipping points for philanthropic support in regard to preventing and responding to vac in east africa. we found that in kenya, funders were beginning to show more interest in community level networks than national level networks. based on discussions with a range of participants, the approach of funding through cops at the grassroots level stood out. cops are groups of people who share a concern or passion and regularly interact to learn how to do it better (wenger, 1997). cops are not always known as such: they may be referred to as “learning networks” or “thematic groups”. the membership of grassroots networks differs from that of cops, in that cops typically involve practitioners focusing their efforts on a specific subject field to further their knowledge and improve their community (cummings & van zee, 2005). discussion we conducted this research in east africa to understand how grassroots networks are formed and how they function. we found that networking is fluid. scholarly literature has historically privileged formal networks over grassroots networks. networks are commonly described in standardized, institutionalized terms (e.g., mizrahi & rosenthal, 2001; younis, 2017). but our data show that such descriptions exclude grassroots networks. in comparing cops to networks, cummings & van zee (2005) found a continuum of increasing formality in terms of structure: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 98 cops are highly informalized and networks highly formalized, with many variations in between. although this definition is more inclusive, it too excludes grassroots networks. our findings concur with zijderveld’s (2000) definition of networks as informal, undefined, non-hierarchical bonds between actors, which is more inclusive. we found that formal networks are formed from strategically planned and intentional efforts by actors who share a common vision or concern. grassroots networks, on the other hand, emerge organically out of the actors’ need to address a specific vac concern that is impacting their communities. guided by the spirit of ubuntu, their actions arise from the need for community reciprocity and collaboration. the study findings suggest that grassroots networks are formed because there is a gap in child protection service delivery that must be filled if children’s rights are to be realized. our research findings confirm past studies (asingwire et al., 2018; awortwi, 2018; awortwi & aivede, 2017), which found that grassroots initiatives are formed to fill a gap left by governments and ngos. our data analysis also shows that grassroots network actors face several challenges in executing their work. we view these challenges as interfering with community empowerment and suggest that a community where grassroots workers must take on personal economic strain in order to protect children is not fully empowered. despite these challenges, grassroots networks display continued resilience even when formal networks have “switched off ” because their funding has run out or their projects have closed. our findings suggest that grassroots initiatives are crucial in vac prevention and response, and are sustainable in the long run. therefore, our study findings are congruent with those of goodman and colleagues (2016), september (2006), and wessells (2015), who contended that grassroots actors are key players in child protection. our study also found a web of connections between formal and grassroots networks. these linkages have advantages for vac work at the grassroots, including the fact that some formal networks, such as menengage tanzania1 and improve the youth uganda2, build the capacity of grassroots actors working to prevent vac. conversely, the formal sector also gains from collaborating with grassroots networks. while the multiplicity of vac actors can be seen as a demonstration of a general commitment to child protection, it can give rise to a fragmented and often confusing web of networks (johnson & sloth-nielsen, 2020). our findings show that the disconnect between formal and grassroots vac actors have sometimes left informal actors feeling voiceless and exploited. one community leader noted, “the big organizations sometimes request us to put our names on their grant applications but when they get the funding, they ignore us. this makes us feel used.” our results suggest that formal networks seem to be making efforts to connect with grassroots actors because of the importance of the grassroots actors in the child protection landscape. 1 https://menengage.org/country/tanzania/ 2 https://www.facebook.com/improvetheyouthug/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 99 we also found that grassroots actors invest their resources of money and time into vac work without expecting any reimbursement. despite their low incomes, they serve as on-the-ground philanthropists who provide clothing for children in need, feed the hungry, and even help bury the dead. there is evidence that grassroots networks have a positive impact in their communities and we did not find evidence of harm. our findings, therefore, contradict those of past scholars like goodman et al. (2016) and spilsbury and korbin (2013) who have asserted that informal networks can do more harm than good unless adequately trained. another of our findings concerns the nature of network functionality. our analysis explored forms of networking beyond the structured forms. we found that grassroots networks that were unrecognized in government records and marginalized in the scholarly literature were actually instrumental in vac prevention and response in east africa. we contend that while the existence of structured networks is important, simply having a structure is not enough to guarantee a network’s ability to function. we found some registered networks that were considered to exist but were not working; as a participant said, they are “nets-not-working” rather than “nets-working” (fgd participant, uganda). such inoperative collaborations are what savage et al. (2010) associated with collaborative inertia: a state of lack of progress among partners. we concur with awortwi (2018, p. 905) that grassroots networks do not have a legal identity, but base their work on collective action. therefore, our findings are incongruent with the conventional ways in which networks are understood: many authors see them exclusively as formal arrangements (e.g., brinkerhoff, 1999; cummings & van zee, 2005; engel, 1993; plucknett et al., 1990). our research supports the growing body of literature that recognizes the vital work of grassroots initiatives (awortwi, 2018; castro félix & dupree, 2014; goodman et al., 2016; johnson & sloth-nielsen, 2020; kyriakakis, 2014; walakira et al., 2017). the findings of this research suggest that funders would do better, when deciding which groups to support, to prioritize networks’ functionality and their capacity to create the desired impact on the well-being of children instead of focusing on their formal “existence”. given the disruptions due to the covid-19 pandemic, we were compelled to modify some of our initial research procedures. the lockdown in kenya and uganda caused difficulties in securing meetings with some of the targeted participants. we remedied this limitation by conducting some telephone interviews and one anonymized video conference interview, then following up by email as needed. additionally, we further reviewed secondary sources to develop a comprehensive understanding of the situation. thus, the perspectives of some funders — specifically, the funders in kenya — were collected through secondary data. as a result, our findings are not generalizable. more research involving all potential categories of actors, such as local governments at subnational levels, is required. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 100 conclusion this article, based on a study of vac networking in kenya, uganda, and tanzania, has aimed to illuminate the existence of grassroots actors in the child protection ecology and their representation in academic literature. we found a web of grassroots networks involved in vac work that had been invisiblized and marginalized in practice, as well as ignored in social science research and literature. the efforts of grassroots vac network actors are not properly recognized by their governments — local, subregional, and state — or by funders. although grassroots network actors endeavored to gain control over child protection in their communities, they were neither facilitated nor empowered. sufficient support and due recognition are vital to achieving fully empowered communities that can contribute to child protection in meaningful and sustainable ways. we recommend that philanthropic efforts should be directed at strengthening grassroots connections instead of supporting expert-driven interventions that are likely to result in lessening of community ownership. future research could investigate strategies that would allow formal vac networks to collaborate more effectively with grassroots actors and that would encourage funders to synchronize their priorities with those of the intended beneficiaries. acknowledgments we are grateful to all our participants at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. we acknowledge nascent rdo uganda for hosting the research and especially recognize other members of the research team (aurelia munene, lydia b. sandi, dr. martha kibukamusoke). we are further grateful to dr. lina digolo for reviewing the first draft of the manuscript and to the reference group members (agnes m. wasike, dr. lina digolo, joel k kiiya, katie davies, and krista riddley) for providing support during the research process. the research was funded by the wellspring philanthropic fund through civsource africa. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 88–104 101 references african committee on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc). 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(2000). the institutional imperative: the interface of institutions and networks. leiden university press. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716740 bad jobs, bad parents? how job characteristics relate to time with children and self-evaluations of parents sabrina l. speights, samuel j. grubbs, and beth a. rubin abstract: using a data set of employed parents in the united states, the 2008 national study of the changing workforce, this paper examines work characteristics, the amount of time parents spend with their children, and how parents evaluate themselves in their parenting role (their “self-evaluations as parents”). the results indicate that although work hours correlate with time spent with children, they do not correlate with parents’ self-evaluations. autonomy is critical to both parenting outcomes, even after controlling for time spent with children. family structure is also correlated with time spent with children, but not with self-evaluations. these findings indicate that for working parents, some of the characteristics of their work influence both the amount of time spent with children and the degree to which they feel they are good parents. keywords: work–family, parenting, time with children, parenting evaluations authors’ note: a previous version of this paper was presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the southern sociological society in new orleans, louisiana. sabrina l. speights (the corresponding author) is a doctoral student in the organizational science program at the university of north carolina at charlotte, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223. email: sspeigh1@uncc.edu samuel j. grubbs is a lecturer on political science at the university of north carolina at charlotte, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223. email: sgrubbs@uncc.edu beth a. rubin is professor of sociology, public policy, and organizational science at the university of north carolina at charlotte, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223. email: barubin@uncc.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716740 mailto:sspeigh1@uncc.edu mailto:sgrubbs@uncc.edu mailto:barubin@uncc.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 21 the challenge working parents experience when attempting to manage work and family is well established (shockley & singla, 2011). conflict arises because parents must negotiate multiple schedules — office hours, meetings with clients, commuting times, child care, soccer practice, school plays — that are often difficult to reconcile (orrange, firebaugh, & heck, 2003). scholars repeatedly find that one’s experience of work–family conflict is related to the nature of one’s work (mennino, rubin, & brayfield, 2005; schieman, milkie, & glavin, 2009). few studies, however, directly examine the relationships between the characteristics of work and parenting. in this paper, we examine the relationships between characteristics of work and two aspects of parenting: the amount of time parents spend with their children, and the degree to which respondents feel that they are good parents (what we refer to as “self-evaluations as parents”). we consider both aspects because the complex relationships between work time, family time, and parenting likely influence the time parents spend with their children and parents’ self-evaluations in different ways. we argue that feeling one is doing a good job as a parent depends, at least in part, on one’s occupation. in an era of “intense parenting” (hays, 1996) in which parents often feel that they are not spending enough time with their children (milkie, mattingly, nomaguchi, bianchi, & robinson, 2004), the feeling of doing a good job as a parent may indicate some level of success in one’s ability to perform well at work, as well as to provide one’s children with physical, emotional, and cultural support. these subjective experiences are also important because it is the subjective evaluations associated with temporal experiences that are associated with key outcomes such as stress and satisfaction with work and family (kossek & ozeki, 1998; orrange et al., 2003). the literature on work and family has long documented the constant negotiation of organizational and family obligations (carlson, kacmar, & williams, 2000; greenhaus & beutell, 1985; moen, lam, ammons, & kelly, 2013). past research has focused on whether or not parents feel that the time they spend with their children is enough (milkie et al., 2004), but has not considered the specific aspects of work that influence parents’ ability to spend time with children. in this study, we address this key limitation and examine the effects of work characteristics on both hours spent with children and self-evaluations as parents. by analyzing parents’ selfevaluations we argue that we also capture the extent to which the management of work and family is successful. in this study, we examine the characteristics of work that are commonly associated with managing work–family conflict. primarily, we consider autonomy, work demands, income, and scheduling. in what follows, we first consider factors that contribute to perceptions of good parenting. second, we discuss how the nature of present-day working life can compete with societal ideals of good parenting. the influence of work on perceptions of “good” parenting there is no universal definition of being a “good parent” and perceptions about good parenting have changed over time. in her examination of parental time with children, epstein international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 22 (2004) discusses broad societal expectations of parents and how those expectations evolved. for instance, parents in the 1960s were expected to ensure their children’s physical and emotional well-being. by the 1990s, parents were expected to focus far more attention on their children’s future social networks and career opportunities. hays (1996) discusses how these changing cultural expectations of increased time and attention to children act as the gauge for how “good parents” are evaluated by others and how parents view themselves. these changes in parenting expectations demonstrate why it is that although parents are spending roughly the same amount of time (or more) with their children (sayer, bianchi, & robinson, 2004), they still feel pressured and wish they had more time with their children (milkie et al., 2004; milkie, kendig, nomaguchi, & denny, 2010). more recently, scholars have demonstrated that attempting to align with these expectations comes at a cost to parents (garey, 1995; rizzo, 2013). for instance, henderson (2016) found that mothers who feel guilt for not meeting parenting expectations experience lower self-efficacy and higher levels of stress. living up to cultural parenting ideologies may be particularly challenging for working parents and competing demands on time from work and children can increase depression for both mothers and fathers (roxburgh, 2012). in light of these cultural schemas of parenting, what blair-loy (2004) would call “familydevotion schemas,” spending time with children becomes a difficult negotiation for working parents (especially mothers) because the demands or schedules from work tend to impinge on family time more than family time tends to impinge on work (hecht & allen, 2009; mennino et al., 2005). given this difficult negotiation, parents alter their definitions of good parenting (christopher, 2012). for instance, using interviews of stay-at-home, part-time, and full-time working mothers, johnston and swanson (2006) found profound differences among their perspectives on what it means to be a good mother, and that these correlated with the mother’s employment status. stay-at-home mothers valued being home with their children and not leaving them in the care of others. for them, a good mother was someone who could be physically present at any time of day. working mothers, in contrast, emphasized deeper relational interactions, with greater ability to communicate and to build the child’s self-esteem, as indicators of good parenting. liss, schiffrin, mackintosh, miles-mclean, & erchull (2013) support these findings in their study of over 500 mothers. specifically, their results indicate that stay-at-home mothers are more likely than working mothers to perceive women as inherently better at parenting than men, and to believe that parents are primarily responsible for mentally stimulating their children. even among full-time employed parents, the perceptions of quality time with children can differ. from interviews with over one hundred dual-career married couples with children, snyder (2007) found that they defined “quality time” in one of three ways. to some parents, quality time with children meant engaging in a planned activity, such as a trip to the museum, or a vacation, that was separate from the daily routine. it was only by allocating a distinct time that these parents felt able to focus solely on their families without distractions from work. for others, quality time was above all child-centered, involving impromptu, heart-to-heart talks with their children and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 23 being emotionally available for them. for a third group of parents, quality time included all time spent at home, even if it included friction between family members. in fact, many such parents explicitly critiqued the view of quality time as only involving positive emotions. snyder’s findings make clear the temporal component of parenting perceptions. parents are expected to make time for their children and children’s activities (vincent & ball, 2007). to the extent that work constrains that time, parents may alter their definition of good parenting to emphasize quality over quantity. even in light of these altered definitions, spending time with children reduces feelings of stress and increases satisfaction with work–family balance among parents (milkie et al., 2010; milkie, raley, & bianchi, 2009). given the importance of spending time with children for maintaining healthy parent–child relationships, scholars have begun to turn their attention to examining the connections between work characteristics and both parent–child relationship quality (roeters, van der lippe, & kluwer, 2010) and parent perceptions of time adequacy (hill, tranby, kelly, & moen, 2013). more evidence is needed, however. examining parenting perceptions is especially important because these perceptions influence parenting competency and child outcomes (jones & prinz, 2005). in the following sections, we identify specific work characteristics that are critical to managing work– family balance. we then present hypotheses for how each characteristic relates to time with children and self-evaluations of parents. work characteristics and parenting most organizations take no more than a passive role in accommodating work–family conflict (googins, 1991). in lieu of taking primary responsibility for the intense time pressures (rubin & brody, 2010; yakura, 2001) and the cultivation of overwork cultures (collinson & collinson, 2004; evans, kunda, & barley, 2004) that drive much of the tension between work and family, organizational initiatives generally represent accommodating strategies that leave the onus of work–family conflict on the employee and the family. thus, instead of examining specific policies or specific “family-friendly” organizations, we argue that the work characteristics considered in this study are a type of workplace accommodation. we suggest that work characteristics create challenges and opportunities with regard to spending time with children, and also affect parental self-evaluations. we present a review of relevant literature of work characteristics and parenting in order to consider the expected directions of specific relationships. autonomy control over one’s work is arguably the job characteristic with the most influence on the relationship between work and family. work autonomy is positively related to job satisfaction (perrucci & macdermid, 2007) and is a key factor in explaining organizational commitment and engagement (blair-loy, 2004). further, those with autonomy are better able to balance the disparate requirements of work and family (schieman et al., 2009) and to manage work–family conflict (michel, kotrba, mitchelson, clark, & baltes, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 24 in their analysis of a work place initiative to improve schedule control, kelly, moen, and tranby (2011) found that the results only work environment (rowe) initiative significantly reduced work–family conflict and that this effect was fully mediated by employee perceptions of schedule control. taken together, the literature suggests that more control over work and scheduling has many positive effects on employees’ individual health and work–family management. we expect autonomy to correlate both with the time spent by parents with their children, and with parents’ positive self-evaluations. work hours historically, empirical evidence has suggested a negative impact of maternal employment on parenting quality. much of this research takes a deprivation perspective and suggests that maternal employment detracts from child engagement and development (see gottfried, gottfried, & bathurst, 2002 for review). for example, belsky and eggebeen (1991) found that children were less compliant with directions at age three if their mothers had worked full time when the child was one or two years old than if their mothers had not worked outside the home at all. using the 1986 national longitudinal survey of youth, han, waldfogel, and brooks-gunn (2001) also found negative child development outcomes for white children (findings for black children were not reported) related to maternal employment that persisted later in childhood until age 8. the deprivation perspective, however, has come under scrutiny. first, scholars have questioned the simple assumption that increased work time necessitates a one-to-one reduction in hours spent with children (bianchi, 2000). school-aged children, for instance, are not available to their parents for a large portion of the day, so any overlap with work hours reduces the loss of time spent with children (see sayer et al., 2004 for review). second, data also support the seemingly paradoxical finding that although parents (especially mothers of young children) are committing more to the labor market, the number of hours they spend with their children has changed very little (bianchi, 2000; bianchi, robinson, & milkie, 2006). employment can also have positive effects for the family. it may provide parents skills and resources that enrich family life and lead to enhanced home environments for children (carlson, hunter, ferguson, & whitten, 2014; huston & aronson, 2005). finally, the effect of work hours on parenting outcomes is also influenced by indicators of social class (augustine, 2014; kendig & bianchi, 2008). there is evidence in both positive and negative directions for the relationship between work hours and time with children and other positive child development outcomes. it is clear, however, that longer work hours lead to a greater impact on life outside work (schieman et al., 2009) and increased work–family conflict (byron, 2005; michel et al., 2011). the stress and emotional guilt associated with work–family conflict (judge, ilies, & scott, 2006; morgan & king, 2012), is likely to reduce parental self-evaluations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 25 income increased income is often associated with increased work commitments because increased work rewards require employees to put in extra work time. for this reason, data suggest that income correlates positively with work–home conflict (schieman, whitestone, & van gundy, 2006) and with reductions in preferred working hours (reynolds & aletraris, 2010). it is, therefore, likely that increased income also correlates with decreased time with children. parents with more money can, however, better afford resources and opportunities for their children. when children are young, parents with higher income can afford center care for their children while they are working (presser, 2003). in addition to basic child-care needs, raising middle class children is an expensive endeavor (bianchi et al., 2006), because little league, ballet lessons, and other organized activities — that have become normative (daly, 1996) — require additional funds. parents with higher incomes can also spend more money on vacations (maume, 2006) and other forms of family leisure (mattingly & sayer, 2006; shaw, 1992) to enhance their children’s cultural experiences. parents with more money may use the participation of their children in these activities as a measure of good parenting because it allows time for family togetherness and decreases the stress of work–family conflict (hilbrecht & smale, 2016). taken together, although increased income may reduce time with children, parents are likely to view themselves as better parents as their income increases. shifts and scheduling the organization of work hours is another important factor. nonstandard work schedules may reduce the time parents spend with children (roeters et al., 2010; wight, raley, & bianchi, 2015), potentially leading to dysfunctional and hostile family dynamics that can harm children emotionally and lead to behavior problems (strazdins, clements, korda, broom, & souza, 2006). child-care arrangements for those with nonstandard schedules can be complex. scott, london, and hurst (2005) interviewed low-income women about their child-care arrangements. these women had to find child care that could accommodate multiple jobs with working hours early in the morning and late at night. consequently, mothers relied on family child-care homes and relatives to aid with child-care management, often needing multiple caretakers to accommodate nonstandard work schedules. finding reliable child care was difficult. many mothers changed caretakers often because either the care was poor or the mother’s jobs or hours had changed (hofferth & collins, 2000). parents with nonstandard schedules may experience unique child-care arrangement challenges (presser, 1998; henly & lambert, 2005); nonstandard work schedules can also increase time with children. for instance, presser (2003) found that fathers who worked nonstandard schedules interacted with and helped their children with their homework more than did fathers working regular shifts. interestingly, mothers’ schedules did not significantly predict the frequency of one-on-one conversations with children, but nonstandard schedules did reduce the amount of time they spent with their children on activities outside the home. overall, nonstandard shifts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 26 complicate child-care arrangements and may interfere with the time parents can spend with their children. the uncertainty in providing care and time with children likely reduces parents’ selfevaluations of their parenting quality. methods data this study uses data from the u.s.-based 2008 national study of the changing workforce (nscw), developed by the families and work institute (bond & galinsky, 2008). nscw is a representative sample derived from a phone survey of working adults in the united states. eligibility for survey participation was contingent upon working for pay or operating a business that produced income, being 18 years of age or older, having civilian employment, and maintaining a household telephone number. our total sample of working parents included 1,093 respondents who worked at least part time and had at least one child under 18 years old. after removing missing data, the final sample included 1,009 parents. dependent variables time with children. to measure time spent with children, we used respondents’ answers to the question: “on average, on days when you’re working, about how many hours/minutes do you spend taking care of or doing things with your child/children?” we report the responses in hours. self-perceptions of parenting. we measure self-perceptions of parenting by using a single survey item: “on a scale of 1 to 10 — with 1 being not a good job and 10 being a very good job — how good a job do you feel you’ve done so far as a parent?” independent variables work autonomy. we measured autonomy using an index of four survey items (cronbach’s α = .75) on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). • i have the freedom to decide what i do on my job. • it is basically my own responsibility to decide how my job gets done. • i have a lot of say about what happens on my job. • i feel i can be myself on my job. these questions have been previously used as a cumulative measure of work autonomy (brody & rubin, 2011; kalleberg, 2011). furthermore, we found that these responses loaded onto one factor when we did a preliminary factor analysis. the mean response for this scale was 2.09 (table 1). hours worked. work hours includes the total number of hours the respondent worked at all jobs in a given week. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 27 regular schedule. respondents were asked to indicate whether their usual work schedule or shift is a regular daytime schedule, a regular evening shift, a regular night shift, or a rotating shift. in order to compare traditional versus non-traditional schedules, we dummy-coded these responses to identify individuals who work a regular daytime schedule (coded 1) compared to all others (coded 0). income. income was captured by using respondent’s estimates of total personal annual earnings in 2008 to measure wage level. hourly employee. the pay structure was dummy-coded (1=“hourly”; 0=“salaried”). control variables. several family and demographic characteristics influence the ability of working parents to manage their work and parenting responsibilities. young children who are not in school require more supervision and care than do older, school-aged children. for this reason, we include a dummy code for presence of children under the age of 6 in the model (1=“yes”; 0=“no”). a spouse or other adult in the home will probably provide support by taking on some of the responsibility of child care. thus, we include marital status (1=“married”; 0=“other”) and the number of adults in the home as controls. we also control for gender given the differences between women and men in taking on responsibility for managing the family. life-course scholars emphasize the importance of considering the dynamism of life patterns on concepts of interest (moen & sweet, 2004). in line with these arguments, we control for age because older workers may be more established in their careers. finally, although racial differences are not typically discussed in the work–family literature, we include a dummy code for race (1=“white/nonhispanic”; 0=“non-white”) because racial minorities are less likely to work in jobs that afford them the resources and income to manage their work and parenting. further, members of racial minorities are more likely than whites to be single parents. analysis for this study, we analyzed the data using stata 13. we used ordinary least squares (ols) regression to examine the effects of work characteristics on the time spent with children. for our analysis of perceptions of parenting, given the rank ordering of the responses, we used ordinal logistic regression. we present a table for each hypothesis examining the individual and model effects. for ease of interpretation of the coefficients, work hours reflects 1/10 of the hours that each respondent worked in a given week and the income variable reflects 1/100,000 of the respondents’ individual estimated incomes. an examination of the data indicates that outliers and multicollinearity (determined by variance inflation factors) are not altering the results of the analysis. results table 1 includes the means, standard deviations, and correlations for all the study variables. regarding the work variables, on average, respondents worked 43 hours per week. approximately international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 28 81% of the respondents worked a regular shift schedule, and 59% were hourly employees. the median income for the respondents was $61,123. this figure is higher than the census data for the same year ($52,029; semega, 2009) because some of the respondents had extremely high incomes (16 had annual incomes above $250,000). additionally, most of the respondents were married (74%) and white (79%). the respondents were almost evenly split between men (47%) and women (53%). the average respondent was 41 years old. there were 2.08 adults per household. relatives and in-laws comprised about 66% of the non-spouse adults in the household (not shown). thirty-nine percent of respondents had children under 6 in their home. we also present a correlation matrix of the dependent, independent, and control variables in table 1. none of the correlations are stronger than ±0.32, indicating that the variables are somewhat independent of each other. in particular, there is very little correlation between the two dependent variables: hours spent with children and parents’ self-perceptions (r = 0.09). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 29 table 1 parenting variables, work variables, and demographic variables: correlations and descriptive statistics (n=1,009) variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. self-evaluations 2. hours with child .09 3. work autonomy .08 .05 4. regular shifta .04 -.05 .10 5. hourly employeeb .12 .09 -.18 -.17 6. hours worked -.05 -.14 .06 .01 -.27 7. income -.01 -.14 .16 .06 -.19 .31 8. marriedc -.06 -.12 .03 .09 -.15 .07 .16 9. white/non-hispanicd -.15 -.10 .05 .10 -.10 .01 .08 .21 10. femalee .06 .12 -.06 .02 .11 -.32 -.24 -.24 -.10 11.age -.08 -.24 .04 .09 -.13 .07 .14 .07 .14 -.04 12. adults in house -.05 .00 -.04 -.03 .00 .01 .01 .29 -.04 -.04 .12 13. children under 6f .04 .16 .00 -.05 -.01 .02 -.01 .07 -.02 -.14 -.52 -.03 m 8.13 2.98 2.09 .81 .59 43.08 61122.65 .74 .79 .53 40.83 2.08 .39 sd 1.29 2.65 0.74 11.68 67064.74 8.48 0.73 note. a0 = irregular shift, 1 = regular shift. b0 = salaried employee, 1 = hourly employee. c0 = not married, 1 = married. d0 = non-white, 1 = white/non-hispanic. e0 = male, 1 = female. f0 = no children under age 6, 1 = presence of children under age 6. standard deviations are omitted for dummy variables. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 30 hours spent with children table 2 presents the results of our primary analyses, testing the relationships between characteristics of parents’ work situations and time spent with children. the overall model fit is statistically significant and the complete model does increase the overall variance explained. on average, parents reported spending 2.98 hours with their children on a workday (noted in table 1); however, the median for the distribution is 2 (not presented) indicating some positive skewness in the distribution. about 10% of the respondents indicated spending more than 5 hours with their children on a workday. table 2 regression models for work characteristics predicting hours with children model 1 model 2 variable b se t-statistic b se t-statistic intercept 5.04 0.57 5.26 0.76 married -0.56 0.20 -2.82** -0.50 0.20 -2.48** white -0.27 0.21 -1.32 -0.28 0.21 -1.36 female 0.53 0.17 3.19** 0.36 0.18 2.03* age -0.06 0.01 -5.04** -0.05 0.01 -4.56** adults in house 0.21 0.12 1.83 0.20 0.12 1.78 children under 6 0.49 0.20 2.49* 0.50 0.20 2.57** work autonomy 0.30 0.11 2.73** regular shift -0.16 0.21 -0.78 hourly employee 0.13 0.17 0.75 hours worked -0.18 0.08 -2.41** income -0.24 0.01 -1.86 r2 0.09 0.11 f 15.83* 10.63* * p < .05, ** p < .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 31 model 1 contains only the control variables; we add the work variables in model 2. in model 1, as expected, there is a significant gender effect such that mothers spend more time with their children than do fathers. this effect did weaken once we accounted for the work variables, but a difference remains stable across models. also, as expected, having young children increases the time parents spend with them. the effect of parents’ age was negative, indicating that as parents get older they spend less time with their children. surprisingly, marital status had a negative relationship with time with children: those who are married spend less time with their children than do parents who are not living with someone as a couple. this finding may be indicative of parents sharing child-care responsibilities, and each parent thus spending less time with their children. moreover, those unpartnered parents who do not have another person with whom to share child care may of necessity spend more time with their children. turning to the work variables (model 2), the positive effect of autonomy and the negative effect of work hours on time spent with children are consistent with our expectations. interestingly, having a regular shift decreases time spent with children, and being an hourly worker increases it. although these findings were not significant, they support the research on nonstandard schedules that suggests working parents can structure their shift work around their family demands (clawson & gerstel, 2014; fagan, 2001). self-evaluations as parents in our second hypothesis, we evaluated respondents’ self-evaluations as parents (table 3). the majority of the respondents rated themselves favorably on the self-evaluation scale. the mean of the distribution is 8.13 on a 10-point scale (noted in table 1). of the 1009 parents who responded, nearly 73% (740) rated themselves as an 8 or higher. furthermore, 172 (17%) respondents graded themselves 10 out of 10. therefore, the results are closely grouped together. again, model 1 includes only the control variables and in model 2 we add the work variables. we find that adding work characteristics doubles the likelihood ratio chi squared, indicating a better fitting model. finally, in model 3, we add hours spent with children to analyze the effect of work characteristics even when accounting for the actual time spent with children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 32 table 3 regression models for work characteristics predicting self-evaluations as parent model 1 model 2 model 3 variable b se z statistic b se z statistic b se z statistic married -0.06 0.15 -0.44 -0.04 0.15 -0.29 -0.02 0.15 -0.15 white -0.69 0.15 -4.54** -0.71 0.15 -4.63** -0.69 0.15 -4.51** female 0.18 0.12 1.48 0.15 0.13 1.16 0.12 0.13 0.93 age -0.01 0.01 -1.08 -0.01 0.01 -0.93 0.00 0.01 -0.55 adults in house -0.10 0.09 -1.2 -0.09 0.09 -1.09 -0.10 0.09 -1.15 kids under 6 0.10 0.14 0.69 0.11 0.14 0.76 0.07 0.14 0.51 work autonomy 0.29 0.08 3.57** 0.27 0.08 3.33** regular shift 0.18 0.15 1.17 0.19 0.15 1.22 hourly employee 0.44 0.13 3.48** 0.43 0.13 3.43** hours worked -0.05 0.01 -0.96 -0.04 0.05 -0.77 income 0.08 0.00 0.94 0.10 0.01 1.08 hours with children 0.06 0.03 2.45** χ2 33.93** 60.46** 66.81** log likelihood 82.48** 114.74* 120.11* * p < .05, ** p < .01 in agreement with our predictions, increased autonomy, working a regular shift, and increased income all positively relate to self-evaluation rankings (see table 3, model 2). autonomy is, however, the only relationship that reaches statistical significance (p < .01). hourly workers rank themselves higher than do salaried workers (b=.43, p <.01), an effect we did not expect. finally, in model 3, hours spent with children had a positive effect on self-evaluations (b=.06, p < .01). note that autonomy and hourly pay remain significant even after accounting for the time parents report spending with their children. in contrast to the findings on time spent with children, in the self-evaluation models, the only control variable that was significant was race. specifically, white parents rank themselves lower on their self-evaluations than do non-white parents. discussion in this paper, we sought to analyze the relationships between work characteristics and both working parents’ time with their children and their self-evaluations as parents. generally, we hypothesized that work characteristics that provide parents flexibility and resources would have positive effects on time with children and self-evaluations as parents. overall, we find some support for our hypotheses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 33 as demonstrated in previous research, the role of autonomy is critical for working parents (kelly et al., 2011; schieman et al., 2006). parents who had more work autonomy reported spending more time with their children and provided higher self-evaluations than parents with lower levels of autonomy. this finding demonstrates that not only does autonomy provide parents with more time with their children, it also related to how they rank themselves as parents. the effect of autonomy on parenting likely occurs because when parents have discretion over their work they are able to align schedules to plan vacations, be home to talk to their children, or attend important events like plays and sports games (snyder, 2007). it is important also to consider the implications that work autonomy can have for parents. control over work is viewed as a critical means for managing work and family demands because it provides employees discretion over when, where, and how their work is done (kelly et al., 2011). our findings demonstrate that work autonomy increases time parents spend with their children and parent self-evaluations. the relationship between autonomy and self-evaluations perhaps is evidence of positive spillover effects (hanson & hammer, 2006), such that experiencing greater work autonomy leads parents to perceive that they actively guide and shape their interactions with their children. future research should continue to examine the ways work characteristics may influence overall work–family facilitation (wayne, grzywacz, carlson, & kacmar, 2007). increased hours worked, as expected, reduced the time parents spent with their children. interestingly, work hours do not significantly predict self-evaluations (however, the relationship is negative, as predicted). our prediction that increased work hours would result in lower selfevaluation scores was not borne out, which aligns with the literature showing that parents’ employment status alters their notions of what makes a good parent (johnston & swanson, 2006). parents who work do not put as much value on their ability to be physically present with their children at all times. instead, they value being able to support the children’s aspirations and praise their accomplishments. thus, it does after all make sense that work hours reduce the time available to spend with one’s children, but that this does not translate into reduced self-evaluations as a parent. structure of pay was related to self-evaluations, but not in the way we expected. hourly employees rated themselves higher than did salaried employees. we reasoned that because hourly pay is often associated with lower status work, lower income parents who are paid hourly would have lower self-evaluation scores than do parents who work for a salary. however, our findings indicate that although hourly workers report lower income and have less autonomy than salaried workers, they also work fewer hours. hourly workers may therefore, be able to structure their schedules in ways that afford them some control over allocating time to their children (presser, 2003). perhaps this unexpected finding reflects class differences in the experiences at the work– family interface such that there is a “stress of higher status” (schieman et al., 2009) associated with salaried employees. hourly employees, in contrast, are able to maintain the needed income to support their families but are not required to work the long hours that, as our findings international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 34 demonstrate, decrease time with children. future research should consider class differences in how parents understand and negotiate worker and parent identities. the effects of control variables were also of interest. in the model predicting time with children, marital status, gender, age of parent, and presence of children under the age of 6 were all significant. in contrast, the only significant control variable for self-evaluations was race, such that white parents rank themselves lower than do non-white parents. these distinct patterns of results probably arise because spending time with children has just as much to do with the characteristics of the family as with those of parent’s work. younger children need more care than older children, mothers spend more time with children than do fathers, and those who are married have another person who can spend time with the child. thus, varied family structures affect both the ability and the need to be present for the children. self-evaluations, however, are specific to the parent. mothers and fathers make assessments of themselves and these evaluations may include a multitude of factors. first, family is not always a safe haven that workers can use to escape the pressures from work (hochschild, 1997; clawson & gerstel, 2014). families can cause stress, frustration, anger, and anxiety. this potential tension is evidenced by the studies in the work–family literature that support the bidirectionality of conflict with family as an antecedent (carlson et al., 2000; greenhaus & beutell, 1985). additionally, there is likely social desirability bias at play (reflected in the high mean score, 8 out of 10, for the self-evaluations). parents do not want to rank themselves low because being a parent is an important aspect of their identities, even if they also have a strong devotion to work (blair-loy, 2004; moen et al., 2013). given this restriction in the range of self-evaluation scores, our findings are likely conservative. however, the limitations of our study must also be acknowledged. first, we relied on selfreported time estimates. time-use scholars have long contested the accuracy of self-reported timeuse estimates because individuals do not accurately estimate the time they spend on daily tasks (lee & waite, 2005). although we cannot escape this limitation, we feel that the contextualized question asking how much time parents spend with their children on days they are working is an advantage that helps to limit the scope of recall for respondents. future research should incorporate additional forms of data, such as experiential sampling methods, to better capture the time parents spend with their children. second, we were unable to analyze the complexity of family life. potential tensions at home may weigh more heavily in parents’ evaluations and have implications for the time parents want to spend with their children. future research should capture data on perceptions of family life and even include information from spouses and children in their analyses. finally, although nationally representative of the united states, the nscw produces a rather homogenous group of working parents and can only speak to the values of one country. the majority of the respondents were white and had relatively high incomes; the sample, therefore, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 35 does not capture the experiences of a vast number who live in the united states. although the nscw is a valuable source of data on workplace perceptions, the unique and complex relationships between race, class, and work in the united states cannot be properly assessed with this data set. an important next step in assessing the connections between the nature of work and parenting is broadening the diversity of types of work and the demographics of the parents in the analysis. despite these limitations, the current analysis finds that the nature of work does have implications not only on time spent with children, but on self-evaluations of parents. presently there are very few family-friendly federal workplace policies in the united states that encourage parents to spend time with children (an exception is the 12 weeks of unpaid leave provided by the family and medical leave act of 1993). we view this study as an important step towards understanding the connection between work and perceptions of success in work–family management. conclusion the time it takes to raise a child is central to discussions of rising work demands. however, few studies examine the efficacy of strategies used to manage work and family. our investigation addresses this limitation by examining both time spent with children and how parents rate themselves (self-evaluations). our findings support much of the work–family literature that suggests control over work and increased work demands have critical implications for the ability of working parents to balance the needs of work and family. we extend previous research by highlighting that the evaluation of the efficacy of strategies to manage work and family is critical to understanding and improving the quality of life of contemporary working parents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 20–41 36 references augustine, j. m. 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(2001). billables: the valorization of time in consulting. american behavioral scientist, 44(7),1076–1095. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002214650604700304 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2005.00122.x https://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/acsbr08-2.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0149206310394864 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038507082315 bad jobs, bad parents? how job characteristics relate to time with children and self-evaluations of parents sabrina l. speights, samuel j. grubbs, and beth a. rubin the influence of work on perceptions of “good” parenting work characteristics and parenting autonomy work hours income shifts and scheduling methods data dependent variables independent variables analysis results hours spent with children self-evaluations as parents discussion conclusion references “like picking up a seed, but you haven’t planted it”: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 204–219 204 “like picking up a seed, but you haven’t planted it”: queer youth analyze the it gets better project shelley l. craig, lauren mcinroy, ramona alaggia, and lance t. mccready abstract: youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer [lgbtq] are at elevated risk of experiencing verbal and physical harassment, as well as an array of negative outcomes, including increased violence and suicidality. the purpose of this study was to solicit input from lgbtq youth (n = 19) about the strengths, limitations, and influence of an online video project focused on suicide prevention, the it gets better project [igbp]. using a grounded theory approach, in-depth interviews were conducted and participant responses were analyzed using atlas.ti.6.7. several major themes regarding participants’ perspectives on the igbp emerged from the analysis. participants indicated that they perceived the igbp as a positive start towards change, with the project drawing attention to the concerning issue of lgbtq youth vulnerability for increased suicidality. however, they also identified flaws with the content and focus of the project, indicating the campaign requires significant further development to provide tangible resources to youth at risk of suicide. recommendations are made and discussed to help inform future research and practice efforts. keywords: lgbtq; youth; it gets better project; media; suicide acknowledgements: the authors wish to acknowledge and thank the youth participants who generously provided their time and insight. this study was funded by a social sciences and humanities research council of canada insight grant (#491406). shelley l. craig, ph.d., (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the factorinwentash faculty of social work, university of toronto, 246 bloor street west, toronto, ontario, canada, m5s 1a1. telephone: (416) 978-8847. e-mail: shelley.craig@utoronto.ca lauren b. mcinroy, msw, rsw, is a doctoral student in the factor-inwentash faculty of social work, university of toronto, 246 bloor street west, toronto, ontario, canada, m5s 1a1. e-mail: lauren.mcinroy@mail.utoronto.ca ramona alaggia, ph.d., is an associate professor and chair in children’s mental health in the factor-inwentash faculty of social work, university of toronto, 246 bloor street west, toronto, ontario, canada, m5s 1a1. e-mail: ramona.alaggia@utoronto.ca lance t. mccready, ph.d. is an associate professor at the ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, 252 bloor street west, toronto, ontario, canada, m5s 1v6. e-mail: lance.mccready@utoronto.ca mailto:shelley.craig@utoronto.ca mailto:lauren.mcinroy@mail.utoronto.ca mailto:ramona.alaggia@utoronto.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 205 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [lgbtq] youth are frequently considered a population at risk (morgan, mancl, kaffar, & ferreira, 2011). though lgbtq adolescents are not a homogenous population and do not experience all risks identically, these youth generally tend to have poorer emotional, psychological, behavioural, and educational outcomes than their non-lgbtq peers (fisher et al., 2008; robinson & espelage, 2011). this population’s particularly high risk of suicidality in both the united states and canada (dyck, 2012) has led to research suggesting suicide is the “the leading cause of death among lgbtq adolescents” (fisher et al., 2008, p. 80), with some estimates indicating up to 40% of these youth have made a suicide attempt. suicidality “refers to the occurrence of suicidal thoughts or suicidal behavior” (galaif, sussman, newcomb, & locke, 2007, p. 27) and incorporates both cognitions and actions elevated lgtbq youth suicidality has been linked to high rates of violence, discrimination, and identity-based bullying (berlan, corliss, field, goodman, & austin, 2010; fisher et al., 2008; morgan et al., 2011), as well as low levels of social support (detrie & lease, 2007). for example, lgbtq adolescents frequently experience verbal (80%) or physical harassment (25 to 40%) or violence (20%) related to their sexuality and/or gender expression (morgan et al., 2011). in canada, a recent study found that one-fifth of lgbtq students experienced physical violence as a result of their perceived lgbtq status (taylor & peter, 2011), contributing to poor health and mental health issues for this population the it gets better project the it gets better project [igbp] (2012a) is an online video campaign created in 2010 by author and activist dan savage, and his partner terry miller, in response to the high-profile suicides of several male adolescents bullied for being, or perceived as being, gay in the united states that fall. the suicides of these lgbtq young adults resulted in significant media attention that contributed to the creation and visibility of the igbp (gay times, 2010; gay-straight alliance network, 2010; make it better project, 2012b; waidzunas, 2012). the project’s stated goal is to let “all lgbt youth know, that despite the tough times, it gets better” (it gets better project, 2012c), providing hope and a sense of community to youth experiencing harassment in order to prevent youth suicide (it gets better project, 2012b; parker-pope, 2010). the igbp emphasizes to youth that adulthood will be an improvement over their adolescence and provides examples of well-adjusted, successful lgbtq adults as role models which youth may lack in their daily lives (it gets better project, 2012b). to achieve this goal, the igbp is comprised of a growing compilation of videos uploaded by participants (both by lgbtq individuals and non-lgbtq allies) assuring youth of a brighter future by sharing their own stories (it gets better project, 2012d; parker-pope, 2010; waidzunas, 2012). many celebrities, politicians, media personalities, and other notable individuals have also contributed to the project (it gets better project, 2012b; parker-pope, 2011; sparks, 2011). as of mid-2012 the project’s website indicates that over 50,000 videos have been created by users, with a total of more than 50 million views (it gets better project, 2012b). additionally, over half a million people have taken the igbp’s pledge to support the igbp, spread the campaign’s message, and speak out against intolerance (it gets better project, 2012a). despite this extensive popularity, little is known about how lgbtq youth view the strengths and limitations of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 206 igbp, as well as their perspectives on the influence of this project on reduction of suicide risk. scholarly attention to popular campaigns such as the igbp is critical as there is little information on best practices or effective strategies to reduce suicide in lgbtq youth (dyck, 2012). the purpose of this study was to solicit input from lgbtq youth concerning the messages imparted by the igbp and their reaction to those messages. methods study design, recruitment, and data collection this study sought the perspectives of lgbtq young adults regarding the igbp. a grounded theory design guided in-depth interviews with 19 lgbtq young adults in the greater toronto area of ontario, canada. grounded theory was chosen as the methodology of this study due to its emphasis on a rigorous and systematic approach to data collection and theory building, as well as its encouragement of context exploration (birks & mills, 2011; patton, 2002). participants were recruited through organizations and programs which specifically provided services or programming for lgbtq youth. youth were pre-screened to meet inclusion criteria: (a) age 18 to 22; (b) self-identified as members of the lgbtq community; and (c) regular consumption of a variety of types of new media. eligible participants were recruited using theoretical sampling throughout the data collection period (between september and december of 2011). theoretical sampling encouraged alternative and nuanced theoretical categories and assured a diversity of research participants, particularly with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity. sampling and analysis were undertaken simultaneously so that emerging findings informed ongoing sampling (charmaz, 2006; strauss & corbin, 1998) until theoretical saturation was reached and little new information was coming forward in subsequent interviews (charmaz, 2006; creswell, 1998; mccracken, 1988). interviews lasted between one and three hours, were conducted by the primary investigator (i.e., the corresponding author), and were simultaneously audioand video-recorded. participants provided informed consent in accordance with the approved university of toronto research ethics board protocol #26749. interviews utilized a semi-structured interview protocol informed by current literature and developed by the research team. open-ended questions gave participants the latitude to convey experiences relative to their individual perceptions and styles of presentation, while being prompted to remain within the scope of the interview topics. examples of questions included: describe your reactions to the igbp? and how do you think the igbp influences queer youth? in addition, probes (e.g., please describe what the igbp does for youth? and what specifically would you suggest to improve the igbp?) were also used to delve deeper into their initial statements. participants were compensated with a gift card to a store of their choice, as well as bus tokens for transportation. participants: sample description the mean age of participants (n = 19) was 19.47 (sd = 1.219), with an age range of 18 to 22. participants identified their gender as cisgender-woman (47%), cisgender-man (32%), transgender-man (16%), and genderqueer (5%), resulting in 21% of lgbtq youth identifying international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 207 with a transgender identity. cisgender (i.e., cisgender-woman or cisgender-man) refers to nontransgender individuals. participants were lesbian (21%), gay (32%), bisexual (11%), queer (5%), polysexual (5%), or using multiple terms (26%). participants also identified as white (74%), black (5%), asian (5%), or multi-racial (i.e., black/white, black/asian, and white/south asian, 16%). ethnicity was more complex and thus more challenging to capture; however, 16% of participants identified as ethnically jewish, while 16% identified as hispanic. nearly all participants (95%) were currently enrolled in school, with one participant currently in the process of applying. of those attending school, 22% were attending high school, while 11% were in college and 67% were in university. participants were avid media users, particularly with regard to new, online media, with all participants spending more than five hours a week online. in the case of new media specifically, social networking, music and video sharing, and blogs/forums were particularly popular among participants. participants were also asked about the amount of their television and online media consumption geared towards lgbtq audiences or content, with study participants consuming a greater proportion of lgbtq-focused content through new media. analysis grounded theory (charmaz, 2006) strategies were used as an analytic framework. grounded theory aims to create a systematic understanding of the relationship between experiences (patton, 2002; strauss & corbin, 1998). essential elements of a grounded theory approach include ongoing and purposeful theoretical sampling, simultaneous data collection and analysis, multi-phase coding and analysis of data, continual reflection on the research and decision-making processes and comparison of preliminary analyses, theoretical saturation, and development of comprehensive theoretical explanations (birks & mills, 2011; charmaz, 2006). a grounded theory approach has been used in previous studies involving lgbtq youth (craig & mcinroy, 2014); russell, muraco, subramaniam, & laub, 2009). all interviews were transcribed verbatim and uploaded into atlas.ti 6.7 software for data management and analysis. transcripts of each session were independently analyzed by three coders, with seven coders participating in the project. after the generation of initial categories, open and axial coding led to the identification of concepts and eventually emergent themes (strauss & corbin, 1998). interrater reliability was reached at 98%. through consensus, codes were discussed and agreed upon leading to a shared understanding of the theme meanings, thus reducing bias (denzin, 1994; russell et al., 2009). to ensure rigour and methodological soundness, trustworthiness measures were employed through credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability (lincoln & guba, 1985). these included prolonged engagement (the research team has considerable experience working with lgbtq youth and together represent expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methodologies), peer debriefing (numerous formal and informal meetings and discussions examined ideas and possible preconceived notions among the investigative team), and thick description (generated themes include rich descriptive accounts and quotes that present contexts and circumstances of sampled participants, findings, and interpretations). dependability of the data was achieved through verbatim transcription of the audio-taped interviews so that the words of the participants were captured directly as they were spoken. in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 208 addition, an audit trail comprised of an extensive collection of memos was maintained by the research team throughout the research study to describe the research process and track research decisions made along the way. finally, awareness of potential presuppositions by the research team because of their previous experiences working with lgbtq youth was examined through the use of reflexivity and bracketing, which consisted of debriefing after every interview and research team meeting and undertaking a frank analysis of the ways in which their own experiences may have influenced interpretation of the material. results four major themes regarding participants’ perspectives on the igbp and its influence on lgbtq youth suicidality emerged from the analysis. participants identified that the project was: (a) an excellent start, but (b) had a long way to go, and should focus on (c) making it better for all lgbtq youth, (d) especially those that were more ethnically or socio-economically diverse. these results will be contextualized using relevant literature where appropriate, and described using the participants’ own words. “i think it’s an excellent start…” participants universally agreed that the igbp had some merit, or was at least an important start towards change. many expressed the need for a campaign or programming reaching out to lgbtq youth, and suggested that the igbp was better than not having any campaign directed towards mitigating suicide risks for these adolescents. the it gets better campaign is beautiful because, [it’s] through social media, through a media that's accessible… it gets better, it's mostly people who are now in a better place than they were many years before, reaching out to people the same age as they were at a time of crisis saying look, please.... please don't kill yourself because there are bullies…. so it gets better just says, you know what, it's a shitty world, but you can get through it…. so it's just a campaign for hope. (phillip1, age 18, transgender-man/androgynous, gay) participants elucidated numerous strengths of the igbp format, including the accessibility of the campaign, its contemporary relevance, the provision of role models, bringing attention to the issue of lgbtq youth suicide, and its potential to decrease or prevent suicidality among lgbtq adolescents. in particular, participants noted that the igbp increased levels of awareness of the bullying and problems that lgbtq youth have to contend with on a daily basis. i guess we should continue with what we’re doing, like getting the support out there and continuing the it gets better campaign and things like that, and bringing awareness to the fact that many lgbt guys and girls and people are dying because of bullying…. so i feel like we should bring awareness to the fact that people are dying because of hate. (steven, age 19, cisgender-man, gay) 1 names have been changed to protect participant privacy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 209 i think it fits with the times. before people didn’t want to talk about it because it’s uncomfortable or most people just generally didn’t care. but now you’ve got people out there saying you can’t ignore this problem anymore and really active…. but i think it is definitely an excellent, it’s a step in the right direction. (michael, age 21, cisgender-man, gay/queer) participants praised the potential of the igbp to reach out to lgbtq youth and raise awareness of the issues lgbtq youth face. commentators have also discussed the importance of the igbp (waidzunas, 2012), such as the potential of its messages of support, as well as its encouragement of individuals to take actions (sparks, 2011). “…but… it has a long way to go” despite their recognition of the igbps strengths, participants noted that the project has some limitations, most notably that the campaign simply wasn’t enough to raise awareness. i think a lot of the messaging for it gets better is great for someone who’s in those like initial stages.... like i always think about it gets better as like picking up a seed... but you haven’t planted it yet, you haven’t watered it, it hasn’t grown. (suelia, age 22, cisgender-woman, queer) participants also echoed the significant critiques of the igbp expressed in literature and popular media. while many commentators have acknowledged the notable contributions of the igbp, they have also suggested that the project should be undertaken with greater care or thoughtfulness (essig, 2010; waidzunas, 2012). participants largely felt that while the igbp had potential, it also had substantial shortcomings, and needed to be developed further. in particular, several participants expressed the need for the igbp to provide immediate and practical tools for adolescents to improve their current situation or mediate their suicidality. additionally, participants identified systemic and social changes that need to occur. i don’t feel like it’s at all where everyone feels that it is. i think it’s like step one in a hundred step system. it’s not step 50 in a 50 system, you know it’s not like there. it’s just this one piece and it was supposed to be like a kick-off for more stuff and that more stuff isn’t happening and that’s the problem. (john, age 19, transgenderman, queer/pansexual) it is good that people are reaching out and saying “it can get better”. but i don’t feel like anyone should be saying it’s going to get better automatically, just by virtue of more age. i think maybe it would be better if the campaign [said]… “it will get better if you do x, y, and z, or doing x, y, and z will increase the chance that it will get better”. and next wednesday would be “seek out a counsellor”, [or] like “go to these websites and find some kind of community”, or “read this article”, or “go to this coffee house with other like-minded people”. and these aren’t like incredibly inventive suggestions, but, you know, just… like actual productive things international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 210 like a miserable 16 year old could do in the hopes that it would propel the getting betterness a little bit sooner than like just, you know, waiting and hoping till high school ends. (laura, age 22, cisgender-woman, queer/pansexual) participants also noted that the campaign would do well to create opportunities to give youth a voice, which was also an objective of this research study. it was identified that not having resources or the ability to share your feelings and concerns could contribute to increased suicidality and that providing the space for youth to do so would be an important component of the future work of the igbp. [we need] to give that voice to youth because the reason so many youth are killing themselves is because they feel destitute, they feel like they don’t have the resources, they feel like they don’t have them accessible, they feel like they don’t have a voice right. so the next step needs to be giving them a voice. (john, age 19, transgender-man, queer/ pansexual) another issue raised by participants was the igbp’s focus on cisgender gay and lesbian adolescents, and its perceived lack of attention to other categories of lgbtq youth. in particular, several mentioned the lack of representation of transgender people in the campaign. this is particularly problematic as transgender youth may be especially likely to experience lgbtq-specific harassment, bullying, and violence compared to their cisgender lgbtq peers. nearly three-quarters (74%) of transgender students in canada experience verbal harassment and one-quarter (25%) experience physical harassment (taylor & peter, 2011). some researchers remain critical of the media’s disproportionate attention on the suicides of the young gay men in late 2010, and the suggestion that their deaths constitute a particular epidemic, rather than an example of the elevated suicide risk experienced by lgbtq adolescents generally (essig, 2010). i think it's more geared to gay-lesbians sort of thing. it's kind of like trans[gender] people are like in another separate category. so in that way it's like they get left out, which isn’t a good thing because i think that a lot of trans[gender] people they're skyrocketing too for suicides and nobody really takes stock of that. (jimarcus, age 19, transgender-man, straight/questioning) although it has been suggested that this form of advocacy has the potential to pathologize lgbtq youth as pitiable or tragic, rather than emphasizing the achievements or successes of the population (essig, 2010; waidzunas, 2012), these concerns were not highlighted by our participants. yet these criticisms remain important to contextualize the youth perspective of the potential for improvement of igbp. “let’s make it better” numerous participants referenced a need to make changes for lgbtq adolescents now rather than asking them to wait until they have survived high school. it doesn’t have to get better later, it doesn’t have to get better in 10 years, it needs to happen now. there is no excuse, you know what i mean. you shouldn’t have to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 211 suffer those four years until it gets better because you’re in grade 9, and you know, it sucks to be in grade 9 and be bullied when you have four years in front of you and you’re like, oh my god, how am i going to get through this? (anthony, age 19, cisgender-man, gay) the next step to the it gets better campaign has to be how do we make it better for them, you know, not let’s just say it. (john, age 19, transgender-man, queer/pansexual) additionally, a number specifically referenced the make it better project [mibp] as being superior to, or going a step further than, the igbp. so it’s changing it a bit, where, you know, not saying it’ll get better no matter what; it’s saying that you have to kind of change the context to make it better for you… make it better could be a stronger message. (chris, age 21, cisgender-man, gay) the mibp, started and sponsored by the united states-based gay-straight alliance network, argues that youth should not have to experience bullying related to sexual orientation while in high school, and emphasizes making conditions better and schools safer for lgbtq youth now rather than waiting for improvements to occur in the future (make it better project, 2012a, 2012b). the mibp, also created in response to the suicides in fall of 2010, views its campaign as going a step further than the igbp by empowering youth to make changes in their current lives and addressing how people can make things better (gay-straight alliance network, 2010; make it better project, 2012a, 2012b). the mibp seeks “to let students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and adult allies know that there are concrete actions they can take right now to make schools safer for all students” (make it better project, 2012b), offering tangible strategies that individuals can use to contribute to the campaign, including letter writing and video blogging (make it better project, 2012a). another recent local incarnation of this mibp model mentioned by several participants is a youth-led organization entitled the “i will make it better” project [iwmibp]. the project was developed by students at etobicoke school of the arts, a high school in the greater toronto area. officially begun in november 2011, iwmibp’s goal is “to raise awareness about the effects of bullying and to have people take a pledge against bullying” (“i will make it better” project, 2012a). the iwmibp seeks to work with schools, providing education on the topic of bullying and emphasizing the role of individual responsibility using real-life stories. the iwmibp has provided presentations and anti-bullying workshops across canada. the project has also received international media coverage, as well as support from local and international celebrities. this included a personal video of support from musician lady gaga at the project’s official opening (“i will make it better” project, 2012a, 2012b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 212 “it gets better for a certain group of people…” participants also expressed the pitfalls of the igbps idealistic view of future outcomes and raised the issue of the igbp setting unrealistic expectations for youth, and potentially causing them to take risks that could result in poor outcomes. like you can't just show too much positivity because what if, like this person’s going to the parents and are like, oh, my parents are going to be perfectly fine because they love me, right. they go and they kick them out, so like their hopes are like gone, right. like they have such high hopes, so happy coming out and excited, but then they get shoved right back down (song, age 18, cisgender-woman, lesbian). participants critiqued the lack of attention to issues of socio-cultural diversity, individual context, and the social landscape within the project, as well as the fact that it simply may not get better for everyone. i think... i think it’s bullshit.... mainly because i think the way that campaign was phrased and the way that it continues to be incorporated into things is that it gets better for a certain group of people. it gets better for gays and lesbians who are white and upper middle class and who have family support sometimes.... but for the most part at least the media.... that’s how it’s portrayed.... and if you don’t, you have friends support, but it’s always like.... it gets better for this group of people, that there’s this like imaginary land.... in which we automatically end up going to after high school or after university and where everything is great, which in reality that’s like so non-existent for so many people (suelia, age 22, cisgender-woman, queer). the relationship between environmental risks and suicidality for lgbtq youth (dyck, 2012) should be considered when developing suicide prevention strategies. as participants indicated, diversity in social location, context, experience, and opportunity should be taken into account in campaigns such as the igbp. “obviously it’s gonna be better for you…” many celebrities, politicians, organizations, sports teams, and other notable individuals have contributed to the igbp, including: united states president barack obama; then united states secretary of state hilary clinton; the staffs of google, disney, pixar, the gap, and facebook; major league baseball teams the boston red sox, the baltimore orioles and the san francisco giants; talk show hosts ellen degeneres and stephen colbert; musicians lady gaga, joel madden, ke$ha, and adam lambert; and actors anne hathaway, colin farrell, and neil patrick harris (it gets better project, 2012b; parker-pope, 2011; sparks, 2011; waidzunas, 2012). the igbp has been critiqued for being too heavily focused on the contributions of celebrities and politicians (parker-pope, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 213 participants commonly thought that the celebrity involvement was generally positive because of the igbps contribution of role models to youth development. i’m extremely proud of all the people that have collaborated with that, especially all the movie stars, because youth and young people take movie stars as role models and when they see them post in a media, you tell them that it’s okay to be gay, i feel like that makes them feel like there’s hope for them. (steven, age 19, cisgender-man, gay) others widely differed in their opinions about celebrity participation. while some liked their inclusion as relevant role models and examples of success in adulthood, others felt that celebrities gave lgbtq adolescents unrealistic expectations of their future and were not particularly relevant to their lived experiences or the intent of the project. here several respondents focused on the fact that while these celebrities were saying things get better, participants perceived that they were doing relatively little to actually improve the circumstances of lgbtq youth experiencing violence. i was like, okay, yeah, you can say that as a celebrity who has thousands of dollars now, who came out in like the tabloids once you were famous and like obviously it’s gonna be better for you because you’re already there.... and, i don’t know it just.... it didn’t speak to my reality, it didn’t speak to a lot of my friends’ realities, it didn’t speak about any of the ways in which you can make it better. (suelia, age 22, cisgender-woman, queer) a number of participants also had issues with non-lgbtq people, including celebrities, participating in a project specifically targeted to lgbtq adolescents and seemingly speaking to an experience that was not their own. notably, participants did not seem to be critiquing the involvement or support of non-lgbtq allies in these types of campaigns, but were challenging the notion that non-lgbtq people could make claims about the outcomes of experiencing lgbtq-specific violence in adolescence. i think it’s good when queer people make these videos. but for a straight person to make a video, because i heard that there are a lot of straight people who are making these videos, i think that’s a bit… because they haven’t been through what it’s like to be queer so they can’t say, it gets better because how do you know, you’re straight, you have this privilege. so i think that it was a little bit… i don’t think straight people should have made those videos, but i think it was good that they had queer people making them. (tiffany, age 19, cisgender-woman, bisexual) discussion this study sought the views and perspectives of a sample of young people from the lgbtq community about the igbp, particularly the campaign’s goal to address the issue of suicide risk for lgbtq youth who are bullied and stigmatized. all participants had heard of the campaign although the depth of their knowledge varied widely. this universal recognition of the igbp by participants may indicate the igbp’s success in getting the project’s message to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 214 target audience. further, youth indicated that that they accessed the majority of lgbtq-focused content through online sources, suggesting the potential of lgbtq-focused new media campaigns (including the igbp) to deliver messages of support. participants indicated that they perceived the igbp as a positive step towards changing the circumstances for lgbtq youth experiencing identity-based violence and bullying, with the campaign drawing important attention to the issue of lgbtq youth’s elevated suicidality; thus attaining the project’s goal to let “all lgbt youth know, that despite the tough times, it gets better” (it gets better project, 2012c). yet, youth identified that the project needed expansion beyond awareness raising to really make it better for all lgbtq youth. it was also unclear whether the participants considered the campaign a form of suicide prevention. the link between the igbp and suicide prevention appears to be fairly tenuous and should be further explored. in addition, serious flaws in the format, content, and focus of the project were articulated and could be considered for further development of the campaign. participants suggested that the igbp was too passive as youth should not be expected to wait until adulthood for their situation to improve but deserve to have their lives changed immediately. youth also identified that the involvement of celebrities and non-lgbtq allies in the project allowed for a wider audience but encouraged less relevant content. youth also suggested that the campaign might not be as relevant to, or effective for, diverse lgbtq adolescents because the campaign lacks attention to youths’ individual contexts (e.g., race and ethnicity, socio-economic status, religion, etc.) and their socio-cultural landscapes (e.g., geographic location, social environment, etc.). contemporary canadian literature has likewise indicated that research on lgbtq youth and suicidality has failed to attend to the potential impact of race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and other socio-demographic and contextual factors (dyck, 2012). participants challenged the researchers and the broader lgbtq community to build on the awareness generated from the igbp and to provide more concrete strategies to impact youth suicide. for example, the movement to change the current school environment by the mibp and the iwmibp is an element not addressed by the igbp. this attention to school climate is essential, as a recent canadian study found that 64% of lgbtq students state that school is unsafe for them (taylor & peter, 2011). the risks of this hostile educational climate frequently include poor academic outcomes, truancy, and attrition, which impacts future opportunities (crisp & mccave, 2007; robinson & espelage, 2011; craig & smith, 2014). in contrast, positive school environments, with supportive personnel, lgbtq-specific programs, and anti-discrimination policies, may provide protection against victimization and contribute positively to academic outcomes and self-esteem (crisp & mccave, 2007; griffin, lee, waugh, & beyer, 2004; craig, 2013). the igbp’s focus on asking youth to wait out their high school years may be an important message of hope but, as the participants indicated, youth need tangible help now. organizations are taking steps, as a recent report by the egale canada human rights trust has called for immediate action on lgbtq youth suicidality by creating an integrated suicide prevention strategy (dyck, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 215 limitations as with all research, this study is subject to certain limitations. the sampling strategy was driven by the need for in-depth investigation and thus the sample was limited in size and not intended to be representative of all lgbtq youth or those that use new media infrequently. findings are primarily transferable to other well-educated lgbtq youth from relatively resourced backgrounds in urban contexts. further, participants were all fluent in conversational english, and the majority spoke english as their first language. since participants were required to contact our study team for an eligibility screening, selection bias may have resulted in a sample that was different than those not making contact. the study location, toronto, is also significant as there is a well-established, active lgbtq community, and a variety of organizations and services specifically serving lgbtq youth. finally the igbp, while international in the scope of its efforts (it gets better project, 2012b), is designed and operated in the united sates, and it should be acknowledged that our canadian sample may differ in a substantive way from the american youth the campaign is primarily designed to reach. recent developments and future directions more than two years after its start, the campaign remains popular. six months after the igbp began, a book on the project edited by dan savage and terry miller was released entitled it gets better: coming out, overcoming bullying, and creating a life worth living (2011), and in february 2012 youth-oriented television network mtv released a one-hour documentary on the project (it gets better project, 2012a). as of mid-2012 the project continues to receive significant traffic on its website and media attention, with mtv releasing a second special in early october 2012 (it gets better project, 2013). further, similar campaigns continue to develop such as the iwmibp launched in the greater toronto area in late 2011. however, despite the overwhelming visibility and popularity of these projects, to our knowledge no rigorous research exists on the influence of these campaigns on the reduction of bullying and the reduction of suicidality of lgbtq adolescents. future research should endeavour to measure the effects of these new media campaigns on both youth suicidality and overall community awareness, as well as identify the role that the media plays in the identity development of lgbtq youth. conclusion this qualitative study explored the opinions of lgbtq youth about the influence of the it gets better project [igbp] on bullying and suicide prevention. participants underscored that new media (e.g., social networking, youtube, etc.) has great potential for reaching lgbtq youth. youth offered that the igbp is a good starting point to raise awareness, but should evolve into tangible strategies to make it better for youth already experiencing risk. in addition, the link between the project and suicide prevention is not clear or strong and may not be particularly helpful for youth already experiencing significant distress. findings highlight the need to include youth in campaign and program development. as the igbp strives to intended to address the bullying and suicide risk of lgbtq youth through new media, it will be critical to take action to further these efforts and provide immediate interventions to reduce the suicidality of lgbtq youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 204–219 216 references berlan, e. d., corliss, h. l., field, a. e., goodman, e., & austin, s. b. 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(2011). every class in every school: the first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in canadian schools. egale canada human rights trust. retrieved march 7, 2013, from http://egale.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2011/05/egalefinalreport-web.pdf waidzunas, t. (2012). young, gay, and suicidal: dynamic nominalism and the process of defining a social problem with statistics. science, technology, & human values, 37(2) 199–225. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0162243911402363 core policing, crime prevention 78 creating safer communities for children and youth: the role of the police in crime prevention tullio caputo and michel vallée abstract: the authors examine the role of the police in crime prevention in the canadian context, based on in-depth interviews with police officers in six police agencies across the country. they explore core policing functions and consider the role of the police in crime prevention. they discuss three recent studies of crime prevention practices in canada, and focus in particular on crime prevention through social development (cpsd). the authors conclude that social development issues are not often seen as part of a core policing function. they argue that the police are in a unique position with respect to cpsd since they are well positioned to facilitate an integrated, multi-agency response to social problems. an alternative role for the police is discussed which would consolidate their law enforcement and crime prevention roles through the facilitation of an integrated problem solving approach based on partnerships with other service agencies. a number of recent studies have examined the role of canadian police agencies in crime prevention including programs and activities aimed at youth. in this article, we consider several types of crime prevention and then present a brief overview of recent canadian research describing the role of the police in crime prevention. we then discuss the results of our own research on this subject that is based on interviews with police officers at different ranks, from six police agencies across the country. we conclude by considering the role that the police could play in crime prevention and how this might influence the future of policing in this country. crime prevention strategies it is clear that the police in canada have a long history of involvement in crime prevention activities (vallée, 2010). beginning with initial efforts at preventing previous offenders from reoffending, police involvement in crime prevention today encompasses a wide array of programs and activities. sherman et al. (1997) identify the following as major varieties of crime prevention: 1. numbers of police 2. rapid response 3. random patrols 4. directed patrols 5. reactive arrests 6. proactive arrests 7. community policing 79 7a. neighbourhood watch 7b. community-based intelligence 7c. police information about crime 7d. police legitimacy 8. problem-oriented policing 8a. criminogenic commodities 8b. converging offenders and victims many of these reflect routine police practices such as random patrols. defined in this way, almost everything the police do could be considered crime prevention. in this article, we take a different approach. we are concerned with activities that have specifically defined and explicit crime prevention objectives. defined in this way, the only explicit crime prevention program included in the above list is neighbourhood watch. the rest of the activities contribute to or represent traditional policing practices. even community policing can be considered as an approach to policing rather than a crime prevention strategy. thus, whether the quality and quantity of police-community contacts affects the level of crime in a community is the type of empirical question that sherman and his colleagues are interested in. for our purposes, however, police-community relations are not primarily intended as a means of undertaking crime prevention. rather, they represent a broader approach to the way policing services are designed and delivered. the types of explicit crime prevention activities we have in mind include: (a) situational crime prevention strategies, of which target hardening and environmental design are important examples; (b) community crime prevention strategies, of which neighbourhood watch is an important example; and (c) crime prevention through social development, of which after-school programs and other recreational programs are examples. situational crime prevention strategies situational crime prevention strategies are based on a concern with the immediate context within which crimes occur. they attempt to reduce the opportunity for crime, make the proceeds of crime less appealing, or make committing a crime potentially more expensive than it is worth. this can be accomplished in a variety of ways. for example, a common situational crime prevention strategy involves “target hardening” which is based on protecting the intended targets of crime through such measures as installing new and more effective locks. other examples include social marketing campaigns to remind people to lock their cars, not to leave valuables in clear view, and not leave their keys in the ignition. situational strategies also promote increased surveillance to deter potential criminals. installing closed circuit television cameras reflects this surveillance component of situational crime prevention. the objective is to deter criminals by increasing the likelihood that they will be caught and prosecuted. crime prevention through environmental design (cpted) is another popular approach that incorporates situational crime prevention principles. in this case, efforts to reduce opportunities for crime are considered with respect to design features of the built 80 environment. sightlines, lighting, access/egress points, and places to hide are all taken into account and altered to make the environment less attractive to would-be criminals. notions of “defensible space” inform this approach and “safety audits” are performed to assess both public and private spaces for crime prevention purposes. other examples of situational crime prevention include: vehicle protection strategies (such as steering wheel locks, alarm systems, and vehicle tracking systems); operation identification in which private property is marked with the owner’s identification to make it more difficult for thieves to sell, thereby making the property less attractive to steal; and crime stoppers which provides an anonymous “tip line” and rewards for information. each of these examples of situational crime prevention requires a great deal of police involvement. in many cases, the police are the key players in programs such as operation identification and crime stoppers. they are typically involved in establishing them, mobilizing community support, and providing the administration, training, and information required to keep them going. it is doubtful whether these types of programs could operate in the absence of direct police involvement and ongoing support. community crime prevention strategies community crime prevention, or neighbourhood crime prevention as it is often called, focuses on local identifiable entities such as neighbourhoods even when implemented on a city-wide basis. community crime prevention can take a variety of forms and include numerous techniques. examples of community crime prevention include neighbourhood watch, neighbourhood advocacy, citizens on patrol, and police-community involvement projects. community crime prevention strategies seek to directly influence the levels of crime and fear of crime by helping to increase social cohesion in neighbourhoods in crisis and to provide them with increased social support and capacity to respond to crime. crime prevention through social development over the past 15 years, crime prevention through social development (cpsd) has gained increasing support and popularity in canada, including within the police community. this approach to crime prevention is premised on going beyond dealing with immediate factors and addressing the root causes of crime. most proponents of cpsd recognize the need for a balanced approach that includes elements of law enforcement, situational crime prevention, and cpsd. however, they emphasize the importance of addressing root causes including the social, economic, and political factors that contribute to crime. root causes include such structural variables as poverty, unemployment, and marginalization, as well as a lack of social, recreational, and educational opportunities. attempts to address these structural variables often require the cooperation of a variety of players in community-based, multi-agency, interdisciplinary responses. thus, for example, after-school programs that attempt to provide a safe and pro-social environment for young people can reflect a cpsd approach. such programs can include the participation of community members, community agencies such as the ym/ywca or the boys and girls club, schools, and the police. the objective is to provide young people with opportunities for safe and healthy recreation 81 during a time when many of them are unsupervised and at risk of involvement in dangerous or illegal behaviour. recent studies of crime prevention in canada the overview presented above provides a brief description of various types of crime prevention activity. during the past few years, several research projects examining crime prevention practices in canada have been completed. three are of particular relevance here since they provide some insights into the nature and extent of crime prevention activity. furthermore, they contain information regarding police involvement in crime prevention. these include a study by jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) undertaken for the federal department of justice. a second study by arcand and cullen (2004) from arcand and associates was conducted for public safety and emergency preparedness canada. finally, we review the results of a study conducted by jamieson and hart (2003) for the caledon institute of social policy that was sponsored by the national crime prevention centre. the study by jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) was designed to examine crime prevention practices in communities of different sizes and from all regions of the country. for this study, 172 in-depth interviews were conducted in 29 canadian communities with key informants from a variety of sectors including: community or nongovernmental organizations (including community service organizations, women’s organizations and shelters, and family-oriented services); governments (primarily municipal); police agencies; schools; health services; aboriginal organizations; and the private sector. this study found that communities had community crime prevention, situational, educational, and cpsd crime prevention activities underway. they report that, “while there were many different types of cpsd activities identified, most involved some form of education such as the school based vip program or crime prevention seminars and workshops for seniors, the business community and other community groups” (jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates, 2000, p. 23). the study goes on to note that the police are the major participant and sponsor of crime prevention activity in canada: the police were identified as delivering the most programs in 24 of the 29 communities in the study sample. they were, by far, the most prominent group involved in crime prevention activity in the communities we canvassed. besides being directly involved in providing various types of crime prevention activities, the police often initiated community actions. they were also supportive of the efforts of others in their communities involved in preventing crime. (p. 25) even in situations where they didn’t deliver most programs, the police were closely involved with the groups or agencies that did. the respondents in this study also reported that in some communities, police officers had started programs for youth including youth centres. they also pointed out that police officers often volunteered their time and resources to help ensure the success of these youth centres. 82 jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) make it clear that the police in canada are actively involved in situational, community, and cpsd. some questions remain, however, about the specific role of the police in crime prevention through social development. for example, to what extent do police crime prevention activities help to address the underlying structural factors that are related to the root causes of crime? specifically, how do their actions address structural variables like poverty, unemployment, racism, sexism, and other forms of inequality? questions can also be raised about the status of educational programs. for example, can educational programs that raise awareness of particular crime threats or which encourage the adoption of pro-social attitudes and behaviour be considered examples of cpsd, or do they represent a separate type of crime prevention activity? the point for us hinges on the extent to which these programs or activities address the underlying, structural causes of crime. from our perspective, while educational programs may be important and useful, it is often difficult to see any link between them and some of the root causes of crime described above such as poverty or unemployment. the jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) study showed that the most common types of cpsd programs or activities in which the police participate are those designed to increase the opportunities for appropriate social and recreational participation such as after-school programs or late night recreational programs for youth such as night hoops. the example mentioned above of police officers establishing youth centres and volunteering to help run them represents activity that, for the most part, takes place outside of work hours. typically, the police are not in the business of operating youth centres and related programs as part of their day-to-day operations. instead, police agencies are more likely to leave the operation of youth centres to community groups or agencies while they provide some resources and support. the issue that remains is articulating the role of the police in cpsd. enhancing social or recreational opportunities available in a community does add to the stock of resources which community members can use. in this sense, these programs are examples of social development. the question is really the nature of police involvement in these and related social development programs. for example, are the police actively involved in designing, developing and, most importantly, delivering these programs? or do they work with community groups and agencies that actually deliver the programs? if the police don’t participate in program delivery but instead support the program by sitting on advisory committees or going to community meetings, does this count as involvement in cpsd? if they are involved in program delivery, then there is no question that they are engaged in cpsd. if, on the other hand, their involvement consists primarily of providing advice and support, are they involved in cpsd? the second study we examine focuses more directly on the role of the police in cpsd. this study was undertaken by arcand and cullen in 2004 for public safety and emergency preparedness canada. the definition of cpsd used in this study, states that it is, “an approach that recognizes and works to address the complex social, economic and cultural 83 processes that contribute to crime and victimization” (arcand & cullen, 2004, p. 5). data was collected for this study through a series of searches that were conducted through the following agencies and links, by phone, in print, and electronically: rcmp, municipal police services, provincial police forces, canadian association of chiefs of police, international crime prevention centre, national crime prevention centre, department of justice youth policy branch, provincial crime prevention organizations, yukon justice, provincial ministries of solicitors general, ministry of public safety and solicitor general (b.c.), and the federal territorial provincial working group on community safety and crime prevention. also included were: internet research, various sites & links; personal referrals; printed materials: blue line magazine, bccpa news, community justice links (yukon). (arcand & cullen, 2004, p. 7) the authors point out that active police participation – in either the organization or delivery of the program – was a key selection criterion for programs to be included in this inventory. they also note that models such as dare (drug awareness and resistance education, party (prevent alcohol and risk related trauma in youth), and pei (project early intervention) were not included since these have already been standardized and are being utilized in communities across the country. this study provides information on 54 programs drawn from all regions of the country. the following table was adapted from the study to summarize the information it provided on the nature of the programs as well as police involvement. table 1: a summary of police involvement in crime prevention through social development programs and activities adapted from arcand and cullen (2004) number of programs percent of total program base activity education 37 68.5% recreation 14 26% safety 25 46% environment 6 11% community justice 7 13% nature of police involvement program operation 19 35% community policing duty 32 59% program dynamics police initiated 31 57% community initiated 14 26% police only 9 17% * note: percentages may not add to 100 since some programs had more than one activity. table 1 shows that over two-thirds of the programs were based on education. it also shows that the crime prevention programs identified by the study were largely undertaken as 84 part of community policing duties. program dynamics also offer important information since they show that police initiated 57% of the programs, with an additional 17% being police only programs. the community initiated only 26%. a closer examination of the 54 programs described in the study raises a number of important questions about the nature of the programs contained in the inventory and the extent to which they can be considered as cpsd. the definition we are using in this article for crime prevention through social development relates specifically to addressing the root causes of crime. the definition used in the arcand and cullen (2004) study is somewhat different although it does include a reference to the complex social, economic, and cultural processes that contribute to crime and victimization. even with this more general definition, however, there is some question whether many of the programs described in the study can be considered as examples of cpsd. importantly, an assessment is provided for each program that highlights its cpsd component. the programs included in the inventory cover a wide spectrum of activities ranging from those that address the root causes of crime (recreation and community development programs) to others that appear to have little to do with cpsd (bicycle safety, intelligenceled policing program, trail surveillance program). as was the case in the jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) study, educational programs and those that are designed to raise awareness and promote pro-social attitudes and behaviour are the most common types of crime prevention programs with police involvement. table 1 notes that this represented 68.5% of the 54 programs included in the arcand and cullen (2004) study. as we argued above, while these may be important and useful programs, they are unlikely to address the structural factors that influence the root causes of crime and victimization. few of the programs described in this study actually meet the criteria for cpsd according to our definition. the final study we examine was conducted in 2003 by jamieson and hart for the caledon institute of social policy. the preparation of a compendium in this study was sponsored by the national crime prevention centre. it was designed to highlight promising practices supported by federal, provincial, and territorial crime prevention initiatives underway in communities across the country. it represents a selection of exemplary programs as opposed to being an inventory of what currently exists. this study does not look specifically at the involvement of police but is important in the context of the current study since the police are mentioned in the description of involved organizations for each of the jurisdictions. this study is included here, therefore, since it provides useful information on the nature of cpsd programs in canada and, moreover, provides an additional opportunity to examine how cpsd is being operationalized across the country. the focus of this study was specifically to describe promising programs that had a cpsd approach (jamieson & hart, 2003). the definition of cpsd used in this report states the following: 85 the social development approach attempts to address the root causes of crime in society. it recognizes that crime stems from a variety of critical experiences in people’s lives: family violence; poor parenting; negative school experiences; poor housing; a lack of recreational, health and environmental facilities; inadequate social support; peer pressure; unemployment; and lack of opportunity and poverty. it emphasizes investing in individuals, families and communities by providing social, recreational, educational and economic interventions and support programs for those canadians, mainly young people, who are most at risk of becoming involved in crime, before they come into conflict with the law. social development also includes investing in rehabilitative interventions for people who are already involved with the criminal justice system. (p. 3) this definition is far more extensive than the one we are using in this article. while it refers to social development, it includes a number of activities and programs which we would argue fall outside of the social development realm. the study contains detailed information on 39 crime prevention programs including some from each province and territory. the focus of the programs varied although particular emphasis was placed on programs for children and youth. of the 39 programs identified, fully 30 had this focus. four of the programs address the safety of women and girls while four involved community development activities and one addressed family concerns. the main activity in four of the programs was intervention with individuals who were at risk. the remaining 35 programs were almost equally divided among programs that were educational in nature, those that provided recreation and other opportunities (art, music, drama), and those that were aimed primarily at community development. this represents a simplified assessment of the programs outlined in this study since many of them had more than one objective. however, our assessment is based on what appeared to be the main focus of each program. the 12 educational programs were quite similar to the ones described in the two previous studies we examined since they were primarily designed to teach skills or provide people an opportunity to learn and develop. similarly, the 11 recreational programs reflect the types of recreational activities found in the studies discussed above. the 12 programs that address community development issues, however, provide some insight into the key aspect of cpsd – namely, social development. educational programs attempt to encourage social development by working with individuals, changing attitudes, and promoting prosocial behaviour. recreation programs move closer to the social development focus of cpsd by increasing available recreational and related opportunities. the extent to which programs are able to achieve a change in the social context is a measure of their ability to achieve social development. unlike education and recreation programs, community development and mobilization activities directly address the social, economic, and political factors related to the root causes of crime and victimization. their focus is on various aspects of the community and their objectives usually involve changing a community to make it a safer and healthier place to 86 live. while the individuals involved or those influenced by the program may also benefit from the experience, the primary target of intervention is social development at the community level. jamieson and hart (2003) include various types of community development projects in their study. one example is similar to those discussed in the studies presented above and involves the establishment of a youth centre. this creates a physical space in the community for young people through which they are provided various opportunities for recreation and social interaction. the creation of a youth centre represents social development since it changes the community in a positive way. thus, it could be argued that a community is more developed if it has more resources for its citizens. the addition of a youth centre constitutes just such a resource development. several other examples from the compendium show how cpsd can be achieved through community development and mobilization. typically, these programs involve an assessment stage during which community members come together, identify a problem, and gather the information needed to develop a community response strategy. once problems are identified and a plan is developed, community resources are mobilized in a collective response. in many cases, these community development and mobilization programs include the cooperation of a broad spectrum of individuals, groups, and organizations in the community including the police. however, these programs are usually housed in and operated by community-based organizations that are responsible for implementing the community plans. other community groups may provide resources and support but the responsibility for carrying out the activities lies with the community organization. this raises several important questions related to the role of the police in cpsd. the programs described by jamieson and hart (2003) are similar to those outlined by arcand and cullen (2004) and jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000). it is clear that the police can and do play an active role in crime prevention programs that are educational in nature. they are less able to participate directly in recreational programs as part of their day-to-day policing duties unless they are expressly deployed for this purpose, as might be the case for school liaison/resource officers or community liaison officers. this is even more the case for police involvement in community development and mobilization programs. their involvement in these types of programs usually includes sitting on a community committee and participating in the identification of issues, the collection of information, and the development of community plans. they are less likely to be directly involved in the actual community development and mobilization activities. while we noted that police officers are involved in creating youth centres (which is a community development activity), we argued above that this is likely to be based on the initiative of a single officer or undertaken as volunteer work during off work hours. typically, police officers are not engaged in social or community development activities as part of routine police work, and especially the patrol work where a large percentage of police resources are deployed. in the current policing environment in canada, cpsd is roughly equated with a proactive approach to policing. for many police officers, a proactive approach is exemplified by problem-oriented policing in a community context. this was reflected in several of the 87 police-sponsored programs described in the three studies discussed above. the logic behind this belief is that the police are proactive when they make an effort to resolve recurring problems. they define problem solving as a way of addressing the root causes of crime. however, as noted several times in our discussion, cpsd involves addressing structural factors such as poverty, inequality, and poor living conditions as root causes of crime. while many in the police community acknowledge the importance of addressing these structural factors, they are limited in what they can do to affect problems such as poverty and unemployment or the lack of social and recreational opportunities. this leads to some debate about what the role of the police should be in crime prevention, particularly in its more proactive version – crime prevention through social development. the role of the police in crime prevention: the perspective of canadian police officers in order to explore questions related to the role of the police in crime prevention more directly, a research project was designed to solicit the views of police officers at different ranks and from different communities across canada. in-depth interviews and focus group sessions were held with police officers in six canadian police agencies. the six police agencies were selected in consultation with key informants in the police community. a convenience sample was drawn that included police agencies from different regions of the country, of different sizes, and from both urban and rural locations. a rural rcmp detachment was included in order to capture the views of police officers with this type of policing experience. in each agency, we sought the views of police officers at different ranks including front line patrol officers, middle level managers, and senior police executives. as well, interviews were held with crime prevention specialists whenever possible. the interviews and focus group sessions focused on two main themes. first, we asked the police officers to identify what they considered to be “core” policing functions. once they had developed a list of core functions, we asked them to rank them in importance. however, in order to make this question more realistic, instead of simply asking them to rank the core functions in order of importance, we asked them to engage in a hypothetical budget cutting exercise. specifically, we asked them which of the core functions would they cut if they had to deal with an unexpected 25% budget shortfall. this forced them to make difficult choices among those policing functions they had identified as core to their role. the second theme we explored addressed the role of the police in crime prevention and, in particular, in cpsd. in a series of questions around this theme, we examined the types of crime prevention activities currently underway in the six participating police agencies. we also discussed the nature and extent of these activities in the context of proactive policing functions. the role of the police as problem solvers and in problem oriented policing generally was discussed in this context. specific questions regarding the role of the police in cpsd were also explored as part of this theme, including a consideration of the meaning of the concept of crime prevention through social development and the responsibility the police have for social development activities. we 88 also discussed how the police role in crime prevention could influence the future of policing in this country. what constitutes ‘‘core” policing functions? the first question we explored was what the participants considered to be “core” policing functions. not surprisingly, we found a great deal of consensus on this issue. the core functions that were identified included responding to emergencies, enforcing the law, and ensuring public safety. keeping the peace and doing criminal investigations were also seen as core policing functions. importantly, these functions were often defined in relation to police work done in specific work environments (e.g., downtown versus suburbs, rural versus urban, etc.). these findings were consistent for all six police agencies and across all ranks. in general, the participants expressed a clear sense of responsibility. indeed, it was obvious that they felt a tremendous obligation and sense of duty to respond if the public needed them. interestingly, crime prevention was also identified as a core policing function but usually after the law enforcement and peacekeeping responsibilities mentioned above. senior officers and crime prevention specialists were more likely to identify crime prevention as a core function than other participants. however, crime prevention was inevitably mentioned as a core policing function in both the interviews and focus group sessions. crime prevention was also mentioned in the context of the need for police agencies to be involved with their communities including other community agencies. in order to get the participants to prioritize the core functions, we asked them what they would do if forced to make a 25% budget cut. since 85% to 90% of police budgets are related to personnel costs, some of the core functions they identified would have to be cut. while this proved to be a difficult exercise for many of the participants, most stated that “soft” policing activities would be given up first. these included such things as school liaison officer programs, community relations officers, and other activities that were not tied directly to responding to calls for service or doing investigations. we were told that cutting entire programs was a preferred strategy to cutting across the board since programs could be brought back if the financial picture improved. the respondents noted that it is harder to get overall budget levels up after they have been cut. it was obvious that many of the participants were familiar with budget cutting realities! the discussion around budget cuts often turned to the issue of staffing levels. the biggest challenge mentioned by the participants was maintaining the staffing levels needed to respond to calls for service in a timely fashion. while each agency has specialized units, the bulk of the staff in most police agencies is in patrol. staffing levels in patrol are usually very tight, especially considering that some people can be away due to illness or training courses. this puts pressure on police organizations since they must comply with safety and health regulations that require certain minimum staffing levels. in some police agencies overtime budgets to meet these minimum staffing requirements can be considerable and run into the millions of dollars. 89 what role do the police have in crime prevention? in general, the six police agencies are involved in similar types of crime prevention activities. these include providing information (education) to reduce (re)victimization, doing cpted audits and inspections to help victims secure their homes and businesses, participating in various watch initiatives such as neighbourhood watch and citizens on patrol, and offering school-based education and awareness programs such as dare. however, while some officers pointed out that they were involved with various community groups, few of them reported police involvement in cpsd initiatives. in the interviews and focus group sessions, it was unclear what the role of the police should be in social development types of initiatives. most police agencies have an individual or a small specialized group of officers that is tasked with crime prevention. these include school liaison/resource officers, community liaison officers, or community relations officers. these are also the police officers working with identifiable groups such as youth, racial or ethnic minorities, seniors, the gay and lesbian community, etc. most police agencies have specific programs that reflect proactive approaches that have been developed either by members of their specialized groups or self-generated by individual officers. consistent with the examples above, we were told that some of these programs are initiated by police officers as volunteers. these programs are based on the needs of specific segments of the community and are often recognized for their effectiveness. the officers involved in these efforts are often credited with doing an outstanding job. much success is noted which reflects well on the organization and for which the organization takes some credit. all of the participants in this study recognized the value of these types of initiatives and many pointed to the success that one of their special officers had had in developing and implementing a proactive program. however, these proactive programs were not considered to be part of the core function of patrol officers but the domain of specialized officers or units. ironically, they would be the first cut in response to budgetary restraints. much discussion around crime prevention arose when we asked the participants to identify what they did with respect to crime prevention that they considered proactive. this is an important issue in police circles since it signals a modern approach and an understanding of the need to do more than react. after debating whether general patrol counted as proactive crime prevention or not, many of the participants identified their problem solving practices as proactive policing. indeed for many of the officers taking part in this study, problem-oriented policing or problem solving was equated with being proactive. moreover, we found widespread support in all six police agencies and at all ranks for problem solving approaches. this should not be surprising for, as buerger, a. j. petrosino, and c. petrosino (1999) point out, police administrators see problem-oriented policing as a way of maximizing their effectiveness by strengthening the community’s ability to handle problems without constantly appealing for police assistance. 90 the notion of problem solving is a key feature of modern policing especially as it relates to community policing strategies. as williams (1996) notes, the, “primary goal of problem solving is to identify and resolve the ‘root causes’ of chronic problems at the neighbourhood level” (p. 312). however, police officers often have different views on what problem solving means. for many of the participants in our study, the problem in problemoriented policing is usually based on repeated calls for service which is defined as a problem by the police because of the expenditures involved in returning to the same address time after time. problems from this point of view may not necessarily be the community’s problems. resolutions can involve intensified enforcement, negotiations and mediation, the mobilization of other resources (seniors groups to support other seniors in the community) or so called third-party policing where those implicated are encouraged, persuaded, or bullied to change their operations to avoid future problems (e.g., bar owners or landlords). the objective, for the most part, is to reduce the repeat calls for service. for a small number of respondents, problem solving had broader connotations that more closely resembled the tenets of cpsd and addressed the root causes of crime. the availability of resources for problem solving activities is crucial. we found that the practical limitations for effective problem solving were based on a lack of resources. a common complaint was that patrol officers typically go from call to call during their entire patrol shift and have little time to do anything beyond taking reports. a sergeant or other supervisor has to allow an officer the time to do a proper problem solving exercise. this usually requires relieving the officer of patrol duties and covering the shortage in patrol staff while the problem solving work is performed. this is often difficult since front line officers, as well as middle managers, are usually dealing with a waiting list of calls for service. ironically, few of these are emergency calls. instead, most involve public order issues such as dealing with homeless individuals, those with mental health issues, or those with chronic drug or alcohol problems. public disorder calls are also common such as neighbour disputes, complaints about barking dogs, and noisy parties. a large portion of the remaining calls involve youth (mischief, vandalism, loitering, petty property crimes), break and enters, and domestic disturbances. these comprise the bulk of the calls answered by patrol officers and represent the routine work that they do. however, the volume of these calls puts pressure on patrol officers to respond in a timely fashion. time pressures mean that the scope of problem solving is usually limited and focused on the factors resulting in repeat calls for service. in most cases, there is little opportunity to address the more structural, root causes of crime. this suggests that despite a conceptual understanding of proactive policing as well as general support for problem solving, police work remains essentially a transactional process rather than a strategic and comprehensive response to problems. the message we were given over and over again was that the police understand the need and effectiveness of proactive approaches but don’t have the resources to do this properly. current service delivery models restrict the extent of proactive work for even the most supportive officers. the limited ability of the police to do proactive problem solving tells only part of the story. we found a desire among the participants at all ranks to have front line officers do more than go from call to call. while those at different ranks may have different reasons, 91 many understand that people enter policing with the idea of contributing to a better society. they want to make a difference and believe that as police officers they can help people. one senior officer told us that current patrol duties quickly turn these officers into report takers. the respondents acknowledged that going from call to call every day leads to dissatisfaction and low morale. front line officers and their supervisors told us they would like to do more than take reports. like-minded middle managers can encourage and allow their staff to use their skills and take the initiative to do more, but this has to be managed and others have to take up the slack with respect to answering calls for service. there was some discussion, however, about conflicting messages with respect to the value and importance of doing proactive work. while most middle managers talk supportively about proactive policing, some continue to pressure front line officers to meet monthly traffic ticket quotas because these lead to good statistics. indeed, the need for good statistics and the role that statistics play in promotion and reward systems is crucial. the consequence is a very mixed message in which most officers take the default position and ensure that they have the right statistics since these count when rewards are considered. the main message was that the police currently don’t have very effective ways of measuring the results of proactive policing which, hence, doesn’t show up in their statistics or count in terms of rewards. our discussion on proactive policing indicated that there is little understanding or agreement on the role of the police in crime prevention through social development. few of the participants had considered what such an approach would mean in terms of the day-today activities of front line police officers. when various examples of a more comprehensive, proactive approach were presented, many of the participants found the ideas appealing since they would allow officers an opportunity to do more than merely take reports. the examples of proactive policing suggest that something positive can be done when police officers work with others in the community. the outcomes also suggest that the police can have an important impact on their communities. however, a broader vision incorporating such an approach is lacking at the present time. what role should front line patrol officers play in working on proactive, comprehensive community-based initiatives? existing time constraints make an expanded role difficult for patrol officers unless they are deployed in a different way. they do not have the expertise to undertake many of the social level interventions required. however, they do have access to, and detailed information about, communities and their residents. their expertise is in securing a situation, assessing it, and understanding what is needed. they are limited, however, by the fact that they do not have access to the required community resources. existing community resources such as child protection, children’s aid, welfare, and domestic violence services are often fragmented and overtaxed. conclusions our interviews with police officers show that there is a great deal of consensus on what constitutes core policing functions. law enforcement, responding to emergencies, and maintaining public order top this list. crime prevention is identified as a core policing 92 function but usually receives lower priority. soft policing functions such as crime prevention would be the first to go if police budget cuts had to be implemented. there are contrasting and often contradictory forces at play within the police environment which tend to dissolve quickly when the actual day-to-day operations of the police are examined. our research showed that while police agencies “talk the talk”, time and resource constraints mean that most front line police officers go from call to call on each shift. there are few resources available for proactive police work. those individuals or units involved in most proactive work are seen by other police officers as special units that are separate from the front line. moreover, while doing interesting and important work, what they do is not “real” police work. at the same time, having these specialized units usually means taking officers away from the front line leaving the remaining officers to shoulder a heavier load. this often creates resentment and low morale. the findings from our study regarding core policing functions indicate that so-called real police work involves law enforcement and maintaining order. this leaves crime prevention in a peculiar position with respect to the role of the police. while it is part of the core function of the police (keeping the peace), and it is touted in police philosophies and management rhetoric, it is consigned to the margins of core policing. as well, it is usually equated with problem-oriented policing that is focused primarily on repeat calls for service as opposed to the root causes of crime. cpsd is a particularly good illustration of this since the police are neither accustomed nor trained to work at the social level. yet, while many police agencies espouse a proactive approach, in reality they are mainly involved in traditional crime prevention activities such as crime prevention through environmental design (cpted), and educational programs including school liaison officer programs. we pressed the respondents on some of the proactive practices they identified as successful. these often involved the police acting in concert with community partners. some were quite extensive involving a range of community actors including service providers, community groups, and individual residents. if these isolated examples had merit, could their elements be identified and used in the development of a new service delivery model? we tested this idea with the participants suggesting what an integrated model of service delivery might look liked based on the examples they had given us. an integrated model would build on the existing strengths and expertise of the police while adding the support and resources of other community agencies. police officers are the only 24/7/365 agency in most communities. this means that they are usually the first to respond to problems. their main role is law enforcement and maintaining public order. however, they should be able to use their knowledge and expertise to act as facilitators in an integrated and comprehensive community response. they have information about the community and are in a unique position to be able to facilitate an appropriate community response. they can help to maximize the community’s response by sharing decision-making power with other service agencies such as health, social services, child protection, and education. they can also offer legitimacy to a comprehensive community response and help to enlist the participation of community representatives (groups and residents). we need to test the validity of such an approach with police leaders 93 for it does imply some fundamental rethinking of the expectations we have of the police within a community policing philosophy. police officers see themselves as peace officers whose primary responsibility is to enforce the law and maintain public order. they don’t want to be turned into social workers or, in fact, do social work. police actions are often directed toward individuals causing harm or experiencing problems. their focus is on individuals since the justice system is designed around ideas of individual culpability and responsibility. while it is relatively easy for them to deliver traditional crime prevention measures, it is more difficult for them to undertake cpsd and other comprehensive social development approaches because they require a different focus and different skill sets while they operate at a different level. they have the community as their focus and activity at the community level as their goal. social development implies that you are working at the social level. many of the successful efforts of school and community liaison officers do just that in relation to activities that result in social development, such as enhancing the availability of recreational resources in a lowincome community. crime prevention through social development and other proactive responses in the community require actions that address that social level. the police are not trained to work at this level and some would argue that community development should not be their responsibility, that others in the community should take the lead in this area but with the full support and cooperation of the police. a new integrated and comprehensive service delivery model could be a way of giving police officers an expanded role in community problem solving. such a model would emphasize their skills and expertise as peace officers and law enforcers. it would build on their operational expertise and experience as first responders. it would provide the police with a way of being involved in proactive community-based problem solving. creating an integrated and comprehensive service delivery model, however, requires the police to work closely with others in the community. and while the police and their community colleagues have been talking about partnerships for many years, few collaborative partnerships exist in which there is shared responsibility for resources and service delivery. most partnerships involve cooperation of some sort with some even requiring the coordination of services. sharing power, however, is not usually part of this equation especially when it comes to the police. if others in the community are to share some responsibility for dealing with community problems, a new type of partnership will have to be developed – one that requires all those involved to share power and control! the police should be motivated to try such an approach for a variety of reasons. it would allow them to play more satisfying roles as members of integrated teams. we expect that, while working as part of an integrated team, they will be able to see the results of their interventions in the social development of neighbourhoods and communities with a concomitant drop in crime and social disorder. additional community resources would be available to work closely with the police making police work easier, as well as more rewarding. an integrated service delivery model would also provide the police with a clearly defined way of being involved in proactive approaches. these would go beyond the narrow problem solving responses currently used by the police. it would also require the police to rethink the way they measure their actions and how they are held accountable. social level 94 indicators such as quality of life and fear of crime will have to be incorporated alongside traditional outcome measures. this is consistent with new management philosophies that are taking advantage of emerging technologies for measuring outcomes. that being said, the value and impact of an integrated and comprehensive community-based response model will have to be demonstrated empirically. the police have to see themselves as one player in a broader community effort to deal with crime and improve community safety. as leighton (2000) notes, the dangers posed by crime must be viewed within the context of changes at all levels of society. as well, all institutions, including the police, must thoroughly and honestly evaluate their roles and functions and take matters in hand. a new police management approach is required, which must focus on strategic and comprehensive problem solving in partnership with other community service providers. crime prevention through social development can be facilitated through effective police-community partnerships. police organizations have to recognize the interdependence between the socio-economic, health, social services, education, and criminal justice systems. commitment from senior administrators in the police community as well as in partner agencies will be needed. community resources including those provided by the police are required if a new service delivery model is to succeed. it must be borne in mind that the bulk of these resources already exist in the budgets of various agencies and that an effective integrated service delivery model should actually result in the need for fewer resources in the long run. since municipalities provide the funds for most of these services, it should be possible to get their cooperation for an integrated response. provincial cooperation will also be required for those services funded by that level of government. based on the examples of successful interventions at the community level we were given, a new service delivery model will have to combine patrol functions with services targeted to specific areas. the identification and prioritization of high “calls for service” neighbourhoods is one way of deciding where to focus the integrated services since they may be too expensive to be deployed throughout the community. nor is such a response needed in every neighbourhood. one suggestion was that a patrol squad that is responsible for a particular area could rotate individual officers through various functions. these would include some officers responding to calls for service and providing enhanced information while other officers from the squad worked on an integrated neighbourhood team. in this way, individual officers would have an opportunity to be involved in both reactive and proactive policing duties as they rotated through the different roles. cooperative training could be scheduled for integrated team members. police officers working on integrated teams could learn about the mandates and responsibilities of other non-police team members, including the challenges involved in doing these jobs. at the same time, non-police team members could learn about police work including their mandate, responsibilities, and challenges. police researchers such as buerger, a. j. petrosino, and c. petrosino (1999) believe that extending the police role is a natural and desirable consequence of community and 95 problem-oriented endeavours. others, such as marx (1990), believe that the police should be multi-purpose actors whose goal is to promote the community’s welfare. however, we prefer to give consideration to an alternative approach that would consolidate the law enforcement role of the police while encouraging the police to facilitate problem solving through partnerships with other service agencies. these community agencies have a responsibility to address long-term problems and are better equipped than the police to do so. the role of the police and core policing functions should emphasize their law enforcement mandate while taking advantage of their knowledge of the community, their leadership, and their ability to facilitate an integrated and comprehensive community-based response. 96 references arcand, m. a., & cullen, j. e. (2004). promising practices: survey of police involvement in crime prevention through social development in canada. ottawa: public safety and emergency preparedness canada. buerger, m. e., petrosino, a. j., & petrosino, c. (1999). extending the police role: implications of police mediation as a problem-solving tool. police quarterly, 2(2), 125-149. jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000). crime prevention practice in canada. ottawa: justice canada. jamieson, w., & hart, l. (2003). compendium of promising crime prevention practices. ottawa: the caledon institute of social policy. leighton, b. n. (2000). community policing in canada: something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. in j. v. roberts (ed.), criminal justice in canada: a reader (chapter 3). toronto: harcourt canada. marx, g. t. (1990). community policing: rhetoric or reality. contemporary crises, 14(1), 78-82. sherman, l. w., gottfredson, d., mackenzie, d., eck, j., reuter, p., & bushway, s. (1997). preventing crime: what works, what doesn’t, what’s promising: a report to the united states congress. washington, dc: national institute of justice. vallée, m. (2010). an historical overview of crime prevention initiatives in canada: a federal perspective. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 1(1), 21-51. williams, e. (1996). enforcing social responsibility and the expanding domain of the police: notes from the portland experience. crime and delinquency, 42(2), 309-323. here we are, amazingly alive in the work international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 1 “here we are, amazingly alive”: holding ourselves together with an ethic of social justice in community work cathy richardson and vikki reynolds abstract: in this paper, the authors describe their orientation to social justice based community work. the tenets of this work include: an ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work, descriptions of social justice, engaging with a hopeful skepticism, responding to privatized pain with justice-doing, and contesting the individualism of “burnout”. this is followed by reflections on the role of solidarity, the sacred, revolutionary love, resistance, and an ethic of belonging in the commitments to staying fully alive in community work. the authors discuss the importance of forging communities of care with other practitioners through shared and collectively held ethics. keywords: solidarity, sustainability, resisting burnout, social justice, belonging, ethics acknowledgements: as bud osborn says, “no human being accomplishes anything alone” (1999, p. v). we acknowledge the profound contributions of people we work alongside, who are amazingly alive, and who are struggling to stay alive amazingly. we are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who provided such an insightful and generative critique. we also thank susan illvitsky for her energy and assistance in structuring the paper, and erica jacquet for her assistance with editing and submission. andrew larcombe, jennifer white, and charleswaldegrave offered insightful critique which improved and expanded the usefulness of this writing. thanks to ga ching kong and jeff smith for their accounts of belonging and for their spirited ongoing solidarity. cathy (kianewesquao) richardson, ph.d. is a metis family therapist, activist, researcher, and associate professor at the university of victoria school of social work, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc, canada, v8e 2y2. e-mail: cathyr@uvic.ca. vikki reynolds, ph.d., rcc is a consultant, supervisor, activist, and instructor with the vancouver school of narrative therapy, vancouver, bc, canada. e-mail: vr@vikkireynolds.ca mailto:cathyr@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 2 “so here we are amazingly alive, against long odds and left for dead” (bud osborn, vancouver downtown eastside poet/activist, 1999, p. 9) joe, a first nations elder with shaggy hair and an uncertain smile, shows up at my counselling office and i almost fall off my chair. outreach workers have been looking for him because his health is so risky, he’s homeless again, and he hasn’t checked in with his parole officer. everyone is concerned for his life. we are beginning to suspect that he is either dead or in jail. i say, “joe! how are you?” he catches me up on the hell he has crawled through. i ask him to teach me how he “crawled through hell.” he says, “julie, a worker at detox, kept me alive.” joe says he puked on her twice and she just kept cleaning him up. when he was thinking of leaving detox, she followed him to the door telling him she would miss him. he was “nicing out” and she found him a cigarette. he said he was rude to her and she refused to take it personally, and told him she knew he could be more respectful. i said, “that is amazing, have you told her that? let’s call her!” we call detox and actually get julie on the speakerphone. i say, “julie, joe is here and he’s just told me that you are a reason he is still alive.” julie cuts me off excitedly, “joe is alive?” she is amazed. i say, “yeah, yeah, he is right here and he says that you are a reason he is alive.” in a shaky voice, joe says, “she remembers me?” julie responds, “of course i remember you joe, you puked on me twice!” i ask julie what it means to her that joe is saying that she is a reason that he is alive. she responds, “man, i can go to work for five years on this!” i ask joe what it means to know that he is going to help julie go to work for the next five years. in a dignified voice joe says, “maybe i’ll help her keep a couple more guys alive.” i staying amazingly alive in community work over the long haul requires a rich engagement with our collective ethics and spirited relations of solidarity. we will start with an orientation of accountability to the indigenous people whose territories we stand on. we will describe our orientation to our social justice-based community work which includes: our ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work, descriptions of social justice, engaging with a hopeful skepticism, responding to privatized pain with justice-doing, and contesting the individualism of “burnout”. we will reflect on the role of solidarity, the sacred, revolutionary love, resistance, and an ethic of belonging in our commitments to staying fully alive in our work. while we are writing collaboratively, at times we will speak as ourselves, cathy or vikki, in order to locate ourselves culturally and to resist conflating our important differences. we will use international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 3 a different font from our collaborative writing to indicate that we are speaking individually, and will begin these pieces with a name in parenthesis to identify which of us is speaking. starting where we stand, on joe’s land we stand on land soaked in the blood of an unreconciled genocide that occurred on unceded indigenous land. part of the history of colonization in canada has been the euphemistically called residential schools. former federal minister duncan campbell scott articulated the mandate of these schools as trying “to kill the indian in the child” (paul, 2006). “the residential schools were a key part of the broader and longer term colonial strategy that included genocide, land theft, and ethnocide. as far as euro-canadian treatment of aboriginal peoples is concerned, colonialism is the plot that drives every chapter” (coates & wade, 2009, p. 2). in june 2008 the canadian prime minister offered an apology from the government for abuses at these “schools”. [cathy] i watch my prime minister’s official apology to joe and his people for residential schools from a reserve with former residential school inmates. everyone is crying. some leave, it is too much to watch. as a canadian with metis, cree, gwichin, dene, and european ancestry, i watch this federal performance beside people who are visibly tormented by memories of state-imposed violence against children. [vikki] my prime minister never asked me or other settler people if we were sorry, or what we were sorry for, if we wanted to be accountable or how we wanted to be accountable for this political violence. it is an empty apology, given on my behalf, that pretends to clean my slate, requiring me to acknowledge nothing and to do nothing. in our partnership, no matter who we work with, we never forget where we are standing. we always start our work from this place, with our feet solidly positioned on the land on which we live, land that was never surrendered. here we are amazingly alive against long odds and left for dead north america tellin’ lies in our head. (osborn, 1999, p. 11) our ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work as community workers committed to social justice, we are ethically obliged to find ways to be “amazingly alive” in our work. the sustainability that promotes being amazingly alive refers to a spirited presence and a genuine connectedness with others. it requires more than resisting “burnout” and keeping a desperate hold on hope. we are amazingly alive in our work when we are able to be fully and relationally engaged, stay connected with hope, and be of use to clients across time. being amazingly alive in our work embraces a rich engagement with a spirit of social justice, and openness to the transformations we may experience as practitioners in this difficult work (martín-baró, 1994). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 4 we promote our sustainability through contesting injustice and committing to an ethic of doing justice (reynolds, 2010a). if we are not working from this ethic, we risk replicating dominance and causing harm to our clients and community members. staying alive in our work is not something we can do alone. it is relational and reflects a professional and ideological commitment to participating in collective action. shouldering each other up in the work, in alignment with our shared ethics, fosters a solid(arity) ground on which we can join against the separation and privatization of personal pain. from here we may contest power structures that cause harm to people, while minimizing the harm to ourselves that is caused by structural isolation. in these contexts of social injustice, in a society that is more just to some than to others, it is hard to stay alive in work alongside people who live in the margins and are forced to dance with death. this is where we work and our clients live. despite this dismal reality, here we are, amazingly alive. our ethical orientation is the medicine that keeps us alive and well. we strive to enact these ethics. describing social justice [cathy] what is social justice from an indigenous or metis perspective? (i use the term indigenous to be inclusive, as metis people are excluded by the term first nations. native is a kitchen table word my family has used to refer to themselves, and we think of aboriginal as more of a government word.) an indigenous world view encompasses shared values of how to live, be together, and take care of one another. mohawk psychiatrist clare brant (1990) articulated certain “native ethics” in an inspiring article, outlining an ethic of non-interference, non-competitiveness, sharing, and a native sense of time and timing. what stands out particularly is the ethic of holding one’s own counsel in terms of thought, opinion, or judgment about the actions of others. it is unethical to give advice or tell other people what to do. storytelling is a respectful teaching practice in indigenous life and serves to put experience in context, to inform the imagination and ethics of children, to teach, to soothe. stories provide moral explanations for human action. they educate young people. they explain creation and the reason for human existence. they may share information about the natural world and appropriate interaction between humans and other aspects of creation. stories are shared orally; they are spoken or sung. native literature professor thomas king (2003) writes that “stories assert tremendous control over our lives, informing who we are and how we treat one another as friends, family and citizens” (p. 9). stories form a theoretical prescription of how to behave within the parameters of the culture (richardson, 2004) and are imbued with the great mystery, sacredness, and recipes for social justice. in the metis buffalo hunt, there was a code of ethics aimed to keep everyone safe and ensure that everyone had enough food. violations of the communal code of ethics were punished with various forms of public humiliation. dignity was something earned through bravery and honourable participation, and people were held accountable for transgressions in ways appropriate to the times, such as cutting up one’s saddle for dishonourable conduct. inclusion, belonging, and participation in community were the central organizing principles which advanced the prospects of social justice (metis family services, n.d.). when we refer to social justice from a metis or indigenous perspective we are describing a quality and a practice of sharing wealth and resources, taking care of the most infirm or vulnerable, making sure that everyone is fed, clothed, cared for in mind and body, and offered belonging. the story we are telling is that everyone matters and everyone belongs. [vikki] from a western perspective, a socially just society may be described as one in which all groups of people, regardless of background, are included in the political, economic, and social decisions international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 5 of that society (orlowski, 2009). building a just society is a collective responsibility that requires front line workers to become activists for social change both in their work with clients and in their lives. social justice includes all domains of social life, beyond the more narrow scope of human rights and justice systems, which primarily uphold laws. indian author/activist arundhati roy (2005, 2009) speaks of attacks on social justice, and draws important distinctions between social justice and human rights: today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack. the assault on vulnerable fragile sections of society is at once so complete, so cruel, and so clever ― all encompassing and yet specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious ― that it's sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. it has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations. even among the wellintentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of “human rights”. (2005, p. 331) the role of community workers/activists is to contribute to the making of a space in which the person who is oppressed gets to have their voice heard and listened to. social justice requires more than being heard by a practitioner; a person's words must matter, not be dismissed, and be met with an accountable response. brazilian popular education theorist paulo freire (1978, 2001) names this authentic dialogue, which he describes as an act of revolutionary love. if we are replicating oppression we are not in dialogue with each other. activist/scholar anita lacey eloquently calls these spaces of justice, which community workers contribute to, “the social divine” (2005a). american anarchist scholar noam chomsky (2005) cautions all of us in our assumption that we know what social justice is, or that we have hit some kind of developmental stage in humanism and that we can decide what is just. what is most hopeful for us in chomsky's caution is the idea that we need to create a future in which something we could not even articulate presently as justice could be possible. moments of the social divine hold glimpses of these possible just futures. wittgenstein (1953) says that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. we do not even know the words to describe what it is we are working towards, because we cannot yet articulate it, and have not yet acted to create our vision of social justice. there is often pressure on us as community workers to influence people into acceptable social norms and structures that do not fit with a just society. we resist these expectations that can result in us replicating oppression, and we enact our visions and hopes for justice-doing. when we speak of our work in relation to issues of social justice, we are acknowledging that many of our clients are in struggles for their lives, that these are issues of life and death. engaging with an ethic of justice-doing in our community work helps us to resist professional “talk of things hidden inside of the heads of individuals” (shotter & katz, 1998, pp. 88–89). the brain and body are a part of the holistic person's struggles – but we hold this idea alongside our knowing that a brain is contained within a particular body that is moving in the world and is subject to power. oppression does not happen to people in their brain. it happens to people in the world. certainly oppression in the physical/social world is inscripted onto the body, but we respond with justice-doing in the social world which is the site of intervention. responding with justice-doing the helping professions’ connections to ideals of neutrality and objectivity can invite us to accommodate clients to private lives of hell, which is not in line with any worker’s ethics (cushman, 2006). many progressive front line workers have spoken of the activist and feminist analysis of private pain/public issue. for example, working with women who have survived rape requires us to keep confidentiality of a particular woman's story, and to speak publicly contesting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 6 the rape culture we live in. when we speak of the individualization of injustice and the privatization of pain, we are connecting with these rich histories from both activist and practitioner traditions that invite us to respond with justice-doing. in community work, kiwi tamasese (2001) of the just therapy team from aotearoa/new zealand speaks of “private issues, public problems”. imelda mccarthy (2001), from ireland’s fifth province team writes of how “public problems become private and privatized issues” in therapeutic practice. these multiple voices call for an ongoing move to action, to continue the practices of resisting neutrality, and to work for change in the social world where clients and practitioners live. mccarthy (2001) writes: it is crucial that the private issues of clients need to be entered into the public arena if social change is to occur. this publication does not refer to the specific details of confidential material but of the themes and trends.... the private and the public cannot be separated when one works with the poor; otherwise we are in danger of creating yet another arena for their silencing and further oppression. (pp. 271–272) we are accompanied by these practitioners, and the rich history of voices legitimizing our activism and contesting neutrality. we have never been neutral about sexual abuse. we have never been neutral about torture. neutrality is itself a particular political position. we take on oppression and injustices on all fronts, at the intersections of our power and privileges, where we have power and where we’re oppressed (crenshaw, 1995; robinson, 2005). justice-doing requires immediate responses. our work is imperfect, but required, and we cannot say to clients, “continue your suffering. we’ll get to you later when we know exactly what to do”. we acknowledge that our responses to oppressive situations will be imperfect. popular education has taught us to act and then reflect, analyze, and recreate our responses (freire, 1970). we cannot wait for better training, the arrival of the right teacher, or finding the right book. we take what we have learned from activist cultures, from progressive trainings, and from our families and cultures, and respond to need with action. while maintaining a critique of the idea of solidified theories, we hold close a teaching from chomsky (2005): social action cannot await a firmly established theory of man [sic] and society, nor can the validity of the latter be determined by our hopes and moral judgments. the two – speculation and action – must progress as best they can, looking forward to the day when theoretical inquiry will provide a firm guide to the unending, often grim, but never hopeless struggle for freedom and social justice. (p. 116) justice-doing is inspired by workers refusing to be contented with social cruelty. however, our work is not innocent and neutral positions are inherently political. a hopeful skepticism we invite a healthy and hopeful skepticism about whether or not we are enacting our ethic of justice-doing in any moment-to-moment interaction. hopeful skepticism is informed by ricoeur and kvale’s hermeneutics of suspicion (kvale, 1996; white, 1991), where we look to our practice to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 7 see if we are in accord with our ethics. activists ask, “am i walking the talk?” holding an antioppression framework is fabulous, but theorizing is limited (tuhiwai smith, 1999). critical theory on its own cannot deliver a just society. [vikki] what matters is that we enact our ethics. for example, i make claims to being an ally and to acting accountably for my access to heterosexual privilege. whether or not i actually perform as an ally is best judged by the person facing the oppression. if a person who identifies as queer says, “you helped make space for my voice to be heard, then you got out of the way, and i experienced that as accountable”, then i know that i am in line with my ethics and hope for being an ally in that moment.ii contesting “burnout” and cynicism: bringing hope we are critical of the individualization of “burnout” and the limits of “self-care” which lays the burden of an unjust society on the backs of individual workers. we embrace the ethical practice of collective care. our community work is often a front line response to violence, abuses of power, and other acts of oppression: i believe that the level of what is being called “burnout” says a lot more about our society collectively than it says about us as counsellors individually. the problem is not in our heads or in ourselves, but in the real world where there is a lack of justice. the people i work alongside do not burn me out and they do not hurt me: they transform me, challenge me and inspire me. we're not “burning out”, we're resisting being blown up! what is threatening to blow me up is an inability to work in line with my ethics, and my frustrating failure to personally change social contexts of injustice that clients wrestle with and live in. (reynolds, 2009, p. 6) “burnout” is an overused term, and we believe that the problems that threaten our sustainability and effectiveness in our work are better described as spiritual pain. by this we mean the harrowing discomfort we experience bodily and spiritually when our work and our own limitations require us to work in ways that transgress and violate the very ethics that drew us to community work. this spiritual pain can be responded to with relationships of solidarity that help us hold close and enact our collective ethics (reynolds, 2008, 2010b). staying amazingly alive in our work requires that we work in the world we are in, with what is, and not what should be. discerning skepticism from cynicism is important. cynicism can paralyze us into believing not only that we can do nothing, but that nothing can be done. we believe that contesting cynicism is an ethical obligation for workers who align themselves with an ethic of social justice. healthy skepticism can help us engage with ethics by questioning our assumptions and generating our desire for something different. skepticism also invites community workers to look for evidence of the doing of the ethical positioning we claim, and not to smooth over the discomfort we experience when we transgress our collective ethics. in this sense, skepticism is in relationship with hope, and onside with staying alive in our work. “cynicism might be an appropriate reaction to injustice that cannot be changed. hope is an appropriate response to a task that, while difficult, is imaginable” (jensen, 2001, p. 2). cynicism can be simple. bringing a reasonable, believed-in hope to our work with clients is more complex and more difficult. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 8 we believe in the correlation of hope and staying fully alive in our work. in this we are backed up by freire (1970), who says, “hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world and fleeing from it. the dehumanization resulting from an unjust order is not a cause for despair, but for hope, leading to the incessant pursuit of the humanity denied by injustice” (pp. 72–73). honouring resistance in saying we honour resistance, we are acknowledging that whenever people are oppressed they resist. resistance is linked to repairing dignity when people’s lives and identities are under attack. there are three main assumptions we make about resistance: 1. whenever a person is oppressed they resist. 2. resistance ought not to be judged by its ability to stop the oppression. 3. resistance is important for its ability to maintain a person’s connection to humanity, especially in instances outside of human understanding. (wade, 1997; reynolds, 2010c) while resistance to oppression is ubiquitous, without a purposeful commitment to witness resistance, it can be disappeared, or be constructed narrowly, so that only that resistance which successfully stops oppression is acknowledged. coates and wade (2007) point out that language is used to either conceal or reveal violence and resistance. in clarifying real events in the world, we look for the person’s own account of their sites of resistance, their resistance knowledges (wade 1996, 1997), and the meanings these acts of resistance hold for the person. acts of resistance can draw attention to oppression that can go unnoticed and unchallenged or can pass for normal. in fact, acts of resistance can be indicators of safety and draw attention to the often ignored stories of the victims’ efforts to protect themselves and others (richardson & wade, 2008). resistance may not stop violence or social cruelty, but it does connect us with our sense of humanity and collective dignity. however, we are careful to not fetishize resistance, and certainly, not every act is an act of resistance. our hope is to transform our communities and society so that people can experience justice, not to witness acts of resistance for their own sake. when we (professionally, collectively) organize our community work around uplifting human dignity and contesting socio-political acts of oppression and cruelty, we demonstrate that our practice can offer social esteem and a kind of liberatory engagement, affirming life. so most days now i say shout shout for joy shout for love shout for you shout for us shout down this system puts our souls in prison. (osborne, 1999, p. 11) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 9 enacting solidarity solidarity speaks to the interconnections of our collective movements towards social justice, and in resisting oppression. profoundly relational understandings of solidarity have been credited to different indigenous elders. lily walker, an australian aboriginal women’s leader, describes solidarity beautifully while speaking to non-aboriginal activists at a land rights protest: “if you come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. but if you come here because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us begin” (walker cited in sinclair, n.d.). [vikki] i heard a retelling of this wisdom when i was involved in a protest against uranium mining in kakadu, australia. there were few non-aboriginal folks present, and the aboriginal elder who was opening the event used a retelling of this phrase. was i there for her, for me, or for us? i did not participate in this land rights protest for aboriginal people, but rather because my life and my relational ethics are inextricably linked to solidarity with these struggles. i live on land that is unceded territory of other indigenous nations: different people, same issue. other ethical commitments i hold for sustainable environmentalism and against war prompted me to take a position against the mining of uranium, a product directly connected to the weaponry of warfare and imperialism. the threads of these particular complexities woven together connect me and this aboriginal elder in solidarity. there is always more solidarity than we can see. unbeknownst to me, in protesting the mining of uranium, i was taking a position in solidarity alongside cathy. when i met cathy she had just had her third hip replacement and explained to me that this was a result of a birth defect related to her family’s participation in uranium mining. [cathy] when my mother was a teenager, her family moved to uranium city where her father took a job at a uranium company. their family life consisted of seasonal work, trapping, hunting, and food gathering. during this time, workers and community members were not given accurate information about the dangers of uranium and radiation. clearly, the government and the military were aware of its profound destructive capacity to cause harm as they were developing the atomic bomb. i have heard of an indigenous prophecy that warned of the black rock in the ground and how it should not be removed by humans or their machines. by the time my grandmother evelyn reached her middle adult years, she had lost all her hair. she had kept radioactive rocks as borders for her flower garden. my grandfather had kept uranium samples in the basement and my mother worked in a laboratory. my family suffers from many related health problems, including two generations of baby girls who could not walk without surgical or medical intervention. uranium city is not too far from deline, also known as the village of widows (blow, 1999). after loading ore onto boats with bare hands, every single man in this village died. the uranium for the atomic bombs dropped on japan came from deline. there are now local indigenous committees deciding how the mining industry should interact with the dene community (m. kodakin, personal communication, 2010). our solidarity can be imperfect and fluid; we're not invested in perfect relationships of unity or cohesion. we look for points of connection, and spaces where we can back each other up authentically. this is informed by activist understandings of “groundless solidarity”, meaning that no site of oppression becomes the primary issue we organize around. we are inspired by canadian anarchist theorist richard day’s idea of “infinite responsibility” which invites us to always attempt to be “open to another other”, to the multiplicity of ways that we might not be enacting our collective ethics and not in solidarity across our differences and privileges (day, 2005, p. 18). our impermanent allegiances are based on situational and timely concerns that bring people together for moments of sacred collision and cooperation. cathy engaged with the practices of solidarity in a unique way as she gave the opening lecture at a minding the gap conference in victoria. she put three chairs on the stage behind the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 10 podium. she invited her colleague, allan wade, who is well published, holds a ph.d., and is of mennonite/german/dutch and scottish ancestry, to sit in the middle chair. on either side of him she placed a book written by other white men who are also well published and held ph.d.s. cathy made public to all of us that her purpose was to show that white people, with authenticated and privileged voices, were saying the same things that she was saying as a métis person. cathy let us know that she was doing this to remind herself that she knew the facts, and that they were correct. allan's presence, sitting down behind her, reminded her that she was not crazy, and that there were nonaboriginal allies who would back her up when she named colonization. this particular and seemingly small act of solidarity shoulders us all up and fosters our hopes for respectful partnerships in our work and our lives across the differences of power that divide us. and shout with my soul shout for life more abundantly shout for all hard-pressed messed-with human beings (osborn, 1999, p. 10) an ethic of belonging for us, the necessity of belonging in community cannot be overstated, and we believe that a risk of not belonging is death. our lives and work have taught us that hate is not a metaphor, and that hate kills. hate works to divide people off from communities of inclusive liberatory belonging where culture can offer sites of healing (reynolds, 2002). in 2007 the american journal of public health published research that revealed lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are twice as likely to think about suicide as heterosexual youth, and three times as likely to attempt suicide (silenzio, pena, duberstein, cerel, & know, 2007). in 2010 the national center for transgender equality released findings that 41% of the transgender persons they interviewed had attempted suicide. these stark numbers could not take into consideration the transgender people who had died of suicide. reported numbers of suicides are always low because a death is only considered suicide when proven by legal investigations. transgender and queer persons are not killing themselves on their own. we believe that hate, particularly racism, homophobia, and transphobia, have a hand in these killings. this is not a metaphor. using the language of “suicide” and “overdose” masks the heart-wrenching suffering, daily indignities, and desolation many people experience. queer, trans, and racialized persons are given many violent messages that they do not belong, and that there is no place for them on the planet. a medicalized term such as “overdose” quiets our collective discomfort, and provides a “cause” for these stolen lives. concealing the violence of hate holds people criminally responsible for their own deaths, when they have been fighting hate to stay alive. “suicide” blames the victims, and lets our society allow hate to continue unnamed and unchallenged in these deaths. justice-doing requires we belong queer, trans, and racialized persons in our communities, and uphold our social responsibility to address the conditions that promote the horror of suicide. fostering belonging is at the heart of our efforts to become amazingly alive in our work, and to promote the possibilities of being amazingly alive in others. a community colleague, ga ching international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 11 kong, who is a counsellor and acupuncturist of chinese, irish, and english descent, articulates beautifully her understandings of our ethic of belonging: collective agreements in groups can be complex, or they can be simplified to the words vikki uses, “everyone is welcome.” this is profound. it is saying everything that is required to be said, as an ethic. when i use these three words in my work with youth and children, our bodies and spirits relax. rather than being in our heads with detailed rules, these words resonate within our bodies – everyone belongs, no matter what. belonging is something we all know how to do, each cell self-organizes to an authentic peace in a space where everyone belongs. (g. kong, personal communication, 2010) saying that everyone is welcome requires that we create spaces of inclusion and engage with the complexities of enacting respect. we structure safety in public and committed ways in collaboration with each other, and develop accountability practices that hold us to this ethic of belonging. we cannot work without these engaged practices that provide the scaffolding for an ethic of belonging. belonging jeff jeff smith is a music therapist involved in community activism and social justice oriented therapies whose ancestors are from ireland, england, and holland. following what anarchist philosopher gilles deleuze calls “lines of flight” (deleuze & guattari, 1987) from the spiritual pain associated with injustice and oppression, jeff has taken risks to align himself with clients and with his ethics (smith, 2010). he has been in some relatively dark places but he still has light in his eyes. [cathy] through recent developments with the islands of safety violence cessation project (richardson, 2009), jeff and i are forming a musical conspiracy, which means “breathing together” in solidarity, bringing music to people who have suffered the harm of violence and whose spirits are on the mend. in this, i am inspired with new life and breath in the work. like jeff, we hunger for our work to embrace ethical commitments and collectivity, for a move from longing to belonging (carriere & richardson, 2009). finding jeff, we invited him to belong with us in a networked community (lacey, 2005a) of practitioners organized around an ethic of social justice in a community of concern (madigan & epston, 1995). but we were reflexively asking him to let us in, belong to us. jeff has connected us with his community of helpers in resistance to work that replicates dominance. jeff’s response to his belonging in dark moments when i notice the massive chasm between my politics and the dominant conservative view that permeates our work, i lean heavily on my community of concern. this community serves as a gathering place for nomads like me when we flee from the colonial swagger of dominant institutions. connecting with my people provides an opportunity to blow off steam, rest, revitalize, share ideas, acknowledge multiplicity, and celebrate difference. while cathy and vikki’s mentorship, supervision, and encouragement to question and engage in multiple analyses of these kinds of events has informed my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 12 personal ethics and politics of practice, it is their ongoing friendship that i value most. to experience revolutionary love in this work is life affirming. sharing food, music, stories, and communities has been a way of resisting the boundaries set up by the institutionalization of mentorship. more like a jam session than a teacher-student knowledge transfer, this kind of belonging is an improvisational practice that is always embodied and moving through the rhizome (deleuze & guattari, 1987), a place where multiplicities flourish and connect with the unknown. (j. smith, personal communication, 2010) we always seek to be part of communities of concern, to be supported in doing justice, doing dignity, and being accountable to specific communities and to each other for our transgressions. through belonging we invite spirited and generous invitations to collective accountability. we are looking for cover, to be blanketed by one another. this belonging is our antidote to being “blown up” by “burnout” and by individualism. the sacred [cathy] much of our work in community begins with an acknowledgement of the sacred, the land, and the connections between all living things. metis songwriter dana lynn seaborn has shared a prayer song invoked to open various meetings, gatherings and ceremonies: when will we learn to see the sacred? when will we learn we’re not alone? when will we find a way to heal our mother earth? then we’ll find the sacred is our home. (richardson & seaborn, 2002) my colleagues and i also find strength in singing the women’s warrior song or the strong woman song to activate courage, commitment and a spirit of justice and inclusion. my family from fort chipewyan lives in a toxic sludge of emissions from the tar sands. lake athabasca is the basin where fish and wildlife live and feed. my family hunts and fishes there; some of them work in fort mcmurray for economic reasons. others are fighting illness while some are standing up for animals and earth. i see these brave citizens at the united nations trying to raise awareness about this industrial nightmare, then returning home to a country recently awarded the “colossal fossil” award for ecological destruction by over 500 non-governmental organizations (demelle, 2009). whatever our position, we cannot escape the outfall when we live in community together. so, under these conditions, how can we uphold the sacred in all levels of interaction, whether deep, mundane or in-between? these experiences of sacred unrest prompt me to keep aspiring for change. when i return to northern indigenous communities, i am embraced by a deep embodied sense of belonging, of being “home”. i see people on the street that look like family. while i have never lived in the north, i feel the presence of my ancestors. cheryl aro, a gitksan woman from the gutginuxw house and the fireweed, sister and colleague of mine, refers to this as a “blood memory”, and is a deep recognition of connection and belonging to people and places of indigenous knowers (c. aro, personal communication, september 2010). the land welcomes me and i am belonged. it is this territory outside of language that moves me to be useful, to continue to walk and struggle alongside the kaska, the dene, the gwichin – the people. it lives within us across lives and pulls us back to places where our ancestors have walked. [vikki] my understandings of the sacred are grounded in my irish catholic roots, my family, and my places of cultural belonging. i am moved by being in communion with others, responding to something made possible in the social divine, and being in webbed relationships of revolutionary love within a spirit of solidarity. my father, bill reynolds, taught us how to hold an extensive clan together with belonging and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 13 compassionate love. my mother, joan reynolds, is the rock of our family, and taught us to be tenacious in holding onto love when it is hard. my relationship with the sacred is not unlike a spirited solidarity that feeds me through my belonging in activist culture. as activists we create temporary communities as acts of resistance to the walls and fences put up around the sites of neo-liberal globalization such as the recent g-20 and g-8 events in toronto. while activists are locked out, locked up, detained, and guarded by heavy security and military action, we create "spaces of inclusion" (lacey, 2005b, p. 404) in direct response to our exclusion in these meetings of global power holders. “activists create spaces of juxtaposition, in which diversity and inclusion are fostered... these spaces of justice are temporary expressions of what global anti-capital activists are striving towards... expressions of the social divine, a sense of being together in self-directed and shaped environment” (p. 404). my experiences of participating in the spontaneous co-creation of these “deliberately forged spaces” (p. 407) accompanies me in our community work. embracing the sacred in our work alongside people who are suffering from mean-spirited policies and right-wing ideologies aligns us with freire’s ideas of revolutionary love. freire (1970) describes revolutionary love as “emancipatory, and generative in terms of fostering further acts of love: it cannot co-exist with abuses of power” (p. 71). been o.d.’ed so bad made a doctor mad lookin’ at me said you’re still alive how can that be? said i don't know why i’m alive except i don't want to be but i got news for that doctor too right now i’m so alive feelin’ so free doctor your science ain’t nothing behind this mystery (osborn, 1999, p. 8) amazingly alive [cathy] on the way back from a ceremony where i received my cree spirit name, i was with some of my sisters at one of those gift shops at a ferry terminal. someone had the idea that we all buy an animal pendant to mark our trip and ceremonial time together. i agreed, even though i wasn’t particularly interested in the jewellery. i wore the eagle pendant on a subsequent trip up north. there, in the yukon, i attended a medicine wheel ceremony as a support person and ended up sitting with a young couple in a counselling session. at the end of our time together, the young indigenous woman lingered and told me quietly that she thought my eagle pendant was pretty. i asked her if she would let me give it to her, as a memory of the place and the time together. she agreed and we placed the eagle around her neck. she started to gently cry. she said that this was the nicest thing that anyone had ever done for her. in fact, she said that no one had ever given her a present before. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 14 there aren’t words to describe a moment like that, the energy that moves between us and the great mystery, weaving us together in particular moments that remind us we are alive. in this amazing valley, backed up by mountains, lakes, animals, and big sky, i imagined that she had been left for dead in those multiple foster homes and institutions that housed parts of her life. in that moment, something different happened that made the spirit dance. shout here we are amazingly alive against long odds left for dead shoutin’ this death culture dancing this death culture out of our heads amazingly alive (osborn, 1999, p. 11) this work is dedicated to flora tuhaka, often referred to lovingly as “mother truth” by her work colleagues, a maori elder with the just therapy team in aotearoa/new zealand, whose passion for sacred connectedness continues to move and inspire us. we miss her. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 15 references alcoholics anonymous. 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(1953). philosophical investigations. oxford, uk: blackwell. http://www.aboriginalsocialwork.ca/special_topics/par/index.htm� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 19 endnotes i [vikki] “joe” is a pseudonym in this composite and fictionalized account informed by multiple experiences. joe’s story demonstrates an enlivening “giving it back” practice, which i was taught by members of alcoholics anonymous (2001) and narcotics anonymous (1988) fellowships. this practice honours the recursive engagement between practitioners and the people they work alongside. we can catch workers up on the moments of their work that might be unknown to them but hold great meanings for clients. as workers, we are open to being transformed in this work, just as joe is honoured here for his meaningfulness in julie’s life as a worker. ii [vikki] “queer” has been adopted by groups of people i work with as an umbrella term for some people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual. i use this term to speak of lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, and queer identified people, acknowledging that this is a problematic term for many reasons (fassinger & arsenau, 2007). people i work alongside who identify as queer may be in any of these groups, but primarily identify outside of heterosexual normativity, which refers to discourses which promote heterosexuality as normal. people who identify as trans do not identify strictly with the gender they were assigned to at birth, and may or may not transition to a gender in which they feel more congruent, which could be something other than male or female. they may or may not transition physically or socially to their preferred gender identity (nataf, 1996). all of these terms are problematic, contested, and evolving. i use these terms for clarity and because groups of folks i work alongside have settled on this imperfect phrasing for now (reynolds, 2010d). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201717998 protecting, balancing, and confronting: health-seeking among homeless youth in ho chi minh city, vietnam victoria l. boggiano, lesley m. harris, verena schmidt, le quang nguyen, ha an nguyen, and michele barry abstract: the objective of this study was to explore health-seeking behaviors and barriers faced in accessing care among homeless youth living in ho chi minh city, vietnam. twelve in-depth interviews were conducted with homeless youth aged 18 to 25. participants were identified using purposive sampling. data were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory techniques. interviews with youth revealed that while living on the streets, they had to balance their need for security with attending to their daily survival needs, which led to a disconnection from thinking about their health. when faced with a major health issue, youth turned to their informal networks of support instead of seeking immediate medical care. to manage their basic health needs, youth obtained medicine and health advice from local pharmacies and sought advice from social workers. homeless youth interviewed in this study relied on an informal network of peers, social workers, and pharmacies when engaging with the health care system. they also faced several barriers to accessing health services, many of which are tied specifically to policies that make homelessness discriminated against in vietnam. within vietnam’s unique political and social context, there is a need for increased collaboration between service providers such as health clinics, local pharmacies, and social workers to provide appropriate health services to this vulnerable population. keywords: ho chi minh city, vietnam, youth homelessness, health care access, grounded theory, qualitative analysis victoria boggiano (the corresponding author) is a medical student at the stanford school of medicine, 871 warren way, palo alto, ca 94303. email: vbogg@stanford.edu lesley m. harris phd is an assistant professor of social work at the kent school of social work, 109 patterson hall, university of louisville, louisville, ky 40292. email: lesley.harris@louisville.edu verena schmidt mssw is a doctoral candidate at the kent school of social work, 109 patterson hall, university of louisville, louisville, ky 40292. email: verena.schmidt@louisville.edu le quang nguyen is a consultant and former program director with save the children in vietnam’s ho chi minh city office, 20 song thao, ward 2, tan binh district, ho chi minh city, vietnam. email: lequangnguyen1@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201717998 mailto:vbogg@stanford.edu mailto:lesley.harris@louisville.edu mailto:verena.schmidt@louisville.edu mailto:lequangnguyen1@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 2 ha an nguyen is a former project officer with save the children in vietnam’s ho chi minh city office, 20 song thao, ward 2, tan binh district, ho chi minh city, vietnam. email: hantornguyen@gmail.com michele barry md is the senior associate dean for global health, the director of the center for innovation in global health, and a professor of medicine at the stanford school of medicine, 291 campus drive, lk3c02, stanford, ca 94305. email: michele.barry@stanford.edu mailto:hantornguyen@gmail.com mailto:michele.barry@stanford.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 3 the united nations defines “youth” as people between the ages of 15 and 24 (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, n.d.), and “homelessness” as living on the streets without “a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters” (un habitat, 2007, p. 119). a report from the asian development bank identifies street youth as children who might transit to the street, children on the street, [or] children who previously lived on the street with a variety of occupations including beggar, rubbish picker, shoeshine boy or flower seller, sweat shop worker, sex worker or petty criminal (west, 2003, p. 1). in vietnam and other emerging economies worldwide, there is a growing population of young people living on the streets who must survive on little income and a fragile social support system (fern, 2006; sauvé, 2003). the phenomenon of youth homelessness is not unique to emerging economies. studies looking at the lifestyles and behavior patterns of homeless youth have taken place in both developing and industrialized countries, including the united states (auerswald & eyre, 2002; zerger, strehlow, & gundlapalli, 2008), canada (hwang, 2001; werb, kerr, zhang, montaner, & wood, 2010; woan, lin, & auerswald, 2013), korea (kim, 2014), latin america (raffaelli, 1999; raffaelli et al., 2001), and vietnam (duong et al., 2008; fern, 2006; unite, 2006). across the globe, young people living on the streets are faced with a myriad of challenges when transitioning to street life, including limited opportunities to generate income, drug and alcohol abuse, and harassment by the police (duong et al., 2008; unite, 2006). in addition, researchers have found that homeless youth are more likely to engage in sex work, substance use, and other risk-taking behaviors compared to their non-homeless counterparts (ensign, 1998; ennett, bailey, & federman, 1999; heffron, skipper, & lambert, 1997). poor physical health is common among those who are homeless (ensign & bell, 2004; rice, tulbert, cederbaum, barman-adhikan, & milburn, 2012). homeless individuals are more likely to have tuberculosis, hypertension, asthma, diabetes, and hiv/aids (zlotnick & zerger, 2009) and higher rates of medical hospitalizations (kushel, vittinghoff, & haas, 2001) when compared to the general population. living on the streets and engaging in high-risk sexual practices puts youth at risk for contracting hiv/aids, sexually transmitted diseases (stds), and other infectious diseases (duong et al., 2008; rotheram-borus et al., 1992; song, safaeian, strathdee, vlahov, & celentano, 2000). in addition, people experiencing homelessness have higher rates of mental illness (werb et al., 2010; woan et al., 2013). however, little is known about how homeless youth conceptualize their health needs and strategize to seek out health care. moreover, past research with homeless youth in the united states, canada, and latin america indicates that adolescents living on the streets rarely seek out formal health services unless they are in need of emergency care (deisher & rogers, 1991; raffaelli et al., 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 4 in developing countries, health care for young people living on the streets has focused largely on hiv/aids prevention, treatment, and care (radford, king, & warren, 1989). healthseeking beyond hiv/aids services has not been as thoroughly investigated; in fact, scholars who study international homeless adolescent populations call for increasing research to explore the factors that influence homeless youth’s health-seeking behavior (hudson et al., 2010; raffaelli, 1999; slesnick, dashora, letcher, erdem, & serovich, 2009). this lack of information about the health-seeking behavior of homeless youth extends to vietnam, where there is a growing population of young people living on the streets (ensign, 1998; ensign & gittelsohn, 1998; hong & ohno, 2005). the paucity of research on vietnamese homeless youth is due largely to the hidden nature of this population and the challenges presented by the government’s refusal to acknowledge their presence (edmonds & turk, 2002; gallina & masina, 2002; terre des hommes foundation, 2004). vietnamese homeless youth are described among local citizens as “bụi đời”, or “children of the dust” (ensign, 1998; human rights watch, 2006). they are colloquially known by social workers and health professionals in vietnam as “street youth” or “homeless youth”. in 2010, the vietnamese ministry of labour, invalids and social affairs (molisa) found that more than 160,000 vietnamese youths were considered orphans or abandoned children; 14,574 children were living in institutions; and 13,000 children resided on the streets (molisa 2010, p. 211). for comparison, approximately 30,000 young people live on the streets in thailand (khaopa, 2010), and approximately 3,000 homeless adolescents live in cambodia’s major cities (maza, 2017). how to address the rising population of homeless young people in vietnam has become a focus of increasing concern for the international community (ekman, liem, duc, & axelson, 2008; fern, 2006; terre des hommes foundation, 2004). without support, vietnamese homeless youth face significant obstacles that impede their ability to live healthy lives. the strict government policies regarding homelessness force homeless youth to hide in parks and markets due to fear of being arrested by the police (gallina & masina, 2002). the homeless population in vietnam is highly policed, and homeless youth in vietnam are routinely rounded up by police and sent to detention centers where they are detained for months to years at a time. these facilities, which are often referred to as rehabilitation centers, also house individuals with substance use disorders, sex workers, orphans, and disabled people without family support who have been arrested and detained by law enforcement (gallina & masina, 2002; human rights watch, 2006). detainees are often subject to extensive hours of forced labor, along with physical and sexual abuse (amon, pearshouse, cohen, & schleifer, 2013). there is international agreement that the rehabilitation centers do not create positive change in captives’ lives (u.s. department of state, 2011). homeless youth in particular remain quite vulnerable once released (human rights watch, 2006), as they are placed once again on the streets without any social support services to assist with their reentry into the community. because their health-seeking behavior is so poorly understood (jones, presler-marshall, & thuy, 2014; minh, 2008), it is difficult for non-profit organizations and hospitals to create health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 5 care services that are well-utilized by vietnamese homeless youth. in this manuscript, we seek to provide a deeper understanding of the health-seeking behaviors of homeless youth living in ho chi minh city (hcmc), one of vietnam’s major cities, and of the barriers they face in accessing care. ecological theories of health behavior (mcleroy, bibeau, steckler, & glanz, 1988), which include individual, interpersonal, and environmental factors (sallis, owen, & fisher, 2008), helped to frame our study design. research has shown that changing individual behaviors can decrease the occurrence of chronic diseases (martin, haskard-zolnierek, & dimatteo, 2010). however, behavior change necessitates a deeper understanding of the multiple social and environmental factors that influence health-seeking, particularly among vulnerable populations such as homeless youth in vietnam. gaining a deeper understanding of the processes and mechanisms that youth undergo to access care may lead to the development of health care interventions to assist them. methods qualitative approach our research team employed a constructivist grounded theory (cgt) approach (charmaz, 2014) to examine health-seeking among homeless vietnamese youth. we used cgt in order to develop a theoretical explanation (corbin & strauss, 2007) — a context-specific framework (denzin & lincoln, 2000; marshall & rossman, 1995; merriam, 2009) — grounded in data from participants who had themselves experienced homelessness (corbin & strauss, 2007). the cgt approach was compatible with our study because it is based on the assumption that as researchers we are actively co-constructing meaning with our participants through a subjective interrelationship. we allowed discussion topics around health-seeking behavior to emerge as our interviews progressed; following each subset of interviews, new questions and concepts were incorporated into our interview guide (described in more detail below). with this method, our interviews explored the individual, interpersonal, and environmental factors that impacted the health-seeking behavior of the vietnamese homeless youth we interviewed. participants for the purposes of this study, we defined youth as individuals between the ages of 18 and 25, and we included youth who had been living on the streets of hcmc for between 1 month and 10 years. we chose the age range of 18 to 25 because of stanford university institutional review board requirements. we could only include children under 18 if we were able to obtain parental approval, and most of our participants did not have access to a parent or guardian. hcmc was chosen as the location because it is the largest city in vietnam, one of the fastest-growing cities in southeast asia and the destination of choice for most runaway children and youth (dapice, gomez-ibanez, & nguyen, 2010). the 19 city districts, which vary in size, contain more than two dozen parks and markets where homeless youth live and work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 6 procedure participants were recruited with the help of staff and social workers affiliated with the save the children in vietnam hcmc office. this method of purposive sampling was appropriate given the hidden nature of the target population (creswell, 2013). all study participants were contacted initially by one of the social workers who described the project’s purpose. upon arrival, participants were briefed again and given an opportunity to refuse participation when the study was introduced, and again prior to signing the consent form at the start of the interview or focus group. youth were told that their participation was voluntary and confidential. they were compensated for their time by receiving a gift bag that included an oral health kit (including toothpaste, toothbrush, and floss), a coupon for a health checkup at a clinic, a resource booklet telling them where they could seek social and health services, and 50,000 vietnamese dong (the equivalent of 2.5 usd). data collection consisted of two focus groups and 12 one-on-one interviews conducted over 8 weeks. focus groups first, two focus groups, with seven participants each, were conducted with formerly and currently homeless youths (basch, 1987). the focus groups lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. focus group questions were informed by the study approach described by rew (2000) and bender, thompson, mcmanus, lantry, and flynn (2007) that gave examples of how to pose questions about specific survival strategies to groups of homeless youth. we used these authors’ interview approach as a starting place, but asked participating youths to expand and elaborate on the topics that would be most important in relation to health-seeking practices in vietnam specifically. participants in the first focus group consisted of seven current or formerly homeless youth leaders identified by a social worker at save the children in vietnam. formerly homeless youths met the same inclusion criteria as the currently homeless youths (namely, between the ages of 18 and 25 and having spent between 1 month and 10 years living on the streets). the second focus group consisted of seven currently homeless youths who met the study’s inclusion criteria and were also identified by the same social worker at save the children in vietnam. interviews focus group transcripts were reviewed by authors boggiano and h. a. nguyen, who met to discuss themes brought up by participants. boggiano and nguyen reviewed participants’ responses systematically question by question, after which a semistructured interview guide was created. following rew’s (2000) example of conducting individual interviews with youth after completion of focus groups, twelve additional homeless youths were recruited to participate in one-on-one interviews (see appendix for interview questions). interviews were conducted at the save the children in vietnam hcmc office. interviews lasted 2 hours on average. every three interviews, the principal investigator (boggiano) and an interpreter (h. a. nguyen) met to discuss the previous three interviews and determine whether there were topics being mentioned by participants that warranted additional mention in the interview guide. questions were adjusted as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 7 necessary during each of these check-ins. together, the investigator and the interpreter, who served as co-researchers, engaged in a collaborative interview process whereby they were co-constructors of knowledge with their research participants (charmaz, 2014; harris, boggiano, nguyen, & pham, 2013). analysis eight female and four male homeless youths participated in the one-on-one interviews. the average age of the participants was 23 years, and the average length of time they had lived on the streets was 6 years. five of the participants had grown up in hcmc, and most of the remaining seven were from provinces located in southern vietnam’s mekong delta region. the participants reported that their education ranged from no schooling to college education. table 1 lists the demographic information for the 12 youths who participated in one-on-one interviews. table 1 demographic information gender age hometown years on the streets current employment school grade completed female 23 ho chi minh city 2 sex worker college female 18 an giang province 2 sex worker not available male 23 da nang city 8 sex worker not available female 22 ho chi minh city 9 selling lottery tickets and recycling bottles not available male 23 vung tao city 9.5 working in a restaurant and odd jobs not available female 18 long an province 1 selling chewing gum 7 male 24 tay ninh province 4.5 stealing and odd jobs 5 male 25 ho chi minh city 10 begging no schooling female 25 ho chi minh city 10 selling drinks and begging 1 female 24 tra vinh province 5.5 sex worker and selling drinks 3 female 24 ho chi minh city 2 sex worker no schooling female 23 tay ninh province 8 sex worker 3 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 8 upon completion, the interviews were transcribed and translated by a professional interpreter from save the children in vietnam, and all identifying information was removed prior to analysis. half of the transcripts were coded line by line by two authors (boggiano & harris). initial codes were clustered together by topic to develop focused codes. the most frequent and significant focused codes were used to construct a codebook that consisted of 13 codes with definitions. dedoose, a web-based qualitative data analysis platform, was used to facilitate data organization and coding (sociocultural research consultants, llc, 2014). the codebook was uploaded to dedoose, and its coding functions were used to code the first six interview transcripts. the finalized codebook was based on iterative discussions of interview transcripts (hsieh & shannon, 2005; joffe & yardley, 2004). next, interrater reliability tests were performed using the other person’s coded transcripts to ensure that agreement was reached. after obtaining a pooled cohen’s kappa statistic of 71.5% (cohen, 1960; de vries, elliott, kanouse, & teleki, 2008), authors boggiano and harris met to discuss and adjudicate each excerpt where agreement was not obtained. cohen’s kappa statistic is a widely-used measure to evaluate intercoder agreement as compared to the rate of agreement expected by chance. according to landis and koch (1977), the kappa statistic achieved was considered to be “good agreement”. after the adjudication process was complete, and 100% agreement was reached, the remaining six interviews were coded. next, a thematic analysis was conducted on the coded transcripts, iteratively refining themes until consensus was reached. the authors maintained memos related to analytic decisions, consulted with other team members, and discussed relationships among the codes that emerged from the data (charmaz, 2014; strauss & corbin, 2015). we undertook these processes to increase the credibility and trustworthiness of our coding process and application. we also met regularly to supervise each other’s coding work and code applications, an approach which increased our ability to be reflexive and improved our teamcoding approach (barry, britten, barber, bradley, & stevenson, 1999). ethics the stanford university institutional review board approved all study documents and selection procedures. boggiano, the data collector, was present at all focus groups and interviews. findings the following section explores the findings from our qualitative interviews with 12 homeless youths living on the streets of hcmc. participants described a balancing act of maintaining their physical health in a polluted city with limited opportunities for shelter and hygiene, while also protecting their safety as they confronted dangers such as human trafficking, exploitation, rape, and violence from police and gangs. the youths reported that their most vulnerable stage of street life was when they first arrived in hcmc and had a limited number of friends and allies, leaving them at the mercy of “the big brothers and sisters” — members of local street youth gangs — who often stole their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 9 belongings and left them in the park, injured and alone. over time, the youths developed allies and gained power, but often sought the help of non-homeless friends in the community, including employers and social workers. the challenges faced in maintaining safety caused the street youths to focus less on their health needs, until it became critical for them to do so, such as in the instance of becoming pregnant, having an std, or being significantly injured. under these circumstances, the youths found themselves “confronting” their health needs and seeking the support of their trusted allies. within this dynamic process of “protecting, balancing, and confronting”, four properties emerged from our interviews: (a) facing challenges in meeting basic needs, (b) encountering barriers in maintaining health, (c) seeking advice through informal networks, and (d) engaging in health activities. table 2 lists these properties and their unique dimensions, and each property is described in more detail below. table 2 properties and dimensions of “protecting, balancing, and confronting” property dimensions facing challenges in meeting basic needs acquiring food to eat finding safe and comfortable places to sleep earning an income finding a good job encountering barriers in maintaining health maintaining personal hygiene living in a stressful environment gang violence police brutality seeking advice through informal networks peer networks social workers internet and public media engaging in health activities pharmacies as primary care centers reproductive health centers hospitals for emergencies facing challenges in meeting basic needs all 12 participants stated that they faced challenges in obtaining adequate food and shelter. the majority of the participants’ time throughout the day was dedicated to earning enough money to eat, finding shelter, and protecting themselves from police, gangs, and other threats. youths acknowledged that food insecurity was a barrier to maintaining health. several reported “not having fixed meals” and often eating only once per day. the preference of all youths who were interviewed was to eat “fast food”, which was defined as “unhealthy snacks” or “small cheap meals” from street food stands. however, youths acknowledged that this food was erosive to their overall health in comparison to home-cooked meals. according to one female participant, “sometimes i just have instant noodles and water all day long: noodles for breakfast, then drink some water, then noodles for lunch, and so on. and i have too much oily food, i feel so sick.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 10 to prevent food insecurity, youths traveled to parts of the city where they were likely to find free or very low-cost meals. youths relied heavily on pagodas, local buddhist places of worship, for “charity meals”. these vegetarian meals were prepared by the monks and the nuns living at the pagoda and were free to the entire community. one male participant shared, “if i don’t have money, and i see them giving food for free, i will come and ask for one.” when no food was available, participants followed irregular eating schedules. one male youth reported, “if i have money, then i would eat; otherwise, i starve myself.” youths used a variety of coping strategies to stave off the sensation of hunger, such as filling their bellies with water. one female youth described the hierarchy of all three tactics of finding food (eating fast food, going to pagodas for food, and starving): “some days when the charity food is not available, we starve ourselves drinking water until we have enough money for a cheap meal.” for 10 of the 12 participants in this study, finding a place to sleep at night became a pattern of drifting in and out of finding shelter and living full-time on the streets. when youths were able to secure shelter (as some did for up to a year), they relied on their relatives, friends, or sexual partners to provide them with housing. participants rented a room when they had enough money to be able to afford a respite from the hectic nature of street life. one female participant stated, “only when i have money [do i rent a room], otherwise, i don’t rent.” another male participant stated that he usually had enough money to rent a room roughly once a month. moreover, one major preventive factor to sleeping on the streets was being in a stable partnership where shared income and security could help a youth afford or acquire more stable sleeping arrangements. two female participants in this study were living with boyfriends that they had met on the streets. when participants could not find housing or shelter, they often fell asleep at the park or in the aisles of hospitals, where they hoped to blend in with patients’ family members. however, these tactics came at a high cost due to the danger of being caught by governmental authorities or police, which could result in an arrest or assault. youths who frequented public places to sleep reported occasionally saving up enough money to rent a hotel room. overall, searching for safe places to sleep, like finding low-cost or free food to eat, was challenging for the participants in our study, causing them stress and preventing them from focusing on their health and overall livelihood. encountering barriers to maintaining health participants highlighted several barriers to accessing health care that they faced while living on the streets: maintaining personal hygiene, earning an income, and the challenge of living in a stressful environment where they were constantly on guard for fear of gangs and police officers. several participants relied primarily on public restrooms for maintenance of personal hygiene. when asked where she was doing her personal hygiene, one female participant responded: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 11 there is a rent bathroom in a house near a park, and i go there to take a shower and do my personal hygiene. they charge 10,000 vnd [0.5 usd] for each time you shower, and they do laundry there too for 10,000 vnd. earning money often placed the youths’ health at risk. seven of the participants stated that some or all of their income was from sex work. participants acknowledged that engaging in sex work increased the chances of contracting an std or being physically assaulted by a customer; female youths faced the additional risk of becoming pregnant. concerning his health, one male participant reported: “i am afraid of fatal diseases like hiv.” a female stated: “customers don’t listen to me and push their demands; i feel unsafe when they don’t use condoms.” regarding her health-seeking behaviors, one female participant insisted that her clients always wore condoms: “i won’t trade my life for money. hiv kills.” when youth acquired condoms, the primary sources were hotels (where condoms were sometimes provided free of charge) and nongovernmental organizations. some youth said they also bought condoms at pharmacies. another participant stated that she did not use condoms unless customers requested it, because she was allergic to them. youths detailed the ways in which having to work and live outside impacted their health. participants tried to stay healthy by avoiding exposure to extreme weather conditions whenever possible. one male participant spoke of “trying to dodge the rains and the heat” to avoid getting sick. another youth reported, “sometimes when the wind changes, i feel chilly to the bone; i will get wet and have a cold … the rains and heat weaken my resilience.” youths also lived in the constant presence of violence from gangs, policemen, and customers. when asked about her surroundings, one female participant stated: i live in nam park1 … it’s a park, a place for people to go jogging, to have some fun, but it’s also a dangerous place, many types of people living there, sex workers, robbers … people of all kinds. another youth stated that she works in a district well known for sex work. the police, who frequently arrest homeless youths for sleeping in parks or not carrying government identification with them, are another threat that the youths must live with on a daily basis. of the 12 participants interviewed, eight stated that they had been arrested at least once. overall, participants displayed avoidance or disconnect concerning their health. when asked about challenges in maintaining health, one participant stated: “it is my fate, i don’t care about that; i haven’t visited a hospital at all in my life.” often, youths’ avoidance of health care was because of having to attend to other priorities, but also stemmed from a lack of knowledge regarding health services. one female participant stated, “i barely inquire about health services.” when asked about how she felt in terms of her health, another youth replied: “i am not as strong 1 the name of the park has been changed to protect participant identities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 12 as before; i will never get back to my previous health condition.” another youth said, “i feel normal, but i don’t know what is going on inside my body.” finally, yet another participant said, “i don’t know, i just lead a normal life, the sickness will come when it comes, i don’t really know how to protect myself, just live day by day.” overall, participants’ health-seeking behaviors were disrupted by challenges in maintaining their basic health needs. seeking health advice through informal networks participants reported seeking advice concerning their health through informal networks, especially peers, social workers, and the internet and public media. when confronted with a major health dilemma (e.g., an std or pregnancy), the youths turned to their informal networks for advice instead of seeking immediate medical care. social workers were also key resources for homeless youth when seeking advice about health. one female participant elaborated: “they counsel us and give us moral support, and they buy medicine for me.” according to another female participant, social workers “showed me types of sexually transmitted infections, the symptoms, and how to prevent them … they advised me when i took a blood test.” participants reported that they often utilized the internet and public media such as government public health campaigns when seeking health advice. several participants described how much information they learned from the internet, which they accessed by visiting internet cafes located across hcmc. one male participant noted that he learned how to use condoms because of the “instructions on the packaging”, and that in the past he had seen many brochures on how to use them. engaging in health activities all 12 youths who participated in this study mentioned that they frequently went to nha thuoc [local pharmacies] to buy medicine when they were not feeling well, instead of using primary care doctors. one participant explained, “i go to the pharmacy and buy medicine. i tell [the pharmacist] how i feel, and they know what to give me.” for all participants, pharmacies were accessed once illnesses became too severe to bear on their own. if a participant had a cough or a headache or was worried about stomach pains that would not go away, he or she would turn to the pharmacist for help in deciding which medicine to buy. among the female participants in our study, becoming pregnant created a need for health care services that mandated a trip to the hospital. reproductive health thus became one means of entry into the health care system for homeless female youth. one female participant commented, “it is simple, everybody goes there to deliver their baby.” another youth explained, “yes, when i delivered, i did go to the doctor.” some youths also received testing for stds at local clinics, which social workers had connected them to. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 13 hospitals were used by youths only for emergencies. one participant reported, “going to the hospital means not earning money … i have no money for the hospital.” for another participant who came down with appendicitis, going to the hospital was the last resort but became a necessity when she was too sick to walk and needed urgent surgery. seven youths (both male and female) stated that they had gone to the hospital at some point during their time on the streets: one for appendicitis, two to give birth, one because she fainted, one for an std test, one for severe nausea and vomiting, and one for dengue fever (for which he was hospitalized for a month). overall, youths indicated that they were preoccupied with their “day-to-day life,” as well as securing food and shelter, and tended to medical issues only when they could not wait any longer. in terms of preventive factors that helped youth maintain their health, participants remarked that engaging with local non-governmental organizations — particularly if the staff at these organizations were trusted by and well-known to the youth — enabled them to obtain services such as testing for stds. though not always available to the participants in our study, these factors, when present, helped them to learn more about their bodies and maintain their health to the greatest extent possible. discussion to date, the health experiences of homeless youth living on the streets of vietnam’s major cities have been poorly studied (fern, 2006; terre des hommes foundation, 2004). there are many factors that lead vietnamese children and adolescents to the streets, and many of those factors are present among both vietnamese street youth and homeless youth from other nations. many children in vietnam — including several of our participants — come to the streets to escape abuse at home or to earn money to send back to their families (fern, 2006; unite, 2006). those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender often seek out street life to escape communities that have terrorized them for their sexual orientation or gender preferences (save the children & institute of social and medical studies, 2015), which is also true for homeless young people in other regions of the globe (keuroghlian, shtasel, & bassuk, 2014). unique to vietnam, however, is the country’s communist government structure that continues to devalue this marginalized population by enforcing policies that cause the youth to be thrown in jail if discovered to be living on the streets. this sustains a culture that tries to make them invisible rather than create muchneeded social services to assist them (human rights watch, 2006). in addition, generations of wealthy families in vietnam’s major cities have created a structuralized racism that places certain vietnamese ethnic groups and social clans above others (krajan, 2017), preventing those in the lower classes from escaping the poverty that forces many of the thousands of homeless youths to earn money by picking up trash or selling sex. the communism and classism that defines much of urban life in vietnam does not create room for social services such as health care facilities to cater to homeless youth. moreover, given the hidden nature of the juvenile street population in major cities like hcmc or hanoi (fern, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 14 2006), it is difficult to gain a deeper sense of what their health needs are or how they engage with the health care system. while the negative health impact of living on the streets is well documented (beharry, 2012; bao, whitbeck, & hoyt, 2000; bender et al., 2007; heffron et al., 1997), participants in our study engaged in formal health-seeking behaviors only when their health became such a pressing issue that it could not be ignored. youths faced several barriers to maintaining their health: challenges finding places to sleep and food to eat, having few resources to spend on accessing health care, and living in a constant environment of fear from gang violence, police brutality, and assault. this finding is corroborated by other literature on youth homelessness (karabanow, 2009; ensign, 1998). as our participants emphasized, many homeless vietnamese youths avoid engagement with medical facilities for fear of being caught by police or government officials and sent to rehabilitation centers. when youths did take action with regard to their health, it was often through pharmacies that served as primary care centers (ngo et al., 2007) or via informal networks of peers, members of the community, and social workers. applying the ecological model to our findings (mcleroy et al., 1988), participants’ individual characteristics gave them enough resiliency to withstand difficult circumstances. they sought out opportunities to find food, shelter, earn an income, and develop networks that they could rely on for help. however, individual and interpersonal factors were not able to overcome the detrimental environmental factors that youths faced, such as threats to their physical safety. although some pharmacists served as facilitators by helping youths obtain medicine, barriers such as limited resources with which to buy food or a safe place to sleep made accessing health services an almost insurmountable challenge. based on what we learned from homeless youths during this study, we offer recommendations about ways to improve their engagement with health services. to date, while there has been extensive research looking at how pharmacies throughout vietnam are operated (van duong, binns, & van le, 1997), there has been little research looking at ways to successfully involve pharmacies in public health endeavors. taking the findings of previous studies a step further (ngo et al., 2007), pharmacies can play a crucial role in helping homeless youth improve their health and can act as a liaison to other health care services. throughout vietnam, locally run pharmacies can be found on each street corner. all 12 participants in our interviews talked about seeking the help of pharmacists whenever they began to feel sick. studies have shown that mobile health care vans that can be parked near homeless youth have been effective in increasing access to health services for this population. a study investigating illness experiences among homeless youth in seattle (ensign & bell, 2004) found that mobile vans provided greater access to youth than did hospitals or medical centers. in such care settings, young people can obtain std testing, vaccinations, and other routine primary care (ensign & bell, 2004). however, as mentioned previously, being homeless is heavily policed in vietnam, and living on the streets greatly increases one’s risk of being arrested if one is discovered in public parks or sleeping on the street without a government-issued identification card. this aspect of vietnamese society might limit the effectiveness of publicly placing mobile vans in “hot spots” where homeless international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 15 youth reside in hcmc. our results indicate that participants most commonly accessed health care resources from the internet or directly through pharmacy care (i.e., self-diagnosing, and ordering medicine from pharmacies without seeing a doctor). however, there might be potential for mobile health care centers if there could be collaboration and agreement with the vietnamese government on the acceptability and feasibility of this intervention. another model of care is the “drop-in center”. in the united states, these centers provide services such as meals, clothing, showers, access to transportation, and occasionally casemanagement services. in his exploration of how homeless youth are able to successfully exit street life, karabanow (2009) stressed the importance of health care centers such as drop-in clinics that youths can access. health clinics, he noted, are one avenue where homeless young people meet “supportive and healthy contacts” that help them not only meet their basic health needs but also begin to develop the skills necessary to exit street life (karabanow, 2009, p. 20). studies have shown that drop-in centers can serve as social support centers and connectors for street youth, and provide a gateway to treatment for substance abuse and mental health problems (tsemberis, moran, shinn, assmussen, & shern, 2003). above all, however, the findings from this study underscore the need for ending the practice of systematic roundups of vietnamese street youth, due to the negative impact on their ability to seek out health care. if the vietnamese government continues to treat homeless youth as illegal and repeatedly send them to rehabilitation centers, their health will continue to deteriorate. limitations there are a few limitations to our study. our small sample size and purposive sampling strategy meant that we were speaking with one small subset of the homeless youth in hcmc. we therefore cannot conclude that our findings are representative of the health-seeking behavior patterns of all homeless youth in vietnam. in addition, the limited time collecting data in vietnam hindered efforts at uncovering all facets of the complexity of homelessness in vietnam. this article is a first step towards uncovering elements of health-seeking behavior among homeless youth in hcmc and vietnam more generally. despite these noted limitations, our study was able to gain a deeper understanding of vietnamese homeless youth, their health needs and strategies, and the barriers they face in accessing health care. conclusion while the damaging health consequences of homelessness in vietnam have been studied previously (duong et al., 2008), the health-seeking behaviors of young people living on the streets and their barriers to accessing health care services have remained poorly understood. this study seeks to contribute a greater understanding of health and health-seeking behavior among homeless youth in hcmc through our description of “protecting, balancing, and confronting”. for young people living on 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(2011). vietnam: 2010 country report on human rights practices. bureau of democracy, human rights, and labor. retrieved from https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/eap/154408.htm van duong, d., binns, ,& van le, t. (1997). availability of antibiotics as over-the-counter drugs in pharmacies: a threat to public health in vietnam. tropical medicine and international health, 2(12), 1133–1139. doi:10.1046/j.1365-3156.1997.d01-213.x werb, d., kerr, t., zhang, r., montaner, j. s. g., & wood, e. (2010). methamphetamine use and malnutrition among street-involved youth. harm reduction journal, 7(5). doi:10.1186/1477-7517-7-5 west, a. (2003). at the margins: street children in asia and the pacific (poverty and social development paper no. 8). manila, philippines: asian development bank. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11540/2287 woan, j., lin, j., & auerswald, c. (2013). the health status of street children and youth in low and middle-income countries: a systematic review of the literature. journal of adolescent health, 53(3), 314–321. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.03.013 zerger, s., strehlow, a. j., & gundlapalli, a. v. (2008). homeless young adults and behavioral health: an overview. american behavioral scientist, 51(6), 824–841. doi:10.1177/0002764207311990 zlotnick, c., & zerger, s. (2009). survey findings on characteristics and health status of clients treated by the federally funded (us) health care for the homeless programs. health and social care in the community, 17(1), 18–26. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2524.2008.00793.x https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/eap/154408.htm http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-3156.1997.d01-213.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7517-7-5 http://hdl.handle.net/11540/2287 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.03.013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764207311990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2524.2008.00793.x international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 24 appendix interview questions for one-on-one interviews demographic questions age: hometown: length of time living on the streets: what are the ways that you have made money? selling food selling drinks selling lottery tickets sex work stealing other what is your sexual orientation? who are your clients? are they vietnamese? are they foreign? both? what is the gender of your clients? male? female? both? individual factors how long have you been living on the streets? what is street life like for you? what first brought you to the streets? when you first moved to the streets, did you feel safe? why? do you feel safe now? what do you do to protect yourself? day by day, how do you feel? has this changed at all since you first got to the streets? when you have a cough, what do you do? what illnesses are you the most concerned about? what are the most common illnesses you and other street youth experience? how do you get information about how to take care of yourself? what do you do to keep yourself from getting sick? how did you learn to do this? how often do you use condoms? how do you get the condoms? how do you know about using condoms? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 1–25 25 interpersonal factors what was your relationship with your family like growing up? how do you earn a living on the streets? what is your relationship with other people on the streets? have you met anyone who made a big impact on your life on the streets? when you need advice/counsel, who/where do you go to? what makes you feel safe? what makes you feel unsafe? environmental factors can you tell me more about where you live and work on the streets? what is your relationship with the government, the police, and the authorities? when you first got to the streets, what would you eat and where would you go for food? now-a-days, what do you eat and where do you go for food? how often do you eat? how often do you feel hungry? where do you work during the day? where do you sleep at night? why? can you tell me about a time where you felt unsafe on the streets? do you know of someone who was taken by the police? if yes, then what happened to them? when is the last time you went to the doctor? when is the last time you went to the pharmacy? how do you find out about health services? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019700 settler education: acknowledgement, self-location, and settler ethics in teaching and learning scott kouri abstract: this paper begins with a critical exploration, from the location of a settler, of how land acknowledgements and practices of self-location function in child and youth care teaching and learning. i critically examine settler practices of acknowledgement, self-location, appropriation, consciousness-raising, and allyship. i use the concepts of settler ethics and responsibilities to underline the importance of accountability in child and youth care pedagogy. i argue that settlers have a responsibility to take action within the challenging ethical landscape of teaching and learning within the settler colonial context. my overall aim is to contribute to the critical and decolonizing literature in child and youth care from the location of a settler educator and child and youth care practitioner. keywords: child and youth care, youth work, settler colonialism, teaching and learning, ethics, pedagogy, identity, acknowledgements, self-location scott kouri is an instructor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: skouri@uvic.ca mailto:skouri@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 57 territorial and relational acknowledgements i begin by acknowledging that i write from the location of a settler living on the territories of the lekwungen and w̱sáneć peoples. i acknowledge that they, and other coast and straits salish peoples, are the first and rightful inhabitants of the lands and waters that are now called south vancouver island, georgia strait, juan de fuca strait, and puget sound. more than 20 distinct first nations currently live in this area and their stories recount their continuous occupation here since the land was created. i acknowledge that historical and ongoing colonization has devastated many indigenous communities in what amounts to genocide. i acknowledge that settlers like myself are responsible, individually and as a group, for the violence and oppression indigenous people have suffered and continue to suffer. settler colonialism is a particularly brutal form of colonialism “in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain” (tuck & yang, 2012, p. 5). i understand that settlers, including myself, are not guests or visitors on these territories but have illegally and violently made a home on indigenous land. ongoing colonization, particularly in its current relationship with the neoliberal state and global capitalism, is inseparable from my current way of life, the academic institutions i work within, and the governments that administer canadian society. the university of victoria, where i have studied and taught, and written this paper, is a colonial structure built on stolen lands of the lekwungen peoples (cheryl bryce, 2018, personal communication). our programs privilege dominant western knowledge and our academic relationships are saturated in power relations structured by colonialism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and racism (mccaffrey, 2011). it is through the painstaking work of indigenous teachers, students, and community members, such as cheryl bryce, lands manager for the songhees first nations, and shanne mccaffrey, cree métis faculty in child and youth care, that our individual and collective consciousness is raised. in such a context, i am humbled by my indigenous friends, teachers, students, and mentors who have been generous and patient with me as i come to be aware of my own colonial past. i am specifically indebted to my teachers and colleagues in child and youth care and particularly want to acknowledge my doctoral supervisor, dr. sandrina de finney. much of my learning has come from the oral and relational teachings that she has shared with me during my graduate studies. dr. de finney has germinated and nurtured many of my academic contributions and particularly what is contained in this paper. the trust and commitment she has shown me far outweigh my ability to acknowledge them within the strictures of academic style. settler academics, including myself, have an enormous responsibility to find practices of transparency and accountability to balance the generosity shown to them by indigenous teachers, supervisors, and colleagues. my experiences with indigenous peoples, families, and communities i have met through my counselling work have also shaped me, my practice, and this paper. the ideas that i have developed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 58 for this paper were influenced by my experiences as a counsellor with penelakut tribe. i acknowledge the oral, relational, and emotional labour of those who helped guide my practice and worked with me. i am particularly grateful to my friend and mentor james charlie, a penelakut elder who spent years introducing me to his community and supervising my work as a counsellor. my hope is that this paper extends what i learned in ways that help to bring other settler people into better relationships with indigenous peoples. to be accountable to indigenous peoples means, for me, to interrupt colonial erasures and to subject myself and the practice of child and youth care — both saturated in colonialism — to criticism. for too long, child and youth care teaching and learning has recapitulated settler colonial values and practices. for example, child and youth care ethics have often been framed in highly individual or philosophic terms, neglecting the social contexts of practice (kouri, 2015a; saraceno, 2012). analyses of settler colonialism and the voices of indigenous peoples are consistently absent from child and youth care courses and literatures that purport to prepare students for practice. to challenge these omissions means centring indigenous people’s work as well as challenging other settlers to undo our habits of ignorance and violence. my view of this profound commitment has been that undoing settler colonialism will require a variety of approaches, not the least of which is establishing collaborative relationships between indigenous people and settlers. part of my learning has been to respect the space that indigenous people need in order to decolonize (coon et al., 2016). another has been to actively seek out and participate in relationships that defy the colonial mandates — relationships in which indigenous knowledge is privileged and i take on the work of listening, studying, and extending our mutual understanding of the need to undo colonial power. aims and structure of this paper with respect to settler colonial relations to land and life, the question of the aims and approaches of teaching child and youth care is pertinent. this paper brings together critical literatures on identity, decolonization, and child and youth care praxis to rethink the politics and ethics of teaching and learning child and youth care. the purpose of this paper is to critically grapple with the concepts and practices of acknowledgement, self-location, and appropriation from the location of a settler. first, i contextualize ethics within contemporary colonialism and explore practices of self-location and territorial acknowledgement to identify ethical tensions particular to settlers. i then engage with the concepts of consciousness-raising, citiational practice, and allyship to explore how settlers have challenged and can challenge settler colonialism and support indigenous people. throughout the paper, i argue that settlers have a responsibility to take action within the troubled and thorny ethical landscape of learning and teaching child and youth care within the settler colonial context. my overall aim is to contribute to the critical and decolonizing literature on learning and teaching in child and youth care from the location of a settler. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 59 settler ethics by foregrounding challenges, contradictions, and ongoing manifestations of settler colonialism, i attempt to outline the ethical dimensions of child and youth care pedagogy. ethics, in this sense, is not only about providing a moral compass, values statement, or codified approach to decision making that would help ground a professional identity or practice. instead, i also use ethics as a troubling site for critically reevaluating our practices, investments, knowledges, and who we are as settler people (white, 2007; white et al., 2017). by applying decolonizing critique, i aim to map settler colonial influence in child and youth care pedagogy, explore approaches to teaching and learning, and challenge notions of a straightforwardly ethical praxis. settler ethics, for me, means taking my own location as a mixed-race white male settler as the starting point and attempting to undo the overlay of colonialism that continues to impose contradictions between my present self and a more ethical life. many of the reflections i share regarding teaching and learning in child and youth care come from years as a student, instructor, and counsellor. some reflections come from learnings i received from clients about how colonialism and capitalism cause harm in their lives. many reflections underscore how i benefit in many ways by the racialized, gendered, and colonial systems that perpetuate the very harms i work to address. while such experiences bring up guilt and shame, they also bring heightened awareness and greater motivation towards ethical practice. in this way, engaging with young people, families, and communities has been an opportunity to open myself to an ongoing process of change. benefitting from such experiences in terms of payment and educational and career advancement is problematic, and i try here to engage with this problem by making it visible and trying to open conversations about it in child and youth care classrooms and literatures. settler ethics for me, therefore, is about scrutinizing how my positionality informs my research and how my affects and emotions (desire, guilt, denial, shame, hope, and love), interests, and investments are involved in knowledge generation and action. part of the work in sharing this approach with other settlers is to buffer some of the backlash that predictably arises as we confront our complicity in colonialism. for too long, the weight of educating settlers about colonialism has fallen on indigenous people, along with the brutal reactions, such as denial, anger, pity, and heroisms (white saviour and social justice warrior complexes, etc.) that such consciousnessraising entails. settler ethics therefore includes discussing, accounting for, disrupting, analyzing, unsettling, and challenging settler identities and knowledge. it means developing new practices of pedagogy, supervision, solidarity, and peer collaboration (kouri & smith, 2016; reynolds, 2010a). it includes working towards new ways that child and youth care students and educators can undo our heteronormative, patriarchal, racial, class, and colonial attachments. what is required, i believe, is a settler ethics that is connected to context, responsible in relationship, and accountable to those from whom their learning comes. my hope is that these deliberations help to develop the ethical coordinates for undoing the settler subject’s grip on the land, knowledge, and bodies of those who have been on this land for millennia. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 60 settler colonial contexts the land that is currently known as canada has been the home of indigenous peoples for millennia. cindy blackstock (2003), gitxsan scholar and director of the first nations child and family caring society of canada, explained that although there is significant diversity amongst the cultures, societies, and language groups that make up first nations and inuit peoples, “they are all bound together by a perspective that supports a holistic interdependent worldview, communal rights and a commitment to sustainable decision making” (p. 3). over thousands of years, indigenous peoples across the continent of north america, known to some of them as turtle island, developed complex and functional systems of politics, economics, education, health, and spirituality (chansonneuve, 2005). although anthropological and prehistoric evidence demonstrates that cultures and societies were being established well over 10,000 years ago in turtle island, indigenous peoples have a number of creation stories to account for their own history and origins (chansonneuve, 2005; watts, 2013). prior to european contact, the ethnically and linguistically diverse indigenous peoples of turtle island were independent, yet had “established intricate systems of political and commercial alliances among themselves” (henry et al., 2000, p. 134). although the first contact that indigenous peoples had with europeans is usually traced to john cabot’s meeting with the beothuk people or the voyages of christopher columbus, henry et al. (2000) explained that indigenous and non-indigenous peoples have had contact for over a thousand years and that these contacts can be classified into four distinct periods. the first period includes intermittent contact between indigenous peoples and europeans, such as the norse and the basque, starting in about 1000 ce, and a sustained european presence from the end of the 15th century until the 18th century. henry et al. characterized this period as one of mutual tolerance and respect, with some exceptions. the second period began in the 18th century, propelled by french and english battles for imperial supremacy in north america. it was marked by the formation of trading and military alliances, as well as increased conflict and death. indigenous peoples suffered enormous population declines as european diseases spread across the continent, while at the same time the european population grew with increased immigration and settlement. the displacement and assimilation of indigenous peoples is indicative of the third period of indigenous–european relations, which occurred at different times across the continent. the third period is “marked by a continuing saga of expropriation, exclusion, discrimination, coercion, subjugation, oppression, deficit, theft, appropriation, and extreme regulation” (henry et al., 2000, p. 120). the fourth period, which continues today, is described by henry et al. (2000) as distinguished by negotiations and renewal. following the end of world war ii, the authors explained, public awareness and indigenous political mobilization increased in response to the ongoing racist attitudes and policies directed towards indigenous peoples. today, these mounting tensions between the colonial state and indigenous nations can be seen in protests against radical environmental extractivism (preston, 2017), targeted attacks on indigenous women and girls (de finney, 2014), and legal actions within state frameworks, processes, and courts (coulthard, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 61 furthermore, vanessa watts (2013) showed that settler colonialism also includes epistemological contexts that mark out difference through knowledge paradigms, often with the effect of delegitimizing indigenous knowledge, practices, and cosmology. indeed, as tuck and yang (2012) explained, in settler colonial contexts, land is what is most valuable, contested, required, both because settlers have made indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also because the disruption of indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence. this violence is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation. (p. 5) this passage reminds us of three things: first, colonialism is about land; second, colonialism is ongoing; and third, colonialism has consequences for knowledge and for who we are as people. tuck and yang (2012) stated that “decolonization brings about the repatriation of indigenous land and life” (p. 1). furthermore, they argued that any movement, regardless of its utopian, critical, or socially just aims, may be incommensurable — may share no common ground — with decolonization if indigenous futures and sovereignty without a settler state are not at the forefront. particularly, they reject settler attempts to reconcile guilt and complicity through metaphorizing decolonization or appropriating it within other critical, liberal, or social justice work. according to tuck and yang, settler colonialism is first and foremost the theft and occupation of indigenous land. in an era of indigenous resurgence, it is the responsibility of settlers to find new ways of relating to indigenous people and to one another. for too long, discussions about colonialism have been met with empty apologies, backlash, appropriation of the other’s pain and culture, and ambiguous relationships in the name of allyship. as settlers, we need to take actions that support indigenous people in their efforts to create material change, a practice not always foregrounded in discourses on decolonization (tuck & yang, 2012), particularly in child and youth care where ahistorical and apolitical portrayals of children, families, and communities are still ubiquitous. while practices of self-location and territorial acknowledgements are fraught with contradictions, developing an ethical space of deliberation will hopefully move us past our blind collusion with colonialism and better prepare us and our settler students for decolonizing child and youth care education. settler-location in my undergraduate education in child and youth care at the university of victoria, selflocation was used as a tool for teaching students to recognize that identity is situated in structures of social privilege and power. self-location was combined with indigenous teachings regarding the importance of understanding both one’s own ancestral land-based history and the histories that one’s ancestors participated in that relate to the lands one now lives on. i now better understand how the ideas i held before entering the program were inextricably tied to systems, discourses, and practices that marginalized other people and ways of knowing and living. throughout my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 62 education, and even more poignantly as i began to practise as a counsellor, i was confronted with complex dilemmas related to my social location and ways of knowing. now, as a graduate of child and youth care and an instructor, i have been further challenged by a generation of students seeking social justice through decolonization, economic and gender equity, anti-racism, and environmental sustainability. this paper takes self-location as a starting point to examine child and youth care pedagogy and praxis and articulate some of the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning from a critically informed and socially located perspective. the act of positioning oneself follows a feminist politics of location that understands knowledge and identity as always situated, embodied, and intersected by power (braidotti, 2011; mcintosh, 1988). self-location relates to the embeddedness of identity within local and global political, economic, and social systems that structure experiences of oppression, discrimination, power, and privilege. identity factors that impact experience, especially those of privilege and oppression, include, but are not limited to, gender, skin colour, race, age, caste, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, ancestry, religion, ability and health, culture, socioeconomic class, geographic location, citizen status (migrant, immigrant, displaced, refugee), indigeneity, and education level (association for woman’s rights in development, 2004). locating oneself or becoming visible (skott-myhre, 2006) as a white settler is a practice of making power and its functions transparent, and thus available for analysis and contestation. within settler colonialism, whiteness is a central organizing discourse that structures relations of power including epistemological supremacy and material inequality. mcintosh (1988) argued that white individuals benefit from systematic privilege rooted in histories of racism and exploitation. frankenberg (1993), furthermore, explained that “white people are not required to explain to others how ‘white’ culture works, because ‘white’ culture is the dominant culture that sets the norms. everybody else is then compared to that norm” (p. 21). white supremacy is often invisible in its more insidious structural forms, and its functioning is invisible in particular to white people, while painfully obvious to many racialized people. alan lawson (1995) argued that locating the settler subject is an ethical and political necessity in that it challenges a “self-serving forgetting of the entangled agency of one’s history as a subject with that of the displaced native/colonized subject” (p. 20). in many ways, whiteness and coloniality are ubiquitous, which makes them difficult to criticize, particularly for white settlers. white supremacy and eurocentric assumptions underlie many traditional models of child and youth care. national curricula and practice standards are grounded in assumptions of individualism, meritocracy, objectivity, and cultural essentialism, and they generally do not represent or respond to the realities and experiences of diverse populations (de finney et al., 2011; yoon, 2012). critical research in child and youth care (e.g., de finney, 2010; di tomasso, 2012; pacini-ketchabaw, 2007) suggests that practice approaches that conceptualize and respond to differential experiences of inequity related to identity, political, and sociocultural factors are important for improving practitioner responsiveness to indigenous, racialized, visible minority, immigrant, and marginalized children and youth. preparing students for such work would require international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 63 a deconstruction of child and youth care theories and values steeped in colonization and eurocentrism, and a curricular commitment to approaches that value indigenous knowledge and practices. locating oneself, therefore, is an essential first step in critiquing the power which underlies white settlers’ continued dominance in the areas of defining the field, elaborating practice theories and approaches, and having leadership roles in teaching and learning. as a child and youth care practitioner and educator, i occupy the position of a white settler. i am middle-class, home-owning, employed, educated, able-bodied, cisgender, straight, married, and a father of three boys. through these social locations, i have access to power and privilege. i have, for example, always been able to easily access education, work, and health care; i am not racially profiled in my daily activities (walking, shopping, driving, etc.); i can travel freely with a canadian passport; and i have not been subjected to racial, gender, or class discrimination. as an educator and counsellor, my voice is imbued with expertise, my pronouncements are credited with a high degree of truth, and my words have a power that is independent of their content. i have never been subjected to formal assessments of my parenting or been threatened with the apprehension of my children. i have always had access to food, shelter, and clothing. as i work and write on colonized lands, my identity as a settler person whose family is part of the waves of immigration and land occupation from europe and the middle east is undeniable. who i am as a student and educator has been shaped by this history, and it is one of my ethical practices of accountability to acknowledge my identity and be visible in terms of my role in the continued occupation of indigenous territory in north america. as a third-generation lebanese– english white-skinned settler living and working on coast salish territories, i recognize historical and contemporary colonialism’s insidious functioning as well as indigenous people’s continued resistance. specifically, i have lived on the traditional and unceded territories and waterways of the songhees, w̱sáneć, and t’sou-ke peoples for nearly 20 years as well as worked with peoples of the esquimalt, pacheedaht, lyackson, stz’uminus, and penelakut nations on their lands. i recognize that historic and ongoing colonization is foundational to canadian nation building and settler life here (kouri, 2015b). canadian educational, governmental, and social systems construct settler privilege and power upon ongoing oppression of indigenous peoples — peoples whose cultures, lands, and languages were systematically undermined in efforts to appropriate and occupy these lands and steal their resources (coulthard, 2014; simpson, 2014; tuck & yang, 2012). the intentional spread of disease, treachery and duplicity in treaty-making, and the direct use of military, carceral, and police violence that characterized nation building continue to operate through canadian policy, decision making, and political force (wesley-esquimaux & smolewski, 2004). prisons and death camps for children, euphemized as residential schools, were integral to the canadian, christian, and capitalist projects of genocide and land appropriation (richardson & nelson, 2007). the racism, classism, and sexism that accompanied canadian colonial nation-building has, at this point, become the norm, and the languages, philosophies, beliefs, and histories of euro-western settlers the dominant ideology (watts, 2013). ongoing settler colonialism takes the form of child international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 64 apprehension practices, economic and resources extractivism, violence against indigenous women and children, and the carceral system (de finney et al., 2018). challenges of territorial acknowledgements addressing the oppressions that are the foundation of settler society and subjectivity begins with the acknowledgement of indigenous presence, history, and land. at an individual level, this process requires learning, self-reflection, and cultivating living relationships. at institutional levels, verbal acknowledgements of indigenous territory vary greatly, from single rote and mispronounced sentences to acknowledgements arising from deeply cultivated relationships with local elders and knowledge keepers. as a settler academic, my acknowledgements of indigenous territory are troubled for a number of reasons, many of which perpetuate colonial relations to some degree. for example, we settler academics who now practise territorial acknowledgements simultaneously make colonialism visible and continue to appropriate what is not ours. the acknowledgement of territory is an indigenous practice embedded in histories of peacemaking, alliance-building, and kinship systems (de finney et al., 2017); for indigenous peoples, the practice follows protocols situated in tradition. as settler people we now take up an acknowledgement and identification practice that was never ours; that is, we take something that is not ours in order to make visible the ongoing act of land theft and occupation. territorial acknowledgements, in this way, illustrate a key axiom of colonialism: settler attempts to challenge or undo colonialism inevitably replicate it. we might also, through our acknowledgements of territory and social location, be consciously or unconsciously attempting to move ourselves to a place of innocence by differentiating ourselves from less knowledgeable settlers (tuck & yang, 2012). attempts at accountability through acknowledgements and positioning are never perfect, simple, or clean. as “visitors” and “guests” who will not leave, our practices of recognizing our settlement often more deeply ingrain it as we move ourselves to a place of less guilt and shame. visitors and guests are often invited, bring gifts, act in accordance with the laws of the home community, and leave before their welcome is worn out. euphemizing our violent settlement as visitation and finding ways of offering reconciliatory answers to calls for true decolonization adds further insult to a history of treachery and lies. mohawk scholar audra simpson (2016) critiqued recognition discourse, arguing that recognition of historical injustice, such as former canadian prime minister steven harper attempted in his june 2008 “apology” for residential schools (parrott, 2014), leaves open the possibility of interpreting past actions as innocent by making the truth of atrocity a revelation about the present. in simpson’s analysis, harper called the residential school system a “mistake” without naming the genocide that transpired or any criminal or political intent. far from redressing settler colonialism, such forms of recognition obfuscate historical harms and obscure the ongoing dispossession and violence of colonialism. simpson (2017) criticized the government’s position as a fait accompli and argued that settler narratives enact “notions of a fixed past and settled present” (p. 18). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 65 settler acknowledgements of indigenous territory often gloss over nuanced aspects of indigenous people’s struggles for self-determination and internal tensions related to sovereignty. for example, in the territories i currently live in, there are conversations internal to indigenous communities about cessation of rights or ceding of lands with regard to treaty negotiations. in classroom contexts, settler educators, disconnected from this history of struggle, consistently make facile political statements, such as calling lands “unceded” or “treaty”, without any awareness of the legal or political implications of these words. other settlers use acknowledgements to silence actual conversations about decolonization and indigenous rights. in classrooms and other educational spaces, acknowledgements seem at times to be no more than a ritualized preface to the “real work” of the meeting, giving settlers a token gesture to reference as a way of forestalling more focused or politicized discussions. acknowledgements can, in this way, be used to say, “we’ve acknowledged colonialism already, we don’t need to talk about this any more.” compared to a past where one could protest the erasure of coloniality from discourse, acknowledgements can provide settlers with a token claim that they are doing antiracist or decolonizing work. -words alone can be unhelpful and even harmful if not supported by affective, ethical, political, and material transformation. consciousness-raising and education the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trc; 2015) recommended changes in education so that young settler people could learn more than their parents did about colonization, the residential school system, and indigenous cultures, peoples, and histories. adult settler educators are now encouraged by the canadian state and provincial education ministries to work with indigenous people to update the public school curriculum to more accurately portray the history of colonization and indigenous presence. as settler canadians, however, many of us did not learn this history accurately, nor did we have any relationships with indigenous people. we are being asked to educate without ourselves having done much work in attending to the affects or ethics of such practices. a recent study in ontario, for example, showed that there are significant challenges in implementing indigenous content in schools due to a lack of awareness of colonialism and indigenous content, as well as within-school intimidation among settler educators (milne, 2017). in summing up the implementation of the trc recommendations, cindy blackstock (quoted in forrest, 2017) said, “there’s lots of good talk and not a lot of action in terms of translating those political statements into real change” (para. 8). while some work is being done on curriculum content and teacher training, the quality of the work is debatable at best, lacking any adequate analysis or plan for attending to the affects and cognitive dissonance produced by such education. as settler canadians become more aware of their own and indigenous histories, there is a clear need for people working in human services to understand and translate powerful affects into new forms of ethics. some scholars, such as michael asch (2014), believe that increased awareness might produce a more lawful citizen who relates meaningfully to treaty law and settler responsibilities. to overcome colonial relations, asch argued, settlers must recognize themselves international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 66 as honourable people who can and must live according to the principle of law. to me, asch underestimated both the potential backlash of settler people as they are challenged to confront their coloniality and, on the other end of the spectrum, the radical possibility of settlers undoing colonialism (kouri, 2015). other non-indigenous authors (e.g., fitzmaurice, 2010; kouri & skottmyhre, 2016; morgensen, 2011; regan, 2010; ritskes, 2013; veracini, 2008) have contended that such a radical change, in which settlers participate in active decolonization, is possible. to approach such change, however, the systems of whiteness, patriarchy, capitalism, and other facets of identity and power that contribute to settler hegemony must be confronted, and alternatives must be provided so that children, youth, and students do not feel immobilized by and further alienated from these debates. elaine swan (2017) discussed the collective ignorance of whiteness and suggested that praxis entails questioning epistemologies that sanction such ignorance; that is, “how our practices of knowing, unknowing and not knowing relate to racism and colonialism, and are motivated, deliberate and self-serving” (pp. 555–556). she suggested that challenging ignorance requires listening for distortions, omissions, and limitations in our knowledge. understanding and undoing our entanglements with racialized and colonized others, including incongruences present in our epistemologies, provides opportunities for such analysis. challenging collective ignorance and attending critically to the affects attendant on consciousness-raising will, it is hoped, help to dissipate the fragility that underlies whiteness and its perpetuation (diangelo, 2011). swan called for a praxis of listening that attends to accounts and analyses of racism and colonialism by minoritized peoples and recognizes their credibility. such listening takes commitment and vulnerability, because whiteness is structured to avoid the pain and responsiveness required in deep listening. in terms of pedagogy, there is a need for instructors who are able to work with the anger, resentment, shame, and guilt that surface around issues of colonization (kouri, 2014). this process begins with people in power understanding their own histories and the implications those histories have in colonialism, and then working with their own affective reactions. for too long, indigenous people experienced violent backlash as they alone shouldered the work of educating settlers. settler educators also need to struggle with the ethics of their positionality as it intersects with the identities of their students. it is imperative to have a deep appreciation for the knowledge that indigenous students bring to the classroom, and for the potential harms and benefits to those students that might come from them sharing their knowledge. we need more conversations in child and youth care about the ethical complexities of engaging with our students across lines saturated with power, privilege, identity, and affect. it is the responsibility of settler students and educators to understand the similarities and differences between the histories of the indigenous peoples of this land and their own people’s colonial histories and struggles for independence. making these colonial similarities and differences visible, and working through them, is one way for settlers to initiate anticolonial indigenous–settler relationships and work towards solidarity. more importantly, however, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 67 addressing colonialism in our educational practices would also entail increasing the quantity of literature from indigenous writers across the program, as well as engaging more indigenous professors, administrators, speakers, instructors, and media across all postsecondary institutions, rather than concentrating indigenous material in specific courses or through token hiring practices. the politics and ethics of engagement with indigenous people and knowledges must be deeply considered to prevent tokenism, appropriation, and further harm. it behooves us to ask how we, as settlers, listen to indigenous voices. how do we orient ourselves to indigenous refusals of and objections to our practices, our attempts at recognition of historical injustices, and our very presence? how do we engage with and represent indigenous knowledges in our classrooms? appropriation and citational practice as settler people, our engagements with alternative forms of knowledge are laden with ethical dilemmas regarding respectful engagement, appropriation, and issues of identity. in fact, the very consciousness-raising that makes oppression visible to us often comes at the expense of others: indigenous cultures, knowledges, and symbols are increasingly being fetishized and commodified. as settler people, we require new forms of listening, taking action, and relating to indigenous peoples and cultures that can bring about material change. celia haig-brown (2010), for example, contrasted deep learning with appropriation, arguing that the former takes years of immersive education in indigenous contexts. such deep learning is in line with cultural protocols, acquired through lasting relationships, and connected to the places where the knowledge was generated and lives. appropriation, by contrast, is mediated by power imbalances, takes without permission, and shows no recognition for context, intellectual and cultural property, or continuity. we settler academics are not only produced within a history that systematically disenfranchises indigenous knowledges, but our continued presence and self-elevation as central producers of knowledge structurally relies on and reiterates settler colonialism. under such conditions, settlers can either work at a distance from indigenous contexts and people, which perpetuates the denial of our constitutive relations with colonialism, or engage with indigenous knowledges, which risks replicating an abhorrent past. kathy snow (2018) emphasized the need for settlers to have clear intention, motivation, processes, and roles when engaging with indigenous peoples or knowledges. snow also emphasized the importance of being able to sit with discomfort yet continue to commit the time, energy, and resources needed to sustain allyship in the face of resistance. while deep self-reflection is invaluable to personal transformation, it is the messy and complicated work of embodied allyship that produces webs of living relationships capable of resistance and change. in order to practice allyship, settlers, as knowledge producers, must constantly consider how they engage with indigenous knowledges and peoples, the inequitable distribution of risk and benefit that characterizes such relationships, and the material changes that ensue from them. sara ahmed (2013), and eve tuck and colleagues (2015), offer us the concept of “citational practice” to analyze whose work gets cited in our writing, whose voices are erased, and whom we might need to stop citing. ahmed explained that citational practices structure disciplines and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 68 reproduce power and discourse. as settler learners and educators, we must constantly question whose work we read, cite, reiterate, build upon, and centre. to subvert the dominance of white voices in critical theory and take up a decolonizing citational practice (ahmed, 2013), indigenous voices and the settler people who are currently engaging with their work must be prioritized. this practice, however, is fraught with challenges. for one, much of the content of our teaching and learning relies on academic publications, which leaves out the knowledge of indigenous peoples who are outside the academic structure. when we do have the honour and privilege of sitting with elders and knowledge holders, we need to consider how we carry the teachings, gifts, and medicines they generously share; we need to question whether we have the right to bring indigenous voices into the academy or practice settings. another problem is that settlers can now advance their academic and practice careers by knowing and speaking about indigenous issues. with their privileges of access to higher education and safer spaces for critical debate, white settlers can quickly advance their academic knowledge of indigenous issues and learn to deploy the language of decolonization. with the power and privilege of access to publishing in academic journals, settlers often have greater opportunity to speak about indigenous issues than is available to indigenous people themselves. the reiteration of colonialism is nearly impossible to prevent, particularly in hypercolonized spaces of privilege like research universities and professional practice settings. we need to be constantly mindful and recognize that colonialism and capitalism will appropriate even our efforts to contest them. settler ethics, therefore, is about the knowledges, cosmologies, epistemologies, and ontologies we draw on (st. pierre, 2018), how we draw on them (watts, 2013), and how we cite them (ahmed, 2013). settler researchers have a responsibility to engage with critical literatures outside their mainstream canon and are accountable for whose voices they engage with in research and writing. ahmed (2013) warned, however, that the term “critical” can become an ideal to which white researchers cling. noting her experience that “the most defensive reactions to such points [have come] from white male academics who think of themselves as ‘critical’ ” (para. 17), she wrote: when criticality becomes an ego ideal, it can participate in not seeing complicity. perhaps criticality as an ego ideal offers a fantasy of being seeing. critical whiteness might operate as a way of not seeing in the fantasy of being seeing: critical white subjects by seeing their whiteness, might not see themselves as participating in whiteness in the same way. (para. 17) this challenge to recognize how we, as white settler subjects, attempt to see ourselves in a different way echoes tuck and yang’s (2012) analysis of “settler moves to innocence” (p. 9), in which they argued that settlers attempt to absolve themselves of the responsibilities of decolonization — land return and indigenous sovereignty — while appropriating the discourse of decolonization. tuck and yang see these moves as a series of actions that on their face seem grounded in morality, solidarity, helping, or allyship, but that allow settlers to feel absolved of their guilt, shame, and, most importantly, responsibility. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 69 allyship, solidarity, and social justice in settler colonial contexts settler ethics, which involves deeply self-reflective, collective reflection and community action while working towards undoing settler comforts and privilege, has much to learn from ally, activist, and solidarity literature and practice. smith et al. (2016) explained that allies have two main characteristics. first, they desire to support social justice and eliminate inequalities through promoting the rights of nondominant groups. second, they offer support through meaningful relationships with those who welcome their support, and they show accountability to those people. allyship is aspirational and “ally” is a designation that is given rather than claimed. smith and colleagues (2016) warned that settlers must avoid appropriation, taking leadership, interfering, seeking emotional support, or having expectations. by focusing on our own undoing of and intervening in the reiteration of colonial subjectivity, we begin to stop interfering in the spaces and processes of indigenous decolonization. drawing on social justice and activist work, and writing from the position of a settler, vikki reynolds (2010a, 2016) explained that solidarity and allyship are promoted by communities of shared values, feelings, interests, and responsibilities. solidarity, for reynolds, is about interconnection and belonging, about seeing how multiple forms of oppression are interconnected and how the liberation of any one person is entwined with the liberation of all. informed by intersectional feminism, reynolds kept various forms of oppression conceptually distinct while seeking connections among them. she proposed six guiding principles in what she called an ethical stance of justice-doing: centring ethics, connecting forms of justice, naming power, fostering sustainability, critically engaging with language, and structuring safety (2010a). the guiding principles she has proposed support many forms of social justice; however, as john winslade (2015) explained, the various forms and discourses of social justice do not always align. tuck and yang (2012) went further, arguing that many forms of social justice, particularly those aligned with democracy and land protection, are incommensurable with decolonization. in a survey of educators, winslade (2015) found that some of the main veins of social justice are diversity and inclusion, equity and equality, consciousness-raising and challenging internalized assumptions, neutrality versus positionality, emancipation, and attending to historical and contemporary injustice, inequality, and harms. social justice work, therefore, must challenge social adaptation where it leads to injustice and must strive to make amends and participate in an ongoing process of seeking justice for all. social justice is here figured as a horizon. rather than something reachable, it is an ongoing practice of analysis, action, and striving. such a processoriented approach to social justice must constantly ask about the social worlds in which practice takes place, the identities and positionality of all who are involved, and the horizons of hope and possibility for rendering freedom, justice, and equality. reynolds and hammoud-beckett (2018) asserted that social justice is principally about taking overt positions in relation to violence, oppression, power, privilege, and social control. they propose that resisting neutrality, competition, and the replication of social norms is necessary for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 70 justice-doing. following paulette regan (2010), they called for settlers to name and respond to white supremacy and colonization, and questioned what it would mean “for the settler majority to shoulder the collective burden of the history and legacy of residential schools” (reynolds & hammoud-beckett, 2018, p. 6). drawing on paul kivel (2007), they also asked to what degree our practices help people adapt to lives of individual suffering and to what degree our work challenges or disrupts structures of oppression. a social justice orientation considers how sense and meaning are made from injustice and how people come to internalize discourses that normalize oppression, discrimination, and injustice (winslade, 2018). winslade challenged millenarian visions of social justice that promote grand narratives and images of a fully equitable future. instead, he suggested that emancipations often lead to further exclusions: we must stay on guard against this and instead enact an ethics of hospitality that incorporates generosity and inclusion of the other. this position centres the ongoing nature of social justice work, where completion is always deferred, and sees the social justice activist as an agent of generosity and hospitality. settler people working for social justice must specifically deal with the settler’s position as the one who has taken land and excluded indigenous peoples from all forms of participation. in order to make social justice work a labour of inclusion and generosity, one must deal with the colonial power that underlies one’s ability to include and be generous and hospitable. tuck and yang (2012) thus called for an ethics of incommensurability that can name the impossibility of reconciling the histories of genocide, land theft, and exclusion that now substantiate settler people as possible agents of social justice work. while the ongoing work of social justice must be enlivened, as tuck and yang (2016) suggested, “with the spirit of resistance to the constant re/production of injustice” (p. 3), it must do so through an analysis of its own failures. rather than try to bolster ourselves as agents of social justice, settlers today are faced with the challenge of owning our failures and attending to the tensions that beset our ethics. conclusion: towards a settler ethics in teaching and learning as educators and students in a practice field, it is up to us to name what makes congruence difficult in our pedagogy, our praxis, and our lives outside of school and work. indeed, as karlee fellner and colleagues (2016) have noted with regard to counselling, “a key difference in ethical professional practice between non-indigenous and indigenous counsellors is that the latter observe the same traditional ethics both inside and outside the office” (p. 138). living an ethical life within colonialism may be impossible for settlers, but such an impossibility can be no excuse for paralysis or cynicism. settlers have a responsibility to engage with one another in working through ethical dilemmas and working against the very power that supports our lives. on this topic, reynolds (2010b) talked of building networks of solidarity to keep us in congruence, while also noting that there will always be mistakes when allies attempt to remain congruent with their ethics. she argued that it is up to allies to work with other people in power and prevent the continual usurpation and misuse of power and space, thereby making greater space for those who are oppressed to speak international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 71 and seek justice. leanne simpson (2011), nishnaabeg writer and academic, suggested that interrogations of violence be directed to the perpetrators rather than the victims of harm. as settlers, we must take up this work and analyze the ways in which we have perpetuated, and continue to perpetuate, colonial violence through our institutions, policies, and practices. we must make the workings of our settler subjectivities, states, and institutions visible and take action to change the conditions of everyday life for indigenous and racialized peoples. drawing again on tuck and yang (2012), we must constantly return to the definition of decolonization as reestablishment of indigenous governance over lands and life. settlers’ support of decolonization, however, will always be troubled because our practices, to some degree, recentre us, our work, our knowledge, and our lives. decolonization, as the end to settler subjectivity and claims to land, is therefore an impossible task for settlers unless they become something radically different from what they are. this impossibility requires settlers to engage with the dialectic between recentring white settler problematics and critiquing the settler’s appetite for all things indigenous — including decolonization. first and foremost, settlers need to support indigenous people’s projects. for me, this means preparing students for ethical work in indigenous communities and with indigenous people. it means supporting indigenous initiatives, helping indigenous people navigate institutional bureaucracy, promoting indigenous leadership, and advocating for indigenous children and families. particularly in academic contexts, indigenous people’s labour in educating settlers is underappreciated and at times resented. settler people must begin to be accountable for the emotional, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual labour that is offered to us, which is offered even when it costs indigenous people dearly. in concert with centring indigenous presence, we also, as settlers, need to turn towards ourselves and radically revise how we do teaching and learning. following robin diangelo (2011), i argue that we can challenge the dominance of the western subject by changing its visibility as a norm into a visibility as object of critique. the critique of the settler subject, however, is fraught with affective turbulence. we need to take up this work ourselves to slow the backlash, scapegoating, and violence that indigenous people experience when settler privilege is challenged. a settler ethics in teaching and learning would take the tensions produced through histories of colonialism as a starting point in refiguring ourselves as people who are accountable for our power, location, citational practices, and practices of justiceseeking. beginning with small acts of interrogating the insidious presence of colonialism in wellintentioned practices of acknowledgement, self-location, and consciousness-raising, it is imperative that we build towards a practice of teaching and learning that can contribute to material change for indigenous children, youth, families, and communities. our teaching and learning in child and youth care is specifically connected to the contexts and people we will come to work with. connecting our educational work with young people who directly resist settler colonialism and globalized capitalism is burdened by contradictions but is nevertheless important work. many young people today have begun to see the global contexts of neocolonial capitalism as oppressive and a threat to themselves, their future, and life on the planet international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 72 (giroux, 2013; mueller & tippins, 2015). young people, in this discursive milieu, explore solidarity, allyship, and social justice as avenues for liberation. this shift to activism often comes through personal experience, moral conscience, or education, and it raises questions about how we engage with them in political, affective, and ethical ways. walking the minefield of appropriation, identification, assimilation, and curiosity, socially minded settler children and youth seek forms of activism and relationality with little guidance, often putting the burden of their education on those most oppressed. furthermore, there is still a great deal of analysis and ethical deliberation to be done when considering the application of a political agenda to child and youth care education and practice. it is up to us as settler learners and educators to develop a new discourse and relationality for child and youth care that might transparently elucidate our agendas and more closely align our work with the critical projects of young people. given that positioning ourselves as knowing better or using young people to further our own political agendas is problematic (gharabaghi, 2018), it behooves us to find ways of relating to young people that help challenge the status quo of reproducing settler colonialism. young people, students, and communities who have been 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(2012). courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling. international journal of child, youth, and family studies, 3(2–3), 164–186. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 http://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/citation-practices http://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/citation-practices https://doi.org/10.1080/07256860802372246 http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/historic-trauma.pdf https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.004 https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/wie/vol5/iss1/3 https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 56–79 79 biography scott kouri phd is an instructor in child and youth care at the university of victoria. he is the author of empire and identity: the ethics of becoming other than what we are and of critical cyc counselling in settler colonial contexts. he is a co-author of catastrophe: a transversal mapping of colonialism and settler subjectivity with hans skott-myhre, and of street analysis: how we come together and apart in localized youth work peer supervision with jeff smith. he practises as a clinical counsellor in private practice, wilderness, post-secondary, and first nations contexts. running head: school strategies and lgb youth suicidality international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 89–112 89 school-based strategies to reduce suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and discrimination among sexual minority and heterosexual adolescents in western canada elizabeth m. saewyc, chiaki konishi, hilary a. rose, and yuko homma abstract: this study explored the relationships between the existence of and length of time since implementation of school-based gay-straight alliances (gsas) and explicit antihomophobic bullying policies in secondary schools across british columbia, canada, with experiences of anti-gay discrimination, suicidal ideation and attempts among lesbian, gay, bisexual (lgb), mostly heterosexual, and exclusively heterosexual students. analyses of the province-wide random cluster-stratified 2008 b.c. adolescent health survey (n = 21,708) compared students in schools with gsas or policies implemented at least 3 years, and less than 3 years, with those in schools without gsas or anti-homophobia policies, using multinomial logistic regression, separately by gender. lgb students had lower odds of past year discrimination, suicidal thoughts and attempts, mostly when policies and gsas had been in place for 3+ years; policies had a less consistent effect than gsas. heterosexual boys, but not girls, also had lower odds of suicidal ideation and attempts in schools with longer-established antihomophobic bullying policies and gsas. given consistently higher documented risk for suicidal ideation and attempts among lgb and mostly heterosexual adolescents, prevention efforts should be a priority, and school-level interventions, such as gsas, may be an effective approach to reducing this risk, while also offering prevention benefits for heterosexual boys. keywords: sexual orientation, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, gay-straight alliance, adolescent, school policy, school-based surveys, homophobia acknowledgments: these analyses were supported in part by grants #cpp-86374 and #mop119472 from the canadian institutes of health research, institute of population and public health, and institute of gender and health (saewyc, pi). the authors acknowledge the mccreary centre society, vancouver, for permission to access the 2008 b.c. adolescent health survey. elizabeth saewyc, ph.d, rn, fsahm, fcahs (the corresponding author) is professor of nursing and adolescent medicine, and director of the stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, at the university of british columbia school of nursing, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, b.c., canada, v6t 2b5. office telephone: (604) 822-7505. fax: (604) 822-7466. e-mail: elizabeth.saewyc@ubc.ca mailto:elizabeth.saewyc@ubc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 90 chiaki konishi, ph.d. is a postdoctoral fellow in the stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, at the university of british columbia school of nursing, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, b.c., canada, v6t 2b5. e-mail: chiaki.konishi@ubc.ca hilary rose, ph.d. is an associate professor of child & family development at concordia university, 1455 de maisonneuve blvd. west, montreal, quebec, canada, h3g 1m8. e-mail: hilary.rose@concordia.ca yuko homma, ph.d. is a postdoctoral fellow in the stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, at the university of british columbia school of nursing, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, b.c., canada, v6t 2b5. e-mail: yuko.homma@ubc.ca in spite of a significant increase in research about the mental health issues in sexual minority youth over the past couple of decades, there is little research about various protective factors that may mitigate the risks facing lesbian, gay, or bisexual (lgb) and “mostly heterosexual” youth, and potentially prevent mental health problems. recent reviews have summarized the health disparities experienced by sexual minority youth compared to their exclusively heterosexual peers, including greater prevalence of harassment, victimization, depression, substance abuse, and suicidality (coker, austin, & schuster, 2010; king, semlyn, tai, et al., 2008; saewyc, 2011). with respect to suicidality (suicidal thoughts and attempts) among sexual minority youth, recent large population-based studies and meta-analyses have been remarkably consistent on the topic (haas et al., 2011; marshal et al., 2011; saewyc, skay, et al., 2007): sexual minority youth are more likely than their heterosexual peers to be suicidal, not only in north america, but also in countries such as new zealand (lucassen et al., 2011), norway (wichstrom & hegna, 2003), and turkey (eskin, kaynak-demir, & demir, 2005). suicidality in sexual minority youth is associated with individual mental health factors such as depression, as well as interpersonal or relational factors, including enacted stigma (discrimination, harassment, abuse, and other victimization). researchers have documented a strong association between victimization of sexual minority youth and suicidality (birkett, espelage, & koenig, 2009; d’augelli, pilkington, & hershberger, 2002; goodenow, szalacha, & westheimer, 2006; rivers, 2001). several authors have argued that health issues related to sexual orientation in adolescence must be viewed in the wider social context (goodenow et al., 2006; horn, kosciw, & russell, 2009; hatzenbuehler, 2011; rose, 2009). to the extent that lgb and mostly heterosexual youth are more likely to experience the negative environments or exposures that have been implicated in suicide attempts generally, this may help explain their higher risk of suicidality (saewyc, 2007). others have also argued that researchers need to look beyond risk factors and consider protective factors that promote resilience in at-risk youth (russell, 2005; saewyc, 2011; savin-williams, 2005). emerging evidence suggests that feeling safe at school and school connectedness or attachment are important protective factors for all youth that may also reduce the likelihood of depression, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts in sexual minority youth (eisenberg & resnick, 2006; galliher, rostosky, & hughes, 2004; homma & saewyc, 2007). mailto:chiaki.konishi@ubc.ca mailto:hilary.rose@concordia.ca mailto:yuko.homma@ubc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 91 furthermore, sexual minority students are not alone in being the targets of anti-gay homophobia and bullying in the school context. several authors have reported that heterosexual youth can also be targets of anti-gay bullying (smyser & reis, 2002; saewyc, poon, et al., 2007; swearer, turner, givens, & pollack, 2008; see also north vancouver school district no. 44 v. jubran, 2005). as a result, several authors have recommended policy changes with respect to improving school climate not only for sexual minority youth, but also for heterosexual youth (kosciw, greytak, diaz, & bartkiewicz, 2010; taylor et al., 2011). other authors have made similar recommendations in order to reduce the suicide rate and suicide attempts in sexual minority youth (haas et al., 2001; suicide prevention resource center, 2008). key among these policy recommendations are the explicit inclusion of sexual orientation in antibullying legislation and policies, as well as the establishment of sexual minority support programs such as school-based gay-straight alliances (gsas). however, researchers know very little about the impact of school-based gsas on the mental health of sexual minority youth, especially at the population level (heck, flentje, & cochran, 2011; walls, kane, & wisneski, 2010). review of the literature a number of authors have drawn upon emile durkheim’s classic typology of suicide to explain increased suicide risk in sexual minority youth. according to durkheim (as cited in thompson, 1982), suicide is not an individual act, it is a social act, and it is a function of both social integration and moral regulation (i.e., sociological factors). durkheim (1897/2004) argued that different social groups, therefore, had different propensities towards suicide, for example, single people compared to married people. in addition, durkheim posited four types of suicide: egoistic suicide, anomic suicide, altruistic suicide, and fatalistic suicide. saunders and valente (1987) concluded that sexual minority youth’s alienation from society and societal rules lead to a sense of anomie, thus increasing the risk of anomic suicide. more recently, kulkin, chauvin, and percle (2000) argued instead that a lack of connection to the social groups to which sexual minority youth belong (low social integration) increases the risk of egoistic suicide. saunders and valente considered a combined perspective: “individuals who are estranged from social norms, disconnected from their social ties, and denied full participation in society, become progressively more isolated and alienated, and thus are more prone to suicide” (1987, p. 11). most researchers who study lgb youth health disparities have incorporated a broader model of social stigma and exclusion, based on goffman’s (1963) theory of stigma management, rather than durkheim’s more focused model of suicide. in a recent decade review of research, saewyc (2011) concluded that the evidence of health disparities among sexual minority youth, including suicide, is more supportive of a stress-induced response based on theories of stigma and rejection than of other theories: “one of the most common explanations for health disparities among sexual minority adolescents is their exposure to stigma and discrimination, especially enacted stigma, that is, being targeted for bullying and harassment, exclusion, and violence” (p. 265). numerous studies have found links between enacted stigma, or victimization, and increased health risk behaviours such as suicide (waldo, hesson-mcinnis, & d’augelli, 1998), substance abuse (bontempo & d’augelli, 2002), eating disordered behaviours (woodford, howell, silverschanz, & yu, 2012), teen pregnancy involvement (saewyc, poon, homma, & skay, 2008), and sexual victimization (tyler, 2008). one of the contexts in which sexual minority youth are prone to experiences of isolation, alienation, stress, and stigmatization is the school. as one example of how heterosexism leads to feelings of isolation and alienation, woodford and colleagues (2012) examined the effects of hearing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 92 “that’s so gay!” on lgb college students. the authors argue this pejorative comment is an example of heterosexist micro-aggression that can lead to poor mental and physical health in sexual minority students. the study found that between 47% and 87% of participants reported hearing “that’s so gay!” in the past year, with almost half hearing the expression 10 or more times, and most hearing it at least once. in addition, those sexual minority students who heard the expression more often also reported feeling left out on campus. these same students reported having more headaches and more eating problems than students who heard “that’s so gay!” less often. swearer and colleagues (2008) found comparable results in a presumably heterosexual sample. high school students who were bullied because of their perceived sexual orientation reported higher depression and more negative attitudes toward school than did students who were bullied on other grounds, although these authors did not measure sexual orientation, increasing the chance of confounding orientation and homophobic bullying. a similar report from seattle’s youth risk behavior survey, however, found that 70% of students who experienced anti-gay harassment actually identified as heterosexual, and they were just as likely as lgb youth who had experienced anti-gay harassment to feel school was unsafe, to skip school, and to engage in health compromising behaviours (smyser & reis, 2002). given what researchers and educators know about the increased risks that sexual minority youth face in the school context, what are school boards and schools doing to ensure that these students are afforded a safe and equitable education? recent school climate surveys conducted by glsen in the united states (kosciw et al., 2010) and egale canada (taylor et al., 2011) have found that the majority of sexual minority students report frequent harassment and victimization at school, feeling unsafe and isolated at school, and low levels of school attachment and academic achievement. in some studies, sexual minority youth who attend schools with gay-straight alliances (gsas) report fewer negative and more positive school experiences compared to those who attend schools without gsas, although this is not a consistent finding. for example, in the american survey, having a gsa at school was related to less victimization and less absenteeism as well as greater school attachment on the part of sexual minority students (kosciw et al., 2010). likewise, having explicit anti-homophobia policies at school was related to less victimization and a greater willingness to report incidents on the part of sexual minority youth. similar results were found in the canadian survey, especially with respect to having an explicit anti-homophobia policy at school (taylor et al., 2011). both of these studies used convenience samples, however, so the generalizability of findings is limited. a recent population-based study of schools in wisconsin found no significant relationship between the presence of gsas and homophobic victimization experiences (poteat, sinclair, digiovanni, koenig, & russell, 2012); although the authors state the findings were in the right direction, the small number of schools involved may have reduced the power to detect effects. in the united states, few school districts have adopted anti-discrimination policies that are inclusive of sexual orientation (wald, rienzo, & button, 2002). for example, even in american jurisdictions that have passed gay rights legislation, only a third (36%) included schools as institutions protected under the legislation (button, rienzo, & wald, 1997). over a decade later, researchers are still calling for explicit anti-discrimination school policies, arguing that such policies represent “the most important first step to challenge gender and sexuality norms and promote safe school climates” (toomey, mcguire & russell, 2012, p. 189). however, there is limited evidence as to whether policies alone are enough; in the study by toomey & colleagues, having inclusive school policies was not a significant predictor of perceived safety, and the authors concluded that school policies are necessary but not sufficient in terms of improving the school climate for gender-nonconforming students. given the crossinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 93 sectional nature of the study, determining directionality was not possible. nor did they consider the length of time since the policies had been implemented in measuring effects, although it can take time for policy changes to disseminate widely and actually alter school climates or student behaviours. with respect to suicidality, some research has shown that sexual minority youth in schools with gsas have a lower rate of suicidality than sexual minority youth in schools without gsas (e.g., goodenow et al., 2006), although the primary study was limited to a single american state (massachusetts) with progressive societal attitudes about lgb people, as evidenced by it becoming the first state in the u.s. to legalize gay marriage. another study among sexual minority youth receiving social services found attending a school with a gsa was related to having fewer suicidal thoughts and attempts (walls, freedenthal, & wisneski, 2008). more recently, a retrospective study of california young adults found that participation in a gsa during high school buffered the risk for lifetime suicide attempts, but only when levels of sexual minority victimization are low (toomey, ryan, diaz, & russell, 2011). for those sexual minority young adults who reported high levels of victimization as students, participation in a gsa was related to a greater probability of attempting suicide. these authors point out, however, that as their variable of interest was “lifetime suicide attempts,” these could have occurred prior to participation in a gsa. in studying the impact of gsas on the mental health of sexual minority youth, therefore, researchers have found inconsistencies (toomey et al., 2011; walls et al., 2010). the presence of a gsa at school is typically but not necessarily associated with positive outcomes for sexual minority students. methodological differences no doubt account for some of these inconsistencies; for example, some studies are quantitative in design (e.g., hatzenbeuhler, 2011; heck et al., 2011) whereas others are qualitative (e.g., russell, muraco, subramaniam, & laub, 2009). some researchers have studied the effects of having a gsa at school (e.g., szalacha, 2003; goodenow et al., 2006); other researchers have studied the effects of participating in a gsa (e.g., toomey et al., 2011; walls et al., 2010). some researchers have focused on lgb youth (e.g., goodenow et al., 2006; hatzenbeuhler 2011), while others have focused on gender-nonconforming youth (e.g., toomey et al., 2012). all the studies we found to date have been conducted in the united states, most of them in relatively liberal or progressive states. there is also the issue of who is both affected by homophobic school climates and might benefit from gsas. because heterosexual youth outnumber lgb youth so greatly, they can comprise half or more of those targeted with anti-gay harassment (smyser & reis, 2001; saewyc, poon, et al., 2007), yet it is unclear whether the “straight” teens in schools with gay-straight alliances benefit from them similarly. gsas alone are unlikely to change school climate (goodenow et al., 2006; walls et al., 2010). it may be that a more comprehensive approach is required, including gsas as well as explicit antihomophobia and anti-transphobia policies, the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) issues in the curriculum, and teachers who intervene when students are harassed or victimized (kosciw et al., 2010; taylor et al., 2011; toomey et al., 2012). for example, hatzenbuehler (2011) has examined suicidality in lgb youth as a function of their social environment at both the level of the school and the level of the community. in particular, hatzenbuehler created a composite index of the social environment in 34 counties in oregon, including the proportion of same-sex couples, the proportion of registered democrats, school policies that explicitly protect sexual minority students, and the presence of gsas in schools. the sexual minority youth who lived in unsupportive counties had a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 94 20% higher risk of suicide attempts compared to the sexual minority youth who lived in more supportive counties. thus, although much progress has been made over the past decade with respect to the volume and quality of research about suicidality among sexual minority youth, with beginning evidence for the effectiveness of some interventions, many unanswered questions remain. for example, are recommended interventions, such as gsas, having the desired effect with respect to youth outcomes like suicide attempts in more places than progressive states on the east and west coasts of the united states? do policy and gsa interventions affect the school experience and suicidality of all youth, or only sexual minority youth? furthermore, given the correlational nature of most cross-sectional studies, researchers are limited in their ability to infer directionality or causality, while studies that use convenience samples limit researchers’ ability to generalize more widely. research is needed that can help address some of these further questions about the effectiveness of specific interventions to address the higher risk of suicidality among sexual minority youth. purpose we used a population-based data set to examine the link between two school-district or schoollevel interventions (explicit anti-homophobic school policies and gsas), on recent suicidal ideation and attempts among both sexual minority and heterosexual youth in western canada. in particular, we explored suicide ideation and suicide attempts as a function of two school-level interventions: having an explicit anti-homophobia school policy in the school district, and having a gsa in the school. furthermore, as it takes time for school policies and gsas to take effect, we examine whether the length of time that interventions have been in place affects current student behaviours, by comparing students in schools with older established school policies and gsas with students in schools with more recently established school policies and gsas. this may help tease out the issue of the timing of intervention versus risk behaviour. we hypothesized that, as with the preponderance of existing studies, lgb and mostly heterosexual students in the schools in our study would have higher prevalence than exclusively heterosexual students of homophobic discrimination, despair, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts (h1). we also predicted that lgb students who attend schools with specific anti-homophobia policies or gsas would have lower prevalence of homophobic discrimination, suicidal ideation or attempts compared to lgb students who attend schools without such policies or programs (h2). in addition, we expected that lgb students who attend schools with longer-established policies and gsas would have lower rates of all these mental health challenges compared to lgb students who attend schools with no policies or gsas, or with only recently established interventions (h3). although there is no extant evidence to directly guide our hypotheses about mostly heterosexual or exclusively heterosexual students and policies or gsas, we felt that an overall change in school climate driven by these types of anti-homophobic or inclusive programs would also benefit the mental health of other students in those schools, and that these two orientation groups would also be less likely to report suicidal ideation or attempts than mostly heterosexual or exclusively heterosexual students in schools without these policies or programs, or schools with more recently established programs (h4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 95 methods data sources and sample the present study was a secondary analysis of the 2008 british columbia adolescent health survey (bcahs). this paper-and-pencil questionnaire was administered to a cluster-stratified random sample of more than 1,700 classes in grades 7 to 12 in more than 450 public schools in british columbia, canada. the participating school districts represent 92% of enrolled students across the province. in consultation with statistics canada, the original data from 29,315 students were weighted to adjust for the differential probability of selection in the various regions, response rates, and proportion of enrollment. the university of british columbia behavioural research ethics board approved both the original survey and this subsequent study. the present study included only students who responded to a self-labelling measure defined by romantic attractions for sexual orientation that has been used in previous research (e.g., saewyc, bearinger, blum, & resnick, 1999; saewyc et al., 2006). the response options for this measure included 100% heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, bisexual, mostly homosexual, 100% homosexual (gay/lesbian), and not sure. the 100% homosexual (gay/lesbian), mostly homosexual, and bisexual youth were grouped together to form an lgb sample for the present analyses. the mostly heterosexual group was kept as a separate sexual minority group, being both larger than the combined lgb group, and because of prior research that suggests this group differs from both exclusively heterosexual and also lgb groups in demographics and health disparities (saewyc et al., 2004; saewyc, 2011). as described earlier, previous research has also shown the presence of homophobic bullying and its negative effects among exclusively heterosexual or “straight” youth, but we do not know yet whether gsas or anti-homophobic policies would contribute to the reduction of homophobic bullying or its negative effects for the heterosexual teens. accordingly, the present analyses explored the roles of gsas and policies not only for lgb and mostly heterosexual students but also the 100% heterosexual teens. the “not sure” group was excluded from the present analyses, because several different possible reasons for choosing that option make it unclear how such students are responding to the item (saewyc et al., 2004, provide a critical evaluation of “not sure” categories in several surveys). seventh graders were also excluded in this study, because the majority of these students were enrolled in either elementary or middle schools, where gsas have not been implemented in british columbia. the final weighted sample in this study included 21,708 students. given that sexual minority youth appeared to be sparsely and randomly distributed across the province, with no clustering within schools or classrooms, adjustments for the cluster-sampling design were considered unnecessary for these analyses (poon & saewyc, 2009). measures homophobic discrimination. experience of discrimination due to sexual orientation was measured with a single item: “in the past 12 months, have you been discriminated against or treated unfairly because of your sexual orientation (being or thought to be gay or lesbian)?” responses were yes or no. suicide-related variables. the suicide-related variables included serious suicidal ideation and the number of suicidal attempts in the past year. suicidal ideation responses were yes or no, while original response options to suicide attempt were “0 times”, “1 time”, “2 or 3 times”, “4 or 5 times”, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 96 “6 or more times” which were dichotomized into attempted or did not attempt suicide in the past year. despair. despair, a proxy measure for depression symptoms, was assessed by asking if students had felt so sad, discouraged, hopeless, or had so many problems that they wondered if anything was worthwhile in the past 30 days. the ordinal response options included “not at all”, “a little”, “some, enough to bother me”, “quite a bit”, and “extremely so, to the point i couldn’t do my work or deal with things”. students who reported having felt these symptoms at an intensity that was enough to bother them, so much so that they had difficulty functioning, were classified as having despair. we included this proxy measure for depressive symptoms primarily as a control variable for the suicide outcomes; depression may have organic causes unrelated to discrimination or homophobic bullying, yet it is also strongly linked to suicidal ideation and attempts in the overall population (evans, hawton, & rodham, 2004). procedures and data analyses in order to identify schools having gsas or specific anti-homophobic bullying policies, the websites of schools that participated in the bcahs were first examined for mention of policies or gsas. in addition, schools with explicit homophobia-related anti-bullying policies were documented on the british columbia teachers’ federation website. then schools were contacted by telephone to confirm the presence or absence of gsas and specific policies, and to learn the year in which they were first implemented, if that was not already provided. for these analyses, schools were classified into those with no gsa and/or policies, those with recently established gsas or policies (i.e., implemented within the past 3 years, between 2005 and 2007) versus those with longer-term gsas or policies (i.e., more than 3 years, or before 2005). subsequently, the information about gsas and school-district antihomophobia policies was linked to the bcahs data of individual students in the relevant schools. spss version 19.0 was used for all statistical analyses in this study. prevalence comparisons between lgb and mostly heterosexual students to heterosexual students with regard to suicidal outcomes, experiences of discrimination, and school characteristics were performed using chi-square tests. logistic regressions examined the hypothesized effects of gsas and policies on suicidal behaviours and sexual orientation discrimination among lgb, mostly heterosexual, and heterosexual students separately; the regression models for suicidal outcomes included covariates to control for potential confounders (e.g., level of despair). for evaluating the effects of timing of gsas and policies, we used multinomial logistic regression models for each orientation group, with no gsa or no policy as the referent group. we also conducted multinomial regressions focused on evaluating the combinations of gsa, policy, or both on the three main outcomes; however, because schools may implement only gsas and policies, or both in different years, the permutations rendered it infeasible to conduct multinomial regression models incorporating length of time since program or policy was implemented. given the well-documented gender differences of health and risk behaviours (saewyc, bearinger, heinz, blum, & resnick, 1998), we conducted all analyses separately by gender. among both boys and girls, lgb and mostly heterosexual students were significantly older on average, and there were significantly larger percentages of lgb and mostly heterosexual youth in the older grades (boys, χ² = 21.43, p < .001; girls, χ² = 22.72, p < .011). this is commonly found in population surveys, as sexual identity is a developmental task of adolescence, and younger adolescents who have not begun to feel sexual attractions tend to choose the “default” heterosexual identity, although they may change identity labels international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 97 as they get older (ott, corlyss, wypij, rosario, & austin, 2011). to address this maturational issue, we controlled all analyses by grade. results as shown in table 1, the majority of students identified themselves as 100% heterosexual (weighted n = 10,408 for boys; weighted n = 10,577 for girls) as compared to mostly heterosexual (weighted n = 840 for boys; weighted n = 914 for girls) or lgb (weighted n = 359 for boys; weighted n = 364 for girls). a similar proportion of lgb, mostly heterosexual, and heterosexual youth were enrolled in schools with gsas and with explicit school district anti-bullying policies, although mostly heterosexual youth were slightly more likely to be in schools with gsas and explicit policies. hypothesis 1: differences in prevalence of discrimination, suicidal ideation and attempts as hypothesized, lgb and mostly heterosexual boys and girls were more likely to report despair in the past month compared to exclusively heterosexual students, and they also reported a significantly higher prevalence of sexual orientation discrimination in the past year (table 1). because exclusively heterosexual students comprise a much higher portion of the overall student population, however, the small proportion of them who had experienced discrimination because others thought they were gay or lesbian represents an equal or larger actual number of students compared to lgb or mostly heterosexual students (385 exclusively heterosexual boys versus 181 gay/bisexual boys and 143 mostly heterosexual boys; 138 exclusively heterosexual girls versus 140 lesbian/bisexual girls and 80 mostly heterosexual girls). as expected, both lgb and mostly heterosexual students (boys and girls) were significantly more likely than heterosexual peers to report serious suicidal ideation (also table 1). fully 1 in 3 gay and bisexual boys and 1 in 4 mostly heterosexual boys reported ideation in the past year compared to fewer than 1 in 10 exclusively heterosexual boys; nearly half of lesbian and bisexual girls and 1 in 4 mostly heterosexual girls said they seriously thought about suicide, as compared to just over 1 in 9 exclusively heterosexual girls. the disparity in past year suicide attempts was even more striking for sexual minority students compared to their heterosexual peers, as more than 1 in 4 lgb boys or girls and 1 in 10 mostly heterosexual students had attempted suicide in the past year, while fewer than 5% of exclusively heterosexual students had done so. hypotheses 2 (and 4): presence of gsas and/or anti-homophobia policies reduces sexual orientation discrimination and suicidality first we examined the potential links between the presence of a gsa, or explicit antihomophobic bullying policies, and sexual orientation discrimination or suicidal responses for lgb, mostly heterosexual, and exclusively heterosexual youth (table 2). then we examined the various combinations of gsa, policy, or both on these outcomes for each of the orientation groups. as shown in table 2, gsas in schools were associated with lower odds of sexual orientation discrimination for both lgb boys and girls, and mostly heterosexual girls. gsas were only linked to reduced odds of suicidal ideation for mostly heterosexual girls, but none of the orientation groups had significantly reduced odds of past year suicide attempts, although all but one of the odds ratios was in the right direction. explicit anti-homophobic bullying policies were associated with lower odds of discrimination for mostly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 98 heterosexual girls, suicidal ideation for exclusively heterosexual girls, and suicide attempts for lgb boys and girls. the majority of students (59.2%) attended schools with neither a gsa nor an anti-homophobic bullying policy; 20.6% attended schools with gsas but no policy, 8.6% attended schools with antihomophobic bullying policies but no gsas, and 11.6% attended schools with both gsas and policies. table 3 shows the adjusted odds of discrimination, suicidal ideation and attempts comparing the different combinations of gsa and policy for lgb youth. lgb boys in schools having both a gsa and an anti-homophobic bullying policy reported significantly lower odds of discrimination, while lgb girls reported significantly lower odds of discrimination, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. among mostly heterosexual students, having both a gsa and an explicit policy was only linked to lower sexual orientation discrimination for girls. for exclusively heterosexual students, no combination of gsa and/or policy was linked to reduced odds of discrimination or suicidality, although the adjusted odds ratios were slightly less than 1 in nearly every combination (data not shown). hypotheses 3 (and 4): length of time gsas or anti-homophobia policies have been implemented influences discrimination and suicidality since it can take time for policies and programs to have a widespread effect within a school, we also examined the relationship between length of time since they were first implemented and the discrimination and suicide outcomes among each orientation group. table 4 presents the results of multinomial logistic regression analyses for sexual orientation discrimination and suicidality among lgb students, table 5 shows the same results for mostly heterosexual students, and table 6 shows the results for exclusively heterosexual students. students in schools with longer-established gsas (i.e., more than 3 years since implementation) had significantly reduced odds of all of the outcome measures (i.e., homophobic discrimination, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts) for lgb boys and girls, except for suicide attempts among boys. the odds of discrimination, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts were reduced by more than half with longerestablished gsas compared to no gsa. however, having a recently established gsa (i.e., one that was implemented between 2005 and 2007) did not predict lower odds of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, or discrimination. for mostly heterosexual students, a gsa that had been in place for 3 or more years was linked to significantly lower odds of sexual orientation discrimination for both boys and girls, but only lower odds of suicidal ideation for mostly heterosexual girls; having a recently established gsa was not associated with reduced odds of discrimination or suicidality. the presence of longer-term anti-homophobic bullying policies was also associated with lower odds of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts for gay and bisexual boys, and lower probability of suicide attempts for lesbian and bisexual girls, but not to discrimination. recently established antibullying policies were not significantly associated with homophobic discrimination or suicidality among lgb adolescents. in contrast, for mostly heterosexual students, policies that had been in place for 3 or more years were associated with lower odds of discrimination for girls, but not boys, and were not linked to the suicide variables for either boys or girls. recently established policies had no significant relationships to discrimination, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 99 what about the “straight” members of gay-straight alliances, those who identify as exclusively heterosexual? schools with a longer history of gsa or an explicit homophobia-related anti-bullying policy were also significantly linked to lower odds of suicidality among exclusively heterosexual adolescent boys, but not girls (table 6). heterosexual boys in schools whose gsas had been in existence for more than 3 years were about half as likely as those in schools without gsas to attempt suicide (aor = 0.52), and boys in schools with longer-established specific anti-bullying policies were about 25% less likely to experience suicidal ideation compared to boys in schools with no policies (aor = 0.72). these results were not found for exclusively heterosexual girls, and similar to the results for sexual minority adolescents, neither recently established gsas nor recently established policies were linked to a lower probability of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, or discrimination among heterosexual boys and girls. discussion in this study of sexual minority and heterosexual students in grades 8 through 12 throughout the province of british columbia, on the west coast of canada, lgb and mostly heterosexual students in schools with specific anti-homophobic bullying policies and schools with gsas had lower odds of recent sexual orientation discrimination, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts, primarily when both were implemented, or when the policies and gsas had been in place for 3 years or more. this suggests that the presence of a gsa, or the existence and enforcement of specific anti-bullying policies, may influence the overall school climate enough to reduce discrimination and other stressors among sexual minority youth and, in turn, may help prevent suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. these results affirm the results from the first such study, in massachusetts schools (goodenow et al., 2006), but may also help explain the equivocal results in some prior studies in the united states (toomey et al., 2012; poteat et al., 2012); the length of time since the policies or gsas had been implemented was not included in those studies, and so it might have been too soon after the initiation of some programs to influence school environments enough to reduce suicidal ideation and attempts among lgb and mostly heterosexual youth in those schools. at the same time, explicit policies had a less consistent protective effect than gsas did, which suggests, as toomey and colleagues concluded, that they may be an important but not sufficient school-based intervention to help prevent suicidality among sexual minority adolescents. as ours is one of the first studies to consider the potential effects of these interventions for mostly heterosexual and exclusively heterosexual adolescents as well as lgb youth, we feel it is important to consider the gender difference in these effects. mostly heterosexual girls, but not boys, and exclusively heterosexual boys, but not girls, had lower odds of suicidal ideation and attempts in schools with anti-homophobic bullying policies and gsas. while the reasons for these gender differences are not clear, one possible explanation, found in observational research among younger adolescents, is that homophobic bullying is more commonly used by boys as a way of enforcing dominant norms of masculinity and status in their peer groups (mcguffey & rich, 1999), even towards other heterosexual boys. this was also the case in our study, where exclusively heterosexual boys were more than twice as likely to report sexual orientation discrimination than exclusively heterosexual girls, although both of these were small percentages compared to sexual minority groups. to the extent that homophobic bullying is outlawed and the policy is enforced, or where gsas offer supportive space for other performances of masculinity, this may create a less stigmatizing space international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 100 for exclusively heterosexual boys who do not fit the stereotypes of hegemonic masculine behaviour. this is just one possibility, and other reasons may include a lack of power to detect significant differences between rarely occurring events (suicide attempts) and rarely occurring predictors (sexual orientation discrimination) for this group; however, it is important to recognize that heterosexual boys and girls who reported the sexual orientation discrimination were more likely to report suicidal ideation and attempts than their peers who did not experience that discrimination. further research is needed to understand how anti-homophobic policies and programs may influence heterosexual boys’ and girls’ school experiences and suicidality. while the results of our study are promising as evidence of the potential benefits of gsas and specific policies to reduce stigma and suicide among adolescents in school, there are some limitations to the research that should be noted, and potential challenges to implementing such programs to be considered. although we had information about when the gsas were first implemented, we had no other details about the gsas, their size and visibility in the schools, and their purpose. the type of gsa, that is, whether a social support club as opposed to a social justice club (russell et al., 2009), may influence its effectiveness in reducing discrimination and emotional distress among lgb youth. the perceived effectiveness of the gsa within the school, and the amount of time that students actually spend involved in a gsa, could similarly affect their outcomes (toomey et al., 2011). as well, while we found a potential additive effect of having both gsas and policies in place in schools, we could not incorporate into that analysis the length of time since they were implemented, as this created too many permutations for adequate power within our sample. it is possible that the effects shown among the combinations of gsas and policies would be stronger among longer-established gsas and policies as opposed to recently established programs. likewise, this is still a primarily cross-sectional study, in that students were only assessed at one point in time, albeit with recent discrimination and suicidal behaviours, and the timing of the gsas and policies in schools. in contrast, examining school climate and youth suicidality before and after a policy or program was implemented, perhaps by using successive waves of data from population surveys, would offer stronger evidence that interventions were having the desired effects. given the consistently documented higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts among sexual minority adolescents, prevention efforts should be a priority for this population, and population-level interventions in schools may be an efficient way of addressing this health inequity. at the same time, it requires the willingness of schools and school districts to enact these policies and programs, and some schools and school districts may not be supportive of gsas (walls et al., 2010). recently, the legislature of the province of ontario passed bill 13, an anti-bullying act, which stipulates that school boards and principals cannot refuse to allow gsas in ontario schools: “neither the board nor the principal shall refuse to allow a pupil to use the name gay-straight alliance or a similar name” (bill 13, 303.1[2], 2012). catholic bishops have voiced serious concerns about this new legislation, as they feel the purpose of gsas is in conflict with roman catholic values (howlett, 2012). that our results suggest gsas could also be helpful in reducing suicidal ideation among heterosexual students may serve to reduce some of the opposition, and may offer an opportunity for school district staff, who are themselves supportive, to provide evidence to reassure concerned parents or elected school trustees. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 101 more research is needed to understand the specific mechanisms by which gsas and antihomophobic bullying policies influence suicidal ideation and attempts: is it through changing the school climate, by reducing stigma, harassment, and discrimination? or do these population-level interventions promote school connectedness, a sense of belonging and feeling safe and supported, among students? as well, while suicide prevention is an important focus, do these strategies also have influence on other health disparities amongst lgb, mostly heterosexual, or exclusively heterosexual youth? gay-straight alliances, and specific anti-homophobic bullying policies, appear to be two important school-based interventions to help prevent anti-gay discrimination, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents, as well as having some effect for mostly heterosexual girls and exclusively heterosexual boys. the potential effect is not small; although lgb youth generally have twice or greater the odds of suicidal behaviour than their heterosexual peers, each of these interventions, where they had been in place for a few years, reduced those odds by half or more. schools have a responsibility to create safe and supportive environments for all their students, and these interventions are two strategies that may help some of their most vulnerable students survive. given how long it may take for their effects to be felt throughout the school, there is no time to lose. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 102 table 1. school characteristics and experiences by sexual orientation and gender boys lgb n=346 mostly heterosexual n=840 heterosexual n=10,055 χ² gsa at school (%) gsa before 2005 13.3 17.5 13.5 gsa between 2005 & 2007 22.7 20.0 17.8 11.06* explicit policy (%) policy before 2005 14.1 17.9 13.4 policy between 2005 & 2007 7.3 6.8 5.2 13.04** suicidal ideation (%) 34.9 24.2 7.5 361.44*** suicide attempts (%) 23.4 9.1 2.5 385.53*** sexual-orientation discrimination 50.4 17.0 3.7 1139.26*** despair (%) 51.6 38.7 18.3 274.15*** girls lgb n=377 mostly heterosexual n=914 heterosexual n=10,930 χ² gsa at school (%) gsa before 2005 13.4 17.0 14.1 gsa between 2005 & 2007 19.0 18.4 18.2 ns explicit policy (%) policy before 2005 13.3 19.4 14.8 policy between 2005 & 2007 6.1 6.2 5.1 24.86*** suicidal ideation (%) 43.8 25.8 11.5 541.20*** suicide attempts (%) 26.5 12.4 4.9 429.63*** sexual-orientation discrimination 38.5 8.7 1.3 1920.11*** despair (%) 65.7 50.4 31.3 387.88*** notes: all ns are weighted, *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 103 table 2. relationship between presence of gsas or explicit school district policy, sexual orientation discrimination and suicidal outcomes among lgb, mostly heterosexual and 100% heterosexual youth sexual orientation discrimination suicidal ideation suicide attempts aor 95% ci aor 95% ci aor 95% ci gsas lgb boys 0.47* (0.26-0.84) 0.79 (0.39-1.58) 0.68 (0.32-1.45) lgb girls 0.61* (0.40-0.93) 0.66 (0.42-1.05) 0.72 (0.43-1.21) mostly het boys 0.65 (0.37-1.14) 0.74 (0.45-1.24) 0.83 (0.41-1.67) mostly het girls 0.60* (0.37-0.97) 0.68* (0.49-0.95) 1.04 (0.68-1.57) 100% het boys 0.97 (0.761.24) 0.90 (0.75-1.08) 0.86 (0.63-1.16) 100% het girls 0.88 (0.59-1.32) 0.86 (0.74-1.00) 0.95 (0.77-1.18) explicit sd policy lgb boys 0.59 (0.31-1.13) 0.51 (0.23-1.10) 0.38* (0.15-0.97) lgb girls 0.75 (0.46-1.21) 0.73 (0.44-1.23) 0.55* (0.30-0.99) mostly het boys 0.94 (0.53-1.67) 1.07 (0.63-1.84) 0.62 (0.27-1.40) mostly het girls 0.39** (0.22-0.70) 0.98 (0.71-1.37) 1.03 (0.69-1.56) 100% het boys 0.99 (0.76-1.30) 0.84 (0.69-1.03) 0.91 (0.65-1.27) 100% het girls 0.93 (0.61-1.44) 0.84* (0.72-0.99) 0.99 (0.78-1.24) notes: statistically significant results in bold *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. reference categories: no gsas; no explicit sd policy. adjusted for grade. control variable(s) for suicide-related outcomes: feelings of despair (note: not for sexual-orientation discrimination). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 104 table 3. comparing influences of combinations of gsas & explicit anti-homophobic bullying policy on sexual orientation discrimination and suicidality among lgb youth sexual-orientation discrimination suicidal ideation suicide attempts aor 95% ci aor 95% ci aor 95% ci boys neither gsas nor policy ref ref ref gsas only 0.52 (0.26-1.05) 1.39 (0.60-3.20) 0.87 (0.36-2.08) explicit policy only 1.03 (0.39-2.73) 1.48 (0.43-5.13) 0.44 (0.10-2.04) both gsas and policy 0.36* (0.15-0.89) 0.34 (0.11-1.03) 0.31 (0.09-1.15) girls neither gsas nor policy ref ref ref gsas only 0.71 (0.42-1.19) 0.89 (0.51-1.53) 1.09 (0.61-1.96) explicit policy only 1.04 (0.51-2.14) 1.25 (0.57-2.74) 1.01 (0.46-2.22) both gsas and policy 0.46* (0.23-0.92) 0.41* (0.20-0.85) 0.29* (0.11-0.76) notes: statistically significant results in bold *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. reference categories: neither gsas nor explicit sd policy. adjusted for grade. control variable(s) for suicide-related outcomes: feelings of despair (note: not for sexual-orientation discrimination). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 105 table 4. relationship between timing of implementing gsas or explicit anti-homophobia policy, sexual orientation discrimination and suicidal outcomes among lgb youth sexual orientation discrimination suicidal ideationa suicide attemptsa aor 95% ci aor 95% ci aor 95% ci gsas boys gsas between 2005 & 2007 0.61 (0.31-1.23) 1.63 (0.74-3.62) 0.79 (0.34-1.86) gsas before 2005 0.30** (0.12-0.72) 0.07** (0.01-0.51) 0.47 (0.13-1.71) girls gsas between 2005 & 2007 0.72 (0.44-1.20) 0.87 (0.50-1.52) 1.00 (0.55-1.83) gsas before 2005 0.46* (0.24-0.87) 0.44* (0.23-0.86) 0.41* (0.18-0.94) explicit sd policy boys policy between 2005 & 2007 0.90 (0.33-2.44) 1.31 (0.42-4.04) 0.56 (0.15-2.01) policy before 2005 0.47 (0.22-1.03) 0.24* (0.08-0.73) 0.27* (0.07-1.01) girls policy between 2005 & 2007 0.78 (0.35-1.73) 0.70 (0.29-1.70) 1.27 (0.52-3.09) policy before 2005 0.74 (0.42-1.30) 0.75 (0.41-1.35) 0.33** (0.15-0.73) notes: statistically significant results in bold *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. reference categories: no gsas; no explicit sd policy. all analyses adjusted for grade. a control variables for suicide-related outcomes also included feelings of despair, but not for discrimination. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 106 table 5. relationship between timing of implementing gsas, explicit anti-homophobia school district policy, sexual orientation discrimination and suicidal outcomes among mostly heterosexual youth sexual orientation discrimination suicidal ideation suicide attempts aor 95% ci aor 95% ci aor 95% ci gsas boys gsas between 2005 & 2007 1.18 (0.64-2.17) 0.63 (0.33-1.21) 0.98 (0.43-2.22) gsas before 2005 0.17** (0.05-0.57) 0.90 (0.46-1.75) 0.65 (0.24-1.80) girls gsas between 2005 & 2007 0.70 (0.39-1.26) 0.77 (0.51-1.17) 1.35 (0.82-2.22) gsas before 2005 0.50* (0.25-0.99) 0.58* (0.37-0.92) 0.72 (0.39-1.33) explicit sd policy boys policy between 2005 & 2007 1.31 (0.53-3.24) 0.87 (0.33-2.32) 1.25 (0.38-4.12) policy before 2005 0.81 (0.41-1.60) 1.15 (0.63-2.09) 0.43 (0.15-1.23) girls policy between 2005 & 2007 0.66 (0.27-1.01) 1.42 (0.79-2.55) 1.22 (0.58-2.56) policy before 2005 0.31** (0.15-0.64) 0.87 (0.60-1.26) 0.98 (0.62-1.55) notes: statistically significant results in bold *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. reference categories: no gsas; no explicit sd policy. adjusted for grade. control variable(s) for suicide-related outcomes: feelings of despair (note: not for homophobic discrimination). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 89–112 107 table 6. relationship between timing of implementing gsas or explicit anti-homophobia policy, sexual orientation discrimination and suicidal outcomes among exclusively heterosexual youth sexual orientation discrimination suicidal ideationa suicide attemptsa aor 95% ci aor 95% ci aor 95% ci gsas boys gsas between 2005 & 2007 1.02 (0.76-1.37) 0.98 (0.79-1.22) 1.17 (0.83-1.65) gsas before 2005 0.90 (0.64-1.28) 0.81 (0.63-1.04) 0.52** (0.32-0.85) girls gsas between 2005 & 2007 0.88 (0.54-1.46) 0.89 (0.74-1.07) 0.96 (0.74-1.26) gsas before 2005 0.88 (0.50-1.54) 0.83 (0.67-1.01) 0.93 (0.69-1.25) explicit sd policy boys policy between 2005 & 2007 0.74 (0.43-1.26) 1.19 (0.86-1.67) 1.27 (0.75-2.17) policy before 2005 1.09 (0.81-1.47) 0.72** (0.57-0.93) 0.78 (0.52-1.17) girls policy between 2005 & 2007 0.65 (0.25-1.65) 0.84 (0.62-1.14) 1.26 (0.86-1.86) policy before 2005 1.04 (0.65-1.66) 0.84 (0.70-1.02) 0.89 (0.68-1.17) notes: statistically significant results in bold *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. reference categories: no gsas; no explicit sd policy. all analyses adjusted 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(2012). “that’s so gay!”: examining the covariates of hearing this expression among gay, lesbian, and bisexual college students. journal of american college health, 60(6), 429–434. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203405338 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.03.001 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2011.607378 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.23.5.586 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sw/53.1.21 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118x09334957 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.112.1.144 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2012.673519 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 doi: http://dx.coi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717723 risk of psychosocial problems in children whose parents receive outpatient substance abuse treatment marina e. geschiere, renske spijkerman, and anke de glopper abstract: the entrance of parents into substance abuse treatment provides a unique opportunity to discuss parenting with them, and to inquire about the psychological wellbeing of their children. this is important because parental substance abuse is associated with an increased risk for the development of mental health problems in children. in this study, clients from a dutch outpatient treatment facility who had custody of or regular contact with their children completed the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq) about their children aged 4 to 17 years (n = 99), after being referred to a parenting consultation with a specialized professional. compared to other studies conducted in western europe and australia with similar at-risk populations, the sdq results in the present study suggested a lower percentage of children with psychosocial problem behavior. still, 29% of the children in our sample showed psychosocial problems in the clinical range. according to logistic regression analyses, which tested associations between client and family characteristics and risk of psychosocial problems, 5 factors (client’s gender, education level, presence of financial debts, child’s age, and absence of siblings) were associated with a higher likelihood of one or more types of psychosocial problems. present findings suggest that, of children whose substance-abusing parents enter outpatient treatment, almost one third may have psychosocial problems that require further assessment and treatment. keywords: substance abuse treatment, mental health, children of substance abusers, psychosocial problems, strengths and difficulties questionnaire acknowledgement: this research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. marina geschiere msc (the corresponding author) is a clinical child psychologist at parnassia group (brijder addiction care), the netherlands. the correspondence address is: marina geschiere, johanna westerdijkplein 1, 2521 en den haag, the netherlands. email: m.geschiere@parnassiagroep.nl renske spijkerman phd is a senior researcher at parnassia addiction research center, parnassia group (brijder addiction care), zoutkeetsingel 40, 2512 hn the hague, the netherlands. email: r.spijkerman@brijder.nl anke de glopper msc is a junior researcher at parnassia addiction research center, parnassia group (brijder addiction care), zoutkeetsingel 40, 2512 hn the hague, the netherlands. email: a.deglopper@brijder.nl http://dx.coi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717723 mailto:m.geschiere@parnassiagroep.nl mailto:r.spijkerman@brijder.nl mailto:a.deglopper@brijder.nl international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 12 parental drug use is associated with several emotional, behavioral, social, academic, and physical problems among children throughout their life course (clark, cornelius, wood, & vanyukov, 2004; ranta & raitasalo, 2015; van den einde-bus, goldschmeding, tielen, de waart, & van de looij-jansen, 2010. maternal drug use during pregnancy can cause premature birth, slowed growth (vucinovic et al., 2008) and low birthweight (schuetze & eiden, 2006; behnke et al., 2013). in their childhood years, children of substance-abusing parents (csap) are at increased risk for developing anxiety problems (diaz et al., 2008; hill, tessner, & mcdermott, 2011), hyperactivity (marmorstein, iacono, & mcgue, 2009; sayal et al., 2009), aggressive behavior (molina, donovan, & belendiuk, 2010), and reduced intellectual abilities (bennett, bendersky, & lewis, 2008; yang & kramer, 2012). as adolescents, csap are more prone to develop mental disorders compared to their peers without substance-abusing parents (diaz et al., 2008; elkins, fite, moore, lochman, & wells, 2014; hill et al., 2011; kelley & fals-stewart, 2004). despite these increased developmental risks, not all children with a substance-abusing parent or parents experience developmental problems or other negative outcomes. as described by hosman, van doesum, and van santvoort (2009), the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology to csap depends on a complex interplay between risk and protective factors in the child’s environment, the parent’s environment, the social environment, and the wider community. for the development of effective preventive interventions, it is important to learn more about which csap are most at risk for developing negative outcomes and how to support these children at an early stage. problems that csap may experience often go undetected or are recognized at a relatively late stage. early signs of problematic behavior in csap are easily missed when parents are unaware of the symptoms and risks of developmental problems in their children (shahrbabaki et al., 2010). furthermore, substance abuse may negatively affect parental sensitivity and monitoring, resulting in less reliable or late problem recognition (elkins, mcgue, malone, & iacono, 2004; robertson, baird-thomas, & stein, 2008). in addition, societal stigmatization of substance-abusing parents can be a hampering factor for these parents when it comes to seeking help and being open with professionals about their personal and family problems (stringer & baker, 2015). fear that openness might lead to negative consequences, such as losing custody of their children, increases parents’ reluctance to seek or accept help. we therefore suggest that easily accessible parenting support and empowerment of substance-abusing parents in their parenting role may increase early detection of and intervention in developmental problems in csap. since psychosocial problems in csap can evolve during their life course, it is important to monitor children’s mental health status on multiple occasions. the decision of parents to enter treatment provides counselors with a unique opportunity to inquire about parenting and the wellbeing of their client’s children, and to lend additional support as required. for many parents with substance abuse problems, being or becoming a parent can motivate them to seek treatment and change their harmful behavior (fulcher, 2009; jessup, humphreys, brindis, & lee, 2003). parental recovery from substance abuse is likely to contribute to a better living environment for csap. conversely, improvements in the living environment and wellbeing of csap can positively affect recovery of parents in treatment (lander, howsare, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 13 byrne, 2013). due to this interplay, paying attention to parenthood and parenting issues during treatment may not only contribute to parents’ recovery from substance abuse but may also prevent mental health disorders in a new generation (niccols et al., 2012). for workers in adult mental health treatment organizations, assessing and addressing the needs of their client’s children is still considered complex and challenging (lauritzen, reedtz, van doesum, & martinussen, 2014; marsh, smith, & bruni, 2011). possible explanations for the perceived difficulties associated with routine assessments of parenthood and csap in adult treatment may be that workers are often preoccupied with the mental health problems of the parent, or that they fear discussing parenting might interrupt the client–worker relationship. with regard to family-related issues, professionals may feel they have insufficient time or skills to conduct adequate assessments (gruenert, ratnam, & tsantefski, 2006). aside from this, clients can fear the involvement of child protective services when they open up about their parenting (lander et al., 2013). possibly due to the above-mentioned difficulties with implementing routine assessments of client’s children and family situations, collection of data on the mental health of csap at the point when their parents receive treatment has been limited (niccols et al., 2012; oliveros & kaufman, 2007; reedtz, lauritzen, & van doesum, 2012). more research on this subject is needed for two reasons. first, data gathered from children whose parents enter addiction treatment could provide additional insights about the strengths and needs of children of substance-abusing parents. second, more specific data about the prevalence of internalizing and externalizing problem behavior in children of parents in substance abuse treatment, and about the features that function as mediators between the problems of the parent and the wellbeing of their offspring, are important for the development of interventions to support substance-abusing parents and their children. few studies have reported on the wellbeing of csap during their parents’ treatment trajectories. some studies reported elevated rates of mental health problems in these children, such as the study by vandemark et al. (2005), which assessed 253 children (5–10 years) of mothers who entered treatment for substance abuse, domestic violence, and trauma problems. of these children, 40% showed signs of internalizing problem behavior and 37% showed signs of externalizing problem behavior. another example is provided by gruenert et al. (2006), who assessed the psychosocial wellbeing of 48 csap using the parent version of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq; goodman, 1997) during parents’ participation in substance abuse treatment and a family intervention. results showed significantly higher levels of emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, and peer problems in csap when compared to a general population sample. burstein, stanger, kamon, & dumenci’s (2006) study of 399 children of 251 parents during substance abuse treatment correlated child behavior checklist (cbcl) scores to parenting practices and found that negative parenting (less positive involvement, negative or ineffective discipline, and less monitoring) was significantly correlatedwith externalizing behavior in this group of csap. burns, solis, shadur, & hussong (2013) investigated the psychiatric wellbeing of children (n = 81) whose parents were in different types of substance abuse treatment. according to their findings, children of parents in medication/detoxification treatment showed higher levels of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 14 somatization, social withdrawal, and attention problems compared to children whose parents received outpatient treatment. however, for other forms of problematic behavior such as hyperactivity, aggression, anxiety, and depression, no differences across treatment types (medication/detoxification, outpatient, and inpatient) were found. two other studies conducted during parental treatment did not find more mental health problems in csap than in peers without substance-abusing parents. for example, redelinghuys and dar (2008) found no abnormalities in sdq subscores and total scores for the mental health of children (n = 152) as reported by their parents who had been admitted to a detoxification unit. another study, conducted by conners et al. (2003) with 4,084 children of mothers in residential substance abuse treatment, concluded that even though a quarter of the children showed problem behavior at school, and had certain physical difficulties (such as asthma, hearing, and vision problems) at a greater rate than the controls, they did not experience more mental health problems than their peers in a community sample. since the wellbeing of csap is seen as a result of the interplay among risk factors on different levels (hosman et al., 2009), many studies have investigated child, family, and environment features as potentially influencing factors of psychopathology in csap (luthar & cushing, 1999; steinhausen, dal mas, ledermann, & metzke, 2006; vitaro, wanner, brendgen, & tremblay, 2008). ineffective parenting, and, in particular, harsh parenting (robertson et al., 2008; conners-burrow et al., 2013) and lack of parental monitoring (molina et al., 2010) are seen as important predictors of negative outcomes in the child (burlew et al., 2013; mcmahon, winkel, & rounsaville, 2008; vitaro et al., 2008). also, both comorbid mental disorders (hussong, flora, curran, chassin, & zucker, 2008; peleg-oren & teichman, 2006) and the number of other family members with substance abuse problems are often related to psychopathology in csap (diaz et al., 2008; molina et al., 2010; hill et al., 2011). certain neighborhood features are important at the environmental level. these include neighborhood residential instability (buu et al., 2009) and neighborhood quality as defined by income; frequency of moving; and rates of public assistance, unemployment, single-parent households, residents under 18 years, and vacant houses (ridenour et al., 2009). populations in the abovementioned studies did not all specifically consist of csap whose parents received substance abuse treatment. therefore, less is known about which child-related, parental, and environmental factors are linked to the type and severity of psychosocial problem behavior in csap at the time that their parents are receiving treatment. this lack of a specific focus on csap during parental treatment suggests that more research concerning the variability in the risk of developing mental health problems could be helpful for the further development of suitable interventions for this group of vulnerable children. the present study aimed to provide more insight into the prevalence of parent-rated psychosocial problems and related characteristics among csap at the time their parents received outpatient substance abuse treatment. the sdq was used to screen the csap’s psychosocial wellbeing as this commonly used instrument is regarded as short, user-friendly, and valid. due to the increased risk of csap developing mental health problems, we expected that the children in our study were more likely to show a clinical score for internalizing and externalizing problem behavior in comparison to children from community samples. in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 15 addition to demographic information about gender, age, nationality, and education level, the parents’ substance use, employment, and financial situation were taken into account. in line with hosman and colleagues (2009) and findings from other studies (hussong et al., 2008; sayal et al., 2009; burns et al., 2013) suggesting that the actual development of problematic behavior of the child often depends on the number and severity of detrimental characteristics at the child, parent, and/or environmental level, we expected to find more problems regarding the mental health of csap in families with lower levels of education of the parents, parental poly-drug use, unemployment, and financial problems. methods study sample and setting our study is based on data routinely collected for treatment purposes from 99 parents who received outpatient treatment at brijder addiction care, a large addiction care organization in the western part of the netherlands. according to the new treatment policy of this facility, in line with the upcoming dutch legislation on the mandatory reporting code for domestic violence and child abuse (ministry of health, welfare and sport, 2013)1, all clients entering the outpatient treatment departments who either had custody of children between 0 and 18 years old or had contact (weekly or biweekly) with their children were invited for at least one consultation with a social worker trained and specialized in providing parenting support to clients with substance use disorders. during this consultation, the children’s wellbeing and the client’s own parenting-related experiences, questions, and demands were discussed. in addition, as part of a standardized procedure, the specialized professional noted basic client characteristics and asked clients with children in the appropriate age range (4 to 17 years) to complete the sdq.2 prior to the administration of the sdq, clients received oral and written information about the study and were invited to participate. all clients provided written informed consent. data were anonymously coded, analyzed, and stored in a separate digitally protected file that could only be accessed by the involved researchers via the secure digital environment of the treatment facility. assessments to examine whether children of parents entering our addiction care facility might suffer from psychosocial problems, the parent version of the sdq was used. this is a commonly applied screening instrument for detecting psychosocial problems in youth and is suitable for 4to 17-year-olds (goodman, 1997). a deviating score on the sdq might indicate the presence of psychosocial problems and warrants further examination. the parent and self-report version 1the new law obliges organizations and independent professionals to adhere to a reporting code targeting domestic violence and child abuse. as well as the standard protocol, professionals and organizations that work with adult clients are encouraged to use the “child check”. this short procedure should be performed during contact with adult clients and involves checking whether they have children and whether these children may be at risk. 2deviating scores on the sdq and other signals that might indicate problems among csap were discussed in a multidisciplinary team under the supervision of a child psychiatrist. based on this discussion, advice was formulated about additional support for the child and family. both the sdq-outcomes and the formulated advice were shared with the client and his or her family during a follow-up meeting with a specialized social worker. specific support on familyand parenting-related issues during addiction treatment and recovery for the client was provided by the addiction treatment facility. in case additional support was needed for the client’s children or family, referrals were made to child mental health care organizations and specialized family treatment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 16 of the sdq have been validated in the netherlands (muris, meesters, & van den berg, 2003; van widenfelt, goedhart, treffers, & goodman, 2003). the first part of the questionnaire consists of 25 items containing three answer categories: 0 = not true, 1 = somewhat true, 2 = certainly true. the items comprise five different subscales with five items each. each scale is calculated by using the sum of the corresponding items, resulting in scales for emotional symptoms (α = .72), conduct problems (α = .65), hyperactivity/inattention (α = .82), peer relationship problems (α = .56), and prosocial behavior (α = .72). a total difficulties score (tds) can be calculated from the first four subscales that measure difficulties (α = .85); the prosocial scale measures strengths and therefore has been excluded from the calculation. we dichotomized the scores of the tds and the four subscales according to cut-off points that are used in dutch populations (crone, vogels, hoekstra, treffers, & reijneveld, 2008; stone et al., 2015; van santvoort, hosman, van doesum, & janssens, 2013). for the tds, a score of 14 and above indicated that problems were in the clinical range. a cut-off score of 3 or higher was used for peer and conduct problems. for emotional problems, lack of prosocial behavior, and hyperactivity/inattention we used the cutoff scores of 4, 5, and 6 respectively. background information about the participants was gathered on the following characteristics: age, gender, education level, employment status, presence of financial debts, number of children, type of substance disorder, and presence of other mental disorders. for the child, age and gender were recorded. analyses for the analyses, the data of only one child per client were used. if a parent had filled out the sdq for two or more children, we randomly selected one child and entered his or her sdq outcomes in the analyses. this way we were able to focus on the specific relationship between client characteristics and the risk of psychosocial problems of the clients’ child. possible mutual influences of siblings and other family members were not taken into account due to the large variability in types of family relations (biological, non-biological, halfand step-siblings) and numbers of involved family members (biological father or mother, grandparents, foster parents, partners, ex-partners, and other family members), and the fact that information about the child was only reported by the substance-abusing parent who had entered our treatment facility. to examine which factors were associated with a higher likelihood of psychosocial problems in csap, we developed explanatory models based on the existing empirically established and potentially influencing factors and tested the predictive value of these explanatory models by means of binary logistic regression analyses. as dependent variables we included the dichotomous outcomes of the sdq for the tds and the five subscales. independent variables considered for the explanatory models were all of the client characteristics presented in table 1. age of client and child and type of substance use disorder were categorized into: client’s age (0 = 26–39, 1 = ≥ 40), child’s age (0 = 4–6, 1 = 7–11, 2 = 12–17), and type of substance disorder (0 = alcohol, 1 = other substances). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 17 before conducting further analyses, we checked the expected cell counts for each combination of independent and dependent variables by conducting cross-tables and chisquared tests. logistic regression analyses were only performed on dependent variables that met the expected cell counts. according to diagnostics for multicollinearity, none of the independent variables showed a tolerance less than10 or a variance inflation factor greater than 10. to examine which factors were associated with the outcomes for the tds and each subscale of the sdq, we followed the procedure for logistic regression models suggested by hosmer and lemeshow (2000). in the first step of the analytic procedure, bivariate logistic regression analyses for each predictor with the dependent variable were performed to determine which predictors were allowed in further multivariate analyses. only variables showing associations with the dependent variable at a level of p < .25 were retained. in the second step, logistic regression analyses were performed while entering all variables that were selected on the basis of the first step of the analytic procedure. following backward selection, predictors with the highest p values were removed until the final models included either significant predictors (p < .05) or predictors with p < .10 that significantly increased the fit and explained the variance of the model. the latter was assessed by inspecting the model fit indices and the change in -2 log likelihood (p < .05) between the model with and without the predictor. statistical analyses were performed using spss version 23.0. results sample characteristics table 1 presents an overview of clients’ and their children’s characteristics. in total, 99 parents (50.5% female) who entered the addiction care facility completed the sdq for at least one of their children. to examine the presence of psychosocial problems in csap, we used children’s mean scores on the parent-rated sdq as well as the prevalence of children scoring above the dutch cut-off values. these results are shown in the lower part of table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 18 table 1 descriptive statistics (n = 99) client and child characteristics m (sd) n (%) client characteristics age in years (26–57 yrs.) 40.3 (7.0) 26–39 yrs. 49 (49.5) 40–57 yrs. 50 (50.5) gender: female 50 (50.5) nationality: non-dutch 24 (24.2) education: low (primary or lower vocational education) 75 (75.8) employment: unemployed 68 (68.7) financial situation: debts 56 (56.6) abuse diagnosis: alcohol 72 (72.7) cannabis 13 (13.1) cocaine 7 ( 7.1) gambling 2 ( 2.1) opioids 2 ( 2.0) amphetamine 1 ( 1.0) gaming 1 ( 1.0) prescription drugs 1 ( 1.0) other mental disorder(s) according to dsm-iv-tr criteria 58 (58.6) child characteristics child’s age (4–17 yrs.) 9.4 (3.4) 4–8 yrs. 28 (28.3) 8–10 yrs. 33 (33.3) 11–17 yrs. 38 (38.4) child’s gender: girl 50 (50.5) presence of siblings: yes 44 (44.4) parent-reported sdq-scores total difficulties score (0-40) 9.9 (6.5) % clinical cut-off score 29 (29.3) emotional symptoms (0-10) 2.5 (2.4) % clinical cut-off score 31 (31.3) conduct problems (0-10) 1.8 (2.0) % clinical cut-off score 26 (26.3) hyperactivity/ inattention (0-10) 3.9 (2.7) % clinical cut-off score 28 (28.3) peer relationship problems (0-10) 1.7 (1.7) % clinical cut-off score 28 (28.3) prosocial behavior (0-10) 8.6 (1.8) % clinical cut-off score 7 ( 7.1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 19 binary logistic regression analyses probably due to the fact that very few children scored above the cut-off value on the prosocial behavior scale (n = 7), chi-squared tests indicated that the expected cell counts for this subscale were too low. therefore, we did not perform logistic regression analyses for the prosocial behavior scale. outcomes for the tds and the other subscales of the sdq are presented in table 2. results of the bivariate logistic regression analyses predicting a clinical score for tds indicated that 7 out of 13 predictors fulfilled the criterion (p < .25) for entering the multivariate analysis. two of these predictors were significantly associated (p < .05) with tds. as shown in table 2, a clinical tds was more likely to be found in children of clients with low education levels and in children from clients with financial debts. according to the findings for emotional symptoms, 6 of the 13 predictors showed a pvalue < .25. none of these predictors were significant at p < .05. bivariate analyses predicting clinical scores on the conduct problem scale showed that 4 of the 13 predictors had a p-value < .25. two of these predictors were significant at p < .05 suggesting that elevated scores on the conduct problem scale were more likely to be found in children from clients with low education levels and in children without siblings compared to children from clients with high education levels and children with siblings. for hyperactivity/inattention, we found that 4 of the 13 predictors showed associations with p < .25. only 1 of these 4 predictors was significant at p < .05 indicating that children with clinical scores for hyperactivity/inattention were more likely to be reported by female than by male clients. finally, bivariate logistic regression analyses predicting peer relationship problems indicated that 5 of the 13 predictors had p < .25. one of these 5 predictors showed a significant association (p < .05) with peer relationship problems, suggesting that children with a clinical score for peer relationship problems were more likely to be found among clients with low education levels than among clients with high education levels. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11–36 20 table 2 prevalence of clinical scores on sdq-subscales by client characteristics total difficulties emotional symptoms conduct problems hyperactivity/ inattention peer problems characteristics % p value % p value % p value % p value % p value client age 26–39 34.7 .244 36.7 .251 24.5 .692 36.7 .068 32.7 .341 40 < 24.0 26.0 28.0 20.0 24.0 gender male 22.4 .141 28.6 .561 22.4 .395 18.4 .033 20.4 .088 female 36.0 34.0 30.0 38.0 36.0 nationality dutch 32.0 .300 32.0 .795 28.0 .489 29.3 .682 26.7 .529 non-dutch 20.8 29.2 20.8 25.0 33.3 education level high 12.5 .048 16.7 .084 8.3 .035 25.0 .682 8.3 .023 low 34.7 36.0 32.0 29.3 34.7 employment status yes 22.6 .324 22.6 .210 19.4 .295 22.6 .397 25.8 .712 no 32.4 35.3 29.4 30.9 29.4 financial problems no 16.3 .015 20.9 .054 20.9 .293 18.6 .065 23.3 .332 yes 39.3 39.3 30.4 35.7 32.1 type of substance alcohol 26.4 .302 34.7 .236 23.6 .330 26.4 .495 29.2 .750 other 37.0 22.2 33.3 33.3 25.9 other diagnosis no 22.0 .180 22.0 .095 17.1 .085 24.4 .471 19.5 .107 yes 34.5 37.9 32.8 31.0 34.5 child age 4– 6 25.0 .170 28.6 .303 25.0 .504 28.6 .384 10.7 .057 7–11 21.2 24.2 21.2 18.2 39.4 12–17 51.8 39.5 31.6 36.8 31.6 gender male 32.0 .550 38.0 .150 30.0 .395 32.0 .408 30.0 .702 female 26.5 24.5 22.4 24.5 26.5 presence of siblings no 34.5 .202 32.7 .735 36.4 .014 36.4 .050 36.4 .050 yes 22.7 29.5 13.6 18.2 18.2 note. p < .25 in bold. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 21 in the second step of the analytic procedure, we performed separate multivariate backward regression analyses for the tds and the subscales of the sdq. in each regression model we included all predictors with p < .25 according to previous bivariate analyses. the final regression models are presented in table 3. as shown, the chi-squared statistics of the five final models were all significant, indicating that they provided a better prediction of the dependent variable (a clinical score on one of the sdq scales) than the constant-only models. table 3 logistic regression analyses predicting risk of psychosocial problems according to the parent-rated sdq predictor or (95% ci) p model χ² p total difficulties client’s education: low 3.75 (0.91, 15.51) .068 15.36 .004 financial situation: debts 3.39 (1.16, 9.93) .026 child’s age: 12–17 yrs. (ref) .047 4–6 yrs. 0.28 (0.09, 0.94) .039 7–11 yrs. 0.28 (0.09, 0.90) .034 emotional symptoms financial situation: debts 2.44 (0.98, 6.07) .054 3.91 .048 conduct problems presence of siblings: yes 0.34 (0.12, 0.96) .041 10.74 .005 client’s education: low 4.00 (0.84, 19.01) .081 hyperactivity/inattention client’s gender: female 2.99 (1.16, 7.74) .023 9.07 .010 financial situation: debts 2.71 (1.02, 7.18) .045 peer problems client’s education: low 7.04 (1.48, 33.45) .014 15.78 .001 child’s age: 4–6 yrs. (ref) .038 7–11 yrs. 5.85 (1.43, 23.99) .014 12–17yrs. 5.22 (1.26, 21.66) .023 the final regression model predicting the likelihood of a clinical score on the tds included three remaining factors: client’s education level, financial problems, and child’s age. although client’s education level was not significant at the .05 level, it did show a marginally significant association (p = .068) and contributed to a better model fit (change in -2 log likelihood = 3.876, p < .05). we therefore kept this factor in the final model. significant associations for financial debts and child’s age group suggest that a clinical score on the tds was more likely to be found in children of clients with financial debts compared to children of clients without financial debts (or = 3.39, 95% ci: 1.16, 9.93), and in children aged 12 to 17 years compared to children from the age groups 4 to 6 years (or = 0.28, 95% ci: 0.09, 0.94) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 22 and 7 to 11 years (or = 0.28, 95% ci: 0.09, 0.90). the marginal association for client’s education level could suggest that children of clients with low education levels are more likely to show a clinical score on the tds than children of clients with high education levels (or = 3.75, 95% ci: 0.91, 15.51). multivariate logistic regression analyses predicting the likelihood of a clinical score on the subscale for emotional symptoms resulted in a final model with only one remaining predictor: financial problems. the association between the predictor and emotional symptoms was, however, marginally significant (p = .054), suggesting that children of clients with financial debts might be more likely to show emotional symptoms (or = 2.44, 95% ci: 0.98, 6.07). the final model predicting the likelihood of a clinical score for conduct problems included two predictors: presence of siblings, and client’s education level. although the association for client’s education level was only a marginally significant trend (p = .081), it contributed significantly to the fit of the explanatory model (change in -2 log likelihood = 3.891, p < .05). according to our findings, a clinical score for conduct problems was less likely to be found in children with siblings than in children without siblings (or = 0.34, 95% ci: 0.12, 0.96). the marginal trend for client’s education level could indicate that children of clients with low education levels are more likely to show a clinical score for conduct problems than children of clients with high education levels (or = 4.00, 95% ci: 0.84, 19.01). a clinical score for hyperactivity/inattention was predicted by two client factors: gender and financial situation. associations for both factors were significant indicating that children with a clinical score for hyperactivity/inattention were more likely to be reported by female than by male clients (or = 2.99, 95% ci: 1.16, 7.74) and by clients with financial debts than by those without debts (or = 2.71, 95% ci: 1.02, 7.18). finally, results for peer relationship problems showed significant associations for client’s education level and child’s age. these findings suggest that peer relationship problems were more likely to be found in children of clients with low education levels compared to children of clients with higher education levels (or = 7.04, 95% ci: 1.48, 33.45). in addition, both 7to 11-year-olds (or = 5.85, 95% ci: 1.43, 23.99) and 12to 17-year-olds (or = 5.22, 95% ci: 1.26, 21.66) were more likely to show clinical scores for peer relationship problems than were 4to 6-year-olds. discussion this study aimed to provide more insight into psychosocial problems of csap whose parents were receiving substance abuse treatment. according to our findings, 29% were classified by the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq) as having psychosocial problems in the clinical range. in line with the literature (hosman et al., 2009), our sample showed higher sdq scores than dutch children from general populations (bot, de leeuw den bouter, & adriaanse, 2011; crone et al., 2008; mieloo et al., 2012; muris et al., 2003; van widenfelt et al., 2003; vogels, crone, hoekstra, & reijneveld, 2009). however, lower sdq scores were observed in our study than in previous studies concerning dutch children from atinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 23 risk populations (kaptein, jansen, vogels, & reijneveld, 2008; van der zanden, speetjens, arntz, & onrust, 2010; van santvoort, hosman, van doesum, & janssens, 2014; wansink, janssens, hoencamp, middelkoop, & hosman, 2015). furthermore, studies that used the sdq to address psychosocial problems in csap showed comparable (dawe & harnett, 2007; comiskey, milness, & daly, 2017) or somewhat lower (gruenert et al., 2006; redelinghuys & dar, 2008) mean scores than those reported in children of parents with predominantly nonsubstance-related mental disorders (van santvoort et al., 2013; van der zanden et al., 2010; wansink et al., 2015). still, the sdq scores in the present study were the lowest. the remarkably lower rates of psychosocial problems in our sample might be explained in several ways. first, children’s psychosocial problems were reported by the parent who was in treatment for a substance use disorder. in our study, 50% of the clients were fathers. since mothers are more often the primary caregivers and may be more likely to observe problematic behavior of their children, such behavior may have been underreported in our data. similarly, our study population included parents who did not have full custody of their children; this might be associated with having less contact with their children and therefore having an incomplete view of their children’s behavior. second, the lower rates of psychosocial problems could also be due to differences in sample characteristics between our study and previous research in comparable risk groups. for example, some studies included children who participated in support groups (van santvoort et al., 2014; van der zanden et al., 2010) or whose families received additional parenting support (dawe & harnett, 2007; wansink et al., 2015). perhaps these children were receiving support because they had already shown signs of problem behavior. the lower rates of parent-reported psychosocial problems in our study could also reflect actual problem rates in csap, suggesting that children of substance-abusing parents might experience fewer psychosocial problems than do children from other clinical samples. a third explanation may be found in certain characteristics of addicted parents themselves that distinguish them from parents with other mental illnesses. addicted parents may be less likely to perceive problematic behavior in their children. on the other hand, they may be more likely to underreport problems, whether to avoid possible consequences (e.g., involvement of child protection services, losing custody), or because of feelings of guilt or shame. however, as far as we know, differences in parent-reported sdq scores between substance-abusing parents and parents with other mental disorders have not been addressed in earlier research. the available dutch studies on the sdq in at-risk populations were mainly conducted among children whose parents suffered from non-substance-related disorders such as depression and anxiety and only included a small proportion of csap (van santvoort et al., 2014; van der zanden et al., 2010; wansink et al., 2015). in sum, present findings suggest relatively low levels of psychosocial problems in csap compared to children from other at-risk populations. however, this finding needs to be replicated in future research before it can serve as a basis for further conclusions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 24 our study findings further showed that an increased risk of psychosocial problems in csap was associated with five characteristics: client’s financial problems, client’s education level, client’s gender, child’s age, and the presence of siblings. first, children whose parents had financial debts were more likely to show psychosocial problems in general, symptoms of emotional problems, and hyperactivity/inattention. few studies have investigated financial debts as a predictor of mental health in csap. however, a similar link has been found for children whose mothers suffered from depression (goodman et al., 2004). it is conceivable that financial problems provoke parental stress and conflict (puff & renk, 2014), which could negatively influence parenting and child development (conger, conger, & martin, 2010). parents with financial problems might also be reluctant to seek help for their children because of other priorities and expected financial costs, resulting in potential deterioration of their children’s problem behavior (santiago, kaltman, & miranda, 2013). a second factor related to a clinical score on the sdq in the present study was client’s education level. children whose parents had low education levels were more likely to show peer relationship problems than children of parents with higher educational levels. previous research on children’s wellbeing and their parents’ socioeconomic status (ses) suggests a similarly negative association, implying that mental health problems are more prevalent in children from families with a low ses than in children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (piotrowska, stride, croft, & rowe, 2015; rajmil, herdman, ravens-sieberer, erhart, & alonso, 2014; reiss, 2013). several studies among children and adolescents from general population samples report similar negative associations between parental education and peer relationship problems (havas, bosma, spreeuwenberg, & feron, 2009; de laat, essink‑bot, van wassenaer‑leemhuis, & vrijkotte, 2016; rajmil et al., 2014). a few studies that applied other types of mental health assessments, rather than the sdq, confirmed that mental health problems were more prevalent in csap with low ses, compared to csap with higher ses (ornoy, segal, bar-hamburger, & greenbaum, 2001); likewise, mental health problems were more prevalent in csap whose mothers had lower educational levels compared to those whose mothers had higher educational levels (ranta & raitasalo, 2015). economically disadvantaged families often show higher rates of marital problems, parental conflict, and domestic violence (conger et al., 2010); such factors could mediate the relationship between educational level of the parent and peer relationship problems. narayan, sapienza, monn, lingras, and masten (2015), in a sample of homeless, impoverished families, confirmed that domestic violence was related to peer relationship problems, mediated by the extent of parental warmth and of parental criticism and negativity. third, according to our findings, client’s gender was also associated with a clinical score on one of the subscales of the sdq. more specifically, we found that mothers were more likely than fathers to report a clinical score for hyperactivity/inattention. this result is in line with a meta-analysis suggesting that mothers report slightly more problem behavior in their children than fathers do (duhig, renk, epstein, & phares, 2000), and with previous research among children from clinical samples showing higher levels of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) symptoms reported by mothers than by fathers (caye, machado, & rohde, 2013; sollie, larsson, & mørch, 2012). in all of the above-mentioned studies, adhd international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 25 symptoms were assessed with other instruments than the sdq. in contrast, two studies addressing differences in parent-reported sdq scores for hyperactivity/inattention in children from a community sample indicate an association in the opposite direction, with higher levels of adhd symptoms reported by fathers than by mothers (chiorri, hall, casely-hayford, & malmberg, 2016; davé, nazareth, senior, & sherr, 2008). it is not clear yet how these mixed findings should be interpreted, since multiple factors affect how parents perceive, interpret, and report their children’s behavior (de los reyes & kazdin, 2005). a plausible explanation for our finding could be that mothers, since they are most often the primary caregivers, were more likely to notice hyperactivity/inattention problems in their children. another related explanation is that children of female clients, when living with their mothers, may be more strongly affected by their maternal substance abuse and as a result could be more at risk for developing adhd (ornoy et al., 2001). more research is needed, however, to confirm the association between client’s gender and adhd symptoms and to test the proposed explanations. fourth, our results showed associations between child age and clinical scores for total difficulties and peer relationship problems. compared to children in the two younger age groups (4 to 6 years & 7 to 11 years), children aged 12 to 17 years were more likely to show a clinical score for psychosocial problems in general. for peer relationship problems, 7to 17year-olds were more likely to show a clinical score than 4to 6-year-olds. one explanation might be that these age effects reflect normative developmental differences in psychosocial problems during childhood and adolescence. according to a large international dataset based on assessments with the cbcl among 27,861 adolescents (11 to 18 years) from 25 countries, higher levels of psychosocial problems were found in older (15 to 18 years) compared to younger adolescents (11 to 14 years; rescorla et al., 2013). bourdon, goodman, rae, simpson, and koretz (2005) also propose that psychosocial problems may develop according to different trajectories for boys and girls. in their cross-sectional study among a representative sample of children and adolescents in the united states, parent-reported sdq scores for boys were higher for ages 8 to 14 years, while for girls sdq scores were higher for ages 11 to 17 years. another explanation can be found in the complex interplay between the reciprocal and cascading effects of different types of psychosocial problems that children may develop over time. it has been suggested that csap show higher rates of behavioral problems at a younger age than their peers from community samples (clark et al., 2004; molina et al., 2010). these problems could contribute to the development of peer relationship difficulties at a later age, as described by van lier and koot (2010), who confirmed similar cascading effects in a community sample of school-aged children. the peer relationship problems, rooted in externalizing problem behavior, were, over time, related to the continuation of externalizing and the onset of internalizing problems. similar results were found in a sample of children from low-income families (hoglund & chisholm, 2014). it is important to note that in contrast to the above-mentioned findings from large representative population samples, two studies among at-risk populations did not demonstrate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 26 any age effects (hser, evans, li, metchik-gaddis, & messina, 2013; janssens & deboutte, 2010). furthermore, we found one dutch study that showed an opposite age effect, indicating that parent-related behavioral and emotional problems may be particularly higher in younger instead of older age groups (brugman, reijneveld, verhulst, & verloove-vanhorick, 2001). since empirical findings on possible age differences in psychosocial problems remain inconclusive, further research is needed. the last factor associated with a clinical score on one of the subscales of the sdq was the presence of siblings. in our study, csap with siblings were less likely to show behavior problems than their counterparts without siblings. according to the literature, sibling influences can be protective as well as harmful to a child’s development (kim, mchale, crouter, & osgood, 2007). within the context of growing up with a substance-abusing parent, which can generate a lot of family stress (vanderplasschen, autrique, & de wilde, 2010), children with siblings might benefit from mutual support and understanding (branje, van lieshout, van aken, & haselager, 2004). in addition, a sibling might take care of a younger child when the parent is not able to. hence, having siblings can be a protective factor against the development of psychosocial problems in csap. on the other hand, siblings may have a negative impact on their brother’s or sister’s adjustment by serving as negative role models, performing negative, coercive behaviors, and reinforcing mutual problem behavior (brody et al., 2003; bullock & dishion, 2002). limitations finally, before drawing further conclusions, several study limitations need to be mentioned. due to the cross-sectional design, our data do not allow causal interpretations. prospective studies are needed to investigate which client and child factors predict further development of psychosocial problems in csap during and after their parents’ substance abuse treatment. longitudinal assessments can provide valuable information about the predictors and timing of problem development in csap that can be used for treatment and prevention purposes. another study limitation involves the absence of multi-informant data. as described earlier, present results are based on parent-reported sdq outcomes from clients in substance abuse treatment and could contain bias. by using multi-informant data, a better indication of psychosocial problems in csap can be obtained. this issue might be particularly relevant when assessing psychosocial problems in csap, since these children are more likely to come from “broken” families, and are more often raised by people other than their biological parents. another restriction of our study is that we did not measure psychosocial problems in all children, but randomly selected one child per parent. more data about the wellbeing of the other children is important since siblings might be differently affected by their parent’s substance abuse. although domestic and intimate partner violence are seen as important mediators between parental substance abuse and the wellbeing of the child (conners-burrow et al., 2013), we could not include a reliable estimation of the prevalence and extent of domestic violence in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 11-36 27 the study. the data for this study were gathered during the first interview between the social worker and the referred substance-abusing parent. although workers were experienced in detecting and acting upon signals of child abuse and domestic violence, they did not follow a uniform procedure and the way and the moment that this delicate topic was discussed differed from case to case, depending on the willingness of the parent to speak about their family situation. some factors that could have affected a parent’s willingness to discuss family matters were the amount of distrust with regard to fear of involvement of cps, the intensity and frequency of contact between parent and child, and comorbid psychological problems of the parent. since conversations about domestic violence were not systematically and uniformly registered we were not able retrieve a reliable indication for the presence or absence of domestic violence. in future research, more attention should be paid to this important factor. conclusion the results of this study indicate that 29% percent of the children whose parents received outpatient substance abuse treatment showed signs of psychosocial problem behavior according to their parents’ sdq reports. although this percentage is much higher than found for general population samples, it was unexpectedly lower than previously shown by research in children from similar at-risk populations (dawe & harnett, 2007; 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(2012). paternal alcohol consumption, family transition and child development in a former soviet country. international journal of epidemiology, 41, 1086–1096. doi:10.1093/ije/dys071 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954579410000283 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623730.2013.851816 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00787-013-0476-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00787-003-0341-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10899-008-9096-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-9-489 http://dx.doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2008.49.5.705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/fsh0000105 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ije/dys071 risk of psychosocial problems in children whose parents receive outpatient substance abuse treatment marina e. geschiere, renske spijkerman, and anke de glopper methods study sample and setting assessments analyses results sample characteristics binary logistic regression analyses discussion limitations conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 472 youth’s future orientation and well-being: materialism and concerns with education and career among turkish and norwegian youth salman türken, hilde eileen nafstad, joshua m. phelps, and rolv mikkel blakar abstract: youths’ well-being and subjectivity are strongly related to prevailing political, economic, and social conditions. neoliberalism has extensively permeated societies worldwide, changing the way individuals, especially youth, make sense of their surroundings and themselves. there is thus an increasing need to investigate how youth subjectivities are influenced in contemporary societies that are under the influence of neoliberalism. through an analysis of the future orientation of youth, we can investigate discourses that shape youth subjectivities. in this study, we perform a foucauldian discourse analysis of the future orientation of youth — high school students, from two national contexts, turkey and norway — who were asked to write an essay on their personal futures. we investigate what dominant discourses are revealed in the youths’ writings and how they may influence their subjectivities and well-being. we detail two frameworks of discourses, one pertaining to materialism and the other pertaining to education and career, that our participants drew upon in their writings. we relate these discourses to neoliberalism and discuss the extent to which youth constitute themselves as neoliberal subjects of their respective societies. we discuss how these discourses may also be related to their well-being in diverse ways. keywords: youth future orientation, neoliberalism, materialism, subjectivity, well-being salman türken (the corresponding author) is a phd student at the department of psychology, university of oslo, p.o box 1094, blindern, 0317 oslo, norway. email: salman.turken@psykologi.uio.no hilde eileen nafstad, phd is professor of social and developmental psychology at the university of oslo, p.o box 1094, blindern, 0317 oslo, norway. email: h.e.nafstad@psykologi.uio.no joshua marvle phelps, phd is associate professor of social psychology at bjørknes university college, lovisenberggata 13, 0456 oslo, norway. email: joshua.phelps@bjorkneshoyskole.no rolv mikkel blakar, phd is professor of social psychology, university of oslo, p.o box 1094, blindern, 0317 oslo, norway. email: r.m.blakar@psykologi.uio.no http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 mailto:salman.turken@psykologi.uio.no mailto:h.e.nafstad@psykologi.uio.no mailto:joshua.phelps@bjorkneshoyskole.no mailto:r.m.blakar@psykologi.uio.no international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 473 youth attitudes, values, and well-being are strongly related to prevailing political, economic, and social conditions (e.g., gillespie & allport, 1955; greene, 1990; nurmi, 1991), reflecting the complex and embedded nature of subjectivity (berger & luckman, 1966; burr, 2003; gergen, 2009). in various spheres of life such as education, the job market, and media, youth are exposed to changing discourses and ideologies on local, national, and global levels that influence their development (apple, 2001; roberts & peters, 2008; türken, nafstad, blakar, & roen, 2016; walkerdine, 2006; white, 2015; wyn & dwyer, 2002). scholars have described these current changes as having to do with globalization and interrelated ideas, and practices associated with neoliberalism, consumerism, and individualism (e.g., arnett, 2002; bourdieu, 1998; harvey, 2005). neoliberalism in particular has been conceptualized as pensée unique of the globalization era and is thus particularly relevant for youth subjectivity. neoliberalism has further been conceptualized as an overarching hegemonic global discourse shaping common sense (e.g., bourdieu, 1998; harvey, 2005) and as a metanarrative within which all other ideas relating to political economy as well as social, institutional, and cultural life are expected to operate (roberts & peters, 2008). for example, neoliberal ideas stress the economization of the social (foucault, 1978–1979/2008; harvey, 2005) and therefore have led to economic thinking entering into the personal, social, and public spheres of life (see lemke, 2001; nafstad, blakar, carlquist, phelps, & rand-hendriksen, 2007; rose, 1999). rose (1999), in line with foucault (1978– 1979/2008), argues that neoliberalism has led to the establishment of new conditions in liberal democracies under which individuals understand themselves as solely responsible for their own well-being and fate, for their successes and failures. hence, given the dominant power of neoliberalism, individuals increasingly understand themselves as free, autonomous, selfregulating actors and as a source of capital. each individual becomes “the bearer of a human capital, who must seek to maximise her own self-value” (weidner, 2009, p. 406). neoliberalism has accordingly also led to the weakening of solidarity and individuals’ ties to collectives (bourdieu, 1998; foucault, 1978–1979/2008; rose, 1999). at the same time, individuals are required to accept responsibility for their well-being, for managing every sphere of life, and for tackling the risk and uncertainty created by changes in the structural elements of society (bauman, 2001; beck, 1992; dean, 2010; rose, 1999; walkerdine, 2006). youth experience such pressures to an even greater degree (arnett, 2002; furlong & cartmel, 1997; heggli, haukanes, & tjomsland, 2013). overall, these changes seem to enhance ambiguity, complexity, and the unpredictability of the future (hermans & dimaggio, 2007); weaken institutions that have traditionally provided stability such as family, the job market, and the welfare state (ranci, 2010); increase uncertainty and individualize risk (bauman, 2001; beck, 1992; dean, 2010); lead to identity confusion (arnett, 2002); and provide more diversified and individualized ways of being (buchman, 1989; leccardi, 2005; woodman, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 474 consumerism is also central in neoliberal societies in which individuals are increasingly conceptualized as consumers, with their identity and well-being increasingly linked to material possessions (bauman, 2007; dittmar, 1992; miles, 1998; rose, 1999). this applies especially to youth, who to ever greater degrees are exposed to the mantra of “to have is to be” (fromm,1978, p. 25). rose (1999), particularly connecting individualization to neoliberalism, argues that the subject of neoliberal societies is required to assemble her or his own way of life, and that that is usually achieved through consumption. thus, in neoliberal societies subjectivity, and consequently, the well-being of individuals, is conditioned by consumption. as indicated above, these societal changes affect young people’s subjectivity — their sense of themselves — as well as their ideas and goals for the future. however, as subjectivity is dynamic and subject formation takes place across multiple social contexts and in contradictory ways, how societal changes influence youth is not always predictable. in the present paper we will investigate youth’s future orientation in order to gain insight into the ways in which contemporary discourses related to neoliberalism either open up or limit opportunities for the development of youth subjectivities and well-being. orienting toward the future is an important feature of human life: individuals think and act, set goals, plan, explore options, make commitments, and thus develop themselves and their identity based on their expectations for the future (adamson, ferrer-wreder, & kerpelman, 2007; nurmi, 1991; seginer, 2003). according to nurmi (1991), future orientation involves three processes: motivation, planning, and evaluation. first, youth set goals based on their values and expectations of the future. next, they sketch out ways of realizing and reaching these goals. finally, they evaluate the possibility of realizing their goals and dreams and actualizing their plans. overall, if youth are uncertain about or hindered from achieving their most central goals related to their futures, their well-being will suffer. the possibilities for youth to achieve their goals are strongly related to socio-structural and historical conditions in a given society (gillespie & allport, 1955; kleiber & manaster, 1972). to researchers, future orientation may thus function as a mirror of current times, reflecting the structural elements as well as the ethos of society with its social and cultural norms, and may provide crucial knowledge about possible directions in which society may be heading (hicks, 2002). obtaining higher education and employment is often central to future orientation. with increasing neoliberalization, the pressure to obtain higher education seems also to increase. in terms of increased competition between individuals and reduction in state services, neoliberalization has led to a reconfiguration of education as a commodity (giroux, 2008; roberts & peters, 2008). education becomes an investment and youth may accordingly view the obtaining of higher education as necessary to becoming successful adults. youth feel the pressure both from their parents and from political discourse, especially given neoliberal demands for individual responsibility (harden, backett-milburn, maclean, & jamieson, 2012). indeed, as children and youth are often posited as a society’s future, social and economic policies are put in place to turn them into responsible “citizen-workers of the future” (lister, 2006). responding to http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 475 the changed economic conditions, most western governments have made far-reaching revisions of their educational goals since the 1980s; revisions which, according to wyn and dwyer (2002), emphasize the economic importance of educational qualifications on the one hand and raise uncertainty about the predictability and security of outcomes on the other. research shows that future orientation among youth, almost independently of culture, generally relates to concerns about family, education, and career, and about self or identity, and self-esteem (nurmi, 1991; seginer, 2003). but changing conditions of society under globalization influence the way youth see the future and develop themselves. for instance, lindfors, solantaus, and rimpelä (2012), studying future orientation of finnish youth, report an increase in fears regarding health, death, loneliness, and relationships since the 1980s. haid and colleagues (2010) also report fears about the future among turkish, italian, and german adolescents. adamson et al. (2007) emphasize that there is a need to pay more attention to why young people view their futures in the ways they do, especially for those who work in the field of youth care, which is also undergoing changes due to neoliberalism (white, 2015). our investigation specifically aims to add insights into this complex subject matter by explicating discourses that high school students from two distinct nation-states, turkey and norway, draw upon in voicing how they view their future. the present investigation this paper presents discursive research examining how youths in two nation-states make sense of themselves and their surroundings, as revealed in essays written by them about their own future. we investigate dominant discourses that emerge from these essays, drawing upon a foucauldian approach that suggests that individuals constitute themselves by negotiating discursively available subject positions that reflect society’s existing material and social order (foucault, 1978–1979/2008; hook, 2001). more specifically, discourses construct, promote, or strengthen ways of being, and offer subject positions which, when taken up, have implications for how individuals experience and act in the world (burr, 2003; hook, 2001; willig, 2009). according to gergen (2014), discursive research aims at investigating, revealing, and critiquing discourses that may be “prejudicial, oppressive, unjust, or misleading” (p. 52; see also parker, 2005; willig, 2009). we will thus discuss how the discourses as revealed in youths’ writings are related to neoliberalism and whether or not these discourses may promote social control through making available certain ways of being and thinking while constraining others. the socio-historical context of norway and turkey norway and turkey are similar on some dimensions, such as membership in international and global institutions like the united nations, the world trade organization, the north atlantic treaty organization, and the european union; but very different on others, such as culture, religion, and heterogeneity of population. the two societies also differ regarding the well-being and happiness of their citizens. levels of well-being, as measured by the world values survey, have been higher in norway than turkey since the start of these measurements in 1981 (e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 476 diener, 2000; selim, 2008). international reports by the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd; 2011) and the united nations development programme (undp; 2015) also confirm differences in reported levels of well-being, with norway scoring high not only on measures of overall life-satisfaction but also on other issues such as community, environment, and safety. living in an egalitarian society with high social consensus, a high degree of inclusiveness, low wage inequality, substantial redistribution of wealth, and good public services such as education and health seems to play a major role in norwegians’ personal fulfilment and well-being (oecd, 2011; undp, 2015). turkey’s score on the other hand is below the oecd average: it is in fact one of the unhappiest countries in the study. selim (2008) reports that turkey also shows the highest standard deviations of life satisfaction and happiness compared to other developed countries, which seems to indicate sociocultural differences and unequal income distribution among turkish people. apart from these differences, both societies are going through large-scale transformations associated with globalization and are increasingly permeated by neoliberalism. in spite of a history of an extensive public system rooted in strong social-democratic welfare-state values, norway started, albeit slowly, implementing neoliberal policies in the 1980s by cutting back on public expenditures. the increase of neoliberal policy in norway led not only to a restructuring of the economy through deregulation and privatization, but also toward value shifts in society, from the collective to the individual, observable in norwegian media language (nafstad et al., 2007). privatization, contracting-out of public services, and implementation of more costefficient ways of offering health services such as elder care have become increasingly common (van riemsdijk, 2010). while norway remains a strong welfare state (undp, 2015), both older and more recent research have shown that youth have become more concerned with consumption and material possessions. an early study by tiller (1969) reported materialistic discourse among urban youth. tiller’s participants understood themselves in terms of “i am what i own”: a positive future for these urban youth involved coming into possession of material goods, which resulted in a positive self-identity. this was not the case for rural youth who were more oriented towards social ties and belonging. however, with increasing urbanization, living standards, and neoliberal influence there is a reason to expect that such a discourse of materialism is becoming more widespread among youth in norway. for instance, brusdal and lavik (2008) report that consumerism has become a part of daily life for young norwegians, while hoffman, iversen, and ortiz (2010) found evidence (albeit slight) of materialism as forming part of key life experiences for norwegian youth. the neoliberal shift in turkey occurred in the 1980s with economic restructuring and incorporation into the global economy, and the introduction of new values related to individualism and consumerism (cizre & yeldan, 2005; emrence, 2008). these developments have brought about a tension in turkish society between collectivistic values of solidarity and belongingness on the one hand, and individualistic values of freedom and entitlement on the other (neyzi, 2001). according to cosar & yegenoglu (2009), the neoliberal influence in turkey http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 477 has been successful to such a degree that the state has implemented neoliberal policies that have greatly diminished its responsibility for the well-being of its citizens. neoliberal and other policies, especially those implemented in the last decade, have changed the educational system, with the emphasis now being on employability, efficiency, and competition (e.g., kaya, 2015). the social security system has changed as well, curtailing the rights of the working population, increasing the cost of social insurance, and limiting the levels of benefits received (cosar & yegenoglu, 2009). moreover, there has been an abrupt change in the way turkish youth are conceptualized: the prevailing construction of youth as politically active defenders of the state in the pre-1980s era has been replaced by a construction of youth as apolitical individualistic consumers (neyzi, 2001) who now develop consumer identities (lüküslü, 2009). method we employed the qualitative method of essay writing to gather data (see connelly & clandinin, 1990; heggli et al., 2013). this method minimizes researcher intervention and provides participants the opportunity to write as they please. data were gathered from samples of high school students in turkey and norway. the turkish sample comprised 236 students (83 girls and 153 boys) from three high schools in three different middle-sized towns. the norwegian sample comprised 106 students (67 girls and 39 boys) from two different schools located in an oslo suburb. students were all attending the last year of high school, and were thus approaching a phase of their lives in which they would be making important choices concerning their futures. participation took place during school classes and lasted approximately 45 minutes. the study met the requirements for data privacy of, and was approved by, the norwegian social science data services. we also received permission to collect data from the local educational authorities in turkey. additionally, principals of all schools in both national contexts approved the study. the first author, who speaks both turkish and norwegian, supervised all essay-writing sessions. students were informed about the voluntary nature of participation and that their responses were anonymous. in this paper, participants are identified by their nationality, gender, and an assigned number. the students were asked to write an essay based upon the following question: what are your hopes, expectations, ideals, and worries for the future? they were explicitly informed that there were no right or wrong answers, and to write in as much detail as possible. the length of the completed essays ranged from half a page to four pages. foucauldian discourse analysis we took a foucauldian approach to conducting a discourse analysis of the youth essays. discourse analysis can provide knowledge of how particular understandings of the self and the world are diffused in society; as “discourses tend to define how the social world is ordered and organized, then it is inevitable that discourses will reach into the very hearts of individuals and come to influence and shape their sense of identity” (connolly, 1998, p. 14). such a foucauldian understanding holds that discourses create certain ways of being — subject positions — that, when negotiated and taken up by individuals, have implications for their subjectivity and http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 478 experience (hook, 2001; willig, 2009). through a discourse analysis of how youth write about their future, we attempted to reveal the dominant discourses that influence and shape the youths’ subjectivity in each of the two societies. moreover, this approach also provides insight into how high school students construct identity through negotiating meanings embedded in various dominant discourses they encounter in their daily lives. discourse analysis also offers the possibility of questioning and challenging those understandings, as discourses function ideologically, presenting an oppressive version of the world that defines what is normal and what is deviant (parker, 2005; willig, 2009). willig (2009) suggests a stepwise procedure to perform a foucauldian discourse analysis. following willig, the first author read all the essays thoroughly, searching for different discursive constructions (e.g., applying to education or career) and locating various discourses drawn upon by the students in each national context. engaging with the research literature, the first, second, and fourth authors held collective discussions to relate the discourses in the students’ writings to wider societal discourses. we then evaluated what our participants had to gain by constructing objects (e.g., education, career) in the particular ways that they did. in the next step of the analysis, we evaluated what subject positions were offered by these constructions and what they implied about possible actions by those who take on these subject positions. the guiding question was, “how do discursive constructions and subject positions open up or close down opportunities for action and limit what can be said and done?” finally, we discussed how subjectivity might be influenced — what can be felt, thought, and experienced from within the subject positions identified? the analysis we present in this paper deals particularly with the central issue regarding, “what subject positions are promoted and enabled, and what subject positions are constrained or made unreasonable by the discourses students draw upon?” answering this question allows us to explore the implications of those discourses on subjectivity of youth. there is also a comparative element to our study as globalization is experienced differently between nation-states (heggli et al., 2013). hence, comparing and contrasting the two sets of data from turkey and norway should provide insights into the complex relationships between future orientation, subjectivity, and societal discourses. on a more general level, according to haldar and wærdahl (2009, p. 1142), “having two sets of data from different contexts adds to the richness of the data by providing a contrast that is needed to illuminate the taken-for-granted” (see also guest, macqueen, & namey, 2012; miles & huberman, 1994). analysis in line with much research on future orientation (nurmi, 1991; seginer, 2003), we found that participants were predominantly concerned with education, career, family, and the self. parts of this study, presented elsewhere (under review), cover a relationality framework on the tensions youth feel between, on the one hand, becoming autonomous, self-directing individuals in search of individual achievement and self-realization, and, on the other hand, joining with others in http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 479 solidarity, belonging, and citizenship. it should suffice to say here that although the same discourses appear in the writings of youth in both national contexts, individualistic neoliberal discourses seem to be more widespread among norwegian youth than among turkish youth who, to a larger degree, draw upon discourses that enable a collective identity and belonging. in this paper, we present data concerning what youth expressed as essential to their future well-being: (a) materialism and (b) education and career (see table 1). we will detail and discuss how youth in turkey and norway constitute themselves as particular subjects in order to achieve success and increase their own well-being by drawing upon certain discourses related to materialism on the one hand and education and career on the other. our analysis did not reveal any gender differences in the way students from each national context relate to materialism, education, and career. whenever applicable, we will connect the discourses presented in this paper with the discourses related to a relationality framework, presented elsewhere (under review). table 1 most common themes appearing in the writings of youth in the norwegian and turkish national contexts, in order of prevalence norway % turkey % employment education materialism 66 62 38 employment education materialism 86 81 24 materialism youth in both national contexts constructed positive goals for the future in terms of possession of money or material ownership. we thus found a discourse of materialism in the essays of a substantial number of our participants; for example, norwegian girl 11 wrote, “to live happily without material happiness, is it real? i do not think so.” obtaining the means to possess material things or commodities such as “a luxury car”, “a nice house”, and “a lot of money” was essential for a prosperous future. within this discourse, happiness, images of a good life, and, hence, well-being were dependent upon money: “money makes you happy! money matters!” norwegian boy 4 “i want to establish my own work … and get very rich. to own all the things i want to have.” turkish boy 40 “my ideal is to be rich in the future.” turkish boy 35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 480 material possession was constructed as such an important goal that the possibility of living happily without it was in doubt. this discourse accordingly constitutes the individual as a subject who is not only motivated but also obliged to earn a lot of money to escape a failed, unhappy life. in other words, a positive future is dependent on making money: “in spite of those who claim ‘money does not make you happy’, i want a job that pays a lot.” turkish girl 36 “well, anybody’s dream is to get rich and be happy. i am not going to hide that this is mainly my dream.” norwegian boy 22 while turkish girl 36 is aware of a non-materialistic discourse of happiness, she positions herself against it and is motivated to get a job that will provide her with financial resources that arguably lead to happiness and a good life. norwegian boy 22 makes a link between getting “rich” and being “happy”. moreover, through the expression “anybody’s dream”, he takes for granted that it is only normal for him to wish for the same. this is not surprising given the increasing discourse on consumerism expanding throughout the world in which identity becomes more and more connected to material possessions (dittmar, 1992). these findings also correspond with other research highlighting that materialism and the desire to consume have become key values among young people in contemporary turkey (lüküslü, 2009; neyzi, 2001) and in norway (brusdal & lavik, 2008; hoffman et al., 2010). our analysis shows materialistic values in the essays of 38% of the norwegian and 24% of the turkish sample indicating that a discourse of materialism is clearly present in the writings of youth in both societies. however, a majority of participants were more concerned with other themes and did not explicitly write about materialism. yet, a dominant discourse does not necessarily need to be made explicit all the time or require unanimity. for those who explicitly drew upon a materialist discourse, their future well-being seemed to be conditioned by the need to not only obtain money for security and survival, but to be rich and gain the material possessions required to become happy. moreover, there were only a few essays that challenged materialism. for example, norwegian boy 38 stated, “i have no expectations of becoming rich, money is false happiness.” the few findings in this vein mirror heggli et al.’s (2013) study of 14to 15-year-old norwegians, who in the context of making career choices talked about money only in terms of sufficiency, wanting simply to “have enough”. regarding the norwegian context, the discrepancy between our findings and heggli et al.’s findings might be explained in terms of age. our participants were older and about to make important choices to become independent (most norwegians move out of their family’s house when they turn 18), which might have made them more preoccupied with economic independence and money. however, there was little to indicate http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 481 the dominance of an “anti-materialistic” discourse that offered alternative subject positions (i.e., that it was a normal position to not want or need money or material possessions). hence, the materialism discourse seems to be a dominant discourse in both norway and turkey as it is largely successful in limiting critical voices. most youth who draw upon a materialism discourse in both contexts construct a link between material possessions and well-being. however, many scholars have warned against a preoccupation with material possessions, claiming that the pursuit of happiness through possessions is bound to result in dissatisfaction (e.g., fromm, 1978). for instance, kasser and ryan (1993) show that valuing materiality and aspiring to financial success among adolescents is associated with more depressive symptoms and overall lower well-being. materialism, correlated with higher egocentric behaviour and less sharing of money or other possessions with both significant (family and friends) and non-significant (strangers and society in general) others, is found to be correlated negatively with self-esteem and with overall satisfaction with life: materialists are less satisfied with the amount of fun they have, with family life, with relationships to friends, and with their income or standard of living (richins & dawson, 1992). while money may matter to increase the well-being of the very poor, it seems to be weakly correlated with happiness (dittmar et al., 2014; selim, 2008). indeed, a recent meta-analysis shows a negative correlation between well-being and pursuit of material possessions (dittmar et al., 2014). education and career two other elements that the youth constructed as essential in their future orientation were education and career. university education in particular was seen as important to a successful future for participants in both national contexts. yet, subjectivity cannot develop independently of culture and the structure of society. a main finding was that there were very different ways of constructing and relating to education and career in the two national contexts. turkey: concerns with education and career — a worried self one element that was both central to future orientation but also a great source of worry for the turkish youth was access to university education as a path to better career prospects. higher education was widely constructed by our turkish participants as a key to a good future, and posited as providing youth with possibilities: “my biggest ideal is to get an education at a very good university and have a life of high standards.” turkish girl 26 “my only hope and dream for the future is attending university, having an occupation that i can master, with good job opportunities…” turkish girl 78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 482 university education was thus constructed as a first step toward a good life. as turkish girl 78 continues, “i do not have any other dream beyond attending a university. to be honest, i have not thought about that at all. maybe, to have other dreams, i need to realize this dream first.” hence, without achieving this goal, other dreams cannot be realized. leading a good life seemed almost impossible without an education: “to live a better life later on i will work hard to get into the university.” turkish boy 78 “i know from my life at the present how it is with unemployment.… my father did not get an education and i will learn from that and build a better life for myself.” turkish boy 99 here, education is seen as the difference between poverty and a better future. for youth such as turkish boy 99, learning from his parents’ “mistakes” suggests a rational, responsible subject. he also explains his father’s lack of higher education as a matter of personal choice and also understands himself as the sole responsible agent for a better future. this construction implies “work on the self”, reflecting a discourse of individualism strengthened by the current powerful influence of neoliberalism (walkerdine, 2003). according to that view, youth have to take individual responsibility to succeed in life; the structural constraints of society are ignored. indeed, higher education was construed as such an important event that not having access to it was associated with a multitude of fears for the youth. turkish girl 78 elaborates further on her dream of education, writing that, “my only fear is to let down my family and teachers who expect [a lot of me].” turkish boy 66 also writes about feeling uneasy about whether he will get into a good university: “i am afraid to fail the university exam. i fear that if i fail the exam, i will stay unemployed. i fear that i will not be able to take care of my family.… my biggest wish right now is to attend a good university and thus guarantee my future. a good university means a good job, a good job means a good life. i of course want to lead a good life.… my greatest worry is not being able to realize this dream.” turkish boy 66 these youth feel the burden of possible failure as it would also mean not living up to the expectations of their family members and significant others. furthermore, many participants worried specifically about the university entrance exam as the key to shaping their future: “my hope for the future is to get higher education and start work life later on. my fear is failing the university exam.… if i do well at the exam and get into the university, i believe everything will in itself get better.” turkish boy 134 “the most important reason for why i have to pass the [university entrance] exam is that how my life is going to take form from now on is dependent on this exam.” turkish boy 135 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 483 however, there were critical voices to be found among the turkish participants. although the idea that “a good university, a good education means a good life” (turkish boy 26) represented a predominant understanding among turkish youth, many graduates in reality will face unemployment (celik, 2008). some of the youth in our study were thus keenly aware and critical of the existing system, and in particular the role of the entrance exam, which promotes university education as a solution to unemployment: “our life is decided by a couple of exams we take. at this age, we are turned into race horses. in fact, they do not want a thinking, questioning youth. they only look at what answer you give to a multiple choice question. you necessarily have to fit into the system.” turkish girl 37 “my only hope is the exam. everything is bound to that. it is such a pity that a human life is so much decided by a single exam but unfortunately it is the way it is, i hate life. i don’t even want to live such a life.” turkish girl 64 we can see that the anxiety felt by youth regarding the university exam is so strong that turkish girl 64 uses such a term as “hate” and even considers life as not worth living. this is an illustration of the connection between social structure and subjectivity. the current educational system in turkey creates subjects whose present and future well-being is extensively dependent upon events such as the entrance exams: “the exam totally occupies me and turns all my thoughts upside down. i do not want to do anything. i am depressed knowing that my friends are doing well at [preparatory] exams and me not so good.… therefore, i am cautious about having dreams. if i worked harder, it could go ok but it did not go well on that day [preparatory exam]. everyone says ‘it is going to be all right’ but i don’t believe in this sentence at all because when the results get back, it is not going to be all right.” turkish boy 55 this quotation illustrates how the structure of turkish society in combination with a discourse of “hard work” associated with neoliberalism, creates a worried subjecthood. placing responsibility for success or failure on the university entrance exam alone is such a burden that turkish boy 55 feels depressed and helpless, and wants to withdraw from social activity. when university education is constructed as the fundamental difference between failure and success in life, a strong sense of anxiety is almost inevitable when access is under threat. as well, the inefficient social security system in turkey puts the burden of managing life on the shoulders of the individual. our data also resonate with other studies linking university entrance exams with anxiety among high school students in turkey (e.g., kockar & gencöz, 2004). turkey has in fact the lowest youth education attainment rate (as measured by completion of an upper secondary education) in europe at 51.1%, compared to the average 79% for european countries and 71.1% http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 484 for norway (eurostat, 2012). this means that a larger number of turkish youth are structurally hindered from getting the higher education that is posited as a key for future well-being and success. indeed, out of 2,126,670 youth taking the university entrance exam in 2015, less than half (983,090) were granted enrolment (ölçme, seçme ve yerleştirme merkezi [measuring, selection and placement centre], 2015). furthermore, contrary to a common-sense understanding of education leading to a better life as demonstrated by our participants, selim (2008) reports that higher education has no significant effect on well-being and happiness in turkey. in such societies, neoliberalization may lead to failed subjectivities, especially for youth who increasingly understand themselves as self-made individuals with the sole responsibility for their own successes and well-being (walkerdine, 2003, 2006), as exemplified by the struggle to get access to university education. a worried subjecthood among our turkish youth was not only linked to obtaining university education, but also extended even further into the future, especially with regard to working life. for example: “my biggest fear is unemployment.… my expectation for the future is first of all getting an education and then having an occupation. yet in our country, university graduates do not easily find work. a lot of people are unemployed. my biggest fear is remaining unemployed after university.” turkish girl 42 some participants even questioned the role of the state: “one of my fears is to finish university education yet remain unemployed. because there are thousands of young people like that. although the state has a duty to provide jobs to those who are educated, this duty is overlooked, i think.… maybe the system is failing … if people, after 16 years of education, are ‘pavement engineers’ [a common phrase used to refer to the educated yet unemployed segment of the population] … i do not want to be that pessimistic but these are my observations.” turkish boy 26 according to turkish boy 26, the turkish state fails to provide fundamental services connected to employment for its citizens. such a critique is possible within a welfare state discourse; the development of a welfare state discourse in the aftermath of the establishment of the republic in 1923 made it the state’s task to provide social security services. modern turkey was founded on the principle of statism as an extension of the people’s will (spencer, 1958), in which issues such as unemployment are not viewed as just a personal matter, but rather as a societal or state responsibility. however, current neoliberal development in turkey has reduced the state’s tasks and duties. hence one will find greater pressure on each citizen to be responsible for passing entrance exams, completing an education, finding a job, and remaining employed. as turkish boy 26 elaborates further, “i guess, having a university education is not the only necessity for a positive future, one needs to hold on to a job later and remain employed.” (emphasis added). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 485 wyn and dwyer (2002) contend that, in many societies, large-scale economic changes that began in the 1980s have led to youth today experiencing unemployment and short-term jobs. “what young people are experiencing today … reveals a mismatch between human capital ‘instrumental education’ approach, which informs policy on education in the 1990s, and the reality of deregulated, flexible, and ‘unpredictable’ market forces” (wyn & dwyer, 2002, p. 148). yücesan-özdemir (2012) also discusses how neoliberalism has led to higher rates of unemployment and precarious working conditions in turkey. cosar and yegenoglu (2009) similarly argue that neoliberalization in turkey has resulted in the state assuming less and less responsibility for the well-being of its citizens. subjectivity of youth is influenced negatively by these structural changes, leading to worry, as we found among our participants. taken together, we can see the contours of neoliberal subjectivity among turkish youth. the predominant neoliberal discourse that puts the responsibility for getting into university, finding a job, and remaining employed on the shoulders of the individual (kelan, 2008), is expressed in the fears recounted by many of our turkish youth participants. indeed, the turkish statistical institute (tsi; 2013) reports that 48.4% of participants in formal and non-formal education and training designed to improve career prospects were higher education graduates. thus, employment becomes a lasting concern for many individuals, even those who already possess a higher education, as they need to seek further educational credentials to guarantee employment (celik, 2008). not surprisingly, unemployment is negatively correlated with wellbeing in turkey (selim, 2008). therefore, in strongly individualized societies it can be argued that youth, drawing upon neoliberal discourses, often internalize systemic failure and see it as the fault of their own shortcomings (dean, 2010; rose, 1999; see also bauman, 2001; beck, 1992), a perception that negatively affects their well-being. norway: desire for enjoyable education and minimal concern for unemployment — the self-realizing subject while university education also emerged as an important issue for our norwegian participants, the way in which they related to it differed considerably from their turkish counterparts. obtaining a university education was, in contrast, a non-issue, and the link between a university degree and success via employment was not as strong: “at the university, i want to study something that really intrigues me, no matter what job i have later on. it is not a good job which is the goal. the goal is to get into the discipline i wish at the university, what comes afterwards is not important.” norwegian girl 1 norwegian participants’ future orientations were thus more concerned with what they personally find “intriguing”, “meaningful”, “fun”, or “enjoyable”, as exemplified by norwegian boy 30, who stated, “i want to study something i enjoy.” these participants’ essays focusing on university education were also written in a much more relaxed style. one explanation for this is that there is not an entrance exam in norway. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 486 students are instead free to apply to a number of programs and are accepted based on their own interests and grades from high school. while turkish participants revealed negativity and anxiety about their ability to get into university and hold a job, norwegian participants’ worries related instead to being satisfied with their choices and the consequences these may have in the future: “i do not know what i want. many questions in my head … what to study? what if i don’t choose the right one? what if i do not enjoy myself?” norwegian girl 48 “my biggest worry is that i do not find something exciting to study and i do not find a job i enjoy. that i will have a boring (a4) life. that i will have the feeling that i should have done more or made different choices along the way. i am horrified to end up with resentment and wrong choices.” norwegian girl 64 quotations such as these illustrate that a majority of norwegian youth did not show much regard for the idea of education as a necessity, in the way their turkish counterparts did. rather, attending university or college was something they wanted to enjoy. we found that this goal of enjoyment also applied to working life, and was related to more abstract statements about selfrealization and self-development: “… not forget to live, take care of myself. my dream is to work with something meaningful, something that will allow me to develop myself continually.” norwegian girl 4 “my hope for the future is to do what i feel like doing.” norwegian boy 35 this connection between future orientation and education, working life, and self-realization can arguably be explained in terms of norwegian participants living in a well-functioning welfare society in which certain provisions from the state enable a different subjectivity. this resonates with heggli et al. (2013) who state that the combination of a welfare state with more neoliberalist values promote a self-realizing subject, as illustrated by norwegian girl 4 who wants to “accomplish my full potential”. presumably feeling rather secure about the future, norwegian youth were also able to draw upon discourses of sensation-seeking and self-realization. many seemed to take the sociostructural mechanisms of the welfare state for granted and expressed worries mostly about their own inner life and well-being. moreover, their writings about their futures reflected that they considered themselves more as isolated agents of self-interest: “get a life in which every day is about stuff i want to do and not things i have to do. do not give up on own interest.” norwegian girl 12 “as a 17-year-old now looking at the future, i can only see one thing: opportunities. i have the possibility to do what i want, become just what i want, and use my life to do http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 487 whatever i want. everything is up to me, everything is dependent on my own choices.” norwegian girl 42 (emphasis in original) youth in norway seem to be much more concerned with autonomy, inner life, and self-interest than turkish youth, although there some wrote about being connected to family and showing solidarity with humanity. this widespread understanding among norwegian youth resonates with rose’s (1999) contentions regarding how neoliberalism shapes subjectivities. the self-realizing subject of neoliberalism is a person who is self-centered, who understands herself or himself as autonomous, and who must continually seek personal development to feel satisfied with life. thus, subjective well-being is to a large degree linked to self-satisfaction. such a discourse may lead youth subjects to feel less satisfied when fulfilling their duties as citizens and more concerned with their own individual rights as a way to achieve their full potential and own self-realization. indeed, gullestad (1996) reports changes in the upbringing of children in norwegian society: throughout the 1980s, youth became more concerned with “finding and being oneself”, with little sense of group solidarity. similarly, nafstad et al. (2007) argue that the neoliberal turn in norway has led to more emphasis on rights individuals have rather than duties they are to perform as citizens, indicative of a shift from collective to more individualistic values. combined with self-realization, and in contrast with the turkish youth, concern for unemployment was minimal amongst our norwegian participants as none of the participants explicitly mentioned unemployment as a worry. while some participants were preoccupied with earning enough, for instance “to be able to travel” and “to experience new stuff”, their main worry concerning working life was whether or not they would end up enjoying their job, as exemplified by norwegian girl 58, who stated, “i am afraid that i won’t succeed career-wise, because it is important to have a good income to manage oneself, especially in norway. i am worried i will end up with a job i do not enjoy.” most of our norwegian participants in fact did not express much concern for the unknown future. rather, given the stable living conditions, they wrote with a sense of security. however, this was felt to such a degree that it was posited by some as an issue of dissatisfaction, arguably lessening their well-being. norwegian boy 14 writes: “i sometimes think life is boring since i know all that is going to happen. i know i will get an education, establish a family, live, work, have kids and eventually die! i do not want to think like that and choose therefore to tell myself that i need to live as much in the moment as possible.” norwegian youth seem to take the functioning of the welfare state for granted, as exemplified by the above quote. similar to our findings, the younger (14–15 years) norwegian participants in the study by heggli et al. (2013) also felt less uncertainty and showed a more relaxed attitude regarding unemployment compared to their peers from the czech republic and tunisia. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 488 the difference in future orientation between norwegian and turkish youth illustrates how subjectivity is conditioned by the structural mechanisms and conditions of society (foucault, 1978–1979/2008). although uncertainty is a common consequence of globalization for youth (arnett, 2002; hermans & dimaggio, 2007), national conditions influence the ways and the extent to which it is experienced (heggli et al., 2013). the dominant underlying concern for turkish youth who seek university education as a way to a successful life seems to be unemployment. this finding corresponds with key statistics illustrating that unemployment is indeed a huge societal problem in turkey. according to tsi (2015), the unemployment rate in turkey was 10.1% (youth unemployment 18.3 %) in august 2015, staying steadily around 10% since 20021. while youth unemployment is 18.3 %, celik (2008) reported that 39% of college graduates were unemployed, and argued that unemployment breeds unemployment in turkish society, reproducing social inequality. meanwhile the norwegian unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2015 was 4.6% (youth unemployment 7.8 %; statistics norway, 2015); the rate has not exceeded 5% in the last 20 years. hammer (2006) reports that although short-term unemployment after graduation is not unusual, norwegian youth do not suffer from long-term unemployment. such structural differences may indeed influence youth differently in the two nations. for instance, heggli et al. (2013), reporting that many norwegian youth are indecisive about their future, argue that such indecisiveness is a reflection of an abundance of opportunities. the “open and positively charged attitude [of norwegian youth] is, therefore, framed by a high level of structural security that makes it possible to cultivate uncertainty as a positive aspect of life, as potential and a possibility” (heggli et al., 2013, p. 928), which differentiates norwegian youth from their turkish counterparts. concluding remarks our analysis reveals both similarities and differences concerning discourses that youth in norway and turkey draw upon in their future orientations. we found noteworthy similarities in how ideological and socio-economic changes related to neoliberalism in both societies influence youth subjectivities. drawing upon an increasingly widespread discourse of materialism, youth in both societies sought well-being in material possessions. a dominant discourse can be recognized by the degree to which it limits critical voices. in our study, there were only a handful of youth who wrote in an anti-materialistic manner, while a substantial number in both national contexts emphasized how material possessions were important for their well-being. the materialism 1 it should be noted that the official unemployment rate in turkey is contested. for instance, according to the confederation of progressive trade unions of turkey research institute (diskar; 2015), the official numbers are too low because the labour force participation rate is kept artificially low (51.1 % compared to norway’s 71.6 %), excluding millions of unemployed people from the calculations. disk-ar suggests that the unemployment rate would otherwise be 19.9 % for 2015, the actual number of unemployed being 6,496,000. indeed, the rate of long-term unemployment has been between 20% and 30% for the last decade (oecd, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 489 discourse found in both contexts corresponds with trends in other societies. for instance, myers (2000) found that the number of american college students reporting that being well-off was essential for their well-being rose from 50% in 1971 to 75% in 1998 (myers, 2000). however, dittmar et al.’s (2014) recent meta-analysis of the research on materialism and psychological well-being demonstrates “a clear, consistent negative association between a broad array of types of personal well-being and people’s belief in and prioritization of materialistic pursuits in life”(p. 915). the more youth strive for extrinsic goals such as money, the more problems they may face and the less robust their well-being becomes (kasser & ryan, 1996). it is thus important that researchers, educators, and youth workers be aware of how globally dominant discourses such as the materialist discourse found in our study might influence youth subjectivities, so they can help youth reflect upon how those discourses affect their well-being. our findings also demonstrate the complex ways in which subjectivity develops, as sociostructural differences between norway and turkey seem to lead to key differences involving constructions of subjectivities across similar themes. our analyses indicate that social change toward increasing neoliberal influence in each society, and thus increasing individualism, impacts youth differently in each context. a majority of youth from both national contexts wrote about the same issues, namely university education and employment. however, we found a predominantly self-realizing, sensation-seeking subject among the norwegian youth, who were more preoccupied with growth of their inner lives than were their turkish counterparts. for the norwegian youth, who could rely on the welfare state to provide job-related security, concerns for education and employment seemed to focus more on self-fulfilment and enjoyment. in contrast, we found predominantly a worried subject among turkish youth. one explanation for this difference involves the presence of the university exam in turkey, which was a source of concern for turkish youth. the widespread discourse depicting university education as the key to employment and future well-being seemed to magnify the importance of the university exam and hence increase the strain on the turkish youth in our study. adding to that worry is the much higher and stable rate of unemployment in turkish society. analysis of the essays thus revealed differences in how youth from the two societies relate to insecurity about their personal futures. an uncertain future with a limited potential of stable employment leads to a worried self in turkey, greatly affecting the well-being of the turkish youth in our study. meanwhile norwegian youth seem to be at ease regarding their hopes and expectations of the future, presumably because of the security that the welfare state provides for its citizens. despite increasing neoliberalization, norway is still one of the strongest welfare states in the world, with universalistic policies and economic prosperity. the fact that unemployment is not a major issue in norwegian society today, combined with the knowledge of social security policies (i.e., that one will be taken care of by the welfare state if in need), presumably lead youth to worry less about their future in terms of material safety. however, the security provided by the welfare state seemed to be taken for granted among our norwegian participants, most of whom in their writing did not relate to the society or the collective that http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 490 enables their way of life. this taken-for-grantedness even leads some to find security “boring”. arguably, dissatisfaction with a secure future can be felt if the youth draw upon neoliberal discourses and constitute themselves as neoliberal subjects, preoccupied more with selfrealization, sensation-seeking, and their inner lives (rose, 1999). there might however be disadvantaged groups in norway who show similar concerns to our turkish participants. for instance, sletten (2011) reports a higher prevalence of pessimism amongst adolescents in poor families as they are more concerned about future unemployment and well-being. as our data show, youth who draw upon neoliberal discourses constitute themselves as isolated subjects governed primarily by self-interest. according to these subjects, who seem to take social security for granted, the present and the future, and education and jobs, ought to be about things one enjoys. indeed, only a handful of norwegians showed concern for the well-being of society and wrote that they would like to contribute to society, in contrast to a certain number of their turkish peers. this finding lends support to nafstad et al. (2007) who, in studying changes toward neoliberalism in media discourse, argued that individuals under neoliberal influence were more preoccupied with their “rights” and showed less concern for their “duties” as citizens in norway. norwegian youth can be understood as representatives of post-modernity, having selfrealization as a major goal with work and leisure fused together, isolated to a larger degree from collective ties. in contrast, youth in turkey show a high level of uncertainty and concern regarding their future, as they expect to encounter socio-structural hindrances to obtaining a higher education and finding stable employment, both of which they see as central to a better life; all this leads to a worried self. although discourses that pertain to collectivity are more widespread among turkish than norwegian youth, most turkish youth also draw upon neoliberal discourses and see themselves as autonomous individuals capable of deciding their own fate, and thereby released from structural constraints. yet no matter how hard they work and prepare, most turkish youth will not succeed in the obligatory university entrance exam, given the high failure rate. they are thus, to a larger degree than their norwegian peers, left to fail because of processes beyond their control. neoliberal discourses that youth draw upon promote the concept of responsible and autonomous subjects who manage their lives on their own through selfimprovement and self-discipline, either to attain self-realization or to secure their future and achieve well-being. as far as youth draw upon neoliberal discourses to make sense of their surroundings and constitute themselves as subjects, they will be inclined to seek individual solutions to systemic problems, and this may limit their ability to think critically about the system as a whole. as researchers, it is our duty to investigate the ways in which youth are influenced by systemic changes, and to contribute to increasing consciousness about how their well-being may be preserved. scholars of neoliberalism are particularly preoccupied with investigating how far the vision of neoliberal subject-making is recognized and disseminated in society as well as exploring levels of resistance (e.g., parker, 1999; rose, 1999). in this study, we have attempted to show how widespread such subjectivity is among norwegian and turkish youth. we encourage scholars to investigate further the various contexts in which neoliberal discourses become salient http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 491 and influence subjectivities. such knowledge is imperative to raise consciousness, especially among youth in contemporary societies, about the effects of neoliberalism. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 472–497 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 492 references adamson, l., ferrer-wreder, l., & kerpelman, j. 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(2012). the social policy regime in akp years: the emperor’s new clothes. in s. cosar and g. yücesan-özdemir (eds.), silent violence. neoliberalism, islamist politics and akp years in turkey (pp. 125–152). ottawa, on: red quill books. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616175 youth’s future orientation and well-being: materialism and concerns with education and career among turkish and norwegian youth salman türken, hilde eileen nafstad, joshua m. phelps, and rolv mikkel blakar the present investigation the socio-historical context of norway and turkey method foucauldian discourse analysis analysis materialism education and career turkey: concerns with education and career — a worried self norway: desire for enjoyable education and minimal concern for unemployment — the self-realizing subject concluding remarks references microsoft word 06 complex_mobilities.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120233 the complex mobilities of rural versus urban youth: mobility into and out of the parental home and one’s community e. dianne looker abstract: this paper examines the options facing rural versus urban youth as they negotiate the complex mobilities of moving into adulthood. specifically, it looks at the links between geographic mobility into and out of one’s home community, and mobility into and out of the parental home. qualitative and numeric data from a longitudinal survey of 1200 youth provide insight into these transitions. leaving the parental home is clearly a process rather than an event, and for many it is subjective and ambiguous. more rural youth than urban expected to leave both their parental home and their community, for education and work, and more in fact did leave, by age 19 and 22. this pattern reflects the often limited educational and work options in rural areas. many youth returned to the parental home for varying lengths of time; again, more rural than urban youth followed this pattern. urban youth more often have the option of staying close to home to pursue further education or find a job. the parental home serves as an important safety net for youth, especially those who may have been pushed to leave because of limited options nearby. having the option of returning home gives youth an additional way of dealing with the challenges of their complex mobilities. the results confirm that the pressures on rural youth as they grapple with the mobilities options available to them are quite different than those on their urban counterparts. thus, rural youth are more often faced with the complexities inherent in the links between social and spatial mobilities. keywords: youth, rural, mobility, parental home acknowledgements: an earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference, rural mobilities: towards applied and transformative understandings, held on march 9 and 10, 2017 in puebla, mexico. the author would like to acknowledge the funding provided by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, which made this research possible. e. dianne looker phd is professor emerita at acadia university and at mount saint vincent university. mailing address: 2248 white rock rd., wolfville, ns b4p 2r1. email: dianne.looker@msvu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 49  youth are mobile. many move from one geographic area to another, either to pursue educational opportunities or to find employment. as they obtain further education and/or work experience, they are also engaging in a form of social mobility — gaining human capital as well as working towards gaining credentials and income. this is not always a straightforward process. findlay et al. (2015) pointed out: ,…complex movements include the multiple residential mobilities of students in the early stages stages of entering the labour market, which sage et al. (2013) have shown to involve multiple temporary relocations between place of study, parental home, and residence close to a new place of employment. (p. 392) youth are also moving from childhood to adulthood, albeit at different rates that may or may not correspond to their chronological age. arnett (2000) describes this transition as one of “emerging adulthood” (see also bynner, 2005). further, as mortelmans et al. (2016) noted, the transition from adolescence to adulthood is “demographically dense” in that it involves a number of transitions, including that of leaving the parental home. this particular transition is one that many, if not most, youth see as critical to gaining “adult status” and thereby becoming independent. data from the survey described in the current paper show that, at age 28, rural “youth” are much more likely than their urban counterparts to say moving from the parental home is “very important” to claiming adult status. this paper explores the complex mobilities of rural as compared to urban youth, looking at the relationships between spatial/geographic mobility and mobility in and out of the parental home. these various mobilities differ in a number of ways, one of which is their reversibility. age is irreversible; all youth age at the same rate, although they lay claim to “adult” status at different ages. one of the times that youth in the current study say they are not treated as an adult, even when they are in their late twenties, is if they are living with their parents at age 28. gaining human capital and work experience are resistant to being reversed. one can lose one’s knowledge and skills, and work experience can become irrelevant, but in most instances, it is safe to assume that skills and experience gained are kept. in contrast, both geographic mobility and mobility into and out of the parental home are fairly easily reversed, and often are. these two mobilities are often linked. in most cases, youth leaving the home community are simultaneously leaving the parental home, although some, of course, move with their parents to a new locale. many will stay in the same community, but leave the parental home; others will move from the parental home for varying lengths of time, and then return. what is more, as i will show below, it is not always clear — to the parent or the youth — when and whether the young person has, in fact, “left” the parental home. for many youth, there is a broad transition period during which they live with their parents for a while and away at other times, without a strong sense of which locale counts as the one where they “live”. indeed, this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 50  ambiguity created difficulties for statistics canada when they were designing a survey for 18to 20-year-olds in canada as a first stage of the youth in transitions project, which i advised on. for a certain percentage of households, parents and their 18to 20-year-old child did not agree on whether the young person was living at home, but was temporarily away at school, or had moved out to attend school, and only returned to the parental home for summer and holiday visits. it may be better to see mobility out of the parental home as a process rather than a discrete event (rossignon et al., 2016; tosi, 2016) , even though for some youth it may be a discrete event. in this way, the parental home may be the quintessential example of “in-between-ness” (sheller & urry, 2006, p. 219) for youth. see also rinallo (2016) for a discussion of young adulthood as an “intermediate” stage. further, mobility out of the parental home is normative. there is a clear cultural expectation that, once they reach a certain age, youth will leave the parental home and establish themselves as independent adults. the age at which this is expected may vary, but the expectation is there. that expectation for mobility is less definitive for geographic and other forms of mobility that youth may experience. methods the data to explore these complex mobilities come from a longitudinal study of youth, undertaken by the author, who were surveyed at ages 17 (n = 1,200), 19 (n = 1,043), 22 (n = 985) and 28 (n = 736).1 the first phase of the study involved 400 youth in a city in central canada, 400 in the urban area of an eastern canadian province, and 400 from rural and small town areas of that province. detailed, structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with these youth. at the same time, structured surveys were given to the parents (or legal guardians2) of the youth. lists were obtained from schools and school boards in the sample areas and a random sample of those born in the target year (aged 17, turning 18 at the time of the survey) were contacted. there was an over 80% response rate from the youth and over 70% from the parents. two years later, when the youth were 19 years of age, they were sent a one-page survey asking: ”which of the following are you doing?” and “which of the following have you done [since first surveyed]?” each question was followed by a list of possible responses. three years later — 5 years from the first data collection — a more detailed, structured questionnaire was sent to all the youth (now 22 years of age) who could be traced. a one-page version was sent to those who did not respond after three requests; 63 young people completed this form themselves, and for an additional 47, the information was obtained from an alternative source, usually a parent. in depth, face-to-face, structured interviews were also undertaken with 483 youth at age 22, half from rural areas and half from urban areas at the time of the first survey. 1see andres et al., (1998) and looker (2000) for details of the sample design and data collection. 2only 1% of the youth were living with neither parent but with two legal guardians. three quarters were living with two parents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 51  responses to all the preset questions were coded and linked in a longitudinal numeric file for quantitative analysis. the data set also includes qualitative data from verbatim responses to the many open-ended questions in the surveys (about their definitions of adulthood, and their various moves and why they made them), as well as verbatim responses from the detailed qualitative interviews with the 483 participants at age 22. these verbatim, qualitative answers are linked, via the person’s identification number, to the numeric file. this data set has some limitations. first, the rural sample is drawn entirely from one fairly small, culturally homogeneous province. it does not include any youth attending a school on a first nation reserve. considerable time, money, and effort was put into tracing the youth for the follow-up portions of the study. those investments paid off in terms of strong response rates, and thus minimized non-response bias due to attrition. nevertheless, those whose paths have been more problematic (from their point of view) may have been less willing to share their details. those who were less mobile were easier to trace — a reality that is particularly relevant given that the focus of this analysis is on mobility. despite these limitations, the overall patterns of mobility are very similar to those reported in other jurisdictions and other time frames. what this analysis adds are the voices of the youth as to why they made particular mobility decisions. the primary focus of the present paper will be on mobility into and out of the parental home, and its links to geographic mobility, for rural and urban youth. some of the mobility patterns are gendered; gender differences will be highlighted where relevant. expectations in the first phase of the research, when the youth were 17 years of age, both the youth and their parents were asked if they thought the young person would stay in their current community. the responses of rural residents differed markedly from those of urban residents.3 table 1. will youth stay in community? parental responses when youth is age 17     mother’s response (%) father’s response (%)  row  prediction  rural  urban  rural  urban  1  definitely not stay  13  3  14  2  2  probably not stay  55  30  54  33  3  total “will not stay”  68  33  68  35  4  probably stay  29  59  30  60  5  definitely stay  3  8  3  6  6  total “will stay”  32  67  33  66  note. rural mothers: n = 242; urban mothers: n = 551; rural fathers: n = 188; urban fathers: n = 412. 3throughout this analysis, “rural” and “urban” refer to the locale where the youth lived at age 17, at the time of the first survey. as noted, there was geographic mobility between the time the youth were 17 and the time they were 22 but the details of this mobility are not discussed here. rather the focus is on those from rural and from urban areas. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 52  as we see in table 1, two thirds of the parents in urban areas said that they expected their son or daughter to stay in the community (67% of mothers and 66% of fathers; table 1, row 6). in contrast, two thirds of the parents in rural areas (68% of mothers, and 68% of fathers; table 1, row 3) said that they expected their child to leave the community. the youth were asked if they were likely to stay in their current community. again, there was an urban–rural split: 58% of urban youth said “yes”, compared to 27% of rural youth (data not shown). here we see evidence of the expectation not only of leaving rural areas, but of staying in urban ones. note that there were no differences in these responses based on the gender of the child. the 17-year-olds were also asked how important it was to them, “as a person”, to stay in their current area. over half of the urban youth (55%) said it was important to them, compared to 42% of rural youth. in contrast, 22% of rural youth and 10% of their urban counterparts said it was “not at all important” to stay (detailed data not shown)4. unsurprisingly, the expectation for rural youth leaving is partly based on educational opportunities (corbett, 2007). however, that is not the whole story. parents and youth in rural areas were also more likely to agree that, “young people have a better chance of getting a good job if they leave here” (see table 2). only a quarter of urban parents and urban youth agreed with this statement compared to 70% of rural parents and rural youth (see table 2, row 3). table 2. agreement with “young people have a better chance of getting a good job if they leave here”: parental and youth responses when youth is age 17     mother’s response (%) father’s response (%)  youth response (%)  row  level of agreement  rural  urban  rural  urban  rural  urban  1  strongly agree  43  11  36  10  36  8  2  agree somewhat  34  15  36  15  36  17  3  total “agree”  77  26  72  25  72  25  4  neither agree nor disagree  8  21  13  19  16  31  5  disagree somewhat  8  16  7  21  9  28  6  strongly disagree  6  38  8  36  3  16  7  total “disagree”  14  54  15  57  21  44  note. rural mothers: n = 247; urban mothers: n = 574; rural fathers: n = 192; urban fathers: n = 417; rural youth: n = 332; urban youth: n = 853. the expectation at age 17 is that many rural youth will leave both the parental home and their community. the longitudinal nature of the data set allowed us to follow these youth to see whether they did, in fact, leave. 4this rural–urban difference is the only rural–urban difference evident in the youth’s responses to a whole set of questions about what is important to them including: involvement in community activities, earning a lot of money, developing friendships, being physically active, marriage or living together with a partner, having a steady job, involvement in leisure-time activities, involvement in work or career, family relationships, doing well in school, having children, travelling to different places, working to correct social problems, and “owning your own home”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 53  mobility out of the parental home and community there was no rural–urban (or gender) difference in the proportion of youth who, at age 17, were still living with their parents or legal guardians. over 90% of the youth were still in the “parental” home at that point. that picture had changed by the time of the first follow-up survey, at age 19. at that point over half (54%) of the rural youth had left their community, compared with 33% of urban youth (see table 3, row 6). even more rural youth (62%) had left the parental home, compared to 41% of urban youth (table 3, row 5). table 3 gives the details of the intersections of these two types of mobilities for rural and urban youth at ages 19 and 22. it is important to note that the measures differ for the two ages. at age 19, the youth were directly asked if they had moved out of the parental home and if they had moved from their community since the first survey (when they were 17). in other words, this is a subjective report by the youth: to respond “yes” to this question, they would have had to regard themselves as having, at some point, moved out. as we will see below, youth varied in their definitions of what actually constitutes “moving out”. more females than males, in both rural and urban areas, had moved out of the parental home by age 19 (data not shown). at age 22, the youth were asked who, including parents and guardians, lived in their current household; for this analysis, their answers were tabulated into a dichotomy: “living with one or both parents/guardians” or “not”. they were also asked the name of the community in which they were currently living (at age 22), which was coded into a dichotomy: “same community” or “different community” (from the one they were living in at the time of the original survey when they were 17). some could have left the community, or the parental home, and returned; these youth would be grouped with others at age 22 who had never left at all. in other words, the 22year-olds were not asked whether or not they had ever left the parental home. table 3. percentage of youth who left home community and/or parents by age 19 and age 22     age 19  age 22  row location  rural (%)  urban (%)  rural (%)  urban (%)  1  not with parent(s) nor in same community as earlier  51  28  44  16  2  not with parent(s) but in same community as earlier  11  13  15  19  3  with parents and in same community as earlier  36  55  32  60  4  not in same community as earlier, but with parent(s)  3  5  9  5  5  total left parents (rows 1 + 2)  62  41  59  35  6  total left community (rows 1+4)  54  33  53  21  note. rural age 19: n = 309; urban age 19: n = 732; rural age 22: n = 239; urban age 22: n =546. the results show that similar (small) percentages of rural and urban youth had left the community with their parents (table 3, row 4), and similar percentages were no longer living with their parents but had not left their community (table 3, row 2). however, many more rural youth than urban (51% vs. 28% at age 19; 44% vs. 16% at age 22) had left both the community and their parents (table 3, row 1). conversely, a higher percentage of urban youth were living at home with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 54  their parents at age 19 (55% vs. 36% of rural youth; table 3, row 3) and age 22 (60% vs. 32% of rural youth). in other words, there is, especially for rural youth, a clear link between mobility out of the parental home and mobility out of their “home” community. overall, as the summary rows in table 3 (rows 5 and 6) show, more rural youth had left the parental home at age 19 (62% vs. 41% of urban youth), and age 22 (rural: 59%; urban: 35%). more rural youth had also left the community in which they had been living at age 17 (54% vs. 33% urban at age 19; 53% vs. 21% urban at age 22). this difference in the proportion of rural youth who are mobile is central to the discussion in this paper. the greater mobility of rural youth reflects the often limited range of options available to them compared to urban youth. a clear pattern of gender difference has also been observed (data not shown). more males than females either had never left the parental home, or had left and returned. these gender differences were evident for both rural and urban youth. as of age 22, 36% of rural females were living with one or both parents, compared to 50% of rural males, 59% of urban females, and 67% of urban males. this intersectionality of types of mobility highlights the dilemma facing rural youth, which corbett (2007) captured in his insightful analysis in learning to leave. if rural young persons want to pursue post-secondary education, especially university, they usually have to leave their home communities and therefore their parents’ homes.5 although urban youth may opt to further their education in another locale, university or college attendance is available in virtually all canadian cities. in other words, for some youth (particularly those in rural areas) the decision to extend one’s human capital by pursuing further education means they must make at least a temporary transition out of the parental home and their home community. the “in-between” process of leaving home the true complexity of the process of leaving the parental home is evident in the words of the survey participants. some youth who had left to pursue educational options, and had returned during the summers, said they had not really left. for example, one young woman from a rural community said: “there were two stages — one when i went to [university]; the other was after i graduated and moved to [city] — that was the big move out. i think when i was 17 and went to [university] i still considered i lived here.” similarly, a young man from an urban area explained that he came back summer “because it’s where i live”. an urban female said: “i only went away to attend university — i never considered it moving out”. similarly, another said: “i went to england for university — i couldn’t take them with me. it wasn’t like i left or moved out” (urban female). in contrast, many others with exactly the same pattern of living away from home during the school year, and back during summers, felt they had moved out and were “only back for the summers”. one rural female commented on how gradual the “moving out” process was. “it started 5see frenette (2003, 2007) for detailed analyses of the impact of proximity to colleges and universities on the postsecondary enrolments of rural youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 55  out just a few days and progressed. i had clothes at home and here [with her boyfriend]. i could spend time with my boyfriend and it was nice and quiet down here. i was in transition for a time, in and out but definitely out by the spring.” another said: “both: moved back and forth from school and work” (rural female). so, moving out of the parental home seems to be a subjective matter. interestingly, some youth were inconsistent from one survey to the next regarding their date of moving out, stating first that they had not moved out by a given date, but later that they had left the parental home before then. in other words, they revise their idea of when they actually moved out. some reported having moved out, but then clarified that it had been for just a few days or weeks; others who were away for months at a time considered themselves still to be living “at home”. how long does one have to be away to be classified as having “left”? how long must one live with parents again to be counted as being “back”? some youth classified the return in the summer as “coming home”, others as “visiting for the holidays”. as du bois-reymond (1998) noted: “according to one’s life situation, one moves around between one’s own place and the parents’ home, and leaving the parents’ home is not as final as it used to be.” the complexity of the process is also evident in the fact that some youth left and returned many times, and not just for summers when they were attending a post-secondary institution elsewhere, although that was the most common pattern. by age 22, 57% of rural youth and 34% of urban said they had left their parents’ home and were not currently living there. an additional 16% of rural youth, and 22% of their urban counterparts said they had left but later returned (detailed data not shown). in sum, given that the transition out of the parental home is a process, not an event, the definition of what is happening and when it happens becomes a complex social construction. these unclear definitions are part of what leccardi (2006) described as, “changes in the construction of young people’s biographies in a social context characterized by great uncertainty, acceleration and fragmentation.” the complexity of this construction becomes evident in the next section of the paper, which looks at the reasons the youth gave for leaving the parental home and then returning to it, reasons that demonstrate that they regarded themselves as having moved out, and (for some) that they had returned. as we have seen, whether these “moves” have taken place is subjective and malleable. tables 1 to 3, above, provide some of the rural–urban context for these moves. it is clear that not only are rural parents and youth more likely to expect that the young person will leave their home community (table 1), these rural youth, in fact, are much more likely than urban youth to leave their community and therefore also the parental home. this difference in the proportion of youth leaving (and returning to then again leave) the parental home is the key rural–urban difference. in data not shown, it is evident that, on average, rural youth leave the parental home at a younger age than do urban youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 56  reasons for leaving the parental home the interviews conducted at age 226 provided more detail about the complex process of moving out, as youth were asked for their reasons both for leaving and for returning to the parental home.7 their reasons for leaving are presented below; the following section gives their reasons for returning. pursue further education: as indicated earlier, the most common reason for leaving home was to pursue further education at an institution in a different community (usually a city). for most rural youth, the decision to move was dictated by the decision to pursue this further education given that there was not a post-secondary institution in their own community: these youth usually felt that “it was too far to commute” (see also holdsworth, 2009; malatest & associates, 2002). urban youth also left their homes and communities for schooling, but only because they had chosen a particular institution that was farther away, not for lack of options in their home community. so, the decision process of pursuing further education is different for rural than for urban youth. for rural youth, the decision is whether to go on to post-secondary education; for urban it is where to go. most rural youth must accept that the decision to continue their education entails leaving not only their parental home but also their home community. for most urban youth, the decision about further education is independent of the decision to leave home. according to the interviews at age 22, 30% of the urban youth and 43% of the rural youth left the parental home to pursue schooling elsewhere. however, keep in mind that some of the youth who left their community to attend an educational institution did not “feel” that they had “left home”. find work: it is not just schooling that pulls or pushes youth to leave the parental home. youth also leave home to find work, work that is typically more readily available in urban than in rural areas. sixteen percent of rural youth said they left their parents’ home for work; only 9% of urban youth gave this response. however, it is also the case that many youth return home for the summers (or even permanently) for the work available in their home community. both rural (13%) and urban (10%) youth said they returned home for work. be on one’s own: another motivation to move out of the parental home is to be on one’s own, to “be independent”. thirty-one percent of rural and 28% of urban youth mention this search for independence as the rationale for leaving home. as one young rural woman reported, “i had to for my sanity; it was not that bad, but it was time to leave and be on my own.” another, a young man from a rural area commented: “i figured i could do stuff on my own.” or, as a young woman from 6interviews were conducted with a subset (483 youth) of the total sample, who at this stage of the research were 22 years of age. many of those whose questionnaire responses are reported in table 3 were not part of these additional detailed interviews. 7the youth who were interviewed were asked if they were currently living with one or both parents (or legal guardians). if they said yes, they were asked if they had ever moved out, and if so, when and why, and when and why they moved back. those who said no, that they were not currently living with their parents or guardians, were asked when and why they had left, and when and why they had ever gone back for any length of time. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 57  an urban region phrased it, “i just wanted to get my own place, see what it was like on my own and everything.” many moved in with a friend or relationship partner, while others left because they were having a child. these youth tended to also say the move provided a type of independence. conflicts: a minority (about 7% of rural and 8% of urban youth) left home because of conflicts with their parents or another family member. a rural female commented, “i had problems at home. that’s why i quit school and left home.” another rural female commented that she “hated living at home and the restrictions”. some chafed at the rules set by parents: “i was 17 and i had to be home by 10 p.m. and all my friends could stay out until 12 or 1 on school nights. i couldn’t do what i wanted; it wasn’t fair” (rural female); “i had a dispute with my father; i couldn’t take his controlling influence any more” (rural male); “mom and i were getting on each other’s nerves. i thought it was time to be on my own” (urban male). involuntary: in a few cases the youth didn’t leave, the parents left — to another part of canada, to an “old folks’ home” (grandparents were the guardians in this case) or a lone parent died. some youth were kicked out: one rural female said, “they [her parents] asked me to [leave]. i never had a job and they were getting on my case, so i left and moved in with an aunt.” an urban female commented, “i was pregnant; my parents thought it would be too much of a hassle to have a baby there.” one urban woman had to move from her parents’ home because she was enrolled for social assistance and “wasn’t allowed to live with parents”. reasons for moving back as noted above, in the interviews conducted when the youth were 22 years of age, the participants were also asked whether or not they had moved back home and the reasons for this choice. of course, their comments about returning have to be understood in light of the considerable variation in their definitions of what constituted having “left”. a small number of these youth said they would never go back, but most did — at least temporarily for holidays and weekends, if not summers. others returned to the parental home for more extended stays. and, of course, at age 22 there were still a number (60% of urban, 32% of rural) who said they had never left (table 3, row 3). fallback option: for many returning youth, the parental home was a fallback option. the parental home as a fallback is part of the parental safety net, as described by other researchers (e.g., sage et al., 2013; swartz et al., 2011). if things didn’t work out elsewhere, if they couldn’t get a job, if their marriage or relationship was in trouble, they moved back “home”. of youth who left home and then returned, 26% of rural youth and 16% of urban youth gave reliance on the fallback of parental support as the reason for their return. an additional 9% to 10% of rural and urban youth talked about how living at home was cheaper, and thus saved them money. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 58  the following quotations illustrate these patterns: “i was finished school and i didn’t know what i was doing” (urban male); “i couldn’t afford my own place any more” (urban male); “because i wasn’t getting anywhere with my life at that time. i had no job, no education, and i realized i had to get back on my feet…” (urban female); “i ran out of money and had to come home” (rural male); “when [boyfriend] and myself broke up, because of financial reasons i lived at home” (rural female); “i returned home between jobs whenever i had no place to live” (rural female); “to get a job and it was cheap to live here” (rural female). opportunities in the community: others (10% of urban and 13% of rural youth) had opportunities in the community where their parents lived for summer or more permanent work. some found work in their parent’s business; others felt they had options because of the contacts they had in the community. offer support: while some returned home to get assistance, others came to offer support when needed — a family member was sick, a relative needed a babysitter, or someone close to them needed care. however, such transitions were not always straightforward. one urban female said, “coming home people expect things of you. it’s harder to come back this time.” home in many of the quotations, whether they were talking about leaving or returning, the youth used the term “home” to describe living with their parents. this terminology raises the question of when a young person can be said to have established a “home” of their own and thus when the parental abode is no longer considered “home”. many of these young people had lived on their own — in academic residences, in apartments, with friends, roommates, siblings, spouses, and partners. yet, they still referred to their parents’ house as “home”. for rural youth in particular, the fact that, in most instances, their parents still lived in what they called their “home community” reinforced this definition of home being where their parents are. options besides the fluidity of the transitions in and out of the parental home, an underlying dynamic seems to be one of options — options available or restricted to which youth have access. youth, as emerging adults, “not only vary in the degree of exploration they choose to pursue, but also … this exploration is not equally available to all young people” (mortelmans et al., 2016, p. 82). for many rural youth, educational and work options are restricted. table 2, above, documents that rural youth and parents were aware of the restricted work options available locally even while the young person was still at home. urban youth can pursue a range of post-secondary and employment options while staying in their home communities, and the results, reported above, suggest that they take advantage of this possibility. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 59  the key “option” being explored here is that of staying in the parental home, and of returning once one has left. about a third of both rural and urban young people who said they had left their parents’ home also (as of age 22) said they had not returned. for some, this was because they had moved on and established their own home with a partner, and/or child. a minority had left after experiencing conflicts at home; for them, returning was not seen as a viable option. for others, especially those in rural areas, the option of living in or returning to the parental home was not available to those who wanted to pursue certain other options with respect to education, work, or relationships. overview of interview results the tables, below, give a numeric summary of the patterns in these quotes from the interviews with the youth at age 22. it is important to remember that they were only asked why they left the parental home, and when and whether they returned to the parental home if they reported they had, in fact, at some point left and returned. they were only asked why they returned home if they reported they had, in fact, left. as the quotations have shown, the youths’ views about whether they had left and whether they had returned were fluid and ambiguous. with that caveat in mind, table 4 and table 5 allow for a more systematic comparison of the responses given by the 22year-old youth (who are designated “rural” or “urban” according to where they were living at age 17). the number of observations differs between the two tables because only those who said they had left the parental home at some point were asked if they had returned, and, if so, why they had returned. also, individual participants often advanced more than one reason for leaving or returning, and so were counted in multiple rows. not all reasons for leaving or returning are listed: for example, a handful said they had left to travel, and a few had left home or returned home because they were pregnant. table 4. reasons for leaving the parental home: from interviews, age 22 row  selected reasons for leaving  the parental home  rural (%)  urban (%)  1  schooling  43  30  2  work  16  9  3  independence/living with another  31  28  4  conflict at home  5  8  note. some individuals gave more than one reason for leaving. this table presents the reasons most frequently given by those who had left. rural: n = 191; urban: n = 144. table 4 documents, from the qualitative interview data, what numeric analyses from other studies (e.g., looker, 2002; malatest & associates, 2002) have shown: many youth report that they leave home for schooling and for work. schooling looms large as a source of the rural–urban difference in the likelihood of leaving home. at age 22, more rural than urban (43% vs. 30%) participants said they had left home to pursue schooling. for work, the rural–urban difference is also present, but less pronounced: 16% of rural youth and 9% of urban youth gave this reason for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 60  leaving the parental home. it is notable that a relatively high percentage (about 30%) of both rural and urban youth said they had left to establish some independence. table 5 provides a summary of the reasons the 22-year-old youth gave for returning to the parental home once they had left. rural youth were more likely than urban to mention that they just returned for summers, or just for visits and/or vacations. more importantly, they were more likely than urban youth to give reasons for returning that reflected reliance on the parental home as a safety net (26% of rural vs. 16% of urban youth were in this category). table 5. reasons for returning to the parental home: from interviews, age 22 row  selected reasons for returning  to the parental home  rural (%)  urban (%)  1  schooling  3  3  2  work  13  10  3  to help  4  1  4  financial reasons  10  9  5  summers only  25  13  6  just to visit/vacations  19  2  7  fallback/safety net   26  16  note. some individuals gave more than one reason for returning to the parental home. this table presents the reasons most frequently given by those who had left and returned. rural: n = 144; urban: n = 83. it is not difficult to understand the key rural–urban difference in the rationales for leaving the parental home. rural youth left to find educational and work options that were generally unavailable in their home communities. when it comes to returning to the parental home, however, what are we to make of the rural–urban differences in rationale? many more rural than urban youth, of those who had reported leaving (table 3, row 6), returned for summers and for visits (table 5, row 6). we know that more of them left (see table 3). however, these percentages are based on those who say they had left. moreover, why did more rural than urban youth use their parents as a fallback or safety net (table 5, row 7)? one interpretation might be that the rural youth left earlier than their urban counterparts, and in greater numbers, because of the limited educational and occupational options they face. given this “compelled” mobility, these youth may not yet have been as ready as they would have liked for this independence. of course, those urban youth who were still, or again, living with their parents at age 22 might also have been dependent on the parental “safety net” — they just did not leave home to invoke it. given the patterns observed for urban youth, and given the limited evidence we have on shifts in mobility patterns when educational options in rural areas are expanded (frenette, 2003, 2007), it might be safe to assume that many of these rural youth would have opted to stay closer to home if they had had the chance. in other words, not only is the process of leaving home a complex and fluid one, the pressures facing rural and urban youth to leave (and to return) are quite different. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 61  conclusion the majority of rural youth and rural parents say they expect that the youth will leave their home community (and therefore the parental home), for education, work, both, or some other purpose. these expectations are largely borne out in this longitudinal study. however, there is considerable “back and forth” mobility as rural youth go through the process of leaving the parental home and community. pursuing educational opportunities is a prime driver of migration from rural communities (corbett, 2007), as this study confirms. employment is a distant second. in our study, “independence” was a motivation for about a third of the youth; of course, taking on a job or pursuing educational options may also involve establishing some independence from parents. however, for most youth, that independence is apparently explored with the confidence that the parental safety net is there if things do not work out. for many of the young people in this study, their first forays into independent life were short-lived, ending when relationships failed or money ran out. it is clear from the evidence, presented above, that leaving the parental home is a “process” and a complex and a subjective process at that. youth, their parents, and a neutral academic observer might each reach different conclusions, based on the same observed “facts”, about when and whether a young person had left the parental home, and whether they had returned. indeed, for some, it may be that “home” is as much or more a subjective emotional attachment to a locale rather than a specific place of residence. this analysis has documented some of the complexities of the process of moving into and out of the parental home. this transition is expected of youth at some point — it is, as noted at the start of the paper, a normative type of mobility. the timing is variable, however, and dependent in part on whether the parents live in a rural or an urban community. youth from rural areas more often felt compelled to link geographic mobility with mobility into and out of the parental home. this link was necessitated by the relative dearth of educational options in most rural communities. it is exacerbated by a lack of desirable work options as well. however, their home communities seem to have provided temporary summer jobs for at least as many if not more rural as urban youth, insofar as somewhat more rural than urban youth say they return to their home community for work. urban youth can, of course, stay at home and access the educational and work options there. we have seen that definitions of whether or not one has, in fact, “moved out” used by youth and their parents were fluid, ambiguous, and sometimes inconsistent. since more rural than urban youth left their home communities between the ages of 17 and 22, more of them had to confront this ambiguity. urban youth who lived at home while attending post-secondary education had no difficulty in affirming that they were still living at home. it was those who had gone away who had to address the question of whether they had really left and, if so, when. were they living at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 62  home while temporarily away, or were they living elsewhere and temporarily home when school was not in session? these two interpretations are quite different social constructions of the same complex reality. it is rural youth in particular who have to grapple with these social constructions. thus, it is rural youth in particular who are faced with the complexities of the link between these spatial and social mobilities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 48–64 63  references andres, l., anisef, p., krahn, e. d. looker, & v. thiessen. 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(2016). leaving home sooner or later: co-residence and parent–adult child relations in italy and sweden [doctoral dissertation, university of trento]. http://eprintsphd.biblio.unitn.it/1748/ international journal of child, youth, and family studies, volume 3, number 2/3, 2012 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 128 roundtable: conversations on conversing in child and youth care sandrina de finney, j. n. cole little, hans skott-myhre, and kiaras gharabaghi, sandrina de finney, ph.d. is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. tel: (250) 721-6372. e-mail: sdefinn@uvic.ca j. n. cole little, ph.d. is a sessional instructor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, b.c., canada, v8w-2y2. tel: (250) 721-7979. e-mail: jnlittle@uvic.ca hans skott-myhre, ph.d. is an associate professor in child and youth studies at brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. tel: (905) 6885550 ext. 4323. e-mail: hskottmy@brocku.ca kiaras gharabaghi, ph.d. is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, m5b 2k3. tel: (416) 979-5000, ext. 4813 (office) and (705) 394-7264 (cell). e-mail: k.gharabaghi@ryerson.ca mailto:sdefinn@uvic.ca� https://wm3.uvic.ca/src/compose.php?send_to=jnlittle%40uvic.ca� https://wm3.uvic.ca/src/compose.php?send_to=hskottmy%40brocku.ca� https://wm3.uvic.ca/src/compose.php?send_to=k.gharabaghi%40ryerson.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 129 in the spring of 2011, we had the pleasure of participating in the third child and youth care (cyc) in action conference hosted by the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, victoria, british columbia, canada. we were invited by conference chairs veronica pacini-ketchabaw and jennifer white to participate in a roundtable discussion on the theme of “conversations on conversing in child and youth care”. this theme was inspired in part by a recent posting to the cyc-net listserv, which asked, “why are people speaking about the field in ways i don’t understand?” veronica and jennifer sensed that this question – and the spirited, and at times fractious, discussion that it generated on the listserv – would provide an excellent platform for mutual learning, critique, and reflection. thus they capitalized on the opportunity to extend a conversation that was already underway, and used the question as a departure point for our roundtable discussion. in this paper, four of us who participated in the roundtable continue this conversation, with each of us probing deeper and pushing further along the themes and ideas we discussed in victoria. we are not so much responding to any particular questions here, but rather trying to articulate some of our critical reflections on the field as we each are experiencing it. we hope that readers might engage with some of ideas we present in this conversation on their own terms. in keeping with the spirit of the roundtable discussion, this is a fluid, open-ended, ongoing conversation without end. in working together, we have sought to foster the conditions for open, creative, respectful, and generative conversations across our differences. in other words, we were neither looking to find answers to these questions nor were we seeking to solve problems. on the contrary, our goal was to open up space for fresh ways of thinking about our work. we also want to extend our gratitude to jennifer and veronica for initiating and facilitating this conversation. initial reflections on the roundtable conversation sandrina de finney i have been asked to share the kinds of questions i have about the field of child and youth care (cyc) and the conversations i hope can be disrupted, amplified, or added to our evolving, collective musings about the field. i am putting forward four foci for the purpose of further discussion: first is the question of who we work with in our diverse field, and what brings these children, youth, families, and communities into “cyc” spaces and interventions. i am deeply alarmed that aboriginal (or, as i prefer, indigenous1 1 the notion of aboriginality and who is counted under the already problematic government category of “aboriginal” warrants unpacking. as an alternative, and to make visible struggles against colonialism among first peoples around the world, i am opting for the increasingly recognized term “indigenous”. see de finney, dean, loiselle, and saraceno (2011) for a more detailed description of ongoing colonialism and indigeneity. ) children, youth, and families are drastically overrepresented across practically every context in which we practice and research. whether we are working in the fields of mental health, community and school-based services, residential care, or child protection, first nations children and youth are the ethno-cultural group that is most represented yet receives the least funding – up to 22% less for social services, and between 25% and 40% less for education (first nations education council, 2009; trocmé et al., 2006). i am concerned that as a field and as a society, we do not focus enough on how and why international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 130 indigenous communities are so significantly overrepresented in indicators of social exclusion, yet remain chronically underfunded compared to other canadians. too often, this history is treated like a dirty, shameful secret. the second focus or question that interests me is an examination of what underlies this overrepresentation, a laying bare of the dirty secret of hundreds of years of colonial policies and practices. this secret burns in my throat in whatever work i do. we need to understand colonialism not as something that is “over and done with” but as a powerful contemporary reality; colonial effects are constantly reformulated onto the bodies, spirits, societies, and lands of first peoples, shaping the lives of children, youth, and families to whom we are committed in our work. but this dynamic remains largely invisible in our discussions of cyc practice, policy, and research – largely absent even in our journals, online networks, conferences, curricula, competencies, even though fine and ruglis (2009) argue that the story “is no news to our nation; we were founded on this narrative” (p. 12). as a third focus, then, in order to make sense of this narrative of colonial racism that is so integral to canadian society – and by extension, the production of normative constructions of gender, ability, and sexuality, among others – i search for other accounts. fine and ruglis (2009) explain that those children, youth, and families who do not meet dominant white standards are treated as “disposable, embodying danger, worthy of dispossession, or in need of containment in order to protect ‘us’” (p. 12). my hope is that alternative stories might disturb the dominant pathologizing discourses of young people and families who fall outside of normative ideas of “adjusted”, “healthy”, “successful”, “beautiful”, “worthy”. i wonder what gets lost when we become stuck in the familiar contours of normative theories and practices? what knowledge and ways of being flow outside the overwhelmingly eurowestern perspectives that so define our field? what critical theories – specifically, anti and postcolonial, indigenous, feminist, queer, and other analyses of resistance, hope, transformation – can contribute to this discussion, and to a more productive praxis of social change? how can we make room for unanticipated, nuanced, previously silenced narratives of what counts and what is effective practice? in this search, i am at once attracted to and wary of theoretical fluidity and nomadism. nomadism and hybridity are fruitful lines out of linear eurowestern-centric knowledge hierarchies, at the same time as they are colonial strategies of uprootedness, displacement, and dilution. lastly, i am interested in reformulating how we think about the relationships among cyc practice, theory, advocacy, and our roles as members of the communities in which we live and work. i am drawn to approaches that do not re-victimize and pathologize all “others”. eve tuck (2010), an indigenous activist and scholar, writes about the limitations of damage-centred perspectives. she stresses that pathology-driven lenses only “seek to document pain, loss, brokenness or damage”, depicting “entire schools, tribes, and communities as flattened, ruined, devastated” (p. 638). as linda tuhiwai smith (1999) argues, a damage-centred approach reduces indigenous people to “making claims” about their “rights and dues” (p. 143). this approach assumes it is outsiders – specifically, those who represent normative societal values of neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism – who have the authority and power to legitimize claims and give up their resources to redress the inequity (a restructuring of power, we know too well, does not happen) while communities themselves are powerless, relegated to “proving” their worth and entitlement. tuck asks, “what are the consequences of singularly defining schools, communities, and tribes as damaged? are the long-term costs of these damage narratives worth the benefits?” (p. 638). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 131 instead of pathologizing frameworks, tuck proposes a framework of productive possibility, what she calls a framework of smart desire, building on and complicating deleuze’s theorizing of desire. this framework is “intent on convoking loss and oppression, but also wisdom, hope, and survivance” (p. 639). according to anishinaabe scholar gerald vizenor, survivance storytelling constitutes an “active repudiation of dominance, tragedy, and victimry” and strengthens “the creases of transmotion and sovereignty” (as cited in tuck, 2010, p. 639). tuck’s framework has struck a chord with me: what is uncharted, unanticipated, subversive in theory and practice, is in fact precisely what speaks to many of us who do not see our realities represented in the confines of normative eurowestern-centric perspectives on how lives should be lived. this requires an unpacking and a resisting of the dominant, deeply absorptive discourses of individualization and responsibility for the individual change of our clients – and our personal responsibility not to “burn out” in the face of overwhelming social injustice. clinical counsellor and community activist vicky reynolds (2009) argues that this convenient and deliberate “blame centred” discourse says more about societal problems than about the failures of individual service providers: the problem is not in our heads or in ourselves, but in the real world where there is a lack of justice. the people i work alongside don't burn me out and they don't hurt me: they transform me, challenge me and inspire me. we're not “burning out”, we're resisting being blown up! what is threatening to blow me up is an inability to work in line with my ethics, and my frustrating failure to personally change social contexts of injustice that clients wrestle with and live in. (p. 6) i think we have a lot to gain from questioning the encumbered, malfunctioning machine of social services. to understand how active coloniality operates is to seriously and humbly interrogate our own complicity/embeddedness in its inner workings – because the system sets us up that way – and in so many ways we are part of the system, and it is part of us. yet in applied fields such as ours, the concern is frequently voiced that theorization – and particularly critical analyses such as those presented here – detracts from practice and even limits our efforts to connect effectively with children, youth, and families. i find this perspective deeply problematic for several reasons. first, it reproduces a false dichotomy between those who work with and those who think about children, youth, and families, as if working with and thinking about were mutually exclusive acts. understanding them as such maintains the safety of the status quo and curtails possibilities for radically transformative interventions with children, youth, and families. from my multiple locations as a community member, academic, practitioner, and activist, i find it necessary to problematize the artificial division between thinking and doing that maintains both eurowestern privilege and the exclusion of other voices. in the spirit of unsettling such paralyzing dualisms, i emphasize the value of a more collective, politicized approach that integrates collaborative theorization and practice, one that is rooted in working and thinking and changing with. undoubtedly, my proposal for a collective ethic raises other questions that are beyond the scope of these brief pages, but these are questions i am excited to engage with and that are ripe with possibility. my hope is that our collective engagement can provide an opening for further conversation rather than definitive resolutions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 132 cole little * what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why? the conversations that inspire me the most are with students i teach and youth and families i work with. i teach in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria and the majority of my teaching has been with undergraduates. i challenge them on “cyc speak” which tends to leak into conversations without a lot of critical reflection. although all disciplines involve a particular grooming in conduct, language, and, dare i say, politics, i find the challenge in the classroom the most animating. an inspiring conversation, for me, involves deconstructing the dialect of cyc praxis with a focus on gender, identity, and social justice. a student this year was really challenged by the introduction of postmodern theories of narrative and social constructionism: do we have a core? can we really re-author our stories? what gets lost in the process? these philosophical wrestlings in the classroom are what i really thrive on. in my clinical practice, i am inspired most notably by “philosopher teen” who is a young woman well into the territory of recovery from an eating disorder. she asks the raw questions about gender, identity, and social justice that i so often theorize about. although i see many people in any given week, she is the one that reminds me why i teach, research, and practice. she also reminds me that work in gender issues is not done, alongside the intersections of ability, mental health, identity, racialization, and colonization. i do find the question – “what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why?” – somewhat vexing. i draw on various conversations for my work as a teacher, researcher, and practitioner: ted talks (www.ted.com), feminist poetry and theory, arts-based methodology, fiction, and talking with people in the grocery line. that said, i believe we as a cyc “field” can draw much animation from the research conversations we are having with specific attention to participatory action research methods and community collaborations that take the traditional idea of “milieu” to a different level of reflection. * how do you currently make sense of (or engage with) some of the uncertainties and contradictions that are part of our current conversations in cyc? i truly believe the field of cyc is experiencing an identity crisis of sorts. the emphasis on higher degrees (of which i am a recipient) creates a tension of perceived distance between “the field” and “the academy”. many of us in the academy are active practitioners, and i think this artificial divide between theory and practice is, at this point, unavoidable, but at all points untenable. there is progressive work around the idea of praxis (white, 2007) but this does not, to me, appear to be embodied and gets taken up as a politically correct lingo of “practice”. i also see the field grappling with eurowestern paradigms of development alongside its purported strengths-based orientation. while some would argue for a singular cyc discourse, i would invite more conversation around theory and common sense that ground our current perspectives of how dominant and non-dominant discourses merge and counter-merge with the process of helping children, youth, families, and communities. * what kinds of conversation, if started today, might stimulate new ways of thinking and also reflect the complex conditions in which we all live? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 133 i would invite conversations that are not interested in distilling an essence of cyc but those that focus on the possibility of the field. in my own early training, i was often encouraged to consider “our” difference from other fields and, at times, this felt like professional xenophobia. i believe we need to be asking how we contribute, alongside other helping professionals, to the overall project of social justice. how does one’s work, whether individually, collectively, in a kitchen or an office, contribute to dismantling social norms that actually get in the way of healthy pursuits? how do we, as schools and a field, acknowledge the research methodologies emerging that support and critique the systems we urge our graduates to join? hans skott-myhre * what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why? to make sense of this question, it might be worth situating my work and my interests. throughout my work, i have been operating out of a sense of being an escapee. an escapee, from my perspective, is someone who finds himself or herself surprised to be on the agency side of the equation. it is someone who recognizes that it is quite by accident that they were not caught up in the net of discipline and control that now contains and surrounds the young people they encounter in their work. somehow, their behaviour and demeanour escaped notice. they slipped the net. nonetheless, the escapee feels compelled to return to the field of capture over and over again, even though they could very probably safely blend into the broader social milieu without too much of a ripple. what is the purpose of their return? it is to give the keys of the institution to the inmates; to provides avenues of escape and to subvert the dominant power of the guard. the anti-psychiatrist franco basaglia (1987) called such people class traitors in that they refuse to carry out the work of the bourgeoisie. marx (1978) said that the work of the bourgeoisie or the middle class was to protect the interests of the ruling class from any assault by the working class. basaglia (1987) said that, in social service or mental health settings such as psychiatric hospitals or residential treatment centres, the interests of the ruling class are vested in what he called the “functionaries of the dominant ideology” (p. 144). what he meant by this was that most staff in such institutions promote and disseminate the belief systems and practices that are to the advantage of the ruling class. in our field, these would be ideas that allow us to justify controlling and disciplining young people, to rationalize dismissing their wisdom, and to valorize our own power and superiority as adults. as a result, i am interested in several general categories of conversation in our field. one conversation is premised in thinking that challenges any dominant construction of the truth about young people. another related conversation is any interchange that interrogates common sense notions about the relation between young people and adults. premised in these conversations is discussion about how our work might be deployed as a practice where we jointly create modes of resistance or liberation for both young people and adults. finally, i am interested in what the great philosopher david crosby (1970) called, “letting my freak flag fly”. in short, i am interested in any conversation that emphasizes the importance and value of deviance and difference. please note that i am not citing authors, thinkers, and practitioners from our field here, not because they are not having these conversations, but because there are so many that it would not be fair to valorize only the ones of which i am aware. besides, we all know who the freaks international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 134 are, don’t we? * how do you currently make sense of (or engage with) some of the uncertainties and contradictions that are part of our current conversations in cyc? i am a huge fan of both contradiction and uncertainty, as might well be surmised from my previous comments. i like contradiction because, as marx (1978) points out, it is through contradiction that we can see the actual machinery of domination. basaglia (1987) points this out in relation to institutional work with people when he says that it is in the contradiction between the claims of what the institution can do and the reality of what it actually does do, that its real function can be discerned. i think we might well be attentive to this in our own work and in the ways we define our field. i am fond of uncertainty, because people who are certain ask fewer questions and i think creativity thrives in the rich atmospheric of the unknown that is generated by and generates the question. how do i engage contradiction? through seeking the antagonism that arises when the effects of domination become clear to those suffering its effects. this is the rhetorical ground for liberation and revolutionary praxis. i do not seek to smooth over contradiction. i seek it out so as to use it as a tool to build little machines of resistance and escape. how do i engage uncertainty? i hope to embrace it so that i can stay open to as much of the world and my experience of it as i can. i don’t wish to believe in anything as a certainty. i do seek to have faith in contingency and the productivity of all random events. what does this mean in relation to how i engage our field? i engage our field in primarily two ways: 1. with curiosity and i hope the humility of constantly having conversations with my colleagues that challenge and stimulate me; 2. with a political project designed to constantly undermine the fundamental assumptions of our field and my own beliefs about that field. * what kinds of conversation, if started today, might stimulate new ways of thinking and also reflect the complex conditions in which we all live? i believe we have begun the kinds of conversations i have noted above already. i hope we can continue them and i welcome anyone to engage me in conversation critically, creatively, or collegially (or all of the above at the same time). in fact, it would make my day. kiaras gharabaghi sometimes it seems that life itself, or at the very least “living life”, is so firmly embedded in the imposition of victimization that one is hard pressed to continue searching for alternatives. of course, the ambiguities of who is being victimized by whom remain, and there are many debates and philosophical discussions pursuant to the disentanglement of such ambiguities. young people occupy a very special position in the geography of debating these kinds of issues and questions. they are deemed important enough to be considered within the debate, but they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 135 are almost never included in the debate as young people. instead, they are invited to contribute ambiance to the debates by being young. at a time when we are growing increasingly complacent toward the evils of capitalism, colonization, violence, and ideological rhetoric divorced from empirical observation, and when we are, through our cooperation and participation, actively promoting the decay of democracy in order to serve the moment, the range of possible responses on the part of young people to their political marginalization is shrinking rapidly. conformity and compliance no longer make sense, even if one maintains a strong commitment to hypocrisy and pragmatic disloyalty. we have eroded the value of such cooperation and compliance as an end in itself; no one cooperates because this is good. cooperation is a means to an end, and en route to the end an act of disloyalty, of abandonment, or of transformation is always required. young people who cooperate for 18 years with the state, are compliant with the expectations set by the state’s agents, and perform as per the state’s expectations, are still abandoned based on the state’s need to arbitrarily set limits to providing for them. aboriginal people who cooperated and agreed to compliance regimes through the mechanism of treaties quickly learned about the fickle nature of goodwill. young first nations people today pay the price for our acceptance of ideological rhetoric without empirical evidence. an eloquent apology for previous wrongdoing masks the concomitant denial of human rights, material subsistence, and spiritual purity in aboriginal communities of the north. the echoes of the apology sustain the racism of the present and the future. so what can be done? and what can be done in the specific context of child and youth care practice and the academic story of this practice? i find myself conveniently categorizing what i see coming from the child and youth care intelligentsia into three groups (thereby grotesquely contributing to the ever-shrinking intellectual depth of thought in our field of practice). the first group of contributions is the ever-expanding scope of evidence-based practice. the foundation of this group of contributions is the quasi-religious belief in doing those things for which we can safely predict the outcomes. i can appreciate how this group of contributions might be of value to a parent emotionally distraught by the self-destructive behaviours of his or her child. this parent needs to know that the interventions selected will produce results that speak to their need for comfort and safety. stop the self-destructive behaviour is the instruction given, and evidence of likely outcomes is therefore called for. the difficulty with these contributions is that they are divorced from the young person altogether. evidence-based practice serves the needs not of the young person but of those who have a stake in how the young person turns out. this is inherently oppressive because it reduces the young person to a commodity. but it is not surprising that evidence-based practices have become popular, and even dominant, contributions to the field. given our deep commitment to consumerism, we do very much like commodities after all. a second group of contributions takes a completely different approach to staging its credo as a way of thinking about the field. in popular parlance, this group is sometimes referred to as the postmodern perspective, and it is seen to uphold the ideals of anti-oppression, justice, philosophical depth, deconstructive critique, and radical thinking. i am not much of a proponent of popular parlance, largely because it reflects generalizations and poorly articulated simplifications of very complex ideas. i very much like this group of contributions for its focus on those embedded structures and processes in our lives that are often taken for granted and viewed as mere tools rather than as the embodiment of oppression. i very much appreciate the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 136 critique of language itself, for example, which has exposed the cheap and economically brilliant sustaining of the market for professional helpers on the part of those very helpers, who all turn out to have a vested interest in the propagation of the “crazy people myth”. it is this group of contributions, more so than all others, that has resisted ready-made truths about disorders, diagnoses, chemical interventions, and many other things. the challenge for this group, which i experience with each and every engagement of their contributions, is that i find these contributions to be inherently irrelevant to young people. this irrelevance is neither intentional nor problematic. but it is noteworthy for its rhetorical withering as it is transferred to practice. complex theory withers into common sense practices of non-judgment, the mitigation of oppression and a reflective approach to managing power within relationships and constellations of multiple identities. i am, at times, inspired by both the evidence-based approach and the critical foundations of the first two groups of contributions. they help to provide frameworks for thinking, for dismantling such thinking and rethinking or thinking again from scratch. in this way, i appreciate both of these groups of contributions very much. i am, however, drawn much more to a third group of contributions that i think provide meaningful critique while also maintaining some acute relevance to young people themselves. these are the contributions that are centred around the imagined experiences of young people and work from these experiences outward to the interveners, the professionals, and the other stakeholders. these are the relationship-focused contributions that seek to understand and develop all kinds of interesting ways of being together. i like these kinds of contributions because i am convinced that for most of us, being together is difficult and replete with unspoken questions and doubts. we are social animals to be sure, but this does not mean we are wise in our social contexts. i do believe that it is the minutia of everyday experiences that require our attention, and that provide opportunities for child and youth care practice and an accompanying rhetoric for such practice, that are open to young people and other stakeholders alike. what is missing for me is a more explicit focus on resistance and reflective noncompliance. in my experience, virtually everything is better when it must first overcome rejection and then work through ongoing resistance. for young people, a strategically strong approach to responding to all those wishing to be helpful is to reject their help at first, waiting for some adjustments to be made, and then making it very difficult for the helper to be helpful. and just when the outcomes seem good for everyone involved, young people ought to try their hands at disloyalty and abandonment on their terms. responses to initial reflections from discussants kiaras gharabaghi a response to my friends and colleagues: it is extremely stimulating to read the contributions of my friends and colleagues to this conversation, especially because i have very different personal experiences with each of them. i have to disclose from the start here that i cannot (and also have no desire to) separate my personal experiences with individuals from their written contributions to a professional, academic, fun conversation. for me at least, person and text are organically linked forever, even if neither person nor text stays the same over time. at any rate, it seems to me that all four of us international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 137 have some common ideas about things (the word “things” is the only word i can think to capture that about which we have common ideas). we all resist “truth”; we all recognize that there is a political and historical context of injustice, racism, and other deeply disturbing problems that underwrites what we currently face in societies all over the world; and we all dismiss conformity to and compliance with the status quo as a viable or ethical option. there are some nuanced differences in how we approach things. sandrina’s focus on the ongoing injustices faced by indigenous peoples allows for a very powerful critique of eurocentrism and also opens the doors for exciting reconstructions of knowledge production through storytelling and other methods. i am, of course, very excited about sandrina’s arguments and believe that this direction is invaluable as a contribution to thinking and being with children and youth. i wonder, however, whether this direction requires a yet more menacing approach to looking at issues of social justice; for decades, voices within the indigenous communities that are critical of entirely externalizing issues of family violence and child abuse as consequences of colonization and ongoing neo-colonial dynamics have found few opportunities to be heard. in my own context of living through islam, i have too often seen the difference between critique and dogma dissolved into nothingness, and this is something that we must learn to avoid. cole’s comments meet the spirit of my own feelings pretty much head on. inspiration drawn from students and those we engage with for the purpose of care and self-exploration is tough to beat. i like cole’s pragmatism and flexibility and i can relate to the multiple conversations she draws on, ranging from virtual worlds of recorded speeches to every conceivable style of narration. i am, perhaps, a little less perturbed by the field’s “identity crisis”; i have always believed that identities in crisis are really the only authentic identities to begin with. i am also not overly concerned about the emergence of an academy within the cyc field, including its valuing of higher degrees. i do, however, disagree strongly with cole’s (and also sandrina’s) characterization of the divide between theory and practice as untenable or simply false. i think there is and ought to be such a divide, albeit not one that renders each inaccessible to the other, nor one that requires individuals to commit fully to one at the expense of the other. i know that both sandrina and cole are active as theoreticians and as practitioners (also as advocates and philosophers), and indeed many of the great contributors to theory in social sciences/fields of inquiry assumed both of these roles, including the likes of foucault, derrida, and certainly deleuze and guattari (1994). but none of them conducted themselves in the same way in their theorizing and their practicing respectively, and i am glad that they did not. i believe that theory should inform practice but not define it; and practice should inspire theory but not contain it. i have to admit that i really dislike reading “applied theory” that reads like a “how to” manual to child and youth care practice; at the same time, i equally dislike reading theoretical work that lays claim to being rooted in practice. let’s face it, there are individuals in child and youth care who label themselves as practitioners but really are not very good at practice at all; and there are also individuals in our field who label themselves as theoreticians but whose theories are, frankly, ridiculous. there have been many instances of bad practice containing theory: point and level systems in residential care, control-based approaches in schools, and rationalizations for the criminalization of radical ideas in community-based work are all reflections of this. at the same time, there have been many instances of bad theory inspiring terrible practice: approaches to anti-oppression that silence points of view steeped in different traditions, scientific theory promoting pharmacological interventions, or game theory promoting psychological distortion and confusion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 138 i don’t really understand why anyone would want to eliminate the distinction between theory and practice. doing so promotes hypocrisy more than anything else we could possibly do. it is when we begin to claim that we are transcending the power differentials between those who get paid to provide services and those who come to receive those services that we take the first step toward becoming little more than a helping industry, with all that this language implies. and it is when we claim to have figured out anti-oppression in practice, or diversity in theory, that our integrity plummets. in reality (my reality), those who do radical theory are doing so within an employment context that could not possibly be more reflective of the hegemony of all that they argue against. and those who do practice follow the commands of logistics and bureaucratic requirements regardless of their theoretical orientation. this is why i quite like hans’s endorsement of contradiction and uncertainty. and i especially like his idea of little machines of resistance and escape. i think this is a good way of maintaining one’s sense of humour in relation to the privilege of getting paid to theorize and the emotional burden of trying to make sense in the process. hans skott-myhre at the time of this writing, there have been young people in the streets of britain burning and looting, facing government troops in bahrain, israel, libya, syria, egypt, being beaten and jailed while protesting global capitalist economic policies in the united states and canada, and facing long prison terms for challenging autocratic rule in china. ironically, the impulses for these actions seem to fall into two categories, a revolutionary hope for a better future that has led to the struggles outside europe and a sense that the future holds no hope within europe. the situations in the u.s. and canada are a mix of both. i would argue that the question of whether young people have a sense that they have a viable future is deeply rooted in the contested relationship they have with their elders. in the global economic system heavily promoted and defended by the elders of the ruling class, premised on narcissism, addiction, and greed, the future becomes only a slogan without substance. under such a system, i would argue that the relation of young people to adults is a global version of the parental addict. the material needs of the children will always come second to the craving for money, power, and profit. even in the situations where young people are fighting with hope for “democracy”, there are multinational corporations salivating at the prospect of a new “open market”. what does this have to do with what my colleagues have written here? simply everything. when i read their analyses and proposals for working with young people, i sense an antidote to the addiction of global capital: the possibility of a road to sobriety and sanity. let me be clear in saying that i don’t mean to imply a clear path to utopia; simply a set of relations premised in a struggle for mutual well-being rather than the struggle over who can make the most money while the rest of the world sinks into misery and deprivation. one of the dynamics of an addictive system is the critical role of denial. sandrina offers an antidote to this in her call for an acknowledgement of what she calls the “dirty shameful secret” of colonialism and its effects. sandrina breaks the code of denial in asking why our field has remained both silent and complicit in the ongoing oppression and cultural violation of aboriginal young people. she states that it is specifically the ongoing colonial practices that are at the heart of what shapes our relations with young people. certainly, if we look at all of the conflicts i have noted at the beginning of this reflection, they are all rooted in effects of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 139 colonial project and its postcolonial hangover. without a doubt colonial practices are the gateway drug to global capitalism. the idea that we, as child and youth care workers, can somehow operate in a realm of pure relationship absent an active struggle to overcome the practices imbedded in our common history of colonization is an act of massive and destructive denial. sandrina tells us that a knowledge of one’s history is crucial, that to deny the ongoing effects of historical subjugation and domination is both dangerous and damaging. i would concur and go further to assert that there can be no field of relational child and youth care without undoing the regimes of privilege and power rooted in the practices and beliefs of whiteness. so where is the antidote? the antidote to the addiction of global capitalism that i find in her writing is precisely in the refusal to deny the actuality of our history and its effects. the avenues she proposes for this i find deeply compelling. the profound need for counter-narratives premised in the material realities of young people and adults are desperately required if we are to discover counter-practices. her proposal that we investigate deleuze and guattari’s (1994) notion of desire – that is, the search for a form of desire that is not premised in the hunger of addiction for what we lack – is crucial. deleuze suggests that if we are to have a desire for the future, it needs to be a desire to act and to become. such a desire, deleuze and guattari (1994) tell us, is premised in reclaiming ourselves as a becoming people. this is what i hear in sandrina’s call for a collectivity of political action. in my reading of kiaras’s remarks, i also find harbingers of an antidote. if we are to break the wall of denial that is the linchpin of addiction, there is no more powerful suggestion than his statement that conformity and compliance no longer make sense. young people clearly have exactly this message and are acting it out across the face of global capitalism. the question becomes, how shall we join them? this is a question of relationship and kiaras wisely turns us precisely to relationship as the central element of all political and social revolutionary action. of course, what suffers the most in any addictive system are relationships. it is simply not possible to sustain a caring, nurturing, and trusting relation with an addict. the relationship to the substance of choice (e.g., money and power) will always come first. i would argue that if we are to practice relational child and youth care, then we must be sure that we are not addicts ourselves, that we are not invested in creating our young people as conforming and compliant addicts to serve our own need for denial. of course, this is not an easy or clean task. it is a messy struggle under a system that permeates every aspect of our lives. however, one element of the antidote might lie in kiaras’s suggestion that we find interesting ways to be together. addictive relationships might be dramatic and even traumatic, but they are sadly predictable and not very interesting. to seek interesting ways to be together is to challenge the logic of addiction through an active exploration of the possibilities of jointly creative relations. both kiaras and cole direct our attention to the central importance of the day-to-day mundane interactions of living in common. it is, of course, in the day-to-day that all actual politics and power relations are formed. while things may play out on the global stage, the staging area for all struggle lies in the mundane. if we are to find an alternative to addictive capitalism, it will be found in the mutuality of what cole calls the open field of learning. indeed, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 140 it is in her suggestion that we learn from each other, in the minutia of daily interaction, that we might find the becoming people of a new world. cole calls for the dissembling of norms through day-to-day interactions. if we are to challenge the practices of colonialism and refuse compliance and conformity, then we must pay close attention to the micro-politics of every interchange and interaction. relationships are not conceptual, though they may lead to concepts. these concepts may in turn offer new sets of relationships that produce concepts and so on. fundamentally, however, relationships are sets of practices. out of these practices we construct a world together. there is no more revolutionary act than this. cole little collective musings about the field bodies, spirits, societies/ constellations of multiple identities (we) rationalize dismissing their wisdom. they are invited to contribute ambiance (not as) little machines of resistance and escape. this secret burns in my throat, conformity and compliance no longer make sense (but endure) a particular grooming. we are part of the system and it is part of us. through contradiction, we can see the actual machinery of domination (colonialism, heteronormativity, social services, you, me, us). the echoes of the apology sustain the racism of the present. the encumbered malfunctioning machine (defies) reflective non-compliance, making it difficult for the helper to be helpful being together is difficult – more active praxis of social change (pretty please) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 141 i am struck at how four cyc identified/affiliated practitioners appear to be sketching a topography of cyc, but it appears our mediums of choice differ slightly. perhaps this hints at kiaras’s notion of a child and youth care intelligentsia! as the found poem above suggests, if our words are woven together, an overall picture emerges that suggests common concerns and articulations of omissions in the field. at the same time, there are points made in the original comments that trouble me. i intend to briefly take up both the resonance and dissonance in this response. perhaps most striking are the missing conversations noted by my three colleagues – those of youth. as sandrina eloquently reflects, indigenous youth, families, and communities have been systemically denied a voice through systems of colonization that continue to this day. when students rail “but it wasn’t me!” they are part of this silencing that leaks into practice. the “dirty little secret” sandrina refers to is echoed by kiaras who rightly reflects on a lack of commitment to human rights under the liberal notion of apology. it is not just marginalized youth that are questioned throughout; however, the very notion of youth representation and presence is brought forward. how do we theorize and practice in the absence of youth? well, as my colleagues point out, it happens out of the commodification of youth and the avoidance of pain. youth voices are not convenient for the status quo. hans suggests that “we jointly create modes of resistance or liberation for both young people and adults” and i wholeheartedly concur. yet my question of this is how this can occur in a cyc context where theory and practice are so easily divisible in conversations. this brings us back to the “intelligentsia”. i found kiaras’s categories interesting in terms of how one might align with the propagation of cyc thought, and most certainly agree with the problematic underbelly of “evidence-based”. if i could sum up his categories, those would be evidence-based, postmodernist, and organic. while he suggests these overlap, i feel there is again an assumption of what “real” child and youth care practice looks like (organic, obviously). while i concur that the “minutia” of everyday interactions is key to my clinical practice, the analysis of such cannot be amputated from postmodernist assumptions asking me what is taken for granted in that minutia. kiaras is seemingly, and respectfully so, concerned with the accessibility of the rhetoric we use on youth. yet, as i have stated before, conversations around power, privilege, justice, diagnosis, and other postmodern “concerns” do not wither in translation with the youth i encounter. around their diagnosis of an eating disorder, they tell me about class struggles in their school, about trying to enact environmentalist interventions, the ethics of being a vegetarian, the confines of gender binaries, and the pressures of capitalism. they actively resist the labels on their files; many protest the “crazy people myth”. perhaps where kiaras and i converge is the need for “a more explicit focus on resistance and reflective non-compliance”. and this then becomes the connection between practice and theory. i applaud sandrina’s call for a “more collective, politicized approach to praxis that integrates collaborative theorization and practice, one that is rooted in working and thinking with”. for me, this would involve a serious consideration to how we theorize, research, and teach child and youth care – because it is the students who take those ideas into practice, develop policy, and so on. an example of this would be recent curriculum i am writing. the question at hand is what theories to include in a core helping course. i struggle to create a theoretical literacy without a systemic grooming of individual foci of change – it’s damned hard. so, on a very practical (and political level) of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 142 curriculum writing, i struggle to maintain my idealism of human change processes along conscripted lines of what students “need” to know. sandrina de finney i am especially inspired by hans’s and cole’s discussion of everyday micro disruptions, and by kiaras’s proposal for coming together differently. i am interested in thinking about politics of change and the intimacy of entanglement in community from both the inside out and the outside in, and everywhere in between. how and why, i wonder, can we engage differently, together? in this vein, i want to heed hans’s and cole’s wise warnings about becoming overly invested in micro engagements without linkages to the why. cole insists that the minutia of the everyday cannot be dismembered from an examination of power and privilege. hans’s assertion is that operating in the realm of pure relationship without an active struggle to overcome our history of colonization is an act of massive and destructive denial. achieving deep engagement with each other while maintaining an equally deep analysis of what shapes these encounters is, i think, at the heart of what we are struggling with here – how to do both at once, while remaining productively open. being together differently only happens if we link that project to an understanding of what we hope to do differently. this is why i think the organic relation between theory and practice is so important; for me, “doing differently” is about understanding why things are not working as they are. it is to this tension that i want to speak here, again not in the hopes of producing definitive answers, but to raise questions i have been struggling with for a long time as a cyc worker, researcher, and community member. if we are indeed to find something new in the mundane moments of interaction with each other – an idea i find promising – we need to understand why some voices are missing from our daily engagements and why the playing field – even in those mundane moments – is already inequitable, warped, politicized. there is a link here that is vital if we are to see the full picture. this is why i am so determined to talk about the dirty secret of canada’s becoming – how indigenous peoples became fourth-world citizens in their own lands in the span of a few hundred years – and about why it is such a big deal to even bring up this issue in our field. if you will not take my word for it, perhaps you will find that canada’s very own auditor general has a more authoritative take on the issue. before she retired recently, auditor general sheila fraser released an evaluation of 10 years of federal policies dealing with first nations2 i appreciate kiaras’s concerns about getting bogged down in dogma, and how unhelpful that molar positioning becomes when we are asking people to think productively. i do not think paying attention to what the auditor general calls “deep-seated inequalities” makes this analysis dogmatic or reductionist – a focus on structural inequities is an attempt not to minimize the . her report states that the basics of life – education, child welfare, clean drinking water, and adequate housing – are persistently and dramatically substandard for first nations, and in some cases the situation is deteriorating. in speaking to these findings, fraser noted: “i am profoundly disappointed to note ... [that] a disproportionate number of first nations people still lack the most basic services that other canadians take for granted” and that “in a country as rich as canada, this disparity is unacceptable.” fraser eschews an “internal explication” and points instead to the impact of “deep-seated inequalities”: “in our view, many of the problems facing first nations go deeper than the existing programs’ lack of efficiency and effectiveness.” 2 for the full report, see http://www.oagbvg.gc.ca/internet/english/parl_oag_201106_04_e_35372.html. http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/english/parl_oag_201106_04_e_35372.html� http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/english/parl_oag_201106_04_e_35372.html� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 143 complexity of the situation, but rather to augment it. i am trying to nuance and expand what has so far been an extremely one-sided and narrow account. how else can we explain why thousands of families from completely different first nations in different parts of the country are experiencing the same patterns of chronic poverty, racial discrimination, and underfunding that even our own government calls “unacceptable”? what is the common thread here? i think that when we are working with a first nation youth who was taken into care when a white child in the same circumstances was not, or a first nation community whose social services are underfunded by 22% compared to the non-native town down the road, we need to look beyond internal, pathologizing, victim-blaming rationalizations. in my view, the dogma we need to disrupt is that of overly individualized explanations that preclude urgently needed discussions of what is happening in the world. the living footprint of colonialism impacts how we theorize as much as how we practice because it shapes our funding, our legislation, our bodies and spirits, our professional frameworks, what we expect of children and youth, and what they expect of us. i do strongly feel that we urgently require engagement with the perspectives of other communities – children and youth included – who are ignored under a eurowestern colonial paradigm that shapes the “canon” of our field. yet this past year, when a cyc-net post asked for important cyc texts dealing with diversity, not one response could suggest a uniquely cyc resource. i know this gap in our cyc literature concerns many of us. the theories and practices that inform our field are, in the main, dominated by the work of white european and north american men, with the occasional (and important) exception. we are working within a remarkably narrow and ethnocentric history of child and youth care perspectives. while i have learned a lot from these perspectives, along with many others i am interested in what the other 80% of the world thinks about child, youth, family, and community wellness. i am saddened when i hear that this suggestion might generate resistance or defensiveness. i wonder why paying attention to microdynamics makes us ethical and creative, while attending to what links microdynamics – the meta story of colonialism and global capitalism that hans refers to – makes us dismembered from practice? and so, how do we think about change and come together differently, more inclusively and subversively? i love that cole comes right out and says “it’s damned hard”. indigenous scholars thomas and green (2007) stress that social change “should always be complicated and uncomfortable” (p. 91), but within this messiness and contradiction, i see great potential. like my co-conversationalists, i think finding our way out of this requires radical imagining and hope, and a commitment to work in uncharted waters through the “damned hard” parts of it. i really appreciate kiaras’s point that our engagement with each other is shaped by our common dismissal of conformity to and compliance with the status quo as a viable or ethical option. in my work with diverse communities, i have always found that a willingness to work in this way is essential to building relationships because it honours the critical knowledge and multiple forms of advocacy and political engagement that communities already hold. naming and addressing social injustice challenges us to engage both personally and politically as practitioners and researchers beyond the rhetoric of “practice” versus “theory”. neither research nor practice can be seen as distinct, mutually exclusive wholes; as many differences and tensions exist within practice and within theory as between theory and practice. i want to practice and research in a critical way – while certainly i bring different tools and skills to theory and practice, a critical, non-eurowestern-centric, decolonizing approach is the thread international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 144 that works across both. for me, “coming together differently” requires a multiplication of possibility: hans talks about little machines – a more mutual, collective, political everyday struggle for productive engagement – to release a different energy, a disruption of static, reductive sedimentations. i think researchers and practitioners who are concerned about neocolonial dynamics are walking a similar path, with a goal of making our field more critically engaged and responsive to the issues that matter to the diverse communities we work with. many other teachings, perspectives, and ways of working can enrich our collective exploration. why not include them in the conversation? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 128–145 145 references basaglia, f. (1987). peacetime crimes. in n. scheper-hughes & a. m. lovell (eds.), psychiatry inside out: selected writings of franco basaglia (a. m. lovell & t. shtob, trans., pp. 143–168). new york: columbia university press. crosby d. (1970). almost cut my hair. on déjà vu (record album). new york: atlantic records. de finney, s., dean, m., loiselle, e., & saraceno, j. (2011). some children are more equal than others: minoritization, social inequities and social justice praxis in residential care. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 2(3), 361–384. deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? (h. tomlinson & g. burchell, trans.). new york: columbia university press. fine, m., & ruglis, j. (2009). circuits and consequences of dispossession: the racialized realignment of the public sphere for u.s. youth. transforming anthropology, 17(1), 20–33. first nations education council. (2009). first nations education funding: current trends. wendake, qc: author. marx, k. (1978). the german ideology: part one. in r. c. tucker (ed.), the marx-engels reader (pp. 146–202). new york: norton. reynolds, v. (2009). collective ethics as a path to resisting burnout. insights: the clinical counsellor’s magazine & news, december 2009, 6–7. smith, l. t. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london: zed books. thomas, r., & green, j. (2007). a way of life: indigenous perspectives on anti-oppressive living. first peoples child & family review, 3(1), 91–104. trocmé, n., maclaurin, b., fallon, b., knoke, d., pitman, l., & mccormack, m. (2006). mesnmimk wasatek: catching a drop of light. understanding the overrepresentation of first nations children in canada’s child welfare system: an analysis of the canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect (cis-2003). toronto: centre of excellence for child welfare. tuck, e. (2010). breaking up with deleuze: desire and valuing the irreconcilable. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 23(5), 635–650. white, j. (2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child youth care forum, 36(5), 225–244. doi: 10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 roundtable: conversations on conversing in child and youth care sandrina de finney, j. n. cole little, hans skott-myhre, and kiaras gharabaghi, in the spring of 2011, we had the pleasure of participating in the third child and youth care (cyc) in action conference hosted by the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, victoria, british columbia, canada. we were invited b... in keeping with the spirit of the roundtable discussion, this is a fluid, open-ended, ongoing conversation without end. in working together, we have sought to foster the conditions for open, creative, respectful, and generative conversations across ou... initial reflections on the roundtable conversation sandrina de finney i have been asked to share the kinds of questions i have about the field of child and youth care (cyc) and the conversations i hope can be disrupted, amplified, or added to our evolving, collective musings about the field. i am putting forward four fo... first is the question of who we work with in our diverse field, and what brings these children, youth, families, and communities into “cyc” spaces and interventions. i am deeply alarmed that aboriginal (or, as i prefer, indigenous0f ) children, youth,... indigenous communities are so significantly overrepresented in indicators of social exclusion, yet remain chronically underfunded compared to other canadians. too often, this history is treated like a dirty, shameful secret. the second focus or question that interests me is an examination of what underlies this overrepresentation, a laying bare of the dirty secret of hundreds of years of colonial policies and practices. this secret burns in my throat in whatever work i do... as a third focus, then, in order to make sense of this narrative of colonial racism that is so integral to canadian society – and by extension, the production of normative constructions of gender, ability, and sexuality, among others – i search for ot... lastly, i am interested in reformulating how we think about the relationships among cyc practice, theory, advocacy, and our roles as members of the communities in which we live and work. i am drawn to approaches that do not re-victimize and pathologiz... instead of pathologizing frameworks, tuck proposes a framework of productive possibility, what she calls a framework of smart desire, building on and complicating deleuze’s theorizing of desire. this framework is “intent on convoking loss and oppressi... tuck’s framework has struck a chord with me: what is uncharted, unanticipated, subversive in theory and practice, is in fact precisely what speaks to many of us who do not see our realities represented in the confines of normative eurowestern-centric ... the problem is not in our heads or in ourselves, but in the real world where there is a lack of justice. the people i work alongside don't burn me out and they don't hurt me: they transform me, challenge me and inspire me. we're not “burning out”, we'... i think we have a lot to gain from questioning the encumbered, malfunctioning machine of social services. to understand how active coloniality operates is to seriously and humbly interrogate our own complicity/embeddedness in its inner workings – beca... from my multiple locations as a community member, academic, practitioner, and activist, i find it necessary to problematize the artificial division between thinking and doing that maintains both eurowestern privilege and the exclusion of other voices.... cole little * what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why? the conversations that inspire me the most are with students i teach and youth and families i work with. i teach in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria and the majority of my teaching has been with undergraduates. i challe... i do find the question – “what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why?” – somewhat vexing. i draw on various conversations for my work as a teacher, researcher, and practitioner: ted talks ... * how do you currently make sense of (or engage with) some of the uncertainties and contradictions that are part of our current conversations in cyc? i truly believe the field of cyc is experiencing an identity crisis of sorts. the emphasis on higher degrees (of which i am a recipient) creates a tension of perceived distance between “the field” and “the academy”. many of us in the academy are activ... * what kinds of conversation, if started today, might stimulate new ways of thinking and also reflect the complex conditions in which we all live? i would invite conversations that are not interested in distilling an essence of cyc but those that focus on the possibility of the field. in my own early training, i was often encouraged to consider “our” difference from other fields and, at times, t... hans skott-myhre * what are some of the ongoing conversations in the cyc field today that animate/inspire your work? and why? to make sense of this question, it might be worth situating my work and my interests. throughout my work, i have been operating out of a sense of being an escapee. an escapee, from my perspective, is someone who finds himself or herself surprised to b... the anti-psychiatrist franco basaglia (1987) called such people class traitors in that they refuse to carry out the work of the bourgeoisie. marx (1978) said that the work of the bourgeoisie or the middle class was to protect the interests of the ruli... as a result, i am interested in several general categories of conversation in our field. one conversation is premised in thinking that challenges any dominant construction of the truth about young people. another related conversation is any interchang... please note that i am not citing authors, thinkers, and practitioners from our field here, not because they are not having these conversations, but because there are so many that it would not be fair to valorize only the ones of which i am aware. besi... * how do you currently make sense of (or engage with) some of the uncertainties and contradictions that are part of our current conversations in cyc? i am a huge fan of both contradiction and uncertainty, as might well be surmised from my previous comments. i like contradiction because, as marx (1978) points out, it is through contradiction that we can see the actual machinery of domination. basagl... i am fond of uncertainty, because people who are certain ask fewer questions and i think creativity thrives in the rich atmospheric of the unknown that is generated by and generates the question. how do i engage contradiction? through seeking the antagonism that arises when the effects of domination become clear to those suffering its effects. this is the rhetorical ground for liberation and revolutionary praxis. i do not seek to smooth over c... how do i engage uncertainty? i hope to embrace it so that i can stay open to as much of the world and my experience of it as i can. i don’t wish to believe in anything as a certainty. i do seek to have faith in contingency and the productivity of all ... what does this mean in relation to how i engage our field? i engage our field in primarily two ways: 1. with curiosity and i hope the humility of constantly having conversations with my colleagues that challenge and stimulate me; 2. with a political project designed to constantly undermine the fundamental assumptions of our field and my own beliefs about that field. * what kinds of conversation, if started today, might stimulate new ways of thinking and also reflect the complex conditions in which we all live? i believe we have begun the kinds of conversations i have noted above already. i hope we can continue them and i welcome anyone to engage me in conversation critically, creatively, or collegially (or all of the above at the same time). in fact, it wou... kiaras gharabaghi sometimes it seems that life itself, or at the very least “living life”, is so firmly embedded in the imposition of victimization that one is hard pressed to continue searching for alternatives. of course, the ambiguities of who is being victimized by... at a time when we are growing increasingly complacent toward the evils of capitalism, colonization, violence, and ideological rhetoric divorced from empirical observation, and when we are, through our cooperation and participation, actively promoting ... so what can be done? and what can be done in the specific context of child and youth care practice and the academic story of this practice? i find myself conveniently categorizing what i see coming from the child and youth care intelligentsia into thr... a second group of contributions takes a completely different approach to staging its credo as a way of thinking about the field. in popular parlance, this group is sometimes referred to as the postmodern perspective, and it is seen to uphold the ideal... i am, at times, inspired by both the evidence-based approach and the critical foundations of the first two groups of contributions. they help to provide frameworks for thinking, for dismantling such thinking and rethinking or thinking again from scrat... what is missing for me is a more explicit focus on resistance and reflective non-compliance. in my experience, virtually everything is better when it must first overcome rejection and then work through ongoing resistance. for young people, a strategic... responses to initial reflections from discussants kiaras gharabaghi a response to my friends and colleagues: it is extremely stimulating to read the contributions of my friends and colleagues to this conversation, especially because i have very different personal experiences with each of them. i have to disclose from the start here that i cannot (and also ha... there are some nuanced differences in how we approach things. sandrina’s focus on the ongoing injustices faced by indigenous peoples allows for a very powerful critique of euro-centrism and also opens the doors for exciting reconstructions of knowledg... cole’s comments meet the spirit of my own feelings pretty much head on. inspiration drawn from students and those we engage with for the purpose of care and self-exploration is tough to beat. i like cole’s pragmatism and flexibility and i can relate t... i know that both sandrina and cole are active as theoreticians and as practitioners (also as advocates and philosophers), and indeed many of the great contributors to theory in social sciences/fields of inquiry assumed both of these roles, including t... i don’t really understand why anyone would want to eliminate the distinction between theory and practice. doing so promotes hypocrisy more than anything else we could possibly do. it is when we begin to claim that we are transcending the power differe... this is why i quite like hans’s endorsement of contradiction and uncertainty. and i especially like his idea of little machines of resistance and escape. i think this is a good way of maintaining one’s sense of humour in relation to the privilege of g... hans skott-myhre at the time of this writing, there have been young people in the streets of britain burning and looting, facing government troops in bahrain, israel, libya, syria, egypt, being beaten and jailed while protesting global capitalist economic policies in ... i would argue that the question of whether young people have a sense that they have a viable future is deeply rooted in the contested relationship they have with their elders. in the global economic system heavily promoted and defended by the elders o... what does this have to do with what my colleagues have written here? simply everything. when i read their analyses and proposals for working with young people, i sense an antidote to the addiction of global capital: the possibility of a road to sobrie... one of the dynamics of an addictive system is the critical role of denial. sandrina offers an antidote to this in her call for an acknowledgement of what she calls the “dirty shameful secret” of colonialism and its effects. sandrina breaks the code of... the idea that we, as child and youth care workers, can somehow operate in a realm of pure relationship absent an active struggle to overcome the practices imbedded in our common history of colonization is an act of massive and destructive denial. sand... so where is the antidote? the antidote to the addiction of global capitalism that i find in her writing is precisely in the refusal to deny the actuality of our history and its effects. the avenues she proposes for this i find deeply compelling. the p... in my reading of kiaras’s remarks, i also find harbingers of an antidote. if we are to break the wall of denial that is the linchpin of addiction, there is no more powerful suggestion than his statement that conformity and compliance no longer make se... this is a question of relationship and kiaras wisely turns us precisely to relationship as the central element of all political and social revolutionary action. of course, what suffers the most in any addictive system are relationships. it is simply n... of course, this is not an easy or clean task. it is a messy struggle under a system that permeates every aspect of our lives. however, one element of the antidote might lie in kiaras’s suggestion that we find interesting ways to be together. addictive... both kiaras and cole direct our attention to the central importance of the day-to-day mundane interactions of living in common. it is, of course, in the day-to-day that all actual politics and power relations are formed. while things may play out on t... cole calls for the dissembling of norms through day-to-day interactions. if we are to challenge the practices of colonialism and refuse compliance and conformity, then we must pay close attention to the micro-politics of every interchange and interact... cole little collective musings about the field bodies, spirits, societies/ constellations of multiple identities (we) rationalize dismissing their wisdom. they are invited to contribute ambiance (not as) little machines of resistance and escape. this secret burns in my throat, conformity and compliance no longer make sense (but endure) a particular grooming. we are part of the system and it is part of us. through contradiction, we can see the actual machinery of domination (colonialism, heteronormativity, social services, you, me, us). the echoes of the apology sustain the racism of the present. the encumbered malfunctioning machine (defies) reflective non-compliance, making it difficult for the helper to be helpful being together is difficult – more active praxis of social change (pretty please) i am struck at how four cyc identified/affiliated practitioners appear to be sketching a topography of cyc, but it appears our mediums of choice differ slightly. perhaps this hints at kiaras’s notion of a child and youth care intelligentsia! as the fo... perhaps most striking are the missing conversations noted by my three colleagues – those of youth. as sandrina eloquently reflects, indigenous youth, families, and communities have been systemically denied a voice through systems of colonization that ... this brings us back to the “intelligentsia”. i found kiaras’s categories interesting in terms of how one might align with the propagation of cyc thought, and most certainly agree with the problematic underbelly of “evidence-based”. if i could sum up h... around their diagnosis of an eating disorder, they tell me about class struggles in their school, about trying to enact environmentalist interventions, the ethics of being a vegetarian, the confines of gender binaries, and the pressures of capitalism.... sandrina de finney i am especially inspired by hans’s and cole’s discussion of everyday micro disruptions, and by kiaras’s proposal for coming together differently. i am interested in thinking about politics of change and the intimacy of entanglement in community from b... if we are indeed to find something new in the mundane moments of interaction with each other – an idea i find promising – we need to understand why some voices are missing from our daily engagements and why the playing field – even in those mundane mo... i appreciate kiaras’s concerns about getting bogged down in dogma, and how unhelpful that molar positioning becomes when we are asking people to think productively. i do not think paying attention to what the auditor general calls “deep-seated inequal... i think that when we are working with a first nation youth who was taken into care when a white child in the same circumstances was not, or a first nation community whose social services are underfunded by 22% compared to the non-native town down the ... i do strongly feel that we urgently require engagement with the perspectives of other communities – children and youth included – who are ignored under a eurowestern colonial paradigm that shapes the “canon” of our field. yet this past year, when a cy... and so, how do we think about change and come together differently, more inclusively and subversively? i love that cole comes right out and says “it’s damned hard”. indigenous scholars thomas and green (2007) stress that social change “should always b... naming and addressing social injustice challenges us to engage both personally and politically as practitioners and researchers beyond the rhetoric of “practice” versus “theory”. neither research nor practice can be seen as distinct, mutually exclusiv... references basaglia, f. (1987). peacetime crimes. in n. scheper-hughes & a. m. lovell (eds.), psychiatry inside out: selected writings of franco basaglia (a. m. lovell & t. shtob, trans., pp. 143–168). new york: columbia university press. crosby d. (1970). almost cut my hair. on déjà vu (record album). new york: atlantic records. de finney, s., dean, m., loiselle, e., & saraceno, j. (2011). some children are more equal than others: minoritization, social inequities and social justice praxis in residential care. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 2(3),... deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? (h. tomlinson & g. burchell, trans.). new york: columbia university press. first nations education council. (2009). first nations education funding: current trends. wendake, qc: author. marx, k. (1978). the german ideology: part one. in r. c. tucker (ed.), the marx-engels reader (pp. 146–202). new york: norton. thomas, r., & green, j. (2007). a way of life: indigenous perspectives on anti-oppressive living. first peoples child & family review, 3(1), 91–104. trocmé, n., maclaurin, b., fallon, b., knoke, d., pitman, l., & mccormack, m. (2006). mesnmimk wasatek: catching a drop of light. understanding the overrepresentation of first nations children in canada’s child welfare system: an analysis of the can... tuck, e. (2010). breaking up with deleuze: desire and valuing the irreconcilable. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 23(5), 635–650. proposed title international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 473 mythologizing asperger syndrome: exploring impacts on social justice for children in out-of-home care irene stevens abstract: while the majority of children affected by autistic spectrum disorders (asd) remain at home and within their communities, a minority are so badly affected that they require out-of-home care. this article draws on some of the findings of the author’s doctoral thesis. social justice discourse and critical disability studies have alerted researchers to the foregrounding of privileged ideas in society. for this study, texts were analyzed using ideas from foucault and critical discourse analysis. textual analysis revealed that the discourse of asperger syndrome comprises an association with high intelligence, special talents (especially in maths or computing) and possibly with genius. there is also a prevailing belief within the discourse of asperger syndrome that it is a “mild disorder”. the voices of children who are seriously affected by asperger syndrome, to the extent that they may need out-of-home care, are absent. a field study that examined the views of potential and newly recruited child care practitioners demonstrated the ways in that incomplete messages from the discourse of asperger syndrome can affect practice. keywords: autism, asperger syndrome, disability, discourse analysis dr. irene stevens is a lecturer at and the research manager for the scottish institute for residential child care, which is part of strathclyde university in glasgow, scotland. she was previously a residential child care practitioner and her main research interests are out-of-home care, disability, and children’s rights. correspondence on this article should be addressed to dr. irene stevens, scottish institute of residential child care, university of strathclyde, sir henry wood building, 5th floor, southbrae drive, jordanhill, glasgow, g13 1pp. contact: irene.c.stevens@strath.ac.uk (+44–141 950 3683) mailto:irene.c.stevens@strath.ac.uk� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 474 asperger syndrome is named after hans asperger, the austrian paediatrician who discovered the condition in 1944. asperger noted that such children exhibited a range of behavioural difficulties, some of which could be severe. a few examples of these difficulties included a child described as “aggressive and lashed out with anything he could get hold of (including a hammer)” or “hit or verbally abused other children indiscriminately” (as cited in frith, 1991, pp. 42 and 59). he also stated that they developed early language skills and that “the cleverest among them can overcome their difficulties by dint of sheer intellect” (as cited in frith, 1991, p. 63). he referred to the affected children as “little professors” and maintained that they had high intelligence and were capable of abstract and original thought. the paper ends on a positive note in terms of outcomes, although asperger did say that “the positive aspects of autism do not outweigh the negative ones” (as cited in frith, 1991, p. 74). the term asperger syndrome was first used by wing (1981), referencing asperger’s work. she noted the 34 children in her study did not indulge in imaginative play and also that they lacked interest in relationships. she disagreed with two of asperger’s points. the first was that her children did not demonstrate early language skills. the second was that they did not demonstrate abstract original thought and high intelligence. any special abilities they had could be explained by rote learning but not by a deep understanding of the subject. she questioned the hopeful view of the prognosis that was given by asperger. her group of children had a range of problems, related mostly to their lack of social awareness and need for sameness, to such an extent that in one of the cases, the young person had attempted suicide. of the children she studied, she said that “the majority need help and guidance in sheltered settings for all of their lives” (wing, 1991, p. 118). she acknowledged that some “manage to become reasonably wellfunctioning and even, in a few cases, markedly successful” (wing, 1991, p. 118). in her view, however, this was not the norm. wing felt that the best way to describe the relationship between autism and asperger syndrome was to conceptualize them as part of a range of disorders that occupy a continuum (wing, 1988). a place on the continuum could be decided on how seriously a person is affected by a “triad of impairments” in communication, relationships, and imagination. professionals in the autism field have now adopted the notion of an autistic continuum or autistic spectrum disorders (asd). however, one of the weaknesses of the concept of a continuum is that asperger syndrome is considered to be a milder form of autism. this is refuted by researchers such as gillberg (1991) who states that asperger syndrome “… cannot be dismissed at the drop of a hat as ‘mild autism’ and thereby relegated to the status of eccentricities in a textbook on child psychiatry” (as cited in frith, 1991, p. 122). in other words, there is also a continuum of effects within asperger syndrome, ranging from mild to severe. links between genius and asperger syndrome have been suggested by fitzgerald (2003, 2005). using retrospective diagnosis of gifted individuals in history, he suggests that there is a genetic link between asperger syndrome and genius. the people he has diagnosed retrospectively include wittgenstein, michelangelo, and mozart (among others). while fitzgerald may well be correct in suggesting a genetic component, and while it may also be the case that some of these historical figures did have asperger syndrome, his methodology is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 475 highly flawed. he begins with the criteria for asperger syndrome and works from contemporary notes to fit the subject into the diagnosis. while some people with asperger syndrome have a special interest and a degree of focus that, when coupled with above-average intelligence and a high degree of support, can allow that person to excel in their field (e.g., grandin, 1995; willey, 1999), this is not the case for all those affected. an examination of some of the research into academic achievement may give a clearer indication of how children and young people with asperger syndrome manage their lives. reitzal and szatmari (2003) reported on a long-term study examining academic achievement. the vast majority of children had long-term difficulties in school and their work was consistently below that of their peers. interestingly, they also reported that there are few studies on neurocognitive profiles of children with asperger syndrome, and the specific focus on academic achievement is even sparser (as cited in prior, 2003, p. 46). manjiviona (2003) stated that, “one of the misleading claims made by professionals working in this area is that children with asperger syndrome have a distinctive cognitive profile, usually incorporating a higher verbal i.q.” (as cited in prior, 2003, p. 56). a study by griswold, barnhill, myles, hagiwara, and simpson (2002) on academic achievement revealed a group of young people with “an extraordinary range of scores, extending from significantly above average to far below what might be predicted for their assigned grade levels” (p. 98). research shows that within that part of the autistic spectrum occupied asperger syndrome, there are wide differences. yet, as frith (2004) commented “asperger syndrome has a special cachet that hints at superior intelligence and perhaps even genius” (p. 673). one of the diagnostic criteria for asperger syndrome is a narrow and obsessive range of interests such as inflexible adherence to rituals or a preoccupation with something that is abnormal in intensity or focus. there can be benefits to having a circumscribed interest. for example, grandin’s autobiographical account (1995) outlines how her special ability has helped her design cattle pens that led to a career in animal husbandry. in the majority of cases, however, the child with asperger syndrome will struggle in trying to accommodate their circumscribed interest with daily living. klin and volkmar (2000) argue that, given the diverse ways in which asperger syndrome can present in children, interventions by professionals must be “highly individualised to address a child’s specific needs while capitalising on the child’s assets” (p. 340). asperger syndrome is a fairly new diagnostic category, having only been included in diagnostic manuals since the 1990s. there have been few studies of how it is socially constructed. o’dell and brownlow (2005) carried out a discourse analysis on media reports linking the mumps, measles, and rubella (mmr) vaccination with autism. this was an interesting piece of work but addressed itself purely to the mmr reports and not to the wider construction of autism or asperger syndrome. brownlow and o’dell (2006) studied an internet chat room used by those with asperger syndrome, to see how they constructed themselves. this group constructed themselves positively and felt that they were the experts on their condition. they were often disparaging toward professionals, but felt that a diagnosis was ultimately helpful. the importance of looking at the socio-cultural production of asperger syndrome from a critical disabilities study viewpoint is highlighted. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 476 nadesen (2005) views the development of asperger syndrome through a postmodern lens. she criticizes the use of the medical model to understand asperger syndrome, and focuses on the socio-cultural development of asd. she argues that it must be contextualized historically within its time and states that “the public’s fascination with autism, particularly its highfunctioning forms stems in large part from the idea that people with autism are technologically gifted and are particularly adept with computer technology” (nadesen, 2005, p. 4). asperger syndrome paradoxically signifies pathology and special aptitudes, especially in the mathematical/technological arena. this speaks more about the contemporary power of technology, than about the lived reality of asperger syndrome. murray (2006) discussed how asd is represented in films and novels. he contends that asd are now strongly defined by films such as rain man (1988). these films construct asd as including difficulty understanding social situations, obsessional preoccupations, and the “purportedly exceptional skills of the autist” (murray, 2006, p. 31). murray states that art misrepresents reality in important ways. he argues that the narrative space created by film reflects back upon the concerns of the “normal”, while the reality remains hidden. finally, he commented on the power of the media to create an image that is skewed to “spectacularize” asd by constant reference to exceptional, almost superhuman abilities. this paper will enter the debate on how people may obtain knowledge about asperger syndrome as a social and ideological entity. foucault (1972) maintains that “to tackle the ideological function of a science in order to reveal and modify it” (p. 125), one should question it as a discursive formation. discursive formations will have an effect on how practitioners relate to children. the staff who care for those children with asperger syndrome in out-of-home care can have the most profound impact on the lives of those children. hawthorn (2005) describes the richness and intensity of relationship that a residential practitioner needs to develop with the child who has a disability. if practitioners are not prepared for the intensity of the task, they may fall back on a habitus (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) that is drawn from the messages that exist in wider discursive formations (such as seeing the disabled child as “victim”, “tragic”, or “impaired”). practitioners who are not adequately prepared for their care task may believe that they do not have the ability or temperament to carry out this job, and may move away from the profession. the term “discourse” is bound up with use of language. one of the most helpful theorists in this respect has been fairclough, who said that discourse was “language as social practice determined by social structure” (fairclough, 1989, p. 14). language as social practice usually comes in the form of texts, such as newspaper articles. as language is determined by social structures, then an analysis of language can provide some indications as to the origin of ideas about social justice. discourses are, in effect, ways of objectifying values and issues within society. the study of discourse owes much to postmodernism. foucault (1980) stated that language of itself gives clues to social structures lying beyond the subjective self. the language and texts generated at particular points in history give clues about the structures of knowledge and power underlying them. he also said that power is something that permeates social institutions and determines whose voice is heard. the ideas of foucault would suggest that aspects of social justice may be determined by texts concerning asperger syndrome, which are artefacts of the thinking which underlies much more than the writing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 477 methodology this study is divided into two parts. one is an examination of texts dealing with asperger syndrome and the other is a field study of potential and newly recruited child care practitioners. the tool of enquiry used to interrogate the texts was critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1989). fairclough (1989) asserts that discourses determine action. as he said: in seeing language as discourse and as social practice, one is committing oneself not just to analysing texts … but to analysing the relationship between texts, processes and their social conditions (p. 21). fairclough was interested in how some ideas came to be highly visible and reported, while other ideas were absent. reflecting foucault, he felt that people apply to their everyday understandings of textual material an ideological lens that has been socially determined and of which they are largely unaware. only by applying critical reasoning to the discourse can the researcher move beyond superficial meaning and explicate some of the discourses lying beneath the constructed text. meaning-making is a negotiation between the writer, the reader, and wider ideas of social justice. this helps in gaining an understanding of how the discourse translates into practice and contributes to the habitus of child care practitioners. the texts used in this study comprised extracts from autobiographical accounts of people with asperger syndrome, novels referring to people with asperger syndrome, and newspaper articles about asperger syndrome. the bulk of the texts submitted to analysis were newspaper articles. the reason for this is because these articles form a significant way for people to gain information and, potentially, to absorb ideological beliefs. for the majority of people in western society, reading a newspaper makes up a significant part of their exposure to texts. it seemed reasonable to include a range of articles to which child care practitioners may have been exposed. segments of two novels were included because novels, like newspaper articles, are artefacts of the thinking that produce them. two autobiographies written by people with asperger syndrome were included as a way to ensure that the views of those most closely affected would be represented. when examining the views of potential and newly recruited child care practitioners, focus groups and questionnaires were used. two sets of focus groups were organized. the first groups represented potential staff and comprised students who were due to complete their studies at three further education colleges and who were about to seek employment. the second groups represented newly recruited practitioners working in two autism-specific residential settings. a total of five focus groups provided the data. participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire, before the focus group took place. this served to standardize part of the process as the same questions were asked of all participants. the transcripts from the focus groups were submitted to content analysis, grouped into broad categories, and coded. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 478 findings of the textual analysis article one: “mapping the autistic mind” (the observer, 3 august 2003) the article begins with a short description of jadyn, a child on the autism spectrum, and finishes with a statement about the rising incidence of autism. two main themes emerge from the article. the first of these themes is the role of research and medical intervention in the lives of children affected by autism spectrum disorders. the second theme is an exploration of the nature of autism and asperger syndrome. the first theme of the role of research and medical intervention clearly draws upon the discourses of disability and medicine. in terms of the discourse of medicine, the power of the medical research establishment is seen in the legitimation of the article. using van leeuwen’s categories of legitimation cited by fairclough (2003), this article draws on authorization for its credibility (p. 98). this is drawn from the authority of the researchers who are quoted and discussed. the second theme explores the nature of autism and asperger syndrome. there are a range of phrases and words that valorize aspects of asd. some examples are: “very good at analysing systems”; “high-functioning, highly intelligent people”; “they will spend much time working on devices”. most of the valorizations are around aspects of intelligence and technical ability. hence, the existence of a discourse of autism and asperger syndrome begins to emerge. embedded clauses also highlight this theme: luke jackson, who has asperger’s syndrome, which is a high-functioning form of the condition, is an articulate and intelligent boy who revealed his struggle to make sense of other people. alan turing, the father of modern computing, was though to be mildly autistic. these two embedded clauses refer such valorizations as an association with high functioning or an aptitude for computing. a range of propositional assumptions is also apparent in the article. for example, in relation to people with asperger syndrome, they are said to be “highly intelligent people who have overcome some of their difficulties”. this proposes that there are difficulties associated with asperger syndrome. a description in this text for the nature of these “difficulties”, however, is vague. they include phrases such as: “impaired social development, specifically lack of eye contact”; or “struggle to make sense of other people”. the phrases use non-specific words, leaving the reader to construct asperger syndrome from equally vague information. other vague words include “quirky” and “weird”. these words imply that children with asperger syndrome represent a group with “difficulties” that are not, however, entirely clear. the headline of the article refers only to autism, but the article is, in fact, about highfunctioning autism and asperger syndrome. the use of the word “autistic” in the headline serves to homogenize all children who are affected, instead of suggesting that there may be differences and nuances within autism. finally, the article is accompanied by a large picture of jadyn, sitting in front of a computer and turning to face the camera. the picture is a stylistic feature that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 479 reveals traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome, associating it with a degree of intellectual and perhaps technical proficiency. article two: “andrew top of the class as he overcomes autism” (evening times, 26 november 2003) this article covers the annual awards given by the scottish qualifications authority, the main awarding body for qualifications in scotland. the main focus of the story concerns andrew, a young person with asperger syndrome and reports that he achieved the best results for higher grades in the history of his school. two main themes emerge from the article. one is about asperger syndrome and educational achievement. the other is that of overcoming adversity. the article derives part of its legitimation from authorization by two directly quoted head teachers and an amorphous group of “teachers” who also have a direct quote attributed to them. in fact, three of the five direct quotes in the piece come from teachers. in addition, one of these quotes is repeated and highlighted in a feature box within the text. this signifies the privileged voice of education. the foreground purpose of the article is the reporting an awards event. in reality, however, it focuses on the achievements of one award winner. there is an existential assumption about where the achievement may lead in the following quote: “(andrew) plans to go to strathclyde university to study maths and computing science”. apart from one small two-word quote, andrew’s voice is mediated by the author. the only descriptions of the possible problems associated with asperger syndrome come from robert mckay, a spokesperson from an autism charity, and from the author’s narrative. mckay’s contribution to an understanding of difficulties comes in the phrase, “living in a world where they don’t understand social rules”, which is vague. the author states that: “asperger’s impairs communication skills, social understanding and imagination but not intellect”. this non-modalized declarative statement, with the contrastive clause at the end, indicates clearly how the author is committed to the article. another valorization is the association that the author makes between asperger syndrome and the subjects of maths and computing. andrew received five higher grades, yet only his ability in maths and computing is mentioned. in this text, part of the discourse of asperger syndrome includes (a) a special talent (b) that could be about maths or computing. a hyponymic relation develops between the term “asperger syndrome” and talents such as maths and computing. finally, the article is accompanied by a picture of andrew, standing in front of a whiteboard. on the whiteboard behind him are geometric and algebraic equations. the image creates a stylistic association between andrew and complex mathematics, suggesting that asperger syndrome is associated with mathematical ability. article three: “michelangelo may have suffered asperger’s syndrome” (the scotsman, 1 june, 2004) this article outlines the findings of a research report on asperger syndrome. in the article, the researchers claim that michelangelo had asperger syndrome. it proceeds to describe international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 480 how michelangelo’s behaviour was indicative of asperger syndrome. the article further claims that asperger syndrome may have affected other exceptionally gifted historical figures. the film rain man is also mentioned. there are two interlinked themes in the article. one is the theme of special talent. the other is the theme of the characteristics of asperger syndrome. this article sets up a significant relation of equivalence between the two themes in terms of its structure. this is marked by a higher-level contrastive semantic relation across the whole piece. the article alternates between descriptions of michelangelo and descriptions of asperger syndrome. co-locations serve to link special talent with asperger syndrome. for example: “asperger’s sufferers, while socially disabled, possess phenomenal talents and huge powers of concentration—just like michelangelo”. this co-location is a relation of equivalence. the above example is also contains existential assumptions that people with asperger syndrome have special talents. this is not contested or modalized in any way by the use of pronouns such as “some” in front of the phrase “asperger’s sufferers” suggesting that special talent is a given feature of the condition. at the end of the article, the author refers to the film rain man. this film is an extremely powerful cultural marker for autism and asperger syndrome, as evidenced in the literature review. by referring to this film, the author invokes a visual image of the person with asperger syndrome. even with this evocative image, however, the reader is not left to think about aspects of the film that showed dustin hoffman’s character experiencing difficulties. the reader is, instead, immediately directed to the character’s gift with numbers. a special ability with numbers as a feature of asperger syndrome appears once again. article four: “schoolboy with autism to do battle on mastermind” (the scotsman, 4 may 2005) this article concerns andrew, an 11-year-old boy with asperger syndrome who was scheduled to appear on the u.k. television quiz programme junior mastermind. two themes emerge from the article. the main theme is a valorization of asperger syndrome. there is a less pervasive theme about the other contestants and the nature of this particular quiz programme. contrastive clauses are used on several occasions to positively valorize certain characteristics of asperger syndrome: “sufferers often find social situations confusing and are unable to make small talk or keep eye contact, but are outstanding at picking up details”. the contrastive clause here creates a value assumption through the creation of a dialectical relation. when looking at “characteristics” in the first part of the segment above, the author does not use any adjectives. when looking at the “ability to pick up facts”, however, this characteristic is described as “outstanding”, valorizing this characteristic above the others. the headline includes the word “autism” but goes on to talk about someone with a diagnosis of asperger syndrome. this, once again, leads readers to the conclusion that the reported traits and special talents associated with asperger syndrome are applicable to all those children and young people affected by autism. the article outlines some of the difficulties associated with asperger syndrome. these include: “prone to anxiety attacks”; “difficult to deal with crowds and high noise levels”. the final paragraph is interesting and reveals more traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 481 a recent study for the royal society of medicine diagnosed the artist michelangelo as one of the most famous sufferers. analysing accounts of the painter’s life, experts claimed that he showed all the key traits of the syndrome. this paragraph draws on the power of the discourse of medicine to legitimate the view that asperger syndrome is associated with special talent. the reader is left with a strong sense that special talents are shared by michelangelo and andrew and, by association, others with asperger syndrome. article five: “keith joseph, the father of thatcherism, ‘was autistic’ claims professor” (the independent, 12 july 2006) this article covered an academic conference. one of the speakers, professor fitzgerald, presented his findings on a retrospective analysis of figures from recent and past history, including keith joseph, a minister in the u.k. thatcher government. fitzgerald concluded that all of the historical figures he studied had asperger syndrome. the article has two main themes. one is a description of keith joseph. the other theme is about the relationship of asperger syndrome to special talent and exceptionality. contrastive clauses are present: joseph – who died in 1994 – was a brilliant lawyer who served in harold macmillan’s government in the 1960s but was prone to eccentric behaviour and errors of judgement that can be attributed to his mental condition, said professor fitzgerald. the first half of the sentence before the conjunction “but” serves to mark out joseph’s giftedness. after the conjunction, joseph’s behaviour is described. the contrastive nature of the sentence adds a conditional aspect to his “brillian(ce)” and sets up the existential assumption that his eccentricity and errors of judgement are part of asperger syndrome. the odd behaviour, however, did not stop him from being “brilliant”. there are interesting co-locations that identify asperger syndrome with special talent and exceptionality in a positive sense. the article gets its legitimation from authorization. professor fitzgerald is consistently named at the beginning and end of sentences. the discourse of academia is drawn upon for authorization as references are made to the conference and to the professor’s academic title. a sentence in the second last paragraph sets up an existential assumption that asperger syndrome is a mild condition: “like autism, of which it is a mild form, asperger’s runs in families”. one of the final sentences highlights the relation with computing and intellect: “the professor of computer science with a brilliant mind, few friends and an obsessive interest in model trains is the classic sufferer”. novel one: atwood’s oryx and crake (2003) the analysis concerns the beginning of the chapter entitled “asperger’s u”. the two main characters, jimmy and crake, are the key protagonists in this chapter. the chapter begins with the chapter heading “asperger’s u”. the chapter heading sets the tone for the rest of the chapter. used in this way, the letter “u” follows a common convention in north america, where universities are often referred to by this abbreviation. the co-location of “asperger” with “u” in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 482 this context creates a value assumption about both the word “asperger” and “university”. universities are highly valued in western society as they supposedly attract the most intelligent people. this value is transferred by co-location to the word “asperger”. the following series of quotes shows how crake’s character is developed and linked with asperger syndrome. the initial part of the segment contains jimmy’s reflections on what he felt were crake’s difficulties in having romantic relationships. the propositional assumption is that crake finds it difficult to form relationships with the opposite sex and the value assumption is that this is not a positive aspect of his being: “falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him [crake]”. crake’s description of falling in love does not fall within the usual conventions of romantic fiction. there are no descriptions of the feelings and emotions normally associated with love. instead, the process is described using terms from science and medicine. the sentence also states two almost-mathematical propositions: “love = altered body chemistry = real/altered body chemistry = delusional state = love”. the propositional assumption about this is that love, in crake’s eyes, is a mental illness. in terms of a value assumption, mental illness is viewed negatively in western society and therefore falling in love is negative. the quote suggests that crake is an overly rational scientific person who is out of step with the “normal” expectations about love in the west: “(sex) was on the whole a deeply imperfect solution to the problem of intergenerational genetic transfer”. the above quote gives crake’s views of sex as a process that exists for one outcome (procreation) and not as part of an emotional connection between two people. once again, scientific language is used, that further incorporates this into crake’s personality. the description of a game of chess between crake and jimmy is also interesting: “he already saw thirty moves ahead and was patiently waiting for jimmy’s tortoiselike mind to trundle up to the next rook sacrifice”. in western society, chess is a game associated with intelligence. this link with intelligence is further strengthened by the reference to “jimmy’s tortoiselike mind”. the propositional assumption set up here is that crake’s mind is much quicker than that of jimmy. the use of the verb “trundle” and the noun “sacrifice” serves to emphasize jimmy’s lack of ability and the inevitability of his defeat by crake. in the following segment, the author/narrator describes watson crick institute that crake attends as a student: watson crick was known to the students there as asperger’s u, because of the high percentage of brilliant weirdos that strolled and hopped and lurched through its corridors. demi-autistic, genetically speaking; single-track tunnel vision minds, a marked degree of social ineptitude – these were not your sharp dressers – and luckily for everyone there, a high tolerance for mildly deviant public behaviour. the additive and elaborative clauses (emphasis added) following “asperger’s u” serve to give the author/narrator’s view of aspects of asperger syndrome. the word “brilliant” sets up the propositional assumption that this group is highly intelligent. the phrase “demi-autistic” is particularly unusual. one feature of atwood’s writing is that she invents new words. this invented phrase uses the prefix “demi” that calls to mind the word “demi-god”, a partly divine being. behaviour that may be deviant is modalized by the use of the adverb “mildly.” in an email exchange with jimmy, crake compares watson crick to their old high school, helthwyzer: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 483 compared to this place, helthwyzer was a pleebland, crake replied. it was wall-to-wall nts. nts? neurotypicals. meaning? minus the genius gene. in the above segment, the italics are used to highlight the e-mail messages. the term “neurotypical” is a term commonly used in non-fiction literature and on websites within the asperger online community. it refers to people who are not on the autism spectrum. crake also defines “neurotypicals” as being “minus the genius gene”. the propositional assumption here is that all those who attend “asperger’s u” have the genius gene. this analysis reveals traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome. atwood is talking from her position in the real world, where messages about asperger syndrome circulate. although it is never stated that crake has asperger syndrome, the reader infers this. aspects of the discourse of asperger syndrome that have been textured into this chapter are intelligence (or even genius), clumsiness, social discomfort, some odd behaviour, and high degree of ability in science. the voice of the less-able person with asperger syndrome is entirely absent once again. novel two: haddon’s the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (2003) the analysis concerns chapter 83 of the book. the first point to note is that the book only contains 51 chapters. christopher, however, orders the book chapters according to prime numbers because he likes prime numbers. chronologically, this chapter is actually the 23rd in the book. this unusual convention created by the main character immediately has traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome that suggests a mathematical gift. the majority of this chapter is written in the first person so in this way the presence of the young person with asperger syndrome is immediate. the style of this piece of fictional writing is very immediate. in this chapter, christopher talks about being an astronaut: to be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and i am intelligent. you have to understand how machines work and i’m good at understanding how machines work. you also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft. references to intelligence and a technical proficiency are present in this segment. in the chapter, christopher talks about how he would cope with being on a spaceship: “and i wouldn’t be homesick at all because i’d be surrounded by lots of things i like, which are machines and computers and outer space”. traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome such as being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 484 associated with computers are present. the use of the conjunction “and” at the beginning of the sentence occurs many times throughout the chapter and, indeed, throughout the novel. although not strictly grammatical, this linguistic device suggests a continuous generating and processing of facts, through the use of additive clauses and sentences. the device works to produce a sense that christopher’s mind works like a computer, continually producing and processing information. while this is, in all probability, the author’s intention, the use of this device provides another trace of how computers are part of the discourse of asperger syndrome. some chapters are more explicit about christopher’s mathematical and technical ability. other chapters are concerned with the problems that christopher faces and his reactions to these. in the book, the character of christopher is intelligent, mathematically gifted, and with a great ability to remember facts. he also has great difficulty with social relationships, and is extremely anxious in strange situations. autobiography one: jackson’s freaks, geeks and asperger syndrome (2002) this text talks about luke’s thoughts on the use of the term “asperger syndrome”. the text invites comments or thoughts from other young people with asperger syndrome as in the following quote: hands up those of you reading this who have been called a freak or a geek or a boffin or a nerd? (or any variation on this theme!) i am pretty sure that would be the majority of as kids, probably adults too. this use of the interrogative mood occurs several times to signal the invitation to the reader to become involved more fully in the text. while inviting others into the conversation, however, the use of the terms “freak”, “geek”, “boffin”, and “nerd” all serve to paint a particular picture of asperger syndrome. the contemporary use of the terms “geek” and “nerd” is often associated with a single-minded interest, particularly in computers. a “boffin” is a term used for a scientific or technical expert. these expressions contain traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome associating it with proficiency in science or computers. the word “freak” is more pejorative than the other three expressions. an alternative meaning for “freak”, however, is someone who has an obsessive interest in something. for example, the phrase “health freak” is a common one in western society to describe someone who is obsessed with becoming healthy. both uses of the word “freak”, in this case, reflect the texturing together of the discourses of disability and asperger syndrome. luke jackson’s book is interesting because it gives a view of asperger syndrome from a young person’s perspective. luke is honest about his difficulties but is also extremely positive about his diagnosis. he admits that he was not very good at maths, for example. it is also very clear, however, that luke is an articulate young person. these self-reports contribute to traces of the discourse of asperger syndrome that suggests that those affected are particularly able, if a little “freaky” to use luke’s word. the voices of those less able than luke, however, are absent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 485 autobiography two: willey’s pretending to be normal: living with asperger’s syndrome (1999) book introductions are important, acting as signposts to its content. many readers go to the introduction of a book, its chapter headings, and summary to decide whether or not the book is relevant or interesting (cottrell, 2003). the introduction to this book begins with the following sentences: “the autism umbrella is vast. within its boundaries is a wide range of abilities and disabilities; a wide range of differences”. this foregrounds the author’s recognition of difference. the use of the word “abilities” before the word “disabilities” immediately suggests her valorization of asd. however, its co-location with “disabilities” also introduces a degree of ambivalence. this sense of ambivalence runs throughout her book and reflects her life as an able and intelligent woman who has also experienced some harrowing events. the author consistently alludes to the fact that asperger syndrome can affect people in many different ways. when her description of asperger syndrome is given, however, a clearer idea of her orientation to difference emerges: at their best they will be the eccentrics who wow us with their unusual habits and streamof-conscious creativity, the inventors who give us wonderfully unique gadgets … the geniuses who discover new mathematical equations, the great musicians and writers and artists who enliven our lives. at their most neutral, they will be the loners who never know quite how to greet us, the aloof who aren’t sure they want to greet us, … a few of the professors everyone has in college. at their most noticeable, they will be the lost souls who invade our personal space … the people who sound like robots, the characters who insist they wear the same socks and eat the same breakfast day in and day out. a trace of the discourse of asperger syndrome that involves its association with giftedness informs the first part of the paragraph giving a background valorization to certain traits over the more “neutral” and “noticeable” traits referred to later. a value assumption is created with the use of nominalizations. for example, instead of using “people who behave eccentrically”, or “people with eccentric behaviour”, the author chooses the nominalized version. this serves to reify this characteristic. finally, the words “eccentric”, “genius”, and “mathematical” crop up again, creating a hyponymic relation between those terms and asperger syndrome. the author is clearly an intelligent articulate person, working as a researcher in the field of psycholinguistics and learning style differences. although the book does give clear insights into how she has experienced asperger syndrome and some of its associated difficulties, the association of her title, “doctor”, with “asperger syndrome” serves to contribute to the discourse of asperger syndrome as being associated with academic achievement and high intelligence. findings of the field study the questionnaires and transcripts were analyzed to explore the beliefs and experiences of potential and newly recruited child care practitioners. a number of themes emerged and these are discussed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 486 sources of knowledge in the questionnaire, students were asked where they had gained most of their knowledge about asd. practitioners were asked from where they had learned about asd before they started in their post. only six of the students learned at college. both groups referred to films, tv, books, and newspaper articles as being a source of knowledge. practitioners also quoted the internet as a source of knowledge, while none of the students quoted this as a source. this may be because if someone is actually recruited to work with asd, they may carry out some research before they go for an interview. in the focus groups, there were examples of students and practitioners talking about the film rain man when describing sources of knowledge. a total of seven references were made to the film across the three student focus groups. this appears to demonstrate the power of this particular film as a cultural marker for asd. there were also direct references made to television, newspaper or magazine reports about people affected by asd. this indicates that some of the students have been exposed to the media messages that exist in the wider discourse. understanding of asperger syndrome and autism few students connected autism and asperger syndrome with behavioural problems or challenging behaviour. the construction of autism by the student group contained more negative labels and a less positive evaluation of autism than of asperger syndrome. none of the practitioners reported “giftedness” as a feature of autism while three of the students did. five of the students reported “giftedness” as a feature of asperger syndrome. while five of the practitioners also reported “giftedness” as a feature of asperger syndrome, it should be noted that four of these five practitioners had not yet worked directly with a child or young person affected by asperger syndrome. this may suggest that students and less experienced practitioners have absorbed a message from the media that giftedness is associated with this. the questionnaire also sought data on the construction of asperger syndrome from students. the results are shown in table 1: table 1: concepts used in the students’ construction of as concepts used numbers disability 8 challenging behaviour / behavioural problem 6 communication 4 social interaction 6 flexibility/imagination 3 giftedness 5 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 487 only 17 of the 28 students mentioned asperger syndrome. the remaining 11 students reported that they did not know what asperger syndrome was or that they had not heard of it. (the figures in the table add up to more than 17 because some students used several sentences when describing asperger syndrome). five of the respondents mentioned autism and they were clear that asperger syndrome was a “milder” form of autism or a “higher functioning” form, possibly associated with a degree of giftedness. some of their responses were as follows: “asperger’s syndrome to me is like autism but a milder condition.” “i think asperger’s is a higher functioning form of autism.” “it is a kind of autism, where they are hyper-intelligent.” “i think it’s a kind of autism. the person is very clever or has special abilities.” “quite intelligent person. the person may become quite hyper. a form of autism.” understanding the challenges children affected by asd who are in out-of-home care tend to be there because their behaviour cannot be sustained in a mainstream school or home environment. as such, the children who live in autism-specific facilities will present challenges to practitioners. students and practitioners were asked for their perceptions about these challenges. when asked about the specific difficulties they may face, students believed that there would be problems in communication, flexibility/imagination, and challenging behaviour and that these would be more prevalent in autism than in asperger syndrome. practitioners were asked what problems they faced in their day-to-day work with their young clients. for autism, the responses differed from the students in that the frequency of problems they experienced in the areas of communication and interaction was higher, in practice, than what had been imagined by the student group. for asperger syndrome, the responses differed from the students in that the frequency of problems they experienced in practice was higher in the areas of communication, flexibility/imagination, and challenging behaviour than had been imagined by the student group. students had overestimated the amount of challenging behaviour they may experience from clients with autism but had underestimated the amount of challenging behaviour in asperger syndrome. in addition, students had not mentioned cognitive impairment or self-injury, while practitioners reported that they encountered these in their work. this is illustrated in table 2: table 2: comparison of perception v. reality of problems problem autism (students) autism (practitioners) as (students) as (practitioners) communication 35% 78% 23% 31% flexibility/imagination 35% 28% 12% 23% social interaction 18% 33% 47% 46% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 488 challenging behaviour 71% 61% 23% 54% cognitive impairment 0 17% 0 8% self-injury 0 17% 0 0 mental health issues 0 0 12% 0 intelligence 14% 0 6% 0 the results indicate that students may underestimate some of the difficulties they will face when they go into practice. this was particularly marked in relation to communication (rf., autism) and challenging behaviour (rf., asperger syndrome). practitioners were asked to identify the behaviours that they found most difficult to deal with. they were also asked if they had expected to deal with that particular behaviour before they came to work with children affected by asd. table 3 outlines the answers to this question: table 3: most difficult behaviours expected type of behaviour expected expected (conditional) not expected self-injury 1 5 3 aggression 2 2 0 limited interaction 1 0 0 task avoidance 0 0 1 spitting 0 1 0 snatching food 0 0 1 children scaring other children 1 0 0 the respondents identified seven behaviours that they found most difficult to deal with. self injury was quite significant. five members of staff said they expected to deal with it but the reality was different from their expectations. these were some responses: “one of the main behaviours i find difficult to deal with is self-injury. although i expected this sort of behaviour it’s hard to accept when you see it.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 489 “self-injuring. it’s hard to understand, harrowing to see and difficult to deal with. i will deal with this behaviour here but don’t know if i’m ready for it.” three respondents said that they did not expect to be working with self-injury at all. four respondents identified aggression as the most difficult behaviour to work with. although all of the respondents said they expected to work with it, two of them found the reality different from their expectations: “aggression. i was aware that this could happen but not the regularity.” “aggression but not constantly.” only five out of the 18 respondents felt able to give an unconditional response that they had expected to deal with the behaviour they had identified. stress factors in residential practice and difference between belief and reality in focus group transcripts, only four statements indicating stressors were evident in the student transcripts. the transcripts from the newly appointed practitioners revealed that there were 26 statements that related to stressors. the stressors could be grouped into three subthemes. the first sub-theme was experiencing difficulties with specific issues relating to the children. thirteen of the statements related to specific issues that included self-injury (4), aggression (4), communication (3), and flexibility/imagination (2). the second sub-theme was how the lack of experience and perceived lack of preparation was adversely affecting them as practitioners. seven of the statements related to this sub-theme. the third sub-theme was the effect that organizational issues could have on practitioners. the practitioners were asked what the main differences were between their expectations of their work and their actual experience of the task. the answers clustered around four sub-themes. the first of these was that expectations were not matched by reality, especially when it came to how severely affected the children and young people could be by their asd. the second sub-theme identified was that of challenging behaviour, particularly aggression. the third sub-theme that was mentioned was that respondents had different perceptions of what their job roles would be. the fourth sub-theme was the individual differences of the children and young people. discussion critical disabilities studies and social justice discourse invite researchers to look beyond the obvious and to highlight the power/knowledge in society. in this study, textual analysis revealed that while the discourse of asperger syndrome is sited within a wider disability discourse, there is a degree of ambivalence because it contains ideas that it is correlated to high intelligence, special talents (especially in maths or computing), and possibly with genius. there is also a prevailing belief within the discourse that asperger syndrome is a “mild disorder”. yet the literature review revealed that children with asperger syndrome can have severe problems and that the idea that children with asperger syndrome have high intelligence is contested. the notion of genius has attached itself to asperger syndrome. if the asperger genius exists, however, why is this account privileged over all others in the discourse? where is the voice of the ordinary asperger syndrome child? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 490 the conceptualization of asperger syndrome within the discourse is problematic because it is not fully inclusive of all of its constituency. there are a number of people affected by asperger syndrome who are of high intelligence and who have made a great success of their lives. in addition, there are groups of people affected by asperger syndrome who have constructed their identities in a positive way with little reference to prevailing beliefs, especially about disability. once again, such self-constructed identities that challenge the able-bodied hegemony should be celebrated. the prevailing discourse of asperger syndrome in western society is inclusive of these individuals and can assist them to meet and fulfil their personal aims. in terms of fairclough’s schema, however, the social problem consists of those children who are completely invisible within the discourse. when a social group is absent from the discourse, it is difficult then to begin to address their particular rights from a viewpoint of social policy or provision. like nadesen (2005), i would contend that asperger syndrome is articulated discursively not only through the clustering of symptoms but also through the structure and beliefs relating to middle-class discourses that articulate childhood as the locus of class mobility and intellectual superiority as the pathway to success. the hegemony that defines disability also incorporates concepts of normality, able-bodiedness, and, most importantly in this instance, able-mindedness. it is within such a set of discourses and practices that this obstacle arises. disability is viewed negatively in our society, and learning disabilities are the most negatively viewed among all forms of disability because such disabilities affect the intellect. from this it may be deduced that a “disability” that is associated with high intelligence might be construed as a “lesser evil”. here lies the ambiguity of asperger syndrome. the discourse of asperger syndrome sites it within a wider “dis-ability” discourse but also within the “ability” discourse. when examining asperger syndrome, the emergence of an identity that is often characterized in the media as “genius” may seem to place those in western society with that diagnosis at an advantage. any foregrounding of the more serious issues that can be experienced by children with asperger syndrome would challenge the hegemonic valorization of the intellect. practitioners who work in out-of-home care with children affected by asperger syndrome are among the least powerful of the professional groups involved in this area. they tend to have a shorter period of formal training for their work tasks than other groups of professionals. in terms of the development of their habitus as professional caregivers, therefore, they may be more susceptible to messages in the wider discourse. the textual analysis gave examples of the types of printed media to which they may be exposed. the fieldwork for this study alluded to some interesting relationships between the messages in the discourse and the myths versus the reality of working with children who are severely affected by asperger syndrome. among potential staff and newly recruited practitioners, it was noted that films, tv, books, and the printed media were important sources of knowledge. some key differences emerged between the potential staff and newly recruited practitioners. in particular, asperger syndrome had giftedness as part of its construction for both potential staff and for those current practitioners who had not yet worked with a child with asperger syndrome. this reflects the power of the discourse of asperger syndrome. potential staff were also more inclined to believe that the task of caring for such children may have relatively little stress associated with it. it is in this area that the messages contained within the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 473-493 491 discourses of asperger syndrome can have a negative impact upon newly recruited staff. the group of newly recruited staff reported a much wider and specific series of stressors than did the potential staff group. this could indicate that the habitus is maladapted for the task of caring for this group of children. newly recruited practitioners reported that their expectations were not matched by the reality of the work. these expectations had been partly formed by the discourse and had come to form part of their habitus in relation to their identity as residential practitioners. they also experienced the level of challenging behaviour as stressful. once again, the expectations generated by the discourse of asperger syndrome did not allude to this. finally, the construction of autism and asperger syndrome did not clearly demonstrate the individual differences between children on the autistic spectrum. it was almost as if the staff expected that their young clients would all conform to a stereotypical image. perhaps this image may have reflected the images contained in the discourse – that of the quirky, eccentric child with a possible talent or high iq. i would suggest that as a result of the discourse of asperger syndrome and the wider discourse of autism, some staff may be lost to the profession. high staff turnover in out-of-home care can have a negative impact upon children. if they have a constant change of staff, this can affect the consistency of care and cause some distress for them. therefore, it is important that the prevailing discourses of autism and asperger syndrome are challenged in a productive way. conclusion there is no fixed way of being a child and there is no fixed way of being autistic. moss and petrie (2002) took an ecological view and suggested that we should be creating spaces for children to be and to exist at that time, without a notion of driving them out to a “better” place. understandings like this should be disseminated into wider society. in keeping with the social model of disability, there needs to be a social valuing of children as human beings and not just as potential productive cogs in an economic machine. we must write about and represent these children as real people living ordinary lives and not simply accept the extraordinary representations that exist. the constructs of asperger syndrome and autism come ready-made with a set of rules and procedures implicit within the construct. by questioning the construction of the child with asperger syndrome as a discursive formation, this study has attempted to disentangle the complex web of related practices in order to appreciate the interplay between myth and reality. asperger syndrome is not a purely existential entity, with an independent essence outside of human relationships. it is reified and mediated within sets of social practices. it can be viewed, in fact, as an ideological entity whose meaning is created in the social milieu. the way that phenomena such as asperger syndrome are described in texts is conditioned by the discourses within which it is embedded. discursive practices arise from types of social relations. mediated social relations such as reading books or newspapers, and sharing this information are one way of ensuring that people integrate the predominant messages, and thereby acquire the template for predominant power/knowledge relations within society. this then links to the practice of care as these messages come to form part of the habitus. international journal of child, 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(1991). asperger’s syndrome and kanner’s autism. in u. frith (ed.), autism and asperger syndrome (pp. 93–121). cambridge: cambridge university press. abstract: while the majority of children affected by autistic spectrum disorders (asd) remain at home and within their communities, a minority are so badly affected that they require out-of-home care. this article draws on some of the findings of the ... asperger syndrome is named after hans asperger, the austrian paediatrician who discovered the condition in 1944. asperger noted that such children exhibited a range of behavioural difficulties, some of which could be severe. a few examples of these d... findings of the field study sources of knowledge only 17 of the 28 students mentioned asperger syndrome. the remaining 11 students reported that they did not know what asperger syndrome was or that they had not heard of it. (the figures in the table add up to more than 17 because some students used ... understanding the challenges stress factors in residential practice and difference between belief and reality discussion conclusion reitzal, j., & szatmari, p. (2003). cognitive and academic problems. in m. prior (ed.), learning and behaviour problems in asperger syndrome (pp. 35–54). new york: the guilford press. microsoft word 08 editor_intro.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 1–5 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019514  introduction to special issue: moving through trails and trials toward community wellness shanne mccaffrey abstract: the child and youth care in action vi conference — moving through trails and trials toward community wellness took place april 25–27, 2019 at the university of victoria in victoria, british columbia. working from the position of trying to inhabit the space of a good relative, all conference preparations and work, all details, protocols, and calls to community were guided by the desire to achieve optimal and positive outcomes. from this location we are very grateful to provide this special conference edition of the international journal of child, youth and families studies. shanne mccaffrey is from rural northwest saskatchewan and has metis, cree, blackfoot, and irish ancestry. shanne has roots to beardy’s okemasis community, batoche, and duck lake in saskatchewan, as well as the flathead community in montana. her irish ancestry is from the north of ireland in the region of ulster and village of larne. shanne moved to vancouver island in 1996 and has worked at the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria since 2004. email: smccaffr@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 1–5 2  we open this conference journal with a land acknowledgement to the coast and strait salish peoples on whose land we work, live, and play. our privilege and power on these lands continue to create an ongoing dispossession that is a deep loss to the peoples of this territory and places the burden of dispossession on indigenous children, youth, and families every day. in that spirit, i acknowledge that we are occupiers on the stolen ancestral and traditional lands of the coast and strait salish. we know that the land on which we gather, on which the university of victoria stands, is the unceded traditional territory of the wsáneć, lekwungen, and wyomilth peoples. their relationship with the land — all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be — remains strong and unbroken despite the ongoing dispossession that continues on these lands. the child and youth care in action vi conference — moving through trails and trials toward community wellness took place april 25–27, 2019 at the university of victoria in victoria, british columbia. among our inspirations, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the good work, wisdom, and guidance provided by dr. martin brokenleg. dr. brokenleg is a member of the rosebud sioux people and co-author of the book reclaiming youth at risk: our hope for the future. he is also a co-developer of the circle of courage model, and provides training worldwide for individuals who work with youth at risk. he has worked tirelessly in the field of child and youth care to provide pathways to wellness for children, youth, and families. he has also mentored generations of learners with positivity, good spirit, and care. dr. martin brokenleg is an adjunct professor in the school of child and youth care and part of our family and circle. we sincerely raise our hands in thanking him for helping in the development, guidance, and co-hosting of the conference. working from the position of trying to inhabit the space of a good relative, all conference preparations and work, all details, protocols, and calls to community were guided by the desire to achieve optimal and positive outcomes. from this location we are very grateful to provide this special conference edition of the international journal of child, youth and families studies. in this issue you will find articles from conference attendees that extend the work they are developing in the field. the work is innovative and spans a large breadth of content within the framework of good child and youth care praxis. on the second morning of the conference, we witnessed with the community wellness drum a strong plenary from our relatives that furnished the basis for the first two articles, on african-centred solidarity and on re-imagining child and youth care practice with african canadian youth. the authors of the next article grapple with the discourse of reckoning with privilege and how we are implicated and accountable. the fourth article looks at queering child and youth care, and wrestles with the dynamics of intersectional identity, theory, sexuality, and politics, and with how these elements are taken up in child and youth care. the next article takes up the recent and evolving phenomenon of “gender reveals” and examines how this practice connects to parenting and reifying gender under capitalism. our final international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 1–5 3  article is reflective of the interest among conference participants in de-settlering ourselves, and of how our ways of knowing, doing, and being emerge when we come together in this way. it is important to consider the process that occurred prior to the conference and how that created pathways for what was to come. it was good fortune, suggestions, and encouragement that steered four of us together to work on the conference. our organizing committee consisted of wisdom keeper dr. martin brokenleg, conference guru extraordinaire; tracy underwood, school of child and youth care alumna, academic advisor in the indigenous student support centre, and a valued local community member of the wsáneć peoples; caroline green, the all-knowing and indomitable graduate program assistant in the school of child and youth care; and myself, shanne mccaffrey. our committee numbered four — an intentional choice. four is a sacred number in indigenous cultures, and represents the four directions, the four seasons, and the four quadrants of the medicine wheel, among other important concepts. our coming together was effortless and we vowed to meet, enjoy our time together, and always affirm our work with companionship, food, and deep belly laughs. the conference opened in ceremony and spirit, and upheld that approach throughout the three days. we ended with a giveaway potlatch, a grand circle of all participants, and a closing prayer of gratefulness. we had decided to open ourselves to all possibilities and to be able to flex when called upon. community wellness drum by dylan thomas international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 1–5 4  we decided to use the community wellness drum by dylan thomas as our theme for the call for proposals. the drum features four humans in a circle, representing culture, relationships, families, and communities. the centre of the circle holds the space for youth in perfect balance. the community wellness drum is a witness, meaning that it shares the sacred space of work and being in the conference as a stoic and sacred witness to all the work that is happening. as an organizing committee, we particularly wanted to invite voices and people that sometimes remain relatively hidden and silent in our larger child and youth care community. our call-out to community offered broad themes that people could align with, and share their innovative work and thoughts. the proposals rolled in quickly, and our two-day conference expanded to include a third day. our organizing committee felt that this new structure was evolving as it was meant to. near the school we have a stunning transformation pole that stands in the entrance of the human and social development building (hsd) at the university of victoria, greeting everyone that comes in. the pole was carved from red cedar in 1993 by artist and carver don smith quw’utsun (cowichan) to commemorate the school’s 20th anniversary. it depicts the salish thunderbird as half eagle and half human. between the wings of the thunderbird nestles a child or youth. the thunderbird is there to protect and embrace this youth as its own, enclosing the youth in the spirit of contentment. from an indigenous perspective, both the drum and the transformation pole are animate and alive; they are keepers of memories, stories, and responsibilities. with this animate spirit, which we feel in all our relations, our conference developed an approach of starting all together with a land acknowledgement, and gradually moving into ceremony. we also acknowledged two local indigenous scholars who had recently been hired by the school of child and youth care, and welcomed a group of local tribal school children who came to dance and sing on the land. we had decided that we would ask local elders and wisdom keepers to come and provide a blessing for the transformation pole and for the community wellness drum. elders may and skip sam also blessed our conference and the work of the attendees. in the opening gathering, the pole was blessed by the elders and witnessed by the gathering. we blanketed the carver, publicly acknowledging and honouring him and his wife. the pole was also blanketed and a kerchief was tied to the head of the thunderbird. the community wellness drum was next to receive the blessing and wear a kerchief. we felt very grateful for the children and youth from the local tribal school who filled the air with positivity, good spirits, and togetherness. the spirits and ancestors move in closer when children dance and sing on the land. we had a great gathering in the courtyard, inside the entrance of hsd and people moved in to dance with the children and youth and celebrate the blessing of the drum and pole, the honouring of the maker and his wife, and the blessing of the conference and people attending. it felt good to be able to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 1–5 5  move from ceremony into the sessions and work that we were there for, and to do this with the medicine of the pole, drum, land, and children — a perfect recipe for spirit to be amongst us throughout the three days. the menu was carefully selected and organized by caroline, who understood that food would play a starring role in the conference. food is vitally important in indigenous communities, and it is part of our protocols to make sure that there is enough. we opened registration with a huge breakfast that fed and nourished all of us, including the indigenous vendors that we had invited to be part of the opening, and to showcase and sell their wares. at a sit-down meal at the university club, shells, pebbles, and pieces from the land decorated the tables to remind us of this beautiful territory. it felt right to share food, laughter, and friendship with each other in this territory that we all have all come to love. at the end of the conference we gathered for a community potlatch giveaway, and to recognize community members with handshakes and indigenous gifts. as part of the potlatch giveaway, attendees were asked to write a message to the pole, the drum, or the conference. these messages were gathered up in the ceremonial room of the first peoples house. it was heartening to read people’s accounts of how they engaged in the conference and in ceremony from their own locations and perspectives, summing up and processing the conference in their own extraordinary ways. i would like to convey the thanks of the four committee members to all those who came and shared with us in the conference. we thank the writers who contributed to this special edition. finally, we wish you all wellness and caring trails. all my relations, shanne mccaffrey international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321286 missing the mark: the importance of financial anxiety in financial skills training for foster youth amanda keller abstract: it is well established that many former canadian foster youth struggle with financial issues after aging out of care. much of the financially focused intervention literature speaks to financial literacy training within independent living programming (ilp) or financial empowerment within individual development accounts (idas). these important programs offer educational modules to address financial skills or increase youth access to savings. yet they are not sufficient, as neither addresses the emotional side of personal financial decision-making. growing up in poverty can create emotional challenges related to money, such as financial anxiety. financial anxiety affects quality of life in complex ways. using three clinical composite profiles of youth aging out of the youth protection system in quebec, this paper highlights some of the complex challenges faced by foster care alumni in dealing with economic insecurities. it is our proposition that we must be more mindful of current and former foster youth’s financial well-being and adapt financial literacy training accordingly. further, these programs must be assessed for shortand long-term efficacy. neglecting to measure and address financial anxiety for foster youth and alumni of care risks setting them up for preventable hardships and failures. this paper thus proposes that canadian child welfare organizations and research teams must further develop this area of inquiry and intervention. keywords: financial literacy, financial anxiety, foster youth, care-leaver, independent living programming, financial well-being amanda keller msc is a vanier scholar at the school of social work, mcgill university, 550 sherbrooke ouest suite 100, tour est, montreal qc h3a 1b9. email: amanda.keller@mail.mcgill.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 72 the financial hardships many youth experience before and during placement in foster care, and, indeed, during their transition from care, can leave an enduring mark on their relationship with money. these financial hardships can create complex challenges affecting every aspect of well-being across the life trajectory. specifically, many young people struggle with financial anxiety (hasler et al., 2021), which is defined as ongoing financial distress and constant worry related to one’s finances (shapiro & burchell, 2012). yet, the canadian youth protection system and current financial literacy training programs fail to acknowledge or address the emotional side of finances, rendering financial literacy and financial empowerment training programs less effective than they might otherwise be. the economic experiences of young canadian foster care alumni attest to the inadequacy of current financial training for foster youth. the integration of financial therapy models into current financial literacy training could improve these programs and thus the lives of young adults who are now aging out of the youth protection system with financial anxiety. childhood poverty has been shown to have lasting consequences for one’s relationship with money across the lifespan (hughes & tucker, 2018), and some authors assert that financial trauma can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd; freshman, 2012). regardless of whether poverty exposure causes ptsd, it can cause financial anxiety and affect mental health (evans & cassells, 2014). financial anxiety influences economic decision-making (grable et al., 2015). the food we consume (laraia et al., 2017), the schools we attend, the activities we engage in, the neighbourhoods in which we live, and the transportation we use all reflect financial decisions (brüggen et al., 2017; haushofer & fehr, 2014). when discussing financial well-being and skill development in foster care alumni, it is critical to acknowledge that many youth age out of out-of-home placements and into poverty (courtney & heuring, 2005). most studies examining economic outcomes find that youth aging out of care face greater struggles than their same-age peers in terms of earnings and employment (cassarinoperez et al., 2018; harris et al., 2009; naccarato et al., 2010; o’brien et al., 2010; pecora et al., 2006). the midwest study (courtney & dworsky, 2006) found that foster care alumni are significantly less likely to be employed than their same-age peers, a finding that is consistent with many other studies (barnow et al., 2015; dworsky, 2009; goyette et al., 2019; mason et al., 2003). in a small, peer-reviewed, longitudinal project based in british columbia, rutman and colleagues (2007) interviewed youths four times over two-and-a-half years and found that the number of youths who reported living on less than $500 a month increased between the second and third interviews, demonstrating economic instability and precarity for youth emerging from care. while following a sample of quebec youths aging out of placement across 5 years with interviews conducted at three time periods, goyette and colleagues found that roughly 29% of 831 youths reported being neither at work nor at school at the second interview (goyette et al., 2020). the second interview period for the second wave of the study terminated in january 2020, thus it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 73 likely that many youths were soon to be negatively impacted by the pandemic, which at that point was about to begin. while the social assistance data has yet to be released for goyette et al.’s (2019) longitudinal study, many of these youths who were neither working nor in school were undoubtedly dependent on some form of social assistance to make ends meet. in quebec, however, it is difficult to get by solely on welfare payments. if single, a youth living on social assistance receives $726 a month in provincial benefits (gouvernement du quebec, 2021). for youths unable to work, this income must cover their rent, food, and transportation expenses. in montreal, for instance, the average onebedroom apartment in january 2022 cost $1300 a month (moore, 2022), while the montreal average monthly bus fare cost $94 (société de transport de montréal, n.d.). with the cost of living mounting, young people on social assistance cannot simply budget themselves out of poverty. many receive emotional counselling, but this can be of little immediate assistance to them during a period of financial crisis or extreme poverty. when creating holistic programming, community and social service organizations must be sensitive and responsive to the realities that youth face. for single youths who age out of the system without employment prospects, education and advocacy efforts must focus on increasing government benefits in terms of income, access to education, and subsidized housing (doucet et al., 2021). a significant percentage of youth aging out of placement are working and have the means to make ends meet, but may still experience financial anxiety. because of its many negative impacts, financial anxiety is a critical area to examine and address, an area that we need to develop not only for youth aging out of care, but also for older alumni of care. given the importance of financial decision-making and the specific challenges that foster youth experience, i propose that financial anxiety evaluations be integrated into clinical planning for youths who are aging out of foster care, followed by financial therapy as required. current approaches to financial interventions for foster youth canadian independent living programming (ilp) may include financial literacy training, but that is not documented in the peer-reviewed literature, nor is the outcome of such training (doucet et al., 2022). the information on canadian financial literacy programming that is available in the grey literature focuses on budgeting, banking, credit, debt, and savings (burgha, 2015; children’s aid foundation of canada, 2022; oacas, n.d.). financial literacy training programs are most often offered as a structured online module or classroom-based series (burgha, 2015; children’s aid foundation of canada, 2022; financial consumer agency of canada, 2017). some agencies also offer individual development accounts (idas) — financial empowerment programs that provide matched savings to help low-income individuals accumulate assets from earned income. the american casey family foundation currently offers a multistate ida program for youths aging out of the system, which has been in operation for two decades (the jim casey youth opportunities initiative, 2009). many non-profits in canada also offer ida accounts, though they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 74 do not necessarily target foster youth. larger canadian ida programs include the learn$ave program (elliott, 2007) and the winnipeg seed program (seed winnipeg inc, n.d.). matched savings are an incentive to participate in ida programs, which typically integrate financial literacy training workshops. this makes them a viable alternative to classroom-based financial literacy programming. the matched-savings interventions help low-income people build assets for specific goals under formulas that typically offers between a 1:1 and a 1:4 match. in a 1:1 match, a $100 deposit by the individual would be matched with $100 from the program, yielding $200 in savings; a 1:4 match would yield $500 saved for every $100 deposited. money saved under these programs can only be used toward specific goals such as schooling costs, business startup expenses, or the purchase of tangible and beneficial assets such as a car or home (community renewal canada, n.d.; elliott, 2007). despite their clear benefits, current financial literacy workshops offered by social services agencies and within ida programs seem to assume that poor financial decisions primarily result from a lack of financial knowledge and skills. while financial skill development is critically important — indeed, some youths in care have had no opportunity to learn how to manage money prior to leaving placement — it is not sufficient. financial decisions are not always straightforward or only about financial capacity. knowing the best choice and making it are two different things. this becomes clear if we compare disordered spending with disordered eating: few psychologists would recommend lessons in calorie counting as the sole intervention for people diagnosed with bulimia or anorexia, since it is generally acknowledged that these disorders originate in emotional challenges like anxiety that must be simultaneously addressed. however, current foster care financial skills training programs completely neglect the emotional and relational components of financial decisions. researcher positionality statement as an alumnus of group care who became a clinician, and now as an emerging researcher, i draw on many experiences to inform my research agenda related to well-being. twenty years ago, i aged out of group care. before aging out, i was forced to complete my county’s independent living workbook, which taught basic skills such as how to write a cheque and create a monthly budget. these were financial skills that i had already mastered. i was not allowed to skip worksheets or offered any form of individualized independent living skills training, and this has always annoyed me. although resilient, i faced many challenges in my transition to adulthood; for example, for many years after aging out, i hoarded every penny i could, fearful of the day when i might become destitute. this behaviour limited my quality of life. in my professional career, i worked with two community-based social service agencies in montreal, initially as an outreach worker for homeless youth and then as a case manager with at-risk youth between the ages of 16 and 30. until 2019, when i embarked on my doctoral studies, i worked with many transition-aged foster youths, and always employed a strengths-based approach in my clinical work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 75 methodology in this paper, i provide examples of composite profiles of young adult clinical cases. in these case histories, either all identifiable details have been altered slightly or cases have been merged to ensure my former clients’ anonymity. all three cases summarized below have details taken from actual clinical cases, but the complete descriptions are fictitious and only for illustrative purposes. most of the time, in my case management role i carried a caseload of 30 clients, who ranged in age from 16 to 30. i estimate that about half of my clients at any given moment had a history with youth protection and perhaps a third had aged out of the system. most often, i would begin my work with these young people by helping them solve an immediate crisis, which was often housing, income, or substance-abuse related. if they wished for ongoing support after the crisis was resolved, we would work on issues that they identified. i would help them secure an income, find affordable housing, develop skills associated with independent living, and access needed health services. if they were interested in pursuing secondary, vocational, or post-secondary education, i would help them register and secure funding. in some instances, i would see youth through to their college graduation, marriage, and introduction to parenthood. the cases i outline here were selected because they illustrate specific challenges associated with financial anxiety that is not based on current economic insecurity. it is important to note that not all youth age out into homelessness or poverty. youth from care have diverse needs, capacities, and available resources. in fact, many youth who age out of care already have jobs, scholarships, or full disability/parental benefits that in some cases can fully cover their cost of living. by removing the complexities of current poverty, these resilient youths’ profiles offer a clearer image of the impact and presentation of financial anxiety. composite profiles tara in 2019, i was assigned “tara”, a 22-year-old single mother who had aged out of the system at 18. tara had grown up in a middle-class family until her father died. at that point, the family’s resulting poverty led to housing and food insecurity, and child welfare placement. tara had her first and only child at age 16 while in care. her son had severe developmental delays and was still non-verbal at age 6. as the primary caregiver of a disabled child with unique needs, tara’s atypical schedule did not allow her to pursue a career or schooling. tara’s financial challenges were wreaking havoc in her life. she spent her monthly welfare cheques within the first few days. in quebec, federal and provincial child benefits have lifted very low-income families like tara’s out of poverty, as the province has some of the most generous tax credits for families (first call, 2018, p. 5). the roughly $3,200 per month that tara received in public benefits could have been enough to afford an apartment, food, and transportation, except she would exhaust most of her income during the first week of the month. she would purchase designer clothing, spa treatments, and expensive electronics. midway through the month, she could international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 76 not afford food or suitable material goods for her young son. after missing several rent payments, tara was evicted from her apartment. when questioned about her spending habits, she described having a “now or never” mentality. she felt that if she did not buy what she was craving at the start of the month, she would never be able to do so. this behaviour appears to be a case of anxietybased binge spending, negatively affecting both tara and her son. adam in 2017, i was assigned “adam”, a 19-year-old male who had aged out of foster care. a few months into our work together, adam unexpectedly inherited a six-figure lump sum from a relative he had not seen in years. certainly, this was an unusual situation for a foster care alumnus. it could have been a happy story of a foster child gaining the economic capacity to realize his potential through an unexpected windfall, except that he believed he could not afford to improve his life. six months after receiving the inheritance, he reported being unable to afford school or a car and came into my office each week wearing pyjamas. when asked about what he intended to do with the money, he said he planned to save all of it for his future retirement. the lack of adjustment to his newfound reality was holding him back from fulfilling his potential. hanna “hanna” was a 27-year-old who had been coming to the office since she aged out of group care into homelessness a decade earlier. she had grown up in poverty and went into placement at age 11. she struggled through her early adulthood but was able to complete an undergraduate program at age 25. hanna immediately found a professional job with a starting salary of $50,000 a year, yet two years into her career, many of her conversations focused on what she could not afford. she rationed her money to an extreme, refusing to purchase essential goods or quality foods. hanna lived on cheap ramen soup and kraft dinners and wore donated or used clothing. she spent three hours a day commuting back and forth to work on public transportation to save money. when hanna was assigned to budget counselling, it was found that she had saved more than half her salary every month without using a bank account, instead storing her cash in an underwear drawer. when asked how she cashed her cheques, she replied, "oh, down the street at a payday lender.” when asked why she didn’t have a bank account, she said, “because banks steal all your money.” she verbalized that, despite her successful and well-paying career, she remained terrified of poverty and skeptical of banks. moreover, she had watched her mother deposit small amounts of money into a bank account and end up in debt due to her chequing account fees. as a result of witnessing her mother’s money habits, she remained fearful of traditional banks. while she had a bank account for her financial aid in college, she closed it as soon as she could. because she did not use a bank, she was charged $20 for every cheque she cashed, and was unable to have a credit card. hanna’s anxieties about money and our banking system were deeply entrenched, and financial literacy training alone was not enough to help her move past it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 77 discussion in all three instances, these young adults experienced poverty during their childhood and early adulthood. yet they did not lack financial literacy skills, intellect, or financial means. i believe they all had high levels of economic anxiety, although it presented differently in each case. still, anxiety-based financial decision-making in all three profiles resulted in choices that significantly limited their lives. these choices were heavily influenced by their history with money and their current challenges and emotional states. addressing such challenges requires that we reexamine our assumptions about why foster youths struggle with their financial decisions. it is not simply a matter of irresponsibility or ignorance, but that trauma, anxiety, loss, relationship histories, and systemic injustices have altered how they think about money and engage with the financial system. there is nothing inherently wrong with choosing to have a longer commute, budgeting out food costs, or splurging on an expensive item, provided those choices do not impair one’s quality of life, as was the case for these three otherwise resilient young people. poor coping with financial anxiety can cause a complex array of negative impacts, such as poor nutrition, lower educational attainment, fewer social activities, and reduced planning for the future (archuleta et al., 2013; britt et al., 2015). given the importance of financial decision-making and the specific challenges that foster youth experience, i propose that financial anxiety evaluations be integrated into clinical planning for youth aging out of foster care. financial therapy could likewise be incorporated into financial literacy programs (smith et al., 2017), particularly for working and college-bound youth. the lack of clinical consideration for the emotional and relational sides of personal finances may render financial literacy programs less effective. as we focus on developing technical financial skills, we forget that one’s relationship with money may have an emotional basis. individuals with economic anxiety may hoard cash out of fear or binge-spend when faced with negative feelings. both overspending and hoarding may ultimately result in poor dietary decisions, poor housing conditions, reduced social opportunities, and educational or career setbacks. in all three clinical presentations described above, the individuals suffered diminished quality of life. therefore, more research needs to go into understanding the emotional side of financial decisions and creating effective financial therapies (archuleta et al., 2020), particularly for foster youth. expanding upon ideas presented by smith and colleagues (2017), which focused on one model for financial therapy that could be developed for youth in care, i propose that financial therapy and financial literacy training need to be made more available for both youth in care and alumni. we need to develop a more holistic model of financial education that incorporates developing hard skills, soft skills, and assets. ideally, we would offer financial literacy education, financial assistance, ida programming, and financial therapy. services offered to each person would be based on their individual needs, as some youths may already have adequate financial literacy skills and therefore not benefit from a standardized training program. likewise, some youths may have a healthy relationship with money and therefore not need to participate in financial therapy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 78 programs based on assessing for needs, and offering a broad spectrum of services that youths select in collaboration with their social workers would be more responsive than current approaches. tying matched funding under an ida to foster youths’ educational or therapeutic needs would help young people build assets and incentivize participation in needed training or therapy. finally, offering such services for several years after aging out of care would help reach more youths by allowing them to partake in such training and support at the point in their lives when they are able to receive it. those of us who have worked with youth aging out of care know that some youths are not open to receiving needed supports for a variety of reasons. refusing financial therapy at age 17 should not negate eligibility at age 20. unfortunately, young people who refuse a service or intervention within the youth protection system often forfeit their eligibility immediately. a well-rounded, thoughtfully timed, and empowering approach to financial education and therapy would likely be more effective than current approaches, which fail to consider the timing of service offerings, financial literacy needs, or the presence of financial anxiety when selecting training and supports. thousands of youth age out every year in canada (bains, 2021). many are working and must begin to make important life decisions regarding their earnings. they need to decide where they should live, whom they should live with, and whether they should go to school. even though i have observed that many foster youths have high levels of financial anxiety, i could not find a single peer-reviewed article dedicated to examining financial therapy implementation or outcomes for foster youth. however, smith et al. (2017) have written about one possible approach that was developed for couples and based on a five-step process for readiness to change, which the authors suggested could be adapted for foster youths. additionally, archuleta et al. (2020) developed a brief solution-focused therapy that could be adapted as a shorter-term, cost-effective approach for foster care populations. adapting and testing multiple financial therapy models is needed to advance this area of inquiry. ideally, these clinical trials could be integrated into current financial literacy and financial empowerment programming. also compelling is the idea that alumni of all ages may benefit. it is possible that programs examining the needs and realities of older alumni may deliver more therapeutic benefit than programs focused on teenagers who are living in poverty. thus, financial therapies should be offered broadly. i suspect the youths currently in care who will benefit the most from these programs are those who are identified as particularly resilient or mature. these are youths whose needs during their transition from care are often neglected due to the urgent needs of those who are less resilient. i suspect there is a broad subset of young people who could benefit from such programming if it were offered after they have aged out of services. future research directions given the importance of financial decision-making and the specific challenges that foster youth experience, i propose that financial anxiety evaluations should be integrated into clinical planning for youths aging out of foster care, and that financial literacy programs, particularly for working international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 79 and college-bound youth, should incorporate financial therapy. financial anxiety scales could be adapted to and normed for foster youth and alumni. these measurements could be used routinely with cohorts of youth aging out of the system to better understand the extent to which youths struggle with financial anxiety and how these symptoms manifest. cost-effective interventions geared towards addressing financial anxiety could be implemented and measured for shortand long-term outcomes. online modules with group therapy components may be a cost-effective intervention that could be made available for alumni of all ages who are struggling with their relationship with money. it is important to note that a certain percentage of youths who age out into poverty recover economically over time. that recovery does not necessarily provide improved quality of life, however, as the composite profiles given above exemplify. therefore, financial therapy needs not only to be developed and offered by youth protection services, but also at the community level, perhaps through youth in care networks and other community-based organizations. while this article primarily addresses financial anxiety in foster care alumni, broader clinical populations with high exposure to poverty and its related structural exclusion (king, 2015) may also benefit from combined financial literacy and financial therapy interventions. these populations, such as survivors of domestic violence, immigrants and refugees, and those affected by the criminal justice system, may all include individuals raised in poverty who have complex relationships with money. therefore, there could be a broader profile of people who would benefit from such measures. conclusion this paper calls on canadian researchers and clinicians to consider the impact of poverty and financial anxiety on foster care alumni’s economic decision-making, and to work toward developing an evidence base sufficient to understand the roots of the issue in order to better inform policy and programmatic interventions. current financial literacy programming for foster children aging out of the system is missing a vital piece of the puzzle in terms of understanding foster care alumni’s financial needs and challenges. individuals who have experienced childhood poverty may make maladaptive financial decisions in adulthood not solely because of a lack of skills or knowledge but also due to financial trauma, financial anxiety, and the individuals’ particular relational trajectories. while theories of scarcity and financial anxiety are well-developed in academic literature, this is not true in the clinical and academic literature regarding foster youth. in the future, this area of research and associated clinical interventions need to be better integrated into existing programs for those about to leave foster care as well as for foster care alumni. neglecting to address financial anxiety leaves this population vulnerable to preventable hardships and failures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 71–83 80 references archuleta, k. l., dale, a., & spann, s. m. 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(2012). measuring financial anxiety. journal of neuroscience, psychology, and economics, 5(2), 92–103. doi:10.1037/a0027647 société de transport de montréal. (n.d.). monthly pass, all modes a [government]. retrieved june 21, 2022, from https://www.stm.info/en/info/fares/transit-fares/monthly-pass smith, t. e., malespin, t., richards, k. v., & shelton, v. m. (2017). financial therapy in foster care. journal of human behavior in the social environment, 27(3), 165–170. doi:10.1080/10911359.2016.1268553 abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 379 closing the implementation gap: moving forward with the united nations guidelines for the alternative care of children jennifer davidson abstract: this paper offers a brief picture of an international policy framework, the united nations guidelines for the alternative care of children, and their development from initial conception within the committee on the rights of the child to today. it provides an overview of the key principles of these guidelines, drawing from a new resource developed to support their implementation around the world, entitled moving forward: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children. this overview includes an explanation of the “necessity” and “suitability” principles; the importance of prevention alongside a robust “gatekeeping” function; the fundamental need for developing a genuine range of options; and the significance of focusing on “de-institutionalising the care system”. this article aims to offer something of a road map, identifying along the way a number of key milestones negotiated for children’s rights to be fully realised in alternative care. while this is a long road, the course has been internationally agreed. keywords: children’s rights, alternative care, child protection, deinstitutionalisation, international guidelines, implementation acknowledgements: the following article was originally presented by jennifer davidson as a plenary contribution to the international fice congress in berne, switzerland on october 11, 2013. the content is drawn closely from the moving forward implementation handbook authored by n. cantwell, j. davidson, s. elsley, i. milligan, and n. quinn. the moving forward handbook, on which this paper was based, was supported by the international social service, oak foundation, sos children’s villages international, and unicef. underlying research materials related to this paper can be accessed at: www.alternativecareguidelines.org jennifer davidson was the director of the moving forward project, and is the director of the centre for excellence for looked after children (celcis) at the university of strathclyde, lord hope building, 141 st james road, glasgow g4 0lt. e-mail: jennifer.davidson@strath.ac.uk http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org/ mailto:jennifer.davidson@strath.ac.uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 380 one of the many creative outputs from an international conference for young people with experience of care (in parallel with the 2004 fice congress) was a message painted on canvas that now hangs on our office walls at the centre for excellence for looked after children (celcis) at the university of strathclyde. it hangs as a reminder of the empowering role that we are called to play in children and young people’s lives; the artwork announces: “don’t forget it’s our lives!” this declaration was the young people’s key message to the adults involved in their remarkable, inspiring, and complicated lives. photo taken at the 2004 fice congress, university of strathclyde, scotland. perhaps similarly affecting, the powerful photos of syria’s children alerting us to the terrible complexity of living in a war zone, presented at the fice congress 2014 opening ceremony, are images that will surely remain with all those who were present. some may also remember that the 2004 fice congress took place just after the russian tragedy in beslan, which we had watched with our hearts in our mouths, as the horror unfolded on our tv screens. pausing to remember the very difficult conditions for children around the world at both the 2004 and 2014 fice congresses surely begs the question: what has changed in 10 years? certainly, we can confidently say that not enough has changed. however, with our eyes firmly fixed on the importance of realising children and young people’s rights, today i would like to highlight one important international development over this past decade. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 381 the last decade has seen big steps taken toward the goal of placing children’s rights at the heart of alternative care. (cantwell, davidson, elsley, milligan, & quinn, 2012, p. 14) while i cannot speak about changes in direct practice for children in your particular communities, i would like to draw our attention to a substantial change at the international policy level that has taken place in recent years, and which has the potential to have lasting effects on the experiences and outcomes of some of the most vulnerable children and young people we work with. that is, those children who are living out of their parents’ care. these contributed to the development of the guidelines for the alternative care of children (the guidelines) (united nations general assembly, 2009) the following article will briefly outline the development of these international guidelines from their initial starting place within the convention on the rights of the child (crc), and will offer an overview of the key principles of the guidelines, drawing from a new resource developed to support the implementation of these guidelines around the world entitled moving forward: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children (cantwell et al., 2012). this paper aims to offer something of a road map, identifying a number of key milestones in the path negotiated for children’s rights to be fully realised in alternative care. while this is a long road, the course has been internationally agreed. the united nations convention on the rights of the child the u.n. committee that monitors the implementation of the convention on the rights of the child (crc) (united nations, 1989) in policy and practice by member states has long had an “obsession” (zermatten, 2012) with services for children who are at risk of, or in need of alternative care. this is due in part to the large numbers of children living in alternative care, and in particular “due to the reasons that children are unnecessarily there (such as poverty); due to the poor conditions when care is provided; and due to the slow progress on improving conditions and reasons for coming into care in the first place” (zermatten, 2012, p. 1). this question of how best to realise children’s rights in the context of alternative care formed the basis of the annual day of discussion in 2005 hosted by the crc committee. this was supported by an earlier call for international standards, led by unicef and international social services. in the following years, the answers were sought through a collaborative effort between governments, unicef, ngos, specialists, and young people with experience of alternative care from all regions of the world, resulting in the guidelines for the alternative care of children. the guidelines for the alternative care of children the guidelines offer a policy framework at an international level that is more coherent than anything previous, and this is shaping a more human rights-based approach to providing services for children and young people whose families are unable to care for them. children’s rights, at an international level, have been applied specifically to the context of alternative care and these have been recognised around the world by all governments. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 382 the guidelines were unanimously welcomed by the general assembly as a nonbinding text in 2009: the fact this was unanimous makes them a very strong tool. since then the crc committee has used the principle of these guidelines in almost all its concluding observations: very few state parties escape criticism on this theme. additionally, the potential of the guidelines is not limited to the boundaries of the influence of the crc committee alone. for examples, the committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (united nations human rights council, 2012) has for the first time highlighted the concerns of children with disabilities in alternative care by incorporating the issues identified in the guidelines into their concluding observations. the african committee of experts on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc) in its first general comment also makes specific reference to the guidelines (acerwc, 2013, para. 40 & 63). while government leadership is essential for the effective implementation of these guidelines, it is important to note that the guidelines are explicitly not limited only to governments, but toward “all sectors directly or indirectly concerned” (guidelines, para. 2) including policy-makers, decision-makers, and professionals. there is, therefore, the potential for the guidelines to function as an important advocacy tool as well. while it is a significant achievement to agree on a legal framework and establish proactive guidelines such as these in relation to this important aspect of children’s lives, it is the implementation of these guidelines evidenced by actual changes to practices and systems which will ultimately make a felt difference to children’s lived experiences. the development and welcoming of these guidelines reflect one remarkable step; the implementation of the guidelines is yet a different challenge completely. and implementation is our collective chief interest here: making sustainable improvements to services and systems to ensure that international policy makes a lasting and felt difference to the day-to-day lives of children out of their family’s care. the moving forward implementation handbook not long after the guidelines were welcomed by the u.n. general assembly, moving forward: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children (cantwell et al., 2012) was commissioned and supported by a range of international bodies with the intention to do just that: to move the guidelines beyond their existence as an important international policy framework into developing practice that embeds children’s rights in the provision of alternative care. celcis was commissioned to undertake this exciting work, and it was my privilege to lead the project. translated into six languages (at time of writing), moving forward supports the implementation of the guidelines by making clear connections between national policy, direct practice, and the guidelines themselves. as the guidelines do not entail a binding international treaty, the background drafting documents normally associated with these treaties are not available in relation to the guidelines. in lieu of these “travaux préparatoires”, moving forward offers insight into the intended meaning of the guidelines. its authority is drawn from the chief development role played by the project’s lead consultant from their early beginnings and throughout their progress. moving forward helps to “unpack” the guidelines and brings to life some of the policy and practice challenges, as well as outlining some ways in which, around the globe, people at state level, in ngos and civil society, have overcome these many challenges to ensure that improvements in alternative care gain momentum. informed by a global international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 383 consultation process, moving forward explains the principles and intentions behind the guidelines’ messages; it outlines the key national and regional policy orientations that are necessary as the basis for the implementation of the guidelines; it examines particularly complex areas of practice, and gives examples of promising practice from around the world to inspire us to apply the guidelines, regardless of economic stability, cultural contexts, or other circumstances. i will draw on moving forward in my outline of some of the key aspects of these guidelines. principles of the guidelines the guidelines offer both a powerful advocacy tool as well as a guide to how we collectively understand the whole system of alternative care for children. while the fundamental principles may not be unfamiliar, how they are crafted into an overarching framework offers a refreshing synthesis perspective on the context of the work we do and what we collectively aspire to achieve in partnership with children and families. as moving forward explains, the guidelines were created to ensure respect for two basic principles of alternative care for children, namely: “that such care is genuinely needed (the ‘necessity principle’), and that, when this is so, care is provided in an appropriate manner (the ‘suitability principle’)” (cantwell et al., 2012, p. 22). these principles emphasise the need for a fundamental prioritisation of efforts toward the prevention of separation as the key starting point, to ensure that alternative care is used only when necessary and is appropriate for the child concerned. necessity indeed, much of the guidelines is devoted to the idea of preventing the need for alternative care. this means addressing a substantial range of issues including poverty, stigmatisation, discrimination, health, parent support, and family strengthening. it also requires the recognition of the vital role that informal traditional care mechanisms can have in ensuring care for a child who is not able, for whatever reason, to live with his or her parents. this is the starting point in the guidelines, which aim to challenge our assumptions about what is necessary: what could we do further to ensure a child does not need formal care and that adequate measures for reintegration into the family are in place? a robust “gatekeeping” mechanism makes certain that children are admitted to the alternative care system only if all possible means of keeping them with their parents or wider family have been examined. the implications here are twofold, requiring adequate services or community structures to which referrals can be made, and a gatekeeping system that can operate effectively regardless of whether the potential formal care provider is public or private. among other issues, this is to protect against the consequences of providers themselves being gatekeepers for their own resources, which can unintentionally create an incentive to recruit and maintain numbers of children, and likewise risks creating a disincentive in supporting children to return to their kin. suitability once it has been determined that a child’s needs are best met and their rights best realised through formal alternative care, this care must be provided appropriately for each individual child. that is, whether it is family-based or residential, the care provider must international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 384 maintain a high quality of care for the children and – very importantly – the type of care that is provided must respond as best as possible to the specific needs and characteristics of the child. to uphold the suitability principle, “all care settings must meet general minimum standards” (cantwell et al., 2012, p. 22). ensuring this requires the establishing of standards as well as a mechanism and process to authorise providers of alternative care on the basis of this criteria. to monitor compliance, subsequent inspections also need to be carried out. matching the specific needs and characteristics of the child with the care setting means selecting the care provision that will best meet the child’s needs, and regularly reviewing this decision with a view to the child’s changing needs over time. a genuine choice must exist in order to effectively match the child to the care setting, hence a range of family-based and other care settings should be available. this leads us to a further fundamental principle of the guidelines: “if deciding on ‘suitability’ is to be a meaningful exercise, there must clearly be a range of valid care options from which to choose” (cantwell, et al., 2012, p. 71). ensuring a range of options the guidelines remind us that children need stability for their healthy development; so frequent changes in care settings must be avoided. for stability to be achieved, the range of options must first be available, then thoroughly assessed against the child’s needs, and reviewed as the placement progresses. this range of care options should exist “with priority to family and communitybased solutions” (u.n. general assembly, 2009, para. 53 & 54). importantly, the guidelines acknowledge that family-based settings and good quality residential care facilities form part of a range of appropriate responses, provided that the residential care facilities conform to certain specifications and are used only for “positive” reasons – that is, when they are the most appropriate response to the situation and the needs of the child concerned (u.n. general assembly, 2009, para. 121, 126, & 21; cantwell et al., 2012, p. 22). in other words, a lack of other options, of time or of resources to find a more appropriate setting need to be addressed in their own right, and are not sufficient reasons for providing a child with a residential living situation. distinguishing between “residential facilities” and “institutions” is a sticky issue globally, and in some cases clear parameters and definitions are not easy to establish, and the concepts are not absolute. as cantwell and colleagues (2012) note: the term “institution” has generally taken on a very negative connotation, but there is still no international agreement on its definition: the crc (article 20) merely mentions “institutions” as the only example of a non family-based care setting, while the guidelines simply use the term to describe “large residential facilities”. (p. 42) in addition to many ngo and u.n. reports, the economist magazine (2013) recently called for faster reforms to institutions worldwide, citing them as “poisonous”. the reasons offered include: the toxicity of the environment on children’s health; the isolation it enforces on children from families and their communities; and the unnecessary costs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 385 in truth, there is no universally agreed definition – in the guidelines or elsewhere – of what constitutes an “institution” as opposed to other residential care settings. according to the guidelines, size is one factor, but this is largely because of the now well-documented negative impact that large-scale group care frequently has on the well-being and development of children, and on the capacity to safeguard and promote their rights. (cantwell et al., 2012, p. 34) importantly, it is the “large residential facilities” or “institutions”, and not residential facilities as a whole that are to be targeted through a “de-institutionalisation strategy” (u.n. general assembly, 2009, para 23). moving forward asserts that it is most important to address head-on the cultures themselves that are institutional in nature; which are described as “the regimes and day-to-day organisation that take little account of individuality, or psychological and emotional needs, and tend to isolate children from the outside world” (cantwell et al., 2012, p. 34). as this type of culture can also occur in smaller care homes, this broader understanding of institutional cultures should be the lens that is applied when determining whether a particular facility should be considered as an “institution” . de-institutionalising the system it is difficult, if not impossible, to talk about developing a range of options without making reference to the very important task of deinstitutionalisation. in many countries these go hand-in-hand, as they should. the guidelines stipulate that nationally, to deinstitutionalise effectively, “suitability of care placements” cannot be a sufficient focus. that is, a focus on closing down institutions is insufficient. instead, the guidelines stipulate the need to “de-institutionalise the system”; this requires ensuring that the “necessity” and “gatekeeping” functions within the wider system are given adequate priority alongside developing a range of noninstitutional options. working alongside governments to achieve this is imperative. where this goal has been achieved, it has been a complex, complicated, and carefully planned process. conclusions this presentation has offered introductory information about the guidelines, alongside commentary and contextualising perspectives from moving forward, with the aim of supporting the guidelines’ implementation. a strengths-based, interactive implementation measuring tool, entitled tracking progress: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children (elsley, davidson, hill, cantwell, & milligan, in press) is currently under development, which is aspiring to enable states – and their wide range of partners in the provision of alternative care – to adequately determine the extent to which they have implemented the guidelines, as well as to identify their priority next steps. i began by asking this question: what has changed in 10 years? and ultimately, until we consistently implement these guidelines, genuine social inclusion for these children and young people around the world will continue to be elusive and at best, inconsistent. together with partners, we can make sustainable changes happen, and the guidelines offer us a new coherent and principled vision for our efforts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 386 references african committee of experts on the rights and welfare of the child (acerwc). (2013). general comment on article 30 of the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child. acerwc/gc/01. addis ababa: author. retrieved june 24, 2014 from http://acerwc.org/ ainsworth, f., & thoburn, j. (2014). an exploration of the differential usage of residential childcare across national boundaries, international journal of social welfare, 23(1), 16–24. cantwell, n., davidson, j., elsley, s., milligan, i., & quinn, n. (2012). moving forward: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children. glasgow: centre for excellence for looked after children in scotland. retrieved june 24, 2014 from http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org davidson, j. (2010). a bully in the playground: examining the role of neoliberal economic globalisation in children’s struggle to become ‘fully human’. law, social justice & global development journal, 16(2), retrieved june 24, 2014 from http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2010_2/davidson economist. 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(2009). guidelines for the alternative care of children (resolution a/res/64/142). new york: author. retrieved june 24, 2014 from http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/64/142 http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org/ http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2010_2/davidson http://www.economist.com/news/international/21583665-orphanages-are-closing-not-quickly-enough-nanny-state http://www.economist.com/news/international/21583665-orphanages-are-closing-not-quickly-enough-nanny-state javascript:void(0); javascript:void(0); http://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/crpd/pages/session8.aspx http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/64/142 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12025 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 379–387 387 zermatten, j. (2012). president of the u.n. committee on the rights of the child introducing “moving forward: implementing the guidelines for the alternative care of children” (video file). retrieved june 24, 2014 from http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org/movingforward/introducingmovingforwa rd/tabid/2804/language/en-gb/default.aspx http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org/movingforward/introducingmovingforward/tabid/2804/language/en-gb/default.aspx http://www.alternativecareguidelines.org/movingforward/introducingmovingforward/tabid/2804/language/en-gb/default.aspx necessity suitability ensuring a range of options microsoft word 08 queercrip.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120342 a reflection on queercrip child and youth care practice: dreams of care and futurity casper gemar abstract: this paper engages with a reflection on the author’s embodied queercrip youth care praxis. the author uses queercrip theory to examine child and youth care practices and the relationships they hold to structures of power and domination. in so doing, he uses the terms eliminatory logics, survival dreaming, and crip constellations to understand the dynamics that undergird care and liberatory futures. exploration of the (re)emerging queercrip paradigms that are the foundation of this work finds that these practices of care require moving beyond current imaginaries in youth care spaces. the paper concludes with recommendations for practice. keywords: queer, transgender, disabled, queercrip, futurity, dreaming, prefiguration casper gemar (he/him/his) is a white queer and trans disabled youth care worker, educator, and community organizer. casper is located on the occupied territories of the lhaq’temish and nooksack peoplein the pacific northwest of the united states. email: gemarc@wwu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 130  this reflection is a love letter. to those who have taught me what it means to love with every reach of your body and soul. to those who move through life at a pace that is incongruent with abled society. to those who have found celebration and joy and desire and heart and future in the spaces and bodyminds1 they have been told are broken, who have made being broken fierce and exhilarating. this is a paper full of the knowledges that a middle-school-aged me felt hollow without. this is a thank you to those who have taught me how to laugh in my whole humanity amidst days, weeks, and years that felt impossible. this is only the beginning of my lifetime spent writing love letters to you. as a young, queercrip2 youth worker, educator, and undergraduate student, i hope that, if nothing else, i can share with you some of the ways i have learned to love and care for myself and the youth i construct space with. it was in the journals that i keep on these practices that i first wrote about how my body was my first teacher in learning how to trust. i started a line of questioning in those journals: if i didn’t know how to trust my own bodymind, my own feelings, my own flesh and bones and experience, how could i theorize from it?3 how could i trace the ways i have come to know what parts of the world hurt? and why? what structures and systems enforce the hurt, and how? and, most critically, what builds power against them? what understandings of our flesh and experience must we centre and learn from to build spaces where we (as educators, as students, as youth) feel whole enough to dream beyond the constructions of such spaces as schools and other care facilities? to build against those spaces that, at the end of the day, seek to ensure the continued existence of a state and society that seeks to erase us? in this paper, i will explore these conversations and spaces of practice, writing to think about: (a) in what ways do i use the embodied knowledge of my trans, queer, and disabled self to push against the normative practices of child and youth care spaces? (b) in what ways are queercrip paradigms necessary for liberatory child and youth care spaces? queercrip locality queercrip existence is fundamentally collaborative, responsive, non-hierarchical, connective, iterative, and expansive. in other words, a queercrip locality exists in a space and imagination 1“bodymind” is a term that recognizes that our minds and bodies are deeply entangled and interconnected, rather than two entities that can be separated from each other. this term intentionally resists the harm of a mind/body split that is upheld by the norms of white, colonial culture. there are many variations of this term, including “bodymind” (clare, 2017) and “body/mind” (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018). 2“queercrip” is a term that combines “queer” and the reclamation of the term “cripple” to locate and build power within an identity and a bodymind that occupies both queer and disabled spaces. this is sometimes written “queercrip” or “queer crip”. for further reading see strauss (2018). 3this turn-of-phrase references the concept of “theory in the flesh” that was developed in the field of chicana feminism by moraga and anzaldúa (1983). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 131  beyond what is supposed correct and possible by white western colonial thought. a queercrip locality highlights the intersectionality (crenshaw, 1989) of multiple forms of oppression (or power relations). that is, histories of white supremacy, gender, and ableism are inextricable from the violence of colonialism, conquest, and capitalism (sins invalid, 2017). as such, the deconstruction of ableism and cisheteropatriarchy also necessitates the deconstruction of all entwined systems of control and domination — an affirmation of the understanding that our movements must be intersectional and our liberation must be collective. it should be understood that a queercrip locality is one that cannot exist outside a movement for collective liberation grounded in the lineages, legacies, knowledges, movements, and traditions of black, brown, and indigenous communities. it is critical to seek a disruption of the tendency that centres white stories and assumes them to be the default (or most valid) experience. this paper should not be read in isolation or assumed to be the default and only queercrip experience. this paper should be understood within a whole body of queercrip literature, much of which is written by black, indigenous, and other authors of color. writing this paper as a white author who is queercrip requires that i navigate my positionality and privilege with great care and nuance. in line with the intersectional foundations of a queercrip locality, i work to understand how my identities as a white, trans, queer, disabled, and neurodivergent person shape how i experience and challenge power. through these understandings, i also work to deconstruct the actions, thoughts, and socializations i have that are constructions of white-supremacy and colonialism. this paper is not going to be a perfect entrance into conversation, but will be part of a lifelong commitment to learn and work towards collective liberation and remain accountable to roots, people, and communities while working towards such a future. in grounding my understandings of a queercrip locality for practice, i draw on freeman’s (2007) imagination of queer studies as: a set of possibilities produced out of temporal and historical difference … shaped by and reshaping not only various disciplines but also the studies of race, nation, migration, and postcolony … this queer studies meets critical race theory and postcolonial studies in its understanding that what has not entered the historical records, and what is not yet culturally legible, is often encountered in embodied, nonrational forms: as ghosts, scars, gods. (p. 159) through this framing, i begin to trace the contours of a queercrip locality where an expanding set of possibilities emerges from the “queering” and “cripping” of space. this queercripping of space does not only encompass ball’s (2016) understanding that “queering something involves a deconstructive disposition that points to norms, resists them, and opens up space in which things might be done differently” (p. 35). it also pulls heavily from the embodied nature of the language used in asking: how do we lean the entire weight of our existence on a system until it breaks open enough to build in the cracks? (brown and reagon, 2020, 50:30). the queercripping of space i seek to trace wonders if, perhaps, it could be the weight of our ghosts, scars, and gods — that is, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 132  our embodied knowledge — that enables us to break open the spaces that cannot hold us, and to build differently in their cracks. freeman (2007) named queerness as “not yet culturally legible” (p. 159), and i would argue that the nearly 15 years since she wrote this have suggested that perhaps queerness is fundamentally illegible to the logics of a white, western, settler-colonial, cisheteropatriarchal, capitalist society. in the wake of landmark events such as the obergefell v. hodges (2015) u.s. supreme court case that legalized gay marriage, it has become clearer that the widespread legalization of gay marriage functions primarily as an assimilatory avenue for individuals to engage in heterosexual roles and restrictions and recieve some degree of acceptance for doing so (conrad, 2014). granting legal rights and protections to all queer ways of relating and being in partnerships, rather than just the ones that mimic straight capitalist society, would require that the logics of cisheteronormativity, capitalism, and settler colonialism could continue to operate while allowing for opposing ways of being to exist. i argue that because those logics are fundamentally eliminatory and rely on straight constructions of relationality in order to maintain order, queerness can never be fully legible to them. freeman’s work is neither the first nor the last exploration of the cultural legibility in the relationship between queer identification and the cultural identification of queerness. in muñoz’s (2006) exploration of minoritarian affect, he examined how social logics projected onto the minoritarian subject results in minoritarian affect being, always, “partially illegible in relation to the normative affect performed by normative citizen subjects” (pp. 678–679). the concept of having your embodiment be illegible, or incomprehensible, as viewed through normative logics is also present when piepzna-samarasinha (2018) indicates to the reader some of the ways in which their book and their crip stories are beyond the stories about disability that can be comprehended by racist, ableist constructions of disability (p. 25). they also note this in their statement that “crip bodies and minds are too wild to fit” into traditional movements and nonprofit industrial complex structures (p. 124). the writing of wilchins (2007) in queer theory, gender theory unites the work of muñoz (2006) and piepzna-samarasinha (2018)into an understanding of how the phenomenon of being incomprehensible is (re)produced and maintained through a dominant societal narrative. in her discussion of michel foucault’s work in regard to discursive power, wilchins highlights the understanding that social truths about gender constructed through the dominant discourse of society create a narrative that portrays some bodies and minds as real and normal and, by exclusion, others as nonsensical. by extension, not only will embodied knowledges of the latter bodyminds always be seen to exist outside normative constructions of truth and reason, but, as long as constructions of their bodyminds are written within those dominant discourses that serve as a foundation for knowledge in normative spaces, they will remain objects of discourse rather than participants in discourse (wilchins, 2007, pp. 60–61). this is recognized in the popular knowledge of queercrip communities through the understanding that our bodies can never not exist in space — we cannot leave them at the door. bodyminds deemed normal by the social truths professed in dominant discourse — by measures international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 133  of ability, size, presentation, whiteness, etc. — have the privilege of disappearing in spaces or passing through them. they have the privilege of writing themselves, to be read in the ways they desire. queercrip bodyminds, and those of many other subaltern groups, are already written upon before they enter a room. narratives constructed for us about who we are, can, and should be are always superimposed over our bodies, our stories, and our minds. we become one-dimensional to those viewing us through these logics. who we really are, our substance and joy and love and fire and skills and humanity, is discarded — eliminated within the bounds and constructions of such discourse. a queercrip locality, in its orientation towards liberatory futures, requires that we name the ways the dominant structures operate. i use the term “eliminatory logics” here and throughout this paper, drawing on lytle hernández’s (2017) use of this term in describing how the foundational eliminatory logic of settler-colonialism structures the world for everyone in a settler society. she illustrates how this logic, deployed in many different ways, ultimately seeks “elimination in the service of establishing, defending, and reproducing a settler society” (p. 9). it is this understanding that underpins my use of “eliminatory logics” to describe the ways that oppressive structures — settler-colonialism, white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, racial capitalism, etc. — function in daily life to support and reproduce each other through the elimination of other ways of knowing and being, such as queercrip ones. eliminatory logics can readily be found in mass media. for example, in the movie million dollar baby (eastwood, 2004), the newly disabled protagonist begs to die and is subsequently murdered. the trope perpetuated in this movie and in other media is that disabled people would be “better off dead than disabled”. this eliminatory attitude, greatly compounded across intersections of identity, is manifested in the medical care disabled people receive (asch, 2005). another example can be found in conversion camps, which are based in the eliminatory view that queer and trans people need to be “cured” regardless of any harm and trauma inflicted in the process. in choosing the term “eliminatory logics” for this paper, i aim to have it be an explicit and intentional reminder that spaces constructed within the context of dominant discourse are inextricably linked to the history, intentions, and functions of settler-colonialism, white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, and racial capitalism4 — to the elimination of all ways of being and knowing that do not reproduce and maintain their power and construction of normality. these structures don’t only eliminate — they also punish, subjugate, control, restrict, and criminalize. however, within the context of this paper and within the context of a queercrip locality, it is my intention to be in conversation with the specific ways in which these systems set out to eliminate conceptions of queercrip embodiment by eliminating any fundamentally queercrip way of interacting with the world and others. 4racial capitalism is “the process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person” (leong, 2013, p. 2152). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 134  i include these framings with a goal of dismantling eliminatory logics and moving beyond their bounds: i don’t include them to seek inclusion or legibility within eliminatory logics, as being legible to eliminatory logics would only serve to help perpetuate the system that seeks to eliminate the other. as piepzna-samarasinha (2018) noted, “the state was built on racist, colonialist ableism and will not save us, because it was created to kill us” (p. 23). history shows that as white liberal queers gained in state recognition, the black and brown liberatory origins of the queer movement in the united states were obscured and erased (conrad, 2014), with the white queer positionality inadvertently being used to support the eliminatory projects of colonialism, imperialism, and antiblackness (briggs, 2012). instead, challenging the logics of elimination requires that we continue to implicate settler-colonialism, anti-blackness, white supremacy, capitalism, and the actions and structures that support them. this includes troubling the fact that we are all drawn into the reproduction of these structures through the prevalence of eliminatory logics in our lives. in the liberatory project that rests in a queercrip locality and practice it is imperative to name the dominant structures and how they operate, but it is in the work to move beyond them to where our homes and futures rest. the imaginations for our homes and futures become possible in spaces informed by our embodied knowledges for the very reason that such knowledges are culturally illegible and outside the historical record. in the quotation above, freeman (2007) listed embodied knowledges as often being encountered as ghosts, scars, and gods; i do not find the inclusion of our ghosts, scars, and gods to be separate from queercrip youth care practice. i have found that any practice capable of seeing and honouring the wholeness of those who occupy the margins cannot exist in isolation from our bodies, our homes, our relationships, or our histories. it cannot exist in the absence of what we know viscerally, even — and especially — if those knowledges are not culturally legible. there is a myth that prevails in many professional spaces, including schools and care facilities, that there is a necessity to leave everything at the door: to only enter with your mind and whatever disembodied knowledge has been deemed worthy. for those of us whose most important teachers have been our relationships with body, time, land, community, and rhythm, what is there left of us to enter the room with when our most significant knowledges have been deemed disposable? in the liminality of my ghosts, scars, and gods, i both return home and build my practice. it is through their languages that i understand myself. in my writings on ghosts, scars, and gods, i make sense of how i walk in this world. as part of my journey as a youth worker dedicated to challenging eliminatory logics, i journal about my reflections, dreams, and thoughts for practice. my journals document my relationships with eliminatory logics and explore the power of my embodiment in challenging them. below, i share a piece i wrote some months ago. it stands out for me in its exploration of scars as a medium to engage with corporeal understandings of memory, self, and the dispossessed feeling of a younger self. the outgrowth of this piece in my practice is a foundational understanding of how eliminatory spaces can leave scars, and, from that, one possible way to navigate the complex and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 135  nonlinear journey of healing5. i will share this piece with you so you can see these connections and the personal nature of some of my reflections. i hope the result of sharing this is a deeper understanding of how practices that are typically separated into the eliminatory binary of “personal” and “professional” are entangled. i do not hold the knowledges of my bodymind and the histories that have built them as a side note or addendum to disembodied strategies for practice. rather, i place them at the core of my work. it is okay that i do not have an uncomplicated relationship with my scars, my histories, my compulsions … i will never know how many scars are on my body. some have faded enough that i have to search for them, only sometimes uncovering their form on a sunny day at just the right angle. some i will always see, always run my fingertips over, some feel lost to me. how is it that those moments of such pain are ghosts on my skin now? i still see my scars. i still marvel at the way they blanket my body. i still twist in the light to find paths my fingers can run along, feeling ghosts bubble up to lay across my thighs. and i still know there are so many so faded i may never hear their stories again or feel their fire rushing under the surface and maybe forgetting them is like the amnesia i used to wish for to forget the hurt … but this time i just wish i could remember better the child that wore them. i will let the scars be part of me, remember for me, helping me honor the kid that got me here and grieve all he never should have gone through. practitioner context my practitioner context is primarily, and perhaps most significantly, in a middle-grades afterschool program in the pacific northwest of the united states that serves children aged 11 to 14. this context necessarily informs and is informed by community organizing work that recognizes that the practice of liberatory education is inextricable from that of collective struggle.6 while i work with 9to 10-year-olds or 15to 17-year-olds, it is primarily middle-grades youth that i am speaking and thinking of when i talk about the context of my youth care work. however, my practices in working with youth are heavily informed by my other spaces of care and teaching. i have found that the fundamentally queercrip, non-traditional community, and the in-home practices of caregiving in which i participate, are also significant influences on how i approach caring for youth in my practice. further, a critical piece of how i approach practice is the experience i gained theorizing and practising student-constructed education as an undergraduate student in an emergent, preservice pathway program titled family and community engaged 5the mainstream concept of what “healing” is, and requires, is also rooted in deeply held ableist ideals of cure and able-bodyness being the goals (clare, 2017; piepzna-samarasinha, 2018). this piece of writing is also an exploration of what an experience of finding healing and wholeness, absent an interest in being unscarred and ablebodied/neurotypical, can look like. 6this is a position also recognized in ethnic studies, abolitionist teaching, and civil rights era community freedom schools (to name a few). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 136  teaching7 (facet). through this program, i also gained significant experience doing research and curriculum development. a constant across all of these spaces that has made practising from a queercrip paradigm possible is that they are aligned with the resistance of the eliminatory logics reproduced in schooling and state-sanctioned care practices. our after-school program exists to resist the punitive and punishing nature of k-12 schooling. my role as a caregiver is rooted in disabled community practices and unrecognized by the narrow, punitive, understandings of care held by the state. facet has grown into a powerful relational space that has faculty and students working together to not only critique and reveal the harm in current and historical practices of schooling, but to build practices of education in our classrooms and lives that counter them. when i speak of my youth care practice throughout this article, it is certainly in conversation with institutional understandings of youth care and youth work, but i locate my use of the term “youth care” within a more relational, embodied space that explores the many different ways we can build lives and worlds dedicated to caring for youth. the words “child and youth care”, aside from designating a field of work, have always felt to me to be, above all, a promise and a goal. there is some weight in that declaration. part of what comes up in my meditation on why i use the term “promise” is that care as practised in institutional care facilities has done so much harm and perhaps has yet to truly learn what it might mean to adopt a politic of caring for each other in our full humanities. there is a poem i have read over, and over, and over, and over, and over again with each part of myself, in so many places and times in my life. it hits the heart of the emotions that come up for me in contemplating what we have yet to be able to give our youth when we promise them care and safety. it is a poem i hold tenderly at the centre of everything swirling around me day in and day out, at the centre of any future worth building. these lines from “love letter to the babies/they are all ours” (brown, 2012) are my foundation for a queercrip youth care: everyday the world reminds me that i cannot protect you. i don’t know if protecting children has been possible yet on this earth. i just believe that what we do, or allow to possibly be done, to our babies, in this world, at this time — that is the measure of our humanity. it’s quite possible that this is the purpose of our evolution, to reach a point where we do nothing which takes away from childhood, that protecting childhood is how we grow healthy societies. that the safe unfolding of children into adults shapes every aspect of the worlds we build (stanzas 9–10). it is this that i work for and wonder and dream of. i see my youth care practice first as a site for liberatory educational praxis and, as written in my practice journals, a space that i hope feels like the possibility of home. my practice itself (re)emerges8 in the ways that i interact with youths 7see https://wce.wwu.edu/facet 8i use the term “(re)emerges” in recognition of the many practices and paradigms that we who have been socialized in western culture may consider to be “emerging” but that in fact already exist and are centrally held practices of other cultures (indigenous cultures, subaltern cultures, non-mainstream ways of life, etc). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 137  and others, the functions and contours of the spaces i hold, frequent reflection and adjustment, and my application of both the lessons for practice from an embodied queercrip knowledge and lessons from others. those lessons come from such sources as abolitionist teaching (love, 2019), critical pedagogy and its critiques (cervantes-soon, 2017; freire, 2005), emergent strategy (brown, 2017), and disability justice (clare, 2017; mingus, 2019; piepzna-samarasinha, 2018; sins invalid, 2017). more than anything else, my youth care practice is deeply personal. it is complexly bound up in the very fundamentals of who i am. as i learn and grow in myself and the values, hopes, dreams, and goals i hold closest to my heart, so too does my practice. queercrip paradigms i have found that the understandings at the core of queercrip paradigms resonate deeply with brown’s (2017) concept of emergent strategy9. it has always appeared to me that, in addition to the many other complex traditions that resonate deeply with the concept, emergent strategy speaks to a profoundly queercrip way of interacting with the world. in fact, brown cites octavia butler’s (2019) parable of the sower, a book many disabled folx have read as a disability justice narrative10, as a primary influence in the development of emergent strategy. in her work, brown speaks of emergence as “the connective tissue of all that exists … critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships, listening with all the senses of the body and the mind”, and of “the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies” (p. 3). in my explorations of this way of moving through the world within a queercrip context, i’ve called emergence “constellatory connections” or “crip constellations”. i’ve conceptualized it as being a skill developed out of the ways that being disabled teaches you to see how things can trace and touch other things, connections that are obscured for a lot of people: cold can be intricately linked to pain, sleep can be intricately linked to specific parts of digestive function, the arms and tendrils of trauma in our bodies touch our fascia and our sympathetic nervous system, and music can interrupt and rebuild those connections. i located it in being able to learn and relearn to touch and shape change in the connections — those within our bodies, those between our bodies and the earth, those between our bodies and other people, those between our bodies and understandings of what is not yet culturally legible, those between our bodies and the functions of eliminatory space — all at once, all the time. those connections become just as real as anything tangible and just as traceable as anything else in space. sometimes we see connections and complexity a lot more easily than we draw air into our lungs. for me, it is this emergence, these crip constellations, that are the heart of a queercrip way of moving through the world. 9“emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” (brown, 2017, p. 3). 10piepzna-samarasinha (2018) observed, “to me, butler’s parable books are a black disability justice narrative. lauren often struggles with her nonnormative mind, but it also gives her black disabled brilliance.” (p. 135). piepzna-samarasinha also noted that further key reading on this idea can be found in dr. sami schalk’s book bodyminds reimagined: (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women’s speculative fiction. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 138  while there may be parts of this paper that name things that run deep in collective queercrip experience, it is far too eliminatory to expect or desire that one paper and one practitioner (especially a white one) can or should write more than just one thread in a larger tapestry of queercrip experience. i write these paradigms as i have experienced and understood them within my own life and experience, but i am a single star in a vast and interdependent night sky of queercrip constellations. i cannot even tell my own entire and complete truth in this one story; the words here are but a few threads of the story i hold in my bones and tissue, sampled at one set of moments in my life. all i can do is write my part of the conversation. as i share what i have come to know to be true of the queercrip understandings that shape my practice, i honour the nature of those understandings by recognizing that, at every moment, i am a multitude of constellatory selves and possibilities. i am all at once my suicidal youth, the fierce love i’ve found in radical education, my capacity for collective joy, my moments of isolation so severe they have left scars, and the futures i spend lifetimes each day dreaming of. i am always understanding histories viscerally, full of awe and fear, disgust and hopelessness, hope and desire. i am all at once everything a bodymind can hold, even as i have learned so little of what it has to teach me. in every possible reach of these experiences, i am never only me. i am connections, heartbeats, and heartbreaks, trying something different that could only become possible together, through touching each other’s dreams and curiosities, and finding our own tangled up there too. in constructing these paragraphs, i rely heavily on piepzna-samarasinha’s (2018) book, specifically their work around “crip emotional intelligence — skills we use within our cultures and with each other” (p. 69) to build a foundation for queercrip paradigms. when i speak about a queercrip way of moving through the world i am informed by more than just my own experience and practice: i first found the words to connect to myself to larger community, history, and movement in the writings of eli clare (2017), alison kafer (2013), leah lakshmi piepznasamarasinha (2018), and mia mingus (2019). it was in their words that i first felt less utterly alone in the world. it was in their words that i felt human and possible. everything i ever write and any work i ever do will be in debt to them. unconventional creativity and determination in my third year of undergraduate studies, from may 2019 to march 2020, i wrote and taught a one-time group independent study course11 for facet, the pathway program i mentioned in my practitioner context. in my experience, facet fundamentally serves as a space for connection, community, study, and research for a number of educators, from faculty to undergraduate students to community members and local k–12 staff. my course, entitled “imagining futures for family and community engaged teaching”, was a deep dive into queer and disabled anarchist/abolitionist theory and practice that supported future educators in theorizing on the nature of teaching practices and education. it also facilitated the creation of a collaborative online document that detailed the 11at the institution i attended, a “group independent study course” is bureaucratically distinct from a standard course – it does not require any sort of formal curriculum review and has no distinct course number. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 139  “core values” of our practices as a facet community. the core values established by students in this course were informed by our experiences working with youth in the community, queercrip theory, and our experiences with eliminatory spaces in education, such as being made to feel profoundly alone, out of place, and out of touch within the assertions of the curriculum and classroom community. the core values established through the class were: love, vulnerability (with boundaries), affirmative criticality, solidarity, reciprocity, and relationality. one space from this class that lives bright in my heart and is a powerful example of the creativity, unconventionality, and determination of a queercrip practice took place the friday before we were moved online because of covid-19. i hadn’t held class the week before due to most of us attending a conference, and — as we only met once a week — it felt imperative that we be together. as someone used to dealing with the pushes and pulls of chronic illness, it was unsurprising to me when i woke up that morning and realized that there was no chance it would be a good enough pain day12 to make it to campus. for a moment i felt my heart drop and the rest of the quarter slip away — the first class i was teaching for higher education suddenly seemed too close to ending abruptly. but then i took a chance. i thought, hey, if writing from bed is a time-honoured disabled way of being an activist and a cultural worker (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018), why not teaching from bed too? i’m no stranger to the “that’s-scary-because-it’s-weird-and-unconventional” look you get when you have to come up with highly inventive solutions to get around the barriers to daily life. i’d gotten that look plenty of times around the university, but i hoped that maybe we had truly built something different enough in this class that what i was envisioning might be possible. i messaged my class and let them know what was going on. i asked them to vote: (a) we do class online, (b) we don’t meet this week, or (c) we have class in my tiny apartment and i teach from bed. they unanimously chose the last option and my heart soared. so that day at 1 p.m., i had a room full of my peers — probably in the most unconventional education space of their college experience — drinking apple cider, eating snacks, and studying schooling in the united states. those few hours broke down the longstanding narrative that i could never teach or succeed in academia as a disabled person. it was, as my sister so marvellously put it in a text to me the other night, “disabled queer heaven”. the class brought to life the disability justice spaces that i had been reading and teaching about for years. rather than just imagining a facet model for education that was radical, powerful, inclusive, and liberatory, this class brought it into the world. every day i hold on to that in my writing and teaching. it fuels my dreams of what could be possible for education. 12“pain day” is a term that refers to the level of pain someone with chronic pain is experiencing on any given day. for me, on a “good enough pain day”, the level of pain is conducive to getting to campus; on a “bad pain day” caring for my chronic pain becomes the primary goal of that day. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 140  it also speaks to the ways in which we can’t just stop being disabled or queer or trans or neurodivergent. not for things that are only accessible to abled bodyminds, nor just long enough to finish a project, nor to be a more palatable queer, nor because the abled/cis people around us are tired of it. frequently, when we continue to be disabled and trans in a way that makes people uncomfortable and spaces continue to be inaccessible, eliminatory logic in action throws us away or leaves us behind. it assumes we would be better off dead than living miserably in a society that refuses to actually work towards a future with us in it, and hopes it never has to see us again — which is offensive nonsense. not only because there is no space in a normative imagination to consider that our bodyminds might not inherently make us miserable, but also because we are the ones waking up the next morning despite how much work has been put into structures that, by not making room for our lives, might as well wish us dead. we are the ones who have been shut out and turned away and ignored. despite how much some people may wish that this exclusion would make us just disappear, we are still here and we have to figure out how the hell to survive. this isn’t new. for centuries, trans and disabled people have been creating ways to survive and build community. we have histories to look back on, once you look hard enough to find them. it does mean that, if we survive, we are often skilled at figuring things out and figuring out how to do that over and over again. things will change unpredictably: your day will probably never go as planned. i recall running late to a conference, throwing up all over myself on the freeway, driving around a big unfamiliar city trying to find a laundromat and clean clothes, wiping puke off my belt and chest binder with an industrial-sized wet wipe — and still somehow presenting that day. this is a knowledge that runs deep, of how navigating the world is constantly exhausting, of how you will go on a field trip with the youth in your care and find the elevators are broken. or, you must figure out how to convince five 11-year-olds to help you find the one elevator hidden on the other side of the building so you can access the field trip space. some days it is wondering how on earth abled people have the energy to balk every time an unconventional solution is proposed. unconventional solutions save my life weekly and i do not know if there will ever come a point when i don’t get that look just about every time i propose one. it is knowing that our lives sometimes depend on our creativity and “the understanding that we are in a constant dance of negotiating how to work while disabled or sick or in pain” (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018, p. 71). sometimes that determined, unconventional creativity is needed for finding ways to rest, for always (re)discovering not just the ways to scrape by, but the ways to fill our homes (whether that means our beds or our bodyminds or our cars) with practices that hold us how we deserve to be held. sometimes the determination in unconventional creativity is just the will to walk away without shame or guilt and find better ways to take care of yourself when you try to meet up with your co-workers and find they are on the second floor of a restaurant with no elevator. it is born of learning how to hold heaps of contradictions and how sometimes your oldest understanding of “home” is an in-between: a home found somewhere between this world and the one where we are free. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 141  dreaming i used to call the ways that our unconventional creativity and determination helped us survive “survival dreaming”. i wrote in my journals that survival dreaming is making it to tomorrow by any means possible, knowing the only means that are possible are those that you built out of dreams. those dreams are often ones that you, and everyone around you, thought impossible yesterday or a few hours ago. survival dreaming is a dreaming that comes from intimately knowing being left behind. desperate, hysterical, alone, and incapable of getting to the other side of whatever barrier everyone else seems to walk through like ghosts. survival dreaming is when you are there and you take a breath, however impossible it feels, and find whatever shreds of possibility imagination can fish out of the currents of fear and conventionality and elimination that swirl ever higher. it gets you to tomorrow, exhausted and in pieces. i owe it everything, but it isn’t enough. i do not often speak of this application of unconventional creativity as dreaming any more; i refrain from doing so mostly in a stubborn acknowledgment that we need another kind of dreaming too. one that heals, cares, and holds. one that abolishes the barriers instead of just desperately finding ways to survive them. a dreaming that builds power in our constellations and is committed to our joy. for me and for so many other queercrip folx, our dreaming is political. we survive in spaces that want us dead, then we dream and build spaces where we can not only live but celebrate our lives. our dreaming is the creation of everything that should already exist for us, starting from where we find ourselves and with whom we find ourselves. clare (2017) speaks to this dreaming as “building anew” to make our bodyminds home — an acknowledgment that maybe there is “no return, no restoration, no cure, but rather acceptance, resistance, building anew amidst this dense thicket” (p. 166). it was in this practice of learning to connect and build anew that i first began to understand the ways that the liminality of this queercrip bodymind has grown the skill to dream futures and build possible lives from those dreams. after surviving a suicide attempt at age 16, i had to learn how to exist in this world and in myself again, in any and all ways i could possibly imagine to: my greatest feat of survival dreaming. i like to think i have been a dreamer as long as i have been alive; whether that was out of necessity or nature i don’t know, probably both. i remember vividly during my recovery in my late teens that i could not see a path or place for myself through any means that were expected or offered. i had more grief than i knew what to do with from the years and years and years of forcing myself into a shape that never fit, or was even for me. my greatest grief came not from the trauma of that act in and of itself, but from the realization that as long as i had been alive, i had never held a shape that was my own. it was from there that i began to live and build and create my dreams of who i would be in a different world. and then i began dreaming of building that world, and hoping for all the futures that would come with it. i started out of spite and rage, refusal and bitterness. i was going to cost the world what it had cost me. as i grew, i began building those dreams deeper, out of joy and love, hope and possibility. i found others doing the same. i found histories i never knew existed. i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 142  found writing on queerness and disability. i found theory that helped me understand the functions of eliminatory logics that i had not previously had words to name, and how those logics impacted others with different identities from my own. and i found people asking how we could get free together. when i think about how this works in practice, i think about fridays on the lawn. on friday at the afterschool program i work at, i have been tasked with being one of the adults on the courts at the back of the school. i take a big blanket out to the grass on the far edge of the courts and sit in the sun. it has become natural that a group of youth, typically almost entirely queer or trans, will join me. we spend the hour and a half of our program doing our own arts and crafts projects, listening to music, telling stories, and sharing our experiences navigating the world as trans and queer folx. i have the great joy in these spaces of getting to bear witness to these youth growing up and to see them for all of who they are. that alone is something that hardly exists in education or institutional youth care spaces, which bear the legacy of foundations that uphold the restriction of youth agency (vachon, 2020, p. 67). especially for students who occupy the margins in multiple ways, there is an experience of never getting to be quite seen, of always carrying around parts of who you are that adults and other youth can’t really see or understand or don’t have the capacity and knowledge and ability to bear witness to. getting to co-create spaces with youth is one of the greatest joys i have ever known. they choose the music and the activities and the conversation, and we are people together. i get to share my knowledge of being queercrip and celebrate with them the ways in which they shape and change and complicate and find home in those knowings as they grow and change and move through different identities and ways of engaging with life. we construct conditions where we can connect across the time and space of our experience to make sense together of how we can navigate the eliminatory logics of religion and heteropatriarchical family structure as different generations of queer people. in the seemingly simple act of constructing space that operates from a queer knowing of the world, we construct a fundamentally different foundation for youth care than the one we had left — the one we would return to when the time came to dissolve our shared space. we modelled for ourselves, and hopefully for all those we will ever be in constellation with, a different possibility for a future where all our spaces are built from the joy of knowing each other in all our queer(crip)ness. this dreaming that builds lives for us is known also as “prefigurative politics” — “a fancy term for the idea of imagining and building the world we want to see now” (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018, p. 149), which implies “living and relating differently with others here and now” (bergman & montgomery, 2018, p. 38). one of the questions i get asked most frequently in talking about my work is how i balance future dreaming with tangible action day-to-day. my answer is always that, for me, they are the same. an extraordinary thing about crip culture is that it is always here and there, it is always grounded in the realities of what our bodyminds need urgently and the yet-to-be of our wildest imaginations that wonder fascinatedly about what could be possible. action fuelled by dreams. in my youth care, it is both imagining a radical education praxis built from the ground international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 143  up as i fall asleep as well as waking up the next day to lean into all the little constellation-sparking connections throughout a day that continue to make those imaginings feel possible. sometimes, that means affirming the joy a youth shares with me about their queer identity, or putting on eyeliner and knowing myself in the mirror. other times, it is meeting with parents and other educators to brainstorm abolitionist strategies for community organizing. from time to time, it is spending an extra 3 hours lingering in a friend’s car talking about the intricacies of colonialism, or noticing how a fern almost seems to smile at the sky. it grows and builds, becomes a dozen things, and those constellations become the foundation for programs, practice, and community that ensure i am never dreaming a future in isolation. constellatory complexity and we have had to learn to hold complexity like it is stardust shimmering, shifting between our fingertips known intimately by its indescribability -from my practice journals when i don’t wear a chest binder, some people assume that i am somehow no longer trans. i don’t walk around with a sign letting them know if i’m not wearing the binder due to pain, having trouble breathing, being too exhausted to wrestle into it, or just because i am comfortable not wearing it that day — and they don’t ask (not that they are entitled to that knowledge). their assumption isn’t only that my gender identity is tied to my chest (it is not), but that my use of he/him pronouns signals male/masculine and should thus signal a cis/binary ideal presentation (neither of which i identify with or strive for). that is the cisnormativity of it all. and it is not only violent in its cisnormativity, but in the fact that cisnormativity is also inherently ableist because it ties gender normativity to an able bodymind, one that can perform gender to cisnormative specifications, which my bodymind cannot — and could not even if i wanted it to (again, i do not). both of those logics capture and constrain the complexity of trans and disabled experiences and eliminate the histories and knowledges of those experiences in their attempt to wrestle our bodyminds into a particular kind of embodiment — a single truth, a single narrative. this analysis of eliminatory forces also prompts us to ask how norms about health, body, and gender are also based in colonial ideas of gender, on white bodies and minds, and on access to capital. the assumptions of eliminatory spaces all, always, function to lift up a particular kind of bodymind experience and eliminate all others. as a result, normative imagination does not have the capacity to comprehend queercrip stories. queercrip embodiment comes with a baseline understanding of a multiplicity of self and relationships that can never be simplified. this speaks to our crip constellations — to the ways we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 144  have come to understand, in tracing tangled strands of existence and contradiction, that the universe is multifaceted enough to hold us in our full humanity. having to learn to experience life in indescribably complex constellations and connections is a queercrip skill that can also be applied to our spaces and practices. this can arise through making room for the reality that even tiny functions of space are intricately connected to eliminatory logics and to understanding how a classroom setup can be an eliminatory legacy of colonialism entangled with ableism and antiblackness. it is knowing that there is always more than what is seen and more than what can be communicated in a moment (or a lifetime), and having it take precedence in our interactions with youth and each other. it is an understanding that we cannot simplify our looping and contradicting histories any more than we can leave each other behind, because that is what eliminatory spaces have done to us more times than we can count. it doesn’t mean that we see everything or know everything: it means that we know intimately we are far from being able to see or know everything. we will know more intimately the complexity of those connections that we experience most presently, and we will have to listen to and trust how others see and experience their own constellations. it is a lifelong commitment to practising complexity. it is walking through life knowing better than to assume. piepzna-samarasinha (2018) explained: it’s always asking: if you can touch, what you call your body or your sick, what you need, if you even want suggestions for your issue or if you just want listening. it’s understanding that each disabled person is the expert on their own body/mind. (p. 70) care queercrip care makes home in our relationships to each other. our practices of care are deep, winding, creative, complex, and contradictory. they also, perhaps fundamentally, are relationships built and sustained mutually. with the youth i work with, as well as the friends and family i have learned how to care with, this most often shows up as a co-construction and co-determination of how best to meet all the needs present in the room — both in that moment and as long-term practices. it has been a somewhat experimental process of listening to each other’s experiences and trying our best to name and determine the needs that we have which have not yet been met in those experiences — and then trying whatever solutions we can dream up. this process is responsive: it involves listening and asking. for example, it may mean noticing that a particular youth seems reluctant to engage in big groups and always has their headphones on, but rather than assuming that they are simply unengaged for the sake of being unengaged, asking if they need a quieter space, or if there is something in that environment that feels “too much”. it is also knowing that you will not always get an answer — because trusting people with your needs and care is to make yourself vulnerable, or because a response is not easily accessible — and respecting that while continuing to ask questions and offer different options for care. it will be trial and error in each situation, recognizing that each relationship is unique, and learning the practices that work best within its dynamic — what worked and what did not being determined by those receiving care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 145  a queercrip understanding of care is built on a desire and necessity to build away from intimately known histories of the violent and carceral state systems that have taken on the guise of care (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018, pp. 38–39). this aim, to build beyond eliminatory care practices, speaks directly to the field of child and youth care, which has come to exist within the same patriarchal, colonialist, and curative (ableist) context of care that queercrip paradigms identify and resist: one that frames care as “a practice of intervening, categorizing, saving, containing, fixing, and purifying” (vachon, 2020, p. 72). queercrip care resists the assumption that a bodymind defined by eliminatory logics as correct and healthy (abled) is the only desirable bodymind. it resists an idea of cure based on that assumption and the resulting justification of becoming more abled “by any means necessary”. queercrip care recognizes the inherent value, worth, desirability, and agency of people just as we are, in the bodyminds we are currently in. we all need care, in some capacity or another, and we all have the right to be the one directing and determining that care. caring for queercrip humanity is not assuming. caring for queercrip futures is committing to a practice of dreaming — right now and with all the time we have left. finding the unconventional solutions that refuse to leave anyone behind is an act of care. dismantling harmful and exploitative systems and practices is care. care is unlearning the practices that hurt each other and ourselves. care is accountability to that practice and each other (mingus, 2019). recommendations for child and youth care for child and youth care practitioners, the first place i recommend examining is the imaginaries of your practice. what are you building for and towards? not just what do you believe is possible, but what possibilities does your practice communicate to youth, families, and your community? what logics do your imaginaries develop from? how do those logics define the boundaries of a space, and how might other logics explode those borders? does the imagination your practice rests upon allow you and the youth you work with to “imagine ourselves and others otherwise” (butler, 2004, p. 29)? or does it rest in the assumption that eliminatory logics are simply what is and will continue to be? even if you have never had to dream in order to survive, you can act in the service of building the dreams of those who do. build your practice by centring the dreams of black, brown, indigenous, queer, disabled, migrant, immigrant, muslim, houseless, and low socioeconomic status youth. don’t assume what their dreams are or believe yourself entitled to them; instead, listen to them when they are offered. facilitate dreaming in your spaces and listen to their constellations, and not just the conventional parts, but also the parts you want to dismiss. participate in action that works to dismantle the systemic barriers to those dreams, whatever that looks like for your particular context. action could be on a bigger scale in your community, through interpersonal relationships, or in how you are structuring your space; it likely will be all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 146  of those in whatever ways are most powerful in your context. grow your imaginaries through building collective and meaningful connection to the community in your youth care context. work to lean into a practice of constellations. hold as much complexity and messiness and contradiction and multiplicity and curiosity as you possibly can, and then — once you’ve gotten the hang of that much — even more. it is always going to be much harder than falling back into simple narratives, but it is also needed more than you can imagine. and as the foundation of it all, rest your every practice in the care of nurturing love, joy, wholeness, humanity, and dreams for yourself, your youth, and your community — because no other work becomes possible or sustainable without that. working towards liberatory child and youth care in late 2019, i began building a critical photography practice with youth, facilitating a photography club during our hour of programming time on monday nights. this was one of the first projects that i built alongside youth from the ground up. the creation of the space was informed and supported by my mentors and my co-workers, asked for and envisioned and constructed by students, and realized through inspirations, conversations, passions, and relationships. the very growth of this space came to exist out of constellations. the project has been a site and space for students to explore and reclaim their connection to a building, land, and self that is otherwise defined during the school day primarily through eliminatory logics. the practice of creating and taking pictures is one of joy and creativity that can function as a way for students to theorize about their world and tell their stories. in facilitating this project, i wanted students to direct the club, choosing, for instance, what photos they wanted to take and where we would wander on campus to take them. i did this partially in reaction to noticing that our school building has a large, metal, slotted gate that is closed during non-instructional hours and divides the classrooms from the common areas, such as the gym and the lunchroom. there are several ways to travel between the two spaces when the gate is down, but all of them require a staff key for access. extracurricular activities are typically held in the common areas of the school and separated from the classrooms by the gate. not only is this architecture plainly carceral in nature, but it meant that students were physically cut off from building extracurricular (non-eliminatory) connections to their classroom space. over the year that i supported this club, students most frequently elected to have photoshoots in the instructional wing of the building and outside — places where they typically would have been unable to simply hang out. what i saw when students were able to choose to explore their extracurricular relationships with those parts of the building was that the images they chose to create grew from reflections on how parts of those spaces felt to them (such as taking pictures of each other reaching through the gate into the other section of the building with expressions that conveyed grief and longing) to a reclamation of the school campus as their own (such as artistically international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 147  posed group photos, the creative use of stuffed animals as models in all sorts of silly and brilliant ways, and the inclusion of pride flags in self-portraits). in writing this paper, it has become clear to me how queercrip knowledge — such as never leaving anyone behind, caring for many different interests and needs, and telling more complex stories than words could alone — was shared through this photography project. the youth and i learned and practised how to build a community that moved through our space and time together. we practised coming up with ways to meet all of our needs. sometimes we waited a few more minutes in one spot for the last photographer to finish up their shot. we took the elevator instead of the stairs or split into two groups if we had students who were claustrophobic. we balanced our time outside with the needs of those most sensitive to cold and balanced our time inside with consideration for those who were easily overstimulated. we imagined new projects and planned field trips. we talked about how certain rooms, hallways, portables, patches of grass, and fences made us feel and why; what memories they brought up and why; how we connected those feelings to bigger patterns in our worlds; and how we could capture any measure of that on film. i hope that by now it is becoming clear that i do not share my queercrip experiences and my joy in a practice located in those experiences as information to be reabsorbed into the established eliminatory logics that are the foundation of institutional spaces of youth care, of classrooms, and of academia. nor do i do so with the goal of having those spaces reformed enough that some more privileged queercrip folx can exist in them a little more easily. i share my experiences in order to build understanding that the only way i have been able to survive — and believe in even the possibility of a future where every child is loved in their full humanity — is by constantly working to build and nourish deep constellatory connections that increase the possibilities we can imagine for liberatory futures. in my life, that practice operates from a queercrip paradigm in whatever ways i know to be possible, and is in collaboration and solidarity with thousands of other paradigms working to move beyond eliminatory conceptions of what futures are possible or even worth building. that work is impossible without breaking apart the systemic constructions that, in their basic function, only wish to reproduce power maintained through the exploitation, subjugation, dehumanization, and elimination of those that occupy the margins. if our youth care spaces are to be liberatory, they must be built up from different roots. queer joy as a tool for intergenerational healing i note that practices such as these, grounded in subaltern embodiment and demanding justice, are difficult and exhausting. my own has been able to continue to exist because, although the necessity for struggle is not walking away any time soon, my practice is not first and only a relationship defined by its opposition to eliminatory logics: more critically, it relates to lifesustaining practices of healing and joy. it has been extraordinary beyond anything i myself could have imagined as a youth to experience spaces where queer folx of various intersections from ages 11 to 40-plus could share experiences and joy, and build community. some of the remarkable international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 148  qualities of these spaces are: lack of consumption of queer identity13, affirmation, acceptance, resisting shame, access to community roots and histories, and that they are not just for students or for adults but are created together and promote mutual healing. i have been a part of “love declarations”, where students and adults take turns on the microphone speaking their love for each other and the community into the space. i felt those declarations healing parts of me i didn’t know were broken or missing. they were more than fire or hope, but made me feel like i had stumbled into another world, one where the kind of care i dream of but sometimes think impossible was, instead, defining our lives. i know the future we dream of is possible because i have seen portals to it in the coming out stories of youth that redefine coming out; in their new iterations of queer identity theorized at age 12; in celebration of that which is messy and undefined; in moments of childhood i never got to experience; and in the passing of knowledge not just from adults to children, but freely across our different experiences in finding wholeness. it is in these moments that i recognize us building homes, not the only way i had ever known — in the in-between, from shared grief, isolation, shame, and unbelonging — but in the centre of our lives, from humanity, love, and possibility. i wonder and hope for a generation that never learns the lessons that teach them to build their first home in desolation, for the promise of a childhood that knows first the wonder of the cosmos, and for a world worthy of holding and bearing witness to that brilliance. bits and pieces of these spaces are scattered across my everyday working with youth and alongside older queer staff and mentors. this joy is a steadfast foundation for our dreams, our healing, and our futures. writing ourselves home my experience of the world has never quite lined up with those that are visible in most spaces, especially institutional ones, and over time i have come to identify a sort of dissociating of self and body that accompanies my presence in those spaces. through my time in academia and as a youth care practitioner, my life has come to be about figuring out how to tell the stories of my existence that are too expansive and complex to be comprehended using the logics of those spaces. it has also been learning that these stories must be told, in conversation with the many other stories that complexify and reveal the contradictions of mine, in order to grow our collective capacity to build spaces in youth care and in education that overwhelm the bounds of eliminatory imaginations. the struggle to write my bodymind and have it find validity has been a constant through my years. the logics of eliminatory spaces are not built to hold a body within their bounds, especially 13“lack of consumption of queer identity” means that our identities as queer people in the space are not primarily there to be consumed, observed, debated, or fascinated at by others through a cisheteronormative gaze. rather, to just exist and be present without also being on display. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 149  a queer, disabled one. they render my stories and my experiences illegible. these spaces strive to erase bodies, to focus on disembodied minds, convincing teachers, researchers, students, and youth that any truth that exists does so in absence of feeling and experience. those of us who cannot be separated from our bodies get lost or, maybe more truthfully, intentionally obscured and pushed out. when the weight of eliminatory logics crashes down around me and it suddenly becomes breathtakingly painful to hold onto myself, i continue to rediscover the possibility of doing so in how the dreams we wrap ourselves in sometimes touch and we find ourselves a little bit less alone. i rediscover how my bodymind is a text of our stories, the scars and fidgets and curves and contradictions of in-between. i remember that i can breathe stardust and laugh with mischief and weightless joy in the same moments that i stop breathing from the pain. i find i can pull all these skills from my ever-expanding bodymind and build worlds with them. it is within these joys of queercrip experiences and connections that i find the will to write a practice, with every breath and utter abandon, that gives voice to the memories and scars and hopes and desires that dwell in the creases of my body and carry us towards the possibility of home. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 129–151 150  references asch, a. 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(2007). queer theory, gender theory: an instant primer. alyson books. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716944 correlates of binge drinking in a sample of canadian university students tamara edkins, jason d. edgerton, and lance w. roberts abstract: there is a lack of recent research exploring the differences between binge and non-binge drinkers among canadian university students. the current study aims to address this gap in the literature through an exploratory statistical analysis. univariate, bivariate, and multivariate (logistic regression) analyses were employed to identify the prevalence of binge drinking, as well as its various sociodemographic, behavioural, and mental health correlates. a large majority (83.1%) of the 507 respondents reported consuming alcohol in the previous 12 months; of these, 69.7% (67.0% of males, 70.9% of females) reported engaging in binge drinking (5 drinks in one session for males, 4 for females) at least once in the previous 30 days. although there was no significant gender difference in the prevalence of binge drinking, there were several gender differences among the correlates. compared to non-binge drinkers, male binge drinkers reported greater life satisfaction, and greater probability of smoking cigarettes and engaging in risky sex, while females reported greater impulsivity and lower religiosity. as expected, binge drinkers experienced more adverse consequences from alcohol consumption than did non-binge drinkers, but unexpectedly did not differ significantly in mental health and wellbeing. limitations of the present study and future research directions are discussed with a view to improving our understanding of risk and protective factors related to unhealthy alcohol consumption among university students in canada and abroad. keywords binge drinking; alcohol research; university students; canada; mental health tamara edkins ma is a student in the faculty of law at the university of manitoba, 224 dysart rd., winnipeg, mb r3t 2n2. email: edkint@myumanitoba.ca jason d. edgerton phd (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of sociology, 323 isbister building, 183 dafoe road, university of manitoba, winnipeg, mb r3t 2n2. email: j.edgerton@umanitoba.ca lance w. roberts phd is a professor in the department of sociology at the university of manitoba, 321 isbister building, 183 dafoe road, and a senior fellow at st. john’s college. email: lance.roberts@umanitoba.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716944 mailto:edkint@myumanitoba.ca mailto:j.edgerton@umanitoba.ca mailto:lance.roberts@umanitoba.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 113 in the canadian community health survey, nearly 1 in 5 (17.9%) canadians aged 12 years or older (an estimated 5.3 million people) were classified as heavy drinkers (statistics canada, 2015). past research has shown that canadian university students tend to exhibit higher levels of heavy alcohol consumption than the general population (adlaf, demers, & gliksman, 2005; arbour-nicitopoulos, kwan, lowe, taman, & faulkner, 2010; kwan, faulkner, arbournicitopoulos, & cairney, 2013). this trend has also been documented internationally, in countries such as italy (digrande, perrier, lauro, & contu, 2000), spain (caamaño-isorna, corral, parada, & cadaveira, 2008), the united kingdom (davoren, demant, shiely, & perry, 2016), france (tavolacci et al., 2016), sweden (vaez & laflamme, 2003), new zealand (kypri et al., 2009), and, most extensively, in the united states (e.g. fenzel, 2005; jessor, costa, krueger, & turbin, 2006). binge drinking, or heavy episodic alcohol use, among university students appears to have become part of a “college culture”, in which consuming copious amounts of alcohol is increasingly normalized. for example, using a canadian sample of university students, arbour-nicitopoulos et al. (2010) found that respondents overestimated by 30%, on average, the percentage of students who had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days (e.g., alcohol was consumed by 65.8% of students, while participants estimated that 95.6% of students consumed alcohol), and that students who believed such consumption behaviour to be typical were approximately 7 times more likely to engage in such behaviour themselves. although the prevalence of binge drinking among university students in canada is not as severe as has been documented in the united states (kuo et al., 2002), binge drinking has been associated with health issues, both mental and physical (knight et al., 2002; parada et al., 2012; schoenborn, stommel, & ward, 2014). for example, knight et al. (2002) found that binge drinkers were 18 times more likely to be diagnosed with alcohol dependence, and 13 times more likely with alcohol abuse, than non-binge drinkers. numerous studies have highlighted the prevalence of binge drinking among university students; however, many canadian studies used datasets that are now 10 or more — even up to 20 years old (e.g. adlaf, demers, & gliksman, 2005; balodis et al., 2009; gliksman, newton-taylor, adlaf, & giesbrecht, 1997; gliksman, adlaf, demers, & newton-taylor, 2003), whereas other studies have simply focused on establishing the prevalence of alcohol use among canadian university students (e.g. arbour-nicitopoulos et al., 2010; kwan et al., 2013) rather than exploring bivariate or multivariate levels of analysis with regard to binge drinking. the most recent study exploring correlates of binge drinking among canadian students (carlson et al., 2010) focused on personality traits, not mental health. the current study attempts to address this gap in the canadian literature by using more recent data (collected in 2014 and 2015) to compare binge versus nonbinge drinkers within a university sample using a logistic regression model. the current research is one of the only canadian studies of university binge drinking to employ logistic regression (another was gliksman et al., 2003), which enables the calculation of differences in the probability (and hence the risk) of binge drinking associated with particular student behaviours and attributes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 114 the theoretical background to this study is rooted in a developmental psychopathology perspective on emerging adulthood, one that focuses on the link between life transitions and health risks (schulenberg & maggs, 2002; schulenberg & zarrett, 2006). such a perspective conceptualizes the transition to college as a critical period during which both developmental and contextual transitions can cause disruptive shifts in roles and expectations, heightened distress (adlaf, gliksman, demers, & newton-taylor, 2001) and increased vulnerability to disordered mental health (conley, kirsch, dickson, & bryant, 2014). emerging adulthood, as a time of increased autonomy, exploration, and experimentation, also leaves many university undergraduates vulnerable to excessive alcohol use (arnett, 2005). given previous evidence of the co-occurrence of alcohol and mental health disorders (e.g., deykin, levy, & wells, 1987; swendsen et al., 1998), it is reasonable to expect that the transitional adjustment difficulties that are associated with increased probability of mental health issues might also be associated with increased probability of excessive alcohol use such as binge drinking. thus, the overarching research questions guiding this study are: how prevalent is binge drinking in a sample of canadian university students, and are there significant differences in a number of sociodemographic, attitudinal, behavioural, and mental health variables between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers. review of the literature binge drinking operationalized binge drinking has been defined in the literature as consuming five drinks or more in one sitting or outing (e.g., gliksman et al., 2003; jessor et al., 2006; pascarella et al., 2007; schaffer, jeglic, & stanley, 2008). however, other researchers have elaborated upon this definition, and have further operationalized and supported the need to consider binge drinking as a gendered concept (e.g., balodis et al., 2009; d’alessio, baiocco, & laghi, 2006; delucchi, matzger, & weisner, 2008; simons, christopher, & mclaury, 2004; wechsler, dowdall, davenport, & rimm, 1995). based on arguments for gender differences in terms of body mass and weight (i.e., “gastric metabolism”; wechsler et al., 1995, p. 982), most recent studies have conceptualized binge drinking as five or more drinks for males, and four or more drinks for females (or some similar adjustment). such a gendered measure of binge drinking is consistent with the definition of binge drinking as suggested by the national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism (niaaa; 2003), and has also been supported in the literature. for instance, wechsler et al. (1995) conducted a study that compared binge drinking and alcohol-related consequences. the researchers found that females consuming four or more drinks were just as likely as men consuming five or more drinks to report adverse consequences from alcohol use, such as a hangover, missing class, falling behind in class, unplanned or unsafe sex, and related injuries. females consuming five or more drinks were significantly more likely than males consuming the same amount to experience such adverse consequences. therefore, in light of these gender-variant results, wechsler and colleagues (1995) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 115 argued that gendering the concept of binge drinking would provide a more meaningful threshold for alcohol abuse among females, because it takes into account the physical and metabolic differences between males and females. similarly, others (e.g., digrande et al., 2000; gliksman et al., 2003) have argued that using the five or more drinks measure for both men and women risks underestimating the prevalence of binge drinking among women. accordingly, the present study will operationalize binge drinking as four drinks or more in one sitting for females and five drinks or more for males. correlates of binge drinking the literature has identified numerous correlates of binge drinking (or heavy drinking) among university students and the general population, including demographic characteristics, personality traits, sexual behaviour, mental health, and further alcohol and drug use. gender: gender is one of the key correlates of binge drinking among university students. research, previous canadian studies included, has consistently demonstrated that among university students, male students are more likely to engage in binge drinking compared to their female counterparts (e.g., adlaf et al., 2005; balodis et al., 2009; carlson et al., 2010; gliksman et al., 1997, 2003; tavolacci et al., 2016). living arrangements: living arrangements have also been correlated with binge drinking among university or college students. the difference between students living with parents and students living away from parents has been noted in the literature. college students living on campus or away from their parents are typically more likely to engage in binge drinking than students living with their parents (adlaf et al., 2005; carlson et al., 2010; gliksman et al., 1997, 2003; tavolacci et al., 2016). canadian-born status: there have been mixed results with regard to the relationship between immigrant status and binge drinking. some research has found that canadian newcomers are more likely to engage in high levels of alcohol consumption (caetano, clark, & tam, 1998), while other studies have found that canadian-born respondents are more likely to engage in excessive alcohol use (ross, 1995). however, few studies, and no recent ones, have explored this relationship in a canadian university student population. family history of alcohol use: alcohol abuse or problems with alcohol among college students (and the general population) have been associated with a family history of alcohol abuse (meyerhoff et al., 2004; perkins & berkowitz, 1991; pullen, 1994; weitzman, nelson, & wechsler, 2003). in a study that defined binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks for males and four or more drinks for females at least once in the 2 weeks prior to being surveyed, weitzman et al. (2003) found that of individuals who had begun binge drinking in college, 66% indicated their parents drank, compared to 53% of individuals who did not begin to binge drink in college. further, among a sample of american adults, meyerhoff et al. (2004) reported that heavy drinkers (five drinks or more per day for males, and four drinks or more for females) were significantly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 116 more likely to report a family history of alcoholism compared to light drinkers (65% vs. 42%, respectively). however, despite such support in the literature for the association between a familial history of alcohol abuse and increased alcohol consumption, some research disputes the existence of such a relationship (e.g., baer, 2002; engs, 1990). taken together, the results of existing research on the relationship between parental or family alcohol problems and heavy alcohol consumption are uncertain; therefore, more research is required to further examine any possible association, particularly in the canadian context. grade point average (gpa): gpa and academic motivation of university students have been correlated with binge drinking, with students who engage in binge drinking reporting lower levels of academic achievement (gilbert, 2014; gliksman et al., 1997; pascarella et al., 2007; simons et al., 2004). for example, simons and colleagues (2004) found that students who were engaged in higher academic achievement (“achievement strivings”) were more likely to report a lower number of binge drinking days. further, gliksman et al. (1997) found that students with an a average reported less propensity for engaging in heavy drinking (i.e., 15 or more drinks per week) compared to students with a gpa below a. finally, pascarella et al. (2007) found that students who engaged in binge drinking were more likely to have lower semester grades than nonbinge drinkers. this relationship held true even while controlling for numerous other demographics such as sex, race, and place of residence. mental health: the co-occurrence of alcohol and mental health disorders has been established in the literature (e.g., deykin et al., 1987; swendsen et al., 1998); for example, swendsen et al. found that respondents with alcoholism (i.e., alcohol abuse or dependence) were more likely to exhibit mental health issues such as anxiety or depression. furthermore, mental health indicators such as depression, anxiety, quality of life, and positive/negative affect have been correlated with binge drinking or heavy alcohol consumption (mohamed & ajmal, 2015; mushquash et al., 2013; powers, duffy, burns, & loxton, 2016; townshend & duka, 2005). for example, mushquash et al. (2013) found, among a canadian sample of female university students, that heavy episodic drinking (having four or more drinks at a sitting) was associated with depression; by using longitudinal analysis, the researchers also found that depression significantly contributed to heavy episodic drinking, but not vice versa. further, mohamed and ajmal (2015), using a sample of irish adults, also found that binge drinkers were more likely to report lower scores on quality of life. finally, townshend and duka (2005) reported that non-binge drinkers were more likely to report positive forms of affect (or a positive mood) compared to their binge drinking counterparts. other indicators of mental wellbeing such as social alienation and self-esteem have shown mixed results in the literature. in talking about social alienation, some studies have shown how people susceptible to peer pressure, and people with more friends, are more likely to engage in binge drinking (talbott et al., 2008; weitzman et al., 2003; wechsler & kuo, 2000); however, other findings have indicated that individuals who report feelings of loneliness or fewer social interactions are more likely to engage in such behaviour (knox, vail-smith, & zusman, 2007; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 117 nezlek, pilkington, & bilbro, 1994). no studies that we are aware of have explored the relationship between binge drinking and a validated or complete measure of social alienation among university students. finally, contradictory results have been noted in the literature with regard to the relationship between self-esteem and heavy alcohol consumption among college students. for example, jessor et al. (2006) found that low self-esteem acted as a risk factor for students who had low social support, while valliant and scanlan (1996) found that higher levels of alcohol consumption were associated with high levels of self-esteem, but neither luhtanen and crocker (2005) nor poikolainen, tuulio-henriksson, aalto-setälä, marttunen, and lönnqvist (2001) found evidence of a significant relationship between self-esteem and binge drinking. religiosity: religiosity, although less commonly explored than other factors in relation to binge drinking, has been associated with alcohol use in the literature. for instance, patockpeckham, hutchinson, cheong, and nagoshi (1998) found that students who identified as catholic or protestant were less likely to report engaging in alcohol use than students who identified as nonreligious. further, fenzel (2005), in a study of a sample of undergraduate students at a catholic liberal arts college in the united states, found that strength of religious involvement was correlated with lower levels of heavy drinking (defined in their study as “consuming five or more drinks at a sitting over the previous two weeks”). finally, bock, cochran, and beeghley (1987) also found that religious involvement deterred heavy alcohol use among a sample of americans (see also galen & rogers, 2004; wells, 2010). although hundleby (1987) and rasic, kisely, and langille (2011) looked at the association between religiosity and alcohol use in canadian adolescents, to our knowledge, there has to date been no investigation of such a relationship among canadian university students. impulsivity: one personality trait that has been consistently correlated with binge drinking in the literature, especially among college students, is impulsivity (balodis et al., 2009; carlson et al., 2010; caswell, celio, morgan, & duka, 2016; clark et al., 2012; townshend, kambouropoulos, griffin, hunt, & milani, 2014; wellman, contreras, dugas, o’loughlin, & o’loughlin, 2014). in the literature, impulsivity is considered a multifaceted concept (as noted in caswell et al., 2016); however, most commonly impulsivity refers to a deficits in the ability to regulate present actions and plan proactively, or to favouring spontaneous behaviour over regard for future consequences. researchers have noted the relationship between excessive alcohol consumption and heightened impulsivity. for example, in a united kingdom study, clark and colleagues (2012) found that among a mixed-gender sample of university students who were binge drinkers, the personality trait conscientiousness (which is inversely related to the trait impulsivity) decreased as the amount of alcohol consumed during the week increased. further, carlson et al. (2010) found that among canadian male and female university students, binge drinking was positively associated with impulsivity, as well as with adventure seeking. although there is thus some degree of consensus on the relationship between impulsivity and binge drinking, balodis et al. (2009) found no difference in impulsivity between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers; however, in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 118 the same study, the level of impulsivity was found to increase with the number of drinks consumed on a single occasion. higher levels of alcohol consumption have been associated with diminution of neurological processes involved in “impulse control” (e.g., lópez-caneda, holguín, corral, doallo, & cadaveira, 2014); as argued by henges and marczinski (2012), individuals who cannot control the number of drinks they consume are the most at risk for binge drinking. further, other studies have demonstrated that university students in peer groups who engage in peer delinquency such as stealing, smoking marijuana, or cheating on tests are more likely to also engage in binge drinking (gibson, schreck, & miller, 2004). “risky” sexual behaviour: based on the association between binge drinking and disinhibition (or impulsivity), binge drinking has also been associated with risky sexual behaviour such as unprotected or unplanned sexual relations (bersamin, paschall, saltz, & zamboanga, 2012; brown & vanable, 2007; connor, psutka, cousins, gray, & kypri , 2013; orchowski, mastroleo, & borsari, 2012; townshend et al., 2014). for example, townshend et al. (2014), in comparing low-binge drinkers (those who scored lower than the median binge drinking score of 28.5 on the alcohol use questionnaire which factors in both quantity and frequency) to high-binge drinkers (those who scored higher than the median score), found that high-binge drinkers reported more instances of unplanned sexual encounters than their lower-level counterparts. further, brown and vanable (2007) reported that prior alcohol use before sexual relations was related to risky sexual behaviour (e.g., unprotected sex); however, this relationship existed more prominently among individuals engaging in sexual relations with non-steady partners. finally, orchowski et al. (2012) found that reporting higher levels of alcohol consumption per week and risky behaviours related to alcohol use were both significantly associated with reporting having had a sexual encounter under the influence of alcohol that was later regretted. alcohol and drug use: binge drinking has also been associated with alcohol-related consequences and the age of onset of alcohol use, as well as illicit drug use and smoking tobacco cigarettes. for example, in one study students who engaged in binge drinking were more likely to report alcohol-related consequences such as physical injuries or alcohol dependence (bennett, miller, & woodall, 1999). other studies have also found higher levels of alcohol-related consequences such as physical symptoms (e.g., hangover, insomnia, malnutrition); engaging in unlawful behaviour, interpersonal and intrapersonal problems (e.g., lower life satisfaction, lost friends); and academic consequences (e.g., missed classes, lower grades) to be associated with binge drinking (e.g., carlson et al., 2010; wechsler, molnar, davenport, & baer , 1999). binge drinking has also been associated with drug use, including tobacco cigarettes and marijuana. for instance, bennett et al. (1999) found that a higher level of use of drugs (e.g., marijuana and other illegal drugs) was associated with higher levels of binge drinking. further, digrande et al., (2000) found that university students who had recently used marijuana (in the previous 30 days) were an estimated 5 times more likely to engage in binge drinking, and students who had recently used cigarettes were 2.2 times more likely (see also fenzel, 2005; tavolacci et al., 2016; townshend et al., 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 119 age at first intoxication: finally, the age at which students began drinking alcohol has also been associated with binge drinking among university students (caamaño-isorna et al., 2008; d’alessio et al., 2006; delucchi, matzger, & weisner, 2008; digrande et al., 2000; townshend et al., 2014; weitzman et al., 2003). for example, caamaño-isorna et al. (2008) found that students who had engaged in alcohol use before they were 15 years old were 7.2 times more likely to engage in heavy episodic (binge) drinking. further, digrande et al. (2000) found that students who began drinking alcohol before turning 17 were over 4 times more likely to engage in binge drinking than students who began drinking alcohol after 17 (42.2% vs. 13.4%, respectively). finally, townshend et al. (2014) found that high-level binge drinkers were more likely to have become intoxicated for the first time at an earlier age than low-level binge drinkers. in sum, various sociodemographic, behavioural, and mental health variables have been examined for associations with binge drinking in general, and among university students in particular. however, not all correlates have been sufficiently or recently assessed among contemporary university students, especially in canada. accordingly, the present study will attempt to identify significant differences between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers by examining these correlates using a current sample of canadian university students. methods data the current study (n = 507) uses data from the student leisure and well-being survey (slwbs), which was administered in class to students enrolled in sections of either an introduction to sociology or an introduction to research methods course at a midwestern urban canadian university, the university of manitoba in winnipeg. the survey included questions about general demographics, mental health, personality, gambling behaviour, online gaming behaviour, and alcohol and drug use. participation was voluntary, and the study was approved by the university’s psychology/sociology research ethics board. the slwbs sample compares well to available institutional demographics for 2014 to 2015 (provided by the office of institutional analysis at the university). the sample has slightly more female students (65.0%) than are found in the university population overall (54.0%). however, as noted in an institutional report on the faculty of arts, female university students were more likely than male students to be enrolled in sociology courses, and to major in sociology. a similar percentage of participants in the sample identified as full-time and part-time university students (82.6% vs. 17.4%), compared to the actual institutional distribution (88.4% vs. 11.6%). further, the ratio of international to canadian students (15.4% vs. 84.6%) is nearly identical to institutional demographics (15.1% vs. 84.9%). finally, 88.7% of participants were aged 18 to 24, which is comparable to the institutional proportion (77.3%). in sum, the characteristics of the slwbs sample appear reasonably representative of the general university population. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 120 analytical procedures all statistical analyses were conducted with spss 22. univariate analysis was conducted first to assess the prevalence of binge drinking among canadian university students. then bivariate correlational analyses and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted separately for male and female subsamples. a logistic regression model requires a dichotomous dependent variable, and allows for continuous and categorical independent predictor variables (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). the model was intended to explore which characteristics differentiate binge drinkers from non-binge drinkers in a sample of canadian university students. finally, an insignificant little’s mcar test indicated that missing data were missing completely at random, but to preserve sample size and power, multiple imputation was used to generate 20 datasets from which final model estimates were pooled. measures binge drinking: based on the previously discussed literature (e.g., wechsler et al., 1995), the current research project employed distinct thresholds for defining binge drinking for males and females. the dependent measure, binge drinking, was defined as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in one session or sitting in the past 30 days for males, and consuming four or more drinks in the same period for females. although there is a growing trend in the alcohol studies literature to replace the term “binge drinking” with the term “heavy episodic drinking”, the majority of the studies in our literature review refer to “binge drinking” as defined by the niaaa (2004, p. 3); for consistency, we have therefore chosen to retain this term in the present discussion. a dichotomous variable was computed, with engaged in binge drinking behaviour coded as 1. demographics: several demographic variables were included in the following analysis: gender, immigrant status, family history of alcohol problems, living arrangements, and gpa. the majority of demographics were coded into dichotomous variables with being female, being born outside canada, indicating a member of one’s family has an alcohol problem, and living with parents each coded as 1. gpa was coded using the high school average for participants in their first year of university, and using university gpa for participants in their second year or beyond. gpa categories ranged from 4.0 to 4.5 (a/a+), 3.5 to 3.9 (b+), 3.0 to 3.4 (b), 2.5 to 2.9 (c+), 2.0 to 2.4 (c), and 1.0 to 1.9 (d or lower). notably, despite the importance of age in the literature (e.g., gliksman et al., 1997; perkins, 2007), it was not included in the current analysis due to lack of variation in the birth years of respondents. sample demographics for binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers can be found in table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 121 table 1 sample description: binge vs. non-binge drinkers demographic variable binge non-binge place of birth canadian-born 87.9% 77.6% born outside of canada 12.1% 22.4% student status part-time 10.8% 12.1% full-time 89.2% 87.9% first year of university complete yes 42.1% 49.3% no 57.9% 50.7% gpa (or high school average) 4.0 to 4.5 (a/a+) 30.6% 26.4% 3.5 to 3.9 (b+) 24.6% 30.4% 3.0 to 3.4 (b) 23.7% 21.6% 2.5 to 2.9 (c+) 13.9% 11.5% 2.0 to 2.4 (c) 5.6% 6.1% 1.0 to 1.9 (d or lower) 1.5% 4.1% live with parents yes 75.1% 70.4% no 24.9% 29.6% gender male 34.0% 38.2% female 66.0% 61.8% year of birth (mean) 1995 1994 mental health: measures of two mental health disorders, depression and anxiety, were included in the analysis. anxiety was measured using the generalized anxiety disorder 7-item (gad-7) scale (α = .90; spitzer, kroenke, williams, & löwe, 2006); depression was measured using the center for epidemiologic studies depression (ces-d) 20-item scale (α = .91; eaton, smith, ybarra, muntaner, & tien, 2004). before computing the ces-d scale, four items had to be reverse coded. finally, for both indices, high scores indicate high levels of mental illness (min = 21, 55, respectively), while low scores indicate low levels of mental illness (max = 0, for both). six measures of mental wellbeing were included in the analysis: positive affect, negative affect, life satisfaction, positive mental health, social alienation, and self-esteem. all variables were measured using indices that have been validated in the literature. positive and negative affect (α = .87, .82, respectively) were measured using the short form of the positive and negative affect schedule (panas-sf; ebesutani et al., 2012); life satisfaction was measured using the diener’s satisfaction with life scale (swls; α = .87; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985); positive mental health was measured using the mental health continuum short form (mhc-sf; α = .92; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 122 keyes, 2009); social alienation was measured using the social alienation scale created by jessor and jessor (1977; α = .83), where four positive-oriented or non-alienation items were reversecoded; and finally, self-esteem was measured using the rosenberg self-esteem scale (rse; α = .89; martin-albo, núñez, navarro, & grijalvo, 2007), where five items were reverse-coded before computation. religiosity: religiosity was measured using the santa clara strength of religious faith (scosorf) questionnaire (plante & boccaccini, 1997), a 10-item index measuring the level of religious faith among respondents (α = .98). the measure ranged from 0 to 30, with 30 indicating the strongest level of religiosity. impulsivity: impulsivity was measured using the barratt impulsiveness scale (bis-11), a 26-item index that has been used to measure impulsivity among university students in previous studies (stanford et al., 2009). the index was computed by adding the 26 items together (α = .82). before computation 11 of the items were reverse-coded. high scores on the index indicate high levels of impulsivity (max = 62), while low scores indicate low levels of impulsivity (min = 3). “risky” sexual behaviour: risky sexual behaviour was computed by combining two variables, measures of unprotected and unplanned sexual relations (α = .71). respondents were asked whether, in the past 12 months, they had, while under the influence of alcohol, engaged in (a) unplanned sex or (b) unprotected sex with a person they had never met before. the risky sexual behaviour variable was coded into a dichotomous variable, with those answering “yes” to one or both of the risky sexual behaviour items receiving a score of 1 and those answering “no” to both measures receiving a score of 0. experiences with drugs and alcohol: a number of variables were used to measure experiences with drugs and alcohol. the validated shorter 18-item version of rutgers alcohol problem index (rapi) was used to measure the number of alcohol-related consequences (α = .88; white & labouvie, 2000). due to excessive kurtosis and skewness, the natural log of the rapi score was used. early experiences with alcohol were measured using one variable: the age at which one first became intoxicated from alcohol. drug use was measured by two dichotomous variables: tobacco cigarette use (“yes” = 1) and use of other drugs including marijuana, heroin, and cocaine (use of one or more = 1). results univariate analysis: prevalence of binge drinking in the current study, 83.1% of respondents reported consuming alcohol in the past 12 months; 69.7% of these students reported engaging in binge drinking at least once in the previous 30 days. there was no significant difference between the proportion of males (67.0%) and females (70.9%) who indicated binge drinking (χ2 = .798, p = .372). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 123 for students who had engaged in binge drinking, the most common reported frequency was 2 to 3 times in the previous 30 days (42.8%), followed by 1 time in the previous 30 days (35.9%), 1 to 2 times per week (15.5%), 3 to 4 times per week (1.4%), and more than 5 times per week (3.7%). descriptive statistics for modelled predictor variables are reported in table 2 for the overall sample, and for the male and female subsamples. table 2 descriptive statistics predictor variable overall male female continuous measures mean (standard deviation) religiosity 10.13 (10.13) 9.79 (9.96) 11.65 (10.18) impulsivity 32.62 (10.20) 33.03 (10.24) 32.43 (10.18) rapi (logged) .439 (.432) .459 (.447) .430 (.424) age at first intoxication 16.05 (2.22) 16.17 (2.56) 15.99 (2.02) depression 17.93 (10.8) 16.55 (10.500 18.71 (10.90) anxiety 8.91 (5.51) 7.78 (5.25) 9.51 (5.55) life satisfaction 11.94b (4.26) 12.20 (4.08) 11.80 (4.33) positive mental health 47.27 (12.24) 48.12 (11.74) 46.82 (12.44) positive affect 12.59 (3.56) 12.88 (3.63) 12.45 (.38) negative affect 6.68 (3.42) 6.10 (3.46) 6.99 (3.34) social alienation 25.38 (9.04) 24.58 (8.93) 25.84 (9.08) self-esteem 19.49 (5.55) 20.43 (5.52) 18.97 (5.51) categorical measures % yes binge drink 69.7 67.0 70.9 live with parents 69.6 69.4 69.7 born outside canada 22.7 25.3 21.0 risky sexual behaviour 12.2 18.6 8.8 cigarette use 20.8 22.2 20.2 other drug use 34.6 34.6 34.7 family history of alcohol problems 45.0 42.2 47.3 gpa (or high school average) 4.0 to 4.5 (a+/a) 27.8 24.9 29.3 3.5 to 3.9 (b+) 25.3 24.9 25.4 3.0 to 3.4 (b) 21.6 21.3 21.8 2.5 to 2.9 (c+) 16.3 16.9 16.1 2.0 to 2.4 (c) 5.9 8.2 4.7 1.0 to 1.9 (d or lower) 3.1 3.7 2.8 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 124 bivariate analysis: correlates of binge drinking correlations for each gender sample are reported in tables 3 and 4. illicit drug use, cigarette smoking, and reporting negative consequences from use of alcohol were positively correlated with binge drinking for both sexes, while age at first consumption or intoxication was negatively correlated with binge drinking for both sexes. strength of religious faith was negatively correlated with binge drinking for females but not for males, while impulsivity was positively correlated with binge drinking for females but not for males. anxiety, depression, and being born outside canada were negatively associated with binge drinking for males, but not for females, while life satisfaction and having engaged in risky sex were positively correlated with binge drinking for males but not females. neither positive or negative affect, nor positive mental health, alienation, or self-esteem were significantly correlated with binge drinking for either gender. none of the remaining sociodemographic variables — residing with parents (or not), gpa, having family members with alcohol problems — were significantly correlated with binge drinking for males or females. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 125 table 3 female sample correlations var. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 2 .084 3 .009 .137** 4 -.091 -.020 -.144** 5 .076 .045** .055** -.092** 6 .242** -.036** -.231** -.090** .133** 7 .193** .003 -.055** -.088** .094** .449** 8 .227** .032** -.012 -.098** .266** .439** .395** 9 -.140* -.034** .035** .094** -.221** -.347** -.302** -.248** 10 -.213** .008 -.054** .244** -.130** -.282** -.150** -.163** .166** 11 .207** .049** -.172** .072** .138** .246** .215** .272** -.236** -.066** 12 .018 -.024* .179** -.167** -.022* -.171** -.108** -.124** -.065** .125** .269** 13 .056 .083** -.118** .060** .116** .199** .181** .237** -.050** -.124** .352** -.575** 14 .073 .110** -.001 -.057** .087** .192** .187** .256** -.062** -.081** .200** -.331** .673** 15 -.010 -.125** -.058** -.134** .050** .095** .123** .144** -.069** -.104** .066** -.133** .086** .061** 16 -.018 .040** -.156** .040** .068** .130** .056** .125** -.029** -.116** .370** -.566** .625** .407** .163** 17 -.029 -.054** .087** -.052** -.070** -.213** -.178** -.175** .031** .192** -.338** .632** -.703** -.508** -.099** -.713** 18 .083 .032** -.103** .108** .132** .169** .162** .206** .071** -.083** .307** -.513** .716** .534** .072** .480** -.587** 19 .051 -.029* .023* -.079** .015 -.017 .004 -.119** -.039** .060** -.197** .580** -.634** -.364** -.077** -.554** .587** -.525** 20 .013 -.013 .130** -.082** .031** -.077** -.079** -.146** -.016 .065** -.325** .609** -.654** -.373** -.111** -.612** .663** -.526** .791** notes: 1=binge drinking; 2=live with parents; 3=gpa; 4=born outside canada; 5=risky sex; 6=drug use; 7=cigarette use; 8=rapi; 9=age at first intoxication; 10=religiosity; 11=impulsivity; 12=life satisfaction; 13=depression; 14=anxiety; 15=family alcohol problems; 16=social alienation; 17=self-esteem; 18=negative affect; 19=positive affect; 20=positive mental health *p ≤ .05, **p ≤ .01 table 4 male sample correlations var. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 2 .026 3 .114 .166** 4 -.250** -.172** -.086** 5 .319** -.037* -.107** -.121** 6 .156** .029* -.068** -.208** .330** 7 .238** .001 -.115** -.137** .212** .423** 8 .200* .029* -.075** -.046** .348** .350** .420** 9 -.158* -.039** .023 .311** -.205** -.290** -.279** -.224** 10 -.088 .078** .032* .292** -.119** -.240** -.132** -.081** .256** 11 .074 -.057** -.200** .064** .213** .098** .136** .381** -.092** -.033* 12 .236** .089** .235** -.182** .076** -.025 -.020 -.046** -.164** -.100** -.186** 13 -.188* -.070** -.167** .153** .038* .017 .093** .244** .113** .124** .350** -.554** 14 -.151* .000 -.143** .050** .016 -.008 .129** .198** .090** .115** .264** -.406** .738** 15 .138 -.098** .009 -.188** -.040* .050** .186** .249** -.082** -.117** .095** -.122** .081** .122** 16 .097 .062** -.075** .089** -.023 -.016 .065** .195** -.081** .140** .321** -.475** .626** .525** .092** 17 .193 -.013 .240** -.198** .040** -.007 -.077** -.203** -.133** -.124** -.371** .645** -.729** -.634** -.110** -.639** 18 -.178 .013 -.056** .131** -.051** -.027 .000 .175** .216** .143** .245** -.377** .642** .718** .118** .392** -.582** 19 .117 .105** .190** -.069** .063** .039* -.021 -.064** -.054** -.043** -.209** .598** -.516** -,359** -.181** -.443** .621** -.376** 20 .140 .039** .244** -.060** .047** -.005 -.134** -.194** -.032* -.056** -.300** .617** -.569** -.404** -.210** -.534** .666** -.417** .753** notes: 1=binge drinking; 2=live with parents; 3=gpa; 4=born outside canada; 5=risky sex; 6=drug use; 7=cigarette use; 8=rapi; 9=age at first intoxication; 10=religiosity; 11=impulsivity; 12=life satisfaction; 13=depression; 14=anxiety; 15=family alcohol problems; 16=social alienation; 17=self-esteem; 18=negative affect; 19=positive affect; 20=positive mental health *p ≤. 05, **p ≤ .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 126 multivariate analysis: binge drinkers vs. non-binge drinkers — are there differences? due to concerns about sample size and power for the separate gender analyses, several variables that were not significantly correlated with binge drinking in either gender subsample were omitted from the multivariate analyses (positive mental health, negative affect, positive affect, social alienation, self-esteem, and having a family member with alcohol problems). table 5 hierarchical modelling odds ratios predictor variable model 1 model 2 model 3 (full) male sample not born in canada .320** .380* .427 live with parents .935 .879 1.02 gpa 1.00 1.11 1.01 risky sexual behavior 6.72* 6.42* other drug use .720 .706 cigarette use 2.95 3.61* rapi 3.80** 4.25** age at first intoxication .949 1.02 religiosity .980 impulsivity 1.03 life satisfaction 1.17** depression .996 anxiety .968 cox & snell r2 .044 .206 .267 nagelkerke r2 .061 .287 .371 female sample not born in canada .644 .751 .964 live with parents 1.33 1.37 1.37 gpa 1.02 1.12 1.10 risky sexual behavior 1.05 .871 other drug use 1.96* 1.76 cigarette use 1.51 1.44 rapi 3.02** 2.80** age at first intoxication .967 1.01 religiosity .961** impulsivity 1.04** life satisfaction 1.07 depression .985 anxiety 1.03 cox & snell r2 .009 .110 .155 nagelkerke r2 .013 .157 .221 note: pooled estimates *p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 127 although depression and anxiety are highly correlated in both male and female subsamples (r > .7), both variables were left in the model for conceptual consistency, since neither was significant, whether the other was removed or not, or whether combined into one index variable. furthermore, variance inflation factor values below 2.5 and tolerance values near 1 indicated that collinearity was not a concern for any of the modelled variables (allison, 1999). logistic regression modelling (odds ratios are reported in table 5) was conducted hierarchically, with sociodemographic variables entered first (model 1), followed by the addition of behavioural variables (model 2), and then dispositions and mental health variables (model 3). table 6 full model (3) logistic regression results predictor variable b (se) odds ratio 95% ci male sample (n = 180) not born in canada -.852(.534) .427 .150-1.22 live with parents .019(.460) 1.02 .414-2.51 gpa .010(.460) 1.01 .755-1.35 risky sexual behaviour 1.86(.835) 6.42 1.25-33.0* other drug use -.348(.465) .706 .284-1.76 cigarette use 1.28(.631) 3.61 1.05-12.4* rapi 1.45(.573) 4.25 1.38-13.09** age at first intoxication .018(.084) 1.02 .864-1.20 religiosity -.021(.022) .980 .938-1.02 impulsivity .025(.022) 1.03 .981-1.07 life satisfaction .154(.061) 1.17 1.03-1.31** depression -.004(.036) .996 .929-1.07 anxiety -.032(.057) .968 .866-1.08 female sample (n = 327) not born in canada -.036(.394) .964 .445-2.09 live with parents .314(.303) 1.37 .755-2.48 gpa .099(.116) 1.10 .880-1.38 risky sexual behaviour -.138(.611) .871 .263-2.89 other drug use .565(.353) 1.76 .880-3.52 cigarette use .361(.430) 1.44 .618-3.34 rapi 1.03(.415) 2.80 1.24-6.31** age at first intoxication .007(.078) 1.01 .864-1.17 religiosity -.039(.015) .961 .934-.990** impulsivity .042(.016) 1.04 1.01-1.08** life satisfaction .069(.042) 1.07 .987-1.16 depression -.015(.020) .985 .947-1.02 anxiety .025(.034) 1.03 .960-1.02 note: pooled estimates *p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 128 as reported in table 6, after controlling for all other variables in the full model, only three variables were significantly related to binge drinking for females: having reported negative alcohol-related consequences in the past year, religiosity, and impulsivity. of these three variables, only negative alcohol-related consequences was significantly associated with male binge drinking. additionally, for males, having engaged in risky sexual behaviour, smoking cigarettes, and life satisfaction were significant correlates of binge drinking. although being born outside canada was negatively associated with binge drinking for males in the first two models, it became insignificant in model 3 once dispositions and mental health variables were added. none of the other variables were significant for either gender at the multivariate level. binge drinkers were significantly more likely than non-binge drinkers (2.8 times for females, 4.25 times for males) to report higher scores on rapi (i.e., a higher number of adverse alcohol-related consequences). in terms of gender differences, female binge drinkers (but not males) were significantly, albeit slightly, more likely to report higher levels of impulsivity than their non-binge drinking peers. in contrast, female binge drinkers (but again not males) were significantly, if modestly, less likely to report high levels of religiosity compared to non-binge drinkers. male binge drinkers (but not females) were 3.6 times more likely than non-binge drinkers to smoke cigarettes and 6.4 times more likely to have engaged in risky sex. finally, with regard to life satisfaction, male binge drinkers (but not females) reported higher scores on the life satisfaction index compared to non-binge drinkers. discussion although numerous studies have found that male university students are more likely to report binge drinking or heavy alcohol use compared to their female counterparts — previous canadian studies included (adlaf & gliksman, 2005; balodis et al., 2009; carlson et al., 2010) — the current investigation found that females were just as likely as males to report having engaged in binge drinking. such results could be attributed in part to the use of a gender-specific binge drinking variable, and in part to changing trends in binge drinking among university students, particularly women (counter, 2016). delucchi et al. (2008) used an even more strongly genderweighted measure of five or more drinks for men and three or more drinks for women, and found that, among their sample, female students were more likely to engage in binge drinking than males. regarding the social trend aspect, a meta-analysis of university alcohol consumption in ireland and the united kingdom conducted by davoren et al. (2016) found that the gender gap between male and female university students is narrowing with regard to excessive alcohol consumption. consistent with this, using american data from the national survey on drug use and health, with a non-gender-weighted binge drinking criterion of five drinks in one sitting, grucza, norberg, and bierut (2009) found that rates of binge drinking have been on the rise in recent decades (1979– 2006) for females aged 12 to 34, while male rates have decreased or remained steady. likewise, another national survey in the u.s. (johnston, o’malley, bachman, schulenberg, & miech, 2016) found that the gender gap in college binge drinking (using a five-drink criterion for both sexes) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 129 decreased from 23 percentage points in 1975 to 4 points in 2015. in light of these trends, and the fact that the present study used a gender-weighted measure of binge drinking with a very recent university student sample, it does not seem surprising that the findings of the present study differ from those of older studies. living with parents, having a history of family alcohol problems, and gpa were not significant differentiators between binge and non-binge drinkers for either gender. although previous canadian studies have found that students who live on campus or away from their parents are more likely to report heavy drinking than are students who live off campus with their parents (e.g., adlaf et al., 2005; carlson et al., 2010), the results of the current research do not reflect such an association. it is worth noting that the large, party-oriented sororities or fraternities commonly found in the u.s. are far less prevalent in canada, and therefore perhaps the difference between off-campus and on-campus life is less marked at some canadian universities. this may be particularly true of the university sampled in the current study, which does not have a substantial student residential district or a hospitality and entertainment district on or near campus. this study was the first to test the relationship between history of family alcohol abuse and binge drinking in a canadian sample of undergraduates; the results indicate no significant association, which is consistent with previous american studies (baer, 2002; engs, 1990). with regard to participants’ gpas, the current results were inconsistent with the majority of the literature, including previous canadian research (gliksman et al., 1997). however, the gpa variable used in the present study was created using a mixture of high school averages and university gpas, and therefore may not reflect recent university performance for some students still early in their first year at the time of survey administration. finally, students born in canada were more likely to report binge drinking than their peers who were not born in canada, a finding consistent with previous canadian literature on the general population (ross, 1995); however, this difference became insignificant once mental health and dispositional variables in the model were controlled for. more canadian research is required to explore patterns of alcohol use among international, immigrant, and canadian-born university students. working from a developmental psychopathology perspective on emerging adulthood that focuses on the health risks associated with life transitions (schulenberg & maggs, 2002; schulenberg & zarrett, 2006), it was expected that binge drinking would be marked by greater cooccurrence of mental health problems; in actuality, almost none of the mental health variables in the present study differed between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers for either gender. despite other findings in the literature showing that anxiety and depression (mushquash et al., 2013; swendsen et al., 1998), positive and negative affect (townshend & duka, 2005), and indicators of wellbeing such as self-esteem or social alienation (mohamed & ajmal, 2015) are connected to binge drinking or alcohol use, no such associations were significant in the present sample of canadian university students. for example, the current sample did not show any significant difference between binge and non-binge drinkers in degree of social alienation. however, as noted in the literature, socially alienated or lonely people (knox et al., 2007), as well as people on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 130 other end of the spectrum who have many friends or are subject to greater peer pressure (talbott et al., 2008), have been found to be more likely to engage in heavy alcohol consumption. mixed results have also been evident in relation to self-esteem, and there is empirical precedent for the current finding of no relationship between self-esteem and binge drinking (e.g., luhtanen & crocker, 2005; poikolainen et al., 2001). life satisfaction was significant in bivariate and multivariate analyses for males only; however, the relationship between life satisfaction and binge drinking was somewhat inconsistent with the literature, which generally indicates that binge drinkers are more likely to report lower levels of quality of life (mohamed & ajmal, 2015). among the current sample of university students, male binge drinkers were more likely to report higher life satisfaction (or quality of life) than non-binge drinkers, but no such difference was evident for females. interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest alcohol consumption may be associated with positive social consequences (nyström, 1992; park, 2004) for university students, such as increased intimacy and self-disclosure in social interactions (nezlek et al., 1994). in fact, nezlek et al. (1994) suggest that some level of occasional binge drinking may actually be normative and is associated with fuller integration into the collegiate community compared to students who have too many, or no, episodes of binge drinking. the present findings seem in line with this possibility, at least for males, as many binge drinkers fell in the “once in the past 30 days” or “1 to 2 times per week” frequency categories. male students may be more apt to perceive some positive effects on life satisfaction with normative or occasional binge drinking, but these effects may dissipate with higher frequency of binge drinking, thus revealing a curvilinear relationship (murphy, mcdevittmurphy, & barnett, 2005). in our findings, higher levels of religiosity were associated with a lower likelihood of binge drinking — but only for females. this is again somewhat consistent with the literature, including previous canadian studies (e.g., hundleby, 1987; rasic et al., 2011). the association could be attributed to the fact that university students who report strong religious affiliation are more likely to be invested in religions that preach abstention from alcohol or moderation in its consumption, coupled with the higher levels of religious faith reported in the present sample by females than by males (t = 2.05, p < .05). the relationship between impulsivity and binge drinking was also only partially consistent with previous results in the canadian literature (e.g., carlson et al., 2010; wellman et al., 2014), in that high levels of impulsivity were associated with binge drinking, but for females only. explanations for such a relationship are largely based on neurological differences, with more impulsive people tending to exhibit less control over heavy alcohol use and less foresight regarding the consequences of consuming large amounts of alcohol. the present result is rather novel and should be reassessed in a larger sample, especially given the modest size of the male sample in the current study. the significant relationship between impulsivity and binge drinking found only among females in the current study could be related to the trend toward increased binge drinking among women, which, in turn, could be related to increasing deviance from traditional gender roles by women (nolen-hoeksema, 2004). nolen-hoeksema (2004) noted international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 131 that alcohol consumption has often been related to male gender roles such as aggressiveness, while female gender roles such as nurturing tendencies have not been related to alcohol consumption. however, in recent times, women have begun to transcend the traditional gender roles, and therefore perhaps women who no longer embrace the traditional gender roles that support women as calm and nurturing rather than impulsive and aggressive are more likely to engage in binge drinking, while women who are less impulsive and more abiding of traditional gender roles are less likely to engage in binge drinking (see further discussion of gender roles and alcohol in nolenhoeksema, 2004). finally, risky sexual behaviour was significantly associated with binge drinking — but only for males. the definition of risky sexual behaviour in the present study is not rooted in a moral perspective, but a public health one positing that people under the influence of alcohol, both male and female, are more likely to engage in sexual behaviours (e.g., having unprotected sex, or sex with a partner of unknown sexual health status) that pose such risks as exposure to sexually transmitted infections. one explanation for the significant relationship between binge drinking and risky sexual behaviour among male participants, but not female participants, is found in desiderato and crawford (1993), who observed that female college students were more likely to have concerns about sexually transmitted diseases like aids than their male counterparts; this could suggest that it would be less likely for women, even those who engage in binge drinking, to engage in risky sexual behaviour. finally, as found in poulson, eppler, satterwhite, wuensch, and bass (1998), among female college students, strength of religious belief was negatively correlated with risky sexual behaviour and alcohol consumption, as is also the case in the present study. therefore, any potential positive effect of binge drinking on risky sexual behaviour may be offset by the negative relationship between religious faith and both binge drinking and risky sexual behaviour among females (who as noted above reported higher average levels of religiosity than males). tobacco use and the use of illicit drugs (e.g., marijuana, heroin, and cocaine) were significant bivariate correlates of binge drinking, consistent with previous literature (bennett et al., 1999; digrande et al., 2000); however, both variables were non-significant for females in the multivariate analysis, and only cigarette smoking remained significant for males. one explanation for this significant relationship among male participants, but not females, could be that one motive for cigarette use among women is physical attractiveness, whereas male smoking often derives from the urge to rebel socially, a motive also implicated in binge drinking (see waldron, 1991). this explanation, rooted in traditional gender roles, suggests that women may be more attuned to smoking cigarettes independent of drinking, whereas for men smoking and drinking are more likely to be co-occurring activities. a somewhat similar relationship was seen for age at first alcohol intoxication, wherein individuals who reported a younger age of initial intoxication were significantly more likely to engage in binge drinking at the bivariate level, again consistent with the previous literature (e.g., townshend et al., 2014), although the association was rendered insignificant at the multivariate level for both genders. rapi was the only substance use indicator that remained significant at the multivariate level for both genders, with binge drinkers being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 132 significantly more likely to report higher frequency of alcohol-related problems (such as not being able to complete homework or study for a test, getting into a fight, causing shame or embarrassment to someone, neglecting responsibilities, and missing a day of school or work), a finding consistent with previous canadian literature (carlson et al., 2010). on the whole, the results of the current study are mixed in relation to the literature exploring binge drinking and its correlates among university students internationally, and in canada in particular. however, with the exception of carlson et al. (2010), previous canadian studies of university students relied on data more than a decade old; it is likely that canadian university students’ alcohol consumption patterns have changed over this time. additionally, the present study differs from, and complements, the carlson et al. (2010) study in several ways. for example, we had a larger, more recent sample, and a very different set of variables in our model, with the carlson study focusing on personality traits and the present study focusing on a number of mental health variables. in fact, the only non-demographic predictor common to the two studies is impulsivity. additionally, the time frame for measuring binge drinking in the carlson study was 12 months rather than 30 days as in the present study. another recent canadian study by wellman and colleagues (2014) found that impulsivity, novelty-seeking, and subclinical depression were associated with sustained binge drinking among a sample of young adults. their study also differs from the present one in a number of ways; for example, in addition to modelling different predictors, their sample was not specific to university students, and they did not use a genderweighted measure of binge drinking (they used five drinks or more as the cut-off for both sexes). finally, the present study also differed from the latter two studies in that it ran separate logistic regression models for males and females. limitations and future research the data used in this study are subject to the limitations of cross-sectional self-report surveys, and due caution should be exercised in generalizing from a single university sample to all canadian university students. also, given that the sample comprised mostly introductory sociology students, this sample may be more homogeneous in a number of respects than a general undergraduate sample; such reduced variability could have resulted in fewer significant associations between binge drinking and the other variables. future research should assess these relationships in a more general university or post-secondary student population. similarly, it is possible gender differences may have been more evident with a larger, more diverse sample. for example, drawing from additional faculties, including engineering and science, would likely result in a greater proportion of male participants. it also bears noting that there may be associations between binge drinking and the mental health variables that went undetected due to our dichotomous (binge versus non-binge drinker) criterion variable. that is, the strength of the relationship between mental health and alcohol consumption may vary according to the level or frequency of binge drinking. in order to detect this difference, future research could employ multinomial or ordinal logistic regression to assess international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 133 whether the associations differ according to frequency of binge drinking. engaging in binge drinking almost every day in the previous 30 days is likely to impact an individual’s life more than would be the case for someone only partaking in one heavy drinking episode during that time. distinguishing between heavy, moderate, and occasional binge drinkers may therefore be particularly informative in identifying how severity of binge drinking is related to differences in mental health. further, students who engage in excessive alcohol consumption often do not see themselves as having an alcohol problem (knight et al., 2002), misconceive the average amount of alcohol that a university student consumes (arbour-nicitopoulos et al., 2010; perkins, 2007), or think binge drinking involves drinking more than just five alcoholic beverages for males and four for females (wechsler & kuo, 2000). another way to gauge the extent of heavy alcohol consumption would be to use the number and severity of alcohol-related problems as the criterion variable. measures such as the frequency of binge drinking and the severity and frequency of alcohol problems could provide a more detailed indication of unhealthy or excessive alcohol use and its correlates among canadian university students. for example, paljärvi and colleagues (2009) used indicators of binge-drinking severity and found that only heavy binge drinking (binge drinking patterns that involved intoxication, passing out, and being hung over) was associated with depression. it would also be useful to include measures of motives for drinking, such as positive reinforcement motivation (e.g., sensation seeking) and negative reinforcement motivation (e.g., anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness) as described by woicik, stewart, pihl, and conrod (2009), as well as normative perceptions about alcohol consumption (chauvin, 2011; crawford & novak, 2010). finally, to our knowledge, there has been no longitudinal study of the relationship between binge drinking and its correlates among canadian university students. such a study would undoubtedly contribute much to our understanding of the temporal ordering of relationships between binge drinking and its correlates. conclusion in summary, the present study found no gender differences in the prevalence of binge drinking, but there were several gender differences in the correlates of binge drinking. in light of much of the existing canadian and international literature, a number of the current findings are rather novel: (a) no association between binge drinking and depression or anxiety, (b) gender differences such as greater reported life satisfaction for male (but not female) binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers, (c) greater probability of smoking cigarettes and engaging in risky sex for male (but not female) binge drinkers, (d) greater impulsivity for female (but not male) binge drinkers, and (e) lower religiosity for female (but not male) binge drinkers. interestingly, although binge drinkers in this sample, on average, reported significantly more alcohol-related problems, these did not seem to manifest in greater mental health problems. it may be that there are mental health correlates of binge drinking that are undetected in the present study due to the relative homogeneity of the sample and the use of a dichotomous binge drinking criterion variable. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 112–144 134 follow-up research would benefit from a more graduated indicator of binge drinking, such as frequency and intensity of binge drinking, and a larger, more representative canadian university student sample, ideally with repeated measures across time. such research is required to increase understanding of risk and protective factors for heavy alcohol consumption among university students, and how best to mitigate the risk factors, enhance the protective factors, and promote healthy living among a population of young adults seeking to embark on a productive, prosperous, and happy life. acknowledgement collection of the slwbs data used in this study was funded by the manitoba gambling research program of manitoba liquor and lotteries; 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(2010). the effect of religiosity and campus alcohol culture on collegiate alcohol consumption. journal of american college health, 58(4), 295–304. doi:10.1080/07448480903380250 white, h. r., & labouvie, e. w. (2000). longitudinal trends in problem drinking as measured by the rutgers alcohol problem index. alcoholism: clinical and experimental research, 24(5 suppl. 1). woicik, p.a., stewart, s. h., pihl, r.o., & conrod p. j. (2009). the substance use risk profile scale: a scale measuring traits linked to reinforcement-specific substance use profiles. addictive behaviors, 34, 1042–1055. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2009.07.001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acer.12365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07448480903380250 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2009.07.001 correlates of binge drinking in a sample of canadian university students tamara edkins, jason d. edgerton, and lance w. roberts review of the literature binge drinking operationalized correlates of binge drinking methods data analytical procedures measures results univariate analysis: prevalence of binge drinking bivariate analysis: correlates of binge drinking multivariate analysis: binge drinkers vs. non-binge drinkers — are there differences? discussion limitations and future research conclusion acknowledgement references a description of a music therapy street outreach program: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 272 becoming-music: a description of an improvisational music therapy outreach approach jeff smith abstract: the following paper is a description of a music therapy outreach program that drew upon the philosophical work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari, narrative therapy, and response-based practice to provide a creative anti-oppressive service to under-housed youth living in coast salish and straight salish territory (more commonly advertised as victoria, british columbia). the author provides examples from his work with a composite character called pete. keywords: music therapy, deleuze and guattari, outreach, narrative therapy, responsebased practice acknowledgements: i acknowledge the tireless radical youth work of betty zimmermann and travis letondre who ran the “y-van”, which was a mobile selfreferral hub for youth who did not access office-based social services. i also acknowledge the young nomads who invited me into many creative and thought-provoking interactions. thanks to vanessa vondruska for her well-crafted questions about an earlier draft of this manuscript. finally, i appreciate the feedback from the anonymous reviewers who contributed to a more succinct and philosophically congruent description of the work. jeff smith, ma, mta is a music therapy faculty member at the victoria conservatory of music, 900 johnson street, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8v 3n4. email: galvin@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 273 i love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming. that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end. (henry miller, p. 232) in this article, i discuss my engagement of music therapy outreach work with an underhoused youth living in coast salish and straight salish territory (more commonly advertised as victoria, british columbia). i begin by situating the practice of therapy in its dominant modernist location and then describe how the practice of outdoor musical improvisation allowed for connections outside of dominant psychological understandings of problems, and provide an example from my work with a composite youth called pete. to exemplify this process, i provide a description of how improvised music connected pete and me in an outdoor environment. to facilitate a disruption of popular forms of institutional power and knowledge in my music therapy work, such as normative discourses of “helping” as psychological and clinical, i experimented with concepts and practices from outside the traditional music therapy, counselling, and child and youth care canons. i draw upon the work of french philosopher gilles deleuze and post-lacanian psychiatrist felix guattari (1996) to describe how our interactions were affected by the unknown (i.e., when a sound or person, etc. exceeds our expectations) and prefabricated systems (i.e., music theory, popular music, therapeutic ideology). i then introduce narrative therapy and response-based practice as frameworks that guide my therapeutic conversations with young people who are responding to life-altering problems. the evidence base social psychologist ken gergen (2007) states: “when science attempts to share its knowledge with the public, to influence policy issues, and to sell merchandise (such as psychological tests, books, educational programs), we confront significant issues of cultural concern” (p. 7). take, for example, former american psychological association (apa) president ronald levant’s (2005) call for “evidence-based practice”, as defined by the institute of medicine (iom). evidence-based practice (ebp) is a “treatment” that works better than a placebo or “treatment as usual” in two or more studies (duncan & miller, 2006). we see the power of science as discourse when we consider the findings from wampold’s (2001) massive meta-analysis of psychotherapy, which showed that while cognitive behavioural therapists (cbt) cited 15 studies showing a therapeutic advantage for cbt (constituting an evidence-based practice), there were 2,095 studies that showed no difference between cbt and other approaches. michel foucault’s (2000) analysis of social science offers a detailed map of how power is embedded within the history of human knowledge through practices that are linked with institutions, economic requirements, and the politics of social regulation. the hegemony of therapeutic approaches like cbt may owe more to the institutional, economic, and political currency of evidence-based discourse than to what researchers actually found. support for revisions to the dominance of evidence-based practice in therapeutic interactions stresses the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 274 need for consistent client consultation about the direction of therapy (duncan, miller, & sparks, 2004; duncan & sparks, 2007; prochaska, norcross, & diclemente, 2006). street jams pete and i met in a territory established by the presence of a small outreach team comprised of two paid employees, youth volunteers, and their graffiti-adorned outreach vehicle. the outreach vehicle provided a temporary gathering place for young people to receive support from trusted adults, to access material resources (i.e., food, condoms, articles of clothing), to provide one another with peer support, and to share insider knowledge about places to sleep, bad drugs, dangerous people, and culturally relevant events. moreover, this mobile territory also served as an entrance to social service structures such as health care clinics, mental health support, addiction counselling, and information about housing. my connection to this mobile territory provided unique opportunities to enter the rhizome of youth subculture (skott-myhre, 2009). the rhizome is a horizontal plant stem, usually growing underground, that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. it is difficult to track the origin of a rhizome because outgrowths move in every direction. for the purposes of this article, i use the concept of the rhizome in two ways. first, it can be understood structurally as the social underground that is constantly being recreated by a diverse community of young people often referred to as “street involved” or “at-risk” and, second, it can be understood analytically in relation to the sonic outgrowths from the musical improvisations that i took part in. during my first interaction with pete, i attempted to build rapport by making casual conversation, by saying “hello” and asking “how are you doing?” to which pete replied with a nod. i continued: 1. jeff: “where are you from?” 2. pete: “here and there.” 3. jeff: “oh, so you are more transient at the moment.” 4. pete: “no i think i still feel a pulse.” (looks at other youth who laugh and look away) “fucker.” 6. jeff: (silence) 7. pete: (begins to make a guttural sound with his voice and to play some dissonant notes on his guitar while staring into jeff’s eyes) 8. jeff: (joins in tentatively by adding a natural harmonic) this interaction is an example of how youth produce new forms of relating by speaking in what deleuze and guattari (1996) describe as secret languages, which are processes of creating a language within a language, by inviting continuous variation (e.g., transient means death?) using both linguistic and non-linguistic elements. my unintended contribution to the emergence of these languages occurred when i attempted to code pete’s lifestyle as “transient” and he and his friends resisted in ways that were productive, yet unknown to me. working with people who do not have access to middle-class social privileges, such as stable housing or post-secondary education, requires one to reconsider international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 275 the classist assumptions that accompany training in “interpersonal” and “non-violent” forms of communication. rather than engaging in a struggle against this young man – for example, i call pete a name (i.e., transient), he calls me a name (i.e., “fucker”), i treat him according to a popular clinical category (i.e., oppositional defiant), he calls me out, i call the police – i viewed pete’s response as useful feedback (“don’t try to classify my lifestyle, fucker”) and his guitar work and death metal growl as an invitation into a sonic space where we could play out our differences. by “play out” i do not mean we were able to overcome them; on the contrary, what we produced emerged from our engagement with difference. i was able to contribute more intentionally by letting go of the desire for shared forms of meaning making (i.e., any attempt to explain what i meant by transient, or to extract an apology from pete for swearing at me), which made way for style to emerge from our differences, that is, our unique ways of knowing, speaking, moving our bodies to sound, playing guitar, and singing. as an outsider to the alternative forms of conduct (i.e., going from town to town, living in squats, making concealed weapons, trading sex with pedophiles for money, drugs, or a place to sleep) engaged in by young people who have limited resources to respond to life-threatening issues (i.e., poverty, homelessness, discrimination, ongoing colonialism, gendered violence, and inadequate health care), i view myself as a visitor while simultaneously attempting to offer contributions in a non-oppressive way. this process is successful when fragments of popular culture (psychology, music therapy, and popular musical forms) are assembled with alternative culture (free improvisation, anti-oppressive practice, hardcore punk, and death metal) to produce new forms of relating that allow for the affirmation of life and expressions of dignity. my encounters with pete reminded me that social regulations, for example social norms like my belief that human interactions begin with verbal communication, are fragile and can be broken in the pursuit of forging new connections. my engagement with pete’s non-verbal offer to improvise was an invitation into the rhizome, which, once underway, engaged other voices and opportunities for creation. pete started with a growl, which elicited a musical response from me. then another youth joined in, adding a vocalization, linking to another entrance that i responded to with my voice and pete with another note on the guitar. each new entrance (sound) modified the territory, and the shared creative endeavour established new sonic territories. the de-centring effect of these movements of mutual transformation can be shocking to those of us who have been trained to plan and document sessions according to a therapeutic milieu prescribed by regulating bodies such as accreditation boards, peer reviewed journals, postsecondary schools, social service agencies, and other institutions. these openings to the rhizome allowed for improvisation, or what deleuze and guattari call lines of flight, to emerge from outdated or unhelpful modes of being, such as normative clinical practices of interacting and documenting/coding those interactions. hans skott-myhre (2009) defines a line of flight as a creative act in which one escapes the confines of prescribed ways of being to establish a new territory or “identity”. he writes about hip-hop, street punks, and traditional skinheads (non-racist skins) as youth subcultures that arose as creative responses to capitalism and the mainstream marketing of youth identities. these new identities in flight are connected to various modes of living, such as freestyle rapping, slam dancing, busking, and protesting in diverse ways against a system that categorizes and totalizes. these identities are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 276 temporal and once youth subcultures are categorized and totalized, which is an inevitable result of living in the era of global capitalism, creative nomads will have already moved on. the creative therapeutic encounter provides opportunities to establish safety, honour, and dignity by avoiding the kind of unsolicited advice-giving endemic to helping work, which amounts to an unspoken code in the helping professions. nick todd and allan wade (1994) refer to this as the colonial code of relations: 1. i am proficient 2. you are deficient, therefore i have the right to 3. fix you, diagnose you, change you, intern you 4. for your own good we are then, under the premise of evidence-based practice, justified to proceed with popular interventions. to avoid perpetuating the colonial code of relations and the truncation of flight through oppression, i have found it helpful to reflect upon foucault’s introduction to deleuze and guattari’s (2008) anti-oedipus: “how does one keep from becoming fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? how do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and pleasures, of fascism? how do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior?” (p. xv). my collaborations with youth are more effective when i engage in an ongoing analysis of my institutional positions of power, which gives me an understanding of how, why, and when i orient to power in my work. i have become more observant of how people respond to my actions and, when necessary, i attempt to make amends for perpetrating oppression in my interactions with young people. when i recognize or am held accountable to my misuses of power – or what vikki reynolds calls “replicating dominance” (personal communication, march 13, 2011), that is, providing unsolicited advice, making psychological assumptions, misinterpreting a young person’s intentions or lifestyle, promoting heteronormativity, and so on – and apologize for my indiscretions, i am better able to retain connections with youth who are wary of professionals that live outside of their communities. when a youth takes flight from our professional attempts to code behaviour and solve their problems, we have an opportunity to back off and allow for the escape. we might seek ways to collaborate in the flight process. facilitating opportunities for non-oppressive youth/adult interactions not only allows for the extension of lines of flight, but may also provide a crucial collaborative context to be an ally to young people who would benefit from a more formal therapeutic arrangement or further structural support. we can use our institutional positions of power and interdisciplinary connections to advocate for social services such as housing, prevention and harm-reduction measures, and recovery beds when those services are available1 . 1 keep in mind that in 2007, over 1,242 people were unable to secure permanent housing (victoria cool aid society, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 277 arborescent tracings many language-dominated models of interaction are based on the idea that we have the world on one hand, and sign systems on the other. the idea that the word (sign system) represents reality “out there” (i.e., behaviourism) or “in here” (i.e., psychodynamic and cognitive behavioural approaches) is a commonly held assumption in the helping professions. deleuze and guattari (1996) argue that the representational use of language as a mirror of reality is actually a practice of “… receiving, and transmitting order-words” (p. 76) and that social norms and cultural rules are regulated through “order words”, which are statements that are linked to particular social obligations. for example, in therapy these obligations define what can be recognized as normal (i.e., rational/coherent speech) and abnormal (i.e., irrational thoughts or incoherent speech). these clinical obligations are then used in a way that pathologizes alternative subjectivities via dominant clinical formulations. deleuze and guattari (1996) use the term “arborescent” to describe the modern tendency to value a unitary and stable identity that is connected to a root, which is like the one true self, or core truth, that exists beneath the surface. the tracing of the arborescent is already complete, and objects of interest are inserted into its prefabricated reality. for example, arborescent tracings are like the clinical diagnoses and accompanying discourses of dysfunction that were applied to some of the young musical people that i met during my outreach work downtown. representatives of the mental health system often misperceive responses to poverty, homelessness, racism, homophobia, violence, harassment, and exploitation as symptoms of personal disorder. psychiatric labels such as borderline personality, oppositional defiant disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are what narrative therapists, drawing upon anthropologist clifford geertz, call thin descriptions of people’s lives (white & epston, 1990; madigan, 2011). these descriptions are problematic when young people’s complex relational and contextual experiences are ignored or misinterpreted because they do not fit the arborescent structures that are constructed by truth-making bodies, such as the american psychological association. when the actions of youth are interpreted through psychological discourses and diagnostic criteria, and our professional responses are “evidence-based” and apolitical as opposed to contextual and creatively liberating, we confront issues of significant ethical concern. music therapists are well positioned to engage creatively with youth in the ongoing construction of new and preferred identities, and we have unique opportunities to engage in multiple ways of viewing and performing health, community, and justice. my attempt to work within a socially just framework, by remaining open to encounters with diversity and difference, has been transformative. improvisation is immanent the concept of immanence provides an alternative to the transcendent linguistic system that fails to recognize difference as a productive resource. immanence is a concept that deleuze (1990) borrowed from spinoza to argue that there are no transcendent or external causes for the world, but rather that life produces life. his analysis is focused on how materials are used to produce something new. colebrook and bennett (2009) apply this concept to music and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 278 challenge the notion of theory as a philosophical or literary movement that is applied to the performance of music, suggesting instead that we have theory because we always already have musicality itself. deleuze and guattari (1996) describe the ontology of music as the refrain or rhythm that precedes more formal linguistic systems. in other words, music came first. an understanding of the immanence of music allows one to conceive of musical bodies (i.e., musicians, instruments, notes, and so on) as an interpenetration of the human and non-human, a process of informing, bending, composing, and escaping notation and music theory. this description of music as immanent has implications for practices of improvisational music therapy. the rhizome is a multiplicity that is always in a process of becoming. corbett (1994) posits that the rhizome is synonymous with improvised music and rejects the idea that improvisation is an act of self-expression, arguing instead that improvisation is the product of assemblage, which is the creative process that occurs when multiple bodies (i.e., musicians and sounds) collide. these bodies are machined together with different bodies (such as instruments) during a performance to create new configurations. to describe this process is to engage in a cartographic study of sonic tangles. the cartography of an improvisation can be thought of as a mapping process that is continually altered in relation to the changing landscape of sound. the process of mapping a collective improvisation requires one to understand improvisation as an open-source production in which anyone or anything can plot a line on it. this is of special importance when discussing musical engagements in public spaces2 , which are subject to multiple sounds and events that arrive from outside to inform a musical event. for example, while working downtown one evening i was involved in a collective improvisation when a shovelhead engine, propelling a harley-davidson along douglas street (a downtown thoroughfare), became part of the orchestra drowning out our temporarily established tonal center. the roar was soon replaced by a seagull, which allowed us to re-territorialize the sidewalk in the key of a-minor. other examples of the influence of the “outside” include tempo changes that were informed by the footsteps of tourists, shouts of recognition from across the street, interpretive dance moves, dirty looks, nods of approval, sirens, and screeching tires. it is only in the moment of a musical event that an improvisation can exemplify the ever changing, immanent, and perpetual becoming of reality. when the music ends, so does that moment of becoming-music. we may as musicians, audiences, therapists, and/or researchers attempt to grasp the vestiges of an event through theoretical musings and meaning-making practices (such as i have done in the writing of this paper), however due to the temporal nature of everything this act inevitably falls short, resulting instead in arborescent formulations that envelop, simplify, and signify the multitude that constitutes any event. we can then draw upon those materials in the making of new events and sonic territories. 2 while the homeless needs survey (victoria cool aid society, 2007) counted 1,242 homeless or under-housed people in victoria, public spaces in “the garden city” are becoming increasingly privatized and patrolled. the sanctions against homeless people in the form of heckling, harassment, violence, economic penalties (in the form of by-law tickets), and arrest, are implemented to enforce socalled public order and safety. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 279 stories of victory skott-myhre (2009) declares that the power of the minority, of the “other” (the oppressed and impoverished), can be realized when we draw upon the residue of past struggles for equity, dignity, and liberation. i witnessed this power in pete who shared stories about the incomplete revolutions of his past. for example, he once described a time when he played the acoustic guitar so loud that he drowned out the voices that had been torturing him that day, only to be interrupted by a security officer who called it noise and then accused pete of loitering. pete’s attempts to reason with this man were met with hostility and the police were called. mental health is not promoted by colonial practices that discourage the equal use of “public” space, for instance when pete’s creative practice of interrupting the mean voices with music is counteracted in the name of public security. our ensuing discussion about pete’s responses to this act of oppression was informed by response-based practice, which is “based on the observation that whenever people are badly treated, they resist” (wade, 1997, p. 23). we explored the history of pete’s musical expressions and acts of resistance to the oppressors that he faces as a young homeless “street musician”. in addition to being mistreated by adults on the street, pete had been diagnosed by professionals with words that were used to categorize him in clinical settings, coding his identity as schizophrenic, oppositional defiant, and depressed. the anthropologist and social scientist gregory bateson stated that the language of a person experiencing schizophrenia is appropriated, interpreted, and “over-coded” by the dominant culture based on the positioning of coder (the therapist) and coded (client/patient), without investigating the full local meaning (as cited in skott-myhre, 2009). what are the costs when we privilege clinical naming practices and rely on the interventions of modern psychology rather than people’s own descriptions of their problems and the co-construction of local solutions? narrative therapist stephen madigan (2007) states: professional stories written and told about the person – to the person prescribed and to others – maintain the powerfully pathologized plot, rhetorically embed the problem name (and personal life), and assist in piecing together states of despair… for the person looking for help and change, the naming and writing process of therapy used in north america can be both confusing and traumatic. (p. 179) while my use of improvisational music has facilitated creative and relational forms of connection it has been important for me to consider the framework i orient to during therapeutic conversations. as a music therapist committed to socially just mental health practices, i draw from narrative therapy and response-based frameworks to explore and contextualize young people’s creative acts of resistance against oppression and life-altering problems. these approaches offer opportunities to subjugate dominant psychological ideas about people experiencing difficulties and privilege locally relevant explanations about problems and the kind of responses that contribute to living preferred lives. in pete’s case, we explored the directions that he assigned to the multiple voices, which were fundamental to our ongoing musical and verbal interactions. rather than perceiving pete’s multiplicity of moods and discursive twists as disturbing, and then invoking the arborescent by ignoring, distorting, or appropriating their meaning, i did my best to remain with the tension of the constant movements. through my questions, guided by narrative therapy (white & epston, 1990), i learned about pete’s unique international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 280 relationship to “the voices” and was able to align with him as we co-investigated strategies that he had used to give him an advantage over the “mean ones”. as we had mapped the recent history of the mean voices, we found that they were often connected to material concerns such as housing, mental health support (or the dearth of it), violence, and prescription and nonprescription drug use. conclusion by entering the rhizome in our creative work with youth, we become engaged outside of the mainstream and are afforded opportunities to add new routes to the map of our lives as practitioners. we may start in a well-defined territory, such as a common theory of communitybased music therapy (baines, 2003; stige, 2002), or strum the chords of a well-known song such as wish you were here by pink floyd. however, if we allow ourselves to move beyond the confines of the arborescent (our theory, our world view, the correct way to play a song) and allow for movement outside of the chord/harmonic structure of the song, we engage in a process of becoming. this process is integral to my conceptualization of improvisational music therapy as a decolonizing form of collaborative expression. i find this endeavour to be challenging, and an especially important consideration when working with people who are responding to legacies of residential school imprisonment, prison history, psychiatric hospitalization, and other contemporary forms of forced institutionalization. like the process of flight and capture mentioned previously, the rhizome is constantly being re-territorialized (mapped as familiar/arborescent), de-territorialized (disrupted), and then re-territorialized again (deleuze & guattari, 1996). case in point: improvised music occurs through the establishment or territorialization of tonal or rhythmic centres that are then abandoned, or de-territorialized, by one or more musicians during a group session, leading to new musical landscapes. this allows youth and music therapists to construct new ways of being relational, creative, and expressive in the world, which are not predetermined by normalized categories of music-making (which often excludes untrained or self-taught musicians). the rhizome is not impermeable to lines of order and control (arborescent) because it connects to everything, including regimes of dominant power. this open system allows access to everyone, providing people of social and economic privilege working within arborescent structures like the victoria conservatory of music (vcm), opportunities to connect with youth who do not identify themselves in terms of the dominant culture. skott-myhre (2009) writes that youth produce themselves in the cracks and fissures of the dominant culture by, for example, recording an original punk rock song, or spitting a freestyle rap in a classical music school. providing opportunities for economically marginalized youth to participate in programming at a community music school led to new musical, relational, and recording/production experiences for youth who spend much of their time in squats, parks, roadsides, in and out of foster care, and recovery homes. despite good attendance, a high number of referrals from community partners, and positive outcomes (for example, music recordings and testimonials of participants and community partners), the music therapy outreach project did not receive further funding. one afternoon after i shared the news with a regular program participant, she picked up a guitar and played a familiar chord pattern to accompany her raspy voice that belted out the following lyrics: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 281 while they’re standing in the welfare lines crying at the doorsteps of salvation wasting time in the unemployment lines sitting around waiting for a promotion poor people gonna rise up and get their share poor people gonna rise up and take what’s theirs (chapman, 1988) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 282 references baines, s. (2003). a consumer-directed and partnered community mental health music therapy program: program development and evaluation. voices: a world forum for music therapy, 3(3). retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/ article/view/137/113 chapman, t. (1988). talking about a revolution. on tracy chapman [cd]. hollywood, ca: elektra/asylum records. colebrook, c., & bennett, d. (2009). the sonorous, the haptic and the intensive. new formations, 66 (spring, 2009), 68–80. corbett, j. (1994). extended play: sounding off from john cage to dr. funkenstein. durham, nc: duke university press. deleuze, g. (1990). expressionism in philosophy: spinoza. new york: zone books. deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1996). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (vol. 2). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. (original work published 1980) deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (2008). anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia (vol. 1). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. (original work published 1972) duncan, b., miller, s., & sparks, j. (2004). the heroic client: a revolutionary way to improve effectiveness through client-directed, outcome informed therapy. san francisco: jossey-bass. duncan, b., & miller, s. (2006). evidence based practice: talking points. treatment manuals do not improve outcomes. in j. norcross, r. levant, & l. beutler (eds.), evidence based practices in mental health. washington, d.c.: apa press. duncan, b., & sparks, j. (2007). heroic clients, heroic agencies: partners for change. chicago: istc press. foucault, m. (2000). the subject and power. in j. faubion & p. rabinow (eds.), power: essential works of foucault (pp. 326–348). new york: the new press. gergen, k. (2007). the self: colonization in psychology and society. in m. ash & t. sturm (eds.), psychology’s territories: historical and contemporary perspectives from different disciplines (pp. 149–168). new york: routledge. retrieved february 12, 2009 from http://www.swarthmore.edu/x20607.xml levant, r. (2005). evidence-based practice in psychology. apa online, 36(2), 5. retrieved april 2, 2009 from http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/pc.html http://www.swarthmore.edu/x20607.xml� http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/pc.html� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 272–283 283 madigan, s. (2007). anticipating hope within written and naming domains of despair. in c. flaskas, i. mccarthy, & j. sheehan (eds.), hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: adversity, forgiveness and reconciliation (pp. 100–112). hove, uk: brunner-routledge. madigan, s. (2011). narrative therapy (theories of psychotherapy). washington, dc: apa press. miller, h. (1982). tropic of cancer. new york: grove press. prochaska, j., norcross, j., & diclemente, c. (2006). changing for good. new york: collins. skott-myhre, h. (2009). youth and subculture as creative force: creating new spaces for radical youth work. toronto: university of toronto press. stige, b. (2002). culture-centered music therapy. gilsum, nh: barcelona publishers. todd, n., & wade, a. (1994). domination, deficiency and psychotherapy. calgary participator, 4(1) (fall, 1994), 37–46. victoria cool aid society. (2007). homeless needs survey, 2007: housing first – plus supports. retrieved from http://www.coolaid.org/publications/ hns_final_report_2007.pdf wade, a. (1997). small acts of living: everyday resistance to violence and other forms of oppression. contemporary family therapy, 19(1), 23–39. wampold, b. e. (2001). the great psychotherapy debate: models, methods, and findings. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. white, m., & epston, d. (1990). narrative means to therapeutic ends. new york: norton. abstract: the following paper is a description of a music therapy outreach program that drew upon the philosophical work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari, narrative therapy, and response-based practice to provide a creative anti-oppressive service... street jams arborescent tracings stories of victory references baines, s. (2003). a consumer-directed and partnered community mental health music supports. retrieved from http://www.coolaid.org/publications/ hns_final_report_2007.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321282 programs and services offered to young people transitioning out of care in canada: a literature review paola a. leal-ferman, charlene weight, and eric latimer abstract: little research has been carried out on young people transitioning out of care in canada. the objective of this paper was to describe and comment on the services provided to youth leaving care systems in canada, with a focus on the four provinces with the largest populations (ontario, quebec, british columbia, and alberta). the quebec government offers only one limited-access transition program, which has just been extended to age 25. ontario, british columbia, and alberta offer several transition programs, which include financial, education, and life skills components. in british columbia, these offer support up to age 29. the 6 remaining provinces and the 3 territories offer support to a maximum age that ranges from 21 to 26. most offer a general financial allowance, and some offer additional supports that can include a housing allowance, tuition waivers, and job training. british columbia and ontario offer the most supports, including medical assistance, tuition waivers, and mental health supports. research is needed to find out which supports are most beneficial, and under which circumstances. keywords: foster youth, transition out of care, transition programs, youth care leavers, canada, transition to adulthood acknowledgements: this study was funded by the social sciences and humanities research council. drs. varda mann-feder, naomi nichols, christine stitch, and laurence roy contributed to the orientation of the manuscript. paola a. leal-ferman msc is a research assistant in the department of biomedical sciences, université de montréal, québec, canada, and at the douglas research centre, perry 3c, 6875 lasalle blvd, verdun qc h4h 1r3. email: paola.alexandra.leal-ferman@umontreal.ca charlene weight bsc (corresponding author) is a master of epidemiology student in the department of epidemiology, mcgill university, montréal, québec, canada, and at the douglas research centre, perry 3c, 6875 lasalle blvd, verdun qc h4h 1r3. email: charlene.weight@mail.mcgill.ca eric latimer phd is a professor in the department of psychiatry, mcgill university, montréal, québec, canada, and at the douglas research centre, e-3114, perry 3c, 6875 lasalle blvd, verdun qc h4h 1r3. email: eric.latimer@mcgill.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 8 transitioning out of care tends to be associated with negative outcomes including increased risk of homelessness (dworsky et al., 2013; fowler et al., 2017; goyette, blanchet, bellot, et al., 2022), low academic achievement (batsche et al., 2014; goyette et al., 2021; piel, 2018; ziani & goyette, 2020), and unemployment (dworsky, 2005; goyette et al., 2021; hook & courtney, 2011). it is therefore important to examine programs and services offered to young people after they leave care. in general, canada’s health and social services are not controlled by the federal government but almost autonomously by its 10 provinces and three territories; this is particularly the case with child protection and transition programs (jones et al., 2015; public health agency of canada, 2019). as a result, services offered to care leavers vary considerably across the country, with quebec being an outlier in terms of the restricted access to, and limited scope and duration of, services provided in the public health sector (jones et al., 2015; public health agency of canada, 2019). to the authors’ knowledge, no published articles have collected and synthesized information on transition programs or services offered by individual canadian provinces. the present paper aims to fill this gap, especially with regard to government programs. method canadian provinces and territories vary widely in terms of population. ontario and quebec account for 15 million and 8.6 million people respectively out of canada’s total population of 38.6 million (statistics canada, 2022). at the other extreme, the northern territory of nunavut numbers about 40,000 residents, and prince edward island, the smallest province, counts 167,000 residents (statistics canada, 2022). accordingly, greater attention will be focused on the most populated jurisdictions, the provinces of ontario, quebec, british columbia (5.2 million), and alberta (4.5 million; statistics canada, 2022), which together account for 86% of canada’s population. only a brief overview of programs found in less populous provinces will be provided. we found limited information concerning the yukon, the northwest territories, and nunavut. information was collected through worldcat, google scholar, and google by combining search terms such as “transition foster care”, “care leaving”, “foster care leaving”, “extended foster care program”, “extended transition support”, “youth”, “youth in care”, and “aging out”, with geographical designations (“canada”, names of provinces and territories). the equivalent french terminology was used for quebec. due to the paucity of peer-reviewed articles, much of the information presented here comes from news articles, theses, government websites, and submissions to the quebec commission spéciale sur les droits de l’enfant et la protection de la jeunesse [special commission on the rights of children and youth protection], which is known as the laurent commission (government of quebec, 2021). research queries were restricted to the past 10 years for both published and grey literature to ensure that the information was as upto-date as possible. if a particular search yielded no information for that interval or if no change in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 9 policies had been made, the latest available information, regardless of publishing date, was used. an information source was selected if it helped to answer the following questions: • what are the programs and services offered to youth aging out of care, particularly in terms of education, housing, financial aid, employment support, and life skills support? • are the services provided by the government or by community organizations? • has there been any change or evolution since the inception of the program or service? • is there systematic transition planning? • what are the challenges or issues related to these programs and services? we also extracted from each document the following information: service type (education, housing, financial, employment, life skills, and others); age of majority; whether the government issued the program or service; currency of the information; challenges surrounding the program or services, and transition planning; and the ages of eligibility for each type of service, along with any other eligibility criteria. three reviewers conducted the literature review. leal-ferman and weight identified sources and conducted data extraction. in cases of doubt, they consulted each other to review the information and reach a consensus. latimer reviewed the results and queried leal-ferman and weight about apparent inconsistencies and anomalies. results british columbia in british columbia, the age at which a youth is no longer in the care of the ministry of children and family development is 19 (child, family and community service act, part 2.1, 12.2(6), 1996.). programs have been put in place, however, to provide a health and social safety net to youth who have aged out. the first transition program in british columbia, introduced in 2008, was the agreement with young adults (aya; government of british columbia, n.d.), which provides financial support to a maximum of $1,250 per month to eligible youth leaving care (laube & wadhwani, 2019; ministry of children and family development, 2022). however, the funding provided by the program was deemed inadequate by some care leavers (laube & wadhwani, 2019). british columbia’s budget 2022 includes a 3-year government project to modify the eligibility criteria and increase support for youth transitioning from care (ministry of children and family development, 2022). a press release from the ministry of children and family development (2022) outlines the changes, which include: extending the current age limit for receiving support from 19 to 27; being eligible for $1,250 per month, regardless of participation in programs; a new rent supplement ($600/month); a no-limit earnings exemption; better access to transition workers; enhanced life skills and mental-health programs; and better medical benefits until age 27. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 10 as of august 2022, the amount of funding a care leaver receives through an aya contract no longer considers employment income or employment insurance; thus, care leavers no longer have to choose between working and having the agreement (aged out, 2022). the initial eligibility criteria to be in the aya program were: (a) to be enrolled in a life-skills, mental health, or skills training program for a minimum of 5 hours per week; or (b) to have 60% or more of a full-time course load (40% if the youth has a disability); or (c) to be in a rehabilitation service (laube & wadhwani, 2019; ministry of children and family development, 2022). relaxing these criteria as planned in budget 2022 will allow all young people who were in care for at least 24 months to get access to the aya program and receive financial support for housing, living expenses, and more (ministry of children and family development, 2022). another important change is an extension of temporary housing support that will allow young people to continue to stay in their homes until their 21st birthday (junos, 2022). new transition workers in delegated aboriginal agencies will also be deployed for early and ongoing transition planning, beginning at age 14 and continuing until the 25th birthday, to help youth navigate new and existing government services (ministry of children and family development, 2022). taken overall, the expansion of the transition program for care leavers in british columbia, together with complementary resources such as aged out1 (2023), and aunt leah’s place (2023) 2, will provide more equitable access and increase the support provided to care leavers. alberta in 2004, through the child, youth and family enhancement act, alberta introduced a government transition planning program called post‑18 support, financial assistance that is colloquially known as the support and financial assistance agreement (sfaa). the sfaa enabled youth leaving care at 18 to receive financial support with a maximum of $1,810 per month as of 2022 (johnson, 2022), continuing until age 24 (government of alberta, 2004; legislative assembly of alberta, 2019, p. fc-83; mir iniesta, 2016). the sfaa provided youth who were in the welfare system with caseworkers, services to develop life skills, counselling, living accommodations, some health benefits, basic financial assistance, and supplementary financial assistance related to training and education (government of alberta, n.d.). on april 4, 2022, a new program called transition to adulthood program (tap), for those 18 to 24 years old, replaced the sfaa (government of alberta, 2022c). tap expands services provided to care leavers to include mentoring opportunities, life skills, mental health and addiction supports, and assistance seeking employment (government of alberta, 2022b, 2022c). general financial support (maximum: $1810/month) provided by tap terminates at age 22; in contrast, under the sfaa, this support was provided until the age of 24 (government of alberta, 2022c, 2022d; johnson, 2022; legislative assembly of alberta, 2019, p. fc-83). youth can, however, apply to the advancing 1 aged out provides resources through its website at https://agedout.com. 2 aunt leah’s place acts as an alternate caregiver for youth aging out of care. it provides supported housing, job training, and life skills coaching. https://www.auntleahs.org/programs/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 11 futures program, which offers targeted financial support (up to $40,000 over 4 years) to cover costs associated with pursuing an undergraduate degree or certification (davidson, 2019; government of alberta, 2022a, 2022b). youth can apply before the age of 25 and are supported for 5 years, to a maximum age of 31 (government of alberta, 2022a, 2022b). additional financial supports provided by advancing futures include funds for necessities, transportation, childcare, and rental deposit; health care is also provided through this program (government of alberta, 2022a), whereas health benefits were previously provided by the sfaa. in addition, youth transition programs are offered by several non-profit organizations. examples are the ymca of northern alberta youth transition program3 (n.d.); the youth transition to adulthood program4 of the mcman youth, family and community services association of calgary & area (n.d.); and the trellis society youth transition to adulthood program5 (n.d.). these programs are accessible through a referral from child services, though the ymca does accept self-referral. ontario ontario provides many supports to care leavers until their mid-twenties. in 2005, a transition program called extended care and maintenance was offered to care leavers up to age 21 (goldstein & wekerle, 2008, p. 10), and in 2013, it was replaced by the continued care and support for youth program, which also offered support to age 21 (office of the auditor general of ontario, 2015, p. 120). in 2014, additional supports related to physical health and mental health were offered by the provincial government through the aftercare benefits initiative, which provided “health and dental benefits for eligible youth between 21 and 25 years old, and … counselling and life skills supports for eligible youth between 21 and 29 years old” (ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a, para. 2). as of 2022, there is a plethora of services in ontario for youth in transition who are 16 to 24 years old, some of which come from non-profit organizations through either a referral service or through youths contacting the organization directly (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). there is a wide range of services such as mental health care, addiction support, health and dental care, independent or life skills training, employment services and training, legal services, and education or vocational skills resources (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). throughout ontario, various service agencies operate youth in transition worker programs: for example, john howard society of ontario (n.d.), youturn (n.d.), and ontario native women’s association (n.d.). some provide other services, employment programs, or events to first nation communities (weechi-it-te-win family services, n.d.; youth employment readiness program, 2009). 3 https://ymcanab.ca/programs/learning-leadership-employment/youth-young-adults/youth-transitions-program 4 https://mcmancalgary.ca/yta/ 5 https://www.growwithtrellis.ca/youth-programs/housing-shelters/youth-transistions-to-adulthood international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 12 aside from the services given by non-profits, ontario has a voluntary youth service agreement program that is specific to youth 16 to 17 years old who are in need of protection, and which aims to enable a seamless transition without disruptions to services before aging out at 18 (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021a). if a youth is still in care at 18, ontario offers the continued care and support for youth (which includes $850/month as well as non-financial supports), which can be extended until the 21st birthday (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021a). there is also the stay home for school program, which allows youth from 18 to 21 who need additional time to complete high school to remain with their caregivers (ontario ministry of children and youth services, 2016). in ontario, no financial support is given past the 21st birthday. however, former youth in care between 21 and 25 (and their dependants) are eligible to receive prescription drug, dental, vision, and extended health benefits through the aftercare benefits initiative (ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a). in addition, youth may be able to receive counselling and life skills supports until age 29 (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a). other services include a savings program (ontario child benefit equivalent) with financial management training (ministry of children, community and social services, 2018), an immigration status guide to help youth address unresolved immigration issues before aging out of care (ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a), and education grants for post-secondary education (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). in short, ontario offers a variety of supports for care leavers, some of which can last until age 29, presumably increasing the likelihood that they can successfully reach independence. quebec quebec offers only one transition program for youth, the youth qualification program (programme qualification des jeunes; pqj). until july 2022, this program provided support only to age 19 (centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’outaouais, n.d.; government of quebec, 2021). it began as a pilot project that ran between 2001 and 2005 with 80 youths and was made available provincially in 2006 (goyette & morin, 2010). access to the program, which lasted for 3 years, was limited to 16-year-olds who had been referred by their social worker; the youth were then provided with job and skills training and preparation for independent living through both individual and group activities (centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’outaouais, n.d.; goyette & morin, 2010). the program was found to improve autonomous functioning but had strict eligibility criteria and limited geographical accessibility (goyette, 2007; government of quebec, 2021). a recent report by goyette, blanchet, tardif-samson, and gauthier-davies (2022) suggests that the program might not have been providing enough support. following the release of the laurent commission report (government of quebec, 2021), the maximum age has been extended to 25, and eligibility has been extended to those who are not likely to reintegrate with family, and who are interested in receiving the services offered (government of quebec, 2022). another planned change is increasing the number of educators and opening around 650 placements international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 13 for youths (ministère de la santé et des services sociaux, 2021). as the number of youths leaving care far exceeds the number of youths who can enter the program, additional placements will be needed before the program can be accessible to all care leavers. unlike other provinces, quebec does not provide general support to care leavers once they reach age 18 (government of quebec, 2021). to fill this vacuum, multiple independent projects have been created by non-profits and some regional health authorities (known by their acronyms cisss and ciusss in quebec). for example, project clé provides youth with financial support to a total of $8,000 for post-secondary studies (fondation du centre jeunesse de la montérégie, n.d.; touzin, 2017), and maison aspire provides independent housing at $200 per month for up to two years (étude longitudinale sur le devenir des jeunes placés au québec et en france, 2017; touzin, 2017). recently, the scope of supports that the province offers has been extended through multiple modifications of existing programs and structures. the société d’habitation du québec has set aside, over the course of a 5-year plan, 100 rent supplements for vulnerable youth to use as long as needed; these rent supplements are paired with case management services that are intended to partner with existing community supports (ministère de la santé et des services sociaux, 2021). the number of rental units is low, however, considering that over 2,000 youth leave care every year in quebec (government of quebec, 2021, p. 266). a reform initiated by the public curator6 is also scheduled to come into effect on november 1, 2022, which will allow vulnerable young adults to name an “assistant” who will support and counsel them in their transition towards adulthood (curateur public du québec, 2022; ministère de la santé et des services sociaux, 2021). furthermore, the aire ouverte [open area] program, which is similar to the australian headspace model (headspace, n.d.) and the foundry program in british columbia (foundry, n.d.), will be opening unique physical spaces designed to appeal to youth aged 12 to 25 while facilitating access to physical and mental health services, including an on-site nurse or a social worker (macé & weiss, 2021). support or advice will also be provided on topics such as employment, school, and housing, along with legal and financial aid (government of quebec, n.d.a; macé & weiss, 2021). finally, a mentorship program for youth aged 16 to 21 who are in protection services has been established with the help of les grands frères et grandes soeurs du grand montréal [big brothers and big sisters of montreal] in which volunteers accompany youth during their transition and meet for activities twice a month for half a day (les grands frères et grandes soeurs du grand montréal, 2021, n.d.; votre gouvernement, 2019). amendments to draft bill 15 that were passed on april 26, 2022, make it mandatory that a transition plan be completed 2 years before a youth’s 18th birthday (assemblée nationale du québec, 2022). youth will then receive support until age 26 and remain in their foster home (chaire de recherche sur l’évaluation des actions publiques à l’égard des jeunes et des populations 6 the public curator of quebec is a government agency responsible for protecting vulnerable individuals who cannot manage their affairs due to mental or physical incapacity (government of quebec, n.d.-b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 14 vulnérables, 2022). thus, having long been an outlier in terms of the paucity of the supports it offers care leavers, the quebec government, spurred by the laurent commission report, has recently started expanding supports to care leavers as they transition into adulthood, in terms of both the age at which supports can be accessed and the range of types of support (radio-canada, 2021). unlike in other provinces, however, government programs providing financial assistance to care leavers, whether for basic needs or to help access training and education, remain unavailable (public health agency of canada, 2019). at this time, quebec still lags behind other canadian provinces in offering support to care leavers. other provinces and territories the transition programs that the remaining provinces and territories offer share many similarities. most but not all require transition planning (office of the auditor general of canada, 2014; sukumaran, 2021). the age at which foster care ends varies — in some cases, it can be as early as 16, but in most jurisdictions care ends at either 18 or 19 (public health agency of canada, 2019). transition support is provided everywhere, although the length and conditions of these programs vary (public health agency of canada, 2019). transition supports last until 24 or 26 in some provinces and territories, but more often only until 21 (government of northwest territories, 2016; government of nunavut, 2021; legislative assembly of yukon, 2022; public health agency of canada, 2019; social supports nb, 2022). at a minimum, all of these jurisdictions offer financial support to care leavers who agree to a contract with the government (public health agency of canada, 2019). as in alberta, british columbia, and ontario, additional supports can be provided; prince edward island, for instance, has increased funding for education, job training, and housing (meader, 2021). however, even the minimum support can be contingent on factors such as education status, employment status, age, and criminal history (government of prince edward island, 1988; public health agency of canada, 2019). in prince edward island, advocates, care leavers, and foster parents have recommended that supports should be available to all care leavers, eliminating eligibility criteria (provincial foster care program review steering committee, 2019). among the provinces, manitoba stands out in terms of the many services it provides to care leavers. since 1997, care leavers in manitoba have been supported until the age of 21 through the act to amend the child and family services act and consequential amendments (government of manitoba, 1997). the requirement for a formal agreement and transition planning were introduced in 2015, whereby care leavers at the age of 15 meet with a social worker to establish goals; if necessary, they also sign an agreement with the director of child protection to continue to support their goals until age 21 (government of manitoba, 2015a, 2015b). manitoba has funded and created other services such as futures forward, a collaborative effort between the canadian mental health association, youth employment services, and community financial counselling services that offers accessible services and transitional supports for current and former youth in care aged 15 to 29 in the areas of mental health, housing, employment, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 15 education, and financial counselling (futures forward, n.d.). manitoba also offers the youth engagement program, which supports western manitoba’s youth in care in their journey from entering care to independence and competence: youth engagement program workers provide supports and resources, and advocate for the rights of youth (child and family service of western manitoba, n.d.). furthermore, a youth may be referred to pilot programs such as myteam, which provides skills training, mentorship to support education or training goals, and work experience opportunities, as well as support in getting other resources or informal health support (ka ni kanichihk, n.d.). sail, another pilot program, provides a support worker to help youth acquire independent living skills and get housing until they have either completed the program or have been discharged from care (knowles centre, n.d.). finally, voices: manitoba’s youth in care network (n.d.) provides peer mentoring, outreach services, leadership programs, and scholarships, and allows youth to speak out about their situation. each of the remaining provinces and territories has at least one government program to provide support to care leavers, and additional supports can be obtained through existing non-profit organizations. common denominators across canadian provinces and territories all jurisdictions, including quebec, provide at least one governmental transition program under such names as voluntary youth service agreement and young adult agreement (government of alberta, 2022c; government of british columbia, n.d.; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; government of northwest territories, 2016; government of nunavut, 2021; government of quebec, 2022; legislative assembly of yukon, 2022; ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a; public health agency of canada, 2019; social supports nb, 2022). the programs focus on the same goal of supporting youth up to a specific age while facilitating, to a variable extent, participation in education or training in areas such as education, employment, and life skills (government of alberta, 2022c; government of british columbia, n.d.; government of quebec, 2022; legislative assembly of yukon, 2022; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; ncsa connections, n.d.; ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a; public health agency of canada, 2019; social supports nb, 2022). common components across canada financial support unlike quebec, transition programs in alberta, british columbia, and ontario include a monthly allowance to help youth leaving care pay for basic living needs and housing (government of alberta, 2022c; government of quebec, 2021; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; junos, 2022). as noted above, the maximum amount varies by jurisdiction: for example, it is currently $330/month in nunavut and $575/month in saskatchewan (government of nunavut, n.d.; government of saskatchewan, 2014). some jurisdictions, such as manitoba, newfoundland and labrador, and the northwest territories, have transition programs with financial assistance, but the amount is not disclosed (government of manitoba, 2015b; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 16 government of newfoundland and labrador, n.d.; government of northwest territories, 2016). however, in british columbia and ontario, youth leaving care often stated that the amount provided did not cover all expenses, leaving them struggling and susceptible to becoming homeless (laube & wadhwani, 2019; rampersaud & mussell, 2021). in 2022, the time of writing, youth leaving care in british columbia have multiple sources of income, with nearly half (48%) receiving the aya, 44% earning money through employment, and smaller numbers receiving bursaries and scholarships, help from their family, and other forms of income assistance (mccreary centre society’s youth research academy, 2022, p. 39). despite these supports, 52% of these youth were in debt (mccreary centre society’s youth research academy, 2022, p. 5). thus, a more generous allowance (or other financial assistance program) that applies to all care leavers and is enough to cover all living expenses — more in line with the support that british columbia is currently implementing (ministry of children and family development, 2022) — would be helpful in other jurisdictions as well. education many transition programs incentivize youth to pursue education by providing additional support that is contingent on working towards completion of secondary or post-secondary education (government of alberta, 2022a; public health agency of canada, 2019; student aid bc, n.d.a, n.d.b). this support can take the form of reimbursements or bursaries for tuition and expenses related to schooling (government of alberta, 2022a; student aid bc, n.d.a, n.d.b). the focus is generally on high school education, with some provinces such as alberta, british columbia, and ontario expanding this support to those enrolled in post-secondary education as well (government of alberta, 2022a; government of british columbia, n.d.; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; student aid bc, n.d.b). the age limit for completion of schooling in british columbia is 27, the highest in the nation; in alberta and ontario, the limit is 24 (government of alberta, 2022a; government of ontario, 2012; ministry of children and family development, 2022). education has been a central component of many transition programs in canada, as the benefits of supporting care leavers’ education help justify the costs of implementing these programs (leroux et al., 2020; sukumaran, 2021). life skills programs life skills programs are offered by some provinces to help youth leaving care develop the necessary skills to become independent adults (government of alberta, 2022b; government of british columbia, n.d.; government of saskatchewan, 2014; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). the quebec pqj focuses on the development of life skills, job skills, and social skills (government of quebec, 2022). participation in the pqj was associated with an increase in life skills over a 3-year period, but did not show improvements in areas such as housing, education, and employment (goyette, 2007; goyette, blanchet, tardif-samson, & gauthierdavies, 2022). the ontario program is similar to the pqj; youth can enrol as early as 16, and can stay in the program until age 25 (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 17 the eligibility criteria are not as restrictive as those of the pqj, and other supports, such as for housing, education, and mental health, are offered together with employment training (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b). british columbia also offers a life skills program that is focused on day-to-day living and helping youth attain their own goals (government of british columbia, n.d.), while alberta, new brunswick, and saskatchewan offer programs focused on becoming an independent adult (government of alberta, 2022b; government of new brunswick, n.d.; government of saskatchewan, 2014). provinces that include integrated life skills programs in their transition programs hope to help care leavers become more independent by learning to manage everyday tasks, although evidence concerning their real-world effectiveness is limited. challenges lack of social support care leavers tend to have few social supports prior to leaving care (sukumaran, 2021). unless care leavers remain in contact with family members or foster families, they leave foster care without a social safety net, making it more difficult to integrate into their communities (sukumaran, 2021). a few provinces, such as saskatchewan and british columbia, have peer support groups for formerly displaced youth (federation of bc youth in care networks, n.d.; saskatchewan youth in care and custody network inc., 2007; sukumaran, 2021). without social supports and someone to help find the right resources, care leavers are likely to encounter feelings of loneliness and anxiety (montgomery et al., 2016). while the importance of social support is accepted, further research is needed to clarify the best ways of providing it to care leavers. mental health resources in our source literature, connecting care leavers with mental health resources is rarely mentioned as a service provided by transition programs, even though care leavers are more likely than their peers to have experienced traumatic childhoods (baidawi et al., 2014; charlesworth, 2020; dorsey et al., 2012). due to their traumatic pasts, care leavers tend to have unresolved psychological issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, complex trauma, depression, and anxiety (patterson et al., 2015; turney & wildeman, 2016). as noted in a recent report by del graff (2019), the child and youth advocate for alberta, if youth do not have the means to access psychological services when they leave care, their mental health issues are not addressed as well as they might be, further impeding their ability to integrate into society. the report further discussed the deaths of care leavers in the transition program, attributing the deaths in part to mental health issues, themselves likely influenced, if not brought about, by past traumatic events. this report suggests that the absence of mental health supports is one reason care leavers are more likely to die young, compared to youth who have not been in care. it is important that mental health services be provided to youth prior to leaving care to allow them to heal from their pasts and build resilience (king, 2021; sukumaran, 2021). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 18 lack of knowledge regarding programs care leavers themselves are often unaware of services that may be available to them, relying on their caseworkers to provide this information (sukumaran, 2021). if a youth does not have a good relationship with their caseworker, if the caseworker is not aware of all the programs and services available, or does not understand the criteria for or the main purpose of a program, the caseworker may not pass on the information to the youth (sukumaran, 2021). in a study entitled “youth in transit: growing out of care”, youth in care emphasized the benefits of understanding the available community supports that fit their needs and interests (montgomery et al., pp. 226– 227, 2016). care leavers need to be informed of the resources and supports available to them, and social workers need to be more knowledgeable about these resources and to advocate for care leavers so that they can access the supports that will be most helpful to them. strict eligibility criteria the eligibility criteria to enter transition programs, which can include age, enrolment in training or education, and employment status, can mean that youth leaving care do not receive these services (sukumaran, 2021). for instance, in ontario, foster families can continue to receive funds for a youth over 18 until the age of 21 only if they are finishing their high school education through the stay at home program (ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; ontario association of children’s aid societies, n.d.). most provinces other than the four most populated provide supports for youth no later than age 21, with few supports provided for care leavers in their mid to late twenties (public health agency of canada, 2019). meanwhile, in the general population, young adults often live longer with their parents — one in three adults between the ages of 25 and 29 was living with their parents in ontario in 2016 (ministry of finance, 2021). this trend has been attributed to the high cost of housing in canada along with increased time in education and job market changes (ansari, 2019). young adults transitioning out of care, who disproportionately struggle with trauma and mental health issues, clearly need continued access to programs that compensate for the lack of family support and provide a safety net for when things do not go as planned (sukumaran, 2021). transition programs need to increase their accessibility to all care leavers so that they receive the supports they need until they are well into their twenties. inadequate transition planning case managers often do not collaborate with youth on transition planning, and when they do, transition planning is often not systematically implemented (montgomery et al., 2016; office of the auditor general of canada, 2014; sukumaran, 2021). in the yukon, despite transition planning being officially integrated in the transition program, only 41% of files mentioned a transition plan (office of the auditor general of canada, 2014). furthermore, transition plans do not always reflect the wishes and needs of youth; instead, some youth report being told what to do without regard for their wishes (montgomery et al., 2016; sukumaran, 2021). perceiving their contribution as unimportant, care leavers may choose to leave the care system early or not enrol in transition programs (montgomery et al., 2016; sukumaran, 2021). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 7–29 19 conclusion findings regarding transition programs across canada suggest that reforms are needed to better support care leavers. compared to the other jurisdictions, british columbia offered the most supports and provided them for a longer duration, and is moving in the direction of making eligibility criteria less restrictive (government of british columbia, n.d.; ministry of children and family development, 2022). ontario also offers many supports in regard to education, employment, and physical and mental health, among other areas; however, some supports are only available to age 25 (government of ontario, 2012; ministry of children, community and social services, 2021b; ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2014a). quebec has been an outlier in terms of the lack of supports offered to care leavers by the government, and supports seem likely to remain relatively limited even after implementation of the changes prompted by the release of the laurent commission report in may 2021 (government of quebec, 2021; radiocanada, 2021). alberta’s sfaa program, which provided financial and other supports until age 24 (johnson, 2022), was recently replaced with the tap, which expanded transition services but ended general financial support at age 22 (government of alberta, 2022c). when combined with advancing futures, however, some services can be provided up to age 31 (government of alberta, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c). the other provinces and territories provide financial support through an agreement with care leavers that can span ages 21 to 26; depending on the agreement, other supports can be included (government of northwest territories, 2016; government of nunavut, n.d.; legislative assembly of yukon, 2022; public health agency of canada, 2019; social supports nb, 2022). while some of these programs have existed for over a decade, little is known about their effectiveness in terms of education, employment, and independent living outcomes (sukumaran, 2021). some efforts have been made to determine which types of support care leavers prefer, and which provide the most benefits. one study, conducted at a residential care facility in the united states, found that transition planning was important to care leavers, and additional supports were desired (trout et al., 2014). the types of supports desired differed by gender, with males generally valuing support on financial management and cultivating relationships, while females prioritized educational supports (trout et al., 2014). only two studies examined the quebec pqj: goyette (2007), and goyette, blanchet, tardif-samson, & gauthier-davies (2022). in the 2022 study, goyette and colleagues found that those enrolled in the program did not improve in terms of educational status or employment. those enrolled were at high risk of homelessness, low education, and unemployment; 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(2020). favoriser la réussite scolaire des jeunes issus de la protection de la jeunesse: constats sur les effets des enjeux organisationnels sur la scolarisation des jeunes hébergés en centres de réadaptation [promoting the academic success of young people from youth protection: observations on the effects of organizational issues on the schooling of young people housed in rehabilitation centers]. chaire de recherche sur l’évaluation des actions publiques à l’égard des populations vulnérables. http://edjep.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2020/11/final_rapport-scolarisation-_9nov-2020-sansfiligrane.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 404 social and cultural factors influencing immunization of children in rural abia state, nigeria ezebunwa e. nwokocha and chioma obioma abstract: the role of adequate and timely immunization in the reduction of infant and childhood mortality cannot be overstated, especially in sub-saharan africa. this study, anchored in the health belief model and rational choice theory, investigated the sociocultural factors influencing childhood immunization in the rural state of abia, nigeria, an area with a high infant mortality rate. a multistage sampling technique involving the random selection of 3 communities in bende local government area and the purposive selection of 433 respondents with children under the age of 5 was adopted. in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 respondents — 3 health personnel, 3 traditional birth attendants, 4 community leaders (2 men and 2 women), 2 church representatives, and the head of the health department in the local government headquarters. findings reveal that the majority of respondents had heard about childhood immunization and largely understood its essence. religious beliefs and the mother’s economic activities (especially when market day coincides with immunization day) were identified as major influences on immunization. more attention should be directed to providing adequate education for rural dwellers on the importance of immunization for childhood mortality reduction. keywords: immunization, childhood mortality, religious beliefs, disease prevention ezebunwa e. nwokocha, phd is a senior lecturer in the department of sociology, faculty of the social sciences, university of ibadan, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria. email: miczeze@yahoo.com chioma obioma is a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology, faculty of the social sciences, university of ibadan, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria. email: chiomabioma@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 mailto:miczeze@yahoo.com mailto:chiomabioma@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 405 statistics have shown that the highest rates of mortality in children under the age of 5 occur in sub-saharan africa, where 1 child in 8 dies before the 5th birthday (nwokocha & awomoyi, 2009; national population commission [npc] & icf international, 2014). about 70% of deaths of children under the age of 5 occur in 15 countries, with india and nigeria accounting for nearly one-third of under-5 mortality globally (you, jones, & wardlaw, 2010). research reveals that preventable or treatable infectious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, and hiv/aids are implicated in more than 70% of the estimated one million annual under-5 deaths in nigeria (ekure et al., 2013; united nations children’s fund [unicef], 2009; you, jones, & wardlaw 2010). these figures may underrepresent the current situation since some of these deaths occur at home and are therefore not reported. although there has been an overall reduction in childhood mortality in nigeria over the years the rate of reduction has been marginal and far from meeting the millennium development goal of a two-thirds reduction by 2015 (nwokocha, 2013). notwithstanding the various efforts that have been made by governments and agencies, the rate of childhood mortality in nigeria has remained stubbornly high and progress has been fitful. for instance, in 1990, the under-5 mortality rate was estimated at 147 deaths per 1000 births; it increased to 176 in 1995 but dropped to 153 in year 2000 (central bank of nigeria, 1991; ajala, 2002; unicef, 2002). the latest nigeria demographic and health survey revealed that 128 children per 1,000 live births, or about 1 out of 6 children, dies before age 5 (npc & icf international, 2014), even worse than the rate for sub-saharan africa overall. immunization is not only the surest way of protecting children but also the most costeffective and important public health approach to disease prevention (tagbo, uleanya, & omotowo, 2012; adeyinka, olademeji, adeyinka, & almakhu, 2009; unicef, 2009). immunization has saved over 20 million lives in the last two decades (rahji & ndikom, 2013), yet, for various reasons, including rumors about perceived side effects and lack of vaccines and health personnel, immunization coverage in nigerian communities — particularly rural areas — has been low (itimi, dienye, & ordinioha, 2012). thus, individual and systemic factors undermining the availability and utilization of immunization services have been linked to preventable diseases occurring among children in nigeria. this paper investigates the factors influencing childhood immunization in rural nigeria as a way of understanding the effects of relevant manifest and covert factors. specific issues examined include people’s perceptions and beliefs about immunization, socioeconomic status, and availability and utilization of services. theoretical framework the health belief model (hbm) by rosenstock,strecher, and becker (1988), and rational choice theory (rct) by coleman (as cited by ritzer, 2008), have been adopted in analyzing immunization of children in rural nigeria. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 406 the health belief model the health belief model focuses on six constructs to predict the behavior of actors in regard to health care, namely: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. rosenstock, strecher, and becker (1988) noted that people are likely to take a particular health-related action if they (a) feel that it is possible to avoid the negative health condition; (b) have an expectation that by taking the recommended action, the condition can be avoided; and (c) believe that they can successfully take the recommended health-related action. the model explicitly recognizes that individuals are motivated to act on the basis of their understanding of the situation as it relates to the constructs (rosenstock, 1974; becker, radius, & rosenstock, 1978). perceived susceptibility. parents who perceive that without routine immunization their children will be vulnerable to diseases and infections will probably make it a priority to have their children immunized, unlike parents who do not consider their children as potentially susceptible to childhood killer diseases. the perception that immunization isn’t necessary may derive from ignorance or from an insistence on upholding centuries-old beliefs and practices pertaining to child survival and health strategies. perceived severity. perceived severity of diseases among children when they occur is also a critical factor in deciding whether and when to have children immunized. parents who understand that their children are susceptible to childhood diseases but who do not grasp the potential severity of such diseases may not take timely action. delays in having children immunized can have serious adverse consequences, as vaccines must be administered on a prescribed schedule to be fully effective. perceived benefit. perceived benefit as an integral part of the hbm focuses on how a supposed gain or advantage of an intended action motivates an individual towards acting, in this case presenting a child for immunization. as a corollary, parents who do not perceive the benefits of immunization will most likely ignore it as inconsequential. perceived barriers. various perceived barriers may discourage parents from presenting a child for immunization, including having to travel a long distance to the immunization facility, anxiety about likely side effects, delays in accessing vaccines, and reliance on traditional beliefs and practices. thus, the four constructs so far discussed have a complementary effect in defining the attitude and behavior of a prospective actor towards taking a health-related action. for instance, a parent who perceives children as vulnerable to diseases and the concomitant severe complications that could result is more likely to understand the benefits of taking preventive action, and to have a child immunized as prescribed. the model posits that cues to action concretize other hbm constructs that are built on perception by providing necessary information that may lead to action. information sources that can provide cues to action include the media, http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 407 extension workers, and significant others (rosenstock, 1974). the most recent addition to the model, self-efficacy, relates to a parent’s level of confidence in his or her ability to successfully present a child for immunization as and when necessary. such a decision is reached after processing insights derived from other constructs. rational choice theory the second perspective, rational choice theory, views individuals as able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a goal-directed action before taking the action (friedman & hechter, 1988). as such, actors have the capacity to make rational choices among alternatives within the context of available resources and prevailing conditions. however, that ability must be considered relative to a prospective actor’s level of awareness about the efficacy of these alternatives in dealing with a particular condition. in the current analysis, the alternatives include presenting a child for immunization as and when necessary, late presentation, or nonpresentation. within the context of these alternatives, an individual is expected to attempt to make a rational choice that seeks to maximize benefits while minimizing cost or pain (ritzer, 2008). effectively weighing the options supposes that the actor has sufficient information about available alternatives. we note that when choices are quite similar, it can be difficult to decide on the preferred option. that ought not to be the case in making a rational decision as to whether to have a child immunized, considering that the merits of immunization are well documented. in what follows we present a conceptual framework that synthesizes the theoretical perspectives employed in explaining the factors that impinge on immunization of children in rural abia state. conceptual framework figure 1 shows three possibilities with regard to children’s health in rural nigeria: preventive strategies, childhood diseases and treatment, and management options. these possibilities define the relevance of an actor’s perception related to vulnerability, seriousness, benefits, and barriers to action. the framework indicates that the degree of importance or meaning attached to the constructs will influence an individual’s choice of health-seeking behavior, such as, in the present discussion, timely immunization, delayed immunization, or none at all. in contexts where immunization is efficacious, timely, and appropriate, immunization will lead to prevention of diseases, or to reduced effect when diseases occur, promoting stable health among the immunized children. conversely, individuals who do not present their children for immunization expose them to the danger of morbidity and mortality. figure 1 also shows that parents who have once experienced the death or serious illness of a child are likely try to avoid a similar incident by seeking health information from relevant sources including neighbours, media, community health workers, and social advocates, as reflected in the box, “cues to action”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 408 figure 1. conceptual framework. methods abia state in southern nigeria was chosen for this study because of its low immunization coverage, with only 49.8% children receiving all the basic vaccinations (npc & icf international, 2014). generally, the rural inhabitants of the state make little use of modern health services, partly as a result of a strong attachment to cultural beliefs, values, and practices with regard to medical matters, and partly due to the paucity of functional orthodox health facilities. many are illiterate, conservative, and unprepared to accept changes in the social, economic, religious, and familial structure of society. although a large number of the people profess christianity, traditional norms supporting male child preference, polygamy (in particular polygyny, as a symbol of wealth and virility), and high fertility still pervade rural abia communities (nwokocha, 2007). the study employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. a total of 433 copies of an openand closed-ended questionnaire were administered to mothers with children under the age of 5. given the low literacy level among respondents, interviewers asked the questions and recorded the answers. of the total number of questionnaires administered, only 364 copies (84%) were completed and thus available for analysis. thirteen indepth interviews (idis) were conducted with 3 orthodox health personnel, 3 traditional birth attendants, 4 community elders, 2 religious leaders, and the head of the health department in the bende local government area (lga). a multistage sampling technique was adopted beginning with the selection of three communities from the lga through the simple random method. the second stage also involved the random selection of villages from which mothers with children of immunization age were purposively selected. ethical considerations were fully observed in the course of data collection; the anonymity of study participants was guaranteed, and their recruitment was on the basis of voluntary and preventive strategies treatment and management perceived susceptibility childhood diseases perceived benefits perceived severity perceived barriers cues to action no immunization delayed immunization timely immunization morbidity mortality amelioration when disease occurs disease prevention self-efficacy stable health health outcomes rct hbm possibilities http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 409 informed consent. in addition, the principle of no harm to subjects was applied. prior to the commencement of interviews, the participants were informed of the ultimate benefits that the study would have for them. they were also informed about their right to withdraw from the study at any time. quantitative data were edited and cleaned to remove inconsistencies that could undermine research validity and reliability. data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics through frequencies, percentages, and cross tabulation of variables using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). qualitative data analysis involved the use of ethnographic summaries and content analysis. the procedure began with the translation and transcription of tape recordings of idis. these were followed by the examination, and then the thematic isolation, of various responses that threw light upon the study objectives. by adopting this method, responses from the qualitative data complemented the questionnaire survey. results table 1 shows the sociodemographic characteristics of respondents. the mean age of the respondents was 29.51. eighty-one percent of respondents were aged 25 to 34; the age categories least represented were 35 to 39 (8.8%) and 40 years and above (0.8%). eighty-nine percent of the respondents were married and 6% were single. overall, 69% of the respondents were in a monogamous union and 99.7% were christian. forty percent of the respondents had secondary school education and 18% had tertiary school education. over two-thirds (68%) of the respondents were involved in either trading or farming, 10% were civil servants, and 15% were artisans. table 1 also shows that most of the respondents (73%) delivered their babies in a primary health centre, 18% delivered either at home or in church, and only 6% delivered in public or private hospitals. it is important to note that women who give birth in churches, following a practice supported in sections of the community, do so in the hope of divine assistance, which is thought to be readily accessible in the church. it shares with home delivery a lack of emphasis on providing expert assistance such as would be available in other places of delivery. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 410 table 1 sociodemographic characteristics of respondents characteristics frequency (n=364) percent age group >24 years 25-29 years 30-34 years 35-40 years 40+ years 35 161 133 32 3 9.6 44.2 36.5 8.8 .8 marital status single married separated/divorced widowed cohabiting 22 324 6 7 4 6.1 89.3 1.7 1.9 1.1 family type monogamous polygamous 238 107 69.0 31.0 level of education none primary secondary tertiary 60 94 144 65 16.5 25.8 39.6 17.9 main occupation trading farming civil service student artisanship 179 70 37 25 53 49.2 19.2 10.2 6.9 14.5 religion christianity islam 363 1 99.7 .3 place of delivery home primary health centre traditional birth attendant private clinic general hospital church 42 265 13 17 3 24 11.5 72.8 3.6 4.7 .8 6.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 411 table 2 examines the main source of information on immunization for the respondents, which ranged from 34% whose main source was their healthcare provider to 5% for whom it was the media. the proportion of those who relied on information from family members and friends combined was 37%. table 2 main source of information on child immunization source frequency percentage family member 82 22.5 health care provider 125 34.3 antenatal care service 57 15.7 friends 53 14.6 church 23 6.4 media 19 5.2 total 364 100.0 in-depth interviews revealed respondents’ perceptions about the necessity of immunizing children in the study area. the following views were expressed by some of the respondents: child immunization is used to prevent diseases and even if a child will contract one of the vaccine-preventable diseases it would not be as severe as it would have been without immunization and it is very necessary for a child to survive. (idi/orthodox health personnel) immunization is very vital for a child’s survival. the necessity can be seen from the reduction of child mortality in this community. a good number of mothers have known the use and embraced immunization very well, although there are still mothers who feel child immunization is not necessary. they give reasons ranging from believing god that nothing will happen to the child to not immunizing their first children who didn’t die and therefore no need to immunize children born thereafter. (idi/community leader) we always try to encourage mothers during our gatherings on the importance of immunization. (idi/female community leader) another interviewee had a different opinion about the necessity for immunization: immunization is necessary for children whose parents do not have faith in the great physician (god). there are situations where children die even after immunization. the immunization that is very necessary is that which is drawn from god. (idi/religious leader) http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 412 figure 2 shows the views of respondents on the dangers associated with nonimmunization of children. about 4% of respondents reported either no consequence or do not know of any consequence; the rest identified various consequences and therefore the need to have children immunized. 78.3 14.8 3.3 2.7 0.8 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 illness death disability no consequence don't know figure 2. perceived dangers of non-immunization of child. a large majority of the respondents (78%) stated that not immunizing a child could lead to illness; 15% said it could lead to death. notwithstanding identified dangers, table 3 shows the perceptions of respondents about the main barriers to immunization. delay at health facilities and the distance to immunization facilities were reported by 38% and 25% respectively. as one respondent stated, delays are sometimes caused by a shortage of people attending the clinic for immunization: practices such as perceived inviolability of participation in eke market affects immunization activities among the people. on each eke day, few parents would bring their children but most will rather come after buying or selling. on such days mothers spend very long time waiting because we cannot open the vaccine box if we do not have a reasonable number of children that the vaccines can be administered on. some parents would not come at all and will therefore postpone their children’s immunization till the next immunization day or even miss it completely. (idi/orthodox health personnel) twelve percent of the respondents stated not knowing of any main barrier and 4% identified fear of possible side effects. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 413 table 3 respondents’ perception of the main barrier to child immunization perceived barrier frequency percent delay in health facility 137 37.6 long distance to facility 92 25.3 lack of health workers 54 14.8 religious belief 8 2.2 lack of information 16 4.4 fear of side effects 15 4.1 don’t know 42 11.5 total 364 100.0 although some interview respondents viewed the necessity for immunization as outweighing any perceived barriers, others expressed some level of reservation. for instance, one of the interviewees stated: nothing should stop a woman from immunizing her child because it is very important to its survival.... any woman who does not take her child to a facility for immunization is to be blamed should the child contract preventable diseases. no excuse is good enough to deny a child immunization. (idi/health personnel at the local government office) other respondents explained why some parents may be unwilling to have their children immunized. as one observed: some parents who are reluctant to get their children immunized believe that immunization will make them sick or injure their legs. the usual claim is that these children had never fallen sick even without immunization, hence no need to worry. (idi/community leader) the importance of the mother’s educational status in childhood immunization was highlighted by a health worker in the study area when she stated: the level of education of mothers in one way or the other influences their level of compliance regarding immunization of children. it is easier to discuss the issues concerning immunization such as side effects with more educated mothers than less educated ones. we have to take extra efforts to convince mothers who have lower levels of education about immunization. also, during immunization awareness exercises, mothers who are more educated participate actively relative to their less educated counterparts who keep quiet, for the most part, even if they do not understand the issues. sometimes they feel intimidated and may go back home almost empty. (idi/orthodox health personnel) http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 414 participants were questioned on household decision-making on immunization of children. a large majority of the respondents (65%) stated that immunization decisions are jointly taken by a child’s parents. interestingly, although the prevailing social organization is patriarchal, among respondents for this study more women made a sole decision on immunization (31.2%) than did men (3.4%). stressing the need for women to abide by the patriarchal ethos of the bende community, one of the community leaders argued that: women ought to take permission from their husbands before taking their children to facilities for immunization. the man is the head of the home and therefore should be respected. it is unlikely for a man to deny the woman the permission because they know that immunization is necessary for the survival of a child. (idi/community leader) although most men may indeed be aware of the necessity for immunization, the barriers identified in table 3 may nevertheless discourage them from giving approval for women to proceed with immunization. table 4 interrogates the link between a respondent’s level of education and who makes the decision whether to immunize the child. the chi-square result shows that there is a significant relationship between the level of education of respondents and spousal decision making (x2 = 33.06, df = 6, p = .001). table 4 level of education and spousal decision-making spousal decision making level of education none formal primary secondary tertiary chi-square value me alone 36 (61.0%) 28 (30.8%) 35 (24.5%) 13 (20.0%) x2=33.06 df=6 p=.001 my spouse alone 2 (3.4%) 4 (4.4%) 5 (3.5%) 1 (1.5%) both of us 21 (35.6%) 59 (64.8%) 103 (72.0%) 51 (78.5%) total 59 (16.5%) 91 (25.4%) 143 (39.9%) 65 (18.2%) figure 3 shows the length of time required for respondents to travel to a health facility for immunization, which ranged from 10 minutes or less (53%) to 31minutes and more (6%). sixteen percent of the respondents took more than 20 minutes to get to a facility, which may be a source of discouragement for some community members. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 415 figure 3. length of time to immunization centre. on the influence of religion on immunization, the following views were expressed by respondents. one respondent noted that a gradual but positive attitudinal and behavioral change towards immunization was occurring: the community has made efforts to reduce the influence of religious beliefs on immunization of children in our community. many adults today are disabled or blind due to the influence of these doctrines on immunization. some parents who did not believe in immunization in the past are beginning to see its importance. we have gone to churches that discourage immunization among their members.… we thank god because some of the doctrines against immunization are gradually waning. (idi/community leader) another interviewee underscored the need for advocacy and sensitization of individuals and groups when necessary: when reports come to us about parents who do not immunize their children due to religious beliefs and other reasons, we ensure that a team is sent to such an environment for outreach. we try not to force these parents but make them see the reason why they should immunize their children. (idi/orthodox health personnel) for some respondents, prayers and blessings offered in the church were seen as efficacious and therefore an alternative to immunization accessed through health facilities. one interviewee stated: parents who do not immunize their children bring water and oil to church for blessings. the man of god will use a scripture in the bible and pray over the water and oil. the parents will then use it on the children either by drinking or by rubbing on the body. and it works effectively. (idi/church leader) 53 26.1 9.9 6.1 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0-10 mins 11-20 mins 21-30 mins 31-60 mins http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 416 the same explanation was offered by another church representative who corroborated the earlier position when he stated: we call ours faith home or church where we believe in the efficacy of supernatural protection against diseases and germs. all we use in place of immunization is prayers. it works perfectly. (idi/ church representative) table 5 shows the relationship between each of several factors and respondents’ perceptions about the necessity for immunization. a respondent’s level of education, marital status, and age were examined in this regard. the table indicates that a respondent’s age did not necessarily affect their perception of the necessity for immunization. however, the table indicates that the association between a respondent’s marital status and her perception of the necessity for childhood immunization is significant (0.001). this suggests that respondents living alone were less likely than their married counterparts to perceive immunization as necessary. table 5 factors influencing respondents’ perceptions about the necessity of child immunization age of respondent >24% 25-29% 30-34% 35-39% 40+% chi-square figures necessary not necessary i don’t know total 30 (88.2%) 0 (0.0%) 4 (11.8%) 34 (9.4%) 146 (91.8%) 6 (3.8%) 7 (4.4%) 159 (44.2%) 123 (93.2%) 6 (4.5%) 3 (2.3%) 132 (36.7%) 28 (87.5%) 1 (3.1%) 3 (9.4%) 32 (8.9%) 3 (100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3 (0.8%) x2=8.739 df=8 p=0.3 marital status living alone living with spouse necessary not necessary i don’t know total 27 (79.4%) 0 (0%) 7 (20.6%) 34 (9.4%) 303 (92.9%) 13 (4.0%) 10 (3.1%) 326 (90.6%) x2=21.98 df=2 p=0.001 level of education none formal primary secondary tertiary necessary not necessary i don’t know total 53 (86.9%) 1 (1.6%) 7 (11.5%) 61 (19.9%) 82 (88.2%) 5 (5.4%) 6 (6.5%) 93 (25.8%) 131 (92.9%) 6 (4.3%) 4 (2.8%) 141 (39.2%) 64 (98.5%) 1 (1.5%) 0 (0%) 65 (18.1) x2=13.63 df=6 p=0.003 the chi-square result shows that there is a significant relationship between the level of education and the perception of immunization being necessary (x2=13.63, df=6, p=0.003). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 417 discussion results of the study show that although almost all the respondents were christians, a large number were in a polygamous union. the import of this contradiction is unmistakable and suggests that christianity has not fully supplanted traditional sentiments and cultural values among rural dwellers in abia. a high percentage of women (22%) gave birth at home, at church, or with the assistance of traditional birth attendants, increasing the danger to both mother and child in the advent of an emergency. interestingly, patrons of each healthcare delivery system were likely to perceive their choice of birthing environment as more appropriate than the other available alternatives. we contend that a claim to rational choice is tenuous unless all contending options are weighed to establish the most efficacious. this is hardly the case among the rural people of the region, many of whom are more disposed to rely on medical systems that reflect their cultural norms and values than on orthodox medicine. among the main factors that discourage parents from having their babies immunized is the perception that the child is not vulnerable (harmsen et al., 2013). some respondents who had older children who were not immunized and did not contract notable communicable diseases erroneously assumed that susceptibility to disease follows a predictable pattern; this antecedent effect can lead them to regard immunization as pointless. another issue identified by respondents is the belief that faithfulness to god and his power to protect believers is enough to shield children from diseases. as a result, affected respondents neither perceive their children as vulnerable nor their medical condition as severe, relying on the conviction that with god immunization of children is immaterial. when eke market day coincides with immunization day, participation in eke market activities is often prioritized above having children immunized. jegede and owumi (2013) noted that presenting children for immunization is usually affected when immunization day clashes with the economic activities of women. thus, immunization of children is postponed, even though vaccines are not as efficacious when administered later, outside the prescribed timeframe. furthermore, given that it is cost-effective to immunize a large number of children at one time, healthcare providers often delay vaccine administration on such days to enable children whose parents are involved in weekly market activities to be included. delay in accessing services constitutes one of the main barriers against presenting children for immunization when necessary (abdulraheem, onajole, jimoh, & oladipo, 2011; ojaakaa et al., 2011). the immediate implication of delays in access or completion of immunization is well established in the literature and ranges from deterioration of medical conditions to increase in susceptibility to epidemics (sadoh & eregie, 2009). for others, perceived side-effects of vaccines on children post-immunization is a critical and proximate determinant of immediate and future engagement with immunization for the current child or subsequent children. it is important that health care workers themselves should be well-informed about the potential side effects of immunization so that they can provide http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 418 authoritative information, correcting erroneous conclusions about causation that are based on speculation or rumour, and reassuring parents that despite the possibility of mild side-effects such as fever, pain, and dizziness, the benefits of immunization far outweigh the costs. in the rare case of severe side effects, care should be taken to establish adequacy of the vaccine by age of child, expiration date, and dosage, as well as competence of the medical personnel, and then to communicate the findings to the community. interestingly, none of the respondents reported unavailability of vaccines in health facilities — what is commonly referred to in nigeria as “outof-stock syndrome”. this is contrary to the observation of ubajaka, ukegbu, okafor, and ejiofor (2012) that one of the major problems confronting healthcare services in nigeria is unavailability of drugs, including vaccines. the mother’s level of education also has an important influence on access and use of health facilities. as desai and alva (1998) and desai (2000) have observed, educated mothers access health facilities more often, and adhere to medical regimens more reliably, than their less educated counterparts. the findings of this study support that assertion. indeed, accurately perceiving the susceptibility and severity of a medical issue, and the likely benefits of an intended health-related action, largely depends on an actor’s level of awareness, which is in part a function of education. as results indicate, 17% of the respondents reported not having any form of formal education; when those who had only primary school education are added, the percentage of women with low educational status increases to 42%. as this category of mothers is more likely to exhibit ignorance on issues surrounding immunization more effort is needed to dispel misconceptions about western science and technology, especially in regard to health matters. we note here that although gender relations are largely constructed to reflect a patriarchal ethos and notwithstanding the low level of education in rural abia, immunization decisions are almost always either taken jointly or mainly by the woman. only a negligible number of respondents reported that only their spouses took such a decision. as oluwadare (2009) observed, in most nigerian communities women seek approval from their spouses on major issues, which is not the case in the present investigation. part of the reason for the assertiveness exhibited by mothers in the study area is a conviction that their spouses appreciate the necessity of immunization and are therefore not likely to oppose the procedure. conclusion the importance of childhood immunization in reducing the mortality and morbidity rate among children in nigeria cannot be overemphasized. an expression of this realization was common among respondents; however, for ideational, educational, economic, religious, and sociocultural reasons some community members do not present their children for immunization when necessary. the health consequences of non-immunization of children are well established, yet non-immunization continues to occur in the communities studied, due to factors such as a low level of education, concern about perceived side effects, and a preemptive belief in the http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 419 efficacy of the healing power of god. this lacuna necessitates a call for more sensitization of rural dwellers on the need to fully embrace immunization of children as a strategy for morbidity and mortality reduction. it is important not only to create awareness messages that are compelling and convincing but also to identify new trajectories of community engagement that will be effective in promoting attitudes and behaviors that entail a positive predisposition to childhood immunization. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 404–422 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 420 references abdulraheem, i. s, onajole, a. t, jimoh, a. a. g., & oladipo, a. r. 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(2002). the state of the world’s children 2002. geneva, switzerland: author. united nations children’s fund. (2009). the state of the world’s children 2009. new york, ny: author. you, d., jones, g., & wardlaw, t. (2010). levels & trends in child mortality: estimates developed by the un inter-agency group for child mortality estimation (report 2010). new york, ny: united nations children’s fund. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616128 social and cultural factors influencing immunization of children in rural abia state, nigeria ezebunwa e. nwokocha and chioma obioma theoretical framework the health belief model rational choice theory conceptual framework methods results discussion conclusion references accessibility of social services for disabled youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 165 youth with a disability and their experiences with social services programs james cairns abstract: this study explored the experiences of 14 young people (aged 16 to 24) with a disability, who had accessed social services within the greater toronto area (gta) within 12 months of the dates during which the study was conducted. through in-person and online focus groups, youth were asked to highlight their programs’ positive and constructive attributes and to makes suggestions about how these services could be improved. content analysis of the semi-structured interviews showed that on the positive side, programs offered a place to belong, an opportunity to share their feelings, and a safe space. the analysis also showed that programs could be enhanced through reducing the size of the groups and increasing the number of sessions. suggestions for future programs were mixed with some participants preferring disability-focused groups and others preferring groups that are inclusive of all youth. keywords: school choice, descriptive phenomenology, parent experience with school choice, parent of a child with a disability, experiences with school choice james cairns, m.a. is a researcher and counsellor who is committed to providing opportunities for marginalized voices to share their experiences. e-mail: jcairns@uvic.ca mailto:jcairns@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 166 the national centre for health statistics classified someone who is disabled by the following: severe limitations of daily tasks; required use of assisted devices (e.g., wheelchair); use of specialized programs or services; behavioural indications of development delay or disability; and a specific physical, mental, or emotional disability (white, 2002). this broad definition allows for the inclusion of all those that identify as disabled, and reflects the notion of a disability culture. even individuals who have invisible disabilities (i.e., mental illness and chronic health concerns) are included in disability culture (smith, 2009), a culture that speaks to all individuals beyond just those who have been diagnosed and supports those who have been marginalized simply by how others perceive them (smith, 2009). currently there are 195,720 youth aged 15 to 24 years with a disability in canada (statistics canada, 2013). comparably, within the united states and the united kingdom, at least one in ten children is estimated to have some form of health, developmental, and mental health concern. with these numbers, it is important that social service agencies be aware of how to properly serve youth with a disability. relatively speaking, the academic community appears to have ignored research on youth with a disability and their experiences with social service programs. this qualitative research study gives voice to such youth. it invited them to provide commentary on the social services that they had received and invited them to make suggestions to social service agencies who may be looking to enhance their programming and/or are planning to create new programs for this target population. people with disabilities rely heavily on the health care system and utilize a range of health care services from therapy to community-based care (gulley & altman, 2008). a study in australia revealed that adolescents and young adults with a disability were much more likely to feel isolated from peers, excluded from employment and educational opportunities, have poorer health, and experience poverty (emerson, honey, madden, & llewellyn, 2009). previous research that focused strictly on services to clients with disabilities was difficult to find. the majority of the studies focused on health care services in general. further, these studies often focused on the many limitations and barriers that individuals with a disability face. three identified barriers most often mentioned are: the behavior of staff towards clients, the lack of appropriate equipment, and facility location (smith, 2009). where staff are concerned, participants with a disability spoke of wanting to work with staff members who present a caring and patient attitude, are tolerant of differences, and have a willingness to initiate interactions (muller, schuler, & yates, 2008). as antle international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 167 (2004) pointed out, individuals with a disability highlighted being treated differently by staff as one of the principal issues related to their disability. smith (2009) elaborated this finding and showed that a key barrier is the way in which staff members communicate with their disabled clients. smith also showed that this problematic staff-to-client communication also creates communication difficulties between patients and physicians, and has been correlated with lower rates of access by disabled individuals to health care. with regard to appropriate equipment, smith (2009) showed that clients who are deaf have indicated the lack of text telephone (tty) machines and/or lack of staff trained to utilize them as a communication barrier. as well, smith noted the difficulties in locating american sign language (asl) interpreters on short notice that led to difficulties in understanding physicians despite attempts at written communication. where facilities are concerned, harrington and kang (2008) showed that clients living in centralized locations were more likely to receive services. this finding echoed earlier work by chermak (1990) who showed that centralized facilities for persons with disabilities would often target only those in their area and would exclude those outside of major urban centres. for those persons with mobility issues or illnesses that result in fatigue, this can severely compromise their attempts to attend the services (mendelson & poole, 2007). additionally, graham and mann (2008) found that only about 8% of facilities they examined had an accessible bathroom and an accessible route from the entrance to main floor, lobby, and elevator thus begging the question, “if an individual with mobility issues cannot get into the building, how are they to access the services?” certainly, in the area of overcoming facility-related barriers some solutions have been offered. one of the solutions is utilizing a wraparound approach, which is a community-based, family driven, interagency-coordinated approach to delivering services to disabled individuals (epstein et al., 2005). this approach could help to eliminate the facility barrier by using the school as the entry point for the delivery of services (epstein et al., 2005). since most young people attend school, the addition of social services within this environment could help to reduce the facility and assisted devices barriers. more solutions were highlighted that could ease facility barriers. these included ramps, repositioning furniture, braille signage and documentation, pipe protectors, cup dispensers, and accessible paper towels (graham & mann, 2008). with regard to the barriers related to staff behaviour, smith (2009) suggests that staff should be trained and educated to focus on a consumer drive approach while they are studying for their academic credentials. smith suggests that thinking about clients as worthy consumers of services to whom and for whom workers are responsible, mitigates against a facility-driven mentality and forces staff to think first about adapting services to client needs, rather than forcing clients to adapt to one-size-fits-all programming. smith also suggests that staff need to be aware that disabilities – for example, an inability to speak – does not mean that individuals have cognitive deficits, and argues persuasively that proper training can lead to the development of more programs and better customer service for those with disabilities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 168 despite the progress that has been made in the area of disability studies, there are very few research studies available that focus on youth with a disability and their experiences with accessing social services. harrington and kang (2008), who conducted a study on the disparities in service utilization for young people with developmental disabilities (dd), related that before conducting their study they were unable to locate any previous research on this topic. muller and colleagues (2008) also noted an absence of the voices of individuals with disabilities and have recommended that their perspectives be regularly included in any research. with the inclusion of the voices of young people with disabilities in mind, the research study reported on here, seeks to help to fill in the present gaps in disabilities research. the central question posed by this study is: what are the experiences of youth with a disability in utilizing social services programs? this question signals a strong interest in engaging with participants’ stories and therefore a qualitative approach. methodology as corbin and strauss (2008) note, “qualitative researchers lean towards qualitative work because they are drawn to the fluid, evolving, and dynamic nature of this approach” (p. 13). qualitative research focuses on how individuals make sense of the environments they interact with (berg, 2007), and that was my intention where each youth in this study was concerned. participants criteria for participation in this study included: youth must be (a) between the ages of 16 and 24 years, (b) self-identified as having a disability, and (c) currently accessing or had accessed a social services program within the last 12 months in the greater toronto area (gta). participants were 14 individuals from diverse backgrounds in terms of age, gender, disability, and type of service that they had accessed. disabilities fell under the generalized categories of: physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and mental illness. participants were recruited from various groups including: soy toronto, compass group, pathways york region, autism ontario, children's treatment network, and those who saw the advertised flyer at various social agencies and/or listed on social networking sites (twitter, facebook) and/or received the flyer by e-mail through distribution lists. social networking sites (i.e., twitter and facebook) were utilized to promote the research study. a generalized search for disability groups in ontario was made on facebook and information was posted on their various walls with the general information and a link to access the specific dates and locations of the focus groups. the flyer included three focus groups that individuals could participate in. it outlined that the research was being conducted by a student at ryerson university as part of a final year research project. it stated that participants between the ages of 16 and 24 were being sought. participants needed to identify as disabled and have utilized a social services program within the last 12 months within the greater toronto area (gta). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 169 once participants were selected, i elected to use focus groups rather than individual interviews because focus groups can provide insights into the experiences of people who have certain characteristics in common (krueger, 1988). one of the benefits of conducting a focus group is the tendency to garner insights from the participants that may not occur within a one-on-one interview (padgett, 2008; taylor & bogdan, 1998). and indeed, as i gathered my data, i found that the participants were able to amplify another person’s point in a way that may not have occurred within a one-on-one interview. data collection three focus groups were spread out over a period of six weeks; they included one in-person focus group and two online focus groups. each group had a maximum of eight registered participants to ensure that individuals would have ample opportunity to voice their opinions. the focus groups were held for a period of one hour and included 11 open-ended questions that were used to generate discussion amongst the participants. the questions were designed to gather information relating to the types of programs that participants attended, how service providers can promote their services to youth, individual experiences with accessing social services – both positive and negative – as well as soliciting feedback on the types of programs they would like to see developed in the future. participants were also informed that they could leave if at any point they did not feel comfortable, and that they always had the right to choose not to answer the questions during the session. the in-person focus group was hosted in a centralized location that was easily accessed by transit and that was wheelchair accessible. participants were encouraged to show up early to review consent forms and to pose any questions they had prior to the start of the session. the session was videotaped to ensure accuracy in the collection of the data. the other two focus groups were held online at a public website that could be accessed without the need for registration or having to download a specific chat software program. participants could use any type of computer and browser – the only requirement was that they be able to get access to the internet. prior to the start of the session, participants had to review the consent form and confirm their agreement by e-mail. they were informed that the transcripts would be saved to ensure the accuracy of the data. participants agreed to not to save a copy of the transcripts for their own purposes. the online focus groups were chosen to create an inclusive participation opportunity for those with a disability. it had been suggested by youth and their care workers that participants with mobility issues might not be able to attend an in-person focus group. another concern raised by participants within a group home was possible transportation difficulties. as well, individuals within the deaf community indicated that their participation would be limited without an american sign language (asl) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 170 interpreter present for the proceedings. analysis after the completion of the in-person focus groups, i reviewed and transcribed the video recordings. for the online focus groups, chat sessions were continually saved and then files were added together to form a proper transcript. i used content analysis to determine the themes pertaining to the following topics: positive experiences, negative experiences, aspects of a strong program, characteristics of a good staff person, preference or otherwise for disability-focused programs, and ideal future programming ideas. results attendance at focus groups the first focus group was held online and featured 4 participants. the second focus group was held in person and had 6 participants. the third focus group was held online and 4 participants were in attendance. ages ranged from 16 to 24. disabilities ranged from physical to intellectual disabilities and mental illness. the majority selfidentified with only one disability, although one individual did state that he had a combination of disabilities. types of services accessed in last 12 months similarities became apparent, when reviewing the types of services that participants had attended. the largest majority of participants were presently accessing a weekly support drop-in program, many had attended either individual or group counselling, one participant was involved in an anger management program, one was presently in a group home, one was attending a school for the deaf, and two were involved in youth-specific recreational programs. positive aspects of programs the question was posed to each individual about the positive aspects that each program offered them. three themes became apparent from the participants’ reponses: a place to belong, the opportunity to share their feelings, and a safe space. an online participant stated that their involvement “enables me to feel more involved in my community”. many other participants echoed this sentiment, noting that they had felt isolated prior to joining their respective programs/services. the positive aspect of the space being safe and non-judgmental was brought up within each focus group. many youth expressed having been teased and/or made fun of at school and even within their own families, but felt safe within their groups. “often, i get, made fun of, but here we joke around and it’s not in a mean way” summed up one online participant describing their weekly program. in their respective programs, they had the opportunity to express international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 171 these feelings and discuss possible solutions to solving it. “i spend my time away from the program waiting the opportunity to get back to it. here, i feel welcomed and have friends that care” shared a participant from the in-person focus group. suggested improvement for programs to ensure the accuracy of assessments about the programs, the participants were asked if there were any improvements that could be made to their programs. two themes were mentioned clearly by a majority of the participants: the size of the group and the length of the programs. participants felt that in an effort to reach more youth, many of their programs accepted too many participants and it was causing them to be less effective. an individual within a group home stated, “eight kids in a four-bedroom house means shouting and screaming every day”, while another youth found that “the group can't tap into everyone's potential when there’s too many people in a room”. the underlying reasoning behind limited group size appeared to be that individual attention is needed and that it is easier to control a small group. length of the program was continuously brought up within the different groups as many felt that programs were too short of time and/or had too few sessions. the norm appeared to be one hour a week for four to six sessions, with a lengthy break before another session would open up again. participants expressed the need for lengthier sessions that could possibly continue year round: “u finally feel comfortable and willing to share and then it’s over until next year” [error in original] was one participant’s comment over his dismay at the short length of the program. promotion of programs participants found out about their programs through assigned care professionals (i.e., social worker, community worker, youth worker, or guidance counsellor), family members, word of mouth through friends, social networking sites, and through their own online searches. word of mouth played a key part in them discovering new programs and was the best indicator that they would go to the program. these methods are similar to their suggestions to social service agencies for promoting their programs to youth. getting the information to the schools was another main factor with one student pointing out that, “the best way for agencies to get their programs known is through the school, since youth are at school for seven hours! this means that they should not just vaguely remind a guidance counsellor about their services but also send posters, brochures, and representatives.” types of programs that interest youth when asked about the attributes of a program that is attractive to youth, there were four core themes that emerged: development of skills, the accessibility of location, day and time of the program, and the organization of session(s). youth were looking for a program that would assist them with leadership and life skills: “i wnt to improve my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 172 skills n find a way to get smarter at real stuff” [error in original]. youth highlighted how programs that involved opportunities for discussion and instructional hands-on activities were the most desirable. along with this, the sessions should be organized and a purpose should be evident each week. accessibility of the location and program was a high indicator of potential attendance for these participants. this included having buildings that were close to transit systems or within walking distance of their homes: “more than 30 minutes away and i won't be going to a program and not in a sketch area” stated one of the online participants. the single deaf participant in the study, who was involved in one of the online focus groups, wished that services could be expanded to online forums stating that, “i kinda wish all things could just be online. i get excluded from a lot due to asl interpreter costs”. preferred characteristics of staff the staff are a key component in each program/service that the participants were involved in and the characteristics that they sought out in the staff included: being accepting of others, being organized, not a dictator, punctual, real (not fake), respectful, treats us like adults, willing to hear suggestions, friendly, not condescending, but cool and welcoming. youth stated that staff were their main reason for continuing or discontinuing a program. one online participant offered a piece of advice for all service providers: “people need to realize that they can't fix everything, even if they're really good at what they do”. ideal future programs there was a split in each group over whether they would prefer a program that catered to their specific disability or was open to all youth. the replies ranged from those in favour of programs exclusive to one disability (“i feel safer with those that have the same problems as me”) to a more inclusive program (“i prefer programs that are inclusive to all” [emphasis in original]). one individual shared that, “i actually feel kind of awkward in disability-focused spaces in real life because i don’t appear disabled”. the main themes most prevalent with respect to what characteristics an ideal program would include: friendly staff, incentives (i.e., free food and ttc tokens), and that youth input was sought to reflect the programming. with incentives came the statement that there should be “more positive encouragement (why do we always lose rights/privileges)”. on the topic of friendly staff, one participant made the following observation: “follow through! if you say you'll do something, then do it. or say you're sorry when u f it up” [error in original]. finally youth input/inclusion can be summed up by the following comment: “i would like to see that every participant has an equal opportunity to participate and have leadership roles in the program, regardless of the length of their commitment (e.g., how long they have been a part of the program), ethnicity, or gender”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 173 these results demonstrate that youth with a disability were able to strongly articulate their experiences of accessing social services programs. a review of the literature, in light of these results, permits an in-depth discussion of this topic. discussion given the limited number of studies about the experiences of youth with a disability in social services programs, i believe this study has a useful contribution to make. i also believe that it is important to first acknowledge the 14 participants for their contribution and to note that these individuals were speaking for themselves and not for the disabilities that they have. nevertheless, with the limited access to these kinds of studies, this information should be viewed as a valuable critique of the programs that are being offered to such young people at this time. all of the participants were recent or current attendees at various types of social services programs within the gta within the last 12 months. they are therefore able to judge what is presently out there and are in a unique position to offer honest feedback on the positive and negative aspects of these services, while also suggesting how to improve programs for current and future participants. many of the service limitations described in the literature review were highlighted again in the findings of this study. the most pressing issues that were identified focused on the facility (i.e., physical barriers, location of facility, and lack of proper equipment), the staff of the programs, and the lack of promotion of the programs to a wider area. for many of the participants the need for services that are within walking distance and/or easily accessible by transit was identified as their number one priority. this confirms earlier findings by harrington and kang (2008) who showed that individuals in centralized locations had more access to services, and also supports the findings of mendelson and poole (2007) who showed that many individuals with mobility issues were unable to access services. the lack of proper supportive equipment was also identified as a barrier. for example, as a deaf participant explained, many programs do not provide an asl interpreter. this confirms the research of smith (2009) who examined patient-physician communication and also found that for deaf patients the lack of effectively trained staff to handle their needs was a barrier. providing asl interpreters would require an organizational change in the process of putting together a social services program. it may require putting requests for these kinds of funds into present application grants or applying for new grants with a specific focus on increasing accessibility through the offering of asl interpreters. whether or not this is feasible for a small agency is an open question. one option that may help with keeping services affordable is the online option and the agencies may want to offer online communications for their clients and staff. it could well save on costs with respect to renting space and ensuring buildings are accessible, if clients only require the use of a computer with an internet connection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 174 previous studies (antle, 2004; muller et al., 2008; smith, 2009) also highlighted that their participants wanted to encounter staff who are respectful, caring, organized, and sought input from the youth. these general qualities may seem simple, but could make the difference between a successful program and one that falls flat. participants really highlighted their need to be listened to and respected by the staff. this could be related to the sense that sometimes being disabled means that one is treated differently or is perceived to be less of a person. if staff fails to seek their active input around programs, numerous disabled youth may be left out of those programs. as previously noted by emerson et al. (2009), this could amplify feelings of isolation, as many do not feel like a significant member of the community. these skills will need to be taught at the educational institutions that train staff. if such training is not included by institutions that educate those who work with disabled youth, it should at least be offered as part of the training for new staff within every agency. disabled youth need to be engaged to the same degree as any other youth who are participating in a program. another similarity to previous studies that was presented in this current one was the idea of promoting services to all youth and not just those in the general vicinity of their service locations. chermak (1990) found that centralized locations would often only target those in the immediate vicinity and exclude those outside of the area. youth brought up the idea of promoting directly to schools through flyers and announcements to ensure that the word got out to everybody and not just their guidance counsellors. they highlighted the importance of utilizing social networking sites (e.g., facebook and twitter) to help spread the word and that these tools could be utilized to support word of mouth information. distribution lists, word of mouth, and social networking sites were the principal tools used in this study. not a single participant mentioned seeing a flyer about the focus groups, but instead highlighted that they had received a notice by e-mail, saw it on facebook, or heard about it through a social services worker or a friend. social service agencies should consider the potential of new technologies as a key way to promote their services. social networking sites are free options that could be easily pursued in promotion or as a supplement to current promotional efforts. pamphlets, flyers, and brochures may soon become a thing of the past and agencies should embrace this technology. those with physical impairment may already have enhancements on their computer screens and this would cut down on the costs of trying to produce accessible literature. for example, an individual with a visual impairment would require a flyer specifically created for their needs that could come at a substantial cost. those with a computer with screen reader technology would be able to access an online site and utilize their own technology to receive the information at no extra cost to the service agencies. incentives were a new idea that was generated through the focus groups as an aspect of an ideal program. this information could also be utilized in future studies on this topic. as there were no incentives offered within the focus groups, this could have limited the interest of the target population. the suggestions regarding incentives that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 175 came from the group included having food available, providing transit tokens, and financial rewards for continued participation. if such items are not present in current program plans and/or budgets, these should be items that staff pursues in the future. ward (2003) stated that having a disabled researcher included in the research team could lead to more successful studies. none of the youth brought this up as a factor that influenced their decision to participate in the focus groups. perhaps that was because the information about the study that they received was presented via e-mail distributions and facebook notes. nonetheless, the participation of a disabled researcher in any face-toface engagement with participants should not be underestimated and could certainly be considered as important in any research and program design and delivery. the idea of having disability-specific youth social services versus being inclusive to all youth stimulated an interesting discussion within each focus group. participants seemed divided between wanting to be inclusive of everybody and still having a safe space to communicate their individual needs. one individual stated that due to the lack of visibility around their disability, they felt uncomfortable in situations that were more generally inclusive. the need for more education about the distinctions, differences, and shared experiences of persons with disabilities was reflected when several participants contacted me about whether they fit into these focus groups as disabled people. for this study, the only requirement was that they self-identified as disabled; however, some participants still worried about whether this requirement applied to them. this suggests that agencies and service providers could take the opportunity to begin to initiate and educate around a different view of what a disabled person is and thereby assist those who are disabled in feeling less isolated from the general community. a broader understanding of persons with disabilities could help people to realize that more people than not have some sort of disability. agencies may also want to consider the images they are utilizing when promoting their services and how they themselves have described being disabled in their own literature. not everyone with a disability uses a wheelchair, a guide dog, or has a particular physical appearance. many have invisible disabilities that are not apparent to others and this could lead to a degree of friction within a group. properly educating staff and participants on the variety of disabilities that exist could prove to be a valuable component of training. additionally, agencies may want to decide if there is value in catering to specific disabilities or simply ensuring that their programs are truly inclusive to all. if the programs are to be inclusive, are their proper supports in place to ensure that anybody can truly access their services? having a disability-specific group could assist youth with connecting with other youth that share similar disabilities. this could well buttress a supportive group environment, where individuals could learn from each other’s experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 176 where an all-inclusive group could be just as effective, especially within a skillsbased program, staff should be challenged to ensure that the skills could be taught to different levels of ability. this would ensure that an agency’s staff are catering to a large representation of the youth population, while participants could greatly benefit from having the opportunity to connect with youth from diverse backgrounds. limitations one limitation of this study, and for that matter of any study based on focus group data, is the extent to which group-think may affect individual responses (kidd, 2000; mansell, bennett, northway, mead, & moseley, 2004). within any focus group and especially with this target age, participants could be susceptible to trying to please either those in the group or the researcher leading the activity. still the anonymity that accompanied the online focus groups could have encouraged them to voice their own opinions and not those of the other individuals. as well, a majority of the participants were involved in weekly group programs and this could have had an impact on the results. because so few of the participants were involved in one-on-one therapies within or outside a residential setting, the findings of this study cannot properly represent their experiences. rather, these findings are a general commentary on social services as a whole that do not speak specifically to each service or program. further research with the potential implications and limitations described above in mind, further research could be conducted to determine whether the suggestions given by the participants would create a more effective program for youth that self-identify as disabled. partnerships could be developed with agencies that are presently serving or are interested in serving this target population. these agencies could review their present practices and implement the feedback on location, staff, and what an ideal program might entail. for data collection in subsequent studies, it may be wise to do a survey with the option of following up with select participants. despite promotional efforts that included a number of service agencies sending out notices, posting flyers, and the use of social networking sites to get the word out over a period of three months, this study only managed to attract 14 participants. the time commitment and youth’s busy schedules may explain the low participant response to involvement that required participation in a focus group. a survey, on the other hand, could be distributed through the same channels that were utilized to advertise the focus groups and could be completed at the convenience of respondents. four social services programs did not choose to distribute the information that invited their clients to participate in the study. one group refused to share the focus group with the participants due to the fear that their clients would be incapable of answering the questions for the focus group. the suggestion of altering the questions to fit their mental capacity was met with resistance. the other three all returned with the statement that they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 177 were presently all booked up and/or too busy at the present time. the option of completing a survey would have solved the “too busy” issue. as well, this may demonstrate that a study of this kind requires more than three months notice to put together. social agencies should be contacted at least six months in advance. the online focus groups seemed to attract more youth than the face-to-face option and this could be due to the anonymity of the internet. filling out an online survey could provide a further sense of anonymity and allow participants to feel even more at liberty to share their thoughts and feelings. during the in-person focus group, the youth took longer than the online group participants to start sharing their thoughts and feelings. it was only within the final 30 minutes that they began to offer more of their thoughts and feelings while starting to acknowledge what other participants were saying. if focus groups were utilized again, incentives should be provided. incentives may include: free food, transit tickets to get to and from the venue, and even the opportunity to earn a prize for participation. attracting youth could be made easier if there’s a reward in it for them. for this study, the only reward was the opportunity to share their thoughts in the hope that programs could become more accessible in the future. this intangible gift may be less valuable to them than something as tangible as a gift card. finally, expanding the target population could help to increase the number of respondents. in future research, the age range could include 16to 24-year-old participants, plus those closest to these participants or their programs such as the parents of disabled youth, social service providers, and educators. each of these groups could add value to the study by sharing their experiences of trying to get or provide accessible and successful programs for the youth. moreover, in an effort to expand the target population, additional research could include self-identified disabled youth who have never accessed a social service program or those who had attended a program outside of the previous 12 months. having participants who had never accessed programs involved in research could generate a different view of what is lacking in the present services being offered. those who had accessed a program more than 12 months ago could explain why that is, and thus could offer valuable information for the service agencies on how to retain this population. further research could also be focused on determining the amount of access disabled youth presently have to new technology. do they have a computer? do they have a screen reader for their computer? while the online focus groups tended to generate more participation in the present study, this could have been a serious limitation to youth without access to technology. including an inquiry into youth’s access to technology in a further study would significantly help, especially in the financial area. if a significant proportion of individuals have access to technology, it could assist in the creation of programs that do not require space, inclusion facilitators, modified equipment, and/or asl interpreters. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 178 conclusion this study is a small step toward documenting the experiences of youth with a disability who utilize social services programs within the gta. while only a small number of youth participated, we should not discount their opinions on the state of the programs that they have accessed. youth programming exists in an ever-changing milieu and knowing what young people think and need is key to building a successful program. the findings of this study give service providers an opportunity to reflect on the programs that are presently offered and suggest ways that they can enhance them. those agencies that have been hesitant to target this market with their programs have now been given some basic ideas on how to do so. none of these youth were asking for drastic changes to the present system that exists within the gta. an ideal program, simply put, includes incentives, friendly staff, and involving youth input. none of these add great expenses to any programs currently being offered. one hopeful and helpful outcome of this study is that simple shifts in thought, attitude, and behaviour have the potential to accomplish a great deal of good. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 165–180 179 references antle, b. j. 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(2002). access to health care: health insurance considerations for young adults with special health care needs/disabilities. pediatrics, 110(6), 1328–1335. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1362361307086664 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2009.06.002 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080 /0963828031000090399 young people’s perceptions of sex and relationships in northern namibia international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 279 young people’s perceptions of sex and relationships in northern namibia maria b kaundjua, lydia kauari, and pempelani mufune abstract: this paper examines conceptions of gender identity and gender relations among youth in rural northern namibia to see whether or not real life practices are meeting the requirements of legislation that supports gender equality including the right to work in all spheres for equal pay and benefits, discouragement of gender-based violence and marginalization, and equality with regard to property inheritance. more specifically, we describe the attitudes and behaviour regarding sex and male/female relationships among these youth. qualitative research methods based on focus group discussions (fgd) were the core of the data collection techniques in this exploratory study. our findings indicate that male respondents feel that males are superior to females. both 15to 19-year old and 20to 24-year-old boys confirmed this. girls affirm this finding but feelings of inferiority were more marked among girls aged 15 to 19 than among 20 to 24 year olds. all these groups regard sexual intercourse as normal, contributing to a sense of powerlessness when girls are in the presence of boys. males initiate sexual behaviour (as it is culturally unacceptable for females to do so) and seem to have many more partners than girls. the gap between existing laws and what is culturally desirable (in sex practices) seems real and must be addressed in extended sex education forums whose curriculum challenges long held cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity. keywords: sex, relationships, namibia, youth, masculinity and femininity. pempelani mufune, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor of sociology at the university of namibia, private bag 13301, 340 mandume ndemufayo avenue, pionierspark, windhoek, namibia. telephone: 264 61 206 3809. e-mail: pmufune@unam.na maria b. kaundjua is a lecturer of sociology at the university of namibia, private bag 13301, 340 mandume ndemufayo avenue, pionierspark, windhoek, namibia. telephone: 264 61 206 3812. e-mail: mbkaundjua@unam.na lydia kauari is a lecturer of sociology at the university of namibia, private bag 13301, 340 mandume ndemufayo avenue, pionierspark, windhoek, namibia. telephone: 264 61 206 4793. e-mail: lkauari@unam.na international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 280 background gender relations are the ways in which a culture or society defines rights, responsibilities, and the identities of men and women in relation to one another (bravo-baumann, 2000). especially in traditional societies, the relations between women and men are typically hierarchical and tend to disadvantage or disempower women. although often accepted as “natural” particularly by fundamentalists groups, these are socially determined relations, which are culturally-based, characterized by conflict and co-operation, and subject to change over time (connell, 1987). traditional gender relations in namibia favour men over women. not only are women subordinated to men, they also have less power, fewer opportunities, and restricted access to resources compared to men. since independence in 1990, the government of namibia has shown commitment to achieving gender equality by passing legal and policy provisions in an effort to create a supportive environment for attaining gender equality within the country. namibia has several acts that regulate and promote gender equality. these include the following: • combating of rape act no. 8 of 2000: this law is aimed at combating rape by prescribing stricter minimum sentences for rape. it abolished the rule that a boy under the age of 14 years was incapable of sexual intercourse. it also modified certain rules of evidence that were hitherto applicable to offences of a sexual or indecent nature. according to hubbard (2007), this law introduced the issue of marital rape and brought about a broad gender-neutral definition of rape. it moved the focus from consent of the victim to force or coercion by the perpetrator. it is thus seen as a major instrument in combating gender-based violence in namibia. • married persons equality act 1 of 1996: this was among the first of the postindependence laws specifically aimed at uplifting women’s social status. among its major achievement was its elimination of the concept of marital power (hubbard, 2007) that defined women in civil marriages as minors without rights to administer property or to contract without the assistance of their spouses. with this law wives and husbands were subjected to similar restraints and power with regard to property. wives like husbands can now enter into contractual obligations without asking their spouses. • combating of domestic violence act no. 4 of 2003: this legislation covers such things as physical abuse, sexual abuse, economic abuse, intimidation, harassment, and trespassing; additionally, emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse; and the psychological abuse of a child. its coverage includes those in marriage, living together as husband and wife, having a child or children together, parents and their children, family members, and boyfriends and their girlfriends. this law gives the victims of domestic violence avenues for protection, laying charges, and for privacy. in theory, this law allows women to freely enjoy their human rights. the relevant article in the namibian constitution is article 10 which provides that: (a) all people shall be equal before the law; and (b) no persons may be discriminated against on the grounds of sex, race, colour, ethnic origin, religion, creed, or social or economic status. an additional constitutional provision which should be mentioned here is article 14 which provides that men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, creed, or social or economic status shall have the right to marry and to found a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 281 family. they shall be entitled to equal rights as to marriage during marriage and at its dissolution. all these laws rest on the namibian constitution article 10 (23) that ensures gender equality before the law. it must be pointed out that the acts that regulate and promote gender equality in namibia do not necessarily target young people. thus two of the three laws listed above pertain to sexual violence and the third has to do with some aspects of equal rights in marriage, while young people are mostly unmarried. the challenge that faces namibia is putting these policies and laws into practice. thus, although the above laws enshrine gender equity, social practices that focus on gender relations may not live up to the law. in this paper we ask the general question of whether these legislative changes have had any impact on interpersonal relationships and gender relations and attitudes. more specifically, we look at conceptions of gender identity and gender relations among the young people in rural northern namibia to see whether practices are living up to the requirements outlined in the new legislation. the purpose of this article is to describe the attitudes and behaviours regarding sex and male/female relationships among young people. our choice to focus on young people is deliberate because the young are most likely to adopt new views and practices. additionally, our choice to focus on a young cohort of adolescents is also informed by the knowledge that young people are those most affected by hiv/aids and related sexual and reproductive health problems (ministry of health and social services [mohss], 2007) because they are the most sexually active. while cross-sectional studies have looked at knowledge, attitudes, and practices of young people with regard to pregnancy, sexual knowledge, hiv and family planning in namibia (e.g., siapac 2005), few have investigated gender attitudes and practices involving rural youth. sexual activity in namibia starts early and attitudes about gender roles, sex, and relationships may also form during early years (hubbard, 2007; siapac, 2005). this study may provide insights from young people that could help policy-makers design programs and services to promote greater gender equality. literature review often gender is constructed in terms of “femininity” and “masculinity”, that as butler (1999) so clearly shows, are a socio-culturally relative set of behaviours and characteristics inscribed onto female and male bodies. masculinity is a set of characteristics and behaviours expected of men in a given culture, behaviours that are constantly created and recreated over time. thus masculinity is an expression of current images men have of themselves in relation to women and these images are often contradictory and ambivalent (brittan, 1989). connell and messerschmidt (2006) argue that these images are also constructed in relation to other men. thus in any culture, pluralistic images of masculinity are identifiable, but there exists an ideal hegemonic masculinity against which men measure themselves and are measured against by others (connell, 1987). hegemonic masculinity occupies a position of cultural authority and leadership in relation to subordinate masculinities and to women (silberschmidt (2003). an example of a type of subordinated masculinity is homosexuality, as is dominance by older men over young men in given international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 282 occupations (connell & messerschmidt, 2006). according to jewkes and morrell (2010), patriarchal african societies are heteronormative, that is, they require men and women to demonstrate their gender by actively participating in heterosexuality and by affirming heterosexual desire. studies in southern africa suggest that there exists a hegemonic masculinity that emphasizes “toughness, aggressiveness, stoicism and sexuality” (brown, sorrell, & raffaelli, 2005, p. 586). brown et al. found that in namibia, having multiple partners and fathering many children are important markers of traditional and contemporary notions of masculinity. silberschmidt (2003) found a link between the affirmation of hegemonic masculinity and susceptibility to hiv/aids in east african communities. she argues that socio-economic change has affected men more deeply than women. consequently, men’s traditional roles and identities have been challenged because they are no longer the breadwinners while those of women have in some ways been strengthened as they have become sole providers for families. silberschmidt also points out that although men are benefiting from patriarchy and have formal authority, social and economic changes have ensured that many lack employment and have insufficient income, and thus cannot fulfill their culturally expected roles and maintain authority. as she puts it, “not being able to live up to social roles and expectations has serious consequences for male gender identity, social value and self-esteem – not to mention their sexual and reproductive behaviour” (silberschmidt, 2003, p. 132). as a result of men’s inability to become “men” through breadwinning roles, they seek affirmation of their masculinity through multi-partnered sexual relationships and sexually irresponsible behaviour such as having multiple partners. it is also in this context that “women all too often pay the price in terms of domestic violence and abuse in spite of their increased economic and social role as well as increased self-value” (silberschmidt. 2003, p 132). in other words, men’s inability to become “men” in this sense leads to rape and violence. in similar circumstances abrahams, jewkes, laubscher, and hoffman (2006) found that young men who perpetrated partner violence engaged in significantly higher levels of risky sexual behaviour than non-perpetrators. a key issue that seems to be bypassed or ignored by both silberschmidt and abrahams et al. is that of homosexuality. it must also be mentioned that hiv risk through “men who have sex with men” is significant in namibia (lorway, 2006). despite this, namibia’s criminal code defines homosexuality as “sodomy” and illegal. consequently, prisoners involved in same-sex relationships are denied access to condoms (lorway, 2006, 2008). these relationships are also rarely targeted in public health campaigns. femininity is also identified as a set of characteristics and behaviours that are expected of females in a given society and while there are different forms of femininity in different societies at different times, these forms all seem to be constructed in the context of overall subordination of females by males (connell, 1987; connell & messerschmidt, 2006). thus femininity and masculinity are not isolated from each other. as connell (1987) points out, femininity is “organized as an adaptation to men’s power, and emphasizes compliance, nurturance and empathy as womanly virtues and is not much of a state to establish hegemony over other kinds of femininity” (p. 25). across cultures, the most significant attribute of femininity is attractiveness to men. thus in most cultures feminine behaviour extends to physical appearance, supporting male partners, containment of ambition and anger while at the same time international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 283 prioritizing motherhood. in many cultures femininity implies sexual availability without sexual assertiveness in relation to given partners. connell (1987) talks of emphasized femininity, which more or less implies compliance with subordination of women to men by accommodating the interests and desires of men. she also talks of other forms of femininity including those that imply non-compliance if not resistance to the interests and desires of men, and femininities that may reflect an intricate calculated blending of conformity, resistance, and collaboration with men and their interests and desires. connell does not extend her discussion to whether or not there are hegemonic and subordinated femininities, just as there is hegemonic and subordinated masculinities (schippers, 2007). schippers takes up this concern and describes pariah femininities (women exhibiting conventionally masculine characteristics), male femininities (men exhibiting conventionally female characteristics), and alternative femininities and masculinities. accordingly instead of possessing or having masculinity, individuals move through and produce masculinity and femininity by engaging in masculine or feminine practices. this is actually something that both men and women do (schippers, 2007). as hurd, martin-matthews, and matthews (2006) state, dominant constructions of femininity define it in the language of marriage, domesticity, and child-rearing, while masculinity is dominantly seen in terms of paid work and the ability to father a child. in namibia initiation ceremonies that are mostly focused on women (such as olufuko, i.e., a traditional initiation of girls and young women into womanhood and marriage) are also used to validate submission of women to men (indongo, 2007; mufune, 2003). methodology qualitative research based on focus group discussions (fgd) was the core of the data collection techniques in this exploratory study. merton, fiske, and kendall (1956) first developed focus group discussions in the 1940s. focus groups are premised on semi-structured interviews in which the discussants know in advance the topics to be covered. the people included are those known for their involvement in a particular situation. people who have a similar background and/or experience are targeted and assembled to discuss a specific topic of interest (dawson, mandelson, & tallo, 1993). in focus groups, homogenous groups of people are best because mixing people without regard to their age, sex, etc. may prevent some participants from fully expressing their views. focus group discussions allow researchers to explore views in detail, and local expressions and views that describe important phenomena help researchers to delve into meanings of given findings. fgds are sometimes said to produce findings that reflect an inclination in participants to conform to the group. morgan (1996) has therefore argued that the focus group moderator ought to be aware of this potential and should attempt to counteract this inclination. despite the potential that a focus group might elicit conformity, fgds also have the benefit of group synergy. as kitzinger (1994) stated, fgds also generate more critical comments than ordinary interviews. morgan (1996) points out that focus groups are best when the goal is to combine the observation of phenomena in context with a rich understanding of participants’ knowledge. all the research assistants for this study were brought together in windhoek for a twoday training workshop where they took part in a course focused on conducting fgds, on the construction of focus group questions, and on the interpretation of participant responses. the construction of focus group questions were in line with the purpose of identifying gender international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 284 identities and gender relations among youth in rural namibia. more specifically, questions dealt with what participants do in relation to others with whom they sexually engage, as well as what they knew and what they thought or felt about gender relations. focus group facilitation training consisted of researchers and research assistants intensively going through a guideline that included: general preparation for the fgd (i.e., ensuring that seating arrangements for the participants enabled them to interact with each other comfortably, providing refreshments for the participants, and being courteous to them), greeting and introducing the participants, thanking them for their time, and stating the purpose of the interview. ground rules were stated and respect for confidentiality and anonymity was emphasized for both participants and researchers as participation was voluntary. it was also emphasized that the information gleaned was for academic purposes and that feedback would be given to participants in the form of seminars and reports. all questions were translated into oshiwambo (the language of northern namibia). final changes were made to the research methodology and research tools based on pilot tests. sample and site selection purposive sampling was utilized in choosing the two sites of eenhana (the capital of ohangwena) and oshakati (the capital of oshana) in northern namibia. probability sampling was not possible in these areas that have few maps and no sampling frames. the areas were chosen because they are administrative centres that represent different parts of the country. eehnana as an administrative centre, has a number of government offices, a hospital, clinics, a senior secondary school, and a number of combined and primary schools. the majority of the people live in traditional palisade homesteads outside the town. subsistence livestock farming and pearl millet (mahangu) cultivation dominate economic activity. oshakati is the centre of the whole of northern namibia with a business district surrounded by formal, informal, or mixed housing areas. it is also a major receiving area for rural migrants searching for economic and health facilities located there. some migrants seek wage employment in formal and informal economic activities in oshakati before moving on to other urban areas. finally, the people that were to be interviewed were chosen through consultations with community leaders (specifically village headmen, youth leaders, and teachers). we must point out that we had no way of telling how biased these community leaders were towards a stereotypical masculinity and male dominance. there is the possibility that their biases could have skewed participant selection given the homophobic sentiments that many leaders in the area sometimes publicly display. the choice of a non-probability sample suggests that this research is hypotheses generating and the validity of the hypotheses produced will ideally require further testing in quantitative work research measures among the various areas of inquiry that are in the interview guide are knowledge of sexual and reproductive health issues, views on gender identity and relations, sexual behaviours, sex education at home and at school, and social problems young boys and girls face. in this study four fgds stratified by age and gender were conducted in each area and audiotaped for later transcription and translation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 285 group profiles each group consisted of between five and seven people. the groupings were: adolescent boys (14 to 19 year of age) and adolescent girls (14 to 19) in secondary schools; out of school girls aged 20 to 24 and out of school boys aged 20 to 24. all the participants were told that they were free to not participate in discussions. data analysis participants were seated in a semi-circle in a classroom. this enabled participants to interact with each other comfortably. then refreshments were provided. each participant and researcher was asked to introduce themselves. the researcher thanked participants for coming and introduced the ground rules such as being courteous and respectful to each other. the researcher also reminded participants that the session was voluntary and that it was important that what was discussed remained confidential. participants were asked to pose any question they had with regard the fgd. the researcher then started asking questions. the researcher and research assistants took notes. with participant agreement the interviews were recorded. all the fgds were later transcribed. then using the steps listed by krueger and casey (2009) and krueger (2006) the three main investigators were given the transcripts to read and reread. the aim was to have the investigators familiarize themselves with the discussions. the investigators first met to review the major objectives of the study and the main questions in the interview guide. then they were each required to develop categories for the topics discussed by the various focus groups. they were also required to select statements that represented given topics from the transcript and give interpretations of what they meant. in these cases the coded material was mainly sentences and exchanges between individual respondents in the focus groups. thus each investigator first independently scanned the transcripts for comments from respondents about sex and relationship issues. they then systematically examined interview data and established themes and located examples within the transcripts of ways in which these themes were portrayed in the participants’ own words. the use of multiple analysts was strategic. it provided us with the opportunity to assess the reliability of coding of major themes and issues. the investigators again met to compare notes and identify commonalities including examples from participants’ quotes. our discussions showed that there were many similarities in our individual analyses, but also some differences. these differences were discussed until agreement was reached. in the findings section illustrative comments are presented for the various themes in order to give a sense of what the respondents actually believe and said. for these examples, responses from subjects are enclosed in quotes. findings gender identity issues among questions asked pertaining to gender identities were the following: • in your culture what are the main characteristics of a girl? • what are a girl’s and a boy’s assigned roles in the family? • how are girls supposed to behave towards men? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 286 • how are boys supposed to behave towards women? • as a girl do you think you are superior to boys? • as a boy do you think you are superior to girls? girls’ views on gender identities: the girls in the 15 to 19 age group described the cultural meaning of girlhood as follows: “when she can cook, pound mahangu [the local grain] and clean the house. you will also know by the way she talks to grown up people. a real girl should also know how to make traditional beer”. they said that a girl is different from a woman because, “the women have more responsibilities. a woman is someone who is married and she looks after her children”. they see the assigned roles of a girl in the family as to cook, clean the house and look after children. “sometimes the role of the girl is to pound mahangu and cultivate the mahangu fields, while the boy in the family goes fishing, looks after cattle and hunts. the boy shoots goats with the catapult”. according to the 15to 19-year-old girls, “girls are inferior to boys who are culturally considered more powerful. boys have more rights than girls. boys have more sexual freedom; for example, if they impregnate a girl there are no strings attached while the girl is embarrassed and has to leave school to stay with the baby”. in their opinion, parents are more lenient towards boys than girls and this makes boys feel superior, “they bully girls and think they can have girlfriends, but girls should not have boyfriends. a brother will tell you not have a boyfriend but it is okay for him to have a girlfriend”. girls feel powerless because boys do not appreciate what girls do. according to the 20to 24-year-old girls: “a real girl is one that is still a virgin – untouched by a penis; feet must not move in different directions when walking; there should not be a space between the big toe and the second toe good quality for marriage”. we do not actually understand the “good quality for marriage” comment although we speculate that in the rural setting that was the context of our research there is a high premium on marriages for both girls and boys around 24 years of age. the 20 to 24 girls age group continued by stating that a, “girl has never had sexual intercourse while a woman is one who had sexual intercourse, whether she had a child or not. in ovambo culture a girl should not have sexual intercourse and a woman should be married and have children. if you are not married and you have a child you are regarded as a bitch – ‘oshikumbu’”. they saw a girl’s role in the family as one of helping parents, “to cook food, fetch water from the well, pounding mahangu, collect fire wood and doing washing”. the roles of the boys were listed as, “looking after the cattle; protecting younger sisters from bullying boys; digging wells and pounding mahangu if there are no girls in the family; cultivating mahangu field and doing all household chores that cannot be done by women”. they stated that girls and boys in the same family are not supposed to share rooms. while boys bring girlfriends to their parents’ houses, girls do not and if caught by a parent with a boyfriend, the girl’s punishment is more severe than that of a boy. boys’ views on gender identities: according to the 15to 19-year-old boys, “a penis shows that you are a boy. he has to be strong. he only wants to talk about girls and sex and does boy things. i think a boy always wants to be with other boys and work with his father. he is interested in wearing boy’s clothing. where i become confused is when there are boys who want to be like girls. they like to be with the girls and to dress like girls”. according to them, “a boy is still developing and a man has already developed. a man is someone who can produce babies”. for them a man of 40 years without children “is not a real man”. a boy is said to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 287 protect little brothers, look after cattle, and light the fire in the evening. on the other hand, the girl’s role is to cook, look after children, and assist the mother with household chores. we asked them whether there is any pressure for a boy to prove his manhood through sexual intercourse. they said that there is “no pressure because no one can tell you when you can have sex, the decision is yours”. others felt that 21 years is a good age for sex because now you are mature. a few argued that people should wait until they are married. they said: “the feelings are there but you can control them, it is just when you are drunk that you cannot control your feelings, have unprotected sex and get aids. but some people cannot control their feelings and that is why some women get raped”. from this discussion of hiv and rape it is quite clear that the respondents imbibe the dominant script that sex is by its definition heterosexual. a “key element of successful african manhood is heterosexual success and this is proved by being able to ‘win’ desirable women, keep them (and thus prevent them from being seduced by others), and show evidence of being a man in control (of others)” (jewkes & morrell, 2010, p. 3). the mythology that hiv is a mostly heterosexual issue in namibia is related to this attenuated notion of hegemonic masculinity. jewkes and morrell (2010) observe that, “hegemonic masculinity inextricably links having multiple sexual partners with the subordination of women to male control, if necessary with the use of violence” (p. 5). these authors further state that patriarchal african societies are heteronormative, that is, they require men and women to demonstrate their gender by actively participating in heterosexual activity or affirming heterosexual desire. it is also in this context that some lgbt namibians have experienced homophobic violence (lorway, 2008). they did not think that their culture pressures girls to remain virgins until marriage. “i don’t think so because children usually play [as in vigorous games like football and netball] so a girl can lose her virginity when she is small”. when asked whom they prefer to marry they said “the woman that you had sex with for a while”. others indicated, “we prefer a virgin because she tastes much better”. another complementary view was that “you should marry a virgin because then you know she is not having this (hiv) virus”. others disagreed: “i don’t think you can tell if someone is a virgin. you must marry a girl who already is having a child because then you know that she can produce”. most boys feel superior to girls. some felt the superiority is based on their culture: “it is the tradition because the elderly tell us that man controls the whole house. the girls do the work in the house but are controlled by men. and because the boy learns what his father is doing he will also behave like that. it is ovambo culture and this culture is the biggest that is why it is so in namibia”. when the 20to 24-year-old boys were asked about the character of a real boy, they described it as follows: “when he has a penis and has certain behaviour of male and not the female. he must be a hard worker and respect parents”. a real girl must be a “hard worker doing woman’s things, looking after kids and women activities at home. one can also identify them by the face. the face of a girl is soft and fresh while the face of the boy is not”. according to them, “a boy is still in the process of becoming a man. at age 15 years one is still a boy and if older is a man. a boy also becomes a man after he has had sexual intercourse”. when asked whether there is any pressure for boys to prove their manhood through sex, their views were: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 288 “not every day, we are supposed to have girlfriends and sex. we can only do this on our own if our parents see us we will be in trouble”. this older group of boys also stated: “long ago if a man had a lot of girlfriends his name would be praised in songs. i would also like to be praised. forefathers had a lot of girls. in today’s times it is very expensive to have a child and a man needs to plan. our forefathers were in competition with each other to have the most children but that was before schooling came. some men may want to have a child because if they die without a child they will be buried with a knopkierie” [a short wooden club with a heavy rounded knob]. although they value virginity in girls, they see it as unrealistic: “mammas still want to see the white cloth at the weddings – so i think the pressure is still there. but in reality nowadays there are no more virgins. even the girls of 13 years age are already having sex”. when asked to whom they would like to marry, they said, “a virgin but also a woman without a kid. i cannot marry a girl with a child i do not know how to be with that child”. they were asked about the feelings of girls with children who get married to other men. their response was: “some men do not mind, but i cannot marry a woman with a child. some men believe that a lady must prove that she can produce so they like a lady with a child. but i cannot, other males will laugh at me saying there are so many girls why must i take one with a child”. another individual said: “i can take a lady with a child because she made a mistake when she fell pregnant. it depends on her behaviour – how she gets along with me and my family”. on the question of superiority towards girls, they unanimously agreed to that: “a man is way ahead, the lady is inferior because men do all the hard work. they say a girl works ten times more than a man, it is just this light work women do. we cannot look at these new things of gender balance that is out. in the bible a women is made out of the rib of a man so they need to be inferior. to be serious women cannot compare themselves to men, it is only now that we men have decided that women need some upliftment”. absent from these discussions are the power dynamics involving non-heterosexual relationships. this is because all our respondents self-identified as heterosexual. given the cultural environment that is strongly against homosexuality and other forms of sexuality, none of the respondents would be expected to admit to alternative sexual orientations. this does not mean that alternative orientations do not exist. power dynamics between men and women in the namibian context are complicated by the heteronormativity of policies and public discourses around sex. the idea of “heteronormativity” encapsulates an understanding of the ways in which gender and sexuality are structured hierarchically (clucas, 2012, p. 942). it is “the normative status of heterosexuality which renders any alternative sexuality ‘other’ and marginal” (jackson, 1999, p. 163). many sexual and gendered ideas and practices (including marriage) in northern namibia carry an aura of “what is considered right and normal”. we also assume that alternative sexual relationships that exist also involve an unequal power relationship but due to the cultural environment they are underground. according to horn (2008) and rigillo (2009) namibia is one of the most christianized countries in africa. its christian roots date back to the early 19th century, when the first german and scandinavian missionaries arrived in the country. some versions of christianity work to reaffirm heteronormativity (heath, 2009) by insisting on different gender roles and heterosexual relationships. many christians in namibia object to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 289 homosexuality and homophobic attitudes remain entrenched. this has allowed people in government (including the former head of state) to openly advocate against homosexuality. gender relations and sexuality in this section the focus was on asking what girls and boys do when they are together. girls’ views on gender relations and sexuality: accordingly the 15to 19-year-old girls, they “discuss about sexual and reproductive health issues. in high school we challenge each to see who scores the highest marks. we also talk about feelings for each other and share ideas about the future”. boys and girls give each other, “chocolate, cards and flowers and games to play with. some girls give gemstones to their boyfriends so that they think about them whenever they wear it”. this group of girls saw the suitable time to start a sexual relationship as “after finishing school, after marriage or after twenty-one years (21) of age”. they said that one could have a relationship without having sexual intercourse because; “love is about caring and not only about sex”. they confirmed that boys demand sex: “when a boy proposes and you tell him that you only like him as a friend, he will not take no for an answer or even when he takes no for an answer he will go and spread lies about you”. not all girls disapprove of boys who demand sex: “okay, i do know of a girl who has a lot of boyfriends and has sex with them in return for money and clothes”. another girl stated that “i know someone too; she says that after three days of having a relationship with a guy who has not asked her to have sex, she dumps him because she feels that there is nothing to do with such a boyfriend”. the 15to 19-year-old girls mentioned parents, teachers, peers, and older siblings as people they prefer to talk to about sex and relationship issues because they have a lot of knowledge. in their opinion “a girl cannot initiate sex” and only those who do not have respect for themselves do it. although they know about masturbation it is not popular. the 20to 24-year-old girls group said that they discuss their background, likes, and dislikes with boyfriends although some of the boys mislead girls: “some boys are clever, they know how to mislead girls especially if they want to sleep with the girls”. they listed chocolates, kisses, greeting cards, roses, and necklaces as gifts from boyfriends. when asked about their reaction when a boy demands sex, one girl said, “it is a nice gift” but few supported her. the girls agreed that it is possible to have a relationship without sex, “but you have to fight for that because boys are always demanding sex”. the girls also talked of “masturbation” although they said this is not common. the respondents also pointed out that it is not acceptable for a girl to have many sexual partners because she might not know who will be the father to her child. they confirm that sugar daddies are common in the area and it is usually men over 45. these are the men who prefer sex with younger girls who do it for money. according to this group, marriage “makes your parents happy, but there are also many problems within marriage. it prevents one from having many sexual partners”. from the girls’ observation, there is a lot of divorce due to a failure to understand one another and alcohol abuse. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 290 boys’ views on gender relationships and sexuality: the 15to 19-year-old boys group confirmed gifts like cards, kisses, movies, and sex are common in relationships: “some of the big guys prefer sex. you can find young boys going to the cinema with girls but the older ones just want sex”. these boys claimed, “some girls with experience will ask for sex. girls cannot really ask a boy for sex but the way she is looking at you, you can see that she wants sex” and when this happens, it is not easy for a boy to refuse. some said it is all right when girls refuse sex, “some guys know a lot of girls so they do not mind they will just say there is a lot of fish in the sea”. others take it badly: “some guys beat their girls if they do not want to have sex. some guys buy pills [type not specified] at the pharmacy. the pills is just for adults and it makes you active in sex and makes you to want sex even if you have not planned it. then they put pills into the drink of the girl and when they go home the girl just wants to have sex”. their views on rape were negative: “it is bad because a girl is not supposed to be raped. she can become your wife in the future. sometimes the girl’s whole future is destroyed due to the rape because she can have aids now”. they suggested the punishment for the rapist should be severe. they emphasized that the boy who impregnates a girl should support and maintain the girl. some boys deny the pregnancy and reject the child because “they are afraid of the parents or to pay or other girls will reject them, but like in our case if we make a girl pregnant you have to leave school”. the 15to 19-year-old boys had very negative views of sugar daddies: “they are not planning to marry these girls but just giving them diseases. the girls must go out with boys their own age then they will not get disease”. they also said, “parents have to stop this they must talk to their daughters and they as parents must say that although there is no money in the house we cannot get money this way. it is the mothers who are sending these girls to sugar daddies to bring money into the house”. according to these boys, girls get pregnant because of money: “some of the sugar daddies say that if you need money you must have unprotected sex and that is how some girls fall pregnant”. no one amongst the group had a child but they knew about neighbours with children: “one of my friends was told that he has impregnated a girl but he just denied it saying that he is still young and that he wants to go around, he is too young. they can also not accept because they are afraid to pay. in our culture a boy has to pay n$1,200 when he has impregnated a girl”. they went on to say that this boy and his family are now supporting the girl and the child. the 20to 24-year-old boys claimed that with girls they, “usually talk about our relationship and create good communication. we also discuss sex as we get ready to reach that part of the relationships”. in summary these findings support general discussions of masculinity and femininity in that male respondents clearly feel that males are superior to females. girls also affirmed this sense of male superiority. there were however differences among female groups. thus the younger girls were more likely to feel males are superior than the older girls especially in the presence of boys. males are the initiators of sex, as it is culturally not acceptable for a woman to do so. it is prestigious for boys to have multiple partners. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 291 discussion we believe that we need to note here that especially with regard to sexual relationships there are many nuanced ideas and experiences that were discussed in our focus groups that may be lost in translation. this is so because language is not merely a representation of ideas through words, but also plays a role in the construction of ideas. it is very possible that we did not capture every thought and experience from our respondents given that we relied on translation. therefore the interpretation of these data should take this limitation into account. the findings of the research are in line with general discussions of masculinity and femininity. male respondents clearly feel that males are superior to females. both 15to 19-year-old and 20to 24-year-old boys confirmed this. girls affirmed this but feelings of inferiority were more especially marked among girls 15 to 19 than among those 20 to 24 years old. this contributes to a sense of powerlessness when girls are in the presence of boys. relationship power depends on the relative interest partners have in a relationship. the partner that has less interest possesses more power. all the groups confirm that men initiate sex as it is culturally not accepted for a woman to do so. it seems that girls invest more in relationships because it is important that they are perceived to have one partner. for boys having many partners is prestigious and boys take advantage of their position much more still needs to be done to effect change regarding attitude and behaviour among the young as they still practice unprotected sex despite their vast knowledge, although this is not necessarily evident from the data presented. sexual encounters are regarded as part and parcel of the male/female relationship. this “part and parcel” notion that sexual encounters are to be expected also served to underpin our finding that respondents from all the groups registered their concern about increasing rape cases and the light punishment culprits receive. girls confirmed that maintaining a non-sexual relationship with a boy is a difficult challenging task because without sex, the boy will leave. this raises the question of just how consensual their consensual sexual relations really are. it is evident from respondents’ opinions that alternative modes of sexual satisfaction are not utilized. few mentioned masturbation as an alternative although they knew about it. the fact that girls find masturbation unpopular is a really important finding because this illustrates that they have few alternatives for sexual release. many of the practices discussed by our participants enforce heterosexuality as the normative form of sexuality thereby reinforcing heteronormativity in young people. namibians seems to have a long way to go in order to promote gender equality in the sex intimacy and relationship sphere. the dissonance between existing laws and what is culturally desirable seem real and must be addressed in sex education forums. however, this may not be enough. we hypothesize that in rural namibia the laws are not seeming to have any effect partly because there is a lack of knowledge of the provisions of these laws and, more importantly, because adherence to culture and tradition (that may well be homophobic) mean that these laws are ignored. gender inequality in rural namibia may be so deeply rooted in culture and tradition that it is unlikely to be changed through sex education alone. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 279–295 292 sex education in namibia is limited. all schools now have life-skills programmes providing young people with facts about sexual and reproductive health (srh), pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections. teachers, however, receive little training in srh and many are not sensitive enough to handle the subject. namibian students do not take examinations in srh education; consequently, few teachers and students take it very seriously (mufune, 2008). this means that it would be useful to consider other ways of addressing this issue. this might mean investing more resources in fighting gender-based violence and attitudes that come with deeply entrenched inequalities. as carmody and carrington (2000) argue, this means that in order to change deep-rooted cultural ideas and traditions around sexuality, we need to go beyond twohour or one-day workshop-based education programs. what is needed is a preventative strategy with an extended curriculum that is tailored to fit specific groups of young people and their cultural mix. this curriculum should be able to challenge cultural norms and traditions that see women as sexual objects and allow participants to rework their views of masculinity and femininity. this education should confront forms of masculinity and femininity that promote and condone sexual violence and the exercise of power and control over women (carmody 2006, 2013). efforts to change cultural norms that underpin the imbalance of power in heterosexual relationships should target all levels of community (individuals, relationships, community, family, schools, religion, and other institutions). men should be an important part of the overall solution (dyson & flood, 2008). men should be provided with curricula that teach them to reflect on their own masculinity and masculine beliefs and how these impact on themselves and potential sexual partners. further, religion may be a means of surveillance and control in the interests of gender inequality and power imbalances (macey, 1999; clucas, 2012). with regard to religion, ethics emphasizing non-violence in relationships should be taught and fundamentalist ideas about the subordination of women should be discouraged in order to allow young men and women to rework their gender practices. in conclusion there is a lot of work to be done if namibia is to achieve its stated aim of gender equality in the realm of sexual and reproductive health. 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(2003). aids, sexuality and gender in africa: collective strategies and struggles in tanzania and zambia. social science & medicine, 56, 425–427. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.129 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/136910501165631 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681810801980961 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9022-4 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(02)00033-3 microsoft word 08 cyc_cis-tem.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120333 exploring the cyc cis-tem: a literature review of queer and trans topics in child and youth care mattie walker abstract: although child and youth care (cyc) sees itself as a field that embraces diversity and complexity, there is a notable lack of discussion of sexual and gender diversity: queer and trans topics are rarely taken up across cyc research, practice, and pedagogy. through a systematic literature review of articles published between 2010 and early 2020 in six journals with a focus on cyc practice, research, and theory, this article assesses how queer, trans, two-spirit, and nonbinary identities and topics are being discussed in the current cyc literature and reveals a conspicuous absence of publication on these topics. in a 10year period, across six cyc publications comprising over 4000 published articles, only 36 articles focused on queer and lgbt issues (by covering both sexual and gender diversity) and, of those, only eight articles specifically focused on gender diversity or trans topics. no articles were found within any of the reviewed publications that specifically focused on two-spirit identities or topics and only one article mentioned nonbinary identities. through exploring how and where queer and trans, two-spirit, and nonbinary identities and topics are being discussed, this review asks how we as a cyc field might begin to make space for these topics within our field and practice, in order to work towards social change that shifts our field and challenges the cis-heteronormative cyc system. keywords: queer; lgbtq; gender; transgender; trans; two-spirit; nonbinary; gender diversity; child and youth care; cisnormativity mattie walker ma is a graduate of the school of child and youth care and a current phd student in the social dimensions of health program at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: mattiew@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 24  white (2015) described child and youth care (cyc) as a field that recognizes itself as “a site of contested meanings, where ongoing debates about identities, roles, boundaries of practice, and professional status continue to animate the field” (p. 499). cyc is often articulated as a practice and field that is about possibilities, creating spaces, and finding opportunities (vachon, 2020), challenging dualisms and normative practices (skott-myhre, 2012), and emphasizing the importance and value of difference (de finney et al., 2012). nevertheless, despite this emphasis on cyc as a field that embraces diversity and complexity, there is a noticeable gap in how sexual and gender diversity are being discussed in the field and how queer1 and trans topics are being taken up across research, practice, and pedagogy in cyc. “care permeates queerness” (vachon, 2020, p. 63), yet where is the queerness of cyc? this literature review was born out of a question that i have been asking myself throughout my experiences with cyc pedagogy, both during my education in cyc in undergraduate and graduate programs, and in my work as a sessional instructor with the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. the literature explored in course content and classroom discussions gave little attention to queer and trans topics and identities despite an ongoing wider conversation about the diversity of cyc practice and pedagogy. i found myself wondering how and where queer and trans topics were being discussed in our field when my own experience in this cyc context had left me at a loss. in my own educational experiences, queer topics seemed limited to short textbook passages offering brief overviews of gay and lesbian identity in adolescent development, or the section called “lesbian and gay therapy” in a chapter on feminist therapy in jones-smith (2016). these topics are often offered as a subtopic within a larger theme of feminism or adolescent development. i remember two particular conversations, one when i was a teaching assistant speaking with the instructor of a class on change theory, and the other when i was the instructor and my teaching assistant was commenting on the lack of content; in each case we each shook our heads at the limited representation and questionable presentation of the information available in the course textbook but wondered whether it is better to include a cursory nod to queer content, or no queer content at all. while some queer content and brief acknowledgement of gay and lesbian experiences did find themselves into my cyc learning and education, i noticed an even larger gap regarding attention to gender diversity, and specifically trans, two-spirit, and nonbinary (t2snb) identities and experiences. i can think of only one class in my undergraduate and graduate course experiences where we specifically discussed gender identity and transgender experiences and this was limited to one unit in a much larger course. 1the term queer has been taken up as an umbrella term for people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual (everett et al., 2013). although this term is widely used to broadly refer to a multitude of identities, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified, this term is also considered problematic for many reasons (anzaldúa, 1991; fassinger & arsenau, 2007, in everett et al., 2013). the term is used within this review with this tension in mind. the term trans is used alongside queer to indicate experiences with gender that are not cisgender but, as not all individuals who identify as trans identify as queer, these terms are used separately with the awareness that there is overlap as well as distinction between them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 25  these experiences left me wondering how cyc practitioners (cycps) are being educated about queer and t2snb topics, particularly in relation to practice concerns, contexts, and challenges. it also raised the question of how and where queer and t2snb cyc students are seeing themselves and their experiences represented and discussed in relation to their future practice when so much of our cyc learning appears to be from a cis-heteronormative perspective. shipherd and sloan (2019) noted that, while an interdisciplinary approach to the health and well-being of queer and t2snb people is indicated within the literature, consistent and reliable research on how best to support the mental health needs of these communities has only just begun. cycps are well positioned to provide much needed support and care to queer and t2snb young people (taylor, 2020); however, the lack of available research about these urhspecific populations makes it difficult to know how to proceed (lev, 2004; mizock & lewis, 2008). as craig and austin (2017) cautioned, “a clear understanding of gender identity development and the range of gender experiences among children and adolescents, as well as the associated terminology, is a prerequisite for all discussions of gender identity-specific healthcare needs and potential interventions” (p .57), but when and where is this education occurring to properly prepare cycps to practise competently with queer and t2snb individuals and communities? this literature review seeks to explore how these topics are being discussed in the cyc literature in order to identify themes and areas of focus, and to make visible the gaps that are present in this field. in starting this process, i was particularly interested in locating where and how t2snb identities and topics are being specifically discussed in cyc, in addition to queer content more broadly. gender diversity is often discussed as part of, or related to, the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) communities; however, a common sentiment within discussions of lgbtq topics and identities is that the t is often silent (jenkins, 2015). while my question about queer and trans topics in cyc is related and intertwined with lgbq identities and topics and queerness itself, my focus and emphasis are on t2snb identities and topics, to actively work against this silencing that so often occurs. in order achieve these ends, this literature review explored articles published in six academic and practice publications that focus on cyc research, practice, and theory. the following sections describe the method used for the literature search and review and the results of the keyword search, as well as the three primary themes identified. method starting with the question, “how and where are queer and t2snb identities and theories being discussed in cyc literature and research?”, i identified six key publications: children and youth services review; the international journal of child, youth and family studies; child and youth services; cyc-online; child and youth care forum; and relational child and youth care practice. these publications were chosen as i have seen them utilized and referenced often in cyc classrooms, the cyc curriculum, and research in my experience as both a student and instructor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 26  within the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. some of the publications are peer reviewed and academic (children and youth services review; the international journal of child, youth and family studies; child and youth services; child and youth care forum) while two (cyc-online, relational child and youth care practice) are publications that concern practice and do not utilize a peer-review process; however, relational child and youth care practice does provide peer review at the request of the author. as a next step, i searched within each journal using the following individual search terms: gender, gender nonconforming, gender variant, transgender, lgbtq, queer, two-spirit, and nonbinary. searches were conducted directly within the journal publication using keywordanywhere searches spanning 2010 to early 2020. search terms search terms were chosen that would identify articles focusing on the topic in question. as the goal of this literature review was to explore how queer topics and t2snb identities and issues were being discussed within cyc literature, each of these terms was used as a search term. i started with the broad search term of gender and then began narrower searches that used specific identity descriptors. although not specific identity terms, gender nonconforming and gender variant were utilized to capture broad descriptors that are sometimes used to describe a range of diverse gender identities outside of cisgender identities. specific identity terms, such as transgender, two-spirit, and nonbinary, were searched individually. for terms that had slight variations (nonbinary/nonbinary, nonconforming/non-conforming, two-spirit/two-spirit/two spirit, variant/variance, transgender/trans), all variations were used and included in the search results. i searched for the term lgbtq, as it is the most commonly used version of the acronym identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities. many different variations of this acronym are used in different community contexts; however, most start with “lgbtq” so variations with additional characters were also found by this search. for example: “lgbtq2+” (addition of “2” for two-spirit and “+” to indicate that additional identities are included but not represented by a specific letter) or “lgbtqia” (addition of “i” for intersex and “a” for asexual). articles were considered generally relevant (a) if they discussed or included any of queer, lgbtq, and t2snb topics or issues; (b) if they utilized or drew on queer or trans theories; (c) if the primary topic was an example of gender being discussed in cyc despite not referencing trans topics specifically; or (d) if the article mentioned that the primary topic was relevant and important to consider in relation to queer and t2snb communities. additionally, articles that focused on queer and t2snb topics were separately categorized if the primary or a main focus was specifically on one or more of these topics. also included were articles that made mention of queer, lgbtq, or transgender identities or topics, (e.g., including transgender youth as a population of focus for a research project on youth homelessness) or mentioned them in their discussion (e.g., taking into consideration queer youth issues; or including queer and trans identities in a larger discussion about diversity or marginalized communities). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 27  overview of the findings the six publications examined published over 4000 articles from 2010 to 2020. out of these, just 58 relevant articles were located, of which only 36 focused on sexual and gender diversity issues and topics, and only eight took gender diversity or transgender identities or issues as a main topic. these search results are presented in table 1, which outlines for each publication the total number of articles, spanning 2010 to early 2020, located with a keyword-anywhere search on the identified terms. table 1. journal keyword search results depicting total number of articles located with identified search terms by publication spanning 2010 to 2020 search categories (see notes) journal g gna gvb t l q 2sc nbd ir total (sg div) total (gender) cysr 2529 5 5 101 65 46 7 14 24 18 2 ijcyfs 76 1 12 7 3 14 2 0 20 8 4 cys 109 3 1 14 7 20 2 2 8 4 1 cyc-net 6 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 3 3 1 rcycp 3 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 2 0 cycf 317 0 0 1 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 total 3040 9 18 125 78 84 11 17 58 36 8 notes. results indicate search results from keyword anywhere searches using the search term identified. for terms where slight variations exist, results include search results for all variations. search category codes: g = gender, gn = gender nonconforming, gv = gender variant, t = transgender), l = lgbtq, q = queer, 2s = two-spirit, nb = non-binary, ir = included as relevant, total sg div = total unique articles focusing on both sexual and gender diversity — i.e., queer or lgbtq topics, total gender = total unique articles focusing on gender diversity, trans, two-spirit, nonbinary identities and topics. journal abbreviations: cysr = children and youth services review; ijcyfs = international journal of child, youth and family studies; cys = child and youth services; cyc-net = cyc-net (cyc online); rcycp = relational child and youth care practice; cycf = child and youth care forum. a searched as non-conforming and nonconforming; b searched as variant and variance; c searched as two spirit and two-spirit; d searched as nonbinary and non-binary. it is notable that out of the 58 articles that were located, just eight focused on gender diversity or trans identities and issues. each of the eight used transgender as an umbrella term. within the reviewed publications, no articles were located that specifically focused on two-spirit or nonbinary identities, topics, or issues, except for lebuis (2018), which explicitly mentioned nonbinary identities in referring to both sexual and gender identity. while both two-spirit and nonbinary are often encompassed under the “transgender umbrella”, they are distinct identity terms that connote distinct experiences of gender. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 28  it is also crucial to note that two-spirit identities are particular to indigenous cultures and encompass a range of identities, related to both gender and sexual identity that complicate distinctions between gender, sex, and sexuality (hunt, 2016). this term and associated identities are culturally bound and grounded in traditional knowledges, cultures, and languages (hunt, 2016). to see that not one article within the cyc literature in the last 10 years has specifically spoken in support of two-spirit young people highlights the fact that cyc continually needs to be improving itself as a field by decolonizing our practices and centring and holding space for indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing this work. due to the lack of specific attention to two-spirit identities, the discussion of two-spirit individuals and identities will be glaringly absent. similarly, as nonbinary identities were mentioned only in lebuis (2018), they also will not be featured in this review. the following sections provide an overview of the terminology found in the literature search and the review, followed by a brief summary of the findings within each journal. terminology within articles reviewed in the literature search and in this review, the terms queer and trans are utilized not only as identity terms and categories but also to engage with queer and trans theories and politics. as lee (2019) articulated, “critical queer and trans theories unpack how social institutions, processes, and practices reproduce heterosexuality (heteronormativity) and the gender binary and the erasure of trans people (cisnormativity), thus operating to reinforce dominant social norms (cohen, 1997; stryker, 2008)” (p. 73). these terms are taken up in this review in order to capture works that speak to queer and trans identities as well as to the critical theories and politics that challenge the dominant social norms within our social and professional contexts in cyc. defining terminology, particularly the terms trans and transgender, was a common practice in many of the articles i reviewed. arguably, the fact that authors writing on these topics must continue to define what trans means for the reader speaks to the lack of general knowledge, familiarity, and understanding of these identities within this field. while there are many identities and terms we no longer must define each time we write about these topics, gender and sexual diversity continues to be a topic in which lack of familiarity is not only presumed, it is expected. when discussing gender identities, the majority of the 58 relevant articles used the term trans or transgender. many articles also used variations of gender diversity, gender diverse, and gender expansive as broad umbrella terms. therefore, for the discussion section of this review, the term trans will be utilized as an umbrella term capturing a variety of gender identities and experiences. in my previous research outside this literature review, and in personal and professional experiences, i have found that the acronym t2snb, for “trans, two-spirit, and nonbinary”, is often used as an umbrella term that encompasses a diverse array of identities, including genderqueer, gender fluid, gender flux, and others; this terminology continues to evolve as individuals and communities create and utilize language in unique ways to describe and discuss their identities (everett et al., 2013; walker, 2017). however, neither this acronym nor a discussion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 29  of the underlying complexities and distinctions was present in any of the reviewed literature. although t2snb people are often discussed as if they are a single population within the broader category of lgbtq, or even within the trans umbrella, the experiences of t2snb populations cannot be collapsed or seen as homogeneous (alessi & martin, 2017). each of these populations faces unique and diverse experiences of oppression, minoritization, erasure, advocacy, visibility, and subjection to structural violence, along with other complex intersections of identity and subjectivities in relation to dominant and hegemonic power and systems of political, cultural, and social power (alessi & martin, 2017; shelley, 2008; spade, 2015). as mayo (2017) stated, “these complexities are more than anecdotal; they are constitutive” (p. 536), so holding space for complexity in service provision becomes an essential part of delivering accessible and respectful care. nevertheless, due to the lack of specific identification and consistent terminology usage across the literature reviewed, the current paper utilizes the broad (and notably limited) umbrella term “transgender” (or “trans”), which has implications not only for this discussion but also for the relevance of the currently available literature to two-spirit and nonbinary communities, and to those who define themselves in ways that are not specifically trans but also are not cisgender. utilizing the language discussed above, the following sections provide a brief summary of the findings within each journal. journals are listed in order from most results to least. children and youth services review children and youth services review contained 24 relevant articles, including 18 that focused on lgbtq topics, and two that focused on trans topics (goldberg et al., 2020; shelton, 2015). these articles concerned themselves with a range of topics:  youth homelessness (begun et al., 2019; coolhart & brown, 2017; côté & blais, 2019; maccio & ferguson, 2016; mountz & capous-desyllas, 2020; prock & kennedy, 2017; rew et al., 2019; shelton, 2015);  sexual exploitation (hounmen & o’grady, 2019);  the child welfare system and foster care experiences (goldberg et al., 2019, 2020; scannapieco et al., 2018; wilson & kastanis, 2015);  bullying and harassment (barth & olsen, 2020; wernick & kulick, 2013; wernick et al., 2013);  mental health support interventions, resources, and outcomes (craig & austin, 2016; chiang et al., 2018; richards-schuster et al., 2013; scannapieco et al., 2018; wagaman et al., 2020; wells et al., 2013); and  school safety (atteberry et al., 2019; seelman et al., 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 30  additional articles contained the search term transgender, but because the topics covered in these articles were not specific to transgender experience, or because the term was only mentioned once during the article, these publications were not considered relevant and were not included in the results of this literature review. in these articles, the search terms of interest were used:  as notes regarding demographic information with no specific discussion (e.g., brown & wilderson, 2010; carter narendorf et al., 2018; chambers et al., 2017, 2018, 2020; chisholm-straker et al., 2019; choy-brown et al., 2020; crosby et al., 2018; gibbs et al., 2015; haner & pepler, 2017; mitchell et al., 2016; ruff & harrison, 2020; thulien et al., 2019; tyler et al., 2012);  in indicating lgbt as a particularly vulnerable group (e.g., axe et al., 2020; elbedour et al., 2020; robertson, 2013; snyder et al., 2016; stott, 2013);  as considerations for future study (e.g., aparicio et al., 2019);  to note gaps in knowledge or attention and the need for additional resources or training (e.g., bruce, 2016; harmon-darrow et al., 2020; kaasbøll et al., 2019; shpiegel & simmel, 2016; stanley et al., 2015; vacca & kramer-vida, 2012); or,  merely to explain that because the sample size of transgender youth was too small to be considered relevant, these participants were either excluded or rolled into other categories (e.g., chisholm-straker et al., 2019). international journal of child, youth and family studies the international journal of child, youth and family studies contained 20 relevant articles, including eight that focused on lgbtq/queer topics, and four that focused on gender diversity and trans topics (clark, 2017; jack, 2020; lee, 2019; walker, 2014). the topics and foci within these journal articles included:  social justice and responding to structural violence (ajandi, 2011; de finney et al., 2011; lee, 2019; richardson & reynolds, 2012; saraceno, 2012);  supportive resources for lgbtq youth (craig et al., 2014; wolowic et al., 2018);  gender as an important considersation for cyc practice and research (hodgins, 2014; kassis et al., 2015);  how gender diversity is talked about and understood (jack, 2020; walker, 2014);  practice issues and considerations with lgbtq and gender-diverse youth (cameron et al, 2017; clark, 2017; saewyc et al, 2014); and  expanding current understandings of practice and theory within cyc (artz et al., 2010; de finney et al., 2012; newbury, 2012; skott-myhre, 2012; vachon, 2020; yoon, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 31  child and youth services child and youth services contained eight relevant articles, including four that focused on queer and lgbtq topics, and one that focused on transgender topics (wagaman et al., 2019). these articles concerned themselves with:  how challenging practice issues are talked about and understood (ecker, 2016; loiselle et al., 2012; wagaman et al., 2019); and  participatory and empowerment-based approaches for supporting youth (capous-desyllas & mountz, 2019; gharabaghi & anderson-nathe, 2018; mayo, 2015; stauss et al., 2016; wagaman, 2015). cyc-online cyc-online contained three relevant articles. two were related to lgbtq and queer issues generally and one focused on a specific individual’s personal experience with transitioning (skottmyhre & wagner, 2014). the topics examined were the expansive possibility of transformation (skott-myher & wagner, 2014); the education of practitioners who may not be familiar with queer or transgender experiences (fox, 2015); and the role of the practitioner in supporting queer and trans young people (taylor, 2020). relational child and youth care practice relational child and youth care practice contained three relevant articles. laidlaw (2010) discussed questioning and considering traditional gender roles and stereotypes for gendered expectations for children; lebuis (2018) focused on utilizing humour to alleviate the stress of the coming out process for queer young people with regard to both sexual and gender identity; and graham et al. (2018) discussed the experiences of racialized, trans, queer, and minoritized young people, and explored the transformative power of creating art with young people through excerpts from interviews with two youth participants in an audio-drama project called transitioning home. child and youth care forum this journal is mentioned here because it concerns itself directly with cyc. unfortunately, despite this, in the 10-year period of interest, it did not include any articles that fell within the parameters for inclusion as relevant. using the search strategy for this review, no articles were located that focused on lgbtq or queer topics, or on t2snb identities. themes amongst the articles reviewed, several key themes were identified, including gender and sexual diversity as a risk factor, education, and youth voice and participation, each of which is discussed in detail in the following sections. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 32  gender and sexual diversity as a risk factor many of the articles located for this review that broadly referenced lgbtq populations or transgender participants focused on homelessness, sex work, addiction and substance use, experiences of violence, and youth suicide, emphasizing a link between gender and sexual diversity and “risk” for what is often seen as problematic behaviours, dangerous living conditions, and contexts in need of adult or system intervention. as de finney et al. (2011) stated, while all children are considered equal, “some children are more equal than others” (p. 364); they showed that there continues to be systemic minoritization of certain groups of children and youth, which is particularly evident in the overrepresentation of indigenous, lgbtq, and racialized children and youth within contexts of care such as residential care and the child welfare system. these authors called attention to the ways in which indigenous, racialized, and queer and trans children and youth are theorized and understood as being in “need” of professional intervention in their lives (p. 367). arguing that many services and care systems are entangled with normativity, the authors called for cycps to think deeply and critically about the ways in which we construct our care, enact our practices, and gather the information we use to inform our interventions. without this critical approach, the authors argued, we risk conceptualizing care “as the rehabilitation of minoritized children and youth into unquestioned norms” (p. 368). wagaman (2015) discussed the challenges of the risk–resilience dichotomy, noting that a riskbased approached establishes a standard or expectation that young people are held to by practitioners and adults in their lives — a standard that values only those coping strategies deemed “positive”, and labels resistance and ways of surviving that are outside of the norm of acceptable behaviours as “risk”. this can, unintentionally, actually increase the hazards faced by lgbtq young people by diverting attention away from systemic and contextual change towards individual behaviour management, thus reinforcing stigma and inequities (wagaman, 2015). to challenge the risk– resilience dichotomy, wagaman (2015) explored empowerment as a contrast to resilience, and recommended supporting young people to situate their experiences within social and historical contexts in order to help all involved (youth and workers) to deal directly with issues of oppression. as wagaman (2015) pointed out, while services targeted at supporting queer and trans young people have typically been risk-focused and prevention-oriented, we must consider the message underlying a risk framework: “risk is often translated into a status characteristic of the young person rather than a characteristic that describes that person’s experiences or context” (russel, 2005, p. 8, in wagaman, 2015, p. 126). wagaman also showed that this risk frame can and does contribute to the stigmatization and marginalization of young people. ecker (2016) found that much of the research focused on the deficits and hardships facing homeless queer youth, but little research attended to the resiliency and strengths of these populations. similarly, gharabaghi and anderson-nathe (2018) noted that they have found that, “quite a lot of research is unfolding with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 33  respect to young people focused on specific, often one-dimensional identity markers.… very often, such research seeks to highlight the damaged context of life that unfolds within these groups of young people” (p. 97). these authors argued that research frequently tends to start from a deficit orientation and a focus on the risk and damage within a particular group or population of young people. as an example, they noted that queer youth are uniformly seen as “at risk”, with the result that research has focused on how to mitigate this risk. gharabaghi and anderson-nathe (2018) further argued that “the historical record in the human services demonstrates clearly how research focused on interventions presupposes this damage narrative in which we can identify us as experts and them as victims” (p. 99). ecker (2016) emphasized that it is important to understand what queer youth feel are their own strengths, beyond mere survival. while the levels of victimization and rates of violence that trans people experience are well-documented (e.g., veale et al., 2015), and queer youth are disproportionately represented among the homeless population in both the united states and canada (ecker, 2016), research that moves beyond risk is direly needed. as gharabaghi & anderson-nathe (2018) concluded, “at the very least, we can say with confidence that queer youth are not victims of queerness; they face exclusion, judgement, and a firm designation as other” (p. 99). in the same vein, capous-desyllas and mountz (2019) showed that the majority of research about lgbtq young people is centred in a risk framework with little to no attention given to youths’ connections to each other and themselves. these authors built on previous findings that lgbtq youth are not only overrepresented in the foster care system, but are also among the most poorly treated youth within it. further, in keeping with her earlier research wagaman, now with colleagues (2019), noted that until recently, research regarding trans young people has focused primarily on risk and victimization. lee (2019) tackled the complex topic of “how the canadian immigration regime socially organizes the everyday lives of queer and trans migrants with precarious status” (p. 70), examining how participants navigated visa and permit eligibility criteria, crossed borders to enter canada, and shifted between precarious statuses. while exploring the ways in which “heteronormative processes inform the canadian immigration regime’s production of precarity” (p. 76), lee identified the particular ways in which queer and trans migrants experience structural violence. lee’s study focused on the institution of immigration in canada, approaching the topic using institutional ethnography. while the focus on the creation and enactment of violence is articulated as institutional and structural, the theme remains that sexual or gender diversity puts one at risk for experiencing violence. education a number of the articles reviewed spoke to the need for practitioner education, education for young people, and education in the community about queer and trans identities, needs, and issues. among these, ecker (2016) noted that it is important for both practitioners and researchers to be aware of their own knowledge of queer culture, including learning appropriate language and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 34  cultural terms; although some articles within cyc publications did briefly define such terms, few went so far as to discuss queer and trans identities and experiences in detail. clark (2017) cautioned practitioners that issues that arise in cyc practice with trans youth and their families can be complex and ethically challenging, and discussed how four ethical approaches (bioethics, rights-based ethics, relational ethics, and justice-doing) may be applied to practice situations involving trans youth and their families. clark outlined the important role cyc workers can play in ensuring access to needed services as well providing direct support, information, and advocacy for trans youth and their families; and also encouraged critical thinking in practice with trans youth and their families. further, clark suggested that in order to practise ethically with trans young people and their families, practitioners must be aware of their own beliefs and biases, and must provide accurate, appropriate information and education. similarly to ecker (2016), clark (2017) emphasized a need for education even though it is unclear where practitioners are to access this information and where this training is available, particularly for cyc workers. speaking to the experience of youth, wolowic et al. (2018) explored the ways in which lgbtq young people learn about and gain access to activities and supports within their community contexts that are supportive and inclusive of lgbtq identities, and specifically investigated the ways in which lgbtq people find and indicate safe spaces, inclusive services, and welcoming support or recreational environments. these authors found that clear, complete, and easily accessible information can support lgbtq youth to take steps towards judging the relevancy and suitability of resources in their area, with many young people preferring online spaces as a safe and anonymous way to explore resources, rehearse new identities, and learn about others’ experiences and identities. taylor’s (2020) research further built on the idea of creating safe services and support contexts, calling for practitioners to move beyond rainbow flags towards providing personal connections and support, and suggesting that the “out self” in practice can be a tool to support young people not only to access resources and supports in their communities — including help from trusted individuals, particularly trusted adults — but also as a means of “vicarious resilience” (p. 23). there was a noticeable gap in the articles reviewed regarding online spaces as educational resources and sites of connection, learning, and community. through my previous research, which explored how tumblr served as a site of language creation, exploration, and education for genderdiverse young people (walker, 2017), i saw how online spaces are often a site of education and exploration for both youth and their caregivers. however, while wolowic et al. (2018) identified the preference for online spaces, very few of the articles reviewed mentioned online spaces as sites of education and information-sharing for youth or their caregivers. the need remains for more research and practice information regarding young people’s engagement with online spaces and the potential for online sites of service and support, particularly for young queer and trans people. several of the reviewed articles spoke to the importance of gay–straight alliances (gsas; also known as gender–sexuality alliances) as spaces of learning and education within schools, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 35  about the importance of bullying and suicide prevention programs for young people. saewyc et al. (2014) found that gsas and specific antihomophobic bullying policies were important schoolbased interventions that help prevent antigay discrimination, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among lgb youth, as well as among heterosexual youth; however, this study did not focus on trans or gender-diverse students. mayo (2015) offered a brief history of the development of gsas in american schools and emphasized the potential of gsas to be important sites of learning and education for young people regarding sexual and gender diversity and social justice. while noting the importance of gsas, mayo also offered a critique of the power dynamics present in the approach to learning and teaching in these groups, which are often run by teachers for students within the school. mayo suggests that embracing a less hierarchical approach, utilizing the idea of “third space” (zeichner, 2010 in mayo, 2015), can create new learning opportunities valuing the knowledge of both students and the adults leading the groups. this approach allows for transformative spaces of learning for youth that can support the expansion of students’ knowledge and activism, and encourage reflection, helping to create spaces for long-term learning and activism for students and schools. mayo suggested that those best suited to leading gsas and creating these spaces of learning are not teachers but youth workers, who may be better equipped to support youth with these topics, address power differentials, and connect with youth in less hierarchal ways. besides gsas, other programs aimed at educating young people about issues pertaining to them were mentioned in the literature. stauss et al. (2016) explored the effectiveness of a youth diversity program by looking at the sustaining effects of a week-long diversity youth camp program offered in the united states entitled “ourtown for teens”. while stauss et al. found that the program achieved positive and sustaining impacts for the participants, including gaining leadership skills and “greater understanding of ‘the other’ ” (p. 23), the researchers also found that the approach of educating participants about and “exposing” them to “the other” could also arguably perpetuate harmful and exclusionary behaviour. despite this potential for risk, stauss et al. found that after participation in the ourtown for teens program, many of the respondents were better able to analyze their own value systems, were more comfortable with themselves, and were more comfortable with those different from themselves. in addition to articles that discussed educational programs for youth within the field, fox (2015) offered readers an introductory lesson on lgbtq terminology and identities as a “way of helping children and young people develop understanding and respect for differences in the human family” (p. 8). the goal of the article was to: give us [cycps] all enough information to increase our comfort level with others of different feeling and attractions than our own. this is particularly important for the most marginalized group who need others who will be prepared to be the friend a transgendered person needs. (fox, 2015, p. 13) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 36  while fox (2015) intended this article as a tool for understanding diverse identities, she offered a definition of transgender that is at odds with the prevailing definition, usage, and understanding of transgender and trans identities. fox stated: a transgender female feels and is most comfortable dressing and acting as a man in her culture would be expected to feel and act. a transgender male is a boy or man who feels and is most comfortable dressing and acting as a woman in his culture would be expected to feel and act. (p. 13) fox, unfortunately, misses the mark with these descriptions, as not only are these definitions incorrect, but the meaning of transgender is about far more than being comfortable in how one dresses and acts. as well, in her article, she uses forms of the term transgender (i.e., “a transgender” and “transgendered”) that have been identified as harmful and disrespectful by trans individuals and communities (kapitan, 2017; serano, n.d.; trans journalists association, n.d.). while terminology and language are continually shifting, adapting, and being created to describe and define gender experiences and identities (walker, 2017), when terminology is misused and incorrectly applied it becomes harmful and disrespectful. while fox’s definition of transgender and her use of the term is an exception in the articles located within the cyc literature reviewed for this paper, it is noteworthy that this article was published as an educational piece in cyconline in 2015, yet still misused transgender terminology. this is perhaps an indication of the work that cyc researchers, writers, and educators still have to do on presenting informed, appropriate, and accurate information about sexual and gender diversity to the field. youth voice and participation a primary theme across the literature reviewed was an emphasis on the importance of youth participation and youth’s voices being accurately represented in the research, writing, and programming for trans and queer youth. some articles discussed the importance of empowermentbased work and youth participation in research; other studies took up these suggestions by engaging directly with youth and emphasizing youth’s voices in their findings. craig et al. (2014) focused on youth perspectives and input in regard to the it gets better project (igbp; n.d.), soliciting input from lgbtq youth about the strengths and limitations of this popular online video project that was started by gay writer and activist, dan savage, and his husband terry miller in 2010 and is ongoing today. this study provides an example of centring youth voices and experiences with projects and interventions aimed at supporting them. craig et al. (2014) found that the young people involved in their study felt the project was “a good starting point to raise awareness, but should evolve into tangible strategies to make it better for youth already experiencing risk” (p. 251), and that the program needed to focus on “making it better” for all lgbtq youth, especially those who are ethnically or socioeconomically diverse. the youth called for researchers and the broader lgbtq community to “build on the awareness generated from the igbp and to provide more concrete strategies to impact youth suicide” (p. 214). one of the salient findings articulated by the youth was that the focus of the igbp on asking youth to wait international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 37  out their high school years in the anticipation that things will then get better may be an important message of hope; however, young people need tangible and accessible help now. in their article on transformation, skott-myhre and wagner (2014) shared wagner’s personal story, told in her own words, of transitioning and “becoming”. skott-myhre introduced the theme of transformation as a site of possibility, framing wagner’s personal story as an example of the importance of growth, change, and transformation that occurs throughout development for young people. their article, a powerful personal narrative, demonstrates that sharing personal stories is itself an important tool for learning and understanding diverse perspectives, but unfortunately provides only limited direct connections to practice applications with the cyc field. researchers have suggested that empowerment-based interventions and services are of particular benefit to individuals and communities that face systemic injustice and marginalization (craig et al., 2014; gameral et al., 2014; gutiérrez et al., 2000; matthews & salazar, 2012). when researchers engaged with young people who had been clients, or had been involved with the practice, care, and interventions offered by cycps, unique perspectives were revealed, leading to important and necessary insights. for example, shelton (2015) explored young transgender people’s experiences of homeless and of services for homeless youth, noting the pervasive binary understanding of gender, also known as cisgenderism, among services and supports. drawing from experiences shared by the youth in the study, shelton (2015) suggested the need to consider “unstably housed transgender and gender expansive young people as a distinct population with unique needs that differentiate them from their lgb counterparts” (p. 17), noting that transgender and gender-expansive young people who need services may find that the only services available are gender-based (e.g., gendered shelters). clark (2017) specifically focused on practice challenges and suggestions for practitioners working with transgender youth. exploring different approaches to ethical dilemmas in practice with trans youth, clark noted the flexibility and fluidity that comes with employing relational ethics and rights-based ethics that place importance on the youths’ perspectives, voices, and participation. while the focus of the article is on the ethics of practice, clark emphasized the importance of practitioners centring youth’s perspectives in their own care and services. graham, hightower, and vachon (2018) offered an example of centring young people’s perspectives on their own access to services and availability of appropriate and respectful care in the shelter system. vachon interviewed graham and hightower about their own lived experiences and their involvement as characters in the transitioning home audio drama2. moving between their personal stories and their connections to the characters portrayed in the podcast, both graham and hightower noted the need for respectful and safe shelter services for trans young people and how experiences of not being treating with dignity or respect may lead young people to choose to not access services at all and instead stay on the streets. graham emphasized that when shelters 2https://transitioninghomepodcast.podbean.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 38  are designed with queer and trans young people in mind, they can become safer and more accessible for populations that have a demonstrated need for such services. wagaman et al. (2019) continued this line of discussion in their exploratory study documenting the ways in which transgender and gender-expansive youth engaged with community-based services. they emphasized the importance of utilizing the youths’ own words to describe how the young people perceived and overcame their challenges. the authors highlighted the value of asking transgender and gender-expansive youth what they need, with their studying demonstrating, “a deepness in their [transgender and gender-expansive youths] insight and a clarity in what they were searching for to achieve” (p. 59) as well as their ability to live authentically. many of the articles reviewed here emphasized the importance of centring youth voices and experiences through research methods that focused on participation and youth engagement. throughout these articles, methodologies that place importance on youth involvement and youth perspectives were identified. capous-desyllas and mountz (2019) pointed out that photovoice, community-based, and participatory methodologies “tap into broader and more expansive and textured ways of knowing” (p. 299) and thus assist with empowerment. these researchers used photovoice to explore the experiences of lgbtq youth in the foster care system, emphasizing the importance of building research capacity and “harnessing young people’s power for creative selfexpression and collective representation” (p. 270). they noted that there was almost no research exploring the experiences of lgbtq youth who were formerly in foster care, and that the photos and words in this study give voice to some of the distinct experiences that have not previously been a point of focus. discussion while queer topics and identities received sparse attention within the cyc literature reviewed in this article, representation of trans identities and topics was scarcer still, and representation of two-spirit and nonbinary identities and topics was glaringly absent. this section highlights the continued gap in representation of t2snb identities and topics within the currently available cyc literature, and discusses some of the challenges and debates that speak to the wider scope of research and writing on queer and trans identities and topics. in their analysis of lgbtq youth-serving organizations across numerous communities and within many schools in the united states, allen et al. (2012) found that only half of the organizations they reviewed reported working with transgender young people. we cannot assume that a program ostensibly designed for lgbtq young people is prepared for, or even accessible to, transgender young people (wagaman et al., 2019). in ecker’s (2016) critical literature review on queer youth homelessness, he noted that the data on transgender individuals were masked or missing in many of the quantitative studies that compared the experiences of heterosexual and queer youth: such data were removed from the analysis, combined with data for other queer youth, or not included in the data collection in the first place. these findings mirror a similar pattern in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 39  the literature reviewed for this current paper. wagaman et al. (2019) found that young people talked about their gender identities as being central to their interactions with the world and their sense of themselves, but this literature review has revealed that research specifically addressing gender identity within cyc is scarce. in one of the few articles that i was able to locate that specifically focused on gender, jack (2020) tackled the topic of gender reveal parties3, articulating the ways in which expectant parents “reify gender difference and perform ‘good’ parenthood” (p. 83). while jack’s article does not specifically focus on queer or trans identities, it is included in this review as an important voice in the discussion of gender within cyc because it identifies the complex discourses and sociocultural conditions that children, youth, and families are steeped in, even prior to birth, and shows how this centralizes biological sex as a determinant of gender, identity, behaviour, and value within the family unit. gender reveal parties are a growing trend, and are prominently featured on curated social media accounts where expectant parents share photos or videos of these events. jack argued that these parties are not without harm and risk, despite being portrayed as “harmless fun”: some of the videos jack reviewed included scenes such as parents being visibly upset by the revealed sex, siblings crying, and property being damaged by fire through various means of creating coloured smoke. most importantly, jack draws attention to the ways in which these parties emphasize and solidify not only a limited binary expectation of gender but the “amount of power some give to genitals in dictating not only the kind of life they expect a child to have, but even what kind of relationship a parent of a particular sex can have with that child” (p. 89). jack (2020) spoke to the important ways in which the existence and possibility of t2snb individuals is ignored and erased within dominant parenting expectations, social media, and representation within north american and other western contexts. what does it mean for cycps and researchers to contend with this lack of presence of queer and t2snb identities in the media and in the resources within our own literature — the resources that are available to us and to the youth, families, and communities that we serve? in what ways can cycps take action to support the visibility, acceptance, and dignity of t2snb individuals, families, and communities? taylor (2020) spoke of the “out self ” as an important relational tool in cyc and articulated that “unlike other identity markers and characteristics, gsd [gender and sexual diversity] status may not always be quite as obvious until it is personally articulated by a given individual” (p. 24). cycps are “often taught to be mindful of boundaries and cautiously avoid any self-disclosure that could unintentionally lead to enmeshment” (p. 25); however, disclosure about sexual and gender identity for practitioners may be an important support to queer and t2snb youth and offer representation and visibility to queer and t2snb practitioners. in my own professional experience 3jack noted that the term “gender reveal party” is a misnomer: these parties reveal the sex of the fetus as determined through identification of gendered genitals or chromosomes, not the gender (i.e., social role and identity) that the fetus will eventually assume. this is, at best, a guess by a healthcare provider, given that sex and gender are distinct categories that exist in “mutually informed and complex relationship with one another” (fausto-sterling, 2013 in jack, 2020, p. 84). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 40  as a cycp, it is becoming a common practice in many community groups, organizations, and some cyc classrooms to offer and inquire about pronouns when making introductions. however, as taylor (2020) pointed out, this well-intentioned practice may also be potentially damaging as it can cause feelings of uncomfortable visibility. while the practice urges individuals to challenge their assumptions about how we recognize appearance and assume pronouns and gender, there are considerations in how and when we engage in the process and how we might open up other opportunities for individuals to share pronouns with their practitioners, instructors, or peers. beyond the reviewed cyc literature, shelley (2008) noted that “repudiation of trans subjectivity … lies at the heart of sectors of the ‘helping’ professions that seek to ‘assist’ trans people, usually with the aim of making them disappear into ‘normativity’ ” (p. 4). shelley (2008) explored the critique that mental health supports aimed at “managing ‘gender disorders’ ” (p. 4) are inherently conflictual for trans people. pervasive cisgenderism erases t2snb people by structuring services in ways that become at least unwelcoming and at worst harmful (shelton, 2015). misgendering and pathologizing are two forms of cisgenderism explored within the literature in fields that are allied to cyc (shelton, 2015). shelton defines misgendering as “the inaccurate use of gendered language” to describe individuals, and pathologizing as “the labeling and treatment of people’s self-designated genders as disordered” (2015, p. 11). both misgendering and pathologizing contribute to the erasure of transgender people within current social contexts shaped by cisgenderism (shelton, 2015). de finney et al. (2011) suggested that, “we need to ask critical questions about how we conceptualize the entangled relationship between normativity and service provision” (p. 368). when care is provided uncritically, without questioning what the needs of the young people and families with whom we work really are, we risk “rehabilitat[ing] minoritized children and youth into unquestioned norms” (de finney et al., 2011, p. 368). nevertheless, critical approaches to providing care are subverted by practice recommendations and policies that ignore real-world complexities (gharabaghi & anderson-nathe, 2017). as de finney et al. (2011) pointed out, notions of relating to diversity are inadequately taken up within helping fields, such as cyc, as “cultural competence”, a phrase suggesting that diversity and culture can be figured out, ignoring complex histories and intersections of multiple identities and subjectivities within communities. this idea of becoming “competent” in a culture or identity that is not your own suggests that a practitioner can arrive at a point of having learned enough about a community or identity that is different from their own experience to adequately understand it. this model of “competency” arguably presents cultures and identities as something that can be figured out and taught as an end product to new practitioners, instead of educating and supporting cycps to continually practise with approaches that place importance on working across difference, diversity, and complexity while centring dignity and respectful engagement. nevertheless, as gharabaghi and anderson-nathe (2017) noted, when youth are identified by services or practitioners as “complex”, they are often positioned as not fitting into available services: complexity is seen as a problem with the youth and not with the limitations of the services international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 41  or models of practice available. with this in mind, gharabaghi and anderson nathe (2017) suggested that the current discourse about the “complex young person” needs to shift its focus away from othering young people and towards describing (and acknowledging) the incapacities of services, institutions, and policies that are meant to work with young people in order to structure systems in ways that are more inclusive, thus offering new ways to exist and work “within difference, within multiple normative contexts and multiple intersections of identity and performance” (p. 2). without asking critical questions about the aims of care and support work and without taking into account the true complexities of diverse subjectivities, practitioners will continue to perpetuate experiences of systemic violence, revictimization, and violence within systems of support and “care”. this raises questions about what happens when “care” is harmful. as vachon (2020) told us, there is remarkably little theory and writing that is directly about care in cyc: “while the word ‘care’ is everywhere in our publications, the actual deep thinking — theorizing, conceptualizing, and grappling — is minimal” (p. 68). transgender and gender-diverse people continue to experience abuse and marginalization at the hands of those in positions of authority in systems of “care” (browne et al., 2011; shipherd & sloan, 2019). throughout the current academic literature (e.g., namaste, 2000; shelley, 2008; spade, 2015), and in community knowledge (browne et al., 2011; robles & edmiston, 2017), an overwheleming theme is that systems of care and support have historically been unsafe for trans people to access (applegarth & nuttall, 2016) and continually create barriers to needed care: wideranging improvements are needed across helping fields to foster supportive and accessible services for trans people (benaway, 2018; shipherd & sloan, 2019). the question remains: in what ways are we as a field ensuring that our cyc practices are safe for queer and t2snb young people? despite the many changes and (arguably) improvements in trans visibility and representation in media and pop culture, trans people continue to face transphobia and violence in systems of care (benaway, 2018; namaste, 2000; shelley, 2008; shipherd & sloan, 2019; spade, 2015). when systems of support become systems of continued violence, queer and trans people are limited to the resources available within their own communities, face barriers to services and justice, and risk not receiving critical medical care during emergencies. retraumatization and continuing repudiation (shelley, 2008) are typical experiences of trans people even within systems of “support”. as de finney et al. (2011) showed, we can find similar patterns with systems of care that cycps find themselves aligned with, working for, and interacting with. what is mostly absent in the cyc literature, as well as the other literature reviewed here, are suggestions for how to practise with queer and t2snb young people and an examination of what care means for them. while some articles do take this up (e.g., clark, 2017; lee, 2019; taylor, 2020), articles that directly inform or suggest practice approaches for working with t2snb, and queer young people are uncommon. articles focused on risk, experiences of violence, or critical theory of practice are far more prevalent than articles that explore what we as cycps can actually do differently. while both of these areas are inarguably crucial to our understanding of the work, practice-focused research is needed to support cycps integrate different ways of “knowing” and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 42  “being”, as well as “doing”, into their cyc praxis (white, 2007) with queer and t2snb young people. loiselle et al. (2012) challenged the “frequently voiced concern in cyc that critical theory and analysis are not useful for or relevant to frontline practice with young people, families, and communities” (p. 200), and found that this resistance within the field is not only deeply problematic but reinforces and reproduces “a false dichotomy between those who work with and those who think about children, youth, and families, as if working with and thinking about were mutually exclusive acts” (p. 200). extending this challenging of dichotomies, gharabaghi and anderson-nathe (2018) argued that the human services and cyc contexts perpetuate a divide between “us” as practitioner experts and “them” as victims. this can be extended further into considering the ways in which current cyc discourse presents those who are working with queer and trans young people and those who are queer or trans as mutually exclusive. by examining these discourses, contexts of practice, and embedded dichotomies and narratives, we reveal the ways in which we as a cyc field are erasing the presence of queer and trans identities and topics. as vachon (2020) stated, “acts of care take place within social and political contexts”; therefore, examining how these acts of care are performed reveals a lot about the context in which this care is embedded (p. 70). conclusion as de finney et al. (2011) stated, “critically examining the work to which so many of us dedicate ourselves can be uncomfortable” (p. 377). these authors also pointed out that addressing power requires us to commit to a complex analysis and come to terms with multiple ways of knowing, despite “contradictions and messiness” (p. 377). although there is a well-documented need for services and supports, intervention development for queer and trans young people is seriously lacking (saewyc, 2011; wagaman, 2015). clark (2017) emphasized that, “it is our individual actions that can determine whether rights are upheld or violated, whether trans youth are supported or oppressed, and whether or not society becomes more just” (p. 91). clark also stated that trans youth “have long been served by the child and youth care (cyc) profession” (p. 75); however, as this literature review has found, the representation of queer and trans identities, theories, and topics is scarce within cyc literature and research at this time. queer and trans youth are unique populations that require specialized services to address their unique needs, implemented by “sensitive and knowledgeable staff ” (ecker, 2016, p. 325). few articles in cyc address these topics, so it is time that we begin to critically examine the work that we are dedicating ourselves to and reflect on how and where we might make space for voices, writing, and research that take us beyond cis-heteronormative perspectives. loiselle et al. (2012) told us that “thinking and embodying and doing cyc practice by interrogating structural inequities and affirming the survivance and presencing of communities and ecologies can be incredibly difficult, but not doing this is not an option” (p. 201). vachon (2020) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 43  called for cycps to think of a queer cyc imagination as “one that recognizes, perhaps even celebrates desire, sex, identity, theory, and politics, and to wonder, together, what this might mean — what does queering cyc do?” (p. 64). as lee (2019) noted, within the current global context, the human rights of queer and trans people continue to be debated and contested. if cyc is truly to be framed “as a site for radical theorizing, advocacy, and social change” (de finney et al., 2011, p. 362), we must ask ourselves how we can make space for queer and trans identities and topics within our field, in order to work towards social change that shifts the field and challenges a cisheteronormative cyc system. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 44  references ajandi, j. 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(2018). in a world of “us” and “them”: the case against intervention-focused research. child & youth services, 39(2–3), 97–100. doi:10.1080/0145935x.2018.1531510 gibbs, d. a., hardison walters, j. l., lutnick, a., miller, s., & kluckman, m. (2015). services to domestic minor victims of sex trafficking: opportunities for engagement and support. children and youth services review, 54, 1–7. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.04.003 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 48  goldberg, a. e., frost, r. l., miranda, l., & kahn, e. (2019). lgbtq individuals’ experiences with delays and disruptions in the foster and adoption process. children and youth services review, 106, article 104466. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104466 goldberg, a. e., tornello, s., farr, r., smith, j. z., & miranda, l. 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(2015). normal life: adminstrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law. duke university press. stanley, n., ellis, j., farrelly, n., hollinghurst, s., & downe, s. (2015). preventing domestic abuse for children and young people: a review of school-based interventions. children and youth services review, 59, 120–131. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.10.018 stauss, k., koh, e., coustaut, c., & ayers, b. (2016). ourtown for teens: long-term impact of a youth diversity program. child & youth services, 37(1), 23–48. doi:10.1080/0145935x.2015.1052134 stott, t. (2013). transitioning youth: policies and outcomes. children and youth services review, 35(2), 218–227. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.10.019 taylor, g. 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(2012). preventing the bullying of foster children in our schools. children and youth services review, 34(9), 1805–1809. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.05.014 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 23–54 53  vachon, w. (2020). queering child and youth care. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 11(2), 61–81. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs112202019519 veale, j., saewyc, e., frohard-dourlent, h., dobson, s., clark, b., & the canadian trans youth health survey research group (2015). being safe, being me: results of the canadian trans youth health survey. stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, school of nursing, university of british columbia. https://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2018/05/06/trans-youthhealth-survey/ wagaman, m. a. 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(2015). sexual and gender minority disproportionality and disparities in child welfare: a population-based study. children and youth services review, 58, 11–17. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.08.016 wolowic, j. m., sullivan, r., valdez, c. a. b., porta, c. m., & eisenberg, m. (2018). come along with me: linking lgbtq youth to supportive resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 9(3), 1–20. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs93201818274 yoon, j.-s. (2012). courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 3(2–3), 164–186. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 introduction to the international journal of child, youth and family studies, volume one, number one and number two: i introduction to the international journal of child, youth and family studies, volume one, number one and number two: reflecting on crime prevention and youth justice in canada michel vallée and tullio caputo, guest editors over the past several decades, discussion in canada about crime and victimization issues can be characterized by two distinct yet polarized views. on the one hand, we have been influenced by the neo-liberal thinking that has dominated the political discourse of most western nations since the early 1980s. in the area of crime and corrections, this has meant an emphasis on “get tough” measures, harsher punishments, and higher incarceration rates. this type of approach has been especially evident in the united states with its “three strikes” policies and its burgeoning prison population. on the other hand, a growing recognition has emerged among social scientists, service providers, and policymakers that many of the existing and traditional responses to crime – and other social problems – are ineffective. the experience of the united states is often used as an example of this since higher incarceration rates there have not translated into a lower crime rate. those advocating this perspective contend that a social problem such as crime cannot be understood exclusively in terms of individual motivations and culpability. instead, crime is seen as part of the broader social context. this has led to a focus on community factors and processes and, ultimately, on the social bases of crime. these competing philosophies and political orientations have led to the emergence of a number of contradictory policies and practices in the area of criminal justice policy. for example, in canada, the new youth justice legislation attempts to address the concerns of both conservative and progressive critics by being “tougher” on serious and repeat young offenders while promoting less formal, community-based alternatives for youth involved in first time and minor offences. similarly, the emphasis over the past decade in the law enforcement field has been on community policing, but at the same time, broad new enforcement powers have been granted to the police in order to combat organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and terrorism. as these examples show, policy-makers have tried to appease the concerns of those favouring a “get tough” approach while simultaneously responding to those who want to address crime as a broader social problem. an interesting debate has developed within this context with respect to crime prevention. beginning in the late 1970s, proponents of crime prevention through environmental design (cpted) received considerable support for initiatives such as community safety audits. these were intended to identify areas where the built environment increased the opportunity for crime. this approach to crime prevention emerged at a time when there was a growing emphasis on the identification and management of risk. for crime prevention, this resulted in the attempt to reduce the opportunities for crime by altering the physical environment through increased lighting, and the use of access control measures (locks on doors and bars on windows). individuals ii were encouraged to secure themselves and their property against potential victimization. these cpted measures – known as situational crime prevention – promoted target hardening on the one hand and self-policing measures on the other, a precursor to the type of “responsibilization” strategies that would emerge later. at the same time as these more “reactive” initiatives were appearing, more “proactive” crime prevention approaches also began to gain in popularity. crime prevention through social development (cpsd), for example, explicitly acknowledged the link between crime and underlying social factors such as poverty, unemployment, racism, sexism, and other forms of social marginalization. a growing body of literature began to document the relationship between youth crime and a variety of contextual variables such as: parental criminality, alcoholism, or substance abuse; family conflict; school failure; delinquent peer associations; and a lack of appropriate educational, recreational, and economic opportunities for youth. the response to these underlying social causes of crime was not more policies or programs aimed at individual offenders but, rather, social development initiatives designed to address the underlying social causes of crime. looking back, a number of key developments emerged during this era. first, many sectors within criminal justice began to turn to the “community” for a solution. that is, the community began to be perceived as the source of the problem, the site for intervention and, importantly, a participant in service delivery. from the late 1970s onward, these ideas resulted in the development of and growing support for community policing, community corrections, and community-based alternatives such as restorative justice. this mirrored similar developments in other fields with the introduction of community health, community living, and community schools. second, concerns over children and youth became a highly visible public policy issue during this period which often influenced broader policy developments. in the criminal justice area, these concerns led to an almost continuous process of legislative change and amendment that has continued for over 30 years. beginning with a debate over the 78-year-old juvenile delinquents act and its replacement with the young offenders act in 1984, public discussion and debate over youth justice has been at the centre of criminal justice matters in this country. one of the interesting aspects of both community and childhood is that both concepts have a “taken for granted” quality, yet are difficult to define. there is no simple, widely accepted definition of the concept of community. in fact, this concept is a highly useful policy instrument precisely because of its lack of specificity. moreover, since it evokes a positive connotation, many observers have invoked it to suit their own needs. the lack of conceptual clarity related to “community” is also there with respect to the concept of childhood. many scholars have acknowledged the various ways this concept has been used and have begun to explore the consequences that existing “idealized” notions of childhood have for young people. in some contexts, childhood refers to young children. in others, it includes those below the age of majority (defined differently in iii different countries). still others have used the concept of childhood to include people from birth to 30 years of age. the theoretical and conceptual issues surrounding the concepts of community and childhood informed the development of this collection of original essays. we invited a number of recognized experts concerned about crime prevention and community safety for children and youth to submit their original work in this area. part i begins with two introductory chapters authored by michel vallée that provide a conceptual overview of crime prevention and community safety in canada. in chapter three, rick linden presents a rationale for supporting an evidence-based approach to crime prevention. this is followed in chapter four by a consideration of the role of the police in relation to crime prevention by tullio caputo and michel vallée. part ii, which will appear in april, 2010, includes a discussion of some of the key issues related to children, youth, and their families within a community safety context. it illustrates of some of the innovative ideas of key canadian experts working in this area. chapter 5 by mike boyes, joe hornick, and nancy ogden, and chapter 6 by sibylle artz, diana nicholson, elaine halsall, and susan larke, examine responses related to the child welfare and protection system. in chapter 7, yasmin jiwani, ann cameron, and helene berman focus on the “girl child” while in chapter 8, bernard schissel reports on his research with aboriginal youth and the justice system. chapter 9 by susan reid addresses issues related to children and youth and the criminal justice system. finally, in chapter 10, sylvie hamel, marie-marthe cousineau, and sophie léveillée, in collaboration with martine vézina, and julie savignac, discuss the implications stemming from a major youth gang prevention project implemented in montréal. in the epilogue, we reflect on some of the issues raised in the volume and consider their implications for criminal justice policy and research on children and youth in canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 1–4 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818079 introduction to the two fice special issues emmanuel grupper, james p. anglin, and silke b. gahleitner guest editors this is the first of two special issues based on materials presented at the fice international congress in vienna, austria in august 2016. the theme of the congress was “together towards a better world for children, adolescents, and families”. the same theme was chosen for these special issues. child and youth care professionals who presented their quality material in the congress were invited to rework their presentations as formal papers meeting the norms of a scientific journal. fice international is most thankful to the guest editors, jim anglin, silke gahleitner, and emmanuel grupper, who worked with all the contributors to prepare their materials for publication. we also want to thank dr. sibylle artz, the editor of ijcyfs, for giving us the opportunity to publish this material in an open-access electronic journal and in that way share it with a much broader audience. emmanuel grupper phd is vice-president fice-international, and associate professor at the school of education and social studies at the ono academic college, 104 zahal st., kiryat ono 5545173, israel. email: emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il james p. anglin phd is full professor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700 stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2, canada. email: janglin@uvic.ca silke birgitta gahleitner phd is a professor at the alice salomon university of applied sciences berlin – arbeitsbereich psychosoziale diagnostik und intervention, alice-salomonplatz 5, d-12627 berlin, germany. email: sb@gahleitner.net http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818079 mailto:emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il mailto:janglin@uvic.ca mailto:sb@gahleitner.net international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 1–4 2 child and youth care professionals are often confronted with the dilemma of having to choose between a utopian vision of a better world for all people and a more concrete vision of a better world for vulnerable populations of children, youth, and their families who are in need of specialized services. although we would like to believe in a utopian world where all children could grow up leading secure lives with their biological families, we have to face the reality that large numbers of children and young people are confronted with hardship, danger, and neglect. such conditions create masses of socially excluded children and young people who need specialized services for a variety of reasons. let us take as an example the large numbers of refugee youth who have become a significant proportion of excluded youth in many industrialised and developed countries. many of these young people have left their homes and families behind because of wars, famine, lack of resources, and absence of future prospects; they have headed to other countries where they hope to find better life conditions and opportunities. in 2013, the international migration organization (imo) published an important report entitled “children on the move” to document this large-scale movement of children and young people, often without their families, which is a reality in many countries, and challenges child and youth care workers everywhere and at all levels. whenever we child and youth care professionals think of a better world for children, adolescents, and families, therefore, we have in mind better services and better opportunities for education, empowerment, and support for children and young people from vulnerable families and communities. while there are still many challenges ahead of us, we can be proud of recent developments that represent a major improvement in services for these young people that offer them a better future. as an example, let us look at the transition from care to independent life. since the beginning of the third millennium, it has become generally accepted that services for children and youth who are in need of care should include a “safety net” and quality programs for supporting care leavers. it is encouraging to see among many of the papers presented in this special issue that this relatively new concept is already being applied around the world and not only in well-established and relatively rich countries. the two special issues emerging from the 2016 fice international congress are divided into three clusters of articles. the first cluster consists of four papers focused on trauma and neuroscience. the second cluster, with six papers on the theme of national perspectives leading to an international one, also appears in this first of the two issues. the third cluster, comprising eight papers dealing with evaluation, research, and challenges in residential, foster, and family care, occupies the whole of the second issue. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 1–4 3 cluster 1: trauma and neuroscience isabella sarto-jackson, from austria, authors the first paper in this cluster. she is looking at the roots of psychological trauma, and presents an original interdisciplinary approach that combines neurobiology, evolutionary biology, and social pedagogy. another group of austrian professionals — silke gahleitner, christina frank, katharina gerlich, heidemarie hinterwallner, martha schneider, and hermann radler — present the results of a research project on trauma pedagogy in residential care facilities for children and youth in austria. they summarize their insights in a phrase from one of the children in their study: “otherwise i might not have been able to cope at all.” readers who are curious to understand the meaning of this remark are invited to read the full article. susan hunt, marlene moretti, chris booth, and nickole reyda are canadian professionals from british columbia. they share with us the results of their evidencebased research looking at the possibility of promoting change among clients by using traumainformed perspectives. this could been seen as an example of applying theoretical principles to practice. cluster 2: national perspectives leading to an international one the second cluster opens with a paper by nilika dutta investigating street children in india and the health education issues they experience. in their contribution, from serbia, anita burgund isakov and jasna hrnčić deal with leaving alternative care from the perspective of serbian researchers, and offer several recommendations for improving outcomes for care leavers. stephan sting from austria reminds us of new developments in classical social pedagogy practices for working with children and young people in his country, while three japanese scholars, shigeyuki mori, satoru nishizawa, and arimi kimura, present in their paper actual developments in out-of-home care in japan, and the challenges of trying to enhance foster care services that have been almost nonexistent in the past. next, anna schmid from switzerland and her hungarian colleague krisztián herczeg focus their paper on the great potential for improvement in residential care services by close collaboration between professionals from different countries. the concluding paper is by varda mann-feder of concordia university in montreal, canada, who looks at a prominent issue in the child and youth care field: care leavers. her insights from a field study show interesting relationships between three variables: care leaving, friendships, and agency policy. cluster 3: evaluation, research, and challenges in residential, foster, and family care the first paper in this third cluster is by zsolt major of hungary. his qualitative research done in residential care homes in hungary examines relationships between professional selfesteem and organizational developments. a paper from german researchers michael macsenaere and corinna pummer-pilaj looks at success and failure in residential care, and offers insights based on a large-scale evaluation of child and youth care. next, three swiss researchers, clara bombach, thomas gabriel, and renate stohler, focus on the complexities of foster care and the factors that can bring about breakdown. from austria, andrea nagy looks in her paper at the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 1–4 4 experiences of care leavers. her insights are based on a consideration of residential care alumni and the possibility of their becoming autonomous in a residential care facility. ivan lukšik and lucia hargašová from slovakia also focus on care leavers. their particular interest relates to the potential relationships between residential care cultures and the quality of life of young adult care leavers. kira amman from switzerland contributes a perspective on moral developmental thinking of children between 8 and 12 years old, and how they learn to distinguish right from wrong. next, south african professional rika swanzen casts a light on the generation chasm as it exists today, with detailed consideration of generations y and z, and the implications of generational characteristics for pedagogy. the final paper, by satarupa dutta, deals with the preparation of young girls in india for their integration into society after they leave residential care facilities. closing remarks in summary, the papers presented in this special issue are written by professionals practising in 12 different countries, writing from locations as disparate as north america, europe, the middle east, india, and japan. the topics are varied, but taken together we can see in them the reflection of meaningful improvements in the quality of services for children, adolescents, and families in at-risk situations. these important ongoing developments can give us hope that we are on the way, albeit with small steps, towards a better world for children, youth, and families — the theme of these special issues. in memoriam carol kelly in february 2017, when we were in the midst of our work on this special issue we were deeply saddened by the news of the passing of dr. carol kelly from california who served for many years as representative of fice usa in fice international. we are pleased to add a short memoriam by bettina terp and varda mann-feder as a tribute to carol’s great contributions towards making a better world for children, youth, and their families. tf_template_word_windows_2016 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019713 innovation in a capstone course in youth work: using the authentic situated learning and teaching framework stéphanie hovington, natasha blanchet-cohen, and varda r. mann-feder abstract: capstone courses often focus on applied learning, typically practicum experiences such as internships. however, students do not always benefit as much as they could from their internships because teaching and learning resources are not used optimally. this paper explores the use of project-based learning in a capstone course of the graduate diploma in youth work program at concordia university that includes an in-class seminar and an internship in a human services agency. using the principles of context authenticity and cognitive apprenticeship from the authentic situated learning and teaching (aslt) framework, we examine the experiences of two cohorts of interns (24 students in all). an analysis of their final papers and participation in a focus group, as well as the results of the university’s course evaluation, suggests that the aslt framework contributes to the transfer of learning in a professional setting. furthermore, the use of the psychoeducative model to structure active pedagogies in a youth work capstone course provides a means for planning therapeutic activities and organizing intervention programs that help develop competencies to work in diverse settings. keywords: authentic situated learning and teaching, active pedagogy, projectbased learning, capstone course, internship, psychoeducation, youth work, child and youth care stéphanie hovington (corresponding author) is a professor of psychoéducation at the université du québec en abitibi-temiscamingue, 445 blv de l’université, rouyn-noranda, qc j9x 5e4. email: stephanie.hovington@uqat.ca natasha blanchet-cohen, applied human sciences, concordia university varda mann-feder, applied human sciences, concordia university mailto:stephanie.hovington@uqat.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 147 most college and university programs that aim to train professionals in youth work include an articulation between theory and practice through a capstone experience, often referred to as an internship. it allows students to apply what they have learned in the classroom and to acquire new knowledge and professional skills. internships also give students an opportunity to develop their professional identity, which is an important part of preparing for professional careers in human services. furthermore, these types of courses offer professors the chance to teach outside the traditional pedagogical framework (myers kiser, 2012). scholars have advanced the view that internships complement theoretical training by allowing students to acquire the skills and attitudes necessary to practise a profession and to experience engagement in professional tasks in a progressive manner (myers kiser, 2012; villeneuve & moreau, 2010). however, a common concern among faculty who teach internship seminars is how to help students make use of the fragmented knowledge they have acquired from the academic curriculum and forge meaningful connections between classroom learning and their experiences in an internship (frenay & bédard, 2004). students may have difficulty using concepts previously acquired in class when the practicum environment does not support their learning (vanpee et al., 2010). in the graduate diploma in youth work at concordia university, the internship course is designed to include active pedagogies such as project-based learning activities. the course involves a supervised internship in a human services agency and a biweekly 2.5-hour seminar, with in-class instruction provided by a licensed psychoeducator. a distinctive feature of this course is that it blends fundamental concepts of the psychoeducational model with the principles of the youth work program. the psychoeducational model of intervention, unique to french-speaking quebec and based on the work of gendreau (1978, 2001), provides a means for planning therapeutic activities and organizing interventions. the model offers concrete tools that can be used in project-based learning activities such as designing and creating developmentally appropriate group interventions. this paper explores how project-based learning in a capstone internship promotes the transfer of learning. the design of the capstone course was based on the authentic situated learning and teaching (aslt)1 framework (bédard et al., 2000; frenay & bédard, 2004) and incorporates psychoeducational activities. pedagogical methods for teaching and learning that use project-based learning active pedagogies assume one learns by doing, which, in turn, fosters understanding of the subject matter (helle et al., 2006). these pedagogies call upon a set of methods, such as the case method, problem-based learning, games, and discussions, which aim to make students active 1 model developed in french: apprentissage et enseignement contextualisé et authentique (aeca). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 148 agents of their learning. project-based learning and similar methods focus on action and the creation of social interactions that enhance the learning process (ménard & st-pierre, 2014). project-based learning requires that students move beyond simply stating what they have learned to using what they have learned to offer meaningful responses to relevant questions or needs (simonds et al., 2017). a project allows for the implementation of diverse knowledge, fosters learning in action, and provides the student with a professional perspective (leduc, 2014), thus promoting the transfer of knowledge from the classroom to a professional setting (frenay & bédard, 2004). projects are aimed at responding to a real problem or need in the target community. for instance, in the field of youth work, this could involve students designing a social skills workshop that would fit the needs of a group of teens in a high school. it is a real situation requiring students to use what they know about development and social skills to come up with solutions in cases where there is no single correct design (svinicki & mckeachie, 2014). as a result, projects become meaningful and have emotional value (wurdinger, 2016). having students address real-life problems during their studies and reflect in and on action (schön, 1983) promotes the important process of knowledge restructuring for the development of expertise (helle et al., 2006). in project-based learning, teachers “guide students through a problem-solving process that includes identifying a problem, developing a plan, testing the plan against reality, and reflecting on the plan while in the process of designing and completing a project” (wurdinger, 2016, p. 13). the aslt framework pedagogical frameworks can be informative in bridging theory and practice (vierset et al., 2015). in this paper, we propose that the aslt framework (bédard et al., 2000; frenay & bédard, 2004) which falls within a socioconstructivist perspective (vanpee et al., 2010) is particularly helpful. this framework entails the use of an interactive pedagogy in which the construction of knowledge, although personal, takes place in a social setting (ménard & st-pierre, 2014). aslt has been used to design and analyze the pedagogical aspects of an internship in a psychoeducation program (hovington et al., 2020) and in a medical school program (vanpee et al., 2010), with a focus on the roles of the instructor (coaching posture) and the roles of the students (learning posture; vierset et al., 2015). the aslt framework proposes two fundamental and intertwined principles: context authenticity and cognitive apprenticeship. context authenticity emphasizes that learning and teaching approaches should anchor knowledge in a context that is as close as possible to professional practice (frenay & bédard, 2004; vanpee et al., 2010). in this regard, internships give students the opportunity to use therapeutic techniques and interpersonal skills with youth (renou, 2014). internship seminar activities allow students to analyze real interventions — to talk about their experiences, their feelings and reactions, and their struggles and achievements (sweitzer & king, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 149 context authenticity is based on seven key conditions in the learning environment: (a) students must engage in learning situations that are as similar as possible to their future professions; (b) students must learn through action, by gradually mastering skills and developing autonomy; (c) learning situations must integrate multiple factors related to professional tasks; (d) students should engage with a range of theoretical frameworks; (e) learning situations should require disciplinespecific and cross-disciplinary competencies (communication skills, ethical and legal considerations, etc.); (f) students should experience diverse clinical situations; and (g) students should be confronted with situations that allow for several strategies (including less effective ones) and solutions. the second principle, cognitive apprenticeship, dictates that the construction of knowledge is facilitated by coaching that encourages the student’s cognitive and metacognitive engagement (vierset et al., 2015). thus, the pedagogical relationship between the internship instructor and the students is of great importance in learning situations, since it has an impact from both a cognitive– sociocognitive and emotional–relational point of view (vierset et al., 2015). this second principle includes seven key conditions that focus on the quality of the apprenticeship and the willingness of the internship instructor to guide the student. these include: (a) comparing knowledge from different contexts to facilitate transfer; (b) encouraging students to critically examine their actions while comparing themselves to others; (c) encouraging the generalization of learning in real environments; (d) coaching by the instructor that involves observation and intervention when needed; (e) providing scaffolding through the encouragement of freedom of choice accompanied by coaching by the instructor; (f) modelling by the instructor; and (g) freedom of choice and action that fosters initiative and ownership. ultimately, the complementary learning contexts of the internship and the in-class seminar enable the implementation of the principles and conditions required by the aslt framework. this theoretical framework, which sheds light on learning activities that are conducive to the transfer of learning, served as the basis for the research design as well as the analysis of students’ experiences in the capstone course. the context: the internship for the graduate diploma in youth work courses in the youth work program at concordia university are primarily designed to engage students in experiential learning that includes observational exercises in the community, role playing, and group work to develop facilitation and intervention expertise. students complete 24 credits (8 courses) prior to beginning their internship. the internship is designed to provide a supervised experience in a professional role as a youth worker in normative youth work (ymca, schools) or clinical settings (child protection agencies) that builds on the student’s previous courses. the internship capstone course design attempts to meet the 14 conditions of the aslt framework identified earlier. in addition, the course integrates experiential learning activities that exemplify youth work principles and psychoeducational concepts. practical skills learned in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 150 internship settings are grounded in the program’s five guiding principles: (a) collaborative relationship, (b) ecosystemic approach, (c) developmental perspective, (d) rights-based approach, and (e) ethics and reflexivity (ranahan et al., 2015). active pedagogies are included in both learning settings (seminar and internship). figure 1 provides an overview of the course design for the internship capstone course. figure 1. internship capstone course design aslt framework guiding pedagogical principles and conditions for course and internship design implementation: context authenticity and cognitive apprenticeship internship capstone course integration of youth work principles and psychoeducation seminar (biweekly; 2.5 hours) internship (320 or 420 hours) active pedagogies discussions, games, simulations project-based learning with peers and seminar instructor field experience project-based learning with youth methods for student evaluation reflection journals psychoeducational activities with peers final summary journal field experience psychoeducational activity with youth site evaluation survey based on five guiding youth work program principles the seminar begins with an intensive focus on the psychoeducational approach. in particular, the structural psychoeducative model (gendreau, 2001) and its components are described, demonstrated, and discussed. students learn how to plan and deliver psychoeducational activities by using the model to support and engender positive action for the youth. in this respect, during the seminar, the university instructor presents video excerpts of activities carried out by youth workers. this allows students to observe and reflect on authentic clinical situations. psychoeducational activities (discussions and games focused on personal qualities, goal setting, expressing emotions, etc.) are also designed by the instructor and demonstrated throughout the seminar to help students build an understanding of fundamental concepts in psychoeducation. experiential activities used in the seminar are learner-centred and require the active participation of each student. as a result, students are simultaneously doing and thinking about the work, with the goal being to enhance their higher-order thinking capabilities. in addition to the hours of applied practicum at the internship, students design and carry out two projects, both of which aim to familiarize them with the psychoeducational model and the implementation of psychoeducational activities. the first project requires students to work in pairs to engage in a psychoeducational activity with their peers. since the project is carried out by a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 151 team, members share responsibility for the project’s success (proulx, 2004), which encourages the development of personal and relational skills (wurdinger, 2016). in this context, the instructor acts as a resource — a “guide on the side” (mclellan, 1996) — and not as a leader. for their second project, students plan and animate a psychoeducational activity at their own internship site. through this assignment, students acquire new knowledge while consolidating and integrating specific skills (analyzing situations, using strength-based communication with the youth, adapting to their unique needs) and developing attitudes (empathy, consideration, confidence) that prepare them for work in the field (simonds et al., 2017). moreover, evaluation for the course includes written reflection journals to explore personal and professional growth. in a final paper, students discuss their experiences of the course as a capstone experience. they reflect on the skills used during their projects and their overall experience, describing how the course relates to their personal and professional development. methodology this study used qualitative methods to explore students’ learning experiences (lofland et al., 2006). triangulation of qualitative data (paillé & mucchielli, 2016) allowed us to better understand students’ perspectives. the three sources of data analyzed were the interns’ final summary papers, transcripts of a focus group interview, and the results of the university’s standard course evaluation. data were collected from two cohorts of internship students, one from 2018 and the other from 2019. the first group comprised 15 students, and 13 (1 male, 12 female) consented to participate in this research. the second group had 11 students (2 male, 9 female), and all agreed to participate. in total, these 24 students were present in 22 internship locations (see table 1). the principal author was the course instructor for both cohorts. table 1. number of students at each type of internship site number internship site 4 high school 2 alternative high school 2 drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre 2 youth protection rehabilitation unit 4 ymca 1 community youth centre 2 ciuss 1 clsc 1 youth leadership program 1 community youth centre 1 native friendship centre 1 women’s shelter 2 hospital child psychiatry unit international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 152 first, a content analysis (paillé & mucchielli, 2016) was performed on the students’ final summary papers (n = 24). documents were read to identify themes and the recurring concepts and perspectives that represent the aslt principles of context authenticity and cognitive apprenticeship. quotations that capture the essence of each category were identified and organized in a table. second, a focus group was conducted with the interns of the 2019 cohort. based on a discussion guide validated by the three researchers, the focus group lasted 90 minutes and was directed by a doctoral student who served as a neutral facilitator. participants (n = 10) were made aware that they were under no obligation to answer questions, and that they could discontinue participation at any time. focus group discussions were digitally recorded, and those recordings were supplemented by notes written by participants during the focus group. a general inductive approach was used to treat data from the focus group. the text was closely read to allow for the identification of themes related to both principles of the aslt theoretical framework. finally, four of the 20 questions asked in the university’s course evaluation were relevant to the study and therefore analyzed. all but one of the participants (n = 23) completed the course evaluation. results our results suggest that the integration of project-based learning using psychoeducative activities into an internship capstone course contributes to the transfer of learning in a professional setting. it also appears that the aslt framework provides a useful means for the conceptualization and design of capstone courses in youth work. responses to the course evaluation indicated that students enjoyed the course and found the psychoeducational model useful. all 23 students who responded ranked the course as good (n = 9, 39%) or very good (n = 14, 61%). thirteen students (56%) rated their learning in the internship as very good. interestingly, 43% of students rated their knowledge of the psychoeducational model prior to the internship as average. as one student commented, “we need to be exposed to psychoeducational concepts earlier in [the program] and understand how they are interconnected.” students agreed that the internship seminar contributed to reflection on the actions they had taken by allowing them to share ideas and knowledge. in the section that follows, we present data gathered from the interns’ final papers and the focus group, sorted according to the aslt principles (see table 2). the students’ descriptions suggest instances of learning and the development of skills, which may be due to the pedagogical conditions conducive to the transfer of learning that were put in place in the capstone course. . international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 153 student perception of context authenticity table 2. analytical examination of the authenticity of learning situations context authenticity criterion guiding question student perspectives on field experience and project-based learning learning-transfer context were students able to experience authentic clinical situations, and practise developing their relationship with the young person? “i saw most of my clients once every two weeks. this meant that i needed to build rapport, explore needs, develop interventions, try the interventions, and then assess their success all within roughly 10 sessions. i often wondered whether i had enough of an impact in the lives of my clients to promote learning.” development of skills in teaching and learning environments do the proposed tasks lead to the acquisition of skills expected at the end of the internship? “the youth-work principle that i developed the most is the rights-based approach.” “when possible, i attempted to provide opportunities for the youth to make decisions for themselves (what to do as activity, where to hold the activity, etc.).” complete and complex learning situations have the students had the opportunity to plan, organize, and animate an intervention program or activity? “my goals of promoting teamwork, creating good rapport between the youth themselves and with the staff, and creating a positive group dynamic were all accomplished in these activities [human bingo and rally] the rally accentuated that collaboration and problem solving were necessary for young people to succeed.” multidisciplinary content did students have the opportunity to propose a multidisciplinary solution for the project? “the activity i chose was art-based therapy, which is not something the agency does often. the activity was perfect. many of the youth are artistic and find that drawing is therapeutic.” multidimensional problem situations have the students confronted situations with challenging ethical, social, cultural, and psychological dimensions? “the staff team is composed of individuals with various ways of counselling, intervening, and simply being with kids. a component that allowed me to grow as a person, is that i decided to challenge an older staff whose ways of doing intervention contradicted what i valued as a professional. it turned out to be a great debate on how different intervention styles can help some, yet not all, youth.” diverse situations did the students experience diverse clinical situations that presented unexpected difficulties and required immediate decision-making? “a few of the youth went into crisis prior to the activity beginning. due to this, the energy level of the group was too high. i performed a focus activity where i would ask the youth to tap various extremities, drawing in their focus to the moment and to me. this worked well and the youth could start the activity in a solid space.” multiple solutions for, conclusions regarding, or interpretations of the same situation did the students consider several possible solutions, their advantages and disadvantages? “for the many weeks prior to conducting my activity at the child protection unit, i had difficulties deciding what was both developmentally appropriate and supported their traumarelated needs. i am thankful i could not only test out an activity in class, which allowed me to practice facilitating, but also observe other classmates’ activities that lent inspiration for my own.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 154 the study found that as a result of their experience of project-based learning with the psychoeducational model in an internship, the students perceived an enhancement of both their intervention skills in authentic clinical situations with real world constraints and their personal skills. one student wrote, “my confidence has been strengthened to make the transition from university to real world occupation.” most students concurred, commenting on the applied knowledge and confidence they had gained. project-based pedagogy in the seminar created a friendly atmosphere conducive to students showing keen interest in activity participation, collaborative learning, and knowledge sharing. one student pointed out, “i learned more about collaborating as a team member, and figuring out what i can offer to the group.” a pair of students prepared a photo rally throughout campus and one of them found that, “coming up with reflective questions for the group to consider was fun, engaging, and allowed us to reflect on our experiences together.” the other wrote, “i was glad that we had the chance to plan a psychoeducational activity in class before doing the one at my internship because i felt it was a nice, safe space to prepare and practice. i learnt so much from my classmates through their activities. they all came so prepared and it was obvious they had put a great deal of thought and effort into their activities.” in addition to the hours of practicum, students were also required to carry out a psychoeducational activity individually, using gendreau’s model, in their respective internship settings. table 3 provides an overview of the psychoeducational activities that were designed and delivered by the students. because the students completed their internships in varied settings, they worked with young people who had unique combinations of strengths and challenges. these project-based learning activities allowed students to implement the psychoeducational activities in different planning stages. as one intern wrote, “the main advantage of the activity model, for me, would be its firm structure, serving as guide for the construction of the activity.… i found that it really helped in providing the framework to adapt one’s activity to the audience and making sure the learning objectives are reached.” using the model increased students’ capacity to ensure alignment of the objectives of a psychoeducational activity and the needs of youth in their setting. analysis of their templates for the psychoeducational activities illustrate that the interns displayed positive traits that could affect outcomes: a high standard of work, and respect for the uniqueness of the youth. as one student pointed out: working closely with certain youth has taught me so much about how to take in all the circumstances surrounding a young person and just remain present in the moment for them. it has taught me to listen with compassion and humility. it taught me to meet someone where they are at and take the steps they feel comfortable with. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 155 table 3. examples of psychoeducational activities internship site psychoeducational activities youth involved high school study skills workshop: develop efficient study skills and organizational skills 5–10 students (male and female), ages 14–15 alternative high school girls’ day out: improve the quality of relationships among female students group brainstorm: identify things that they appreciate about their classmates 4 female students, ages 13–15, secondary 2–3 5 students (4 male and 1 female) youth protection rehabilitation unit feelings activity: helping youth familiarize themselves with the names and facial expressions of different feelings 7 youth (4 male and 3 female), ages 9–12 ymca summer bbq kick-off: commit to and participate in planned activities youth from diverse cultural backgrounds, ages 13–16 community outreach centre self-reflection and self-care workshop: give youth tools to address anxiety and stress 5 youth, ages 20–30 ciuss discussion group: identify appropriate sharing of personal information within their social support system youth and parents with intellectual difficulties clsc video feedback: help a mother and teenage son work on their relational issues mother and 13-year-old son youth leadership program pitch perfect: invent a service that will address an issue in their community 4 youth, ages 12–21 women’s shelter body beautiful: raise awareness of the ways girls and women are socialized, and its influence when it comes to body image young women who have experienced conjugal violence according to the students’ internship reports and the focus group, project-based learning was central to learning how to facilitate and plan a psychoeducational activity in a real environment. one student said, “i have learnt how to facilitate groups and have conversations with individual youth in a way that lays out their options and emphasizes the importance of them making their own decisions.” another reported, “i learned and practiced crisis management and psychoeducational strategies for behavioural intervention in groups and one-on-one with youth with behavioural and learning challenges.” students made use of their knowledge in practical ways. one student wrote in the final summary, “basing myself on different theories learnt in the past and this year, i was able to integrate factors of attachment theory and family dynamics theory in understanding the youth’s perspective in my interactions.” students faced complex situations throughout their internships. for one student, this meant adapting a board game to increase communication between a parent with an intellectual disability and her adolescent child. for this student, it was an opportunity to respond to the specific needs of the client. his internship site supervisor expressed the desire to reuse the tool with other clients in the future. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 156 the diverse situations experienced by the students integrated several dimensions of the profession and required the use of both discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary interpersonal skills. as one student noted, “i evolved as a person by increasing my cultural awareness. i gained the chance to interact with youth from a variety of different backgrounds who were each very unique.” many students pointed out that they acquired a better understanding of others: how and why others act the way they do and how to interact more effectively with them. in her final paper, one student wrote, “i believe an influential experience for me which allowed me to grow was the constant ‘act outs’ that occurred. during these moments, i would have to adapt my approach to each individual and understand how to intervene.” some of the greatest gains in personal growth are evident in an increased sense of confidence and autonomy. as one student wrote, “i learned to voice my opinion to my colleagues and supervisor in order to improve the functioning of the organization.” planning an activity for the class also allowed students to compare different ideas and solutions in relation to the same objective. the students learned by working collaboratively while respecting others’ attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs. for one team, this ended up being a challenge; however, they were still able to learn to address conflict in a constructive manner: this discord and its resolution also further contributed to the training benefit of the project as a whole, simulating the reality of professional teamwork and conflict resolution. in real life, we often do not have the luxury of choosing our colleagues and could be paired with people with different values, opinions, cultural backgrounds, etc. learning how to effectively collaborate in a team is therefore key. this comment illustrates that students reflected and adjusted their strategies throughout the activity planning process. in sum, these activities were opportunities for students to learn by doing and observe fellow students in action. student perception of cognitive apprenticeship the first three conditions of cognitive apprenticeship, which refer directly to the learner, present objectives aimed at enhancing student autonomy. the other four conditions represent pedagogical means used by the instructor as a support for both learning and transferring knowledge to practice. see table 4. . international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 157 table 4. analytical examination of the cognitive apprenticeship cognitive apprenticeship criterion guiding questions students’ perspectives on field experience and project-based learning articulation of knowledge did students practise mobilizing the knowledge acquired in class and articulating it with new knowledge acquired in the field? “i got an opportunity to put a lot of my counselling skills to work. i feel like i was a better mentor because there were so many students depending on me, to discuss so many issues from academics to their relationships.” reflection on action were students able to share and develop their point of view with peers? did students carry out a self-assessment of their psychoeducational activity? “i became a bit more assertive when dealing with conflict, whether it was with staff or with the youth. i feel because of our discussions [during the seminar], we had gone through issues that people were having in their internship, and because of feedback that was given from our classmates and the professor, i feel it gave me the confidence to assert myself in those situations.” knowledge transfer have students practised recognizing the similarities and differences between similar clinical situations? although psychoeducators and other professionals make use of it in working with youth, “the psychoeducational model is just as useful for a youth worker”. all professions are different but “if we are learning how they interact together, how they overlap, then actually, we’re not perpetuating that difference, but rather we’re bringing things together. and i think that’s important.” coaching did the instructor provide support for activities to be performed? did the instructor use specific teaching material? students identified the components of the psychoeducational model from excerpts of a video. students proposed psychoeducational activities based on everyday play materials (play dough, images, cards). scaffolding did the instructor provide guidance to the students? did the instructor let the students build their own learning by letting them search for solutions? the internship instructor facilitated activities such as discussions and games focused on personal qualities, expressing emotions, and contributions to group success. modelling did the instructor communicate strategies for action or reflection by verbalizing them to students? the internship instructor provided feedback during in-class psychoeducational activities. fading when the students have reached a sufficient level of competence, does the instructor give them the opportunity to act alone in practice? by the end of the term, students performed activities on their own at their respective internship sites. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 158 the seminar discussions allowed students to articulate what they knew, demonstrating that the transfer of knowledge was taking place. as one student wrote, “the class discussions were a guide in terms of directing me on how to react to different situations and provided an opportunity to problem solve as a group.” students were able to understand connections between concepts underlying youth work and those foundational to psychoeducation, while also identifying differences. in fact, two students commented that youth do not appear to have enough of a say in the planning of psychoeducational activities. for these students, this represents a gap in gendreau’s model as illustrated in this comment: this activity … has highlighted for me also the importance of the collaborative approach within the field of youth work. i believe that it is difficult to create a great psychoeducational activity in a vacuum, as the success of such activity, i believe, is determined in how you bring the participants together in the activity. students also reflected on their internship experience. for example, a group of students created a game of snakes and ladders to explore highs and lows of the internship experience. students learned about themselves and others and discovered the personal and social implications of their learning. as one student pointed out, “i learnt a lot while preparing for the facilitation [of the psychoeducational activity] because it gave me an opportunity to be creative [and] it gave me a feeling of how to work with colleagues in an actual work situation.” although this preparatory activity was perceived positively by students, one student pointed out the adjustments that became necessary because of the context: “my classmates represent a far different audience than a group of young people.… getting them to participate was easy, which minimized areas of challenges.” another student’s comment supported this view: “the behaviour from the youth is unexpected, in the sense that they may participate, or they may act out. whereas, with our peers and in the setting of a class, the expected behaviour is to participate.” these comments illustrate the difficulty of replicating real world practice in the classroom. the student’s comments also suggest that internship experience is more effective when combined with pedagogies conducive to critical thinking and reflection. students engaged in a variety of metacognitive processes to monitor their learning. they planned their projects, monitored the success of various strategies while facilitating their activities, and reflected on the degree to which their strategies and interventions were working. as one student pointed out, “if i could plan this activity again, i would include more time for explanation, modelled after the classroom teacher’s clear and thorough instructions for group activities, instead of my more loose facilitating style that i had hoped would make the activity feel more relaxed.” in this case, the site supervisor became a model for the student to follow. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 159 project-based learning also allowed students to discriminate and match their knowledge to the intervention context. one student was surprised at how well youth responded to her activity: “the youth who participated did reach the objectives that i had set. their participation was creative, thoughtful, and earnest, which surprised me because this was something that was outside their regular routine.” this comment supports the idea that learning and performance are best fostered when students engage in projects that focus on specific goals and target an appropriate level of challenge. feedback from both the instructor and other members of the cohort contributed to the students’ ability to implement a psychoeducational activity in different contexts while adapting to the target clientele. as one student wrote, “it helped me to better understand the structural model of psychoeducation in action. i had designed a program for a paper last year but had never thought about actually implementing it. the advantage of running it in an internship seminar is the potential benefit supervision adds to the development of the activity.” project-based learning gives students some freedom in their choices and decisions. the supervisor stepped back, allowing students to coach and guide one another. for one student, this approach “was helpful because it allowed us to take ownership of the class, because it was not lecture based but rather discussion and activity based, we knew what we put into the class is what we would get, so this created ownership towards the class and it helped us participate.” finally, results also suggest that the internship experience was an opportunity to foster personal growth and develop strengths such as assertiveness and the ability to form working relationships with youth. most students also commented on the applied knowledge they gained and the professional growth they achieved. one wrote, “i feel that i have had a great opportunity to learn about how the field works in the real world.” after indicating great enjoyment of the internship experience, one student wrote, “this internship has been an amazing experience that taught me so much about myself and the field.” when asked to write about specific learnings regarding the internship experience, this illustrative comment was made by a student: “i am more confident with my animation and program development skills. having this knowledge of the psychoeducational model increased my professional skill set.” another intern wrote, “the team activity functioned in improving my skills in persuasion, encouraging participation, and facilitating useful brainstorming; goals that i had set at the beginning of my internship.” such learnings prompted them to develop a more discerning sense of their professional potential. in his final paper, one student wrote, “i created interventions with youth for the first time, which was an excellent way to motivate youth and make sure they were on track. i now feel confident to create and implement interventions with individuals in the future.” the integration of psychoeducational concepts to the internship seminar contributed to the students’ overall experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 160 project-based learning also presented some challenges, as evidenced by the following comment: “it was difficult to assess the number of participants as the youth come in on a drop-in basis [at the ymca] in the summer. the psychoeducational model was created for clinical spaces. however, it was easy to adapt to the community organization milieu.” another student interning in a high school setting added, “my site activity did not entirely go as planned. i received half the number of students that i expected.” this comment illustrates how the complex and diverse situations that arise in professional practice will require students to consider several possible solutions. consequently, the conditions of the internship do not always allow students to apply knowledge as it was taught in class. discussion previous research asserts that active pedagogies support higher-order skills in capstone courses such as internships (vanpee et al., 2010). this study contributes to the literature on capstone courses by illustrating how project-based learning that uses the aslt framework promotes students’ perception of transfer of learning in the context of internships. both principles of the aslt framework are intended to be useful when teachers are committed to promoting in-depth learning (vierset et al., 2015). in this sense, the active learning pedagogy used in this internship capstone course met most aslt conditions and supported transfer of learning to the real-world setting. this study also provides empirical findings on the value of innovative pedagogies in human intervention programs. the positive outcome of this innovation, we contend, can be attributed largely to the integration of project-based learning using a specific model, in this case the psychoeducative model, to guide the capstone internship experience. in particular, the psychoeducational activity projects carried out in the internships allowed students to take actions designed to address a real need in the community and to reflect on the implications of those actions. indeed, the contextualization of knowledge as a teaching and learning approach contributes to the transfer of learning (lave & wenger, 1991). moreover, the aslt framework made it possible to reflect on the pedagogical quality of the internship capstone course (vierset et al., 2015). the format of the internship seminar included activities in which students could learn and reflect on their experiences. as carlson and peterson (1993) posited, a capstone course “should give students a sense of coherence of their program of study in a discipline and should deepen their appreciation of the discipline as an approach to specific problems” (p. 239). in this sense, students not only developed the skills and knowledge to perform complex tasks, but they also practised combining and integrating them to develop greater fluency and automaticity (ambrose et al., 2010). the more the students are involved in real problem-solving, the greater the probability that they will be able to use what they learn after they graduate (svinicki & mckeachie, 2014). in this regard, a study conducted among students from all faculties of a francophone higher education institution demonstrated that project-based learning is among the educational international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 161 activities most valued. students feel more competent to perform the tasks required, more confident, and more in control of their learning (viau, 2009). indeed, when students are able to find positive value in a learning goal or activity, expect to successfully achieve a desired learning outcome, and perceive support from their environment (cognitive apprenticeship), they are likely to be strongly motivated to learn (ambrose et al., 2010). in general, the seminar and internship demonstrated the successful application of many conditions associated with the aslt model. however, opportunities for application of some conditions, such as learning transfer context and complete and complex learning situations, were limited. some settings made it more difficult to implement psychoeducational activities, given, for instance, the number of young people present, the fact that participation in activities was voluntary, and the lack of multidisciplinary team discussions. this supports prior research findings indicating that it is insufficient for students merely to possess the skills to realize a task: they must also have the opportunity to learn to apply their learned skills (frenay & bédard, 2004). therefore, successfully meeting the challenge of transferring knowledge to the real world requires that students recognize and are provided with situations in which they can use that knowledge. moreover, while psychoeducative activities in the seminar allowed the instructor to model different abilities, she did not observe or coach students during their on-site interventions. this means that modelling, coaching, and scaffolding, which according to collins et al. (1989) are critical, were limited. prior research has concluded that classroom learning, even with the extensive use of simulations, is not sufficient to produce effective human services professionals (myers kiser, 2012). thus, even though internships provide an opportunity to practise in the real world, promoting consistency in the coaching posture of supervisors in both academic and practice settings would require also developing the site supervisors’ awareness of the aslt pedagogical principles. this recommendation is consistent with other studies in psychoeducation in which site supervisors call for specific training expectations for internship coaching (moreau & villeneuve, 2006). clearly, teaching and learning in youth work and psychoeducation require a different approach, one that employs experiential teaching and learning such as project-based learning. in fact, a skilful integration of different approaches is vital in human services work (ranahan et al., 2015). the structural psychoeducative model could indeed be used by youth work professionals as a rigorous intervention methodology. in order to foster social interactions and to create favourable environments for youth empowerment (blanchet-cohen & brunson, 2014), youth work professionals need to develop competencies to work at the individual, group, and organizational levels. in this sense, the internship allowed students to engage in embodied learning activities that evoke emotional, physical, and psychological experiences (ranahan et al., 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 162 when students are given opportunities to learn in authentic situations in the field, such as those provided in internships, the learning becomes significantly more powerful (flippo, 2016). by engaging in guided experiences, individuals connect their learning to actual experiences, have opportunities for reflection, draw meanings from their reflections, create new learning, and transfer their learning into the next experience (frenay & bédard, 2004). in addition, the animation of a psychoeducational activity centred on the internship experience and carried out in class with peers has promoted positive interpersonal relationships, leading to a constructive classroom climate as described by barr (2016). students reported that these experiences involved much emotion and personal relevance. the depth of sharing increased over the course of the semester, and the seminar became a collegial support group. limitations this study has idiosyncratic dimensions associated with the quebec university context where french and english perspectives are intertwined. this context may be different from other jurisdictions and may influence how different pedagogical models have developed. results should be viewed with caution due to the small number of participants, which limits the study’s applicability to students in general. moreover, despite the precautions taken, the simultaneous posture of researcher and internship instructor played by the principal researcher may have led to biases in the information collected. in this case, the principal researcher was also well versed in the aslt framework, psychoeducation, and youth work; these particular qualifications may in themselves be difficult to replicate. while not all aspects of this project can be applied to other universities, the pedagogical methods used may inspire researchers and professionals working in other contexts. findings illustrate the impact of an innovative pedagogical project that provides grounds for further research on active pedagogies in capstone courses. with this article, we hope to encourage others to consider using the aslt framework in youth work education, adapting this highly specific template for the design of internships and capstone courses in order to best address the integration of theory and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 163 references ambrose, s. a., bridges, m. w., dipietro, m., lovett, m. c., & norman, m. k. 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(pp. 443–470). de boeck supérieur. wurdinger, s. d. (2016). the power of project-based learning: helping students develop important life skills. rowman & littlefield. https://doi.org/10.1051/pmed/20090330 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 146–166 166 biographies stéphanie hovington is a professor of psychoeducation at université du québec en abitibi-témiscamingue. she has over 20 years’ experience as a licensed psychoeducator, member of the ordre des psychoéducateurs et des psychoéducatrices du québec (oppq). she has taught various courses related to clinical practice in special care counselling and psychoeducation programs. she has designed and taught many internship seminars and was awarded a teaching excellence award for her work on internships and experiential courses. her research interests include pedagogical innovations and teaching and learning in higher education. in particular, she is interested in internship supervision, classroom climate, and the development of soft skills amongst human services professionals. natasha blanchet-cohen is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university and graduate director of the youth work diploma. she is the co-chair of the quebec youth research network. dr. blanchet-cohen’s work focuses on child rights and participation, resiliency, social inclusion, and systems change and innovation. as an interdisciplinary scholar, she has led national research initiatives on building resilient communities through youth engagement, and holds a particular interest in immigrant and indigenous youth. her work explores the opportunities and limitations for immigrant and indigenous young people in being change agents in their schools, homes, and communities, as well as the perspectives of youth in providing for rights-based and culturally safe services and programs. varda r. mann-feder is professor of applied human sciences at concordia university. dr. mann-feder is known for her research on aging out of care and her advocacy on behalf of youth in placement. she worked for many years as a consulting psychologist in the anglophone child welfare system in montreal, where she provided intervention training to front-line workers across a range of domains. dr. mann-feder is the adult mentor to the newly formed care jeunesse, the first alumni-of-care organization in quebec. at the international level, she is a member of the executive committee of intrac, and a member of the editorial board of fice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616088 a literature review of strategies for the prevention of intimate partner violence during the childbearing years teila sinnott and sibylle artz abstract: this narrative literature review examines the peer-reviewed research in english on the prevention of intimate partner violence (ipv) during the childbearing years, published between january 2000 and january 2015. it shows that in the 43 articles that were located there is a disproportionate emphasis on making females responsible for not becoming victims of ipv, especially if they are mothers, who are made responsible for ensuring not only their own but also their children’s safety. also noted is a striking lack of research on the prevention of ipv perpetration in males, particularly fathers. even the current ipv research that focuses on interventions with males, notes the absence of interventions specifically designed for fathers and calls for both a better understanding of the underlying factors that contribute to male violence and a focus on interventions tailored to preparing men for the challenges of fatherhood. two such programs are described in the final section of this review. keywords: intimate partner, domestic violence, domestic abuse, prevention, childbearing, pregnancy, parenthood, transition to parenthood, father, fatherhood, paternal teila sinnott, ma is working for the government of alberta as a policy analyst as part of a policy internship program. email: teilasinnott@gmail.com sibylle artz, phd (the corresponding author) is a professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. email: sartz@uvic.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616088 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 325 interest in the serious and widespread issue of intimate partner violence (ipv) has increasingly been characterized by a growing concern for the impact of exposure to this violence on children (jackson & artz, 2014) although children may not be the direct victims of ipv, research clearly shows that witnessing violence between family members puts children at risk of adverse outcomes in multiple domains, including neurological, mental, and physiological development; these in turn can lead to poor physical health; multiple behavioural challenges such as conduct disorder, delinquency, and crime, and, eventually, poor academic and employment outcomes ( artz et al., 2014). the personal impacts of witnessing ipv also come with enormous economic costs to society: costs for the provision of medical care, criminal justice, and other social services, and costs incurred through the loss of productivity in education and the workplace (andresen & linning, 2014). estimates that put the rate of ipv exposure at 125,000 new children in canada each year approximate a yearly economic expense of $759 million for a single cohort of children (andresen & linning, 2014). new costs of course are not “freestanding” and are added each year to the already accumulated lifelong costs of all previous new cases. with $759 million as the benchmark for each new cohort and the cumulative continuing costs over a ten-year period for the ten cohorts involved, the total costs of an additional cohort year over year is $26.4 billion (andresen & linning, 2014). taken together, the serious and far-reaching consequences of childhood exposure to ipv suggest to us that more should be done to prevent ipv and children’s exposure to this toxic experience. with that in mind we undertook a review of the current literature on research into the prevention of ipv in families with children. while we acknowledge that violent behaviours can be perpetrated by either member of an opposite-sex couple, our review focuses primarily on male violence against women because females are much more likely to be the victims of family, spousal, and ipv than are males (canadian centre for justice statistics, 2015; sinha, 2012, 2013). of particular note is that the literature we examined places a disproportionate emphasis on making females responsible for not becoming victims of ipv. this was especially true for mothers, who were considered responsible for ensuring not only their own but also their children’s safety. we also found a striking lack of research on the prevention of ipv perpetration in males, particularly fathers. thus, while maintaining our focus on identifying effective ipv prevention strategies, we also assessed the current landscape of ipv prevention practices, and the effects of these current practices in positioning mothers as responsible for managing ipv-related behaviour and outcomes. methodology to locate the existing body of research for this review, a computerized literature search was conducted. our central search terms — intimate partner violence, domestic violence, and domestic abuse — were variously combined with the keywords prevention, childbearing, pregnancy, parenthood, and transition to parenthood, and entered into academic search complete, google scholar, psycinfo, social sciences full text, and web of science. titles and abstracts identified in these initial searches were reviewed for relevance. the reference lists of these eligible international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 326 articles were also reviewed to find additional relevant articles that may not have been identified through the electronic search. our inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) focus on childbearing years or transition to parenthood (prenatal to first five years); (b) discussion of strategies for the prevention of ipv, or intervention in existing ipv such that intervention would preclude the risk of exposure for children; (c) published in the english language; (d) published between january 2000 and january 2015; and (e) published in a peer-reviewed journal. systematic reviews and study protocols were eliminated; however, relevant non-intervention studies and non-research commentaries were retained, as they helped to build a more comprehensive understanding of the current state of ipv prevention during childbearing years. following this initial search, a total of 31 articles met the inclusion criteria. of this number, 29 articles studied screening techniques or interventions for ipv victims in medical care settings or through home visitation programs, and 2 articles evaluated interventions for couples during the transition to parenthood. this initial search did not yield any literature on ipv prevention specifically for men during the transition to fatherhood. our finding that there appears to be a significant lack of research on preventing perpetration of ipv by men who are about to become fathers, and a concomitant emphasis on helping women to avoid violent men, led us to expand our search terms and inclusion criteria. using the same databases, our second search attempt sought to apply new search terms that focused more specifically on ipv in the context of fatherhood (e.g., father, fatherhood, paternal). in order to draw in some research and commentary that would help us learn more about the configuration of contemporary ipv prevention practices, we included articles that focused on ipv intervention specifically within the context of fatherhood, even following children’s exposure to violence. using this adjusted search strategy, we were successful in identifying an additional 12 articles. although these modifications departed somewhat from our original intention to examine the prevention of ipv before children’s exposure, the additional articles that were identified allowed for a more rounded understanding of the current landscape of ipv research specifically as it pertains to homes with children, which was consistent with our primary aim. notably, even with the expanded inclusion criteria for ipv perpetrator research, our searches returned a considerably smaller body of research than that on preventing women’s victimization by ipv. main areas of intervention screening during pregnancy the majority of the articles that we located in our search focused on screening and intervention for ipv in the context of medical practice, and this was especially true with regard to pregnant women. we believe that this may reflect a response to research showing that violence during pregnancy may be more severe and more frequent, like the work of bianchi and colleagues (2014), who found that women reporting abuse during pregnancy had significantly higher scores for threat of abuse, physical abuse, and danger for murder than women who reported ipv outside of pregnancy. it is also possible that research tends to focus on pregnant women because international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 327 experiencing ipv during gestation can endanger the health of both the women and their unborn children (bianchi et al., 2014). additionally, maternal medical care typically involves women in ongoing interactions with health care providers, thus providing a key opportunity for intervention (bacchus, mezey, bewley, & haworth, 2004). several studies that we reviewed aimed to determine the demographic and other factors that were associated with women who reported ipv while pregnant, in order to create a pregnancyfocused ipv risk profile that could be used to help maternal care practitioners identify cases early and provide timely assistance to victims. some common findings among these studies were that women who reported experiencing ipv during pregnancy were typically young, unmarried, nonwhite, lacking social supports, and afraid of someone close to them (andersen, marshak, & hebbeler, 2002; rådestad, rubertsson, ebeling, & hildingson, 2004; reichenheim, patricio, & moraes, 2008). also, medically-focused symptoms and presenting complaints such as back pain, chronic illness, coital pain, depression-related symptoms, stomach pain, and urinary tract problems were noted as specific indicators of possible ipv during pregnancy (rådestad et al., 2004). other ipv-related difficulties identified in the research included experiencing depression or anxiety, child sexual abuse (andersen et al., 2002), drug use, and a history of abortion (reichenheim et al., 2008). the authors of these studies suggest that asking about these symptoms and recognizing them as risk factors can support clinicians in identifying the emergence of ipv during pregnancy so that appropriate steps can be taken to intervene and prevent further abuse and harm. a study conducted in the united kingdom that assessed the prevalence of ipv in pregnancy found that 2.5% of pregnant women reported ipv if asked about it directly during a routine interview with a midwife (bacchus et al., 2004). the evidence from this study suggests that the introduction of routine screening of pregnant women could significantly contribute to increased rates of ipv detection, as women rarely disclose ipv to health care professionals unless directly asked. in establishing the most effective ipv screening methods with pregnant women, a japanese study determined that self-administered questionnaires, as opposed to face-to-face interviews, resulted in significantly higher identification rates (kataoka, yaju, eto, & horiuchi, 2010). this is a useful finding; however, further studies are needed in different regional and cultural settings to establish the generalizability of the results, particularly as japanese cultural norms regarding verbal disclosure of private and family matters may have influenced these outcomes (kataoka et al., 2010). given the importance of directly asking potential victims about ipv, humphreys, tsoh, kohn, and gerbert (2011) investigated whether an interactive video-counselling intervention presented during prenatal care, with a cue sheet for practitioners to enquire about ipv, would improve rates of ipv identification. women receiving the video counselling were significantly more likely to report having a discussion with their care provider about ipv than the women receiving the usual care (humphreys et al., 2011). although this study only reported on provider– patient discussions of ipv and did not indicate rates of successful identification of ipv, this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 328 strategy may nonetheless provide a means of overcoming some of the documented barriers to greater prevalence of screening and risk assessment (humphreys et al., 2011). practitioners’ attitudes towards and knowledge about ipv have also been identified as playing a crucial role in ipv screening and response. a comparison of hospitaland communitybased midwives’ views and experiences with routine ipv enquiry indicated that both groups of midwives felt that they had a significant role to play in responding to ipv (lazenbatt, taylor, & cree, 2009). however, both groups also tended to underestimate the prevalence of ipv and only identified and responded to a portion of these cases (lazenbatt et al., 2009). this suggests a need for more training for maternal care providers to gain knowledge and confidence in responding to ipv. the bristol pregnancy domestic violence training program for midwives is one example of a program that has been developed in response to such a need (salmon, murphy, baird, & price, 2006; baird, salmon, & white, 2013). an evaluation of the bristol program found it to be successful in improving midwives’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding routine antenatal enquiry for ipv (salmon et al., 2013), and in a five-year follow-up, showed a statistically significant increase in midwives’ self-reported confidence and knowledge about responding to disclosure compared to the original data (baird et al., 2013). despite increases in knowledge and confidence, however, the actual rates of inquiry following delivery of the program were not as high as anticipated (baird et al., 2013). midwives identified several significant barriers that have limited greater implementation of routine screening, suggesting that changes in practitioner knowledge and attitudes are only one part of the equation. the most widely documented barrier to greater screening was the presence of a partner during antenatal consultation, which prevented maternal care staff from being able to ask directly about ipv (baird et al., 2013; lazenbatt et al., 2006; marchant, davidson, garcia, & parsons, 2001; salmon et al., 2006). in addition, an analysis of policies and practices in midwife trusts in england and wales found that only 12% of the units studied had written policies for identifying ipv, and only 30% had any form of agreed practice in this area (marchant et al., 2001). similar findings have suggested that midwives have been reluctant to enquire about ipv because they lacked the requisite knowledge of organizational policies (lazenbatt et al., 2006), or because of a perceived lack of organizational support, time, and resources (salmon et al., 2006). in responding to known barriers, an earlier study by marchant and colleagues (2001) recommended that, in addition to greater training and education, clear policies and guidelines focusing on the identification of ipv should be put in place in maternal care settings. baird et al. (2013) also emphasized these recommendations and noted that, in particular, such policies should ensure that a woman is seen alone at least once during her pregnancy to give her an opportunity for safe disclosure. intervention during pregnancy screening for ipv risk during pregnancy is becoming increasingly recommended as a best practice for the reduction and prevention of ipv victimization, but based on our review little is yet international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 329 known about which interventions are most effective in assisting women once ipv victimization has been recognized. five studies were identified that discussed different treatment modalities employed with pregnant women. we present these below in the order in which they were published. in seeking to compare the treatment outcomes for pregnant, physically abused hispanic american women who were receiving assistance at two urban prenatal clinics, mcfarlane, soeken, and wiist (2000) engaged 329 participants in a longitudinal, repeated-evaluation interview study that compared three types of intervention — brief therapy, counselling, and outreach — by interviewing participants at 2, 6, 12, and 18 months post-delivery. analyzing their data using repeated measure anova, they found that violence scores at 2 months were significantly lower for the outreach group (p < .05) and the brief therapy group than for the counselling group. however, they also found that this initial significantly lower finding for the outreach group disappeared over time so that no treatment differences remained at 6, 12, and 18 months. still, the 6-, 12-, and 18-month follow-ups showed that, despite the somewhat patchy initial results, positive findings did emerge over time, in that the severity of abuse had declined significantly for all three groups (p < .001), significantly bettering the initial immediate positive result for the outreach group. these long-term results can be seen as promising for all three interventions, but should be interpreted with caution since no control groups were involved. in a hong kong-based, 110 participant, randomized control group study focused on empowerment training of pregnant women who were being abused by their intimate partners, tiwari et al. (2005) found that treatment group participants who had been subjected to minor physical abuse reported significantly less psychological abuse and significantly fewer incidents of minor physical violence after receiving the intervention. however, women experiencing sexual or serious physical abuse reported no significant changes. the empowerment approach also yielded some significant results in a subsequent study conducted in peru by cripe et al. (2010). the study, which involved 220 women randomly assigned to either empowerment treatment or a control group receiving standard care, consisted of asking about abuse and offering program referrals. cripe and colleagues (2010) found that, compared to the control group, the empowerment treatment group “were more likely to hide money (44.6% vs. 34.3%), establish a code with family or friends (19.6% vs. 16.2%), ask neighbors to call police if violence began (6.9% vs. 1.0%), had available bank account numbers (17.1% vs. 3.1%), had valuable jewelry (8.4% vs. 3.8%), and had available a hidden bag with extra clothing (9.0% vs. 3.1%)” (p. 2054). the fact that the members of the intervention and control groups who participated in the study did not report significant differences in their increased adoption of safety behaviours, in their improved health-related quality of life, or in their increased use of community resources, suggests that care in general outweighs the importance of any particular therapeutic approach. as cripe et al. state, “simply asking pregnant women about abuse and offering referral could potentially interrupt and prevent further ipv” (p. 2072). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 330 promising findings were also reported by kiely, el-mohandes, el-khorazaty, and gantz, (2010) in their 1044 participant, randomized control group study of pregnant or recently delivered african american women, where the intervention group received individually tailored psychobehavioural counselling sessions and the control group received standard prenatal care. keily et al. found that overall, the women who had been randomly assigned to the counselling group reported significantly fewer episodes of ipv victimization than those who remained within the standard prenatal care group, although levels of severity of ipv yielded differences within the intervention group: those in the intervention group who had earlier experienced minor ipv had significant reductions in further ipv episodes both during pregnancy and postpartum, while women who had previously experienced severe ipv reported significant reductions in further episodes only during the postpartum period. as well, those who received the counselling intervention had fewer preterm infants and longer gestation periods, leading the researchers to conclude that, “a relatively brief intervention during pregnancy had discernible effects on ipv and pregnancy outcomes” (p. 273). acknowledging the problem and offering help and support are of central importance to violence prevention, a finding that is further supported by kramer, nobusch, and rice (2012) who, in their evaluation of safe mom, safe baby, a collaborative, community-based initiative serving pregnant and newly delivered mothers who disclose ipv victimization during screening, found that the clients participating in the program “achieved birth outcomes comparable to the overall population of women delivering at the centre” (p. 314). while this study has limitations in that it did not involve a control group and did not provide data about the occurrence of ipv victimization, it is still noteworthy that women receiving the intervention reported a higher number of safety behaviours at program completion than they had reported at intake, and more than half indicated progress toward the maintenance of violence-free relationships. finally, we think it worthy of note that several studies that we have discussed in this section have suggested that the presence of an ipv assessment may itself contribute to reducing or halting future abuse by simply making women aware of this concern (cripe et al., 2010; mcfarlane et al., 2000; tiwari et al., 2005); therefore, future research should seek to distinguish between outcomes prompted by screening alone and those that can be credited to specific intervention programs that could be generalized to multiple groups and locations. pediatric screening because of the multiple negative outcomes associated with children’s exposure to ipv, this issue has also come to the attention of pediatricians. as thackeray, hibbard, and dowd (2010) note, “pediatricians need to be aware that most abused caregivers will seek care for their children but not for themselves, which makes the pediatric setting an ideal place to be alert to the presence of ipv” (p.1096). the literature on pediatric care that we reviewed showed that, in pediatric just as in maternal care settings, there are several identified barriers to ipv screening; these include lack of time and resources, lack of knowledge about ipv, insufficient referral sources, and fear of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 331 offending or angering the caregiver (erickson, hill, & siegel, 2001; thackeray et al., 2010). studies that examined routine ipv screening report a range of findings, from 5% to 18% of participants reporting ipv in one study (borowsky & ireland, 2002), and 8.5% in another (erickson et al., 2001). further, pediatricians were found to significantly underestimate the prevalence of ipv in their practice (erickson et al., 2001). pediatricians did not uniformly inquire about ipv, and those most likely to conduct routine screenings were those who had previously completed ipv-specific training (erickson et al., 2001). in response to this ongoing need, education about the dynamics of ipv and the implementation of an office protocol for managing cases of ipv — particularly one developed with input from local community resources and women’s shelters — have been recommended (borowsky & ireland, 2002; erickson et al., 2001; thackeray et al., 2010). there are, however, no identified studies that examine the effectiveness of pediatric screening on reducing ipv. this suggests that more research into pediatric screening is needed. early prevention home visiting programs early prevention home visiting (ephv) programs that are part of preand post-natal care provide another opportunity for screening and intervention for potential victims of ipv. these programs have traditionally been used to identify home and caregiving risk factors in order to promote healthy family environments and facilitate positive child development (chamberlain, 2008). in response to growing evidence about the negative impact of ipv on children, there has been an increased interest in adapting existing ephv programs to specifically address risk of ipv and exposure of children (chamberlain, 2008). in one randomized control study of home visitation following child birth, hawaiian mothers receiving ephv services reported lower rates of ipv victimization (e.g., being physical assaulted) and significantly lower rates of perpetration (e.g., physically assaulting their partners) than the control group of matched families who did not receive ephv services (bair-merritt et al., 2010). a dutch study of the impact on ipv of nurses’ home visits during pregnancy reported findings similar to those of the hawaiian study: at 32 weeks of pregnancy, women receiving the ephv intervention reported significantly less psychological, physical, and sexual aggression by intimate partners, and significantly lower use of psychological and physical aggression towards and injury of their intimate partners, than the matched participants in the control group (mejdoubi et al., 2013). further, in the dutch study, these significant reductions in both victimization and perpetration were sustained at 24 months after birth. together, the two studies suggest that ephv programs can assist with mitigating women’s victimization and perpetration of ipv following childbirth. another aspect of ephv programs that has been assessed is the impact of the type of visitor used. in a comparison of the impact of home visits performed by nurses and paraprofessionals, olds et al. (2004) found in a two-year follow-up that only the nurse-visited intervention group reported a significant decrease in physical partner violence. olds and colleagues suggest that this indicates that nurses may be more effective than paraprofessionals in dealing with ipv during home visits, although the reason for this remains unknown. as well, it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 332 not yet possible to state definitively that one type of home visitor is more effective overall than another, since studies to date have involved a range of home visitors with a variety of educational training backgrounds and occupational titles. for example, taft et al. (2011) examined the role of peer mentors, rather than professional home visitors, in providing social support to pregnant and recent mothers at risk of ipv victimization and found that at follow-up mean abuse scores favoured the intervention group; outcome measures for depression, well-being, and social support also improved, although only at weak levels. still, these findings suggest that mentorship programs provide a promising approach for social support to new mothers. as the existing research on ephv impact shows, drawing conclusions about the relationship between professional designation and impact is as yet somewhat premature and in need of further research. different types of home visitor, filling various roles, may have different confidence levels in dealing with ipv, which will have an impact on the effectiveness of the ephv. research has shown that visitors reported multiple personal barriers to addressing ipv during their visits. these included: (a) fear of offending the client and having the client withdraw from services; and (b) not knowing what to do if ipv were disclosed (eddy, kilburn, chang, bullock, & sharps, 2008; jack et al., 2012; sharps et al., 2013); (c) believing the formal training they received to be inadequate (tandon, parillo, jenkins, & duggan, 2005); and (d) not knowing how to assist clients in connecting with the resources they needed due to a lack of knowledge about the community services available (eddy et al., 2008). as reported by jack et al. (2012), home visitors’ lack of general knowledge and skills in identifying and responding to ipv was certainly noted by their clients. for these reasons, jack and colleagues (2012), and before them chamberlain (2008) and tandon and colleagues (2005), recommended that these barriers be dealt with through more formal, intensive, and ongoing skills-based training for home visitors who are dealing with ipv risk assessment, communication about risks, safety planning, and tailoring interventions; and that this training should include helping home visitors become familiar with the legal options and social supports available for mothers experiencing ipv. chamberlin (2008) also recommended that ephv programs should develop partnerships with other community organizations in order to help facilitate necessary referrals and interventions. another recommendation was the design of detailed screening protocols and intervention curricula specific to the particular circumstances of ephv that take into account the barriers to addressing ipv in a home visitation context (chamberlain, 2008; tandon et al., 2005). in general, ephv programs have been observed to have a potential role in reducing the incidence of ipv following childbirth; however, there is a need for more research to determine the most effective ways of implementing this practice, and for more work to be done in optimizing these programs to best meet the specific needs of mothers at risk of ipv. interventions for couples violence prevention counselling and education programs for expectant couples have also been noted in the ipv prevention literature, but this approach does not appear to be widely researched: we found only two articles on these topics, both published in the same year. halford, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 333 petch, creedy, and gamble (2011) examined prevalence rates of ipv in couples who were expecting their first child and attending couple relationship education. they found that 32% of expectant couples reported at least one incident of violence in the past year, and 7% reported injury resulting from ipv. halford et al. suggested that these prevalence rates indicate that couples relationship education programs should include training in healthy communication and conflict management, with the express purpose of reducing the risk of ipv. florsheim, mcarthur, hudak, heavin, and burrow-sanchez (2011) examined the impact of the young parenthood program, a co-parenting counselling program for young expectant parents, on ipv. they found that 3 months after the birth couples attending the program were significantly less likely to report occurrence of ipv than were those in the control group; however, this difference was not sustained in the 18month follow-up. still, florsheim et al. suggest that the 3-month results can be seen as encouraging and that counselling programs may address some of the risk factors for ipv during the transition to parenthood, although program improvements and further research are needed. interventions for perpetrators our review located a small body of literature focusing on fathers as perpetrators of ipv that situated these men as responsible for their own violent behaviour and its consequences for their intimate partners and their children. in a marked contrast to what we found in the literature on working with female ipv victims, which provided empirical and evaluative data to help inform practice, much of the research on male perpetrators is based on qualitative inquiries that foreground male perspectives but do not examine actual intervention practices. the dearth of programming for male perpetrators of ipv is well noted in the more recent research on this issue (alderson, westmarland, & kelly, 2013; stanley, graham-kevan, & borthwick, 2012; stover, 2013). further, within that literature the absence of violence prevention approaches that focus on fatherhood is particularly striking in light of statistics indicating that 84% of men arrested for ipv have some type of fathering role; and that in 82% of cases, these relationships continued after arrest (salisbury, henning, & holdford, 2009). also striking is that in their analysis of existing ipv perpetrator programs, alderson et al. (2013) found that half of the programs they examined did not provide any services for children, and only three organizations worked with the children of fathers in the program. still, we were able to locate some early research in this area and we present it below. transition to fatherhood the work of condon, boyce, and corkindale (2004) was particularly useful to building our understanding of ipv in men who are about to become fathers. these researchers, who examined the social and biological effects of men’s transition to parenthood, reported a statistically significant deterioration in men’s mood, quality of social support, couple relationships, and sexual functioning during their partner’s pregnancy, with little postnatal improvement. condon and colleagues therefore suggest that this heightening of stress during the transition to parenthood is a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 334 time when men would benefit from preparation and support for fatherhood, and that doing so has the potential of mitigating the risk for violence. fatherhood as a motivation for change fatherhood as a motivation for change was highlighted in a number of other qualitative inquiries of fathers who perpetrated violence against their partners. for example, perel and peled (2008) found that fathers expressed a strong desire for a closer and warmer relationship with their children, and that this desire played a significant role in their personal narratives. fathers indicated concern for the well-being of their children and expressed ways that they intended to care for and protect them (stover & spink, 2012). many fathers saw their growth as a parent as part of an ongoing process of change that ran parallel to their efforts toward non-violence (perel & peled, 2008; vetelӓinen, grӧholm, & holma, 2013). the findings from these reports powerfully represent men’s desires to be good fathers; however, some tensions arise from significant evidence that also indicated that men may not perceive the negative impact of their violent behaviours on their children, and therefore did not account for that violence in their assessment of their own parenting. in many cases, men’s talk of violence was in distinct isolation from their talk of fatherhood, avoiding any linking of these two aspects of themselves (perel & peled, 2008; vetelӓinen et al., 2013). many fathers were prepared to admit that their children had been exposed to some violence, but few perceived this exposure as having a negative impact on the children (stover & spink, 2012; salisbury et al., 2009). however, this trend may be stronger for nonbiological fathers; in a comparison of biological fathers’ and stepfathers’ perceptions of the effects of their ipv on their children, biological fathers were more likely to report an awareness that their violence negatively impacted their children in a range of domains (rothman, mandel, & silverman, 2007). on a positive overall note, despite these differences, the majority in both the biological father and stepfather groups indicated that they were willing to stop their violence and seek help (rothman et al., 2007). in order to begin to determine whether fatherhood plays a role in the success rates of various male-focused ipv intervention programs, the interaction between fatherhood and the treatment type was examined in a study comparing a coordinated substance use and ipv treatment program with treatment for substance use alone (smith stover, mcmahon, & easton, 2011). this study showed that combining substance use treatment with ipv treatment was significantly more effective than offering treatment for substance use alone in reducing both violence and alcohol use in the men who were not fathers, but generated no significant differences for men who were fathers (smith stover et al., 2011). the exact relationship between fatherhood and treatment outcomes, therefore, remains unclear. smith stover et al. (2011) concluded that these findings further underline the need to better understand how fatherhood plays a role in violence prevention and intervention and how this role is connected to substance abuse. in a further response to the lack of fatherhood-focused programming, stanley and colleagues (2012) examined the impact of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 335 existing programs for male perpetrators that did not explicitly address men’s parenting in order to determine how these programs impacted fathers. through a series of qualitative interviews, stanley et al. (2012) determined that many fathers in the program were motivated to change their behaviours in order to regain custody of their children following an apprehension, and expressed the desire to become a “better father” and make a positive difference for their children. the authors therefore suggested that “men’s needs to protect and maintain a positive image of themselves as fathers could function as motivation to act to change abusive behaviour” (stanley et al., 2012, p. 272). in response to this evidence regarding fathers’ perceptions of the impact of ipv exposure on children, it has been recommended that intervention programming for fathers who perpetrate ipv should include among their aims increasing men’s awareness about the negative effects of exposure for children, and prompting reflection on this behaviour as part of a larger commitment to being a “good father” (alderson et al., 2013; salisbury et al., 2009). indeed, the small handful of fathers who were prepared to discuss the impact of their violence on children were those who had previously completed intensive ipv interventions (perel & peled, 2008). this suggests that interventions that focus on educating perpetrators about the impact of their actions on their children are well placed within an ongoing process of change toward non-violence. interventions for fathers who perpetrate ipv relatively recently, the fathers for change program was developed to address the comorbidity of ipv and substance abuse and its impact on parenting outcomes (stover, 2013). this program was developed with a focus on fathering, and sought to increase parenting competence as a motivation to change these men’s interrelated patterns of violence and substance use. in order to evaluate the impacts of this program, stover (2015) conducted a small sample evaluation of 18 fathers who were randomly assigned to the program and compared to a matched group receiving standard drug counselling. this evaluation showed that men in the fathers for change group were more likely to complete the treatment and reported greater satisfaction with the program; however, those who completed either group reduced their use of substances to the same degree and both groups had significant reductions in violence over time, although this trend was greater for the men in the fathers for change program. stover’s findings augur well for the fathers for change approach and suggest that more large-scale evaluations of the program should be completed in order to further establish its effectiveness in working with fathers who engage in ipv. also promising as an intervention that has the potential to reduce ipv in fathers is strong fathers, a psycho-educational, cognitive-behavioural approach for managing co-occurring ipv and child maltreatment (penell, rikard, & sanders-rice, 2014). using participants’ self-assessments and an analysis of child protection data to examine the effects of the strong fathers program, penell et al. found that men’s desires to be “good fathers” are strongly connected to their motivations to change their patterns of violence; following completion of the strong fathers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 336 program, the number of child protection reports involving the program participants decreased from 32 of the 53, to only 4 of the 53. it is noteworthy that three of the fathers involved in the four child protection incident reports did not complete the program, thus suggesting that full completion of the program may have reduced this number of child protection incidents even further. these results are promising and, as with those generated by the fathers for change study (stover, 2015), warrant further research. summary and directions for future research the research that has been presented here represents the majority of the recent peerreviewed literature regarding the prevention of ipv during childbearing years, particularly with respect to preventing children’s exposure to violence. this research has by and large focused on contemporary practices directed at influencing the behaviour of mothers as potential victims of ipv. although there have been some promising findings, there remains a need for more largescale, high-quality trials in order to determine the most effective methods of screening and intervention with mothers. there is also a need for the development of more ipv-specific training of professionals and a protocol for assessing risk in order to improve the rates of screening and the quality of responses to ipv disclosure. across the board, the literature suggests that all professionals interacting with pregnant women and recent mothers need to become familiar with available community resources in order to develop a meaningful response to ipv and to help women access appropriate supports. we also note that the research on the prevention of female ipv victimization was largely characterized by contexts of women’s medical care and home visitation programs focused on mothers. we believe that this may be largely a result of the immediate access to mothers and children during these medical visits. although we acknowledge the practicality of this approach, and the intention of creating safe spaces for battered women and their children, we question the extent to which this contributes to discourses that focus on the victimhood of women and represent women’s choices as a determining factor in children’s exposure to violence. as featherstone and peckover (2007) point out, strategies directed at influencing the behaviour of ipv victims position these mothers as responsible for managing and mitigating risk to themselves and their children; and, in shifting attention away from men’s behaviours, miss a significant opportunity to engage with men as potential perpetrators of ipv, specifically as they transition into the role of father. more services for fathers would not only constitute a more comprehensive response to ipv, but would more effectively address the safety needs of women and children by addressing the problem at its immediate source. in a call for more perpetrator programming that specifically addresses men as fathers, alderson et al. (2013) contend: if perpetrator programmes are successful in changing [violent] men’s ways of engaging with their children, and [these] men can safely be involved in their children’s lives, then they are integral to an overall social work response to the safeguarding and protecting of children who live with domestic violence. (p. 191) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 337 based on the results of our search, we believe that research on programs for ipv prevention for fathers is still in its infancy. fortunately, we were able to locate some promising findings indicating that fatherhood is a key motivator in men’s processes of change toward cessation of violence (penell et al., 2014; stover, 2015). unfortunately, we were not able to uncover work focused on men that explored the development and evaluation of strategies to prevent their engagement in ipv during their transition to fatherhood. we posit that, for men, the time during which they and their partners are expecting a child is as opportune a moment to work on ipv prevention as it is for women, given that this has been identified as a period of stress and uncertainty, and such programs would help prepare them for the challenges of fatherhood (condon et al., 2004). this is an area of ipv prevention that has been neglected, but presents a rich opportunity to provide a response that avoids placing the responsibility for mitigation of violence on mothers, and has the potential to increase the safety and well-being of all members of the family. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 338 references alderson, s., westmarland, n., & kelly, l. 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(2012). fathers and domestic violence: building motivation for change through perpetrator programmes. child abuse review, 21(4), 264–274. stover, c. s. (2013). fathers for change: a new approach to working with fathers who perpetrate intimate partner violence. journal of the american academy of psychiatry and the law online, 41(1), 65–71. stover, c. s. (2015). fathers for change for substance use and intimate partner violence: initial community pilot. family process, 54(4), 600–609. stover, c. s., & spink, a. (2012). affective awareness in parenting of fathers with co-occurring substance abuse and intimate partner violence. advances in dual diagnosis, 5(2), 74–85. taft, a. j., small, r., hegarty, k. l., watson, l. f., gold, l., & lumley, j. a. (2011). mothers’ advocates in the community (mosaic) non-professional mentor support to reduce intimate partner violence and depression in mothers: a cluster randomised trial in primary care. bmc public health, 11(1), 178. tandon, s. d., parillo, k. m., jenkins, c., & duggan, a. k. (2005). formative evaluation of home visitors’ role in addressing poor mental health, domestic violence, and substance abuse among low-income pregnant and parenting women. maternal and child health journal, 9(3), 273–283. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 324–342 342 thackeray, j. d., hibbard, r., & dowd, m. d. (2010). intimate partner violence: the role of the pediatrician. pediatrics, 125(5), 1094–1100. tiwari, a., leung, w. c., leung, t. w., humphreys, j., parker, b., & ho, p. c. (2005). a randomised controlled trial of empowerment training for chinese abused pregnant women in hong kong. bjog: an international journal of obstetrics & gynaecology, 112(9), 1249– 1256. veteläinen, a., grönholm, h., & holma, j. (2013). discussions of fatherhood in male batterer treatment group. sage open, 3(2), 1–10. a literature review of strategies for the prevention of intimate partner violence during the childbearing years teila sinnott and sibylle artz methodology main areas of intervention screening during pregnancy intervention during pregnancy pediatric screening early prevention home visiting programs interventions for couples interventions for perpetrators transition to fatherhood fatherhood as a motivation for change interventions for fathers who perpetrate ipv summary and directions for future research references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718073 fathers’ importance in adolescents’ academic achievement stephen d. whitney, sara prewett, ze wang, and haiqin chen abstract: many studies have investigated mothers’ impact on students’ achievement, yet little is known about how various father types impact students’ school performance. this study examines 6 mutually exclusive categories of father type: resident biological fathers, resident stepfathers, resident adoptive fathers, nonresident biological fathers, unknown biological fathers, and deceased fathers. adolescents’ school performance from seventh through twelfth grade is examined using data from 3 waves of the national longitudinal study of adolescent health (add health), a nationally representative united states secondary data source. findings indicate different types of fathers have distinct and independent positive associations with adolescents’ school achievement, after controlling for mother involvement. adolescents with resident biological fathers had higher school performance than adolescents with nonresident fathers. adolescents with stepfathers had higher rates of school failure than their peers living with their biological parents. the lowest achievement and the highest risk of school failure and course failure were experienced by those adolescents who did not have a resident father figure and didn’t know the identity of their fathers. implications include the need to model for the unique influence of father involvement and father type on academic achievement, and the inclusion of unique family contexts in efforts to increase adolescents’ school involvement and integration. keywords: father type, father involvement, adolescents, academic achievement, school failure stephen whitney the corresponding author is an associate professor of educational psychology at the university of missouri, 14 hill hall, columbia, mo 65211-2130. email: whitneyst@missouri.edu sara prewett is a postdoctoral fellow in the educational, school and counseling department at the university of missouri, 14 hill hall, columbia, mo 65211-2130. ze wang is an associate professor of educational statistics at the university of missouri, 14 hill hall, columbia, mo 65211-2130. haiqin chen is an associate psychometrician at the american dental association, 211 east chicago ave., chicago, il 60611-2678. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718073 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 102 in recent years, research has increased concerning the associations of fathers’ (including guardians’) contributions to their children’s psychosocial and academic outcomes (e.g., tamislemonda, shannon, cabrera, & lamb, 2004; martin, ryan, & brooks-gunn, 2010). studies have documented the unique contribution of fathers’ activities and behaviors, since mothers and fathers differ in terms of parenting styles (simons & conger, 2007), parental care (mikelson, 2008), and parental involvement (lamb, 2004). increased focus on fathers’ roles raises new questions about the influences of different categories of fathers in children’s developmental outcomes, particularly with regard to changing family dynamics such as divorce, remarriage, and unmarried childbearing (schwartz & finley, 2006; perry, harmon, & leeper, 2012). despite distinct categories of fathers in a variety of family dynamics, prior research studies often dichotomize father types into biological fathers versus stepfathers (e.g., sweeney, 2007; videon, 2004), or father presence versus father absence (e. g., vogt yuan & hamilton, 2006). many studies fail to investigate fathers’ influence on children’s academic outcomes, instead relying on mothers’ involvement to model the effect of both parents (see an & hodge, 2013; lai & vadeboncoeur, 2013: monti, pomerantz, & roisman, 2014; von otter, 2014; sheng, 2012). as family demographics continue to evolve, research into the various influences of different father types becomes more important. children experience a wide range of family types and categories of father, including biological, step, adoptive, foster, and absent. the few studies that do account for different father types are inconsistent. for example, some studies have reported that children with stepfamilies have lower academic achievement and more problem behaviors (cherlin & furstenberg, 1994), while other studies have illustrated that the level of involvement is important, so that highly involved stepfathers were associated with academic outcomes for their stepchildren similar to those of children with resident biological fathers (emmott & mace, 2014; vogt yuan & hamilton, 2006). however, there is some evidence that greater fathers’ involvement in later schooling is correlated with lower achievement, possibly because fathers become more highly involved when students are already struggling (mcbride, dyer, liu, brown, & hong, 2009). finally, little is known about the influence of having an adoptive father on child outcomes, which is an important consideration since adoptive fathers make a legal and deliberate choice to become a father (baumann, 1999). the current study provides important contributions to these gaps in our knowledge by examining how fathers’ roles in children’s families are associated with adolescents’ academic outcomes. furthermore, the association of three types of resident father (biological, step, and adoptive) and three types of nonresident biological father (deceased, unknown, and not living with adolescents) with adolescents’ school outcomes is examined. mothers’ involvement is controlled for to understand how fathers’ contributions to children’s outcomes emerge above and beyond mothers’ involvement. understanding fathers’ various familial roles and the importance of their involvement in their children’s academic lives strengthens our understanding of all aspects of family systems that impact children’s lived experiences. the study utilizes secondary data and is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 103 largely exploratory in nature. it is based within a united states sample and generalizations beyond the united states are tenuous. research and theory of father types and father influence fathers’ involvement has unique and long-term outcomes for children, although mother’s involvement is the more traditional way of measuring parents’ involvement (curtis, grinnelldavis, & alleyne-green, 2017; gordon, 2016, 2017). for example, in a longitudinal study, flouri and buchanan (2004) found that fathers’ level of involvement in their children’s educational pursuits at age 7 influenced educational attainment 13 years later when those children turned 21. additionally, coley, lewin-bizan, and carrano (2011) found that fathers’ warm and stimulating parenting predicted enhanced reading and math skills for children in middle childhood. mcbride et al. (2009) found that father affection in early childhood predicted later father involvement in children’s academic pursuits. mcbride, schoope-sullivan, and ho (2005) found that the involvement of a father figure in a child’s schooling may affect student achievement beyond the influence of maternal involvement. finally, jeynes (2015) found in a meta-analysis of father involvement and school outcomes that father involvement contributed to students’ achievement above and beyond mothers’ involvement, especially for students in elementary school. however, although it is clear that fathers have unique contributions to students’ outcomes, little is known about the particular contributions of different categories of fathers. biological fathers studies have shown that in two-biological-parent families, involved fathers have a distinct positive association with children’s school achievement over and above that of mothers, even after taking into account parents’ education and income (affuso, bacchini, & miranda, 2017; martin et al., 2010; tamis-lemonda et al., 2004; u.s. department of education, 1998; vasquez, patall, fong, corrigan, & pine, 2016). in the literature, most studies use two-biological-parent families as the basis of comparison for other family structures, including those with stepfathers and adoptive fathers, but few specifically focus on the fathers’ unique contribution to their children’s outcomes. fathers’ involvement and support in their children’s lives has been associated with students’ school readiness and academic outcomes when children had lower levels of mothers’ involvement and support (harris, furstenberg, & marmer, 1998; martin et al., 2010); however, fathers’ involvement and support has not predicted students’ school outcomes when there were high levels of support from the mothers. higher levels of father support are especially important when, for any reason, mothers are unable to provide a high level of support, even within a nuclear family structure. even when analyses find that fathers’ involvement and support are insignificant (e.g., martin et al., 2010), or even negative (mcbride et al., 2009) as a contributor to students’ academic outcomes, fathers may contribute to the family in a way not yet measured given that two-biological-parent families have students with the highest academic outcomes (e.g., manning & lamb, 2003). thus, biological fathers are likely contributing to the students’ achievement outcomes in other ways. for example, simons & conger (2007) found that within two-biologicalinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 104 parent households, when parents both demonstrated authoritative parenting styles, characterized by high warmth and high consistency, children had the highest academic outcomes, and children who had at least one parent with an authoritative parenting style fared better than those with no authoritative parents. yet, they found that an authoritative father did not outweigh having an uninvolved mother (simons & conger, 2007). thus, there are other mechanisms at work in a biological father’s role in child rearing and students’ academic outcomes. stepfathers certain stereotypes about stepfathers are well known. for example, stepfathers are seen as less loving, more conflictual, less supportive, and less involved than biological fathers, and are more strongly associated with negative outcomes for children (planitz & feeney, 2009). when examining the psychosocial adjustment of members of a stepfamily, gosselin and david (2007) found that outcomes were dependent on the coping ability of all members. furthermore, the level of communication among members of the stepfamily predicted the quality of the relationships among stepparents and stepchildren, although a high quality of communication was linked to a lower quality of relationship, perhaps due to the stepparent playing the role of a friend rather than parent and disciplinarian. additionally, gosselin and david (2007) found that when children engaged in meaningful activities together with their biological fathers, regardless of residence, the children reported poor relationship quality with their stepfathers. some literature indicates that stepfathers exhibit lower levels of warmth, acceptance, and involvement, and more negativity toward their stepchildren than biological fathers do, especially when those stepfathers have their own biological children (lamb, 2007). however, when stepfamilies have biological children, the stepfathers’ engagement with their stepchildren rises and is similar to biological fathers’ engagement and involvement levels. finally, lamb (2007) investigated when and why stepfathers adopt their stepchildren. the few stepfathers who do adopt their stepchildren are more likely to not have their own biological children, and are in the earlier stages of their marriage to the mother. adoptive fathers in contrast, adoptive fathers have been given very little attention by researchers compared to either biological fathers or stepfathers. limited research has found that adoption is related to increased risk of academic difficulties, external or internal problem behaviors, and other negative outcomes (haugaard, 1998; kriebel & wentzel, 2011; rodgers & rose, 2001). adopted children sometimes enter families with accumulated risk factors, such as poor prenatal care, or abuse prior to adoption. kriebel and wentzel (2011) found that when adopted children had many prior risk factors, the children had lower academic outcomes; however, children who entered an adopted family with parents who employed a child-centered parenting style, characterized by authoritative parenting with high levels of warmth and consistency, had better academic and behavioral outcomes. this parenting style acted as a moderator between the adopted children’s risks and their academic outcomes. while kriebel and wentzel’s study did not differentiate between mothers’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 105 and fathers’ parenting styles, both mothers and fathers participated in the study and contributed to the moderating effect on children’s outcomes. simons and conger (2007) investigated parenting styles within biological families and found it to be likely that fathers provide a unique contribution to child-raising and to their children’s academic outcomes (pp. 236–237). father residency father absence in children’s lives has been associated with negative academic outcomes (mclanahan, tach, & schneider, 2013). compared to children with biological fathers in the household, children without fathers or those who do not live with their biological fathers were found to be less prepared for school (fowler & richards, 1978; martin et al., 2010), to have lower academic achievement and cognitive ability (cherlin & furstenberg, 1994; hetherington & stanley-hagan, 1997; mulkey, crain, & harrington, 1992; rodgers & rose, 2001), to experience higher risk of school dropout (mclanahan & sandefur, 1994; suh & suh, 2011), and to exhibit higher levels of behavior problems (king, mitchell, & hawkins, 2010). for instance, menning (2006) found that when nonresident fathers had higher involvement in their children’s lives, those children had a lower probability of detrimental school outcomes; the students who were most at risk were those whose fathers had infrequent involvement. sweeney (2007) found that children without a resident father also fare poorly emotionally. despite the contributions these studies and theories make to our understanding of how and why fathers are important for their children’s development, large gaps in our understanding remain about the associations between children’s school performance and the unique contributions of father involvement activities, father types, and father residency. using the national longitudinal study of adolescent health database (add health; udry, 2003), this study provides a detailed look into how the contributions of the different types of fathers are associated with adolescents’ academic outcomes. our study addressed three research questions to investigate the unique association of fathers’ roles in adolescent achievement: (a) do adolescents’ father type and father residency uniquely predict their academic outcomes as measured by grade point average (gpa)? it is hypothesized that adolescents with resident biological fathers have higher gpas than those with stepfathers or no fathers. (b) for adolescents with resident fathers, is father relationship quality and educational expectation associated with gpa? it is hypothesized that different levels of father quality and expectation are associated with differences in adolescents’ gpas. finally, (c) are father type and father involvement associated with adolescents’ school and course failure? it is hypothesized that adolescents without fathers are at a higher risk of failure than those with fathers. method data from the national longitudinal study of adolescent health (add health) were used for this study. add health is a school-based study of adolescents from 134 schools in seventh through twelfth grade (udry, 2003). the add health study combines longitudinal stratified survey international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 106 data to investigate how adolescents’ social environments and behaviors are associated with their health and school outcomes. add health selected nationally representative participants in four inhome interviews across four waves of data collection, including wave i (1994–1995), wave ii (1996), wave iii (2001–2002), and wave iv (2008–2009). as the present study’s outcome measure was academic achievement and a majority of participants in the add health study were beyond high school age in wave iv, only the first three waves are used here. all wave iii respondents were asked to complete a high school transcript release form that authorized the study personnel to collect student participants’ transcripts from the last schools attended. approximately 91% of the wave iii respondents signed a valid transcript release form and had transcript data collected, which is linked to the wave i and wave ii data. the add health data set contains a rich volume of data concerning academic achievement and family background; however, it is a secondary data set, and as such researchers utilizing the data are constrained to use only the items included within the study. sample from the full sample of 20,745 adolescents who completed the in-depth, in-home questionnaire in wave i, the current study restricted the sample to those who reported information about their fathers, whose type of resident father did not change between wave i and wave ii of data collection, and who were under 18 years old (n = 6,992), since young adults over age 18 may choose to live apart from their parents. an additional 398 cases were excluded because they did not indicate having a resident parent, leaving a final sample of 6,594. the sample was about equally split between males (48.6%, n = 3,205) and females (51.4%, n = 3,389). in addition, 67.4% of the adolescents lived with their biological fathers, while 26.9% did not have a resident father. table 1 lists the frequencies of the sample by father type. table 1 sample frequency of adolescents with different father types gender type of father male female total percent biological father 2,250 2,194 4,444 67.4% stepfather 170 144 314 4.8% adoptive father 23 42 65 1.0% unknown father 100 106 206 3.1% deceased father 78 111 189 2.9% knows but does not live with bio-father 584 792 1,376 20.9% total 3,205 3,389 6,594 100% percent 48.6% 51.4% because of oversampling of schools in add health and other features in the survey’s sample designs, all analyses take account of appropriate sampling weights, and standard errors are corrected for design effects (for details, see chantala & tabir, 1999). we rescaled the weights so that all weights sum to the actual size of the sample dataset. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 107 predictor variables father type: information about the type of father present in the home was gathered from the in-home interview, specifically the household roster obtained during that interview. information about the nonresident biological father, if any, was obtained from the in-home questionnaire. in the add health study, there were five categories for fathers: biological father, stepfather, adoptive father, stepfather who became adoptive father, and foster father. due to limited sample size for the last three groups, the authors combined adoptive father and stepfather who became adoptive father into one group: adoptive father. adolescents with foster fathers (n = 38) were not included in this research. adolescents who self-reported that fathers were not present were grouped into three further categories: those whose fathers were dead, those who did not know anything about their biological fathers, and those who did not live with their biological fathers. all father types are mutually exclusive, with each adolescent in our sample paired with one specific type of father. thus, adolescents were grouped into six categories according to their father types, three with resident father figures (biological father, stepfather, or adoptive father), and three with nonresident father figures (known biological father, unknown biological father, and deceased father). father influence: five father quality variables were summed to create a composite measure to represent the quality of the relationship between the adolescent and the father figure. wave i items included questions about how close the adolescents felt to their fathers, how warm and loving their fathers were towards them, and the quality of their communications (cronbach’s α = .89) among others. the scale has a theoretical range of 5 to 25, with m = 22.93 (sd = 2.77). father’s educational expectation was measured using the sum of two items: how disappointed the respondent’s father would be if the respondent did not graduate from college, and how disappointed he would be if the respondent did not graduate from high school during wave i. responses were based on a scale from 1 (low educational expectation) to 5 (high educational expectation). the scale has a theoretical range of 2 to 10, with m = 8.81 (sd = 1.81). control variables: based on previous research on father involvement and children’s school performance, we used gender and social economic status (ses) as control variables in the analyses. ses was created using a combination of parental income, parental education levels, and household income. household income was derived from wave i reports. since around 33% of adolescents did not have resident fathers or had very limited contact with their fathers, while more than 85% lived with their biological mothers, mother’s highest level of education, in years, was used for parental education level, when available. if mother’s highest level of education was missing, father’s highest level of education was used for parental education level. the two variables, income and parental education level, were standardized. ses is a strong indicator of academic achievement, as students from higher ses families attain higher standardized test scores across all subject domains, graduate from high school and college at greater rates, and are held back a grade at lower rates than students from lower ses families (jimerson, egeland, sroufe, & carlson, 2000; rampey, dion, & donahue, 2009; reynolds & johnson, 2011; warren, hoffman, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 108 & andrew, 2014). mother’s influence was measured by the scales of mother quality and mother’s educational expectation. mother quality was measured using the same five summed variables from wave i as father quality but from the perspective of the adolescent’s relationship with the mother (cronbach's α = .83). the scale has a theoretical range of 5 to 25, with m = 23.19 (sd = 2.42). we measured mother’s educational expectation using the same two summed variables from wave i as father’s educational expectation, but from the viewpoint of the mother. the scale has a theoretical range of 2 to 10, with m = 8.73 (sd = 1.79). race and ethnicity was measured as white, black, asian, native american, hispanic, and other. outcome variables multiple indicators of educational success were used for the analyses, including three gpa variables, one school failure variable, and one course failure variable. in addition to self-reported data in wave i and wave ii, official indicators of school performance from students’ high school transcripts in wave iii were also used in this study. gpas: in wave iii, students were asked to sign a transcript release form authorizing add health to request official transcripts from the high schools they last attended, which included their academic performance for each year of high school. the cumulative overall gpa for all courses taken across all years (m = 2.57, sd = 0.83) was used in this study. if a student had only 2 years of course-taking data, his or her cumulative gpa was calculated based on those 2 years, in contrast to the typical student with 4 years of data. course failure: there is no self-reported course failure available in wave i and wave ii. therefore, the cumulative course failure from the official transcript data across all years was used. the variable is a ratio of the number of courses where the student received a failing grade over the number of courses on the student’s transcript. therefore the range of the scale is 0 to 1 with m = 0.10 (sd = 0.14). school failure: adolescents were asked whether they repeated a grade or had been held back a grade (0 = no, 1 = yes), received an out of school suspension (0 = no, 1 = yes), or been expelled from school (0 = no, 1 = yes). due to the high number of zero cases, 4,973 (75.4%) of the items were dichotomized to 0 (never having been expelled, suspended, or held back a grade) and 1 (having been expelled, suspended, or held back a grade). analysis the analysis was conducted in several steps. first, to account for missing data 26 data sets were imputed using stata version 14.1, following bodner’s (2008) recommendation that the number of imputed data sets should exceed the highest percentage of missing data (quality of father relationship, wave ii; 25.6%). next, a linear regression was conducted to study the association of each of the six categories of father type on the overall cumulative gpa across years. covariates were ses, race/ethnicity, gender, mother quality (wave i), and mother’s educational expectation (wave i). third, a linear regression was used to examine the association of father type and course international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 109 failure, controlling for the same five covariates. next, a binary logistic regression was conducted to test the relationship between father type and school failure, again using the same covariates. mother quality and mother’s educational expectation were included to allow the unique influence of fathers to be modeled separately from the influence of mothers. finally, path analyses were conducted to examine how father quality, father’s educational expectation, mother quality, mother’s educational expectation, ses, and gender were associated with children’s cumulative gpa and school failure. both a full-group path analysis and a multiple-group path analysis were conducted. father type was the grouping variable for the multiple-group path analysis. cumulative gpa was modeled as a continuous variable and school failure was modeled as a dichotomous variable, consistent with previous analyses. since only children with resident fathers (biological, step, and adoptive) had legitimate values on the father influence variables (father quality and father’s educational expectation), only these cases were analyzed in these path analyses. missing values were handled with the full information approach in mplus. in addition, the residuals of the cumulative gpa and school failure variables were allowed to covary, resulting in a just-identified model with perfect model fit. path coefficients for associations between father influence variables and the outcome variables were of interest. results father type and adolescents’ gpas to test the association between father type and adolescents’ gpas, a general linear model was conducted with father type and five covariates: ses, race, gender, mother quality, and mother’s educational expectation. results indicate the main effect for father type was significant, f(5, 6359.9) = 111.82, p < .001, r2 = 0.16, suggesting that the cumulative gpas differed for adolescents who had different types of fathers, controlling for the covariates. pairwise comparisons were conducted to further compare father types in terms of the cumulative gpas of adolescents, controlling for covariates. a series of linear regression models was run, each time using a different reference group for the father type variable. in relation to those with resident biological fathers, adolescents with resident stepfathers (t = -2.45, p = .014), unknown fathers (t = -5.42, p < .001), deceased fathers (t = -2.40, p = .016), and not living with father (t = -8.87, p < .001) all had significantly lower cumulative gpas. adolescents with resident stepfathers had significantly higher gpa scores when compared to those with unknown fathers (t = -2.70, p = .007) and not living with father (t = -1.98, p = .048). adolescents with resident adoptive fathers had higher gpa scores when compared to those with unknown fathers (t = -2.68, p = .008). finally, adolescents with unknown fathers had significantly lower gpas than those with deceased fathers (t = 1.99, p = .047); see table 2. father type and course failure to test the association between father type and adolescents’ overall course failure, a general linear model was conducted with father type and five covariates: ses, race, gender, mother international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 110 quality, and mother’s educational expectation. results indicate the main effect for father type was statistically significant, f(5, 6284.7) = 51.05, p < .001, r2 = 0.10; that is, overall course failure differed for adolescents who had different types of father. pairwise comparisons controlling for covariates were conducted using a series of regression models similar to that for the cumulative gpas (see table 3). in relation to adolescents with resident biological fathers, those with resident stepfathers (t = 2.20, p = .028), those with unknown fathers (t = 4.01, p < .001), and those not living with father (t = 5.22, p < .001) all had significantly higher rates of course failure. adolescents with resident adoptive fathers had lower rates of course failure when compared to those with unknown fathers (t = 3.26, p = .001) and those not living with father (t = 2.77, p = .006). father type and school failure to test the association between father type and adolescents’ overall school failure, a binary logistic regression was conducted with father type and five covariates: ses, race, gender, mother quality, and mother’s educational expectation. results indicate the main effect for father type was statistically significant, f(5, 6287.5) = 44.86, p < .001; that is, the linear composite of overall school failure differs for adolescents who have different types of father. pairwise comparisons controlling for covariates were conducted using a series of logistic regression models, each time using a different reference group for the father type variable. results are shown in table 4. in relation to adolescents with resident biological fathers, those with resident stepfathers (t = 2.03, p = .043), resident adoptive fathers (t = 2.74, p = .006), unknown fathers (t = 2.00, p = .046), deceased fathers (t = 3.03, p = .002), and those not living with father (t = 7.45, p < .001) all had significantly higher rates of school failure. no other comparisons were significant. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 111 table 2 linear regression analysis of the association of father types, father involvement, and adolescents’ gpas variable cumulative gpas resident biological father resident stepfather resident adoptive father unknown father deceased father b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) ses .25 (.02) *** .19 (.03) *** .16 (.03) *** .16 (.03) *** .18 (.04) *** gendera .27 (.02) *** .31 (.04) *** .33 (.04) *** .33 (.04) *** .33 (.05) *** raceb -.05 (.01) *** -.05 (.01) *** -.04 (.01) ** -.04 (.01) ** -.05 (.01) ** m-quality .03 (.01) *** .03 (.01) *** .03 (.01) ** .03 (.01) ** .02 (.01) * m-ed expectation .05 (.01) *** .04 (.01) *** .04 (.01) *** .04 (.01) ** .04 (.01) *** resident stepfather -.14 (.06)* resident adoptive father -.14 (.07) .02 (.09) unknown father -.34 (.06) *** -.22 (.08)** -.25 (.09) ** deceased father -.17 (.07)* -.04 (.09) -.07 (.10) .18 (.09) not living with father -.25 (.03) *** -.12 (.06)* -.15 (.08) .11 (.06) -.08 (.07) r2 .16 afemales were coded 0 as the reference group. bwhites were treated as the reference group. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 3 linear regression analysis of the association of father types and course failure variable cumulative course failure resident biological father resident stepfather resident adoptive father unknown father deceased father b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) ses -.04 (.00) *** -.03 (.01) *** -.03 (.01) *** -.03 (.01) *** -.03 (.01) ** gendera -.04 (.01) *** -.06 (.01) *** -.06 (.01) *** -.06 (.01) *** -.06 (.01) *** raceb .01 (.00) *** .01 (.00) ** .01 (.00) ** .01 (.00) ** .01 (.00) ** m-quality -.00 (.00) *** -.01 (.00) ** -.01 (.00) * -.01 (.00) * -.01 (.00) * m-ed expectation -.01 (.00) *** -.01 (.00) ** -.01 (.00) * -.01 (.00) * -.01 (.00) * resident stepfather .03 (.01)* resident adoptive father .01 (.01) -.02 (.01) unknown father .06 (.01) *** .03 (.02) .05 (.02) ** deceased father .02 (.02) -.00 (.02) .02 (.02) -.04 (.02) not living with father .03 (.01) *** .01 (.01) .03 (.01) ** -.02 (.02) .01 (.02) r2 .10 note. higher scores indicate a higher number of courses failed. afemales were coded 0 as the reference group. bwhites were treated as the reference group. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 4 logistic regression analysis of the association of father types and adolescents’ school failure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 112 variable overall school failure resident biological father resident stepfather resident adoptive father unknown father deceased father b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) b (se) ses -.38 (.07) *** -.23 (.11) * -.19 (.11) -.18 (.11) -.23 (.12) * gendera -.86 (.08) *** -.92 (.12) *** -.94 (.13) *** -.93 (.13) *** -.97 (.14) *** raceb .08 (.02) ** .07 (.04) .05 (.04) .05 (.04) .07 (.05) m-quality -.07 (.01) *** -.07 (.02) *** -.07 (.02) ** -.06 (.02) ** -.06 (.02) ** m-ed expectation -.08 (.02) *** -.08 (.03) ** -.08 (.03) * -.08 (.03) * -.07 (.04) * resident stepfather .33 (.16)* resident adoptive father .89 (.33) *** .51 (.36) unknown father .39 (.19) * .10 (.24) -.38 (.38) deceased father .63 (.21) ** .30 (.26) -.19 (.38) .19 (.28) not living with father .67 (.09) *** .34 (.17) -.16 (.33) .22 (.20) .04 (.22) note. higher scores indicated a higher number expulsions, suspensions, or grades repeated. standardized betas are not reported as stata version 14 does not allow β for data using complex survey designs. afemales were coded 0 as the reference group. bwhites were treated as the reference group. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 5 path coefficients from multiple-group path analysis to predict cumulative gpa and school failure biological fathers stepfathers adoptive fathers cumulative gpa school failure cumulative gpa school failure cumulative gpa school failure variable b(se) b(se) b(se) b(se) b(se) b(se) father quality .01 (.00) ** -.01 (.00) *** .00 (.01) -.02 (.01)* -.01 (.01) -.006(.03) father educational expectation .03 (.01) *** -.00 (.02) .10 (.03)*** -.17 (.06)** .09 (.08) -.204(.16) mother quality .00 (.00) -.01 (.00) ** -.01 (.01) .01 (.01) .02 (.01) -.022(.03) mother educational expectation .02 (.01) * -.04 (.01) ** -.01 (.03) .08 (.06) -.01 (.07) .001(.12) gendera .25 (.03) *** -.49 (.06) *** .11 (.10) -.50 (.20)* .42 (.16)** -.573(.45) ses .29 (.02) *** -.31 (.04) *** .39 (.07)*** -.29 (.15)* .24 (.10)* -.25(.27) note. adolescents without resident fathers were not included in the model because there are no resident father involvement data. afemales were coded 0 as the reference group. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 113 influence of father quality and educational expectation on school failure and gpa full-group analysis: of the 4,823 children with resident fathers (biological, step, and adoptive), 3,403 of them had a valid value on at least one of the following variables: father quality, father’s educational expectation, mother quality, mother’s educational expectation, ses, and gender. these cases were used in the full-group path analysis. figure 1 shows the model with estimated path coefficients. these predictor variables accounted for 16% of the variance in cumulative gpa and 14% of the variance in school failure. figure 1. full-group path analysis model with unstandardized path coefficients. cumulative gpa was modeled as a continuous variable and school failure was modeled as a dichotomous variable. their residuals were correlated. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. both father quality and father’s educational expectation were significantly associated with cumulative gpa. as father quality increased by 1 point, the child’s cumulative gpa increased by 0.02 points (p < .001), controlling for other predictors. as father’s educational expectation increased by 1 point, the child’s cumulative gpa increased by 0.04 points (p < .01), controlling cumulative gpa school failure father quality father edu expectations mother quality mother edu expectations gender ses -.052 -.387*** .320*** -.501*** .251 *** .036 .016 .02** .021*** -.037** .04** -.030* international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 114 for other predictors. a significant negative association was found between father quality and school failure (p = .001), but father’s educational expectation was not associated with school failure (p = .057) at the .05 level, controlling for the other predictors. mother quality and ses were found to be significantly associated with cumulative gpa positively and school failure negatively. in addition, female students tended to have higher cumulative gpas and were less likely to have any school failure. we also tested whether there was any interaction between gender and the father and mother influence variables. none of the interactions was statistically significant at the .05 level. figure 2. path model of influence of biological father quality and father’s educational expectation on cumulative gpa and school failure. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. multiple-group analysis: the multiple-group analysis revealed that father quality and father’s educational expectation affected students with different types of resident fathers differently in terms of cumulative gpa and school failure. table 5 shows the path coefficients between predictor and outcome variables for each of the three resident father types. for those .006*** -.012*** .033*** -.004 .003 -.011** .018* -.041** .252 *** -.485*** -.305*** .290*** father quality father edu expectations mother quality mother edu expectations gender ses cumulative gpa school failure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 115 living with biological fathers, both father quality and father’s educational expectation were significantly positively associated with cumulative gpa (p = .001 for father quality and p < .001 for father’s educational expectation), controlling for other predictors. father quality was significantly negatively associated with school failure (p = .001), but father’s educational expectation was not associated with school failure (p = .81), controlling for the other predictors. in addition, mother quality was negatively associated with school failure (p < .01) and mother’s educational expectation was positively associated with cumulative gpa (p < .01) and negatively associated with school failure (p < .01). students from higher ses families and female students tended to have higher cumulative gpa and were less likely to have any school failure (see figure 2). figure 3. path model of influence of stepfather quality and stepfather’s educational expectations on cumulative gpa and school failure. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. for adolescents living with stepfathers, father’s educational expectation was positively associated with cumulative gpa (p < .001) and negatively associated with school failure (p < .01). .002 -.024* .104*** -.174** -.008 .008 -.01 .08 .113 -.496* -.239* .393*** father quality father edu expectations mother quality mother edu expectations gender ses cumulative gpa school failure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 116 father quality was negatively associated with school failure (p < .05) and not significantly associated with cumulative gpa (p = .67). the mother influence variables were not associated with the outcome variables. students from higher ses families and female students tended to have higher cumulative gpa and were less likely to have school failure. however, there was no gender difference in cumulative gpa after controlling for the other predictors (see figure 3). for those living with adoptive fathers, neither father quality nor father’s educational expectation was significantly associated with cumulative gpa after controlling for the other variables. these father influence variables were not significantly associated with school failure either. in addition, neither mother quality nor mother’s educational expectation was significantly associated with cumulative gpa or school failure. students from higher ses families and female students tended to have higher cumulative gpa but ses and gender were not significantly associated with school failure. discussion fathers matter in the lives of adolescents. within families, fathers add unique contributions, depending upon their involvement behaviors, role types, and residency, to adolescents’ school performance. prior studies have provided important information about how the differences in dichotomies of fathers (e.g., resident vs. nonresident, or biological vs. non-biological) affect children’s outcomes (sweeny, 2007; videon, 2004; vogt yuan & hamilton, 2006). we add significantly to the literature by looking more comprehensively at the many ways relationships with their fathers comprise adolescents’ lived experiences. our findings illustrate that father type and quality of father–adolescent relationship contribute unique associations with adolescents’ school performance, boosting our understanding of the importance of fathers in their children’s lives. these findings are particularly important, as prior findings in the literature on fathers’ unique contribution to adolescents’ outcomes, above and beyond mothers’ contributions, have been inconsistent (cherlin & furstenberg, 1994; martin et al., 2010; mcbride et al., 2009; vogt yuan & hamilton, 2006). our findings indicate that not only are fathers important, but there are differences in outcomes depending upon the type of father relationship. adolescents with resident fathers by testing the association of father type, quality of father relationship, and adolescents’ gpas, we consistently found that adolescents living with their biological fathers and mothers had the highest gpas, lowest course failure, and lowest levels of school failure compared to children with stepfathers and nonresident fathers. adolescents in families with both biological parents consistently outperformed their peers, indicating that having a stable family is an important aspect of children’s outcomes; although our study did not address adoptive families as such, we speculate that these outcomes might be reflected in certain other family types, including adoptive. adolescents in adoptive families appear to also have an advantage in some areas; for instance, the ses in adoptive families is higher than all other family compositions (schwartz & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 117 finley, 2006; troilo & coleman, 2008). interestingly, although overall performance for adolescents with adoptive fathers was lower than for those who lived with their biological families, the regression analysis indicated that there was not a significant difference from those with biological fathers in school or course performance. adoptive fathers tend to have more commitment to their children because of comparatively high role clarity (finley, 1998). these findings are consistent with the stereotype of adoptive fathers, who are perceived to be more compassionate, giving, supportive, and well meaning when compared to divorced, nonresidential, and never-married fathers (troilo & coleman, 2008). when adoptive fathers are more involved in adolescents’ development, this can generate positive dynamics in adoptive families, which can reduce adolescents’ school failure and course failure. the findings also agree with the social role theory that adoptive fathers are their children’s only father figures (finley, 1998; troilo & coleman, 2008); these fathers make firm commitments to the children from the beginning, which is different from stepfathers or nonresident biological fathers. these findings about adoptive fathers are important in light of kriebel and wentzel’s (2011) findings that children with risk factors prior to adoption are at risk for poorer outcomes without parental investment and warmth. the adolescents who were adopted likely benefited from the positive dynamics of having high investment in their well-being and high involvement from their adoptive fathers. children raised with stepfathers appeared to be particularly vulnerable to lower academic outcomes, which corroborates prior research showing that adolescents living in families with stepfathers have significantly lower gpas when compared to those with biological fathers (lamb, 2007; planitz & feeney, 2009; white, 1994). additionally, children raised in stepfamilies showed no advantage over children raised by single mothers, despite the higher overall family income when there are two wage earners in a family (baumann, 1999; gosselin & david, 2007; planitz & feeney, 2009; white, 1994). when a stepfather was present, despite higher familial ses, adolescents did not show significantly better school performance compared to adolescents whose fathers were dead or those who did not live with their biological fathers, after controlling for adolescents’ gender, ethnicity, and mother’s involvement. moreover, stepfathers tended to be less involved in adolescents’ lives compared to biological fathers and adoptive fathers. there are several possible explanations of these results. first, adding a stepparent to a family adds another familial transition in adolescents’ lives, beyond the dissolution of the original biological family. it is also likely that adolescents have had lower emotional well-being following the dissolution of their biological parents’ union. for example, they may have felt that they were abandoned by their biological fathers, or may have had negative feelings towards their parents for not being able to resolve their differences. some researchers have claimed that the problems associated with family disruption are rooted in marital discord that begins long before the parents separate or divorce (skolnick, 1991). additionally, stepfathers may have lower overall investment in their stepchildren than biological fathers do and adolescents may have been aware of the low involvement and reacted to it, setting up conditions ripe for conflict. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 118 adolescents without resident fathers the results of this study show how critical biological father presence is in adolescents’ lives. father absence had many causes, including parental divorce (adolescents who knew their biological fathers but did not live with them), death, non-marital birth, and children abandoned by their fathers entirely (and so did not know anything about their biological fathers). adolescents in the last category were the most disadvantaged group overall, with the lowest academic performance and highest risk of school and course failure. they may have had the disadvantages that often come with a single-mother household, such as low ses, lack of father involvement, and perhaps lower mother involvement, especially if the mother is working long hours to support her child or children. adolescents also have lower socioemotional stability and experience negative feelings toward their fathers when their fathers are not available to support them emotionally, academically, spiritually, or physically (downey, ainsworth-darnell, & dufur, 1998; king et al., 2010; menning, 2006; popenoe, 1999; sweeney, 2007). one important difference emerged for adolescents without resident fathers. adolescents whose fathers had died were not significantly different from adolescents with adoptive fathers in terms of their school performance. this finding supports the research showing children of widowed parents report significantly less life stress, less family conflict, and more support than those with stepparents (short, 2002). adolescents who have experienced their father’s death may experience emotional loss but not the familial conflict and stress of marriage dissolution; death, unlike divorce, is not a failure of a relationship. in most cases, their fathers did not choose to leave or abandon their families and children. moreover, in a father’s death, the mother likely still retains love and admiration for him. for the adolescents, the stories that their fathers loved them and protected them remain the same, even though the paternal presence has been lost. they tend to develop positive inner feelings towards their fathers as a way of memorializing them (silverman, nichman, & worden, 1992). in contrast to adolescents with deceased fathers, school performance of adolescents who knew their biological fathers, but did not live with them, showed significant differences from that of adolescents living with their biological fathers; however, the results were similar to those of adolescents with stepfathers. they also showed a relatively higher risk for experiencing school failure and course failure. these results agree with troilo and coleman’s (2008) finding that divorced nonresidential fathers were among the most negatively stereotyped father types. a possible reason may be that most of these adolescents knew their biological fathers, but did not live with them, and are also from divorced families, like adolescents with stepfathers. to summarize, results of this study are consistent with stereotypes of different father types: biological and adoptive fathers are the most positively viewed, while divorced and nonresidential, and never-married fathers are the most negative (troilo & coleman, 2008). however, in contrast to the literature that shows fatherlessness has the same devastating consequences for all children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 119 who are without the emotional, moral, or economic support of their fathers (daniels, 1998), this study suggests that father absence is not equally harmful to all adolescents. conclusion one important implication of our findings is that practitioners and policy makers should be aware of how important father involvement is for children’s school performance. in particular, school counselors and school psychologists could be of help to adolescents with unknown fathers, by finding ways to effectively assist these adolescents to succeed academically. for policy makers, intervention policies and programs can address the need for more supportive services directed toward fatherless adolescents, in particular those with unknown biological fathers. a key direction for future research is to explore why academic performance differs among adolescents without fathers. the findings in this study suggest that adolescents who have no knowledge of their biological fathers had significantly lower gpas and higher school and course failure than those with deceased biological fathers and those who did not live with their fathers. it is important to examine this group of adolescents separately and explore whether adolescents with unknown fathers are also at risk for socioemotional difficulties, such as problem behaviors or emotional problems. limitations the results of this study must be interpreted in light of its limitations. first, we do not know why those adolescents who did not know anything about their fathers have low academic performance and high course and school failure. unfortunately, as this study was a secondary analysis, there is no related information available. however, we did find that these adolescents also have lower ses, mother involvement, and mother’s educational expectation. finally, this study did not examine the association of other factors, such as parent’s marital status, siblings, and stepsiblings, with adolescent’s school performance. in addition, it is possible that the findings could be mediated or moderated by a number of contextual factors such as same-sex or cross-sex relationships between fathers and sons or daughters, the number of children present, and the mix of the children present within the home (i.e., the number of biological, step, or adopted children, and the family makeup); however, these factors are beyond of the scope and design of the present research and represent potential future directions for research in this area. despite these limitations, the present study contributes to the literature about father influence on adolescents’ academic achievement by providing complete comparisons of adolescents with different types of fathers and their academic outcomes. unlike prior studies that had to rely on small and selected samples, the nationally representative longitudinal data of add health on adolescents and their parents allowed this study to understand broader trends among different groups of adolescents with different father types. more importantly, by separating adolescents with nonresident fathers into three groups, this study found that one group — international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 120 adolescents with no knowledge of their biological fathers — was at highest risk, suggesting that more attention needs to be paid to this group. acknowledgement this research uses data from add health, a program project directed by kathleen mullan harris and designed by j. richard udry, peter s. bearman, and kathleen mullan harris at the university of north carolina at chapel hill, and funded by grant p01-hd31921 from the eunice kennedy shriver national institute of child health and human development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. special acknowledgment is due ronald r. rindfuss and barbara entwisle for assistance in the original design. for information on how to obtain the add health data files, see the add health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). no direct support was received from grant p01-hd31921 for this analysis. http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 101–126 121 references affuso, g., bacchini, d., & miranda, m. c. 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(pp. 109–138). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x14563599 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs111202019473 popularity, gender, and social inclusion among girls in ethnically diverse contexts in norway mari rysst abstract: this article discusses the phenomenon of popularity and its implications for gender construction, social inclusion, and gender equality among girls in two ethnically diverse contexts in norway. at one field site, girls of immigrant origin were a majority, at the other they were a minority. based on detailed ethnographic methodology and participant observation over time, this study shows that the crucial dimensions of popularity overlap with “economies of dignity” and vary according to whether the ethnic norwegians are in a minority or majority position. the dimensions of popularity, which include the importance of attracting the male gaze, are connected to consumption. my results suggest that consumption influences girls’ construction of gender, and may have negative consequences for the inclusion of immigrant girls when in a minority, because they often live in lowincome families. the article concludes that the overlap between the dimensions of popularity and the tokens of value of the economies of dignity underlines the importance of how power, through popularity, works among children. one implication of this power is that neither ethnic norwegian girls nor girls of immigrant origin appear to live in a climate of gender equality. keywords: popularity, peer power, inclusion/exclusion, gender construction, gender equality mari rysst phd is a professor in social anthropology, and director of the phd program children and youth participation and competence development at inland norway university of applied sciences, gudbrandsdalsvegen 342, 2600 lillehammer. she is a senior researcher at consumer research norway, oslo metropolitan university. email: mari.rysst@inn.no mailto:mari.rysst@inn.no international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 47 research on children’s social hierarchies and the phenomenon of popularity among girls is not new (hey, 1997; thorne, 1993), but is quite rare within the field of anthropology. i first became interested in studying children’s social hierarchies in 2002, while doing anthropological fieldwork for my phd. in later projects i have studied how social hierarchies relate to consumption as “including strategies” (rysst, 2015, 2016, 2019); the data for this article are drawn from those studies. the phenomenon of popularity is related to consumption, as will be shown in two ethnically diverse field sites in norway. not only are these field sites ethnically diverse, but they also differ socioeconomically, and thus in the resources available to families and children as consumers. most importantly, in norway, children of immigrant origin often live in low-income families, which limits their participation in social activities that cost money. the article is thus in dialogue with other research focusing on ethnicity, social inclusion, and consumption, particularly the work of allison pugh (2009; see also lareau, 2003). the questions i address are: • what are the crucial dimensions of the social construction of popularity among girls at two ethnically diverse field sites in norway? • what are the implications of popularity for (a) gender construction, (b) social inclusion of girls of immigrant origin, and (c) gender equality? short literature review a search on google scholar, “girls and popularity”, gave 387,000 results, showing a vast amount of literature on the theme, often in the field of psychology (e.g., duffy et al., 2016; lease & kennedy, 2002; gommens et al., 2017; xi et al., 2016). a specialized search on “girls, popularity and ethnography” reduced the results to 35,800. it appears that the studies of adler and adler (2001), eder and corsaro (1999) and merten (1997) are groundbreaking and often referred to in recent texts, but newer research is not abundant (see duffy et al., 2016; duncan & owens, 2011; gommans et al., 2017; read et al., 2011; xi et al., 2016). moreover, from the literature search, it appears that “popularity” is not often an explicit focus, but is implicit in the texts. the works of barrie thorne (1993), rachel simmons (2002), marjorie h. goodwin (2006), and linda duits (2008) are relevant examples of this, while lease and kennedy (2002), duncan (2011), duffy et al. (2016), xi et al. (2016), and gommens et al. (2017) have the word “popularity” in the title. all these articles point to the importance of an attractive appearance for popularity among girls, as does renold (2005). others highlight the importance of spending power (adler & adler, 2001; lease & kennedy, 2002; pugh, 2009; rysst, 2008, 2015, 2016, 2019). for instance, adler and adler wrote of the importance of consumer goods for popularity: “the norms of popular appearance included designer clothing” (adler & adler, 2001, p. 50). in some, the connection between social power and popularity is underlined: “being popular is a key determinant of social power in peer groups of older elementary school students” (lease & kennedy, 2002, p. 87; see also gommans et al., 2017). simmons also argued that being popular “is no walk in the park. competition and insecurity are rampant” (2002, p. 173). once in the popular group, girls have to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 48 work continuously to stay there. linda duits (2008) presented an ethnographic account following young girls of diverse ethnic backgrounds in the multicultural dutch society and showed that the girls in her study defined popularity as having many friends or having a favourable appearance. duncan and owens (2011), in a study of the relationship between “bully” and “popular” in two english schools, found that popularity was highly related to attractiveness to boys in both schools, and also that popular girls tended to bully others. regarding norwegian studies of relevance, aasebo (2011) showed that being high-achieving in upper secondary school did not qualify for popularity, while exhibiting heteronormative attractiveness and experimenting with alcohol and sex did. heteronormativity (butler, 1993) and the “male gaze” (well, 2017) are implicit in the works of duncan and owens (2011) and aasebo (2011). “ ‘male gaze’ is a term coined by film critic laura mulvey to describe the cinematic angle of a heterosexual male on a female character” (well, 2017). girls and women are viewed as sexual objects by males; that is, they are judged according to heterosexual attractiveness, which is a gaze girls and women also employ vis-à-vis each other (well, 2017). the gaze of interest to the study of popularity may thus be understood to include a male gaze. dmitrow-devold’s (2016) doctoral study on norwegian teenage bloggers also touches on the male gaze and popularity, explicitly illustrating the importance of popularity for how these girls blog. they blogged on themes they expected potential and actual followers would like, such as fashion trends, make-up, and body work they believed may improve attractiveness (dmitrow-devold, 2016). in sum, popularity among girls appears to be closely related to heteronormativity and to attractive appearance aided by consumption. the present study is, as far as i am informed, the only norwegian work that explicitly addresses popularity among girls of diverse ethnic origins living in two ethnically and geographically diverse field sites in norway. background norway has experienced ethnically diverse immigration since the late 1960s. today, norway has approximately five million inhabitants, of whom foreign-born citizens and citizens born in norway to immigrant parents make up 16.3% (statistics norway, 2016a). oslo has the largest population of people of immigrant background, both in relative and absolute terms. of oslo’s 658,400 inhabitants, 163,300 were immigrants and 50,900 were norwegians born to immigrant parents as of january 1, 2016; these two figures combined constitute 33% of the capital’s entire population (statistics norway, 2016a). one of the field sites of this study was the school “furu” in “eastside” (both pseudonyms), located 10 minutes’ drive east of the city center of oslo. eastside had approximately 9000 inhabitants at the time i did the fieldwork. in 2009, people of immigrant origin comprised 56% of this population (aalandslid, 2009). the other field site was the school “mesna” in “inland city” (also pseudonyms), situated in the gudbrand valley, approximately two hours’ drive north of oslo. in january 2015, the total population of inland city was 27,476 (lillehammer, n.d). in january 2016, there were 2,772 foreign-born residents and norwegians born to immigrant parents. of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 49 these, 506 were norwegians born to immigrant parents (statistics norway, 2016b). thus, 11.9% of the total population in inland city was of immigrant origin compared to 33% in oslo and more than 56% in eastside. in the nordic countries, norway included, equality regarding living conditions, gender, sexuality, and race is both a political ambition and a cultural ideal (formark & ohman, 2013, p. 5; gullestad, 2002; hübinette & tigervall, 2009; lien et al., 2001). norway’s image in the world beyond appears to be that of an affluent, egalitarian, and homogeneous society (gullestad, 2002; korsnes et al., 2014; lien et al., 2001); moreover, nordic — and thus norwegian — girls are seen as having achieved a freedom of gender and sexuality absent in many other countries (mitchell & reid-walsh, 2013). this article touches on three aspects of these issues — living conditions, gender, and ethnicity — and how these dimensions are related to popularity and social inclusion. in general, children in norway are taught official norwegian gender values: that girls and boys have the same opportunities regarding education and careers, and can engage in the same activities and choose who they will be and how they will present themselves. the norwegian focus on gender equality, both in kindergartens and schools and in public political debates, may be a challenge for girls of immigrant origin, whose families may have other gender ideals related to ethnic cultural values (oyewumi, 2005; schröeter, 2013). immigrant girls in muslim families are often more protected and are expected to stay at home more than boys are. girls of immigrant origin often experience more restrictions and expectations regarding how to dress and act than their brothers do (rysst, 2015; vestel, 2004). this may influence how these girls experience social inclusion among their peers in norway, as appearance, clothes, and social participation are important for social inclusion (rysst, 2015, 2019). therefore, for the purposes of this article, informed by the works of moore (1994) and lien et al. (2001), i define gender equality as the possibility to freely engage in activities and construct gender without risking social exclusion in the peer group or family. i argue that childhood is contested for girls of immigrant origin because they must relate to and negotiate cultural values from both their country of origin and norway in their construction of gender, which has implications for gender equality. for instance, parents may not want their daughters to become “too norwegian”. this criticism usually implies that they may disapprove of their daughters’ construction of gender, as being more “norwegian” or “western” than their cultural gender ideals permit. when this is the case, the girls are not free to construct gender as they wish, which in turn may influence their friendship relations (rysst, 2015, 2019; vestel, 2004). set against this backdrop, i will discuss the social construction of popularity as it relates to gender construction, social inclusion, and gender equality among girls in two ethnically diverse contexts in norway. data from fieldwork done in 2015, among children at one school in inland city where ethnic norwegians are a majority, are to be compared with data from another fieldwork done from 2010 to 2011, at furu school in eastside near oslo where ethnic norwegians are a minority. “ethnic norwegian” denotes people who have been born in norway and have both parents and grandparents also born in norway. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 50 methodology anthropological methodology is open-ended and inductive; it is “experience-near” or “emic”, in that concepts used by the informants are taken as the point of departure for understanding their lifeworlds. anthropology does not involve the testing of hypotheses, and its practices differ from those of other disciplines in that data are written down in notebooks and not formally coded and categorized before analysis and interpretation take place (okely, 2012). anthropological methodology has at its core participant observation over an extended period in combination with informal interviews and conversations. in this article, experience-near concepts, such as “popularity”, “foreigner”, and “norwegian”, are taken as points of departure for the interpretation in order to grasp “the native’s point of view” (i.e., the insider’s perspective; geertz, 1983). many anthropologists, myself included, concur with the arguments made by sociologists jerolmack and khan (2014) in the article “talk is cheap: ethnography and the attitudinal fallacy”, in which they discuss the role of interviews and the spoken word in understanding people’s lifeworlds. the “attitudinal fallacy” is “the error of inferring situated behavior from verbal accounts of sentiments and schemas” (jerolmack & khan, 2014, p. 200). they argue that, “not only is it the case that people commonly act in ways that are inconsistent with their expressed attitudes, but they also routinely provide inaccurate accounts of their past activities.” (jerolmack & khan, 2014, p. 200). anthropologists are aware of the discrepancy between what is said and what is done, and underline the importance of achieving knowledge through the body: “participant observation involves more than co-residence, verbal interaction and observation; it also involves knowledge through the body, through all the senses” (okely, 2012, p. 77). in the following, i describe my methodological approaches in the field. at both field sites, the mesna school in eastside in oslo and the furu school in inland city, i presented myself to the students as a researcher interested in how they lived their lives in school and elsewhere. i told them i was not a teacher and was not there to discipline or monitor them. i did not find it hard to establish contact with all of the girls, irrespective of their ethnic origins, even though i am a middle-aged, white, ethnic norwegian woman. i told them about my own childhood experiences and my experiences as a mother of three daughters, which appeared to be a good icebreaker for the conversations to come. after some weeks, they became accustomed to my presence, and one boy at furu school even presented me to a new teacher as “a member of our class”. however, it is possible that the girls at both field sites, when they realized my interest in friendships and presentations of self, became more aware of their own ways of dressing and self-presentations. it is also possible that a younger woman without children would have established a stronger rapport. in addition to participant observation and informal interviews, the teachers at both field sites gave me access to their sociograms, which worked as guidelines for my own mappings. the parents and children were informed about this, as making sociograms is quite a common practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 51 in norwegian schools (bo & schiefloe, 2007). sociograms are mappings of the children’s friendship networks complied from confidential information the children have given to the teacher. the sociograms overlapped my own observations and interpretations of friendship networks. as such, i believe data collected through my presence over time, my observations, and the sociograms point to issues the girls may not have revealed about friendships in the interviews, which were conducted in pairs or in groups. writing up was done by careful reading of my handwritten notes and careful reading of transcribed informal interviews. my search for repeating themes and expressions concerning friendship circles and concepts of social classification yielded “popularity”, “norwegian”, and “foreigner”. further details of methods are given in the descriptions of the field sites below. field sites site 1, inland city participant observation at mesna school, inland city, lasted from august to december of 2015. i obtained access to the sixth form of 11 year olds, which i was interested in because of a relatively high number of students of immigrant origin in that form. according to the principal, mesna was one of the schools in inland city with a high number of students of immigrant origin, and had a total number of 595 students representing 21 languages. most of the immigrant children in this school were of refugee origin from africa, asia, and eastern europe. despite the principal’s observations about the high number of immigrant children at mesna school, i noted that when compared to furu school, where a vast majority of the students were of immigrant origin, mesna school represented the opposite: most of the students there had ethnic norwegian backgrounds. in addition, of 50 pupils in the sixth form, only nine girls and one boy were of immigrant origin, and two girls were of mixed ethnicity. in mesna school i did participant observation and wrote notes in the classroom of 6a with 25 students, over 4 months, two days per week, sitting at the back observing and chatting to those who came by. i tried to observe everything that was going on among all the children, and was particularly alert to informal comments not meant for my ears. informal comments may elucidate relational aspects that more formal interview settings do not. i followed the girls in the schoolyard and in other activities in school contexts. i conducted eight informal interviews with 15 girls in 6a and three girls of immigrant origin in 6b. the interview guide was organized by themes, not detailed questions. the themes related to friendship networks, who hangs out with whom, leisure time activities, and opinions about school and life in general. the interviews were done during lunch break. i brought drinks and snacks to make the situation more relaxed. i interviewed the girls in pairs or in groups of three, and did my best to make sure that the girls in these groups were friends, because i believed the girls would speak more freely and would be more honest when they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 52 trusted the others in the room. i also believed, based on common sense, that the girls would be quieter and more reserved if i talked to them alone. of course, i don’t know if i was right, but the girls did seem to speak freely in the pairs or groups and did not appear reserved when we had our talks. all interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed by me. site 2, eastside, oslo in 2010 and 2011, i conducted research with both boys and girls at furu school, in eastside, oslo. according to the principal, there were approximately 475 students at the school, living in families originating from 16 to 18 different countries. i did participant observation over six months in the fifth to sixth form, two days a week. among the children, only one student, pernille, was ethnic norwegian; the others were of pakistani, moroccan, turkish, and afghan backgrounds. i followed them in breaks, jumped rope with them, joined them on a weekend tour to the mountains, and tried to map their friendship networks as the point of departure for informal interviews and conversations among the girls (rysst, 2015, 2016). i did 13 informal interviews of girls, mostly in groups of two, after school had ended for the day. i was allowed to use one of the rooms in the school and i brought drinks and biscuits in order to try and make the girls more relaxed. as at mesna school, the interview guide was organized by themes such as friendship networks, leisure time activities, and opinions about school and life in general. the total interview sample for this article consisted of 14 girls and two teachers, and the talks were recorded and transcribed by me. ethical considerations at both field sites, the parents were informed through a meeting and a letter. the parents of all the girls included in this article gave written permission. the girls themselves also wanted to participate. both parents and children were informed that the children were free to withdraw at any time, and that all names used would be pseudonyms. i kept the original name of the ethnic background if that group was numerous, but if the child was the only representative, i gave her an ethnic background very close to the original. this anonymization included the names of the schools “furu” and “mesna”, and the places “inland city” and “eastside” in oslo; the terms “furu” and “mesna” refer to the school settings only, not locations. the themes of discussion, popularity, and social inclusion may be understood as sensitive, which i have been aware of and tried to anonymize as much as possible without turning the text into fiction. as such, if they read the text, it is possible that the children and the teachers will recognize each other, but no one outside their circles will recognize them. some years have now passed since i did the fieldwork and i believe there are no ethical problems in how the girls are presented. in addition, the norsk senter for forskningsdata [norwegian centre for research data] approved the projects before i started fieldwork at both field sites. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 53 theoretical approaches gender construction over the last two decades, modern childhood has become increasingly commercialized in the western world (borch et al., 2019; brusdal & frones, 2008; buckingham & tingstad, 2010; cook, 2004; pugh, 2009; siegel et al., 2001; sorensen, 2014). as a result, more and more aspects of children’s lives cost money — for instance, “must-have” clothes and organized leisure activities. this commercialized situation increases the possibility of social exclusion related to socioeconomic position. the commercialization of childhood influences gender construction, how girls (and boys) use material items in doing gender (butler, 1993; moore, 1994; rysst, 2008, 2015, 2019; west & zimmerman, 1987). informed by west and zimmerman (1987), butler (1993), and moore (1994), i view gender construction as relational and dynamic, and as having competences, activities, and appearance, including clothes and hairstyles, as vital elements (rysst, 2016, p. 163). as i have previously noted (rysst, 2016, p. 162), post-structuralist researchers (e.g., henrietta moore, 1994) have argued that multiple identities or selves are acted out in different social contexts. modern and post-structuralist conceptualizations of the self differ in that the former reads the self as having a core, while the latter views the self as fragmented (lorentzen & muhleisen, 2006). moore argues that a single subject can no longer be equated with a single individual, as each individual is a multiply constituted subject and “take[s] up multiple subject positions within a range of discourses and social practices” (moore, 1994, p. 55). this theoretical approach is relevant regarding intracultural variation and the construction of ethnic identities, particularly among foreign-born residents of a country and their children. against this backdrop, in a situation with both parents and friends present, a daughter may position herself differently depending on her understanding of expectations from the persons interacting with her. this concerns the norwegian-born girls of immigrants included in this study because they have “one foot in two cultures” and thus navigate cultural values from both their parents’ country of origin and the country they now live in, that is, norway. ethnic norwegian girls do not experience similar parental talk about challenges regarding various ethnic values and gender construction. still, it is understood that all the girls in this study have multiple identities and that feminine identities may vary according to social contexts (rysst, 2015, 2016, 2019). economy of dignity sociologist allison pugh (2009) stated that the most important relational process among children concerns how to secure the experience of belonging among peers. her analysis of children’s “longing and belonging” argues that children everywhere “claim, contest, and exchange among themselves the terms of their social belonging, or just what it would take to be able to participate among their peers” (p. 6). she termed this system of social meanings the “economy of dignity”, where “dignity” refers to being “worthy of belonging” or having “an absolute capability to take part in the community” (p. 7). pugh held that “children together shape their own economies of dignity” (p. 8). however, i argue that it is not “children together” but those accorded influence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 54 and power who are likely to define the tokens of value. therefore, i reconstruct pugh’s definition of “economy of dignity” by noting that it is “the popular children, here girls, who shape the peer group’s economy of dignity”. pugh (2009) further said that the economy of dignity “in turn transforms particular goods and experiences into tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” (p. 8). i am aware that children relate to and talk about the popular children in various degrees, but i suggest that they all know what their peer group’s “tokens of value” are, and relate to these in some way, as i will return to later. pugh (2009) observed that, “when children came home with their desires turned into needs by the alchemy of dignity” (p. 8), most parents responded by fulfilling those desires in order to satisfy their children’s need for social belonging. the concept of economy of dignity is a fruitful analytic tool for understanding popularity, gender construction, and relationships, as i will show. the anthropologists mary douglas and baron isherwood (1996) argued that “goods are neutral, their uses are social; they can be used as fences or bridges” (p. xv). their views enrich our understanding of how material items are used in negotiating social position among children. the “goods” or things can be markers in social classification; for instance, in demarcating social categories among girls, such as “popular” and “unpopular” (renold, 2005; rysst, 2008, 2019). i argue that the popular children have the strongest influence on what are to be “fences or bridges” and relevant gender constructions, which is directly related to what is included in the economy of dignity in the peer group, which i take to include all children of the same age in a school, and to consist of a hierarchy of subgroups with the popular children at the top. goods used as bridges, such as iphones, are elements in the economy of dignity, and may be observed as such by the researcher. i suggest children in all groups share the same tokens of value, but vary in the level of respect with which they regard them, the strength of their desire to possess them, and their ability to acquire them. popularity and peer power popularity. though ubiquitous, is not an easy phenomenon to understand. the literature presented above points to what adler and adler, and others, expressed: that “popularity” denotes rank in the hierarchy of social positions, and thus social power (adler & adler, 2001, p. 38; duffy et al., 2016; duncan & owens, 2011; gommans et al., 2017; read et al., 2011; simmons, 2002; xi et al., 2016). informed by these works, i construct my definition of popularity as “a social construction that classifies some persons’ relationships as more socially attractive than others; an attractiveness that infuses these persons with power”. the social construction of popularity varies with time, place, gender, ethnicity, and class, but appears to have a common core. as indicated, i argue that popularity and peer power are closely related in that popular children become leaders able to define “the tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” (pugh, 2009, p. 8). as such, popular children represent peer power, well expressed by adler and adler (2001): “leaders derived power through their popularity and then used it to influence membership and social stratification within the group” (p. 57). in other words, they influence the social hierarchy of the peer group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 55 the concept of power is an abstract and experience-distant concept used to enhance understanding of the experience-near concept of popularity, which is used by the children. “peer power” is not used by the children, but by analysts. in line with this, michel foucault’s (1976) theory of power as a relation that operates at the micro level of social relations helps to elucidate the phenomenon of popularity. as explained in a former article (rysst & klepp, 2012), foucault argues that: power is not owned by one group and then used to dominate another; rather, power is more dispersed and involves a willingness to internalize the gaze of a generalized other who may be watching (foucault, 1976). this gaze need not be connected to particular people, but is experienced as the possibility that others may be watching. (p. 260) i argue that regarding girls and popularity, power is connected to particular people, but power is also an active relational force — a judging gaze. such gazes are subjectively experienced as they discipline the body according to expectations implied in this gaze. in this light, peer power may be understood as a force residing in the relationships between girls that shapes these relationships according to the tastes or views of a particular girl or a group of girls. the combination of peer power and social attraction is thus fundamental to the construction of popularity. concerning the girls in this article, i argue that they are influenced by the gaze of the popular, or by how they understand that gaze, in their construction of gender. as described above, this gaze is informed by heteronormativity and the male gaze (butler, 1993; well, 2017). as such, the gaze of the popular is directly related to gender construction, and indirectly to social inclusion and gender equality. how much each girl has the interest or the financial resources to construct gender according to the popular gaze varies, but the point here is that most girls relate to it in some way or other. the tokens of value defined by the popular group are found among the unpopular too, but not followed as strictly as among the popular group. results and discussion the crucial dimensions of popularity mesna school, inland city: all the children in this school, girls and boys alike, spoke without prompting about “the popular” and identified almost the same children as forming part of the popular group. the following conversation with dimitra, a girl of russian origin, and sirin, a girl from afghanistan, serves as an illustration of the social climate. i introduced the theme of friendship by asking who were best friends in their class: dimitra: there is a lot of “drama” among the girls … sirin: there are so to speak two popular groups, or just one … mari: and who are they? dimitra: ingrid, mette, else, tone (6a), anne, but the most popular are mette, ingrid and anne, because they are so-called “cool”…. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 56 mari: but what does it mean to be cool? dimitra: they talk to people who are cool … and they try to be, so they buy clothes from popular shops … sirin: and then there are many groups that are unpopular … like me, i am not popular … (laughs) mari: hm, and what about the other groups you mentioned? dimitra: ludmila, fatou, slovenka, you and me, and some in the other class who are not popular … but i don’t want to be popular, but i don’t want to be … really excluded. this conversation indicates how the girls relate to the power of popularity in their everyday relational practices. this was a theme the girls introduced, not the researcher. it resides in their relationships as a disciplinary force forming their opinions on appearance and thus gender construction, in that a certain femininity position is experienced as necessary to avoid being “really excluded”, at least from the popular group. the “drama” dimitra mentions concerns negotiations among the girls, particularly the popular ones, of who is “in” or “out” of the group at certain periods of time. this is an indication of the competition simmons wrote about, that it is hard work staying in the popular group (simmons, 2002, p. 173). i read dimitra as wanting a position in the popular group, even though she says “but i don’t want to be popular”. i did not trust her utterance here: my observations and knowledge acquired by “hanging around” told me something else. she was often seen around the popular children, discussing and arguing, and she spoke a lot about them in informal conversations. from what dimitra said, i read popularity to be intimately related to gender construction, in that the popular exhibit a particular way of doing gender (rysst, 2019) that is seen as “cool”, a style dimitra tried to imitate by sometimes wearing an item of a popular brand. according to the girls, to experience belonging among the popular certain clothes must be worn: the popular group sported a cool style from “popular shops”. this was to some extent connected to clothes that were more expensive, and was thus directly related to socioeconomic position. in school, the popular girls sported a cool femininity subject position, or cool gender identity, which the girls in the other groups were aware of, and tried to imitate to some degree (rysst, 2017). it is perhaps no coincidence that the three most popular girls (mette, ingrid, anne) were ethnic norwegians and had educated parents with well-paid jobs. interestingly, this is almost identical to what i found east of oslo, in ostli, thirteen years ago: the popular girls were the ones considered good looking by their peers and who came from ethnic norwegian middle-class families (rysst, 2008). it also resonates with research on girls and girlhood in other parts of the western world (adler & adler, 2001; goodwin, 2006; hey, 1997; renold, 2005; simmons, 2002; thorne, 1993). this research has in common the finding that popular girls are often those who are considered good looking and are from the higher social classes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 57 in the study that i present here, kudra, of east african origin, represents an interesting case in that she explicitly aspired to a position among the ethnic norwegians and the popular girls. some also mentioned her as part of the popular group. she too may read as being disciplined by the gaze of popularity in how she spoke about the popular, and how clothes and appearance were important for her construction of gender and experience of inclusion. here is how she described this: kudra: mette and anne are very best friends, and they are also very popular.… mari: hm, but what do you think is the reason why these girls are popular? kudra: hm … i think it is their behaviour … and appearance. that they buy new clothes, new brands … kristin: very long hair … and that they know and talk a lot about others.… kudra: and they are a lot with the boys, teasing them and such.… mari: but do you then feel a pressure to have similar clothes? kristin and kudra: yes, a bit.… kudra: but it is very difficult, because you want to be popular too … and be liked by many. that’s why i want to get new clothes and such. kudra confirmed what the other girls said above, that appearance and clothes were important, and added long hair and flirting as necessary for being popular. however, kudra pointed to an important distinction in the quest for social inclusion in saying that she wants “to be liked by many”, not necessarily only by the popular. this is an important distinction to bear in mind, in that the experience of belonging among peers in general is also important, not only belonging to the popular group. however, i suggest that the gaze of the popular, which includes the heterosexual male gaze of the dominant boys, disciplines the quest for social belonging among peers in general, not only for inclusion among the most popular. in other words, the girls’ social hierarchy is influenced by the gaze of popularity. when i understood that the most popular girls all were ethnic norwegians, i asked dimitra for some elaborations: mari: do you think it is possible to be popular if you have an ethnic origin other than norwegian? dimitra: that is very difficult! one has to be perfect! you must be “norwegian-pretty” (norsk-pen). norwegians are often blonde and have a very white complexion.... mari: but so have you? dimitra: yes, i have, but i, i am somewhat pretty in my country of origin, but here i am just ordinary, but the blondes in norway are different. in dimitra’s experience, it was impossible to be popular if you were not “norwegianpretty”. to her, this included having a “very white complexion”, which indicates that skin colour may be of importance for being high on the social hierarchy (dyer, 1997; frankenberg, 1993; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 58 hübinette & tigervall, 2009; prieur, 2004). the irony in this for dimitra is that she had the same complexion, but still did not qualify as “correctly” white from her point of view. she regarded herself as a “foreigner”, a category that usually implies a darker complexion than ethnic norwegians (prieur, 2004; rysst, 2019). said differently, the label “foreigner” includes people with brown or black skin, but also other physiognomic characteristics not typically found among ethnic norwegians, such as brown eyes, or black or curly hair. dimitra surely experienced a judging gaze regarding appearance; that is, of a gender construction that may qualify for popularity, which thus contradicts the assumption of gender equality, when gender equality is defined as the possibility to freely engage in activities and construct gender without risking social exclusion in the peer group or family (see background). she classified herself through the gaze of popularity, not her own, which resulted in her seeing herself as less “perfect” and not “white” in the same manner as the ethnic norwegian girls. in addition, it was a teacher’s impression that dimitra, in particular, was very concerned about brands. in spite of living in a household with strained financial resources, dimitra now and then wore clothes of expensive brands, as mentioned above. this may confirm that she aspired to a higher position in the peer group, as suggested previously, and that she believed wearing clothes of certain brands would help her achieve this (dyer, 1997; hübinette & tigervall, 2009). the popular group of ingrid, mette, and anne sported similar gender positions by emphasizing good looks, long hair, fashionable clothes, an interest in dating, and participation in activities like football, cross-country skiing, and dance. they also had in common middle-class backgrounds, with parents who had relatively high income. in addition to playing football on the local football team for girls, they also attended what they called a “professional football school”, a special after-school activity with limited enrolment, resulting in children finding themselves on waiting lists. it was common for the ethnic norwegian girls to pursue two or more paid leisure activities and to go on holidays abroad. in short, the tokens of value and femininity positions of the girls at mesna clearly reflected a commercialized childhood, as everything cost money, particularly clothes, individual leisure activities, sports gear, and holidays (borch et al., 2019). as such, it is difficult for girls of financially strained families to construct gender in order to match the “particular goods and experiences transformed into tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” (pugh, 2009, p. 8) that are reflected in the lives of popular girls. the vigilant reader may by now have remarked that the “particular goods and activities transformed into tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” — the bridges for inclusion and thus the content of these girls’ overarching economy of dignity — overlap with the dominating characteristics in the social construction of popularity, and thus the femininity positions needed to enhance belonging in the overall peer group. i interpret the crucial dimensions of popularity and the contents of their economy of dignity to consist of the following: attractive appearance; an interest in sports, particularly being a footballer; dating; clothes defined as “cool”; paid leisure activities; holidays abroad; hairstyle (long hair); and possession of attractive material items, such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 59 as an iphone. in addition, i speculate that white skin also is a prerequisite for popularity (borch et al., 2019; dyer, 1997; hübinette & tigervall, 2009; rysst, 2008, 2015, 2019). at furu school, eastside, oslo i had spent some months among the furu children before i arranged to talk to them after school. i was allowed to use a room in the school, and brought biscuits and drinks for the occasion. the theme of popularity was not as explicit at furu school as at mesna; the participants at furu did not speak about it spontaneously. the categories of “popular” and “not popular” were not part of their social classification system. in contrast to mesna, the hierarchy among the children was related to religious affiliation and ethnic origin, illustrated by their social categories of “muslim or not muslim”, “norwegian or foreigner”, and “brown, black, or white”. the social categories (experience-near terms) point to dominant values in their social contexts, which reflect that ethnic and religious affiliation is important in their everyday lives as also found by ghorashi et al. (2009). even though they did not have the categories of popular and not popular, my interpretation of their friendship network is, nevertheless, that some girls are more attractive friends than others are. in other words, the phenomenon of popularity existed as at mesna, but was expressed in other terms. this was indicated in interviews when the girls hesitated on my direct question about popular girls, as in this conversation with rosie, of chinese origin, and rania, of turkish origin: rania: fatima thinks so much about sahra, she calls on her all the time, and sahra gets fed up, and sighs, “jesus, stop it!!” mari: so sahra, she is popular then? rosie: i don’t know, i wouldn’t say she is unpopular. it is evident that both of these girls hesitate to label anyone as “popular” or “unpopular”. the reason may be that they have talked a lot in class about the importance of everyone being equal, and that all are to be included, which are frequent themes in norwegian kindergartens and schools. this talk about equality was more frequent at furu than at mesna. rosie’s hesitation may also have been because she did not feel very popular, as she did not have close ties to anyone in her class (rysst, 2015). however, i read sahra, of turkish origin, and pernille, of ethnic norwegian background, to be the most popular girls in their class, based on observations, interviews, and the mapping of their social network. both sahra and pernille were attractive friends and referred to by many. the most obvious reason that sahra had this position is, i believe, that she was considered good looking, had a sympathetic personality, was good at sports, and constructed gender through how these girls defined “cool enough” clothes (to be described below). in addition, she danced at the “girls’ café”, a free leisure-time activity centre managed by the local red cross. dance was the most popular leisure activity among the girls, although only sahra and pernille attended the classes. i suggest it was the combined effect of these relevant dimensions that gave sahra her high social position. there was less “drama” around these girls than at mesna, although a continuous negotiation went on with regard to expanding the popular dyad to include international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 60 fatima. at the end of the sixth form she was included. sahra was the most popular girl, probably in part because she was a representative of the majority of children at furu, by virtue of having a foreign, muslim background. in addition, she was quite fair-skinned. research in scandinavia and in other parts of the western world, for instance the united states, has illustrated the priority of whiteness for inclusion in many social contexts, which may have relevance also at furu school (hübinette & tigervall, 2009; hunter, 2016; prieur, 2004). inequality through skin tone, termed “colourism”, is a known phenomenon from critical race and whiteness research (dyer, 1997; frankenberg, 1993; hunter, 2016). teachers at the furu school told me in informal conversations that they also had the impression that fair skin colour had higher social prestige among the children than brown and black. ethnic norwegian pernille was also popular and fair-skinned, and the relationship between her and sahra showed how they influenced each other according to gender construction, by sharing the same style of dressing. this is the style most of the other girls appeared to aspire to as well. as such, how sahra and pernille dressed and behaved is understood to highlight important tokens of value in the girls’ economy of dignity, and thus in the judging gaze of popularity. the style they sported was a cool, teenage-inspired style with tight jeans, long sweaters, and sweaters with hoods, clothes that worked as bridges for inclusion in the peer group. they both had shoulder-length or longer hair, usually tied in ponytails or plaits. possession of attractive material objects, such as an iphone, conferred a special position here as well. all these items, which were parts of their social construction of popularity, were also elements in their economy of dignity, paralleling the situation at mesna school. and lastly, i also suggest here that fair skin was more conducive to popularity than darker skin, as dimitra expressed above: you had to be “norwegian-pretty” in order to qualify as popular. implications of popularity the relationships between popular girls and how they relate to their peer groups are important and interesting because, as popular children — with all that such influence and power implies — they may dominate the peer relationships in many ways (adler & adler, 2001; duits, 2008; goodwin, 2006; hey, 1997; renold, 2005; thorne, 1993). they are the center of attention, and have the power to define the relevant gender constructions and tokens of value (pugh, 2009, p. 6), as i will discuss below. gender construction, social inclusion, and gender equality at mesna school i read the friendship network of the mesna girls to indicate a pattern of ties distributed according to ethnic background; that is, according to the broad categories of foreigner or norwegian, but not according to particular nationalities or ethnicities. the ethnic norwegian girls who were not part of the popular group (hilde, astrid, kristin, tone), formed a loose group of their own. however, i read them as constructing their gender identities as disciplined by the gaze of popularity; they attempted the cool style, but did not succeed at doing this and were still defined by others and themselves as having an ordinary style. thus, while caring about the popular style international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 61 and feeling disciplined by a judging gaze that to some extent they tried to live up to, their personal gender constructions satisfied inclusion in a group of “ordinaries”. i also observed that crossing ethnic lines seemed to be rather a one-way street. so, for example, kudra was the only girl of foreign origin who was mentioned as a “friend” by ethnic norwegians, and who was also included in the ethnic norwegian girls’ friendship network, while more ethnic norwegians were identified as friends by other girls of immigrant origin. this could be read as an attempt on part of immigrant girls to seek acceptance among ethnic norwegians. interestingly, all the girls of foreign origin, except kudra, belonged to the group of immigrant girls around dimitra. it appears that “birds of a feather flock together”, which may support beverly d. tatum’s (2003) postulation that hanging out with children of similar ethnic origin, in this case as foreigners, is a good and even necessary prerequisite for building positive ethnic identities and belonging. in contrast, kudra primarily spent time with ethnic norwegians and was more included and quite popular because, as i saw it, she implemented a clearer assimilation strategy in how she constructed gender (see below) than the others of immigrant origin. she participated in football and aspired to a position in the popular group, imitating their appearance and ways of dressing. she tried to be and look like the ethnic norwegians in school rather than foregrounding her african ethnic identity, which, according to berry (2011), may be termed an “assimilation strategy”: a strategy whereby the minority group does not wish to maintain their cultural integrity, but aspires to belong to the dominant group. in addition, in the case of kudra, the other children praised her for speaking norwegian fluently, even though she was born abroad and only arrived in lillehammer in her seventh year. proficiency in the norwegian language helped the inclusion of immigrant children in general, but i found no indication of this contributing to inclusion among the popular. as i saw it, all the dimensions in the informants’ economy of dignity worked as bridges for popular gender construction, which then led to inclusion. these bridges, which appeared to be centered on appearance and participation in paid leisure activities (first and foremost, football), were necessary for belonging, and were harder to achieve for girls of immigrant origin when they were in the minority because their families were generally less well off than ethnic norwegians (aalandslid & tronstad, 2010). while i did not have detailed information about the financial situations of immigrant families at mesna, other than knowing something about the job situation of the parents of the girls i knew personally, my observations seemed to confirm the findings of aalandslid and tronstad (2010). where crossing the financial bridge was not possible, the girls of immigrant origin formed a group of their own, with an accepted “inside group” that reflected femininity positions inspired by the popular gaze. in this group, inclusion was possible without matching the overall economy of dignity, such as participation in football. these girls said they didn’t like football, which may have been true, but dimitra said her mother did not want her to play football because it is a “masculine” activity. in other words, her mother did not share the norwegian cultural value of gender equality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 62 when it comes to the question of gender equality among the girls at mesna, the data that i gathered suggest that they are not free to construct gender in such a way as to experience belonging and social inclusion both in school and at home. they are all disciplined by the judging gaze of popularity, which, of course, prioritizes the popular girls of middle-class families, because they use this gaze themselves, influenced by popular culture, and by social and financial forces in their surroundings. as such, girls living in immigrant families appear to have a harder time achieving the experience of social inclusion when they live in low-income families and do not choose to adopt an assimilation strategy. gender construction, social inclusion, and gender equality at furu school at first sight, it was difficult to argue that friendship ties were systematically distributed at furu school according to ethnic background, as they were at mesna. the two most popular girls represented different countries of origin but constructed gender in similar ways, as shown above. a closer scrutiny, however, indicated that girls of similar religious affiliation, here muslim, flocked together (5 girls). there were only two non-muslims in their class, rosie and pernille, and rosie had no close friends among her classmates. i argue that the girls at furu are also disciplined by the judging gaze of popularity in their construction of gender, which has some interesting features because of the situation of immigrant girls being in the majority. as the girls at furu school gradually approached puberty during the sixth form, an islaminspired covering-up code started to dominate their gender construction by way of dressing. they constructed a culturally-mixed — hybrid — gender position consisting of fashionable clothes, but with tunics and long sweaters over tights or jeans in order to hide their buttocks. rania and fatima also wore hijabs. this hybrid femininity position consisting of both cultural and religious items, in combination with general norwegian fashion, may be read as a consequence of negotiating a balance between the cultural values of their countries of origin and those of norway. this was explained by the participants as follows: sahra: we don’t like scanty clothing; we want to hide our behinds ... mari: hm … i think that is rather usual among muslim girls … ethnic norwegians don’t think like this? sahra: no, she (pernille) is very influenced by how we … i don’t mean to insult by saying this … but one gets influenced by the people one hangs out with and she doesn’t socialize with very many norwegians. pernille constructed gender by adjusting to the covering-up code of the majority, which the popular girl sahra had adopted, along with fatima as a new girl in the popular group. sahra remarked that pernille had adapted to the majority dressing code, saying that pernille once wore shorts to school, at which point pernille quickly underscored the fact that she wore tights underneath, meaning that her legs were acceptably covered (rysst, 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 63 this covering-up code did not visibly exist in the gender constructions at mesna among the muslim girls i got to know. here too, the girls adjusted to the majority’s definition of clothing styles, which in their case was defined by ethnic norwegians, who were not concerned about hiding their bodies. mette, for instance, often wore jeans with a very short top, showing her stomach or back if she bent over. as such, the girlhood at furu school in general may be understood as more contested than at mesna, because the majority of furu girls had to negotiate cultural and religious values both from their countries of origin and from norway. in contrast, the majority of girls at mesna did not have to negotiate cultural values in their gender constructions beyond, perhaps, discussions with their parents concerning price category and clothes being too “grown-up” for their age group (rysst, 2017). however, the girlhood of the minority (immigrant) girls at mesna may have been more contested than that of the majority (immigrant) girls at furu, because social inclusion appeared more difficult to achieve at mesna without adopting an assimilation strategy. clothing style appears to have been equally contested in both schools, but always dominated by the popular girls in the majority group. in contrast to what was included in the economy of dignity at mesna school, at furu there existed no overarching leisure activities such as football to serve as bridges for inclusion. none of the girls at furu played organized football. this may be because most of them were muslims, and because football was defined as a masculine sport, as some muslim parents pointed out at mesna. in fact, none of the girls at furu attended paid, organized leisure activities, and therefore appeared to exclude these as parts of their gender construction and economy of dignity. however, the free indoor activities at the girls’ café served as bridges to some extent; these included dance, pingpong, and video games. in sum, at furu school there existed no pressure to participate in any paid activity outside school in order to experience belonging and social inclusion. this suggests that their local girlhood was less influenced by commercialization than at mesna and in other places where ethnic norwegians are in the majority. for instance, at the ostli school of my previous research (rysst, 2008), where 60% of the children were ethnic norwegian, the material items of the economy of dignity were of more expensive brands than at furu, and included paid leisure activities, quite similar to the situation at mesna. the popular girls there were also white, ethnic norwegians of the middle class, who defined the content of their economy of dignity and the dominant gender positions. this resulted in girls from immigrant backgrounds and low-income families having a hard time experiencing social inclusion (rysst, 2008, 2019). when it comes to the issue of gender equality, the furu girls, similar to those at mesna, may be read as not free to construct gender as they wish. the furu girls of immigrant origin, being in the majority, sported a hybrid femininity position informed by cultural values from both their countries of origin and the host country. as such, they avoided social exclusion in the family and also among peers. for the most popular girl, sahra, it was possible to construct gender in harmony with both her parents and the popular girls, being one herself, while pernille adjusted to the muslim-informed norms of the majority in order to experience social inclusion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 64 conclusion this article has shown that the crucial dimensions of the social construction of popularity among young girls at two field sites in norway varied according to minority/majority positions, and overlapped the tokens of value in their economies of dignity. this overlap confirms the relevance of my reformulation of pugh’s (2009) definition of economy of dignity to include the word “popular”, as mentioned earlier: “the popular children, here girls, shape the peer group’s economy of dignity which in turn transforms particular goods and experiences into tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” (adapted from pugh, 2009, p. 8). the overlap also underlines the importance of how power, through popularity, works among children and how minority children, irrespective of ethnic origin, often adapt to the norms of the majority in their construction of gender. the dominant femininity positions at both field sites were constructed by the popular girls. all the girls experienced these femininity positions as a disciplining, judging gaze, and respected and followed them to a greater or lesser degree. their gender constructions were influenced by this gaze, enmeshed with the male gaze, and reflected a commercialized childhood, particularly at mesna where ethnic norwegian girls from middle-class families were in the majority. this commercialization of young girls is influenced by teenage, popular culture and affects the girls’ appearance and activities (rysst, 2008, 2015, 2019; sorensen 2014). this may have particular negative ramifications for the social inclusion of girls of immigrant muslim families when in the minority, as shown in mesna school. the revealed overlap between the dimensions of popularity and “the tokens of value suddenly fraught with meaning” (pugh, 2009, p. 8) in the girls’ economy of dignity, suggests a number of overall conclusions. if pugh is correct in that, for children everywhere, the most important thing is the experience of belonging, and that what is needed for this experience among peers is influenced by the popular children, they have an important position for the well-being of their peers. i suggest the overlap between the social construction of popularity and the tokens of value of economy of dignity is found in most childhood contexts in industrialized societies, irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation. i also suggest that the overlap underlines the profound importance of taking peer power and the power of popularity seriously when conducting research concerning children and social inclusion. social inclusion and popularity appear to depend on how the child furnishes the values of the economy of dignity, and this needs to be unpacked in order to understand more deeply what goes on among children. more insight into these processes may support the work of parents and teachers to include marginalized children. it appears that when girls of immigrant origin are in the minority, they have more difficulty with social inclusion in the popular group, and perhaps in the overall peer group, than when they are in the majority. these differences are primarily related to lack of money (i.e., socioeconomic position) but also to cultural values relating to ethnicity and religion, and their family’s priorities with regard to consumption. however, when the majority live in low-income families, popular girls included, the economy of dignity appears to contain fewer expensive items and activities than when the popular girls live in ethnic norwegian middle-class families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 46–70 65 the final implication of the overlap of popularity and economy of dignity is that neither ethnic norwegian girls, popular or otherwise, nor 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(2016). friendly girls and mean girls: social constructions of popularity among teenage girls in shanghai. the japanese psychological association, 58(1), 42–53. doi:10.1111/jpr.12101 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/201711/taking-back-the-male-gaze https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/201711/taking-back-the-male-gaze https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12101 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818119 creating evidence-based change through a traumainformed lens: translating principles into practice susan hunt, marlene m. moretti, chris booth, and nickole reyda abstract: when programs and services incorporate an understanding of trauma and its impact on an individual’s behaviour and ability to cope, the potential for misdiagnosis and inadequate treatment planning is significantly reduced. incorporating trauma-informed approaches into service delivery is an essential component to developing programs that accurately address the needs of youth and their families. the organization involved in this study, in the province of british columbia, canada, provides an extensive array of services to youths aged 12 to 18 years who have significant emotional, behavioural, and psychiatric difficulties. in a joint multidisciplinary effort to better support traumatized young people and their families, the organization embarked on an in-depth evaluation of its service delivery. together the team co-created a shift in practice that supported the translation of trauma-informed principles into practice and developed valid and measurable methods for evaluation through the adoption of a participatory action framework. four semi-structured interviews were developed for collecting qualitative feedback from clients, stakeholders, and staff who experienced the change in service delivery across 5 clinical cases over the course of 8 months. the feedback confirmed that the shift in practice was effective in cultivating an environment of safety, choice, and collaboration for clients. this resulted in the development of an evidence-based shift in service delivery as well as identifying training needs and developing plans to integrate this change into broader practice throughout the organization. keywords: trauma informed, principles, qualitative research, maples adolescent treatment centre, the maples, evidenced-based, service delivery susan hunt ba (corresponding author) is a certified child and youth care professional with the ministry for children and family development, bldg #200; suite #20820434 64th ave, langley, british columbia v2y 1n4. email: susan.m.hunt@gov.bc.ca marlene m. moretti phd is a tier 1 canadian research chair and professor in the department of psychology at simon fraser university, burnaby, british columbia v5a 1s6. email: moretti@sfu.ca chris booth md is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and clinical director of the maples adolescent treatment centre, burnaby, british columbia v5g 3h4. email: chris.booth@gov.bc.ca nickole reyda is a registered psychiatric nurse and program coordinator at the maples adolescent treatment centre, burnaby, british columbia v5g 3h4. email: nickole.reyda@gov.bc.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818119 mailto:susan.m.hunt@gov.bc.ca mailto:moretti@sfu.ca mailto:chris.booth@gov.bc.ca mailto:nickole.reyda@gov.bc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 55 when people think of the term “trauma”, they generally think of things like a catastrophic world event or a devastating personal tragedy. however, to those in the helping professions, it is recognized that trauma is a much more common occurrence with far reaching and pervasive consequences on a person’s life and ability to cope. in fact, according to british columbia’s trauma-informed practice guide (bc provincial mental health and substance use planning council [bcmhsupc], 2013), a remarkable “76% of canadian adults report some form of trauma exposure in their lifetime” (p. 9). there are a number of dimensions of trauma that take into account the magnitude of an incident, the frequency of its occurrence, and its duration, as well as if it occurs within an interpersonal relationship or from an external source. whether it is a single life event, a subtle series of attachment injuries and adverse childhood experiences, or a prolonged exposure to abuse, trauma may result in devastating physical and psychological consequences. furthermore, while reactions to trauma can vary from person to person, the age at which trauma occurs is an important variable (bcmhsupc, 2013). when trauma is experienced in early childhood, it can have a significant impact on the development of the brain, the progression of social and emotional growth, and a person’s behaviour (anda et al., 2006). in fact, according to the adverse childhood experiences (ace) study by anda and colleagues (2006), adverse childhood experiences are much more common than previously recognized and have been directly linked to substance use and mental health problems later in life. it is therefore crucial to integrate trauma-informed approaches into service delivery as an essential component in creating and developing programs that best fit the needs of clients. in fact, when services do not reflect an understanding of trauma and its impact on a person’s attempts to cope, the potential for misdiagnosis and inadequate treatment planning can be substantial (bcmhsupc, 2013). even when the importance of trauma-informed practice is recognized, transforming agency practices to align with a trauma-informed approach can present a number of challenges. this is particularly true for multidisciplinary agencies that provide a variety of programs to youth and families, including both on-site and community-based services. the organization involved in this study, the maples adolescent treatment centre (the maples; bc ministry of children and family development, n.d.), has been in operation since 1969 and is part of the provincial child and youth mental health service network for british columbia. the maples provides an extensive array of programs and services to youth aged 12 to 18 throughout the province who have significant emotional, behavioural, and psychiatric difficulties; the clients include youth who have experienced significant trauma both individually and multi-generationally. a high proportion of clients receiving service are youth from economically disadvantaged families, youth within the foster care system, and aboriginal families. while the organization utilizes the language and diagnostic criteria of the diagnostic and statistical manual for psychiatric disorders (dsm), the foundations and principles of the existing clinical model are explicitly based on the recognition of attachment as a fundamental biological regulatory system that shapes behaviour. because attachment-based practice inherently recognizes the impact of trauma on mental health and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 56 behaviour, clinical practice that arises from an attachment-based perspective aligns well with emerging trauma-based principles. in recognition that the overarching goal was to establish quality services that are both evidence-based and trauma-informed, the maples endeavoured to ensure that the programs delivered not only promote child and adolescent well-being, but also provide services that do not retraumatize families. project objective to facilitate a review of clinical practice in relation to trauma-informed practice guidelines, a collaborative practice team (cpt) comprising a multidisciplinary working group and a steering committee was created at the maples in 2014. within this initiative, the organization embarked on an in-depth evaluation of service delivery that endeavoured to deepen understanding of the relationship between trauma and a person’s attachment needs. a participatory action model was adopted to guide this work; it incorporates strengthening collaborative engagement, ongoing feedback, and learning throughout the process (bergold & thomas, 2012). this approach ensured the collection of meaningful information about the quality and effectiveness of services while also creating a collaborative context that supported clinically relevant, feasible, and reliable changes in service delivery. the qualitative approach used in this study, which was designed to provide structure and accountability to a project and to clarify the purpose and direction of the research, provided a clear framework to guide the various methods of data collection, the analyses, and the interpretation of the findings into evidence (bouma, ling, & wilkinson, 2012). using procedures already established within the organization, the delivery of programs and services within the maples is developed and evaluated in partnership with youth, caregivers, and community care teams, and through research, education, and collaboration (maples adolescent treatment centre, 2014). based on the feedback from the organization’s outcome measures, and from discussions within the cpt, several key areas were identified for practice review and key questions were posed:  is the organization’s service delivery consistent with best-practice guidelines and evidenced-based practice in the field of child and youth mental health?  how might we integrate the principles of a trauma-informed approach into the areas of service delivery and program development? together, staff identified the care plan development meeting and its preceding assessment process as the key focus for evaluation (see figures 1 & 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 57 figure 1. development of a care plan at the maples prior to review. together the cpt developed a shift in practice regarding the care plan development meeting that it hypothesized would not only be effective in responding to the concerns and feedback from the organization’s outcome measures, but would also support the translation of trauma-informed principles (tips) into practice. this led to the creation of a formulation meeting for the maples team that would be scheduled to occur prior to the care plan development meeting itself. this pre-meeting was seen as an opportunity for the care plan team to discuss detailed results from the multidisciplinary evaluations, to identify common themes across the assessments, and to ensure that the information shared in the care plan development meeting was presented in a traumasensitive format that focused on patterns, themes, and strengths relevant to the youth and family. the formulation meeting was also viewed as an opportunity to shape the presentations in the care plan development meeting so that they could be tailored to the needs of clients rather than the other professionals. the care plan a care plan at the maples is a comprehensive assessment that includes four components:  a child and youth care/psychiatric nursing report from a life space perspective  a social history report of the family’s generational themes and patterns, completed by a social worker  a psychological assessment that includes formal cognitive and psychological testing as well as an interview with the youth  an educational assessment that includes academic testing and a review of school records at the end of this 4-week process, each of the above disciplines presents their findings in a care plan development meeting at which the family is in attendance, along with community professionals and the assigned maples psychiatrist. the care plan document, developed from the information shared in this meeting, is written by the psychiatrist and is designed to be a “portable” document: the information and recommendations formulated are intended to follow the youth throughout their adolescence and into any community or setting in which the youth lives. a care plan consultant is then assigned to this document and it is this person’s role to assist others in understanding and adapting the recommendations from the care plan to work with the resources available within the youth and family’s community. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 58 figure 2. complete care plan process prior to review. method bouma et al. (2012) stated that a guiding principle of doing research is letting the research question itself determine the data collection strategy. given that our research questions were aimed at determining the impression left by, and the emotive experience resulting from, a change in service delivery, we utilised qualitative methods for our research. this research project had an element of “live-learning”: the focus was not a formal evaluation of an already established and standard practice but rather an evaluation of a process of change that was current and ongoing. a discharge to community • outreach workers are introduced and provide follow up support to community to implement the care plan care plan meeting with youth, family and community support • professionals present assessment findings • care plan is discussed as an integrative document that brings together observations and recommends treatment options and community supports multidisciplinary assessment • assessments completed by psychiatry, social work, psychology, education and youth care youth and family intake • youth and family attend a meeting where the care plan process is explained international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 59 qualitative approach was needed to provide us with the ability to adapt and modify the interviews and the variables as required by the participant feedback and themes that emerged besides the four tips used to guide this review (see figure 3). figure 3. the four tips used to guide this review. sample a smaller pilot team from within the larger cpt, comprising a professional from each of the discipline areas involved in the care plan assessment, was assembled to implement the new format of the care plan development meetings. five upcoming clinical cases were identified as proposed pilot cases for the new format. for the purposes of this study, and because the maples is an organization that serves the entire province of british columbia, the pilot cases were selected based on geographical location. selection by proximity and accessibility to the youth, family, and community professionals allowed the research team to collect the qualitative feedback for evaluating the impact of the shift in service. the five clinical cases were chosen to represent diversity in family composition, culture, and socioeconomic status. in-depth interview while the larger cpt worked together in defining their roles and functions within the formulation meeting versus the care plan development meeting, the interdisciplinary steering committee began the work of developing valid and measurable methods for evaluation. a high priority was placed on obtaining feedback from those who directly experienced the new format as trauma-informed principles trauma awareness: building awareness and understanding for clients and staff around the impact of trauma and the relationship between trauma and substance use, physical health, and mental health. safety and trust: establishing physical, emotional, and cultural safety for both clients and staff. safety and trustworthiness can be established through adapting physical spaces, providing clear information, ensuring consent and collaboration, and so on. choice, connection, and collaboration: fostering a sense of self-determination, efficacy, dignity, and personal control for those receiving service by providing choice and working collaboratively with clients. strength and skill building: assisting clients in identifying strengths to further develop resiliency and coping skills. (bcmhsupc, 2013) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 60 these contributions were recognized as essential for measuring the effectiveness of developing a stronger and more trauma-informed approach. therefore, as guided by the tips outlined in figure 3, four semi-structured interviews were developed for collecting qualitative feedback from those who had experienced the shift in practice: clients, stakeholders, and the maples professionals. adopting the tips into the development of these interviews provided a framework for creating research methods designed to measure and examine the translation of the principles into practice. questions were carefully considered for each of the tip categories and were aimed towards evaluating whether the shift in practice demonstrated trauma awareness, promoted an environment of safety and trust for clients, and provided a sense of collaboration, choice, and connection for the youth, family, and community care team. questions were also aimed at determining the level to which the youth’s and family’s strengths were identified. additionally, several questions were created for measuring the level of collaboration, teamwork, and support amongst the maples team, with the intent of addressing the evidence of vicarious trauma experienced by professionals. field research in addition to the in-depth interviews, we decided bring in an element of field research — a silent observer — for the aggregation of qualitative data. a member from the child and youth care discipline within the maples cpt was designated the silent observer, a neutral, nonparticipating attendee in each of the pilot case care plan meetings who would record the events, behaviours, and dynamics that occurred within each meeting. this data provided supplementary evidence to the feedback collected from the in-depth interviews. with the exception of the final pilot case care plan meeting for which a cpt member from the psychiatric discipline filled in, the designated professional in the silent observer role did not vary throughout the project. inter-rater consensus during the progression of data collection and theming of the qualitative feedback gathered from each of the pilot cases as they occurred, the feedback was also presented to the members of the larger cpt. not only did this process reaffirm the collaborative and participatory action framework adopted throughout this research process, but it also provided an opportunity to assess consensus in the theming of the qualitative feedback and created cross-rater reliability in the interpretation of the data. limitations in a large organization such as the maples, the adoption of a trauma-informed perspective requires collaboration across disciplines to ensure a coherent framework is created that guides services within each area of specialization. well established institutions with a long standing history and model of service delivery also face the challenge of reviewing administrative and clinical practices and programs that may define their identity as an organization. retaining aspects international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 61 of practice that are congruent with trauma-informed practice while at the same time introducing change where it is needed can be challenging. it requires a collaborative approach that engages staff at all levels and is guided by a clearly defined framework and timeline. a guided research approach using the qualitative model and methods for evaluation provided ongoing opportunity to shape and refine problems as they arose throughout the research project. some of the problems and difficulties that arose involved three occurrences when the family or community professionals declined consent to have their interviews audiotaped. this made transcribing their interviews more difficult, as the interviewer needed to take notes while conducting the interview. not only did this hamper the ability of the interviewer to be fully present in gathering the authentic experience of these participants, but it also affected the accuracy of the transcriptions. furthermore, there were other difficulties: two instances of delayed care plans due to client circumstances, a parent and youth who withdrew their consent to participate in the interview following their care plan meeting, a community professional who was unavailable to participate in her interview due to illness, and a few occurrences of having to adapt and complete the interviews over the telephone because of hesitance on the part of a youth, a caregiver, and several community professionals in committing to an in-person interview. finally, as the approach to this project primarily engaged those professionals who were most interested in the process of change and open to creating a shift in practice, the selection of the pilot team participants was later recognized as one of the limitations of the research. findings adopting the tips to guide this project not only provided clear structure in the development of the qualitative methods for evaluation; they also guided the analysis and interpretation of both the feedback gathered and the observational data obtained by the silent observer. trauma awareness throughout all five pilot cases, clients as well as stakeholders were consistent in their responses that the information presented in the meeting was helpful to them in understanding how past trauma and events were related to current challenges the family was experiencing. both groups found that the meeting was effective in “helping us to understand [the youth] more”; that it “helped make meaning of [the youth’s] behaviour”; and that it provided them with a “sense of how to approach working with [the youth]”. one parent in pilot case #1 responded that the meeting and the way in which the information was shared helped her in answering “the whys” behind her child’s behaviour. the observational data substantiated the feedback; when the reports were presented in a summary focusing on themes and patterns, the families appeared more engaged and the youth were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 62 able to remain in the room for the entire meeting. conversely, when there appeared to be some practice drift from the project’s objective in pilot cases #3 and #4, the opposite observations were made. for example, during these care plans, the staff presented their reports in full detail. this practice demonstrated decreased awareness regarding the impact of trauma and retraumatization; the silent observer noted that the families tended to present as more distracted with “glazed over” expressions during these meetings. during the meeting for pilot case #4, the youth left the room until the presentation of the family’s social history report was over. in terms of the feedback from the maples team, there was consistency in reporting that the formulation meeting was effective in providing a shared understanding of the family and community dynamics prior to entering the care plan meeting. it was further reported that this resulted in the team’s ability to adapt the process within the care plan meeting itself to meet the youth’s and family’s needs more effectively. for example, in several of the formulation meetings, the team was able to change the order in which the reports would be presented in the care plan meeting based on what the youth’s strengths were and what reports the team thought might contain more difficult information. as well, the team reported that this new format helped them in “simplifying who the audience is” and prepared them to “better attune to the family’s needs and reactions”. safety and trust across all five pilot cases, the families as well as community professionals were consistent in reporting that the environments within the meetings were “very sensitive and respectful” and that the families were “treated very well” owing to the approach of the care plan team. furthermore, community stakeholders felt better about recommending the service due to the environment of safety that was created within the new format, saying, for instance: “i would have struggled with feeling protective of the family previously.” and, “now i feel like with more sensitivity the likelihood of it being a difficult process is less”. the feedback from caregivers was also consistent with regard to an overall sense of safety in the meetings. for example, 100% of caregivers responded “no” to the question: “did you feel unsafe or exposed by the information shared in the meeting?” and several parents also reported feeling respected when they expressed their concerns that sensitive information from their social history reports would be read out in the meeting. in fact, in one of the pilot cases, a caregiver reported specifically that “i had asked for some stuff to be left out (during the meeting) and i was pleased that it was respected”. the observational data provided indicate that the discussions within the formulation meetings were also effective for the team in creating an environment of safety and trust for families. by framing their role as a collaborative partnership with the family and community professionals, and mindfully seating themselves in the meeting room to be intermixed with the group, power differentials in the room were minimized (bcmhsupc, 2013). this perspective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 63 and mindful seating arrangement was also effective in providing a sense of availability, support, and proximity to the clients. for example; the silent observer noted: as [maples social worker] had close physical proximity to mom, she was able to note her discomfort with portions of the report and touched her arm; offering her comfort at a point in the report as well. [mom was] offered kleenex. as [maples social worker] summarized the report, it gave her opportunity to make eye contact with mom and [youth]. mom was engrossed in reading along with the report and didn’t notice the attempt for eye contact, but [youth] did meet [social worker’s] eyes. feedback from the staff also revealed a consensus that the formulation meeting provided a venue for discussion and planning of any necessary adaptations to the structure of the care plan meeting and for considering any dynamics and relationships amongst the participants who would be attending. for example, as was discussed above under trauma awareness, in three of the five pilot cases the team decided to switch the order in which reports would be presented in order to cultivate an immediate environment of safety for clients. while traditionally the family’s social history is the first report presented in a care plan meeting, in these three pilot cases, the team chose to begin with the report that best represented the strengths of the youth and family. additionally, with specific reference to two of the pilot cases that involved families with aboriginal heritage the team reported that the formulation meeting provided an important venue and context for reflecting on cultural issues related to historical and continuing cultural marginalization, and to increase their awareness and understanding of transgenerational and systemic trauma experienced by these families. these discussions were essential to the team’s ability to provide cultural safety for these families as well as respect for their heritage and experiences. choice, collaboration, and connection questions within the semi-structured interviews were designed to seek feedback in two aspects of this tip category: (a) the availability of choice to the clients and their sense of collaboration and connection within the meeting; and, (b) the sense of connection and collaboration within the maples care plan team. throughout the five pilot cases, feedback was 100% consistent across families, community teams, and maples staff that families had the choice of whether to participate or not, and that the new format of the care plan meeting was effective in promoting an environment of choice and collaboration for clients. common feedback included: “the biggest difference is that there is a lot more dialogue with the family” (stakeholder); “there was so much participation, it was very respectful” (stakeholder); “the [youth] was engaged and it felt like we did it with her, not to her” (maples staff); and, “i really enjoyed being a part of this care plan” (stakeholder). families also reported that the opportunity for choice and collaboration resulted in feelings of control and added international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 64 a sense of safety for them within the meeting. in fact, one parent responded, “the social worker was respectful of my choice so i felt like i had control.” as mentioned previously, not only did this new model provide an opportunity to increase the level of choice, collaboration, and connection for clients and stakeholders, but the maples professionals also reported an increased sense of collaboration and connection amongst themselves as a team. staff comments included descriptions of the formulation meeting as “remarkably casual and there was good dialogue amongst everyone”; “quite a harmonious sort of meeting”; “there was a real sense of ‘team’ as we went into the meeting”; and, “i was validated and supported by my team”. furthermore, it was acknowledged with 100% consistency in all staff responses that this format was “better” than the previous model and that the formulation meeting was effective in eliminating the need to track each other down and consult during the lead-up to a care plan development meeting. strengths and skill building across all five pilot cases there was consensus throughout the feedback that the new model was effective in producing a greater focus on the youth’s and family’s strengths and protective factors. it was further reported that this stronger focus generated greater opportunities for skill building and effective treatment planning on the part of the community professionals working with the youth and family. for example, one community mental health clinician reported that the focus on strengths “helped us and the family find a fresh start to work from”. further responses from community professionals included: “everyone really emphasised [youth’s] strengths”; and, “the reports were very respectful and really built up the strengths of [parent]”. reflecting on the difference between prior practice and the revised practice format, another community professional commented: “before it was about the diagnosis and this time it was about identifying ways to support the youth so strengths were the focus.” most importantly, when asked if they felt their strengths were recognized within the meeting, 100% of clients responded “yes”. despite feedback from one youth that it “was a bit awkward”, there was strong consensus in the youth and family responses that they felt “good” and “hopeful” after their care plan meetings. practice reflection even though the feedback across the tip domains from families, community professionals, and staff was almost universally positive, several areas of practice emerged as needing further development and growth. first, staff consistently expressed a need for greater focus and structure within the formulation meeting, including feedback such as: “the formulation meeting is really unstructured”; “i really want it to be chaired and everyone take turns”; and, “it should be chaired better so there is no competing for time”, with the further comment, “no, i did not feel heard or respected”. furthermore, when specifically asked what they might change about the formulation meeting in the future, staff responses were consistent: “people need to have an awareness of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 65 timelines and focusing on themes”; “we could focus the discussion better and tighten the timeframe”; “i think it was hard for [a staff member] because they didn’t come prepared to discuss themes, they used the formulation meeting for this purpose”; and, “people need to come prepared with their themes and tips in mind already because there is not a lot of time”. these comments are especially important when considered alongside comments already noted on the value of the formulation meeting in creating a shared understanding of trauma issues for the families and support for staff in processing trauma information. the need for clarity, structure, and safety in the formulation meeting was clearly just as important as the need for these same aspects in the care plan meeting. in fact, as the team progressed they realized that the tip principles applied as much to them as to the families that they served, and that integrating these principles into their team relationships and process was essential in supporting their emotional and professional responsiveness to their clients. a second recurring topic, related to practice reflection across the pilot cases, was how to effect a sense of closure at the end of a care plan meeting and the importance of a relational continuity. staff agreed that greater attention was needed to ensuring that families in the assessment process were served by the same people as much as possible. for example, prior practice allowed for and sometimes required that professionals have someone else stand in for them to present their findings at a care plan meeting due to scheduling conflicts. staff consistently pointed to their discomfort with this process as such disruption could easily be experienced as abandonment or disregard by clients who have experienced many such disruptions in their lives. the team and the agency struggled to find ways to balance workload and scheduling problems with their commitment to the tip principles and the welfare of their clients. all agreed that further discussion of and attention to systemic and institutional issues were needed. staff also expressed concern about the opening and closing of the care plan assessment and the importance of ensuring respect and structure throughout this process. through practice reflection, the team recognized the importance of having the care plan consultant, who is responsible for the post-discharge community support, involved right from the start of the admission process. given the care plan consultant’s continued role with the family, providing continuity across service delivery represented an important commitment and point of contact for families. discussions within the larger cpt, as well as feedback from the qualitative interviews, indicated an ongoing “breakdown in the flow of the meeting” at its end when attention shifted to the care plan consultant explaining his or her ongoing role to the family and community team. for example, one care plan consultant commented: what i am struggling with now is how to close the meeting. before i would invite the maples staff to leave but the feedback i got was that the family felt rushed because everybody is getting up and running out of the room … so now my expectation is that maples staff stay in the room while i do my piece. i spoke for a little while and then conversations between staff started going on, then i lost the attention of the community members … it felt chaotic to me. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 66 these comments reflect the fact that, as professional practice shifts, it creates new challenges for the entire team. the team’s responses must be processed and refined within a collaborative context. another important area of practice reflection that emerged was the use of acronyms and diagnostic terminology in the meetings. terms specific to professional practice were felt to actually create a sense of separation rather than collaboration with families. for example, one community professional identified that “words like ‘disregulated’ and our knowledge of attachment theory was likely lost on mom”. furthermore, discussions within the cpt generated greater awareness of conveying an unintended meaning when using of some of the terminology common in youth care, and the need to revise our language in this regard. for example, terms frequently used to refer to service delivery such as “residential” and “non-residential” carry significant meaning within aboriginal communities as they touch on the history of residential schools and the removal of children from families through social services. accordingly, the organization began the process of finding alternative terminology to use and making the appropriate changes to the program names, descriptions, and manuals. the topic of when to cancel or reschedule a care plan meeting was another area of practice reflection that arose from the qualitative feedback and discussions within the cpt. for example, in one of the pilot cases, the youth’s caregiver was unable to attend the care plan meeting due to a last-minute medical issue. importantly, this relationship was a strong protective factor in this youth’s life after a long history of trauma, loss, and addiction. when asked if she had felt safe in the meeting and if she had felt able to express her opinion regarding who should attend, this youth responded, “if i had had a choice [my caregiver] would have been there.” this concern was supported by staff responses, such as, “we should have rescheduled the meeting for this case if we were really paying attention to the tips, if we wanted her to feel safe.” other notes from the in-depth interviews and silent observer data included thoughts for practice reflection such as the need to debrief and check in with each other following a care plan meeting, the related need for peer feedback, and such thoughts as: should we offer paper/pen activities to youth in [the] care plan meeting? understanding why they use music/technology to cope. (cyc) gave [youth] a questionnaire to fill out during the psychology report. just as it was helpful for mom to read along or take notes, it appeared helpful to have [youth] distract herself with the questionnaire during more difficult times of psych report. finally, when asked if this new model had changed or impacted their workload, the team did acknowledge consistently in their feedback that working from a deeper level of connection and trauma awareness actually requires more work in terms of preparing for the meeting, determining what themes to present, deciding how to do so in a trauma-sensitive way, and being present and available to the family during the meeting itself. comments included: “maybe over time it will become more efficient as i get used to it. but being trauma-informed will always require more international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 67 awareness”; “ya, taking longer prep time, more thinking and awareness and mental prep”; and, “it’s harder from our perspective because we are working from a deeper level of awareness”. similarly, an increase in workload was also recognized by the role of the care plan consultant with regard to families “feeling more connected to me so i am fielding calls immediately” and “the role of supporting the care plan in the community starts earlier (now)”. notwithstanding the identified areas to improve upon, the feedback from this qualitative review also revealed compelling agreement amongst the maples pilot team that this revised practice was “better” than the previous model. with comments like: “yes!” and “absolutely”, 100% of the maples team agreed that they would recommend this new format to their colleagues. conclusion in alignment with bc’s trauma-informed practice guide, the qualitative feedback from this review has substantiated the shift in practice of the care plan development meeting as effective in incorporating the principles of a trauma-informed approach. the feedback gathered from the indepth interviews and observational data confirm that this new model was successful in cultivating an environment of safety, choice, and collaboration for clients, and in focusing on the existing strengths of the youth and family, as well as enhancing trauma awareness amongst community stakeholders, the maples professionals, and the youths and their families. furthermore, creating a formalized process that followed a model of qualitative research resulted in the development of clear strategies to shift practice in measurable ways that align with best practices in the field of child and youth mental health. this has resulted in the development of a shift in service delivery that is not only trauma-informed, but is also evidence-based with regard to its efficacy. as many opportunities for further development have emerged, the cpt is now in the process of in-depth practice reflection pertaining to each area of discipline; templates for reports as well as practice guidelines are now in the early stages of discussion and brainstorming. at the same time, training needs are being identified and plans have been developed to integrate this change into broader practice throughout the organization. acknowledgement this project is attributable to the ongoing collaborative partnership between simon fraser university and the maples adolescent treatment centre. furthermore, this research would not have been possible without the participation of the youths, the families, and the community stakeholders involved in each of the pilot cases. we heartily thank them all for their contributions and cooperation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 54–68 68 references afifi, t. o., macmillan, h. l., boyle, m., taillieu, t., cheung, k., & sareen, j. 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(2014). operational and strategic directional plan for 2014-2017. victoria, bc: ministry of children and family development. http://dx.doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.131792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4 https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/managing-your-health/mental-health-substance-use/child-teen-mental-health/maples-adolescent-treatment-centre https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/managing-your-health/mental-health-substance-use/child-teen-mental-health/maples-adolescent-treatment-centre https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/managing-your-health/mental-health-substance-use/child-teen-mental-health/maples-adolescent-treatment-centre http://bccewh.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2013_tip-guide.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-13.1.1801 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221115 networking for violence against children: an analysis of the formal–informal network dichotomy in uganda doris m. kakuru, annah kamusiime, martha kibukamusoke, kylee lindner, and catherine mugabo abstract: the rising cases of violence against children (vac) have prompted strategies, laws, and policies to protect ugandan children at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. despite the emergence of various strategies by different vac actors who network formally and informally to address vac, the functionality of their networks has not received adequate attention in previous research. we conducted a qualitative study to examine the dynamics of networking for vac in uganda. we collected data using interviews with network funders and leads at the national and subnational levels and focus group discussions with grassroots and community members. our findings reveal that vac networks belong to two broad categories: formal and informal. these exist side by side, usually operating in parallel, but sometimes with crisscrossing and overlapping activities. while the work of formal network actors is better resourced and recognized, and more visible, informal network actors are invisibilized in government plans, philanthropic efforts, and scholarly research. a more collaborative and inclusive vac networking system would be instrumental in enhancing vac prevention and response. keywords: violence against children, child protection, children’s rights, civil society networking, formal networks, informal networks doris kakuru phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca annah kamusiime ma is a phd candidate at the institute of social studies of the erasmus university rotterdam and the programs director at nascent research and development organization, p.o. box 25382, kampala, uganda. email: annahkamusiime@yahoo.com martha kibukamusoke phd is an associate professor of sociology at cavendish university, plot 1469 nsambya, ggaba road, kampala, uganda. email: cfmdirector@gmail.com kylee lindner ba is a master’s candidate in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: kyleelindner@gmail.com catherine mugabo ba is a master’s candidate in organizational psychology at makerere university and an associate at civsource africa, 18 balikuddembe road, naguru, p.o. box 4310, kampala, uganda. email: cmugabo@civsourcea.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 106 violence against children (vac) is a global phenomenon that has received international attention. as part of the united nations’ sustainable development goals1 (sdgs), world leaders in 2015 committed to striving towards ending vac by 2030, specifically through sdg 16: promote just, peaceful, and inclusive societies. progress is measured through indicator 16.2.1, which measures the “proportion of children aged 1–17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month” (global sdg indicator platform, 2022). according to a global report by the united nations children’s fund (unicef; 2014), “on average, about four in five children between the ages of 2 and 14 are subjected to some kind of violent discipline in the home” (p. 96). rates of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse are highest in countries with lower income, many of them in africa (walkersimpson, 2017). in uganda, according to a 2016 report by the ministry of gender, labour and social development (mglsd), there were 2,878 calls made to the uganda child helpline2 to report instances of serious violent abuse (mglsd, 2017, p. 6). in 2018, cases reported to the child helpline “included child exploitation, child neglect, child trafficking, emotional abuse, murder, online child sex and violence, physical abuse, and sexual abuse” (mglsd, 2018a, p. iii). child neglect (1,791 cases) was the most reported form of violence, and sexual abuse (753 cases) ranked second (mglsd, 2018a, p. iii). moreover, due to the complex nature of vac, there is a possible discrepancy between the actual number of cases and the number reported. according to the world bank, in 2018 uganda had the fifth youngest population of any country in the world (koop, 2021), with 45% of ugandans being under 15 (united nations population fund, 2021). the high prevalence of vac (51%; mglsd, 2018b) is thus of particular concern. the high rates of violence have led to multilevel interventions and strategies from a range of actors at grassroots, national, regional, and international levels. at the national level, collaborative efforts are informed by inspire3, a global campaign that provides a practical guide for preventing vac. the campaign calls for collaborations between multiple sectors and stakeholders, including public, private, and civil society organizations at national and local levels (unicef, 2020). in 1990, uganda ratified the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc; united nations, 1989) and the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child 1 the sdgs are: (1) no poverty; (2) zero hunger; (3) good health and well-being; (4) quality education; (5) gender equality; (6) clean water and sanitation; (7) affordable and clean energy; (8) decent work and economic growth; (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure; (10) reduced inequalities; (11) sustainable cities and communities; (12) responsible consumption and production; (13) climate action; (14) life below water; (15) life on land; (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions; and (17) partnerships for the goals. see https://sdgs.un.org/goals. 2 the uganda child helpline (also known as sauti 116) is a government toll-free telephone service for reporting, tracking, responding to, and referring cases of child abuse. 3 inspire stands for: implementation and enforcement of laws; norms and values change; safe environments; parental and caregiver support; income and economic strengthening); response services provision; education and life skills (world health organization, 2020). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 107 (organization of african unity, 1990). these conventions have been domesticated through local laws and policies on children, including the 1995 constitution of the republic of uganda; the prevention of trafficking in persons act, 2009 (republic of uganda, 2009); the prohibition of female genital mutilation act, 2010 (republic of uganda, 2010a); the domestic violence act, 2010 (republic of uganda, 2010b); the education (pre-primary, primary and post-primary) act, 2008 (republic of uganda, 2008); and the children act, 1997 (republic of uganda, 2016). there are also other national commitments: for example, the national strategic plan on violence against children in schools (ministry of education, science, technology and sports, 2015); the national strategy to end child marriage and teenage pregnancy (2022/2023–2026/2027; republic of uganda, 2022); and the third national development plan (ndpiii) 2020/21–2024/25 (national planning authority, 2020), which prioritizes early childhood development. within the mglsd, there are three sections focused on enhancing child protection: children and youth, the national child protection working group, and the national children authority. additionally, there are the uganda national parenting guidelines (mglsd, 2018b), which place the responsibility for child protection on parents, in close collaboration with other members of their communities. in addition to the government’s efforts to ensure child protection, significant child protection work falls on civil society organizations and networks. it has been suggested that governments in the global south are overwhelmed with issues related to resource scarcity and therefore rely on non-governmental organizations (ngos) to provide child protection (renzaho et al., 2018; walker-simpson, 2017). as we outline here, this has resulted in splitting the vac prevention and response system into two tracks — the formal and the informal. the formal track consists of government and registered child protection actors, while the informal one consists of smaller, lessestablished groups. these informal networks utilize strengths-based approaches to address vac at the community level (september, 2006; women of uganda network [wougnet] 2020). although formal networks have historically been involved in child protection work, research shows that these efforts have largely been unsuccessful (ejuu, 2015; manion & jones, 2020; ochen, 2012; renzaho et al., 2018; seruwagi, 2017; walakira et al., 2017). some scholars argue that government departments and formal networks lack the local and grassroots knowledge required to successfully guide their efforts (ochen, 2012; renzaho et al., 2018; seruwagi, 2017; walakira et al., 2017). conversely, it has been contended that community-level groups have situated and cultural knowledge, making them better equipped to achieve meaningful, effective, and sustainable efforts for children in need of protection (castro-félix & dupree, 2014; renzaho et al., 2018; seruwagi, 2017). a review of past studies (e.g., renzaho et al., 2018; seruwagi, 2017; walakira et al., 2017) shows that despite the existence of various child protection guidelines, policies, and interventions, there is a lack of consistent and intentional networking among vac actors, which often results in overlapping and disjointed vac services delivery. moreover, the lack of systematic networking promotes the maintenance of an issue-based focus, with less attention to preventive measures (walakira et al., 2017). indeed, existing literature suggests that a multiplicity of actors, networks, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 108 and interventions, however well intentioned, can result in a fragmented and confusing web of networks (johnson & sloth-nielsen, 2020). while some research exhibits an understanding that a two-track networking system exists, there is a lack of research that provides an in-depth analysis of the operations and functionality of these networks, both independently and in collaboration. while formal networks have created a significant legal and policy framework, they have largely been unsuccessful in eradicating vac (ejuu, 2015; manion & jones, 2020; ochen, 2012), since they lack the requisite contextual knowledge. informal networks that do have situated knowledge (castro-félix & dupree, 2014; renzaho et al., 2018; seruwagi, 2017), on the other hand, have not received due attention in scholarly literature. previous research on networking has also not analyzed how formal and informal vac network actors interact to prevent and respond to vac in uganda. in the spirit of enhancing understanding of vac network functionality, we utilize qualitative methods to highlight how vac actors understand networking at the state and community levels, and we examine the gap between informal and formal groups. we elaborate on the existing types of vac networks and the dynamics of vac networking in uganda. employing systems theory, we advocate for better vac network connectivity between network actors at multiple levels. we contend that more cohesive vac networking is required to enhance child protection in uganda. theoretical framework this article draws from niklas luhmann’s (1970) systems theory, which argues that society consists of several differentiated social systems that each fulfil a societal function (michailakis & schirmer, 2014). from a systems theory perspective, stabilizing social systems and subsystems involves the creation of binary codes. these codes define roles and expectations for specific situations (kihlström, 2011). our analysis also draws from the work of bourdieu and passeron (1977), as they distinguish between dominant and subordinate actors within networks. they assert that dominant, high status, actors have the economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital needed to catalyze change. in contrast, subordinate or lower-status actors do not have these types of capital. according to maclean and harvey (2016), dominant, or elite, actors have access to critical information, allowing them to see the bigger picture, whereas subordinate actors lack the necessary information regarding the available strategic choices. maclean and harvey noted that “elite actors who activate ties and bring together disconnected others are often less visible than apparent dominant actors” (p. 399). networks can also be distinguished by the types of interests the actors in them have. using bourdieu’s (1996) concept of fields, we follow maclean and harvey in their definition of field-specific networks as those comprising actors who share common characteristics and are bound by common interests, while networks within the field of power have elite actors from various fields who oversee societal interests (maclean & harvey, 2016, p. 3; see also bourdieu, 1996). through systems theory (luhmann, 1970), and bourdieu and passeron’s (1977) dominant–subordinate actor framework, we analyze the formal–informal dichotomy of vac networks’ operations and functionality in uganda. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 109 methodology study design the findings presented in this article are derived from a larger study, which began as a desk review of east african vac networks and the overall landscape of these networks (civsource africa, 2021). the current study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach, which allowed us to interact with participants and gather their in-depth perspectives on networking. data sources before we began our study, the mglsd (2018b) had reported that cases of vac were highest in the district of kampala but relatively low in the district of gulu; therefore, we purposively selected these two districts. the study population consisted of local leaders and individuals involved in vac networking within these districts. these included three national vac network leads, three district network leads, and two representatives of vac network donors. additionally, we conducted three focus group discussions (fgds) with grassroots vac actors, one in the paicho subcounty in gulu district, one in the katwe area of kampala, and one in the nsambya area of kampala (see table 1). fgd participants included state and non-state vac actors such as parish chiefs, child protection officers, religious leaders, local council representatives, head teachers, and representatives of community-based organizations (cbos) and associations. these leaders were selected through a combination of purposive sampling and snowballing. representatives of vac networks who participated in interviews were those whose networks had been identified during the fgds or through the document review process. donors to vac networks were identified during interviews with network leads. table 1. data sources data collection methods kampala gulu interviews with national network leads 3 0 interviews with district network leads 1 2 interviews with donors 1 1 focus group discussions 2 1 data collection data were collected from the desk review, fgds, and in-depth interviews. desk review: we conducted a desk review (published by civsource africa in 2021) to conceptualize study issues and identify literature gaps and existing networks. we searched for relevant documents from the websites of line government ministries (mglsd, ministry of education and sports, ministry of health, and ministry of justice and constitutional affairs). we also searched the websites of the local governments of interest (kampala capital city authority and gulu district). additionally, we gathered materials on civil society networks and networking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 110 using the google search engine. the desk review produced information on existing networks within gulu and kampala, which enabled us to identify organizations and individuals to participate in the study interviews. various online and physical sources were utilized to gather the reviewed documents. we also continuously collected secondary data from online sources and through visits to national government, local government, and vac network offices throughout the life of the project. focus group discussions: three fgds were conducted at the grassroots and community levels by research team members using an fgd guide. each fgd comprised eight to 12 participants who were key community influencers and community leaders. informed written consent was obtained from each participant before the sessions. the participants were asked to describe existing children’s rights networks in their communities; their understanding of, and best practices for, vac networking within their communities; and their recommendations for children’s rights networking. on average, the fgd sessions lasted about 90 minutes. all fgds were audio-recorded with consent. the fgds generated qualitative data that provided insights on vac networking in the community. interviews: these were utilized to collect data from district-level and national-level network leads and donors. we sought information on vac network formation and how networking for vac prevention and response is conducted. informed written consent was obtained from each participant before the interview. interviews were conducted by members of the research team using an interview guide and typically lasted 90 minutes. all interviews were audio-recorded with consent. data analysis we conducted a thematic analysis using an iterative approach (glaser & strauss, 1967) in which data collected from one phase (desk review followed by fgds) were analyzed to inform the implementation of the subsequent phase (in-depth interviews). throughout this iterative thematic data analysis process, data were transcribed into text and anonymized. the anonymized transcripts were entered into the atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software for further management. more than one research team member coded each interview and fgd transcript to identify emergent themes and subthemes. to eliminate any discrepancies in the interpretations, the identified themes were shared among all research team members and discussed until a consensus was reached. summaries of the themes and subthemes were used to write this paper. to achieve data trustworthiness, we engaged in reflective journaling and peer debriefing (connelly, 2016) during data collection and analysis. we kept peer debriefing and field methodological notes and referred to these whenever necessary. we also engaged in iterative questioning of data, research themes, and explanations throughout the lifecycle of the project. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 111 ethical considerations we obtained ethical approval from the uganda christian university ethics review board. we received a permit from the national council for science and technology to confirm that our study did not have the potential to cause harm to humans. our participants consented to all research plans for data collection (including voice recording), data storage, and reporting. we ensured participant anonymity by anonymizing all raw data before coding and analysis. findings in our study, networking is broadly conceptualized as being centred on actors with common interests and goals, such as knowledgeand experience-sharing, and on leveraging synergy or building relationships to achieve mutual goals and objectives (younis, 2017). the collected data provided information concerning how informal and formal network efforts are recognized, the differences in vac network functionality, the reasons for the formation of networks, and vac network categories and linkages. recognition of networks’ efforts to generate a more fulsome understanding of networking, we explored how networks and actors define their work with vac and their levels of operation. the results show different levels of network activity. some networks exist only at the national level and have limited or no grassroots connections, while other national-level networks have connections at the subnational and grassroots levels. in the absence of a more detailed taxonomy of networking, we categorized networks as formal (structured) or informal (unstructured). formal networks can be described as those with legal status — those registered by the government. they have established management structures, including a constitution and criteria for identifying members who share common goals. network members have obligations such as attending meetings and participating in network activities. some formal networks require members to pay annual subscription fees. members can be organizations or individuals and can be state or non-state actors. some formal networks are fully active, while others are intermittently active. the intermittently active networks operate efficiently under certain circumstances but become quiescent when conditions are not conducive. for example, they collaborate well on vac agendas while funding is available but become inactive when they cannot cover operational costs. on the other hand, informal vac networks are collaborations that are not recognized by national and local governments or by donors because they are not officially registered. as elaborated by kakuru et al. in this issue, these networks are unknown to, or ignored by, scholars and others working in the field. their purpose for existence is not formally defined, and their operational areas are not officially demarcated. for example, an informal network might comprise local leaders, religious leaders, and family or clan heads. although such collaborations are not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 112 formally constituted, they are guided by national legal and policy documents such as the children’s act and the national constitution. most grassroots networks are informal, while most national networks are formal. both types can incorporate groups of actors and individual actors operating at the state or non-state level. our data made it apparent that not all “networks” describe themselves as such: some formal networks referred to themselves as working groups, platforms, coalitions, or initiatives. regardless of which term is used, they all seem to connect in a similar fashion. at the grassroots level, we found individual community members networking without any management structure and without an agreed-upon description. whereas formal networks are structured and have defined ways of describing themselves, in informal networks, networking happens spontaneously and therefore is not something that members can describe formally. additionally, since informal networks are not established by or registered with the government, formal networks tend to discount their importance as child protection actors, leading to them being ignored and not consulted on policy formulation and implementation matters. another result of informal networks being invisibilized is that they do not receive funding, even though they are the first responders to vac in their communities. all vac networking efforts should be recognized as relevant and important. our findings show, however, that informal networks currently tend to be marginalized and unrecognized by local governance, philanthropic efforts, and academic literature. vac networks’ functionality analysis of our data revealed that not all formally registered and well-structured networks have high functionality as far as preventing and responding to vac is concerned. some formal networks are actively engaged in vac work only when they have running projects. for example, fgd participants described a prominent child protection network as “dormant” at the time of data collection, despite its supposed influence and large membership. we found that some networks4 that formed to collaborate on specific goals, such as eliminating child trafficking within a specified time frame, became inactive after completing such a plan or when the funding ran out. on the other hand, despite their lack of formal existence, informal networks — churches, local leaders, community members with focal roles in children’s rights, family heads, neighbours, and village group heads — are able to remain active because they do not rely on external funding or technical project protocols. for example, when a community member notices a suspicious person or activity, they typically alert a neighbour or a member of the village council, who will then notify a family head, a religious leader, and the local police. three or more people within the community often collaborate to prevent child abuse or to respond as needed. in such cases, the women’s representative on the village council (lci) who suspects another community member of child abuse may decide to enlist other lci committee members to act as witnesses before addressing 4 to maintain confidentiality, we do not identify specific networks in this article. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 113 the matter. she can also convene a meeting to strategize on the way forward. during one of our fgds, one participant noted: last year i noticed a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) rider who used to park across the road at the time when children were coming from school. he would stop and talk to a 14-year-old schoolgirl from another village every day. i didn’t like their relationship, and i told my neighbour, who advised that we alert the chair of our child protection committee. the following day, when he started talking to the same girl, three of us watched him from a distance. we worked with the police, who apprehended the boda-boda rider after establishing that he was indeed a potential perpetrator of sexual violence. (fgd participant, paicho) such informal networks operate spontaneously. when members collaborate, they use their own personal resources and their own time. therefore, these individuals and groups working at the grassroots level have functionality — they do all the groundwork for preventing and addressing vac, benefiting children and families even though their network is not formally recognized. we found that the existence of formal networks was more theoretical in nature and technical in approach, with high visibility to donors and the public. in contrast, informal networks have higher visibility at the community level and the potential to create a more tangible and lasting impact. we contend that formal and informal networks play pivotal roles in the ugandan vac realm, but their efforts are largely detached from each other. the operations of vac networks demonstrate that their formal and informal activities are disjointed, and therefore there is a need for more intentional collaboration for enhanced vac prevention and response. lack of coordination across vac network categories an illustration of the detached nature of vac networking efforts can be traced from the different categories of networks that exist. we categorized them based on their functions, which we identified as policy, advocacy, and service. policy networks operate at the national level mainly through formal structures. they are engaged in child policy formulation, advocacy, and funding. some vac networks involved in policy formulation and advocacy also provided services such as counselling for vac survivors. advocacy networks are engaged in advocating for the adoption and implementation of child protection laws and policies. these networks can be either formal or informal. they lobby communities to prevent different forms of violence such as sexual violence, ritual murders, child labour, and child trafficking. they use various strategies and operate very effectively under certain circumstances, but fall silent when conditions are not conducive to their efforts. service networks, whether formal or informal, are those involved in vac response activities. these include local ngos, local cbos, institutions, and stakeholders. they provide such services for vac survivors as legal aid, psychosocial support, shelter, food, clothing, and medical care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 114 actors in informal service networks usually belong to local groups such as village child protection committees or children’s rights committees. the different types of networks perform different functions. although these functions are complementary, the networks’ efforts are often detached from each other. for example, while both policy and advocacy networks are interested in ensuring a protective child policy landscape, their services are not coordinated. additionally, informal networks are ignored in policymaking and formal service provision efforts, yet these efforts need to be consolidated. after policies have been formulated, policy networks should liaise with advocacy networks that can work on the next step: advocating for adoption or implementation. both policy and advocacy networks need to consult with those involved in service networks to find out what is needed in each local circumstance. formation of networks when we asked network leads why they network, they offered different reasons depending on whether they were associated with a formal or an informal network. formal networking leads explained that networking enables actors to pool resources, increase visibility and impact, enforce government accountability and response, facilitate government oversight and support, keep the national vac agenda active, and maximize technical expertise and knowledge-sharing to help refine intervention strategies. as one participant from fgd2 noted, “the major reason for networking is concerted efforts, more visibility and greater child protection impact.” several network members worked with allies on specific interventions and projects, such as research projects. the representatives of informal networks stated that their main motivation for networking was to better serve their communities. they did collaborative vac prevention and response work, including serving on village child protection committees, church committees, local councils, and other grassroots groups. fgd participants mentioned that some people serve as police and court witnesses. as community members, they are also obliged to protect each other’s children, and they do not necessarily have to be members of a committee to prevent or respond to vac. participants felt that perpetrators of vac were beginning to realize that the community cares for children, which will ultimately reduce the incidence of vac. while informal networks may not aspire to increase their visibility or change policies, their members recognize that networking is necessary — that it would be difficult for them to be effective against vac as individual actors. hence while formal network actors form networks with the intent of improving their visibility and consolidating their efforts, informal networks form organically, without the use of structured procedures. the differences in the motivations for the formation of formal and informal vac networks partly explain why they work unilaterally instead of collaborating with each other. additionally, we found networks that exist within or alongside other networks. within formal networks, this takes the form of subcommittees; in informal networks, these are regarded as allies or co-allies. despite their differences, the involvement of subcommittees and allies can be seen as a commonality between informal and formal networks. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 115 how networking happens the study also aimed to understand how networking happens among the different vac actors. we found a difference between the dynamics of networking in formal versus informal networks. for example, some formal networks, such as those at the national level, have big memberships: uganda child rights ngo network (ucrnn) and the gender-based violence prevention network have over 200 members. formal networks at the national and subnational levels hold regular vac networking events or meetings, and keep detailed written records of them. meetings of informal networks are less structured, and usually documented with voice recordings that may be referred to for years to come. although donors do not generally prioritize network activities, individual, institutional, and organizational actors who are members of prominent formal networks pool resources to support those activities, making contributions of meeting space, furniture, stationery, snacks, drinks, and so on. actors in informal networks, by contrast, contribute their personal resources to vac work, mainly in the form of using their time for village, clan, or family meetings, making telephone calls, and so on. despite the general lack of interaction between the two types of network, we found that in some circumstances formal organizations do draw on informal network actors to implement their projects. for example, the district local government, which belongs to a formal network, can reach out to the village child protection committee for community mobilization support, while formal institutions such as the police sometimes collaborate with informal vac actors. nevertheless, the two types of network function independently most of the time. another difference between formal and informal networking can be found in the types of network actors. informal networks embody connections among individuals, while some formal networks, like the joining forces coalition and the end corporal punishment initiative, comprise both individual and organizational members. in sum, networking among formal and informal vac networks happens differently in terms of resourcing networking events and meetings, record keeping, and types of network members. this finding further elucidates the nature of the formal and informal networking systems — coexisting but largely detached from each other — for responding to and preventing vac. crisscrossing linkages although formal and informal networks may operate independently, our findings demonstrate that connections between formal vac actors crisscross intricately. many actors belong to multiple child protection networks, yet we found few direct connections between formal and informal networks. we also found only limited direct contact between children and formal networks. however, strong relationships with children did exist with grassroots networks, and with individual members of formal networks and government bodies. note that, as nassimbwa et al. and kamusiime et al. report in this issue, and as our findings confirm, children do not normally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 116 participate in networking activities themselves. this is especially true in formal networks, although service networks are sometimes in contact with vac survivors. to a great extent, formal and informal networks operate independently within the child protection landscape. however, some actors, such as local governments and cbos, participate in both types of network and help mediate between them. our study shows that formal and informal networks operate in separate social systems that have varying expectations, as michailakis and schirmer (2014) and kihlström (2011) have described using social systems theory. discussion this study was conducted to understand the functionality of vac networks in uganda. previous research suggested that vac networks consist of both formal agencies and grassroots initiatives, with multiple efforts and interventions being made to address the severity of vac (renzaho et al., 2018; walker-simpson, 2017). our study found that formal and informal networks are described and recognized differently by the groups themselves, as well as by government, philanthropists, and the public. they also receive different levels of attention from scholars and hence in published literature. while formal networks must be established and registered with the government, informal networks are not structured and operate spontaneously. although past studies by ochen (2012) and renzaho et al. (2018) have underscored the importance of the contextual and situated knowledge possessed by informal networks in spearheading child protection efforts, our study findings demonstrate that informal networks are “unknown” and ignored when it comes to matters of child policy formulation and implementation, as well as in accessing funding opportunities. the assertions of bourdieu (1996), bourdieu and passeron (1977), and maclean and harvey (2016) regarding the differences in status between dominant and subordinate actors are relevant to the formal–informal network dichotomy in uganda. in our study, formal network actors are analogous to the dominant actors described by bourdieu and passeron (1977) in that they have high status and economic resources; however, they lack the cultural and symbolic capital required to catalyze change. informal networks at the community level have the symbolic and cultural capital and situated knowledge that enables them to offer more sustainable and culturally relevant interventions than formal government agencies can (seruwagi, 2017; walakira et al., 2017). in addition, we found that informal network actors, though they are the critical frontline vac actors who initiate the ties that form networks, are less visible than formal network actors, who are the dominant actors in this landscape. the lack of coordination between formal and informal children’s rights networks in uganda can result in duplication of actions. worse, it ultimately fails to address the factors that underpin the vulnerability of children (walakira et al., 2017). our finding that there is a lack of communication among the diverse networks, actors, and intervention efforts confirm past studies, such as castro-félix and dupree (2014) and walakira et al. (2017), which called for better connections among the various systems to create a more effective and harmonious child protection international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 117 landscape. walakira et al. (2017) also proposed that strengthening the multiple child welfare systems in uganda could address the piecemeal nature of current approaches and that “issues of system functionality, improved capacity, quality of process and services, expanded reach, and effective coordination of mechanisms should be given critical attention” (p. 262). while formal networks sometimes function intermittently, depending on funding cycles and seasonal child protection activities, informal networks operate year round. the networking activities of informal networks are not dependent on funding, donor conditionalities, or government regulations, because they happen spontaneously. we argue that the negative effects arising from formal networks operating only intermittently would be minimized if they were to work intentionally in close collaboration with informal networks. this position agrees with the work of johnson and sloth-nielsen (2020), who noted that fragmented networks can be confusing to potential beneficiaries. based on their functions, we identified three network categories: policy (formal networks engaged in policy formulation and funding), advocacy (networks involved in policy adoption and implementation), and service (formal or informal networks providing services to vac survivors). in policy formulation, and in formal advocacy and service provision, informal network actors are not consulted or involved. the findings revealed that these networking efforts are disjointed, impacting their synergy and their ability to leverage each other’s actions and resources. formal and informal networks have different reasons for networking. actors create formal networks to increase their visibility, collaborate on projects, and moblize resources jointly. informal networks form organically to leverage their members’ vac response and prevention efforts. we contend that these differences in motivation partly explain why formal and informal networks work unilaterally instead of collaboratively. our analysis resonates with maclean and harvey (2016), who contended that network actors who share common interests are bound by those interests only. strengthening child protection networks requires an understanding of the existing efforts being made through various networks. in agreement with previous research that highlighted the need for more collaborative efforts (renzaho et al., 2018; walakira et al., 2017), our study further underlines the areas where vac networks and actors need more collaboration and connection. although existing connections have resulted in many acknowledged successes that should not go unnoticed, networks need to work on improving collaboration to cultivate a consistent approach to child protection in uganda. through the lens of systems theory, it is obvious that a better connection between these systems will require clarification of their individual roles (kihlström, 2011; renzaho et al., 2018) to avoid duplicate interventions and a piecemeal approach to child protection (walakira et al., 2017). similarly, research participants emphasized the importance of vac networks that offer community-attuned resources and interventions while having clear goals; such networks are more effective than their counterparts. in agreement with castro-félix and dupree (2014), we assert that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 105–122 118 grassroots initiatives could improve the implementation of interventions as their services are more likely to fit with community priorities. achieving clearly defined roles can be challenging in the current child protection climate. for example, the fact that informal networks and actors lack visibility cripples their efforts, since they are ignored in funding programs. a more equitable and resource-abundant vac networking landscape might minimize competition and ultimately contribute to a more stable system of networks. we caution our readers that the study findings are not meant to be generalizable but rather to provide a nuanced, in-depth understanding of how networking for the prevention of and response to vac in uganda exists in an informal–formal network dichotomy. conclusion in this article, we report the results of an exploratory study that examined vac network functionality in east africa (civsource africa, 2021). although uganda has a well-developed legal and institutional child protection framework within a rich child-focused civil society, vac remains unabated. we have presented an in-depth analysis of informal and formal vac networks in uganda and shown that they operate adjacent to each other with regard to how their efforts are recognized, how they function, the reasons for their formation, how they are categorized, and their linkages. the findings of our study demonstrate a system of networks aimed at preventing and responding to vac that operates on two separate tracks, leading to fragmented and sometimes redundant efforts. since the detached nature of vac network operations leads to disjointed efforts, intentional collaboration between formal and informal networks is necessary for enhanced vac prevention and more rapid response. for example, policy networks and advocacy networks should collaborate and work in consultation with informal, grassroots networks who are the vac frontline responders. following the recommendations of the global status report on preventing vac (who, 2020), which include the need to prioritize research in terms of data collection and knowledge translation, we argue that it is urgent to address the paucity of research in this area. future research about children’s rights networking should investigate how to foster collaboration between vac networks at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels, including state and non-state actors. acknowledgments we are grateful to all our participants at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. we acknowledge nascent rdo uganda for hosting the research and especially recognize other members of the research team (auleria munene and lydia b. sandi). we are further grateful to the reference group (agnes m. wasike, dr. lina digolo, joel k. kiiya, jacqueline asiimwe, katie davies, and krista riddley) for providing overall quality assurance; 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(2017). evaluating coalitions and networks: frameworks, needs, and opportunities. center for evaluation innovation. https://efc.issuelab.org/resources/29445/29445.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818123 reconsidering recent developments in japanese residential care and the road to fice japan shigeyuki mori, satoru nishizawa, and arimi kimura abstract: in order to foster interactive discussions with other countries, this paper offers an overview of residential care for children in japan and its ongoing development. japan still relies especially heavily on the residential care system; this is due to the past process of development more than to traditional japanese culture. the period from the post world war ii era to the present is briefly described, including the rapid growth in the number of institutions before 1960, the rather stable period before 1990, the revision of the child welfare act in 1997 permitting the privatization of institutions, and the movement towards problematizing child abuse in the mid 1990s, after which residential institutions were designated as the last resort for maltreated young people. in the present situation, smaller institutions and a foster care system are strongly promoted in accordance with international guidelines for alternative care and the recent governmental guideline based on the child rearing vision of 2010 and the child welfare act of 2016. the task of present japanese residential care institutions is to realize a family-like environment and a better placement strategy, collaborate more with specialists to improve the standard of care, function in the community as centers for the care of children in need, and expand their care work for young adults and care leavers. the paper concludes by stressing the need for more international exchange among individuals and groups working in japanese residential care. keywords: residential care, japan, history, reformation process shigeyuki mori is a professor in the department of human sciences at konan university, 8-9-1 okamoto, kobe, 658-8501, japan. email: moris@konan-u.ac.jp satoru nishizawa is a professor in the department of social work at yamanashi prefectural university, 5-11-1 iida, kofu, 400-0035, japan. email: nishizawa@yamanashi-ken.ac.jp arimi kimura is a psychologist at a residential care institute, koushou gakuen, 9-1-1 sinkotoni shijou, kitaku, sapporo, 001-0904, japan. email: n.hata@kousyou.or.jp http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818123 mailto:moris@konan-u.ac.jp mailto:nishizawa@yamanashi-ken.ac.jp mailto:n.hata@kousyou.or.jp international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 122 japan is one of the very few developed countries where institutionalization is still the main option when protecting vulnerable children (zhang, fukui, & mori, 2016). identifying the underlying reasons for this would involve multiple tasks, such as historical, sociological, economic, and cultural surveys, that are far beyond the scope of this paper. here we aim only to give an overview of residential care for children in japan and its ongoing development in order to develop interactive discussions with other countries and to form an international network, or at least start forming it, for future development. we will focus on the philosophy of the japanese child welfare act, as amended in 2016, in terms of its impact on the residential care system and practice. reliance on residential care more than 46,000 children are in care in japan, 88% of them in institutions (ministry of health, labour and welfare [mhlw], 2014). while foster care has been the major option for the care of children in need in many countries, japan still relies heavily on the residential care system. among developed countries, there is a wide range in the use of foster care, from strongly foster-care-oriented countries such as australia and the united states to those at the other end of the scale, such as israel and germany, and japan, with the least foster care of all (see figure 1). figure 1. ratio of foster care among children in care (mhlw, 2010). * japanese data from 2017 (mhlw, 2017). 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 *data in 2017 (mhlw, 2017) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 123 no simple explanation for the underuse of foster care in japan has yet been proposed. the “cultural explanation”, which stresses traditional japanese culture as a determinant of the family system and of the belief in the importance of blood relationships, is not well supported by research. actually, foster family care was not foreign to japanese families in the past: the shame associated with not living with biological parents, and the emphasis on blood relationships, which are regarded as having led to the dearth of foster family care, grew gradually along with the nuclearization of the family in the modern era (goldfarb, 2012, 2018). once in place, institutions change only subtly and gradually, resisting drastic transformation (mahoney & thelen, 2009). accounts of how institutions have been influenced by their preexisting forms of care accord with the theory of path dependency (pierson, 2000; king, 2013), which explains a social status not from immanent causes, such as culture, but as a result of circumstantial reality with self-enforcing processes. this is supported by statistics that show a big difference in the foster care to residential care ratio among prefectures within japan, although this may still be explained by cultural differences among the prefectures. japanese culture is not as unified as is often supposed. brief history of japanese residential care before the 21st century the modern form of residential care was introduced into japanese society in the 1890s, and the number of institutions grew significantly even before world war ii. but the ground for today’s residential care was set by a rapid expansion of care after the war to meet the needs of war orphans, and by the passage of the child welfare act in 1947, which redefined orphanages as yōgō [rearing/caring] shisetsu [institutions] (goodman, 2000; bamba & haight, 2011; zhang et al., 2016). following these developments, the number of institutions grew dramatically from 86 in 1945, to 306 in 1947, then 394 in 1950, and 528 in 1955. it was an era when residential care was still a standard form of alternative care throughout the world, and the government’s policy of reliance on residential care to meet the needs of vulnerable children was not exceptional in the global context. subsequently the concepts of hospitalism and anaclitic depression (i.e., that institutionalization can have untoward physical and mental effects), which were taken up during and after the war (bender & yarnell, 1941; spitz, 1945, 1951; bowlby, 1951), were introduced into japanese practise in the 1950s and led to heated discussion. these concepts resulted in a shift to smaller-sized units in a limited number of institutions, with no change in the legally required standard of care. notwithstanding the deinstitutionalizing shift since the 1950s in western countries, especially english-speaking countries, no overall shift to foster care (i.e., deinstitutionalization), took place in japan (oda & ishii, 1982; shōji et al., 2011). although it is not easy to identify the reasons for this course of events, the fact remains that the government continued to prefer established institutions and did not support a systematic shift to foster care; this could perhaps be viewed as an example of path dependency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 124 figure 2. number of institutions (zenyokyo zenkoku jidouyōgoshisetu kyogikai, 2018) figure 3. number of children staying in institutions (zenyokyo zenkoku jidouyōgoshisetu kyogikai, 2018). 520 530 540 550 560 570 580 590 600 610 620 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 531 615* *data in 2017 (mhlw, 2017) 25000 26000 27000 28000 29000 30000 31000 32000 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 26449* *data in 2017 (mhlw, 2017) 30787 25741 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 125 circumstances surrounding residential care for children in japan did not change, by and large, from the 1960s to the 1980s. after the rapid increase in the post-war era, the number of institutions stabilised at around 530, and the 1947 act did not require any fundamental reformation of the system. the decade from the late 1980s was, in today’s eyes, a calm period: the number of children staying in the institutions dropped dramatically, and when high economic growth allowed the majority of citizens to see themselves as belonging to the middle class, and reduced the number of children placed in care due to poverty. directors worried that their institutions could not meet their quotas because of the shortage of children, and the number of institutions fell slightly (see figures 2 & 3; the drop after 2005 in figure 3 is due to an increase in foster care and new forms of residential care like group homes, which are not statistically included as institutions here). in the meantime, the child welfare act was undergoing amendment, and a new child welfare act was enacted in 1997. the philosophy of the act accorded with the international climate as well as with a trend in policy favoring privatization and consumer choice. the act introduced a third-party evaluation system into the social welfare sector. consumer choice was not introduced for residential care for children, however, and the primary goal of the amendment was to support youth to be independent by broadening the institutions’ mandate beyond that of traditional “protection”. the categorization of institutions was changed slightly, adding jido [child] to make them jidou yōgō-shisetsu, but this had no significant implications in terms of philosophy. around the same period, perhaps coincidentally, an unexpected change of circumstances took place: an increase in public attention given to child abuse under the impact of the ratification of the convention of the rights of the child in1994. media coverage of the ratification, and a rise in abuse-prevention activities by citizens’ organizations, both contributed to the increase (the child abuse prevention of the whole country network, 2018). the heightened national focus on child abuse was also stimulated by the international child abuse prevention movement embodied in the international society for the prevention of child abuse and neglect and its japanese affiliate, the japanese society for the prevention of child abuse and neglect, which was established in 1994 as the japanese study group for the prevention of child abuse and neglect and renamed in 2004 (japanese society for the prevention of child abuse and neglect, 2018). that change brought the traditional “protection” function of institutions to the fore, and the number of children placed in institutions increased rapidly, as the child abuse prevention act of 2000 designated residential care institutions as virtually the only choice for alternative care of maltreated young people. at the same time, the changes led these institutions to broaden their scope, not only providing children with safe living spaces but also offering care and therapy to traumatized children, with special interest in their healthy development (zhang et al., 2016). the concepts of trauma and attachment were introduced into the field by academics working for children’s mental health, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, and these became the main international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 126 theoretical frameworks in working with children. these changes were exacerbated by the great hanshin-awaji earthquake in 1995 and the concomitant focus among mental health professionals on trauma. responding to the needs of overloaded institutions, local governments allocated some funding for additional staff, including psychotherapists, but institutions remained overloaded. recent developments: the 21st century with the expanded task of protecting and caring for maltreated children on a large scale, there have been many arguments as to what residential care in japan should be and what it should aim to accomplish. the past two decades in particular have seen a lot of discussions, planning, involvement, and change at both the governmental and non-governmental levels. it has also been a period of pressure from international organizations such as the world health organization and unicef, as well as from academics, for more family-like settings (zhang et al., 2016; pinheiro, 2006; united nations, 2010). the global shift to a policy of deinstitutionalization was reinforced by the issuing of guidelines for the alternative care of children by the united nations (2010) based on the philosophy underlying the convention on the rights of the child. responding to these pressures, the government formed working groups for the reformation of alternative care; these planned the functions not only of institutions but also of foster care under the total provisioning of an alternative care system (mhlw, 2007, 2011). in 2010, the government of japan launched a program, child rearing vision, that included goals to promote foster care and smaller-scale homes, though they were not the main thrust of the program. however, change did not come quickly. in 2014, a human rights watch article sent a harsh message to japan by including a figure showing that, as of 2011, only 12% of children in alternative care were receiving foster care (braunschweiger, 2014). in 2016, the section on alternative care in the child welfare act was revised, with a clear description of the rights of the child, bringing hope that deinstitutionalization would soon follow. as for non-governmental efforts at reform, three elements are worth mentioning: institutions’ efforts to develop quality care, involvement of academics in residential care, and activities by academic societies. institutions’ efforts to develop quality care institutions have been trying to meet these needs, conscious of both their heavy task and the expectations and criticisms from society. some of them have introduced new forms of living space such as small-unit care (maximum 8 children) and group homes (maximum 6 children; tables 1 & 2). many have begun to either hire psychotherapists and psychiatrists or to work with them as outside supervisors. there have been many discussions in a variety of forms, from local international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 127 meetings to a national assembly of all the institutions. the overall quality of care has been improving, although outcomes vary across both institutions and locales. table 1 children under each form of welfare service (mhlw, 2017) service number of children % foster homes 4578 9.9 family homes 829 1.8 infant care institutions 3069 6.7 children’s homes 28831 62.6 facilities for children with risk of delinquency 1544 3.4 short-term treatment facilities for children with emotional disturbances 1310 2.8 institutions for mothers in need of support 5877 12.8 total 46038 100.0 table 2 the introduction of small group homes (mhlw, 2017) traditional homes newly introduced small homes year number of institutions large (> 20) medium (13-19) small (< 12) small group care homes small homes in community other group homes 2008 489 n 370 95 114 212 111 55 % 75.8 19.5 23.4 43.4 22.7 11.3 2012 561 n 283 153 231 323 143 34 % 50.4 27.3 41.2 57.6 25.5 6.1 involvement of academics in residential care as a result of the overreliance on institutions without a systematic procedure to include their practice within a local community, there was a lack of cooperation between institutions and other professional agencies. however, when the needs of children protected and placed after abuse became widely known in the 90s, practitioners and academics in child mental health and child development, such as psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and pediatricians, gradually began to get involved in the field through supervising, intervention work, and research. this has resulted in a community of professionals who are willing to work in residential care. this resource is without doubt much stronger than it was a couple of decades ago. activities by academic societies organizational aspects of residential care work have undergone some development with the goal of integrating individual efforts. one example is the continual and sustained endeavor of a group of jaspcan members that has organized a number of sections at annual conferences. the japanese affiliate of the world association for infant mental health is another important society that has contributed to the development of the field. quite interestingly, a new society called nihon jido-yogo jissen gakkai [the japanese society for studies on child protective care practices] was established in 2009 for workers and professionals working with children at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 128 residential care institutions. this is the harvest of discussions and efforts within institutions to meet present needs amid a deep awareness of changing requirements both inside and outside the field. despite these activities, we still lack a society for all the workers and professionals in which to discuss the full range of topics around residential care. the present and the future the present situation cannot be described without referring to the comprehensive revision of the child welfare act that took place in 2016. it will result in regulation aimed at improving the ratio of children to workers, creating a family-like environment for children in care, and improving placement strategies. the promotion of foster care as a standard form of protecting and caring for maltreated children is a core policy of the act, and the goal of establishing small group homes called “family homes”, an expanded form of foster care, is an important aspect of that policy. under the act, the function of residential care institutions will be expanded to respond to the needs not only of children in residential care, but also of children in the community, including those in foster care. the institutions are being designated as centers for the care of children in need, though much will need to be done to bring about their reformation and the adjustment of interactions between institutions and the community. to fulfill this assignment, it will be necessary to overcome the presumed prejudice towards children in care and care leavers, which is the counterpart of the shame associated with not living with biological parents. social and school-based education about family diversity, abandoning the notion of a standard family type, will be helpful not only for children under institutional care but also those under foster care. another related issue that is being recognized, and that will be systematically addressed by the act, is care work for young adults and care leavers. for japanese residential care, which is regulated by the child welfare act for children under 18 years, one area of concern has been how it can support care leavers over 18 years old. institutions and workers with the volunteer spirit have been attempting to support them, but only with limited capacity, and without the benefits of a funded system. the new act expands the possibility for care and support of young adults up to the age of 22, when most university students graduate and get jobs; however, this is still limited compared with the practice in western countries such as the united kingdom and germany, where support continues up to 26 years of age. in order to activate discussion and move towards an optimal system and quality practice, we need to open up the closed circle of japanese residential care to the outside world, and encourage more international exchange among individuals and groups working in japanese residential care. japan has without a doubt suffered a “trade deficit” in such international exchange. almost all the exchange has been learning and introducing western theories, practices, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 129 and systems into japan, with little effort to communicate the japanese experience to the outside world. in this regard, an exchange program between japan and thailand planned and managed by jido-yogo jissen gakkai (2014) is worthy of note. conclusion we have presented an overview of japanese residential care, including a brief history and a report on today’s state of affairs. we have shown that the unique path of japanese residential care for children has brought us to a transitional period where we have a chance to improve the quality of care and to address certain difficulties. what is clear is that we should not rely only on present resources that were developed separately as residential care and foster care along separate paths according to their individual needs and resources, but that we need a unified model of alternative care with collaboration between them. this will also require the collaboration of scholars and practitioners involved in the field according to their individual interests and needs. in order to fulfill this complex task, we are planning to expand international exchange by joining fice international and the cyc network, which held their first joint congress in vienna in 2016, where they presented their visions for expanding their network to the rest of the world, including african and asian countries. the aim of this expansion will be not only to learn from the world, but also to examine the japanese experience and inform the world of its strengths as well as its weaknesses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 121-131 130 references bamba, s., & haight, w. l. 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(2016). japanese residential care in transformation: implications and future directions. in t. islam & l. fulcher (eds.), residential child and youth care in a developing world: global perspectives (pp. 87–107). retrieved from http://press.cyc-net.org/samples/global perspectives-ebook.pdf http://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/06-seisakujouhou-11900000-koyoukintoujidoukateikyoku/0000187952.pdf http://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/06-seisakujouhou-11900000-koyoukintoujidoukateikyoku/0000187952.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2586011 http://www.unicef.org/violencestudy/5.%20world%20report%20on%20violence%20against%20children.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00797308.1952.11822915 http://www.orangeribbon.jp/about/child/institution.php https://www.unicef.org/protection/alternative_care_guidelines-english.pdf http://www.zenyokyo.gr.jp/what.htm http://press.cyc-net.org/samples/global%20perspectives-ebook.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 257 teachers’ experiences of re-engaging disenfranchised young people in learning through inquiry-based pedagogies: a phenomenographic study debra talbot and debra hayes abstract: the potential of inquiry-based pedagogies to improve the learning outcomes of students has gained some support in the literature. in australia, a small group of schools has adopted inquiry-based pedagogies that foreground students’ interests in order to reengage young people who have been disenfranchised from schooling, and also to provide an alternative education for those seeking a more responsive form of educational provision. this paper reports on a phenomenographic analysis of the experiences of teachers in these schools, which was part of a larger study that included interviews with students and their parents or caregivers, classroom observations, and documentary analysis. in developing their curriculum, participating schools drew inspiration from a u.s. organization, big picture learning; hence, a core element involved students learning through their interests (lti), a feature of big picture schooling. the building of inquiry skills, for both students and teachers, is foundational to the success of lti. this paper aims to contribute to more responsive education provision for disenfranchised young people by documenting the range of variation in teachers’ experiences when implementing such a curriculum. we also consider the implications for sustainability of this approach in terms of the intellectual, physical, and emotional demands made on teachers. keywords: inquiry learning, interest-based learning, phenomenography debra talbot, phd (corresponding author) is a lecturer in the faculty of education and social work at the university of sydney, sydney, australia. email: debra.talbot@sydney.edu.au debra hayes, phd is an associate professor in the faculty of education and social work at the university of sydney, sydney, australia. email: deb.hayes@sydney.edu.au mailto:debra.talbot@sydney.edu.au mailto:deb.hayes@sydney.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 258 for some young people, schooling practices have disenfranchising effects that contribute to their disengagement and exclusion from schooling. alternative education for these young people seeks to change the provision of schooling so that it better meets their needs. this may involve the creation of more caring and flexible relationships between teachers and students. a small number of schools across australia are also attempting to change the relationship between students, teachers, and knowledge by introducing “learning through interest” (lti). lti addresses much of what smyth, mcinerney, and fish (2013) have identified as being crucial to re-engaging young learners. it places the focus of what needs to be taught squarely on what the young person wants to learn. designing the curriculum around the young person’s interests is dependent on moving beyond a deficit view of young people’s interests and capacities. simultaneously building what mcgregor (2011) terms more “egalitarian” relationships between the teacher and student, whereby the teacher acknowledges the sociomaterial dimensions of the young person as increasingly connected and “positioned to question notions of truth and determine their own values outside the school” (p. 2). through the building of new relationships to knowledge, as constructed through inquiry, alongside supportive interpersonal relationships, the teacher is more able to provide opportunities for students to exercise agency in regard to curricula and pedagogical choices. we draw on a three-year research project designed to investigate the variation in experiences of students, teachers, and parents/caregivers in six big picture-inspired schools in australia (hayes, down, talbot, & choules, 2013). in this paper, we focus on the experiences of the teachers in this larger study, in particular their efforts to implement lti in an alternative setting. two important aspects of this lti program were the internship and the advisory group. the internship provides opportunities for students to spend time working beyond the school setting with a mentor on a topic aligned to their interests. the advisory groups are composed of approximately fifteen students working for extended periods of time with one teacher, known as an advisor, who supports the development of the students’ individual and collective interests. the advisory process is highly dialogic; it requires the teacher and students to collaborate and critically interrogate topics of interest. learning through interest requires well-developed inquiry skills on the part of both teachers and students. teachers in our study demonstrated varying degrees of familiarity with terms pertaining to pedagogies of inquiry, such as negotiated curriculum, dialogic pedagogy, and inquiry-based learning. even so, these terms match well with the teachers’ descriptions of their activities, and with what we observed during our site visits. although much of the substantial research literature on pedagogies of inquiry focuses mainly on the teaching of science and mathematics, this literature provides useful insights into the challenges reported by teachers implementing lti in any subject. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 259 in the next section, we trace how inquiry pedagogies are situated historically and theoretically, and give examples of how they have been adopted in other times and contexts. the subsequent methodology includes an explanation for the adoption of a phenomenographic approach in this study, and its application in eliciting variations in teachers’ experiences when implementing lti. these experiences are then discussed within four categories: issues with lti; curriculum modifications to lti; pedagogies of performance; and what it is like to be a teacher in an lti classroom. in the conclusion we examine the broader implications, particularly for teachers, of sustaining lti, and making it more widely available as an alternative approach to learning, particularly for young people who have been disenfranchised from conventional forms of schooling. curriculum design, interest and inquiry thinking about curriculum design over the past half century, it could be argued that greene’s (1971) description of curriculum from the learner’s point of view as merely an arrangement of subjects still rings true. rarely, she says, does curriculum signify a possibility for the learner to be acknowledged as an “existing person, making sense of his own life world” (p. 253). this may be due to our failure to operationalise the aspirations contained in formal curriculum documents (stenhouse, 1975) but the constraining influence of the ideology underpinning the institutionalised expression of the curriculum is also significant. for teachers, possibly the most constraining of these ideologies is described by schiro (2008) as the scholar academic ideology which sees the function of education as primarily the induction of students into the various disciplines as they are defined by universities. american educators, such as sizer (1996), sought to change the way school is “done” and the ways in which curriculum is planned and enacted. sizer’s ideas were taken up and further developed by elliot washor and dennis littky in their 1995 formulation of the non-profit, non-governmental organization big picture learning which is based on three principles: “first, that learning must be based on the interests and goals of each student; second, that a student’s curriculum must be relevant to people and places that exist in the real world; and finally, that a student’s abilities must be authentically measured by the quality of her or his work” (big picture learning, 2016). such formulations of curriculum based on student interest however, present teachers with a number of dilemmas, including, but not limited to: how they prioritise the content of the formal curriculum; how they differentiate the curriculum to meet the needs of different learners; how they assess student learning; and how they select and enact suitable pedagogical practices that support learning through students’ interests (talbot & mockler, 2013). a pedagogical practice based on inquiry is centered on the learner’s questions as the means through which knowledge is identified, constructed, and connected to the learner and their context. such an approach holds promise for the enactment of a co-constructed, interest-based curriculum. children begin their lives as inquiry learners, questioning their world and testing their knowledge in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts. it is often the case that formal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 260 schooling fails to enhance their inquiry learning capabilities and only when they leave school do they pick up inquiry for learning again (washor & mojkowski, 2013). for both teachers and their students, inquiry learning begins in engagement with a matter of interest that stimulates the asking of questions. whether or not interest and hence engagement is maintained may depend on the scope for deeper and ongoing inquiry afforded by the matter of interest. teacher facilitation of the inquiry process is also critical to ongoing student engagement. while it may be argued that inquiry pedagogy pre-dates socrates, it has certainly been a topic of intense research interest since the early 1970s. the systematic and effective training of teachers in inquiry pedagogy became a focus for teacher educators’ inquiries; investigations focused on what inquiry teaching looked like and whether all teachers were capable of inquiry teaching; and the effects of inquiry teaching on student learning were examined (hurst, 1974; merwin, 1976; smith & vansickle, 1975; wendel, 1973). much of the research related to inquiry as pedagogy comes from the subject areas of science and mathematics teaching following the release in the usa of the national science education standards (national research council, 1996, 2001). bybee (1993, 1997) has been writing about reforming science education and teaching for scientific literacy since the early 1990s. bybee et al. (2006) proposed the 5es model as a means of scaffolding the inquiry process for both teachers and students. significantly for an lti approach, the first “e” in this scaffold represents “engagement” and draws attention to the need to hook learners into a problem or concept that not only has relevance for them but also sufficient depth that it will generate rich questions around which the inquiry can be built. in the 5es approach this “hook” is usually provided by the teacher, whereas in the interest-based approach we report on here it was the students who initiated engagement in the topic of interest. in the last two decades inquiry pedagogy has been investigated as a means for addressing declining student participation rates in science and mathematics, particularly in australia (goodrum, hackling, & rennie, 2000; lyons & quinn, 2015). the appeal of inquiry pedagogy for these subjects is that it more closely approximates the way in which scientists actually work. in australia and new zealand, inquiry pedagogy has also been encouraged across all subject areas through new mandated curriculum. in new zealand, inquiry pedagogy is directly called for in the curriculum; in australia , the explicit emphasis is instead placed on student learning associated with what are known as general capabilities, whose purpose is to build a skill set appropriate for learning and life in the 21st century (australian curriculum, assessment and reporting authority, 2011; cowie et al., 2009). whether or not teachers are disposed towards, or appropriately skilled to facilitate, inquiry learning is a complex issue. research investigating the link between teachers’ epistemologies and their enacted classroom practices finds that teachers often hold beliefs about knowledge and learning that might be supportive of inquiry learning while their classroom practice remains predominantly transmissive in style (gates, 2006; gess-newsome, southerland, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 261 johnston, & woodbury, 2003; windschitl, 2002). this may be because teachers lack experience with conducting genuine research or inquiry for their own learning and hence experience difficulties when it comes to facilitating such a process for the learning of others (lee, hart, cuevas, & enders, 2004; windschitl, 2002). a further compounding factor may be a lack of deep content and procedural knowledge in the subject or subjects related to the field of inquiry (bybee & loucks-horsley, 2001). methodology research design the six schools in our study were at various stages of implementing lti. we conducted at least two sites visits in each school, and interviewed a total of 20 advisory teachers. the novelty of this design in the australian context, and the schools’ link to big picture learning, made them readily identifiable. we adopted an approach to the analysis and reporting of findings designed to afford greater anonymity to the participants, while at the same time identifying variations in experiences demonstrably justified by evidence from the transcripts. the highly personalised nature of the lti approach presented an additional methodological challenge due to its lack of standardisation and its inherent complexity. it was apparent from the outset that any data collection tools would need to be flexible enough to capture the nuances of differences that might exist between sites, and between participants. protecting anonymity the phenomenographic approach to analysis, employed in this study as a means to protect the anonymity of participants, is consistent with an epistemology that views knowledge as constructed through an individuals’ experiences in the world (marton & booth, 1997). it offers a “kind of research that aims at description, analysis and understanding of experiences” (marton, 1981, p. 177) and one that allows the researcher to describe the “variations in the ways an aspect of the world has been experienced by a group of people” (mann, 2009). the heightened protection for participants is built-in to phenomenographic methods through the reporting of results as a depersonalized outcome space in which individual voices are not easily identified (marton & booth, 1997). teacher participants the teacher participants in this study were not recruited directly. they were included as a consequence of their connection as an advisory teacher to the student participants who were explicitly recruited. interviews were conducted with 26 students ranging from those in their first year of secondary schooling to those in their last year. the age range of the students was approximately 12 to 18 years. we invited each student to share an example of their work that illustrated how they learn in an lti advisory group. these work samples provided a talking point. we did not request an exemplary work sample but one that might represent a challenge, a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 262 process, a work in progress, or something already completed. students also provided us with a copy of a personal narrative or reflection they had written. after talking with each student, we observed them in their advisory class, and interviewed their advisory teacher. we asked each teacher to elaborate on observations made in their advisory class and matters pertaining to learning that had been raised by their students. we interviewed a total of 20 advisory teachers. in the course of talking about their students’ learning and work, teachers also spoke about how that work affected them, even though we did not explicitly question them about these matters. all of the teacher participants in the study had more than five years of teaching experience in a mainstream setting and at least one year of experience with the lti approach. ensuring trustworthiness interviews were often conducted in the presence of two researchers in order to facilitate debriefing and adoption of a consistent technique for eliciting further detail related to the main questions or to unexpected aspects initiated by the participant. as previously noted, the main questions for teacher interviews had been developed from what each of their students had said about their experiences with lti. after numerous readings, the interview transcripts were uploaded to a software tool (nvivo) that facilitated the selection and classification of quotations into categories of description, and also the cross-checking and subsequent modification process that occurred between two coders that is essential for inter-coder reliability. content-related credibility of the analysis was achieved through the researchers’ comprehensive understanding of the topic of inquiry, while simultaneously preserving an open understanding of the topic by carefully bracketing and examining their own assumptions in order that the categories of description genuinely arose from the data rather than the researcher’s preconceived ideas. this study is not predicated on claims of generalisability as commonly understood. since the aim is to examine the variations in experiences of the participant group of teachers rather than represent the experiences that might be considered general to the population of teachers as a whole. collier-reed, ingerman, & berglun (2009) acknowledge the difficulties for phenomenographic research in establishing what they call “the external horizon of trustworthiness” (p. 351) even when the internal trustworthiness of the study is assured. chief amongst these is the perception by a wider audience that the categories of description represent something that is not quite real. this issue was addressed by selecting words used by the participant(s) to form the categories of description wherever possible. the strengths of phenomenography for this study were: (a) the capacity to identify variations in experiences of being an lti teacher through a rigorous and defensible process of analysis of what participants chose to say about those experiences; and, (b) to simultaneously protect the identities of the participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 263 to focus our data mining of the full study for the purposes of this paper we chose to address the following questions, from a teacher’s perspective: • what difficulties do teachers face in relation to curriculum design and pedagogy when implementing an lti approach? • what are the implications for sustainability of an lti approach with regard to the demands made on teachers? the findings below describe and discuss the categories of description related to each of these questions. difficulties experienced by teachers when implementing an lti approach the students enrolled in lti were described by their teachers as having a range of characteristics that impinged on their interest and engagement with learning in conventional school settings. but most distressing for some teachers was that students were coming into the lti approach no longer seeing themselves as learners. in speaking about a particular student, one teacher said: she had become quite disengaged as a learner. not through behaviour or anything, she just switched off and didn’t really see herself as a learner. she talked about in her speech … she said i’m going to give [lti] a go, because it couldn’t get any worse. the lti approach employed in the study schools is underpinned by the belief that each student has a unique set of interests, needs, and capabilities which influence the design of an individualised learning plan through a collaborative process with their advisor. in talking about their facilitation of lti it became apparent that teachers were faced with a range of curriculum design and pedagogical issues both during the implementation phase and in the maintenance of the approach. the analysis of what teachers had to say about these issues yielded the following categories of description. category 1: issues with an lti approach getting lti started presented a number of obstacles that teachers attributed to guiding a young person’s learning in an area in which they have existing understandings. one teacher outlined issues associated with the initial planning stage in the following way: if you make too many suggestions about what they should be doing in their project then they say that’s not my project any more and they lose interest. we’ve changed our thoughts about how to manage the projects. when we look at a project we see what could make it richer and deeper but we have to hold off with suggestions and just offer at an appropriate time, “have you thought about this?” rather than sitting down and planning international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 264 out from the beginning, on the kids behalf, how they could cover their maths, science etc. so we hold off a bit until the kid is feeling confident and then we make suggestions. extending students beyond what they know requires sensitivity on the part of the advisor. this process requires them to have knowledge across the curriculum to connect students with broader bodies of knowledge, and depth of knowledge to facilitate new understandings. if curriculum basics are to be integrated with adequate rigour and depth, teacher judgment in combination with curriculum content knowledge is required, particularly in the initial planning phase of student lti projects. teachers also described limited access to specialist facilities such as science laboratories, kitchens, and technical workshops. supporting the integration of practical learning experiences by booking the use of appropriate facilities sometimes involved timing and sequencing issues. category 2: curriculum modifications to an lti approach local conditions in each school determined the nature and frequency of some of the modifications. the availability of colleagues with subject-based expertise, for example, was an important factor in determining how and when students could receive the facilitation they required for learning about their area of interest. in some settings the spread of expertise across the lti team of teachers was such that students were given the opportunity to work with teachers other than their advisory teacher in order to access specialist knowledge and skills. in schools where the lti approach ran alongside mainstream classes, some students were able to attend mainstream classes in order to access specialist teaching and learning experiences, particularly where specialised equipment was required, such as that found in science laboratories, kitchens, and technical workshops. compliance with state-based curriculum documents also posed challenges for teachers in terms of ensuring that each student met the requirements for breadth and depth of specified content. interestingly, for us as researchers who have spent many years observing in classrooms, it seemed that the teachers in an lti approach often had much higher expectations regarding authentic student engagement with curriculum content than their colleagues in mainstream classrooms where coverage by the teacher often suffices. at the time that this research was conducted, teachers were also beginning to think about how they might design an lti curriculum in relation to the new australian curriculum that would be progressively implemented from 2013 onwards. we make sure we embed the national curriculum in [the lti approach], as well as the school requirements, and that’s taken us a long time to get that balance of enough of each component to make everyone happy and also to meet their academic outcomes. teachers were required to provide evidence and map students’ interest-based learning to subject-based curriculum documents. for year 11 and 12 students particularly, careful attention international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 265 had to be paid to how interest projects meet accreditation requirements. one teacher described this process as “extremely challenging”. this year all the yr 11 students are doing [externally assessed] subjects so they have to have a certain amount of points and there are certain things they have to do. i have to keep detailed notes about what they have done around their coursework, of how their interest covers the course work they need to cover. finding interest-based internships for each student was a difficult and time consuming process. it was not always possible to find a placement that aligned with the student’s interest for a range of reasons including the dependence of certain opportunities on geographical location and work-place safety issues associated with young, untrained people in the work setting. innovative solutions included the placement of young people with mentors who were likely to provide a positive out-of-school experience and placements designed to build student confidence in the workplace. in some cases lti occurred simultaneously with other learning programs designed to meet student’s individual needs where gaps in student knowledge, particularly of literacy and inquiry practices, were impediments to pursuing learning interests. assessment of these needs was made possible through the one-to-one interactions with their advisory teacher: spelling was one of those things that she never picked up, and everyone said, “oh you will pick it up, you will pick it up”. she got to this year, and the first piece of writing i got from her, and i said, “your spelling is atrocious”. she said, “i know”. then i worked with [other teachers to help her pick up], for some reason [all the years] in primary school and high school, she hadn’t picked up core spelling skills. we worked on those and we got a sheet of the top 400 words that you need to spell on a regular basis and she worked through that in her own time. we still work on those really hard, core skills, because they can’t explore their passions if they don’t have those skills. category 3: pedagogy of performance an individualised curriculum to provide for learning through interest has major implications for the way in which teachers assess students’ learning. first, each student in an lti advisory group could potentially be working on a different topic of interest, in a highly individualised way, so traditional forms of “across the class: and “across the grade” assessment are not appropriate. second, and perhaps more importantly, assessment sends powerful messages to students about the kind of learning that is valued. the major form of assessment for the lti approach is through exhibition. this requires students to prepare the work they have completed during a term or semester for presentation to an invited discussion group including their parent/caregiver, advisory teacher, and peers. teachers used a common assessment rubric for oral presentations to facilitate moderation of oral presentations across advisory groups. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 266 commenting on the affective benefits of exhibitions, one teacher said, “the students respect each other. they realize that: ‘even though doing the exhibition is hard for me, all the others have to do it too. i am a part of a community of learners.’” journalling and reflection are important tasks that are completed in advisory group time. the journal, as an original product, forms the base of the students’ work for exhibition, and teachers use the journalling process to help each student make connections to their learning goals. students are encouraged to exhibit to their audience not only the various learning “products” they have created but also how these products connect to each other and to their learning goals. the following teacher comments demonstrate how these strategies work to support depth and rigour of student learning: so their journal is probably their key element. here’s xxx’s journal and this is graded too. there’s a rubric for the journal as well. the journal’s about thinking it’s not about writing styles and so the focus isn’t on spelling or anything like that, but it’s about that deep thinking, which is often difficult to mark, but we have to, to some degree. so, from here they will revisit their journal and they’ll take parts from the journal to indicate as evidence. at [his internship] he made drawings and that will be part of his exhibition. he is looking at legal guidelines for building. as outlined above in the discussion of curriculum modifications to the lti approach, sometimes tasks are set in the advisory class in order to ensure that everyone has access to content and skills considered foundational to learning through inquiry. often, this learning is assessed through a common task that has scope for modification in order that it might still fit within the student’s personal interest. these assessment tasks may also be presented at exhibition. teachers described these tasks in the following ways: the assessment piece for the last learning plan was this scientific information report, which they could choose but most of the time it was related to whatever they were doing in their learning plan. the portfolio is actually — and i push this really hard — is a stand-alone document, that any person who walked off the street could pick up and tell me what happened in your year: the highs, the lows, the deep thinking, all of that. that’s 100 per cent of their grade for communication for this term. so, it’s a significant document. assessment through exhibition is not however, without its frustrations. as one teacher describes, it can sometimes be the case that what is exhibited reflects limited skills and incomplete work. the failure of some students to meet certain standards of performance would international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 267 be regarded as quite normal in any mainstream assessment regime, but among these teachers it is felt to be not acceptable, and gives rise to reflection on, and questioning of, their pedagogy. we’ve had some difficulty in actually getting our hands on concrete products of the work, particularly the harder bits. sometimes the students are happy to show us their creative stuff, but we really haven’t had very much writing, not that we overly value that, but we really haven’t seen much finished work from kids. so, it’s really difficult for us to get a sense … implications for sustainability the teachers in our study had been supporting students in lti for two to three years. some of the issues they faced might be considered “teething” problems, and the teachers also acknowledged that as their experience increased so too did their feelings of success. category 4: what is it like to be a teacher in an lti classroom most teachers regarded working with students in this way as a rewarding experience and said things like: the projects are now looking more creative and interesting and real. i’m going home mentally exhausted but fulfilled. at this early point i haven’t gone home and felt i can’t be bothered getting up the next day, it isn’t worthwhile. it is a good type of tiredness. it’s been a difficult experience — but usually in a good way. what i’ve most enjoyed is that it is so strong in philosophy, its core tenets. when we talk about it as teachers — we are in big philosophical discussions. as a beginning teacher this is very enriching, all different ideas and approaches. it is the reaction of the kids that i love, when they get excited about something. one kid is interested in music. she got off the phone and was bouncing off the walls. that is what is the pat on the back for us. included within the categories of description for this phenomenon of “being an lti” teacher, however, are several issues that contribute to threats to the longer-term sustainability of an lti approach. the first of these threats stems from the way that advisory classes are structured, which provides advisory teachers with very little relief from face-to-face time with their students. this means that, unlike mainstream secondary school teachers, they have almost no opportunities for time within the school day, or indeed beyond it, to prepare or mark student work, to confer with each other, or simply to eat and rest. while most advisory teachers told us international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 268 that they thought it was important for them to be readily available to their students, many reported, as in categories 2 and 4 above, the emotional and physical demands of being “always on”. teachers spoke about their physical and emotional exhaustion in the following terms: i think we got to about the end of term 1 last year and it already felt like the end of term 3. i’ve never been so tired in my life.… i’ve never been with a bunch of people that work this hard and i’ve worked with some really good teams before. we’d be on facebook to 2 or 3am for those first two terms most nights doing stuff. there’s no release time in the school day so we’re up late at night making the connections and thinking about our work. i’m not complaining because it’s my choice do this but it’s really, really tiring and that’s one of the low points. i’ve never been more tired in my life. it is contact the whole time. it’s bloody hard in here. for me sitting and being an advisor but also supporting everybody else is really hard. for me finding the time to have those one-on-one meetings has been really hard with so many interruptions. each of us works a full day, unlike mainstream. it’s not just during school hours. girls, parents, and some mentors call me out of hours. the second threat resides with the expertise of the teachers themselves and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to be a successful lti teacher. if lti programs cannot be staffed by the “right” kind of teachers then the approach will not be sustainable. the teachers involved with lti described that not only was it important to have the right motivation, teachers also had to be able to work effectively as part of a team and, most importantly, be able to work across the curriculum both in terms of content and appropriate pedagogies. my understanding is that the students drive the learning. my job is to help them identify and map the curriculum. but i’m constantly going back to reassess what i thought [lti] was about. i’ve had to re-think my whole teaching practice. it’s all the resources from my previous teaching years that i bring with me because you still need all those tools to teach. it’s not just about their interest, it’s about skilling them up through their interest and i think there’s that balance that’s sometimes struggled with. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 269 in [lti] you have to love teaching and you have to know about 15 to 20 topics at the same time. it’s not black and white limits to subjects — this is maths, this is science. instead we are finding the connections. that is the idea of it. i have to be across a broad range of curriculum and for me personally that’s my biggest worry. having the core subject workshops takes the pressure off me a bit to find maths et cetera in kids’ interest projects. in some schools the lack of individual cross-curricula expertise had been overcome by having a team of advisors who shared their varied expertise in order to meet student needs. one teacher explained, “the expertise and the structure of our team is why we feel it’s successful. we all have a specialization in an area different to each other.” in other contexts, limited expertise in certain subject areas has “forced” a reversion to some subjects being taught in more traditional class formations, as one teacher stated, “i have taken on teaching maths & english because there is no one else here to do that.” while cross-curricula integration is common practice in primary school settings it is not the norm in high school where strong divisions along subject–content lines is more usual. thus, high school teachers have fewer models available to them of cross-curricular designs that have been successfully implemented. this impedes self-directed teacher inquiry for the purposes of professional learning and compounds the difficulties teachers face in responding across the curriculum to a student’s learning interest. summary of findings below we present a summary of our findings, by category. category 1: issues with an lti approach teachers said they had difficulties with: 1. finding internships 2. increasing parental involvement in learning plans and exhibitions 3. finding ways to address that “kids don’t know what they don’t know” 4. ensuring academic rigour and depth 5. the limit to how much guidance students will accept 6. student and parent perceptions that students are missing curriculum basics 7. students opting out and playing up 8. access to practical work facilities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 270 category 2: curriculum modifications to an lti approach 1. students go to some mainstream classes of their choosing 2. workshops are offered where the content feeds into interest-based topics 3. workshops are offered where the content is designed to meet state curriculum 4. interest-based learning is mapped back to state curriculum outcomes 5. skills are developed through standard advisory tasks applied to interest-based topic 6. some forms of mainstream testing or assessment are included 7. year 11 & 12 students focus on state curriculum when designing lti projects 8. lti runs in conjunction with other learning programs 9. implementation of a flexible timetable 10. students co-construct their curriculum with state curriculum in mind 11. internship is not necessarily linked to interest-based learning category 3: pedagogy of performance 1. original products and presentations for exhibition 2. tasks set by teachers during advisory or workshops 3. products reflect a limited range of skills category 4: what is it like to be a teacher in an lti classroom 1. a need to reflect and question your approach 2. being more than just a classroom teacher 3. cross-curriculum content knowledge is essential 4. having time to pursue learning with each student 5. high physical and emotional demands 6. having the right skills and motivation is important 7. a rewarding experience 8. working as a team 9. working with limited resources conclusion like their students, teachers in alternative education often seek opportunities to engage in different kinds of learning relationship. working outside conventional settings affords them opportunities to support their students in ways that are not generally offered in conventional schooling, which are often less flexible and responsive environments for learning. the teachers in our study were drawing upon prior knowledge and experience to make this transition to lti. they reported receiving limited specialised professional learning or support to meet the new challenges they experienced. for teachers, the broader implications of making an lti approach a viable alternative to mainstream schooling fall into three main categories, which relate to (a) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 271 teachers’ knowledge and professional learning; (b) the physical and emotional demands of being “on” all the time; and (c) difficulties associated with meeting state and national accreditation requirements for students, for both schooling and university entry. advisory teachers reported the need to have a well-developed repertoire of pedagogical practices together with a well-equipped understanding in a number of fields of knowledge. professional learning for teachers implementing lti might enable them to explore their learning interests beyond their field of specialization, through judicious combinations of external opportunities and contextualized practitioner inquiry. teachers acknowledged the demands of the intensely relational dimensions of lti, which require them to be available to their students all day and even beyond the normal school day without any provision for release from face-to-face time. for sustainability, a design solution must be found that provides teachers with the necessary time for planning, preparation, lunch, and rest without losing the benefits that the high quality of student–teacher relationship brings to student learning. teachers in lti were confronted by the tension of working with student interest while they simultaneously endeavoured to meet syllabus and accreditation requirements. the resolution of such tensions might be achieved through the inclusion of options in the official curriculum that provide scope for collaborative design by students and teachers in order to meet outcomes that reflect broader aspirations for learning rather than specified content. alternatively, ways might be explored for lti programs, and the accompanying student portfolios produced for the purposes of assessment in these programs, to be accredited in their own right as part of a direct pathway to tertiary education. the viability and sustainability of alternative education programs for young people are dependent on the professional preparation and support provided to the teachers who facilitate such programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(2): 257–274 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs72201615721 272 references anderson, r. 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(2002). inquiry projects in science teacher education: what can investigative experiences reveal about teacher thinking and eventual classroom practice? science teacher education, 87(1), 112–143. doi:10.1002/sce.10044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sce.10044 teachers’ experiences of re-engaging disenfranchised young people in learning through inquiry-based pedagogies: a phenomenographic study debra talbot and debra hayes curriculum design, interest and inquiry methodology research design protecting anonymity teacher participants ensuring trustworthiness difficulties experienced by teachers when implementing an lti approach category 1: issues with an lti approach category 2: curriculum modifications to an lti approach category 3: pedagogy of performance implications for sustainability category 4: what is it like to be a teacher in an lti classroom summary of findings category 1: issues with an lti approach category 2: curriculum modifications to an lti approach category 3: pedagogy of performance category 4: what is it like to be a teacher in an lti classroom conclusion references social determinants of children’s health in canada: the solid facts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 220 social determinants of children’s health in canada: analysis and implications1 dennis raphael abstract: the health of canada’s children when placed in comparative perspective with other wealthy developed nations is mediocre at best. much of this has to do with the social determinants of children’s health (sdch) in canada being of generally lower quality and more inequitably distributed than is the case in most other wealthy developed nations. the sdch are of two kinds: (a) those to which their parents are exposed, and (b) those specifically related to societal support for early child development. in both cases canada’s support of the sdch through the making of health promoting public policy is lacking. much of this has to do with the political ideology of ruling governments consistent with canada being identified as a liberal welfare state where intervention in the unbridled operation of the market system is frowned upon. there are means of improving the situation. these involve a wide range of activities from more responsive clinical practice through to advocacy and political action. keywords: social determinants, public policy, political economy of health dennis raphael, ph.d. is professor of health policy and management at york university, room 418, hnes building, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada, m3j 1p3. e-mail: draphael@yorku.ca. 1 material in this paper was presented at the symposium the coming of age of social paediatrics, a symposium cosponsored by the canadian child and youth health coalition and paediatric chairs of canada, toronto, october 20, 2013. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 221 in this article i consider the current state of the social determinants of children’s health (sdch) in canada. after briefly describing how canadian children’s physical, mental, and social health compares to children in other wealthy developed countries (canada’s performance is mediocre at best), i explore how children’s health is related to the quality and distribution of a variety of sdch in canada. here again, canada’s performance as compared to other wealthy developed nations is not exemplary. i then examine the determinants of the sdch in canada. this involves an exploration of how public policy in canada shapes the quality and distribution of the sdch to which canadian children are exposed. it is suggested that much of what passes for public policy in canada can be explained by recourse to canada being a liberal welfare state in which state intervention in the operation of the market economy through enactment of employment standards, laws, and the provision of universal supports and benefits to families with children is minimal. the resurgence of the ideology of neo-liberalism over the past 25 years has only reinforced these canadian public policy trends. canada’s modest expenditures on benefits, programs, and services that would improve the quality and distribution of the sdch can be explained by politics in that the political ideology of governing authorities at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels shape these public policy approaches. these policies continue because the public has not been presented with an alternative to the neo-liberal welfare state where governments do little to promote children’s health through action in sdch-related public policy areas. complicating this situation is the existence of a variety of research and professional discourses by which the sdch are understood. these range from seeing the sdch as identifying those in need of health and social services through to one that identifies those sectors of society that benefit from children being exposed to health-threatening sdch. the article concludes by outlining various means by which the sdch could be improved. it is argued that what is really necessary is the strengthening of the environments in which children and their parents live, work, and play through the creation of healthy public policy that improves the quality and distribution of the sdch. whether this can occur without profound political change that involves the shifting of power and influence in canadian society remains an open question. the state of children’s health in canada children’s health is important as it serves as a foundation for health across the lifespan (hertzman & power, 2003; irwin, siddiqui, & hertzman, 2007; kuh, ben shlomo, & susser, 2004). a number of recent special publications have surveyed the state of children’s health in canada and have found canada’s approach to supporting children’s health generally wanting (haddad, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2012; raphael, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c; raphael, 2010d). since there is no central canadian agency responsible for monitoring the health of canadians in general and children’s health in particular, it is left to numerous independent researchers in universities and research institutes to provide information on the state of children’s health and the sdch (raphael, 2012a). these data are difficult to interpret without benefit of comparative analysis that takes into account the situation of children in other wealthy developed nations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 222 fortunately, unicef’s innocenti research centre in florence, italy provides ongoing comparative analysis of children’s situations across wealthy developed nations that move beyond simple presentation of comparative data to careful analysis of the public policy antecedents that shape children’s health in these nations. much of their data is taken from work done by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (organisation for economic cooperation and development, 2011a, 2011b). infant mortality and low birth weight rates two key indicators of children’s health are infant mortality and low birth weight rates. infant mortality rate is seen as an especially sensitive indicator of the overall health of a population that is shaped by the quality and distribution of the sdch (butler-jones, 2008). the figures for canada are rather striking. in addition to canada having one of the highest infant mortality rates among wealthy developed nations, of special importance is the shift in relative ranking of canada since 1980. in 1980 canada ranked 10th in infant mortality rates of 24 oecd nations (robert wood johnson foundation, 2008). but by 2010 canada’s ranking had slipped to 27th of 36 nations (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011a). canada’s comparative performance for low birth weight rate – a good predictor of health during childhood and adulthood – is somewhat better. canada currently ranks 11th of 29 oecd nations on this indicator (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011a). earlier innocenti reports provide a rather poor portrait of canada’s standings on other health indicators such as teen pregnancies, mortality from injuries, and mortality from parental abuse (innocenti research centre, 2001a, 2001b, 2003). canadian children’s well-being in international perspective the innocenti research centre’s 2013 report card examined children’s well-being along five dimensions: material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviours and risks, and housing and environment (innocenti research centre, 2013). canada’s overall rank was 17th of 29 wealthy developed nations. it ranks 15th in material well-being, 27th in health and safety, 14th in education, 16th in behaviours and risks, and 11th in housing and environment. table 1 provides the contributors to these different dimensions. it is important to note that while the nations whose children fare better than canada unsurprisingly include the social democratic nordic nations of norway, iceland, finland, sweden, and denmark where commitment to children’s health is expressed through extensive provision to families of economic and social security, they also include many of the conservative nations of continental europe: the netherlands, germany, luxembourg, switzerland, belgium, and france. these findings should be of significant concern. indeed, unicef canada produced a critical companion report to the innocenti report card on the situation of canadian children entitled stuck in the middle (unicef canada, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 223 table 1. how child well-being is measured dimensions components indicators dimension 1: material well-being monetary deprivation relative child poverty rate relative child poverty gap material deprivation child deprivation rate low family affluence rate dimension 2: health and safety health at birth infant mortality rate low birthweight rate preventive health services overall immunization rate childhood mortality child death rate, age 1 to 19 dimension 3: education participation participation rate: early childhood education participation rate: further education, age 15–19 neet rate (% age 15–19 not in education, employment or training) achievement average pisa scores in reading, maths and science dimension 4: behaviours and risks health behaviours being overweight eating breakfast eating fruit taking exercise risk behaviours teenage fertility rate smoking alcohol cannabis exposure to violence fighting being bullied dimension 5: housing and environment housing rooms per person multiple housing problems environmental safety homicide rate air pollution source: innocenti research centre (2013). child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview, box 1, p. 5. florence: innocenti research centre. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 224 numerous analyses show these rankings to be strongly determined by national public policy approaches concerned with families and children (innocenti research centre, 2005, 2007, 2010). the primary dimension which seems beyond dispute is that nations that intervene in the operation of the market economy to provide families with the means (e.g., employment security and living wages, family benefits and entitlements, supports during periods of unemployment, disability, and illness) of living economically and socially secure lives – that is, the sdch – are the ones whose children show better health and well-being outcomes (esping-andersen, 2002a). canada is not one of these nations (doherty & friendly, 2004; friendly, 2009; hertzman, 2000, 2008; raphael, 2010c). the state of the social determinants of canadian children’s health children’s health is therefore integrally related to the health and well-being of their families (engster & stensota, 2011; esping-andersen, 2002a). the most important sdch therefore have much to do with their parents’ living and working conditions (campaign 2000, 2004; innocenti research centre, 2007; mikkonen & raphael, 2010). the most important of these is income which for most parents is a function of their employment and working conditions. for those parents unable to participate in the labour market, family income is determined by level of benefits and assistance provided by governmental programs. important sdch also include housing quality and food security which, while closely related to income, are shaped by specific public policies that address these areas (bryant, 2009; tarasuk, 2009). government support of early child development through the provision of affordable childcare and early childhood education is also an important sdch, as are the health and social services that are available (friendly, 2009; mcgibbon, 2009). finally, in canada, one’s personal identity or social location (e.g., class, gender, race, aboriginal, immigrant, or disability status, etc.) also play an important role in shaping access to the conditions necessary for health (anderson, 2011). this has much to do with the unequal distribution of power and influence that comes to shape the distribution of economic and social resources – that is, the sdch – important to health (grabb, 2007; raphael, 2011d). the next section presents what is known about the quality and distribution of four key clusters of sdch: income and employment of their parents, food and housing security, early child development, and children’s specific social locations. income and employment income has a direct effect – through parents’ and children’s living and working conditions – on children’s health (auger & alix, 2009; lightman, mitchell, & wilson, 2008; raphael, 2010b). the most apparent demonstration of income’s effects on children’s health is the relationship between poverty and health outcomes (beiser, hou, hyman, & tousignant, 2002; engster & stensota, 2011; raphael, 2011c; singer, 2003). children living in family poverty – defined as either absolute or relative – are more likely than other children to experience a whole range of physical, mental, and social health problems (lightman et al., 2008; raphael, 2010a; raphael, 2011c; wallis & kwok, 2008). the innocenti research centre provides comparative poverty rates – using a relative definition of < 50% of the median family income – for wealthy developed nations (innocenti research centre, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 225 for the 2009-2010 period the poverty rate for children – representing the poverty rate of their families – was 14% which gave canada a ranking of 25th of 35 wealthy developed nations (innocenti research centre, 2013). on the indicator of child poverty gap – the gap between the poverty line and the median income of those below the poverty line as a percentage of the poverty line – canadian children are 22% below the poverty line. this gives canada a ranking of 17th of 35 wealthy developed nations. these poverty rates for families with children have for the most part remained unchanged over the past 20 years. since 14% of canadian families with children live in poverty, large numbers of canadian children experience various forms of material and social deprivation that manifests in a variety of adverse health outcomes (innocenti research centre, 2013). a nation’s poverty rate is determined in large part by how governments act to regulate employment and working conditions (jackson, 2010). in canada, there is little attempt by the state to regulate employment and working conditions (tompa, polanyi, & foley, 2009). the oecd calculates an employment protection index of rules and regulations that protect employment and provide benefits to temporary workers (organisation for economic cooperation and development, 2011d). canada performs very poorly on this index, achieving a score that was ranked 26th of 28 nations. the oecd also provides data on the percentage of work identified as being low waged (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2013). this index considers earning less than two-thirds of the median income as constituting low-wage employment. even without data from the nordic nations of norway and sweden which historically have levels below 5%, canada ranks 22nd of 22 oecd nations in having the highest proportion of men identified as low-wage workers at 21%. canada’s percentage of lowpaid women workers (22%) give it a ranking of 10th of 22 nations which is a reflection of nations such as japan, australia, korea, germany, and great britain, among others, having very high proportions of women working for low pay. for those parents unable to work, levels of social assistance are the key factors determining income levels. the supports offered by canadian governments are well below those provided by most other wealthy developed nations. the oecd publishes extensive statistics on social assistance spending amongst its members (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011b). canada ranks 22nd of 39 members on social assistance payments, 23rd of 28 for unemployment benefits, 27th of 29 for services for people with disabilities, and 25th of 29 for general supports and benefits to families with children (organisation for economic cooperation and development, 2009a, 2009b). for those families with children dependent on such benefits, this places them well below the poverty line, however defined (national council of welfare, 2010; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011b; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2009c; raphael, 2011a). food security and housing the ability to obtain food and housing is closely related to income and the distribution of income (bryant, 2009; mcintyre & rondeau, 2009). not surprisingly, families living in poverty are more likely to experience food insecurity and live in problematic housing situations.(tarasuk, 2009). in addition, the extent of food insecurity and inadequate housing – important sdch – are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 226 also impacted by public policy in these specific areas (mcintyre & rondeau, 2009; shapcott, 2009). canada is one of few wealthy developed nations without a national housing strategy (shapcott, 2009). it also has no food security strategy of note (mcintyre & rondeau, 2009). figures concerning the amount of food insecurity and inadequate housing in canada are alarming. close to 11% of canadian families with children experience significant food insecurity (mcintyre & rondeau, 2009). the growing numbers of food bank users across canada – of which 40% of them are children – is said to underestimate the percentage of families experiencing food insecurity. similarly, the percentage of canadians experiencing inadequate housing is also striking (bryant, raphael, schrecker, & labonte, 2011). the canada mortgage and housing corporation estimates that 26% percent of urban families with children are in core housing need, either paying more than 30% of their incomes on housing, living in crowded housing, or living in substandard housing (canada mortgage and housing corporation, 2012). food insecurity and inadequate housing have been shown to be strongly related to adult health outcomes (bryant, 2009; tarasuk, 2009). there is little reason to doubt that these issues play a significant role in shaping the health of children as well. early child development canada is one of the lowest spenders on supports and benefits for early child development (innocenti research centre, 2008; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011c). there is no national childcare program to speak of and comparative studies place canada at the bottom of the heap in its support for families with children (doherty & friendly, 2004). programs that are available are targeted and there is little evidence of effectiveness in strengthening the sdch and making their distribution more equitable (raphael, 2010c). in regard to access to regulated childcare – an important contributor to child well-being – only 17% of canadian families have access to regulated child care (friendly & prentice, 2009). even in quebec where an extensive effort is underway to provide regulated high quality childcare, only 25% of families have access to it. the oecd published a report that rates canada as last among 25 wealthy developed nations in meeting various early childhood development objectives (doherty & friendly, 2004). canada is also one of the lowest spenders on early childhood education, ranking 36th of 37 wealthy developed nations (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2011b). social locations all these sdch-related issues are closely related to adults’ – and their children’s – social location in canadian society. social location refers to aspects of one’s personal identity such as class, race, gender, aboriginal status, immigrant status, disability status, as well as other personal characteristics (raphael, 2011d). in canadian society, these characteristics are indicators of power and influence and are therefore related to access to economic and social resources that shape health status (grabb, 2007). in canada being of working class origin, a person of colour, female, aboriginal, a recent immigrant, and/or having a disability is related to both the quality of the sdch one is exposed to, as well as to the adverse health outcomes that result from such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 227 exposures (galabuzi, 2009; jackson, 2010; rioux, 2010; smylie, 2009). canadian children in these social locations are more likely to experience: (a) a reduced level of health-supporting sdch; and (b) adverse physical, mental, and social health outcomes. it says much about canadian society that so many social locations come first to be related to adverse living and working conditions and secondly to unfavourable health outcomes. the social inequality literature shows that these social locations are associated with differing living and working conditions as a result of these groups having less influence on the making of public policy by governmental authorities whose attention is more focused on the needs of the more powerful and wealthy (grabb, 2007). these social locations are also important as canadian governmental authorities do little to manage the inequality-producing aspects of the dominant institution in canadian society – the market economy (leys, 2001; macarov, 2003; saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). means of balancing these differences in power and influence through governmental intervention in and management of the market economy in the areas of employment security, the setting of wages, and provision of family and child supports should be an important concern (esping-andersen, 2002a, 2002b). the determinants of the determinants it is becoming more apparent that simple explication of the importance of the sdch has done little to improve their quality and make their distribution more equitable in canada (bryant et al., 2011; collins & hayes, 2007; hancock, 2011). increasingly, attention is being paid to the importance of public policy in shaping the quality and distribution of the sdch (raphael, 2011a). in addition, analysis is focusing on how public policy within a nation is very much a function of the general organization of governmental decision-making. these differences have come to be known as a “worlds of welfare” analysis and, not surprisingly, canada falls within the cluster which is the least likely to support the strengthening and more equitable distribution of the sdch (esping-andersen, 1999; saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). and even more enlightening has been analysis of how political organization and political values of governing authorities shape these general forms of the welfare state (coburn, 2010; navarro et al., 2004; navarro et al., 2006). all of this work suggests that improving the quality and distribution of the sdch requires careful political analysis of a range of issues that include public policy, political ideology, and public understandings of these issues. public policy public policy is primarily concerned with whether a problem is recognized as being a societal rather than an individual problem. if the former, the solution is one that should be undertaken by society in the form of government activity as opposed to being left to the individual to solve (briggs, 1961; stone, 1988). despite a long tradition of individualism in western societies, it is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the problems that face us in the 21st century require communal solutions carried out under the authority of governments (hofrichter, 2003; raphael, 2003). with regard to sdch, there is no shortage of areas that require such governmental intervention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 228 these public policy areas include issues of employment and working conditions, provision of benefits to families and individuals to provide important necessities such as food and housing, and support of early child development. if these issues are not considered as public problems and therefore not amenable to government action, then they are left to the other major sector of society, the normal operation of the economic system. this is far from an acceptable solution, since despite what we have been led to believe by pro-business and conservative institutions and organizations, the economic system as it is constituted today in canada and other western countries is ill-suited to provide families with the means by which their children can experience high quality sdch (coburn, 2004, 2010; hertzman & siddiqi, 2000; leys, 2001; macarov, 2003). the economic system itself says little about the provision of health promoting levels of education, health care, income and employment, food and housing, and if left to its own devices does little to improve the sdch. differences between nations in providing quality and equitable distribution of sdch are due to differences in intervening and managing many aspects of the economic system (brady, 2009; pontusson, 2005; swank, 2005; teeple, 2000). this is not only the case in the social democratic nations of scandinavia but also among the conservative nations of continental europe. this is a reflection of both groups of nations’ long tradition of suspicion about the ability of the economic system to meet the most important needs of the citizenry (espingandersen, 1990). it is only in the liberal nations such as canada, the united kingdom, the united states, and australia that the belief is often stated that a well-functioning and profitable economic system will serve to meet the most important needs of the citizenry. such a view is patently untrue. it should not be surprising then that nations that do intervene in the operation of the economic system are the ones that provide children and their families with the conditions necessary for health. this raises the issue of the concept of the welfare state and where canada fits into its various forms. welfare state approach, politics, and political ideology esping-andersen’s distinction between social democratic, conservative, and liberal welfare states has much to do with the sdch (esping-andersen, 1990, 1999). figure 1 shows how the basic elements and characteristics of these differing forms of the welfare state have the potential to affect the sdch and children’s health itself (saint-arnaud & bernard, 2003). these differing forms of the welfare state have not come about by accident but have much to do with the ideology of governing authorities informed by the politics of governing parties. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 229 ideological inspiration organizing principle focus of the programmes central institution social democratic liberal conservative latin equality reduce: poverty inequality unemployment liberty minimize: government interventions “disincentives” to work solidarity maintain: social stability wage stability social integration residual: taking care of the essential needs of the most deprived (meanstested assistance) insurance: access to benefits depending on past contributions rudimentary and familialistic universalism social rights resources state needs risks market family and occupational categories source: saint-arnaud, s., & bernard, p. (2003). convergence or resilience? a hierarchial cluster analysis of the welfare regimes in advanced countries. current sociology, 51(5), 499–527, figure 2, p. 503. figure 1. ideological variations in forms of the welfare state international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 230 the social democratic welfare state has been strongly influenced by the social democratic tradition (esping-andersen, 1985, 1990; fosse, 2011, 2012). the conservative welfare state is distinguished by governance of christian democratic parties that have traditionally maintained many aspects of social stratification, some degree of commodification of societal resources, and an important role for the church (esping-andersen, 1990, 1999). finally the liberal welfare state is dominated by its governance by political parties that have been identified as being pro-business generally with resistance to intervene in the operation of the economic system (esping-andersen, 1990; myles, 1998; myles & quadagno, 2002). such an analysis suggests either changing the politics of those parties in power or electing parties of differing political persuasions that can be depended upon to implement the kinds of public policies shown to be so effective in improving the quality and distribution of the sdch and promoting the health of children themselves. this requires recognition that ultimately issues related to the sdch are political issues that require not only careful policy analysis but also recognition of the important role that politics, ideology, and values play in shaping the factors important to children’s health (bryant, 2012; raphael, 2012b). acting to strengthen the social determinants of children’s health in canada the situation of children in canada is not helped by the fact that the state provides rather little in terms of universal entitlements outside of health care, libraries, and education from kindergarten through grade 12. this is in marked contrast to many other wealthy developed nations where parents are routinely provided with state supports for having children through family allowances and the provision of childcare and housing supports. having identified these issues, the task is to identify what means can be implemented to improve the current situation. a wide variety of actions are possible. the important question is which approach will ultimately prove to be the most successful in shifting a society’s approach to the sdch, thereby promoting children’s health. improve services no one would dispute the importance of improving children’s health and social services. such services need to be responsive, effective, efficient, and geared to the particular needs of those who require them. certainly, every attempt should be made to improve their quality (haddad, 2011b). change behaviours there is also ongoing attention to changing the behaviours of children and their parents in the hope that this will improve health. these usually include issues of tobacco and alcohol use, diet, physical activity, and weight control. people’s behaviours are strongly embedded however within those particular environments in which they live and work (jarvis & wardle, 2003), and this is especially the case for children. all too frequently this leads to the simplistic approach by which people of particular social locations are identified as being particular targets for interventions to change their behaviour (raphael, 2011b). such an approach in itself can be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 231 stigmatizing, ineffective, and do little to actually improve the living and working conditions that spawn health and other problems (labonte & penfold, 1981). strengthen environments through community development activities community development approaches work on the assumption that if individuals and families come together to effect change they will be able to do so (heritage & dooris, 2009; park, 1993). such a belief assumes that governing authorities are receptive to the ideas and wishes identified through such activities. sadly in canada, this has not recently been the case and it appears that governments are becoming more and more resistant to responding to the particular needs of individuals and communities. this suggests that it may be necessary to organize communities to not try to persuade governing authorities to effect change, but rather to undertake actions that will force government authorities – through fear of electoral defeat – to take actions to improve the sdch and make their distribution more equitable (bryant et al., 2011). strengthen environments by building healthy public policy all of the previous activities mentioned are certainly worthwhile. they suffer, however, from their inadequacy to shape the public policy that determines the living and working conditions of parents and their children. moreover, public policy analysis is not part of the training that health professionals usually receive. it is not just those in the health sciences who lack public policy analysis skills. most academic disciplines – psychology, sociology, education, medicine, nursing, and social work – have little to offer in their curricula regarding public policy analysis. in fact, it could be argued that the only academic discipline that takes the issue of public policy seriously is that of political science. nevertheless it is becoming increasingly apparent to the health community that public policy plays a crucial role in shaping not only the health care system but also the sdch. what are the specific public policy areas that are of such importance? as mentioned earlier, primary ones are those concerned with the distribution of income and wealth, provision of supports and benefits, and generally any public policy that concerns itself with the health and well-being of children. not surprisingly, the nordic countries have acted upon many public policy areas that in the end come to strengthen the quality and make more equitable the distribution of the sdch (innocenti research centre, 2007, 2008, 2010). a short list would include universal, affordable childcare, the provision of financial supports to families with children that allow for the achievement of food and housing security, the provision of employment training and support prior to training and if employment is lost (olsen, 2002, 2010). the ability to organize a large proportion of the population into labour unions is also a powerful driver of sdch-related public policy (raphael, 2012b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 232 conclusions the literature on the sdch is providing increasing evidence that the primary means of improving their quality and making the distribution more equitable is through public policy that provides parents with the economic and social security necessary for health. these public policy areas shape all the sdch of early childhood development, income and wealth distribution, employment security and working conditions, food and housing security, and the provision of health and social services. this argument outlines a major role for the state – acting on behalf of the majority of citizens – in taking an active role in the provision of economic and social security for citizens. without such government intervention, the economic system creates the social inequalities that shape the quality and distribution of the sdch. in nations such as canada where there is growing withdrawal of the state from involvement in these areas, we see evidence of either stagnating or declining health of children. while all of us should do what we can to improve the sdch, it seems to me that the key issue to be considered is whether those concerned with the health of children will begin the important debate of the role of the state in providing parents and their children with the economic and social security necessary for health. those working in the health field can either accept or reject this analysis. what they cannot do is ignore it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 220–239 233 references anderson, e. 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(2008). daily struggles: the deepening racialization and feminization of poverty in canada. toronto: canadian scholars' press. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00113921030515004 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1474746404002337 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/choice.38-3964 tell it like you see it: youth perceptions of child and youth care practitioner interventions and outcomes in an alternative school setting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 214 tell it like you see it: youth perceptions of child and youth care practitioner interventions and outcomes in an alternative school setting cait mcmillan, carol stuart, and jennifer vincent abstract: using a semi-structured interview format, students (n = 7) attending an alternative school program who were supported by child and youth care (cyc) practitioners described their view of the work these practitioners do and the effect it has on the students. we were interested in learning about how students perceived the strategies and interventions they experienced and how the said interventions affected student outcomes. students described program strategies such as the use of a token economy and daily group sessions as well as practitioner strategies including presence, support, use of self, and the student as resources for information and assessment. students accomplished a variety of academic and socio-emotional outcomes, and identified the relationship as the basis for effective work between themselves and the cyc practitioner. students identified both passive and persistent engagement strategies in the relational context. together, these two types of engagement seem to create a continuum of constant engagement. through a comparison of the student perceptions to the cyc practice literature, we offer a beginning point for a dialogue between students and theorists and researchers about some of the accepted and common practice strategies in our field. keywords: school-based practice, interventions, outcomes, youth perspective cait mcmillan, b.a. is a certified cyc practitioner working with youth in a residential setting in ottawa, ontario, canada. e-mail: cait.mcmillan@gmail.ca carol stuart, ph.d. is the dean of health and human services at vancouver island university, 900 5th street, nanaimo, british columbia, canada, v9r 5s5. e-mail: carol.stuart@viu.ca jennifer vincent, b.a. is a master's student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: vincent4@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 215 increased pressure on the part of government for accountability has led service providers in children’s mental health to adopt evidence-based practice (ebp), train child and youth care counsellors in specific evidence-based treatments (ebt), and focus on gathering outcome data for children, youth, and families who use their services. as such, there is a growing interest in further understanding the way that cyc counsellors are developing and utilizing specific ebp/t activities within the life space of clients and in formal intervention protocols. the uptake of ebp/t in children’s mental health has influenced other service sectors employing cyc practitioners, including child welfare, juvenile justice, and, to a lesser extent, the education sector. previous research on the use of ebp/ts (stuart, fulton, kroll, rapuano, & mcmillan, 2008) showed that cyc practitioners working in group care settings implement many different intervention strategies that are consistent with intervention strategies used in ebp. these practitioners apply the interventions in the life space of the young person in planned and purposeful ways that are consistent with treatment goals. although evidence-based practices are frequently used by cyc practitioners in group care, there has been limited exploration of the ebp used in non-residential settings or the specific outcomes that derive from cyc interventions. research on the working strategies of cyc practitioners which precipitate outcomes for young people has relied primarily on the scientific approach through the implementation of ebp/ts. it is understood in practice that across settings the intervention strategies of cyc practitioners include, but also reach far beyond, the utilization of ebp/ts. relationship, for example, is a mechanism for change which cannot be captured in a scientific approach. a cyc approach to working with young people seeks their meaningful engagement and values their voices as evidence regarding what interventions and strategies are helpful to them and the relation of the interventions to outcomes. engaging youth by soliciting their opinions about the intervention activities and resultant outcomes is a crucial aspect of gathering new information about what is of value to those served. given the significant lack of current research that addresses what types of strategies cyc practitioners employ in the educational sector, we were interested in speaking with young people about their experiences with cyc practitioners in a school setting. the goal of this study was to explore the relationships between life space intervention strategies of cyc practitioners, the service program(s), and the outcomes of the participating youth in an alternative school setting. our specific research objectives were: 1. to understand how students perceived the intervention strategies they experience in a school setting; and 2. to identify how students connected interventions with their real or anticipated outcomes. method the research reported here is part of a larger study exploring perceptions about cyc strategies for intervention and the resultant outcomes of both cyc practitioners and the youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 216 they work with. social service organizations that engaged cyc practitioners to provide a variety of services to youth volunteered to participate. an exploratory qualitative approach using semistructured interviews enabled us to engage youth in a discussion about their perceptions of the work of cyc practitioners. the interview questions were designed to elicit information about the perceptions of the strategies and interventions used and the outcomes experienced by the youth. the semi-structured interview approach provided opportunity for the participants to speak freely in their own words, and flexibility for researchers to probe participants to clarify or request further detail. setting all participants attended an alternative high school program (section 23) in the toronto area. students attended the program because they had been identified (by self or other) as requiring extra academic and socio-emotional supports not available to them in a mainstream school setting. the program was located in a building that was shared with another (unassociated) school, each with their own entrances and schedules. the program employed four teachers and four cyc practitioners with a maximum of 24 high school students. recruitment and data collection using a purposeful approach to recruitment, cyc practitioners in the school provided preliminary information on the study to students whom they felt were experiencing success and who could speak to their experiences within the setting. we then met with the students as a group at the school to provide additional details on the study and emphasize the voluntary nature of participation. written informed consent was obtained from participants during this meeting and interviews were scheduled for the time immediately following the meeting in a room separate from the classroom area. a team of three researchers individually interviewed the students. in total, seven (n = 7) students participated, five males and two females, aged 16 to 18 years. two had been in the program less than 6 months, four between 6 and 12 months, and one had been in the program for over one academic year. the interviews were audiotaped and lasted an average of 30 to 40 minutes. students received a $25 honorarium for their participation in the study. data analysis interviews were transcribed verbatim in preparation for analysis. all identifying information in the data was replaced with a participant code in the process of transcription. the interviews were coded thematically using nvivo 8 software. preliminary analysis consisted of a line-by-line review of the data without any preconceived ideas to identify preliminary themes. once preliminary themes were identified, they were reviewed with the second author following her independent review of the transcripts. the discussion of preliminary themes grounded the themes in the data and identified overarching themes related to the research questions. the analysis was initiated by the first author and checked independently and collaboratively with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 217 second author through regular meetings to review the emerging themes1 . after each meeting the first author returned to the data to check and code new emergent themes and revise the analysis. results six separate but interconnected themes emerged in thematic analysis: 1. cyc practitioners inserting themselves in the life space. 2. program strategies of cyc practitioners, which includes sub-themes of the token economy and group time. 3. working strategies of cyc practitioners, which includes sub-themes of presence, support, use of self, students as a resource, and assessment. 4. student perspectives on treatment goals. 5. student perspectives on outcomes now and in the future, which includes sub-themes of future outcomes, academic outcomes, and socio-emotional outcomes. 6. relationship, which includes sub-themes of development of relationship, naming the relationship, relating strategies to outcomes, passive engagement and persistent engagement. the sub-themes passive engagement and persistent engagement were strategies used by cyc practitioners in the relational context, which together formed a continuum of constant engagement. 1. c y c p r actitioner s i nser ting t hemselves in the l ife space cyc practitioners engaged with students primarily in the school environment; however, youth (n = 6) described instances in which their practitioners connected the school and the home spaces through regular communication. in the eyes of students, this constant contact between cyc practitioners and youths’ caretakers promoted their success. constant contact with the guardians. which i don’t know how awesome that is for the kids themselves, but … when everyone knows everything, well that may not be what a lot of people want or desire, it is definitely something that is helpful because there is constant contact and support in between the two. (002cs) the student further described this “constant contact” as a way for the cyc practitioners to make their presence known to the youth outside of the school environment. the extension of practice beyond the “place” of school and into a more broadly defined life space was noted by another student who identified how she transferred her newly acquired social skills to other systems in which she was involved. neither the practice strategies nor the outcomes were restricted to the school setting. 1 the third author interviewed students for this study and completed an analysis of data from cyc practitioners in the program. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 218 2. p r ogr am s tr ategies of c y c p r actitioner s program strategies were used by all cyc practitioners and affected all students in the school. participants identified rules, routines, rewards, and group activities as important contributors to their success at the school. built into the school program were daily routines and rules established as structures for the students. but sometimes their parents can’t afford certain things or say for instance can’t make a lunch every day. so what happens here is the program here has lunches on mondays and fridays where you make a sandwich, or make a sandwich and have a pop or something like that…and certain days of the week we have hot lunch. that means, like last monday, i actually made spaghetti and meatballs. (001) sometimes you have to owe back time if you’re late and stuff, but i think that reassures me that i need not to be late so that, you know, at least there is some type of discipline here. (003jv) rewards for good behaviour included early dismissal, extra breaks, computer time, and earning dollars towards the token economy. the token economy was a structure that the cyc practitioners used to reward students when they noticed positive behaviours or “good” choices on the part of the students. in addition to program-wide rewards available to all students, youth were able to earn “dollars” by demonstrating behaviours related to their individual case plans and goals. students believed that the presence of the reward system called “d dollars” kept them motivated to be on time and on task throughout the day, while helping them develop a sense of responsibility to themselves and others. oh yeah, we have – we have, we also have auction. which is like for everything we do good, for instance i get – basically it’s d dollars, right. so if we do – if we do good class, like if we do good in class like no interruptions, get down to work, you just got yourself five d dollars. and every two weeks you auction – they put stuff up for auction. like for instance, um – this, say this was five d dollars, and then the bid would start at five, and like five dollars – six, seven, eight ... and you can earn gift cards, mcdonald’s or tim hortons or hmv, or wal-mart, or anything. we usually, sometimes we get candy, pop, chips, you know, you name it...one time somebody won an mp3 player. so yeah, it was pretty good. (001) all students participated in a daily group session developed and led by cyc practitioners. group was an interactive environment where students learned social and other life skills. as described below, the topics varied and seemed to be jointly determined between students and cyc practitioners. we’ve done stuff on safe sex, a thing we were doing on nutrition; we just recently watched the pianist and discussed it and all that. so it’s a smattering of everything. just on stuff that the staff thinks are interesting and can help us in our current time in life. (002cs) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 219 3. w or k ing s tr ategies of c y c p r actitioner s the students (n = 7) identified a variety of planned and in-the-moment strategies that were employed by the cyc practitioner, the youth, or through collaborative efforts by both players. they included presence, support, the use of self, the student as a resource for information, and assessment. p r esence. students noted that the ongoing, non-intrusive presence of cyc practitioners in their physical life space allowed practitioners to observe and assess needs so that they could then help students manage and respond to emotional states. here, a student identified a situation where the cyc practitioner acted after she had been present over a period of time: like, we have this thing called group where we all, sometimes we all sit and talk. i used to sit in the back and i didn’t say anything. then she would call me out, and before i got really mad, but i realized that it was actually helping me, because i needed that push to talk more. (003cm) the constant presence of the cyc practitioners in the school allowed students to call upon the workers when they needed support or guidance: i’d have to say, you know, i just would miss the constant presence, because it’s like they’re always there. even if i’m not using it, i could go say “i’m having a problem with this. i need help with this. can you help me?” and that’s always really great and just the constant – their presence here and how they’re just so great with everyone. (002cs) s uppor t. the cyc practitioners’ physical presence in the life space created an environment that prepared students to receive and/or seek out support. support was provided for both academic and socio-emotional reasons. all students (n = 7) noted that their primary cyc practitioner actively engaged in providing them with one or both of these types of support: “for the most part they are there to support you academically and also – like, i don’t know what the word is, not mentally, but like more emotionally” (003jv). students described both active and conversational support. cyc practitioners engaged in active support with students by providing specific assistance to accomplish goal-related tasks or to help them advocate for themselves. conversational support involved verbal response to a behaviour, validation, congratulations, advice or guidance, and motivation. active listening by the cyc practitioner was a key component of student support. students indicated that both types of support provided them with tools and created opportunities that allowed them to take risks and experience new things. the positive reinforcement that one student received from the cyc practitioners was a strong motivating factor that encouraged her to work toward her goals. she compared her experiences in the program to those she had in mainstream schools: “it’s like nobody ever notices. but to me, here, it’s more the attention that you get, it’s more reassuring” (003jv). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 220 students compared the support systems in the school to those found in families. here, the student explained that the support that he received from his primary cyc practitioner was much like the support that he would expect from a mother, who reminds him of daily events and tasks and assists him with developing proper social interactions with others. he said that the personal and tight-knit environment the staff created in the school felt much like a family: it’s a very personal setting, it’s like a family-like setting, because we are together all day, everyday. so it’s really great to be in the setting, because some students here are in residence, group homes, where they may not get that kind of family setting where they should be. so it’s good that they can come to this school, this program, where they can get that kind of family setting. because we do come here, we do work, we have fun, play games, we um – we had a thanksgiving dinner, we had a christmas dinner here, we had a hallowe’en party, we had all these little get-togethers, all these little lunches, it’s really good. yeah. (002jv) u se of self. students described how cyc practitioners used themselves as tools in their personal approach to practice, using their personality and interests to inform how they interacted with students. areas of common interest between cyc practitioners and students, such as movies, music, and sports, formed the basis of conversations at breaks, at lunch, or in the morning before school. students reacted differently to the varied ways that cyc practitioners engaged them, and invested more in the topics and individuals who most suited their personal interests: so like, it’s great, because i can relate to her. like, we listen to the same kinds of music, some of the same interests and whatnot. so it’s easy to sit down and talk to her, not like youth worker and student, but like acquaintances. (002jv) overall, students (n = 6) appreciated the ways that cyc practitioners informed practice using self, and were approachable when advice, companionship, or support was sought. i think she just is a very approachable kind of person. she’s really down to earth, so it’s really easy to go up to her and say, you know, “i’m having a problem with this so on and so forth, could you help me?” and she doesn’t like, you know, when you’re in class we’ll talk at break or talk at lunch – she’s like, okay. we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about the issue at hand and maybe brainstorm some ideas as to what we can do and we’ll go from there. so she’s – she’s just been amazing all year. (002jv) s tudents as a r esour ce. students are resources for information about their own needs and their progress made in the program. cyc practitioners asked students to share how intervention strategies were working, and to identify where they thought the approach should be changed to increase their opportunities for success. their responses allowed cyc practitioners to gather information and collaboratively develop new working approaches. a ssessment. students identified the formal and informal assessments used to determine academic and socio-emotional needs and goals, and to track their progress over time. informal assessments happened frequently (daily or weekly according to youth needs) through international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 221 conversation initiated by either a practitioner or the student. they were generally unplanned, but students observed that assessment was a significant part of the cyc practitioners’ regular routine. formal assessments were performed during regular case plan meetings with primary workers where students shared their successes and struggles and updated their case plans. these assessments were individualized and personalized to fit each youth, and were not limited to formal program goals but could include any part of the life space that was relevant. case plan meetings were scheduled on a biweekly to a monthly basis. students further noted that cyc practitioners also assessed the quality and effectiveness of interventions with students by asking questions and making observations. cyc practitioners asked students whether or not particular strategies and interventions were helpful to them, and students became comfortable approaching their primary cyc practitioner if there was an intervention or a strategy being employed that was not a good fit for them. because she asks, like, “did you accomplish this today?” and i tell her yes or no. and if it doesn’t [work], she’ll say “okay, we’ll try something else, or we’ll see what needs improvement”. and if it does, she’s happy. yeah, but if it doesn’t, then she usually helps me on what didn’t, what went wrong in it, or how come, what stopped me from completing it. then we’ll work on that. (003cm) 4. s tudent p er spectives on t r eatment g oals students identified goals in two areas: academic goals and personal development goals. academic goals included showing up to school on time daily (n = 3), staying on task, and completing assigned work (n = 5). students also mentioned such goals as getting good grades and preparing for re-entry into mainstream high school by staying organized and successfully managing the workload. personal development goals were specific to each student (n = 4); these included acting as a role model for newer students, accepting redirection and decisions made by cyc practitioners or teachers, being more honest, and developing social skills. three students identified feeling a sense of responsibility to fulfil their goals because they had become committed to positive personal and academic change. and i just really wanted to change myself, because i wasn’t – like, i’m a sociable kind of guy, people don’t think of me as a bad influence on other people or prone, um, to negative influences, or vulnerable to that but, you know, i was. you know, i was doing a lot of bad stuff. you know, skipping school, failing in school, just wasn’t working well for me in the family setting. (002jv) students informed goal and case plan development by sharing personal or academic goals with primary cyc practitioners (n = 4). other students were more removed from the process and the cyc practitioner then established goal and case plan development to ensure a proper fit with the student (n = 3). in one case, development was informed by a parent along with the staff member and student. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 222 5. s tudent p er spectives on o utcomes, now and in the f utur e students spoke of their individual outcomes in three areas: future outcomes not yet achieved, academic outcomes, and socio-emotional outcomes. socio-emotional outcomes included sub-themes of improved outlook, responsibility, and the development of skills needed for success in the school environment. f utur e outcomes. future outcomes are separate from, but related to, the achievement of program goals. attending post-secondary education was cited (n = 6) as an expected long-term outcome of program participation. shorter term goals for the future were unique to each individual student and included the completion of specific credits before the end of the school year, taking on a recognized leadership role as a peer helper, developing skills to cope with the academic workload, and feeling comfortable in social situations with peers. a cademic outcomes. a ll students (n = 7) identified achievement of at least one academic outcome since starting in the program. most frequently cited was an increase in grade marks (n = 4), followed by the ability to complete more school work (n = 3), and increased academic success as a result of regular, timely school attendance (n = 2). then grade 11, it was just the worst year. that was last year. that was just like the worst year from me. um, i think i failed – out of eight courses i think i failed six... and she recommended me to this day program… it’s been amazing. like i’m passing everything. above and beyond my own expectations and goals. like courses, i got a bonus credit for outstanding achievement in this program, and my work is at academic and university level. (002jv) s ocio-emotional outcomes. students identified achievement of personal development goals; those who had not identified specific personal development goals were still able to recognize outcomes in this area. i mproved outlook. since starting, some students had experienced a change in their world view or feelings about involvement in the program. the following student noted that the content of his personal journals had become more positive and he was able to associate this shift with his positive experience in the program: well, at the start of the program i was really dark, i don’t want to say it, but sometimes violent... and now, it’s like, ah, i used this word before: optimistic, it’s more positive than it was... it’s very optimistic now. it’s got a more positive outlook on life and on change... i was just able to come in here and learn a lot about myself...and about why i’m in this situation...at the beginning it was like, “i’m in here because i’m an idiot”, or whatever, but now i’m realizing i’m in here because my past experiences directly influence my school work and my school life. (002jv) another student, on the verge of dropping out when she entered the program, experienced a significant shift in the way she thought about education and was looking forward to returning to the program the following year with new aspirations of getting a post-secondary education. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 223 this was significant given that she started in the program only a month before the interview took place: honestly, before i came to this school it’s really, i don’t know, never been talked about. but before i came to this school, i wasn’t actually going to back to school. i was just going to get a full-time job. but i said that i was going to come here for a month and if i liked it then i would stay.... i thought it was going to be like skipping or whatever, but when i came here i was like, everybody’s smiling, everybody’s like, “hello, good morning, how are you?” and it’s like, it makes you feel wanted, like people actually want you to go to school. it’s not just my parents like standing over me, “you have to go or else”...but it’s like they want you to realize that it’s really going to benefit you in the long run. so for the most part it just made me excited; like okay, if i can be excited about school there’s something you guys are doing right. and it’s like, i think it’s the fact that everybody is so upbeat and happy about it; it’s like, what makes it worthwhile. (003jv) r esponsibility. students identified times when they acted responsibly, including acts of reminding themselves of goals and tracking them, determining effective working strategies to stay focused and on task, cooking a meal for everyone in the program, encouraging others to arrive at school on time, approaching staff when an issue presented that they thought would affect school work, and refraining from physical confrontation with peers in times of conflict. development of skills needed for success in the school environment. two students (n = 2) described time management outcomes, indicating that being habitually late for school was no longer an issue for them. two students noticed an increase in their ability to retain focus on tasks for longer periods than were typical before: my behaviour is, i’m very, i’m more calm... but now i’ve actually learned to, like, sink my butt in this chair and actually listen to people. so i couldn’t be able to do it four years ago. so yeah, i find that more what you say, i can see now that i’m not fitter, jittery, you know i can actually sit here and talk to you guys. (001) students developed social skills and were more confident interacting with peers (n = 3). development of social skills improved students’ anger management skills, self-esteem, and selfconcepts. the following student was not yet convinced that he had seen academic or personal success in the program. he spoke of having continued trouble staying on task and not getting “caught up” in distractions created by peers during group sessions. when he did get caught up, a cyc practitioner would initiate discussion about his behaviours following the group session, often offering suggestions for appropriate change. the student indicated that he had become less disruptive and more likely to consider the consequences of an action before engaging in it; however, he spoke with hesitation and was uncertain about whom or what to credit for these changes. rather, he credited his successes only to developing maturity as a result of growing older. the student noted that he still struggles at times: “well like, i think things through more before i try to say something. but sometimes it can be hard when a lot of people are joking around about that” (002cm). 6. r elationship international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 224 descriptions of the process of the development of relationship with cyc practitioners and the labels used by students in naming the relationship give insight into the perceptions of students regarding the relational strategies of cyc practitioners in the setting. the relationship between strategies and outcomes is described through the process of constant engagement by cyc practitioners, which includes passive engagement and persistent engagement. descriptions and examples of these terms are provided. development of the r elationship. relationships with cyc practitioners developed in a variety of ways. some credited the cyc practitioner for being patient and available to students when they were ready, while others mentioned the reciprocal nature of relationship development (such as shared time during breaks and lunches). students said that the genuine, personal approach, and sharing of self by the cyc practitioners helped them feel more comfortable and connected in the relationship. six students (n = 6) mentioned that they trusted their primary worker. half of these (n = 3) mentioned that the cyc practitioner was able to facilitate the development of trust through physical presence, caring actions, and consistency. naming the r elationship. students used the metaphor of either friend or family to describe their feelings for workers and their perceptions of relationships with them. in one instance, a student differentiated between the relationship he had with his primary cyc practitioner and other cycs: the first was like family, while the others were more like friends. i just consider her like my big sister, i can just talk to her about anything. she’s always listening and when it’s time for class, she’ll still have time for me ... she lets me finish what i’m saying and she helps me and she gives me feedback. yeah, so our relationship is really good. (003cs) students identified qualities of the relationship that demonstrated their understanding of its characteristics, even when they chose not to affix a label to it: i don’t know if it’s a really close relationship, but we’re definitely – she’s there, she’ll ask how i’m doing, you know. and it just, it’s a pretty casual relationship. it’s nice though, i feel like i can talk to her and keep in contact with her. there’s no – i don’t feel there’s a barrier usually – between a social worker and a student, which there usually is. (002cs) r elating str ategies to outcomes. students emphasized that a crucial factor in their experiences of positive relationships and outcomes in the program was the constant engagement of the cyc practitioners. c onstant engagement can be expressed passively or persistently depending on whether the cyc practitioner waits for the student to take the initiative that results in action or intervention, or whether the cyc practitioner takes the initiative herself (all cyc practitioners working in the program were female). students explained how passive engagement, a kind of inactive or background engagement by cyc practitioners in the setting made possible through physical presence, placed the onus on the student to seek out or to propose action or support from the workers. two essential components of passive engagement allowed students to feel they could initiate action: cyc practitioners’ approachability and availability. persistent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 225 engagement occurred when the cyc practitioner initiated an action or support that was intended to address goals and best interests without having been called upon to do so by the youth. p assive engagement: a ppr oachability and availability. students (n = 6) felt that the cyc practitioners were approachable and they were comfortable seeking support or advice about academic or personal matters. a student mentioned that he had never forged a positive relationship with a practitioner whom he found unapproachable. he did maintain he found the majority of cyc practitioners to be approachable and this was important in his relationship with them. students said that cyc practitioners were available when they needed support, a listening ear, or guidance around an issue. the cyc practitioners made themselves available by being present in the environment, not only during school time but whenever youth and practitioners were together, including before school or during lunch breaks. this availability of the cyc practitioners was a “constant” when the students (n = 3) were in the school environment. i think she just is a very approachable kind of person. she’s really down to earth, so it’s really easy to go up to her and say, you know, “i’m having a problem with this so on and so forth, could you help me?” and she doesn’t like, you know, when you’re in class we’ll talk at break or talk at lunch – she’s like, okay. we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about the issue at hand and maybe brainstorm some ideas as to what we can do and we’ll go from there. so she’s – she’s just been amazing all year. (002jv) if there is something, if we do have an informal check-in it’s usually me who asks her for that...some weeks are different. sometimes it could be every day of the week, sometimes it could be twice a week, sometimes it won’t be any. it depends on how i’m feeling or what’s going on with me. (003cm) p assive engagement to solve a bullying problem. passive engagement is evident in this student’s description of how his cyc practitioner took the time with him to address a situation in which he was the target of ongoing bullying. she began by listening to him as he explained the situation, and offered a solution that involved the bullies and the bullied student talking about the situation. the bullied student was able to speak in a safe place where he felt supported by the cyc practitioner. the student later spoke positively about his ability to seek support and to approach the situation in a non-confrontational manner, noting that in the past he would not have approached such a scenario in the same way: “before i wouldn’t be able to do that. i couldn’t speak what i had on my mind. it was more done by physical” (001). p er sistent engagement. students indicated that the cyc practitioners demonstrated persistence in finding appropriate ways to address issues and reach treatment goals. although persistent engagement was not always initially welcome, students were able to appreciate their cyc practitioners’ use of this strategy in hindsight. the cycs displayed persistent engagement through ongoing support and motivation (n = 3), regular informal check-ins (n = 3) and, in one case, routine phone calls to a youth’s home or residence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 226 p ersistent engagement to increase participation. this student was shy and unwilling to participate in the daily group time when he started the program. he would sit in the back of the room or request an early dismissal from school. with persistence and gentle encouragement over time, his primary cyc practitioner helped him to incrementally become more engaged until he was ready to fully participate in the sessions: before, she would call me out, like we have this thing called group where we all, sometimes we all sit and talk. i used to sit in the back and i didn’t say anything. then she would call me out, and before i got really mad, but i realized that it was actually helping me, because i needed that push to talk more....she would tell me – she wouldn’t force it on me – she would say “if you can, i just want you to be a part of the group so you can just be a part of it with everybody. you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but if you do, make sure everyone is quiet so they can hear your opinions.” yeah, she made me feel really comfortable. (003cm) cyc practitioners’ constant engagement manifested differently with individual students; they would tailor their degree and method of engagement to the individual and the situation using the different strategies at their disposal. students appreciated the intentionality they saw in the cyc practitioners’ actions when engaging with them to create physical and mental spaces that fostered successful outcomes. cyc practitioners primarily used persistent engagement with students in their early experiences in the program. these important early experiences provided the foundation for the therapeutic relationship, and helped the students develop an understanding of the role of the cyc practitioners in the program. with this came the students’ awareness of the way that cyc practitioners were approachable and available at all times. thus students recognized their workers’ use of passive engagement later in the relationships. discussion our research objective was to understand how youth assess the strategies and outcomes of cyc practitioners’ interventions in a school-based setting. overall, the results suggested that students perceived that the cyc practitioners created an environment where they felt motivated and supported in the pursuit of their academic and socio-emotional goals. they understood that their positive outcomes were related to the successful relationships they had been able to develop with the cyc practitioners, and that these relationships stimulated their desire to achieve goals. students were asked to specifically highlight the practice strategies used by cyc practitioners that were helpful to their success in the program. given the highly personalized environment described by the students, it is not surprising that results indicated a wide variety of strategies and approaches that had limited identification with ebp/t approaches. the strategies and approaches described by students as being helpful in achieving successful outcomes provide an alternative form of evidence of cyc practitioners’ effective working strategies and approaches to practice when compared with residential ebp/ts. our discussion is twofold. first, it focuses on student perceptions of strategies related to the discussion in child and youth care literature on presence, care and belonging, constant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 227 engagement, friendship, token economies, and “fitting in” at school. next, it focuses on student perceptions of outcomes related to the literature on young people’s future selves and on mentoring relationships between adults and young people. our intent is to provide a starting point for further dialogue among students, cyc practitioners, and researchers about some of the program and practice strategies significant to young people’s outcomes that cannot be assessed or measured in the same ways that ebp/t approaches can. y outh p er ceptions of p r ogr am and c y c p r actitioner s’ p r actice s tr ategies p r esence. for students, the theme of presence was a working strategy of cyc practitioners in the school environment that focused solely on physical presence. the cyc practitioners were ther e, in the setting. they could be seen and heard and so they were present. the notion of what entails cyc practitioners’ presence in the literature reaches beyond the physical. presence is one of the four themes identified by krueger (1994) as being fundamental in child and youth care interactions: it goes beyond a cyc practitioner’s attendance and includes a state or condition of being attentive and responsive to the moment. further, it denotes the cyc practitioner’s ability to reflect the experiences of young people back to them, and convey the message that “i am here and i will go with you” (krueger, 2005, p. 26). more than merely physical, krueger’s conception entails mindfulness and action on the part of the cyc practitioner. presence is an important factor contributing to a cyc practitioner’s constant engagement in the school setting, where he or she is attuned to what is happening and responds when necessary. in further descriptions of the supportive work strategies and constant engagement of the cyc practitioners, the students did mirror features of krueger’s notion of presence. the disconnect seen between the students’ concrete perceptions of presence and how it is described more broadly in the literature may be due to differences in the language used and the depth of reflection on the concept of presence. the students have not had the depth of experience that would allow them to conceptualize presence in the way described by krueger. further, krueger’s notion of presence is oriented around the physical and mental spaces of the practitioner. the students were not asked to place themselves in the position of the cyc practitioners and understand what presence might look like from their perspective; however, their examples concretely illustrate the ideas that krueger discusses and thus indicate their importance from a student perspective. c ar e and belonging. when students lack a sense of being cared for or belonging in the school setting, they are less likely to see successful outcomes (lee & ryser, 2009). students identified their experiences with their cyc practitioners as pivotal to their feelings of belonging in the setting. they described factors such as the supportive, family-like atmosphere, and cyc practitioners’ use of self to inform practice which contributed to the student’s sense of belonging. feeling a sense of belonging at school was an important factor in the students’ abilities to focus on goal achievement and achieve success in the setting. how then did their sense of belonging translate into successful outcomes and positive perceptions of the program? it occurred in a similar way to that of students whose experiences were enhanced through an ethic of caring within school settings. beginning in relationship and guided by action, an ethic of care uses the concept of caring as the foundation for practice and decision-making. as waterhouse (2007) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 228 states, “defining attributes in this construct are involvement, empathy, holism and individual context. the primary aim of the agent here is to seek to fulfill the needs of others, and as a result, maintain harmony” (p. 30). in previous studies on care in the school setting, care was conceived by young people as: • feeling welcome in the setting, being acknowledged and understood, feeling respected, getting needed help, and feeling connected by friendship with teachers (cassidy & bates, 2005); • feeling personally connected to others, feeling like they were in a family-like environment, being encouraged to engage in dialogue, being motivated by adults in the setting (waterhouse, 2007); • feeling valued in the setting, receiving personalized attention, and being engaged in the setting in positive ways (lee & ryser, 2009). working via an ethic of care, which emphasizes the fostering of a sense of belonging, can be seen as a way to encourage student success. the similarities to our data indicate that the cyc practitioners actively engaged in promoting a culture of care that the students noticed and were affected by. these parallels noted in the literature are not surprising. child and youth care practice at its core is, after all, based on caring. cyc practitioners are driven by an ethic of care, whether stated or not. c onstant engagement. constant engagement by cyc practitioners is composed of passive engagement (where the student initiates a request for action) and persistent engagement (where the cyc practitioner initiates action). consider for a moment constant engagement as a continuum of responsibility and action. at one end, the student holds a high degree of responsibility to act on improving aspects of his or her own life space. the cyc practitioner is present but waits for direction from the student before he or she acts; the cyc practitioner is passively engaged. as we move along the continuum, the degrees of responsibility and action are shared and then transferred to the cyc practitioner. how responsibility and action are shared depends on the situation and the individual. at the other end, it is the cyc practitioner who holds the responsibility to act on improving aspects of the student’s life space. the cyc practitioner is present and moves to improve the life space of the student; the cyc practitioner shows persistent engagement. the concepts of passive and persistent engagement are echoed in a study where young people described how the roles of adults in youth programs helped them to learn strategic thinking (larson & angus, 2011). in the context discussed by larson and angus, directive assistance was defined as instances in which adults were the ones who structured the program, “prodding and keeping them focused” (p. 288). where such strategies were employed, youth developed the skills needed to adhere to deadlines and expectations. persistent engagement was demonstrated by cyc practitioners as they helped students learn to follow program rules and routines. facilitative assistance, on the other hand, is seen when the adults refrain from imposing on the work of young people unless they are asked for support (larson & angus, 2011). adults who use facilitative assistance are involved in behaviour that is similar to passive engagement. they take a step back, allowing young people to engage them when support is required. it is through this non-directive strategy that youth learned strategic thinking skills, where the use of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 229 higher-order processing and analytical skills helped them accomplish goals. effective interventions can occur at any point along the continuum of constant engagement; cyc practitioners might use the continuum in determining how best to provide effective interventions and opportunities for experiential learning that continue to support students’ learning and development. f r iendship. without calling workers “friends”, the students described their relationships with cyc practitioners as being friend-like. by describing the relationship in this way, the students displayed their awareness of boundaries that were present. they also noted characteristics they thought important in the student-practitioner relationship, indicating an ability on their part to understand that they didn’t have a personal relationship or a friendship with their cyc practitioner. the move towards professionalization in recent decades has created a shift in the discourse on friendship between practitioners and young people in cyc. previously, practice values included the notion of friendship between child and youth workers and the young people with whom they were involved; now, the field is more focused on the maintenance of boundaries and professional relationships (blacker, 2010). in effect “the concept of ‘worker as friend’ has become increasingly marginalized” (blacker, 2010, p. 27). the students were aware of and showed respect for an unmentioned, yet concerted, effort on behalf of the cyc practitioners in the setting to refrain from engaging in a “friendship”. students thought carefully about the words they used to describe their relationships with cyc practitioners, and refrained from affixing a label of friendship to their descriptions. instead, students focused mainly on the helping nature of the relationships in which they were engaged. the language – cyc practitioners being friendlike or family-like – denotes a need for the students to use examples of their own relational experiences as comparisons to confidently and effectively describe their relationships with cyc practitioners. t ok en economy. the students in this study spoke highly of the token economy embedded into the program strategy, indicating that the possibility of reward motivated them to be on time, be prepared for classes, and notice and act on opportunities to help others. token economies and similar strategies are widely used in group treatment settings (gharabaghi & phelan, 2011; vanderven 2009), though their use in cyc practice is the focus of ongoing debate in the literature. vanderven (1995, 1999, 2005) is a prominent voice on the flaws that exist in point and level systems in the literature. instead of encouraging students to act with an internal sense of responsibility or purpose, she posits that a token economy acts as an external locus of control whereby students are motivated to action by the possibility of reward (vanderven, 1999). in our study, students liked the token economy precisely because of the rewards; while the intervention encouraged responsible actions, the students may have been engaging in such actions as a means to an end. they indicated they were more focused on getting the “stuff” than they were on gaining recognition for their actions. token economies can also be seen as control-based, where it is the one with control – the cyc practitioner – who determines eligibility for rewards and awards tokens to the student (gharabaghi & phelan, 2011). students didn’t acknowledge this power differential that existed in the token economy. it could be that they didn’t care, or that the rewards in the setting were more attractive than their need for empowerment, or even that they hadn’t taken the time to question international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 230 the complexities of token economies. is a control-based system the best way to promote the development of pro-social, responsible behaviours? surely not, but students did speak of having a sense of responsibility in the fulfillment of their goals, indicating that some aspect of the overall program or the manner in which the staff interacted with students allowed for the development of a sense of responsibility. further, with the token economy comes the opportunity for students to have control by offering choices. as a program strategy, the token economy was not optional; all students participated. choices existed within the structure of the program; students decided how much time and effort they wanted to invest in collecting “dollars”. they could also choose how and when to spend their saved dollars at auction time. “f itting in” at school. the students who were interviewed attended the program because for some reason they had difficulty performing in a mainstream high school setting. benefits of participation in the program were twofold: they received required academic support and they learned socio-emotional skills (e.g., time management, focus on tasks, social skills) that would allow them to “fit in”, (or reintegrate) to the mainstream high school system for graduation. students noted that the cyc practitioners helped them develop these skills. how are cyc practitioners able to encourage the development of the skills that are needed for success in the school environment? “fitting in” at school requires that students are able to follow rules and abide by expectations that exist in the school environment. according to hewitt (1998), the development of skills that are needed for success in the school environment must begin by nurturing of a sense of belonging in students. adults in the setting can foster a sense of belonging by refraining from judging student behaviours or imposing personal or organizational values, and by providing them with alternatives when behaviours are not aligned with the norms of the setting (hewitt, 1998). cyc practitioners were able to do this by working via the ethic of care described previously. given their constant engagement with students, cyc practitioners were in a position to recognize and promote pro-social behaviours important to help students develop skills associated with successful integration. y outh p er ceptions of o utcomes o utcomes: f utur e goals, futur e selves. the students’ prominent future goal was to attend post-secondary education. in another study where occupational attainment was the primary focus, attainment of post-secondary education was one of the categories that emerged when youth participated in a “possible selves” mapping interview with 11to 13-year-olds (shepard & marshall, 1999). in our study, students’ ages and the educational context of the setting may have been influential factors that led them to place more emphasis on educated selves rather than occupational selves as was the case with the participants in shepard and marshall’s (1999) study. m entor ing r elationships: differ ent player s, similar outcomes. rhodes, spencer, keller, liang, and noam (2006) describe how close mentoring relationships between adults and youth influence youth through three interrelated processes: facilitated social-emotional development, cognitive development, and the promotion of positive development of self-identity. students reported that cyc practitioners assisted the achievement of outcomes in all of these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 231 areas, indicating that similar processes are involved in the supporting of youth across different settings. in this study, students likened their relationships with their cyc practitioners to family and friends – relationships that are presumed to be close and supportive. the associations of their workers with family indicate that the students’ relationships with the cyc practitioners meet their emotional needs and thus promote development in this area. rhodes (2004) suggests that the ability to foster close connections with non-parental adults is an important indicator of positive socio-developmental outcomes, and staff can act as secondary attachment figures for the young people with whom they engage. similarly, at-risk youth in another study who experienced caring relationships with educators also used a family parallel in their descriptions of their relationships (waterhouse, 2007). formal and informal conversations and small talk feature prominently in students’ descriptions of the working strategies of the cyc practitioners. constant engagement, assessments and case planning, and at some point virtually all other working strategies require the presence of dialogue. in addition to being a necessary ingredient of working strategies, cognitive development is facilitated with conversation in mentoring relationships (rhodes, 2004). this is not surprising since it is conversation that is the “bedrock on which youth work is built” (young, 2006, p. 85); relationships are generated and evolve through conversation and intervention plans are the result of these conversational interactions. conversation is also a theme in waterhouse’s (2007) study, where students described that the family-like environment encouraged rich dialogue that in turn invited sharing and facilitated problem solving. further, dialogue is a necessary ingredient in the development of critical thinking and reflection skills for young people (young, 2006). cyc practitioners promote the development of self-identity in students through their constant engagement in the setting and the program. with group and individual conversations and interventions, practitioners promote the heightening of self-awareness and show the students new and alternative choices. individually, this is seen when students help to plan and assess the strategies used in the process of goal attainment; in group interactions, students develop social and life skills through activity, reflection, and discussion led by the cyc practitioners. the way that students described their outcomes bears evidence to the importance of the establishment of relationship as the basis for progress toward the achievement of goals. as the literature suggests, young people succeed best when they are able to form and maintain relationships that support their needs and provide ample room for growth and development. it was made clear by the students in this study that they considered the relationship they developed with their cyc practitioner to be a necessary basis for the achievement of successful outcomes. most of the strategies that are identified by students as contributing factors to their successful outcomes are ones that defy placement in the realm of ebp/t, yet the literature provides significant conceptual support for the importance of most of these strategies. while this represents only a small sample of the perceptions of young people about the work of their cyc practitioners, it provides an important window of insight into those factors that are difficult to assess scientifically and systematically. references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 214–233 232 blacker, h. 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(2007). g iving voice: e xploring the school-based car e experiences of at-risk youth (doctoral dissertation, simon fraser university). available from dissertations & theses: full text (publication no. aat nr41032). young, k. (2006). the art of youth work. dorset, uk: russell house publishing. discussion canadian health promotion and human rights in action: what does the convention on the rights of the child have to say to others international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 510 human rights and health promotion: a canada fit for children? richard c. mitchell abstract: the 2011 canadian election campaign demonstrates once again that while the health care debate is always a highly contested political issue, little of the discussion originates from, or is concerned with, citizens under 18 years of age. this paper responds to this gap in knowledge with findings from a qualitative, exploratory human rights study investigating the youth-led health promotion group react (resist, expose and challenge [big] tobacco). under the auspices of the chief medical officer, successive cohorts of high-school students have been working within the niagara public health region in ontario, canada since 2005. the main findings suggest that young people are fully competent to manage important aspects of their own health, and have led authorities to support health-enhancing behaviours for themselves and their peers. moreover, it is clear that rights-based health promotion has been underutilized in canada since dominant theoretical approaches to healthy development and traditional top-down institutional processes frequently overlook – and thus violate – the participatory human rights of young people. this violation represents a social justice issue with far-reaching consequences for equity in the overall health of the canadian population. keywords: human rights, determinants of population health, health promotion, sociology of childhood richard c. mitchell, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of child and youth studies and core faculty of brock environmental sustainability research unit at brock university. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to dr. richard mitchell, department of child and youth studies, brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. contact: rmitchell@brocku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 511 the following study was undertaken with the assumption that new knowledge grounded within professional relationships is required to inform and reinvigorate the ongoing debate over children’s rights in canada (human resources and skills development canada, 2004; senate of canada, 2007). it builds upon an earlier british columbia investigation (mitchell, 2000, 2003a, 2003b) that was similarly framed by the united nations convention on the rights of the child (united nations, 1989; hereafter crc). a second assumption builds on the work of the great 20th century brazilian educator paulo freire, who argued that all pedagogical approaches are political by their very nature, and conversely, all politics are pedagogical. in canada, this would necessarily include the politics and pedagogies of children’s human rights. adopting a descriptive, exploratory approach and ethnographic methods, i analyzed how the principles and provisions of the crc were being utilized in a southern ontario health care region from 2007 to 2009. the data were interpreted from a research standpoint drawing upon the “sociology of childhood” as a conceptual framework (james & prout, 1997; matthews, 2007; mitchell, 2003a, 2003b, 2005), a standpoint shaped by two decades of front-line practice with young people, their families and caregivers in british columbia child welfare, youth justice, education, and mental health settings (mitchell, 1996, 2010; moore & mitchell, 2008). this approach differs from much of the current canadian and u.s. child rights literature, as well as traditional “age and stage developmental approaches” adopted by many authors attempting to understand the challenges of children’s rights (see, for example, howe & covell, 2001, 2005; hertzman & weins, 1996; peter et al., 2007; matthews, 2007). the main findings offer an overview of, (a) how a group of secondary school students employed as health promotion agents are demonstrating leadership in a hierarchically-oriented regional health care system, and (b) a challenge to key concepts relative to healthy human development, human rights, and health promotion. furthermore, i argue that these findings reveal the extent to which dominant theoretical and policy discourses – particularly those conceptualizing “adolescent development” and “youth engagement” – can comfortably embrace young people’s human rights when working within public health promotion, policy development, and practice settings. re-theorizing human rights in order to illuminate notions of power, ability, gender, sexual identity, poverty, and ethnicity embedded within transdisciplinary discourses of law, childhood, human rights, and healthy development, o’byrne (2003) has theorized a “sociology of human rights”. he has suggested that a lack of coherence in application of human rights across many cultures may result from the confusion over notions of “universality” (ontological assumptions), and efforts to obtain new “knowledge” of human rights (epistemological assumptions). following on with this thinking, an examination of the roots of human rights in contemporary law and social policy reveals that many authors employ concepts that first emerged in the context of western european, enlightenment-era debates to be subsequently codified after the french and american revolutions (for example, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 512 donnelly, 1993, 2003; douzinas, 2000). these erroneous assumptions ignore the plethora of historical socio-political and cultural antecedents across many civilizations (belden fields, 2009; ishay, 2004). the cylinder of cyrus (circa 539 bce, but recently in the news upon its return from iran to the british museum), the code of hammurabi (circa 1790 bce), and the scottish declaration of arbroath (1320 ce) each offer evidence of historically and culturally situated efforts to articulate and implement political rights for oppressed populations. these predate the enlightenment-era philosophies favoured by many anglo-american human rights scholars. indeed, while still engaged in the unfinished emancipatory march for women, indigenous people, children, racial and ethnic, physically and intellectually challenged, and/or sexual-identity minorities, western notions have thus far prevailed – although grassroots uprisings recently facilitated by social media in many middle eastern countries could turn these dominant assumptions even further aside (see support democracy for egypt, 2011). canada enjoys an international reputation as a bastion of human rights compared to many nations (united nations development program, 2011) – a reputation increasingly being called into question under both neo-liberal and neo-conservative federal regimes for many groups of young people and individuals (blackstock, 2005; canadian bar association, 2009; senate of canada, 2007; united nations committee on the rights of the child, 1995, 2003). the testimony of one young woman’s life experience during a 2006 senate standing committee hearing on human rights succinctly articulates these gaps: the adoption of the convention and its very existence seems to me, a bunch of words written on a piece of paper, a lot of them have not been implemented in my life, and i have not seen any evidence of those rights actually affecting me … it is also interesting when you consider the idea that those people that have those rights have no idea that they even exist. let me tell you a little bit about my life experiences. racism is a huge part of my life and a part of everything i have achieved or been denied (ms. hawa mire, senate of canada, 2007, pp. 197–198). the senate report cited above was aptly entitled, children: the silenced citizens, and is the most comprehensive study conducted in canada since the crc was ratified two decades ago. echoing repeated calls from the u.n. committee on the rights of the child (1995, 2003), the senate report makes four fundamental recommendations that – if heeded – could see a paradigm shift in child, youth and family-serving sectors throughout the nation: • make the convention part of canada’s national legislative regime; • establish a national children’s commissioner; • improve implementation of the convention in all government departments; and • inform youth and the public through education and regular reports. in keeping with these recommendations, the canadian paediatric society (2007), which represents the nation’s 2,500 pediatricians, called for similar legislative reform in support of a federal children’s advocate. in more than 60 countries, legislation creating these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 513 offices allows such advocates to function as de facto “child and youth rights commissioners” who operate at arms-length from partisan government interference. indeed, after a lengthy period of debate and development, legislation introducing the “independent office of the child advocate” for new york state took place in late 2010, notwithstanding persistent u.s. federal government reluctance to ratify the crc (new york state senate, 2011). there is no similar draft legislation on the current federal agenda in canada, thus ensuring that children and young people continue to be silenced within political and policy debates at time of this writing (see also mitchell, 2000, 2005, 2010). in a parallel discussion, we find that health and well-being have emerged in recent decades as a globally accepted “human rights” principle – a principle that drives the mandate of at least one academic journal, harvard university’s health and human rights. in canada’s federally funded national health care system, traditional developmental models are embedded within the overarching policy framework known as “the determinants of population health” (hertzman & weins, 1996; mitchell, 2000, 2003a). table 1 cross-references these determinants with corresponding crc articles and is reprinted with permission from the canadian journal of public health (mitchell, 2003a, p. 415). table 1: determinants of population health and the crc income and social status – described as the single most important determinant of health. articles 2–4, 6–8, 12–17 and 27. social supports and networks – support from families, friends and communities is associated with better health. articles 2, 3, 6, 12–17 and 24–29. education – health status improves with the level of education. articles 24.2, 28, 29, 32-33, and 42. physical environments – factors in the natural environment (air and water quality) are critical influences on health. the human-built environment is also noted as an important influence. articles 2, 6, 9, 19 and 32–37. biology and genetic endowment – individual genetic endowment and functioning of various bodily systems are fundamental determinants of health. articles 2, 3, 6 and 12. healthy child development – the effect of prenatal and early childhood experiences on subsequent health, well-being, coping skills, and competence is powerful. articles 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13, 18, 19 and 23– 29. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 514 health services – maintenance and promotion of health, prevention of diseases, and restoration of health contribute to healthy populations. articles 24, 25, 27 and 39. culture – some people or groups face additional health risks associated with a socioeconomic environment which is determined by more dominant cultural values contributing to conditions of marginalization, stigmatization, loss or devaluation of language, lack of access to culturally appropriate health care services. articles 2–6, 8–15, 18–20, 23–29, with emphasis on 30-31. employment and working conditions – those with more control over work circumstances and fewer stress-related job demands are healthier; unemployment is associated with poorer health. articles 2–4, 6–8, 12–17, 24– 29. personal health practices and coping skills – research in areas such as heart disease/disadvantaged childhood shows evidence that powerful biochemical and physiological pathways link socioeconomic experience to adverse health events. articles 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13, 19 and 23–29, and 39. while the political portion of the canadian health care debate is far removed from the lived experiences of most young people, the application of a common set of human rights principles adopted from the crc offers a new framework for understanding their developmental capacities and taking them forward. the convention still offers an innovative way to understand working relationships with young people in any professional context, and thus, the two theoretical frameworks in table 1 – one top-down and health-oriented and the other top-down and legal – provide both a conceptual and a policy entry point for this investigation. re-theorizing childhood in a seminal analysis of how various professionals are being educated in childhood studies, british early childhood educators peter moss and pat petrie (2002) argued that we have no “choice between ‘theory’ or ‘no theory’, or indeed between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ … theories whether in the form of academic, political, or professional ideas … shape our understandings and govern our actions, whether we recognize this or not …” (p. 17). indeed, they concluded that children’s professionals, many of whom engage in the deficit labelling of the behaviourally “disordered”, have thus far avoided this transformation (see also american psychiatric association, 2000). moreover, they decried the present individualistic frameworks for children while highlighting an inclusive, holistic view of the changing conditions of children’s existence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 515 across cultures and their potential contribution as competent, social actors: “we offer such examples … more as lenses through which we may view ways of doing things and the assumptions that underpin them. we argue … that working with different theories offers another set of lenses” (moss & petrie, 2002, p. 10). the crc represents one such alternative theoretical view of young people, though repeated canadian studies have found that little is known of the treaty at the elementary, secondary, or post-secondary educational levels or, for that matter, in professional and post-academic training (howe & covell, 2001, 2005, 2007; mitchell & mccusker, 2008; senate of canada, 2007; see also united nations committee on the rights of the child 1995, 2003). part of this omission may be attributed to pervasive notions within the child development and health care literature where young people are frequently misrepresented as “problems” to be solved, defined, and evaluated through conceptual lenses “of dysfunction, of deficit, and of deviance” (roche, 1999, p. 477; mitchell, 2003a, 2003b; woodhead, 1999). from an american perspective, matthews (2007) has considered how many u.s.-based childhood scholars “are on a somewhat different path than their colleagues in other western countries” (p. 322). she noted that much of the impetus for this “new” sociology runs parallel with international crc implementation, in that it has been ratified by all countries except the united states1 . like woodhead (1999), she argued that young people are considered “not yet members of their societies” (matthews, 2007) and identified three key ways in which theorists have begun to reshape universalized, linear thinking about how young people develop. first, matthews (2007, p. 324) noted how young people themselves are competent social actors impacting and shaping their own development as well as that of siblings, peers, and even adults in their lives. secondly, strict developmental thinking “homogenizes children . . . regardless of social location or context” (matthews, 2007, p. 325). through this social constructionist view, she maintained that contemporary scholars in the interdisciplinary field of child and youth studies may “focus on how particular cultural representations of children [and youth] affect children’s relationships, rights, and responsibilities” (matthews, 2007). finally, traditional thinking – at least over the past century – has focused on “the individual child” by divorcing his or her experiences from the social, political, and historical contexts within which they occur. matthews has thus observed that “no matter how benign parents, teachers, and other adults may be, relationships between adults and children are characterized by differential power resources” (matthews, 2007, p. 326; see also karnieli-miller, strier, & pessach, 2009). undoubtedly, the sociological view of childhood and its inherent assumptions of the competency of young people has detractors such as british legal theorist michael king (1994, 2007), whose autopoietic analyses of the crc have thus far failed to include viewpoints from young people themselves. indeed, he has argued such human points-ofview are quite irrelevant to an appreciation of the crc as a form of systemic legal communication. 1 notably, matthews overlooked the case of somalia, which also has declined ratification of the crc due to political chaos. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 516 returning to the canadian context, a recent senate report on population health policy has noted that some good practices with young people coexist in the country and may be found, for example, in the “healthy child manitoba” initiative. noting that even when well-integrated, health care services alone do not make a community healthy. governments at all levels should support an overall, community-based approach to health and human development and assist with the integration of health and social services, wherever possible, and where it makes sense for the users. (senate of canada, 2009, introduction) this integration runs headlong into the interplay of conflicted notions of health, wellbeing, and child development that, for many professionals, are founded upon exceedingly different concepts. as scottish childhood researchers hill and tisdall (1997) have declared: rights, and the related concept of citizenship, constitute one of the most powerful discourses in today’s world … definitions of children’s rights, and debates around them, are reliant on two concepts – of “childhood” and of “rights” – and how these two are combined. (p. 21) in new zealand, for example, burrows and wright (2007, p. 83) have considered how shaping health-enhancing attitudes of the young is “a weighty task” made more so by the sheer volume of perceived “risks” to their health in contemporary times. they further noted how alcohol, drug-taking, smoking, bullying, the sun, and “stranger danger” are just a few of the concerns dominating public and professional discourses the world over – each running in parallel with and frequently contradicting the rights discourse. in a critical review of empirical studies on the competency of minors within u.k. health care, alderson (2007) has noted problems of expanding “consent” beyond its current remit. she found that young people’s changing status as rights-bearers and competent decisionmakers about health care “has gradually gained greater respect” (p. 2272). also writing in britain on the rights of young people, coppock observed the over-prescription of stimulant medication and increased “medicalising” of young people’s behavior (2002, p. 139) along with professional discourses (containing both written and assumed notions about “childhood” and “adolescence”) informed decisions about what is “acceptable” and/or “appropriate” behavior. she concluded these judgments and the interventions upon which they were based had profound consequences in the lives of young people. researcher standpoint, aims, and methods this study’s main goal has been to explore and report how successive groups of high school students have implemented the principles and provisions of the crc, particularly the provision of health standards stated within article 24.1, in their own and other organizations throughout the niagara region public health. this article affirms that: “states parties recognize the right of the child to the highest attainable standard of health … [and they] shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 517 access to such health care services”. in light of the plethora of power relations at work in the research context (karnieli-miller et al., 2009) and in order to articulate my own research standpoint, it is significant that for two decades i was a child and youth counsellor at various child psychiatry, education, social work, and youth justice sites in british columbia. as such, i have researched and written about the convention for more than 15 years (mitchell, 1996, 2000, 2005) and have drawn not only upon feminist and participatory methodologies, but also freirean critical pedagogy as theoretical and epistemological resources to inform and analyze these studies (freire, 1970, 1999; giroux, 2003; smith, 1987, 1990). as principal investigator, i worked alongside a research assistant during the initial phases of the study to deploy a descriptive, exploratory approach that utilized ethnographic methods over a 30-month period from 2007 to 2009. these methods included carrying out 15 participant observations, obtaining eight audiotaped person-toperson, open-ended key informant interviews and their transcription, and an in-depth series of legal, policy, and literature reviews. my relationship with niagara regional chief medical officer, dr. robin williams, was reflexive: it began in 2005 when i first approached her with the crc and inquired how she and her senior managers might “engage” young people in health promotion using the treaty as a framework. as an innovative local health project, the organization of react was initially facilitated through the adoption of crc principles (react, 2009; unicef canada, 2007). with little empirical research available to guide public health officials in applying the convention in canada, williams began recruiting cohorts of high school-aged activists and two adult mentors in 2005. they all received stipends for their assistance. “resist expose and challenge [big] tobacco” (react, 2009) was the result, and took shape as a peer-led, youth-driven, rights-based program that plans and implements initiatives throughout the regional education system with the intention of decreasing smoking rates among young people. grounded theory procedures of open and axial coding and constant comparison of various forms of textual data with literature, policy, and observational data were employed (glaser & strauss, 1967). the results of these comparisons with local and international observational data were further analyzed to facilitate identification of key findings. results and discussion the dataset included descriptions of the work of students participating in three different react cohorts as well as from adult mentors overseeing the program. the interviews and participant observations were conducted simultaneously with the united nations mid-decade review of a world fit for children, the 2002 policy framework of commitments made by delegates from 180 countries to a global action plan supporting children’s human rights. five years later, the 2007 react group were active participants in the canadian portion of this review entitled, a canada fit for children in a world fit for children, a cross-national project led by unicef canada with seed funding from the department of canadian heritage (unicef canada, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 518 as one of a dozen university-based collaborators in this coast-to-coast domestic review, in december, 2007 i was fortunate to attend u.n. general assembly sessions to hear delegates review their own national action plans for children, including those from canada. these observations facilitated a deeper integration and grounded analysis of the “local” dataset within the “global” framework for understanding young people’s human rights. the following findings illustrate this analysis and offer an overview of how a rights-based, population health approach to local heath promotion and youth activism unfolded. the first group observed the extent to which government coffers at various levels were being swelled by cigarette taxes, largely procured from underaged smokers who had been targeted to buy tobacco products through advertising in canada and beyond. declaring that “there are some things taxpayers should not buy. for big tobacco’s debt let’s make them pay”, the students produced the “mighty card” – a mock credit card to be presented to ontario government officials with the group’s request to access a portion of those taxes for youth-oriented benefits (figure 1). figure 1 – the mighty card the 2007 react cohort also “discovered” that not only were canadian tobacco companies exporting cigarettes to children as young as 10 years of age in developing nations like ghana, but that they were further utilizing millions of dollars in domestic tax revenue as subsidies. at a time when contraband tobacco and its widespread underground distribution had spiked domestic addiction rates, the students then took their case to the federal minister of health in ottawa to seek a way to restrict these networks. they framed their arguments as a violation of both international human rights law and agreements found in the policy framework, “a canada fit for children” (human resources and skills development canada, 2004, pp. 10, 25). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 519 added to these efforts, the 2008 cohort spent many summer afternoons collecting 25,000 cigarette butts from places including my own university campus and elsewhere in the niagara region. filling a number of manikins with this odious litter helped illustrate not only deleterious health impacts on a local scale, but that cigarettes represent one of the largest worldwide sources of environmental pollution for the current and foreseeable future. this example of environmental pollution was used again during presentations to 300 elementary students during the local review of “a canada fit for children” (unicef canada, 2007, pp. 4, 17). a participant in the cross-canadian public initiative, ms. cara bulger – a react peer leader for the three successive cohorts cited above – offered an analysis of how the group brought the convention into their work. react’s main goal is to prevent youth from ever starting to smoke [but] the fact that we are youth-based is what makes us unique … there is a lot of peer pressure that youth face and providing another voice that reassures us that we can make our own decisions is vital. react has conducted numerous events in the community to expose the tobacco industry’s infringement on children’s rights around the world. react requests that the canadian government uphold their signing and ratification of the convention on the rights of the child and stand up for children’s rights. (unicef canada, 2007, p. 17) she further described a key initiative: last year one of our big events was the “mighty card”. we got signatures from students in the high schools around the region saying that they want the canadian government to sue tobacco industries for healthcare costs directly related to smoking and tobacco. and to sign this as future taxpayers saying “we don’t want any more of our money going into that. they should be paying for it”. (see also unicef canada, 2007, p. 17) another participating student recalled: i saw their sign and started reading “you’ll work a maximum of six hours and get about ten dollars an hour”. so i’ve been working since august of 2006 ‘til now [2007] and i’ll be applying again next year. i think the fact that the health department has actually given youth the opportunity for a job [is how they have adopted the convention]. i think that’s it for sure because we’ve been given this opportunity to go out and speak to youth all around the region and in a way tell them about their rights, that they don’t have to smoke, that the tobacco industry is manipulating them, and that they have a right not to fall under their nasty spell. we did a presentation to a grade eight health class and … i felt it was a very cool experience because these youth look up to us in a way because we are three to four years older. i also think that was very cool that i have a right to, you know, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 520 go into this classroom and tell them the information [article 17] i knew and how i was trying to make a difference. another theme articulated by the majority of react peer leaders, as well as by their adult mentors, was the extent to which they felt young people in the group managed their own planning and programming. a health promotion manager responsible for the regional tobacco control program, david lorenzo, observed: my role is to facilitate paid youth who work with the health department and to manage the program in a creative way which can be very exciting especially from the creative standpoint, the infusion of new ideas usually without boundaries because they haven’t yet been jaded on policy, on making sure things have to be done a certain way. we try to make it in a structure where it’s not a top-down approach, more the bottom-up approach where it is truly youth-driven. the youth deliver their findings, decide what part of the tobacco piece they want to talk about, and what they want to present to their peers. this is done with the youth being the leaders and the adult staff [act] more as facilitators and resources. they come in with great ideas and we just try to get out of the way. the region’s chief medical officer, robin williams, responded to a question about whether the convention’s health provisions were being fully upheld in the niagara region: absolutely not! how can we make such a claim when one in five children is living here in poverty? what about obesity or the environment? the youth engagement model is now a permanent aspect of our regional approach but what has surprised me most has been the resistance to this – the sense that this might cost more money or that someone could be sued, the litigious aspect of this rather than healthy developmental concerns. another big “aha” for me has been hearing the voices of aboriginal young people. finally, a key finding that was repeated by all younger key informants – especially in light of the salience of the convention as a set of organizing principles for “engaging” young people – was articulated by another informant when asked whether s/he had received enough information about human rights: no, not at all. in grade ten we have a civics class and that touches base on it [the crc] somewhat. but i just learned about this at the beginning of the year because our bosses actually gave us the blue booklet, the convention, and we read through it. i had no idea this was going on, and that we have these rights implemented. i mean other than what they gave us i had no idea. i went “wow! where has this been, and when was it formed?” and even for the teachers not to express this, but they might not know either ’cuz i mean, it’s not publicized. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 521 conclusions analyses from international and canadian legal and policy documents, comparative theory within the sociology of childhood and population health literature, findings elicited from participant observations in ontario and during a united nations global review, and a series of interviews conducted within the niagara region public health authority have been presented as part of an exploratory study of react, a health promotion group employed in southern ontario, canada. rather than relying upon traditional notions of human development, deficit-labelling and deterministic beliefs about the lack of agency in young people, a holistic, rights-based approach was adopted in this study – one that assumes young people are competent social actors at any age. results were analyzed utilizing a constant comparative technique and open and axial coding of texts first articulated by grounded theorists glaser and strauss (1967). the study found that using the crc as a parallel to other youth engagement strategies is a practical and readily available theoretical, legal, and policy framework that could guide public health promotion and health-enhancing professional interventions. as alderson (2007), coppock (2002), lee (2001), matthews (2007), mitchell (2003a, 2003b), scraton (1997), and woodhead (1999, 2000) have all noted, historical notions of the competency of young people are being challenged by a gradual reconstruction of adult power relations within the context of articulating human rights relations in professional settings. this is particularly the case when an increased understanding of young people’s capacity is allowed to play a role in “therapeutic research” (alderson, 2007, p. 2273). echoing this sentiment, i would propose that alderson’s study be used as a template for responding to any number of health promotion – and particularly environmental – concerns. ultimately, the main problem with the convention in canada and elsewhere is a systemic resistance to the application of new knowledge in professional settings “engaged” with children: politically, this has been seen in terms of a general lack of will and, ideologically, in terms of seeing young people as research and legal objects rather than subjects and co-constructors of knowledge. notwithstanding, it must be observed that a collective, wholesale disenfranchisement of young people has taken place in canada – a disengagement that is further reflected and reinforced in the choice of young adults to opt out of the federal electoral processes en masse. this is disheartening to me as an educator and as a public intellectual. while it is well documented that youth engagement outcomes have tremendous societal and interpersonal benefits (centres of excellence for youth engagement, 2009), framing these research and policy initiatives within the framework of international law as rights-based has not occurred. this study concludes with two questions that were posed to me by participants from two previous studies: • “what kind of country gives its citizens rights but is afraid to tell them?” • “is canada fit for children?” (mitchell, 2010). i would argue the latter question will remain unanswered until the former is addressed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 510-526 522 references alderson, p. 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(2000). children’s rights and children’s development: rethinking the paradigm. in e. verhellen (ed.), understanding children’s right – collected papers presented at 5th international interdisciplinary course on children’s rights (pp. 113–127). belgium: university of ghent. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,crc,concobservations,can,3ae6af5a14,0.html� http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(symbol)/995a15056ca61d16c1256df000310995?opendocument� http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(symbol)/995a15056ca61d16c1256df000310995?opendocument� http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/can.html� table 1: determinants of population health and the crc dis[s]curse[if] challenges: professional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 146 dis[s]curse[if] challenges: professional conversations in child and youth care in fluid modernity sibylle artz keynote speech for child and youth care in action iii conference: leading conversations in research, practice and policy, april 28 to 30, 2011, university of victoria. sibylle artz, ph.d. is a professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: sartz@uvic.ca i have, as you can see, entitled my talk: dis[s]curse[if] challenges: professional conversations in child and youth care in fluid modernity. i chose this title, in part, with a smile on my face. we have, in the last few years, in what we sometimes refer to as the child and youth care “academy”, challenged ourselves to work with language forms that signal our knowledge of, and affection for, the history, the geneology, of the ideas that support our practices and also show that we can speak the vernacular. new turns of phrase, new ways of employing words that for many of us have had fixed meanings, now force us to meet these words again in different guises, and so create the need for a reacquaintance, for hearing and seeing again in a different way, what we thought we knew: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 147 words move [and] music moves… words after speech, reach into the silence… words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, will not stay still. shrieking voices scolding, mocking or merely chattering, always assail them…(eliot, 1944, p. 19) our words, our discourses, our “formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject” (the definition of discourse found in the ninth edition of merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary, 1991, p. 361), are sometimes a little less than orderly even if they are extended. but after all, the latin root of discourse is discurrere, which means “to run about” (merriam-webster’s free dictionary, 2011, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discourse) – and indeed we sometimes do that, in our minds and with our words, so perhaps we can be forgiven for our occasionally laboured erudition, our sometimes obfuscating efforts to communicate. …[when] wrestling with words and meanings …the knowledge derives a pattern, and falsifies, for the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all we have been…(eliot, 1944, p. 26) perhaps, that is why our discourses and their analyses are often so hard fought and never finally won and each idea is subject to scrutiny and every discussion never over. we seem to be caught up in a dialectical understanding, one that opposes thesis with antithesis in the hope that the tension of opposites will somehow create a new and improved synthesis, where one set of ideas, modernity for example, is knocked out of the park by another set of ideas, post-modernity for example, and for a time, hopefully the rest of our lifetimes, we have it right and can take charge and manage accordingly; until, of course, the new synthesis becomes the old thesis, once again about to be opposed by the antithesis, and so it goes. but really, that’s probably not how it works. our struggles are not merely caught up in the tension of two well-defined opposites, and those aspects of our human experience that we have for so long treated as “hard” concepts and even as trait variables – concepts like race, ethnicity, class, social position, culture, gender, sexual identity, personal identity – these are not merely fixed points or parts of an additive description of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 148 self, other and world, but fluid and emergent patterns, open to reinterpretation, to being lived in multiple ways at the same time. so i remind us: knowledge derives a pattern, and falsifies, for the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all we have been…(eliot, 1944, p. 26) let me give you an example: in one of my professional discursive worlds, the research world that focuses on trying to understand the use of aggression and violence and the engagement in crime of young people, the public discourse tells us that youth today are much tougher and more entrenched in violent crime than ever before, and more dangerous than they have ever been, and that girls, who are seen to be ever more problematic over time, are much harder to work with because they are so emotionally out of control and much meaner and more devious than boys. this discourse of the badness of youth today is intimately connected to the current “tough on crime” political discourse pushed by neo-conservatives that tells us that because most behaviour, especially criminal behaviour, is not amenable to change (for that is the underlying theme of this discourse), the only way to deal with crime is to build more prisons, mete out stiffer sentences, and keep more people in jail for longer periods of time so that we, the good people, will be safe. this discourse is purposefully “running to and fro”, pumping up fear with sophisticated sound bites that are strong on message and weak on facts (pascal, 2010). my professional conversations in this research realm have, over the last nearly 20 years, come back again and again to these points. so here i am in the middle way, having had twenty years… trying to learn to use words, and every attempt is a wholly new start…a new beginning…(eliot, 1994, pp. 30–31) my beginning is typically empirical. i like to look at the data, and i like to look at numbers. to help us with looking at the numbers, i refer us to a pie chart that provides us with an overview of crime in canada: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 149 figure 1: 2006 total canadian court cases statistics canada, cansim table 2520048 – youth court survey, number of cases, by sex of accused, annually & 2520044, adult criminal court survey, number of cases by sex of accused – 2006 the overview of crime in canada presented in figure 1 has not substantively changed for the two decades during which i have looked at such charts and shows that only 13% of all canadians charged and brought to court are minors, and of these only 3% are girls (statistics canada, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). it is not youth but adults, especially adult men, who are likely to enter the court system for crimes against persons, property, or the public order – the so-called index crimes which seem to always be our focus even though white-collar crime is far more prevalent than index crime and far more costly, but it’s clean. white-collar crime, defined by edwin sutherland (1949) as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (p. 9), overlaps with corporate crime because the opportunity for fraud, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, computer crime, copyright infringement, money laundering, identity theft, and forgery are more available to white-collar employees, and cost us literally “billions of dollars annually” (henderson, 2001). but rather than focusing on major widespread issues like white-collar crime, the kind of crime that brought us a worldwide recession, we seem to be most pleased to devote front page stories and – as was, for example, the case in march of 2011 – assign three days worth of television and radio air time and newspaper space, including time as a top story on the national evening news, to a fight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/corporate_crime� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fraud� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bribery� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/insider_trading� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/embezzlement� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/computer_crime� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/copyright_infringement� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/money_laundering� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/identity_theft� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/forgery� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/white-collar_worker� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 150 between two girls in the parking lot of a mall in nanaimo. please don’t misunderstand, i am not in any way suggesting that fighting and bullying are not serious issues. people are unquestionably harmed by these behaviours, but does this warrant sensational news coverage? in sensationalizing this behaviour are we not also making unacceptable social actions into actions worthy of celebrity? as we know, even bad publicity is better than no publicity and there’s nothing like national television as an aid to building a rep. let’s take a look at how these kinds of things play out on a youtube website entitled, teenage girls fight, uploaded by cbc television news on april 6, 2011. (readers are encouraged to watch a news clip about this incident at the following youtube web link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq.) as we can see as we follow the story as told through the news clip, the introduction sets up the behaviour that is on display as “not pretty and far from ladylike”, where girls are “throwing punches and pulling hair” and engaging in “a severe case of bullying”. then, as we watch, other dynamics also play a role and through the sound bites that are offered, the discourse is shaped in a very particular way. first we notice that we can view the news clip as many times as we like for as long as this clip is posted on youtube and each time we view the clip we again learn that the story is characterized as a “cbc topstory”. but if we look more closely we can also see that the material that is central to the story – the fight – consists of material that was pulled from a website called hateclubtva, which can be found at the following: http://www.youtube.com/user/hateclubtva if we visit the hateclubtva site, we will learn that this is a rap hip hop website where a bystander, not a journalist, posted the video of the fight as a backdrop for his rap song, a song in which the word “bitches” figures prominently, a video which was removed from the hateclub site at the behest of the police but now lives on as a “cbc topstory”. this top story might never have been a story at all if our opportunist songwriter and would-be video artist had not used the fight as a medium for his song and posted it on the web. it is, therefore, entirely possible that this fight would have gone unnoticed and these “unladylike” girls would never have come to our attention. but someone did notice the posting and the raw material that was first a music video is reshaped for the evening news and its ongoing perpetual life on the world wide web and has become a “serious offence”. that seriousness is certainly taken up by those who report and discuss the problem on the evening news, all of whom are sombre and concerned adults: a straight faced reporter who reports the fight, a frustrated and worried mother who sees the event as evidence that “there’s no rules and nobody cares about life anymore”, and a uniformed police officer who speaks to an investigation. pain and loss are also expressed and this march 2011 fight between these girls is linked to the march 2010 tragic suicide of ashkan sultani, a student in the same school district. the school district is then highlighted as a central player in both events, the fight is characterized as criminal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq� http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq� http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq� http://www.youtube.com/user/hateclubtva� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 151 behaviour, and a known expert (also serious) is given eight seconds to speak to a possible intervention. positioned against the words of the serious adults are comments from youth that turn the event into gossip about clothes and hair and a prevalence-based description of the problem that youth don’t try to stop, even though about the same number of students who report being affected by bullying state that they try to intervene. and there we have it, an example of some of the public discourse on girls and aggression. we also know now that after a month of investigation, assault charges were laid and the girls involved became crime statistics. a further examination of crime statistics as, for example, those presented in figure 2: girls in court by charges as compared to boys and adults – 2006, shows us again that young people, especially girls, including girls who fight in parking lots, and, for that matter boys, are the least of our problems. figure 2: girls in court by charge as compared to boys and adults – 2006 statistics canada, cansim table 2520048 – youth court survey, number of cases, by sex of accused, annually & 2520044, adult criminal court survey, number of cases by sex of accused – 2006 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 152 still, in canada, we seem to be particularly afraid of our “bad” kids. until recently, canada was known internationally to have one of the “harshest regimes for young offenders in the western world” (mallea, 1999, p. 3). international comparisons made in 1999 alerted us to the fact that canada was creating more space to incarcerate youth than many other developed countries. on the assumption that the number of youth prisons that exist in a country is generally correlated with the number of youth serving time in custody, figure 3: international comparison of youth prison facilities, 2000, serves to illustrate this point by comparing the number of youth prison facilities per 100,000 youth across six western industrialized countries and shows that in 1999, canada far outstripped its nearest competitors when it came to imprisoning young people 12 to 18 years of age. figure 3: international comparison of youth prison facilities – 2000 united nations office on drugs and crime, centre for international crime prevention, 2001. our over-incarceration of young people has certainly been noted and we have, since 2003, replaced the young offenders act, which was seen to be at the heart of our over-incarceration, with the youth criminal justice act (ycja) and the number of youth sentenced to custody has decreased overall. as figure 4: proportion of accused youth cleared by means other than formal charges after the ycja shows, there has been an approximately 20% increase in the number of accused cleared by means other than formal charges across all major criminal code offence categories and that is good news. so, in 2006, “58% of accused youth were given a warning, caution, referral to a community or extrajudicial program or handled through some other means in lieu of formal charges” (taylor-butts & bressan, 2007, p. 4). it is also worthy of note that since the introduction of the ycja in 2003, decreases in charge rates have been greater for female youth (-31%) when compared to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 153 their male counterparts (-25%). but there is a rub: although the youth criminal justice act was designed to deal with over-incarceration, it had an additional purpose – it was also a political reply to the characterization of the young offender’s act (yoa) as overly weak on crime. figure 4: proportion of accused youth cleared by means other than formal charges after the ycja that led to the inclusion in the new act of a provision that lowered the presumption of an adult sentence to the age of 14 from the age of 16 and maintained the characterization of failure to comply with a non-custodial sentence as a serious offence http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/yj-jj/ycja-lsjpa/back-hist.html (the youth criminal justice act, 2009-09-04). this inclusion of failure to comply in the category of offences for which custody is an option, has left the door wide open to jailing young people for “breaching” their probation orders and has contributed to a substantial number of youth, especially youth from poor homes and communities with few resources, being jailed for non-serious offences. as calvery, cotter, and halla (2010) tell us: despite the overall declines witnessed in admissions to youth correctional programs, trends in the use of remand are of note. although the number of admissions to remand decreased in 2008/2009, admissions had grown in prior years and data indicate that, on any given day in 2008/2009, youth in remand outnumbered those in sentenced custody for the second year in a row. (p. 21) http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/yj-jj/ycja-lsjpa/back-hist.html� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 154 so while the number of youth sentenced to custody has declined, the number of youth, especially females, admitted to custody on remand (that is, staying in custody while awaiting trial) and the number of youth, especially females, being sent to custody for administrative offences (that is, breaches of bail or probation orders) has increased, particularly for aboriginal females. this development highlights an ongoing problem for youth justice in canada: along with our not quite yet diminished penchant for overincarceration, we have an additional glaring issue that has a long history in canada, namely the over-representation of aboriginal people, particularly aboriginal female youth, in custody as figure 5: over-representation of aboriginal youth admitted to correctional services, illustrates: figure 5: over-representation of aboriginal youth admitted to correctional services total female admissions total male admissions (n = 6,500) (n = 25,300) statistics canada, canadian centre for justice statistics, youth custody and community services survey and demography division, population estimates, 2006 census of population. calvery, cotter, and halla (2010) also point out, in 2008/2009, in canada, aboriginal female youth represented 44% of all female youth sentenced to custody. they note that this is up from 29% to 35% in 2004/2005 and that, additionally, aboriginal girls also make up 34% of females on remand and 31% of those admitted to probation. these researchers underline the importance of our taking note that these percentages for girls are all higher percentages than those for aboriginal boys’ correctional services involvement and are, of course, vastly disproportionate numbers given that aboriginal youth aged 12 to 17 constitute 4.5% of the canadian population. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 155 currently in british columbia, a province that takes pride in having one of the lowest youth incarceration rates in canada, 58% of girls in b.c. custody centres are aboriginal while only 8% of the b.c. youth population is aboriginal (sharpe & gelsthorpe, 2009). canada’s youth justice practices seem to be especially problematic for aboriginal girls who experience very high rates of remand and administrative charges. information gathered by one official during one year at one b.c. custody centre helps to underline this point: in the course of one year, 50 girls spent time in this centre for an average of 131 days each. only six of these girls had committed a violent offence, the kind of offence meant for custody; however, 30 of the 50 girls were put in custody before they were even convicted of an offence. all 50 girls spent time in custody for a non-violent offence, a drug offence, or an administrative offence, crimes for which they could well have received an extra-judicial intervention. further, 19 of the 50 girls were aboriginal girls who were, once again, vastly over-represented at 38% of the total group, and 17 girls were aged 13 or younger – children really – and five girls were pregnant or parenting. so while our official discourse, our youth criminal justice act, tells us that we should only jail young people for serious offences, other discourses also structure our actions (personal communication, 2011, with an expert source working within the british columbia youth custody system who wishes to remain anonymous). these findings beg the questions: who are these girls and why are so many of them in jail? we have known for some time that the young people we are locking up, sometimes but not very often for serious offences, are at risk for years before they commit any kind of offence because of the conditions in which they live. these young people live in what i call the “fire triangle” of family strife and violence, mental health challenges, and addictions. in february 2009, british columbia’s representative for children and youth and the office of the provincial health officer released a joint special report entitled, kids crime and care. health and well being of children in care: youth justice experiences and outcomes. this study, which is the largest of its kind undertaken in canada, examines data on 50,551 children born in 1986 for a ten-year period beginning in 1997 and ending in 2007 and focuses on all members of this birth cohort who have had or have involvement with the youth justice system. the authors of this report state quite clearly that those who end up in the criminal justice system are: a very vulnerable group of children and youth, many of whom are aboriginal and in the care of the government. these children are often struggling to overcome significant issues and traumas such as neglect or abuse, and also frequently have mental health issues or developmental disabilities. not surprisingly, being abused or neglected also nearly doubles a child’s chance of having a youth justice record. although the incidence of special needs and mental illness is high for children and youth in care or otherwise living out of the parental home, the statistics are even more alarming for those in care who are involved in the youth justice system. of the youth in care involved with the youth justice system, almost 72 per cent have been reported with intensive behavioural problems or serious mental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 156 illness within the school system, compared with just over two per cent for the general youth study population. (p. 4) bernard schissel (2010), in his article entitled, ill health and discrimination: the double jeopardy for youth in punitive justice systems, tells a similar story. he states that, “ill health, both physical and emotional, not criminality is the defining characteristic of this vulnerable population” (p. 157) and backs up his statement with a careful analysis of the health outcomes and legal involvement of young offenders. his analysis, which once again points out that aboriginal youth are vastly over-represented within the justice system and that our justice responses are highly racialized, also emphasizes the strong connection between justice system involvement, poor health, a lack of safety and security, and maltreatment and abuse, with girls in particular suffering from mental health challenges. it is indisputable, as moretti, odgers, repucci, and catherine (2011) point out, that decades of research confirm the connection between maltreatment and poor behavioural outcomes. they, like so many researchers before them, also found that for the girls who participated in their five-year longitudinal research project on gender and aggression, maltreatment is strongly linked to poor health and behavioural outcomes and that exposure to family violence, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and to neglect is strongly linked to criminal justice offending. research provides the evidence that allows us to unequivocally say that girls who become involved in the justice system are usually experiencing multiple forms of deprivation and abuse in their lives. we can also say with confidence that while these girls may be understood as offenders in the eyes of the law, they are usually victims first, long before they become perpetrators. in a study of a b.c. custody center, corrado, odgers, and cohen (2000) found that the girls in that centre had multi-problem profiles: all had histories of severe family dysfunction. in addition, 67% had been the victim of physical abuse at some point….while 52%...reported being a victim of sexual abuse…55% report[ed] crack use, 49% report[ed] heroin use and 65.7 % indicat[ed] cocaine use. the average age of the onset of drug use was 12 years old. (p. 199) a study conducted by the mccreary centre society (2001) noted even higher numbers for abuse: in that study 63% of girls in the custody of the province of british columbia in 2001, the year in which the study was conducted, reported experiencing sexual abuse and fully 96% reported physical abuse. in a follow-up report conducted after the new youth criminal justice act became law, mccreary centre society (2005) researchers noted that little had changed with regard to the life worlds of the youth they surveyed in b.c.’s custody centres: this report tells an extremely disturbing story. many of the young people surveyed have survived physical or sexual abuse, and grew up in families where suicide, addiction and criminal activities were common. the majority has lived in government care at some time. most have ongoing physical and mental health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 157 problems, and began using drugs and alcohol at an early age. many of these young people are lonely and disconnected from their families and communities. some have felt angry or hopeless enough to think about, or try, taking their own lives. (p. 5) in that follow-up report, researchers found that among girls in custody, 92% reported a history of physical abuse and 63% a history of sexual abuse, and once again 96% had a history of one or both. our odd response to these lives of deprivation, abuse, and maltreatment is that, in the absence of treatment facilities and access to therapeutic remedial and compensatory programs and interventions – those resources that regularly suffer death by a thousand small cuts – we are locking up our children and particularly our female aboriginal children to keep them safe. as amber richelle dean (2005) showed so evocatively in her study entitled, locking them up to keep them “safe”: criminalized girls in british columbia, our youth justice system seems to be bereft of alternatives to incarceration and therefore has turned to carceral protectionism, that is the use of custody as a way to deal with non-criminal social problems. dean cites the work of corrado, odgers, and cohen (2001) who conducted a review of female young offenders’ probation files and learned that 75% were locked up to keep them (not society) safe while only 4.5% were locked up to keep society safe. dean cites the following example of the discourse of carceral protection found in a probation file by corrado et al. (2001): …short of a custodial disposition, which is not desirable at this time, [i] am at a loss as to how to control or assist this defiant girl in the community…. her history reflects a continuous cycle of refusal to cooperate with treatment attempts and running away…. it is my fear that this youth is in great danger of further victimization and self harm if not action is taken. (dean, 2005, p. 15) the language – the discourse – is telling: controlling defiance and the avoidance of further harm are paired and the solution is jail. a pedagogy of control is paired with a pedagogy of rescue and another girl lands up in custody. the girl that is the subject of this discourse received a 45-day sentence for two administrative charges, two breaches – behaviours like not returning home on time and not attending school – for which jail is the answer. but what will she encounter in jail? she will encounter exactly what awaits our hair-pulling, punching, un-ladylike girls from nanaimo who probably come from similar circumstances as those already described. their first encounter with custody will be a strip search. every time a young person is taken into custody, even if she has been taken from custody to court for a scheduled appearance and back again and has never been without constant surveillance, she will be strip-searched. that means that under the watchful eyes of a female custody officer she will be told to strip naked and her clothes, including her underwear will be set aside and packaged. then she will be cavity searched for contraband, and after that, told to take a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 158 shower. once showered, she will be issued with her prison clothing and assigned to her cell. and remember, many of these young women have been sexually abused, physically abused and maltreated, and have mental health challenges; some are disabled, some are developmentally delayed, all are humiliated, but this is for their own good. while in jail, according to a survey conducted by the mccreary centre society (2001), 26% of young women reported experiencing sexual comments or jokes, 22% reported being touched or grabbed in a sexual way, 11% reported being punched, hit, or beaten up, and 45% reported experiencing verbal abuse: so much for “their own good”. because boys always outnumber girls in custody, a girl in custody becomes an immediate target for sexual harassment and sexual abuse from boys whose models for power and control are premised on sexist stereotypical standards for behaviour so often learned from the highly abusive male models in their lives. and yes, aside from encountering strip searches and further abuse, our young woman who breached her probation and our girl from nanaimo, will get eight hours of bed rest (in a cell with no control of when she sleeps, awakes, has the light on or off, and what she is allowed to take into her cell) and three meals per day (with no choice about when and what she eats and how much), and while in custody, will attend school and do crafts and engage in physical activities (these if she behaves according to the rules). and some kids will say that jail was the best thing that ever happened to them and some will make their first ever positive relational connection to an adult in jail and will want to come back, because jail is better than the alternative (artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000). but just what does that tell us about the state of affairs of child welfare in our country? the youth criminal justice act, our legal discourse on youth and crime, prescribes that our approach to youth crime should be based on “a more inclusive framework, focusing on public awareness, crime prevention, education, child welfare, health, family and the community” (calverley, 2007, p. 2). but in order for us to do that, substantial changes in social attitudes and structural inequalities are also urgently needed: instead of investing significant economic resources into forcible means of protection or behavior change, we need to begin to directly address the circumstances that compromise girls’ (and boys’) safety (such as systemic racism, family poverty, community disintegration, eroding funding for schools and communities, child and youth maltreatment and sexual exploitation) and invest in voluntary programs and supports that facilitate girls’ (and boys’) development. (dean, 2005, abstract) jennifer charlesworth (2011), the executive director of the federation of community social services of british columbia, stated on april 28, 2011, in an article in the times colonist that “canada ranks a shameful 37th out of 38 among developed nations in spending on child care and early childhood development…32nd in the benefits it provides to families…[while] one out of six children in b.c. lives in poverty, one out of three arrives for their first day in kindergarten lagging behind their classmates international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 159 developmentally” to say nothing of the fact that more than half of the children in b.c. who are in care are aboriginal. these facts speak to our social organization, not to the failings of individual families because, as dr. charlesworth noted in her quote from dennis raphael, (a york university health policy professor and researcher): government authorities and through them the electorate, we the people in other words, “shape children’s living circumstances by influencing how income is distributed and [by] determining the availability of affordable housing and early childhood education and care… and governments shape parents’ payment security and working conditions through legislation and regulation” (victoria times colonist, april 28, 2011, p. a-13). those strip searches mentioned above and everything else to do with what leads to a girl or a boy ending up in jail are political processes as well as very personal ones. the choices involved are, at bottom, about politics and money. bernard schissel (2010) puts it very clearly: “the public policy and academic research that has centred…on the individual and his or her socio-cultural characteristics, while largely ignoring toxic contexts and structural inequalities is a political act with political and economic motivations” (p. 158). the economic consequences of these political acts are enormous. violent crime, much of which is preventable, is extremely costly: the cost of dealing with a murder is typically about $17.5 million, a rape $448,532, a robbery $335,733, an aggravated assault $145,379, and a burglary $41,288 (delisi et al., 2010). these costs are staggering and cannot be ignored. also not to be ignored is the finding that, despite declining crime rates, we have been subject to an increase in police budgets in canada of 41% in the past 10 years (morrow, 2011), even though we know that spending more and more on police, courts, and prison services does not reduce crime and victimization (national working group on crime prevention, 2007). delisi and vaughn (2011) tell us that, “across an array of studies, the evidence for the value of prevention is compelling” (p. 3) and provide us with a long list of wellevaluated studies demonstrating that preventing violence and crime save inordinate amounts of public money, and public and private pain and suffering. delisi and vaughn also tell us that for a youth at age 18, the benefits of preventing the costs of dropping out of high school, avoiding the costs of heavy drug use, and particularly avoiding the costs resulting to the individual and society from becoming a career criminal amount to a discounted present value of between $2.6 million and $5.3 million (u.s.). so why is there a constant call for tougher crime legislation instead of an ever-growing demand for crime prevention? we know that crime prevention and intervention cannot merely be a matter of the management of individuals. when it comes to the commission of crime, systemic social and political processes that structure the marginalization of non-dominant groups have as much to answer for as many of the individuals who commit the crimes. we know this, but our knowledge seems, so far, to be unable to gain a foothold in policy and practice and “despite the rhetoric of canada’s youth justice system framework, there is a striking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 160 lack of funding for, or commitment to, alternatives to formal justice” (schissel, 2010, p. 157). so what do we do? i think that we have to recognize that all our work, our teaching, our research, and our practice is ethical work with moral consequences and, above all, it is political work with daily social consequences. our current discourses on girls and crime need to be rewritten to accurately reflect how crime emerges. as practitioners and researchers we must revisit our units of analysis. as long as we distract ourselves with policy and practice discussions that foreground only analyses of individual differences, we will remain mired in wrong-headed notions of “every man for himself” where we all participate in a zero-sum game of winners and losers, and some – those children from the wrong side of life, for example – are made to be responsible for their own risk-embedded state and held accountable for the actions of a society that is quite willing to abandon them to their already pre-determined fate, because helping them might cost too much. we live with a fear-based notion that we mustn’t pamper those in need because they might take advantage, so we dole out stingy little bits of aid and make people wait their turn: victoria women’s transition house, wait 1 month; aboriginal mental health, wait 3 months; phoenix human services, wait 8 months; children who witness violence program, wait 3 months; beacon community services, wait 4 months (victoria times colonist, april 8, 2011, p. a-14) and when the wait is finally over, we offer services only to the most desperate and carefully ration for how long. the combination of caring prevention and intervention is our best option, our least expensive risk for a greater good, and one that, politically, we will have to invoke very soon because the alternative is bankrupting us morally and financially. thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. thank you also to lorinda stoneman, a ph.d. student in the school of child and youth care, for her invaluable assistance with the figures that appear in this document. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 161 references artz, s., blais, m., & nicholson, d. (2000). developing girls’ custody units. unpublished report, justice canada. british columbia representative for children and youth and the office of the provincial health officer. (2009, february). kids, crime and care. health and well being of children in care: youth justice experiences and outcomes (joint special report). victoria, bc: authors. retrieved from http://www.rcybc.ca/images/pdfs/reports/youth%20justice%20joint%20rpt%2 0final%20.pdf calverley, d. (2007). youth custody and community services in canada, 2004/2005. juristat, 27(2), statistics canada catalogue no. 85–002. ottawa: statistics canada. calverley, d., cotter, a., & halla, e. (2010). youth custody and community services in canada, 2008/2009. juristat, 30(1). statistics canada catalogue no. 85–002–x. ottawa: statistics canada. cbc television news. (2011, april 6). teenage girls fight. retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq charlesworth, j. (2011, april 28). when you vote, keep your children in mind: know where parties stand on issues affecting canada’s youth. victoria times colonist, p. a–13. retrieved from http://www.timescolonist.com/life/when+vote+keep+children+mind/4688334/sto ry.html corrado, r., odgers, c., & cohen, i. (2000). the incarceration of female young offenders: protection for whom? canadian journal of criminology, 42(2), 189– 207. corrado, r., odgers, c., & cohen, i. (2001). the incarceration of female young offenders: protection for whom? in t. fleming, p. o’reilly, & b. clark (eds.), youth injustice: canadian perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 423–442). toronto: canadian scholars press inc.. dean, a. r. (2005). locking them up to keep them “safe”: criminalized girls in british columbia. a systemic advocacy project conducted for justice for girls. vancouver, bc: justice for girls. retrieved from www.justiceforgirls.org delisi, m., kosloski, a., sween, m., hachmeister, e., moore, m., & dury, a. (2010). murder by numbers: monetary costs imposed by a sample of homicide offenders. the journal of forensic psychiatry & psychology, 21(4), 501–513. http://www.rcybc.ca/images/pdfs/reports/youth%20justice%20joint%20rpt%20final%20.pdf� http://www.rcybc.ca/images/pdfs/reports/youth%20justice%20joint%20rpt%20final%20.pdf� http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsbbsrn1ooq� http://www.timescolonist.com/life/when+vote+keep+children+mind/4688334/story.html� http://www.timescolonist.com/life/when+vote+keep+children+mind/4688334/story.html� http://www.justiceforgirls.org/� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 162 delisi, m., & vaughn, m. g. (2011). the importance of neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament to the prevention of antisocial behavior. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 2(1/2), 12–35. eliot, t. s. (1944). four quartets. london: faber and faber. hateclubtva: http://www.youtube.com/user/hateclubtva1 henderson, l. (2001). crimes of persuasion: schemes, scams, frauds. factors which allow the white collar crime problem to continue unabated. retrieved from http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/laws/problems.htm http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/author.htm mallea, p. (1999). getting tough on kids: young offenders and the “law and order” agenda. winnipeg, mb: canadian centre for policy alternatives. mccreary centre society. (2001). time out: a profile of bc youth in custody. vancouver, bc: author. retrieved from http://www.mcs.bc.ca/ mccreary center society. (2005). time out ii: a profile of bc youth in custody. vancouver, bc: author. retrieved from http://www.mcs.bc.ca/pdf/time_out_2.pdf merriam-webster’s free dictionary. (2011). springfield, ma: author. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discourse merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary (9th ed.). (1991). markham, on: thomas allen & son limited. moretti, m., odgers, c., reppuci, d., & catherine, n. (2011). serious conduct problems among girls at risk: translating research into intervention. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 2(1/2), 142–161. morrow, a. (2011, january 7). what’s the price of law and order? the globe and mail. retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/whats-the-pricefor-law-and-order/article1862544/ national working group on crime prevention. (2007). building a safer canada. institute for crime prevention, university of ottawa, available online at: https://www.cacp.ca/media/coalitiongroups/efiles/5/buildingasafercanada.pdf 1 since this keynote speech was given, the hateclubtva site has undergone some changes. if readers select the link provided here, they will find themselves instead at a video-sharing website where a number of fights between girls have been posted. http://www.youtube.com/user/hateclubtva� http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/laws/problems.htm� http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/author.htm� http://www.mcs.bc.ca/� http://www.mcs.bc.ca/pdf/time_out_2.pdf� http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discourse� http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/whats-the-price-for-law-and-order/article1862544/� http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/whats-the-price-for-law-and-order/article1862544/� https://www.cacp.ca/media/coalitiongroups/efiles/5/buildingasafercanada.pdf� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 146–163 163 pascal, c. (2010, november 17). harper tough on crime but soft on facts. toronto star. retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/891822-harper-tough-on-crime-but-soft-on-facts sharpe, g., & gelsthorpe, l. (2009). engendering the agenda: girls, young women and youth justice. youth justice, 9(3), 195–208. schissel, b. (2010). ill health and discrimination: the double jeopardy for youth in punitive justice systems. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 1(1/2), 157–178. statistics canada. (2006a). youth custody and community services. canadian centre for justice statistics, survey and demography division (population estimates, 2006 census of population). ottawa: author. statistics canada. (2006b). adult criminal court survey, number of cases by sex of accused (cansim table 2520044). ottawa: author. statistics canada. (2006c). youth court survey, number of cases, by sex of accused, annually (cansim table 2520048). ottawa: author. sutherland, e. h. (1949). white collar crime. new york: dryden press. taylor-butts, a., & bressan, a. (2007). youth crime in canada, 2006. juristat, 28(3). statistics canada catalogue no. 85-002-xie. ottawa: statistics canada. united nations. (2001). seventh united nations survey of crime trends and operations of criminal justice systems, covering the period 1998-2000. retrieved october 20, 2003 from http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/seventh_survey/7pv.pdf victoria times colonist. (2011, april 8). letters to the editor. p. a-14. youth criminal justice act: summary and background. (date modified: 2009–09–04). retrieved from http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/yj-jj/ycja-lsjpa/back-hist.html http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/891822--harper-tough-on-crime-but-soft-on-facts� http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/891822--harper-tough-on-crime-but-soft-on-facts� http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/seventh_survey/7pv.pdf� http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/yj-jj/ycja-lsjpa/back-hist.html� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019701 unsettling white settler child and youth care pedagogy and practice: discourses on working in colonial violence and racism kaz mackenzie abstract: in 2018, using in-depth, semi-structured, collaborative dialogues, i asked 11 child and youth care practitioners working in various canadian provinces, including british columbia, alberta, and ontario, “how do you understand, name, reproduce, contest, and struggle with white settler privilege?” the intent was to name and challenge the dominant whitestream norms in child and youth care. this project was inspired by the significant work of indigenous and racialized activist– scholars to address the ongoing overrepresentation of indigenous families across colonial systems in which child and youth care practitioners work, such as the child welfare and justice systems, and the underrepresentation in others, such as educational systems. participants named colonial violence and systemic racism as entrenched in child and youth care practice while recognizing the difficulty of challenging dominant white norms and conventions in the classroom and field. i explore how this key finding unsettles child and youth care pedagogy and practice. in closing, i propose two practical ethical pathways towards unsettling white settler privilege in child and youth care. keywords: child and youth care, youth work, settler colonialism, racism, critical whiteness, critical praxis kaz mackenzie is a graduate of the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: kmackenzie@uvic.ca acknowledgements: i would like to express my appreciation to the editors, professors johanne jean-pierre, natasha blanchet-cohen, and sandrina de finney, along with the peer reviewers for their scholarship and commitment to this special issue. i would also like to thank the practitioners that shared their knowledge, experience, and radical reflexivities for this study. mailto:kmackenzie@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 81 acknowledgement: let me begin in a good way i’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional territories and nations that my ancestors occupied with invasion and violence, bringing disease, genocide, and terror: wampanoag, mohegan, mohican, cherokee, chippewa, seneca, shawnee, wyandotte, potawatomi, illini, iowa, delaware, sac and fox, abenaki, listuguj, mi’kmaq, and kahnawake mohawk. my white occupier ancestral lineage connects me to ireland, scotland, and england; my occupier roots have been on turtle island for three to seven generations, depending on the ancestral line. i am a white, settler, cisgender woman (she/her/hers) who has spent the last three decades working in the field of child and youth care while living on the stolen territories of the lekwungen, w̱sáneć, t’souke, and pacheedaht peoples. in the explicit naming of my own lineages, along with locating myself within systems of whiteness and white supremacy, i heed the plea of critical, politicized child and youth care scholar–activists: “if we do not name it, how will we work collectively to change it?” (de finney et al., 2011, p. 377). the child and youth care association of british columbia (n.d) defined child and youth care as a field of human service that works with children, youth, families, and communities with complex needs, and stated: at the core of all effective child and youth care practice is a focus on the therapeutic relationship; the application of theory and research about human growth and development to promote the optimal physical, psychosocial, spiritual, cognitive, and emotional development of young people towards a healthy and productive adulthood; and a focus on strengths and assets rather than pathology. (section 5) child and youth care practitioners work across the field of human and social development in applied contexts, such as early childhood education; child protection; residential care; youth justice, health, and education; and in human service community-based settings. child and youth care has had a legacy of inviting critical perspectives to unsettle established norms and approaches (pence & white, 2011, p. xii); however, even with this critical invitation, the field is never innocent or removed from our colonial history (little & walker, 2012; loiselle et al., 2012; skott-myhre, 2006; white, 2015). attending to an “ethic responsibility-based truth telling” (snelgrove et al., 2014, p.4) and ethical commitments of justice-doing (richardson & reynolds, 2014, p. 152), i engaged in research on critical, politicized praxis and white settler privilege in child and youth care. in taking up critical, politicized praxis, i looked to loiselle and colleague’s (2012) definition of doing child and youth care as an ethical commitment to “politicized, critical, and radical social change work alongside children, youth, families, and communities” (p. 180). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 82 introduction drawing from critical child and youth care practitioners’ narratives, the purpose of this study is to disrupt, unsettle, and reframe white settler child and youth care practice, and to illustrate ethical pathways to teaching and working in child and youth care that lead to challenging colonial violence, racism, and white settler fragility. understanding child and youth care practitioners’ engagement with white settler privilege may assist in shifting the narrative in child and youth care education towards examining the white settler problem (mackenzie, 2019). the key finding explored in this article is that participants named colonial violence and systemic racism as endemic to child and youth care practice while recognizing the difficulty of challenging dominant white norms and conventions in the classroom and field. the purpose of this exploration is to unsettle whiteness in child and youth care, and engage politicized praxis in how we teach and practise child and youth care to further justice-doing (reynolds, 2012). i highlight the wisdom, transgressions, learning, and disruptions of whiteness that practitioners discussed. i frame the exploration of working in colonial violence and racism and white fragility within an “unsettling pedagogy” based on the premise that white settlers cannot just theorize about liberation and decolonization but must embody it, starting with ourselves (regan, 2010, p. 19). context: unsettling whiteness and white settler privilege in child and youth care in this section i will define the theories of whiteness, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and eurocentrism used in this study and analysis. i also define white settler privilege, and provide a contextual framework for the theoretical concepts mobilized in the analysis of the practitioners’ narratives. whiteness can be defined “as a positionality of privilege systemically promoted by a racially organized world” (steyn, 2015, p. 3). the concept of whiteness, rooted in racial superiority, is entrenched in the foundational structures and values in canadian society (saraceno, 2012, p. 253). whiteness masks racism in the settler state of canada by espousing ideas of “niceness” and “multiculturalism”. further, whiteness is a product of white supremacy. child and youth care scholar hans skott-myhre (2017) raised the critical issue of naming the power structure of white supremacy in which child and youth care is embedded, and asserted the need for the use of this language within the field. in my scholarship i look to charles mills’ (1997) definition of white supremacy as “the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over non-white people” (pp. 1–2). white supremacy is a power structure, both informal and formal, full of socioeconomic privilege, and enforcing standards for the distribution of material wealth and opportunities (p. 3). it is also the unacknowledged and invisible political configuration that formed the modern world (p. 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 83 further, this study was conducted in a settler colonial state. in settler states, settler colonizers come to stay and move to eradicate the indigenous peoples; as such, “settler invasion is a structure, not an event” (wolfe, 1999, p. 163). settler colonialism is defined in this study as a “persistent social and political formation in which newcomers/colonizers/settlers come to a place, claim it as their own, and do whatever it takes to disappear the indigenous peoples that are there” (arvin et al., 2013, p. 12). eurocentrism is predominant in western ontology, and is the foundation of canadian structures and institutions, including those in child and youth care and the human services. the theoretical framing of eurocentric ideas is based in liberal ideologies (maldonado-torres, 2007). the dogmas of universalism and individualism are foundational in liberalism, and they sustain the theoretical base of white supremacy (diangelo, 2018; mills, 1997). the “normative values inscribed in the practices of professionalized helping” are eurocentric; the “hegemonic foundations and power base” are eurocentric as well (saraceno, 2012, p. 251). child and youth care education and practice is rooted in the ideologies of neoliberalism — the legacy of liberalism — which centre the experiences and knowledge of white, eurocentric, wealthy, heterosexual, male knowledge holders (gharabaghi, 2017; skott-myhre, 2017). with these theoretical foundations supporting currentday practices in child and youth care, white settler child and youth care practitioners “cannot assume our roles as inherently benevolent and unproblematic” (mackenzie, 2019, p. 114). targeted, paternalistic, state-sanctioned residential internment of indigenous children has lasted decades, including residential schools, indian hospitals, day schools, the sixties scoop, and the present-day millennium scoop (de finney, 2014), which refers to the current mass removal of indigenous children from their homes and communities by the child welfare system (turner, 2016). while indigenous children and youth make up just 7% of the child population of canada, they represent 48% of the children in government custody across canada (turner, 2016). these numbers reveal that there are currently more indigenous children who have been removed into government care than there were at the height of the residential school era (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). in the truth and reconciliation commission of canada’s (2015) executive summary, justice murray sinclair articulated that all canadians need to interrogate the indian residential schools’ legacy as a canadian problem and not merely an indigenous one. what is needed, sinclair emphasized, is a collective act of reflexivity on the part of the settler population. white settlers can somehow ignore, deny, and avoid the systemic problems of settler colonialism and white supremacy that created and continue to disseminate violence towards indigenous and racialized1 children, youth, families, and communities (skott-myhre, 2017). with this in mind, is it not crucial 1 the term racialized is applied to people of colour who live with imposed, socially constructed, negative racial markers (daniel, 2018). white people who live within white supremacy do not tend to recognize themselves, or other whites, as members of a racial category nor self-identify with the descriptor white (henry & tator, 2006, p. 46). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 84 that child and youth care practitioners consider how white settlers are educated and implicated in the continued violence to indigenous and racialized children, youth, families, and communities? what role do white settlers play in perpetuating these violent systems? as posited by epp (2003) and regan (2010), it is important to interrogate the white settler problem and thus white settler privilege within child and youth care education and practice. how does white settler privilege operate within child and youth care education and practice? white settler privilege is defined as conjoining white privilege and settler privilege by naming the established system, which was created by white people for white people, and which privileges white people who concurrently receive unequal citizenship benefits while profiting from living and working on stolen indigenous lands (gilio-whitaker, 2018; jafri, 2012). conceptual framework the conceptual framework of this study is rooted in an ethical and theoretical commitment to unsettling settler colonialism through what loiselle and colleagues (2012) defined as a transtheoretical approach to child and youth care (p. 180). in this transtheoretical approach, i engage critical race, intersectional feminist, antiracist, and activist methodologies to expose power dynamics, white hegemony, and hierarchies, with an emphasis on the relationships between the personal and the political (lorde, 1984). a pedagogy of unsettling must occur alongside connecting our logic and feeling — head and heart — as a fundamental part of the decolonizing process (regan, 2010, p. 12). african american sociologist w. e. b. du bois (1903/2015) coined the term “double consciousness” (p. 5) to describe the internal conflict that black people experience while navigating life within the confines of whiteness; originally, du bois referenced double consciousness in regard to the epistemic conflict that exists for many people of african descent living in north america (moore, 2005, p. 751). du bois’ research is grounded in a theoretical framework to analyse white settler privilege within a field centred in whiteness. linked to double consciousness is ahmed’s (2004) “double turn” (para. 59), which requires white people to stay implicated when critiquing whiteness and to continue to take responsibility for the legacies of colonialism and racism “as histories of the present” (para. 59). as such, the analysis of the narratives of the participants in this study is guided by the double turn. an analysis including the double turn cannot be separated from white fragility. because of white fragility, according to robin diangelo (2018), the smallest racial stress in white people generates “emotions including anger, fear and guilt and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stressful situation” (p. 2). diangelo further defined white fragility as “white racial control” (p. 2) and the defence generated by emotional discomfort and anxiety grounded in the conceptualization of whiteness as superior and entitled. erinn gilson’s (2011, 2014) scholarship states that “white fragility is not a weakness but rather an active performance of invulnerability” (cited in applebaum, 2017, p. 862). both bell hooks (1990) and audre lorde international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 85 (1984) suggested that feeling bad about racism or white privilege can cause a white person to respond with self-centredness, certain that their place is at the centre of any discourse that involves them (p. 7). hooks argued that white guilt is performative and contributes nothing to actually undoing whiteness (as cited in ahmed, 2004, p. 7). critical race theory scholars describe “racial microaggressions” as “subtle forms of racism that exist in daily life, which may be hard to pinpoint as racism, but cause harm, nonetheless” (kohli & solórzano, 2012, p. 446). microaggressions can be seen in behaviours that are linked to white fragility, such as “crying, physically leaving, emotionally withdrawing, arguing, denying, focusing on intentions, seeking absolution and avoiding” when discussions regarding race and racism occur (diangelo, 2018, p. 119). further, the theory of spiritual pain is used throughout the analysis of the participants’ narratives. vikki reynolds (2012) defined spiritual pain of practitioners as the stress experienced “when we are not able to enact our ethics” in our work (p. 21). this occurs when there is “a discrepancy between what feels respectful, humane, generative” and the feelings engendered by working in circumstances that demand we defy the very beliefs and ethics that brought us to the work (p. 21). methodology the aforementioned theoretical approaches provide important guidelines for anticolonial research methodologies (carlson, 2016, p. 4). anticolonial research seeks to correct colonial oppression; settlers engaging in anticolonial research need to guarantee that their actions do not emphasize colonial dominance (hart et al., 2017, p. 334), and to respond to the call of many indigenous researchers for allied settler research to be rooted and engaged in critical, emancipatory, and holistic methods (absolon, 2011; kovach, 2010; smith, l., 2012). the methodology used in this study is steeped in process-driven research that centres the complexities of multiple truths, power, ethics, and relationships. my research question was: “how do practitioners understand, name, reproduce, contest, and struggle with white settler privilege?” recruitment and participants with practitioners directly impacting the daily lives of children, youth, families, and communities, their practice presented a salient site of inquiry for exploring white settler privilege within child and youth care. i purposely recruited child and youth care practitioners who identified as advanced (i.e., having experience and having practised in the field), critical, and politicized. i extended invitations through emails (using the graduate student listserv for the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria) and through social media. the practitioners who responded were interested in engaging in conversations on white settler privilege and were open to troubling white settler privilege in the field. in total, i had collaborative dialogues with 11 practitioners: seven self-identifying white settler practitioners (although in the interview one of those reported having mixed-race ancestry), three self-identified indigenous practitioners, and one international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 86 self-identified non-white practitioner. four of the seven self-identifying white settler practitioners identified as male. the participating practitioners worked across a wide spectrum of applied child and youth care contexts, including early childhood development, education, health, child protection, and nonprofit community services. data collection in order to address my methodological commitments to a critical, collective, unsettling research processes, i opted for an approach to data collection that was collaborative and rooted in the experiences of advanced frontline practitioners. thus, i engaged in collaborative, semistructured, in-depth dialogues. i provided participants with some questions and themes and invited them to consider these ideas prior to engaging in our conversation. among the questions were: “how can you challenge your white settler privilege and how can you resist white settler privilege?”; and “can you share with me what you struggle with as a white settler practitioner or working within a white settler colonial context?” i indicated to the practitioners that these questions could help guide our collaborative dialogue, but that my most important aim was to have a collaborative discussion guided by their insights, reflections, and queries. data analysis in order to absorb and synthesize the content in the collaborative dialogues, i used a manual critical thematic analysis approach, which i applied through the transtheoretical lens described in the previous section. clarke and braun (2017) described thematic analysis as “a method for identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (‘themes’) within qualitative data” (p. 297). within the procedures for thematic analysis, i paid particular attention to the dynamics and themes in the participants’ narratives, including those of power, silences, the difficulty in challenging dominant white norms and conventions, and systemic and historical issues. following a preliminary analysis of the data, to ensure alignment with a collaborative and relational research approach, i contacted the practitioners once again to invite feedback and comments, and adjust the interpretation of the data if needed. reflexivity from my position of being a white settler researcher and practitioner, it is necessary to explicitly state the white centring required to contest white settler privilege (diangelo, 2018) in child and youth care research. further, it is essential to acknowledge that examination of the impacts of white settler privilege and of whiteness is not new. for generations, black and indigenous people and people of colour have theorized, spoken about, advocated for, written on, taken action against, and given up their freedom and lives to contest the violent injustices of white supremacy (ahmed, 2004, 2007, 2012; blackstock, 2008; bundy, 2019; creese, 2019: daniel, 2016; de finney, 2015; hooks, 1994; hunt, 2014; james, 2019; lorde, 1984; palmater, 2015; razack, 1998, 2015; smith, 2012; vowel, 2016). for centuries, indigenous and racialized people have asked white people to turn and look at themselves (coulthard, 2014; du bois, 1903/2015; freire, 1970; manuel & derrickson, 2015, 2017; mills, 1997; razack, 2002; simpson, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 87 concurrently, i acknowledge that i can complete this work without facing the kind of systemic discrediting, denial, backlash, pain, and violence that indigenous and black scholars and scholars of colour face every day for speaking about these same topics. this work, then, is deeply indebted to the historic and current active resistance and resurgence of indigenous and black activist– scholars and activist–scholars of colour. findings: working under colonial violence and racism in this section, i share practitioners’ experiences and insights as they navigate working under colonial violence and racism. i begin with the subtheme of the ongoing colonial violence and racism in child and youth care that presented itself repeatedly in the collaborative discussions i had with practitioners. ongoing colonial violence in child and youth care according to jules2, an indigenous practitioner with extensive experience in child and youth care and an outspoken survivor of indian day schools3, “there has never been an end [to colonial violence] — from residential schools, to day schools, the sixties scoop, child welfare, health care, to current-day policies, programs, and removal of our children, it goes on and on.” they went on to say that the colonial structures continually show up in their work, from paperwork to the policies for programs they run serving children in their community. jules’ narrative reflects what critical social services literature has shown: colonial and racial violence have not ended, and their impacts on indigenous and black practitioners, practitioners of colour, and the children, youth, and families of these communities, are incessant (bundy, 2019; creese, 2019; daniel, 2018; de finney et al., 2018; edwards, 2018; yoon, 2012). in fact, indigenous practitioner gale, working in an educational setting, spoke about the canadian myth of being a peaceful country while denying and forgetting the systemic racialized violence experienced by indigenous, black, and racialized people. they asserted: everyone wants to be “canada, yeah, yeah! we are the greatest place on earth!” but we aren’t. and when you question this “rah, rah, canada!” spirit, and you say, “i need you to realize what canada has done to people of colour in general”, you are met with denial, and power. 2 practitioners have all been given gender-neutral pseudonyms and i use gender-fluid pronouns (they/them/their) in this article. 3 starting in 1920, the settler colonial state of canada established 700 indian day schools. it is estimated that 200,000 indigenous children attended these federally operated schools, and many who attended have reported experiencing extensive trauma inflicted by those entrusted with their care (government of canada, 2019, para. 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 88 further, all white settler practitioners in the study spoke of systemic racial violence within the field of child and youth care. a white settler practitioner, dane, with experience in both the nonprofit sector and government, contextualized this systemic racial violence: and when you think about who primarily goes to school to become teachers, it is primarily white people, at [child and family services] in policy and research everyone is white. that is where all the programs for child and youth mental health are coming from. if you think about the people that are producing the knowledge and producing the policy, they are all coming from a white perspective and lots of the time probably haven’t done any sort of work or had to confront their own white privilege … those programs [were] assuming that everybody spoke the same way, that everybody spoke the same language, that everybody was the same culture, that everyone had a parent at home with them to do work with them. the exclusivity of whiteness in designing programs, compounded with the denial of racism and the ongoing demands of delivering programs from the state in indigenous communities, echo several scholars’ claims that colonial and racial violence have not ended (gharabaghi, 2017; james, 2019; kouri, 2018; mccaffrey, 2010; skott-myhre, 2017; white et al., 2017). eurocentrism in action the white settler practitioners in this study identified the accepted eurocentric, western norms in which we are educated, and which underlie the frameworks and assessments we use to evaluate children, youth, families, and communities. these accepted norms flow from the white supremacist and christian ideologies of residential schools that were meant to destroy any connection to family and culture while indoctrinating indigenous children into white settler ideologies (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). the white settler practitioners shared stories about the eurocentric and neoliberal constraints of practice. tanner, a white settler practitioner who has worked in both education and residential care, articulated that knowledge is privilege and eurocentric norms are entrenched in child and youth care practice. tanner shared that “the way i see it happening here now is [eurocentric] knowledge is [valued] over other knowledge … norms are very eurocentric, western norms.” tanner went on to discuss the some of the impacts of these norms in practice: if you are a youth in care, you are already classified as other, in that you need specialized care. it’s a norm that you are not making it. so just to be concise, basically everyone who needs help is falling short of the expectations of our society. so they are evaluated and judged as less than … those developmental milestones, those professional and social milestones … the neoliberal mindset of individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, we are told we only need ourselves to be successful. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 89 from the basis of these norms, dane, a white settler practitioner, spoke of the restrictions on participants in programs, and how client needs are simplified, screening out those with more difficult or complex needs rather than meeting youth and parents where they are at. dane recalled witnessing indigenous folks accessing services but not asking for help: first there are lots of different types of people accessing the service. some people are really active in coming for help and some people are not. but there is this really, really messed up thing that happens: if a person is not actively coming and seeking help then they aren’t participating in the program and therefore they [don’t get a service]. because if they aren’t participating in the program … we should ask them to leave. and so who are the people who primarily don’t ask for help? the indigenous folks who are accessing our services and why aren’t they asking for help? because they are so fucking afraid of, like, okay i shouldn’t put words in peoples’ mouths. but there is something going on there. dane was forthright that all the people that worked at the service were white, and that dane, also white, did not speak up about this problem. they expressed how they saw racism and witnessed indigenous people and people of colour trying to fit into the eurocentric mould. to further exemplify eurocentrism in practice, white settler practitioners spoke of the general lack of knowledge and understanding among white settlers of the lives of indigenous people and the historic truths and continued atrocities of colonialism. quinn, a white settler practitioner who had recently worked in child welfare, referred to foster parents being uneducated about canada’s history of genocide. quinn observed: i still had foster parents that didn’t know anything about residential schools. they just don’t know. let alone the fallout of them and the sixties scoop or anything like that. they would literally say, “i have never heard of this matter of residential schools.” the canadian settler state currently has unprecedented numbers of indigenous children and youth in care, more than at the height of the residential school era (de finney et al., 2018; kouri, 2018; vowel, 2016), and the state primarily places indigenous children and youth in white settler homes and white settler facilities (gharabaghi, 2017; skott-myhre, 2017). white settler practitioners — foster parents and beyond — are undereducated in colonialism and racism (edwards, 2018). white settler compliance and powerlessness beyond the layers of institutional and academic knowledge steeped in eurocentric views, white settler practitioners identified their own compliance and expressed their lack of power to make real, substantive, systemic change. tanner stated that they “use [their] power in ways that [they are] comfortable using it. that doesn’t make [them] overly uncomfortable,” and added that they are “more comfortable not being in conflict with people”. white settler practitioners international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 90 repeatedly commented on being dedicated to this work, but still finding it difficult to enact antiracism and anticolonialism within organizations and institutions. in fact, white settler practitioners shared that if they spoke up about racism or the impacts of colonialism on children, youth, and families they were perceived as the problem in their organizations and work places. the white settler practitioners in this study implicated themselves within the structures of whiteness. tanner linked their desire to disrupt colonialism and their compliancy by saying, “we try to create people that are the right kind of citizen to ultimately perpetuate the system, contribute to the capital gains of the state. but we are super complicit in that.” when asked what it is like not to challenge the system, tanner responded, disheartening. unavoidable. so, in terms of challenging that or responding to it, it can feel really challenging … it seems like to me, in a really novice place, that there [are] certain non-negotiables that i don’t have the power to change. [i am] forced to value certain knowledge types over others. dane, discussing times when they have challenged colonial violence and racism with their white settler colleagues, expressed that they also struggled with a lack of power in their position. dane ashamedly shared their inner dialogue when working under paternalistic colonial state pressures: i don’t know where this feeling is coming from, maybe it is my white privilege, but just “be nice, [dane], just go sit in that nice little chair and do your job and collect your pension and be nice like everyone else.” it is not nice. you know. while white settler practitioners in this study critiqued whiteness, they also indicated their own sense of powerlessness to change daily acts of colonial violence and racism in the field. dane highlighted an ethical dilemma that involved an indigenous parent, their white settler supervisor, and their workplace team. during one supervisory team meeting at the community agency where dane was employed as an outreach support worker, dane spoke about a new family that had been referred to them. the practitioner told the team that they had achieved a strong initial relationship with this new family, which was headed by a fierce indigenous parent. dane further described the indigenous parent as engaged and committed. the white settler supervisor recognized the family name from a previous position, and proceeded to disclose historic, confidential information. when dane challenged the supervisor on their boundaries, the supervisor characterized dane as a bleeding heart. dane stated, “we are supposed to be on the side of the [parent]”, but the program dane worked in did not integrate, or even acknowledge, how the “basic intersection of domestic violence, mental health, and addictions, let alone colonial violence, impact children, youth, and families’ lives”. dane indicated that they repeatedly witnessed the impacts of pathologization and hypervigilance on indigenous, non-white, homeless, and economically disenfranchised program participants. even when attempting to challenge the supervisor’s violation of professional ethics, the white settler practitioner’s advocacy and support was seen by their white settler supervisor as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 91 too aligned with the indigenous parent. dane shared, “and now, [the white settler supervisor] just refers to me as the bleeding heart. and so now i feel super silenced about it. i guess it doesn’t matter if i speak up or not.” dane and the indigenous participant were made the problem by the supervisor and team; there were no consequences for the supervisor. this frontline practice example exposes systemic power imbalances that limit the ability of white settler practitioners to challenge white settler systems and privilege in their work. as these examples continued to be raised in the collaborative dialogues, i became curious about how the “racial veil” (du bois, 1903/2015, p. xiii), which prevents white people from seeing black and other racialized people as fully human (holloway, 2015), is perpetuated, consciously or unconsciously, by white settler practitioners, supervisors, and the system in the field of child and youth care. disembodied locations of white settler practitioners bailey, who self-identified as an educated, white, male, settler practitioner, framed working in colonial violence and racism and their understanding of white settler privilege as an “ethical piece. as an educated white male, i understand that in a very intellectual way.” harper, a white settler practitioner who worked in community, acknowledged and questioned their own privilege: i am incredibly privileged. one definition of privilege is around unearned rights and benefits and in many respects that exists for me. and what i think about my privilege … comes [with] an ethic — what [do] i do with my privilege? in relation to colonialism, harper went on to express that they “had some trepidation and some nervousness, and [i] thought there’s a level of discourse around indigenous issues which does not exist in the world [i] travelled in.” dane articulated that, as a “white [person] not wanting to be a part of that [colonial] violence … sometimes [i am] — just by the nature of wearing [white] skin.” lou, a white settler practitioner whose child and youth care work has taken them across the field in various practice locations, articulated their own “double turn” — a requirement for white people to stay implicated when critiquing whiteness and continue to take responsibility for the legacies of colonialism and racism “as histories of the present” (ahmed, 2004, para. 59) — and exemplified it through acknowledging the limits to examining white settler privilege, whiteness, and their own racism. when talking about their own awareness of their white settler privilege, lou stated, “i feel really aware that i skip in and out of understanding or levels of understanding … [and the] ability to integrate or shift my own perceptions, my own racism, my own patterns of thinking. it comes and goes.” to this disembodied connection to white settler’s privilege, harper linked the intersections of gender and settler. harper described the “awareness of my own violence and how and what the legacy of settlership means from a male perspective … and owning that part, as well, which perhaps feels more concrete for me, [those] other forms of colonialism, because i am confronted international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 92 by my maleness, misogyny, and violence in a different way.” while all of the white settler practitioners acknowledged working in violent systems, the impacts of that violence were differently described by — and housed very differently in the bodies of — indigenous and nonwhite practitioners. embodied impacts on indigenous and racialized practitioners the indigenous and racialized participants all stated that the colonial systems they worked within continually overrode indigenous and non-white ways of knowing, doing, and being. in addition, they shared lived experiences of being impacted by racism and colonial violence daily themselves, and seeing the same impact upon indigenous and non-white children, youth, families, and communities with whom they worked. in my conversations with indigenous and non-white practitioners, all described the ceaseless denial of racial and colonial violence by their white settler practitioner colleagues. it was clear from the dialogues that working within settler colonial institutions and systems embedded in white supremacy impacts indigenous, black, and non-white children, youth, families, and communities in very real and violent ways. for instance, sam, an indigenous child and youth care practitioner working in a community-based agency, spoke of the intersection of settler colonialism, racism, and white supremacy. they expressed how white settler practitioners’ own pain can reassert this violence: settler colonialism, to me, is you are participating in the ongoing colonialization of not just indigenous people but all non-white people that have come in because of your white supremacy. but you just keep reenacting it because you’ve been taught to, and you don’t want to see anything outside of yourself because it would be too painful. this reflection is supported by literature that identifies settler colonialism’s encouragement of white settlers to ignore the impacts of systemic violence while “colonial power is imprinted on indigenous bodies in a myriad of everyday ways” (razack, 2015, p. 201). indigenous and racialized participants expressed the harrowing discomfort they felt, bodily and spiritually, when colonial violence and systemic racism impeded their work. parker, a racialized practitioner who had worked in various child and youth care settings, spoke about being the only indigenous person or person of colour in a workspace: it is unnerving but it’s what, i think, [is] maybe [at] the heart of my impostor syndrome. because i always feel out of place … i think, particularly for myself as a racialized practitioner … it is the ongoing reminder that you don’t belong, and it was created without you in mind. it has always been created by and for white people and to support whiteness and to support settler colonialism, to support the settler dream. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 93 what drove parker was the welfare of the indigenous and racialized children and youth with whom they worked. naming the anger that working in white supremacy had created, parker asserted that the youth were: my motivation [for] pushing myself to be in systems like this. can it be dehumanizing? 100%! but what about the kids that walk through the door? what is it like to be seen by a face you can see yourself in? further, indigenous and racialized practitioners explicitly described experiencing racism enacted by their colleagues; they also witnessed the indigenous and non-white children, youth, families, and communities they worked alongside experiencing racism. sam declared: what is it like to work in colonial systems? it is not like there is ever any change. i work with a lot of systems. a lot with child welfare. a lot with mental health. several systems as well — government and health, and then justice … it’s the hardest part of my work. so, i work with a lot of trauma and a lot of dark things sometimes, and that’s a lot of weight to carry … the difficulty [is] practising in systems that are so broken and inconsistent, and incongruent with what my values are and my worldview. dissident. and so disembodied. throughout my conversations, indigenous and racialized practitioners reiterated the scope and impact of the embodied stress they experienced in relation to dominant whiteness, which was similar to experiencing double consciousness (du bois, 1903/2015). sam emphasized this by saying, “i feel like i experience [colonial violence and racism] alongside my clients. it is an exhausting uphill battle.” microaggressions most of the white settler practitioners spoke of experiences in which they witnessed a racial microaggression, acted out a microaggression unconsciously, or intervened in an act of microaggression. practitioners highlighted the background of microaggressions in the field, allowing white settler practitioners not to challenge our privilege or each other, and to sidestep the messy task of analyzing systemic violence. for example, bailey discussed microaggressions that occur when educating white settlers in anticolonialism and antiracism work in child and youth care: so much of that education of white settlers falls on indigenous [and racialized] people and then the backlash of that when people raise consciousness. i am not innocent of that, i definitely, you know, behaved in those ways. each participant detailed microaggressions that occurred both in one-on-one interactions and in collective environments, such as meetings or training sessions. gale, an indigenous practitioner, articulated the impacts on themselves of sitting in circle when their white settler colleagues were processing the emotional impacts of learning about settler colonialism and all its violence: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 94 it is not my job to make you feel better for what your people did to my people. like why am i sitting here with a bunch of white people crying about how bad their people were to my people? … well, don’t just cry there. do something. read some stuff. grab some knowledge. if you have some questions in the middle of that, i am so happy to talk with you. but you have to make the first step. spiritual pain the constant confrontation of racism and colonial violence never escaped the indigenous and non-white practitioners in the study. parker said: i remember reading something [by a white settler] about experiencing racism and then not allowing yourself to be traumatized by your clients’ experiences of racism. how do you separate those two things? because what ends up happening, it wears us down. it wears down our spirits. parker named this as an example of spiritual pain (reynolds, 2012), which takes place when practitioners are unable to enact what they believe they are ethically bound to do. yet, despite the dehumanizing impact of working in these systems, the indigenous and racialized participants remained because they felt that the young people for whom they deeply cared had a desperate need for contact with indigenous and racialized practitioners. parker asserted that “it is so crucial to have indigenous and racialized people in the field”: there is nothing wrong with white people supporting children and youth of different cultures, but i think there needs to be an effort to have people who have that experience of racialization and have the experience of othering, because that changes the way you connect with someone. current literature echoes the need for representation of indigenous practitioners, black practitioners, and practitioners of colour in the field, and asserts the need to dismantle the colonial violence and racial logics under which we all work (edwards, 2018). spiritual pain was expressed by white settler practitioners. dane, a white settler practitioner working in a community agency, whose mandate and values did not align in their practice, illuminated the eurocentric, neoliberal, and white supremacist ideologies deeply rooted in the organization. dane had repeatedly witnessed racism and the screening out of people from programs. they struggled with the fact that the organization presented a façade of white feminism when really, “there was a lot of push to help people who are just really easy to help: they show up; they had a decent enough income; they can engage in programs; and, you know, we help them learn skills, they are really keen to learn.” the practitioner experienced spiritual pain when they were unable to support indigenous, racialized, and street-entrenched people to access programs because of the incongruency of the agency’s mandate and values. dane’s critical, politicized lens was ineffective in initiating change in the agency, and they ultimately left because of these issues. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 95 as a measure of protection from spiritual pain, parker stated, “critical practitioners need each other, need community. and they need people with differing amounts of privilege. like actually start to balance things, and leverage their privilege, and leverage their reputation.” creating connections with critical politicized practitioners and leveraging privilege were discussed as pathways to address and dismantle systemic injustices. unontologizing throughout the study, participants offered concrete examples of how to unsettle white settler practice. sam, an indigenous practitioner working in community settings, articulated that “people have been brainwashed by white supremacy and patriarchy”, and named the process of counteracting that brainwashing “unontologizing”. sam stated that the formation of the white settler identity is something that: is engrained, that is an active process to work against. unlearning is the most difficult thing. you are unlearning. you are unontologizing. you are taking away that ontology of who you are as a being. that’s difficult, it’s difficult work. but you aren’t going to make it by making up excuses. unontologizing is the process of unlearning what has been framed as normal. it is the struggle to overcome neoliberal ideologies that claimed non-white as nonhuman and colonial property; the struggle against “whiteness over all else and the struggle to overcome the racism inscribed in [our] bones” (skott-myhre, 2019, p. 13). sam suggested that because white settler child and youth care practitioners are implicated in and benefit from others’ pain, they must learn “not [to] turn away from pain, from struggle, and other people’s struggle”. together we discussed how to unsettle practice and make white settlers aware of the need to sit and be still with discomfort. sam highlighted white fragility and microaggression, which often emerge as white settler practitioners unontologize: [white settler practitioners] can’t see themselves in a way they see as negative.… and [white settlers] aren’t going to [unontologize] by finding ways to say, “i can’t hear this feedback. i can’t think of doing something that is racist.” no one said it is with intention. it’s not intentional. it’s unintentional knowing and ways of being. sam underscored that intent does not equal impact, and that it is important for white settler practioners to get uncomfortable and expand our learning outside of dominant eurocentric, white supremacist frameworks. discussion: ethical pathways as i processed the collaborative dialogues with advanced, critical, and politicized child and youth care practitioners, i considered the call of scholar-activists de finney et al. (2018), who stated that “we urgently need other ethical frameworks by which to understand our practice and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 96 professional ethics” (p. 34). weaving together suggestions by practitioners and current literature, i here offer for consideration two ethical pathways towards unsettling white settler privilege in practice. strategic use of white settler discomfort the first pathway is the strategic use of white settler discomfort. as white settler practitioners, we are born into white supremacy and have internalized that thinking (harvey, 2007). white gender studies scholar elizabeth grosz (1993) asserted, “bodies are essential accounts of power and critiques of knowledge” (p. 196), and practitioners’ accounts of embodied and disembodied knowledge generated a palpable tension across their accounts of practice. there was a marked contrast between the visceral, embodied impacts of colonial violence and racism described by the indigenous and non-white practitioners, which showed up repeatedly as frustration and exhaustion, and the “embodiment of racial innocence and white guilt” (daniel, 2018, p. 24) of white settler privilege by white settler practitioners, myself alongside them. this contrast highlighted one of the pivotal and crucially important differences in how interfacing with systemic colonial violence is divergent for differently racialized practitioners and is a tension held throughout this work. practitioners are in a unique position to influence child and youth care practice, policy, and research in ways that could have direct, tangible impacts on all children, youth, families, and communities (kohli & solórzano, 2012). as critical praxis evolves in child and youth care, it is imperative that we white settler practitioners are self-aware and locate ourselves as politicized, accountable, and ethical. although we may situate ourselves as antiracist and anticolonial white settler practitioners, when we identify with disempowered and marginalized people but do not acknowledge our differences (e.g., being colour blind, or not addressing our own white settler privilege and the benefits white people have been afforded through indigenous genocide) we nevertheless reinforce foundational frameworks in which harmful, albeit well-intentioned, actions occur (fee & russell, 2007, p. 188). a few steps to counter white settler privilege and ongoing colonial violence and racism include: engaging with indigenous and black scholars and activists, and scholar–activists of colour, in course materials; challenging dominant whitestream norms; having white settlers engage in critical discussions about our own white settler privilege and the ways we are implicated in ongoing settler colonial violence and racism; and allowing for space in classes for indigenous and black students and students of colour to collaborate outside the white gaze (razack, 1998, p. 15). importantly, there are many possibilities for transformative networks among diasporic nonwhite people and indigenous peoples that build connections of resistance and resurgence and do not centre whiteness (simpson, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 97 unontologizing the second pathway is what a participant termed “unontologizing” — the process of unlearning what has been framed as normal by eurocentric, neoliberal, and white supremacist norms. unontologizing asserts the unsettling of white settler privilege, requiring white settlers to do the emotional and intellectual work needed to progress towards antiracism and anticolonialism. ethical considerations for unontologizing include a requirement for discourse within education and practice on white fragility and “white supremacy consciousness” (kasl & yorks, 2002, p. 74), which is a way of thinking that takes for granted the legitimacy of a society being dominated by white norms and values. the findings illustrate elements of internalized “white supremacy consciousness” expressed by white settler practitioners in their experiences of powerlessness to change colonial violence and racism in practice, and their insights into their own compliance with these dominant systems. within white supremacy consciousness, kasl and yorks (2002) explained, “white norms and values are normalized, thus making implicit their supremacy over other groups’ norms and values. it is this normalization that maintains the institutionalization of privilege based on race” (p. 74). the white settler practitioners in this study all challenged internalized white supremacy consciousness within themselves. figure 1. overt and covert white supremacy consciousness note: adapted from safehouse progressive alliance for nonviolence (2005) and turner (2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 98 figure 1 details components of white supremacy consciousness. it is important for white settler practitioners to pay attention to covert, socially acceptable aspects of white supremacy, such as eurocentric curricula, practices, and policies; denial of racism and white privilege; expecting indigenous people and people of colour to teach white people; and self-appointed white allies assuming that good intentions suffice. these are all embedded in unconscious white supremacy, resulting in the kind of socially acceptable enactments of white power and subordination of indigenous and racialized people, as discussed throughout the findings. white supremacy consciousness is an important concept in navigating the meaning-making of the collaborative dialogues on white settler privilege in child and youth care. the maintenance of white settler superiority and privilege is often unconscious. therefore, a key question raised by this study is: “how do white settlers bring white superiority out of the cultural shadows (bhabha, 2004), do the essential work of recognizing our own internalized supremacy, and ‘feel the shame contained therein’ (turner, 2018, p. 10)”? while overt forms of supremacy lead to horrific acts of brutality, the indigenous and non-white practitioners in this study made it clear that even the covert forms — which, according to black intersectional psychotherapist dwight turner (2018), are more subtle and more culturally acceptable (p. 4) — have serious impacts on relationships with coworkers, on recruitment and retention of staff, and on practice. further, white supremacy is evident in the overrepresentation and underserving of indigenous and non-white children, youth, families, and communities that result from existing policies and funding structures. white supremacy also places the responsibility to address and fix systemic racism on indigenous and non-white practitioners, creating grief, resentment, and burnout from contending with backlash, denial, and silencing. there are various resources for white settlers to integrate this ethical pathway. one is the book me and white supremacy: a 28-day challenge to combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor (saad, 2020), which takes white settlers from simply intellectualizing about white supremacy to action. with this practical tool, white settler practitioners can begin to act to address their own eurocentrism and the disembodied intellectualizing of white settler privilege, colonial violence, and racism. to mitigate microaggressions and racialized violence experienced by our colleagues and the children, youth, families, and communities we walk beside, white settler practitioners can engage in settler repair — going beyond simply responding to emotions to uncovering the connections between heart and mind in our white fragility — while we expose our own racial amnesia (razack, 2002). and we can ask ourselves, as diangelo (2018) suggested: what “has allowed [us] to not know what to do about racism?” (p. 15). conclusion as white settler child and youth care explores and “experiment[s] with who we might become” (white et al., 2017, p. 59), this research invites us to unsettle dominant white norms to contest the everyday acts of colonial violence and racism perpetuated at the expense of indigenous and noninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 99 white children, youth, families, and communities, along with the colleagues with whom we practise. hunt and holmes (2015) suggested that we “raise questions and tensions, in order to center the dynamic, messy quality of relationships among individuals who are engaged in processes of unsettling dominant power dynamics and colonial ideologies” (p. 161). this article is a contribution to the ongoing work of integrating an unsettling pedagogy into child and youth care curricula, and engages critical, politicized ideas to point out ways to generate micro-level, everyday transformations and macro-level shifts in education and practice towards unsettling whiteness in the field of child and youth care. the recent national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (2019) called for “an absolute paradigm shift” to “dismantle colonialism within canadian society, and from all levels of government and public institutions” (p. 172). this will require rejecting past and present “ideologies and instruments of colonialism, discrimination, and misogyny” (p. 172). this is a further call for child and youth care pedagogy and practice to address colonial violence and racism, and to unsettle its white supremacist, eurocentric foundations, and white settler privilege. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 100 references absolon, k. e. 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(2017). risking attachments in teaching child and youth care in twenty-first century settler colonial, environmental and biotechnological worlds. international journal of social pedagogy, 6(1), 43–63. doi:10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.004 wolfe, p. (1999). settler colonialism and the transformation of anthropology: the politics and poetics of an ethnographic event. leicester university press. yoon, j. (2012). courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling. international journal of child, youth, and family studies, 3(2–3), 164–186. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.004 https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 80–107 107 biography kaz mackenzie is a graduate of the university of victoria ma program in child and youth care. as a white, cis-gendered, settler woman (she/her/hers) living on unceded lekwungen and w̱sáneć territory, kaz is committed to her own unsettling and responsibilities to occupier repair. her research and practice interests include: flipping the narrative and addressing the white settler problem; committing to pathways towards unsettling whiteness; staying implicated in ongoing settler colonialism; and antiracist, anticolonial, and intersectional praxis in the human and social development field. microsoft word 07 african-centred_solidarity.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019516 developing a practice of african-centred solidarity in child and youth care peter amponsah and juanita stephen abstract: what does it mean to be an ally? more specifically, what does it mean to do the work of allyship in support of black young people and families? as educators, researchers, and practitioners in the child and youth care field, we seek to initiate a conversation pertaining to the epistemological make-up of child and youth care practice and the movement towards persistent and intentional solidarity work as a framework for cross-racial engagement. through a series of critical questions, this paper seeks to deconstruct the taken-for-granted practices of white eurocentric allyship in favour of a new vision for the future of solidarity work with african-descended children, youth, and their communities. keywords: african-centred, solidarity work, allyship, critical youth work, decolonial practice authors’ note: this paper is based on the panel presented at the child & youth care in action vi conference: moving through trails and trials toward community wellness, held in victoria, british columbia, canada at the university of victoria, april 25th to 27th, 2019. the panel included the present authors as well as dr. julian hasford and travonne edwards. their thinking and theorizing was crucial to the panel and have been influential in the development of this paper. we are also grateful to dr. johanne jean-pierre for including us in the development of the panel. peter amponsah msw (corresponding author) is a phd student in social work at york university, keele campus – room s880, ross building, 4700 keele st., toronto, on m3j 1p3. email: pamponsa@yorku.ca juanita stephen ma is a phd student in gender, feminist & women’s studies at york university, keele campus – room 206g, founders college, 4700 keele st., toronto, on m3j 1p3. email: jstephen@yorku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 7  ...the weather is the totality of our environments; the weather is the total climate; and that climate is antiblack. christina sharpe (2017, p. 104) black people do not need allies. we need people to stand up and take on the problems borne of oppression as their own, without remove or distance. we need people to do this even if they cannot fully understand what it’s like to be oppressed for their race or ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class, religion, or other marker of identity. we need people to use common sense to figure out how to participate in social justice. roxane gay (2016, para. 12) what does it mean to be an ally? more specifically, what does it mean to do the work of allyship in support of black young people and families? these questions relate to child and youth care’s ongoing professional, moral, and ethical quest to do better work with marginalized young people and communities. these questions, and many related ones, have gained considerable attention in social justice discussions over the last decade, and more recently in child and youth care literature, education, and practice (de finney et al., 2018; gharabaghi, 2017; munroe, 2017; saraceno, 2012; skott-myhre, 2017). this results, in part, from the continually unfavorable outcomes seen in the cases of young people served by child and youth care and the uncompromising environments in which child and youth care takes place. these are compounded by sustained political and social disregard for child and youth matters, and the global and national momentum towards more empirically based, and control-oriented strategies of care as issitt and spence (2005) have noted, “in the contemporary climate … the language of both accreditation and so-called smart outcomes (specific. measurable, achievable, realistic, timed) with their promises of measurable and completed results seems to have robbed youth work of its ability to express and explain itself on its own terms and in its own more subtle vocabulary” (p. 64). these dynamics have culminated in the need for child and youth care to push back against the influences of trends that impact the field’s ability to have intentional responses to black/african youth’s experiences. the authors of this paper are practitioners, educators, and researchers in the child and youth care field who have experience in both their personal and professional lives with matters of allyship. for both, their encounters and engagement with ally work, literature, interpersonal moments, and institutional arrangements have, for the most part, been grounded in whiteness. that is, white racial experience is the lens through which possibilities and limitations for different social relations are discussed and acted upon. this approach normalizes whiteness as the entry point into goodness, understanding, and change, and poses many challenges for the field of child international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 8  and youth work by contributing to the maintenance of a stagnant space of practice amidst rigid concepts of care. one example of such an outcome is the depoliticized and dehistoricized content that is taught in child and youth care curriculums, which ignores the importance of historically constituted sociopolitical realities. a general scan of publicly available course outlines will present some surprising and disappointing facts on the degree to which child and youth care is committed to allyship, particularly in regards to black and afro-diasporic children and youth’s experiences. throughout this paper the authors use african and black interchangeably.the authors acknowledge the histories of the terms african and black as highly contested social, cultural, and historical phenomena. however, for the purposes of this paper, the author’s draw on mohanty and decoito (2009) who provide a guideline for the use and understanding of this language. black is the political term used to categorize and define individuals who are of african descent whose ethnic or ancestral origins are in africa. however, the diversity within the population requires the user of this terminology to be knowledgeable of and sensitive to the different cultural and linguistic groups within it (p. v). the authors employ a decolonial perspective in tackling the issue of allyship and solidarity work with black/african children, youth, and communities. to these ends, we draw from the decolonial project as proposed by frantz fanon in his early works (1952, 1963), which rejected the historical and current colonial order, including its racial relations, in favour of the “new being”. that is, in the context of child and youth care, this paper seeks to subvert the taken-for-granted ideas about care work for black children and youth in an attempt to propose a practice that affirms the existence and experiences of black/african children and youth. much of the mainstream work on allyship has been led by white authors (bishop, 2002; mcintosh, 2003; wise 2005) whose writings are meant to speak to white audiences. although these authors have added valuable concepts to the literature, they lack a critical lens to be able to interpret the deeply embedded role of race in determining, for instance, who bears the burden of proof for racially unjust experiences, a lens that can arguably only be developed through a firsthand lived experience of racial injustice. far too often the power of racial burden is ignored in these writings (bonilla-silva, 2012; froyum, 2013), and, as is experienced in the daily dynamics of racial inequity, it is up to racialized scholars to challenge and expand our ideas of what is and isn’t possible in transformative youth work and social relations. our hope is to add to this call for voices and open up the conversation by drawing upon black and african-centred worldviews. our efforts to expand the dialogue in the child and youth care field, however, have been met with varied responses, especially concerning anti-black racism work. similar to those identified by bishop (2002), these responses from child and youth care professionals and institutions can be characterized under three themes pertaining to the field: resistance, acceptance, and denial:  resistance: this response is rooted in a sense of entitlement to the power of providing care. mckamey (2017) brought light to this point in her piece exploring care education. she said, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 9  “in caring towards, the carer maintains power over the cared for” (p. 214). she went on to say: in one form of caring for — the caring towards discourse — the youth worker maintains their own cultural norms or perspective. sometimes the youth worker acts on behalf of the appropriate rules expected within the school or educational context. the youth worker acts upon what they view is in the best interest of the young person. (p. 214)  acceptance: often displayed by those who cannot see the potential of child and youth care or social inequity to be transformed. this is seen in the hesitancy to have child and youth care education engage with alternative pedagogies and voices in favour of solidifying its professional identity and mandate. this response is challenged by creativity and innovation.  denial: often displayed by those who refuse to see child and youth care work as a contentious, social-political space in favour of a self-indulgent benevolence. this is evidenced in the scarcity of attention directed towards structural dimensions of child and youth care work, such as the changing geopolitical context of young people today. such positions perpetuate harmful practices and pedagogies in the child and youth care field that require deep and intentional reflexive work to unravel. these include the appropriation of cultural tools and frameworks in our attempts to diversify child and youth care curriculums; the funnelling of racialized bodies into particular care roles in teaching and frontline practice; and the apathy directed to critical issues of disproportionality in various service systems. as we move forward in this process of simultaneous deconstruction and construction, we ask the reader to be open. what might it look like to not be the expert on someone else’s care needs? to honestly engage with the type of practice that you have been doing? are you providing the outcomes you want or the outcomes that are needed? and, moreover, are the lives of the black children and youth you serve changing for the better? we hope that the discussion we start here and the ongoing self-reflexive work you will do will help to answer these questions. troubling the notion of “allyship” a key element in the foundation of this discussion is to consider what is meant by the word “ally”. some schools of thought embrace the idea of allyship as an identity, claiming that one can take up the title of “ally” based on an alignment with certain ideologies or by engaging in certain practices. others conceptualize allyship as a practice, linked specifically — and exclusively — to action. the anti-oppression network (n.d.) takes up this orientation, speaking of allyship as “an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and reevaluating, in which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group” (para. 2). though the authors of this paper tend to align more closely with the second understanding, we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 10  approach the word ally with some reservation, recognizing that the popularized use of the word brings with it certain assumptions, associations, and familiarities that are misaligned with the spirit of the work we aim to discuss. the growing use of the word in academic, activist, and popular discourse has shifted “allyship” from a topic of critical engagement to a buzzword that is invoked frequently but with little critical thought. this can be observed through the use of the word “ally” as common branding on t-shirts and buttons, usually backed by an image of a rainbow or another graphic meant to identify the social movement with which the wearer claims to be allied. presumably, wearing the shirt or button is meant to be read as an act of allyship. or, perhaps more generously, it can be understood as an act of communication — politically marking the wearer as someone choosing to be on the right side of history. while there is no way to know what actions the wearer engages in beyond this public self-identification, it leaves unanswered the question, “who does this public declaration benefit?” is it a signal that the bearer is “one of the good guys” or does it mean that they are open to being recruited to do the work that is implied by the title of ally? similarly, when the ally paraphernalia is being handed out as swag at a college fair or sold on clearance at the local novelty store, how does that change how we think about what it means to call yourself an ally? the reality is that the title of ally can be claimed in this way with no further action. yet we would argue that action — informed, persistent, deliberate action — is precisely what is missing from this expression of allyship, and, frequently, divorced from the word “ally” overall. however, inaction is not the only way that allyship can become problematic. actions can often impede or subvert the efforts put forth by oppressed groups toward impactful change. uninformed allyship, for example, gives rise to action without awareness; that is, seeking to be helpful without doing the work of learning the history of not only the oppression, but also of the responses — resistance, refusal, education, writing, calls to action — that have come before you. uninformed allyship is problematic for several reasons. primarily, in the case of allyship with black communities, it devalues the work of the black activists and scholars who have already done the work of framing the issues, identifying the actions taken, and (in many cases) outlining what responses are desired and appropriate for non-black people who are committed to working for change. secondarily, uninformed allyship centres the expertise of the ally and assumes that they will know best what is needed to address an issue that does not affect them directly. informed allyship requires the work of listening across difference and centring the needs and wants of the black communities allies aim to support, while uninformed allyship is motivated by an assumption that the ally will intuitively know what is needed and warranted in a particular situation. also problematic, performative allyship involves action that serves the ally more than the person or group the action is framed to be in support of. performative allyship is done for the sake of being seen, often seeking recognition or exemption from inclusion in the oppressing (dominant) group. performative allyship says, “see! i understand the issue and i vow to do better. everyone look at me! white supremacy is an oppressive force, but i’m not like those white people. i am enlightened! i am different!” publicly committing to working toward racial justice without doing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 11  the work is merely performative, as is donning ally buttons and t-shirts without doing the work required to dismantle systems of oppression. consider who the public proclamations, tears, or retweets serve, and consider the possibility that the most significant beneficiary may be yourself. the posturing of allegiance in order to alleviate your own guilt or claim exemption from the “we” in “we need to do better” is not, in fact, allyship at all. it is in instances such as these that we are reminded of the key role that language plays in framing our understanding and application of concepts and ideologies. while “ally” is frequently taken up as an identity or indicator of proximity to social justice issues, the word on its own does not imply action. this being so, the authors of this paper seek to trouble that language. we posit that in order to develop a child and youth care practice that is dedicated to centring the “empowerment, liberation, and well-being of people of african descent” (hasford et al., n.d.), practitioners must use language that is congruent with the action to which they are committed. we put forth solidarity work as a reframing of allyship. moving away from the language of identity, african-centred solidarity work refocuses on the type of action necessary to support africandescended young people and families in care work. african-centred solidarity work is (a) specific in its focus — deliberately centring the needs, values, and voices of african-descended people; (b) relentless — persisting in spite of risk, fear, or ignorance; (c) intentional — requiring workers to recognize their racial, gender, class, and ability privilege and to leverage it for the benefit of african-descended people; and (d) manifest on multiple levels — personal, structural, political, and spiritual. basic tenets of african-centred solidarity work epistemological focus all professions have their epistemological stance; that is, the way they come to know, and what counts as knowledge. in the case of child and youth work specifically, this stance is rooted in the way we come to know ourselves as a profession that cares. it is through this stance that knowledge, information, ideas, and opinions are organized to form an identity and culture (williams, 2006). the north american brand of child and youth work has emerged from an environment of eurocentrism that, therefore, informs much of the profession’s epistemological direction. as a result, the opportunities and capacity to show authentic engagement with african-descended young people and their needs have been all but eliminated. a eurocentric worldview, amin (1989) explained, is concerned with the reproduction and imitation of the western model by all people as the solution to our problems. he stated that, “eurocentrism is a specifically modern phenomenon, the roots of which go back only to the renaissance, a phenomenon that did not flourish until the nineteenth century. in this sense, it constitutes one dimension of the culture and ideology of the modern capitalist world” (p. vii). taking amin’s point practically, we note that the timeline commonly put forward for the genesis of the professionalization of child and youth care practice in north america mirrors the timeline for the development of eurocentricity (charles & garfat, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 12  2009). the relationship of the child and youth care profession to processes of nation-building continues to sustain the white perspective in the work; it is an area of inquiry that requires more critical exploration. a careful examination of the tools that are used in the creation of knowledge in child and youth care will reinforce some key facts: (a) knowledge creation happens as a part of multiple, historical, sociopolitical processes; (b) white, upper-middle class, european people (predominantly men) have controlled these processes; (c) these processes have been strategically constructed to benefit white, upper-middle class, european people at the expense of others, including non-european people. these facts have shown up in consistent ways through the texts, discourses, and ideological orientations found in many spaces of higher learning. it is this understanding that frames our need for shifting the intellectual and professional entry point for those who engage in care work with african-descended populations. relentless persistence as solidarity work focuses on centring the needs and well-being of people who are dissimilar to ourselves, it rarely comes naturally. starting from a place of unfamiliarity can be daunting and can present challenges — fear. risk, ignorance — to our motivation to persist. however, inherent to the work of solidarity is encountering these challenges and labouring to overcome them. black young people and their families may face issues that literally threaten their personal safety and human rights; these issues often necessitate solidarity with non-black people. it is understandable that doing the work to address these issues and dismantle the systems that uphold them can be scary. showing up at police headquarters, for instance, to demand accountability for the unnecessary use of lethal force on a black man requires the use of the bodies of solidarity workers to stage a protest along with black communities that have seen too many deaths, who have learned that at any time it could be a member of their own family whose life is not seen as valuable enough to spare. aligning with black bodies in this way can be fear-inducing, but solidarity work requires you to persist despite the fear. solidarity work also asks you to persist when you are not the expert. for example, if you are a teacher who is not familiar with any black writers on the topics you are teaching during a particular semester, solidarity work asks you to use the resources available to you — the library, google, and other print and online resources about black scholars in that area of study — to educate yourself on how to bring black voices into your classroom. pay black experts to come in as guest speakers. become familiar with african ways of knowing. claiming ignorance on “black issues” shifts the responsibility onto black people and their allies to do the work you refuse. finally, solidarity work requires you to persist even when it involves risk. the work of disrupting systems from which you may benefit, or from which your colleagues, friends, family, and professional network benefit, can bring real or imagined risk to your job security, income, personal and professional relationships, opportunities, or reputation. there are often incentives not to challenge the status quo — opportunities for advancement, greater earning potential, minimal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 13  conflict. however, we posit that true solidarity work requires action up until the point that you become as vulnerable as the group you are working in solidarity with. if you are working for equal pay, you must be willing to risk your income. if you are advocating for the hiring of more black professors, you must be willing to persist, even when your own job security is threatened. the movement toward (and into) positions of vulnerability is as indicative of solidarity as the use of privilege or power that cannot be threatened, perhaps even more so. we will use an ontario-based community organization as an example. the child and youth care alliance for racial equity (care) was founded in 2017, bringing together educators, direct service practitioners, students, and young people — all of whom are indigenous, black, and people of colour (ibpoc). the collective formed in response to a noted absence of ibpoc representation in the field of child and youth care in particular, and in social services more broadly. each of the dozen or so members of the collective had been working in their respective spaces — classrooms, communities, places of business — to challenge the exclusion and inequities they had come across. care served as a way to support and amplify those individual efforts through collaborative research, capacity-building, and activism. however, care’s start-up was not seamless and was met with resistance and skepticism along the way. many white practitioners expressed frustration at not being extended an invitation to membership since they claimed an orientation toward racial justice. their public criticism of the organization’s exclusion spread widely and quickly. several ibpoc practitioners decided it was not in their best interest to be affiliated with a group committed to challenging institutions on racial injustice because of the potential impact on their job security and professional reputation. others joined the collective, but were fearful that advocacy that was seen as “too much” or “too disruptive” could impact opportunities for their own professional advancement. this was a genuine space of fear, particularly for early-career practitioners and scholars. in fact, for the first year of care’s existence, one member served as the point of contact for communication to the broader community in order that care’s membership could be kept confidential, guarding against possible pushback directed at group members, some of whom were particularly vulnerable. also, none of the members really knew what the entity was that they were building together. they did know that there was racial injustice that had to be addressed and that they were willing to do the work necessary to make some impact. the writers of this paper are two of the original members of care. we can say that now, two years in, the threats to our personal and professional reputations still exist — particularly when we are challenging a policy or practice enacted by a claimed “ally”. we run the risk of losing their support for the rest of the work that we do. there is still pushback from institutions who are invested in the oppressive systems from which they benefit. these institutions have longerstanding reputations than our grassroots organization, which is still in its infancy; the institutions could easily use their influence to make it very uncomfortable for us to work in the very small field that is child and youth care. finally, we still do not position ourselves as experts in this work. we have, however, learned how to show up, build relationships, ask questions, and listen for the best way we can use the resources and skills available to address the issues at hand. the positive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 14  impacts — progressive policy development, necessary structural changes, and knowledge production — validate the risk. solidarity work is not about perfection, nor about expertise or fearlessness, but rather about the willingness to persist with intentional action. intentionality competency and capacity both influence the possibilities for solidarity work. as a result of heavily cognitive-based approaches to the development of social justice practice, individuals often find themselves suspended among the spaces of knowing, doing, and ability, unable to decide how to implement theory they have learned, and therefore developing a conditioned response of apathy and stagnation towards common-sense justice. this inaction is antithetical to the very nature of child and youth care practice, which must be responsive to the needs of vulnerable, marginalized children and youth. the overall desired outcome of racial equity for children and youth in care work is put in a precarious state when it becomes too dependent upon criteria of knowing and doing. the litmus test of quality education systems and programs should be their commitment to true racial and social justice education and research; however, the constraints and limitations presented in the highly contested spaces of knowing (see epistemological focus) and the pace at which change is happening mean that the current demand for children and youth services cannot be met. in addition, the space of the knower and known relationship, particularly for white practitioners in relation to anti-black racism advocacy, must transcend the rhetoric of accountability and ability (tetreault, 2018) to envision a transformational solidarity work that challenges white comfort and racial apathy. nonetheless, the question of “how can i use what i have in my solidarity work?” continues to be a persistent one that has not received sufficient attention. a fundamental principle of solidarity work is the acknowledgement and understanding of one’s privilege, particularly white privilege and its influences on one’s subjectivity. a key, yet contested, principle in much social justice theorizing is the understanding of the expression of privilege and oppression as intersectional, contextual, omnipresent, and diversified (hill collins, 1990; crenshaw, 1991). given these contending but complementary stances, it would be useful to engage in exploring racial justice as an imperative (hemphill, 2015; szekeres et al., 2019) that requires moral courage. kutlaca et al. (2019) tell us that “what differentiates acts of moral courage from other pro-social behaviors is … the underlying motivation to restore a violated moral standard” (p. 2). in other words, child and youth care’s recognition of the inequities in care for black children and youth as issues of ethical significance should be enough of a catalyst to prompt the field and its practitioners towards seeking alternative outcomes. the following sections will offer some critical thoughts on what african-centred solidarity can look like across personal, structural, political, and spiritual domains. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 15  solidarity work on multiple levels personal solidarity self-awareness and self-reflection are common frameworks used in social justice education. these frameworks incorporate the idea that understanding the construction of one’s thoughts, feelings, actions, sensations, identity, and so on is necessary for working with others who are in need. the use of reflection and self-awareness holds a significant space in the child and youth care field. ricks (2011) wrote about a curriculum she facilitated, stating: the self component is viewed as the learner being able to examine and understand how the knowledge and the skill areas of self are relevant for them, how the knowledge of self will be integrated into what they already know, and how the skills for knowing and changing self will be evidenced in their child and youth care practice. (p. 5) as a result of these hopes for aspiring practitioners, child and youth care curriculums have overemphasized the skill development of self-awareness through reflection assignments and tasks, without taking a critical approach to the nurturing of this skill. this process of self-discovery leaves the layers of embedded oppressive thought intact and unnoticed, in favour of a liberalized selfpresentation as good and noble. ricks (2011) aptly noted: in spite of self being an amorphous concept, many professions and trainers of professionals argue that being one self and having self-awareness is critical in professional practice. the claim usually made is that more self-present and aware professionals are more effective. (p. 6) in crafting an alternative approach to this skill development for effective african-centred solidarity, mary ellen kondrat (1999) offered a way to think about our desired outcomes for practitioners. she identified three different types (or levels) of awareness that are commonly found in social justice literature: “(a) simple conscious awareness (awareness of whatever is being experienced), (b) reflective awareness (awareness of a self who is experiencing some-thing), and (c) reflexive awareness (the self’s awareness of how his/her awareness is constituted in direct experience)” (p. 451). child and youth care, like many related professions, has suffered from the absence in its pedagogy of critical reflexivity; that is, a framework of reflection that allows practitioners to acknowledge and deconstruct the historical, sociopolitical power structures and mechanisms that have contributed to the current issues of inequity for children and youth. as jan fook (2015) stated, “in order to be reflexive, we need to be aware of the many and varied ways in which we might create, or at least influence, the type of knowledge we use” (p. 443). fook’s point further highlights the need for child and youth care practice to actively engage in revisiting and constructing new perspectives about who we really are, whom we are serving, and how we come to know our practice. our field cannot claim to have been effective in black children and youth’s lives while black parents and communities continue to experience multiple contexts of injustice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 16  there have been many critiques of the self-awareness, critical-reflection approach to personal and professional development for racial solidarity work. heron (2005), though in favour of the use of reflection in educating critical practitioners, noted in an example: the acknowledgment of privilege seems to strike a chord for racially aware members of the dominant group, but i would propose that admitting one’s privilege does not necessarily unsettle its operation. for this is a concept that has the potential to leave those who name it in a place of double comfort: the comfort of demonstrating that one is critically aware, and the comfort of not needing to act to undo privilege. for individuals on the other side of the privilege coin, the citing of privilege by those in dominance amounts, however inadvertently, to a reinscription of marginalization. (p. 344) badwall (2016) took a similar stance. she was “concerned with the ways in which critical reflexivity is at risk of operating as a tool of governance and regulation” (p. 1). she went on to state that “the practice of critical reflexivity works to re-install whiteness through the colonial production of moral superiority and innocence” (p. 1). reflective processes that ignore the practitioner’s relationship to the land that they and the young people they serve occupy, along with the historically constituted social relations at present, can be detrimental to the advancement of racial justice for equity-seeking groups. in child and youth care practice, an effective posture for personal solidarity on issues of antiblack racism is one that assumes a transformation-focused, critically reflexive stance. such a stance would encourage professionals to situate themselves, their practice, and the young people they are working with within the larger white hegemonic infrastructures of society. such a stance would provide the tools and language necessary to disrupt discourses and initiatives associated with unfavourable outcomes for black children and youth. such a stance could help establish what the child and youth care profession’s role is in seeking justice and reconciliation for racialized young people and communities. political and structural solidarity in 1995 mike harris was elected premier of ontario in a majority government. harris and the conservatives had run on a “common sense revolution” platform (bradburn, 2018) with the objective of minimizing bureaucracy and reducing the fiscal deficit. in the conservative view, social programs and supports, including public education, were to blame for the province’s financial woes; as a result, they made drastic cuts to those services. these actions had a direct impact on the province as a whole, but were particularly devastating in schools and communities that were already underresourced, many of which were home to black children and youth (price, 2018; morgan, 2018). on june 7, 2018, the province of ontario elected another conservative majority, with doug ford as its 42nd premier. the conservatives had again campaigned on and charted a path towards international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 17  balancing the budget by eliminating and making cuts to social programs and education. one action that was widely seen as tragic and socially irresponsible was the elimination of the office of the provincial advocate for children and youth (syed, 2019), a nonpartisan political entity whose mandate was to oversee the well-being of children and youth and lobby the government for system changes. as black children and youth are overrepresented in many of the social service programs and institutions that fell under the purview of the advocate’s office (e.g., child welfare and youth legal custody), the consequences of this action were notably detrimental for these young people. the conservatives cut off one of the very few avenues black children and youth had for seeking justice regarding discrimination and rights violations. these two stories of political change share many similarities, but there is one obvious difference. both stories highlight the ways that political ideologies can affect broader social outcomes. they have similar protagonists — white, male, conservative premiers — and both illustrate how the outcomes of political decisions impact the lives of marginalized young people. the obvious difference between these stories is their timing. with 23 years separating the two eras of political governance, it appears that the lessons from the inequity and frustration felt in black communities from one era have carried over to the next, highlighting the need for child and youth care to play an active role in neutralizing the political landscape that black children, youth, and their “allies” have to navigate. the question that child and youth care practitioners must take up is, “how can my practice reflect solidarity with black children and youth, their families, and their communities at a political and structural level?” some authors in child and youth care call for a radical, politicized practice in the work (edwards & gaidhu, 2018; gharabaghi, 2012; skott-myhre, 2017). for the purposes of broadening this discussion, we will draw from literature in the education field. garad (2013), in comparing traditional approaches of care to black feminist or womanist epistemological approaches to care, stated that successful black women educators display such a radical, politicized approach, “caring for students in a manner that resembles mothering, sometimes with tough love. this approach is more political than eurocentric or white feminist caring because caring has more critical implications in marginalized communities” (p. 68). garad (2013) went on to highlight that in the context of schools, “caring means enacting a political clarity: teaching students about and preparing them for the harsh realities of racism, sexism, and other ‘isms’ that exist beyond the schoolhouse” (p. 68). drawing from this, we propose that child and youth care must reconstruct its approach to care work for black children and youth to enact, throughout our field, the kind of political clarity identified by garad (2013). political clarity asks child and youth care practitioners to consider how politics enter the institutions they are a part of, and how political ideologies are upheld through the mechanisms of that institution — the hiring practices, program requirements, eligibility criteria, curriculum, evaluation, and so on. politicized practice recognizes that the power brought into a role through race, class, education, gender, or other axes of privilege can be used to call attention to the institutional practices that uphold injustice. for example, tenured professors can sit on hiring international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 18  committees and actively work toward recruiting black candidates for tenure-track positions or advocate for broader integration of african epistemologies into the curriculum. boards of directors can actively seek out black candidates for management positions. political and structural solidarity requires that your efforts extend beyond interpersonal relationships or participation in movements during your personal time. it recognizes the need to hold institutions accountable for their role in upholding injustice and wherever and however possible use those institutions to work towards redress. spiritual solidarity it is evident that in care systems, resources go where a need is identified. with regard to spirituality in care work, some have brought attention to the fact that it is an entirely absent priority in child and youth development (benson & roehlkepartain, 2008) and others have noted that it is a matter of resolve and of investment in equipping child and youth care workers with what is necessary (kimball, 2008). there is a significant body of literature on religion, spirituality, and black children and youth (curry, 2010; dancy, 2010; garad, 2013), indicating the importance, relevance, and necessity of spirituality for identity and development in this group. therefore, if the issue of engaging with black/african spirituality in care spaces is simply a matter of resolve and worker preparation, it speaks to the glaring gaps in what the field has given priority to. child and youth care’s position in the lives of young people opens it up to possibilities for solidarity that other professions cannot access. as such, it is essential for the field to view engaging in spirituality as justice work in child and youth care, as a practice that aligns with the field’s priorities of caring for the whole child. the hesitancy to engage with black/african spirituality in care work lies in the aforementioned issues of competency and capacity (see intentionality above). however, it is necessary to recognize also the epistemological barriers and dualities that are hidden in child and youth care that continue to present the bodies, communities, practices, and beliefs of black people as dark, infantile, pathological, and mythical. this site of struggle in the minds of child and youth care workers must be interrogated through an intentional process of decolonization; a starting place for many practitioners could be asking difficult questions such as “why is there less value placed on knowledge and resources from black communities?”, “what am i fearful of?”, “is the source of this fear real?”, “have i always had this fear?”, and “how can i work through this fear to support transformation in young black people’s lives?” this series of questions is critical to the awareness necessary for solidarity work with black children and youth that recognizes spirituality as valuable. in turning towards the incorporation of spirituality in child and youth care, a paradigm shift must be made towards rehumanizing the black child; it is when the child is seen as human that spirit can dwell and flourish. it is well documented (mccabe et al., 1999; washington et al., 2014) that systems have deliberately represented black children and youth as dysfunctional, delinquent, and violent, all of which actively serve to dehumanize the population. this process also includes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 19  removal, isolation, and exclusion from collective life, denying the black child the possibilities of logic and civility; engaging in this type of identity destruction in child and youth care is not only unjust, but ethically irresponsible. little attention has been paid to a reciprocal result; that is, the dehumanization that also takes place in the practitioner when they are not acting in favour of protecting and preserving young black lives. this space of “spirit-less” work requires more attention and theorizing, which could furnish insights regarding the direction that child and youth care has been taking. carving out a practice of spiritual solidarity for black youth requires practitioners to move away from westernized concepts of a homogeneous black/african people, and westernized interpretation of indigenous african spiritual traditions as a dark, illogical, and incomprehensible spirituality (tagwirei, 2017), to a recognition of the heterogeneous complexity of black/african experience. spiritual solidarity needs to move to a more pragmatic application of daily practices that reaffirm black children and youth’s lives as valuable and worthy of dignity. to these ends, it is important for care systems to be transparent about their ability to create spiritually affirming spaces and services for black children and youth and to have the willingness and humility to engage with ethnic and culturally specific communities and leaders to co-create these realities for children and youth. effective spiritual solidarity work starts from a place of acknowledging colonialism’s role in determining spiritual value and recognizing the black child as a human entity, worthy of a quality life. it also recognizes the plurality within black/african experiences and spiritual beliefs, and recognizes that the communities in which these black/african children and youth exist possess all of the knowledge and resources to address their needs, and these should be leveraged in creating holistic care communities. conclusion the framework that we have proposed for developing a child and youth care practice of intentional, informed, relentless solidarity with black children, youth, and families, is just that — a framework. like many of the foundational concepts in child and youth care, we recognize the need for and encourage more theorizing to grow this discourse, broadening both the theoretical understanding and practical application of the ideas held therein. necessarily, this will require a continued shift in our field away from resistance, acceptance, and denial and an intentional movement toward the action audre lorde (1984) suggested — that we “reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside [ourselves] and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. see whose face it wears. then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” (p. 113). sandrina de finney and colleagues (2012) have called for an urgent “engagement with the perspectives of other communities ... who are ignored under a eurowestern colonial paradigm that shapes the ‘canon’ of our field” (p. 143). it is through these processes of deep self-reflexive action international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 20  and the significant integration of the contributions from indigenous, black, and otherwise racialized educators, practitioners, and students that we may broaden and reconstruct — if we do not dismantle entirely — the canon of literature that informs and limits what child and youth care practice can and should be. we are hopeful. child and youth care as a discipline can only benefit from broadening the possibilities of practice and engagement with truly diverse perspectives and approaches. only then can we say that we are truly foregrounding the interests and well-being of the black children, youth, and families whom we claim to support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 6–24 21  references amin, s. 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(2005). white like me: reflections on race from a privileged son. soft skull. microsoft word 09 moving_visibilities.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120343 moving queer visibilities into identity-sustaining practices in cyc: toward queer(ed) futures a longoria abstract: this essay aims at connecting child and youth care (cyc) to u.s. teacher education, educator pathways, and schooling in the united states. further, this essay addresses wolfgang vachon’s call to push the boundaries of cyc, specifically in queering the field. i offer ways u.s. teacher education contexts and practices might be considered as guidance in supporting queer identities in cyc. i posit that there is a corporeal pedagogy that queer cyc practitioners enact that is effected beyond simple visibilities, and that they sustain their own identities and survival in cyc spaces through this practice. i also offer a testimonio of my practice as an out genderqueer, chinese mexican teacher educator who works in u.s. field-based teacher training and after-school cyc spaces. further, i argue for critical engagement with curricula and field work in our training programs and make a call for training programs to support cyc practitioners in sustaining their queer identities. finally, i argue for a need to continue to archive — and perhaps rescue — the practices and collective memories of queer cyc practitioners in order to advance a meaningful sustaining of queer identities in cyc. keywords: identity-sustaining pedagogy, queer theory, child and youth care, teacher education a longoria (they/them) phd is assistant professor of secondary education and director of the master in teaching program in the woodring college of education at western washington university, 516 high street, ms 9089, bellingham, wa 98225-9089. email: a.longoria@wwu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 153  recent debates in the united states about starting face-to-face schooling amid the covid-19 crisis have brought to light a role for u.s. schooling that goes beyond instructional delivery and academics. the economic impacts to working families already affected by stay-at-home orders have underscored that u.s. schooling serves an implicit child and youth care (cyc) need. in this essay, i seek contemporary connections between cyc and u.s. teacher education, educator pathways, and schooling in the united states. further, this essay addresses vachon’s (2020) call to push the boundaries of cyc, specifically with regard to queering the field. i offer insight into how u.s. teacher education contexts and practices might provide guidance in supporting queer identities in cyc settings. this essay also builds on notions of the teacher educator as role model (lunenberg et al., 2006). further, i argue for critical engagement with curricula and field work in our training programs and call for more ways to support cyc practitioners (cycps) in sustaining their queer identities. through this essay, i hope to speak to teacher educators, cyc educators, cycps, and, most importantly, foster dialogue and build a nexus between these related fields of study and professional settings. cyc and teaching are distinct, yet a comparative analysis can be drawn from examining the role that teachers in the united states, and cycps everywhere, engage with. there are enough analogous components to merit comparison through a queer(ed) lens1. the ways that the two professions intersect provide valuable insights into the ways youth might be best served, especially youth with marginalized identities. i draw upon my experiences as a genderqueer, chinese mexican, university-based, pre-tenure, assistant professor and teacher educator to explore the notion of pedagogical freedom as a practice of queer generosity (rodriguez, 2012). a curious phenomenon in my teaching practice is that i feel most free to embody my queer identity when teaching. the agency i effect in constructing this pedagogical space — including virtual teaching during the global covid-19 pandemic — gives me some reprieve from the world outside my courses, and my imaginary for a more just world is generated from this freedom. i argue that this act of queer generosity is a kind of embodied liberation modeled for my teacher education students and the subsequent pedagogies they will reify in their work with youth in the u.s. kindergarten to grade 12 (k–12) schooling system. this essay also asks for whom this generosity — this corporeal pedagogy in teacher education — is constructed. in teaching future teachers, i explore how this generosity is constructed from a practice-based, explicitly preprofessional, context. doing this work at a state university, not at a high output r12, and fulfilling the state-mandated call to educate teachers invokes a queer-class 1i use “queer(ed)” here to denote both the active process of queering cyc and teaching (queer), and its intended after-effects and transformative future (queered). as well, i playfully embrace the wordplay enacted with “ed” as shorthand for “education”, which in the u.s. context encompasses teaching, learning, and youth issues, among other concerns of the field. 2r1, or research 1 universities, is a shorthand term used in the united states to refer to higher education institutions where faculty are expected to consistently produce published, peer-reviewed scholarship. this is often the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 154  analysis from a “poor queer studies” paradigm (brim, 2020). this includes navigation of professional expectations, k–12 school culture, youth culture, and the state-overseen preparation of teachers. queer generosity, too, is a vehicle for sustaining my identities. in this agentive act, i enact an identity-sustaining pedagogy as an intersectional person of color (rios & longoria, 2021). what do i mean by queer? i use queer intentionally to be inclusive of multiple sexual and gender identities, including gender nonconforming, gender variant, and expansive identities (green et al., 2020). it is admittedly inadequate, and some find an all-encompassing queer identity to be constricting. there is a wide variety of opinions about the best term to use in describing the queer community. k–12 schooling most commonly uses lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) or lgbtq (to include those who identify as queer or those questioning their sexual orientation). though i acknowledge that there are arguments against using “queer” as an allencompassing term, it remains the term most often used in queer popular culture, including activism (mayo, 2014). nevertheless, i acknowledge the wide variation of terms used by activist movements to self-identify (jagose, 1996; mayo, 2014). a key idea explored in this essay is the notion of being out, the navigation of which queer teachers and cycps face in their schooling and professional contexts. “out” means to be public about one’s queer identities. another way of referring to this is “visibility”, for one is visible with one’s queer identity or identitites by being out. biegel (2010) suggested that in spite of the legal right to be out in schools, queer people must have the freedom to negotiate the terms for doing so. thus, there is a kind of necessary agency and decision-making process queer teachers and cycps likely make in their classrooms and professional roles in navigating decisions about being out about their identities, negotiating various professional and contextual expectations, and determining safety in doing so. ghaziani and brim (2019) articulated some problems that can arise in queer(ing) research methods, especially regarding quantification and the tensions between humanities and social science methodologies. incorporating queer issues into teacher education poses its own disciplinary problems. education, as a hybrid field, navigates tensions between its typical academic home in the social sciences, its influences from humanities scholarship, and its role as nexus between academic inquiry and praxis. schooling and teacher education have been slow to incorporate queer(ed) contexts into practices and scholarship (mayo, 2014). we queer teacher educators have had to enact a kind of queer generosity with the hope of encouraging an advent of our scholar-educator peers’ awakening to queering the field in meaningful ways. where then is our home to put down our queer(ed) roots in this field? i adapt duncan-andrade’s (2010) writing on hope as a way to address this question: a critical hope tethered to a queer(ed) future. the way forward cannot be founded on an unexamined, empty hope, but rather one set on facilitating paramount indicator used for judging whether such faculty are successful; it is often the primary criterion for attaining tenure and promotion. at non-r1 universitites, such publication requirements may be deemphasized in favor of teaching and service (working on university committees, etc.). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 155  liberation, or a more complex and critically informed hope. this essay seeks to imagine how we queer educators might work toward finding a home for ourselves in the field. to this end, i consider the question: in summoning the generosity to liberate others, how might we simultaneously liberate ourselves — as educators, trainers, and cycps — from oppression? u.s. schooling today faces multiple continuing challenges. teachers navigate tensions between teaching subject matter and attending to the social–emotional needs of students (duncan-andrade, 2009; paris, 2012). the covid-19 pandemic has growing implications for schooling and cyc in the united states (charles & anderson-nathe, 2020). in the first year of the pandemic there was a rapid shift in how schooling and school-based cyc services were delivered in the united states. the long-term effects of that shift have yet to be fully understood. cyc spaces exist explicitly in u.s. schooling largely as after-school and summer spaces. often these do not include teaching traditional academic content or serve, at best, to support such content in a supplemental way. cyc-like work can be seen, however, in the interstices of the many duties teachers juggle. teachers volunteer to run after-school clubs, coordinate distribution of schools meals in their classrooms, and follow up with families about students’ health and well-being amid their primary responsibilities in instruction. i argue that queering cyc and creating a stronger queer lens on teacher education might allow us to understand cyc better, especially if these take place within a reciprocal process that benefits both practice and theory. vachon (2020) rightly pointed out disciplinary tension in defining cyc; i extend this argument by suggesting that teacher education in the u.s. context might offer important insights for cyc and cycps, especially in queering practice. early 21st century reforms to teacher practice and teacher education brought a marked shift to the profession. policies like no child left behind (2002) brought an academic focus to teacher training and attempted to increase learning accountability through high-stakes testing. the reforms also created a strict and complicated bureaucratic system. to become certified, teachers had to meet stringent requirements including extensive coursework and prequalifying exams. while the focus on academics and achievement wrought through these reforms shifted attention away from the cyc dimension of teaching, the need for cyc teacher practices, including those that attend to social–emotional needs, care, and justice work, did not diminish. i maintain that these extensive reforms institutionalized a comprehensive, university-based training program under which teacher education programs can serve as a venue for disseminating adaptations to teacher training. especially with regard to social justice and liberatory approaches to education, this comprehensive system holds the potential to reach teachers in training and encourage such approaches as foundational to their emerging professional practice — hopefully, one that will be sustained throughout their careers. in the absence of this system, it is likely that school reform would lack an adequate apparatus to effect comprehensive change. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 156  taken together, u.s. schooling and teacher education are arguably the best analogy for understanding cyc and cycp education in context. while u.s. education scholarship has a substantial literature base replete with considerations for teacher education and practice, it has not adequately taken up cyc perspectives nor readily considered its ample connections to cyc scholarship. nevertheless, teacher education has a strong foundation — particularly in theoretical and qualitative literature — to help envision supporting diverse identities within its systems. while literature seeking to queer teacher education and teacher practice is still emerging, its more recent output might provide important insights for cyc studies. i wholeheartedly agree with gharabaghi and anderson-nathe (2011) that a global approach to cyc practice is limited by our own perspectives and practices while simultaneously being boosted by our efforts to overcome these limitations and by our openness to other perspectives and cyc settings. i offer that u.s.-based teacher education settings — my own current setting — might be useful in understanding how we could collectively continue to queer cyc work and spaces. this is not to impose some u.s.-centric analysis, or worse, a u.s. exceptionalism, upon comparable cyc scholarship or practice, but rather to suggest that u.s. teacher education, and, more broadly, the field of education in the u.s., has made advances to queering its own contexts that might offer support for global cyc spaces (kumashiro, 2002; mcready, 2010; pascoe, 2012). as i argue here, cycp and teacher queer identities are imperative to the work of queering cyc. sustaining queer identities it is likely that there have always been queer teachers in k–12 schools in the united states. while there has been a complex string of recent wins in legal and policy protections for queer identities, within schooling the legal visibilities — freedom from termination of employment or other repercussions — have been relatively recent developments (will, 2020). controversy around the rights of queer people persists, especially for gender-variant identities, such as trans and nonbinary3 identities. for intersectional identities — most saliently queer teachers of color — the schooling landscape represents multiple professional and pedagogical contexts to navigate for identity survival. schooling and cyc spaces are sites of binary gender sorting — that is, they remain sites of compulsory gendering. this process might be as subtle as teachers or cycps defaulting to having students line up for recess by gender — boys and girls. other more insidious ways this process plays out can be seen in the ways youth police each other’s gender performance in what pascoe (2012) called the “fag discourse”. in the face of this sorting, how might teachers and cycps transgress the rules and conditions of spaces that actively seek to silence or invisibilize queer people, or otherwise to compel — both implicitly and explicitly — heteronormative and cisnormative norms? queer educators and cycps 3stryker (2017) describes nonbinary people as “people who do not conform to binary notions of the alignment of sex, gender, gender identity, gender role, gender expression, or gender presentation” (p. 24). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 157  might sustain their queer identities by actively transgressing such norms and insisting on asserting their identities in these spaces. possible ways of transgressing norms include insisting on one’s pronouns in spite of their lack of use in a professional space, and wearing professional attire that matches one’s gender identity, not one’s perceived or compulsory gender. further, these identitysustaining practices should be rigorous and professional, and, most importantly, would provide beneficial modeling for the children and youth that queer professionals serve. rios and longoria (2021) argued that black teachers, indigenous teachers, and other teachers of color might actively sustain their identities in their teaching practice by resisting identity silence — the identity-neutral approaches implicit in professional standards and schooling practices that seek to normalize white dominance 4 . identity-sustaining pedagogy is rooted in multicultural education, a field that seeks to envision schooling and education that serves a pluralistic population of diverse youth and communities while also envisioning and working toward necessary reforms (banks, 2004). above all, this essay offers a queer(ed) application of rios and longoria’s (2021) notion of identity-sustaining pedagogies. i argue that queer cycps might engage in sustaining their own identities — and survival in cyc spaces — by engaging in the identity-sustaining pedagogy framework that includes resisting identity silence, actively including identity in cyc practice, normalizing pushback, and empowering other identities. despite scholarship not having directly engaged in queer teacher practices toward identitysustaining pedagogies, research and scholarship have sought to address similar themes and have provided important insights, mostly at the conceptual level. rodriguez (2012) suggested that queer embodiments —the ways that queer bodies exist and function within a given space — enact a kind of pedagogy that inspires other queer students to imagine their own embodiments. he also framed these pedagogies as a type of generosity enacted through these embodiments. rofes (2000) supported a similar point through his retrospective analysis of the impacts his queer identity had on students. he surveyed his former students (by then adults) to ascertain whether his being openly gay had any lasting effects on their learning experiences. rofes concluded that teachers may play a central role in the moral development of youth and provide students with a model of how an adult can navigate a marginalized or controversial identity. rasmussen (2004) reviewed relevant, extant scholarship on queer teacher identity, especially empirical studies that examined the various parameters teachers navigate in determining visibility for queer identities. she contended that queer teachers construct their queer identities based on individual and contextual factors, such as time, space, and schooling site. she further argued that as queer teachers navigate visibility their identities are “constructed via moral, political, and pedagogical considerations related to the production of sexual identities” (p. 149). nevertheless, it is clear that scholarship has given too little attention to queer teacher practice, especially 4some examples of identity-neutral practices in the u.s. context include: using english or anglicized versions of names that are different from those used in one’s ethnic group, professional hairstyle expecations that do not account for different hair textures, and discouraging translanguaging or bilingual practices. for additional information, see rios and longoria, 2021. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 158  scholarship that tests and builds on these conceptual assertions. ghaziani and brim (2019) reinforced this point: queer pedagogies can orient us, even in the midst of the powerfully disorienting focus of the neoliberal academic marketplace, by allowing us to think critically and expansively about what kind of teacher-scholars we want to be — with whom, for whom, and where. (p. 22) while simultaneously lamenting the excessive theorizing that saturates queer studies scholarship, the authors suggested that advancing the field must include an agenda that examines how queer theory is enacted through pedagogical applications — and then acts upon what this work reveals. intersectionality, with its complex interplay of identities, is also an important concept in examining sustaining identities for queer teachers and cycps. originally coined by crenshaw (1991), the term has been popularly used as a buzzword simply indicating multiple identities. more pressing is the imperative that the term should be used in the service of aims that entail social change (collins, 2019). muñoz (1999) extended crenshaw’s (1991) conception to include queer identity. he suggested that “disidentifications” (p. 8) — ways in which one can contradictorily and paradoxically both identify with and push back on identities — can help explain ways queer minoritized groups respond to cultural dominance. these disidentifications are extensions of intersectional experiences that amplify the contexts that must be considered in interactions with cultural dominance. for racialized cycps, disidentifications can be seen as a queer of color version of crenshaw’s intersectionality. a corporeal pedagogy queer identity-sustaining practices are necessarily corporeal pedagogies. this means that queer educators and cycps who enact these pedagogies do so through their very bodies existing within a schooling or cyc site. as they insist on visibility and openly sharing their identities through the process of being out and other actions, they necessarily push the boundaries of heteronormative and cisnormative expectations. to be clear, this visibility itself teaches others to challenge and eventually to adapt through either cognitive dissonance or critical thinking processes. it is hoped that changes to normative expectations in the schooling or the cyc site would result. corporeal pedagogies, as i argue here, are not involuntary, passive acts. they are not enacted simply from existing within a space. rather, there is a body-bound dimension to corporeal pedagogies — one enacted regardless of the actions of the educator or cycp seeking to transgress norms — that stems from this conscious visibility. admittedly, there is an ontological potential that is realized in identity-sustaining practices; these should ultimately be seen as secondary to intentional acts to preserve one’s dignity, humanity, survival, and generosity in teaching or serving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 159  “to and through”5 the preservation of one’s queer identities. it is a decided act of survival for queer teachers and cycps to sustain their identities through their professional practice. one way to teach others about our experiences is to enact testimonios, or testimonies. the testimonio is a practice rooted in critical race theory that aims to empower stories from people with nondominant identities to speak back to beliefs present in the dominant culture (cruz, 2012; peréz huber, 2009). in other words, in testimonios we teach others about the world through the experiences of our bodies. testimonios are intended to help readers and listeners to our stories to build solidarity with each other toward some common changes necessary to our collective work (cruz, 2012). my testimonio speaks to my experiences in an innovative cyc–teacher education hybrid space, working in a teacher pathways program with an in situ teacher education practice. i insist on holding my teacher education courses in school settings. i believe it is important for teacher candidates — those training to be teachers — to have direct service with youth. as they navigate the nuances of practices, these teacher candidates have opportunities for enacting real praxis for course readings and themes. i have also had opportunities to hold in situ courses for teacher pathways students. these are courses designed for students considering a professional career in education, typically as a teacher or youth worker. my university colleagues and i call this pathways course and its associated program family and community engaged teaching, or facet (larson et al., 2019). a key feature in our courses is that faculty members work alongside students in enacting direct service with youth. we as faculty are thus able to introduce our student apprentices to critical and humanizing praxis, and can facilitate reflections on direct service, especially to make connections between course readings and themes, and to troubleshoot problems arising in practice. under facet, i work with apprentice undergraduate cyc students who volunteer in an afterschool program with middle school youth. admittedly, the disciplinary and definitional boundaries between cyc and teacher education, especially in the u.s. context, are unclear. this work is only a beginning toward bridging the two, yet our facet work has clearly revealed that we need more cyc in teacher preparation. for teacher education, this is an innovative space: while acquiring first-hand experience working with youth, our students can begin to discern their potential path toward applying for and studying in our teacher education programs toward professional licensure. for this pathway program, we try to center cyc work and experiences. we believe — in disagreement with the no child left behind reforms — that this approach to preparing teachers is far more sustainable and facilitates a more just practice than alternative approaches with a greater 5i extend gay’s writing on culturally responsive teaching here to support my argument about queer teacher and cycp practice. gay (2018) wrote that culturally responsive teaching seeks to teach “to and through [students’] personal and cultural strengths” in order to boost their achievement and success in schooling (p. 32). in their framework for identity-sustaining pedagogy, rios and longoria (2021) extended ideas about culturally responsive teaching to apply to teacher of color practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 160  focus on academics. further, i contend that teacher education programs sometimes lose sight of the importance of preparing teachers for roles that necessarily involve working with children and youth professionally. building this orientation — a type of realistic, practical, preprofessional preparation — is essential to liberatory work. the work my colleagues and i do facilitates reflective practice, which i believe helps to cultivate the kinds of critical thinking about practice that are necessary for making space for diverse identities and the liberation needed to sustain them within cyc and schooling spaces. in the most recent pre-pandemic offering for this coursework, a colleague and i held our facet class in a local middle school afterschool program in a school that serves the most racially and economically diverse population for its age group in the district. as far as i know, it is as yet the only school in the district that allows youth to self-identify as gender variant in official recordkeeping. my colleague and i cotaught a 2.5 hour course that included a 45 minute pre-service class, one hour of direct service with youth, dinner with the youth, and a 20to 30-minute debrief after the direct service. in this work, we attempted to center youth knowledge and learn about the community. this included community mapping, frequent informal interview projects with youth, research gathering on community demographic data and history, and, often, youth joining our debrief spaces for further insight and member checks on our processing of practice and praxis. this orientation to cyc ultimately facilitated identity-sustaining practice and queering work with youth. our pathways students were constantly asked to reflect on how their own identities inform their practice, how student identities were at play in service, and how to critically engage with changes to practice in serving youth and communities. we believe that when students are apprenticed into humanistic work, identities become more central and germane to the work than the more academic goals of teaching, although those are still important. throughout all of this work, i, as a university professor, find visibility and my own enactment of identity-sustaining pedagogy to be central to how i mentor cyc apprentices. in my testimonio of practice, i offer my experience as a genderqueer person working with youth and their community in a field setting. though this testimonio is necessarily a personal statement, please note that the work and setting that i detail in this essay is part of a larger collective process in working in this cyc space. longoria’s testimonio introduction i find much validation in the “subcultural” connotation that genderqueer evokes, especially in being a genderqueer person of color in a larger, national queer community that so often feels dominated and defined by white queerness (stryker, 2017, p. 24). following the u.s. 2016 election, i made the decision to be out about my genderqueer identity. i first transitioned to using my preferred name, longoria, rather than my birth name. i later asked people to use they/them international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 161  pronouns to further honor my genderqueer identity. throughout this process, i have navigated a kind of aesthetic — how to present my gender identity through attire and cosmetics — that fits within the professional settings in which i operate. working in university, school, and cyc settings means that i navigate spaces that have received queer identities in various ways. in university settings, as a university professor, my transition and outness were more easily effected. in schooling and cyc settings, i find myself more cautious, especially when i do not know enough about the space. this sometimes translates to concern for my personal safety, but more often manifests as caution. i do not mean to deny the complexity and difficulty of being visible and enacting identitysustaining practices. i offer a testimonio on these experiences here. the testimonio i recount my thinking from my most recent work in a cyc afterschool setting. walking through the parking lot before and after service with youth. the gaze of families and not knowing how they will perceive me. will today be the day that i will be questioned? should i push other cycps that i do not have a professional relationship with to insist on my pronouns? so many thoughts run through my head as i enter into cyc and schooling spaces: i worry that my nail polish, my typical turquoise blue, is too bright. i worry that parents will question my qualifications or reasons for being in the afterschool space. i worry that my braid is too unkempt and this will reflect poorly on queer educators. and then there is the business of my name badge. it is unusual — a type of queering — in that it shows, rather than a typical binomial name, my preferred name: longoria. related acts where my difference comes up are found even in the act of signing in at the school’s front office. though a necessary step to ensure school safety and follow its practices, i have been challenged to sustain my queer identity in these spaces. my mononym is sometimes not accepted as sufficient to use for sign in. some staff have challenged my sign-in name and required that i use my full legal name. moreover, some staff that do not know my gender identity have called me “sir” or referred to me using masculine pronouns. more recently, i have started to use a pin that reads “they/them” to signal to others my pronouns and gender identity. although these types of transgression might seem trivial, they effect a sustaining of my queer identity and my self-determination. yet, my active queering of norms is not spectacle — my name badge resists patriarchal binomial standards by simply rendering my mononym while still serving its necessary purpose in signaling to others in the space that i have been vetted for school safety. sustaining our identities in cyc spaces is necessary and pragmatic, but meets with ongoing resistance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 162  an act of generosity and futurity in their framework for identity-sustaining pedagogies, rios and longoria (2021) suggested that one needs to “normalize pushback” — to expect resistance and use it as a positive, critical tool. my testimonio illustrates that identity-sustaining pedagogy is not built upon passive acts: we effectively teach others about our identities by means of a process enacted through our very bodies. there will be resistance to our intentional sustaining of our identities. yet, this reciprocal process not only effects an active queering of the spaces we exist and work within, but also serves to empower other identities. while working in field-based settings, there are times when i must take the time to insist that a new colleague try using my pronouns, or must stop what i am doing to answer a question from a curious teenager. this, at times, demands that i enact patience and generosity in spite of any frustrations. thus, identity-sustaining pedagogies are acts of queer generosity (rodriguez, 2012). this is not some docile or passive generosity; rather, it is one that has an eye toward the future and for liberation. my insistence on my pronouns is also an act of ensuring our collective queer futurity — a move toward the goal of collective liberation (muñoz, 1999). this work encompasses a collective commitment toward a future that liberates all children and youth — and their communities — from heteronormative and cisnormative oppression. returning to the concept of intersectionality (collins, 2019), my multiple identities are a kind corporeal theory realized. as a mixed-race chinese mexican american queer person, the intersections of these identities bear on my work as a teacher educator. being a person of color (poc) and queer poc is foundational to my work. because i am often the first queer poc that youth, my teacher education students, fellow teachers, and cyc colleagues have worked with, i often navigate being a “first-and-only” for them. beyond the novelties of my being a “first” for people, i wrestle with the question: how do i not compromise or silence my identities? for example, my queer identity cannot be isolated from my racialized identities as a chinese mexican person. i struggle to resist hiding my identities amidst cultural difference. further, queerness — at least in the u.s. context — is particularly intertwined with whiteness. to consider queer identities in simple isolation, outside the context of intersectional identities, is to invisibilize the complex work queer teachers and cycps navigate in sustaining their identities. this is even more important for poc teachers and cycps working in schools and cyc settings. some researchers have suggested that navigating notions of adulthood and expected adult roles in youth and school settings can add to the challenges faced by queer researchers (pascoe, 2012; slovin, 2020). in many school and youth work settings, adults are effectively categorized according to a simple binary: those with relevance (and authority) and those of little consequence (and with little to no authority). the latter category is often applied to guests and volunteers in such spaces. i suggest that my work in such settings relies on my being seen as an adult with relevance. my work as a first-and-only, i believe, helps change conditions for other queer and poc cycps and educators in the space. given my unique, intersectional identities within such spaces, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 163  there is a kind of (role) modeling that i navigate. this suggests that a multilevel practice of identitysustaining pedagogies might help change conditions for all queer people within a setting, even if such changes are enacted for a future realized long after we have completed our own work within a space. not without costs there is a danger to enacting visibility. it is important to acknowledge that queer teachers and cycps must navigate risks in enacting their identity-sustaining pedagogy. some communities are not supportive. i do not mean to romanticize visibility or corporeal pedagogies, because doing so comes at a potential cost to safety. queer teachers and cycps will need to be mindful of their own professional and community contexts to ensure that their own outness and visibility can be effected safely. when it is safe to do so, we as queer educators and cycps teach our colleagues, youth, and families how to ensure our survival when we purposely sustain our identities through our professional work. pennell (2016) offered a counter-framework to traditional notions of cultural capital that gives schooling professionals a way to highlight queer people’s strengths, not their deficits, in what she calls “queer cultural capital”. as queer teachers and cycps enact visibility and actively work to sustain their identities in their professional settings, they build queer cultural capital. perhaps the accumulation of such capital within the systems in which we work might help to create more capacity for liberation of other minoritized identities. queer teachers and cycps hold queer cultural capital and, more importantly, sustain their queer cultural capital through identitysustaining practice. yet this sometimes comes at risk to personal safety. slovin (2020) wrote about their experiences navigating working with youth and queer identity when conducting ethnographic research in a high school in western canada as a non-binary researcher. key to their argument that “a person’s adherence to cisheteronormative logics is an integral aspect of being recognized as an adult” (p. 225) is their recognition of the nuanced differences between how youth and adult professionals in the school setting perceive who is and who is not an adult within the space.this has bearing on the contexts queer teachers and cycps navigate and might be important in considering the effects of visibility within a space. with a particular eye toward aesthetics, alvarez (2016) wrote “finding sequins in the rubble”, which seeks to theorize the ways latinx queer and trans people in los angeles “make sense of their lives and engage in an ongoing process of self-fashioning that involves aesthetic and affective strategies and fashion and style negotiations” (pp. 624–625). here, i extend alvarez’s concept for theorizing the ways cycps and teachers navigate and negotiate their own queer identities. alvarez reminds us that aesthetics are not trivial and are often a site of queer survivance. how then might this play out in cyc and schooling spaces? it is not insignificant that queer cycps and teachers enact their queer identities through aesthetics. perhaps for the dominant culture, one’s sartorial choices must adhere to explicit norms for professionalism and gender, and implicit norms for respectability. queer people transgress these norms for visibility or outness, at times for political international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 164  reasons and at other times for survival. these transgressions are important for pushing back against the potentially restrictive and policed norms present in our spaces (vachon, 2013, 2020). for youth, such aesthetic representations — a kind of corporeal pedagogy — present an ontological model, or, more affectively, a necessary hope that a queer life can be lived visibly and with purpose. modeling gender possibilities is important too. keenan (2017) argued that there is a powerful modeling trans teachers can effect in this work. he maintained that teacher educators hold power in helping students rethink and reimagine gender variance through a process he called “unscripting”. there are, however, limitations to this work. keenan related that there is deeper societal work to unscripting gender. yet, in working with youth, keenan argued that allowing youth to articulate the terms of their own sensemaking about gender, and, more importantly, encouraging play and experimentation in doing so, might make more space for diverse gender identities and the conditions to support them. cycps must enact corporeal pedagogies that are effected beyond simple visibilities: they must teach through their very existence — especially as out practitioners — in cyc spaces. how then might they sustain their identities through practices and direct service with children and youth? further, how might training programs work toward empowering practitioners to sustain their identities through praxis? this extends keenan’s (2017) notion of unscripting. in what ways can teachers, teacher educators, cyc educators, and cycps work toward conditions that allow for unscripting? in queering cyc spaces, there is an ongoing need to resist homonormativity. homonormativity refers to a limiting and restrictive sameness or singularity in queer identity (mccann & monaghan, 2020). it is important to keep in mind that the term “queer” comprises myriad identities. by one simple definition, “queer” refers to that which is not normal. yet, queerness itself should defy definition (jagose, 1996). there is a danger in normalizing singular, universal queer identities (i.e., stereotypes). while we might use “queer” as a kind of umbrella term in practical settings, we still seek to ensure that cycps make space for diverse queer identities. it might be too easy to call this intersectionality, for that term has euphemistic connotations. in many ways, “intersectionality” has been watered down by popular applications of the term. queer teachers and cycps have much potential to help further the development of expansive ways to envision a diverse queer community. it does not seem fanciful to hope that sustained activity of this type could produce meaningful change. obergefell v. hodges (2015) is the landmark supreme court decision that legally allowed same-sex marriage in the united states. there is a danger that, in this post-obergefell society, some might erroneously view the decision as having won queer rights for all, but that would fail to acknowledge the legal precarity of same-sex marriage and the ongoing lack of gender protections for cycps and educators. post-obergefell society thinking also invisibilizes nonhomonormative queer identities. in truth, queer legal protections remain precarious. legal wins international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 165  for queer rights triggered a conservative backlash that, under the trump administration, led to many trans protections being dissolved (fadulu, 2019). since president biden was elected in 2021, there has been a renewed increase in anti-trans legislation at the state level and is focused on preventing trans youth from accessing healthcare that affirms their gender identities and other legislation attempting to limit trans youth participation in sports (national public radio, 2021). for these reasons, it is important that cyc contexts remain spaces that protect and affirm queer identities, fostering self-determination and offering safety regardless of the political and legal landscape. although policies must be followed and laws must be obeyed, there remains the necessity for cyc practices to stay true to queer-supportive praxis regardless of political forces outside explicit cyc contexts. in our global pandemic world, amidst the turmoil of sudden and ongoing change to society, schooling, and cyc spaces, challenges to sustaining identities have emerged and may persist. we must continue to document, study, and find ways to help queer cycps sustain their identities in virtual settings. because screen names, cameras, lighting, and other technology help users to alter their appearance, gathering remotely may come with a benefit: queer cycps and educators can curate their appearance to more accurately reflect their queer identities — to more effectively sustain those identities. while some guidance might be gained from previous research on virtual spaces (kidd, 2017) — especially with regard to providing a support for queer identities — the changing landscape offers more questions than answers. concluding thoughts professions that work with youth — both cyc and the teaching profession — will necessarily evolve to serve the needs of queer youth, especially as more queer people enact visibility and as laws and policies change to better serve their humanity and dignity. with recent legal wins over the last 10 years for some queer people in the united states, there is a danger of settling into postobergefell society paradigms that might inhibit critical reforms toward meaningful queering of schooling and cyc spaces. instead, our work requires that we continue to archive — and perhaps rescue — the practices and collective memories of queer cycps in order to advance a meaningful sustaining of queer identities in cyc specifically. it is particularly important for queer people of color to rescue their own sensemaking and narratives (alvarez, 2016). i implore teachers and teacher educators, cyc educators and researchers, and cycps to document and examine their practices as they relate to queering cyc and youth work. the production of knowledge is imperative to ensure a queered future in cyc, especially for training programs. amid the global pandemic, still raging as this article goes to press in the late summer of 2021, it becomes even more important to archive the work that has been done and to take stock of what work has yet to be done, rather than let this moment of rapid change to our systems dictate priorities for reform. this work may also include engaging both university and privately held archives to record oral histories, especially of queer cycp experiences. admittedly, this call is u.s.-centered, but it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 152–169 166  hoped its applications will inspire corporeal pedagogies to be archived and honored in their contexts across borders. insisting on our identities is liberatory. as queer teachers and cycps make the conscious choice to sustain their identities, their actions will undoubtedly facilitate further positive change for all queer people within their professional settings. by choosing to sustain their identities, they work toward their own survival and pave the way for other queer people to do so within the spaces they share. this liberation is not without its costs: all queer people within schooling and cyc spaces must consider their personal safety, the safety of other queer people, and the full ramifications of visibility. it will be important for allies in this work to help ensure that conditions in such spaces will help, rather than hinder, queer teachers and cycps to sustain their identities. training programs will need to critically examine and revise their curricula and practices in order to help facilitate this work. while the long-term impacts of the global pandemic cannot yet be fully understood, this era promises, at minimum, a lasting change to schooling and cyc. what might it mean for us as teachers and cycps to seize this opportunity to purposefully remake practice for queer(ed) empowerment? what might it mean for us to intentionally center the sustaining and survival of queer(ed) identities in our schools and cyc settings? the answers to these questions — informed by contexts of the respective educative and cyc spaces — encompass a necessary collective futurity. international journal of child, youth and 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(2020, june 15). lgbtq teachers celebrate supreme court ruling on workplace protections. edweek. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/lgbtq-teachers-celebratesupreme-court-ruling-on-workplace-protections/2020/06 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717758 the impact of positive school experiences and school ses on depressive symptoms in chinese children: a multilevel investigation yang yue abstract: the current study investigates the effects of teacher support, school connectedness, and school socioeconomic status (ses) on youth depressive symptoms. data were collected from a sample of 881 students in grade 6 from 10 primary schools in northwest china. hierarchical linear modeling indicated that higher levels of teacher support, school connectedness, and school ses were significantly associated with fewer depressive symptoms. further, the relationships between school-level ses and youth depressive symptoms varied by the participant’s perceived level of teacher support and perceived level of school connectedness. these findings underscore the importance of positive school experiences on child psychological outcomes. implications for future research on chinese youth are discussed. keywords: teacher support, school connectedness, school ses, depressive symptoms, chinese children acknowledgements: i am thankful to all the children who participated in the study. i also appreciate the support received from principals, head teachers, and parents of the child participants. gratitude is also extended to the xian city bureau of education for permitting and providing support for data collection. yang yue msw is a phd candidate in the college of social work, university of south carolina, hamilton college, 1512 pendleton st, columbia, sc 29208, usa. email: yue@email.sc.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717758 mailto:yue@email.sc.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 38 childhood onset depressive symptoms have been associated with greater rates of depression recurrence (merry, mcdowell, wild, bir, & cunliffe, 2004), faster relapse rates (alloy et al., 2006), increased chronicity of episodes, and longer duration of illness (lewinsohn, shankman, gao, & klein, 2004). moreover, some longitudinal cohort studies have tested the developmental continuity between childhood and adulthood diagnoses and found that the link is both homotypic and heterotypic; that is, youth depressive symptoms are associated with increased risk of adult depression and other types of mental illness (stringaris & goodman, 2009, 2013). depressive episodes in childhood often have debilitating consequences across multiple life domains, including poor academic achievement at school and conflicting relationships with family members and peers (kaminer, conor, & curry, 2007). the most serious outcome is suicide (centers for disease control and prevention, 2015). indeed, suicide is an important cause of death among individuals aged 10 to 14 years in both the united states and china (anderson & smith, 2003; cui, cheng, xu, chen, & wang, 2011). given the future risk for major depression and the significant functional impairment related to child depressive symptoms, assessing the ecological correlates of depressive symptoms among children is critical. in sharp contrast to the amount of research conducted in the united states and other developed countries, few studies on youth depressive symptoms have been conducted in china, particularly in the economically disadvantaged areas of northwest china. as school-aged children and adolescents spend at least half of their waking hours in school except during holidays, schools present one of the most influential environments for developing youths (smith, boutte, zigler, & finn-stevenson, 2004). in a cultural setting like china’s, which emphasizes academic competence and interpersonal harmony, support from teachers and a sense of connectedness in schools could be particularly valuable for students (stewart & sun, 2012; zhang, li, gong, & ungar, 2013). besides the direct protective effect on mental health, positive school experiences have been found to act as a buffer for youth at risk, such as those living in rural poverty (davidson & adams, 2013), and those in a racial or sexual minority (joyce & early, 2014). in contrast, negative school experiences, often characterized by unfair treatment from teachers, peer rejection, and poor disciplinary climates, tend to lower student-perceived teacher support and school connectedness, resulting in more depressive symptoms (kuperminc, leadbeater, & blatt, 2001; loukas & robinson, 2004). thus school context is important in protecting children and adolescents from depressive symptoms. along with china’s rapid economic development over the last three decades, income inequality between urban and rural areas has increased. children and adolescents in rural areas commonly grow up in households with financial strains. the majority of rural youth attend local schools with limited social capital, reducing their later educational and career prospects. chinese youth in rural schools receive little help with psychological issues, and there is limited research comparing rural school youth and urban school youth in northwest china with regard to depressive symptoms. to fill this gap, the current study collected data from children and adolescents from schools with diverse socioeconomic status (ses) in shaanxi province, a typical northwestern international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 39 inland region characterized by prevailing poverty and an increasing urban–rural economic gap. the goal of the present study is to examine school-related predictive factors associated with youth depressive symptoms. specifically, this study examines the following research questions: (a) to what extent are student-perceived teacher support, student-perceived school connectedness, and school ses each associated with youth depressive symptoms? (b) to what extent does the association between school ses and youth depressive symptoms vary by student-perceived teacher support? and (c) do the effects of school ses on youth depressive symptoms depend on studentperceived school connectedness? literature review perceived teacher support and youth depressive symptoms students’ perceptions of support from teachers have been vitally linked to psychological outcomes for school-aged children and adolescents. teacher support refers to ongoing warmth and trust, united with open communication, instructional support, and positive involvement in students’ overall well-being (reddy, rhodes, & mulhall, 2003; wang, 2009). a low level of teacher support among youth is consistently associated with a high level of youth depressive symptoms. for example, in a longitudinal sample of 2,585 u.s. students who were followed from grade 6 to grade 8, reddy and colleagues (2003) found that students who reported decreasing levels of teacher support had corresponding increases in depressive symptoms. further, in a crosssectional study of a nationally representative adolescent sample from grade 7 to grade 12, joyce and early (2014) found that youth with lower perceptions of teacher support had more depressive symptoms. moreover, besides poorer psychological adjustment, way, reddy, and rhodes (2007) and wang (2009) have demonstrated that less perceived support from teachers led to more disruptive behaviors in the classroom. among chinese youth, the significant contribution of teacher support to youth’s emotional health is well supported. in a sample of rural adolescents aged 13 to 16 years, davidson and adams (2013) found that among youth who experienced cumulative adversities in rural villages, teacher support buffered the impact of poverty-related risk factors on internalizing problems. similarly, in a study of 221 urban adolescents, teacher support was the most significant predictor of positive psychological functioning in chinese youth (tian, liu, huang, & huebner, 2013). particularly for rural left-behind children (those who stay at home when both of their parents relocate to cities to work), social support from teachers predicted fewer depressive symptoms (he et al., 2012) and problem behaviors (liu, li, chen, & qu, 2015). perceived school connectedness and youth depressive symptoms greater school connectedness among children and adolescents is consistently linked with better psychological outcomes. school connectedness refers to the extent to which students feel included, respected, valued, cared for, and supported by others in the school context (joyce & early, 2014; libbey, 2004; shochet, dadds, ham, & montague, 2006). using data from the u.s. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 40 national longitudinal study of adolescent health, two cross-sectional studies employing multilevel modeling found that students’ higher levels of school connectedness correlated to lower levels of depressive symptoms (anderman, 2002; joyce & early, 2014). additionally, prospective studies in the united states have demonstrated that a lower level of school connectedness was predictive of future depressive symptoms. for example, in a sample of 2,022 students aged 12 to 14 years, school connectedness associated strongly with concurrent depressive symptoms and predicted depressive symptoms one year later (shochet et al., 2006). in another study of 460 children and adolescents in grades 6 and 7, kuperminc and colleagues (2001) found perceptions of school climate (i.e., fairness, order, and discipline; sharing of resources; and student interpersonal relationships) accounted for 2% of the variance in anxious-depressed symptoms and 7% in behavioral problems at the 12-month follow-up. in the chinese context, there is little research on the relationship between school connectedness and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents. however, the available research suggests a strong link between school connectedness and adolescent depression; for example, in a study that examined chinese adolescents in the 11th grade, zhao and zhao (2015) found that perceived school connectedness was negatively correlated with depressive symptoms, and mediated the effect of emotional regulation on depressive symptoms. school ses and youth depressive symptoms although depressive symptoms have been found to be associated with low family ses (wickrama, noh, & elder, 2009) and low community ses (wight, botticello, & aneshensel, 2006), a small number of studies have assessed the role of school-level ses on youth’s mental health. overall, the limited research on the association between school ses and youth depressive symptoms reveals a mixed picture. for example, in a cross-sectional sample of 13,235 adolescents with an average age of 15.9 years, goodman, huang, wade, and kahn (2003) found low schoollevel family income predicted a high level of depressive symptoms after controlling for individuallevel family income. however, in another study examining longitudinal changes in depressive symptoms, school-level aggregated family poverty was not found to have a significant effect on the trajectories of depressive symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood (wickrama & vazsonyi, 2011). similarly, dunn, milliren, evans, subramanian, and richmond (2015) found that school-level ses, calculated as the mean of standardized measures of school-level poverty, school-level parental occupation, and school-level percentage of whites, was not significantly related to youth depressive symptoms. these mixed findings might be attributed to different operationalizations of school ses. in the chinese context, there were no studies that directly examined the relationship between school ses and youth depressive symptoms. however, studies showed that youth living in rural communities (who are very likely to be in resource-constrained schools), had higher rates of internalizing symptoms compared with those in urban communities (fan, zhang, yang, mo, & liu, 2011; hesketh & ding, 2005). similarly, davidson and adams (2013) found rural poverty international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 41 affected every aspect of youth’s lives (e.g., parent migration and academic struggles), which further trapped them in adversity. in another multiwave study on urban and rural adolescents from hunan province of china, cohen and colleagues (2014) found that rural chinese adolescents experienced increased levels of anxiety symptoms, but showed no significant difference with regard to depressive symptoms. as school setting is an important ecological entity that parallels family and neighborhood, it might be important to examine the association between school factors and youth mental health. the current study grounded in bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory (1979), the current study aims to fill gaps in the social determinants literature by examining the influence of school factors on depressive symptoms in a little-studied population: urban and rural youth residing in northwest china. according to bronfenbrenner, human development is a dynamic process influenced by innate characteristics and life experiences. bronfenbrenner’s theory embraces the person-inenvironment perspective by focusing on the individual and the context in which the individual functions. according to bronfenbrenner, youth development is strongly influenced by the family, school, and community contexts in which they live and interact. this study takes account of the nested nature of the data (individuals nested in schools), and applies a multilevel statistical approach to model the effects of individual and school factors simultaneously on youth depressive symptoms. individual perceived school experiences are considered level-1 predictors; school characteristics are considered level-2 predictors. the objective of this cross-sectional study is to understand the unique influence of studentperceived teacher support, student-perceived school connectedness, and school-level ses on depressive symptoms among children and adolescents. also, the current study investigates the extent of the association between school-level ses and depressive symptoms varied for individuallevel perceived teacher support and school connectedness. specifically, the following hypotheses were tested: • hypothesis 1: a higher level of student-perceived teacher support, student-perceived school connectedness, and school-level ses will predict a lower level of youth depressive symptoms. • hypothesis 2: the association between school-level ses and youth depressive symptoms will vary for youth with different perceived levels of teacher support, such that among students in low ses schools, the protective effect of teacher support will be stronger compared with those in high ses schools. • hypothesis 3: the association between school-level ses and youth depressive symptoms will vary for youth with different levels of school connectedness, such that among students in low ses schools, the protective effect of school connectedness will be stronger compared with those in high ses schools. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 42 methods sampling procedure and participants three-stage stratified and random cluster sampling was used to recruit youth participants from 10 primary schools in a mid-sized city and surrounding area located in northwest china. the sample was stratified first by region (urban vs. rural districts) and then by school type (key vs. ordinary schools, the two main types of public school in china). compared to ordinary schools, key schools usually have higher quality teachers, better facilities, and more academically advanced students. most of them are located in urban areas. at the third stage, two grade 6 classes in each school were randomly cluster sampled. approvals from a review board in china and the 10 school committees were obtained before conducting the study. students were recruited through a letter that was sent to the parentteacher conference of the selected classes. families who were interested in participating were asked to sign and return a consent form. the students whose parents had consented to participate and who were willing to participate themselves completed a questionnaire during the school day. after a brief introduction of this research project by the author and research assistants, student respondents were asked to complete the questionnaires by themselves and were assured of the confidentiality of their responses. as students completed the paper-and-pencil self-report measures, the research assistants were present to answer questions. sampled students were surveyed on demographic information, personality characteristics, family and school experiences, and psychological functioning. all responses were identifiable only by participant number. a total of 881 sixth-grade students participated in this study, with a response rate of 97%. the study sample was fairly evenly divided between urban (51%) and rural (49%) schools. reflecting the proportion of key schools in this area, 34% of sampled students were in key schools, whereas 66% were in ordinary schools. among the participants, 400 were girls and 481 were boys, with a mean age of 11.59 years. the majority were the only child (71%) in a two-parent family (86%). the mean monthly family income was 6,501 rmb (approximately 980 usd). forty-five percent of either the father or mother of student respondents had less than nine years schooling. fifty-three percent of either the father or mother of sampled students held low-skilled occupations, such as waitress, cleaner, or construction worker. since the missing data were few (less than 1% of responses) and were missing at random, listwise deletion was used to treat the missing data, as it outperforms the imputation method when less than 30% of data are missing (kromrey & hines, 1994). measures child depressive symptoms. the primary outcome variable, child depressive symptoms, was measured by the children’s depression inventory (cdi; kovacs, 1992). the cdi consists of 27 items designed to measure a variety of symptoms of depression, such as sleep disturbance, appetite loss, suicidal thoughts, and general dysphoria; it is not a diagnostic instrument of clinical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 43 depression. each item consists of three statements that describe a range of possibilities, from normal responses (0), to indications of moderate depressive symptoms (1), to severe depressive symptoms (2). the instrument has been widely used in many western countries and has been found to be reliable and valid in the chinese version (yu & seligman, 2002; he et al., 2012). the cronbach’s alpha measured in this study is .86. student-perceived teacher support. the level-1 predictor, perceived teacher support, was measured by the subscale of the child and adolescent social support scale (casss; malecki & demary, 2002). the 12-item subscale covers youths’ perceptions regarding emotional, informational, appraisal, and instrumental support from teachers, with a cronbach’s alpha of .89. although the casss was originally developed from a sample of western youths, it has shown good psychometric properties among chinese child and adolescent populations (chen & wei, 2013; liu, mei, tian, & huebner, 2016). the sampled students responded on a 6-point likert scale, from 1 (never) to 6 (always), reflecting the degree to which respondents perceived teachers as attentive, encouraging, caring, and interested in them. sample items include: “if i study hard, my teacher will praise me”, and “my teacher helps me solve problems by giving me information”. student-perceived school connectedness. the level-1 predictor, perceived school connectedness, was measured by the psychological sense of school membership scale (pssm; goodenow, 1993). the pssm has been widely examined in the chinese context, and has demonstrated good reliability and validity (bao & xu, 2006; cheung, 2004; cheung & hui, 2003; pan, wang, song, ding, & dai, 2011). this 18-item measure with a 5-point likert-type response scale from 1 (not at all true) to 5 (completely true) comprises items such as “i feel like a real part of this school”, “people here know i can do good work”, and “i am included in lots of activities at this school”. cronbach’s alpha in the present study was .88. school ses. this composite measure, the level-2 predictor, was calculated as the mean of standardized (z-score) measures of aggregated household income, aggregated parental education, and aggregated parental occupation with higher values representing higher levels of school ses (cronbach’s alpha = .81). the calculation of the school ses composite variable followed the standardization process used by duncan and aber (1997). first, the mean and standard deviation for each variable in the composite variable was calculated using data from observations included in the sample. second, because the three variables included in this composite measure were not originally measured on the same scale, z-scores were created for each student for each variable included in the composite. third, the z-scores for each variable included in the composite were averaged into a final composite score. importantly, the composite measure of school ses used the same variables as the family ses to provide consistency across ses measures. control variables. individual-level covariates included the age of the respondent as a continuous variable, and gender as dichotomous (boy = 0, girl = 1). family cohesion was measured by the six items on parental behaviors and interactions with children in the family setting created by yi, wu, chang, and chang (2009); each item was rated on a 4-point likert scale, from 1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 44 (disagree) to 4 (agree), with higher scores represents higher level of family cohesion. the cronbach’s alpha of the family cohesion scale was .87. individual-level family structure (single parent = 0, not single parent = 1), sibling presence (single child = 0, non-single child = 1), and family ses (a composite measure of family income, parental education, and parental occupation) were also controlled. school-level covariates included school type (ordinary = 0, key = 1) and school urbanicity (rural = 0, urban = 1). analytic approach given the need to model individual and contextual characteristics simultaneously, the author employed a 2-level hierarchical linear model (hlm) to take into consideration the fact that individuals were nested within schools. the 2-level hlm approach made it possible to examine the influence of individual and school variables on depressive symptoms of rural and urban chinese children and adolescents. adhering to the procedure that raudenbush and bryk (2002) recommended for hlm analyses, a total of five 2-level hierarchical linear models were estimated. to determine the best fitting model, proc mixed in sas v9.4 with maximum likelihood (ml) estimation and a betweenwithin degrees of freedom approximation was used. the estimated coefficients associated with each of the main effects indicate whether the predictors of interest are associated with depressive symptoms and whether the interactions are significant, net of other control variables in the model. the final model for the outcome variables is: 𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 𝛾𝛾00 + 𝛾𝛾10𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑆𝑆𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾20𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾30𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾40𝐺𝐺𝐴𝐴𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐴𝐴𝐺𝐺𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾50𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐷𝐷ℎ𝐴𝐴𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝐷𝐷𝐺𝐺𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾60𝐹𝐹𝐷𝐷𝐺𝐺𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐷𝐷𝐹𝐹𝐺𝐺𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾70𝑆𝑆𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝐺𝐺𝐴𝐴𝐶𝐶𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾80𝐹𝐹𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾01𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾02𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾03𝐷𝐷𝐹𝐹𝐺𝐺𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝐺𝐺𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾11𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑆𝑆𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 ∗ 𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖 + 𝛾𝛾21𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 ∗ 𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝑖𝑖 + 𝜇𝜇𝑖𝑖 + 𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 where depresssymptomsij is the depressive symptoms score for student 𝑖𝑖 in school 𝑗𝑗 . 𝛾𝛾00 represents the estimated average depressive symptoms scores in the population when all variables are set to zero. the regression parameters 𝛾𝛾10 through 𝛾𝛾80 are associated with individuallevel independent variables and covariates: student-perceived teacher support, student-perceived school connectedness, age, gender, family cohesion, family structure, sibling presence, and family ses. the regression parameters 𝛾𝛾01 through 𝛾𝛾03 reflect the effects of the school-level predictor and controlled correlates — school ses, school type, and school urbanicity — on youth depressive symptoms. the cross-level interaction, 𝛾𝛾11, represents the moderating effect of perceived teacher support on school ses. similarly, another cross-level interaction, 𝛾𝛾21, represents the moderating effect of perceived school connectedness on school ses. the random effect, 𝜇𝜇𝑖𝑖, represents the common unobserved characteristics that distinguish school 𝑗𝑗. the residual, 𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖, is the unique error term associated with student 𝑖𝑖 in school 𝑗𝑗. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 45 to determine the proportion of total variance explained by school differences — the intraclass correlation (icc) — a fully unconditional model with no predictors included (model 1) was tested. with 18.6% of the total variance in youth depressive symptoms residing between schools, and 81.4% within schools, these results indicated that proceeding with a multilevel hlm analysis is appropriate and preferred over traditional regression models. as suggested by raudenbush and bryk (2002), the decision to proceed with a multilevel analysis depends partly on the extent of between-group variation compared with within-group variation. to answer the research questions, the author then estimated a level-1 model (model 2) with student-perceived teacher support and school connectedness as level-1 predictors; a main effect model (model 3) including both level-1 and level-2 predictors for the first research question; a cross-level interaction model (perceived teacher support * school ses) for the second research question (model 4a); and another cross-level interaction model (perceived school connectedness * school ses) for the third research question (model 4b). all models were estimated as random intercept models. parameter estimates and fit statistics for the five models are presented in table 2. to determine if changes in model fit were significant, the -2 log likelihood (-2ll) and applied chi-squared likelihood ratio tests were examined. this revealed that model 4a was the best-fitting fixed-effects model. all continuous predictor variables without a meaningful interpretation of zero were grand-mean centered. to test model assumptions, the author ran the mixed_dx macro in sas proc mixed (bell, schoeneberger, morgan, ferron, & kromrey, 2010) to examine residuals for violations of distributional assumptions at both of levels 1 and 2, and no violations were detected. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 46 results descriptive statistics descriptive statistics for participants and bivariate correlations among the key study variables and controlled correlates are presented in table 1. the mean cdi score in the sample was 23.57. in regard to clinical significance, 21.4% of the sample had a cdi score equal to or above the cutoff point of 19 (kovacs, 1992). this finding is consistent with previous studies among children and adolescents in other areas of china (chan, 2012; wang et al., 2015). the bivariate analyses demonstrated that being male, better family cohesion, being a single child, and better family ses predicted fewer symptoms. importantly, the key study variables, student-perceived teacher support, student-perceived school connectedness, and school ses, were associated with youth depressive symptoms. both individual-level perceived teacher support (r = -.17, p < .001) and school connectedness (r = -.13, p < .001) were negatively associated with youth depressive symptoms, suggesting that teacher support and school connectedness are protective factors for youth emotional disorder. further, school-level ses was negatively associated with depressive outcomes (r = -.11, p < .001), indicating that low school ses is a significant risk factor for depression. table 1 descriptive statistics and correlations for all variables (n = 881) variable m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. depressive symptoms 23.57 2.24 2. child age 11.59 1.07 -.04 3. child gender .45 .50 -.07* .01 4. family cohesion 13.24 1.51 -.18* .02 .01 5. family structure .86 .42 .03 .01 .01 .23* 6. single child .71 .48 .10* .01 .09* .03 .03 7. family ses 9.54 .95 -.07* .03 .02 .02 .26* -.06* 8. perceived teacher support 43.88 4.76 -.17* -.15* .05* -.02 .02 .01 .07* 9. perceived school connectedness 49.93 6.61 -.13* -.03 .01 .01 .02 .01 .05* .14* 10.school ses 7.16 1.39 -.11* .01 .01 .03 .04 .06* .28* .07* .05* 11.school type .30 .48 .01 .002 .01 .03 .01 .02 .21* .04 .04 .20* 12.school urbanicity .50 .53 .01 .01 .01 .01 .03 -.09* .07* .04 .04 .11* .04 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 47 two-level hierarchical linear models table 2 presents the results of the random intercept effects of the hlms. model 1 indicated that youth depressive symptoms scores varied across schools, with about 18.6% variation to be explained by school-level characteristics. model 2 showed that youth depressive symptoms varied in individual age (b = -.26; p < .001) and gender (b = -.89; p < .001) when between-school variation was partialled out. results showed that younger participants and male participants were more likely to report higher depressive symptoms scores. while family structure was not correlated with the outcome variable (b = .03, p > .05), better family cohesion and having no siblings were associated with fewer depressive symptoms (b = -.20, p < .001; b = .12, p < .001, respectively). importantly, teacher support (b = -.19, p < .001) and school connectedness (b = -.16, p < .001) were significantly associated with depressive symptoms. model 3 is the main effect model that contained the level-1 and level-2 predictors and covariates simultaneously. the model showed school ses correlated negatively with youth psychological outcome when controlling for level-1 variables (b= -.35, p < .05). the results from model 2 and model 3 supported hypothesis 1, showing significantly negative associations between teacher support, school connectedness, school ses, and depressive symptoms. model 4a included cross-level interaction between perceived teacher support and school ses (b = .67, p < .05), which was statistically significant, indicating that the relationship between school-level ses and youth psychological outcome varied by individual-level teacher support. model 4b included another cross-level interaction between perceived school connectedness and school ses (b = .54, p < .05), which was also significant, meaning the relationship between school ses and youth psychological outcome did vary by individual-level school connectedness. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 48 table 2 parameter estimates for internalizing problems models and models of interest (n=881) fixed effects model 1 model 2 intercept random model 3 (rq1) intercept random model 4a1(rq2) intercept random model 4b (rq3) intercept random intercept 20.66* (.31) 23.21* (1.47) 23.29* (1.47) 23.93* (1.47) 23.93* (1.47) child age (centered) -.25* (.09) -.25* (.09) -.26* (.09) -.25* (.09) child gender -.89* (.28) -.88* (.28) -.89* (.27) -.88* (.28) family cohesion (centered) -.21* (.02) -.20* (.02) -.20* (.02) -.20* (.02) family structure .03 (.07) .04 (07) .03 (.08) .03 (.07) single child .12* (.08) .12* (.08) .12* (.09) .12* (.08) family ses -.03 (.02) -.03 (.02) -.03 (.02) -.03 (.02) perceived teacher support (centered) -.19* (.24) -.18* (.24) -.19* (.24) -.18* (.24) perceived school connectedness (centered) -.15* (.18) -.16* (.18) -.16* (.18) -.16* (.18) school ses -.34* (.20) -.35* (.20) -.34* (.20 school type .03 (.04) .03 (.03) .03 (.04) school urbanicity .02 (.07) .02 (.07) .02 (.07) perceived teacher support*school ses -.08* (.02) perceived school connectedness*school ses -.06 * (.02) model fit -2ll 5858.7 5695.5 5678.1 5673.3 5674.5 error variance level-1 35.84* (1.46) 32.00* (1.39) 31.99* (1.39) 31.89* (1.39) 31.90* (1.39) intercept (school) 8.17* (1.14) 6.78* (1.08) 6.33* (1.06) 7.13* (1.06) 6.98* (1.06) note: *p < .05; icc = .186; estimation method=ml; between within degrees of freedom; entries show parameter estimates with standard errors in parentheses. 1best fitting model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 49 figure 1 illustrates an interaction effect, the association between youth depressive symptoms and school ses as a function of individual perceived teacher support. figure 2 illustrates another interaction effect, the association between youth depressive symptoms and school ses as a function of individual perceived school connectedness. figure 1. the effect of perceived teacher support on the association between school ses and youth depressive symptoms. in figure 1, the predicted depressive symptoms score is plotted against school-level ses separately for low and high levels of teacher support. as shown, the interaction between individual-level perceived teacher support and school ses was significant in predicting youth depressive symptoms. overall, a high level of teacher support protected youth from depressive symptoms. further, the association between school ses and depressive outcome varied with the level of teacher support. as depicted in figure 1, the effect of school ses on depressive symptoms was larger among students perceiving a higher level of teacher support. counter to hypothesis 2, the protective effect of teacher support is stronger for youth in high ses schools compared with those in low ses schools. that is, for students from low ses schools, the effect of teacher support on depressive symptoms was weaker. similarly, figure 2 plots the predicted depressive symptoms scores against school ses separately for low and high levels of school connectedness. generally, for an average student in a school with average ses, a higher level of school connectedness was related to lower scores on the scale of depressive symptoms. as depicted in figure 2, the interaction effect between studentperceived school connectedness and school ses was significant in predicting youth depressive symptoms. school connectedness moderated the negative association between school ses and youth depressive symptoms. this association was significantly stronger among students with high 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 low school ses high school ses y ou th d ep re ss iv e sy m pt om s low perceived teacher support high perceived teacher support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 50 school connectedness, but much weaker among students with low school connectedness, which rejected hypothesis 3. thus, the hypothesized stronger protective effect of school connectedness for students in low ses schools was not supported. figure 2. the effect of perceived school connectedness on the association between school ses and youth depressive symptoms. discussion as expected, higher perceptions of teacher support and school connectedness were associated with fewer depressive symptoms, offering preliminary support for the impact of positive school experiences on youth psychological adjustment in northwestern china. the results echo findings from previous research done in the united states (joyce & early, 2014; reddy et al., 2003) and other areas in china (davidson & adams, 2013; zhao & zhao, 2015). a major contribution of the current study is to establish school ses as a valuable predictor of depressive symptoms among chinese youth. this finding adds to the current literature by relating school ses to a reliable and validated chinese-version measure of child depressive symptoms. while years of research have established that the ses of a youth’s family and community is vitally linked to the youth’s mental health (wickrama et al., 2009; wight et al., 2006), school ses has been largely overlooked in the literature as an important resilience/risk factor, particularly in the chinese context. in the last three decades, along with the economic boom in china, the urban–rural economic gap has widened rapidly. many schools in rural areas are resource-constrained, and as a result, students often experience low-quality instruction, high teacher turnover, and a disordered physical environment (davidson & adams, 2013; sargent & 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 low school ses high school ses y ou th d ep re ss iv e sy m pt om s low perceived school connectedness high perceived school connectedness international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 51 hannum, 2009), potentially harming their mental health. future research should examine the relationship between low school ses and myriad aspects of children’s socioemotional and educational development. this study also examined whether the relationship between school ses and youth depressive symptoms varied with perceived teacher support. beyond its independent benefit (davidson & adams, 2013; reddy et al., 2003), perceived teacher support appeared to play an interactive role with school ses. because students in this sample had spent a great deal of time with teachers, due to long school days and long academic years (adams & hannum, 2016), the author originally hypothesized that students in low ses schools would gain more benefit from teacher support. the findings suggest, however, that the association between teacher support and youth depressive symptoms is stronger in high ses schools. one explanation for this finding is that youth in economically well-off schools might be better able to perceive and respond to teacher support (cohen et al., 2014; ding, 2006). for example, academic anxiety is prevalent among students from low ses schools who have not benefited equally from educational resources in china (ding, 2006), which might make students less likely to perceive and respond to teacher support. the results underscore that teacher support is important for reducing depressive symptoms among the sampled youth in northwest china. this is true for both low and high school ses, but the effect is greater when school ses is high. in the current study, the relationship between school ses and depressive symptoms did vary significantly for students with different perceptions of school connectedness. for students both in low and high ses schools, higher perception of school connectedness was associated with fewer symptoms. however, counter to the third hypothesis, results showed that school connectedness has a stronger protective effect for youth in high ses schools than for those in low ses schools, similar to the moderating role of teacher support. one possible explanation for these findings could be that high ses is significantly related to urban key schools that commonly have enriched curriculums and activities, and adequate teacher training (sargent & hannum, 2009), which may promote school connectedness among students. another explanation could be that for the overwhelming majority of sampled students in high ses schools, both parents work; as a result, students in these schools might not receive sufficient supervision and emotional support from parents. thus connectedness with schools, support from teachers, and other positive school experiences could be more important for the mental health of these children than of those in low ses schools who have at least one parent available at home. future research is needed to better understand why this might be the case. it has been noted that children and adolescents in economically disadvantaged schools are at increased risk of experiencing a negative educational climate, including poor teacher quality, harsher discipline, and peer delinquency (davidson & adams, 2013; hannum & park, 2002). such negative experiences could accumulate and ultimately result in poorer mental health. although it is not the focus of this study, it is noteworthy that gender effects on chinese youth depressive symptoms differ from the effects reported in u.s. literature. a large number of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 52 studies on u.s. youth found that girls reported greater severity as well as more rapid development of depressive symptoms (ge, conger, & elder, 2001; kessler et al., 2012). in contrast to the research conducted with american youth, our study found that boys reported higher scores on the measure of depressive symptoms. this unexpected finding might be attributed to son preference in chinese culture. parents pin great hopes on their sons, and often use stricter parenting with them than with their daughters, which could contribute to deterioration in the sons’ psychological functioning. this is especially true for boys from economically deprived families, who often receive the majority of household resources to stay in school, and are expected to become academically outstanding in order to bring the whole family out of poverty eventually. thus, it is possible that boys who struggle with academics might be more depressed than girls who face similar academic hardships. future research is needed to explore the relationships between parenting, academic performance, and gender difference in depressive symptoms among chinese children and adolescents. limitations although the current study contributes to the literature by enriching our understanding of positive school experiences on youth mental health, a number of limitations should be considered when interpreting the study findings. first, self-report measures were used to examine depressive symptoms, teacher support, and school connectedness. with regard to depressive symptoms and other constructs, while self-report measures used in the present study possess high levels of reliability and validity, the use of more sophisticated and comprehensive methods of assessment, such as clinical interviews and information from multiple informants (parents and teachers), should be utilized in future studies. second, the cross-sectional nature of this study does not allow eliminating alternative explanations for the proposed causal relationships. this highlights the need for prospective studies to establish the causal direction between the key predictors and the criterion variable. lastly, the findings of this study were limited to a small number of sixth grade children in one city and its surrounding areas in china. their generalizability to youth in other areas of china and other countries is thus limited. conclusion this pilot study serves as a basis for continuing studies in understanding how school factors predict youth mental health in both wealthy urban and disadvantaged rural areas. given the prevailing emphasis on education in china, the school setting is particularly critical to the development of chinese youth. further, school is often the primary setting for mental health education, prevention, and intervention in china. future research on the relationship between teacher support, school connectedness, school ses, and chinese youth depressive symptoms is warranted, particularly among those in rural resource-constrained schools. ultimately, understanding the effects of teacher support and school connectedness might lead to opportunities for developing and implementing efforts to support youth psychological functioning within the school context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 53 references adams, j., & hannum, e. c. 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(2013). stressful events and depression among chinese adolescents: the mitigating role of protective factors. school psychologyinternational, 34(5), 501–513. doi:10.1177/0143034312472760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9744-x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0123-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.01.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-007-9143-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2010.04.001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20453 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10964-005-9009-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0268580909102914 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1522-3736.5.1.59a http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0143034312472760 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 37–58 58 zhao, y., & zhao, g. (2015). emotion regulation and depressive symptoms: examining the mediation effects of school connectedness in chinese late adolescents. journal of adolescence, 40, 14–23. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.12.009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.12.009 the impact of positive school experiences and school ses on depressive symptoms in chinese children: a multilevel investigation literature review perceived teacher support and youth depressive symptoms perceived school connectedness and youth depressive symptoms school ses and youth depressive symptoms the current study methods sampling procedure and participants measures analytic approach results descriptive statistics two-level hierarchical linear models discussion limitations conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716741 a community survey of child care issues in canadian shift workers: evidence for barriers and opportunities phoebe scotland, the elk valley child care advisory initiative, and the elkford women’s task force abstract: child care availability and affordability are common concerns throughout many communities in canada. furthermore, there are specific child care issues affecting families that include shift workers. a formal initiative was developed in the elk valley, british columbia, following identification of child care as a major concern of residents, and in 2015 a survey was conducted with the aim of understanding child care issues as they relate to employment. the intent was to investigate barriers and opportunities, and to develop both shortand long-term mitigation strategies. the survey queried the perspectives of 302 respondents, including parents, guardians, and other caregivers, as well as child care providers, employers, and other interested community members. the results confirmed that there are barriers to availability and affordability of child care and allowed for recommendations regarding mitigation strategies. furthermore, respondents indicated that municipal governments, the provincial government, local employers, child care providers, families, and other community organizations are responsible for working together to develop solutions to the child care issues. the results of this community-based survey are applicable to other communities across canada and internationally, and provide insight into child care issues that impact the workforce. keywords: child care, shift work, parents, dual-income, employer, employee, early childhood education, workforce phoebe scotland, m.a. (the corresponding author) is an instructor in psychology at the college of the rockies, 2700 college way, cranbrook, bc, v1c 5l7. email: phoebe.scotland@gmail.com the elk valley child care advisory initiative was formed to provide the teck coal communities of interest (coi) advisory initiative with data to be used toward the mandate of fostering dialogue and developing solutions regarding child care issues, sector-specific challenges, and shortages of child care options in the elk valley. 116 centennial street, po box 1777, sparwood, bc, v0b 2g0. email: sharon.strom@teck.com the elkford women’s task force is a charitable non-profit organization formed in 1992 to address social needs impacting community members, particularly women. p.o. box 742, elkford, bc, v0b 1h0. email: ewtf@telus.net http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716741 mailto:phoebe.scotland@gmail.com mailto:sharon.strom@teck.com mailto:ewtf@telus.net international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 43 high-quality child care is an essential component of a healthy society. child care that meets a population’s needs promotes healthy child development, increases participation of women in the workforce, provides economic advantages to families and to society overall, and reduces workplace absenteeism by employed parents (invanova, 2015). despite the benefits of high-quality child care, there is widespread recognition that child care, particularly care that is provided by certified early childhood educators (eces), is not meeting the needs of british columbia (bc) families (invanova, 2015). most child care arrangements follow typical daytime work schedules, which produces additional challenges for shift workers who rely on paid child care. while some dual-parent families find that shift work can contribute to successful child care solutions, shift work is associated with numerous challenges related to family scheduling (williams, 2008). approximately 20% of the canadian workforce is employed in some form of shift work (statistics canada, 2011g), therefore scheduling that incorporates shift work is common in canadian families. occupations where shift work is common include manufacturing, some trades, food and service industries, and emergency responders. the present study originated from a formal initiative developed in the elk valley, bc, canada, with the aim of understanding child care issues as they relate to employment. this grassroots project originated from identification of child care as a major concern of area residents, who sought both shortand long-term mitigation strategies. our survey data describe child care use, needs, barriers, and opportunities in the elk valley. although the data are specific to the three communities studied, the findings are relevant to other communities facing similar child care issues. comparable communities exist across bc, across canada, and internationally. the need for flexible child care in canada has been formally reported on since at least 1989 (friendly, cleveland, & willis, 1994), yet many of the same issues remain. the present findings and resulting recommendations propose strategies at several levels, including individuals and families, community support, broader community development, and governmental policy. in bc, there are two major categories of child care: licensed and unlicensed (sometimes also referred to as licence not required, or lnr, care). whether a child care provider must be licensed or not is determined by factors such as the number of children in care at a given time and the duration of care. the bc community care and assisted living act applies to all licensed child care programs, and sets requirements for “staffing qualifications, staff to child ratio, space and equipment, and program standards” (government of british columbia, 2009, p. 5). the community care and assisted living act also outlines approved early childhood educator (ece) programs for obtaining professional credentials and first aid requirements for child care providers. types of child care are outlined in the parents’ guide to selecting and monitoring child care in bc, published by the government of british columbia (2009), and are described below. this full description is relevant to the present study because the type of care and associated staffing requirements are components of fully understanding child care barriers and opportunities. group child care is a type of licensed care that can include infant and toddler care for children from birth to 36 months of age, and preschool care for children ages 30 months to grade 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 44 infant/toddler group child care is required to have at least one licensed infant/toddler ece, one ece, and one ece assistant per 12 children. group child care for children over 30 months of age is required to have at least one ece and two ece assistants for groups of up to 25 children. school-age group child care is a type of licensed care for children who attend school and require care outside of school hours. these programs require one “responsible adult” for every 10 children in kindergarten or grade 1 (maximum group size of 20 children), and one “responsible adult” for every 15 children in grades 2 and higher (maximum group size of 25 children). “responsible adults” are people aged 19 years and older who have completed 20 hours of training, completed first aid certification, and passed a criminal record check. preschool programs also operate for children who are at least 30 months old and have not begun grade 1. children attend preschool programs for a maximum of 4 hours per day, in groups of 20 or fewer children, and are staffed by at least one ece for every 10 children, or one ece and one ece assistant for a group of 20 children. family child care, another type of licensed care, operates out of the care provider’s own home rather than a child care centre. this type of care can accommodate children from birth to 12 years of age, and the care provider is a “responsible adult” who is licensed to care for up to seven children of varying ages. there are specific regulations regarding the age combinations that are permitted in this type of child care arrangement. also, any family members or others over the age of 12 who live in the home must pass a criminal record check. in-home multi-age child care is provided in the care provider’s home, but in this case, the care provider is an ece licensed to practice in bc, and can care for up to eight children at once. there are regulations regarding the age combinations of the children, and other requirements such as a criminal record check for people in the home over age 12. multi-age centre-based care is also licensed, and is provided by an ece, with a maximum of eight children per ece at a given time. unlicensed or lnr child care is permitted for situations where a provider cares for a maximum of two children or one sibling group at a given time, who are not related to the provider by blood or marriage. care providers are encouraged to register with their local child care resources and referral (ccrr) program, but this is not an obligation. lnr care refers to those providers who are not registered, whereas registered lnr (rlnr) care refers to those providers who have met requirements including passing a criminal record check, character reference checks, a home safety assessment, a physician’s report on their physical and emotional capacity to care for children, first aid training, and participation in training related to child care. in child’s own home is a third type of unlicensed child care, and refers to child care that is provided by a nanny, babysitter, or au pair. in this situation, parents are responsible for making employment insurance and canada pension plan payments, as well as meeting other obligations of employers. eces complete several components of training in order to receive their professional credentials. eces are licensed through the early childhood educator registry of bc, and have completed an approved ece training program, work experience requirements, character and work reference checks, and passed a criminal record check. the ece licence to practise must be renewed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 45 every 5 years, and requires 400 hours of related work experience, references, and demonstrated completion of 40 professional development training hours. approved ece training programs take approximately 1 year to complete, with an additional year of training required for infant/toddler or special needs designations. certified ece assistants must have completed at least one ece class in child growth and development, health, safety and nutrition, or child guidance. they must also have related work experience, complete character and work reference checks, and pass a criminal record check. certification is administered through the early childhood educator registry of bc, and expires every 5 years. the renewal requirements include 400 hours of related work experience, reference checks, and completion of an additional post-secondary class with relevant content. there are provincial differences in licensing standards to practice as an ece, and training is not necessarily accepted between provinces. the present study we aimed to document barriers and opportunities regarding child care, in three communities composed primarily of shift workers. data-based recommendations were developed, which suggest mitigation strategies for the identified child care concerns. the data are discussed in the context of child care throughout canada and internationally. due to a perceived child care crisis in fernie, sparwood, and elkford, the elk valley child care advisory initiative (evccai) was established in january 2014, and members determined that quantifiable data-based findings on child care barriers and opportunities would be needed in order to propose recommendations to community organizations, industry, and various levels of government. a collaboration was formed with the elkford women’s task force (ewtf), an elk valley non-profit society that operates local social programs. together, the evccai and the ewtf obtained funding from the columbia basin trust in order to conduct the elk valley child care barriers and opportunities survey. the survey aimed to: 1. increase understanding of concerns related to affordability and availability of child care in the elk valley. 2. increase understanding of whether child care issues create barriers to employment in the elk valley. 3. document opportunities for shortand long-term mitigation strategies. 4. develop data-based recommendations for solutions that are specific to each of the three largest communities in the elk valley. the survey findings were presented publicly in each community, at general community presentations, and to local city councils. they have also been presented online at www.ekkids.ca. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 46 communities surveyed the survey was conducted in the communities of fernie, sparwood, and elkford. variables related to child care in each community appear in table 1. table 1 community characteristics characteristic fernie sparwood elkford population* 4,448 3,667 2,518 ages 0–4 years* 240 220 185 ages 5–9 years* 215 225 180 licensed group care spaces 12 8 0 children waitlisted for licensed group care 40 20 n/a preschool spaces 48 8 57 cost of licensed group care (infant toddler/preschool age) $940/$740 per month $1166/$895 per month n/a hours of licensed care 8:15 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. monday-friday 6:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. monday-friday n/a licensed family care spaces 7 7 n/a strongstart program yes yes no *census, statistics canada, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c as indicated in table 1, both fernie and sparwood have strongstart programs, which provide opportunities for supported child development in these communities, but do not meet child care needs, as parents must attend with their children. a pilot project called healthy start is operated in elkford on saturdays by the ewtf; the program focuses on fitness, healthy eating, and other issues related to child development. however, the healthy start program is also not a child care option, as it requires parent participation. furthermore, the limited opportunities for after school care in fernie and sparwood do not meet community needs. elkford residents report that the elk valley garage sale facebook group is a common place to find child care providers, but many residents have expressed safety concerns over this option. in addition to the data presented above, it is relevant to note the most common industries reported in each community, according to the statistics canada 2011 national household survey (nhs), which used the north american industry classification system (naics) 2007. in fernie, these were (a) mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (570 of 2,720 people participating in the labour force); (b) accommodation and food services (350 people); and (c) health care and social assistance (340 people; statistics canada, 2011e). in sparwood, the most common industries were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 47 (a) mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (665 of 2,075 people in the labour force); (b) health care and social assistance (170 people); and (c) wholesale trade (140 people) and retail trade (140 people; statistics canada, 2011f). the primary naics-classified industries in elkford were (a) mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (705 of 1,420 people in the labour force); (b) public administration (90 people); and (c) accommodation and food service (85 people; statistics canada, 2011d). many people in these occupational categories are shift workers. methods information sessions and survey distribution prior to the survey, community information sessions were conducted to gather information regarding child care in the elk valley, as well as to brief interested community members regarding the intent of the survey and time frames for participation. newspaper articles, social media, posters, and word of mouth were used to announce the first round of information sessions. fortyseven people attended the sessions and provided their perspectives on child care in the elk valley. parents, child care providers, employers, and other interested community members were represented. additionally, separate interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, including parents, child care providers, employers, staff members of the east kootenay child care resource and referral program (ekccrr), and those involved in the east kootenay child care needs assessment project (a similar project in cranbrook, a nearby town). input from these sources enriched the survey consultant’s understanding of current child care issues in the elk valley, and contributed to the development of a priori hypotheses to be assessed following data collection. approximately 1 month following the conclusion of the first round of community information sessions, the elk valley child care barriers and opportunities survey was available for respondents to complete. the survey was open for participation for 1 month, in june and july of 2015. participation was solicited through newspaper articles and advertisements, radio advertisements, flier distribution through area schools, advertisement on the elk valley/crowsnest pass communities of interest advisory initiative website, social media, community posters, community partners (such as a public health office, local businesses, the chamber of commerce, and parenthood groups), distribution with teck coal limited pay stubs and staff email distribution lists, and word of mouth. participation was voluntary and met criteria outlined by the declaration of helsinki. respondents were informed that it was not necessary to be a parent in order to complete the survey, and there were separate sections of the survey for parents/guardians/primary caregivers, child care providers, employers, and other interested community members. a second round of community information sessions occurred during the time that the survey was available for participation. data collection and analyses data were primarily collected online, using surveygizmo online survey software (surveygizmo, boulder, co) with display logic to ensure that participants were only asked international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 48 questions relevant to their circumstances. diagnostics provided by surveygizmo indicated that the survey had low fatigue and high accessibility scores, and estimated that it would take an average of 22 minutes for respondents to complete. paper copies, which included all questions in the survey, were also available for pick-up and drop-off at two locations in each community (libraries, community centres, recreation centres). respondents were anonymous if they chose to be, but had the option to provide contact information in order to receive the results of the survey. only the survey consultant had access to participant identities, if provided. raw data were compiled into a report generated by surveygizmo, and were also exported for further analyses. analyses were performed using ibm spss 23 software (ibm, armonk, ny) and quickcalcs online software (graphpad software, san diego, ca). open field data were categorized as described, or were quoted verbatim where indicated. data from the three communities were combined for overall analyses when appropriate, which was the case for most questions. separate recommendations were presented to each community, but the present report discusses findings for the three communities combined. participants of 411 surveys started, 302 were completed, for a completion rate of 73.5%. however, ip address data were not analyzed, so it is possible that some of the incomplete surveys represent respondents who later returned to complete the survey. of the 302 completed surveys, 296 were completed online and 6 were completed using the paper forms. there were 209 women (69.2%), 50 men (16.6%), and 43 people (14.2%) who either indicated that they preferred not to give their gender, or who skipped this question. the survey was open to people who live or work in the elk valley. the three main communities of interest were each represented, with 134 (44.4%) participants from fernie, 79 (26.2%) from sparwood, 71 (23.5%) from elkford, and 18 (5.9%) from other communities including hosmer, crowsnest pass, cranbrook, jaffray, and elko. the participation rates for each community are approximately representative of the elk valley, when compared with data from the 2011 census of population (statistics canada, 2011; χ2 = 5.813, p = .0557), and also achieved sample sizes that enabled separate analyses of responses from each community where appropriate. respondents indicated the community in which they work, study, or operate a business. of the 278 respondents to this question, 77 (27.7%) indicated fernie, 100 (36.0%) indicated sparwood, 68 (24.5%) indicated elkford, and 33 (11.8%) indicated other communities. the majority of survey respondents (243 of 302, 80.5%) were parents, guardians, or other primary caregivers to children. it should be noted that findings indicating numbers of children to whom particular situations apply should be interpreted with caution because multiple parents, guardians, or primary caregivers of some children may have completed the survey. respondents were asked whether another parent to their children planned to complete the survey, and 36 of 240 respondents (15.0%) indicated that they did. an additional 89 respondents (37.1%) were unsure as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 49 to whether their children’s other parent(s) planned to complete the survey. therefore, although it is reasonable to draw conclusions regarding trends observed, the data should not be used to represent exact child care needs within the communities of the elk valley. respondents were permitted to identify multiple categories of interest in the survey. there were 31 participants who indicated that they are child care providers (10.3%); 23 employers, recruiters, or human resources staff (7.6%); 17 other family members to children who require care (5.6%); 30 future parents (9.9%); and 10 people who had other interests in completing the survey (3.3%). the majority of survey respondents were married, in a common-law relationship, or cohabiting with a relationship partner (78.5%). the remaining respondents were divorced or separated (4.3%), single never married (4.0%), or did not answer the question (13.2%). of respondents giving annual household income information, 44.0% reported household incomes greater than $120,000 per year (see figure 1). for comparison, the median family income of couple-with-children families reported for the 2010 tax year was $116,110 in fernie (statistics canada, 2011e), $115,022 in sparwood (statistics canada, 2011f), and $126,459 in elkford (statistics canada, 2011d). the present sample is therefore approximately representative regarding household income. the majority (90.8%) of survey respondents were not recipients of child care subsidies. respondents were employed in a variety of fields, with high representation (42%) from the mining industry compared to the general population of the elk valley communities (χ2 = 107.419, p < .001; statistics canada, 2011d, 2011e, 2011f). this high representation was anticipated given that mining is a major local industry, and because some survey recruitment strategies focussed on employees of teck coal ltd. data from the nhs show that respondents were relatively well-educated compared to the general population of the elk valley (statistics canada, 2011d, 2011e, 2011f), with 85.5% of the 264 respondents to this question having completed a post-secondary credential, compared to only 58.2% of the local general population (χ2 = 175.169, p < .001). this difference from the general population of the elk valley is likely due to generational shifts in levels of education. the nhs data include all adults over 15 years of age, including those who are not currently in the workforce or of typical child-rearing ages. results current child care of the 243 parents, guardians, and other primary caregivers who completed the survey, 127 (52.2%) indicated that they currently access child care for their children. of those respondents who currently access child care, 71 (55.5%) access it in fernie, compared to 44 (34.6%) in sparwood, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 50 33 (26.0%) in elkford, and 9 (7.1%) in other communities. some respondents indicated that they access child care in multiple communities. of the 219 responses regarding frequency of child care access, respondents indicated that 73 of 219 children (33.3%) attend full-time care (35 hours or more per week), 43 children (19.6%) attend half-time care (20–35 hours per week), and 103 children (47.0%) attend part-time care (less than 20 hours per week). of the 144 respondents to this question, 59 (41.0%) indicated that they pay for more child care than they actually require, in order to keep a space available when they need it. data were also collected regarding current child care schedules and types of care. results are presented below in figures 1, 2, and 3. respondents had the option to select multiple schedules and types of care for each child, which was necessary in order to capture complete data on child care use and needs. respondents currently accessing child care were asked whether any of their children access multiple care options in a single day (e.g., having a babysitter take the child to their licensed group daycare), and 35 of 138 (25.4%) respondents indicated that this type of multiple provider child care arrangement occurs for at least one of their children. figure 1 current weekly child care schedules 21% 7% 16% 6% 2% 4% 16% 11% 17% m-f, full days set weekdays, full days weekdays, variable days weekdays, drop-in m-f, half days set weekdays, half days after school before school backup or emergency international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 51 figure 2 current early, late, and weekend care figure 3 current types of care accessed (number of children) summer care was specifically queried, as child care availability and needs often change in the summer months when children are not attending school. of 241 respondents, 44 (18.3%) indicated that their children require full-time summer care, and 50 of 235 (21.3%) indicated that their children require part-time summer care. 37% 4% 7% 6% 6% 4% 13% 9% 14% backup or emergency weekend overnights weekend evenings weekend early mornings weekend extended days weekday overnights weekday early mornings weekday evenings weekday extended days 58 19 31 27 18 63 82 11 7 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 52 preferred child care when asked which communities they would access child care in if it were available, respondents indicated that they would access child care for their children in fernie (135, 42.1%), sparwood (99, 31.0%), elkford (77, 24.0%), and other communities (10, 3.1%). respondents had the option to indicate multiple communities in which they would access child care. table 2 compares communities where respondents are currently accessing child care, with the preferred usage indicated in the survey. given that few respondents indicated multiple communities, there appears to have been a strong preference for care in a particular community. strategies that rely on travelling between communities are thus unlikely to meet child care needs, even in these communities that are relatively nearby to each other. table 2 current versus preferred child care by community community current frequency current % indicated frequency indicated % fernie 71 55.5 135 42.1 sparwood 44 34.6 99 31.0 elkford 33 26.0 77 24.0 other 9 7.1 10 3.1 parents, guardians, and other primary caregivers were asked the frequency of child care required for children who are not currently accessing child care. they indicated a total current need for 153 full-time spaces (35 hours or more per week), 117 half-time spaces (20–35 hours per week), and 78 part-time spaces (less than 20 hours per week). parents, guardians, other caregivers, and future parents were also asked to indicate the child care schedules and types of care that they anticipated needing in the future. data are presented below in figures 4, 5, and 6, with findings demonstrating a clear preference for licensed group child care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 53 figure 4 anticipated child care schedules required figure 5 anticipated early, late, and weekend care required 22% 10% 15% 7% 4% 3% 13% 11% 15% m-f, full days set weekdays, full days weekdays, variable days weekdays, drop-in m-f, half days set weekdays, half days after school before school backup or emergency 23% 4% 6% 6% 7% 3% 21% 9% 21% backup or emergency weekend overnights weekend evenings weekend early mornings weekend extended days weekday overnights weekday early mornings weekday evenings weekday extended days international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 54 figure 6 preferred access to future child care (number of children) special needs respondents were asked whether any of their children have special requirements that impact child care. of the 240 people who answered this question, 18 (7.5%) indicated that at least 1 child has special child care requirements, and 21 (8.8%) of respondents were unsure. future parents and those who plan to have more children would not be able to accurately predict whether their children will have special care requirements; therefore, the estimates are likely minimized. those who indicated special child care requirements were asked to provide details of need, and gave answers including allergies and food intolerances (8), developmental disabilities including autism (3), needs related to speech disabilities (2), behavioural concerns (1), and being a nonnative english speaker (1). special needs related to developmental delays and behavioural issues are maximally addressed in licensed group child care settings, as this is the only type of care setting in which supported child development programs can occur. child care affordability given that affordability was a specific area of interest in the current survey, respondents were asked the maximum amount per month that they would be willing to pay for child care, per child, based on an average of 40 hours per week of high-quality care that meets their family’s needs. only 104 of 234 respondents (44.4%) indicated that they would be willing to pay rates comparable to current child care fees (over $700 per child for full-time care) in the elk valley (figure 7). therefore, costs of care must be considered in strategies aiming to increase accessibility to child care. 278 199 73 146 151 169 98 7 13 16 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 55 figure 7 fee levels that parents, guardians, and primary caregivers are willing to pay barriers to child care all survey respondents were asked whether they feel that there are currently barriers to accessing child care in the elk valley. only 3 of 278 respondents (1.1%) indicated that they do not feel that there are barriers. the vast majority of participants (255, 91.7%) indicated that they feel that there are barriers, and 20 (7.2%) of participants were unsure. respondents who indicated that there are barriers, or who were unsure, were first asked to complete an open-field question regarding the current barriers. common responses were related to the limited number of spaces available, the length of time on waiting lists, scheduling issues (particularly regarding early mornings and extended days related to shift work schedules), lack of qualified child care providers, cost of care, lack of available infant and toddler care, staff turnover, and lack of part-time or variable-schedule care. examples of open-field responses are presented in the anecdotal findings section of this report. following the open-field question, respondents were asked to rate their level of concern regarding predefined child care issues, using a slider bar to indicate responses between 0 (no concern) and 10 (maximum concern). means, standard deviations, and number of responses are indicated below in table 3. the findings demonstrate that respondents had the greatest concern (8.41/10) regarding the number of spaces available, but moderate to high levels of concern were indicated for all child care issues that were queried. quantitative data obtained from ratings of concern with the predefined categories demonstrated similar concerns to those in the qualitative open-field format question. 23% 20% 12% 10% 11% 7% 6% 6% 5% less than $500 $500-599 $600-699 $700-799 $800-899 $900-999 $1000-1099 $1100-1199 more than $1200 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 56 table 3 participant levels of concern regarding child care issues child care issue average (mean) standard deviation number of responses number of spaces available 8.41 2.34 260 hours available 7.74 2.62 248 days of the week available 5.86 3.26 217 availability of part-time care 6.85 3.04 230 availability of care on variable days 7.03 3.32 187 cost 7.93 2.49 245 quality of care 7.58 2.80 239 safety and monitoring of care providers 7.10 3.02 224 staff training and qualifications 7.25 2.83 227 communication or access to information 6.46 2.85 217 stability or longevity of care 7.76 2.65 234 respondents were also asked a series of questions to assess the impact of child care unavailability on their choices to live or work in the elk valley, as well as decisions related to their employment status. data are summarized below in table 4. the data demonstrate that many respondents have experienced adverse impacts on their employment due to child care issues; in several cases, these issues have resulted in unemployment, despite the respondent’s desire to participate in the workforce. anecdotal reports and the survey findings revealed strategies that parents use to compensate for child care unavailability. for example, many parents, guardians, or other primary caregivers rely on family or friends to supplement formal child care. others share child care with another family (either sharing a child care space or caring for each other’s children at different times), while some couples work opposite shifts to ensure child care coverage. the survey data revealed that 69 of 221 (31.2%) respondents work opposite shifts from their spouse or their children’s other parent in order to ensure child care coverage. while this strategy ensures that child care needs are met, anecdotal findings indicate that working opposite shifts places significant stress on families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 57 table 4 child care as it relates to community choice and employment status decision (self or spouse) number of respondents impacted % of total respondents choice of community to live in, within elk valley 53 19.3 considered moving from elk valley 101 37.1 not seeking employment 142 60.2 quit job or retired early 74 31.5 declined job offer 95 41.9 limited career opportunities or promotion 132 56.2 not returning to work following parental leave 101 44.5 unemployed to care for children, but would prefer to be employed 63 28.5 additionally, 8 of 221 (3.6%) of respondents indicated that they have school-age children at home unsupervised due to the lack of available child care options, despite feeling that the children should have adult supervision. an additional 4 of 221 (1.8%) of respondents indicated that they would prefer not to say whether this scenario occurs in their family. this issue was raised as a topic of concern during the first round of community information sessions, and although it does not apply to a large number of respondents, it is nonetheless concerning. many survey respondents rely on informal child care when it is available, such as that provided by extended family, trusted neighbours, and friends. of the respondents to this question, 116 of 239 (48.5%) had informal care available, primarily for infrequent or back-up care. however, they did also express hesitation over using these child care options, and examples of these hesitations are given in the anecdotal findings section of this report. the responses to this question also indicate that 50.5% of respondents have no informal care options available. the perceived negative effects of child care on various aspects of work, family, and community life were assessed by asking respondents to use a slider bar to indicate negative effects from 0 (no negative effect) to 10 (maximum negative effect). participant responses are given in table 5, and indicate that the most negative impact of child care is on household budgets (6.92/10). respondents indicated moderately negative effects of their child care situation on other aspects of life, including mental health (5.66/10) and time together as a family (5.58). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 58 table 5 perceived negative effects of child care aspect of life average (mean) standard deviation number of responses productivity at work 5.28 3.20 158 work–life balance 5.33 3.24 177 mental health (e.g. stress, anxiety, depression) 5.66 3.21 182 sense of belonging in the community 4.18 3.20 145 attachment to the community 4.25 3.20 142 household budget 6.92 2.95 190 safety and security 5.04 3.13 131 overall quality of life 5.10 3.11 151 time together as a family 5.58 3.30 148 child care opportunities the majority of respondents indicated that they feel there are barriers to accessing child care in the elk valley; however, they did give approximately neutral responses when asked to use a slider bar from 0 (no positive impact) to 10 (most positive impact) to indicate perceived positive impacts of child care on aspects of their work, family, and community lives. the response data are presented in table 6. respondents indicated feeling most positively regarding the effects of child care on overall quality of life. survey respondents were asked questions to assess potential solutions to child care issues. when asked whether they would be interested in job sharing, 124 of 237 respondents (52.3%) indicated that they would be interested in this possibility, and an additional 40 people (16.9%) indicated that they were unsure. job sharing was described in the survey question as a situation where two employees share the same position and responsibilities, each working a portion of the position hours. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 59 table 6 perceived positive effects of child care aspect of life average (mean) standard deviation number of responses productivity at work 4.72 3.19 102 work–life balance 5.00 3.21 117 mental health (e.g. stress, anxiety, depression) 4.50 3.31 107 sense of belonging in the community 3.98 3.06 112 attachment to the community 4.11 3.11 108 household budget 3.72 3.51 94 safety and security 4.75 3.28 97 overall quality of life 5.12 3.24 104 time together as a family 5.02 3.32 98 anecdotal reports from the initial community information sessions indicated that there may be people living in the communities who are trained in early childhood education but who do not work as child care providers. survey results found that there are at least 10 eces in the elk valley who are not currently working in child care, and 12 people who have qualifications to work as eces with infants/toddlers or children with special needs, but who are not currently doing so. when asked the reasons for not working in child care or for not using their infant/toddler or special needs training, respondents indicated that they do not have child care for their own children, that they would not make enough to pay for child care for their own children, or that they have had challenges with licensing regulations. as discussed in the introduction, the regulations for ece qualification differ between provinces. some of these trained eces did not receive their education in bc, and therefore may be required to take additional courses in order to demonstrate credentials accepted by the early childhood educator registry of bc. an additional 27 people indicated that they currently do not have qualifications to work as an ece, but that they would be interested in working in the child care field. furthermore, 77 of 239 respondents (32.2%) indicated that they would be interested in caring for another person’s children in their home on some days, if that person cared for their children on other days. an additional 40 people (16.7%) indicated that they were unsure whether they might be interested in a child care trading arrangement. if support was available to navigate regulations for becoming a licensed family daycare or to comply with lnr family care, 40 people indicated that they might be interested in providing this type of care, and an additional 40 people were unsure. respondents were asked whether they would be interested in hiring a live-in nanny to care for children in their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 60 own home, provided that it was cost effective and that they had support with finding the right person, and 110 of 238 respondents (46.2%) indicated that they are interested in this option. an additional 35 respondents (14.7%) were unsure. overall, these data indicate that the respondents were quite open to exploring a variety of child care arrangements that could meet their needs. respondents expressed a high level of interest in employers offering child care on-site or near to work sites, if such care were comparable in price to other available options. a total of 193 of 238 respondents (81.1%) indicated that they would be very likely or somewhat likely to have interest in using child care offered by their employer. responses of child care providers the survey included questions designed to assess perspectives of child care providers. thirty-one respondents categorized themselves as child care providers; this number included some not currently employed as child care providers. the ones who were employed worked in a variety of care models, the majority at licensed group child care facilities. data on types of child care provided by survey participants are presented in figure 8. figure 8 types of child care provided (number of providers) child care providers were asked to indicate their highest level of education in child care. of 25 respondents, 20% were ece certified with infant/toddler or special needs certification, 36% had ece certification, 12% were ece assistants, 4.0% had the “responsible adult” designation, and 28.0% had no ece education. child care providers were asked whether they plan to be working in child care 5 years from now, with 13 of 26 respondents (50.0%) responding “yes,” 5 of 26 (19.2%) responding “no,” and 8 of 26 (30.8%) being unsure. reasons for not working in child care in the future are summarized in figure 9. 10 5 1 6 5 1 7 1 2 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 61 figure 9 reasons for leaving child care field (number of respondents) child care providers were asked to indicate their level of concern regarding issues related to their profession, using a slider bar from 0 (no concern) to 10 (maximum concern). this data is summarized below in table 7. findings indicate that low wages are the most concerning issue for child care providers (9.32/10), which was supported by the open-field responses. table 7 concerns of child care providers provider issue average (mean) standard deviation number of responses low wages 9.32 1.25 20 lack of training opportunities 5.97 2.48 18 lack of support to eces as professionals 7.47 2.16 17 understaffed working conditions 8.08 2.15 16 job instability 4.11 3.78 11 other 7.28 2.09 4 the challenges experienced by child care providers were further explored by investigating reasons for the scarcity of available spaces. of 15 respondents who worked at centres with hired staff, 14 (93.3%) indicated that their child care centre has challenges with finding qualified staff. additionally, 6 of 16 respondents (37.5%) indicated that finding or maintaining appropriate space is a challenge. respondents were asked whether there is a waiting list to begin child care at their 1 6 3 5 5 3 2 4 retirement low wages home with own children lack of support to eces understaffed working conditions lack of training opportunities other career interests other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 62 centre. of the 17 respondents to whom the question applied, 15 (88.2%) said “yes.” furthermore, child care providers confirmed that preference is often given to families using full-time spaces rather than part-time spaces, with 76.9% of applicable providers indicating registration preference for children who attend full-time. employer perspectives on child care an aim of the survey was to investigate employer perspectives on child care. the survey respondents included 23 employers, recruiters, or human resources staff, and 17 of 21 of these respondents (81%) indicated that they have employees who require care for their children. table 8 presents survey data regarding child care issues from an employer perspective, based on reports from their employees. employers indicated whether the listed events had occurred, specifically as a result of employees or potential employees not having child care for their children. although this is a small sample of employers, 9 of 20 (45%) employers, recruiters, or human resources staff reported that they had cancelled a service offered by the business, closed temporarily, or had dayto-day business operations otherwise impacted by the absence of an employee due to child care issues. table 8 experiences of employers related to employee child care child care issue % reporting issue proportion of total responses missed work in past 1 year 76.2 16/21 quit job in past 3 years 28.6 6/21 did not return from parental leave in past 3 years 33.3 7/21 declined job offer in past 3 years 23.8 5/21 employer respondents were asked whether they offer any assistance to their employees regarding child care, and 3 of 21 (14.3%) indicated that they do. specific assistance offered included special leave for caring for ill children (2) and discounted child care rates for employees at a child care centre (1). responsibility for child care issues survey respondents were asked who they feel should be responsible for ensuring that child care needs are met in the elk valley. the findings summarized in table 9 indicate that the majority of respondents feel that addressing child care solutions should be a partnership with several contributors, including community organizations, parents, guardians, and primary caregivers, employers, child care providers, and all levels of government. of those respondents who indicated international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 63 that a specific contributor should be taking on a leadership role, municipal and provincial government were most commonly identified as preferred leaders. table 9 perceived responsibility for finding solutions to child care issues contributor not at all responsible minor contributor one of several contributors a leader in finding solutions solely responsible number of respondents parents and other family members 4.2% 12.7% 48.5% 28.5% 6.2% 260 organizations that provide child care 1.6% 3.9% 45.1% 46.7% 2.7% 255 employers 5.0% 12.4% 45.7% 34.9% 1.9% 258 community organizations 6.0% 11.1% 56.3% 26.2% 0.4% 252 municipal government 1.9% 5.8% 34.2% 50.6% 7.4% 257 provincial government 3.5% 5.4% 31.4% 50.8% 8.9% 258 federal government 7.0% 10.2% 31.3% 43.4% 8.2% 256 anecdotal findings in the process of gathering background information for the survey design, during interviews with key stakeholders, and through open-field responses to the survey, it became clear that the full scope of the issues regarding child care cannot be fully elucidated without considering the personal experiences of individuals in the context of the group data. in many cases, the impact on families and care providers could be observed in the emotional recounting of events related to child care. participants in these discussions felt that ensuring access to high-quality child care is a critical aspect of community sustainability, and often made comments about the impacts of child care issues on their mental health, their children’s development, and gender equity in the workplace and in society. the majority of survey respondents gave anecdotal or open-field responses. the selected comments below are representative of the open-field responses to the survey. i believe the responsibility for the education of all children begins when they are born, not when they turn 5, therefore i believe we need universal child care in canada. we do the best we can with wages and funding, but unless we have more we will never achieve the quality of care our children deserve. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 64 it’s hard to keep child care providers in an area where they can make more driving truck. lack of child care is why i am unemployed. i don’t have a choice. i have also done child care for others as they don’t have options for child care. it is a terrible situation for a lot of women, who can feel quite trapped or stuck. i didn’t know before i had kids that the hardest thing about being a parent would be not being able to work. i believed that i could have both. i’d love to stay working as an ece, but i wouldn’t make enough to pay for child care for my own kids. besides, there probably wouldn’t be a space available for them anyway. there is no child care that coordinates with [employer] schedules. we have had luck finding local nannies who we trust, but have had five in 18 months, all who have moved on for reasons unrelated to the job. this creates a lot of stress and change for our family, and makes it challenging to provide extra commitment or flexibility to our employer. i have a master’s degree in educational studies and have been a hands-on stay at home mother for 13 years. this however does not count as valid child care experience to the licensing board. this means that i am not fully qualified to work with children. if the licensing rules accepted other types of qualifications then there might be more available child care workers. the pay scale of an ece does not make retraining an economically viable option. there are not enough licensed [workers] at educated child care facilities. we have a lot of stay at home moms that take on children, but i personally want my children in a regulated environment with safety, learning, and schedule standards. and the ones that are here, with certified and educated staff are so expensive it’s not plausible. not enough day care facilities have forced me to stay at home with child during the day and work evenings only. i’m unable to work full-time as my husband already works and is away during the day. either myself or my husband will need to quit our job if we don’t find care soon. we both really like our jobs and have worked hard to get our careers established. i feel that setting up a strong system of child care is extremely important for the next stage of achieving gender equality in the workplace. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 65 our family has been seeking child care for our first born since we were 8 weeks pregnant, the search is still ongoing and our first born is 1 at the end of this month. it has made our first year of parenthood stressful and worry stricken. we used three different day homes in sparwood prior to 2013; in 2013 my mother moved to the valley to act as a live-in nanny for us. hours of operation for commuting parents to [employer location] need to coincide with shift schedules including travel times. anything you can afford comes without a receipt so you can’t claim it, so not really all that cost effective. if [employer] wants to retain employees in the valley, they need to get involved with making quality child care accessible. there is a lack of government support on provincial and especially municipal levels … for licenced daycare spots. for new parents there is little information to help prepare you for child care issues … i put my son on the waitlist when he was 2 months old and after 9 months he is still in the teens on the wait list … i suggest having a centralized place to find out information on available private day homes, rather than it being a case of who knows who having more access to child care. to me that makes child care less accessible for it is a bit of a private club. why would anyone go into the child care field, they will be paying off student loans for a long duration. my husband and i must work opposite shifts, having just 1 hour for the three of us [including child] during each day. even our days off are not the same. i fought with the government of canada over hiring a new zealander nanny legally. in the first 6 months of work, i had 8+ sitters. i was not able to claim any of it on my taxes, because they were all on visas, or not claiming the money. i was taking home less than $200/week after child care expenses. i believe that safe, reliable, affordable child care should be mandated at the federal and provincial levels. child care affects absolutely everyone in society — the current level of service is a barrier to productivity, family life, healthy communities, and work equality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 66 discussion data-based recommendations were developed, which focussed on both shortand longterm mitigation strategies. the aim of the present study was to develop strategies that can be enacted with the intent of resolving child care barriers in the elk valley. however, these findings are also applicable to other communities in canada, as well as internationally. short-term mitigation strategies at the individual and family levels short-term mitigation strategies were apparent when opportunities to organize existing resources were considered. given the many people with identified needs for child care, it would be pertinent to develop networks of people who need child care in each community, in order to facilitate child care trading. the survey results indicate interest in this option (a total of 117 respondents indicated openness to this idea), which may help to address the needs of shift workers, and would be a lowor no-cost option for families. the disadvantages include both lack of regulation and limited capacity to organize this system. however, criteria could be developed for being part of the network, such as proof of having taken a first aid course or passing a criminal record check. capacity may exist through existing community organizations, or a next step by the evccai may be to further investigate child care co-operatives (e.g., as outlined by babycenter, 2015) and facilitate progress in this area. furthermore, this potential solution to some child care issues could be implemented in virtually any community, in any area or country, as a grass-roots initiative by those who need child care. short-term mitigation strategies at the community support level it may be possible to capitalize on existing community resources to create a network of trainers or support people to guide others through processes such as hiring a foreign nanny or providing lnr family care at home. the anecdotal findings of the present study indicate that there are people in the elk valley communities who have experience with these processes, and information sharing would likely mitigate the complications experienced by those who have not been through these processes before. this strategy likely also applies in other geographical areas, as local experts may be recruited. in the elk valley, the ekccrr would be a valuable partner in this strategy, as they offer resources on these topics that would facilitate expanded information sharing (east kootenay child care resource and referral program, 2015). there are similar referral programs in other bc communities; places without such programs may benefit from establishing them as a first step to addressing child care issues through resource coordination. similarly, families would likely benefit from creation of information packages regarding cost-saving or budgeting methods as they relate to child care. it appears that some people are not aware of options such as child care subsidies or tax credits, although this may be in part due to the fact that most of the present survey respondents had income levels that make them ineligible for these programs. nonetheless, many community members may benefit from having this information collected in a single source, and existing community organizations (such as the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 67 ekccrr program in the elk valley) or governmental agencies have the expertise to create these information packages. information packages should be tailored to each geographical region, whether it be a collection of municipalities or an entire country, based on pertinent child care regulations. both shortand long-term value would result from collaboration by local child care providers to develop a system of availability sharing, in order to reduce overpaying for unused child care and also potentially create more space to accommodate additional children. given that some parents pay for space that they do not use in order to ensure child care when they do need it, it is likely that there are unused spaces in child care centres on a regular basis. this strategy could also reduce problems associated with preference being given to those requiring full-time care. creating an information sharing system for child care providers may be a logical next step for the evccai and similar community organizations in other provinces or countries. this option may be limited by privacy issues and regulations pertaining to information sharing, but region-specific information sharing policies could be developed to mitigate this barrier. given that staffing challenges were identified, a logical mitigation strategy is to promote and support the local college in offering ece courses or programs on campus or online. this recommendation is based on the recent success of the local college (college of the rockies, fernie campus) in providing several people with the training requirements to provide lnr child care in their homes, or for being able to work in a licensed child care facility. previous research across canada has also found that supporting ece education is a critical strategy toward resolving child care barriers (watson, 2001). supporting eces as professionals is a long-term endeavour; however, local programming could be impacted in the short term. this strategy could be applied in any community in which local colleges have the capacity to offer increased training opportunities. finally, short-term solutions to the child care barriers in the studied communities could be achieved by providing support to child care providers currently operating unlicensed and unregulated child care facilities, in order to promote standards for safety and confidence in the quality of care. anecdotal reports indicate that there are several such care providers operating in the elk valley communities, some of whom may be eligible for registration with the ekccrr program with little or no need for additional training or documentation. the providers who operate these child care businesses may be unaware of the standards for registration and may not be aware that they do not need to have ece credentials or meet licensing criteria in order to be registered. increasing the number of rlnr child care providers may make it easier for parents to find child care that they feel comfortable with, rather than relying on word of mouth. parents would also likely be reassured by the first aid knowledge, criminal record check, and other requirements for registration. furthermore, it is likely that unregistered care providers throughout bc could be assisted with the registration process via a provincial-level initiative, thereby increasing accessibility and parent confidence in care providers in other communities as well. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 68 long-term community development strategies residents of each of the three main communities in the elk valley indicated a clear preference for child care in their home community rather than the community that they work in. this finding is not surprising given the geographic distribution of the communities. sparwood is the central community, and is 34 km from elkford and 31 km from fernie, for a total distance of 65 km between elkford and fernie. additionally, employees of teck coal ltd. (41% of survey respondents) may work at mine sites that are distant from their home communities. the mine sites are up to 30 km away from the nearest community (teck coal limited, 2015), adding to commuting time and extending the length of time that child care is required. therefore, a strong conclusion, which impacts all recommendations based on this survey, is that it is essential for each community to have child care that fully addresses that community’s needs. this finding is particularly significant because it is relevant to many communities in canada with similar geographical distances between neighbouring communities. the implication of this finding is that relying on resources in neighbouring communities will not address child care needs. as noted above, a lack of trained eces has been identified as a barrier to child care access and affordability in the elk valley, as well as in other communities. therefore, in order to create sustainability, it is necessary to support the availability of trained eces needed to staff licensed child care facilities. parents, guardians, and other primary caregivers of children across the elk valley voiced a clear preference for licensed group child care facilities. however, previous research has found that regulated child care spaces of any type are only available for 18.7% of children from birth to 12 years of age, and 22.7% of children from birth to 5 years of age in bc (friendly et al., 2015). across canada, regulated child care is only available for 24.9% of birth to 12-year-olds and 24.1% of birth to 5-year-olds (friendly et al., 2015). child care providers have clearly indicated that staffing child care centres is a major challenge, as reported by 93% of child care provider respondents in the present study. the present survey identified that there are at least 10 trained eces in the elk valley communities who are currently not working in child care; a similar situation likely exists in other communities across bc and canada. therefore, recruitment may focus on people who are already trained, or who require minimal upgrading to their training, in order to work in the child care field. recruitment strategies to train new eces would also be beneficial, and would be most effective if they are expanded beyond the level of individual child care centres to involve municipal government and other community partners. however, issues of recruiting new eces to initial training occur throughout bc, with low wages for work as an ece and a lack of paid benefits cited as major deterrents to entering or staying in the field (early childhood educators of bc, 2012). additionally, training that occurs on a part-time basis and that accounts for the scheduling needs of those being trained would enhance the probability of new eces being available to work in licensed group child care facilities. scheduling considerations should include the needs of current international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 69 child care workers who want to upgrade their qualifications, as well as those who currently work in other fields but have an interest in working in child care. child care providers in the present survey indicated low wages as their primary concern within their profession, and those trained as child care providers but not currently working in the field have clearly indicated that wages are the primary reason for either not being employed or for seeking employment in other fields. therefore, long-term strategies must support wage increases for qualified ece staff in licensed child care facilities. there are currently well-established initiatives directed at the bc government, with aims that include wage increases for eces. for example, the $10aday child care plan, by the coalition of child care advocates of bc (2015), proposes wage increases to approximately $25 per hour plus improved benefits, as well as support to those who want to become trained eces. these components of the plan are based on extensive research on child care issues in bc, including surveying the membership of the early childhood educators of bc. by comparison, eces in the elk valley currently earn $14 to $21 per hour, consistent with the median wage earned by eces in bc, which is within a $16 to $18 per hour range (early childhood educators of bc, 2012). under the $10aday child care plan, families whose annual income is less than $40,000 per year would not pay fees for ece-provided child care, and the cost to families with higher incomes would be $10 per day for full-time care or $7 per day for part-time care. therefore, the plan addresses concerns of both eces, as well as the parents and caregivers of children. additionally, direct strategies in specific communities, such as approaching local employers, community organizations, or funding agencies for support, may yield more rapid mitigation of the current child care barriers, yet also have considerable long-term effects. job sharing emerged as a potential option for many families, which may reduce barriers to employment that result from limited child care options. the elk valley is in need of a strategy to enable women, many of whom are highly educated and skilled, to participate in the labour force; the survey data indicated that there are many women in these communities who want to work but are not able to due to child care issues. job sharing by these women, their partners, or both, may provide opportunities for people to use their developed skills to the benefit of local employers. additionally, the challenges facing dual-income or single-parent families working 12-hour shifts (plus commute time) must be considered in order to fully meet the child care needs of shift workers. this does not necessarily mean that children require child care for the entire duration (and licensing regulations require that this cannot occur in licensed child care settings), but hours of available care must be flexible enough to accommodate shift work schedules. acting on this recommendation likely involves developing child care options that involve multiple care providers in a single day, whom parents feel confidence in. other strategies to address this recommendation may include job sharing or developing a child care co-operative, as outlined above. the specifics of labour force participation in the elk valley revolve around shift work schedules. therefore, a recommendation is that major employers should be approached regarding providing opportunities for a flexible work schedule that allows parents to adjust hours around international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 70 typical child care centre operating hours. for example, it may be possible for some employees to change their work hours from a 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift to an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift, in order to coincide with child care hours. this recommendation is based on the fact that a single major area employer is primarily responsible for the shift work schedules that are identified as a major barrier to accessing adequate child care in the elk valley. even if additional spaces were available in a licensed group child care facility with typical operating hours, these hours would not adequately address the child care needs of elk valley residents because they currently do not coincide with the shift schedules. this strategy may also apply to other relatively small communities with a single major employer, as the relationship between the required child care schedule and employee work hours is straightforward. furthermore, it may be more realistic to adjust shift schedules to child care availability when possible, rather than to expand the hours of child care availability. a 2001 study reported on pilot projects by the canadian union of postal workers using a child care fund to create extended care hours (lowe, 2001). despite extensive funding, many parents chose not to use extended care hours because of concerns over disrupting their children’s schedules with a program that may be temporary, or by using child care that would necessitate moving children during their sleep time. in canada, the current federal liberal government has promised to amend the canada labour code to give workers the legal right to request more flexible work, including modified start and end times, as well as opportunities to work from home, without fear of reprisal (liberal party of canada, 2015). therefore, a recommendation for adjusted work schedules when possible is a realistic option for parents with young children. in addition to the issues of creating more access to licensed group care, the present findings also emphasize the unmet need for flexibility in child care provision. shift work and dual-income families often create the need for alternative types of care arrangements during non-standard hours, for overnight care, and for ill children. the needs for this type of care have been extensively outlined in the past (friendly et al., 1994; watson, 2001), but child care regulations and licensing remain prohibitive of most child care arrangements that would address these needs. provisions for flexible child care arrangements, particularly in rural areas, have been proposed and even endorsed in most provinces across canada (watson, 2001). however, implementation has been only sporadically supported by various levels of government, and has yet to be fully realized. given that the current canadian federal liberal government has highlighted child care issues as a component of their election platform, there may be opportunities for improved child care to be realized in canada. in the present survey, 43.4% of respondents indicated that the federal government should be a leader in finding solutions, and 31.3% of respondents indicated that it should be one of several contributors to resolving child care barriers. furthermore, 50.8% and 31.4% of respondents indicated that the provincial government should be a leader in finding solutions or one of several contributors, respectively. the current bc liberal government assists families through child care subsidies, but a provincial child care strategy has not been adopted or proposed (british columbia liberal party, 2013), and subsidies do not address the barriers identified in the present survey. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 71 conclusions based on the present study may be limited by the fact that data were collected from three specific communities of the elk valley. while the obtained sample is a good size for the relevant population and has thereby provided detailed information that is highly useful in the elk valley communities, demographic, occupational, or geographical differences may affect the generalizability of the data to other communities in canada and other countries. therefore, it would be useful for future research to replicate the present survey in other communities, in order to investigate potential child care barriers and opportunities elsewhere. if similar findings occur in multiple studies, the generalizability could be extended. an additional future direction would be to more fully explore the responses of eces and employers to child care issues in specific communities. the conclusions of the present study are limited by sample size for these types of respondents, but obtaining more data would be useful for obtaining a more complete understanding of child care issues as they relate to employability, as well as to understanding the reasons for a lack of trained eces to staff child care centres. a previous study surveyed eces throughout bc (early childhood educators of bc, 2012) and replication of that survey with community-specific data would be useful for determining local initiatives that may assist with resolving child care barriers. finally, findings such as the preference for licensed group child care or interest in job sharing options may or may not occur in other populations, and gathering this information across a spectrum of communities would be beneficial to national or provincial child care strategies. conclusions the present study described child care use, needs, barriers, and opportunities in the three communities of the elk valley, bc, canada. although the resulting data are specific to the communities studied, they are also relevant to other communities facing similar child care issues. furthermore, the findings are consistent with issues that have been identified across canada for several decades. the findings and resulting recommendations of this survey are practical strategies to pursue in the absence of provincial or national child care strategies. however, continued work toward large-scale solutions is necessary in order to address needs that cannot be met by community-based efforts. a combination of local initiatives and large-scale strategies would ensure that high-quality child care is accessible and affordable. acknowledgements the study was fully funded by the columbia basin trust. the authors also wish to thank the survey respondents, participants in the community information sessions, and key stakeholders who were interviewed during survey development. additionally, we are grateful to our partners who provided meeting space and staff participation for the project. disclosure the original study report is available online at www.ekkids.ca. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 42–73 72 references babycenter. 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(2008). work-life balance of shift workers (statistics canada catalogue no. 75-001x). ottawa. retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2008108/pdf/10677eng.pdf http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=popc&code1=1143&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=popc&code1=1143&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=popc&code1=1143&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom= http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom= http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&b1=all&custom= http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=59&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=59&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&geo2=pr&code2=59&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=59&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901003&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901003&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901003&data=count&searchtext=elkford&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901012&data=count&searchtext=fernie&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?lang=e&geo1=csd&code1=5901006&data=count&searchtext=sparwood&searchtype=begins&searchpr=01&a1=all&b1=all&custom=&tabid=1 http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2sv.pl?function=getsurvey&sdds=3889 http://www.teck.com/generic.aspx?page=teck+site%2fdiversified+mining+pages%2fcoal+pages%2fcoal+mountain&portalname=tc http://www.teck.com/generic.aspx?page=teck+site%2fdiversified+mining+pages%2fcoal+pages%2fcoal+mountain&portalname=tc http://casa-acsa.ca/fr/node/4510 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2008108/pdf/10677-eng.pdf http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2008108/pdf/10677-eng.pdf a community survey of child care issues in canadian shift workers: evidence for barriers and opportunities phoebe scotland, the elk valley child care advisory initiative, and the elkford women’s task force the present study communities surveyed methods information sessions and survey distribution data collection and analyses participants results current child care preferred child care special needs child care affordability barriers to child care child care opportunities responses of child care providers employer perspectives on child care responsibility for child care issues anecdotal findings discussion short-term mitigation strategies at the individual and family levels short-term mitigation strategies at the community support level long-term community development strategies conclusions acknowledgements disclosure references “single mothers by choice”: disrupting dominant discourses of the family through social justice alternatives international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 410 “single mothers by choice”: disrupting dominant discourses of the family through social justice alternatives jennifer ajandi abstract: this paper seeks to disrupt the dominant narrative of victimhood associated with the single mother family status. there are many barriers and difficulties associated with this status such as economic insecurity and political and social stigma. however, there are also many rewards and possibilities that make this family status desirable and rich with possibilities. single mother families challenge the dominant paradigm of heteronormativity found within the notion of traditional nuclear family households. drawing on critical feminist and queer theoretical perspectives and qualitative research from my doctoral studies, i will discuss how participants created a new narrative for themselves and their children. in particular, i focus on single mothers engaged in critical pedagogy and curriculum and community activism to seek connections with others who also viewed their families from a strengths perspective. “single mothers by choice” establishes itself in its own right as a formidable alternative to dominant notions of the “family”. keywords: single mothers, dominant discourse, strengths, social justice jennifer ajandi, ph.d. is a sessional instructor in the school of social work at ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on, m5b 2k3. email: jajandi@ryerson.ca mailto:jajandi@ryerson.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 411 “single mother.” say it out loud in a grocery store, at school, in the park, on the news, or in a social service agency and all of the destructive and pathologizing images of a neglectful mother come to mind. the stereotype of the single mother intersects class, race, gender, sexuality, ability, and age. it is a deeply racialized image that presents a false and simplistic picture of a single mother dependent upon social assistance (bashevkin, 2002; mitchell, 2003; sidel, 2006). the discourse of the “welfare queen” pervades everyday dialogue, political commentary, and the ideologies prevalent in social service delivery, the education system, and the broader community (jones-deweever, 2005; roberts, 1999). within this discourse, the single mother household becomes responsible for all that society deems morally unfit and undesirable. children raised in single mother households become scapegoats for a perceived increase in crime rates, a breakdown of social cohesion in communities, and “early” pregnancy, just to name a few examples. the effects of ideologically conservative and punitive social policy attacks on marginalized populations become masked when individuals or groups of people are blamed for their own dire circumstances. a discourse of individualism dominates the political landscape wherein privilege is hidden and success is therefore achievable by anyone who tries hard enough (brady, 2007; carniol, 2000; mullaly, 2002; waldner, 2003). blaming the individual becomes a political strategy to cover up the inequitable distribution of resources and power (carniol, 2000). given the many injustices that marginalized people face, such as racism, economic insecurity, food insecurity, ableist structures, heterosexism, and discrimination based on family status, the resilience and resistance employed on an everyday basis is remarkable and worth noting. in this paper, i discuss the difficulties and possibilities of 25 single mothers attending university across southern ontario, canada. these findings are based on my doctoral research, which addresses a large gap in canadian and u.s. literature. i provide a brief analysis of the barriers that were reported but the majority of the discussion focuses on the strengths, aiming to develop a positive alternative discourse to the prevailing stereotypes of single mothers, despite their status as one of the most economically disadvantaged groups (bezanson, 2006; caragata, 2009), particularly for single mothers of colour (khosla, 2008) and single mothers who are aboriginal (d. lavell & j. lavell, 2006). this alternative discourse does not make the struggles and challenges of single mothers invisible but highlights parts of their lives that are often not reported or not asked about in research studies. in some instances, i even dare to put forward the notion that single mother households might be more constructive and healthy than some traditional, heterosexual, and two-parent households. at the very least, these family structures have positive characteristics of their own in contrast to the many negative ones commonly put forth by the dominant discourse, a reality that deserves attention in its own right and might ultimately legitimize the single mother family status. most women in this study did not apologize, feel ashamed, or feel that their families were “less than” their two-parent counterparts. on the contrary, they thrived, felt grateful for their struggles and joys, and believed that their families were representative of and contributors to the larger social justice goals of equity and inclusion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 412 reflection i write about issues that arouse passion, connection and a drive to action within me. in the same way that i need to connect to practice, volunteerism, and teaching (praxis), i also need to connect to the issues i research and to the overall research process itself. women have invited me into their lives, their pains, and their joys with a sometimes unearned trust that humbles me. i take the role of a researcher and an “insider/outsider” quite seriously. in this study, it was important that i identify who i was, who i was not, and be critical of my own social location and the inscriptions of history, power, oppression, and privilege on my body. throughout my dissertation i wrote in a reflective way, paying attention to social location, privilege, and transparency. at times, the stories i shared in my study were ones i shared with the women who participated. when writing about equity and social justice, it is important for me to also challenge the dominant constructions and deliveries of scholarship that permeate some fields such as child, youth, and family studies and social work. students often comment on my use of accessible language and how i ground my work in personal narrative which, in turn, assists them in making connections to their own lives. the writing in this paper reclaims the personal and experiential in the spirit of critical feminist, anti-colonial, and other theoretical frameworks and areas of research that are committed to transformation and social justice (potts & brown, 2005). transparency and reflexivity are integral to the research process, including the dissemination of the research itself. undertaking a commitment to social justice not only involves the counter narratives and discourses we create but also challenges the dominant eurocentric ideologies, practices, and expectations in academic institutions (smith, 1999). my position as an activist scholar is that by identifying the voice of the author and researcher, i aim to disrupt the dominant norms of “objectivity” commonly found within academia. further, this voice is not regulated to one section or compartmentalized, but is integrated throughout. my own experience as a queer single mother (beginning in the third year of my undergraduate degree, continuing into my graduate studies, and now into my career as an academic) guides my own analysis and structures my views of society, the education system, and the institutions of the family. the invisibility and stigma i felt on-campus as a single mother student and recipient of social services, especially during those first few years, were palpable, painful, and transformative. for quite literally months on end, i would sleep no more than two hours at a time and averaged four hours a night until the last year of my doctoral degree. single mother students are simply on a 24-hour shift. the intangible stigma of being a single mother impacts my access to housing and my daughter’s experience in the education system. the last time i looked for a place to rent, one of the first questions i was asked was who would be living in the space. i answered myself and my daughter. the next question i was asked each time was if i was on social assistance. i was repeatedly turned down on applications even though i had the privilege of holding a high status occupation in the community. despite the struggles i have encountered, the privileges i hold impact my ability to access the limited resources available. i know that had my body been read international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 413 differently, had i been a black single mother, had visible physical disabilities, or received social assistance at that time i would have received even more hostile comments and less access to resources. i reflect on and engage in this privilege, knowing that i have the power in the classroom to dispel the myths, stigma, and dominant discourse that constructs single mothers and other marginalized groups in society. wehbi (2009) notes the importance of thinking and writing about our reflections on teaching in social work classrooms: “over the years, i have come to understand reflection on our practice as social workers in the field, or as educators in the classroom are both significant sources of knowledge worthy of writing about. these are our ‘field’ stories to tell” (p. 506). i work as an ally to disrupt dominant discourses and listen to constructive feedback from colleagues, community members, and students (bishop, 2002). now that i am the first in my family to graduate from university, i am both uncomfortable with the new resources i have and grateful for them. my story, as well as the stories of the women who participated in the study, disrupts the dominant discourse of single motherhood, yet i do not strive to perpetuate the binary of the “deserving” versus the “undeserving” single mother (abramovitz, 1996; ajandi, 2009); this paper aims to start a different dialogue. reviewing the literature and theoretical contributions previous research explored single mothers’ experiences within the context of the state, with a main focus on the barriers erected due to changes in oppressive state policy in the united states. this subject remains underrepresented in the canadian literature and this study’s aim is to start filling in that gap. across many countries, neo-liberalism and the corresponding rise in neoconservative political ideology has impacted the way the state supports or does not support its citizens (status and non-status). with an increase in global market demands and a pressure to reduce deficits, states are clawing back much-needed supports and services to its most marginalized communities. a reduction in funding to the social service sector alongside an increasing emphasis on managerial matters in the social work profession has had devastating consequences for service providers and service users (fook, 2002; ife, 1997; razack, 2002; rogowski, 2008). with the social service sector beginning to look more and more like business, not only are the values and principles of anti-oppressive social work being eroded, the voices and needs of the service users are being lost as well. among its many principles, anti-oppressive social work values self-determination, disruption to power hierarchies, advocacy, and activism (barnoff & moffatt, 2007). in an accountability climate that values evidence-based practice, output measures, and cost-effectiveness at the expense of true anti-oppressive work, it is more and more difficult for social workers to avoid feeling overwhelmed and susceptible to burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, etc. (fook, 2002; ife, 1997; razack, 2002). the majority of previous literature focuses on conservative measures that were implemented to social assistance in the 1990s in the u.s. that, in effect, placed severe restrictions upon single mothers who received social assistance and wanted to pursue post-secondary education (adair, 2001; pandey, zhan, & kim, 2006; pandey, zhan, neely-barnes, & menon, 2000). programs, supports, services, and monies that were used to support families with dependents were drastically changed and recipients were instructed that they had time limits on how much education they could receive. the exact time limits varied from state to state but in most cases they restricted recipients’ ability to participate in any long-term, meaningful education that could quite possibly improve their economic situation (jones-deweever, 2005; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 414 zhan & pandey, 2004a). it is well documented that attaining post-secondary education results in higher incomes and is, moreover, becoming a necessity for even entrance level positions (lightman, herd, um, & mitchell, 2009; zhan & pandey, 2004b). while receiving postsecondary education is not the end-all solution and does not address barriers that women experience in the paid labour market such as racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, family status discrimination, etc., it has been shown to provide some economic stability. changes to social assistance policies that reduce access to education should be seen as a violation of a person’s rights. canada, and more specifically the province of ontario, saw similar cuts to its social safety net in the 1990s based on neo-conservative individualistic ideology. part of this ideology was demonstrated in targeted cuts to programs and services serving some of the most marginalized members of society: those experiencing violence; children; racialized people; and poor people (lightman & baines, 1996). cuts to the education system were also devastating; tuition rates in ontario dramatically increased (bezanson, 2006; rajagopal, 2002; shanahan & jones, 2007; schwartz & finnie, 2002). previously, students could apply for social assistance to meet their living costs and student loans to assist in their educational costs. now, for the most part, students cannot collect both benefits at the same time. since a greater amount is received from student loans than from social assistance, most people choose that option. however, interest rates on student loans are considerable and graduating with such high debt loads puts students at a disadvantage (statistics canada, 2006). my own debt load from years of post-secondary education, for example, will take at least 15 years to repay. this is a best case scenario and demonstrates my own privileged position as a university instructor, as many graduates will not earn enough from their paid employment to repay their loans within this time frame. while changes in social policies have taken place over the last 20 years, the dominant structure of eurocentrism found in many canadian educational institutions is far longer-standing and more entrenched. this type of education focuses on one standardized way of knowing and learning, ignores accurate history or makes it invisible, and excludes diversity in curricula, policies, practices, and bodies on-campus (bannerji, carty, dehli, heald, & mckenna, 1991; baskin, 2005; brathwaite, 2003; carty, 1992; collins, 2000; dei, james, karumanchery, jameswilson, & zine, 2000; giroux, 2002; kelly, 2000; kitzinger, 1993; mojab, 2002; montureangus, 2001; oliver & barnes, 2010; rezai-rashti, 1997; sapon-shevin, 2007). anti-racist and anti-colonial educators and activists challenge these practices and advocate for inclusionary spaces centring on multiple voices and ways of knowing (abele, dittburner, & graham, 2000; antone, 2003; dei et al., 2000; baskin, 2008; collins, 2000; graveline, 1998; henry & tator, 2009; hooks, 1994; james, 2003; mahtani, 2004; ng, staton, & scane, 1995; reed, lewis, & lund-lucas, 2006; wong, 2004). while women of colour and aboriginal women discussed these issues most frequently during the interviews, some white women also identified eurocentrism as a barrier in their educational experience. they preferred to study in fields or classes that were taught by aboriginal professors, focused on aboriginal world views in the curriculum, and/or used anti-colonial pedagogical approaches. they found that their life experiences were more valued in these classrooms and they connected with a way of teaching that was more holistic than that of more traditional classrooms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 415 eurocentrism rests on a number of assumptions found throughout society, including a dominant discourse of motherhood that places all responsibility of children onto mothers. this discourse expects mothers to be economically independent from the state, to be the “right age”, to have partners (preferably husbands), to devote all their time to their children at the expense of their own needs, and to have just enough children. when a mother does not fall into these unrealistic, middle-class, eurocentric norms, she becomes the undesirable other mother (anderson, 2000; berman, silver, & wilson, 2007; cull, 2006; dua, 1999; kelly, 2000; khosla, 2008; d. lavell & j. lavell, 2006; little, 1998; pillow, 2004; wane, 2000). a discourse involves all the ways in which language and symbols are constructed and used by players such as the government, media, and the community to impact ways of knowing and interacting (fook, 2002; kelly, 2000). according to griffith and smith (1991), discourse is: an organization of relations among people participating in a conversation mediated by written and printed materials. a discourse has a social organization of authorities, sites, production processes, etc. the term does not just refer to the “texts” of this conversation and their production alone, but also to the ways in which people organize their activities in relationship to them. (p. 90) oftentimes, the single mother is socially and politically conceptualized within an eitheror dichotomy in absolute terms. she is constructed as a heroine (sidel, 2006), who has somehow managed to overcome all obstacles by just trying hard enough, which dismisses the very real economic, political, and social limitations placed upon single mother families. or, she is constructed as a marginalized and vulnerable victim who is at the mercy of state policies and the processes of social exclusion (brady, 2007; caragata, 2009), with little acknowledgement of the resistance, strength, and agency of single mothers. the more accurate representation of single mothers is somewhere in between or at least somewhere on a continuum. they exist in a complex and nuanced reality of ambiguity and fluidity. in this paper i use a critical feminist queer theoretical framework that intersects with race, class, and ability, to understand and explain moments of disruption to a traditionally heteronormative conceptualization of the family (reid, 2004; peters, 2005). these moments of disruption are meant as challenges to normative constructions but also to provide an alternative discourse of the family using examples of social justice. the purpose of this paper is not to ignore or under-represent the overwhelming barriers single mothers face in society – racism and other forms of discrimination, poverty, stigma, and an assaulting policy platform by the state – for these findings were well documented in my doctoral research. rather, i would like to offer a more comprehensive picture of the experiences of single mothers using a strengths-based analysis focusing not only on the troubles, but also on the rich possibilities of single motherhood as a legitimate constructive family status. also, i hope to uncover an alternative dialogue that supports this status within an equitable and desirable context and challenges the dominant discourse of victimhood. importantly, this study also contributes to the literature by providing a canadian context to the experience of single mother students, as the majority of the literature emerged in the united states and frames single mothers as being dependent upon the state through the delivery of social assistance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 416 design and methods i feel privileged being able to witness the struggles and rewards single mother students have experienced. i feel honoured that women spent so much of their limited time and energy contributing to this important and under-studied research area. the research questions were:  what are the experiences of single mother students?  what are their barriers and facilitators?  do single mothers experience discrimination?  what are the strengths of these identities, histories, and households? women had the opportunity to participate in either an individual or group interview. i found having both options available was important. during individual interviews the sense of anonymity provided a space where women discussed serious issues of violence, for example. yet, the group interview was important as well and decreased the amount of power i held as the researcher. participants have more control over the direction of the conversation in a group setting and the researcher’s position shifts from interrogator to facilitator and listener. this method can also be more comfortable for participants when the researcher is unknown to them. salmon (2007) also found that participants in her study preferred this method, noting “they felt that this would give them additional support, encouragement, and an increased sense of safety and trust in an interview with a researcher who was previously unknown to them” (p. 985). however, the lack of time available to meet the scheduling demands of the group interview proved to be a significant barrier in this study and, as a result, more individual interviews needed to be scheduled. the first 25 women who expressed interest and met eligibility criteria participated in group and individual interviews. women identified as single mothers also needed to be full-time undergraduate university students or recently graduated. throughout the process, women identified the need to meet other single mother students. as a result, we started a social/consciousness-raising group outside of the research. questions were open-ended and subjects had the opportunity to participate in the research in a number of ways: they could make suggestions about the interview guides; participate in the social group; review and approve their transcripts, as well as contribute to the summaries of the findings; attend a member check-in session at the end of the research; and make other suggestions pertaining to their interest in the study and time they had to contribute (kirby & mckenna, 1989; potts & brown, 2005; reid, 2004; ristock & pennell, 1996; wilkinson, 1998). data was analyzed using descriptive and analytic coding with particular attention paid to the emergence of multiple themes (ristock & pennell, 1996). i received ethics approval from three universities and a community agency. because the study involved aboriginal single mother students, one university also required a separate ethics approval submission to their aboriginal advisory circle, which was approved. i approached many on-campus groups who also assisted in the distribution of the call to participate. researchers might identify themselves as being either an insider to the research or an outsider (smith, 1999). an insider is seen as someone who identifies as part of the community they are doing research with, whereas an outsider is someone who has no connections to the community. but what does it mean to be “part of a community”? single mothers are not a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 417 homogeneous group, just as “communities” are not. depending on who i am working with, we might find similarities and differences that work in a fluid and unfixed expression of power (foucault, 1977). i do not face systemic oppressions such as racism and discrimination based on immigration status. my life experience is different from those of single mothers of colour and single mothers who are aboriginal, and i needed to acknowledge my white privilege and outsider status. yet, on many occasions, having some amount of insider knowledge contributed to the trust that was built over the course of the partnerships. stories were shared on both sides that might be read by the dominant discourse in a different way than the speaker intended. we were also able to strategize and problem-solve issues related to parenting or education that might not have happened without the shared foundation of being single mothers and students. however, smith (1999) also cautions us as researchers not to rely on dichotomous interpretations of insider and outsider experiences and reminds us to critically reflect on our own privilege within the partnership. fook (2002) further challenges us to refrain from using dichotomous and binary terms that can hold false assumptions. acker (2001) also points out that an insider status can be detrimental to the interview process if participants fail to discuss issues in the same way since they may assume the researcher already knows what they are talking about. co-participants all the women in this study identified as single mothers and were attending university in an undergraduate program, with the exception of two who had graduated in the past few years. they ranged in age from 25 to 44 and had children as young as 1 year of age and as old as 21 years of age. participants studied in various disciplines; however, many of them were in social work, aboriginal studies, sociology, and women and gender studies. it is likely the findings of this study would be different had the majority of students belonged to other disciplines. the previous, limited amount of research exploring single mothers and education has not brought attention to the many diverse voices of women participants. in order to provide a more accurate and representative picture, i emphasized diversity during the recruitment stage. the result was a fairly broad spectrum in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, immigration status, and spirituality. however, economically, most of the women experienced poverty: seven of the women stated that they earned less than $10,000 per year and another 14 less than $30,000 per year. although given their student status this might be expected, it is important to note that some of these women worked full-time or had multiple part-time jobs. contrary to the dominant narrative of single motherhood, almost three-quarters of the women relied upon student loans for financial support and only two women were receiving social assistance. the implications inherent in state’s lack of support through social assistance to university students deserves more attention and the consequences of such policies need to be explored in future research. participants were born in many countries, including canada, the caribbean, china, holland, pakistan, poland, scotland, senegal, ukraine, uganda, and the united states. some women wanted to have these places remain broadly described in order to protect their anonymity. in a demographic questionnaire, the women were asked to self-identify their race and ethnicity. some of these identities included black, black and indian, canadian/jamaican, caucasian, chinese, dutch, ghanaian, goan, irish and aboriginal, jewish and white, native and white, and white with biracial children. much diversity was represented in spirituality as well. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 418 for example, women identified their spirituality as earth-based and wicca, catholic, christian, atheist, agnostic, not sure, karma, buddhist, and christian and aboriginal traditions. one of the interesting findings from the study, which is also demonstrated by the demographics of single mother students, is that almost 25% of the women were exploring their sexuality and were able to do so because they felt liberated from the confines of previous traditional heterosexual partnerships. women identified as heterosexual, bisexual, openminded, not sure, queer, and two-spirit. also, seven women identified having a disability including mental health, physical, and learning disabilities. three children of single mother participants also had disabilities. the following sections outline some of the main findings from this research with a focus on the strengths of single mother families and connections to social justice. independence and empowerment many women felt privileged to be single mothers because it gave them the freedom to be the sole decision-maker for the family. they were able to raise their children with their own values and did not need to negotiate these decisions with a partner. participants commented on how much better off they sometimes felt when they witnessed how their friends argued with their partners about how to raise their children or the division of household work and child care. many women mentioned how much work was involved in taking care of the house, children, and partners when they were in relationships. some women felt that even though they experienced barriers and being a single mother student was a 24-hour job, not having the other partner to take care of reduced their burden significantly. when christina and her partner were still together she discussed her 24-hour shift when she was working overnights at a tim hortons. jenn: so you had mentioned in the first year it was basically you that raised your child, did the carework involved with the baby. does that mean you were doing all of the unpaid work in the house as well? christina: absolutely. j: did you work for pay at all during this time? you had mentioned you worked for children’s aid? c: right. that was after, i did actually when my son was about 6 months old i started working nights at a tim hortons in paris just because we needed the money essentially; so his dad would work during the day and would get home around whatever time, 6 o’clock at night maybe and i would work 11-7. j: overnight? c: umhum, 11-7; so my son was sleeping through the night consistently enough at that point that he may have gotten up once or twice but consistently enough that i would go 11-7 and be home at 7 in the morning and he would still be sleeping so i would just get him and bring him into bed with me because he would sleep longer if he was in bed with me (laugh) and then his dad would leave for work and he was still taking a morning nap; so he would get up at 8 or 8:30 and we would be up for a bit and then he’d lay down for his nap and i’d lay down with him then get up for lunch so it was really hard. j: when did you sleep? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 419 c: i honestly don’t know how i did that either. eichler (2010) defines household work as “the sum of all physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual tasks that are performed for one’s own or someone else’s household, and that maintain the daily life of those for whom one has responsibility for” (p. 36). christina also discussed how much work it was when she lived with her partner and how time away from home at her place of work was like “a break” for her: i consider myself the only caregiver in the home really because his father wouldn’t take him on the weekend with him. he wouldn’t. i remember one time i had been stung by a bee. i have an allergy to bee stings. not life threatening but i swell up a lot. so i had been stung by a bee and i just wanted to go to the grocery store and get an antihistamine and even that was an argument – to have him stay with his dad, right? because i just wanted to get the heck into the car and get over to the drug store cause it was here in my ear (points to her ear) and i could feel it swelling down my neck and i just want to go over to the grocery store and get the antihistamine because, for whatever reason, we didn’t have any in the house. and there was an argument – why do i need to leave to go do that and why couldn’t i take him with me, and that kind of crap. he just never took him. so i think going to work when i started working at night was my little break for me because i was not in that sole caregiving role. i had time to myself, it was quiet. i don’t know that i would want to work at tim hortons again but at the time it was the night shift and there wasn’t a whole lot going on. i could just clean, there was the baker in the back and me at the front and we’d just go through the night and the odd customer would come in. that was the break for me. overall, feelings of independence contributed to elevating their perceptions of selfesteem and self-worth. the obstacles they overcame daily gave them the strength and resiliency to believe in themselves in ways that they often did not when they were in relationships. gemma found strength in her role as a student in the education system. as she described it: it's freedom, it's an opportunity for me to shine in an area that has nothing to do with family or home. and if you put the work in, you get the rewards back. i mean in my marriage, there was very little self-esteem building, confidence building, there was very little affirmation – well none basically...i walk through these halls and i feel so liberated, in control of myself, on a path, and part of something. women were also able to advocate for themselves and their children. many times, women had to fight for their children’s rights within the school system due to racism, ableism, heterosexism, and single mother stigma. in some situations, this advocacy occurred within the school they attended and in other situations women had to transfer their children to a more inclusive school. even though they often encountered discriminatory attitudes and systemic barriers, they felt confident in their agency. meena spent much of her time advocating for her son in school before she decided to switch him to another school: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 420 the school, it was predominately white and i felt the principal, vice principal, right down to the teachers, had strong racist undertones. the way they even spoke about him, “sitting like a possum” and taking away marks because he didn't speak loud enough – because he is very soft spoken. there were so many things, even the way that they spoke to me in their condescending manner. i expressed if this is any indication of how they speak to my son, i can see why he was traumatized. and instead of looking at what was going on there, they suggested something must be wrong in my home...once i made the decision to remove him, they were like, “oh, we're sorry to see him leave”. i'm like, “let's be real, you have traumatized him”; he went from the school that he was at getting high grades to being “at risk” in a matter of months and then when i moved him to the school that he is currently at, his grades are back up. so i said to them, “do you not see that he came here with high grades and dropped in a short time?” do you not see something going on here? you’re just going to automatically assume that it is something within my home as opposed to something within your school system? violence the prevalence of violence was one of the most prominent findings in the study, despite no questions about violence being included in the discussion guides. many women discussed experiencing emotional, psychological, physical, sexual, and financial violence at the hands of their ex-partners. in some situations, the violence was still occurring even after they had left. one month prior to our interview together, julianne’s ex-partner had picked up their son for a weekend visit and began using derogatory language towards her and calling her names. while he was holding their young son he slammed her against the wall. when i asked julianne how she felt about him having access to visits with their son, she said, “ i don’t think he’s going to kill him, so i just have to hang onto that – he’ll come back to me alive....”. after leaving their relationships, women knew they had no other means to support themselves and their children; they felt that going to university was the only chance to provide financially for their children. i was particularly surprised at the lack of support that many women found in their friends and family when they left the violent relationships. those around them often encouraged them to go back to the relationships to avoid becoming single mothers. being a single mother, it seems, was perceived as being worse than experiencing violence. given the prevalence of the problem, the lack of research examining violence and the student experience is also surprising, with the exception of eyre (2000), wagner (2008), and wagner and magnusson (2005). reciprocity and giving back to the community ideals of reciprocity and giving back to the community are common among many cultures and, not surprisingly, are a prevalent theme in the social work and child, youth, and family studies courses i teach. many students identify a pivotal point of turmoil in their lives when they needed support from friends, family members, community and/or social support workers. these experiences often provide much of the foundation for wanting to give back to the community and support others in non-judgemental ways. many students focus on the populations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 421 or fields that they were or are involved with in order to share their understanding and life experiences with others. the women in this study also emphasized these principles in similar ways to social work students in my classroom. volunteer work, community involvement, and giving back to those with similar experiences were driving forces in their educational endeavours and personal lives. many were culturally, socially, and politically active in their communities. they valued these experiences and saw them as integral to child-rearing practices. some even spoke about the activist work they did with their children and bringing their children along to protests. reciprocity was a key element in women’s positive experiences as single mothers because their understanding, compassion, and empathy for others sprang from the obstacles they faced, even those as trying as systemic discrimination and oppression. elizabeth explained: well, you know what, that's why i'm in school. i'm here for people who have experienced anything that i've experienced, that's why i'm here. i don't know what i'm going to do when i'm done but i have a passion for women, especially women on the streets, single mothers, and mothers who have lost their children. even though many women said that caseworkers, professors, or other social support workers contributed to the systemic oppression they experienced such as racism, ableism, and heterosexism, they had also met workers and professors who went out of their way to be supportive allies. the important roles these people played in their lives contributed to their sense that they needed to give back to the community and fill such a role for someone else. social justice and becoming an ally many single mother students became activists and advocates against oppression and structured their families to be active in social justice issues. for example, karina viewed her family as a queer family and was involved in local initiatives that brought awareness to this family status. she was connected with other moms who were both partnered and not within a queer context. this experience was freeing and something she felt she might not be able to do if she were in a traditional heterosexual partnership. however, her political awareness did not end there. she was involved in becoming an ally through anti-racist work and wanted her son to be raised in a social justice environment where he saw how oppressions were linked and understood how important it was to fight against injustice. as karina noted, “social justice isn’t just about fighting for equity and inclusion in one community, but seeing how all communities are linked and learning how to become an ally – all injustices are interconnected.” many women also resented being met with pitied responses when people found out they were single mothers. several women defined themselves as “single mothers by choice.” some women were not only exploring the benefits of raising their children in single mother households but were also exploring sexuality. when partnered in heterosexual relationships, most women were unable to explore this or even discuss it with their partners, which produced isolation and fear. heterosexism is prevalent in many social and political institutions and people with non-normative sexualities and gender identities are still met with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 422 hostile resistance and discrimination, particularly when their identities intersect with institutions of the family. while the movement for equal marriage rights has gained momentum and made great strides within some parts of canada and globally, queer parental rights are still an issue (epstein, 2009a). some women who had their children with a heterosexual partner feared their partners’ responses to exploring sexuality. however, most women were excited to be single and to have the time and space to explore their feelings about their sexuality. as with karina’s example, single mothers incorporated discussions about sexuality with their children as part of larger conversations about equity and inclusion. conversations that challenge dominant norms surrounding femininity and masculinity (butler, 2004; feinberg, 1998; namaste, 2005; stryker, 2008) are also important in demonstrating that there are many ways of knowing and being. daniela, even though she had partnered with a woman and dated a person who was transgendered, did want to be labelled: daniela: i think i’m just open-minded. i guess i don’t know. maybe questioning. i don’t know what. jenn: just feel comfortable in that space? d: yeah. i think maybe i’m just, like, open-minded to being in a relationship with someone i like. j: yeah, regardless of their… d: regardless of their gender. j: so you wouldn’t identify a certain way? d: no, i wondered for a long time if i was bisexual but i don’t quite think that either. so i haven’t quite figured out a preference. many women reported that the men they had been partnered with insisted on restrictive binary codes of gender behaviour for their children and being single freed them from this limitation. however, some interesting challenges emerged from explorations of sexuality. a single queer mother, or a single mother exploring her sexuality, must endure a constant process of coming out because she has no same-sex, same-gender, or transgender partner that would more easily identify her as queer. sexuality, it seems, is identified in society by another – by a relationship with someone else as opposed to the self. for years, much pressure has been put on queer communities and queer parents in particular to prove they are as good as heterosexual families. research has often been formulated to make this point. epstein (2009a) challenges this sameness debate and builds on pivotal findings by stacey and biblarz (2001) that demonstrate the unique differences of children who were raised with lesbian and gay parents. in this study, children exhibited increased self-esteem, more empathy towards social justice issues, more interest in being an ally, and less conformity towards restrictive gender roles and responsibilities. epstein’s (2009b) edited collection about queer parenting contributes a unique and diverse array of experiences, including barriers and rich possibilities for many kinds of families. many women were also involved in on-campus initiatives, programs, and activist groups that sought to challenge oppressive systems in society, such as anti-ableism, anti-racist, antiheterosexist, and union groups. these venues gave women a space to validate their life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 423 experiences and contribute to social activism in an educational setting. one of the difficult binaries that arose in the study was women feeling as though they were expected to separate both the challenges and rewards of their personal lives from their academic lives. most women were proud of their identities, the obstacles they had overcome, and the children they were raising either on their own or with the assistance of friends and family members. indeed, most women entered or re-entered academia because of their children. for many women, going to university was the best chance they had at being able to provide for their children as a sole-support mother with only one income. many of the co-participants in the study were already studying in critical fields such as social work, women and gender studies, aboriginal studies, diaspora studies, and sociology, or wanted to move into “helping professions”. as they put it, having these difficult and rewarding experiences in their lives made them aware of how marginalized people are denied access to resources and are stigmatized in society. their own struggles gave them a unique perspective with respect to understanding of, identification with, and empathy toward those experiencing barriers. sally talked about her own struggles and her opportunity to give back now by being in the field of social work. also, she felt that becoming pregnant at 16 was not the negative experience characterized within dominant discourse: i often say getting pregnant at 16 saved my life, even though i was in high school. i was involved in a lot of dangerous activities and so i think, yeah, actually it was having a child that made my commitment to it (education) even greater. i remember i hung my high school diploma over his crib when he was young...that brings up a lot of emotions. i remember how proud i was of that stupid high school diploma, before even knowing the benefits of post-secondary education. i didn't even think i would get in. many of these single mother students came into university through an access program designed to provide support for non-traditional students. these programs often recognize historic and current-day systemic barriers due to issues such as homelessness, poverty, racism, colonialism, and discrimination against single mothers (antone, 2003; brathwaite, 2003; stallberg-white, 2003). many participants reported being very conscious of introducing the university to their children and brought their children with them to campus whenever they could. first, they wanted their children to see where they spent so much of their time and energy. but just as important, they wanted to normalize the university for their children. many single mother students had not imagined going to university and belonged to historically disadvantaged groups without access to post-secondary education. they did not want their children to feel that university was not an option for them, the way that many of them had. further, these women challenged the assumption that there should be a divide between individuals and their lives on the one hand, and the student and the university on the other. these aspects of identity were interconnected and added to the richness of possibilities in both the education system and their larger life experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 410-431 424 conclusion while real structural and attitudinal barriers exist in society and in education, opportunities also exist in these spaces to create a new narrative of single motherhood that challenges society’s dominant image. this new narrative encapsulates a more complex and strengths-based analysis of single mothers’ lives, bringing attention to the positive impact of these experiences and contributing to a new discourse of the family in the community. during the 1800s and 1900s, and even still today, single mothers have been referred to as unwed mothers, deserted wives, or widows (brady, 2007). women and mothers have been defined by their relationship to a partner, or the lack thereof, never as a person or family unit in their own right. even the category of single motherhood needs to be challenged since its very definition suggests single mother as other, while the discourse of motherhood alone reinforces the dominant nuclear family norms. single mother families in this study challenge previous research which only looks at their connections to the state. despite politically driven images of single mothers being a drain on the state, in contrast, only two women received social assistance. this study expanded its lens to explore other areas of oppression such as racism, ableism, and heterosexism but also focused on strengths, what made single mother families unique and strong. by not approaching this family unit from a deficit model, important themes emerged that contribute to a socially just family structure and larger connections to community were made. while this study looked at the experiences of students, we need to be careful not to assume that education is the end-all solution to the barriers faced by marginalized populations. for example, many do not have access to foundational, formal education, may have already acquired education in another country (the credentials for which may not be recognized in canada due to imperialist policies), or might distrust the education system because of colonial policies and practices. some might not have housing and be fighting for survival on a daily basis. also, while most women in this study benefited from attending university and found empowering and consciousness-raising spaces, not all spaces were considered safe or free from discrimination (for further discussion of the barriers faced by single mother students, see ajandi, 2011). however, the aim of this paper was to present an alternative discourse that emerged in this study, which other single mothers might identify with, and to disrupt the dominant themes of victimhood, poverty, and neglect that are prevalent in the single motherhood canon. as i am continuously contacted by others in the field who are either single mothers or doing research with single mother students, i look forward to seeing more work that complicates rather than simplifies the multiple realities of our lives. international journal of child, youth and family 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(2004b). postsecondary education and economic well-being of single mothers and single fathers. journal of marriage and family, 66(3), 661–673. http://www.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/knowing-through-discomfort-a-mindfulness-based-critical-social-work-pedagogy� http://www.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/knowing-through-discomfort-a-mindfulness-based-critical-social-work-pedagogy� early life or early death: support for child health lasts a lifetime international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 204 early life or early death: support for child health lasts a lifetime stephen bezruchka abstract: the first thousand days following conception is a critical period during which a large fraction of adult health is programmed. societies can structure their support during this period in ways that enhance or damage not only the health and well-being of children, but also the health of the adults they become. inequality is a major influence on early child health. nations may focus on trying to effect changes in individual healthrelated behaviors, but public policies promoting more economic equality are more effective in producing health. a national focus on economic growth may produce overstressed parents who have inadequate time and energy for parenting. how a country chooses to allocate its national budget for health and welfare services exposes its priorities. some of the nations that put the most federal money per person on the first year of life have some of the best overall health; others that focus spending on the later years may have limited health improvements. economic policies, however, can be overcome in some cases by social and cultural norms, which can override both supportive and unhelpful measures. the path to health looks at its source determinants and supports early life conditions that promote the well-being of children, which in turn will further their health as adults. keywords: early life, parental leave, epigenetics, economic inequality, determinants of health, adverse childhood experiences stephen bezruchka, md, mph, is a senior lecturer in the departments of global health and health services at the school of public health, university of washington, box 357230, seattle, washington, u.s.a. 98195. telephone: (206) 932-4928. e-mail: sabez@uw.edu mailto:sabez@uw.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 205 it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. frederick douglass (1817–1895) this article begins by considering factors that produce societal health, and then focuses on evidence that early life is the most critical period for adult health. it concludes by asking: how can we structure the first thousand days after conception to produce health? life can be seen as an endeavor where progress is measured by various surrogate markers, with death the ultimate endpoint. markers of advancement can be income or wealth, using proxies such as one’s house, car, vacation site, or the ability to pay off credit card debt. for some, the surrogates might be employment status, colleges that one’s children attend, or having a partner get out of jail. in western societies there is a strong reliance on the importance of individual agency as the means by which the path through life is navigated. in other societies, the focus may be on the support of the extended family, with limited importance of individual efforts. delaying death is an unstated but highly meaningful indirect goal of this project for most individuals. people focus on being healthy as individuals. in the teenage years we begin to consider health as a vague concept and rely on myriad sources for guidance. absent suffering from serious disease in early life, important proxy measures of health in youth are desirable body image, athletic prowess, good coordination, age-appropriate size and weight, and the ability to perform well in school and to navigate social relationships successfully. factors said to affect these measures may include eating the proper foods, using the right skin and hair products, and exercise regimens. we learn about these approaches through admonitions from parents and friends, and as a result of corporate advertising media that present cleverly packaged messages on how to attain health and beauty. in later years clinical markers such as cholesterol and blood pressure become the surrogate focus for health, requiring new behavioral and medical interventions. health in older persons becomes focused on treating chronic diseases. in contrast with this focus on treating or preventing problems of individuals is the concept of population health. a population health approach considers health of a society by monitoring rates of death or diseases in large groups of people, which allows comparisons with groups in other societies. a key measure of population health is life expectancy, a calculation of the average number of years lived by a population if death rates were to remain constant. infant, child, or adult mortality measures are also used. monitoring the prevalence of chronic problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular afflictions, or obesity represents a disease focus that leads to treating disease. death is an easily measured endpoint compared to disease conditions. monitoring mortality measures in different populations indicates relative health status and can lead to population efforts to avert death that go beyond treating diseases. behavioral admonitions (eat right, don’t smoke, use a condom) and appropriate medical care are the measures most often recommended to improve health. pharmaceuticals in particular are seen as ways to prevent a condition (e.g., immunizations), cure a condition (antibiotics for pneumonia), or maintain someone with a risk factor or disease (statins for high cholesterol). in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 206 the industrialized countries, the transition from deaths caused by infectious diseases in the young to that of chronic conditions in older ages has led today’s pharmaceutical industry to focus on maintenance of people with chronic diseases. but treating illness is very different from producing health. what do we know about what makes populations healthy? scientific studies range from anecdotes of individual cases to randomized controlled clinical trials, the so-called gold standard. when comparisons are made among groups in clinical trials, researchers traditionally control for or remove the influence of socioeconomic status from the investigation by various statistical means. this is needed because without factoring out the influence of socioeconomic status, other specific causes can’t be identified. socioeconomic status thus must have a very strong impact on health. in fact, the socioeconomic gradient in health is ubiquitous. socioeconomic position is the single most powerful determinant of health and development within every human society on earth. stated simply, poorer people have poorer health for almost every outcome considered, because of the choices societies make that privilege or disadvantage strata of people within that society. the importance for health of socioeconomic status has been known for thousands of years, yet even today most people are unlikely to consider relative poverty as a critical risk factor impeding health attainment. how this relationship develops will be the focus of this paper. early life impacts health the importance of early life – the period from conception through the first two or three years – for adult health has been known since the time of the greeks and that awareness has been found in asian and other societies since antiquity. it is little considered in the united states by either the general public or the medical community, even though our growing understanding of the impact of early life adult health is nothing less than a scientific revolution. memes in the united states today such as “we are all born equal” and “life is what you make of it” make acceptance of this revolution problematic. it defies the american dream to consider that what happened in your life before you had any consciousness or control over it has critically important effects on your life potential today. we now have strong evidence that broad environmental conditions that we are exposed to from conception throughout the first few years of life determine to a large degree how we die in later years (gluckman & hanson, 2006; montez & hayward, 2011). the developmental origins of health and disease (dohad) is the new paradigm for understanding the chronic diseases that have replaced infectious conditions as the leading killers in the industrialized countries. dohad is a multi-disciplinary field that examines how factors in the environment, broadly considered, during critical periods of development modify the capacity of the organism to cope with later life. natural experiments evidence from natural human experiments provides insight into the effects of early life stresses on infant outcomes. the dutch hunger winter was a period of low food availability in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 207 holland during world war ii, with caloric restrictions from 1,800 calories to less than 1,000 calories occurring between november 1944 and april 1945. children born of women who were pregnant during this period were followed to adulthood, and the results were striking. adults who were exposed to the famine in the early months of their gestation were more likely to have mental disorders, neural tube defects, glucose intolerance, an atherogenic lipid profile, altered blood coagulation, female obesity, stress sensitivity, coronary artery disease, and breast cancer. cognitive function was also affected in later life. those exposed in mid-gestation had glucose intolerance, as well as kidney and lung problems, while for late gestation exposure the risk of glucose intolerance was greater. these specific findings correlate with the periods when various organs were being formed in the foetus that were impacted by famine conditions. the many studies from this natural human experiment have demonstrated that nutritional stresses in utero that produce non-optimal growth during the foetal period can have profound health effects later in life (de rooij, wouters, yonker, painter, & roseboom, 2010; schulz, 2010). studies also support the intergenerational transmission of health. the progeny of women who were born during the dutch hunger winter have been found to have neonatal adiposity and poor adult health (painter et al., 2008). the explanation for this finding is not complex: all of us were born of an ovum that was produced by our mother when she was herself developing in her own mother’s body. for that reason, our maternal grandmother’s condition could have substantial impact on our own health. the health and socioeconomic status of grandparents thus can predict the health of individuals (schreier & chen, 2010). nutritional stress during pregnancy and infancy is strongly correlated with many chronic diseases in adulthood, but other kinds of gestational stresses affect us as well. children born of pregnant women exposed to the psychosocial stress of hurricane katrina and 9/11, for example, have been found to have various health issues as they develop (ohlsson, shah, et al., 2011). there was an increase in foetal deaths, in preterm births and low birth weight infants for those exposed to katrina (currie & rossin-slater, 2013; zahran et al., 2014). other elements affecting the foetus are known to affect birth outcomes, including infections such as rubella, drugs such as thalidomide and diethylstilbestrol, environmental factors (e.g., particulate matter in the air), as well as chemical exposures (tobacco smoke). the foetal origins hypothesis a non-experimental way of considering the impact of early life on adult health requires studying subjects as close to the time of conception as possible and following them until death, and then considering the next generation. ideally, the subjects for such cohort studies would be randomly selected and be in various settings representative of humans around the globe, something currently unthinkable. what follows describes the best studies that consider subjects during their beginnings in utero and for the first few years after birth. pregnancy outcomes that have been measured include low birth weight, prematurity, and intrauterine growth restriction. in the 1990s david barker conducted studies of people who were born in the early part of the 20th century in three regions in england where detailed birth records were kept (hertfordshire, preston, and sheffield). he demonstrated an association between low birth weight and coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension in adults, findings that became known as the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 208 foetal origins hypothesis. low birth weight is a surrogate marker of impaired foetal growth and development. the results have been replicated for various health conditions in many different populations using other indicators besides birth weight, such as the ponderal index (a birth weight to length ratio) and head circumference that are also proxies of growth and development in utero (barker, 1998). barker later studied infants born at helsinki’s university central hospital between 1923 and 1944, following them to adulthood. boys with low birth weight who remained small for weight, length, and body mass index during the next two years were more likely to have coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes as adults, even though they had significant catch-up growth after five years of age (barker, 2012; barker, osmond, kajantie, & eriksson, 2009; eriksson, 2007). infant growth predicted income 50 years later (barker, eriksson, forsén, & osmond, 2005). efforts to identify other early life factors affecting later health are ongoing. the british birth cohort studies enroll all infants born in one specific week in the united kingdom and follow them at various ages. the 1958 british birth cohort has followed people from birth, and at ages 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, 46, and 50 (elliott & vaitilingam, 2008). a general finding from these extensive data is that having poorer early life situations predisposes to worse health later. case, fertig, and paxson (2005) conclude: we find, controlling for parental income, education and social class, that children who have experienced poorer uterine environments and poorer health in childhood have significantly lower educational attainment, poorer health and lower socioeconomic status as adults. moreover, prenatal and childhood health appear to have direct effects on health and economic status in middle age: controlling for educational attainment, and for socioeconomic status and health in earlier adulthood, we find prenatal and childhood health markers are significant predictors of health and economic status at age 42. (pp. 367–368) how much of adult health is determined in early life? the answer depends on the definition of adult health. one measure is self-rated health, obtained by asking the subject how healthy she or he is on a likert scale, which patterns actual mortality rates in culturally similar populations. examination of the 1958 british birth cohort members at age 33 found that conditions in early life predicted about half of self-rated health. in the trajectory from conception to death there are imprinted or latent effects operative in early life that are independent of later events. what has happened in this period cannot later be reversed. later on, so-called pathway or indirect effects set the person on various life courses that depend on factors such as level of schooling and grade of employment, while cumulative effects, related to dose-response and intensity, consider enhancing and damaging health-related behaviors and environments (hertzman, 1999). examples of pathway effects include completing advanced education, while cumulative ones are income earned or damaging drug use. taken together, the strength of the pathway and cumulative effects are roughly equal to latent effects (hertzman & boyce, 2010). the 1958 british birth cohort used age seven as the cutoff for early international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 209 life, since that is when the second data collection point occurred; other scholarship would put the age lower. currently there is interest in the first thousand days after conception as the critical period during which adult health is programmed. roughly half of adult health, the impact of the latent period, is determined early in life. the latent effects are mostly related to socioeconomic status and its consequences. psychosocial stress and health stress during pregnancy, characterized by specific negative life events rather than subjective reports, has been linked to inflammatory markers in the women’s offspring in their 20s (entringer et al., 2008). the negative life events considered were: relationship conflicts characterized as divorce, break up, paternity denial, marital infidelity; death of someone close such as a partner, parent, or other child; severe illness of someone close including cancer, heart attack, or stroke; and severe financial problems, such as loss of house by flooding, or sudden unemployment of husband, or foreclosure. others included a car accident, being unmarried with the child’s father not accepted by family, and finally, becoming a political refugee. cytokine production in response to antigen stimulation, which measures immune function, was assessed in the progeny. prenatally stressed women showed levels of cytokine production similar to that of chronically stressed women. maternal stress may be transmitted to the foetus via: (a) transplacental transport of maternal stress hormones to the foetus; (b) maternal stress-induced release of placental hormones that enter the foetal circulation; and (c) maternal stress-induced effects on placental physiology, including blood flow and changes in foetal metabolism impacting oxygen and glucose usage. these changes may affect organ development and programming of the stress response, as has been found in non-human animal experiments. the same study model was used to demonstrate increased insulin resistance when the study women were in their 20s, as well as decreased memory and other factors known to increase risk for developing diseases in later life (entringer et al., 2012). work is progressing on the biological mechanisms through which prenatal stress affects adult health. one promising approach finds that maternal stress exposure produces shorter telomeres in the resulting young adults, which portends worse health later (entringer et al., 2011). foetal programming and developmental plasticity are terms given to the panoply of processes that mold the foetus to adapt to life outside the uterus. foetal programming may be the set of adaptive responses that enable successful reproduction, our evolutionary purpose (gluckman & hanson, 2004). in this “womb with a view” perspective, the foetus scans the environment to prepare for the post-natal one. epigenetic mechanisms are the likely path for this process. epigenetic factors on the genome tell the genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper, and are influenced by a host of broadly considered environmental factors. most importantly, they are transmitted across generations. thus transgenerational influences, as well as nutrition, lifestyle, environmental substances, clinical conditions and social stressors, act on the epigenome to produce chronic diseases in later life after successful reproduction (boekelheide et al., 2012; hochberg et al., 2011; lane, robker, & robertson, 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 210 the placenta, the maternal foetal interface, is actively involved in complex ways in shaping the foetus to survive outside the uterine environment. the placenta provides an immunological barrier between foetus and mother, mediates the transfer of respiratory gases, water, ions, and nutrients, and produces and secretes a vast array of hormones, cytokines, and signaling molecules (jansson & powell, 2007). placental growth is under the control of imprinted genes (those whose expression depends on their parental origin) that may upor downregulate growth depending on the parent of origin. paternally expressed genes tend to enhance foetal growth while maternal ones suppress it. the placenta has a distinct epigenetic profile that changes through gestation in response to the environment. it is involved in foetal brain development and likely impacts child and adult cognitive functioning (boekelheide et al., 2012; zeltser & leibel, 2011). there is unequivocal evidence that the first nine months of life before birth are strongly associated with various chronic diseases in adulthood (paul, 2010). what about the effects after birth on adult health? biological embedding is one term used to describe postnatal influences on health. the socioeconomic gradient found in health status appears very early in life. infant and child disease outcomes are related to the socioeconomic status of the parents: children of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be ill and die. reasons postulated include access to health care, education, material deprivation, psychological and social factors, the physical environment, behaviors, and exposures to pathogens (colvin et al., 2013). for children admitted to tertiary care hospitals in the u.s., those from lower income zip codes were more likely to die in hospital than those from upper income ones. children in the u.s. who receive heart transplants and have low socioeconomic status are more likely to have rejection and graft failure (davies et al., 2013). what can explain the socioeconomic gradient’s effect on health in children? the same stresses linked to complex social, societal, and parental factors that work during pregnancy continue after birth affecting early child development. growth after birth is an important indicator that portends future health outcomes. for example, weight at one year is inversely proportional to the risk of coronary heart disease in adulthood. like all population-based measures, however, these data represent risks and averages, not inevitable results. lower weight at birth or at one year of age does not doom the infant to bad adult outcomes, but the chances of problems are greater. the same concept applies to the rest of the indicators presented here. similarly, birth weight has been found to be related to cognitive function of grade school children as measured on standardized tests, and is invariant to school quality (figlio, guryan, karbownik, & roth, 2014). general statements are presented that do not apply to individuals, but to populations. family socioeconomic circumstances during childhood appear to be more important predictors of adult health than later change in income or social mobility. a child who grows up in poverty has worse health in adulthood than a child not growing up in poverty (chen, martin, & matthews, 2007; conroy, sandel, and zuckerman, 2010). poverty has adverse effects on brain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 211 development (nelson, 2013). although in the united states explanations for this inequality often revolve around the lack of access to health services, studies in other countries with universal health care demonstrate the same phenomenon (seguin et al., 2012). attachment theory attachment theory is another important concept in the study of early life outcomes. john bowlby, a british psychiatrist, studied separation in children before, during and after the second world war and developed a theory of attachment as an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate socialization. comfort with interpersonal closeness and a willingness to depend on others have species survival benefits. bowlby’s work with mary ainsworth led to categorization of attachment styles (bowlby, 1988). secure attachment resulted from supportive contact from a caregiver in early life. securely attached infants bond with the primary caregiver, tend to be more comfortable around strangers, and cope with stress knowing they can retreat to a secure base. humans are almost the only primate with white sclerae (whites in their eyes). eye contact is an important process for secure attachment to occur and the eyes of a single caregiver are important for this process. a major goal of infancy can be seen as the creation of a secure attachment bond with a primary caregiver and the development of self-regulation as the infant interacts with its environment. the infant is exposed to and processes enhancing touch, sounds, and images. this works better in a socially rich environment (schore, 2005). if an infant is presented with many different pairs of eyes early on, he or she is more likely to be uncomfortable among strangers and exhibit avoidance or ambivalence towards caregivers. attachment styles are termed secure or insecure with three types termed: dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful. another categorization of insecure attachment is anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. about half the adults in people in the u.s. and england may have a secure attachment style (ciechanowski et al., 2004; stansfeld, head, bartley, & fonagy, 2008). adults with predominantly secure attachment style are believed to have experienced consistently responsive early care giving and are generally comfortable depending on and being readily comforted by others. adults with predominantly dismissing attachment style are posited to have experienced early care giving that was consistently emotionally unresponsive and from an early age they develop strategies in which they are highly selfreliant and uncomfortable trusting others. on the other hand, adults with predominantly preoccupied attachment style experienced inconsistently responsive care giving; to ensure proximity to caregivers, they learned to do more than their share in attachment relationships. they are generally emotionally dependent on others’ approval and generally have poor self-esteem. people with a predominantly fearful attachment style also may desire social contact, but this desire is inhibited by fear of rejection. they are hypothesized to have had overly critical or harshly rejecting care giving and as adults are more likely to demonstrate approach-avoidance behavior interpersonally, stemming from a fear of intimacy. (ciechanowski et al., 2004, p. 721) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 212 attachment is related to social position, context, culture, and economic circumstances in a complicated way with much research being done. healthy early life attachment may facilitate resilience to adversity encountered then and promote better later health (bartley, head, & stansfeld, 2007; chida & steptoe, 2008; stansfeld, head, et al., 2008; stansfeld, clark, rodgers, caldwell, & power, 2008). mortality has been found to be higher in diabetics among those without secure attachment (ciechanowski et al., 2010). avoidant and anxious adult attachment styles are related to worse health outcomes (mcwilliams & bailey, 2010). there are stress and immune function consequences (jaremka et al., 2013). neurocognitive development imaging shows that the visual cortex of the brain is very active and is being remodeled in the first six months of life, followed by the auditory cortex which peaks in the next few years. children raised in a rich sound environment where complex language is used by caregivers develop better than those in situations with limited words and phrases. such environments correlate with socioeconomic status: wealthier families tend to expose children to richer verbal discussions, while poorer ones may focus on words of admonishment (hart & risley, 1995). pre-literacy skills are more advanced in higher ses children and enable them to do better at school. pediatricians now recommend that parents read to children right from birth as a means of fostering attachment and exposure to a varied vocabulary. as a child grows, the frontal lobes of the brain, our social organ, develop. while in the first year the infant may do best with a single caregiver, the presence of a second caregiver in the second year is important and beyond that period a nourishing social environment enhances social adaptation. stimulating surroundings with other children are important after the first two years of life. during the 1980s when abortion and contraception were forbidden in romania, that country had high birth rates with many abandoned infants and children. large numbers of orphans were placed into very deprived environments within their first month of life as the country focused on repaying foreign debt. these infants spent most of their days unattended. studies of their adoptions abroad show that the more severe deprivation they were exposed to, the more severe attachment, cognitive, and behavioral problems they have. the difficulties orphans experienced, including severe cognitive and behavioral problems, do not return to normal levels even after placement in a nurturing environment. brain imaging studies show significant damage due to this early life effect (marshall, 2014; nelson, fox, & zeanah, 2014). an ideal study of the first few years of life after birth for lifelong health impacts would require simultaneous cohort studies that enrolled a substantial sample of people in many societies, and followed their progeny from conception to death. the perfect study would require wearing a lifelong personal camera to monitor behaviors such as breastfeeding, parenting, social interactions, and other activities. although this kind of research obviously has not been done, a number of existing cohort studies have been conducted that provide useful information. the 1958 british birth cohort study described earlier found that the latent factors of early life at age seven that mattered most for later health were whether the child was read to on a regular basis by his or her parents, whether the child adjusted easily when first attending school, and what proportion of ultimate adult height the child reached at age 7 (hertzman, power, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 213 matthews, & manor, 2001). these findings are consistent with healthy physical development and attachment. studies with a kaiser patient population in san diego, california in the 1980s revealed that abuse in early life was common and related to adult health problems. abuse explained many compensatory adult behaviors such as smoking, overeating, alcohol and drug use, which provide immediate partial relief from the emotional problems suffered earlier. adverse childhood experiences (aces) were categorized as: abuse (emotional, physical and sexual); household dysfunction (violence towards mother, not being raised by biologic parents, household member being alcoholic or drug user, household member with significant mental problems); and neglect, either physical or emotional. the more of these aces a person experiences, the higher the chance of dying younger, the greater the number of antipsychotic prescriptions consumed, and the greater the likelihood of teen pregnancy or paternity, injection drug use, or attempted suicide in later life (felitti, 2009; felitti & anda, 2010; felitti et al., 1998; maté, 2008). the biological mechanisms that produce the adverse effects of aces are likely epigenetic changes in the expression of the genome (essex et al., 2013). knowing the possible biology that may operate behind an assertion considerably strengthens it. what has been presented here is the effect of early childhood stress on health across the lifespan. stress in childhood can be positive, the normal kind that challenges us to develop. it can be tolerable but relatively short-lived, such as a natural disaster or family disruption, and may benefit the child developmentally if there is adequate support. toxic stress, however, results from sustained adverse experiences that children find difficult to manage. toxic stress adversely affects brain development, and models link stress in early childhood to chronic diseases of aging (middlebrooks & audage, 2008; miller, chen, & parker, 2011; pesonen & raikkonen, 2012). parenting and health good parenting is beneficial for the health of offspring. some people can overcome the impact of having bad parenting and adversity, but it is better not to have this challenge (gladwell, 2008). defining what represents good parenting is problematic, but animal experiments shed some light on the subject. the brain is linked to the body’s stress response via neuronal mechanisms, the autonomic nervous system (ans), as well as hormonally by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (hpa) axis that modulates the stress response. there is considerable evidence that animals lower down in the social hierarchy have different stress mechanisms than those higher up. cortisol, secreted by the adrenal gland, is our chronic stress hormone. in rat experiments, removal from the mother for even a short period of time in the rat pup’s life can permanently alter the hpa stress response. there is a brief window when extra licking and grooming after return to the mother can result in a more adaptive stress response. the others not given this extra parenting showed more rapid aging (hertzman & boyce, 2010). rat pups that were more frequently or less frequently groomed by their mothers have hpa axis differences related to epigenetic changes in the expression of dna. less licking and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 214 grooming resulted in a more highly reactive hpa axis. these behaviors are biologically embedded and passed on to the next generation. rat pups that have been highly licked and groomed will, upon reaching adulthood, lick and groom their pups more, while those exposed to less licking and grooming will do likewise with their pups. cross-fostering studies demonstrate that the licking and grooming behavior is patterned by the exposure rather than genetically, indicating transfer by epigenetic means (hertzman & boyce, 2010). similar neural mechanisms are found in humans as well, and explain poorer outcomes found in romanian orphans (rilling & young, 2014). many studies of the impact of parenting and social relations on health come from extreme conditions as in romania presented above. having both parents in the home can affect the level of positive parenting that is available to a child. parents who find raising children a challenge today will mostly agree that it is easier when two people work together. a study was done in sweden on the effect of having only one parent in the home on child mortality from age one to 16. the mortality impact of being in a single-parent household for boys was 50% greater than for two-parent boys, and for girls 21% greater (weitoft, hjern, haglund, & rosén, 2003). studies looking at non-mortality measures suggest children in single-parent households have worse health (bramlett and blumberg, 2007; tobias, kokaua, gerritsen, & templeton, 2010; troxel & matthews, 2004). a child’s parenting that is sub-optimal can predict more ill-health during mid-childhood (waylen, stallard, & stewart-brown, 2008). for example, a child exposed to intimate partner violence is more likely to have asthma, although the ability of the mother to maintain positive caregiving may buffer that risk (suglia, enlow, kullowatz, & wright, 2009). a study looking at hypertension among adult black men in the u.s. found considerably higher levels among those who did not live with both parents when growing up (barrington, adeyemo, & rotimi, 2014). many parenting studies examine children with severe disabilities because they are easier to study. such families have considerable stress. training and support for these families seems to have a beneficial effect (dykens, fisher, taylor, lambert, & miodrag, 2014). studies usually control for socioeconomic status and so do not study those differences. with very high levels of parental stress, the interventions studied don’t work as well (osborne, mchugh, saunders, & reed, 2008). parental warmth, however, can buffer childhood abuse’s impact on adult health (carroll et al., 2013). what about non-parental care in early childhood? during brain development after the age of two, the frontal lobes undergo rapid remodeling. a stimulating social environment, such as play with other children, is necessary for this remodeling. thus social relationships are vital to brain development and therefore to producing health. in a similar manner, the impact of friendship and support on averting mortality is greater than practicing individual health-related behaviors (holt-lunstad, smith, & layton, 2010). high social support from any source helps alleviate early childhood adversity (runsten et al., 2014). studies are mixed on the extent to which non-parental child care benefits children, with variation depending on the study and outcome measures employed as well as the socioeconomic status of the families involved (lee, 2014). high-quality care is associated with improved international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 215 children’s language development, cognitive skills, and behavioral adjustment. age of the child when care begins as well as the amount of time spent in non-parental care also affects outcomes. the nature of the home environment, whether it is harsh, disciplinary, supportive, or responsive, and whether parents have significant mental illness or other risk factors, also matters. is the childcare center-based and typically then state-regulated? such care may be called nursery school, or pre-school, and may be associated with a workplace and accredited by a national organization. family childcare or the use of nannies represent other arrangements. whatever the source, more stable childcare situations result in greater cognitive test score improvement. with the increasing levels of employment outside the home for women and thus the increase in non-parental care, what matters for the child’s well-being ranges from pre-existing risk factors to the quality of the care and how it is financially supported. many governments are moving to institute universal access to non-parental child care (jenkins, 2014). providing the nurturing early life that impacts adult health will be an increasing challenge around the world as today’s globalization changes the work world. for families in poverty, the mitigating effects of quality non-parental child care on adult outcomes may be significant (lee, 2005, 2014; leseman, 2013; love et al., 2003; quan, bureau, yurkowski, moss, & pallanca, 2013). socioeconomic disadvantage in early life in countries such as the united states, with its emphasis on individualism, the pursuit of happiness and achievement is made more difficult by vast economic inequality. parenting by those lower down the socioeconomic ladder is more problematic for many measures including educational outcomes (reeves & howard, 2013). richer parents have more opportunities for raising healthy children. parents in the u.s.a. facing economic hardship are more likely to be single and focus on survival and “natural growth” of their children while richer parents focus on the “concerted cultivation of children” (lareau, 2011). international comparisons of parenting demonstrate considerable variations (druckerman, 2012). like other concepts discussed here, poorer parents, individually, are not necessarily worse parents than richer ones, but opportunities for better parenting occur higher up the economic hierarchy. many studies demonstrate that poverty in early life is the greatest obstacle to a healthy adulthood. a new zealand study looked at children followed to age 26 and found a strong impact of early life socioeconomic circumstances on adult health. the higher up the economic ladder the family was during childhood, the healthier the adult (poulton et al., 2002). this study has been replicated in many different societies for many different measures of adult health (braveman & barclay, 2009). while social support may buffer the adverse effects of relative poverty in early life, it can’t do away with them (andersen & mortensen, 2006; kuh, hardy, langenberg, richards, & wadsworth, 2002; luo, wilkins, & kramer, 2006). political economy approaches to better health political economy studies the role of the state in the economic and social organization of a country by asking what public policies and institutions bring people closer to an ideal society. the distribution of wealth and income is central to a political economy approach. we use this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 216 strategy in discussing how to improve population health. mortality trajectories in relation to economic growth typically demonstrate what is called a business procyclical quality, namely that health improves more during economic declines than during booms, at least in developed nations (bezruchka, 2009). the benefits of economic growth on societal outcomes in rich nations today have reached a plateau, and there is little evidence of a human development advantage from expanding the economy, as compared to making it more equitable (wilkinson & pickett, 2010). economic inequality today is at a record high, reaching levels of the gilded age and the period before the great depression. the compression of inequality that followed reached its nadir in the 1970s. today’s inequality will likely swell even more (piketty, 2014) and be responsible for increasing health inequities (wilkinson & pickett, 2010). it may be time to reconsider current models of political economy for their effects on health. mortality outcomes very greatly among rich nations with a paradox: the richest nation, the united states, has perhaps the worst health outcomes. this includes nearly all mortality indicators and many other measures of well-being (unicef office of research innocenti, 2013). there is no substantial group within the u.s. that can claim stellar health outcomes, if the standard of comparison is similar groups in other rich nations (national research council & institute of medicine, 2013). reasons for this phenomenon go beyond the lack of universal health care and probably relate to historical issues and american exceptionalism, along with that country’s extreme inequality (bezruchka, 2012a, 2012b). one death in three in the u.s. can be linked to its income inequality (kondo et al., 2009); the u.s. is a convincing example that the wealthiest societies are not necessarily the healthiest. from a political economy perspective it is preferable to create conditions for healthy early life outcomes that depend less on individual agency in order to increase the chances that more people will be healthier as they age. we begin considering individual steps. individual health advice since socioeconomic status is critical for good health outcomes, one admonition directed at the individual family who desires to have a healthy child is to not be poor, or at least to not be poor during their children’s early life. the efficacy of this advice depends on the society in which the future parents live. the united states, for example, has the highest child poverty rates of all rich nations, so having a family there may be inadvisable unless one is quite well off (unicef office of research innocenti, 2013). even then, health outcomes for those privileged in the u.s. are not as favorable as similar people in other rich nations (national research council & institute of medicine, 2013). inequality in a society affects everyone to a degree, rich and poor families alike. interventions that address individual behaviors to improve child health outcomes are well-intentioned but typically not that effective. dietary prescriptions, for example, are fraught with hazard. pregnant women are given nutritional advice in a clinical setting and through the media. although variations in the maternal nutrient balance of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins affect foetal growth, there is no consensus for population level, well-researched, maternal dietary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 217 guidelines beyond suggesting an optimal healthy balanced diet (wood-bradley, henry, vrselja, newman, & armitage, 2013). often women do not recognize they are pregnant until towards the end of the first trimester when many exposures that adversely affect the foetus may already have taken place. because a girl is a potential mother from the time of her own conception, the girl’s life history matters more for her child’s health than what she does during pregnancy. prenatal or antenatal care, the impact of visiting a clinic while pregnant, is thought to be of great benefit for the progeny. however, demonstrating an independent effect of prenatal care for populations is difficult in rich and poor nations alike (kramer et al., 2001). health outcomes are heavily determined by what happened to the mother before she became pregnant. such statements are not meant to suggest that pregnant women avoid prenatal care, but for most women without pregnancy complications the benefits of prenatal care as generally practiced are limited in scope (di mario, basevi, gori, & spettoli, 2005). recognizing the limitations of dealing with individuals, the political economy perspective would structure society for ensuring the best infant, child, and adult health outcomes. political choices to be considered include the following. aim for societies with little poverty if low socioeconomic status is the pre-eminent condition impacting health, then perhaps poverty should be considered a disease or at least a risk factor to be treated with income (bloch et al., 2008; bloch, rozmovits, and giambrone, 2011; costello, erkanli, copeland, & angold, 2010). treating the disease of poverty with income or some kind of financial support is a political economy “medicine”. rich countries have remarkably different levels of support for various peoples within their nations. some, like the u.s., have low government expenditures on what is termed social welfare, namely financial help for the less advantaged (bradley, elkins, herrin, & elbel, 2011; piketty, 2014). by contrast, the scandinavian countries are known for their non-means tested welfare supports (booth, 2014). societies could provide a basic income guarantee. this intervention was proposed by a republican president in the united states in 1969 and came close to becoming law (burke & burke, 1974). the swedish government prioritizes spending directed at the first year of life. this is consistent with overwhelming evidence that spending directed at early life averts spending for disease conditions in later life. sweden tries to assist parents in parenting during the early years (campbell et al., 2014; organisation for economic co-operation and development [oecd], 2007; raphael, 2010a, 2010b). provide financial support for periods of pregnancy and parenting given the difficulties of being pregnant and of parenting, a political economy strategy would make this period as easy as possible for families. one way is to provide paid leave for pregnant women working outside the home, and for parents once the child is born. almost all rich nations except the united states have a paid antenatal leave policy varying in length up to four months. only two nations globally do not have a federally mandated paid parental leave policy (paid maternal postnatal leave, at a minimum), the united states and papua new guinea international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 218 (addati, cassirer, & gilchrist, 2014). there is considerable evidence that parental leave results in substantially improved outcomes (cerón-mireles, harlow, & sánchez-carrillo, 1996; guendelman et al., 2009; heymann & mcneill, 2013; tanaka, 2005; wüst, 2014). make parenting support widely available evidence-based home visiting programs can improve parenting, whereas programs like pre-kindergarten education outsources parenting. the u.s. focus is primarily on funding pre-k education rather than improving parenting (reeves & howard, 2013). in the last five years (2009 to 2013), the u.s. federal government has allocated $37.5 billion to head start, 25 times the $1.5 billion that it has allocated to evidence-based home visiting programs. yet nurse home visitation programs (nurse family partnerships) for vulnerable families have been found to improve health outcomes. these benefits extend not only to behavioral outcomes but also to mortality. in a country where parents are seen as private agents and solely in charge of their family’s destiny, attempting to craft policies to provide this kind of social “medicine” is challenging (eckenrode et al., 2010; kitzman et al., 2010; olds et al., 2010). high-quality, comprehensive, intensive interventions that stimulate the early childhood environment have been found to not only improve cognitive skills, but also substantially boost adult health. efforts directed from birth through age five produced significantly better outcomes than those directed beyond school entry. a study carried out in north carolina, for example, used gold standard techniques of investigation to demonstrate these findings (campbell et al., 2014). involving communities in the process can improve child health. the early development instrument (edi) was developed in canada as a tool for measuring population health in early life. the edi is carried out by a teacher in kindergarten to assess a child’s school readiness in five domains of child development: physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge. neighborhood comparisons are made so the community has a sense of their children’s readiness to learn (hertzman & bertrand, 2007). when communities are aware of the importance of early life on adult outcomes, they can act to improve those circumstances. the edi has also been widely implemented in australia (janus et al., 2007). in summary, early life conditions have dramatic effects on adult health. the avenues for improving early life conditions include working with individual families or creating societal conditions in which salutary effects occur naturally. if the premise is accepted that social and economic inequality is at the root of most undesirable outcomes, then the task at hand is to work at the societal level to reduce inequality and direct resources towards producing a healthy early life. the way to deal with social problems is with social forces. socioeconomic status lies at the root of most health issues, so limiting inequalities in society is the key political issue that must be addressed. from a political economy perspective, utopian interventions such as a progressive transparent global wealth tax, an income tax, and an inheritance tax could bring about the revenue required to support early life (piketty, 2014). evidence of benefit may be seen in shortterm surrogate outcomes, but the major impacts on mortality will take generations for full effect. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 219 an important early step in this process will be to create awareness of the critical role of early life conditions in the development of health and disease, with a focus on the links to economic inequality. the public everywhere needs to understand this critically important information and recognize that individuals aren’t to blame. our task is to accurately present the facts of early life in a way that raises awareness and leads to dialogue and change. people everywhere need to be involved in discussions of how early life affects all of us. like most scientific revolutions, that task is formidable. phenomenal increases in communication avenues for reaching large numbers of people suggest that the way forward is possible. we must begin. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 204–229 220 references addati, l., cassirer, n., & gilchrist, k. 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workers using three different frames of understanding: (a) the precarious employment associated with the tourism industry itself; (b) the specific place and community of banff and how it shapes particular conditions of precarity and agency within the tourism industry and for young tourism workers’ experiences; and (c) the young adult tourism workers themselves — their motives for work and travel, their experiences of work, and their agency in navigating the tourism industry in banff. using these three frames, i examine the impact of precarity and agency on the transfer of work knowledge, on the sustainability of the tourism industry work and the community, and on the young adult tourism workers’ future work experiences. it is critical to examine work precarity, worker agency, and job and community sustainability in order to understand more fully the experiences of mobility of young adult tourism workers, and their early work experiences. this is all the more important as, in a climate of economic change and restructuring, young adult workers are becoming central to the consideration of employment policy issues. keywords: young adult, tourism worker, precarity, agency, community (un)sustainability, banff angèle smith phd is associate professor and chair of anthropology, university of northern british columbia, 3333 university way, prince george, bc v2n 4z9. email: angele.smith@unbc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 66  the town of banff, alberta, lies within the bounds of banff national park in the rocky mountains of western canada. a news headline in 2018 read: “banff ‘bursting at the seams’ ” (ctv news, 2018). in 2019, approximately 4.09 million people visited banff national park (statista, 2020) — eclipsing the attendance figures of other parks across canada. but the park and town are a destination place not only for tourists, but also for the young adult tourism workers that supplement, and are indeed the backbone of, the tourism industry workforce. with a local population of just 9,6581 (enns, 2018), it is not surprising that the tourism industry of the town of banff is dependent on the mobile young workers who come for a season or two to work in the national park and experience living there. the tourism industry provides ample employment opportunities and is often a first-time or early work experience for young workers. at the height of banff’s two peak tourist seasons — hiking in summer and skiing in winter — there is great demand for entry-level, cheaply paid workers. the young adults who fill these jobs are often backpackers or other travellers who simultaneously are tourism workers and semi-permanent residents in the community of banff. however, in the shoulder seasons of fall and spring, there is a shortage of work relative to the number of young people looking for employment. for mobile young adult tourism workers, their work experience is often marked by instability and precarity: poor pay, shifting and part time work schedules, inability to get beyond entry-level jobs, challenging work conditions, and seasonality. in banff specifically, they must also contend with living in an extremely expensive community with critical housing shortages. the result is that many of these young workers cannot find sustainable work and living conditions and must leave to find work elsewhere. employers and workers alike are always in “training” mode as there is a cycle of workers leaving and new ones arriving. in other words, there is a cycle of precarity and unsustainability. this paper draws on data collected for research undertaken through the on the move partnership (2012–2020)2, focusing on the experiences and context of the years before the covid19 pandemic. i examine these first-time or early work experiences for young workers in the tourism industry in banff national park, with a primary focus on the town of banff, highlighting how these experiences are often marked by instability and precarity. it explores how large numbers of young workers must leave to find work elsewhere, meaning that there is little transfer of work knowledge and little attachment to place. at the same time, the study finds that many young 1according to the banff 2017 municipal census briefing (enns, 2018), the permanent population was 8,865 and the shadow population was 793 for a total of 9,658. a shadow population is defined as “temporary residents of a municipality who are employed by an industrial or commercial establishment in the municipality for a minimum of 30 days within a municipal census year” (alberta municipal affairs, 2018, p. 4). these are not considered “permanent” or usual residents. 2for more information about the “on the move” partnership research, see http://www.onthemovepartnership.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 67  workers gain valuable skills in negotiating the precarity of the work environment, having used their own agency and the flexibility of the work to develop their resilience and adaptability. in this paper, i begin by contextualizing this study of young adult tourism workers in banff national park within the body of research carried out on employment-related geographic mobility and outline the research methods that i used to gather data. i discuss the patterns and the impact of the work mobility of these young adult tourism workers using three different frames of understanding. the first frame focuses on the precarious employment associated with the tourism industry itself. the second frame is concerned more specifically with the community of banff and how it shapes particular conditions of precarity and agency within the tourism industry and for young tourism workers’ experiences. this frame focuses on place-based conditions as well as the identity of the place of banff national park. the third frame focuses on the young adult tourism workers themselves — their motives for work and travel, their experiences of work, and their agency in navigating the tourism industry in banff. i will use these three frames to examine the impact of precarity and agency on work knowledge, exploring what it means for the sustainability of the tourism industry and the community, as well as what it potentially means for the young adult tourism workers’ future work experiences. finally, i conclude with a discussion of how critical it is to examine work precarity, worker agency, and job and community sustainability in order to more fully understand the experiences of mobility and the early work experiences of young adult tourism workers. research context this research is part of a larger national (canadian) “on the move” project concerned with “employment related geographic mobility” and funded by a partnership grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (2012–2020). the fundamental questions of this national study are concerned with why people move to a new community to find work, and what the impacts of that mobility pattern are for the workers, their work destinations, and the places and people left behind. my own research within this project deals specifically with the young adult mobile tourism workers coming to banff national park (primarily the town of banff and neighbouring lake louise) and explores their travel, work, and living experiences. the project investigates the key concepts of mobility, identity, and place through a longitudinal study and an in-depth ethnography of young adult tourism workers who have travelled to banff to find work. banff is a “destination” tourist site, with many attractions that draw tourists from around the world, which results in tourism being the principal industry of the town and park. it is an important research site for studying the community of tourism workers, but it also has symbolic and national importance. banff is a canadian icon with a long history. first nations peoples lived on and visited these lands along the bow river for more than 10,000 years (langemann, 2011). the town of banff in southern alberta is located with the treaty 7, signed in 1877 and encompassing the traditional territories of the blackfoot confederacy, the tsuut’ina first nations and the stoney nakoda nations (town of banff, 2021a). banff also is entwined with legends of canadian nationinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 68  building in terms of exploring into the western “wilderness” through the rocky mountains, and linking the nation from east to west with the construction of the canadian pacific railway (campbell, 2011). the heritage of banff as canada’s first official national park, as well as its unesco world heritage designation, adds to this important image (sainsbury, 2021). as a result, tourists, travellers, and would-be young tourism workers journey to banff in large numbers. the distinctions between these different types of visitors often blur, adding yet another dimension to the particular characteristics of banff that help to shape the experiences of those young people seeking employment at the start of their working lives. method the research uses a mixed-method approach including both quantitative and qualitative techniques. my research team and i conducted participant observation in the town of banff on fieldwork trips (2011–2018); conducted one-on-one interviews and focus groups with residents, young adult workers, small tourism business operators, elected municipal officials, and staff and services workers of the town of banff; and carried out a household survey. we also surveyed newly arrived workers while they attended the banff heritage ambassador program. in carrying out participant observation, the research team recorded what they noticed, experienced, heard, saw, and talked about while in banff. information was recorded mostly in written journal notes, but also through photography and photojournalling. this method was a continual process used throughout the time in the field. important primary data were collected through 40 one-on-one interviews over the various field seasons. the interviews provide a more in-depth perspective and understanding of living and working in banff. through the interviews, the research team gathered information on the participants’ backgrounds, their travel and work expectations and experiences, their perceptions and knowledge of banff housing and community, and their experiences and identity connected to banff. the individuals interviewed included: young adult tourism workers, young adult migrant workers, social service providers (from banfflife, family and community support services, bow valley immigration partnership, and temporary foreign worker support), business community members (hotel human resource managers and the director of the banff lake louise hotel motel association [bllhma]), community leaders (the mayor and councillors), banff housing corporation members, a parks canada human resource manager, local religious leaders, and residents. in addition to these interviews, four focus groups were conducted with the aim of initiating a group discussion about the experiences of travelling, working, and living in banff. these focus groups targeted mobile young adult workers; however, what was not anticipated, and proved very informative, was the diversity of the people who came to the focus group meetings. there was a wide range of participants in terms of age, length of time in banff, and type of employment. among the attendees, for example, were a middle-aged couple who had lived in banff for more than 25 years, and a young tourism worker from australia who had only arrived the day before the focus international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 69  group meeting. the result was a discussion that included many different viewpoints on living and working in banff. finally, we conducted a household survey in specific residential areas known to have a higher population of young migrant workers, based on data from the town of banff census (pivotal research, 2011). participants were asked to complete the surveys for collection two to three days later. the surveys included questions concerning background information of the individual resident filling out the survey, including their length of time in banff and reasons for coming, type of work, housing, and perceptions of the community. the household surveys provided another set of data and a means of identifying participants interested in follow-up one-on-one interviews or participation in a focus group. discussion using the research methods described above, i examined the data using the three frames of understanding to better interpret the patterns and impact of the work mobility of the young adult tourism workers in banff. the first is concerned with the tourism industry itself and the prevalence of precarious employment within it. tourism industry frame if work precarity is the lack of job predictability, protection, and security, characterized by poor pay (standing, 2016), then it is not surprising that tourism work is inherently precarious. this kind of work thus shapes the work mobility patterns of young adult tourism workers, placing sometimes intolerable demands on the flexibility of workers, to the point that many feel compelled to leave in search of more secure job situations. lee et al. (2015) argued that “work in the tourism industry is increasingly precarious in the descriptive sense [of being] … uncertain, contingent and exploitative” (p. 217). this description of precarious work accurately describes the tourism industry in banff and young adult tourism workers’ experiences of working and living in the banff area. tourism’s key subindustries and services in banff (as noted in figure 1) include accommodation, food and beverage services, transportation, guiding/ski area services (as examples of recreation and entertainment, and travel services), and retail sales and service (pivotal research, 2011). there is a wide variety of jobs within these subindustries and services. for example, the food and beverage kitchen category employs cooks, kitchen helpers, dishwashers, and cleaners; food and beverage front lines include restaurant servers, hosts, bus persons, baristas, bartenders, and delivery drivers; hotels need workers in housekeeping and cleaning, hotel guest services, and office and administration; in the transportation sector, there are bus, van, and taxi drivers; local stores employ retail and customer service staff; and entertainment and travel services require tourist guides and operators, ski instructors, ski lift and customer service staff, and river guides. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 70  figure 1. banff employment in tourism sector note. adapted from the town of banff municipal census, 2011, (p. 20), conducted by pivotal research ltd. the pattern of these subindustries and services that provide tourism jobs in banff is comparable to the distribution of such jobs nationally, where food and beverage work combined with accommodation work make up the largest number of jobs (51%; see figure 23). figure 2. job breakdown within tourism industry nation-wide note. the figure uses data averaged over four quarters from statistics canada, 2013, employment generated by tourism (x 1,000) [cansim table 387-0003]. doi:10.25318/3610023201-eng 3i am using the data from bow valley labour market reviews (lmrs) of august 2018 to january 2019 (the job resource centre, 2019a), and february to july 2019 (the job resource centre, 2019b). more recent lmrs do not show typical patterns as a result of the impacts of covid-19 on the tourism industry in the banff area. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 71  these subindustries and services tourism jobs make up a large proportion of the occupational demands in banff as recorded in the bow valley4 job resource centre report (2019b) for the period of february to july 2019 (see figure 3). figure 3. february to july 2019 occupational demand   note. the figure is adapted from the job resource centre (2019b), bow valley labour market review: fall 2019, p. 2. tourism work in banff consists almost exclusively of entry-level jobs with little opportunity for advancement. additionally, many of these jobs are part-time. nationally, the ratio of full-time to part-time work is about 4 to 1 (80.7% vs. 19.3%; statistics canada, 2015); in banff that ratio is just 3 to 2 (60% vs. 40%; deloitte llp, 2014). entry-level and part-time jobs offer limited potential for young adult tourism workers to make a sustainable living. further, the wages paid to these workers are consistently low, especially given the region’s cost of living (as will be discussed below). a minimum wage of $15 per hour has been in effect in alberta since october 2018 (retail council of canada, 2021). for the spring of 2019, the local bow valley job resource centre (2019a) reported that the lowest average wages were for frontline food and beverage work at an hourly rate of $15.63 before gratuities; followed by the accommodation sector at $16.38 for housekeeping and cleaning and $16.57 for hotel guest services; $16.72 for retail sales and services; $17.62 for food and beverage preparation and dishwashing; and $18.94 for travel and tourism (park interpreters, guides, tour operators and bus, 4the bow valley is the local area along the bow river and includes the town of banff and hamlet of lake louise in addition to other small communities. 22.1% 14.0% 13.6% 13.0% 13.0% 8.1% 5.0% 4.3% 3.7% 3.2% 0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% food & beverage kitchen trades & labour sales & services housekeeping & cleaning food & beverage front line hotel guest services travel & tourism office & administration social services & health care miscellaneous international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 72  van, and taxi drivers). these wages are above the minimum wage set for the province of alberta; however, the cost of living and housing in banff means that workers still struggle to make ends meet, as will be discussed below. while food and beverage servers are often able to supplement their wages with gratuities, the same cannot be said of other job categories. some workers might benefit marginally if, for example, there is centralized tipping amongst the housekeeping staff at a hotel, but as one worker explained in an interview, this amounted to only an extra $36 per month. low wages are a chronic issue that is exacerbated by shorter shifts (5 hours instead of 8) and fewer shifts per week as the peak season draws to an end. tourism workers are often not given fixed hours or a regular schedule, making it logistically difficult for them to accommodate a second job as they are never sure of their work schedule from week to week. even so, many, if not most, of the young adult workers interviewed explained that they had to work multiple jobs in order to manage financially while living in banff. as one of the small tourism operators explained: you might be sold on the idea that you can come to banff to work in a coffee shop and go hiking every weekend, but then by the time you have paid for your accommodation and the food on your table, you realize that you are working 60 hours a week just to do that and you have no time to go hiking or skiing; a lot of people come here planning to work one job but end up with two just to make ends meet. (small tourism operator interview c, february 17, 2012) for young adult tourism workers, the industry provides little or no job security. in part this reflects uncertainties typical of the tourist market, which is affected by many external variables, such as weather, natural disasters, or changes in economic conditions or political climate (lee et al., 2015) such as resulted in 2020 to 2021 from the covid-19 pandemic (macfarlane, 2020). in banff, specifically, the work is seasonal, with peak seasons in winter and summer, and “shoulder” seasons in fall and spring. figures 4 and 5 illustrate the job supply and demand during two periods, august 2018 to january 2019, and february to july 20195. these graphs clearly show the high and low seasons of employment. in the fall/winter graph (figure 4), the job centre in banff reported that during this period, the centre “served 13,470 job seekers and posted 1,511 jobs”, suggesting that those seeking jobs had a success rate of only 11.2%. in the spring/summer graph (figure 5), the centre “served 11,123 job seekers and posted 2,240 jobs”, suggesting a success rate of 20.1%. while the success rate during the summer peak season is significantly higher than that in the winter peak season, these low numbers indicate that, in general, finding work can be challenging in this tourism destination. 5again, i am using pre-covid-19 data as a better example of tourism work for young adults in more typical years. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 73  figure 4. august 2018 to january 2019 job supply and demand in banff note. the figure is from the job resource centre (2019a), bow valley labour market review: spring 2019, p. 2. figure 5. february to july 2019 job supply and demand in banff note. the figure is from the job resource centre (2019b), bow valley labour market review: fall 2019, p. 2. there is no real chance for a tourism worker to move “up the ladder” and thus few prospects for job permanency or any prospect of putting down roots in the community. in other words, the employment constraints of the tourism industry mean that workers are treated as “disposable” (smith, 2018b). the expectation that workers are non-permanent — that they will move on from banff — and thus subject to precarity, is intrinsic to the tourism industry. thus employers and workers are always in “training” mode as the cycle of workers leaving and new ones arriving continues. there is little transfer of work knowledge, and little attachment to place. and in a place international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 74  like the banff community, there are additional challenges shaping the work mobility patterns of young workers. this leads us to the second frame. the community of banff frame the infrastructure of the place and community of banff also influences the work mobility patterns, making it challenging for the young tourism workers to stay for any length of time. these factors contribute to the precarity of their experiences working and living in this tourism destination place, and create a work and community environment based on unsustainability. as with many tourist destinations, housing costs in the town of banff are exorbitantly high and vacancy rates are extremely low. after several years of 0% vacancy rate, the town’s ongoing housing crunch relaxed slightly in 2019 when the residential vacancy rate was reported to be 1.1% (town of banff information, 2019). while the banff community housing strategy identified a healthy vacancy rate as between 3% and 5%, the mayor, karen sorensen, commented that, “this is a positive step in the right direction” (ellis, 2019). comparatively, the overall provincial vacancy rate across alberta increased from 11.7% in 2017 to 13.3% in 2018. further, “according to the provincial survey, the highest end of the rental ranges across alberta was in banff: two-bedroom units at $3,600 and four-plus bedroom unit[s] at $4,000. average provincial rates for two-bedroom were $893 and for four-bedroom $1,436” (ellis, 2019). these rental rates illustrate the prohibitively high housing costs confronting young adult tourism workers (see figure 6 for rental costs in banff and canmore). figure 6. rental costs per month in banff and canmore note. the figure is from the job resource centre (2019a), bow valley labour market review: spring 2019, p. 3. as a result of the high prices, rental accommodations in banff are often overcrowded, sometimes illegally so; it is not unusual to have 6 or more young adults living in one apartment (field notes, 2012). speaking at a housing forum put on by the banff housing corporation that was attended during the 2013 field season, several young tourism workers explained that they had international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 75  practised illegal squatting, couch-surfing with friends, or “sleeping on the floor behind the couch” in an overcrowded apartment (field notes, 2013). in an interview, one official explained that it is a “landlords’ market” and that many take advantage of the situation (interview c, february 16, 2012). town officials are aware of the cramped conditions, but withhold enforcement of laws prohibiting them rather than leave many young adult tourism workers without accommodation. some types of work (e.g., in hotels, motels, and hostels) provide staff accommodations, often located on the same premises as the work itself (field notes, 2013). but this situation has its own issues. although rents under these arrangements are often comparatively low, they must still be paid from the worker’s low wages, which are thus effectively siphoned back into the pockets of the employer. the worker accommodations are often run down and crowded. workers share bedrooms and, in some circumstances, share a communal kitchen, living room, and dining room with as many as 30 people. workers reported being afraid to complain about these conditions because their landlords are also their employers. if they were turned out of staff accommodation, they would face the same difficulties as others in finding affordable housing in town. in staff accommodations, there is little divide between work and “home life” and “you can’t get away from either your boss or your co-workers”, as one hotel worker complained. another result of the high costs and low vacancy rates is that the neighbouring town of canmore, just 25 km away but outside of banff national park, has become a bedroom community for the town of banff. while the residential vacancy rate in canmore is a healthy 5% (alberta regional dashboard, 2019), the housing is also very expensive; as in the town of banff, this has led to overcrowding of shared accommodations. one tour operator working in banff explained that he had been living in calgary (130 km from banff) because the housing was cheaper, but, “after working a 9-hour day whitewater rafting and then having a 3-hour commute on top of that to and from calgary every day — it really wears on you — and i moved to canmore” (interview a, february 17, 2012). to get a sense of what those housing costs really mean, we can recall the average wages of some of these young adult tourism workers. assuming a 35-hour work week, a front line food and beverage server making $15.63 per hour would make $2,188 a month before taxes ($26,256 a year). a housekeeping cleaner at $16.38 per hour would make $2,293 a month before taxes ($27,516 a year). it a general rule that the cost of accommodation should not be more than 30% of take-home pay (broverman, 2021). however, when comparing these monthly salaries to the rental costs in banff of cheaper types of accommodation (1-bedroom, studio/bachelor, or shared; see figure 6), the server would be spending more than 69.8%, 50.5%, or 39.2% of her or his monthly salary, respectively, while the housekeeping cleaner would be spending more than 66.6%, 48.1%, or 37.5% of her or his salary. beyond its high housing costs and low residential vacancy rates, the town of banff is in some ways unique, as it is a “town within a park”. that is, as a municipality within a national park, the town of banff is in the distinct position of being governed equally by its elected municipal council international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 76  and by the federal canada national parks act6, which attempts to maintain a balance between the needs of the town and the ecological integrity of the national park. it does this by legislating that the town cannot grow beyond specific boundaries (either horizontally or vertically) and by a policy objective that caps the town population at 8,000 residents. this objective is realized in a “need to reside” policy mandating that one must be employed in banff in order to reside legally in the town (town of banff, 2021b). as a result, many who come to the town of banff looking for work, or are between jobs there, are in violation of this law. the town of banff’s community plan suggests the number of permanent residents should be fewer than 10,000, even though this exceeds the canada national parks act mandate of a population of 8,000 (ellis, 2013). in 2017, the town population was 9,658 (enns, 2018). therefore, the population size has reached a critical point as evidenced by the housing crisis, which is an issue of concern for both park and town. the policies that manage the community’s imperative to “remain small” have a direct impact on the work and living experiences of everyone in the town of banff, especially the young adult tourism workers. finally, the co-governance arrangement between the town council and parks canada at the federal level results in a friction between the growth objective of the town and its tourism economy, and park canada’s objective of environmental and community sustainability. this conflict between rival objectives is not unique to banff. in the last 5 years, there has been increasing concern with “overtourism”, which the united nations world tourism organization (unwto) defines as “the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way” (unwto et al., 2018, pg. 4). as well as threatening community sustainability, overtourism also threatens the natural environment that is the basis of, and attraction for, tourism (smith, 2018a). according to the unwto, a three-pillar approach to sustainability — economic, environmental, and sociocultural — has been incorporated into tourism destination agendas globally (unwto, n.d.); however, as mihalic (2020) argued: “in reality, tourism destinations continue to encourage economic growth [and]… are strongly embedded in a capitalistic socio-political system” (p. 1). this is very much the case in the town of banff, and young tourism workers are often caught in the middle of this tension. tourism is almost the sole economy of the park and the town of banff, which attract more than four million visitors each year (roughly 400 times the resident population). because of the constraints on the population of the town through the canada national parks act, non-local and temporary tourism workers are essential to maintaining this economy. but as tourism grows, the number of young tourism workers grows, and their residence in banff can be viewed as a violation of the population restrictions in the town of banff, signifying overtourism and threatening community and environmental sustainability. 6https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-14.01/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 77  moreover, young tourism workers in the town of banff are caught in the middle of the tension between tourism growth and community sustainability because of the difficulties of making a living with the precariousness of tourism work and the challenges to finding accommodation in banff. the tourism workers are often simultaneously backpackers or travellers, as well as tourism workers and (semi-permanent) residents. even if they do want to remain in banff and make a life for themselves, most are not able to stay due to the low wages and lack of prospects of advancement, coupled with the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing. these structural impediments are built-in mechanisms that help to maintain the mandate of a small-town population, but they also raise concerns about community sustainability. municipal officials have stated in interviews (interviews m & n, august 27, 2016) that it is impossible to know the exact number of mobile young adult tourism workers actually working and living in banff. this is partly due to the housing issue, and the substandard and sometimes illegal accommodations available to these temporary workers. the 2011 town of banff municipal census (pivotal research, 2011) counted about a thousand “temporary” workers (12.5% of the population)7. many of these individuals would certainly have been mobile tourism workers. however, it likely that their actual numbers were considerably higher, as the census often misses people who are living more marginally: those who are mobile or who have irregular housing arrangements largely go uncounted. the temporary and fluid nature of the town population is evident in data from 2011 showing that that more than 60% of banff residents had lived there for less than 10 years (pivotal research, 2011). of residents who had lived in the community for less than 5 years, nearly half were newcomers to either canada (26.5%) or the province (22.4%; pivotal research, 2011). this indicates a highly mobile and fluid population. what is more, the population is relatively youthful, with 44% of the population between the ages of 15 and 34 (pivotal research, 2011). these demographics reinforce the presence of a young adult mobile tourism workforce, which is the focus of the third frame. the young adult tourism workers frame consideration must be given to the agency, choice-making, and particular circumstances of young adult tourism workers. two main characteristics of these workers are that first, by necessity, they are non-local —“from away”; and second, this is often one of their first work experiences. many have no expectation that their work in banff will be long-lasting or permanent. commenting on the fact that young adult tourism workers come from elsewhere in canada and from international locations, darren reeder, executive director of bllhma, said: “we have no ability to recruit in our backyards. being in a national park, where things are expensive and housing is expensive, it just makes this an incredibly difficult place to attract people and to keep them longterm” (d’aliesio, 2014, para. 21). the difficulty of attracting canadians to live and work in banff 7this detailed information is not publicly available for the 2014 and 2017 municipal census reports. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 78  is confirmed in interviews with numerous hotel human resource managers who stated that, in their experience, young adult canadians did not want to work for the low wages paid in the temporary entry-level tourism jobs offered in banff despite the appeal of the mountain location and lifestyle (hotel manager interviews g, h, i, & j, august 20–24, 2016). the bllhma (2014) “destination labour attraction and retention strategy” report commented on immigration and ethnocultural diversity in banff, noting: “banff’s population has always included a strong immigrant component” (p. 6). further, the town’s immigrant population has grown substantially (municipal official interviews m & n, august 27, 2016). according to the bllhma, the majority of these new immigrants came from the philippines and from japan. prior to covid-19, these immigration numbers reflected the increase in the total number of temporary foreign workers (tfws; employment and social development canada, n.d.) 8 and young adults on international experience canada (iec) programs (immigration and citizenship canada, n.d.). the iec initiative is a program administered by immigration and citizenship canada (n.d.) that provides young individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 the opportunity to travel to and work in canada. it is these mobile young adults, not the tfws, that are the real focus of my analysis, as “iec employed workers are more numerous in banff & lake louise tourism businesses than hires from the regular tfw stream” (tourism industry association canada & banff and lake louise hospitality association, 2014, p. 12). the iec program is available in 33 countries, including the united states, australia, new zealand, britain, germany, japan, korea, and the czech republic. the iec program offers travel authorization and temporary work permits for one or two years depending on the country of origin and young adult workers can choose from three different travel and work experiences, including: working holiday, young professionals or international co-op internship. work permits are labour market impact assessmentexempt (lmia) and are either employer-specific (young professionals and international co-op) or open work permits (working holiday). young adults on the iec program who become tourism workers in banff often are backpackers, students, or on gap year vacations, looking for seasonal or temporary work. in the past, the iec has been based on an “invitation-to-apply” model, in which an employer must invite a participant to apply for the iec, but under covid-19 in 2021, a potential worker must furnish proof of a valid job offer in order to receive an invitation to apply for the 2021 season (immigration and citizenship canada, n.d.). the second characteristic of the young tourism workers in banff is that this is often an early work experience for them, and one that is commonly fraught with challenging economic circumstances. as one tourism worker, a young woman, explained in an interview (interview a, february 17, 2012), she had been offered a job in the day care centre at one of the local ski hills. 8the government’s goal to get albertans back to work during and after covid-19 has impacted banff as frontline tourism occupations were added to the “refusal to process list”, meaning a drop in the number of new tfws in the banff tourism industry (ellis, 2020).  international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 79  her pay before taxes would have been $8 per hour. she calculated that after paying her own mileage and gas to get to and from the ski hill every day, her take-home salary would not pay for her rent and would barely keep her fed. she explained, “people are working full-time in gift shops but don’t have enough money to put food on the table — they are having to get food baskets to just eat in banff” (tourism worker interview a, february 17, 2012). she did not expect to stay on for another season of work. another young woman in the housing forum focus group (february 20, 2013) recounted that she had been working in toronto but had come to banff for the lifestyle. she liked the idea of balancing work and play while living in the backyard of a national park, but also had deliberate plans to work her way up in the tourism industry in banff. in toronto, she had paid a lot for rent but was still able to save. however, when she arrived in banff and found work, her job on the front desk of a hotel earned only half what she had received in toronto, while the rent on her studio apartment was only marginally less than she had been paying there. as a result, she was not able to save money, nor was she able to “play” in and appreciate the scenic location because she was scheduled for so many shifts (housing forum focus group, february 20, 2013). she worried that if she stayed in banff, she would not be able to realize her career goals. others expressed contrasting views. in a tourism worker focus group, one young woman in her mid-20s said, “i think banff is good because it’s easy to get jobs. most of the time you have options” (tourism worker focus session 1, july 25, 2013). pierre (a pseudonym) also recounted how easy it had been for him to find work: i arrived here and within a week i found a job that had staff accommodation. and i’m like, “wow, this is pretty sweet” … even though i have to share one room with two other people. but, i mean, you’re still in that vacation mode. so that was for the summertime, and i even met a girl. so, i’m like, “wow, it’s easy here.” and that’s the thing: it is easy in banff. find a job? within a week, you got a job. (tourism worker focus session 2, july 25, 2013) however, as these are low-paying, entry-level jobs, with no benefits and little job security, it is not likely that these young workers will be able to maintain these jobs and their life in banff, especially through the shoulder season when fewer jobs are available. samantha (a pseudonym) explained: when i moved here, because i have a university degree, i had a career back home, so i was expecting to find the same thing here. and i’m not. i’m not able to get a real job.… after seven years, i’m not able to get that real job. i’m still doing those entry-level positions that basically anyone can do.… and, of course, one issue that we have in banff is the cost of living. it is almost impossible to say, “hey, i’m going to find a place of my own to live in.” even if i had a good job, it’s so international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 80  expensive to have your own place. that’s why, after seven years, maybe it’s time to move on. (tourism worker interview e, august 4, 2014) while some of these young adults came to banff expecting to live a balanced life of work and play, enjoying hiking and skiing in the national park, or having an “iconic canadian experience” (interview a, february 17, 2012), the reality is quite different. the working and living conditions in banff’s tourism industry keep young adult workers in a marginal economic and social position, often and ultimately forcing most of them to move on. impacts of tourism worker precarity and agency the three frames (tourism industry, banff community, and the young adult tourism workers) clearly demonstrate what these experiences of precarity and marginal economic and social standing mean for young adult workers. it is also important to recognize the impact this precarity has on the employers and the tourism industry, as well as the sustainability of the town itself. another aspect to examine is the different objectives that the young adult tourism workers may have — what they expect from, and what they get out of, their work experiences in banff — and to understand the agency and motivations of the young adult workers themselves. what is the impact of precarity on the employers, the tourism industry, and the town itself? tourism industry work in banff is based almost exclusively on entry-level jobs that pay low wages, offering no benefits and little job security. at the height of the tourist seasons in winter and summer, jobs are plentiful and employees can move from job to job with relative ease. because the supply of labour in the form of these mobile workers is ample, their remuneration is low: minimum wage, perhaps augmented with a free ski pass or similar bonus, is the norm. however, when the tourist boom slows during the shoulder seasons in the spring and fall, many employees are let go. the high cost of living means that these unemployed young adults cannot then afford to continue to live in banff, so they either elect to leave or have no choice but to do so. thus, the economy is dependent on low-paying entry-level positions that can be filled with a seemingly endless supply of new labour: a new crop of mobile workers will be hired when the next peak season comes. employers claimed that their businesses would not survive unless wages continued to be kept low (hotel manager interviews g, h, i, & j, august 20, 2016). one young adult worker interviewee complained that, “employers take advantage of workers, especially those that are here on work visas, then the employers basically own you” (tourism worker interview e, august 4, 2014), a view that was shared by others. the one decisive option that the young adult mobile worker could exercise was to leave. this defines both tourism worker agency and the ambiguity in the young adult workers’ identity: “essential” for the survival of the tourism industry, yet “disposable” because the next season will bring a new supply of workers willing to accept these circumstances. workers are expected, if not encouraged, to “move on”: the tourism industry, in fact, depends on the continued work precarity of its employees. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 81  as a result, the transfer of work knowledge from experienced worker to novice, which occurs in many other work settings, was impaired or did not take place at all among these highly mobile young tourism workers. williams (2012) discussed the impact that tourism workers’ mobility has on the human capital of knowledge and skills. he identified three types of skills that are affected: technical skills (involving high levels of practical work); routine skills (including repetitive work); and social skills (which facilitate communication and social interaction). the detachment of skills and the potential for low productivity, along with the labour flows in banff, affected the experiences of the workers in training as well as the level of tourism services the area could provide. the experiences of young tourism workers in banff will ultimately be determined by the sustainability of the tourism industry there. the study of sustainability derives from ecology and centres on the idea of living within the carrying capacity of the supporting ecosystem. when approached more broadly, “the concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically” (maida, 2011, pg. 1; see also munasinghe, 2007; and in relation specifically to tourism, mihalic, 2020; unwto, n.d.; wall, 2019, 2020). according to the brundtland report (world commission on environment and development, 1987), community sustainability must meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (p. 8). this idea suggests that a community can only be healthy or sustainable by maintaining its holistic self — by simultaneously upholding its environmental, economic, and social sustainability. the issues of this kind of integrated sustainability were at the root of the assessment reports produced by the town of banff and the bllhma. these include: the town of banff community social assessment (family and community support services, 2014; gerrits et al., 2019); the town of banff economic prosperity strategy (deloitte llp, 2014; meier, 2013); the town of banff housing strategy (community housing strategy committee, 2014); and the banff lake louise destination labour attraction and retention strategy (bllhma, 2014). because of the unique position of the town of banff, much care has been taken through federal and municipal policy to sustain the ecological integrity and balance of the town within the national park. but what can be said of the economic or social sustainability of tourism in banff and of the community itself? is it possible to generate a consistent and healthy tourism industry and a sense of community when the population is in constant flux? and how does that affect the young adult tourism workers? what role does young adult workers’ agency have in the tourism industry, in the community of banff, and for their future work experiences? it is important to acknowledge that young adult tourism workers have different objectives with regard to their work and living experiences in banff. documenting what they want and get out of these early work experiences in banff must include a discussion of their own agency and motivations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 82  young adult tourism workers in banff have been stigmatized by some permanent town residents as “transient” (husdal, 2014). more accurately, they have found themselves with an ambiguous role, both “on the move” and “staying”: simultaneously travellers and workers, guests and residents; in transit and at their destination, travelling through a place and dwelling in that place. some of these young adult workers had no expectation or intention that their tourism jobs would be lasting or permanent: they wanted, or were able, to work for only a season or two. this might be because they were students who worked in their off-semesters in 3or 4-month blocks. some were international workers on international exchange visas with finite work period permits (usually up to 2 years). some were adventurers working to travel, rather than travelling to work, where work is their means to an end: to stop working and to move on. they are “tourist-migrant” (uriely, 2001) workers working in the tourism industry because it allowed for the flexibility they were seeking. in this way, these young adults were controlling their own agency over their work and mobility. the liminal space of the traveller is often set in opposition to the “real world”: travel life is not the mundane world of everyday life and work, but stands in contrast to that life. when one is travelling, the rules and norms of the everyday have less force. thus, young adults in this situation are often perceived as behaving in ways that are considered unruly, disruptive, or disrespectful: “here for a good time, not a long time”. but it also means that they do not expect to be well paid or find permanent work with a prospect of advancement. many of the young adult workers in the focus groups (sessions 1 & 2, july 25, 2013) said that they came for the same reasons: partying, having fun, taking “breaks from the real world”, “smoking weed”, and meeting up with other young people from around the world with similar interests and at a similar stage of life. chris (a pseudonym), an australian working in the local hostel, captured this as he said: “i got friends back home settling down and having kids and buying homes and stuff, but i don’t want that yet. i kind of just want to give it some time, and let things happen if they happen” (interview l, august 25, 2016). i have discussed how the “blurring” of lines between travellers and worker residents had negative effects on the young adults and also on the sustainability and well-being of the community. however, because their motivations are different, the impacts on young adult workers are different. some former young adult tourism workers that i interviewed were bitter about their work experience in banff, saying that they couldn’t support themselves there and so had to leave. they focused on the hardships of living in overcrowded, expensive accommodations, working multiple jobs to make ends meet, and ultimately having to leave banff in order to get “real work”, by which they mean security, the ability to “make a living”, and the ability to leave behind their former work mobility patterns and “put down roots”. but some young adult workers who were formerly and presently engaged in tourism work clearly communicated that they had gained invaluable skills in negotiating and navigating the precarity of the work environment, having used international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 83  their own agency and the flexibility of the work to increase their resiliency and adaptability. these are the lasting consequences which may follow them into future work experiences. conclusion unlike some other research on the relationship of employment to the geographic mobility of workers (halseth & ryser, 2017; vodden & hall, 2016), my research does not focus on the reccurring journeys of a single worker into the site of employment (e.g., “fly-in/fly-out” camps). rather, tourism workers journey to banff for what is usually a short period of employment, leaving when the work ends. also, my research is focused on a particular place and a single industry, not on multiple destinations or multiple professions. thus, part of the story of these tourism workers must be connected to issues of the sustainability of that community in relation to tourism. the banff community, with its high cost of living and its attempts to limit the population, is as much a contributor to the precarity of the young adult workers as is the tourism industry in which they work. for some young tourism workers, mobility is their goal: they aim to use work as their means of travelling rather than travelling to work. for them, the economic and social marginality in the tourism industry is no deterrent. instead, these young adults take advantage of the flexibility and temporariness of this work experience. they adapt to the work conditions and navigate them to their own benefit, learning instrumental skills, resilience, and resourcefulness along the way. the abilities and the agency of the young workers — who are deemed “essential” to the tourism industry in banff — seem in contrast to the undeniable precarity of the tourism industry and the unique situation of the community of banff, which regards the workers as “disposable”. this ambiguity is fundamental to the operation of the tourist economy in banff. it shapes the very identity and nature of the community as much as it shapes the identity of the workers. part of that identity exists in the tensions and ambiguities that are created through the double role of the young adult worker: on the one hand an“outsider” and traveller, and on the other a local “insider” working in tourism. a better understanding of these seeming contradictions between precarity and agency depicts them as a product of the unsustainability of the tourism industry and community, allowing a more complete picture of the early work and mobility experiences of young adult tourism workers. this is all the more important as, in a climate of economic change and restructuring, young adult workers are becoming central to the consideration of employment policy issues. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 65–87 84  references banff lake louise hotel motel association (bllhma). 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(1987). our common future [the brundtland report]. oxford university press. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321287 the many faces of the “foster care youth” label: how young women manage the stigma of out-of-home placement mathilde turcotte and nadine lanctôt abstract: a number of studies have found that adolescents in foster care expect and perceive stigma related to their “foster care youth” status. yet, little is known about how this perceived stigma manifests, as well as how youth manage it. the current study therefore aimed to explore how young women with a history in foster care integrate these experiences into their life stories. the focus is on discursive manifestations of stigma in participants’ narratives about placement in foster care, their own perceptions of care-experienced girls and women, as well as how they self-present. special attention is also given to the ways in which youth try to reduce, deflect, or eliminate stigma. the present study draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 20 young women with a history in foster care. our findings suggest that participants do anticipate and perceive public stigma in relation to their history in foster care. the results also highlight the various strategies used by participants to resist self-stigmatization. the main strategy used was to distance themselves from their “foster care youth” status, insisting that they should never have been placed in foster care and that they are not faring badly as adults, unlike typical care-experienced youth. keywords: foster care, identity, stigma, management strategies, adulthood mathilde turcotte phd (corresponding author) is a researcher at the institut universitaire jeunes en difficulté, centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du centre-sud-de-l’îlede-montréal, 1001 boulevard de maisonneuve est, montréal qc h2l 4r5. email: mathilde.turcotte.ccsmtl@ssss.gouv.qc.ca nadine lanctôt phd is a professor and the chairholder of the canada research chair in placement and rehabilitation of vulnerable young women in the department of psychoeducation, université de sherbrooke, campus longueuil, 150 pl. charles-le moyne, longueuil qc j4k 0a8. email: nadine.lanctot@usherbrooke.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 85 ever since kools’ 1997 and 1999 studies, qualitative research among youth with a history in foster care has consistently reported that they both anticipate and experience stigmatization (ferguson, 2018; havlicek, 2018; michell, 2015; ridge & millar, 2000). the perceived stigma appears to be related to the adverse life experiences that necessitated the intervention of child protection services, but also to their placement in foster care (dansey et al., 2019; kools, 1999). indeed, upon entering care, their status changes (emond, 2014; havlicek, 2018; kools, 1999; mcmurray et al., 2011). once they become “foster care youth”, many children and adolescents dread that their new status will change people’s attitudes and behavior towards them. although youth are placed in foster care for their own protection, the label carries with it negative attributions and expectations that position them as deviant. youth with a history in foster care often report being treated as “different”, “bad”, “violent”, or “disturbed” (colbridge et al., 2017; emond, 2014; kools, 1999; rogers, 2017). common stereotypes about why some youth end up in foster care have also been identified, including rejection and abandonment by parents because of the youth’s problem behavior or delinquency, parents’ drug or alcohol abuse, and extreme poverty (emond, 2014, p. 199). in addition, foster care-experienced youth tend to be aware of and denounce the assumptions that they will be welfare dependent as they transition into adulthood (mulkerns & owen, 2008; villagrana et al., 2018) and that they will become negligent parents themselves (bermea et al., 2019). the potential impact of stigma is especially preoccupying during the transition to adulthood, when young persons with a history in foster care are highly vulnerable (goemans et al., 2018; gypen et al., 2017; teyhan et al., 2018). due to past experiences (e.g., exposure to trauma and placement instability), as well as external factors (e.g., lack of social support and need to fend for oneself), this transition can be particularly abrupt and difficult for foster care-experienced youth (mendes & rogers, 2020). research by multiple teams, including brännström et al. (2017), courtney et al. (2018), gypen et al. (2017), seker et al. (2021), vinnerljung et al. (2015), and zlotnick et al. (2012), has suggested that, as a consequence, youth with a history of placement in foster care do not generally fare as well as their counterparts without such a history, a contrast seen across multiple domains. for example, rates of incarceration, homelessness, unemployment, and hospitalization are higher among foster care-experienced youth than in the general population. prevalence of mental health problems, substance abuse issues, and victimization are also higher among care-experienced youth. the fact that young persons with a history of foster care may be navigating the demands and challenges of autonomous life with low self-esteem and a stigmatized identity further complicate the transition (colbridge et al., 2017; havlicek, 2018; mulkerns & owen, 2008). concretely, stigma has been shown to impact the transition into adulthood of vulnerable young persons in at least three ways. first, youth who are the object of discrimination have access to fewer opportunities (clark, 2012), including for identity exploration (cosner berzin et al., 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 86 yet, identity exploration is a critical task of emerging adulthood (arnett, 2000). stigma also exacerbates vulnerable youth’s tendency to consider self-reliance as a mark of “success” during their transition into adulthood, leading them to cut ties with care professionals and making them reluctant to ask for help in general (samuels & pryce, 2008; villagrana et al., 2018). fear of disclosing negative characteristics, including but not limited to placement in foster care, can lead youth to feel disconnected from their peers and contribute to social isolation (kools, 1997; moseson et al., 2019; peterie et al., 2019). nevertheless, identity development is rarely the main focus of studies on youth with foster care experience, nor is it often considered as a measure of their well-being during adulthood (ferguson, 2018; marshall et al., 2020). therefore, we know very little about why and how stigma manifests in some youth and not others, as well as how they deal with it. the current study addresses this oversight by analyzing how young women with a history in foster care integrate these experiences into their life stories. the focus is on discursive manifestations of stigma in participants’ narratives about placement in foster care, their own perceptions of care-experienced girls and women, as well as how they self-present. special attention is also given to the ways in which youth try to reduce, deflect, or eliminate stigma. public and self-stigma: implications for foster care-experienced youth research tends to distinguish two types of stigma. the first is public stigma, which encompasses the concepts of social, enacted, external, and perceived stigma (nguyen & li, 2020). in the field of mental health, for example, public stigma is concerned with the general population’s stereotypes and prejudicial treatment of people suffering from mental health problems (corrigan & rao, 2012). public stigma takes place within a broader sociocultural context that makes it possible for negative attributions towards a group to emerge and to shape informal, professional, and institutional responses towards them (link & phelan, 2001; pescosolido, 2013; pescosolido et al., 2010). studies on social images of children and youth in foster care have confirmed that, in the general population, the “foster care youth” label carries negatives attributions (calheiros et al., 2015; vaz garrido et al., 2016). for example, calheiros et al.’s 2015 study in portugal with 176 adult participants — “individuals with and without professional contact with children and youth in residential care” (p. 159) — found that the characteristics associated to children and adolescents in residential care were mostly negative. in a questionnaire asking respondents to list five attributes of young people in residential care, children were mostly described as “sad” and “needy”, and adolescents as “rebellious” and “aggressive” (p. 165). in another portuguese setting, vaz garrido et al. (2016) conducted two studies to compare “the social images people have about youths in residential care to those they hold about youths living out of care” (p. 439), and observed that the images of youth in residential care were more negative than those of young people in normative contexts. perhaps even more troubling, professionals working with at-risk children and adolescents (25.3% out of 726 participants in the second study) had a more negative view of youth in residential international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 87 care than did laypersons (vaz garrido et al., 2016, pp. 449–450). as a result of public stigma, care-experienced youth often report being bullied and ridiculed because of their foster care status (see, e.g., emond, 2014; kools, 1997; vacca & kramer-vida, 2012). youth who have been placed in foster care are also very reluctant to disclose their status for fear of being judged (emond, 2014; mcmurray et al., 2011). the second type of stigma is self-stigma. public stigma can lead to self-stigma; that is, stigmatized people turn the prejudice against themselves (rüsch et al., 2005). for foster care youth to internalize public negative attributions, however, young persons need not only to be aware of negative public attributions regarding foster care youth and agree that they are true, but also agree that they apply to them (corrigan & rao, 2012). self-stigma is considered highly detrimental for youth’s well-being as it is associated with low self-esteem, a fragile identity, and a tendency to self-isolate, as well as a reluctance to ask for help (livingston & boyd, 2010). self-stigma has not really been explored with regard to youth placed in foster care. however, a few studies have suggested that care-experienced youth’s devalued sense of self could be explained by the internalization of stereotypes and judgements (an et al., 2020; kools, 1999; thomas, 2014; villagrana et al., 2018; vojak, 2009). it is well documented that negative designations and expectations, if internalized, are associated with a myriad of negative outcomes (benoit et al., 2018; hatzenbuehler et al., 2013; livingston & boyd, 2010). there is also some evidence to suggest that the negative impact of internalized stigma is persistent (an et al., 2020; moore et al., 2016). future research should therefore focus on manifestations of self-stigma in youth’s discourses and narratives to determine whether care-experienced youth tend to agree or not with public negative images and whether they apply the negative images to themselves. the management of foster care-related stigma stigma management is conceived of as the process an individual uses in responding to stigma; it is aimed at eliminating, reducing, or at least managing stigma. from this perspective, those “labeled” are not necessarily affected by negative social images others have of them. in general, individuals on the receiving end of stereotypes have access to various responses; some effectively resist or deflect stigma entirely (weitzer, 2018). in fact, some scholars have documented resistance to negative identities among youth placed in institutional contexts for behavioral and emotional difficulties (mckinney, 2014; severinsson & markström, 2015). stigma management, therefore, allows for the possibility that youth with a history in foster care might be not weighed down by discrimination and could challenge public representation. yet, this perspective also recognizes that stigma is structural. therefore, stigmatized individuals might not have the resources to effectively protect their sense of self and the strategies used to fight back could perpetuate the power imbalances that create stigma (roschelle & kaufman, 2004). one of the most comprehensive typologies of stigma management strategies was developed by meisenbach (2010). it is based on two criteria: the individual’s attitude about challenging (or not) public perception of the stigma, and the individual’s attitude toward the applicability of public international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 88 stigma to himself or herself (p. 277). individuals feeling stigmatized can therefore object or not to the negative beliefs about a particular group or occupation (fighting public stigma or enduring it); and accept or not that these stereotypes apply to them (fighting self-stigma or enduring it). individuals who accept the public stigma and agree that it applies to them will likely try to convince themselves that they are at ease with the stigma, and either self-isolate or bond mostly with others who are stigmatized, whereas individuals who accept the public negative images, but challenge its applicability to themselves, will try to conceal, distance themselves from, or eliminate the stigmatized attributes (meisenbach, 2010, p. 278). as meisenbach (2010) noted, there are individuals at the other end of the continuum who instead challenge public stigma. if they still feel stigmatized, their stigma management strategies will aim to convince others of how little control they have over the stigma, to highlight nonstigmatized parts of their identity, or to minimize the harm of stigma. individuals who challenge public perceptions and reject their applicability to themselves may deny or ignore the existence of the stigma, or discredit their “discreditors”. although stigma management, as a perspective, had not previously been used in research among youth with a history in foster care, four stigma management strategies used by careexperienced young persons were identified by kools (1999). the first strategy was hiding their “foster care youth” status or selectively disclosing it to trusted friends and professionals (kools, 1999, but also dansey et al., 2019; emond, 2014; rogers, 2017; steenbakkers et al., 2016). a second self-protection strategy was to defensively maintain a posture of indifference or defiance toward their “foster care youth” status. the third and fourth self-protection strategies were to distance themselves from others, and to keep superficial any relationships that did develop, thus avoiding getting close to people and being hurt by what they might think. in addition to kools’ (1999) list, a couple of studies have highlighted discursive stigma management strategies related to how foster care-experienced youth self-present and how they discuss their placements. for example, emond (2014), as well as turcotte and lanctôt (2019), highlighted that perceived stigma is apparent in the stories youth tell about being removed from home and placed in foster care. inclusionary and exclusionary discourses can also be used (denenberg, 2016). by choosing whom they identify with and whom they want to distance themselves from, youth can deflect or reduce stigma. the current study will therefore explore the strategies used by young people to manage stigma and will also consider the usefulness of those strategies. methods the present study is part of a larger longitudinal research conducted in the province of quebec by lanctôt (2011–present), which follows a cohort of women into adulthood from their admission to residential care as adolescents. at wave 6 of data collection, when participants were aged about 19, in-depth interviews were conducted with a subset of 20 young women. participants were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 89 interviewed either two or three times. the first interview focused on experiences in care and placement instability. the second, guided by a narrative identity perspective (mcadams, 1988, 1989, 2021), elicited participants’ life stories. finally, a third interview exploring young women’s needs was guided by the good lives model (ward & gannon, 2006). the present paper draws exclusively on data gathered during the second interview and therefore on participants’ life stories. as a communicative format, the life story is especially appropriate to the study of possible manifestations of stigma and how it is managed. first, the life story is conceived as a window into participants’ identity work (watson et al., 2015; willis & holland, 2009). it is through an evolving story of the self that young adults begin to reconstruct past experiences in ways that align with their present and their expectations about the future. second, a life story format allows young women to be in control of how they self-present during the interview (ballantine, 2021). participants can therefore test discourses about experiences in care and outside care that reinforce, rather than threaten, “preferred identities” (riessman, 2008). participants a subset of 22 possible participants (20 of whom agreed to participate) was selected from the original cohort sample, based on three criteria. the first concerned past experiences in foster care. research has shown that youth admitted to foster care can experience very different care pathways depending on age at admission, duration of care, and the number of placement moves and breakdowns (see, e.g., hélie et al., 2017). three placement trajectories in particular were identified in the original cohort sample using cluster analysis (hébert & lanctôt, 2016). we therefore randomly selected participants from each trajectory in proportions roughly similar to what we observed in the original sample. for example, three out of 20 participants were selected from those whose placement trajectory was very unstable — youth who had been placed as children and had moved an average of 19 times; this trajectory represented 6.37% of the original sample. another six participants were selected from those (13% of the original sample) who had followed a trajectory in which they had been placed in care as children, but had been exposed to less instability except for a high turnover among care professionals assigned to their case. the final 11 participants had been placed as adolescents, had spent a comparatively short time in care, and had been exposed to little or no instability; this trajectory represented 80.65% of the original cohort sample. other sampling criteria included time elapsed since exiting care. we decided as a team that participants had to be at least 20 years old, to allow young women who had aged out of care at 18 a bit more hindsight. in the present study, the immigration generation of participants was also considered in order to test for cultural differences with regard to perception of stigma and strategies used to manage it. however, it is pertinent to note that we observed very little variance in the original sample with regard to this variable. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 90 procedures and interview guide after securing ethical approval from the université de sherbrooke, our team’s research coordinator contacted all selected participants to present the study’s objectives and ethical considerations. of the 22 individuals contacted, 20 agreed to participate. these signed a consent form, and were given an alphanumerical code and pseudonym for data presentation purposes. a $50 compensation was offered to all participants upon completion of the interview. the vast majority of interviews took place at participants’ homes. all interviews, which lasted an hour and a half on average, were tape recorded and then transcribed by a professional firm. a summary description of the sample is provided in table 1. table 1. description of the sample in terms of foster care trajectories pseudonym age at 1st placement duration in years number of placements number of moves number of care professionals assigned alex 13.63 1.30 3 3 4 emma 16.36 1.14 3 3 4 nathalie 17.06 0.78 1 1 3 laurence 7.32 9.18 4 4 16 vanessa 14.56 0.73 2 2 1 annie 14.27 1.04 1 1 3 stéphanie 14.32 0.77 1 1 2 camille 16.61 1.16 2 2 2 lili 14.94 0.77 1 1 4 frédérique 16.24 1.05 3 3 4 sophie 13.71 3.36 4 5 7 marie-hélène 11.11 3.93 5 5 10 rose 7.48 8.51 8 9 13 béatrice 11.81 11.15 11 20 1 julie 12.95 7.62 12 15 9 émilie 14.1 3.78 14 20 0 danielle 8.18 11.13 8 10 13 geneviève 7.97 4.59 8 10 14 marie 13.27 6.05 7 8 3 véronique 15.34 3.15 3 3 1 mean (sd) 13.06 (3.12) 4.06 (3.63) 5.05 (3.95) 6.30 (6.03) 5.70 (4.99) on average, as table 1 highlights, participants had been placed at age 13 and had spent 4 years in foster care. they had been moved into and out of placement six times and been assigned six different social workers throughout their foster care trajectories. the subsample constituted for the present study experienced slightly more instability that the original cohort sample (hébert & lanctôt, 2016). this may be due to the fact that the participants retained at wave 6 of data international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 91 collection were those who had spent more time in foster care and therefore were easier to contact for follow-up. the interview guide was largely based on mcadams’ (2008) life story interview-ii. participants were invited to think about their lives as if they were shooting an autobiographical movie. they were instructed to focus on the memories, events, relationships, hardships, and successes that they wanted to depict so that the audience would understand why and how they became who they were. no direct questions were asked about their experiences in foster care, to ensure that participants themselves could decide whether and to what extent their various placements would feature in their stories. analysis working together with our research team, we developed a general strategy for analyzing qualitative data, inspired by the principles of consensual qualitative research (hill et al., 1997, 2005). this strategy has been tested successfully with three sets of qualitative data so far (lanctôt & turcotte, 2018; turcotte & lanctôt, 2019, 2021). this strategy allows us to render the process of qualitative data analysis more transparent, and therefore more credible, by (a) involving at least two researchers at every stage; (b) conducting occasional audits with a third researcher less involved in the process; (c) holding regular meetings to discuss and revise all aspects of the coding; and (d) documenting all questions raised and decisions made. two researchers worked together to develop and test the codebook. all interviews were coded by both researchers, using the qda miner software. a third researcher was asked to test the final version of the codebook on one interview; we obtained a 94.4% intercoder agreement regarding the relative importance of all codes. after that, five interviews were coded again by three researchers, this time achieving a 97.6% intercoder agreement. we created four main codes with which we analyzed the data related to identity and stigma in participants’ narratives. we used the expression “perspective” in all four codes to refer to the various positions or points of view from which stigma might manifest. all four codes were inspired by previous studies on narrative identity and stigma. for example, both the narrative identity perspective and the literature on stigma emphasize the social/relational nature of identity and stigmatization (link & phelan, 2001; mcadams & mclean, 2013). under our first code, “the perspective of others”, we regrouped all excerpts related to how participants feel they are perceived or expect to be perceived by others. since inclusion and exclusion discourses are major stigma management strategies (aiello & mcqueeney, 2016; grittner & walsh, 2020; roschelle & kaufman, 2004; trautner & collett, 2010), the second code was named “perspective on others”. under this category, we coded all excerpts in which participants discussed other groups of people and, in particular, other care-experienced youth. a third major code, “perspective on the self ”, related to the well-established fact that negative social images of foster care youth and the interiorization of stigma become apparent in how youth self-present (colbridge et al., 2017; kools, 1999; severinsson & markström, 2015). our fourth and final code, “perspective on placement”, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 92 focused on how participants talked about their experiences in foster care. qualitative studies among foster care youth have shown that the ways in which they discuss placement and experiences in care is identity work (munford & sanders, 2015; schofield et al., 2017). findings are care-experienced youth fighting back against stereotypes? participants definitely perceived a social taint about being “foster care youth”. based on what they had experienced personally, but also what they had seen, read, and heard, participants discussed negative social images of youth with a history in foster care. for example, béatrice reported that she had been shunned because of her history in foster care. indeed, she recalled that once her history in foster care had been disclosed to her friends, some parents decided that she wasn’t allowed near their children because she was probably a “bad person” and a “delinquent”. another manifestation of public stigma can be found in stéphanie and marie-hélène’s comments about how friends and neighbors would never “suspect” (to use their expression) their history in foster care. stéphanie had recently told a couple of new college friends that she had been placed in residential care as a teen. she emphasized that her friends were very surprised to find out about her history in foster care since she was perceived as a “little family girl” who seemed like she had “never experienced anything”. marie-hélène discussed how her foster care status had been invisible to neighbors in her town, because she was well mannered and never used her background as an excuse to contravene social norms. stéphanie and marie-hélène both took pride in the fact that their “foster care youth” status was not apparent since care-experienced young people are expected to talk and behave in ways that make their devalued attributes obvious. being both care-experienced and a young mother was described as an intersection of stigmas likely to ignite concerns about the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. almost all of the 10 mothers1 in the sample discussed a common public expectation that child protection services would intervene to place their children in foster care. they felt that they were assumed to be negligent or violent because of their own history in care and because of their age. finally, questions about what impact a movie based on their lives could have often led participants to hope aloud that their film would debunk common myths and stereotypes about “foster care youth”, especially the idea that young persons are placed in care because of problem behavior and that they have a low chance of “recovery”. this is illustrated in vanessa’s comments: and i think that for other girls, my movie could revive their flame, give them some hope that maybe they lost, because not all girls — but also boys — not all children in foster care have problems like delinquency or are members of street gangs. for many of them, it is because they were neglected or because their parents didn’t have 1 one of the ten was pregnant at the time of the interview. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 93 the resources to take care of them. so, you know, people have prejudices about people in foster care, like that they are delinquents or that they are unrecoverable, but on the contrary. there are way more lost souls than rebels in foster care, in my opinion. so, they all deserve some glimmer of hope. while participants discussed public stereotypes held by the larger population about youth with a history in foster care, they mostly feared the negative attributions of care professionals. practitioners’ interactions with care-experienced youth were interpreted as manifestations of distrust and biased judgement towards them. words such as “delinquents” and “dangerous” were used frequently to describe how care professionals perceived and treated them. in residential care specifically, as marie-hélène, emma, and julie all noted, the physical environment and security personnel reinforced this image of foster care youth as presenting a risk from which professionals had to be protected. the role of youth in reinforcing foster care-related stigma although participants wanted to challenge preconceived ideas through their “movies”, one troubling finding is that most of them agreed with negative attributions regarding youth with a history in foster care. one stereotype that participants appeared to endorse is that youth placed in foster care are partly responsible for their removal from home. while the young women recognized that some foster care youth experienced considerable adversity in their family of origin (e.g., maltreatment, exposure to trauma, neglect), they also believed that placement was something you deserved because of some condition (e.g., mental health problems) or because of severe problem behavior. another example of agreement with stereotypes regarded the (mostly gendered) negative expectations participants had about youth with a history of care as they transitioned into adulthood. a common image used to represent the beginning of this transition was that of foster care youth ending up on the street with garbage bags to hold their possessions the day they turned 18 years old2 — a terrible position from which to begin a new life. in addition to this assumption, participants felt that young women were expected to be engaged in prostitution, to become young single mothers, and to expose their children to intimate partner violence. such expectations were universally held in our sample, but it is worth noting that only a few based their judgement on actual encounters with former foster care youth. for example, julie remained in contact with a lot of women with whom she had been placed. her comments emphasized the perceived high probability that young women in transition out of care and into adulthood would get involved in sex work: you know, sometimes i will mention that i was placed in youth centers and all, but it’s because there are many girls that i know from there. sometimes, it’s like, “hey, 2 the age of majority in quebec is 18 years. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 94 how are you?”, “i’m good!”. you know, i’m like, “i’m good”. but at the same time, i’m like, “ah, another one”, you know — that’s really what i tell myself. yes. [laughs] no, but i don’t want to. i don’t want to be negative, but it is so true. sincerely. it’s incredible! like on facebook, people will contact me like, “weren’t you in [name of a youth center]? and i’m looking at their profile pics and she’s an exotic dancer or an escort. you’re like, “ah! again!”. yes. you know, one time i would like one to come forth and say, “i’m studying at university …” for most participants, however, such negative public attributions were not grounded in personal experience, but rather based on so-called “statistics” that participants were made aware of. for instance, stéphanie noted that 98% of care-experienced youth who became mothers were doing so as an inadequate coping strategy to avoid and deny their problems. yet, she was not in contact with anybody from her past in residential care, including young mothers. likewise, emma talked about the well-being of foster care youth during their transition into adulthood, drawing on what she felt was well-established common knowledge: emma: three quarters of girls exiting youth centers are not doing well. interviewer: but when you say that three quarters of girls are not doing well when they transition out of care, why do you say that? is it something that you observed? emma: well, no, but it is statistics, you know. everybody says it. you know. interviewer: ah, i thought that was something you observed yourself … emma: no. no. well, i saw one after, and like, same situation as before. she was back with her [pimp]. and another one, same situation as well. she was placed because she had problems with her mom, and she was still having problems with her mom now that she was out. and she had to find an apartment because it wasn’t working out with her mom. you know, nothing had changed. participants therefore felt that most youth with a history in foster care are likely to experience a difficult transition into adulthood from which they will emerge even more damaged. again, these bleak future perspectives were perceived as somehow deserved because foster care youth refused to accept responsibility for what had happened to them and refused to work on themselves. although participants expressed a desire to debunk some stereotypes, they themselves turned out to be harsh critics of youth with a history in care. since all the young women interviewed were former foster youth themselves, our analysis turned to the ways in which participants managed that incongruity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 95 do young women accept that stereotypes about foster care youth apply to them? “i’m not like other foster care girls”: how former foster youth resist self-stigma. as we focused on identifying stigma-management strategies, we realized that participants’ adherence to negative public attributions about foster care youth served an important purpose: it allowed them to self-present as not part of the care-experienced group. the stronger the caricature, the easier it was for participants to distance themselves from it. the young women we interviewed had strong feelings indeed about being personally labeled a “foster care youth” and actively resisted the stigma that came with it. to illustrate, we use an excerpt from the interview with danielle, who strongly reacted to an implication that she was even in the same group as other foster care girls: interviewer: what do you mean by “they didn’t learn anything”? danielle: well, in the sense that i changed for the better.… today, all the girls i was placed with in youth centers have become prostitutes and escorts — and exotic dancers. in a way, they just continued to do what they were doing when they were admitted in care. because they were placed for these exact reasons. and they just continued when they got out. maybe they will eventually realize, but in the meantime, it’s a shame. interviewer: okay, so what you are saying is that when you compare yourself with these girls … danielle: well, compare is a big word. i don’t compare myself with escorts. but it affects me in a way, because i know and i like some of them. participants used two main exclusionary discourses to argue that they were not “foster care girls”. the first centered on how they did not belong in foster care (“i should have never been placed in the first place”). there were many variations of that message. stéphanie recalled how shocked she was after being admitted into foster care when she realized how different her background was from other girls that had been placed. she came from what she thought of as a “regular family”, and everything from her family’s socioeconomic situation to her social abilities and manners allowed her to distance herself more: but you know, i come from a family that is very present, even though we had our problems. everybody has a stable job, everybody went to school and graduated, nobody in the family really has a drug or alcohol problem, things like that. so, although we all have problems, i would say my family is more like a regular model in society, i don’t know. i don’t want to generalize, but about 100% of the girls i met had a different reality, like their family context, or economic situation — their lifestyle, things like that. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 96 … like often it’s in the way they carry themselves or react. i don’t know, i lost my idea [silence]. the mentality, i guess — tackling things with a bit less class or things like that. at my house, there’s a minimum that is required socially, you have to be like this and that. maybe less during my rebellious phase, but like in the day-today, attitude-wise, and in the ways we interact with each other. it was different. stephanie’s narrative was the most elaborate, in terms of complete rejection of the label of “foster care youth”. most participants simply aimed to show that their problem behavior was less severe than that of other girls placed and so did not require such drastic measures as removal from home and placement. for example, emma mentioned that the girls she was placed with would scream and “blow up” to the point that security personnel had to intervene and physically restrain them. distancing herself in that way allowed her to question how she had found herself placed in their company. camille had a similar discourse as she explained that she had a rebellious phase in adolescence, but never expected that there would be such an extreme consequence as being removed from home and placed in residential care. after all, she thought placement was reserved for the “the crazy violent types that would hurt their parents by giving them hell”. a second exclusionary discourse used by some participants focused on how well they were functioning as young adults. because they were not welfare-dependent, involved in sex work, or faring badly as young adults, they felt they were not really “foster care youth” (“i did not become a statistic”). examples of “functioning” included going back to school, holding a good job, being in a loving intimate relationship, and having none of the “negative” attributes mentioned previously (e.g., being a single mother, being a sex worker, being a victim of intimate partner violence). vanessa is a good example, as she was studying in college to become a care professional herself. her story is particularly interesting because her older siblings had been placed in foster care before her. her efforts to distance herself therefore focused on how members of her own family had failed to “change the vicious circle” while she had succeeded. in her “movie”, she mentioned that her siblings represented “the persons i would be if i hadn’t evolved”. she refused to let her placement in foster care define her like it defined them: interviewer: okay so you mentioned “deviant” persons like your siblings … vanessa: yes. yes. in fact, they don’t do much with their days. so that’s it. they live close by. [laughs] i go see them often. of course, it makes me question my future, the person i want to be, like i tell myself: when i turn 25, it’s like in 5 years, i wonder where they’ll be. they’re older than me, but i feel like — i don’t know how to say it. it’s like life is a vicious circle: whether you want it or not, you’re born into a family and history keeps repeating itself. and it’s like they don’t care that history is repeating, but i do. i told myself: “no, i am going to change things, i’ll do what i must so it’s better for me and for my family.” … they are what i would — have become if i had not taken back control. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 97 but not all young women we interviewed had access to the same discourse. some participants were themselves engaged in sex work, or had been so in the past (laurence, marie, julie); half the sample were mothers or about to be; and a few disclosed incidents of intimate partner violence. their strategy instead was to acknowledge inconsistencies between their willingness to distance themselves from other former foster care youth and how they were faring as adults, but to shift the blame to their placement in foster care. yet, having not been able to avoid becoming a “statistic”, this stigma management response appeared to be less effective for them. julie, for example, hoped out loud that she would meet a former foster care youth who was not a sex worker. during the interview, she explained that her history in care led her to see sex work as a way to be financially independent at 18. she then disclosed that she had turned to exotic dancing to make ends meet. she expressed that she was not “proud” of her occupation: … but you know, sincerely, if i had not been placed in youth centers, i never would have become an exotic dancer. sincerely. it’s really because when i got out — i had nothing! they don’t give you money. you don’t have a bank account with money in it when you leave like: “here, take this money and get yourself an apartment”. no. you get out and if you can’t count on your parents, you’re alone. so, what is the easiest for a girl to make money quickly? to dance! of course, you can look for a job, but the it will take more time to gather the money, you know? like if you dance, you’ll get 2-3 months’ rent in a week. but if you have a normal job, it will take you almost a month to get the same amount. … it’s not perfect. sometimes i think back and the fact that i was placed makes me mad.… but i did eventually realize that it made me the person i am right now and i am proud of that person. maybe i’m not proud of the job that i have, but it’s like: “there’s nothing i lack, there’s nothing my child lacks”. that’s what is important to me. for julie, but also for others who felt that their present situation confirmed some negative public images about “foster care youth”, it seemed harder to avoid self-stigma completely. yet, participants were able to reduce the negative consequences of a tainted identity by blaming placement for creating problems that had not been there before. discussion the present study explored stigma manifestations in the life stories of young women with a history in foster care, as well as the strategies they used to manage it. findings show that participants were very aware of the public stigma that accompanied “foster care youth” status. negative social images of foster care youth were indeed discussed throughout the interviews. however, being care-experienced themselves did not incite participants to challenge the stereotypes. on the contrary, the young women we interviewed reinforced the stigma by depicting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 98 foster care youth (and girls in particular) as deserving of their placement and likely to reproduce a vicious cycle of maltreatment and deviance. further stigmatizing the stigmatized allowed participants to self-present as not belonging in the “foster care youth” group and to develop a more coherent identity. the main contribution of the current paper is to show how pervasive and potentially harmful the foster care-related stigma is. it threatens youth’s identity by raising self-doubt on many fronts: why they had been placed in foster care, how they will fare as adults, and what they will expose their children to. the underlying assumption appears to be that placement in foster care is the youth’s own fault, that they deserved removal from home because of mental health or behavior problems, and that it is therefore their own responsibility to “get better”. during the transition into adulthood, they must be ready to “function” autonomously as soon as they turn 18. during and after the transition, young persons with a history in care struggle to find ways to maintain a positive identity, a task made more difficult by the negative attributions that the “foster care youth” label implies about their character and future. it is therefore not surprising to observe the strength with which participants fought back against the applicability of negative attributions to themselves in their narratives. they used the pretext of making a movie about their life as an opportunity to show who they really were as individuals and what really happened to them. participants wanted to invite care professionals to “watch their movie” so that they could understand why they had really been placed in care and why they acted the way they did. what was surprising, however, was the main strategy used to resist self-stigma: to completely reject their “foster care youth” status by painting a very stereotypical picture of girls in care. research has shown that distancing oneself is an effective stigma-management strategy; for example, some sex workers compare their sex work activities to those of others to show how theirs are more “respectful” or “morally superior” (levey & pinsky, 2015). studies have also suggested that the stigmatized can discriminate against other marginalized groups to avoid being targeted themselves (craig & richeson, 2012; shapiro & neuberg, 2008). however, members of a minority group reinforcing and spreading stigmatizing attitudes towards other members of the same group is less documented (see, e.g., sellnow-richmond et al., 2022). this management strategy, called intragroup stigmatization, is considered dangerous as it can worsen the outcomes for the group that is the target of prejudicial attitudes and behavior. for example, for the sake of distancing from a tainted identity, it can lead individuals to endorse policies and measures that have a negative impact on their own group (mendoza lepe et al., 2022). the implications of the present study can be organized around two ideas. first, stigma is structural, and challenging negative designations about foster care-experienced youth is a shared responsibility (liegghio, 2017). while we applaud initiatives aimed at empowering and enhancing narrative abilities to prevent the interiorization of stigma, some of which have shown interesting results (evans et al., 2018; hansson et al., 2017; ma et al., 2019), such initiatives also reinforce international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 99 the notion that youth should self-protect. thus, they risk contributing to care-experienced youth’s tendency to overvalue self-reliance and independence during the transition to adulthood. one promising avenue is to engage youth, professionals, policymakers, and even researchers in a necessary discussion about the indicators of well-being used to evaluate how former foster care youth are faring in adulthood. both at the policy and practice levels, a risk-centered perspective tends to dominate, with a focus on outcomes in education, employment, and health as measures of well-being. yet, as noted by bakketeig and colleagues (2020, p. 3): by limiting the definition of what it means for a care-experienced person to ‘do well’ to what are effectively indicators of economic potential/productivity or of cost to society, we (as researchers, policy makers and professionals) fail to attend to the rich dynamic and relational complexity of lives lived. in doing so, we risk reinforcing a stigmatizing construction of care experienced people as something other. these tendencies are likely to shape care experienced people’s biographies in multiple ways — for example, by informing the priorities established in the policy and services designed to support them, as well as through the micro-sociological interactions of everyday lives in time. researchers have therefore not only argued for a greater focus on the strengths and resilience of young persons as they prepare for adult life, but also for a better understanding of how youth themselves define “success” or “doing well” in adulthood (bakketeig et al., 2020; frimpongmanso, 2018; hare & bullock, 2006; schofield et al., 2017; sulimani-aidan, 2017). second, stigmatization occurs within relationships (link & phelan, 2001; meisenbach, 2010). in the case of foster care-experienced youth, it has been suggested that care professionals should play an important role in reinforcing or disrupting stereotypes (emond, 2014; kools, 1999; severinsson & markström, 2015; vaz garrido et al., 2016). educating professionals, notably by debunking stereotypes and myths and replacing them with facts, is considered an effective solution (corrigan et al., 2012). in terms of how practitioners should interact with youth placed in foster care in particular, munford and sanders (2015) recommended that care professionals should aim to create “safe relational places” by helping youth make strong and secure connections with adults, by trying to understand the meanings behind youth’s behavior, and by helping youth to understand themselves. most importantly, care professionals should question the words and expressions they use to refer to care-experienced youth, their past, and their future. language propagates stereotypes and prejudice to the point that it can affect the quality of care offered by professionals (ashford et al., 2019) and thus youth’s engagement in treatment and recovery (werder et al., 2022). advocates and organizations such as the adolescent and children’s trust (tact) 3 have therefore worked with young people in care to suggest better, less stigmatizing, ways of referring to care-experienced youth and their stories. 3 https://www.tactcare.org.uk/a-reflection-on-language-that-cares international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 100 the present study has important limitations. the sample size is small, composed uniquely of women, and potentially biased in terms of placement instability. indeed, participants as a group had been placed for longer and experienced more placement moves and breakdowns than the original cohort sample. this could have affected their identity development and increased their desire to dissociate from their “foster care youth” status. a second limitation is concerned with the challenges of studying stigma as outsiders — as researchers unfamiliar with the experience under study. this presents the risk of further ostracizing research participants and failing to capture the complexity of their experiences. to limit these risks, we chose to give participants complete control over their stories and how they self-presented (ballantine, 2021). we wanted them to be able to choose what they would depict in their “movie” and how it would be portrayed. in fact, two of the women we interviewed mentioned having made the decision not to show a particularly difficult experience because it was too personal or did not fit with their preferred identities. in the end, the importance they gave to being in control of their stories as adults was a telling indication of what little power they felt they had over how they were perceived as “foster care youth”. a final important limitation is the descriptive nature of our findings. we focused on manifestations of stigma, but during analysis, larger questions emerged about why certain youth appeared more affected than others by the stereotypes associated with the “foster care youth” label, which management strategies were more effective, and how some participants developed a more positive or coherent narrative identity than did others. having opened the door to larger discussions about foster care-related stigma, future studies should focus on its determinants, how public stigma can lead or not to self-stigma, and outcomes for foster care-experienced youth in terms of identity coherence and maturity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 84–109 101 references aiello, b., & mcqueeney, k. 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(2012). life course outcomes on mental and physical health: the impact of foster care on adulthood. american journal of public health, 102(3), 534–540. doi:10.2105/ajph.2011.300285 hi anne-marie international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718000 looked after children’s perspectives on books being delivered to the home during the letterbox club scotland project andy hancock and juliet hancock abstract: the low educational achievement of looked after children — children in the care of a local authority — is well documented in the united kingdom and internationally. however, official statistics do not reveal the nuances of individual children’s lived experiences nor children’s agency. this article gives weight to children’s perspectives, and reports on the views of looked after children aged 7 to 10 in scotland during the letterbox club project. it specifically investigates children’s perspectives of reading practices in the home and their responses to books delivered to them over a 6-month period. data were gathered from 3 distinct but interrelated phases of the research: (a) literacy profiles completed by the children in collaboration with their carer(s), (b) children’s comments on evaluation sheets contained in each of the six parcels, and (c) individual conversations with children at the end of the project. the findings reveal the heterogeneous nature of looked after children with multifarious reading proficiencies and reading habits and routines. the children made choices about where and when they read and with whom, expressing opinions about books and authors and using the contents of the parcels to take action and gain greater ownership of their own learning. finally, the contested nature of children’s agency is discussed, as well as the implications for future research involving looked after children. keywords: looked after children scotland, reading practices, agency, home literacy acknowledgements: this evaluation of the letterbox club project, scotland, was funded by booktrust. we gratefully acknowledge the participation of all the children, carers, and professionals involved in this research. we would also like to thank dr moira leslie for her part in the fieldwork and data analysis. andy hancock (the corresponding author) is a senior lecturer at the institute of education, teaching & leadership, moray house school of education, university of edinburgh, holyrood road, edinburgh eh8 8aq, scotland, uk. email: andy.hancock@ed.ac.uk juliet hancock is a teaching fellow at the institute of education, teaching & leadership, university of edinburgh. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718000 mailto:andy.hancock@ed.ac.uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 27 many studies have reported on the low educational achievement of looked after1 children and young people in scotland (scottish parliament, 2012; scottish government, 2016), the wider united kingdom (uk; sebba et al., 2015), and internationally (o’higgins, sebba, & luke, 2015)2. all provide considerable evidence that looked after children face significant social, cultural, and institutional barriers that impede their success in school education. this is as a result of numerous interrelated factors including transitions to different schools and the need to develop new relationships, high incidences of absenteeism, instances of challenging behaviour and exclusion, low expectations from teachers, and encounters with racism3 and bullying (centre for excellence for looked after children in scotland, 2016; driscoll, 2013; simkiss, stallard, & thorogood, 2013). looked after children are also more likely to have additional support needs than children in the general population (scottish government, 2015a) and, as a group, have lower literacy levels than their peers (poulton, 2012; sebba et al., 2015). cundy and duffy (2009) showed that there is considerable variation in scotland in how looked after children are supported to achieve the best possible education. despite acknowledged trends, berridge (2007) cautioned against researchers’ and policymakers’ use of insufficient and simplistic explanations about low academic achievement among looked after children. for example, despite the many challenges, looked after children can achieve very good educational outcomes (her majesty’s inspectorate of education, 2008). therefore, winter (2006) argued that greater attention needs to be given to broader sociological perspectives, the intersectionality of childhood identities, and the sociocultural aspects of the looked after setting. moreover, increasing numbers of children are coming into care as a result of austerity and rising poverty (puffet, 2015) and looked after children are living in circumstances that have become increasingly diverse. at the same time, the potential pathways through the care system for some children are not clear-cut in terms of permanence of care (boddy et al., 2014). arrangements include legally permanent adoption; temporary, more long-term, or permanent foster care; kinship care (living with a relative); living with birth parent(s); and planned shared care. for definitions and further detail both on these arrangements and on the proportion and attainment of looked after children by accommodation type, see mathers, hardy, clancy, dixon, and harding (2016), and scottish government (2017). sebba and colleagues (2015) showed that children who had entered foster or kinship care at an earlier age made better progress educationally than those who were older at age of entry, demonstrating that care could provide an environment more conducive to 1 the term “looked after” introduced by the children act 1989 in england and wales, and used within the children (scotland) act in scotland is used in this article to refer to children in the care of local authorities. this includes care by relatives (kinship care), by foster carers, or at home with birth parent(s); and in residential care homes, residential schools, or secure units. for proportions of each care arrangement in scotland refer to her majesty’s inspectorate of education (2008). 2 evidence that looked after children lag behind their peers in educational achievement is gained from measures such as examination grades, literacy and numeracy assessments, and attendance and exclusions. 3 black and minority ethnic groups are overrepresented compared to the general population of looked after children in england (thoburn, chand, & procter, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 28 learning than did their prior circumstances. this may have an important bearing on children’s agency and their engagement with books. at present there is scant research that looks beyond the data on educational outcomes and considers looked after children’s agency. the aim of this article, therefore, is to get behind the official statistics and provide insights into looked after children’s lived experiences with reading in the home and their own views of receiving books during the letterbox project. policy context the scottish government has invested in a number of initiatives targeting “vulnerable” families in order to raise literacy standards and address the poverty gap (scottish government, 2010a), with a particular emphasis on looked after children. policy directions such as the education (additional support for learning) (scotland) act 2004 (amended in 2009) and getting it right for every child in 2008 have introduced frameworks to improve support to looked after children in school and beyond the school gates (scottish government, 2008; scottish government, 2010b). with all of this in mind, dymoke and griffiths (2010) surmised that looked after children require additional educational support with transitions and during the long holiday break, when there is an observed “summer dip” in their academic progress. furthermore, evaluations of paired reading schemes involving carers have shown to be effective in improving literacy and engagement in learning (osbourne, alfano, & winn, 2010). such considerations motivated the university of nottingham to develop the letterbox club project in 2003 in partnership with local authorities. the letterbox club the letterbox club sends personalised parcels containing books, stationery, and maths games to children’s homes once a month for 6 months (june to november). as space does not allow a detailed analysis of all the resources in the parcels, this article focuses primarily on reading practices and children’s responses to the books in the parcels.the expectation is that the parcels will encourage children to engage more with reading, do more numeracy activities, and write and draw more frequently. additionally, the resources aim to help children and carers build their relationships by increasing the amount of time they spend interacting with each other through sharing the books. previous research investigating the impact of the initiative on children’s reading skills include studies in england (griffiths, dymoke, & comber, 2009), wales (griffiths & comber, 2011), and northern ireland (winter, connolly, bell, & ferguson, 2011). these evaluations provided evidence that the children who participated in the letterbox club saw significant improvement in their reading accuracy and comprehension scores over a 6-month period. however, concerns were expressed about the validity of such quantitative measures conducted without a control group to compare progress against (winter et al., 2011). instead, in scotland, the inquiry shifted to a qualitative approach using case studies in order to provide rich accounts of children’s own lived experiences with literacy in the home environment. the data presented in this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 29 article are drawn from a larger evaluative project and body of fieldwork providing in-depth case studies (hancock & leslie, 2014). children’s reading at home over the last three decades, there has been an increasing understanding that literacy is not simply a narrow cognitive skills-based process gained in school, and that the meanings of literacy are co-constructed and determined by the family contexts in which children are socialised (hancock, 2008; heath, 1983; weinberger, 1996). rogoff (1990) used the term “guided participation” to stress the active role of children in both observing and participating in routine practices around texts alongside adults, in order to support new understandings. gee (1990, p. 43) believed that the very texture of these more widely situated practices involves not only dialogue and interaction around texts, but also the inculcation of values and beliefs about what counts as literacy. this sociocultural perspective of literacy learning informs this study, which attends in particular to children’s lived experiences, their relationships with others, and the diverse nature of their care contexts. these interwoven features involve the home literacy environment, the role of significant adults and siblings, family narratives, independent reading, and practices such as children’s participation in the selection, choice, and quality of reading materials. all of this helps to shape children’s literacy acquisition and meaning-making. many looked after children are originally from disadvantaged homes (mathers et al., 2016). the reasons for this are complex and intertwined. they range from the previously cited barriers to success in school, to chaotic home experiences in their early lives, often involving poverty, problems with neglect and abuse, or dealing with a parent’s alcohol and substance abuse (simkiss et al., 2013). such factors as parents’ emotional capacity for family interaction, attachment difficulties, limited shared book reading, difficulty finding a quiet place to read, and availability of good quality reading materials can all affect children’s exposure to literacy and their capacity to learn (cameron, connelly, & jackson, 2015; lang et al., 2016). with the above in mind, it is not surprising that research has indicated that looked after children are already behind in their language development during the preschool years (pears & fisher, 2005) whilst pears, heywood, kim, and fisher (2011) reported on looked after children’s gaps in prereading skills, such as poor phonological awareness, on entry to school. at the same time, some contributors to the discussion on learning and home environments have cautioned against making polarised and deficit interpretations about these low-income and less advantaged environments (cole, 2011; smyth & wrigley, 2013). although not focusing on looked after children, the growing up in scotland (melhuish, 2010) longitudinal research discovered that while sociodemographic family factors such as parents' education and income are important, the extent to which families engage with their children in such home learning activities as regularly reading stories, looking at books, and playing games exerts a greater and independent influence on children’s learning. these pursuits can have profound influence on children’s attitudes to reading and responses to texts in the home. melhuish’s findings echoed those of sylva, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 30 melhuish, sammons, siraj-blatchford, and taggart (2004), who suggested that positive parenting and parents’ participation in literacy practices with their children in the home can alleviate some of the effects of disadvantage. at the same time their study on effective preschool education showed that higher-quality preschool settings can promote greater resilience in young “at risk” children, particularly when competent and caring adults engage in “sustained shared thinking” with children in order to develop and extend their understanding. a wide range of studies have investigated national intervention programmes to enhance literacy as a supportive factor in the development of preschool children who are “at risk” due to environmental and individual factors. these evaluations of government-sponsored programmes include head start in the united states (chambers, cheung, slavin, smith, & laurenzano, 2010) and sure start in the uk (melhuish, belsky, macpherson, & cullis, 2011). chambers et al.’s (2010) extensive review of the effectiveness of head start programmes included children’s enhanced phonological awareness and print or book knowledge as a result of different types of interventions such as provision of resources, shared book reading, dialogic reading, and parent or carer engagement. hall et al. (2009) noted that the capacity to cope with adversity depends heavily on intellectual resources. therefore, if these interventions can have a beneficial effect on children’s cognitive development, then such intellectual development can contribute in important ways to children’s well-being and resilience. these studies do not relate specifically to looked after children but there is reason to believe that the same is true for this group, as they are also “at risk” children. there have been a number of small-scale literacy intervention programmes to support reading with looked after children in the uk. these include making connections with libraries (vincent, 2004), storytelling (stevens, kirkpatrick, & mcnicol, 2008), carers’ involvement in children’s reading (brodie, 2005), and promoting positive reading environments (finn, 2008). all pointed to improved reading confidence and a positive impact on children’s reading attitudes, whereas the evaluation of the reading champions project (city of edinburgh council, 2010) noted the strong links between storytelling, literacy skills, positive attachments, and the development of resilience. however, the letterbox club project takes a different stance and explores how children in foster and kinship care engage with texts and their concomitant responses including their tastes, preferences, and ideas. these texts include a range of genre such as audiobooks and literature associated with popular culture (marsh et al., 2005; alvermann, 2011). fry (1985), who analysed children’s identities as readers, talked of children seeing themselves as readers and being seen as readers where ownership of books and talking about stories gives children status in the world. in this way possession of a book is not simply about ownership but also about taking pleasure in being able to show that you are a reader. the letterbox club supports this interaction of ownership, identity, and pleasure as the children are in receipt of personalised parcels delivered to their home. the children can then engage with a range of texts for a variety of purposes, and unlike school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 31 books, they are to keep and use as they wish, so they can make choices and return to their favourite books (dymoke & griffiths, 2010). regular reading outside of school is now widely accepted as crucial to children’s educational achievement and personal growth (clark, 2014). moreover, politicians and policymakers consider enhanced literacy standards as leveraging for social change and combating social exclusion (scottish government, 2010a). krashen (2004), a strong advocate for voluntary reading, suggested that for children, being regularly engaged in reading at home augments a myriad of literacy skills including lexical growth, reading fluency, and gaining knowledge of different reading strategies to suit particular purposes such as perusing, browsing, skimming, scanning, and glancing. more practice in reading also leads to improvements in writing abilities as children internalise essential skills of spelling, syntax, and punctuation and absorb the conventions of expression, narrative, and story structure. children are then able to use these ideas and understandings to generate their own writing (glazzard & palmer, 2015). although not a homogeneous group, reading for pleasure may have added significance for children who are looked after, as children’s literature plays a powerful role in shaping how readers think about themselves and the world in which they live (levy, 2011). stories provide opportunities for escapism and entering into imaginary worlds that are far removed from the realities of children’s everyday lives. readers can also develop empathy with fictional characters and an emotional attachment to “others” (see kirkpatrick, 2012 for details of the cathartic effects of stories and their positive contribution to children’s well-being). at the same time books can encompass and extend the possibilities of human experience and introduce children to other times, places, and cultures as well as validating the reader’s own experience. extensive reading not only feeds imagination and creativity but also inculcates healthy attitudes to reading and an appreciation that reading is a rich source of relaxation and enjoyment. in contrast, disengaged readers tend to avoid reading, which may have a negative impact on children’s confidence and self-esteem (cairns & stanway, 2004). these different patterns of reading engagement are reminiscent of stanovich’s (1986) “matthew effect” where the gap between good readers and less able readers gets wider over time as independent readers gain more exposure to print and thereby process more information, acquire wider vocabularies, and are more able to access the school curriculum. that said, the individuality of looked after children means there will be fundamental differences in the developmental trajectories of their reading abilities; of course, family contexts and motivation are also critical to reading engagement (paratore & dougherty, 2011). foy and mann (2003) showed that the conditions that can provide looked after children with literate cultural capital can change over time as they respond to different care arrangements. this can be dependent on the age of the child. the collected literature makes a powerful case for ensuring that looked after children have contact with consistent and stable caregiving in environments where they can begin to trust adults and form consistent and secure relationships international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 32 (mathers et al., 2016). care arrangements that offer opportunities for children to participate in singing songs and sharing rhymes and stories provide social and emotional benefits. these interactions can have a lasting impact on the child’s engagement with literature and their literacy development. the importance of carers and other significant adults in looked after children’s lives cannot be underestimated. however, the focus of this present study is aimed towards investigating the heterogeneity of looked after children’s experiences with reading, their opinions about the books delivered to the home, and their professed uses of the texts. research methodology how we think about research with looked after children brings into sharp focus a number of methodological challenges and ethical quandaries. some scholars point to the problematic and time-consuming nature of navigating a succession of gatekeepers who are protective of children (heptinstall, 2000; hayes, 2005). others have attempted to ensure that any potential gains from the research are finely balanced against risks to participants (stewart, 2008). new policy agendas and practical measures put in place to safeguard children considered vulnerable means gaining access to looked after children for research purposes is not straightforward nor a matter to be taken lightly. rather, it involves a combination of shared ethical standards throughout the research process, sensitive research planning and design, treating children with dignity and respect, and thoughtful negotiation with children and with carers and professionals who act as advocates for the child (oliver, knight, & chandappa, 2006). meanwhile some academics have problematised the notions of “vunerability” and “hard to reach” as it can lead to group identities becoming homogenised as a negative social category and children being silenced when constrained by adult surveillance (valentine, butler, & skelton, 2001). as mentioned in the introduction, looked after children are a diverse group and whilst these children have faced and will face challenging life circumstances, a number of scholars have provided a more nuanced picture that emphasises children’s resilience and agency (mannay et al., 2017), and experiences of consistency of care and placement in safe and secure environments (sebba et al., 2015). more recent approaches to research with children also challenge the objectification of children as lacking capacity and insight and are designed to be respectful of children’s agency as social actors in their own right and experts in their everyday worlds (einarsdóttir, 2007). this epistemological view of childhood has a number of implications for research conduct as it recognises children as competent research participants, knowledgeable about their own experiences, and with specific communication skills that researchers can draw upon. informed consent the views of looked after children were vital in this study and the researchers were heedful of clark and moss (2011), who argued that whilst listening is an expression of rights it is also part and parcel of ethical practice. drawing on alderson’s (2012) rights-respecting research agenda a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 33 number of ethical principles were put into practice. this has repercussions for our research and our approach to informed consent which, according to tisdall, davis, and gallagher (2009), involves the children understanding the realities of the research, who is undertaking and financing it, and its hoped-for benefits to other children. given our understanding of all this, we explained to the children the nature and purpose of the research, and how the information will be used and by whom. they were given opportunities to discuss any concerns and encouraged to ask questions prior to any involvement in the research. they were also assured that the information would remain confidential and that it was not possible for people unconnected with the research to identify them. pseudonyms were assigned to both children and carers to maintain confidentiality. to ensure all the children understood the aims and processes of the study, the participants were provided with spoken information and an information leaflet designed to use accessible language that enabled the children to comprehend what the research involved. it was also made explicit that they were under no obligation to participate. as part of the wider study differentiated consent forms were produced for the carers and key professionals. the children were reminded that consent was renegotiable and that they had the right to withdraw from the process at any stage without any implications for themselves.the researchers remained vigilant about any anxiety or embarrassment the children displayed, using what skånfors (2009) referred to as an “ethical radar”, which alerts the researcher to body language cues and signs of resistance even when children do not express their feelings verbally. attention was also paid to minimising possible coercion from carers and other adults. several local authorities in scotland had already agreed to take part in the letterbox pilot project so initial contact was made by phone to social work managers in two local authorities in the west of scotland to discuss the research design. separate local authority ethics application forms were completed by the researchers and submitted with additional research documentation to the two social work services. as the looked after children participating in the project were under 12 years of age, social services also sought consent from the children’s birth parents or the adult who held parental rights and responsibilities for the child. research design this research draws on a range of data sources rich in context to offer a credible, in-depth exploration of children’s views and opinions as a result of participating in the letterbox club. the data collection process lasted 6 months and contained three distinct but interrelated phases to allow the researchers to establish and maintain a respectful relationship with the children and build on learning gained during each stage of the project. phase 1 the first consultation with the children was at a location organised by the social services representatives. the setting was familiar to the children, which supported engagement, and was an environment in which the participants felt comfortable and relaxed, and had a sense of control over international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 34 the situation. it was decided that the home would not be used to avoid intruding into children’s private spaces. the children were accompanied at all times by one or both of their carers, and their key social worker. professionals from social services played a key role in the selection of participants as care was taken about the choice of children to avoid risk of harm. the sample size was determined by social services based on the willingness of children and carers to participate in the research and the practicalities of accompanying the families to meetings. as such, purposive sampling was employed to yield relevant and information-rich cases related to the phenomena of interest (palys, 2008), whilst judgements were made by social workers to guarantee a balance of age, gender, and looked after circumstances. three separate meetings were held after school with a total of eight families and 11 children. this arrangement was for geographical reasons but in hindsight the size of the group was large enough for the children to feel part of a collective and supportive project but small enough to allow an “intimacy between strangers” (alderson & morrow, 2004). profile questionnaires were completed by the children and their carer(s) together and were designed to gain background information to frame the case studies (see appendix 1). the questionnaires included a broad range of literacy-related topics including the children’s favourite books and authors, details of reading practices and routines in the home, and library visits, as well as their expectations of the letterbox club. the profile questionnaires were used as a conversation tool and an opportunity to build a rapport with the children and their carers to support the next two phases of the research process. the intention here was to capture the children’s lived experiences with literacy as the project commenced and not to establish a baseline for quantitative data comparison as preand post-intervention reading assessment tools have proved problematic and unreliable in past evaluations of letterbox club initiatives (winter et al., 2011). for more details of the data captured from the questionnaires see hancock and leslie (2014). phase 2 during the second phase data was gathered from evaluation sheets included in each of the six parcels (examples can be seen in the findings section). for further information on the books included with the parcels, see appendix 2. children were asked to indicate their views about the resources using a 4-point smiley face scale. several scholars (punch, 2002; clark & statham, 2005) have suggested using a blend of both “adult” and “child-friendly” data-gathering techniques in order not to be patronising to children. therefore, space for written comments was also available and the children were encouraged to add their own opinions about the books. this phase involved minimal intrusion in the children’s lives and gave them the opportunity to respond at a time that was convenient for them. these open-ended comments also ensured that the children felt a sense of ownership over their contribution to the data and alleviated any apprehension about articulating negative aspects of the books. the written comments were used as a stimulus for conversations with the children during the final phase of the project. sensitivity was shown about any anxiety international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 35 the children evinced about their own confidence and competence with literacy. for some children their carers acted as a scribe; however, one child took the initiative and scribed for another looked after child in the family. phase 3 the third phase consisted of tape-recorded conversations with eight children, from five families. this sample became naturally self-selecting as challenging family circumstances led to a number of children being unable to attend the meetings. in this way the study’s findings reached data saturation as the researchers were restricted to the number of children who had participated in all three stages of the research, but it was felt that sufficient data would be generated to replicate the study (fusch & ness, 2015). the imbalance of power between the researcher posing the questions and the participant responding to them is particularly pronounced during adult–child interactions and thus it may lead children to answer in ways that they think researchers are expecting. these individual sessions were therefore relatively informal and conversational in style using the children’s evaluation forms as a stimulus for open-ended questions. the children were encouraged to expand on ideas expressed on their written evaluation sheets and were given the opportunity to articulate their perceptions in their own words. the parcels were also on hand so that the children could follow their interests during the conversations and use the books to support their thinking. all the final interviews were recorded, with the permission of the participants, and fully transcribed. some children preferred to use drawing to communicate their experiences of receiving the parcels. this alternative format allowed the children to express a range of emotions and understandings using their visual memory, without the constraints of oral language (merriman & guerin, 2006; einarsdóttir, dockett, & perry, 2009). that said, assumptions were not made that all children would prefer to use this medium of communication and care was taken to ensure pictures were not falsely interpreted (harden, scott, backett-milburn, & jackson, 2000). the approach to data analysis was inductive in nature, allowing ideas and themes to emerge from the content of the various sources of data outlined above (guest, macqueen, & namey, 2011). the procedure involved both of the researchers working independently at first, reading and rereading the data thoroughly to become familiar with the content and composing descriptive comments. this was followed by cross-checking individual interpretations and coding collaboratively to validate the themes emerging from each family. finally, the process was repeated case by case and patterns were identified to illuminate the differences and subtle similarities among the children. these co-constructed conversations and reflections contributed to revision and recoding as interpretations were shared, examined, and debated. through this critical and reflexive reading of the data, a number of strong themes became evident including reading practices, individual responses to books, and children’s agency as independent learners. the data were verified with the key social workers throughout the process to provide some measure of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 36 reliability. unfortunately, respondent validation was not possible because of access restrictions to the children and their carers from social services. a difficulty for any researcher using this type of qualitative analysis is the transfer of naturally occurring data to research data without investigator distortion, a hazard when interpreting the lives of “others”. to avoid this potential limitation, the researchers attempted to “bracket” subjective experience and suspend judgment about the natural world while focusing on the analysis of the children’s lived experience with reading (tufford & newman, 2012). at the same time, an emphasis was placed on the children’s personal narratives as a resource for providing them with a voice for expressing the experiences of looked after children. table 1 details of looked after children and carers name parcel age care arrangement caitlin red 10 foster care with tom and grace jack blue 7 rachel red 10 foster care with alison kyle blue 7 michael blue 8 kinship care with grandmother ryan blue 9 foster care with helen and dave lauren blue 8 kinship care with aunt emily blue 7 findings reading practices even before the project began a number of the children reported that they were avid readers and enjoyed reading independently. the children made choices about where and when they read and had their own established reading routines and book preferences (including repeated reading of books). caitlin demonstrated a passion for reading and confided that she buys books from charity shops and reads constantly even “in the middle of getting ready” in the morning. her favourite author is jacqueline wilson and recently her carer bought her the complete set of this author’s books, which caitlin thought “was amazing”. like caitlin, rachel also describes herself as “a really good reader”. she reads every day and reading makes her feel “really happy”. for rachel going to the library is an “exciting” experience and she likes to read different types of books, including “funny ones, some that have a wee scary bit in them, happy ones, adventure ones, and princess ones”. she sometimes reads the same book “over and over again”. she particularly enjoys the famous five and malory towers series and books by david walliams. another girl, lauren, also reads regularly on her own, particularly what she calls “books with lots of chapters” such as the horrid henry series. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 37 predictably not every child was an able reader but they looked for different ways to engage with texts. michael revealed that he does not like reading “because it’s hard” and prefers “looking at comics” and “just going out and playing”. at bedtime michael usually watches dvds, although he did mention that occasionally he would take one of the books from the parcels to bed. he explained that he was not able to read the book independently: i just look at the pictures ’cause i am not with my gran. my gran can’t help me so i just read words that i can in my bed, then when it’s time to go to sleep i go to sleep. emily, who repeated one year of schooling because of her additional support needs was aware of her difficulties with reading, claiming “i just like looking at the pictures because i can’t read” (figure 1). emily also found o’connell’s (2009) ancient egypt sticker book “hard to read”, but was delighted with the stickers. she was able to locate the correct place for each sticker by looking closely at the shape of each object and matching the objects to the blank spaces on the pages. talking about this book she said, “i loved that one by the way. i founded them all without reading”. figure 1. emily’s comment sheet. emily and michael’s perceptions of themselves as readers echoes levy’s (2011) findings where children viewed reading to be only about decoding words and those who could not decode print did not see themselves as readers. in contrast, authors like o’neil (2011) recognise the importance of picture-reading skills in developing children as “readers”, as there is much to be understood and inferred from a picture. a number of the children talked about enjoying reading in bed (figure 2), taking the books on extended family short breaks, and listening to the story cds from the parcels in the car or at bedtime. kyle particularly liked walker and sharkey’s (2006) jack and the beanstalk cd and emily enjoyed simon’s (2010) horrid henry rocks cd (figure 3). some authors such as dymoke and griffiths (2010) have noted some limitations of cds as they only offer abridged versions of the original book making it impossible to follow the text and listen to the story simultaneously. furthermore, they argue that audiobooks are considered a poor substitute for an adult and child bonding by reading together. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 38 figure 2. ryan’s drawing: “that’s me reading in bed”. a counterargument is that listening to cds can allow children to enjoy texts that are in advance of their reading level and expand their vocabularies. furthermore, hearing a book read aloud by a gifted storyteller can add drama, intrigue, and humour to a story and introduce the listener to a variety of language styles. kirkpatrick (2012) also believes in the therapeutic nature of listening to the spoken word. this was important for ryan who had difficulty sleeping, due in part to the instability of frequent care moves. he said he enjoyed listening to walker and sharkey’s (2006) jack and the beanstalk and simon’s (2010) horrid henry rocks cds by himself after his two bedtime stories. through the children’s conversations there were numerous insights into the social interactions that surround reading and sharing books. these interactions included ryan and his dad, dave, spending time together reading the books from the parcel and cycling together to the library; rachel’s family “taking turns” reading some of the books from the parcel and “having fun together”; and lauren’s family with “all 3 sitting round the kitchen table reading”. rachel and kyle shared the contents of their blue and red parcels, “swapping books”, “looking at each other’s things”, and reading the books together. as with rachel’s home, there were other families with more than one looked after child. this provided opportunities for shared reading with more experienced older readers in a process of guided participation (rugoff, 1990). caitlin explained how she would read jack’s books to him as well as reading her own books to him. furthermore, she scribed his views about the materials on the comment forms. lauren also played a significant role in scaffolding her sister emily’s reading by “sounding out” the words rather than giving her the words. this sharing of books also went beyond the immediate family with emily taking the cd and book to a friend’s house (figure 3); michael taking the books to his auntie’s house where she read “a wee bit” to him; and rachel sharing with friends at the girl guides. many of the children also took the books to school to show their teachers and classmates as described later. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 39 figure 3. emily’s comment sheet. research indicates that the type of social interactions cited above are not only important for children’s language and literacy development but these shared practices are also accompanied by encouragement and feelings of friendship — all of which support children’s self-esteem and relationship building (hancock & leslie, 2011). individual responses to books the children’s responses to the books were gathered from the written comments and tick boxes on the evaluation sheets and later validated by conversations with the children. descriptions included “love it”, “great”, “liked it”, and “really interesting” (figure 4). figure 4. caitlin’s comment sheet. scribing for jack had encouraged caitlin to listen carefully to him about what he thought about the books, and she took the initiative to add an additional column herself to the comment sheet with the category “loved it” (not shown). several of the children also commented on specific storylines or characters (figures 5 and 6). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 40 figure 5. jack’s comment sheet scribed by caitlin. figure 6. rachel’s comment sheet. books associated with popular culture were well received by the children. in particular, the harry potter film and television programmes (the deadly 60 and horrid henry) were mentioned in the interviews (figure 7). echoing the study carried out by marsh et al. (2005), the children consciously related the books to the television programmes, drawing on the language experienced with the moving image text to develop their own narratives (scottish screen, 2009). figure 7. ryan’s comment sheet scribed by his dad. interestingly, michael, who had referred to himself as “poor reader”, was keen to talk about the knowledge he had gained from the deadly 60 presenter regarding what action to take if a poisonous snake bites you: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 41 and he shows you what the animals are, poison and all that, and what they can do. and this snake bit a guy and you have to start putting more blood into you and keep on doing it until you get normal blood again. if it’s a poison snake you have to keep on — there is this big jag [medical injection] machine you take with you … you have to keep on jagging yourself till you get all the poison blood into that jag and then it puts normal blood into you. research indicates that, for children, engaging with popular culture can be very motivating and encourage the habit of reading (marsh & millard, 2000). one implication for the letterbox club is that fashions wax and wane and the choice of books needs to be kept contemporary. the parcels contained a range of non-fiction books to cater for varied genre tastes, such as backshall’s (2012) deadly factbook: mammals, described by ryan in figure 7. there is a lack of research conducted with children comparing reading non-fiction with fiction, despite that fact that their language and knowledge demands differ. some studies, however, indicate that children are adept at reading informational texts but they require practice to become acquainted with the genre (wray & lewis, 1997). ryan clearly enjoyed the non-fiction texts in the parcels and liked extracting information from books. he explained: i like information. kind of like … if someone walked over to me and was interested in vikings and they said, “what would vikings eat?” well i would, if i didn’t know that … i don’t know, but if i had information (i do know what they ate), but if i had information i would be able to say fish and porridge, oatcakes. michael liked dorling kindersley’s (2006) human body (eye wonder) and he rated it as “good” because “it learns you how to take care of your bones and all that”. emily has a similar view (figure 8). figure 8. emily’s comment sheet. caitlin described opening one of the parcels (figure 9): my wee brother was like “open it, open it” and he was urging me, so i opened it, and then i saw owls, and i really, really like owls, ’cause i like the way that they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 42 move and the way that they fly … i like owls, so it was quite good to have an owl book. so i read it all in like two minutes. figure 9. caitlin’s comment sheet. some of the books were based on traditional fairy tales, allowing the children to read familiar stories. both emily and lauren said they loved collodi’s (2004) pinocchio and described how they had seen the story performed in the theatre. ryan was excited to discover pinocchio in the parcel as he said he was going to see it at a pantomime at christmas (figure 10). for emily, walker and sharkey’s (2006) jack and the beanstalk was a favourite book (figure 11) and she also spoke about don’s (2012) little red riding hood saying, “i know this story very well”. fairy tales can teach critical thinking skills, develop a child’s imagination, and build emotional resilience (kirkpatrick, 2012). figure 10. ryan’s comment sheet scribed by his carer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 43 figure 11. emily’s comment sheet. for some children, books by particular authors, or books that were part of a collection, acted as a “hook” to read more books by the same author. ryan was thrilled to get ross’ (2010) horrid henry because he described himself as a “fan” and owned other titles in the series. lauren loved roald dahl and she had already read his george’s marvellous medicine (1981) and was delighted to discover his the enormous crocodile (1978) in one of the parcels. she confessed that she was asking santa for the “whole selection of roald dahl books”. both caitlin and rachel enjoyed rowling’s (1997) harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone, stating that it was the first book they had read in the series. caitlin was keen to read more of them whereas rachel declared that she would save up all her pocket money to buy them. rachel commented it was “really adventurous”. rachel said that she had seen the films, but now felt that she preferred the books as “they tell a little bit more”. the children also offered feedback about not liking a book. these comments included “babyish” (figure 12), “boring”, and “hard to read” (figures 12 and 13). figure 12. caitlin’s comment sheet. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 44 figure 13. emily’s comment sheet. for some children with additional support needs (such as michael and emily), some of the books were not appropriate for their stage of reading development. however, when selecting books to read from the parcels michael was able to put into practice some of the strategies he had been taught at school to make an informed choice. talking about king-smith’s (2012) the finger eater he justified why it had not appealed to him: didn’t really read it. nuh, didn’t like it. because it didn’t look good from the outside and then when i looked at the pictures inside and then i read the thing on the back, see the blurb, read that, it didn’t sound that good. i didn’t like it. the children liked being asked for their opinions about the contents of the parcels and, in the main, were keen to offer their suggestions about how the parcels could be improved. for example, ryan had ideas about what could be included in other parcels at different stages. he thought the primary six children would benefit from “a danger book” that would prevent “very stupid people touching electricity” and for primary five children a history book about kings and queens. meanwhile, rachel thought that if she were to make up the parcels she would include more non-fiction books. caitlin’s involvement in the letterbox club seems to have prompted her to consider the needs of others. she talked a lot about the educational value of the parcels, not just in terms of her own development, but also that of other children who were not good readers. for example, she highlighted the fact that bradman’s (2008) the two jacks was described as “a dyslexia friendly book” and thought it would be good for some of the children in her class. one of the things that caitlin really liked about being in the letterbox club was that children were asked to give their opinions about the books and that their views would be respected. she explained: well, i think it’s just because you get your say in it. i mean if you like the books you can say, “i like the books”, and if you don’t like the books you can just say that you didn’t like them and it doesn’t really matter if you’re a good reader or not, it just depends on what your opinion is. yeah, i like the way that they do these smiley faces, like that, and then the comment ’cause you can just write what you feel, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 45 … you can just tell, and just share your feelings and it’s good to know that nobody will shout at you and nobody will moan at you as well. children’s agency as independent learners having agency means children being able to make decisions and choices that influence events and which have an impact on their own lives (waller & bitou, 2011). the children’s opinions cited above and the actions they took during daily negotiations about how, when, where, and with whom they read, and their genre choices, are all illustrations of children developing a sense of agency. in this way the children’s identities as independent readers were reinforced. the following examples show children using the contents of the parcels to make autonomous choices and take greater ownership over their own learning and schoolwork. michael particularly liked o’connell’s (2009) ancient egypt sticker book because egypt was his current class topic. however, his gran told him that she did not want any of the books “to get damaged” by taking them to school. as michael does not have a computer in the house, he took the initiative and decided to go to his auntie’s house to ask her to use her computer to print “stuff about egypt”. he took the material that he had downloaded from the internet to show his teacher. relating the story to the researcher, it was apparent that michael had a sense of pride in his endeavour and a feeling of control over his own learning. this was particularly important for a child who was described as “always getting into trouble at school” and “on a behaviour report card”. after receiving some of the books, kyle decided to use an exercise book in one of the parcels to record all the books that he had read since he was a baby. he asked his carer the name of his first book and his first reading book at school. he then used his recollections to compile a written list of books (figure 14). figure 14. kyle’s comment sheet. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 46 caitlin believed that being a member of the letterbox club had been “very good” for her in terms of extending her vocabulary. she described how sometimes she came across words in the books from the parcels that she was “not sure of” and she would ask her carers to explain the meaning. she continued, “they explain it and then i explain it back to them, and then i get a sort of idea in my head”. on other occasions, she divulged that she tried to do it herself and she “didn’t go straight away” to ask her carers; rather she tried “to figure it out using the sentence and the picture”. noon’s (2012) story of the titanic stood out for rachel as it coincided with the topic she was studying at school (figure 15). she said: “when i opened the parcel i thought wow!” she was excited as she had to make a model of the titanic and she used the book to help her. rachel chose to take the book to show her teacher. this proved to be a positive experience as the teacher had the same book, and she asked rachel to help her read the book to the whole class. rachel told this story with a feeling of pleasure and added that the teacher had asked her if she could leave her book at school for a few days so that it could be shared with all the children. figure 15. rachel’s comment sheet. discussion and conclusion although the discourse of “consulting with children” has gained prominence in political and educational forums of late, children frequently “continue to find their voices silenced, suppressed, or ignored … and even if they are consulted, their ideas may be dismissed” (james, 2007, p. 261). children are the best judges of what they would like to read and the findings demonstrate that many of the children valued being given the opportunity to express their opinions about the books — they felt that their views mattered. however, it is not just about listening to children but also taking them seriously, turning their ideas into reality, and involving them directly in any future selection of books to be included in the parcels. promoting children’s agency has been identified as fundamental to children’s learning, development, and wellbeing (corsaro, 2005). conditions promoting agency are particularly important for looked after children and how they manage their sense of identity, not just in terms international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 47 of their education but also in their daily interactions and relationships at home and school. the findings reveal children having multifarious reading proficiencies, reading habits, reading routines, and author and book genre preferences. this nuanced picture of children’s experiences with reading sheds light on the heterogeneous nature of looked after children and their family contexts. looked after children’s disadvantaged status should not be ignored (berridge, 2007). this study demonstrates children responding to such a positioning in diverse and strategic ways, such as: making choices about where and when they read and with whom; expressing opinions about books (including likes and critiques); and using the contents of the parcels to take action and gain greater ownership over their own learning and schoolwork. the idea that children can be vulnerable, as they start out from different power positions compared to adults (leonard, 2015), and yet can exercise agency at the same time depending on what they are faced with, requires further scrutiny (bluebond-langner & korbin, 2007). bordonaru and payne (2012) have referred to this phenomenon as “ambiguous agency”. hancock, hancock, and leslie (2014) have argued that interpretations of agency and how it is achieved continue to be wide-ranging and children’s capacity for agency should be perceived as a varying and moveable construct, set within the context of daily negotiations and relationships with others. tisdall and punch (2012) stated that children’s agency should be a contested construct, rather than one that is taken for granted or assumed to be inherently positive and desired by all children. for example, michael’s social worker informed the researchers that the final parcel remained unopened in the home and a number of children chose not to complete or return the evaluation forms. the reasons behind this are complex and speculative in nature but it could be argued that the children were asserting their authority and choosing not to participate. according to tisdall and punch (2012, p. 259), focusing on children’s agency is no longer enough and greater emphasis is needed on the “intricacies, complexities, tensions, ambiguities and ambivalences” of children’s lives. we believe taking this stance alongside a perception of agency as “potential” (ratner, 2000), and fluctuating rather than static, will assist scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to engage more critically with studies involving looked after children in the future. with the move to problematising agency have come reassessments of what constitutes authentic, inclusive, and ethical research with children who are asked to provide insights into their own lives. a number of restraints and pragmatic decisions influenced the conduct of the research outlined in this article, but on reflection there should have been greater involvement of the children at every stage, including designing the questionnaire and the evaluation sheet. how we communicate and share information with the children to allow them to make real choices is complex. langhout and thomas (2010) pointed out that the act of consulting with children sounds like a good idea until we hear what they have to say, as children’s perspectives may challenge the social order of the researcher as well as institutional or community values and norms. that said, future research with looked after children needs to consider how children can participate in decision-making from the start. this calls for researchers both to be open about the issues and who benefits, and to collaborate with children when developing research tools. feedback on research international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 48 findings should also be routinely provided to children as part of acknowledging their contribution and seeking their views on dissemination and outputs, as well as gaining their thoughts on withdrawing from the research process. the letterbox project has been rolled out across the uk but it remains small scale as it relies on the good will of professionals and financial support from educational authorities in a time of budgetary constraints. the letterbox club involves interagency partnerships but there needs to be greater engagement with libraries and schools. this could involve the lending of books and engaging with carers about participating in literacy practices in the home. the project has the potential for replication across international contexts but its impact needs to viewed as an integral component of other measures to raise literacy standards for all children. for example, in scotland, there have been numerous national initiatives to support children’s reading such as the scottish government’s play talk read campaign and scottish book trust’s bookbug schemes4 (scottish government, 2015b). how these initiatives are inclusive of, and recognise, looked after children warrants further investigation. 4 working through locally based partners including libraries, health professionals, early years settings, and primary schools, free packs of books are gifted to all children in scotland when they are aged around six weeks, eighteen months, three years, and when they start school at five years of age, along with guidance materials for parents and carers. a number of research studies have been commissioned in scotland to look at the impact of the bookgifting programme, including berry and mcmellon (2008) who reported on the benefits of intervening early and building a foundation of literacy in young children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 49 references alderson, p. 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(2012). bracketing in qualitative research. qualitative social work, 11(1), 80–96. doi:10.1177/1473325010368316 valentine, g., butler, r., & skelton, t. (2001). the ethical and methodological complexities of doing research with ‘vulnerable’ young people. ethics, place and environment, 4(2), 119– 125. doi:10.1080/13668790123540 vincent, j. (2004). access to books and reading projects for young people in public care: the librarians’ training kit — final report. nadderwater, exeter: the network. retrieved from http://www.seapn.org.uk/uploads/files/phf-final-report.pdf waller, t., & bitou, a. (2011). the sociology of childhood: children’s agency and participation in telling their own stories. in t. waller, j. whitmarsh, & k. clark (eds.), making sense of theory and practice in early childhood: the power of ideas (pp. 101–114). maidenhead, uk: open university press. weinberger, j. (1996). a longitudinal study of children’s early literacy experiences at home and later literacy development at home and school. journal of research in reading, 19(1), 14– 24. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.1996.tb00083.x winter, k. (2006). widening our knowledge concerning young looked after children: the case for research using sociological models of childhood. child & family social work, 11(1), 55–64. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00385.x winter, k., connolly, p., bell, i., & ferguson, j. (2011). evaluation of the effectiveness of letterbox club in improving educational outcomes among children aged 7–11 years in foster care in northern ireland. belfast, ireland: centre for effective education, queens university belfast. wray, d., & lewis, m. (1997). extending literacy: children reading and writing non-fiction. london, uk: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2012.693376 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1473325010368316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13668790123540 http://www.seapn.org.uk/uploads/files/phf-final-report.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.1996.tb00083.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00385.x international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 57 appendix 1 part a: family profile 1. children in the home details a. child 1 (receiving letterbox parcel) age gender b. child 2 age gender c. child 3 age gender 2. school/nursery/playgroup etc. where applicable name of establishment a. child 1 b. child 2 c. child 3 part b: questionnaire 1. what do you think you will get out of the letterbox club? 2. were the aims of the letterbox club explained to you at the start? 3. are you looking forward to taking part/any reservations? 4. are you a member of a library? a. if yes, how often do you visit the library? b. if yes, how many books do you take home on each visit? 5. how often do you read? 6. do you share a book with the child? (e.g. morning daytime evening before bed) 7. a. how do you feel about reading b. what kind of books do you like to read? c. what is your favourite book that you have read recently? d. would you recommend it to a friend? e. what would you say to them about the book? f. tell us everyone who reads to you – including your teacher! 8. do you ever write things at home (for example, stories, diary, and notes)? give details: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 26–58 58 appendix 2 children’s books backshall, s. (2012). deadly factbook: mammals. london: orion. bradman, t. (2008). the two jacks. edinburgh: barrington stoke. collodi, c. (2004). pinocchio. london: osborne. dahl, r. (1970). fantastic mr. fox. london: george allen & unwin. dahl, r. (1978). the enormous crocodile. london: jonathan cape. dahl, r. (1981). george’s marvellous medicine. london: jonathan cape. don, l. (2012). little red riding hood. oxford: barefoot books. dorling kindersley. (2006). the human body (eye wonder). london: dorling kindersley. farrell, j. (2009). manfred the baddie. london: quercus children’s books. king-smith, d. (2012). the finger eater. london: walker books. o’connell, e. r. (2009). ancient egypt sticker book. london: british museum press. mccall smith, a. (2005). akimbo and the lions. copenhagen: egmont. noon, s. (2012). story of the titanic. london: dorling kindersley. rowling, j. k. (1997). harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone. london: bloomsbury. savage, s. (2006). animal neighbours: owl. london: wayland. simon, f. (2010). horrid henry rocks. london: orion. walker, r., & sharkey, n. (2006). jack and the beanstalk. oxford: barefoot books. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 5–8 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818116 in memoriam dr. carol s. kelly bettina terp and varda mann-feder dr. carol s. kelly was born may 15, 1939 in marion, ohio, and passed away on friday, february 10, 2017 at thousand oaks, california. dr. carol s. kelly began her teaching career in 1969 at california state university, northridge, in the college of human development. carol provided key leadership in developing and implementing the interdisciplinary program in child development, and in working across and beyond campus to strengthen the program, which later became the department of child and adolescent development. having established a legacy through her teaching, she continued to mentor students and alumni as a professor emeritus after retiring in 2007. carol was among the original founders of the national organization for child care worker associations (noccwa), which was the first national cyc association in the united states and the precursor of acycp, the association for child and youth care practice. carol served overseas http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818116 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 5–8 6 as a senior consultant for the united nations international year of the family. in recent years, she was an active member of the fice board, an ardent leader of the martha mattingly scholarship committee, and a contributing member of acycp. her retirement from the university did not in any way diminish her energy or her contributions. carol believed in professionalization, certification, accreditation, and international collaboration. she was deeply committed to generativity and the cultivation of emerging leaders. the child and adolescent development alumni chapter of california state university recently referred to her as a “transformative figure … who established a legacy through her teaching … and continued to mentor students and alumni as a professor emeritus”. carol was appointed fice usa representative at the 1994 fice congress in milwaukee. in 1994, at the fice congress in milwaukee, carol was announced as representative for fice usa. she worked tirelessly and diplomatically to maintain the presence of fice usa in the fice international community. even at the beginning of her dedication to fice international, carol was tiny and had white hair. she could have been mistaken for a favourite grandmother as she smiled fondly at everyone. however, her physical energy and razor-sharp mind belied her years. she came regularly to fice meetings from the west coast of america and still had the stamina to participate fully in the whole programme of activities. professionally she was deeply committed to keeping alive professional links across north america and the rest of the fice family, because she realised the importance of networking and learning from each other. she would often be the first to reach out to new members when they came to meetings, and always gave her undivided attention when others were speaking. networking is one of the main strengths of fice and carol excelled at it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 5–8 7 carol was the recipient of numerous awards throughout her career, but one of her proudest moments came when she was awarded the 2016 lifetime achievement award by acycp. this event was part of the 33rd fice congress in vienna, austria in august 2016. receiving the acycp lifetime achievement award. in a recent newsletter, the nominator was quoted as saying that carol “was an extraordinary force in cyc for over 50 years, in which she unselfishly dedicated her life to making the world a better place for children. … her impassioned efforts as a change agent has led to the development of ground breaking policies both nationally and internationally … her legacy extends from russia to finland to africa and the usa”. carol kelly achieved much in her lifetime and her efforts will have a profound impact on cyc for years to come. carol was a person who had the capacity to touch and influence people, especially young ones. we thought it appropriate to quote part of a very emotional tribute written by one of fice's youngest delegates, simon peter from kenya: as the curtain falls for the icon carol, her [passing] has caught everyone's attention, it's hard to believe … she galvanized the hopes and aspirations of many members, inspired the sense of responsibility, she was such a brilliant analyst capable of thinking tactfully and practically. i had the privilege of spending time next to her during the many conferences and i benefited from her voice of reason and moderation. carol struck consistently by how much her strength at the conferences affected my strength back in kenya. she gave me hopes of how many years i have ahead for the work with children at risk. i kept asking myself ... how did a person so of age simultaneously cross seas and oceans to contribute to the policies and practices in pursuit of a simple dream, “the rights of children at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 5–8 8 risk?”… we appreciate the honour of having known carol as we admit that the loss is terrible for fice, family, and friends. this is just one example of many moving tributes to carol kelly that are posted on fice’s website: https://www.ficeinter.net/single-post/2017/05/19/in-memoriam-dr-carol-s-kelly. when referring to fice’s work for children and young people, or to particularly successful projects, like “isibindi”, or to groundbreaking effects of international cooperation, carol had her own favourite phrase for paying the highest possible compliment, saying, “it‘s priceless beyond words.” carol with gitta griffioen, fice netherlands. on a personal level, carol was small in stature but mighty of spirit. her greatest gift was her ability to connect with people. those of us who had the pleasure of interacting with her experienced her talent for communication and her love of conversation. carol had an encyclopaedic knowledge of our field and served as a great resource. she always had so much to share. carol was a devoted grandmother who frequently expressed her love for her family, her colleagues, her students, her neighbours, and for the field of child and youth care. for us in the fice family, and for the whole child and youth care community, the privilege of having worked, talked, and laughed with carol was definitely “priceless beyond words”. we have lost a tiny giant human, a highly professional colleague, and a dear friend. https://www.ficeinter.net/single-post/2017/05/19/in-memoriam-dr-carol-s-kelly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717722 the future of child and youth care education: insights from canada varda mann-feder, daniel g. scott, and bruce hardy abstract: this article reports on an analysis of a conversation held at a world café gathering in the spring of 2014. at that time, a group of 25 professionals involved in higher education in child and youth care engaged in a discussion of challenges that have implications for the future of the field. four major themes emerged: tensions between theory and practice, issues related to child and youth care values, trends and traditions in child and youth care, and questions about professional integrity and identity. these themes are discussed in light of ongoing debates in the literature. the results of our discussions also underscore the need to harmonize divisions in the field and consolidate an agreed-upon knowledge base for child and youth care. keywords: child and youth care education, knowledge base in child and youth care, professional identity, world café varda mann-feder ded is professor of applied human sciences at concordia university office l-ve-223, 1455 de maisonneuve blvd. west, montreal, quebec, h3g 1m8. email: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca daniel g. scott phd is associate professor emeritus at the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: dgscott@uvic.ca bruce hardy phd is associate faculty at city university of seattle, 521 wall street, suite 100, seattle, wa 98121. email: hardyb@cityu.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717722 mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca mailto:dgscott@uvic.ca mailto:hardyb@cityu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 2 prior to the child and youth care in action conference at the university of victoria’s school of child and youth care in may 2014, as part of their fortieth anniversary celebrations, there was a preconference event focused on the future of education in child and youth care (cyc). there is a long tradition of conferences in the field being preceded by an educators’ day, in recognition of the critical role that education and training play in the field. at the 2014 event, conference delegates were invited to come, to take an active role in stimulating the conversation, and to suggest critical issues to include in the conversation. based on the suggestions received and the work of the planning team (drs. hardy, mann-feder, and scott) the participants gathered for an afternoon session before the official start of the conference.1 this preconference session was planned using a world café model (brown & isaacs, 2005). the model provides a structured approach for the promotion of “strategic dialogue”, and is characterized by time-limited small group discussion in relation to a series of prepared questions. the large group is broken down into small groups (the recommended number for the small groups is about eight participants), who sit at round tables and work together throughout the event. a facilitator is assigned to each small group and records the highlights of each discussion. an important feature of the model is that after the series of questions has been discussed, the responses from each group are presented, and the total group engages in reflecting on the salient points from the conversation. the dialogue at the university of victoria was attended by 25 participants, all of whom worked in higher education in cyc. the vast majority were from canadian colleges and universities, although there were also a handful of participants from the united states and the united kingdom. five of the participants agreed to act as facilitators at separate tables. the session lasted about three hours and was guided by the following questions: 1. where are we headed as a field? 2. what should we add to cyc education to reflect the expanded range of settings where we practice? 3. what is the role of theory and research in cyc education? 4. what is the range of approaches we need to consider? how do we represent the diversity of the field? 5. what are the next steps to keep the dialogue going? 1 the authors wish to acknowledge s. curran, anderson nathe, j. ezaki, p. fenske, h. modlin, h. skott myhre, l. steckley, and n. wemigwans for their important contributions in the planning and facilitation of this event. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 3 approximately ten pages of detailed responses to the first four questions were gathered and then presented to the large group. all participants then engaged in discussing the responses, and took up the last question, which solicited comments about the potential for follow-up to the event. the written notes were made available to all present. lastly, the authors of this article undertook to analyze the responses, tracking major themes across questions. the purpose of this article is to report on the major themes that characterized the concerns of cyc educators at the 2014 conference for the future of cyc education and the cyc field more broadly. implications for cyc education will be identified. major themes four major themes characterized the discussion of the questions. participants debated the relative importance of theory and practice in cyc education, and the definition of theory more generally. two themes that arose repeatedly, regardless of which stated question was being explored and where the conversation started out, were those related to cyc values and to cyc traditions. lastly, there was a major preoccupation with professional identity. what follows is a description of each theme, with quotes from the notes that were especially characteristic. tensions between theory and practice the role of theory and practice in cyc education was debated throughout the world café. this theme dominated the discussion of all four guiding questions, and there was by no means unanimity regarding the ideal theory–practice relationship, nor even about the definition of theory as it applies to cyc education. given the range of positions expressed, and the lack of consensus, the group was divided on this question. for some participants, theory played a critical role in cyc education and was stressed as an increasingly important focus for the future, while for others, cyc education overemphasizes theory, leading to a lack of authenticity and a distancing from relationships. in some cases, theory and practice were viewed as dichotomous, as were theoretical versus relational approaches to education. beyond this, there was a significant diversity of opinion, even among those who valued theory, about how theory and practice should be integrated and which theories should be emphasized. participants who downplayed the importance of theory in cyc education stressed the “general relational focus” and the importance of skill building, especially interpersonal skill, as the core of cyc education. some participants emphasized that theory should not provide the basis for relating to youth. “who you are and how you relate” were cited as critical components that needed to be stressed more in the future. participants who saw practice concerns as more important than theoretical considerations stressed “real world practical information”, “co-teaching with practitioners to transmit understanding of the world”, and “the role of the self and interaction” in cyc education. it appears international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 4 that for some a relational focus or a practice orientation was seen as a theoretical orientation. however, some other participants who espoused these perspectives considered these approaches to be atheoretical. one participant noted: “we need to problematize theories and maybe theory more generally. practice needs to be flexible, relatable, constructivist, experiential, and experimental.” participants who favoured theory as an important component of cyc education stressed its role in informing practice. the following are examples of comments that underscored the need to integrate theory and practice: “theory can help education and inform cyc to engage groups”, “theory and research can help us to reclaim territory in terms of the revolutionary potential of care”, and “theory supports professionalism”. one participant commented that “the link between theory and practice is central and research may be the answer to uniting them, but with a cyc voice.” it is interesting to note that the participants who saw theory as critical to cyc education had different suggestions about how theory and practice could work together. one participant commented: “theory should lead to practice and then back to theory again”, while another asked which should come first and how both can be taught. others cautioned that “theory should not be prescriptive”, and that “you can learn theory but experiences need to be first”, while it was also observed that “practice should be grounded in theory with praxis”. there was some disagreement about the diversity of theories that need to be included in a cyc curriculum. many participants made reference to reflexivity as an important element in both theory and practice, while others stressed political analysis, indigenous ontologies, and critical theory as elements that needed more emphasis going forward. some participants praised multidisciplinarity, while others stressed the importance of the unique cyc perspective and the need to re-theorize our position and the field. social work theory and developmental theory were both mentioned as being overemphasized, while it was also noted that cyc has favoured analysis of the micro over the macro, and has not privileged “diverse ways of knowing”. it appears there is an anxiety for some that new theories (particularly “post” and critical theories) mean that somehow practice and practice-based approaches are being called into question. for some, deconstruction is problematic because it is not rooted in practice (and cannot be admitted as a way to critique or consider practice). however, people view “theory” — the word itself — as having quite different overtones for people in different locations in the field. some see relational practice as a theoretical location but there were others working from a relational practice approach who view themselves as outside theory. for them, there is a sense that practice is and must be practical and not theoretical. theory is seen by these traditionalists as academic, perhaps obscure, and not speaking to the day-to-day realities of practice. there is another cluster who see theory and its role in a much more deconstructionist way. an exploration of theoretical location, in that view, is essential to understand what theory or theories are in play, what their historical roots are, and, from that analysis, what implications there are for practice and for refining both theory and practice through critical examination and selfinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 5 examination. the tension is more than a binary dynamic because amongst those for whom theory is a necessary and critical part of thinking about and doing practice, there are differing understandings of the role of theory and the theories that matter. theoretical approaches are seen as valuable and critical for developing practice, for enriching its scope, and for critiquing existing approaches to consider hidden assumptions and potential blind spots. child and youth care values in this wide-ranging conversation between cyc practitioners and academics, the theme of values came up time and time again. many participants talked about what they saw as the critical importance of advocacy or, more specifically, the role of cyc practitioners as advocates. the comments seemed to suggest that we should be advocates. one participant saw “advocacy as a hallmark of cyc rather than an outcome”; another stated, “radical advocacy is required.” some participants felt a need to advocate for a cultural shift so that “cyc workers [become] agents of this change” and a need “to become [a] political force but [we] can’t do this by continuing in the same way — some of our strategies have developed the problem”. for some it was clear that currently, we are not advocates. this theme then linked to a broader discussion about professionalism and the role of professionalism in cyc. it was by no means a unidirectional conversation. professionalism was not seen by all as necessarily positive and a number of participants seemed to suggest that a move towards professionalism was potentially a move away from advocacy. this in turn led to a discussion about the role of education in professionalism and in cyc in general. in a wide range of comments, participants spoke about how, currently, cyc education “was not necessarily relevant to child and youth care practice”, “was not supporting advocacy”, “needed to make itself more current and less mired in the past”, and “was not as relevant as practice”. in addition, one participant observed that educational research was driving practice “when in reality it should be the other way around”. this conversation about education, practice, and research was a passionate dialogue that illustrated tensions in the field. some participants were strongly in favour of trying to “understand our own positions in neoliberal contexts — our work is political — how can we expect/hope for students to help children and youth transform worlds if we’re not also doing it?” they wanted to draw on political, structural, and anti-capitalist analysis both “in classrooms, [and] in the real oneon-one relations with one another.” they saw that there were tensions between “post structural values and regulatory pressures.” others were concerned with “real world” practice, stating that “families focus must not get lost!” and that we should be “trying/needing to match competencies with children and youths’ real needs.” the conversation included concerns about low wages, the qualifications of practitioners, and the accompanying challenge in canada of establishing national standards and education. there were questions about residential and group care, overstretched resources, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 6 what practices in the field are valued. some saw a need for “practical information helping students [to] better understand youth experience and not reducing youth to current problems.” one participant said that there was “a need to move back to the foundations of the field and possibly away from the trappings of professionalization.” the discussion ended with many questions about the role that cyc practitioners and educators should take when it comes to the funding of programs, the politics of funding, and the work of policy development. many believed that cyc needs to take on a more significant role in these areas, particularly in creating policy and influencing policy makers. does care work need to include attention to policy, political realities, and the historical context of care work? if care work is not adequately funded what is the role of a cyc practitioner in addressing the social and political context that has produced the underfunded context? these questions remain as considerations for ongoing work in cyc education. trends and traditions in child and youth care another major theme was that of cyc traditions. some of the discussion centered around the belief that child and youth care is a young discipline and as such needs to be able to develop and articulate its own view of the world before looking to integrate those beliefs with other disciplines. consequently cyc traditions related to multidisciplinary practice featured prominently in the discussions. there were many who spoke about the importance of acknowledging practice, research, and education from allied fields while others felt that a multidisciplinary approach was watering down cyc. again there is not a single clear perspective in cyc. some wanted to “acknowledge the diversity in age of those served” and “recognize the diversity of approaches to the field” and the “range of roles” that cyc practitioners fill. there was some disagreement about the diversity of theories that need to be included in a cyc curriculum, and about how best to balance the relational with the theoretical and the academic with the practical in cyc education. at root for many was the belief stated by one participant: “there are many approaches, but at the core of all of them is the relational.” for many practitioners that is the core tradition of cyc. within the dialogue relating to multidisciplinary practice, there was an additional discussion that focused on multiculturalism in both cyc practice and cyc education. this discussion raised a number of questions: • is cyc reflective of a wide range of multicultural practice theories? • is cyc practice reflective of the multicultural communities in which we practise? • is cyc doing a good enough job responding to aboriginal/indigenous practice issues? • do cyc educators reflect the broader community and the broad base of students? • do cyc educators focus on the future of the field or do they focus on the past? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 7 • is cyc open to different voices? • is there a role for cyc educators in training cyc practitioners in policy issues? • should cyc be more political in its approach to practice? • does cyc do enough action-based research? • should cyc be more politically driven? there was a tension about what counts as cyc practice. our field has roots in residential care, youth work, and early childhood care and education. for some, the primary focus remains on children and youth in difficulty and this drives their approach to practice and their understanding of the field as rooted in care for those in crisis. for others, practice includes a wide range of environments where addressing difficulty and crisis are not central to practice. recreational programs, early childhood sites, community development initiatives, and other environments all require different orientations to practice. this diversity in the growth of the cyc field seems to be a part of the tensions and divergence in the conversation we hosted. as the field has developed and broadened the scope of engagement across diverse age groups, social and cultural settings, and practice foci, there are many contexts to consider. a single approach is not adequate to meet all contexts. how can cyc educators and practitioners be open to the needs of multiple settings, various ages of children and youth, and families who come from different cultures and contexts? who are the clients in cyc now? where is the work taking place? how old or young are they? how much are families involved? what are the links to communities? again a range of questions arose that illustrate the complexity of the developing field. questions about professional integrity and identity throughout the world café conversation, a variety of perspectives on the nature, identity, and issues of cyc education and practice was evident. there was a sense that this conversation has been going on for some time without any clear direction, and in the context of this event similar comments arose around each of the questions asked. for some participants there was a desire to reinvent “who we are”, calling for a much more informed political sensibility that would be “taking risks [with] more analysis of material conditions”, and a concern that we in cyc do have “a particularly high level of political understanding” and that impedes our work. a number of participants felt that we “need more cogent analysis of the living conditions of young people” and that we “need theory and research to resist the commodification and marketization of the field, of children and youth”. the desire to resist seeing children, youth, and families as “customers or consumers” was articulated with a hope that “theory and research can help us reclaim territory in terms of the revolutionary potential of relationship and care”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 8 at the same time other voices were calling for “authenticity in our relationships” and wondering if it is time to “let go of the abstract — political — … to abandon professional identities”. these voices drew on the traditional discourses of cyc saying our work is “more about who you are and how you relate to and understand youth” and expressing a need to “move back to the foundations of the field and possibly away from the trappings of professionalization”. there was general acknowledgement that in the context of reduced funding resources and the rise of managerial approaches, there are deep concerns for professional integrity and identity. cyc work was seen as facing many challenges ranging from worker burnout to the wide scope of the field, from early childhood care to group and residential care, and from street work to therapeutic interventions. another challenge is the call to respond to the “hot-button issue” of the day, be it autism, trauma-informed practice, or suicide prevention. there was general acknowledgement that cyc workers needed to have skills that are transferrable between settings. what was not evident was a shared sense of “what grounds our perspective and our practice”. one participant wanted us “to clarify our ethos” and another to “infuse leadership through curriculum”. lingering in the discussion regarding professionalization and its implications were concerns regarding the role of educational institutions in setting standards for cyc education and deciding core and minimal requirements for professional qualification. some anxiety was expressed regarding standardization as potentially limiting. and so the conversation circled back to the challenges for education. what do the priorities need to be? how can we as cyc educators respond to multiple and sometimes contradictory demands: to standardize the field and work from shared competencies, while at the same time developing astute political and critical sensibilities, and encouraging the formulation of new ideas and approaches, that in turn may challenge our current ideals. the passion is shared but the direction is uncertain. discussion it is clear from our analysis of this conversation amongst educators that, as cyc develops, having a view of education for practitioners as focused on one sort of client and one context is not possible. furthermore, there was little consensus as to what constitutes an appropriate theory base or even what role theory should play going forward. the recognition of the deep divisions in the field of cyc and cyc education is not new, especially in relation to the fundamental questions about the relationship between theory and practice. in 1993, karen vanderven observed: there is a pervasive lack of connection … between theory and practice in child and youth care work. despite the insistence of some that this field, due to its practical, instructive nature, does not require theoretical frameworks, many others feel they are essential (p. 264). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 9 as recently as may of 2016, a gathering of cyc educators at a national conference in halifax was characterized by a diversity of positions. “the themes that resonate for one [educator] will perhaps not even be noticed by another. this seems to be the nature of our emerging community of practice” (snell, shaw, & weninger, 2016, pp. 118–119). is this a bad sign? not all cyc scholars agree on this point either. in 2013, freeman observed, “the fact that it is difficult to find a commonly agreed upon definition of cyc is perhaps a sign that the field is in a distinct, emerging phase of its history.” (p. 100). in 2015, ranahan, blanchet-cohen, and mann-feder observed that the lack of unanimity reflects the increasing complexity of the context in which young people and families develop. white (2011) argued that absolute definitions of the field should be resisted, while bessant (2012) advocated the integration of diverse approaches over the search for a single approach. what is clear is that there is by now a well-documented history of disagreement on fundamental issues in cyc and cyc education. this may be absorbing too much energy in our field, as “self/other and either/or permeate our institutions, professional discourse, and general conversations” (little, 2011, p. 3). perhaps most concerning is that this lack of agreement creates undue challenges for cyc educators in higher education because the field is still not consistently recognized as an academic discipline. as stated by fusco (2012), “if those closely engaged in the field do not agree on language and content, it will be difficult for the discipline to grow deep roots within higher education” (p. 113). consensus is needed, even consensus that draws on a “multiplicity of perspectives” (fusco, 2012, p. 113). this need for an agreed-upon knowledge base has a profound effect on practice as well: intervening in the absence of a theoretical framework has been compared to navigating tokyo without a map (steckley, 2009). cyc has become a diverse community and learning to live in and with that complexity seems to be a necessary process. our persistent engagement in debate on basic issues threatens our legitimacy. naming what holds us together, what our driving principles are, our shared ethos, our practice approaches, and our educational needs will require a continuing dialogue. it appears there will not be one answer to these questions, and it will take courage and persistence to arrive at a consensus. it is evident that further discussion is both necessary and inevitable, by both cyc practitioners and students, and especially by cyc educators. are we mature enough as a field to live with that reality? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 1–10 10 references bessant, j. (2012). youth work and education of professional practitioners in australia. in d. fusco (ed.), advancing youth work: current trends, critical questions (ch. 5). new york, ny: routledge. brown, j., & isaacs, d. (2005). the world café: shaping our futures through conversations that matter. san francisco, ca: berrett-koehler. freeman, j. (2013). the field of child and youth care: are we there yet? child and youth services, 34(2) 100–111. doi:10.1080/0145935x.2013.785875 fusco, d. (2012) on becoming an academic profession. in d. fusco (ed), advancing youth work: current trends, critical questions (pp. 111–125). new york, ny: routledge. little, r. n. (2011). articulating a child and youth care philosophy: beyond binary constructs. in d. fusco (ed), advancing youth work: current trends, critical questions (pp. 3–18). new york, ny: routledge. ranahan, p., blanchet-cohen, n., & mann-feder, v. (2015). moving towards an integrated approach to youth work education. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 6(4), 516–538. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs.64201514286 snell, h., shaw, k., & weninger, w. (2016). what happens when you put a group of cyc educators in a room? relational child and youth care practice, 29(3), 117–122. retrieved from http://www.rcycp.com/docs/rcycp_vol29-3.pdf steckley, l. (2009). why theory? cyc-online, 123. retrieved from http://www.cyc-net.org/cyconline/cyconline-may2009-steckley.html white, j. (2011). restor(y)ing professional ethics in child and youth care: towards more contextualized, reflexive and generative practice. in a. pence & j. white (eds), child and youth care: critical perspectives, pedagogy, practice and policy (pp. 33–51). vancouver. bc: ubc press. vanderven, k. (1993). advancing child and youth care: a model for integrating theory and practice through connecting education, training and the service system. child and youth care forum, 22(4), 263–284. doi:10.1007/bf00756952 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0145935x.2013.785875 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs.64201514286 http://www.rcycp.com/docs/rcycp_vol29-3.pdf http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cyconline-may2009-steckley.html http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cyconline-may2009-steckley.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00756952 the future of child and youth care education: insights from canada varda mann-feder, daniel g. scott, and bruce hardy major themes tensions between theory and practice child and youth care values trends and traditions in child and youth care questions about professional integrity and identity discussion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818211 success and failure in residential care: results and experiences from the evaluation of child and youth care (evas) michael macsenaere and corinna pummer-pilaj abstract: evas is the largest study in germany that evaluates the structures, processes, and results of residential care. the results show a success rate of over 60% and a cost-benefit ratio of 3:1. the study provides a number of indications as to what works; for example, the willingness to cooperate and the participation of the clients, a well-founded social-educational diagnosis, and a sufficient duration of help. keywords: residential care, evaluation, effectiveness, efficiency, what works, cooperation, social-educational diagnosis, duration of help michael macsenaere phd (the corresponding author) is the managing director of the ikj institut für kinderund jugendhilfe ggmbh, saarstraße 1, 55122 mainz, germany.email: macsenaere@ikj-mainz.de corinna pummer-pilaj phd is the scientific director of the ikj austria, vienna. email: pummer-pilaj@ikj-austria.at mailto:macsenaeresenaere@ikj-mainz.de mailto:pummer-pilaj@ikj-austria.at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 29 approximately half a million young persons per year make use of educational assistance in germany. they are entitled to such assistance whenever their current environment cannot guarantee an upbringing according to their developmental needs and only if the assistance service is both appropriate and necessary to fulfil these needs. “educational assistance” as provided in germany covers a broad range of pedagogical services and some therapeutical ones related to them, starting with child guidance counselling (with a comparatively low threshold for entry) to day-care and outpatient support, and also including fully inpatient services. in total, the range of services offered in accordance with german legislation covers eight different means of intervention. this paper focuses on an inpatient intervention: residential child care. german social law (§ 34 sgb viii) describes this intervention as follows: all-day educational assistance offered by institutional providers (residential child care) supports children and adolescents in their development by complementing their natural everyday experiences with pedagogical and therapeutical services in order to help them overcome deficits in education and upbringing in their current environment. in accordance with age, state of development, and potential for improvement in the family of origin, its main purpose is to  make a return to the family of origin possible, or  prepare for education and upbringing in another family, or  offer a stable environment in which the young person can prepare for an eventually independent lifestyle. young persons are to be advised and supported in matters of vocational training, employment, and all issues with regards to living a well-structured life. pressure on providers of residential support for education and upbringing (see macsenaere, esser, knab, & hiller, 2014) to provide legitimation of its benefits is currently increasing due to the high costs of residential care. residential child care seems to be particularly affected by this, as shown by various practices relating to cost. for example, the duration of the aid is limited to 18 months, residential child care is used only as a last resort, additional interventions are thinly spread, and the decision to obtain help for a child’s upbringing is often put off until it is too late. given these pressures, it is especially important to examine the possibilities and limitations of this type of assistance. some insights have been provided by qualitative studies (e.g., finkel, 2004; lambers, 1996; rätz-heinisch, 2005); however, in order to be able to make generalizable statements it would be helpful to supplement their findings with up-to-date nationwide results from quantitative research. to this end, the results of a systematic evaluation of youth welfare interventions (the “evaluation of educational aids” [evas]; macsenaere & knab, 2004) are presented, and the practical application of evas is described by presenting an example of a residential institution. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 30 the database: evas in 1995, an interdisciplinary working group was set up with the aim of creating a set of tools to enable child and youth welfare institutions as well as youth protective services to promote quality development based on a uniform and systematic evaluation. after analysing the results of studies on youth welfare with a focus on the quality of the results (including the jugendhilfeeffekte-studie [youth welfare effects study] (jes; macsenaere, 2007; schmidt et al., 2003), a set of tools was developed that contained the most suitable items from both the content and testtheoretical points of view. after several pre-tests, the tools were condensed into a four-page instrument that could be used by practitioners with reasonable effort. evas started in bavaria in 1999 and subsequently spread to the entire federal republic of germany (macsenaere & knab, 2004). evas has now developed into the largest evaluation of youth welfare interventions in the german-speaking region: distributed over all 16 federal states, data on more than 50,000 youth welfare interventions are currently available, coming from around 250 institutions in germany, austria, and luxembourg. the following statements refer to 25,757 cases of residential child education and upbringing according to § 34 sgb viii, of which 18,136 have been completed. who utilises residential education? the average age of the residents at the beginning of an intervention is roughly 13 years, which is considerably higher than that for other forms of care intervention. the 14to 17-yearolds constitute the largest group. this group has grown gradually over the past years and currently accounts for more than 50% of all youth in residential care. this may indicate a trend towards granting residential care at later ages. roughly 60% of the residents are male and 40% female, which mirrors the figures for residential care in federal germany as a whole. only 29% of the residents’ parents have joint custody. in almost half of the cases one parent alone has custody (mothers 39%, fathers 5%), and in at least 15% the child has a guardian. in 95% of cases residential care follows on from some prior form of youth assistance. this finding is alarming, since the probability of failure of a youth welfare intervention increases with the number and intensity of previous interventions (macsenaere & herrmann, 2004). it is similarly worrying that since 2001 the trend has been to provide residential education after supportive interventions that are unusually numerous or intense. the main form of previous placement is residential education (33%), followed by inpatient psychiatry (26%), social pedagogical family help (25%), emergency removal (19%), child guidance counselling (11%), and day groups (15%) (macsenaere & herrmann, 2004). the main reasons for admission relating to children’s immediate environments are domestic conflicts (68%, with an upward trend in recent years) and parental failure in education or upbringing (50%). the main reasons for admission that pertain directly to the child are performance problems (44%), dissociative disorders (35%), and developmental deficits (26%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 31 compared to the clientele in outpatient care, those using residential services generally have less robust resources, especially with regard to the resources of self-concept, self-assurance, coping strategies, family function, and social-communicative competences. resources insufficiently expressed are characterised by a strongly externalizing disturbance pattern with aggressive (41%), dissocial (e.g., lying, truancy; 37%), and delinquent behaviour (19%). other important problems are social insecurity (44%), attention deficits and agitation (36%), and deficient or undifferentiated attachment behaviour (31%). it is noticeable that the externalising symptoms are more likely to be observable in boys while internalising abnormalities are more frequently expressed by girls, which serves as a possible explanation for the greater average age of the female clientele at the onset of support interventions (macsenaere & herrmann, 2004). the residents tend to have entered residential care as teenagers rather than as small children. often, they have had many prior admissions (or in some cases particularly intensive ones), correlating with a combination of low resources and pronounced externalising problems. considering the help factors for youth welfare, this constellation of features is an unfavourable starting situation, one that considerably reduces the probability of success and increases the risk of failure. what are the results? any intervention — including residential care — may produce not only its intended effects, but usually also has side effects that can have a significant impact on the outcome. in order to determine the results of an intervention, therefore, both desired effects and side effects must be recorded. sociopedagogical and social work diagnostics furnish instruments that allow the providers of residential support to record the resources and deficits of young people and their families at multiple points in time from the beginning of the intervention to its end (hermsen & macsenaere, 2007). impact measurement conducted with these tools covers more than just the extent of goal achievement, thus avoiding two major weaknesses: the degree of attainment is often too low and thus not reliable, and attainment levels only provide indications for intended effects and cannot capture side effects (macsenaere, 2007). in view of the great importance of planned interventions, it is recommended to additionally take the attainment levels into account in any evaluation; however, they should be given less weight with regard to determining the effectiveness of an aid. on this basis, a so-called effect index is calculated by evas, which provides a first overview of the result of the examined intervention. this index takes into account all relevant developments during assistance as well as the attainment levels. despite the extremely unfavourable initial situation, approximately 60% of the evaluated interventions have a positive effect index and thus indicate positive change. significantly large effect sizes (cohen’s d) were achieved in more than half of these cases. every educator working in residential education knows that success cannot be attained in every instance. this is confirmed by the results obtained from evas, which indicate negative change in approximately 35% of all sample cases (see figure 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 32 figure 1. effect strengths of residential care. the statistical results are reflected in the personal statements of the clients. from the evas follow-up questionnaires, three examples of the success of the intervention are given here: i feel better because i and my mother now get along with each other again and i don’t have that much trouble with her any more. (young person) thank you for helping me. on the whole i felt very well and you did everything for me: thank you sooooooo much. (young man) it is now easier to deal with him. he no longer reacts aggressively right away. (mother) a number of central factors, as shown by macsenaere and esser (2015), can be empirically determined to factor into the success or failure of residential education. with regard to the clients, a high willingness to cooperate, a low age at the beginning of the intervention, and as few prior experiences with youth welfare as possible facilitate an intervention’s success. it is also important to conduct a sociopedagogical survey (bayerisches landesjugendamt, 2001; macsenaere, paries, & arnold, 2009) taking into account the resources of the young person and their family and involving them in the planning process for the intervention. for institutions — but also equally for youth protective services — the most essential step towards success is helping clients make use of how strong are the effects of educational aids? 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 negative large negative medium negative small no change positive small positive medium positive large 16,3 7,7 10,7 4,0 14,8 13,4 33,1 s tr e n g th o f e ff e c ti v e n e s s in % positive neutral negative international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 33 any self-help resources they have (see also peters, 2006). failure to consider this markedly decreases the probability of the intervention succeeding as a whole. in order to promote the necessary cooperation between clients and service providers, the educational approach must be built around the resources of the participants, while avoiding a deficiency-based understanding of residential education as a “repair workshop”. the duration of the intervention also directly correlates with the effects achieved: supportive interventions with a duration of less than 18 months, on average, do not result in significant positive change. on the other hand, interventions that last for a longer time will, on average, have an appreciable effect. the client-specific and procedural effects mentioned here must be supplemented by the structural ones, as elaborated by the youth aid effects study (macsenaere, 2003) and integra (internationale gesellschaft für erzieherische hilfen, 2003). since the effectiveness of the intervention depends to a great extent on its duration, with the majority of the effects only achieved after the first year, a general capping of the duration of support after, for example, 18 or 24 months, is not useful — not even from an economic point of view. not only would the full potential of residential education be left untapped and the clients not helped according to their full needs, this “cost-saving model” would have a low effect strength and would not change the need for support, leading to future expenditures for subsequent high-level interventions. cost-benefit relation of residential education current studies in efficiency research address the question of what economic benefits can reasonably be expected given the considerable costs of residential care. investigations by roos (2005) and hermsen, roos, and zinkl (2007) predict strong long-term benefits for the categories of education, employment, health, and delinquency based on data from jule-study (bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend, 1998), jes, and evas. using these estimates, one euro of expenses would result in approximately three euros of economic benefit in the long run. at that rate of return, residential education would be economically worthwhile with loan financing at an interest rate of between 3.7% and 10.5%. interestingly, the economic benefits are particularly pronounced in the case of girls. accordingly, residential education is not only effective overall, but is also economically sensible and in the long term worthwhile for the taxpayer, justifying the classification of the associated expenses as an investment rather than mere costs. how is evas used in institutions? the above-mentioned results for residential education are made possible by the interinstitutional aggregation of individual cases. in addition, the participating institutions have an interest in using the evaluation procedure to inform the concrete pedagogical work within the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 34 institution. an institutional manager of the schottener sozialdienste [schotten social services] gives an example from the point of view of an institution providing residential services: evas can be applied in the daily pedagogical work. the online version allows the immediate evaluation of all data entered, both for the entire institution as well as for an individual case. this means that up-to-date results can be obtained at any time, which can be used as a basis for discussion concerning intervention planning or central control processes. the educators have a corresponding and timely access to the most important information and can select them specifically from the entire package. here are some examples:  evas individual evaluation can be used directly in official meetings. this makes a higher degree of objectivity and a better professional positioning possible. the regular use of the evas results helps in the structuring of realistic educational interventions and mediumor long-term strategies (what should we react to, what measures do we derive from it?). evas contributes to greater transparency of pedagogical actions and to the improvement of the inter-institutional practice.  use for educational (assistance) planning: the evas evaluation leads to the replacement of the “soft” documentation practice with fact-based evaluation that provides comprehensible results based on empirically collected data. concrete comparisons, a competent argumentation in everyday life as well as in situations involving immediate crises and a more efficient planning and use of the facility resources are thereby possible.  preparation and implementation of the intervention planning discussions: evas provides an institution with arguments based on empirical data when it comes to the consideration of the development of the clients versus the economic needs of the employees of the institution, the provider, and the cost bearer. the development of the child, the childand family-related goal-fulfilment as well as prognosis relating to these are systematically presented. an exact development curve can be calculated and the specific course of action can be documented accordingly. in practice, we have found that the use of evas data is particularly relevant in more complex cases. focusing on the deficits is avoided since the evas items allow an analysis of the resources, e.g. in terms of social integration, social-communicative competences, special skills and achievements, interests, self-reliance, function in the group and the family, and physical health. based on this information, a more precise formulation of the objectives is possible in the working group tasked with planning interventions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 35 the manager continued: from our point of view, evas has developed into a user-friendly evaluation system in the last few years: it can be used by every educator after minimal training, the well-designed questionnaires can be completed quickly, and evaluations are available immediately after data entry. it is the basis for control processes and quality development at several levels. outlook the present evas results on residential education are positive despite the difficult initial situations of the clients. on the other hand, the results reveal potential for optimisation that could lead to a gradual improvement of the intervention:  it is important to avoid a “stringing together” of youth welfare interventions. the goal must be to choose the appropriate intervention even if it is associated with higher costs. primary evas results indicate that in many cases an unsuitable type of intervention is assigned.  the intervention must focus on the resources of the young people and families involved. to this end, it is necessary for institutions as well as for young people as coproducers of interventions to sharpen their view of these resources. this may be achieved, for example, by using a sociopedagogical survey giving insight into these resources.  the change in the client’s development is to be reviewed and evaluated at least every six months during assistance planning. the results of the intervention can be predicted after just 6 to 12 months. this knowledge should be integrated into the support planning process and used for optimisation.  the averages across positive outcomes show broad variance from successful to failed interventions. this diversity represents an opportunity for future improvement that should not be underestimated. it becomes all the more important when we see youth welfare in an international context. it would therefore be very interesting to compare the available data with international partners based on a common evaluation procedure, and to use the results for quality development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 28–37 36 references bayerisches landesjugendamt [bavarian state youth office] (ed.). 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(2004). klientel, ausgangslage und wirkungen in den hilfen zur erziehung [clientele, starting position and effects in aids for education]. unsere jugend, 56(1), 32–42. macsenaere, m., klein, w., & scheiwe, n. (2003). jugendhilfe-effekte-studie: was leistet jugendhilfe? [youth welfare effects study: what is youth welfare?]. unsere jugend, 55(2), 484–491. macsenaere, m., & knab, e. (2004). evaluationsstudie erzieherischer hilfen (evas): eine einführung [evaluation of educational aids (evas): an introduction]. freiburg, germany: lambertus. macsenaere, m., paries, g., & arnold, j. (2009). est! evaluation der sozialpädagogischen diagnose-tabellen – abschlussbericht [est! evaluation of social pedagogical diagnosis tables final report]. münchen, germany: bayerisches staatsministerium für arbeit und sozialordnung, familie und frauen. peters, f. (2006). zum stichwort: wirkungsorientierung/wirkungsorientierte steuerung. forum erziehungshilfen, 12(5), 260–261. rätz-heinisch, r. (2005). gelingende jugendhilfe bei „aussichtslosen fällen“!: biographische rekonstruktionen von lebensgeschichten junger menschen [successful youth welfare in "hopeless cases"!: biographical reconstructions of life stories of young people]. würzburg, germany: ergon. roos, k. (2005). kosten-nutzen-analyse von jugendhilfemaßnahmen [cost-benefit analysis of youth welfare measures]. in f. petermann (ed.), studien zur jugendund familienforschung [studies on youth and family research] (vol. 23). frankfurt, germany: lang. schmidt, m., schneider, k., hohm, e., pickartz, a., macsenaere, m., petermann, f., … knab, e. (2003). effekte erzieherischer hilfen und ihre hintergründe [effects of educational aids and their backgrounds] (schriftenreihe des bmfsfj; vol. 219). stuttgart, germany: kohlhammer. pedagogical encounters of the case-based kind international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 234 pedagogical encounters of the case-based kind heather sanrud and patti ranahan abstract: child and youth care (cyc) practice is diverse, complex, and contextualized. pedagogical approaches to preparing cyc professionals in pre-service education programs require learning activities that recognize the “inter-subjective, contingent, and context dependent character of everyday cyc work” (white, 2007, p. 241). case-based learning activities are advantageous in preparing future professionals for the complexities of everyday cyc work. these activities provide students with an opportunity to explore cyc practice in an authentic way while being supported by instructors who model, coach, and engage students throughout the process. this paper describes the organic evolution of the case of “allan” at the beginning of a year-long cyc course facilitated by a team of instructors. the case of allan continued to develop throughout the course in an authentic fashion mirroring the realities of cyc work with individuals and families over time. allan provided a way of situating course content as well as supporting students’ application of new knowledge and skills to practice situations. keywords: pedagogy, case-based approaches, child and youth care corresponding author: heather sanrud, faculty of health and human services, vancouver island university, 900 fifth street, nanaimo, b.c., v9r 5s5. e-mail: heather.sanrud@viu.ca heather sanrud, m.a., bcatr, b.ed. is an instructor in the child and youth care diploma and degree programs, faculty of health and human services, vancouver island university, 900 fifth street, nanaimo, b.c., canada, v9r 5s5. she is also a registered b.c. art therapist. e-mail: heather.sanrud@viu.ca patti ranahan, ph.d. is an assistant professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, 1455 de maisonneuve blvd. w., montreal, québec, canada, h3g 1m8. e-mail: pranahan@alcor.concordia.ca mailto:heather.sanrud@viu.ca� mailto:heather.sanrud@viu.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 235 meaningful pedagogical encounters in the classroom are required between learners and instructors in pre-service child and youth care (cyc) education programs. pedagogical encounters are viewed as constructed and spontaneous occasions for teaching and learning within the pre-service classroom context. case-based learning activities are pedagogical encounters that illuminate the “inter-subjective, contingent, and context dependent character of everyday cyc work” (white, 2007, p. 241). case-based learning activities are advantageous in preparing future cyc professionals for the complexities of situated practice. exploring the nuances, layers, and intricate details located within a well-constructed case provides learners with an opportunity to grapple with a real-life situation and explore cyc practice in an authentic way. navigating the challenges of a case across time, in the context of a supportive and safe learning environment, stimulates occasions for integrating theory and practice. central to a case-based pedagogical approach are the instructors who model, coach, and motivate students’ inquiry, inviting opportunities for deeper, integrated learning. in this paper we aim to provide an overview of a case-based approach we used while team teaching a course entitled cyc 200b: professional foundations for child and youth care. we begin with a description and critique of case-based approaches within pre-service education. next, we situate the course under study within the child and youth care pre-service program. in the final section, we introduce and describe the unique approach to the construction of “allan”, the 15-year-old boy that anchored learning activities throughout the year-long course. case-based approaches barrows and tamblyn (1980) suggest that, “learning from problems is a condition of human existence” (p. 1). they argue that problems or cases we encounter in our daily lives provide opportunities for learning that can be applied to future situations. literature within the cyc field has often included descriptions of cases or stories from the field to illustrate features of practice (see, for example, g. charles & h. charles, 2008; krueger, 1994; valois, 2009). further, case studies are used as part of the examination for cyc certification (curry & eckles, 2009). in the context of pre-service education, teaching with cases originated in the 1800s at harvard (lynn, 1999). analysis and discussion of cases was initially used in the harvard law school and subsequently spread to the harvard graduate school of business in 1908 (merseth, 1991). in canada, the mcmaster university school of medicine in the mid-1960s began using problem-based teaching approaches to support students’ knowledge translation to practice within clinical settings ((mantzoukas, 2007). case-based learning (also referred to in the literature as problem-based learning, the case method, or enquiry-based learning) has been defined as “learning that results from the process of working toward the understanding or resolution of a problem” (barrows & tamblyn, 1980, p. 1). currently, case-based pedagogical approaches are used across disciplines such as social work (jones, 2003), accounting (cullen, richardson, & o’brien, 2004), early childhood education (farrell & walsh, 2010), and nursing (raftery, clynes, o’neill, ward, & coyne, 2010). case-based approaches within pre-service education involve the use of a practice-based case scenario as the “centerpiece” for class discussion (jones, 2003, p. 183). the scenario depicts an example of a person, problem, or situation that students international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 236 would likely encounter in their future professional work. students actively engage with the problem or case scenario and direct the enquiry (deignan, 2009). for example, students discuss the facts and issues within the case and identify remaining questions that require further research (tully, 2010). students may research the questions individually or collectively. the process of enquiry encourages students to consider what information is known, what remains to be investigated, and how new knowledge may be integrated into their understanding of the case. mantzoukas (2007) suggests that case-based learning activities provide students with an occasion to rehearse the process of gathering and analyzing information to assess problems and the overall situation, and develop an action plan. such rehearsal can prepare students for how they might approach cases in their future professional practice. characteristics of a caseor problem-based approach include beginning with a problem or case of concern that students likely will encounter in their future practice and encouraging students’ individual and collective responsibility for their own learning (hallinger & bridges, 2007). merseth (1991) suggests that instructors may have different aims when incorporating cases into the curriculum, and that case-based learning activities may be used to explore the complexities of “messy problems” for the purposes of educating students to think critically while integrating theory with practice (p. 246). instructors may also use cases as an example of how an established theory relates to principles within practice or for the purpose of encouraging selfreflection (merseth). ultimately, case-based instruction is focused on “professional education as a process, not a product” (ertmer & dillon, 1998, p. 606). there are several elements instructors must consider when teaching with cases including alignment with learning outcomes, the role of instructors with students in the learning process, the applicability and relevance of the case to professional practice, and the strengths and challenges inherent in a case-based pedagogical approach. alignment with course learning outcomes case-based approaches are best used if they are aligned with the course learning objectives (jones, 2003). in applied professional disciplines such as child and youth care, the theme of applying learning is often explicitly articulated in learning objectives. students are required to demonstrate their skills and apply their learning in preparation for practicing as a cyc professional. working with cases provides opportunities for evaluating students’ applied practice, as instructors are able to observe students as they engage in simulated practice within the classroom environment. role of instructors with students rather than reliance on a lecture-based format, teaching and learning revolve around discussion where students are active participants (jones, 2003), and teachers are facilitators (raftery et al., 2010) in collaboratively resolving concerns they are likely to encounter in practice. as students engage with the case, instructors require patience as they encourage students to explore all the possibilities and consequences of potential solutions (jones, 2003). along with patience, skilful instructors tolerate differences and multiple perspectives as students international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 237 share their ideas, facilitate the discussion through summarizing points of view without taking control, and are willing to take risks and experiment with potential outcomes (lynn, 1999). instructors support students’ learning through encouragement and praising students’ “risk-taking attempts, and by treating mistakes… as learning opportunities” (hallinger & bridges, 2007, p. 28). in addition to classroom facilitation, instructors are required to construct and design cases that are sufficiently developed and aligned with students’ current learning needs. preparing such cases can be labour-intensive for instructors (mostert, 2007). herreid (1997) suggests several criteria for constructing a good case. first, the case must tell a good story. the storyline is centred on a provocative event or problematic situation that engages students. it may be taken from an event that actually occurred that is well known to students, or may be created by the instructor based on their practical experience. students must see opportunities for decision making in the case where there is a dilemma, challenge, or difficulty that needs to be resolved. secondly, herreid (1997) suggests that the case must elicit empathy towards the characters involved. students need to experience connectedness to the child, youth, or family and believe that the story is an authentic representation of the characters’ situation. particular instructional strategies may be used to encourage students’ connection to the characters. for example, facilitators in morris and turnbull’s (2004) study used interactive role-plays as an instructional strategy to support students’ engagement with the case. third, students must be able to envision encountering the characters in their future professional practice. if the case is outside the scope of child and youth care practice or their professional role, students may not see the relevance for engaging in discussion and end the learning exercise prematurely. for example, if the case involves a young person presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia, students may quickly evaluate this situation as being beyond their expertise and refer the character to a psychiatrist. that is, students need to be able to see the relevance of their role as a child and youth care professional in the situation. lastly, herreid suggests the case needs to be one that can be generalized to other practice situations. for example, students working on a case involving a child disclosing abuse would require consideration of the relevant legislation, relationship to the child and their parents, availability of resources and access to services for the family, and students’ self-awareness of their own biases, values, and judgments. similarly, a case involving a youth disclosing thoughts of suicide would also include consideration of the legislation, relationship, resources, and students’ self-awareness of their attitudes and beliefs towards suicide. the role of instructors, then, is to craft cases that are engaging and provocative stories where students are able to step into the role of child and youth care professional connecting with the characters to collaboratively make decisions to resolve the situation at hand. relevance to practice case-based approaches help prepare students for the real world of practice in the field of child and youth care. cases crafted and discussed in the classroom provide a platform for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 238 students and teachers to explore professional concepts and engage actively with the content in meaningful and purposeful ways to address situations that would be encountered in the field. further, “students are not simply being asked to store information, but to examine how it is applied in particular situations” (hallinger & lu, 2011, p. 269). according to lynn (1999), the case method addresses two educational goals that include “skills needed to identify and apply relevant knowledge in specific situations; and coping with the problem-oriented, interdisciplinary nature of the real world of practice involving synthesis, judgment, and application” (p. 38). though cases are essentially simulated learning activities, they provide an opportunity for students to see themselves as professionals. as cases are often presented to students in the form of a narrative (wright, 1996), the characters and events become real in the classroom. characters can be referred to by name, their feelings identified, and direct quotations used to bring the case alive within students’ discussions. strengths and challenges of case-based approaches a central strength of a case-based approach is the opportunity for students and instructors to integrate theory into practice. jones (2005) suggests that integrated learning in social work education is essential for student growth and development and is a foundation upon which other capacities, such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and professional decision-making skills are developed and refined. integrated learning takes place in child and youth care education as well, as students are invited by instructors to connect the case to learning occurring in other courses and to their experiences in field placement settings. using cases also provides opportunities to raise students’ self-awareness as they engage with the child, youth, or family in the scenario in a meaningful way. students’ values, judgments, or beliefs may be illuminated as multiple perspectives on the situation are discussed with their classmates and instructors. students may be required to explore their location and identify how this impacts their view of the persons in the scenario, and their decision-making process as the “professional” involved. provided with a complex situation, groups of students must probe more deeply into issues arising from a case study, seeking out connections and solutions. interestingly, this presents opportunities to engage with each other in a dialogue, which may include understanding how others might interpret events in the case differently. this dialogue can engender new insights for both teachers and students and might have the potential to influence future practice and research as well (cullen et al., 2004). west and watson (2000) note that the capacity of students to develop reflective skills is greatly enhanced when they are enabled as active participants in their own learning. they build on what they already know and feel more empowered as professionals. students’ understandings of ecological and systems theory is also enhanced as they wrestle with the case-in-context. through class discussion and instructor facilitation, students are able to move beyond the specific child or youth in the scenario to explore the systemic influences on the situation. students are able to explore and identify resources and assets within the community that may support the child and, simultaneously, learn about the gaps in services and the challenges that may be encountered when attempting to access services. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 239 while case-based pedagogical approaches can provide enriched learning opportunities in pre-service education, there are also challenges that instructors and students alike may encounter. for example, students may suggest a resolution to the problem prematurely (jones, 2003). it can be challenging for students to fully engage in exploring the case if the problem presented evokes an emotional response or a feeling of being “triggered”. students may desire to move away from emotion to solution quickly and encourage their classmates to do the same. while resolution to the case may be at the forefront of students’ minds, case-based learning activities are focused on the process students and instructors engage in while making decisions. to address this challenge, instructors can provide sufficient detail when constructing the case and illuminate aspects of the case students overlooked by asking questions about their suggested solution. case-based approaches also rely heavily on group discussion and the full participation of students. a lack of student engagement and participation can be a significant challenge to a casebased approach. for example, students may experience conflict with classmates, lack confidence in participating in the discussion, or be unprepared to relate theoretical knowledge to a practical experience (vardi & ciccarelli, 2008). student participants in tully’s (2010) evaluation of enquiry-based learning reported concerns about their peers’ lack of commitment or motivation during group work and discussions. participants in morris and turnbull’s (2004) study also reported concerns with regard to the self-directed nature of the approach and the assumption that students were to be responsible for others’ learning during the process. spending time to construct a safe classroom environment and building relationships both with students, and between students, can be beneficial to students’ participation in the case-based activity. most importantly, tully (2010) recommends students be informed about the expectations of their role in the learning activity including attendance, academic presentation, commitment, and process of evaluation. instructors, then, are required to be mindful of the small group process and the timing in regard to when to introduce cases as a learning activity. investing time in preparing students for the learning activity will enhance a case-based approach. the preceding section has discussed ways in which case-based pedagogical approaches are effective in encouraging students’ active participation and engagement. the next section describes the child and youth care course where the case-based pedagogical approach was used as an anchor to support students’ learning. cyc 200b: the pedagogical context the cyc 200b teaching and learning experience invited students and teachers alike to participate in an innovative pedagogical approach, which encouraged the application of new knowledge and skills in the classroom during a year-long course of study (september to april). students enrolled in this core course during the second year of a two-year diploma and met once a week for three hours. students also participated concurrently in a 300-hour supervised practicum in a child and youth care setting and attended a weekly two-hour seminar class. the course description articulated in the course outline for cyc 200b was the following: the course explores child and youth care as a profession, current issues impacting practice and an introduction to organizing self in practice with children, youth, families international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 240 and communities. an understanding and application of models consistent with child and youth care principles (person centred approach, the awareness of self and others is critical in the development of relationships, purposeful, ethical, inclusive and collaborative professional practice) and perspectives (relational, strength-based, pluralistic, developmental, ecological, and social justice) are emphasized. the case-based learning activities provided a pedagogical lens so students could see how to organize themselves in practice, as they discussed and played with the application of models consistent with child and youth care principles and perspectives directly in the classroom. class structure, course outcomes, and activities there were 24 students and two teachers involved. as cyc 200b was team taught, we drew on each other’s strengths and teaching interests as we collaboratively planned and implemented learning activities. together as instructors and learners, we created a positive learning community to stimulate active engagement and an encounter with the course content, and to facilitate participation in case-based learning activities. the two pertinent cyc 200b course learning outcomes pertaining to case-based learning are as follows: the student will be able to: • describe and demonstrate, in both oral and written form, the skills associated within a case planning process including: receiving referrals, consultation and collaboration, observation, identification of wants and concerns, assessment, formulation of outcomes, strategy design, implementation, evaluation, and follow-up; and • articulate and apply a range of practice models that address case planning and reflect relational, developmental, ecological, strength-based, pluralistic, and social justice perspectives. we were mindful of the purpose of case-based pedagogical approaches described previously in this paper, and endeavoured to construct classroom activities that linked theory to practice, raised students’ self-awareness, deepened students’ learning, developed their critical thinking skills, and furthered their understanding of ecological and systems thinking. students engaged in defining the issues involved in a case, participated in further inquiry, problem-solved and made ethical decisions, implemented simulated interventions, and evaluated outcomes. the course description, learning outcomes, and classroom activities were the foundation for our design of a story and character, which anchored the course content. the following section describes students’ encounters with the case of allan. with the instructors’ introduction of allan into the classroom, cyc students discovered a new way of putting theory into practice, which contributed to their development as emerging professionals. practicing tangible skills supported and encouraged students to link theoretical ideas to the real world of work, transferring this knowledge directly to their cyc practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 241 encountering “allan”: illuminating pedagogical dimensions of case-based learning to anchor the course content and to assist students with learning the case planning process as outlined in the above learning outcomes, we created a mock case of a 15-year-old boy named allan. in the story, students were placed in the role of a child and youth care professional at a secondary school that receives a referral from a teacher regarding their concern about allan’s poor hygiene, absence of social connections, and recent interest in the columbine high school shootings. we designed allan’s story to be provocative and grab students’ attention. columbine was a well-known event that students were likely to be aware of and the use of allan’s quotations in the story of “feeling alone” supported the students’ connectivity to his experience. it was also relevant to practice as many child and youth care professionals practice in school-based settings, and some students in the class were in school field placements during the course. students, then, were able to place themselves in the role of the professional in working with allan. following a typical case planning process, the story of allan was also expanded upon throughout the year. for example, after the child and youth care professional met with allan the third time, allan disclosed he periodically saw his father who dealt drugs in the community even though this was against his mother’s wishes. evolving allan in this way modelled the typical practice experience of working with a youth and their family over time. concurrent to the evolution of allan, students in small groups each designed and created their own mock cases during class time. each group was provided with a topic area (e.g., teen pregnancy) and crafted their story and characters. students became the centre of attention during this process and were expected to be active participants, with knowledge and ideas flowing from “teacher to student, from student to teacher, and from student to student” (lynn, 1999, p. 44). thus, the course learning outcomes were met through a collaborative and mirroring process. the case of allan showed up in each class and provided students with a model to apply the skills being learned in each lesson. after discussing as a whole group the practical concerns and decisions required with allan, students engaged in small group discussions regarding their own child, youth, or family they were working with. students learned experientially and in this particular pedagogical encounter, students were learning in both the large group with allan, and within small groups with the cases they constructed. by listening to each other and through working together, students collaboratively reached decisions at each step of the learning process. designing details about the child, youth, or family as characters in the story was the first step in the process. crafting the story was an integral component that served to fully engage students in the learning activity. students became more invested in their own learning because they had created their own characters and case dynamics, rather than being assigned a random case. learning modules were designed to take students through each step of case planning. they were able to work on their cases during class time soliciting instructor support along the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 242 way, as well as experiencing feedback at each step. it was an organic process and the evolution of allan mirrored the student’s own evolutionary work on their own case studies. to illustrate, imagine a class lesson that will specifically focus on one aspect of the case planning process – goal creation, for example. the students were first invited to participate in a learning activity about creating goals. following this, allan was presented to the class to demonstrate what goals would look like for allan, and then each group of students would work on its own particular cases by developing goals and a case plan. instructors acted as facilitators in the classroom by being available to discuss goal development and case plans with each group as needed. this style of lesson was repeated with each component of the case planning process: assessment; creation of goals, strategies and implementation; and evaluation and follow-up (see appendix a for a copy of this assignment). the case of allan generated rich classroom discussions as learners and teachers engaged in dialogue that encouraged an exploration of differences in perceptions, beliefs, and values within professional practice. for example, in the case of allan, some students held different perspectives on the limits of confidentiality within the helping relationship. on the one hand, students believed that the cyc worker should play the role of an advocate and discuss allan’s situation with his teacher. alternatively, some students suggested confidentiality must be maintained between the cyc worker and allan to ensure a trusting relationship developed. instructors viewed this illumination of different perspectives amongst students as a learning opportunity to discuss the role and limits of confidentiality within helping relationships across various settings. eliciting different viewpoints on the case required us to use questioning techniques to fuel discussion and stimulate learning. mostert (2007) suggests that instructors avoid questions that elicit “yes/no” responses and use questions to challenge students’ views (p. 439). such questioning techniques may be challenging for some students who view instructors as “holders and imparters of content knowledge and truth” (mostert, 2007, p. 439). when we did not provide students with a concrete direction or answer but challenged them to further consider their viewpoints and decisions, an opportunity arose for students to consider the implications of their decisions (ertmer & stepich, 1999). the final section of our paper delineated how we introduced the case-based approach within a child and youth care course. allan became a pathway through the course as new concepts and case planning skills were introduced and tied to his story. in the large group, students were able to envision themselves as the child and youth care professional working with allan, encountering the challenges, and collaboratively planning with him how to meet his needs. students then moved into their small groups, mirroring the work with allan with their cases. we found the case-based pedagogical approach described here highly effective in engaging students and creating a real world encounter within the classroom. conclusion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 243 a case-based pedagogical approach provided child and youth care students with an opportunity to engage in collaborative inquiry, develop critical thinking skills, and hone their reflective practice. allan was a unique example of a progressive case study that anchored students’ learning experience over a year-long course. bringing allan to life enhanced students’ participation and understanding of real world practice. in closing, we would like to share a comment from a student from cyc 200b who described moving beyond the classroom to the real world: at the end of the day for a student… a case study like this is really a pass/fail…. but when you go out into the field, it’s not about the mark. it’s about the change you can implement, the service you can give. and i think it was really well-assessed… that it was looked at “what kind of change would that make in this child’s life? what kind of implications does that have for a real world family?” not “did you meet the criteria and did you have the proper grammar?” (smith, 2010) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 244 references barrows, h. s., & tamblyn, r. m. (1980). problem-based learning: an approach to medical education. new york: springer. charles, g., & charles, h. (2008). guidelines in child and youth care family work. child & youth services, 25(1-2), 95–115. doi: 10.1300/j024v25n01_07 cullen, j., richardson, s., & o’brien, r. (2004). exploring the teaching potential of empirically based case studies. accounting education, 13(2), 251–266. doi: 10.1080/096939280420001676648 curry, d., & eckles, f. (2009). national certification for child and youth workers. policy & practice, 67(1), 37. deignan, t. (2009). enquiry-based learning: perspectives on practice. teaching in higher education, 14(1), 13–28. doi:10.1080/13562510802602467 ertmer, p. a., & dillon, d. r. (1998). “shooting in the dark” versus “breaking it down”: understanding students’ approaches to case-based instruction. qualitative studies in eudcation, 11(4), 605–622. ertmer, p. a., & stepich, d. a. (1999). case-based instruction in post-secondary education: developing students’ problem-solving expertise (report no. ed 435 375). retrieved from educational resources information center website: http://eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ed435375.pdf farrell, a., & walsh, k. (2010). working together for toby: early childhood student teachers engaging in collaborative problem-based learning around child abuse and neglect. australiasian journal of early childhood, 35(4), 53–62. hallinger, p., & bridges, e. m. (2007). a problem-based approach for management education: preparing managers for action. dordrecht, the netherlands: springer. hallinger, p., & lu, j. (2011). implementing problem-based learning in higher education in asia: challenges, strategies and effect. journal of higher education policy and management, 33(3), 267–285. doi:10.1080/136008x.2011.565000 herreid, c. f. (1997). what makes a good case? journal of college science teaching, 27(3), 163–165. jones, k. (2003). making the case for the case method in graduate social work education. journal of teaching in social work, 23(1), 183–200. doi: 10.1300/j067v23n01_12 http://eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ed435375.pdf� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 245 jones, k. (2005). widening the lens: the efficacy of the case method in helping direct practice msw students understand and apply mezzo and macro dimensions of practice. social work education, 24(2), 197–211. doi:10.1080/0261547052000333135 krueger, m. (1994). framing child and youth care in moments of rhythm, presence, meaning, and atmosphere. child & youth care forum, 23(4), 223–229. lynn, l. e. (1999). teaching and learning with cases: a guidebook. chappaqua, ny: seven bridges press. mantzoukas, s. (2007). reflection and problem/enquiry-based learning: confluences and contradictions. reflective practice, 8(2), 241–253. doi:10.1080/14623940701289311 merseth, k. k. (1991). the early history of case-based instruction: insights for teacher education today. journal of teacher education, 42(4), 243–249. morris, d., & turnbull, p. (2004). using student nurses as teachers in inquiry-based learning. journal of advanced nursing, 45(2), 136–144. mostert, m. p. (2007). challenges of case-based teaching. the behavior analyst today, 8(4), 434–442. raftery, s. e. c., clynes, m. p., o’neill, c., ward, e., & coyne, i. (2010). problem-based learning in children’s nursing: transcending doubts to exceeding expectations. nursing education perspectives, 31(4), 210–215. smith, n. (producer). (2010). art of teaching: engaging students in inquiry learning [dvd]. available from http://www.viu.ca/iel/teachlearn/art_of_teaching_2/index.asp. tully, s. l. (2010). student midwives’ satisfaction with enquiry-based learning. british journal of midwifery, 18(4), 254–258. valois, t. (2009). working with families: a child and youth care case example. relational child & youth care practice, 22(2), 64–69. doi:10.1080/14703290802377190 vardi, i., & ciccarelli, m. (2008). overcoming problems in problem-based learning: a trial of strategies in an undergraduate unit. innovations in education & teaching international, 45(4), 345–354. west, j. e., & watson, d. (2000). developing an empowering approach to child care teaching. social work education, 19(5), 463–470. white, j. (2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child youth care forum, 36(5), 225–244. doi: 10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 http://www.viu.ca/iel/teachlearn/art_of_teaching_2/index.asp� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 246 wright, s. (1996). case-based instruction: linking theory to practice. physical educator, 53(4), 190–197. appendix a vancouver island university child and youth care programs cyc 200b professional foundations for child and youth care assignment #4 care planning report (a group assignment) instructors: heather sanrud and patti ranahan total value: 40% of final grade the purpose of this assignment is for you to work in a team to experience what is involved in creating a care plan in professional child and youth care (cyc) practice. you will be randomly divided into groups for this assignment. once you are in a group, your instructors will provide you with a “presenting issue” that will be the focus of your involvement with a fictitious family, child, or youth for the purpose of developing a care plan. your group will also have an opportunity to cocreate the case scenario with the guidance of your instructors. step one: care plan outline the first step of this assignment provides you with an opportunity to outline your group’s intentions. you will submit a short outline which describes how your group plans on working together to accomplish the tasks of this assignment and what you imagine all the parts of this assignment will potentially look like. also, make sure you include a clear description of your group’s case scenario. this outline has the potential to provide your group with a map or guide to follow as you progress through each part of the assignment. your instructors will also keep a copy of this outline to assist your group with its development. it is also significant to note that plans set out in the beginning may change and evolve as you work together over time. use apa format. part a: identification of wants/concerns & assessment due: december 1, 2008 (10%) 1. working with the information within your case scenario, your task is to engage the family, child, or youth with the intent to gather information about how you might best support them to resolve their presenting issue. a variety of information gathering strategies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 234–247 247 including observation and interview could be used. describe what that might look like as well as describe the resulting information from your information gathering (i.e. possible questions and answers). the intent of your information gathering is to develop as complete an understanding of this scenario as possible to develop an assessment. 2. you will submit a 3-5 page assessment report (using apa format) based on the information you have gathered which clearly identifies the purpose for the assessment, strategies for gathering information (how information was collected), what information was collected, and what conclusions you have drawn based on the information collected in regards to the purpose. part b: formulation of outcomes, strategy design and implementation based on the conclusions identified in part a, develop a care plan which will include the formulation of outcomes, strategy design, and implementation. the plan needs to clearly identify the family, child or youth’s strengths, area(s) of concern, goal (s), what you will do to support the family, child or youth in achieving the goal (s), what the family, child or youth will do to work on the goal(s), and how the plan will be evaluated. use apa format. part c: evaluation and follow-up write a short reflection about how you might evaluate your plan and follow-up with the family, child or youth. how would you know if your strategy worked or not? how might you adjust if your strategy was not working? what indications might you notice that reveal success or lack of success? also write about how you have demonstrated relational, developmental, ecological, strength-based, pluralistic, and social justice perspectives in your work. part d: oral summary this is the last part of the assignment and is a wonderful opportunity for you to showcase your work. each group will have an opportunity to explain their work to others, sharing what they learned in this process as well as highlighting creative and innovative cyc assessments, plans, tools, techniques, strategies, theories, and perspectives. students will be involved in the preparations of these oral presentations and they may be coordinated with the presentations from assignment #3. earning 5 marks for this part will be based on how your presentation is organized and delivered, and may even be peer and/or self-assessed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818120 street children in india: a study on their access to health and education nilika dutta abstract: street life is a challenge for survival, even for adults, and is yet more difficult for children. they live within the city but are unable to take advantage of the comforts of urban life. this study focused primarily on access to health and education in street children from 6 to 18 years old in the indian metropolises of mumbai and kolkata. the study also aimed to assess the role of social work interventions in ensuring the rights of street children. a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies was used. convenience sampling was used to recruit 100 children. data were collected on a one-to-one basis through semi-structured interview schedules and by non-participant observation. findings revealed that extreme poverty was the primary cause for the increasing numbers of street children. lack of awareness among illiterate parents regarding educational opportunities kept most children away from school attendance. factors such as lack of an educational ambience at home made it difficult for the children to work on their lessons outside the premises of the institution. it was evident that those living with their parents had better access to health care facilities than did those living on their own; however, nongovernmental organizations made significant efforts to redress this imbalance, setting up health check-up camps at regular intervals. although exposure to harsh reality at an early age had resulted in a premature loss of innocence in most, making them sometimes difficult to work with, the nongovernmental organizations were striving to ensure child participation and the growth of individual identity. the interventionists therefore focused on developing a rightsbased approach, rather than a charitable one. keywords: street children, rights, social intervention, health, education, india nilika dutta is a research scholar at the centre for human rights, school of social sciences, university of hyderabad 500 046, telengana, india. email: nilikadutta@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818120 mailto:nilikadutta@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 70 the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act of 2015 is concerned with children in two broad categories: those in need of care and protection, and those in conflict with the law. street children may fall within both categories simultaneously, as children who are not provided with care and protection may end up in conflict with the legal system. over the years, various researchers and organizations have attempted to provide concise definitions of the term “street children”. de moura (2002) analysed the media and literature on these children and found that the use of the term “street children” is predominant in latin america, asia, africa, and eastern europe, while the term “homeless children” is used in north america and western europe. dabir and athale (2011) mentioned that the united nations has provided a broad definition: “those for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, i.e. unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.), more than their family has become their real home, a situation in which there is no protection, supervision or direction from responsible adults.” (p. 6). furthermore, unicef 1986 (dabir and athale, 2011) has also identified three categories of children in difficult situations: children on the street (‘home-based’ children who return home at night), children of the street (‘street-based’ children who have less or no family support), and abandoned children (those ‘children of the street’ who have severed all ties with family and completely survive on their own). however, it has been argued by the authors that these categories do not include children who have been victims of war or disaster, those who are suffering from aids or have been orphaned due to aids, or for some other complex reason are driven to live on the streets. for this reason, dabir and athale (2011) prefer a broader definition of street children that considers only two classifications: home-based and street-based. the existing statistics on the number of street children both at the national and global level are rather conflicting (subrahmanyam & sondhi, 1990). estimates provided by different nations are for different times and the methods of estimation have also varied (dabir & athale, 2011). the existing literature on street children is mostly in the form of survey results or evaluation studies carried out by voluntary organizations (e.g., subrahmanyam & sondhi, 1990). hartjen and priyadarsini (2012) have provided readers with a clear view of the present situation of street children from various countries and of the legislation that has been enacted, or could be enacted, to secure the welfare and protection of all children. de moura (2002) has analysed the existing literature on street children, identifying patterns of descriptions and characterizations, and focusing on the factors responsible for the existence of this socially excluded group. works by humphries (2003), schmitz, traver, and larson (2004), and wiener (2009) address the issue of child labour, its origin and economic aspect, its spreading across the world, especially to the developing nations, and the dangers that it poses for children. several studies on street children have also been conducted in india. dabir and athale (2011) compare the living conditions of street children in three different cities of the world, including mumbai. bajpai (2006), phillips (1994), and chopra (2015) focus mainly on the relevant policies and legal mechanisms. other case studies on street children in india include those of chikarmane (1996), and mathur (2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 71 the situation in india the situation of street people in india has been well summed up by phillips (1994, p.11): “the whole family lives on pavement, procreate on pavements.” the children belonging to street dwelling families grow up to engage themselves in work from a tender age, so that they may carry some bread back home for the family’s sustenance. in children in india 2012 — a statistical appraisal, the ministry of statistics and program implementation (2012) stated: according to the international labour organization (ilo), “born to parents who themselves were uneducated child workers, many child workers are forced to continue a tradition that leaves them chained to a life of poverty” (ilo, united states policies to address child labour globally 2010). that is why child labour is a very complicated development issue, affecting human society all over the world. (ch. 6) “in india, poverty is high and governmental support is severely limited, so children often serve as a source of family income” (segal, 1999). hence, in spite of a standing constitutional fundamental right that prohibits child labour, there has been a disturbing rise in the number of working street children over the years. humphries (2003) observed that, “although child labour is hard to document, an alternative way of curbing child labour is by requiring school attendance” (p. 191). unicef’s state of the world’s children 2012 report states, “the children living in around 49,000 slums in india are invisible.” (save the children india & pwc india, 2015, p. 10). such dismal statistics reveal that it is indeed difficult to track down the number of working street children especially when the basic count is distorted in the nation. according to dabir and athale (2011), global challenges like poverty, rapid urbanization, overcrowded cities, the uneven distribution of wealth, privatization, and the effects of globalization have resulted in an emerging migration of population, and in turn to growing numbers of people relegated to street life. “every day millions of children live — and many die — in the streets of the world’s cities. sadly, no nation is spared this shame of shames” (pemberton, 2007, as cited in dabir & athale, 2011, p. 3). researchers have cited various reasons for this rise in the street population, and in the number of working children. while aptekar (1994) explains the increase with reference to factors like family status and the psychological condition of the child and his or her perceptions about life, others, like epstein (1996), have highlighted abuses, armed conflicts, natural calamities, and an alteration in family structures as some of the causes. according to the census of india 2011, the total urban population was 377 million, with a remarkable increase from 17% in 1950 to 31% in 2011 (save the children india & pwc india, 2015). considerably, one of the major reasons for such increase is migration of people that also leads to the growing number of working children in the cities. however, i believe this growing problem could be tackled effectively by a systematic social organization that would not only spread awareness, but would also bring the street children back into mainstream society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 72 role of social intervention according to chikarmane (1996, p. 37), “street identity is created by the media and social work interventionists”. whether the presence of interventionists actually curtails the right of these children to create their own identities is a debatable issue. a contrary theory maintains that these destitute children gain moral support from social work intervention, helping them to feel that they “belong”, that they “exist”; and to know that they are no longer alone if they are hurt or unwell (chikarmane, 1996, p. 37). for children living without families, such social interventions may provide their only support, “their only anchor”, as chikarmane (1996, p. 37) puts it. the type of intervention provided tends to affect the way these children are portrayed — as victims, villains, dependents, or deviants (panter-brick, 2002). thus, it is important for the social interventionists to take utmost care of the type, form, and degree of intervention they render upon the different types of street children. for instance, the kind of intervention required by working street children living with their parents is much different from the degree of intervention lone street children would need or desire. however, in contemporary times, interventionists have changed from a charitable to a rights-based approach, working with children rather than for them, thus giving prime importance to child participation. the rights perspective in the twentieth century, with a shift in paradigm from a welfare approach to a rightsbased approach, two primary schools of thought developed regarding child rights: the child liberationist model that uses concepts like individualism, independence, and self-determination to argue that children should be freed from adult control; and the child protectionist model that considers children to be naïve and dependent on adult care. the united nations convention on the rights of the child was developed from both models (chopra, 2015). all members of the united nations have ratified the convention, except the united states. child rights form an integral part of human rights and therefore every child is entitled to civil, economic, social, and cultural rights. what children do not possess are institutionalized political rights. civil rights of children include the right to a name and nationality, and protection from torture and ill-treatment, along with special rules pertaining to their right to not be deprived of liberty or separated from a parent. economic rights include the right to benefit from social security, the right to an adequate standard of living to ensure proper development, and protection from exploitation at work. social rights of children include the right to the highest attainable standard of health and access to medical services, the right to education, the right to special care for disabled children, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and the right to adoption. cultural rights include full participation in creative and cultural activities. a final category of child rights includes the concept of the “three ps” — provision, protection, and participation. in other words, every child has the right to be provided with the necessities of life, along with services needed for healthy development; the right to be shielded from certain acts and practices; and the right to do things, express oneself, and have an active and effective voice in matters affecting one’s life. both methods of classification are useful in analysing and understanding international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 73 children’s rights. where one classification shows us, for instance, that children have no political rights, the other highlights the fact that they have limited rights with regard to participation. the criticism sometimes made that the concept and content of child rights are essentially patriarchal and overprotective has no real grounds, as protection is only one element among others as a basis for these rights. indeed, it is a component both of overall human rights, and of particular rights concerning special groups such as ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. methodology this study focused primarily on access to health and education in street children between 6 and 18 years old in two of the most densely populated metropolitan cities of india, mumbai and kolkata. the study also aimed to assess the role and the effectiveness of social work interventions (which are among the protective factors) in ensuring the rights of vulnerable children. both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were employed in this exploratory study. as far as i am aware, no previous attempts have been made to study accessibility to both health and education of street children in these two study areas. two categories of street children took part in the study: those who lived with or without their parents in either kolkata or mumbai (comprising a total of 80 participants), and those who lived in a night shelter in mumbai (20 girls). during the study, i also interviewed a small number of social workers and made an attempt to understand their perspective on the children, with whom they had been working for a long time. the total sample comprised 100 children. data were collected through individual semi-structured interview schedules and nonparticipant observation. a convenience sampling technique was used: the selection of participants depended on the availability of children at the nongovernmental organizations (ngos) at the time when the interviews were being conducted. the quantitative data collected from the field were sorted, coded, and then analysed through the use of the spss statistical tool. health and education are vital requirements for children to fulfil their potential. denial of access to either may result in the “presence of street children as helpless victims of social discrimination” (panter-brick, 2002, p. 156). educating these poor and needy children, giving them social standing, and looking after their well-being and good health will assist the children to become the architects of their own lives. findings and discussion most of the 100 children who were interviewed had families to return to at day’s end. in general, their homes were rudimentary, affording little protection from sun, wind, and rain; reeking of the nearby open drains and canals. such a home could also be called a pavement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 74 their pastimes and games, which included playing alongside the gutters and fishing from them, were not those of most children of their age. although the street children were enrolled in formal schooling, which the ngos supplemented with in-house informal education by helping with home assignments and providing tutoring, once the children were out of school and away from the interventionists, they tended to forget about the training they had been receiving. often, the children would return to the centres claiming to have lost a book or stationery, or even their whole school bag, merely due to carelessness, and demand new supplies. this kind of behaviour was common since the children were well aware of the fact that they would receive new supplies even if they had lost their belongings, and therefore, some of them did not bother to take care of their items. easy availability of amenities projected that the children took this facility for granted. however, the children are not to be blamed for such behaviour, which arose because the streets did not support their education or their well-being. “parents are often unavailable to assist their children with schoolwork and the chore of completing homework is often unrealistic” for the child (epstein, 1996, p. 291). the streets did not provide the ambience that might enable these children to make a better choice for themselves. in an interview, one of the toiling interventionists exclaimed, “it seems easy to handle these children, but in actuality, it is very difficult.” part of the reason interventionists found these children “difficult” was that the children tended to develop their own ideas, which they expected at least the interventionists to acknowledge and respect. such behavioural patterns are common among children who have been orphaned at a young age and have been struggling to survive on their own, taking their own responsibility and growing up without any adult supervision. they seem markedly more mature and self-sufficient than their peers. also, children who are on the street may be there due to some specific reason, such as difficulty accepting a new parent following a remarriage, or even sexual abuse by family members. such events may compel the children to spend more time with the interventionists than within their families. the centre in mumbai had a night shelter facility, accommodating destitute, homeless girls up to the age of 18 years. at the time of my visit to the centre, about 50 girls were residing there. for these participants — some of whom had been deserted, were runaways, or were victims of sexual abuse — the centre was their only support system, and they developed an affinity and affection for both the place and the interventionists. one of the responses received from among the 20 participants interviewed seemed to be a reflection of the entire group: “there is no home to return to. i enjoy staying here, with all my friends. this place provides an ambience that encourages me to study. i get proper meals here, and also enough freedom to enjoy my rights. this is my home now.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 75 findings the study revealed a number of causes for the children adopting a street-based lifestyle. abject poverty: figure 1 shows that, for most of the children (83) and their parents, poverty was the major reason they were living on the streets. this was true for the majority of the children in both domains of the study, with the children having been born on the streets. in developing nations, it is observed that with increasing economic marginalization of the poor, the number of street children also increases, leading more people to “procreate on pavements” (phillips, 1994, p. 11). a survey called “surviving the streets”, which was conducted on street children in delhi in 2010 as initiative by save the children (2011), mentioned that the cities of delhi, mumbai, and kolkata caters to the largest number of street children. while street-dwellers would be adding more breadwinners to their families, the nation would acquire more street children in need of help. figure 1. the distribution of circumstances that led the children to streets. in six cases, street-living began when the parents migrated with their children into the city in search of a better occupation. for another five, desertion by parents led them to become street children, with some fending for themselves under the guidance of the local people in their place of stay; and others, as in some cases found in kolkata, staying with their grandparents in the city under similar conditions. five children reported other causes for turning to the streets, such as running away in response to some form of exploitation or separation of parents. only one participant reported having become a street child following the demise of both parents. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 76 lack of awareness of educational opportunities: the study revealed that a majority of children, especially females, had no access to educational facilities in the pre-intervention period, and that several children who did have access to educational facilities had been studying below the required standard. thus, the hypothesis may be drawn that female education was not encouraged until intervention was provided to the children in the area, which resulted in a new awareness of educational opportunities among parents and guardians. the fact that the children had been benefiting from their exposure to the social intervention that was being provided was evident from the observation that majority of them showed interest in educating themselves, had set vivid ambitions, and were “dreaming big” for themselves. this trend was more visible among the grown up girls especially the ones residing in the night shelter, who constantly received intervention within the centre premises. helping illiterates become aware of educational opportunities seems to be one of the issues most in need of social intervention, even today. however, with the rapid advent of ngos and other civil society organizations that work extensively for and with the vulnerable, the issue of lack of public awareness is quickly being addressed, especially through the mass media. for instance, advertisements, announcements over the internet, radio, and/or television, awareness camps conducted by various governmental and nongovernmental bodies that address the issues of gender equality, importance of girl child education is being addressed at regular intervals. livelihood patterns: figure 2 depicts the livelihood of the children in the study. the majority of the children (91) were found to belong to a street family, to be staying under parental guidance, and to be dependent on their illiterate parents, who were mainly daily wage earners in the case of fathers and domestic workers in the case of mothers. that these parents were generally unaware of the importance of seeking education or striving for self-development had a strong influence over their children’s conceptions about life. three of the children were rag-pickers, earning a minimal amount of money for themselves. one was earning a livelihood as a domestic help. four of the children had other means of livelihood, such as helping their parents at the workplace and selling items; for instance, one of them helped his father in a commercial automotive garage, while the other three children worked to earn their own living (abandoned children). among the ones residing with their parents (91), many of them just worked to earn pocket money for a new dress or an ice cream, trying to cater to their own petty requirements. children learn quickly from their environment, and they tend to copy and abide by the norms and traditions that they have grown up with. their identities are shaped by these socializations and conventions. although the children received proper formal as well as informal education after the interventions, a strong sense of gender socialization remained evident, with the girls returning home to help their mothers in household work, and the boys returning home to play with their peers and then waiting for dinner to be served to them. the hope is that the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 77 children will eventually be able to educate their parents and society, and create identities of their own. figure 2. the livelihood of the children. dreams and aspirations: it is often said that one cannot sustain life without having aims and aspirations. the same was true in the case of these children. they had set their goals, and the road to achieving them was being smoothed by the meticulous support of the interventionists. almost a quarter of the children (21) aspired to become doctors, and nearly as many (18, mostly girls) hoped to be teachers. sixteen children had not decided on a career path, while 12 hoped to join the police force, and 5 hoped to become pilots. the remainder (28) had an assortment of ambitions, with the boys aspiring to be army officials, engineers, or sportsmen such as football players and cricketers, while the girls aspired to become fashion designers, artists, and actors. an exposure to education through proper channels, and active participation in the vocational courses offered by the centres, helped these children nurture their self-development skills, tap their inner potentials, polish their identities, and strive to achieve their goals in life. education also provided tools to help the children cope with the societal obstacles and environmental hardships they will inevitably encounter. hygiene versus health: the study showed that most children suffered from ailments like malaria, tuberculosis, cold and cough, water-borne diseases, and skin diseases, a result of their unhygienic living conditions. although most had access to proper toilets, there were still a few unfortunate ones without. the inadequate sanitation facilities in areas of mumbai and kolkata 4 4.00% 1 1.00% 3 3.00% 1 1.00% 91 91.00% others wage worker rag picker domestic help under parental guidance basis of livelihood for the children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 78 not only lead to illness, but pose an especial danger for young girls, who may be sexually harassed due to the lack of privacy. in their article “acting without sanitation: open defecation”, mcfarlane, desai, & graham (2011) reported that, although the cleanliness and sanitation byelaws were established in mumbai in 2006, women still felt unprotected and insecure due to the lack of proper sanitation facilities in many of mumbai’s urban slums. however, most children in the current study received proper medical attention when required, since a majority of them lived under parental guidance. all the children also received regular medical examinations from the social interventionists. vulnerability to exploitation: the majority of children in this study faced physical abuse, mostly from parental beatings. almost all of the children, irrespective of gender, said that they were afraid of their parents, because their parents beat them when they were being naughty. the incidence of physical abuse was higher for boys. sexual exploitation was however predominant only among the girls in the study. other abuses reported by the participants included calling names, exchanging abusive words, passing inappropriate comments, ragging and bullying younger siblings, and discouraging children who wished to study or expressed ambition. a unicef (2006) report, “behind closed doors: impact of domestic violence on children”, estimated that 27.1 million to 69 million children were exposed to domestic violence in india, while a study conducted by the ministry of women and child development in 2007 found that a total of 54.5% of street children reported incidences of sexual abuse (save the children india & pwc, 2015). the children learned to survive with their daily fears, and to remain alert about their surroundings, not sure when they might be victimized. a ten-year-old girl spoke about such fears when she said, “my sister goes very far every day to fetch water for our daily needs, and i stay alone at home. i am not scared of ghosts, but of people.” maturity beyond age: another observation that was subtly evident from the study was the fact that the hardships of life as a street child could take away the innocence of childhood and lead one to become mature beyond one’s years. the participants in this study survived street life on their own terms. when a 13-year-old who was being reared by a single parent spoke, his words brought out the level of maturity and responsibility he had attained at such a tender age: i don’t know why we don’t stay with our father, but i respect my mother’s decisions and have learnt to live without him now. i don’t wish to know the reasons for their separation, hence i don’t bother my mother with such questions. another child who lived with her grandparents after being abandoned by her family stated that she felt bad but had somehow accepted the fact that her parents were willing to look after her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 79 siblings, but for reasons unknown would not take her back. she said, “i am the most deprived and unlucky one of my parents’ [children] to have been disowned this way.” discussion through this study, i have tried to identify the role of social intervention in ensuring some of the basic rights of street children. drawing from existing literature, dybicz (2005) presented an overview of the kinds of intervention needed by the various categories of children: those who have not yet taken to the streets, those who have chosen street life but have family contact, and those who are entirely on their own. however, in a developing nation like india that struggles to sustain a huge population, it is a difficult task to provide educational intervention to all children in need of it. establishing different kinds of ngos to support all the categories of street children is indeed a challenging effort for india. some articles on street children, like those by chikarmane (1996), dabir and athale (2011), and hartjen and priyadarsini (2012), reevaluate the size of the ever-growing problem of street children, highlighting the menaces of urbanization, poverty, abuse, culture differences, and other modernizing factors that lead to such phenomena. this paper also addresses similar issues, like poverty, lack of parental awareness, and globalization, that have led the children to be on the streets. however, the findings have been mostly based on empirical data, and as suggested by martins and ebrahim (1993), there is a need for qualitative research on street children in order to gain a better understanding of their emotions, the hardships of life on the streets, and their coping strategies. in a study conducted by aptekar in 1993 (as cited in aptekar, 1994), it was pointed out that, in developing nations, more street boys than girls are born. in a nation where even today, a boy child is often preferred over a girl child, it is perhaps not unexpected that more boys would be trying to earn a living for their families on the streets, and that the girls would be kept back in the household to run the daily errands. amidst such gender socializations, the role of the ngos, which strive to educate and empower the street children and to create awareness on gender equality, has been well defined. likewise, my study has revealed that most of the girls had no access to education in the preintervention period, and that very few boys helped their mothers in daily household work. very few have been able to break free of stereotypical gender roles. chikarmane (1996) highlighted the fact that intervention is a way of restoring street children to mainstream society, but also explained how essential it is for interventionists to respect the “street identity” of these children, and simultaneously to take care of their needs. while it is not easy for the children to accept the changes needed to bring them into mainstream society, it is a bigger challenge for the interventionists to encourage those changes without harming or alienating the children. this paper has also emphasized some of the challenges that the interventionists face when dealing with street children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 80 conclusion this study shows that street children, whether with their families or on their own, are especially vulnerable to the dangers of society. poverty is seen to be the leading cause for their being on the streets. while most of the children lived under parental guidance, receiving some care and security, all nevertheless faced hardships and challenges every day. the challenge of mainstreaming this section of society has indeed been difficult for social interventionists over the years; however, many studies are now providing promising indications that, given the present success rate of the interventionists, the task is not impossible. the outlook of parents and society is changing, with an increase in girl-child education and a reduction in gender disparities. initiatives by the united nations, ngos like save the children india, and government initiatives like the integrated child protection scheme are not only helping in creating awareness but are also attempting to reverse the continuing increase in the number of vulnerable children in the nation. a “holistic service structure” for the protection of all children has been the new approach of all stakeholders (save the children india & pwc india, 2015, p. 141). the multiple issues explored and studied while conducting this research include the reasons for living on the streets, whether the children had family support or the company of friends while on the streets, the number of years the children had been receiving social work intervention, access of the children to educational facilities in the preand post-intervention periods, and access of the children to health facilities in those periods. findings in the two study areas have highlighted the positive role of social work interventionists, and other circumstances responsible for impacting and altering the lives of the children. this study has led to a holistic understanding of the socioeconomic profile of street children, underlining the areas of deprivation and the necessity to overcome them in order to promote a better future for these children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 69–82 81 references mcfarlane, c., desai, r. & graham, s. (2011). acting without sanitation: open defecation. durham, uk: department of geography, durham university. retrieved from https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/everyday_sanitation/acting_without_sanitation/ aptekar, l. (1994). street children in the developing world: a review of their condition. crosscultural research, 28(3), 195–224. doi:10.1177/106939719402800301 bajpai, a. (2006). child rights in india: law, policy and practice (2nd ed.). new delhi, india: oxford university press. chikarmane, p. (1996). street identity. indian journal of social work, 57(1), 33–38. ministry of statistics and programme implementation.(2012). children in india 2012 – a statistical appraisal. new delhi, india: government of india. retrieved from http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/children_in_india_2012-rev.pdf chopra, g. (2015). child rights in india: challenges and social action. new delhi, india: springer. dabir, n., & athale, n. (2011). from street to hope: faith based and secular programs in los angeles, mumbai and nairobi for street living children. new delhi, india: sage publications. de moura, s. l. (2002). the social construction of street children: configuration and implications. british journal of social work, 32(3), 353–367. doi:10.1093/bjsw/32.3.353 dybicz, p. (2005). interventions for street children: an analysis of current best practices. international social work, 48(6), 763–771. doi:10.1177/0020872805057083 epstein, i. (1996). educating street children: some cross-cultural perspectives. comparative education, 32(3), 289–302. doi:10.1080/03050069628722 hartjen, c. a., & priyadarsini, s. (2012). the global victimization of children: problems and solutions. berlin, germany: springer. humphries, j. (2003). child labor: lessons from the historical experience of today’s industrial economies. the world bank economic review, 17(2), 175–196. doi:10.1093/wber/lhg016 martins, s. b., & ebrahim, g. j. 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(1994). street children in india. jaipur & new delhi, india: rawat publications. save the children. (2011). surviving the streets: a study on street children in delhi [news release]. retrieved from https://www.savethechildren.in/news/surviving-the-streets-acensus-of-street-children-in-delhi save the children india, & pwc india. (2015). forgotten voices: the world of urban children in india. new delhi, india: author. retrieved from https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/publications/urban-child/urban-child-india-report.pdf schmitz, c. l., traver, e. k. & larson, d. (eds.). (2004). child labor: a global view. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. segal, u. a. (1999). children are abused in eastern countries: a look at india. international social work, 42(1), 39–52. doi:10.1177/002087289904200105 subrahmanyam, y. s., & sondhi, p. (1990). child porters: psychosocial profile of street children. indianl journal of social work, 51, 577–582. retrieved from https://journals.tiss.edu/archive/index.php/ijswarchive/article/view/2227 unicef. (2006). behind closed doors: the impact of domestic violence on children. littlehampton, uk: the body shop international. retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/media/files/behindcloseddoors.pdf wiener, g. (ed.). (2009). child labor (global viewpoints). farmington hills, mi: greenhaven press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085359 https://www.savethechildren.in/news/surviving-the-streets-a-census-of-street-children-in-delhi https://www.savethechildren.in/news/surviving-the-streets-a-census-of-street-children-in-delhi https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/publications/urban-child/urban-child-india-report.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002087289904200105 https://journals.tiss.edu/archive/index.php/ijswarchive/article/view/2227 https://www.unicef.org/media/files/behindcloseddoors.pdf investigating the multimodality of children and youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 284 investigating the multimodality of children and youth lynda phillips and catherine ann cameron abstract: capturing lived childhoods without decontextualizing their meaning and still providing information needed by policy-makers and practitioners is a pressing challenge for contemporary researchers. in this paper we provide information to open up such a dialogue via a range of tools we have utilized when investigating well-being. we interrogate bio-socio-ecological approaches to human development to provide relatively holistic pictures of the lived experience of childhood. we utilize various methodologies within this approach to determine what they transactionally facilitate at each level. at the bio-psychological level, for example, controlled, psychologically valid, psychosocial stress procedures expose hormonal responses, yielding valuable information about individual differences in physiological stress reactivity. at the level of the psychological self within a social ecology, we systematically observe children and youth in naturalistic, environmental transactions with the aid of visual methodologies such as day in the life filming, and invite the children and their parents and youth to share their reflections on their lived context via focused discussions and interviews. in this paper we discuss new ways of integrating research findings by suggesting sameroff’s (2010) unified theory as an interpretive framework for research within the field of child and youth care. keywords: children and youth, day in the life, bio-socio-ecological methodologies, transactional models lynda phillips, ph.d. is an instructor in the department of child and youth care counselling at douglas college, and an adjunct professor in the department of educational psychology at vancouver island university. e-mail: phillipsly@douglascollege.ca catherine ann cameron, ph.d. is honorary professor of psychology at the university of british columbia, 2136 west mall, vancouver, b.c., canada, v6t 1z4, (604) 822-9078. e-mail: acameron@psych.ubc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 285 we open up this dialogue by asking the following questions: • can the current conceptual tools and language of child and youth care critically engage with the multiple and competing demands that practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers encounter in their everyday work? • how can we capture lived childhoods without decontextualizing their meaning and yet still provide the information that is needed by policy-makers and practitioners? we ask these questions because we believe that they are pressing questions for the contemporary researcher and that we cannot continue to investigate the field of child and youth care through disciplinary silos. there is no single lens through which one can begin to deconstruct the lived experience of children and youth. to understand their lived experiences we – as researchers and practitioners – must enter into the complex and dynamic bio-ecological system from which they – the children and youth – construct meaning. we need to do this because who we are grows from a complex and dynamic interaction between our biology and our environment in the broadest of terms. lee (2010) likens this dynamic interchange to a braid where the strands of human dispositions, physiological systems, environmental stimuli, and cultural practices cross over and interact with each other to shape who we become. she asks, “ . . . if adaptation and plasticity are characteristics of brain functioning . . . why are we not doing more to understand the conditions of such adaptation and plasticity particularly with regard to those who face the greatest threats or obstacles . . .?” (p. 647). consequently, we argue that we need to use contemporary theories and methodologies of research that enable us to investigate the multiple pathways in which adaptation can occur. as researchers we need to become comfortable with methodologies that have the capacity to investigate systems and the transactional change that occurs between the interdependent parts. we need to become comfortable sitting at and even in the intersection of change. by considering only individual isolated parts of a system, our understanding of the adaptation process is limited and should not be used to drive either policy or practice. we believe that to inform and guide the policy and the practices of child and youth care counsellors, there is a need to recruit researchers that can cross multiple contexts and who are comfortable and competent with using a variety of research tools that have the capacity to investigate change transactionally, at the intersection of change across time. in order to develop policy that leads to practice there is a need to understand the richness of ecology that shapes the lives of the children and youth, first via interaction and then transaction. therefore, the focus of this paper will be to engage this discussion. our intention here is to describe initially the bio-socio-ecological approaches of bronfenbrenner (1994), bronfenbrenner and ceci (1994), lee (2010), and sameroff (2009a, 2009b, 2010), as we believe that their models provide a more holistic picture of the lived experience of childhood as they move between multiple contexts and have the capacity to direct child and youth care research. however, despite the many citations to this work within the human services field, there has been very little empirical research that focuses on specifically addressing the reciprocal effects between the child and the lived context (sameroff, 2009a, 2009b). then via a range of tools that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 286 have been utilized when investigating the resilience processes of early thriving (cameron, 2009; cameron, tapanya, & gillen, 2006; cameron, ungar, & liebenberg, 2007; gillen & cameron, 2010), we will provide a number of vignettes that will illustrate what can be learned about the complex lives of children and youth, when multiple methodologies that have the capacity to negotiate the rich ecology of childhood are used. interactions and transactions at this point one may ask, “how do interactions differ from transactions?” sameroff (2009b) provides us with operational definitions of both of these terms. he defines interactions as “…dependencies in which the activity of one element is correlated with another” (p. 24) and provides the example of a smile being reciprocated with a smile as explanation. a transaction is identified as occurring “…when the activity of one element changes the usual activity of another, either quantitatively by increasing or decreasing the usual level of response or qualitatively by eliciting or initiating a new response” (p. 24). he provides the example of when a smile is reciprocated with a frown, which may elicit confusion, negativity, or even increase anxious positivity as an explanation of the difference. methodological frameworks the bio-socio-ecological approaches of bronfenbrenner (1994), bronfenbrenner and ceci (1994), and sameroff (2009a, 2009b, 2010) hold a great deal of promise for guiding researchers who are interested in using new and existing models of research to capture and contextualize the complexity of the environment in which children and youth find themselves. these models of development direct our attention to the multiple pathways in which development can occur, and that we, as researchers, need to consider if our ways of working with children and youth are to be both meaningful and beneficial. in their bio-ecological approach, bronfenbrenner and ceci (1994) describe developmental change as an interaction between multiple contexts and the child, and argue that to understand human development one must understand the entire ecological system in which the child grows. they draw to our attention to the importance of proximal processes in change and inform us that change occurs through the joint function of proximal process (i.e., the form, power, content, and direction of those processes) and the characteristics of the environment. proximal processes are identified as mechanisms through which genetic potentials for effective psychological functioning are actualized. bronfenbrenner and ceci explain that proximal processes are involved with such functions as: differentiating perception and response, directing and controlling behaviour, coping successfully under stress, acquiring skills, and establishing relationships. they stress that underlying this model is a cardinal theoretical principle that states: “genetic material does not provide finished traits but rather interacts with environmental experience in determining developmental outcomes” (p. 571). in this model the child is seen as developing within a system of bi-directional, interacting relationships. bronfenbrenner (1994) identifies these bi-directional, interacting relationships as microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and chronosystems. a microsystem is created from a pattern of activities, social roles, and interpersonal relationships experienced by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 287 the developing child in a face-to-face or one-on-one experience. a mesosystem is comprised of the linkages between two or more systems such as home and school, whereas the exosystem is comprised of two or more systems that interact with each other but engages at least one system that the developing child does not inhabit. an example of this would be the parent’s work environment. the child does not inhabit this environment but does experience its effects. the macrosystem represents the overarching beliefs of the culture or subculture the child lives within and involves such influences as beliefs, cultural customs, opportunities, and life course options. the chronosystem adds the historical change or time component within the individual and the environment (bronfenbrenner, 1994). sameroff (2010) adds to this bio-psycho-social ecological approach with his unified theory of development. he identifies development as ongoing and transactional and states: “[t]he… development of any process in the individual is influenced by interplay with processes in the individual’s context over time” (sameroff, 2009a, p. 6). he describes a child as being a product of the continuous dynamic interactions between itself and the multiple social settings it needs to negotiate, and in doing so he draws our attention to the plasticity of both the environment and of the individual to engage in change. he adds that it is not just the child or the environment that changes in response to the interaction, but that both are changed as time moves forward due to the transactions that occur. to add to our increasing understanding of the complexity of this situation sameroff (2009a, 2009b, 2010), like bronfenbrenner (1994), addresses the fact that environments, like individuals, interact with each other and affect, and are affected by, each other. lee (2010) concurs with both bronfenbrenner’s (1994) and sameroff’s (2010) analysis of the systems of development being dynamically intertwined. she describes developmental change as involving human dispositions, physiological systems, cultural practices, and environmental stimuli and argues that these influences on development are so dynamically intertwined that it is only possible to understand human development through engaging with the multiple pathways that lead to adaptation. as researchers we feel that sameroff’s (2010) unified theory holds a great deal of promise for directing the kind of research that needs to occur within the field of child and youth care. in support of sameroff’s model, a number of authors have described the need to move from a mechanistic world view of research to that of a systemic-organic world view (cameron, 2009; davison, 2006; grajales & gonzales, 2008; ramey & grubb, 2009), due to a growing need to understand any phenomenon within its context. there is a movement away from the acceptance of one simple reality or one simple answer that is independent from our perceptions, and movement toward an acceptance that each one of us experiences a different reality. consequently, conducting research that fails to consider these differences or how they come about limits the findings to superficial factors, which involve only one or two dimensions of reality, and limits an understanding of the whole (grajales & gonzalez, 2008). ramey and grubb (2009) argue that researchers need to spend time “…in a milieu of open critical dialogue” (p. 77) that would enable one to sift through the many different possibilities and forms of research to create new frameworks that do not privilege any one method or any one paradigm (denzin & lincoln, 2005). this is good advice. models must have the capacity to provide equal attention to the individual and to the environments in which individuals find themselves across international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 288 time. consequently, when completing research into the lived experience of children and youth, we need to move beyond the dominant, linear discourses that have traditionally been utilized within the field of child and youth care to those that have the capacity explore multilevel dynamic systems (sameroff, 2010). it is our belief that sameroff’s (2010) unified theory of development provides a place to have this critical dialogue, and the space to consider the types of methodologies that need to be used if one is to consider the transactional change between the child and his or her environment across time. there is a need for researchers to inhabit what sameroff describes as “most known influences on the life trajectory” (p. 17) and then to spend time considering which models of investigation best serve the four models of change across time as they interact and then transact with each other. however, such a task is not to be taken lightly because, as lee (2010) astutely reminds us, examining such interdependent concepts is conceptually and methodologically extremely difficult. sameroff’s unified theory in his unified theory sameroff (2010) integrates four models of change and states that it is necessary to understand these models in order to understand human growth. sameroff identifies these four models of change as: personal change, contextual, regulation, and representational. personal change involves the change in an organism in the form of traits, growth, and development that occurs across the lifespan. lee (2010) concurs with sameroff about the importance of understanding this type of change due to our need to unpack the everchanging developmental complexities of the organism across time and then to plan for them. contextual change refers to understanding the complexities of the environment that can constrain or promote development. growing children find themselves in increasingly complex bioecological environments that they have to navigate. consequently, the ability of the environment to support and then sustain the individual – directly or indirectly – dramatically affects the longterm outcomes and therefore needs to be understood. the regulation model describes the dynamic interface of self and the environment whereby early interactions during infancy are primarily biological but over time move to psychological (self) and social (other) regulation. representational change explains the relationship between real world experiences and the development of thought in the form of the cognitive structures that stand for them. real world experiences are encoded and stored and then used with increasing complexity as children age to provide an interpretive structure to their lived experience. sameroff in his 2010 discussions of this model clearly articulates the importance of considering these four models of change holistically, and transactionally. he states: “[c]ombining these four models offers a comprehensive view of the multiple parts, wholes and their connecting processes that comprise human development” (p. 12). he then continues to describe how these four models interact and transact across time to create one unified theory of development. in explaining his theory, sameroff (2010) first starts with the components of the personal and contextual models, and then adds the regulation and the change components of the personal model to demonstrate the processes that need to be considered across time. he identifies self as being composed of a set of interacting psychological and biological processes that overlap the domains of emotional and cognitive development. in figure 1 the psychological and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 289 biological processes are seen as a set of grey overlapping circles that compose the psychological self. figure 1. the biopsychological system. taken from “predicting developmental outcomes: is it the child or the environment” by a. sameroff (2010), oslo – november, 2010. this biological self-system interacts with the ecology at large (figure 2). this is the child’s parents, siblings, and extended family and friends, the community at large, the school and their peers, and the geopolitical system of the time. the model now includes the biological and psychological components of self, interacting within the social ecology of the lived experience. figure 2. the biopsychosocial ecological system. taken from “predicting developmental outcomes: is it the child or the environment” by a. sameroff (2010), oslo – november, 2010. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 290 sameroff then adds the dimension of time (figure 3) that he states can be used as a growth model in which bio-psychological aspects increase quantitatively across time without change in their interrelationship, or as a developmental model in which aspects of growth necessitate qualitative shifts in organization. figure 3. adding the time dimension. taken from “predicting developmental outcomes: is it the child or the environment” by a. sameroff (2010), oslo – november, 2010. figure 4 depicts the unified theory. here sameroff integrates the components of the biopsychological self, which includes the personal change and contextual and regulation models, within a social ecology across time. he excludes the representational model from the figure stating that it would make the model overly complex to add it, but reminds us that it is important to understand that it permeates every aspect of the model – that is, the interacting identities, attitudes, and beliefs of the child, the family, the culture, and the organizational structure of the social institutions. figure 4. biopsychosocial continuity model. taken from “predicting developmental outcomes: is it the child or the environment” by a. sameroff (2010), oslo – november, 2010. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 291 sameroff closes his discussion of the unified theory by emphasizing that it does not make any specific predictions about how development can occur but stresses that it explains what is necessary to consider if one wants to explain a development. this closing statement brings a focus to much we have learned about the children and youth we work with in the field of child and youth care as it has tremendous ramifications for research and practice in providing a rationale for why some of the work that we do simply does not make a difference whereas other work can and does. sameroff’s unified theory provides an excellent model of how we should be conducting research and our practice within the field of child and youth care. in this model he provides clear examples of the component parts of the whole that interact and transact to create change across time. therefore, as child and youth care researchers, we can use this model as an example of how to investigate the lived experience of children and youth and as a guideline for new and existing research tools that enable us to develop an understanding of how change occurs transactionally between and across domains within a given social ecology. when thinking about the language of child and youth care and the importance of contextualized relationships in our work, utilizing a bio-psycho-socio-ecological approach such as the one suggested by sameroff (2010) is most appropriate. this model fits with the philosophy of the field, and provides an opportunity to utilize a variety of investigative tools that work together transactionally. using tools that can interact and transact will provide a picture of how longitudinal development is occurring within and across multiple domains in a complex ecology. these kinds of tools will enable us to ask the rich kinds of questions that only this type of framework can address. unpacking our current research with reference to the unified theory sameroff (2010) describes the complexity of what he terms “untangling . . . social and biological processes [and the importance of not waiting] for a complete resolution of these pathways before [researchers] begin to attend to potential avenues of intervention” (p. 51). therefore, to illustrate how we have begun to struggle with this issue, we offer five examples of methodologies drawn from our own research that we believe respond to sameroff’s call to engage in the kind of research that has the capacity to shed light on the multiple pathways through which adaptation can occur. the following examples utilize a variety of different research methods and tools to demonstrate how we have attempted to unpack and then reintegrate divergent methodologies that interact and transact with each other across time, thereby creating a more holistic picture of the lived experience of children and youth. all five examples involve the response of children and youth to stressful life experiences. our first three examples focus on physiological processes in response to psychosocial stressors, showing how experimental manipulation in a laboratory setting can expose processes at the level of personal reactivity in the service of increasing psychological and social regulation of environmental challenges. our final two examples are relatively naturalistic observational studies of the personal characteristics of thriving children and resilient youth in transition. we examined toddlers and teenagers in ecological context, in their homes and neighbourhoods respectively. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 292 we observed the models of change move from the biological to the psychosocial via the regulation of self and other. by having participants (parents of the toddlers and the youths themselves) reflect on their experiences, we were able to represent the interpretive structures of their lived experiences. the first example is a project that investigated gender, anger, and attachment in adolescent stress responsivity. it involves controlled laboratory methods in order to identify causal factors in psychosocial stress reactivity. the typical biological response to a stressful situation is an increase in arousal mechanisms, indicating a state of heightened vigilance. this state can be identified by an increase in sympathetic arousal, such as elevated blood pressure and/or stress hormone levels (in particular, cortisol). however, research has not consistently demonstrated this pattern in adolescents’ stress responding. consequently, we were interested in determining why some studies show this change while others do not. in order to dig a little deeper into this inconsistency in the literature, we conducted a study with a large sample of canadian early adolescents and asked them to experience a stressful situation; participants performed an age-appropriate oral story-completion task before an audience of critical judges. the purpose of this study was to examine the role of individual differences in the teenagers’ stress responses. we found an expected bifurcation pattern when we examined our results. half the teenagers showed an increase in arousal in response to the stressor whereas the other half actually decreased. this result held true for both boys and girls. in examining individual differences, we found that the girls who decreased in arousal were participants who self-reported low maternal attachment and high trait anger and who exhibited high teacher-reported aggression. in this study, these individual differences did not consistently predict whether boys would increase or decrease in arousal. however, this gender difference could be due to the type of anxiety-provoking stressor used. example two, following on from the above study, was designed to provide a more focused analysis of attachment and anger in youth. additionally, this study included an investigation of coterminous anxiety, coping skills; and again, we elicited physiological stress responses. in this study, we used a different stress-inducing protocol and studied a different group of adolescents. this time, instead of requiring the youth to engage in public speaking, which can be anxiety provoking, we asked the adolescents to participate in an evaluated peer debate on a value-laden topic that we designed to produce frustration (a frustration social stressor for adolescents [fss-a]). we established a bifurcation pattern in response to this stressor as well. half of the adolescents increased in rated physiological (cortisol) arousal whereas the other half decreased. the individual differences that predicted whether the adolescents’ responses would increase or decrease was consistent with the previous study – adolescents reporting more positive maternal attachment and lower trait anger and rates of externalizing problems demonstrated greater cortisol reactivity in response to the fss-a, while teenagers reporting high trait anger, poor maternal attachment, and whose teachers reported them as having high levels of externalizing behaviour showed a decrease in cortisol secretion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 293 this time the individual differences that distinguished decreased from increased reactivity were consistent across genders. although gender was related to different coping skills, it did not moderate cortisol reactivity. by combining the evidence from both studies, we found that low self-reported attachment and high trait anger is linked to a decremented biological response to stress. when we consider both of these studies with respect to multiple pathways in which adolescent development can occur in the context of sameroff’s unified theory (2010), we can see data collected at the biological, and psychological level and at level of the bio-psychological self within a social ecology. at an individual biological level, we collected data on the adolescents’ blood pressure and cortisol levels. participants also completed a survey on their relationship with their parents and peers with specific interest in maternal attachment. the level of the teenagers’ externalizing behaviour such as aggression was determined using ratings by the adolescents’ teachers or parents. additionally, by combining the results from the two studies one is able to start to develop an image of the interactions and the transactions that are taking place that associate with either an increased or decreased level of arousal, implicating the kinds of interventions that would be needed to ameliorate angry stress reactivity, namely working with establishing trust in developing attachment relationships, and thereby creating yet another beginning space for new investigations. in a third, most recent, ongoing, study we are investigating younger children and their parents’ stress responses to verbal deception. the stressor this time involves the need to make a moral choice, engaging the regulations of the children’s and their parents’ representations or interpretive structures in their physiological responsivity and, further, cultural differences between families are explored, thus engaging all four models of change in the unified theory. the child participants have to decide whether or not they should cover an apparent parental transgression. the protocol of this study involves a (confederate) parent and their child, who are given a joint project to complete unsupervised. the parent is instructed to “find” an answer key and use it to complete the joint challenge, and then to “damage” accidentally some laboratory equipment when returning the key. following this incident, the parent leaves the room and then the experimenter questions the child. the experimenter first queries the child about the high level of their performance on the joint task and then about the broken equipment. at this point the child has to decide either to cover for the parent or expose the transgressions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 294 this was a significantly stressful experience for participants as indicated by figures 5 and 6, representing child and parents’ normative cortisol increments. figure 5. cortisol responses of children who exposed parent and exhibited reactivity figure 6. cortisol responses of parents’ normative reactivity to the stressful situation although we have worked with a relatively small number of participants to date, we have once again triggered the bifurcation pattern in stress response using this verbal deception stressor. figures 7 and 8 depict the cortisol patterns of a parent and their related child whose levels decreased in response to the stressor. figure 7. parental decreased responsivity to the stressor. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 295 figure 8. paired child’s decreased responsivity to the stressor. as these are incomplete findings and data analyses are in progress, we are not yet able to determine the individual and contextual differences that predict which children and parents will increase or decrease in cortisol response to the stressor. we do however see consonance between family pairs in their reactivity, which is an interesting start in unravelling a relational picture. nonetheless, by looking at different sources of data such as physiological responses, self-reports, parental and teachers’ reports, we are able to expose this bifurcation pattern in at least three controlled situations that had not been captured by other procedures, highlighting both the importance of individual differences in the stress response and the advantages of pulling together different strands of youth experiences at the personal, contextual, regulatory, and representational levels of analysis. new observational methodological approaches to child and youth transactions can be seen in two large international ecological studies using visual techniques to interrogate the daily experience of thriving toddlers and teenagers. they were cultural studies of everyday lives of children and adolescents in context. the major protocol for these studies was an innovative day in the life (ditl) filming of participants (gillen et al., 2006). the procedure was initially developed to accommodate early childhood experiences in the home. we filmed a full day in the life of 30-month-old girls in seven communities around the globe. their parents were interviewed before we filmed their child and her family on a day (usually a weekend day or holiday) when parents were not working and the child was not in childcare out of the home. parents were interviewed before the filming to ascertain their perspectives on childrearing and the characteristics of their child. after the filming, we made a compilation film of one half-hour out of the day, with approximately six clips of five minutes each that we thought represented some of the strengths revealed during the children’s days. this composite film was shown to the parents who we encouraged to reflect further on their child, her strengths, and their socialization practices. we have published many studies of these toddlers’ transactions in context, including their emotional security strivings, notational system developments (in drawing and joint book reading with parents), play, musicality, eating events, and humorous techniques for establishing themselves in familial connection. some of these topics are represented in the gillen and cameron (2010) edited book. a second application of this methodology to the habitus of resilient, migrant, adolescents around the globe involved some significant revisions (cameron, 2011; cameron, theron, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 296 liebenberg, & ungar, 2011). the new ditl visual approach was expanded to include a photo elicitation procedure and interviews with the participants themselves. further, the teens orchestrated their own days to show what they thought were their strengths, knowing that they had been nominated by community youth advocates because they were seen as doing well under challenging, relocational adversity. sixteen youths in eight locations (one boy, one girl in each) were filmed all in one day and again, a compilation film was made for them to reflect upon, as well as photographs they took of people, places, and things important to them. findings with the adolescents confirm that cultures and contexts matter. similar themes play out very differently under varying circumstances and these variations are excellent signifiers that one-size-fits-all western theoretical perspectives on resiliency processes underestimate the breadth and depth of developmental adaptation possibilities. thriving reflects differential strengths at microto macro-systemic levels, from the personal through the contextual to the regulatory and representational systems. traditional cultural practices in various contexts bring different strengths to migrant youths otherwise at risk for vulnerability (theron et al., 2011). some communities contribute promotive influences while others create barriers, depending upon circumstances. schools play an especially large role in some communities whereas family strengths can scaffold autonomy in others. emotional security is a hallmark of thriving but it has many forms (cameron, lau, & tapanya, 2009) and humour is a potent concomitant of enhanced socio-emotional functioning (e. cameron, fox, anderson, & a. cameron, 2010). however, longitudinal work is necessary to reveal developmental patterns to these findings. to conclude, we have offered five examples of our own work that we believe respond to sameroff’s (2010) call to engage in the kind of research that has the capacity to shed light on the multiple pathways through which adaptation can occur. these examples utilized research methods and tools aimed at demonstrating how we have attempted to unpack divergent methodologies that have the capacity to provide a more holistic picture of psychosocial stress as a lived experience of children and youth. when considering sameroff’s (2010) model as a framework for practice and the importance of relationships and context to our work, utilizing a bio-psycho-socio-ecological approach is most appropriate. this model fits with the philosophy of the field, and provides an opportunity to utilize a variety of investigative tools that work together transactionally. using tools that have the ability to interact and transact will provide a picture of how development is occurring within and across multiple domains in a complex ecology, longitudinally, and enable us to ask the rich kinds of questions that only this type of framework can address. sameroff’s (2010) model as a framework for policy requires that we must learn to interpret both quantitative and qualitative data, insist upon using multimodal data in decision making, and partner with children and youth enabling them to become their own spokespersons and advocates by using the data they provided from their lived experience. finally, as framework for research, sameroff’s (2010) unified theory provides a model of how we should be conducting research within the field of child and youth care. in this model he provides clear examples of the component parts of the whole that interact and transact to create change across time. however, it is important to recognize that although this theory has a strong international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 284–299 297 dialectic, organismic orientation (sameroff, 2009a, 2009b) we are not suggesting that one should only use a qualitative perspective, which is why we provided examples of how one can use both quantitative and qualitative methods to deepen understanding of psychosocial stress. in fact, many of the researchers that are calling for new methods and new ways of completing research are not suggesting that we should abandon quantitative methodologies, but that we should be moving away from the traditional binaries, and moving towards choosing eclectic methodologies that best suit the answer to the question (davison, 2006; yanchar, 2006a, 2006b). yanchar (2006b) states: “. . . it is possible that some forms of quantitative research can fit theoretically within an interpretive framework and provide useful methodological resources for contextual interpretive enquiries. . . i . . . argue, some quantitative strategies, when carefully interpreted and employed, can make integral contributions to the meaningful study of human action in context” (p. 212). yanchar makes this argument because he believes that we should investigate novel perspectives, methods, and strategies that may prove to be useful even though they may not follow traditional research methodologies. he emphasizes that there is a need to focus on theory construction, innovative methods, critical analysis, and problem solving rather than using “settled perspectives and formulaic methods” (p. 215). it is our belief that as researchers within the field of child and youth care, we should do this using sameroff’s unified theory as a model. we began our discussions by asking if the current conceptual tools and language of child and youth care could critically engage with the multiple and competing demands of practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers and how it might be possible to capture the lived experience of childhood without decontextualizing its meaning and yet still providing the information that is needed. it is our belief that sameroff’s unified theory provides a theoretical model that will enable us to undertake this complex task. additionally, we hope that by opening up the discussion on the unified theory as a framework for researchers within the field of child and youth care, others will join the dialogue, thereby deepening our understanding of how this model can be used as a framework for policy-makers, and practitioners as well. international journal of child, youth and 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(2009). passing it on during a day in the life of resilient adolescents in diverse communities around the globe. child and youth care forum, 38(5), 227–271. cameron, c. a., tapanya, s., & gillen, j. (2006). swings, hammocks, and rocking chairs as secure bases during a day in the life in diverse cultures. child and youth care forum, 35(3), 231–247. cameron, c. a., theron, l., ungar, m., & liebenberg, l. (2011). adapting visual methodologies to identify youth protective processes in negotiating resilience across cultures and contexts. australian community psychologist, 23(2), 68–84. cameron, c. a., ungar, m., & liebenberg, l. (2007). cross-cultural understandings of resilience: roots for wings in the development of affective resources for resilience. in n. carrey & m. ungar (eds.), resilience special issue. child and adolescent psychiatric clinics, 16(2), 285–301. cameron, e. l., fox, j. d., anderson, m. s., & cameron, c. a. 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(2010). a unified theory of development: a dialectic integration of nature and nurture. child development, 81(1), 6–22. theron, l., cameron, c. a., didkowsky, n., lau, c., liebenberg, l., & ungar, m. (2011). a ‘day in the life’ of four resilient youths: cultural roots of resilience. youth and society, 43(3), 799–881. yanchar, s. c. (2006a). on the possibility of contextual-quantitative inquiry. new ideas in psychology, 24(3), 212–228. yanchar, s. c. (2006b). beyond the qualitative-quantitative divide: how to proceed? new ideas in psychology, 24(3), 275–281. suicide prevention in child welfare: the quebec experience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 144 suicide prevention in child welfare: the quebec experience protecting children and staff kees maas abstract: in the year 2000, the child welfare system of quebec implemented a provincial suicide prevention protocol. the goal of this protocol was two-pronged: (a) heightened client safety, security, and treatment; and (b) heightened support to front line staff and better protection against vicarious traumatisation. from the vantage point of a participant-observer, the author uses batshaw youth and family centres as an example to illustrate the implementation and evolution of this protocol. more specifically, the aim of this article is to demonstrate the benefits that clients and staff gain from such a protocol. further attention will be given to the impact this protocol has on front line staff and second level team members intervening with suicidal clients, considerations that lessen the risks of vicarious traumatisation, as well as professional burnout. statistics show there has been a decrease in suicidal gestures and attempts over the past decade following the protocol’s implementation. finally, the supports and debriefing foreseen in the protocol are appreciated by staff, and further supports such as clinical consultation, (peer) supervision, and continuing education have been implemented. keywords: suicide prevention, mental health screening, child welfare, vicarious traumatisation author’s note: there are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to be reported. kees maas, ph.d. is clinical psychologist with batshaw youth and family centres, 4039 tupper street, westmount, province of quebec, canada, h3z 1t5, e-mail: kees_maas@ssss.gouv.qc.c international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 145 context and clinical profile of the clientele child welfare in the province of quebec, canada, is organized by 17 administrative regions, under the umbrella of “centre jeunesse” (youth centre). the centres jeunesse fall under the quebec ministry of health and social services. these centres were created in the early 1990s and brought together different social services available to children and adolescents, including centres for social services and youth rehabilitation centres. thus, all child and adolescent social services (adoption, child protective services, residential and foster placement) were regrouped under one roof. the clientele of the centres jeunesse shows a wide diversity of social and mental health problems. first and foremost the families struggle with problems related to parenting, substance abuse, mental health, unemployment, housing, and often poverty. children come to the attention of the child protection services for reasons of neglect (the primary reason they are signalled to youth protective services), different types of abuse, family violence, abandonment, and for the older children (10 and older), conduct disorders. the centres jeunesse service a highly vulnerable clientele presenting a wide variety of mental health problems, including non-suicidal self-injury (nssi), suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts, and suicide. in a given year at batshaw youth and family centres, an average of 42 situations require high levels of supervision due to severe suicidal behaviour and approximately three times as many situations require the involvement of mental health specialists. the inception of the protocol following a coroner’s inquiry of suicides among youth serviced by the centres jeunesse, a provincial suicide prevention protocol (protocol d’intervention en situation de problématique suicidaire dans les centres jeunesse) was created through a collective effort (association des centres jeunesse, 2000). this effort brought together the association of centres jeunesse of quebec (acjq), the professional licensing board of physicians (college des médecins du québec), the provincial association of hospitals (association des hôpitaux du québec), and the provincial association of local centres for community health and social services (association des clsc et des chsld du québec). the protocol defined three interdependent levels of intervention. the first level refers to first line interveners of the centres jeunesse (educators, social workers, and managers) who have the mandate to screen for suicidal risk and, in close collaboration with the second and third levels, to put in place safety and intervention plans. the second level specifically created by this protocol consists of general practitioners, nurses, and psychologists, whose roles are to assess suicidal risk, decide on specific levels of supervision required, assist the first line interveners in establishing safety and intervention plans, support the first line through debriefing of incidents (suicidal attempts) and postvention following suicides. the second level interveners also refer to the third international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 146 level of intervention, comprised of child psychiatrists, whose mandate is to assess suicidal risk, provide psychiatric diagnoses and intervention recommendations. this protocol brought about a clarification of the mandates of the different interveners involved and established clearer communication pathways and referral processes in cases of suicidal risk. it further led to the creation of the second level team in the organigram of the centre jeunesse. this required the establishment of service contracts with general practitioners, redefining mandate assignments for nurses and psychologists already in the service of the centre jeunesse, and in many regions the need to establish resource sharing with the local community services centres (clsc). attracting general practitioners to the centre jeunesse was difficult in many cases because of the lack of general practitioners in the province and the pressure of the global health system on reduced resources. the official language of quebec is french, so the initial documents referred to here are in french. the author has been involved as a consultant-trainer in the initial dissemination of the protocol to all centres jeunesse of the province, but mostly in its planning, implementation and follow-up at batshaw youth and family centres. this centre jeunesse is the only one to provide services in english to families, children, and youth from the island of montreal, as well as to english speaking clients requiring services that other regions of the province cannot provide in english. implementation of the provincial suicide prevention protocol at batshaw youth and family centres (byfc) challenges and adjustments given the involvement of the author with a provincial task force on suicide prevention in the early and mid-1990s, the byfc had already started to create policies and procedures, identify appropriate screening tools, develop interview questions to be used, and establish a better working relationship with child psychiatry. when the provincial protocol came out, a review and modification of these documents and necessary adjustments to the practice were required. the first document produced after the introduction of the provincial protocol was the byfc policy (batshaw youth and family centres, 2001) with the following objectives: 1. detect clients at risk of suicidal behaviour, determine the level of urgency and severity of suicidal behaviour, and act accordingly. 2. prevent the occurrence of suicide or any forms of suicidal behaviour as well as decrease the risk of reoccurrence and possible contagion effect. 3. increase the sensitivity and awareness of caregivers, families, and partners to the issue of depression and suicide and enlist their involvement in helping clients at risk. 4. ensure that interveners and foster parents give systematic, immediate, and specific attention to all suicidal behaviours and that they are not left isolated in dealing with a situation of suicidal behaviour. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 147 5. provide a necessary level of supervision when a client at risk of suicidal behaviour is in placement (residential, foster care), pay particular attention to this risk in service and intervention plans, and foresee follow-up services, adequate support, and referral to appropriate resources. 6. clarify all stages of interventions indicating the roles and responsibilities of byfc personnel and foster parents with respect to the phenomenon of suicide. 7. record, gather, and share relevant information concerning situations of suicidal behaviour. 8. standardize byfc’s approach in order to provide continuity of clinical interventions in dealing with suicidal behaviour. 9. re-establish stability amongst staff and clients in the event of a suicide attempt or completed suicide. 10. manage the impact of a completed suicide within byfc and with our partners. the guiding principle of this policy is to ensure that suicidal risk is screened for, and handled appropriately, either through internal resources or external specialized resources. this aspect of the protocol focuses on the safety, security, and treatment of clients. the other important principle is to assure that no intervener remains isolated in dealing with such difficult situations, as well as to provide supports to family and others closely related to the suicidal person. in addition, these measures were taken in order to prevent contagion, particularly in cases of suicide. the vulnerability of suicide survivors has been well documented in the literature (séguin, kiely, & lesage, 1994; séguin, brunet, & leblanc, 2006) and requires due attention, especially given a clientele already representing a host of risk factors associated with suicidal behaviour. this aspect of the byfc policy refers to the protocol’s aim to acknowledge the inherent stress that suicidal behaviour brings to the staff and the need for the organization to provide supports in order to diminish the risks of vicarious traumatisation or professional burnout. secondly, parallel to the elaboration of the above policy, procedures were written in order to standardize the practice within batshaw youth and family centres regarding suicidal behaviour. one of the main functions of the procedures is to provide interveners with clear guidelines as to what to do when different types of suicidal behaviour occur. the procedures foresee the roles of different interveners in the organization, the communication channels, the recording of information in the case of suicidal ideation, suicidal ideation with a plan, a suicide attempt, and a suicide. one of the initial challenges was to provide a support system to the front line staff during regular hours as well as outside regular hours (evenings, nights, and weekends). in order to cover 24 hours a day, and seven days a week, one idea was to have the small second level team take turns and be on call, above their habitual duties. this was deemed too great a burden on these professionals, and didn’t necessarily make sense clinically. any crisis occurring in the evening, night, or weekend would require first and foremost measures to assure the safety and security of the client. it so happened that the residential services of byfc were creating a pool of duty officers, called on-site managers, to cover the evenings, nights, and weekends and thus were well placed to assist the front line staff in making decisions about heightened supervision or the necessity for risk assessment by the hospital system. all further assessment and setting up of intervention plans is better done during regular hours when both first and second level interveners international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 148 are on duty and can convene in order to collaborate on a common understanding of the case and of the treatment modalities. the second level interveners provide support to the on-site managers through debriefing, ongoing consultation, and communication related to levels of supervision and crisis management strategies. occasionally, the question of second line intervener availability outside of the regular hours resurfaces, particularly on the heels of demanding and emotionally intense situations often related to clients displaying chronic suicidal or self-harming behaviours. in these times, additional supports that are provided in a timely fashion can partly respond to the need expressed. levels of supervision one of the aims of the suicide prevention protocol was to develop a common language to use when referring to suicidal ideation, a suicidal plan, and a suicide attempt, as well as to introduce clear levels of supervision accordingly. every centre jeunesse, and often residential programs and hospital programs, have their own terminology, such as “suicide watch” or “strict sight supervision” to indicate what structure and supervision to provide to a suicidal client. the protocol introduced two levels of supervision required in the case of suicidal risk that contrast with the regular supervision generally applied to all youth in a given program. this regular supervision is referred to as the first level of supervision. level two (close supervision) requires visual contact at least every half-hour. when the youth concerned is in a location that is difficult for the supervising adult to access (e.g., washroom, shower), the frequency of the controls and the intensity of the supervision must increase. this may be accomplished by asking the youth to respond at shorter intervals to questions such as: “is everything okay?” or “are you okay in there?”. all necessary and possible changes can be made to the environment to make it safer: for example, personal belongings and furniture that pose a risk can be removed, and required alterations to the architectural layout, such as to doors and windows, can be undertaken to make the premises safer. level three (constant supervision) involves visual and auditory contact with the youth at all times. this involves “one-on-one” monitoring. as is the case for close supervision, this level requires that all necessary and possible changes be made to the environment to make it safer. since it can only be exercised in locations where these overall conditions can be met, “security-type units” may sometimes be the only place where constant supervision can take place. this decision is made by the program manager or on-site manager. collaboration with child psychiatry one other aspect of implementing the protocol involved collaboration with child psychiatry. one of the irritants between the hospital network and the child welfare network had been the use of the emergency room (er) as a way to get assessments of suicidal risk and general psychological functioning. the clarification of expectations regarding what an assessment in the er can provide (e.g., assessment of suicidal risk) helped to create other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 149 avenues for the more global assessment of psychological functioning, (e.g., determining a psychiatric diagnosis). consequently, a service corridor was developed specifically for clients of batshaw youth and family centres. it used the paediatrician affiliated to our second level team for the referral, and the nurses who gathered all the information in the file, including information from the batshaw psychologists and other professionals involved. this helped the child welfare interveners obtain more helpful and timely guidance in the organisation of their interventions. it was decided that the er would only be used in the case of a need for immediate risk assessment. agency consultation and approval the initial drafts of the policy and the procedures were submitted for consultation to the different departments and standing committees (multidisciplinary council, multicultural or multiracial committee) and were ultimately approved by the batshaw management committee (batshaw youth and family centres, 2001). the protocol was introduced to the division of residential services for adolescents at first, because this division receives the agency’s most vulnerable clientele that is most prone to acting out. over time, procedures for the other divisions were introduced in a staggered way. constitution of second level team the first step was to constitute the second level team and begin training. initially, designated nurses and a psychologist were identified and updated about the policy and the procedures. the main focus was to clarify their tasks and involvement in the different stages of intervention in cases of suicidal behaviour, but also to provide them with a theoretical training regarding suicidal behaviour as symptoms associated to mood disorders, conduct disorders often in comorbidity with substance abuse disorders. the framework for this training was developed at a provincial level and then adapted, translated, and delivered by the author for the agency. training of front line staff in a fairly short time period, all first level staff (educators and managers, as well as social workers affiliated exclusively to residential services) received one day of training, comprised of a theoretical component similar to the second level training, as well as an introduction to the policy. participants were invited to participate in a personal exercise concerning their feelings, attitudes, and values regarding suicidal behaviour, followed by a discussion related to ethical and religious considerations, and the stance taken by the agency that suicide in children and young people needs to be prevented with all our might. thus, as professionals of our agency, they are expected to adopt this value and stance. furthermore, in this training, the procedures are presented with a clear outline of role expectations and checklists of actions to undertake, depending on the type of suicidal behaviour presented by the client. the training proceeds further through experiential learning with vignettes of situations where participants are required to assess the situation and identify the actions required international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 150 according to the outlined procedures. these initial trainings became the base for future trainings that were later developed to accompany the implementation of this protocol in the other divisions. through the years, these trainings have become one of the requirements in the orientation of new staff. over time, the handling of non-suicidal self-injuries became a separately identified part of the procedures and the trainings. in the initial stages of this training, trainers encountered a lot of anxiety with the front line staff and a concern regarding the degree of training it takes to work with suicidal clients. the scope of the training was also to relay to the staff working directly with clients on a daily basis that many of the interventions required are of a psycho-educational nature and totally consistent with the base training and practice of educators. furthermore, the focus was on clarifying the multidisciplinary collaboration and the support the second and third levels provide. with time, and the use of the procedures, the first line staff became more confident with their capacity to intervene as well as with the supports in place. staff who participated in the training, after having already worked with suicidal clients and the new procedures, were more prepared, emotionally and professionally, to see these situations as an intricate part of their practice. ongoing consultation with staff in the residential units provided the opportunity to refresh the theoretical components of this protocol training. consultation is also a forum to discuss specific interventions, clinical procedures, the usefulness of specifically designed individual crisis management plans, and not in the least occasions to discuss the emotional strain suicidal clients bring to the individual worker and to the team. management of supervision levels the procedures of this protocol foresee the possibility of heightening the level of supervision of a youth in care because of suicidal risk. a level two supervision is generally put in place when there is suicidal ideation, some thoughts about the possible means, but no plans. any manager, including the on-site manager, can put in place the level two supervision. this level entails checking regularly (a minimum of every halfhour) with the youth about his or her state of mind, and more frequently if the youth is not visible during shower or washroom use. it doesn’t entail, however, waking up youth while they are asleep. one of the problems encountered with this level of supervision is the difficulty of carrying it over from one shift to the other, and the management of youth going into the community with this level (e.g., travelling to school). especially if the level is maintained for several days, the practice has shown that it sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, particularly if the youth has gone out of obvious crisis mode and is settled in a quieter way. several strategies have been used, certainly systematic shift exchange with a formal point on the agenda around levels of supervision. helping educators with broaching the difficult subject of suicidal ideation has been another way to avoid oversight of the level. level two has been adapted to allow youth to maximize their attendance at activities that are meaningful and gratifying to them, such as school or team sports. it requires putting clear boundaries and expectations around the travel time and route, and regular checking in by the unit with the location where the youth is, for example by calling in when leaving and arriving. these arrangements always require a case-by-case consideration international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 151 and when discomfort about any of these activities persists, it is better to cancel when one is not sure the youth can handle either the travel or the activity itself in the light of his or her more vulnerable state. the protocol calls for a discussion with the second level team for a reduction of this level back to regular supervision and this decision is made conjointly between the first level team and second level team staff. there had been some confusion in the initial days of the protocol around the role of the psychologist as opposed to the role of the nurse, in this process. the procedures clearly state that either one of these professionals can be involved in the lowering of this level. level three can also be instituted by any manager, except that during regular hours it is done in consultation with the second level team. level three is used when there is a high risk of acting on the suicidal ideation, generally because the youth has a plan. often the level three is used after a youth has gone into the hospital emergency because of a suicidal gesture or attempt. with time, the child psychiatrists became somewhat aware of the existence of these levels of supervision, but every situation necessitates discussion with the medical staff regarding the required need of supervision. when a youth is placed on level three supervision, one staff is with the youth at all times. the staff keeps the youth engaged, which doesn’t mean constant talk about suicide. however, the thoughts about suicide need regular examination, at least shift-by-shift. the youth is an essential source in this examination and is generally a good indicator of where he or she is at any given time. the educator uses his clinical judgment and the youth is also met by the second level staff, generally the nurse, more often present on the premises of the residential units. the changing of level three always requires a discussion between the second level professionals, as well as with the first level staff. unlike level two, it is the psychologist who decides on a change of the level, after due consultation. debriefing and postvention in the course of the last decade, several situations of suicide attempts have required debriefing and in two cases postvention was required. postvention is the specific process called for in cases of suicide. two youth committed suicide months after their discharge upon reaching the age of 18. these last two youth had been under byfc’s care for an extended period of time, had been chronically suicidal, and were highly invested in by the youth care teams that worked with them. other meetings resembling postvention meetings have occurred following violent or sudden deaths of current or former clients, and of staff. in debriefing situations, generally two representatives of the second level team would intervene with the professionals as well as with the peers, and in several situations also with the family of the suicidal client or with families of other clients affected by the situation. the debriefing procedure is very close to mitchell’s critical incident stress debriefing developed in the 1970s (mitchell, 1983). small groups gather in order to allow fact sharing, thoughts and reactions, and to teach how the symptoms are in the realm of the normal in these circumstances. an important goal of the debriefing is to help people move on, get them back to a routine, identify international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 152 individuals who might require more support and possibly need referral to outside help through the employee assistance program or other resources. for the second level interveners it was pivotal to have follow-up meeting(s) after any debriefing or postvention intervention. the second level interveners were all seasoned clinicians; however, not all of them had been exposed to this particular kind of clinical work and thus the initial debriefing or postvention sessions were learning experiences. the literature helped to prepare, but the subsequent debriefing of the debriefing sessions helped to integrate the theory and the practice for the second level interveners. one of the challenges with setting up debriefing sessions with residential intervention teams is the timeliness. ideally, they are done within a framework of 24 to 72 hours. it is not always easy to get all the professionals together within this time frame. the constraints of work responsibilities, scheduling, part-time work, etc., didn’t always permit the availability of two second level professionals and many debriefing sessions ended up being run by one professional. in addition, it was often required that these second level professionals extend their normal work schedules. following the debriefing, supports were put in place to help the professional after such solo interventions and provide additional support in the follow-up. the postvention sessions were not structurally different from the debriefing sessions, but the suicides affected far more people, both staff, youth, and their families. the sessions with the youth always happened before the staff sessions. as much as possible staff members were present in the sessions with the youth, mainly in order to be able to follow up later with the client group or with individual clients. therefore, some staff members would have been going to the process first in the presence of some of their clients and then later in company of their colleagues. the benefits and weaknesses of the protocol to the safety, security, and treatment of clients the main benefit of the suicide prevention protocol has been the systematic screening for suicidal behaviour. over the years, however, this protocol has expanded to include a systematic screening of global mental health. this screening has attracted attention to the presence of disorders as well as to the required treatments. the systematic use and application of the different levels of supervision, depending on the level of suicidal risk, has brought a greater sense of safety and security, both for children and their families, as well as staff. these procedures give clear guidelines for intervention as well as for channels of communication. the protocol has allowed for a tighter and clearer collaboration with the local child psychiatry network. the use of the emergency room has also diminished and now clients have scheduled assessments through our service corridor. these assessments go beyond a risk assessment, and provide more information and recommendations that can be worked into the intervention and service plans for clients. the weaknesses of this protocol are related to some of the benefits. first of all, the systematic screening underscores different types of treatment, some of which are relatively easy to put in place, while others cannot be delivered in a timely manner due to a lack of resources (e.g., psychotherapy). secondly, following up on crises with regular consultation regarding issues of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 153 mental health and ensuing intervention strategies to the treating team would be desirable, but cannot be systematically available for resource reasons, on the one hand, and on the other, once the crisis is over, the motivation to pursue these issues is lessened at the team level. thirdly, the level two supervision has been problematic when extending over several shifts or several days, especially when the behaviour of the child or youth has subsided and is attracting less attention. efforts have been made to include a discussion of the level of supervision in every shift change, but the most successful method has not yet been found to assure a more flawless continuity. fourthly, clear communication about the different events and interventions through the involvement of both first and second level staff remains a challenge. the electronic file system in use would allow the centralization of everybody’s progress notes, but departmental procedures are not always aligned and the streamlining of communication channels that requires major attention is currently in the works. exposure to suicidal behaviour and its impact on staff the youth presenting with suicidal ideations and attempts requires more structure and supervision and thus the highly structured secure residential units are more likely to receive these youth. in addition, staff in these residential units are often far more exposed to the stress that is part and parcel of working with suicidal clients. unfortunately, one has no control over the frequency of occurrence, nor on the number of suicidal clients one might have in a secure unit at any given time. work in the field of child welfare exposes interveners to a variety of sources contributing to the suffering of their clients and to the different ways this suffering translates into often disturbing and self-destructive behaviour. individual resources, professional training, ongoing education, and clinical supervision are means available to interveners to deal with the stress inherent to their daily work. professionals working in higher structured secure units that receive clients prone to suicidal or self-harming behaviour are at greater risk for vicarious traumatisation (mccann & pearlman, 1990; pearlman & saakvitne, 1995). dunkley and whelan (2006) discuss concepts related to vicarious traumatisation such as professional burnout, secondary traumatic stress disorder, and compassion fatigue. vicarious traumatisation seems to best describe the specific impact that work with trauma victims can have on interveners. several of the residential teams of secure units have been heavily burdened by the presence of one or more chronic suicidal clients, and the disclosure of the life stories behind the suicidal behaviour brings its share of exposure to the trauma in these children’s and youths’ lives that can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed. vicarious traumatisation refers to a transformation in the trauma worker’s inner experience resulting from empathic engagement with the trauma material of a client (figley, 1995, 1999; lewis & bensmihen, 2009). in order to avoid vicarious traumatisation or avoid professional burnout, a mix of personal and organizational strategies is required (rothchild, 2006; trippany, white kress, & wilcoxon, 2004). each individual can seek the best work-rest-play balance for themselves, maintain a good social support network, both professionally and personally, take care of one’s physical health, identify personal limits, and acknowledge the personal distress that work can bring. spirituality can be another source of personal support. organizational supports are in the realm of providing appropriate training as well international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 154 as access to continuing education; provide workers with manageable caseloads, consultation, and consistent supervision as well a respectful and supportive environment. despite the best knowledge of these different strategies, individuals do react differently. because of the stress of working in the units described above, these reactions may include booking off shifts or even going on sick leave. this scenario can then create more pressure on the remaining staff. moreover, the replacement staff members often have less work experience and can be more vulnerable to vicarious traumatisation. at the organizational level, additional supports can be offered by the second level team. over the past decade, experience has shown that this kind of help was often not asked for in a timely manner, and was only requested after exposure to a series of stressful incidents. the recuperation after exceptionally stressful shifts, with the occurrence of suicide attempts or recurrent serious self-injury, takes more than a single debriefing. the best remedy constitutes a series of “normal” shifts with their normal stress. helping a youth through one suicidal crisis is one thing; but dealing with a chronic suicidal youth is very different and much more demanding. the constant threat of a possible tragic gesture drains a lot of energy. how can a team best be accompanied in these stressful times? it is known that stress rises in an exponential fashion when a unit receives a second or a third suicidal client in the same way as described by rutter (1987), given the impact of the accumulation of stressors on the capacity to develop resilience. of course, the resilience of a team depends on its composition, but also on the presence of leadership, as well as the pressure it has confronted in its recent past. the staffing of residential unit teams follows the rules of collective agreements and solutions such as the rotation of personnel or temporary reassignment cannot be implemented easily. other solutions such as temporary or permanent mandate changes of the units or redirection of clients are equally difficult or impossible to implement given the limited resources available. despite being well trained and capable of understanding the dynamics of such clients, there is a limit to the staff’s tolerance to this stress. some individuals are more resistant, depending on their personal resources and the circumstances in their lives. personal circumstances can bring temporary reduction of the tolerance threshold in the workplace. some of these variables are beyond institutional control, but the organization has to maximize its strategies to provide supports and aim at the reduction of the stress related to suicidal clients. for instance, a more timely presence of heightened clinical support can be one of these strategies. professionals that provide this type of support expose themselves to the risk of getting overburdened as well. hence, the importance of the optimal distance from the practice that allows the provision of support to the front line staff without getting sucked into the same maelstrom. the benefits and weaknesses of the protocol for the protection of staff from vicarious victimisation the procedures provide guidelines for intervention and channels of communication among the different levels of intervention and the main goal is to avoid the isolation of interveners. the supports foreseen by the procedures, such as the implication of the nurses and psychologists, are very helpful, but the front line workers can still feel isolated during evenings, nights and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 155 weekends, when these professionals are neither on the premises nor available by phone. the rotation of on-call duties often leads to situations where front line workers have to repeat background information and recent events to different professionals, leading to frustration and also loss of useful information. ongoing follow-up around a specific client by a designated second level professional has been a way to provide ongoing support to residential teams. each highly structured secure unit has a specific professional attached as consultant. this professional can provide ongoing training on issues of mental health, suicidal behaviour, non-suicidal self-injury, as well as participation in clinical discussions aimed at improving intervention strategies. conclusion suicide prevention in child welfare cannot be dissociated from careful screening for mental health concerns. the vulnerable population of the centres jeunesse has many of the risk factors associated with the occurrence of self-harm and of suicidal behaviour. early detection and the treatment of the underlying mental disorders as well as promotion of global mental health through educational programming are all ways to prevent suicidal behaviour. clinical support to the front line staff and professional assessment of the suicidal risk and the mental disorders by mental health professionals is another condition to prevent suicide. furthermore, adequate training to front line staff in terms of theoretical understanding as well as professional intervention strategies adds to the confidence staff have in their capacity to help these vulnerable youth. last but not least, ongoing supervision, clinical consultation, and peer support and supervision will help front line staff to maintain their professional and emotional capacity to face the daily stressors and the high demands that come with work with these vulnerable children and youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 144–157 156 references association des centres jeunesse. 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(2006). intervention en situation de crise et en contexte traumatique [intervention in situations of crises and related to trauma]. montreal: les éditions de la chenelière. trippany, r. l., white kress, v. e., & wilcoxon, s. a. (2004). preventing vicarious trauma: what counselors should know when working with trauma survivors. journal of counseling & development, 82(1), 31–37. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2004.tb00283.x the procedures of this protocol foresee the possibility of heightening the level of supervision of a youth in care because of suicidal risk. a level two supervision is generally put in place when there is suicidal ideation, some thoughts about the pos... one of the problems encountered with this level of supervision is the difficulty of carrying it over from one shift to the other, and the management of youth going into the community with this level (e.g., travelling to school). especially if the leve... international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321283 neuroscientific evidence and care leaving: a multidisciplinary critical commentary amit sundly, meghan keating, andem effiong, and abdullah omar saif abstract: while neuroscientific literature suggests that some parts of the brain are not fully developed until the mid-20s, public discourse is skewed toward early child development (ecd) because of its supposed long-term economic benefits. some researchers have gone so far as to say that society overinvests in remedial programs for disadvantaged adolescents. such claims resist advocacy efforts for extended care for children in out-of-home care and discourage policy and legislative concerns regarding investing in early adulthood. in this commentary, we unpack the literature on brain development and critically discuss its selective use by legislators and policymakers for investments in ecd. despite the availability of neuroscientific and economic evidence, it is not prominent in the discourse surrounding supportive interventions like extending care. using bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, we discuss how preference is given to only the type of knowledge that preserves the social structures that work to ensure the multigenerational flow of capital among dominant groups. also, social institutions act within the dimensions set by the social structure, constantly shaping and reshaping ways of facilitating capital preservation among the upper classes. we conclude that, in addition to moral argument, the current neuroscientific evidence may support investment in extended care programs. amit sundly med (corresponding author) is a phd candidate at the division of community health and humanities, faculty of medicine, memorial university, 300 prince phillip drive, st. john’s, newfoundland and labrador a1b 3v6. email: as0887@mun.ca meghan keating jd is an llm candidate at osgoode hall law school, york university, 92 edison place, st. john’s, newfoundland and labrador a1e 6h9. email: meghanskeating@gmail.com andem effiong mace is a clinical epidemiologist at the faculty of medicine, memorial university, 300 prince phillip drive, st. john’s, newfoundland and labrador a1b 3v6. email: aeffiong@mun.ca abdullah omar saif msc is a ph.d. candidate at the division of community health and humanities, faculty of medicine, memorial university, 300 prince phillip drive, st. john’s, newfoundland and labrador a1b 3v6. email: aosaif@mun.ca acknowledgement: amit sundly would like to thank dr. diana l. gustafson, honorary research professor, division of community health and humanities, memorial university, for her consistent motivation and valuable input on academic writing and grantsmanship. he would also like to thank janeway children’s hospital foundation for the financial support towards his doctoral degree. all the authors would like to thank the reviewer and the editor from the international journal of child, youth and family studies for their valuable feedback. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 31 a multinational study of care-leaving legislation in 36 countries by strahl et al. (2020) revealed that few countries have well-developed legislation in this area and that such legislation, where it exists, generally provides little support to youth beyond 18. canada, where care-leaving legislation is a provincial/territorial responsibility, places among the countries with rudimentary care-leaving legislation. the limited attention given to such programs, despite the evidence that youth in transition face social and economic adversities, implies that interventions at the age of transition (later childhood/early adulthood) and extending care are not a priority for canadian legislators and policymakers. with regard to the other end of the spectrum of childhood — the early years — the last two decades have evidenced considerable motivation globally for investment and interventions (beddoe & joy, 2017; wastell & white, 2012). the motivation for promoting interventions for early childhood development (ecd) during the critical first 5 years of life is grounded in evidence from the field of neuroscience, and the economic benefits of investing in ecd (center on the developing child at harvard university, 2007; heckman, 2006; heckman & masterov, 2007; irwin et al., 2007). the influential nobel prizewinning economist james heckman used data from the perry preschool program and the abecedarian project and estimated annual returns between 7% and 13% per year on investment in ecd programs with disadvantaged children and families (heckman, 2016). according to heckman and mastrov (2007), ecd interventions are significantly more effective than interventions in later life. heckman (2006) stated that: early interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have much higher returns than later interventions such as reduced pupil teacher ratios, public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies, or expenditure on police. at current levels of resources, society overinvests in remedial skill investments at later ages and underinvests in the early years. (p. 1902) rea and burton (2020) found “no support for the claim that social policy programs targeted early in the life course have the largest benefit–cost ratios, or that on average the benefits of adult programs are less than the cost of the intervention” (p. 241). with respect to children in care, multiple cost–benefit analyses have shown that increasing support for youth in transition outweighs the associated costs (forbes et al., 2006/2016; ontario provincial advocate for children and youth, 2012; packard et al., 2008; shaffer et al., 2016). rea and burton (2021) further state: a number of early intervention programs have been shown to be cost effective, as have a range of “remedial” or “second chance” programs targeting older individuals. good public policy requires a case-by-case assessment of the evidence and benefit–cost analysis for each intervention being considered. (p. 1258) neuroscience is a rapidly developing field that continues to advance our understanding of brain physiology and functionality, although munro and musholt (2014) have suggested that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 32 neuroscientific evidence at most confirms what is already known from the social sciences about the detrimental effects of childhood maltreatment. at present, the findings that 90% of the human brain develops by age 5 and that investing in ecd has long-lasting economic benefits continue to motivate significant investment in ecd programs worldwide (beddoe & joy, 2017; wastell & white, 2012). however, neuroscientific evidence showing ongoing brain development during adolescence and the demonstrated economic benefit of investing in supports during adolescence and emerging adulthood have made comparatively little impact in the public policy domain. while acknowledging that intervention in the early years is crucial and promotes future health, a growing body of neuroscientific evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex (pfc) of the human brain does not fully develop until the mid-20s (arain et al., 2013; burns & bechara, 2007; giedd et al., 1999; hochberg & konner, 2020; samango-sprouse, 2007). according to arain et al. (2013): the development and maturation of the prefrontal cortex occurs primarily during adolescence and is fully accomplished at the age of 25 years. the development of the prefrontal cortex is very important for complex behavioral performance, as this region of the brain helps accomplish executive brain functions (p. 459). despite these findings, there remains a contrast in both government and public rhetoric about investment aimed at disadvantaged children in early childhood versus young adulthood. investment is skewed predominantly towards early childhood because of studies that show high returns on ecd interventions (wastell & white, 2012). while critiquing the selective application of neuroscientific evidence and its use in economics research, bruer lamented that “the findings of the new brain science have become accepted facts, no longer in need of explanation or justification, to support childcare initiatives” (bruer, 1999, p. 61). why is the evidence from neuroscience and economics used selectively by legislators and policymakers to justify increased investments in early childhood but not in interventions with adolescents and young adults exiting care? intrigued by this question, i (the first author) began to think beyond the practical matter of what policy, programs, and legislation are in place for young adults who grew up in the canadian child welfare system. this led to the present critical commentary, which is a collaborative effort by an interdisciplinary scholar, a clinician, a lawyer, and a critical theorist to explore the question from a multidisciplinary and critical perspective. in this commentary, we first briefly introduce canadian care-leaving legislation and transition programs; this is followed by a section on neuroscientific evidence on brain development in adolescence and early adulthood. finally, using bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, we will explore why legislators and policymakers use evidence from neuroscience and economics to justify increased investment in early childhood but do not use the abundant similar evidence to justify increased investment in interventions with adolescents and young adults exiting care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 33 transitioning youth in canada in canada, it is estimated that over 62,000 children are in care at any given time (jones et al., 2015; trocmé et al., 2019). the lack of federal uniformity or common standards among provinces and territories means that when these children are ready to transition out of care, they may experience different standards of services depending on where they live. unsurprisingly, most children transitioning out of canada’s care system face significant obstacles that can lead to detrimental health and well-being outcomes (rome & raskin, 2019; tweddle, 2007). overrepresentation of individuals with care experience among the young homeless population (between 13 and 24 years of age) and historical negative care outcomes are viewed as evidence of ineffective and insufficient transition planning (gaetz et al., 2016; shewchuk, 2020). canada has no federal legislation with child protection oversight; instead, its 13 provinces and territories have the responsibility of handling child protection and welfare matters. the lack of national legislation means there is little uniformity across the country regarding child protection and welfare. for example, even the definition of a child — someone who has not reached the age of majority — is not consistent across each piece of legislation: in several provinces, a child is a person under 18 or 19; in others, it is a person under 16 (public health agency of canada, 2019). further, some definitions include youth within the term “child”, whereas others regard youth as a distinct age category (public health agency of canada, 2019). although programs and services are available for youth in transition in canada, there are several issues that reduce the effectiveness of these programs. the cut-off age, at which individuals in care must exit the system and no longer receive protection services, is inconsistent, ranging from 16 to 19. in most provinces, 16and 17-year-old youth who have no one to take care of them upon exiting care have the option of entering into services agreements to receive continued intervention services. under these agreements, provinces provide financial, residential, supportive, and rehabilitative services to individuals who can no longer stay at home, through such initiatives as newfoundland and labrador’s extension of youth services program (sukumaran, 2021; public health agency of canada, 2019). despite making services available for youth in transition, policymakers are criticized for their overt focus on measurable outcomes, such as education or employment (antle et al., 2009; barker et al., 2020; lee & berrick, 2014). however, a scoping review of high school outcomes of children in care found that neither researchers nor policymakers are well informed about the high school outcomes of children in care in anglosphere countries (sundly et al., 2023). most of these transition supports have conditions attached to them. according to sukumaran (2021), the funding for education and employment support programs requires youth to attend postsecondary education or training to develop skills for future employment. other programs that do not have an academic condition attached to them require youth to maintain regular contact with their case manager to update them on their transition plans. some provinces and territories limit their support to individuals who are in specific care arrangements immediately before their cut-off international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 34 age. not meeting the requirements means an end of support and services. hence, the nature of the oversight attached to these programs is authoritarian, disciplinary, punitive, and hegemonic rather than just and empathetic (featherstone et al., 2014). lee and berrick (2014) and shewchuk (2020) have argued that current programs do not emphasize the development of relational skills and social capital, which are crucial for post-care independent living. some advocates who emphasize the social determinants of health have put forward proposals for models, frameworks, and best practices to improve the effectiveness of transition plans, with common elements that include an emphasis on interdependence, enhancing social capital and agency, extending support until mid-twenties, and a holistic approach to services (e.g., armstrong-heimsoth et al., 2021; greeson, 2013; sukumaran, 2021). beyond the moral and ethical arguments for extending these services, abundant neuroscientific evidence also suggests an increased need for support during adolescence and early adulthood. neuroscientific evidence in brain development during adolescence and early adulthood in public discourse, the value of the early years in a child’s life is taken as established fact, largely on the basis of scientific findings on brain development that have been reported in the mass media and cited in advertisements. however, the neuroscientific evidence about brain development during adolescence and young adulthood — though sometimes invoked in the legal defence of juvenile offenders in the united states (shah, 2016; yoder & decety, 2017) and within legal contexts in general (chandler, 2015; meixner jr., 2018; schwartz et al., 2018; steinberg, 2014; walsh, 2010) — seldom informs prevention and health promotion initiatives, including the provision of transition supports for care leavers. while acknowledging the importance of the early years, we argue that the neuroscientific evidence on brain development in later childhood and early adulthood clearly merits discussion. significant brain development occurs during early childhood, but not only then: dynamic alterations of the gray and white matter subregions of the brain persist during adolescence (casey et al., 2009; sowell et al., 2004). the motor and sensory systems underlying primary functions mature first (gogtay et al., 2004), and higher order association areas that consolidate the primary functions mature later (arain et al., 2013). myelinogenesis, the development of the myelin sheath needed for adequate insulation, systematic control, and communication in the nervous system, extends beyond childhood (arain et al., 2013). as a result, the brain during adolescence remains structurally and functionally sensitive to sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) and environmental stimuli, affecting sex, eating, and sleeping habits (arain et al., 2013). scientists have also argued that the neural mechanisms underlying changes in adolescent behaviour are characterized by an increased sensitivity to rewards and reduced control of impulses (casey et al., 2008). extant human and animal imaging research suggests a biological premise comprising disparate progression of limbic reward systems throughout adolescence in contrast to childhood and adulthood (casey et al., 2008). galvan et al. (2007) conducted a study “designed to examine neural correlates of risk-taking behaviour in adolescents, relative to children and adults” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 35 (p. f8) and found that the predominance of glutaminergic neurotransmission juxtaposed with impaired gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba) transmission may be behind immature behaviour, neurobehavioural excitement, and impulsivity commonly seen among adolescents. the regulation of affective (emotional) arousal is a crucial facet of human social and cognitive development (perlman & pelphrey, 2011). the process and mechanisms involved in developing this executive functioning component include the pfc regulation of the amygdala — the brain’s emotional center, responsible for primal feelings of fear and rage (perlman & pelphrey, 2011). perlman and pelphey (2011) found “reliable increases in affective connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex [a region of the pfc] and the amygdala during times of increased demand for emotional regulation” (p. 607). specifically, their study of how brain connectivity relating to emotions changes with age found that constructive connectivity increases throughout childhood, and in early, middle, and late adulthood. meanwhile, according to shah (2016), there is evidence that activation in the amygdala is less subject to inhibition by the pfc during adolescence: “visual [imaging] scans have established that while teens rely mostly on the use of the amygdala — the region that guides instinctual or ‘gut’ reactions — adults rely on the frontal cortex, which governs reason and planning” (p. 174). overall, adolescence is a time of marked sensitivity to environmental disturbances that can have long-term effects on pfc functioning (blakemore & mills, 2014). in particular, the adolescent brain is not fully mature: cognitive and neurological ontogenesis extends through adolescence and early adulthood (rocque, 2015). the aggregation of these processes and changes in maturation enhances brain physiology, facilitates more rational thought, and makes information exchange more efficient, resulting in better impulse control and decision-making (steinberg, 2014). in recent years, research on the course of brain development has informed us that even late in the teen years and early adulthood, a person’s capacity for judgement is limited because the pfc is not fully developed (arain et al., 2013; burns & bechara, 2007; giedd et al., 1999; hochberg & konner, 2020; samango-sprouse, 2007). these neurological findings second the theory of emerging adulthood, as propounded by arnett (2000). emerging adulthood is defined as: an extended period of development between adolescence and young adulthood, typically lasting from ages 18 to 25. central to the theory is the tenet that emerging adulthood is a distinct period of development, different from the stage of adolescence that precedes it and the young adult period that follows. the theory of emerging adulthood stresses the psychological and subjective experiences of individuals aged 18 to 25, characterizing the age period as one of identity explorations, feeling “in-between,” instability, self-focus, and possibilities. (tanner & arnett, 2016, p. 34) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 36 while these findings are interesting, there might be concerns that such research could be used to justify calls for increasing the legal age of driving, drinking, voting, and so on. using simulated driving activities, foy et al. (2016) studied pfc activation and young driver behaviour. according to them, although there was no difference in how many overtakes each group performed, ageassociated differences did occur in pfc activity. yet when comparing younger drivers’ pfc activity in regard to inhibitory control and mental workload with that of older drivers, younger drivers did not exhibit different risk-taking behaviours. nonetheless, older drivers used more inhibitory control, suggesting they were safer when they decided to overtake. although younger drivers exhibited significantly lower pfc activity than older drivers, brain size reductions and cognitive slowing in older adults may also lead to increased crash risk and lower performance. thus, examining other ages and populations in future longitudinal studies may be advantageous before setting age limits for tasks such as driving, voting, or drinking. assessing changes in pfc functional activity and related structural maturation over time via a longitudinal study design with structural imaging scans would provide sounder justification for implementing age limits for task choices hitherto determined primarily by age-related differences in experience, cognition, and behaviour. within the context of the child welfare system, we argue that young adults in the general population typically have significant adults (e.g., parents) to support them during this sensitive period of brain development. while their own pfc is still in maturation, they have mature, caring adults with fully developed pfc to guide and advise them — such guidance compensates for the natural impairment that results in impulsivity and helps them make better decisions about such activities as drinking and driving. however, most young adults exiting care have to make judgement calls without the benefit of caring individuals who can provide them with proper guidance or put limits on them. whether to exit care at the earliest opportunity, regardless of consequences in the outside world, is one such judgement call. the overrepresentation of individuals with care experience among the young homeless population in canada may be the result of adolescents’ tendency to make impulsive decisions based on gut reactions. previously, studies on youth in transition stressed the importance of support during the transition out of the care system (mann-feder, 2007; mann-feder & goyette, 2019; mcghee & deeley, 2022; toulany et al., 2022). despite these findings, the welfare discourse continues to be dominated by the idea of the “critical years” of ecd, leading to a disproportionate distribution of funds. while acknowledging the importance of investment in ecd, the evidence from neuroscience and economics shows that emerging adulthood is also a critical phase in human development. we ask why, despite the current neuroscience and economic evidence, child welfare legislators and policymakers continue to regard early childhood interventions and investments as more important than interventions for and investments in transitioning youth and young adults? our critical assessment follows. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 37 a critical analysis of ecd investment the evidence informing social and public policies and the policies themselves should undergo critical scrutiny. unfortunately, health policies often result from political considerations without regard to scientific rigour; the selective emphasis on investing in ecd programs is one example (bruer, 1999). beddoe and joy (2017) and wastell and white (2012) have accused policymakers of predominantly relying on neuroscientific claims that are often not critically examined nor validated by further experimentation. multiple researchers have criticized the notion that the first few years determine the life trajectory in later years. for example, in his influential book three seductive ideas, kagan (2000) questioned whether early years really determine future development. kagan provided counterevidence of war orphans who, despite having experienced traumatic early childhood, came to achieve intellectual levels that were similar to those achieved by average children. in their study of child maltreatment and brain development, twardosz and lutzker (2010) stated, “the precise effects on the human brain and the extent to which they might be reversed or modified by intervention are still far from clear” (p. 66). a limitation of using neuroimages as evidence is that they do not tell us anything about genetic or environmental influences on the brain (munro & musholt, 2014; schmitz & höppner, 2014). in fact, “the apparent tendency in the literature to think of them [neuroimages] as akin to photographs leads to a tendency to over-estimate their reliability” (munro & musholt, 2014, p. 19), and the decontextualized public use of such images can be misleading (wastell & white, 2012). however, these images continue to be used in government reports that inform public policies and investments (beddoe & joy, 2017; wastell & white, 2012). our intent is not to nullify the neuroscience or economics behind investing in ecd programs. we simply want to express the view that neuroscience, like any other branch of knowledge, has complexities whose interpretation can result in contradictory perspectives. some researchers suggest that more research is needed to establish causation in factors influencing brain development. as wastell and white (2012) put it: “neuroscientists and clinicians concern themselves with understanding the workings of the brain, the aetiology of neurodevelopmental disorders and eventually their work may produce new treatments, but currently the knowledge is not ‘policy ready’ ” (p. 411). so, why does investment in early childhood receive so much attention despite evidence that critical brain development continues to occur later? we investigate this question in light of pierre bourdieu’s social reproduction theory. pierre bourdieu’s social reproduction theory one aspect of social reproduction theory explains how social disparities are reproduced within society. social disparities are created when certain social groups gain more ability to access different types of capital than others have. bourdieu (1986/2010) categorizes these types of capital as economic, social, symbolic, and cultural. economic capital comprises resources such as money and wealth. social capital generally refers to an individual’s connections with their social network, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 38 while symbolic capital refers to the resources or prestige that individuals gain through their positions in society. cultural capital refers to the skills (e.g., language skills, knowledge) people learn as a result of belonging to a certain social group or class. the notion of cultural capital is crucial to understanding how social reproduction produces disparities in society. for example, learning a language from an elite institution can enhance a person’s skills, which may help them achieve more economic capital (e.g., money). according to bourdieu, access to capital is essential for human development: the more capital we have, the more powerful we can be in society. people belonging to the upper or hegemonic class have better access to all four types of capital than those belonging to poorer classes. also, important for understanding social reproduction is the concept of habitus, which helps explain how access to capital is linked with the reproduction of knowledge. bourdieu’s (2004) term “habitus” refers to a person’s internalization of experiences of the social world in which they live. knowledge derived from such internalization can be personal, meaningful, and seem commonsensical to the individual. however, bourdieu wanted us to consider that the processes through which the individual internalizes their continuous flow of experiences are not independent of the influences of social structures. a social structure is a space consisting of different social groups that struggle to exert power over each other regarding capital accumulation. since they have more access to capital than others do, dominant groups have more power to shape and reshape social institutions that disseminate knowledge, and so these institutions work to maintain and continue the existing social structure with all its disparities (bourdieu, 2004). in other words, knowledge reproduction in a society emanates from the social structure and is carried out by institutions that perpetuate the knowledge used by the dominant culture to maintain its multigenerational dominance. the necessity of promoting the dominant knowledge through institutions comes from the capitalist desire to pass accumulated capital from one generation to another. however, this knowledge only reflects the lived experiences of the dominant groups. the experiences and knowledge of other groups are not captured when knowledge is reproduced unless they help preserve the existing social structure. this explains why knowledge disseminated in educational institutions often fails to capture other voices. the distribution of knowledge or cultural capital occurs in such a way that only dominant groups, or groups near them, can use this knowledge to ensure the flow of the various forms of capital among themselves, creating disparities in society. in bourdieu’s (1973) words, “the educational system reproduces all the more perfectly the structure of the distribution of cultural capital among classes (and sections of a class) in that the culture which it transmits is closer to the dominant culture” (p. 493). to maintain the passing on of capital to hegemonic classes, the social structure selectively picks up knowledge favourable to the upper classes and perpetuates it through institutions such as schools, universities, and research organizations (bourdieu, 2004; 1986/2010). bourdieu wanted us to analyze the structures of institutions to understand the reproduction of knowledge as a consequence of the flow of capital among dominant groups. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 39 applying bourdieu’s theory to ecd bourdieu’s conceptualization of social reproduction provides us with a lens to understand why a certain habitus or knowledge is preferred over others (bourdieu, 2004). in our case, we have noted that there is a focus on investment in ecd, ignoring neuroscientific and economic claims suggesting that investment in later years could also be beneficial. we discuss two points below in light of the concept of social reproduction. first, using a bourdieusian analytical approach, we see that in a capitalist society, the reproduction of knowledge is associated with wealth accumulation. the dominant groups within a capitalist society are driven by the desire to accumulate capital. this indicates that in a capitalist system, preferences will be given to only those types of knowledge that preserve the existing social structure, which works to ensure the flow of capital among the dominant groups from generation to generation. this also means that ideas that are not economically justifiable — “cash-worthy” — will not be prioritized. the idea of spending more on ecd is regarded as cash-worthy because investing in early childhood has been deemed economically beneficial, with a potential high return (heckman, 2006). wastell and white (2012) provided interesting evidence that shows how dominant capitalist discourse wants to make investing in the early years attractive to the masses. one influential report on investing in ecd in the united kingdom features a “brain image on the cover, … joined by symbolic bars of gold emphasizing the economic sense behind ‘early intervention’ ” (wastell & white, 2012, p. 397). we argue that the accepted cash-worthiness of investing in ecd demonstrates that hegemonic forces working through different institutions of knowledge production see young children as better “capitalist assets” than adolescents or young adults are. since capital accumulation is one of the major objectives of capitalism, any intervention that does not generate maximum capital is often discarded. for example, bruer, cited in smith (2014), stated that there is a concern that funding for educational programs in prisons will be withdrawn because the dominant discourse discourages investment in later years. although neuroscientific research suggests that important parts of the brain continue to develop up to age 25 or so, the hegemonic forces see investing in later years as less profitable than spending money on ecd. second, the idea of investing in ecd is promoted to policymakers through research organizations that are often run by wealthy families and individuals. even government agencies and international authoritative bodies are susceptible to political motivations. these institutions are acting within the dimensions set by the social structure, which is constantly shaping and reshaping ways to facilitate capital preservation among the upper classes. therefore, these organizations continue to promote ecd investment, ignoring the extensive body of literature that invites policymakers to extend their thoughts beyond the early childhood framework. we posit that there is a need to use a critical stance to demystify narratives based on ideas regarding human brain development, and the economic studies grounded in these narratives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 30–46 40 concluding comments according to the center on the developing child at harvard university (2022b), “helping adults build and use … core capabilities is essential not only to their own success as parents and workers, but also to the development of the same capabilities by the children in their care” (p. 8). moreover, “current health promotion and disease prevention policies focused on adults would be more effective if evidence-based investments were also made to strengthen the foundations of health in the prenatal and early childhood periods” (center on the developing child at harvard university, 2022a, p. 2). therefore, we argue that ecd programs can complement interventions and investments in adolescence and early adulthood but are not an adequate substitute for them. we have shown in this article that legislators and policymakers use evidence from neuroscience and economics selectively to argue for increased investments in early childhood, rather than also applying such evidence to interventions with adolescents and young adults exiting care. to explore why this is so, we have offered a multidisciplinary critical commentary on: (a) the current canadian care-leaving legislation and programs and their limitations; (b) current neuroscientific evidence supporting the argument that critical brain development is not limited to early childhood but continues throughout adolescence and early adulthood; and (c) the selective application of the available evidence, drawing on bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction. while discussing the capitalistic structural and hegemonic forces that may have skewed investment towards programs in ecd, we add our voices to those who call for increased investment in programs for care leavers in emerging adulthood. for children in care, this would mean extending care until their mid-20s. moreover, supporting individuals who have grown up in care is a moral responsibility of the state (mendes et al., 2022). the argument on extending support for transitioning youth that is currently grounded in moral and sociological findings — what munro and musholt (2014) called soft science — can also be backed by hard neuroscientific evidence, as we have shown. according to munro and musholt (2014), neuroscientific evidence may be more appealing to policymakers and legislators “due to an implicit bias towards so-called ‘hard sciences’, which are somehow seen as providing better, more reliable evidence than ‘soft sciences’, such as the social sciences” (p. 19). even though we have made an argument for extended supports for care leavers, we stress that the evidence informing social and public policies, like the policies themselves, should undergo repeated critical scrutiny. this proposition is nothing new: critical scholars and philosophers have clearly shown that discourses around health need to be deconstructed and decolonized (holmes et al., 2006). from the philosophical works of deleuze, guattari, and foucault, we see that health discourses are heavily laden with positivistic or post-positivistic paradigms that exclude evidence that is incongruent with the hegemonic intent in various socially located institutions producing health knowledge. the arguments we have presented in this paper call for a more nuanced and critical study of knowledge production to better understand how capitalist 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(2017). the neuroscience of morality and social decision-making. psychology, crime & law, 24(3), 279–295. doi:10.1080/1068316x.2017.1414817 original paper international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 150 improving sexual health resources for youth: the use of sex-positive public health websites clemon george, robert weaver, alyssa higginson, and lindsay chartier abstract: technologies that bring more information to our fingertips can often mislead and misinform youth about the risks of practising unsafe sex. on the other hand, valid and trustworthy information can promote health and reduce harmful practices by shaping and encouraging safe sex practices. our qualitative study conducted with 32 youth explored their desire to access sexual health information and services, their perceptions of current sexual health services, and their sources of information. the results of the study indicate that youth are concerned about the accessibility, anonymity, confidentiality, and comfort of sexual health services; and that they identified the internet as a key source of information, and as the preferred medium for sexual health information. yet they expressed concern about the quality of information retrieved on the internet. this indicates that trustworthy sources of youth-friendly health materials on the internet need to be provided to support youth in making low-risk sexual decisions. keywords: adolescent, reproductive health, health service, internet, health promotion, canada disclosure: dr. george was funded by a canadian institutes for health research (cihr) new investigator award during the time of this research. alyssa higginson was awarded a cihr masters award. this study was funded by the ontario hiv treatment network through a capacity-building grant. the authors wish to thank members of the durham sexyouthality project and the participants who devoted their time and opinions to this study. clemon george, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor at the university of ontario institute of technology, faculty of health sciences, 2000 simcoe street north, ua 3000, oshawa, ontario, canada, l1h 7k4. e-mail: clemon.george@uoit.ca robert weaver, ph.d. is a professor at the university of ontario institute of technology, faculty of health sciences, 2000 simcoe street north, ua 3000, oshawa, ontario, canada. email: robert.weaver@uoit.ca alyssa higginson is a graduate student at the university of ontario institute of technology, oshawa, ontario, canada. e-mail: allysa.j.higginson@gmail.com lindsay chartier is a youth worker with the aids committee of durham region, oshawa, ontario, canada. e-mail: youth@aidsdurham.com mailto:clemon.george@uoit.ca mailto:robert.weaver@uoit.ca mailto:allysa.j.higginson@ mailto:youth@aidsdurham.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 151 youth in canada experience a high burden of sexually transmitted infections (sti) and early pregnancy (maticka-tyndale, 2001, 2008). this is exemplified in the durham region, a municipality east of toronto, where the prevalence of stis such as chlamydia among youth is high (durham region health department, 2004). for example, in the durham region for the years 2007 and 2009 combined, chlamydia rates in males 15 to 19 years were reported at 298.3 per 100,000 compared to a corresponding gender/age provincial average of 278.0 per 100,000, and among females 15 to 19 years at 1,203.5 per 100,000 compared to a corresponding gender/age provincial average of 1,155.7 per 100,000 (durham region health department, 2011). for various reasons, youth, particularly those from rural communities and sexual minority groups, have difficulty in accessing sexual health services (klein, mcnulty, & flatau, 1998; trieu, bratton, & hopp marshak, 2011; walters, horwath, & simoni, 2001). in addition to such barriers as poor health infrastructure, including limited clinical services, difficult transportation schedules, and long distances between home and clinical sites, access to sexual health services is often challenged by community and cultural values stigmatizing youth sexual practices (maticka-tyndale, 2001). this reduces the likelihood of youth seeking direct sexual health information and health care services (maticka-tyndale, 2008; quine et al., 2003). how services are made available influences who will access them and the extent to which they will be accessed. however, youth input is seldom included in policy and program development. for sexual health services to be effective, youth must be aware of the services available and feel comfortable accessing them; moreover, the services must be appealing and flexible enough to fit within youth schedules (anderson & lowen, 2010). further, for programs to be effective for youth, especially for sexual minorities, they must be perceived as friendly. we conducted a qualitative study in durham region, ontario, canada, to explore youths’ access to sexual health services, their perceptions of current sexual health services, and their sources of and desire for information to help with sexual health decision-making. methods community-based research this qualitative study used a community-based participatory action research approach. this approach offers theoretical flexibility and facilitates the development of community networks and capacity. moreover, the approach fosters “buy-in” among youth whose concerns we wished to understand and whose needs we hoped to meet (minkler, 2000). developing partnerships would aid in the shaping of services that would be more youth-centred and hence more acceptable to youth (anderson & lowen, 2010; maticka-tyndale, 2008). youth were engaged through the development of a community advisory committee (cac). this cac included members of an existing youth community-building group and other youth members who were interested in sexual health research. members were recruited by advertising on the internet and through the durham healthy sexyouthality coalition (a group of government and non-governmental agencies working with and on behalf of youth in durham region). a total of eight youth, who self-identified variously as heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual, formed the cac. the cac met during the early stages of the research process to set the agenda, approve the questionnaire guide, and advise on recruitment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 152 recruitment and sample focus groups were employed for gathering data since this approach would encourage ongoing capacity-building by engaging youth in areas that affect their lives. based on recommendations from the cac, focus group participants were assigned to four groups to capture a diverse range of sexual health needs in the region: an urban group, a rural group, a semi-rural group, and a group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and other sexually diverse youth (lgbt). the lgbt group included youth from all geographic areas in the region. each member participated in one group only. flyers and information cards about the study were distributed at stakeholders’ work sites, and we actively recruited participants at local shopping centres and other areas frequented by youth. additionally, we posted the study on the local “craigslist” website. the recruitment material included a poster with brief information about the study, a telephone number, incentive information, and the e-mail address of the study coordinator. participants would then contact the coordinator, who screened them for eligibility according to five criteria: (a) between the ages of 15 and 24 years, (b) a local resident, (c) able to provide contact information, (d) able to consent to participation in the study, and (e) able to commit to three meetings over a one-month period. focus groups for each group of participants, we planned three focus-group meetings at one-week intervals. at the first meeting, the research was introduced and informed consent was obtained. we also attempted to sensitize youth about the topics, to create a friendly environment to facilitate discussions in a group setting, and to ensure that youth were aware of basic ground rules. the second meeting was a guided discussion and the third meeting included a “member checking” and debriefing session. at that final focus group meeting, participants were able to add information that had not emerged in earlier discussions and to correct information that may have been misunderstood. we wanted to capture broad areas of youth concern about sexual health without delving into individual behaviours in a group setting. we provided a safe environment for youth to express themselves and urged participants to describe “what their friends do or say” to remove the pressure of unwittingly disclosing personal information (although most youth did speak in the first person). youth were reminded of the principles of inclusion, group etiquette, and confidentiality of information. group discussions followed a general questionnaire guide created with the cac. at each focus group meeting, participants were greeted by the study coordinator , who was also a youth, and an adult facilitator. a light dinner was offered and refreshments were available throughout the meeting. once youth had had the opportunity to meet, and to partake in refreshments, the facilitator began with icebreakers to bring light humour to the meeting, and thus encourage honest discussion, as described by powell and single (1996). each meeting lasted approximately two hours. all meetings were held at youth-friendly, accessible, and safe locations, with a trained peer coordinator and a facilitator, who took notes. the study was approved by the university of ontario institute of technology research ethics board. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 153 data collection group discussions were slightly modified based on the dynamics in each group. some groups were ready to discuss sexual health needs and priorities from the first meeting while others took longer to develop rapport. discussions were audio-recorded and a note-taker documented non-verbal cues and reactions of the group. recordings were later transcribed verbatim by the research coordinator. the transcriptions were completed using express scribe to enhance the speed of transcribing and ensure that what participants said was written verbatim. each participant received an honorarium of either a movie pass or 10 canadian dollars. youth were given information about sexual health and safer-sex resources, such as condoms and dental dams. transportation fare was provided if requested. data analysis transcripts were analyzed using content analysis for common themes in nvivo 9 (qsr international, 2010). our analysis summarized and categorized the data from conversations and grouped them based on an “a priori” coding frame. this frame was informed by the literature (larossa, 2005) and our knowledge of the local vernacular and politics. the analyst first categorized the data by the research questions. categories were then coded according to the content of the conversations. initial themes emerging from the analysis were discussed with the research team, revised, and refined. a combination of themes that arose from this process were treated as outcomes. results table 1 presents the demographic composition of the youth involved in the focus groups. the themes that arose from the focus groups based on the questionnaire guide are discussed below. table 1 demographic characteristics of youth in the durham sexyouthality study characteristic total sample n = 32 age in years mean 18.96 median 18 range 15-24 gender male 12 female 19 transgender 1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 154 sexual orientation bisexual 3 gay 5 heterosexual 16 i don’t know 2 lesbian 2 pansexual 4 self-identified ethnicity black 1 middle-eastern 2 mixed 2 spanish 1 italian 1 white/canadian 24 missing 1 residence urban 17 rural 5 semi-rural 10 awareness of services for sexual health unless youth are aware of sexual health services, they cannot access them. to ascertain the level of awareness, participants were asked several questions about what programs were available to youth and where youth could go for sexual health services. participants indicated that they sought information about sexual health services through various sources, including parents, but unanimously agreed that the internet was their primary source. many of the urban youth knew about sexual health services in their region. however, lgbt members and rural youth were less aware of these services. as small communities often lack specialized sexual health clinics, rural youth frequently used general clinics when they required sexual health services. participants indicated that the specialized clinics were not promoted through their schools or health care providers. as expressed by one participant, “honestly, i think that's how bad it is … i'm 21 now and i have no idea where any [sexual health] programs are set up … absolutely nothing”. as a result of not knowing where these specialized clinics are located, some youth forgo sexual health services, resulting in outcomes that may be detrimental to their health, as one participant explained, “when i think of that i think of people who got pregnant in high school … i honestly think it’s because they didn’t have that support system or they didn’t know where to turn”. when youth were asked about places to receive sexual health education and services, they first discussed family doctors although many stated that they did not have a family doctor. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 155 additionally, although many of the urban youth knew where sexual health clinics were located, they did not know about the specialized sexual health services that these clinics offered. accessibility of health services focus group members expressed concerns about the accessibility of sexual health services such as testing for stis, counselling, free condoms, and birth control. services were often not available at convenient times for in-school youth, such as evenings and/or weekends; or involved extended travel. for example, youth from one community lamented that condoms were not easily accessible from public sources and were expensive to purchase. in communities where no sexual health services existed, youth needed to travel long distances to access services, so transportation also became a barrier. when the facilitators asked youth about how they would get to a sexual health clinic or to describe their ease of access to transportation, a participant said, “we have the go bus” [an intercity bus], to which another participant added, “it only comes every five days”. the difficult transportation schedule, plus lack of time due to being involved in many activities, meant that youth often delayed their appointments. one female participant said, “i have to reschedule a doctor’s appointment usually at least once a week. i don’t have time”. perception of health services youth were concerned about the anonymity, confidentiality, and comfort of health services. it should be noted that since many did not use specialized sexual health services, their concerns were often about services in the school system or general clinical sites. while some perceptions were negative, youth also believed that there were positive aspects to some of the sexual health services that they had used. friendliness youth who had previously accessed the specialized sexual health clinics stated that the staff were friendly. youth identified these sexual health practitioners as knowledgeable and able to provide useful information. a male participant believed that sexual health clinics and health centres at his location were youth-friendly; he believed that by working daily on these issues with young people, clinic staff became more aware and sensitive to youth needs. a female participant said, “they literally touch on every subject; they’re very thorough, they know their stuff, they make you feel super-comfortable while you’re there”. there was also an expectation that services should be “queer” friendly. this was not always the case with general clinics. in general, youth wanted to know that the staff providing the services they would be accessing understood the issues that affected them. anonymity participants voiced concerns about the level of anonymity provided when accessing sexual health services and resources such as birth control and condoms. they indicated that in rural areas community networks are often small and lack anonymity discouraging them from buying condoms at a local store or pharmacy. for those who live in urban areas, the location of sexual health services may inhibit them from walking into the clinic. youth suggested that condoms should be provided in a variety of places, such as school bathrooms, where anonymous access would be possible. with regard to the location of clinical sites, youth wanted these services located in areas where youth gather, such as shopping centres. youth from one international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 156 community applauded the fact that their sexual health clinic entrance was located at the bathroom section of a shopping centre, where there are no commercial businesses. this limited the stigma of being seen accessing sexual health services. i sort of like the way the [name] health centre is set up in the mall for that because you have to walk kind of by the bathrooms behind everything else and like you can just [say] “i’m just going to the bathroom,” but i’ve been gone a really long time, because i’m actually going to the room behind the bathroom. confidentiality issues related to confidentiality were the foremost concern of youth seeking services for sexually transmitted infections (stis). confidentiality issues arose due to the insensitivity of the general clerical staff and the misunderstanding of youth culture by clinical staff. a male participant said: when i get tests done at the [clinic location] it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable when i go to the receptionist and say, “i want to get tested”, and then she asks, “what are you here to get tested for?” [in a very audible voice] i go up there and i’m whispering because i don’t want people to think that i have hiv when i'm just getting tested. it just feels so uncomfortable to ask them. lack of confidentiality extends to other aspects of sexual health. for example, youth living in rural areas expressed distrust of teachers and guidance counsellors who provide them with sexual health education. multiple participants reported not confiding in these agents for fear of information being shared with others. as sexual health clinics are not located in rural areas, youth suggested that there should be confidential services at school so that they could talk to a supportive professional. one youth stated: in a rural community, you are going to have a lot of people that you’ve seen before. so it might be like not a good idea [to use the general community health service], because they won’t want to go to it, because [they may see someone they know] so they won’t feel confident to go. judgemental many youth were concerned about being judged by health providers when accessing information and services as these services often ask for a sexual health history. participants felt they were being interrogated about their sexual health history, particularly if they were lgbt. some participants felt that the tone of the provider can be condescending. one youth said, “… i understand the need to ask those [questions] for statistical purposes … but they don’t explain that to you”. a case in point is exemplified below: i mentioned earlier that i am with a man and at some point we went in to get checked for various reasons and he came out afterwards and said, “i’ve never been so uncomfortable to be almost interrogated about my sexual history, you know my sexual health, this and that”, and i'm like, “welcome to my life”, you know because [there is] no comfort in terms of how you're asked questions and what, like i know some questions have to be asked but how you ask them and your tone and the order of them is really, really important, and not feeling like you're being interrogated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 157 how youth want to receive sexual health services and education an important part of this research was to get youths’ input on how they would like to receive health education and services. while youth mentioned that they would like to receive better information from teachers, and lamented forgone opportunities with their parents, they all identified the internet as a key source for information and as the preferred medium for sexual health information. some youth also identified the internet as a source of sexual health services. many youth stated that they use google to search for information that they may not otherwise ask a friend, peer, parent, teacher, or health services provider. further, youth often research a topic through google searches before approaching a professional. therefore, if health care providers fail to provide frank and honest information about an issue, when that information is readily available on the internet, they may be judged as incompetent: i feel that my doctor, he’s practised in everything, so he’s not specialized in stis. he’s doing a swab, but he doesn’t know what he’s [testing for]. i’m a nurse [nursing student] and everyone expects me to know everything … but i don’t. if i knew there was an sti doctor or like a person that is specialized in that area … if i knew there was a doctor that specialized [in stis] in the community, i’d probably go there before my gp. the internet was said to be accessible, easy, anonymous, safe, and convenient. participants said, “it’s so much easier just googling it”. as they are not subjected to being judged on moral grounds, a barrier to information and services is removed: “you get rid of that stigma and the confrontation and all that”. further, youth talked about the challenges in discussing sexual health information with parents or authority figures, who may regard some areas of sexual activity as not socially acceptable. parents were said to be sometimes upset with youth for asking questions. a youth stated, “… you’re not going to get yelled or screamed at by the internet as well. so it’s just a very safe medium to go to”. youth were cognizant of the fact that not all information on the web is credible and discussed the dangers of unreliable information posted on websites or in chat forums. one female participant said, “forums pop up when you ask sexually related questions and [are often not] legitimate at all”. because of this, youth preferred to go to websites of authoritative organizations such as government or non-governmental health organizations, where they felt the information could be trusted. a youth said: if it’s like on the [name] department [website] there could be a link that leads specifically to that [sexual health] stuff. in that way, it would be reliable and we would know it’s all updated … it’s still private and confidential and you'll get full information. schools were identified as a preferred location for receiving sexual health information and services as most youth attend schools. however, the manner in which information is presented, and by whom, is very important. youth expressed the need for many changes to be made to the current curriculum including the content, the method of delivery, and the personnel providing the sexual health education or service. youth had four recommendations about who should be teaching sexual health in schools, suggesting that it should be someone who is: comfortable teaching the material, knowledgeable about and interested in what they are teaching, able to relate to students, and external to the daily instructor/student relationship. a major recommended change relates to the individual delivering the sexual health information. as one participant said: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 158 i’d want someone who actually takes a general interest in it, instead of just, “oh, i’m only doing this because i have to”…. if the teacher actually takes an interest into it and actually wants to teach it, then that would be better than someone that’s like, “i’m only doing it because i have to”. participants said that some teachers skip the material altogether, while others treated it in a perfunctory way. for example, one youth said that his in-school education on homosexuality consisted of the teacher saying, “guys, some people are like that… just don’t hate them”. youth expressed the need to have a peer, or someone they could relate to, presenting the materials. they believed that peer educators would be more attuned to their needs since there would be no “intergenerational divide”. finally, youth also preferred having someone external to their environment present sexual health information in school settings. this was particularly important for youth in rural areas. youth suggested that having a professional, such as a nurse or other front-line worker who is not part of the regular staff, would be more effective. it’s kind of nice for me to talk to someone and they can relate to what you’re going through, like they make it relatable so you don’t feel like you’re alone in it. you know, when people have experienced what you’re experiencing, like it helps, makes you feel like better or whatever … reassuring. discussion providing information to promote sexual health can be challenging (gilliam, 2006; maticka-tyndale, 2008; wynn & trussell, 2006). sex is often tied to moral and religious constraints and many people regard some forms of sexual health education or promotion as fostering promiscuity (epstein, 2006). while youth in our study were generally aware that sexual health services existed, they were not uniformly aware. further, some were confused about the nature of specialized sexual health services, given that many had only experienced health services from family medicine clinics. other studies have shown differential awareness of services, especially among inner city, rural, and sexual minority youth (epstein, 2006; quine et al., 2003; walters, horwath, & simoni, 2001). as such, providing sexual health information without targeting specific groups will perpetuate current disparities in sexual health awareness. youth in our study highlighted the difficulty in accessing specialized sexual health services due to infrastructural limitations. however, not accessing specialized services may be detrimental to their health (coles, makino, stanwood, dozier, & klein, 2010; english, 2000; quine et al., 2003). even in larger cities, sexual health services may not be located within easy reach of the youth who need them, creating a barrier to access (nwokolo, mcowan, hennebry, chislett, & mandalia, 2002). yet other studies have shown that it is possible for individuals in remote locations to have access to information and services at lower cost compared to the traditional clinic through new technology such as telemedicine, smart phones, and other web 2.0 enhanced devices (fox, somes, & waters, 2007; norman & skinner, 2007; norman & yip, 2012). today’s youth are internet-savvy and adept at using smart-phone technology devices. many youth are already using smart phones. cost-free services on these devices could be readily implemented to provide anonymous and non-judgemental sexual health promotion services (garrett, hocking, chen, fairley, & kirkman, 2011; garrett et al., 2012; hottes et al., 2012). the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 159 internet is becoming the norm for service provision in education and industry and, as such, providing youth with health information through web 2.0 should be promoted and enhanced (davis, shoveller, oliffe, & gilbert, 2012; mccarthy et al., 2012; miller & west, 2009; public health agency of canada., 2008). youth perception of sexual health services not only are there concrete, objective, physical constraints on service access, there are also perceived constraints that produce equivalent effects. as indicated by study participants, anonymity, confidentiality, and comfort are all important for effective use of a service. dehne and riedner (2001) have suggested that factors such as those described above create an atmosphere of comfort and friendliness, and suggested it is also important to have providers specially trained in youth issues. this gives youth a sense that their information will be handled with respect. practitioners who are not trained to provide this type of service, and services that are not set up to provide youth with a sense of security, may unintentionally obstruct access to support services resulting in negative health outcomes. similarly, youth often turn away from services when they feel that moral judgements go along with the information or resources provided (public health agency of canada., 2008). how youth would like to receive sexual health services and education a key lesson from the study is that all the participants wanted pragmatic information on sexual health from reliable government or non-governmental health agency websites. this information is supported by other studies that have shown similar results (gray, klein, noyce, sesselberg, & cantrill, 2005). youth require more than a “clinical” guide to sexual health promotion. many public health sites do provide this type of information but the focus is on the negative consequences of sex, such as stis and pregnancy. however, youth are often looking for information on love, intimacy, and pleasure, which are fundamental to human sexuality (gray et al., 2005). materials on sexual pleasure and intimacy are often not available on public health websites. not addressing these issues on trustworthy institutional websites may lead youth to explore websites where the emphasis is on the commercialization of sex, and where dangerous sexual practices may be presented as the norm (buhi, daley, fuhrmann, & smith, 2009; buhi et al., 2010; gray et al., 2005; ybarra & mitchell, 2008). the use of the internet as a major health resource for youth has been identified by other researchers in canada and elsewhere (garrett et al., 2011; media awareness network, 2005; ralph, berglas, schwartz, & brindis, 2011; shoveller, knight, davis, gilbert, & ogilvie, 2012). however, gaining access to the internet is still challenging for some (buhi et al., 2009; magee, bigelow, dehaan, & mustanski, 2012; rains, 2008). some youth come from economically deprived homes where an internet connection may not be a priority or where web browsing and download fees may be judged unaffordable. in rural areas, access to broadband service may be difficult or expensive to obtain. some youth also face intellectual challenges and may not be able to master web browsing or distinguish legitimate from false information (media awareness network, 2005). local information is also more difficult to find than general information (buhi et al., 2009). in some public spaces, such as schools and libraries, surfing sexual health-related information may be restricted. this is problematic, particularly for economically and socially deprived youth (gray & klein, 2006; mitchell, finkelhor, & wolak, 2001; richardson, 2002; ybarra & mitchell, 2008). however, many youth do have personal smart-phone devices: health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 160 agencies can explore initiatives to provide low-cost sexual health promotion through such devices with little additional infrastructure (skinner, biscope, poland, & goldberg, 2003). engaging youth in creating and designing such sexual health outreach initiatives would help to make the service youth-friendly (franck & noble, 2007; gray et al., 2005). youth in our study suggested that authoritative institutions, such as public health departments working on behalf of youth, should work with trustworthy organizations to validate their websites, thus providing a “seal of approval” to support youth decisions. alternatively, these authoritative institutions could, through their web pages, provide hyperlinks to trustworthy sites, as most youth find public health department websites to be too clinical. for example, a discussion on sexual pleasure would be hyperlinked to a legitimate site where sexual pleasures are described in a purely non-clinical way. there are youth-friendly electronic resources available from many non-governmental organizations but it may be a challenge for youth to search, find and evaluate the legitimacy of these resources (hansen, derry, resnick, & richardson, 2003; skinner et al., 2003). public health institutions could reduce this barrier to finding reliable sexual health information by providing links to trustworthy resources. limitations, conclusion, and recommendations a number of strategies that were incorporated into the data collection process were aimed at ensuring that youth would be open to talking about sexual health, recognizing the sensitive nature of the topic. however, while this enabled good rapport, it also meant that our participants may have been more informed or politically motivated about sexual services or programs in their communities than youth in general. also, while our strategy of using follow-up focus groups may have increased rapport, there is always the possibility that this, in turn, may have engendered “group think”. this is particularly the case for the lgbt group since, as an outcome of the research, an informal group ensued. however, we posed questions to encourage dissenting views and so curb group-think tendencies. the sample size and technique may also make it difficult to generalize from this study, since the sample was not randomly selected. this study was formative in nature, as it was designed to assess the sexual health service and education needs of durham region youth. the results are applicable to similar communities in canada, the united states, and other parts of the world that face the challenge of providing services for a mix of urban, rural, and semi-urban communities and sexual minority youth. youth participating in the study identified various sexual health needs and challenges but also identified ways to improve the available sexual health services to better address their sexual health issues. many of their suggested improvements could be implemented with currently available webbased technologies, which are often readily accessible to youth. reaching out to youth through smart-phone devices and the internet should be considered for targeted sexual health services. we deduce from the study that there is an important role for youth in planning and developing programs targeting their sexual health information needs. sexual health providers are often resistant to engaging youth in these discussions. youth are ready and willing to explore sexpositive health promotion through the internet. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 150–164 161 references anderson, j. e., & lowen, c. a. 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(2006). images of american sexuality in debates over nonprescription access to emergency contraceptive pills. obstetrics and gynecology, 108(5), 1272–1276. doi:10.1097/01.aog.0000237193.90586.53 ybarra, m. l., & mitchell, k. j. (2008). how risky are social networking sites? a comparison of places online where youth sexual solicitation and harassment occurs. pediatrics, 121(2), e350–e357. doi: 10.1542/peds.2007-0693 improving sexual health resources for youth: the use of sex-positive public health websites methods community-based research focus groups data collection data analysis results awareness of services for sexual health accessibility of health services perception of health services friendliness anonymity confidentiality judgemental how youth want to receive sexual health services and education discussion youth perception of sexual health services how youth would like to receive sexual health services and education limitations, conclusion, and recommendations references tf_template_word_windows_2016 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019703 poised to advocate: the pedagogy of the lightning talk in child and youth care education johanne jean-pierre, sabrin hassan, asha sturge, kiaras gharabaghi, megan lewis, jonathan bailey, and melanie panitch abstract: advocacy is an integral part of child and youth care workers’ roles and a significant component of child and youth care politicized praxis and radical youth work. drawing from the qualitative data of a mixed-methods study conducted in 2019 at a canadian metropolitan university, this study seeks to unpack how the pedagogy of the lightning talk can foster advocacy skills to effectively and spontaneously speak out with and on behalf of children, youth, and families in everyday practice when an unforeseen systemic challenge or barrier arises. a purposive sample of 70 undergraduate students was recruited in two child and youth care courses, both of which required students to present a lightning talk. participants completed an online questionnaire with closed-ended and open-ended questions in order to share their perspectives of the pedagogy of the lightning talk. the findings show that the lightning talk fosters twenty-first century and metacognitive skills and, most importantly, advocacy skills. keywords: pedagogy, lightning talk, oral presentations, advocacy, child and youth care, youth work johanne jean-pierre (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care, ryerson university, 350 victoria st., toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: jjeanpierre@ryerson.ca sabrin hassan, factor-inwentash faculty of social work, university of toronto asha sturge, school of child and youth care, ryerson university kiaras gharabaghi, school of child and youth care, ryerson university megan lewis, canadian roots exchange (cre), toronto jonathan bailey, the faculty of behavioural sciences, yorkville university melanie panitch, office of social innovation and school of child and youth care, ryerson university acknowledgement: we would like to acknowledge that this research project was funded by a ryerson university learning and teaching grant (2019). we thank all the participants for taking the time to share their insights. mailto:jjeanpierre@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 109 using a range of pedagogical approaches, human services faculty and instructors strive to foster crucial skills during preservice education that lead to compassionate interactions with service recipients, ethical discretionary judgement, and beneficial supervision, management, and policy decision-making. using developmental-ecological and reeducational approaches (derksen, 2010; mann-feder & litner, 2004), child and youth care professionals in educational, health, corrections, residential, and community settings accomplish a variety of context-dependent tasks with children, youth, and young adults in their life-spaces, including primary care, relational practice, life-skills training, discipline, recreational and therapeutic activities, and counselling on the go (krueger, 2007; maier, 1991). given this range of potential duties and roles, child and youth care faculty are compelled to create learning opportunities that cultivate versatility, a broad understanding of the systems that shape professional practice, and a capacity to respond effectively in the moment to unexpected circumstances. in fact, a number of teaching activities adopted in child and youth care programs have been examined empirically, such as international experiential learning programs (bellefeuille et al., 2017; bellefeuille & mcgrath, 2013); arts-based activities, such as self-portraiture (bellefeuille et al., 2018) and mask-making (lashewicz et al., 2014); and weekly journalling and discussions (mckamey, 2017). moreover, several authors have argued for the potential benefits of various pedagogies, such as creative inquiry (bellefeuille et al., 2014), case-based learning (sanrud & ranahan, 2012), practice placement (forkan & mcelwee, 2002), improved integration of theory and practice (vanderven, 1993), as well as the contributions of indigenous elders as guest teachers (cooke-dallin et al., 2000). empirical studies of oral presentations have explored biases in peer assessments of presentations (vahid, 2017), how personality and motivation influence the performance of presentations (liang & kelsen, 2018), and how the use of technology can assist in developing presentation skills (gwee & toh-heng, 2015). students’ learning experiences of the “lightning talk”, and its use in fostering advocacy skills development, have received only limited attention in academic literature. some authors have discussed a shorter form of oral presentation, the 30 to 60 second “elevator pitch”, which is a compelling speech designed to sell a service or product (cox & marris, 2011; pagana, 2013; simpson, 2016). recently, the three minute thesis (3mt) competition, a contest that challenges graduate students to synopsize their research project in 3 minutes has also been explored (hu & liu, 2018), but not as a pedagogical tool for advocacy development. for the purpose of this paper, a lightning talk is defined as an oral presentation of 3 minutes on a particular subject, given without supporting materials like notes and powerpoint slides, and without audience engagement. it thus simulates a practice context for which the practitioner has had no opportunity to plan or prepare. as a further component of the lightning talk, students are asked explicitly to use persuasive communication skills in order to advocate for a particular perspective, action, or narrative. everyday practice in different settings may require “thinking on one’s feet” or spontaneously articulating a compelling case to prevent a course of action that could negatively impact serviceinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 110 users. we contend that the lightning talk can help foster the metacognitive and advocacy skills needed to respond to unforeseen systemic challenges in everyday practice. this article’s purpose is to build upon the aforementioned literature by examining how the pedagogy of a lightning talk can foster the skills required to effectively advocate with and for children, youth, families, and communities. using qualitative data from a mixed-methods research project conducted with canadian undergraduate students, this research project’s results illustrate how the lightning talk can consolidate aspiring child and youth care professionals’ twenty-first century and metacognitive skills so that they will be poised to advocate effectively in everyday practice. context advocacy the standards for practice of north american child and youth care professionals (child and youth care certification board, 2017) establish as a principle the responsibility to advocate for the rights of children, youth, and families, and to support them in their efforts to advocate for themselves. child and youth care practitioners also often draw on the principles stated in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (1989) to inform their practice. more recently, we have been encouraged by the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015) to teach the legacy of colonialism and residential schools, and to support indigenous peoples’ actions for decolonization and institutional change. in the context of cross-sectoral, everyday practice, we suggest that advocacy can be defined as the capacities (a) to speak out, argue, plead, and act to confront and eliminate institutional and social barriers with, and on-behalf of children, youth, and families to promote their rights and well-being; (b) to actively empower youth to advocate for themselves, which can involve meaningful participation in decision-making processes; and (c) to organize impactful plans and actions with and for youth and communities that uphold their collective aspirations for social change and equity. this tripartite definition implies that practitioners must develop an in-depth understanding of the social, economic, and political circumstances that affect their service recipients’ regions and communities, and of the web of systems and regulations in which their organization of employment operates. furthermore, it calls for the development of concrete skills that underpin effective advocacy in everyday practice as unexpected challenges emerge. university-based child and youth care programs have sought to incorporate advocacy skills into their curricula, be that through dedicated courses (university of victoria and ryerson university), experiential learning (see child and youth care educational accreditation board of canada, 2016; keough, 2016), and community engagement activities at the local or international levels (bellefeuille et al., 2017). however, such initiatives are rarely assessed in the context of supporting advocacy skills, and usually unfold without empirical evidence of their efficacy. in some fields, such as nursing, counselling, education, social work, and law, the development of knowledge and communication skills to empower future professionals to advocate on behalf of patients, students, or clients is accompanied by empirical research that aims to explore the impact international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 111 of such initiatives on student capacity (brawley, 1997; doherty et al., 2016; hurley, 2017; nagro et al., 2019; peltzer et al., 2016; ramirez stege et al., 2017; vitielo, 2015). such programs do so by designing and evaluating pedagogical tools across degree levels (bachelor, master, doctoral) that may involve experiential learning (hurley, 2017; peltzer et al., 2016); a formal communication competency program (doherty et al., 2016); coursework, faculty projects, and internships (anderson et al., 2005); or learning how to intervene through mass media with news releases, newspaper articles, letters to the editors, and radio and television interviews (brawley, 1997). this list of pedagogical tools and their assessment in the aforementioned fields exemplifies how advocacy skills can be acquired in class and in the community concurrently or consecutively, and demonstrates that individual and group assignments furthering such skills can be designed and implemented. advocacy is an integral part of north american child and youth care ethical guidelines and a cornerstone of critical youth work as politicized praxis. pedagogical methods that further spontaneous advocacy skills on the part of students are therefore necessary if one is to perpetuate a strong ethical focus on critical, or radical youth work. critical youth work, radical youth work, and child and youth care politicized praxis critical youth work can contribute to empowering disenfranchised groups and initiating actions towards social change when policies, programs, and institutional decisions do not sufficiently consider the voices and ambitions of children, youth, families, and communities. critical practice “is not an event, a final or ultimate moment of radical work, but a process of working towards a preferred, anti-oppressive future” (bamber & murphy, 1999, p. 227). critical youth work, or radical youth work, requires that we do not confine our role to engaging in recreational and therapeutic activities with children and youth, but that we form communities with youth to challenge oppressive structures and systems (skott-myhre, 2006). effective advocacy buttresses critical youth work by centring the aspirations and voices of children, youth, and families, and by proposing alternatives to common or routine procedures and decision-making processes that can negatively affect their lives. while our role involves working towards greater equity and justice in the system on both the macro and micro levels (gharabaghi & krueger, 2010), radical youth work can be challenging and uncomfortable because it involves examining one’s own privilege and (in)visibility. it also requires that we question how we participate in the process of “othering” young people: for many of us who live in centers of power and who hold certain privileges ascribed through race, class, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, or education, we have become accustomed to escaping scrutiny. we seldom have to account for our identity. we don’t have to “come out” as heterosexual; we don’t have to clarify, justify, or give testimony about our culture; account for our wealth and the behaviors associated with it (leaving aside the costs to others for our economic security); we don’t have to defend our bodies against scrutiny or sexual assault. our invisibility allows us to move through our society with a minimum amount of agreed upon surveillance. (skott-myhre, 2006, p. 226) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 112 akin to critical or radical youth work, canadian professionals and scholars have proposed that we should embrace child and youth care as politicized praxis (kouri, 2015; loiselle et al., 2012). this idea stems from the praxis framework proposed by white (2007), where praxis is defined as a way of knowing, doing, and being, in which theory and practice intertwine to shape self-aware, ethical, responsive, and accountable practice. politicized praxis is rooted in theories that challenge power differentials and advocate for actions driven by the desire for social change, such as critical race, feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories (loiselle et al., 2012; pon et al., 2011; saraceno, 2012). of equal importance are paradigms that name, confront, and propose holistic and pluralistic alternatives to eurocentrism, such as indigenous and africentric worldviews (asante, 2000; de finney, 2015; mazama, 2001; simpson, 2014). politicized praxis can involve planning and leading courageous conversations about eurocentrism, western cultural hegemony, and racism (yoon, 2012); however, some child and youth care instructors have reported that students tend to avoid naming or addressing race and racism (little & walker, 2012; mckamey, 2017). other topics, such as colonialism, sexism, and the intersectionality of different forms of oppression, also provide an opportunity to unpack complex systems that perpetuate marginalization and “othering” (de finney, 2015; de finney et al., 2011; saraceno, 2012; skott-myhre, 2006). child and youth care politicized praxis literature is relevant to front-line work because critical work takes place daily when we create trusting and respectful relationships with youth while we share power and a meaningful purpose with them (bamber & murphy, 1999). advocacy in everyday practice can require practitioners to challenge actions that amplify macrostructural and exosystemic barriers, such as the discounting of youth and families’ views, or the lack of procedural flexibility. thus, course content and activities related to child and youth care politicized praxis delve into and move beyond the interpersonal dynamics and microdynamics of front-line relational practice, and tackle complex and evolving macrostructural and exosystemic factors through the continual questioning of power, privilege, and equity (saraceno, 2012; yoon, 2012). if we lose sight of the reality that critical practice is an intentional, dynamic, and fluid process that aims to confront institutional barriers, historically rooted inequities, and oppression, we run the risk that we will become content — that we will “congratulate ourselves on our inclusive environments and our politically correct terminology yet cease to evolve beyond it” (little & walker, 2012, p. 325). child and youth care politicized praxis entails that we disrupt the individual-based, pathology–diagnosis–treatment linear model that aims to change youth, and focus on working with youth to change the social and institutional constraints that undermine their agency, human rights, and well-being (de finney et al., 2012; gharabaghi, 2014). while politicized praxis requires a grasp of critical theories and paradigms, an inclination toward inquiry and reflexivity, and a commitment to undertake concrete actions and interventions for social change, it also requires the capacity to speak up in the moment. in short, politicized praxis, aside from its theoretical and substantive contexts, includes spontaneously but assertively advocating alongside children, youth, families, and communities. this, commensurate with the skills underpinning the pedagogy of a lightning talk for effective advocacy, overlaps with twenty-first century and metacognitive skills. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 113 twenty-first century and metacognitive skills some authors have suggested that a number of traditional pedagogies have emphasized the transmission of knowledge at the expense of fostering crucial competencies, such as creativity or problem-solving skills, that are deemed necessary to face contemporary life (larson & miller, 2011; tindowen et al., 2017). globalization, economic fluctuations, technological development, and declining civic engagement engender the necessity for instructors to foster the skills needed to be successful in a range of circumstances and experiences (kim et al., 2019). the term “twentyfirst century skills” is applied to those high-priority skills and attributes believed to be the most important to help students learn, live, and work successfully in the twenty-first century (larson & miller, 2011). although these skills may not be themselves new, they prepare individuals to locate and grasp information from multiple sources and subsequently apply it for decision-making purposes or innovation (larson & miller, 2011; tindowen et al., 2017). twenty-first century skills encompass competencies such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, metacognition, communication, civic responsibility, and global awareness (kim et al., 2019; saavedra & opfer, 2012), not merely as sequential or cumulative skills but as a fully integrated skill set, with due recognition of their intersectional character. among these skills, metacognition is decisive to bolster the development of competencies, particularly the critical thinking skills that schools and post-secondary institutions strive to inculcate. we contend that twenty-first century skills contribute to the ability to “think on one’s feet” in everyday practice and spontaneously speak with and on behalf of service users who may face unexpected systemic barriers. metacognition takes place when individuals are aware of their thoughts, values, and feelings, and choose to mobilize this information to direct their learning (kozikoğlu, 2019). in education, critical thinking enhances meaningful learning, and it is understood as the process in which students utilize existing knowledge to work through and solve challenges and problems (magno, 2010). to engage in appropriate critical thinking, one must utilize metacognitive skills, such as the constant appraisal of thoughts and intentional efforts to progress towards a specific goal (kozikoğlu, 2019; magno, 2010). metacognition can be regarded as having two components, both of which are crucial for effective learning: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition (sperling et al., 2010). knowledge of cognition involves knowledge of one’s own cognitive processes (sperling et al., 2010), while regulation of cognition is the mobilization of specific skills to control one’s learning, such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation (sperling et al., 2010). without these twenty-first century and metacognitive competencies, it can be challenging to advocate effectively, particularly when we hope to reshape the decisions, actions, and narratives that may have a negative impact on children, families, and communities. methodology this article draws from the qualitative data of a mixed-methods research design that used a post-test online questionnaire with both closed-ended and open-ended questions. the questionnaire included closed-ended questions with a likert scale (“strongly agree” to “strongly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 114 disagree”) pertaining to preparation strategies and learning processes involved in oral presentations, along with accessibility-related questions. there were some open-ended questions such as: “what would be useful for you to be better prepared for lightning talks, both at school and in the field?”, and “what have you learned about your own strengths, interests, and ideas?” in this paper, we focus on qualitative data to explore students’ rationales for and interpretations of how the pedagogy of the lightning talk can support the development of everyday practice advocacy skills. this research project was conducted in april 2019 in two undergraduate child and youth care courses at a canadian metropolitan university. both courses required students to complete a lightning talk, defined as a three-minute oral presentation without the use of powerpoint, notes, or any other such aid. we believe that preventing the use of notes and presentational aids is important because in everyday practice, practitioners will often be required to organize their thoughts quickly and argue clearly and concisely with and on behalf of children and youth. advocacy accomplished by everyday front-line practitioners is as critical, meaningful, and valuable as organized and institutionalized advocacy, because it can transform children’s life trajectories. in addition, the instructors aimed to reinforce core curriculum competencies, such as critical thinking, selfawareness, advocacy, and oral communication skills. one of the courses required that students define child and youth care work or an allied human services profession, present their own individual skills, and explain how they could contribute to enhancing the school climate. in the other course, students were expected to summarize a peer-reviewed article and make a compelling case about its relevance in order to encourage students to read and analyse its contents. a purposive sample was employed, as only students registered in the two courses could complete the online questionnaire. a total of 70 undergraduate students completed the questionnaire. for the purposes of analysis, inductive coding was used to identify and explore the salient themes that emerged. two research assistants conducted the analysis with the principal investigator to achieve triangulation and enhance methodological rigour (bamberger et al., 2012). the qualitative software nvivo was used to analyse the data with three phases of coding. the first phase involved initial coding, in which each author compared the content of the respondents’ narratives and remained open to different interpretations (saldaña, 2016). the second phase involved pattern coding, in which we attempted to create categories and subcategories that summarized the various codes created from the first phase (saldaña, 2016). the third phase involved axial coding to establish the connections between the categories and subcategories in order to remove redundant codes and merge similar codes (saldaña, 2016). we obtained institutional ethics review board approval from a canadian university for this study. findings we recruited a total of 70 participants, and some skipped a number of questions on the online questionnaire. nevertheless, 89.07% of the 64 participants who answered a closed-ended question international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 115 about their perceptions of the lightning talk indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that the lightning talk promotes advocacy-related skills. the focus of the analysis below is on the qualitative data of this mixed-methods study, which seeks to unpack students’ perspectives on the learning process. the qualitative data discussed in this article is derived from the statements of the 48 of 70 participants who answered the following open-ended question: what have you learned about your own strengths, interests, and ideas? only one of the 48 participants reported not having learned anything new. the remaining participants’ narratives reflected the realization or improvement of communication and metacognitive skills that are instrumental for effective spontaneous advocacy and that overlap with twenty-first century skills. participants’ responses pointed to four main themes related to their learning experience: (1) the self-assessment of their public speaking skills, (2) the identification of self-regulation strategies, (3) the evaluation of their state of preparedness, and (4) the realization of the importance of advocacy skills. self-assessment of public speaking skills the most salient theme captures how participants evaluated their capacity to accomplish the lightning talk without notes, powerpoint slides, or other technological support. in general, respondents characterized their own public speaking abilities across a spectrum that ranged from “not so good” to “having confidence”. some students self-assessed that they were not proficient in public speaking. for instance, perry wrote, “i’m awful standing in front of people, and would rather write a paper or speech.” similarly, fabian realized that the lightning talk was more challenging than previously assumed: “i am a little worse at public speaking than i thought.” other students did not characterize their lightning talk presentation in negative or positive terms, but rather with nuance; they reflected upon the contexts or circumstances that could affect their effectiveness in speaking publicly. nicky shared that the ability to speak publicly can be affected by the composition of the audience: “in front of my peers, i am horrible at public speaking. in front of strangers, i have no problem.” on the other hand, jaylen pointed to a difference in proficiency contingent on the type of oral communication activity: “i am better at spontaneous communication than presenting a speech.” another group of students described a moment of self-actualization in which they acknowledged their own strengths and abilities. noel stated, “i am good at presenting in front of the class.” like noel, angel recognized having the ability to speak in public after the lightning talk: “i learned that i am okay speaking in public.” florian uncovered an ability to improvise a lightning talk: “that i am pretty good with improvising in the moment.” along with greater knowledge of their competencies, the lightning talk yielded feelings of affirmation or increased self-confidence. for instance, winter wrote, “i can do it!” for val, being able to convey an idea in a compelling manner constituted an occasion of positive self-discovery: “that i have the ability to speak with conviction.” raven chronicled the metacognitive skills that contributed to the ability to speak publicly, and analysed her own thought process in the context of other students’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 116 presentations: “my strengths are memorization and looking at things critically. i noticed i had a completely different idea from what others did.” rumi pinpointed that being passionate about a topic facilitated the task: “i can present easily about topics i’m passionate about.” the ability to reflect on one’s strengths and liabilities as a communicator constitutes a metacognitive skill that is valuable for engaging in advocacy and for self-regulation. self-regulation the second theme relates to the self-regulation strategies participants used to grapple with the stress associated with public speaking before and during the lightning talk. responses indicated that self-motivation and self-encouragement constitute primary coping mechanisms. some participants shared the motivational phrases that they used before and during their presentation. landry wrote, as a cautionary note to future cohorts, “don’t second guess yourself.” similarly, andy suggested, “fake it until you make it.” halo articulated some inspirational thoughts that could nurture self-confidence before and during a lightning talk: i am capable of anything. if you train your mind to believe in yourself, you can’t fail. lifting yourself by saying you got this and just being confident in your abilities goes a long way. you don’t need to memorize a script. be yourself. these hopeful and supportive ideas may have helped some participants manage their emotions and nervousness while focusing on the task at hand. some respondents’ comments revealed how their ability to cope with stress or pressure influenced their ability to complete the lightning talk with confidence. before the presentation, stage fright can cause some nervousness; as haven explained, “i was more nervous before going up in front of the class than i was when i was actually up there.” despite their preparation for the lightning talk, some participants experienced high levels of stress that they felt impaired their ability to speak publicly. marley shared, “i can memorize but get stressed under pressure.” after the presentation, some respondents realized that their self-regulation strategies enabled them to face the pressure. emery stated, “i am capable of completing a presentation under pressure.” while the self-regulation of thoughts and emotions was significant, another factor was the students’ self-assessed degree of readiness to carry out a brief oral presentation of three minutes without any form of written or technological support. state of preparedness with regard to the third theme, the respondents suggested that an interest in the topic discussed, combined with certain metacognitive skills, resulted in the ability to successfully complete the lightning talk. accordingly, in participants’ narratives, memorization was strongly associated with being able to complete the lightning talk. for instance, sparrow disclosed, “i am not good at memorizing texts.” wren attributed the ease of the presentation to practice and organizational skills: “with practice, i am able to be prepared and organized.” mirroring wren’s assurance, avery stated, “i believe that i prepare effectively for presentations with my organization.” well-prepared students could utilize organizational and time management skills to fully comprehend and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 117 prioritize the content of their presentations. consequently, dallas observed that mastering a presentation’s content can ease the challenge of public speaking: “presentations are not difficult if you know your material.” in addition to recognizing the benefits of being well-versed about a subject matter for the lightning talk, some participants remarked that they experienced fewer difficulties with public speaking when they had an affinity for the topic and were motivated to delve into its details. robin wrote, “i liked the content of the presentation.” meanwhile, parker discovered new academic inclinations: “i am very data driven and like exploring discussions surrounding discourses.” being prepared, organized, capable of prioritizing information, and having confidence reflect twenty-first century and metacognitive skills. participants’ responses illustrate how those skills can support advocacy in action. capacity to advocate the fourth theme encompasses respondents’ statements relating to what they learned about their capacity to advocate both for children and youth and their professional roles. the child and youth care profession is sometimes mistaken for social work or early childhood education. in one of the courses, the lightning talk focused on introducing child and youth care professionals’ specific roles, attributes, and singular contributions. as a result of the lightning talk, participants like jean realized the importance of learning how to advocate: “i learned how it is important to think about how you would communicate your role as a cyc [practitioner] in a school.” others concluded that they felt ready to advocate for the profession. emerald said, “i learned that i can advocate for child and youth care practices and values.” parallel to emerald, drew stated, “i am able to advocate for our profession.” in the field, practitioners may face circumstances and situations on a daily basis that demand that they advocate for children, youth, families, and communities, in order to remove barriers to meaningful participation, empowerment, rights, and well-being. it is important that all aspiring child and youth care professionals develop the knowledge base and skill set to affirm with confidence, like paris, “i have the ability to advocate for children and youth.” discussion in the discussion, we will initially focus on providing a synthesis of the findings. we will then tie our findings to a brief discussion on advocacy and its relationship to the lightning talk, reflecting the emphasis on building spontaneous speaking and response skills for practitioners. the results indicate that, for a number of undergraduate students, the lightning talk can be a challenging assignment due to limited communication, self-regulation, organizational, or metacognitive skills, which can result in a lack of self-confidence. yet a majority of students expressed that they gained insights about their cognitive, public speaking, and interpersonal abilities,; fulfilled their potential; and improved their skills. the results also indicate that students with self-awareness skills were less nervous about sharing their thoughts and views, and thus were better prepared and more confident for their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 118 lightning talk. these students were able to transition their thoughts from an apprehensive state into one of affirmation regarding their capacity to speak publicly. they were able to overcome their fear of presenting, recognizing that through previous learning opportunities they had gained competencies that prepared them to complete the lightning talk successfully. as advocacy skills are a core element of effective child and youth care practice, it is also important for practitioners to be confident in their ability to advocate. the process of preparing, presenting, and subsequently reflecting on the lightning talk enabled students to establish how effective they were at this skill, to recognize what they had achieved, and to become aware of areas that could be improved. it also helped strengthen their assurance in their ability to be successful as an advocate, as they were able to identify how their comfort level in completing this assignment demonstrated their ability to work well under pressure while expressing their idea clearly and effectively. some faculty may surmise that a certain proportion of human services professionals cannot be expected to develop oral communication skills due to shyness, overwhelming nervousness, or lack of interest in future advocacy or policy-related positions. yet, “without adequate communication skills to address concerns, advocacy is threatened” (doherty et al., 2016, p. 254). other faculty may suggest that advocacy can be accomplished with actions such as writing an essay that do not involve public speaking. however, writing even a compelling essay may not be a suitable response when there is little time to prepare or organize; in an immediate crisis or dilemma, appropriately timed advocacy efforts are critical to successful intervention. when practitioners engage in frontline work, situations arise that require the clear and concise articulation of a problem, and an outline of how a solution could be achieved, by means of spontaneous public speaking. pedagogical tools must be designed to promote intentionally advocacy-related skills, since advocating for children, youth, and families is an integral principle of the standards for practice of north american child and youth care professionals (child and youth care certification board, 2017), and because child and youth care workers are often compelled to confront institutional and systemic barriers when engaging in politicized praxis or radical youth work. while a critical theoretical foundation can shape an understanding of actions that result in social change, the findings reveal that it is also important to develop certain practical skills to enact spontaneously politicized praxis in everyday front-line work. combined with a critical curriculum and other pedagogical approaches, the lightning talk can contribute to preparing future practitioners to engage in child and youth care politicized praxis, and instructors can scaffold this approach throughout their program. in short, a politicized praxis in this field requires pedagogical tools that equip students with the skills and attitudes (like confidence and conviction) to challenge, resist, and offer alternatives to problematic and oppressive contexts at the micro and macro levels. based on the findings from the analysis of the qualitative data collected for this research project, we can state that: (a) students can learn with practice to achieve greater skill and confidence in spontaneous advocacy efforts; and (b) many students approached the prospect of speaking publicly without notes with trepidation, suggesting a need for pedagogic approaches designed to mitigate such fears and discomforts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 119 conclusion following the completion of the lightning talk, the responses of undergraduate students attest that the lightning talk as a pedagogy can facilitate the development of twenty-first century and metacognitive skills that also constitute crucial advocacy skills in human services, particularly in child and youth care. more specifically, participants self-assessed their public speaking skills, reflected upon their ability to regulate their emotions, evaluated their state of preparedness, and realized the importance of advocacy capability. this research project contributes to the state of knowledge in child and youth care education in regard to the development of advocacy skills to sustain effective everyday critical youth work. in addition, this article emphasizes the importance of fulfilling the professional ethical principle to speak up, and the relevance of centring students’ perspectives of their learning in our field. the results also suggest that, in other university programs, the lightning talk could be used to cultivate twenty-first century, metacognitive, and communication skills. meanwhile, future studies can examine how university programs can scaffold the pedagogy of a lightning talk at different professional development stages, and for students with a range of public speaking and self-regulation abilities. for instance, for beginners, one possibility could be to scaffold the learning process by asking students to present for thirty seconds at first, then gradually increasing the length of the presentation to three minutes. more advanced pedagogical tools to develop capacity for advocacy might eliminate not only the use of supporting tools in oral presentations, but perhaps even the opportunity to prepare the topic itself: after all, practitioners are most in need of being able to “think on their feet” when they encounter unexpected situations in their practice. advocacy is vital to politicized and ethical practice as a way of countering the silencing of young people, their families, and their communities. other pedagogies that aim to encourage the development of advocacy skills should also be assessed empirically in light of students’ perspectives on their learning. advocacy is ultimately a skill that we hope to do with, for, and on behalf of the children, youth, families, and communities whom we serve. across the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in child and youth care and youth work, faculty and instructors should regard, as a core component of their programs, the design and implementation of applicable pedagogies that scaffold and develop advocacy skills with individual, group, and community outreach activities. based on students’ perspectives in this study, the lightning talk can become one of the pedagogies used in conjunction with child and youth care praxis and radical youth work. child and youth care and human services graduates not only need a strong grasp of the historical, social, political, and economic contexts of service recipients; and the 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(2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child and youth care forum, 36(5-6), 225–244. doi:10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2016.1182091 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-006-9010-2 https://doi.org/10.1076/edre.10.2.117.27905 https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017726116 http://nctr.ca/reports.php https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2017.1393820 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00756952 https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs32-3201210864 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 108–125 125 biographies johanne jean-pierre phd is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university. she holds a doctoral degree in sociology from mcmaster university and conducts bilingual research projects in the fields of sociology of education and child and youth studies. her current research program explores post-secondary trajectories and experiences, alternative school discipline practices, and child and youth care pedagogy. her research focuses on the social–cultural dynamics that can inform promising policies and practices to work with refugee and immigrant youth, african canadian communities, and linguistic minorities such as francophone minority communities. sabrin hassan holds a master’s degree of social work (msw) from the university of toronto with a specialization in mental health and health, a bachelor’s degree of arts in child and youth care from ryerson university, and a college diploma in child and youth work from george brown college. her research interests include culturally responsive approaches with a focus on practice in black communities. asha sturge is working towards her bachelor’s degree in child and youth care at ryerson university. she holds a college diploma in child and youth care from humber college. kiaras gharabaghi phd is a professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university. his core research and professional activities are focused on the ongoing evolution of child and youth care practice in canada and globally, residential care and treatment, system/organizational change, and social innovation and entrepreneurship. his most recent book is a hard place to call home: a canadian perspective (canadian scholars press, 2019). megan lewis is a young kanien’kehá:ka woman from tyendinaga mohawk territory, currently residing in tkaronto, ontario. she holds a master of arts in public policy and administration and a bachelor’s degree in child and youth care. she has developed a passion for the advocacy of indigenous people and communities through education. over the years she has held various roles both on the front line in community organizations and in the federal government, and she continues to strive to make connections between policy and practice in her current role as the policy and research manager at canadian roots exchange (cre). jonathan bailey is working towards a master of arts in counselling psychology at yorkville university with a specialization in child and family therapy. he holds a bachelor’s degree in child and youth care from ryerson university and a college diploma in child and youth work from george brown college. jonathan’s research interests include the effects of parenting support on children’s mental health and the social determinants of health that impact the quality of life of parents and children. melanie panitch dsw is an associate professor and the executive director, office of social innovation at ryerson university. she was the founding director of the school of disability studies. throughout her career she has been an activist, advocate, researcher, and educator, with strong roots in the disability rights movement and broad international experience. she has been central to embedding social innovation curriculum, teaching core courses in the minor in social innovation, and fostering international student engagement for social innovation. her research, published as disability, mothers and organization: accidental activists (routledge, 2008), is a gendered history of activist mothering in the canadian association for community living. crime prevention and community safety: 1 crime prevention and community safety: a conceptual overview michel vallée abstract: the author explores some of the factors that have influenced the public debate in canada over issues of crime and victimization, particularly with reference to children and youth as both perpetrators and victims. focusing specifically on various approaches to crime prevention, he discusses some of the key elements of a comprehensive crime prevention strategy and argues that for such a strategy to be meaningful and effective, it should be a community-based social development approach this article, which serves as an introduction to volume 1, number 1 and number 2 of the international journal of child, youth and family studies explores some of the factors that have influenced public discourse in canada surrounding crime and victimization, focusing specifically on an assessment of various crime prevention strategies and approaches. building on this analysis, some of the key elements of a comprehensive crime prevention strategy are discussed. finally, i consider why a comprehensive crime prevention strategy based on a social development approach has the greatest potential to affect crime and victimization. as noted in the preface, the papers in this collection present a multidisciplinary analysis of crime prevention with a particular emphasis on the safety, health, and wellbeing of children and youth. this emphasis was the focus of the policy forum upon which this volume is based, and was selected through a series of discussions and negotiations with senior federal government officials from several departments who participated in the event. while these policy-makers shared a general interest in crime prevention programs and strategies, a broad consensus emerged during negotiations with these federal representatives that the focus of our discussion on crime prevention should be on the experiences of children and youth. both the research literature and public opinion polls in canada reflect the importance of addressing the experiences of children and youth as both victims and perpetrators of crime. for example, an earnscliffe survey (2000) reported results that are typical of public opinion in canada regarding youth involvement in crime. this survey showed that crime, and youth crime in particular, is near the top of the public agenda. an ekos survey (2004) confirms these findings, suggesting a continued perception by canadians that crime is increasing and that crime involving youth is increasing more dramatically than other crimes. in fact, three-quarters of canadians perceive that violent crimes and property crimes committed by youth, as well as school-based violence, are increasing. 2 while youth crime and victimization have garnered considerable public concern, children and youth have also become the focus of much crime prevention activity in canada. a study of crime prevention practices in 29 canadian communities by jamieson, beals, lalonde & associates (2000) revealed that, “in all 29 communities, youth and children were identified as the major program beneficiaries” (p. 5). indeed, many of the programs identified during this study involved the police or schools in educational, recreational, or mentoring activities aimed at children and youth. while most communities had traditional situational programs and activities, the majority of the activities identified were “crime prevention through social development” (cpsd) in orientation. in most communities, the police were the main group participating in both situational crime prevention and cpsd. similar results were reported by jamieson and hart (2003) in their review of promising crime prevention practices in canada. in their compendium, fully 30 of the 39 programs identified focused on activities aimed at children and youth. another example of the importance of children and youth in the area of crime prevention is a report by arcand and cullen (2004). this study examined the role of the police in crime prevention through social development. of the 54 programs identified in this report, 68.5% had an educational focus while 26% involved recreational activities. most of these programs were designed for children and youth. the focus on children and youth in the area of crime prevention reflects a wide range of societal concerns and beliefs about crime and victimization. for example, canadians generally favour prevention over punishment for youth. this is illustrated in the ekos survey report (2004): for the majority of canadians, providing young people at risk of offending with opportunities (e.g., training, rehabilitation or recreational programs) is by far the preferred approach to crime prevention. alternatively, attempting to deter youth from committing crimes through increased law enforcement methods such as “tougher sentences” is favoured by about one in four. the perception that opportunities are the best way to prevent youth crime has increased from 68 per cent in 2000 to 73 per cent in 2003. (p. 24) identifying children and youth as both “victims” and “villains” reflects many of the dominant cultural stereotypes surrounding the concept of “childhood”. on the one hand, these stereotypes portray children as innocent and passive victims who need guidance and nurturing. on the other hand, some children and youth are identified as potentially dangerous and criminal actors in need of punishment and control. the “victim” imagery is based on the notion that children need guidance and protection from the dangers of adult life. this view defines children and youth as not fully developed, offering the potential of successful socialization or even rehabilitation. many programs aimed at children and youth are based on just such a premise, that is, children and youth can be educated and made aware of potential dangers (drugs, crime, unsafe sexual activities, 3 etc.). educational, recreational, and mentoring programs (to name a few) can be designed to encourage the development of pro-social behaviour patterns in the young. at the same time, enforcement efforts aimed at youth crime, including violence, drugs, and gang activity, respond to people’s fear of crime. indeed, many offenders fall into the 14to 24-year-old age range confirming societal concerns regarding youth crime. attitudes toward prevention and rehabilitation, however, also reflect dominant stereotypes. given their potential for future growth, general attitudes toward youth that run afoul of the law perceive good candidates for reform and rehabilitation efforts in comparison to adult offenders who are thought to be more set in their ways and therefore less susceptible to change. in the sections that follow, issues related to crime and its prevention are discussed in a general way, especially with respect to identifying the major types of crime prevention. the relevance of this discussion for the safety, health, and well-being of children and youth is implicit; however, specific reference will be made to the implications of the discussion for children and youth where appropriate. crime and its prevention in canada over the past decade neo-liberal thinking has dominated political discourse in most western nations including discussions of law and order. this has stemmed from the influence in the early 1980s of the reagan administration in the united states and the thatcher government in britain. in the area of crime and corrections, this has meant an emphasis on “get tough” measures, harsher punishments, and higher incarceration rates. however, despite this focus on a so-called “law and order” approach, there has been a growing recognition by researchers, policy-makers, and service providers alike, that many of the existing traditional responses to crime and victimization are ineffective. for example, there are very real limits to what the criminal justice system can achieve in terms of preventing crime, deterring criminals, or making our homes and communities safer. while the most concrete outcome of canada’s current approach to crime is an incarceration rate that is among the highest in the world, crime and victimization rates continue to remain high. the limits of the judicial process as a crime prevention tool are also evident when we consider that the criminal courts and the sanctions they provide do not deal with the root causes of crime. rather, they deal with the situational events surrounding a crime and the offender. a similar argument can be made with respect to the limited effectiveness of correctional treatment and rehabilitation programs. as gendreau and ross (1987) note, it is unfortunate that the discussion of treatment effectiveness has become almost dogmatic and influenced by the prevailing political climate. while some correctional programs do have positive preventive effects on some offenders, they cannot be considered as an effective mechanism for preventing crime and victimization in any comprehensive manner. interestingly, public perceptions about crime and victimization have not changed much over the past several decades in canada. the canadian public continues to see crime as being stable or increasing and, as noted above, believes that youth are 4 responsible. a review of studies and polls describing the views of canadians confirms this conclusion. for example, an ekos survey (2004) indicates that a majority of canadians continue to believe that crime is either at the same level or increasing, but not by as much as in a previous survey (ekos, 2001). as well, the public is concerned about their children's safety in schools. on the other hand, canadians feel safe from property and violent crimes within their own neighbourhoods. importantly, however, while the canadian public sees crime as being an important issue, they are also aware of the significance of key risk factors related to crime, such as difficulties within families and schools, problems related to drugs and alcohol, and poverty. in fact, in recent surveys, the public has expressed its support for crime prevention initiatives and has endorsed directing greater attention and resources to the “causes” of crime. for example, the ekos (2004) report notes that by a margin of two to one the public prefers crime prevention to punishment as a primary goal of the criminal justice system. moreover, three in four canadians would rather see an approach to youth crime that offers opportunities to get involved in positive activities, such as training and drug rehabilitation, rather than imposing tougher sentences. more specifically, the report states: respondents were presented with a hypothetical situation where they were forced to choose between a series of randomly paired choices on how best to reduce crime. the results show that, almost two out of three times, the expansion of literacy and training programs for youth was selected when paired against other options. further evidence of the public’s preference for proactive solutions to address crime can be found in the support for increasing early childhood intervention, parenting programs, youth recreational activities, and public education programs, which were selected more than half of the time as the most effective form of crime reduction. (ekos, 2004, p. 36) in order to identify some key elements of an effective crime prevention strategy, it is important to begin by considering what we mean by “crime prevention”. harvey, grimshaw, and pease (1989) suggest that there are effectively no real boundaries to crime prevention work, and that proponents and practitioners subsume widely divergent practices under the headings of “crime prevention” and “community safety”. crawford (1998) points out that genuine prevention is inherently difficult to assess. it involves securing a “non-event”. hastings (1995) suggests that there are three specific tasks in developing a blueprint for prevention. these are: (a) defining the crime problem from the perspective of society, victims, and community; (b) deciding on the appropriate level of intervention, i.e., primary prevention or problem focused, secondary prevention focused on a specific situation or individuals, or tertiary prevention focusing on individuals who have already been involved in an offence; and, (c) deciding on the appropriate point of intervention, i.e., the motivation of the offender, the vulnerability of the victim, and the situation or the opportunity that could give rise to the criminal act. 5 there have been many efforts to classify crime prevention approaches. for example, lejins (1967) talks about differentiating between the techniques employed in crime prevention activities, e.g., punitive prevention or deterrence, corrective prevention or the elimination of criminogenic social conditions, and mechanical prevention or measures to reduce criminal opportunities. further to this, crawford (1998) writes, “…in trying to define crime prevention’s conceptual boundaries, we recognize that crime prevention is somewhere between the narrow craft of ‘policing’ and the elephantine and somewhat amorphous processes of social control” (p. 8). lab (1997) states that crime prevention entails any action designed to reduce the actual level of crime and/or perceived fear of crime. hastings (1995), however, indicates that prevention should mean a great deal more than better law enforcement. definitions of crime prevention, its boundaries, and appropriate conceptualizations remain the subject of intense debate and considerable academic interest. seeking agreement on a workable definition of crime prevention is not an easy task, nor is trying to determine at what point to intervene and at what level. these are difficult choices to make. crawford (1998) states that these choices, “…embody assumptions about causes of crime, the nature of social relations and principles of justice, as well as, at the same time they connect with, and are promoted by, political strategies and ideological perspectives” (p. 3). the nature of prevention strategies can range on a continuum that includes tertiary intervention (e.g., correctional treatment measures) at one end, secondary prevention (e.g., situational crime prevention) in the middle, and primary prevention (e.g., social development) at the other end. prevention can be multi-dimensional by focusing on all three levels of intervention in an integrated manner. at the same time, crime prevention can be comprehensive and include the health care, child welfare, education, and criminal justice systems, as well as retaining a significant role for the local community. this latter approach emphasizes the need to take a broader look at the root causes of crime and develop a more comprehensive crime prevention strategy. the house of commons standing committee on justice and the solicitor general (scjsg) provides strong support for a comprehensive approach to crime prevention in their concluding statement: the committee accepts that crime will always be with us in one form or another, and will require police, court, and correctional interventions. at the same time, it believes that our collective response to crime must shift to crime prevention efforts that reduce opportunities for crime and focus increasingly on at-risk young people and on the underlying social and economic factors associated with crime and criminality. this comprehensive approach involves partnerships between governments, criminal justice organizations, and community agencies and groups. as well, it situates the crime problem in a community context and sees its solution as a social question. (government of canada, 1993, p. 2) 6 do we really know what underlying social and economic factors are associated with crime and criminality? can we recognize the impact and effects of these factors? social science research has identified many interrelated factors in the social environment of persistent offenders that contribute to their criminality. a number of witnesses at the 1993 scjsg hearings emphasized the relationship between the following: 1. dropping out of school and coming into contact with the juvenile justice system; 2. illiteracy, school failure, low self-esteem, and crime; 3. inappropriate disciplinary methods of parents (lack of consistency is the worst) and delinquency; 4. violent behaviour by young and adult offenders; and 5. witnessing and/or experiencing physical or sexual abuse as children. it is clear that there is no single “cause” of crime. rather, crime is the outcome of the interactions of a constellation of factors that include: poverty, physical and sexual abuse, illiteracy, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, lack of job opportunities for youth, negative peer influence, physiological defects (e.g., fas/fae), biological defects (chromosome imbalance, tumours, etc.), low self-esteem, inadequate housing, school failures, unemployment, inequality, and dysfunctional families. crawford (1998) also identifies a number of variables that impact crime. in addition to gender (most crimes are committed by men), he discusses the impact of the following: (a) individual personality and behavioural factors, such as hyperactive behaviour in early childhood, impulsiveness, and restlessness; (b) family influences, such as social class, family size, family poverty, lone-parenting, inadequate parenting, physical and sexual abuse, parental conflict and separation; (c) living conditions, such as poor housing and unstable living conditions; (d) disintegration of social supports; (e) school influences, such as poor schooling, bullying, poor educational achievements, truancy, and exclusion from school; (f) peer group pressure, delinquency or having friends who are involved in delinquent activities; and, (g) employment issues, such as a lack of training and unemployment. crime prevention strategies the discussion above demonstrates that many factors and variables have been associated with crime. it also shows that there are numerous strategies or approaches to crime prevention and many ways to categorize and describe them. in the following discussion, i consider the strengths and weaknesses of four key crime prevention approaches: 1. community crime prevention 2. situational crime prevention 3. developmental crime prevention 4. crime prevention through social development 7 community crime prevention community crime prevention is sometimes referred to as neighbourhood crime prevention because, for the most part, these programs tend to focus on local, identifiable entities such as neighbourhoods. it is called “community crime prevention” even when implemented on a city-wide basis. community crime prevention seeks to directly influence intervening constructs such as social cohesion, community atmosphere, and surveillance. additionally, these programs try to affect community cohesion, crime levels, and the fear of crime. neighbourhood or block watch programs, block parents, citizen patrols and general police-community initiatives (such as education programs, social events, anti-drug activities, etc.) are excellent examples of such community crime prevention programs. evaluation studies of the effectiveness of community crime prevention show mixed results. early research found that familiarity with neighbours and the community increases with participation in block parties and social events. however, later studies paint a bleaker picture. for example, in a study of two neighbourhood watch programs in london, england, bennett (1990) finds that social cohesion increased in one area and decreased in the other. in addition, building on an analysis of four organized neighbourhoods in chicago, rosenbaum (1986) reports no change in the social cohesion in three areas and actually found decreased social cohesion in the fourth. in general, the literature regarding neighbourhood watch programs is mixed. for example, lab (1997) reports that the literature on citizen patrols suggests that they can be effective in reducing both crime and fear, but that police foot patrols have had mixed results. he points out that the evidence supports the idea of communal action as a successful neighbourhood watch means of combating crime and the fear of crime. gerbner, cirel, evans, mcgillis, and whitcomb (1977) also report that official crime records reveal a positive impact of programs. however, some observers have raised questions about the effectiveness of these programs and whether they merely displace crime rather than prevent it. others have criticized neighbourhood or community crime prevention because these types of programs are aimed primarily at property offences. they have little, if any, impact on interpersonal violence because much of this type of behaviour goes on behind closed doors. nor do they address other types of crime such as white collar and corporate crime, computer and internet-based crime, or economic crime. an example of an early neighbourhood crime prevention strategy was based on broken windows theory (wilson & kelling, 1982, 1989). this theory stresses police and citizen foot patrols and greater community efforts to clean up neighbourhoods. broken windows theory formed the basis of the state of new jersey's “safe and clean neighborhood program” in the mid-1970s, as well as efforts in new york city in the 1980s. wilson (1983) reports on the new jersey experience and points out that while some success was observed with respect to the “clean-up” of the neighbourhood, there was no evidence that foot patrols had reduced crime rates. 8 neighbourhood or community crime prevention is appealing because it reflects a “common sense” approach to crime. that is, if we are watching out for each other (including our property), we are less likely to be victimized. by extension, having police officers or citizens patrol neighbourhood streets gives the impression that someone is there to protect us. however, this approach to crime prevention has encountered considerable criticism and is limited in its focus. a salient lesson learned from the experience with community crime prevention is that the involvement of community members is a crucial factor in developing an effective crime prevention strategy. there has been renewed interest in community crime prevention strategies as a result of the recent focus on social capital as a policy and program instrument. social capital has come to be seen in community crime prevention as a key ingredient in policecitizen neighbourhood interventions. the role of social capital has been highlighted in the work of sampson and raudenbush (1999) in chicago neighbourhoods. their efforts in promoting interventions related to social capital and based on informal neighbourhood relationships, as a tool to reduce minor street crimes and disorder, appear to have had an impact on reducing violent crimes in these neighbourhoods. corrado, cohen, irwin, and davies (2005) present recent research on social capital that suggests that community networks need to be expanded beyond just police links or coordinated programs to include early education intervention programs, health care, and employment schemes. their discussion regarding the importance of social capital raises a number of questions about the concept and its use. to begin with, a clear definition of this concept is required if policies and programs are to be developed based on social capital. at the moment, such a definition is not available and there is considerable debate over how social capital should be defined and applied. while it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed discussion of these issues, suffice it to say that a working definition of social capital is required which is sufficiently broad to encompass the experiences of neighbourhoods with informal networks, yet narrow enough to differentiate between these informal networks and other social interaction that goes on in neighbourhoods between residents and such professionals as teachers and police officers who work there. calling all relationships and social networks in a community “social capital” does not allow us to distinguish between various forms of social interaction and their impact on community functioning. moreover, this discussion brings several other key variables into focus including the definition of community, the meaning of community-based, and who qualifies as a member of a community or neighbourhood. equally important is a clarification of the role that professionals have in these contexts. situational crime prevention the prioritizing of crime prevention efforts is nowhere more evident than under the umbrella of situational crime prevention strategies. one of its distinctive features is the targeting of a specific problem, place, or person. canada’s national crime prevention centre (2000b) describes situational crime prevention as a “common sense” approach to crime prevention. it is referred to as such because situational crime prevention often 9 involves taking simple, common sense steps to reduce or eliminate opportunities for crime. some examples of this common sense approach include not leaving your car keys in the ignition when you leave your car, locking your doors when you leave home, not leaving packages in your unattended car, and taking other such common sense precautions. clarke (1983) suggests that situational crime prevention generally focuses on highly specific forms of crime. it involves the management, design, or manipulation of the immediate environment. it is systemic and permanent, and aims to reduce the opportunities for crime, as well as increasing the risk of engaging in criminal activities for a wide range of offenders. crawford (1998) simplifies this discussion by suggesting three premises for situational crime prevention: (a) reduce the opportunity of crime; (b) increase the risk of detection; and (c) reduce the rewards of crime. it is difficult to define situational crime prevention without mentioning its two precursors, i.e., opportunity reduction (jane jacobs, 1961) and defensible space (oscar newman, 1972). moreover, the popularization of the concept of crime prevention through environmental design (cpted) represents one of the more well-known and well-utilized situational crime prevention strategies. the cpted approach suggests that the physical environment can be manipulated to influence behaviours that ultimately reduce the incidence and fear of crime. further, crowe (2000) suggests that there is a resurgence of interest in cpted. for example, he refers to recent efforts of the state of florida, which has gone so far as to pass a law entitled the “safe neighborhood act”. this law provides legal authority and funding for the implementation of cpted strategies. lab (1997) writes that situational crime prevention offers an approach that seeks to target specific problems with individualized intervention. these techniques epitomize the idea of secondary prevention. many of the studies of situational crime prevention, such as those by deschamps, p. l. brantingham, and p. j. brantingham (1991) on transit system fare avoidance in british columbia, and ekblom (1992) on preventing post office robberies in london, england, indicate a significant measure of short-term success. another example is the recent crime reduction effort based on the use of closed circuit television (cctv). welsh and farrington (2004) report on a meta-analysis of what they deem as the highest quality available research evidence on the effects of cctv on crime in public spaces. they examined the results of studies from the united kingdom and north america that included follow-up periods of between 3 to 24 months for city centres or public housing (averaging less than 12 months), 12 to 32 months for public transport (averaging less than 24 months), and 8 to 30 months for car parks (averaging slightly more than 12 months). they concluded: cctv had a significant desirable effect on crime, with an overall reduction in crime of 21 per cent in experimental compared to control areas. cctv was most effective in reducing crime in car parks, most effective when combined with improved street lighting and targeted at vehicle crimes, and more effective in reducing crime in the u.k. than in north america. (p. 21) 10 however, while this example was presented as an evidence-based crime prevention analysis, there was limited information in the report on the different factors potentially affecting the results of each study in the meta-analysis. the evaluation studies on situational prevention strategies are less clear on the long-term and lasting effects of these types of measures. the reason for this is that it is both difficult and costly to sustain these techniques for extended periods of time. as well, it is equally a challenge to assess the impact of these strategies on the overall rates of crime and to take shifts in crime patterns into account. the success of situational crime prevention strategies has made them very popular with law enforcement agencies and the general public, despite the fact that these strategies do not deal with the perceived root causes of crime. by themselves, these approaches have limited long-term value; however, when included in broader and more comprehensive approaches, they can play a key role in reducing some specific types of crime and victimization. developmental crime prevention crime prevention from a developmental perspective is largely based on the idea that criminal activity is determined by behavioural and attitudinal patterns that have been learned during a child’s psychosocial development. ideas concerning crime prevention and the fundamental causes of crime are really concomitant ideas. the point is that while some criminal activities are influenced by proximate events, others are influenced by key risk factors that require long-term intervention. research such as that done by tremblay and craig (1995) confirms that intervention with young children and their parents has positive effects on three key risk factors: (a) poor parenting (parents); (b) cognitive deficits (life environment); and (c) socially disruptive behaviour (school). this does not negate the importance of other structural risk factors such as poverty and a poor living environment but it does provide easier and more focused opportunities for preventive intervention. in addition, tremblay and craig’s review of the literature indicates the positive effects of intervention on inadequate parenting. they looked at the formation of attitudes toward parenting, mother satisfaction, family communications, father participation, child abuse and neglect, as well as the rate of a return to work and further pregnancy rates. they found that to the extent that positive effects can be maintained over long periods, they are likely to have a significant effect on a child's development. cognitive deficits of all kinds are associated with criminal behaviour. longitudinal studies such as those done by moffitt (1990, as cited in tremblay & craig, 1995), farrington (1991, as cited in tremblay & craig, 1995), and stattin and klackenberglarsson (1991) have shown that preschoolers and elementary school children’s cognitive deficits predict later criminal behaviour. most of the studies highlighted by tremblay and craig (1995) confirm that interventions (such as daycare participation, special learning 11 opportunities, or social skills training), which focus on stimulating cognitive development, must begin at an early age in order to have a significant impact. studies such as earls (1986, as cited in tremblay & craig, 1995) and mrazek and haggerty (1994, as cited in tremblay & craig, 1995) report positive effects of early treatment on the disruptive social behaviour of children, particularly in the short term. while experience with respect to long-term effects is more limited, there are indications that short-term studies have demonstrated long-term effects (farrington & tonry, 1995). howell (1997, as cited in lab, 2004) suggests that protective factors are individual or environmental factors that tend to increase resistance to, or inhibit the development of, problematic behaviours. however, as indicated by catalano, arthur, hawkins, berglund, and olson (1998, as cited in lab, 2004), children exposed to multiple risk factors are at substantially greater risk of future delinquent behaviour, even with the positive influence of some protective factors. a good illustration of the positive influence of protective factors can be found in programs using the healthy families model. an evaluation of this model is provided by boyes and hornick (2005), who note that the model is based on the healthy families america program. this model was tested in various sites across canada, including three experimental sites of the success by six healthy families program in edmonton, alberta (norwood child and family resource centre, the bent arrow traditional healing society, and terra association); the kwanlin dun first nation healthy families program in whitehorse, yukon; and the best start healthy families program in charlottetown, prince edward island. the healthy families model was successfully implemented at all five sites. at all program sites, over 70% of program time was spent on client-focused activities. finally, the tremblay and craig (1995) examination of some 49 prevention experiments suggests that early childhood intervention can have a positive effect on the three very important risk factors for juvenile delinquency: disruptive behaviour, poor cognitive skills, and poor parenting. two of these – disruptive behaviour and poor cognitive skills – also impact school performance. furthermore, their review indicates that experiments with long-term follow-up targeting at least two of these risk factors, i.e., disruptive behaviour and poor parenting skills in childhood, have been shown to have a significant effect on decreasing future criminal behaviour. tremblay and craig (1995) indicate that many of the experiments that have been reviewed in the past have been small-scale confirmatory or replication type studies. moreover, as indicated by lab (2004): …recent studies based on better theoretical models with quality longitudinal data have demonstrated considerable success at addressing and improving a number of important protective factors and reducing risk factors, including antisocial behaviors such as crime (see howell, 1997; kury and obergfellfunchs, 2003; loebner and farrington, 1998). (p. 145) 12 from a policy perspective, proponents of this approach believe that money invested in early prevention efforts with at-risk families will have greater payoffs than money invested later, after the child has engaged in criminal activity. however, developmental crime prevention does not sufficiently deal with certain types of crime, such as familyrelated violence, personal crimes, and white-collar or economic crime. in addition, rosenbaum, lurigio, and davis (1998) note that as a society, we need to understand that children face different risk factors at different points in their development, thus dictating the need for different interventions as they develop. this is a challenge that developmental theorists have only partially dealt with since they focus principally on children and do not typically address the problems faced by youth who develop delinquent characteristics during their preadolescent or adolescent periods. these young people represent a significant portion of those exhibiting delinquent and subsequent criminal behaviour in society. crime prevention through social development crime prevention through social development (cpsd), or social crime prevention as it is called in europe and in some circles in the united states, rests on what lab (1997) refers to as the assumption that true change in crime and fear can be achieved only through attacking and altering larger social and economic problems and issues. lab further states that advocates of such social prevention point to problems of structural inequality, poor education, economic or social powerlessness, and other related concerns. currie (1988) suggests that the approach we need toward crime in the coming decades might be called “social environmental” or, to resurrect an old term, “human ecological”. by this, currie means a strategy that includes interventions on the level of individuals and families “at risk”. it also moves beyond this level to interventions aimed at the larger social forces that have an impact at the community level and thereby put large numbers of individuals and families at risk. are the concepts of social prevention and crime prevention through social development synonymous? lab (1997) suggests that from a social prevention orientation, society needs to address problems at the “macro level”. the social prevention model focuses on developing programs and policies on the national scale to improve health, family life, education, housing, work opportunities, and neighbourhood activities. in addition, we can deduce that for lab (1997), social prevention is at the frontier or the boundary of what is traditionally viewed as primary and secondary prevention. on the other hand, social development (which is a term more in use in canada) attempts to build upon what we believe and know about the social and economic factors that are most closely related to criminal behaviour. the national crime prevention centre (2000a) presents crime prevention through social development (cpsd) as an approach to the prevention of crime and victimization, which recognizes the complex social, economic, and cultural processes that contribute to crime and victimization. cpsd seeks to strengthen the bridge between criminal justice policies and programs and the safe, secure, and pro-social development of individuals, families, and communities. 13 furthermore, the national crime prevention centre (ncpc) suggests that cpsd tends to concentrate on secondary prevention measures. such a definition implies that we should focus on key risk factors that contribute to involvement with crime such as those suggested by crawford (1998) as well as other risk factors discussed above. once again, these include: individual personality and behavioural factors, family influences, living conditions, school influences, peer group pressures, and recreational and employment opportunities. one of the key characteristics of the canadian experience with cpsd is that it is implemented on a relatively small scale and is community driven. in addition, as pointed out by the ncpc (2000a), most of the social development strategies in canadian communities can be classified under one of three general rubrics: 1. individual-level strategies that focus on addressing existing deficits that may place individuals at risk of involvement in crime; 2. family-oriented strategies that seek to strengthen family capacity, such parenting programs; and 3. community-level strategies that seek to strengthen local capacity to prevent crime. presumably all these strategies focus on high-risk situations. some of the critics of a social development approach highlight the fact that its definition and scope are quite broad. for example, crawford (1998) suggests caution regarding social development approaches because of the potential danger in becoming either too diffused or too dominating within social policy. social development approaches require a significant amount of human and financial resources from both within and outside the community. it is also difficult to target those responsible for, or at risk of becoming involved in, white-collar crime and so-called “victimless crimes” such as electronic commercial fraud and internet crime. in addition, the issue of violence against women, especially within private spaces, is not readily amenable to social development intervention strategies. finally, it is difficult to assess the impact of these broad prevention strategies both in the short and long term since many variables can have a potential impact on outcomes. conclusion: toward a comprehensive crime prevention strategy i have noted key arguments that suggest the need for a new and different crime prevention approach. crime and victimization continue to exist and while official data indicate a reduction in overall levels of crime, reasonably unchanged levels of victimization counterbalance this. second, the public view is that the agents of the criminal justice system (police, courts, and correctional services) have not been able to demonstrate that they can reduce or control crime and victimization. in addition, many believe that the criminal justice system contributes to the increase in crime through its use of prisons, which can become training grounds for criminals. the current situation begs 14 the question as to what types of crime prevention strategies are most appropriate and able to produce effective results. it is my belief that a meaningful strategy for preventing crime should be based on a social development approach that strengthens individuals, families, and communities. such an approach should be designed and managed at the local level. the strength of a community-based social development approach is that it can address specific factors that are strongly associated with youth as well as adult criminal activity. these include violence in the home, unsupportive family life and parental behaviour, poverty, poor housing, failure in school and illiteracy, drug and alcohol abuse, and unemployment. advocates of social crime prevention approaches highlight existing and entrenched societal problems of structural inequality, poor education, unemployment, poor employment options, economic and social powerlessness, and other related concerns. these social inequities disadvantage many in canadian society and have a particular impact on children and youth, the elderly, and single parents. prevention based on social development makes sense for our communities by making them safer and more attractive places for all citizens. moreover, there is ample evidence that well-designed social development programs prevent crime and are costeffective. the ncpc (2000a), for example, points to american evaluations that show that crime prevention through social development pays handsome dividends. the perry preschool project in michigan has been shown to be responsible for significantly reducing juvenile and adult crime in the long term. this conclusion is based on almost 30 years of participant follow-up. social development strategies do not, however, necessarily alleviate the shortor medium-term needs of communities that are in crisis and seeking an immediate reduction in crime. as indicated by the aspen institute (2002, as cited in hunsley, 2003): comprehensive community initiatives have made great strides in identifying the many moving parts that have to come together to achieve change and in understanding how difficult it is to implement complex community change strategies and to acquire the capacity and resources needed to make them work effectively. (p. 7) to achieve this, we must add supplementary prevention strategies, usually situational in nature and often including community capacity building, to the longer-term social development approach. their aim must be to generate a greater sense of safety and well-being, as well as increasing socio-economic benefits for those residents most in need. a comprehensive crime prevention strategy needs to meet several important requirements to be effective. these include building active partnerships throughout the community, ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of all players – and especially the police – are clearly defined, putting in place a sound governance structure to help in 15 decision-making, and implementing intervention strategies using an evidence-based approach. comprehensiveness thus refers to a systematic process of identifying the priority concerns of a given community, using diagnostic tools to identify and target relevant risk and protective factors particularly with respect to children and youth across multiple domains, and identifying and implementing evidence-based responses that match the prioritised factors. (hawkins, catalano, & arthur, 2002, pp. 955-956) a comprehensive strategy should be designed to address the multiple risk and protective factors associated with crime and victimization at the individual, family, community, and societal level. such an approach should yield a higher return than discrete approaches. establishing a comprehensive community-wide approach is a longterm effort, however, and it may not be a practical option if, for example, key community agencies are unwilling or unable to respond to some specific problems or issues. in such cases, alternative methods are available to provide support for communities facing significant problems that possess limited resources or consensus on how to deal with these problems. wyrick and howell (2004) highlight one of these methods. their strategic riskbased response model was applied to youth gangs, although in my view it is equally applicable to broader community concerns. they state: comprehensive community approaches still remain the ideal communitylevel response to youth gangs. many communities, however, cannot implement comprehensive programs for a variety of legitimate reasons and these communities can benefit from developing a strategic risk-based response to youth gangs. (p. 20) i believe their approach can provide a framework for intervention when key community agencies are unwilling or unable to respond to all the particular concerns identified in a community assessment process. the goal then becomes to focus on key or core issues, such as children and youth at risk, and on factors where there is the most potential for joint partnership intervention. one key lesson learned by the national strategy for community safety and crime prevention (nscscp) and reported by léonard, rosario, scott, and bressan (2005) suggests the need to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of local advisory groups, project coordinators, and partnering organizations (or what i referred to earlier as governance structures) are clearly articulated. another lesson from this study focuses on the importance of building and maintaining local partnerships as key to sustaining collaborative action. to this, i would add the importance of ensuring the full participation of the police in any comprehensive local crime prevention strategy. police officers see themselves as peace officers whose primary responsibility is to enforce the law and maintain public order. as caputo and vallée (2010) point out: 16 a new integrated and comprehensive service delivery model could be a way of giving police officers an expanded role in community problem solving. such a model would emphasize their skills and expertise as peace officers and law enforcers. it would be build on their operational expertise and experience as first responders. (p. 93) finally, it is important that any intervention be reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure that it is on track and meeting its objectives. according to welsh and farrington (2005), “systematic reviews are the most comprehensive method to assess the effectiveness of crime prevention measures” (p. 349). they also point out that, “in an evidence-based society, [systematic reviews] would be the source that governments would turn to for help in the development of policy” (p. 348). this view is certainly supported by those assessing the lessons learned through the nscscp. i share the view that evaluation is a vital element of success in the development, implementation, and sustainability of effective crime prevention programs. 17 references arcand, m. a., & cullen, j. e. (2004). promising practices: survey of police involvement in crime prevention through social development in canada. ottawa: public safety and emergency preparedness canada. aspen institute. 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(2004). evidence-based crime prevention: the effectiveness of cctv. crime prevention and community safety: an international journal, 6(2), 21-33. welsh, b. c., & farrington, d. p. (2005). evidence-based crime prevention: conclusions and directions for a safer society. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 47(2), 337-354. 20 wilson, j. q. (1983). thinking about crime (revised edition). new york: vintage books/random house. wilson, j. q., & kelling, g. (1982, march). broken windows: the police and neighborhood safety. atlantic monthly, 249, 29-38. wilson, j. q., & kelling, g. (1989, february). making neighborhoods safe. atlantic monthly, 263, 46-52. wyrick, p. a., & howell, j. c. (2004). strategic risk-based response to youth gangs. juvenile justice, ix(1), 20-29. crime prevention and community safety: a conceptual overview crime and its prevention in canada crime prevention strategies community crime prevention situational crime prevention developmental crime prevention crime prevention through social development conclusion: toward a comprehensive crime prevention strategy references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs132-3202221117 locating state actors in violence against children (vac) networks in kenya: a complexity leadership lens jacqueline nassimbwa, doris m. kakuru, and malcolm t. mpamizo abstract: kenya has made significant efforts to address violence against children (vac), but its prevalence remains high. networking of different actors has shown evidence of benefit in some sectors, but determining its effectiveness in addressing vac has not received due scholarly attention. we conducted qualitative research, including a desk review, focus group discussions, and interviews. in this article, we apply complexity leadership theory to illuminate the types of networks involved and the influence kenya’s government actors can exert towards eliminating vac. we found that these actors operate through structured and unstructured networks. the latter are mainly grassroots responders who work voluntarily. the complexity leadership theory postulates that leadership influence is exercised through key functions, which are reflected in the two types of networks. the political– administrative function in kenya is shaped by law; we show how it transforms other networks via an adaptive function. an enabling function is executed through enforcing policy, monitoring, and other methods, while a dissemination function involves the translation of ideas into policy, such as the transformation of childline kenya, a grassroots organization, into the national child helpline. we conclude that government should strengthen child rights networking by building more technical and financial capacity for this role. keywords: violence against children, child abuse, child rights networking, civil society networks, children, complexity leadership theory jacqueline nassimbwa msc (corresponding author) is a master’s candidate in child, youth, family and community studies at the university of victoria, and a researcher at nascent research and development organization uganda, p. o. box 25382, kampala, uganda. email: jacquelinenassimbwa@uvic.ca doris m. kakuru phd is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: doriskakuru@uvic.ca malcolm t. mpamizo llm (international human rights law & policy) is a social justice lawyer and advocate at civsource africa, plot 4310, balikuddembe road, naguru, kampala, uganda. email: mmpamizo@civsourcea.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 124 violence against children (vac) is a global health and human rights concern affecting over half of children aged 2 to 17 every year (world health organization [who], 2020), yet the public remains generally unaware of its magnitude and consequences (mercy et al., 2016). significant international and national commitments have been made to address vac, including target 16.2 of the sustainable development goals1 (sdgs), which explicitly aims to “end abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children” (united nations department of economic and social affairs, 2015). countries have adopted international commitments through national regulatory frameworks, programs, and strategies. the who’s 2020 global status report on vac shows that 89% of countries assign the task of reducing vac to multiple sectors, such as the education, health, justice, and social sectors (p. xi), and states that vac prevention and response should include targeted interventions at four interrelated levels of risk — individual, interpersonal, community, and society. horizontal interlinkages are found at the community level between children, parents, caretakers, families, and schools. addressing vac also entails vertical involvement of actors at the household, community, district or county, national, and global levels. kenya has demonstrated commitment to addressing vac primarily through the ratification of the united nation’s convention on the rights of the child (crc; 1989) in 1990 and, in 2001, the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (acrwc; organization of african unity, 1990). the latter is the overarching legal guidance for children’s rights in the african region; it promotes an approach to child protection that involves strengthening systems such as laws, policies, regulations, and services that are needed throughout the various social sectors. government institutions at the national and subnational levels bear the responsibility for laws, policies, and regulations, while civil society actors and community groups deliver services (organization of african unity, 1990). the crc was adopted into the kenyan constitution of 2010, which includes provisions regarding child protection (republic of kenya, 2010). the children act, 2001 elaborates on the constitutional provisions for children’s rights and protection and clearly states that it adopts its mandate from the principles of both the crc and the acrwc (republic of kenya, 2001). the constitution legitimizes the national children policy (national council for children’s services [nccs], 2010), which aims to realize and safeguard the rights and welfare of children. later policies include the national social protection policy (ministry of gender, children, and social development, 2011), the national policy on elimination of child labour (ministry of labour, social security and services, 2016), and the national plan of action for children in kenya (2015–2022; nccs, 2015). 1 the sdgs are: (1) no poverty; (2) zero hunger; (3) good health and well-being; (4) quality education; (5) gender equality; (6) clean water and sanitation; (7) affordable and clean energy; (8) decent work and economic growth; (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure; (10) reduced inequalities; (11) sustainable cities and communities; (12) responsible consumption and production; (13) climate action; (14) life below water; (15) life on land; (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions; and (17) partnerships for the goals. see https://sdgs.un.org/goals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 125 specific to vac networking, kenya has a national council for children’s services (nccs), which oversees the supervision and control of planning, financing, and coordinating child rights and welfare issues. the nccs is replicated at the subnational level by county area advisory councils (aacs) in 47 counties, 229 subcounties, divisions, and other devolved structures. the nccs receives reports, and funds and advises the aacs. the nccs was designed to be multisectoral, reflecting the fact that child protection issues were spread over diverse government ministries. however, the participation of the different ministries was not defined. the lack of statutory guidance on their roles and the consequent deficit of official accountability meant that line government ministries worked in silos, with duplication of roles. the national child protection system framework (nccs, 2011) was developed in 2011 to address this problem by promoting connectivity among stakeholders. this marked the beginning of vac networking among state actors. in this article, networks are perceived as “social arrangements made up of individuals and representatives of institutions based on establishing and building relationships, sharing tasks and working on mutual or joint activities, enabling new learning and mobilizing alternative action” (younis, 2017, p. 2). the kenya national child protection system framework acknowledges the complexity of child protection and the need for multidisciplinary and multisectoral actors. the framework facilitates coordination of the various interventions and actors in vac prevention (nccs, 2011). the department of children services2 (dcs) is another government institution designed to work through a collaborative approach. one of its seven divisions is focused on child protection; it develops vac-related programs and works with nccs to develop policies and guidelines to address vac. the dcs participates in child protection technical working groups, committees, and alliances. considering that all these derive guidance from international instruments that promote a system-strengthening approach, one can adduce that networking to address vac is supported by the kenyan legal system. the kenyan government has been recognized both as leading in the care and protection of children at risk in africa and as unwilling to ensure their care and protection (chege & ucembe, 2020; cooper, 2012). kenya has a rich legal and institutional framework to address vac, but the operationalization of laws and policies is limited by various factors attributable to social and economic inequalities (wangamati et al., 2019). the heavy political investment that has been made is unfortunately matched with poor service-seeking behaviour and low uptake of services (annor et al., 2022). therefore, the prevalence of vac in kenya is still high, although annor et al. (2022) pointed out that the 2019 vac survey shows an improvement in indicators from its predecessor in 2010. for example, the prevalence of any form of lifetime sexual violence among females (13–24 years) dropped from 36.2% in 2010 to 25.2% in 2019, while those who reported any physical violence went from 28.4% to 16.8% over the same period. the vac survey, published by the ministry of labour and social protection, department of children’s services (2019), 2 https://www.socialprotection.go.ke/children-services/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 126 showed that among children aged 18 to 24 more boys (56.1%) than girls (45.9%) reported having experienced childhood violence (p. 8). however, girls reported a higher risk of sexual violence: 15.6% of girls and 6.4% of boys experienced sexual violence before turning 18, and 62.6% of girls who were sexually abused had experienced multiple incidents (p. 8). physical violence is the most common type of vac, experienced by 51.9% of boys and 38.8% of girls (p. 8). some recent studies on vac in kenya seem to point to the importance of strengthening collaborative efforts between various actors in the child protection space (e.g., undie & mak’anyengo, 2020). examples of such studies include some that have examined the topic of sexual violence, including its drivers (wangamati et al., 2018), its prevalence (russell et al., 2020), the kinds of perpetrators and the context (mwangi et al., 2015), and health providers’ post-rape care knowledge, attitudes, and practices (wangamati et al., 2020). undie & mak’anyengo (2020), in their study to understand screening for sexual violence against children in kenya, collected data from children and parents through collaborating with schools and hospitals, working with parents, schoolteachers, child health care providers, and children. their results show the importance of building collaborations with all stakeholders in child protection and speak to the extent of networking for vac prevention and response. the existing literature paints a bleak picture of the magnitude of vac in kenya despite the numerous child protection efforts put in place by the kenyan government and partners. ayaya et al. (2021) studied vac among orphans and separated children and adolescents and found that, while they all reported high levels of abuse, street-connected participants had the highest incidence of all kinds of violence. a qualitative study conducted by embleton et al. (2021) on access to health care for street-connected children also found that they had many needs arising from child neglect. the study recommended multidisciplinary, holistic, and community-based approaches to care. wangamati et al. (2018) explored community perceptions of drivers of child sexual abuse. they found that participants attributed child sexual abuse to numerous factors, including poverty, girls’ provocative clothing or behaviour (survivor blaming), “developmental stage, peer pressure, huge gender disparities exacerbated by negative social norms and cultural practices, the hiv epidemic and social media platforms that circulate sexualised images” (p. 1394). this is further evidence that a multipronged approach is needed to successfully address vac in the communities. the importance of forging solid collaborations between various state and non-state child protection actors has been well acknowledged in multiple studies (e.g., badoe, 2017; devaney & byrne, 2015; o’leary et al., 2015). however, vac networking has often been perceived as a reserve of not-for-profit actors. the work of awortwi (2018) recognizes civil society and grassroots networks as having an advantage over state actors in addressing matters that concern grassroots communities, such as social protection. on the other hand, tshimpaka et al. (2021) viewed civil society networks as well-governed, self-organized entities that function in the same way as the formal arrangements of government technocrats. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 127 although most of the existing literature shows that both state and non-state actors play significant roles in addressing vac, wessells (2015) found a disconnect between state and nonstate child protection efforts. hence, while there appears to be some connectivity within state actors or non-state actors as shown by awortwi (2018) and tshimpaka et al. (2021), the types and functionality of networking for vac have not received due scholarly attention. in the existing literature, there is a lack of studies analyzing the nature of efforts to address vac through collaborations or networks among state actors, and between state and non-state actors. this article aims to illuminate the types of networks that have formed, and the role of government actors as the ultimate duty-bearers for the realization of global, regional, and national commitments toward eliminating vac in kenya. theoretical framework: the complexity leadership theory networks are complex and diverse, so the actors within are often uncertain of the magnitude or significance of their actions within networking arrangements (scholten et al., 2015). the traditional leadership theory that assumes hierarchy or bureaucracy cannot take into account this complexity. anchoring networks in complexity science instead would help us position government actors in this complexity, which changes over time. coveney (2003) defined complexity science as the “study of the behaviour of large collections of … simple, interacting units … with the potential to evolve with time” (p. 1058). the interconnectedness, interactivity, fluidity, and diversity of a network means it can be defined as a complex adaptive system (cas), “a complex interplay from which a collective impetus for action and change emerges when heterogeneous agents interact in networks in ways that produce new patterns of behaviour or new modes of operating” (uhl-bien et al., 2007, p. 299). in a cas, leadership denotes not authority or position but an emergent dynamic (uhl-bien et al., 2007). in this article, networks for vac in kenya are regarded as cass, and are used as the basic unit of analysis. the subunits in networks are interdependent actors (individuals or institutions) united by a shared goal. each of these subunits brings unique creativity, learning, and adaptability. leadership arises dynamically from the interactions of the different subunits (scholten et al., 2015). the leadership framework in cass is what has come to be known as the complexity leadership theory (clt; uhl-bien et al., 2007) that anchors this article. clt underpins our analysis as we explore the types of networks in which the government is an actor and examine how government leadership influences approaches to vac intervention within the networks. with guidance from uhl-bien et al. (2007), we regard clt as premised on: • the nature of interactions and interdependencies among people, bureaucratic divisions, environments, and organizations. this context is the foundation of a cas and of its leadership. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 128 • a distinction between leaders and leadership. the latter emanates from the interconnectivity of subunits leading to adaptive outcomes (adaptive leadership). leaders are those individuals that influence the dynamics and outcomes. • a distinction between leadership and managerial positions, which are usually bureaucratic (also called administrative leadership). managers produce orderly results efficiently, while leaders are a force for change (meijerink & stiller, 2013). clt is also premised on three functions of leadership: administrative, enabling, and adaptive (uhlbien et al., 2007). vac is a global policy issue, and analysis of the leadership in vac networks demands a framework suitable for examining cass in political contexts. thus, we use meijerink and stiller’s (2013) redefinition of the functions of leadership: political–administrative, adaptive, enabling, connective, and dissemination (p. 253). the political–administrative function is fulfilled by positional leaders, such as political leaders or managers within networks. it comprises top-down leadership that includes decision-making, and sourcing and allocation of resources; it targets a political context in which policy is made in the cas (e.g., on climate change, or vac). although meijerink and stiller (2013) included “adaptive” as a function of leadership, they actually stated that it is not a leadership task; rather, the “adaptive function is an emergent property of the cas” (p. 252). in our case, the adaptive function concerns the prevention of and response to vac. the third leadership function is enabling, which entails creating conditions for a cas, such as a vac network, to create, disseminate, learn, and adapt. positional leaders support this function by practising tolerance for diversity and variety, driving networking, or igniting urgent consideration of an issue. examples of this function include tolerating deviations from policy, finding necessary resources for experiments, and getting buy-in from other government agencies. the fourth function is dissemination, which includes all actions taken to disseminate new approaches generated through the adaptive function of the framework. political entrepreneurs (drivers of policy change) are essential for this function, and they link the informal networks to formal decision-making arenas. the last function is the connective one, which coordinates all connections horizontally and vertically. methodology study design and sites this study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach to enable interaction with the participants and generate in-depth perspectives on vac networking (civsource africa, 2021). the study commenced with a desk review (later published by civsource africa, 2021), which was conducted to provide insights into the kenyan vac response network landscape and identify organizations to possibly engage in the study. nairobi and kisumu counties were selected as the study sites through purposive sampling. specifically, nairobi county was selected due to having international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 129 been characterized as suffering a high prevalence of vac and having an informal settlement dynamic (onyango & tostensen, 2015), and because it has a mix of national and county government responses to vac, and multiple organizations working in that space. nairobi also hosts several network secretariats and donor communities. kisumu county was selected for having a heavy burden of hiv and orphanhood, a high rate of teenage pregnancy, both rural and urban dynamics (mkutu et al., 2019), and a concentration of community-based organizations (cbos) and non-governmental organizations (ngos) responding to vac. study participants the selection of participants was done through purposive sampling and snowballing. after selecting the study sites, we referred to the civsource africa (2021) report to identify child protection organizations operating in these areas. we purposively selected both formal and informal network actors (formal organizations, and informal collaborations between individuals) that work to prevent or respond to vac in kisumu and nairobi. after identifying these existing partnerships, we randomly reached out to and recruited members of the informal collaborations to participate in focus group discussions (fgds). earlier participants referred us to peers who were recruited in turn until the desired number of fgd participants had been achieved. we conducted three fgds with members of informal networks from nairobi (11 participants), kisumu central (8), and kisumu east (9). from the fgds, we confirmed the existence of formal vac networks and invited their leads or representatives to participate in interviews. we conducted key informant interviews with representatives of three national-level, three county-level , and three subcountylevel networks. data collection we collected both secondary (from civsource, 2021) and primary data (using fgds and indepth interviews). fgd data were collected using an fgd guide that two research assistants administered during face-to-face sessions. the guide was translated into swahili (the local language), tested, and revised before being administered to the study participants. the fgd guide aimed to collect data on how vac networking happens, who is involved, why it is essential, and current challenges and suggestions for the future. the 28 fgd participants were involved in child protection work at the grassroots level. the fgds were conducted in swahili at three different locations convenient for the participants, and were audio-recorded. members of the research team took field notes that were helpful at the data analysis stage. interview data were collected using an interview guide collaboratively developed by members of the research team. the interview guide was also translated into swahili, tested, and revised before actual data collection. the interview guide aimed to collect data from network leads about why and how vac networking happens, who is involved, networking challenges, and tipping points for vac philanthropic work. interviews were conducted face-to-face. all interview data were audio-recorded. members of the research team also took detailed field notes that informed the data analysis process. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 130 data management and analysis all audio and text files were stored in a password-protected folder accessible only to the research team members. audio files were transcribed into text and anonymized to conform to the confidentiality requirements. the data were then coded into emerging themes using atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software. a thematic analysis was conducted using an iterative approach (glaser & strauss, 1967), using data collected from the fgds to inform the interview phase. the emerging themes were checked with the literature that had been reviewed in the initial stages of the project. trustworthiness was achieved through both peer (connelly, 2016) and researcher triangulation (curtin & fossey, 2007). members of the research team held regular debriefing meetings during data collection and analysis to compare notes and iron out any discrepancies in data interpretations. we also diversified the data sources to enhance the quality of our analysis. ethical considerations we obtained ethical clearance and a research permit (ref. #277079) from the relevant institutions before the commencement of the study. written consent was sought and obtained from all study participants for data collection and audio recording. we removed participants’ identifiers, including names and locations, from all reports to ensure anonymity. results types of network one of the objectives of our study was to understand vac networking functionality, and we sought this information from both fgds and interview participants. our data show that government actors were involved in both structured and non-structured networks aimed at preventing and responding to vac. structured networks structured networks are those with more or less clearly defined boundaries, including goals and membership. they may or may not have structures at the devolved county (subnational) level. our research found three types of structured network at the national and devolved government levels: policy, advocacy, and service delivery. policy networks operate at the national level and include invited membership. both state and non-state actors unite to work on issues that relate to policy, including research, formulation, dissemination, and implementation, among others. they are mainly donor-funded and may or may not have a defined period for operation. for example, the nccs was established to be a corporate entity by law; it has representation from different government sectors, ngos, religious institutions, and the private sector. these members hold a three-year term and can serve only twice (republic of kenya, 2001). the nccs is mandated to exist as long as it is legitimized by law. however, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 131 council mainly collaborates with different actors to realize a particular output for a defined period. for example, developing the nccs framework for the national child protection system involved various members, including state and non-state actors, children, and the kenyan citizenry. this collaboration ended once the framework was developed (nccs, 2011). similarly, the vac survey was conceptualized and conducted by a multidisciplinary and multisectoral partnership between state and non-state actors, dubbed the vacs technical working group, the operations of which halted after the completion of survey-related activities (ministry of labour and social protection, 2019). there are many other technical working groups that do not have an ordained time scope but are not legally bound to remain in existence. we conceptualized advocacy networks as those whose dominant role or purpose of coming together is to influence a legal or policy action, including formulation, adoption, or implementation. advocacy networks sensitize communities about children’s rights, but we did not find any government actors in these networks. this is possibly because we operationalize advocacy, in this context, as seeking government action. from interacting with their members, we noted that the networking function in advocacy networks is not expressly stated in their job descriptions. this could reflect a gap in advocacy networks’ understanding of networking, or perhaps it is simply that organizational activities take priority over network activities. finally, service delivery networks provide vac services like legal, health, psychosocial support, and shelter, among others. some are mandated to provide services by law. for example, the nccs official who participated in our study reported that only one aac was actively coordinating different actors to address vac. the participants reported that many aacs at the county and subcounty level were non-functional due to a lack of coordination, supervision, and resources from the nccs. instead, sometimes they rely on funding from other networks or organizations to execute their roles. the desk review showed that other networks are self-organized to ensure a systems approach to service delivery for vac. they include both state and non-state actors with varied expertise in addressing vac. most organizations that form these networks rely on donor funding targeted to project activity and the short term. this makes service delivery discontinuous, particularly in vac response, where multiactor coordination is critical. the situation is further compounded by capacity gaps among court officials, police officers, and others (united nations children’s fund, 2018). other services like mental health and psychosocial support providers, and health care, are compromised by limited logistical support and supervision, and lack of a reliable supply of drugs and materials, among other challenges (munene & okwany, 2016). we also learned from the fgds that structured network members often have membership in several different networks performing similar functions. this is because being part of a functional network is attractive to donors, and organizations have to compete for resources within the network. this funding dynamic results in dormancy periods, especially for networks with few sources of income. they are revived when actors find financing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 132 unstructured networks unstructured networks comprise individuals who have dedicated their time, material resources, and energy to respond to vac in their communities. some of them are linked to a particular state or non-state institution, often on a volunteer basis. they may or may not have previously worked in child protection, or had relevant training. they include gender activists, paralegals, opinion leaders, and general volunteers. the term “unstructured” denotes that these individuals collaborate loosely with formal networks and organizations to which they refer vac cases, and are often not registered members. there are also networks of individuals within defined government structures who volunteer on issues relating to vac. community health volunteers are the first level of health service delivery recognized in the ministry of health (2020) community health strategy. they are chosen by the community to fulfil roles that include collecting primary health data and identifying referrals for health matters; they are attached to households and to public health facilities to which they make referrals (aseyo et al., 2018). our fgd data show that they respond to vac in teams and that the other networks and organizations designated to receive their referrals are often underfunded. another category of volunteers is children’s officers, who are recruited by the district or county aacs. they support child protection through identifying, documenting, and reporting cases of vac. however, like community health volunteers, they do not receive funds for facilitating communications with their communities, for necessary travel, or for accompanying children who require care or protection. fgd interactions generally revealed that unstructured networks are driven by care for their communities, and as such, are more resilient because they develop organically. they are the frontline responders to vac, supporting both individuals and groups. state officials supervise those within the public system, while those outside are accountable only to themselves. these unstructured networks identify and follow up on vac cases; structured networks rely on them for this. the submissions we received from unstructured networks showed that they have accumulated knowledge on child protection through training conducted by various organizations. however, given the resource constraints they face, addressing vac can become secondary, being overridden by activities that earn them income. some network activities may even be halted altogether, resulting in failure to follow up on cases. additionally, due to their unstructured nature, these networks — especially those defined in a legal framework — engage both vertically with civil society organizations and the state and horizontally with each other, leading to their resources being stretched too thin. actors in unstructured networks also expressed being powerless relative to those in the structured networks. they felt that they were being used by the structured networks as evidence of the “boots on the ground” required by many donors. these grassroots actors further reported being victimized by perpetrators of vac in the communities they serve. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 133 the influence of government leadership in networks to address vac in the literature we reviewed, we found that the government of kenya had invested heavily in child protection, but the prevalence of vac remained high. we therefore set out to analyze the role of government leadership in vac network functioning. our findings revealed four categories of government leadership: political–administrative, adaptive, enabling, and dissemination. political–administrative function as the government is the primary duty bearer, its officials bear the responsibility of carrying out the political and administrative function of protecting children. this function is shaped by a legal framework that guides programming for child protection and holds both duty bearers and perpetrators of violence accountable for children’s rights. this legal framework extends to the formation of institutions that oversee policy and child welfare. these include the nccs and its devolved structures, the aacs and the dcs. the councils hold a political and administrative function that oversees kenya’s planning, financing, and coordination of child rights interventions. the nccs and its partners developed the nccs framework for the national child protection system to support this function. the who’s (2020) global status report on preventing violence against children shows that kenya has 12 government sectors with functions addressing vac, of which only eight have a coordinating function. the report further indicates that most sectoral plans are only partially funded. this limited state funding impedes them from effectively delivering on their mandates. the resulting heavy dependence on donors and ngos leads to failures in policy implementation (nyamu, n.d). similarly, devolved structures are expected to enforce national policies and laws at the county level. however, hyun et al. (2020) showed in their report on gender analysis that, in practice, devolution is applied selectively, creating a gap in vertical networking that compromises the effectiveness of policies addressing vac. the political–administrative function of government, which should be providing leadership, is thus weakened. adaptive function the adaptive function of leadership refers to the dynamics of change within networks — the emergence of new ideas and practices. we illustrate this with an example from the vac survey process, a collective undertaking by various state and non-state actors led by the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) in the united states. the findings of the first kenya vac survey in 2010 led to the formation of other teams that contributed to various follow-on processes, including strengthening of language on child protection in the constitution, and implementing the framework for the national children protection system and the strengthening child protection in kenya programme strategy 2011–2014 (cdc, n.d.). similarly, the vac survey in 2019 led to the adaptation of networks to produce different outputs necessary for child protection, including the national prevention and response plan for violence against children 2019–2023 (ministry of labour and social protection, state department for social protection, & department of children’s services, 2019), a child-friendly handbook on child protection (ministry of labour and social protection, state department for social protection, & department of children’s services, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 134 2020). a further result was the formation of childline kenya, an ngo created by a collaboration of three non-state actors to manage a toll-free helpline. this service was developed so that children could express themselves and receive an appropriate referral (childline kenya, n.d). throughout this survey process, adaptability was evident in the transformations of the networks of vac survey actors, as shown in our results. enabling function different government actors (positional leaders) enable the development of adaptive networks. the dcs is a crucial actor that influences the adaptive function through a legal mandate. some dcs functions stipulated in the children’s act, 2001 include: supervision of children’s officers and coordinating their work; working with government institutions to embed best practices for children; maintaining records and data management on the degree of access to welfare amenities; safeguarding the welfare of children in foster care; providing care and assistance for children in custody; and intervening on behalf of children who need care and protection. through its mandate, the dcs is a member and a convener of technical working groups, committees, and alliances. our engagements with actors in unstructured networks also revealed that government officials at the subnational level can enable effective policy implementation at that level. however, there were reports of allegations that law enforcement personnel had accepted bribes from perpetrators of vac whose cases had thereafter not been prosecuted. one volunteer mentioned that she had received death threats after reporting a case of vac by a health worker to the police. corrupt behaviour of this kind weakens networks at the subnational level. one of the troubling findings of our study was the apparent absence of children’s networks. the nccs framework for child protection promotes child participation: children were part of the process of developing the framework (nccs, 2011) and other policy documents such as the national prevention and response plan on vac (ministry of labour and social protection, state department for social protection, & department of children’s services, 2019). there is provision for two children (a boy and a girl) in the devolved structure of the aacs, as well as children’s parliaments and assemblies (nyamu, n.d). the environment is thus conducive to enabling children’s participation. however, there was no mention of these representatives in our interactions, and we did not find any active children’s networks in our literature review. dissemination function the dissemination function of leadership is illustrated by new ideas being integrated into formal policies. an example is the childline toll-free helpline, developed by non-state actors but afterwards merged with the dcs’s crisis desk to form the national child helpline service in 2008. this enabled the 11-digit toll-free number used by childline to change to a nationally recognized short form (116) allocated by the national communication authority. to date, the dcs is the custodian of 116, and childline manages the every-day running of the helpline (childline kenya, n.d). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 135 discussion the global vac status report (who, 2020) recommended strengthening multisectoral governance and coordination of actors as a critical strategy for the prevention of vac. this article illustrates that networking is connectivity beyond identity. some established networks, such as the nccs, its devolved structures (aacs), and some donor-funded non-government institutions are prevented by financial or capacity constraints from carrying out networking activities. on the other hand, there are individuals who intentionally unite efforts to challenge vac in their communities using their own resources. the structure providing connectivity between these individuals may have no official name — or any name at all — but the function of networking happens spontaneously through regular communication, referral, and follow-up of cases. the article further shows that government, as the ultimate duty bearer, must participate as a crucial actor in networks that address vac if they are to realize change. we conceptualize government leadership as operating through a legal framework that legitimizes networking and obligates government actors as positional leaders to actively engage other stakeholders. the nccs and dcs, as well as their sub-national structures, hold leadership positions that require them to oversee issues on protection and prevention of vac. although there is no evidence of formal connections between state and non-state vac actors, our results do not confirm those of wessells (2015), who found a deep disconnect between state and non-state actors. we show how policy-level networks can adapt using the example of the vac surveys of 2010 and 2019, which were carried out through a partnership between state and non-state actors. according to meijerink and stiller (2013), the adaptive function of leadership is not a task, but an emergent property of a network. to illustrate, the vac surveys mentioned above were conducted by one network (the vacs technical working group), and when the results were released, other groups organized themselves into new networks to translate the findings into actionable interventions. in 2019, for example, the vac survey results motivated the establishment of one network in the form of the team that developed the national prevention and response plan for violence against children 2019–2023, and another network that developed a child-friendly handbook on child protection. the emerging networks included participants from the technical working group, some of whom were government actors. our findings show that although networking for vac is not limited to non-state actors, government involvement in networking is more visible at the national level than at the subnational level, impacting formulation or revision of policy. donor funding seems to be a significant defining factor for the functionality of these policy-level networks, and it is doubtful whether the policy environment to address vac would be as rich if external funding were reduced or eliminated — a phenomenon we call donor-induced networking. the strength that national networks have in policy formulation is undermined by barely functional sub-national networks (like the aacs under the nccs) because the latter have limited funding, if any, for policy implementation or supervision. other scholars (chege & ucembe, 2020; cooper, 2012; nyamu, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 136 n.d.) have highlighted the inadequacy of government funding for implementation of laws and policies on child protection in kenya. despite this lack of government funding, there have been improvements in addressing vac since 2010, which annor et al. (2022) attributed partly to the successful implementation of policy strategies. this suggests that the implementation efforts have mainly been carried out by non-state actors funded from the private sector. future research could compare the direct contributions to child protection of networks that include state actors with those solely comprising non-state actors. additionally, while we see government actors as enablers in policy-level networks, they become disablers at the grassroots level when they take bribes from perpetrators of vac or threaten network members who are advancing child protection. this reflects several problems. first, there is lack of supervision from government actors, as nyamu (n.d.) highlighted in her critical analysis of the nccs child protection framework. a report by hyun et al. (2020) also shows the selective devolution of government structures, and a resulting gap in responsibilities between the national level and government actors at devolved levels. second, there seems to be a poor understanding among government actors of networking for vac, and the importance of the unique role played by networks in referral of cases, investigating and adjudicating cases, and apprehending perpetrators. third, we think it is possible that government actors disregard vac as a societal nuisance, and accord it low priority. relatedly, we found that children participated in different policy formulation processes as information providers, but we did not find active children’s networks, especially at the implementation level. although determining the existence of such networks was not part of our research design, it is notable that there was no mention of them in all of our engagements with participants; this may indicate that active children’s networks indeed do not exist, or perhaps that different stakeholders in vac, including government actors, regard their leadership as insignificant. individuals like greta thunberg, a young swedish woman who has been at the forefront of global child activism for climate change since age 15 (zhanda et al., 2021), and the students who led a pivotal series of demonstrations in 1976 against the use of afrikaans as an official language in the south african education system (banda, 2000), are examples of the power of young people’s leadership in networking and their influence on government policy and practice. on the whole, our results agree with embleton et al. (2021), who recommended a holistic approach to child protection involving the creation and sustenance of collaborations between state and nonstate child protection efforts (badoe, 2017; devaney & byrne, 2015; o’leary et al., 2015). conclusion since the government is the primary duty bearer in the prevention of vac, the many recommendations in the who’s (2020) global vac status report begin with a key government task: strengthening the governance and coordination of multisectoral actors. to carry out this role, the report recommends that governments ensure that there is “an appropriately resourced agency international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 137 … to coordinate multisectoral action to end violence against children” (p. 63). as well, governments must strengthen the roles of various ministries, departments, and agencies, giving them clearly mandated responsibility for delivery of programmes in areas that may not be covered by existing roles, such as “norms and values, parent and caregiver support, safe environments, and income and economic strengthening” (p. 63). although the kenyan government has demonstrated political commitment to addressing vac and achieved partial success, the prevalence of vac remains unacceptable, possibly due to gaps in implementation and supervision, and limited capacity in networking, among government actors as the main duty bearers. previous studies have investigated vac without focusing on connectivity among various actors, and our research aimed to provide this missing perspective. our study findings show that both government and civil society collaborations are essential for vac prevention and response. we recommend that the kenyan government be more intentional in supporting vac network actors at all levels for accelerated response to, and eventual elimination of, vac. better networking among state and non-state actors is needed to eliminate duplication of roles. additionally, better connections among actors will increase network functionality and reduce donor-induced networking and the associated disadvantages. we recommend that further research be undertaken to explore the enabling environment for children’s networks in both preventing and responding to vac. acknowledgements we are grateful to all our participants at the grassroots, subnational, and national levels. we acknowledge nascent rdo uganda for hosting the research, and specially recognize other members of the research team (annah kamusiime, auleria munene, lydia b. sandi). we are further grateful to dr. lina digolo for reviewing the first draft of the manuscript, and the reference group (agnes m. wasike, dr. lina digolo, joel k. kiiya, jacqueline asiimwe, katie davies, and krista riddley) for providing overall quality assurance. finally, we thank catherine mugabo for extensive administrative support, and the wellspring philanthropic fund through civsource africa for funding the research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 13(2-3): 123–142 138 references annor, f. b., chiang, l. f., oluoch, p., mang’oli, v., mogaka, m., mwangi, m., ngunjiri, a., obare, f., achia, t., patel, p., massetti, g. m., dahlberg, l. l., simon, t. r., & mercy, j. a. 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(2021). children climate change activism and protests in africa: reflections and lessons from greta thunberg. bulletin of science, technology & society, 41(4), 87–98. doi:10.1177/02704676211049690 courageous conversations in child and youth care: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 164 courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling jin-sun yoon keynote speech for child and youth care in action iii conference: leading conversations in research, practice and policy, april 28 to 30, 2011, university of victoria. jin-sun yoon is a senior instructor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: jsyoon@uvic.ca following the tradition of indigenous and korean elders with whom i have had the great privilege to work and learn from, i would like to start by sharing my gratitude for the land that we are on. in this way, we ground ourselves spiritually, emotionally, and physically by acknowledging the presence of our ancestors (current and past) in everything we do. i am a child immigrant from south korea so i want to acknowledge that this is not the indigenous land of my ancestors. i would like to point out the privilege of being a visitor who can work, play, and raise my family on unceded traditional coast and strait salish territories. back in the early 1990s, the first nations house of learning was opened while i was a graduate student at the university of british columbia. at that time, i understood that it was important to acknowledge traditional territories. what i used to believe was basic protocol in the presence of indigenous people and during ceremonies has now been transformed to an embodied way of living that guides me in my daily practice. mailto:jsyoon@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 165 i am deeply grateful for the continuous journey of self-discovery and decolonization practices that has been so patiently guided by my indigenous friends and elders. with my growing appreciation of indigenous knowledge, i am even more aware of the longest journey between head and heart. the process of personal decolonization is a long and arduous journey. if you feel no pain, then you are not on the journey, except in your head. i would like to share a quote that literally guides me every day: if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together. – women’s aboriginal activist group, queensland australia, 1970s this quote speaks to the necessity of working together for our collective liberation from the shackles of the dominant mainstream discourse of power and privilege. we have nothing to lose, we can only gain by working together. we have nothing lost in the telling of our stories, but everything to lose if we do not tell and, especially, if we do not listen. i added the word “courageous” in front of “conversations” in the title of this talk because the child and youth care profession requires courage at this juncture. we are at a serious tipping point in human history. we need to make transformative personal change that will impact social change from the ground up. we are all in some form of practice and we all influence other people. we need to use these relationships and connections to tell our stories and to make space to hear others. as long as we manufacture and sustain the often unnecessary tensions in our field, we are doing anything but good practice. elephants in the room i chose the “elephant in the room” as a metaphor for my talk because as a minoritized faculty member in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, i often feel there are several elephants in the room. i cannot assume that everyone reading this is a fluent english speaker so let me give a brief explanation: an “elephant in the room” is an english idiom that refers to those things that are obvious truths but go unspoken or unaddressed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 166 some of these elephants for me are not elephants for others so i do understand that it is entirely subjective. but what isn’t experienced through the subjective self? from my many years of doing diversity training, anti-racism activism, and multicultural education i know that elephants cannot be seen by all people at all times. for those with social locations that overlap mine, the elephants are as clear as day, but for others, it may be an academic matter with limited personal interest. my intention is that exposing the elephants may start conversations and put some of my recommendations for change into action. i am very grateful every day to my colleagues who took a leap of faith when hiring me 10 years ago. would i be the model minority or the yellow peril? (an image of my family is projected onto the big screen that has “le peril jaune” [french for “the yellow peril”] written on a banner on the side). “yellow peril was used to attribute a wide variety of dangers to migration from asia including loose morals that would corrupt society and cheap labour that would take away jobs from hard-working canadians and americans” (madokoro, 2010). this is a photo of my family on the day we received canadian citizenship in 1972. it is a postcard that my sister made for an art project early in her art career. i was given an english name (bonnie) by the united church minister to help me assimilate into canadian society. we came to canada in the late 1960s before multiculturalism was introduced as a policy. for all the criticisms of the multicultural act of canada enacted in 1988 (citizenship and immigration canada, 2011), as a racialized immigrant i feel that we are better off with it than without it. in the “good old days” before multiculturalism and human rights, overt racism was rampant and socially acceptable. back in those days, we were all considered chinese or japanese because we were among the first koreans to arrive in canada. that is largely why there is a strong identity now as asian-canadians: no one can really tell us apart! the maclean’s article originally titled too asian (findlay & kohler, 2010) caused much controversy in november 2010. many stated that it is a testament that there continue to be strong racist feelings against asian people [it was retitled: the enrollment controversy]. how many is too many? asian-canadians were very upset about this article and have impressed me with their solidarity and political activism. we may yet be the yellow peril! does that send a little jolt of terror in you? being a racialized minority in canada to be a racialized minority in canada is about being minoritized or marginalized. as we know, the majority of the world’s population of seven billion are people of colour and half are female, so this is not about numeric concepts of being a minority. it is about differential power and privilege, and failures of the democratic process. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 167 we live in a neo-liberal and neo-colonial world order, where race is still a salient marker, even if inaccurately ascribed by others. racial profiling and single-story stereotypes (adichie, 2009) are not about how people see themselves, but about how others are informed by the body and then the action taken in response. the term “racialization” addresses the construction of race as a potent force in our socialization. this is what compelled me to do my graduate work in understanding ethnic identity development. it continues to be a source of inquiry in my daily practice as i see varying levels of race consciousness. my primary focus in this paper is to alert you to the changing demographics in canada and that the elephants in the room must be addressed in this light. in doing so, i will offer some very basic recommendations for the field to take up intersectional practice frameworks, to rise to the challenge, to get ahead of the curve instead of responding woefully afterwards. changing demographics of canada we need to be really conscious of the changing demographics of canada’s future and how that will impact us in child and youth care. with the decline of the birth rate in canada, an aging population with the baby boomer generation, and an anticipated shortage of labour, we are entirely dependent on large-scale immigration to sustain the canadian institutions that we hold as the cornerstones of the nation such as universal health, education, and social safety nets (fang, 2009). statistics canada (2010) released projections for the racial diversity of the canadian population 20 years from now. they suggest that the immigration will come from non-european countries, thus increasing the category that the federal government designates as “visible minorities”. with current immigration projections, this translates into one-third of the canadian population, and that is not counting those of mixed race heritage. aboriginal peoples in canada according to the last census data from 2006, the aboriginal population surpassed the one-million mark, reaching 1,172,790 (4% of the total population of canada). the past decade has seen a large increase in the aboriginal population: it grew by 45%, nearly six times faster than the 8% rate of increase for the non-aboriginal population; 56% of the current aboriginal population is under 25 years old with 40% of them under 16 years (statistics canada, 2009). in the 2011 census, the census long form has been eliminated so we do not know if this kind of important data will be captured in the future (scrivener, 2010). what these statistics are showing us is that there is a growing population of indigenous people concentrated in the younger demographic. how can we use this knowledge of our future humanscape to conceptualize, define, and practice how “care” can be done differently? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 168 how can we put into practice what we have learned from the past and present to imagine a kinder enlightened type of care? it is with this that i feel an urgency to call child and youth care as a field to high alert. we need to prepare ourselves, our students and practitioners now in the field, with appropriate training through personal and curricular decolonization, intersectional frameworks, and cross-cultural skill development. we cannot afford in the face of this changing tide to do business as usual. my greatest pleasure and honour in being in the child and youth care field is that we have the potential to be “agents of influence for social change” that can help to shape society’s future citizens and leaders. as we work with children and youth, we can empower or oppress. we can inadvertently become normalizing agents who maintain the status quo or we can really support alternate ways of perceiving, supporting, and liberating youth. child and youth care praxis orientation knowing-doing-being praxis orientation thanks to the great work of jennifer white (2007), we now operate from a more sophisticated version of the former kss (knowledge-self-skills) model to the knowing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 169 doing-being praxis framework in child and youth care. the essence of the model incorporates the fundamental influences that couch our child and youth care praxis: these include the sociocultural, political and institutional, community, interpersonal, and organizational influences that frame how we operate and carry out the fundamental principles of child and youth care praxis. we identify the fundamental principles of our field as: • pluralism • social justice • relational practice • youth-engagement • community collaboration • ethical professionalism • holistic development • strength-based • ecological introducing the “elephants in the room” to achieve these wonderful and noble aspirations of our field, we must address the elephants in the room. let me introduce them: 1. the first elephant i have called “eurocentric worldview”. 2. the second is “western cultural hegemony”. 3. the third is “racism”. i know that there may be a lot of contestable points in how i have described each elephant and the way in which i have grouped the underpinning concepts. i also know that each one could be a lecture unto itself so bear with me in introducing it in such a compressed manner. finally, please pay attention to your emotional reaction because some buttons may be pushed. consider these emotional reactions as compasses and our minds as our engines and our bodies for action. it is difficult to navigate through psychological processes that need to take place in order for real social change and political activism to happen. “eurocentric worldview” eurocentric worldview is everything we do in child and youth care as we know it today. it is not that i do not value it or want to dismantle it. what i am proposing is that we critically examine it to test for its robustness in applying it to the future humanscape of our field, not just to those who will be “receivers of care” but those who are and will be our practitioners. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 170 i do not have time to review each and every one of these concepts so i will summarize why this worldview must be contested or, at the very least, critiqued. first, many people come from collectivist worldviews that are diametrically different from the eurocentric worldview. collectivist worldviews are deeply rooted in millenia-old indigenous knowledges and traditions (prowse, 2011). this monolithic eurocentric worldview impacts everything we do in child and youth care, from the very essence of the pedagogy and curriculum in academic training to the professional standards of practice and competencies in the community. it influences everything from student recruitment strategies, staffing, program design, skill development, and intervention methods. ethnocentrism is structurally upheld through government policies, enforced through law, and accepted by society as “normal and acceptable” if not superior. there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these pillars of “best practice” are exactly what exclude the marginalized and minoritized in canadian society (fryer, 2006; stanfield, 1985). although some of these concepts have been systematically and historically contested in academia (for example, qualitative research methodology addresses issues of objectivity and positivism) there are others that are rarely questioned. the print word is something that is seen as the bedrock and it is well established as the method of knowledge production and dissemination. why is oral tradition not seen as a bona fide knowledge exchange system of education and training (rankin, hansteen-izora, & packer, 2006)? why do children learn not to tell stories when storytelling is an important method of imparting wisdom and guidance in so many traditions? it is encouraging to see more and more people using expressive methods, but they remain still on the fringe of what are considered “valid and credible” forms of “academic or scholarly” [read: eurocentric concepts of] leadership, particularly when they are couched in feminist, anti-racist, and/or indigenous critiques (mihesuah & wilson, 2004). meritocracy suggests that we are all on a level playing field, that we have equal opportunities, and that hard work pays off (mcnamee & miller, 2004). it also intimates that there are natural consequences or “just desserts” for those who do not make it. we must address this myth of meritocracy by understanding the systemic and institutional barriers that exist rather than focusing on an individual’s lack of will or effort. individualism and independence impact such things as how we conceptualize self-care and professional boundaries. many of us are doing “relational self-care” not just caring for ourselves. how can we do “self-care” in the way eurocentrism dictates when we are so intricately connected to the well-being of others in our practice, families and communities? i see students who are parents, especially mothers, who struggle with this all the time and i invite discussion on how we can collectively redefine what self-care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 171 and boundaries look like so we can liberate ourselves from crippling guilt and inadequacy. feminism has a lot to teach us, but what does it say when it is referred to as the “f” word (rowe-finkbeiner, 2004)? “western cultural hegemony” the second big elephant in the room is called western cultural hegemony. this is what is happening to our world community as it is dominated by powerful individuals and transnational corporations that threaten cultural and biological diversity. this has resulted in a global monoculturalism that many of our great thinkers are warning us about (davis, 2003; suzuki, 1999). while there is a considerable increase in chinese and indian influence, western cultural hegemony is still the dominant force that shapes and dictates world financial institutions and economies, military and commercial interests, and globalized consumerism and materialism (marsella, 2005). capitalism is at the heart of this elephant that has caused increasing economic disparities between the haves and the have-nots, nation by nation and within nations. with increasing privatization, corporatization, and standardization the world is being shaped by greed and profit. we must remind ourselves of this elephant as we work with those children, youth, and families we identify as needing our help. we are often positioned to be “helping” the indigent, the disabled, the broken, the mentally messed up, the frail, the vulnerable, the “at risk”, the helpless, the hapless, the homeless. what i have learned in working in the field is how easily we as “the helpers” get caught in perpetuating the hegemony of human worth. we celebrate those who “rise above” their challenge and blame or pity those who don’t or can’t. if we juxtapose the meritocracy myth and the principles of capitalism, homeless people are those who did not work hard enough, dream disney enough, or play by society’s rules. we tidily connect mental illness, substance use, or personality flaws as the reasons for their homelessness, not the ways in which the distribution of wealth is intricately established. if we look at each other through our stories, there is a humanity that we cannot fail to see. it exposes all of us to see our complicity in society’s current composition − who is on top and who is on the bottom of society’s ranking of worth. i urge you to create situations where you hear the stories instead of segregating yourself from it. when we surround ourselves with those in our own social class and rank, it’s very easy to get sucked into the “myth of meritocracy” as global hegemony shapes our thoughts. the threat to cultural diversity and biodiversity in the world must be taken seriously. our physical environment − the air we breathe, the water we drink, the other species that we share this planet with − is in such danger (suzuki, 1999). when will we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 172 see this elephant that will impact the next seven generations with frightening consequences? i recommend you to watch the mockumentary film called the age of stupid (armstrong, 2009) to drive this message home. we are in a fragile time in human and planetary history; we must not continue to act this stupidly as a human species. i truly worry for my children’s children and if we all think along these lines, it is hard to believe how anyone can actually believe we are doing okay. what kind of legacy will we be leaving? how will they pay the consequences of our collective inaction? do not deceive yourself and think this is just another crisis that every generation has faced and the following generations will do just fine. global cultural hegemony has shaped the very nature of social norms that stem from increasingly fundamentalist religious institutions and values. heteronormativity results in socially accepted forms of homophobia and transphobia (oswald, blume, & marks, 2005). gender variance has been accepted in many indigenous cultures around the world, however we now have little tolerance for sexual and gender difference in many countries (alaers, 2010; bhaskaran, 2004; rifkin, 2011). instead of taking education to value indigenous knowledges of inclusion and acceptance of cultural, religious, and sexual diversity, we create numerous programs in canada to “stop bullying” and deflect attention from the social norms that perpetuate the conditions in the first place. many people are skeptical that these types of school-based anti-bullying programs are even effective (boesveld, 2010; ferguson, san miguel, kilburn, & sanchez, 2007). so why are we so loathe to examine the social conditions instead? western standards of beauty are held up across the globe with value to lighttoned skin, non-kinky hair, round eyes, thinness, height preferences, blue eyes, and hairlessness on the body as examples of that hegemonic impact (ashe, 1995; bordo, 2003; frith, cheng, & shaw, 2004). being able-bodied and youthful are standards that are voraciously desired across all age groups all around the world now. american popular culture is particularly responsible for the globally hegemonic shaping of cultural values of materialism, consumerism, narcissism, sexuality, romance, and heteronormativity. the fact that celebrities are more recognizable and have more popular influence than world leaders tells us something about this world domination (marsella, 2005). in our wired world of instant digital communication, english is the dominant language around the world, although not spoken by the largest number of people. its currency is high and is instituted from the language of internet content to educational, business, and financial systems around the world (crystal, 2003). there is a frightening intolerance for accents as i see more and more programs for accent reduction. why are we not promoting accent appreciation if we believe ourselves to be globally-minded? dsm. in the field of child and youth care, we are heavily impacted by the diagnostic and statistical manual, the brainchild of the american psychiatric association international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 173 in 1952 (american psychiatric association, 2000). the global reach of the dsm is truly shocking, especially in light of the omnipresence of big pharma (chapman, 2011) or the pharmacological tsunami that holds us hostage to our own mental health and well-being. we need to be acutely critical when we talk about mental health, especially with respect to children and youth. cyc is in the business of being “upstream” workers so we must be mindful to not be the agents of normalization, or uncritical automatons who keep order and insist on compliance and obedience. we need to liberate ourselves from the mainstream attitudes towards the mass production of children in the name of socialization. we must develop keen observational skills and pragmatic frameworks to see the strengths of an individual and the family instead of getting caught up in finding and focusing on deficits. i find it chilling how easy it is to slip into the “diagnosis funding” game that uses children as pawns. why do we have record numbers of children who are being diagnosed with anxiety and depression (foxman, 2010)? why are we not alarmed? think of what this means for the future generation of adults? this is no longer only about personal stigma, this is about a pandemic that is shaping the resilience and outlook of our future generations. children today have more access to information from around the world than any previous generation and are what marc prensky (2001) calls “digital natives” (making we from the “older generation” digital immigrants). they are bombarded with imagery regardless of how purist we are as parents or practitioners in attempting to “keep them away from” media influences (schuler, 2007). we are in a time when we no longer go somewhere for information like many of us did in our childhoods. this is the age when information and misinformation is banging on our doors and our screens 24/7, with tweets, notifications, and texts all with their own rings, beeps, and chimes. the digital generation is upon us and we need to educate it in a very different way, and really carefully and critically examine our contemporary modes of practice without losing the wisdom of those who came before us (jukes, mccain, & macdonald, 2007; palfrey & gasser, 2010). our actions today will shape the landscape of the future so it is particularly crucial that we take this job very seriously. children know about the horrific effects of global warming and climate change; they see and hear about environmental degradation, animal extinction, food contamination and insecurity, and human poverty; they are the targets of rapacious marketers goading them to consume more and more of what is not good for them; they know that there are ugly wars fought that make no sense; they know about suicide bombers and what a terrorist looks like; they are aware of racial, gender, and sexual difference and power; they hear the gruesome details of a murder that happened not so far from their homes: with all that, what kid wouldn’t be anxious and depressed? i am more worried about the children who do not experience anxiety than i am about those kids who feel helpless and worried for their futures. why are we pathologizing those international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 174 children who really should be the “canaries in the coal mine”? should we not be nurturing them as leaders instead of putting them in support groups and medicating them? thinking critically of this, we support an entire system where children are influenced to behave like everyone else. i know there are amazing parents and practitioners, but it is not about the individual actors. it is about an educational, social, and political system that is failing not only our children but also our families and communities (robinson, 2010). when will we start lobbying for change and stop putting all the resources downstream? when do we challenge the status quo or “business as usual” when we know as a field that it is not working? more prisons are being proposed instead of improving conditions upstream (cbc news, 2010). these are serious concerns for our field; these are the big fights we need to take on. we all know those who are disproportionately represented in social and health indicators of poverty, incarceration, sexual exploitation and assault, substance use, obesity, diabetes, suicide, child protection, and homelessness. i could spout out research study after study, fact after fact, to raise the alarm that indigenous people are the most at risk (first nations child & family caring society of canada, 2011; national council of welfare, 2007; statistics canada, 2009). newcomer immigrants and refugees are not far behind (campaign 2000, 2010; canadian council on social development, 2000). this is not an issue of contention, it is another indication that we need to do more than teach one or two courses in cyc education that have critical theory. we need to decolonize not only ourselves as individuals, but also ourselves as professionals in our wide-scoping field if we are serious about changing this tide. “racism” this leads me to bring up the third elephant in the room, which is “racism”. i am not talking specifically about individual acts of racism; rather, i want to address the structural, systemic, and institutional forms of racism and discrimination within the field. i could have easily expanded this into just “ism” and address sexism, rankism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, sizeism, ageism, colonialism, but i am extremely limited in my time. i sincerely apologize that this is a speedy and limited analysis. we prefer to use terms like “diversity”, “multiculturalism”, and “pluriculturalism” so that it is easier and less loaded than the “r” word. the consequences of this colourblind approach has deep psychological and behavioural impacts on racialized minorities (bonilla-silva, 2006). there is a cost to those racialized minorities who live in the psychological shadow of assimilation (sue & sue, 2008). for those who gain a critical consciousness of race and racism, it can be empowering to critically analyze oppression. however, it also requires a psychological state of “constant vigilance” that can result in a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 175 pretty serious state of “cultural allodynia” (comas-diaz & jacobsen, 2001) or “colour rage”. there are many challenges in maintaining a healthy outlook and working daily in the face of systemic and institutionalized racism. when there is no critical mass, it becomes even harder to challenge the status quo, particularly when the dominant discourse and practice is colour denial, colour blindness, cultural appropriation, and cultural tourism. the elephant is staring you in the face, but others have the privilege of not seeing it, or ignoring it. as “critical whiteness” studies becomes more recognized as a scholarly contribution to discourses on race, more and more white allies come to work in solidarity, not from a place of pity and patronization, but from a place of social liberation, and so the load feels lighter (aveling, 2004). we introduce peggy mcintosh’s (1990) seminal work on white privilege in several courses in our undergraduate child and youth curriculum. students have a range of emotional reactions to this. this is where being a racialized minority has the extra “emotional labour” component in our teaching while at the very same time putting us in danger of being accused of having our own personal agenda. we cannot talk about racism without talking about colonization. we must all recognize that the dominant canadian narrative is built on “the discovery myth” (i.e., north america was discovered) and that the indigenous people who were living here did not count as a viable civilization (slapkauskaite, 2004). how on earth will we ever improve the dialogue and relationships between minoritized communities and indigenous communities if the very foundation of citizenship is built upon a terrible racist myth? how do immigrants avoid replicating “settler mentality” and perpetuating colonialism? this racist myth has long tentacles as many indigenous individuals, families, and communities continue to feel the direct and residual effects of this in their daily lives. ethnic and racial profiling results in single-story stereotypes that create cultural monoliths that are uncontested by the dominant discourse. when combined with low racialized or minoritized consciousness, there is internalized racism (or a low worth of oneself and others of colour) and, as a result, there is inter-cultural racism and distrust (sue & sue, 2008). our current practice is to focus on “the problems” or “risk factors” in minoritized groups that perpetuate racialized pathology. there continue to be efforts to “help” the indigenous, the immigrants, the queer, and those who do not assimilate well. we provide initiatives and projects to develop community and develop strengths. but without us seriously shifting our gaze to whiteness and heteronormativity as the social norm and a consequent look at power and privilege, we will continue to spin our wheels and cause the lateral violence i witness every day. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 176 canada’s federal election is upon us in a few days on may 2, 2011. how many times have you heard this term called “the ethnic vote”? this is another testament to the racialization and the minoritization of those who are not perceived as “real” canadians. how many generations does it take? we must be aware of the human rights doctrine that distinguishes the difference between intent and impact. our best intentions and goodwill is not enough. we need to expand our thinking to consider the impact, not only on individuals but on a systemic level as well. this leads me to address the notion of parochialism. it is one of the reasons behind this challenge to unearth intent and impact. when people have limited interests and experiences in the world, parochial mindsets can be limiting, especially when that person occupies a position of power and influence. even if there is experience in the world, if it is limited to cultural tourism and consumption, it can only fuel the pretense of global mindedness. as long as “other cultures” are consumed, appropriated, romanticized, pitied, or revered, there will be a huge gap between colonized mindsets and social justice practice. when “difference” is inadvertently translated as inferior or superficially glamorized, and ethnocentrism goes unchallenged, this parochialism is stifling. i must admit that i find it most frustrating when i am confronted by the neoliberal mask of racial acceptance and cultural knowing. what is inaccurately called “political correctness” has become the most effective silencing tool in the discourse of racism. when all the “right” words are spoken and lip service is given, but the racial intuition says otherwise, this causes much discord and dissonance. this tension is one that is often felt but not spoken about; this elephant is probably the one that will make people most uncomfortable. in conclusion…we have much work to do! without critical examination of these elephants in the room, we have no hope of putting the fundamental principles of child and youth care into solid practice. we need a major paradigm shift in how we work with children and youth, not only those who are minoritized. i am talking about social change that will impact the climate that we live in, that impacts the metaphorical air that we breathe. for some of us, the air is thinner, like on mount everest. we have more motivation for change because we experience how the current cultural hegemonic domination, eurocentric worldviews, and racism choke us, making us gasp for air. i am also mustering up every ounce of courage to speak about this because it is not easy saying these things to you [a largely white audience]. i don’t want to offend; however, i do want to agitate for social change. my job here as a keynote speaker is to make you think and to be provocative. if child and youth care, as a field, really wants to make a difference in the increasingly pluricultural social fabric in canada, we must address these elephants in the room. much of our curriculum and practice in the child and youth care field is based on a eurocentric worldview, even though we might think we are contesting it. it falls on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 177 some more than others, those who see the elephants, to address them via curriculum or in our personhoods to teach critical theory. without critical examination, we do become perpetuators of the uncontested social norm. we know that there are many minoritized people who are desperately trying to “fit in” in an attempt to belong to a society that claims tolerance and acceptance. we know that “fitting in” does not mean the same thing as “belonging”. we also know that there is lots of goodwill and an existential search for meaning making. how can we in child and youth care educate ourselves to get our heads out of the sand, lest we deny so many people their rightful place in shaping canada’s future humanscape in a good way? when will we in child and youth care see the elephants that threaten the very future of those with whom we work? how can we inspire hope and meaning in their lives when we won’t commit to authentic personal change ourselves? when will we be outraged enough that we start thinking past our own interests? i know that many of us feel overwhelmed by the prospect of such looming threats to our very existence as we know it. we must take courageous leadership if we want to be relevant change makers. we must stop working against each other. the tremendous potential for us in child and youth care to influence the next generation of children, and their families and communities, is astounding. we cannot afford to alienate each other, we cannot have our own internal battles between theory and practice, between knowers and doers, between whites and non-whites. we must co-exist to fight a much larger battle. we need pragmatics as much as we need thought leadership. so what to do? here is a quote from audre lorde (2007, p. 138) that says it all: there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives – audre lorde intersectional practice how can child and youth care take a lead role that combines theory and practice in a way that is both intellectually rigorous and practical? how do we become or remain pragmatic and relevant human service providers if we do not prepare to shape the future? how do we become respectful of the gifts and strengths each person brings instead of judging and loathing each other? current leaders need to be strategic and invite people to step up, not expect that everyone else share the same feelings of comfort or welcoming in leadership positions. cultural safety has to be established; otherwise, why would anyone want to step up when elephants in the room are ignored? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 178 i offer the use of intersectional frameworks of praxis as a means to frame our future work as a field. some people find this approach to be dangerously close to the antioppression frameworks that we often credit to our allied field of social work. i personally have no difficulty with it because i don’t believe that it is productive to focus our energies on semantics and territorialism. we have a job to do, let’s roll up our sleeves and do it with good spirit, some hard personal work, strategic planning, and political positioning. an intersectional framework insists that we cannot separate race, gender, class, rank, ability, age, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and religion from political, historical, cultural, social, and economic realities. it allows salience of the interlocking aspects of our multiple and textured identities. intersectionality has been widely featured in social sciences and humanities when considering theoretical concepts, but other fields are not as interested as we are in child and youth care in how this applies in practice. feminist scholars have done an excellent job in defining intersectional approaches in research methodology (daly, 1996; mccall, 2005). we are not starting fresh. as i have reviewed earlier, the starting point is recognizing that there are elephants in the room that must be addressed thoroughly in our field. child and youth care must not be in the business of custodial care and maintaining the status quo, but in the business of developing responsible, intelligent, and thoughtful citizens and leadership for the future. traditional indigenous knowledge holds so much wisdom for our future that we must be willing to seriously and respectfully engage in it without appropriating it. we must be willing to do the hard personal work that is painful and profound. cultural diversity, celebration, and ceremony are what we lean towards in this field because it is easier to talk about, not only to the instructors and students but also to the supervisors in practicum and in all our partner agencies. i have the privilege of having both the introduction and advanced practicum seminars so i get to go out into the community regularly. i also continue to work in the field in all sorts of ways so i see how discussions of colonization and racism are avoided and diversity is celebrated at a surface level. i am guilty of feeding into this; it is much easier to celebrate diversity than to identify and rectify racism when creating a relationship! it is with much discipline that i must strategize to bring awareness starting from where i believe a supervisor and student are at in terms of their racial consciousness. because the vast majority of our student body and practitioners in the field are white, i have to be so diplomatic to even introduce the discourse of difference, oftentimes aborting it to keep harmony and good relations. this is a particular challenge for me, especially when we do not have much on diversity in our professional practice areas and competencies. we miss areas of strengths where our minoritized students can shine and where other students can further their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 179 professional skill development. instead, we operate on what is considered tried and true, which has certainly positively impacted many, while silencing and alienating others. recommendations culturally responsive pedagogy i recommend that we have a more culturally responsive pedagogical approach to our curriculum. this means that we do not just “add culture and stir” and expect the racialized or sexualized minorities to represent “their people”. we know that these approaches of representation, marginalization, and tokenism do not work; however, they are still practiced unintentionally. we know that this is a poor way to practice in the field and yet we see this all the time. in culturally responsive pedagogy, we start off with deconstructing what is already known and held to be true. it is wholly ineffective, however, if the instructor has no idea how to do this. professional development opportunities this is why i recommend that we create professional development opportunities for instructors and practitioners and especially supervisors in the field to get versed in intersectional practice frameworks and decolonization. i also recommend that we dedicate a future child and youth care conference to intersectional practice. i see that many of the sessions in this conference are skirting the edges of it and some are right in the middle! this is exciting to see in our field and i ask that we give more credibility to those cutting edge voices that are likely modelling good practice. what i see often is that good practice is being done, but we have no measure of it in our dated notions of professional practice areas and competencies. revise professional practice areas and competencies i recommend that a group of national representatives work on developing a new set of professional practice areas that are grounded in both theory and practice. without a national movement to incorporate and shift to a more sophisticated form of practice, we will remain struggling to be recognized as a bona fide human service field in practice circles. we need to work collaboratively and strategically. encourage research i hope that my talk has inspired graduate students to think about intersectional framework for practice as a potential research topic. we need so much research in this area. combining it with the fine work that is already being done by brilliant graduate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 180 students and professors, i have great hope that it will truly shape the direction of the child and youth care field, both in intellectual leadership and in community practice. decolonize the profession the central paradigm shift must start with our own personhoods. we must decolonize ourselves. for some of you, the discovery myth of canada is evident and incontestable. for those of you who are still convinced that canada was founded on principles of fairness and equity to the indigenous people, well…you have a little further to go. for me, the starting point is to recognize the history of canada from a different lens that is not the one of the dominant narrative. the dominant narrative continues to influence our children and youth through textbooks and curriculum, is reinforced by uncritical teachers, and then further validated through standardized provincial tests, at least in british columbia. anyone wanting to become a canadian citizen is forced to study from a book that romanticizes indigenous peoples as long-lost people of the past with little acknowledgement of the cultural genocide that was the result of assimilation policies and actions like the residential schools and the sixties scoop (assembly of first nations, 2008; indigenous foundations, 2011). imagine a time when canadians can take collective accountability and responsibility for the history and rectify it with better practices, policies, and politicians! imagine how the health and wellness of canada would prosper if we levelled the playing field and actually addressed the institutional inequities. imagine a time when we stop thinking canada is so morally superior to the united states when we’re not…or maybe just a little. imagine a time when we can actually say activism without calling it advocacy because we are no longer afraid of “radical ideas”. when i get called a radical, i laugh a lot and cry a little. i do not consider myself radical. i consider myself pragmatic. i cannot see how we can continue in the same old ways when we know that the earth cannot sustain us at this rate, it just does not make sense to me. so if that’s what a radical is, then so be it. i’m good with that. i started this talk by acknowledging the land and the elders from whom i have learned such a great deal. i want to end with my gratitude to those who are here. i want to thank my parents for being here today from vancouver. they taught us to incorporate the best of the two cultures. they raised us to be bicultural, comfortable with the hyphen between korean ancestry and canadian citizenship. contrary to popular asian stereotypes, our parents never pushed us to be more academic. they pushed us only to live mindfully and with compassion, to put in our best effort, to stand up to injustice, and to be well-rounded human beings. the most important lesson they taught us was to understand the paradox of life: that happiness cannot come international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 181 without sadness and suffering; that the human body is fragile, but the human spirit is robust and indomitable. they were both born during the japanese occupation and went through the korean war when they were adolescents. they have experienced human cruelty, colonization, and occupancy. it was only as an adult that i appreciated how incredibly resistant and resilient they were. i don’t go a day without thanking them for their spiritual, intellectual, and emotional guidance and mostly for their unconditional love. it has not always been like this, but since i became a parent myself and saw their perspective on what is required for optimal child development. i ask that we all be kinder and gentler with each other and not take each other for granted. let us not lose our humanity and compassion in our quest to show the world how smart and clever we are. let us not forget that as we have the privilege to be here today, that there are children and youth who are living horrific lives here in canada and around the world at this very moment. let us not forget that social justice means nothing if we don’t fight for justice for all. let us fight the good fight together. i leave you with another quote that inspires me to think of the future in my work today: what we have is because someone stood up before us. what our seventh generation will have is a consequence of our actions today. – winona laduke, annishnabe thank you all for listening to me today, it has been my honour. kamsahamnida. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 164–186 182 references adichie, c. 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(2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child youth care forum, 36(5), 225–244. doi 10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1 http://www12.statcan.ca/census-� http://www12.statcan.ca/census-� http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-� courageous conversations in child and youth care: nothing lost in the telling microsoft word 13 queer_revisions.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120334 queer (re)visions of archive, affect, and place in child and youth care august a. abstract: this article presents an autoethnography that interweaves the queering of archive, affect, and place using an object-oriented method. engaging with a hundred-year-old antique photo album found in a thrift store, this article brings forth queer (re)visions of past, present, and future that (re)imagine queer (be)longing, which expand spheres of ancestral consciousness in 2slgbtqiaa+ communities. situated in the united states, this work traces the entanglements in this object-oriented autoethnography through a mapping of queer identity in the pacific northwest, capturing temporal reflections that reach from the present back into 1918 and back further still into the early english colonies. in orienting towards the realm of queering child and youth care this work seeks to contribute to a cultivation of discourse of collective (re)visions of past, present, and future that uproots the enshrined settler-colonial, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, capitalist ethos that continuously crafts the layered erasures of sex, gender, and sexually diverse people in the united states. i endeavour in the threading of autoethnography, both as a white settler and in my being and continually becoming, a genderqueer, trans person struggling and thriving, to critically query the implications of this history within the present and to (re)affirm the possibilities for queer and trans youth in the future. keywords: queer, affect, archive, lgbtq+, youth, autoethonography august a. (they/them/theirs) is a student in the master of arts program at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: augusta@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 56  queering archive, affect, and place ~ through object-oriented autoethnography ~ (re)imagining & empowering queer ancestral consciousness in cyc and beyond in this article there are passages containing critical reflections stemming from what felt like a moment of time travel that occurred when i visited a thrift store in the suburbs of portland, oregon in 2016. i came upon an antique photo album that lay amongst the plastic binders, address books, and random folders. the beauty of the stark black sturdy paper against the uniquely scribed goldenyellow font pulled me in. in its pages was a photo that spoke to a place deep within me. it showed a hammock with what appeared to be two women in long dresses resting together, with heads at opposites ends and legs intertwined. the handwritten caption read “ ‘solid comfort’ — sheridan, or 1918”. i was instantly carried to that moment, in a pivotal year that saw the eruption of a global influenza pandemic and the end of the first world war. as i moved through the pages of the album, i encountered another photograph that resonated with me: a different pair, this time standing side by side, one wearing a fashionable period dress while being held at the waist by the other, who wore markedly plain attire and appeared to have been one of the young women swaying in the hammock and embodying “solid comfort” in the first photo. the apparent intimacy between the two piqued my interest in the contrasting choices of clothing between the plainly dressed young person and the person they held close. i wondered: was the plainly clothed young person purposely standing at the cusp of american society’s limits for the presentation of identity for a young women in that period? i began to read the many captions preserved on the pages, including some that no longer had pictures affixed to them. there was a sense of ambiguousness that overtook me as i perused the materials, and a precious laughter filled my body as i read the words “oh to see you smile” on an otherwise empty page. i began to imagine this plainly-clothed young person scribing their longing for the one they held close, as they marked the places that contained their moments — places familiar to me, like portland, oregon and seattle, washington. until that moment, i had not seen or held archival materials that dated before the mid-late 20th century that allowed me to identify and connect with a sense of ancestral belonging rooted in the existence of queer young people living beyond the norms of sex, gender, and sexuality in the united states. there was a sense of enmeshment that occurred within me, collapsing the moments that unfolded on the album’s pages from 1917 to 1919 into a momentary sense of queer international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 57  (be)longing1 with those reimagined moments, awakening a curiosity that kindled a growing sense of queer ancestral consciousness. queering archive, affect, and place in her book unruly visions, gayatri gopinath (2018) charted a path of uprooting by engaging with archive, region, affect, and aesthetic through “queer optics” (p. 5). gopinath’s analysis dissolved the trepidations that had been nagging at me. although i had reviewed numerous scholarly articles that theoretically grounded the intention, purpose, and fruitfulness of an academic container for this queering of archive interwoven with my own affective relationship through writing, i had not previously met a work such as hers, which spoke directly to the core tenets of my intended analysis while also embodying the action of queer (re)vision. in defining the realness of the “everyday archive” that holds “queer counter-archives … minor histories … informal archives made up of discarded and devalued objects”, gopinath helped me to know that my own emerging curiosity about, inquiry into, and entanglement with this thrown-away photo album has a place that is continuing to be carved out in academia (p. 8). gopinath (2018) defined the queer lens as the central tenet of this analysis in stating that: queer desire, identification, and affiliation are central to apprehending this indiscreetness of multiple histories, spaces, and temporalities. if these aesthetic practices bring to the fore those shadow histories, subjectivities, and desires that are occluded in dominant history, queerness is the conduit through which to access the shadow spaces of the past and bring them into the frame of the present. (gopinath, 2018, p. 9) in a similar vein, queering can also be accessed through various forms of writing. as dallas baker (2013) explained in her article entitled creative writing praxis as queer becoming, the “queer (re)positioning of textual subjectivities in discourse as an intervention into power relations, around sexual and gender identities … is a practice of liberty (foucault 1978)” (p. 360). in connection to this, esmeralda rodriguez et al. (2017) discussed how, by using autoethnography, a writer can engage in a method of “assemblage” wherein the vast layered multiplicities of a focus area can be “juxtaposed” in such a way as to illuminate one’s evolving and precarious relationship to the phenomena. desireé rowe (2017) reflected that the “autoethnographic mapping of the object, then, allows for us to unfold the intersections of stories and bodies” (p. 230). the queersubjective, affective relationship that is intermingled in this research is an embodiment of the process described by baker (2013), wherein “queer becoming is a practice and/or process through 1i use “(be)longing” in this way to draw attention to the relationship between belonging and longing. archival documents such as photos, books, and other materials that are subtly or covertly 2slgbtqqia+ require a lens (or vision) into the past, present, and future that embraces imagination. queer diasporic scholar gayatri gopinath (2018) directly informs this articulation. i see that (be)longing, and one’s desire as a queer young person to see oneself in the past, present, and future, are interconnected with the necessity to engage in archival methods with a lens of imagination and revision that illuminates the way 2slgbtqqia+ people have been erased. similarly, i use “(re)vision” to highlight the need for continued, ongoing visions (imagination) across time and place. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 58  which queer subjects intervene in their identities or subjectivities and remake themselves; also, a resistant practice, a practice of liberty” (p. 360). marika cifor (2015) reinforced the use of affect theory, specifically in relation to archival discourse, as a tool to critically analyze “the way power circulates in discourse” (p. 7). these scholars represent guideposts for navigating the arising intimacy of this journal article’s intentions, interweaving queer archival research and autoethnography while underpinning analysis with a critical lens that seeks to illuminate (re)claiming queer (be)longing for 2slgbtqiaa+ children, youth, and families. in queering child and youth care, we can decolonize our tenets and praxis through (re)constructing archives, affect, and place. in this article, the act of queering ancestral consciousness is an academic manifestation, a queer method of praxis, that 2slgbtqiaa+ people of colour have been holding sacred, protecting, rekindling, and passing along since time immemorial. in my growing awareness, i acknowledge the work of adrienne maree brown, gayatri gopinath, leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha as writers and activists who trouble the white2 settler-colonial versions of archive, affect, and place to (re)claim ways of being and belonging beyond the regimes of patriarchy and white-supremacy culture by activating a reverence for and an honouring of ancestral consciousness rooted in resistance, survival, and love. (re)claiming in (re)claiming queer belonging and navigating temporal (re)visions this inquiry seeks to embody the deleuzian concept (gilles deleuze, 1925-1995) of the “rhizome”. in the handbook of autoethnography, deanna shoemaker (2013) refined and illustrated this concept, stating: “embodying principles of non-hierarchical connection and heterogeneity, the rhizome calls a queer aesthetic that conjures various horizons” (p. 531). in this way, this article is an effort to queer temporality, reconfiguring my ongoing and evolving relationship with a (queer) ancestral consciousness that can exist within and beyond the biological. the article and the formal thesis inquiry that will follow aims to contribute to the lay and formal queering of ancestral narratives, in the realms of child and youth care, as a method of empowerment for 2slgbtqiaa+ communities (re)claiming belonging and honouring the vast web of lineages that dwell outside the binary. queering ancestral consciousness the photo album had entered my orbit in 2016, one day before the united states presidential election — a night that is seared into my memory. the curiosity piqued in that thrift store aisle 2i have chosen to not capitalize “white” in this article. the article “why we lowercase white” by john daniszewski (2020) best encapsulates the reasoning behind this decision. i will continue to critically reflect and engage in dialogue and learning around race, racism, and language. in so doing, i recognize that, as meera e. deo (2021) stated, “clearly, language itself (like race) is both socially constructed and fluid — constantly changing, shifting, and evolving. when using language and especially when crafting new terms to think about race, racism, and resistance, it is therefore critically important that racial categories and terminology are grounded not only in history, but in contemporary context” (p. 119). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 59  was momentary and fleeting. i had excitedly brought the treasure home with me, sharing it with my housemates, one of whom was my long-time friend and someone who has felt to me to be chosen family. as i noted the subtle queer underpinnings that appeared to me throughout the pages, she rolled her eyes. because of her social position, she had never felt the need to search for subtext or subtlety to feel seen. in hindsight, my younger queer self was there with me, existing in a heightened state and pulsing with unresolved trauma related to gender and sexuality (alongside other complexities). unconsciously the queer child within me had anticipated the rebuff, while still holding out for signs of safety and belonging. instead, my friend’s eyes shed doubt upon my queer interpretations and reminded me of the heartbreak of longing to be seen. the album was tucked away after this initial contact. the album re-emerged into my consciousness nearly two years later. during this period seismic shifts in my own queer (re)claiming had taken place, including a name change and adoption of nonbinary gender pronouns, as well as connecting with a trans-focused primary care doctor. it was around this time that we welcomed in a new housemate, contacted through a queer housing social media group. i recall nervous anticipation as i brought forth the album and shared with this new housemate the queer intimacies that i had gleaned from it. on those thick dark pages, i pointed out the fading captions and images: ‘oh to see you smile’ & ‘prunes eating prunes’, photographs of the hammock that held solid comfort, the young couple standing posing side by side, another moment of two young people… ~ one standing behind the other ~ arms pulling them in close ~ all four hands tangled up ~ as they stood donning swimsuits, in a lake with their friends, holding the moment for the camera, to be remembered. when i looked up at this housemate, i was greeted with their smile of amazement that i had come upon this discarded 100-year-old queer love story. they suggested i might be able to trace the origins of the album. this affirmation rekindled in me a desire to seek out and unravel the curiosity that the archival materials had piqued, leading to a lay-archival exploration that allowed me, though not a professional archivist, to infer a persuasive, if necessarily incomplete, account of the album creators’ origins. i began to scan the pages, straining to interpret the fading cursive captions on previously overlooked pages to pin down any distinguishable references or hints. in a photograph of a young man posing with a sports racket, i noted that the building in the background had an advertisement painted on the side. a generic online database search using the full text of the advertisement revealed that the building was a prominent and historically well-known seattle international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 60  business that is the subject of a specialized repository in a local regional museum. i also saw that nearly one-third of the album had blank pages, some holding the remnants of adhesive paste where pictures had been. when i fanned through this end-portion of the album, two partly preserved fourleaf clovers dropped out. as i continued to engage with the album, i began to focus on metaphysical queer ancestral realms by immersing myself physically in their material landscapes. i engaged in semi-structured place-based wanderings in the locations recorded in the album, while simultaneously (re)imagining a queer narrative taking place, tapping into an embodied felt sense of the unfolding narrative. i visited historical museums and repositories, sifting through directories, maps, and special collections in search of materials that could affirm the existence of the young person clothed in the plain attire. i examined regional archived newspapers using an online database, focusing on the period of 1917 to 1919. i came upon a clipping from the tacoma times of tacoma, washington, a smaller city in the pacific northwest region. the headline, one that seems antiquated today, was “woman lives as a man” (1917). once again i was transported back a hundred years as i envisioned myself as the person who was being described as “living as a man”. it felt extraordinary to come upon a century-old newspaper acknowledging the existence of a person living beyond the norms of sex, gender, and sexuality, a type of coverage i had not previously associated with that time period. i felt compelled to seek deeper insight into this story. it was only at this point that curiosity began to dissolve the emotional barriers that had previously numbed any desire i might have felt to trace my biological paternal lineage. in a pivotal moment, my estranged biological father, confused about the change of my name on social media (after a significant delay of awareness), had reached out via text messages leaving a thread of awkward conclusions regarding my gender identity and ended the thread with multiple lines of sad-crying emojis. after careful consideration, i responded with an offer to exchange emails and answer questions as best i could. the email i received expressed his “love” for me and told me to “think logically” about an article he had attached, entitled “lady gaga accidentally proves why trannies shouldn’t be allowed in the military”3. i decided that withdrawal was the safest option for survival, setting and enforcing a boundary of unilateral severance. i began to chart my biological ancestry, as well as that of the album’s potential creator, by using a prominent online database4. there was an abundance of materials already pinned to people across centuries, adding depth and context to these lives that intermingled over time to form mine. reflecting upon the bodies that have brought mine into being, alongside this (re)imagined queer ancestor, i became cognizant of our overlapping ancestral similarities. like me, the person pictured 3after president trump declared on twitter that transgender people would be banned from serving in the military, popular singer lady gaga posted a tweet on july 26, 2017 asking if he knew that “45% of them ages (18 to 24) have attempted suicide already”. this was taken by many as proof that transexuals should not serve in the military. https://twitter.com/ladygaga/status/890325967595606017?lang=en 4based on reasonable assumptions regarding the identity of the person in the photograph, i was able to trace a probable ancestry of that person alongside my own using https://www.ancestry.com. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 61  swaying in the hammock was born near the salish sea as a white settler on the stolen homelands of the duwamish and suquamish peoples. setting my paternal line alongside the maternal line of this queer ancestor, i began tracing the lineage of these settlers. tracing a regime of patriarchy and the false binary in the early 17th century, disembarking on the lands of the wampanoag, massachusetts, nipmuck, pennacook, penobscot, passamaquoddy, and the quinnipiac, the first english colonists brought with them biological and theological warfare. integral to the present analysis is an awareness of the forces that set those ships to sail. a central role was played by the judicial framework of christianity which issued religious proclamations of authority for “ ‘declaring war against all non-christians throughout the world … specifically sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-christian nations’ — a collective proclamation that would later become known as the ‘doctrine of discovery’ ” (newcomb, 1992, p. 18, as cited in greenberg, 2016, p. 236). one relevant decree relevant is the papal bull “inter caetera” (1493) imposed by pope alexander vi, which was used to “justify christian european explorers’ claims on land and waterways they allegedly discovered, and promote christian domination and superiority, and has been applied in africa, asia, australia, new zealand, and the americas” (upstander project, 2021, para. 2). these proclamations were embedded in the legal governing structures of the colonial/settler-colonial mission of conquest. in the united states and canada this decree continues to be cited as a legal precedent for the continued disenfranchisement of indigenous5 peoples and communities (assembly of first nations, 2018); it was invoked as recently as 2018 (doctrine of discovery, 2021). evelyn nakano glenn (2015) parsed out multiple threads of social, economic, and political authority that crafted colonization and settler-colonization, focusing on the “context of and experiences in the new world” (p. 58). the “metropole” (homeland) of great britain wielded the manufactured sovereign power that was granted by the church to engage in the “settler colonial project” for the purpose of economic exploitation (glenn, 2015, p. 58). utilizing an intersectional analysis, glenn (2015) framed this project as an ongoing structure in which “logic, tenets, and identities engendered by settler colonialism persist and continue to shape race, gender, class, and sexual formations into the present” (p. 55). specifically, crafting these as hierarchical formations supported the normalizing of the racialization of whiteness, and the placing of white males at the pinnacle and white women as subservient (glenn, 2015, p. 70). thus, the metropole of great britain is a primary source for the deep-seated heteropatriarchal scripts and illusions that incite the erasure of diverse bodies and behaviours in the united states. silvia federici (2004), imani perry (2018), and jonathan o’donnell (2020) each grounded their analysis of the legalized erasure of people who did not align with this regime of white-bodied patriarchy on the integral role that criminalization and demonology played in its ratification. perry 5the capitalization of indigenous is intentional. this usage is explained in the book elements of indigenous style: a guide for writing by and about indigenous peoples by gregory younging (2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 62  (2018) pointed to three foundational judicial concepts — sovereignty, property, and personhood — that underlay the structure of the political, economic, and social systems that sustained the patriarchal orderings in the nation-state and in “colonial incursions” (p. 21). perry focuses on the enlightenment political philosopher john locke (1632–1704), illustrating a foundational concept propounded by locke: the doctrine of personhood — entails a system whereby the subject before the state or the law was made into either a patriarch, his liege (woman), or someone outside legal recognition, whether slaves or what in that time were termed “savages” but whom we can also term “nonpersons” in the juridical sense. (p. 21) the implications of this for gender and sexually nonconforming people are grave because of “the naturalization of binary gender categories that were, and continue to be, applied to citizenries. those who lie outside citizenship and the gender binary had distinct rules applied to them, which were often mechanisms for violent domination” (p. 21). before perry (2018), federici (2004) problematized the negation of nonbinary understandings of gender location in “the normative body politic of christendom”, enshrined through the centuries-long constructed sovereign authority of the church, such that these legal mechanisms were: manifested in the criminalization of abortion, sex work, and homosexuality, in land privatization, and the binary division of people based on ascribed biological function and their assignation to duties of productive or reproductive labor — processes enacted throughout europe and its colonies. (p. 11) more recently, o’donnell (2020) reflected upon the significant influence of jean bodin (1530– 1596), a formative english thinker and writer in political theology, noting how christian theology was wielded to configure the legitimization of sovereign power for the “delegitimization (indeed, demonization) of all that threaten their desire for singularity and supremacy, sentencing viable alternatives to perdition” (p. 532). this crafting of sovereign power as theopolitical is deeply and intimately intertwined in the doctrine and authority of the church (o’donnell, 2020, p. 531). o’donnell (2020) noted that boden’s, les six livres de la république [the six books of the republic] of 1576, positioned the family as the “true image” of the state — whilst the sovereign ruler was the “image of god” — reflecting “the natural society, founded by the creator of nature himself [emphasis added] at the beginning of the human race” (o’donnell, 2020, p. 533). this results in a societal design and ordering of common life that transforms a person’s daily activities into an “imitation of the divine” (o’donnell, 2020, p. 531). o’donnell (2020) referred to bodin as the “godfather of political sovereignty” and a seminal agent for embedding demonology into the legal structures of criminalization. before o’donnell, perry (2018) had pointed out that the implications of these articulated specifications go deeper than legal sanctions of “rights and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 63  recognitions of legal personhood”, in that an individual and familial relations were simultaneously infused with power differentiation and legitimization through these orderings (p. 24). notably, federici (2004) and o’donnell (2020) made evident the correlation between the emerging economic system of early capitalism and the implementation of the witch-hunt as a method of mass control; these occurred alongside a growing theological literature authored by wealthy white men. federici (2004) examined bodin’s (1580) on the demon-mania of witches in which bodin insisted that witches should be “burned alive instead of being ‘mercifully’ strangled before being thrown into the flames, that they should be cauterized so that their flesh should not rot before death and that children too be burned” (as cited in federici, 2004, p. 168). layering their analysis of archival (re)visions, o’donnell (2020) posited a parallel between queerness and witchcraft, recognizing that “queerness” has: [a] dual sense used by queer theorists, to “designate a refusal or an inability to signify monolithically in relation to sex, gender, and to sexuality and that which is othered, excluded, and marked for death within normative society to maintain that society’s coherence and teleological vision of the future. (whiteneir, n.d., as cited in o’donnell, 2020, p. 541) these passages become intimately entangled with my ancestral connections (biological and otherwise) and the queer ancestor whose photo album has become a precious heirloom. because i was using an online database accessed by millions of people daily, i could easily maneuver through the layers of research and historical context that may be hyperlinked to an individual6. i found that the bodies and the familial formations that had brought ours into being in the region of the pacific northwest were descendants of the first generation of settlers that formed the massachusetts bay colony7. these forebears adhered to the strict puritan beliefs that infused the governing structures forming all aspects of life in the colonies. this served to perpetuate the pervasive forms of violence and oppression, that underlay the enactment of political–theological sovereign power for the ultimate purpose of capitalizing on the wealth of the colonies. in the year 1692, in the massachusetts bay colony, my ancestors (paternal lineage) found themselves imprisoned on charges of witchcraft, alongside the ancestors of the person i believe to be the album’s creator. in the seminal work of jonathan katz (1976), the erased histories of “lesbians and gay men” in the united states are made visible. michael bronski (2011), in a queer history of the united 6the abundance of archival materials documented on ancestry.com is due to the legacy of colonial/settler colonial violent destruction. church documents of births, baptisms, marriages, and the like are directly tied to the granting of legal personhood and political sovereignty. thus, in colonial/settler colonial realms, this type of archival documentation does not exist for those deemed to be outside of political personhood. this way of seeing into the past through paper and ink (or material forms of archive as a whole) represents a hegemonic archival practice that should continue to be critically reflected upon. queering archival methods requires honouring and opening to 2slgbtqiaa+ ways of knowing and relating to ancestry that exist beyond the confines of conformity of white colonial/settler colonial knowledge creation. 7personal archival materials. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 64  states, positioned katz’s (1976) work as influential scholarship that arose out of the 1970s’ gay liberation movement, signalling an “lgbt” archival (re)claiming (p. xv). katz (1976) laid bare the compiled archival evidence of the atrocious tactics of heteropatriarchal surveillance and enforcement, stating that for the four hundred years documented here, american homosexuals were condemned to death by choking, burning, and drowning; they were executed, jailed, pilloried, fined, court-martialed, prostituted, fired, framed, blackmailed, disinherited, declared insane, driven to insanity, to suicide, murder, and self-hate, witch-hunted [emphasis added], entrapped, stereotyped, marked, insulted, isolated, pitied, castigated and despised. (p. 11) while there are limitations of the work’s theoretical lens, as it frames sexuality and gender in a homonormative script, this volume of archival materials can be honoured as a watershed moment in queering literary history. bronski (2011) articulated the complications that occur in archival analysis, noting that language and concepts regarding sex, gender, and sexuality are ideas created by a given cultural milieu, influenced by the epoch. bronski (2011) noted that “while language informs identity, the elaborate emotional, psychological, and political intricacies of lives exceed identity, and language itself. there is never a perfect word or set of words to fully understand oneself” (p. xviii). however, rather than relinquish the past, bronski (2011) encouraged the reader to see “history as an ongoing process through which we understand and define ourselves and our lives” (p. xiv). the queering of archives in the container of this inquiry shall endeavour to expand rather than contract. i shall strive to honour the agency and epoch of the figures in the photo album in a way that carves out space for malleability of bodies and behaviours while allowing for (re)visions that are affective and critique the crafted doctrines of white-supremacist, able-bodied, cisgender, heteropatriarchal conformity. stepping back into the archive, peter boag (2011) sought to query “how and why crossdressers and the transgressive sexual and gender identities they represented have been marginalized, expunged, and forgotten in western history” (p. 8). the introductory chapter contains an “extended meditation on the life history” of alan hart, who, in 1918 in portland, oregon, underwent the first (consensual) surgical procedure that sought to affirm his “physical and sartorial transformation into a man” (p. 13). emile devereaux (2010) noted that while this surgery represents “the first in the united states for what would later be termed ‘transexual’”, there were intersex individuals who underwent surgical interventions employed under the guise of “corrections” (p. 178). the erasure of sex-diverse people at the turn of the 19th century was illustrated by gill-peterson (2018) as: the abstract value of the child’s growing body as a guiding metaphor in the life sciences and the process through which its plasticity was brought under the jurisdiction of medicine hold our attention. intersex children were forced during these decades into a decisive role as the experimental subjects in whose bodies the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 65  abstract theories of endocrinology were translated into real medical technique for altering human sex. (p. 62) gill-peterson (2018) offered insight into the historical path of modern medicine that has sculpted and pathologized bodies into categories of “inversion, hermaphroditism, homosexuality, and transvestism” as a means of constructing and upholding binary sex (p. 95). honouring hart’s legacy, devereaux (2010) critiqued the “perversely voyeuristic” medical journal article that was authored by the attending doctor who published his interpretation in the journal of mental and nervous disease in 1920, entitled “homosexuality and its treatment” (p. 176). devereaux re-examined katz’s (1976) placement of this article in his chapter on “passing women”, in which katz comments on the procedure and hart’s life with disdain, framing hart’s choices as “internalized homophobia” (p. 177). importantly, devereaux (2010) also cited katz’s updated perspectives: katz has since retracted this epoch-based categorization and critique (in booth, 2000, as cited in deveraux, 2010, p. 177). the larger purpose of devereaux’s paper was to analyze hart’s 1943 writings on the power of x-ray technology, and to explore how his writing might be used as a tool for archival analysis that embraces queer (re)visions: “the x-ray device allowed for the tracing of a forgotten narrative. even without the hint of a memory to assist in its detection, the x-ray responds to an unanswered question from the past” (p. 183). the various (re)visions of alan hart’s life, while flawed and incomplete, have intermingled with my affective relationship with the object of the photo album, aiding in a deep sense of queer belonging and existence. as i followed the unfolding of hart’s surgical transition in the public sphere, reading clippings from a regional oregon newspaper, the albany daily democrat, i gained insight into the collective mainstream cultural shifts surrounding sex and gender roles erupting from the impacts of ww1. this small-town newspaper was the sole medium of collective communication in albany, hart’s hometown. in 1917, an article honoured hart’s academic accomplishment of receiving a medical degree from the oregon state medical school of portland. hart’s social, economic, and political positions granted him the rare ability to understand and guide the surgical and social transformation necessary for his well-being and autonomy. hart was raised a white settler on the lands of the kalapuya people. he was assigned “female” at birth, but as an heir to monetary wealth with access to academic education, he was able to wear attire that suited him in front of friends and family from an early age. he lived in a milieu where in 1918 some professed that “there is nothing wrong with wearing male attire in a hospital”, no more “than in wearing it in a factory, laundry or workshop, as hundreds of thousands of women are now doing in america, england and france” (“dr. hart does work”, 1918). early in 1918, the albany daily democrat published two exposés on the topic of hart’s surgical transition. this was due to a former classmate and colleague’s recognition and disclosure of hart’s former identity to the medical establishment in which they were both attendants. the first article reads as a hastily composed gossip column, while the latter provides the reader with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 66  direct quotes from dr. hart as he spoke unequivocally of his surgery, his name change, and the reasons for both. in that article, titled “dr. hart explains change to male attire — real identity discovered and proof held; truth beyond question” (“dr. hart explains”, 1918), hart is quoted as stating, “i have been happier since i made this change than i have ever been in my life, and i will continue to live this way as long as i live” (p. 1). as the interview continued hart went on to say, “there can be no dual sex in a person. it is either one or the other” (p. 1). this statement does not undermine or detract from the initial and growing sense of empowerment flourishing in the queer ancestral connection that has taken place within me. seeing beyond the latter part of this statement, there is a place in me that allows this to exist in the time, space, and place that it was made while understanding the complexity of dialoguing with archived materials. impact and implications the u.s.-based human rights campaign (n.d.) reported that at least 44 trans and gendernonconforming people were murdered in the united states in 2020, the highest number reported since the organization began monitoring data in 2013, with black and latinx trans women disproportionately represented (human rights campaign, n.d.). similarly, in their study of future perspectives of 16 transgender and gender-nonconforming youth and their families, katz-wise et al. (2017) noted the detrimental impacts that high rates of discrimination and violence have on transgender children and youth, as well as their adult counterparts. however, key to this data analysis is the vital recognition that: although transgender individuals are disproportionately subject to adversity, transgender youth who receive higher levels of support from their families have been shown to experience better mental health outcomes, including lower likelihood of engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury, lower rates of suicidal ideation, fewer suicide attempts, fewer depressive symptoms, a decreased sense of burdensomeness stemming from the youth’s transgender identity, higher selfesteem, and higher levels of life satisfaction (simons et al., 2013; travers et al., 2012; veale et al., 2015). (katz-wise et al., 2017, p. 28) with the intent to “de-pathologize emotional distress” that lgbtq+ youth in their u.k. study had experienced, elizabeth mcdermott et al. (2019) focused on lgbtq+ youth’s mental health and its intersection with family relationships using a “relationship-oriented perspective” (p. 179). mcdermott et al.’s discussion placed the onus on the family collective rather than the individual and, in doing so, recognized that the norms and expectations of heteronormativity in a family can take on the function of “levels of heteronormative surveillance” (p. 191). the authors described how the “data suggest the ongoing process of becoming an autonomous queer individual that did not fit with heteronormative family expectations created difficulties/tensions in belonging to their families, and for some it threatened a secure and safe home and was damaging to mental health” (p. 187). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 67  the initial dearth of my queer archival knowledge can be contextualized as reflecting the legacy of white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, settler-colonialism that has sought to uphold the economic, political, and social power relationships that sustain these constructs as normative and ideal. the tactics for controlling bodies and behaviours through codifying sex, gender, and sexuality are intertwined, and relational to a person’s multiplicity of being. the scripts and codes that a person is compelled to align with and agree to meld aspects of identity along spectra of skin colour, cognitive functioning, bank statements, physical abilities, language, and many others so as to stratify power and uphold monetarily wealthy, white, able-bodied, cisgendered, patriarchal formations. it has only been in the last few years that a critical awareness of regional place, land, and history has come to the forefront of my consciousness, reflecting a new understanding of the white privilege that has allowed me to remain ignorant. this kindling of queer (re)visions of past, present, and future has prompted a deeper recognition of the ways my lack of attention and respect to metaphysical and biological ancestry has been a symptom of the continuation of whitesupremacist patriarchy. i am in a continual process of unlearning the ways of being that maintain these interlocking systems of oppression. critical regional place, land, and history in this year 2021, in the region of the pacific northwest coast, the toxicity of late-stage capitalism permeates the air. within a short time, governments have declared a series of sometimes overlapping states of emergency. in early march of 2020, the world health organization declared the novel coronavirus disease (covid-19) a pandemic, and many nation-state borders hurriedly closed. the international ferry that brought me to the lands of the songhees, esquimalt, and wsáneć peoples to study at the university of victoria in british columbia, canada, sits docked indefinitely in port angeles in washington, usa on the lands of the s’klallam peoples. the city around the harbour that shelters this boat is built upon the desecrated site of the či̕xʷícәn (tsewhit-zen) village. this village dated back as far as 750 bc; it was destroyed nearly 100 years ago by white settlers to make way for a lumber mill (valadez, n.d), one of many built in the area for the purpose of turning old growth trees, larger than any person now living will ever see again, into raw material — into product, into profit. this drew many more settlers to the area over the years, including my maternal grandparents, causing the displacement and cultural genocide of the s’klallam peoples and the despoliation of the surrounding lands and waters. (be)longing though it is painful to contemplate, the toxic symptoms of the multilayered enforcement of heteronormative patriarchal beliefs have been infused into my family of origin. in young adulthood, my repressed queer sexual desires became imbued with a strategy for inner emotional freedom that used copious amounts of alcohol to allow me to touch moments of bliss that erupted from complicated and messy yearnings. the shame that surfaced after the hangovers, alongside my budding alcoholism, brought me to a decision to move away from my family of origin and my hometown and to live alone in a small studio apartment a few blocks from the capitol buildings in olympia, washington. while refraining from alcohol during this time as i attended community international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 68  college, a space was made for me to open to the idea that i am safe to feel desire outside the scripts of heteronormativity. it may very well have taken a bit longer had it not been for me stumbling upon and taking an elective course, “diverse sexualities and cultures”, in my first fall term. the “coming-out” process with friends and family (initiated at the time with a selfidentification as a lesbian) was weird and uncomfortable, and remains so to this day. it is telling that a close friend responded to my coming out with, “you don’t want to be a boy though, right?”, to which i quickly responded, “of course not.” it is only now, in my early thirties, having been sober from alcohol for going on 8 years, having accessed mental health resources for most of my life, that i am able to see that interaction in the fulness of its meaning (as presently understood). this clarity is tied to the path that took me from my hometown to places where 2slgbtqiaa+ people had been able to carve out communities in sites of mainstream cultural support, such as addiction support groups. olympia was my springboard into portland, oregon, where for 10 years i (re)claimed (be)longing and “solid comfort”. i moved to portland on a whim with a friend i had met at summer camp when i was 9 years old, both of us having become camp counsellors in our teenage years; our friendship had grown to the point that by now we were “camp family” — chosen family. a few months later, another former camp counsellor joined us, becoming the third roommate in a two-bedroom tiny box of a condo. he, a gay, white, cis male, and she, a straight, white, cis female, had known each other since infancy; their familial bonds were already strongly woven. soon enough we found a home further into the city, 100 years old with hardwood floors, a fireplace, and a big yard to build garden beds in. that home lasted for 10 years. it would not have done so had i not succeeded in relinquishing alcohol through community support, particularly through finding 2slgbtqiaa+ embracing spaces. gopinath (2005) noted that “queer diasporic cultural forms suggest alternative forms of collectivity and communal belonging that redefine home outside of a logic of blood, purity, authenticity, and patrilineal descent” (p. 187). in portland i found safety and support, navigating alternative ways of being that allowed me to reconsider opening to the child i was before the internalized shame and stigma of “acting like a boy”, a pattern that progressed from wearing gender-ambiguous clothing in the early 1990s to a deeper body language and behaviour that made people question if my single mother had four sons instead of three. being the youngest child in the family with three older brothers it was often assumed that i was emulating their behaviour, refusing to wear dresses once old enough to protest. i vividly remember reaching the summer of third grade and learning that how i wanted to dress, play, and be in the world would make me a target of ridicule by friends, family, and strangers. the triggering incident was a forced haircut to deal with persistent head lice. the cultural signifier allowing others to categorize me as female was removed. one of my aunts gave me the haircut at the request of my mother and both still regret the decision. in my heart it feels as though their regret does not stem from them taking away my right to selfautonomy, to choose the length and style of my hair, but instead comes from their own embarrassment and shame upon seeing clearly that — god forbid — i embodied my desire (in dress-up role play with friends, halloween costumes, and the everyday) to be a boy. this shame international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 69  and embarrassment were passed on to me and led to a desire to pass as a girl, a desire for puberty to change my flat chest into breasts so that the double-takes, stares, and weaponizing of my appearance would end. i am still in the process of unravelling these internalized complexities. in this writing thus far, these travels and transformations appear to be linear, binary, and wholly positive in direction; however, the intricate messiness of my journey of seeking to (re)claim solid comfort and inner (be)longing is deeper than that. the multiple dislocations and ruptures that have occurred in my life over time have shifted my perceptions and conceptualizations of home and belonging. i am blessed to have a mother who over the years has moved through stages of acceptance and understanding in relation to my queerness, always striving to love and support me as best she is able. simultaneously, i continue to reaffirm a boundary of unilateral severance with my biological father, who has consistently demonstrated his inability to respect these enforcements, belligerently affirming his apparent prejudices and ignorance. sadly, these toxic beliefs and behaviours have splintered my biological family of origin; i shelter in levels of avoidance, now preferring silence over correspondence. 2slgbtqiaa+ children, youth, and families tracing the toxicity of settler-colonial ideologies (patriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy, etc.), using this queer archival autoethnographic methodology, i have attempted to briefly lay bare the scripts and tactics of conformity in the settler-colonial united states regarding sexuality and gender. in the 21st century, there still persist blaring reverberations of proclamations made from church pulpits in the 15th century regarding life, land, and sovereignty. in our current epoch, people of diverse sexualities and genders remain systemically and interpersonally marginalized and oppressed, and targets of multilayered violence. once again, the human rights campaign has rung the alarm for the united states: by the first half of march 2021, 82 antitransgender bills had been filed in state legislatures since the beginning of the year, already eclipsing the highest number ever filed in a single year (ronan, 2021). the purposes of these proposed laws include enacting discrimination against trans and nonbinary young people in the form of: barring or criminalizing healthcare for transgender youth, barring access to the use of appropriate facilities like restrooms, restricting transgender students’ ability to fully participate in school and sports, allowing religiously-motivated discrimination against trans people, or making it more difficult for trans people to get identification documents with their name and gender. (american civil liberties union, 2021) individuals, families, and communities grapple with the resulting stress, trauma, and violence these tactics and scripts incite. it is vital that we as guardians of children and youth ensure their legal protection and autonomy while also empowering their queer ancestral consciousness. we as gender and sexually diverse people have existed across time and have cultivated belonging within ourselves, alongside others, and among community that is forever beyond the regimes of patriarchy. our lives have been, are, and will be far more vibrant than the limitations of archival international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 70  practices that show the lineage of legal persecution, dimmed in the shadow of oppression and violence. we are more than the collective strength of our resilience and resistance to erasure. 2slgbtqiaa+ children, youth, and families deserve an illustration of the solid comfort that comes from belonging with oneself through the process of queering our collective consciousness and ancestral belonging across past, present, and future. navigating these archival realms, initially seeking to actualize the origins and personhood of the photo album’s creator, has illuminated for me an entanglement of ancestry, identity, and place that embodies a transtemporal “rhizome” (a messy, multitudinal, and interconnected ancestral consciousness). during these uncertain and precarious times, navigating the unknown, yet-to-beshown, waiting-to-be-remembered ways of being, i am anchored in a growing sense of safety and belonging. i turn to the altar in my home where i have compiled found antique photographs of queer ancestors in the comfort of each other’s presence, including “solid comfort”. on my wall, i shield my home through honouring with images joan of arc, “transvestite and heretic” (evans, 2013), and grace harper, a fictional super-soldier of the resistance sent back from 2046 to 2020 to protect her queer lover in the movie terminator: dark fate (miller, 2019). in my daily life, i continue to honour and cultivate these queer ancestral connections. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3-4): 55–73 71  references american civil liberties union. 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(2021, march 13). breaking: 2021 becomes record year for anti-transgender legislation [press release]. human rights campaign. https://www.hrc.org/pressreleases/breaking-2021-becomes-record-year-for-anti-transgender-legislation rowe, d. d. (2017). beyond the talk-back: performing autoethnography and the functions of critique. international review of qualitative research, 10(3), 283–290. doi:10.1525/irqr.2017.10.3.283 shoemaker, d. (2013). autoethnographic journeys: performing possibilities/utopias/futures. in s. holman jones, t. e. adams, & c. ellis (eds), handbook of autoethnography (pp. 517– 537). left coast press. valadez, j., watson-charles, c., & francis, b. (n.d). tse-whit-zen. lower elwah klallam tribe. https://www.elwha.org/culture-history/tse-whit-zen/ woman lives as a man. (1917, august 3). the tacoma times, p. 1. younging, g. (2018). elements of indigenous style: a guide for writing by and about indigenous peoples. brush education. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818124 creating futures: residential care homes in hungary and switzerland collaboratively develop their capacity to empower children and youth to actively realise their own futures anna schmid and krisztián herczeg abstract: child and youth homes in hungary and switzerland want to increase the chances that the approximately 1,000 children and youth in their care will transition well from residential care to other settings, will be fully included in society, and will live lives that they have reason to value. key to this objective is the empowerment of the children and youth to take their development into their own hands, to develop ideas of a possible future, and to pursue these ideas actively and sustainably. in the project “creating futures”, these homes plan to collect knowledge from children, youth, staff, and managers, as well as from the literature; to develop a framework of analysis to identify current good practices, and potentials for further development; and to implement a concrete pilot project in each home. evaluations of the learning and development process and dissemination of publications complete the project. throughout, there will be a strong focus on the voice of children and youth. collaborating as a community of practice and within the context of expert network fice international, the homes will make use of their diversity for stimulating learning and development on the individual, professional, and organisational levels. this paper describes the emergence and design of the planned project. keywords: child, youth, care leavers, residential care, quality development, empowerment, participation, protagonism, community of practice, hungary, switzerland, international acknowledgement: the authors thank szilvia szalontai for her valuable translation support during the writing of this paper. anna schmid phd (the corresponding author) is a lecturer and researcher at the institute of management and social policy at the school of social work of zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8005 zurich, switzerland, and board member of fice switzerland. email: anna.schmid@zhaw.ch krisztián herczeg djur is director of cseppkö child and youth home centre, cseppkő u. 74, 1025 budapest, hungary. he is a lecturer in child protection at the university of pécs, and vice president of nenesz, a member network of fice international. email: cseppgyermek@cseppgyermek.hu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818124 mailto:anna.schmid@zhaw.ch file://///user.zhaw.ch/staff/smia/eigene%20dateien/fice/wien/artikel%20f%20publikation/cop/cseppgyermek@cseppgyermek.hu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 133 this paper presents the emergence of a community of practice (cop) of child and youth homes in hungary and switzerland and its development and design of a research and development project. motivation the root of the creating futures project lies with a group that included four experts in child and youth care from child and youth homes, relevant authorities, and an expert network in hungary; and a swiss academic (the corresponding author) who specialises in organisation studies with a practice background in residential care. the group first came together in may 2015 at an event of fice international1 in serbia. in informal conversations during those proceedings they discovered a firm shared belief in children and youth’s 2 competencies, capacities, and potentials, as well as a commitment to promoting their inclusion, participation, and empowerment. they also discovered a mutual interest in personal and professional learning and in further developing the quality of residential child and youth care, and noticed that their conversations were made particularly rich and enjoyable by drawing on their diverse personalities, knowledge, experiences, and professional backgrounds, as well as on the different contexts of the two countries and their child and youth care systems and services. inspired by this experience, the idea emerged to join forces, learn from each other and with each other, and support each other in a concrete initiative with the aim of making a relevant contribution to aspects of quality development in residential care, thus benefiting children and youth in residential care concretely and effectively. this idea was further strengthened during a first visit to budapest by the corresponding author, which included conversations with the original group as well as opportunities to observe some of the daily work in one of the child and youth homes. this provided insight into residential and foster family services and collaboration with roma organisations. three months later, a visit to zurich offered the hungarian group an opportunity to meet two child and youth home directors from switzerland who were also interested in collaborating, and to visit one of the homes and gain insight into its diverse services. they also met with the representative of the relevant authorities of the canton of zurich. furthermore, hungarian and swiss representatives had a first opportunity to discuss questions of quality in residential care with each other, students, and other experts on the occasion of an international seminar offered by zhaw zurich university of applied sciences in collaboration with fice switzerland. after this first phase in 2015, discussions continued in 2016 both within and between the countries with two goals: to build up a strong basis for collaboration, and to develop a topic of relevance to practice that would be at the heart of concrete collaborative work. 1 fice international is a worldwide network of professionals in the field of alternative child and youth care, founded in 1947 and present in more than 35 countries. see http://www.ficeinter.net. 2 the term youth includes adolescents up to 18 years of age and young adults up to 26 years of age. http://www.ficeinter.net/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 134 the group’s starting point was the goal of a concrete and sustainable development initiative, with the belief that this could be best achieved if it drew on the capacities and potentials of the individual and contextual diversity of the persons and organisations involved. members felt that an important first step was for the members in each country (not all of whom knew each other well) to form a strong group willing and able to work together, in order to then build a joint group with the partners from the other country. this was all the more necessary because membership in the group was entirely voluntary and not subject to any obligation, such as to an employer. consequently, a structure for, and mechanisms of, voluntary collaboration based on relationships of trust, mutual interests, and both personal and joint commitment had to be created. a fundamental concern of the two country groups in the initial stages of the collaboration was whether they would have “enough to offer” to the other country, and whether it would be possible to find topics of common interest that both groups would be able to work on. for example, it was felt that the education of staff members was at that time a more topical issue in hungary than in switzerland. also, as economic pressures are greater in hungary than in switzerland, swiss members of the cop hypothesised that perhaps hungarian youth in residential care would be more “grateful” and “motivated” than swiss youth in a system “where people are looked after and maintained even if they display no motivation or effort whatsoever”3, as a swiss child and youth home director put it (personal communication, november 10, 2016). in august of 2016, the corresponding author, now coordinator of the group, had the opportunity to visit further child and youth homes in budapest. in october of that year, the hungarian group again visited zurich for meetings with their swiss counterparts and had the opportunity to visit another of the homes involved. subsequently, the swiss had the opportunity to visit the hungarian homes during joint cop meetings in budapest in june of 2017. here, the cop received input from exploratory focus group discussions with seven youths from the swiss and 50 youths from the hungarian homes, with 10 of the latter actively participating in the meetings. in the course of discussions, it became apparent that the two countries complemented and contrasted with each other in a way conducive to a joint initiative. both shared an expert community currently focusing strongly on quality in residential care and its development according to international guidelines and the current state of the art in the field. the countries differed from each other in social, political, and cultural contexts as well as some aspects of practice; a fact that the group members from both countries regarded as enriching for their joint reflection, discussion, and development. in the course of 2016, the group decided to regard itself as a cop, as defined by wengertrayner and wenger-trayner (2015): “communities of practice are groups of people who share 3 translated from german by the corresponding author. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 135 a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (p. 1). in all cases, the key elements of a cop, according to wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2015), are:  the domain, where members are brought together by a learning need they share (whether this shared learning need is explicit or not and whether learning is the motivation for their coming together or a by-product of it);  the community, wherein their collective learning becomes a bond among them over time (experienced in various ways and thus not a source of homogeneity); and  the practice, in which their interactions produce resources that affect their practice (whether they engage in actual practice together or separately). figure 1 the cop and its expert network. by june of 2017, this cop included three hungarian child and youth home centres in budapest and their representatives as well as two swiss child and youth homes and their representatives in the zurich area; two more homes from the zurich area were in the process of joining. together, these homes represented approximately 1,000 children and youths in their care. the cop also maintains an exchange and collaboration with the relevant authorities in both countries. furthermore, it has links to international exchange and expertise, in particular with the fice international network of experts in alternative care of children and youth, which is present in 35 different countries. additionally, an independent group of experts from both countries advises the cop regarding issues of child protection and ethics. the overall and scientific international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 136 coordination of the cop and its project creating futures lies with the corresponding author of this paper. problem identification from the beginning, the hungarian and swiss cop members were not only concerned with building up a collaboration, but also engaged in finding a joint focus topic to collaborate on, discussing candidate topics that they felt were of relevance to their current practice. in these discussions, the hungarian group mentioned a firm belief that “every child has talents”, and described the successful talent development programme varázscsepp [magic drop], which had been started by one of the homes represented in the group and then had been extended to a large number of residential care homes throughout the country. anecdotally, they mentioned success stories such as that of “the teenagers who said that they were not interested in anything”, but who, with encouragement, found something in the areas of culture, sport, or the professions that they liked and were able to do well. by doing so, they were able to engage in positive activities rather than harmful ones, take advantage of the opportunities for exchange with others that these offered, strengthen their self-esteem, and develop skills, resulting in positive, enjoyable experiences. as well as contributing to their inclusion, this helped them to overcome crises and difficulties, change their motivation and outlook on life, and generally strengthen their resilience. interestingly, the director of that home described a similar moment in his own life that had not only had a great impact on his personal and professional development, but that had also inspired this approach. on this basis, the hungarian group had a strong interest in further empowering children and youth to discover and develop their talents, and cited organisational conditions and, in particular, staff’s attitudes and quality of work as most relevant to that objective. at the same time, the transition of adolescents into more, or totally, independent adulthood was a topic mentioned time and again. for example, the hungarian members voiced concerns regarding young adult care leavers who struggle to “find their own feet” in a sustainable manner. on an organisational level, the hungarian group mentioned a difficulty in finding wellsuited staff, and, in this context, also mentioned issues concerning the education, management, and development of staff, citing the varying levels of the staff’s formal education and practical experience. for a joint initiative by the cop, they requested that two conditions be adhered to: (a) the focus should be on real life challenges and experiences in everyday practice in residential care; and (b) children and youth had to be included in the collaboration, as experts regarding their own lives and the institutions in which they live. this latter condition was partly based on the homes’ positive experiences with protagonism and participation in the democratically elected child and youth councils present in many homes in hungary, but was also based on experiences such as the public “child and youth parliament” that one of the group members was actively involved in. a further expectation was that children and youth from the two countries should international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 137 have opportunities to meet and thus gain insight into the other country, its culture, and ways of life. the swiss group echoed the topics of their hungarian colleagues, mentioning a variety of current activities aimed at strengthening children and youth’s motivation and resilience and supporting them in building their lives, while also referring to concerns regarding adolescents and young adult care leavers being able to “find their own feet” and leading “good” lives (in the sense of lives they had reason to value) in a sustainable manner. one of the swiss youth home directors said that he had noticed that the adolescents coming to his home seemed increasingly “more challenging” in the sense of coming from complex situations with a whole range of problems. he felt that these adolescents often were “not very motivated and difficult to motivate to take their development into their own hands” and to collaborate actively in the services and activities provided by the youth home. in his view, an important question would be: what does an adolescent need to open a door? sometimes, we try many things but seemingly without effect. then, suddenly, there is a change in the adolescent and they start taking their development into their own hands, and we wonder what made this possible all of a sudden. what are the moments in which change and development become possible for the adolescent?4 (personal communication, june 8, 2016) one swiss youth home director (personal communication, april 6, 2016) mentioned that what he noticed most about the hungarian colleagues when first meeting them was their engagement. he felt that the hungarian children’s home directors in the group showed an engagement and commitment towards each individual child that went beyond “doing the job”, and that they did their work with much passion (the german expression is herzblut [heart blood]). he felt that, with staff turnover being high in switzerland, employees’ attitudes have changed, in the sense that many see their work in a child and youth home as one of several steps in their professional development, as a job rather than a personal, lifelong engagement. he mentioned the following two questions as being linked to this issue: “what is needed for children and youth to feel taken seriously and addressed as individuals in the collective context of a residential care home? what is needed for the home to establish and maintain a strong focus on the child or youth in his or her individuality?”5 another child and youth home director from switzerland (personal communication, june 17, 2016) echoed this, saying that he saw a certain risk that some recent developments (e.g., the adoption of sozialraumorientierung [social spatial orientation]6 by some swiss child and youth services) and the planned (as of 2016) expansion of 4 translated from german by the corresponding author. 5 translated from german by the corresponding author. 6 social spatial orientation is an approach adopted in some areas of social work and social pedagogy in germanspeaking europe. rather than focusing on pedagogical work with individuals, it focuses on creating living contexts and conditions that allow persons to deal better with difficult life situations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 138 ambulatory services might carry a certain risk that the individual child will not be sufficiently taken into account, or may pass “under the radar” altogether. he felt that in everything, the question “what about the child?” should be considered also, and added that it was particularly important to him to promote the development and realisation of individual life plans, and that this required of him and his child and youth home an open, even creative, attitude rather than a narrow, inappropriately normative one. from these discussions, the hungarian and swiss partners agreed that they wanted to focus jointly and as a cop on the following topic: how can child and youth homes support and empower children and youth even more effectively in taking their development into their own hands, developing their own ideas of a possible future, and pursuing and realising these actively and sustainably? in order to collaboratively increase its knowledge and to develop quality in the participating homes on the basis of concrete pilot projects, the cop decided to design and implement a research and development project, creating futures, which will be described in the present investigation section below. short literature survey a comprehensive literature survey regarding the focus topic and relevant subtopics will be part of the creating futures project’s phase 1, “raising knowledge” (see the present investigation section). the following short literature survey refers to selected aspects of the two main areas of the focus topic: (a) children and youth and their situation as they and their lives develop over a shorter or longer stay in residential care, and (b) child and youth homes as organisations providing services aimed at promoting and supporting this development. those two areas could be visualised as meeting “in the middle”, where coproduction happens between the organisation and the children and youth it serves, enabling them to take their development into their own hands and create and realise their own ideas of the future. in particular, this survey refers to a series of aspects that the cop considered of particular relevance when designing the project. children and youth in or from residential care: a considerable number of care leavers from child and youth homes fail to establish a sustainable future for themselves. international research has shown that they do less well than their peers, exhibiting lower academic achievement, and higher rates of unemployment and detrimental experiences such as self-harm, homelessness, and participation in illegal activities. for example, in switzerland, gabriel and stohler (2008, p. 203) cited a high risk of social exclusion for young people leaving care and an elevated mortality rate among young male care leavers, while burgund and rácz (2015, p. 103) mentioned that in hungary, an estimated 40% of young people who passed through both care and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 139 after-care (i.e., usually up to age 24) “become criminal, unemployed, homeless, prostitute or their children will grow up in [the] child protection system as well”. research has also shown that, internationally, children and youth who have been in residential care encounter particular economic and social disadvantages and barriers in their lives. piller and schnurr (2013, p. 12) identified structural disadvantages that are due to both the events that lead to young people being taken into care, and the biographical fact of having had a “stay in residential care”. these disadvantages are compounded by the fact that children and adolescents in residential care have to enter the process of becoming independent significantly earlier than their peers who live in their families of origin, as sievers, thomas, and zeller (2014, p. 13) have pointed out. there are laws and provisions in place to sustain care leavers in the social support system and in employment. however, these vary both within and across national boundaries (gabriel & stohler, 2008; stohler & gehrig, 2015). in hungary, for example, after-care provisions are in place up to age 24 for a large percentage of care leavers (burgund & rácz, 2015), but this is the case in only some of the swiss cantons. overall, and in most countries, the implementation of support approaches that can specifically accommodate care leavers is far from comprehensive. in addition, it has become increasingly clear that the issue runs deeper than questions of ensuring housing and employment or preventing crime, which are often the focus of support for care leavers (stohler & gehrig, 2015). children and youth’s self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy are among the important factors to be strengthened. children and adolescents in residential care face greater challenges than their peers in developing an adequate notion of self, a sense of achievement, and plans for a possible future, as well as in actively pursuing and successfully realising their plans through their own efforts. for example, macsenaere and esser (2012, p. 87) found in their research on impact factors that many children and adolescents in child and youth homes have lived through poverty and have thereby experienced exclusion, contempt, a lack of appreciation and recognition, and a lack of selfefficacy (one’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish goals). resource-oriented approaches support children and adolescents in discovering that they already have individual abilities on which they can build and that can contribute to their self-efficacy and self-confidence, and that distinguish them from their peers. macsenaere and esser (2012) emphasised additionally that children and adolescents can only experience self-efficacy in the context of a challenge that gives them the opportunity to experience themselves and their abilities and develop them further. interviews with care leavers by esser (2010; as cited in macsenaere & esser, 2012, pp. 86–87) showed that leisure, musical, sports, creative, celebratory, and group activities were favourite activities that strengthened young people’s protective personality factors. in addition, such activities were particularly important for children and adolescents who had no personal relationships in the home yet, as they gave them opportunities to meet people and form such relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 140 the statements of care leavers make it clear that they wish to be involved in such processes. for example, in 2016, a group of 60 care leavers from 15 countries formulated 10 standards for “leaving care” that were officially adopted by the more than 600 participating experts of the 33rd fice congress and 2nd cyc world conference. among the adopted standards were: “every care leaver should be involved in their own care leaving plan and have a say in what has to be done”, and “to be able to find and succeed in a job, every care leaver should get help to become aware of and get recognised with their potentials, so that they gather the chance to improve them” (fice standards developed by young care leavers, 2016, p. 1). the child and youth home as an organisation: child and youth homes do not develop the children and adolescents in their care. rather, these organisations provide conditions, programmes, ways of working, persons of reference, relationships, experiences, and so on that are considered conducive to the children and youth’s own development as they proceed on their life paths and build their futures. child and youth homes are not simply providers of services, but spaces of living, living together, growing up, and socialisation. they are collective contexts in which children and adolescents live for some or most of their formative years, and that must, for example, “be able to recognise their individual potential, to value their dreams and abilities and turn them into talents”7, as barros (2006, p. 99) stipulated. as systems that contribute to change in people, child and youth homes are predominantly based on interactional relationships. thus, the quality of face-to-face relationships and of interactions is a strong determinant of the success of any intervention, including sociopedagogical ones (fretschner, 2011, p. 77). the child and youth home as organisation frames the interaction between staff and young people, both opening spaces and defining limits (bommes & scherr, 2012, p. 256). according to wohlgemuth (1991), an organisation is a goal-oriented, relatively enduring, open sociotechnical system with formal and informal structures, a process of coming into being, and a relatively continuous process of change. within, various social and technical elements interact in order to attain a performance conducive to fulfilling the organisation’s purpose. this means that, in order to create the organisational frame and spaces necessary for rendering services capable of reaching desired outcomes (such as children and youth developing ideas of the future) and contributing effectively to desired impacts, a child and youth home has to design and shape a number of elements both technical and social. piber (2014, p. 73), for example, listed a “cultural subsystem” (including sense, purpose, mission statement, basic values, programmes, plans, etc.), a “social subsystem” (including organisational structure, hierarchy, relationships, knowledge, skills, management style, power, climate, etc.), and a 7 translated from portuguese by the corresponding author. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 141 “technical-instrumental subsystem” (including core and support processes, money, buildings, machines, instruments, vehicles, etc.).8 to a large extent, human interaction cannot be standardised, nor can its exact outcome be predicted (drepper & tacke, 2010, p. 266). this means that joint reflection and learning by staff and children and youth is a promising approach to quality development, particularly when approaching a complex and highly individualised topic such as children and youth taking their development into their own hands and developing and realising their own ideas of the future. child and youth homes deliver person-oriented services. these are characterised by the fact that they are produced in coproduction between the home and those they serve: the performance of professional staff cannot be separated from the performance of the young people. the services offered by the home can only be successful if children and youth engage in them and succeed in drawing the maximum benefit for their own development from them. in order to illustrate and exemplify this, we will now consider the aspect of motivation. what do children and adolescents need in order to draw the greatest possible benefit from what the home offers them for their own development? participants of the cop have mentioned “motivation” as an important factor for children and youth to take charge of their own development. according to stangl (stangl, n.d.), “a person’s motivation to pursue a certain goal is influenced by situational stimuli, personal preferences, and the interaction between the two.”9 this means that motivation is not simply something that a person either has or does not have. motivation depends not only on personal choice, but also on the situation, as well as on the internal and external consequences of the action. the motivation of an individual child or youth will be affected by the child or youth home, its employees, and the other children and youth, be it intentionally and directly (e.g., when completing explicit assessments) or unintentionally and indirectly during everyday communication. to summarise, “motivation” denotes a complex phenomenon, one that is not directly observable. it is only possible to deduce motivation from action. practical experience shows that misinterpretations can occur, particularly when employees are less educated or have less experience. for example, passive, rejecting, critical, or aggressive behaviours of adolescents do not necessarily indicate a lack of motivation but may have altogether different causes. we suggest that the work and offerings of the child and youth home may fall on the most fertile soil possible if motivation is present. at the same time, from the point of view of both social pedagogy and organisation studies, “to be motivated” is not only a task for the child or adolescent alone, but something that the child and youth home has to create and provide favourable conditions for. the actions stemming from that motivation will be a result of coproduction between the home and the young person. for this coproduction to be possible, the 8 translated from german by the corresponding author. 9 translated from german by the corresponding author. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 142 home must not only provide appropriate structures, processes, resources, and so on, but also create spaces where coproduction and thus the development of children and youth as individuals, and as members of a group, of their families, and of society, can germinate, take root, and flourish. understanding children and youth as protagonists of their own development and making their participation in the child and youth home possible is most relevant from two points of view:  from a sociopedagogical and psychological point of view, participation allows children and youth to build their self-esteem and develop the skills needed as they become more independent.  from an organisational point of view, participation of children and youth is of vital importance to the performance and success (results, impact) of the child and youth home. thus, there is a clear interconnectedness of sociopedagogical and organisational issues in child and youth homes. the cop strives to do justice to this interconnectedness in its collaboration and project. present investigation background creating futures, which the cop has designed and is currently beginning to implement, is planned as a three-year research and development project. the formal start date depends on grant money being approved and is planned for the second half of 2017. the cop members are jointly responsible for developing and implementing the planned project. from each child and youth home at least one person with a responsible role and one young adult will take part in the cop, whose members will be in constant dialogue, both virtual and, whenever possible, in person (see figure 1). each national community works in its national context as well as in collaboration with the partner country. in addition, each national cop maintains a professional dialogue with a wider expert network. this includes the relevant member ngos of fice international, as these will play an important role in providing expert feedback on methods and results from multiple perspectives, and be instrumental in disseminating the results to all member institutions and countries and the wider expert field. furthermore, it includes the relevant authorities in their functional responsibilities: the hungarian directorate general for social affairs and child protection and the authority for youth and occupational guidance of the canton of zurich support the project, contributing perspectives from their roles in coordinating the alternative care services supply system and their expertise in child protection and country-specific regulations, as well as supporting the dissemination of acquired knowledge. these authorities are in a position to encourage the implementation of recommendations or newly developed approaches in additional child and youth homes in their respective territories. moreover, the wider expert network includes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 143 universities, with a view to collaboration and exchange regarding scientific methods, dissemination, and the option of eventually developing materials for professional education and training. the project’s objective is to develop knowledge and approaches (e.g., methods, attitudes, processes, etc., and the organisational conditions that make them possible) that enable the participating child and youth homes to support and empower young people even more effectively in taking their development into their own hands, developing their own ideas of a possible future, and pursuing and realising these actively and sustainably. based on empirical research, the results will take the form of knowledge, ideas, and recommendations developed collaboratively by children, youth, staff, managers, and other experts, and tested in pilot projects, culminating in a model that may serve not only the member homes of the cop, but others as well. with a view to ensuring sustainability, a further goal is to contribute to, and strengthen, learning and development capacity on the individual, professional, and organisational levels through the methodology used, as discussed below. the project will contribute to closing a major research and knowledge gap. much research exists regarding outcomes and impacts of residential care. for example, in germany, there are the various publications of the project “effect-oriented qualification of assistance for education” 10 and macsenaere and essers’s (2012) publications; in switzerland, there is the current project “individual outplacements: administrative decisions and life trajectories in the canton of zurich (1950–1990)” 11 , aimed at revealing the connections between care home upbringing, earlier life circumstances, and the later life course. however, little is known about the interplay between residential care settings and the development of individual ideas of the future by children and youth. by uncovering the implicit and explicit knowledge that children and youth, staff, managers, and other experts hold, a much wider discourse and more varied approaches to the issue become possible. even more importantly, the project will also contribute to reducing a gap in practice. recent definitions of quality of residential care in legislation and in professional standards are important advances. while defining goals to be reached, however, they leave residential care homes to grapple with the challenge of reaching these goals with the limited resources available to them. concrete implementation, therefore, is necessary and of great relevance. the project will achieve this by not only producing knowledge, but putting it to use, testing and refining it in a concrete pilot project in each participating child and youth home in a manner aimed at supporting the home’s capacity for learning and development. 10 http://www.wirkungsorientierte-jugendhilfe.de/ 11 https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/care-homeplacements-in-the-canton-of-zurich/ http://www.wirkungsorientierte-jugendhilfe.de/ https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/care-home-placements-in-the-canton-of-zurich/ https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/care-home-placements-in-the-canton-of-zurich/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 144 last but not least, the project’s high degree of diversity and participation as well as its methodology are aimed at stimulating and promoting sustained learning processes of all those involved on the personal, professional, and organisational levels. the insights gained on these three levels are expected to be rewarding for all participants. methodology and methods the cop members have developed the methodology to be adopted in this project in collaboration. they regard children and youth as “experts of their everyday lives”, as “coproducers” of the homes’ services, and as protagonists of their own development (the main characters in their own stories). they also regard all members — managers, staff, children, and youth — of the child and youth homes as the main elements that constitute, maintain, and further develop the organisation. consequently, the cop members have agreed to ensure that the children, youth, staff, and managers of the participating homes are not only affected by the project but involved in it as experts in a participatory and collaborative manner. in this, their roles must go beyond providing information and include reflexive and interpretative processes as well as the elaboration of recommendations. although this is a path as yet rarely taken by research and development projects, the cop members are convinced that it is indispensable if creating futures is to be a coherent, useful, sustainable, and credible project. not least, they have chosen a focus on implicit and explicit practice-based knowledge in the homes with the intention of promoting the homes’ development “from the inside out”, contributing to sustainability by involving directly in designing the development those who will live this transformation, be it as managers or staff or as coproducing clientele. the project consists of four modules and is planned for a duration of three years. figure 2. the project modules. module 1 — raising knowledge is aimed at gathering and reviewing knowledge about the core topic of the project and related themes. the objectives are (a) to understand how children and youth in residential care form their own ideas of a possible future; (b) to understand the necessary prerequisites to support these processes, with particular regard to personal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 145 competencies, resources, options, and organisational conditions; and (c) to accumulate examples of good practice (as material input, not project output) and to formulate hypotheses on how these prerequisites can be developed and strengthened in the organisational context of a residential care home. in phase 1a a literature study will be conducted. it will take into account a wide range of peer-reviewed and also “grey” literature (e.g., concepts, guidelines, and white papers). in phase 1b, focus group interviews will be conducted in switzerland and hungary to collect and systematise the experiences of adolescents, young care leavers, staff, and managers. additionally, a “young expert exchange” in the summer will bring together youth from the homes in both countries to collect and exchange knowledge and experiences and to collaborate on formulating recommendations. since implicit knowledge is expected to be key, it will employ methods that access not only cognitive content (as interviews do) but also intuition, experience, creativity, mutual dynamics, perception, and association. ideally, children would also be included in the phase 1b activities; however, that will depend on the resources available as different, age-appropriate methods, and experts competent in applying them, would be required. the cop, with an invited young adult from each home, will meet twice, once in budapest and once in zurich, to discuss findings of phase 1, reflect on them, and develop conclusions and recommendations for the further course of the project. module 1 will conclude with the dissemination of a detailed final report, which will be the starting point for module 2. module 2 — creating futures: developing ways of working will devise organisational approaches that empower children and youth in residential care to take their development into their own hands, develop ideas of the future, pursue them actively, and realise them sustainably. it is important that these are concrete “ways of working”; that is, routines, practices, concepts, frameworks, mind-sets, and cultures that can be effectively implemented by a child and youth home. phase 2a aims to enable the participating child and youth homes to conduct a selfanalysis and to identify developmental opportunities and possibilities that are specific to the organisation. the goal of this phase is not only to develop the framework for analysis based on the results of module 1, but also to complete analyses in each participating home and to formulate hypotheses and propose candidates for specific projects in each home. the evaluation of this phase will provide ideas for first pilot projects, which then form the basis for phase 2b. phase 2b starts with the design and implementation of one pilot project per participating child and youth home. the pilot projects are intended to be innovative, to foster change, and to result in new or improved solutions regarding organisational matters relating to the empowerment of young people (methods, attitudes, processes, etc., and the organisational international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 146 conditions that make them possible), thus contributing to improvements in the participating homes’ quality of service. a key evaluation criterion will be whether the pilot projects indeed result in an increase in the homes’ capacity to further the empowerment of the young people they serve. implementing the pilot projects will lead to a refined version of the framework produced in phase 2a as well as to its extension into a model that refers to aspects of organisational implementation. the evaluation of each individual pilot project will identify further opportunities for improvements specific to each child and youth home. the cop will prepare an evaluation report that documents not only the pilot projects implemented, but also all project phases that resulted in the design and implementation of these projects. the report will apprise each participating home not only of the concrete pilot project each of the other participating homes has implemented, but also of the process by which the project identification, design, and implementation came about. as regards methods, the following activities will contribute significantly to the pilot projects and to their evaluation: focus groups and young expert exchanges with children, youth, staff, and managers from each country; national cop workshops in each country; and joint 3-day cop workshops. the perspectives of children, youth, staff, and managers on each project will be reported and jointly evaluated. additionally, the wider expert network will be involved in the reflection and discussion of proceedings and results at regular intervals. module 3 — the evaluation and final framework will produce a final report with recommendations for the participating child and youth homes. the final report will integrate the main results from modules 1 and 2; that is, it will address the explicit knowledge base, the implicit knowledge base, and the organisational insights gained by conducting and evaluating the pilot projects. it will clearly address intended effects as well as unintended side-effects and errors, and will not only focus on organisational elements having been changed or introduced, but also on the learning processes experienced. in addition, the corresponding development steps will be described, including the expertise of children, youth, staff, managers, authorities, and the wider expert network. recommendations for further learning and development regarding the project’s focus topic, and information on the highly participatory, resource-oriented methodology of the project, will be provided to each participating home and country. again, the evaluation and preparation of the final report will also be supported by additional focus groups and young expert exchanges with children and youth from each country, staff workshops in each home, national and binational cop workshops with the managers, joint 3-day cop workshops, and consultations with the wider expert network. module 4 — guidelines and dissemination will make the model and the report available to all fice members, nationally and internationally, and to the public. the main objective is to offer relevant information and a model regarding the focus topic not only for all interested child and youth homes, but also for managers, staff, children, and youth, as well as academics and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 147 students in the field. module 4 will ensure that all relevant information becomes available and is communicated in german, hungarian, and english. overall, the dissemination will include peerreviewed journal articles; a practice handbook or website of similar content, illustrated with reallife examples; practice-oriented publications; and presentations and publications for a more general audience. the development of didactic materials for professional education and training for staff and managers is also considered. recommendations or proposals for follow-up projects with a particularly high impact will be included. subjects over the three years, based on what can be planned at the present stage, it is estimated that the project will involve up to 150 members of management and staff of the participating child and youth homes, as well as approximately 400 children and youth from those homes, both in producing and reflecting on information, and in designing, implementing, and evaluating parts of the project. however, it is likely and desirable that these numbers will further increase, particularly in the context of the concrete pilot projects being designed and introduced, as several participating homes have already mentioned that, with regard to sustainability, they consider it important that all their staff and most, if not all, children and youth in their care be involved in some way. results the creating futures project will start formally in at the beginning of 2018 if the necessary resources have become available by then. from then on, focus groups, young expert exchanges, cop meetings and, later, pilot projects, will be realised; and their results and learnings will be disseminated continually. however, by the time the project starts formally, the cop will have collaborated for nearly two years already, getting to know each other, coming together in national groups as well as in the joint group, establishing ways of communicating and collaborating, discussing interests, finding and defining a focus topic of mutual interest, designing the structure of the project, agreeing on methods and participants, and so on. the first results of the project can be seen in all that is presented in this paper, in particular as regards the topic, content, design, and organisation of the project, since they all have been developed jointly by the swiss and hungarian participants. in fact, this paper itself and the presentation at the 33rd fice congress in 2016 that it is based on are important first achievements for the cop. most of all, though, the sustained interest and engagement of all participants over two years must be considered a success, as must be the fact that some adolescents and young adults from a home in hungary and a home in switzerland have reacted with enthusiasm and great interest, both to the topic of the project and to the role they can play in it. at the time of writing this paper in may of 2017, module 1 had reached the stage of organising the first focus groups and young expert exchange. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 148 the preparatory phase of the last two years has presented a number of challenges as well as strengths. to the cop, it has been a very significant phase, and consequently, it shall be described here, and some of its learnings cited. all the activities of this phase have been realised despite insufficient financial resources. this has made the support that the cop enjoys and the creativity and motivation of its members even more apparent, as zhaw and the hungarian directorate general for social affairs and child protection found ways to contribute some finances and paid work hours, and the cop members and particularly the coordinator contributed a considerable amount of voluntary work and found creative solutions for communication and collaboration when meeting in person was not possible. the establishment of a group of experts dedicated to, and able to collaborate in, realising the project was a prerequisite even more fundamental than financial resources to the project’s success. in other aspects, too, both challenges and strengths have become apparent. as a hungarian participant said, “thinking beyond our everyday tasks and experiences and leaving our comfort zones is very positive and, at the same time, a challenge.” language is perhaps the most immediately obvious challenge, as cop members in the two countries speak either hungarian or german and have varying degrees of confidence and fluency in english (though several cop members report improvements in their language skills thanks to the collaboration, some of them remarkable). all documents, including minutes of meetings and communications, have to be made available in both german and english and translated to hungarian and vice versa. the coordinator as well as the cop members from both countries soon noticed that contexts and habits are indeed diverse. this is not only true on the level of aspects such as laws and regulations, or the history of child and youth care, but also with regard to aspects such as how discussions are structured, decisions are taken, and conflicts are addressed and resolved. furthermore, the fact that all participants are subject to particular conditions, relationships, and hierarchies, and thus experience diverse possibilities and constraints in their professional roles and contexts, is apparent and impacts the collaboration, sometimes favourably, and sometimes less so. remarkably, all members of the cop have been taking on these challenges with patience and good humour, granting each other a considerable amount of trust and displaying professional and reliable behaviour as well as a great willingness to contribute to moving the collaboration forward. regular metacommunication continues to be necessary in order to find shared ways forward. in fact, members have mentioned repeatedly that the ensuing discussions have contributed to “opening their horizons”. in both countries, the members have given the coordinator access to their organisations, including staff and children and youth, and have explained their contexts and work. as the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 149 coordinator had no previous experience of hungary, the generosity and openness with which child and youth home directors, staff, children, adolescents, and young adults, as well as members of the directorate general, showed and explained their worlds to her was much appreciated. in switzerland, too, she was welcomed most kindly, and generously given opportunities for open exchange with directors, staff, and youth, as well as with the official responsible for child and youth homes at the authority for youth and occupational counselling. as the coordinator, an academic at a university of applied sciences, is tasked with coordinating a cop and a project intended as being “from practice for practice”, this engagement of the practice partners is of vital importance to her ability to fulfil her role appropriately and contribute the necessary academic knowledge and skills in a suitable and fruitful manner. it has been noticeable that participants from each country have felt inspired by some of their experiences during discussions or visits to homes or authorities in the other country. for example, one of the swiss directors wrote, “i am impressed with the personal commitment of the partners from hungary and their pioneering spirit.” all members of the cop have demanding jobs and work intense schedules with little free time. the swiss group members have repeatedly mentioned the extent to which their field is in motion, and the challenges this poses for the homes. for example, the introduction of a new law for child and youth homes is planned for the canton of zurich in 2018. the law will bring with it not only a change in finance models but also a paradigm shift regarding placements, as an attempt will be made to focus more on what each young person needs and less on the services that are available, while an increased preference will be given to ambulatory over residential services. child and youth homes “will become more like just one service among many”, as one of the participating directors said (personal communication, june 17, 2016) . “they may experience difficulties in taking in enough children and youths to remain running; some homes even may have to close. of course, it is not impossible that, over time, it will become apparent that placements in residential care continue to be necessary.” these changes lead to an increase in pressure and workload in the homes as they are reviewing their services to be ready for positioning themselves once the new law comes into force. as regards an additional concrete project or initiative within a swiss–hungarian collaboration, a wish to do something that would be immediately useful in this period of change became apparent. why, under such circumstances, would the cop members wish to take on the challenge of jointly building up this cop and developing the creating futures project together with colleagues from quite a different context? on an individual level, a “curiosity for new things” or, “i hope to hear and learn new things” have been mentioned by members from both countries. as regards the professional role, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 150 the hungarian participants (personal communication, july 2016) have mentioned that they felt that the cop allowed them to:  get a wider, deeper view of approaches, methods, and techniques in residential child care;  share and implement the new learnings in daily practice;  enrich personal knowledge of theories and practices of child and youth care;  share their own points of view and know-how with foreign professionals, develop together new know-how and innovative methods and techniques, and support each other in implementation; and  contribute to increased respect for child and youth care and those who work in it. on the part of the swiss participants (personal communication, july 2016), statements such as the following were made: i assume that culture, degree of professionalization, and financial investment vary between the two countries. these differences offer an opportunity for new perspectives in the pedagogical work. how can my work succeed in stimulating motivation for change and learning in adolescents? maybe the different social contexts help us to think differently about these questions. it is enjoyable and fruitful for me to step outside my daily work every now and again and come to these meetings and reflect about topics of relevance together with colleagues that i have not had much contact with before.12 when offered the possibility of joining the collaboration, another child and youth home director (personal communication, march 2017) said, “what i really like about this idea is that it offers an experience of self-efficacy to all who are involved, and everybody goes on a learning journey together”13. conclusion creating futures is a project of binational, multicontextual, multilingual, multicultural collaboration that involves diverse stakeholders in a participatory fashion, and takes a somewhat unusual methodological path in the pursuit of a complex topic. as such, it has required an intense preparatory phase, which has been lengthy not only due to the complexity of the endeavour but also to the limited resources available. 12 translated from german by the corresponding author. 13 translated from german by the corresponding author. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 151 these characteristics have been a topic in several conversations between members of the cop or between individual members and their employers who perhaps are more used to the more common type of research where either an academic drafts a project and then asks for informants from practice organisations, or a practice organisation has a very specific question for which it asks academics to render research services. although such projects can be complex too, they depend less on interpersonal and joint processes than the path that this cop has chosen. the members of the cop feel, however, that their chosen path has many benefits, and that any perceived “lack of speed” of the initial phase will likely translate into greater stability and sustainability of the project as well as into rich and diverse content and many sources of creativity and inspiration. developing a mutual understanding of what it means to work as partners who jointly and with equal rights and obligations take responsibility for the functioning of the cop and its project remains a challenge and a continuing process. as this is a participatory and exploratory project designed as a collaborative learning and development process, its outcomes and impact cannot be predicted in their entirety. consequently a not inconsiderable amount of trust, courage, flexibility, and creativity but also time and mental energy, are required of each member of the cop. the endeavour of the cop will remain complex and will continue to bring its share of challenges and achievements, difficulties and joys. certainly, though, it will be a learning journey which, if carried out successfully, will be undertaken jointly by the participating “young” and “old” experts learning and developing together, encouraging and inspiring each other, and collaborating on making a contribution to the children and youth in residential care who are continually building their lives, and to the homes that support and empower them in taking their development into their own hands, developing their own ideas of the future, pursuing these actively, and realising them sustainably. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 132–153 152 references barros, r. 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(1991). das beratungskonzept der organisationsentwicklung : neue form der unternehmungsberatung auf grundlage des sozio-technischen systemansatzes [the consultancy concept of organisational development: a new form of management consultancy based on the socio-technical systems approach] (3rd ed.). bern, switzerland: haupt. http://forschungsnetzwerk-erziehungshilfen.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/abschlussbericht_final_03-2014.pdf http://forschungsnetzwerk-erziehungshilfen.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/abschlussbericht_final_03-2014.pdf http://lexikon.stangl.eu/337/motivation/ http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs.63201513600 http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616089 prevalence of intimate partner violence in jamaica: implications for prevention and intervention delores e. smith abstract: intimate partner violence (ipv) is a global phenomenon. it is pervasive in every society and cuts across culture, religion, wealth, status, age, and lifestyle. ipv is a violation of women’s human rights and a threat to public health and national development. however, in many societies, particularly developing nations, it is not given the national attention it deserves. the purpose of the current article is to present a snapshot of the prevalence and scope of ipv in the jamaican context. in addition to presenting information on ipv and its consequences, the article uses ecological systems theory to delineate the various factors that potentially place jamaican women at risk for intimate partner victimization. further, the article proposes strategies for addressing existing cultural gender norms and beliefs about heterosexual interpersonal relationships and offers suggestions to policy makers for prevention and intervention approaches to limit the potential for the perpetration and maintenance of ipv. it is suggested that a combination of legislative action and public and private ventures will help reduce the incidence of domestic violence in jamaica. keywords: jamaica, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, gender, cultural norms delores e. smith, phd is associate professor in the department of child and family studies, college of education, health, and human sciences, 1215 w. cumberland ave., knoxville, tn 37996. email: delsmith@utk.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616089 mailto:delsmith@utk.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 344 the united nations defines intimate partner violence (ipv) as “a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviours including physical, sexual and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion used by adults or adolescents against their current or former intimate partners” (united nations children’s fund [unicef], 2006a, p. 3). it is one of the most ubiquitous human rights challenges of modern times (unicef, 2006a, 2006b; world health organization [who], 2005, 2013), pervading every culture, ethnicity, educational level, age, religion, income level, and lifestyle (unicef, 2006b; who, 2013). according to the world health organization (2013), ipv is a violation of women’s human rights, a criminal justice issue, and a threat to public health and national development. the who deems ipv to be a peace and national security issue and hence urges that all societies make addressing violence against women a national priority. both men and women perpetrate ipv and are victimized by it. in fact, some authors (e.g., dutton, 2007) have indicated that ipv perpetration is evenly distributed across gender, while others (e.g., capaldi, knoble, shortt, & kim, 2012) have suggested that women commit ipv at higher rates than men. nonetheless, the preponderance of the literature holds that women experience all forms of ipv at higher rates than men and that the consequences for women are more severe (campbell, glass, sharps, laughon, & bloom, 2007; goussinsky & yassour-borochowitz, 2012; hart & klein, 2013; united nations development programme [undp], 2012; who, 2013). according to the who (2016), an estimated 35% of women are victims of ipv, and in some countries up to 71% of women experience a lifetime occurrence of some form of ipv (who 2016). furthermore, males kill their female partners at a rate 5 times higher than the reverse (goussinsky & yassour-borochowitz, 2012). according to the united nations office on drugs and crime (unodc, 2014), globally, in 2012, almost half (47%) of the 93,000 female victims of homicide were murdered by their intimate partner, whereas less than 6% of male homicide victims were murdered by an intimate partner. in the united states, a woman is nine times more likely to be murdered by her male partner than by a stranger (campbell et al., 2007). furthermore, 72% of murder-suicides involved an intimate partner, with the woman murdered by her husband or boyfriend in 94% of cases (violence policy center, 2012). however, in jamaica, as in many other developing societies, ipv has historically not been recorded separately from other types of violence but has been subsumed under the rubric of societal violence in general. unfortunately, therefore, it has not received as much attention in the literature as have other forms of violence (e.g., political conflicts, community violence; bott, guedes, godwin, & mendoza, 2012; undp, 2012). purpose of the paper the purpose of this article is to call attention to the prevalence and magnitude of ipv in jamaica and to suggest approaches to addressing, and ultimately eliminating, the problem. in jamaica, as in some other societies, a tradition of cultural acceptance of ipv makes it an especially contentious issue (bott et al., 2012; inter-american commission on human rights [iachr], 2012; royes, samiel, tate, & fox, 2006). however, recent public discourse about its deleterious effects on jamaican society has garnered increased civic interest in the issue and spurred some critics to charge that successive governments have not done enough to address it. according to some sources international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 345 (e.g., iachr, 2012; ustanny, 2006; stop violence against women, 2014), jamaica lags behind many countries in taking action against violence against women. it has also been argued that a lack of committed responsiveness on the part of the state is the major cause of continued abuse of vulnerable women (iachr, 2012; stop violence against women, 2014). in this article, ipv is considered as a separate issue from the community violence in which it is embedded in many societies. indeed, several sources (e.g., unicef, 2006a, 2006b; stop violence against women, 2014; who, 2005, 2013) have inferred that subsuming ipv under the rubric of broader societal violence renders official figures unreliable and the true magnitude of the problem difficult to decipher. that literature does not deny the robust interconnection between ipv and general community violence, but holds that the two are distinct. ipv is perpetrated mostly by men against women, primarily within the confines of intimate relationships and in the privacy of the home “behind closed doors” (who, 2013). community violence, on the other hand, is committed in public areas, and usually by a perpetrator who is not in an intimate relationship with the victim (national child traumatic stress network, 2015). furthermore, special recognition must be paid to ipv because of its destructive impact on society’s most basic institution — the family, and most vulnerable members — women and children (bott et al., 2012; unicef, 2006a, 2006b; who, 2013). as well, over the past three decades a strong body of research, albeit primarily from developed societies, has offered new knowledge about the nature of ipv and its detrimental social consequences. limited attention has been paid to ipv in the jamaican setting (stop violence against women, 2014; ustanny, 2006), and the major public health problems it presents for personal and national development (who, 2005, 2013, 2016). while not disputing that ipv also has male victims, the emphasis here is exclusively on female victims in the jamaican context. this article is not meant to be an exhaustive review of ipv: it addresses only related factors that have been shown to be consistent across cultures. i review the literature on the prevalence of ipv in the jamaican context, outline my theoretical framework, summarize the literature on the consequences of ipv, and note their implications for jamaican society. i also make suggestions to policy makers and the private sector regarding workable strategies for addressing the ingrained cultural dynamics of ipv. the jamaican context jamaica is a small island nation (4421 sq mi) with a population of 2.9 million. women make up about 50% of the adult population. within the un economic and geographical classification, the island is an upper-middle-income economy situated within the latin american and caribbean (lac) region. the lac region is ranked among the most violent in the world , and jamaica has the world’s sixth-highest homicide rate (unodc, 2014). although there is no comprehensive prevalence data on ipv in jamaica (organization for economic co-operation and development [oecd], 2014), ipv has been identified as the most prevalent form of violence on the island (bott et al., 2012); however, for the most part, addressing the problem is not prominent in the country’s national security blueprint (iachr, 2012; stop violence against women, 2014). according to the organization of american states (iachr, 2012), ipv is one of the more common forms of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 346 violence plaguing jamaican society: “it contributes to the overall pattern of crime and violence due to its debilitating effects on the social fabric and its role in socializing the youths to violence as a means of dispute resolution” (p. 76). the iachr (2012) also noted that, notwithstanding the government’s efforts to adopt a series of international legal standards regarding gender equality and violence against women, jamaican women continue to suffer discrimination and violence of all kinds, including all forms of ipv and sexual harassment. violence against women permeates all social strata of jamaican society and, as is also true globally, its occurrence is significantly underreported due to prevailing social and cultural norms (oecd, 2014; iachr, 2012; unicef, 2006b). in particular, because ipv often goes unreported, the number of incidents is much higher than recorded and presented in official reports (iachr, 2012). however, the limited available data have indicated that of the 22,739 cases of domestic violence reported over a 3-year period (2005–2008), 61% of the victims were women and girls (iachr, 2012). police statistics show that in 2013, there were 814 cases of women being raped and 128 women were murdered, 76 in what were classified as “domestic related” murders; also, of 52 cases of suicide in that year, 19.2% were attributed to domestic conflict (presumably an underestimate, as the motive in 45% of the cases was stated to be unknown; planning institute of jamaica, 2014). one study (le franc, samms-vaughan, hambleton, fox, & brown, 2008) investigating the prevalence of interpersonal violence in three caribbean countries found that jamaican women reported the highest rate (85.1%) of violent victimization within their intimate relationships; 45.3% of women in the jamaican sample reported that they had experienced physical violence, and 72.6% indicated that they had been sexually coerced. in one study (royes et al., 2006) utilizing focus groups, all the men from a middleor upper-class background, and 80% of other men, admitted to physically abusing an intimate partner. findings from soyibo and lee’s (2000) study indicated that 45% of their school-aged sample reported that they had witnessed ipv in their homes; 39% had witnessed family members being injured in those violent encounters; and 24% indicated that they had been injured themselves in violent domestic conflicts. in a report of ipv studies (unicef, 2006b), 50% of jamaican men acknowledged having hit their partner and 30% of adolescents worried about the violence in their home. in the 2008 reproductive health survey (rhs), serbanescu, ruiz, and suchdev (2010) found that 35% of jamaican women (aged 15–49) reported a lifetime occurrence of at least one form of ipv (verbal, physical, or sexual); and 17% reported having been subjected to any form of ipv over the past 12 months. theoretical framework of ipv traditional theories seeking to explain male violence against women have used three lenses: biological, psychological, and sociological. according to cunningham et al. (1998), there are conceptual variations among these broad frameworks: (a) biological explanations of male violence against women posit either a gene-based evolutionary process resulting in the male’s instinctual struggle for dominance, or individual physiological factors such as brain injury; (b) psychological explanations emphasize the role of a disordered psyche; and (c) sociological explanations underscore the role of the social structures and systems that create and perpetuate male violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 347 against women. however, contemporary thought maintains that because no single perspective can explain human outcomes, violence is best viewed through a set of integrative formulations (who, 2010, 2013). hence, ecological systems theory, proposed by bronfenbrenner (1979), has been identified as the best suited to address ipv. the who regards it as the gold standard for organizing and integrating the various nested mechanisms of human development (who, 2010, 2013). according to the ecological systems framework, human development occurs within a complex web of social exchanges among individuals and the multiple social systems in which they reside. thus, the theory implies the importance of understanding human behaviour within the context of the interaction of numerous factors of the cultural ecology. in conceptualizing and studying ipv, therefore, the use of ecological systems theory is recommended because of the multiple interconnected risks that contribute to its perpetration and maintenance (who, 2010). the model suggests four levels of inquiry: individual, relationship, community, and society. at the individual level, the model addresses the biological characteristics and personal characteristics and histories that engender ipv. variables at this level include gender, history of violence, excessive alcohol use, education, and wealth status. at the relationship level, the social alliances that encourage or support the perpetration or victimization of ipv are considered. factors such as economic inequality, excessive controlling behaviours, and isolation from potential social support are implicated. major contributors at the community level include the neighbourhood climate, community policing and law enforcement practices, economic opportunities, and access to services. lastly, the broader societal sphere encompasses factors such as cultural norms and national policies and laws — or lack thereof — that promote social inequalities among groups within the society (gass, stein, williams, & seedat, 2011; who, 2010, 2013). for the sake of parsimony, in this article the four levels are collapsed into two: the proximal, comprising the individual and relational contexts; and the distal, comprising the community and cultural environments. proximal factors many of the proximal risk factors regarded as key contributors to the occurrence and persistence of ipv in jamaica are comparable to those seen in other cultures. for example, international research has shown a strong correlation between ipv and childhood exposure to violence (bott et al., 2012; gass et al., 2011; hart & klein, 2013; unicef, 2006a). consistent with those findings, data from the 2008 rhs (serbanescu et al., 2010) indicated that the three strongest predictors of ipv victimization among jamaican women were a history of childhood exposure to family violence, controlling behaviours of the intimate partner, and alcohol use. other relevant factors were age, education, and wealth status. childhood history of violence globally, having personally experienced or witnessed violence in the family of origin is the most robust predictor of ipv perpetration and victimization. rates of ipv victimization are reportedly higher among women whose husbands were abused as children or who witnessed their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 348 mothers being abused (bott et al., 2012; hart & klein, 2013; who, 2010). middlebrooks and audage (2008) reported that children who witnessed ipv were four times more likely to report ipv perpetration in adulthood than children who did not witness ipv. these findings were confirmed by gass et al. (2011), who found that men who reported ipv perpetration were four times as likely to have experienced childhood familial abuse and to have witnessed interparental violence. having been battered as a child significantly increases the risk for both victimization and perpetration of family violence in later life (bott et al., 2012; capaldi et al., 2012; gass et al., 2011). the literature also consistently demonstrates a strong overlap between children witnessing ipv and being abused or neglected (hart & klein, 2013; osofsky, 2003). children who witnessed ipv were 15 times more likely than their non-witnessing peers to be physically abused (osofsky, 2003). in light of the strong correlations between childhood histories of violence and the potential for ipv, it is significant that harsh physical punishment features prominently in jamaican childrearing practices. according to data from the 2011 multiple indicator cluster survey (mics, statistical institute of jamaica & united nations children’s fund [statin-unicef], 2013), 85% of jamaican children aged 2 to 14 experienced some form of violent discipline at the hands of a parent or primary caregiver in the month prior to data collection. gender and wealth status affected the risk of such treatment, in that 90% of children from the poorest quintile experienced violent discipline compared to 76% of children from the richest quintile, and boys received more frequent and severe punishment than did girls. for example, “male children were more likely to be subjected to both ‘any physical punishment’ and ‘severe physical punishment’ (71.4 and 6.7%) than female children (65.2 and 4.7%)” (statin-unicef, 2013, p.10). a comparison of rhs data among 11 lac countries indicated that jamaican respondents registered the highest percentage (69.5) of women who experienced childhood physical violence by a family member (bott et al., 2012). the overwhelming majority (82%) of ipv victims in the 2008 jamaica rhs reported that they had experienced childhood physical abuse by their parents, and a sizable minority (32%) had witnessed interparental violence prior to age 15 (serbanescu et al., 2010). bott and associates (2012) observed that the prevalence of ipv victimization in jamaica was twice as high among women who reported seeing their mothers being beaten than those who had indicated not witnessing such violence. furthermore, women who had experienced ipv were significantly more likely than the control group (64.5% vs. 52.1%) to report the use of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure on their own children (bott et al., 2012). controlling behaviours controlling behaviours are a form of ipv that perpetrators use to maintain dominance over their victims (hart & klein, 2013; who, 2005). men who exhibit controlling behaviours in their intimate relationships tend to also engage in other forms of ipv (bott et al., 2012; hart & klein, 2013; who, 2005); even on their own, such behaviours may be as emotionally injurious to victims as physical or sexual violence (who, 2005; hart & klein, 2013). across the lac region, women who reported being subjected to three or more controlling behaviours by their intimate partners were up to three times more likely to report other forms of ipv compared to a control group (bott et al., 2012). similarly, the jamaica rhs data showed that 75% of jamaican women who experienced international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 349 physical or sexual ipv had experienced at least one controlling behaviour from their intimate partner, and having experienced multiple controlling behaviours was strongly associated with all forms of ipv (serbanescu et al., 2010). the jamaica rhs also indicated that the most frequently cited forms of controlling behaviours reported by participating women were: male partners tracking female partners (35%), males being angry if their female partners spoke to another man (30%), and males often being suspicious that female partners were unfaithful (20%). similar findings regarding the prevalence of controlling behaviours have been reported globally (hart & klein, 2013; laisser, nyström, lugina, & emmelin, 2011). alcohol use across the globe, research findings have consistently implicated alcohol use in the perpetration of ipv. there is no evidence of a causal link between alcohol and ipv, but the majority of pertinent research has suggested a linear association between a perpetrator’s alcohol use and the severity and frequency of partner violence (hart & klein, 2013; wilson, graham, & taft, 2014). specifically, men who misuse alcohol are up to 5 times more likely to perpetrate ipv against their intimate partners (who, 2010). additionally, gass et al. (2011) found that alcohol abuse was a strong predictor of ipv perpetration and victimization for both men and women. male perpetrators were twice as likely as non-perpetrators to report alcohol abuse and female perpetrators were seven times as likely to have had alcohol use problems. moreover, alcohol use has been associated with the severity of all forms of intimate partner abuse in several studies (hart & klein, 2013). nevertheless, the ways in which alcohol contributes to ipv are complex. some sources (e.g., hart & klein, 2013; wilson et al., 2014) have hypothesized that alcohol facilitates violence in various ways. it may help to break down the abuser’s inhibitions, warp information processing and problem-solving abilities, increase risk-taking behaviours, and cause perpetrators to misinterpret their victims’ comportment toward them (wilson et al., 2014). alcohol may also elevate the user’s sense of personal power and dominance over others, thereby enabling and escalating the severity of the abusive behaviour (hart & klein, 2013). across the lac region, “drunkenness or drug abuse” by a partner was the single most-commonly cited trigger for ipv (bott et al., 2012). in the jamaica rhs, nearly one-fourth (22%) of abused women, compared to 11.2% of non-abused, reported that their intimate partner got drunk at least once within the past year (serbanescu et al., 2010). across the lac region, both ipv victims and perpetrators “were more likely to be drinkers of alcohol (versus abstainers) and — among drinkers — more likely to drink heavily on each occasion, compared with those who did not report intimate partner violence” (bott et al., 2012, p.111). findings from several cross-sectional studies from lowerand middle-income countries have indicated that men who misuse alcohol are between 2 and 5 times more likely than non-consumers to perpetrate ipv (who, 2010). socioeconomic status the term socioeconomic status (ses) comprises education, income, and occupation. it is commonly used to conceptualize the social standing of an individual or group; in general, individuals with higher education tend to have higher incomes and more prestigious occupations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 350 and hence, higher social status (hart & klein, 2013; serbanescu et al., 2010). ipv pervades all social classes, but low ses elevates its risk and severity (benson & fox, 2004; who, 2010). compared to their more affluent counterparts, women at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale are disproportionately victimized by their intimate other (benson & fox, 2004; hart & klein, 2013; who, 2010). the odds of a man battering his spouse increase significantly among poor, unemployed, and marginalized men (benson & fox, 2004; capaldi et al., 2012). for instance, benson and fox (2004) found that couples experiencing high financial strain were 3 times more likely to report ipv than couples with a low financial burden. in one study (ackerson, kawachi, barbeau, & subramanian, 2008), women with no formal education were almost 6 times (5.51) as likely to experience ipv victimization as college-educated women, and wives of uneducated men were almost twice (1.84) as likely to be victimized by their partners than were wives of collegeeducated men. consistent with that literature, in the jamaica rhs, lower educational attainment and concomitantly lower wealth status was associated with higher prevalence of ipv (serbanescu et al., 2010). women reporting the highest prevalence of lifetime ipv victimization had the lowest educational attainment and wealth status. also, women with lower educational attainment (less than 9 years) were significantly more likely than those with higher education (more than 13 years) to subscribe to traditional gender roles, such as agreeing that a man should show his partner who is boss, and that a woman should obey her partner even when she disagrees (serbanescu et al., 2010). the women least likely to disclose the abuse were of lower educational level (less than 9 years) and the poorest wealth status (i.e., poorest quintile; serbanescu et al., 2010). age ipv occurs across all stages of the lifespan. however, older age is associated with decreased risk for ipv, with the greatest risk occurring in late adolescence and young adulthood (capaldi et al., 2012). globally, women aged 16 to 24 are more likely than those in older age groups to be victimized by an intimate partner, and younger men are more likely than older men to perpetrate ipv (johnson & das, 2009; unicef, 2006a; who, 2010). consistent with that literature, younger jamaican women (15–24 years) reported higher levels of ipv within the preceding 12 months than those in older cohorts (bott et al., 2012; serbanescu et al., 2010; statin-unicef, 2013). the younger cohort was also more likely to believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife for at least one specified reason (serbanescu et al., 2010). perhaps not surprisingly, the women least likely to disclose abuse were from the younger cohort (15–24 years; serbanescu et al., 2010). acceptance of violence across cultures, subscribing to the notion that violence is acceptable is strongly correlated with higher rates of ipv (johnson & das, 2009; who, 2010). for example, embracing wife-beating as acceptable was found to increase the incidence of ipv fourfold in bangladesh (johnson & das, 2009). in one jamaican study, employing focus groups and survey methodology, royes and colleagues (2006) found that although violence against women was outwardly condemned, it was still condoned under certain conditions by both sexes. for example, in one focus group, while the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 351 majority of the men agreed that was improper to hit a woman, some stated “there were instances when women ‘frustrate’ men into violent behavior” and that women required “a few blows now and then to show them who is boss” (p.46). it is also noteworthy that some women believed that there are times when women provoked the abuse and thus deserved to be beaten, and there was also general agreement among the women that “a man should be the head of his home and be the dominant figure in the relationships” (p. 46). researchers (e.g., laisser et al., 2011) have maintained that over time social norms become internalized, leading women to believe that a husband has the right beat his wife. in a multination study of women’s health, women’s acceptance of wife-beating was higher among women who had experienced abuse than among the control group (who, 2005). perhaps, then, repeated and extended exposure to abuse leads some women to accept violence against them as normal. it might be that “… women learn to ‘accept’ violence in circumstances where they themselves are victims, or that women who see violence as ‘normal’ are more likely to enter or remain in violent relationships” (who, 2005, p. 20). research is lacking on the dynamics relating to ipv in jamaica. however, it is likely that the entrenched belief that male violence against women is a matter of “men being men” contributes to women’s acceptance and tolerance of violence against them by their intimate partners (ustanny, 2006). geography it has been widely shown that rural women are more likely to be victims of ipv than their urban or suburban counterparts. rural women experience both higher rates and greater severity of ipv than their non-rural peers (hart & klein, 2013; peek-asa et al., 2011; zakar, zakar, & abbas, 2016). although the mechanisms linking geography and ipv are unclear, several factors peculiar to the rural setting have been hypothesized. for example, compared to their non-rural counterparts, rural women tend to have lower education and income, have stronger belief in and greater acceptance of patriarchal norms, marry at a younger age, and experience greater social isolation; all of these factors place these women at higher risk for ipv (ackerson et al., 2008; peek-asa et al., 2011; who, 2010; zakar et al., 2016). in fact, research has shown that rural women are 3 times further away than urban women from ipv intervention services such as emergency shelters, counselling, legal representation, transportation, and resources referral (peek-asa et al., 2011). they also have less access to information from the media or the internet (hart & klein, 2013). furthermore, rural women have fewer capacity-building opportunities and less access to economic resources, and so are more dependent on their intimate partners for their day-to-day survival (zakar et al., 2016). in addition, because of rural women’s lower educational levels and weaker social position, their awareness of their social and legal rights is severely compromised (peek-asa et al., 2011; zakar et al., 2016). in one report of ipv in jamaica (serbanescu et al., 2010), geography was associated with women’s experience of ipv. for example, rural women were more likely to subscribe to traditional gender roles and report higher rates of controlling behaviours by their intimate partner than their non-rural peers. compared to their non-rural peers, rural women more frequently agreed that it is important that a man shows his partner who is boss, that a “good” wife obeys her husband, and that family problems be discussed only within the family. furthermore, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 352 women reporting four or more controlling behaviours by an intimate partner were more likely to reside in rural parishes. however, contrary to findings from some international studies (e.g., peekasa et al., 2011; zakar et al., 2016), although there was a trend to rural jamaican women reporting being recipients of verbal abuse at slightly higher rates than their peers, their reports of physical and sexual abuse did not differ significantly from non-rural women. in another study (statinunicef, 2013), rural jamaican women were also more likely to agree that men were justified in battering their partners. distal environment in terms of ecological systems theory, distal processes are those that have an indirect or secondary influence on development and behaviour. they include features of the sphere outside the home that still affect the interactions within the familial milieu. social conditions that facilitate or impede optimal outcomes are part of the distal environment, and include neighbourhood and societal attributes that foster violence. neighbourhood quality the social conditions of a community affect the interactions of the people residing within it. for example, high levels of economic and social deprivation, unemployment, and crime and violence intensify the prevalence and severity of dysfunctional behaviours (benson & fox, 2004; edwards, mattingly, dixon, & banyard, 2014). benson and fox (2004) investigated the effects of individual and community risks and found that the highest rates of ipv were among women residing in neighbourhoods with a high incidence of individual poverty, unemployment, and job instability. in benson and fox’s study, women whose intimate partners had a history of unstable employment stood a threefold risk of ipv victimization compared to those in the control group. benson and fox, therefore, reasoned that individual poverty combined with social deprivation creates a volatile mix that elevates a woman’s risk of ipv. those findings are in line with social organization theory, which posits that neighbourhood disadvantage increases the likelihood of “bad behaviours” among its residents and raises the probability of crime and disorder. for example, high criminal activity, and by extension lawlessness, within a community limits collective efficacy, impedes the community’s ability to exert formal and informal social controls (edwards et al., 2014), and increases women’s vulnerability to violence, particularly rape (ustanny, 2006). in terms of the jamaican ecology, high crime levels are a constant feature of jamaican life, particularly in the poor urban communities; violence against women is therefore likely to be consistently higher in those locations (ustanny, 2006) than in more privileged urban communities. in impoverished neighbourhoods, there is a high rate of vigilante violence and gang violence fed by the illegal gun trade; gangs exercise social control through violence and intimidation (freedom house, 2015; iachr, 2012). in one urban jamaican study (meeks-gardner, powell, thomas, & millard, 2003), 1,710 youth aged 9 to 17 were asked about their perceptions of their neighbourhoods. only 28% of youth thought their neighbourhoods were very safe; 54% witnessed relationship fights between men and women; 60% had a family member who had been a victim of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 353 violence, and 37% had a family member who had been killed. remarkably, the overwhelming majority (84%) knew of peers who carried weapons to school, and the most common reasons for carrying a weapon included threatening or hurting others (66%), for protection (64%), or to gain respect (50%). these dynamics have led observers (iachr, 2012) to underscore the widespread insecurity, fear, and despair among the jamaican populace. furthermore, others (e.g., smith, 2016; unicef, 2006b; ustanny, 2006) have asserted that the cumulative effect of the many forms of violence (i.e., home, school, community, and media) to which jamaican young people are exposed, have led to their desensitization to violence and the belief that violence of any kind and in any relationship is acceptable and normal. the jamaica rhs (serbanescu et al., 2010) did not disaggregate the ipv data by neighbourhood, but kingston, the capital city of the island, is one of the three parishes with the highest percentage (30%) of women reporting having experienced any physical or sexual ipv. it is also instructive that in the same study, male residents of the kingston metropolitan area reported the highest level of agreement with statements affirming that a man was justified in beating his wife under certain conditions such as infidelity (27.3%) and disobeying her husband (25%). social and cultural gender norms a cultural acceptance of women’s subordination normalizes violence against women and contributes to the perpetuation of spousal abuse (who, 2013). in jamaica, widespread violence against women has been engendered by deep-seated patriarchal beliefs: the male is superior to the woman, the woman belongs to the man (ustanny, 2006), the man is divinely sanctioned as the head of the household and gatekeeper of family resources, and it is the man’s duty to keep the woman in her proverbial place (stop violence against women, 2014; ustanny, 2006). it is contended that such traditional beliefs and attitudes have bolstered the acceptance of ipv in jamaica and allowed offenders to commit acts of violence against women with impunity (bott et al., 2012; iachr, 2012; royes et al., 2006; stop violence against women, 2014). further, ustanny (2006) argued that ipv in jamaica is due, among other factors, to the compounding effect of numerous deeprooted cultural attributes including gender socialization that teaches women to be subservient and dependent on men. she also criticized the local media for seemingly not taking ipv seriously , asserting, for example, that cases of ipv are rarely reported in reputable newspapers unless they are sensational or end in death. other observers (e.g., iachr, 2012; oecd, 2014) have concurred that media presentation and coverage (or lack thereof) of this kind of violence socializes jamaican youth to believe that ipv is normal and justified. the oecd (2010) noted that “traditional gender stereotypes are institutionalised within jamaica’s education system, the media, religion and the family” (oecd, 2010, p., 120). institutional and legislative norms institutionalized structures that create a climate in which violence is tolerated undoubtedly contribute to the perpetration and maintenance of gender violence (who, 2010, 2013). arguably, society overtly and covertly assigns roles based on gender and socializes individuals accordingly; often laws are instituted to support those gender scripts, resulting in marginalization for those who international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 354 deviate (oecd, 2010; oecd, 2014). indeed, laws biased against women engender cultural conditions favourable to violence against women (freedom house, 2015; oecd, 2014; u.s. department of state, bureau of democracy, human rights and labor [usds], 2012). freedom house (2015) underscored the continued widespread violence and discrimination against jamaican women and highlighted the ineffectiveness of the government in protecting women and combating violence against them. for example, some observers (e.g., oecd, 2014; usds, 2012) have pointed out that there are currently no laws addressing sexual harassment, despite the high rate of sexual harassment in the jamaican workplace1. the oecd (2010) also noted that jamaican legislation prohibits all discrimination based on race or religion, but not discrimination based on gender. moreover, the oecd (2010), while acknowledging some progress toward addressing women’s issues (e.g., outlawing ipv, provision for maternity leave), maintained that the laws of the country are not written in gender-neutral language and that the country’s civil and penal codes still contained numerous discriminatory measures. for example, “…lesbian, bisexual and transgender women do not receive protection under the law from violence due to sexuality or gender identity and in fact are discriminated against within the criminal justice system” (oecd, 2014, p.5). the iachr (2012) pointed out that the “shortcomings in [jamaica’s] national legislation do not deal adequately with marital rape, incest or sexual harassment, thereby encouraging impunity and leaving women without the protection of the law” (p.73). the iachr also claimed that even when laws are amended or new ones implemented, they either do not go far enough or are still biased against women. under the sexual offences act passed in 2011, for example, marital rape is a crime only in some situations, such as: when the parties have separated or when proceedings to dissolve the marriage or have it annulled have begun, when the husband is under a court order not to molest or cohabit with his wife, or when the husband knows he suffers from a sexually transmitted infection (usds, 2012, p. 16). another telling example of a strong anti-female policy centers on women’s reproductive rights. in jamaica, under the law, a woman found guilty of terminating a pregnancy faces life imprisonment and anyone found guilty of assisting in facilitating an abortion, except to save the life of the mother, faces up to three years in prison (amnesty international; 2014). in addition, ustanny (2006) cited major obstacles in the judicial system for women who report sexual assault against them. in particular, she referred to the doubly traumatic experience women face because of rules that permit invasive interrogation about the sexual history of the complainant. ustanny also called attention to the fact that women traumatized by violence against them face barriers to negotiating the systems that should be protecting them (e.g., receiving prompt medical attention). additionally, amnesty international (2014) pointed to the meagre clear-up rate (~50%) of crimes against women that are brought before the courts. in jamaica, according to the iachr (2012), violence against 1 on december 8, 2015, a sexual harassment bill was tabled in parliament to outlaw sexual intimidation and coercion in workplaces, institutions, and in landlord–tenant relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 355 women is one of the most pervasive crimes yet the least prosecuted: violence against jamaican women rarely results in prosecution of the perpetrator. further, the oecd (2014) maintained that the inordinate amount of time it takes law enforcement to investigate and prosecute cases of ipv deters women from reporting crimes against them. the oecd also indicated that insufficient awareness and training among judges, prosecutors, police officers, and health professionals on violence against women is a contributing factor to jamaica’s difficulty in dealing with the problem. the iachr (2012) asserted that the aversion of the jamaican police to enforcing relevant ipv laws fosters victims’ mistrust of the law enforcement system. insensitivity of the criminal justice system and a tendency of courts to stereotype women in judicial decisions have also been alleged (iachr, 2012; oecd, 2010, 2014). consequences of ipv in addition to financial costs, ipv brings with it adverse health and social consequences for adults, children, and society as a whole. international research has indicated that women who experience non-lethal ipv suffer compromised physical, socioemotional, and reproductive health. when compared to women who do not report any form of ipv, women who report ipv were significantly more likely to report a greater incidence of direct injury (e.g., broken bones, cuts, burns, traumatic brain injury). they also exhibited chronic health problems such as diabetes, asthma, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and chronic pain syndrome (centers for disease control and prevention, u.s. department of health & human services [cdc], 2015; cronholm, fogarty, ambuel, & harrison, 2011). among the rhs jamaican sample, 30% of ipv victims indicated that they had suffered injuries necessitating medical attention, including bruises and scratches (50%), headaches and other pain (55%), and more severe injuries such as cuts and burns (21%) and stab wounds (4%); in addition, 15% had missed work because of the violence inflicted on them (serbanescu et al., 2010). the adverse psychological outcomes for ipv victims include anxiety, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd), and suicidal behaviours (cdc, 2015; cronholm et al., 2011). in one study (houry, kemball, rhodes, & kaslow, 2006), women who reported being victims of ipv were 6 times more likely to exhibit suicidal tendencies, 3 times more likely to report symptoms of depression, and 4 times more likely to exhibit ptsd symptoms than the control group. furthermore, victims of ipv are at increased risk of engaging in high-risk behaviours such as multiple sex partners, substance abuse, and smoking, which in turn puts them in jeopardy for further health problems (cdc, 2015). ipv undermines women’s ability to exercise their reproductive rights and exacts severe costs on their sexual and reproductive health. it impedes victims’ access to family planning and exposes them to pregnancy-related health risks, sexually transmitted infections, sexual dysfunction, unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, and prenatal difficulties (cdc, 2015; cronholm et al., 2011; middlebrooks & audage, 2008). ipv puts children at risk for stunted development because it renders mothers emotionally unavailable to provide the nurturance and security that children need for optimal development (osofsky, 2003). it also puts mothers at high risk for abusing their children (osofsky, 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 356 the economic costs of ipv to society are high. ipv costs the united states, for example, an estimated 8.5 billion usd annually, excluding criminal justice services (cdc, 2015), and the economic burden is even heavier in developing countries with struggling economies. in chile, women’s loss of salary as a result of ipv amounts to about 2% of the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) or 1.56 billion usd (beavers & kumpf, 2013). no specific ipv cost data for jamaica could be located, but jamaica spends about 4% of its gdp on the direct medical cost of interpersonal violence (ward et al., 2009). in 2006, jamaica’s direct medical cost for interpersonal injuries accounted for 12% of the total health budget, and productivity losses due to violence-related injuries amounted to 27.5 billion jmd (ward et al., 2009). according to beavers and kumpf (2013), the enactment of policies to prevent violence against women is imperative for economic growth and national development: “for most countries, it is clear that decisive action to prevent violence against women and girls will reduce state expenditures and increase productivity” (para. 6). discussion and conclusion the purpose of the current article is to provide an overview of the prevalence and nature of ipv against women in jamaica and to suggest workable approaches for its prevention. ipv is a human rights transgression with serious adverse physical, sexual, socioemotional, and economic consequences, both immediate and long-term. it affects the general well-being of victims and their families, and exacts an enormous economic cost on society. yet, ipv lacks the attention it deserves as a related but distinct issue from general societal violence. in jamaica, research on ipv is extremely sparse; there is a large gap in the literature regarding the prevalence of ipv and its consequences for society. what is assumed about ipv in the jamaican context has been largely extrapolated from studies done in other societies, and although those findings have been fairly consistent across cultures, generalization of research findings can be problematic. the who (2013) maintained that the caribbean region is one of the regions with the least available data on ipv. amnesty international (2014) posited that a comprehensive data collection on all forms of violence against women is needed in order to implement effective policies or laws that address women’s issues. unquestionably, extrapolation from other cultures can be helpful; however, there are unique cultural nuances that do not transmit from one culture to another. for example, it would be helpful for research to investigate not only ipv prevalence, but also the sociocultural factors that contribute to its occurrence and maintenance in jamaica. such research is needed since much of the available literature on ipv in jamaica is based on anecdotal data, conjectures, and extrapolations from studies done elsewhere. it would also be helpful to understand what factors put jamaican women at risk for ipv, the strategies women employ to cope with ipv, the particular needs of women who experience ipv, and the shortand long-term socioemotional effects on children who witness such violence. also, it would be prudent to investigate whether jamaican women and children identify the same consequences as women and children worldwide. to date, the sparse jamaican ipv data come from questions about ipv that have been added on to larger studies such as the mics and rhs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 357 despite the limitations of some of the jamaican data cited above, the existing data and the commensurate inferences from other sources must be taken seriously. recently, the jamaican government has stated its commitment to women’s empowerment and to making the issue of violence against women a priority. it has also taken some positive steps in that direction (iachr, 2012). nonetheless, the jamaican government has been criticized for not moving expeditiously enough to strengthen existing laws and enact new legislation to prevent and reduce the incidence of ipv and other gendered violence. according to the iachr (2012), significant barriers to gender equality still exist and legal reform is slow. therefore, efforts to address the jamaican ipv problem need to be substantially increased. several global organizations (e.g., amnesty international, 2014; iachr, 2012; unicef, 2006a) have alluded to the role of government in the safety of its citizenry. for example, unicef (2006a) specifically stated that “governments carry a primary responsibility for ensuring that children and women are safe and secure in their homes, and can take several key steps to ensure this” (p. 11). therefore, those organizations have implored governments everywhere to move with urgency to address ipv. they have also advised that ipv is best addressed by approaches that tackle the cultural norms and systems that validate violence against women, suggesting that governments: • embark upon a public education saturation program to raise awareness on the debilitating effects of ipv on individuals and society; • enact legislation making ipv a criminal offence under all circumstances and maximizing its punishment for perpetrators; • demand swift and judicious investigation and prosecution of violence against women; • increase the allocation of social service resources to provide protection (e.g., more crisis centers and shelters) for victims; and • establish and intensify training programs for key stakeholders (e.g., medical, police, justice system, clergy, public service). additionally, unicef (2006a) has called on the jamaican private sector to recognize its moral obligation to exercise corporate social responsibility by joining the fight against ipv, highlighting the value of corporations’ commitment to all employees within the workplace and recommending that corporations: (a) institute employee education and training programs to increase awareness of ipv, (b) fund and support initiatives and services for victims of ipv, and (c) persuade the government to place domestic and other gender-based violence high on the national agenda. male attitudes and behaviours are not the only elements that require change; female acceptance of family violence is problematic and should be addressed as well (stop violence against women, 2014). hence, public education should extend beyond mere awareness of ipv prevalence. campaigns should seek to empower victims and inform the public of practical ways to take action to end abuse in the family. education also means alerting survivors to available options and resources, and apprising victims of their rights (national resource center on domestic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 358 violence, 2012). furthermore, both perpetrators and victims need intensive counselling to address underlying personal deficits such as low self-image and self-efficacy, and other mental health problems. most importantly, treatment for perpetrators should be mandated. miller, drake, and nafziger (2013) reviewed the relevant ipv treatment literature and noted a variety of promising evidence-based treatment programs for ipv offenders that effectively reduced ipv recidivism. in jamaica, treatment for alcohol use and abuse is especially critical as alcohol consumption appears to be a serious problem. when asked about their alcohol behaviours, 79% of jamaican men aged 20 to 24 reported a lifetime prevalence of drinking, and 41% binge-drank in the last month. among women in the same age group, 46% reported being drunk at some point, and 19% binge-drank in the last month (serbanescu et al., 2010). in addition to programs for adults, training programs for children are imperative. helping children develop social competence, particularly constructive conflict resolution skills, has been shown to have positive developmental effects. for example, social competence has been reported to enhance emotional regulation, boost communication, improve problem solving, promote positive self-esteem, and lessen conduct problems (smith, 2016). the assumption here is that these learned competencies will be carried forward into relationships in adulthood, thereby, lessening the prevalence of ipv. in sum, ingrained cultural beliefs and life-long practices will not disappear with legislation and awareness alone. while prevention is the ultimate goal with regard to solving any social problem, intervention is vital for both victims and perpetrators. considering the devastating effects of ipv on victims, families, and society, access to comprehensive services is of paramount importance. these services must include legal intervention and rehabilitation services, and these should be integrated to minimize the stress of negotiating several complex support structures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 343–363 359 references ackerson, l. k., kawachi, i., barbeau, e. m., & subramanian, s. v. 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children’s literature through a content analysis of 26 awardwinning arabic children’s books published between 2011 and 2018 — after the arab spring. the origins of arabic children’s books are first investigated from a number of different standpoints, and are shown to have traditional, religious, and global ties. i also explore the recent rise of interest in creating arabic literary works for young children. i deduce that the causes of this increase are a cultural reawakening, globalization, and government support and funding. finally, the 26 children’s books studied show links between the ethnicity of their authors, their dates of publication, and the illustrations and themes that appear in them. this provides support for the idea that arabic political reality is often reflected in arabic children’s literature. keywords: middle eastern literature, arabic children’s literature, arab spring, political content nisreen anati phd is a professor of curriculum and instruction — english language education at the community college of qatar and the college of education, qatar university, p.o. box 2713, doha, qatar. email: dr.nisreen.anati@gmail.com mailto:dr.nisreen.anati@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 72 the arab spring erupted in 2010, following a brewing storm of economic, political, civil, and social problems in the region. it consisted of a number of uprisings that were “inspired by the success of the protests in tunisia” (jamshidi, 2014, p. 9) on december 17, 2010, and quickly ignited in egypt, libya, yemen, bahrain, and finally in syria on march 15, 2011 (jamshidi, 2014, pp. 8–14). the current study, which aims to shed light on the fast-growing yet under evaluated field of arabic children’s literature, is the first of its kind. through the exploration of the political reality of 26 award-winning arabic picture books, i hope to focus the attention of children, parents, teachers, and literary critics on the value and significance of the implicit messages in many of the popular arabic children’s books that have recently been published, and on their relationship to the current political status of the arab world. thus, this paper aims to be a pioneer in paving the way for critical thinking, valuable discussions, and additional, insightful research studies in this neglected area. it also hopes to serve as an avenue for the discovery of parallels between the lives of the young fictional protagonists of arabic children’s books and those of children in the wartorn arab world. furthermore, i highlight the factors that may have influenced the appearance of certain major, recurring themes in recently published arabic children’s books. i also describe the manner and mode of presenting political reality in books written for young arab readers during or after the arab spring, whether that be through symbolism, pictures, or direct narration of the harsh reality many arabs lived through as a result of the uprisings and political disorder during those years. the paper explores the following research questions: • what are the reasons for the rise in the number of arabic picture books in the past decade? • what are the manner and mode of presenting political reality in arabic picture books? • in what ways do arabic children’s picture books portray political events related to the arab spring uprisings? origins of arabic children’s literature there are varying ideas on how, why, and when arabic children’s literature first came to exist. some researchers, like biqa’ei (2003), have argued that the initial production of arabic children’s literature is a direct outcome of outside — specifically european — influences. children’s literature was ubiquitous in europe in the 17th century, a period during which arab scholars studied in france, russia, and other european countries, then brought their knowledge and discoveries back to their homelands. additionally, the colonization of middle eastern countries in this period may have promoted the transfer of ideologies and knowledge to arab countries. mdallel (2004) affirmed that the arab world followed the footsteps of european educational systems after getting in touch with the west through colonization. biqa’ei (2003) acknowledged the egyptian poet, ahmed shawqi (1868–1932), as the earliest writer to compose books for arab youngsters. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 73 on the other hand, according to arab writer al kilani (1998), the concept of “children’s literature” was not clearly defined until 1920, and only began to really develop between 1970 and 1990. he claimed that much of today’s morally driven arabic children’s literature emerged through islam; oral literature proliferated with families orally transmitting the lessons and stories of the qur’an to their children and young relatives. in contrast, arab literary critic al faisal (2001) argued that arabic children’s literature originated in the form of rhyming poetry rather than as short stories and novels. al faisal also contended that classic short stories such as one thousand and one arabian nights (mccaughrean & fowler, 1999) and kalila wa dimna: fables from a fourteenth-century arabic manuscript (atil, 1981) were originally written in arabic before their conversion to french, and that these literary pieces eventually reverted to arabic through cultural exchange and globalization. generally, classical arabic children’s literature is characterized by didacticism and moralization. although it is undeniable that there has been a growth in the number of arab books produced purely for entertainment purposes, such as aladdin and sinbad the sailor, it is notable that there also is a trend towards the production of arabic children’s books that are reflective of the arab political reality. in his article, “the sociology of children’s literature in the arab world”, sabour mdallel (2004) stated, “there is a tendency to make children aware of the political and military challenges that face the arab nation” (para. 18). more specifically, he noted that historical fiction is seen as a major part of the literature written for arab children. this genre covers “political themes like honoring the glorious arab past with stories about heroic arab figures, just caliphs, major islamic conquests and, more recently, victorious arab wars” (para. 18). he also claimed that “children’s literature about local political leaders like presidents and kings can also be found” (para. 18). this strong political trend in arabic children’s literature can be explained through the political changes, events, and challenges the region has faced in recent decades. since 2010, the presentation of political realities in arabic children’s literature has shifted; the new style better suits the young audience towards whom these books are directed. factors influencing the increased interest in arabic children’s literature regardless of origins, it is clear, through multiple studies (e.g., anati, 2017; holland, 2011; lindsey, 2014; mdallel, 2004; qualey, 2010; staton, 2015) that there has been a heightened interest in the production of arabic children’s literature in the past few years, both in arabic and in translation. different theories have been advanced regarding the reasons for this growth. one theory is that a reawakening is taking place in the arab world, particularly in the oilrich arabian gulf states such as qatar, the united arab emirates (uae), saudi arabia, and kuwait, and that it is inspiring arabs to return to their roots and connect more with their traditions, origins, and distinctive cultural traits (anati, 2017; holland, 2011; lindsey, 2014; qualey, 2010). this reawakening stems from an inner arabic cultural influence; in other words, arab scholars and linguists are increasingly emphasizing the need to return to one’s arabic roots, arabic authenticity, and pride in the arabic language. in the words of the pioneer of arabic children’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 74 literature, author and publisher taghreed al najjar, “in the last 10 years, the [book publishing] industry has experienced a dramatic burst of energy — so much so that insiders are talking of a renaissance, or nahda” (staton, 2015, para. 3). another factor influencing the increased focus on the creation of arabic children’s literature is the unprecedented support, funding, and encouragement many arab governments and organizations are providing to arab authors. since 2007, several administrative initiatives have been launched to accelerate the production of high-quality arabic children’s literature. several arabic regions have announced generous book prizes, created new literary translation programs, established new publishing houses, organized literary festivals and book fairs, and facilitated writing workshops. for example, in 2012, the qatar foundation for education, science, and community development founded the translation and interpreting institute1 in order to enable the production of a larger quantity of arabic children’s books. similarly, in abu dhabi, the creation of an initiative called kalima in 2007 has led to the translation of 900 books to arabic (as of december 2016; kalima, n.d.). more translation efforts are being made with the aid of governments and organizations, which seems to have contributed greatly to the rise in arabs’ interest in arabic literature in general, and literature aimed towards children in particular. moreover, a number of distinguished prizes have been created solely to recognize arabic literature for children and young adults. in 2010, the anna lindh euro-mediterranean foundation2 announced a prestigious book competition called reading here, there, and everywhere, inviting writers from lebanon, syria, egypt, jordan, and palestine to produce high-quality children’s literature in arabic. similarly, the etisalat prize, announced in 2010 by the uae national chapter of the international board on books for young people (uaebby)3, provides an additional incentive for creators of children’s books in the arab world. a variety of literary prizes have been created under the uaebby to further promote interest in arabic children’s literature, including the arab thought foundation’s kitabi/my book prize; the sharjah children’s book award, declared every year during the sharjah children’s reading festival; and the sheikh zayed award for creative writing and children’s literature, which was first established in 2007. all these competitions, prizes, incentives, and awards act as additional catalysts in encouraging the production of original arabic children’s literature and increasing public interest in this field. another reason for the notable boom in arabic children’s literature may be the recent globalization phenomenon that has taken over the world, the arab world included. the recent translation movement has enabled translators worldwide to encounter books from all different cultures. for example, the bloomsbury qatar foundation publishing organization, established in 2008 and renamed the hamad bin khalifa university press4 in 2015, has published all its books 1 https://tii.qa/en/who-we-are 2 https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/ 3 http://uaebby.org.ae/en/ 4 https://hbkupress.com/en https://tii.qa/en/who-we-are https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/ http://uaebby.org.ae/en/ https://hbkupress.com/en international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 75 in both arabic and english. correspondingly, the british magazine banipal5 has been producing arabic literary books since 1998. additionally, the saif ghobash banipal prize6 for arabic literary translation, that was launched in 2006, honors high-quality arabic literature in english translation. as a result of the translation movement and such initiatives that have come with it, arabic literary books have become more accessible than ever. journalist ursula lindsey (2013), who has written on the topic of arabic translation, noted the increase in translations to and from arabic: “certainly the interest in arabic literature in translation — which i have seen grow in the 10 years i’ve lived in cairo — is heartening to those of us who know how much great writing there is in arabic” (lindsey, 2013, para. 1). additionally, she states that, “we ought to celebrate the fact that we have greater access to more literary works from the arabic world than ever before, a time when the region’s literature is proliferating with new approaches, genres, and voices.” (lindsey, 2014, para. 7). thus, globalization has clearly allowed more children’s books to be translated to and from arabic, both by widening the range and diversity of the audience and by increasing interest in arabic books. although the quality and quantity of arabic children’s literature is clearly increasing, research studies examining the content of contemporary children’s books are scarce. it is challenging to find legitimate scholarly studies analyzing the thematic content of arabic children’s books in general, much less the reflection of arab political reality in them. the available studies on this genre are limited to posts or articles published in local newspapers or online websites. the present study hopes to reduce the research gap and contribute to the existing limited body of qualitative research by concentrating on a content analysis of the manner and mode of presenting political realities in award-winning arabic children’s books, specifically picture books. methodology method of sample selection when considering what books to use for this study, i chose to look at 30 books that either won or were shortlisted for a recognized award. eight had won the etisalat award for children’s literature (see appendix a), with one book representing each year from 2011 to 2018; the remaining 22 books had been shortlisted for the sheikh zayed award during the same period (see appendix b). of these 30 books originally considered, only four had to be excluded because they did not meet the study criteria. this study is therefore based on 26 picture books intended for children between the ages of 4 and 12, all written in arabic. this time period was chosen to ensure that the analysis and observations discussed in this paper are of relevance to the arab spring uprisings, since that political outburst began in december 5 http://www.banipal.co.uk/ 6 https://www.banipaltrust.org.uk/prize/award.cfm?y=2019 http://www.banipal.co.uk/ https://www.banipaltrust.org.uk/prize/award.cfm?y=2019 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 76 of 2010 and is still going on today. the etisalat award and the sheikh zayed award are among the most notable prizes for children’s literature in the arab world; they are commonly acknowledged by teachers, educators, librarians, and other cultural critics as being valid, dependable books (e.g., abdullah, 2012; “etisalat for the children’s book”, 2018; sataton, 2015; “uaebby at nd”, 2019). the chosen books were selected based on their discussion of arabic cultural subjects, age-appropriateness, and availability. the four books that did not meet these criteria will not be discussed in this paper. they include: mheidly’s (2014) the girl who traced the characters of ibn al muqaffa’, an adaptation of the classical tales of kalila wa dimna; fakhr eldine’s (2013) thirty poems for children, a book of poetry; abdullah’s (2012) fanoun’s tales, an art-like book for teaching drawing; and al hassan’s (2016) umm kaseb, the she-wolf , a story of imagination. the 26 titles selected all had a positive reception from banipal magazine of modern arab literature (“the shaikh zayed book award”, 2018), the revolvy website (“arabic literary awards”, 2019), the qatar foundation (“bloomsbury qatar foundation”, 2015), and many electronic educational sites supported by etisalat (“ministry of education”, 2018), which are recognized by instructors, teachers, and librarians. data collection and analysis the texts were examined through an exploratory content analysis, which is commonly “used to interpret meaning from the content of text data and, hence, adhere to the naturalistic paradigm” (hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 1277). in the context of this study, this paradigm refers to the arabic stories that reflect the realities of arab youngsters who live in areas of conflict. in addition, content analysis is a flexible research method for analyzing texts and describing and interpreting the written artifacts of a society (white & marsh, 2006). content analysis also offers a subjective, methodical procedure for developing an understanding of content, and it “provides new insights, increases researcher’s understanding of particular phenomena, and informs practical actions” (krippendorff, 2013, p. 24). the data analysis procedure involved an initialization stage followed by a reflection stage. during initialization, the researcher closely read sections of the books and annotated and highlighted information from which authors’ perspectives could be derived, explored, and interpreted. generally, the search for answers to the following questions then guided the reflection phase: • how do the illustrations aid in understanding the underlying messages in the texts? • what are some of the themes that appear in the texts? • can connections be drawn between the nationalities of the authors and the content or settings of the stories? • do the dates of publication of the books support the conclusions, drawn from the content of the stories, about the ties to arab political events? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 77 findings and discussion the 26 children’s literary pieces investigated in this study can be categorized according to the major themes presented in them. these themes are notably tied to the subjects of war, oppression, and loss of freedom that are characteristic of the arab spring and the revolutions and uprisings that accompanied it. five central themes emerged from the content analysis of the picture books: family; coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression; death, illness, and injury; identity; and conflict resolution. the following sections provide details and examples of each theme found in the books investigated. family the theme of “family” is presented in a number of books written by authors of different backgrounds and published in a range of years that, overall, covers the time period from 2011 to 2018. for instance, ebtihaj al harthi’s me and mah (2015) is a very explicit tale in terms of the message it aims to convey to its young audience. the young protagonist azzan’s relationship with his family is highlighted in the book’s description of his close relationship with his grandmother, mah, and his mother. azzan is portrayed as being extremely open and vulnerable when talking to these two characters, and the detailed illustrations of his facial expressions show he is often happy and at peace when around them. this story focuses on the idea of family and the importance of it in the lives of young children who are suffering from loss or hardship. me and mah was published in 2015, just a few years after the dawn of the arab spring, which makes it possible to infer a connection between this seemingly innocent children’s book and the horrifying political reality in the arab world with the start of the arab spring. it is important to note that the author of this tale is from oman, a country untouched by the arab spring. nonetheless, the arab world is very connected as all arabs are “bound by a common identity grounded in language and history” (rogan, 2017, p. 12) and have all been affected to some degree by the arab spring. in his article, “why middle east studies missed the arab spring”, f. gregory gause iii (2011), a professor of political science at the university of vermont, stated, “if any doubts remain that the arabs retain a sense of common political identity despite living in 20 different states, the events of this year should put them to rest…. all arabs share a common political identity and fate.” (p. 88). he also said that, “the arab revolts have shown that what happens in one arab state can affect others” (p. 89). it is thus plausible that me and mah was inspired, at least to some degree, by the political reality of the arab world, especially since one of the major themes — family — is very easily tied to the by-products of the modern-day arab political reality. as exemplified in this collection of books, during times of difficulty family togetherness and communal support are essential to maintaining quality of life; this especially applies during the current hardships in the arab countries. similarly, my mom loves fattoush, written by lebanese author eva kosma (2014), focuses on the theme of family. the heart-wrenching story is narrated by a little girl living in poverty and observing her mother’s actions. the young narrator explains that she always thought international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 78 her mother did not like fattoush since her plate was always empty while everyone else thoroughly enjoyed the dish. however, the narrator later discovers that her mother actually loves fattoush but refrains from eating it in order to allow her loved ones to enjoy more of it: “surprisingly, my mother loves fattoush.” the author presents all the details of this agonizing tale in a positive light by using bright, friendly colors when depicting the fattoush and the clothes worn by the characters in the book. this stylistic technique balances the depressing reality of the content so it is more age appropriate for its young, impressionable audience. thus, my mom loves fattoush focuses on the importance of loving families, especially during tough times. the story was published only two years after the beginning of the arab spring and the author is lebanese, and thus was presumably greatly influenced by the pain and suffering in the countries neighboring her homeland. the protagonist’s mother shares her fattoush dish with relatives and neighbors, symbolizing the deprivation that many selflessly endured during the famine that engulfed syria, yemen, and other neighboring countries. the story presented in my mom loves fattoush focuses on the theme of family in relation to the modern political reality of the arab world. the theme of family is prevalent in a number of the other books under study. for instance, sbeity’s story, two homes instead of one (2017), follows the experience of young adam after the divorce of his parents as he learns how to deal with the situation and realizes that family is still an important, constant factor he can depend on in difficult situations. in like manner, lina al hassan hawyan’s looking for ghannam, the falcon (2015) focuses on details of the emotions young sabah experiences after being separated from his grandmother and uncle on a desert trip, as he recounts how much his family means to him and how much his displacement from them hurts his emotional well-being. in al-harthi’s nostalgia (2018), the importance of one’s connection and respect for elders and traditions is highlighted through the experiences of a group of young omani children learning about their ancestry. also the longing for one’s home and family is presented in makawi’s (2013) book the garbage galaxy. after arriving on another planet, rasheed, a young boy, felt homesick. he missed his grandmother and his friends badly and realized that family is a source of security. finally, in al najjar’s against the tide (2013), the theme of family is clearly conveyed through the story of a young girl named yosra, who decides to challenge social norms, with her family’s unyielding support, to become a fisher and provide for her family. clearly, the theme of family is pervasive in the books studied and the tie between the arab spring and this theme in the stories is clear: these tales encourage young children to be sure to maintain strong relationships with their relatives in the midst of the chaos, treachery, and corruption that accompanied the dawn of the arab spring. coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression the theme of “coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression” is also prevalent in the books explored. amani al ashmawi’s fly o kite (2011), an etisalat award winner published in egypt in the first year of the arab spring, directly addresses different coping mechanisms for children suffering feelings of depression as a result of loss. such loss from war and conflict has become all too familiar in recent times. several studies consider the loss of loved ones a reason for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 79 depression and suggest a strong positive correlation between loss and depression rates (clements et al., 2004; dardas et al., 2019; hickman, 1994). the main character of the story, 9-year-old zahraa, loses her parents and moves to live with her father’s cousin and his wife in alexandria, egypt. zahraa experiences depression and sadness and struggles to cope with her losses. these emotions are made clear in the detailed illustrations, especially those of the characters’ faces, used throughout the story. after making a friend, who is also an orphan, zahraa learns to relieve her pain and stress by journaling on a kite and then flying it — releasing all her pain. this story touches explicitly on coping mechanisms for orphans and is most likely directed towards children who have lost parents through war and violence. according to critic and writer raneem hassan (2016), “this book helps children who have lost loved ones understand that our thoughts control our feelings and only through them can grief be ended” (para. 9). as this book was published only a year after the start of the arab spring in egypt, it seems reasonable to assume that the story was created in order to help children — especially egyptian children — cope with the violence surrounding them, and to give them characters to relate to so they would not feel alone in the midst of the crisis in the arab world. another excellent story that illustrates the theme of coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression is palestinian author duniazad al sa’di’s when you get angry (2013). this story follows little hady on his quest to find ways to cope with his anxiety and his extreme mood swings that make him act violently. hady’s depressed, angry nature at the start of the book is reflected through the illustrations, which are all in black and white. throughout the book, however, hady tries a variety of coping mechanisms in an effort to reduce his stress and eventually discovers that singing, drawing, and journaling uplift him and change his mood for the better. this book was published in 2013, only one year after the gaza war first broke out. in her review, critic sahar abdullah (2014) commented that when you get angry is a children’s book that sheds much light on the theme of coping mechanisms for children who may have suffered post-traumatic stress as a result of the ongoing conflict in the arab world since 2011. it is thus probable that this book was produced in order to help young palestinian children cope in a healthy manner with the chaos and suffering surrounding them. this theme was also present in a number of other books in the sample including mheidly’s creatures on the ceiling (2012), in which 8-year old kareem, alone and sad at night, discovers that he can use his imagination to make friendly creatures out of the peeling ceiling of his room. also, in al harthi’s me and mah (2015), the young protagonist learns that he can overcome his grief by doing activities that remind him of the good times he spent with his late grandmother. additionally, in al najjar’s against the tide (2013), the female character yosra becomes a fisher to provide for her family after her father is severely injured during the gaza war and discovers that finding a purpose and working hard to achieve her goals help her to overcome hardship and deal with life’s challenges. in like manner, in al sharouni’s miracle in the desert (2013), the young egyptian protagonist, hamza, who lives in aljara oasis, develops problem-solving skills that help him overcome the hardship faced when his community is dangerously close to running out of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 80 water. lastly, in al najjar’s raghda’s hat (2012) and in abdo’s the boy who saw the color of the wind (2012) the respective young protagonists, raghda and bassem, both afflicted with terminal illnesses, discover coping mechanisms that enable them to find their purposes and their worth despite their deadly diseases. coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression was a major theme in many of the books explored for this study; presumably, this theme has been presented to help children deal with the stress and issues that they face as a result of the political reality many arab children now experience. death, illness, and injury another theme that was present in the books studied was death, illness, and injury, which is highly reflective of the modern political reality of the arab world. in al harthi’s me and mah (2015), mah dies shortly after the bond between her and her grandson, azzan, has been established. the detailed illustrations show the sadness and confusion the young protagonist experiences as a result. azzan begins to ask his mother questions: “is mah asleep?” and “is mah in the sky?” this is a transition into the rest of the book, which consists of a dialogue between azzan and his mother, who tries to answer his questions honestly and sensitively. she comforts her son and tells him that “mah will always reside in our hearts” (p. 8). rather than avoiding the difficult questions asked by young children who have experienced loss, al harthi tackles these inquiries directly and honestly. the parallels between the emotions azzan experiences and those of the syrian children documented by the save the children organization (as reported by lynch & brand, 2017) show the reach and the benefits such a literary piece can have for many arab children. the organization documented the heart-wrenching trauma syrian children have experienced as a result of the ongoing war in the country: “hundreds of thousands of these children have known nothing but war, death, dispossession and loss” (lynch & brand, 2017, para. 1). as death, loss, and injury are are far too common for many arab children because of the arab spring, this book’s representativeness of arab political reality is clear. the date of publication is supportive of this, and although the fact that al harthi is from oman does not indicate direct ties to the current issue, the entirety of the arab world was affected to some degree by the movement. in like manner, taghreed al najjar’s award-winning tale, raghda’s hat (2012), explicitly touches on the idea of death and disease. raghda is a young girl who gets cancer. after going through chemotherapy, she is left completely bald and wears a hat while in public, leading to stares and bullying at school. the change in her confidence and mood over the course of the story are highlighted through illustrations that focus on raghda’s emotions. al najjar is a palestinian author who has written several books that are tied to the current state of palestine, such as the mystery of the falcon’s eye (2014) and who hid the eid lamb? (2012). raghda’s hat was published in the year that the gaza war first broke out, giving credence to the idea that it was written in order to help young victims of the war cope with death and loss that they wouldn’t usually have been exposed to at such a young age (hamouda, 2013). thus, this heart-warming book exposes young children to the concept of life-threatening disease and death, which is in line with the theme of death, illness, and injury that occurs in seven of other titles in the sample. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 81 other books in the sample that clearly present the theme of death, illness, and injury. in hassan’s the bee-eater (2015) illness is presented in the severe injury a bird experiences due to being terrorized by a group of boys. similarly, in alosaimi’s fest in a jug (2014) and al ashmawi’s fly o kite (2011), death is represented through the loss of parents. in al najjar’s against the tide (2013), illness is presented through the injury of yosra’s father in the gaza war. in tabbalah’s the house and the palm tree (2011), the illness of the grandson faris during his family’s migration journey is another example of the theme of illness. in both abdo’s the boy who saw the color of the wind (2012) and al najjar’s raghda’s hat (2012), illness is represented through the dangerous diseases of the main characters — blindness and cancer, respectively. in the context of the arab spring uprising, which has led to casualties throughout the arab world, the recurrence of the death, illness, and injury theme in many of these books is representative of the political reality of many children today. identity another theme that was found in of 11 of the books studied was the theme of “identity”. lebanese author lorca sbeity’s two homes instead of one (2017) focused on this theme. sixyear-old adam witnesses countless fights between his parents that lead to their eventual divorce. adam is forced to move from one house to another in order to spend time with both of his parents. the story ends on a happy note when adam accepts his situation and cheerfully states, “i have two homes instead of one!” (p. 10). the colorful illustrations lighten the story’s heavy mood, as seen on the book’s cover, where little adam is beaming as he stands between the two houses. this story indirectly addresses immigrant children who must reside in a home away from their homeland. adam was driven out of his original home because of the ongoing conflict surrounding him at all times — just as is the case with millions of immigrant children all over the arab world. adam then faces an identity crisis as he struggles to figure out to which home he truly belongs, which parallels the inner conflicts many immigrant youth face after being driven out of their war-torn countries. lorca sbeity is a lebanese poet, author, and journalist who, like many other lebanese people, has witnessed countless arabs being forced out of their homelands into foreign countries, particularly palestinians who, having migrated to lebanon, reside in overcrowded, underserviced camps. this background information provides further support for the idea that this children’s tale was created to be reflective of the current political state of the arab world. in the story, hatless, by lateefa buti (2015), the protagonist is born with a cap on her head just like everyone else around her. the illustrations show that the characters of the story are all lacking in distinguishing features, a representation of how societal constraints strip people of their individuality. the main character’s curiosity leads her to remove her hat and she discovers that life is much better without it. the protagonist is ostracized by her community for being different, so she makes a new hat for herself, a hat that fits her lifestyle and makes her stand out as an individual. the book ends with, “never again was a baby born with a hat on his/her head” (p. 15). this story teaches children to think outside the box and also to find themselves and hold on to their identities regardless of what others may think (mohammed, 2017). this corresponds with the realities of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 82 many young arabs nowadays who are deprived of their individuality and identity; their cultures have been taken from them by the war and violence characteristic of the arab spring. however, in egypt, the arab spring brought people together and gave them a stronger sense of identity and culture. it is possible here to establish a relationship between the arab spring and this book for multiple reasons, including the fact that the book was published in 2015 — only a few years after the start of the arab spring. this suggests that this story could have been inspired by that event or might even be a subtle reflection of it. the nationality of the author in this case cannot be seen as a source of inspiration for writing about the chaos in the arab world, as kuwait did not play a major role in the arab spring. however, the illustrator, duha el khateeb, is from syria, a country that witnessed great deprivation of identity and individuality due to war and violence. once again, the connectedness of the arab world makes it easy to conclude that buti may have chosen to write about the arab spring in support of children whose origins may be slightly different from her own. given the connections highlighted here, the theme of identity in hatless can be seen as a reflection of the current arab political reality. other stories from the collection that also consciously focus on the theme of identity include al harthi’s nostalgia (2018), in which a group of omani friends are taught about their cultural identity and ancestry. al mutawaa’s i dream of being a cement mixer (2018) presents the life of a young boy who follows his dreams and passions regardless of outsiders’ opinions. similarly, ezzat’s the blue house (2016) is a story about how a group of preteens first identify themselves on social media platforms like facebook. al najjar’s against the tide (2013) follows yosra’s adventure in challenging societal gender norms and constraints that stand in the way of her helping her family. in al sharouni’s miracle in the desert (2013), the deep connection and desire the egyptian protagonist hamza has for his land shows his strong sense of identification with the place he grew up in. suleiman’s book (2011) hanji banji local foreigner is another egyptian story that represents the theme of identity while celebrating our differences. the author and artist ahmed suleiman draws the purple hanji cabbage to symbolize anything that is local, patriotic, or national, and the green banji cabbage to symbolize anything that is foreign. the dialogue between the cabbages unfolds the concept of identity and encourages young readers to accept their differences in a logical way through asking funny or paradoxical yes-or-no questions, such as “local or foreigner?”, “red or green?, “for cooking or for salad?”, “speaks arabic or latin?”. finally, abdallah’s the thinking fish (2013), al najjar’s raghda’s hat (2012), abdo’s the boy who saw the color of the wind (2012), and bamya’s where is my beak? (2018) are all stories that focus on diversity and the importance of individuality in all communities and societies. the large proportion of books from the sample that focus on the theme of identity shows the importance and relevance of this issue in many modern-day arab children’s lives. it signifies that the authors may have had a deeper meaning in mind when they included in their books the theme of identity: how to maintain one’s identity in the midst of the current political state of the arab world. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 83 conflict resolution the final theme that was often found in the literary pieces investigated is conflict resolution. in the book, i am not you (2017), written by syrian author jekar khourchid, the story focuses on conflict resolution for young children after the start of the arab spring. in the story, a rhinoceros is manipulated by a sly hyena who tries to force all the animals around him to act, think, and talk like he does. unlike the other animals though, the rhinoceros stands up for himself and confidently confronts the malicious hyena by saying, “i am not you.” this story shows young arab children how to stand up to bullies in a peaceful, direct manner, which may be helpful to young arabs who are compelled to deal with the violent conflict in their countries due to the arab spring. i make this deduction because of the ethnicity of the author and the date of publication of the book. the author is syrian and is thus well-placed to relate to the conflict resolution theme; he may even feel so connected to it that he feels obliged to write about it. also, the date of publication is only a few years after the start of the arab spring in syria where many syrian children are suffering from the ongoing conflict around them because they cannot fight back, and may lack viable strategies for dealing with the issue peacefully. as for the illustrations, all the animal characters in the story are drawn whimsically. clearly, the contrasting size, color, and shape of the rhinoceros and the hyena illustrates that one can not be the other. using animal characters is a common device even in adult literature — for example, maus (spiegelman, 1991) and animal farm (orwell, 1945/1996) — in order to disguise controversial themes and to deliver difficult lessons to young children in an unthreatening way. under closer inspection, i am not you can be regarded as representative of the political issues of the arab world following the dawn of the arab spring, particularly in relation to different ways in which children can resolve conflicts. fatima sharaf eldin’s whose olives are these? (2012) also focuses on conflict resolution for young children. in the book, rana and jad’s families are neighbors whose houses share a single, ancient olive tree. one day, when the tree is ready for harvest, the two families fight over who owns the olives. the families continue to fight while little jad and rana watch their elders. the adults become so absorbed in their fight that they do not notice a flock of birds collecting the olives and taking them away. so, in the end, because of the violent way in which the two families approached the issue, they both missed out on the harvest. this story parallels the current political situation in palestine, where the olive tree is often seen as a symbol of peace. palestine and israel, represented by jad and rana’s families, have been violently fighting over land for almost a century, and thus neither party has been able to truly enjoy the land. therefore, sharaf eldin may be making a statement through this seemingly innocent children’s book about the situation in palestine and the problematic ways in which people are dealing with the conflict there. this conclusion is supported by the fact that this book was published in 2012 when the palestinian–israeli conflict was at a peak. however, as with the omani author al harthi’s me and mah (2015), sharaf eldin’s lebanese nationality is seemingly in conflict with the tie between the book and the arab political reality it presents. despite this, however, it is arguable that all arab nations are close knit and share each other’s hardships, which may be why sharaf eldin chose to write about a palestinian political issue despite being lebanese. another book of hers, habbat rayahon qawayaton [a strong wind international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 84 blew] (2013), is a clear example of sharaf eldin’s tendency to write books for children of other arab nations, as she has stated that a strong wind blew is dedicated “to egypt, to the children of egypt, to the children of all arab revolutions” (qualey, 2012). in whose olives are these? (2012), sharaf eldin shows children that much is lost when people cannot share resources or find solutions that benefit all parties involved in a conflict. a number of other books in the collection also touch on the theme of conflict resolution. sbeity’s two homes instead of one (2017), for instance, displays the way in which divorced parents set their differences aside in order to ease the emotional stress of their young son, adam. mheidly’s excuse me! give me way (2016) is a story about a monkey who has to develop the necessary social skills to enable him to deal with his neighbors, who are unknowingly interrupting his daily activities. in buti’s hatless (2015), the protagonist learns how to deal with the backlash she receives for being different, in a way that satisfies her and advances the thinking of her community. the protagonist, yosra, from al najjar’s against the tide (2013) learns how to deal with society’s criticism in a peaceful manner that allows her to achieve her goals at the same time. in al sharouni’s miracle in the desert (2013), the young protagonist has to find a way to deal with the conflict surrounding the fast-disappearing water in his village in order to save the oasis. in raghda’s hat (2012), raghda has to deal with the bullying she is subjected to after losing her hair due to chemotherapy, which forces her to develop useful skills for conflict resolution. finally, the story by huda al qaddoumi, animals’ case against humans (2010), revolves around the conflict between a group of animals and the humans who are harming them with their irresponsible and selfish behavior. the animals calmly and civilly deal with the conflict so that both parties are satisfied with the outcome. thus, all of these stories provide excellent ideas for how children can resolve conflicts in their personal lives, and how they might resolve conflicts in the future when they have more control over larger domains. perhaps the inculcation of such methods will, in time, result in reduced conflict throughout the arab world. conclusion literature written for contemporary children mirrors the diversity of the society in which it is created, as stover (1996) reminded us in stating that the themes presented in children’s literature are of high significance to youthful readers, and “the issues with which the characters wrestle are of significance in our ever-changing world” (p. 5). the 26 books investigated in this study all have some major connection to at least one of the five themes of family; coping mechanisms for dealing with loss and depression; death, illness, and injury; identity; and conflict resolution. each theme can be seen as relating to some aspect of the arab spring, or other conflicts in the arab world, and what many children experienced as a result. the themes are all conveyed through the settings, illustrations, and storylines presented in these literary works. through this study, it has become evident that, since the arab spring, arab political reality has been presented more frequently in arabic children’s literature. such books international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 85 have become a way of helping arab children cope with the impact of political crises and of teaching them how to avoid violent resolutions in their own lives. although the deeper meanings behind these simple children’s books may be difficult for young children to root out, they will learn the embedded lessons and morals of the stories simply by being able to relate to the characters — a phenomenon that is relatively new in the arabic literary realm. on the other hand, older children, teachers, parents, and literary academics may recognize these deeper meanings, and thus work at furthering this movement of creating books current generations can learn and benefit from, which will both enhance arab children’s mental and emotional well-being and better the future of the arab world. miller (2009) argued that books about war are not an escape from violence. rather, such books “reestablish the place of embattled individuals within the unstable social and political circumstances of a nation at war” (p. 272). arab critic and researcher, sabour mdallel (2004) confirmed that arabic children’s literature should be a true reflection of the conflicts that face the arab world and that children should not be spared such challenges since they will be the future decision-makers. therefore, these types of messages embedded in children’s literature are a step towards the advancement of the arab world and its children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 86 references abdullah, a. 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(2011). teari ya tayara طيري يا طيارة [fly o kite]. cairo: nahdet misr. al harthi, ebtihaj. (2015). ana w amah أنا و ماه [me and mah]. al doha: bloomsbury qatar foundation. al sa’di, duniazad. (2013). endamah taghdab عندما تغضب[when you get angry; illustrator: thareefa haidar]. beirut: asala publishing house. al harthi, aisha. (2018). nostalgia الحنين. al aalm al arabi publishers, uae. kosma, eva. (2014). umi tuhb al fattoosh امي تحب الفتوش [my mom loves fattoush; illustrator: azza hussein]. beirut: academia international. mheidly, nabiha. (2012). ka’naat saqf al ghurfah كائنات سقف الغرفة [creatures on the ceiling; illustaror: hassan zahreldin]. beirut: dar al hadaek. mheidly, nabiha. (2016). ihm ihm! marirni min fadlik لكاحم احم مررني من فض [excuse me! give me way; illustrator: waleed taher]. beirut: dar al hadaek. sbeity, lorca. (2017). badal albayet baytan بدل البيت بيتان [two homes instead of one]. beirut: dar al saqi. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 90 appendix b sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2018 al mutawaa, husain. (2018). ahlun an akoun hjalat ismant احلم ان أكون خالط اسمنت [i dream of being a cement mixer]. syria: dar al hada’q. bamya, yarah. (2018). aina menqari أين منقاري؟ [where is my beak?]. jordan: the palestinian workshop for writing. khourchid, jekar. (2018). ana lastu anta انا لست انت [i am not you]. syria: dar al hada’q. sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2017 al hassan, lina. (2016). الذئبة ام كاسب al zi’ba um kaseb [umm kaseb, the she-wolf]. lebanon: hekaya. buti, lateefa. (2015).بال قبعة. bila quba’a [hatless]. kuwait: sedan media. illustrator: duha al khateeb. ezzat, samah. (2016). المنزل االزرق al manzel al azraq [the blue house]. lebanon: dar lubnan publishing. illustrator: tanya al kayal. sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2016 abdallah, hassan. (2015). طائر الوروار ta’er al warwar [the bee-eater]. beirut: academia international. laila hamzzah. alosaimi, nouf. (2014).eed fi ibreeq عيد في ابريق [fest in a jug]. jeddah: dar kadi wa ramadi. al hassan hawyan, lina. (2015). al bahth ‘an al saqer ghannam البحث عن الصقر غنام [looking for ghannam, the falcon]. beirut: dar al adab lil-nashr wa al tawzi. sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2015 al najjar, taghreed. (2013). sitt el koll ست الكل [against the tide]. amman: al salwa books. abdallah, hassan. (2013). al samaka al mufakkira السمكة المفكرة [the thinking fish]. beirut: dar al adab. mheidly, nabiha. (2014). al fatat allati iqtafat aathar shakhsyyat ibn al muqaffa’ الفتاه التي اقتفت ابن المقفعاشخصيات [the girl who traced the characters of ibn al muqaffa’]. beirut: dar al hadaek. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 71–91 91 sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2014 al sharouni, yaqoub. (2013). mu’jiza fi al sahra’ معجزة في الصحراء [miracle in the desert]. cairo: nahdet misr. al najjar, taghreed. (2012). quba’t raghda قبعة رغدة [raghda’s hat]. amman: al salwa books. fakhr eldine, jawdat. (2013). thalathoon qaseeda ثالثون قصيدة لالطفال [thirty poems for children]. beirut: al-hadaek group. illustrator: ali fakhr eldine sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2013 sharaf eldin, fatima. (2012). lmn alzaitoun? لمن الزيتون؟ [whose olives are these?]. dar al saqi. illustrator :tina mahklouf saeed, makawi. (2013). koukab alnyfayat كوكب النفايات [the garbage galaxy]. zahra’ alshrq library. abdullah, sahar. (2012). hkayat fanoun حكايات فنون [fanoun’s tales]. dar elyas. illustrator: sahar abdullah. sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2012 al qaddoumi, huda. (2010). da’wa al-haywan dhid al insan ind malik al-jan دعوى الحيوان ضد الجان: عن رسائل اخوان الصفااالنسان عند ملك [animals’ case against humans]. beirut: dar alsaqi. suleiman, ahmed. (2011). hanji banji baladi frnji حنجي بنجي بلدي إفرنجي [hanji banji local foreigner]. cairo: al dar al masriah al lubnaniah. wazan, abdo. (2012). al fata alathi absar al lawn al hawa الفتى الذي أبصر لون الهواء [the boy who saw the color of the wind]. beirut: al dar al arabia liloloum. sheikh zayed’s shortlisted books: 2011 tabbalah, afaf. (2011). al bayt wal nakhlah البيت والنخلة [the house and the palm tree]. cairo: nahdet misr. microsoft word 06 newfoundland.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120235 “(im)mobile precarity”1 among young people in newfoundland and labrador nicole power abstract: mobility for work and education among young people has been a key feature of contemporary life. drawing on focus groups with youth living in the canadian province of newfoundland and labrador, as well as key informant interviews with people who work for community-based organizations that serve youth, i examine the relationship between young people’s employmentand education-related geographical mobilities and precarity. i draw on recent insights from scholars examining precarity as grounded in both labouring conditions and ontological experience. in foregrounding the experiences and subjectivities of poor and working-class youth, i show how the structure of youth labour markets and of education and training cheapens youth labour, with implications for youth’s capacity for independence. in a context of broader regimes of mobility associated with resource extraction, young people without formal qualifications live precarious lives: they move from job to job and place to place, and rely on family and friends to support their housing and other needs. in this context of uncertainty and labour market volatility, youth expressed disorientation regarding decisions about work, education, and mobility, reflecting the high stakes of not making the “right” choice, and developed a pragmatic approach to work as a way to make a living rather than a pathway to a meaningful life. i conclude by situating these findings as a critique not just of precarity but of capitalist economic arrangements more broadly, with implications for the kinds of solutions that can address structural class inequalities. keywords: mobility, precarity, youth, transitions, employment, education nicole power phd is professor in the department of sociology, memorial university of newfoundland and labrador, st. john’s, 230 elizabeth avenue, nl a1c 5s7. email: npower@mun.ca 1the term “(im)mobile precarity” is used by martin et al. (2019) to describe the relationship between mobility and precarity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 89  mobility for work and education among young people is certainly not new, but arguably has taken on new significance globally in the last couple of decades. much of the youth studies literature, especially the literature in the global north, makes sense of youth mobilities for work and education as a means to access and achieve autonomy and independence as part of the transition to adulthood (see robertson et al., 2018 for a review). one argument is that young people become mobile in order to seek better educational and employment opportunities and outcomes. another is that geographical mobility itself is evidence of cosmopolitan subjectivity, or is valued as a way to acquire it, since cosmopolitan subjectivity is preferred in today’s global labour market (skrbis et al., 2014). as robertson et al. (2018) reminded us, “mobile transitions” are uneven, as the capacity for mobility or staying in place reflects diverse histories and intersectional oppressions. furthermore, rather than being linear, “mobile transitions” and their consequences are complex, and may sometimes leave young people in more precarious positions. in the current context of high rates of unemployment and underemployment among youth in many parts of the world, and the overrepresentation of youth among the precariously employed (furlong et al., 2017), the relationship between young people’s mobility (including forced or limited mobility, as well as immobility) and precarity warrants attention. this is the problematic at the centre of this paper. drawing on focus groups with young people living in the canadian province of newfoundland and labrador, as well as key informant interviews with people who work for community-based organizations that serve youth, i examine the relationship between young people’s employment and education-related geographical mobilities and precarity. employmentand education-related geographical mobilities include spatial and temporal dynamics, and range from short daily commutes to extended stays in more distant places, to rotational work arrangements as well as seasonal and more permanent migration (see temple newhook et al., 2011). by drawing on recent scholarship that conceptualizes precarity in terms of the conditions of political economy and ontological experience, i address young people’s “precarious labour and precarious life” (millar, 2017, p. 5) in relation to their (im)mobility. in the following paper, i first review some of the research and theorizing on youth transitions, mobilities, and precarity, and develop a conceptual framework that i use to interpret the focus group interviews. second, i describe the research project and data used in the paper, and provide some background regarding young people’s position in the political economy of the province of newfoundland and labrador. third, i describe the findings under the headings of two main themes: paths to mobility and precarity, and mobile labouring subjects. i conclude with some thoughts about the findings in terms of broader conversations, oriented to social justice, regarding young people’s mobilities, and offer some reflections on young people’s mobility in a post-covid world. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 90  transitions, mobilities, and precarity roberston et al. (2018) rightly pointed out that the youth transitions literature: tends to account for mobility only as a means to improve education and employment prospects. mobility is thus typically treated as a short-term strategy that enables youth to stay “on track” for a conventional pathway to secure work or a career. (p. 207) in the context of uneven and exploitative conditions of capitalism associated with post-fordist, post-keynesian countries in the global north since the 1970s, as well as in the global south where insecurity and informal or unwaged work are common among labour (millar, 2017), such outcomes — securing work or starting a career — will be difficult for some youth to achieve, and impossible for others. political economy scholars have argued that in neoliberal capitalist economies, government and corporate practices (e.g., corporate lobbying to keep minimum wages low, government subsidies for employers to hire youth in low-waged and temporary positions) constitute youth as a form of cheap and precarious labour; combined with the need to aquire credentials for better-paying jobs, such practices result in young people’s ability to make a living and live independently being increasingly delayed (côté, 2014). the precarity of young people’s employment is often justified — in some cases even desired — because it is framed as temporary (e.g., summer jobs) or stopgap (tannock, 2001), and because youth are largely understood as dependent, either on the family or the state. research has shown how local and national economic conditions and limited labour markets serve as major drivers of young people’s intranational and international mobilities. much of this research has focused on the intranational movement of youth from rural to urban or suburban places. studies in australia (alston, 2004; argent & walmsley, 2008; drozdzewski 2008), mexico (howell, 2018), nordic countries (bjarnason & thorlindsson, 2006), canada (corbett, 2005; norman & power, 2014), and the united kingdom (ní laoire, 2001) have found that outmigration of youth is a response to limited educational, employment, and consumption options in rural places. in fact, the movement of youth away from rural places has been called a migration or mobility “imperative” (corbett, 2005; farrugia, 2016). this body of work has also found that rural to urban moves are gendered and classed (bjarnason & thorlindsson, 2006; power & norman, 2019). for example, employment in rural areas tends to be concentrated in male-dominated sectors, including resource extraction and agriculture, which favour young men and enable pathways for mobilities to other places with similar industries. in addition to limited job prospects, youth scholars point to a framing of rural places as “lacking”, and a privileging of urban and suburban spaces as sites of choice, opportunity, and success (dodd, 2020; nairn et al., 2003; ní laoire, 2001). the rural-to-urban mobility imperative and the discursive privileging of the urban mark those rural youth who stay as having failed, with consequences for their emotional wellbeing (easthope & gabriel, 2008; ní laoire, 2001; power, 2017). other research has focused on how young people engage in international mobilities with the goal of acquiring skills, experiences, or status that will increase their employability, only to end international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 91  up in precarious employment. for example, kawashima’s study (2018) found that young skilled workers from japan who migrate to china for temporary employment with hopes of enhancing their social mobility, end up working in low-paying jobs with few prospects of upward mobility. the precariousness of their employment and mobility is exacerbated by the uncertain regulatory context for mobile workers in china. kawashima noted that while migrants may have experienced a temporary reprieve from some of the normative pressures to transition to adulthood, one of the longer-term consequences of their mobility is a sense of lagging behind. similarly, martin (2017) found that the chinese women in her study who moved to australia for school and work to enhance their employability experienced very limited employment opportunities due to anti-asian discriminatory practices by local employers. the women students were, however, able to use their chinese diasporic networks in australia to access employment in restaurants or trade. in addition to the precarious character of this work, it created few opportunities to build the kinds of valued social and network capital that would increase their labour market success in the future. other research has focused on international employment programs that target young people, such as the international working holiday scheme (in canada, international experience canada2). these schemes offer temporary employment opportunities to youth through bilateral agreements and are often marketed as ways to gain valuable international employment experience and to become a global citizen. research shows, however, that the social mobility aspirations of young people on working holidays often conflict with their precarious working conditions in the host country (see smith, this issue). this is also the case in ho’s (2019) study of hong kong youth on working holiday schemes in australia. ho found that working holidays appeal to young people’s subjectivities that value mobility as a form of self-exploration and a means to access a meaningful life. however, rather than interpret this as evidence of a rejection of the normative transition to adulthood though paid work, ho explained that the reality of the migrants’ working conditions and the temporariness of the scheme produce a sense of resignation and acceptance about becoming labouring adult subjects. while research points to how these schemes tend to reproduce privilege among affluent youth travellers, oommen’s work (2017, 2021) in the united kingdom suggests that because working holiday migrants are differentiated by gender, class, racialization, language, and nationality, “hierarchies of privilege” is a more useful description. these hierarchies, oommen argued, are produced by policies that shape who has access to and can avail themselves of working holidays in ways that reproduce historical colonial relations. two important insights emerge from this literature. first, young people’s aspirations of social mobility through geographical mobility are constrained by their working conditions. in other words, mobility and precarity are related, at least for some youth. second, precarious work affects young people’s subjectivities, their lives, and their future plans. precarity, then, “encompasses both ‘labour’ and ‘life’ ” (strauss, 2018, p. 625). in making the case for blurring the political economy and political philosophy approaches to precarity, strauss (2018) wrote, “life is inherently 2https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/iec/eligibility.asp international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 92  precarious, but human societies and economies are organized in ways that render some lives more precarious than others, often but not exclusively through the capitalist wage relation and the division of paid and unpaid labour” (p. 625). in a similar way, millar (2017, p. 5) argued for a relational approach to understanding precarity as a labour condition and an ontological experience. mobility and immobility may produce or intensify precarity as both a labour condition and ontological experience, and precarity may drive or entrench certain kinds of mobilities and immobilities. martin et al. (2019) referred to this relationship between mobility and precarity as “(im)mobile precarity”. the phrase is useful because it reminds us that precarity may be associated with both mobility and immobility, and that the form of this relationship varies across time, place, and political economies. while precarity has often been associated with the specific context of neoliberal capitalist regimes, scholarship in the global south shows that precarious labour and life have long been features of colonial economic relations. to reflect diverse histories, millar (2017) put forward “a method of inquiry” that examines “how precarious labor and precarious life intersect in particular times and places”. echoing millar’s method of inquiry, martin et al. (2019) suggested mapping “paths to precarity” by attending to “local historical, cultural, economic and regulatory conditions that render lives precarious in specific contexts” (p. 901). i draw on these insights to examine the relationship between young people’s employmentand education-related geographical mobilities and precarity. foregrounding the lives of poor and working-class young people in newfoundland and labrador, i consider how local labour market conditions and employment-related geographical “regimes of mobility” (glick schiller & salazar, 2013) shape young people’s (im)mobilities, and how their (im)mobilities in turn produce precarious lives. the concept “regimes of mobility” turns attention to the ways in which mobilities are managed, surveilled, and made possible (or not) within and across borders. examining young people’s mobilities through the frame of precarity, i challenge reductive explanations of youth joblessness and job churn as a human capital problem and show how precarity can be both a precondition for and outcome of mobility for work and education. young people’s subjectivities in relation to mobility, labouring, and adulthood reflect the structural insecurities of contemporary employment arrangements. research project and methods in this paper, i draw on data collected for a research project with the on the move partnership3 (2012–2020) that examined the educational and employment-related geographical mobilities of young people in newfoundland and labrador. one of the projects included a collaboration with the community youth network4 (cyn), which is funded by the provincial government and has 34 sites located across the province. the cyn’s mandate is to deliver services and programs to young people defined as at risk or living in poverty. while cyn services and programming broadly 3for more information on the on the move partnership research, see http://www.onthemovepartnership.ca/ 4https://www.gov.nl.ca/pep/community-youth-networks/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 93  focus on poverty reduction and facilitating access to education, training, and employment, local centres tend to tailor services to meet the needs of young people in the region they serve. except for those communities with a school, the cyn site often provides the only physical space dedicated to youth programming in rural regions. the cyn targets young people between the ages of 12 and 18; however, i found that, in practice, staff delivered programming and services to older youth. for example, cyn executive directors interviewed for this study talked about delivering government-funded social programs that provided career training, waged employment, and financial support to unemployed youth between the ages of 18 and 30. in this paper, i draw on data from nine focus groups with 72 youth who participated in programming and services delivered by the cyn primarily in rural regions, as well as interviews with five cyn executive directors. young people’s mobility for education and employment is not new in the province of newfoundland and labrador. however, since the downsizing of the fishing industry and subsequent job losses in the early 1990s, youth outmigration from the province and from rural areas in particular, along with declining fertility rates, low rates of immigration, and an aging population have been identified as key problems by successive governments and policymakers (see government of newfoundland and labrador, 2020; simms & greenwood, 2015). a recent government-commissioned report found that the majority of people who migrate from the province do so in search of employment (goss gilroy inc., 2018). the province is largely rural (simms & greenwood, 2015), which affects the character of local labour markets. the province has invested heavily in the extractive industries (e.g., mining, oil and gas, hydroelectric power) and in the training of young people in relevant trades to meet predicted demand in these sectors (government of newfoundland and labrador, 2009, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; skills task force, 2007). a recent canadian centre for policy alternatives study (shaker, 2014) of the state of young workers in newfoundland and labrador found the unemployment rate among youth in the province remains higher than the national rate at around 15%, and that collegeeducated and unskilled (completed high school and less) workers are more vulnerable to unemployment than their national counterparts (pp. 16–17). this is especially significant given that more workers in newfoundland and labrador have college diplomas compared to their counterparts in the rest of canada. the study also found that outmigration has been levelling off, but other forms of mobility (e.g., rotational workers) across provincial borders are not captured in national statistics (shaker, 2014, p. 13). this is supported by recent work by lionais et al. (2020) suggesting that workers in the province were heavily dependent on mobile jobs in the construction and oil and gas industries in alberta between the years 2006 to 2011. findings and discussion in this section i focus on two main themes that arose in the focus groups: paths to mobility and precarity, and mobile labouring subjects. by foregrounding the experiences of poor and workingclass youth in a province that is highly dependent on mobile labour, i show how precarity can be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 94  both a precondition for and an outcome of mobility for work and education. finally i describe some of the ways that precarity shapes young people’s subjectivities in relation to mobility, labouring, and adulthood. paths to mobility and precarity in this section i describe three different relationships between mobility and precarity that emerged from the focus group discussions. the first focuses on young people’s limited local mobility and employment options, and i pay particular attention to how government-funded social programs both produce jobs for youth, and cheapen youth labour, with implications for their capacity for independence. the second relationship focuses on the impact of mobility for education on work opportunities. rural university students lacking social networks in the city returned to their home communities to work for the summer, while college students in apprenticeship programs had to incur the financial costs of multiple moves over the course of their programs to accommodate on-the-job training. young people ended up working in a series of short-term jobs and incurring high debt loads to pay for their programs and associated mobility. the third relationship focuses on the expectation that young people will move away for work, and how their experiences of employment-related geographical mobility are shaped by broader regimes of mobility associated with resource extraction. young people who lacked formal qualifications ended up living precarious lives, moving from job to job and place to place, and relying on family and friends to support their housing. local labour market for youth across the focus groups with young people, there was a common theme — there were few employment opportunities for young people in their communities, especially in rural regions. the absence of a public transit system outside urban areas meant that rural youth who did not have access to a car (and a driver’s licence) were limited to looking for employment close to home. the employment available to young people tended to consist of part-time and low-paying jobs in the service and sales sectors, or, in the case of rural youth, government-funded jobs delivered as part of social programs aimed at integrating youth into the workforce or supporting student summer employment. focus group participants suggested that openings for new entrants into longer-term positions requiring training and credentials (e.g., teaching) were rare, and, as with other kinds of work, getting a job depended on knowing the right people. those with experience in the service industry described their work as stressful — often fast-paced and requiring interactions with rude customers. at the same time, they reported receiving little or no training. as one youth responded when asked if she had received training in her job as a cashier: oh, definitely not. like during my training it was just like mentioned, “there’s going to be mean people and you’re just going to have to deal with it.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 95  young people identified government-funded (federal and provincial) programs (e.g., canada summer jobs5 program, linkages6) as important sources of employment. in general, these programs fund or subsidize employers or not-for-profit organizations to hire youth, who are usually between the ages of 15 and 30. some programs target particular groups of youth; for example, the provincially-funded linkages program, in partnership with not-for-profit community-based organizations, focuses on supporting youth who “have not made a successful attachment to the labour force” (government of newfoundland and labrador, n.d.). other programs target high school students who are university-bound and university students who return home for the summer; in fact, some of the programs paid students with tuition vouchers. while students talked about some of the “fun” aspects of this work (e.g., running sports activities, planning community festivals), these jobs often entailed busy work or seemed more like a string of odd jobs. as one participant put it: no matter what student position you get, you do everything. like if they — like if they calls us up and the town council is like, “come do this”, well just go and do it. and then at jobs, you kind of got to be okay with doing everything that they want you to do, so you kind of learn to just do it. not complain. these youth employment programs are structured not only to provide opportunities to work, but to constitute youth as a form of cheap and precarious labour for local employers and not-for-profits that in turn receive wage subsidies. the employment associated with these programs is inherently temporary, and, like the part-time work in the sales and service sector, does not provide a living wage. the example of tuition vouchers as deferred payment points to an assumption that the young people had other sources of support, either family or the state, in turn reproducing their financial dependency. impact of mobility for education on work opportunities congruent with research on rural youth elsewhere, young people who participated in this research largely anticipated that at a certain point — usually marked by completing high school — they would become mobile, even if only temporarily, to pursue education and employment opportunities: i think there are only a couple from my class that graduated out of 36 people that actually stayed here. like there might be like five or six of us, if that. mobility for education influenced young people’s employment options. there is only one university in the province, with the main campus located in the capital city. for rural youth, attending university in the province or elsewhere requires leaving one’s community for a city; over the summer period, staying in or leaving the city depends on finding work. in the focus groups, 5https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/funding/canada-summer-jobs.html 6https://www.gov.nl.ca/ipgs/students/linkages/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 96  university students reported finding jobs in sales, as wait staff, or as personal support workers, during the school year as well as over the summer break. however, rural students also reported returning to their home communities for summer employment. those who were relatively new to the city and lacked social networks reported being largely unsuccessful in their attempts to gain employment in the city. in this quotation, a young woman describes her unsuccessful attempts to apply for work: well, i find in town there’s a lot of students and everyone is looking for part-time jobs like when they’re not at school … and for just a random sales associate position, part-time, there was 142 people who had already applied to that job, and i was like this is kind of difficult. and i’ve already — i think i’ve already applied for at least like 30 different jobs and i haven’t heard anything yet. and it’s already been like two months. but kind of trying to wait it out, see what happens. college programs are decentralized and offered in different locations across the province, meaning that where young people go for training depends in part on where a particular program is being delivered. for skilled trades programs, mobility is built into the apprenticeship structure, with students moving between periods of classroom instruction and on-the-job training. this structure means that, over the course of their program, apprentices commute or temporarily relocate multiple times to attend school and to find employment (power, 2017). the province has also developed agreements with other provinces that make it easier for apprentices to work across provincial borders to fulfil training requirements. for some, mobility associated with apprenticeships, especially mobility out of province, has meant incurring substantial debt loads over the course of their training. this situation is especially problematic for those who are unable to find longer-term employment in their field, as this young man explained: … now i’m jobless, can’t find a job, and i’m $25,000 in debt [pursuing trades training], and i haven’t paid my debt since i moved here. as found in other studies, a lack of employment and educational opportunities can be a precondition for mobility for education. however, focus groups with young people also show how moving for education shapes their options for work, and often entails additional forms of mobility. rural students in the focus groups who lacked social support or networks in the city to help with finding employment returned to their communities. although there are some financial supports to assist students, young people and their families largely carried the costs of these moves. mobility for employment as with education, the focus group participants expected to be mobile for work, and among rural youth, there was an expectation that such mobility meant moving to a city: i feel like going more towards the city sort of area or even going to a suburban area working out of home. like i feel like that would be better just because there’s more opportunities, but in newfoundland, i don’t really see much. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 97  here, the young participant pointed to both a lack of opportunities in rural communities, and indeed the province more generally, but also indicated that there was something “better” in urban and suburban places. this expectation cannot be separated from broader “regimes of mobility” that characterize normal, everyday life in the province. young people live and work in regions where commuting long distances intraprovincially and “working away” as rotational workers in other provinces, usually in the oil and gas industry, are common. this mobile employment arrangement is becoming the norm in resource extraction industries in canada and elsewhere (dorow & mandizadza, 2018; storey, 2016). some of the young people in the focus groups described their own experiences moving away for work, especially for periods in the summertime. and, while some young people in the group discussions earned “big money” working away, especially those with sought-after credentials in a skilled trade, others described their employment as short term, low-paying, and without benefits. this was the case for those young people who moved to provinces such as alberta chasing the oil boom, but lacked formal or in-demand qualifications or credentials and were therefore relegated to “unskilled” work. for example, bob moved to edmonton in hopes of securing better employment, but found only low-wage work, leaving him unable to pay rent, and with little money to buy food and other necessities: $700 every two weeks does not pay for your apartment when it’s $800 a month. so you’re not going to have enough for rent. you’re not going to have enough for food or toiletries. so before you even buy the apartment, you have to buy your food for the first month and your toiletries for the first month, so that way you still have enough to eat. that’s what i was doing in edmonton at least. this is illustrative of the way precarious mobile employment enacts a precarious life — compromising housing and food security. the risks and costs associated with precarious mobile employment and structural job churn are downloaded onto young people and their families. alex, a young women whose employment history took her from rural newfoundland and labrador to alberta, lived with family at first while she worked in a string of low-paying jobs in the service sector because she could not afford a place of her own. while in alberta, she met her current boyfriend, and they both moved back to the province of newfoundland and labrador after losing their jobs in the oil downturn. at the time of the focus groups, she was working in yet another temporary job and planned to move back to alberta with her boyfriend when the contract expired. alex was paying her own way back and forth, and her family in newfoundland and labrador in alberta supported her housing. well, the only way i got there is because i have family up there. like my mom’s sister was there and i lived with her, and then i went on my own, and then i met my boyfriend. then we moved back here, and now we’re going to move back as soon as i’m done this job.… we moved back home because i’m sure everybody knows how alberta is right now. it’s like just dead, so we kind of had no choice really. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 98  alex’s case, while not unusual, is instructive in that it demonstrates how broader networks — in this case family located both in her home province and in alberta — facilitated her movement (see earle & power, 2017). it is also a reminder that, despite the rhetoric, not all of the mobility associated with resource extraction leads to high-paying jobs. young people’s aspirations of social mobility through geographical mobility are constrained by their working conditions and by labour market volatility. young people navigate these conditions by moving from job to job and from place to place and relying on family and friends to support their housing, as the precarious work makes living independently next to impossible. in the next section, i explore the impact of such (im)mobile precarity on labouring ontologies. mobile labouring subjects in this section i describe two of the ways that precarity shaped focus group participants’ subjectivities in relation to mobility, labouring, and adulthood. first, young people experienced a sense of disorientation on having to make educational, employment, and mobility choices in the context of labour market volatility. their delay or uncertainty regarding which type of training or employment to pursue did not reflect a desire to engage in some of kind self-discovery but rather the high stakes of not getting it right. second, young people took a very pragmatic approach to work. in the context of repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get work, the focus turns to getting any job, at home or away. work is not seen as contributing to a meaningful life, but as a means to an end, a way to make sufficient money to avoid a precarious life. disorientation in the context of (im)mobile precarity political economy approaches to youth employment have shown how the current mode of global capitalism has disrupted school-to-work transitions and constitutes youth as a form of cheap and precarious labour, in turn delaying young people’s transition to independence, financially and otherwise (côté, 2014). in contrast to notions of “emerging adulthood” (arnett, 2000) that interpret delays in educational choices or entry into employment as a matter of individual choice allowing a time of self-discovery, côté and bynner (2008), among others, have focused attention on the ways in which young people continue to be constrained by structural features of society, such as class and gender, and by exploitative capitalist relations. for example, focus group discussions illustrated a kind of disorientation in the context of having to make educational, employment, and mobility choices. rather than articulating freedom to make choices or to take time to discover more about themselves, focus group participants talked predominantly about not knowing what to do or where to go. as one young man put it: “i just didn’t know what i wanted to do in school, so i just went up away and worked.” as a number of participants pointed out, it is not easy to find the “right” educational or training program or the “right” job or the “right” region (see earle and power, 2017; power, 2017). for example, since the release of the skills task force report (2007), the provincial government of newfoundland and labrador, along with school counsellors and family members, have encouraged youth to pursue skilled trades training to meet the labour demand predicted to result from investment in the development of megaresource extraction projects. however, the jobs associated with resource extraction have been hit hard in recent years international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 99  by the volatility of global commodity markets, especially for oil and gas, and this has left young people skeptical about the advice to pursue trades: like, a lot of people in the community, they were all like pressured into doing trades back in the day because that was like the big thing back in the day, was to do a trade and go make lots of money, right? there is good reason for youth to be skeptical, as reports have emerged about the difficulty skilled trades apprentices in newfoundland and labrador have experienced in finding work (power, 2017). the volatility of employment associated with resource extraction (see barber & breslin, 2020) means that investing in skilled trades credentials is risky, though the chance of making “lots of money” may make it worthwhile. the risk is not limited to training and jobs for the extractive industries, as jacky explained: like, one year — i used to want to do hairstyling. and that was like my long term goal. it was like, i don’t really have to go back, you know, and finish my high school. but i decided to come here, and by the time i got … i would keep like an eye on all the listings for different kinds of jobs for when i was done school, and it was like a huge wave of every place wanted a hairstylist. and now it’s like another job that i really want to do is childcare. and now it’s like everyone is wanting childcare workers and everything. and so within like next year or the year after, you don’t really know if the job that you want is available or not. in this case, pursuing a job in a feminized industry may carry even greater risks given the increased likelihood of precarious working conditions. regardless of their particular choices, poor and working-class young people, and sometimes their families, carried the costs of training. in the context of labour market volatility, the stakes are high: if young people make the “wrong” choice, their ability to make a living and live independently are put in jeopardy. some participants who had experienced longer-term unemployment took part in programming aimed at integrating them into the local labour market. they received instruction on how to make these important educational and employment choices. jacob explained: so for the first three meetings, we sat down and we went through all the questions and we looked at all the possible jobs, and it really, it gives you so many different options. that was how i came across a couple of the things that i was thinking about doing. and then we discuss them with the coordinator and she talks about like how you can go about applying for those things and all that. so those are — i found those really helpful. here, jacob described how this program helped to identify “all the possible jobs” and how the participants in the program could get these jobs. the assumption is that, rather than a labour market problem, there is a human capital problem or a skills mismatch between the qualifications of youth and local employment opportunities, and that addressing individual worker deficits will resolve the problem of youth unemployment (lysenko & vodden, 2011). like other youth employment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 100  programs, this particular initiative provides young people access to temporary work through employer subsidies, which serves to further entrench precarity in the local labour market. pragmatic subjectivities the literature on post-fordist work has shown how immaterial and affective forms of production demand “an intensification of the requirement to construct the self in relation to the requirements of the labour force, precisely as the structural conditions underpinning employment are becoming more precarious” (farrugia, 2019, p. 711). to put it another way, work is not separate from other parts of one’s life; rather, work offers a pathway to a meaningful life. other research has focused on the rise of aspirational labour, which entails the intentional production of the entrepreneurial self by doing what you love with the goal of one day making a living from the work, a goal that is rarely realised (duffy, 2016). the focus group discussions with poor and working class young people in newfoundland and labrador expressed a different relationship to work. in the context of weak local labour markets for youth, and employment-related geographical mobility regimes dependent on volatile resource extractive industries, finding a job is what matters, not self-realization or investing in one’s passion. to be clear, young people in the focus groups did articulate passion: some were passionate about politics, others art, and so on. however, passion was not the primary way they related to work. they needed paid work to get by, to make a living; a job was a means to an end. some youth became increasingly desperate the longer they were without work. for them, just getting a job — any job — was the goal, and as a result, they applied for almost every job that became available: and i have like put over 30 different resumes in that area where the [name of drugstore chain] is and where the [name of hardware store chain] is and all that stuff. yeah. i’ve put at least 30 or 40 resumes down there, and no one has gotten back to me. so … like the working-class youth in farrugia’s work (2019), the constant rejection experienced by youth impacted their sense of worth, and it was difficult for them not to see the problem as some deficiency in themselves, affecting their confidence and emotional well-being: trying to, but can’t even get like a minimum wage job. i don’t know why.… i had interviews, but i don’t know. maybe it’s me. in this context of uncertainty, it makes sense that some youth prioritized making money over the content of a job. as one participant put it, “i’m not really figured out entirely, but i just want to make a lot of money. but like have fun while i’m doing it.” the focus on money encouraged a sort of pragmatism regarding mobility. some, like brittany, a skilled trades worker, considered her mobility options by figuring out the financial difference between staying home to work full time and working as a rotational worker “out west”: i don’t care. i’ll pick up and go tomorrow. a trades job is a trade. but now then again, i’m not going somewhere for $17 an hour and you got to pay your own international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 101  flights. it’s just as well for me to stay home with a full-time job. have to pack up everything, leave, fly up there, wherever. in this example, brittany is willing to work on rotation, provided the costs of her mobility are covered by the employer, and her wages are greater than what she could make by living and working at home. there has been a great deal of public interest and talk regarding the “big money” earned by rotational workers employed in the oil and gas sector (see barber & breslin, 2020). rather than dismiss the prioritization of earning money as reflecting a generation that is selfish and greedy — a popular interpretation and one that carries moralistic overtones — or some kind of economic rationality, i suggest that a focus on making money makes sense in relation to the expectation and experience of precarious employment. it makes sense to get what you can, wherever and as quickly as you can, if high-paying jobs are rare, and come and go. in this sense, young people’s labouring subjectivities reflected a willingness to be mobile to make “big money” and a prioritization of other ways to achieve a meaningful life, such as through their place-based attachments. for others in the focus group discussions, attachment to their community outweighed investment in career goals and passions. some participants expressed a willingness to change career goals to accommodate local labour market opportunities as a way to build a meaningful life in their community (see earle & power, 2017). for example, olive talked about changing her career goals (from teaching to dental hygienist) to secure employment in her community; that is, to secure work and to have a less precarious life — and in this case a less mobile life: i was going to do teaching at first. that’s what i really wanted to do. then i was thinking about it and … like i probably won’t get a job and i really, really want to. so i was talking to my dentist here in [community name], and she said that if she knew that she was going to have a hygienist waiting, then she would stay here and the job is open and everything for me. olive is not articulating a passion for her choice of work, nor does she see this work choice as a reflection of who she is or wants to be. instead, her work choice, however constrained, is a pathway to make a meaningful life in her community. this case is an example of a young person privileging her attachment to community, rather than investing in her preferred career. there is a robust literature documenting young people’s attachment to place, especially rural places, and the ambivalent emotions associated with the processes of staying and leaving, especially when certain (im)mobilities are widely associated with success or failure (easthope & gabriel, 2008; ní laoire, 2001; power, 2017). however, this example shifts the focus away from ambivalent emotional attachments to place and toward how such attachments impact young people’s labouring subjectivities, lives, and future plans. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 102  conclusion in foregrounding the work and mobile experiences of poor and working-class young people in newfoundland and labrador, i have shown how local labour market conditions and broader mobility regimes centred around resource extraction shape young people’s (im)mobilities, how their (im)mobilities in turn produce precarious lives, and how precarity shapes young people’s subjectivities in relation to mobility, labouring, and adulthood. in doing so, i have tried to push back against simplistic, adultist, and damaging accounts of young generations — those depicting them as self-interested, greedy, and as choosing to delay the transition to adulthood in order to leisurely pursue pathways of personal growth. one of the risks of focusing on youth experiences of mobilities is that of prioritizing economic rationalities and individual choice; however, foregrounding the experiences of poor and working-class youth illustrates how the organization of capitalist economies renders “some lives more precarious than others” (strauss, 2018, p. 625). their experiences of precarity and mobility point to structural features of life (e.g., class) that make certain paths possible and discourage others, as they navigate educational, employment, and mobility decisions, and deal with the consequences. scholars (berlant, 2011; millar, 2017; weeks, 2011) warn that critiques of precarity should not fall into the trap of calling for a return to some golden age of the standard employment relationship, which was in fact a historical anomaly in the global north that privileged certain groups of people, including men and white people. millar (2017, p. 6) wrote, “the very condition of having to depend on a wage to sustain one’s life is what makes a worker precarious — not just the specific structures of this or that job.” conceptualizing precarity in this way mitigates a tendency to offer “solutions” that strengthen capitalist economic arrangements and employment relations, which would ultimately have damaging effects. instead, perhaps we should look to examples of new possibilities of redistribution (e.g., guaranteed annual income), and other ways to loosen the relation between income and work, which would also open up new ways of thinking about youth transitions to adulthood. the research described in this paper was conducted prior to the global covid-19 pandemic. however, the dire consequences of the pandemic on young lives only increase the pressure to act. youth have been hit disproportionately hard by the economic downturn and the disruption of schooling associated with the pandemic. because young people are overrepresented in the service industries, they have been subject to higher rates of job loss or to classification as essential frontline workers. the pandemic has laid bare the consequences of social inequality. there have thus been renewed calls to strengthen social programs and to rethink capitalist economic arrangements. without appropriate intervention, the consequences of the pandemic on youth will be long lasting (stanford, 2021). acknowledgments i would like to thank edwina mccarthy, manager of the community youth network (cyn), as well as the cyn executive directors, for their assistance with this research. i would like to acknowledge the research assistance of julia lawlor, michelle porter, and madeline bury. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 88–108 103  the on the move partnership: 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(2011). employment-related mobility and the health of workers, families, and communities: the canadian context. labour/le travail, 67(spring), 121–256. weeks, k. 2011. the problem with work: feminism, marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries. duke university press. what was good for me will be good for you: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718074 predicting adults’ approval of physical punishment from their perceptions of their childhood experiences joan e. durrant, elif acar, justin mcneil, ailsa m. watkinson, and anne mcgillivray abstract: most physical violence against children in their homes is rooted in physical punishment. parents’ approval of physical punishment is a primary predictor of its use. therefore, reducing approval of physical punishment is critical to preventing physical violence against children. we explored the relative contributions of four variables to young adults’ approval of physical punishment with the aim of identifying effective routes to prevention. the participants were 480 first-year university students in 3 canadian provinces. the outcome measure was a scale assessing participants’ approval of physical punishment. the predictor variables were four dimensions of participants’ perceptions of their childhood physical punishment experiences: physical (frequency, severity), cognitive (perceived abusiveness, perceived deservedness), affective (shortand long-term emotional impact), and contextual (degree to which it was accompanied by reasoning, power assertion, emotional abuse, or emotional support). most (73%) of the participants had experienced physical punishment in childhood. of these, 78% had experienced punishments other than mild spanking with the hand; one fifth had been pushed against a wall, and one third had been hit with objects. the strongest predictor of participants’ approval of physical punishment was a belief that their experiences were deserved. reducing approval of physical punishment requires strategies to alter the perception that children deserve violence. keywords: physical punishment; attitudes; approval; physical abuse; prevention. joan e. durrant phd (the corresponding author) is a professor in the department of community health sciences, university of manitoba, fort garry campus, 35 chancellor’s circle, winnipeg, mb r3t 2n2. email: joan.durrant@umanitoba.ca elif acar phd is an assistant professor in the department of statistics, university of manitoba, 318 machray hall, winnipeg, mb r3t 2n2. email: elif.acar@umanitoba.ca justin mcneil is a phd candidate in psychology at the university of toronto, 100 st. george st., toronto, on m5s 3g3. email: justin.mcneil@mail.utoronto.ca ailsa m. watkinson phd is a professor in the faculty of social work, university of regina, saskatoon campus, 111-116 research dr., saskatoon, sk s7n 3r3. email: ailsa.watkinson@uregina.ca anne mcgillivray phd is a professor of law (retired), faculty of law, university of manitoba, 224 dysart rd., winnipeg, mb r3t 2n2. email: anne.mcgillivray@umr.umanitoba.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718074 mailto:joan.durrant@umanitoba.ca mailto:elif.acar@umanitoba.ca mailto:justin.mcneil@mail.utoronto.ca mailto:ailsa.watkinson@uregina.ca mailto:anne.mcgillivray@umr.umanitoba.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 128 the most common type of police-reported family violence against children in canada is physical assault (statistics canada, 2015). the most recent canadian incidence study of maltreatment reported to child welfare authorities revealed that more than 20,000 incidents of physical maltreatment were substantiated in 2008 (public health agency of canada, 2010). between 2003 and 2013, 319 children in canada were killed by a family member (statistics canada, 2015). why is physical violence against children in the family still so prevalent in canada? since dr. henry kempe identified the “battered child syndrome” (kempe, silverman, stelle, droegmueller, & silver, 1962), research has grown at an explosive pace, and prevention and treatment programs abound, yet the violence continues. what is missing from our efforts to end it? the united nations global study on violence against children called world attention to what may be the fundamental obstacle to child maltreatment prevention — the cultural legitimacy of violence against children (pinheiro, 2006). the study points specifically at the justification of physical punishment as a traditional value that stands in the way of eradicating physical violence against children. in every region of the world, ending social approval of physical punishment was identified by study participants as fundamental to effective prevention efforts. evidence for this position has been accumulating for decades. from his examination of 1,380 cases of physical abuse, gil (1970) concluded that the most common type “involves incidents developing out of disciplinary action taken by caretakers” (p. 126). his findings have been replicated repeatedly (durrant et al., 2006; kadushin & martin, 1981; margolin, 1990; trocmé, siddiqi, fallon, maclaurin, & sullivan, 2002). findings of the canadian incidence studies of reported child abuse and neglect have repeatedly demonstrated that at least 75% of substantiated physical maltreatment takes place in a punitive context (jud & trocmé, 2013; trocmé et al., 2005; trocmé et al., 2001). in a recent meta-analysis, physical punishment was strongly and consistently associated with indicators of physical abuse (gershoff & grogankaylor, 2016). children who are spanked are 7 times more likely to experience severe violence (clément, bouchard, jetté, & laferrière, 2000). infants who are spanked are 2.3 times more likely to sustain injuries requiring medical attention than those who are not spanked (crandall, chiu, & sheehan, 2006). every occurrence of spanking increases the odds of physical abuse by 3% (zolotor, theodore, chang, berkoff, & runyan, 2008). a canadian study found that adults who reported having been spanked at age 10 were almost 60 times more likely to also report physically abusive experiences at that age (fréchette, zoratti, & romano, 2015). these findings challenge the traditional notion that physical abuse is an act of violence while physical punishment is a legitimate parenting tool. in fact, some suggest that the perpetuation of this conceptual dichotomy affirms the legitimacy of violence against children (belsky, 1980; garbarino, 1977; gelles & straus, 1988; mcgillivray, 2011a). increasingly, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 129 physical punishment is becoming recognized not only as unnecessary (roberts & powers, 1990) and a developmental risk factor (gershoff, 2013), but also as a violation of children’s rights to physical security (covell & howe, 2001, 2009; gershoff & bitensky, 2007; freeman & saunders, 2014; watkinson, 1999). to date, 53 countries have explicitly prohibited physical punishment of children in all settings, including the home.1 these prohibitions affirm children’s rights to physical security and are aimed at reducing the acceptability of physical punishment by delegitimizing it in the public mind (durrant & janson, 2005; smith & durrant, 2011). in canada, however, “punishment” is still distinguished from “abuse”. in 2004, canada’s supreme court upheld the section of the criminal code that allows parental use of corrective force, but narrowed the definition of “reasonable” force to that applied with the hand with an impact that is “transitory and trifling” (for analyses of this ruling see mcgillivray, 2011a, 2011b; mcgillivray & durrant, 2012; mcgillivray & milne, 2011; watkinson, 2006, 2009). the court assumed that it is the severity of physical punishment that is the fundamental issue in protecting children, failing to recognize that its implicit legitimization of physical punishment per se may be its most powerful message, perpetuating its perceived acceptability in the public mind (durrant, sigvaldason, & bednar, 2008; mcgillivray, 2011b). the court’s decision highlighted a fundamental theoretical question: will public approval of physical punishment be more effectively reduced by limiting its severity or by delegitimizing it altogether? we explored this question through a survey of young adults (first-year university students) who had recently exited childhood and were approaching or entering parenthood. these individuals are still close to the experiences of their childhoods, and are likely to have adopted the social construction of physical punishment typical of their generation. therefore, they provide an opportunity to examine the factors that influence their attitudes toward this practice in order to identify the most effective route to targeting and reducing its public approval. approval of physical punishment approval of physical punishment has been found to be a powerful predictor of its use — more so than parental mood (holden, coleman, & schmidt, 1995), anger (durrant, rosekrasnor, & broberg, 2003; socolar & stein, 1995) or childhood experience of physical punishment (durrant et al., 2003). it was found to be the most powerful of eight predictors of mothers’ use of physical punishment with their preschoolers (ateah & durrant, 2005). a key belief among mothers at high risk for using physical punishment is that physical punishment is necessary and instrumental for achieving parental goals (taylor, hamvas, & paris, 2011). 1 these countries are albania, andorra, argentina, austria, benin, bolivia, brazil, bulgaria, cabo verde, congo, costa rica, croatia, cyprus, denmark, estonia, finland, fyr macedonia, germany, greece, honduras, hungary, iceland, ireland, israel, kenya, latvia, liechtenstein, lithuania, luxembourg, malta, mongolia, montenegro, netherlands, new zealand, nicaragua, norway, paraguay, peru, poland, portugal, republic of moldova, romania, san marino, slovenia, south sudan, spain, sweden, togo, tunisia, turkmenistan, ukraine, uruguay, venezuela. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 130 approval also amplifies the impact of negative affect. for example, under conditions of frustration, approval of physical punishment fully mediates the relation between a history of physical punishment and the choice to use it (russa, rodriguez, & silvia, 2014). similarly, the association between parenting stress and child abuse potential appears to be moderated by the strength of parents’ beliefs in the value of physical punishment (crouch & behl, 2001). therefore, reducing approval of the practice is likely to be an effective prevention strategy. in the case of use of physical punishment, early modeling almost certainly plays a role (bandura, 1997). when a child is exposed to physical punishment, it enters the child’s behavioral repertoire. the more frequent the exposure, the fewer opportunities the child has to learn alternative responses. therefore, it is not surprising that frequency of exposure as a child predicts frequency of use as an adult (bailey, hill, oesterle, & hawkins, 2009; bower-russa, knutson & winebarger, 2001; wang & xing, 2014; woodward & fergusson, 2002). what is more difficult to explain is the common finding that childhood experience of physical punishment predicts adult approval of it (buntain-ricklefs, kemper, bell, & babonis, 1994; deater-deckard, lansford, dodge, pettit, & bates, 2003; gagné, tourigny, joly, & pouliot-lapointe, 2007; lunkenheimer, kittler, olson, & kleinburg, 2006; straus, 1994). it could be argued that this relationship defies logic. classical learning theory would predict that the association between physical punishment and pain should condition an avoidance response to the very idea of physical punishment. the experience of being burned by a candle in childhood likely will be used in adulthood to protect one’s child from the same pain; most parents would not draw on the experience of being burned to suggest that touching a candle is a good teaching tool. yet many parents will view the pain of physical punishment as providing a valuable and effective lesson that should be repeated with their own children. at the same time, many individuals who were physically punished as children neither repeat the experience with their own children nor approve of it. a simple modeling process cannot explain this variation in the relationship between childhood experience and adult approval. perhaps it is the physical characteristics of the experience that influence later approval of it. for example, a higher frequency of childhood exposure to physical punishment reduces exposure to other means of resolving conflict, potentially resulting in a lower level of parenting knowledge and a stronger belief that physical punishment is normal and non-abusive. indeed, the frequency of physical punishment experienced in childhood has been found to be related to adult approval of it (gagné at al., 2007). it could also be hypothesized that the severity of the child’s experience influences approval in adulthood. while the severity of reported physical punishment in childhood is related to approval ratings in young adulthood, this relationship appears to follow an inverted-u pattern; the weakest approval level has been found among those with either the least or the most severe childhood experiences (ateah & parkin, 2002; gagné et al., 2007; kelder, mcnamara, carlson, & lynn, 1991; murphy-cowan & stringer, 1999). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 131 yet a substantial proportion of individuals who experienced severe physical punishment do approve of it (bower & knutson, 1996; bower-russa et al., 2001; miller & knutson, 1997; orhon, ulukol, bilonger, & gulnar, 2006; rodriguez & sutherland, 1999). for example, in a 10year longitudinal study of more than 11,000 adults only 26% of those who experienced severe physical punishment (e.g., punching, kicking, choking) labeled themselves as maltreated (knutson & selner, 1994). therefore, it may not be the physical experience itself that shapes approval, but one’s cognitive interpretation of that experience; that is, an appraisal of one’s experiences as non-abusive may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of approval. further, the more one’s disciplinary experiences are perceived as deserved, the more likely one is to consider physical punishment to be appropriate and non-abusive (kelder et al., 1991; rausch & knutson, 1991). therefore, a second relevant cognitive dimension may be a perception that one’s childhood physical punishment was deserved. the experience of physical punishment also has an affective dimension. while it usually elicits negative affect, primarily sadness and anger (dobbs, smith, & taylor, 2006; saunders & godard, 2008), some children might experience positive affect. indeed, approval levels are higher in cultures where physical punishment is defined as an act of love than where it is viewed as an act of violence (durrant et al., 2003; gopaul-mcnichol, 1999; payne, 1989; statistics sweden, 1996). perhaps children who interpret physical punishment as an act of love are more likely to approve of it later in life than are children who experience it as rejection. physical punishment also has a contextual dimension. it might be accompanied by power assertion (e.g., additional punishment), emotional abuse (e.g., yelling), emotional support (e.g., apology), or induction (e.g., explanation). perhaps physical punishment accompanied by induction suggests to the child that it is intended for his or her own good, which might contribute to later approval of it. in the present study, we attempted to assess the relative contributions of young adults’ perceptions of the physical, cognitive, affective, and contextual dimensions of their childhood experiences of physical punishment to their current approval of this practice in order to identify routes to its prevention. on the basis of findings demonstrating that adult approval is not consistently related to the severity of one’s experiences (knutson & selner, 1994), we hypothesized that adults’ perceptions of the cognitive, affective, and contextual dimensions of their childhood experiences would be more powerful predictors of their current approval than their perceptions of the physical dimension of their experiences. if this is the case, reducing the severity of physical punishment will be less successful in reducing its approval than will shifting interpretations of the experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 132 method participants a sample of 480 first-year university students was drawn from three canadian provinces: nova scotia (cape breton university; 43.1%), manitoba (university of manitoba; 30.3%), and saskatchewan (university of saskatchewan and first nations university of canada; 35.6%). six participants’ data were incomplete and omitted from the analyses. the sample was drawn from the first-year university population because these individuals are likely to be leaving adolescence and entering young adulthood. therefore, they are chronologically close to both their childhood experiences and parenthood. the study sample of 474 students had a mean age of 21 years. most were non-parents (88.3%), female (73.1%), single (57.5%), and caucasian (76.0%). we acknowledge that this sample may not be representative of the population in terms of their characteristics, experiences, or attitudes. however, their accessibility made it possible to obtain a sample of considerable size across diverse regions of the country. measures the parenting and punishment questionnaire was developed for this study.2 the items were rationally derived to reflect constructs hypothesized or found to be relevant in the theoretical and empirical literature on physical punishment, as well as those often suggested to be important in the public media. the questionnaire measured participants’ approval of physical punishment, as well as their experience of its four dimensions (physical, cognitive, affective, contextual). it was approved by an ethics review committee at each participating university. each participant signed a consent form prior to completing the survey. the questionnaire required some retrospective reporting of childhood physical punishment experiences. while retrospective measures have limitations (e.g., inaccurate recall), there is evidence to suggest that these measures can still yield valid findings; for example, data obtained through a prospective longitudinal study were consistent with those obtained through retrospective self-reports (deater-deckard et al., 2003). retrospective reports of childhood experiences of parental aggression correspond with observers’ assessments of those same parental behaviors 10 years earlier, as long as the retrospective measures are objective and specific (prescott et al., 2000). thus, in the present study, our variables were operationalized using the parenting and punishment questionnaire. outcome variable: approval of physical punishment. respondents indicated their levels of agreement with each of 13 statements on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the statements reflected both positive (p) and negative (n) attitudes toward spanking (the n items were reverse scored): “parents know best how to deal with their own children” (p); “too much fuss is made about spanking, it’s no big deal” (p); “some children need to be spanked for their own good” (p); “there is never a good reason to 2 a copy of the complete questionnaire is available from the first author upon request. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 133 spank a child” (n); “spanking is harmful” (n); “there should be a law against spanking children” (n); “i was spanked and i am fine” (p); “i will spank my children if they need it” (p); “it is okay to spank as long as you do not harm the child” (p); “spanking teaches children right from wrong” (p); “all spanking is abusive” (n); “spanking is okay as long as it is done by the child’s parent” (p); “spanking does no good at all” (n). these items had strong internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .94). the mean of ratings on the 13 items constituted the approval score, with a possible range of 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating higher levels of approval. predictor variables: physical, cognitive, affective, and contextual dimensions of childhood physical punishment experience. the questionnaire provided the following standardized information to participants before they completed the items related to their physical punishment experiences: “we want to know about your experience of physical punishment as a child or teenager. physical punishment includes spanking, slapping, shaking, hitting with a hand or object, kicking, punching, making you stand still or kneel for a long time, and similar acts.” they were then asked to indicate whether they were physically punished at least once as a child or teenager by someone they lived with. to control for diverse intraindividual experiences across caregivers, those who indicated that they had been physically punished then were asked to indicate, of the people they lived with, all those who physically punished them at some time. they were then asked to indicate which one of those people physically punished them the most. they were asked to respond to all subsequent questions with reference to the individual who physically punished them the most. physical dimension. to assess the frequency with which they experienced physical punishment, respondents were asked to rate, on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (a lot), how often they experienced each of 10 forms of physical punishment: mild spanking with a hand, hard spanking with a hand, hitting with a fist, punching or choking, pushing against a wall, earor hair-pulling, hitting with an object, being forced to stand still for a long time, being forced to kneel on hard objects, and any other form of physical punishment. the ratings had adequate internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .75). the highest rating across the 10 items was used to define a frequency of physical punishment score, which could range from 0 to 4, with zero indicating no physical punishment and higher scores indicating higher frequencies of physical punishment. for descriptive purposes, participants who indicated being hit with objects were asked to specify the object(s) used. the assessment of physical punishment severity is challenging. a researcher’s placement of acts into a severity hierarchy might not coincide with a child’s subjective assessment of the same acts. further, “severity” is multidimensional, including aspects such as degree of force, intensity of pain, degree of emotional distress, and the act’s duration, as well as the verbal and nonverbal communications (e.g., facial expression) that accompany it. therefore, placing physically punitive acts into a hierarchy of severity on the basis of the act itself is overly simplistic and of questionable validity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 134 rather than imposing a severity hierarchy, we constructed a variable reflecting our research question: will limiting the severity of physical punishment or delegitimizing “mild spanking” be the more effective route to prevention? the three categories were “no physical punishment”, “mild spanking with the hand”, and “other physical punishment” (hard spanking with a hand, hitting with a fist, punching or choking, pushing against a wall, earor hair-pulling, hitting with an object, being forced to stand still for a long time, being forced to kneel on hard objects). “no physical punishment” received a severity score of 0 and “mild spanking with the hand” received a severity score of 1. those who reported experiencing “other physical punishment” received a score of 1 for each type they experienced at least rarely. therefore, the severity score could range from 0 to 10, with higher scores reflecting a greater number of “more severe” acts. three items measuring physical harm supplemented this measure of severity:  whether injury was ever sustained as a result of punishment (no = 0, yes = 1);  whether medical treatment was ever required as a result of punishment and, if so, how often (no = 0, once = 1, twice = 2, 3 or more times = 3); and  whether hospitalization was ever required as a result of punishment and, if so, how often (no = 0, once = 1, twice = 2, 3 or more times = 3). these three scores were summarized into a total physical harm score, which could range from 0 to 7. participants who did not experience physical punishment or who were not injured as a result of punishment received a physical harm score of 0. those who were injured but not medically treated or hospitalized received a physical harm score of 1. participants received an additional score of 1 for each medical treatment or hospitalization they reported. cognitive dimension. perceived abusiveness refers to participants’ beliefs regarding whether the physical punishment they experienced was within the normal range or was excessive. this construct was assessed with two items: “do you think that the punishment you received was too harsh?” (no = 0, yes = 1); and “do you think that you were physically abused?” (no = 0, yes = 1). the items had adequate internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .69). the mean score on the two items was used to construct a perceived abusiveness score that could range from 0 to 2, with higher scores indicating a stronger belief that the punishment was abusive. perceived deservedness was assessed on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) indicating agreement with the following statements: “i was only physically punished when i deserved it”; “the physical punishment i received was unfair”. the second item was reverse scored. the items had good internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .80). the mean score on the two items was used to define a perceived deservedness score (possible range: 1–5; higher scores indicate stronger belief that the punishment was deserved). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 135 affective dimension. short-term affective impact of physical punishment was assessed on a five-point scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (always) indicating the frequency with which participants felt each of a list of positive (relieved, okay, loved) and negative (sad, lonely, confused, scared, humiliated, angry, guilty) emotions immediately after the experience. the three positive emotion scores (cronbach’s α = .57) were averaged to create a positive short-term affective appraisal score (possible range: 0–4; higher scores indicate more positive short-term affective impact). the seven negative emotion scores (cronbach’s α = .80) were averaged to create a negative short-term affective appraisal score (possible range: 0–4; higher scores indicate more negative short-term affective impact). long-term affective impact of physical punishment was assessed on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) indicating agreement with the following three statements: “physical punishment showed me i was cared for”; “being physically punished improved my relationship with the person who punished me”; “being physically punished harmed my relationship with the person who punished me.” the third item was reverse scored. the ratings on the three items had adequate internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .75). participants’ scores were averaged to create a long-term affective appraisal score (possible range: 1–5; higher scores indicate more positive long-term affective impact). contextual dimension. respondents rated the frequency with which physical punishment was accompanied by nine other parental acts on a five-point scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (a lot). the acts represented induction (explaining why the child was being punished), power assertion (removing privileges, grounding, time out), emotional abuse (humiliating, yelling, threatening), or emotional support (expressing love, apologizing). scores were averaged within each category to yield inductive (possible range: 0–4), power assertive (possible range: 0–4, cronbach’s α = .64), emotionally abusive (possible range: 0–4, cronbach’s α = .81), and emotionally supportive (possible range: 0–4, cronbach’s α = .73) scores. higher scores indicate higher frequencies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 136 analysis the analysis was conducted in three stages. first, we generated descriptive statistics on the sample’s demographic characteristics, approval of physical punishment, and prevalence and types of childhood physical punishment experienced and who administered it, as well as each of the predictor variables. second, we examined the impact of experiencing childhood physical punishment on adult approval scores before and after accounting for participants’ demographic characteristics. third, focusing on the subsample who reported experiencing childhood physical punishment, we conducted multiple regression analyses to assess the relative contributions of the physical, cognitive, affective, and contextual dimensions of childhood physical punishment to adult approval. results descriptive statistics demographic variables. the three subsamples from manitoba, nova scotia, and saskatchewan differed demographically. gender differed significantly by site (2 = 23.18, df = 2, p < .001), with a smaller proportion of males in manitoba than in nova scotia and saskatchewan. differences in marital status (2 = 6.06, df = 2, p = .049) and parenthood status (2 = 31.62, df = 2, p < .001) indicated that the smallest proportion of singles and the largest proportion of parents lived in saskatchewan, followed by manitoba and nova scotia. the nova scotia subsample had a higher proportion of caucasian participants than the other two sites (2 = 29.25, df = 2, p < .001). approval of physical punishment. table 1 presents the proportions of respondents who strongly disagreed/disagreed, sort of agreed, and strongly agreed/agreed with each item on the approval of physical punishment scale. only one quarter (25.9%) agreed or strongly agreed that they will spank their children, but approximately 40% agreed or strongly agreed that spanking is acceptable as long as the child is not harmed. almost two thirds (63%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “i was spanked and i am fine.” however, approximately half (48.9%) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that all spanking is abusive, and 60.5% agreed or strongly agreed that there should be a law against spanking children. for each participant, an approval of physical punishment score was calculated using the average rating across the 13 items, with higher scores indicating higher levels of approval. the mean physical punishment approval score was 3.1 (possible range: 1–5; actual range: 1–5; sd = 0.9). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 137 table 1 approval of physical punishment (n = 474) item stongly disagree/ disagree (%) sort of agree (%) strongly agree/ agree (%) meana sd positive items parents know best how to deal with their own children. 10.4 47.2 42.4 3.4 0.8 too much fuss is made about spanking; it’s no big deal. 46.6 30.9 22.5 2.7 1.1 some children need to be spanked for their own good. 41.1 29.5 29.3 2.8 1.2 i was spanked and i am fine. 24.9 12.0 63.0 3.6 1.3 i will spank my children if they need it. 46.1 28.0 25.9 2.6 1.2 it is okay to spank as long as you do not harm the child. 30.2 28.3 41.4 3.1 1.2 spanking teaches children right from wrong. 40.9 32.9 26.2 2.7 1.1 spanking is okay as long as it is done by the child’s parent. 38.7 29.4 31.9 2.9 1.2 negative itemsb there is never a good reason to spank a child. 29.7 22.4 47.9 3.2 1.2 spanking is harmful. 35.9 33.1 31.0 2.9 1.1 there should be a law against spanking children. 17.3 22.2 48.9 3.6 1.2 all spanking is abusive. 29.5 21.5 48.9 3.2 1.3 spanking does no good at all. 25.1 21.3 53.6 3.3 1.2 amean agreement rating on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). bitems are reverse scored. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 138 frequency of physical punishment. most (73.4%) respondents reported that they had experienced physical punishment at least rarely (77.0% of males, 72.0% of females). among the subsample of 348 subjects who reported experiencing physical punishment, the most prevalent types were mild spanking with the hand (87.8%) and hard spanking with the hand (62.3%). approximately one fourth of the sample had had their ears or hair pulled (25.7%), been made to stand still for a long time (23.1%), or been pushed against a wall (22.5%). smaller minorities had been hit with a fist (12.5%), punched or choked (9.9%), or made to kneel on hard objects (4.8%). “other” forms of physical punishment (15.1%) were specified as slapping on the face (30% of “other” responses), grabbing (30%), kicking (20%), throwing the child outside (10%), and throwing cold water on the child (10%). one third of those who were physically punished had been hit with objects: belts (19% of objects specified), wooden spoons (17.7%), shoes (11.4%), branches (10.1%), and brooms (8.9%). also reported were switches, paddles, phones, newspapers, hairbrushes, remote controls, spatulas, tv cords, extension cords, metal bars, butter knives, drinking glasses, baby bottles, forks, pieces of plastic, pieces of conveyor belt, chairs, books, rulers, plates, canes, batteries, and “any object they could grab at the time” (each constituted 1.3% to 3.8% of objects specified). people who administered physical punishment. when asked to identify all those who had physically punished them, respondents identified their mothers (81.3%), fathers (73.6%), siblings (19.8%), grandmothers (6.0%), grandfathers (3.4%), aunts (4.0%), uncles (2.9%), stepmothers (1.7%), stepfathers (4.3 %), foster mothers (1.7%), foster fathers (1.7%), and other (a boarder, people at institutions; 2.3%). when asked which person had physically punished them the most, respondents indicated that this person was the father in 46.3% of cases, the mother in 44.8%, and siblings in 4.4%. physical dimension of physical punishment. each of the 10 types of physical punishment was rarely or never experienced by a majority of participants, with the exception of mild spanking with the hand, which was experienced by 63.5% at least rarely (table 2). the frequency score across all 10 types of physical punishment was 0 for 26.6%, 1 for 23.4%, 2 for 34.2%, 3 for 10.8%, and 4 for 5.1% of the participants. the mean frequency score was 1.4 (sd = 1.1). among the 348 participants who experienced physical punishment, 22.1 % experienced only mild spanking with the hand; 32.5% experienced one or more other types of physical punishment; 17.0% experienced two; 13.2% experienced three; and 15.2% experienced four. the participants who did not experience any physical punishment received a severity score of zero. the mean severity score was 2.1 (possible range: 0–10, sd = 1.9). the majority of participants had not sustained injury (90.5%) and very few required medical treatment (2.1%) or hospitalization (0.8%) as a result of punishment (table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 139 table 2 frequency of physical punishment (n=474) type of physical punishment experienced never (%) rarely (%) sometimes (%) quite often/ a lot (%) meana sd mild spanking with hand only 36.5 26.2 31.2 6.1 1.1 1.0 other physical punishment hard spanking with hand 56.1 24.9 14.3 4.6 0.7 0.9 ear or hair pulled 81.6 9.1 7.4 1.9 0.3 0.7 made to stand still 83.8 8.6 4.0 3.6 0.3 0.8 pushed against wall 84.2 7.8 6.8 1.3 0.3 0.7 hit with fist 91.1 4.2 3.2 1.5 0.2 0.5 hit with an object 75.3 11.6 9.3 3.8 0.4 0.9 punched or choked 93.0 3.2 2.7 1.1 0.1 0.5 made to kneel on hard objects 96.6 1.5 0.6 1.3 0.1 0.4 any other form 94.5 2.1 1.5 1.9 0.1 0.5 amean frequency rating on a scale of 0 (never) to 4 (a lot). table 3 injury, medical treatment, and hospitalization after physical punishment (n=474) score % of sample (n) injury no 90.5 (429) yes 9.5 (45) medical treatment never 97.9 (464) once 1.7 (8) twice 0.2 (1) three or more times 0.2 (1) hospitalization never 99.2 (470) once 0.6 (3) twice 0.2 (1) three or more times 0.0 (0) total physical harm scorea 0 90.5 (429) 1 7.4 (35) 2 1.1 (5) 3 0.6 (3) 4 0.2 (1) 5 0.2 (1) 6 0.0 (0) 7 0.0 (0) asum of injury, medical treatment, and hospitalization scores. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 140 cognitive dimension of physical punishment. among those who reported childhood physical punishment, the mean perceived abusiveness score was 0.2 (sd = 0.3; possible range: 0–1); 22.7% believed that their punishment was too harsh and 11.5% believed they were physically abused. the mean perceived deservedness score was 3.7 (possible range: 1–5; sd = 1.1). the mean score on the item “i was only physically punished when i deserved it” was 3.6 (sd = 1.3; possible range: 1–5). the mean score on the item “the physical punishment i received was unfair” was 2.3 (sd = 1.2; possible range: 1–5). the latter item was reverse scored such that a higher score indicates a stronger belief that the punishment was fair. affective dimension of childhood physical punishment. participants’ affective impact appraisals were more negative than positive (table 4). among the short-term positive affective impact items “okay” had the highest mean score. the short-term negative impact items with the highest means were “sad” and “angry”. the long-term affective impact item with the largest contribution was “being physically punished harmed my relationship with the person who punished me.”, with which one-quarter of participants indicated some level of agreement. when this item was reverse scored its mean became the highest (6 − 2 = 4) among the three long-term affective impact items. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 141 table 4 shortand long-term affective impact of physical punishment (n=348) measure never/ rarely (%) sometimes (%) usually/ always (%) mean sd short-term affective impact: positive items relieved 81.9 12.0 6.1 0.6 1.0 okay 45.2 29.7 25.1 1.6 1.2 loved 56.7 21.3 21.9 1.4 1.3 total positive short-term impact score 1.2 0.9 short-term affective impact: negative items sad 25.5 28.7 45.8 2.2 1.2 lonely 64.9 20.0 15.1 1.1 1.3 confused 66.8 20.4 12.8 1.1 1.2 scared 59.5 19.8 20.7 1.3 1.3 humiliated 69.1 13.7 17.2 1.1 1.3 angry 22.7 24.1 53.2 2.4 1.3 guilty 44.6 29.4 25.9 1.7 1.3 total negative short-term impact score 1.6 0.9 strongly disagree/ disagree (%) sort of agree (%) strongly agree/ agree (%) long-term affective impact items physical punishment showed me i was cared for. 45.8 32.9 21.3 2.6 1.1 being physically punished improved my relationship with the person who punished me. 58.0 26.7 15.4 2.4 1.1 being physically punished harmed my relationship with the person who punished me. 74.6 10.2 15.2 2.0 1.3 total long-term affective impact score 3.0 1.3 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 142 contextual dimension of childhood physical punishment. induction was the most common context to accompany physical punishment at least rarely (88.4% of cases; m = 2.53). it was followed by emotional support (m = 1.58), power assertion (m = 1.53), and emotional abuse (m = 1.49). the acts most likely to accompany physical punishment at least rarely were yelling (93.1%), explaining (88.6%), and removing privileges (87.8%). see table 5. table 5 disciplinary contexts accompanying physical punishment (n=348) context never (%) rarely (%) sometimes (%) quite often/ a lot (%) meana sd induction explaining 11.6 9.9 20.9 57.6 2.5 1.3 power assertion removing privileges 12.2 19.2 38.3 30.3 2.0 1.1 grounding 29.6 14.5 22.6 33.2 1.7 1.4 time out 56.5 15.3 16.5 11.8 0.9 1.2 emotional abuse humiliating 61.4 14.9 14.9 8.8 0.7 1.1 yelling 6.9 14.4 32.0 46.7 2.4 1.2 threatening 40.1 18.6 20.1 21.2 1.3 1.3 emotional support expressing love 30.2 19.2 16.9 33.7 1.7 1.5 apologizing 33.9 18.4 23.7 24.0 1.5 1.3 amean frequency rating on a scale from 0 (never) to 4 (a lot). regression analysis — full sample the mean physical punishment approval score was significantly higher among participants who reported being physically punished than among those who did not (m difference = 0.770, p < .001). approval scores did not differ based on site, age, parental status, marital status, or ethnic identity. this was at least partially due to the fact that some demographic characteristics were not adequately represented in the study sample. the only demographic variable to yield a significant difference was gender. males obtained a higher mean approval score than females (mean difference = 0.288, p = .0019). the regression model including gender and childhood physical punishment experience explained 16% of the variation in approval scores. among the predictor variables, only the physical dimension of physical punishment could be quantified for participants who did not experience any physical punishment. therefore, we examined frequency, severity, and harm scores as measures of physical punishment experience. the relationship between frequency and adult approval was quadratic (concave), with higher approval scores among participants who experienced moderate frequency levels than among those who experienced low or high frequencies. the regression model that included gender international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 143 (p = .001) and frequency (p < .0001) with a quadratic term (p < .0001) explained 18.5% of the variation in approval of physical punishment. the harm score was more informative than the severity score in explaining the variation in approval. adding severity increased the adjusted r2 to 19.5%, while adding harm increased it to 21.6% (p < .0001). therefore, the best model included gender, frequency, and harm (table 6). table 6 results of the multiple regression analyses for the full sample (n = 474) variable b se b β p (intercept) 2.69 0.09 0.22 <0.0001 gender: female -0.27 0.08 -0.30 0.0012 frequency 0.76 0.09 0.97 <0.0001 frequency2 -0.14 0.03 -0.64 <0.0001 harm -0.36 0.08 -0.20 <0.0001 note: adjusted r2 = 0.216. regression analysis — physically punished subsample the impacts of the physical, cognitive, affective, and contextual dimensions of childhood physical punishment on the approval scores of physically punished participants were investigated using multiple regression. we included gender as a significant demographic variable. the fitted regression model (table 7) explained 34% of the variation in approval. as in the full sample, males obtained a higher mean approval score than females. frequency had a linear effect on the approval scores in the physically punished subsample, and it was the most significant physical dimension predictor (p = .052). of the cognitive dimension predictors, perceived deservedness of physical punishment was highly significant (p < .0001). the only significant affective dimension predictor was long-term affective impact appraisal (p < .0001). none of the cognitive dimension variables contributed anything further to the model. it is important to note that the predictor variables showed some dependencies within and across dimensions (table 8). the correlations confirmed that long-term affective impact appraisal and perceived deservedness were the most significant predictors of approval. the correlations among most predictors were weak to moderate. however, long-term affective impact appraisal, perceived deservedness, perceived abusiveness, and emotional abuse showed stronger correlations among themselves and with other variables. nevertheless, our checks of the model in table 7 did not indicate any multicollinearity issues (the highest variance inflation factor was 3.2). thus, the best regression model included gender, frequency, deservedness, and long-term affective impact appraisal. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 144 table 7 results of multiple regression analyses for physically punished subsample (n = 348) variable b se b β p (intercept) 1.43 0.26 0.22 <0.0001 gender: female -0.25 0.08 -0.31 0.0036 physical dimension frequency 0.11 0.05 0.11 0.0518 severity 0.04 0.03 0.08 0.2170 harm -0.10 0.08 -0.07 0.2211 cognitive dimension abusiveness -0.13 0.19 -0.05 0.4972 deservedness 0.29 0.06 0.40 <0.0001 affective dimension short-term negative impact appraisal 0.06 0.06 0.07 0.3041 short-term positive impact appraisal -0.08 0.05 -0.09 0.0983 long-term impact appraisal 0.25 0.06 0.29 <0.0001 contextual dimension induction 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.5014 power assertion -0.07 0.04 -0.08 0.1122 emotional abuse 0.05 0.05 0.07 0.3030 emotional support -0.06 0.03 -0.09 0.0861 note. adjusted r2 = 0.340. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 145 table 8 correlations among predictor and outcome variables in the physically punished subsample (n = 348) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 approval frequency severity harm abusive deserved short-term negative short-term positive long-term affective induction power assertion emotional abuse emotional support 1 1.00 0.01 -0.09 -0.23 -0.38 0.52 -0.24 0.13 0.49 0.24 0.01 -0.21 0.03 2 0.01 1.00 0.56 0.36 0.38 -0.26 0.36 -0.09 -0.16 -0.09 0.29 0.45 -0.02 3 -0.09 0.56 1.00 0.46 0.45 -0.43 0.43 -0.02 -0.29 -0.22 0.19 0.52 -0.16 4 -0.23 0.36 0.46 1.00 0.57 -0.45 0.31 -0.17 -0.33 -0.24 0.03 0.35 -0.13 5 -0.38 0.38 0.45 0.57 1.00 -0.72 0.58 -0.26 -0.62 -0.35 0.02 0.52 -0.18 6 0.52 -0.26 -0.43 -0.45 -0.72 1.00 -0.52 0.31 0.73 0.47 0.04 -0.54 0.24 7 -0.24 0.36 0.43 0.31 0.58 -0.52 1.00 -0.18 -0.47 -0.24 0.22 0.62 -0.03 8 0.13 -0.09 -0.02 -0.17 -0.26 0.31 -0.18 1.00 0.39 0.31 0.06 -0.24 0.39 9 0.49 -0.16 -0.29 -0.33 -0.62 0.73 -0.47 0.39 1.00 0.48 0.04 -0.52 0.28 10 0.24 -0.09 -0.22 -0.24 -0.35 0.47 -0.24 0.31 0.48 1.00 0.22 -0.33 0.43 11 0.01 0.29 0.19 0.03 0.02 0.04 0.22 0.06 0.04 0.22 1.00 0.19 0.18 12 -0.21 0.45 0.52 0.35 0.52 -0.54 0.62 -0.24 -0.52 -0.33 0.19 1.00 -0.16 13 0.03 -0.02 -0.16 -0.13 -0.18 0.24 -0.03 0.39 0.28 0.43 0.18 -0.16 1.00 note. abusive = abusiveness; deserved = deservedness; short-term negative = short-term negative impact appraisal; short-term positive = short-term positive impact appraisal; long-term affective = long-term affective impact appraisal. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 146 discussion the purpose of this study was to explore the theoretical question of whether the approval of physical punishment would be most effectively addressed through strategies focused on reducing the severity of physical punishment or strategies focused on transforming the legitimacy of physical punishment per se. our findings demonstrated that the severity of childhood physical punishment was not strongly related to its approval in adulthood. the best predictor of approval was the degree to which childhood physical punishment experiences were perceived as deserved, followed by their long-term emotional impact. interestingly, the context of childhood physical punishment experiences did not predict approval, suggesting that parental actions accompanying physical punishment are less important than children’s cognitive and affective appraisals of their experiences. the belief that physical punishment is deserved appears to be an important factor in approval of physical punishment. if defining physical punishment as deserved strengthens approval, and approval strengthens the likelihood of physical punishment use (holden et al., 1995), redefining physical punishment from an act deserved by the child to an act that is the responsibility of the aggressor will be an important component of prevention strategies. while considerable progress has been made in establishing that other forms of physical aggression (i.e., peer-to-peer aggression, adult-to-adult aggression, stranger-to-child aggression) are never deserved, many victims of parent-to-child aggression believe that they deserved it — even among a university sample. therefore, a key element of prevention will be to shift this perception. it is interesting that the only form of interpersonal aggression that is called “punishment” is that directed by adults towards children. the implicit assumption underlying this label is that the child did something that merited the adult’s aggression. when a child hits another child, this is called “aggression” or “bullying”, which places the responsibility for the action on the aggressor, not on the victim. the same can be said of “partner violence” and “dating violence”. it is only in the case of adult-to-child aggression that we use language implying that the act was deserved. a study carried out in nine countries revealed that parents’ perceptions of physical punishment were key predictors of their use of it (lansford et al., 2015). its authors concluded that policies aimed at altering parents’ perceptions of physical punishment as normative and needed have the potential to change behavior at the cultural level. laws like those in canada, the united states, and the united kingdom that merely attempt to limit the severity of physical punishment are counter-productive to this process. rather than redefining physical punishment as an illegitimate act of aggression, such laws target only its severity which, as the present findings suggest, is unlikely to contribute to attitude shifts. in fact, canada’s law explicitly affirms that mild corporal punishment is “justified”; that is, deserved by the child. an analysis of public responses to the 2004 decision of the supreme court of canada, which did not alter the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 127–153 147 wording of section 43, found that it was interpreted by many as confirmation that physical punishment is a justifiable act (durrant et al., 2008). in contrast, a growing number of countries are redefining all physical punishment as violence. the present findings indicate that this approach to legal reform is likely to be more effective in transforming social norms. in germany, for example, where physical punishment was prohibited in 2000, parents have become more likely to define slaps and smacks as “violent” and “mild” physical punishment has declined (federal ministry for family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth, & federal ministry of justice, 2003). in sweden, where physical punishment was prohibited in 1979, only 11% of swedes were “positively inclined toward even the mildest forms of physical punishment” by 1996 and the practice had become extremely rare (durrant & janson, 2005; statistics sweden, 1996). by 2011, 92% of swedish parents believed that it is wrong to slap a child even if the parent is very angry, and only 3% reported hitting their child in the previous year (janson, jernbro, & långberg, 2011). in a comparative study of five european nations, parents’ knowledge of physical punishment’s legality had a direct effect on their definitions of violence and approval of physical punishment, as well as on the frequency of their use of severe physical punishment (bussman, erthal, & schroth, 2011). the present study has several limitations. first, although participants came from several regions of the country, the sample was not randomly drawn so the findings cannot be reliably generalized to the canadian population. second, 73% of the participants were female and 76% were caucasian, so there may be gender and cultural biases in participants` responses. third, few participants experienced physical injury or needed medical treatment as a result of physical punishment so the range of scores on the physical harm scale was severely restricted. fourth, even the best regression model accounted for less than 35% of the variance in approval scores, indicating that additional aspects of childhood physical punishment and its approval merit investigation. nonetheless, the present findings do strongly suggest that perception of child physical punishment as deserved is a more powerful factor in its approval than the 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(2009). corporal punishment and education: oh canada! spare us! in m. manley-casimir (ed.), the courts, the charter and the schools: the impact of the charter of rights and freedoms on educational policy and practice (pp. 181–199). toronto, on: university of toronto press. woodward, l. j., & fergusson, d. m. (2002). parent, child, and contextual predictors of childhood physical punishment. infant & child development, 11, 213–235. doi:10.1002/icd.252 zolotor, a. j., theodore, a. d., chang, j. j., berkoff, m. c., & runyan, d. k. (2008). speak softly — and forget the stick. american journal of preventive medicine, 35, 364-369. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.06.031 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2010.00633.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-013-9574-1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872806065329 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/icd.252 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2008.06.031 microsoft word 08 school_importance.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120231 how important is a school? examining the impact of remoteness from a school on canadian communities’ attraction and retention of school-age children karen foster, ray bollman, and hannah main abstract: many canadian communities, especially rural communities, are concerned about youth outmigration as a cause of population decline, which is associated with fewer services and amenities. proponents of keeping underattended schools open argue that removing a school from the community means that fewer families will want to live there, and that more families will consider leaving. others view school closures as a rational response to population decline. still other perspectives complicate the correlation between schools and population, noting phenomena such as children “learning to leave” and “place attachment” that modulate the temptation to move away. this paper offers an empirical test of discursive connections between school closures and mobilities by studying the population change of school-age children in canadian census subdivisions indexed by distance to the nearest school. based on this method, we conclude that there is a positive correlation between the school-age population in a community and proximity to a school in that community. although our data do not answer the question of whether school closures cause population decline, or such a decline causes school closures, or both, we provide a quantitative foundation on which to ask it. keywords: schools; education; canada; rural; mobilities karen foster phd (the corresponding author) is associate professor of sociology, canada research chair in sustainable rural futures for atlantic canada, and director of the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university, rm. 1128, marion mccain arts and social sciences building, 6135 university ave., halifax, ns b3h 4r2. email: karen.foster@dal.ca ray bollman is a research associate at the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university, rm. 1128, marion mccain arts and social sciences building, 6135 university ave., halifax, ns b3h 4r2 email: rayd.bollman@sasktel.net hannah main maes is a phd candidate in sociology and research assistant at the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university, rm. 1128, marion mccain arts and social sciences building, 6135 university ave., halifax, ns b3h 4r2 email: hannah.main@dal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 13  wherever populations are shrinking, aging, or stagnating, youth outmigration is a problem that policymakers try to solve. the presence of young people in communities is important for a variety of reasons. some of these are symbolic — a youthful population is seen as having a future. others are pragmatic — young people grow into adults who keep the community running by holding down jobs, doing volunteer work, and pumping money into local businesses and tax bases. there is thus significant interest in understanding how areas with shrinking and aging communities can create employment opportunities, amenities, and infrastructure in order to retain and attract young people, whether as children in young families or as young adults starting independent lives. one point of interest is to understand why young people raised in such communities have tended to leave them. scholarship from around the world has been fairly consistent in categorizing the causes and consequences of youth outmigration. it has tended to focus on rural communities, which are more likely to be shrinking and aging compared to larger towns and cities. while “poorer quality of life is not an inevitable outcome of rural depopulation” (peters, 2019, p. 637), a high rate of rural outmigration, especially of young people, has been found to have deleterious economic, social, political, and cultural effects on the communities left behind. when agglomeration, decline, or restructuring impact local industry and commerce (alasia, 2010), communities face a loss of amenities like churches, banks, and health centres; a “growing dependency by residents on neighbouring market towns and cities” (stockdale, 2004, p. 187); and a host of social impacts, including business succession planning challenges, school closures, and the burden of volunteering falling on older residents (harling-stalker & phyne, 2014). in canada, concerns about youth outmigration have at times crystallized around school closures and consolidation (corbett, 2014; geraghty, 2017; oncescu, 2014; schollie et al, 2017). thousands of schools have been permanently closed in canadian communities since the 1990s, often despite considerable outcry from the people affected (seasons et al., 2017). in almost every case of a rural school closure, the community’s population had been declining for decades until, finally, the number of students diminished to the point where authorities felt closure was necessary. at the centre of the community response to school closures in canada is the belief that schools are more than just sites for education. they are at the “heart” of communities, contributing to identity, belonging, volunteerism, and sociality (gollam, 2017). but they are also generally believed to play a critical role in youth attraction, retention, and outmigration: the closure of a school may easily be interpreted as a sign that the community itself is dying (šūpule & søholt, 2019). it is logical that young families would take the presence or absence of a school into consideration when deciding where to live, and that a lack of schools in a community might lead a family with children to move away. this logic is partially backed up by empirical research on youth mobilities, in canada and elsewhere, most of it qualitative. such research, which is discussed later in this article, shows that the presence or absence of a school affects how young people and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 14  their families regard their communities, and whether they are able to envisage a future in them. but significantly less research has been done worldwide, and none in canada, to quantify the impact a school has on youth mobility. in this article, we seek to begin this work in canada by linking a statistics canada index of remoteness to schools by census subdivision (csd) to census data on csd-level population changes. we ask whether there has been any correlation between a community’s access to an elementary or secondary school and its loss or gain of young people between the 2011 and 2016 censuses. we begin by reviewing research on the role of schools in youth retention, attraction, and outmigration. we next introduce our methodology, explaining the calculation and rationale behind the school accessibility indices, then present the findings from our analysis. we conclude by connecting the findings to our initial question: is there a correlation between access to public schools and the size of the change in the school-age children population at the community level? mobility and residential choice over the last fifty years, many rural canadian communities have suffered a gradual loss of jobs, which has in turn driven population decline. the rural problematic (hallstrom, 2018), at least in canada, stems in part from the relative increase in the value of human time relative to the price of capital (i.e., machines), which means that enterprises have an incentive to substitute machines for labour. rural communities are able to sell more and more of their products (especially agricultural) and services with less and less labour. thus, in order to grow, or even maintain, their workforces, these communities must find something new to produce. but not all communities are able to add to their existing products and services. in time, the decline in employment drives a decline in population (foster, 2018). accordingly, when young adults from rural communities in canada and elsewhere make choices about where to live, they have been found to move away in search of rewarding, stable, well-paid employment (cairns, 2014; power, 2017; sherman, 2014) including specific jobs, such as those in the so-called “creative class”, that are perceived to be more plentiful in cities (florida, 2003). at the same time, scholars have increasingly emphasized that employment is not necessarily the most important factor (artz & yu, 2011; cairns, 2017; halfacree, 2004; ní laoire, 2000; rérat, 2014) in young people’s mobility decisions, which intersect with considerations and events that are best understood as biographical (cairns, 2017). numerous studies have revealed the powerful influence of “place attachment” on whether young people stay, go, or come back (artz & yu, 2011; cassidy & mcgrath, 2015; janning & volk, 2017; leyshon, 2008; mcmillan lequieu, 2017; morse & mudgett, 2017; pedersen, 2018; simões et al., 2019; wiborg, 2004). young families, whose mobilities are mostly determined by parents, have been found to move in search of good jobs, but also to prioritize safe, quiet places to raise children, and to move or return to places to which they feel some attachment or have family and friendship ties (cook & cuervo, 2020; eacott & sonn, 2006). if there is one sentiment that characterizes contemporary scholarship on youth outmigration, it is a resistance to focusing solely on the economic factors of migration over the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 15  many noneconomic factors that shape young peoples’ mobilities (halfacree, 2004; malatest & associates, 2002). the outmigration of older youth is also only one piece of the complex mobility equation. economics professor charles tiebout proposed a model of local expenditures in 1956, arguing that people reveal their preferences for local public services — including schools — by choosing to live in places with the services they want (tiebout, 1956). the notion that residents “vote with their feet”, choosing a community for its level of public services, is still persuasive. tiebout’s model was tested empirically by gramlich and rubinfeld (1982) in michigan, where they found that this mechanism impacted urban more than rural areas. tiebout’s theory is undergirded by the assumption that there is no cost of moving for households; however, one possible reason for the urban–rural difference is that the actual cost of moving from district to district in rural areas is likely higher, meaning that families are less likely to move for a change in services. banzhaf and walsh (2008) tested whether tiebout’s theory applied in the case of one specific public good, namely air quality. they found that changes in air quality in communities are correlated with migration to or from these communities. these, along with other empirical tests of tiebout’s theory (epple & sieg, 1999; hoyt & rosenthal, 1997), confirm the real estate industry cliché that when it comes to choosing a place to live, there’s nothing more important than location, location, location. however, the difference between locations in the united states is shrinking: in a study of u.s. municipalities from 1870 to 1990, rhode and strumpf (2003) found “a wide variety of preference and policy variables indicate that communities (as measured by municipalities and counties) have become more alike” (p. 1672). while we do not know for certain if canada has seen a similar convergence, we may assume that preferences regarding public services may sometimes be a factor driving residential choice, but that the differences between public services in different communities may often be too minor to play an important role. schools and the migration of parents with children there is some evidence that the availability of a good local school is a contributing factor when young people elect to either remain in or return to their home area (pedersen & gram, 2018), when young families’ choose a place to settle with their children (wulff et al., 2008, p. 121; schollie et al., 2017, p. 17), and when businesses decide where to set up shop (mcgranahan et al., 2010; schollie et al., 2017, p. 17). on the other hand, some studies question the link between school closures and outmigration. egelund and laustsen (2006) found through case studies of 30 danish communities where schools had closed that the expected “devastating effects” were rare: in the majority of communities with the most significant population declines, the school closures were a consequence, not a cause, whereas in thriving communities, the schools had been repurposed as community spaces. likewise, using data from rural germany, barakat (2014) found no evidence to support expectations of dramatic population decline following school closures. a more recent study in portugal by marques et al. (2020) reported similar findings, leading the researchers to conclude that decisions about school closures should be made on the basis of the extant population’s quality of life, and not with the goal of attracting or retaining population. elshof et international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 16  al. (2015) found more complicated patterns: their data from the netherlands showed that villages without primary schools and villages whose primary school closed during the study period had higher rates of family outmigration than did villages with primary schools, but all villages had similar rates of family inmigration. in other words, the absence of a primary school was correlated with families moving out, but did not affect the flow of new families moving in. if families do not simply choose a community on whether it has a school, they might do so based on quality of the schooling available to its residents. literature on the correlation between residential choice and school quality is lacking in the canadian context, but research elsewhere, even in places where schools are differently governed and funded, can provide useful insights. there is a significant body of such literature coming from the united states (e.g., bayer et al., 2007; clapp et al., 2008; gehrke et al., 2019; rothstein, 2006). brunner and colleagues (2012), in a study of u.s. school districts, found that the introduction of interdistrict school choice — the possibility of choosing a school that is not the nearest to your house — resulted in an increase of population density and housing values. the implication is that when there are more schools to choose from in an area, it becomes a more attractive place for families to live. similarly, when measuring school quality according to test scores, bayoh and colleagues (2006) found that in columbus, ohio, school quality was positively correlated with residential choice. however, as myers and gearin (2001) argued, the importance of school quality when it comes to residential preferences declines as people get older. for young families, the presence of a good local school is important when choosing a place to live, but this is not generally true for others. the presence or absence of a local school can also have effects on long-term mobility: the presence of a good school in the community may affect not just the mobility decisions of parents choosing where they want to raise their children, but also the mobility decisions of those children when they have grown up. this is because schools can foster place attachment for both adults and children. community schools are places where children learn alongside their neighbours; parents and other community members can volunteer; and some community members find stable employment as teachers and support staff, as studies in the netherlands (elshof & bailey, 2015), the united states (howley & howley, 2006; lyson, 2002), new zealand (kearns et al., 2009), and canada (schollie et al., 2017) have shown. this research, and public discussions about school closures, remind us that the presence of a school in a community is perceived by residents to benefit the whole community, not just children (tetanish, 2013), and schools become part of the community social fabric. if students are transported outside of their local community for school from a young age, if their parents rarely visit the school, and if their teachers do not live in the same community as the students, their place attachment to the community may suffer. it may be easier to leave a place that you have been used to leaving since your schooling began. qualitative research with rural young people in europe and in the united states has also shown that they consider leaving town after high school to be just another part of the life course (nugin, 2014; sharp et al., 2020; smith & sage, 2014; stockdale & catney, 2014), particularly if the next step is post-secondary education. the fact that most post-secondary institutions, especially international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 17  universities, are in urban centres, means that rural youth are unlikely to be able to attend college or university while staying in place, and thus that many canadian young adults migrate away from their home communities to pursue further education after high school (walsh, 2009; 2013). on the surface, this tendency is straightforward but it is important to note that although proximity to a post-secondary institution is indeed consequential, participation is also mediated by socioeconomic and other factors. for example, one recent study found that young people from the northern parts of canada’s provinces who live farther from a college or university are less likely to attend, but their parents’ income and encouragement mediate this “locational effect” (zarifa et al, 2018). an older canadian study found that distance did not determine overall post-secondary enrolment, but young people at greater distance from universities (and typically more rural) were more likely to enrol in a community college (frenette, 2002; looker, 2010). on one level, distance thus induces a closing off of certain opportunities. at the same time, since community colleges typically focus on “training” workers for local, specific jobs, this choice of post-secondary education by rural students might facilitate their being able to stay in the rural community while qualifying for a better paying job. there is also a deeper, more subjective process taking place. for rural youth, social mobility is symbolically linked to geographic mobility: according to canadian sociologist michael corbett (2010), rural public schools are largely responsible for driving mobility through “a complex of routine practices which privilege and valorize an exodus from the locale” (p. 236). as he wrote, “rather than support place-based ways of knowing and established social, economic and cultural networks in rural and coastal communities, the school has typically stood in opposition to local lifeworlds” (2007, p. 10; see also huang et al., 1996). in other words, the rural school, with its standardized curriculum, prepares students for a future away from their rural hometown. the result is that rural students “learn to leave”, as the pedagogy of rural schools is reinforced by rural parents, most of whom encourage students to obtain postsecondary education and subtly convey the message that to move out geographically is to move up socially (looker & naylor, 2009; huang et al., 1996). the loss of young people who leave for further education is experienced not only as a general loss of population, but also as a “brain drain” that sees the most educated leave their communities, depriving those places of valuable skills and experience (hillier et al., 2020; sherman & sage, 2011) — although it is important to note that there is lower demand for higher skilled workers in rural communities (alasia & magnusson, 2005). thus, there is a paradox in the literature around schools and youth mobilities. as discussed above, community schools play a demonstrable role in encouraging and linking social and spatial mobility — the “learning to leave” effect — but in other studies schools have also been found to be critical for attracting families with youth and retaining them in the community. as tieken (2014)found in arkansas, “a school — and especially a school district — gives a rural community state money and creates leadership positions: it provides resources, the ability to control them, and a voice” (p. 158). studying school closures in chicago, ewing (2018) concluded that “in losing a school one loses a version of oneself — a self understood to be a member of a community, living international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 18  and learning in relation to other community members” (p. 131). indeed, one study in latvia and sweden concurred, stating that, because schools so often serve as multidimensional community hubs, “in the context of depopulation, people often see the closing of rural schools as a sign that rural areas are ‘dying’ ” (šūpule & søholt, 2019). there are some grounds, therefore, to assume that schools are important to rural communities for attracting and retaining parents of young children, even as, at the same time, they prepare rural high school students to leave. but extant research does not uniformly support this assumption. indeed, the weight of evidence suggests that schools follow population trends rather than the converse. moreover, there is little quantitative research on the roles of schools in youth mobilities. there is thus value in inquiry that focuses on actual population movement rather than perceptions and mobility intentions, and that examines a large number of cases for patterns and correlations rather than relying on in-depth qualitative interviews with fewer cases. the present article takes up this challenge, using a school remoteness index, developed by alasia et al. (2017) for all csds in canada, to check for correlations between remoteness to schools and population changes at the csd level. the index, and our methodological approach, are discussed next. methodology we use the index of remoteness to a school (for elementary and secondary education separately) that was calculated by alasia et al. (2017). the index is calculated at the csd level. in official canadian usage, a csd is an incorporated town or municipality (as determined by provincial and territorial legislation), or an area treated equivalently for statistical purposes (e.g., first nations reserve1, unorganized territory). the index, which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0, is based on the road distance from each csd without a school to the nearest csd with a school. each csd with a school was assigned a remoteness index of zero. csds without schools and not connected to a road network were not assigned an accessibility index. for all other csds, the first step was to calculate the distance to the nearest school as a ratio of the distance to the most remote school. we took the index of remoteness to elementary and secondary education for every csd in canada, and matched it with csd-level population counts for young people (aged 0–19) from the 2011 and 2016 censuses. the population counts were stratified into three cohorts by age in years, with ranges 0 to 4, 5 to 9, and 10 to 14 in 2011 (and, accordingly, 5 to 9, 10 to 14, and 15 to 19 in 2016). we then calculated the change in the size of each cohort between 2011 and 2016. for example, we counted the number in the youngest cohort (0–4) in 2011, and subtracted it from the number in that cohort in 2016 (when they were 5–9). it is important to note that we are not counting the same individuals for each census; rather, we are simply looking at the net change in the number of individuals. some of the 0-to-4-year-olds from the 2011 count may well have taken part as 5 1data on accessibility for first nation reserves were not available at the time of writing due to the need for further verification of its accuracy, and are thus excluded from our analysis. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 19  to-9-year-olds in 2016, but some of them would have moved away and been replaced by different individuals of the same age. an increase in cohort size from 2011 to 2016, then, should be interpreted as an indication that a csd, by some combination of retaining, replacing, and adding cohort members, has experienced a net influx. the results are summarized next in figures 1 to 4, where the size of the remoteness index and the size of the population change have been classified into ranges for ease of interpretation. tabular results, with more detail, are presented in tables 1 to 4 in the appendix. the three highlighted rows in each table are the source of the data for the corresponding figure. findings across all age cohorts and analyses, we found that the majority of children live in a csd with a school. the tables show that 53% of csds with children have an elementary school and 45% have a secondary school. however, given that the bulk of the population live in large urban centres, each of which has a school, well over 90% of canadian children live in a csd with a school. only a very small proportion live in csds that lack a school, and so are classified as having some degree of remoteness, although the actual distance to the nearest school in another csd varies widely, from close to very far. with this in mind, we present the results of the analysis. figure 1. communities closer to an elementary school were more likely to see an increase in children 5 to 9 years of age from 2011 to 2016 note. in this figure, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., first nation reserves and settlements, and unorganized territories). first nation reserves are not included. csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada’s centre for special business projects. *“no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort from 2001 to 2016, and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid the distortion of calculating a percentage change based on such small numbers. the figure was assembled by ray bollman using data from statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 20  figure 1 shows, for each elementary school remoteness class, the distribution of communities (i.e., csds) by the size of the change in the number of individuals in the youngest cohort (aged 0– 4 in 2011). while the difference in population changes across communities with lower and higher remoteness to elementary schools is not dramatic, it is clear that communities with lower remoteness scores (i.e., those with better access to a school) were generally able to retain, replace, and attract more young children via migration of their parents between the two census years. figure 2 depicts the distribution of communities for the next cohort — children aged 5 to 9 in 2011 — and summarizes the correlation between these population changes and proximity to elementary schools. its results are similar to those for the younger age categories in figure 1, although a smaller proportion of communities in each remoteness class saw increases in this cohort of children compared to the younger cohort. figure 2. communities closer to an elementary school were more likely to see an increase in children 10 to 14 years of age from 2011 to 2016 note. in this figure, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., first nation reserves and settlements, and unorganized territories). first nation reserves are not included. csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. *“no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016, and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid the distortion of calculating a percentage change based on such small numbers. the figure was assembled by ray bollman using data from statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 21  figure 3 covers the same cohort (aged 5–9 in 2011) but depicts the distribution of communities for each secondary school remoteness class, which children at the older end of the cohort (aged 8– 9 in 2011) would be likely to attend by 2016, when they were aged 10 to 12 years. figure 3. communities closer to a secondary school were more likely to see an increase in children 10 to 14 years of age from 2011 to 2016 note. in this figure, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., first nation reserves and settlements, and unorganized territories). first nation reserves are not included. csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. *“no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016, and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid the distortion of calculating a percentage change based on such small numbers. the figure was assembled by ray bollman using data from statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. as figure 3 shows, communities that are closer to a secondary school (i.e., that have a lower remoteness index) were more likely than communities farther away to see an increase in children aged 5 to 9 in 2011 and 10 to 14 in 2016. figure 4 shows the results when the next older cohort (aged 10–14 in 2011) is checked against csd proximity to secondary schools. again, we find that communities closer to a secondary school (those with a lower remoteness index) were more likely than those farther away to see an increase in this age cohort between 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 22  figure 4. communities closer to a secondary school were more likely to see an increase in children 15 to 19 years of age from 2011 to 2016 note. in this figure, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., first nation reserves and settlements, and unorganized territories). first nation reserves are not included. csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. *“no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016, and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid the distortion of calculating a percentage change based on such small numbers. the figure was assembled by ray bollman using data from statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. limitations there are a number of points to bear in mind when interpreting the results presented above. first, some csds had very small numbers of people in any given cohort, creating some “noise” in the data: the small number of observations in these csds may skew results. all data are also rounded to the nearest multiple of 5, adding to the noise. we have attempted to dampen this by classifying communities with very small numbers of children in each age cohort (in our case, this applies to csds with 5, 10, or 15 individuals in an age group) whose populations changed by 5 or less between 2011 and 2016 as “no change”, to avoid these changes being represented as potentially large percentage swings that could skew the data. second, any correlation between schools and migration decisions does not tell us clearly about the direction of the relationship — whether people choose not to live in a place because there is no school, or whether there is no school in a place because people choose not to live there, or both. the only way to examine this more deeply would be to carefully select csds in which a school had been built or closed during the study period and examine inflows and outflows of population every year to determine whether the school change or the population change came first. our data international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 23  also tell us only how close a school is to a given csd, and nothing about school quality, so we do not capture movement that might happen as families move closer to subjectively determined “good” schools. third, population changes include internal migration within canada, whether to a neighbouring csd or from one end of the country to the other, and immigration and emigration. some of the increases in population comprise newcomers to canada, whose initial destination might be less likely to be based on school location than on other factors, such as employment alone, or the presence of a diaspora. conclusion despite the limitations noted above, the data analysed for this article provide support for the common belief that the presence of community schools helps communities, rural, urban, or otherwise, retain and attract young population. we find that communities closer to a school are more likely to see inmigration of school-age children. it is still likely that school closures follow population declines, and that school construction and maintenance tend to happen where there is adequate demand. however, none of this negates the possibility that a larger number of smaller schools could support population maintenance in rural communities. our data show that the population effect that could be attributed to schools is not dramatic, at least not over the 5-year time period and within the cohorts examined here, but over longer periods of time, or in smaller communities where population losses and gains are more keenly felt, the link between schools and demographics may be more impactful. our analysis cannot address the paradox presented at the beginning of the article: we show support for the assertion that the presence of a school is correlated with population growth, but only among school-age children. we have no insight into the aggregate effects of the “learning to leave” (corbett, 2007) phenomenon, as schools in places with increasing population may well be preparing their pupils for lives beyond the community, particularly if that community is rural. however, if the lessons from theories and studies of place attachment hold true, where one’s school is will have an impact on where one feels most at home. our analysis has provided a foundation for further quantitative research using the remoteness index to delve more deeply, perhaps in a multivariate analysis, into 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(2008). attracting new arrivals to smaller cities and rural communities: findings from australia, canada and new zealand [introduction to special issue]. journal of international migration and integration/revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale, 9(2), 119–124. doi:10.1007/s12134-008-0048-x zarifa, d., hango, d., & pizarro milian, r. (2018). proximity, prosperity, and participation: examining access to postsecondary education among youth in canada's provincial north. rural sociology, 83, 270–314. doi:10.1111/ruso.12183 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 31  appendix note: highlighted rows in tables 1 to 4 are the source of the data for figures 1 to 4 in the article. table 1. communities1 classified by percent change in number of children who were 0–4 years in 2011 and 5–9 years in 2016 and by degree of remoteness to an elementary school. percent change in number of residents age 0-4 in 2011 to age 5-9 in 2016 index of remoteness to an elementary school2 higher (>0.795) 0.739 to 0.795 0.691 to 0.738 0.633 to 0.690 lower (<0.633) school exists in community all census subdivisions1 number of census subdivisions1 decline more than -1.1% 33 45 47 41 52 547 765 population decline (subtotal) 33 45 47 41 52 547 765 no change3 104 122 114 93 81 433 947 population increase (subtotal) 35 59 90 107 125 1,473 1,889 1% to 9.9% 2 3 6 7 20 465 503 10% to 19.9% 6 11 22 26 29 480 574 20% to 29.9% 8 17 19 30 28 272 374 30% to 39.9% 8 6 16 22 22 122 196 40% or more 11 22 27 22 26 134 242 all census subdivisions1 172 226 251 241 258 2,453 3,601 row percent decline more than -1.1% 4 6 6 5 7 72 100 population decline (subtotal) 4 6 6 5 7 72 100 no change3 11 13 12 10 9 46 100 population increase (subtotal) 2 3 5 6 7 78 100 1% to 9.9% 0 1 1 1 4 92 100 10% to 19.9% 1 2 4 5 5 84 100 20% to 29.9% 2 5 5 8 7 73 100 30% to 39.9% 4 3 8 11 11 62 100 40% or more 5 9 11 9 11 55 100 all census subdivisions1 5 6 7 7 7 68 100 column percent decline more than -1.1% 19 20 19 17 20 22 21 population decline (subtotal) 19 20 19 17 20 22 21 no change3 60 54 45 39 31 18 26 population increase (subtotal) 20 26 36 44 48 60 52 1% to 9.9% 1 1 2 3 8 19 14 10% to 19.9% 3 5 9 11 11 20 16 20% to 29.9% 5 8 8 12 11 11 10 30% to 39.9% 5 3 6 9 9 5 5 40% or more 6 10 11 9 10 5 7 all census subdivisions1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1. in this table, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., indian reserves, indian settlements and unorganized territories). in this table, indian reserves are not included and csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. 2. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. 3. “no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016 and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid distortion of the calculated percent change based on such small numbers. source: statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 32  table 2. communities1 classified by percent change in number of children who were 5–9 years in 2011 and 10–14 years in 2016 and by degree of remoteness to an elementary school. percent change in number of residents age 5-9 in 2011 to age 10-14 in 2016 index of remoteness2 to an elementary school higher (>0.795) 0.739 to 0.795 0.691 to 0.738 0.633 to 0.690 lower (<0.633) school exists in community all census subdivisions1 number of census subdivisions1 decline more than -20% 26 25 37 23 21 158 290 -20% to -10.1% 13 10 9 20 25 248 325 -10% to -1.1% 6 15 11 12 273 317 population decline (subtotal) 39 41 61 54 58 679 932 no change3 101 118 112 113 94 515 1,053 population increase (subtotal) 32 61 71 74 109 1,254 1,601 1% to 7.9% 2 1 7 7 17 449 483 8% to 14.9% 5 7 15 15 28 386 456 15% to 24.9% 10 14 12 13 22 228 299 25% or more 15 39 37 39 42 191 363 all census subdivisions1 172 220 244 241 261 2,448 3,586 row percent decline more than -20% 9 9 13 8 7 54 100 -20% to -10.1% 4 3 3 6 8 76 100 -10% to -1.1% 0 2 5 3 4 86 100 population decline (subtotal) 4 4 7 6 6 73 100 no change3 10 11 11 11 9 49 100 population increase (subtotal) 2 4 4 5 7 78 100 1% to 7.9% 0 0 1 1 4 93 100 8% to 14.9% 1 2 3 3 6 85 100 15% to 24.9% 3 5 4 4 7 76 100 25% or more 4 11 10 11 12 53 100 all census subdivisions1 5 6 7 7 7 68 100 column percent decline more than -20% 15 11 15 10 8 6 8 -20% to -10.1% 8 5 4 8 10 10 9 -10% to -1.1% 0 3 6 5 5 11 9 population decline (subtotal) 23 19 25 22 22 28 26 no change3 59 54 46 47 36 21 29 population increase (subtotal) 19 28 29 31 42 51 45 1% to 7.9% 1 0 3 3 7 18 13 8% to 14.9% 3 3 6 6 11 16 13 15% to 24.9% 6 6 5 5 8 9 8 25% or more 9 18 15 16 16 8 10 all census subdivisions1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1. in this table, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., indian reserves, indian settlements and unorganized territories). in this table, indian reserves are not included and csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. 2. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. 3. “no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016 and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid distortion of the calculated percent change based on such small numbers. source: statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 33  table 3. communities1 classified by percent change in number of children who were 5–9 years in 2011 and 10–14 years in 2016 and by degree of remoteness to a secondary school. percent change in number of residents age 5-9 in 2011 to age 10-14 in 2016 index of remoteness2 to a secondary school higher (>0.850) 0.810 to 0.850 0.776 to 0.809 0.729 to 0.775 lower (<0.729) school exists in community all census subdivisions1 number of census subdivisions1 decline more than -20% 46 44 34 35 26 104 289 -20% to -10.1% 42 46 29 33 36 139 325 -10% to -1.1% 11 34 29 33 25 185 317 population decline (subtotal) 99 124 92 101 87 428 931 no change3 156 153 136 150 146 312 1,053 population increase (subtotal) 85 124 172 159 173 888 1,601 1% to 7.9% 11 26 38 32 30 346 483 8% to 14.9% 17 26 49 45 49 270 456 15% to 24.9% 20 24 36 34 34 151 299 25% or more 37 48 49 48 60 121 363 all census subdivisions1 340 401 400 410 406 1,628 3,585 row percent decline more than -20% 16 15 12 12 9 36 100 -20% to -10.1% 13 14 9 10 11 43 100 -10% to -1.1% 3 11 9 10 8 58 100 population decline (subtotal) 11 13 10 11 9 46 100 no change3 15 15 13 14 14 30 100 population increase (subtotal) 5 8 11 10 11 55 100 1% to 7.9% 2 5 8 7 6 72 100 8% to 14.9% 4 6 11 10 11 59 100 15% to 24.9% 7 8 12 11 11 51 100 25% or more 10 13 13 13 17 33 100 all census subdivisions1 9 11 11 11 11 45 100 column percent decline more than -20% 14 11 9 9 6 6 8 -20% to -10.1% 12 11 7 8 9 9 9 -10% to -1.1% 3 8 7 8 6 11 9 population decline (subtotal) 29 31 23 25 21 26 26 no change3 46 38 34 37 36 19 29 population increase (subtotal) 25 31 43 39 43 55 45 1% to 7.9% 3 6 10 8 7 21 13 8% to 14.9% 5 6 12 11 12 17 13 15% to 24.9% 6 6 9 8 8 9 8 25% or more 11 12 12 12 15 7 10 all census subdivisions1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1. in this table, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., indian reserves, indian settlements and unorganized territories). in this table, indian reserves are not included and csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. 2. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. 3. “no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016 and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid distortion of the calculated percent change based on such small numbers. source: statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 12–34 34  table 4. communities1 classified by percent change in number of children who were 5–9 years in 2011 and 10–14 years in 2016 and by degree of remoteness to a secondary school. percent change in number of residents age 10-14 in 2011 to age 15-19 in 2016 index of remoteness2 to a secondary school higher (>0.850) 0.810 to 0.850 0.776 to 0.809 0.729 to 0.775 lower (<0.729) school exists in community all census subdivisions1 number of census subdivisions1 decline more than -19% 81 89 78 74 54 198 574 -19% to -7.6% 48 83 85 98 74 329 717 -7.5% to -1.1% 13 34 29 35 47 271 429 population decline (subtotal) 156 153 136 150 146 312 1,720 no change3 166 154 134 127 138 329 1,048 population increase (subtotal) 43 51 80 80 102 506 862 1% to 11.9% 10 18 35 33 41 337 474 12% or more 33 33 45 47 61 169 388 all census subdivisions1 351 411 406 414 415 1,633 3,630 row percent decline more than -19% 14 16 14 13 9 34 100 -19% to -7.6% 7 12 12 14 10 46 100 -7.5% to -1.1% 3 8 7 8 11 63 100 population decline (subtotal) 9 9 8 9 8 18 100 no change3 16 15 13 12 13 31 100 population increase (subtotal) 5 6 9 9 12 59 100 1% to 11.9% 2 4 7 7 9 71 100 12% or more 9 9 12 12 16 44 100 all census subdivisions1 10 11 11 11 11 45 100 column percent decline more than -19% 23 22 19 18 13 12 16 -19% to -7.6% 14 20 21 24 18 20 20 -7.5% to -1.1% 4 8 7 8 11 17 12 population decline (subtotal) 44 37 33 36 35 19 47 no change3 47 37 33 31 33 20 29 population increase (subtotal) 12 12 20 19 25 31 24 1% to 11.9% 3 4 9 8 10 21 13 12% or more 9 8 11 11 15 10 11 all census subdivisions1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1. in this table, a “community” is a census subdivision (csd). a csd is the general term for incorporated towns and municipalities (as determined by provincial/territorial legislation) or areas treated as equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., indian reserves, indian settlements and unorganized territories). in this table, indian reserves are not included and csds with no individuals in 2011 or 2016 in the target age groups are excluded. also excluded are some municipalities in manitoba without consistent data in 2011 and 2016 due to amalgamations in 2015. 2. the index of remoteness was provided by statistics canada's centre for special business projects. 3. “no change” includes (a) csds with a ±1% change in the number of children in the designated age cohort in the csd from 2001 to 2016 and (b) csds with less than 10 children in 2011 and less than 15 in 2016, in order to avoid distortion of the calculated percent change based on such small numbers. source: statistics canada, census of population, 2011 and 2016. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs141202321288 youth as truth-tellers and rights-holders: legal and institutional reforms to enable youth housing security naomi nichols, jayne malenfant, and youth action research revolution abstract: in the first pan-canadian study on youth homelessness, 57.8% of youth reported prior involvement with child protection services. indeed, transitions from government institutions (e.g., child/youth protection, inpatient mental health treatment, the youth justice system) represent common pathways into homelessness for youth across north america. this article examines young people’s experiences navigating youth protection services to identify institutional, legislative, and policy processes that pose problems for youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness, as well as processes that show promise for the promotion of the interests, protection, and well-being of youth. our participatory youth research team explored homeless youth’s histories of involvement with youth protection services, seeking to clarify the sociolegal mechanisms in and beyond the youth protection system that make young people vulnerable to homelessness. youth and adult co-researchers interviewed 38 individual youth (aged 16–29) who completed 64 qualitative institutional history interviews. according to our analysis, young people identified the following sociolegal practices as implicated in their experiences of homelessness: the use of totalizing institutions, the criminalization of runaways, the abrupt cessation of service delivery at 18 years of age, a systemic failure to view youth as rights-holders, and an overly complex emancipation process. keywords: youth protection, youth homelessness, interventions, policy, law, participatory research naomi nichols phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor of sociology and a tier 2 canada research chair in community-partnered social justice, trent university, 1600 west bank drive, peterborough, on canada, k9l 0g2. email: naominichols@trentu.ca jayne malenfant phd is a third century postdoctoral follow in the department of integrated studies in education, mcgill university, 3700 mctavish street, montreal, qc canada. email: jayne.malenfant@mcgill.ca youth action research revolution is a youth-led team consisting of laurence adamovicz, shayana narcisse, maxime plamondon, and mickey watchhorn. mailing address: research for social change lab, trent university, 1600 west bank drive, peterborough on, k9l 0g2. email: williampearson@trentu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 111 twenty percent of canada’s homeless population is made up of young people between the ages of 13 and 24 years, with at least 35,000 to 40,000 youth experiencing homelessness in any given year (gaetz et al., 2016, p. 6). of these, 40.1% are less than 16 years of age when they have their first experience of homelessness and 75.9% go on to experience multiple episodes of homelessness (gaetz et al., 2016). most young people who experience homelessness and housing insecurity will interact with a range of public systems: education, health care, and the criminal legal system, for example. young people across canada are required to participate in schooling until they are 16 to 18 years of age, depending on which province or territory they live in, and nearly 60% of young people experiencing homelessness in canada report prior relationships with provincial youth protection systems (nichols et al., 2017). transitions from government institutions (e.g., child welfare, inpatient mental health treatment, the youth justice system) represent common pathways into homelessness among youth in north america (cheng et al., 2013; karabanow, 2004; nichols, 2014, 2016). our research offers clarity and specificity about the legislation, policies, and processes in public systems that youth identify as implicated in their experiences of homelessness. young people’s knowledge of institutional policies and processes is often reflective of how they get positioned in and by these same sociolegal structures. our task as a research team was to illuminate connections between their lived accounts and the policy and programmatic structures that shape the institutional organization and governance of child protection services more broadly. using a participatory research approach, our team designed and implemented a project to document young people’s experiential knowledge of housing precarity and homelessness, as well as their lived knowledge of various intersecting public sector organizations and processes. the aim of our research was to identify places where changes in public institutions — policing and criminal law, health care, education, child welfare, and housing — could be leveraged to better serve the expressed needs of homeless youth and ultimately prevent young people from experiencing homelessness at all. interactions with the quebec youth protection system1 (dpj) emerged as an important topic during research training after one youth researcher talked about his relationship with child protection services throughout his childhood and adolescence. after identifying the child welfare system as one we wanted to explore as a team, we asked a legal intern to teach us about quebec’s child protection laws. later, as part of the institutional history interview process, youth and adult co-researchers invited 38 homeless and precariously housed youth (aged 16–29) to tell them about their experiences seeking, avoiding, or receiving child protection services throughout their lives. in these interviews and in our legal analysis, several aspects of the dpj are revealed as particularly problematic in terms of young people’s right to adequate, secure housing. for 1 québecois youth refer to the institution of youth protection itself as the dpj (based on the french: la direction de la protection de la jeunesse). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 112 example, existing legislation mandates placing youth with complex needs in residential youth centres, but all services are terminated at age 18. our aim here is to articulate ways in which the dpj could enable youth housing security. our recommendations are based on the results of our research and the lived experience and knowledge of our team. we focus centrally on young people’s experiences with the dpj and peripherally on their experiences with the broader sociolegal, housing, social assistance, and education systems in the canadian province of quebec. building from young people’s individual accounts, we identify the generalized institutional and policy conditions that shape youth efforts to find and sustain housing. literature review: links between youth homelessness and the youth protection system the literature consistently identifies an association between youth homelessness and previous involvement in child protection services (barker at al., 2014; britton & pilnik, 2018; jasinski et al., 2010; nichols, 2014; nichols et al., 2017; gaetz, 2014). in the first pan-canadian study on youth homelessness, 57.8% of homeless youth reported some type of involvement with child protection services over their lifetime (gaetz et al., 2016), whereas national data indicates that only 0.3% of the general public receive child welfare services (statistics canada, 2011). also, 65% of these youth reported that they had not completed high school (gaetz et al., 2016). a longitudinal study of youth involved with quebec’s dpj, étude sur le devenir des jeunes placés (edjep), found that only 24.8% of participants involved with the dpj obtained their high school diploma by age 19, compared to 77.4% for youth in the province as a whole (leroux, blanchet, goyette, & bouchard st-amant, 2020). in general, research confirms that youth transitioning from child protection services are less likely to finish secondary school or participate in post-secondary education, and more likely to experience unemployment, than are the general population in the united states and in canada (gunawardena & stich, 2021). limited participation in education and employment increases young people’s vulnerability to poverty and homelessness as they leave child protection services (fowler et al., 2009; gunawardena & stich, 2021; rosenberg & youngmi, 2017). in quebec, 20% of young people involved with the dpj report one or more episodes of homelessness after aging out of the care system (goyette, bellot, et al., 2019). despite the clear indications that young people involved in child protection services experience challenges as they transition into adulthood, very little research synthesizes young people’s experiential knowledge of child protection and other intersecting systems to suggest how to better meet their evolving needs so that they do not experience homelessness and instability when they exit care. furthermore, research on the outcomes of child protection largely takes for granted the central importance of youth autonomy and independence. laws governing the lives of youth in canada (e.g., the youth criminal justice act and the youth protection act) position young people as deserving of protection and rehabilitation until age 18, when they are expected to emerge from state interventions as fully independent subjects. writing about governmentality and youth criminal law reform in the united kingdom, vaughan (2000) observed that under the crime and disorder act of 1998 youth and families were individualized in law as responsible for their own risk mediation and rehabilitation, which mirrors other individualizing neoliberal reforms of that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 113 time. in canada, baullucci (2008) noted the encroachment of actuarial technologies — tools and techniques for predicting and mediating an individual’s risk of reoffending — in youth criminal justice settings. while the youth criminal justice and youth protection systems do not share the same mandate, these systems are shaped by and operationalize similar rationalities with respect to the normalization of actuarial tools and dispositions, and the individualization of responsibility for familial and youth well-being. in contrast, we are inspired by nelson’s (2020) critique of bureaucratic forms of care and suggest it is worth considering nelson’s invitation to actualize forms of revolutionary care that are built on trust and interdependence, rather than individualist independence and bureaucratic indifference. the youth action research revolution youth action research revolution (yarr) is a participatory youth research team (cammarota & fine, 2010; fine et al., 2003; nichols, 2019; nichols & ruglis, 2021) that worked together between 2018 and 2021. the team was co-led by a university professor (nichols) and a doctoral student (malenfant2, now a postdoctoral fellow). co-leadership of this project allowed us to share resources, be more available to our youth co-researchers, and benefit from the different strengths we brought to the team. the yarr project was designed to improve knowledge of specific structural factors that undermine and enable housing stability for youth. the project is an institutional ethnography (ie) of public institutions that directly and indirectly shape youth housing precarity: child protection, health, education, corrections and policing, and shelters and social housing. described by its founder, dorothy smith, as a sociology for people, ie was developed to improve the transparency and navigability of ruling institutional processes and discourses. in an ie, people are not positioned as the objects of sociological discourse (smith, 1999); rather, institutional ethnographers try to generate knowledge that is useful to individuals and groups seeking to organize and advocate for institutional changes (e.g., repeal a section of law), to get something accomplished (e.g., secure access to social housing), or otherwise actualize a collective or individual objective (e.g., improve child welfare processes). yarr met in person to work and have lunch together each week from the fall of 2018 until the spring of 2020, when covid-19 public health restrictions compelled a shift to virtual meetings. the first six months of the project were spent getting to know one another, developing research and legal skills, and creating our research design. we did not rush. in an ie, people’s experiences serve as entry points for empirical investigations of the institutions, organizational structures, policies, legislation, discourse, and knowledges that mediate how people relate to one another and the world (nichols, 2014, 2019). given ie’s requirement that experience be the starting place for research, we spent time each week sharing experiences and mobilizing expertise within the group. for example, during the 2018/19 academic year, our team worked with two legal students who were completing internships at the youth homelessness agency where we met each 2 malenfant experienced homelessness and housing precarity in their youth as did our youth research team members. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 114 week. based on shared experiences among members of our team, we posed a series of legal questions to the interns, inviting them to teach us about the municipal, provincial, and federal laws that govern the institutions with which homeless youth interact. during legal education sessions, our team shared experiences and observations that allowed us to compare and contrast the laws as written with the laws as youth experience them. these discussions were thus as educative for the legal interns as they were for the research team. all research training and team-building opportunities were paid. to enable paid participation in the study design, the remaining funds from one of nichols’ research grants were redirected to cover the training and project design phase. once the study was designed, we secured federal research funding to cover its implementation. our research was conducted in montreal. drawing on young people’s experiential knowledge of the public sector organizations and processes that punctuate and give shape to their lives, our objective was to identify specific interinstitutional and policy junctures — in provincial or federal education, child welfare, (mental) health care, criminal legal, and housing systems — that shape conditions of housing precarity for youth. our research sought to address the following questions: • what have been young people’s experiences with state systems and how have these experiences shaped, and been shaped by, conditions of housing instability? • what institutional and social processes do young people identify in their histories as points of system promise and points of system failure? • what are the policy and legislative contexts that shape the practices, discourses, and programs young people describe? to address these questions, a team of youth and adult co-researchers interviewed 38 individual youth (aged 16–29) who participated in up to three interviews each about their historical and present-day interactions with public institutions. research methods for this project, we adapted a three-stage institutional history interviewing approach (prasad et al., 2006). the structure we developed included up to three one-hour interviews; it resembles an oral history approach, in which a small group of people are invited to participate in multiple interviews in an effort to build an historical account of some aspect of their lives. youth were asked to choose particular interactions with public institutions and community-based organizations that directly and indirectly shaped their experiences of homelessness, housing precarity, and housing stability; those interactions served as starting points to trace sequences of events forward and backward through time. interviews always began with the same question: “based on the recruitment materials, you knew this was a research project about how government systems could prevent youth homelessness. what did you come here to tell us?” from this single prompt, youth were able to self-determine the public systems they wanted to address in each interview. for example, if a first international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 115 interview focused on a young person’s history of interactions with health care institutions, the next interview focused on their interactions with the police and the judicial system. this approach allowed us to work with youth participants to identify the general institutional and policy processes (e.g., school codes of conduct; placement options for youth in youth protection) that had shaped the trajectories they described. given our interest in assessing key points of system failure and system potential, we needed an interview strategy that allowed people to construct and add to historical accounts, specifying points of intervention, across different developmental stages and social contexts, that undermined or contributed to housing stability. participants using an approach in which one youth and one adult served as co-interviewers, we conducted up to three in-depth confidential institutional history interviews with 38 individual youth aged 16 to 29 (64 interviews in total). participants were recruited via posters hung at the multiservice youth organization where our team met each week, as well as through the social networks of youth coresearchers. potential participants reached out to nichols directly via email or cellphone, or approached members of our team in person to speak with us about the project during our weekly lunches at the organization. to participate in the study, subjects had to have experiential knowledge of at least one public system they identified as implicated in their experiences of homelessness. based on our prior experiences of institutions as service-users and researchers, the research team had identified several potential public sector contexts that we anticipated other youth would speak about. however, the final choice of institutions of focus for analysis was made during the first phase of co-analysis with our team. research participants received $20 for each interview they did with a youth and adultresearcher on our team, and participated in a formal written informed consent process for each interview. participants were compensated monetarily (rather than through a grocery card, for example) because we are committed to honouring young people’s bodily and intellectual autonomy. the research design was approved by mcgill university’s research ethics board, where nichols was a professor and malenfant a doctoral student at the time of this research. to protect the identities of participants, they are referenced by pseudonyms in this article. at the start of their first interview, we asked each participant to self-identify using demographic indicators that they determined were important (see table 1). the use of self-determined identifiers reflects our team’s respect for lived knowledge; however, this approach makes it difficult to summarize the demographic characteristics of our interview sample because it would require us to recategorize people using a single system of classification, which we have chosen not to do. instead, we include identifiers people used to describe themselves as we introduce their stories later in this article. for general demographic characteristics, we reference the results of the most recent without a home (wah) survey sample for a breakdown of demographic characteristics among youth experiencing housing precarity in quebec (gaetz et al., 2019). while we were undertaking the qualitative data collection presented in this article, our research team administered international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 116 the wah survey to 117 youth at the agency serving street-youth where we worked each week — as such, there is overlap between the survey sample and our interview sample. in total, 174 wah surveys were completed in the province of quebec. table 1. wah participant demographics sexual orientation survey language straight 55% english 16% lgbtq+* 45% french 84% gender identity race cis-male 51% white 65% cis-female 29% mixed/multiple 13% two-spirit (2%), 12% black 7% transgender (3%), brown 7% gender-queer (3%), indigenous 5% unsure (4%)* other 3% other 7% no answer 1% *numbers in each category were too low to report separately of the 38 youth who participated in this study, 14 identified child protection as an institution that directly or indirectly shaped their experiences of homelessness, and we created institutional histories for each of them. the points of failure and possibility identified in this article are common across these 14 histories. an affordance of the institutional history approach is that it brings institutional and policy relations into view over time and space — that is, across a young life. as such, in conveying our findings, we have sought to keep young people’s histories intact so that the reader can see these temporal relations as they unfold in young people’s accounts. this means that our findings highlight the experiences of a subset of the larger sample. analysis based on a preliminary analysis of the interviews to identify problematic and promising institutional junctures in young people’s narratives, we identified the policies and legislation that shaped or mandated the institutional practices and responses they described. our aim was to analyze how policy and legislation are organized and implemented across institutional domains (e.g., mental health and community policing) to produce the institutional patterns that appeared in the narratives. analyzing the institutional history interviews and relevant policy, practice, and intervention protocol materials, we produced institutional timelines for each youth’s interactions with each institutional sector (e.g., health, education) that they saw as relevant to their experiences of homelessness. systematically assembling the data in this fashion allowed us to deduce key “points of [institutional] failure” and points of possibility (sauvé et al., 2018, p. 2) as well as the specific policies, legislation, processes, and programs that mediated them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 117 findings like other canadian provinces and territories, the dpj in quebec is governed by provincial legislation: the youth protection act. the purpose of the act is to “protect children whose security or development is or may be considered to be in danger” (youth protection act, p-34.1, 1991, chapter 1.2). under this act, a “child” is anyone who is less than 18 years of age. in each region, a director of youth protection is tasked with applying the act. the role of the dpj is to intervene in situations where a report has been made that a child has been or is at risk of being abandoned or neglected, or psychologically, sexually, or physically abused. the dpj is also mandated to intervene in cases where a young person is struggling with serious behavioural problems. the goal of the intervention is to put an end to the situation that has placed the child at risk, and prevent it from happening again. child protection interventions are delivered through integrated health and social service centres, which are colloquially described as youth centres. people use “youth centre” to refer to residential or intensive day-centre treatment, and open or closed custody facilities mandated by the youth criminal justice act. intensive residential supports are only to be used when a child’s safety cannot otherwise be protected in the familial home or in a foster care situation: if a child is provided with foster care in compliance with an immediate protective measure or an order issued by the tribunal under this act, and there is a serious risk that the child represents a danger to himself or to others, the child may be placed in an intensive supervision unit maintained by an institution operating a rehabilitation centre that allows close supervision of the child’s behaviour and movements due to its more restrictive layout and special living conditions. (youth protection act, p34.1, 1991, chapter 2, division 2.11.1.1) in april 2021 the commission spéciale sur les droits des enfants et la protection de la jeunesse (special commission on the rights and protection of children and youth) released a 562-page report, “instaurer une société bienveillante pour nos enfants et nos jeunes” (establishing a caring society for our children and youth; government of quebec, 2021). the report was commissioned after a 7-year-old girl died in 2019, despite prior child protection involvement and clear evidence of familial distress. the report suggests that chronic underfunding has prevented the dpj from responding effectively to steady increases in demand for youth protection services over the last 5 years: reports to the director of youth protection increased by 21% between 2014 and 2019. specifically, the report points to an overrepresentation of black youth in care compared to the quebec population at large, problems with the provision of “rehabilitation service” to those placed in youth centres, and insufficient preparation and support for adulthood when young people are no longer eligible for youth protection services (government of quebec, 2021). in quebec, youth are no longer eligible for youth protection services when they turn 18, leaving many young people without stable access to housing, schooling, or work (goyette, blanchet, & bellot, 2019). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 118 indeed, institutionalizing a child but not preparing them for independence, combined with the expectation that independence is the end-goal for every child protection intervention, was identified as one of two primary points of failure for the youth who participated in our research. participants explained that a history of running away while in care, coupled with poorly supported transitions from the child welfare system — particularly the province’s rehabilitation centres — shaped their subsequent experiences of homelessness. the other major point of failure is the absence of protective interventions on the part of youth protection services, as well as those other professionals who have a legal duty to report child protection concerns (e.g., teachers). we also interviewed young people who had been involved in the youth protection systems of other provinces, and who had experienced difficulties associated with the organization of child welfare services there. although post-care outcomes are similar across canada (e.g., young people involved with child protection services experience higher rates of youth homelessness in all provinces), the specific sociolegal determinants of homelessness we point to in this report are unique to the experiences of québecois youth. point of failure: institutionalization, coupled with a lack of transitional supports interviewees identified the placement of youth in provincial rehabilitation centres (colloquially described as youth centres) and the abrupt end to service eligibility at 18 as key structural determinants of homelessness. they were highly critical of youth centres and concerned that these institutionalized environments did not prepare them for their transition to adulthood at 18. young people’s concerns about youth centres echoed the findings of the edjep team: those placed in youth centres during adolescence were more likely to experience homelessness and housing instability upon being discharged from the dpj (goyette, bellot, et al., 2019). youth centres are “totalizing institutions” — they mediate the entire experience of life for the young people who are placed there. the transition at 18 from such a routinized environment to unstructured independence can be jarring, and is likely to pose socioeconomic challenges to anyone who cannot be discharged into the care and custody of their family. as robert, a white, cis-gendered, straight, francophone man who received educational and residential services at a youth centre throughout his childhood and adolescence, noted: you get up in the morning. you make your bed. you eat breakfast. you go to school. you come back in the evening. you have time to do homework. after that it’s dinner and you can watch a movie at night, if not you go to your room and, that’s it. while his days were highly structured, interpersonal relationships were not — he had many different intervention workers and an increasingly strained relationship with his biological family. indeed, from robert’s point of view, the dpj intentionally undermined his relationship with the only caseworker he trusted because they were perceived to be becoming too close. this social worker actively sought to get to know robert and establish a relationship with him by playing ball and going fishing. he was the only social worker in robert’s recollection that sought to build a trusting professional relationship with him. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 119 as he got older, robert — like many other youth — became increasingly lonely and miserable at the centre and began running away. as a runaway, robert was able to spend time in libraries during the day, but was ineligible for most social services because of his legal status as a minor. robert said he was unaware of any youth services through which he could have accessed support, such as food, safe shelter, or health care. unsure how to feed himself or find shelter without any source of income or adult service eligibility, robert would eventually return to the youth centre to face the institutional consequences associated with running away. young people described three interventions to address runaways at youth centres: punishment (loss of privileges and social isolation); using a private security company or the police to have youth returned to the centre; and an introduction to an emergency shelter for youth requiring temporary respite from the street. punitive interventions and the use of security services do not address the reasons youth run away from youth centres, nor do they prepare a young person for a life after institutionalization. for instance, as robert approached 18, he began running away from the youth centre for longer stretches of time, sometimes months, then either returning to the centre voluntarily or being brought back by a security company or the police. when nearly 18, he was brought back by a security company and was advised that his file was closed: they [garda, a security company] had to wait for them [the centre] to decide what was going to happen to me, because i was gone for too long.… when i contacted the centre, they called garda. they came and got me and brought me to [another youth centre]. and after that, well they had to decide what they were going to do with me. i stayed in isolation … then i turned 18, they kicked me out, and i didn’t know what to do. when interventions are aimed at punishing running away rather than interpreting it as a sign that youth require supportive scaffolding in their pursuit of independence, the opportunity to support youth to achieve stability when they exit the care system is missed. like other youth who had been placed in youth centres during adolescence, robert transitioned directly to the streets at 18 without completing his secondary school education and with little capacity to take care of his own basic needs or work with others to ensure mutual safety and well-being (“i can’t even cook an egg … you end up in the street, you have nothing. you just have your clothes, your backpack”). he was homeless for the next three years. other youth with similar histories of involvement with youth protection described a similar lack of preparation for life after 18. as mathieu, a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, francophone man, cynically observed, “you’re treated like a sack of garbage. and at 18, if you don’t integrate like everyone else, it’s too bad. you’re on the streets then. and they don’t care. their mandate is over.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 120 point of failure: institutional inaction our research revealed another point of failure: a lack of intervention in young lives, even when it is clear that youth are unsafe and even when they are asking for protection and support. in the institutional histories profiled in this section, young women either raised clear concerns about their safety to school personnel or were regularly attending school in a state of obvious distress (e.g., after using drugs, sobbing, covered in bruises). even though all professionals who work with youth are legally mandated to alert the director of youth protection to any case where there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the security or development of a child is or may be considered to be in danger” (youth protection act, c p-34.1, chapter 4, division 1.38), similar patterns of inaction were observed by many of the other youth we interviewed. for example, jolene, a white franco-bilingual woman we interviewed, explained that she had often come to school showing signs of distress as a child, but neither the school nor child protection had intervened. jolene’s intuition — one that was shared by a number of young people who had grown up in middle-class montreal suburbs — was that her family’s financial stability prevented school staff from seeing her as at risk of neglect. however, as she explained: my mom was never really there for me, and she was like, abusive, she was an alcoholic. she wasn’t really taking care of me or my sister, and, well, i feel like when you have money, and you look a certain way, like, the dpj don’t even fucking — they don’t even search or anything. poverty is often misinterpreted by middle-class teachers and social workers as evidence of neglect (lash, 2017). families experiencing acute financial distress are more likely to find themselves under the gaze of the child welfare system than financially stable families in which emotional neglect and absentee parents are less likely to be noticed in the absence of material deprivation. in jolene’s case, no one intervened despite clear signs of distress: the school, they were aware, like my grades were really bad.… my situation was just degrading, because i didn’t understand anything that was going on in class, because whenever i had homework or whatever, i fucking couldn’t do it. because my mom was never there to help me, and they knew that, like, all along. high school, like, showing up with bruises and everything, all the time, since i’m showing up to school crying, because my mom was really awful to me all the time.… they knew i was not doing well, or whatever, i was like, doing drugs, in a bad situation, pretty much, all my childhood. despite declining academic performance, visible bruises, tears, and obvious drug use, school staff did not ask jolene how she was doing or offer support, nor did they (to the best of jolene’s knowledge) report her as a child whose “security and development” might be in danger (youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 121 protection act sc 2020). when jolene was 12, her mother left home, leaving jolene in the custody of her mother’s former spouse. shortly thereafter, at 14, jolene also left to live with her 27-yearold boyfriend. throughout this period of instability, jolene was still enrolled in school, but attending sparsely: i was still going to school when i was 14 years old. i lived with my 27-year-old boyfriend. and i was going to school like, once a week, because he wanted me to help him doing some stuff, that i’m not going to say, and like, the school picked up on that, and actually the girl, the social worker at the school, she knew him, because she went to school with the guy.… she knew he wasn’t a good person, and they never did anything. a poor school attendance record provides the legal justification for educators to inquire with guardians about a child’s well-being and also — in the absence of an appropriate intervention and a consequent change — to make a report to the director of youth protection, but no such inquiry or report were ever made in jolene’s case. despite her statement that she “wanted a family like anybody else”, jolene did not actively seek out support, neither from school nor directly through the dpj. a number of the young people we interviewed for this project and some members of our team also reported being reluctant to ask for help and, in many cases, had actively sought to prevent social workers or police officers from getting involved in their lives because they were not confident an intervention would lead to improved safety for them or their siblings. thus, the onus is on schools and other institutions that youth interact with to proactively check in with them and ensure that they know their rights and are aware of different pathways for seeking support. rather than acting on a narrow view of their legal and professional obligations (e.g., a duty to report a youth they suspect needs protection), school staff need to recognize signs of distress and the potential for risk (e.g., of homelessness, trafficking, mental illness), and then act in compliance not only with provincial laws but also with young people’s rights to self-determination. for example, educators can engage with young people who exhibit signs of distress about whether and how they might help. looking back on her own experiences, jolene observed that “the school should have done something”. indeed, jolene’s teachers and principal failed to exercise their legal duty to report to the director of youth protection any concerns about jolene’s “security and development”. thus, at 15, jolene stopped attending school, and when she ended the abusive relationship with her boyfriend, she became homeless. fariha (a queer franco-bilingual immigrant woman, whose family were practising members of a religious minority) had also struggled to get adult professionals to take her concerns seriously, connect her to resources to alleviate her suffering, and effectively intervene between her and her family. like jolene, fariha grew up in a middle-class montreal suburb. unlike jolene, fariha relentlessly sought out support from her school, from social services and homeless-serving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 122 organizations, and from the dpj. in the school setting, she first reached out to friends, then to her teachers, and finally to her high school principal: i grew up with a lot of childhood abuse and violence, sexual abuse and violence as well, so like, at one point i was fed up with it, so i decided to seek help from school.… at first, nobody took me seriously.… the teachers wouldn’t do anything about it, so that led up to not really trusting anyone, or having faith in anything happening.… so then, after that i ran away from my house, because, like, i had no other option … because nobody believed my story. the lack of action by fariha’s teachers and principal with respect to her experiences of victimization at home led directly to her first experience of homelessness. each time a young person discloses their suffering to an adult who does nothing, their faith in the entire intervention system is eroded. also, a young person’s disclosure of personal risk to an adult professional represents legally sufficient grounds for reporting the disclosure to the director of youth protection, who then shoulders the responsibility of investigating the report. legally, a young person’s “security and development” may be considered to be in danger if they are in an abusive home, but also if the child has left: the security or development of a child may be considered to be in danger where he leaves his own home, a foster family, a facility maintained by an institution operating a rehabilitation centre or a hospital centre without authorization while his situation is not under the responsibility of the director of youth protection. (youth protection act, , c p-34.1, chapter 4, division 1.38.1) treating ‘runaways’ as ‘missing children’ and failing to coordinate housing led, rightsbased, youth-centred actions despite several substantive reasons to initiate a child protection investigation, fariha was categorized and processed as a “missing person” and was continually returned to her biological family’s home: when i sought help, i couldn’t [access services] because, first of all i was underage, so my parents were against the idea that i live with someone else, that i go in a shelter — they were completely against it…. so like, it was really hard for me as a teenager to get help because my parents weren’t approving of anything, so it was either you come back home, or you’re on the streets.… i was really powerless.… at one point i was fed up with not getting anything done, so i ran away, and i was claimed disappeared [missing]. in fariha’s case, it was her parents who reached out to contact the dpj when she ran away; as such, the institutional action deemed appropriate was to bring her back home. unfortunately, fariha’s own account —that home was unsafe — was not initially seen to be institutionally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 123 actionable. by reporting fariha missing, her parents were viewed as having demonstrated their will “to put an end to the situation in which the security of development of the child was in danger”. as such, fariha continued to be assessed as in need of protection from herself (because she continued to run away), rather than in need of protection from her parents. she thus remained caught between running away and being at home, exposed to ongoing violence every time she returned. as the conflicts at home escalated, sometimes the neighbours would phone the police. fariha stated, “a lot of neighbours would call the cops because there were a lot of fights in my house.” eventually, her school and the police reported fariha to the director of youth protection. but despite years of street involvement and running away (between ages 14 and 17) and disclosures of abuse to multiple professionals, fariha was never provided with the housing, the financial support, or the protection and guidance she was looking for from the dpj. like robert, fariha spent 3 years on the streets, while trying to get access to services. by the time she was 17, fariha had graduated from high school and enrolled in cegep, a publicly funded pre-university college in quebec. but because she lacked the financial support needed to live on her own and participate in school (e.g., purchasing textbooks, paying for rent and food), she eventually dropped out. discussion fariha’s experiences point to a problem to be resolved with respect to the youth protection act in quebec. presently, legislation does not sufficiently recognize a young person’s right to pursue and/or inform a service agreement with the dpj. nor does the system offer accessible legal information and support for young people who are seeking legal emancipation from their biological families. in this discussion, we focus on legislative and procedural changes that would ensure that the dpj contributes to the prevention of youth homelessness in quebec. point of possibility: legal grounds for the protection of homeless youth throughout fariha’s adolescence, she continued to run away from the violence in her home. because she was legally considered a minor, she was ineligible for most emergency housing services in the city and suburbs of montreal. furthermore, because her mother repeatedly reported her missing, and missing person reports are regularly circulated in the shelters, she would be flagged by staff as ineligible for services, or reported to the police who would return her to her home. where there is a concern that a young person has been abducted, trafficked, or otherwise involuntarily removed from their place of residence, this process is protective; however, for those youth who are voluntarily choosing to leave the custody of parents or guardians (including youth centres, foster homes, and group homes), this reporting policy pushes youth onto the streets. section 38.1 of the youth protection act empowers the dpj to classify homeless and “runaway” youth as eligible for protection. this provision has the potential to position the dpj as a key lever in the province’s efforts to prevent youth homelessness, serving as a model for other provinces (e.g., ontario, where youth homelessness is not considered grounds for protection). in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 124 order to capitalize on this potential and not inadvertently push youth onto the streets, young people must be positioned as rights holders within the act —able to access or refuse youth protection services, or to legally emancipate themselves from parental control. point of possibility: improved access to justice and a simplified emancipation process access to justice for street-involved youth can be enabled by providing street-front legal services. these would assist young people who are seeking to understand their rights and navigate complex sociolegal processes, such as legal emancipation from the custody of their parents or guardians. unfortunately, the process in the case of emancipation is bureaucratically complicated. accessible legal services are a start, but for youth to access justice in this regard, improved procedural fairness in terms of the legal process itself is required. currently, once a young person has turned 16, they can apply for and be granted simple emancipation through the court system if someone else is willing to serve as their guardian. simple emancipation does not grant one access to services and support for adults; it only allows a young person to get married or sign a lease. note that even “simple” emancipation requires a young person to appear before the courts, provide institutionally recognized evidence in support of the application, and comply with conditions. michel, a white, straight québecois man, described the process he had to go through to achieve simple emancipation: at 16, i went in front of a judge and i asked for, what we call, an emancipation. i wanted my own apartment, i was independent, but the landlord needed me to be 18 to sign the lease, have credit cards, and everything.… they looked through diagnoses and reports and everything, and for sure, they gave me the appropriate resources. i had an educational aide, i had child psychiatrists, i had so many followups. it was conditional to all of that, but they still gave me the emancipation. the process for full emancipation is even more stringent, since full emancipation means a young person is no longer considered a minor. with full emancipation, a young person has full legal capacity over their property and are deemed fully responsible for their actions (government of quebec, 2023). the process of legally emancipating in quebec is too complex for most young people to navigate: they face considerable difficulty in “proving” valid reasons for seeking emancipation (e.g., that they are unsafe at home, that they have been abandoned). besides the fact that having to prove one has been abandoned may reactivate past trauma, those who are homeless may lack access to basic identification and historical documentation. furthermore, the process is not explicitly oriented to enabling access to financial supports that would prevent homelessness. until a minor has legally emancipated, they are ineligible for provincial social assistance programs under the quebec individual and family assistance act. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 125 for jolene, who, like fariha, became homeless in early adolescence, an inability to navigate the emancipation process, the failure of the dpj to intervene, and a subsequent lack of access to social assistance shaped her subsequent experiences of street involvement: i was too young to get welfare, so i couldn’t get any money.… you have to be 18 years old. 18 or 19. i think even older than that, because, like, they still consider, when you’re under 21 that your parents could still be providing for you. i had no contact from my parents. i couldn’t get any letter from them. to maximize the preventive possibilities, the legal system for the emancipation of minors should be more clearly linked with the dpj. young people who are of legal age to apply for emancipation (16 or older) and who arrive seeking temporary shelter or housing supports at street youth organizations could — if they so chose — be supported to legally emancipate and apply for welfare eligibility through the provincial social assistance system. currently, provisions to establish eligibility for social assistance as a minor pose restrictive barriers to young people, particularly those who need it the most — homeless youth. conclusion this article shows that the dpj has a key role to play in preventing young people from experiencing homelessness. first, we highlighted two institutional points of failure — normalized institutional processes through which the dpj undermines young people’s housing and social stability in and after care. we then highlighted two points of possibility — existing institutional and policy processes that could serve as levers to help prevent at-risk youth from becoming homeless. here we return to these points of failure and possibility and propose key changes that both attend to young people’s expressed concerns and align with existing research evidence. our research adds to the considerable evidence that the dpj is currently unable to provide young people with the supports and services they need and want while they are in care, and does little to prepare people for an independent or interdependent life after care. while extending the eligibility age for care has shown mixed results as a policy intervention (gunawardena & stich, 2021), the trend in canada and across western nations has been towards extended dependence on parents or the state due to limited opportunities for stable employment (cairns, 2017), with 34.7% of young canadian adults residing with their parents in 2016 (statistics canada, 2017). indeed, gunawardena and stich’s (2021) systematic review suggests that extending service access to age 25 shows the most promising results in multiple areas, including educational attainment, employment, and housing. this view aligns with that expressed by martin (a white québecois trans man) who suggested that young people need voluntary access to services and supports throughout their transition into adulthood: for me, i think that if the person isn’t ready, she’s not ready. i find that at 25 years old, you should have access to the dpj on a voluntary basis.… i find it really inconceivable that at 18 years old, there is not a single support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 126 of course, none of the youth we interviewed suggested extending eligibility for the type of punitive, low-quality services they had experienced. the extension of service eligibility must be coupled with investments in high-quality service delivery. to improve service quality, our team suggests the use of rights-based and trauma-informed (e.g., relational) interventions, rather than institutionalizing, punitive, and carceral ones. research favours the use of transitional supports that address not only housing, but the multiple and intersecting domains of youth’s lives (e.g., education, mental health, legal system involvement, employment, and social connections, as well as housing); such supports may include independent living readiness programs, extended flexible supports beyond the age of majority, and mentorship (other than from caseworkers) as young people transition towards interdependence in community settings (gunawardena & stich, 2021). young people’s participation in extended or after-care programming must be voluntary, consensual, and progressively self-determined. this connects to the second key role the dpj can play in preventing youth homelessness: working to ensure that youth are viewed as truth-tellers and rights-holders, capable of expressing their own needs for protection and emancipation. our research points to a statutory failure to position youths as rights-holders, capable of voluntarily seeking or refusing protection services. when young people bring forward a concern about their safety and well-being to an adult professional, the concern must be taken seriously. youth who are 16 and older should be invited to self-determine subsequent actions in dialogue with, and with support from, professionals. in some cases, youth who run away from group homes, foster homes, and family homes should not simply be returned to the place from which they were seeking refuge. treating “runaways” as missing children without serious consideration for the reasons they run away may have the unintended consequence of pushing them to sever all links to institutional services and support. in this article, fariha’s trajectory is a stark reminder that treating all runaways as “missing persons” can lead youth to actively avoid service delivery systems for fear that they will continue to be returned to an unsafe familial home. fortunately, we also identified two points of possibility — existing policy levers that could be used to enable the dpj to contribute to the prevention of youth homelessness in quebec. the youth protection act, for example, recognizes running away as evidence of a need for protection and there is an existing system for emancipation accessible to young people between 16 and 18 years of age. unfortunately, the legal processes for emancipating are outdated (e.g., from age 16, marriage suffices as grounds for emancipation), will likely require considerable legal assistance for youth to navigate effectively, and are not presently coordinated with other necessary support systems (e.g., social assistance). these legislative shortcomings mean youth are likely to emancipate into poverty. in addition to the programmatic and practice-based shifts we have highlighted in this conclusion, there is a need for policy interventions that address institutional gaps and enable changes that are attentive to contemporary political–economic relations in quebec and across canada. these include the rising cost of housing, lack of employment opportunities for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2022) 14(1): 110–130 127 youth, delayed economic independence among young adults, and increased expectations of postsecondary participation. acknowledgement this research was funded by: the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc) of canada, insights development grants program 430-2019-00166, the sshrc vanier 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(2019). the effect of placement instability on the transition to adulthood: report from wave 1. etude sur le devenir des jeunes placés (edjep), école nationale d’administration publique (enap), & la chaire de recherche sur l’évaluation des actions publiques à l’égard des jeunes et des populations vulnérables (crevaj). http://edjep.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/rapport_instabilite_eng.pdf gunawardena, n., & stich, c. (2021). interventions for young people aging out of the child welfare system: a systematic literature review. children and youth services review, 127, art. 106076. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106076 jasinski, j. l., wesely, j. k., wright, j. d., & mustaine, e. e. (2010). hard lives, mean streets: violence in the lives of homeless women. northeastern university press. karabanow, j. (2004). being young and homeless: understanding how youth enter and exit street life. peter lang. leroux, l., blanchet, a., goyette, m., & bouchard st-amant, p.a. 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(2006). engaging scientists through institutional histories [ilac brief 14]. institutional learning and change, bioversity international. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/52523/2/ilac_brief14_institutional.pdf rosenberg, r., & youngmi, k. (2017). aging out of foster care: homelessness, post-secondary education, and employment. journal of public child welfare, 12(4), 99–115. doi:10.1080/15548732.2017.1347551 sauvé, c., smith, c., fawzi, a., rose, t., langille, j., burkholder-harris, k., & kennelly, j. (2018). building bridges: perspectives on youth homelessness from first nations, inuit and metis, newcomer, and lgbtq2s+ youth in ottawa. https://homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/building-bridges.pdf smith, d. e. (1999). writing the social: critique, theory, and investigations. university of toronto press. statistics canada. (2017). census in brief: young adults living with their parents in canada in 2016 [cat. no. 98-200-x2016008]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/assa/98-200-x/2016008/98-200-x2016008-eng.cfm vaughan b. (2000). the government of youth: disorder and dependence? social & legal studies, 9(3), 347–366. doi:10.1177/096466390000900302 running head: standing on the shoulders of giants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 240 standing on the shoulders of giants: narrative practices in support of frontline community work with homelessness, mental health, and substance use brian dean williams and barbara baumgartner abstract: in the context of starting a housing first assertive community treatment (act) team, the authors describe their use of narrative therapy and narrative practices while working alongside individuals facing problems with homelessness, mental health challenges, and substance use. as many front line community workers responding to such problems are not trained counsellors, the authors provide an overview to narrative therapy, its key concepts, and how workers might use narrative practices as a nonexpert, anti-oppressive, and social justice response. to illustrate the concepts and how they translate into everyday conversations with workers, roy, a participant of the act program, shares his story of resistance to the influences of stigma and substances. roy also offers a reflection on this paper. practice questions are suggested to support alternative story development, and the relevance for child, youth, and family work is suggested. keywords: narrative therapy, narrative practices, housing first, assertive community treatment, act, substance use, addictions, mental illness, mental health, homelessness brian dean williams, ma, ccc, is a therapist currently in private practice, 204 – 402 west pender street, vancouver b.c., canada, v6b 1t6. e-mail: connect@briandeanwilliams.com barbara baumgartner, msw, rcsw, is a social worker and counsellor currently working in brisbane, australia. e-mail: barb.baumgartner@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 241 in 1676, isaac newton wrote to his rival robert hooke: “if i have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants” (turnbull, 1959, p. 416). we had similar experiences in our work as members of an assertive community treatment (act) team, working alongside participants seeking solutions to homelessness and mental health issues in vancouver, canada. through front line work in this project, we learned much by witnessing individuals working to overcome homelessness, mental health challenges, and substance use dilemmas. we discovered that the knowledge and lived experiences of program participants informed our ideas and practices, more so than what we learned from school and textbooks. in this sense, we truly do stand on the shoulders of giants. thus, our aim is to share with others who do front line relational work what we learned from program participants, utilizing key concepts of narrative therapy and narrative practice. we hope that this will be useful to others working with families and individuals in response to similar problems. both authors were members of the raincity1 housing first assertive community treatment (act) team in vancouver, british columbia, which was one branch of the at home / chez soi research demonstration project conducted by the mental health commission of canada2. beginning in 2009 in five cities across the country, the at home / chez soi study looked into solutions to chronic homelessness for those diagnosed with mental illness by comparing assertive community treatment (act), intensive case management (icm), and congregate housing interventions, to a treatment-as-usual cohort. we are not writing about the results of this research, but rather our lived experiences and what we learned in providing the services3. our team’s role in implementing one of the experimental conditions was to provide housing, mental health, primary health, and substance use services for 90 participants assessed to have “severe mental health issues” through a combination of housing first and assertive community treatment models. these models were based on the work of the pathways to housing organization located in new york city (tsemberis, 2010). housing first “is a recoveryoriented approach based on client choice. it gives people who are homeless and living with mental health issues immediate access to independent housing through rent subsidies and mental health supports such as assertive community treatment (act) or intensive case management (icm)” (mental health commission of canada, 2012). according to tsemberis (2010), housing first is based on the belief that “housing is a basic human right rather than something people with mental illness have to earn or prove they deserve by being in treatment” (p. 18). this stands in stark contrast to the more conventional “treatment first” approach to homelessness. act is an extensively documented and evidence-based model that has been used since the 1970s as a community-based solution for severe mental illness (matejkowski & draine, 2009, p. 6). in this 1 raincity is a non-profit agency in vancouver that specializes in providing innovative services to people struggling with homelessness, with the vision of “a home for every person”. home, with respect to the act program, means a market apartment in a neighbourhood of the person’s choice. 2 see www.mentalhealthcommission.ca 3 for more information on the early findings of the at home / chez soi study, refer to http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/english/node/775?terminitial=23 http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/english/node/775?terminitial=23 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 242 model, people are provided with an array of professional services to choose from, provided by a transdisciplinary team. in addition, people have a choice of the neighbourhood and type of housing that fits best for them, with no conditions attached to it aside from a commitment to see the team a minimum of once per week. since housing was not contingent on treatment or medication, participants had a choice of which mix of services, if any, they chose to access. with support from colin sanders (2007), stephen madigan (2011), and vikki reynolds (2010), the authors integrated narrative therapy and narrative practices into their work within the housing first act model. roy’s story to set the stage for our work, as well as to centre insider knowledge4, we would like to introduce roy, one of the “giants” on whose shoulders we stand. roy, a participant of the act program, agreed to have his story contribute to this paper. roy is 37 years old and has 22 years of insider experience with homelessness, substance use, and the mental health system. he grew up in a small city outside of vancouver, and has experienced homelessness three times in his life, including a seven-year stretch that ended when he became a participant in our program in 2010. roy has been diagnosed as “schizophrenic” and “schizoaffective”, although he does not invest in these labels. he has extensive experience with mental health programs, criminal justice, hospitals, homeless shelters, drop-in centres, and street culture. roy recently said: “to tell you the truth i didn’t think i’d live past 25 … on the road i was headed on, 25 is a big feat. now here i am at 37, finding my stride”. since becoming a participant with the raincity act team in early 2010, roy’s physical and mental health has significantly improved, he has been hospitalized much less often, and his substance use patterns have changed: my drug use has come down to a minimum, maybe $40 every two days – it’s gone down quite a bit. when you get away from the streets, the dope scene, you start thinking about other things – i busk for cigarettes and groceries. you start looking for other options – like construction safety officer, get my first aid, maybe get a small trade ticket. roy has been able to reconnect with one of his passions, music, and regularly busks in public with his acoustic guitar. such outcomes reflect the intentions of the program, which are to provide housing and tenancy support, and to support the person in making their own choices of when and how to change their relationship with substances, pursue educational or vocational goals, or explore psychiatric treatment. what are narrative therapy and narrative practice? narrative therapy is based on the ideas of michael white and david espton (white & epston, 1990), which they began developing and publishing in the 1970s and 1980s. more 4 insider knowledge: the understandings and skills gained from being a member of a particular community, and having experiences particular to that community (anderson & burney, 2004, as cited in tilsen, 2013, p. xviii) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 243 recently, many people have also contributed to the body of work known collectively as narrative practices or narrative community work (dulwich centre publications, n.d.). narrative therapy is unique in that it is not based in the tradition of psychology, but is rooted in ideas of social work, anthropology, literary criticism, feminism, and queer theory (madigan, 2011, p. 12). such non-individualizing and anti-oppressive ideas have created a valuable theoretical lens through which the contexts of problems are examined collaboratively with the client. using the metaphor of story, narrative therapy considers how identity is created through the telling and retelling of stories within the contexts of class, race, sexuality, gender roles, and culture (madigan, 2011). in this sense, the ways in which we talk about people and the problems they are experiencing do not just reflect reality, they begin to construct and become reality (freedman & combs, 1996; white & epston, 1990). as a deeply respectful approach that centres the person as the expert in his or her own life, narrative therapy is particularly well suited to collaborative work. drawing on the ethics and emphases of narrative therapy, narrative practices, also known as narrative community work or narrative approaches, have recently been used outside of therapy offices in day-to-day engagement with homelessness, mental health challenges, and substance use dilemmas (fraenkel, hameline, & shannon, 2009). while narrative therapy purposefully examines the context of problems, it simultaneously seeks to examine the person’s or community’s response to problems. when it comes to problems such as poverty or mental illness, a person’s response to the problem (such as spending one’s monthly income on substances instead of food or yelling back at voices), usually gets inadvertently ignored or pathologized by service providers (becoming an insider group members, personal communication, n.d.). this only serves to further discount the person’s own wisdom of the problem and its tactics. for example, here is the way one group member explained the illogic of budgeting in the context of poverty: if i only get money once a month and i know that there is no way that the money can last the entire month, what’s the point of even trying? i might as well spend it and have one or two weeks of food and comfort. i can always figure out how to get by the last couple weeks. (becoming an insider group meeting, circa 2011) this observation aptly sums up the irrational system response of teaching “budgeting skills” to people whose income is well below the poverty line. by renaming the problem as one of budgeting, the responsibility shifts onto the individual, rather than holding society and government accountable. how is narrative therapy relevant to community work? the principles and practices of narrative therapy offer rich possibilities not only for narrative therapists, but also for front line community workers. working within institutions, many conditions exist to support the blaming of individuals for complex problems like homelessness, substance use, and mental illness. white and epston (1990) write: “those analyses of power that have appeared in the therapy literature have traditionally represented it in individual terms, such as a biological phenomenon that affects the individual psyche or as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 244 individual pathology that is the inevitable outcome of early traumatic personal experiences” (pp. 18–19). for instance, using prevailing psychological and psychiatric language tends to pathologize the individual as the source of the problem, by referring to someone primarily by their diagnosis. we may read in a person’s file: “nancy is a borderline who acts out against other residents on the ward”, rather than “nancy is a person who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder” or “nancy describes herself as someone who struggles with establishing limits in her relationships”. by decontextualizing problems from the social, political, economic, and/or historical influences that support them, it becomes easier for helping professionals to conceive of problems as originating within individual experience. narrative therapy draws strongly on the work of french social theorist michel foucault (1980), who suggests “that we are subject to power through normalizing truths around our lives and relationships” (as cited in white & epston, 1990, p. 19). foucault viewed power and knowledge as inseparable, and the ability to define and categorize human experience as one of the primary exercises of power since the 17th century, including the objectification and scientific classification of individual bodies.5 when we speak about narrative therapy and narrative practices with community workers, many realize that they are already operating from a similar set of ethics and practices, but did not have the language or framework to support this way of working. sometimes they have been using these skills in underground ways, for example, by practicing covert compassion, refusing to pathologize individuals in client files, or inviting people to attend the “case” conferences where their treatment is discussed. in this sense, we view our trainings as acts of solidarity (polanco, 2011; reynolds, 2010) and community building, rather than bestowing our expert knowledge on under-trained or under-qualified people. the raincity housing first act program is not the only group in canada using narrative practice. at an agency level, the phoenix youth programs (pyp), a multi-service agency for homeless youth in halifax, canada, has been integrating narrative practice into their delivery of residential, drop-in, employment, prevention, and shelter programs (hartman, little, & ungar, 2008). in 2005 pyp, through an examination of its practices, began to co-author alternative stories of youth’s lives by meeting them “where they’re at”, drawing greater attention to unique outcomes and involving youth in transmitting their stories between workers, agencies, and their families (hartman et al., 2008). peak house in vancouver, canada, has also been a leader in applying narrative therapy principles in its provision of residential recovery services for young people (sanders, 1998, 2007). similarly, fraenkel and colleagues (2009) have written specifically about applying narrative practice to group work with families experiencing homelessness in three new york city shelters. in this context, narrative practice emerged as a helpful approach in part: because with its focus on the constraining effects of language and imagery on identity, narrative therapy seemed uniquely suited to address the impact of stigmatizing language 5 foucault has written at length about historical examples of this exercise of power/knowledge in terms of modern prisons (1979), medical clinics (1973), sexuality (1984), and madness (1965). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 245 and images of “the homeless” and to help families recover and enlarge other ways of viewing themselves. (p. 329) while providing individual, group, and family therapy was part of our role on the act team, narrative practices also informed the day-to-day interactions that we had with participants. for example, while delivering a person’s medications, we also had opportunities to explore their hopes for the future. while assisting a person with budgeting and grocery shopping, we could bring forward unique outcomes. in the waiting rooms of medical clinics, we had opportunities to ask what advice a future version of oneself might give to the current version. if substance use had interfered with a person’s tenancy, we could use externalization to explore the effects that substances were having on the person’s life and those around them. in some cases, a person had faced multiple evictions due to substance use and the problems that can accompany that, including noise complaints and the behaviour of guests. drawing on narrative practices, we co-authored a mutual understanding document about our shared preferred outcomes for the person’s housing, and the next steps to realizing this goal. this document was intended to set parameters and make expectations clear, while being as collaborative as possible. we were also aware that many programs with an addictions component required a formal assessment, which quantified a person’s current substance use and history with various substances. in response, we developed a “substance use conversation template”, which listed narrative candidate questions borrowed from colin sanders, david epston, stephen madigan, vikki reynolds, and others. these questions included: • have there been instances when [substance] convinced you to do something that went against your deeply held values? how did it do that? • were there other instances when [substance] tried to convince you to do something, but you stood by your values instead? how did you manage to take a stand in this instance? • what response do you have for the direction that [substance] is taking your life? • what is becoming possible that once seemed impossible, now that you’ve taken a few steps away from [substance]? we selected questions for participants who were interested, and recorded their responses verbatim. we then co-authored a document about their relationship with substances, and gave a copy to them as an aid to transforming this relationship, if that was a preferred outcome. the person could refer back to this document later to track changes they had made. the ethics of narrative practice infused the day-to-day choices we made, including our use of language with (and about) participants, our attempts to respect individuals as the experts in their own lives, and how we framed problems, such as making sure that we did not frame problems as residing within the bodies of individuals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 246 the context we worked in the city of vancouver, canada, on the unceded territories of coast salish peoples. vancouver is known around the world for its downtown eastside (dtes), which is an area of several square kilometres infamous for its high concentration of social problems, flanked by expensive neighbourhoods and the downtown business core. residents of the dtes6 have a long and interesting history of resistance, survival, and creativity. our team’s task was to provide housing first act services, rent supplements, and to give people the choice to move into apartments in different vancouver neighbourhoods. historically, people who have been homeless move through a continuum of shelters and housing offered in specific buildings (mental health commission of canada, 2013). in contrast, the housing first act program used scatter-site housing, which are market apartments located in unidentifiable buildings around the city, in neighbourhoods chosen by the person who is going to live there. it is a form of housing not previously offered to homeless people in vancouver. over time, we observed that the vast majority of act participants chose housing outside the dtes. in addition to narrative therapy, the principles guiding our work included participant choice, harm reduction, and mental health recovery. the authors had never personally experienced homelessness, nor been assigned labels such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. we knew we would not be able to offer advice or create a roadmap for people coming into the program. instead, we approached our conversations with participants wondering, “what does this person have to teach me?” we noticed that this was a useful starting point as many people described past pathologizing and disrespectful experiences when their opinions and choices were not heard. doing this kind of work is not a one-way process, with the worker “helping” and the “client” passively receiving. it tends to be a reciprocal process. rather than charity, we try to remember that when you work in relationship with people, they have much to give you. we feel that we are now able to see further because of what we have been given. working in the context of the dtes required that we acknowledge the politics of the work, as the majority of front line workers have little formal qualifications relating to mental health or substance use, yet provide the majority of support provided to people in the dtes. front line support workers in shelters, drop-in centres, and outreach programs deal with the most difficult and intense situations and are often overworked, undervalued, and underpaid, in addition to having to “help” individuals experiencing problems that are systemic in nature. the requirement to have an educational qualification and the professionalization of human service work can serve to separate front line workers from the very skills they need to have useful and supportive conversations. hansen (2010) describes how the rewards of the rise of professionalism in the field of counselling have limited the discussion of some of the disadvantages of professionalism, including insularity. we are not implying that training and education are not important. rather, we seek to deconstruct the existing notions of what it takes to be useful in relationship, and not add to an anxiety telling us that we are not good enough workers. some of the best work we have witnessed has been by non-credentialed staff, who are able to sit with people in distress, listen with the utmost respect and curiosity, and who can 6 to learn more about the social and political history of this area, see a thousand dreams by larry campbell, neil boyd, and lori culbert (2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 247 refrain from telling clients what to do. this position of non-expert listener serves as the most useful foundation in our work. key concepts key concepts of narrative therapy we used while working with the raincity housing first act team, include: seeing the person as expert; recontextualizing the problem; externalization; story as a metaphor; and re-authoring. person as the expert in her or his own life in narrative practice we attempt to reverse the traditional power dynamic, and privilege insider knowledge rather than “expert” professional knowledge, while also endeavouring to acknowledge the inherent imbalance of power in the relationship as a result of our privilege (e.g., from education, class, race, sexual identity, and gender). in this sense, our expertise is not so much about telling people what they need to do to make a change (in this case, from homelessness to having a home), but rather working towards dismantling barriers and constraints, all the while treating people with respect, and being skilful and compassionate in the kinds of questions we ask. our role is to facilitate individual and group conversations, with the aim of bringing into the foreground the knowledge, capacities, experiences, values, ethics, and connections required to make new meaning and change. we have learned that at both a group and an individual level, it is more ethical and pragmatic to centre people as experts in their own lives. to illustrate the value of insider knowledge, we have included the following exchange between roy and co-author brian at a training session for service providers: brian: do you have any other advice for people interacting with people having these kinds of struggles? roy: you’re not going to be able to convince people – they all know: i need id, education, a job … they know, it’s just that they’re not ready … and workers sometimes get worked up by something that their client says, and “i can’t help you unless you see it this way” and [the person]’s not going to see it that way… as we began our act work, we attempted a non-expert position and began interviewing those who came to a weekly group, which came to be known as “becoming an insider”. the meaning of the group’s name was twofold: first, people’s experiences of literally moving inside after a period of homelessness, and secondly, a shift in identity away from being people with undervalued or marginalized knowledge, towards being people with insider knowledge that was both valued and centred. we asked participants about their experiences of homelessness, the mental health system, their substance use, and what skills and knowledge they were now using in order to create a home. we acknowledged the value of this insider knowledge by archiving it as a handbook for staff and for new participants, similar to the handbook created with homeless families living in new york city shelters, as described by fraenkel et al. (2009). we also developed a newsletter based on the content of these discussions, and circulated the insider knowledge to other participants outside the group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 248 as we became aware of the isolation and lack of support that family members of participants were feeling, a group for family members began. the family group fostered relationships around shared experiences and explored the many ways family members had stood by their loved ones in the face of poverty, social stigma, mother-blaming practices, and violence.7 in our experience, centering people as experts in their own lives helped in creating rapport and close relationships with the people we were allying with. it was the rich quality of these relationships that served workers and participants alike, particularly when challenges and/or conflict arose. as a deeply respectful and collaborative approach, narrative practices are particularly well suited to cultivating collaborative working relationships and fostering a therapeutic alliance. the centering of insider knowledge is not just a token gesture, but can have powerful effects on the lives of insiders and even on the institutional systems that surround them, notably when given the opportunity to build solidarity and community with others who are facing similar struggles. re-contextualizing problems and resisting the blaming of individuals it seems obvious to state that homelessness, substance use dilemmas, and mental health struggles are entwined within a matrix of cultural, social, political, and economic forces. as tilsen (2013) asks: “if we understand problems to be socially located and that discourse shapes and gives meaning to personal narratives, is it possible or ethical to only work on the micro level with clients?” (p. 102). however, dominant psychological discourses about these problems have suffered from a narrow focus on individual experience, and at times this has inadvertently led to the blaming of individual bodies as the source, and container, of these problems (morrow & weisser, 2012). narrative therapy, drawing as it does on academic disciplines with a broader focus (sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, and women’s studies), can remind workers of the landscape in which the day-to-day struggles that they encounter are contained. keeping this in the foreground of our work creates space for us to resist the blaming of individuals when we are faced with persistent problems, behaviours, or interpersonal patterns in the complicated world of front line service work. white & epston (1990) write: “within the context of the practices associated with the externalizing of problems, neither the person nor the relationship between persons is the problem. rather, the problem becomes the problem, and then the person’s relationship with the problem becomes the problem.” (p. 40). as wealth has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the social safety net and national housing program have also been shredded over the past two decades in canada, which remains one of a few countries without a national housing strategy, or an official definition of homelessness.8 if homelessness, substance use, and/or mental health challenges are framed by the media and politicians as a personal “choice”, it has the effect of further absolving society 7 the authors will examine these narrative groups in greater detail in an article currently in progress entitled, becoming an insider: narrative therapy groups alongside people overcoming homelessness. 8 see report by special rapporteur miloon kothari to united nations human rights council in 2009, based on a 2007 tour of canada: http://www.lubicon.ca/pa/humanrp/un090217.htm http://www.lubicon.ca/pa/humanrp/un090217.htm international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 249 from collective responsibility for making things better for everyone. pejorative terms for people with these kinds of struggles obscure the context of trauma, social inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and various other factors that contribute to homelessness (boyer, ku, & shakir, 1997; kirmayer, brass, & tait, 2001; mental health commission of canada, 2009; all as cited in morrow & weisser, 2012), and blame the individual for their plight due to their lack of effort or character. narrative therapy reminds us to be cognizant, even vigilant, about the context from which these kinds of problems arise and, as a practice, it holds promise as a form of “justicedoing” (reynolds & polanco, 2012). a significant aspect of our work was re-contextualizing problems. in therapeutic conversations with the person, we brought forward the context that supported the problems they were facing. we discovered that when asked, people were often happy and even relieved to be asked these kinds of questions. we found that substance use was in some instances a reasonable response to experiences of trauma. ongoing experiences of violence and stigma related to transphobia had constrained housing and career options. alcohol use, rather than reflecting a personal failing or character defect, could be fuelled by the legacy of racism, genocide, residential schools, and related abuses in canada against first nations peoples. we asked questions with the intention of exposing various oppressive social forces that supported problems, and also questions that reminded the person of the resources and support that they had to resist or counter the problem. for example: • how did racism / sexism / transphobia / homophobia / ableism make using crack cocaine an easier option for you to take up? • did growing up in a working family that struggled to make ends meet make anxiety stronger or weaker for you? how did it do that? • what is the relationship between homelessness and crystal meth use? how did your use of meth make homelessness more manageable? was there a turning point when meth started to fuel homelessness more than it was fuelling you? • how did social stigma about your schizophrenia diagnosis affect the job options that were available to you? • who knows about your ability to resist the influence of depression? what might they tell me they know about you that leads them to believe you can overcome it? • who stands with you now against psychosis, and how might we invite them to get more involved in supporting you? narrative practices help us resist the temptation to blame individuals for these problems, helping us to ally with the person and build rapport. it also allows the person to see the problem and themselves in a different light – supporting them in developing an alternative story, reauthoring a new identity, and moving their life in a preferred direction. externalization while living in australia, co-author barbara had the opportunity to hear the late michael white, one of the co-creators of narrative therapy, speak on numerous occasions. she heard him international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 250 repeatedly emphasize that externalization is not a skill, but rather an ethic (white & epston, 1990), or an attitude (roth & epston, 1996). white deeply believed that people were not problems. he suggested using externalization as a means to ensure problems remain separately located – outside of the individual and in the realm of culture. problem identities have been constructed in a societal context and thus must be examined and considered in the same context (white, 1995). externalizing helps to ensure that our work is different from colonizing practices, which seek to blame, pathologize, and control an individual. approaching our community work with the belief that people are not problems, and that the problems of an unjust society should not be individualised onto a person, is a form of social justice. by separating the problem, what contributed to its creation, and how the person has responded to it, we can reinforce the idea that problems are not people. by locating a problem outside a person or their identity, people have space to consider the problem and their relationship to it, deconstruct the problem, and reflect on possible actions they might take. in the narrative tradition, when we write letters to people about problems, we use capitals to denote the problem, which helps to emphasize that the person and problem are separate entities. similarly, we change the adjectives people use as self-descriptors into nouns. for example, if someone talks about “being an angry person”, we might ask, “how long has anger been a big part of your life?” in our learning and teaching, we have asked people to interview each other about the role of a minor substance – for example, caffeine or chocolate – in their life, using the following example questions: • in what ways has [substance] been a friend to you? • how have you experienced it as helpful to your mental health or otherwise? • are there any ways that [substance] has interfered in your life? are there any drawbacks to it? • have there been any instances where you have changed or challenged [substance’s] influence in your life? what led up to this step? practicing externalizing questions invites people to explore the subject from a new position of curiosity, rather than from an assumption that the substance is entirely bad. we find that externalizing conversations that equally explore advantages and disadvantages of substance use are unique and useful for people who experience co-occurring problems in mental health and substance use. it is useful to us as workers, because it maintains the focus of the conversation on exploring the person’s relationship with the substances, and helps to safeguard us from attempting to convince people to abandon their substance use. externalization shows up in our conversation with roy about the current impact of substances in his life: roy: you can’t do that all your life [dope], you get old, your body starts falling apart. i’m not 22 anymore, i get more hung over now. brian: so is it just being more hung over that has gotten you to make some changes with dope? roy: yeah, the effect the next day, even just being older – now you got $60 worth of dope in your system, it makes it that much harder. there’s other ways to enjoy your life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 251 brian: like what? roy: like, go to a concert. i’ve got my guitar now, playing since 16 on and off brian: were you separated from music for a while? roy: yeah, there was nowhere i could play. it’s hard when you’re outdoors trying to keep warm. brian: how did you reclaim the musician part of yourself? roy: a friend played guitar and i picked it up one day. i enjoyed it, so got my own. brian: does the guitar separate you further from substances? roy: yeah. and having a group of people encouraging me is better than people saying i’m a junkie. i have dual diagnosis, mental health issues, plus substance abuse, plus trauma from living on the streets. externalization can also be useful when exploring people’s symptoms of mental health problems or trauma. many people attending our group reported being given a label or diagnosis without consultation or explanation, compounding a sense of disconnection from the agencies and workers that are supposed to provide support. exploring the content of hearing voices, for example, can lead to powerful and useful understanding of their meaning (hearing voices network, n.d.), which is a contrast from how people have been repeatedly told to ignore voices or take medication to dampen them, compounding the isolation and shame a person may already be experiencing. here are some enquiring externalizing questions regarding schizophrenia and the experience of hearing voices: • which parts of schizophrenia can you relate to? • are there some parts of schizophrenia that don’t fit for you? • could you tell me about parts of your life that aren’t influenced by schizophrenia? • when you experience voices, how do you respond to them? • are there times when ignoring the voices works better than others? • what are some of the tactics that voices use to try to get control over you? • if the voices succeed in convincing you that you are a bad person, how do you imagine this will influence the direction your life takes? personifying a problem such as “voices” creates space for a person to revise their relationship with the problem (white, 1995). our aim is not to eradicate the voices, as there are some problems that we cannot eliminate, but rather to explore and revise the meaning of the problem. in this way, the person’s own knowledge of a problem or experience (as opposed to professional knowledge) is privileged and at the centre of the conversation. utilizing a narrative approach, including externalizing, helps us as workers and as community members ensure that community problems are framed as social justice issues. freedman and combs (1996) frame this as an ethical practice. white (1995) also suggests that externalization is useful for examining the dominating and subjugating ideas about mental health and what it takes to be a worthy and “normal person”. story as metaphor narrative practice uses the idea of story as a metaphor to describe how people create a sense of who they are and the actions they take (white & epston, 1990). for this purpose, story international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 252 means a series of events linked in sequence, across time, according to a plot (morgan, 2000). people can have cultural and contextual stories about who they are (freedman & combs, 1996), and both can be dominant or subordinate stories. in this sense, we are multi-storied (madigan, 2011; white & epston, 1990). stories told and retold shape us as individuals and as groups of people. societies tell the story of homelessness in a variety of ways. for example, newspapers tell the story of one person’s experience with becoming homeless, often noting that the person was abused, didn’t finish school, and perhaps fell into drug use. this kind of media story does not outline the lack of a national housing strategy (in canada), the low income people receive (if they are deemed eligible) when they are homeless, the lack of available, affordable, and safe housing, the impact of colonization and loss of culture for an aboriginal or metis person, or how using substances when living outdoors is part of a broader process to form relationships and survive living rough or in substandard housing. instead, society tells the story of an individual with flaws, who is considered a failure. this story is often taken up by the person, pushing aside stories of their own worth, values, and hopes for themselves, their community, and future. co-author barbara had the opportunity to meet a participant we will call bill, who had secured housing through our program. she suggested they get coffee and have a chat at a bakery near his home. barbara was familiar with this new bakery, and noted that they took pride in the french style they had developed. bill had also noticed this new bakery opening in his community. before agreeing to a coffee, bill asked if it was okay if he entered the bakery. he explained, “well, i just worry that i might smell and i don’t look okay enough to go in there”. we can use his question to examine the stories being told about bill, as well as deconstruct the dominant ideas that might impact how he relates to his community. below are a few questions we could consider asking to highlight the layers of dominant and subordinate stories interwoven in this simple moment: bill had lived in this neighbourhood for many years when he was homeless, long before this bakery was opened. we might wonder about who gets to determine who belongs in this neighbourhood. • what other acts of gentrification were taking place in the neighbourhood that led up to bill deciding he might not be welcome in the bakery? • what experiences of discrimination had bill experienced (while he was homeless or housed) which supported his self-exclusion? • what were bill’s thoughts on what it takes for a person to be “okay enough” to access a business? what dress, standard of hygiene, volume/tone of voice, or movement of his limbs was required? • what was bill taking a stand for in his uncertainty about going into the bakery? • how had bill stood up to this kind of stigma in the past? as workers, we want to support people in telling the stories of their life, but a simple telling is not necessarily useful because it might reinforce a less helpful or pathologizing story. for example, if we simply ask bill to tell us about all the times he was excluded from businesses, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 253 we won’t necessarily discover a subordinate narrative9. by asking bill about his experiences, how he responded to these experiences, and his thoughts on the context of these stories of his life, we will hear more about the things he values. we will hear stories about how he prefers to live his life, and his hopes for the future. by deconstructing the cultural or meta-stories of what it means to be homeless, we ensure that the context of homelessness is not individualized onto a person. for people with multiple problem stories of intersecting oppression, it is our duty to ensure that these problems are given light in a wider context beyond the person. re-authoring when working with individuals living at the intersections of multiple social inequities, our individual support work becomes community work. if we accept that our work with people is to deconstruct the problems that have been created in a context of social injustice, then telling the under-told story of how they have resisted the problem or limited its influence is a necessary step, one which has been called re-authoring. michael white (2005) wrote: re-authoring conversations invite people to do what they routinely do – that is, to link events of their lives in sequences through time according to a theme/plot. however, in this activity, people are assisted to identify the more neglected events of their lives – the unique outcomes or exceptions – and are encouraged to take these into alternative story lines. (p. 10) telling an alternative or counter story about ourselves different from the dominant story can be a radical act, especially in the oppressive context of being told we are damaged and in need of repair. in human service and support work, we are trained to look for symptoms and signs of problems or pathology. in a search to understand how people are not doing “well”, we end up overlooking all the ways they are living well despite the problems they are experiencing. white (2005) encourages us to listen to a person’s problem story, but more importantly, to seek out the stories of how people responded to problems and how they resisted problems from completely taking over their lives. white also suggests that no one problem could completely take over a person’s life. there are always areas of living or moments where the problem had little or no influence. white would focus on these places with great curiosity. for example, when roy talks about not using dope for two days, we take a moment to explore this action with questions such as: • how did you go for two days without dope? • was this an important step that you took? • can you tell me what led up to it? • what did you do to prepare yourself to be without dope? • if you continued to loosen dope’s grip on your life each day, what possibilities might open up? 9 subordinate narrative: stories located outside the cultural, professional, and problem’s version of a person (madigan, 2011, p. 83). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 254 when roy answers these kinds of questions, we hear about his love for music, food, going to the movies, and about his ethic to help others. all of these answers can be explored as possible storylines, narratives that have been overshadowed by the dominant stories of being a “mental patient” or “addict”. similarly, by asking questions that explore unique outcomes, we hear a rich and moving description of roy’s hope for his future, including what support he needs to get there: barbara: any advice you’d share with your future self? roy: you’re asking about the direction i’m heading? barbara: what do you call that? roy: up to the highest peak, not taking a way out – the highest point of achievement that i can – right now it’s music, later on with school, to learn as much as i can, fulfill my destiny given to me by my ancestors and my higher power. the reward for me if i choose to go this way – if i climb up to the spot where i need to be, it will be easier for me to slide down the hill. by exploring how people have responded to the problems in their life, other untold stories or unique outcomes come to light. for example, roy as a person with significant experience with dope, has very likely had multiple experiences of going to substance use treatment, detox, or recovery facilities. each of those steps of resisting dope could be explored. doing this might tell a larger story of his preferences for his life, or of his tenacity in not giving in fully to dope’s control, or letting dope overshadow his own preferences for life. in this way we ensure that roy’s own knowledge is at the centre of the conversation, and that we as workers are not simply telling him what his new story of self should be. roy’s reflection brian met with roy over coffee in july 2013 to go over this article and give him the opportunity to respond and reflect on what we have written. we also discussed whether he would like to be published as a co-author. roy declined this option, choosing to use a pseudonym to maintain his privacy, but consented to having us use his de-identified words and story so that others could benefit. here are some excerpts from the conversation: brian: as you were listening to me read the article, which parts caught your attention? roy: it was a reminder of back when i was doing the interview in front of the audience [a workshop in january 2013], i forgot about half the stuff we actually talked about. brian: so was that a good kind of remembering, or … ? roy: yeah, yeah. brian: what was good about it? roy: it was good to remember where you been, right? brian: is that a place that you’d like to go back to? roy: things have changed since then. i feel like i'm a totally different person since that time. brian: how have you become a different person? roy: dope isn’t a part of my life anymore … i'm working on a new plan here. i’m not too sure where i'm going, but it’s a different direction that’s for sure. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 255 brian: is there anything that you think would be important for us to add to this article that we missed or forgot to mention? roy: i think you’ve covered it all. brian: what else has changed for you since we did this interview back in january? roy: just a different outlook on life. different tastes. in a dilemma of “what am i going to spend my money on now?” conclusion implementing models of assertive community treatment and housing first, the authors and their colleagues drew upon the respectful practices of narrative therapy when joining participants in their journeys from homelessness to being housed, and to consider their relationships with substance use. narrative practices opened space for new conversations about a person’s experiences of their mental health and to make new meanings of these experiences, as have been shown by others working in youth homelessness (hartman et al., 2008), families living in homeless shelters (fraenkel et al., 2009), and with youth struggling to overcome substance use (sanders, 1998, 2007). front line workers, often dealing with the most difficult situations, may benefit from learning the principles of narrative practices to support their work. working in the intersections of poverty, colonization, substance use, homelessness, and mental illness, workers might feel out of their depth as we have traditionally been taught in human service degrees to “have the answer”, thereby obscuring the wisdom of the people we are paid to support and further marginalizing their voices. in this paper, the authors suggest that by using key concepts of narrative therapy – including seeing the person as expert; recontextualizing the problem; externalization; story as a metaphor; and re-authoring – workers will see further and be able to support the telling of a person’s hopes, dreams, and untold abilities. the authors believe that narrative therapy is a socially just response to community problems that have been unfairly individualized onto people who have survived trauma and institutional violence. by deconstructing the social context and history of problems, individual responsibility is abdicated, breathing further life into stories of resistance, determination, wisdom, and hope. as roy described, we continue to “head towards the highest peak” to view what has previously been unseen. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 240–257 256 references campbell, l., boyd, n., & culbert, l. 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(2005). workshop notes. retrieved from http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/michael white-workshop-notes.pdf white, m., & epston, d. (1990). narrative means to therapeutic ends. new york, ny: horton. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2011.30.3.42 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2012.31.4.18 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452225869.n4 standing on the shoulders of giants: abstract: in the context of starting a housing first assertive community treatment (act) team, the authors describe their use of narrative therapy and narrative practices while working alongside individuals facing problems with homelessness, mental he... keywords: narrative therapy, narrative practices, housing first, assertive community treatment, act, substance use, addictions, mental illness, mental health, homelessness brian dean williams, ma, ccc, is a therapist currently in private practice, 204 – 402 west pender street, vancouver b.c., canada, v6b 1t6. e-mail: connect@briandeanwilliams.com barbara baumgartner, msw, rcsw, is a social worker and counsellor currently working in brisbane, australia. e-mail: barb.baumgartner@gmail.com to set the stage for our work, as well as to centre insider knowledge3f , we would like to introduce roy, one of the “giants” on whose shoulders we stand. roy, a participant of the act program, agreed to have his story contribute to this paper. roy is... what are narrative therapy and narrative practice? horton. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019714 suicide prevention education within youth work higher education: negotiating presence and procedure patti ranahan abstract: child and youth care practitioners are likely to encounter issues of suicidality. practitioners play an important role in the well-being of youth; thus, mental health literacy, and suicide prevention education in particular, should be an integral part of child and youth care pedagogy and curricular practices in higher education programs. with the aim of explicating a social process of learning and applying mental health literacy, this grounded theory study examined how a curriculum specifically designed for child and youth care practitioners is subsequently applied in suicide or mental health interventions. thirteen students enrolled in youth work courses at a large university in eastern canada participated in the 18-month study in 2015 and 2016. informed by critical and social literacy theories, conceptualizations of mental health literacy, and experiential pedagogy within higher education, analysis of the data identified a process of becoming and being in youth work comprising two subcategories: struggling to become a youth worker, and being a youth worker. conditions, such as particular pedagogical strategies and specific content, served to shape and influence the process and, consequently, participants’ movement therein. the inclusion of a suicide intervention learning activity was a condition that influenced participants’ learning processes, yet also reflected a struggle with the dialectical position of presence and procedure. recommendations and insights are discussed with the aim of enhancing pedagogical approaches to suicide intervention within child and youth care higher education programs. keywords: child and youth care, youth work, suicide prevention, mental health literacy, higher education patti ranahan is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montreal, qc h4b 1r6. email: patti.ranahan@concordia.ca acknowledgements: this work was supported by an individual seed grant, faculty research development program, at concordia university. mailto:patti.ranahan@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 168 “experiential understandings adds flesh and life to the bones so often polished smooth and white by analytical thought.” (jickling, 2009, p. 168) child and youth care1 practitioners are likely to encounter issues of suicidality as part of their relational practice with young people, their families, and their communities (ranahan, 2010). suicide is a leading cause of death for young people worldwide (world health organization, 2019). previous research findings suggest that child and youth care practitioners may resort to rote problem-solving responses when faced with youth contemplating ending their lives (cartmill et al., 2009). indeed, suicide intervention can be experienced as stressful and challenging, especially for early-career youth workers (ranahan & pellissier, 2015). child and youth care practitioners play an important role in the well-being of youth; thus, mental health literacy, and suicide prevention education in particular, should be an integral part of child and youth care pedagogy in higher education programs. in this qualitative grounded theory study, i examined how a mental health literacy curriculum, specifically designed for child and youth care practitioners, was implemented in the classroom context and subsequently applied in interventions with young people impacted by suicidality or mental health concerns. the study involved three groups of youth work students (n = 13) enrolled in preservice graduate and undergraduate programs between september 2015 and december 2016. in this paper i focus specifically on the inclusion of a suicide intervention learning activity as a condition that was influential on participants’ learning processes. to situate the discussion, i begin with a brief overview of suicide intervention education within higher education settings. next, i discuss key features of critical and social literacy theories, conceptualizations of mental health literacy, and experiential education in child and youth care higher education settings, which served as sensitizing concepts. following this, i outline the research method and present the research findings. i conclude with insights on and recommendations toward enhancing suicide intervention teaching and learning within child and youth care higher education programs. suicide prevention education as a topic with limited traction in higher education professional programs, often included based on faculty interest or by guest lecture, teaching and learning about suicide and suicide intervention can be challenging to implement and locate. there is a dearth of research examining the uptake of structured suicide prevention education within child and youth care higher education programs, or how the topic of suicide is addressed with students in informal ways. a previous literature review looked to allied helping professional programs, such as social work or nursing, as a method of identifying a level of engagement with the topic of suicide within higher education (ranahan, 2013). this literature review concluded that the need remains for overt 1 the terms “child and youth care” and “youth work” are used interchangeably throughout this article. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 169 inclusion of suicide content within child and youth care programs and future examination of how pedagogical approaches are linked to subsequent practical actions in suicide prevention. given the absence of research specific to child and youth care, locating the presence of, and approach to, suicide prevention education within higher education holds relevance. while some research points to the ongoing absence of suicide prevention education within higher education course content within the helping professional disciplines (see, e.g., wachter morris & barrio minton, 2012), some recent consideration of suicide prevention education within social work programs has occurred. different pedagogical and curricular approaches have been used, including implementing brief standardized programs in gatekeeper training such as question, persuade, refer (qpr; quinnett, 2007), or offering a course on suicide as part of an academic program. social work students who completed qpr identified an increase in confidence and knowledge, and reported using acquired skills (e.g., asking directly about suicide) during field placements after completing training (sharpe et al., 2014). beyond the implementation of brief gatekeeper training programs, almeida and colleagues (2017) designed a comprehensive full-semester course on suicide that took up topics such as the epidemiology of suicide, risk factors, public health approaches, and conducting risk assessments. in post-test assessments, a correlation was identified between increased suicide-related knowledge and social work students feeling confident and prepared to intervene. while increased knowledge and confidence may be immediate outcomes of suicide prevention education, research findings also illustrate the complexities of applying these outcomes in local contexts in a practical way. a consideration of contexts moves beyond an individualized focus on suicide as located within persons to include the social, political, organizational, and cultural contexts, including structural inequalities and broader social dimensions of health and well-being (see white, 2017 for discussion). to illustrate, mcconnellogue and storey (2017) identified the systemic challenges teachers experienced that undermined their self-efficacy. inadequate referral pathways to mental health care, lack of interprofessional communication, and parents’ dismissiveness were barriers experienced by teachers as they tried to apply suicide intervention skills within a school setting. the authors suggested that existing standardized gatekeeper training programs are designed as “universal” approaches and not tailored to specific contexts, potentially impeding responses to young people who are suicidal (p. 180). complexities of context in applying intervention skills acquired through suicide prevention training were noted by evans and price (2013) as well: organizational policies impeded practitioners’ responses and, over time, practitioners’ confidence waned. given the apparent misguided sole focus in suicide prevention education on participants’ knowledge and confidence outcomes, pedagogical approaches and content must appreciate the importance of context, moving context from the background to the foreground, as hawe and colleagues (2009) suggested. proposed strategies offered by ranahan and white (2016) may international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 170 enhance current suicide prevention pedagogical approaches by inviting a greater appreciation for the complexities of contexts: (1) recognizing literacies in mental health are contextually located in the youth– youth worker interaction; (2) integrating culturally responsive features that invite diverse meanings of suicidality and its origins; (3) repositioning expert educators as co-learners through a relational pedagogical approach; and (4) enhancing youth workers’ awareness, reflexivity, and presence through teaching and experiencing mindfulness exercises in the classroom. (pp. 187–188) critically, investigations are needed into how these and other such strategies are employed within child and youth care higher education, how specific pedagogical approaches may enhance practitioners’ responses and, more importantly, whether young people experience suicide intervention in new, relational ways that work to instil hope and promote life. this study begins to address this need. sensitizing concepts sensitizing concepts are concepts that provide an initial focus on and sensitivity to the topic at hand (blumer, 1954; charmaz, 2006; holloway, 1997), and “identify theoretically relevant phenomena” when analyzing the data (kelle, 2007, p. 207). critical and social literacy theories, conceptualizations of mental health literacy, and experiential pedagogy within higher education provided a focus for exploring how emerging youth work practitioners learned and subsequently applied mental health literacies in practice. critical and social literacy theories critical and social literacy theorists have moved beyond the notion of literacy as a fixed set of skills and acquired knowledge located within individuals whereby they are deemed either literate or illiterate. menezes de souza (2007) described literacy as “a socio-culturally situated practice involving the ongoing negotiation of meaning in continuously contested sites of meaning construction” (p. 4). as a situated and socially constructed practice, freire and macedo (1987) suggested analysis of literacy must occur “within the context of a theory of power relations and an understanding of social and cultural reproduction and production” (p. 142). critical literacy theory emphasizes a process of empowerment that redefines teachers as collaborators instead of transmitters of knowledge (gee, 2007; mcdaniel, 2004). knowledge, then, is co-created as a “relational act” (giroux, 1987, p. 15) requiring self-awareness and critical examination of one’s sociocultural location (shannon, 1995). developing awareness includes exploring how language constructs meaning (street, 1995). for example, questioning current mental health language (e.g., health, disorder, illness, treatment) can lead to new terms (e.g., wellness, community, culture, confidence, control), and alternate meanings may be communicated (stewart et al., 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 171 with respect to pedagogy, critical literacy theorists suggest teaching and learning are focused on transforming thinking, not technical skills (mcdaniel, 2004). through critical reflection, assumptions are examined and new opportunities for social action to address inequities, promote justice, and challenge the status quo emerge (shor, 1999). further, social literacy theorists pluralize literacy, suggesting that multiple literacies are required to negotiate variable and diverse contexts (gee, 2007; ivanič, 2009). this feature shifts pedagogical approaches away from teaching a universal skill set or list of competencies toward “the complexity of meaning making” by persons embedded in particular contexts influenced by power relations, identities, or cultural practices (street, 2009, p. 26). critical and social literacy theories enhance understanding of how mental health literacy is relationally and contextually produced and influenced by the processes of empowerment, self-awareness and critical reflection, transformation, and social action (ranahan, 2015). mental health literacy originally proposed by jorm and colleagues (1997), mental health literacy encompasses knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders, risk factors and causes, prognosis, available treatments, and attitudes toward help-seeking (p. 182). the canadian alliance on mental illness and mental health (2007) extended this definition, emphasizing “the recognition, management and prevention of mental health problems” (p. 7). current conceptualizations maintain an individualized emphasis on knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes; yet some have turned toward acknowledging the complexities of applying such literacy in context. for example, kutcher and colleagues (2016) moved away from a sole focus on individuals’ literacy and suggested that mental health literacy be “context specific” and “integrated into existing social and organizational structures” (p. 155). mental health literacy is a relevant concept for the field of child and youth care given our close proximity to young people who may be considering suicide, or suffering from other mental health concerns (ranahan, 2010). further, child and youth care practice has evolved to make interprofessional collaboration and participation on multidisciplinary teams increasingly commonplace (gharabaghi & charles, 2019). “professional ‘ownership’ of mental health care competencies” no longer holds true, as practice shifts toward integrating mental health care into general health services (kutcher et al., 2009, p. 315). experiential education while there are divisions and tensions among educators in child and youth care as to what should be prominent in education (for current debates see mann-feder et al., 2017), experiential learning via students’ active participation guided by professors as facilitators and mentors remains a common feature of child and youth care higher education programs (emslie, 2009a). as hillman (2018) aptly noted in his reflection after a child and youth care preconference educators’ day, “long gone are the days of education as strictly knowledge acquisition” (p. 62). the classroom itself is viewed as a “therapeutic milieu” where pedagogical approaches are used to promote critical reflection and self-awareness (browne et al., 2016, p. 143). the emphasis is placed on becoming and being a youth worker and the development of students’ professional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 172 identity towards this end, rather than on demonstrating preestablished competencies (emslie, 2009a; ross, 2014). indeed, ross (2014) suggested that the child and youth care teaching and learning environment is created for students to “learn what it means to ‘be’ a youth worker and not just learn about youth work” (p. 958). nurturing students’ movement into the profession is a dynamic and interactional process. conditions for effective child and youth care education include “a safe and structured learning environment, embodied participatory learning activities and attention to self-awareness, and a commitment by students to an emergent learning process as it occurs over time” (ranahan et al., 2012, p. 13). as such, teaching in schools of child and youth care requires instructors to demonstrate congruence with the relational and strength-based principles of the profession (ward, 2013). as a former student embedded within child and youth care programs at malaspina university-college (now vancouver island university) and the university of victoria, and as an educator with over 12 years of teaching in child and youth care programs, i entered the present study sensitized to experiential pedagogy and curricular practices. further, critical and social literacy theories provided the foundation of my doctoral work and subsequent engagement over the past several years in mental health literacy research. woven together, these concepts provided “points of departure” for the development of a mental health literacy curriculum for child and youth care, and for subsequently examining its implementation and application to practice during the grounded theory study (charmaz, 2006, p. 17). method in this section, i describe the development of a mental health literacy curriculum for child and youth care students, the use of grounded theory method, participant recruitment and data collection methods, and the analytical process. curriculum development a comprehensive explanation of the mental health literacy curriculum and the specific suicide intervention experiential learning activity employed in the study is provided elsewhere (see mann-feder et al., in press; ranahan & alsaieq, 2018). in sum, beginning in 2012, in partnership with child and adolescent psychiatrist, stan kutcher (dalhousie university), i developed a mental health literacy curriculum to address a perceived gap in mental health education within child and youth care higher education. notably, some schools of child and youth care have included required course work in mental health for some time. yet the uptake of mental health content, and more specifically, of pedagogical approaches of teaching and learning about mental health within child and youth care programs, has been studied relatively little. thus we aimed in the development of the curriculum to provide a foundational point for examining dominant content knowledge (e.g., presentations of mental health issues) with the complexities of context (e.g., power relations in interprofessional collaborations, indigenous perspectives on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 173 wellness, professional identity development). suicide intervention is incorporated into the curriculum in both content (prevalence of suicidality, cultural continuity, components of intervention conversations) and experiential learning (group and dyad simulation exercises, critical reflection activities). for example, as described in mann-feder et al. (in press), students have an opportunity to engage in a tag-team role play with the whole class. this tag-team role play is used as a chance for the instructor to coach and mentor students through a simulated suicide intervention. at the outset, one student volunteers to act as a young person contemplating suicide, and their classmates are positioned as youth workers engaging in an intervention. individually, each “youth worker” converses with the youth, while having the option to ask for guidance from classmates observing the conversation, or “tag” another student into the role-play to continue where they left off. following this group simulation exercise, students engage in a dyad simulation outside of class in which one student portrays a youth thinking of suicide, and the other student is situated as a youth worker. this dyad simulation is video-recorded and the student provides a written critique on their experience of supporting the youth as a youth worker (see mann-feder et al., in press). a key pedagogical aim in facilitating learning about suicide intervention is developing students’ appreciation for and comfort with uncertainty. as ross (2014) suggested, youth work pedagogy should facilitate the development of “intangible skill[s] of how to appraise and respond to complex problems of practice” (p. 959). given that suicide is a “wild problem” (white, 2012, p. 42), certainty should be resisted and complexity welcomed. congruent with ranahan and white’s (2016) recommendations, learning exercises incorporated into the curriculum were designed to enhance reflexivity through mindfulness exercises, oral and written reflections, the suicide intervention simulation group and dyad exercises, and generating creative products (visual body maps, explorations of beliefs and myths about mental health, etc.). grounded theory methodology grounded theory is both method and methodology: the procedural rules provided initially by glaser and strauss (1967), the founders of the approach, outlined a systematic way — a method — of accomplishing a research project, as well as a methodology with an underlying philosophy of how knowledge is constructed (i.e., pragmatism, symbolic interactionism). interpreting actions is central to symbolic interaction (blumer, 1969), and pragmatism is focused on action as the central unit of analysis (star, 2007). thus the method is highly suitable for investigating “individual processes, interpersonal relations and the reciprocal effects between individuals and larger social processes” (charmaz, 1995, pp. 28–29). the aim, then, of grounded theory is to explicate a social process, a phenomenon, including identifying the various conditions that influence how the process unfolds, and the consequences that arise (corbin & strauss, 1990). key features of grounded theory method include “(a) simultaneous collection and analysis of data, (b) a two-step data coding process, (c) comparative methods, (d) memo writing aimed at the construction of conceptual analyses, (e) sampling to refine the researcher’s emerging theoretical ideas, and (f) integration of the theoretical framework” (charmaz, 2000, pp. 510–511). grounded international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 174 theory method was highly suitable for the present study given that the objective of the study was to explicate the process of learning and applying mental health literacy in variable youth work practice contexts. participants and data collection recruitment commenced after ethical approval from concordia university’s human research ethics committee was received in july 2015. between september 2015 and december 2016, 13 volunteers (n = 13, of 47 eligible) were recruited to participate during the 18-month study. the participants were involved in graduate and undergraduate higher education programs and engaged in youth work internships. twelve identified as female, and one as male; all were between 24 and 48 years of age. participants were divided into three groups, two of which (n = 10) comprised graduate students enrolled in a 12-month youth work program who were registered in a course entitled mental health and addictions: youth work perspectives, policies and practices, which was offered during the winter terms in the 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 academic years. suicide intervention was a topic included in the content and learning activities of this graduate course. inclusion criteria additionally required graduate students to be enrolled in an internship course structured as a capstone course in the summer term. depending on student preference and need, the graduate internship course spanned between 320 and 420 hours. the remaining group was comprised of undergraduate students (n = 3) enrolled in a baccalaureate program in human relations, and taking a 360-hour internship course entitled internship in youth and family work. in addition to regular seminar meetings and completion of internship hours, students were offered a series of three 3-hour workshops on mental health topics (youth work and mental health care, depression and anxiety, and suicide intervention) derived from the curriculum. participation in the workshops was completely voluntary and not associated with course grade. as i was the instructor of the courses and workshops, participants who volunteered for the study remained confidential and anonymous until after grades were posted at the end of each term. research assistants thus facilitated the recruitment, consent process, and initial data collection for each group of students. data were comprised of individual audio-recorded interviews, participants’ written reflections and creative artifacts, and the researchers’ observations and reflexive memos. over 60 pieces of data were collected during the 18-month study. for example, individual interviews were conducted with graduate student participants on two occasions: first, prior to engagement in the mental health and addictions: youth work perspectives, policies and practices course; and second, within 3 months of completing the course. creative artifacts generated during the workshops with the undergraduate participants were gathered immediately following each workshop. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 175 data analysis data analysis ran concurrent to data collection in order to pursue questions that emerged, adapting to new situations, events, and participants (charmaz, 2005; morse, 2009). analysis began with line-by-line coding of transcripts, texts, and artifacts, followed by focused coding using the track changes feature in microsoft word. through the constant comparison method, a codebook was developed that grouped and collapsed codes into delineated categories (corbin & strauss, 2008). comparisons were made to delineate similarities and differences, while pinpointing influencing conditions (charmaz, 2005; corbin & strauss, 2008). as noted previously, in the present paper i offer an in-depth look at the suicide intervention content and requisite learning activities as a central condition that influenced students’ learning. results treating mental health literacy enhancement and application as a social process, and not merely knowledge acquisition, provided an opportunity to examine contextual elements at play in the learning process. analysis of the data identified two subcategories in the learning process: struggling to become a youth worker, and being a youth worker (ranahan, 2018; ranahan & alasaiq, 2018). struggling to become a youth worker involved a process of self-examination (interrogating self), moving between valuing and devaluing youth work as a profession, and making peace with not knowing. features of being a youth worker included attunement, collaboration, reflexivity, and embracing societal challenges. conditions, such as specific curricular practices and specific content, served to shape and influence the becoming and being process and, consequently, participants’ movement therein. the inclusion of a suicide intervention learning activity was a condition identified by several participants as significantly influencing their learning process; however, they struggled with the dialectical positioning of presence and procedure. presence can be defined as relational and physical proximity in moment-by-moment youth worker–youth interactions (ranahan, 2017), whereas procedure refers to following predetermined or standardized responses to a young person who has expressed thoughts of suicide (ranahan, 2016). this struggle was amplified for some participants once they were engaged in child and youth care practice contexts, where suicidality is frequently negotiated in terms of risk and responsibility and adherence to organizational protocols. in the following section, i utilize participants’ quotes to illustrate the suicide intervention activity as an influencing condition, and depict the struggle of presence and procedure. gender-neutral pseudonyms and pronouns are used to maintain participants’ confidentiality. suicide intervention learning activity as influencing condition structure is important in shaping social processes (dey, 1999). the suicide intervention learning activity was an integral component of the mental health literacy curriculum and one of the structural elements that fostered the unfolding of the process of becoming and being a youth worker. chalmers (2014) identified that “structures and processes are interwoven, essentially embedded within and constitutive of each other” (p. 93). structure came in the form of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 176 substantial time dedicated towards facilitating large group discussions, engaging in group and dyad simulations, individual readings, and individual written reflections on suicide and suicide intervention in the context of child and youth care relationships. several students remarked on the importance of the suicide intervention learning activity. for example, jordan stated, “the suicide intervention video exercise was probably the most significant experience for me in this class.” morgan identified, “what stood out to me the most was the suicide intervention.” hayden noted, “the assignment on the topic of suicide was very enlightening.” further, taylor indicated an absence of the topic of suicide and suicide intervention in their prior course work: “surprisingly, i realized that not once have i had the opportunity to address this prevalent social issue [suicide] during my [previous] psychology bachelor.” with content and learning activities focusing on suicide prevention quite limited in higher education, and practitioners often left to gain “downstream” knowledge once actively working in the field (oordt et al., 2009, p. 22), participants regarded this suicide intervention learning experience as important to enhancing mental health literacy. presence in child and youth care literature, presence is often defined as “being there” (krueger, 1994), attuned to the youth–youth worker interaction, where self meets self (fewster, 2002). krueger (2007) suggested that practitioners attempt to hold the relational space with a particular confidence that conveys to the young person commitment and persistence. they can do this, in part, by [communicating] the underlying message: we can move forward together, you and i. i am confident based on my experience and knowledge of your needs that we can make it. you are safe, because i am here and will go with you. i will try to know myself if you will try to know yourself. (para. 20) seemingly accustomed to the banking model of acquiring knowledge (freire, 1970/2005), student participants struggled with the ability to feel confident and certain during the suicide intervention learning activity. the banking model of education suggests that, once educated (i.e., content knowledge has been delivered/deposited), a student is competent and holds the knowledge required. yet, in regard to suicidality, certainty was not gained and confidence was not found even after participants engaged in simulations or child and youth care practice in their internships. hayden noted, “i had a hard time just asking them, like, ‘are you suicidal?’ ” taylor noted uncertainty and a lack of confidence: “i very much lack confidence because i feel like it’s so new, i just don’t want to do something wrong.” as participants engaged experientially in suicide intervention simulations and in practice contexts, several reported difficulties in staying present in these interactions. during the videorecorded simulation completed as part of the graduate course, taylor stated they were “speechless at one time” and “stumbling on my words because i didn’t know what to say”. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 177 suicide intervention simulation also left one participant, raleigh, acutely aware of a “knowledge gap” and feeling less comfortable: i found it difficult to do this intervention and i would have like more coaching. i feel i have only touched the surface of suicide intervention and i feel even less comfortable than before because i am aware that this is a gap i have. for a long time, i thought i wanted to do crisis intervention [work]. but doing the video made me realize how much being put on the spot in such a dramatic context may not suit me. this uncertainty was also evident for another participant when working in their internship setting a few months after the course completed. morgan described feeling “unsure of what i was doing” when speaking with a youth in a residential centre who disclosed suicide ideation. after navigating the interaction with the youth, morgan attempted to convey their concerns to fellow staff members. unfortunately, these concerns were dismissed, leaving morgan feeling discouraged: “yeah, it’s pretty tough especially when you feel like you’re kind of powerless, ’cause i’m not exactly in a position to make certain decisions or calls.” other participants spoke of this unmet expectation of confidence and certainty as a need for more knowledge: • i feel like i still have a lot to learn in this area, like suicide intervention. (taylor) • i realized that i need more knowledge on suicide intervention … because i was still left like unsure of what i was doing. (morgan) knowledge about suicide was assumed to be quantifiable: youth work students believed that banking more knowledge would ultimately provide certainty in navigating suicide interventions. other participants reflected on the need to stay present with the young person, notwithstanding feeling discomfort. morgan identified a need to be responsive to what unfolds in the moment: “it is a dance, so sometimes it’s going very well and sometimes you kind of stop and you need to re-evaluate what’s going on and adapt to the person and what they’re going through.” sidney identified the importance of listening, trying to understand the youth’s experience while staying engaged and aware of one’s motivations: one of the basic components involves listening. when we’re confronted with someone who is thinking about suicide, so often we want to jump in, save them, and tell them all the reasons why their life is worth living. but we need to take a step back. staying attuned to the moment-by-moment interaction, managing discomfort, adapting to what unfolds, and listening to try to understand the young person’s experience were mechanisms international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 178 identified by child and youth care students that supported their ability to remain present during suicide interventions. procedure suicide intervention is often thought of as separate from other engagements with young people — as a structured process with a specific protocol or list of questions designed to assess the level of risk for suicide, which is linked to action (ranahan, 2016). this procedural response often stands in contrast to the attuned and responsive presence participants aspire to hold, which was integral to their prior course work in child and youth care. this contrast is evident in the first interview with tobin in which they shared a story of responding to a young person who expressed thoughts of suicide while residing at a shelter: and i said, ‘your two choices, unfortunately, two choices are either you go to the hospital and then you come back, or you leave the center because we can’t keep you here.’ and oh my god, i fought with all the other workers because i didn’t want him to leave. because what would that mean if he left? this is the only place that he has connection! like, this is the only place he was able to stabilize himself and he has severe social anxiety. tobin’s encounter depicts the struggle of following a procedure (referring the youth to the hospital) and still being relationally responsive (attuned to the youth’s needs). tobin explained further that should the youth not go to the hospital, they would be discharged from the facility, as suicide was not the “responsibility” of the organization. employing a protocol may be a way of mitigating the practitioners’ discomfort with suicide and uncertainty. linden explained: many people have been impacted by suicide in some way in their lives, and this experience is not often acknowledged. instead we tend to distance ourselves from the personal impact of it and discuss it in a very clinical way. in the context of suicide intervention, presence and procedure seemingly unfold as conflicting and divergent approaches, emerging as a dialectical space requiring reconciliation. kingsley described this dialectical space and the struggle to remain responsive in their reflective paper: i experienced a struggle between adhering to protocol while remaining flexible. to be sure, it matters that youth workers carry out their duties according to protocol, but it is likewise prudent that they do so while remaining inquisitive about the client. holding presence and procedure simultaneously was also described by clarke: “competent intervention is not merely a matter of ticking off boxes, and practitioners should be ever vigilant for signs that their approach is falling short of its mark.” there is no reconciliation of these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 179 apparent opposing forces identified by kingsley and clarke. rather, both suggested that it is essential to maintain a judicious awareness of when one is favouring procedure over responsiveness. learning to hold this dialectical space was fostered, in part, in two ways: first, engaging in a tag role-play during class; and, second, positioning mental health content in connection with child and youth care principles as defined by ranahan and colleagues (2015). these principles include collaborative relationships, a developmental perspective, a rights-based approach, an ecosystemic perspective, and reflexivity and ethics. in reference to the tag role-play, morgan suggested this learning experience was beneficial in appreciating the diversity of responses: “through the in-class exercise of role playing a suicide intervention, this allowed me to learn from my peers and see how each approach is different. this made me realize there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach.” in addition, as the mental health content was integrated with principles of youth work throughout the curriculum, it held an emphasis on strengths as opposed to pathology (ranahan et al., 2015). during the course, participants’ responses and responsiveness to young people shifted to seeing them as persons, not disorders. tobin explained: “seeing it from a youth work perspective that was a little different … it’s reminding myself that i have to remember that i’m working with an individual despite their mental health.” this quote from tobin is illustrative of the larger process of becoming and being a youth worker, in which integration into the child and youth care profession is transformative (ranahan, 2018; ranahan & alsaieq, 2018). young people and issues they face are reconfigured as students begin to integrate child and youth care perspectives, such as an emphasis on strengths and collaborative relationships (ranahan et al., 2015). in the next section, i discuss how this negotiation of presence and procedure identified by participants in the present study holds implications for suicide prevention education and pedagogical strategies in child and youth care higher education. discussion and implications white (2012) posited that youth suicide is “an unstable, historically contingent, and unruly problem [which] cannot be solved, nor contained through an exclusive reliance on predetermined, universal or standardized interventions” (p. 42). as such, learning experiences in child and youth care higher education that parallel the complexities encountered in practice and safe learning spaces are needed for students to question, take risks, share beliefs, express vulnerabilities, and accept others’ feedback and perspectives (samaras et al., 2014). moments of fear and anxiety can be viewed as opportunities for learning that can lead to personal transformation (walinga & harris, 2016). suicide prevention education thus requires addressing notions of confidence and desires for certainty, while encouraging the development of multiple literacies in mental health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 180 confidence and certainty certainty and confidence create feelings of security and predictability, and yet complex social problems, such as suicide prevention, are inherently messy. students’ experiences of not knowing and uncertainty can create anxiety, and the potential to rely on technical, detached responses. the attributes of feeling prepared, confident, and knowledgeable are often assessed in suicide prevention education research with a heavy reliance on self-report; these assessments show the effects of education varying widely (pistone et al., 2019). some participants in the present study deemed the content knowledge afforded during the course insufficient, and identified a need to know more. exactly what amount of knowledge is needed, and on what topics, are questions that remain unanswered. suicide prevention education can vary from 1.5-hour professional development workshops to comprehensive courses offered within graduate programs. yet no single curriculum, learning activity, or classroom can fully prepare child and youth care practitioners for the complexities of being with children, youth, families, and communities in diverse contexts (fewster, 2004). as pistone et al. (2019) suggested, “although education has been statistically shown to increase knowledge and attitudes, the practical relevance of this increase is largely unknown at present. a gain in knowledge is only relevant if it leads to an actual change in behaviour” (p. 410). in his analysis of youth work students’ reflective journals completed while engaged in internships, emslie (2009b) notably identified a common theme of feeling overwhelmed when working with complex issues. emslie noted, “responding to young people who had self harmed and who spoke about suicide was particularly difficult” (p. 68). as such, a critical feature of suicide prevention education would be preparing students for uncertainty, and its resulting discomfort (ranahan, 2020). this repositions our knowledge about suicide prevention as incomplete and tenuous at best, and contradicts the message that suicide is a preventable death. as white (2017) explained: within mainstream suicidology, suicide has come to be understood as a static, individual, and recognizable phenomenon that is strongly associated with psychopathology and individual risk factors. as a knowable entity with relatively stable properties — the thinking goes — suicide can be explained, documented, and ultimately controlled. (p. 472) while applying the descriptor complex in reference to suicide intervention may be met with nods of approval and recognition among inexperienced and experienced practitioners alike, child and youth care students are positioned, and position themselves, as open repositories expecting to be filled up by the knowledge needed to negotiate this complexity with ease. morgan’s “need to know more” and taylor’s “i still have a lot to learn” illustrate this taken-for-granted assumption that suicide is a “knowable entity” (white, 2017, p. 472). to add to this complexity, students are likely to have prior experiences and knowledge of suicide through personal experience, family history, peer engagements, or media exposure. for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 181 example, 85% of students in scott’s (2015) study identified that they personally knew someone who had died by suicide. experiential learning can be challenging as learning activities can serve as a context for revisiting prior painful experiences, while also instigating feelings of confusion, conflict, and discomfort (chen, 2014). during my undergraduate course work in child and youth care, the instructor, gerry fewster, often repeated the mantra “do not ask others to do what you are not willing to do yourself”. with this mantra in mind, educators and students alike should embrace challenging topics within child and youth care education and the difficulties such topics impart in the classroom context. prior to engaging in suicide prevention learning activities, educators can scaffold experiences that prepare students to be more comfortable with the activities. for example, identifying suicide as a topic within the course description, including a structured assignment on suicide intervention in the course outline, and positioning suicide prevention learning activities at the midto end-point of the course can provide the necessary framework for students to participate fully in the experience. further, deferring the topic to an outside expert or guest speaker may serve to convey the message that suicide intervention is not the responsibility or role of child and youth care practitioners. educators have opportunities to position suicide prevention as part of practice, as part of our ongoing conversations with young people, and as part of how we work on interprofessional teams in caring for children, youth, and their families. “inside-out” and “bottom-up” mental health literacies approaches to mental health literacy enhancement often solely focus on the transmission of dominant knowledge, emphasizing psychopathology and the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (american psychiatric association, 2013). indeed, course descriptions for mental health courses in child and youth care continue to privilege an illness ideology (see appendix). while knowledge of mental disorders, treatments, and resources available may support interprofessional collaborations in guiding children, youth, and their families through pathways to mental health care (ranahan, 2018), findings from the present study are illustrative of other literacies that require concurrent attention. literacies include how lived, relational, and situational knowledges are produced and communicated, and “valuing knowledges that emerge from the inside-out and the bottom-up” (licona & russell, 2013, p. 2). further, the adult learner is “developmentally distinct”, whereby “learning is optimized when their experience is recognized and utilized in the learning process” (chen, 2014, p. 407). as noted, students are likely to have experience, and thus knowledge, at the outset that can be recognized and built upon. critically examining how organizational protocols may inhibit responsiveness to a young person’s needs, or querying whether the values underpinning such protocols are congruent with child and youth care principles, are indicative of critical literacy praxis. as lankshear and mclaren (1993) suggested, this involves facilitating learning experiences that help students “understand the nature and implications of the ideology on parade: and in doing so engage international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 182 students in reflection upon their own ideological investments” (p. 9). in the present study, linden aptly summarized the transformation that occurs when students are encouraged to examine the implications and investments underpinning their assumptions in their written reflection after attending the workshop series: bringing in discussions and principles related to youth work also allows a unique space for those working in the field to apply questions to their own experience, and uncover buried assumptions, discomfort, knowledge and personal connections. unlike typical discussions of mental health, when we are actively engaged through discussion and activities using multiple intelligences we bring in our own emotional knowledge. one example of this is when i realized through discussing an issue of mental health how uncomfortable i was talking about it due to the words that came out of my mouth. having spaces that help us process information and share experiences helps us practice speaking in a way that is more congruent with our values, through safe trial and error, as well as exploration of discomforts. linden’s learning experience is congruent with white and morris’ (2019) recent suggestions of how a narrative therapeutic approach embedded in suicide prevention education supports participants’ movement towards relational responses and a collaborative way of working in which care is humanized. several present features of child and youth care higher education support pedagogical strategies that evoke “inside-out” and “bottom-up” literacies required in suicide prevention education. for example, an emphasis on self-care and critical reflection can broaden students’ perspectives and improve decision-making (emslie, 2009a; kostouros et al., 2019), and mindfulness teaching supports students’ openness, curiosity, and creativity (ventrella, 2017). conclusion as a key component of the mental health literacy curriculum under investigation in this study, learning activities on suicide and suicide intervention served as conditions that influenced the paths student participants followed in becoming and being youth workers. participants identified a struggle as they attempted to apply learning within simulated and real-world practice contexts, often citing the need for more knowledge as the pathway to increased confidence. this struggle was amplified by students’ discomfort and apparent desire for certainty while attempting to hold attuned relational engagement and satisfy protocols simultaneously. thus participants were positioned in a dialectical space, experiencing tensions between maintaining presence and procedure. implications for pedagogy include resisting pressure for certainty and for simplifying complex issues, building upon existing features found in child and youth care higher education (e.g., reflexivity, self-awareness, mindfulness, collaborative relationships), while embracing suicide and suicide intervention as critical topics integral to students’ future practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 183 references almeida, j., o’brien, k. h. m., gironda, c. m., & gross, e. b. 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(concordia university, 2019, pp. 58–59) cyc 470 child and youth care practice in mental health settings an examination of the prevalence of patterns of atypical behaviours in childhood and adolescence and research on neurobiological correlates and socio-cultural contextual factors often associated with these patterns. students gain understanding of key concepts, classification systems, assessment methods, and objectives guiding the delivery of child and youth mental health services, the use of psychopharmacology and other approaches. the interface between mental health services and professional practice in child and youth care is explored. (university of victoria, 2020, cyc470) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 167–191 191 biography patti ranahan is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university. she is a skilled community-engaged researcher, educator, and practitioner with expertise in child and youth care, suicide prevention, mental health literacy, counselling and parent–youth relations, which is based on over 25 years of direct practice and leadership experience promoting child, youth, family, and community well-being. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 432 intersections of war trauma, culture, and socioanalysis in mental health intervention for post-traumatic stress athena madan abstract: “refugee war trauma” is a poor adjunct to post-traumatic stress, lacking context for a civilian survivor of war. the “therapeutic mission”, or consolidating a therapeutic agenda with political reconstitution, has its tensions: such founders embody politics of “emotionology” (humphrey, 2005, p. 205) bound largely to pharmaceuticals, from a land of “freedom” (where emphasis is on market) and “democracy” (where emphasis is on autonomy of choice, not accountability). additionally, how people “cope” or “solve problems” is not universal: therapy speaks of self-empowerment, selfactualisation, and self-control; reconciliation speaks of collective citizenship, national participation, and group reform. instituting participation in rituals that ‘help” according to predefined norms of an american prescription to suffering speaks more to the globalisation of the american psyche (watters, 2010; venne, 1997) than of humanitarian relief. this paper looks at the absence of cultural and socio-political specificities within the dominant discourse on “war trauma”, that are however of ultimate relevance for people affected by war. using a case example from my own practice with a rwandan woman living now in canada, i question the “helpfulness” of post-traumatic stress treatment with this instance of refugee war trauma, and the impact of power systems in mental health care. how can the therapeutic encounter, given its genesis in eurocentric, patriarchal, enlightenment thought, pause to better consider its potential for injury, especially within contexts of post-colonial genocide? how to avoid a new “mission to civilise”? what tensions to note as the advent of “trauma counselling” seeks more global application and transnational legitimacy? keywords: medicalisation, mental health, refugee, social world, trauma, genocide, post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) athena madan is a phd candidate in sociology and equity studies at the university of toronto, 252 bloor street west, toronto on, m5s1v6. email: athena.madan@utoronto.ca. mailto:athena.madan@utoronto.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 433 traumatology holds particular cultural meanings that can be lost within the contexts of a psychiatric assessment: these may include spiritual and social implications that shape identity, participatory citizenship, and social dreaming. mental health professionals responding to the distress of post-colonial injury can contribute valuable expertise to communities desiring healing and recovery from trauma; however, contributions should not obliterate local beliefs, customs, and traditions that are relevant to healing. bourdieu’s notion of socioanalysis considers intersections of individual and institutional forces within social space, and how these qualities shape relationships. grenfell (2008) defines socioanalysis thus: aspirations and expectations, what is reasonable or unreasonable, [what is] likely or unlikely, (and) beliefs about … actions … are all conditioned by a mediated form of arbitrary social structure. it is our material conditions of existence that generate our experiences of possibilities and impossibilities … in turn shap[ing one’s] unconscious sense of the possible, probable, and crucially, desireable. the hidden workings of habitus is thus a kind of “socioanalysis”, a political form of therapy enabling social agents to understand more fully their place in the social world. (pp. 58–59) bourdieu posits that there are cultural, economic, intellectual, psychosocial, political, and spiritual inheritances (referenced as “habitus”) which shape a person’s way of interacting with the world. conversely, the world’s conditions of governance, economy, and class (referenced as “arbitrary social structure”) are also inherited circumstances comprising the ways in which an individual can enact (or not enact) his or her personal agency. bourdieu was particularly interested in the predictability (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) with which these conditions shape individual circumstance and capacity for social dreaming. this article discusses systemic predictabilities of inequity that may manifest in traumatic stress treatment for instances of post-colonial injury. i relate the experiences of nteza, a former client of mine and child survivor of the rwandan genocide, now a mother, widow, and landed refugee to canada via burundi and the congo. with reference to nteza’s narrative, i question the “helpfulness” of post-traumatic stress intervention for this instance of refugee war trauma, and reflect on the impact of psychiatry as a power system in mental health care. i argue that the dynamics of mental health treatment shape and are shaped by unchecked political epistemologies; these create ptsd as a dominant geopolitical ideology, and serve to perpetuate injurious and colonial-like personal consequences. as canada ranks fifth as a target destination for refugee resettlement (united nations high commissioner for refugees [unhcr], 2011), and as instances of protracted conflict are tragic realities in more than 20% of the world (murray & lopez, 1996), canadians need to undertake a more comprehensive understanding about postcolonial and socio-political conflict dynamics in the context of a “helping” relationship, so as to better respond and prevent further injury. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 434 considering genocide genocide is considered “one of the worst moral crimes of a government”, and has resulted in the deaths of approximately 174 million people since the beginning of the 20th century (canadian centre for victims of torture, 2009). the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide defines genocide thus: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a. killing members of the group; b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (united nations general assembly, 1948, article ii) the most extreme documented forms of genocide have occurred in the u.s.s.r. (resulting in 62 million deaths), china (45 million), and hitler’s germany (6 million). since world war ii, documented genocides have also occurred in tibet, guatemala, guinea, pakistanbangladesh, cambodia, east timor, burundi, and ethiopia. the last quarter century has borne witness to and prosecuted darfur, rwanda, sudan, and the former yugoslavia. areas under concern or at risk of genocide in the last 25 years (office of the special advisor on the prevention of genocide, 2011) include occupied afghanistan, the democratic republic of the congo (dcr), iran, iraq, israel, the west bank/gaza strip, somalia, and sri lanka. the 1994 genocide not only decimated rwanda, but sparked tensions in burundi, the dcr, tanzania, and uganda. from unhcr estimates, not including the voluntary repatriation of displaced persons, the 1994 genocide still affects 5.8 million refugees worldwide (united nations, 2009, and my own extrapolations). the point being: the 100-day war has resulted in consequences as significant and as long-lasting as the holocaust. i reference these facts to illustrate that genocide-affected migrants are not an isolated minority; indeed, the world health organization and the world bank predict that war will be the eighth leading cause of death and disability by 2020 (murray & lopez, 1996). it is thus likely that increasing numbers of patients will present with lived experiences of war as part and parcel of their medical and psychological histories. but particularities of genocide and mass violence are complex, each carrying contexts and consequences that are not yet documented or fully understood. indeed, a recent canadian study with psychiatric resident students reported that, although most residents had encountered a patient who had been traumatised by war, none reported feeling completely prepared, and that 90% desired to learn more about this area (munshi, woods, & hodges, 2010). further, the above naming of conflict is not definitive: advocates, lawyers, and political scientists all suggest that declaring or discerning the convention’s “intent to destroy” clause is precarious, outside the scope of autonomy’s rule (see (kupchan & mount, 2009), and fraught with both political and politicised interpretations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 435 it is important to note that genocide is a distinct form of mass violence in two ways. first, when the united nations declares genocide – a process that some argue has in itself also become political (to review, see moses, 2006) – the international community is required to intervene, as mandated by the 1951 convention; however, as the u.n. has yet to agree on exact parameters of intervention, political and humanitarian intervention efforts often present with conflicting agendas of interest, and are in direct competition for resources to deploy aid. second, also according to the 1951 convention, acts of genocide (since 1951) are punishable by international law. this may affect whatever stability of immigration protection and intervention a host society may be able to provide. analysis of decisions concerning the convention’s implementation, and the u.n.’s governing enactment of it, are outside the scope of this article. genocide and mental health the author has previously discussed (madan, 2010b, p. 262) mass organised violence such as genocide as having “deep, systemic, and ingrained long-term implications”: as conflicts are so protracted, trauma includes an ingrained political reference to collective identity and postcolonial tension, with a collective experience of subjugation that translates into a feeling of “being less than human” (see also madibbo, 2005, p. 13). very relevant in the aftermath of mass organised violence is a heightened sense of collective loss: community, dignity, family, property, safety, and interpersonal rights have all been stripped, with direct experience or witnessing of indiscriminate mass killing, open systematic rape, and torture. with regard to children, the consequences of genocide also include a schema where violence is accepted, acceptable, and expected, and that murder is legislated power (beah, 2007). the refugee experience (fleeing the conflict) lends additional complexities. blackwell (2003, 2005) and the world health organization [who] (2004) note these may include a loss of culture, home, and status, with fear of perpetuating losses under threat of deportation. this threat of deportation creates an adversarial relationship with a government the refugees are still trying to trust; moreover, stress from daily circumstances often includes inadequate housing, a poor diet, financial instability, and separation from or the death of family and communities of origin. specific to relocating children, revell (2001) and the national institute of mental health [nimh] (2002) note that there can also be fears due to the following: the unavailability, disappearance, or death of family members; interruptions to schooling; difficulties with a potentially new language; and a general, sustained sense of uncertainty. additional points to consider in war trauma pertaining to diaspora include a legacy of feeling perpetually second-rate (canadian broadcasting corporation [cbc], 2009; shamsuddin, 2009), a collectivist world view, and a response and ability to act in the commemoration of loss (or, as is said in the case of the rwandan genocide, “le devoir de mémoire”). thus, while the diagnostic framework and reasons for referral in the case of war trauma may focus on a set of particular behaviours in a particular individual, there are a myriad of external, social factors that serve as very relevant points of analysis. to ignore the impact of these has potential to perpetuate stress, instead of alleviating it or building resilience in resettlement (mclellan, 1995; yohani, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 436 current psychiatric approaches in intervention for genocide and mass organised violence current practice for trauma from genocide rests on diagnosis and treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder or ptsd (american psychiatric association [apa], 1994), mainly because ptsd comprises the diagnostic language that’s available. theoretical, clinical, and empirical support for various therapies in the treatment of ptsd is still emerging. while some alternative modalities have been seen to yield moderate “results” in positive treatment outcome, pharmaceutical and psychological modalities remain the ultimate focus of this article. increasing numbers of genocide-affected migrants are being referred to institutions for ptsd treatment (canadian centre for victims of torture, 2009), but the effectiveness of services seems to be poor. the dropout rate or loss of participation in follow-up is high, and for many clients, distress that presented at referral is still just as present upon termination. poor engagement and outcome of ptsd treatment may reflect the following procedural deficiencies: an understanding of cultural responses to distress (snider et al., 2004); an understanding of resilience across different cultures (bhui, mckenzie, & gill, 2004; summerfield, 2008); individual support or political will to sustain participation in therapy (simich, 2010; summerfield, 1998); or, refugees feeling entitled to talk about or evaluate their experience as clients (vasilevska, madan, & simich, 2010). gaps also exist in current psychiatric practise about negotiating diasporas as a result of genocide and mass organised violence: political tension, collectively sustained violence, or the immigration experience beyond settlement have little terms of reference in diagnosis; angloamerican and psychiatric interpretations dominate interpretation of symptoms; and “immigrant and refugee” contexts are undifferentiated in psychiatric literature, with generalised interpretations of war, and assumptions that traumas are carried throughout the migration process unchanged. further, absent are clinical guidelines (or assessments) specific to genocide’s emotional effects, or considerations within which “healing” and “social change” for refugees are relevant (bracken, giller, & summerfield, 1995; summerfield, 1999, 2001b). cultural relevance of ptsd in instances of war summerfield (2001a) has noted points of traditional psychotherapy that exacerbate postcolonial injury: its genesis in western european enlightenment and patriarchal thought; a focus on the individual as the root of pathology; and a process of assessment that lacks multicultural norms. to not consider these nuances, or consider them as attenuating, independent, or nonprimary factors, limits the “success” of any eventual outcome (summerfield, 1995; bhui et al., 2004; blackwell, 2005). so as the practise of “trauma counselling” seeks more global application, it important to pause and consider how this new enterprise grounds itself as culturally appropriate. of their work in peru with survivors of political violence, snider et al. (2004) write: some of the dangers of indiscriminate application of western schema, such as “ptsd” to indigenous societies include: (1) pathologizing normal responses to stress, (2) lack of attention to cultural bereavement and socioeconomic context, (3) bias towards international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 437 individualist treatment approaches stigmatizing to local persons, (4) “category fallacy”, or the false idea that symptoms described in different contexts share the same meaning, and (5) reductionism of the meaning of traumatic experience into clinical descriptors. the meaning people ascribe to traumatic events, to their losses and to their survival of those events, has powerful implications for recovery. (p. 390) there a need to better understand the impacts of mass trauma on communities, but mental health professionals must also recognise the limitations of psychiatric concepts and approaches in attempting to capture the full meaning of traumatic events to their communities. interventions need to be designed appropriately to recognise the complex realities of a group, including attachments, networks, interrelationships, and experiences. there is growing awareness of the relevance of ethnocultural group influences in therapy; however, many assessment processes and treatment models are slow to incorporate independent, multicultural norms. snider et al. continue: as western-trained mental health professionals tend to focus on clinical psychiatric problems alone [in treating contexts of war], the cross-cultural validity and context relevance of their approaches have been called into question. the expression, recognition and treatment of mental disorders are rooted in culture and social context. psychiatric diagnostic schemes and treatment approaches reflect an individualist context that may be inappropriate for collectivist societies … political conflict is imbued with unique meaning for the communities involved. for these communities, trauma may be felt as a collective experience, and psychosocial recovery of individual members related to restoration of the community’s cultural and social traditions. as some experts argue, when the wounds of war are communal, approaches to healing should also be communal. (p. 390) current psychiatric ways of “knowing” are limited to a eurocentric, patriarchal, enlightenment thought; and while science can translate invariably across contexts, how people “cope” or “solve problems” is not universal. while those designing intervention for psychological relief may have genuine intent, care should be taken to note ways in which intervention is actually desired. if treatment or intervention has limited community or cultural relevance, consequences may foment additional symbolic or territorial atrocities. the center on law & globalization (2011) writes: all genocides are different. however, four ideologies commonly preoccupy perpetrators of genocide: racial and ethnoreligious hatred, cults of antiquity, cults of agriculture and territorial expansion. these ideologies serve to both foment and justify genocidal atrocities. when we see these ideologies being touted, we should keep in mind that genocide has sometimes waited in their shadow. (p. 1) it may thus be that instituting participation in rituals “to help” according to predefined norms of an american prescription to suffering speaks more to the globalisation of the american psyche (watters, 2010; venne, 1997) than of humanitarian relief. because the genocidal context has as its root an ideology of superiority and dominance, the psychiatric encounter would do well to re-evaluate how it aligns and positions its expertise. to not do so embodies a sort of “going international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 438 boldly where few psychologists or social workers have gone before” (see madan, 2010a); this risks repeating the colonial encounter. nteza: a case study “nteza” means “i’m expecting” in kinyarwanda, the central bantu (people’s) language of rwanda, burundi, and northeast dcr. while i have chosen this name to represent her in sharing her narrative, i have tried to preserve the rest of her words and experience with as much integrity as possible. for this reason, and also to capture the beauty of her speech, i include nteza’s french expression first, before translating them into an english equivalent; she adhered to a formal, respectful form of address with me, and frequently employed symbolic and metaphorical expressions as vehicles of emotional meaning and expression. nteza was a 27-year-old tutsi rwandaise woman who came to canada as a refugee via the congo. she was referred to me by a colleague, her nurse, who felt she could benefit from emotional support through her pregnancy. nteza had been diagnosed with war-induced ptsd by a previous medical practitioner. the nurse told me that during her first appointment, nteza started crying in her office when she told nteza the baby was a boy. nteza had been in canada for four months, and was almost six months pregnant. she also had a 4-year-old daughter. nteza was at first hesitant to discuss her pregnancy with somebody new, but her nurse introduced me as “une amie sur son équipe / a friend on her team”. i elaborated that the nurse had told me a bit about her situation, about being a refugee in canada; that i was there to help, that i was there to talk about “internal sorrows”. i told her i understood her pregnancy was the result of having been raped in the congo, that her husband was in prison for political reasons, and that hers must be a very difficult emotional load to carry. i wondered aloud that perhaps she did not have to carry that load herself; and i assumed that talking about her load might be helpful. nteza smiled very shyly, and responded, with eyes downcast, that life carried with it new dreams here; that the “devoir de mémoire, ici, n’est pas pareil / the duty to remember and honour ancestors, here, is not the same1”. she said she missed her family: her mother and brothers were dead; her husband was “in prison2 ” without permission to contact her; she knew nothing of any friends or community. she had fled rwanda at 13 with an uncle, uganda at 18 with a family friend, and the congo at 26 with her daughter – each instance of flight had been due to brutal circumstances of war and exclusion. nteza’s social support in canada was small, but considerable: she had started involvement with a church group, shared a house with her pastor, and had recently befriended a neighbour from haiti who had a daughter the same age as her own. however, she said that the 1 “the duty to remember [and honour ancestors], here, is not the same” (trans.). “le devoir de mémoire” is a rwandan phrase of commemoration specific to the 800,000 killed in the 100-day genocide, not unlike “lest we forget” marks remembrance day and the remembrance of wwi and wwii veterans and fallen soldiers in canada, the united kingdom, australia, and new zealand. 2 often, euphemism for death by unnatural circumstances. i suspect that being a widow, and a victim of rape, were not favourable considerations of status in nteza’s communities of origin. these ramifications, or these considerations, i did not discuss. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 439 pregnancy was difficult, both in physical and emotional weight and impact. her biggest loss was not having community during this time of preparation. nteza reflected that she struggled most with feelings of conflict. she felt anger and regret at having discovered abortion would have been an option just four weeks ago; torment that she would have considered such a “discretion non-humaine / inhuman act of will”; and sick that she was at present carrying, and preparing to care for, the seed of hate. the idea of adopting seemed equally horrendous as it was welcoming. she was surprised that the canadian system didn’t have orphanages, and learned about foster parents with an air of fascination and curiosity. she was also worried about how to explain the potential loss of a sibling to her 4-year-old daughter, who expressed interest and curiosity about being a big sister. in the end, nteza decided to keep the baby. nteza came regularly to therapy throughout the pregnancy. she liked beethoven; she dreamed of playing the piano; she loved to walk alongside the canal, saying she would watch and listen in silence and find “peacefulness” as its clear-ish waters flowed. she always spoke shyly and with eyes downcast, and i became very familiar with her shy, private smile. she unfailingly kept appointments, reliably navigating herself, her visibly heavy belly, and her daughter on the hour-long bus ride without complaint. when either i or my colleagues had to cancel our home visits, due to some pressing or unplanned consideration at the clinic, she would always say, “d’accord. je vous accueillirai prochainement. / okay. i will see you then next time”. her humility touched me. i reflected that perhaps i was not the most ideal source of support for nteza: i was a stranger in a strange land; my privilege cast me as unable to identify, really, with her struggles on a day-to-day basis; and however likeable our rapport, i was more like a sister than an elder helper. the constructs of my office, with all its care about “confidentiality” and “professionalism”, offered no pride to her. but i recognised that i was, despite all of these things, a woman; that was enough to give me privileged access. two weeks after the birth, nteza’s nurse and a visitation worker contacted me after a home visit, concerned about the level of despondency they had observed. nteza “n’était pas dans la zone / seemed out of it” while breastfeeding, with demonstrated difficulty in responding to the infant’s cries; they also reported her energy level and affect seemed very low overall. i had noted nteza seemed withdrawn the last time that i had seen her; i shared with the nurse that she had expressed feeling overwhelmed with caring for the child, about whom she had felt ambivalent even carrying. the visitation worker shared that the infant was noticeably underweight, and that she was concerned about the lack of attachment between nteza and the baby. nteza had also not yet chosen a name. the nurse scheduled an in-clinic follow-up for nteza and the children, and during this appointment felt nteza was “so symptomatic” that she was concerned. the nurse called me into her office to speak with nteza. nteza said her stress was “au point que j’ai besoin de quitter . . . je ne partirai jamais, mais la paix de la fleuve . . . j’aimerais flotter loin d’ici, loin de ces difficultés / to the point where i need to get out … i would never leave, but the river’s peacefulness … it would be nice to float away, far from here, far from these hardships”. i tried to translate to the nurse that nteza had always found the river peaceful, in fact liked to take walks and meditate there; but it was decided this was of sufficient concern to necessitate intervention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 440 the nurse referred nteza for psychiatric emergency evaluation for post-partum depression, citing a suicidal plan with access. mental health policy has a way of defining procedures, for the purposes of clarity in crisis; unfortunately, they do not always translate well or effectively to the situation at hand. systemic regulations, while designed for prevention and crisis management, in fact only served to bring up new crises. nteza’s symptomology, and specificity of her “plan”, qualified medically as “severe”. she was referred for emergency psychiatric evaluation; this necessitated transport in an ambulance to the emergency ward; this in turn necessitated foster care placement for her children whilst there. i was given charge to explain the intervention system to nteza: why the ambulance was being called, why child protection was being involved, links between posttraumatic stress and feelings of sadness or stress; i also thought i might maybe explain a little bit about what “hospitals here” looked like, and what relief we thought a “post-partum depression diagnosis” could bring. even though agencies are not required to offer such explanations, and ill-equipped to have the time or resources sufficient to do so, to this day i cannot say there was any “humanity” in this task. nteza expressed repeatedly not understanding why she didn’t have a choice to go to the hospital, why her children and i couldn’t go with her, and that she did not want to be diagnosed as depressed. i could only offer lame responses of “c’est la loi / it’s the law” about the ambulance, “tu nous inquiètes / we’re worried about you” about the depression, and “vos enfants seront corrects / your children will be okay” about being placed. i asked for my supervisor’s approval to negotiate being able to meet nteza at the hospital emergency room; with nteza, i suggested to child protection arranging foster placement that the children please be placed under the care of her pastor. in both instances i was told my recommendations would be considered, but that these were things that ultimately the respective agencies now involved would decide. it was then that the ambulance driver arrived to bring nteza on board. nteza looked at me and said, “ceci ne va pas m’aider / this is not going to help me”. as the ambulance personnel carried her away, i could hear her crying out for her mother. nteza was already admitted when i reached the hospital; triage personnel said that they didn’t have consent for me to accompany her admission, even if they could tell me what room she was in. three days later, we were informed nteza had been admitted under suicide watch and released 17 hours later, during which time she received a diagnosis of post-partum depression and one sample of an anti-depressant. the brief noted that she had been non-compliant to treatment. child protection services united nteza with the children after she was released, though they continued to monitor her regularly for some months after about “parenting”. nteza never returned, either to our clinic or the hospital, for services. advocating for psychological debriefing on a systemic level these events have been ones that i have deconstructed for some time, in efforts to discern what could have been done differently – i’m not convinced that our intervention was successful. in fact, i think our actions were quite disastrous. while these events were extreme, nteza’s experience illustrates how ptsd intervention lacked relevance to her circumstances, compounding the impact of what had already happened. this section addresses my personal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 441 reflections about nteza’s experiences – perhaps the only way her story may be heard by this audience – and how i have since understood what created such unintended inequity. ptsd intervention lacked socio-political context for nteza’s circumstances in the following ways: 1. variable perceptions of trauma. in psychiatric discourse, it is a physiological and psychological injury; according to rwandan consciousness (for review, see bagilishya, 2000), it is considered as a spiritual trial, and a disruption to the social or collective order. nteza perceived her “symptoms” differently, and felt they were more spiritual in nature than mental or physiological. she expressed herself as such. but the symptomatic checklist, or “what we know about trauma”, overrode her perceptions as being secondary in nature. present systemic interventions suppose and impose reactions of trauma, according to normalised contexts from a high-income world view. nteza’s treatment was arranged and measured according to our own formulated prescriptions; we assumed our actions were “correct”, in all our administrative and governing authority. however nteza, even in her moment of crisis, displayed visible expressions of affect, verbal articulation for what she perceived were her stressors, and a coherent organisation of thought about what was going on around her. if symptomology defined our categorisation of her, then these symptomologies were neither depression nor ptsd. i have also since reflected that nteza’s treatment was more about the system, and about canadian life, than nteza and her children. the team’s decisions based on “worry” and interpretations of behaviour were curiously absent of her own points of reference – while nteza recognised she had sadnesses, and sometimes doubts about desire for “a new motherhood”, her feelings were acknowledged and contextualised appropriately for her particular circumstance. further, her desire to not talk about traumas in chronological order, despite her articulate ability to recall emotional and physical detail, was considered in her initial medical examination3 2. political frames of reference. trauma intervention initiatives in rwanda are seen to be implemented on a group level, using groups and families to support individual expression. and while nteza had been “progressive to be a “maladaptive coping mechanism” and a point of significant pathology. i note summerfield’s (1998) observations that surviving genocide may “indeed mean a life sentence, but this is not necessarily a trauma” (p. 1249). 4 3 the psychiatric context advocates a chronological ordering of traumatic incidence, neatly sequenced from beginning to end. disruptions or an incoherent narrative reflects a still-traumatised state of mind. ” enough to come to counselling, what she ultimately desired from services for her and her children was room to exercise strength, not personal instability. she was carrying her sadnesses with dignity, as her own 4 “progressive”, as counselling is still puzzling to rwandans: circles of support to deal with sadness or distress naturally include family and community members; distress is largely discussed indirectly; it is further inappropriate to discuss intimate inner details with, display emotion to, or ask for help of someone who is not immediate family. trauma counselling initiatives in rwanda thus incorporate particular modalities emphasising group format (instead of individual therapy); metaphorical or symbolic storytelling (as opposed to “establishing the chronological narrative of traumatic fact”); visual or musical expression as primary modes of treatment (instead of being adjunct or allied therapies); and building bridges for advocacy with community leaders (instead of “remaining neutral”). interestingly, these initiatives are largely considered as “soft intervention techniques” to funding agencies and companies; they can frequently only find support as project-driven initiatives, not sustainable operations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 442 cultural context prescribed. i have since reflected that nteza deserved better advocacy for her personal agency. “dedicated will” (dallaire, 2003, p. 520), aside from being one of the few key identifiers of self left after a genocidal context, embodies a highly politicised and resistant attachment to an oppressive regime: agency, equity, and access (if not justice) become significant components to healing, well-being, and survival. any medical treatment for her “sadness” could have had better dialogue and more understanding contexts, so as to foster strength in her own time, and in the language of her own resiliencies. 3. cultural frames of reference. these were especially relevant for rituals surrounding birth, life, and death. considering ancestors as living protectors, nteza revered her deceased family and community members with a special status. it was considered appropriate for her to call upon them for spiritual strength in moments of fear or pain. had this construct been known, emergency dispatch personnel would have understood nteza’s calling out for her mother as she was being sent to the ambulance – it was not a sign of psychosis, but a natural expression of fear, grief, or assistance for her children. as it was, her calling out added another check on the symptomology checklist necessitating emergency psychiatric intervention. additional cultural complexity surrounds traumatic loss in rwanda: circumstances such as war which prevent proper mourning, burial, or even care for the dead are legitimate cause for great distress. nteza’s ancestors – her mother, grandmother, brothers, and husband – had not had proper initiation to their new world, requiring a heightened “duty to remember / devoir de mémoire”. thus, for nteza, for whom “[u]nder these circumstances, the mourning period offers no solace” (bagilishya, 2000, pp. 346– 347), her sadnesses were spiritual pains; they were her rightful burden to carry (and call out for) until her ancestors could find relief. 4. spirituality. the contexts of collective mass violence added complexity to nteza’s pregnancy: sexual relations are forbidden during the mourning period. a child conceived so soon after death is considered merciless, or at the very least shameful to the family; even if born of rape, both mother and child are subject to expulsion by the head of the family. bagilishya (2000) writes of a rwandan proverb which suggests that “[e]ven the earth must stop producing … so it is strictly forbidden to cultivate and to sow” (p. 346) during time of mourning. a pregnancy that disrupts the mourning period is considered unclean, unworthy of communion on earth (home of community) or in sky (home of ancestors). this adds some clarity to nteza’s attachment to the canal, and it was not a design of suicidal access: water was the only appropriate element that could sustain her spirituality. 5. reciprocity. the “way our system works” – ptsd’s disciplinary power – leaves no emphasis for dialogue, exchange, or consideration of alternate context. at least, in my own position i felt too powerless (or perhaps too docile) to suggest “tout accommodement raisonnable / another reasonable accommodation 5 5 “reasonable accommodation” (trans.): canadian legislation (first initiated in 1985) addressing fairness and equity in the workplace, regardless of physical ability and religious or cultural affiliation. it is currently a hot topic of debate within québec, especially as these diversities intersect quebec’s historical advocacies of ”. nteza’s attachment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 443 to her ancestors, her communion with the river, her beliefs in community, and her intent in seeking help – none of these could be translated across departments or advocated for appropriately. the very framework of the mental health system predetermined nteza’s participation as a client: it set her up for alienation and failure. further, the “task” in explaining the systems and regulations in canada to nteza as a newcomer (which in itself assumes a certain lack of historical non-existence), coupled with difference of word and of language (see bhugra & mckenzie, 2010; bouchard & leis, 2008), seems an ill-timed and unfortunate preoccupation with bureaucracy. i have since reflected that nteza fled one autocratic rule in life, only to be replaced by another one – and even though judgement included neither height nor the shape of her nose, we may have been just as equally unforgiving. “medical experience now has a collective subject” (foucault, 2003, p. 35), but how to define the parameters of this new collectivity? can those who have the power to name them be indulged to do so? what could make new parameters possible? present therapeutic encounter is shaped out of a particular gaze (foucault, 2003), a gaze with the power to exclude and repress, and with functions sustaining current, “political device[s]” of psychosocial control (moncrieff, 2010, p. 370). nteza’s experience has furthered a questioning to more extended implications. current, prescribed treatment for ptsd assumes one way of healing – how to give legitimacy to others? if impairment of attachment requires healing in attachment (bowlby, 1977), what does this mean for injurious post-colonial relationships? what could new relationships look like? how does one reconstruct associations – cognitively, emotionally, physically, and spiritually – that have become ecological, embodied, and symbolic forms of “knowing”, and of “being”, and of “remembering”? further, how are associations reconstructed while meanings have impacted a collective, and may have shifted – across spheres of circumstance (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992; foucault, 1972), across geographical boundaries, and across time? healing and transformation the import of psychiatric knowledge as expert witness (“war trauma equals symptom x and phenomenon y”) is problematic: it imposes a new hierarchy of superiority, where understanding is an act qualified through authority, with canon-like control of the “magic” of healing. there is also an ideological divide in applying psychiatry to low-income contexts, in that therapy can be seen as a manufactured economy funded by companies whose interests are vested in being ill. in addition, local politics have created massive global inequities of socioeconomic power. the “therapeutic mission”, or consolidating a therapeutic agenda with political reconstitution, further has its tensions: such founders embody politics of “emotionology” (humphrey, 2005, p. 205) bound largely to pharmaceuticals, from a land of “freedom” (where emphasis is on the market) and “democracy” (where emphasis is on autonomy of choice, not accountability). intervening without recognition of such divergent position in relationship is an “act of absorption” (short, 2005, p. 273), reifying already dominating protectionist policy for the preservation of its own language and culture. see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/accommodement_raisonnable (last retrieved december 19, 2010). http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/accommodement_raisonnable� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 444 structures of power. it could be that the “right” to treatment is “a social process, involving power, and should be analysed as such and not assumed to be beneficial” (short, 2005, p. 276). pharmaceuticals, and counselling and psychotherapy disciplines – the political and economic bodies representing powers governing ptsd – are “[bound] together … by insidious extension” for “the internal rule of maximum economy … and the raison d’état” (foucault, 1979, 1995). the no-nonsense guide to world poverty further addresses the need for caution with regard to international intervention: to extinguish alternatives [in intervention] is as intolerant as it is violent. globalisation is ideology made material: ideology not as theory but in relentless, inflexible practise. to say: “there is no market for it” – whether “it” means some commodity or service, or whether it means compassion, wisdom, self-sacrifice or some form of expression – is to condemn areas of vital human experience to silence and non-existence. (seabrook, 2003) bourdieu similarly looks at the role of economy as material barrier to conscious and creative change. he writes: the task is to produce, if not a “new person”, then at least a “new gaze”, a sociological eye. and this cannot be done without a genuine conversation … a mental revolution, a transformation of one’s whole vision of the social world. this new sociological “gaze” is underpinned by a relational mode of thought. (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 251, emphasis added) that ptsd is an export to low-income contexts and discourse (summerfield, 2001b; favila & fellow, 2009) does not necessitate unequal distribution in the field where intervention takes place. however, from a high-income world view, the developing world’s adversities have become marketable. in some circumstances, they are consumable for episodes of spectacle, entertainment, and commodified loss; in other circumstances, they are props for selfcongratulatory, fashionable, and token gestures of generosity. within the high-income context, therapy speaks of self-empowerment, self-actualisation, and self-control; indigenous community initiatives tend to speak to collective citizenship, national participation, and group reform. trauma in many low-income contexts signifies a collective and spiritual meaning, with considerations of coping legitimised very differently. given the literal capital that high-income contexts carry, this binary is important to recognise before (re)assessing the sociological gaze. conclusion: “there, they kill you with bombs. here, they hurt you with feelings” 6 within the contexts of genocide and mass organised violence, focusing on a checklist of individual symptomology, an individual’s “trauma narrative”, and individual assessment of deficiency continues to obliterate cultural agency. further, requiring compliance to treatment as western medicine prescribes, reverberates the dynamics of power and territorial control that originally sustained genocidal traumas. the south african truth and reconciliation committee’s final report states: 6 from feuerverger and richards (2007, p. 557). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 445 restorative justice seeks to repair the injustice and to effect corrective changes in the record, in relationships, and future behaviour. [new] south africa … is concerned not so much with punishment as with correcting imbalances, restoring broken relationships – with healing, harmony, and reconciliation … to empower individuals to take control of their own lives. (as cited in short, 2005, p. 269) the call often heard in the west, to “[afford] indigenous peoples equal recognition and respect . . . [and extend] universal fundamental political rights” (short, 2005, p. 275), while theoretically genuine, is disenfranchising: it seems to locate the african (the aboriginal, the subaltern brown woman) in a position that is “lower”, with the act of “transfer” as one that is bestowed, a generous act and not a fundamentally restorative one. further, the discourse of “rights” is also seen to be a western notion; in indigenous or eastern or african discourse i have noticed more discussion of “responsibilities”. the constructs of “empowerment” and “[taking] control” are also very reflective of a particularly located thought – i would posit it’s not grounded in indigeneity. the “issue” at stake for congolais(e) and rwandais(e) war survivors is not simply a “moving on” from the past affected by war. it is a political affirmation of selfhood, a change in collective responsibility, and a global acknowledgment of legislated murder, legislated poverty, and legislated racism. in short, it is a call to witness to cultural, political, and symbolic change. unless ptsd expands its current ideology of trauma, limited and potentially harmful treatment is a probable outcome. current treatment simply lacks cultural relevance, contaminating instead the spirit of the self and its community. this lack of a rwandan voice in treating a particular rwandan injury perpetuates the era of a rwandan with no social capital (mckenzie & harpham, 2006; whitley & mckenzie, 2005). while i wish to acknowledge that ptsd treatment is largely governed by people who work with genuine intent to alleviate mental distress not only from “horrible imaginings”, but actual and lived “present fears”, my main suggestion here is that even – or especially – so, there is need for pause in navigating future directions. there is need for a more considered (if not equitable) point of departure in trauma treatment. as watters (2010) suggests, “perhaps it’s time that we rethink our generosity” (p. 255). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 432-449 446 references american psychiatric association (apa). 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(2010). nurturing hope in refugee children during early years of post-war adjustment. children and youth services review, 32(6), 865–873. october 31, 2014 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 230 parental leave and child care arrangements during the first 12 months of life are associated with children’s development five years later anca gaston, sarah a. edwards, and jo ann tober abstract: infancy and early childhood are critical periods of development. social policies, such as maternity and parental leave, play an important role in enabling canadian parents to care for their children during this time. using early development instrument (edi) and kindergarten parent survey (kps) data from brantford and brant county, ontario, this study examined the association between parental leave and type of care during the first 12 months of life and children’s development in senior kindergarten. the edi assesses physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development as well as future academic vulnerability. the kps collects information about children’s preschool experiences. parental care during the first year of life was associated with better child development on some, but not all, developmental variables among children attending senior kindergarten in 2011-2012 in brant. keywords: early childhood development, maternal leave, parental leave, child care, social policies anca gaston, ph.d. (the lead and corresponding author) is a data analyst in the program planning & evaluation department at the brant county health unit, 194 terrace hill street, brantford, ontario, canada, n3r 1g7. telephone: (519) 753-4937 extension 330. fax: (519) 753-2140. e-mail: anca.gaston@bchu.org sarah a. edwards, mhsc, (ph.d. candidate), is the manager of program planning & evaluation at the brant county health unit. e-mail: sarah.edwards@bchu.org jo ann tober, rn, ph.d., cchn(c) is the executive director of the brant county health unit. e-mail: joann.tober@bchu.org mailto:anca.gaston@bchu.org mailto:sarah.edwards@bchu.org mailto:joann.tober@bchu.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 231 healthy child development depends upon nurturing and stable relationships with caring adults beginning from birth. parents’ ability to provide the sensitive care required for optimal child development depends on a number of factors, including the ability to be both physically and emotionally present. over the last 50 years, canadians have witnessed a number of profound social, economic, and cultural changes which have altered family dynamics, parental stress levels, and the way children are cared for during their first few years of life. because these factors have been shown to be related to child development, social policies such as maternity and parental leave are designed to enable mothers and fathers to act as the primary caregivers to their children for at least some time after birth. the purpose of the present research is to examine the association between parental leave practices and children’s physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development among a cohort of senior kindergarten students living in brant. biological basis of early development and the importance of attachment relationships while the importance of a child’s relationship with his or her mother and other close adults has been known for some time, it is only recently that neuroscience has been able to demonstrate that a child’s brain architecture reflects the quality of these early relationships (national scientific council on the developing child, 2004). according to dr. daniel siegel, a founding member of the center for culture, brain and development at the university of california at los angeles, “human connections create neuronal connections,” and the environmental factors shaping these key brain circuits are the child’s attachment relationships (siegel, 1999, p. 85). these interpersonal relationships allow the immature brain to use the mature functions of the parent’s brain in order to organize its own processes (siegel, 1999). as a result, abnormal and impoverished rearing environments dramatically slow growth and decrease the number of synapses per brain, simultaneously resulting in dysfunctional brain circuits associated with stress responses, emotional self-regulation, impulse control, attention, and decision-making (joseph, 1999). newborns and young infants experience distress when they are hungry, cold, wet, or uncomfortable and positive emotions when they are fed, soothed, and held. these emotional experiences are then wired into multiple regions of the nervous system with enormous consequences over the course of a lifetime (national scientific council on the developing child, 2004). school readiness does not equal simply fostering literacy and numeracy, but also the ability to develop and sustain positive and co-operative relationships with teachers, peers, and other adults (national scientific council on the developing child, 2004). as such, events that interfere with attachment, such as parental stress or early separation, can have long-term negative impacts on cognitive, emotional, and social development (baydar & brooks-gunn, 1991; maté, 2009; mercer, 2006; bowlby, 2007). adults’ ability to be present and provide sensitive, responsive, and consistent parenting is impacted by many factors, including social, cultural, and economic factors. within a canadian context, several changes have occurred which have impinged upon the amount of time parents are able to spend with their families. for example, between 1976 and 2008, the total weekly employment hours of couples increased from 57.6 to 64.8 (marshall, 2009) and in 2001, 77% of women with infants at home had been employed in the year prior to the birth of their child international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 232 (marshall, 2003). in addition, the proportion of lone-parent families has increased from 8.4% in 1961 to 16.3% in 2011 (statistics canada, 2013a). of these, 80.1% are single mother households (statistics canada, 2013b). as a result of these changes in employment patterns, increasing attention must be paid to social policies which enable parents to act as the primary caregivers for their children for as long as possible. the provision of paid maternity and parental leave is one social policy designed to support parents in this way. although the first canadian maternity leave legislation was passed by the province of british columbia in 1921, national policies did not come into place until 50 years later. starting in 1971, mothers who had a minimum of 20 insurable weeks were eligible for up to 15 weeks of benefits. in 1990, 10 weeks of parental leave benefits were added, which could be used by either parent or split between both parents. in 1996, the unemployment insurance act was renamed the employment insurance act. in december 2000, bill c-32 increased parental leave from 10 to 35 weeks, which resulted in a total maternity plus parental paid leave time of approximately one year. in addition, the eligibility requirement was reduced from 700 to 600 hours of insurable employment. the rate of the benefit has remained unchanged at 55% of average insured earnings (marshall, 2003) up to a maximum of $514 per week in 2014. in addition, additional occupational benefits are often negotiated through collective agreements. these benefits are available almost exclusively to women who are already eligible for employment insurance benefits, and included approximately 20% of mothers in 2001 (pulkingham & van der gaag, 2004). with respect to the leave practices of canadian parents, data from the 2010 survey of young canadians indicated that 90% of children aged 1 to 3 years living outside of quebec had mothers who took some type of leave at the time of the child’s birth or adoption (findlay & kohen, 2012). however, the length of leave varied greatly: 36% of children had mothers who took two weeks of leave or less; 48% took between 25 and 52 weeks; and 9% took more than 52 weeks; 21% of women took unpaid leave only. mothers were more likely to take paid leave if they worked full-time, were not self-employed, and worked regular hours as opposed to shift work. when it comes to fathers, 26% of children had fathers who took at least some leave. the average length of leave for fathers was 2.4 weeks. with respect to the type of leave, 13% of fathers reported paid leave whereas 14% reported taking unpaid leave. fathers were more likely to take leave if they worked in the public sector compared to the private sector. in addition, fathers working full time were less likely to take leave compared to fathers working part-time (findlay & kohen, 2012). maternity and parental leave and child development the majority of studies examining the relationship between maternal employment, child care arrangements, and child development have used longitudinal population-based data from the united states. in general, most of these studies have demonstrated negative effects of first-year maternal employment. for example, baydar and brooks-gunn (1991) found that maternal employment in the first year after birth was associated with more problem behaviours and poorer language development among 3to 4-year-old children. berger, hill, and waldfogel (2005) reported that returning to work within 12 weeks after giving birth was associated with more problem behaviours at age 4. brooks-gunn, han, and waldfogel (2002) found that school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 233 readiness scores among 3-year-old children was significantly lower among those whose mothers started working by the ninth month and worked 30 or more hours per week by that point compared to children whose mothers only worked part-time. the same effect was found for children whose mothers began working by the sixth month. in a study designed to explore whether the negative effects of maternal employment persist over time, han, waldfogel, and brooks-gunn (2001) followed one group of children from ages 3 to 4, to ages 5 to 6, and to ages 7 to 8. consistent with previous studies (baydar & brooks-gunn, 1991; berger, hill, & waldfogel, 2005), han and colleagues found that maternal employment in the first year of life negatively impacted cognitive and behavioural development at age 3 or 4. these effects persisted to age 5 or 6, and to ages 7 or 8. specifically, having a mother who worked during the first year of a child’s life was related to lower math achievement at age 7 to 8 and lower reading recognition at both ages 5 to 6 and 7 to 8. belsky et al. (2007) examined the effects of early childcare arrangements through to the sixth grade and found that children who spent more time in non-maternal child care centre settings manifested more problem behaviours. these results confirmed previous findings that overall time in non-relative care was associated with increased problem behaviours at 4.5 years of age (van ijzendoorn et al., 2004, as cited in belsky et al., 2007). purpose and hypotheses while evidence suggests that early maternal employment and non-parental care is associated with poorer child development outcomes, the majority of this research examined data from the united states. given the differences between american and canadian parental leave policies, it is unknown whether similar relationships exist in canada. thus, the purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the relation between parental leave and child care arrangements in the first year of life and children’s development five years later using data from brant. we hypothesized that children whose mother, father, or both parents took parental leave lasting 6 to 12 months would demonstrate better developmental outcomes compared to children whose parents did not take leave. furthermore, we extended our examination to type of child care and hypothesized that children whose main type of child care is parental care and who spent less time in non-parental child care would have better developmental outcomes compared to children whose main type of care is non-parental care (and, in particular, paid unlicensed care). based on previous findings, all differences were expected to be more pronounced for boys. methods participants participants were children aged 5 to 6 from brant, who attended senior kindergarten during the 2011-2012 school year. students were from one of 51 schools belonging to the grand erie district school board, the brant haldimand norfolk catholic district school board, or the conseil scolaire de district catholique centre-sud (french catholic school board). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 234 measures early development instrument. child development variables were obtained from the 2012 early development instrument or edi (janus & offord, 2007). the edi is a populationbased measure of children’s early development as it influences their readiness to learn at school and the survey is completed by senior kindergarten teachers for all students in ontario (offord centre for child studies, 2013). the edi uses 103 questions to assess child development in five domains: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge. each edi domain is scored from 0 to 10, with a score of 10 indicating the most advanced developmental skills. domain scores are calculated as the mean score of all the answers in that section. children who fall in the lowest 10th percentile on one or more domains are considered vulnerable with respect to school readiness, or more likely to experience poorer academic outcomes (janus & duku, 2007). the edi has been established as a psychometrically sound indicator of child well-being. studies have demonstrated adequate parent-teacher and inter-rater reliability, concurrent validity, and convergent validity (janus & offord, 2007). kindergarten parent survey. information on parental leave, leave length, the main type of child care during the first 12 months of life, and time spent in the main type of child care setting was obtained from the 2012 kindergarten parent survey (kps). the kps was developed by the offord centre for child studies to act as a companion document to the edi and provide additional information on family characteristics and the early life experiences of kindergarten children (gaskin, duku, & janus, 2008). because the kps collects data on a wide range of topics, subjecting it to the same type of rigorous psychometric evaluation as the edi is not warranted. however, a study conducted in 2005 demonstrated consistent responses over time indicating good test-retest reliability (gaskin et al., 2008). parental leave was characterized as: “yes, mother”, “yes, father”, “yes, both parents shared”, and “none”. length of leave was categorized as: “under 6 months”, “6 months to 1 year”, “over 1 year”, and “not applicable”. response options for children’s main type of child care were: “none – parent care only”, “licensed care in a centre”, “licensed care in someone’s home”, “paid, unlicensed care”, and “unpaid care (e.g., relative or friend)”. response options for time spent in main type of child care setting included: “none – parent care only”, “less than 20 hours per week”, “21 to 30 hours per week”, and “more than 30 hours per week”. covariates based on previous research linking children’s edi scores to socioeconomic factors (janus & duku, 2007), all models controlled for two major predictors of children’s readiness to learn in school: income and parental education. procedures ethical approval for the edi and kps was received from the review ethics board of mcmaster university. participant recruitment was conducted by the three school boards located in brant. a letter of information signed by each school’s principal was sent home with all senior kindergarten students. a passive consent process was utilized, whereby parents were asked to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 235 contact the school or local edi coordinator should they wish their child to be excluded. there were no requests for exclusion during the 2012 implementation resulting in a 100% participation rate. between january 27, 2012 and march 27, 2012, 90 teachers completed a total of 1,372 edi questionnaires. two months later, in may 2012, a kps package was sent home with all senior kindergarten students. this package contained a letter of information, the kps questionnaire, a blank return envelope, and a free children’s book as a “thank you” gift. one week later, a reminder letter was sent home. parents were asked to complete the questionnaire, place it in the blank envelope, and return the sealed envelope with their child to his or her classroom teacher. statistical analyses all analyses were conducted using ibm spss version 21. all analyses were conducted first for all children and then by gender. the relationship between type and duration of parental leave, main type of child care arrangement, and time spent in main type of child care during the first 12 months and children’s development was examined using analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures. the dependent variables were the five edi domain scores (physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge) and the total number of domains on which child scored low. the fixed factors (independent variables) were: (a) type of parental leave; (b) leave length; (c) main type of child care during the first 12 months of life; and (d) time spent in the main type of child care. all analyses controlled for parental income and education. post-hoc tests (bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons) were used to test for differences between the different levels of the independent variable. results participants of the 1,372 edi questionnaires completed by teachers, 1,259 (91.8%) students met the edi eligibility criteria (for more information, see gaston, 2012). of these 1,259 eligible students, 883 returned their kps questionnaire (mage = 5.63; sd = 0.27; 48.8% girls), resulting in a response rate of 70.1%. due to some missing data on parental leave and child care variables, the final analyses included between 728 and 749, depending on the variable examined. preliminary analyses pearson bivariate correlations demonstrated that the proposed covariates (parental education and income) were related to the variables of interest. significant linear relationships emerged between parental education and the variables of interest (rs = .11 .23; ps = .001 .001) as well as between parental income and the variables of interest (rs = .11 .26; ps = .001 .003) for all children and boys and girls separately. as expected, parental education and income were also significantly correlated (rs = .15 .36; ps = .000 .003). however, this correlation was not sufficiently large for multicollinearity to be an issue, so both covariates were used throughout the analyses (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 236 leave-taking and child care patterns our results indicate that 77.8% of children had at least one parent who took parental leave (see table 1 below). more mothers took parental leave compared to fathers (68.5% vs. 2.8%, respectively) and 6.5% reported that both parents had shared the leave. approximately half (51.1%) of respondents had parental leaves that ranged from 6 to 12 months in duration (see table 2 below). with respect to child care, parental care was the main type of child care for the majority (87.1%) of children (see table 3 below). among children whose main type of care was nonparental care, 48.4% reported unpaid-unlicensed care (i.e., relative/friend) (table 3). among children whose main type of child care was non-parental care, the highest proportion of children spent fewer than 20 hours per week in non-parental care (42.5%), followed by over 30 hours per week (34.5%), and 21 to 30 hours per week (23.0%) (see table 4 below). results related to study hypotheses overall, children whose mothers took parental leave had significantly higher social competence and communication and general knowledge scores compared to children without a parent who took parental leave. for communication and general knowledge, children whose parents both took parental leave also scored significantly higher than children without a parent who took parental leave. as hypothesized, these differences were more pronounced for boys than they were for girls. boys whose mothers took parental leave had higher scores on five of the six variables examined whereas girls whose mothers took parental leave had higher scores on only one variable (see table 1). children whose parents took a leave lasting from 6 months to 1 year scored higher in physical health and well-being, social competence, and communication and general knowledge scores compared to children without a parent who took leave. for social competence, a second significant post-hoc difference emerged so that children whose parents took 6 to 12 months leave also scored higher than children whose parents took a longer leave (over 1 year) (see table 2). for girls, significant differences in the same direction emerged for one of the six variables and for boys on two of the six variables. children whose main type of care had been parent care scored higher than children whose main type of care had been paid-unlicensed care with respect to the number of domains on which child scored low. there was no significance for girls. boys who had received parental care scored higher than boys who had been in unlicensed paid care on two domains: language and cognitive development and number of domains on which child scored low. with respect to time spent in child care, children whose main type of care was parental care scored lower on fewer domains compared to children who spent over 30 hours per week in alternate child care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 237 among girls, those who spent 21 to 30 hours per week in non-parental care had higher language and cognitive development scores compared to their counterparts who spent under 20 hours per week in non-parental care. for communication and general knowledge, girls who had received parental care only scored higher than girls who spend under 20 hours per week in nonparental care. among boys, significant differences emerged for three of the six variables examined. in general, boys who received either parental care or spent under 20 hours per week in non-parental care had higher scores in social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and scored low on fewer domains compared to boys who spend over 30 hours per week in non-parental care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 238 table 1 results from the analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures for parental leave by parent and edi scores from the kindergarten parent survey and early development instrument scores for children in brantford and brant county, ontario in 2011-12 (n = 749). parental leave ancova neither mother father both mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) f 2 p-value effect size (η2) post-hoc 3 all, n (%) 166 (22.2) 513 (68.4) 21 (2.8) 49 (6.5) physical health and well-being 8.66 (1.40) 9.02 (1.15) 8.32 (1.61) 9.27 (0.93) 3.41 .02 .01 all p > .05 social competence 8.29 (1.92) 8.79 (1.46) 8.39 (1.73) 8.58 (1.64) 3.06 .03 .01 mother>neither* emotional maturity 8.03 (1.73) 8.43 (1.40) 8.17 (1.51) 8.33 (1.30) 2.03 .11 .01 language and cognitive development 8.73 (1.56) 9.02 (1.36) 8.64 (1.32) 9.11 (1.19) .92 .43 .00 communication and general knowledge 7.34 (2.46) 8.30 (2.09) 7.53 (2.46) 8.53 (1.78) 6.38 .00 .03 mother>neither* ** both>neither* number of domains on which child scored low 0.62 (1.17) 0.33 (0.78) 0.67 (1.06) 0.25 (0.85) 2.81 0.04 0.01 all p > .05 girls, n (%) 89 (24.1) 249 (67.3) 9 (2.4) 23 (6.2) physical health and well-being 8.87 (1.07) 9.11 (1.15) 8.63 (1.26) 9.38 (0.90) 1.27 .28 .01 social competence 8.87 (1.44) 9.08 (1.30) 9.23 (0.88) 9.07 (1.02) 0.77 .51 .01 emotional maturity 8.59 (1.34) 8.73 (1.33) 9.20 (0.69) 8.70 (1.04) 0.81 .49 .01 language and cognitive development 9.13 (1.16) 9.28 (1.20) 8.72 (1.63) 9.46 (0.81) 0.63 .59 .01 communication and general knowledge 7.91 (2.27) 8.63 (1.98) 7.36 (2.43) 8.83 (1.52) 2.97 .03 .02 mother>neither* number of domains on which child scored low 0.33 (0.75) 0.23 (0.60) 0.67 (0.87) 0.04 (0.21) 2.01 .11 .02 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 239 boys, n (%) 75 (20.4) 258 (70.3) 10 (2.7) 24 (6.5) physical health and well-being 8.42 (1.71) 8.91 (1.15) 7.88 (1.93) 9.15 (1.00) .52 .03 .03 mother>father* social competence 7.63 (2.20) 8.50 (1.57) 7.50 (2.02) 8.06 (1.98) .008 .03 mother>neither* emotional maturity 7.43 (1.91) 8.13 (1.42) 7.02 (1.33) 7.93 (1.47) 3.73 .01 .03 mother>neither* language and cognitive development 8.27 (1.85) 8.75 (1.47) 8.58 (1.20) 8.72 (1.41) .51 .01 communication and general knowledge 6.65 (2.52) 7.98 (2.15) 7.63 (2.66) 8.33 (1.96) 4.54 .004 .04 mother>neither* * number of domains on which child scored low 0.97 (1.46) 0.42 (0.92) 0.80 (1.32) 0.46 (1.18) 2.60 .05 .02 mother>neither* note. 1number of girls and boys may not always add up to the total sample size due to a small number (1.3%) of missing values for gender. 2all = f(5, 743); girls = f(5, 364); boys = f(5, 361). 3post-hoc tests bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons. boldface indicates significant differences. all analyses controlled for parental income and education. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; †p < .10. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 240 table 2 results from the analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures for length of parental leave and early development instrument scores using data from the 2011-12 kindergarten parent survey and early development instrument scores for children in brantford and brant county, ontario (n = 742). length of parental leave ancova none no leave taken < 6 months 6-12 months over 1 year mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) f 2 p-value effect size (η2) post-hoc 3 all, n (%)1 166 (22.4) 47 (6.3) 379 (51.1) 150 (20.2) physical health and well-being 8.73 (1.38) 8.67 (1.51) 9.18 (1.03) 8.80 (1.25) 5.32 .001 .02 6-12 months > none* 6-12 months > over 1 year** social competence 8.38 (1.80) 8.64 (1.38) 8.87 (1.46) 8.59 (1.60) 2.87 .03 .01 6-12 months > none* emotional maturity 8.12 (1.63) 8.33 (1.32) 7.94, 8.71 8.46 (1.35) 8.32, 8.59 8.34 (1.51) 8.10, 8.59 1.37 .25 .00 language and cognitive development 8.80 (1.45) 8.80 (1.44) 8.37, 9.22 9.09 (1.29) 8.96, 9.22 8.93 (1.40) 8.70, 9.16 1.03 .38 .00 communication and general knowledge 7.43 (2.43) 8.20 (2.12) 7.58, 8.83 8.40 (2.03) 8.19, 8.60 8.13 (2.23) 7.77, 8.49 5.56 .001 .02 6-12 months > none*** number of domains on which child scored low† 0.55 (1.05) 0.45 (0.90) 0.18, 0.71 0.27 (0.74) 0.20, 0.35 0.44 (0.90) 0.30, 0.59 2.39 .06 .01 girls, n (%) 86 (23.8) 27 (7.5) 179 (49.4) 70 (19.3) physical health and well-being† 8.93 (1.03) 8.87 (1.25) 9.24 (1.07) 8.88 (1.29) 2.22 .09 .01 social competence 8.87 (1.42) 8.97 (1.12) 9.20 (1.20) 8.91 (1.42) 1.34 .26 .01 emotional maturity 8.59 (1.31) 8.71 (1.07) 8.78 (1.22) 8.72 (1.46) 0.37 .77 .00 language and 9.21 (1.02) 8.82 (1.52) 9.42 (0.96) 9.06 (1.52) 2.54 .05 .02 all p > .05 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 241 cognitive development communication and general knowledge 7.89 (2.32) 8.17 (2.67) 8.82 (1.83) 8.33 (2.20) 3.72 .01 .03 6-12 months > none** number of domains on which child scored low† 0.30 (0.70) 0.44 (0.85) 0.16 (0.47) 0.33 (0.74) 2.17 .09 .02 boys, n (%) 78 (21.2) 17 (4.6) 194 (52.7) 79 (21.5) physical health and well-being 8.53 (1.69) 7.94 (1.72) 9.13 (1.00) 8.71 (1.22) 5.03 .002 .04 6-12 months > under 6 months** social competence 7.85 (2.03) 7.88 (1.52) 8.56 (1.62) 8.31 (1.71) 1.82 .14 .02 emotional maturity 7.64 (1.77) 7.50 (1.34) 8.14 (1.41) 8.02 (1.49) 1.26 .29 .01 language and cognitive development 8.35 (1.71) 8.64 (1.43) 8.79 (1.49) 8.80 (1.29) .55 .65 .01 communication and general knowledge 6.92 (2.47) 7.94 (1.99) 8.05 (2.13) 7.94 (2.26) 2.72 .04 .02 6-12 months > none* number of domains on which child scored low 0.82 (1.29) 0.53 (1.07) 0.39 (0.92) 0.54 (1.02) 1.03 .38 .01 notes. 1number of girls and boys may not always add up to the total sample size due to a small number (1.3%) of missing values for gender. 2all = f(5, 736); girls = f(5, 356); boys = f(5, 362). 3post-hoc tests bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons. boldface indicates significant differences. all analyses controlled for parental income and education. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; †p < .10. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 242 table 3 results from the analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures for main type of child care during the first 12 months of life and early development instrument scores using data from the 2011-12 kindergarten parent survey and early development instrument scores for children in brantford and brant county, ontario (n = 734). type of main childcare ancova parent care paid licensed (centre or home) paid unlicensed unpaid unlicensed mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) f 2 p-value effect size (η2) post-hoc 3 all, n (%)1 639 (87.1) 25 (3.4) 24 (3.3) 46 (6.3) physical health and well-being 8.97 (1.19) 8.75 (1.67) 8.94 (1.36) 8.77 (1.42) .30 .83 .00 social competence 8.70 (1.55) 8.42 (1.70) 8.19 (1.98) 8.55 (1.95) 1.02 .39 .00 emotional maturity 8.36 (1.44) 8.21 (1.40) 8.03 (2.00) 8.07 (1.95) .63 .60 .00 language and cognitive development 8.99 (1.32) 8.40 (1.80) 8.32 (2.16) 9.01 (1.72) 3.50 .02 .01 all p > .05 communication and general knowledge 8.11 (2.15) 8.58 (2.26) 7.55 (2.65) 8.10 (2.20) .94 .42 .00 number of domains on which child scored low 0.40 (0.81) 0.56 (0.87) 0.83 (1.63) 0.63 (1.40) 3.01 .03 .01 parent care < unlicensed paid* girls, n (%) 320 (88.2) 12 (3.3) 10 (2.7) 23 (6.3) physical health and well-being 9.07 (1.10) 8.49 (2.01) 9.23 (0.99) 9.18 (1.13) 1.32 .27 .01 social competence 9.04 (1.28) 9.18 (1.37) 8.98 (0.91) 9.30 (1.22) 0.31 .82 .00 emotional maturity 8.69 (1.28) 9.26 (0.63) 8.90 (1.33) 8.51 (1.86) 0.95 .41 .01 language and cognitive development† 9.22 (1.22) 8.78 (1.59) 9.35 (0.87) 9.73 (0.34) 2.33 .07 .02 communication and general knowledge 8.38 (2.09) 9.11 (2.17) 7.68 (2.35) 8.86 (1.90) 1.25 .29 .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 243 number of domains on which child scored low† 0.26 (0.64) 0.50 (0.90) 0.20 (0.63) 0.17 (0.49) 0.84 .47 .01 boys, n (%) 310 (86.8) 13 (3.7) 14 (3.9) 20 (5.6) physical health and well-being 8.85 (1.28) 8.99 (1.32) 8.74 (1.58) 8.15 (1.59) 0.91 .44 .01 social competence 8.34 (1.72) 7.71 (1.70) 7.62 (2.35) 7.60 (2.35) 1.81 .15 .02 emotional maturity 8.01 (1.51) 7.24 (1.19) 7.42 (2.21) 7.42 (2.01) 1.99 .11 .02 language and cognitive development 8.76 (1.40) 8.05 (1.97) 7.58 (2.51) 8.11 (2.32) 4.07 .007 .03 parent > paid unlicensed** communication and general knowledge 7.83 (2.18) 8.08 (2.30) 7.46 (2.92) 6.78 (2.86) 0.96 .41 .01 number of domains on which child scored low 0.47 (0.96) 0.62 (0.87) 1.29 (1.98) 1.25 (1.92) 5.00 .002 .04 parent < paid – unlicensed** notes. 1number of girls and boys may not always add up to the total sample size due to a small number (1.3%) of missing values for gender. 2all = f(5, 730); girls = f(5, 359); boys = f(5, 351). 3post-hoc tests bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons. boldface indicates significant differences. all analyses controlled for parental income and education. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; †p < .10. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 244 table 4 results from the analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures for time spent in main type of child care during the first 12 months of life and early development instrument scores using data from the 2011-12 kindergarten parent survey and early development instrument scores for children in brantford and brant county, ontario (n = 728). parental care only time spent in non-parental care ancova under 20 hours/week 21-30 hours/week over 30 hours/week mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) f 2 p-value effect size (η2) post-hoc 3 all, n (%)1 615 (84.5) 48 (6.6) 26 (3.6) 39 (5.4) physical health and well-being 8.96 (1.19) 8.85 (1.29) 8.61 (1.73) 8.86 (1.46) .88 .45 .00 social competence 8.68 (1.59) 8.84 (1.29) 8.58 (1.69) 8.20 (1.93) 1.54 .20 .01 emotional maturity 8.35 (1.47) 8.34 (1.27) 8.33 (1.62) 8.02 (1.49) .66 .56 .00 language and cognitive development 9.00 (1.31) 8.65 (1.55) 8.71 (2.16) 8.52 (2.13) 2.54 .05 .01 all p > .05 communication and general knowledge 8.10 (2.18) 7.90 (2.39) 8.39 (2.43) 8.00 (2.52) .33 .81 .00 number of domains on which child scored low† 0.31 (0.77) 0.33 (0.69) 0.58 (0.97) 0.69 (1.45) 4.01 .01 .02 none < over 30 hours/week** girls, n (%) 311 (88.6) 19 (5.4) 11 (31.3) 20 (5.7) physical health and well-being† 9.10 (1.06) 8.50 (1.51) 8.92 (1.77) 9.04 (1.35) 1.88 .13 .02 social competence 9.06 (1.29) 8.84 (1.34) 9.20 (1.44) 9.06 (1.11) 0.23 .88 .00 emotional maturity 8.66 (1.34) 8.67 (1.02) 8.94 (1.66) 9.08 (0.86) 0.70 .55 .01 language and cognitive development 9.27 (1.15) 8.62 (1.66) 9.90 (0.18) 8.98 (1.55) 3.32 .02 .03 21-30 hours/week > under 20 hours/week* communication and general knowledge 8.48 (2.02) 7.14 (2.70) 9.03 (2.02) 8.56 (2.26) 2.96 .03 .02 parent care > under 20 hours/week* international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 245 number of domains on which child scored low† 0.24 (0.60) 0.42 (0.96) 0.46 (0.82) 0.25 (0.72) 0.95 .42 .01 boys, n (%) 298 (83.0) 28 (7.8) 14 (3.9) 19 (5.3) physical health and well-being 8.81 (1.30) 9.04 (1.11) 8.27 (1.73) 8.66 (1.57) 1.71 .16 .01 social competence 8.29 (1.78) 8.80 (1.29) 8.01 (1.76) 7.31 (2.22) 3.33 .02 .03 under 20 hours/week > 2130 hours/week** emotional maturity 8.01 (1.52) 8.06 (1.36) 7.82 (1.52) 6.91 (2.03) 3.43 .02 .03 parent care > over 30 hours/week** under 20 hours/week > over 30 hours/week* language and cognitive development 8.71 (1.42) 8.63 (1.51) 7.74 (2.59) 8.03 (2.56) 2.85 .04 .02 all p > .05 communication and general knowledge 7.71 (2.27) 8.35 (2.06) 7.77 (2.69) 7.40 (2.69) 1.29 .27 .01 number of domains on which child scored low 0.51 (1.05) 0.36 (0.67) 0.78 (1.12) 1.16 (1.86) 3.77 .01 .03 parent care > over 30 hours/week* under 20 hours/week > over 30 hours/week** notes. 1number of girls and boys may not always add up to the total sample size due to a small number (1.3%) of missing values for gender. 2all = f(5, 724); girls = f(5, 355); boys = f(5, 353). 3post-hoc tests bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons. boldface indicates significant differences. all analyses controlled for parental income and education. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; †p < .10. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 246 discussion this study examined the relation between parental employment and child care arrangements in the first year of life and children’s development five years later among a cohort of children from brant county, ontario, canada. for the majority of variables examined, no significant group differences emerged. however, for those variables where significant differences did emerge, they were consistent with our hypotheses and indicated that children whose mothers took parental leave lasting 6 to 12 months and who were cared for primarily by their parents had better developmental outcomes in senior kindergarten compared to the children of mothers who did not take parental leave or who received non-parental care. greater differences emerged for boys compared to girls, confirming previous findings that the association between child care and development may be gender-specific. beyond these generalized conclusions, several issues merit discussion. with respect to leave-taking patterns, 78% of participants indicated that at least one parent had taken parental leave and 87% of respondents indicated that parental care was the main type of child care during their child’s first year of life (table 3). this latter proportion is in line with results from the 2010 survey of young canadians, which found that 90% of children had a mother who took some type of leave after birth (findlay & kohen, 2012). with respect to fathers, our results indicate that fewer fathers took leave compared to national statistics. specifically, approximately 10% of children in our sample had fathers who took at least some type of leave compared to 26% of fathers who participated in the 2010 survey of young canadians (findlay & kohen, 2012). these differences likely reflect regional differences in employment patterns, since occupation strongly predicts the leave-taking practices of mothers and fathers (findlay & kohen, 2012). for example, compared to ontario as a whole, brant has a higher proportion of babies born to teenage mothers (8.1% vs. 3.6% between 2006 and 2009 in brant and ontario, respectively) and a higher aboriginal population (3.5% vs. 2.0% in brant and ontario, respectively) (brant county health unit, 2010). with respect to parental leave, group differences emerged for two of the six variables overall, one variable among girls, and five of the six variables for boys. all significant findings confirmed previous research that children whose parents took parental leave demonstrated better developmental outcomes compared to children whose parents did not take parental leave (baydar & brooks-gunn, 1991; berger et al., 2005; brooks-gunn, han, & waldfogel, 2002; han et al., 2001). in addition, leaves of 6 to 12 months were associated with the best developmental outcomes among children on four of the six variables examined. this relationship emerged even though a significant proportion of parents who did not report taking leave still acted as the primary caregivers to their children. there are a number of reasons why this may be the case. first, although we controlled for parental education and income, it is possible that other characteristics of parents who did not take parental leave, or who took leaves shorter than 6 months, were related to more impoverished rearing environments. optimal infant brain development is fostered by interactions with attuned, non-stressed adult caregivers (maté, 2009). young parents, for example, are less likely to have the emotional maturity necessary for providing the rich type of attuned attention that fosters infant brain development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 247 although young parents represent a significant proportion of brant parents, we were not able to control for parental age as this was not assessed as part of the kindergarten parents survey. second, in order to qualify for paid parental leave benefits, parents must have 600 hours of insurable employment. evidence exists that, income aside, stable employment (i.e., job security) is associated with lower stress and more positive mental health characteristics (sverke, hellgren, & näswall, 2002). perhaps parents who reported taking 6 to 12 months parental leave were in more stable employment situations, less stressed, and more capable of being emotionally present and providing attuned care to their infants. while we were not able to examine child care quality, we did examine main child care type, a variable which may be related to quality. although few significant differences emerged for child care type, our results were in line with previous findings that parent care is associated with improved development compared to centre-based care and that this relationship is stronger for boys compared to girls (baydar & brooks-gunn, 1991; berger et al., 2005; han et al., 2001; van ijzendoorn et al., 2004). however, these results as well as those of previous studies cannot be used to draw conclusions regarding the influences of particular child care arrangements. it is likely, for example, that parents who were unable to act as the primary caregivers to their children due to economic or social reasons were also more likely to use unlicensed centre-based care. among boys, spending some, but fewer than 20 hours per week, in non-parental care was associated with the highest scores on three out of the six variables examined and among girls, spending 21 to 30 hours per week in non-parental care was associated with the highest scores on two variables. in contrast, spending over 30 hours per week in non-parental care was associated with poorer developmental outcomes among both boys and girls. these results are in line with belsky et al.’s (2007) findings that children who spent a greater number of hours per week nonmaternal care had poorer social, cognitive, and emotional development at 4.5 years of age and brooks-gunn and colleague’s (2002) finding that children whose mothers worked more than 30 hours per week in the first year of life had poorer cognitive performance at 3 years of age. since time spent in non-parental care can be related to numerous third factors which may also be related to the quality of the home environment, these results cannot be used to draw conclusions about the direct effects of child care on children’s development. strengths and limitations this study has numerous strengths. first, to the best of our knowledge this is the first study to examine the relation between parental leave and child care arrangements in the first year of life and child development outcomes five years later using a large cohort of children in a community setting. second, our study used a comprehensive, psychometrically sound measure of child development which assessed physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development as well as future academic vulnerability. we are not aware of any previous research which included such a broad and thorough assessment of child development in multiple domains. despite these strengths, this study is not without limitations. first, the data on parental leave collected as part of the kps was retrospective and thus subject to recall bias. second, kps response options prevented us from knowing the employment status of parents at the time of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 248 birth and from examining length of leave in greater detail (e.g., children whose parents took 6 to 9 months versus 9 to 12 months of leave). third, although the kps response rate was fairly high (approximately 70%), this still excludes approximately one-third of parents. fourth, only “main type of child care” was assessed. as a result, we are not able to examine children’s experiences in greater detail. for example, some children may have spent time in non-parental care even though their main type of care was parental care. fifth and finally, the correlational nature of this study and our inability to account for more “third variables” precludes us from drawing any cause-effect conclusions regarding the effects of parental leave and child care on children’s development. as such, an effort was made to avoid causal language and any use of the term “effects” referred only to the statistical effects of parental leave and child care predictor variables. conclusions this study examined the association between parental care during the first year of life and child development among children attending senior kindergarten in brant in 2011-2012. the majority of parents reported taking parental leave (78%) and acting as the primary caregivers for their children (87%). as hypothesized, children whose parents took parental leave or who were looked after by their parents scored better on some, but not all, of the variables examined. further research is needed, however, before conclusions can be drawn regarding the effects of child care on children’s development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(2): 230–251 249 references baydar, n., & brooks-gunn, j. 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(the corresponding author) is an assistant professor of early childhood education, human development and family science in the college of education and human development at george mason university, fairfax campus, thompson hall 1102, ms 4c2, 4400 university drive, fairfax, virginia, usa 22030. telephone: (703) 993-5346. e-mail: cvesely@gmu.edu rachael d. goodman, ph.d., lpc is an assistant professor in counseling and development in the college of education and human development at george mason university, fairfax campus, krug hall 201 c, ms 1h1, 4400 university drive, fairfax, virginia, usa 22030. telephone: (703) 993-5242. e-mail: rgoodma2@gmu.edu shannon scurlock, ma, is a graduate of the applied developmental psychology program at george mason university and is a behavior therapist in northern virginia. telephone: (856) 305-5274. e-mail: sscurloc@gmu.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 309 just over half (51%) of the approximately 40 million immigrants in the united states are women (britz & batalova, 2013). immigrants make up 13% of the u.s. population, and it is predicted that the foreign-born population will be 19% of the population by 2050 (passel & cohn, 2008; u.s. census bureau, 2013). given the growing immigrant population, it is necessary to better understand the dynamics of the immigrant experience, from the decision to migrate through adjustment to the u.s. research indicates that a number of factors shape immigrants’ experiences at various turning points throughout the migration process. in particular, push and pull factors often influence individuals’ reasons for migrating and experiences post-migration (alk et al., 2007; goldin, cameron, & balarajan, 2011); these factors include economic stability in the country of origin and the new host culture, language ability, the presence of ethnic enclaves, documentation status, social support, immigration and social service policies, and cultural identity and acculturation (chen, benet-martinez, & bond, 2008; portes & rumbaut, 2006; settles, 2001). moreover, recent research points to the unique experiences of women in migration (curran, shafer, donato, & garip, 2006; falicov, 2007), as well as the important role of families in immigration decisions and experiences (bashi, 2007; glick, 2010). however, there is very limited literature that has focused specifically on the experiences of immigrant mothers. as such, to develop a comprehensive understanding of women’s experiences throughout the migration process, as they become mothers in the u.s., it is critical to utilize a framework that attends to the role of family, as well as the numerous microand macrolevel factors that contextualize both individual and familial experiences and processes. in this paper, we draw upon a family life course perspective to understand how microor family-level factors, coupled with broader macro-level influences, shape the immigration processes and experiences of first-generation immigrant women who ultimately become mothers in the u.s. a family life course understanding of immigration experiences the term “family” has been broadly defined across history and cultures. when we consider family, particularly among immigrant mothers, it is important to note descriptors such as nuclear and extended family, family of origin, and family of procreation, as well as move beyond notions of what peters (1999) calls the standard north american family (snaf). in this paper we examine the experiences of latina and african immigrant mothers, with a broad definition of family and a particular focus on how mothers themselves conceptualize their families, which includes extended family members as well as families mothers were born into (families of origin) and families they created through marriage, partnering, and/or childbearing (families of procreation). family life course theory explains the interconnections of family relationships within specific socio-historical and geographic contexts and how these shape an individual’s life course. in particular, this theory considers how developmental or chronological age, typical life transitions, relationships with others, and socio-historical change contribute to one’s life trajectory (hutchinson, 2007). life course theory connects the microand macro-levels of individuals’ environments through various aspects of time, including components of individual developmental time, family time, and socio-historical time. given this multi-dimensional focus international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 310 on time, as well as the relationships within these chronological spaces, life course theory provides a foundation for understanding the complexity of women’s migration experiences and related transitions. two concepts of life course theory are especially relevant in exploring immigration experiences. first, the concept of linked lives explains the interconnectedness among the lives of individual family members and the historical context, such that the developmental trajectories of family members are interdependent and shaped by each other, as well as social and historical influences (elder, 1989; greenfield & marks, 2006; hutchinson, 2007). this idea suggests that women’s migration experiences may be influenced by events in their countries of origin and the new host society, as well as their interactions within their most salient family relationships, including parents, children, siblings, and partners. a second theme of life course theory that is particularly important to women’s immigration experiences is the notion of interplay of human lives and historical time, or how individuals’ lived experiences are shaped by when and where they live throughout their life course (elder, 1989; hutchinson, 2007). for the women in this study, their immigration experiences were shaped not only by where they were migrating from and to, but also the climate of immigration in the united states in terms of policies and laws when they migrated. life course scholars discuss the role of life events, or changes that may lead to significant effects on the individual and/or family (settersten, 2003). these life events are followed by transitions (elder & kirkpatrick johnson, 2003; hutchinson, 2007), or changes to individuals’ roles in their families such as parenthood (carter & mcgoldrick, 2005). sometimes these transitions lead to individuals entering and exiting the family through births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and separations (hutchinson, 2007). moreover, life course theory gives insight into turning points or those life events that (a) expand or reduce opportunities, (b) bring on a permanent change to an individual’s ecology, or (c) change an individual’s self-concept (hutchinson, 2007; jasso, 2003). jasso (2003) indicated that migration is one turning point that reflects all three of these aforementioned types of life events. immigrant women and the migration process as settles (2001) noted, macro-level forces are interpreted at the micro-level, meaning that immigrant women will experience the impact of the larger socio-historical context individually and within their family systems. therefore, in addition to utilizing a family life course theoretical perspective to understand immigrant women’s experiences, we examine research on a number of salient factors impacting this population throughout the migration process. in particular, to understand immigrant women who are mothers, we highlight scholarship on the role of families and social support, as well as the unique experiences of female immigrants who are parents. according to glick (2010), the reasons individuals migrate are often linked to their family systems. research focused on families and immigration most commonly highlights parenting across the lifespan (senyurekli & detzner, 2008; treas, 2008), as well as gender and the role of couple relationships in immigration (cerrutti & massey, 2001; glick, 2010; perreira, chapman, & stein, 2006). for women who are mothers, the ways in which families influence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 311 their migration experiences are likely to vary based on a number of factors throughout the migration and adjustment processes. for example, mothers with adolescent children often migrate for economic prospects, educational opportunities, and safe environments for their children, as well as to reunite with their children’s fathers (perreira et al., 2006). researchers have noted the importance of social support and social networks during migration (e.g., bankston & zhou, 2002; kao & rutherford, 2007; mckether, 2008). ornelas, perreira, beeber, and maxwell (2009) found that immigrant mothers experiencing stress and other emotional problems used social networks and community resources to promote resilience. the importance of parenting experiences related to migration is apparent later in the life course as well, with parents living transnationally to support their grown children and grandchildren (treas, 2008). moreover, adult children and their aging parents work in creative and unique ways to maintain a sense of family across borders and distances of thousands of miles (senyurekli & detzner, 2008). further, literature focused on families and immigration examines the role of gender and couple relationships in migration. often, the migration motivation of a male figure is the primary focus of immigration scholarship, with a female partner seen as a secondary actor who follows a husband or boyfriend to the new host country (cerrutti & massey, 2001; glick, 2010); this is particularly true in literature on border crossing, which has focused primarily on latino men (deluca, mcewen, & keim, 2010; infante, idrovo, sanchez-dominguez, vinhas, & gonzalezvazquez, 2012). however, women have their own considerations and experiences when migrating, particularly when responsible for the care of others (neufield, harrison, stewart, hughes, & spitzer, 2002). the changing global economy has created economic opportunities for women, leading to the “feminization of migration” (falicov, 2007, p. 160). research indicates that immigrant women, particularly those from latin america, tend to utilize their families and family connections as sources of support (dominguez & lubitow, 2008). women may be selected to migrate to further the family’s economic interests because women are considered especially reliable in terms of sending remittances to the family after migration (goldin et al., 2011). however, there may be power imbalances in women’s relationships with male partners that influence women’s migration process by prioritizing the male partners’ needs (killian, olmsted, & doyle, 2012; meares, 2010). additionally, economic opportunities for women may be lower paid and less stable than those for their male counterparts due to their overrepresentation in domestic and care work (fitzpatrick, 1997; henrici, 2013). finally, immigrant parents often face unique challenges negotiating the cultural and linguistic differences between their countries of origin and their new environments that emphasize autonomy and english proficiency (glick, 2010) and have social services and government programs that encourage assimilation into the host society (settles, 2001). retaining ethnic identity is often a central concern for parents, and ethnic enclaves and religious institutions can function to support this endeavor. common challenges faced by immigrant parents include social isolation and disconnection from family, experiences of discrimination, concerns over raising a child in a new environment, navigating unfamiliar social systems, and financial worries (dominguez & lubitow, 2008; perreira et al., 2006). in addition, parents who are undocumented immigrants face additional institutional and emotional challenges related to accessing supports for themselves and their children, and live in fear of deportation (yoshikawa, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 312 2011). to overcome these challenges, immigrant parents may utilize transnational support by connecting with family members in their countries of origin to obtain emotional support (dominguez & lubitow, 2008). developing and maintaining transnational family structures in which families connect and interact while in different countries can provide needed support as immigrant parents face the challenges and emotional strains that accompany the migration experience (falicov, 2007). for example, perreira et al. (2006) found that immigrant mothers’ resilience was connected to developing bicultural coping skills and adapting their parenting skills to their new environment. while the literature provides an understanding of the multiple factors that might influence immigrant women’s experiences, there is a need to further understand how family and family networks shape the entire immigration process and the relevant transitions from the time individuals leave their home country through their experiences adjusting in the new country (settles, 2001), especially for mothers. currently, there is limited empirical work to support a theoretical frame focused on the role of families in migration (bashi, 2007). consequently, despite our growing understanding of immigrants’ experiences and the role of family in these experiences, our understanding of this process over time (individual, family, and sociohistorical), considering both microand macro-level factors, among women who are mothers, is limited. the current study to generate a comprehensive understanding of the turning points and transitions that female migrants who adjust to being mothers in the u.s. experience, research must include an examination of women’s experiences pre-migration, during migration, and post-migration. without an understanding of all three phases, researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners may fail to address related sources of stress and strength. furthermore, the understanding of immigrant women should include a comprehensive view of how family influences women, expanding beyond the traditional emphasis on the influence of a male partner (cerrutti & massey, 2001). theoretical and some empirical work support the importance of family across all three phases of the immigration process; however, the particular family members or family experiences that impact women appear to vary, and this may be especially true of women from various regions of origin (vesely, 2013). therefore, the two foci of this study are: 1. examining how family or micro-level and socio-historical or more macro-level processes shape first-generation immigrant women’s transitions to life as mothers in the united states; and 2. elucidating how mothers’ experiences of migration as a significant life event and the transition that follows, in terms of adjusting to, and simultaneously becoming mothers in, the united states, is an important turning point for their adjustment to the new country. methods participants participants were 40 first-generation, low-income immigrant women who hailed from various african countries (n = 19) and latin america (n = 21). on average, the women had international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 313 migrated to the u.s. about a decade before they were interviewed for this study and were just over 30 years old at the time of the interview. see table 1 for additional descriptive demographic data. the majority of latina mothers in this sample lived in a single neighborhood that was an ethnic enclave within a large urban center on the east coast of the united states. much of their daily routines could be accomplished in spanish, with local early childhood education programs, health clinics, and supermarkets offering services in english and spanish, reflecting the bilingual nature of the neighborhood. however, the majority of african mothers lived in a suburb outside of this large urban center that was home to many different immigrant groups. access to institutions where african languages and cultures were represented was less common compared to what the latina mothers experienced in the city. data collection a modified grounded theory approach was used to collect and analyze data in this study. this approach allowed for consideration of ideas and theories from prior studies that informed and guided the goals and analyses of this study (daly, 2007; larossa, 2005; strauss & corbin, 1990). sensitizing concepts or guiding ideas from family life course theory and other concepts in the literature shaped the development of the interview protocol, as well as the earliest phases of data analysis (van den hoonard, 1997). in particular, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants to understand their lived experiences. recruitment. recruitment efforts commenced after receiving institutional review board (irb) approval. inclusion criteria for this study were: (a) having a child who was enrolled in head start or another free or reduced fee early childhood education (ece) program; and (b) being a female, first-generation immigrant. by the time participants were interviewed for this study they were mothers; however, at the time of migrating only eight participants were mothers. consequently, the experiences of the majority of participants in this study reflect the experiences of women who became mothers at some point during the immigration process and for all women in this study they experienced learning how to mother in the u.s. participants were purposively sampled (patton, 1990) for variation in experience including: pre-immigration socio-economic status (education and poverty), legal documentation upon arriving in the u.s., and region of origin. women were recruited to participate in this study from three ece programs in a major metropolitan area in the u.s. the first author spent approximately one academic year (nine months) in the field, meeting teachers, children, and parents, and observing in classrooms at the three field sites. all names of individuals and organizations have been changed to protect the privacy of the study participants. in-depth interviews. there are various estimates of the number of interviews necessary to achieve saturation in qualitative research, or the point at which there is no new conceptual and theoretical information being gleaned from each interview (daly, 2007), which range from 20 (daly, 2007) to 30 (isaac & michael, 1981). because families from diverse regions of origin were recruited, it was necessary to conduct more than 30 interviews such that saturation could be reached within each regional subgroup. specifically, data were collected from 21 latin american and 19 african women. interviewing women ceased when saturation was reached within each of these broad regional ethnic groups. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 314 the majority of interviews were conducted in women’s homes, while seven interviews took place at the ece programs for the convenience of the participants. families’ homes were considered ideal spaces in which to conduct interviews as women felt most comfortable in their homes, and it provided opportunities to gain greater insight into each family’s daily, lived experiences. the interviews began with lead questions related to women’s immigration experiences, followed by probing questions to gather more detail. for example, in the part of the interview focused on immigration the first author asked, “tell me about coming to the united states” then followed up with probes to learn more about the participants’ experiences coming to the u.s. including: “why did you come to the u.s.?”; “what was the journey like?”; “did you leave/join family or friends?”; “in general, how is life different here versus in your country of origin?” (yoshikawa, chaudry, rivera, & torres, 2007). all of the interviews were digitally audio-recorded. interviews lasted for two to three hours, on average. all but one of the latinas were interviewed in spanish (one chose to be interviewed in english) with the assistance of undergraduate research assistants (ugra) who were bilingual and bicultural. the ugras accompanied the first author to each interview with the latinas and translated throughout the duration of the interview. following each interview, the ugra who assisted with the interview transcribed the interview into spanish, and then translated it into english for analyses. the ugras randomly checked one another’s transcriptions and translations for accuracy. all of the african women were interviewed in english due to limited resources for translators who spoke amharic and/or arabic. however, african mothers’ comfort with and command of the english language, as a group, was stronger than the latina mothers. in addition, the first author consistently repeated statements back to participants to ensure understanding and accuracy. data quality trustworthiness of the data was ensured through the use of a variety of strategies as outlined by guba (1981). specific strategies were employed in this study to increase credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability – indicators of trustworthiness in qualitative research – including lengthy field experience and rich descriptions of these experiences, triangulation, and reflexivity (krefting, 1999). nine months were spent in the field, in interaction with immigrant parents in ece programs as well as their homes. this extended engagement in the field enabled the first author to become familiar and trusted among the participants, as well as to observe their experiences over this period of time. the first author used audio-recorded interviews to gather quotations from women regarding their ideas and experiences, which provided thick description necessary for trustworthiness in qualitative research. specifically, utilizing the mothers’ words offered direct evidence of participants’ lived experiences, which adds to the credibility, transferability, and dependability of this study (krefting, 1999). in addition, various methods of triangulation were employed to ensure data quality, and in turn, trustworthiness regarding the findings for this study. first, triangulation of data sources and methods was achieved by utilizing multiple data sources and methods, including field observations of parents, children, and staff, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with parents. second, the authors employed triangulation of investigators. the ugras who assisted in translating the interviews with the parents also helped international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 315 interpret these interview and observation data from a cultural perspective. third, all three authors coded the data, with each section being coded by two authors independently and then verified, which is explained in greater detail below. together these varied methods of triangulation increased the credibility, dependability, and confirmability of this study and, in turn, helped to tell a more complete story about the experiences of these immigrant families. finally, reflexivity (krefting, 1999), or consideration of the researchers’ backgrounds, was examined throughout this study in terms of how each author’s experiences and perspectives contributed to data collection and analyses. data analyses formal data analyses were divided into three phases: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding (larossa, 2005). during each phase of coding, two of the three authors coded all of the interviews. transcribed interviews were loaded into atlas.ti, a qualitative data management software program. during open coding, each interview was read and initially coded by all three authors using both sensitizing concepts (van den hoonard, 1997), as well as ideas that emerged from the data (larossa, 2005). the sensitizing concepts with which coding began were related to the authors’ research questions regarding how women’s families shaped their immigration experiences, including: reasons for migrating; journey from country of origin; adaptation to life in the u.s.; family of origin; gender roles; and social support. a constant comparison method was used throughout open coding, in which one to two sentence blocks of text were read and then compared with previous blocks of text to determine if the new block of text was an indicator of an existing category or if a new category needed to be created (glaser & strauss, 1967). this aspect of the analyses yielded additional codes specific to immigration and family relationships, including: role of family in reasons for migrating; role of family in the immigration journey; and role of family in adjustment to life in the u.s. during the second phase of analyses, axial coding, each of the salient categories or codes that emerged during open coding were examined by looking across cases to understand the various dimensions of each category (larossa, 2005). next, all the pieces of text related to the most salient codes (e.g., role of family in reasons for migrating) were read to understand the various dimensions of each code. for example, what emerged from this phase of coding in relation to “the role of family in reasons for migrating” were the dynamics of the various ways families, particularly in terms of their needs for different kinds of support including economic, physical, and medical support, shaped women’s decisions to migrate to the united states. following open and axial coding, all three of the authors met and discussed the themes that emerged. when there was discrepancy among two of the authors, the third read the data and provided additional insight for moving forward in the coding process. finally, the three authors worked together during selective coding to determine the main “story underlying the analysis” (larossa, 2005, p. 850), which ultimately reflected how family relationships shape women’s immigration experiences. findings and discussion our findings outline three phases of women’s migration processes, including various turning points and transitions related to migration as well as becoming a mother in the context of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 316 immigration. we illustrate how these were shaped by the confluence of micro-level (women’s experiences, family relationships) and macro-level (social, political, and historical contexts) factors. women’s immigration processes consisted of: pre-migration processes, migration journey to the u.s., and post-migration adjustment once in the u.s. women’s pre-migration processes the past several decades of migration research has acknowledged the need to examine women’s pre-migration experiences and decisions to migrate, as opposed to earlier studies that viewed men as the sole actors in migration and women’s roles as secondary (curran et al., 2006). as noted, research has examined the push factors of the country of origin and the pull factors in the destination country that prompt individuals and families to migrate, and highlight the complexity of the pre-migration process (e.g., alk et al., 2007). for women in this study, the premigration processes consisted of decisions to migrate, reasons for migrating to the u.s., and preparations for migration. these processes were shaped by their families, including their families of origin (n = 14), their families of procreation (n = 14), particularly their children either in their countries of origin or in the u.s., and for a few women, their future families of procreation1 (n = 4). in particular, for many women, the reasons they left their countries of origin and came to the u.s. were linked to the needs of their families in terms of their economic situations, emotional or physical support, and medical treatment needs, as reflected in the concept of linked lives (elder, 1989; greenfield & marks, 2006; hutchinson, 2007). meeting the needs of family members within a given context influenced many women’s pre-migration processes. in particular, some women (n = 14) indicated that they migrated to the u.s. because of economic needs. for 12 women, it was their partners’ need for employment and limited opportunities for work in their country of origin that engendered the economic need. in some cases, the decisions to migrate were made by their male partners. this is a critical aspect of the pre-migration process, as prior scholarship has also suggested that for some women, the decision to migrate may reflect a power imbalance in which the male partner’s economic needs and choices are prioritized (killian et al., 2012; meares, 2010). for a couple of women, economic reasons for coming to the u.s. were related to the needs of their families of origin. it is now well noted that women may serve as independent economic actors who migrate to further individual or family economic goals (curran et al., 2006). in particular, when esmeralda, a 21year-old mexican woman, was 16 years old, her parents sent her and her siblings alone to the u.s. to earn money. esmeralda had been working since the age of seven, when she had to quit school so she could pick vegetables to help support her family of origin. she described growing up in poverty, in a place where, “there isn’t a single person who finishes secondary school or a person who has some type of diploma”. according to esmeralda, her parents relied on her financial contributions due to her mother’s illness, and thus they were unable to fully financially support esmeralda’s younger sister. however, esmeralda’s parents were emotionally distant, which continued after she migrated to the united states: 1 we define families of origin as the families into which participants were born that include: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. families of procreation included participants’ children and partners. finally, in discussing their immigration stories, some women mentioned having considered their future families of procreation, or their future children to whom they had not yet given birth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 317 the only thing they want is for me to send them money, [nothing else], they never say anything, except if i don’t call them. my mom is sick so she asks that i send money because we still have a younger sister [in mexico]. but overall, they don’t say much. for some participants, their decisions to come to the u.s. were contingent on their families’ needs for physical support. samira’s decision to stay in the u.s. permanently, which was somewhat spontaneous, was contingent on the needs of her sister, nyanath, who needed help with childcare while she finished her university degree in the u.s. samira had been in school in sudan working towards becoming a medical lab technician, but while visiting the u.s., nyanath convinced her to stay and help her take care of her children. moreover, while migrating was a significant and life changing event, many women shared that their migration decisions were made quickly and were fairly spontaneous, with very little emotional or logistical preparation. this was particularly true among women who came from mexico and central or south america, many of whom did not have documentation. elsa discussed her preparations to come to the u.s. from mexico with her boyfriend who was migrating because he was unable to find employment in mexico: “honestly, since i never thought, ‘oh i’m going to go to the u.s.’ i never thought about things… like, i’m going to have a lot of money…didn’t even think about having my kids here or anything….” like elsa, many latinas left their countries of origin with limited planning and often to meet the needs of family. as such, their pre-migration preparation was often characterized by spontaneity instead of longterm planning. women who came with visas – more common among african women who were better positioned to be awarded a visa through the diversity lottery – engaged in more planning than women without visas, but still reported limited forethought in their decisions to leave their countries of origin and come to the u.s. while many women were quite spontaneous in their decisions to migrate, a small group of women (n = 7) described being more strategic and intentional about this decision. first, a couple of women came to support the medical treatment of family members. these women reported choosing to take personal action to come to the u.s. to meet the needs of a family member and while the action of coming to the u.s. was planned, their decisions to stay came after they were already in the country. these women helped their family members by earning money to send home for medical treatment or by finding better treatment for their family members in the u.s. the majority of women, and particularly those who sought medical treatment for themselves and/or family members in the u.s., indicated that public health care in their countries was inadequate and private medical care was too expensive. isabel came to the u.s. to earn enough money to send back to her family in mexico for her son’s treatments for asthma. she described her reasons: [my oldest son] was young and sick. he was born with bronchitis and he needed treatment. my brothers were already here so they told me i could come live with them here, work, and send money for [his treatment], because there was very little work in mexico. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 318 ultimately, isabel stayed longer than the three or four years she initially anticipated because her second daughter, who was born in the u.s., was diagnosed with leukemia at two years of age. isabel stayed to seek medical treatment for her daughter. marisol came to the u.s. to help her father who needed treatment for his diabetes. he had been sick for several years in guatemala and her family could no longer afford his medications and treatments there, so he came to the u.s. for treatment. two years later, marisol joined him to help with his care after he went blind and lost his speech from the diabetes. these participants reflect the complex picture of women’s migration in which they enact individual agency, but may be influenced or constrained by family needs (glick, 2010; settles, 2001) and the socio-political context in terms of ability or lack of ability to access certain types of health care (killian et al., 2012). in sum, the majority (n = 32) of women’s decisions to migrate to the u.s. were contingent on family members – illustrating the idea of linked lives – with about one-third of these women coming to the u.s. because of an intimate couple relationship. other women’s decisions to come to the u.s. were influenced by the needs of their families of procreation and families of origin, particularly in terms of physical, emotional, and medical support. a small group of women discussed deciding to come to the u.s. so their future families of procreation would be well supported. these findings reflect settles’ (2001) and glick’s (2010) arguments that decisions regarding migration are not solely individual decisions but that they are shaped by families as well as social networks, and often set in motion by macro-level forces that are interpreted by the family (settles, 2001). however, our findings add an additional layer of complexity in relation to the timing of decisions to migrate. in particular, women exhibited varying levels of spontaneity or strategic thinking regarding migration decisions, which were shaped by family need, socio-political contexts, and documentation status. understanding this additional component of women’s decision to migrate can inform how family practitioners work with immigrant families. while migration is a significant and life-changing decision for both individuals and families, women in this study frequently did not engage in long-term planning or preparation, which may mean that they faced additional challenges related to their migration processes, such as a lack of emotional preparation or resources to assist in the transition to becoming settled in the u.s. women’s journeys to the united states as discussed, the existing literature focused on immigrants’ journeys across borders tends to focus on men from latin america crossing into the united states (deluca et al., 2010; infante et al., 2012). the limited studies on women’s journeys and the gendered experience of migrating to a new country explore extreme aspects, including how and why women without documentation are more likely than their male counterparts to die during relocation due to either socio-political reasons (e.g., border protection) or factors of the physical environment (pickering & cochrane, 2012). documentation and the socio-political context were important aspects of the migration journey, which shaped important turning points in women’s migration processes. these experiences shed more light on the notion of linked lives or the role of family members in these journeys; over half of the participants (n = 28) reported that their families directly influenced their journeys to the u.s. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 319 for women who migrated without documentation, which was the case for most women from latin america (n = 14), this socio-political factor had a considerable impact on the women and their families. women coming to the u.s. without documentation faced physically and emotionally grueling journeys. some women traveled with members of their families of procreation, often a spouse, while other women traveled with members of their families of origin, including siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. women who were undocumented, along with the family members with whom they traveled, experienced extremely difficult and expensive trips, as sofia described: it took almost a month. it was very hard. we all had to walk almost 11 days and by bus too. we would only sleep for, like, two hours and it was really hard. through the desert when we were sleeping a snake bit me two times. my husband thought i was going to die…. it was $6,000 per person…there were 10 of us who didn’t have anything to eat, not even water…my feet would get very swollen because the shoes i wore were not my size and i would bleed a lot…i told my husband he should go on without me. some of the women who were undocumented directly experienced u.s. policy rooted in anti-immigrant sentiments (vallas, zimmerman, & davis, 2009), by being detained when they arrived in the u.s. (infante et al., 2012; wilson, 2000). this further exacerbated the distress of their relocation to the u.s., as daniela describes: they treat you – well, i think they treat dogs better than people…i was arrested for a month. oh, i was crying because i felt when they arrested me i didn’t know why they had to strip me. we were all a group of women in a room naked…i felt ridiculous…i didn’t feel like i deserved that because i had not committed anything bad…. there were a lot of women and a man arrived and told us to take off all of our clothes. if you left the cell they had to strip search you when you returned. since i did not want to be inspected, i would not go out [of the cell]. daniela’s story reflects what infante and colleagues (2012) found among people crossing the mexicali border in terms of being humiliated and psychologically mistreated. ultimately, daniela was released to her mother in the u.s. daniela’s migration experiences highlight a turning point (hutchinson, 2007) faced by some women as they migrated. experiences of detainment as well as other harsh conditions permanently shifted women’s beliefs and cultivated a fear that some women carried with them into their new lives in the u.s. daniela later experienced postpartum depression following the birth of her first child in the u.s. and described not wanting to leave her house, an experience which may have been exacerbated by the constant fear that plagued her in the u.s. due in part to her migration journey. women who arrived with documentation were spared from some of the fear that undocumented immigrants experienced; however, documented immigrants did face humiliation and psychological mistreatment rooted in the anti-immigrant policies and sentiments present in some communities, which restricted public benefits to immigrants for example. aster’s experiences with a local social service agency illustrate how immigrant women, regardless of documentation status, were sometimes mistreated. a single ethiopian mother of three, aster was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 320 having problems paying her gas bill and sought assistance for this. the caseworker with whom she spoke asked her why she did not, “just ask [her] husband”. she described her experience: they give me a hard time, and medicaid and everything is in the same office. i don’t want to be in that situation. now they cut my food stamps, and i say, “forget it” – because [the caseworkers there] are very nasty people. your dignity is [lost] and i don’t want to be in that situation. i never been, never, never, never in my life on food stamps, this time…. if you are a foreigner they have to give you a hard time. women who had legal documentation, many of whom emigrated from africa, generally came on visas or through family sponsorship. despite the relative ease of their physical journey compared to the women without documentation, their travels were also influenced by the sociopolitical environment, as many left their countries due to civil unrest or war. for these documented women, the migration journeys were shaped primarily by the impact of having to separate from their families. for example, maisa was living in a refugee camp in sudan near the border with chad because her family’s village was burned in the civil war in darfur. she traveled to chad, applied for a u.s. visa there, and came on an airplane to the u.s. without her family. although her relocation was not physically dangerous, it was a turning point in maisa’s life; maisa began to feel considerable emotional pain related to worrying about her family’s safety. her migration experience also shaped her desire and ability to become a mother. she indicated that if she were still in sudan she would not become a mother given the socio-political climate and not wanting to bring children into that context. the notion of linked lives, coupled with the literature on civil unrest, war, and trauma (newman & harris, n.d.), reflects the anxiety and worry these women felt as they fled their countries without their family members. as such, women with documentation who come from contexts where there is turmoil may also face difficulty being able to reunite with family, which increases their emotional hardship. although this is not the same as being undocumented in terms of barriers to connect with family, there were still barriers, especially for women coming from war-torn countries or refugee camps. for many women, family provided financial support for their journeys, providing monetary funds as well as connecting them with other resources. for african women, these resources often came in the form of family of origin or family of procreation sponsorship, which enabled them to travel to migrate to the u.s. legally, as well as travel in and out of the u.s., including returning home to visit their families. particularly for the women from africa, some had family members who were already in the u.s., and often served as visa sponsors. in turn, these women generally migrated to the location where their sponsors lived. reflecting aspects of linked lives, individuals’ decisions to migrate were often influenced by their families’ experiences and development. for example, aster came because her mother was already living in chicago and was able to sponsor her. it is possible that had aster’s mother never migrated, aster would not have come to the u.s. either. moreover, for women from latin america, families often provided financial support to travel and settle in the u.s., especially families of origin. for example, juliana’s father used his house as collateral to finance her trip. once in the u.s., juliana needed to work to send money back to her father in guatemala. when she did not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 321 find opportunities where she had first settled, the need to repay the financial support from her family led her to continue her journey and relocate: it was a good, stable place where we were living but i wasn’t able to start paying the money i owed. so my dad…the money that he had borrowed on the house, he said they had given him three months to pay it back…and i wasn’t working on this side [in the u.s.] so they were going to take away his house. [a friend] told me that in washington [dc] there is more work…what mattered most to me was to pay my dad the money because he can’t lose his house because what’s the point of me being here if i can’t help my family…. so [my friend] said, “well, come here and we’ll find you a job”. some women initially made stopovers in other states because they had family that lived in different geographic areas or sought work there, before settling in one geographic area. the temporary nature of the initial arrangements and impending relocations complicated the migration process and added to their stress. their transition did not end once they had arrived in the u.s., but financial strain and necessity, as well as the economic conditions in a particular location, sometimes led to an additional transition and an extension of the migration journey. in sum, the majority (n = 28) of the women’s journeys were contingent upon the financial, physical, and emotional supports of family members and shaped by socio-political factors in the u.s. there were notable differences between the experiences of women traveling with documentation and those without. in addition to the emotional hardship of separation experienced by most participants, women who were undocumented also experienced great physical hardship during their travels. as such, the socio-political environment and the policies that determine how and why individuals are granted legal access to the u.s. directly impacted women’s physical and emotional well-being during migration and engendered a difficult and often harmful transition. women also utilized the support of families to complete their travels, and, in some cases, to eventually arrive at a place where they hoped to be able to contribute to the economic needs of their families both in their home countries and in the u.s.; this reflects how families may support the migration of one member to achieve the family’s overall goals, and marked a turning point for some women who began to take on a new role of family financial provider. overall, these aspects of women’s journeys were turning points that shaped their initial experiences of transitioning to life in the u.s. motherhood as a turning point in women’s adjustment to life in the u.s. migration to a new country is a significant life event, generally followed by a period of transition (elder & kirkpatrick johnson, 2003; hutchinson, 2007; jasso, 2003). however, most of the women in the study (n = 32) became mothers after arriving in the u.s., and as such, each experienced adjustment to life in a new country while becoming a mother. in many ways, becoming a mother in the u.s. was a turning point in their adjustment to life in a new country; having a child in the u.s. fundamentally and permanently changed the ecology of the women’s lives (hutchinson, 2007; jasso, 2003), and marked a significant reason to stay in the u.s. women described making active choices to stay in the u.s., which differed from the often spontaneous ways in which they described the processes that led to migration. moreover, they remarked that their adjustment to the life in the u.s. seemed more pronounced and in some ways international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 322 more challenging after they became mothers, regardless of how long they had been in the u.s. becoming a mother put additional and somewhat unexpected financial, logistical, and emotional strains on women that they had not experienced prior to becoming a parent in the u.s. this was especially true for mothers who came for economic opportunities. esmeralda, a mexican mother of one, described some of the financial challenges she faced after having children in the u.s.: at the beginning everything was good because i earned good money and the rent was really cheap and i had money. we came because everything was better here. then you start to have your own family and everything changes because now you have to worry about one more mouth to feed. esmeralda’s experiences reflect current demographics that on average indicate high levels of poverty and economic hardship among immigrant families (wight, thampi, & chau, 2011). multiple factors, such as economic status when entering the u.s. or barriers to accessing paid work, can influence the degree of financial hardship experienced by immigrant women and families; further, the transition to motherhood can also mark an increase in financial strain, as families facing economic barriers struggle to provide for children in contexts where they may not have the support of their families and communities, and where they may face anti-immigrant sentiments and policies. however, despite the challenges related to access to resources as well as discrimination, motherhood appeared to offer a point of personal meaning, adding to women’s sense of purpose and helping them persist through what were sometimes difficult circumstances. for instance, maisa reported, “if i didn’t have my kids, i wouldn’t be happy”. in addition, some participants noted that even though it was difficult adjusting to motherhood in a new country due to lack of family support and resources, as well as different cultural beliefs regarding parenting, they believed that being in the united states was best for their children. esmeralda discussed this when asked if she would prefer to be a mother in her country of origin: in a way, yes, but in another, no, because you would have the same education that i had. what i mean is that if i would have stayed there i would have gotten married there and [my daughter] would have had the same luck that i had. over there all the kids have the same luck…. it is better here than there. it was salient for esmeralda that she had made a choice that she believed was better for her children because the u.s. offered more opportunities for education and work. this facilitated her adjustment to life in the u.s. by offering a sense of greater purpose beyond herself – the wellbeing of her children. becoming a mother also shaped how women began planning for a future, which now included the possibility of remaining permanently. elsa’s discussion of her decision to stay in the u.s. illustrates how children often changed women’s outlook regarding this decision: yeah, maybe i end up staying here for the rest of my life because of my kids. or maybe i go back because personally i would like to be back with my family especially now that my parents are growing older and sicker…. i prefer here because i am thinking about [my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 323 children’s] futures. when they are grown maybe they tell me they want to continue studying here. it’s whatever they want to do. but if it was up to me, i’d [go back to] mexico. as noted, the views that women and their families held about better opportunities in the u.s. as compared to their countries of origin often played a part in the decision to migrate; as women became mothers in u.s., the focus shifted to opportunities specifically for their children, and engendered a transition towards wanting to stay permanently – a significant turning point and important aspect of their adjustment to life in a new country. as women experienced becoming mothers in the u.s. and their planning and intentionality regarding remaining in the u.s. shifted, their families played varying roles in this process. women’s families of procreation played important roles in women’s decisions to remain, and women’s families of origin provided supports related to these decisions. specifically, women’s adjustment to life in the u.s. as mothers was influenced by families of origin (n = 6), families of procreation (n = 15), or both their families of origin and families of procreation (n = 15). further, this adjustment was shaped by women’s abilities to access logistical and emotional support from individuals in the u.s., as well as their reasons for initially migrating. individuals who provided women with the most support were often members of the women’s families of origin, such as siblings, parents, or aunts and uncles. sometimes these individuals were members of an extended family network through their partners (e.g., sisteror mother-in-law). in terms of logistical support, women noted that family members and family connections provided housing (both temporary and longer term), assisted with finding jobs, and helped with other important functions of daily living. these supports were particularly salient for women with family living in the united states. the support provided by connecting with family members was a way to adjust to life as a mother in the u.s. by remaining a close family unit. sofia stated: my siblings, they are my close friends. there are four – three boys and one girl. …we talk almost every day. yes, at 8:00 a.m. they are already calling me. so we talk every day. … almost every day i talk to my sister…. well, when we see each other we reunite and cook, talk about school, and what we did that week, and what our plans are for the future. however, lack of family support in the u.s. was a challenge for many of the women, which is consistent with previous studies of immigrant parents with adolescent children (perreira et al., 2006). for example, amira had no family in the u.s. and her limited familial support appeared related to her feelings of loneliness and isolation, particularly as she faced the challenges of raising her children. in comparing her country of origin to the u.s., she reported, “that is different when you have a baby in my country, because here, no one, no one take[s] care of you. [it’s] you, your husband, and kids only”. as such, for some women, the experience of motherhood seemed to exacerbate the difficulties often faced by immigrants by accentuating their separation from family and support structures in their home countries. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 324 women voiced concerns related to their emotional adjustment after migrating. even after having children in the u.s., women often felt alone and isolated, which appeared to be related to a lack of family support in the u.s. alejandra described feeling alone while her husband worked long hours each day. “[our first apartment] was too small. in el salvador we had a house with a lot of land with animals. my parents always had animals…so, i felt like a prisoner. i spent my time crying and depressed, and with my little girl. my husband just worked”. some women compared the lack of support in the u.s. to the family support they would have received if they were in their country of origin, often from their families of origin. women did remain in contact with their families in their countries of origin via telephone and the internet, using prepaid phone cards as well as skype. despite this connection with family members back home, they had to adjust to physical separation from family. elsa described how she was reluctant to share her feelings with her mother in her country of origin: “no, i don't like to because [my mom] is already sad because i am here and i wouldn't want to depress her more [by] telling her that i am sad here”. sadness and nostalgia seemed to impact women differently based on their reasons for migrating. women who came for economic reasons, and particularly those participants who were prompted to come by their partners and spouses and whose plans to remain in the u.s. emerged following the birth of a child in the u.s., seemed to have the most difficulties adjusting and remained most nostalgic for life in their countries of origin. women with fewer difficulties adjusting were those who had family members living nearby, and women who felt they had agency in their decision to come and remain in the u.s. in summary, women expressed how their adjustment to life in the united states tended to enter a more strategic, intentional phase following the birth of child, which was shaped by their families as well as the socio-political context of the u.s. after having children, women often made a conscious decision to stay permanently; prior to having children they had not made decisions about staying permanently. the importance of family and motherhood was evident, as many women reported continuing the difficult process of adjustment to the u.s. for the benefit of their children. when possible, women developed ways of remaining connected to their families and countries of origin to assist with their adjustment in the u.s., particularly following the birth of a child. given this, practitioners working with immigrant women may benefit from identifying how and in what ways motherhood impacts the immigrant adjustment experience. as women’s views of permanency are likely to develop after becoming a mother, they may need assistance with transitioning to a long-term view of life in the u.s. furthermore, understanding that motherhood may serve as both a source of purpose and a strain on immigrant women can help practitioners better serve this population. finally, noting which factors might contribute to difficulty in adjustment (e.g., prior economic hardship) can enable practitioners to reach out to women who might be at risk and provide additional support and social services. conclusion this study contributes to the understanding of first-generation immigrant women’s immigration processes in a number of ways that have implications for both theory and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 325 first, the findings related to pre-migration processes indicate that while migration is a significant and life-changing event, for many women the decision to migrate is often made spontaneously or without extensive planning and preparation. as such, immigrant women may benefit from service providers offering assistance with shortand long-term planning, especially since women may now be physically separate from family systems that offered this support in the past. of particular importance is to engage in planning assistance that attends to the complex considerations for immigrant women, including their roles within their families, cultural influences and expectations, and the socio-historical contexts in which they are situated. given that both family needs and financial needs – which were often interrelated – figured prominently in many women’s migration decisions, future research could explore the ways in which these factors intersect and interact to prompt migration. in particular, as economic situations change globally and women’s economic opportunities continue to increase, studies can explore how socio-political factors (e.g., immigration or economic policies) impact women’s decisions to migrate and prevent or hinder their access to opportunities. during their migration journey, the status of women’s documentation had a significant influence on their transition to the united states. while immigrant women generally faced financial stress and the emotional strain of separating from loved ones, undocumented women also faced physical hardship, detention, and abuse. given the stressors noted during women’s journeys to the u.s., especially for those who were undocumented, immigrant women and their families may be in need of services to address the impacts of stress and trauma. service providers need to be aware of the complex journey process, how documentation impacts it, and how it may continue as women and their families make decisions to address economic needs even after they arrive in the u.s. in working with immigrant women, identifying ways to bolster emotional support to buffer the impacts of separation and possible trauma during the relocation process can be an important aspect of both individual and family services. to better understand the impact of this turning point in women’s lives, future research could further examine the impact of having multiple destinations, and ways in which service providers can serve this population so that any supports that are initiated at the original arrival point can be continued in subsequent locations. further, as research continues to highlight the harsh and traumatic experiences of border crossing and detention, new policies and practices need to be explored and researched to prevent further harm to individuals and families. finally, a number of immigrant women in the study noted that entering the role of mother was a turning point in their adjustment to life in the u.s. mothers recalled differences in terms of their expectations versus the reality of the new country, as well as the support available to them in the u.s. as compared to the assistance that they would have had in their countries of origin. as such, service providers working with immigrant mothers should assess the need for support, as this may be exacerbated among women with either limited family support in the u.s., or who are unable to access social services because of barriers such as documentation status. assisting mothers in developing social support in the u.s. might be particularly salient for mothers experiencing isolation or feeling nostalgic for their countries of origin and families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 326 recent scholarship has noted that the use of electronic communication can provide a means for increasing connection between family members who are not in the same location (bacigalupe & lambe, 2011); this could be particularly helpful for women who seek family support in decision-making and parenting as they transition to the role of mother. opportunities to stay connected to their families and cultures of origin may also assist mothers in sharing their culture and traditions with their children, an important aspect of parenting for immigrant mothers. additional research might compare the various factors that either hinder or help mothers in their adjustment process, as well as what interventions are most effective in assisting the diverse population of immigrant women in the u.s. further, the impact of this process on men as they become fathers could also add to the understanding of immigrant families and help to better meet the needs of these families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 327 table 1. participant characteristics (frequencies) total women (n=40) african women (n=19) latina women (n=21) participant age mean age (in years) 32.25 33.89 30.72 20-29 15 5 10 30-39 18 9 9 40-49 7 5 2 participant education less than high school 11 4 7 high school 14 9 5 some college 13 5 8 college 2 1 1 poverty status income below fpl 40 19 21 participant employment full time employment 22 7 15 part time employment 8 4 4 not employed 10 8 2 documentation upon arrival in u.s. documentedfamily reunification 14 8 6 documenteddiversity lottery 6 6 0 documentedrefugee 3 3 0 documentedwork visa 2 2 0 undocumented 15 0 151 time in u.s. avg. years 9.08 9.57 8.62 ses in country of origin (coo) range in years (min-max) 2-21 2-20 5-21 higher in coo than in u.s. 10 5 5 same in coo and u.s. 12 8 4 lower in coo than in u.s. 16 5 11 couple relationship married/ cohabiting 31 15 16 single 9 4 5 1 three women did not explicitly state whether or not they were documented. however their journeys to the u.s. in terms of crossing borders with coyotes indicate they likely came to the u.s. without legal documentation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 308–331 328 references alk, e. a., maroun, n., major, s., afif, 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(2007). metrobaby qualitative study interview protocol (unpublished document). cambridge, ma: harvard university. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2008.00514.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3089573 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2008.00515.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2009.10.002 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2013.02.001 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308275x0002000206 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718001 the use of administrative data to study the triple p – positive parenting program rubab g. arim, anne guèvremont, v. susan dahinten, and dafna e. kohen abstract: this study is among the first canadian population-based evaluations designed to examine associations of the triple p – positive parenting program (triple p) for mother and child outcomes at the community level. uniquely, this study was conducted independently of program implementation, using data collected for other purposes. three anonymized british columbia provincial administrative data sources were used, in addition to program data collected by administrators (island health). the study employed a quasi-experimental design to examine benefits of triple p at the community level, and used sociodemographic community characteristics to match 11 target communities where triple p was implemented with comparison communities where triple p was not implemented. the study’s design and analyses took into account the phased-in implementation of triple p across vancouver island (2004–2008), drawing on preand postimplementation data for all of the studied communities. hierarchical linear modeling results showed that children living in communities where the program had been administered were more likely to have been diagnosed with conduct disorders and to have used counseling services. program intensity was not associated with any of the child health outcomes. for mothers, higher program intensity was associated with lower odds of being diagnosed with mental health conditions. future research should continue to demonstrate the feasibility of a population-based approach and the use of secondary data along with program data to examine community-based intervention programs. keywords: intervention, child, maternal, mental health, services, conduct disorder, anxiety, secondary data, hierarchical linear modeling rubab g. arim, ph.d. (corresponding author) is a social science researcher in the health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture driveway, ottawa, on k1a 0t6. email: rubab.arim@canada.ca anne guèvremont, m.ed. is a research analyst in the health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture driveway, ottawa, on k1a 0t6. email: anne.guevremont@canada.ca v. susan dahinten, ph.d., rn, mba is an associate professor in the school of nursing, university of british columbia, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, bc v6t 2b5. email: susan.dahinten@nursing.ubc.ca dafna e. kohen, ph.d. is a principal analyst in the health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture driveway, ottawa, on k1a 0t6. email: dafna.kohen@canada.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718001 mailto:rubab.arim@canada.ca mailto:anne.guevremont@canada.ca mailto:dafna.kohen@canada.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 60 providing parenting support is an important first step in a public health approach to fostering children’s mental health (hiscock et al., 2008). the triple p – positive parenting program (triple p) is a population-based, community level parenting program developed in australia for parents of children from birth to age 16 (sanders, 1999; sanders, cann, & markiedadds, 2003; sanders, turner, & markie-dadds, 2002). triple p is a population-based parenting program implemented at the community level and offered to all parents (sanders et al., 2002). rather than being a single program, triple p includes five levels of intervention on a continuum of increasing intensity (see sanders et al., 2002; sanders et al., 2003 for details) and aims to enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents and to prevent negative parenting practices, thereby reducing behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems in children (prinz, sanders, shapiro, whitaker, & lutzker, 2009). to date, many international evaluation studies have been conducted on triple p, including five meta-analyses of the effectiveness of the program on parent and child outcomes at the individual level (de graaf, speetjens, smit, de wolff, & tavecchio, 2008; nowak & heinrichs, 2008; sanders, kirby, tellegen, & day, 2014; thomas & zimmer-gembeck, 2007; wilson et al., 2012). most evaluation studies have described decreases in parental levels of stress, anxiety, and depression (e.g., calam, sanders, miller, sadhnani, & carmont, 2008; matsumoto, sofronoff, & sanders, 2007; stallman & ralph, 2007) as well as a decrease in children’s behavior problems, such as hyperactivity and emotional problems (see arkan, üstün, & güvenir, 2013; schmidt, 2012), following program implementation. however, a recent study by sampaio, sarkadi, salari, zethraeus, and feldman (2015) showed no significant improvements in parental mental health or child behavior problems at a 6-, 12and 18-month follow-up. similarly, mcconnell, breitkeuz, and savage (2011) found no significant differences on any outcome measure including parenting stress, positive interaction, and child behavior problems. these mixed findings may be due to methodological or programmatic differences such as differences in child ages or intensity of program implementation. for example, sampaio et al. (2015) focused on preschoolers whereas stallman and ralph (2007) focused on adolescents; both sampaio et al. (2015) and mcconnell et al. (2011) examined only levels 2 and 3 of triple p whereas other studies that found significant improvements addressed levels 4 and 5, which are more intensive. previously cited evaluations have several limitations. first, most studies used small samples focusing on individual level data as opposed to population-based community data even though triple p is a community-based intervention strategy (see fives, pursell, heary, nic gabhainn, & canavan, 2014; prinz et al., 2009 for exceptions). second, few studies (see averdijk, zirk-sadowski, ribeaud, & eisner, 2016; heinrichs, kliem, & hahlweg, 2014) examined outcomes beyond 3 years post-program implementation. third, the greater number of significant outcomes and the larger effects were found for parent-reported outcomes. parental evaluations may be less objective than other more independent sources of evaluation, particularly if parents feel strongly invested in the program. fourth, program intensity has not been previously considered. the present study addressed these limitations by focusing on associations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 61 at the community level; considering both maternal and child health outcomes measured up to 6 years post-implementation; using population-based administrative data collected independently of the intervention and research study (i.e., prior to and without knowledge of triple p using other provincial administrative data, such as data from the ministry of health not collected for research purposes); and including a measure of program intensity. administrative data refer to information collected by organizations and departments for their own non-research purposes. in canada, health care coverage is provided by the provinces. as such, each provincial ministry is responsible for the collection of population-based data such as hospitalizations, diagnostic information provided by physicians, and medical mental health service use (see prinz et al., 2009 for an example from the united states). there are various advantages of using administrative data for research (see dahinten, arim, guevremont, & kohen, 2014). in particular, this is a data source well-suited to assess a population-based intervention. thus, the present study compared target communities, where triple p had been implemented, with comparison communities, where triple p had not been implemented, to address the following three research questions:  what is the association between triple p and selected mental health outcomes for mothers when comparing target communities with comparison communities?  what is the association between triple p and selected health outcomes for children aged 6 to 12, when comparing target communities with comparison communities?  is program intensity associated with outcomes for mothers and children? the choice of health outcomes was purposeful given the aims of triple p to reduce parenting stress as well as children’s behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems. as such, we looked at mental health diagnoses and use of counseling services in mothers, as well as mental health diagnoses, conduct disorder diagnoses, use of counseling services, and injuries in children. examining health services use is important not only for understanding health outcomes, but also for better understanding policy-relevant issues such as patterns of use and costs. in the present study, we anticipated that an examination of health services use would provide a population health comparison at a community level. to date, few studies have examined health services use together with mental health outcomes as outcomes of parenting programs (charles, bywater, edwards, hutchings, & zou, 2013; edwards, céilleachair, bywater, hughes, & hutchings, 2007; prinz et al., 2009). for example, studies evaluating the incredible years parenting program found a decrease in children’s conduct problems (edwards et al., 2007; hutchings et al., 2007) and parental depression as assessed by standardized instruments (charles et al., 2013; hutchings et al., 2007). however, similar changes were not reflected in service use as measured by the parent-reported client service receipt inventory (charles et al., 2013; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 62 edwards et al., 2007). charles et al. (2013) indicated no difference in parental service use (i.e., primary services, social services, and hospital services) for participating families at a 6-, 12-, and 18-month follow-up, and edwards et al. (2007) found no differences in child health (primary care and hospital services), social care, and special education service use at a 6-month follow-up for participating families. these findings highlight the importance of exploring health service use in addition to health outcomes, as well as looking past the implementation period. method study design a non-randomized quasi-experimental design was used to investigate the associations of triple p at the community level, drawing on administrative data collected in 2002 and 2010. more specifically, comparison communities (where triple p was not implemented) and target communities (where triple p was implemented) were matched on sociodemographic community characteristics and then compared. the design and analysis took into account the phased-in implementation of triple p across the area served by the vancouver island health authority (island health) over the period from 2004 to 2008, drawing on a minimum of 2-year preand post-implementation data for all communities, with up to 6-year post-implementation data for some communities. triple p was implemented by island health in collaboration with the ministry of child and family development. over the fiveyear period from 2004 to 2008, 142 training sessions were held for all levels of the triple p program and various intervention strategies such as level 5 pathways and level 4 group triple p; 812 practitioners were accredited within six months after the training (arim, knott, dahinten, kohen, & pace, 2013). source of data the study drew on three anonymized administrative data sources: (a) the british columbia (bc) ministry of health (2012a, 2012b) data holdings, accessed through population data bc; (b) the publicly available 2006 census of population data from statistics canada (2006); and (c) program administration data from island health (http://www.viha.ca/). population data bc is a central data repository that facilitates interdisciplinary research on determinants of human development and health. three separate administrative data holdings from the bc ministry of health were used for this study: (a) the medical services plan (msp) payment information file (british columbia ministry of health, 2012a), which includes data from 1985 onwards regarding medical services provided by fee-for-service practitioners to all individuals covered by bc’s universal health insurance program; (b) the consolidation file: msp & premium billing (british columbia ministry of health, 2012b), which includes population demographic data prepared for research use by population data bc; and (c) the discharge abstract database: hospital separations (canadian institute for health information, 2012) that includes data from 1985 on, including all discharges, transfers, and deaths of in-patients and day surgery patients from acute care hospitals in bc. all data files accessed through population data http://www.viha.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 63 bc are linkable at the individual level, but de-identified to maintain anonymity and confidentiality. for this study, data were extracted from 11 communities where triple p had been implemented and from 11 matched communities elsewhere in bc. individual anonymized data on bc residents in the 22 communities were used for the calendar years 2002 and 2010. these years provided a minimum of 2 years of preand post-implementation data for all communities, with up to 6-year post-implementation data for some communities. the population under study included mothers aged 15 to 65 years with children aged 0 to 18 years, as identified in the child’s first health care registration1, as well as children aged 6 to 12 years. our focus was on school-age children (6–12 years). at school age, mental health conditions are more likely to be diagnosed than at younger ages (centers for disease control and prevention, 2013, table 7). in order to match communities, publicly available data from the 2006 census of population2 were custom tabulated (i.e., aggregated to the local health area3; lha). finally, triple p program data were compiled and made available through partners at island health. island health provided community-specific data on program implementation and program characteristics. these data were sourced from computerized and paper information systems of island health and from local providers; each record included the date of implementation, the levels of programming implemented (e.g., level 4 group triple p), and the intensity of program delivery (e.g., number of practitioners trained). the final population under study included mothers aged 15 to 65 in 2010 (n=242,766) and children aged 6 to 12 in 2010 (n=82,591) living in 22 lhas, who were registered with msp in both 2002 and 2010 and who were living in the same lha in both years. of children and mothers who were registered with msp in 2002, approximately 80% were also registered with msp in 2010 and about 70% were living in the same local health area. data access the encrypted data files were made accessible to the research team in an online secure research environment through population data bc; information on community characteristics was from publicly available 2006 census of population data; and program intensity information came from island health. measures individual characteristics: mother’s age, and child’s gender and age, were used as covariates but also considered as possible moderators of the program’s effects because they are 1 few children (0.2%) had more than one mother as identified in the first health care registration of the children. these mothers were not excluded from the analyses. 2 2006 census of population was the only available census data given the time frame of the study. 3 local health areas are the smallest geographic areas defined by the ministry of health. in this study, lhas are referred as communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 64 associated with mental health and service use outcomes (arim et al., 2015; centers for disease control and prevention, 2013). these variables were obtained from the consolidation file (british columbia ministry of health, 2012b). community characteristics: eleven communities that received triple p between the years of 2004 and 2010 were designated as the “target” communities. each target community had a “comparison” community that did not receive triple p but that was matched on seven aggregated sociodemographic community characteristics at the lha level: (a) population size, (b) proportion of young families (census families with children aged less than 15), (c) proportion of individuals with an aboriginal identity, (d) unemployment rate for population aged 15 or more years, (e) proportion of individuals aged 25–54 years who had not completed high school, (f) proportion of individuals with a mother tongue other than english or french, and (g) proportion of individuals who had not moved during the previous 5-year period. a list of matched target and comparison communities along with their community characteristics has been previously published elsewhere (dahinten et al., 2014). although there was a 100% agreement between the two researchers on the matched communities, relatively few or small differences were apparent. because of the close rater agreement, and the fact that these sociodemographic community characteristics are known to be associated with maternal and child outcomes as well as parenting behaviors (kohen, leventhal, dahinten, & mcintosh, 2008; kohen, brooks-gunn, leventhal, & hertzman, 2002), the seven community characteristics were also used as covariates in the analyses. aggregated baseline community prevalence rates in 2002 for each health outcome — mental health diagnoses and use of counseling services for mothers aged 15 to 65 years, and mental health diagnoses, conduct disorder diagnoses, use of counseling services, and injuries for children aged 6 to 12 years — were also included as covariates based on data from msp and hospital separations for the calendar year of 2002. health outcomes: two binary health outcomes (mental health diagnoses and use of counseling services) for mothers aged 15 to 65 years and four binary health outcomes (mental health diagnoses, conduct disorder diagnoses, use of counseling services, and injuries) for children aged 6 to 12 years were considered based on data from msp and hospital separations for the calendar year of 2010. these outcomes were selected in the context of their relevance to the aims of triple p, which include preventing behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems in children and adolescents. maternal and child mental health diagnoses were identified by the international classification of diseases, ninth version, clinical modification (icd-9-cm) diagnostic codes in the msp data or the international classification of diseases, tenth version, canada (icd-10-ca) diagnostic codes in the hospital separations data for depression and anxiety, including diagnoses for affective psychoses, neurotic depression, adjustment reaction, and depressive disorder. specifically, four icd-9-cm diagnostic codes (296, 300, 309, 311) in the msp data and 23 icd10-ca diagnostic codes (f31, f32, f33, f32.0, f34.1, f38.0, f38.1, f40, f41, f42, f41.2, f43.1, f43.2, f43.8, f44, f45.0, f45.1, f45.2, f48, f53.0, f68.0, f93.0, f99) in the hospital international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 65 separations data were used. presence of any of these diagnostic codes in the calendar year of 2010 indicated maternal or child mental health diagnoses. these definitions have been previously used in other provincial administrative health data studies (e.g., brownell et al., 2012; martens et al., 2010). maternal and child use of counseling services was based on msp data that captures billed services covered by msp but does not capture other “out of pocket” services such as counseling provided privately. both service and specialty codes were used to capture services such as counseling and counseling psychotherapy. specialty codes included services provided by psychiatrists, counselor/psychiatrists, and educators. this definition has been used in previous research using provincial administrative health data (e.g., arim et al., 2015). child conduct disorder diagnoses were identified using a similar strategy as that used for mental health diagnoses. the presence of a single icd-9-cm diagnostic code for disturbance of conduct (312) in the msp data or a single icd-10-ca diagnostic code for conduct disorder, childhood onset type (f91) in the hospital separations data for the calendar year of 2010 indicated child conduct disorder diagnoses. this definition has been used by others (brownell et al., 2015). child injuries were identified by a single icd-10-ca diagnostic code that identifies the presence of any injuries within all recorded diagnostic codes for each individual in the hospital separations data for the calendar year of 2010. program characteristics: typically, program intensity can be captured by the levels of triple p, but since all five levels had been implemented on vancouver island, rather than using levels as an indicator of intensity, this study focused on “practitioner density” with the idea that having longer access and a higher number of trained practitioners may be associated with program benefits. program intensity was derived from the program administration data from island health. it was calculated based on the number of years of training offered in a given community multiplied by the number of practitioners accredited in the community, adjusted for population size and multiplied by 1000 in order to have the same scale as the other variables in the analyses. as an example, a community with a population size of 14,000, which had 5 years of training and 90 practitioners accredited had a program intensity score of 32.14. data analysis first, descriptive statistics were examined separately for mothers and children. due to the large sample size in this study, very small differences emerged as statistically significant. given this, cohen’s d effect sizes (cohen, 1988; rosenthal, 1996) were computed to examine the differences between target and comparison communities. next, logistic hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) was used, with mothers or children nested within communities, to assess program effects, including the intensity of triple p implementation, after controlling for the selected community-level baseline (i.e., pre-program implementation) health conditions and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 66 sociodemographic characteristics. thus, the hlm analyses were informed by a two-level model with both individual (e.g., age) and community level (e.g., unemployment rate) variables. separate analyses were conducted for each of the six outcomes for mothers or children. the laplace estimation method was selected given that the level of measurement of the outcome variables was binary (raudenbush & bryk, 2002). the focus of the data analysis was to examine between-community differences for mother and child mental health and service use outcomes that may be associated with the intensity of the implementation of triple p, adjusted for individual characteristics, community characteristics, and program delivery. for this reason, although an unconditional two-level model (i.e., no predictor variables) was tested first, with subsequent models adding individual and community variables, only two models are presented in the results: model 1, which examines the association between the program delivery and health outcomes, and which includes all the individual and community covariates and the target community variable; and model 2, which adds the program intensity variable after controlling for the effects of individual and community covariates and the target community variable (other models are available upon request). the purpose of examining these models separately was to isolate the effects of (a) the program delivery and (b) the program intensity, as they were moderately associated (r = .73). for both models, all variables were added as fixed effects (i.e., their effects were assumed to be constant across communities). all continuous variables were centered on the mean so the intercept value could represent the “average” child (raudenbush & bryk, 2002). interactions of individual characteristics (i.e., age and gender) with program delivery (i.e., target community) and intensity variables were also examined. results descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations or percentages) of all study variables by community type (i.e., target vs. comparison) are presented as are comparison results, including effect sizes for mother and child outcomes (see table 1). maternal descriptive statistics: the average age of mothers at about 41 years was similar in the target and comparison communities. regarding community characteristics, overall population size was larger in the target communities compared with the comparison communities; there were fewer families with children younger than 15 in the target communities; more individuals were unemployed in the target communities; and fewer individuals had a mother tongue other than english or french. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 67 table 1 descriptive statistics of all study variables mothers (n = 242,766) children (n = 82,591) communities target (n = 117,745) comparison (n = 125,021) target (n = 39,498) comparison (n = 43,093) individual characteristics female, % 100.00 100.00 49.30 49.08 age, m (sd) 40.99 (7.84) 40.99 (7.60) 9.08 (2.01) 9.07 (2.01) community characteristics population size, m(sd) 23586.02 (15216.45)m 17279.00 (7052.60) 23566.43 (15259.97)m 17316.12 (7046.24) families with children < 15 years, m(sd) 30.55 (3.02)l 34.37 (3.54) 30.59 (3.01)l 34.43 (3.53) individuals with aboriginal identity, m(sd) 6.38 (4.58) 6.04 (4.71) 6.41 (4.62) 6.05 (4.72) unemployment rate, m(sd) 6.16 (1.68)s 5.82 (1.18) 6.17 (1.69)s 5.82 (1.19) individuals without high school, m(sd) 11.97 (4.17) 11.33 (5.45) 11.99 (4.19) 11.32 (5.48) mother tongue not english or french, m(sd) 10.78 (2.79)l 15.04 (6.01) 10.77 (2.81)l 15.09 (6.03) not moved during 5-year period, m(sd) 53.85 (4.25) 54.26 (3.79) 53.85 (4.23) 54.26 (3.77) mental health diagnoses in 2002, % 11.01 9.63 1.93 1.53 use of counseling services in 2002, % 17.93 16.14 4.80 4.83 conduct disorders diagnoses in 2002, % n/a n/a 1.92 1.91 injuries in 2002, % n/a n/a 0.68 0.60 program characteristics program intensity, m(sd) 21.55 (14.55) n/a 21.58 (14.57) n/a health outcomes mental health diagnoses in 2010, % 14.92 14.31 2.02 2.03 use of counseling services in 2010, % 18.93 17.07 3.55 3.27 conduct disorders diagnoses in 2010, % n/a n/a 2.28s 1.62 injuries in 2010, % n/a n/a 0.45 0.43 note. slight differences in the community sociodemographic characteristics are due to children sharing a mother in the data. established criteria were used for small (about 0.2), medium (about 0.5), large (about 0.8), and very large (about 1.3) effect sizes for differences in means, and small (7 points), medium (18 points), large (30 points), and very large (45 points or greater) for differences in percentages with odds ratios being used for perce ntages outside the 15% to 85% range. n/a= not available. means are calculated per 100,000 in the community using individual scores aggregated up to the community level. ssmall effect size vs. “comparison” communities. mmedium effect size vs. “comparison” communities. llarge effect size vs. “comparison” communities. xlvery large effect size vs. “comparison” communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 68 in 2002, prior to triple p, mothers’ mental health diagnoses (11.1% vs. 9.6%) and use of counseling services (17.9% vs. 16.1%) did not differ between the target and comparison communities given the effect sizes. in 2010, mothers’ mental health diagnoses (14.9% vs. 14.3%) and use of counseling services (18.9% vs. 17.1%) again did not differ between the target and comparison communities based on effect sizes. child descriptive statistics: approximately half of the children were female in both the target and the comparison communities. the average age of children was also similar at about 9 years. as expected based on the selection criteria, the pattern of results for community sociodemographic characteristics was similar between communities. regarding baseline prevalence of health outcomes, there were no differences in children’s mental health diagnoses (1.9% vs. 1.5%), use of counseling services (4.8% vs. 4.8%), conduct disorder diagnoses (1.9% vs. 1.9%), or injuries (0.7% vs. 0.6%) between the target and the comparison communities in 2002 given the effect sizes. in 2010, there were no differences in the mental health diagnoses (2% vs. 2%), use of counseling (3.6% vs. 3.3%), or injuries (0.5% vs. 0.4%) between the target and the comparison communities based on effect sizes. in contrast, children were more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorders (2.3% vs. 1.6%) in the target communities in 2010, with a small effect size. maternal mental health outcomes: hlm analyses results for mothers’ health outcomes (see table 2) indicated no differences in mental health diagnoses between mothers living in the target communities compared with those living in the comparison communities (model 1). however, higher program intensity was associated with lower odds of being diagnosed with mental health conditions (model 2). this pattern of results was similar for mothers’ use of counseling services, albeit not statistically significant. overall, the model fit statistics suggested that the inclusion of program intensity improved the model for mental health diagnoses but not for use of counseling services, after accounting for the effects of the target community variable. table 2 also identifies individual and community covariates that were found to be associated (albeit weakly) with maternal health outcomes. a series of interaction terms between maternal age and target community and program intensity variables were investigated but not found to be statistically significant for either of the health outcome variables and are thus not reported. child health outcomes: hlm analyses results for children’s health outcomes (see table 3) indicated that children living in target communities where triple p was implemented were more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorders and to use counseling services (model 1). living in the target communities (model 1) was not associated with child mental health diagnoses or injuries. program intensity was also not associated with child health outcomes. overall, given the model statistics, results suggest that the inclusion of program intensity does not significantly improve the models, after taking the target community variable into account. as for child outcomes, none of the interaction terms that we investigated between individual level variables and target community or program intensity variables were statistically significant. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 69 table 2 summary of results from hlm analyses for mothers’ mental health outcomes in 2010 mental health diagnoses use of counseling services model 1 model 2 model 1 model 2 fixed effects individual level variables age 0.99 (0.99-0.99)*** 0.99 (0.99-0.99)*** 0.99 (0.990.99)*** 0.99 (0.99-0.99)*** community level variables prevalence in 2002 1.09 (1.06-1.12)*** 1.08 (1.04-1.11)*** 1.06 (1.01-1.10)* 1.05 (1.01-1.10)* population size 1.01 (1.00-1.02)* 1.01 (1.00-1.01) 1.00 (0.99-1.02) 1.00 (0.99-1.01) families with children aged < 15 years 1.00 (0.98-1.02) 1.00 (0.98-1.02) 1.01 (0.98-1.03) 1.01 (0.98-1.04) individuals with an aboriginal identity 0.97 (0.95-0.99)** 0.98 (0.95-1.00)* 0.98 (0.95-1.01) 0.99 (0.96-1.02) unemployment rate 1.09 (1.03-1.15)** 1.09 (1.03-1.15)** 1.06 (0.96-1.17) 1.06 (0.96-1.16) individuals without high school 1.01 (0.98-1.04) 1.01 (0.98-1.04) 1.00 (0.95-1.05) 0.99 (0.95-1.04) mother tongue other than english or french 1.01 (0.99-1.02) 1.01 (0.99-1.02) 0.98 (0.95-1.01) 0.98 (0.95-1.01) not moved during 5-year period 1.02 (1.00-1.04)* 1.02 (1.00-1.04) 1.03 (1.01-1.06)** 1.03 (1.01-1.06)* target community 0.88 (0.78-1.01) 1.04 (0.87-1.24) 0.88 (0.70-1.12) 1.01 (0.74-1.37) program intensity 0.95 (0.91-0.99)* 0.96 (0.90-1.02) random effects intercept 0.01*** 0.01*** 0.03*** 0.03*** model fit statistics -2 log likelihood 201161.80 201156.40 226606.90 226605.70 akaike information criterion (aic) 201185.80 201182.40 226630.90 226631.70 bayesian information criterion (bic) 201198.90 201196.60 226644.00 226645.90 note. the values for the fixed effects are odds ratio estimates with 95% confidence limits in brackets. effects of continuous variables are assessed as one unit offsets from the mean. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 70 table 3 summary of results from hlm analyses for children’s health outcomes in 2010 mental health diagnoses conduct disorder diagnoses use of counseling services injuries model 1 model 2 model 1 model 2 model 1 model 2 model 1 model 2 fixed effects individual level variables female 0.74 (0.67-0.81)*** 0.74 (0.67-0.81)*** 0.37 (0.33-0.42)*** 0.37 (0.33-0.42)*** 0.61 (0.57-0.66)*** 0.61 (0.57-0.66)*** 0.73 (0.60-0.90)** 0.73 (0.60-0.90)** age 1.16 (1.14-1.19)*** 1.16 (1.14-1.19)*** 1.00 (0.98-1.03) 1.00 (0.98-1.03) 1.13 (1.10-1.15)*** 1.13 (1.10-1.15)*** 1.00 (0.95-1.05) 1.00 (0.95-1.05) community level variables prevalence in 2002 1.41 (1.14-1.73)** 1.30 (1.03-1.63)* 1.34 (1.18-1.51)*** 1.35 (1.18-1.54)*** 1.08 (1.00-1.15)* 1.07 (0.98-1.16) 1.52 (0.58-3.96) 1.67 (0.61-4.58) population size 1.00 (0.99-1.01) 1.00 (0.99-1.01) 0.99 (0.97-1.00)* 0.98 (0.97-1.00)* 1.00 (0.99-1.02) 1.00 (0.99-1.02) 1.01 (0.99-1.03) 1.01 (0.99-1.03) families with children aged < 15 years 1.04 (1.01-1.06)** 1.03 (1.01-1.06)* 1.10 (1.06-1.14)*** 1.10 (1.06-1.14)*** 1.01 (0.97-1.05) 1.01 (0.97-1.05) 1.02 (0.97-1.06) 1.02 (0.97-1.06) individuals with an aboriginal identity 0.97 (0.94-1.01) 0.98 (0.94-1.02) 1.01 (0.96-1.05) 1.01 (0.96-1.05) 0.97 (0.93-1.02) 0.97 (0.93-1.02) 0.97 (0.90-1.05) 0.98 (0.91-1.06) unemployment rate 1.13 (1.05-1.21)** 1.14 (1.06-1.23)*** 1.46 (1.31-1.63)*** 1.46 (1.31-1.63)*** 1.12 (1.00-1.25)* 1.11 (0.98-1.25) 1.02 (0.89-1.18) 1.03 (0.89-1.19) individuals without high school 0.95 (0.91-0.99)* 0.95 (0.91-0.99)* 0.90 (0.85-0.95)*** 0.90 (0.85-0.95)*** 0.98 (0.92-1.04) 0.98 (0.92-1.04) 1.02 (0.94-1.12) 1.02 (0.94-1.11) mother tongue other than english or french 0.98 (0.95-1.00)* 0.98 (0.96-1.01) 1.00 (0.97-1.04) 1.00 (0.97-1.04) 1.02 (0.98-1.05) 1.02 (0.98-1.05) 0.98 (0.94-1.02) 0.98 (0.94-1.02) not moved during 5year period 1.01 (0.99-1.03) 1.01 (0.98-1.03) 0.96 (0.93-0.99)** 0.96 (0.93-0.99)** 1.03 (1.00-1.06)* 1.03 (1.00-1.06)* 1.05 (1.01-1.10)* 1.05 (1.00-1.10)* target community 0.89 (0.76-1.05) 1.10 (0.83-1.45) 1.88 (1.46-2.43)*** 1.99 (1.34-2.95)*** 1.30 (1.03-1.64)* 1.24 (0.84-1.82) 0.92 (0.68-1.25) 1.01 (0.65-1.57) program intensity 0.93 (0.85-1.01) 0.98 (0.90-1.08) 1.02 (0.92-1.12) 0.96 (0.84-1.10) random effects intercept n/a n/a 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 n/a n/a model fit statistics -2 log likelihood 16130.75 16127.70 15064.35 15064.21 24003.47 24003.37 4673.88 4673.53 akaike information criterion (aic) 16154.75 16153.70 15090.35 15092.21 24029.47 24031.37 4697.88 4699.53 bayesian information criterion (bic) 16266.61 16274.88 15104.54 15107.49 24043.66 24046.65 4809.74 4820.71 note. the values for the fixed effects are odds ratio estimates with 95% confidence limits in brackets. effects of continuous variables are assessed as one unit offsets from the mean. n/a= not available. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 71 discussion the purpose of this study was to examine population level outcomes of a communitybased parenting program for mothers and children using archived, population-based, administrative data sources. a unique strength of this study was the use of administrative data that were not collected for the research or program evaluation purposes of the present study and were therefore free from several sources of potential response bias. in addition, sophisticated analyses examining several mother and child outcomes and controlling for correlated factors were incorporated into the research design. regarding associations with the triple p program, there were no differences in maternal health outcomes between mothers living in the target communities compared with those living in the comparison communities. these results are contradictory to previous small sample studies (e.g., matsumoto et al., 2007; stallman & ralph, 2007) and suggest that positive influences of triple p reported at the individual level may not be maintained over an extended period of time at the population level. in contrast, children living in the target communities were more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorders and more likely to use counseling services. although these results do not support our expectations or the results of previous studies (e.g., edwards et al., 2007; hutchings et al., 2007), they may suggest other positive aspects of the program, such as an increased awareness of children’s behavior problems on the part of mothers. indeed, the increased likelihood of using counseling services for children may be a result of an increased awareness of what services are available and needed, resulting from the identification of children’s behavior problems after participation in triple p program in the target communities. additional research is needed to further understand the associations between triple p and service use outcomes in other studies before firm conclusions can be drawn. taken together, our findings suggest that parent outcomes (fewer mental health diagnoses in treatment communities) may be more sensitive than child outcomes in measuring positive program effectiveness when population level administrative data are used (bloomfield & kendall, 2012), although the significant effects may not be maintained over time at the population level. it is also possible that benefits for child outcomes would be observed in a longer follow-up period since identification and service use would be the first steps to reduce and prevent behavioral and emotional problems. regarding associations with program intensity, our findings partially supported our hypotheses. for children, program intensity was not associated with health outcomes. however, for mothers, it seemed that the longer the triple p program was available in the community, the more practitioners who were trained and providing services, fewer mental health diagnoses were made. this finding highlights the importance of health care service as an important outcome measure, one which is often omitted (see prinz et al., 2009). additional research could contribute to our understanding of the associations between parenting programs and health care service use, an important public health outcome. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 72 in 2010, about 15% of mothers in the target communities had mental health diagnoses and 19% used counseling services compared with 14% and 17%, respectively, of those in the comparison communities. these findings are consistent with canadian statistics reporting that in any given year, one in five people in canada report a mental health problem (smetanin et al., 2011). for children, higher percentages of conduct disorders were observed in the target communities than in the comparison communities. while these findings warrant further research, it is possible that the mothers in the target communities were more knowledgeable and aware of children’s behavior problems due to the triple p program, which has a component that aims to improve parents’ knowledge, skills, and confidence about parenting (sanders, 2008; sanders et al., 2002). this could have led to increased service use for children and to diagnoses of conduct disorders in children. as would be expected, there was a low prevalence of children’s diagnoses of mental health conditions and use of counseling services compared to mothers’. this difference may be due to the fact that msp data capture the services provided by physicians such as psychiatrists, but not other services such as those provided by community and school-based professionals (e.g., specialized educators and counselors; arim et al., 2015). in addition, services that are provided through alternative payment plans, such as salaried, sessional, and service agreement contracts, are not included in the msp payment files. future research may include other administrative data sources to supplement information on mental health problems, such as information on prescription drugs (e.g., pharmanet) or reporting systems specific to mental health (e.g., the ontario mental health reporting system metadata). finally, associations with child injury are likely underestimated since we only included injuries that required overnight hospitalization, while other sources of data, such as emergency room data, were not included in the study data file. several limitations of the study should be acknowledged. first, our study did not directly assess parenting behaviors; however, indicators of maladaptive parenting have been included (e.g., injuries) as in other studies (prinz et al., 2009). second, our study included 22 groups, whereas previous research on sufficient sample sizes for multilevel modeling showed that estimates of the standard errors of the second-level variances are too small when the number of groups is less than 100 (about 15% too small with 30 groups; maas & hox, 2005). replication studies may be warranted as the number of target communities increases. in addition, the findings of this study are correlational; they do not claim cause and effect. since analyses and results are reported at the community level (because triple p was implemented, and the program data were compiled, at the community level by island health), our findings do not provide evidence about outcomes for individual participants of triple p and we cannot assume complete participation of all community members. in a similar vein, although we attempted to statistically control many sociodemographic differences between the target and comparison communities, many differences could not be empirically controlled. however, members of our collaborative team living in bc confirmed the similarities between target and comparison communities prior international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 73 to final selection and prior to the analytic phase of the project. third, although program intensity was captured, other program data were limited. although data were available on practitioner’s training, other program features such as program attendance and “dose” of the intervention were not — for example, the information about how many parents were reached by each practitioner was only available for 2008 to 2010. additional exploratory analyses suggested a moderate correlation (r = 0.51) between program intensity and practitioner’s reach score, suggesting that reach may be an important program feature to assess and include in future studies. in addition, some practitioners may have provided services in multiple communities or in communities other than those where they were trained; thus, a potential spillover effect may have occurred. this may also explain why intended effects were not observed. finally, our findings cover a broader age group for mothers (15 to 65 years) but are limited to the school-age population of children (6 to 12 years)).our results are also restricted by the outcomes available to us in the administrative data. additional measures such as parenting behaviors, parenting competence, and parenting stress that would have also been important to include as links with our reported outcomes cannot be verified in the present study, but can only be assumed. despite these limitations, there are several strengths of the study. first, the researchers were not involved in the planning, design, or implementation of the intervention or the collection of program or outcome data. second, this study is the first to use hlm to examine the impact of triple p on mothers’ and children’s health outcomes. the use of hlm allowed us to control for a number of community differences, including baseline scores of the outcomes, sociodemographic community characteristics, and triple p programming. finally, our multidisciplinary project group (including administrative data analysts, program coordinators, researchers, and policy stakeholders) made possible the sharing of program implementation information such as the intensity of program delivery. indeed, program intensity was an important aspect to consider, demonstrating an association with lower maternal mental health diagnoses, and highlighting the importance of program evaluators and administrators collaborating to identify features that should be collected from the start of program implementation. this study aimed to demonstrate associations of a community-level parenting program with health outcomes for mothers and children through the use of provincial administrative data, and also examined program intensity as measured by practitioner density. our findings suggest that the positive influences of triple p on maternal health may not be maintained at the population level over an extended period of time. this finding highlights the importance of continued services and programs for mothers. however, program intensity plays an important role in contributing to positive maternal mental health, which suggests the importance of sustaining program intensity over time. in contrast, children were more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorders and more likely to use counseling services in communities where triple p had been implemented, and program intensity did not play an important role in child health outcomes. this finding raises several questions, such as: is more time needed to observe benefits of triple p for children (given that the program is designed to support mothers)?; and, should international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 74 interventions directly targeting children be used in conjunction with parent support programs in order to have positive associations with child outcomes? furthermore, there is a need to better understand the patterns of service use and whether they are indicators for positive or negative program effects. our study also yields recommendations for program data that is important to collect during program implementation such as details about program reach and intensity (e.g., number of days or hours) as well as relevant follow-up information for participants. future research should continue to explore the feasibility of a population-based approach and the use of secondary data along with program data to examine community-based intervention programs. administrative data can fill some data gaps but cannot necessarily address all research questions. this study has demonstrated an example of an innovative use of administrative data for a program evaluation study that relies on both a close collaborative relationship with program administrators, and the support of other forms of data collection. acknowledgments all data analysis was conducted at the ottawa hospital research institute, the former affiliation of the first author. all inferences, opinions, and conclusions drawn in this article are those of the authors, and do not reflect the opinions or policies of the data stewards at the bc ministry of health, or statistics canada. the authors wish to acknowledge evelyne bougie’s assistance with the compilation of census data and to thank esther pace and cindy knott of island health for their support and assistance with the compilation of triple p data. compliance with ethical standards funding: this work was supported by the canadian institutes of health research [funding reference number 109906]. disclosure of potential conflicts of interest: the authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. ethical approval: this study was approved by the research liaison staff of population data bc, the data stewards at the bc ministry of health, the university of british columbia office of research ethics, the ottawa health science network research ethics board, and the island health research ethics board. all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. informed consent: for this type of study, formal consent is not required. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 59–78 75 references arim, r. g., knott, c., dahinten, v. s., kohen, d. e., & pace, e. 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(2012). how evidence-based is an ‘evidence-based parenting program’? a prisma systematic review and meta-analysis of triple p. bmc medicine, 10, 130. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-130 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1021843613840 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.22.3.506 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.22.3.506 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/car.798 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1019942516231 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5172/jamh.6.2.125 http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/index-eng.cfm http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-007-9104-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-10-130 antiracism education is a political movement and theoretical framework that informs critical scholarly work, pedagogical, curricular, and organizational change measures, and social work practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 385 immediate response: addressing anti-native and anti-black racism in child welfare gordon pon, kevin gosine, and doret phillips abstract: anti-oppression emerged in the 1990s as a perspective for challenging inequalities and accommodating diversity within the field of social work, including child welfare in canada. using the concepts of white supremacy, antiblack, and anti-native racism in conjunction with the notion of the exalted national subject (thobani, 2007), we contend that any understanding of the overrepresentation of aboriginal and black children in the care of child welfare services must be located within the wider narrative of white supremacy that has underpinned the formation of the post-war welfare state. this overrepresentation highlights the need to shift from anti-oppression to critical race feminism and anti-colonialism perspectives in order to address more effectively anti-black and anti-native racism and the economy of child welfare. keywords: child welfare, critical race feminism, anti-colonialism, antioppression, anti-racism, disproportionality acknowledgement: the authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this manuscript. this article was presented at the annual meeting of the canadian association of social work education, fredericton, new brunswick, canada, june 2011. address correspondence to: gordon pon, ph.d., school of social work, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, m5b 2k3 e-mail: g2pon@ryerson.ca gordon pon, ph.d., is an associate professor in the school of social work, ryerson university, toronto, ontario, canada. kevin gosine, msw, ph.d., is an associate professor in the department of sociology, brock university, st. catharines, ontario, canada. doret phillips, msw, rsw, is a social worker who practices from a critical feminist and anti-racist framework. she has extensive work experience in child welfare, violence against women initiatives, and counselling parents and children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 386 while anti-oppression perspectives in social work are increasingly championed as a progressive and liberatory social justice response, we will argue that they are limited in their capacity to address racism in the child welfare system. instead, we assert that critcial race feminism (razack, smith, & thobani, 2010) and anti-colonialism are much more critical and transformative approaches to social work in comparison to anti-oppression. as anti-oppression perspectives become increasingly mainstreamedi (mclaughlin, 2005), its proponents seldom discuss difficult topics such as white supremacy, anti-black and anti-native racism, particularly in relation to child welfare. conversely, critical race feminism scholars such as sunera thobani (2007) argue that the overrepresentation of aboriginalii and black children in the care of the canadian child protection system is inseparable from the history of white supremacy in canada. in what has become known as the “sixties scoop,” canadian child welfare authorities in the 1960s began removing high numbers of indigenous children from their parents, extended family, and communities and placing them with non-indigenous families (baskin, 2006; blackstock and trocmé, 2004; strega, 2007; thobani, 2007). this persisted into the 1980s. of the approximately 76,000 children and youth living in out-of-home care in canada during the years 2000 to 2002, about 40% were aboriginal (farris-manning & zandstra, 2003). more recently, strega and esquao (2009) estimate that 25,000 of the 65,000, or 38% of children in out-of-home care in canada are aboriginal. however, aboriginal children comprise only 5% of the children in canada (trocmé, knoke, & blackstock, 2004). in manitoba, a canadian province, nearly 80% of the children living in out-of-home care are aboriginal (see trocmé et al., 2004). aboriginal youth aged 0-19 represent less than 3% of the total child population in ontario, canada’s largest province, but 14.4% of the number of aboriginal children in care (ontario association of children’s aid societies, 2008). today there are three times as many aboriginal children in care as compared to the height of the indian residential schools (mandell, clouston carlson, fine, & blackstock, 2007). black children and youth are also overrepresented in the child welfare system in canada. the child welfare anti-oppression roundtable (2009), an initiative which includes representation of almost half of the 52 child welfare agencies in ontario, notes that in an urban ontario city, black youth represent 65% of the children in care, despite the fact that the black population in this urban centre totals only 8%. in this paper, we use a critical race feminism approach (razack et al., 2010) to understand this overrepresentation as being implicated in canada’s “master narrative of the nation” (thobani, 2007, p. 4), which is inseparable from a history of white supremacy that was central to the formation of the canadian nation and the rise of the post-war welfare state. this post-structural approach views power as diffuse, contradictory, fragmented, and implicated in what foucault (1980) referred to as discourse. according to foucault, power and subjectivity are inseparable in that the individual is at once both subjected to rule by entities such as government and is also an active agent or subject in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 387 the creation of who they are (prado, 2000). the discourse of the national subject is, according to thobani, one that heralds this individual to be a venerated and exalted responsible citizen who for the most part is compassionate and caring, much like the welfare state itself. the exalted national subject is depicted as having to contend against the intrusions and threats of the racial other, who jeopardize the collective welfare and prosperity of the nation (thobani, 2007). simultaneously, aboriginal and racialized immigrant families were historically excluded from access to the provisions of the welfare state (maiter, 2009; thobani, 2007). we will argue that the contemporary overrepresentation of aboriginal and black children in care is implicated in this master narrative of nation. we further argue that anti-colonialism and critical race feminism, and not anti-oppression, are the most pressing and promising frameworks for theorizing and responding to the overrepresentation of black and indigenous children in care. affirming the feminist anti-racist and anti-colonial emphasis on self-reflexivity and critical awareness of subject location in relation to scholarly work (see lawrence & dua, 2005), we briefly highlight the differing and varied subject positions and experiences that we bring to this collaboration. gordon pon is a chinese canadian, male, who has over five years of experience in front line child welfare work as a children services worker, intake worker, and family services worker. he is heterosexual, ablebodied, middle class, and a professor of social work in a large canadian university. kevin gosine identifies as an able-bodied, heterosexual, canadian-born, racialized middle-class professor of sociology. he locates himself in this middle-class position after growing up in the lower working-class community of regent park located in downtown toronto, canada. doret phillips is a black canadian, female, anti-racism activist practitioner, who has over nine years of front line experience in child welfare as a family services worker. she is heterosexual, now middle class, and holds a graduate degree in social work. white supremacy, anti-black racism, and the exalted national subject the etiology of the overrepresentation of aboriginal and black children in care of the child welfare systems of canada and other anglo-american nations (strega & esquao, 2009) is debated among researchers. while some scholars argue that colonialism and racism explain this overrepresentation (blackstock & trocmé, 2004; chand, 2000; clarke, 2010; dumbrill, 2003; gosine & pon, 2010; roberts, 2002), others assert that there is no compelling evidence that race alone contributes substantially to child welfare decision making (barth, miller, green, & baumgartner, 2001). barth et al. (2001) argue that the disproportionality of african-americans involved with child welfare services is linked to african-american children being at higher risk for needing child protection services, especially in light of high incarceration and death rates associated with african americans. similarly, tilbury and thoburn (2009) caution that racial disproportionality may not necessarily be negative, especially if some aboriginal and black families benefit from child welfare involvement. we assert that the contemporary racial disproportionality in child welfare is inseperable from the historical exigencies of race, class, and gender divisions that were central to the very formation of the canadian settler nation state. ng (1993) argues that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 388 race, like class, gender, and sexual orientation, is to be understood not “as categories designating different and separate domains of social life” (p. 50), but as concrete social relations that organize “how people define themselves and how they participate in social life” (p. 51). the discursive nature of the concept of race signals its fluid and shifting nature. historically the concept of race emerged during modernity. modernity is the time period beginning around the 15th century with the european “voyages of discovery” (goldberg, 1993; lawrence & dua, 2005) and is characterized by the subsequent colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples throughout the world and later, the slavery of africans. these colonial forays into vast “unconquered” lands with tremendous mineral wealth and natural resources gave rise to european expansionism that, fuelled by desires for profit maximization, quickly developed into capitalist industrialization (bolaria & li, 1988). this, in turn, created a relentless european demand for raw materials, exploitation of natural resources, cheap (indentured) labour, and slavery (bolaria & li, 1988). gilroy (1993) starkly describes modernity as a period of western racial terror. the origins of the concept of race can be located within the western european colonial and imperial expansion activities, particularly in the 17th century (dei, 1996). the concept of race was deployed within an ideology that legitimized social relations involving the exploitation, domination, and annihilation of non-western people and socially constructed the supremacy of the white race (dei, 1996, 2008; goldberg, 1993; gilroy, 1993). in the mid-18th century, modernity gave rise to a european intellectual history called the enlightenment. also known as the age of reason, this epoch which hall (2007) described as the domination by the west of the “rest,” saw the displacing of religion by science as the grounds of intellectual authority and cultural legitimacy. the enlightenment also witnessed the emergence of independent scientific domains of anthropology and biology. from these domains emerged scientific racism which involved a classificatory order of racial groupings and socially constructed white europeans as being the highest representatives of civilization (banton, 1987; gates, 1986; goldberg, 1993). scientific racism legitimized and justified the imperialization and colonization of “lesser” races and promoted the discourse that “it was the ‘white man’s burden’ to brighten the dark continents with light” (ching, 1998, p. 67). it is vital to understand and contextualize this history of racism and colonialism when discussing the overrepresentation of black and aboriginal children in care. lowe (1996) and razack et al. (2010) observe a prevailing ontology of forgetting this history that characterizes nations such as canada and the united states. this ontology involves forgetting the genocide of aboriginal peoples (baskin, 2006; monture, 1995) and the history of white supremacy, racism, and western imperialism which proved central to the formation and ascendancy of nations such as canada and the united states (lowe, 1996). such acts of forgetting elide the slavery of african and aboriginal peoples which was practiced by both the french and british in canada for over two centuries (james et al., 2010). moreover, this ontology of forgetting perpetuates the view of canada as a fair and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 389 tolerant society, despite the reality of pervasive racism and sexism (galabuzi, 2006; henry & tator, 2010; lawrence & dua, 2005). reflecting this ontology of forgetting is that despite the striking racial disproportionality, little is mentioned in the child welfare literature about anti-black racism and white supremacy. however, these concepts offer a powerful way to understand this phenomenon of racial disproportionality in the canadian child welfare system. the concept of anti-black racism emphasizes the particular racism experienced by black people in canada, which is rooted in the history of slavery and the colonial period. anti-black racism calls attention to the specific laws and practices that led to the segregation in education, housing, and employment experienced by black people in canada (james et al., 2010). anti-native racism pertains to the distinct forms of racism and colonialism experienced by native people in canada. white supremacy refers to the policies and practices in settler societies and the exaltation of white people as national subjects, and the devaluation of racial “others” as threats to the security and prosperity of the nation (thobani, 2007). as we have seen, the concept of white supremacy is rooted in the history of modernity and european colonialism. white supremacy, anti-black and anti-native racism are vital concepts for countering the ontology of forgetting and for transforming continued racism in contemporary canadian society. this history of settler nations such as canada reveals social policies and practices that secured a white supremacist nation state along with a legacy replete with deadly relations with its racial others (razack et al., 2010). thobani (2007, p. 42) notes that “henry vii charged john cabot with crossing the atlantic ‘to conquer, occupy and possess’ the lands of ‘heathens and infidels.’” she points further to the continuity of the genocidal violence practiced by the french and british via the violent colonization processes throughout the americas, which included waging war against indigenous societies, paying bounties for the scalps of indigenous people, using “poisoned food and blankets contaminated with smallpox,…starvation, coercion, trickery and deception” (p. 42). the indian residential school system is a striking example of a deadly colonialism steeped in discourses of white supremacy (henry & tator, 2010). the indian residential schools were part of an education system that began in the 19th century which had the express purpose of solving the “indian problem.” in 1908 frank oliver, then minister of indian affairs, explained that residential schools would “elevate the indian from his condition of savagery” (as cited in henry & tator, 2010, p. 103). the assembly of first nations has identified the residential school system as being implicated in cultural genocide (henry & tator, 2010). the residential schools exacted genocide through sexual and physical abuse, purposeful spreading of smallpox, and the eventual death of 50% of the children in these schools (henry & tator, 2010). church records reveal that federal funding policies paid schools on a per capita basis, which fuelled the church’s desire to maximize profit by having high enrollment numbers of aboriginal children and refusing to send sick children home (henry & tator, 2010). the generational traumatic impact of the residential schools is overwhelming and has marginalized generations of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 390 aboriginal peoples, both from the canadian mainstream and within their own home environments (henry & tator, 2010). the genocidal racial violence in canadian history is central to what thobani (2007) describes as a process in settler societies whereby whites come to claim the status of the exalted national and all the rights and entitlements accompanying such claims to the nation. citizenship and immigration laws were primary instruments through which whites attained the heralded status as national subject. racist immigration policies ensured the creation of a white national population that enjoyed an exalted national status and the full rights of citizenry, along with the access to resources that this permitted (thobani, 2007). from 1867 to the 1970s immigration and naturalization laws distinguished white british and french people, and later other europeans, as “preferred races” for integration into the nation (thobani, 2007). the “non-preferred” races of immigrants were marked as strangers or sojourners, “an unwelcome intruder whose lack of christian faith, inherent deviant tendencies, and unchecked fecundity all threatened the nation’s survival” (thobani, 2007, p. 75). the turning away from canada of the ships called the komagata maru (1914) and st. louis (1939), which carried indian migrants and jewish refugees respectively, highlight the racialized nature of canadian immigration policies. racist immigration laws such as the 1910 immigration act, legislated prohibitions on the grounds of race and became “‘the principal instrument’ for the ‘keep canada white’ policies” for the next 50 years (thobani, 2007, p. 92). other examples include the 1923 chinese immigration act; chinese head taxes of 1885, 1900, and 1903; and the continuous passage requirement of 1908 (bolaria & li, 1988). the exaltation of white nationals coexisted with explicit racist and sexist discourses that were aimed at preventing non-white women from immigrating to canada. the “women of the non-preferred races were constituted as morally degenerate, sexually depraved, and endowed with fecundity more animalistic than human. keeping them out of the country was considered a special priority of immigration policies” (thobani, 2007, p. 92). indeed, prior to the 1960s few women from china and south asia were allowed to immigrate to canada. single black women were allowed entry as domestic workers, but were not permitted to be accompanied by their families (thobani, 2007). even upon entry into canada, members of the non-preferred races experienced racism and sexism in terms of naturalization laws. the immigration act of 1923 created three classes of citizens which were: (a) natural born, (b) naturalized, (c) those granted citizenship through certificate. racism and sexism were evident in section 10 of the act that stipulated that applicants for a certificate of citizenship who were not fluent in english or french required a residency period of 20 years. those fluent in french and english were required to have only five years of residency. but non-white immigrant women were the most likely of applicants not to be fluent in french or english. in this way the act maintained and reproduced systemic racism and sexism (thobani, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 391 in efforts on the part of nationals to appear less racist, and given the declining population growth and the exigencies of meeting labour market needs, the explicitly racist immigration laws were replaced with the point system in the immigration act of 1976-77 (henry & tator, 2010; thobani, 2007). this system allotted points to prospective immigrants based on factors such as education, profession, occupation, language, and skill levels. the point system shifted the processes of racism to more covert practices such as allocating fewer resources (immigration offices) in developing nations compared to developed ones, or allowing immigration officers to allot points on a discretionary basis for such things as personal suitability (henry & tator, 2010). this discretionary power resulted in officers favouring male over female applicants (thobani, 2007). by the time the point system was implemented, the national narrative of white supremacy had established the popular discourse of non-whites as “newcomers” or “immigrants” in canada, despite the first nations status of aboriginal people, and the long-standing presence of blacks and asians in the settler nation (thobani, 2007). the welfare state and the exalted national subject given the historical exclusion from citizenship rights experienced by aboriginal and racialized people in canada, thobani (2007) observes that few historians have remarked on the impact of the developing welfare state on processes of racialization and national formation. she notes that the “welfare system reinforced citizenship as the mechanism organizing the racial hierarchy of the settler society” (pp. 107–108). additionally, social entitlements of the nascent welfare state were not equitably accessible to aboriginal and racialized immigrant families (maiter, 2009). thobani (2007) asserts that the emergence of the post-war welfare state was in response to emerging labour unrest and the burgeoning women’s movement. in order for nationals to appear to be sensitive to these movements, canadian citizenship was expanded to include social entitlements to the welfare state. this expansion allowed the state to establish a perception that it was benevolent and well vested in representing the interests of all members of society, and not just the elites or its exalted national subjects (thobani, 2007). moreover, thobani contends that the welfare state played a role in the master national narrative by constructing the exalted nationals as kind and compassionate. in contrast to the welfare state’s provision of care to canadian families, thobani argues that aboriginal and immigrant families were regarded as threats to the nation’s well-being. concomitant with welfare provisions being provided to white canadian families, aboriginal families had been “marked for systematic destruction through the residential school system, which was maintained by the welfare state until the 1960s” (thobani, 2007, p. 108). similarly, the use of citizenship as a means to access many provisions of the nascent post-war welfare state precluded immigrant families, particularly immigrant women, from equal access. this is evidenced in the overtly racialized immigration and citizenship legislation that proliferated well into the 1970s (henry & tator, 2010; thobani, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 392 even as canadian immigration policies underwent liberalization in the 1970s in efforts to appear less racist, racism persisted by the way of making racialized immigrant women of the family class dependent on immigrant men, and thus not the nation (thobani, 2007). through immigration sponsorship regulations, sponsored immigrants and their families were denied access to the social rights of citizenship and access to social entitlements such as welfare state programs. as dependents of men, these women and their families were severely restricted in terms of access to social programs. this dynamic intensified the vulnerability of these women to abuse and exploitation within their homes and larger society, while also buttressing the national imagination’s white supremacist stereotyping of non-white communities as being hyper-patriarchal, backwards, misogynist, and uncivilized (razack, 2005). the welfare state provisions made available to aboriginal families significantly differed from the entitlements afforded the exalted white nationals. while the exalted white nationals were reaping the benefits of and entitlements to the nascent welfare state, state sanctioned intrusions into aboriginal family and community life through the removing of aboriginal children from their families and placement into residential schools continued well into the 1970s (esquao & sinclair, 2009; haig-brown, 1988; henry & tator, 2010). in the 1960s, the welfare state became embodied or represented by the child protection system which gradually replaced the residential school system as the vehicle for carrying out nationalistic interests. during that time period, child welfare workers began apprehending aboriginal children in disproportionately high numbers (thobani, 2007). in what could be characterized as an “agent of colonization”, the child welfare system naturalized the removal of aboriginal children by constructing aboriginal women as “bad mothers” (thobani, 2007, p. 122) and promoted the discourse of “mother-blame” (strega, 2007). we believe weaver’s (1999) contention that “social workers must understand the atrocities of the indigenous holocaust in this country and the unresolved pain associated with it” (p. 221) applies equally to canada. henry and tator (2010, p. 102) explain that “like the residential school system, the child welfare system in the 1960s and 1970s was designed to ensure institutionalized assimilation.” this history of the welfare state is critical for understanding the current overrepresentation of aboriginal and black children in care because, as thobani asserts, there is in operation a master narrative of nation that has historically venerated and exalted the responsible, white, citizen who, for the most part, is “compassionate, caring, and committed to the values of diversity and multiculturalism” (thobani, 2007, p. 4). the exalted white national is in direct contradistinction to the aboriginal and racial other, who threaten the collective welfare and prosperity of the nation (thobani, 2007). the child welfare system, we argue, has played and continues to play a significant role in this national narrative. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 393 the welfare state, white supremacy, and the role of white women social workers like a simulacrum of compassion and care, the welfare state from its inception has been unable to escape its modernist foundations and the master national narrative that exalted the national subject, while continuing the colonialist imperatives to “kill the indian” and contain the threats to the national imagination signified by the racial other. most importantly, in relation to social work, thobani (2007) argues that the rise of the post-war welfare state established a new positioning and valuation of white women within the master national narrative. white women social workers, particularly those employed by child welfare agencies, embodied the feminized virtues of care and compassion that had come to be reflected in the new welfare state. she further asserts that nationals constructed the welfare state as based on their own purported image of being civilized and compassionate. this compassion was played out in an ethic of caring and saving and inaugurated changes to the role of white women in the nation. the feminized values of caring and compassion came to embody a new social order and role of white women social workers (thobani, 2007). thus the new roles of many white women (and white male social workers) under welfare statism played a crucial part in moving the abstract national narrative into the day-to-day lived reality and practice of “caring” and “compassion”. white women social workers who participated in the placement of aboriginal children in residential schools and later by apprehending them into the care of child welfare agencies, “concretized and harnessed within a moral economy as very particular qualities and characteristics” (thobani, 2007, p. 9) of being kind and caring – ostensibly by saving indian children from their deficient and impaired aboriginal mothers. by apprehending aboriginal children, white women social workers exalted themselves as the very essence of the national subject as civilized and triumphantly benevolent and caring. the full force of these women’s subjectivities points to such workings of identities to be a technique of power that “naturalizes itself and appears guileless, unexceptionally and ordinarily reflecting an ethical polity that is based on the inherently superior qualities of national subjects and not on the repertoire of governance” (thobani, 2007, p. 9). in this dialectic manner, white women social workers thus emerged as the exalted national subject, and concomitantly obscured the state’s role in the ongoing legacy of colonialism, white supremacy and racism that underpinned the cultural genocide of indigenous people. the post-war welfare state now offered white women access to the emergent labour market as social workers, while fashioning for these white women a novel “experience of ‘belonging’ to the community through the recognition and cultivation of such shared nationality” (thobani, 2007, p. 9). this phenomenon strengthened the bonds of the imagined community between white women and their exalted, white, male counterparts. concurrently, it is important not to rely on modernist binaries such as white/nonwhite, exalted/non-exalted, and white woman social worker/non-white woman social worker. rather, postmodern and poststructural theorists have articulated well the contradictory and fluid nature of subjectivities (weedon, 1987). poststructuralism highlights the discursive construction of subjectivity and how individuals are formed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 394 through language and representation. poststructural theories further argue that there are no essences to subjectivity but rather it is constructed precariously (weedon, 1987) and is what stuart hall (1989) describes as constantly in the process of becoming. heron (2005) points out how subjectivities are by definition always already caught up in contradictory discourses and desires. moreover, individuals regularly take up identifications with complete contradictory subject positions made available through discourses (heron, 2005). in light of these poststructural insights, it is important to acknowledge that white women employed as social workers in child welfare agencies are, indeed, active subjects and not wholly innocent or thoughtless tools of the state, who mindlessly reproduce discourses of white supremacy and anti-black racism. rather, we acknowledge the contradictory, complex, even ambivalent subjectivity of male and female child welfare workers as they negotiate the tensions between helping/empowering and oppressing families. similarly, we acknowledge that the non-white women and men employed in child protection agencies participate in and benefit from the economy of child welfare. we note that non-white child welfare workers thus have a certain access to and belonging within the nation state that is afforded to them through participation in the day-to-day functioning of child welfare agencies, including the apprehension of aboriginal and nonwhite children. as such, we embrace poststructural notions of power that view it as diffuse, choatic, contradictory, multidirectional, fragmented, and implicated in knowledge/discourse. power, then, is not held in particular bodies that are regarded as white, black, or asian etc., but rather in language and representation, or what foucault (1980) calls discourses. our view of subjectivity embraces the foucauldian notion of the dual meaning of the subject. as prado (2000) articulates, foucault viewed the subject as being subjected to rule such as government; but that people are also active participants or subjects in the making of who they are. thus the meaning of subjectivity includes both of these conscious and unconscious aspects of being a subject. for the non-white child welfare worker, this definition alerts us to how their subjectivities can be full of desires and struggles to help families, whilst also being ambivalent, even desirous for exaltation in the workplace as a competent and efficient worker. such subjectivity recalls du bois’ (1994) concept of double consciousness, which referred to the tremendous ambivalence felt by african-americans, who knew what it meant and felt like to be black in a racist society. the vastly complex and contradictory nature of the national narrative of kindness and compassion and social worker subjectivities highlight the entrenched nature of the economy of child welfare. to be sure, not just white people benefit from this economy and this exalted national status, but rather non-white social workers can also desire, aspire, and participate in making claims to the nation via the helping and caring nature of social work. the political economy of child welfare the exalted status of white women social workers in the post-war national narrative has given rise to what sinclair (2009) asserts is now a firmly entrenched international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 395 economic system that rests upon the aboriginal child welfare system. mandell et al. (2007) point out that today there are three times as many aboriginal children in care as compared to the height of the era of indian residential schools. in ontario, which entered what strega and esquao (2009) call the risk assessment period between 1998-1999 to 2003-2004, the number of apprehensions increased by 65% from 11,609 to 19,105 (dumbrill, 2006). parada (2004) notes that during this period, due to escalating numbers of apprehensions, some welfare agencies in ontario had to greatly expand the sizes of their workforce and offices. indeed, the cost of child welfare in ontario during the risk assessment period increased 100%, from $542 million to $1.085 billion (dumbrill, 2006). to be sure, the labour sector of child welfare services in canada is strikingly and unquestionably the domain of primarily white women. fallon, maclaurin, trocmé, and felstiner (2003) point out that 94% of child welfare workers are white; 80% are female; 97% have english as their primary language; 70% are between the ages of 26 and 44; and only 2% are indigenous. undoubtedly, a vast array of employment, wealth, and resources in canada is now implicated in the economy of child welfare. reminiscent of the deadly federal funding of indian residential schools that paid churches on a per capita basis, today’s funding structures continue to reward the apprehension of children. strega and esquoa (2009) explain: present efforts to support indigenous child welfare agencies are doomed to failure because the policy context is one of continuing to control and monitor indigenous populations through funding formulas that privilege child protection over prevention, family preservation and support. for example, federal funding forumulas for first nations and indigenous agencies primarily provide funding solely for the apprehension of children rather than supportive or preventive work with families. (p. 22) in the final section below, we argue that the overwhelming economy of the child welfare system requires significant shifts in our theorizing around racial disproportionality. we propose jettisoning anti-oppression perspectives in favour of critical race feminism and anti-colonialism. in comparison to anti-oppression, these two approaches are better equipped to address white supremacy, anti-black, and anti-native racism in child welfare. theoretical approaches to social work and child welfare practice anti-racism anti-racism education is a political practice and theoretical framework that informs critical scholarly work, pedagogical, curricular, and organizational change measures, as well as social work practice. in contrast to multicultural initiatives which have been largely concerned with celebrating differences and addressing racial intolerance and inequality via attitudinal changes, cultural awareness approaches, and song-and-dance-oriented initiatives, anti-racist educators emphasize the need to battle racism on a structural, (dei, 1996, 2008; niemonen, 2007; troyna, 1987), cultural, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 396 economic, and spiritual (dei, 2008) level. george dei (1996) has defined anti-racism as an “action-oriented strategy for institutional, systemic change to address racism and the interlocking systems of social oppression” (p. 25). anti-racism uses race as the main prism through which to understand and respond to interlocking systems of oppression (dei, 1996). dei (2008, p. 89) maintains that while it is important to grapple with intersectionality, race must serve as the “entry point” or “lens” through which one acquires insight into inequalities of class, gender, ability, and sexuality and how these sources of oppression interact with race. anti-racism education highlights the need to recognize race and difference as matters of power and equity and the historical context of colonialism, particularly in settler societies such as canada (dei, 1996, 2008). antiracism also emphasizes self-reflexivity and the significance of whiteness, including white privilege (dei, 2008). social justice from an anti-racist perspective, then, entails battling both institutionalized and micro-level forms of racism in order to achieve the ideals of equality and equity. “integrative anti-racism” is a framework that has emerged in the last decade that stresses the imperative to work “with the intersections of race, class, gender, ability and sexuality in ways that highlight the saliency of race in critical antiracist practice” (dei, 2008, p. 81). hence, dei emphasizes the need for coalition-building among traditionally marginalized statuses such as race, class, gender, sexuality, language, age, disability, and religion. integrative anti-racism recognizes that it is impossible to grasp fully the impact of racism without understanding the ways in which it intersects and interlocks with other forms of oppression. even within an integrative anti-racism framework, however, race remains the analytic entrance through which we understand issues of inequality and oppression (dei, 2008). critiques of anti-racism in the 1990s the anti-racism perspective was critiqued on a number of grounds. one criticism has centred on the tendency of some anti-racist scholarship to gesture toward bounded and recognizable racialized cultures in which intra-group divisions, ruptures, and contradictions are suppressed. it is argued that this appeal to binary racialized groupings has the effect of reinforcing essentialized (and stigmatized) categories, thereby reifying the binary it has always aimed to critique (e.g., gilroy, 1993; gosine, 2002; hall, 1996; niemonen, 2007; yon, 2000). pon (2000) and yon (2000) have attributed this binary thinking to an often oversimplified conception of power within anti-racist discourse. according to yon (2000), anti-racist education often conceptualizes power as a “zero-sum” phenomenon. the implication of this conceptualization is that there exists a finite or limited amount of power in society for which individuals and groups compete. the majority group is seen as possessing a disproportionate share of the power, while minority groups compete for what little remains. pon (2000, p. 141) asserts the need for anti-racism discourses to utilize a foucauldian conception of power in which power is conceptualized as “diffuse, chaotic, contradictory and multidirectional.” a more complex conceptualization of power would position anti-racism to better understand the complexities and contradictions of lived experiences, and more effectively combat racism and racial inequality (pon, 2000; yon, 2000). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 397 more recently, anti-racism has been critiqued by lawrence and dua (2005) for overlooking the complicity of people of colour in the ongoing project of colonization by occupying and owning land that has been appropriated from aboriginal people. lawrence and dua also critique anti-racism for often failing to acknowledge that in settler societies such as canada, people of colour have rights and privileges that aboriginal people do not have. similarly, anti-racism often regards modernity as beginning with slavery, whereas lawrence and dua assert that the colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples around the world more accurately signals the start of the modern era. finally, with its emphasis on race as the focal point of analyses of oppression and inequality, anti-racism has been accused of being a reductionist framework that creates a hierarchy of oppressions (mclaughlin, 2005; williams, 1999). as williams (1999, p. 214) notes: “single standpoint politics have the potential to create hierarchies of oppressions in which groups eschew their points of commonality for open competition and thus become unproductive to the achievement of equality” (see also barnoff & moffatt, 2007). mclaughlin (2005) asserts that proponents of anti-racism such as lena dominelli (1988; 1996) shifted from anti-racism to anti-oppression to avoid any appearance of ranking oppressions. according to mclaughlin, a perceived need to move from the emphasis on race to a wider and more inclusive range of interconnected oppressions underpinned the gradual shift from anti-racism to anti-oppression in canada and the united kingdom. anti-oppression perspectives in social work in light of the criticisms leveled against anti-racism, anti-oppression perspectives have, over the course of the 1990s, emerged as a social justice approach informing social work practice, including child welfare (baines, 2007; carniol, 2010; mullaly, 2002; shera, 2003; williams, 1999). in the new millenium some child welfare agencies in ontario have developed or are in the process of developing anti-oppression policies (child welfare anti-oppression roundtable, 2009). like anti-racism, anti-oppression is an approach to social work practice that is informed by an array of critical perspectives including anti-racism, feminism, marxism, structuralism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism (mclaughlin, 2005; sakamoto & pitner, 2005). anti-oppression perspectives advocate the critique and eradication of systemic forms of privilege, power, and oppression as generated by such social differences as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability (carniol, 2010). the rising influence of anti-oppression perspectives has been facilitated by postmodern and poststructural theory (mclaughlin, 2005). postmodern and poststructuralist influences are evident in anti-oppression’s emphasis on multiple and intersecting identities (competing narratives rather than grand narratives) and the fluidity of power (its recognition that we all have identities that marginalize us alongside identities that privilege us). there are four widely acknowledged tenets of anti-oppression perspectives: power-sharing, reflexivity, combining the micro and macro pictures, and an emphasis on multiple and interlocking identities and oppressions. power-sharing entails creating egalitarian relationships with clients, that is, taking a “one-down” position when working with service users and treating them as experts on their own life situation (dumbrill, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 398 2003; sakamoto & pitner, 2005). the notion of power-sharing encompasses further the idea of creating democratic agencies and organizations where service users play a key role in programming and making administrative decisions (dumbrill, 2003; strier & binyamin, 2010). anti-oppression perspectives emphasize also the need for selfreflexivity on the part of services providers (strier & binyamin, 2010). self-reflexivity demands of practitioners an ongoing consideration of how values, biases, social differences, and power relations affect their relationships with service users as well as interactions between service users and the organization (strier & binyamin, 2010). power-sharing and self-reflexivity represent strategies to mitigate the degree to which social service organizations might mirror and reproduce the power imbalances and inequities that exist within society at large (strier & binyamin, 2010). borrowing from critical feminist analyses and sociological theory, the third pillar of anti-oppression perspectives has to do with situating people’s narratives and challenges within a wider social and political context (i.e., helping service users to develop a critical awareness of the links between their personal issues and broader public phenomena). finally, a central tenet of anti-oppression entails analysis of the ways in which different identities intersect and interlock in people’s lives to produce marginalization as well as privilege (sakamoto & pitner, 2005). unlike anti-racism which uses race as a central analytic lens when analyzing interlocking systems of oppression, anti-oppression perspectives do not privilege any one identity or social status. antioppression scholars and practitioners therefore consider the multiple and varied ways in which different identities intersect within the lives of individuals to shape their lived experiences and life chances. according to anti-oppression proponents, this poststructuralist emphasis on intersectionality enables anti-oppression perspectives to be more inclusive by targeting multiple oppressions while avoiding the racial emphasis frequently attributed to anti-racism (mclaughlin, 2005; sakamoto & pitner, 2005). while anti-oppression perspectives are increasingly more accepted within the social service realms, it has faced several criticisms. five criticisms in particular have been leveled against anti-oppression perspectives. first, anti-oppression perspectives, like anti-racism, have been critiqued for gesturing toward oppositional discourses (e.g., oppression/emancipation, masculinity/femininity) that have the effect of reifying the very power imbalances anti-oppression perspectives are attempting to dismantle (mclaughlin, 2005). mclaughlin (2005) notes that this observation has been made primarily by postmodern and poststructural scholars, an irony given that these theoretical schools of thought underpin much of anti-oppression theory. second, critics have expressed reservations concerning the generally pronounced anti-oppression emphasis on intersectionality (e.g., collins, 2000; dei, 2008; razack, 2002). scholars assert that highlighting heterogeneity and complexity can make differences seem impossible to bridge thereby complicating the task of developing coalitions and inter-group critical consciousness. put differently, the perspective can render people who have been subjected to various forms of oppression so seemingly disparate that the task of coalition building across differences appears almost impossible. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 399 a third concern with anti-oppression perspectives argues that with the emphasis on multiple identities and oppressions, it becomes easy to avoid naming and talking about the impact of racism while appearing progressive (pon & phillips, 2009; razack, 2002; williams, 1999). in other words, there is concern that anti-oppression perspectives provide a discourse by which people can avoid naming and grappling with the difficult and volatile topics of racism and white privilege. henry and tator (2010) assert that racism remains one of the most volatile social issues in canadian society. the argument has also been made that anti-oppression perspectives, over the years in canada and the united kingdom, have gradually become somewhat diluted or mainstream while being co-opted by the state. mclaughlin (2005) has made the case that the capability of anti-oppression perspectives to challenge the state has receded; antioppression approaches have instead “allowed the state to reposition itself once again as a benign provider of welfare” (p. 283). as discussed above, it is quite widely argued that the anti-oppression emphasis on heterogeneity and complexity has challenged the capacity of traditionally oppressed groups to overcome their differences and develop an overarching shared critical consciousness (collins, 2000; dei, 2008; williams, 1999). given this somewhat weakened state of agency on the part of oppressed groups, the state and social workers have increasingly come to be seen as the key agents for addressing oppression and inequality. in this way, the state has come to be viewed as the “flawed but ultimately favourable referee, adjudicating between competing identity claims” (mclaughlin, 2005, p. 299). hence, via the anti-oppression social worker, the state is able to “enforce new moral codes of behaviour on the recipients of welfare” (mclaughlin, 2005, p. 283). in this climate, anti-oppression social workers have gradually come to take on the role of policing rather than empowering service users. moreover, the challenges service users face are divorced from structural contexts and increasingly viewed as the moral failings of individuals (mclaughlin, 2005). this latter point, insofar as it is true in the u.k. as well as other contexts, would be a particularly ironic development given that the structural contextualization of people’s problems has been a central emphasis of anti-oppression perspectives. finally, some critics have drawn attention to the rationalist and modernist underpinnings of critical theories such as anti-racism and anti-oppression that promote self-reflexivity. they argue that because knowledge or self-awareness of bias does not necessarily bring about changes in behaviour, then logic-based notions of self-reflexivity and social change are often ineffective (britzman, 2000; ellsworth, 2005; irving & moffatt, 2002). the limitations of such logic-based models of self-reflexive change processes is that it fails to theorize the irrational aspects of various forms of social violences such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. in other words, self-awareness of the fact that one’s actions are discriminatory and causing others pain, does not lead one to necessarily stop being racist. rather, the irrational passions of pleasure, jealousy, resentment, pride, and hatred that underpin different forms of social violence, including racism, transcend the logic of self-reflexivity (ellsworth, 1989). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 400 critical race feminism or feminist anti-racism an emergent body of scholarship over the past 10 years called critical race feminism or feminist anti-racism is spearheaded by aboriginal scholars and female academics of colour in canada. this scholarship provides some of the most important, critical, and innovative liberatory work in canada around colonialism, racism, and white supremacy (see razack et al., 2010). much like anti-oppression, critical race feminism values critical self-reflexivity and power-sharing (see lawrence & dua, 2005). critical race feminism, however, offers much more powerful ways for theorizing the experiences of indigenous and racialized women in settler societies such as canada in comparison to anti-oppression perspectives, particularly vis-à-vis child welfare. critical race feminism is influenced by debates within the women’s movement, feminism, and critical race theory. in canada, critical race feminism, is not restricted to one perspective or approach but has “become a part of a movement and constellation of theoretical standpoints in north america and the world that include among others, tribal critical theory, asian canlit, and latina/o critical theory” (razack et al., 2010, p. 9). using a critical emancipatory lens, these authors further argue, critical race feminism broadly interrogates the interlocking vectors of power and oppression and how social differences such as race and gender continue to reinscribe the “colour line” in an “ostensibly raceand gender-neutral liberal state” (pp. 9–10). with a keen focus on anticolonial praxis, critical race feminism theorizes persisting coloniality and white supremacy in settler societies such as canada, and the particularities of racisms following the horrors of 9/11. we believe that the aboriginal and women of colour scholars associated with critical race feminism are at the leading edge of emancipatory praxis in canada and have much to offer social work educators and practitioners. critical race feminism addresses many of the limitations associated with anti-oppression. for instance, razack (2005) links the systemic sexual abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib to white supremacy. she brings complex understandings to the irrational aspects of social hatreds which would benefit logic-based models of self-reflexivity and anti-oppression work. anti-colonialism anti-colonialism is another body of scholarship that is emerging in canada. ashcroft, griffiths, and tiffin (1995), smith (1999), and dei (2000) define anticolonialism as the political struggle and active resistance of colonized peoples against the ideology and practice of colonialism. anti-colonialism is a social, cultural, and political stance against colonialism (ashcroft et al., 1995; dei, 2000; hart, 2009; smith, 1999). anti-colonialism emphasizes decolonization and affirming indigenous knowledge and culture, while establishing indigenous control over indigenous national territories. anticolonialism further aims to establish educational opportunities that are “anti-colonial in their political orientation and firmly rooted in traditions of indigenous nations” (hart, 2009, p. 32). anti-colonialism thus rejects enlightenment principles such as the cartesian duality that promotes a mind/body disconnect, and instead, emphasizes indigenous epistemologies that value the mind/body connection and spirituality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 401 anti-colonialism, particularly with its emphases on decolonization and the validation of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, critiques the dominant research methods of euro-westerners as implicated in the maintenance of colonialism (lavallée, 2007). lavellée asserts that the “development of theory through indigenous worldviews by indigenous researchers and the subsequent influence of policy by indigenous people are essential” (p. 131). decolonizing methodologies emphasize self-reflexivity and sharing decision-making power with the community being researched (absolon & willett, 2005). anti-colonialism, like critical race feminism and anti-oppression, emphasizes critical self-reflexivity and power-sharing (hart, 2009). in her discussion of indigenouscentred social work, baike (2009) asserts that “fundamentally, an indigenous-centred social work theoretical framework is enabled by an anti-colonial perspective” (p. 47). she stresses the importance of social workers developing critical consciousness by reflecting on how they are impacted by indigenous and euro-western world views. critical selfawareness, she argues, is paramount to ensure that social workers maximize their contributions to decolonization and minimize their implications in reproducing colonialism through their practices. we assert that anti-colonialism and critical race feminism are the most effective approaches for understanding the contemporary racial disproportionality in child welfare. these two approaches, which value self-reflexivity and power-sharing, represent alternatives to anti-oppression discourses in that anti-colonialism and critical race feminism promise more effective and critical responses to racism and colonialism. conclusion: the need to shift from anti-oppression to critical race feminism and anti-colonialism anti-oppression perspectives, insofar as they fail to grapple with the difficult issues of anti-black and anti-native racism and white supremacy, are increasingly becoming mainstream and thus perpetuate the political economy of child welfare. mclaughlin (2005) argued that within the u.k., anti-oppression perspectives have become watered down to the point where these approaches reinforce the role of the state as moral arbitrator and welfare provider. mclaughlin has observed the gradual shift in practice informed by anti-oppression from empowering service users to policing them. in the canadian context, within the realm of child welfare specifically, the prevailing emphasis on the apprehension of children reflects the institutional entrenchment of the notion of the civilized and benevolent national subject as embodied largely by white female social workers tasked with policing individuals and families. this phenomenon within canadian child welfare practice demonstrates that mclaughlin's observations regarding the evolution of anti-oppression perspectives hold true in canada as well as the united kingdom. despite the increased emphasis on anti-oppressive practice over the last decade, research (e.g., clarke, 2010; dumbrill, 2003) continues to reveal a child welfare system characterized by a white, middle-class normativity. as we have argued, the overrepresentation of aboriginal and black children in out-of-home care is incomprehensible without acknowledging this exalted white normativity produced within international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 402 the context of national formation. thus, the inability of anti-oppressive perspectives to address racial disproportionality in an effective way is linked to the unwillingness or inability on the part of anti-oppression proponents to address, in a courageous and critical fashion, issues of white supremacy and anti-black racism. due to its increasingly mainstream status, we propose jettisoning anti-oppression perspectives in favour of critical race feminism and anti-colonialism. we assert that these emergent perspectives more effectively theorize white supremacy, anti-black and antinative racism, and how the nation’s exalted subject is inseperable from the welfare state. we contend that critical race feminism and anti-colonialism are the most critical, helpful, and effective approaches for understanding the experiences and realities of aboriginal and women of colour and their families in canada, particularly vis-à-vis the child welfare system. while advocating that anti-oppression perspectives be supplanted within the field of child welfare, we argue for the retention of the values of critical self-reflexivity and power-sharing. indeed, both concepts are central to critical race feminism and anticolonialism. for example, aboriginal contributors to scholarship in anti-colonialism advocate for self-reflexivity and power-sharing, particularly given their emphasis on decolonization and reclaiming indigenous ways of knowing and being. similarly, lawrence and dua (2005) demonstrate in their scholarly work how self-reflexivity and identifying one's own subject location is paramount for understanding anti-racism and anti-colonialism. thus, self-reflexivity and power-sharing are not the exclusive conceptual domains of anti-oppresssion perspectives. rather anti-oppression is heavily indebted to the insights, struggles, and contributions of anti-racist, black feminist, and decolonizing scholarship. anti-oppression discourses have lost much of their critical edge, having gradually succumbed to the forces of neoliberalism. anti-oppressive perspectives are therefore proving increasingly ill-equipped to challenge, in a sustained and effective way, the entrenchment of racism and colonialism in child welfare. with the economy of child welfare now firmly engrained in our society (sinclair, 2009), critical approaches such as critical race feminism and anti-colonialism are required by all individuals implicated in the trading in the lives of aboriginal and black children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 385-409 403 references absolon, k., & willett, c. 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(2000). elusive culture: schooling, race, and identity in global times. new york: state university of new york press. endnotes i we use the term “mainstream” to refer to social work perspectives and/or social work agencies whose ways of knowing, policies, procedures and practices are primarly grounded in the maintenance and reproduction of the status quo (settler society), while offering individuals opportunities for career advancement and self-gain. baines (2007) describes mainstream social service agencies as hierarchical entities that are not so much concerned with progressive social transformation, but rather locating social problems within the individual and/or family, and thereby maintaining the status quo. ii like sinclair (2009), we use the term “aboriginal,” “indigenous,” and “native” interchangeably to refer to individuals who self-identify as the original peoples of turtle island including the métis and inuit. as non-aboriginals, we recognize the dangers of using these terms in ways which sinclair (2009) calls a colonial process of homogenizing indigenous people despite the vast array of diversity and heterogeneity amongst indigenous peoples. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201716754 ethics in child and youth care practice with transgender youth beth a. clark abstract: issues that arise in child and youth care practice with transgender (trans) youth and their families can be complex and ethically challenging. while many trans youth are thriving and have strong family and social supports, others face family conflict and experience negative health outcomes linked to societal stigma. the purpose of this paper is to explore how four ethical approaches — bioethics, rights-based ethics, relational ethics, and justice-doing — may be applied to practice situations involving trans youth and their families. this paper is grounded in the gender affirmative model of care and integrates empirical evidence, critical thinking, and explicit argumentation in ethical analysis. following a brief overview of evidence related to trans youth care, case vignettes are analyzed using diverse ethical approaches. these approaches draw on a variety of philosophical and disciplinary traditions. however, the analyses consistently lead to three imperatives: providing support and affirmation for trans youth; supporting families to support their youth; and fighting injustice where it impedes these goals. keywords: transgender, adolescents, youth, ethics, child and youth care, bioethics, social services beth a. clark, mm, rcc, is a counsellor, educator, and interdisciplinary studies phd candidate at the university of british columbia, vancouver, bc canada. email: beth.clark@alumni.ubc.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201716754 mailto:beth.clark@alumni.ubc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 75 transgender (trans) youth have long been served by the child and youth care (cyc) profession. however, due to increasing visibility of trans youth, expanding options for health care, and a growing body of research, the time has come to consider ethical issues that can arise in practice. trans youth come from all cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and many have high levels of family and social support. others lack family support or access to gender affirming health care providers at crucial times in their lives. some youth will access gender affirming health care, while others will not. regardless of their path, trans youth and families can benefit from the support of knowledgeable care providers throughout their journeys. issues that arise in cyc practice with trans youth and their families can be complex and ethically challenging, and may involve family conflict or rejection, youth suicidality, religious beliefs, and the potential benefits and harms of providing or withholding gender affirming medical care. this paper is grounded in the gender affirmative model of care and written from the perspective that the integration of sound evidence, critical thinking, and explicit argumentation are key in addressing ethically challenging practice issues. in this paper, the term trans is used to include anyone whose gender does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. while this term may not fit every instance, it is intended to be inclusive of people with binary (e.g., transwoman, transman) and non-binary (e.g., genderqueer, genderfluid) genders. cisgender describes people whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. gender affirming medical care refers to medical treatment (e.g., puberty suppression, hormone therapy) that supports physical characteristics congruent with one’s gender, while social affirmation/transition refers to non-medical options for presenting oneself in a manner that aligns with one’s gender (e.g., name, pronouns, clothing; provincial health services authority, 2016). the purpose of this paper is to explore how four ethical approaches — bioethics, rightsbased ethics, relational ethics, and justice-doing — may be applied to practice situations involving trans youth and their families. while it is not possible to provide an exhaustive summary of ethical approaches or practice situations, this paper is intended to offer the reader contrasting perspectives that may be employed in working through ethically challenging situations. this paper is focused on the cyc profession; however, the information presented may be applied in other disciplines, such as social work, counselling, and education. it is hoped that this discussion will stimulate critical thinking about the role of cyc workers in ensuring access to needed services and fostering strong family relationships, as well as providing direct support, information, and advocacy for trans youth and their families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 76 background medical hormonal changes associated with puberty are responsible for the development of secondary sex characteristics. breast growth, menstruation, changing voice, and facial hair growth are examples of pubertal changes that can cause significant distress if they are incongruent with a youth’s gender. gender affirming medical care interventions available for youth include pubertal suppression and hormone therapy (de vries & cohen-kettenis, 2012). pubertal suppression is a fully reversible intervention that blocks the sex hormones that the body naturally produces in order to temporarily stop secondary sex characteristic development, while hormone therapy is a partially reversible intervention through which hormones that produce desired secondary sex characteristics are provided (de vries et al., 2014; khatchadourian, amed, & metzger, 2014). some youth go on to have gender affirming surgeries, typically once they reach the age of majority (coleman et al., 2012). psychosocial current research paints a complicated picture of transgender youth, with documented high rates of suicidality, self-harm, mental health issues, and substance use coupled with lower rates of school success, employment, and family acceptance (ryan, russell, huebner, diaz, & sanchez, 2010; travers et al., 2012; veale et al., 2015). however, recent studies have also highlighted the crucial roles of family support and gender affirming medical care in the overall wellbeing of trans youth (bernal & coolhart, 2012; de vries et al., 2014; khatchadourian, amed, & metzger, 2014; olson, forbes, & belzer, 2011; ryan et al., 2010). in one recent study, trans youth who had access to pubertal suppression and hormone therapy, and who went on to have gender affirming surgery as young adults, reported psychosocial outcomes very similar to their cisgender peers (de vries et al., 2014). research also has shown that trans youth with higher levels of parent support and family connectedness report more positive self-esteem, mental health, and life satisfaction than those with lower levels (travers et al., 2012; veale et al., 2015). safety safety is a major concern when working with trans youth, given the high rates of harassment and violence faced in schools and in the community (veale et al., 2015; herman, 2013; taylor & peter, 2011). in a 2013–2014 canadian survey, 55% of trans youth aged 14–18 reported being bullied in school in the last year, 64% taunted or ridiculed, and 36% physically threatened or injured, while 70% experienced verbal sexual harassment, and 37% physical sexual harassment (veale et al., 2015). many schools develop policies that address the unique needs of trans youth, such as using correct names and pronouns in classrooms and on school records, supporting gender and sexuality alliances, and ensuring access to washrooms and change rooms (british columbia teachers’ federation, 2016; vancouver school board, 2014; wells, roberts, & allan, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 77 ethical issues the medical, counselling, and ethics literature pertaining to trans youth care has primarily focused on issues related to endocrine care and has cited bioethics principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. issues of autonomy include youth rights to privacy and confidentiality, arbitrary age requirements to access care, and emerging capacity to consent to care (giordano, 2007, 2013; milrod, 2014; stein, 2012; swann & herbert, 2009). benefits of endocrine care include relieving psychological suffering and preventing the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics, which, coupled with the low risk of harm from this treatment and the potential risk of causing harm by withholding care, make a compelling case in support of endocrine care for trans youth (antommaria, 2014; baltieri et al., 2009; giordano, 2007; holman & goldberg, 2006; stein, 2012; vrouenraets et al., 2015). some have questioned whether youth possess the maturity necessary to make decisions about endocrine care, especially given the lack of data on long-term outcomes and potential impacts on future fertility (de vries et al., 2006; vrouenraets et al., 2015); however, many have concluded that youth do, as in other areas of health care, have the capacity to make these decisions (holman & goldberg, 2006; giordano, 2007; kreukels & cohen-kettenis, 2011). finally, systemic barriers that negatively impact access to gender affirming medical care for trans youth have been cited as issues of justice in the ethics literature (giordano, 2007). role of practitioners ethical dilemmas for practitioners can arise in situations involving trans youth for a variety of reasons, which may or may not be gender-related; however, this paper focuses specifically on issues related to trans identities and expressions. for example, care providers may struggle with how best to support a young person whose decisions related to gender identity or expression do not have parental support. it is also important to recognize that some people hold beliefs that they feel are not compatible with recognizing trans identities as valid. bernal and coolhart (2012) highlighted considerations for family therapists working with transgender youth and their families, placing emphasis on the ethical role of the family therapist. they set forth guidelines that include: providing accurate information and education to youth and families; connecting youth and families with community resources in order to reduce isolation; and acting as an advocate for clients. other suggestions for practice with trans youth and families involve recognizing that there is a diversity of healthy genders, respecting autonomy, providing an informed consent process, balancing benefits and risks, and delivering equitable services (giordano, 2007, 2013; holman & goldberg, 2006; roen, 2016; stein, 2012; vrouenraets et al., 2015). swann and herbert (2009) recommended that social workers practicing with trans youth pay careful attention to their own biases and belief systems. regardless of the degree of personal and professional experience and expertise with trans communities, practitioner awareness of how personal and professional values and assumptions impact decision-making is essential for strong international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 78 ethical practice. use of established ethical approaches can support critical thinking about salient issues and affected parties, including the beliefs and values of the practitioner encountering an ethical dilemma. conversely, a lack of critical thinking can lead to practices that may not be in the best interest of youth and families (heath, 2012). osmo and landau (2001) proposed that explicit argumentation — articulating the justification for making a decision — is a necessary element in ethical decision-making. theoretical approach current understandings of gender identities and expression are arguably incomplete; however, an emerging body of literature provides theoretical foundations and empirical evidence on which to base practices with trans youth and their families. historically, three approaches to care or treatment with children and youth have been recognized: (a) psychotherapy, to change gender to be congruent with sex; (b) watchful waiting, which includes supporting a person while delaying a decision about gender affirmation or transition until adulthood; and (c) the gender affirmative model, in which an individual is supported to live in and freely express their gender (ehrensaft, 2016; swann & herbert, 2009). the first two models are not well-supported by clinical evidence. attempting to change gender to be congruent with sex (e.g., reparative or conversion therapy) is an approach currently considered harmful and unethical to practice (canadian association of social workers & canadian association of social work educators, 2015; coleman et al., 2012) and it has been outlawed in multiple jurisdictions (cbc news, 2015; new york state, 2016). watchful waiting and withholding gender affirming medical care during adolescence are not considered to be neutral acts, but rather interventions that can have negative consequences for youth due to psychological distress and development of irreversible secondary sex characteristics (coleman et al., 2012). the gender affirmative model is an approach to care in which practitioners seek to understand what a child or youth is communicating about their gender, emphasizing that there are many healthy ways to experience and express gender and that children and youth have the developmental capacity to understand their own gender (ehrensaft, 2016; hidalgo et al., 2013). a key concept in the gender affirmative model is that of gender health, “defined as the opportunity for children to live in the gender that feels most real and/or comfortable” (ehrensaft, 2016, p. 16). research findings have indicated that children who are supported to live in their authentic gender before puberty exhibit mental health similar to their cisgender peers (olson, 2016). as mentioned earlier, youth who have access to gender affirming medical care and parental support also have more positive mental health outcomes. while some people raise concerns that youth may change their minds about their gender, research has indicated that it is highly unlikely for youth who have an increase in the intensity of gender dysphoria when they start puberty to desist later in adolescence (kreukels & cohen-kettenis, 2011). given the theoretical and empirical support for this approach to care, the analyses in this paper are grounded in the gender affirmative model for trans youth and their families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 79 methods this paper presents a case-based approach to exploring ethics in practice, which is consistent with medical ethics education (diekema, mercurio, & adam, 2001). each analysis begins with a brief overview of one of four ethical approaches: bioethics, rights-based ethics, relational ethics, and justice-doing, followed by a fictionalized vignette involving a cyc practitioner and a trans youth. an ethical dilemma emerging from the vignette is summarized, then analyzed in accordance with the established framework. the analysis is grounded in empirical evidence and critical thinking, leading to an explicit statement of how a practitioner may resolve the dilemma. analyses bioethics overview. bioethics has roots that can be traced back to hippocrates (peel, 2005) and the imperative to “do no harm”. contemporary bioethics has four foundational principles: autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice (peel, 2005). the following overview of these principles is based on the work of beauchamp and childress (2013), who provided a comprehensive exploration of these principles in health care. respect for autonomy means that competent persons can “act intentionally, with understanding, and without controlling influences that determine their action” (beauchamp & childress, 2013, p. 104). this may mean engaging in informed consent processes so people fully understand their options, allowing choice in care, and ensuring decisions are made free from coercion. non-maleficence describes the duty to do no harm, and also to prevent and remove harm. beneficence (sometimes combined with non-maleficence) mandates that care providers work to benefit the client, or to “do good”. finally, the principle of justice calls on practitioners to recognize inequities in health care access and health status, and work toward fair, equitable, and appropriate treatment for everyone (beauchamp & childress, 2013). mac (age 15) has been living at a group home for a couple of months and is fairly comfortable talking with andrea, a cyc worker. mac says she doesn’t mind living at the group home too much, but is hoping to reunite with her mother and stepfather soon. part of andrea’s job is to document her discussions with mac about her parents, as the team works toward reunification. one afternoon, mac comes home from school visibly upset. andrea asks if she wants to talk and mac shares that some girls regularly give her a hard time about looking like a guy and she is tired of dealing with it. andrea asks what they have done, and mac describes mostly verbal harassment, but says sometimes one of the girls shoves her up against the lockers and threatens to beat her up. mac continues, saying that the reason it bothers her so much is because she doesn’t really feel like a girl or a guy, and is questioning whether she might be trans. she talked with a school counsellor once who gave her some resources about non-binary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 80 genders and social supports, but she has not told anyone else. mac says she wants to continue presenting as a girl at the group home (e.g., using female pronouns). she is very afraid of what her parents might say, and doesn’t want to do anything that might mess up her plan to return home. looking frightened, mac asks andrea not to tell anyone about their conversation. dilemma. mac has entrusted andrea with very personal information that she does not want shared. however, andrea is responsible for documenting what mac tells her so that it can be used when the team works with the family. andrea is mindful of the potential for this disclosure to impact discharge planning for mac, for example, if her parents were to learn this information and react negatively. however, there is also a possibility that the parents will find out about mac’s gender at a later time, resulting in mac being at risk after reunification, when the team is not in place to provide support. andrea is also aware that mac is exploring her identity and expressing uncertainty about her gender at this time. analysis. autonomy is the first principle andrea will apply from a bioethics framework. first, mac has previously demonstrated maturity in making a broad range of decisions. if she is to be allowed choice in care, andrea should respect mac’s decision about whether and when to discuss her gender with her parents, and mac has clearly declared that she does not want this information shared. she was placed in the group home by a government agency temporarily providing guardianship. mac was informed of the policies of the program (specifically regarding information sharing among team members), but she was not given a choice about placements. therefore, andrea questions whether mac was truly able to give informed consent to these policies. this situates mac’s autonomy at odds with an agency policy that she has not freely agreed to. andrea contemplates trying to convince mac that she should share this information with her parents, but recognizes that this would be coercive and violate mac’s autonomy. non-maleficence means that andrea has a duty to do no harm, and also to prevent and remove harm. in this situation, failing to disclose this information to the team and to mac’s parents could be harmful in the long term. if mac’s parents learn about her gender after reunification, without resources in place to support the family, mac could be at risk for family rejection, and even homelessness or violence. if andrea discloses this information in the short term, plans for reunification could be permanently terminated, which would be emotionally harmful to mac and to her parents. the issue of harm from bullying at school also needs to be addressed, as mac is regularly experiencing verbal and physical harassment. the principle of beneficence guides andrea in the direction of acting in ways that will benefit her client. reunification is mac’s goal and keeping her trans status confidential is her request. from mac’s perspective, this is what is good for her. this could also be beneficial for mac’s parents who would continue planning for reunification and working on strengthening their lifelong relationships with mac. keeping confidence and working toward reunification does not preclude disclosure of this information later on in the process, when mac and her parents have a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 81 stronger relationship and still have supports in place to help them navigate this experience. additionally, andrea considers that she could address the issue of gender-based bullying — focusing on the students’ inappropriate behavior — without disclosing mac’s gender. lastly, justice must be taken into account. andrea has recognized some of the health inequities faced by trans youth in her consideration of mac’s situation. when experiencing family rejection, trans youth are at greater risk for homelessness, violence, and compromised mental and physical health. residential care and other health institutions are often not well prepared to provide affirming care for trans youth. andrea realizes she should examine how her institution could improve their services in order to provide all trans youth with a safer environment while in care. it is also important to look beyond the bounds of this institution, to the broader community, to learn about existing supports for trans youth and families, and possibly to advocate for additional services. resolution. andrea’s primary concern is supporting the wellbeing of mac and her family, and her deliberation is informed by research documenting the importance of family support in the lives of trans youth. when considering all four of these principles, andrea decides that ensuring the disclosed information is not shared with mac’s parents is important for mac’s autonomy, for avoiding immediate harms, and for promoting immediate and long-term benefits. however, andrea is concerned about the long-term implications for family relationships and the lack of supports both in the group home and in the larger community to which mac will be discharged. andrea therefore works with her supervisor and team to document the information — in keeping with agency policies — with an agreement that it will not be shared with the family until such time as mac is ready. the team can now be mindful of creating an environment that is more supportive of gender diversity. in working with the family, team members can focus on strengthening relationships and having supports in place for mac to come out to her parents in the future, if she decides to do so. in the short term, andrea offers to help mac report the bullying at school, supports her in exploring her gender, connects her with community resources, and reassures her that she can choose whether and when to talk with her parents about her gender. rights-based ethics overview. rights-based ethics are rooted in the idea that some rights are inherently a part of being human and that as beneficiaries of these rights, humans bear a responsibility to not infringe the rights of others (peel, 2005). this approach to ethics is grounded in health and human rights agreements, such as those established by the united nations and the world health organization (who). the constitution of the who (2006) proclaimed that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being” (p. 1) and that “healthy development of the child is of basic importance” (p. 1). the united nations convention on the rights of the child (united nations general assembly, 1989) declared that the following rights, among others, pertain to all children under the age of majority: the right to have their best international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 82 interests given primary consideration; the right to access information to promote wellbeing; and the right to be protected from abuse and neglect. the convention on the rights of the child also established the right of parents to provide direction and guidance to their child “in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child”, as well as freedom of religion, with the caveat that religious freedom may be limited in order to protect health or the “fundamental rights and freedoms of others”. a human rights fact sheet issued by the office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights (2008) further stated that “adolescents’ right to health is … dependent on health care that respects confidentiality and privacy and includes appropriate mental, sexual and reproductive health services and information” (p. 15). while there is much documentation and discussion of these rights and their integration into high-level policy, it can be challenging to apply a rights-based framework on a practice level, especially when different rights are in conflict. london (2008) took up the issue of how individual health care workers interface with a rights-based approach, stating that even though health care workers have an obligation not to act in a discriminatory manner, individual workers can inadvertently become perpetrators of human rights violations. this may occur as they experience conflict surrounding dual loyalty to their clients and to the institutions for which they work (london, 2008). critical thinking and reflection surrounding the obligations of practitioners and the rights of youth and families is therefore integral to working from a rights-based perspective. aiden (age 17) is referred to tom, a school-based cyc worker. aiden has come out as trans and wants support talking with his parents. aiden’s hope is that his parents will start using his chosen name and male pronouns, and support him in starting hormones. he has thought about using street hormones, but would rather get them prescribed by a doctor. after a few individual support sessions, tom sets up a meeting with aiden and his parents, which he thinks goes fairly well. the parents are visibly upset, but do not react in an overtly negative manner. two weeks later, tom receives a call from aiden’s mom, asking to meet about her “daughter”. in their meeting, aiden’s mother accuses tom of planting ideas in her child’s head and promoting gender transition. she wants tom to stop meeting with aiden and to promise that he will not provide any more information about trans resources. aiden’s mom said their church does not approve of people being gay or transgender, and they are dealing with things at home, as is their right. aiden, visibly distraught, comes to find tom the next day, saying that his parents have threatened to send him to a religious school or kick him out if he does not start acting like a girl. aiden does not share his parents’ religious beliefs. he asks tom for help talking to his parents again. dilemma. tom is faced with a decision about whether to keep working with aiden or to terminate services as his parents have requested. tom has an established relationship as a support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 83 person for aiden, who is in crisis and requesting support from tom at this time. however, aiden’s mother is his legal guardian and has clearly stated that she feels she has a right to parent according to her religious beliefs. tom will deliberate on rights related to health, access to health information and services, confidentiality and privacy, parents, religion, and the best interests of the youth. analysis. tom first considers the right of a youth to access confidential and private health services and information, in particular those that relate to mental, sexual, and reproductive health. tom has been confidentially providing these services and information, and this was only made known to the parents at the request of aiden. tom thinks it is unlikely that aiden’s parents will provide or allow access to the information and education necessary to ensure safe use of hormones. he knows that aiden’s health may be jeopardized if he resorts to using illegally obtained hormones. tom thinks that withdrawing support and education would be a violation of the right to confidential health services and information. at the centre of this dilemma are the conflicting beliefs of aiden and his parents. tom is concerned that he will be violating the rights of aiden’s parents to raise their child in accordance with their religious beliefs. however, the right to provide direction and guidance according to religious beliefs is not absolute according to the united nations convention on the rights of the child (united nations general assembly, 1989), meaning that this right can be limited if it impedes another’s health, rights, or freedoms. in this case, it appears that aiden’s fundamental right to the highest attainable standard of health is in conflict with his parents’ desire to prevent him from accessing necessary care. finally, attention is given to the right of youth to have their best interests given primary consideration. tom is familiar with the evidence that access to gender affirming medical care and family support are important factors in trans youth wellbeing. by providing support, tom would be respecting aiden’s views of what is best for him, while simultaneously placing his safety at home and family relationships in jeopardy. if tom honours the parents’ wishes, aiden will probably not gain access to gender affirming medical care. while he may maintain safe housing and some level of support, aiden will still not have the support of his family with regard to his gender, and he may experience negative psychosocial outcomes as a result of being denied access to the support and care he needs. resolution. after considering conflicting rights of youth and parents and evidence about psychosocial outcomes for trans youth without parental support, tom decides that continuing to support aiden is the best course of action. this will honour aiden’s established right to the highest attainable standards of health, access to health information and services, and confidentiality and privacy; his best interests will be given primary consideration. providing confidential health information, education, and services is an essential role that tom feels obligated to fulfill. while he does not want to violate the parents’ right to their religious beliefs, tom feels he has a responsibility to ensure aiden has access to information and resources. however, because access to care in combination with parental support are shown to promote strong health outcomes, tom international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 84 has a responsibility to ensure aiden’s parents are also supported. he will work with his supervisor and other community care providers to offer comprehensive supports for aiden and his parents in order to promote strong family relationships while ensuring access to needed care. relational ethics overview. relational ethics holds that ethics are inherent in every situation, interaction, and relationship, and that it is within these moral encounters that people decide what is the “right thing to do” for themselves and for others (bergum, 2013). relational ethics are found between care providers and their clients, and may also involve family members, other professionals, administrators, and politicians. this approach is framed not as a list of principles or virtues, but as a moral space created when people are in relationship with one another (bergum, 2013). within this approach, ethics are in action — embodied, interdependent, and connected (pollard, 2015). this approach centres around the larger question of how we should live together, balancing interdependence with freedom, emotion with reason, and unique situations with universal human experiences (austin, 2008). bergum (2013) presented four relational ethics themes intended to guide health care practices: environment, embodiment, mutual respect, and engagement. the environment includes all of us, as actors within the ecological systems that control access to many things, including health care resources. embodiment refers to the understanding that clients have their own lived realities and attends to the connection of mind and body. mutual respect describes ways to engage with one another in the presence of differences, be they of power, knowledge, beliefs, values, experiences, or attitudes; it requires openness to and respect for others’ perspectives. even in the face of time constraints, practitioners must be in the moment with their clients, engaging in ways that allow understanding of situations, perspectives, and vulnerabilities different from their own. dialogue is seen as “the space wherein relational ethics is most easily realized” (bergum, 2013, p. 18). these relational themes were taken up by pollard (2015) in the context of nursing practice. pollard emphasized that the interaction itself informs the actions of the care provider. it is not a question of whether or not to engage, for engagement is fundamental. the goal is to identify the needs, talents, and capacities of the client through interaction, allowing greater understanding of the client’s view. pollard made it clear that this endeavour is distinct from imagining oneself in the client’s shoes, but is an act that goes beyond the intellectual, to include affective, emotional, and cognitive engagement. for this to be achieved, people must be viewed as interdependent and connected through relationships, not as disembodied clients. finally, according to austin (2008), “it must be recognized that persons marginalized and/or stigmatized due to factors such as poverty, gender, and illness can be disadvantaged in serious ways” (p. 748). jade (age 15) is socially transitioning and is accepted by her friends. her parents are tolerating her gender expression, but clearly view this as a phase of gender exploration. they do not use female pronouns or the name jade at home. jade has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 85 been referred to kris, who provides youth and family outreach through a community-based mental health agency. jade tells kris that she wants to take hormones and needs help getting to see a medical specialist because she has not been able to convince her parents that she is ready for hormone therapy. her parents have said she needs to wait until she is an adult, and then she can decide for herself. they have clearly refused to give consent for hormone therapy. kris knows that starting hormone therapy is a big decision and understands the parents’ desire for jade to wait. however, he knows that as jade progresses through puberty, the irreversible changes to her body are getting more distressing. jade has talked about feeling suicidal, but expresses hope for the future — a future where she is able to start hormone therapy as soon as possible. kris knows of a gender clinic where youth can access hormone therapy. he believes that jade is capable of making health care decisions and knows that where she lives she legally has the right to do so. gaining access to gender affirming medical care could alleviate a lot of distress. however, kris is aware that referring jade to the gender clinic against her parent’s wishes may cause conflict and place jade at risk within her home. dilemma. there are many competing issues that kris must navigate, including jade’s capacity for decision-making, need for hormone therapy, distress around lack of access to care, suicidal ideation, and parents’ lack of support. kris must figure out whether to make a referral to the gender clinic, and how to work with jade and her parents. using a relational ethics approach, kris seeks to determine the “right thing to do” in his relationships with jade and her parents. analysis. in this case, an important aspect of the environment is how access to health care is controlled. kris is an actor within this system, possessing the knowledge of who is able to provide hormone therapy for youth and the ability to facilitate access to providers. kris recognizes that he has a great deal of power within his relationship with jade and also within his relationship with her parents. he has shared some of his knowledge about gender affirming medical care with jade, but realizes her parents may not have access to this same information. kris does not understand the experience of being trans first-hand. however, it is not his responsibility to imagine himself in jade’s situation, but rather to attempt to understand her embodied experience from her perspective. for jade, her experience is one of wanting her body to be congruent with her gender, to embody her gender through development of secondary sex characteristics. this speaks to the relational ethics theme of embodiment, and the importance of bringing mind and body together. kris believes jade should be able to freely express her gender and pursue hormone therapy, but must examine how this belief influences his ability to be in relationship with jade’s parents. this brings kris to the theme of mutual respect. he knows he must work to understand the lived experience of jade’s parents, who do not want to see her take any steps toward gender international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 86 affirming medical care at this time. he must not only have respect for beliefs and values that differ from his own, but be truly open to the value and validity of these perspectives. kris has engaged a great deal with jade, to understand her perspective, strengths, and vulnerabilities, but feels he needs to engage further with jade’s parents. resolution. kris’s plan for moving ahead focuses foremost on respectful dialogue. engaging in mutually respectful dialogue — acknowledging differences of power, knowledge, beliefs, values, experiences, and attitudes — will enable kris to expand his understanding of this family’s connection and conflict, and help all involved to move toward common ground. remaining present and engaged will also help to sustain kris in this process. in order to support jade, kris seeks to engage in a manner that promotes mutual respect, understanding, and the safest and healthiest relationships possible among jade, her parents, and himself. through ensuring that the family’s environment includes access to care, information, and support, and that jade’s voice is heard regarding the distress she is experiencing surrounding her gender and embodied experience, kris anticipates that family relationships will be strengthened, a shared understanding will emerge, and jade will ultimately experience improved wellbeing. justice-doing overview. there are a variety of ethical approaches that incorporate the concept of justice. reynolds (2014) posited that ethics in counselling are fluid and living responses to the social contexts that clients inhabit. reynolds (2012) proposed a framework for an ethic of justice-doing — informed by feminist, queer, and anarchist theory, decolonizing practices, and critical trans politics — which places justice at the centre of practice. this is not a principles-based approach, nor does it focus centrally on individual rights or relationships. justice-doing is a commitment to an ethic of enacting justice and to contesting injustice by “tak[ing] on oppression and injustices on all fronts, at the intersections of our power and privileges, where we have power and where we are oppressed” (richardson & reynolds, 2012, p. 6). this requires workers to act swiftly to address social inequities, resist replicating dominance, and be open to critique. there are six guiding intentions of justice-doing: centering ethics, doing solidarity, fostering collective sustainability, addressing power, critically engaging with language, and structuring safety (reynolds, 2012). centering ethics in the work is essential to sustainability in the face of ongoing violations of our ethics by societal injustices. focusing on collaboration, recognizing that people take many different paths, and embracing the role of an imperfect ally are key in doing solidarity. fostering collective sustainability requires pushing back against individualism and working collectively alongside clients to combat unjust structures in ways that promote dignity, safety, and belonging. addressing power takes the form of active resistance to oppression, and includes being accountable for more than just one’s personal acts. critically engaging with language means recognizing that language is not neutral, and can be used as a tool to obscure the realities of people’s experiences of violence and oppression. finally, safety must be structured through intentionally creating conditions that form a “safe enough” environment for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 87 clients. this is accomplished through “a complex analysis of power, moral courage, compassion, and critical supervision” (reynolds, 2012, p. 28). kai (age 14) is a very social and artistically talented youth who is involved in drama, music, art, and many other school and community activities. she seems to know everyone, and is well liked by her peers and the adults in her life. kai says she is always “reinventing” her image, with various clothes, make-up, and hairstyles. sometimes she presents as quite masculine and other times as highly feminine. june, a cyc worker at the community centre where kai attends a lot of arts programs, has noticed a change in her recently. she is more withdrawn and gets agitated easily. june has tried to talk with her on a few occasions, but kai has been resistant. one day kai asks to talk, and tells june that she has been feeling anxious and depressed. she says she has always felt like a boy, but is trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of her as a girl. in tears, kai says she only feels comfortable when presenting as a male, and finds it increasingly hard to “act like a girl”. she says she knows her parents love her, but they frequently make anti-gay and anti-trans comments when she dresses like a guy. kai denies feeling suicidal, but does confirm symptoms of anxiety and depression, and that she has started drinking and smoking marijuana and cigarettes to cope. she has seen a therapist in the past, but that therapist has moved away. kai asks if june can help her find a new therapist who can help her change her feelings of being a boy, so that she feels like a girl. kai thinks this might be the only way to solve her problems. analysis. june is committed to acting ethically through justice-doing. she has confirmed that kai is struggling with peer and family relationships, and with mental health issues and with substance use. the root of much of this struggle appears to be the gender-based stigma and oppression kai is experiencing. kai is asking for help to conform to societal and family expectations, as she is unable to cope with the external and internalized oppression she is facing. june, who is aware that the reparative therapy kai is requesting is considered harmful and unethical to practice, must determine how to ethically respond to kai’s request. june has already observed the first intention for justice-doing — she is committed to centering ethics in her work. june does not identify as trans and recognizes that she should expand her knowledge of and work alongside trans communities to become a better ally. for june, doing solidarity means striving to develop greater understanding of the many paths that may lead to wellbeing. she ponders whether, as kai believes, reparative therapy really could be a step along the path to wellness. however, as she listens to the voices of those who have suffered as a result international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 88 of this practice and examines the evidence that trans youth are unlikely to change their gender, she understands why reparative therapy has been deemed a harmful practice. june begins to shift her focus away from the issue of referring to reparative therapy to the reasons why it exists. there is injustice in the stigma that often surrounds trans communities and leads to the erosion of dignity, safety, and belonging. june needs to contribute to collective sustainability by joining alongside trans communities to fight these injustices, potentially through adopting a gender affirmative approach to care and advocating to create a world where diverse gender identities and expressions are affirmed rather than pathologized and oppressed. standing up for the right to freely identify and express gender and working to ensure policies and systems are in place to support youth and parents are forms of active resistance to power and oppression. refusing to refer kai to the harmful practice of reparative therapy is also a form of active resistance, one that can be enacted with love and care. while june has not been a direct perpetrator of overt oppression against kai or other trans people, justice-doing mandates that she is accountable for more than her own acts. in this case, it means dispelling the myth that reparative therapy is an effective, acceptable, and ethical intervention. critically engaging with language can help june to see how trans people’s experiences with violence, power, and oppression can be obscured from view. we live in a highly gendered society, one that strongly promotes a binary view of gender and the idea that gender should be congruent with sex assigned at birth. though perceptions are changing and strides are being made in terms of trans rights, gendered structures are entrenched in our institutions and language. for example: “boys line up here and girls line up over there.”; “girls don’t play with trucks, those are for boys.”; and “you can’t have long hair and be a boy!”. the messages are pervasive and strong, and they are internalized by all of us. language can also be used to create a culture of blame and shame: “if he didn’t choose to dress like that, he wouldn’t get bullied.” constantly combating unnecessarily gendered language and working to uncover how our language promotes and obscures violence against trans communities is a necessary practice in justice-doing. returning to kai’s experience, june knows that kai has heard and internalized messages that “being trans is not okay”. the impacts of systemic oppression, comments from her parents, and internalized stigma have likely contributed to kai’s feeling that it is her gender that needs to change. this is perhaps the most significant manifestation of these injustices — undermining kai’s sense of safety within herself. kai’s ultimate gender path is unknown. she may later identify as a woman, a man, neither, or both. june knows she must act to create a space that is safe enough for kai to explore her gender. she also needs to create the safety necessary to address the conflict evident in kai’s relationship with her parents, and to help the parents understand how kai is impacted by their actions. resolution. june is examining how power has impacted kai and must summon the moral courage needed to support kai in the face of this oppression. she will draw on compassion and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 89 seek supervision, but act without delay. june will talk with kai about a referral to a therapist who can support her in her exploration of gender. with compassion and honesty, she will work to create a “safe enough” space to discuss how reparative therapy can be harmful, and that she cannot refer kai to the kind of therapist she has requested. june will journey alongside kai and her parents to learn how she can best support each of them on their journeys. she will also work with trans communities to address injustices that impact trans youth, continually remaining open to critique so that she may better her allyship. discussion scenarios highlighting issues that may arise in practice with trans youth and their families have been analyzed based on four ethical approaches: bioethics, rights-based ethics, relational ethics, and justice-doing. each ethical approach varies in terms of what it brings to the forefront. the following section is a discussion of the strengths each framework possesses as well as the issues it does not address. bioethics is a parsimonious, widely used approach. its strength lies in the straightforward application of the four foundational principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. this approach, however, can be seen as paternalistic and lacking both cultural relevance and explicit collaboration with clients, families, and communities. it does not actively promote integration of ethical thinking into everyday practice, but rather frames certain situations as ethical dilemmas to be resolved by providers who possess power to make decisions. examining a situation from a rights-based perspective can assist in generating an understanding of the complexities of multifaceted issues. dilemmas often emerge when rights and responsibilities come into conflict, and employing a rights-based approach can directly address this. a key strength of rights-based frameworks is their alignment with established, international rights of youth such as privacy, freedom from harm, self-determination, and non-discrimination. it should be noted that these frameworks lack a relational component and do not necessarily address cultural or larger societal influences on the experiences of clients. relational ethics is based in language and dialogue. these are fluid and living, not static universal truths or rights. relational ethics is malleable and able to take environment, culture, stigma, and marginalization into account. it brings to the forefront respect for differences, family, community, diversity, and collaboration. however, relational ethics is open to interpretation by individual practitioners and therefore to the blind spots each inevitably has. it contrasts with bioethics and rights-based ethics in its focus on ethics being constantly enacted in all relationships, rather than a paradigm in which particular dilemmas are extracted to solve with a structured framework. finally, justice-doing follows the premise that ethics always needs to be at the centre of practice. it places the practitioner and client alongside one another and attempts to reduce paternalism. justice-doing can be seen as more challenging to enact than other approaches, but it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 90 addresses complexities that other frameworks do not include. it goes beyond individual interactions and isolated dilemmas to a larger context, examining intersecting oppressions and the institutional and societal injustices that impact clients. it demands commitment and, for many individuals and institutions, can require a paradigm shift in how practice is approached. no ethical approach exists in isolation. the various approaches influence one another and overlap and evolve over time. professional codes of ethics, such as the standards of practice of north american child & youth care professionals (association for child & youth care practice, 1995), often draw upon a range of ethical traditions, leaving it up to each practitioner to decide how they will enact ethics in their practice. this has the potential to result in inconsistent practices; however, this issue can be mitigated through the integration of sound evidence, critical thinking, and explicit argumentation into ethical practice. additionally, practitioners can benefit from seeking out education and reflecting upon their own gender privilege in order to better meet the needs of trans youth. intersections of oppression are also relevant to this discussion, as privileged positions can obscure from view the experiences of those with multiple intersecting oppressions (e.g., those related to gender, race, age, and class). mindfulness of one’s own privileges and worldview is important in this work, as is awareness of when information, education, and supervision are needed to help navigate ethically challenging situations. this paper has primarily focused on issues of gender and how they intersect with age in the ethical care of trans youth and their families. future work in cyc ethics is needed to directly address intersecting oppressions — such as gender, race, age, and class — and to examine diverse cultural perspectives on supporting trans youth. the approaches presented here have drawn on various philosophical and disciplinary traditions; however, there are many other ethical approaches that may also be applied with trans youth and their families in cyc practice, social work, counselling, and education. conclusion mac, aiden, jade, and kai all face challenges connected to unjust stigma and marginalization. the knowledge that family support and access to gender affirming medical care are important factors in the wellbeing of trans youth guides ethical decision-making with this population. the practice of supporting trans youth and their families can be messy. considering the ethics of our actions is crucial. despite their grounding in diverse ethical approaches, the analyses presented in this paper have consistently led to three imperatives: providing support and affirmation for trans youth; supporting families to support their youth; and fighting injustice where it impedes these goals. we must stand up for those whose voices are least heard and least well understood. this may take us out of our comfort zone, require that we relinquish some previously held assumptions, and call on us to act as imperfect allies (reynolds, 2012). however, it is our individual actions that can international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 74–96 91 determine 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(2014). policy manual acb-r-1: sexual orientation and gender identities. vancouver, bc: author. retrieved from https://www.vsb.bc.ca/districtpolicy/acb-r-1-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identities veale, j., saewyc, e., frohard-dourlent, h., dobson, s., clark, b., & the canadian trans youth health survey research group. (2015). being safe, being me: results of the canadian trans youth health survey. vancouver, bc: stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, school of nursing, university of british columbia. retrieved from http://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2015/05/05/being-safe-being-me-results-of-the-canadian-transyouth-health-survey/ vrouenraets, l. j. j. j., fredriks, a. m., hannema, s. e., cohen-kettenis, p. t., & de vries, m. c. (2015). early medical treatment of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: an empirical ethical study. the journal of adolescent health, 57(4), 367–373. wells, k., roberts, g., & allan, c. (2012). supporting transgender and transsexual students in k-12 schools: a guide for educators. ottawa, on: canadian teachers federation. world health organization. (2006). constitution of the world health organization (45th ed. supplement). retrieved from http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf https://www.vsb.bc.ca/district-policy/acb-r-1-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identities https://www.vsb.bc.ca/district-policy/acb-r-1-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identities http://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2015/05/05/being-safe-being-me-results-of-the-canadian-trans-youth-health-survey/ http://www.saravyc.ubc.ca/2015/05/05/being-safe-being-me-results-of-the-canadian-trans-youth-health-survey/ http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf ethics in child and youth care practice with transgender youth beth a. clark background medical psychosocial safety ethical issues role of practitioners theoretical approach methods analyses bioethics rights-based ethics relational ethics justice-doing discussion conclusion references right and wrong from a child's perspective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818215 right and wrong from the perspective of 8and 12-year-old children: an exploratory analysis kira ammann abstract: understanding rights not only means knowing what is permitted by law and what is not, but also being aware of and knowing one’s own rights as a human being. this analysis explores how children understand right and wrong, how they gain moral orientations and a sense of justice, and whether they are aware of human rights and children’s rights, and if so to what extent. twelve children aged either 8 or 12 participated in an interview on a dilemma story, as pioneered by kohlberg, and were also asked about children’s rights and human rights. qualitative content analysis showed that the majority used moral judgements based on fairness and justice, taking the view that behaviour that is wrong should be duly punished. eight children were able to make substantive statements on human rights; of the eight, three also had some knowledge of children’s rights. there were differences between the types of arguments used by the two age groups. there were also some differences between boys and girls, but they were negligible. in german-speaking countries there is little empirical research on children’s rights. few studies have focused on the topic of human rights from the perspective of educational science, and there is also little research on moral concepts and children’s rights. what follows is therefore a first attempt to link two neglected research topics. keywords: justice and injustice, children’s and human rights, interviews with children, child perspective, dilemmas, lawrence kohlberg kira ammann is a research assistant and phd candidate in the department of general and historical educational science at the university of bern, institute of educational science, department of general and historical educational science, fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 bern, switzerland. email: kira.ammann@edu.unibe.ch mailto:kira.ammann@edu.unibe.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 110 moral decisions and judgements not only express opinions about values and attitudes, but also prioritize some social values over others. children can only answer moral questions if they have moral orientations that enable them to make decisions about behaviour in concrete situations. depending on the situational context, these orientations are usually general and can be expressed as abstract behavioural maxims and rules, such as “share fairly” or “be helpful”. in concrete everyday situations, children have to decide which moral rules are of importance while taking into account situational conditions and morally significant assessments. how they will actually behave, however, is unpredictable. for this reason, this study combines cognitive and behavioural aspects and defines morality as “judging and acting both autonomously and responsibly in social conflicts” (steffek, 1999, p. 1).1 according to nunner-winkler (2003), moral development is best understood as a two-stage process. children already have an appropriate knowledge of morals at an early stage. they know simple rules and understand that these rules are universally valid, regardless of authority and sanctions. they derive their first moral knowledge from everyday practices and experiences (nunnerwinkler, 2003). moral motivation then builds up in a second, differential learning process, which strongly depends on the child’s family context (nunner-winkler, 2007b, 2008b). in order to be able to apply moral norms to everyday situations, however, children must develop a complex knowledge system and the necessary cognitive structures (nunner-winkler, 2007b). children do not simply adopt adult moral rules, but translate them in a nuanced manner to their everyday worlds and are thus able to act and behave morally (neuhäuser & rülcker, 1991). research on moral judgements usually focuses on investigations into normative thinking; to date there has been little work on the development of a sense of justice in children (weyers, 2012). however, understanding legal structures from the perspective of children and adolescents is not only of theoretical interest but also of practical importance. children’s and adolescents’ understanding of laws and norms plays an important role in their understanding of rules of conflict, norm violations, criminal justice, the binding nature of agreements and promises, and democracy (weyers, sujbert, & eckensberger, 2007). legal awareness refers to a condition “in which a human being sees him-/herself as part of and contributing to a culture which recognizes the individual as an autonomous legal entity, while the social whole qua legal system provides the principal orientation for social action” (lampe, 1997, p. 11). studies show that while children up to the age of 9 or 10 do not distinguish between law and morality (weyers, 2014), early forms of legal awareness are already recognizable from the second year of life (weyers et al., 2007). in the past two decades, no one has had a greater influence on both the theory of moral education and the practical pedagogical efforts to promote young people’s ethical behaviour than 1 unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 111 the psychologist and educationist lawrence kohlberg (1927–1987).2 focusing especially on adolescents and adults, his main assumption is “that the development of moral thought follows a universal sequence of distinct stages” (tapp & kohlberg, 1971, p. 67). for kohlberg, moral judgements are normative, prescriptive ideas about the social world and one’s own actions, linked to convictions on how to act (eckensberger & breit, 1997). however, moral judgements are not virtues but constructions that are actively formed by the subject through concrete actions and related discussions (eckensberger & breit, 1997). according to kohlberg (1981, p. 39), “there is only one principled basis for resolving claims: justice or equality”. in his theory, justice is the central principle for resolving situations in which there are unresolved conflicting claims: “a resolution of the situation is one in which each is ‘given his due’ according to some principle of justice that can be recognized as fair by all the conflicting parties involved” (kohlberg, 1973, p. 633). legal awareness and children’s rights to learn how children come to understand right and wrong, it is particularly important, from the point of view of developmental psychology, to look at their cognitive and moral development. this is why the present study takes as its starting point kohlberg’s (1981) discussion of the theory of moral development. this investigation works from the assumptions that there is such a thing as moral development and that it is important for the development of legal awareness. as a moral entity, a human being relates not only to himself or herself, but also to the welfare of human society. moral questions, therefore, concern one’s own behaviour in relation to other people (herzog, 1991). moral issues are public issues that affect social relations. recognizing human dignity is not only a cognitive act, but a moral feeling: moral because it provides criteria to judge one’s actions, or failure to act; and a feeling because these criteria are not calculated, but represent an all-embracing, seemingly spontaneous attitude that opens up the world (brumlik, 2004). it is, therefore, necessary to develop moral judgement and moral feeling (könig & seichter, 2014). from the perspective of educational science, the question arises as to how it might be possible to collectively strengthen both the idea of children’s and human rights and the will to realize them in pedagogical activities and situations (könig & seichter, 2014). children are legal persons in a particular way. in their early years, it is their parents, their legal guardians, or the state who execute their rights. while growing up, as children gradually gain more life competences, they need special protection and support as well as child-friendly forms of participation that are appropriate to their stage of development. children “are not ‘less’ than adults (less cunning, less experienced, less informed and less competent) — children are primarily different” (oser & althof 1992, p. 39). while they share with adults basic needs such as food, education, love, and care, their other interests may differ significantly, depending on their circumstances or living conditions. for this reason, the convention on the rights of the child (crc) 2 in recent years, numerous publications have explored the topic of moral development. in addition to kohlberg the works of nunner-winkler (2003, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a) and weyers (2004, 2005, 2012, 2014) on moral development have been particularly important for my investigations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 112 summarizes the universal needs of all children and stipulates that these needs must be met (rossa, 2014). the principles set out in the crc codify respect for the basic human values and dignity of children (maywald, 2008). the convention advocates a holistic approach that strengthens children’s rights to protection, support, and participation in those areas of life that are important to them. in this way, human rights always have an emancipatory, empowering potential (mader, 2007). the question of why children need special rights is, therefore, not answered only by their greater need for protection, but also by their otherness. children create their own physical and social worlds and try to understand what they experience and perceive. they observe things and develop their own theories about them, and about their causes and contexts. the same applies to interpersonal and social relations and their rules (oser & althof, 1992). it would therefore be desirable for everyone to understand children’s rights in such a way that children and youth can make use of their rights whenever they need them — with the help of adults, if necessary. research questions the aim of the interviews was to grasp the argumentation and estimation of children based on a moral dilemma and to find out how much they know about human and children’s rights. few studies have focused on the topic of human rights from the perspective of educational science (andresen & diehm, 2006; lenhart, 2006; lohrenscheit, 2004; stellmacher, sommer, & imbeck, 2003), and there is also little research on moral concepts and children’s rights. the research was carried out from april to december 2014 as part of my master’s thesis (ammann, 2014). the research questions were: how do 8and 12-year-old children understand right and wrong? are they aware of human and children’s rights and, if so, to what extent? method participants the methodological process consisted of numerous decisions and corresponding clarifications for the interview as well as ethical reflections like questions of consent and choice, power dynamics, and protection from harm in the interview setting (nixon, 2013), which had to be made in advance. in order to establish contact with possible participants, a fact sheet including information about the study’s topic, methodology, contact details, procedure, and data protection was sent to a total of 48 gatekeepers (helfferich, 2005). they were requested to forward the information to other parents with children fulfilling the participation criteria. access to the 8-year-old and 12year-old children was thus established by the snowball system (helfferich, 2005). the final sample was composed of a total of 12 children aged either 8 or 12. the average age of the 8-year-olds was 8 years and 6 months (the youngest was 8 years and 2 months, the oldest 8 years and 10 months) and of the 12-year-olds, 12 years and 8 months (the youngest was 12 years and 2 months, the oldest 12 years and 10 months). all children attended a primary or secondary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 113 school in switzerland. in order to be able to examine gender differences, three girls and three boys in each age group were recruited for the sample. all data, except the age and gender of the interviewed child, were anonymised, and the names of the children were changed. the selection of these two age groups was based both on kohlberg’s stage theory, according to which these age groups differ in their moral development (kohlberg, 1968), and on weber’s proposition (2013) that the period between 8 and 12 years is especially suitable for human rights education. as for the socioeconomic composition of the sample, the occupations of the parents were classified using the international standard classification of occupations (isco-88). five children had at least one parent with an academic background; four of these were from the group of 8-year-olds. all parents consented to their children’s participation. the interviewed children, too, were asked to give their oral consent. however, an informed consent in a classical sense cannot be assumed, since it remains an open question when children are old enough to give their consent (miethe, 2013; vogl, 2012). in accordance with the checklist for research on and with children from swissethics (2013), the children were informed orally. interviews i chose a qualitative approach for the interviews, because it offers direct access to the perspective of the research subject and allows researchers and interviewees to interact in a flexible manner (heinzel, 2012; wagner, 2014). based on kohlberg’s (colby, kohlberg, speicher, hewer, candee, gibbs & power, 1987) “moral judgement interview”, i developed semi-structured guidelines for an interview lasting 20 to 30 minutes, a suitable time period if taking into account 8-yearolds’ attention and concentration spans (delfos, 2004). to test its suitability, a pretest interview was conducted with an 8-year-old boy, and analysed with a specialist for forensic and criminal investigations of children. as a further pretest, the interview was repeated in an adapted form with an 11-year-old girl. previous projects have provided experience in conducting interviews with children. qualitative interviews with children are challenging, because their capacity to be actively involved in the research process depends on their intellectual, social, and moral capacities. taking the children’s stage of development into account is essential for adequately implementing the methodology and interpreting their statements and actions (wagner, 2014). above all, the children’s linguistic ability must be considered. it should be noted, however, that a child does not have the same verbal and pragmatic skills in all situations; rather, these are strongly dependent on context (vogl, 2012). the parents and the children had been informed beforehand that the interviews would take place without parents or siblings present. for the interview itself they were asked to leave the room so that the child could react as freely and openly as possible. parents and children were briefed orally that they could interrupt or cancel the interview at any time. as stated in advance to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 114 parents, the interview recordings were deleted after the analysis to protect the privacy of the participants. after the interviewer had explained the conversation rules, the children were aware that they were the experts and that their opinion was important and interesting. next, they were told the dilemma story: the story of mona, a girl, and till, a boy, two friends on their way home from school. originally based on steffek (1999), the story was rewritten in swiss-german dialect and adapted to correspond with the everyday life experiences of the children in the study. the two friends get harassed by a group of older children from the same school. they take till’s new sneakers and kick mona in the belly. they threaten to return if mona and till tell anyone about the incident. after having been told this story, the children were asked if they had ever heard of such a situation and to discuss possible ways of resolving it (see ammann, 2014). if the interviewed child was a girl, the story was adapted so that till was beaten and mona had to solve the situation; if the interviewed child was a boy, mona was beaten and till had to find a solution. after further questions concerning the story, the second part of the interview was introduced with more general information on human and children’s rights. throughout the interview, an attempt was made to avoid leading or closed yes-no questions. if children knew about children’s rights, they were asked in greater detail about what they knew and how they had acquired this knowledge. to strengthen children’s rights worldwide, the united nations has committed to communicating the principles and provisions of the crc to children and adults all over the world (article 42)3. with reference to this article, the children were asked at the end of the interview how information on children’s rights could be better disseminated; they were also asked to invent a new children’s right that they wished would exist. similar to the initial phase before the actual interview, a phase after the interview was implemented where the children had the opportunity to bring in their own thoughts and could ask questions. this procedure was intended to ensure that the child was not left with any emotions that could cause negative effects afterwards. the interview situation ended with an appreciation for participating and the handing over of a memory game about human rights as well as a comic about children’s rights. the data evaluation was based on the content analysis recommendations given by schmidt (2013) for guided interviews and on the computer-based evaluation process according to kuckartz (2014). based on the research questions, i developed a system with 9 main categories and 74 subcategories to categorize the relevant facts in the transcribed interviews. 3 see http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 115 results first of all, 10 of the 12 children had a good understanding of rules and knew what a rule was. knowledge of rules was interpreted to mean that the children had moral awareness. nine children had heard a story like that of till and mona before and were able to elaborate on it when asked. there was no evid0ence to suggest that knowledge of this or a similar situation led to a greater sense of personal concern or a greater willingness to provide more information or more elaborate arguments. my main finding was that most (10 out of 12) of the interviewed children had a general understanding and knowledge of the situation presented in the story. in both age groups, 5 out of 6 children believed that one should not behave as the older children did in the story. half of the children assessed the situation with words like “mean”, “nasty”, or a similar expression. all children but one made at least one moral statement concerning the situation, and one girl explicitly called the situation “extortion”. the fact that mona or till might feel pain or be injured upon being beaten was not mentioned as an argument for helping the other person. almost all children judged the age difference between the attacking group and mona and till as unfair and expressed this belief by referring to aspects like age and height (e.g., “the attacking group is older than mona and till”), fairness (“it is not fair to behave like this”), and group size (“a majority against only two is unfair”). ten out of 12 children expressed the view that misconduct should have consequences. depending on their age, the children proposed different sanctions such as “having to sharpen all one’s coloured pencils during the break” (8-year-old) or “cleaning the water closet” (12-year-old). further categories were emotions (anxiety, sadness, pain), the kind of helping behaviour (passive vs. active), and friendship issues (friendship plays a role vs. friendship plays no role). seven children mentioned emotional aspects like sadness and anxiety. asked what till should have done to help mona, or mona to help till, the interviewed children differed in their choice of passive or active behaviour, with eight preferring passive behaviour like getting help, running away, or waiting and seeing what would happen. none of the children offered arguments or reasons for helping. only four mentioned friendship as a reason why mona should help till or vice versa. this accords with smetana, killen, and turiel’s (1991) finding that, among children, compliance with justice and law are considered more important than friendship issues. with regards to values and moral norms, i had assumed that the children might argue on the basis of human rights (one has to help to protect human lives), but this was not the case. i suggest that this is due not to a lack of moral development but to a lack of knowledge. if you do not have any knowledge about children’s or human rights, you cannot use it as an argument. it is therefore important that children know their rights, so that they can claim them. this underscores the need for comprehensive human rights education in school. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 116 nine children knew what a right was and could name an example (“a right is if you are allowed to do something”). eight children had a fair knowledge of human rights and mentioned aspects such as war, torture, slavery, money, skin colour, gender equality, and so on. overall, the children presented two perspectives: rights for all on a general, abstract level (“all humans are allowed to do the same”; “everyone has the same rights”); and concrete examples from the media as well as from the children’s own experiences (“i know that prisoners of war need to be treated properly and fairly; otherwise, you are not allowed to keep them in jail”; “a friend of our family is a human rights lawyer and sometimes she visits murderers”; “it is not fair that dark-skinned people sometimes are not treated well”). age differences were not detectable. the children who did not know about human rights were all girls, but given the small sample size, we cannot draw any conclusions from this finding. only three children knew about the existence of children’s rights and were able to say something substantive about them (“even so children get beaten worldwide”; “child slavery still exists”; “children have the right to go to school, even if they do not have enough money”). eight of the 12 children had never heard about children’s rights; one child had heard only a little. eleven children affirmed the need for children’s rights. the same number had ideas about how to promote children’s rights, possibly influenced by examples and ideas mentioned by the interviewer. all the children came up with ideas for new children’s rights, such as lego bricks for every child, or a loving and caring family for every child. for some of the younger children, imagining the situation of mona and till seemed to be unpleasant; their statements did not focus primarily on the dilemma the story presented but on the fact that the two friends were in trouble. they expressed their discomfort through displacement activities such as fumbling with their clothes or shuffling their feet. this interpretation is consistent with other research suggesting that older children have a better control over nonverbal behaviour than younger (katz et al., 2012). nevertheless none of these expressions exceeded a critical point of uneasiness. for subsequent questions about the interview, the parents were asked to contact the interviewer if necessary. the shortest conversation was 13 minutes and 49 seconds; the longest 24 minutes and 39 seconds. the average interview length was 20 minutes. during the interviews, the 8-year-olds talked much more than the 12-year-olds. given the small size of the sample, the differences by gender were not considered relevant for the present study, but they might be an interesting aspect for further research. differences in argumentation — for example, with regard to the type of punishment for the attackers — appeared age-appropriate. in both age groups, the girls were more attentive and less shy, perhaps because the interviewer was also female. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 117 conclusion since there is little literature linking the fields of moral development and children’s rights, this analysis necessarily has a tentative and explorative character, and the results should be interpreted with caution. nor is this study representative, given the small sample of 12 children from a relatively homogeneous socioeconomic background. however, the specific setting of the guided interview allowed deeper insights into the children’s thinking processes and abilities than would have been possible in a more standardized research situation (vogl, 2012). since all interviews were conducted by the same person, an interviewer bias can not be excluded. as expected, no child had linguistic difficulties. but the children often answered with “yes”, “no”, or “mhm”, and not all were able to substantiate their answers, which somewhat limited the content of the data and led to fewer meaningful statements than expected. the results indicate that 8and 12-year-old children have an understanding of right and wrong and that moral judgements are important in their assessments of a particular situation. regarding the statements about the story of till and mona, the most frequently mentioned opinion was that one should not behave like the group in the story; the children’s argumentation showed that they associated “right” with fairness and justice. similarly, from the children’s point of view, injustice was unfair and wrong. the majority argued in terms of age and height differences, using expressions like “fair” and “not fair”. these answers agree with kohlberg’s assumption that justice is best described as fairness orientation: the principle central to the development of stages of moral judgment, and hence to proposals for moral education, is that of justice. justice, the primary regard for the value and equality of all human beings and for reciprocity in human relations, is a basic and universal standard. (kohlberg & hersh, 1977, p. 58) accordingly, my findings could be interpreted as demonstrating that indicators of justice like age and height, fairness, and group size are key when it comes to determining children’s sense of right and wrong. further research is needed. for example, this study could be supplemented by interviews with 10and 14-year-old children, or young adults. it would also be beneficial to take in further variables like moral feelings and motivations, since emotions such as empathy, shame, and guilt are linked to moral principles and moral behaviour. with regard to the issue of children’s rights, the question remains as to who determines what is good and appropriate for children. especially in connection with the best interests of the child, this question cannot be answered conclusively or universally and still needs a solution. previous studies have shown that human rights are evaluated differently under a general rather than a contextually-informed view, which means that human rights must be learned through exemplary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 118 conflict situations (weyers & köbel, 2010). discussing and understanding human rights in concrete situations is different than just talking about them in an abstract or theoretical manner. the purpose of this analysis was to expand our understanding of what children perceive as right and wrong and to find out how much they know about human and children’s rights. in sum, it can be stated that children do have an understanding of right and wrong and a partial knowledge of human rights. they have little knowledge of children’s rights, however, and it seems necessary to invest more in the communication and teaching of children’s rights. legal awareness and moral knowledge provide a basis for human and children’s rights education. children and young people who receive such an education can pass on their knowledge as adults and thus actively contribute to a democratic society based on the rule of law. therefore, linking children’s and human rights and moral development may prove to be a fruitful subject for further research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 109-124 119 references ammann, k. 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(2007). recht und unrecht aus kindlicher sicht. die entwicklung rechtsanaloger strukturen im kindlichen denken und handeln [right and wrong from a child's point of view. the development of right-angled structures in the child's thinking and acting]. münster, germany: waxmann. http://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2013/7162/pdf/zfpaed_4_2010_weyers_koebel_folterverbot_oder_rettungsfolter.pdf http://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2013/7162/pdf/zfpaed_4_2010_weyers_koebel_folterverbot_oder_rettungsfolter.pdf http://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2013/7162/pdf/zfpaed_4_2010_weyers_koebel_folterverbot_oder_rettungsfolter.pdf abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 388 a dynamic and gender sensitive understanding of adolescents’ personal and school resilience characteristics despite family violence: the predictive power of the family violence burden level wassilis kassis, sibylle artz, stephanie moldenhauer, istván géczy, and katherine r. rossiter abstract: in this cross-sectional study on family violence and resilience in a sample of 5,149 middle-school students with a mean age of 14.5 years from four european union countries (austria, germany, slovenia, and spain), we worked from the premise that resilience should not be conceptualized as a dichotomous variable. we therefore examined the gender-specific personal and social characteristics of resilience at the three levels “resilient”, “near-resilient”, and “non-resilient”. we also expanded our definition of resilience to include the absence of both externalized and internalized problem behaviours in adolescents who have been exposed to violence in their families. using multinomial logistic regression we found reliable gender differences in the protective and risk factors between the three resilience levels. we also found that the achieved reliability of our resilience classifications is very high. our findings suggest that adolescents’ positive adjustment despite family violence is affected only in small part by school characteristics. the co-morbidity of social risks in the family and individual factors explains a much larger part of the variance in the analysis. from a content perspective this means that an individual’s “resilience status” can be influenced in a focused way by moderating the living environment. these results are discussed in terms of their practical implications for policy. keywords: family violence, aggression, depression, adolescence, gender differences, resilience acknowledgements: this study (stamina: “formation of non-violent behaviour in school and during leisure time among young adults from violent families”) has been funded since 2009-2011 by the ec daphne iii programme whose stated purpose is to combat all forms of violence against children, young people and women (project-number: jls/2007/dap-1/ 134 30-ce-02280 90/00-40). the stamina project was additionally funded by the german federal ministry of family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth and the styrian provincial department for social affairs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 389 wassilis kassis, (the corresponding author) is professor at the school of educational sciences, university of osnabrueck, germany, heger-tor-wall 9 d-49069 osnabrück. e-mail: wassilis.kassis@uos.de sibylle artz, ph.d. is a full professor in the school of child and youth care, the interim director of the centre for early childhood research and policy (cecrp), and the coeditor, international journal of child, youth and family studies, at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: sartz@uvic.ca stephanie moldenhauer, is lecturer at the school of educational sciences, university of osnabrueck, germany, heger-tor-wall 9 d-49069 osnabrück. e-mail: stephanie.moldenhauer@uos.de istván géczy, ph.d. is a psychology instructor at northern lights college, 9820 120th avenue, fort st. john, british columbia, canada, v1j 6k1. e-mail: igeczy@nlc.bc.ca katherine r. rossiter, ph.d. is associate director at the freda centre for research on violence against women and children, and an adjunct professor in the school of criminology, simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, british columbia, v5a 1s6, canada. e-mail: rossiter@sfu.ca mailto:wassilis.kassis@uos.de mailto:sartz@uvic.ca mailto:stephanie.moldenhauer@uos.de mailto:igeczy@nlc.bc.ca mailto:rossiter@sfu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 390 violence in all its contexts including the family is a global concern. in their introduction to the world health organization’s manual for estimating the costs of violence, butchart et al. (2008) state that, “every day, children, women and men live inside their homes with the fear of violence by close family members” (p. v). further, delisi et al. (2010, p. 108) in their extensive review of the literature on the cycle of violence and crime, tell us that “there is considerable evidence that various forms of violence, abuse, depravity, and suffering that occur in early life environments engender maladaptive and antisocial behaviors across contexts (see also farrington & welsh, 2007; gover, 2004; maas, herrenkohl, & sousa, 2008; patterson, 1982; teague, mazerolle, legosz, & sanderson, 2008; wright, tibbetts, & daigle, 2008)”. delisi and colleagues also point out that “environmental exposure to violence figures directly or indirectly in many theoretical explanations of crime…. the long-term consequences of violence exposure, particularly forms occurring in the family home, such as child abuse and child neglect are thought to be particularly catastrophic” (p. 108). in their meta-analysis of the psychosocial outcomes of child exposure to family violence, kitzmann, gaylord, holt, and kenny (2003) acknowledged the earlier work of buehler, anthony, krishnakumar, stone, gerard, and pemberton (1997) but noted although buehler et al. made an important contribution to our overall understanding of a broad spectrum understanding of inter-parental conflict, their analysis cannot not inform us specifically about the effects of witnessing inter-parental violence. to that end, kitzmann and colleagues examined 118 comparative studies published between 1978 and 2000. the selected studies allowed outcome comparisons for: 1. child witnesses of inter-parental violence with non-witnesses; 2. child witnesses of inter-parental violence with child witnesses (only) of inter-parental verbal aggression; 3. child witnesses of inter-parental violence with children who had been physically abused; 4. child witnesses of inter-parental violence with physically abused children; along with 5. a systematic comparison of the reported outcomes of correlational studies of exposure to the four conditions described above. all 118 selected studies yielded a significant association between exposure to interpaternal aggression and/or violence and to physical abuse and poor child outcomes. witnessing inter-parental violence creates a notable risk, one that is at least as problematic as direct abuse at the hands of one’s parents. as the research on the link between violence exposure and internalizing disorders like depression expands, the evidence of the robust and serious contribution of violence exposure mounts (briggs-gowan, carter, clark, augustyn, mccarthy, & ford, 2010). the canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect published by the public health agency of canada (2010) concludes that an abusive family environment is linked to high incidence of adjustment problems among canadian children of all ages in domains of social conduct, intellectual/academic performance, mental health (i.e., anxiety, hyperactivity), and attachment. corroborating data from a meta-analysis of 60 related studies published between 1990 and 2006 – drawing mainly on samples from locations in the united states – also indicate that mental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 391 health and behavioural problems in children (i.e., internalization and externalization behaviours) are moderately associated with violence exposure at home (evans, davies, & dilillo, 2008). finally, wood and sommers (2011) have argued that the severity of symptoms may worsen if children are exposed to more sources of family violence (“double whammy” effect; see moylan et al., 2010). exposure to violence in the family has serious consequences not for every child, but for a significant number, a number that should not be ignored. however, a limitation of the existing research on youth exposure to family violence and the development of internalizing and externalizing problem behaviour is that while these studies have established associations between family violence and the development of depression and violent behaviour in adolescence, far fewer studies have examined resilience pathways out of the violence cycle (van der put, van der laan, stams, deković, & hoeve, 2011). as a consequence, the significance of specific socialization patterns for violence resilience is unclear, and we cannot say whether resilience among children and youth who are raised in violent families is “just” the absence of their use of violence or something more (smith-osborne, 2008). therefore, to say that resilience among children and youth who are raised in violent families can be premised only the absence of their use of violence may be too simplistic (kassis et al., 2010). since we also know that both violent behaviour and depression are linked to physical maltreatment by parents (artz, nicholson, & magnuson, 2008; gilbert et al., 2009; hussey, chang, & kotch, 2006) and witnessing violence or psychological aggression between parents (kitzmann et al., 2003; yates, dodds, sroufe, & egeland, 2003), we believe it makes sense to develop an understanding of violence resilience that examines both aggression and depression. a new theoretical framework for resilience: resilience as a non-dichotomous concept luthar, cicchetti, and becker (2000, p. 548) alert us to the multidimensional nature of resilience. masten (2001, p. 228) notes that resilience criteria are not as clear or distinct from one another as they seem to be, that is, are not merely dichotomous, and calls for an empirical evaluation of resilience measures. khanlou and wray (2014) suggest that resilience is a process, not a single event that should be understood along a continuum rather than as a binary and fixed outcome. we take these notions seriously and agree that resilience must not be conceptualized as a dichotomous variable and acknowledge that any definition of resilience should reflect young people’s desistance from more severe forms of internalized and externalized problematic behaviour even if they exhibit involvement in less serious violence and milder forms of depression (liebenberg & ungar, 2009). we therefore suggest resilience should be categorized in terms of levels that take into account differences in the severity of the use of violence and the tendency to depression of individual actors, and propose a conceptual understanding of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 392 resilience that also includes the concept of “near-resilience”. we suggest that such an approach could prove to be more useful for the purposes of prevention and clinical intervention (hart, blincow, & thomas, 2008, p. 132), because this broader scope aims to identify adolescents both at highest and at middle risk for compromised resilience while helping us to learn more about those resilient young people who, contra-intuitively, have successfully handled family violence and are both non-violent and able to the manage their own emotional stability. predicting the violence resilience of adolescents a number of factors have been identified as contributing to violence resilience. rutter (2007), citing the extensive work of collishaw et al. (2007) and jaffee, caspi, moffitt, polotomas, and taylor (2007), notes that both these longitudinal studies (the first conducted on the isle of wight, the second in england and wales) showed that resilience was not a function of gender. yet, as rutter also notes, dumont, widom, and czaja (2007) in their longitudinal american study, found that gender did matter but in conjunction with membership in a racialized group and family stability. the role of gender difference in resilience thus seems to vary depending on social location and family dynamics and should not be considered independently of other factors. psychology-based theorists (brownfield & thompson, 2005) have emphasized the importance of the individual’s self-concept as an important protective factor for violenceresilience. self-acceptance as well as the knowledge that one’s emotions and future can be controlled despite having experienced violence in peer and family contexts, have been shown to be relevant predictors of resilience. thus, perception of who and what controls one’s choices and opportunities plays a significant role in the development of resilience skills. as brownfield and thompson (2005) have shown, young people who have a more internalized locus of control (i.e., they see themselves as having a choice in how they behave and what their future holds) are likely to be more resilient to violence. parenting style is a well-documented indicator linked to youth violence (eisenberg et al., 1999; hair, mcgroder, zaslow, ahluwalia, & moore, 2002; patterson, capaldi, & bank, 1991; patterson & stouthamer-loeber, 1984), especially the inconsistent parenting connected with family violence. as well, parenting style is central to understanding why adolescents stay violence-free despite experiencing family violence (bates, bader, & mencken, 2003; phythian, keane, & krull, 2008). educational researchers and criminologists have also provided school climate-based explanations for violence resilience and argued that positive school climate (artz & nicholson, 2010; longshore, chang, hsieh, & messina, 2004; prinstein & cillessen, 2003) and a good relationship with teachers (byrne & lurigio, 2008; desjardins & leadbeater, 2011; yeung & leadbeater, 2010) are especially helpful protective factors for adolescents from violent families. the central and shared notion of all these studies is that school based social protective factors are core to exiting the family violence cycle. by contrast, verbal aggression by teachers can create severe strain (khoury-kassabri, benbenishty, & astor, 2005), and higher levels of verbal aggression by teachers have been found to be very closely linked to violence in adolescence (kassis, 2011). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 393 we therefore chose to investigate the importance and the prevalence of these additional risk and strains for explaining the various patterns of resilience and believe that including these indicators makes it possible for us to examine in a deeper way the existing associations between risk and protective factors. our intention in this study is to identify the multifaceted school and personal characteristics of adolescents who are resilient to the use of violence and to depression despite having experienced violence in their families. resilience, the ability to achieve positive adjustment despite adversity (luthar et al., 2000), has more recently been defined by ungar (2008) as a process dependent on a range of ecological factors like family, school, and peers that include a focus on community responsibility and social justice. we trust that our approach takes this more comprehensive understanding of resilience into account. methods the study the research that we report on here is part of a larger study, the stamina project formation of non-violent behaviour in school and during leisure time among young adults from violent families1, funded from 2009-2011 by the european commission daphne iii programme, which has the stated purpose of combating all forms of violence against children, young people, and women. stamina is a study that researches the social (family, school, peers) and individual (self-concept, attitudes, behaviour) characteristics of adolescents who are violence free despite having a family history of violence. in conducting the stamina study, we employed quantitative and qualitative methods. in this article we report only on quantitative data that relates to violence resilience as the subject of this paper. participants the data were collected in the spring of 2009 from a random sample of female and male students in four european union countries (austria, germany, slovenia, and spain) who completed a questionnaire anonymously. parental consent was obtained for all participating youth. on the day of the study, all students who were present at the participating schools received a short oral information presentation about the survey and a handout that provided further information about adolescent-specific local counselling resources on family violence. then students were given the option of participating or declining without penalty. no one chose to decline. table 1, sample descriptors, presents the characteristics of the respondents surveyed: 53% of the participants were male, 47% were female, and approximately 29% came from migrant backgrounds. the mean age of the respondents was 14.4 years. nearly 23% of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 394 adolescents reported being physically abused by their parents and 17.3% witnessed physical violence between their parents. approximately 27% exhibited signs of depression and nearly 35% of the students reported participating in physical violence against other adolescents. the sample was aggregated to ensure that we would obtain a sufficient number of participants in each possible analytic category that would allow us to perform regression analysis. table 1 sample descriptors in % n gender girls 47.0 2,418 boys 53.0 2,731 migration-background without migration-background 71.2 3,666 with migration-background 28.8 1,483 country germany 55.0 2,832 austria 14.1 724 slovenia 14.1 726 spain 16.8 867 physical abuse by parents yes 23.0 1,184 no 77.0 3,965 witnessing physical spousal abuse yes 17.3 892 no 82.7 4,257 depression yes 27.1 1,394 no 72.9 3,755 physical aggression yes 34.8 1,793 no 65.2 3,356 age, av: 14.40, sd: 0.934 n = 5,149 data collection all measures are based on mean-score scales of the adolescents’ self-reports. selfreport surveys as a means for generating reliable incidence rates have been extensively reviewed in the literature on self-reports (alder & worrall, 2004; doob & cesaroni, 2004; hindelang, hirschi, & weis, 1981; sprott & doob, 2004). in order to create our survey we adapted and adopted a number of standardized subscales that are described below. intercorrelation between the subscales indicated that the factors are specific and can’t be summarized in a second order factor (see table 5): international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 395 aggression experiences with peers subscale. aggression experiences with peers were measured as follows: use of physical aggression towards others was measured using an eight item scale (α = .82) entitled, use of physical aggression against peers (e.g., “during a brawl, i hurt a boy/a girl so much that he/she was in pain for several days and/or had to go and see a doctor.”) developed by kassis (2003). depression subscale. depressive symptoms are assessed using five adapted items (α = .78) from the beck depression inventory (beck & alford, 2009) (e.g., “now and then i feel that my life is not worth living.”). family risk factors. to identify family risks we used four converging but independent (see also table 5 on inter-correlation of the subscales) factors. to assess respondents experiences with family violence, we employed three subscales adapted from the family violence inventory developed by mayer, fuhrer, and uslucan (2005) for assessing family violence: (a) the five-item subscale witnessing physical spousal abuse (α = .88) (e.g., “i noticed one of my parents forcefully shoving or pushing the other one around.”); (b) the threeitem measure, witnessing verbal spousal abuse, (α = .85) (e.g., “i witnessed my parents shouting at each other very loudly.”); and (c) the scale physical abuse by parents (α = .83). inconsistent parenting as the third family risk factors subscale (e.g., “people in my family beat me up so severely that i had bruises or scratches.”) was assessed by using an adapted five-item subscale (α = .83) developed by kassis (2003) using the parenting style inventory designed by krohne and pulsack (1996) (e.g., “my parents often scold me for no apparent reason.”). individual protective factors. we employed four subscales for measuring the individual protective factors. to measure self-concept we adopted three subscales developed by fend (2000) for his youth inventory instrument: (a) the four-item emotional self-control subscale (α = .65) (e.g., “i am one of those people who sometimes cannot control their anger.”); (b) the fouritem optimistic future view subscale (α = .68) (e.g., “i am afraid of everything that might happen in future.” reversed coded); and (c) the four-item self-acceptance subscale (α = .59) (e.g., “i have quite a good opinion about myself.”). individual’s activities geared to finding alternatives to violence were assessed with the four item scale seeking help to avoid violence behaviour (α = .76) kassis (2011) (e.g. “if i need help i know which people and places to go to.”). school protective factors. to measure experiences with school-based aggression and school climate we developed four subscales: (a) the four-item subscale (α = .69) verbally aggressive teacher behaviour, adapted (kassis, 2003) from the teacher aggression inventory developed by krumm, lamberger-baumann, and haider (1997) (e.g., “you were insulted or sworn at by a teacher.”); (b) the four-item subscale (α = .78), close relationship with teachers assesses the quality of the relationship between students and teachers by using an indicator developed by fend (2000) (e.g., “i quite like most of our teachers.”); (c) the four-item subscale (α = .85), acceptance by other students, a subscale developed as part of youth inventory (fend, 2000) assesses the quality of the student-to-student relationships (e.g., “in my class, i international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 396 sometimes feel a bit like an outsider.” reversed coded); (d) the three-item subscale (α = .65), school climate is also a part of the part of the youth inventory (fend, 2000), and assesses if the students are feeling particularly connected to their classmates (e.g., “many of the pupils in my class do not get along with each other at all.” reversed coded). analytic strategy the statistical analyses for this study were conducted in four stages. these are described in turn below: analytic stage 1: identifying family violence: the composite “family-burden variable” to identify participants who had experienced family violence, we initially defined the composite family-burden variable and tested for possible gender differences. respondents who indicated they were involved in some family violence (“physical abuse by parents” and/or “witnessing physical spousal abuse”) were included in the sample (family-burden) for subsequent analysis stages. analytic stage 2: examining gender differences in all the measured subscales in this stage we analyzed all the subscales in the overall and in the family-burden sample to test for gender-specific conditions in the two samples. analytic stage 3: computing the composite variable resilience and trichotomization of the family-burden sample in “resilient”, “near-resilient”, and “non-resilient” adolescents in order to investigate participants’ resilience to violence despite their reporting experiences with family violence (n = 1,644), we created three resilience conditions: the students who reported no use of violence at all (answer 1 = “never happened” on the 4-point likert scale) and who additionally had depression-scores below the middle of the scale “depression” (answers range 1 = “not true at all”, 2 = “mostly not true”, on the 4-point likert scale) were coded as resilient (n = 510, 31.0%). for the second condition, which we labelled “non-resilient”, we selected those participants who were situated in the highest quartile for using violence and/or reporting depression on the highest level. the and/or condition secured the consideration of the cooccurrence of high levels of externalized and internalized symptoms for adolescents in violent families, (n = 668, 40.6%). participants in this and/or condition were coded as non-resilient. for the third condition, all students who were not in the “resilient” or in the “nonresilient” group were coded as near-resilient, (n = 466, 28.3%). these students had mid-level scores for using violence and/or in reporting depression. analytic stage 4: identifying resilience patterns by multinomial logistic regressions separated for male and female adolescents international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 397 in the fourth stage, multinomial logistic regression analyses separated for male and female adolescents were used to identify the resilience patterns of those exposed to family violence in the family-burden sample. multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted separately for girls and for boys using three models. model 1 enhances the resilience prediction of the nominal coded fact of having experienced family violence by the intensity of family risk factors (witnessing physical spousal abuse, witnessing verbal spousal abuse, physical abuse by parents, inconsistent parenting) to the three resilience levels. model 2 adds the association between self-concept (emotional self-control, worrisome future, selfacceptance) as individual protective factors and the three resilience levels. model 3 adjusts additionally for the resilience level prediction strength of school protective factors (no verbally aggressive teachers, close relationship to teachers, acceptance by peers at school, school climate). in order to identify the specific effects of each model in a more differentiated manner we will closely look at the odds ratios, and the changes in r2. results analysis results of stage 1: identifying participants who had experienced family violence of the 5,149 young people who participated in our research, 1,644 (31.9%) had been affected by family violence. in these families, three kinds of experiences with violence were found: 1. the young person was physically abused by his/her parents (752 or 14.6%); 2. the young person witnessed the parents physically abusing each other (460 or 8.9%); 3. the young person was physically abused by his/her parents and witnessed his/her parents physically abusing each other, poly-victimization (finkelhor, ormrod, & turner, 2007), ( 432 young people or 8.4%). this means that in total by the age of 14.4 years, almost every fourth respondent (14.6% + 8.4% = 23.0%), had been physically abused by his or her parents and almost every sixth respondent (8.9% + 8.4% = 17.3%) had witnessed physical spousal abuse. the separation of girls and boys into these sub-groups of affected families did not prove to be significant (chisquare = 5.285, df = 3, n = 5,149, p > .05). analysis results of stage 2: gender differences in measured subscales gender differences in mean scores for all measured variables in the overall (n = 5,149) and in the family burden sample (n = 1,644) for boys and girls were examined and are reported in table 2. girls in both the overall and family burden samples reported significantly higher levels of depression, witnessing verbal spousal abuse, seeking help to avoid violence, and verbally aggressive teachers. as well, in the overall sample, girls also reported significantly higher levels of close relationships to teachers. on the other hand, boys in both samples reported significantly higher levels of physical aggression against peers, witnessing physical spousal abuse, physical abuse by parents, exercising emotional self-control, holding an optimistic future view, and experiencing selfinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 398 acceptance. additionally, boys reported significantly lower levels of “close relationship with teachers” in the overall sample. table 2 gender differences of all measures, means and standard deviations overall sample n = 5,149 family burden sample n = 1,644 measure girls boys girls boys resilience: externalized/ internalized physical aggression against peers 1.07 (.23) 1.18 (.35)*** 1.15 (.32) 1.33 (.49)*** depression 2.20 (.75) 1.97 (.69)*** 2.50 (.74) 2.24 (.74)*** family risk factors witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.10 (.36) 1.13 (.50)* 1.34 (.59) 1.41 (.81)* witnessing verbal spousal abuse 1.90 (1.11) 1.71 (.99)*** 2.55 (1.37) 2.25 (1.24)*** physical abuse by parents 1.12 (.35) 1.16 (.44)*** 1.37 (.54) 1.48 (.66)*** inconsistent parenting 1.84 (.68) 1.82 (.64)ns 2.16 (.73) 2.09 (.68)ns individual protective factors emotional self-control 2.45 (.65) 2.58 (.68)*** 2.26 (.64) 2.43 (.69)*** optimistic future view 2.99 (.64) 3.13 (.64)*** 2.82 (.68) 2.97 (.67)*** self-acceptance 2.86 (.63) 3.04 (.61)*** 2.72 (.66) 2.92 (.62)*** seeking help to avoid violence 2.88 (.35) 2.82 (.40)*** 2.80 (.43) 2.73 (.47)** school protective factors no verbally aggressive teachers 3.65 (.46) 3.53 (.56)*** 3.52 (.54) 3.38 (.64)*** close relationship to teachers 2.93 (.62) 2.85 (.67)*** 2.80 (.65) 2.77 (.71)ns acceptance by peers at school 1.65 (.68) 1.65 (.69)ns 1.79 (.73) 1.83 (.73)ns school climate 2.59 (.70) 2.58 (.77)ns 2.50 (.71) 2.45 (.76)ns note: * = p < .05, ** = p < .01, *** = p < .001., ns = non-significant analysis results of stage 3: identifying resilience in the family burden sample as noted above, three resilience conditions – “resilient”, “near-resilient”, and “nonresilient” – were created in order to classify respondents who were exposed to family violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 399 (n = 1,644). of that sample, 510 (31.0%) students were coded as resilient, 466 (28.3%) as nearresilient, and 668 (40.6%) as non-resilient. it is noteworthy from the outset that only one-third of the adolescents who experienced family violence could be coded as resilient. this suggests that family violence creates a resilience barrier with a huge magnitude. our data yielded some slight gender differences on resilience status (chi-square = 11.877, df = 2, n = 1,644, p < .01.). that difference in significance is due to the higher number of girls (35.3%) than boys (27.4%) in the resilient group and the lower prevalence of girls (37.9%) than boys (43.0%) in non-resilient group. however, because of the low cramer’s v = 0.0852 the gender difference should not be considered to be a robust predictor of the resilience status. interestingly, gender does not help to distinguish membership in the near-resilient group, as the number for both genders is the same (26.8% for girls, 29.7% for boys). cross-national comparisons of self-reported resilience yielded no significant differences among the four national samples for girls for the conditions “resilient vs. near-resilient” for girls (chi-square = 1,648, df = 3, n = 470, p > .05) or for boys (chi-square = 0.217, df = 3, n = 506, p > .05). also non-significant were the differences among the four national samples for girls for the condition “near-resilient vs. non-resilient” (chi-square =3,594, df = 3, n = 490, p > .05). the only significant difference that emerged from our comparison was for boys in the german and austrian sample (chi-square = 12.087, df = 3, n = 644, p < .01), such that austrian males reported non-resilience more frequently (54.6%) than german males (37.9%). none of the slovenian or spanish male sub-samples differed from each other or from the german or austrian samples (see table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 400 table 3 the resilience variable by gender and country within the family burden sample (n=1,644) total sample n (%) austria n (%) germany n (%) slovenia n (%) spain n (%) girls, resilience status 757 (100%) 70 (9.23%) 515 (68.03%) 85 (11.23%) 87 (11.49%) resilient 267 (35.3%) 24 (34.3%) 171 (33.2%) 40 (47.1%) 32 (36.8%) near-resilient 203 (26.8%) 16 (22.9%) 138 (26.8%) 23 (27.1%) 26 (29.9%) non-resilient 287 (37.9%) 30 (42.9%) 206 (40.0%) 22 (25.9%) 29 (33.3%) boys, resilience status 887 (100%) 108 (12.17%) 559 (63.02%) 90 (10.15%) 130 (14.65%) resilient 243 (27.4%) 25 (23.1%) 166 (29.7%) 21 (23.3%) 31 (23.8%) near-resilient 263 (29.7%) 24 (22.2%) 181 (32.4%) 24 (26.7%) 34 (26.2%) non-resilient 381 (43.0%) 59 (54.6%) 212 (37.9%) 45 (50.0%) 65 (50.0%) analysis results of stage 4: identifying resilience patterns in the fourth analytic stage, our objective was to examine the gender-specific patterns of the predictors that are relevant for the differences between our three levels of resilience (“resilient”, “ near-resilient”, “non-resilient”) in the family-burden sample. in order to determine these patterns, computed multinomial logistic regressions for the female and male adolescents in our samples were conducted separately. by first testing the inter-correlations of all independent variables by gender we assured that no multi-collinearity problems existed in our analysis because the highest inter-correlation was r = .528. bivariate correlations between each of the variables are reported by gender in table 4. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 401 table 4 gender-specific inter-correlations of all observed variables of the family-burden sample n = 1,644 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1. physical aggression against peers 1 .133 ** .321** .163** .364** .153** -.179** -.081* .008 .376** .446** -.219 ** .023 -.107** 2. depression .223** 1 .211** .254** .175** .407** -.528** -.354** -.468 ** -.144** .182** -.192 ** .374** -.158** 3. witnessing physical spousal abuse .479 ** .193** 1 .384** .239** .165** -.144** -.155** -.024 .108** .218** -.115 ** .046 -.040 4. witnessing verbal spousal abuse .301 ** .249** .499** 1 .081* .324** -.227** -.119** -.084 * -.081* .118** -.090 * .056 -.015 5. physical abuse by parents .492 ** .277** .396** .233** 1 .229** -.135** -.096** -.070 .161** .187** -.121 ** .126** -.036 6. inconsistent parenting .140 ** .313** .180** .353** .233** 1 -.311** -.280** -.324 ** -.092* .208** -.202 ** .232** -.195** 7. emotional selfcontrol -.116 ** -.453** -.100** -.200** -.064 -.242** 1 .228** .215** .209** .194** .184** -.161** .173** 8. optimistic future view -.143 ** -.378** -.193** -.250** -.156** -.292** .267** 1 .386** .067 .175** .182** -.206** .105** 9. self-acceptance -.059 -.429** -.103** -.126** -.113** -.286** .139** .434** 1 -.035 .061 .173** -.362** .109** 10. seeking help to avoid violence -.360 ** -.154** -.225** -.177** -.168** -.088** .112** .073* .066 1 .278** .124** -.024 .063 11. no verbally aggressive teachers -.464 ** -.227** -.331** -.260** -.283** -.260** .200** .199** .087** .319** 1 .489** -.015 .116** 12. close relationship to teachers -.269 ** -.096** -.114** -.146** -.153** -.174** .122** .126** .113** .133** .404** 1 -.061 .113** 13. acceptance by peers at school .129 ** .428** .182** .139** .325** .244** -.199** -.235** -.373 ** .000 -.090** -.033 1 -.217 ** 14. school climate -.132** -.159** -.167** -.115** -.101** -.174** .206** .117** .066* .101** .251** .120** -.200** 1 note. girls’ values above diagonal, boys’ values below diagonal. * p < .05, ** p < .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 402 model 1: intensity of familial strains as predictors of the three resilience levels in the first model we tested the intensity of familial strain predictors (witnessing physical spousal abuse, witnessing verbal spousal abuse, physical abuse by parents, inconsistent parenting) in relation to the three resilience levels. the family model yielded a reliable explanatory value for predicting the specific resilience levels (the prediction strength is reported in % nagelkerke) and is robust in the girls (24.1% nagelkerke) as well as in the boys (21.3% nagelkerke) sample (see table 5). table 5 gender-specific pseudo-r-square of model 1 “intensity of familial strains” pseudo-r-quadrat female cox und snell .214 nagelkerke .241 mcfadden .111 male cox und snell .188 nagelkerke .213 mcfadden .097 the prediction strength of the intensity of familial strains on the specific resilience levels are conclusive (see table 6): in comparison to the resilient students the probability (see table 6) for being near-resilient for both genders is significantly predicted by the amount of experienced “inconsistent parenting” (girls or = 2.17; boys or = 1.64). additionally for boys, a higher amount of “witnessing physical spousal abuse” predicts a 2.12 times higher probability that they will be found in the near resilience group rather than resilience group. the non-resilience level is best explained for both genders by the same three indicators. the probability, detected as odds ratio “or”, to be found on the non-resilient than on the resilient level was far higher for girls and for boys for the experiences of “witnessing physical spousal abuse” (girls or = 3.32; boys or = 3.28), “physical abuse by parents” (girls or = 3.24; boys or = 3.61), and for “inconsistent parenting” (girls or = 2.96; boys or = 1.83). with model 1 we have established that the number and amount of family strains, that is, the experience and levels of witnessing physical spousal abuse”, “physical abuse by parents,” “witnessing verbal spousal abuse”, and “inconsistent parenting” are significantly predictive of the resilience level for adolescents of both genders. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 403 table 6 gender-specific multinomial logistic regression: parameter estimates of model 1 “intensity of familial strains” samples resilience levela b se wald statistic or female near-resilient intercept -2.77*** .59 21.86 witnessing physical spousal abuse .17 .31 .30 1.18 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .05 .08 .33 1.05 physical abuse by parents .48 .28 2.90 1.63 inconsistent parenting .77*** .15 24.45 2.17 non-resilient intercept -5.57*** .57 95.22 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.20*** .27 19.54 3.32 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .08 .08 .95 1.08 physical abuse by parents 1.17*** .26 20.06 3.24 inconsistent parenting 1.08*** .15 49.72 2.96 male near-resilient intercept -1.85** .54 11.82 witnessing physical spousal abuse .75** .27 7.43 2.12 witnessing verbal spousal abuse -.13 .09 1.95 .87 physical abuse by parents .24 .25 .88 1.27 inconsistent parenting .49** .15 10.30 1.64 non-resilient intercept -4.32*** .52 68.16 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.18*** .26 20.43 3.28 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .07 .08 .69 1.07 physical abuse by parents 1.28*** .22 31.99 3.61 inconsistent parenting .60*** .15 16.26 1.83 note: * p < .05.; ** p < .01.; *** p < .001. areference resilience level category is “resilient” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 404 model 2: intensity of familial strains & individual protective factors as predictors of the three resilience levels in model 2 we added individual protective factors to the family strains as predictors of the three resilience levels. with an overall prediction value of 39.8% nagelkerke for girls, and 36.5% nagelkerke for boys, the family strains and individual protective factors combined model also works very well for both genders (see table 7). as the values of the pseudo-r²values show, adding individual protective factors to the family strains substantially increases the explanatory strength of the model for both genders (∆r2 girls 15.7% nagelkerke and for boys ∆r2 15.2% nagelkerke). table 7 gender-specific pseudo-r-square of model 2 “intensity of familial strains & individual protective factors” pseudo-r-quadrat ∆r 2 change to model 1, the “intensity of familial strains” female cox und snell .353 .139 nagelkerke .398 .157 mcfadden .200 .089 male cox und snell .323 .135 nagelkerke .365 .152 mcfadden .181 .084 in model 2, (see table 8), as in model 1, higher scores in “inconsistent parenting” (girls or = 1.80; boys or = 1.49), and “witnessing physical spousal abuse” just for boys (boys or = 2.13) were detected as predictive of the near-resilient in comparison to the resilient level for both genders. also predictive of the near resilience than the resilience level for both genders were lower scores on the personal indicators “emotional self-control” (girls or = .47; boys or = .53), and “seeking help to avoid violence” (girls or = .39; boys or = .29). additionally in model 2, mostly the same indicators as in model 1 were found to be predictive for the difference between resilient and non-resilient level for both genders. thus for both genders, the higher their scores of “witnessing physical spousal abuse” (girls or = 3.16; boys or = 3.28) and experiencing “physical abuse by parents” (girls or = 3.37; boys or = 3.91) the higher the probability that they were found in the “non-resilient” group. also for both genders, lower self-reported scores for all four individual protective indicators were predictive for non-resilience a decrease in “emotional self-control” (girls or = .24; boys or = .31), “optimistic future view” (girls or = .55; boys or = .69), “self-acceptance”(girls or = .45; boys or = .67), and “seeking help to avoid violence” (girls or = .28; boys or = .11) lead to a significantly higher probability that respondents would be non-resilient rather than resilient. additionally, but only for girls, an increase of “inconsistent parenting” (girls or = 1.81) was a more significant predictor of location on the non-resilient than on the resilient level. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 405 table 8 gender-specific multinomial logistic regression: parameter estimates of model 2 “intensity of familial strains & individual protective factors” samples resilience levela b se wald statistic or female near-resilient intercept 3.39* 1.33 6.44 witnessing physical spousal abuse .16 .31 .26 1.17 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .01 .08 .0! 1.00 physical abuse by parents .45 .29 2.45 1.58 inconsistent parenting .58** .17 11.79 1.80 emotional self-control -.74*** .17 17.18 .47 optimistic future view -.24 .17 2.03 .78 self-acceptance -.15 .18 .75 .85 seeking help -.92** .31 8.83 .39 non-resilient intercept 6.12*** 1.34 20.81 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.15*** .28 16.29 3.16 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .03 .09 .11 1.03 physical abuse by parents 1.21*** .28 18.17 3.37 inconsistent parenting .59** .17 11.43 1.81 emotional self-control -1.40*** .19 50.90 .24 optimistic future view -.58** .18 10.47 .55 self-acceptance -.79*** .18 18.44 .45 seeking help -1.24*** .31 15.69 .28 male near-resilient intercept 3.93** 1.34 8.53 witnessing physical spousal abuse .75** .27 7.38 2.13 witnessing verbal spousal abuse -.18 .09 3.33 .83 physical abuse by parents .28 .25 1.22 1.32 inconsistent parenting .40* .16 5.88 1.49 emotional self-control -.62*** .15 16.71 .53 optimistic future view -.25 .17 2.11 .77 self-acceptance .11 .17 .43 1.12 seeking help -1.23*** .33 13.55 .29 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 406 non-resilient intercept 7.67*** 1.33 32.81 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.19*** .27 18.96 3.28 witnessing verbal spousal abuse -.03 .09 .10 .96 physical abuse by parents 1.36*** .23 32.97 3.91 inconsistent parenting .32 .17 3.50 1.37 emotional self-control -1.16*** .16 50.35 .31 optimistic future view -.36* .17 4.25 .69 self-acceptance -.39* .18 4.55 .67 seeking help -2.20*** .32 45.10 .11 note: * p < .05.; ** p < .01.; *** p < .001. areference resilience level category is “resilient” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 407 in summary, for model 2, the multinomial regression shows that for both genders (table 8) family strains and the personal protective factors seem to be more significant for predicting membership in the “non-resilient” and “resilient” groups than for predicting membership in and differences between the “near-resilient” and “resilient” groups. additionally, we detected that lower levels for all four personal protective factors predicted membership in the non-resilient group rather than in the near-resilient group for both girls and boys. this suggests that the low levels of or the absence of these four personal protective factors makes it more difficult for young people (female or male) to remain resilient when faced with family violence. model 3: intensity of familial strains, individual, and school protective factors as predictors of the three resilience levels in model 3, the addition of the school protective factors to the family strain factors and individual protective factors resulted in only very low additional predictive value for the resilience level location of both genders (see table 9): for girls the pseudo-r²-change of model 3 to model 2 is 3.1% nagelkerke, and for boys 2.8% nagelkerke. table 9 gender-specific pseudo-r-square of model 2 “intensity of familial strains, individual & school protective factors” pseudo-r-quadrat ∆r2 change to model 2, the “familial strains & individual protective” female cox und snell .380 .027 nagelkerke .429 .031 mcfadden .220 .020 male cox und snell .347 .024 nagelkerke .393 .028 mcfadden .198 .017 model 3 generated an almost exact replication of the indicators already detected in model 2 (see table 10) for membership in the near-resilient and non-resilient groups for both girls and boys. specifically for the girls, higher levels of “inconsistent parenting” (girls or = 1.67) were significantly connected to membership in the near-resilient rather than the resilient group, and in the non-resilient rather than to the resilient group (girls or = 1.59). also, only for the girls, lower scores for the items “optimistic future view” (girls or = .60), and “selfacceptance“ (girls or = .47) were significantly predictive of membership in the non-resilient rather than the resilient group. interestingly, for girls, higher levels of “acceptance by peers at school” (girls or = 1.51) were significantly predictive of membership in the non-resilient rather than the resilient group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 408 further, model 3 showed that specifically for the boys, higher levels of “witnessing physical spousal abuse” (boys or = 2.01), and “witnessing verbal spousal abuse” (boys or = 1.25) were significant for membership in the near-resilient rather than the resilient group. as well, for both genders, location on the near-resilient level in comparison to the resilient level was predicted by lower levels of “emotional self-control” (girls or = .48; boys or = .57),”seeking help to avoid violence” (girls or = .43; boys or = .32), and “no verbally aggressive teachers” (girls or = .54; boys or = .44). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 409 table 10 gender-specific multinomial logistic regression: parameter estimates of model 3 “intensity of familial strains, individual, and school protective factors” samples resilience levela b se wald statistic or female near-resilient intercept 5.16** 1.64 9.81 witnessing physical spousal abuse .10 .32 .11 1.11 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .02 .09 .08 1.02 physical abuse by parents .32 .29 1.15 1.37 inconsistent parenting .51** .17 8.56 1.67 emotional self-control -.71*** .18 15.47 .48 optimistic future view -.18 .17 1.06 .83 self-acceptance -.11 .18 .35 .89 seeking help -.84** .31 6.99 .43 no verbally aggressive teachers -.61* .26 5.35 .54 close relationship to teachers -.11 .18 .37 .89 acceptance by peers at school .22 .16 1.98 1.25 school climate .04 .15 .09 1.04 non-resilient intercept 9.15*** 1.69 29.26 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.06*** .29 12.83 2.89 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .06 .09 .48 1.06 physical abuse by parents 1.05*** .29 13.13 2.87 inconsistent parenting .46* .18 6.52 1.59 emotional self-control -1.38*** .20 46.47 .25 optimistic future view -.49** .18 7.15 .60 self-acceptance -.73*** .19 14.25 .47 seeking help -1.05** .32 10.67 .34 no verbally aggressive teachers -1.22*** .27 20.57 .29 close relationship to teachers .13 .19 .48 1.14 acceptance by peers at school .41* .16 6.02 1.51 school climate -.10 .16 .43 .89 male near-resilient intercept 6.88*** 1.61 18.07 witnessing physical spousal abuse .70* .28 6.14 2.01 witnessing verbal spousal abuse .21* .10 4.62 1.25 physical abuse by parents .27 .26 1.11 1.32 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 410 inconsistent parenting .33 .17 3.79 1.39 emotional self-control -.56*** .15 12.66 .57 optimistic future view -.22 .17 1.56 .80 self-acceptance .10 .19 .31 1.11 seeking help -1.11** .34 10.65 .32 no verbally aggressive teachers -.80** .23 11.37 .44 close relationship to teachers -.01 .15 .01 .99 acceptance by peers at school .01 .16 .01 1.01 school climate -.13 .13 1.00 .87 non-resilient intercept 11.43*** 1.63 48.83 witnessing physical spousal abuse 1.10*** .27 15.80 3.02 witnessing verbal spousal abuse -.08 .10 .65 .92 physical abuse by parents 1.27*** .24 26.32 3.56 inconsistent parenting .21 .17 1.46 1.24 emotional self-control -1.06*** .16 39.75 .34 optimistic future view -.31 .18 2.97 .72 self-acceptance -.37 .19 3.59 .68 seeking help -2.04*** .33 36.86 .12 no verbally aggressive teachers -1.06*** .24 19.62 .34 close relationship to teachers -.17 .16 1.19 .83 acceptance by peers at school .12 .16 .55 1.13 school climate -.03 .14 .06 .96 note: * p < .05.; ** p < .01.; *** p < .001. areference resilience level category is “resilient” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 411 finally, model 3 (see table 10) also showed that for both genders, membership in the non-resilient group vs. the resilient group is significantly correlated to higher scores for “witnessing physical spousal abuse” (girls or = 2.89; boys or = 3.02), “physical abuse by parents” (girls or = 2.87; boys or = 3.56), and lower scores for “emotional self-control” (girls or = .25; boys or = .34), and ”seeking help to avoid violence” (girls or = .34; boys or = .12). additionally, the analysis generated by model 3 showed that for both genders lower levels of “no verbally aggressive teachers” (girls or = .29; boys or = .34) distinguishes for membership in the non-resilient group than in the resilient group. overall the multinomial regression showed that for both genders (table 10) lower selfreported scores for family strains and higher scores for individual protective indicators seem to contribute more significantly to resilience than school protective factors. accordingly, this suggests that when adolescent girls and boys are highly burdened by family strains and, at the same time, have few if any personal resources, the school-related protective factors that we examined in our study are not sufficient to counter these negative influences. for both genders, the intensity of familial strains was especially predictive for membership in the non-resilient and resilient groups. this also holds for the protective effects of individual factors. still, overall, given the significance of the contribution of lower levels of family risk factors to higher levels of resilience despite having experienced family violence, we underline the necessity of including especially family violence prevention as a keystone for all programmes that aim to build and support resilience in adolescents. discussion as results showed there is reason to be concerned, even alarmed: of the 5,149 participating adolescents with an average age of 14.5 years, 1,644 or 31.9% reported experiencing violence in their families with 23% reporting physical parental abuse and 17% reporting witnessing physical spousal abuse. interestingly, this prevalence of family violence in four european union countries is very similar to prevalence levels found in the united states, where almost 28% of adolescents in the u.s. national longitudinal study of adolescent health reported physical abuse by caregivers during childhood (hussey et al., 2006). consistent with the findings of herrenkohl et al. (2003), sousa et al. (2011), and yates et al. (2003), we detected a robust significant overlap between the two reported family violence indicators. we conclude therefore with kassis, artz, and moldenhauer (2013), that our levels approach to understanding resilience allows us to see that as the amount of violence exposure increases, the number of participants who remain resilient declines and the quality of the resilience becomes more precarious. our findings suggest that for both genders, in order to promote resilience, controlling family strains and risks is of greater importance than promoting protective personal or school factors because the weight of the intensity of familial risk and strain predictors (witnessing physical spousal abuse, witnessing verbal spousal abuse, physical abuse by parents, and inconsistent parenting) best predicts resilience status even though protective factors still play a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 412 significant role. because of the sample size, we decided not to work at the subsample level, so the specific role of poly-victimization (finkelhor et al., 2007) could not be examined. more research on co-occurrence and how this relates to the resilience continuum would be of great use in expanding our understanding of resilience and our new model. as well, a deeper qualitative understanding of the specific family situations in which violence occurs, one that examines the levels of resilience that we suggest, would be extremely relevant. these kinds of insights are likely best achieved through case studies (artz, 1998). our study supports khanlou and wray’s (2014) findings that in order to promote resilience, controlling risks is a central strategy. when compared with resilient students, for both genders, the probability of near resilience is significantly predicted by the amount of experienced “inconsistent parenting”. additionally, a higher amount of “witnessing physical spousal abuse” contributes to a higher probability that boys will be found at the near resilience level rather than at the resilient level. further, location at the non-resilience level is best explained for both genders by the same three indicators: “witnessing physical spousal abuse”, “physical abuse by parents”, and “inconsistent parenting”. thus, for both males and females, the higher the levels of exposure to these negative experiences, the lower the resilience levels. on the positive side of the equation, when we consider individual protective factors, for both genders, higher levels of the personal indicators – that is, “emotional self-control” and ”seeking help to avoid violence” – are predictive of location at the resilient rather than the near-resilient level. as well, for both genders, lower self-reported scores for all four individual protective factors were significant for non-resilience such that decreases in “emotional selfcontrol”, “optimistic future view”, “self-acceptance”, and “seeking help to avoid violence” were predictive of significantly a higher probability that respondents would be non-resilient rather than resilient. our finding that a positive self-concept is highly predictive for resilience supports the work of brownfield and thompson (2005). school protective factors added only a low additional predictive value for assessing resilience levels for both genders. interestingly, for girls, higher levels of “acceptance by peers at school” were significant for membership in the non-resilient rather than the resilient group. for boys, lower levels of exposure to verbally aggressive teachers were predictive of their location at the near-resilient level rather than the non-resilient level, but the effect did not contribute to location at the resilient level. although these findings are somewhat supportive of those of byrne and lurigio (2008), and desjardins and leadbeater (2011) – that especially for adolescents from violent families good relationship with teachers may be helpful resources – our findings suggest that we should not expect positive teacher interactions to erase the negative familial impacts. overall, the multinomial regression showed that for both genders lower self-reported scores for exposure to violence in the family and inconsistent parenting and higher scores for individual protective indicators seem to contribute more significantly to resilience than school protective factors. accordingly, this suggests that when adolescent girls and boys are highly burdened by exposure to family violence and poor parenting and, at the same time, have few if any personal resources, the school-related protective factors that we examined in our study are not sufficient to counter these negative influences. the level of familial difficulties was for both international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 413 genders especially predictive for membership in the non-resilient and resilient groups. this also holds for the protective effects of individual factors. still, overall, given the significance of the contribution of lower levels of family risk factors to higher levels of resilience despite having experienced family violence, we underline the necessity of including especially family violence prevention as a keystone for all programmes that aim to build and support resilience in adolescents. the cross-sectional character of this study implies that we make no conclusions about causalities, and that are results speak only to resilience factors. while not engaging in the ongoing methodological and philosophical discussion about whether causality really exists in social sciences (mackie, 1974, 1965/1993; maruyama, 1997; waldmann & hagmayer, 2006), we still note that longitudinal studies (sousa et al., 2011; spano, rivera, & bolland, 2010) have concluded that there is a reciprocal relationship between violence in adolescence and parental physical abuse. these “coercive cycles” (leadbeater, boone, sangster, & mathieson, 2006) seem to be well established and our work confirms that and adds to the discussion the notion that different forms of family abuse can also have different effects on the resilience level of the adolescents who are subjected to such abuse. as a next step, we believe that we need to replicate our model both across several more e.u. countries and also in the english-speaking industrialized world in order to test its validity, and hope that in the meantime, we have made a good beginning with our revision of existing approaches to understanding resilience. ultimately, we conclude that the level of family violence burden (finkelhor et al., 2007; kassis et al., 2013), and the accumulation of risk factors (kassis et al., 2013; loeber, slot, & stouthamer-loeber, 2008) are central to resilience status and should therefore be the prime targets for prevention and intervention. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 388–420 414 references alder, c., & worrall, a. 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(1997). gewalt in der schule auch von lehrern. empirische pädagogik, 11(2), 257–274. leadbeater, b. j. r., & way, n. (eds.). (2007). urban girls revisited: building strengths. new york: new york university press. liebenberg, l., & ungar, m. (2009). researching resilience. toronto: university of toronto press. loeber, r., slot, w., & stouthamer-loeber, m. (2008). a cumulative developmental model of risk and promotive factors. in r. loeber, h. m. koot, n. w. slot, p. h. van der laan, & m. hoeve (eds.), tomorrow’s criminals: the development of child delinque... longshore, d., chang, e., hsieh, s., & messina, n. (2004). self-control and social bonds: a combined control perspective on deviance. crime & delinquency, 50(4), 542–564. mayer, s., fuhrer, u., & uslucan, h.-h. (2005). akkulturation und intergenerationale transmission von gewalt in familien türkischer herkunft. zeitschrift für psychologie in erziehung und unterricht, 168–185. patterson, g. r., capaldi, d., & bank, l. (1991). an early starter model for predicting delinquency. in d. p. pepler & k. h. rubin (eds.), the development and treatment of childhood aggression (pp. 139–168). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum. phythian, k., keane, c., & krull, c. (2008). family structure and parental behavior: identifying the sources of adolescent self-control. western criminology review, 9(2), 73–87. prinstein, m. j., & cillessen, a. h. n. (2003). forms and functions of adolescent peer aggression associated with high levels of peer status. merrill-palmer quarterly, 49(3), 310–342. rutter, m. (2007). resilience, competence, and coping. child abuse & neglect, 31(3), 205–209. sousa, c., herrenkohl, t. i., moylan, c. a., tajima, e. a., klika, j. b., herrenkohl, r. c., et al. (2011). longitudinal study on the effects of child abuse and children’s exposure to domestic violence, parent-child attachments, and antisocial behavi... spano, r., rivera, c., & bolland, j. m. (2010). are chronic exposure to violence and chronic violent behavior closely related developmental processes during adolescence? criminal justice and behavior, 37(10), 1160–1179. sprott, j., & doob, a. (2004). youth justice in canada. in m. tonry & a. doob (eds.), crime and justice: a review of the research (vol. 31, pp. 185–242). chicago, il: university of chicago press. ungar, m. (2008). putting resilience theory into action: five principles for intervention. in l. liebenberg & m. ungar (eds.), resilience in action (pp. 17–36). toronto, on: university of toronto press. van der put, c., van der laan, p., stams, g.-j., deković, m., & hoeve, m. (2011). promotive factors during adolescence: are there changes in impact and prevalence during adolescence and how does this relate to risk factors? international journal of c... waldmann, m. r., & hagmayer, y. (2006). categories and causality: the neglected direction. cognitive psychology, 53(1), 27–58. yeung, r., & leadbeater, b. j. (2010). adults make a difference: the protective effects of parent and teacher emotional support on emotional and behavioral problems of peer victimized adolescents. journal of community psychology, 38(1), 80–98. endnotes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717850 caring for “parentless” children: an exploration of work stressors and resources as experienced by caregivers in children’s homes in ghana ernest darkwah, maxwell asumeng, and marguerite daniel abstract: the experience of stress by workers in any work environment has negative impacts on employee health and productivity. however, work resources are known to have possible neutralizing impacts on the negative effects of stress depending on the availability of those resources and the extent to which employees are able to identify and utilize them. this study explores this stress–resource relationship and its implications in a work context where the lives of vulnerable children depend on the wellbeing and productivity of their employed caregivers. qualitative exploratory techniques were used to investigate the sources and nature of stressors experienced by caregivers and the extent to which caregivers identify and utilize resources available in that work environment. participants comprised 41 caregivers from 2 children’s homes in ghana. it emerged that aspects of the work environment that were identified as stressors also tended to be identified as resources for caregivers. these included the children, the work environment, institution–community relations, and relationships between caregivers and their own families. caregiver faith and intrinsic motivation stood out as the most frequently reported of the resources upon which caregivers drew to cope with their jobs. keywords: children’s homes, caregivers, stressors, resources, parentless children, workplace stress ernest darkwah (the corresponding author) is a phd candidate in the department of health promotion and development, university of bergen, p.o. box 7807, 5020 bergen, norway. email: ernest.darkwah@student.uib.no maxwell asumeng is a senior lecturer and occupational psychologist in the department of psychology, university of ghana, legon-accra, ghana. email: masumeng@ug.edu.gh marguerite daniel is associate professor in the department of health promotion and development, university of bergen, bergen, norway. email: marguerite.daniel@ uib.no http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717850 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 60 in ghana, children’s homes (chs) are residential institutions that provide care for children without parental care (cwpc). described as a last-resort alternative care measure for such children (department of social welfare, 2015; manful, takyi, & gambra, 2015), chs typically take cwpc into residential care and employ caregivers to assume parental care. caregivers’ responsibilities include feeding and clothing the children, as well as providing emotional, social, and psychological support (bettman, mortensen, & akuoko, 2015; sos children’s villages international, 2010). the caregiver’s ability to carry out socioemotional and psychological support responsibilities is crucial for the child’s cognitive and physical development (groark, muhamedrahimov, palmov, nikiforova, & mccall, 2005; johnson et al., 2010; richter, 2004). in the ghanaian context, caregivers may face many difficulties in carrying out these responsibilities, including a high child-caregiver ratio, poor institutional facilities, and poor work resources (castillo, sarver, bettmann, mortensen, & akuoko, 2012). with some of the children in residence having been previously exposed to trauma, including abuse, maltreatment, and death of parents, caregivers face a stressful job in “parenting” these “parentless” children. when child care workers are under stress, there can be negative impacts for both the workers and the children. the national institute for occupational safety and health (niosh; 1999a, 1999b) defines workplace stress as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of a job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker. the international labour organization (ilo; 2012) notes that stress in the workplace has the potential to inflict negative consequences on employee health and wellbeing, reducing productivity and thus impeding organizational success. in chs, the work outcomes and productivity of employee caregivers and their institutions can have direct consequences for the health and welfare of the children in their care. the work stress–resource interface and the institutional care work environment work stress has been recognized for some time as the most common risk factor in today’s workplaces (chenoweth, 1998), with a wide range of negative physiological and psychosocial consequences, such as cardiovascular disease, loss of concentration, burnout, emotional exhaustion, aggression, and incivility (gacovic & tetrick, 2003; michie, 2002; spector, fox, & domagalski, 2006; torkelson, holm, bäckström, & schad, 2016). in the human care services, reported negative effects of work stress include caregiver ambivalence, depression, anxiety, agitation, and caregiver–client tensions (groark et al., 2005; wieclaw, agerbo, mortensen, & bonde, 2006;). such consequences could be particularly worrying in cwpc care institutions since the cwpc care work environment is one in which employee work outcomes have direct consequences for the children. however, researchers have revealed that the availability of resources in work environments has the potential to reduce the harmful physiological and psychosocial effects of stressors on workers (see bakker & demerouti, 2007; huhtala, feldt, lämsä, mauno, & kinnunen, 2011; hyvönen, feldt, salmela-aro, kinnunen, & mäkikangas, 2009). resources are physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that reduce job demands international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 61 and associated physiological and psychological costs and that are functional in achieving work goals and stimulating personal growth, learning, and development (schaufeli & bakker, 2004). the documented relationship between stressors and resources is confirmed by the health promotion theory of salutogenesis, which refers to resources as a range of factors (biological or personal, material, psychosocial, etc.) that make it possible for individuals to view their lives as consistent, structured, and understandable, and therefore to better manage tension and stress (antonovsky, 1993). by focusing on health rather than disease, the theory takes a positive approach to promoting health (eriksson & lindström, 2008; hanson, 2007). it builds on popular work stress–resource theories such as the job demand–resources model (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti, bakker, nachreiner, & schaufeli, 2001). it argues that the availability of resources in any environment, and the ability of individuals to identify and utilize those resources, are key to empowering them to comprehend, manage, and make meaning of their situations — to develop a sense of coherence (soc). the soc is a central concept within the theory of salutogenesis, which argues that the extent of the soc people have in a given situation determines the degree to which their present stress will affect their future health trajectories. scholars who utilize the salutogenesis theory regard the soc as having three key components: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. comprehensibility is the extent to which one believes that the world is understandable and that a sense of order can be sustained even in unknown circumstances; manageability is the extent to which one feels that one has adequate resources to deal with life’s stressors; and meaningfulness is the extent to which one believes that things make sense and that what people do in life is worth the energy they invest in it (antonovsky, 1993). together, these three components influence the extent to which people manage to remain healthy despite stress in their environments. many workplace interventions focus on a disease prevention approach by trying to remove stressors at work, whereas a health promotion (salutogenic) approach to addressing work stress would strive to foster the growth of each employee’s soc, promoting health despite the stress. the work stress–resource relationship and the implications of this relationship for workers in diverse work environments have been well researched (bakker & demerouti, 2007; brauchli, jenny, füllemann, & bauer, 2015; de jong, le blanc, peeters, & noordam, 2008; schaufeli & taris, 2014). a considerable amount of such research comes from the care industry, but the particular work setting of residential institutions that provide care for cpwc is conspicuously absent from this body of research. instead, research in the institutional cwpc care environment has largely focused on the children and the various ways in which their lives and development are affected by that environment (see the st. petersburg–usa orphanage research team, 2008; freidus, 2010; groark et al., 2005; johnson et al., 2010; perry, sigal, boucher, & paré, 2006; trout, hagaman, casey, reid, & epstein, 2008; yendork & somhlaba, 2015). this research has often been critical of caregivers, sometimes resulting in negative public rhetoric against them (see anas, 2010, 2015). there is general agreement that little is known and therefore little is being done about the work situations of institutional cwpc caregivers (castillo et al., 2012; pretorious, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 62 the dearth of research into how caregivers in cwpc care institutions experience their work constitutes a significant gap in the workplace health promotion and occupational health literature. inspired by the salutogenesis theoretical approach, this study explores the stress– resource experiences of caregivers in cwpc care institutions in ghana, and the implications of these experiences for their work and wellbeing. we interpret caregiver accounts of experiences at work in terms of the soc elements of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. objectives the objectives of this study were to: 1. explore the stressors in cwpc caregiving work as experienced by caregivers in chs in ghana. 2. investigate the resources available, as identified and utilized by caregivers doing cwpc care work in chs in ghana. methodology approach and study design because this study explores subjective caregiver lived experiences of care within the context of chs, the qualitative research approach with a phenomenological (descriptive and interpretative) design was used. compared to other methods, this approach and design gave us a better opportunity to probe the whys and hows of caregiver experiences of the phenomenon of care (cresswell, 2009; green & thorogood, 2014). participants and setting data were collected from 41 caregivers in two chs located in the greater accra and eastern regions of ghana, west africa. one of the participating institutions was owned and run by the government while the other was owned and run by a private, externally funded organization. participants were mainly core caregivers involved in providing day-to-day quasiparental care for the children. within their organizations, they were often called “mothers”, “fathers”, and “aunties”. other institutional staff such as managers, social workers, nurses, former institutional children, and educational workers also participated in the study. table 1 presents details of participant demographics. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 63 table 1 details of participant demographics item category number sex male 8 female 33 age range 25–35 5 36–45 5 46–55 22 56–58 9 education post-graduate 1 bachelor level 3 professional/vocational/diploma 11 middle school 26 work role manager/director 2 mother 22 father 1 assistant mother/auntie 7 former institutional child/volunteer 3 resident nurse 2 teacher 2 social worker 2 length of service 0–10 6 11–20 14 21–30 13 31–40 8 marital status single 8 married 14 divorced 12 widowed 7 data procedures data were collected in two phases. the first phase took place from june to august 2015 and the second in march and april 2016. data collection techniques involved participant observations, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews. participant observation the participant observation technique was used in order to observe caregivers in their natural work environments and record first-hand information and reflections regarding caregiver handling of various work situations in our field notes and journals respectively. the strategy also offered us the opportunity to interact informally with caregivers at work; this enabled us to develop a rapport with some of the workers that made them comfortable enough to share their work experiences with us. the observing author stayed at each institution for four weeks helping children with homework and helping clean the compounds while interacting with caregivers as they went about their daily work activities. during data analysis, consistency and trustworthiness were improved by triangulation of the total data set as we sought corroboration between these field notes and the data gathered from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 64 focus group discussions the participant observations were followed by focus group discussions in each institution. discussants were recruited through friendly interactions during the participant observations. there were 16 participants in total, all of them mothers and aunties in their respective institutions. the mothers were women in charge of home units and the aunties were assistants to mothers. sample themes for discussion included: “what are the work roles of a caregiver in this institution?”, “what stresses you in this job?”, and “what resources do you rely on in handling your work roles?”. using this data strategy enabled us to obtain information about the shared experiences and norms of the caregiving work. the discussions also brought out corroborations and contradictions in experiences within that environment, highlighting the individuality or subjectivity of the experience of care. this enriched our data as it enabled us to obtain detailed descriptions of the care work and the subjective stressors and resources inherent in that work for individual workers. in-depth interviews in order to increase the multiplicity of data sources, additional data were collected through in-depth, one-on-one interviews with participating caregivers selected through both the participant observations and focus group discussions. the interviews provided an opportunity to elicit information that might have been missed during the two previous data collection processes; moreover, they gave us the third set of data needed for triangulation. a total of 32 interviews were conducted at times and places convenient for the participants. seven of the interviewees had been part of the focus group discussions. interviews lasted an average of 1 hour and 43 minutes; the interview language was either english or twi (a local ghanaian language), depending on the preference of the participant. ethics ethical clearance was obtained from norwegian social science data services (now the norwegian centre for research data) before data collection began. additional permissions were obtained from the department of social welfare of the government of ghana and the authorities in charge of the institutions where data were collected. before participant recruitment began, the study, its purpose, participant rights to withdrawal, and rights to seek clarification were explained to all targeted participants. those who agreed to participate were given informed-consent forms to sign before being recruited for participation. audio recordings of all focus group discussions and interviews were made with the full written consent of the participants. data analysis we analyzed the data by first transcribing and translating the focus group discussions and interviews. a coding team consisting of three phd candidates and the lead author was formed, and each member separately coded transcripts using the nvivo 10 software. members then met to discuss the codes. coding disagreements were discussed thoroughly until consensus was reached. we then conducted a systematic network analysis of the data following attridesterling (2001). this process yielded basic, organizing, and global themes. the global themes in this case are stressors (see table 2) and resources (see table 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 65 table 2 thematic network analysis of data, global theme: stressors codes basic themes organizing themes children here challenge authority and refuse chores difficult children child-related stress children do not listen to anything we tell them children fight a lot children refuse errands and talk back at caregivers difficult to bond with children difficult care worker–child bonding children struggle to see us as parents paying equal attention to many children is difficult varying backgrounds of children makes it difficult work overload and no rest difficulty providing care job-related stress there is nothing about this job that is not stressful we have to supplement with our own pocket money we are powerless over the children; how can we raise them? no training to handle mentally ill children shift schedule is only on paper work ambiguity and poor routine caregiver–child ratio is 1:10 or more you can’t tell when you are going to close from work you can’t tell what you will be required to do on any day caregivers are rushed to hospital often poor employee health and safety institutional and work environment stress high blood pressure is on the rise among us light-headedness and dizziness are common experiences here our health is deteriorating and no one cares there is so much exhaustion here and no way out slips and falls are common experiences due to rush there is dissatisfaction and uncertainty about our pension work environment tensions and mistrust we have become sad and afraid employee mistrust and conflicts have become normal here fear of query for poor child dressing or lateness to school superiors reprimand caregivers in front of children we fear secret recordings by visitors the salary is nothing to write home about superiors betray us in the face of trouble you feel guilty of being bad parents following those laws confusion regarding child rights too much child rights spoil the children and make them difficult we are not allowed to be real parents we just follow the rules children here don’t know anything apart from their rights un training gives the children no sense of responsibility when we leave they are sleeping, when we come back they are sleeping tension with and alienation from own family work–family conflict and stress i feel the gap between my children and me widening our families feel abandoned i feel trapped i don’t know if i can mix up with family again as i used to family misperception and overexpectations family thinks institution is rich because white men are involved family expects more financial contributions from me families do not really understand our work they insult us for the children’s bad behaviour community apathy, suspicion, and mistrust communityrelated stress everybody just pays attention to the children not us nurses insult us when we send sick children to hospital i think they see us as child abusers they treat us like criminals negative community opinion and relations with care workers some say we just spoil the children and get paid for it donations have reduced, they think we are rich public opinion about us is demoralizing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 66 table 3 thematic network analysis of data, global theme: resources codes basic themes organizing themes children crack jokes and that relieves stress a little humour and stress relief from children children as a resource children dance and cheer we laugh together as a family older children help at home sometimes children are a resource prayers and support from former children some children are well-behaved and give ideas i just like children children are a source of inspiration seeing the children happy inspires me to work hard when my children excel, i forget the stress in the job my joy is in seeing the children grow and prosper we get things all right but we need more adequate job materials organizational resources when you need anything, you write a requisition and you get it if it’s available we receive adequate household money to buy things for the household they never let the children lack anything we get frequent training institutional support for workers officers assist us in this job sometimes social workers are here to provide support in times of difficulty we call on the director, a social worker the institution helps me get loans because i have a pay slip the institution has partner donors who provide resources for us donor support the office goes on air and to the banks to raise money during difficulty foreign organizations know this institution so they bring us things our thanks go to the donors, we work because of them when there is a family emergency, i rely on them to cover me worker-toworker support i am supervisor but i don’t sit down and watch them suffer, i join in mothers have a prayer team we share our joys and pains together sometimes because god watches over us, anytime i’m rushed to hospital, i come back alive religion as a resource personal resources god takes care of us i receive god’s blessings for doing this job god touches people to give me things when i am in need if you care for god’s children, your sins will be forgiven they did it to jesus some friends of mine pray with me for strength in this job family and friends my church sisters encourage me my own mother commends me all the time for doing this job my husband is proud of me, he calls these children his children you get some friends from the community encouraging you as long as i do this job, i have a comfortable place to live economic and social motivation there is prestige out there in working for this institution i have a salary, even if it is small this job helps me pay for my own children’s education some caregivers don’t have children so they came here to raise children for themselves difficulties are there but i am stronger individual characteristics i don’t let difficulties get to me they can say whatever they want, it won’t stop me my mother trained me to care for children this is my job, i’ve got to do it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 67 findings interesting findings reflecting stress–resource experiences that characterize the care work for workers in institutions for cwpc emerged through the analyses of the textual data. for clarity, these findings are presented here systematically in accordance with the basic, organizing, and global themes. stressors stress experiences recounted by caregivers in this context arose from many different aspects of the work and institutional environment. sources of stress ranged from stressors related to the children in residence, through stressors associated with worker-to-worker relationships, employer–employee relationships, and institutional rules and routine. other sources of stress were found in tensions in the relationships between caregivers and their biological families, and between caregivers and the communities within which their institutions are located. child-related stress: the children in residence were identified as a major source of stress by the caregivers. beyond the usual difficulties associated with parenting children that arise even in family homes, the caregivers seemed to perceive the residential children as particularly difficult to handle for a range of reasons: these children we are supposed to parent are not like normal, regular children. these ones are extra difficult to handle because they do not see you as their parent, and therefore can challenge your authority on any day.… they are government children, not yours. (mother, 54 years old) for some other caregivers, the difficulty in handling the children arises because they come from very different backgrounds: you see, these ones are not biological siblings, so they don’t share a bond … in that case they fight a lot.… look around, i have many children in this unit, i tell you, i defuse over 12 to 15 fights every day.… that leaves me exhausted after every working day. (mother, 48 years old). for another mother, the fights were not so much about lack of bonding; it was rather an ingroup versus out-group issue: you know, in this institution, the policy is that biological siblings must always be kept together … so, what you see happening is that occasionally, each set of siblings becomes a little “gang” defending themselves against the other “gangs”. that is trouble, sir, it is so much trouble. (mother, 51 years old) still other caregivers perceived the stress related to the children as stemming from the fact that the children have learnt about their rights and often take advantage of them to refuse chores and talk back to caregivers: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 68 what stresses me most about this job is when there is so much to be done in this house, and yet even the older children refuse to help with any chores.… in my own house, i could use my authority to get my children to do their chores … but here, for fear of infringing on their rights, you just have to leave them and do everything yourself.… it’s not easy here. (assistant mother, 43 years old) job-related stress: caregivers also recounted experiencing stress coming from the characteristics of the job itself. for many of the workers, their jobs are ambiguous, poorly structured, poorly resourced, and overloaded, giving them no rest: when you come to work, there is so much to do that you have no rest.… just imagine two workers taking charge of 40 children … you have to make sure they are all ready for school on time, that they have all eaten … if even one of them falls sick and needs hospital attention, it means one worker has to go on hospital duty leaving only one remaining to take charge of the rest of the children. (mother, 45 years old) another participant said: what kills them in this job is that you just don’t know what you will be expected to do when you report for work and you don’t know when you will close.… you could be heading to hospital, to a school disciplinary hearing, running errands on the market, etc. … the list is endless. … you could simply spend the whole day trying to convince the office people to give you materials needed to run the home.… i just pity the mothers, they suffer a lot. (social worker, 32 years old) the complaint about materials needed to run the homes came almost entirely from the government institution. another participant said: i can’t count to you the number of times i have had to use my own small salary to get things for these children.… these children have been trained to think that they should get everything they want, so if they come to you asking for something and you don’t give it out, it’s trouble … and who knows what they will tell visitors … before you know it, there is news in the media about how you are denying the children anything they ask for … and the public will set upon you.… the stress here is just too much. (house father, 33 years old) during focus group discussions, there was a general agreement that one of the most stressful aspects of the work is handling mentally ill children: we don’t even know if this is a children’s home or a mental hospital.… we have no training handling children who are mentally ill, yet they keep bringing them in and we just don’t know what to do with them.… there is one in my unit who chews the paint on the walls, and beats up almost all the small children every day.… myself, i am afraid of him, because he has slapped me once. (assistant mother, 36 years old) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 69 institutional and work environment stress: issues affecting the health and safety of caregivers in the institutional environment, as well as rules and regulations regarding child rights and how caregivers are expected to parent, were identified as key stressors. in addition, the institutional atmosphere seemed tense and there seemed to be a lack of trust between workers, and a wariness of visitors to the institutions: we work in an environment where we don’t know who to trust … your fellow worker could be the one who tells a lie about you to the authorities.… i have become very careful these days.… when you get in trouble, no one has your back … you are on your own. (mother, 50 years old) the participant observation phase of data collection in the government institution revealed some of this distrust of visitors, as most caregivers opted to stay away from the observing author and refused to communicate with him in any way. during focus group discussions, there was unanimous agreement in both institutions about concerns for health and safety. some caregivers complained about lack of institutional support in seeking health care for workers: with all this stress, what do you expect? … high blood pressure is on the rise in this environment, ask anyone, they will tell you, and slips and falls are common … it is normal here … and if you need health care, you only have your salary to rely on. (mother, 57 years old) during the interviews, one resident nurse said: they [caregivers] even need medical attention more often than the children here.… if you stand on your legs from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., tell me, what do you think will happen to you? lightheadedness, dizziness, and what have you.… when people hear that someone is being rushed to the hospital from here, they often think it is a child, but very often, it is a caregiver … and who pays for it, they pay themselves. (resident nurse, 49 years old) other caregivers, primarily from the private institution, praised their institution for being very helpful in supporting them during health emergencies but still complained about the level of health deterioration caused by the work: oh, everybody knows that in this institution, the authorities take our health matters very seriously.… in fact, they are very helpful in providing funds and resources … but … you may provide resources ten times for me if i am rushed ten times to the hospital, but the fact that i am being rushed that frequently means something has to be done about the job.… it is too stressful. (mother, 51 years old) the work environment, according to the workers, was also dominated by laws that some perceived as foreign. almost everyone seemed confused by these laws, but felt compelled to obey them. these were child rights regulations that seemed to limit the extent of authority and control that care workers could exercise over the children — control that care workers felt was central to their role as parents: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 70 just imagine this, you tell me to parent a child, and yet forbid me from disciplining that child.… how then do you expect me to be a parent? … does it make sense to you? (social worker, 32 years old). the caregivers’ frustration at having to parent in accordance with child rights principles was demonstrated in focus group discussions, when some caregivers became emotional while narrating how some of their children in the institution would stand up to them, and say things that their biological children would never dare to: how would you feel if a young child like that stood up to you, shouted obscenities at you, and walked out on you? … [wipes tears off face] … can my own child say that to me? … this is what we have to endure in this environment … because we need a job.… these children’s minds have been poisoned with rights and we suffer the consequences. (mother, 55 years old) for some other caregivers, the concept of child rights confuses them and makes their work more difficult: for me, i am even confused with this child rights thing … ok, so the child has a right to do or refuse to do what i tell them, and every child has a right to be loved.… [laughs] … how do you expect me to develop love for a child who does not respect me and who can choose to obey me or disobey me at no consequence? … it’s just funny.… i just leave them alone, it is they who will suffer when they eventually get out there and do not know how to show respect. (assistant mother, 43 years old) interestingly, the prediction of suffering for institutional children who are rights-conscious was corroborated during interviews by two of the three participants who themselves were once cwpc and who were now volunteering in their respective institutions. one said: yes, that is very true, i didn’t find it easy integrating during the first few months out there.… it just seemed like i was the only one who knew anything about child rights.… i got insulted when i tried to stop my neighbours from disciplining their children by spanking, and i found it difficult mixing up because everyone kept saying i didn’t respect … (former institutional child, 27 years old) in one of the institutions, there were times when a particular superior officer would openly caution a caregiver in front of the children, asking her if she wanted the institution’s name in the media for the wrong reasons. in a follow-up interview after one such incident, an administrative officer said: it’s not that we don’t treat our workers well, but those who own and fund this institution expect us to use the rights approach, it’s a condition upon which we receive funding … so if any information gets in the media that the children are complaining, what do you think will happen to us? (administrative officer, 49 years old) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 71 an educational worker in one of the institutions also demonstrated frustration with the dominance of “foreign” child rights laws as conditions for funding when he said: you mean these children here? … yes, those un rules don’t teach them any sense of responsibility … and the ways in which they want us to raise them too, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work, so you just leave it at that … because at the end of the day, that is what brings the funds to run this place. (educational worker, 36 years old) work–family conflict and stress: caregivers were also challenged by tensions within their biological families. the data collection process revealed a seeming unease in most caregivers when having to talk about their relationships with their families and how their work was impacting that relationship. there were accounts of feelings of alienation and distrust on the part of both caregivers and their families. family misperception about the care work and overexpectation of the monetary rewards associated with that work were also reported: hmm … well that is a problem i am struggling to deal with right now.… you see, when i leave for work, everyone is sleeping, when i come back, everyone is sleeping … and on weekends, there is no guarantee that i will not be called for work.… from the way my children react to me, i feel like they don’t know me any more. (assistant mother, 47 years old) for another caregiver, the work was creating distrust between herself and her husband and putting strain on their marriage: let me ask you this: if your wife went to work at dawn and came back late at night from monday to saturday, wouldn’t you even think she has been passing behind to see another man under the cover of work? … well, that is what i’m being accused of every now and then … but i also hit back often, because while i’m away at work, i don’t know what’s happening behind my back … if some woman has been coming into my house, how would i know? … it’s putting strain on the marriage, but i know god will save this marriage for me [wipes tears off face]. (mother, 53 years old) through informal conversations during the participant observation phase, some caregivers shared experiences in which they had been asked to pay more during an extended-family contribution for a funeral or other occasions because they work with white people: sometimes it’s sad, sometimes it’s just funny … i mean you can’t help laughing.… can you believe that one of my uncles died and during contributions for the funeral, i found out that i was being punished with a bigger contribution because i didn’t attend family programs regularly? … when i complained, they said i should pay more because i work with white people and have money. (mother, 53 years old) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 72 one mother recounted, through tears, how her children accused her of abandoning them to care for other people’s children and how that realization made her feel trapped in her current situation: well, this has been my dilemma, this has been my burden, my children confronted me once.… i work hard here to earn my salary and send to them, but they accuse me of abandoning them to care for other people’s children. [wipes tears] … can you blame them? … and if i stop, what are we going to eat at home? … i feel trapped. (mother, 45 years old) participant observation revealed that while one of the institutions organized the work in shift schedules, the other had a policy of permanent stay for all mothers, with a certain number of leave days per month for family visits. however, it was clear that neither system was ideal. the shift schedule never really worked as planned. the workers complained that they often had to keep working even when their shifts were over because the incoming mothers were ill and unable to make their shifts. “hospital duty”, when a caregiver had to stay with a child being admitted to hospital, also often kept them from returning home after their shifts. with regard to the leave policy, there was a clause attached requiring the caregiver to find a replacement before taking leave, but due to a shortage of replacements, caregivers rarely could actually take the leave owed them. while there were provisions for caregivers’ biological children to pay them visits on the institutional compounds, male children were not allowed to sleep over; this restriction also applied to spouses. according to institutional authorities, the restriction was aimed at preventing potential sexual abuses of the children, especially the girls. community-related stress: caregivers also reported experiencing stressors in the communities within which the institutions were located. under normal circumstances, ghanaian social norms lead people to empathize with vulnerable children and their caregivers, and, if possible, make donations to support them. while such empathic ways were still being practised in the communities where the participating institutions in this study are located, caregivers thought the extent of community support was dwindling. participant observation data revealed that, for the private institution especially, this was probably because of a widespread perception that the institution received funds from foreign donors and was therefore rich, with the children in residence being better off than the ones living in their family homes in the local community. indeed, the landscape of the institutional environment, the children’s clothing and general outlook, the type of family homes built for the mothers and their children, and the general facilities in the institution that mothers and their children could access were in a far better state than those in the local community, as the observing author noted. for some caregivers, this was creating a kind of animosity between the institution and the community, with some community members often accusing the children at the private institution of looking down on the local community children: well as you can see, our children here are better clothed, better housed, and better fed than those in the local community … just look around.… how do you expect them [the community] to see the children here as vulnerable? … and of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 73 course, some of the children here act it out when they go to the community … you know children … and that makes us targets of hostility in the community, though not very often. (social worker, 53 years old) an administrative worker at the private institution recounted an experience where a local church came to donate some items and ended up taking those items back: you know we can’t allow these vulnerable children to just live like the cwpc that they were before they came here.… our mandate is to provide for them the kind of care that they never had.… i tell you … a church came here to donate some clothing and when they came and saw how our children here were dressed, their leader told me they were taking their items back because it didn’t even match what our children were already wearing … so you see … it’s a difficult situation.… somehow doing the right thing has become a case for judging you. (administrative worker, 49 years old) during participant observation, an informal conversation with one 16-year-old residential child seemed to corroborate this. the child expressed pity for the local community children and said he kept some of his own food and gave it to his friends from the community when they came to school hungry. he recounted how some of his friends from the community got expelled from school for non-payment of fees, and ended up not going back. the question thus arises as to which child really was the vulnerable one, the institutional child or the child from the community? for the government institution, the challenge in the community for the caregivers was a seeming community perception that those caregivers were just getting paid to spoil the children: some of them think we are just here to spoil the children with some foreign laws and get paid for it … but for us, we know it’s the rules of the job … so we don’t blame them so much. (mother, 53 years old) another caregiver said: it’s demoralizing when you make all these sacrifices to care for these children and the community treats you this way. they think we are thieves who just steal materials meant for these children for our own children … especially since that anas case1 happened. (assistant mother, 50 years old) additionally, the attitudes of local hospital nurses towards caregivers who accompanied sick residential children needing medical attention was also described as stressful: what i hate is hospital duty.… those nurses there don’t think anything good of us, you face all sorts of insults and sarcasm … because they think we mistreat 1 the “anas case” was an undercover investigative journalist’s report alleging caregiver corruption and abuse of children in some children’s homes in ghana. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 74 the children and steal things meant for them … they just treat us like criminals. (mother, 54 years old). an employee in the administration department of one institution said: for me, i don’t see that anybody cares about these mothers … everything is about the children … but i tell you, their work is so difficult.… it kind of makes them feel unappreciated, you know … because when something happens, they won’t take time to investigate, they just blast them in the media. (administrative worker, 54 years old). resources facing daily stressful circumstances in the workplace was not the only experience shared by the caregivers who participated in this study. amidst all the stress, there were accounts of resource experiences that made positive contributions to the caregivers’ ability to continue with the work. interestingly, the very sources that produced the stressors recounted were also identified and utilized as resources, according to caregiver accounts. however, the discussions about resource availability and utilization revealed notable differences between caregivers regarding the extent to which the sources of stress also became resources for them. these differences were largely associated with whether they worked in the private or the government institution. children as a resource: after describing the children in their care as “difficult” and a key source of stress in their work, caregivers shared experiences in which the same children were portrayed as resources that motivated them to keep working and helped them to cope with stress. for some, just the sight of their children “doing well” inspired them to keep working. some felt they received support from the children’s prayers. others described some of the children in their care, especially the very young ones, as “funny”, “adorable”, and a source of humour and stress relief from daily tensions in the work: i would say these same children are resources … you see, especially the little ones in kindergarten, they make you laugh a lot.… when they come back from school and begin to sing those kindergarten songs and begin dancing, oh my god, it’s so adorable and sweet … you tend to forget all the stress momentarily. (mother, 53 years) some caregivers thought some of their children were important resources because they helped with basic house chores: well, it is not as if all the children are so bad or difficult.… you see, among them all, you find some two or three being very helpful with chores that the majority of them refuse to do under the cover of their rights … so some of them are resources for us as well. (assistant mother, 47 years old) for another participant, it is her former residential children who are now living independently that serve as resources for her: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 75 the children that i have raised to become adults and who are now living and working in the cities, they are my resources.… last time when i was rushed to hospital, one of them came to help pay my bills; another time, one of them came here with a lot of foodstuffs for me. seeing them doing so well on their own inspires me and makes me forget about all this stress.… i will never give up on this job. (mother, 57 years old) it became clear during the participant observations and later focus group discussions and interviews that descriptions of the children as a resource were more frequent among care workers in the private institution. government institution workers tended to rate the working conditions of workers in the private institution as better when it came to children helping with chores: you see, this place is not like the other rich private children’s homes.… there, the mothers live in a home with their assigned children like a family … so they are able to get the children to help them because the bond is stronger … but here, it’s like a boarding house, just look at the numbers … so they don’t help. (mother, 53 years old). another government institution worker described the children as being a resource in a way that was different from how the private institution workers saw it: well, i can say that the children are resources for some of us.… it’s not like they help us to do the job in a physical way … but when you see them running around and happily playing in the compound, and you cast your mind back to how they looked when they first came, it kind of makes you proud of what you have accomplished with them. that in itself is an inspiration that keeps you going. (assistant mother, 49 years old) organizational and institutional resources: though caregivers encountered stress in every aspect of their work, there were also instances in which they recounted deriving resources from their institutions. this helped them remain productive and healthy despite the stress. again, there were significant differences between workers from the two institutions. in most cases, caregivers from the private institution had more to say about positive practices in their institution that helped them stay healthy and productive, while the government workers had little to say in this regard. for example, a private institution worker said: the office does very well, they never make the children lack anything … as soon as you request, they strive to provide for you … so we cook and eat what we want.… if a mother or worker gets a funeral, the office bus is made available and they give you the support you need. (mother, 50 years old) in contrast, a government institution worker had this to say: well, the resources we get from this institution are not much.… often, we even have to support the children with our own salaries … you see, because sometimes the money from the government delays, and that means we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 76 experience shortage of materials needed to run the place … and the office people too sometimes think we misuse the things, so you will have to talk and talk before they give you one thing. (mother, 54 years old) thus, while workers from both institutions generally agreed that their institutions provide support, the differences were in the extent of support provided. caregivers from the private institution agreed during focus group discussions that they received frequent training on how to handle their duties well: oh sure, they train us frequently … they are very good at it.… we are even about to embark on a training program next week.… they teach us about child rights and how to deal with some of the difficulties … the problem is that it is difficult to teach a person how to do a job meant for three people, alone. (mother, 51 years old) meanwhile, caregivers from the government institution agreed that they barely had any training: well, i can say i have attended two training sessions in my 15 years here … so yes … they train us but not much. (mother, 54 years old) workers from both institutions did agree during focus group discussions and informal conversations that the social workers and their respective institutional directors have been important resources for them in times of difficulty in various ways. one other resource that was mentioned by workers from both institutions was donor support. indeed, all participants confirmed that donor support was the major lifeline of their organizations and that the resources provided by donors were key in helping them cope with the work and remain productive: you see, sometimes when we are short of materials and the mothers have brought in so many requisitions, it becomes stressful for me as the head here because the responsibility ultimately falls to me, but god being so good, in moments like that you see donors walk in from nowhere to donate the same items that were needed so bad.… that is a resource that reduces the stress for me and the mothers as well. (institutional head, 53 years old) another participant said: well, thanks to our donors … those who come from their hearts to donate to this home so we can breathe a sigh of relief in this job … it is because of them that we are able to do our jobs. (assistant mother, 49 years old) again, despite earlier accounts of tension and mistrust between coworkers, there were reports of workers supporting each other in their daily activities. indeed, it was observed during participant observations that some caregivers had formed a prayer group and periodically met to pray together. after a prayer session, one mother said: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 77 well, if you find yourself in this job, you will realize that you cannot do without prayer and you cannot do without one another.… so yes, tensions may be there, but we still manage to be resources for ourselves and each other. (mother, 59 years old) another said: when i attend these meetings, it renews my spirit because i become convinced that god will take care of me and i am able to carry on.… without this, i don’t know if i would still be working here. (assistant mother, 47 years old) personal resources: the children and elements within the institutional environment were not the only resources that caregivers managed to identify and utilize in their work roles. reaching deep into themselves and finding strength and motivation from personal convictions seemed to be the strongest resource that almost every participating caregiver relied on. from religious convictions to economic motivation, from a sense of self-efficacy to a quest for selffulfillment, caregivers shared experiences that clearly revealed that their greatest resources were themselves: my faith in god as a christian is my greatest resource.… god blesses me for taking care of these vulnerable children.… knowing that i am doing something that pleases god is all that i need to go on in this job. (mother, 51 years old) another said: i know that god loves me because i love these little ones.… that alone inspires me to stay in this job and forget about the stress. (assistant mother, 43 years old) with all participants except one identifying as christian, the perception that doing what is necessary to help the children grow is a duty assigned by god seemed to be one to which almost all caregivers subscribed. thus, faith was a strong personal resource identified and utilized by caregivers. some caregivers considered the care work as something that they were very capable of doing because of skills they had acquired through their experiences of parenting their own children. for these workers, their personal experiences and capabilities were their key resources in the job: i joined this work after all my children entered tertiary education. when you have had that much experience of parenting four children to their adult ages, you realize that there is no job you can do better than parenting children. i rely on my experience a lot in this job. (mother, 57 years old) also, a quest for self-fulfillment and the attainment of that fulfillment became a resource for some other caregivers: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 78 in our part of the world, a woman is not fulfilled until she has had children and raised them.… well, i wasn’t fortunate enough to have my own children and i lost a marriage because of that, but i was determined to experience motherhood, and doing this job has given me that experience. i consider myself fulfilled and this is a resource that makes me find this job easy to do, especially when the children see me and run to hug me shouting, “mother! mother!” (mother, 53 years old) other caregivers felt that the economic benefits they obtained from working for their institutions made them always strive to be innovative in handling their work duties and by so doing become resources themselves: i earn a living by doing this job.… there are countless jobless people roaming the streets … so i always try to be innovative, think of options around situations that crop up in this job and find solutions.… that helps me keep this job … it always works. i consider myself a resource. (father, 34 years old) thus, it became clear that while caregivers experienced different forms of stress at different levels of their jobs and organizational environment, some of the sources of stress were also seen as sources of resources that helped them cope. it also became clear that the experience of resources differed significantly among care workers depending on the type of institution they worked for. discussion a complex web of work stress and resource experiences, subjective or shared, emerged in our findings. the participant accounts show how caregivers understand, make meaning of, and manage the care work situation. in terms of the salutogenesis theoretical framework that inspired the study, this demonstrates how the elements of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness play out for workers in the line of duty. we therefore discuss the findings in accordance with these elements. comprehensibility our findings indicate a general sense of comprehensibility of the work situation and the work environment on the part of caregivers. this is evident in participant accounts which demonstrate clear consistency in the types, nature, and sources of stress confronting them. for example, themes such as the children, child-rights principles, relations with fellow workers and the local community, and work–family conflict consistently emerged as key sources of stress across the institutions. from the salutogenic point of view, the consistency in participant accounts regarding what is stressful for them in their line of work is indicative of the level of predictability of the work environment for caregivers. for example, the fact that caregivers regularly experienced children challenging their authority, having to care for too large a group of children, and mistrust and apathy from the community demonstrates a pattern of consistency and predictability that gives caregivers an understanding of what to expect and a readiness to draw on available resources to cope. thus, while the consistency of stress is not helpful and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 79 does not in any way make the work better, from a salutogenic standpoint, it helps caregivers understand the patterns of stressors in their work, giving them a chance to prepare mentally to face the challenge. it also puts caregivers in a position of knowledge of the complexities of their work and therefore able to assist when interventions are required. for example, should stakeholders decide to design training programmes for caregivers, the caregivers themselves would be able to help with information on what to include in the training content, considering that they know better which aspects of their work they need help with. this level of comprehensibility is an important step towards developing the soc needed to move towards health despite the stress (antonovsky, 1993; eriksson & mittelmark, 2017). it should, however, be noted that the level of employee comprehensibility of the workplace does not in any way reduce the tremendous amount of stress to which caregivers are exposed. comprehensibility is not an excuse for the failure of stakeholders to reduce the stress levels. the consistent presence of stress in that work environment is a cause for concern. this confirms findings from castillo et al. (2012) and akpalu (2007) regarding resource shortages and inadequate support services in chs, such as insufficient training for caregivers. our findings also show that worker–worker, employee–employer, and institution– community relationships were fraught with mistrust and suspicion, as was the relationship between caregivers and their own families. this could affect the crucially necessary cooperation, both intra-institutional and between the institution and the community, needed for the institution to run smoothly. occupational healthand workplace health-promotion literature provides considerable evidence that suggests that this cooperation is key in determining the nature of work outcomes (see brown, gray, mchardy, & taylor, 2015; brunetto, farrwharton, & shacklock, 2010; hegar, 2012). evidence from work–family conflict research also suggests that the observed frictions between care workers and their families have the potential to affect employee outcomes such as work commitment (benligiray & sönmez, 2012; malik, awan, & ul-ain, 2015). our findings suggest a need for intervention to improve work relations between institutional leaders and core caregivers, as well as among caregivers themselves. the caregivers’ evident comprehensibility of the care situation and environment shows their awareness of what the key issues are in their work situation, which puts them in a position to make important contributions to intervention attempts to support them. the design and implementation of any such interventions should therefore consider involving the full participation of the caregivers. manageability despite the stress, some caregivers demonstrated a sense of manageability of the work situation. within the realm of salutogenesis, the concept of manageability is tied to perceptions of availability of resources in the environment and depends on individuals’ ability to identify and utilize existing resources (both internal and external) to deal with the challenges at hand (eriksson & lindström, 2008; eriksson & mittelmark, 2017; hanson, 2007). our findings confirm this. we observed that key internal resources such as faith or religious conviction, values, and motivations were consistently identified and drawn on to manage the stressful work environment. we also found that some caregivers seemed able to pick out existing external international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 80 resources to manage the prevailing stressors. in general, this was easier for employees in the private organization, which tended to have more resources available than the government organization. most caregivers for the private organization were able to identify and utilize the “few helpful children” out of the general bunch of “rights-conscious” and therefore “difficult” children. private ch caregivers also seemed better able to draw on their training and work out inter-employee differences to foster better cooperation and support. with their organization partly paying for their healthcare, caregivers for the private organization seemed better off than those in the government organization. thus, the private ch workers had a higher sense of manageability and tended to experience the care work more positively than the government ch workers.. the implication here is that where more resources are available and used, workers tend to manage stress better. this is a confirmation of earlier stress–resource research outcomes (e.g., bakker & demerouti, 2007; hyvönen, feldt, salmela-aro, kinnunen, & mäkikangas, 2009). the finding also supports earlier findings by baffoe and dako-gyeke (2013) and darkwah, daniel, and asumeng (2016) that suggest a need to provide more resources such as training for caregivers in chs, especially those in the government sector. for example, training caregivers in methods of encouraging the older children to help with chores while remaining within the framework of child rights would be quite helpful. by learning ways to regulate a child’s behaviour using approaches other than smacking or beating, caregivers could achieve desirable results while still respecting the children’s rights. perhaps caregivers would then see child rights principles from a more positive perspective, helping to reduce the perceptions of stress attributed to the united nations convention on the rights of the child. further, our findings suggest that aside from providing more resources, an alternative way to support employees in this context, and perhaps other work contexts, would be to build their capacity to identify and utilize available resources. this is in line with the salutogenesis argument that people move towards health when they are able to identify and utilize resources available in their environments. in other words, an increase in resources would not necessarily help reduce stress on caregivers by itself; in order for the increase to help, caregivers must be able to identify and utilize the resources. we recommend that cwpc care institutions and perhaps other work organizations pay more attention to employee capacity-building in this regard. the resources inequality observed here between the public and the private institutions is congruent with findings from hearle and ruwanpura (2009), who reported that bureaucratic and other delays in government processes often put government-funded care institutions at a disadvantage, leaving them with fewer resources and making the work more difficult for caregivers. in order to adequately address this situation, stakeholders, both local and international, may need to pay attention not only to the children in residence but also to the working conditions of the caregivers. improved working conditions will have direct positive consequences for the health and wellbeing of both workers and children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 81 meaningfulness in the midst of the stressful work environment, most caregivers still seemed to derive meaning from the work they do and seemed to believe that the effort they expended to engage with the stressors was worth it. caregivers seemed to derive an intrinsic sense of satisfaction when the children excelled academically, and worked from a belief that doing care work is religiously and morally right. within the salutogenesis framework, this implies strength in the face of adversity, which indicates a positive move towards health despite prevailing stressful conditions. this finding confirms earlier research that has reported that religious convictions about one’s job orchestrate psychological conditions of meaningfulness and renew motivation, which in turn influences work engagement (park, 2012; rothmann & buys, 2011; saks, 2011). this also supports the conclusion of paloutzian, emmons, and keortge (2010) that employees who are motivated by religious interpretations of their work roles invest more time, energy, and commitment towards achieving work goals. our findings also reveal that those caregivers who saw the job as an opportunity to achieve the status they wanted gained a sense of personal accomplishment. some caregivers tended to relish the challenge of the mothering role in order to satisfy a need to prove themselves equal to a social role of which others thought them incapable. thus while their work provides them with the means to make a living, it also helps them to fulfill a social goal. these beliefs and feelings have the potential to be good foundations upon which institutional leaders and stakeholders could build to further improve caregiver resilience in the work context. while our findings point to actions that can be taken to reduce the stress levels in residential child care work, opportunities have also been identified for measures to be put in place to increase the moral, religious, and intrinsic values of this work. training, resourcing, and capacity-building to increase caregiver motivation and satisfaction could help provide some buffers against the prevailing stressors in this work environment. these suggestions are supported by motivation research outcomes that show positive relationships between employee incentive and work performance (ibrahim & brobbey, 2015; sekhar, patwardhan, & singh, 2013). to the extent that caregivers who demonstrated this sense of meaningfulness seemed less likely to give up and were willing to keep going in the job, our findings also confirm those reported by geldenhuys, łaba, and venter (2014) and rosso, dekas, and wrzesniewski (2010), who reported positive relationships between psychological meaningfulness of work and work commitment. impact on the children in residence the implications of our overall findings for the children, who are the key “outcomes” of the work of caregivers, is best discussed in connection with the sociocultural context within which the care service is provided. in the ghanaian sociocultural context, children described with some of the attributes mentioned in our findings (e.g, difficult, quarrelsome, disrespectful, challenging authority) are generally tagged as “bad children” for whom disciplinary measures including corporal punishment are acceptable (kyei-gyamfi, 2011). these kinds of caregiver perceptions of the children could possibly trigger handling or responses that may not be in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 82 children’s best interests. against the background of previous revelations made by investigative journalists that appear to show physical abuses of cwpc in chs in ghana (adongo, 2011; anas, 2010, 2015), our findings suggest that for the sake of the children there is need for debate about possible interventions to address caregivers’ negative perceptions and beliefs about the children in their care. further, beyond the ch environment, our findings suggest a need for policy review regarding the organization and resourcing of cwpc care institutions. this supports earlier arguments by engle et al. (2011) who call for support for care institutions for cwpc as part of the care continuum. implementation styles and processes of western-backed approaches to child care in the local contexts should also be reviewed. beyond the ghanaian context, our findings suggest that an approach that respects the cultural context and local norms, and that specifically involves parents and other concerned adults in design and implementation, could significantly promote the effectiveness of introducing the principles and practices of international conventions to local populations. this could help prevent feelings of encroaching western hegemony that often trigger resistance from local populations. as can be seen from our findings, the popular perception seems to be that child rights are foreign and are being forced on local caregivers under the cover of funding. the rights-based approach to parenting, which is crucial in these institutions, is thus being experienced as a source of stress instead of as a resource. limitations this study adopted a qualitative approach to explore the general subjective experiences of workers within a specific occupational, social, and cultural context. because we utilized techniques such as participant observation, the roles of the researchers in generating and interpreting the data limit its objectivity. further, only two chs participated in this study; therefore the evidence generated may best apply to the location where the study was conducted. cross-context generalization of the findings should be done with caution though lessons learnt from it could apply to other similar contexts, especially in the sub-saharan african region. the limited generalizability here also implies that it may be unsafe to draw general conclusions about differences between private and government institutions on this evidence. conclusion this study was conducted to explore stress–resource experiences of cwpc caregivers in the context of chs in ghana. we found sources of stress experienced by caregivers to include the children in residence, interpersonal relationships at work, child rights regulations, institution–community relations, and relationships between caregivers and their own families. interestingly, at all levels of the work environment, there seemed to be aspects that served both as stressors and resources for caregivers. it was found that some of the children and certain agents in the work environments, such as social workers and administrative workers, were key resources for the caregivers. religious and moral convictions, as well as personal, intrinsic motivations to engage in the work, emerged as the sources of support and meaning most generally reported by the caregivers. we also observed that some workers exhibited soc, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 83 demonstrating the components of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness of the work and the work situation, which seemed to help them develop a sense of wanting to go on. our findings suggest a need for interventions focusing especially on reducing stress levels and on improving intra-institutional relations and cooperation both among workers and between core caregivers and institutional superiors. such interventions should also target improving institution–community relations and reforming policy to allow workers more contact with their own families to reduce work–family conflict. we also encourage more debate and further research on local implications of strategies adopted to enforce international conventions such as the united nations convention on the rights of the child. finally, we believe that our findings reveal an opportunity for institutional leaders and stakeholders to develop interventions to help caregivers increase their intrinsic sense of satisfaction through training and capacity-building. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 59–89 84 references adongo, s. t. 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(2015). do social support, self-efficacy and resilience influence the experience of stress in ghanaian orphans? an exploratory study. child care in practice, 21(2), 140–159. doi:10.1080/13575279.2014.985286 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2016.1175524 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2007.11.019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/oem.2004.019398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13575279.2014.985286 caring for “parentless” children: an exploration of work stressors and resources as experienced by caregivers in children’s homes in ghana the work stress–resource interface and the institutional care work environment objectives methodology approach and study design participants and setting data procedures participant observation focus group discussions in-depth interviews ethics data analysis findings resources discussion comprehensibility manageability meaningfulness impact on the children in residence limitations conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818117 wired for social interaction: what an interdisciplinary approach from neurobiology, evolutionary biology, and social education work can teach us about psychological trauma isabella sarto-jackson abstract: the human brain is equipped with physiological, neural, and cognitive capacities that enable it to respond flexibly to ever-changing natural and social conditions. this capacity of the brain to reorganize itself, called neuroplasticity, is particularly marked in childhood. the high malleability of the brain at this stage provides the basis for wide-ranging learning, but leaves it vulnerable to negative environmental and social factors. neuroplastic events that occur in response to abusive or neglecting environments can strongly interfere with the adaptive shaping of neural pathways between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, compromising judgment and self-control. traumatic experiences during development can also have other effects on brain plasticity that are mediated by epigenetic mechanisms, and these effects can impair the developing oxytocin system, adversely affecting attachment and bonding. mature individuals seek out niches that match the internal mental structures shaped during their early years, and will even alter the environment to make it match the internal structures. in the case of those who suffered childhood abuse, this can lead to maltreatment of the next generation. addressing the societal challenge of child abuse and maltreatment requires broad interdisciplinary endeavors, uniting neuroscientists and social education workers to break the vicious circle. keywords: neuroplasticity, childhood abuse, developmental trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, social niche construction, maladaptation acknowledgement: this manuscript aims to elaborate some points made in the lecture i gave at the 33rd fice congress held in vienna in 2016. i am indebted to the program committee of the 33rd fice congress for having put together a highly exciting event with excellent contributions. i would like to especially thank hermann radler, president of fice international; peter sarto, ombudsman for children and adolescents in residential communities of the city administration of vienna; and alexander binder-degenschild, a social pedagogue with fice austria, for fruitful discussions and valuable insights into their fields of expertise. isabella sarto-jackson phd is executive manager of the konrad lorenz institute for evolution and cognition research, martinstrasse 12, 3400 klosterneuburg, austria. email: isabella.sarto-jackson@kli.ac.at http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818117 mailto:isabella.sartojackson@kli.ac.at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 10 for more than a century, two diametrically opposed views on human brain development prevailed in the sciences. while one camp emphasized a deterministic perspective that considered brain architecture to be innate, largely hardwired and encoded by genes, a second assumed the brain to be a “blank slate” with boundless malleability (bach-y-rita, 1967; baroncohen, 2003; brizendine, 2006; doidge, 2007; golgi, 1898; gollin, 1981; grossi, 2017; lugaro, 1909). in recent decades these two camps have converged to a significant extent. the second camp has begun to take genetic factors into account in investigations on human behavior and cognitive development, while the first has increasingly acknowledged the importance of environmental and social influences on human brain development (azmitia, 2007; kandel, schwartz, & jessell, 2000; lillard & erisir, 2014). in fact, there is now ample evidence that biological features, ranging from an organism’s behavior to its morphology and anatomy, and even the genetic information in its dna, can be modulated by the environment (mitchell, schneper, & notterman, 2016; szyf, 2011; tognini, napoli, & pizzorusso, 2015). these findings apply to all organisms, including humans. the interplay between biology and the environment is particularly relevant for human brain development, suggesting that the brain is not an instructional, but a selectional system (edelman, 1987). in an instructional system, an incoming signal (genetic determinant, environmental trigger, etc.) is the primary and necessary event that shapes a system’s structure and function. in a selectional system, in contrast, the predominant role is attributed to the mechanism that recognizes and amplifies certain properties. in the latter case, structural and functional properties exist prior to the arrival of the signal. in his book synaptic self, joseph ledoux (2002) explains how the brain — or, to be more precise, the synaptic connections between the individual neurons — is shaped by experience: selection operates on preexisting (synaptic) connections set up by genes (which make proteins that help guide axons to the right areas) working in concert with non-genetic factors (chemicals from the mother, for example). but genes and the chemical environment are not wholly responsible for establishing the initial connections. selection also assumes that there is a good deal of randomness involved — terminals and dendrites that happen to be in the same vicinity take the opportunity to form synaptic connections, independent of the overall guidance plan specified by genes. as a result, in spite of the general genetically programmed plan, the preexisting connections upon which selection ultimately operates also have a unique, individualistic nature, from which experience then does the selecting [emphasis added]. because each person’s experiences are different, different patterns of connectivity are selected. genes thus dictate that we will have a human kind of brain with roughly the same kind of circuits, but random individual differences will exist, and the connectivity of circuits, selected by synaptic activity, will shape the individual’s brain (ledoux, 2002, p 74). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=lillard%20as%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24648605 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=erisir%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24648605 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 11 it is now widely agreed that the evolution of the human cognitive system has been driven by processes of dual-inheritance, that is, gene–culture coevolution (boyd & richerson, 1985; cavalli-sforza & feldman, 1981; richerson & boyd, 2005). moreover, human brains are probably more vulnerable to environmental impact than other mammals, due to the extended period of human brain maturation outside the womb. in fact, the increase in brain size and complexity during human infancy is exceptional amongst all primates, the volume of the brain growing by two thirds in the first five years of life. this increase is paralleled by prolonged maturation times with distinctly orchestrated sequences of sculpting grey matter densities and hierarchical myelination processes that proceed from the diencephalon and hindbrain to the cerebellum and pons and from there to the primary and eventually higher areas of the cortex (deoni et al., 2011; flechsig, 1901; toga, thompson, & sowell, 2006). while the increase in brain volume is partly due to the formation of new neurons (neurogenesis), it is mainly attributable to an exponential increase in the growth of synaptic connections, a process called exuberant synaptogenesis (huttenlocher & drabholkar, 1998). when exuberant synaptogenesis is at its peak at around 2 to 3 years of age, the number of synaptic connections increases drastically. shortly after this period of synaptic growth, the child’s brain undergoes a decline in synaptic density. this decline is due to experiential selection (edelman, 1987): connections that are used more often are strengthened, leading to the consolidation of synaptic connectivities; connections that are used least are weakened or eliminated — synaptic pruning — resulting in the removal of synapses (craika & bialystokb, 2006). synaptic consolidation, pruning, and synaptogenesis are considered to be important mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation (gonçalves, schafer, & gage, 2016; greenough, black, & wallace 1987; rakic, bourgeois, & goldman-rakic, 1994; sweatt, 2016; toulouse, dehaene, & changeux, 1985). these processes are particularly prominent during distinct stages of children’s brain development that have been associated with so-called “critical periods” — periods of high receptiveness to environmental stimuli and thus learning (drachman, 2005). thus, the idea that cognition, personality, and behavior are wholly innate or hardwired at birth is strongly contested by neuroscientific research. during ontogeny, more than in later life, the human brain is constantly changing due to experience, social interactions, emotional development, and self-reflection (chalupa, berardi, caleo, galli-resta, & pizzorosso, 2011). in addition, a plethora of studies demonstrates that neuroanatomical changes occur not only during critical periods in childhood, but throughout life (for reviews see: wolff & missler, 1992; gonçalves, schafer, & gage, 2016; and references therein). these structural and functional changes are covered by the umbrella term “neuroplasticity”, which denotes the nervous system’s capacity to reorganize itself. neuroplasticity provides mechanisms that shape the neural system in both contextual (social and cultural) and historically dependent (based on previous experience) ways (doidge, 2007).human behavior and cognitive skills emerge from multiple processes that are based both on genetic makeup and neuroplastic events. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 12 childhood and stress infant and juvenile brains are particularly neuroplastic due to processes of neurogenesis, dendritic and synaptic maturation, axon overproduction and elimination, and cortical myelination. this plastic growth and rewiring provides the basis for learning and memory formation. at the same time, this developmental malleability leaves the young brain vulnerable to environmentally induced harm because of its immature neurophysiology (i.e., an immature stress response system). in humans, the developmental phase when large brain reorganizations take place is significantly prolonged (geschwind & rakic, 2013) compared to nonhuman primates. humans experience an extended childhood and adolescence paralleled by neoteny. neoteny is characterized by a retention of juvenile physical features like a hairless body, flat face, and large eyes as well as childlike behavior such as playfulness and curiosity. the emergence of neotenic traits in humans is most likely due to sexual selection in human evolution and correlates with a slowed physiological development and a delayed onset of adulthood. neoteny in humans entails two striking peculiarities: (a) human infants, children, and adolescents have a great capacity for social learning (imitation, observational learning, etc.) due to a highly malleable, neuroplastic brain, especially during the first two decades of life; (b) as a result of this malleability, humans are particularly vulnerable to negative environmental factors. when humans experience novel stimuli, the sensory cortex is activated and relays the perceived information through the thalamus to the brain stem. the locus coeruleus in the brain stem is the primary site of synthesis of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. from the locus coeruleus, noradrenergic neurons — those that either secrete or respond to noradrenaline — project to many different brain areas such as the hypothalamus, the cerebellum, the cortex, and the amygdala. in an unstimulated, relaxed state, the firing of neurons in the locus coeruleus is at a low baseline level. upon perception of a novel stimulus the rate of noradrenergic activity in the locus coeruleus increases, which leads to an increase of noradrenaline release to specific brain areas, and this in turn causes a person to become alert and attentive to motivationally significant stimuli. some behavioral qualities such as curiosity and inventiveness that are associated with neoteny and cultural evolution may be strongly dependent on noradrenergic neurotransmission. in contrast, if an environmental stimulus is perceived as dangerous, the neurons of the locus coeruleus discharge intensely and for a prolonged phase. noradrenergic transmission can then trigger stress reactions via the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (hpa axis) thereby activating the sympathetic nervous system (thase & howland, 1995) and leading to a release of cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline into the body. each of these hormones or transmitters acts on several body organs, causing the emergence of physiological symptoms (increases in heart rate and respiration, constriction of blood vessels, etc.). from an evolutionary point of view, this is a healthy response to environmental threats because it allows the body to mobilize energy (e.g., by an increase in highly oxygenated blood flow in muscles) when needed to combat or escape adverse situations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sexual_selection_in_human_evolution international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 13 so that the organism does not end up in a chronic state of stress it is crucial that once the stressful event has passed, the system returns to a resting state. to this end, cortisol or adrenaline/noradrenaline feedback loops lead to a downregulation of the activity of the components of the hpa axis. this is a physiological mechanism that has been retained throughout evolution, is already present in newborns, and is triggered whenever an organism experiences brief adverse events. however, it is important to acknowledge that a child’s hpa system is not fully matured and cannot regulate stress reactions efficiently. children are highly dependent on soothing actions or interventions from the environment in order to calm their excessive bodily stress reactions. it is therefore of paramount importance that parents and caregivers take responsibility for reducing stressful conditions, using soothing activities such as feeding, providing skin contact, and rocking. interestingly, rocking movements seem to exert calming effects that help to develop the newborn’s cerebellum. this was first demonstrated experimentally in monkeys raised in the company of artificial “surrogate mothers” made of wire-mesh and cloth. animals raised in this manner grew into socially deviant, highly aggressive adults (harlow & zimmermann, 1959), but less so if the surrogate mothers performed swinging movements. in addition, the monkeys exposed to such artificial “mothers” sit clutching themselves, or holding their heads and bodies in their arms and perform convulsive jerking and rocking movements (harlow & zimmermann, 1959). it is possible that in the young such movements are conveyed to the cerebellum, a part of the brain that has been shown to be crucially involved in motor coordination. the cerebellum and especially a distinct region of it, the cerebellar vermis, develop gradually and continue to create new neurons after birth. in human infants, it is possible that it is the stimulation of the vermis through rocking and other movements that exerts calming effects that help the vermis to develop, which in turn has an effect on the regulation of the stress response. in fact, the vermis contains an extraordinarily high density of receptors for stress hormones. this abundance of stress hormone receptors indicates that exposure to stress hormones can markedly affect the development of this part of the brain. the cerebellum may thus not only be important for motor coordination, but also for compensating for and regulating emotional instability. conversely, when prosocial interactions between the infant and significant adults are disrupted (e.g., in the event of neglect, isolation, or abuse) a severe stress reaction is triggered in the infant that cannot be overcome by the child’s own physiological mechanisms. as a consequence, activity in the hpa axis is boosted and the sympathetic nervous system suffers chronic overactivation. lack of sensorimotor interaction between parent and child may impair the capacity of the cerebellar vermis to regulate emotional balance and dampen the stress response. socially neglected children often show kinetic automatisms or stereotypical back-andforth rocking movements that appear to be desperate attempts to self-soothe and compensate for the lack of social care. similar rocking behavior has been found in monkeys when they are prevented from forming bonds during the first six months of life (which are roughly equivalent to the first two years of human life). in addition, these monkeys also show signs of severe social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 14 disturbances such as withdrawal, impulsiveness, unprovoked aggression, and learning disabilities (quartz & sejnowki, 2002, p. 173). nongenetic mechanisms influence social behavior all organisms face sequences of environmental challenges as they grow and develop. to cope with these challenges, organisms possess the capacity for adaptive plasticity; that is, by undergoing changes (acclimatization, learning, etc.) they become better suited to their habitats. plasticity enhances survival rates in rapidly changing or constantly varying environments. such nongenetic mechanisms that enable adaptive plasticity are also often called epigenetics. the meaning of the term epigenetics underwent a change over the course of the last century. it was originally coined to describe development and all interactions of products and processes downstream of primary gene products (including neuroplasticity, behavioral plasticity, etc.). today, however, most researchers use the term to denote temporal and spatial control mechanisms of gene activity that are independent of the dna sequence (e.g., dna-methylation, histone modifications, paramutations, imprinting, gene silencing, position effect, maternal effects, etc.). epigenetics in the latter sense is a relatively new field of research and studies in humans are thus rare. however, probably the most prominent example of epigenetic research came from some unexpected, yet remarkable findings in humans. these first epigenetic effects observed in humans were found in an epidemiological study on the consequences of malnutrition experienced during the dutch famine — the “hunger winter” in world war ii (heijmans et al., 2008). the famine caused severe undernutrition in the whole dutch population, but had especially dramatic effects on pregnant women at that time. the study revealed that this period of food shortage and maternal starvation had a profound effect not only on the intrauterine growth of the babies, but also on their state of health after birth and throughout their lives. in fact, the suffering endured during the “hunger winter” has been identified as one of the major contributors to chronic disease in later life for those born at that time (roseboom, de rooij, & painter, 2006). these findings have been referred to as the “fetal programming hypothesis” (barker, 2004). according to this hypothesis maternal undernutrition restricts intrauterine development and thus leads to lower birthweights in newborns. the mother’s deficient diet signals to the fetus that post-birth and long-term living conditions will be impoverished. in response, the development of the fetus follows an altered course, leading to changes in body size and metabolism that will help prepare for harsh conditions after birth. in this way, low birthweight babies are better adapted to a deficient environment than babies of mothers who were pregnant in an environment of abundance. however, when the living conditions improve from the anticipated dearth to abundance, the low birthweight babies become maladapted. such babies are at a higher risk of diseases — obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental illnesses such as depression — in later life, since the individual’s metabolism is adapted to an environment of shortage. it is likely that the developmentally plastic effects are attributable to epigenetic mechanisms that induce the genes to express a wide range of physiological or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 15 morphological states in response to environmental conditions during critical periods in early fetal development (bateson, 2001). once triggered, these plastic effects become manifest in persistent, lifelong changes in the body structure and function. what is most noteworthy is that studies have revealed (bygren et al., 2014; dominguez-salas, cox, prentice, hennig, & moore, 2012; susser et al., 2012) a correlation between the nutritional status of pregnant women and the health of not only their children, but even their grandchildren. this indicates the possibility that some epigenetic changes can be transmitted over at least two generations. other research on epigenetics comes from animal studies and investigates the effect of maternal brood care on offspring social behavior. there are some naturally occurring variations in the responses of mother rats to stress in their offspring. pups that receive ample licking and grooming after birth become more stress resistant and are more open to new experiences and exploratory behavior (meaney, 2001; weaver, meaney, & moshe, 2006) than pups that have received little care. thus, an increase in maternal care and physical contact appears to be an important factor in resilience. significantly, the extent of rats’ maternal brood care influences not only the immediate offspring, but also subsequent generations, and is a nongenetic inheritance process. animals that have experienced neglecting maternal behavior will also behave less affectionately towards their own offspring. however, since these effects are nongenetic, they can be reversed by exposing newborn pups to more caring foster mothers. after having experienced intensive brood care from foster mothers, the female pups of neglecting mothers will eventually become more affectionate mothers as adults. studies on parental care in humans also support the importance of physical contact and affectionate relations between parents and children (brauer, xiao, poulain, friederici, & schirmer, 2016; mclaughlin, sheridan, & nelson, 2017; moore et al., 2017). both skin contact and suckling during breastfeeding trigger the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin. oxytocin is released in the baby as well as in the mother, helping to consolidate a positive mother–baby relationship. interestingly, recent evidence has indicated that skin contact between fathers and their newborns also triggers oxytocin release in both baby and father (vittner et al., 2018). oxytocin is a highly interesting candidate for research on social cognition and behavior, since it has been shown to play a crucial role in attachment, social exploration, and social recognition, as well as in anxiety and stress-related behaviors (meyer-lindenberg, domes, kirsch, & heinrichs, 2011). experimental administration of oxytocin in combination with social support dampens neuroendocrine stress reactivity and decreases amygdala activation in response to threatening stimuli (kirsch et al., 2005). molecular genetic studies have identified variations in the gene (i.e., genetic polymorphism) coding for the oxytocin receptor within healthy individuals. these variations in the oxytocin receptor gene are modestly associated with differences in sociobehavioral phenotypes, such as prosocial behavior, parenting, empathy, positive affect, and sensitivity to social support or support seeking during stress (kumsta & heinrichs, 2013). but polymorphism of the oxytocin receptor gene revealed only small sociobehavioral effects within humans. in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 16 contrast, variations of gene expression of the oxytocin receptor gene by epigenetic factors seem to have a stronger influence on interindividual differences in social cognition and behavior. epigenetic changes in the regulatory sequences of the oxytocin receptor correlate with high levels of callousness and unemotionality and differential activation of brain regions involved in social perception (kumsta, hummer, chen, & heinrichs, 2013). these changes can be dynamically regulated by exposure to psychosocial stress. in addition, adult women with a history of early abuse have lower oxytocin concentrations in their cerebrospinal fluid than women without such negative experiences (heim et al., 2009). prolonged deprivation in early childhood seems to interfere with the developing oxytocin system. postinstitutionalized children who had been reared in severely depriving conditions and later adopted showed lower peripheral oxytocin levels after physical interactions with their adoptive mothers than adopted children who had been reared in a typical home environment (wismer fries, ziegler, kurian, jacoris, & pollak, 2005). thus, traumatic experiences seem to have a negative effect on the developing oxytocin system and probably have adverse effects on attachment and bonding, anxiety, social recognition, and maternal care as well. alleged maladaptation to cultural niches the above examples of nongenetic inheritance lead us to a discussion of the role that individuals themselves play in the generation of their surroundings and habitats. scholars have increasingly pointed out that organisms are not simply subject to selective pressure and environmental influences in a passive way, but can themselves actively alter their own environments in a feedback loop; this dynamic interactive process has been termed niche construction (lewontin, 1983; odling-smee, laland, & feldman, 2003). several biologists have argued that niche construction is as important to evolution as natural selection is (laland, matthews, & feldman, 2016; odling-smee, laland, & feldman, 2003). niche construction has been documented for many species, such as beavers, which alter their ecosystems by constructing dams, and earthworms, which affect the chemical composition of the soil they live in. of all species, however, humans provide the most striking examples of niche construction in that they generate cultural, as well as ecological, niches. above all, it is the cognitive mechanisms shaped by humans in the course of evolution that provide the substrate for creating our social and cultural environments. examples of such mechanisms include recognizing oneself as a mental agent, and inferring the psychological states of other individuals, both of which are prerequisites for developing a theory of mind, and for qualities such as empathy. thus, “one person’s nature is another person’s nurture” (wexler, 2006, p. 16). humans are capable of adapting rapidly to changes in the cultural world, thereby accelerating the timescale of change from a slow, evolutionary one to a fast, developmental one in which changes occur within historical time. thus, culture helps to shape the brain, which creates culture, which again acts on the brain (quartz & sejnowski, 2002, p. 58–59). this feedback loop reverberates throughout international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 17 decades or centuries and is an example of cultural niche construction.1 such man-made niches foster certain cognitive or behavioral traits, while attenuating others. this process can be transmitted over generations, since descendants usually inherit their ancestors’ niches and pass them on to their children. in this respect, the inheritance of ecological and cultural niches is, like epigenetics, a form of nongenetic inheritance mechanism. it might be especially these kinds of nongenetic inheritance that are responsible for the exponential increase in the diversity of human behavior (smith, 2011). while many of the behavioral and cognitive traits that result from such reinforced social interactions within a given niche are highly adaptive (e.g., social learning and teaching behaviors, prosocial child rearing practices, and pair bonding), some may be highly nonadaptive (e.g., addictive or self-destructive behavior). since the appearance of modern humans, our cultural environment has changed drastically. our biology and presumably many of our behaviors underwent significant adaptation during the period when our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers . a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is characterized by low-fat diets, little technology, high mobility, low birth rates with relatively long intervals (4 years) between births, exclusive breastfeeding for the first two years, low population density, and living in small (25 to 50 people), kin-based social groups (dunbar, 1993). clearly, the cognitive and behavioral traits that were advantageous for this lifestyle were different from those that are adaptive in most societies today. this concept has become known as evolutionary mismatch theory (diggs, 2017; lloyd, wilson, & sober, 2011); it refers to negative consequences that result from a trait that evolved in one environment being carried over into another environment. examples of evolutionary mismatches include eating disorders, addictive behaviors, vertigo, and certain types of anxieties. with the onset of agriculture, humans gave up their nomadic lives, shifted their diets, started to live in larger communities (which exposed them to a higher risk of infectious diseases), and reduced the intervals between births, with a resulting increase in birth rates (bocquet-appel, 2008). many of the previously selected traits were no longer advantageous. researchers claim that many characteristics and behaviors that evolved and had adaptive value during our evolutionary history may be maladaptive in some modern contexts (trevathan, smith, & mckenna, 1999), as modern humans have to adapt to many different niches, with significantly different values and norms. transient changes in positive and negative states help individuals to fine-tune their adjustment tactics, allowing them to cope with everyday social life in their particular niche. for example, being in high spirits increases fitness in situations of opportunity, whereas being in low spirits allows the person to stop investing in hopeless endeavors and encourages the quest for 1 “in the niche construction approach, members of a species can alter the environment, and thus how selective pressures act on them. niche modifying creates a feedback loop from behavior to environment to selection in ways that are not generally represented in most evolutionary scenarios. the niche construction model appears to be an extremely robust way of thinking about brain evolution for neuroanthropology because it offers a way to bring together thinking about how patterns of environmental change represent simultaneously adaptation and selective pressure, as subsequent generations face the cumulative effects of altered developmental and evolutionary landscapes” (lende & downey, 2003, p. 118). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 18 alternative strategies or enterprises. as an example of the latter, children raised almost exclusively by neglecting or abusive parents, without the support of other adult members (i.e., alloparents) who could compensate for the maltreatment, will show responses such as fear and sadness that help them to cope with this adverse situation. in this view, human attachment theory (bowlby, 1960) can be interpreted from an evolutionary perspective, which suggests that abnormal styles of attachment, specifically anxious attachment and ambivalent attachment, may in fact be adaptive in certain situations (chisholm, 1996). if a mother is disinclined to invest in a child, ordinary secure attachment may be less beneficial for the infant than anxious or avoidance attachment. in fact, such defense mechanisms based in aversive emotions shaped by evolution may help toddlers to survive the stressful situation of not gaining or maintaining proximity to attachment figures. a seemingly inappropriate behavior, such as the anxious and solitary behavior of an infant in an abusive family, can therefore be adaptive in a certain cultural niche. however, the same behavior may turn out to be maladaptive in other social niches, such as when the individual resorts to anxious behavior in an adult relationship or in a new, caring foster family. such maladaptive responses are then experienced as stressful. consequently, later in life, individuals will seek out niches that match previously established internal, mental structures shaped in response to the external social and cultural milieus of their early childhoods. this will usually be reflected in their adult relationships (with partners or friends), and may also affect their choices of other cultural niches such as work places, professional associations, political and governmental affiliations, religious congregations, and various interest groups. this process of active creation and selection of environments has been termed “niche picking” (scarr & mccartney, 1983) in the psychological literature. in fact, each person is usually a member of multiple overlapping cultural niches. some of these niches may be better matches for an individual’s “inner landscape” than others, and humans are usually successful in intuitively finding social niches that are similar to those to which they have been exposed during childhood. interestingly, similar findings have been shown in animals. when mice are in states of high arousal, they will preferentially return to familiar places where they experienced physical pain rather then seeking out less familiar places not associated with punishment (mitchell, koleszar, & scopatz, 1984). in cases where the available external environment does not match the internal structures, people act to manipulate the environment to make it match their internal structures rather than modify their internal structures (wexler, 2006). this concept can help to explain why, when abused or neglected children become parents themselves, they once more create abusive or neglecting familial environments. this may initially seem surprising, given the findings that the human brain remains extremely malleable and plastic throughout life and is capable of producing different behavioral patterns. however, it is important to note that neuroplasticity decreases in the course of brain maturation. in the adult brain, neuroplastic events are still taking place in various areas of the neocortex, but occur to a lesser extent in other brain regions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 19 emotions play a pivotal role in evaluating whether a social niche matches the inner structure. neuroscientists have shown that human emotions are not located in a single brain area, but involve several interconnected brain circuits. emotions are short-lived physical states that are universally similar across all humans. they have evolved as quick, bodily responses to external stimuli. for the most part our emotional responses are processed nonconsciously and subcortically. the mental associations and reactions that emotions give rise to are feelings, which are influenced by personal experience, beliefs, and memories, and thereby assign meaning to emotions. only when higher processes in neocortical regions of the brain are engaged do we experience feelings, and so become conscious of emotions (damasio, 1994). in fact, emotions and feelings seem to involve different neural pathways that fulfill distinct functions. emotional processes, automatic, quick, and nonconscious, are often described as the “low road” of the system (ledoux, 1996). when a stimulus is perceived, it is relayed via the thalamus directly to the limbic system, where it is processed automatically. this low road gives the individual the chance to react rapidly and instinctively to putative dangers by engaging the amygdala, a part of the limbic system that can activate the fight-or-flight response via the hpa axis. in contrast, the “high road” involves the neocortex, giving the individual the opportunity for flexibility, thoughtfulness, and choice, but at the cost of a slower reaction time. this path activates higher thinking processes that allow rational interpretation of the situation. the quick, low road response evolved as a lifesaver in dangerous situations. this neural pathway is automatically activated when a person feels threatened by actual or presumed dangers, which may cause an overreaction of the amygdala. components of the limbic system, especially the amygdala, provide organisms with the ability to assess and respond quickly to social stimuli. thus, as it navigates social life, the emotional brain continuously appraises environmental stimuli for positive or negative valence, safety, and danger (fishbane, 2007). in contrast, the high road involving the neocortex attenuates quick responses, allowing us to consider various options by integrating conscious information. by incorporating reciprocal neural pathways between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, emotions can guide “rational” decision making. a part of the prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex acts as a regulator of the limbic system, particularly by dampening immediate reactions of the amygdala. the orbitofrontal cortex retains its neuroplasticity throughout life and ensures that we can respond flexibly when new or additional information becomes available. the interplay between limbic and prefrontal functions permits us to make behavioral choices that are in line with our long-term goals and values. for example, going against our initial inner impulse, we may decide not to shout at the boss after being wrongfully criticized because we do not want to risk losing our job. but the high route of feelings is not the dominant pathway. the connections from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex are stronger than the connections in the opposite direction, which explains why emotions can easily overwhelm a person and impair “rational” decision making (ledoux, 1996). this is even more so when the limbic system is constantly challenged international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 20 by an abusive environment during the period of maturation of the amygdala shortly after birth (jedd et al., 2015; pechtel & pizzagalli, 2011). traumatic experiences, abuse, and neglect can also strongly interfere with the adaptive shaping of the functioning of the orbitofrontal cortex (which continues to mature well into adulthood), thereby compromising judgment and selfcontrol (hanson et al., 2010). in addition to neuroplastic events affecting the gross architecture of the brain, high levels of childhood stress can also alter overall levels of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and noradrenaline (de bellis & zisk, 2014). noradrenaline is a crucial component of the hpa axis and involved in stress response. the levels of different neurotransmitters act as an internal guidance system that colors an individual’s world with positive and negative value and conveys this information to higher brain areas to inform decision making (quartz & sejnowski, 2002, p. 196). developmentally traumatic experiences can resculpture the behavior of a child’s noradrenaline system, causing him or her to live in a relabeled world in which positive and negative valuations are biased toward the negative. as a result, the individual´s brain detects dangerous signals everywhere and sends errant alarms to higher cognitive areas, putting the natural defense system in a permanent alert state. a shift in the serotonin system can lead to impairment in sociability and impulse control. lack of maternal care in nonhuman primates leads to reduced levels of serotonin, which in turn correlates with greater aggression, more alcohol consumption, and more anxiety-like behaviors during the animals’ adolescence (suomi, 2003). it is therefore possible that lower serotonin levels in stressed brains wire the brain for extreme and unpredictable violence that may spark a cycle of aggressive behavior and social illiteracy (quartz & sejnowski, 2002, p. 196). when survivors reexperience responses from developmentally traumatic events in the past — very often without their being able to remember the actual situation in their personal history — they fall back into a reactive state of self-protection and survival behavior. this triggers an immediate, nonconscious reaction via the low route, leading to an increase in the firing rate of the amygdala and activating the hpa axis; at the same time, signals from the orbitofrontal cortex are not integrated in the response of the limbic system; that is, the high route is underfunctioning. negative social triggers such as feeling criticized or attacked can activate this low route and lead to a strong overreaction. moreover, even situations that appear normal to other people, such as a crying baby, can trigger an overreaction in a developmentally traumatized parent, due to neurotransmitter systems that are out of balance. the parent then feels unable to cope with the situation and reexperiences an adverse childhood situation in which a similar emotional state was aroused. this emotional state of fear and helplessness is nonconsciously experienced by the parent as a threat to wellbeing and triggers a reactive survival behavior, the fight-or-flight response. however, as an adult, the developmentally traumatized person has an extended potential for action that was not available as an infant. an emotionally overwhelmed parent may act upon the “fight” response and become abusive. alternatively, such a parent may act upon the “flight” response and become neglecting. in both cases self-control via the higher international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 21 cortical route is overridden. acting upon such developmentally early response mechanisms from the limbic system, and excluding higher cognitive processes, leads to situations that are emotionally similar to those experienced in early childhood. hence, the parent has “successfully” generated a social niche in which maltreatment continues and is socially transmitted to the next generation. similarly, this scenario can also explain secondary traumatization in professionals and other people close to a traumatized person insofar as they are exposed to a familiar social niche constructed by the victim. neurobiological mechanisms of acute trauma and developmental psychological trauma developmental psychological traumas as described above refer to stressful events that occur repeatedly and cumulatively over an extended time and within specific relationships and contexts (courtois, 2004). among the experiences that can constitute chronic traumatization are sexual, emotional, and physical childhood abuse, physical and emotional neglect, and severe poverty. however, other experiences that are limited to a single or a few events of highly negative emotional impact can also cause traumas. these experiences involve serious injury or threat to life or limb, and often lead to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd). ptsd was first identified in combat veterans, but it has since been shown that it can also occur in survivors of natural disasters, rape, and other life-threatening or devastating incidents (van der kolk, 2014; howlett & stein, 2016). people with ptsd, who have experienced acute trauma, show psychological reaction patterns and behaviors that are somewhat different from those of people who have experienced chronic traumatic events in early childhood. people with ptsd repeatedly reexperience the traumatic event in the awake state or in dreams. thus, the intense emotions experienced during the traumatic events are manifested in visceral sensations such as heightened anxiety and panic attacks, as well as in vivid visual images and other acute sensory perceptions such as flashbacks and nightmares (van der kolk, 1994). as far as other symptoms go, research on both ptsd and developmental psychological trauma suggests that they have overlapping mechanisms and most likely rely on comparable physiological and neurobiological processes (van der kolk, 2014). both people with ptsd and those with developmental psychological trauma may suffer a numbing of their responsiveness, show reduced interest in activities, limit the range of their emotions, and have feelings of detachment or estrangement from others. in addition, some may also experience heightened arousal (causing difficulty in falling or staying asleep), irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulties in concentrating, hypervigilance, and an exaggerated startle response. although on the face of it the psychological effects of ptsd seem more pronounced (panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares) than those of developmental trauma, this impression is misleading. such differences can most likely be attributed to differences in the duration and age of onset of the traumatic incidents. the longer the aversive situation lasted, and the earlier in development it took place, the more time the victim has had for psychosocial adjustment and to restructure his or her inner landscape to adapt to the abusive environment. moreover, traumatic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 22 experience in early childhood may not be remembered because of naturally occurring infantile amnesia. however, this by no means indicates that the neuropsychological damage is less in early developmental trauma. it is simply less evident to the untrained eye. in fact, it can be assumed that traumatic events of longer duration and earlier onset will have more dramatic and penetrative effects with respect to neuroplastic restructuring of the individual’s brain. in the case of chronic or developmental trauma, the person will run continuously on a psychological “emergency program”, while in the case of acute trauma, the person may suffer from episodic outbursts of defense reactions. in a metaphor, one could describe the former as a silent scream from the body and brain, and the latter as an open cry for help. in fact, it has been demonstrated that the more stressful an experience and the longer its duration, the more severely memory and learning are disrupted (shapero et al., 2014). an important neurobiological mechanism underlying disruptions in memory and learning is the release of toxic amounts of corticosteroids from the stress response circuit when chronically high levels of stress are experienced. cells in the hippocampus, the crucial brain area underlying memory formation and retrieval, have an unusually large number of receptors that respond to corticosteroids such as cortisol. high levels of corticosteroids attack brain cells in the developing hippocampus, initiate a process of shrinking of neuronal protrusions, lead to neuronal cell death, and ultimately result in permanent damage to the hippocampus (bremner et al., 1997). in addition, the hippocampus is one of the few parts of the brain that not only develops gradually, but also continues to produce new cells after birth. as demonstrated in rodents, corticosteroids inhibit neurogenesis (the generation of new neurons) in the hippocampus (karten, olariu, & cameron, 2005). taken together, it can be assumed that situations of chronic maltreatment lead to both damage to the hippocampus and inhibition of the development of new hippocampal neurons, which interfere with both memory and learning. this impairment might explain why highly traumatic events often cannot be consciously recalled and lead to lacunar and situation-specific amnesia. in such severe cases of neural deterioration due to toxic exposure to corticosteroids and inhibited neurogenesis (and other mechanisms not discussed here), partial or complete recovery of memory may never occur because conscious recollection apparently requires an involvement of the hippocampus. yet, the emotional information associated with the traumatic events might nonetheless be stored in the procedural memory system, which matures earlier and is less sensitive to corticosteroids. in some cases, when the victim returns to an emotional state of arousal similar to the one in which the memory was stored (i.e., state dependent learning), this familiarity can trigger retrieval of the event. the reason for this may be that the latter type of recall (familiarity) seems to be mediated by areas of the medial temporal lobe rather than the hippocampus (diana, yonelinas, & ranganath, 2007). in contrast to the described states of amnesia, clinicians working with ptsd sufferers have also observed hypermnesia, in which sensory experiences and visual images related to the trauma do not fade over time and remain much more vivid than other, ordinary memory traces. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 9–30 23 the more unexpected and the less compatible an event is relative to a person’s worldview or their view of a person, the more difficult it will be to integrate such traumatic experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self within his or her world. patients with severe traumatization are often unable to put the trauma behind them, become fixated on the past, reenact the trauma, and are unable to incorporate the event into their personal history (van der kolk, 1994). moreover, not only may they fail to integrate the stressful experience into their self-narrative, but they may not even be aware of this psychological incoherence. since the ability to form a coherent self-image lies at the core of our capacity to generate a view of life in general, such disruptions can have devastating consequences. for example, a person might be unable to link his or her current behavior with his or her future self. consequences of punishment will then not seem threatening because the self who commits the crime will not be linked with the self that has to face the punishment (quartz & sejnowski, 2002, p. 197). conclusion since childhood and adolescence are extended in humans, our brains have evolved the capacity to become significantly sculptured by our social and physical environments, and especially by our experiences early in life. this neuroplasticity enables our brains to adapt to our specific social surroundings advantageously. it is also the basis for lifelong adaptation and changes in our brain. the malleability of the brain provides the flexibility needed to live in different cultural niches and respond to new challenges throughout life. however, if the developing brain of a child or an adolescent is exposed to traumatic events, the integration of higher cognitive processes by means of plasticity is to some degree sacrificed for evolutionarily older “emergency” programs that aim for bare survival. thus, the brains of maltreated individuals seem to develop along rigid, enduring paths, with less of the malleability found in unimpeded development. consequently, severe childhood abuse is not something that one can grow out of and get over. it alters a person’s neurobiological and biochemical makeup and thereby his or her behavior, cognition, and state of mind. neuroscience is only just beginning to grasp the dimensions of the underlying mechanisms and consequences of abuse. it will require broad interdisciplinary efforts to tackle the most urgent research questions in this field, 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(1992). synaptic reorganization in developing and adult nervous systems. annals of anatomy, 174, 393–403. doi:10.1016/s0940-9602(11)80257-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncel.2015.00331 https://doi.org/10.3109/10673229409017088 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1099800417735633 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507526103 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0504767102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0940-9602(11)80257-8 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 423 unpacking young people’s narratives about their aspirations: a bourdieusian perspective cara k.y. ng, rebecca j. haines-saah, carla t. hilario, emily k. jenkins, and joy l. johnson abstract: drawing from bourdieu’s theories on habitus, capital, and field, this article explores the complex relationship between social context and youth’s aspirations and perceptions of the future. based on findings from interviews we conducted with young people in two distinct communities in british columbia, canada, we undertook a comparative analysis of the ways in which class and place influence young people’s “imagined futures”. our findings suggest that family plays an instrumental role in shaping youth’s aspirations in both locations. perceptions regarding opportunity and mobility varied greatly between the communities, and appeared to be influenced by racialized and gendered inequalities. a few youth had aspirations that resided outside of the narrative parameters mapped out by their peers. we explore the implications of these perspectives for community-level strategies aiming to improve young people’s future trajectories, which could have positive impacts on their current and future health and wellbeing. while bourdieu’s theories do not explicitly consider adolescent-specific capital, we found them to be helpful in making sense of youth’s narratives about their futures. keywords: bourdieu, habitus, capital, field, aspirations, youth cara k. y. ng (the corresponding author) is the project director for the radar project at simon fraser university, 515 west hastings street, vancouver, bc v6b 5k3. email: cna14@sfu.ca rebecca j. haines-saah is an assistant professor in the department of community health sciences at the cumming school of medicine, university of calgary, trw building, room 3e17, 3280 hospital drive nw, calgary, ab t2n 4z6. email: rebecca.saah@ucalgary.ca carla t. hilario is a phd candidate in the school of nursing at the university of british columbia, t201–2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, bc v6t 2b5. email: carla.hilario@nursing.ubc.ca emily k. jenkins is an assistant professor in the school of nursing at the university of british columbia, t201–2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, bc v6t 2b5. email: emily.jenkins@ubc.ca joy l. johnson is a professor in the faculty of health sciences, simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, bc v5a 1s6. email: joy_johnson@sfu.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 mailto:cna14@sfu.ca mailto:rebecca.saah@ucalgary.ca mailto:carla.hilario@nursing.ubc.ca mailto:emily.jenkins@ubc.ca mailto:joy_johnson@sfu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 424 young people’s aspirations for educational and career goals have been shown to be influenced by structural inequalities (allen & hollingworth, 2013; archer & yamashita, 2003). it is well documented that class structures associated with poverty and social disadvantage can constrain aspirations and place youth at risk for poor health and social outcomes, and can diminish educational and occupational successes relative to more advantaged peers (ceballo, 2004; maurizi, ceballo, epstein-ngo, & cortina, 2013; stewart, stewart, & simons, 2007; walpole, 2003; wilson, 2010; yoshikawa, aber, & beardslee, 2012). while such structural limitations are not linked to class or income status alone (gonzales, 2011; mello & swanson, 2007; noguera, 2003), researchers have drawn on a variety of approaches to theorize the influence of context — structural, social, cultural, or a combination thereof — on youth’s life trajectories. following bourdieu and passeron’s (1977) work examining the education system in france, analyses of cultural capital have figured prominently within social education research (dumais, 2002; grenfell & james, 1998). bourdieu’s theorization of cultural capital has been a staple for understanding the cultural influences on the “achievement gap” present in educational outcomes (lareau & weininger, 2003). educational theorists have long used bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social capital to explain how families with class privilege confer advantages beyond economic benefits upon their children, facilitating success in school. additionally, this theory has been used to illuminate how both the evaluation standards and social values of institutional fields of education may disadvantage students from working-class backgrounds (lamont, schmalzbauer, waller, & weber, 1996; lareau, 1989). in terms of work and employment, charlesworth’s a phenomenology of working-class experience (2000) is one of the most influential ethnographic works to use bourdieu’s conceptual framework to call attention to the complex subjectivities and experiences of workingclass families, going beyond a simple “culture of poverty” thesis (lewis, 1963). with an emphasis on the cultural reproduction of the “class habitus” from the inside out, bourdieu can be seen as providing a “third way” (grenfell & james, 1998) for theorists seeking a middle ground between an overly structurally determined notion of life chances (i.e., marxism), and the destabilizing, free-for-all of post-structuralist theorizing in which life choices, and the opportunities for remaking the self, appear to be unfettered by social and contextual conditions. in navigating the theoretical tensions among the influences of structure, culture, and agency on youths’ aspirations and outcomes, bourdieu’s framework is valuable for exploring how structural or social contexts is often taken for granted and reproduced “from the personal inside out” (jenkins, 1992, p. 12) rather than perceived by young people as an external influence on their lives. in light of the complex relationship between social context and youth’s aspirations and perceptions of their futures, our analysis drew from bourdieu’s “structuralist constructivism” (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 11) as a theoretical lens through which to enhance our understandings of youth outcomes beyond the “top down” and deterministic approaches that http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 425 have informed theoretical models and research approaches in youth research in the sociological and psychological sciences. based on our study findings, drawn from data collected in two distinct geographical regions in british columbia, canada, we undertook a comparative analysis that utilized bourdieu’s theoretical framework to add to our understanding of youth’s narratives about their “imagined futures” (ball, macrae, & maguire, 1999). we explore the implications of this analysis for community-level strategies aimed at improving young people’s trajectories of current and future health and wellbeing. youth aspirations: the literature youth educational and career aspirations have been widely studied. early empirical scholarship on how young people formulate aspirations focused on the experiences of white male youth in wisconsin in the late 1950s, exploring the ways “social class” impacted occupational aspiration (kao & tienda, 1998, p. 350; empey, 1956). in contemporary scholarship, references to “socioeconomic status” are heavily cited in the literature as a significant factor that affects entry or non-entry into postsecondary education (bowden & doughney, 2010; foley, 2007; james, 2000). “students from high socioeconomic status backgrounds are … more likely to enrol in a university degree”, creating the result of “social reproduction; a process whereby characteristics of a given social structure are … perpetuated over time” (bowden & doughney, 2012, p. 1). one’s cultural resources, such as parents’ levels of education and their occupational status, rather than simply one’s material wealth, have also been seen as significant in determining one’s socioeconomic status (de graaf, de graaf, & kraaykamp, 2000). studies in the past few decades have also explored the educational and career aspirations of other demographics such as young women, and minority, immigrant, and children-ofimmigrant youth (abada, hou, & ram, 2008; behnke, piercy, & diversi, 2004; kao & tienda, 1998; alexander & eckland, 1974). early studies on the role of “sex differences” on educational and vocational aspirations pointed to gendered disparities in both domains (alexander & eckland, 1974; sewell, 1971). as osipow and fitzgerald (1996) contend, “gender is clearly one of the most powerful influences on vocational behavior” (p. 63). since the 1970s, young women’s career interests have broadened significantly. recent studies suggest that females demonstrate a greater interest in a wider range of careers, and more gender-role flexibility in their career ambitions, than males (domenico & jones, 2006; francis, 2002). however, watson, quatman, and edler (2002) also discovered that young women tend to feel more conflicted than their male counterparts between career ambitions on the one hand, and the responsibilities associated with marriage and family on the other. differences in educational outcomes within and between immigrant and visible minority groups have typically focused on “cultural versus structural” explanations (kao & thompson, 2003). while cultural factors have been employed to explain “superior outcomes” seen in certain http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 426 groups of young people, structural factors are viewed as “paramount” in explaining “inferior outcomes” achieved by others (theissen, 2009, p. 6). in the canadian context, krahn and taylor’s (2005) study on the educational aspirations of youth across the country concluded that “young canadians, and particularly [visible minority immigrant] youth, value education” (p. 430). the factors driving higher aspirations among the latter group appeared to be parental education and aspiration for their children combined with higher grades and level of school engagement. however, the authors also argue that for some racialized youth, the increasing exposure to “systemic racism and blocked opportunities in their pursuit of career goals” can produce feelings of disillusionment (p. 430). victor thiessen (2009) studied the educational outcomes of visible minority and immigrant youth across nine “population groups” in canada in an effort to help determine why some visible minority and immigrant youth fare better than others in this realm. he found that the combination of structural location and cultural attributes is connected to educational pathways for youth from different ethnic or immigrant populations, but operates in “distinctive ways” depending on the group (p. 29). prior research in the canadian context has demonstrated significant inequalities between indigenous students and non-indigenous students in educational attainment, with indigenous youth being much less likely to participate in postsecondary education than their non-indigenous counterparts (aman & ungerleider, 2008). regarding academic performance and educational attainment, studies also demonstrate that asian canadians are more likely to attend post-secondary schools than other ethnic groups, and african canadians perform below european canadians (crysdale, king, & mandell, 1999; finnie, lascelles, & sweetman, 2005). according to thiessen (2009), the differences in postsecondary education can be explained by a host of structural and cultural advantages and disadvantages that modulate young people’s experience of the educational system. in the united kingdom, scholars have critically engaged with government policy and its focus on young people’s social mobility and aspirations (milestone, 2016; noonan, 2015; allen & hollingworth, 2013). within this body of scholarship, there are only a few comparative qualitative studies exploring the implications of place on young people’s ambitions for the future (evans, 2016; donnelly & evans, 2015; allen & hollingworth, 2013). absent from the existing literature is a qualitative analysis of young people’s aspiration narratives within the canadian context that compares youth from different communities. while there have been studies that have examined the educational, professional, and mobility aspirations of rural and urban young people living in atlantic canada and ontario using qualitative and quantitative methods (benjamin, domine, & landine, 2001; cairns, 2013, 2014; corbett, 2007, 2009; norman & power, 2015), each of these studies focused on only one research locale. the present study focuses on the aspiration narratives of young people from two distinctive communities in western canada. a comparative approach to youth’s aspiration narratives offers us the opportunity to highlight particularity, and to discover convergences and variations (azarian, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 427 theoretical framework bourdieu: habitus, capital, and field bourdieu described habitus as “a product of history” that constructs practices. it is the “active presence of past experiences” depositing schemes of thought, perception, and action in each organism (bourdieu, 1990, p. 54). thus, habitus operates at every single moment as “a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” (bourdieu, 1977, p. 83). youth from wealthy, white families within the canadian context may have similar or overlapping habitus, which could be expressed through shared political views and social etiquette. it is important to appreciate that for bourdieu, dispositions and lifestyles are not externally imposed, but work internally as people come to embody and reproduce them through their practices (bourdieu, 1990). bourdieu used the phrase “not for the likes of us” to describe how habitus shapes preferences and lifestyles, as a type of self-limiting force that circumscribes people’s life choices (bourdieu, 1984, p. 110). for example, a young person may subscribe to the belief that “people from my family attend (or do not attend) university”, attributing educational choices to family and cultural traditions, but perhaps not recognizing how these opportunities are facilitated or limited by structures of social and cultural capital, and how such structures affect status and privilege. unpacking the conceptual relationship between habitus, capital, and field as bourdieu conceived of it is important for understanding his views about the possibilities for social transformation (reay, 2004). using the metaphor of an “invisible playing field” that structures the nature of the game to be played, bourdieu described fields as “area[s] of structured, socially patterned activity or ‘practice’”, organized “around a body of internal protocols and assumptions, characteristic behaviors and self-sustaining values” (terdiman, 1987, p. 806). for example, the field of adolescence can be described as a social arena that is constituted by the struggle for particular forms of capital — such as popularity among peers, physical attractiveness, and “coolness”. the power of agents in a particular field is shaped by their habitus and access to capital (gaventa, 2003, p. 9). agents with various combinations of habitus and capital compete for power within a given field, and the logic of the field is thereby either reproduced or reconstituted. as bourdieu described, change occurs when there is a mismatch or disjuncture between habitus and field (e.g., encountering a new field; reay, 2004). further, fields are only reproduced to the extent that the social actors within them are willing to accept the rules and to play along (haines, poland, & johnson, 2009). it is worth noting here that we are not conceptualizing each of the study sites as fields, but that each study site is constituted by multiple fields of practice (e.g., adolescent social spheres, home and family, school). bourdieu (1986) delineated several forms of capital and how these manifest within particular fields. in most fields, economic and cultural capital are considered the most important forms for structuring advantage, but social capital can also be central to acquiring status, based on one’s ability to access and expand networks of relationships that facilitate opportunity. bourdieu positions the different forms of capital as working in tandem: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 428 a person’s level of education, the cultural capital they possess, combined with the value of the networks on which it is possible for them to draw and the amount of economic capital at their disposal, gives a person certain advantages or disadvantages that structure their possible education and income. (ashall, 2004, p. 23). similar to habitus, cultural capital is not transmitted instantaneously from parents to their children, but is described as an embodied state of what you know and can do (stempel, 2005). although cultural capital functions as a type of exclusion that limits the opportunities and mobility of lower-status and disadvantaged groups, those groups possess in their turn forms of cultural knowledge and capital that outsiders are not able to access. bourdieu’s theory has been criticised for failing to account for the potential for people to “see their way out” of their habitus (jenkins, 1992; williams, 1995). for example, alexander (1995) has argued that bourdieu grants habitus undue power to determine social action (p. 140). however, according to bourdieu’s field notes, “rules are often bent or broken in practice” and the structure-over-agency argument does not necessarily apply “at the ground level where interests, desires, contingencies, and material exigencies all come into play” (crossley, 2001, p. 83). what is typically neglected is that bourdieu described habitus as having generative capabilities (1998, p. 8) and an inventive capacity (1990, p. 55). as veenstra and burnett (2014) have argued, although bourdieu’s theory of practice has been taken to task by many for being overly deterministic, that critique has most often been based upon a misreading of his relationalist perspective. rather than drawing a “stark distinction between individual agency and social structure”, bourdieu’s theory of practice “consists of relations built upon relations” and “produces a representation of agency that is manifestly intersubjective in nature” (veenstra & burnett, 2014, p. 188). in this schema, agency can be exerted “in fields to which the habitus is particularly attuned, where a person comprehends the shared set of opinions and beliefs of the field (doxa)” (veenstra & burnett, 2014, p. 193). for instance, young people who challenge the androcentrism of school curricula understand that the set of opinions and beliefs of traditional educational domains is patriarchal; however, agency is exerted through their demands for more representation of non-normative and gender-diverse experiences and perspectives. at the “ground level”, rules can be “broken” and reconfigured (crossley, 2001, p. 83) — altering the constitution of the field. in this scenario, the academic field could be reconstituted through a shift towards a more gender-inclusive curriculum. bourdieu and “the future” also relevant to our analysis were bourdieu’s (2000) contributions in theorizing how people’s longings for the future have been linked to processes of power: the more power one has over the world, the more one has aspirations that are adjusted to their chances of realization, and also stable and little affected by symbolic manipulation. (p. 226) http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 429 the greater one’s power, the more plausible one’s dreams for the future become. expanding on bourdieu’s theories about the transmission of capital, jenkins (2002) has suggested that people normally opt for goals that make sense for their habitus; that is, they are likely to have aspirations that are similar to those of people with overlapping habitus (family members, those from similar cultural and class backgrounds), perhaps rendering their thoughts and choices about their futures predictable and unsurprising. this model of the reproduction of future aspirations has been challenged by some scholars. for example, gale and parker (2015) contend that bourdieu’s explanations for the cultural and economic reproduction of capital are “too formal and static (i.e., structuralist)” (p. 84). drawing from appadurai (2004), they critique bourdieu’s theorization of aspirations for its over-preoccupation with the “sense of culture as pastness” and instead argue for a view of aspiration as a “navigational capacity” (p. 61), and more freedom from the “dominance of cultural habits and doxa” (p. 91). although we are mindful of these critiques, bourdieu’s theoretical framework provided a useful approach for analysing our narrative data on young people’s aspirations. although the participants’ narratives suggested they were cognizant of their future opportunities as contextually reproduced and potentially constrained, their interviews also pointed to an “inventive capacity” that served as a navigational skill with which to “see their way out of” their habitus and their ostensibly predetermined social conditions. in substantiating their use of bourdieu’s construct of habitus in their study on the aspirations of youth living in three communities in the united kingdom, allen and hollingworth (2013) write: habitus can be understood to relate not simply to class-based dispositional understandings of what is thinkable for “people like me” but also for “people from round here”. we see young people’s aspirations — their sense of where they belong — as being deeply entangled with their social and spatial location. (p. 501) in a similar vein, we believe bourdieu’s theories offer a unique way of understanding young people’s aspirations for the future since they allow us to consider young people’s future orientations as “structured by objective conditions” — influencing youth to think of certain trajectories as undesirable and out-of-bounds and others as desirable and within reach — rather than through the lens of deficiency, which “holds young people responsible for their own (lack of) ambition and (im)mobility in education and work” (allen & hollingworth, 2013, p. 500). methods research sites the qualitative data analyzed in this manuscript were collected for the researching adolescent distress and resilience (radar) study. this study involved extensive researcher http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 430 immersion or embeddedness in the participants’ social context, drawing on ethnographic methods including individual interviews and field observations (stage & manning, 2015). five researchers from various academic backgrounds based in the school of nursing at the university of british columbia conducted interviews with youth over a span of two years (2012–2014) in three communities from distinct regions of british columbia in order to explore young peoples’ experiences of emotional distress and resilience. the research sites were selected for their distinct geographic, demographic, cultural, and other, characteristics. this paper focuses on the insights of youth from the two most dissimilar of the three study sites in terms of demographics, culture, population size, city versus country traits, and other features. one of these is a small community in the northern part of the province, and the other, vancouver, is a densely populated coastal city. in order to protect the confidentiality of participants from the smaller first community, we refer to it by a pseudonym, “the north”. the population of the north is approximately 4,800. this estimate includes those who live in the town and surrounding first nations reserves and rural communities. the north’s economy is primarily resource-based, with forestry, mining, and agriculture as its leading industries. according to 2011 census statistics, which captured only population numbers in the town itself (excluding neighbouring communities and reserves), just over a quarter of the population self-identify as having an “aboriginal identity”1, while the majority of the remaining population identify as coming from “european origins” (statistics canada, 2013). the community is located on unceded, traditional indigenous territories. in 2011, the population of vancouver was approximately 600,300. it is embedded in a much larger metropolitan area with a population of over 2.3 million (statistics canada, 2012). vancouver is a seaport municipality renowned for its forestry, film, and tourism industries. it is one of canada’s most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban centres. according to the 2011 national household survey profile, “european canadian” residents were the largest ethnic group in the city but comprised less than half the population (46.2%), inhabitants of chinese descent made up 30% of the population, and those of south asian descent comprised 6% (statistics canada, 2013). the city of vancouver is located on the unceded territories of the musqueam, squamish, and tseil-waututh peoples. while these two cities are markedly distinct from one another, they share a common history of colonization, and in both contexts neocolonial state policies have continued to wreak havoc on the health and wellbeing of indigenous communities. for example, health disparities continue to persist between this population and non-indigenous populations in the province. indigenous peoples are overrepresented in respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer, hiv/aids, mental health, and addictions statistics (first nations health council, 2011, p. 21). while british columbia — especially vancouver — has often been characterised as having a culture that 1in british columbia as a whole, indigenous peoples make up approximately 5% of the population (statistics canada, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 431 promotes “healthy” and “outdoorsy” lifestyles (ellis, 2015; ristovski-slijepcevic, bell, chapman, & beagan, 2010, p. 319), this portrayal obscures the fact that there are high rates of income inequality and child poverty in the province. for instance, in 2012, one in five children in the province was living in poverty (first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition, 2014, p. 10), with particular populations of children over-represented in these numbers (first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition, 2013, p. 8). according to a 2013 report on child poverty in bc that drew on 2006 census data, poverty rates were 48% for status first nations children and 28% for other aboriginal children, versus 17% for non-indigenous children (macdonald & wilson, 2013, p. 17). an awareness of the overall demographics that describe the indigenous population illuminates the apparent differences in the ways indigenous and non-indigenous youth discussed their futures.2 recruitment and research procedures ethical approval for this study was acquired from the university of british columbia behavioral research ethics board, and permission from the relevant school districts was acquired before interviewing young people. given the sensitive nature of the study, and youth participants’ rights to privacy and confidentiality, our ethics approval allowed for young people (aged 13 to 18) to provide their own consent to participate. schools had the option of distributing a letter to parents informing them about the study. prior to obtaining written consent, the interviewers reviewed the main points on the consent form with participants. participants were paid $20 cad. recruitment efforts in the north included informational flyers posted in the local high school that directed interested youth to contact the project director. youth were also recruited with the assistance of counsellors and teachers. in the north, 27 youth (14 women and 13 men) were interviewed; 16 participants were indigenous, 4 were white, 4 were multiracial, 2 were métis3, and the racial heritage of 1 participant was unknown. in vancouver, participants were recruited with the assistance of school counsellors, who helped to identify young people from a diverse range of backgrounds. of the 29 youth (14 women, 13 men, 1 “non binary identifying”, and 1 who intentionally left the gender information 2in the context of a different paper written on this study, we have explicitly addressed indigenous/non-indigenous relations, and the colonialism and racism that were pervasive in the northern community (please see haines-saah, hilario, jenkins, ng, & johnson, 2016). 3 participants used the terms “aboriginal”, “indian”, and “first nations” to describe themselves in the interviews. we have used “indigenous” as an umbrella term for these identities. according to linc kesler, some consider indigenous to be “the most inclusive term of all, since it identifies peoples in similar circumstances without respect to national boundaries or local conventions”. while the term itself is not indigenous “in the sense of deriving from an indigenous traditional practice or language … it is very much a term that indigenous people have worked hard to define” (n.d., para.17). one of the participants who identified as métis said he belonged to a band in another province. it was not altogether clear whether the other participant who identified as métis belonged to a métis community or was using it colloquially to describe mixed white/aboriginal heritage. however, she did say she did not belong to any bands in the community where she lives. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 432 blank) who were interviewed, 16 were white, 5 multiracial, 3 asian, 1 latin american, 1 west asian4, and 3 were of unknown racial identity or heritage. interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed; pseudonyms were used to protect the confidentiality of the participants. interviews lasted anywhere between half an hour and two and a half hours, and were conducted in private rooms (e.g., empty counselling offices) in the school setting. analytic strategy thematic analysis was used to systematically interpret and categorize our data from participant interviews. aligned with our research focus on the influences of social context, our approach was informed by wiles, rosenberg, and kearns (2005) who underscore the use of analytic strategies for “interpreting and understanding layers of meaning in interview talk … a form of interpreting a conversation or story in which attention is paid to the embedded meanings and evaluations of the speaker and their context” (p. 90). to carry out the thematic analysis, after reading through multiple transcripts and becoming grounded in the data, the research team identified a preliminary coding scheme that covered the content of the interviews. the codes were exhaustive, but not mutually exclusive as they were applied to the data. in total, 15 codes were used to organize the data – nvivo 10, a qualitative research software package, was used to highlight sections of the interview transcripts and then to sort the data according to the 15 codes. these included frequent topics from the interviews, such as peers and social connections, violence, coping strategies, and family. data for this paper were extracted from the code, aspirations and goals. aspirations and goals captured young people’s stories of their future plans and their goals for adulthood. while there was no formal interview question regarding youth’s prospects and thoughts about the future, the youth interviewed spontaneously raised this topic. our research team also asked questions regarding “the future”, at times out of curiosity and at other times due to the organic flow of a particular interview. the aspirations and goals code was exported into a word processor document, which two members of the research team read through multiple times. observations within this code were written into the margins of the document in order to determine the patterns and themes that were perceived to occur in the narrative data. for each of the two sites, our readings of the narratives within the aspirations and goals code suggested four themes in the ways that youth discussed their future: (a) the family’s role in shaping career and educational preferences, (b) perceptions of “opportunity”, (c) youth’s descriptions of their aspirations for change and mobility as seen through the notion of “elsewhere”, and (d) how some youth defied the narrative parameters mapped out by their peers and “saw a way out of” their habitus. 4 we used the terms “latin american” and “west asian” as these are terms used in the canadian census (statistics canada, 2015). “latin american” in the canadian census implies non-white, latino-latina identity. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 433 findings the north family. what bourdieu describes as the familial transmission of economic and cultural capital was unmistakably at work when we analyzed the participant narratives. family relationships and circumstances appeared to be central to framing the habitus of young people in the north, whether young people were leaning towards the same life goals as older family members or trying to side-step them altogether. career aspirations in the north were focused on trades, art, and design, and professions such as nursing, rehabilitation, and social work. two of the young men in this community spoke about wanting to follow the career paths of their fathers. carl discussed wanting a job in carpentry or “mining with [my] dad.” he elaborated, “my dad’s working at [name of employer], he brings loads of plywood and all that to them. yeah, it’s pretty fun going and doing that with my dad … at some points i go work with him.” another young man’s desire to follow his father’s career path was burdened by troubled family dynamics. tony, a young indigenous participant, discussed disobeying the vocational and life trajectory his mother desired for him — a path that tony felt too closely resembled his brother’s — and pursuing his father’s career path: i don’t know. don’t feel like i was being good enough for my mom. think she wanted me to be more like my brother …. we’re … just starting to get better ’cause she’s finally realizing that … that’s not what i want to do in my life. i don’t want to go to university. i don’t want to be a doctor like him. i don’t want to be a … physiotherapist. i just want to do something that i like and will … for a long time. like, my dad’s worked in the bush since he was fifteen. forty now. and he had his fun. he lived his dream. similar to carl, tony spoke of his aspirations to follow the professional ambitions of his father. unlike carl’s situation, however, tony and his mother had disagreed over whether this was the correct path. one of the one young indigenous women, tori, discussed wanting to become a mechanic because “i used to watch my dad fix up cars and whatnot.” she further explained: i wanted to take [a mechanics program at school] but i don’t know. i don’t want to be stuck with a whole bunch of boys. i was already last year … stuck with a whole bunch of guys, and i was, like, the only girl in there. it was kind of scary [laughs]. in this way, “traditional” gender stereotypes regarding appropriate career paths may also influence preferences and future aspirations, speaking to the nature of habitus as culturally and contextually embedded. while a number of youth aspired to blue-collar jobs, two expressed a longing for something different. these desires, however, continued to reflect the accomplishments of family http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 434 members. sonya, a young woman from an indigenous background, stated a preference for attending a larger, acclaimed university outside of her hometown, and spoke about how several of her family members had studied there. while her mother and father did not attend this university, they, too, had acquired postsecondary education. her desire to attend a postsecondary institution in general, and one specific university in particular, can be seen as an expression of her habitus: her desire for “higher learning” was implanted by her family’s ethos, which collectively viewed it as something of value and a realistic objective. i’ve always wanted to go to [school 1]…. my mum’s brother went to [school 1] … and he really likes it. and i like [school 1], and my uncle m. went to [school 1]…. two other of my family members went to [school 1]. most of my family went to [school 1].… my mum went to [school 2] … she went there for her childcare — i can’t remember what it was, ece…. she’s right now the manager of the [local daycare], and my dad’s a heavyduty mechanic at the [local mill].… both my parents went to university and college. similar to sonya, april’s interview appeared to demonstrate a habitus oriented towards postsecondary education, as seen through her description of a relative’s enthusiastic reaction after telling him she was considering attending the same small university in a larger city he had attended: “i told [my uncle] i was thinking about going to [the same school as he went to] i swear to god i thought he was going to start jumping.” for both of these young women, it appeared that family support for pursuing postsecondary education was a key influence on their trajectories, although this was described as resulting from a “modeling” effect rather than having been dictated to them by parents and family members; the preferences that these young people “absorbed” and assumed for their future paths were part of the context of their habitus. with the exception of sonya and april, however, the career and life objectives discussed by youth in this community do not generally include an aspiration to attend university. we also spoke to george, a participant of multiracial ancestry who, unlike those hoping to follow in the paths of family members, wanted nothing more than to diverge from the life trajectory of his abusive father. in order to remedy what he perceived to be the mistakes his father committed as a parent, he identified his life goal as becoming the father he never had: he was physically abusing me and stuff and … hurting me.… so i figured that he wasn’t my dad and basically my whole entire life, my whole emotions, everything was based on my dad.… it’s kind of hard because you kind of want a dad there, to teach me about things. but he’s just so stubborn. he can’t do it. like, there’s just something about me that he hates. he just can’t talk to me, just hates me…. that’s the main emotional thing i have. it’s the whole, whole reason i want, like, a son or a daughter, just so i could be there for them. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 435 the aspirations described by this young man were outside the career or educational domains, and centred on establishing a stable family and becoming a parent much different from his own father. in regards to habitus, george’s descriptions suggest that his priorities were fundamentally shaped by a “negative” social context and family environment in which he was raised, and that therefore the stability of having a loving family takes precedence. young people’s narratives in the north suggest that family members play an influential role — be it positive or negative — in shaping career, educational, and other future-related goals. opportunity. youth’s discussions about opportunities available to them suggested commonalities in their habitus. while a few indigenous participants spoke about the shortage of opportunity in their communities, only one linked this to the history of racialized inequalities in the region. for example, when christopher, a young indigenous man, discussed the shortage of opportunities in his small town, he spoke about how place circumscribes aspirations, but also felt strongly about the value of individual effort and choice. christopher’s narrative speaks to the contradictory aspects of the habitus: on the one hand, he espouses the individualist model of success (“if you really, really try”), while on the other hand he is also aware of the limitations posed by the objective conditions of his circumstances (“opportunities in school, they’re very slim”): there’s not too much opportunity in a small town, but if you really, really try, there’s … one famous guy from here…. but opportunities in school, they’re very slim … nothing too big, but you still get your chances, your little chances every now and then … there’s … nothing really to do, and there’s so much drug and alcohol abuse here that the kids … if their parents are alcoholics or they do drugs or anything, they don’t really have the strength to say no because they don’t know how to say no…. [the kids] were never taught to have the strength to say no to that stuff, so a lot of them get into that. i have — like, almost all my friends do it. i was not taught to say no. i kind of taught myself that because i have a goal. i have a career i want to follow, and that’s the acting. while christopher spoke of inhabiting a field where people perceived substance use as a normal practice, he described how he managed to resist the temptation through an individualistic process of willpower and having a career goal, but without any mention of social or cultural capitals that may have facilitated his avoiding substance use. the notion of community context as exerting a “negative” influence that spurns action was seen in the narrative of abigail, an indigenous participant, who spoke of wanting to stay in school because she had been made acutely aware of how unusual it is for members of her community to do so. one excerpt suggested abigail’s cognizance of the outcomes and the lack of opportunity for members of her community: “just so many people around here always end up dropping out of school or staying here, and i don’t want to do that. i want to get a good education.” stacey, a young indigenous woman who was pregnant with her first child pushed http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 436 this discussion around dearth of opportunity further by talking about how it is particularly felt for “aboriginal” people such as she: mm, i like [living here]…. i wish there was more opportunities to life and whatnot. like, there is, but there’s low chances of aboriginals to succeed and whatnot…. ’cause … i’m aboriginal … i don’t know. like, it’s, like, really hard and … i still try to … put myself in gear … ’cause i want to succeed in life … for my baby. the history of colonization and collective history of trauma experienced by indigenous communities may have influenced her perceptions of the future and the future of those living in her community. in this social context, rather than early pregnancy being seen as a disadvantage, succeeding at parenthood and as a provider for one’s children was seen as one of the few positive future options available. these narratives speak to the need to understand habitus as exerting both a “positive” and “negative” social influence, with age-specific dimensions that shape life choices and perceptions of the future. mobility and the notion of elsewhere. narratives from young men and women in the north suggested differing expressions of habitus as seen through their descriptions of mobility and the idea of moving elsewhere. perhaps due to the perceived shortage of opportunity that existed in their community, several of the young men indicated that it would be necessary for them to leave their community to further their careers in a larger, urban centre like vancouver. in contrast, some young women in the north conveyed their reluctance, and in a few cases, fear, of moving to the “big city”. this dissimilarity may also speak to the influence of habitus — in terms of how unspoken and gendered expectations shaped the ambitions of young people in the context of a small town such as the north. there were several examples of narratives where young women (white, indigenous, and multiracial) struggled with the idea of leaving home and saw drawbacks to living in the city. for example when discussing moving from the north to a city such as vancouver, april, a young white woman, was clear that the idea of living in a city was outside the confines of her habitus: “i’ve been there — that place is too big for me! do you see where i’m from? [vancouver] scares me.” vivian, a young multiracial woman, and libby, a young indigenous woman, echoed these ideas about the city: i know for one thing i’m never going to live in a city. if it’s not [this town], it’s going to be another small town. there’s something about small towns. it’s a good feel…. i don’t know what it’s like in big cities either, so i may not — i might like it. i don’t know. but two days on concrete, and i can’t stand it. (vivian) i’m thinking [name of small city] for now, just so it’s a little bit … closer to home. so i’m not, like — if i get scared, or if i freak out that i’m, like, on my own or something, then i’m not too far away from home. (libby) http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 437 for vivian and libby, feeling “at home” did not necessarily mean staying exactly where they were raised, but it did denote the social context of a smaller place and suggested that they embodied a habitus that was attuned to the specificities of small-town living. like some of her female peers, stacey, a young indigenous woman, expressed trepidation about living in a bigger centre. however, she appeared to feel that the sacrifice of living in an unfamiliar setting was “worth it” because staying at home would limit opportunities for success and advancement: [leaving] kind of freaks me out ’cause i’ve been living in such a small town for the longest time. everyone knows everyone. so it’s … kind of freaky to go somewhere else and … somewhere big and start off new and where you don’t know no one…. but … i would say it’s … worth it because you can’t just sit around on your butt all day, all year and then … all your life….i was thinking … if i get a fashion degree, i would like to start up … my own clothing store in [community 1], i mean, yeah, [community 2]. thus, unlike those who expressed the desire to remain in town after high school, stacey seemed to consider this immobility a failure not of opportunity but of individual choice. this suggests the complexities of the habitus at work in how youth perceive their future aspirations and picture their future identities, in terms of the tension between the narrative of the limiting structure (lack of opportunity) and a narrative of individual achievement (lack of agency or will-power). it is worth emphasizing what may be seen as the gendered aspects of habitus: in this case, there were differences in narratives of mobility; young women in the north expressed doubt about leaving behind their small town origins, and young men did not. vancouver family. in vancouver, when youth wanted to model careers after the adults in their lives, these careers tended to be jobs that were higher paying and recognized by upper-middleand middle-class families as “good” jobs. in vancouver, most youth who discussed careers anticipated a future involving professions such as business, sciences, law, engineering, and the health sector. a number of young men in both locations modeled their dreams for the future after their fathers. one young white man, scott, talked about wanting to go into business and credited his father for influencing this goal: “so, like, my dad, he’s always talking on the phone.… i get to listen in on it, so i know a lot more than other kids do about [the stock market] … yeah, businesses and everything.” scott’s narrative suggests very clearly how capital is transmitted through the family as he attributed his knowledge and interest in the financial industry to his father. his narrative illustrated the pre-reflexive or taken-for-granted aspects of how habitus is transmitted through families as scott learned about his father’s professional practice through an indirect transfer of knowledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 438 there were additional examples of the importance of family members in helping youth navigate their futures. one young white woman, helena, discussed being thankful for her brother’s assistance in familiarizing her with the university system and its entry requirements: having my brother there being like “you need to take this just to keep your options open” a lot of kids didn’t have that older brother or older sibling to guide them…. i was obviously really grateful of him being like that, ’cause if i didn’t have — i wouldn’t have taken physics and chem 11 if i didn’t have my brother be like “do this”. i wouldn’t have been able to get into the program that i want to now. helena was conscious of the advantages she had as a result of having a savvy, experienced older brother — something she was aware that her peers might not have. her experience was demonstrative of habitus as rooted in capital and field: through her brother’s knowledge (cultural capital) of the postsecondary school system and its bureaucracy (field), a field-specific transmission of capital took place. like tony from the north, who wanted to follow the career path of his father in spite of his mother wishing him to follow in his brother’s footsteps, the future plans of gen, a young man of multiracial heritage in vancouver, also appeared to be informed by the longstanding tensions in his relationship with his mother: i never really liked doing things, i was lazy. when i do things, i do 100 percent but, when i don’t, it’s just “ooh, i wanna sleep”. but, yeah, my mom, she always promised me the business, she was saying, “okay you’re gonna do this, this, this” and then that’s what i was studying for, when i was little, that’s what i had in my dreams. i had everything set on that, and recently they said, “no, can’t do that.” thus while a number of the young men we interviewed in this study discussed wanting to follow the career paths of their fathers, both tony and gen rebelled against their mother’s expectations of them. in gen’s situation, his mother would only allow him to take over the family business if he attended university. while he was in favour of the former, the idea of attending university did not appeal to him. this example perhaps suggests that being socialized into a particular habitus — and the process of rejecting the future path associated with this — is a common process for youth, despite the fact that tony and gen inhabited very different fields with different forms of capital in play. opportunity. a number of young women and young men from vancouver had perceptions about their futures that were notably optimistic. one theme that emerged from these interviews involved a shared perception of the limitlessness of choice, which was manifest in youth’s comments on education and career. for example, helena’s narrative brimmed with confidence when discussing the number of professional doors open to her; furthermore, she took http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 439 for granted that her chosen career will coincide perfectly with her personal passions, an indication of her economic and cultural capital: there’s still so many options of things that i could do, and things that i’ve had interests, like i like city planning, i love law, i’m taking law right now. but like, for me, my passion’s always been sports. passion’s always been like physical education. i could be a gym teacher, a physio, i can be a nurse. i love helping people. joseph, a young white man, also spoke about the post-secondary opportunities available to him. his narrative illustrates how deeply rooted and taken for granted his views on attending postsecondary school were; the notion of not attending university did not figure in his narrative: i’m in the process of trying to decide where i’m going to go, there’s [university 1], [university 2], and [university 3].… it was a big decision here for me to where it’s like, say [university 3]’s the school where i’d like to go to the most, but it’s not the program i’d like. unlike her peers who may have had little doubt that they could achieve their desired goals, reilly, a young white woman, conceptualized the possibility — albeit only to a slight degree — that things might not go in the way she intended: i like sciences, so getting into sciences, especially [university 4], i know is pretty hard…. i like marine biology but i’m not set on that one thing, it’s not like one thing i wanna do. so i’m kind of keeping my options open, so i haven’t really put pressure on myself yet. not sure if i will [chuckles] maybe a little bit, but … if sciences doesn’t end up working out then i’ll always go in for arts, or set building and special effects, sports, i have lots of options open right now. for reilly, the failure to get into postsecondary schooling still falls outside the range of every one of these possibilities. mobility and the notion of elsewhere. perceptions of the future among vancouver participants tended to be “mobile” and “outward” for both the men and the women. for those who wanted to stay in their communities, postsecondary education was, with few exceptions, part of their future plans. the young women we interviewed in vancouver had no hesitation about leaving their community. for instance, gabby, a participant of multiracial background, talked about how she had been accepted to a prestigious school in eastern canada, and how she would be studying there the following year: “i’m excited. sounds hard, but you know, i’m ready for it i think.” in other narratives it was apparent that economic and cultural capital were in play in facilitating mobility, as ling, a young asian man who identified as an international student from china studying in vancouver, described: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 440 basically my parents think they have sacrificed too much to let me live in canada. my mother sacrificed his [sic] group, his friends, china, my father, my father wants to live with us but he cannot, he has work in china, and that’s really essential for us. so, all they want is for me to get brighter future, specifically go to a better university in this case, so they assign me a lot of study objectives like tasks. not all youth in vancouver expressed a desire to leave home. a few expressed varying degrees of interest in living locally or within the province after high school graduation. unlike many youth in the north, however, postsecondary education was usually among their goals. youth expressions of aspiration in vancouver suggested a habitus of privilege, in that the freedom of mobility and the “limitlessness” of possibility appeared to be narratives that had come to be taken for granted. “seeing a way out” of habitus while there were types of professional and academic pathways that youth from each region typically chose, there were other expressions of ambition that illustrated the influence of fields outside the academic context. within these social fields, different social logics, practices, and currencies were in play. because examples that seemed to demonstrate youth seeing a way out of their habitus were limited in each study site; we represent findings from both communities in this section. in the north some students discussed vocational prospects that many would construe as “unrealistic” or “impractical”; in other words, what they coveted would be highly improbable for anyone, regardless of their social, economic, and cultural positioning. george, a young man of multiple racial ancestries, talked about becoming a “rap star”, while tyson, a young indigenous man, mentioned “professional wrestling and singing” as two plausible career paths. specific to the field of adolescence, future goals that are not based on real life experience may be common. in vancouver, gen’s future-related discussion contrasted with the “can-do” attitudes of some of his peers, many of whom appeared to have dreams that were clearly defined. he suggested that while he would attend university, he wanted his mother to understand that she needs to “just give me time to think about what i wanna do. because i have no idea what i want to do.” gen’s behaviour fell outside the norms of “acceptable” adolescent behaviour in his community, especially when viewed from the perspective of adult authority such as parents and teachers. his perceptions might suggest a logic specific to the field of adolescence as a developmental stage. from this developmental view, adolescent habitus should not always be associated with having a concrete and practical future orientation. given the emphasis his high http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 441 school placed on postsecondary education5, gen’s approach to the future fell outside the logic of practice envisioned as appropriate for him given his habitus and family background. like gen, benjamin, a young white man, expressed feelings of uncertainty towards his future. the one objective he had was to “grow weed [for the government]”, which was less traditional and distinguished his aspirations from the more conventional career goals of his peers: i’m a teenager. i don’t know what i wanna do with my life right now, but, one thing i wanna do in the future is grow weed for the government. like i know how to grow weed, i’ve grown weed before, it’s easy, it’s as easy as growing a plant, and you can make a lot of money growing pot, a lot. so easy [chuckles] and you don’t have to go to school to grow weed, that’s why, that’s what i grew up knowing to do, and that’s what i probably will do. to aspire to a career of growing state-sanctioned marijuana is not an implausible objective given the context of canada where medicinal marijuana has been legalized, and british columbia, where cannabis is widely used, but this was clearly still far from a socially conventional career choice. what was also gleaned from his interview, however, was that this young man grew up in a part of the province where cannabis use was relatively common and accepted. given this information, it would appear that his desire to cultivate cannabis for a future living made sense for him. like gen, he may have been inhabiting a field of social practice specific to adolescence; specifically, a logic in youth culture that endeavours to rebel against the “straitlaced” ethos of mainstream adult culture. summary and comparison of themes in both locales, immediate and extended family members appear to have played a considerable role in shaping youth’s preferences for their academic and professional futures. however, while many participants noted the instrumental role family members played in positively influencing their aspirations, two youth also discussed having goals that challenged their relationships with their parents. in this vein, fraught familial ties also appeared to shape the habitus. it also appeared that the opportunities youth felt were available to them varied greatly between the two locations. in the north, youth — particularly the indigenous participants — observed the dearth of options available to them, and commented on the common hurdles young people had to navigate in this community on a daily basis. in vancouver, an altogether different habitus was suggested through the narrative findings. for example, none of the youth talked about shortages of opportunity. 5 this was evidenced by the strong presence of university recruitment material at his school, which was posted on bulletin boards. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 442 narratives of mobility in the north appeared to take on a gendered dimension; young women expressed their reluctance to move away from the small town environment and into a larger community, while young men did not. youth in vancouver had dreams for the future that more often entailed moving to other centres; a fear of moving was largely absent from these narratives. in fact, attitudes towards leaving home often took the shape of eager anticipation of what lay ahead. seeing a way out of habitus — young people dreaming outside the narrative boundaries of their peers — was a theme also seen in the data, particularly in young men’s narratives. in the north, this creativity was expressed as the desire to become something unusual and perhaps unlikely (rap star, professional singer, or wrestler). in vancouver, this took the form of some participants thumbing their noses at parental and adult expectations (not having a clear sense of what they wanted for their future, wanting to grow cannabis for a living). discussion study contributions our analysis of the findings suggests insights for the youth aspirations literature in general, and in particular for bourdieusian-informed approaches that deploy habitus as a way to understand how socio-structural conditions shape young people’s trajectories for better or worse. by employing a bourdieusian perspective, we explored the aspirations youth hold for their adulthoods and considered how these narratives may be interpreted as the products of an “adolescent” habitus, influenced by social fields beyond family-based markers of capital and social advantage. although his work did not explicitly address adolescence as a distinct category of habitus, we have argued that bourdieu’s theorization of habitus, capital, and field can be extended to do so, and is useful for exploring how social context shapes youth perceptions of the types of futures that are possible and achievable. indeed, although bourdieu argued that people from similar habitus held common views regarding “what is not for the likes of us”, a few young people preferred to distinguish themselves from the family or the community with whom they perceived they were expected to share a habitus by pointing out that the dispositions that currently composed it were not “for the likes of them”, as individuals. in bourdieusian terms, this narrative reflected these individuals’ “inventive capacity” — their ability to see their way out of the circumstances they felt were represented in the experiences of their peer group. it is also worth considering the potential limitations of bourdieu’s theorization when applied to our contemporary research context, particularly how his concepts might need to be supplemented and adapted to account for the range of youth experiences represented in our findings. for instance, youth culture scholars and others have adapted the idea of cultural capital and suggested that an adolescent-specific form of “subcultural capital” is useful for addressing the types of cultural currencies that operate in the context of youth cultures. similar to lifestyle markers that denote upward mobility and class status, subcultural capital facilitates “coolness” http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 443 and success for youth outside the markers of adult preferences and lifestyles (thornton, 1996). this subcultural capital may have played a role in shaping the narratives of a few of our participants who discussed wanting careers that did not conform to typical workingand middleclass ideals (marijuana grower, rap artist, wrestler). further, there was a gendered dimension to this subcultural capital in that all of the participants who expressed these types of aspirations were young men. these young men inhabit a gender-specific field of adolescent subculture that espouses rebellion. in their investigation into the aspirations of youth living in disparate parts of the united kingdom with regard to the “knowledge economy”, allen and hollingworth (2013) argued that “social class can produce a stickiness which mediates how subjects inhabit place…. some subjects, through their spatial and social location, can embody mobility and weightlessness while others remain sticky” (p. 502). these authors deployed the notion of class in their research in relation to how participants defined themselves, parental occupation, and family history of education, in addition to conceptualizing it as a social category that is “dynamic and always in process” (p. 503). similarly, youth living in vancouver pictured themselves as more mobile and weightless, ready to move further and more often than those youth living in the north. for the most part, northern participants’ ideas of their future selves remained rooted in their original communities; in the words of allen and hollingworth, these youth’s aspirations “remain sticky”. adding to allen and hollingworth’s (2013) findings regarding place-based social class, this study demonstrated the ways that gendered and racialized distinctions also exert an influence on how young people conceive of mobility, and where they plan to be in the future. undoubtedly, the geography and the culture of small towns may foster the idea that urban living is intimidating and undesirable. in the north, young women in particular deemed the “big city” to be a daunting place. in a number of cases, they felt that contact with this particular setting should be kept to a minimum, or avoided altogether. this was one example of how habitus suggests socially-embedded and unchallenged dimensions of (gendered) practice that shape narratives about future opportunities and mobility. gender is an embodied social category that shapes the perceptions of young women both in terms of their future aspirations and their everyday practices of “taking up space” in the social fields that comprise their community. however, this wary attitude towards living in other places was not expressed in the young women’s narratives in vancouver, which suggests a stronger influence of gender norms in the smaller community. a few indigenous participants in the north discussed how opportunities for youth in their communities were circumscribed, yet, these same young people’s narratives represented the voices of youth who were able to use their navigational capacity to see their way out of their habitus. of these young people, only one woman identified these particular circumstances as being racialized, by alluding to reduced opportunities for aboriginal people. on the other hand, the influence of race did not appear in young people’s discussions about opportunity in vancouver. this could suggest that racial inequalities between white and racialized youth in http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 444 vancouver are not as stark as inequalities between white youth and indigenous youth in the north. study limitations while the findings speak to broad differences between the narratives of youth from the north and from vancouver, they are limited in that they are not illustrative of all young people in these two communities. as participants were chosen from one high school in each community, youth who were not attending school at the time of the study were not represented. given the small population size in the north, it only has one high school; however, in vancouver, drawing participants from only one high school means that the socioeconomic and racial backgrounds of the vancouver participants do not represent a cross-section of the city. the secondary school where we interviewed in vancouver was located in a relatively privileged catchment area. while the students at this school did not represent a socioeconomic monolith, interviewing young people at a school in a more socioeconomically disadvantaged area of the city may have elicited narratives that had more in common with the voices of youth from the north. critically informed qualitative research demands attention to the power imbalances between researchers and participants that are inherent in every research process (karnieli-miller, strier, & pessach, 2009). while this does not mean power is one-directional, given that there are moments when participants themselves can assert power, researchers working within traditional scholarly paradigms ultimately have greater power to influence how findings are collected, interpreted, and shared. therefore when considering the limitations of this study we have considered how these dynamics may have influenced our interpretation of the findings. for example, young people who perceived their interviewers as women from educated, privileged backgrounds may have responded in ways they felt would suit their interviewers’ expectations (e.g., self-censoring based on not wanting to cause offence). study implications the differences in youth’s habitus between sites, and the distinctions in their aspirations, class, race, and gender, speak to the importance of utilizing locally derived and tailored strategies for improving young people’s educational pathways and future trajectories. in other contexts, it has been suggested that shifting attention to aspirations-focused policy development for youth would be helpful. in the united kingdom, for instance, education policy (see department for children, schools, and families, 2009) has targeted aspirations as an area of concern for young people, and has viewed aspirations-focused policies as crucial to elevating attainment, employability, and social mobility in this population (see spohrer, 2011). critics of these educational policies, such as allen and hollingworth (2013), have argued that these strategies are “socially and spatially restrictive” (p. 500), and have an asymmetrical impact on young people depending on their social class and geographical locations, among other factors. likewise, in our findings, youth’s narratives in the north suggested a poverty of opportunity. yet these findings also demonstrated that many youth living in the north wished to stay home or http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 445 close to home. in this context, creating and supporting local educational and employment opportunity could have a lasting impact on their wellbeing. such home-grown approaches would be better able to accommodate racial, class, and gender differences (i.e., socially produced forms of advantage and disadvantage) than policies that do not attend to young people’s dissimilar habitus, as have been enacted in some parts of the world, including the united kingdom. locally designed programs would be more attuned to regional experience given their geographic proximity and use of local expertise. there is a need for interventions that extend beyond the school to the home, through the inclusion of parents and other family members, as well as to the larger community. theatre of the oppressed (brecht forum archive, n.d.) from brazil is an example of an educational tool that can be used by youth, parents, and other family members. theatre of the oppressed “is a form of popular community-based education that uses theater as a tool for social change”, and is based on augusto boal’s work with impoverished people and workers in latin america (mandala center for change, n.d.). the topics covered in this “participatory theatre” forum (brecht forum archive, n.d.) have included what youth imagine for their futures, among other themes (mandala center for change, n.d.). as for community level interventions, one example of a promising initiative for indigenous youth is the gathering our voices aboriginal youth conference hosted annually by the british columbia association of aboriginal friendship centres (n.d.). this event gathers young people from across british columbia to explore educational and career opportunities, learn new skills and ideas, and share knowledge through cultural activities. while most of the young people interviewed in vancouver expressed what would qualify in mainstream discourse as a healthy level of aspiration — setting their sights on a postsecondary education and going on to well-paying upper-middleor middle-class careers — there were some whose narratives did not correspond with conventional expectations. even when young people are ostensibly surrounded by opportunity, local government policies aimed at boosting aspirations in this group must recognise the significance of these variant narratives, and, furthermore, not stigmatize, or relegate to the status of “lost cause”, individuals who have unorthodox perceptions about their futures. local government policies could begin by broadening existing definitions of what qualifies as a desirable future-oriented outlook, and by calling into question current assumptions about what constitutes a successful civic subject. putting this into practice could mean expanding the range of postsecondary and vocational opportunities available to young people, thereby easing the pressures upon them to aim for particular, narrowly construed forms of excellence. directions for further research this area of research warrants further exploration into how existing literature frames youth’s aspirations. to begin, we might ask, “how are definitions of success narrowly construed in this literature?”, and “are these definitions extensions of researchers’ social locations and http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 446 positions of privilege?” as allen and hollingworth discussed in their 2013 study, the notion of mobility is often bound up with success and a middle-class cosmopolitanism, while the notion of not leaving home is often bound up with failure and a shortage of ambition. what unconscious biases pervade mainstream discourse around youth and their achievement of future success? while initiatives that encourage youth aspirations should account for differences in habitus and not make assumptions about what constitutes success, there should also be an awareness of structural barriers and inequalities that contribute to uneven and disparate levels of aspiration among populations with differing habitus. other future research directions could involve examining the ways government policies have attempted to manage and direct youth aspirations. this would be valuable in guiding future action aimed at expanding youth-driven conceptualizations of what constitutes success. the findings suggest some directions for gender-specific research comparing aspirations of young women and young men through a bourdieusian lens. the narratives suggested that many young women in the north do not feel safe enough to leave home after high school for educational and employment pursuits; this may speak to specific gendered and racialized structural barriers for young indigenous women in this part of the province. for instance, what was perhaps unspoken in these narratives was the influence of local and structural conditions of violence against indigenous women in and around northern british columbia, in particular what is known as the “highway of tears”. this section of highway 16 stretches across several communities in northern british columbia (including the north); dozens of women, many of them indigenous, have been abducted and murdered along this highway, and many are still missing with cases unsolved (rhoad, 2013). while the young women themselves did not name the highway of tears as a reason to stay in town, the issue of mobility and violence against women needs further exploration. research that explores young women’s narratives about their futures through a critical gender and place-based lens would help address this need. in this capacity, bourdieu’s (2001) conceptualization of gendered, symbolic violence as a feature of habitus (the pre-reflexive and taken-for-granted conditions that create the context for actual violence) would provide a useful way for considering this apparently gendered distinction that emerged in our study. conclusion while his conceptual framework did not explicitly theorize about adolescent-specific capital, we found the application of bourdieu’s theories on habitus, capital, field, and “the future” helpful for exploring youth narratives about their aspirations. the sheer variation in youth’s stories suggests that far from being reflections of their “innermost selves and desires”, young people’s narratives about the future underscore the ways structural inequalities — founded on disparities based in class, culture, race, gender, and place — have “gotten inside their heads”. policy makers who ignore these differences in habitus will continue to do so at youth’s peril. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2016) 7(3/4): 423–455 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 447 acknowledgments the authors would like to thank the youth who generously offered their time and insights to the study upon which this 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(2012). the effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: implications for prevention. american psychologist, 67(4), 272–284. doi:10.1037/a0028015 http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs73-4201616129 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12105 http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2003.0044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2005.00608.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002716209357403 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0028015 unpacking young people’s narratives about their aspirations: a bourdieusian perspective cara k.y. ng, rebecca j. haines-saah, carla t. hilario, emily k. jenkins, and joy l. johnson youth aspirations: the literature theoretical framework bourdieu: habitus, capital, and field bourdieu and “the future” methods research sites recruitment and research procedures analytic strategy findings the north vancouver “seeing a way out” of habitus summary and comparison of themes discussion study contributions study limitations study implications directions for further research conclusion acknowledgments references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818125 (you gotta have) friends: care leaving, friendships, and agency intervention varda r. mann-feder abstract: this article is based on a presentation at fice austria in 2016 that reported on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the perceptions of friendships held by young people in and formerly in care. eleven young people from the care system and three frontline child and youth care workers were interviewed with a focus on the effects of out-of-home placement on the development of peer relationships. results suggest that there are significant obstacles to the development of age-appropriate friendships both within the care system and between youth in care and their community peers. these findings are discussed in light of the evidence that friendships are critical for healthy development and can serve as a buffer against stigma for youth who have been placed in out-of-home care. the study reported here is part of a larger program of research, the goal of which is to identify protective mechanisms or developmental assets in the transition to adulthood that could be better cultivated for youth aging out of placement. keywords: youth in care, friendship, developmental assets acknowledgement: this study was funded by a grant from the centre for human relations and community studies at concordia university. the author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of riham ahmed. varda r. mann-feder phd is a professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke street west, room ve 227-3, montreal h4b 1r6, canada. email: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818125 mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 155 the critical importance of friendships in development is among the best documented and most robust findings in developmental psychology (lerner & steinberg, 2009). normative peer relationships, especially in adolescence and emerging adulthood, teach relevant skills not learned elsewhere and support development in multiple domains, such as self-esteem, selfdifferentiation, a sense of agency, and the capacity for healthy autonomy (snow & mann-feder, 2013). once most young people enter high school, they spend twice as much time with peers as with their families; from then on, activities with friends occupy more time than any other activities except school (coleman, 2011). having friends has also been identified as a critical source of resilience for youth in outof-home placement. legault, anawati, and flynn (2006) developed a predictive model of adjustment for youth in care, based on data from 220 youth placed in ontario. they found that having close friendships predicted lower levels of anxiety, less risk of aggression, and less frequent use of avoidant coping among youth in foster care. they concluded that “positive friendships may contribute to buffer or diminish the effects of cumulative risks on outcomes” (legault et al., p. 1026). in an earlier study, flynn, robitaille, & ghazal (2006) found that selfrated perceptions of the quality of friendships among youth in care predicted placement satisfaction. at the same time, it has been suggested that being in care in and of itself can create obstacles to the development of friendships (office for standards in education, children’s services and skills, 2014). moreover, multiple moves and changes of school may result in considerable instability, disrupting friendships. rutman and hubberstay (2016) interviewed youth formerly in care who ranged in age from 19 to 26. only 56% of their participants reported regularly turning to friends, although they were seen as a potential source of emotional support. this was in stark contrast to findings for their normative peers in the community, most of whom turned to friends for support on a range of important personal issues (arnett, 2013). emond (2014) interviewed 14 youth aged 8 to 18 in residential homes in ireland and found that relationships with peers at school could serve as a source of belonging and connection but could also elicit a sense of shame about being in care. she concluded that young people in care are left to manage their friendships on their own and have to reconcile their care status with social norms that dictate that growing up at home is optimal. this can influence both their capacity to make friends and their sense of self. some scholars have highlighted the special significance of friendships for youth aging out of care. hiles, moss, wright, and dallos (2013) undertook a systematic review of the international research on care leaving conducted between 2001 and 2013, and found a number of studies that cited friends as a source of emotional support and an entrée into the family lives of others. smith (2011) advocated for a relationship-based approach for youth leaving care, stating that “youth need and benefit from relationships and the sharing of experiences with other youth who have been in foster care” (p. 228). snow, h., and s. (2014) documented the value of peer support and peer mentoring for youth who have left care, and cited friendships as fostering international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 156 feelings of belonging and reducing isolation. rogers (2017) recently identified friends as critical for helping young people from foster care manage “stigmatized care identity”. an earlier study by mann-feder, eades, sobel, and destefano (2014) compared the experiences of home leavers to those of care leavers. while moving out was described as a crisis by both home leavers and those leaving placement, the majority of youth in the community who had moved out on their own reported that they had benefited from some family support, both in the moving process itself and through the provision of a financial safety net. however, at the same time, youth leaving home reported that their friends had a critical role in their moving out process, by determining when they moved out, where they moved to, and how they adjusted after the move. home leavers overwhelmingly reported that when they faced challenges after moving, they preferred to turn to friends for support rather than to their parents. this was especially true of the home leavers who had difficult relationships with their parents, and is consistent with literature that has suggested that peer acceptance and support can compensate for the effects of family adversity (criss, pettit, bates, dodge, & lapp, 2002). care leavers, on the other hand, did not identify either family or friends as particularly supportive; rather, they stressed the need to become independent and self-reliant. while home leavers mentioned spending time freely with friends as a significant benefit of leaving home, care leavers did not identify peer interactions as something to look forward to. as part of an earlier study, care leavers reported that they were actually coached by staff to avoid other youth who have left care, as they might potentially be taken advantage of (mann-feder & white, 2003). taken together, these findings are of particular concern: while the lack of family support is something that placement agencies can never compensate for, friendships constitute an important protective mechanism, especially in the transition to adulthood. peer-centred strategies are urgently needed in child welfare, especially to assist youth in cultivating a peer support network that can persist beyond their departure from care (snow & mann-feder, 2013). this article reports the findings of a qualitative study that further explored the role of friendships for youth in placement, as seen through the eyes of youth in care, youth who had left care, and experienced staff from the care system. an additional goal of this study was to question participants about their views on the feasibility of interventions designed to cultivate peer relationships through peer-managed groups and peer mentoring. method eleven youths and three staff from the child welfare systems in montreal and toronto were recruited for interviews. the study design was vetted by a university ethics committee and all participants were engaged in an informed consent process. the youths in this study ranged in age from 16 to 20, and had spent between 2 and 14 years in care. two of the participants were female; one had left care and one was still in care. two focus groups were conducted, one with four youths currently in care, and one with four youths who had left care. three additional care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 157 leavers were interviewed individually. three staff who worked in a transition program for care leavers, two women and one man, were individually interviewed. the staff had considerable (up to 25 years) experience working with care leavers. all interviews were conducted by two trained graduate students using a semi-structured interview guide. participants were invited to share a meal with the interviewers and were paid an honorarium. questions with all participants focused on friendship experiences while in care, the role of friendships in the lives of care leavers, and the identification of any organizational factors that may have influenced how friendships developed for young people in placement. additionally, all participants were asked whether they thought that programs of peer mentoring and peer support could be helpful for youth exiting care. all interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. a team of two — a third trained graduate student and the author — conducted the data analysis using a consensual qualitative research (cqr) approach (hill, thompson, & williams, 1997). cqr utilizes a team approach to analyzing themes and subthemes in the data, where all coding is worked out through discussion and only those findings that are agreed upon are retained. cqr also identifies themes in the data as general (shared by virtually all participants), typical (shared by the majority), or variant (unusual). results for youth overall and results for staff overall were analyzed as two separate groups, and then compared. results what follows is a description of general, typical, and variant themes for youth and for staff, with characteristic quotes in each area. youth participants analysis of the interview transcripts yielded four major themes. there was a high level of unanimity among the 11 youth participants; the youth who had left care were in strong agreement with the youth currently in care. one major difference between the two groups, however, was in the tone of the responses. those who had already left care tended to be serious, thoughtful, and reflective, while the focus group with the youth in care was more boisterous and emotional. it may be that this reflects the relative age and maturity of the youth who have left care, as well as their aged-out status and relative distance from issues they experienced while in care; at the same time, the youth in care may have experienced some anxiety in relation to the discussion. the four generally supported themes identified by the youth participants were: friendships in care can be problematic; friends from care share a special bond; friendships with youth in the community are difficult, if not impossible, to maintain; and agency policy and staff interventions interfere with the formation of friendships. there was also a generally held view that peer-centred programs would be difficult to implement. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 158 friendships in care can be problematic: a view generally held by the youth in this study was that friendships between youth in care can be difficult. some participants characterized friendships as transitory and hard to maintain: “you’ll have a bunch of friends that you live with and a lot of them will start getting discharged”, and, “it’s like friends have an expiration date”. another general perception was that friendships between youth in placement are not trustworthy and that youth in care take advantage of their friends. for example, participants stated: they are the kind of friends that would steal from you when you have your wallet open. even if they’re your friends, you cannot trust them.… personally, i don’t think you can trust anyone in care. not because they are in care, but it’s just that someone could be showing off as your friend and it does not mean anything. friends in care were also seen as a bad influence. as one participant reported, “i’ve had incidents where i interacted with the wrong people. and i got into trouble.… it ruined my reputation.” friendships in care are close: at the same time, both youth in care and youth who had left care generally regarded their peers in placement as the only friends they could really trust. participants stressed the importance of their shared experience, as demonstrated by these statements: you’re all living together. you know what that person feels. though it may be a different situation, you know how it feels to have somebody tell you “no.” they feel your pain … because they are in care. a typical or majority view was that the shared experience creates a special bond. as the youth participants reported: i still talk to a few people from group homes, and i don’t know, it is just easier to be myself. it’s like family actually. you could wrestle and you would fight with somebody you live with, but you wouldn’t do it to hurt them. we try to find things to do together, because we live together. they already know everything, like, so i can’t surprise them. it is difficult to make friends from the community: the view that youth in care are easy to relate to contrasted with a general perception that making friends from outside the care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 159 system was extremely difficult. all the youth participants in this study shared the belief that the stigma they experienced as youth in care interfered with their capacity to make friends in the community. here are examples of how the youth explained this: they find out that you’re not at home and they’re, like, how come you don’t live at home? and you don’t want to answer that question. so it’s easier not to even be in a situation where you are faced with that question. i remember when my brother was in lockup, and all my friends, like, “oh i heard your brother went to jail”. i was, like, “oh seriously?” so the first thing that went through my mind was that, whenever someone brings up where i live, i say the word “group home”. the majority of youth participants stressed that rules in their care environments also made it difficult to cultivate relationships with peers in the community. as they reported: i was never really able to keep up with my friends from the outside world because i wasn’t allowed to invite anybody back to my group home. or i wasn’t really allowed to go out. you couldn’t have time to hang out. so like, 15 minutes before and after school. my friends in high school … that’s another reason why i couldn’t keep them, just because they would ask for sleepovers or like prom. i couldn’t stay out. they all wanted to go take their limo and go partying. i couldn’t do any of that. a small number of participants also pointed out that they had relatively limited access to digital technology and social media, and that this, too, impeded their ability to connect with community peers. staff intervention sometimes blocks friendships: youth typically reported that staff intervened in their friendships in the care system, for fear that one young person would be influenced by the negative behaviors of others. as these participants stated: i find they don’t want people … anyone … to get too close to each other. they think we are doing criminal things. the reason why we fought and stopped talking was because the group home didn’t want us to be friends any more.… one time we didn’t come back for hours … and they told us that if we were ever together again, we would switch group homes and that was it. if we are out too long together, they would always get suspicious. “oh, what are they up to?” and it was always bad, automatically bad. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 160 one variant finding was that the female youth who participated in this study indicated that, for girls, gender issues resulted in even greater restrictions on friendships within and outside care. as the youth stated: they think you are recruiting or escorting or you are doing god knows what. being with girls, it’s a lot different. if i am friends with a girl who’s been on the street, they’ll automatically think i’m being manipulated onto the streets, even though i am just being a friend. if i was to date people out of the system, it is a lot more difficult. my social worker would have to do background checks and that is disgusting. peer-centred programming would be difficult to implement: lastly, when asked about the appeal and feasibility of peer mentoring and peer-managed groups, the youth participants stressed the complexities of mounting a program of this kind. they wondered if youth formerly in care could help anyone else, and stressed that any such initiative should be clearly dissociated from agency programs in order to succeed. some characteristic suggestions were: i wouldn’t because i haven’t stabilized myself. i am kind of struggling. so i can’t help myself properly yet.… i don’t think i’d be able to help someone else. it would have to be serious and really well organized … because it could turn into something else. if you can make a group like that, then maybe far away from the system. so maybe have it run by somebody who is, was, in care, but left a few years ago, so is stable. not run by anyone who is associated with a care worker, a social worker, whatever, or like a support worker. staff participants analysis of the interviews with staff yielded three major themes: friendships in care can be problematic, friendships in care can be positive, and staff have a major role to play in how friendships evolve for youth in care. while staff endorsed the value of peer-centred practices, they expressed doubts about the feasibility of peer mentoring and peer-led groups. friendships in care can be problematic: a generally held view among staff participants was that the cause of negative relationships between youth in care is that peers negatively influence each other or that peers misuse or manipulate each other. as stated in the interviews: i’ve seen that friendships tend to be negative, and they get each other in trouble. so it’s a negative influence as opposed to “hey, let’s get together and help each other out” kind of thing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 161 i’ve seen kids who moved out on their own and thought that they were good friends with someone, and then realized that they were being used by that person who’s still in the system. i had a girl who said they would come and “eat all your food”. the ones that develop, don’t last. there’s things like, “we were best friends today, but she stole from me.” a typical statement was that youth who are in care lack social skills and are therefore more likely to have difficult friendships: a lot of the kids we have in care lack social skills and so it is difficult for them to make friends. what i’ve observed is that some of them come in and with all their baggage and they’re so damaged that they … i don’t want to say that they don’t have the ability … but it’s like, “if i am friends with you in group homes it’s because you have something that i need.” it’s that type of relationship. friendships in care can be positive: despite this, two of the three staff stressed that having friends is important, and that friendships in care have special properties: i see personally that it is much better to have friends, no matter bad or good, than to be isolated and feel alone. i think they have a tendency to share with each other and that creates a bond. and that bond can be helpful later. close relationships with other youth in care were described generally by staff as particularly helpful to youth leaving care: if you and i are close in age, i think the friendships are more maintained. especially if we are both going to independent living, for example. there’s something we have in common between us and i understand what you’re going through. it’s interesting that a lot of the clients have left us, even if they didn’t know each other in care, sometimes they tend to connect. some are very supportive, helpful. there are some that have had really bad times, so they’re able to say to someone, who’s behind, “okay, you need to practice your budgeting.” more and more now, our kids stay in touch with each other, and they could be helpful to each other. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 162 a typical comment by staff participants was that youth who are in care have difficulty establishing positive contacts with peers in the community. as one reported: i would say that for some of them, they feel intimidated coming out of the system and having that label. i have a girl now who’s doing hairdressing but she feels she has nothing in common with the girls in her program.… she feels on the inside that she has nothing in common with these kids or she’s not equal to them. staff interventions influence friendships: all three staff acknowledged that care professionals have a role in influencing relationships both within the care system and between youth in care and youth in the community. however, they saw their role as both encouraging positive friendships and discouraging negative ones: if we see that someone may have a positive influence on somebody, then yeah it would be encouraged. if it’s a negative influence, then it will be discouraged. i know if somebody is involved in a community activity that’s positive, we may try to encourage, you know, some other kids to tag along. on the flipside of that, if johnny’s habit is to go hang out with his friends and get stoned … [if] the other kids goes and does that, well, it will be clear that, “sorry you can’t go out with johnny because last time the two of you went out together and you both came back stoned.” you know when it’s not a good relationship or you know that the new kid is coming in and you have the kid who’s always using people. now you try to discourage it because you know that the new kid is vulnerable. while staff saw their interventions as essentially protective in nature, there was an admission by one staff participant that these interventions might have a negative effect: i don’t want to say we’re at fault, but if you take a kid in group home … sometimes we have to call and make sure you’re at mary’s house, because we don’t have that trust or whatever. it sort of already makes you different because now the group home is calling mary’s mom. peer-centred programming would be difficult to implement: lastly, when asked directly about the advisability of former youth in care mentoring youth who were getting ready to leave, all three staff expressed some support but also had reservations. the following are characteristic of their responses: i like the idea … but i would want to be selective about who would do the grouping. because again, you might have the one that’s going to school and doing what she needs to do when one was found with a whole bunch of drugs in her international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 163 apartment. you would want the one in school to be a good role model and try to help one to not do that, but i wouldn’t want that one getting pulled back. there are cases where attempts are made, but it’s not easy. and they often times will burn each other, you know? i’ve seen friends move in together and be enemies in a short period of time. while you may listen a bit more attentively, the general attitude of a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old remains, “yeah, yeah, sure i know about it”. whether it comes from a father, a mother, a 50-year-old gran, even a 21-year-old peer that’s been through it. in general, they may be more attentive with the 21-year-old, but it still remains, the attitude is more, “yeah, yeah, i know.” it actually takes time to mentor kids. and you’re asking these kids to be responsible, sometimes for school work, your apartment, and then you have your friendships. and then you’re going to be asked to mentor someone else. it’s asking a lot. discussion and conclusion although the small sample size dictates cautious interpretation of these results, there was considerable alignment in this study among the views held by the three groups — youth in care, youth who have left care, and agency staff — about friendships among young people in placement. the high level of agreement also held up between youth in montreal, and youth in toronto, two distinct jurisdictions with different legislation and different care systems. the responses of the participants overall communicated the complexities and difficulties that youth placed away from home experience in making friends, both with other youth in care and their peers in the community. friendships in care, while highly valued for their level of familiarity and mutual identification, were described as difficult to maintain and fraught with trust issues. all the participants in this study had a strong belief in the possibilities for negative peer influence among youth in care, despite the lack of evidence for the existence of contagion as an objective feature of peer relationships (snow & mann-feder, 2013). this belief in contagion was evident in the views of both youth and staff on the feasibility of peer-led interventions and peer mentoring in the care system; all doubted that youth who had left care were stable enough or trustworthy enough to be of any help to other young people who are aging out. participants also expressed the shared view that staff serve as mediators of the friendships of young people in care, whether by discouraging contact, enacting rules, or enforcing resource limitations that make interacting with other young people difficult. certainly, one of the staff interviewed for this study was acutely aware that in enforcing some agency rules, she was also international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 164 creating problems that could interfere with the maintenance of friendships. risk-averse practices run the risk of overprotecting youth in care to the point where relationships suffer. while the youth in this study did not reflect on the potential for staff to make positive contributions to their friendships, staff reported that they did encourage positive interactions when they could. this echoes the work of emond (2014), who stressed that adults need to actively help youth in care to make friends with “support and training … to counter what have been difficult past relationship experiences” (p. 201), even though this is rarely considered an explicit responsibility of staff. while the staff in this study expressed concern that youth in care lack social skills and therefore struggle to make friends, there are indications that both active staff support and practice with peers are critical for overcoming this limitation. the children’s society (2015), a charitable organization in england that supports youth in care, recently produced a guide to help promote friendships for children in placement. this document instructs adults on different strategies for helping youth in care, based on the premise that no opportunity should “be missed for children in care to have a friend” (the children’s society, 2015, p. 5). the society goes on to advocate that friendships should be considered so important that they become a part of all processes, procedures, and forms used on behalf of youth in placement (the children’s society, 2015). a striking finding of this study is the degree to which the experience of stigma was seen as interfering with opportunities for youth in care to connect with their community peers. this is wholly consistent with other research that has identified stigma as a major concern for youth who are or have been in care (rogers, 2017; snow, 2006; snow, h., & s., 2014). not only is this one of the most painful sequelae of a history of being placed, the ripple effects created by stigma rob young people of access to experiences that might otherwise help to offset the deprivations of a care career. friendships with youth outside the system have rich possibilities for positive modelling, inclusion in family life, and the opportunity to practice social skills and prosocial forms of leisure. at the same time, it has been well documented that one of the most powerful strategies for managing stigma for individual youth who are or have been in care is engagement in friendship networks with other youth who have experienced placement (rogers, 2017). promoting friendships for youth in care is thus both a developmentally informed intervention and a tool for combatting the stigmatizing effects of being in care. the benefits of supporting friendships among youth in care also extend to care leavers and alumni of care, where peer support can dramatically enhance the development of resilience (snow et al., 2014). this has, in part, fueled what is now a worldwide movement to create self-governing networks for former youth from the care system. for examples, see youth in care canada (http://youthincare.ca); clan in australia (http://www.clan.org.au); and voices for choices and care leavers group (https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/health-and-social-care) in the united kingdom. while the participants in this study did not wholly endorse peer-managed groups and peer mentoring as feasible interventions for youth in care, their comments underscored the critical importance of friendships for youth who are or have been in care. perhaps as a first step in peerhttp://youthincare.ca/ http://www.clan.org.au/ https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/health-and-social-care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 165 centred practice, efforts should be made to endorse friendships whenever possible and actively intervene with young people to help them better engage in peer relationships. friendships, both in and outside the care system, should be actively advanced by adults whenever possible, and myths related to the contagion effect need to be openly discussed and reevaluated (snow & mann-feder, 2013). practitioners, researchers, and policy makers need to examine how both values and actions can serve to facilitate or block access to friends. in a recent survey of foster parents and social workers in england, scotland, wales, and northern ireland, a participant stated, “if we don’t address friendship opportunities for looked after young people and children, then we are adding to their social exclusion and failing in our duty as corporate parents” (the children’s society, 2016, p. 9). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 154–167 166 references arnett, j. 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doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818642 family quality of life and the building of social connections: practical suggestions for practice and policy meaghan edwards, trevor parmenter, patricia o’brien, and roy brown abstract: family quality of life literature suggests that families with a member with an intellectual/developmental disability frequently face major difficulties in building social connections with others. they experience low levels of social support, face challenges in community inclusion, and are at risk of social isolation. these challenges may also be faced by other types of marginalized families. families experiencing serious illness, families experiencing intrafamily violence, and migrant families or those seeking political asylum, for example, may also become isolated and find themselves without pathways to connections with others. we present practical suggestions intended for families and professionals interested in action and intervention at the personal, community, program, and policy levels to encourage the growth of social connections and prevent isolation of families experiencing social exclusion. the suggestions will come from families with a member with a disability and the findings of a study examining the social support of families as it relates to quality of life. keywords: intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, family quality of life, policy development, practice, marginalized families, family challenges, marginalization meaghan edwards phd (the corresponding author) is an instructor in community rehabilitation and disability studies, cumming school of medicine, university of calgary, 3280 hospital drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada. email: meaghan.edwards@ucalgary.ca trevor parmenter phd is an emeritus professor in the school of medicine at the university of sydney and adjunct professor in the school of rural medicine at the university of new england, level 1, medical foundation building – k25 92-94 parramatta road, camperdown nsw 2050, australia. email: trevor.parmenter@sydney.edu.au patricia o’brien phd is professor in disability studies and director, centre for disability studies, university of sydney, level 1, medical foundation building – k25 92-94 parramatta road, camperdown nsw 2050, australia. email: patricia.obrien@sydney.edu.au roy brown phd is professor emeritus, university of calgary, canada, emeritus professor flinders university, australia, and adjunct professor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, bc v8w 2y2, canada. email: royibrown@shaw.ca mailto:meaghan.edwards@ucalgary.ca mailto:trevor.parmenter@sydney.edu.au mailto:patricia.obrien@sydney.edu.au mailto:royibrown@shaw.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 89 this article is intended to be of practical use to professionals, families, and those interested in the experiences of marginalized families. the focus is upon the importance of social connections and social support to the health and positive functioning of individuals, families, and communities. in particular, the impact of a lack of social connection upon marginalized families with extra support needs, such as families with a member with a disability, will be explored. the framework and findings from the field of family quality of life (fqol), especially as related to families with a member with a developmental or intellectual disability, will be utilized to illustrate the process and meaning of social support and social connections, which are likely to apply to other challenging situations. practical ideas to improve access to social connections and support will be illustrated with examples drawn from the stories of families with a child with a disabling condition, recognizing that it is the family as a whole that faces these challenges. these suggestions may also have utility for a broader range of families facing marginalization, including those experiencing serious illness, families experiencing intrafamily violence, asylum seekers, and those facing stigma or exclusion in society and their communities. social connections and social support in the health and social sciences social connections, whether entailing emotional and practical support, the building of trusting reciprocal relationships and community, or the sharing of information and resources via social networks, are recognized by most social and health sciences as vital to the successful functioning of individuals, families, and communities. connections and the ability to rely on others for assistance are considered to be essential aspects of what it means to be human, and have been proposed as important elements in our evolution and survival as a species (belsky & simpson, 2008; bowlby, 1973). having positive levels of connection with others including friendships, networks, and social supports seems to be a predictor of positive mental and physical health outcomes, a facilitating element in coping and resilience, and an important indicator of the stability and security of communities. researchers tend to view social support and connections with other people as an important part of living a life of quality (hupcey, 1998). social support from family and friends has been linked to positive mental and physical health outcomes and has been suggested by some researchers to be the most consistent and important variable in individual health outcomes (house, 2001; turner & turner, 2013). the world health organization (who) has asserted that being part of a social network is crucial to the health, quality of life, sense of belonging, and security of a person (sen, ostlin, & george, 2007). in the social sciences, connection with others has been an important field of study since the inception of sociology, with durkheim (1972) suggesting that social ties seemed to be associated with lower rates of suicide. the importance of connections with others has continued to emerge in social science research with opportunities for meaningful social engagement connected to bolstering self-esteem, increasing a sense of well-being, encouraging resilience, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 90 promoting a sense of community (berkman & glass, 2000; cohen, underwood, & gottlieb, 2000; cohen & wills, 1985). ecological systems theory (bronfenbrenner, 1986) recognizes the essential nature of a person’s place in the social world, seeing an individual as existing within nested structures of influence from family, friends and social connections, community, and the larger policy and societal climate. this framework forms the basis for the development and design of interventions in many fields, including social work (stormshak & dishion, 2002). social support and social connections are understood and measured in various ways, but the concepts tend to include social integration and social network size and density, and to measure elements such as the length of relationships or the function and structure of the support available (thoits, 1995). those studying communities and social and economic development are concerned with social connections. social networks, social connection, and social support are a part of the concept of social capital as developed by, most notably, putnam (2000), coleman (1988), and bourdieu (1986). social capital has been framed by putnam (2000) and winter (2000) as social networks of reciprocity, mutual support, and trust. social capital allows people to access support, make connections, and to work together as a community to address and resolve problems that they face in common (stewart-weeks & richardson, 1998). the ways in which individuals and families create and maintain bonds of trust and reciprocity within a community are still being studied and the topic continues to be of concern from local community development projects to international development policy papers (bullen & onyx, 1999; temple, 2001). the meaning and mechanisms of social connection vary across research areas. some scholars focus upon the impact of emotional support, for example, while others analyze the sharing of information and resources across complex social networks (berkman, glass, brissette, & seeman, 2000). social scientists from psychologists to community scholars have called for further research into how social connections are built and maintained. social connection, social support, and marginalized families despite the well-documented importance of social connections and social support, for some people meaningful social connections are difficult to attain. a group identified in the literature to be at particular risk of social isolation is marginalized families. marginalization tends to be characterized as an involuntary exclusion from mainstream productive activity and participation (leonard, 1984). such families are often those who have recently migrated or sought asylum; live in communities without supportive, safe infrastructure or services; experience poverty or homelessness; or encounter some type of social stigma due to a difference such as a disability or a distinct culture or language (cortis, katz, & patulny, 2009). although each family is unique and root causes of marginalization and social exclusion are complex, research has found that in general most challenged families have trouble with isolation in their community and report a lack of social supports and social connections (carbone, fraser, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 91 ramburuth, & nelms, 2004). families most in need of supportive, helpful social networks and community engagement tend to be those least likely to receive these supports. this trend is especially concerning since studies have suggested that the ability to connect with friends, neighbours, and the local community is essential to the well-being of marginalized families. the australian institute of family studies describes social support and social connection as a “potent influence in parents’ lives” (ceballo & mcloyd, 2002, p. 1311). the perceived size and availability of parents’ social networks were linked to positive family coping mechanisms when extra challenges such as marginalizing factors were experienced (benson, 2016). the experience of social support and social connection was found to be related to reduced family stress and to contribute to resilience, as well as being associated with hardiness (ben-zur, duvdevany, & lury, 2005; greeff, vansteenwegen, & gillard, 2012). in marginalized families, low social support has been correlated to poor home and school relationships and lower levels of educational success for children (social exclusion task force, 2007; mackenzie, kotch, & lee, 2011). families experiencing marginalization are often in need of extra support that may be offered through formal support services, but engagement with services is often quite low in isolated populations (carbone et al., 2004). families may feel that services are inflexible, insensitive to family needs, difficult to understand, or difficult to access. they may not feel listened to and may have difficulty trusting service providers (mendoza, katz, robertson, & rothenberg, 2003). they also may have difficulties in expressing or recognizing their needs. this lack of engagement in services and low levels of social connection for marginalized families are linked to the phenomenon of social exclusion being shut out from the social and political processes of integration into one’s community (cappo, 2002). the conceptual model of exclusion used by the social exclusion knowledge network commissioned by the who includes economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions, with these exclusionary processes creating a continuum characterized by an inappropriate distribution of resources and unequal access to capabilities and rights (popay et al., 2010). social exclusion is fundamentally about a lack of social connectedness and participation (mcdonald, 2011; saunders, naidoo, & griffiths, 2007). almost all definitions of social exclusion include a lack of social connectedness and social support, and a lack of social participation. social inclusion, in contrast to social exclusion, can be conceptualized as domains of opportunity, including structured opportunities to connect with friends, neighbours, and the local community. mcdonald (2011) suggested, “children and families need to feel connected to and supported by their community, especially when they face obstacles and challenges. they also need to feel a sense of belonging and to feel as if their voice will be heard” (p. 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 92 social connection, social support, and families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability researchers have called for further work into how to promote social connections and enhance social support for marginalized, socially excluded families (e.g., burton, boyle, harris, & kagen, 2007; davy, 2016; hayes, gray, & edwards, 2008). in the field of disability, specifically intellectual and developmental disabilities, research has been conducted with families examining their access to support from other people. intellectual disability is the presence of significant differences or limitations both in intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviour appearing before the age of 18. developmental disability is an umbrella term that often includes intellectual disability and also includes disabilities affecting development such as cerebral palsy (schalock et al., 2010). since families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability typically experience marginalization and social exclusion, some learning and some practical suggestions from this field, specifically the fqol, are presented in the following sections in the hope that families, professionals, and policy makers concerned with other types of marginalization may recognize common challenges and solutions. quality of life and fqol researchers have suggested that the principles and concepts of the field are generalizable to other areas and may be applicable and useful in a variety of settings (brown & faragher, 2014). family quality of life and social support findings fqol research in the current article is concerned with listening to and responding to the needs of families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability. the field looks at various aspects of family life with the express goal of giving families a voice in determining which aspects of life are most important and which areas need further support (isaacs et al., 2007). a good quality of life for families has been suggested by zuna, brown, and brown (2014) to exist when “families consider their lives to be happy and fulfilling, all members are healthy, they have a safe place to live, have a stable income, enjoy their lives together, have opportunities to learn and improve, benefit from the community supports and resources, and experience fulfilling social relationships with others” (p. 162). the fqol survey-2006 is a tool that attempts to measure the quality of families’ lives (brown et al., 2006). the domains examined on the fqols-2006 are health, financial well-being, family relationships, support from other people, support from services, leisure, values, careers and preparing for careers, and community interaction. the survey has been translated into 25 languages and results have been published in over 15 countries. families around the world in such countries as australia, canada, israel, italy, japan, nigeria, and malaysia have responded in similar ways to fqol measures, despite differing cultural and economic contexts (brown, kyrkou, & samuel, 2016). the domain measuring social support, support from other people, has been given consistently low scores by families, and is often reported as having the lowest satisfaction rating of the life areas measured on the fqols2006 (ajuwon & brown, 2012; rillotta, kirby, shearer, & nettelbeck, 2012; samuel, rillotta, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 93 brown, 2012). research indicates that a large proportion of families report few opportunities to receive or seek out support from other people; few efforts are reported as being made by families to obtain further support from other people, and the levels of support attained seem to be unsatisfactory. fqol studies also suggest that many families are isolated and do not want to burden others with their needs, leading to a situation in which those who need the most help may be unwilling or unable to ask for it (brown, anand, fung, isaacs, & baum 2003). in view of the low satisfaction ratings for social support, it is of great concern that social support seems to be positively related to the overall quality of life of the family (kresak, gallagher, & kelley, 2014; meral, cavkaytar, turnbull, & wang, 2013). despite the importance of social support for health, resilience, and inclusion in the community, families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability seem to find social support difficult to obtain. findings from an in-depth multiple case study an investigation into the meaning and process of social support for families was carried out in sydney, australia using the fqol framework in a multiple case study approach involving six families having varying reported levels of social connections. the design was based upon previous fqol findings and sought to explore the meaning of social connections and the barriers and facilitators to building them. findings suggested that enhancing social connections was linked to the development of emotional and practical support, the building of reciprocal relationships, access to information and resources, and the creation of pathways to collective action (edwards, 2016). families who reported having rich social networks tended to be supported by friends, communities, and social services that actively reached out and took a strong role in organizing practical and emotional help. this assistance included organizing formal and informal circles of support for the person with disability and the family, helping with shopping and child care, and providing access to clear, accurate information on available services for the person with disability and the caregivers. this active, well-planned support also appeared to be strengthened by supportive, family-centered program and policy development that included and respected the voice of families. a model was developed based on the findings in the context of wider fqol and social support literature, suggesting that social connections could be expanded for families through supportive friends and neighbours, structured opportunities for connection, trusted formal allies and services, an inclusive community, and family-centred policy. the model was suggested to be relevant to enhancing the connections of families who have been marginalized in any of a variety of ways (edwards, 2016). the model has gone through initial testing and the results are being prepared for publication. the stories of two of the family participants in the larger case study are outlined below to illustrate some of the challenges and successes families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability may experience in the process of building and maintaining social connections. these families’ stories are not meant to represent the experiences of every family international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 94 with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability, but the narratives are reasonably typical of research findings in the field. identifying details in the following family stories have been changed to protect the confidentiality of participants. maria’s family: maria is a woman who has three grown children, the oldest of whom is in her late twenties and has down syndrome with physical health complications of a heart condition and digestive issues. since maria’s husband passed away five years ago, she has become increasingly socially isolated. while she was once an active member of her community with strong social ties, she relates that time spent seeking out appropriate disability-related services and caring for her daughter have meant that her friendships have fallen away over the years. she has not felt comfortable asking others for help. in addition, she experiences her own health issues, which have made pursuing a career very difficult. she has found little support in the community and says she no longer attempts to participate in community events since people do not seem to understand her family and do not welcome her daughter. she has no one she can trust to take care of her daughter. services have proved difficult to access and are seen as untrustworthy. she expresses confusion about recent changes in disabilityfocused legislation and services. maria expresses ideas about participating in her community such as joining advocacy groups or volunteering but is uncertain as to how this might come about. she identifies herself as lonely but has no plans to try to improve her social connections since this has proved difficult and timeconsuming in the past. she has been unsuccessful in building social connections. sarah’s family: sarah is a mother of two children, the youngest of whom is a son in his early teens who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability. she has had to quit her job in order to care for her son and spends a great deal of time advocating on his behalf. she has a number of allies who assist her in this including her extended family and the administration staff of her son’s school. she has managed, with the help of a community organization, to set up a circle of support for her son. this circle is made up of her friends from university, work, and the local community. the circle helps sarah and her son make important decisions and plan for the future in addition to getting together just to socialize and have fun. she also works together with other families with a member with a disability to organize events and fundraising and lobby the government for better services for people with disabilities. she has neighbours who have reached out to assist her and these neighbours offer practical support when needed such as assisting in yard maintenance or cooking occasional meals for sarah’s family. despite her successes in attaining and maintaining social connections, sarah suggests that her family continues to experience social isolation at times and encounters a sense of exclusion at certain community events and community international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 95 organizations like sports teams. despite ongoing challenges, her social connections have allowed her to take collective action to improve services, find support in other people, and build strong relationships in her community. sarah indicates, however, that these social connections were not easy to create or maintain, and that the efforts she makes to enhance connection for her entire family have left her exhausted and at times disillusioned. maria and sarah’s stories illustrate some of the challenges and successes families, especially mothers, may find in building connections for their families. despite the difficulties, it seems that social connections are useful and important. the importance of connecting theory and practice has been recognized in the field of fqol and such a connection has been strengthened through the use of family stories and experiences (i.e., turnbull, brown, & turnbull, 2004). a set of practical suggestions for organizations, community support workers, and policy makers on supporting families to enhance social connections and increase access to social support and community resources may be useful and timely (zuna et al., 2014; edwards, 2016). the suggestions below are based on findings and theory in the field, and are intended to be of use to professionals and families. the suggestions should be explored in further detail in future research in order to examine the impact, efficacy, and practicality of the approaches. practical suggestions for supporting family members to connect with others although efforts to make social connections by a main caregiver may be an important aspect of connection, the fqol literature has found that efforts to seek out social support are infrequent. people may be prevented from making efforts by ill-health, exhaustion, negative emotions, and lack of time (brown et al., 2003). this seems to be a significant barrier that could be overcome through more organized efforts on the part of those who support families, such as neighbours and friends. it may be that people in these families’ lives need to be informed that families may not necessarily ask for needed support, and without proactive attempts at connection from other people may not receive it. a public education campaign or investments in smaller community campaigns informing community groups of this phenomenon might encourage people to reach out and help others. research suggests that investment in local organizations and programs tends to increase the social capital of an entire community, encouraging a climate in which people are more likely to connect with friends and neighbours (bullen & onyx, 1999). despite the clear difficulty with making efforts to reach out, advocacy or support organizations often place the onus upon families to do the reaching out or to manage these connections. although some organizations may offer support in doing this, a structure of supporting families through assisting the caregivers in a proactive way might provide greater assistance here. the assistance might include making child care available during peer support meetings, encouraging the development of parent advocacy groups, and actively encouraging international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 96 participation of families in program planning. whitaker (2013) found that, while mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disability looked for support for their children with “dogged determination”, they also needed strong support from a responsive service climate and an inclusive community. opportunities for peer mentoring set up and led by parents who have gone through the experience and understand what it takes to go from isolation to connection may also be of assistance here. such an approach has been useful in areas where parent peer-support programs have been implemented (turnbull, turnbull, & kyzar, 2009). o’brien (1989) has written about the challenges of building pathways to relationships for people with extra support needs. suggestions include increasing opportunities for interactions with neighbours, and increasing places in the community where people can interact, prioritizing interactive leisure opportunities. there is also a suggestion that services and funding structures focus upon and recognize the importance of increasing social contacts. brown, corbigo, and taylor (2015) also recognized the need for service-led and serviceorganized parent groups that offer trustworthy, safe support for the child with disability and siblings, allowing the parent to have a break from the caring role and network with other parents. mcarthur and faragher (2014) have suggested that families who are isolated need to be assisted with accessing the social supports that could make a positive difference for themselves and their children. their research suggested the use of “targeted” services to work alongside informal networks to provide practical and emotional support at the local level. further, partnering among formal programs to build informal networks such as playgroups and parent groups in normal, safe, non-stigmatizing places will provide increased chances for social connectedness. practical suggestions for building trusting relationships between services and families a need for trustworthy, responsive services has been recognized in the literature and suggestions have been made to assist service providers in moving to a place of mutual cooperation and respect with families. blue-banning, summers, frankland, lord nelson, and beegle (2004) suggested six components of family–professional partnerships aimed at increasing connection: communication, skills, respect, commitment, equality, and trust. under the component of communication, the need to listen and to be honest and clear is foundational to building a strong relationship with families. simple listening skills such as attention and eye-contact during meetings have been suggested by parents as areas that could be improved. frequent, accessible contact in familiar settings also appear to be important to family members. many families, according to fqol literature, do not appear to have experienced this type of open, respectful relationship with service providers (brown et al., 2003). efforts on the part of formal supporters towards a more family-centred practice may assist in building the trust necessary for families to share their needs and experiences. a positive formal support climate may encourage families to participate in service-led structured opportunities to connect with others, like peer-led training or networking events. trusting services to provide reliable support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 97 through respite services, day services, or an external supported-living situation, may enable caregivers to have time to pursue connections of their own. family capacity-building has also been put forward as a useful approach for service providers. this empowering approach aims to work with parents to increase knowledge and skills, thus improving families’ confidence and competence (dunst, bruder, & espe-sherwindt, 2014). researchers have also suggested that formal support workers, in addition to providing family-centred services that respond to family-determined need, may become community connectors rather than caregivers only, thus enabling people to become active, accepted members of the community (sherwin, 2010). brown and colleagues (2015) suggested that in order for service providers to enable inclusion and create opportunities for connections to develop the vision and mission of the organization, they must go beyond rhetoric and state in practical ways how they will enhance social inclusion for the people and families they support. brown et al. (2016) emphasized the importance of a collaborative approach to providing appropriate support to families across agencies in a supportive policy environment. this would require an ongoing, thorough, systematic evaluation framework of support services and systems that responds to concerns and adapts services and supports accordingly. schalock and verdugo (2014) have suggested and outlined such a framework in detail (pp. 19–34; see also schippers, zuna, & brown, 2015). practical suggestions for creating more inclusive communities those who study inclusive communities have suggested that relationships and social connections are the glue that holds communities together and a lifeline to happier lives and more satisfying existences (amado, 1990). sherwin (2010) recognized that a shift towards inclusion for people with intellectual disability and their families requires genuine efforts on the part of leaders towards creating an attitude shift at a local grassroots level so that community members might become aware of the gifts and contributions of people with disabilities and their families. practical suggestions for building inclusive communities may involve investment in organizations to help set up community groups allowing connections to develop. investment in community centres that host peer mentoring, group classes, or courses, and investment in support of neighbourhood leaders, may also be helpful. these leaders could be helped to mobilize communities to be more connected, fostering inclusive communities (block, 2008; chaskin, 2001). investments in places outside the home, areas where people can get together, share, and have conversations on neutral ground, allowing relationships to build, have also been suggested in the literature on inclusive communities (oldenburg, 1997). others have suggested that assetbased development may assist in allowing people in a community to connect in a strengths-based framework, where relationships are able to thrive and valued social roles are encouraged (kretzmann & mcknight, 1993). researchers have also suggested that fostering relationships may result in positive social action through such methods as purposeful network building in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 98 communities (westoby & owen, 2010). these ideas encourage environments in which marginalized families are included more meaningfully in the community. practical suggestions for involving families in building policy and practice a focus upon families, communities, and relationship building strategies may assist those at risk of isolation to become connected in meaningful ways. the connections that have the potential to be built among families may open up pathways towards positive change, ultimately allowing families to design the supports best suited to their needs and strengths. families were an important part of the deinstitutionalization and normalization movements in the field of intellectual and developmental disability (samuel et al., 2012), and great potential still exists for families to be well-supported, highly effective agents of social change. parmenter (1992) suggested that social policy needs to recognize the importance of the empowerment of families and investment in communities in the creation of opportunities for all citizens to live lives of quality and move towards political activism and social change. especially relevant to the findings is his call to provide resources to informal networks, intentional communities, and social connections that are the lifeblood of genuine communities (parmenter, 2004). supportive policy allowing families to begin to build essential social connections does not seem to be developing. in canada, for example, among families with a child up to age 14 with a disability including physical, developmental, and intellectual disability, only 44% reported receiving formal assistance from government-funded agencies, and 54% of parents, usually mothers, of children with disabilities reported that caring for their child with a disability meant they were unable to participate meaningfully in employment (behnia & duclos, 2003). without adequate respite and support it is difficult to imagine how families can find time and energy to begin to build those essential social connections and participate actively in communities. additionally, families often report a lack of information about service changes and available support services in their communities (brown et al., 2003). government investment in the accessible communication of policy and programs might be of great benefit here. the canadian government has committed to developing the canadians with disabilities act 2018, promising to promote equality of opportunity and increase the inclusion and participation of canadians who have physical, developmental, and intellectual disabilities and their families (government of canada, 2017). consultations with organizations, advocacy groups, and people with disabilities and their families have recently concluded; it will not become clear how inclusive, accessible, and respectful this process has been until the data collected from the consultations are made public. it can only be hoped that such consultations and eventual policy adjustments will begin to reverse some of the feelings of isolation and marginalization experienced by people with intellectual and developmental disability and their families. policy needs to be developed in collaboration with government bodies including provinces, states, and other levels of regional government and should be reflected in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 99 availability of a range of socially oriented support services that are capable of being matched to individual and family needs. the practical solutions mentioned in the preceding sections were useful to families like maria’s and sarah’s and may be of value to other families facing challenges with establishing and maintaining useful connections in the community. some of the suggestions are applied below to illustrate the potential impact on individual families. maria’s family (possible actions): while maria might currently feel quite lonely and isolated, these trends could possibly be reversed with targeted and intentional changes and investments, such as the following, with the aim of maria and her family members becoming healthy, active, and well-connected citizens in their community:  investment and education in community organizations and programs in maria’s neighbourhood to facilitate social engagement and encourage people to connect with friends and neighbours.  peer-led supports for families in a respectful professional environment.  a parent group in which maria might take a strong advocacy role could lead to the strengthening of connections, the lessening of loneliness, and a strong sense of purpose and collective action.  service-provider training of staff in how to build trusting, mutually respectful relationships with parents.  greater access to information about programs and policies to facilitate maria’s interest in advocacy.  a priority on involving parents in the development of policy in a more transparent way. sarah’s family (successes and possible actions): while sarah reports feeling much more connected than maria, she has had to sacrifice a great deal, including her career, in order to take care of her son while building and maintaining her connections. she seems to have benefited greatly from proactive friends and neighbours in her well-connected community but still reports feeling stigmatized and isolated at times. although sarah has found a great deal of success, her exhaustion and burden might be somewhat alleviated with the development of government policy that supports families through adequate respite, well-designed community programs, and the valuing of family members’ expertise. some practical suggestions for sarah’s family include:  further investment in education and community programs within sarah’s local community may assist her and her family to become more included.  support for advocacy programs and peer support networks might help build sustainable connections within their community.  employment opportunities for sarah to act as a trainer in advocacy and family support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 100 the practical solutions offered in this article are specifically connected to families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability but may have application wherever families have been socially excluded. experiences of isolation, disengagement from services, stigma in the community, and a lack of power in important decision-making and policy seem to be a part of the lives of families in a variety of settings. targeted strategies at the family, community, and policy levels may be of benefit to any family experiencing exclusion from meaningful civic and social participation. conclusion this article suggests that social connection, social support, and the building of social networks is vital to all people, yet may be of particular importance to families experiencing various forms of marginalization. research results in the fqol framework regarding the social connections and social support of marginalized families with a member with an intellectual or developmental disability were presented, along with two brief family stories illustrating the challenges in building and maintaining social connections. practical suggestions for assisting families in connecting with others were put forward in the hopes that such practical ideas might be applied with other families experiencing marginalization. we suggest that with targeted investment and planning, marginalized families may become connected in such a way that they may access information, resources, pathways to collective action, reciprocal connections, and emotional and practical support. it seems that in order to bring about change and to empower these families, continuous research is needed to uncover and help ensure the best ways to mobilize pathways to connections, ultimately moving towards a more inclusive society for all families. much of this research requires a close interaction between researchers and the researched. collaboration within an inclusive model is an important ingredient in future research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 88–106 101 references ajuwon, p. m., & brown, i. 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818121 preparedness for emancipation of youth leaving alternative care in serbia anita burgund isakov and jasna hrnčić abstract: the process of preparing young people for leaving alternative care is not sufficiently researched in serbia. in order to define what support is necessary for their successful emancipation, this study of 150 young people in care aims to analyse both their preparedness for leaving alternative care, and whether the type of placement (kinship, foster, or residential) makes a difference to the level of preparedness. a mixed method approach was applied. quantitatively, questionnaires assessing factors contributing to successful emancipation were administered. qualitatively, transcripts of discussions from 5 focus groups, consisting of a total of 26 participants from all 3 types of placement, were analysed. most of the youth in the sample indicated they have self-care and housekeeping skills, social skills to make friendships and connections, good grades in school, and aspirations for further schooling and starting a family. however, negative feelings such as disturbance, fear, and sorrow, and a sense of missing support and feeling insufficiently prepared for leaving care were also evident in their answers. both the focus groups and surveys suggest that the biggest concern with the independence of young people leaving alternative care is financial stability. several recommendations for ways to influence the system in order to improve outcomes for young people are made. keywords: alternative care, kinship foster care, professional foster care, emancipation, resilience anita burgund isakov phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the faculty of political sciences, department of social policy and social work, university of belgrade, jove ilica 165, belgrade. email: anita.burgund@fpn.bg.ac.rs jasna hrnčić phd is an associate professor in the faculty of political sciences, department of social policy and social work, university of belgrade, jove ilica 165, belgrade. email: jasna.hrncic@fpn.bg.ac.rs http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818121 mailto:anita.burgund@gmail.com mailto:jasna.hrncic@fpn.bg.ac.rs international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 84 a considerable number of children in serbia are in care because of a lack of adequate parental care or adoption possibilities. the social welfare system in serbia places, on average, 8 out of 10,000 children into care (žegarac, 2014a). there were 6,088 children in care in 2015; 975 entered care that year, and, of these, 851 entered foster care, and 124 entered residential care (rzsz, 2016). the number of children entering the social care system increased by 19.7% in 2015, even as the number of children in the general population declined by 0.8% due to demographic aging (rzsz, 2016). the increase in children in care was seen especially in children from 0 to 2 years old (žegarac, 2014b). whereas in other countries youth typically leave alternative care between 16 and 18 years of age (stein, 2006), in serbia youth rarely have a chance to leave care before 18 (burgund & žegarac, 2014; žegarac, 2014a). domestic research by the centre for social work1 (žegarac, 2014b) showed that about 75% of the 347 youth in care included in the research were not adequately prepared for leaving alternative care. youth leave alternative care at an age when most of their peers are still in the parental home (stein, 2006). most recent research has been focused on identifying the needs of young people at the moment of leaving alternative care (montgomery, donkoh, & underhill, 2006; stein, 2006; majstorovic, 2009), while the process of youth independence has rarely been analysed. maunders, liddell, liddell, and green (1999) described three phases of the process of leaving care: preparation, transition, and emancipation. preparation may be lacking, as the protection that young people in alternative care receive from the social welfare system seems to make them passive (burgund & žegarac, 2014). when they reach the age of 16 to 18, possibly after years in care, they often lose the protection and assistance of the social welfare system (stein, 2006). even when they encounter difficulties after leaving care, they do not usually have the option to return to the previous placement or a way to receive the help they need (dixon & stein, 2005). they are denied the psychological space that would allow them to face the challenges of independence as do their peers who live with their families — “their path to adulthood is accelerated and compressed” (stein, 2005, p. 10). stein (2006) suggested possible outcomes of such independence, dividing youth leaving care into those who are moving on, those who are merely surviving, and those who are becoming victims. tweddle (2005) summarised research findings on predictors of successful emancipation outcomes: having successfully completed secondary school, the ability and ambition to continue their education, having self-care and household skills, minimal problems in education, the absence of substance abuse, and having been able to participate in decisions related to their preparation for emancipation. a longitudinal study of leaving care in israel has shown that the sense of readiness to leave care was the greatest predictor of the experience of self-efficacy (refaeli, 2014). 1 the centre for social work is a government agency providing social welfare and care for children, youth, and adults in need. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 85 health issues can reduce the likelihood of developing positive identity and can interfere with the ability to cope with the challenges presented by the transition from care to adult emancipated life (stein, 2006). on the other hand, a positive perception of the future gives a sense of hope crucial for overcoming those challenges (stein, 2009). stein (2005) summarises the main factors that affect resilience in young people who have left alternative care: the stability of the placement during care, whether they had a chance to develop a positive identity, the achieved level of education and participation, whether they had some preparation for leaving care, and what quality of life they achieved after leaving care. present study the process of preparing young people for leaving alternative care is not sufficiently studied in serbia. the focus of this research is on the perspectives and opinions of youth in order to give them a voice and understand their perspective, encourage them, and foster their resilience. accordingly, the general aim of this research is to analyse the preparedness for emancipation of youth leaving alternative care in serbia. the specific objectives of the research are: (a) to analyse the preparedness for emancipation of young people in alternative care in the process of becoming independent, and (b) to analyse the differences in preparedness of young people in serbia to leave alternative care with regard to the type of placement (kinship, foster, or residential). the criterion variable of this research, preparedness for independence, is defined by the following indicators: stability of placement in care, state of general and mental health, success and aspirations in schooling, social support, life skills (e.g., self-care and housekeeping) and social skills, orientation toward emancipation, and perception of the future. the predictor variable, type of placement, can be kinship, foster, or residential. method in this study, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been applied. data for quantitative analysis were collected by questionnaires, which provided information on the presence of the indicators among the youth in our sample. data for qualitative analysis were gathered in focus groups, which enable a more detailed description of a phenomenon and provide insights into its quality through dialogue (đurić, 2005). such a combined methodology is most useful when there is a need for generalisation of qualitative findings, as it provides access to the issue from different viewpoints, and allows its elaboration, qualification, and construction (creswell, 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 86 sample the sample for the quantitative research consisted of 151 young people leaving alternative care in serbia, ranging in age from 16 to 22 years (m = 18, sd = 1.78), and representing both genders (females n = 76, 50.3%). most had been placed in professional foster care (n = 86, 57.0% of the sample, 54.7% boys and 59.2% girls), fewer in residential care (n = 36, 23.8% of the sample, 26.7% boys and 21.1% girls), and fewer still in kinship foster care (n = 27, 17.9% of the sample, 17.3% boys and 18.4% girls). placement data were missing for two persons. all available youth aged 16 to 22 from centres for family placement in serbia were included, as well as youth in residential care in the centre for protection of infants, children and youth in belgrade. the sample for qualitative research consisted of all of the young people from the above sample who voluntarily applied for and participated in one of five focus groups. altogether there were 26 focus group participants, from 16 to 22 years of age, with 16 in either foster care or kinship care (8 girls and 8 boys) and 10 in residential care (3 girls and 7 boys). the focus groups averaged five participants each. data collection tools and research procedure the data collection protocol for youth in alternative care (dcpyac) was prepared for the purposes of the broader research on the same sample. only two questions, regarding psychiatric diagnosis and abuse of psychoactive substances, were used in this paper. these data were collected from official records on young people in care. all indicators of youth’s preparedness while still in care were identified and mapped in earlier research. they are operationalised in the questionnaire on leaving alternative care factors for youth (qlacfy) that was completed by young people leaving alternative care. besides demographic data (gender, age, type of placement), the part of the questionnaire used in this paper is the operationalisation of indicators of preparedness listed above, organised in seven topics: stability of alternative care placements (three questions); general and mental health status (two closed-ended questions); success (two closed-ended questions) and aspiration in schooling (four questions); needed and available social support (seven closed-ended questions); life and social skills (13 items about self-care, household skills, and obtaining social support); relation toward emancipation (four closed-ended questions); and, perception of the future (one closedended question). the defined topics in focus groups were: preparedness for emancipation, worries and fears regarding emancipation (two questions), and available support and asking for support during preparedness for leaving care. all youth involved in the study were informed about confidentiality, and all gave written informed consent to be involved in the research. participants filled in the questionnaires independently or with the help of trained interviewers. the average duration of focus groups was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 87 approximately 75 minutes. the study was conducted in serbian; materials and results have been translated into english by the author for this paper. data processing answers to the open-ended questions in questionnaires dcpyac and qlacfy were first coded according to the most frequent answers; then all answers were entered in a database. data were statistically processed by the spss 22 program, and the analyses implemented were pearson’s chi-squared test, a one-way analysis of variance (anova), and a t-test. responses of the young people in the focus groups were coded by gender and number of participants: each response has the code “i” (respondent), “m” or “f” (gender), and the serial number of the respondents (e.g., “im13”). data were processed by thematic analysis. results time spent in care and stability of placement on average, our participants had spent 7 years and 8 months in care (m = 93.66 months, sd = 65.184). the range of time spent in placement varied from 1 month to 21 years. only 5.3% had spent less than 6 months in care, 9.3% had been in care from 6 months to a year, 32.8% from 2 to 6 years, 25.2% between 6 and 10 years, and 32.5% had spent more than 10 years in care. there were no significant differences between groups by type of placement (f[2,141] = 2.073, p = .130). most participants had been in only one placement (64.9%, n = 98), three times more than the number that had had two placements (21.2%, n = 32), while 7.9% had had three or more placements (n = 12). there were five (3.3%) with three placements, four (2.6%) with four placements, and three (2.0%) with five placements. data were missing for 6.0% of youth (n = 9, m = 1.47, sd = 0.869). the one-way anova showed significant differences between the types of placements (table 1). young people from residential care had a significantly higher number of placements than those in foster care (t[112] = 3.099, p = .003) and kinship care (t[59] = 4.537, p < .001), and those in foster care had a significantly greater number of placements than those in kinship care (t[103] = 2.922, p = .004). table 1 significant differences in number of placements by placement type variable type of current placement significance of differences foster care (n = 79) kinship care (n = 26) residential care (n = 35) m sd m sd m sd f df sig. number of placements 1.35 .699 1.08 .272 2.03 1.200 12.323 2 137 .000 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 88 health health condition — self-assessment: most participants assessed themselves as very good, both for their general health (57.5%, n = 84), as shown in table 2, and for their mental health (64.7%, n = 95), as shown in table 3. table 2 self-assessment of general health assessment type of current placement total foster care kinship care residential care n % n % n % n % very good 59 70.2 15 55.6 10 28.6 84 57.5 good 20 23.8 11 40.7 22 62.9 53 36.3 not so good 4 4.8 1 3.7 3 8.6 8 5.5 bad 1 1.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 0.7 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 35 100.0 146 100.0 m and sd m sd m sd m sd m sd 2.63 0.636 2.52 0.560 2.20 0.584 2.51 0.635 table 3 self-assessment of mental health assessment type of current placement total foster care kinship care residential care n % n % n % n % very good 59 68.6 17 63.0 19 55.9 95 64.7 good 24 27.9 10 37.0 12 35.3 46 30.9 not so good 3 3.5 0 0.0 3 8.8 6 4.1 bad 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 total 86 100.0 27 100.0 34 100.0 147 100.0 m and sd m sd m sd m sd m sd 2.65 0.548 2.57 0.492 2.47 0.662 2.61 0.568 participants in foster care most frequently assessed their general and mental health as very good, while young people in residential care most frequently assessed their general health as good and mental health as very good (tables 2 and 3). those in kinship care usually assessed their overall health as very good, and their mental health as good, while no one in this category assessed their mental health as very good. the one-way anova showed that those in residential care assessed their general health condition less positively (f[2,143] = 6.093, p = .003) than those in either foster (t[117] = 3.448, p = .001) or kinship care (t[60] = 2.136, p = .037). there were no significant differences in mental health by type of placement (f[2,144] = 1.266, p = .285). mental condition from records: data from dcpyac showed that substance abuse was recorded in 4.4% (n = 7) of cases, with 3.3% (n = 5) having abused cannabis and 1.3% (n = 2) alcohol. a psychiatric diagnosis had been recorded for 11.9% (n = 18) of our participants, with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 89 mental disability in 5.3% (n = 8) of cases, organic mental disorders and behavioural disorders in 3.3% (n = 5), and multiple difficulties in only one case (0.7%). schooling success in schooling: the vast majority of respondents were regularly attending school (94.7%, n = 143) at the time of data collection; 10.6% of them (n = 16) had work, with 2.6% (n = 4) having full-time work. most were attending high school (37.7%, n = 57) or craft school (baking, butchery, hairdressing, etc.; 33.3%, n = 50). some (8.6%; n = 13) were attending university, and 6.6% (n = 10) attended a school for students with special needs. one person had completed high school (0.7%) without going on to further studies. the most frequent result in school, based on file reviews, was very good success (32.7%, n = 49), while 25.3% (n = 38) had good success, and 22.0% (n = 33) were rated as excellent; sufficient success (8.0%, n = 12) and insufficient success (5.3%, n = 8) were rare. there was no significant difference in school success by type of care (f[2,133] = 0.52, p = .95). aspirations: more than two thirds of our respondents (70.2%, n = 106) indicated that they were satisfied with their school success, while one quarter (24.5%, n = 37) were dissatisfied. they did not show significant differences by the type of placement (pearson’s chisquared[8] = 12.858, p = .117). a little over three quarters were planning to continue their education (76.2%, n = 115), while 17.2% (n = 26) did not have that intention. there were no significant differences by the type of placement on this variable (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 0.231, p = .891). the vast majority (83.4%, n = 126) felt that they had chosen the school which they attended, while 9.9% (n = 15) felt they hadn’t chosen the school they attended, and 8.1% (n = 12) did not answer this question. there were no significant differences by the type of placement (pearson’s chi-squared[6] = 9.538, p = .146). the most frequent reasons young people offered for not choosing the school they attended was that someone else had made a decision for them (n = 4; answers: “centre for social work has made a decision”, “because i was not even asked for my opinion”) and poor school performance (n = 2). the importance that participants placed on their aspirations for education and employment was evaluated by their answers to the question, “what are your wishes for the future?”. there were nine closed-ended choices and one open-ended choice (“other”) offered, with the possibility of multiple responses. two of the answers, one relating to education (“finish school”) and the other to career (“get a job”), considered professional aspiration. the most common responses were that they wanted to find a job (87.3%, n = 131) and to finish school (84.7%, n = 127). there were no significant differences in the aspirations of respondents for employment in relation to the type of care (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 1.040, p = .594), while there were marginally significant differences in aspiration to finish school (pearson’s chisquared[2] = 4.882, p = .087), which was more frequently reported by those in foster care (54.4%) than those in kinship (19.2%) or residential care (26.4%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 90 social support evaluation of support networks was based on the responses to a few groups of questions. sources of support: the first question group targeted sources of support and the extent to which help was available (see table 4), answered on a four-point scale that ranged from 1 (i do not have that person) to 4 (significant help). the number of responses on items varied from 62.3% (n = 94) to 90.7% (n = 137) out of a total sample of 151. the lowest response rate (62.3%) was to the item “residential care staff”, perhaps because many participants in family placement had no contact with them. most often participants stated that they receive support from friends (88.7%), foster parents (81.8%), case managers (80.5%), foster care counsellors (76.2%), and siblings (75.6%). the least frequent was help from residential care staff (36.1%) and parents (41.5%). teachers were assessed as help providers in almost two thirds of cases (65.5%); relatives (i.e., extended family, not parents or siblings) in more than half of the cases (57.2%). significant help is provided most frequently to participants in family care (foster and kinship): a vast majority of them receive it from foster parents (90.1%) and almost two thirds (62.4%) from foster care counsellors. on the other hand, young people in residential care less frequently reported significant help from residential care staff (43.8%). about one half of participants recognized that they have significant help from siblings, and two fifths of them from friends and case managers, while other providers were less acknowledged. for the most part, the results concerning the persons missing from the lives of young people (i don’t have that person) were expected. most frequently, the missing family members were parents, followed by relatives. respondents’ identification of the professionals missing from their support systems varied according to the type of placement. an unexpected result was that 17.7% of participants reported not having teachers in their lives, although only 5.3% weren’t attending school at the time of data collection. this might be the result of the custom in some parts of serbia of referring to high school teachers as “professors”. although only 7.1% (n = 8) of participants reported that they didn’t have a case manager, this is still an unexpected result because they all should have a case manager active in their lives. there were significant differences in the amount of support reported by our participants in different types of care on six items: relatives (pearson’s chi-squared[6] = 18.688, p = .005, c = .381), case managers (pearson’s chi-squared[6] = 13.425, p = .037, c = .327), teachers (pearson’s chi-squared[6] = 18.398, p = .006, c = .373), residential care staff (pearson’s chisquared[6] = 38.792, p < .001, c = .540), foster parents (pearson’s chi-squared[8] = 119.632, p < .001, c = .685), and foster care counsellors (pearson’s chi-squared[6] = 86.520, p < .001, c = .652). see table 4. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 91 table 4 perceived level of support by type of placement source of support level of support type of current placement total foster care kinship care residential care n % n % n % n % parents significant help 17 24.6 5 25.0 7 25.0 29 24.6 some help 12 17.4 4 20.0 4 14.3 20 16.9 not helping me 19 27.5 0 0.0 7 25.0 26 22.0 don’t have that person 21 30.4 11 55.0 10 35.7 43 36.4 total 69 100.0 20 100.0 28 100.0 118 100.0 relatives significant help 10 17.5 11 47.8 8 26.7 30 26.8 some help 18 31.6 10 43.5 5 16.7 34 30.4 not helping me 13 22.8 2 8.7 10 33.3 25 22.3 don’t have that person 16 28.1 0 0.0 7 23.3 23 20.5 total 57 100.0 23 100.0 30 100.0 112 100.0 sibling significant help 33 45.2 17 73.9 15 45.5 66 50.4 some help 19 26.0 4 17.4 9 27.3 33 25.2 not helping me 14 19.2 2 8.7 4 12.1 20 15.3 don’t have that person 7 9.6 0 0.0 5 15.2 12 9.2 total 73 100.0 23 100.0 33 100.0 131 100.0 friends significant help 31 42.5 9 37.5 13 39.4 56 42.1 some help 35 47.9 13 54.2 14 42.4 62 46.6 not helping me 4 5.5 2 8.3 3 9.1 9 6.8 don’t have that person 3 4.1 0 0.0 3 9.1 6 4.5 total 73 100.0 24 100.0 33 100.0 133 100.0 case managers significant help 27 44.3 5 25.0 12 38.7 45 39.8 some help 27 44.3 11 55.0 8 25.8 46 40.7 not helping me 4 6.6 4 20.0 6 19.4 14 12.4 don’t have that person 3 4.9 0 0.0 5 16.1 8 7.1 total 61 100.0 20 100.0 31 100.0 113 100.0 teachers significant help 15 25.0 5 22.7 11 37.9 32 28.3 some help 24 40.0 11 50.0 6 20.7 42 37.2 not helping me 14 23.3 4 18.2 1 3.4 19 16.8 don’t have that person 7 11.7 2 9.1 11 37.9 20 17.7 total 60 100.0 22 100.0 29 100.0 113 100.0 residential care staff significant help 7 14.3 0 0.0 14 43.8 21 22.3 some help 3 6.1 0 0.0 10 31.2 13 13.8 not helping me 6 12.2 0 0.0 3 9.4 9 9.6 don’t have that person 33 67.3 13 100.0 5 15.6 51 54.3 total 49 100.0 13 100.0 32 100.0 94 100.0 foster parents significant help 77 90.6 23 88.5 0 0.0 102 74.5 some help 6 7.1 3 11.5 1 4.2 10 7.3 not helping me 1 1.2 0 0.0 1 4.2 2 1.5 don’t have that person 1 1.2 0 0.0 22 91.7 23 16.8 total 85 100.0 26 100.0 24 100.0 137 100.0 foster care counsellors significant help 46 65.7 12 52.2 1 4.2 60 50.8 some help 18 25.7 11 47.8 1 4.2 30 25.4 not helping me 3 4.3 0 0.0 2 8.3 5 4.2 don’t have that person 3 4.3 0 0.0 20 83.3 23 19.5 total 70 100.0 23 100.0 24 100.0 118 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 92 as shown in table 4, help from relatives was rated highest by participants in kinship care (91.3%) and lowest by those in residential care (43.4%). help from case managers was rated highest by young people in foster care (88.6%) and lowest by those in residential care (64.5%), while help from teachers was rated highest by young people in kinship care (72.7%) and lowest by those in residential care (58.6%). in assessing help from residential staff, the highest scores were noted by young people from residential care (75.5%); considerably fewer of those in foster care considered that they received such help (20.4%) while, as would be expected, young people from kinship care indicated that they did not have any residential care people in their lives. likewise, the significant differences for foster parents and foster care counsellors were due to the lack of such a person in the lives of most young people in residential care. significant differences by type of placement were not found for parents, siblings, or friends. the results of focus group discussions: all participants in the focus groups recognised the importance of getting support for becoming independent and for overcoming future challenges. they recognised who provided support for them; often it was only one person. for example, one participant said, “only the manager of the institution will be the one that will take care of me, i know that she will take my phone number and call me to ask how i am and whether i manage” (im4). participants generally perceived every support as positive, making such statements as: “i have a case manager and a guardian, we never had a problem and we’re in good relations” (im6). needed and received support in different areas: respondents answered the closedended question “in which areas do you need help?” by circling one or more of six possible answers. as shown in table 5, the most frequent answers were job (61.6%), finance (56.3%), and housing (37.7%), followed by counselling and support (35.1%), education (29.8%), and health (9.3%). when asked to specify the areas in which they have received substantial assistance, with six possible answers, table 5 shows that participants most commonly circled advice (62.0%), followed by the completion of school education (52.1%), material support (27.5%), and establishing contact with family (19.0%). they reported receiving the least help with finding a job (9.9%) and an apartment (7.7%). of the eight young people (7.7%) who chose “other”, three were not leaving care (2.1%), four did not get any help at all (2.8%), and one got help with the furniture for the apartment she would live in after leaving alternative care (0.7%). significant differences by type of placement were confirmed for needed help in finance (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 6.283, p = .043) and housing (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 16.731, p = .001), with those in kinship care reporting the least need in these areas. as for receiving substantial help, there were no significant differences by the type of placement in any category. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 93 table 5 assessment of needed and received assistance by different areas needed help received help needed help in: np* %p** n total received substantial help in: np* %p** n total finance 85 56.3 148 material support 39 27.5 142 housing 57 37.7 148 finding apartment 11 7.7 142 schooling 45 29.8 148 in finishing school 74 52.1 142 job seeking 93 61.6 148 finding a job 14 9.9 142 counselling and support 53 35.1 148 advice 88 62.0 142 health 14 9.3 148 contacting a family 27 19.0 142 other 1 0.7 148 other 8 5.6 142 * np number of positive answers; ** %p -percentage of positive answers social backing: there were four questions about who youth felt able to rely on in case of need, with responses on a four-point likert scale (table 6). most participants indicated that they have an adult of trust whom they could rely on when needed (91.0%; 72.2% indicated “completely true”); slightly fewer said that they could rely on their foster parents or caregivers (86.7%; 62.2% responded “completely true”); over three quarters would count on their friends (79.0%; 35.5% responded “completely true”), while the percentage who felt they could count on their families was lowest (66.6%; 44.9% responded “completely true”). table 6 social backup — self assessment social backup answers foster care kinship care residential care total n % n % n % n % i have a trusted adult on whom i can rely when i need to completely false 8 9.5 0 0.0 3 9.1 11 7.6 mainly not true 0 0.0 0 0.0 2 6.1 2 1.4 mainly true 14 16. 7 4 14.8 9 27.3 27 18.8 completely true 62 73.8 23 85.2 19 57.6 104 72.2 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 33 100.0 144 100.0 i can count on my family members completely false 18 23.1 1 3.7 7 20.6 26 18.8 mainly not true 11 14.1 0 0.0 9 26.5 20 14.5 mainly true 18 23.1 3 11.1 9 26.5 30 21.7 completely true 31 39.7 23 85.2 9 26.5 62 44.9 total 78 100.0 27 100 34 100.0 138 100.0 i can count on my foster parents/caregivers completely false 7 8.3 0 0.0 6 18.8 13 9.1 mainly not true 2 2.4 0 0.0 4 12.5 6 4.2 mainly true 16 19.0 6 22.2 13 40.6 35 24.5 completely true 59 70.2 21 77. 8 9 28.1 89 62.2 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 32 100.0 143 100.0 i can count on my friends completely false 7 8.8 2 7.4 6 19.4 15 10.9 mainly not true 12 15.0 0 0.0 2 6.5 14 10.1 mainly true 29 36.2 11 40.7 20 64.5 60 43.5 completely true 32 40.0 14 51.8 3 9.7 49 35.5 total 80 100.0 27 100.0 31 100.0 138 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 94 a one-way anova showed significant differences between types of alternative care in three of the four social backup items: family members, foster parents or caregivers, and friends (table 7). on the fourth item (“i have a trusted adult on whom i can rely when i need to”) the type of placement had marginal significance, with higher results from youth in kinship care. further analysis by simple t-test showed that participants in kinship care assessed significantly more often than those in residential (t[47.3] = 5.814, p < .001) and foster care (t[100.6] = 6.197, p < .001) that they could rely on family members. these participants reported feeling that they could rely on foster parents or caretakers significantly more than did young people in foster (t[41.9] = 4.839, p < .001) and residential care (t[94.0] = 2.085, p = .040). those in foster care assessed that they counted on their foster parents or residental staff significantly more than did those in residential care (t[114] = 3.710, p < .001). those in residential care assessed that they could rely on friends significantly less than did those in kinship (t[56] = 3.799, p < .001) and foster care (t[109] = 2.158, p = .033). in all cases, the biggest difference was between the young people in kinship care, who had the highest scores, and those in residential care, who had the lowest. table 7 significant differences in social backups of youth by type of care social backups type of care significant differences foster care kinship care residential care m sd m sd m sd f df sig. grown up of trust 3.55 .910 3.85 .362 3.33 .957 2.781 2 141 .065 family members 2.79 1.199 3.81 .483 2.59 1.104 11.481 2 136 .000 foster parents/ social pedagogues 3.51 .898 3.78 .424 2.78 1.070 11.211 2 140 .000 friends 3.08 .952 3.44 .640 2.64 .915 5.869 2 135 .004 the results of focus group discussions: young people from residential care who were preparing for independence often mentioned their need to strengthen their skills and their selfconfidence, and how important that was for achieving success, especially in response to the stress and uncertainty that they would face during emancipation. for example, one participant said, “i have raised my confidence to such a level that whenever i talk to someone regarding my residential care or school, i am happy and i believe in myself” (if7). the alternative care system and its professionals were seen as providing material services and benefits to which the participants felt they were entitled. however, participants did not feel they received support or guidance from them as illustrated by the following conversation: q: “would you ask someone from the centre for social work to help you?” a: “no, that would not have occurred to me, i do not believe that it would be helpful, they would hardly help us if we have left care” (if8). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 95 living and social skills to the closed-ended question “have you mastered the mentioned skills?”, after which 13 skills were listed, youth answered on a four-point likert scale. housekeeping and money management skills, social skills, and self-care skills were included (table 8). the number of responses on items varied from 103 to 148, out of a total sample of 151. the lowest response rate (68.2%) was to the item “i use protection during sexual intercourse”, perhaps because many had not engaged in sexual relations. the highest response rate was 98.0% of the sample for the items “i eat healthily” and "i take care about personal hygiene". some skills responses were mostly positive indicating that the skill was mastered; this was most often the case with youth in foster care (table 8). the young people in our sample most positively evaluated taking care of personal hygiene and their health. nearly all believed that they had completely mastered these skills (97.3% and 93.2%), while significantly fewer considered that they ate healthy food (82.5%), and still fewer indicated knowing how to cook (72.2%). not all had mastered skills related to spare time, with 78.8% reporting engaging in hobbies and 69.0% in sports. the results in the social relations area showed that most participants managed to have friends (94.4%) and to make new friends (87.0%), while they found it more difficult to enter into dating partnerships (71.9%). most of those who indicated whether they use protection during sexual relations replied positively (82.5%). the one-way anova showed significant differences between types of alternative care in two categories: eating healthily (f[2, 15] = 0.515, p < .001) and taking care of health (f[2,144] = 4.098, p = .019). the differences reflect the significantly lower scores of particpants in residential care. marginal significance was shown in “looking for help and information” (f [2,142] = 2.885, p = .059) with participants in residential care having the lowest scores and those in kinship care having the highest. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 96 table 8 self-assessment of mastered skills by the type of care skill answers foster care kinship care residential care total n % n % n % n % i can cook completely false 9 11.4 2 7.4 4 11.8 15 10.7 mainly not true 16 20.3 4 14.8 4 11.8 24 17.1 mainly true 43 54.4 18 66. 7 20 58.8 81 57.9 completely true 11 13.9 3 11.1 6 17.6 20 14.3 total 79 100 27 100 34 100 140 100 i can provide everything for maintenance completely false 3 3.6 2 7.7 1 3.0 6 4.2 mainly not true 1 1.2 0 2 6.1 3 2.1 mainly true 40 47.6 12 46.2 15 45.5 67 46.9 completely true 40 47.6 12 46.2 15 45.5 67 46.9 total 84 100.0 26 100 33 100.0 143 100.0 i can do money management completely false 8 9.4 5 18.5 2 5.9 15 10.3 mainly not true 0 0 0 0 5 14.7 5 3.4 mainly true 40 47.1 9 33.3 14 41.2 63 43.2 completely true 37 43.5 13 48.1 13 38.2 63 43.2 total 85 100.0 27 100.0 34 100 146 100.0 i take care about my health completely false 4 4.7 0 0 1 2.9 5 3.4 mainly not true 0 0 0 0 5 143 5 3.4 mainly true 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 completely true 81 95.3 27 100.0 29 82.9 137 93.2 total 85 100.0 27 100.0 35 100 147 100.0 i take care about personal hygiene completely false 1 1.2 0 0 1 2.9 2 1.4 mainly not true 0 0 0 0 2 5.7 2 1.5 mainly true 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 completely true 85 98.8 27 100.0 32 91.4 144 97.3 total 86 100.0 27 100.0 35 100.0 148 100.0 i eat healthily completely false 7 8.1 1 3.7 3 8.6 11 7.4 mainly not true 0 1 3.7 14 40.0 15 10.1 mainly true 42 48.8 19 70.4 9 25.7 70 47.3 completely true 37 43.0 6 22.2 9 25.7 52 35.2 total 86 100.0 27 100.0 35 100 148 100.0 i do sports completely false 11 13.1 5 18.5 5 14.7 21 14.5 mainly not true 15 17.9 5 18.5 4 11.8 24 16.3 mainly true 33 39.3 6 22.2 13 38.2 52 35.9 completely true 25 29.8 11 40.7 12 35.3 48 33.1 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 34 100 145 100.0 i use protection during sexual intercourse completely false 4 6.8 0 3 10 7 6.8 mainly not true 5 8.5 2 14.3 4 13.3 11 10.7 mainly true 11 18.6 3 21.4 2 6. 7 16 15.5 completely true 39 66.1 9 64.3 21 70 69 67.0 total 59 100.0 14 100.0 30 100.0 103 100.0 i have a hobby completely false 11 14.5 1 4.0 1 3.2 13 9.8 mainly not true 9 11.8 2 8.0 4 12.9 15 11. 4 mainly true 20 26.3 10 40.0 7 22.6 37 28.0 completely true 36 47.4 12 48.0 19 61. 3 67 50.8 total 76 100.0 25 100.0 31 100.0 132 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 97 skill answers foster care kinship care residential care total n % n % n % n % i have friends completely false 4 4.8 1 3.7 2 5. 9 7 4.8 mainly not true 1 1.2 0 0 0 1 0.7 mainly true 19 22.6 4 14.8 11 32.4 34 23.4 completely true 60 71.4 22 81.5 21 61.8 103 71.0 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 34 100.0 145 100.0 i easily make friendships completely false 5 6.0 2 7.4 4 11.4 11 7.5 mainly not true 6 7.1 0 0 2 5.7 8 5.5 mainly true 30 35.7 11 40.7 11 31.4 52 35.6 completely true 43 51.2 14 51.8 18 51.4 75 51.4 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 35 100.0 146 100.0 i easily make partnerships (dating) completely false 7 9.1 2 8.3 6 17.6 15 11.1 mainly not true 10 13.0 5 20.8 8 23.5 23 17.0 mainly true 32 41.6 8 33.3 11 32.4 51 37.8 completely true 28 36.4 9 37.5 9 26.5 46 34.1 total 77 100.0 24 100.0 34 100 135 100.0 i know where and how to look for information when needed completely false 5 6.0 0 0 1 2.9 6 4.14 mainly not true 2 2.4 0 0 4 11.8 6 4.14 mainly true 33 39.3 9 33.3 16 47.1 58 40.0 completely true 44 52.4 18 66. 7 13 38.2 75 51.7 total 84 100.0 27 100.0 34 100 145 100.0 orientation toward emancipation most of the young people in the sample knew of their right to remain in care until the age of 18 (84.1%, n = 127). life planning for leaving care: participants were asked when they planned to leave care. the most frequent answer was “to stay in care as long as possible” (43.7%, n = 66); the next was “do not know” (25.2%, n = 38). significantly fewer answered that they would leave care as soon as they could (9.2%, n = 14), and only a few that they would leave next year (4.6%, n = 7). the question was left unanswered by 17.2% (n = 26). there were no significant differences by the type of placement. when asked to specify where and with whom they expected to live after leaving care, 35.8% (n = 54) of youth responded, although some (4.6%, n = 2) stated only the place of residence. others answered that they would live with relatives (10.5% of the sample, n = 16), alone (9.3%, n = 14), with mother or siblings (6.6%, n = 10), with a foster family (4.6%, n = 7), in the current placement (1.3%, n = 2), with a partner (1.3%, n = 2), with a future family of their own (1.3%, n = 2), with a dog (2.9%, n = 3), and with a friend (1.3%, n = 2). feelings related to leaving alternative care: when asked about their feelings on leaving alternative care (six choices, with the possibility of multiple selections), 144 young people responded. at least one of the negative feelings listed was selected 62.5% of the time (n = 90; mean of negative feelings = 1.51). the most commonly chosen feeling was sadness (34.0% of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 98 responses, n = 9), followed by anxiety (32.6%, n = 47) and fear (27.8%, n = 40). among the positive emotions, the most frequent response was excited (23.6%, n = 34), while a lower number indicated happiness (16.0%, n = 23). the least frequent response was indifference (13.2%, n = 19). there were no significant differences by the type of placement to any feeling, but marginal significance was evident with the feeling of fear (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 4.671, p = .0.97), with higher results for those in residential care than those in family placements. the results are consistent with the findings of the focus groups in which all youth participants spoke of exposure to stress regarding the transition to independence. another question about feelings was “what upsets you in connection with leaving care?”. with the possibility of multiple choices (including “nothing upsets me”) and an open response (“other”), 141 respondents replied and most identified at least one thing that upset them (63.8%, n = 90). the average number of positive responses was 1.09 (sd = 1.114), with a range from 1 to 5. many respondents were worried that they would not be able to care for themselves (29.1%) and that they did not know what would happen to them on leaving care (27.7%); others were upset that they didn’t have a plan for where to live (24.1%). eight respondents (5.7%) gave other answers, of which the most common was that they were upset about the anticipated difficulty of finding a job (2.1%, n = 3). pearson’s chi-squared test showed significant differences between types of alternative care on the answers “i do not have a plan where i will live” (pearson’s chisquared[2] = 8.089, p = .018), “i don’t know what will happen to me when i leave care” (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 7.238, p = .027) and “nothing upsets me” (pearson’s chi-squared[2] = 7.597, p = .022). in all cases, the biggest difference was between the responses of participants in residential care and those in kinship care (see table 9). table 9 self-assessment of anxiety about leaving care what upsets you in connection with leaving care? type of care foster care (n = 81) kinship care (n = 26) residential care (n = 34) total (n = 141) np* %p** np* %p** np* %p** np* %p** i don’t know what will happen to me when i leave care 24 29.6 2 7.7 13 38.2 39 27.7 i do not have a plan where i will live 17 21.0 3 11.5 14 41.2 34 24.1 i don’t have enough support 4 4.9 0 0.0 4 11.8 8 5.7 will i manage to take care of myself 20 24.7 8 30.8 13 38.2 41 29.1 will i manage to take care of others that i should take care for 13 16.0 4 15.4 8 23.5 25 17.7 nothing upsets me 32 39.5 13 50.0 6 11.8 51 36.2 other 4 4.9 1 3.8 3 8.8 8 5.7 * np number of positive responses; ** %p percentage of positive responses the results of focus group discussions: participants in family care (kinship or foster) talked differently about preparations for independence than did those in residential care, who international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 99 emphasised personal strengths: “you decide by yourself to get serious, no one will do it for you” (if7). they declared that they would need to rely on their own strengths because they could not count on the help of others in the future. the girls especially emphasised that they would need a job, because if they got married, they did “not want to depend on a husband”. for example, one said “i know i can do it, so far i have managed and i will. i do not want to depend on my husband and to wait for him to give me the money to eat” (if4). when we asked young people from family care if there was anything helping them to prepare for independence, apart from the support of foster parents or relatives, one answered, “certainly there is, but we cannot remember [talking about it]” (if1). when it came to support after leaving care, participants in family care either said that they would stay with relatives or get information from foster care counsellors. they had not discussed about it with anyone and even though they knew they were entitled to some forms of support, they were not sure what was included. perception of the future perception of the future was assessed by answers given to ten items, with the respondent estimating the chances that particular events would happen to them in the next 5 years. each item was answered on a five-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (least likely) to 5 (extremely likely). the number of youth that answered the questions varied from 139 to 149 (table 10). most estimated high probabilities for desirable outcomes: to have good relationships with people (92.7%), to become successful in business (84.6%), and to have a good marriage and family (71.1%). on the other hand, very few young people expected to become a victim of violence (2.8%), to suffer serious health issues due to bad habits (4.8%), and to use social assistance (6.4%). about half felt that they were likely to make a contribution to society (53.9%) and to have a lot of money (49.0%). table 10 perception of the future of care leavers what do you expect in next five years? n n4,5* %4,5* m sd to have success in work 149 126 84.6 4.31 0.874 to have good marriage and family 149 106 71.1 4.00 1.311 to have serious health issues due to bad habits (smoking alcohol, drugs...) 146 7 4.8 1.40 0.962 to have a lot of money 146 72 49.0 3.52 1.131 to make contribution to the society 139 75 53.9 3.39 1.977 to become victim of violence 144 4 2.8 1.18 0.670 to use social assistance 140 9 6.4 1.46 1.005 to get arrested 144 7 4.9 1.21 0.824 to have good relationships with people 145 134 92.7 4.69 0.755 to be the leader in community 139 56 40.3 3.17 1.304 * n4, 5 and %4, 5 are the number of and percentage of respondents answering 4 or 5 on the likert scale international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 100 there were significant differences by type of placement on six out of ten items (table 11). the number of respondents who answered the questions ranged from 80 to 85 in foster care, 25 to 27 in kinship care, and 32 to 35 in residential care. our participants in foster care had the most positive expectations for the future. they assessed their chance of being successful in business significantly higher than did those in kinship (t[110] = 2.639, p = .010) and residential care (t[118] = 2.162, p = .033). they also estimated their chance of having a lot of money in the future as significantly higher than did those in kinship (t[108] = 2.702, p = .008) and residential care (t[118] = 2.201, p = .030), and their chance to have a good marriage and family as significantly higher than did those in residential care (t[47.9] = 2.501, p = .016). our participants in residential care had the most negative expectations of the future. they reported a significantly greater expectation of needing social assistance (t[38.3] = 2.188, p = .035) and of being arrested (t[37.6] = 2.066, p = .046) than did those in foster care. those in residential care assessed their chances of experiencing serious health issues due to bad habits (smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc.) as significantly higher than did those in kinship care (t[45.1] = 2.862, p = .006). table 11 significant differences in perception of future by type of care expectations type of care significant differences foster care kinship care residential care m sd m sd m sd f df sig. success in work 4.48 .717 4.04 .898 4.11 1.105 4.002 2 144 .020 good marriage and family 4.24 1.095 3.81 1.415 3.51 1.579 4.363 2 144 .014 health difficulties 1.34 .941 1.12 .431 1.74 1.197 3.664 2 141 .028 lots of money 3.75 1.034 3.12 1.013 3.26 1.314 4.522 2 142 .012 contribution to society 3.71 1.076 3.46 1.240 3.82 3.557 .244 2 135 .784 victim of violence 1.18 .722 1.08 .272 1.26 .751 .576 2 139 .564 social assistance 1.30 .753 1.42 .987 1.88 1.408 3.923 2 135 .022 arrest 1.09 .477 1.12 .60 1.57 1.357 4.691 2 139 .011 good relations with people 4.74 .661 4.69 .61769 4.55 1.034 .771 2 140 .464 leader in community 3.26 1.319 3.08 1.288 3.00 1.295 .529 2 134 .590 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 101 discussion in our analysis of preparedness for emancipation of young people leaving alternative care, the following indicators were chosen: stability of placement in care, state of general and mental health, success and aspirations in schooling, social support, life skills (e.g., self-care and housekeeping) and social skills, orientation toward emancipation, and perception of the future. these indicators of preparedness were most common in the international literature on young people leaving alternative care; however, as no comparable research has been conducted in serbia, it is possible that preparedness indicators could be different for serbian youth. most of the participants in our study had been in one or two placements, which suggests that they had stability of placement. however, those placed in residential care had more changes of placement than those in family care, suggesting that those in residential care face more risks in completing a successful emancipation. significant differences have been found among youth in different types of care on various indicators of preparedness. youth in kinship care mostly show higher scores and better outcomes than youth in residential care. one of the reasons could be that stability of placement is higher among youth in family placements; another reason could be differences in how care leavers are treated, as the social system doesn’t give any support to those who have left residential care. health is a good predictor of resilience among youth (courtney & dworsky, 2006). youth from the sample assessed their physical and mental health generally as good and the vast majority reported that they didn’t need any support concerning their health habits and didn’t believe that they were likely to experience health problems in the future. however, the data further suggest that youth leaving care are in fact at risk for future health issues. almost two thirds of our participants responded in the questionnaire that thinking about leaving care caused them negative feelings (sadness, fear, anxiety) and that they were upset about the changes that awaited them, which suggests that these youth were under stress that was becoming more intense as the leaving care time approached. all of the young people in the focus groups talked about exposure to stress due to their approaching independence. studies have shown that chronic exposure to stress leads to a drop in physical health and increases susceptibility to disease (bick, calvo, & mootha, 2012). the worse the condition of their general and mental health, the less youth leaving care will be able to cope with stress, as shown in previous studies (williams, lindsey, kurtz, & jarvis, 2001). in some cases, their mental health might be impaired because of negative feelings related to leaving care. the findings of this research show that youth in residential care assessed their overall health and health care as worse than did the other two groups; one may wonder what outcomes can be expected for these youth. the data suggest that it would be useful to conduct research on linkages between resilience in youth and their assessment of general and mental health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 102 it is a positive finding that young people have aspirations, but the fact that one quarter are unsatisfied with their school success suggests that the educational system should be adjusted to support youth by recognizing that they are facing difficulties transitioning into adulthood. youth leaving care need an individualized educational approach in order to reach their potential and achieve greater personal satisfaction. our results show that the participants felt that they were receiving at least some support. the most significant support available to them in all three types of placement came from siblings, friends, and case managers. however, some participants didn’t know that they had a case manager, which corroborates previous research on alternative care in serbia in which some young people reported in interviews that they did not know who their case manager was (burgund & žegarac, 2014). the relatively high percentage of missing teachers reported might be the result of the custom in some parts of serbia of calling teachers in high school “professors”. almost all respondents believe that they can rely on adults and on friends, and many of them report that they can count on foster parents or caregivers. young people in family placements had substantial help from the foster care system, while those in residential care had less support from residential staff. young people in kinship care seem to have the most social support, primarily because of the support they receive from extended family (relatives), but also because they receive more help from teachers. the finding that they need less support in finance and housing might indicate that they receive more substantial support from their relatives. the support from the social system is most visible in qualitative assistance from the foster care system, less from residential care staff and case managers, and least from teachers. the young people in residential care were in the least favorable position: they had less support from extended family, friends, teachers, and professionals in the social system, which left them to rely mostly on their own strengths. it is not surprising that they were the group that most frequently didn’t know what would happen to them after leaving care and that they had mostly negative expectations of the future. analysis shows that young people felt they had the least support in finding a job, housing, and finance, and that these were the areas in which they most needed support. the findings suggest that young people expect that the system will provide them with help and accommodation, and provide an emergency response in crisis. emotional support is not expected from workers in the alternative care system. it seems that the preparation for independence of young people in foster and kinship care is postponed.with youth in family placement, we can assume that attachment and dependence have been nurtured, because for most of those youth the goal is to remain with the foster or kinship family, even though that is contrary to the rules of family care. it is certainly not what other stakeholders who are actively participating in the planning for emancipation expect (žegarac, 2014b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 103 interestingly, both the focus groups and surveys suggest that the biggest concern with the independence of young people leaving alternative care is financial stability. at the same time, one third of survey participants clearly expressed that they need help in the form of advice. this suggests the young people have not yet developed the stability and self-reliance needed for independence. no matter how organised their move into independence is, it seems that young people need to have a person they can rely on, and from whom they can get help. many countries have developed a system with professionals who have the responsibility, experience, knowledge, and competencies to help and empower young people without parental care to become independent (žegarac, 2014b). the young people from the sample largely perceive their future in positive terms. most expected to have good relations with people, success in business, and a good marriage, and didn’t expect to have problems with the law, violence, poverty, or health. the perception of the future is slightly more negative when it comes to making a lot of money and higher aims such as making a contribution to society and becoming a community leader. the emotional responses of our participants to their future prospects included two dominant positive feelings, excitement and happiness; on the negative side, and more frequently, feelings of sadness, anxiety, and fear were reported. the fact that almost two thirds of young people felt upset about leaving alternative care suggests that they were not adequately prepared for transition. on the other hand, the fact that most young people appear to have positive expectations for the future can give us hope. if we encourage the resilience of young people and enable them to see themselves more as successful than unsuccessful, with adequate support during the preparation and transition, they will be more likely to achieve autonomy, independence, and success in adulthood. from the time that young people enter the system of alternative care, they need supports that will enable them to build capacities, acquire skills, and learn how to find support. limitations the concept of preparedness for emancipation is a challenge to conceptualise and therefore measure because it depends on subjective assessment. our effort to overcome this problem was focused on establishing some objective indicators. the special challenge in this research is the difficulty of assessing the readiness for emancipation of youth who are still in alternative care, because it is hard to know if we’re ready for things that we have not yet experienced. assessment of their readiness and preparedness would be more reliable after independence, when the outcomes could be objectively measured. this study is among the first of its kind in serbia. greater accuracy could be expected by validation of the questionnaire on preparedness (qlacfy) and identifying indicators that apply to young people in serbia. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 104 the study design was transversal. emancipation is a process that has an individual duration for each person. studies dealing with the measurement of outcomes at certain moments do not provide information about the process, but the process is indirectly inferred from the outcomes. greater precision on the outcomes of preparedness could be derived from longitudinal studies on the same population of young people after a certain period of living independently. longitudinal studies require resources and must overcome the challenge of contacting young people after independence, because their records may be lost, and youth, as studies have shown (e.g., courtney & dworsky, 2006), often change their place of residence, work, and even contacts. the sample of the focus groups was much smaller than intended due to participation being voluntary; most of the larger sample did not respond to the invitation to participate in focus groups. as a result, the subsample of the focus groups did not satisfy the requirements of saturation. all these limitations are a result of the fact that the findings of existing studies are pioneering both in perceiving the situation of young people who are preparing to leave alternative care and in the methodological approach in this field. conclusion this study suggests that there is a lack of a systematic approach to the planning process of emancipation of young people in alternative care, and that there is a need for research that would deal with the consequences of this systemic non-response. this research explores the characteristics of young people in alternative care and their differences by type of care. research has shown that the system support is not individualized enough to adequately prepare young people in all types of placements for the transition to independence. while young people in family care in most cases had system supports in place, they hesitated to leave their foster or kinship family. on the othe hand, youth in residential care had significantly less social support, which motivated them to try harder to attain success, but also caused stresses that impaired their capacity to cope with difficult situations. we have received encouraging results in the areas of school success, aspirations, and perceptions of the future in young people who have grown up in alternative care. previously conducted research (burgund & žegarac, 2014) points to factors that affect independence: a feeling of security, the continuity and stability of the placement after leaving care, and the level of social support after leaving care. this research has shown that, for many young people in care, the support and experience of security and preparedness are missing. this may serve to stimulate an examination of the independence of young people leaving alternative care from the perspective of their relationships, identities, and life stories, not only from the narrow perspective of acquiring skills. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 83–107 105 recommendations for ways to improve the system in order to produce better outcomes for young people include:  early intervention and family support in order to preserve and strengthen the ties and relations between young people and their parents and relatives;  providing alternative care of good quality in order to compensate for negative experiences and the trauma of entering care for children and young people;  working with young people on their life stories in order to help them form stable identities;  supporting young people to build their support networks and feel that they are in a safe environment;  changing the paradigms of systematic analysis of young people in alternative care that sees them as purely vulnerable, in order to encourage and enable their specific potentials and strengths;  providing a gradual transition from care to independence;  providing continuous support for young people having mental health problems and those who are faced with multiple problems;  involving youth in decision-making processes relevant to their lives and the future; and,  providing individualized plans for youth leaving residential care that would include a gradual transition to adulthood. more research is needed to deal with outcomes, especially research with experimental and quasi-experimental designs. longitudinal studies could provide a clearer understanding of the risks and protective factors on emancipation outcomes. as well, comparative studies 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(2014b). pravo deteta na kvalitetno staranje – analiza sprovođenja smernica ujedinjenih nacija za alternativno staranje o deci u zemljama zapadnog balkana [the child's right to quality care – analysis of the implementation of the un guidelines for the alternative care of children in the western balkans]. sarajevo, bosnia and herzegovina: save the children international. http://www.zavodsz.gov.rs/pdf/izvestaj2016/deca%20u%20sistemu%20socijalne%20zastite%202015.pdf http://www.zavodsz.gov.rs/pdf/izvestaj2016/deca%20u%20sistemu%20socijalne%20zastite%202015.pdf http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/profiles/ms.php http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/112/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.05.005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/yd.199 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13676260123589 aboriginal youth suicide prevention: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 158 aboriginal youth suicide prevention: a post-colonial community-based approach darien thira abstract: aboriginal youth suicide is often understood as a (mental) health crisis, so that prevention efforts are designed to promote the early recognition and intervention that is appropriate for any biological disease. this article redefines aboriginal youth suicide as a community crisis with a social cause (i.e., the impacts of colonization) and cultural “cure” rooted in the reclaiming of wellness through the contemporary expression of traditional values. using the “through the pain to wellness: community-based suicide prevention program” (which has served aboriginal communities across canada for the last 20 years) as an example, an introduction to suicide pre-/inter-/post-vention using a post-colonial community resource model in offered. the program provides a blend of post-colonial consciousness raising (to enhance empowerment), mental health promotion (to enhance awareness), intervention skills training (to enhance capacity), and community development (to enhance wellness) in order to mobilize communities as they develop and implement a strengths-based suicide prevention strategy to promote individual, family, and community resilience in the face of suicide. keywords: aboriginal, native, first nations, indian, youth, suicide, prevention, intervention, postvention, post-colonial, community development, resilience, mental health promotion, wellness program darien thira, ph.d., is a registered psychologist who serves as a community development and wellness consultant for many aboriginal communities across canada. he offers training workshops and clinical consultation related to post-colonial community mobilization and development, trauma healing, addiction, and suicide; he is also a graduate school instructor and mental health clinician/assessor at an aboriginal drug/alcohol treatment centre. in relation to suicide, the culturally driven community-based prevention program described in this paper – “through the pain to wellness” – has been used in over 50 aboriginal communities across canada and australia. e-mail: darien@thira.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 159 aboriginal youth suicide is often understood as a mental health crisis with medical (i.e., psychiatric) solutions. while this is true in some cases, a post-colonial approach redefines youth suicide as a community crisis, resulting from the ongoing insults of colonization, with social and cultural solutions. based upon the academic/research literature, 20 years of aboriginal community development work, and the findings of a qualitative study with members of the coast salish and kwakwaka'wakw nations who transitioned from their own suicidal crisis to become contributors to the wellness of their communities, this paper offers: 1. a brief discussion of post-colonial theory, its application to canadian aboriginal social history, and the notion of suicide “prevention”; and follows with 2. a review of the key ideas that guide a culturally-driven, community-based youth suicide prevention program that has been utilized by aboriginal communities in canada for over 20 years. post-colonial approach according to the post-colonial perspective, the role and status of mainstream psychology is maintained by its “individualistic position,” which suggests that the self can be understood as an independent cognitive agent, that experience is a subjective mental state that is universal to humanity. in this universalist position, meaningful generalizations are made from the study of individuals; society and culture are considered to be the aggregate product of individuals (e.g., bhargava, 1992; schwartz , 1992; youngblood henderson, 2000). the individualist/universalist stance offers the appearance of a value-neutral approach to psychology, since socio-cultural and historical differences between cultural groups are rendered invisible. the risk is the depreciation and pathologizing of individuals and cultures that lie outside of the “norm” (i.e., those experiencing oppression) and that socio-cultural problems are “individualized” (kleinman, 1988; lykes, 1996; satzewich, 1998). as a result, mainstream psychological treatment and research with oppressed peoples may promote the subjugation of oppressed groups by the dominant culture, by reducing the distress associated with oppression to a psychological or medical concern, rather than a natural (i.e., normal) response to the oppression itself. further, the focus on individuals alone denies the strengths of the social context, particularly within cultures that emphasize the collective (e.g., dana, 1996; prilleltensky, 1994; smith, 1998). mental health is isolated from its socio-historical context through the medicalization of psychopathology, healing, and resilience. the post-colonial critique argues that mental illness/health is a psychological social judgment – one in which a normal (i.e., natural) behavioural response to a difficult sociocultural situation is individualised (i.e., understood to be located within the person, to be “personal”) and pathologised for human (i.e., psycho-socio-cultural-historical) phenomena to be reduced by the “medical gaze” to a “symptom” of a mental or physical disorder (foucault, 1973). empowerment is thus conceived as psychic (rather than social or political) liberation and the pursuit of personal “adjustment” (i.e., learning to “cope”) is exchanged for social change. issues of history, privilege, and marginalization are avoided as knowledge is understood to be personally derived rather than socially constituted (atleo, 1997; gutierrez & lewis, 1999; heenan, 1996; ingleby, 1980). as a result, dominant psychological methodologies are used to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 160 colonize political terrain and uphold the position of the dominant power structure (burman, 1996; billington, 1996; wade, 2000). the following section offers a socio-historical foundation for the prevention of aboriginal youth suicide. the four waves of aboriginal colonization in canada aboriginal people in canada have been profoundly impacted by a history of colonization (e.g., kirmayer, tate, & simpson, 2009). for clarity, colonial interventions in canada can be broken down into four waves: the first, legal wave declared aboriginal people to be “wards of the state” and the department of indian affairs was created to manage the lives of aboriginal people, enforce legislation, and exert political control over the communities (harris, 2002). traditional practices, which served spiritual, social, personal, and economic tasks essential to the cultural survival of aboriginal communities were criminalized and ceremonial objects and regalia were destroyed or sold to collectors. native political, cultural, and spiritual leaders were jailed for facilitating traditional practices (furness, 1995). in a parallel administrative wave, the federal government created a reserve system in order to limit aboriginal movement and their use of the land, despite the royal proclamation act (1763) – which established british control over aboriginal territories in the country and required that the dominion government provide “ample” reserves and compensation in exchange for colonial land use (harris, 2002; tennant, 1990). in a third, ideological wave, the government established a legally enforced indian residential school (irs) system run by several christian denominations. initially designed to assimilate the native population into the mainstream, it later served to separate them from it. adhering to the department of indian affairs tenet that aboriginal children “must not be educated above the possibilities of their station,” more time was spent in vocational preparation (i.e., unpaid labour) than in academic studies (milloy, 1999). the children, starting as young as four years of age, were placed into classroom groups and segregated from their families during the school year. conditions were generally very harsh in both physical and psychological terms. in addition to the structural violence (i.e., institutional oppression) inherent in the irs undertaking (sivaraksa, 1999), public humiliation and beatings were a normal response to any attempt at resistance, cultural expression, or attempts to escape (dion stout & kipling, 2003), and arbitrary emotional, cultural, spiritual, physical, and sexual violations were commonplace (e.g., claes & clifton, 1998). finally, the fourth wave of colonization is provided by social services, a method that continues to control and exploit the aboriginal population as effectively as the previous colonial waves (chrisjohn, young, & mauraun, 1997; wade, 2000; ward, 2001). “in the discourse of colonization, aboriginal persons were violated and displaced because they were seen as deficient. in the discourse of psycholonization, aboriginal persons [and families] are seen as deficient (damaged, disordered, dysfunctional, etc.) because they were violated and displaced” (stephenson, 1995, p. 201). from the post-colonial point of view, the model of individual pathology and treatment promoted in government publications regarding service provision and best practices (e.g., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 161 canada, 2005) allows for the continuation of oppression through the pathologization of individuals. the result is false generosity, where the dominant power oppresses a group and then offers goods or services to “help” the oppressed group, as long as the recipients identify as weak or sick, rather than “oppressed” (e.g., duran, 2006; freire, 2005; prilleltensky, 1994). as an aboriginal colleague once asked the author: “how can you [the colonizer] offer the cure when you are the disease?” in the aboriginal context, the individualized experience of a distressed aboriginal person may be made sense of by means of the correlating of factors in the specific individual’s life (e.g., familial mistreatment, addiction, etc.), which necessarily ignores sociocultural “wounds” of ongoing colonial oppression (chrisjohn et al., 1997; lykes, 1996). for example, post-colonial psychology’s adherents argue that the cause of the depression among the oppressed is a normal response to the hegemonic demand that they passively accept their victimization. the “language of deficiency and dysfunction reduces to personality and syndromes behaviours that have emerged as survival or resistance to oppressive conditions” (young & gerrard, 2005, p. 7) and a wide range of institutions and models have been developed to substantiate this designation (e.g., duran, 2006; freire, 2005; prilleltensky, 1994; wade, 2000). the result is a compounding of social and personal problems (brassfield, 2001; dion stout & kipling, 2003; mccormick, 1996; mussel, cardiff, & white, 2004; royal commission on aboriginal peoples [rcap], 1995). with this in mind, any youth suicide prevention activities in aboriginal communities must consider their possible role in further disempowering the very community it intends to serve (samson, 2009). discerning the two discourses of suicide prevention: an aside before exploring a post-colonial approach to suicide prevention, a confusion related to the use of the term “prevention” must be examined. when we find contradiction in a discourse, there are two points of view, two languages used to describe an issue and therefore to identify an appropriate response to that issue. such contradictions may be accounted for by a conflation of two independent discourses that has not been discerned. in the field of suicide prevention, we are often conflating two discourses: that of safety (i.e., suicide intervention) and that of wellness (i.e., suicide prevention). this is evident in the literature’s and practice’s confusion regarding the term “suicide prevention”. the field has created supplementary terms like primary prevention (i.e., reducing the risk of suicide in the lives of community members by education, healing, community building, social activism, etc.), secondary prevention (intervening in the event of a suicidal crisis or training community members to do so), and tertiary prevention (responding to the needs of a community after a suicide to reduce the risk of further suicides, also known as “postvention”) in an attempt to maintain two distinct conversations. secondary prevention is the discourse of safety, in which suicide is understood as potentially lethal and therefore a medical issue, like a heart attack. from this point of view, suicide is understood as an emergency that must be watched for (i.e., community training in the recognition and prevention of suicide) and then dealt with by “experts” (e.g., counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and hospital personnel) issued with all of the surveillance and expert elements that attends a medical emergency. this is the case even though death by suicide across all populations is relatively rare, particularly when compared to the number of youth who consider suicide as a response to their distress (bertolote et al., 2005). the primary prevention discourse is that of wellness, which understands suicide to be an indicator of personal, familial, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 162 and community distress (which, in the aboriginal community, is ultimately rooted in colonial oppression). using a critical lens, it is clear that in the face of this conflation, suicide has been medicalized, since the medical discourse is sufficiently powerful to have become the preferred (i.e., totalizing) narrative (foucault, 1973; gergen, 2001). however, this discernment might allow us to develop both discourses simultaneously – and may reduce the risk of one being overwhelmed by the other. the following model offers an example of this integrated approach in the aboriginal community. a community-based post-colonial approach to youth suicide prevention in aboriginal communities the week-long workshop, “through the pain to wellness” has offered a culturally-based post-colonial community-based youth suicide prevention program for over 15 years. initially developed at the request of an aboriginal program, it has changed and developed based on: the response of participants in the more than 50 communities which it has served; reviews of the literature; suicide resilience-related research with individuals and focus groups; conferences (both aboriginally-focused and generic); and clinical work. designed for first nations, the primary and secondary prevention program follows a three-step model: 1. post-colonial radicalization (i.e., consciousness raising/concientization; friere 2005) that enhances the empowerment of the participants by externalizing (e.g., white and epston, 1990) the problem of youth suicide as a product of colonization (kirmayer, tate, & simpson, 2009); 2. youth suicide crisis intervention (a three-step model to address immediate crises); and 3. traditional cultural values-based community development model (i.e., prevention/postvention) rooted in a “bio-psycho-socio-historical-cultural-ecological-spiritual” notion of self (e.g., duran, 2006). this paper will continue in the same three-step format, using a less academic style that is more in keeping with (and often drawn from) the “through the pain to wellness” training program participant manual. part 1: post-colonial radicalization the first task of an aboriginal youth suicide prevention workshop is to externalize the problem of suicide (e.g., white and epston, 1990); that is, to identify youth suicide as a tragic, but natural, impact of colonization. the intention is to reduce the participants’ sense of shame and disempowerment – the identity as “sick and dysfunctional,” and therefore incapable to act independent of government sanctioned “experts” – that an oppressed community may take on in the face of crisis and suicide. this is accomplished by the initial identification of the traditional values of wellness that have served to maintain the community for “as long as people have been here, on the land and water”. it is recognized that traditional values (e.g., respect, balance, culture, family/community role, interconnection, care, spirituality, etc.) do not naturally lead to the problem of youth suicide (or to that of addiction, violence, and other social problems in the community). a brief history of colonization follows, as described in the “four waves” section previously), with the participants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 163 identifying what was stolen from the community (not “lost” as an elder once stated, “we are not a careless people!”) by each of the insults on the community. the following list is a sample: 1. relocation/reserves (theft of territory, identity, home/belonging, economy, food sources/resources, localized spiritual places, culture, lifestyle, freedom, harmony between families, health, autonomy...); 2. theft of rights & criminalization of culture (theft of cultural traditions/ teachings, ceremonial artifacts, history and identity, livelihood/economy, language, political autonomy/selfdetermination...); 3. residential school system (theft of family/social role, childhood, identity, culture, language, parenting skills, life skills, self-esteem, safety/trust, family harmony...); 4. social services (i.e., aboriginal people and communities are now labelled by the government as “dysfunctional victims” who require help from the very colonizers who harmed them). by identifying what was stolen by each wave, a locally meaningful list emerges that identifies the foundations of a healthy community (i.e., that which was stolen needs to be reclaimed for community to heal). further, this externalization identifies the problems current in the community as a natural response to ongoing oppression, not as a weakness in the community itself. this offers a foundation for an empowered response to the problem of youth suicide (i.e., secondary prevention or suicide intervention) that draws upon the strengths in the community. suicidal crisis is not identified as an indicator of individual mental illness, but a natural response to colonization – a problem which does not belong to the community or its members and needs to be cleansed from it. the goal is to find a better response to the pain of colonization. part 2: community-based youth suicide intervention an understanding of youth suicide, including basic facts, how a person becomes suicidal, how they warn others that they are in suicidal crisis, and how to respond to a suicidal individual (i.e., suicide intervention) is offered to serve the community’s immediate crisis-related needs. this two-day section of the workshop begins with an exploration of suicide facts, the most important of which is: “suicide is about stopping the pain and hopelessness, it is not about dying. and if you can reduce a person’s pain, you can reduce their suicide risk”. this is followed by an exploration of a three-step process by which a person becomes suicidal, namely, that: (a) a problem (i.e., a change or the fear of a change) that seems to be “for the worse”, or the lack of a change for the better including provoking (risk) factors; can lead to (b) pain and hopelessness (which impacts the whole person – it changes how a person feels (emotion), thinks (mental), acts (physical), and visions the world (spiritual); which, after a triggering event, can result in (c) suicidal crisis. four signals of suicide are identified: (a) emotional alterations (i.e., either a sudden change in a person or an ongoing trend for the worse, often labelled as “depression”); (b) mental alarms (i.e., references to suicide or to being dead); (c) physical attempts or acts of self-harm (in the recent past or just disclosed); (d) spiritual arrangements (i.e., actions that you would expect anyone to make, if they believed that they were going to die very soon). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 164 finally, a three-step response to suicide is offered, in terms of the three steps that lead to suicide: 1. ask the youth if they have been triggered into a suicidal crisis (the use of a direct question and risk assessment is discussed and practiced); 2. listen to their pain and helplessness (active listening is discussed and practiced); and 3. help the youth to get help, to connect to resources that will assist them to respond to their problems (a “safety and wellness plan” for all suicidal individuals, specific responses to individuals at “low”, “medium”, and “high” risk, and confidentiality/consultation are discussed and practiced). the model is visualized as three steps down to suicidal crisis: (1) problems → (2) pain and hopelessness → (3) suicidal crisis and, when we recognize a signal of suicide, three step back up, we: (1) ask → (2) listen (3) → help. part 3: culturally-rooted model of suicide resilience and prevention since aboriginal youth suicide is a result of the insult of colonization on the traditional community, it is not surprising that is it is within traditional values that aboriginal suicide resilience can be found. importantly, resilience can be understood as a community process, as much as an individual one (kirmayer, sehdev, whitley, dandeneau, & isaac, 2009). introduced through aboriginal suicide statistics, this third section of “through the pain to wellness” provides a link between four traditional values that appear to be common to all aboriginal communities and four resilience factors that appear to be common in suicide resilience. as has been well documented, the traumatic impact of historical and cultural losses on aboriginal people has led to a significantly increased suicide rate in some communities, with youth living on reserve being most at risk. however, in non-native communities, while youth suicide has also escalated, the suicide rate consistently increases in those over the age of 50, with senior citizens having a suicide risk that far exceeds that of youth (statistics canada, 2001). significantly, this has not been the case with aboriginal elders, who have historically had a remarkably low suicide rate (rcap, 1995). traditional values: the “cure” for youth suicide. the difference between aboriginal elders and non-native seniors appears to be cultural – based on their treatment by and engagement with their community. specifically, unlike non-native seniors, elders receive: (a) care for their well-being (they are not expected to look after themselves without family support as many seniors are required to do); (b) respect for their wisdom/experience (they have a meaningful voice in significant community issues, unlike seniors in the mainstream who are largely ignored); (c) a meaningful family and community role (the responsibilities of an elder increases with age, they are not rooted in a market economic role and expectations of retirement (i.e., relative exile from community engagement) after becoming a senior); and (d) elders are understood to hold the community’s culture and spirit (unlike mainstream seniors, elders are not considered “out of touch” due to their traditional ways; instead, they are expected to serve as guides for important decisions in the face of family or community challenges). while not all aboriginal people “of a certain age” serve as elders, aboriginal elders do not end their own lives with anywhere close to the same frequency as non-native senior citizens. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 165 it is within the traditional values of care, respect, a meaningful role, and culture/spirituality that the “cure” for the social and historical “disease” that is youth suicide can be found (thira, 2009). significantly, the experience of elders is the opposite of that of many aboriginal youth on reserve, who have a significantly elevated suicide rate, and who often complain that: (a) no one understands them (that the community doesn’t really “care” about them); (b) they are not respected (and have no “voice” in the community); (c) they have no meaningful family or community role (except to attend school and stay out of the community’s way, or to be viewed as delinquents); and (d) they are disconnected from traditional culture and spirituality. traditional values and youth suicide resilience. these four traditional values can be understood to contribute to psychological resilience. in this context, resilience is the ability to lead a well-lived life (i.e., one that is meaningful and positive) and to value ourselves (i.e., to have self-esteem) despite difficult circumstances (e.g., masten, 2001; kirmayer, sehdev, et al., 2009). for the purposes of this model, resilience in the face of youth suicide is understood to be comprised of four factors, each rooted in the four traditional values noted above: connection, rooted in care; empowerment, rooted in respect; positive identity, rooted in a meaningful role; and vision, rooted in culture and spirit (dion stout and kipling, 2003; mccormick, 1996; thira, 2009; wade, 2000; weaver (2002). the following subsections will explore these further: 1. care and connection: care is the desire to support those with whom we are connected in being happy, healthy, and safe; it is a value that motivates compassionate intervention. in psychological terms, care offers those who provide and receive it an experience of connection. reciprocally, when we feel connected to someone or something, we care for them. connection, sometimes called “social support”, is one of the two foundations of self-esteem (discussed later; rosenberg, 1979); however, while connection can be found with people (e.g., family, friends, etc.), it is also found with pets, places (i.e., a sense of “home” whether a house, church/ceremonial ground, or in nature), things (i.e., “transitional objects” such as photographs, jewellry, a hat, “ipod,” etc.), and spirit (however conceived). 2. respect and empowerment. respect is the recognition that we are capable of understanding and responding to the world in which we live. it is necessary for a person or family to be respected if their voice is to be heard by others. respect is necessary for the recognition of self/other boundaries (both respect for others and self-respect); it suggests that even though we are connected, at some level we are separate from one another and responsible for ourselves. in terms of psychological resilience, respect offers the opportunity for empowerment. empowerment, meaning “power with” rather than “power over” is the experience of personal or familial autonomy (i.e., the ability to make independent choices) and agency (i.e., the ability to act on those choices). when we are respected and, thus, have the opportunity to learn a new skill for ourselves, empowerment is enhanced; likewise, the provision of respect to a person (i.e., acknowledgement) offers them empowerment. the second foundation of selfesteem, empowerment is sometimes called “mastery” (rosenberg, 1979). 3. meaningful role and positive identity. a meaningful family and community role is the active fulfillment of our responsibility toward family and/or community (i.e., as a protector, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 166 provider, or teacher). before colonization, every member of an aboriginal community had a meaningful family and/or community role (differentiated by talent, age, gender, position, the family constellation, family membership in the community, etc.); it is a value that is essential to well-being. in psychological terms, a meaningful role offers a positive identity, a sense of our responsibility to family and community and, with it, our importance to them. when we fulfill a meaningful role, our identity becomes positive, and the more positive we feel in the face of the community, the more we will contribute. 4. culture/spirit and vision. culture and spirit are rich concepts that are used as a term specific to personal, family, and community experience. culture is a foundation of our experience of being in the world, it provides the lens through which it is seen and guides our response to it (schwartz, 1992). for many aboriginal communities, spirituality is the basis of culture. like culture, spirituality provides the vision of life and our role within it. it is through culture and spirit that many individuals and families find the strength and vision to live a welllived life. in psychological terms, culture and spirit yield vision – that is, our understanding of the personal, social, natural, and spiritual world and how we are meant to live within it. the following figure offers a model that brings the traditional values and resilience factors tighter within the structure of the “medicine wheel” or “four directions” – a structure that is consistently used as requested in aboriginal community workshops. it should be noted that the arrows indicating the relationship between the values and resilience factors are bi-directional – as noted, they enhance one another. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 167 self-esteem and the well-lived life. these four roots of resilience can be understood to grow into a tree with two branches: self-esteem and a well-lived life. self-esteem is the valuing of ourselves. it is rooted in the sense of being connected and empowered and, therefore, comes from the experience of being cared for and respected. a well-lived life is the result of a positive identity, coming from a meaningful community/family role, and pro-social vision, rooted in a person’s culture and/or spirituality. each “branch” will be discussed below. self-esteem is protection from suicide. self-esteem is what protects us against suicide (owens, stryker, & goodman, 2001). self-esteem is the sense of value that we have in ourselves; it is the source of our emotional strength (rosenberg, 1979). people who have a healthy self-esteem feel that they are valuable and in control of their lives. they believe in themselves, responding with courage and creativity to face their problems from a position of strength; they seek to learn and use their skills and, finally, enlist the assistance of those around them. people who have low self-esteem feel worthless and out of control. they may “internalize” their low self-esteem and feel despair (i.e., viewing themselves as worthless and incapable of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 168 changing their lives for the better). experiencing themselves as victims in the face of their life, they are vulnerable to being victimized by others. or, they may “externalize” their low selfesteem and become arrogant. those who are arrogant compensate for their sense of being worthless by acting as if everyone else is worthless and incompetent compared to them (i.e., “i am valuable because you are not”). they often operate in the world as bullies. their apparent self-love is false, however. self-esteem is not built upon comparison with others, but on selfacceptance. self-esteem is based on two resilience foundations: connection and empowerment. however, the source of connection or empowerment must be important to the youth themselves, at the time that it is offered. for instance, youths who believe they are not accepted by their families may not have a strong sense of connection, even if they are valued by their peers. or a youth might be an excellent artist, but if he believes that being a successful athlete is more important, he will not feel a sense of empowerment from his artwork. replacing rather than taking away a source of self-esteem. some of youths’ sources of connection or empowerment are not good for them or those around them. for example, if they feel a connection to their drinking and drugging buddies, or to a partner who hurts them, or if they feel empowerment when they intimidate people or steal without being caught, that is not healthy. however, when we tell a youth to stop doing something that gives them empowerment or being with someone who gives them connection, no matter how much it may hurt them or others, they will resist, because we are asking the youth to give up a source of connection or empowerment. we are asking the youth to reduce their self-esteem! and when they lose selfesteem they suffer. we should never ask a youth to give up an unhealthy source of self-esteem, but we should help them replace it with something better – better for their wellness and that of their family and community: “never take away, always replace it with something better” is a strengths-based approach that permits youth to build on their capacity, rather than identify as “sick” or “dysfunctional”. the values of care and respect and self-esteem. self-esteem is enhanced by the balance of the two traditional values of care and respect (which offer connection and empowerment, respectively). when the two values are not offered in balance the result is a loss of self-esteem in the youth being “helped”. if our care exceeds respect, we may attempt to take over the youth’s life; to take on their life for them and to try to solve their problems, tell them what to do (i.e., give them directives in the guise of advice), or try to rescue them from the consequences of their actions (e.g., lie for them, make arrangements on their behalf that they should make for themselves, etc.). by doing so, we are telling them that we are “strong”, “know all the answers”, and want to fix them. this tells them that they are “weak” and “ignorant” and “broken”, that they cannot emerge from their pain without us. alternately, respect may exceed care, particularly when we are “burning out” or after allowing the youth to cross through our personal boundaries; as a result, we may judge, criticize or punish the youth, avoid them or ignore their pain. they may feel “abandoned” or mistreated. in either case, the imbalance of these values results in the theft of self-esteem from the youth being “helped”. as a consequence, they may internalize their loss (i.e., “inferiority complex”), and depend on you in their despair (i.e., become a victim), or they may externalize it (i.e., “superiority complex”), and reject you and act out with arrogance (i.e., become a bully; adler 1956). with care and respect in balance, we never “do harm”. we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 169 offer a suicidal youth a caring connection and the respectful opportunity to gain their own sense of empowerment in the face of their situation. a well-lived life as the antidote to colonization. a well-lived life is made up of our identity (which emerges from a meaningful family and/or community role) and vision (which comes from culture and spirituality, however defined). a well-lived life is the ground upon which resilient individuals, families, and communities grow. it is the antidote to colonization (kirmayer, fletcher, & watt, 2009). many aboriginal youth have come to view themselves according to the characteristics defined by the latest “social service” wave of colonization – as sick and dysfunctional. thus, it is important that a youth not only try to view themselves positively (i.e., have a positive identity), but that they do this by taking on a meaningful role in their family and community, which will transform their identity from “a suicidal youth, victim, or delinquent” to that of a “volunteer for elders” or a “caring friend or parent”. this decreases youth suicide risk. traditionally, community members fulfilled three meaningful roles, roles necessary for the survival of the community; they were to be: 1. providers (by hunting/fishing, food gathering/preparing, house building, entertaining, facilitating ceremony, etc.); 2. protectors (as nurturers, warriors, healers, etc.); and 3. teachers (as role models, mentors, skills trainers, etc.). these three roles continue to be essential to community survival, but indian residential school, which stole these roles from the students and their families, and the forces of assimilation have convinced many that only paid jobs that are part of the market economy are meaningful. this is particularly destructive today, since the economy of many reserve communities has been stolen by the colonizer as well. while being a “student” is sometimes identified as a meaningful role or “job” this is not the case: a student is travelling over a bridge to a meaningful role once they have completed study and become a plumber or counsellor, for example. unfortunately, the mainstream elementary/secondary school curriculum does not support students in taking on meaningful roles, but emphasizes information that often has little relevance to assuming such a role in the community. moreover, in many communities there are few jobs available that take advantage of an education; this means that a youth who pursues a career based on their education is often forced to choose exile from their family and community. nonetheless, in most communities, a youth’s graduation from secondary school is celebrated at a community feast; but those who contribute through meaningful roles (e.g., who excel in hunting, caring for children, supporting their peers, learning to tell traditional stories, helping elders, contributing at community events, etc.) are not equally acknowledged, even though these are the people who are living by traditional values. the result is those youth who remain in the community after leaving school often do not take on a meaningful role. they do not have an opportunity to develop a positive identity. the “through the pain to wellness” program works with the participants as they identify ways that youth are contributing to the community in any of the three roles, and to identify further opportunities to make a contribution and receive recognition for their contribution. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 170 the vision aspect of a well-lived life describes how we are meant “to live in good way”. this way of living can be identified by considering the qualities of a true elder. these qualities may include: generosity, being a teacher and healer; wisdom, patience, being cultural and spiritual; having integrity, strength, self-sufficiency and resilience; caring for others and listening from the heart; being unconditionally accepting, forgiving, non-judgmental and refusing to gossip. the program argues that, “the only ‘job’ of an aboriginal youth is to become an elder”. the goal of youth suicide prevention is not to stop suicide, but to enhance the youth’s opportunity to develop their self-esteem and to live a well-lived life: to replace suicide with something better. an example of this form of suicide intervention comes from one community in which a small group of youth in their late teens were identified to be “at risk”. they were asked to go to an elder and learn a “traditional” story to teach to children in the community daycare. (learning the story was not the intervention, since being a student is not a meaningful role). the youth were recognized as teachers at the next community feast. in this example, the opportunity to contribute offered the youth connection with both the elders and the children, empowerment because they learned how to tell an important story and they were acknowledged at the feast, an identity as “teacher”, and enhancement of their vision by playing a part in the community’s cultural heritage and development. the community is the medicine since youth suicide impacts the whole community, the whole community can respond to a crisis in one of its individuals, its families, or the community at large. the capacity was there before contact and it’s there now, because it is rooted in the traditional values of care, respect, a meaningful family/community role, and culture/spirituality. however, to recognize and benefit from the wisdom and strength of the community, it is necessary to step outside the limited view of the community and its resources and escape dependency on government-sanctioned “false generosity” that has been the key to the fourth wave of colonization. the identification of a rich collection of underutilized resources, beyond those offered by the mainstream “mental health” model, resources available to youth within even the most remote communities, is undertaken in the “through the pain to wellness” program. this requires two steps: first, the redefinition of self from an individualistic view (i.e., in which a person “ends” at the outside of their skin) to a collectivist view (i.e., the self as a “self/community life-world”); and second, re-visioning the community as a resilience resource network (i.e., a site for the enhancement of connection, empowerment, positive identity, and vision), rather than the site of the problem. self / community life-world a self/community life-world is a conceptual integration of our biological, psychological, social, cultural, historical, ecological, and spiritual experience of ourselves and our context. it simultaneously defines identity (i.e., it is existential) and describes the context in which we live our life (i.e., it is experiential). surrounding (and within) a youth, a self-community can be considered to be made up of six interdependent parts: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 171 1. self: resources to be found within oneself; 2. family: (or clan) as identified by oneself; 3. individuals: specific people, generally known by name (e.g., friends, professional and non-professional caregivers, etc.); 4. the community: taken at large (i.e., whose membership may change, but the identity of the collective or role remains, such as agencies, services, community centres and schools, support groups, sports teams, etc.; 5. outside community: forces or individuals outside the community which can have an impact (e.g., neighbouring communities, the internet, regional services, books, political leaders, heroes or youth idols, the media, etc.); and 6. nature and spirit: the non-manmade environment in which a person lives and the nonmaterial forces that people experience. community resource map when combined with the four factors of resilience, the community (as divided into six parts) creates a community resource map that is able to offer individuals, families, and the community as a whole, opportunities for: (a) connection; (b) empowerment; (c) a positive identity; and (d) vision. a community resource map provides a basis for community-engaged crisis intervention, effective postvention, and community-based primary prevention. this can be depicted in the graphic that follows. community resource map and youth suicide intervention. after a youth is safe from immediate risk of suicide, the crisis (and therefore, the opportunity) has not passed. the problem(s) that led to the pain of crisis must be dealt with so that the crisis can ultimately become an opportunity to enhance resilience. while it is ultimately the person in crisis who will identify resilience resources suitable for them, it is important to work with them to identify at least one community resource for every government-sanctioned funded resource. for example, a response to low suicide risk may include counselling. however, healing may also be facilitated by time with an elder who may teach the youth what it is to be a man, or may recommend time spent fishing with an older family member thus affording an opportunity to contribute fish to other elders. in this case, the elder’s wellness is also enhanced by being called upon as an elder, and the family member driving the boat will feel engaged in the youth’s healing and learning. interestingly, the more “traditional” the activity, the richer its impact in terms of resilience enhancement. more examples from community resource-mapping for a youth in suicidal crisis are noted below. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 172 community resource map international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 173 connection empowerment identity (meaningful role) vision self belief in oneself, hope, creativity, self-care, empathy, etc. self-discipline, previous resilience, courage, responsibility, strength, etc. sense of self as a provider, protector, and teacher ceremony, prayer, faith, meditation, etc. family and/or clan participate in activities that enhance the experience of love and support for and from family members of all generations, get to know extended family members participate in family events/ activities, time with children, making amends, family-related chores and support, etc. learn family history, take on meaningful family role (protect children, provide firewood, teach a skill), enhance view of family and its role by the rest of community, contact estranged family, etc. learn traditional family/clan stories, take on traditional role in the family, learn and perform family-owned songs/ dances/ ceremonies, etc. individuals youth spend positive time with friends, peerhelpers, friend’s children, etc. volunteer time with younger children; participation in team sports/ activities/clubs role model, sober friend, protect , mentor, teacher, etc. learn/perform traditional songs/dances/ ceremonies, etc. adults seek support from adult friend, elder, professional (counsellor, teacher, doctor...), sponsor, coach, mentor, etc. volunteer help for elders (chop wood, clear yard, drive to events...), learn a skill from someone, etc. provide for a friend by babysitting or fishing, protect a child or client, teach a skill, etc. seek assistance from a spiritual guide/elder, etc. community social/human services, support/self-help groups, community programs, schoolbased support, community centre programs, healing workshops, youth centres, etc. get a haircut, seek return to schooling, volunteer, attend training workshops, develop a resume, apply for work, etc. connect to cultural and spiritual identity; volunteer (e.g., clean corner store, help arrange community event), invite “house family” involvement, start a support group, etc. engage with congregation, spiritually designated buildings, community ceremonies, spiritual role in the community, etc. outside community “long-distance” friends/family, treatment/healing centre, outpatient programs, crisis line, internet chat rooms, national organizations, music, etc. attend treatment program, write to media/social activism, complete detox program, intercommunity activity (e.g., sports/cultural exchanges), etc. aboriginal/ national identity, teach others about culture or social history, develop worldwide indigenous relationships, etc. participate in inter-tribal ceremonies (“pow wows”) and/or social/cultural development initiatives, etc. nature/spirit time on the land or water (camping or sitting), prayer/ ceremony, etc. fishing, hiking, hunting, gathering, food preparing, etc. sharing one’s catch, conservation, actively contributing to spiritual community, etc. cleansing ceremonies, spirit quest, sacred places, sweat lodges, walking around home territory, etc. as the community helps the person in crisis, it reduces its dependency on governmentsanctioned programs that identify the community and its members as sick or dysfunctional. specifically: (a) its connection is enhanced (as people and programs work together and the conflicts that surround a person in crisis are resolved); (b) its empowerment is enhanced (as the community resolves its own issues); (c) it provides meaningful roles (as members of the community are called upon to contribute and collective service of the youth in distress helps to dispel the community’s colonial identity as a dysfunctional victim); and (d) this community mobilization is cultural because traditionally the community took care of its own. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 174 community-based response to an individual’s distress – distress which can itself be understood as an expression of the community’s distress rooted in the wounds of colonization – heals the community and the individual simultaneously. in other words, the community transforms itself one crisis at a time! community resource map and youth suicide postvention. not every suicide can be prevented and the impact of a suicidal death on the “survivors” can be significant. to support the community and reduce the risk of further suicides, a postvention (i.e., tertiary prevention) protocol provides initial coordinated steps to long-term recovery for a community and its members. the community resource map can guide the development of protocol, which can act to build the self-esteem of the community as a whole in the face of the tragedy, ensure that those who need support get it, and provide necessary information and education. it is important that each community have, first, a community response team (i.e., a team made up of human service workers, first responders, community leaders, and natural caregivers that can respond to individuals in crisis and critical community incidents), and second, postvention protocol (i.e., the tasks that a community can undertake to support community members and reduce the risk of contagion. a discussion of team development and the identification of the protocol tasks are included the “through the pain to wellness” program. led by a community response team, the protocol allows for the enhancement of the community’s self-esteem (supportive connection and a sense of collective empowerment) across and within the community in the face of the tragedy. community resource map and primary prevention: visioning the future. it can be valuable for community members committed to wellness and social development to use the community resource map to envision a suicide-free community. in other words, to imagine, in specific and practical terms, the individual, family, and community’s activities/roles, social networks, services, and programs responsible for greater connection, empowerment, and engagement in roles that create a positive social identity, and activities that promote a culturally rooted vision. to this end, a visualization of a suicide-free community, five years in the future, is facilitated, using the community resource map as a template. an example of primary prevention that a community discussed in the “through the pain to wellness” program is described below. this is an example of community-based primary suicide prevention: the “three generations of youth: youth leadership-mentor program” co-created with an aboriginal community wellness team, is based on the following premise: before colonization, youth played essential roles in the community and while recently youth have been told “you are the future”, they have not been given a role in making the future a reality; they have been told that the traditions will guide them, but they have not been given the opportunity to play traditional (i.e., meaningful) roles in the community. this program assists aboriginal youth in taking on their traditional leadership and mentorship roles. the program development and implementation follows four steps. first, its development begins with three days of consultation, during which participants were asked to answer 3 questions: what was it like to be a youth? what do youth need? what would you recommend be included in a mentorship training program? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 175 on the first day, elders were asked these questions while youth watched and listened and then responded to what they heard in the last part of the day. on the second day, youth were asked the questions, while elders listened and then commented in the last part of the day. finally, on the third day, the questions were put to front-line professionals and community health directors. in this way the program design is rooted in the community’s unique culture and perceived prevention needs. in the second “training for trainers” step, “older youth” (19 to 24 years old) received a five-day “leadership training program” that offered an opportunity for them to become facilitators of a two-day workshop designed to train peer-mentors. in the third stage, “younger youth” (13 to 18 years old) received the two-day “mentorship training program”. in the fourth step, the children received caring connection and respectful empowerment opportunities from the youth mentors in their community and learned that they have an opportunity to become mentors in their turn. conclusion from a post-colonial standpoint, youth suicide is the product of oppression. it is a natural, although tragic, reaction to the ongoing impacts of the colonial enterprise on communities, families, and individuals. rather than encouraging dependency on “expert” outsiders or attempting to “fix” the community and its members, post-colonial aboriginal youth suicide prevention requires the engagement of the community’s capacity to enhance family and individual wellness in the face of the oppression. this approach is true community-based prevention: assisting the community to build stronger connections, empowering the community to respond to its own issues, offering a shift in community identity (from dysfunctional victim to resilient healer), and transforming the community’s vision (from colonized “indian” to a culturally strong aboriginal nation). rooted in traditional cultural values, a community-based response to suicidal crisis becomes an opportunity for the enhancement of individual resilience, family healing, and community transformation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 158–179 176 references adler, a. 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(2000). postcolonial ghost dancing: diagnosing european colonialism. in m. battiste (ed.), reclaiming indigenous voice and vision (pp. 161–171). vancouver: university of british columbia press. merga international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818646 understanding maths anxiety in pre-service teachers through a quality of life framework sue wilson abstract: this article analyzes pre-service primary teachers’ written reflections using the quality of life conceptual framework, with its three domains of being, belonging, and becoming, as a lens to elucidate the concepts of identity and projective identity. data collected via critical incident technique were used to investigate the antecedents of mathematics anxiety as perceived and identified by pre-service teachers. when not addressed, high levels of mathematics anxiety in primary pre-service teachers’ affect their future teaching of mathematics and the achievement of their students. the results show that using the framework contributes to an understanding of primary pre-service teachers’ mathematics anxiety and its implications for their identity development. the article concludes with recommendations and practical implications. keywords: mathematics anxiety, pre-service teachers, critical incident technique, identity, quality of life framework acknowledgements: this article draws on earlier work presented at the 39th annual conference of the mathematics education research group of australasia. this research is supported by an australian government research training program (rtp) scholarship. sue wilson med is a lecturer in mathematics and science education at the australian catholic university, canberra campus, phillip avenue, watson, act 2602, australia. email: sue.wilson@acu.edu.au mailto:sue.wilson@acu.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 169 rapid social and technological change has been a hallmark of the 21st century. the development of citizens who are able to successfully engage with mathematics has widereaching social, economic, and political implications. mathematical understanding is essential not only to the life chances of individuals, but also to the health of communities and the economic well-being of nations (walls, 2009, p. vii). as kilpatrick, swafford, and findell (2001) stated: for people to participate fully in society, they must know basic mathematics. citizens who cannot reason mathematically are cut off from whole realms of human endeavor. innumeracy deprives them not only of opportunity but also of competence in everyday tasks. (p. 1) in modern society, it is increasingly important to be able to use mathematics confidently. students who exhibit persistent problems learning mathematics during their education usually transfer these difficulties into their adulthood and professional lives (robinson, menchetti, & torgesen, 2002). poor mathematical literacy skills have far-reaching effects, as mathematical skills and understanding have been linked to better employment outcomes and higher salaries (shapka, domene, & keating, 2006). this is relevant to issues of social justice because being mathematically literate and becoming competent citizens who are able to make informed decisions is an important aspect of equity in our society. mathematics anxiety (henceforth, maths anxiety) has been identified as an issue internationally (organization for economic cooperation and development, 2015). in reviews of previous studies, maths anxiety has been identified as an issue for pre-service teachers (psts) entering primary or elementary teacher education programs internationally (wilson, 2014). increasingly, there has been scrutiny of teacher education courses; for example, in australia, compulsory numeracy testing of all psts before they graduate from initial teacher education courses has been introduced (pyne, 2015). amelioration of the impact of maths anxiety, summarised by martin (2002, p. 34) as “to heal and enthuse”, on progress and achievement in teacher education courses is the subject of ongoing research. in a previous publication i explored how selected concepts from quality of life (qol) could be applied to the study of maths anxiety (wilson, 2014). the present article extends this work beyond the exploration of the relevance of the concepts of qol by examining the application of the qol conceptual framework (renwick & brown, 1996) to investigating how best to understand primary psts’ maths anxiety, and its implications for their identity development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 170 the quality of life approach the study of qol has included a range of approaches and definitions, and these have led to the development of a range of indicators, both quantitative and qualitative, particularly in the health literature (vankova, 2015). there has been a history of extensive application of the scientific and social view of qol developed in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities (brown & faragher, 2014). brown and brown (2003) describe qol as a conceptualization that can focus on large populations, but which can also be used to focus on improving the lives of individuals. the concept of qol has developed over the last thirty years and is now influencing research in the fields of education (brown & faragher, 2014; faragher & van ommen, 2017; wilson, 2014). brown (1997) emphasized the “complexity of interacting forces which go to make up any individual’s quality of life” (p. 3), and concluded that, as the underlying principles of disability within a qol framework are examined, “ways in which attainment and fulfilment may be optimised for all individuals as they live within increasingly complex societies” become more apparent (p. 10). according to brown and faragher (2014), the major concepts from this view of qol are well-being, holism, lifespan, choices, personal control, perception, self-image, empowerment, interand intra-personal variability, and values. in previous work, i have used concepts from qol to examine the issue of maths anxiety in psts; in particular, the concepts of perception, choices, self-image, empowerment, personal control, and lifespan, and the principle of inclusion (wilson, 2014). that exploration demonstrated that these core ideas are applicable to mathematics education. they can contribute to understanding learning and development in mathematics, especially as they apply to those in need of support and intervention. in particular they can serve to heighten mathematics educators’ awareness of the importance of students’ social and emotional well-being. wilson (2014) argued that these concepts of qol provide a useful structure for informing research on maths anxiety, although further research was required. in this article the conceptual framework from the scientific and societal view of qol, as developed in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities, provides a theoretical lens for examining the issue of maths anxiety that also relates to the wider population. through this lens, aspects of our increased understanding of the issues concerned with disability, such as the impact of environment on cognitive development, can be applied to inform our perception of the impacts of maths anxiety on people’s lives. there is a range of intensity of maths anxiety. at extreme levels there are similarities between severe maths anxiety and a developmental disability, because both can limit people so much that they are adversely affected and unable to live to their potential. the impacts on cognitive development are critical. the concept of normalization and the development of the inclusion movement, leading to a widening of the focus to examine abuses in all kinds of institutions, provide a lens through which to examine the way that incidents that increase maths anxiety can harm or delay functioning. fiore (1999) stated that “success for many students is related to how we make them feel in class”, and calls students with maths anxiety “math abused students”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 171 according to brown and brown (2003), positive qol predicates a life “that is very meaningful to people and provides them with resources” (p. 19) and also provides “a richness of opportunities to choose from” (p. 20). the qol approach is based on the understanding that “people have their own ideas about what is most meaningful to them, what fits their self-image best, and what adds richness to their lives” (p. 20). this approach aims to achieve both improvement in the person’s self-image and increases in levels of personal empowerment. however, the researchers caution that “opportunities to improve must be within the person’s grasp” (p. 32). two important elements of the qol approach (brown & brown, 2003) are the need to understand the individual’s environment and to ask for and listen to the individual’s perspective. these are also relevant to a researcher seeking to address maths anxiety. one potential outcome of this approach that is applicable to addressing maths anxiety in psts is empowerment of the individual and enhanced self-image; another is improved practice, which provides strategies for similar interventions with other individuals. the qol approach (brown & brown, 2003) is based on values, and uses a specific conceptual framework. conceptual framework the framework used by the qol approach (brown & brown, 2003) was developed at the university of toronto’s centre for health promotion as part of research involving people with disabilities. the qol framework is based on a conceptual framework of three domains of life: being, belonging, and becoming (renwick & brown, 1996), as listed in table 1. table 1 domains from the quality of life conceptual framework domain refers to being individual attributes belonging the individual in their environment becoming life goals the domains of the qol conceptual framework provide a framework for the study of identity in the affective dimension in mathematics education. an initial analysis of the applicability of the qol framework to maths anxiety in 246 first-year primary psts (wilson, 2016) identified the potential for this framework to contribute to understanding their perceptions of antecedents of maths anxiety and the development of identity. that study identified several subdomains within this conceptual framework that are particularly apposite to the study of maths anxiety. these are psychological being, social belonging and community belonging, and practical becoming and growth becoming, shown in table 2. within this framework it is possible to examine factors that help improve well-being and those that hinder development. these factors may be common to a group or specific to an individual. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 172 table 2 subdomains from the quality of life approach subdomain refers to being psychological being individual attributes involving thoughts and values belonging social belonging relating to persons in the individual’s environment community belonging resources in the individual’s environment and access to these resources becoming practical becoming purposeful activities growth becoming activities involving development this article investigates how the use of the qol conceptual framework (renwick & brown 1996, pp. 82–84) as a tool to interpret reflections on maths anxiety may be extended to analyze not only the reflections of primary psts who are in the later years of their course, but also the subsequent implications for their identity development. literature review two bodies of research informed this study. the first concerns maths anxiety in psts, the second involves pst identity. maths anxiety in primary pre-service teachers maths anxiety is a complex phenomenon. associated feelings involve not only a dislike of mathematics, but also a feeling that mathematics cannot make sense, resulting in feelings of helplessness and lack of control over one’s learning. maths anxiety refers to worry and feelings of tension and fear that interfere with using mathematics in school and in everyday life, especially in situations where evaluation is occurring (brady & bowd, 2005). it results in negative thoughts (e.g., “i can’t do maths”) and poor cognitive performance. maths anxiety also involves physiological symptoms (e.g., nausea, sweaty palms, rapid heartbeat), and avoidance and disengagement behaviours (e.g., excuses to miss mathematics class). according to main and whatman (2016), students disengaging from school report that they “do not have a sense of belonging to the school environment” (p. 1055), and libbey (2004) considers engagement to focus predominantly on whether students feel that they belong. in addition, kahu’s (2013) framework of student engagement in higher education identifies the importance of the sense of belonging to the affective dimension of engagement. the sense of belonging is also used as a measure of student engagement in the programme for international student assessment (pisa) engagement index (willms, 2003). this is “based on students’ responses to six items describing their personal feelings about being accepted by their peers and whether or not they felt lonely, ‘like an outsider’ or ‘out of place’ ” (p. 18). maths anxiety has been identified as a specific learning difficulty for many children (dossel, 1993). it can appear even in the first grade (vukovic, keiffer, bailey, & harari, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 173 students with maths anxiety participate less in mathematics classes, demonstrate lower performance, and avoid maths in high school and university courses. high maths anxiety impacts performance and achievement in mathematics (betz, 1978; sheffield & hunt, 2006; stubblefield, 2006). in many cases a teacher plays a powerful role in engendering maths anxiety, especially teachers who are hostile, hold gender biases, or embarrass students in front of peers (vukovic et al., 2013). maths anxiety has been associated with inappropriate teaching practices and with the belief, prevalent in western cultures, that success in mathematics is determined by ability rather than effort (stigler & hiebert, 1992). researchers have reported that teachers have persistent effects on student emotions and achievement. wilson (2014) stated: “students’ beliefs about their capacity to learn and the perceptions they have about how their teachers see them, can result in powerful and destructive emotions which are self-limiting” (p. 77). these can be perpetuated in classrooms (furner & berman, 2005). researchers have also reported that high levels of teacher mathematics anxiety have an impact on student achievement (beilock, gunderson, ramirez, & levine, 2009). however, ng (2012) reported that in singapore, which has an asian culture and great emphasis on performance in mathematics, the highest levels of student maths anxiety are attributed to tests and examinations. international patterns of maths anxiety are alarming given that mathematical proficiency is increasingly important for accessing social and economic opportunities and for full participation in modern technological societies. maths anxiety, its causes, and its impact on psts have been investigated internationally; for example, by researchers from the united states, finland, canada, italy and australia. namukasa, gadanidis, and cordy (2009) noted that “impoverished school mathematics experiences have left many pre-service teachers with strong negative [emphasis in original] affective responses about mathematics” (pp. 46–47). researchers of elementary psts have reported high levels of mathematics anxiety, low confidence about teaching elementary mathematics, and low mathematics teacher efficacy (swars, daane, & giesen, 2006). the perceptual changes that occur as a result of maths classroom experiences are enduring (coppola, di martino, pacelli, & sabena, 2015; lutovac & kaasila, 2011; wilson, 2015b). however, more studies are needed to investigate this issue. the transfer of mathematics anxiety from teacher to student (beilock et al., 2009) also has long-term educational implications for society. pre-service teacher identity sociocultural models of identity propose that identity is developed by social and cultural practices. wenger’s (1998) theory of community of practice (cop) views learning as “a process of becoming” (p. 215), which is “an experience of identity” (p. 215); and identity as “not an object, but a constant becoming” (pp. 153–154). wenger conceptualized identity in terms of “belonging” to a cop in which participation involves “modes of belonging”: engagement, imagination, and alignment (pp. 173 ff.). owens (2008) saw identity as dynamic, a “state of becoming” (p. 37), and held that “social identity encompasses learning as belonging” (p. 38). in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 174 addition, mockler (2011) identified becoming and being as related to teacher professional identify and the lived experience of being a teacher. sfard and prusak (2005) defined identities as stories about people, especially narratives that are reifying, endorsable, and significant. reification is indicated by verbs such as “be”, “have”, or “can” (as opposed to “do”) and by adverbs that indicate repetition such as “always”, “never”, and “usually”. they stated that “identity talk makes us able to cope with new situations in terms of our past experience and gives us tools to plan for the future [emphasis in original]” (p. 16). until recently, however, the future aspect has mostly been overlooked when exploring teacher identity and reflection (di martino & sabena, 2011; lutovac & kaasila, 2012). wilson and thornton (2008) applied the concept of “projective identity” (gee, 2003) to the development of psts’ identities, as a way of describing this future perspective. according to markus and nurius (1986), in this future orientation individuals imagine the selves they would like to become as well as those they want to avoid. mockler (2011) suggested professional identity might be formed out of professional learning that focuses “on the kind of teacher it is possible to be” (p. 136). this has important implications for teacher education. grootenboer and zevenbergen (2008, p. 248) contended that “it is essential that teachers of mathematics (at all levels) have well-developed personal mathematical identities.” in order to achieve these it is important, as walshaw (2004, p. 557) argued, that “teacher education must engage the identities of pre-service students.” with respect to past experience, reflective thinking is important for developing professional practice as it assists in the identification of the assumptions that underlie thoughts and actions. according to kaasila, hannula, and laine (2012, p. 991), when students “discover that the interpretations of events can be changed, it can free them to search for new perspectives on their mathematical past and future”. methodology given the complex nature of maths anxiety, and the aim to study the narrative or storied nature of experience, a qualitative approach was appropriate. this study is based in the interpretive paradigm, as emotional responses are not determined by objective reality but by interpretation of events. hence, it is based on the understanding that people create and associate their own meanings about their interactions with the world. thus, a phenomenographic approach was used to “discern patterns of understanding in nonnumerical language and describe differences in the way people understand or ascribe meaning in the world around them” (barnard, mccosker, & gerber, 1999). previous researchers have investigated the sources of maths anxiety in psts using a range of methods. for example, lutovac and kaasila (2011), using an autobiographical interview with a pst, identified that a teacher was the main character in her memories of negative experiences; wilson (2015) investigated the impacts of critical incidents on australian primary psts’ views of themselves as learners and potential teachers of mathematics and on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 175 development of maths anxiety; while coppola and colleagues (2015) reported “crucial events” in 145 italian psts’ mathematical experiences that they identified as significant. methods such as collecting autobiographical data can require long-term engagement with participants, and result in large volumes of data from which researchers select and analyze themes. angelides (2001) recommended the analysis of critical incidents as an efficient technique by which a researcher “can quickly gather rich data … which otherwise would need a longer-term engagement” (p. 430). hence, i used the critical incident technique (cit; flanagan, 1954) to access the storied nature of participants’ lived experiences, as narratives are important for meaning construction (ricoeur, 1985). the cit focuses on real-life incidents. a critical incident is a description of a vivid event that a person remembers as being meaningful: the way a person perceives an event is real for them. this is supported by the thomas theorem (thomas & swaine thomas, 1928), which states that it is not important if a person’s interpretation is correct, as the way a person perceives an event is real in its consequences. as tripp (2012, p. 8) pointed out, “like all data, critical incidents are created. incidents happen, but critical incidents are produced by the way we look at a situation: a critical incident is an interpretation of the significance of an event.” some of these incidents have been identified, upon looking back, as crises or tipping points (wilson, 2015b). participants the research study participants were 12 psts from the bachelor of education (primary) course on an australian regional city campus who were in the second and fourth years of their course. the psts responded to invitations to participate in a small-group maths anxiety workshop facilitated by a teacher educator and the student counsellor (see wilson & raven, 2014). procedure ethics approval for the study (hrec register n2011 76) was based on accepted informed consent procedures. the data were collected in a neutral setting. the psts wrote descriptions of critical incidents from their school mathematics experiences. the aim of this writing was to help participants reflect on their perception of the event and its impact on the way they constructed their identities as learners and potential teachers of mathematics. the participants chose the relevant experiences and identified their impact. data were collected from the perspectives of the participants, using their own words. at the start of the workshop, the participants first completed a maths anxiety survey that sought to identify the level and extent of their maths anxiety (see wilson, 2015a). i asked participants to describe how they viewed themselves as learners and future teachers of mathematics. i then used cit to ascertain what participants identified as the reasons for their views, by asking them to recall and describe a critical incident (positive or negative) from their own school mathematics education that had had an impact on their image of themselves as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 176 learners and potential teachers of mathematics. participants then read and discussed excerpts that they chose to share with the others. the participants were encouraged to reflect on their perception of the event and its impact on their views of themselves as learners and potential teachers of mathematics, and how these perceptions had been reinforced by subsequent experiences. therefore, the research methods focused on aspects of emotional responses to lived experiences (lazarus, 1991). the cit produced open-ended responses. to identify perceived causes of maths anxiety, these responses were analyzed for terms indicating anxiety, such as “anxious”, “nervous”, and “not confident”. then the data were examined for alignment with the being, belonging, and becoming conceptual framework, in order to evaluate the potential for using the qol conceptual framework as a tool to explore the meaning that individual psts ascribe to the problem of maths anxiety, and how it impacts on the development of their identities as learners and potential teachers of mathematics. the quotations from the workshop participants’ narratives reflect real experiences, chosen to illustrate the application of the qol framework. results and discussion the writing was open-ended, so the participants chose the experiences relevant to them as individuals and identified their impact. in their descriptions, more than 90% of the participants identified an interaction or demeaning encounter (often with a teacher) as a result of which they were seen as or defined themselves as persons who had difficulty learning mathematics. they identified a change in the way they thought of themselves as learners of mathematics. less than 10% described and reflected on a positive experience. the three domains of the qol framework — being, belonging, and becoming (renwick & brown 1996) — are useful for analysing the reflections in ways that might advance understanding of the development of the mathematical identities of psts (wilson, 2016), as shown in table 3. the three domains of the qol framework were used for an initial analysis and grouping of the reflections of the participants. as they looked back on these incidents, and discussed readings about maths anxiety, their comments and written reflections provided evidence for progress in the development of their mathematical identities. table 3 application of the quality of life approach to the study domain application to the study being link to identity (mathematical identity, storied or “telling” identity) belonging connection to others and to their environment becoming link to projective identity as future teachers of mathematics being: from the reflections, the evidence of reification of storied identity (sfard & prusak, 2005) is indicated by the use of verbs such as “be”, “have”, and “can”, which relate to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 177 the first domain, being, in participants’ reflections such as “i am an average learner” and “i have an open mind towards maths”, and by adverbs that indicate repetition such as “always” and “every time”. most participants identified themselves as not confident, average, not very good, struggling, or incompetent, and showed evidence of a sense of failure as mathematics learners. belonging: a sense of belonging and social connection is important; without this, individuals feel alienated. one facet of belonging is the extent to which students feel accepted or included in the mathematics classroom. becoming: the ”becoming” domain of the qol framework is related to the future focus and how participants view themselves as potential teachers of mathematics in primary classrooms. this relates to the concept of projective identity. in order to explore the application of the domains more fully, i investigated how the previously identified subdomains of the qol conceptual framework (see wilson, 2016) might allow deeper analysis, and might function to identify factors that help improve well-being, and those that hinder the development of a positive projective identity. an example of this initial identification of comments relating participants’ reflections to the qol subdomains is shown in table 4. table 4 analysis using subdomains from the quality of life approach subdomain refers to example being psychological being individual attributes involving thoughts and values “i still see myself as someone who struggles with learning maths.” (fourth year) belonging social belonging relating to persons in the individual’s environment “…so many other kids got it and were good at it. to fit in, you needed to have those basic skills to be seen as normal.” (second year) community belonging resources in the individual’s environment and access to these “i remember having a bad maths experience in primary school. we were always taught out of a textbook and not given a variety of strategies to cater for all learners.” (second year) becoming practical becoming purposeful activities “i feel that i’ll be a great teacher of maths plainly for the fact that i know too well how stressful and scary it can be at times. i know the importance of using different strategies and teaching students that it’s ok to make mistakes.” (fourth year) growth becoming activities involving development “when i am a teacher i [will] endeavour to help all my students and explain maths in a way that helps my students feel confident with mathematics.” (second year) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 178 psychological being participants’ descriptions of the incidents showed associations with worry and stress with respect to mathematics that affected their evaluation of their personal attributes. this influenced their confidence and self-concepts as learners of mathematics. one participant shared her frustration that, “even if i grasp one aspect or concept, or think that i have it, it never seems to last long before i find myself back where i began. this process is frustrating and has eaten away at my confidence as a learner of mathematics for many years” (second year). one of the participants wrote, “i see myself as a very confused learner of maths” (second year); and another, “i see myself as failing maths every time in high school” (second year). these feelings can persist throughout the years of their teacher education course, as the following reflection shows: “i am not 100% confident in my ability yet but i think this is only because i am still trying to let go of past negative experiences” (fourth year). social belonging these participants’ reflections provided further insights into the factors that impact identity. classrooms were environments that strongly influenced participants’ sense of belonging. one of the participants recalled, “to fit in, you needed to have those basic skills to be seen as normal” (second year), showing the importance placed on fitting in or belonging socially. most of the reflections that related to the subdomain of social belonging — those concerning a person in the environment in the participants’ recollections of their school mathematics experiences — involved the teachers. other reflections described interactions with parents and with peers, and explained how the interaction made the participant feel. the reflections about teachers described both positive and negative experiences, with the emphasis being on how the participants felt at the time as a result of the interactions with the teacher. one participant recalled positive experiences with teachers who provided her with safe and supportive learning environments: “teachers always encouraged me” (second year). in contrast, another participant recalled, “throughout a whole year not understanding anything in maths, no support or help” (second year). one participant retained intense memories of her experiences of feeling evaluated in public. critical incidents that she identified as impacting negatively on her identity as a learner of mathematics included, “quick drill things, being asked to do maths in front of the class. singled out. teacher asking class ‘what has she done wrong?’ ” and, “being singled out. it’s obvious i can’t do it. i will go bright red. everyone will look at me. i will have to say i don’t know the answer. that will be embarrassing. my anxiety level is 8-9/10” (second year). these types of negative experiences show the impact of the failure to provide learning environments where all students feel a sense of belonging. the lack of connection that the last two participants described is also evidenced by another participant’s memory of her classroom: “… teachers not willing to work with me through it. lost cause — they said, ‘we haven’t got international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 179 time to work with you’” (second year). the same participant recalled experiences in which she felt embarrassed in front of her peers: “there were constantly opportunities for embarrassment and humiliation in front of our peers. i thought, ‘i am obviously the dumb one in class’ — and i couldn’t see myself getting any better.” from these interactions with a disabling teacher, it is evident that participants’ realities and their perceptions of mathematics and mathematics learning were influenced by their not feeling safe and supported in that classroom environment. these comments reinforced findings from other research (lutovac & kaasila, 2011; wilson, 2015b) on the important impact of individual teachers on students. the importance of the sense of belonging was still apparent even at the two different stages of their teacher education course. when participants were asked what they had gained most from the workshop, reflections included, “i gained the understanding that i am not alone in the way i think about maths” (second year); “talking and sharing my experiences with maths with others. it was great to learn how others feel in similar situations” (fourth year); and “i think it was a lot more powerful having that small group, because you were comfortable enough to share your own experiences” (fourth year). this shows that the significance of that sense of belonging persisted into the later years of the course. community belonging participants who considered that their school mathematics learning environments lacked the resources to cater for their individual needs had also felt a lack of connection and belonging. for example, one participant reflected, “we were always taught out of a textbook and not given a variety of strategies to cater for all learners” (second year). practical becoming the becoming domain of the qol framework is related to the concept of projective identity. this domain has a future focus, as evidenced by the participants’ reflections quoted in table 4. these provide evidence of how the participants viewed themselves as future teachers of mathematics. the subdomain of practical becoming relates to activities that are purposeful: my anxiety will help me to recognize for students who are struggling that [there] may be a problem, and to be able to cater for those students. i need to understand how students feel because then i can develop strategies. if you don’t know how they feel, they will move on to the next class and fall through the gaps. (second year) this participant’s response showed that he was thinking more deeply about the implications of the workshop for his practicum and subsequent teaching. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 180 growth becoming participants showed development towards a positive projective identity. for example, one participant in the last year of her course wrote, “i believe by learning the right strategies and talking openly about my feelings about maths i can be a confident & positive figure in maths for my future students. modelling mistakes and learning from them is very important for both myself and my future students” (fourth year). this comment is evidence of personal growth, and relates to mockler’s (2011) suggestion that identity might result from professional learning that focuses “on the kind of teacher it is possible to be” (p. 136). conclusions in the workshop, the cit responses show participants’ current identities (related to being and belonging) were filtered through and reinforced by their perceptions of past experiences. the process of writing helped participants reflect on their perception of the event and its impact on their construction of their identities as learners of mathematics. the self-analysis of an emotionally charged experience was an opportunity to review past actions and emotions, and the process of writing was used to reflect on their previous actions and decisions. the critical incident reports described occurrences that were not only pivotal personally, but also affected their professional development, as they were about situations that impacted their identities. the exploration of the critical incidents challenged participants’ concepts of self. the recognition of the importance of the role of the teacher accords with findings from other researchers of psts (e.g., lutovac & kaasila, 2011), and shows the importance of teachers in developing a classroom where all students feel a sense of belonging. this has important implications both for participants’ future teaching and for teacher educators. participants also shared their memories of interactions with peers, and these also related to belonging. this relates to the sense of belonging as a measure of student engagement (willms, 2003) and hence has wider applications to learning beyond teacher education. this study demonstrates the utility of the qol conceptual framework for analysing the perceptions of past experiences identified by the 12 workshop participants via critical incidents, and the feelings that they invoked. at the beginning of their workshop, participants’ current identities were filtered through and reinforced by their perceptions of their past experiences. the critical incident reports provided evidence of how the participants viewed themselves as learners and future teachers of mathematics. by providing participants with a sense of belonging and encouraging them to challenge and overcome these negative perceptions, the workshop has the power to be transformative. challenging these perceptions assisted these later-years psts in addressing maths anxiety and viewing themselves as potentially more effective teachers of mathematics. these transformations have important implications for teacher education. challenging the way psts see themselves as becoming future teachers of mathematics can enable them to develop a more robust projective identity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 181 in summary, qol provides a framework to bring together ideas from a number of different researchers who have recognized the significance of being, belonging, and becoming in educational research. the research literature pertaining to learning and identity contains sometimes disparate references to being, belonging, and becoming as individual concepts (mockler, 2011; wenger, 1998). in addition, the research and theoretical literature that discusses the development of identity refers to “being”, “belonging” (wenger, 1998) and “becoming” (owens, 2008). this article shows that the qol conceptual framework provides a useful and relevant tool that defines these separate concepts and compiles them into a framework that can be used to interpret and understand psts’ and students’ views of themselves as learners of mathematics. practical implications and recommendations previous research demonstrated that the qol concepts of perception, self-image, and empowerment provide new insights into the study of maths anxiety (wilson, 2014). this article supports and extends a previous study with first-year primary psts (wilson, 2016) and reinforces its findings, demonstrating that the domains from the qol conceptual framework and their subdomains offer a potentially useful framework within which to analyze and understand the concepts of identity and projective identity and their development in psts at different, and especially final, stages of their courses. hence, this research makes an important contribution to the frameworks available for researching the development of identity in teacher education courses. the framework provides a tool for researchers who seek to understand the antecedents of, and ways to address, maths anxiety. this is relevant to both initial teacher education and school education. the identification of new frameworks with which to analyze research into maths anxiety is timely because although maths anxiety and its impact on psts and the students they ultimately teach has been a long-term problem, its impact is even more critical in the 21st century. the power of the small-group workshop, allied with cit, lies in its potential to inform psts. the workshop challenged their assessment of their capacity to learn and teach mathematics. this has the potential to be a healing process that generates enthusiasm for teaching mathematics. realizing that they are not at fault is, for psts with maths anxiety, part of the healing process, and enhances the development of their projective identity. promoting positive change for future teachers strengthens their engagement in the learning process. this is of contemporary social and theoretical concern and is relevant to society because of the extended impact teaching has on children. investigating other effects of primary teachers’ maths anxiety — for example, on students with special needs in inclusive classrooms — could lead to further applications of similar workshops in teacher education. the amelioration of maths anxiety also has relevance for teacher educators and teachers. negotiating this issue has the potential to transform learning and teaching beyond the psts to the future students. well-prepared teachers who are comfortable with teaching mathematics is a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 182 key factor in engaging students and enhancing their learning. ultimately, empowering psts in this way contributes to social justice in that it can make a difference not only for themselves but for their future students, and hence may help bring about social change. it is for these reasons that pst education remains a crucial site for further research. the qol conceptual framework provides a new framework for teacher educators and teachers to use in analyzing psts’ and students’ reflections. it is an effective way of synthesizing their reflections on their prior experiences. it provides teachers with a shared language to talk about students’ emotional responses in terms of the processes of being, belonging, and becoming. it is also a framework for teachers to use in examining their own practice. therefore it provides the potential for teacher educators and teachers to confer and to evaluate their practices, and to reframe their responses in ways that promote these processes. it provides and describes a framework that others could adopt, and thus is very practical in its potential applications. the opportunity to transfer the workshop procedures and their analyses to other learning areas, and to use them to address issues other than mathematics anxiety, should also be explored. although pst education is the focus of this particular article, the results of this analysis are relevant to society and to the wider population. there is much to learn from the challenges of how to negotiate issues of education as pathways for quality of life for a diverse society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 168–187 183 references angelides, p. 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(2008). “the factor that makes us more effective teachers”: two preservice primary teachers’ experience of bibliotherapy. mathematics teacher education and development, 9, 22–35. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019698 ȼentol tŧe teṉew̱ (together with the land) part 2: indigenous frontline practice as resurgence sandrina de finney, sarah wright cardinal, morgan mowatt, nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton, danielle alphonse, tracy underwood, leanne kelly, and keenan andrew abstract: in this paper, part 2 of a two-paper series, we extend our learning on landand water-based pedagogies from part 1 to outline broader debates about upholding resurgence in frontline practice with indigenous children, youth, and families. this article shares key learning from an indigenous landand waterbased institute held from 2019 to 2020 that was facilitated by knowledge keepers from local first nations and coordinated by faculty mentors from the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. the purpose of the one-year institute was to convene a circle of indigenous graduate students and faculty to engage in landand water-based learning and meaningful mentoring connections with indigenous old ones, elders, and knowledge keepers. students participated in landand water-based activities and ceremonies, learning circles, and writing workshops, and were invited to develop and share culturally grounded frameworks to inform their frontline practice with children, youth, families, and communities. drawing on a storytelling approach to share our learning from this institute, we explore the praxis and challenges of resurgence in deeply damaging colonial contexts. our individual and collective reflections on indigenous landbased pedagogies focus on local knowledges, our own diverse perspectives and frontline work, and ethical land and community engagements as integral to resurgent indigenous practice. keywords: indigenous child and youth care; land-based; water-based; indigenous practice; indigenous children, youth, and families; resurgence; child, youth and family services; youth work; child and youth care; decolonizing child and youth care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 35 sandrina de finney (corresponding author) is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: sdefinn@uvic.ca sarah wright cardinal, school of child and youth care, university of victoria morgan mowatt, political science and indigenous nationhood, university of victoria nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton, school of child and youth care, university of victoria danielle alphonse, aboriginal early childhood development, vancouver island university tracy underwood, school of child and youth care, university of victoria leanne kelly, school of nursing, university of victoria keenan andrew, school of child and youth care, university of victoria acknowledgement: we gratefully acknowledge our funders, the aboriginal service plan (ministry of advanced education, skills and training), and the canet foundation and spirit bear art farm, without which this institute would not have been possible. mailto:sdefinn@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 36 íy, sȼáćel siám 'uy' skweyul tawâw, tânisi tawnshi kiya? luu amhl good’y win gya’an qey, tan kahk ʔukłaasiš imscha hist’t’ukk shitls ahous hist’t’ukk shitls nuučaan̓uł isaak camis čuu ƛ̓eekoo ƛ̓eekoo the greetings that begin this paper are for our ancestors, relatives, and readers. starting with our languages is our way of honouring the sacredness of the first stories, which come from our homelands and connect us to all our relations. we extend our deepest gratitude to the songhees, esquimalt, w̱sáneć, and t’sou-ke nations on whose homelands we live and work. in making this acknowledgement, we commit to enacting everyday actions and solidarities that uphold their resurgence and sovereignty. we write this story together as graduate students and faculty from the university of victoria who participated in an indigenous landand water-based learning institute. we belong to the nations of the w̱sáneć, snuneymuxw, stz’uminus, cowichan, nuu-chah-nulth, gitxsan, saulteaux-cree métis, métis-cree, nehiyaw (cree), ojibwa, anishinaabe, kahnawake, wolastoqiyik, and maya. we are all frontline practitioners working with children, youth, families, and communities. as such, our work — including this paper — speaks to the urgent need for postsecondary programs to promote a more comprehensive integration of indigenousled, community-responsive practices that both respond to the pervasive damage caused by colonialism in our communities, and proudly uphold our original teachings to sustain child, youth, family, and community well-being and resurgence. held in the homelands of the w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke nations, the purpose of our one-year, landand water-based institute was to support indigenous students in developing ethically and culturally grounded frameworks for their frontline, applied practice. students participated in landand water-based activities, circles, ceremonies, an online component, and editorial mentoring, and were invited to develop and share culturally grounded frameworks to inform their frontline practice with children, youth, families, and communities. our group was generously welcomed and hosted in this important work by w̱sáneć old one jesiṉten (john elliott), elder may sam, t’sou-ke knowledge keepers jeff welch and thor gauti, w̱sáneć knowledge keeper jb williams, and nuu-chah-nulth artist denise williams from house of winchee. the institute was facilitated by sarah wright cardinal, nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton, and sandrina de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 37 finney, school of child and youth care faculty at the university of victoria. students were also supported by faculty mentors christine sy, leanne kelly, and mandeep kaur mucina. drawing from our institute reflections and using a storytelling approach combined with an analysis of literature and key historical issues in practice, we have created two papers to share our collective learning from our work on and with land and water. the first paper, ȼentol tŧe teṉew̱ (together with the land) part 1: indigenous land-based pedagogies (mowatt et al., 2020), is focused on landand water-based, restorative, desettling, pedagogical practices. in this article, part 2: indigenous frontline practice as resurgence, we extend our landand waterbased learning to our frontline practice frameworks with children, youth, families, and communities. lead authors (sandrina, sarah, and morgan) collectively wrote the introduction, analysis, conclusion, and framing pieces, and invited institute participants to contribute individual stories that show the diversity of our lenses and their translation into practice. throughout the papers, we use both “old one(s)” and “elder(s)” to refer to honoured and respected teachers of indigenous worldviews. “old one” is a more appropriate english translation of the senćoŧen word used in w̱sáneć territories. we also use both of the terms “land-based” and “landand water-based”, with the understanding that even though “land-based” already encompasses water and air (archibald, 2008), specifying “water” is especially important when working in coastal territories. we raise our hands in deepest gratitude to the knowledge keepers, ancestors, relatives, waters, and lands who hosted, cared for, and fed us during this institute; to the amazing students and institute faculty mentors; to all the staff of the university of victoria’s indigenous academic and community engagement (iace) office, especially indigenous initiatives coordinator dorothea harris and le,noṉet mentorship and bursary coordinator jilleun tenning; to the centre for indigenous research and community-led engagement (circle); to our funders, the aboriginal service plan (ministry of advanced education, skills and training) and the canet foundation1; and to spirit bear art farm2, who hosted us during the institute. we begin this paper with a description of the institute followed by an analysis of historical issues in practice before sharing individual stories written by students and collectively edited by our circle. learning to practice with and from the land and water whereas decolonization, the act of undoing or dismantling colonialism, has roles for both indigenous and settler peoples, indigenous resurgence is a call specifically to reclaim indigenous nations’ teachings and practices that are rooted in natural laws (garroutte, 2005; gaudry, 2011; grande, 2000). these natural laws, essential to resurgence-based praxis, are embedded in the 1 www.thecanetfoundation.org 2 www.spiritbearartfarm.com http://www.thecanetfoundation.org/ http://www.spiritbearartfarm.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 38 lands and waters that sustain indigenous communities (grande, 2000; mcadam, 2015). leanne simpson (2017) suggested that an everyday place-based practice of resurgence requires “aligning oneself and one’s life in the present with the visions of an indigenous future that are radically decoupled from the domination of colonialism and where indigenous freedom is centered” (p. 192). as a way of orienting our circle of students to the idea of “indigenous practice as resurgence”, our institute featured knowledge exchange activities, including learning from and with knowledge keepers and land and water relatives, conferring with faculty mentors, ceremonial work, circle, peer sharing, networking, and writing and editorial supports. during our land-based days, elders jesiṉten (john elliott) and may sam and knowledge keepers jeff welch, thor gauti, and jb williams welcomed and gifted us with invaluable teachings, stories, language, and hands-on practices. our circle gathered along beautiful shorelines and in old growth forests at sṉidȼeƚ [tod inlet] and other w̱sáneć homelands, and in t’sou-ke homelands; we shared songs and prayers, walked through ancient forest and meadow trails while learning plant and tree knowledge, gathered berries and medicines for tea, prepared and cooked salmon, and learned to weave cedar. we gratefully learned about sacred gathering and harvesting places that hold storied memories that have been carefully stewarded and transmitted across generations, often at great risk to knowledge keepers. our hosts shared the numerous impacts of their communities’ forced dispossession of their homelands, where our relatives such as the cedars, pines, and camas, and the medicines they hold, face the constant threat of colonial expansion and climate change. figure 1. t’sou-ke gathering at spirit bear art farm note. knowledge keeper and educator thor gauti teaches students how to make cedar roses at spirit bear. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 39 as we explored the ways in which the growing footprint of colonialism has devastated homelands, communities, and the places in which we practise, it was immediately clear to our circle that a landand water-based, indigenous-led way of learning about frontline practice took us far beyond the physical and ontological confines of building-based, too often depoliticized, colonial pedagogies of traditional child and youth care classrooms. as frontline practitioners, we considered the links between the kind of knowledge taught in frontline programs, and the damaging colonial practices that continue to be present in child, youth, and family services. we considered questions such as: how have colonial policies impacted generations of indigenous families, children, and youth? what kinds of issues have these policies created for frontline practice, and how do we prepare practitioners-in-training to do work that addresses — and unsettles — the colonial violence that permeates the systems in which we work? these questions were at the heart of our work throughout the institute. the urgent need to reformulate frontline practice indigenous communities across the world have been harmed by colonial discourses and practices. indigenous homelands, kinship structures, languages, and identities have been targeted for genocide by colonial projects such as residential and day schools, the justice system, health and educational services, and the child welfare systems (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2016). colonial childand family-serving systems were explicitly tasked with eroding the fabric of indigenous kinship and governance systems (de finney et al., 2018; de leuuw, 2015). child welfare is one particularly detrimental system that has formed an integral part of canada’s colonial policies, and in which the prevalent assimilative force has been disconnecting indigenous children from their families and their understandings of the world (wright cardinal, 2016). further, “parents, and grandparents, who were usually acknowledged as the primary producers and transmitters of knowledge, were no longer considered part of the educational process of children” (wright cardinal, 2016, p. 53). in a context of continued and pervasive erosion of our family and kinship networks through child and family services, it is critical that frontline practitioners access training that restores original teachings and frameworks for upholding indigenous land-based systems of care (de finney & di tomasso, 2015), since these are integral to indigenous self-determination and resurgence. at the institute, the landand water-based learning assisted us in “express[ing] and nurtur[ing] extended kinship” (corntassel & hardbarger, 2019, p. 92) with each other and with all our relations, for the purpose of fostering a relational worldview (smith & varghese, 2016) to inform practice-based resurgence. the stories and reflections we present here amplify our integration of indigenous ways of being and learning with a focus on local knowledges and ethical land and community engagements as integral to indigenous frontline practice. some of the issues that most animated our discussions centred around the question of how indigenous practitioners can honour their own healing and support their capacity to do this crucial work when they are working in often deeply harmful institutions and agencies; this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 40 question is especially salient considering that practitioners and their families must also live with the same colonial legacies that impact the lives of those with whom they work. in this context, what kinds of responses, skills, practices, and ethical frameworks are important for frontline practitioners to have in order to support indigenous resurgence in child and family services? the colonial history of human services calls on practitioners to rethink the norms and values we uphold in our practice across colonial systems, and to consider whether they harm and demean indigenous families, or uphold their dignity and resurgence. indigenous frontline workers are increasingly called upon to provide culturally congruent services that address — and seek to redress — the deep violence of the colonial state. in what could be considered a cruel irony, this work falls onto our shoulders as caregivers and professionals in our communities. offering culturally rooted practice requires a level of historical and personal engagement that is not typically addressed in mainstream frontline practitioner training (de finney & di tomasso, 2015). we acknowledge the challenges of framing indigenous ways of knowing within settler structures, and the ethos of relationship with the land and water. understanding that indigenous resurgence stems from the collective learning foundations that happen in community is key to nurturing a frontline practice grounded in wellness. as communities call on us to contribute to a groundswell of resurgence, we bear witness to restorative practices that sustain our work across diverse communities. in the following sections, individual institute participants share their unique stories about their learning and the impact of the institute on their restorative practice frameworks. xaxe ȼe tŧe sḱál ƚte, by nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton xaxe ȼe tŧe sḱál ƚte. ćse lá,e tŧe xaxe tŧe sḱál lŧe. niƚ ȼo tŧe sḱál e tŧe selálew̱ le ƚte i, tŧe selálw̱án ƚte. lá, teṉ ȼo, tŧe xaxe tŧe teṉew̱ i, tŧe á,leṉeneȼ ƚte ȼƚ hiŧ ȼo. i, ṯáu oṉesteṉ tŧe ćeláṉen tŧe skáls i, tŧe śx̱enáns lŧe áƚe e tiá teṉew̱. niƚ ȼe tŧe ćeláṉen lŧe. snoueƚ e tŧe sḱal meq tŧe w̱ćisteṉs i, tŧe skáls ƚte. hiŧ se ȼensist tŧe sqá, ƚte e tŧe skáls. [our language is sacred. our language is from the sacred one. these were the words from our past elders and our elders’ advisors. the great spirit made our homeland long ago, and our beliefs and our ways, culture, and language of this land long ago. this is our birthright. inside the language are our laws, beliefs, and teachings. long into the future we will hold that belief.] indigenous peoples in canada and around the world had societies that developed and evolved over thousands and thousands of years (many, if not all, indigenous peoples’ oral histories state that they have been present on their homelands since the time of creation). each indigenous nation has an intricate society that is founded upon their own indigenous knowledge, contained in their language, infused with their worldview, and rooted in their land. their knowledge system is a unique way of living and being in the world and guides ways of relating to each other and to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 41 the land. many indigenous worldviews, like many indigenous languages, are threatened in canada. fostering indigenous resurgence in indigenous children and youth in our communities entails creating learning and teaching opportunities for children and youth so they can grow up intimately related to and strongly connected to their homelands, immersed in their languages and spiritual worldviews, and practising and embodying their cultural practices and traditions. settler colonialism, through the implementation of the indian act, the reserve system, and state-run education, has severed indigenous peoples from their lands and attempted to assimilate us into mainstream canadian society. figure 2. a walk at sṉidȼeƚ in w̱sáneć homelands note. nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton (facing camera), faculty in the school of child and youth care, shares teachings about local tree and plant medicines with students. in w̱sáneć territories, it is very important to explore development of land-based pedagogies from a w̱sáneć perspective: this will foster the connection of w̱sáneć children and youth to their homelands and strengthen their identities as w̱sáneć people through language, story, and place. the land-based child and youth care institute was designed to create learning experiences for indigenous students, who came together to learn from local indigenous communities and knowledge keepers of t’sou-ke and w̱sáneć in their homelands. through this training, child and youth care students will be able to envision the ways their work with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 42 indigenous children and youth can foster a new generation of indigenous people who are strongly rooted in their indigenous knowledge systems. indigenous knowledges are distinct and represent diverse ways of understanding the world. indigenous peoples and knowledge systems have developed from generations of being in relationship with, living with, and depending on the physical and spiritual worlds — most importantly, the land. child and youth care practice with indigenous peoples is incomplete without indigenous knowledge and connections with land. it is vital that future generations think and live within our indigenous philosophies, laws, and beliefs and are able to enact their philosophies, laws, and beliefs to counter the ongoing colonialism that indigenous nations face. indigenous land-based child and youth care pedagogies are vital to this. the land is our foundation. when we are engaged in healing the land, we are healing ourselves. tiichma [heart], by keenan andrew as i walk through the traditional lands of the w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke first nations, i spend the days listening, sharing, and learning traditional teachings from local elders, professors, and the respected stewards of these lands. i am reminded of the pouch of medicine that has been sitting in my front pocket. i walk to the water and place the medicine into the ocean and ask for clarity to guide my practice in a good way, to help me move gently with myself and towards those that i work with and support. finally, i ask the creator to watch over my family, friends, and all those who need care and love. sitting in circle and spending quiet time by the water, i learn that i deeply connect to learning from the land and that the land helps reground and guide my child and youth care practice. as a master’s student in child and youth care who also holds a bachelor’s degree in child and youth care, grounding myself in land-based pedagogies helps support my overall well-being and produces deeper connections to my ancestral birthright and indigeneity (rorick, 2018). this in turn fully informs the skills, worldview, and lenses i bring to my child and youth care praxis across contexts. my hope is that these transformative, healing methods will be available to more of us working in community. as i transition into more advanced practice roles, i hope to support holistic land and water well-being and healing with young people who might not have these opportunities readily available. the institute inspired reflection on my own knowledge-seeking as a practitioner. it provided me with a vision of, and guidance on, supporting gender well-being through working with indigenous young men, boys, two-spirit youth, and gender-fluid youth living in male bodies. for my master’s degree, i am expanding on these teachings through cedar hat weaving workshops that uphold gender wellbeing and sovereignty while unsettling gender-based violence in the lives of indigenous women, girls, two-spirit people, and vulnerable indigenous young men and boys. the teachings of our ancestors, both human and nonhuman, offer a tremendous wealth of knowledge that grounds our indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. these teachings have guided our indigenous ancestors since time immemorial (black, 1999; claxton & de france, 2018; rorick, 2018), and they guide me today. through the institute, i realize that my ancestors are always present, providing me with knowledge and love. i saw many relatives in the water and on the land. i felt an especially strong connection to the t’sou-ke lands and was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 43 reminded of a story my mother told me of when she was a little girl. she would boat down from ahousaht with her parents to pacheedaht and t’sou-ke to sell fish. connecting to the same lands and waters that harvested so many wonderful and fulfilling memories for my mother — and generations before her — helps me reconnect to why i am doing this work. as we sat on the beach making cedar roses and i listened to the water crashing onto the shore, i thought about how my ancestors must have felt being on the same beaches while working with cedar medicines; this filled my tiichma [heart]. as i completed my cedar rose, i chose to place it among the pebbles on the beach and take a photograph with the ocean gently washing over it. a traditional teaching was once shared with me about how the creator only gives us as much as we can handle. in our child and youth care work, we are gifted opportunities to work with children, youth, and families to remind them (and ourselves) that although life can be stormy and leave our beach in disarray, the tide will wash up and leave us with another beautiful canvas once the storm clears. listening to the sounds that resonate through the forest, i feel invigorated, grounded, and recentred. the sounds of gwatwena [raven] and robin, as well as our water relatives (seals) coming to visit us from the water, remind me of how important it is to connect to these places. this institute has reminded me that if we sit still, acknowledge our surroundings, and truly open our tiichmas to the lands, waters, and ancestors, we can see that our ancestors are with us, guiding us. by incorporating these indigenous teachings into our child and youth care work, we can continue to decolonize and dismantle settler colonialism to protect indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being on indigenous lands (simpson, 2014). čuu ƛ̓eekoo ƛ̓eekoo [respectfully, thank you] imscha my resurgence, by tracy underwood water necessity, life giving, beauty. depraved, life taking, dark. sparkly, dark green, soul refreshing. íy sȼáćel, my name is eskiselw̱et, i live on stáutw̱ first nation, located in w̱sáneć nation, coast salish territory. i attended the university of victoria for my bachelor’s (2001) and master’s (2010) degrees, both in child and youth care. i am married to romaine underwood and we have four children, ruth, abigail, romaine jr., and victor. i have four adult children who live on their own, joshua, brett, jewelia, and savannah. from my four older international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 44 children i have eight grandchildren. on my father’s side, i am from w̱sáneć (descendant of ziȼot). i am part scottish, as his maternal great-grandfather was from scotland. i also have a paternal great-grandmother from tseshaht (nuu-chah-nulth) and another with hawaiian heritage. my father died from alcoholism a month before i turned 16. he attended residential school from ages 7 to 14. on my mother’s side i am (paternal) snuneymuxw (nanaimo) and (maternal) qw’umiyiqun (within cowichan tribes). i have two brothers and one sister and many, many cousins. my writing is connected to my place, which is embedded in my homeland of w̱sáneć, and is woven with culture and staying active in our senćoŧen language. i am also writing out my jáeƚnonet (acknowledge/receive) framework. jeáƚnoṉet means to manage to thank, to be given opportunity to give thanks. this teaching is guiding my current practice and research as a doctoral student in child and youth care; it expresses my hopes for my children and grandchildren (my resurgence) on their educational and reconciliation journey. they represent my resurgence. depraved, life taking, dark. my most recent encounter with racism required me to write a victim impact statement. racism, discrimination, investigations, misunderstanding, judgement, policies, mandates, reporting, call-ins — these are all products of the faceless monster named “system”. system sells merchandise that causes harm to those who don’t even intend to purchase. system is life taking, maybe not of the body, but the soul and heart, as well as the mind. it thrives in buildings with titles on them, like courthouse, hospital, child protective services, aboriginal affairs and northern development canada, and schools at all levels. in my whirlwind of encounters with this monster named system i have had to find ways to heal my hurts. in my own life, many times i have concluded that hurts can be covered with the band-aid solution of addictions, which has proven to be only temporary. my own journey of healing at first was not named anything but survival. now, at times, it can be named self-care. i have learned that an immediate aid is simply breathing — deep breaths. among other strategies of looking after myself, resilience has been my armour. resilience has direct connection to being grounded in who i am, where i come from, my ancestors, and my roots — all connected to the land. it is hard to describe how and why i even have resilience. i follow the four directions of indigenous intelligence: spirit, body, emotions, and the mind. i do know that i have to be resilient when the system monster is out and about. water. sparkly, dark green, soul refreshing. i see water as hope. i hope that creating knowledgeable spaces and explaining who the monster is, what the monster looks like, can prevent the monster from creating more pain. i imagine the monster sitting and listening, genuinely caring and wanting to help. although indigenous people have a number of caring people in these buildings and are training our people to be a part of these systems to eliminate harm, the monster still exists. soul refreshing is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 45 connected to healing as well as hope and being able to move on after experiencing trauma, pain, and lashes from the system monster. necessity, life giving, beauty. the poem at the start of my story is made of words for a reason: words carry great power. the poem led to the creation of a healing “wordle” for myself that i imprinted on a rock for my own healing. since then i have created more, and many people have been able to understand the big picture: holistic healing that hands-on creating can generate. if we can practise our ways of healing, and turn to the land, water, and nature, the monster will not win. we will win. the force behind what i do is my children and grandchildren. i continually want to make the world a better place for them. we live in a beautiful part of the world. i am lucky to be w̱sáneć. connecting to community-based learning, by danielle alphonse prayer creator please help me as i try to listen carefully to the words of the wind, songs of the birds, and the sounds of the waves to help give me insight in thinking about my path and teachings connected to the land. i fully acknowledge the missing piece in my soul, a heartache of not having my language. i recall my late grandmother discussing the importance of using language when gathering medicines or interacting with the water from the river and ocean. i feel a deep sense of responsibility to embrace my family’s spiritual relationship with the natural world and to carry forward the teaching of my ancestors. thank you for the wind cleansing my soul, brushing away from my mind, body, and spirit things that are not needed on my path forward. also, i raise my hands in gratitude for the butterflies who show the possibilities of inner transformation. all my relations past, present, and future will stand by me and support me. my name is danielle alphonse. qwul’stun’a’wat is my traditional name passed down from my late grandmother philomena alphonse. i am cowichan on my mother’s side and kahnawake, welsh, irish, and scottish on my father’s side. i am currently in my sixth year as the bc regional innovation chair for aboriginal early childhood development at vancouver island university. i also teach in the early childhood education and care program. my educational background is in early childhood education, child and youth care, and education. as an indigenous practitioner, researcher, and educator, i must develop and bridge both indigenous and mainstream ideas through academic inquiry and asking questions that focus on the needs of our communities, children, and families. in my work, i consider questions such as: how does one align ancestral healing approaches when working with indigenous children and families? how can i use my understandings about the importance of the land to promote understanding of the past, present, and future in communities? how can i help mainstream academia understand and value our sacred teachings? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 46 i know that when i truly connect to the land, the signs reveal my path and my spirit trusts my inward sense of direction. by learning through my indigenous worldview, i am developing my cultural, spiritual side to complement my mainstream education and support my profession in research and teaching. i resonate with the words of bell and brant (2015), who wrote: the land communicates as a teacher and is a receptacle of knowledge and wisdom. when aboriginal people seek wisdom, it is to mother earth that they return. with her they dream, have vision quests, and obtain the knowledge and wisdom they need. the knowledge and wisdom they glean from the land are not founded in logical thought framed within the western rational scientific tradition. rather, they are grounded in the land. (p. 16) situating myself on the land at sṉidȼeƚ during this institute provides the perfect place to think about culturally relevant frameworks to guide my work. for me, the land holds all the knowledge of the past, and i believe that by honouring and acknowledging the past, we can create resurgence for a better future. in our cultural and spiritual learning specific to the w̱sáneć nation, old one jesiṉten (john elliot) shared that nations follow the cycles of the moon. these old cultural practices reflect the seasons of preparing and gathering: fishing, planting, harvesting, and gathering cedar to sustain oneself throughout the year. in an academic and practice context, i need to consider ways to represent learning through themes such as gathering, sharing, and teaching with others. interpreting a cultural approach alongside mainstream knowledge is a complex task, yet it is absolutely central to my work. for me as an indigenous person and practitioner, co-creating a relationship with the land to guide my practice is essential. eve tuck and marcia mckenzie (2015) stated that “relationships to land are familial, intimate, intergenerational, and instructive” (p. 57.) manulani aluli meyer (2008), a hawaiian scholar, echoed the significance of our kinship ties for place-based learning: land is our mother. this is not a metaphor. for the native hawaiians speaking of knowledge, land was the central theme that drew forth all others. you came from a place, you grew in a place and you had a relationship with a place. this is an epistemological idea…. one does not simply learn about land, we learn best from land. (p. 219) during our time at sṉidȼeƚ, nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton shared the sacred names of the trees and plants and how they keep us protected and help us in our life both internally and externally. as the ancestral knowledge emerges and its importance is strengthened by the gentle teachings of old ones, i wonder how to reconnect with the land and renew our relationships to our sacred places to strengthen my educational journey and my practice with young children and families. xemŧoltw̱ told the story of camas, an essential food source of our past, and challenged us to connect to the camas and gain strength from how it sustains itself by growing bigger with each passing year. i realize i need to nourish myself in each year of my learning, to sustain myself over the long term. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 47 my thoughts always return to the children and future generations. i am reminded of the importance of research, education, and practice being community-based and community-driven. indigenous knowledge and practice need to be anchored in a cultural perspective to be meaningful to the community. alexandria middlemiss (2018) has highlighted that the two greatest predictors of success for indigenous students are “access to traditional knowledge and teachers who employ a culturally responsive pedagogy” (p. 17). “for indigenous students,” she wrote, “education must be designed from an indigenous perspective and provide a relevant cultural context to be meaningful and effective” (p. 17). the crucial role we play in transmitting teachings to future generations brings contentment to my spirit, because i realize my ancestors prayed for my path and are behind me in the spirit world. thinking about these teachings from our land-based institute, i realize the value of being part of a collective that creates momentum and energy to be a change agent. to me, being on the land and learning in a circle allows us to use an indigenous approach and experience an indigenous worldview. learning to do land-paced work, by leanne kelly my name is leanne poitras kelly and i identify as a métis-cree woman with family roots in the qu’appelle valley in saskatchewan. i currently reside as a guest in coast salish territory. my family can trace our métis lines through migration across canada with the fur trade. my mother, rose amyotte, was born in a place called katepwa, saskatchewan, in an area where many métis families settled. it is home. living on vancouver island now and working for cowichan tribes for the last 25 years has given me perspective on the value and role of one’s roots. the teachings of the cowichan and coast salish peoples have helped me to find my place in honouring the land that i now live on as a guest, but it will never be mine. yet i have a responsibility to support and create space for these ways of knowing, especially when i remember how my own family knowledge was suppressed. this is part of the ethical framework that guides my frontline practice. when i started work for cowichan tribes, i soon realized that life within this coast salish community was different from the prairie culture that i knew. the timelines and community expectations were all connected to place, identity, seasons, and community norms. basic knowledge, like knowing when the salmon came in for families and how that would impact health centre programming, was new to me. understanding the winter ceremonial season and how that influenced the demands placed on families, resources, time, and division of labour was crucial in knowing how and when to connect with families, how i could support them, and how i might be invading intimate spaces. these community ways of living are solidly rooted in cowichan. they are foreign to my métiscree understanding and my western biomedical training, and yet so crucial to the way i would offer my service. thus, this land determines the pace of my work. it has been crucial to my practice ethics to understand the influences that have shaped this community, such as the physical location of the cowichan traditional village sites and the intersection with settler-owned land. the tensions of racial division have had a profound international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 48 influence on how people have learned to move within this geography. i came to understand the history of this particular place, the community flow, and how community members were perceived and treated within western institutions like schools and hospitals. my work with youth often involved walking and talking about the pulls of both worlds, the tensions the youth have to navigate, and the restlessness that motivates their acts of defiance. these opportunities to get on the land and walk and reflect remind me that the meaningful engagement the land provides can act to create calm and introspection. reorienting my practice to spend time in relational, landbased spaces has allowed formation of what andrew hatala and his colleagues (2019) referred to as “soothing places where nature and land interactions could occur” and which created “a sense of distance from stressors associated with the everyday lives” (p. 127). the seasons and the land have always defined what happens in the community and how priorities are shaped and implemented. community ceremonies and cultural and family obligations influence school attendance, family attendance, and medical appointments, and set up competing demands from family members and professionals in positions of mainstream power. my own need as a health care provider to keep families on a strict schedule did not match the priorities of many families, nor did it have clear relevance outside the world of trained professionals. this intersection of the competing ways of seeing community practice is important to understand. as an outsider, i come to community work knowing that i bring my own set of teachings and values that must be reconciled with the people of the land i live on now. giving myself space to explore my gaps in knowledge and the tensions that arise from my personal worldview, my own land teachings, my professional training, my past experiences, and my current learning are crucial to developing a supportive relationship with families. when i reflect on the work i do with families, i maintain that there are key principles, informed by the land and relational experience, that are essential for any practitioner. these are: • knowing who you are and the land you come from: identification of your own “place” comes first (absolon, 2011). • knowing where you are now and how you have connected with the land and the people you will serve: how will the land inform your presence and the work you are being asked to do (de leeuw, 2015; wildcat et al., 2014)? • knowing that colonization has dispossessed many indigenous people from their lands and teachings: practitioners must work to create opportunities for reconnection by seeking guidance and leadership from local knowledge holders and learning about the complexities of land teaching and learning (smith, 2012; wildcat et al., 2014). • knowing what drives your daily work and asking yourself whose needs are being met and why: placing the western professional agenda in a position of greater power than indigenous lifeways is counterproductive to achieving indigenous self-determination and creates barriers to learning from each other (cormier & ray, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 49 i have come to understand that my professional identity is best built upon my root identity and that only through recognizing that we all have this profound need to seek connection to our original teacher, our mother, will we find the connections that we need to sustain both our soul and our relationships with each other. seeking relationships with those i hope to serve, built on acknowledgement and intentional regard for the teachings of the land, honours the ancestral knowledge specific to that land and people. working to decolonize my professional role by elevating relationships in this way ultimately helps me to find an authentic space to do the work i am asked and trained to do. conclusion: blanketing our communities with resurgence figure 3. institute participants receive blankets with crests and colors that represent their vision for resurgence in practice, made by nuu chah nulth artist denise williams note. during our closing blanketing ceremony, participants were blanketed while elder may sam and knowledge keeper jb williams shared seasonal land-based teachings and protocols. through our institute circle, we supported each other in reflecting on the diverse ethical and cultural teachings and guidelines we carry as we work towards indigenous resurgence and selfdetermination. to extend these kinship and healing pathways into their frontline work, textile artist denise williams invited each student to envision a crest, colours, and images representing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 50 their ethical commitment to resurgence in practice. denise then made each blanket by hand, and they were gifted to us during a blanketing ceremony at the close of the institute. these blankets will shelter and teach us as we walk in and with communities. creating spaces in community for children, youth, and families to engage in land-, water-, and spirit-based cultural, ceremonial, and everyday activities can help repair the intergenerational relationships that are under constant assault by colonial systems, structures, and policies (hart, 2010). as sylvia mcadam (2015) stressed: indigenous people are not lawless people; the creator’s laws are strict and inform every part of a person’s life. it is these laws that governed and guided in the days when europeans did not walk the territories of indigenous people. these laws still exist and can be revitalized. (p. 23) red pedagogy (grande, 2000), radical indigenism (garoutte, 2005), and other indigenous resurgence frameworks provide a pathway towards restoring the indigenous knowledge systems that nurture community healing and wellness. this work constitutes a tall order for new generations of frontline practitioners; our community-based resurgence work does not in itself sever all of the elastic, far-reaching tentacles of colonialism that operate in many aspects of indigenous lives. we deal with the ways in which colonial violence is reformulated, not only in damaging structures and systems but also through lateral and vicarious forms of trauma that infiltrate our relationships and work conditions. teaching indigenous practitioners therefore involves preparing them to work ethically with indigenous communities in the face of complex issues, including entrenched racialization, growing wealth disparities, and an expanding global ecological crisis, all of which represent formidable threats to indigenous resurgence. given increasingly mobile forms of neocolonialism, including new corporate, environmental, and extreme right-wing colonial formations, we know that our practices have to adapt and be increasingly astute, agile, and brave. we are also mindful of the challenges of “reclaiming” practices that can be too easily homogenized, romanticized, appropriated, and institutionalized, and thus sapped of their sacred power. we wonder how landand water-based learning can be equitably resourced and made ethically accessible to students and families who are living in increasingly compromised urban environments. as a response, we return to a productive, enacted, collective resurgence, a resurgence that is nested in connections with homelands and kinship. we have so few places where the beauty of indigenous knowledge and kinship systems can be unapologetically celebrated without being subsumed by debates about the loaded politics of reclaiming and longing. when we revitalize sacred indigenous laws we are not seeking a simplistic return to a static, essentialized memory, because the ancestors are always walking with us in the present. across thousands of diverse indigenous worldviews, knowledge is often understood as collective and human beings are only a small part of the cosmos. vine deloria (1991) explained the intimate connections we have to the environment — an inseparable existence — and that humans are the “youngest member of the web of life” ( p. xi). the humility in this teaching is at the heart of resurgence in frontline practice with children, youth, families, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 51 and communities. many indigenous knowledge systems include this notion of being in relationship with all living beings and honouring the spirit of each being. our frameworks emphasize that landand water-based knowledges are tied to personal identity, spiritual development, and relationships with and accountability to others (meyer, 2003, cited in mcguire, 2010, p. 123) and to past, present, and future generations. what we have learned is that a resurgent, decolonizing praxis requires an active resistance to colonial paradigms, a critical perspective on history, and a reimagining of collective life and accountability. resurgence invites us to remember the ways we sat with old ones and cared for family and land and water kinship — for all our relations — prior to colonization. we need to unburden coming generations of the imprint of colonization and engage in restorative, decolonial, community-centered practices. kathleen absolon (2011) described indigenous collective practices as ones in which “we journey, we search, we converse, we process, we gather, we harvest, we make meaning, we do, we create, we transform, and we share what we know. our spirit walks with us on these journeys. our ancestors accompany us” (p. 168). this generative way forward is a lived, dynamic praxis of everyday resurgence that carries us into the future. there is no “one way” to practice these teachings. they are brought alive every day, as an ethic of accountability, across all of the contexts in which we work, care, and practise. as caregivers, witnesses, and stewards — as frontline practitioners — we engage in brave, powerful truth-telling; we live with the backlash, denial, and resentment placed on us by our own institutions and colleagues; we support place kinship and spirit-based projects; we respect indigenous knowledges as complex systems of governance, education, health, and wellness; and we ensure that indigenous children, youth, and families are upheld and celebrated with dignity to engage in their own nations’ teachings and practices. all our relations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 52 references absolon, k. e. 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(2017). as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press. smith, l. t. (2012). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. zed. smith, n. l., & varghese, j. (2016). role, impacts, and implications of dedicated aboriginal student space at a canadian university. journal of student affairs research and practice, 53(4), 458–469. doi:10.1080/19496591.2016.1167065 truth and reconciliation commission of canada. (2016). canada’s residential schools: reconciliation: the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (vol. 6). mcgill-queen’s university press. tuck, eve., & mc kenzie, m. (2015). place in research: theory, methodology, and methods. routledge. wildcat, m., macdonald, m., irlbacher-fox, s., & coulthard, g. (2014) learning from the land: indigenous land-based pedagogy and decolonization. decolonization: indigeneity, education, & society, 3(3), i–xv. wright cardinal, s. (2016). a framework for indigenous adoptee reconnection: reclaiming language and identity. canadian journal for new scholars in education, 7(1), 84–93. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjnse/article/view/30693/pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2016.1167065 https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjnse/article/view/30693/pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 34–55 55 biographies dr. sandrina de finney, faculty member in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, is lead researcher for sisters rising: honouring indigenous body and land sovereignty (sistersrising.uvic.ca), a project that promotes indigenous-led, youth-engaged, landand waterbased gender well-being and resurgence. dr. sarah wright cardinal is a faculty member in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria. her work centres the importance of healing from colonial disruptions to indigenous identities and addressing these fractures with land-, water-, and spirit-based teachings and practices that contribute to child, youth, and community wellness. morgan mowatt is a member of the gitxsan nation, a second-year phd student in political science and indigenous nationhood at the university of victoria, and co-director of the young indigenous leaders symposium. morgan’s research focuses on indigenous sovereignty, decolonial futures, and youth empowerment. dr. nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton is a faculty member in child and youth care, university of victoria. his teaching and research are centred on the revitalization and resurgence of indigenous knowledges and languages through community-based and land-based research and education. this involves reconnecting elders, youth, and community members and supports a longer-term journey of resurgence and intergenerational resilience. danielle alphonse is the bc regional innovation chair for aboriginal early childhood development and a faculty member in the early childhood education and care program at vancouver island university. danielle is completing an interdisciplinary phd in indigenous early childhood education and child and youth care at the university of victoria. tracy underwood is the indigenous academic coordinator for the indigenous students support center in the faculty of human and social development (hsd). she is the mother of eight children and grandmother of six grandchildren. she has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in child and youth care, and is completing a phd in child and youth care, focused on reconciliation in university settings and w̱sáneć resurgence. leanne kelly is an assistant teaching professor with the school of nursing, university of victoria. leanne is a metis/cree cisgender woman, mother of two sons, and a registered nurse. she has spent her career working in first nations communities in both saskatchewan and british columbia. she is currently working on her phd with a focus on supporting nursing education to address anti-indigenous racism within our health systems. keenan andrew holds a bachelor’s degree in child and youth care and is an ma student in child and youth care, a child and family counsellor, and a sisters rising research facilitator who is working with indigenous boys and young men to address the colonial roots of gender and sexual violence. keenan is the recipient of sshrc, jordan’s principle, chief joe mathias, and le,noṉet student awards. https://sistersrising.uvic.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818212 acknowledging the complexity of processes leading to foster care breakdown clara bombach, thomas gabriel, and renate stohler abstract: family-based solutions for children in care are the preferred option in european countries on the grounds of both cost and quality. yet, too often, foster care placements intended to be long term are terminated unexpectedly early. few studies have identified factors leading to unexpected breakdown and fewer still have translated such findings into practical guidance for professionals. this article outlines: (a) the ambiguity and contradictions in the use of terminology (e.g., instability, breakdown, disruption) in several international studies; (b) the adoption of a one-sided, file-based, systemic perspective in recent studies of foster care instability, breakdown, and disruption; and (c) empirical data collected from interviews with foster children. foster care breakdown is shown to be a process that takes place on several levels. in addition to the actual breakdown event, the situation of the child before the placement, the situation during the placement, the emergence and development of the crisis and the consequences of the breakdown for all those involved are all part of the process. it is only in retrospect that the ending of a foster care process is perceived as a breakdown. assessments of whether it was planned or unplanned, expected or unexpected, and desirable or undesirable are meaningful only from an individual perspective. such a perspective must be clearly identified: different people experience and remember the same breakdown in different ways, and its significance for their personal biographies may vary. keywords: foster care, breakdown, placement change, perspective of foster children clara bombach ma (the corresponding author) is a research associate at zurich university of applied sciences, school of social work, institute of childhood, youth and family, pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8037 zurich, switzerland. email: clara.bombach@zhaw.ch thomas gabriel phd is the head of the institute of childhood, youth and family at zurich university of applied sciences, school of social work, pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8037 zurich, switzerland. email: thomas.gabriel@zhaw.ch renate stohler lic.phil is a lecturer and project leader at zurich university of applied sciences, school of social work, institute of childhood, youth and family, pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8037 zurich, switzerland. email: renate.stohler@zhaw.ch mailto:clara.bombach@zhaw.ch mailto:thomas.gabriel@zhaw.ch mailto:renate.stohler@zhaw.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 39 family-based solutions for children in care are the preferred option in european countries on the grounds of both cost and quality (delap & melville fulford, 2011). yet, too often, foster care placements intended to be long term are terminated unexpectedly early (kindler, helmig, meysen, & jurczyk, 2011; wilson, sinclair, & gibbs, 2000). few studies have identified factors leading to unexpected breakdown and fewer still have translated such findings into practical guidance for professionals (rock, michelson, thomson, & day, 2013; semanchin jones & wells, 2008). studies of unexpected foster care termination or breakdown have adopted a range of definitions of “breakdown”, which has hindered comparison. while oosterman, schuengel, slot, bullens, and doreleijers’s (2007) review of literature on “placement breakdown” was “based on the assumption that multiple moves between foster homes and group homes are universally seen as undesirable”, christiansen, havik, and anderssen (2010, p. 915) preferred a definition of breakdown as something that arises “when a child moves from a placement intended to persist except for moves from an acceptable arrangement to a better one.” differences also exist in relation to policy contexts, legislation, and philosophies of care that give rise to variations in the role and remit of foster care. these differences may impact the conclusions of studies of foster care breakdown, which are usually confined to a single country and thus limit the extent of crossnational knowledge transfer. there is little international consensus regarding the concepts and tools to be used in the measurement and assessment of foster care breakdown. an international team comprising researchers from the zhaw1 school of social work in switzerland, the university of siegen in germany, and the university of london in england has been carrying out research on a project entitled “foster care breakdown” since 2014. the aim of the study is to evaluate the reasons why foster care placements in england, germany, and switzerland break down. it sets out to identify the factors that play a role in the breakdown of foster care placements and examines the unfolding of the processes that lead to such breakdowns.2 to fulfil these objectives, the project team conducted interviews with foster children and parents and analyzed files relating to foster care placements. the title of the project prompted different reactions among foster children, foster parents, professionals from child and youth welfare services, and researchers. far from being selfexplanatory, it proved to require considerable clarification. the researchers in all three countries observed that when seeking to approach interviewees and specialist services with a view to accessing files for analysis, the project title frequently provoked irritation and had a deterrent effect. for example, requests for access to files for analysis were denied with the explanation that 1 zurich university of applied sciences, school of social work, institute of childhood, youth and family: www.zhaw.ch/socialwork. 2 more detailed information about the ongoing project can be found at: https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/foster-careplacement-breakdown/. http://www.zhaw.ch/socialwork https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/foster-care-placement-breakdown/ https://www.zhaw.ch/en/socialwork/research/kindheit-jugend-und-familie/kinder-und-jugendhilfe/foster-care-placement-breakdown/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 40 breakdowns were extremely rare and only arose in highly complex individual cases. this prompted the project team to undertake a critical evaluation of the research tradition, terminology, and data pool in the context of the current research on the topic. an effort was also made to clarify the use of terminology within the project, with the aim of developing a definition of foster care breakdown that would incorporate the experience of foster families and foster children and would be suitable for use in the analysis of files and for the exchange of information and the sharing of experiences between professionals from foster care services. it was also seen as important to decode the connotations conveyed in the project title and to discuss the participating researchers’ own approach to the designation of foster care breakdown. we begin by exploring the current status of the research on foster care breakdown and its designation, and by identifying the dimensions conveyed by the majority of the associated definitions and terminology. we then show, based on 13 interviews carried out with foster children who had experienced the breakdown of a foster care placement in switzerland, that the dimension of experience should be regarded as a key factor in the development of such definitions. foster care breakdown in switzerland according to an estimate by pflegekinder-aktion schweiz [foster child action switzerland] and integras [swiss national association for social pedagogy and special needs education], between 22,000 and 30,000 children and young people in switzerland do not currently live with their parents (keller, 2012). however, national statistics for foster placements are not recorded: no national data are available on the “total childcare population, care leavers or children in need. at the national level there are also no data available on placement types, lengths of stay in care or on the age profile of looked after children” (gabriel & stohler, 2008, p. 197). little research has been carried out on children in foster care, despite the fact that the need for such research was referred to in the mid-1970s (kuntsche & nett, 2002) and highlighted when national councillor jacqueline fehr published her parliamentary postulate on the swiss foster care system in 2002, in which she claimed that there was a need for more research and data (zatti, 2005). little is known about the rate of foster care breakdown in switzerland or about the conditions necessary to reduce the unexpected termination of long-term placements. similarly, not much is known about foster care stability in switzerland or about the promotion of placement stability by social services. figures that provide some points of reference are currently available from two cantons. first, the surveys carried out by the bildungsdirektion des kantons zürich, amt für jugend und berufsberatung [office for youth and career guidance of the canton of zurich department of education] reveal that, in the early 2000s, the breakdown of foster care “due to conflicts between the family and foster child or birth family and at the request of the parent or foster child” (bildungsdirektion kanton zürich. amt für jugend und berufsberatung, 2014, p. 4) was as follows: 34% of foster care placements were terminated in 2002, 31% in 2003, and 25% in 2005. the report states that, “in view of the fact that the termination of a foster care placement generally has a severe impact on the affected child, the average figure of 30% breakdowns should be assessed as high” (p. 4). also, according to assessments conducted by professionals responsible for foster international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 41 care placements in the canton of bern (kantonales jugendamt, 2016), about a quarter of departures from placements in 2016 were described as “unplanned”, and “this can mean the termination of the care by either the service recipient or the service provider” (p. 14). it is also stated in another part of the report that almost 90 percent of all departures from foster care placements can be assessed as planned (kantonales jugendamt, 2016, p. 21). the obvious contradiction between these statements is not explained. definitions and statistics: ambiguity and inconsistencies the challenges presented by the conceptualization of foster care breakdown are due in part to the inconsistent and inaccurate use of terminology in both theory and practice (james, 2004; newton, litrownik, & landsverk, 2000). various attempts have been made to determine how often breakdowns arise among children and young people in foster care placements: reviews of factors relating to foster care breakdown, such as those by oosterman et al. (2007), christiansen et al. (2010), and rock et al. (2013), have found that there is a variation of between 20% and 50% in the rate of breakdown or placement change across different studies and countries. this considerable variation in the data can partly be explained by the lack of consistency in the definitions of foster care breakdown employed; moreover, the rates of breakdown are also influenced by differences in systems and practices. whereas long-term placements are avoided where possible in the united states and great britain (the aim being to have foster children adopted as quickly as possible), it is not uncommon for foster children in switzerland to spend their entire childhood and youth with one or more foster families (festinger, 2014). despite — or because of — these difficulties in the conceptualization of foster care breakdown, we will discuss the attempts that have been made at defining the concepts encountered in the international research literature and identify the defining characteristics on which they are based. placement change in the english-language literature, all forms of change from one professionally supervised residential or semiresidential care situation to a different one tend to be subsumed under the terms “placement change” or “placement move”. in the area of child and youth welfare, these changes include, for example, the moving of a child or young person from a foster family to a residential facility, or the interruption of residential care by a temporary time-out placement. andersen (2014) also includes the return of the child or young person to the family of origin in her definition of placement change. pecora (2010) sees all changes in place of residence as a placement change. while he defines change as spatial (place of residence), his definition also incorporates the changes that arise in the child’s or young person’s relationships with adults in a shared household as a result of such moves. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 42 unplanned placement change placement changes can be planned in advance or be decided on and implemented in the course of a foster care placement. in addition to these planned forms of change, the term “placement change” also covers moves that can be described as unplanned or unexpected. the terms “premature” (rostill-brookes, larkin, toms, & churchman, 2011; vanderfaeillie, van holen, & coussens, 2008), “unintended” (backe-hansen, 2010) and “unplanned” (proch & traber, 1985) are also used in the international literature. the terms used to designate these unplanned and unexpected forms of placement change are ambiguous and often used synonymously, and precise definitions are not usually given. for example, rostill-brookes et al. (2011) use the terms “foster placement breakdown”, “premature end of placement”, “placement disruption”, and “moving placement” in the same article. ekins (2009) uses the term “failure” in her exploration of the topic, while vanderfaeillie et al. (2008) adopt the more neutral “termination of placement”. gilbertson & barber (2003) present an overview of studies that demonstrate the negative long-term consequences of the breakdown of placements on foster children, such as unemployment, low educational attainment, and homelessness. it is generally accepted that unplanned placement changes have negative consequences for the affected children and young people and, correspondingly, that continuity and stability in foster care is the desired objective (brown, bednar, & sigvaldason, 2007). the arguments used are based mainly on attachment theory (barber & delfabbro, 2003; ekins, 2009; newton et al., 2000). breakdown berridge & cleaver (1987) coined the term “breakdown” for unplanned and unexpected forms of placement change and it prevails to the present day in the english-language literature discourse originating from both europe (andersen, 2014 [denmark]; backe-hansen, 2010 [norway]; egelund & vitus, 2009 [denmark]; kalland & sinkkonen, 2001 [finland]; khoo & skoog, 2014 [sweden]; lópez lópez, del valle, montserrat, & bravo, 2011 [spain]; sallnäs, vinnerljung, & kyhle westermark, 2004 [sweden]; vanderfaeillie et al., 2008 [belgium]; vinnerljung, sallnäs, & berlin, 2014 [sweden]) and canada (brown et al., 2007; gilbertson & barber, 2003; palmer, 1990). van santen (2013) used the english term “breakdown” in the german-language context and it was translated as scheitern [failure] by gehres (2007) and heinemann (1994), as ungeplante beendigungen [unplanned terminations] by hédevári-heller (2000) and as abbruch [termination or breaking off] in a report published in switzerland (bericht und antrag des regierungsrates, 2007). although “breakdown” is used to describe unplanned placement changes to the present day, its negative connotations, which are expressed particularly clearly in the german term scheitern, are often criticised. “breakdown” is also disliked because it is at odds with the implications and objectives of the placement — the creation of the maximum possible stability and continuity. the term implies the cessation of all links between the child and foster parents or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 43 caregivers; that is, a clear end to a placement situation. however, studies show that foster children may continue to have contact with the former care setting after the breakdown of a placement (backe-hansen, 2010; unrau, 2007; unrau, seita, & putney, 2008). positive reversal and concealment the term “breakdown” is not used in the widely-cited u.s. studies of the past 20 years. unplanned placement changes are referred to instead using the term “disruption” (hyde & kammerer, 2009; james, 2004; newton et al., 2000; rubin, o’reilly, luan, & localio, 2007; semanchin jones & wells, 2008; unrau et al., 2008). unlike breakdown, this term does not imply a definitive end to a placement and evokes instead the impression of interruption that could involve short-term instability but could possibly also serve the interests of long-term stability with regard to the development of the child and the continuity of their relationships with adults. for this reason, the expression “improving stability”, which positions interruptions or breakdowns in a broader context, is becoming more common; it is also used in the australian literature (barber & delfabbro, 2013; gilbertson & barber, 2003). this means that these events are no longer limited in temporal or spatial terms or in terms of the child’s or young person’s relationships with adults and are conceived instead as capable of being worked on and, possibly, as predictable from the perspective of professional practice. in practical terms, based on this logic the professionals supporting the care relationship have the capacity to act: they can respond, offer support, and prevent crises. it is becoming clear that better planning is required for foster placements: objectives must be well defined and their implementations monitored. this leads to the question of whose perspective the breakdowns are described from. it may be assumed that the terminology was coined by those who see themselves as being in a position to avoid breakdowns, the actors who intervene in, change, and provide professional support for foster care relationships. what should also be examined here is the extent to which, and within what timeframe, it is possible to plan or predict the development of complex life circumstances that change and reconstitute themselves. reimer (2015) demonstrates this complexity clearly. referring to geertz (1987), she shows that culture is constantly being newly interpreted and defined, that it is never objective, and that it is produced through everyday human action (p. 66). this “collectively developed system of meanings” (p. 66) cannot necessarily be accessed from outside: when a child comes to a new family, they must … become familiar with and learn to understand the family’s culture. … the child must learn to interpret and understand the family’s symbols while simultaneously overcoming the at least partial loss of their own relationships, habits and familiar environment. (reimer, 2015, p. 68) the aim of child welfare practice is to facilitate the establishment of stable, reliable, and long-term relationships between children and young people and the adults in their lives; instability international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 44 and interruptions are considered undesirable, destructive, and often negative for everyone involved. this view is supported by attachment theory, which holds that stable and long-term relationships are more positive for the development of the child (nienstedt & westermann, 1999; oosterman et al., 2007). also, studies have shown stability has a positive impact on the long-term consequences of foster and residential care placements (jackson & cameron, 2012; stein, 2006; stein, 2012; ward, 2009). as noted in describing the “foster care breakdown” project, the authorities initially refused to make files available for analysis or to inform foster parents and children about the possibility of participating in interviews about foster care breakdown. one of the conclusions the researchers drew from this was that those authorities’ negative view of foster care breakdown is at odds with child welfare practice efforts to provide support for foster care placements so that the aim of ensuring the well-being of the child can be fulfilled. the authorities also felt that the majority of placement changes were foreseeable and could not therefore be described as breakdowns. however, following discussion about what kind of events can be understood as breakdowns, it was not uncommon for us to be provided with numerous files for qualitative analysis and to be put in touch with (former) foster children and parents who had experienced foster care breakdown. thus positive reversal, the avoidance by authorities of the terms “breakdown” and “instability”, side-steps the negative connotations associated with the traditional use of these terms. this avoidance strategy could also be interpreted critically as concealment. the attempt to restrict the use of the term “breakdown” to the most serious cases and to introduce alternatives based more on the neutral, general category of “placement change” can be found in the use of terminology in both the united states and the united kingdom.3 the use of such terms as an alternative for “breakdown” is an attempt to move away from the negative connotations of failure, disruption, and collapse. however, as demonstrated by the unclear definitions and synonymous use of these terms, this aim is not pursued in a sustained and consistent way. moreover, terminology use from the united states or the united kingdom has virtually no impact on the way breakdown is designated in english-language publications from non-english-speaking countries. for these reasons, this article still uses the term “foster care breakdown”. system logic channels attention to the child’s behaviour the neutral terms that are frequently used in quantitative, file-based studies can be understood against the background of a particular system logic: the avoidance of breakdowns. in these studies, factors leading to the breakdown are identified on different levels of the process 3 to this end, proch & traber (in james, 2004) introduced the composite term “unplanned move” as far back as 1985. similar to the above-mentioned general category of “placement change”, the terms “change” and “move” are used synonymously with “disruption” in the u.s. literature. the same applies to more recent literature from the united kingdom which no longer uses the term “breakdown”, despite the fact that it was coined there by berridge and cleaver (1987). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 45 (before, during, and after placement), but are rarely considered in context or are merely presented uncritically from a file-based perspective. to be consistent with the system logic, factors such as the behaviour of the child or young person must be clearly designated as the cause of the breakdown in order to enable the legitimization of eventual reactions like sanctions and interventions. from the perspective of the system, the visibility of negative behaviour generates key moments of evaluation and categorization and also legitimizes its work. the foster care service in switzerland has developed a comprehensive catalogue of authorized targeted responses to the behavioural problems of children, such as “time-outs” — temporary moves to different settings (bombach, stohler, & wydler, 2015). in the quantitative research on foster care breakdowns, the definitions of the terms predominantly used relate specifically to the point in time at which the foster care situation ends. the factors cited as explanations for the breakdown are very often described one-sidedly and are often attributed to the foster child. the attention is mainly focused on the negative consequences of the breakdown for the child. according to various, mainly quantitative studies, frequently cited reasons for breakdown that are attributed to the foster child include: behavioural and attachment problems on the part of the child (james, 2004; van santen, 2013; vanderfaeillie et al., 2008), divided affiliations and loyalties (blandow, 2004; van santen, 2013), and school problems (ekins, 2009; van santen, 2013). reasons for breakdown attributed to the foster parents include: subjecting the foster child to physical or sexual abuse (james, 2004; price et al., 2008; vanderfaeillie et al., 2008), being unable to cope (andersen, 2014; gehres, 2007), demanding an exclusive relationship (gehres, 2007), suffering too much stress from the behaviour of the foster child (james, 2004), being affected by critical life events (ekins, 2009; james, 2004), and not receiving enough support from the social network (ekins, 2009; price et al., 2008; van santen, 2013). factors relating to the system are relatively rarely identified as a cause of breakdown, and little attention is paid to the interaction between the different actors involved in the process (birth family, foster family, foster child, foster siblings, representatives of the authorities, social workers, etc.). references are made to emerging difficulties and “rivalries between family systems” (van santen, 2013), unclear arrangements and poorly implemented support services on the part of the child welfare system (ekins, 2009; gehres, 2007; price et al., 2008), and the insufficient availability of information about the foster child (kalland & sinkkonen, 2001). another central factor that has received little or no attention up until now emerged from the file analyses and the interviews with foster children and parents carried out as part of the “foster care breakdown” project: the foster care service system itself can cause breakdowns and trigger breakdown processes. this can arise when the regulations relating to third-party placements are changed; for example, when a new permit is required that the foster family is unable to provide. in one such case encountered by the project, a foster family would have had to register as a kleinheim [small residential care unit] to enable a foster child to remain with them in the long term. the family refused to do this for various reasons, resulting in a change of placement for the foster child. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 46 a one-sided view of negative problem constellations the majority of studies on the topic of foster care breakdown adopt a predominantly negative perspective and aim to reduce problem constellations to factors that constitute reasons for foster care breakdowns, often from an uncritical and one-sided (file-based) point of view. the perspectives of the affected children and young people have rarely been taken into account and have played only a marginal role in shaping the discourse. thus the research literature rarely contains references to the complex ambivalent effects of foster relationship breakdowns, which could possibly also be experienced in a positive way; they have “the potential to be both helpful and harmful to children in their journey through care” (unrau, 2007, p. 132). accordingly, breakdowns should be understood as “a solution that always both limits and creates options” (gehres, 2007, p. 76). according to unrau (2007), one reason for this situation is that most international research on this topic relies on a one-sided view that is focused on a particular point in time and is based on the analysis of files, and quantitative assessment of factors relating to unplanned breakdowns. thus, quantitative studies based on the analysis of files specify the “behavioural problems” of children and young people as the main reason for foster care breakdown (see, for example, barber & delfabbro, 2003; pecora et al., 2003). this methodological error leads to attributing blame for the breakdown to the children and young people themselves, thereby concealing the systemic factors at work (wulczyn, 2010). one-sided accounts insufficient the analysis of files carried out as part of the “foster care breakdown” study often yielded contradictory results: when the social workers involved in a case were asked to name the reason for the breakdown of a foster care placement, they frequently referred to the situation that prevailed at the end of the process; that is, the child’s departure from the foster family. in the course of the qualitative analysis of the files, the research team often identified other, sometimes more complex, situations that came to a head in the event referred to by the social worker. without those preceding experiences, the event might not have resulted in the termination of the placement. van santen (2013) also refers to this important distinction: the initiative in instigating the breakdown of a placement cannot be equated with the cause of the breakdown. … the decision may be taken at the end of a chain of (co-determined) decisions, any of which may themselves be shot through with ambivalence. (p. 8) the role, remit, and limited insight of case reporters, whose opinions, observations, decisions, and interview notes are recorded in the files, have received far too little attention in the discussion of such outcomes. studies have provided little critical reflection on the dependencies, interests, roles, and remits of the supervising professionals (see, for example, lópez lópez et al., 2011; pecora et al., 2003; pecora et al., 2005). the quantitative research tradition has consistently international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 47 ignored the demand arising from qualitative studies (e.g., unrau & day, 2010) that the actors directly affected by foster care breakdown must be called on to describe their own experiences, ensuring that dimensions with a subjective significance are also recorded. foster children are the focus of all measures but they are all too rarely the focus of the research. this observation prompts the question as to which facts are considered valuable in the research. this is mainly determined by the actors that provide and control research funding. is there any willingness to adopt alternative approaches and record the perspectives of those directly affected by measures, whose individual experiences should be the focus of the research studies? or is it taken as a given that funding will only be provided for research designs that record onesided perspectives but promise to do so for a large number of cases and thereby frequently reinforce the existing system logic? foster children’s experiences of foster care breakdown the fact that relatively little comparative research exists on the topic of foster care breakdown reflects the complexity of such breakdowns, which are, from the perspective of foster children and parents, highly variable processes. breakdown “is not considered the ‘antithesis of stability’ or a moment when everything falls apart.” (backe-hansen, 2010, p. 240). egelund and vitus (2009) concluded: “we cannot assume that breakdown of care is always a negative result of placement. while this can be the case, more often placement breakdown is a process that takes place over time characterised by multiple contributing factors.” (p. 46). to be able to incorporate this complexity into the research project, interviews were also conducted with foster children who had experienced foster care breakdown. the aim was to record different experiences and ascertain individual assessments of the situations under examination. field access and sample through different channels, the foster children were informed about the research project and the possibility that they could report on their experiences of foster care breakdown: networks were activated, requests were submitted to offices that support and supervise foster children, and calls for interviews were disseminated through the distribution of flyers in various locations which were then passed on by means of a pyramid system. the research team could be reached by email, telephone, and the messaging application whatsapp. at the time of interviewing (2015–2016), the interviewees were aged between 14 and 32 years. the foster care breakdowns they had experienced had occurred between 3 months and 16 years earlier. the placement with the shortest duration broke down after 3 years. the longest placement, experienced by a young woman, had lasted 16 years before breaking down. table 1 provides an overview of the sample (n=12), the placement durations, the subjects’ places of residence prior to the placement, and the solution adopted after the breakdown. all names are anonymized. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 48 table 1 placement durations with living situations before and after placement breakdown age gender name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 f jacqueline fo ––––––––––––––––– fc f lisa fo –––––––––––––– rc m sandra fo ––––––– rc m michael fo ––––– fc f diana fo –––––––– sil f maria rc ––––––––––– f lana –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– sil f leyla fc –––––––– sil m peter fo ––––––– rc f julia fo –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– fc m joram fo ––––––– fc f elli fc –– il note. f = female; m = male; fo = family of origin; rc = residential care; fc = foster care; (s)il = (supported) independent living. the start and end of each arrow represent the ages at the start and end of each foster care placement. interviews with foster children the semi-structured interviews were conducted at locations chosen by the young people and adults: for example, at the place of residence adopted as a solution after the breakdown (which might be a residential care home), the interviewees’ private residence, outdoors by a river, in a café, or at the research institute. contracts authorizing the anonymized use of the data in the context of the research project were signed at the beginning of the interview. the former foster children were asked to describe their lives before, during, and after the foster placement that had broken down. the audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed and anonymized and the information they contained was analyzed and evaluated using maxqda. there was only one case in which both a foster child and the foster mother involved in the breakdown were available for interviewing. the reason for this was that the foster child had been re-placed with the foster family in which they had experienced the breakdown. both parties agreed to each other being interviewed. for reasons of research ethics, none of the other cases involved the combining of perspectives on a single case. the interviews with the foster children involved different cases than the interviews in which foster parents were asked about their experiences, and their statements are not presented in this article. processes leading to placement change it emerged clearly from the accounts given in the interviews that foster care breakdowns are experienced as processes. most interviews included the description of a period in which it was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 49 clear to the foster child that the placement was not proceeding in accordance with their wishes: they felt that they had not settled in the foster family, that they did not really belong there, or that they had problems expressing their needs. these sentiments are illustrated below based on the experiences of jacqueline and michael. “happy breakdown” and a predictable end — jacqueline‘s experiences as a little girl, jacqueline spent a few days a week on a day placement with a family. the time spent with the family was gradually increased and included overnight stays. when jacqueline’s mother was no longer able to take care of her, a permanent placement with a foster family was considered. jacqueline was ten years old and no longer remembers the circumstances surrounding the placement or the reasons for the selection of her foster family. conflicts quickly arose between jacqueline and the foster mother and the other children in the foster family, and jacqueline soon became aware that she did not want to stay with this foster family. she repeatedly reported this to her legal deputy4 over a period of years; however, the latter did not react. she then took the matter into her own hands and at the age of 16 finally moved to a new foster family, the family of a school friend, against the will of her foster mother. stage of life: a better option jacqueline’s case is exemplary for cases involving foster children who express their reservations and dissatisfaction with their foster families to third parties. the identity of these third parties varies from case to case: they can be family members, confidantes, deputies, or social workers. although jacqueline’s request to her deputy initially fell on deaf ears, she repeatedly told both him and other people of her wish to leave the foster family. jacqueline had a personal goal, something that provides important indications about her self-perception — in retrospect she was satisfied with her decision and thought it was right for her life — and had a sustained influence on her decision to leave the family. the experiences reported in relation to the expression of reservations and dissatisfaction with foster care placements vary considerably and appear to depend on the foster child’s network of contacts outside the foster family. foster children who have a social network of trusted, approachable people use it to address difficult situations, and to seek out allies who agree with their decision to look for a placement change and who will support them in their interactions with decision-makers or persuade the latter to provide post-breakdown solutions. 4 on the role and function of the beistand [deputy] in the swiss child and adult protection system, particularly in the foster care services: the deputy accepts a mandate “that can involve advice, consultation, representation and occasional checks and usually carries it out for a relatively long period of time” (heck, 2015, p. 94). the tasks for which the deputy is responsible vary, depending on whether the placement is voluntary or was ordered by the child and adult protection authority; the professional background of deputies can also differ according to the background of the placement. the deputy is responsible for ensuring the well-being of the child, and maintains personal contact with the child, obtains an overview of the situation, advises, mediates, keeps written records, and interacts with other professionals who are involved in the supervision of the foster care placement (heck, 2015, p. 94). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 50 there are other foster children who, like jacqueline, are capable of acting independently within their own situation. they activate networks, demand their rights and freedoms, and — even when their requests to their deputies are ignored — are capable of finding alternative solutions themselves and often participate in carrying them out. of course, the fact that the ability to adopt such an active role is age-dependent applies to the young people in the sample under discussion here. foster children who make the decision on a relatively independent basis that they do not want to continue living in the foster family, and who have access to adults as allies in their social networks, are in a position to process the experience of a foster care breakdown as a “stage” in the course of their lives. for example, one young woman described such an experience as a “stage of life”. leyla reported, “i have the feeling that it’s good how it turned out.” although she misses some aspects of the foster care situation, she can also see how it was better for her to leave the family. these foster children experience the breakdown process as comparatively positive in retrospect because they played an active part in assigning meaning to it. in such cases, breakdowns tend to be experienced as self-initiated and planned transitions that can be prepared for, followed up, and supervised as long as the support network (deputies, etc.) reacts promptly to the young person’s needs, acknowledges the solutions they propose, and initiates the next steps to be taken. relationships with the children, young people, and adults in former foster families that disband in this way are not necessarily terminated when the foster child moves out. on the contrary, they often continue, or at least are not terminated against the will of the former foster child. the dominant impression emerging from cases like leyla’s was, “i did this for myself and wanted it that way” — even if the retrospective assessment was not necessarily entirely positive and could also include experiences that reinforced sentiments such as, “if i don’t do it, then nobody will care about me”. whatever the outcome, the experience of empowerment remained. self-image and future expectations the retrospective assessment of these breakdowns was linked with the young person’s view of themselves and with their expectations of the future. accordingly, it was possible to establish that young people who had a positive self-image and could designate goals for their own lives were able to actively bring about breakdowns by independently seeking post-breakdown solutions or suggesting them to the decision-makers. such breakdown processes were more rarely perceived as negative in retrospect and were seen instead as providing evidence of the feasibility of individual goal-setting. escalation and a “hard cut” — michael’s experiences as also demonstrated by unrau and day (2010) and unrau et al. (2008), there are foster children who associate foster care breakdown with experiences involving a loss of self-esteem, a loss of a sense of self-determination in relation to their own future, and a loss of friends and personal belongings. examples presented by unrau et al. (2008) show that such young people describe the breakdown process as a “time of shutting down” and an experience that stays with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 51 them into adulthood (p. 1261). the swiss sample included young people who described the breakdown of their foster care placement as unexpected, despite referring in the interview to situations and feelings that indicated that they did not feel comfortable in the family, that there were conflicts, or that they were actively working towards bringing the foster care relationship to an end. michael’s experience of foster care breakdown is an example of such a situation. michael was placed in a foster family with his brother. prior to the placement, they lived with their mother and their two sisters. the search for foster parents who would take 15-year-old michael and his 13-year-old brother proved difficult. however, michael had one clear condition: he would only consider living in a foster family if he could stay with his younger brother. a foster family was found and michael described the foster parents, who had adult children of their own, as friendly and helpful, somewhat strict, and expecting the foster children to organize their lives as independently as possible. michael and his brother enjoyed this freedom but felt uneasy at the same time. when michael stole from the foster parents, forged their signatures, and lied to them, they confronted him at the door of their house and would not let him back in. following a meeting with the responsible authority, which michael did not attend, he was placed in residential care. after some initial difficulties, michael now has regular contact with his former foster parents again and with his younger brother who still lives with them. point of no return when a situation escalates and, as in michael’s case, a “point of no return” is reached whereby it is obvious that the foster child must leave the foster family, it is often evident that many questions remain open for the foster child and that the termination of the foster care placement will involve an abrupt loss of contact, which in many cases also applies to the child’s siblings who remain with the foster family. this is associated with experiences characterized by a sense of powerlessness, a lack of agency, a lack of freedom, and very restricted rights of participation on the part of the child. based on this, some experiences of foster care breakdown can be described as “hard cuts”. such situations are characterized by the fact that no plans have been made for the child’s future prospects at the time of the breakdown. michael’s transition to the residential care home took place from one day to the next. he was not involved in the decision-making. he described in the interview how he lay crying on his bed in the care home, talking to his brother on the telephone. another interviewee, joram, was also informed about his deputy’s decision at a meeting and was allowed no say. because joram had been breaking into houses and dealing drugs, he was informed that the only alternative for him was to go to a psychiatric facility. in the interview, joram described himself at the time as a young man “who only ever screws things up”. it was ultimately decided not to opt for the placement in a psychiatric facility and a time-out placement with a married couple was arranged for joram. he was not very happy with this solution, however, and wished that he could return to the former foster family and live there again. his biological siblings remained with the family. he was not sure whether he would still be welcome there and was trying to arrange an appointment to discuss this with his deputy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 52 it emerged from the interviews that breakdowns that can be described as points of no return are often experienced as fast, hard cuts, which can also result in the termination of relationships with people in the foster family, including any biological siblings who remain there. the selfimage of the young people who have experienced this kind of breakdown tends to be uncertain and their sense of powerlessness is evident. often, many questions remain unanswered. there are some former foster children who are unable to come to terms with such experiences of foster care breakdown, even many years later, and who remain uncertain about what exactly happened. maria, for example, was informed by her foster parents one morning before going to school that “you must not come home here this evening.” her letter of apology went unanswered and she was blocked by the foster parents on the messaging application whatsapp. maria drew the following conclusion from this subjective experience: “it’s a breakdown. because it’s, i found it terrible. they never said to me before that i had to leave. but they did it because i am 18 and i find that really mean. because if you’re sleeping on the street at 18, then you’re out of luck.” making oneself heard there are various indications that foster children whose deputies persistently ignore their wish to terminate a foster placement and who can find no alternative solutions adopt strategies that enable them to attain their objective themselves. whereas those who have access to people who will actively represent their interests are able to act forcefully within their networks, young people in the aforementioned examples also act forcefully and independently to bring about the changes they want even without such support — albeit merely temporarily in many cases. several of the interviewed foster children reported that despite repeated attempts to inform their deputies that they did not feel happy in their foster families, their pleas were ignored and they were fobbed off (“we’ll reconsider it next year if you still feel the same; we’ll see”), admonished (“that’s life, it doesn’t always go the way you want it to”), and even disparaged (“you’re only going to end up on the streets anyway”). this prompts young men, in particular, to actively demand the attention of the professionals by, as peter describes it, “acting particularly stupidly”, and provoking reactions by actively disobeying rules, stealing, and so on. decision-makers generally respond to this behaviour swiftly and punitively. as our empirical material also shows, the foster care system responds very efficiently to behavioural problems. it is also evident to us that visible coping strategies (unlike invisible ones) succeed in prompting the professionals to react. however, in some cases they react too late, and with a hard cut, because the initial signs of a breakdown process have gone unacknowledged. chaos: nobody knows what’s going on it emerges clearly from peter’s description that the experience of breakdown cannot be reduced to a particular point in time or action. he described himself as being in a chaotic situation that left him in the dark: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 53 because there was just always chaos and turmoil and because nobody really knew what exactly was going on. so i did not know what was happening then and … i did not necessarily know about the re-placement either, what was going on there, and i don’t think my two parents knew what was happening either and they did not … complete chaos. … the [deputies] knew everyone’s opinions and were basically the central point that dispensed, did things and organized everything. i guess so, at least, i can’t really say. it emerges here that peter perceived himself as “uninformed” in contrast to the “informed” deputies, who from his point of view were not, however, in a position to impose order on the chaos. this statement is typical of the situation of many foster children who may know which actor has which rights and options in the process but do not experience them being put into practice. in the interviews, the former foster children were asked what advice they would give to a child or young person in a similar situation: all of the interviewees named the responsible adults in the process as people whom the child or young person should turn to immediately because — and the interviewees were aware of this — children and young people have the right to express their needs and certain people are responsible for ensuring these needs are met. it is interesting to note that this fictitious advice only matched the interviewees’ own experiences of breakdown in very rare cases. conclusion: the importance of interactive biographical contexts the cases outlined above clearly show that the designation of the process of foster care breakdown should not be divorced from the individual experience of it or understood in isolation from it. rostill-brookes et al. (2011) noted from their interviewing of young people that, “interestingly, terms like ‘placement ending’ or ‘breakdown’ did not filter into the young people’s accounts; instead they referred to ‘moving’, ‘leaving’ and ‘not being wanted’” (p. 111). the reported experiences clearly demonstrate that breakdowns are lived through in very different ways and, depending on the perspective, different dimensions become identifiable that cannot be related exclusively to a single point in time. breakdowns are not isolated situations but processes, the start of which can be clearly identified by foster children. in order that foster care breakdown can be described as a process and understood as such, interactive and biographical contexts must be taken into account (khoo & skoog, 2014). the understanding of the breakdown process “is dependent on perspectives and guided by interests” (gehres, 2007, p. 84). to make the complexity of foster care breakdown understandable, different perceptions and experiences must be elucidated (van santen, 2013). in other words, breakdown should be understood as a process that unfolds in stages: the situation of the child before the placement, the placing situation, and the manifestation of the crisis, as well as the actual breakdown event and the consequences for all actors involved. thus foster care breakdown involves processes that can only be explained by considering how they unfolded over time and by focusing on interactive factors at work on different levels that can both mitigate and reinforce each other. hence we would recommend that the definition of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 54 foster care breakdown be closely linked with how it is experienced from an individual perspective. breakdown occurs when it is perceived (retrospectively) as such. assessments of such processes as planned, unplanned, expected, unexpected, formally ended but continuing on an informal basis, wanted, unwanted. and so on are made from the perspective of the actor involved (child or young person, foster parent, professional, etc.). this perspective must be clearly stated, and it must be acknowledged that different people experience and remember the same breakdown process individually and attribute different meanings to it and that these can change over time based on biographical perspectives. once this complexity is acknowledged, the previously rather one-sided data pool consisting of quantitative file surveys can be supplemented and the results of such studies can be reinterpreted. statements emerging from various interviews to the effect that children and young people must resort to conspicuous, loud, and difficult behaviour to get the attention of the support system shed new light on the finding that the behavioural problems of foster children are a cause of foster care breakdown. thus it is necessary to carry out research that is oriented towards the subject of the research and that follows the socio-pedagogical premise of concentrating on the problems that young people actually have and not those that they create. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 38–60 55 references bildungsdirektion kanton zürich. amt für jugend und berufsberatung (2014). stationäre betreuung in kinder-, schulund jugendheimen. richtlinien über indikation, voraussetzungen und rahmenbedingungen für a. timeout b. umplatzierung c. ausschluss [inpatient care in children, school, and youth homes. guidelines on indications, requirements and framework conditions for: a. timeout, b. replacement, c. expulsion] (bills/resolutions). zurich, switzerland: author. andersen, s. h. 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(2008). why do foster care placements break down? a study on factors influencing foster care placement breakdown in flanders. international journal of child & family welfare, 2(3), 77–87. vinnerljung, b., sallnäs, m., & berlin, m. (2014). placement breakdowns in long-term foster care: a regional swedish study. child & family social work, 22(1), 15–25. doi:10.1111/cfs.12189 ward, h. (2009). patterns of instability: moves within the care system, their reasons, contexts and consequences. children and youth services review, 31(10), 1113–1118. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.07.009 wilson, k., sinclair, i., & gibbs, i. (2000). the trouble with foster care: the impact of stressful events on foster carers. british journal of social work, 30(2), 193–209. doi:10.1093/bjsw/30.2.193 wulczyn, f. (2010). placement stability in the context of federal policy. in t. laliberte & p. j. pecora (eds.), cw360°: a comprehensive look at a prevalant child welfare issue, spring, 6– 7. st. paul, mn: school of social work, college of education and human development, university of minnesota. zatti, k. b. (2005). das pflegekinderwesen in der schweiz. analyse, qualitätsentwicklung und professionalisierung [the foster child care system in switzerland. analysis, quality development and professionalization] (expert report). bern, switzerland: federal office of justice. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12068 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12189 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.07.009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/30.2.193 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs93201818275 parental legitimacy, procedural justice, and compliance with parental rules among brazilian preadolescents kendra j. thomas, herbert rodrigues, aline morais mizutani gomes, renan theodoro de oliveira, debora piccirillo, and rafael cardoso brito abstract: the purpose of this study is to capture a snapshot of the lives of brazilian preadolescents and gain a deeper understanding of the variables that influence compliance with parental rules. this analysis draws from the são paulo legal socialization study, a cohort study (n = 800; age = 11 years) from public and private schools. descriptive statistics provide a perspective on normative brazilian parenting practices and preadolescents’ perceptions of parental legitimacy across multiple domains. hierarchical linear modeling revealed that procedural justice, global legitimacy, issue-specific legitimacy, and disciplinary techniques all significantly predicted compliance across issues and between preadolescents. parents who used constructive disciplinary practices paired with procedural justice practices were more likely to be perceived as legitimate authorities and to have their preadolescent children comply with their rules. our findings broaden the literature on constructive parenting practices in preadolescence, and allow for greater generalizability of current western research to a diverse metropolitan setting in brazil. keywords: parenting, early adolescence, preadolescence, procedural justice, legitimacy, disciplinary style kendra thomas phd (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor of psychology at the university of indianapolis, 1400 e. hanna ave., indianapolis, in 46227, usa. email: thomaskj@uindy.edu herbert rodrigues phd is an associate researcher at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp), av. prof. almeida prado, 520, são paulo – sp, 05508-900, brazil. email: herb@usp.br aline morais mizutani gomes ma is a senior researcher at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp), av. prof. almeida prado, 520, são paulo – sp, 05508900, brazil. email: alinemizu@gmail.com renan theodoro de oliveira ma is a research assistant at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp). av. prof. almeida prado, 520, são paulo – sp, 05508900, brazil. email: renantheodoro@gmail.com mailto:thomaskj@uindy.edu mailto:herb@usp.br mailto:alinemizu@gmail.com mailto:renantheodoro@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 22 debora piccirillo ba is a research assistant at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp). av. prof. almeida prado, 520, são paulo – sp, 05508-900, brazil. email: deborapiccirillo@gmail.com rafael cardoso de brito is a research assistant at the center for the study of violence at the university of são paulo (nev/usp). av. prof. almeida prado, 520, são paulo – sp, 05508-900, brazil. email: rafabrito2@hotmail.com mailto:deborapiccirillo@gmail.com mailto:rafabrito2@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 23 the transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by an increased desire for autonomy (steinberg & silverberg, 1986; zimmer-gembeck & collins, 2003) and more nuanced contextual thoughts about the role of authorities, including parents (smetana, 1999). during late childhood and early adolescence, individuals develop more complex notions about authorities and begin to differentiate areas in which they will submit to authority and areas over which they take ownership. this period can be a time of intense autonomy negotiation and renegotiation. adolescent compliance with family rules varies across different domains, with stronger adherence in areas of safety (darling, cumsille, & peña-alampay, 2005) and morality (smetana, 1995), compared to issues perceived as private and personal (milnitsky-sapiro, turiel, & nucci, 2006; nucci, camino, & milnitsky-sapiro, 1996). however, their compliance (obedience and adherence to rules) is also influenced by variables within parents’ control. prior research in adolescent development has revealed that the presence, monitoring, and enforcement of rules are predictors of compliance (darling, cumsille, & martinez, 2007). this study is a detailed analysis of these issues in a preadolescent brazilian sample. the purpose of this study is to capture a snapshot of brazilian preadolescents to gain a deeper understanding of how certain parental practices can contribute to some young people being more compliant than others, and can affect what specific issues they are more likely to be compliant about. preadolescents’ reports of parents’ disciplinary practices and procedural justice levels, and of their perceptions of parental legitimacy, are expected to predict their self-reported compliance with household rules. this research provides a data point on an under-researched population, filling a gap in the literature on procedural justice and legitimacy in preadolescence. parenting there is substantial research on authoritative parenting and the importance of both developmentally appropriate demandingness and sufficient warmth and support (bartholomeu, montiel, fiamenghi, & machado, 2016; baumrind, 1971; baumrind, 1991; gunnoe, hetherington, & reiss, 1999; pinquart, 2016; smetana, 2017; steinberg, lamborn, darling, mounts, & dornbusch, 1994). some prominent researchers have even gone so far as to say that there is enough evidence to support the use of authoritative parenting that research efforts should be directed to other areas (steinberg, 2001). while there is plenty of research on the benefits of authoritative parenting, there is still much to explore with regard to parenting practices, particularly within specific developmental and cultural contexts. darling and steinberg (1993) differentiate between parenting style and parenting practices. parenting style creates an overarching emotional climate; it can be aptly described as a constellation of parental attitudes. parenting practices are specific behaviors defined by socialization goals. they operate in particular domains and are aimed at defined developmental outcomes (darling & steinberg, 1993). this distinction between parenting practices and parenting styles signals the value of specialized investigations of parenting practices in specific developmental periods and sociocultural contexts. this study will focus on parenting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 24 practices of procedural justice and rule enforcement in brazilian preadolescents to understand how these practices predict compliance. parenting practices can either pave the way for adolescents to see their parents as legitimate sources of authority, or undermine and delegitimize their authority. evidence has recently emerged from the literature showing that the authoritative parenting style creates a relationship that is conducive to adolescents granting legitimacy to their parents (trinkner, cohn, rebellon, & van gundy, 2012). accordingly, when adolescents perceive their parents as both responsive and demanding (characteristics of authoritative parenting) they are more likely to see them as legitimate authorities and thus are more likely to comply with their expectations (mellado, cumsille, & martínez, 2018; trinkner et al., 2012). this may be because authoritative parents are more likely to rationalize rules based on principles of equality and social relationships (leman, 2005; trinkner et al., 2012). the present study adds to the discussion of parenting legitimacy and compliance by looking at this phenomenon in preadolescents and bringing specific disciplinary practices into the empirical conversation. we suggest that age-appropriate considerations must also be taken into account when analyzing parenting practices and research should always be seen within the developmental context of its participants. as individuals transition from childhood to adolescence, they become more sensitive and aware of how adults exert authority (cumsille, flaherty, darling, & martinez, 2006; larzelere & kuhn, 2005; smetana, ahmad, & wray-lake, 2015). in addition, the effectiveness of disciplinary methods varies by age range (larzelere & kuhn, 2005; paikoff, collins, & laursen, 1988). research on middle school children reveals their sensitivity to, and their ability to assess the effectiveness of, different parenting practices is greater than in elementary school children (paikoff et al., 1988). the transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by maturation from convention-based reasoning to a more sophisticated way of questioning parental authority (darling, cumsille, & martinez, 2008; smetana et al., 2015; smetana, wong, ball, & yau, 2014; turiel, 1978). early adolescence is a time when individuals experience an increased drive to differentiate themselves from their parents and take ownership of their lives; this study will further knowledge of the effectiveness of specific parenting practices and preadolescent perceptions of those practices. researchers have highlighted the importance of acknowledging cultural norms and customs when investigating parenting and disciplinary practices (darling & steinberg, 1993; locke & prinz, 2002). parenting practices carry inherent cultural assumptions (e.g., authority, independence) and are driven by interaction with society (e.g., education system, involvement of other authority figures, neighborhood safety). careful measures have been taken in this study to adhere to brazilian practices and contexts defined by brazilian psychologists and sociologists. more detail will be given in the method section, but it is important to remember that, although the majority of the research cited was conducted in north america and from an american perspective, this study has taken careful steps to ensure these concepts are measured and defined appropriately within the brazilian context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 25 parental disciplinary practices there is a high degree of consensus among researchers about effective and ineffective approaches to parental discipline. studies show that spanking, name-calling, offending, threatening, and other forms of harsh discipline are unconstructive, and tend to generate undesirable future behavior (bartholomeu et al., 2016; gershoff & grogan-kaylor, 2016; gershoff, 2002; gershoff et al., 2010; kremer, smith, & lawrence, 2010; locke & prinz, 2002; mckee et al., 2007; straus & donnelly, 1993). although physical punishment may enforce immediate compliance, in the long term it undermines children’s trust in parents and their willingness to obey (gershoff, 2002). harsh verbal discipline, such as screaming, cursing, threatening, or name-calling, and harsh physical punishment are associated with higher levels of child externalizing disorders (gershoff et al., 2010; mckee et al., 2007). the most constructive parenting practices include taking away privileges (locke & prinz, 2002; mckee et al., 2007), making clear rules and requests, direct reinforcement of appropriate behavior, and application of reasoning and induction (kremer et al., 2010; locke & prinz, 2002). as in the studies cited above, a cross-cultural study by gershoff and colleagues (2010) comparing discipline techniques across six different countries found negative outcomes from harsh verbal and physical discipline and shaming. research in brazil has also established these patterns and outcomes for constructive and unconstructive forms of discipline (cardia, 2010; de paula gebara et al., 2017; gomes & azevedo, 2014). for this reason, in this study these forms of discipline will be categorized as constructive or unconstructive. in addition, some research has also found that families with lower socioeconomic status (ses) tend to report higher incidences of unconstructive discipline (najman et al., 1994; straus & stewart, 1999), a trend that is also noted in brazil (de paula gebara et al., 2017). for this reason, demographic factors will also be taken into account in research analyses. procedural justice and legitimacy this study not only looks at how parents are disciplining their preadolescents, but also at preadolescents’ perceptions both of how fairly they are being treated (procedural justice), and of whether their parents are legitimate sources of authority in the areas in which they exert power. within criminology, social psychology, and sociology research, procedural justice is widely regarded as a necessary construct for voluntary submission to authorities. procedural justice is marked by the perception that authorities will listen to the individual, will be unbiased and respectful, and will govern with benevolence (fagan & tyler, 2005; tyler, 1990). when individuals perceive legal authorities to be respectful and unbiased, they are much more likely to perceive them to be legitimate sources of authority and to comply with their rules and requests (fagan & tyler, 2005; piquero, fagan, mulvey, steinberg, & odgers, 2005; tyler, 1990; tyler, goff, & mccoun, 2015). recent work has extended this finding to familial settings and found consistent results (trinkner & cohn, 2014). perception of parental procedural justice significantly predicted the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 26 legitimacy that adolescents in the 11th grade attributed to their parents and indirectly predicted compliance with parents, mediated through the legitimacy of parental authority (trinkner & cohn, 2014). research among middle school students found higher procedural justice within the family to be correlated with lower incidence of bullying (brubacher, fondacaro, brank, brown, & miller, 2009). however, the research analyzing procedural justice in non-legal settings is still sparse and very little has been conducted in a preadolescent sample. parenting with procedural justice means allowing children and adolescents to tell their side of the story, listening to them before making quick judgements, and speaking respectfully and impartially. the current study tests to see if these procedural justice practices, combined with constructive discipline practices, can foster a family climate in which there is greater voluntary compliance with household rules because preadolescents have granted their parents legitimacy. when adolescents perceive their parents to be legitimate sources of authority over their lives, they are less likely to engage in rule-violating behavior (smetana, 1999; trinkner & cohn, 2014). research has recently identified authoritative parenting (parents are both demanding and warm; baumrind, 1971) as a possible mechanism for establishing legitimacy: youth who see their parents as authoritative grant greater legitimacy and report more obedience (darling et al., 2005). authoritarian parenting (parents are demanding but not warm; baumrind, 1971) is negatively related to parental legitimacy (trinkner et al., 2012). adolescents who believe their parents are not legitimate sources of authority are more likely to be motivated to comply for pragmatic reasons — to avoid punishment — but adolescents who believe parents have legitimate authority are more likely to report affective reasons to obey parents — to preserve their relationship (darling, hames, & cumsille, 2000). adolescents’ perception of parental legitimacy is an important marker of their willingness to be socialized by their parents (darling et al., 2007). adolescents from authoritarian homes are more likely to resist their parents’ socialization (trinkner et al., 2012). younger children have less freedom to resist their parents’ socialization efforts, but the transition to adolescence gives them a stronger voice to either actively welcome their parents’ influence, or move away from it. while we know that parenting style influences legitimacy and compliance, we should further investigate how specific and culturally relevant parenting practices of procedural justice and discipline can influence compliance in preadolescence. longitudinal research among adolescents has revealed a steep decline in parental legitimacy and obligation to obey in early adolescence both in chile (darling et al., 2008) and in the united states (kuhn & laird, 2011). this developmental period is important because of the influence that cognitive development has on perceptions of the legitimacy of authority. in early adolescence, children begin differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate authorities and claim greater independence and decision making power (baumrind, 1991). researchers have emphasized the importance of studying this process more extensively in younger adolescents, yet most work is still focused on high school students (trinkner & cohn, 2014). work must also be done in a variety of cultures, since power distance (the extent to which the less powerful accept international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 27 the unequal distribution of power) and compliance with authority are quite sensitive to cultural norms (darling et al., 2005; smetana et al., 2017). the association between parenting socialization methods and adolescents’ developmental outcomes varies across cultural contexts (martínez, garcía, & yubero, 2007). the purpose of this study is not to compare cultures, but its focus on preadolescents in a diverse brazilian metropolis will add a data point to the literature on procedural justice and legitimacy between childhood and adolescence. legitimacy of authority can be assessed at a global level (general perception of parental authority as legitimate or not), yet it can also be measured at an issue-specific level (some domains are legitimately under parental authority while others are not). for example, issues that adolescents consider to be of a personal and private nature are less likely to be deemed as under their parents’ jurisdiction (baumrind, 1991; cumsille et al., 2006; martinez, perez, & cumsille, 2014; nucci et al., 1996; smetana et al., 2015). issues that are within a moral domain are more likely to be attributed legitimacy than are issues of personal relationships and issues relating to social conformity (smetana, 1995; smetana et al., 2014). when adolescents believe the issue to be within the sphere of legitimate parental authority, they are much more likely to report obeying the corresponding rule (darling et al., 2007). early adolescence is a time of increased cognitive sophistication in which the negotiation of power becomes domain specific; thus, it is important to assess legitimacy both at a global and an issue-specific level. a recent study (trinkner et al., 2012) stated the need to assess legitimacy on an issue-by-issue basis and conduct multilevel modeling to examine the effects of parental legitimacy both specifically and globally. the current study is targeted to address this gap. researchers have also noted a relevant difference between ses groups, with middleand upper-class children differentiating between personal issues earlier than their lower-class peers (martinez et al., 2014; milnitsky-sapiro et al., 2006; nucci et al., 1996). lower-ses adolescents tend to grant more authority to parents than those in middleto high-ses households (martinez et al., 2014; smetana et al., 2015). the current study will incorporate demographic variables into the model in order to account for their effects across the sample. the brazilian context brazil is a rich country but with vast economic inequalities that make it a very suitable place to study how youth transition from childhood to adolescence in a complex society. however, brazil’s economic and social disparities present certain research challenges. one challenge is obtaining access to various demographic groups. in a recent study, 60% of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17 were not in school (bermudez, 2017), even though by law they must receive an education. therefore, any school-based study on older adolescents will be skewed to a more privileged sample. one of the reasons this study is tailored to preadolescents is because 90.5% of 6to 14-year-olds are in school (bermudez, 2017). therefore, it is much more realistic to gain a representative sample of brazilian preadolescents through a school sample compared to older adolescents. another challenge is that many middle-school students are still deemed functional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 28 analphabets, indicating that although they can technically read, they cannot understand a simple text (instituto paulo montenegro, 2012). therefore, it is difficult to conduct a self-administered survey in a truly demographically diverse sample. steps were taken throughout the research design process to minimize these problems and construct a reliable study on a challenging population. these steps are outlined in the development of the measure section below. the current study the current study investigates what legitimacy and issue-specific compliance looks like in preadolescence in a diverse brazilian sample. the study draws from the database of the são paulo legal socialization study (splss) developed by the center for the study of violence of the university of são paulo (nev-usp). the study collected data among preadolescents from são paulo city. with a population of almost 12 million and a reputation as an emerging global city (sassen, 2005), são paulo is best known for its role as a south american economic and financial capital. it is a heterogeneous and complex urban environment with one of the widest income inequalities of the world’s largest cities (un-habitat, 2010). the analysis encompasses questions of parental procedural justice practices and preadolescent judgements of legitimacy to understand their relationship with compliance with rules about specific issues in preadolescence. part of the importance of the current work is that it studies normative development in preadolescence. many studies on legitimacy and procedural justice focus on older adolescents or draw from juvenile delinquency samples (piquero et al., 2005). this is a diverse sample of brazilian preadolescents and can provide much insight into how parenting disciplinary practices, procedural justice, and legitimacy beliefs influence preadolescent individuals. research questions and hypotheses 1. what issues do parents of preadolescents in brazil have rules about, and are these rules perceived by their children as legitimate? a descriptive analysis will reveal the trends in preadolescence and how the rules vary across a variety of issues. we hypothesize that, already at age 11, there will be some variability between issues, with rules relating to issues of a moral or safetyrelated nature perceived as more legitimate. 2. what is the profile of brazilian parents’ disciplinary procedures, and does it differ across economic lines? a descriptive analysis will reveal the national trends and popularity of certain practices across demographic indicators. we hypothesize that those in lower income levels will report higher incidences of harsher disciplinary methods. 3. do disciplinary practices, procedural justice, and legitimacy beliefs predict preadolescent compliance on specific issues? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 29 a hierarchical linear model will assess preadolescent compliance across specific issues to understand its strongest predictors. we hypothesize that parental variables of procedural justice, disciplinary practices used to enforce the rules, and global legitimacy will help predict which preadolescents will be more compliant with their parents’ rules. we expect that constructive disciplinary methods (privilege withdrawal and verbal correction) will positively predict legitimacy, and unconstructive discipline (harsh verbal or physical punishments, threats) will negatively predict legitimacy. we also hypothesize that their judgement of the legitimacy of specific issues will significantly predict which rules they report being more willing to obey. method development of the instrument research on parenting practices must take careful steps to minimize measurement biases and maximize cultural appropriateness when investigating various discipline techniques (darling & steinberg, 1993; locke & prinz, 2002). in line with this understanding, the splss research team created a data collection instrument based on their extensive literature review, their fieldwork at schools in são paulo, and an analysis of the previous instrument used by the new hampshire youth study (nhys; cohn, trinkner, rebellon, van gundy, & cole, 2012). the splss research team consisted of sociologists and psychologists specializing in criminology and human development. in addition, the team consulted with a brazilian child psychologist, and american educational and social psychologists. this research respects the differences of the brazilian system and has been adapted accordingly based on work from various researchers. the splss was initially developed based on fieldwork conducted in são paulo through ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews to better understand brazilian preadolescents (rodrigues, gomes, veiga, brito, & oliveira, 2017; silva & rodrigues, 2017). this exploratory step was based on theoretical and methodological studies that addressed moral and legal socialization of preadolescents (fagan & tyler, 2005; tyler & trinkner, 2017). in the fieldwork, the researchers conducted several semi-structured interviews with demographically distinct preadolescents (11 years old) and explored their views on concepts of rules and laws, legitimacy, procedural justice, trust, exposure to violence, and rule-breaking behavior. these concepts appear in different research studies in the united states, chile, and the philippines (darling et al., 2008; darling et al., 2005; jeleniewski, 2014; sunshine & tyler, 2003; trinkner & cohn, 2014; trinkner et al., 2012); however, not all of these studies focus on preadolescents. furthermore, the existing instruments were designed and implemented largely in other countries (primarily in the northern hemisphere). this study attempts to bridge the gap in the literature and add data to understand the themes of legitimacy and justice in a brazilian preadolescent sample. for the current study, we adapted the instruments to take into account the age and diversity of the population in different regions of the city of são paulo. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 30 the ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews facilitated the construction of the quantitative questionnaire. a pilot study with the questionnaire highlighted the difference between students from public and private schools: the public school students had a much harder time articulating their perspectives, grasping abstract notions, and completing the survey independently. it became clear that a self-administered survey was not the best way to research parenting practices in brazil. self-administered surveys are common in studies with older children and young adolescents, and have had some positive results, but would inhibit our ability to collect data from the diverse group of brazilian youth targeted by our study. therefore, the data were collected by individually applying the quantitative instrument through personal interviews to ensure that even students from poor neighborhoods would understand the questions as intended. for administrative and political purposes, the city of são paulo is divided into nearly 100 districts. once the first version of the questionnaire had been constructed, it was piloted in different districts to test it with a variety of demographic characteristics and so ensure that it was understandable across a diverse sample. in total, 12 pilot interviews were conducted. the first was held at the research center (nev) and was designed to check understanding of concepts by the interviewees. after conducting the initial interviews, there was another discussion round for changing words, removing some repetitive ideas, and clarifying the questions. interviews were also conducted across schools (one public, two private) in order to evaluate the construct validity of the questions in each setting. pilot study data were analyzed to determine whether participants had understood and correctly filled out the survey, and to assess the relevance of the questions. this step revealed some redundant and some developmentally inappropriate questions; such questions were removed and some others were restructured in order to reduce the number of questions and shorten the interview (rodrigues & gomes, in press). both the exploratory study and the pilot interviews used many different scales, such as the agreement statement and the 5-point scale. in many cases, these preadolescents (particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds) had difficulty understanding the questions. to maximize comprehensibility, a dichotomous scale (yes/no) was adopted for most questions. this was deemed the most suitable option for the research population, given its age, diversity, and socioeconomic challenges (chambers & johnston, 2002; davis-kean & sandler, 2001; rodrigues & gomes, in press). this also helped minimize the interpretation bias of the administrator. after the pilot study, a consultant from an ivy league american university made a final review and the questionnaire was converted to the software survey-to-go to allow the use of tablets by the interviewers. this method minimized errors of commission and omission and facilitated the systematization of the data into a database. each participant completed the questionnaire with the help of a research assistant who read the questions aloud to guarantee that each item was understood. each interview took 25 to 30 minutes to complete. data collection took place from may to september 2016. the survey has been validated in this brazilian sample of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 31 preadolescents; more detailed results will appear in a forthcoming publication (rodrigues & gomes, in press). a specific breakdown of the measurement of each construct follows. measurement global legitimacy: this concept is based on work in psychology (darling et al., 2008; laupa, 1991; laupa & turiel, 1993) and criminology (fagan & tyler, 2005; trinkner & cohn, 2014). it was measured through two items: “do you agree your parents have the right to make the rules?” (0 = no, 1 = yes; jeleniewski, 2014; tisak, tisak, & rogers, 1994), and “must you obey your parents even when you do not agree with their decisions?” (0 = no, 1 = yes; darling et al., 2008; fagan & tyler, 2005; trinkner & cohn, 2014). items were added together for a composite score of 0 to 2, with higher scores indicating higher legitimacy. issue-specific legitimacy: ten different issues (e.g., clean the room, tell the truth) were identified through the literature (cohn et al., 2012; darling et al., 2008) and field work to be most relevant to brazilian preadolescents (see table 2). for each issue, participants were asked if it was a house rule (0 = no, 1 = yes), if they believed the rule was within their parents’ legitimate domain (0 = no, 1 = yes), and if they obeyed the rule (0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = always). the design of asking three questions for each item and use of the 3-point likert scale was adapted from the social disclosure questionnaire (darling et al., 2007; darling et al., 2008). the 10 issues were chosen based on the nhys iii (cohn et al., 2012), the local focus groups, and pilot interviews. parenting practices — procedural justice: the core principles of procedural justice are voice, neutrality, equity, and respect (fagan & tyler, 2005; jeleniewski, 2014; trinkner & cohn, 2014). we asked participants to think of situations when they had violated family rules, and asked if the following statements were true about their parents (0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = yes): “they would give you the opportunity to express your side of the story”; “they would explain why they are reprimanding you”; “they would listen to all sides of the story, before making any decision”; and, “they would talk to you politely.” these items were summed; the computed score of procedural justice ranged from 0 (“no” to all items) to 8 (“yes” to all items). parenting practices — discipline: based on the literature review and field work of culturally prevalent disciplinary methods (bartholomeu et al., 2016; gershoff & grogan-kaylor, 2016; gershoff et al., 2010; paikoff et al., 1988; rodrigues & gomes, in press), participants were asked to state if their parents used the following discipline methods (0 = no, 1 = yes): verbal reprimand (call attention, lecture); harsh verbal reprimand (yell, offend, call names); media withdrawal (no computer, cell phone, tv, video games); social withdrawal (cannot leave the house or play with friends); physical punishment (hitting); or threatening comments. these items were based on the work of brazilian psychologists (martinez et al., 2007; teixeira, oliveira, & wottrich, 2006). following previous work (mckee et al., 2007), these items were added up to compute a total score for constructive discipline (verbally reprimand, media withdrawal, social withdrawal) and unconstructive discipline (harsh verbal reprimand, physical punishment, threats). the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 32 constructive and unconstructive methods were summed independently and both scores ranged from 0 (responded “no” to all) to 3 (responded “yes” to all). procedure the probability proportional to size (pps) method was applied in order to create a stratified sample from the school population. the selection was based on the 2014 school census and random selection of schools. if schools refused, another pps was run in order to replace the dropped schools generating another list of schools to be contacted. within schools, participants were selected based on random sampling and parental consent forms. students were informed about the project in their classrooms and received a letter of consent describing the study to take home and return to school. the letter asked parents to sign the consent form and to complete demographic information (e.g., economic bracket). approximately 2,560 letters were sent home to families and 35% of parents returned the forms. the demographics of the final sample resemble those of the population of são paulo so we consider the sample to be representative of the city. all study procedures were approved by the national ethical committee, by the public education departments (state and city), and the private school boards. the survey took place from may to september 2016. participants were individually interviewed at the school and were awarded r$40 (approximately us$15) for their participation. participants the sample included 800 sixth-grade students (400 boys, 400 girls, age = 11 years, birth cohort 2005). all students were residents of são paulo, the largest city of brazil. the city area comprises about 12 million inhabitants with an average per capita income of approximately us$5,100 per year (ibge, 2016). although são paulo is the main financial center of the country, it has high rates of violence, social inequalities, and a persistent authoritarian culture (cerqueira et al., 2016; pinheiro, 2002), which intensifies the need for further research on parenting practices and child and adolescent development. to ensure that the heterogeneity of são paulo was adequately represented, the sample was composed of students from public (59%) and private (41%) schools; this proportion accords with the national school census of 2014 (inep, 2014). the city districts in the sample were chosen using the pps method. the racial composition was: 47% white, 12% black, 27% mixed race, 9% other, 7% not specified. this is similar to census data for são paulo (fórum de desenvolvimento econômico inclusivo, 2010). participants represented a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, which was measured in terms of the equivalent amount of monthly minimum wages. this is a standard method of assessing economic brackets in brazil and is the basis for policies and research on economic disparities (agenor & canuto, 2015; correa-faria, paiva, pordeus, & ramos-jorge, 2015; nogueira et al., 2016). the minimum amount is set by the federal government for the salary of regular workers in brazil, approximately us$260 monthly. see table 1 for the breakdown across economic brackets. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 33 table 1 breakdown across economic brackets up to 1 minimum wage/month between 1 and 2 between 2 and 5 between 5 and 10 between 10 and 20 more than 20 no answer 17.63% 28.13% 22.50% 13.00% 6.38% 2.63% 9.75% analysis to answer the first and second research questions (rq1: what issues do parents of preadolescents in brazil have rules about, and are these perceived as legitimate?; rq2: what is the profile of brazilian parents’ disciplinary procedures, and does it differ across economic lines?), frequencies and descriptive statistics were used to profile preadolescents growing up in the metropolis of são paulo. a correlational analysis was performed to establish the frequency of unconstructive discipline across income levels. in line with darling and colleagues’ (2007) work on understanding adolescent compliance across multiple issues, this study utilized hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) to statistically nest multiple issues (e.g., clean room, control media, dating) within participants. although it is typical to use persons as the lowest level of analysis, it is also appropriate to use measurement points within an individual to determine particular time-specific or issue-specific outcomes (raudenbush & bryk, 2002). this is an appropriate method for longitudinal data, when the same person answers the items multiple times (raudenbush & bryk, 2002) and has been previously used to analyze multiple variables within the same person — such as how one adolescent complies across multiple issues (darling et al., 2007). this method allows for the inclusion of level 1 issue-specific variables (such as the legitimacy of multiple issues), and, in a more global analysis, level 2 adolescent-level variables (such as perceived parental procedural justice). the issue-specific variable (legitimacy of that issue) predicts whether an adolescent will comply with some issues over others (withinperson variability), and the adolescent-level variables (i.e., parenting variables) help explain what makes some preadolescents more compliant than others (between-person variability). this analysis sheds light on how much the legitimacy of the specific rule (level 1 variable) is important and how relevant broader parenting variables (level 2 variables) are to compliance in preadolescence. four nested models were analyzed with the software package r to understand whether the progressive addition of variables significantly improved the model fit. the null model (without any predictors) was run first to establish a baseline for use when comparing subsequent models. then, only the demographic variables (income and type of school) were included to control for their effects. the third model included only parenting practices (procedural justice, discipline). the final model included both parenting practices and participants’ perceptions of parental legitimacy (global legitimacy and domain-specific legitimacy). the final model was also conducted with random slopes to see if the model fit would significantly improve if the strength of the relationship between legitimacy and compliance was allowed to vary between issues. a chiinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 34 squared analysis was used to understand if the addition of variables at each point significantly improved the model fit. these practices are within the guidelines of hlm (raudenbush & bryk, 2002). results what issues do brazilian parents have rules about, and how legitimate do preadolescents perceive these issues to be? over 90% of early adolescents reported their parents had rules against lying, swearing, and drinking and smoking. between 75% and 87% reported that their parents had rules that controlled their schedule, media usage, and friend relationships, and had rules about cleaning their room and fighting with siblings. the least popular rule-bound issues were in the areas of dating (56.3%) and playing in the streets (43.5%). see table 2. table 2 frequency of parental rules and legitimacy beliefs across issues issue household rule legitimacy require you to clean and organize your bedroom 80.3% 94.1% control your curfew, sleep schedule, homework, and usage of the computer/tv/cell phone 75.9% 94.1% control the music you hear, video games you play, and what you watch on the tv/internet 75.8% 90.1% do not allow you to fight with your siblings* 83.1% 90.2% do not allow you to play in the streets 43.5% 74.9% demand you always tell the truth 97.3% 97.5% do not allow you to say cuss words 94.0% 97.8% do not allow you to date 56.3% 71.3% do not allow you to drink and smoke 98.6% 99.1% control who you hang out with 87.1% 93.3% *excludes 135 students without siblings. the percentage reflects the valid percent of the reduced sample (n = 665). when asked about the frequency of compliance across issues, most reported consistent obedience, but there were some issue-related differences. participants reported obeying less often in the areas of cleaning their rooms, fighting with their siblings, controlling their schedule (curfew, sleep, media usage, homework), and truth-telling. they were most likely to report consistently obeying in the areas of controlling friends, dating, playing in the streets, and drinking and smoking. see figure 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 35 figure 1. frequency of compliance across issues. what is the profile of brazilian parents’ disciplinary procedures, and does it differ across economic and racial groups? a frequency analysis revealed that almost all participants said that their parents verbally reprimanded them when they violated the rules (96.1%). the second most common disciplinary tactic was withdrawing media privileges (74.9%), followed by withdrawing social privileges (48.3%), and threatening punishment (47.6%). a minority of students reported that their parents enforced corporal punishment (18.5%) or shouted at and verbally offended them (15.4%). two variables were created compiling the number of constructive discipline practices (verbal reprimand, media privilege withdrawal, social privilege withdrawal) and unconstructive discipline practices (threaten, corporal punishment, shout or verbally offend). a correlational analysis between income levels and constructive and unconstructive discipline revealed that there is a mild significant correlation between both tactics. both unconstructive discipline (r = -.132, p < .001) and constructive discipline (r = -.177, p < .001) were less common among higher income families. 1.4% 0.8% 1.0% 5.3% 0.7% 1.8% 0.9% 0.7% 0.4% 0.6% 59.0% 41.7% 29.2% 51.5% 16.8% 10.9% 35.9% 21.9% 1.1% 15.8% 39.6% 57.5% 69.8% 43.2% 82.5% 87.3% 63.2% 77.4% 98.5% 83.6% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% clean room controle schedule control media fight siblings control friends dating truth telling cuss words drink and smoke play in the streets never sometimes always international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 36 what influences compliance reporting in a specific domain? the hlm allowed us to include the issue-specific variable of legitimacy (level 1 predictor within preadolescents), along with level 2 predictors of parenting (between preadolescents). we hypothesized that preadolescents’ predictions of legitimacy would be a significant predictor of their compliance between issues. we also hypothesized that the way the parent disciplines, the level of procedural justice in the parenting, and the global legitimacy that preadolescents give to parents would significantly predict their compliance on specific issues. see table 3 for all models. table 3 results from the hlm predicting adolescent compliance of specific issues null model model 1 (demographics) model 2 (parenting) model 3 (parenting + beliefs) variable coeff. t coeff. t coeff. t coeff. t fixed effects between person intercept 1.689 191.8** 1.706 75.827** 1.497 21.328** 1.003 8.260** family income -.007 -.723 -.013 -1.306 -1.188 -1.246 school type .009 .343 .005 .209 3.430 .137 procedural justice .037 4.498** 3.166 3.949** constructive discipline -.008 -.641 -7.844 -.651 unconstructive discipline -.040 -3.762** -4.083 -3.888** global legitimacy 1.354 2.668* within person legitimacy of issue 2.739 7.798** random effects error .204 .204 .204 .202 random intercepts .035 .033 .030 .028 model comparisons aic 8410.5 7577.2 7538.1 7464.3 bic 8430.7 7610.3 7591.1 7530.6 deviance 8404.5 7567.2 7522.1 7444.3 note. school type is coded 0 = public, 1 = private. *p < .01. **p < .001. the null model provided a baseline with which to compare other models. model 1 included only demographic variables of income and type of school; neither were significant in predicting issue-specific compliance. model 2 included parenting practices of constructive discipline (call international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 37 attention verbally, withdraw media, grounding), unconstructive discipline (yell, offend, hit, threaten), and procedural justice. model 2 revealed that there is a significant and positive effect of procedural justice, indicating that the more preadolescents perceived their parents to treat them with respect and impartiality, the more likely they were to report compliance. there was no significant effect for constructive discipline, but unconstructive discipline had a significant negative effect. this indicates that students who reported that their parents yelled at, hit, or threatened them were less likely to report compliant behavior. model 3 added early adolescents’ beliefs about their parents’ authority legitimacy both in general and for specific issues. results revealed a significant positive effect of legitimacy. preadolescents who reported their parents to be broadly legitimate sources of authority, and who believed the specific issue was within their parents’ legitimate domain, were more likely to report compliance. because the models were nested within each other, we conducted a chi-squared test for deviance to compare the models. the deviance represents the lack of fit between the model and the data. each successive model was a significantly better fit, indicating that, already at age 11, a model including the legitimacy of the parents’ authority is a significantly better fit than a model including only parenting variables. we also ran the same model 3, but allowed the slopes to vary across items, which significantly lowered the deviance (d = 7429.0) and improved model fit (2 = 15.29, p < .001). this indicates that the strength of the relationship between legitimacy and compliance varies across issues. discussion overall, preadolescents’ opinions of legitimacy varied across domains indicating a sophistication of opinion in their perceptions of authority. research has documented that adolescence is a time of increased critical thinking about the domains of authority (turiel, 1978). according to darling and colleagues (2007), granting legitimacy to parents’ authority is an indicator of adolescent willingness to be socialized by parents. at age 11, these participants have already begun to differentiate some domains as more or less legitimate than others and have begun taking control of the socialization they accept from their parents. as a whole, the participants perceived themselves as individuals who typically conformed to their parents’ guidelines and accepted their socialization. compliance reporting was predominant with almost all answers in the “sometimes” or “always” category. the domains of highest reported compliance were in social matters (control of friendships, dating) and safetyrelated areas (drinking and smoking, playing in the streets). consistent with prior research, the domains with the highest legitimacy were in the areas of morality (truth-telling and swearing) and safety (drinking and smoking; darling et al., 2005; smetana, 1995; smetana et al., 2015). consistent with prior research (martinez et al., 2014; milnitsky-sapiro et al., 2006; nucci et al., 1996), preadolescents in lower ses households were more likely to report usage of harsher international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 38 parental disciplinary practices. however, although there was correlational significance, this was controlled for in the hlm analysis and it did not yield a meaningful difference in the models. our research demonstrates that the kinds of measure that parents use to enforce the rules play an important role in establishing compliance with issue-specific rules. while the direction of the relationship between consequences and obedience was as expected, only unconstructive consequences significantly predicted compliance at age 11. constructive consequences were not significant, but the effect was in the expected direction. the descriptive statistics indicated that the lack of significance could be due to a ceiling effect of reported constructive consequences, meaning that because the responses were too high across all participants, there was less variability in constructive consequence disclosure. parents’ disciplinary practices and the procedural justice they established significantly predicted preadolescent compliance. while parents may resort to unconstructive discipline methods out of exasperation or in an increased attempt to gain their child’s compliance, results from this study indicate that the use of threats or harsh verbal or corporal punishment only decreases the probability of compliance at this age. this study emphasizes the importance of explicitly communicating procedural justice practices such as allowing preadolescents to state their perspective and feel respected in conversations. parents can indirectly encourage compliance by giving their children a chance to tell their side of the story, explaining the rationale behind the rules and consequences, and speaking to them respectfully. this can be most effective while paired with the usage of constructive disciplinary techniques such as removing privileges. this study further broadens the application of legitimacy and procedural justice findings — traditionally investigated within legal authority research (tyler, 1990; fagan & tyler 2005) — to familial authorities and emphasizes the importance of justice and legitimacy perceptions in preadolescence. one prior study found that global legitimacy beliefs were not associated with higher obedience scores, which were predicted by issue-specific legitimacy only (darling et al., 2007). there are a few reasons why the current study may have provided a different picture. first, global legitimacy in the current study was measured by broadly worded questions about preadolescents’ agreement over their parents’ authority and deference to that authority, while in the prior study it was measured as a composite score of all the specific legitimacy questions. in addition, darling and colleagues’ (2007) participants were predominantly adolescents in high school, while our study was conducted with a younger sample. our more generalized measure of authority legitimacy might access an internal working model for deference to authorities that is stronger in preadolescence than in later years. asking the general question, instead of averaging the specific questions, may access a different construct, especially for a younger sample. future work should consider the importance of both global and issue-specific legitimacy, because these constructs may be distinct. issue-specific questions are more fluid throughout adolescence, with adolescents increasingly desiring autonomy and renegotiating what rules are legitimately within their parents’ domain. a more global question may connect with a deeper sense of authority and legitimacy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 21–46 39 the most important predictor of compliance on specific issues (within preadolescents) was the perceived legitimacy of parental authority within the domain. for example, if a participant believed that their parent was legitimately in charge of controlling their media usage, they were much more likely to comply with rules in that area. this is consistent with prior research (darling et al., 2007) and provides some evidence to further generalize previous findings to preadolescents as well as to an urban south american context. conclusion the findings of this study reveal that individuals in preadolescence are already making domain-specific judgements and are much more likely to report compliance if they perceive their parents’ authority to be legitimate, if they perceive the issue to be within their parents’ domain of legitimacy, and if their parents treat them with respect and impartiality. parents who use unconstructive discipline negatively influence the likelihood of compliance. preadolescence marks the beginning of the time when individuals are exploring increased autonomy and drawing boundaries in authority domains. parents who wish to establish respectful compliant relationships with their preadolescents should be explicit about their procedural justice practices, prioritize the issues they enforce, and refrain from utilizing unconstructive methods of discipline. international journal of child, youth 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(b) present violence against female partners as a family or domestic problem; (c) present violence against women as linked to a problem or deficit within women and therefore blame and pathologize women. our view is practice-informed and based on the idea that all people prefer to be treated with kindness and respect, and that when they are being harmed they try to stop it in some way (wade,1997). through private practice and research, we understand that those who perpetrate violence do it with deliberation and it is a “violence issue”, not an issue of alcohol use, mental health, anger management, or being “preprogrammed” for violence. as such, this article explores the construct of victim-blaming and the purposes it serves, such as excusing the perpetrator and positioning the perpetrator in positions of power over those ones who have been targeted and harmed. the term “crisis of representation” was borrowed from a period of transition in the academic world, particularly in the social sciences, that was in full swing by the mid-1980s. the critical focus on the legitimacy of the big social theories was being questioned, as were the ways of knowing and of creating knowledge, and the limits of positivism. what emerged in the mid1990s from this crisis was an engagement with scientific texts, which were ostensibly based on “facts” and “truth”, and a broader focus on meaning, discursive representations, and a more reflexive approach to the practice of social sciences (rudenko, 2017). throughout history, there have been shifts of understanding, in paradigm, and in the representation of public events. european history has been coloured by the struggle for religious and political dominance. the holy roman empire overtook pagan lands and imposed its religion. in 325 ad, the council of nicea articulated their preferred relationship between humans, deities (god and jesus), the human soul, and civic holidays, notions that would become doctrinal truths (whipps, 2008). later, struggles for dominance continued in europe with articulations of world and military history varying within the narratives of the conquerors and the conquered. representations of events differed according to who controlled the dominant narrative, typically those with hegemony (foucault, 1991; gramsci, 1971). more recently, events with police in the quebec city of val-d’or (2016) drew attention to this struggle for representation. over 37 indigenous women accused police (members of la sûreté du québec) of physical and sexualized abuse (shingler, 2016). after an investigation by montreal police, charges were brought against six officers, who denied the accusations; the charges were finally dropped for lack of sufficient evidence to build a conclusive case (val-d’or crisis, 2016). officers initiated a “ribbon campaign”, wearing wristbands to show solidarity with fellow accused officers. édith cloutier, the executive director of the val-d’or friendship centre, stated that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 5 5 “officers have even showed up at willie’s place, a drop-in centre for homeless native people, wearing the bands along with their police uniforms.… the police now want to be seen as the victims.” (val-d’or crisis, 2016). in a joint declaration, 12 of the women accusers stated that they felt “betrayed [and] humiliated” (val-d’or crisis, 2016). in such a situation, impunity is achieved for perpetrators, or for those in positions of power, and the victims are blamed for the events and for misrepresenting the truth. they are even named as the perpetrators. there are multiple issues of concern in the area of violence against women and violence against indigenous people; the struggle for representation is only one of them. murdered and missing indigenous women in regards to the murdered and missing women in canada, responsibility for the violence is often ascribed to the vulnerability of indigenous women as in amnesty international’s report on the stolen sisters (2004). this representation is ubiquitous, but it is an interpretation that presupposes that there is something about being an indigenous woman — a deficit, or something wrong about them — that accounts for their victimization. if we instead viewed the mix of violence and racism as a social issue, the descriptors of the events would focus on a problem in the social world, highlighting the responsibility of the perpetrator. instead, the issue is primarily characterized, abstractly, as frightened women. this identifies the problem as a psychological state in the mind of the (potential) victim. this discursive representation feeds into the faulty notions that victims are to blame for the violence and that the problem could be overcome by sending girls and women to classes in self-defence and in fear management, so they can learn how not to appear weak or afraid. this type of victim-blaming analysis is often found in the context of schools in relation to what is called “bullying”. the thinking is, “if we toughen up the ones who are getting attacked, the violence will stop.” of course, this approach neglects the responsibility of the perpetrators, and implicitly accords them impunity or power in the system. in pointing out the problem of this logic, allan wade has said that we have tried to change the behaviour of violent men, for decades, by tampering with the minds of women and “it hasn’t worked” (wade, personal communication, duncan, bc, canada, 2015). similar language is used in amnesty international’s report on the stolen sisters, as noted by richardson (2009), speaking on a panel at the united nations permanent forum on indigenous peoples. the prevalence of aggressors and impunity alternatively, and more accurately, instead of framing the issue as a problem of the vulnerability of women, it could be framed as the problem of the high number of men in canada willing to use violence against women in general or indigenous women in particular. while courts tend to focus on the actions of the perpetrator, almost all other disciplines focus on the presentation and pathology of the violence against victims: these disciplines include psychology and child protection (coates & wade, 2007; garkawe, 1992; richardson & wade, 2009; wade, personal communication, 2014). with this victim-focus, victims are held accountable for events beyond their control. at the same time, the responsibility of perpetrators is diminished when, for example, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 6 6 social interaction is framed as an issue with the mind of the victim1. in this article, the authors focus on the ways in which victims are blamed or held responsible for their mistreatment, as if they have done something wrong. elizabeth fast and cathy richardson have documented this type of violence against métis people, who have been blamed for their perceived deficiences, such as having fragmented identities or not being “native enough” (fast, 2016; fast, drouin-gagné, bertrand, bertrand, & allouche, 2017; hancock, 2017; richardson, 2004, 2017; vowel, 2017). because the métis are so misunderstood (and misrepresented) in canada, this population falls through many systemic cracks and are denied rights, reparations, and appropriate social services (richardson, 2004). in this article, cathy richardson contributes her response-based analysis, generated with colleagues allan wade, linda coates, and shelly bonnah, to elucidate how representations of violence tend to blame and pathologize victims and excuse or eliminate perpetrators from the account. elizabeth fast draws from her research and experience working with indigenous women and youth. rachel flowers (2015) offered us another perspective on the violence against indigenous women. she noted that this type of gendered violence is linked to settler dispossession of indigeous lands. flowers believed that the concept of dispossession relates to the removal of bodies from the land as well as the disappearance of indigenous people as free people. this kind of interpretation offers a challenge to the body politic of canada and to the settler population. she wrote: over the last four years of organizing and speaking at the memorial march for missing and murdered indigenous women in victoria, i witnessed women and men come together in affirmation to share both their sorrow and love in remembrance of our sisters, and to demand that violence against indigenous women come to an end. these demonstrations provide a counterdiscourse to the dominant narrative that indigenous women and girls are “vulnerable” thereby placing the burden on us to not only protect ourselves by changing our “risky” behaviours, but also to find solutions to ongoing systemic violence and oppression (2015). i believe that flowers would concur that this issue relates not to being indigenous women but to canada’s difficulty in naming and addressing white male supremacy. this discourse, although more accurate, is more provocative and volatile, and can actually bring more violence upon indigenous women in the form of backlash. yet, if allies from the settler community joined with indigenous women and activists in moving the focus away from the victim-blaming rhetoric, we 1 richardson and wade (2009) give examples of how diagnoses under the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) are typically used to pathologize persons who have experienced violence. victims of violence are often described as depressed, having boundary issues, anxious, hypervigilant, and so forth. their responses are seldom described as social and understandable in context, but rather as signs of illness. moreover, acts of resistance to violence are misconstrued as symptoms of pathology, as has been described by todd and wade (1994). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 7 7 might have more success in changing perpetrator behaviour and addressing these forms of structural and interpersonal violence. despite increased attention to intervention and prevention after the second world war, society has not been successful in stopping violence, including femicide, gay-bashing, and racially motivated crimes of hate. in canada, indigenous people comprise only 4.9% of the population (statistics canada, 2016) but are held accountable for a disproportionate number of crimes:métis, inuit, and first nations men and women accounted for 27% of admissions to federal corrections services (malakieh, 2018). for example, indigenous youth accounted for just 8% of the youth population, but for fully 46% of youth admitted to youth correctional services in canada (statistics canada, 2016). as well, indigenous people experience a disproportionate amount of violence. in 2014, the rate of violent victimization among indigenous people in canada was more than double that of non-indigenous people (163 incidents per 1,000 people versus 74 incidents per 1,000 people; statistics canada, 2016) and indigenous women were 3 times as likely as non-indigenous women to be a victim of violent crime (statistics canada, 2016). this article explores events that occur at the intersection of sexist and racist (e.g., anti-indigenous) violence. the authors explore some of the implications of this violence in relation to the service sector with a view to problematizing and addressing victim-blaming. a contextual, response-based perspective is drawn upon to elucidate the interaction between violence and the responses to violence. analysing social interaction we draw from research that shows that numerous discourses, including legal and psychological, hold victims responsible for their situation, suggesting that this misrepresentation is a main reason that violence in society remains ubiquitous and problematic. as response-based practice is based on analyzing and understanding social interaction within context, we work with the idea of the inter-relatedness and connections of events and context. that is, what people do, within the context of their lives, can be studied with a lens that focuses on the importance of preserving dignity and increasing safety through action. nora bateson (2016) discusses this kind of “contextual integrity” and the role and limits of individual human agency within a background of context. in symmathesy (interaction as a trans-systemic context for mutual learning), the idea of agency should be treated as a paradox that necessarily resides between the existence of the organism as a unique entity, and the simultaneous impossibility that this entity can be deontextualized or in any way uninfluenced by its contextual interactions. (p. 174) this means that all action and interaction take place within context. to highlight this point in teaching, richardson often poses the following questions: “where you live, who is the most likely to be blamed for a crime they did not commit?” and, “who is most likely to get away with a crime international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 8 8 they did commit?” such questions highlight the power dynamics at play and what groups of people are most privileged, and which most disadvantaged, in society and its system of justice. the study of interaction can begin at any given point. once we choose a starting point, we analyze “who is doing what to whom”. this means identifying the actions of the perpetrator, the co-responding actions of the victim and so on, back and forth. simultaneously, we consider the anticipated or real social responses to both of these parties, in so far as the social responses inform and guide what each party may do. for example, if a woman is being raped by her husband, whether or not she decides to scream depends on what she knows about her neighbours and neighbourhood. if she thinks that her neighbours would likely help her, she may scream. if she understands that her screams would be ignored, she may choose another path, like going limp until it is over (wade, personal communication, duncan, bc, canada, 2015). however, in accounts of violence in north america, the process of trying to understand victim resistance is largely omitted from public and legal processes. when victim resistance to a sexualized assault is taken up in court, it is usually presented in such a way as to accuse the victim of being a co-aggressor (coates & wade, 2007). analysing discourse and representation coates and wade (2007) proposed a model of “four-discursive-operations; namely, the concealing of violence, obfuscating of perpetrators’ responsibility, concealing of victims’ resistance, and blaming and pathologizing of victims” (p. 511). this “four operations of discourse” model demonstrates that when resistance to violence is concealed in the account of “who is doing what to whom”, the three other functions are simultaneously performed. specifically, when resistance is hidden, the violence and the level of brutality and deliberateness are also invisibilized. often the perpetrator is removed entirely from the account and the victim is held responsible because they are the only party present in the description. one example can be found in former prime minister stephen harper’s apology to residential school survivors (see https://www.aadncaandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649). he omitted any reference to the detailed strategies of colonial violence enacted by the state, as well as the role of mining and land companies in taking land from indigenous people. indigenous resistance, such as parents trying to hide their children from authorities, and avoid imprisonment and financial sanctions, was not mentioned; it would have pointed directly to the violence of the state. so, when the actions of the perpetrator (i.e., canada, and specifically the members of the upper-middle-class protestant elite who formed the government) are minimized and hidden, it becomes politically acceptable, and convenient, to refer to the “resilience” of the victims because, unlike resistance, resilience does not offer a challenge to the status quo nor shed light on the actions of the perpetrator. violence was also hidden when particular strategies for government land theft were not mentioned in prime ministers harper’s apology. this would make any indigenous movements such as “idle no more”, “standing rock”, and the earlier mohawk resistance (“oka crisis”) of 1990, seem disparate, and disconnected from the particular violence of the government. https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649 https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 9 9 when much of the discourse is focused on indigenous mental illness (flowers, 2015; richardson & wade, 2009), the perpetrator and perpetrator’s actions become obscured or invisibilized. individualizing, pathological theories are applied to the victims, and to the state of their brains (e.g., neuropsychological versions of trauma theory, american psychological association presentations of mental illness, metaphorical descriptions such as “the wounded warrior” or “the soul wound”; duran & duran, 1995). the problem of colonialism has then been transferred into an epidemic of indigenous mental illness. government resources can then, minimally, be put into mental health services rather than returning stolen land, returning profits from mineral and gas exploitation, and reuniting families. highlighting victim responses and resistance one reason to highlight victim responses and resistance is that it highlights victim capacity and depathologizes and recollectivizes behaviour. when the actions of the perpetrator are made clear, the level of violence and oppression also becomes clear, as well as the particular strategies used to discredit the victim(s). attention to so-called lateral violence (violence within a group) is one of the successful strategies used by those in power to discredit the ability of indigenous people to live harmoniously in their communities without paternalistic intervention. revealing victim resistance offers a counter-narrative to: (a) resist the construction of the victim as an unworthy, passive object who didn’t do enough to stop the violence; (b) contest the ideas that women choose violent men, that indigenous people like to be colonized, and that people of colour are not disturbed by racism because they are internally oppressed and have low selfesteem; and (c) minimize the use of trauma-based formulations (e.g., fight, flight, and freeze) that tell us that victims cannot act when in dangerous situations because the amygdala “hijacks” and “shuts down” the neocortex2, which is normally responsible for prioritizing people’s actions and the meanings they make of them. eliciting resistance provides an antidote to victim-blaming because the victim is seen as an active agent, not a passive object, as one often finds in the literature on harmed, oppressed, and traumatized people (bunce, larsen, & peterson, 1995; van der kolk, 2015). throughout this article, we will provide a number of concrete examples of these linguistic functions as well as examples of other forms of victim-blaming. blaming the victim blaming the victims, or targets, of violence contributes to their aggravated, extended, and unnecessary suffering. it is of crucial importance for recovery that victims receive positive social responses from family, friends, and professionals after they disclose violence, especially since 2 of course, this is not true or there would be no firefighters, heroes, or mothers who rescue their children. it is mainly when events are decontextualized that responses are not seen as ways of maximizing safety and dignity. “playing dead” is not the same as freezing. in terms of accuracy, metaphors cannot be given the same weight as analysing interactions in context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 10 10 victims are often lacking in power and resources. however, the literature shows that very often, at least half the time, victims receive some of the blame (andrews & brewin, 1990; andrews, brewin, & rose, 2003; goffman, 1963; richardson & wade, 2009). blaming victims adds to the shame and humiliation that they already feel. being a victim is so stigmatizing in our society that having been harmed by another is often seen as a stain on one’s character — as if one has a “victim personality”, or is weak or unclean. we will also demonstrate in this paper that sometimes being indigenous is enough to make one be seen as guilty, because particular interactions take place in the context of interpersonal and systemic racism involving police, medical systems, child protection, and so on. violence involves one person acting against the will and well-being of another without consent (wade, personal communication, duncan, bc, canada, 2015). it is not a mutual act. in response-based practice, the term “victim” is descriptive of an event rather than an identity. however, being a victim is seen so negatively in north america that many people decide never to talk about what has been done to them (goffman, 1963; patrick, 2018; richardson & wade, 2008). if people do tell others about their experiences, they are commonly accused of “having a victim personality”. within the social sciences there is a field of study known as “victimology” but there is no parallel field called “perpetratorology”. criminology is a general field that does not relate specifically to studying perpetration. indeed, one is legally a criminal only if sentenced; most perpetrators of violence are not. mutualization and the responsibilization of victims when victims are indigenous mothers, they are cast as having deserved the violence, and sometimes are actually seen as co-perpetrators. coates & wade (2007) have demonstrated ways in which violence is often mutualized in its representations and the victims are seen as coresponsible. conjugal violence researchers such as lapierre (2007, 2008) and bancroft & silverman (2002) found that mother-blaming was used by male perpetrators as either a pretext (e.g., bad mothering, bad housekeeping) or that mothers were treated more like co-perpetrators than victims after the fact. this, for example, is what is implied in the naming of the truth and reconciliation commission (2015) of canada3 — that the violence and the responsibility are mutualized. reconciliation, from the latin conciliare [to unite], is about restoring to wholeness that which was once whole and then was broken. putting the onus of reconciliation on indigneous people implies that indigenous people have something they need to do to repair the relationship broken by white genocide. in victim-blaming, there is sometimes an implication that the victims did something to bring the violence on themselves, such as not having boundaries, assertiveness skills, self-esteem, or a knowledge of self-defence. allan wade writes that this form of victim-blaming is like saying, 3 the truth and reconciliation commission was a national process in canada designed to elicit stories from the survivors of residential schools and to document the violence and hardship experienced by the indigenous children forced to attend these institutions. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=905 http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=905 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 11 11 “if you weren’t so aboriginal, i wouldn’t be so racist … if you weren’t so disabled, i wouldn’t make fun of you … if you weren’t so annoying, i wouldn’t beat you up.” (wade, personal communication, duncan, bc, canada, 2015). for women, the same logic states: if you want equality with men, you should have been born a man. for the métis, victim-blaming involves condemning them for being mixed-race and not something “whole” (fast et al., 2017; richardson, 2004). in a presentation at the qualitative research conference in champaign, illinois (fast, boldo, clark, richardson, & smith, 2018), elizabeth fast cited a métis participant who stated, “the word métis in quebec, this word doesn’t exist: not in the family, not in the culture, not in the law, not in politics, not in the government.” (personal communication, champaign, illinois, 2018). cathy mattes, who also writes about the métis experience, wrote: i believe that for many métis the experiences of being recognized and recognizing, being and becoming is internalized, and effects how we view ourselves. i would argue that it is embedded in the struggles of our relations, ourselves, government legislation, and being of mixed ancestry. it also comes from the general lack of acknowledgement about métis people, our experiences, and our contributions. we are whole — a whole nation, whole families, whole individuals, yet sometimes, it seems that we are treated, or recognized as only being half. (mattes, 2003, p. 6) for women living in a context of inequality, not doing what partners, fathers, or bosses tell them to do is seen as an invitation for reprimand, criticism, or attack. when power relations are imbalanced to the advantage of the perpetrator, a refusal to comply does not tend to open space for mutual discussion, exploration, and solution-finding; instead, the result is often the resistance of the victim. sharene razack (2000) used a pioneer metaphor to describe the violence done to indigenous woman pamela george4 before and during her murder by two young white men, aged 19 and 20. george, a mother of two children, was from the sakimay first nation. razack stated that the identities of the victim and the perpetrators were used in an analysis to minimize the violence of the young men and to transfer partial responsibility to the woman. george, because she was an indigenous woman in a certain area of town, was characterized as belonging to a “zone of degeneracy”, and the accused were seen as foreign to this space and therefore less culpable. the judge created a metaphor in which the boys enacted a “rite of passage”, entering this dodgy space in order to come out as men. other mutualizing constructs were used to blame pamela george. for the perpetrators, hurting a woman, presumably while having an orgasm, was part of their “coming of age”, marking the domination of white settler men over a first nations woman. according to angus (1997), the court learned that steven kummerfield (20) and alexander ternowetsky (19) got drunk that night and decided to “look for a prostitute”. they picked up 4 here, we honour the memory of pamela george and send condolences to her family, friends and all the people who love and miss her. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 12 12 pamela george and took her to a gravel road near the airport, where they isolated her. termowetsky had been hiding in the trunk. kummerfield let him out. while george tried to escape, it was reported that they caught her and returned her to the car where they had “oral sex” and then “they proceeded to beat her” (p. 5). by this time, george had been screaming and trying to escape from these two men who eventually beat her to death. another young male witness said he talked to kummerfield, asking him what he did the night before. kummerfield had told him: “not much. we drove around, got drunk and killed this chick.” (p. 5). under cross examination, the witness amended his statement, now giving kummerfield’s words as, “ ‘i think we killed her.’ he also testified that kummerfield told him they threatened to kill pamela george if she refused to have sex5 with them.” (p. 5). the young men were charged with first degree murder and left the court convicted only of manslaughter. mutualizing language and the fact that she was an indigenous woman moving in an “unsafe” area of town made her, according to the court, partially to blame for her fate. response-based contextual analysis figure 1 illustrates the analytical process of response-based analysis and interviewing. we begin by taking into consideration the context, which we call social material conditions. this can include the particular historical background, such as colonization, as well as the current degree of social inequality. we often pose the question when teaching, “where you live, who is most likely to be accused of a crime they did not commit; and who is most likely to be excused for a crime they did commit, an act that leads to perpetrator impunity?” the fact that the number of convictions for sexualized assault in canada is only 1% of the number of people who have stated that they have been victims of such an assault (johnson, 2012; reynolds, 2014) is one indicator of the impunity found in what some refer to as rape culture (reynolds, 2014) and others as a culture of impunity (patten, 2008). when women are trying to participate freely and fully in society, they seek to work, to engage politically, to be equal, to have full access to public spaces, and to dress how they want; however, asserting one’s autonomy can be seen as an affront to those who want to protect the status quo or patriarchal advantage. the silencing by u.s. president donald trump of women speaking out is one prominent recent example of male oppression, and having lawyers and allies to help silence women is an example of a social response to a woman victim or a woman who challenges male power (neumeister & hays, 2018). the context behind the #metoo disclosures demonstrates that women are in shock and disbelief when a man they trusted violates them and leaves them with the choice of staying quiet or speaking out and becoming unemployed. however, this kind of exploitation is going on all the time: the violation of single mothers by landlords, the sexual 5 in this article, sex is defined as a mutual and consensual act between adults. in a climate of violence and coercion, such an interaction constitutes violence, not sex. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 13 13 innuendos of shopkeepers or restaurant owners to women employees who need the job, and so on. mothers, in particular, are more vulnerable because they need the job to support their children. figure 1. the analytical process of response-based analysis and interviewing (adapted from bonnah, coates, richardson, & wade, 2014, as presented by wade, 2015). the government of canada (2017) reported that 60% of respondents to an online survey (approximately 83% of whom identified as female) stated that they had experienced non-sexual harassment at work; 30% had experienced sexual harrassment, 21% had experienced non-sexual violence, and 3% had experienced sexual violence. as well, universities haven’t been safe places for women as either students or employees (fox, 2018). recent reports show that violence, harassment, and sexual violence are widespread on university campuses and that we have not yet found a meaningful way of addressing the problem (xing, 2017). in relation to violence and harassment for staff, faculty, and students on canadian university campuses, chiose (2017) reported in the globe and mail newspaper that: canadian universities try to resolve most complaints of harassment or discrimination made by staff, faculty and students informally, numbers collected responses to social responses social material conditions situation interaction offender actions victim responses and resistance social responses dignity / safety response-based contextual analysis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 14 14 from more than 20 institutions and analyzed by the globe and mail reveal. the data show that less than 10 per cent of complaints are resolved through a formal investigation, with some institutions turning to a formal process in less than 1 per cent of cases. the reality is similar for charges of sexual assault, which researcher holly johnson referred to as the attrition of sexual assault charges; she noted that while 460,000 women self-reported a sexual assault in 2004, only 1,519 males were convicted of a sexual assault during 2006 (desson, 2014). johnson’s (2012) research showed that of the assaults that are reported, most do not make it to the charging or sentencing stage of the court process. the fact that there are so few convictions means that life becomes less safe for these women, who are then sometimes accused of making false allegations. in 2016, cathy richardson documented the court case of sexual assault of a minor in the yukon territory in which a young woman experienced harrassment by family members (her family and the family of the alleged perpetrator) while waiting over two years for her case to go through the courts. when a culture of impunity for perpetrators is created, they can get away with their violations and the reputation of the victims gets called into question. one researcher stated that “it has become ‘open season’ on indigenous women” (wade, 2015). another issue is that many people are conflict-avoidant and find these kinds of situations very tense. in a culture where being polite is valued, individuals may have difficulty naming and addressing the actions of a violent perpetrator in the context of family life. in many cases, therefore, allegations are swept under the rug. linda coates (1997) has demonstrated that this effect can be worse in the court sytem because the woman (i.e., victim of sexualized assault) faces a defence lawyer attacking her character and even bringing up her sexual history in jurisdictions where that is still permitted. this phenomenon of extracting sexual history from women in rape trials is documented by mcglynn (2017) and thomasson (2018), who discussed some of the legal, ethical, and social justice issues related to this practice, which some would see as sexist. the mechanics of victim-blaming violence, which we know is unilateral, is described as something mutual (“it takes two to tango”). an assault may be referred to as a conflict or a fight, implying that two parties share responsibility for the violent events. we might assume that two parties contribute to a “loving relationship”, and then apply the same logic to spousal assault or a violent relationship. the issue is that “loving” is typically a mutual act while violence is unidirectional6 (coates & wade, 2007). 6 in the case where both parties “put on gloves and get into the ring together”, we could call this a fight and regard it as consensual, unlike violence. to be helpful and accurate in the field, it is crucial to understand the difference between violence and self-defence, and between violence and conflict. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 15 15 the difference between violence and self-defence if we believe that people resist violence and mistreatment, as response-based thinking invites us to believe, then we probably understand the difference between violence and selfdefence. this distinction is crucial in the violence prevention field. however, in jurisdictions where there is dual charging (i.e., both parties in a domestic dispute are charged), many women who have tried to defend themselves have been sentenced as secondary aggressors (johnson, 2012). and, in some situations where the perpetrator is particularly convincing, the victim can even be seen as the primary aggressor7 (elizabeth, gavey, & tolmie, 2012). victim-blaming is also achieved through the misrepresentation of violence as sex. many would probably say they can distinguish between sex and violence. consensual sex can be a loving, mutual practice between two consenting adults8. canada’s criminal code articulates the impossibility of an adult having consensual sex with a child (coates, bavelas, & gibson, 1994): consent is unacceptable as a legal defence (criminal code, 1985). due to the age differential and the “in loco parentis”, or caretaker, responsibility of an adult, acts that are often referred to as sexual instead should be seen as violence. these include sexual assault, sexual touching, sexual interference, kissing, fondling, sexual aggressivity, and so forth (coates et al., 1994). dr. linda coates has found through her research on violence discourses in the courtroom that whenever violence against children is referred to as “sexual”, responsibility is mutualized and sentences are lower or sometimes nonexistent; a few years back, a canadian judge was reprimanded for responsibilizing a child, referring to the young child as “sexually aggressive” (coates, personal communication, australia, 2017). the importance of accurate language wade (personal communication, duncan, bc, canada, 2015) illustrated the inappropriateness of the confusion between sex and violence by saying: if someone comes up to you and, with force and slobber, assaults you with their mouth, on your face, we could call that forced oral contact. however, that typically gets called “a kiss”. harassment at school or work is typically referred to as a personality conflict, rape is referred to as sex, invasion is typically referred to as war, genocide in canada is referred to as “the indian problem”. often perpetrators are excused for the harm they cause others because they themselves were hurt as children. however, this kind of rationalization of criminal behaviour is less generous 7 a mother who is trying to protect her children from the violence of the father can be seen as “alienating” the children from the father. parental alienation is punished in courts, in child protection systems, and in psychological assessments. see the work of simon lapierre and isabelle côté (2016) on mother-blaming and the inaccurate assumptions behind parental alienation. 8 although as esther perel points out in a fiaf talk, not all consensual sex is wanted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to97dxyoqxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to97dxyoqxo international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 16 16 with black and indigenous men and more prominent when the perpetrators are caucasian with european descent (razack, 2000). perpetrators are sometimes pathologized through the use of deficit psychological labels and conditions, even if some of these diagnoses do not have violence as part of their symptomatology (wade, personal communication, duncan, bc., 2015). in our experience, psychological reports typically refer to attachment disorders in adults as well as borderline, narcissistic, or oppositional personality disorders. sometimes, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is listed as a causal factor in relation to violence, even though this connection may be spurious. problematic recasting of problems of violence as problems of anger, alcohol, and so on very often, people who use violence are said to have anger or alcohol problems. why would the problem of violence sometimes be recast as a problem with alcohol or a problem with anger? and, why is this problematic? there are individuals who drink alcohol, or get angry, who never hit or abuse anyone, just as there are sober people who use violence with calculation and cruelty. there are people who live with anger who do not assault others, but perhaps channel their anger into activism, social justice, or social change, just as there are people who are calm and collected and who use violence and control for their own purposes. perhaps one reason why we haven’t been able to address violence in our society effectively is that we make inaccurate assumptions and send people to the wrong kinds of programs. logically, if someone has a problem with violence we should send them to a violence cessation program. the unworthy victim we blame victims by referring to them as passive, as people who do not do things to help themselves. when we do give victims agency, it is usually to say that they have used their agency in ways that cause harm. we say that they actively choose bad partners, that they are trying to relive the abuse of their childhood in their adult relationships, and that, because they don’t have boundaries, they choose men who are going to hurt their children. media researcher yasmin jiwani (2011) documented this misogynistic representation: in this climate of seemingly diverse media representations, women who are victims of violence are often accused of playing the victim card. the idea that these women are able to choose victimhood over resilience and survival is a lie embedded in the neo-liberal ethic of consumer society and obscures the structural conditions that mediate and constrain the latitude of choice. (paragraph 2) this false representation of women victims raises questions about who benefits from these disparaging representations. for women victims, these practices cause harm and, as negative social responses in the aftermath of violence, they have the power to inflict what is often referred to as secondary traumatization. jiwani goes on to spell out how certain women are more likely to be blamed than others and that these representations tend to align with the degree of power that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 17 17 particular woman already possesses in the social hierarchy, with women of colour and indigenous women being more likely to be negatively represented. so, in the face of these negative accounts, how do we then treat mothers who are seen as guilty, passive, or unprotective with regard to their children in the context of violence, even when both women and children are the targets? social science textbooks tend to make sweeping generalizations about people who have been harmed or oppressed, talking about how such people are all affected by violence (and now also by trauma). while there may be some helpful interventions associated with trauma care, we must analyze the social consequences of reducing male violence to issues in the brains of individual victims. in child welfare interventions, as part of what is termed a parent’s “failure to protect”, mothers who have been victims of male partner violence are told that they cannot parent due to their trauma and psychological issues. we give their children to someone else to raise, sometimes to the perpetrator. child protection workers recognize this victim-blaming behaviour in their co-workers as well. one worker spoke about how indigenous women are all lumped together and labelled as deficient due to the generalized history in canada, regardless of tribal affiliation, class, or access to supports and services. the mass stigmatization of residential school survivors, based on an exaggeration and overuse of the theory of intergenerational effects, can prevent child protection workers from accurately analyzing cases involving indigenous mothers (wade, 2015). one aspect of social unfairness is the unequal supports available to birth parents versus foster parents in child welfare settings. this practice undermines indigenous mothers who want to keep their children but are judged negatively due to poverty or to being the victims of spousal abuse. in british columbia, foster parents would formerly receive more funding for indigenous children than for other children because all indigenous children were considered to have “special needs” (becky madina, b.c. ministry of child and family development, personal communication, 2005). jiwani (2014) showed that the nature of the portrayals of rape victims and rape perpetrators is based on their race, with members of the dominant culture being portrayed more favourably. further, these media portayals influence how the various parties are viewed in society, as well as in court settings. according to the logic of the courts, if a woman leaves home and goes to a shelter while the man she has been living with stays in the house, she is seen as homeless and the man is seen as the more stable parent. she is blamed for her situation, in spite of making good safety decisions for her and for her children. we need to turn to better examples of mother-care, like the safe at home program in western australia, where the male perpetrator is escorted from the home and placed in a shelter. in these cases, the victims are not seen as the guilty party (see http://www.womenscouncil.com.au/safe-at-home.html). recommendations child welfare reform with indigenous families is something we have been advocating for many years now. we need to reverse the victim-blaming policies that fail to protect indigneous http://www.womenscouncil.com.au/safe-at-home.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 18 18 families and that separate mothers from their children. we can reverse the four operations of discourse to support victims and hold perpetrators accountable. if we want victims to speak out and come forward to press charges, then we need to create a culture in which it is safe to do so. fears that this will lead to many false claims are unfounded: research shows that the proportion of false claims of sexualized abuse is quite low (institut national de santé publique du québec)9. we need to understand that being a vicitm of violence is not the fault of the victim and has nothing to do with one’s efficacy as a parent. in cases where a caregiving parent is temporarily unable to parent, relatives can typically be found to take care of the children; the large canon of indigenous child welfare literature (carrière & richardson, 2016; fast, 2016; richardson & carrière, 2012; richardson & nelson, 2007) advocates for kinship care and family support. we must stop blaming indigenous mothers for the violence they were subjected to in residential school, in foster care, and in their family of origin. despite recommendations against it, many child protection risk assessments still pose “double-bind” questions asking about the history of violence. a question such as “did your parents harm you as a child?” is designed to seek a history to which a deterministic logic can be applied: a person who has been harmed will thoughtlessly reproduce the violence and not make different choices about how to act. people who answer “yes” have a greater chance of being put into a high-risk category and losing custody of their children (ministry of youth and family services, 2016). interviews conducted for carrière and richardson’s 2017 book calling our families home indicated that, although some child welfare practices are becoming more collaborative, deterministic tools for assessing risk are sometimes still applied. we know this kind of thinking is false, that there are other factors to consider, such as the quality of the social responses received systemically and from family and friends. many people who experienced violence never went on on to use violence against others and, in fact, made commitments never to reproduce what they had experienced as children. but we do know that most of the violence that is committed against indigenous people is perpetrated by people who were harmed and violated, many in the care of the state. and, more generally, sexualized violence against women and children in particular contexts (e.g., colonization, war, political aggression) is understood as a tactic of domination: the unacceptable reality today is that it is still largely cost-free to rape a woman, child or man in many situations of conflict around the world, and sexual violence continues to be employed as a tactic of war, terrorism, torture and repression. it is used precisely because 9 “on the basis of a representative sample of 7672 cases of abuse investigated by child protection authorities in canada, trocmé and bala (2005) noted that only 4% of the 35% of unsubstantiated cases were deemed to be the product of intentionally fabricated false allegations. the rate was slightly higher in cases of sexual abuse (6%) compared with cases of physical abuse (4%), neglect (4%), and emotional maltreatment (2%). however, none of the false allegations of sexual abuse had come from the children themselves.” (institut national de santé publique du québec, n.d., false allegations of child sexual abuse, section 1, paragraph 2) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 19 19 it is such an effective and devastating weapon, destroying not only individuals, but tearing apart families, and fracturing communities. (patten, 2008) this quote describes the kind of violence inflicted on indigenous boys and girls in canadian residential schools: it is a form of violence used to silence people and keep them down. one of the things that we can continue to do is to speak out publicly about the injustices and misrepresentations of violence that we see as we do our work. however, in order to remain alive in the work, it is important to celebrate small victories and to bring joy and kindness into the work (richardson & reynolds, 2012). giving-back practices are important. this means making sure that colleagues and co-resistors know when their actions have made a difference, promoted systems change, and made life better, even for one person. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 3–25 20 20 references amnesty international. 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(2017, september 12). sexual assault policies at universities fail the people they’re supposed to protect, students say. cbc news online. retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/campus-sexual-assault-policies-in-ontario-don-tmeet-student-expectations-1.4281177 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1026154215299 http://www.livescience.com/2410-council-nicea-changed-world.html https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/campus-sexual-assault-policies-in-ontario-don-t-meet-student-expectations-1.4281177 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/campus-sexual-assault-policies-in-ontario-don-t-meet-student-expectations-1.4281177 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918808 we need to get better at this! pedagogies for truth telling about colonial violence elizabeth fast and marie-ève drouin-gagné abstract: this article considers the importance of widespread teaching of colonial histories to future generations of students. the truth and reconciliation commission of canada’s 2015 report, calls to action, asserts that the lack of historical knowledge among most canadians has serious consequences for indigenous peoples, and for canada as a whole. using the responses to interpersonal violence framework, this paper explores the capacity of educators to teach colonial histories in a way that indicates supportive social responses and a recognition of the ongoing colonial violence lived by indigenous peoples in canada. it also makes recommendations on core principles of teaching colonial histories to indigenous and non-indigenous students in a responsible way that respects the intentions of the truth and reconciliation commission. keywords: teaching, decolonization, colonial histories, truth and reconciliation, response-based practice elizabeth fast phd, métis (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the department of applied human sciences, concordia university, vanier extension, 7141 sherbrooke west, montreal, qc h4b 1r6. email: elizabeth.fast@concordia.ca marie-ève drouin-gagné is a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology, concordia university, 1455 boulevard de maisonneuve, montreal, qc h3g 1m8. email: marie-eve.drouin.gagne@concordia.ca mailto:marie-eve.drouin.gagne@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 96 the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trc) was established in june of 2008 as one of five measures instituted by the indian residential schools settlement agreement. during the six years that the commission was active, it travelled throughout canada to hear from individuals who had been taken from their families as children and placed in residential schools. residential schools were part of a set of policies meant to try and assimilate indigenous children by removing them from their families, communities, and cultures and forcing them to abandon all aspects of their cultures for fear of punishment and abuse (milloy, 1996). the trc’s final report and calls to action were released in december 2015 and are available on the national centre for truth and reconciliation website (http://nctr.ca/reports.php). the commission’s focus on truth determination was intended to lay the foundation for the important question of reconciliation: now that we know about residential schools and their legacy, what do we do about it? in the trc’s (2015) report calls to action, under the heading “education for reconciliation”, call to action number 62 states: we call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with survivors, aboriginal peoples, and educators, to:  make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, treaties, and aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to canada a mandatory education requirement for kindergarten to grade twelve students.  provide the necessary funding to post-secondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms. although these recommendations are critical to increasing awareness and knowledge of canada’s colonial past and its ongoing impacts, there are a few potential barriers to a full implementation of the recommendations. first of all, it will take time for post-secondary institutions to train teachers; thus, even if students do begin to learn about residential schools, there is no guarantee that their teachers have received this education. teachers may then avoid introducing indigenous knowledges and pedagogies into the classroom because they don’t know where to begin and are intimidated by the prospect of facilitating difficult discussions. second, as a result of our combined experience teaching undergraduate students and what they have relayed about the reality in quebec and other eastern provinces, we have become aware that students are coming into post-secondary settings with little or no knowledge of indigenous histories and contemporary realities. in addition, the language of “reconciliation” has been criticized as a settler “move to innocence” (tuck & yang, 2012), which eases the guilt for the settler society of benefitting from indigenous peoples’ erasure, dispossession, and assimilation, but without addressing the ongoing colonial violence. tuck and yang (2012) define colonial violence as the structure of our society, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/indian_residential_schools_settlement_agreement http://nctr.ca/reports.php international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 97 which disrupts indigenous relationships to land by imposing on it a property and ownership relationship (p. 5), resulting in the dispossession and imposed poverty of indigenous peoples, as well as disruption of indigenous “epistemological, ontological, and cosmological relationship to land [which] are interred, indeed made pre-modern and backward” (p. 5). in this process, there is a “profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence … reasserted each day of occupation” (p. 5) that is not resolved or addressed simply by teaching critical perspectives on colonialism. therefore, there is a need to explore and implement models and frameworks that can orient our teaching so that we get better at teaching colonial history and integrating indigenous perspectives, knowledges, and teaching methods in our classrooms. the responses to interpersonal violence (riv) framework aims to reshape the way that we think about responses to interpersonal violence. traditionally, in describing and understanding acts of interpersonal violence, the focus has been on the violent act as such and the victim is constructed as relatively passive in the interaction (coates & wade, 2007). as a consequence, research has tended to overlook the series of responses to the violence. however, using the riv framework, discursive concealing of violence, obscuring of responsibility, concealing of resistance, and victim blaming can be avoided by exposing the full extent of the violence, clarifying responsibility, revealing resistance, and aligning with the victim or victims (coates & wade, 2007). figure 1. four operations of discourse on violence that the riv framework avoids (coates & wade, 2007). by broadening the study of interpersonal violence to include the responses it evokes, the riv framework is helpful in reframing the way that colonial histories are taught. on one hand, it allows the unveiling of violence as a deliberate, social, and unilateral reality, and, on the other hand, the recognition that resistance to colonial violence is ever-present. this paper will draw from the riv framework, in dialogue with existing literature on decolonizing and indigenous pedagogies, to discuss how educators can take up the challenges of teaching colonial histories in ways that promote cultural safety in the classroom. for the purposes of this paper, the analysis will conceal resistance obscure responsibility blame victim conceal violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 98 be on the social actors’ (i.e., school teachers, university and college professors) responses to colonial violence and how these responses are then passed on or taught to students. we will then use our own experiences to show how anti-racist principles might be applied when teaching difficult topics, particularly pertaining to indigenous colonial histories. literature review: why teach colonial histories and ongoing colonial violence? to avoid concealing violence: truth-telling and exposing the full extent of the violence as the riv framework puts it, a first step in addressing responses to violence is to obtain accurate accounts of the violence from all sides, exposing its full extent (kinewesquao & wade, 2009). this also applies to colonial violence, and various authors have written about the importance of teaching colonial history in the classroom, as a way to render visible, explain, and problematize the historical and ongoing unfairness of our social structures (tuck & yang, 2012, p. 2; waziyatawin & yellow bird, 2005, p. 3). the canadian ongoing colonial reality implies serious continuous effects on indigenous peoples, such as violence, ethnostress, and historical trauma (cote-meek, 2014, pp. 25–31). as the trc also calls for the repudiation of concepts “used to justify european sovereignty over indigenous lands and peoples such as the doctrine of discovery” (trc, 2015, p. 5)1, we need to understand this colonial past in order to change the present and repudiate the concepts and actions that are part of the colonial violence. as waziyatawin and yellow bird (2005) put it, “the first step towards decolonization, then, is to question the legitimacy of colonization” (p. 3), which, of course, implies learning about the processes of colonization. acknowledging and validating the history of oppression and colonization on which the country was created at the expense of indigenous nations is seen as an important step in healing and decolonization (battiste, 1998). more precisely, truth-telling has to happen in ways that allow us to understand past events, such as the imposition of residential schools, as part of a current 1 the doctrine of discovery comes from a legal opinion articulated by the us court (marshall’s opinion in johnson v. m’intosh, 1823) following an old european principle of international law that proclaimed the right of european nations to own the lands they "discovered" and conquered, at the expense of indigenous sovereignty (miller, 2011; miller, ruru, behrendt, & lindberg, 2012). the concepts of land titles articulated in this legal doctrine were based on two fundamental ideas of a supposed western superiority: europeans were superior because they were christian and because they were "civilized"; therefore, settlers were bringing civilization to indigenous nations. based on these conceptions, settler societies took upon themselves to “educate” indigenous peoples following their ideas of religion and civilization (lomawaima, 1999; lomawaima & mccarty, 2006). miller et al. (2012), in accord with williams (1988, 1990, 2012a, 2012b) and many indigenous activists at the united nations (frichner, 2010; un permanent forum on indigenous issues, 2010, 2012), present the doctrine of discovery as the foundation of the current laws regulating relations between indigenous peoples and settler states like the united states, canada, australia, and new zealand, as well as the international recognition of these governments' sovereignty over indigenous peoples and lands. the idea of western superiority is maintained today with concepts such as progress, and how indigenous peoples are seen as obstacles to this progress. as the legitimacy of our states in the americas relies on the doctrine of discovery, it implies the subordination of indigenous peoples’ rights, life projects, relationships to the land, and political aspirations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 99 colonial relationship still to be dismantled today (regan, 2010, p. 42), just as we still have to effectively displace the cognitive imperialism that has been imposed on indigenous peoples through education (battiste, 2013, p. 158). in that sense, the colonial experience has to be spoken about because it offers an explanation for the past and present violence that indigenous peoples have faced and still face, as well as a way to understand resistance and possible futures (cotemeek, 2014, p. 25). simply put, and following core principles of any “truth and reconciliation” process, telling the truth is part of the healing process, and it is especially important when the truth includes past and present experiences of suffering that have been diminished, silenced, or ignored (waziyatawin, 2005, p. 193). furthermore, an important motivation for teaching the history of colonial relations between indigenous and settler societies is the impact it can have for indigenous students. for indigenous students, revealing the abuses of the past and their ongoing impacts can be painful; however, it can also be uplifting or empowering by validating their experiences and offering an explanation of the current continuous or intergenerational violence (cote-meek, 2014; evans-campbell, 2008; fast & nutton, 2014). meanwhile, for students and professors coming from a settler-privilege perspective, the teaching of colonial history and its current impacts on our society as well as the confrontation and elimination of racism can be very challenging, because it questions the national image that they have built as canadians (battiste, 2013, p. 125), to which they may have very different levels of commitment. nevertheless, however positive students’ and professors’ image of canada might be, it is important to question it precisely because this positive narrative is the one that justifies the colonial violence over indigenous peoples, rationalizing the taking of indigenous lands and resources. hence, the challenging nature of truth-telling, and the resistance and guilt that it might encounter, cannot be an excuse to avoid the responsibilities that any “reconciliation” would entail (regan, 2010). to avoid “ignorance” and “innocence” moves that obscure responsibility: clarifying responsibilities clarifying who is responsible for the violence, and taking responsibility for it is an important part of the teaching of colonial histories in a riv framework. in the context of colonial history teaching, this does not mean that the identity crisis potentially experienced by non-native students, and the difficulty they might encounter throughout the unsettling process of learning about colonialism, should not be addressed. but a clear understanding of who is the survivor and who is in position to continue or stop the violence must be established. a good example of ignorance as colonial strategy is to ask to “put behind us” the colonial violence as something of the past (“get over it”), rather than “examining the cultural attitudes that influence understanding of the responsibility that canadian society bears” for colonial violence (regan, 2010, p. 42). in that sense, in the classroom, it is crucial to establish an understanding and acknowledgement of the racial burden and ongoing violence lived by indigenous students (cote-meek, 2014). this understanding cannot occur solely through lectures and readings, but requires holistic pedagogical approaches that will allow a transformation in the students. this is why many authors have argued international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 100 for the use of indigenous pedagogies in the classroom in order to address difficult materials and to achieve a transformative, unsettling education towards decolonization (battiste, 2013; cote-meek, 2014; grande, san pedro, & windchief, 2015; henry, 2014; irlbacher-fox, 2014; regan, 2010; snelgrove, kaur dhamoon, & corntassel, 2014; waziyatawin & yellow bird, 2005; wildcat, mcdonald, irlbacher-fox, & coulthard, 2014). however well intentioned, educators might feel unsure as to where to begin. for example, the department of applied human sciences at concordia university held a teaching day on “responding to the trc calls to action” on april 27, 2015, including a workshop on contemporary indigenous identities in canada, with suzanne keeptwo, and debriefing and reflection sessions led by a teaching team comprised of members of the department (dr. elizabeth fast, dr. rosemary reilly, and dr. hilary rose). part of the debriefing and reflection was centred on asking participants about their needs for support when it comes to integrating indigenous content in their classrooms. one of the main findings that came out of these discussions is that most faculty had little knowledge of historical forces that impact the living conditions of indigenous peoples in canada, and little confidence in their grasp of such basics as proper terminology. they felt lacking in the background knowledge to effectively manage discussions in the classroom. in that sense, there is a profound contradiction between the fact that we encourage teachers to include indigenous content and colonial history in their curriculum, and the reality that “the majority of teachers, like the majority of canadians, have a limited understanding of aboriginal people, history, and culture; rather their understanding is informed by dominant discourses” (dion, 2007, p. 330). there is thus a need to find ways for professors to transform the way they relate to canadian colonial history, and the way they understand indigenous peoples and their relations with canada, before they can teach their students how to do so. this lack of preparedness, lack of training, and the gap in faculty’s actual knowledge of colonial history and indigenous peoples’ history can serve as a barrier to inclusion in course content, leading to the thought that it is better to avoid the subject than to approach it in a wrong way. however, using our ignorance as an excuse to absolve ourselves from the “responsibility of addressing our shared colonial history” (regan, 2010, p. 33) is a “move to innocence” (tuck & yang, 2012) that only perpetuates colonial violence. “violent innocence” protects individuals, organizations, institutions, and society at large from uncomfortable truths (regan, 2010). cotemeek (2014) stressed the responsibility of teachers when it comes to learning difficult knowledges: “educators have a pedagogical and ethical responsibility to set the tone and context of the classroom experience where students may be required to bear witness to historical trauma” (p. 150). in an academic context that “remains founded on epistemological practices and traditions that are selective and exclusionary”, it is the responsibility not only of the teachers but also the entire educational institution to overcome the “sanctioned ignorance of the academy at large” (kuokkanen, 2007, p. 1). in this regard, we need to overcome the “scarcity” discourse that predominates in the academy regarding available resources such as indigenous authors, information about indigenous international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 101 peoples’ histories and cultures, and perspectives on colonial histories. there are far more articles, books, films, websites, blogs, and community resources available out there than most teachers know about, and the oft-heard statement that there are no indigenous authors in a given discipline only contributes to the violent erasure of indigenous peoples’ intellectual traditions and contributions to the academy. to avoid concealing resistance: bringing awareness to ever-present indigenous knowledges and pedagogies negating the intellectual and pedagogical production of indigenous peoples in the academy, or not alluding to it when teaching colonial histories, conceals indigenous resistance and frames indigenous peoples in the role of passive victims in the colonial process. following the riv framework, however, highlighting the ever-present indigenous resistance to colonial violence should be a priority. similarly, tuck and yang (2012) warned against using a model if it “recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (p. 3). rather, we should turn to indigenous models of teaching colonial histories. done properly, this type of colonial history teaching can be uplifting for indigenous students in highlighting resistances to colonialism, both in the past and for the future (cote-meek, 2014). table 1 presents some of the existing practices that are achieving this kind of transformation through consideration of colonial history and indigenous perspectives, and from which one could draw inspiration for their own practice. table 1 presents different avenues to teaching colonial history that are not exclusive of each other but complementary, and can be built upon. among the many steps that we can begin to take in our classrooms are: making space in the classroom for alternative accounts by indigenous voices (texts, videos, music, guest speakers, etc.) 2 ; fostering a critical reflection about one’s responses to mainstream representations of indigenous peoples and history; incorporating approaches that aim at solidarity, and at resistance to dominant discourses and practices; and creating the space necessary for indigenous resurgence. without expecting that teaching practices can be changed from one day to the next, the existing models provide good starting points. table 1 selected models to address colonial history in education 2 kovach, carriere, montgomery, barrett, and gilles (2015) mentioned that there is a wide variety of course material tapping into community resources (such as grassroots videos and websites) that can serve to give students a “wider picture of indigenous peoples’ experience with colonialism and what they are doing about it” (p. 72). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 102 author and reference description of approach main objectives means employed bill bigelow and bob peterson (1998) rethinking columbus: the next 500 years. alternative account to the “discovery myth” (i.e., the idea that europeans had discovered a “new world”, although it had in fact been inhabited by many nations for centuries earlier) taught for so long in schools. addressing the origins of racism, economic exploitation, and resistance, to allow moving out of the victim and/or “conquered” position. creation of a forum for native people to share their views of the encounter through interviews, poetry, analysis, and stories, and telling parts of the story that have been mostly neglected. bryan m. j. brayboy (2005) “tribal critical race theory” make sense of indigenous peoples’ identity in terms of: (a) the problems encountered by “american indians” in educational institutions; (b) the educational programs that are in place to uniquely serve american indian communities; and (c) the complicated relationship between “american indians” and the united states federal government. unveiling the endemic colonization that is present in american society and its institutions, including knowledge institutions (universities), and in policies. addressing the impacts of this colonization on indigenous identity (marginalization, racialization). addressing the resistance to indigenous peoples’ projects of sovereignty, autonomy, and self-determination. resistance to assimilation through maintaining and adapting indigenous identity and cultural integrity through self-education, indigenous ways of knowing and values, and indigenous sources of data and theory in stories and oral knowledge. addressing stories as means of resistance and survivance of indigenous knowledges. susan dion (2007) “disrupting molded images: identities, responsibilities and relationships — teachers and indigenous subject material” remembrance approach: the students recognize their investments in relationships structured by particular ways of knowing aboriginal people. to counter stereotyping and other negative effects of the “cultural difference” approach. raising awareness of the ways in which the identities of both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in canada have been shaped by the colonial encounter and its aftermath. dialogue between students, incorporating their own experiences and memories; indigenous texts and productions. stephanie irlbacherfox (2014) “traditional knowledge, coexistence and coresistance” co-resistance for coexistence: resistance to injustices as the basis of the relationship. redefining the so-called “indian problem” into the “settler” or “privilege” problem. refusing to collaborate in maintaining injustice as the basis of the relationship between the state and indigenous peoples. deconstructing issues in ways that centre settler privilege as the focus of analysis instead of the usual mainstream highlighting of indigenous “difference” from a settlerbased norm. corey snelgore, rita kaur dhamoon, and jeff corntassel (2014) “unsettling settler colonialism: the discourse and politics of settlers, and solidarity with indigenous nations” indigenous resurgence: responsibility-based ethic of truth-telling to identify and act upon new pathways to indigenous resurgence. restoration and regeneration of indigenous nationhood. repatriation of indigenous life and land. to call for justice and the return of stolen lands and waterways; to acknowledge their special relationships with indigenous peoples. relational analysis of colonial issues (instead of onedimensional analysis based on the settler). place-based solidarity: engagement with the literal and stolen ground on which people stand and upon which they come together. the common thread among the models presented here is that, while recognizing the importance of teaching colonial history and the difficult materials this entails, these approaches international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 103 also incorporate hope (regan, 2010) by presenting indigenous responses to colonial violence and oppression. these responses must be included in education about colonial history so as to present indigenous peoples as an active part of history and contemporary society, to which they contribute in different ways, including their resistance to colonialism. in that sense, indigenous frameworks, perspectives, knowledges, experiences, and history need to be at the centre of the ideas presented when addressing colonial violence in the classroom, and at the centre of the pedagogical models to do so, if we want to move past the status quo in settler–indigenous nations relationships and build new, decolonizing, alliances. to avoid blaming the victims: aligning with survivors and building cultural safety acknowledging indigenous perspectives on colonial histories and indigenous resistance to colonial violence allows us, by following the riv framework, to align ourselves with the “victims” (or rather, survivors) of the violence, thus breaking the cycle of victim blaming. in that sense, for teachers in mainstream institutions and programs, beginning to interrogate their position “as colonizer-perpetrator and colonizer-ally” (regan, 2010, p. 27) is a first step towards truth-telling and the starting place for a dialogue that encompasses both the survivor and the perpetrator of colonial violence (regan, 2010, p. 42). however, these alliance strategies need also to be assessed in terms of the dignity and safety they provide for indigenous peoples in the academy, to ensure they do not perpetrate a discourse in which the survivors are blamed. for example, many models of support for indigenous students in higher education rely upon ideas and cultural models in which indigenous peoples are “othered”, becoming special cases in the mainstream system, or in which the difference between indigenous and mainstream culture is identified as a risk. these deficit models eventually turn into victim blaming devices. for example, cote-meek (2014) argues against the deficit models that maintain racial and cultural hierarchies, making indigenous peoples’ culture the reason for their failure in the system (p. 90). battiste (2013) identifies this “cultural difference” answer as very common among white students and professors to explain inequity issues (incarceration rates, educational outcomes, etc.), and she thus suggests models that allow us to gradually move away from “canada’s response to difference to a course in anti-racism and anti-oppressive education” (battiste, 2013, p. 127). as cote-meek (2014) put it, “an anti-colonial framework brings to the centre indigenous worldviews while still identifying the enormous impact that colonization plays in the lives of aboriginal peoples” (p. 140). in other words, rather than learning about indigenous peoples as “others”, unsettling pedagogy starts with the idea of learning from the other (regan, 2010). in that sense, most of the positive approaches to transformative education are about: finding a balance between critical approaches; centring indigenous knowledges; employing holistic pedagogies that address not only the intellectual dimension, but also the emotional and physical dimensions of learning; and honouring the individual voices of students (cote-meek, 2014, p. 90). the idea of centring indigenous worldviews and knowledges in the academy context has increasingly been articulated by canadian universities under the principle of “indigenizing the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 104 academy”, described as “a conscious effort to bring indigenous people, as well as their philosophies and cultures, into strategic plans, governance roles, academics, research and recruitment” (macdonald, 2016, para. 4). this process takes a variety of forms across the country, comprising, among other things, the creation of campus spaces and symbols (including events and powwows), academic programs and resources, and research chairs and projects. while this process has often been accompanied, in the past decade or so, by a deeper reflection on canadian universities’ relationships with indigenous peoples, the meaning of “indigenizing the academy” has yet to be defined (canadian association of university teachers / association canadienne des professeures et professeurs d’université [caut/acppu], 2016, p. a5). in formulating a definition, moves to innocence must be avoided in order to truly align universities with indigenous peoples’ resistance to colonialism. in that sense, newhouse (2016) mentioned that the cultural representation of indigenous peoples in the academy is not enough: real indigenization of the universities needs to address the academy work, which is “about knowledge and its production and transmission from one generation to another” (p. a2). the goal should thus be to bring indigenous knowledges to the research and teaching that happens in universities (both through academic literature and through indigenous knowledge holders becoming part of the academy), and to spread indigenous knowledges to all applicable disciplines (not just indigenous studies, but political sciences, philosophy, environmental studies, etc.). in the same spirit, universities canada’s 13 principles on indigenous education were crafted with the idea that “the cohabitation of western science and indigenous knowledge on campuses has the power of opening a dialogue among cultures and enhancing our shared knowledge” (murphy & robitaille, 2015, para. 4). still, in order for this dialogue in mainstream universities to become a real conversation that breaks the power dynamics implied in the existing colonial relationship, and to create an ethical space of engagement with indigenous peoples (ermine, 2007), it seems necessary to look at the models already developed in the “indigenous academy” (indigenous programs and institutions of higher education). hence, table 2 presents some directions for indigenous education that we think should be taken into consideration when thinking about “indigenizing the academy”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 105 table 2 selected models of indigenous approaches to education model (authors) description of model main objectives means employed storytelling, storying, and counter-stories (grande et al., 2015) indigenous voices and stories, as well as indigenous histories and indigenous perspectives on histories, as a response to colonial history and colonial violence. remembrance: looking at one’s community history, remembering indigenous knowledges, and maintaining indigenous philosophies. reclamation: taking back spaces, places, and perspectives; reconnecting. regeneration: moving forward as contemporary peoples, based on traditional values. paired with remembering the history of colonialism and recognizing its effects, the authors propose a way to answer and resist the colonial legacy through indigenous stories. storytelling of ancestral and contemporary histories in the schooling process (chi’xapkaid, 2005). indigenous communitybased pedagogy (ball, 2007; garcía, lozano, olivera, & ruiz, 2004; mccarthy & lee, 2014; urrieta, 2013) education that respects indigenous sovereignty, and is accountable to indigenous communities (mccarthy & lee, 2014). the knowledges include daily, complex, relational, and reciprocal relationships in family and community life (urrieta, 2013), and are transmitted in those community and family settings (garcía et al., 2004). cultural sustainability and revitalization (including language revitalization) (mccarthy & lee, 2014). nation and community building. sustaining the communal wisdom and good life (garcía et al., 2004). understanding and forging belonging, responsibility, and integration into family and community life (urrieta, 2013). community-based education partnerships between first nations and postsecondary institutions (ball, 2007). learning by intent community participation (urrieta, 2013). learning communities and learning through community experiences (garcía et al., 2004). community-based accountability (mccarthy & lee, 2014). place-based and landbased pedagogy (henry, 2014; irlbacher-fox, 2014; wildcat et al., 2014) the transmission of knowledge about the forms of governance, ethics, and philosophies that arise from relationships on the land (wildcat et al., 2014). reinserting people into relationships with and on the land, within frameworks of indigenous intelligence, as a mode of education (wildcat et al., 2014). reinhabitation and decolonization (henry, 2014). privilege refusal and reversal (irlbacher-fox, 2014). direct contestation to settler colonialism and resurgence of indigenous life and indigenous claims to land (wildcat et al., 2014). learn forgotten or unheard aboriginal, immigrant, and settler histories in their neighbourhood, through arts-based approaches and engagement with specific communities or organizations (henry, 2014). in indigenous communities and on indigenous land, positioning nonindigenous individuals as students of, and dependent on, indigenous peoples, which reverses the usual power dynamics (irlbacher-fox, 2014). the few models presented here are just some examples of indigenous approaches to education, going from critical stances resisting assimilation and colonization, to remembering, reclaiming, and regenerating indigenous cultures, languages, knowledges, and sovereignty, to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 106 rebuilding indigenous communities and relationships to the land. we could add to these models some key shared features of indigenous knowledges, including the use of story as a valuable medium; the importance of place and connection to local lands and land wisdom, learning about and respecting local protocols, the integral role of elders as knowledge holders, valuing relationality, and the practice of teaching through indigenous embodiment (kovach et al., 2015, pp. 35–37). the underlying goal, however, when following the riv framework, is to align with indigenous peoples’ experiences of, and responses to, colonial violence. to this end, it is possible to analyze the three models presented in table 2, and the key features of indigenous knowledges, in relation to three important decolonizing projects of the indigenous academy. first, indigenous programs and institutions of higher education present a restorying of national histories, and thus they challenge mainstream society’s assumptions. they uncover western traditions of civilization and colonization, presenting alternative narratives to the history of the west and of sciences currently taught in school, and they create space for indigenous history and knowledges, which are so often ignored. second, by focusing on indigenous communities — their cultural and intellectual productions, their life projects, their current experiences, and their self-determination — the indigenous academy, as “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion”, is a manifestation of native “survivance” (vizenor, 2008, p. 1). finally, by reestablishing the relationship with the land through place and land-based pedagogy, the indigenous academy participates in indigenous resurgence (alfred & corntassel, 2005) as a way of “reconnecting with homelands, cultures, and communities” (corntassel, 2012, p. 97). in order to align with indigenous peoples’ responses to ongoing colonial violence, mainstream academia must find ways to support these three decolonizing projects. establishing solidarity with these processes in the classrooms may become very complex once we acknowledge the “incommensurability” of “settler and indigenous sovereignty and futurity” (tuck & yang, 2012, p. 35), but ideas of differences, uncommonality, and difficult contact need to exist, rather than ideas of inclusion, integration, and assimilation, if we are going to change the relationship between indigenous peoples and settler society. furthermore, the alignment with these decolonizing projects should be done in a way that questions the power relationships that exist between mainstream academia and indigenous peoples. thus, we should ask ourselves how safe indigenous students, faculty members, and staff feel in our classrooms and institutions at large, and how their cultural location, values, and preferences are taken into account in these places (ball, 2008). in that sense, cultural safety calls for a transformative change in the systems of education, health, justice, and so on that begins with the recognition of the colonial violence and its continuous impacts today: “ultimately, cultural safety demands an examination of indigenous peoples’ power in society as a whole … it upholds the political ideas of selfdetermination and decolonization (national aboriginal health organization, 2006)” (yeung, 2016, p. 4). in the next section, we offer more concrete examples of “how to get better at it”, by presenting some of the key principles that we apply in our classrooms in order to create a safe space. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 107 how the riv framework can be applied in the classroom in an effort to address the application of the riv’s four core principles to the teaching of colonial history, each author will describe her efforts to teach colonial histories that centre indigenous pedagogies and knowledges. both are educators with experience teaching indigenous histories, theories, and contemporary social issues. elizabeth is of métis and mennonite (settler) ancestry from st. françois-xavier, manitoba, on treaty 1 territory, and she is a professor in the applied human sciences department of concordia university, where she has taught a variety of courses, including a special topics course on indigenous perspectives across the disciplines. she is also currently in a two-and-a-half year mandate as special advisor to the provost on indigenous directions. marie-ève is of french canadian (settler) ancestry and was born and raised on haudenosaunee territory, in montreal (in mohawk, tiohtià:ke); she is a phd candidate in the sociology and anthropology department of concordia university, where she is teaching the “first peoples of north america” anthropology course. we both feel that our pedagogies and the content of our courses align with the riv core principles of revealing truths, clarifying responsibility, revealing the resistance, and aligning with the survivors. revealing truths elizabeth: at a recent event an educator approached me after a talk i had given and said that she was teaching a new course on “indigenous revitalization”, but that she was having difficulty because her students had no idea why indigenous peoples needed “revitalizing”. since the release of the trc final report in particular, i have heard increasing criticism, both among indigenous communities and settlers, about the dangers of focusing only on stories of victimization and colonization. i wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment; however, any understanding of our contemporary realities needs to be based on a solid understanding of all that has come before us. taking indigenous ways of knowing and making it a central part of any course will certainly add value regardless of whether or not students have the ability to put this information into context. however, providing a balanced understanding of indigenous knowledges, and the many ways these have been targeted by colonial projects will provide a more complete and certainly a more socially just framework for analysis. there are many ways to introduce students to canada’s assimilationist strategies, but indigenous pedagogies call for holistic and embodied ways of learning these histories. on several occasions i have invited facilitators of the “blanket exercise” by kairos3 to take students through this hour-long experiential activity. the activity takes students through 500 years of colonial history while they role-play being part of indigenous communities that see their land (blankets) shrink before their eyes and see children removed from their arms. they then hear about some of the current impacts and ways that indigenous peoples have resisted ongoing incursions onto their lands and into their lives. for many students, particularly in the context of eastern quebec 3 https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/ https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 108 university classes, this is their first exposure to these truths about canada’s treatment of indigenous peoples. the facilitators allow time for a talking circle at the end of the activity in order to give students a chance to process the reactions they may experience, including guilt, shame, anger, and sadness. most, if not all, students have written about the profound impact that this activity has had in leading them to think differently about the myth of canada as a just nation. they also write about their new understanding of their own role in helping to reveal these truths to their own friends and family members, now that they have received this education. another way of including first person accounts of colonial projects is to use films that allow students to hear from indigenous survivors of residential schools. the nfb film “we were children”4 provides emotionally charged accounts of the realities of being taken from one’s family, the explicit attempts made by the government and church employees to eradicate indigenous cultures, and the ongoing intergenerational impacts of these abuses. the nfb provides debriefing materials that educators can use to help students work through their feelings after viewing the film. other activities that help them process these topics are reflective writing and talking to other students who are experiencing similar emotions. when educators are learning this information for the first time along with their students, it may be threatening to include these kinds of activities. there may need to be greater efforts to make activities available specifically for faculty development. alternatively, regan (2010) suggests approaching learning about colonial histories and indigenous knowledges with great humility. approaching teaching as a “co-learner” is consistent both with indigenous pedagogies and collaborative learning approaches (barkley, cross, & major, 2014; kanu, 2006). marie-ève: this idea of humility is fundamental, and in the classroom, i try to set an example out of my own position and experience. i begin my course by presenting how i am a settler in mohawk territory, a fact that i was unaware of for most of my life. while i am careful to situate that ignorance is not innocence, i do encourage my students to reflect on their own positionality, to consider from where they have come to “knowledge”, and to begin seeing some of the gaps that might have existed in their education. furthermore, i tend to structure my course so that the first part of the semester is dedicated to understanding the colonial context in which anthropology was developed as a discipline, and how it still plays a role as an “expert knowledge” in the actual colonial system. we question our own categories of knowledge during that first part of the course, and we also discuss how these categories often obscure or erase indigenous knowledges, histories, and experiences. i include in these discussions works and videos on indigenous literary forms, scientific knowledges, and architecture and urbanism, and on how colonial processes destroyed, marginalized, and continue to invisibilize these knowledges. in the second part of the course, we engage with current issues for indigenous peoples such as land, education, identity, nationhood, and self-determination. for each of these issues, i include 4 https://www.nfb.ca/film/we_were_children/trailer/we_were_children_trailer/ https://www.nfb.ca/film/we_were_children/trailer/we_were_children_trailer/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 109 texts and activities that take into account the colonial legacy and ongoing violence, alongside texts and activities that help with thinking critically about decolonization, and that present indigenous proposals and knowledges around these issues. understanding the doctrine of discovery as a colonial tool and the basis for the legitimacy of the canadian state is a priority in my class. the blanket exercise that elizabeth mentions will be part of my course for the first time this semester, replacing my lecture on the issue of land. the course includes films and testimonies of residential schools survivors on the issue of education, as elizabeth suggests, as well as a “field trip” to the kanien’kehá:ka onkwawén:na raotitióhkwa language and cultural center in kahnawake5, who agreed to host my class. a presentation by a community member situated the centre’s programs, including its efforts in language revitalization, in the context of the community’s history. this presentation, together with the exhibits in the centre’s museum, had a great impact on the students. the exhibits covered colonial history up to the present, with highlights on the st. lawrence seaway’s impact on the community, and on the “oka crisis” events. for many students, it was the first time they had visited an indigenous community in a conscious way, and the testimony and history they heard that day made concrete many of the issues we had talked about in class. clarifying responsibility elizabeth: as students move through different phases of learning about their own relationship to oppression in society, there are some activities that can get them to consider their own level of privilege. the exercise “unpacking the invisible backpack” by peggy mcintosh (1989) is one such activity that can be adapted for use among diverse groups of students. the activity has several variations, ranging from stepping forward or back for each privilege the students have experienced, to a more private version where the students individually keep track of their own level of privilege. once again, it is important to allow everyone to debrief after this activity, as some of the statements deal with intergenerational traumas or touch on topics that students may never have thought of as having a direct impact on their lives. when students begin to understand their own privilege, they become better able to take responsibility. responsibility does not mean that the students take the blame for canada’s colonial legacy, but rather that they are grounded in the reality that there are ongoing ways that colonization is acting in the lives of indigenous people, that they have the responsibility to learn about these histories, and that they have the responsibility not to commit the same mistakes as past generations in whatever profession they follow. additionally, responsibility means that if they want to be useful as an “ally” they must build real relationships with indigenous people and commit to whatever actions they choose to take with great care and humility. marie-ève: while i also bring into the classroom the idea of individual privilege in relation to the society’s structure, and especially in terms of problematizing settlers’ privileges (irlbacher-fox, 2014), i address them in parallel with a “western privilege” or the construction of 5 http://www.korkahnawake.org/ http://www.korkahnawake.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 110 a “western intellectual tradition” (see, e.g., williams, 2012a) and its participation in the racial and colonial privilege, or, as kuokkanen calls it, “the white supremacy of intellectual conventions that manifest themselves as discriminatory practices and discourses, both of which have real-life effects” (kuokkanen, 2007, p. 65). battiste (2013) also talked of a displacement from biological racism to cognitive racism. this is the kind of racism that we address in the classroom when i ask my students to reflect on the theoretical perspectives they privilege as “valid knowledge”. we look at different maps to see the direct impacts of anthropological theorization regarding indigenous peoples (through “cultural areas”, “linguistic families”, etc.) on their representations, when compared to indigenous maps of their own nations and territories. i also use what i call an epistemological exercise for students to reflect on “how they know what they know”. i present a closed box to the class and ask them how would they proceed to know what is in the box from where they are sitting, including possibly creating tools, and so on. then we debrief on what their answer means in terms of their ontological and epistemological assumptions, and we think about privileged epistemologies and knowledges in our institution. just as elizabeth mentions, responsibility does not entail blaming students for privileging western ways of knowing, and quite often ignoring indigenous ways of knowing, but instead requires us to understand where each of us stands, and assume this position together with the choice to critically analyze the privilege of western knowledge and to challenge this privilege by entering in conversation with indigenous knowledges. similarly, while we cover extensively the relation of anthropology to colonialism, both in the history of the discipline and in its current role in our society, the idea is not to discard anthropology or blame students for engaging in that discipline, but, rather, to raise awareness of some of the problems and critiques of the discipline. furthermore, by engaging with indigenous anthropologists such as charles menzies, kim tallbear, and audra simpson, amongst others, the critical stance is balanced with the hope of doing anthropology differently. revealing resistance elizabeth: teaching about resistance means moving away from focusing on indigenous peoples in the role of victims to highlighting the multiple acts of resistance that are happening across the globe. once learners have a solid understanding of the colonial mentality, they will be ready to understand both the terminology and the necessity of concepts such as cultural revitalization, self-determination, and self-governance. these should not merely be taught as reactions to colonization, but rather as ever-present entities that have seen ruptures, but continue to live on and flourish (vizenor, 2008). this also means highlighting indigenous ways of learning, which include a wide range of “nontraditional” or rather, non-western, practices. every semester my students take part in a number of these activities, including field trips, guest speakers, and using stories as learning tools, along with activities that incorporate multiple learning styles (kanu, pg. 7). one field trip to a local community consisted of a presentation by a community-run organization that offered a wide range international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 111 of activities and health and healing opportunities to their constituents. the presentation highlighted the ways that the community has taken control of their own well-being, resisting government limitations by being creative and assertive in their attainment of funds, and by being inclusive of diverse needs within the community by offering both western and indigenous opportunities for healing and for maintaining mental health. we have also visited an urban indigenous social enterprise, as well as had guest speakers who are advocates for ethical and community-based collaborations with local indigenous communities. finally, using indigenous authors and films ensures that any interpretations or analyses are launched from the lived experiences of indigenous peoples and will stay away from outsideror “victimization”-focused accounts of one-sided abuse by the government. marie-ève: the use of indigenous authors and films is indeed fundamental in my class too. the first time i taught the class, the format was a twice-weekly hour-and-a-half meeting. i had consequently structured my class so that we would look at issues from three perspectives. the first meeting, we would look at either the colonial legacy or western concepts and knowledges, often from a critical standpoint. at the second meeting, we would look at indigenous perspectives and knowledges on the same issues. this was a great way to balance the colonial violence of the first meeting, and not perpetuate it by maintaining indigenous peoples as victims, but rather, show how different indigenous nations, practitioners, and intellectuals had various strategies to resist the colonial violence, and different solutions to problems of our society. the next time i taught the course, it had been reorganized as a three-hour weekly meeting. given that many students complained that i was assigning too many readings, i had to change the format, but we still are looking at one perspective on colonial legacy and ongoing violence, one decolonization perspective (that can be from an indigenous author, but mainly, a critical stance), and one indigenous perspective on the subject, meaning one proposal that is rooted in an indigenous intellectual tradition (not necessarily a critical stance). while less detailed and varied, this solution still allows for the presentation of indigenous resistance and survivance. i also end my course with looking at indigenous national and international activism, diplomacy, and resistance through history, from tecumseh’s movement to idle no more, going through the interventions of indigenous peoples at the united nations and in the national politics of various countries. aligning with the “victim” and increasing cultural safety elizabeth: teaching difficult material requires that educators think carefully about how they will handle “microaggressions” and racist or inadvertently ignorant comments. thinking carefully about setting up cultural safety in the classroom will ultimately make a difference in whether indigenous students either learn from or feel further stigmatized by learning about canada’s abusive relationship with indigenous nations (cote-meek, 2013). at the beginning of the semester, i make it clear that students come into the classroom with very different levels of knowledge about indigenous issues and peoples. students with a low level of knowledge or lived experience are encouraged to listen much more than they speak and to do their own self-learning international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 112 by using at least three sources to try to find the “answer” to their query before asking me (the “three before me” rule). i also make it clear that i will address comments that i interpret as microaggressions, racist, or ignorant, and encourage students to do the same, as long as we do so respectfully (battiste, 2013; barkley et al., 2014). students are also asked to group themselves by their level of knowledge or lived experience and encouraged to work in groups where they feel most comfortable. for many indigenous students and others who have spent a lot of time listening and learning, this will keep them from always having to backtrack and answer basic questions that newer learners might be struggling with. for newer learners, this gives them the space to gain a better understanding, without worrying about inadvertently insulting others. this model does not, however, mean that these students will not have to take some risks. groups are expected to present their ideas to the larger class at various intervals and may have to have some of their interpretations or comments addressed by myself or other members of the class. marie-ève: i am learning a lot from elizabeth’s take on cultural safety in the classroom, and this year i adopted her idea of forming groups by level of knowledge and experiences. in regard to aligning with the survivors, i have used some tools that i thought were useful in terms of creating empathy in non-indigenous learners. pringle and featherstone’s (1986) short film babakiueria presents an australian aboriginal satire of colonialism, inverting the roles of white and aboriginal societies in australia with an aboriginal anthropologist commenting on western ways of living. by reversing the mirror, this film seems to have a great impact on students. similarly, deloria’s (1969) anthropologists and other friends text helps students in anthropology understand the indigenous perspective on anthropological research. finally, making space to critically discuss colonialism, while centring the class on indigenous resistance to it and indigenous knowledges and histories from their own perspectives, has also created space for indigenous students to be proud of their experiences and cultures. i also encountered this in the journals of other students, non-indigenous but from non-western backgrounds, who felt they also had space to engage with their own legacy and its relation to colonialism. conclusion when beginning this article, we thought it would be interesting and useful to try applying the riv framework to the broader systemic and societal violence of historical and ongoing colonialism in canada. with the recommendations of the trc in mind, we thought that the riv framework could be useful in establishing principles for educators to follow when teaching colonial histories and addressing colonial violence in their classrooms. along the way, we also became more conscious that the principles of the riv framework had quite often already put forward by indigenous academics, intellectuals, and educators. thus, we decided to first establish a dialogue between the riv framework and indigenous and decolonizing pedagogies and knowledges. the outcome is a set of models that we can follow, as educators, to address colonial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 113 histories while also recognizing indigenous resistance to this violence and aligning our practices with indigenous survivance. perhaps because of our engagement in, and commitment to, indigenous pedagogies and knowledges, we have both come to the realization while writing this article that our teachings have been aligned with the core principles of the riv framework. we are sure that many other educators, especially indigenous educators and non-indigenous allies, might already practice these core principles. however, this explicit reflection on our pedagogy in relation to the riv framework might help other teachers and educators to improve their teaching of colonial histories by following the four core principles of truth-telling, taking responsibility, acknowledging and learning from indigenous resistance, and aligning with indigenous survivors. we hope that our concrete examples, taken from our respective teaching experiences, will serve as stepping stones for colleagues who might want to undertake the task of addressing colonial histories in their classrooms. this model may also help to recontextualize discussions of indigenizing the academy by providing a clear framework for ethically moving forward. the problems with the discourse of reconciliation have been clearly highlighted here, particularly in regard to the last two core points — acknowledging and learning from resistance, and aligning with survivors — and some solutions have been offered. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 95–118 114 references alfred, t., & corntassel, j. 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(2016). conceptualizing cultural safety: definitions and applications of safety in health care for indigenous mothers in canada. journal for social thought, 1(1), 1–13. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818638 the golden triangle of happiness: essential resources for a happy family robert a. cummins abstract: it is normal for people to feel positive about the quality of their lives, despite the presence of challenges. of special interest here are the challenges of caring for a child or a disabled family member. how do the adults living within such families maintain a positive self-view? answering this question requires an understanding of subjective well-being as it applies to each individual family member and of the management system that strives to keep each person feeling positive. this paper describes various psychological components of this homeostatic management system, together with a consideration of the most useful resources to support homeostasis. key resources have been identified by using the personal wellbeing index, a seven-item scale measuring subjective well-being (mood happiness). over many studies, researchers have found considerable agreement that three kinds of resources — “the golden triangle” — are consistently more relevant to subjective well-being than the others. these are feelings of satisfaction with income, relationships, and life purpose. the implications for interventions that offer support to families in need are discussed. keywords: quality of life, family quality of life, measurement, well-being acknowledgement: this work was supported by the national research foundation of korea grant funded by the korean government (nrf2013s1a3a2054622). robert a. cummins ph.d is emeritus professor, office of faculty of health, melbourne burwood campus, deakin university, australia. email: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 13 an omnibus definition of “family” is “a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head” (merriam-webster, 2017). in this context, the well-being of a family is both a well-being collective, with contributions by each family member, and a microcosm of community well-being as measured by social indicators (kee, lee, & kim, 2017). this essay concerns the well-being of individuals as it contributes to family life quality. the scientific understanding of human life quality is now represented by a massive research literature. as might be expected from such a vast repository, many different interpretations have been published. however, some issues represent common ground among researchers, and the most fundamental of these is the distinction between objective and subjective life quality (andrews & withey, 1976; campbell, converse, & rodgers, 1976; cummins, 1998a). objective life quality concerns the tangible world we experience in common with other people. the component parts are, for example, how much money people have, the size of their friendship networks, and whether they are productive members of their communities. this dimension can be measured in ways that can be verified by other people; for example, by observing how many friends the family member has. the second dimension is subjective, and therefore private. it comprises the feelings that can only be experienced by each individual. examples are the level of satisfaction someone has with their earnings, their friends, and the work they do each day. this dimension is the primary target of this essay; it is commonly referred to in the scientific literature as subjective well-being (swb). it seems intuitive that these two dimensions should be simply related to one another such that, for example, people who are wealthy and healthy will have a high level of swb. this is not so, however. an authoritative review within the disability literature (schalock et al., 2002) describes the strength of the relationship as only “modest” (p. 458). finding an explanation for this counterintuitive result requires an understanding of the science underpinning swb. such an understanding is provided by the theory of subjective well-being homeostasis management system. this system has been described in detail elsewhere (cummins, 2016, 2017) and will now be summarized. understanding subjective well-being in common scientific usage, the term “subjective well-being” is used synonymously with “happiness” and “life satisfaction” (e.g., kozma, stone, & stones, 2000). all three terms refer to a single construct and, when measured as mood through self-report, all three are highly correlated (anglim, weinberg, & cummins, 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 14 the most common form of swb measurement is by means of semi-abstract questions of “satisfaction”, most commonly the single question, “how satisfied are you with your life as a whole?” (campbell et al., 1976, p. 33), termed global life satisfaction (gls). swb can also be measured using multi-item scales. the most popular of these is the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985), which comprises five items, each an assertion regarding satisfaction with “life as a whole”. this scale construction allows the production of a single average measure that is more reliable than any single item used alone, and which correlates highly with gls (e.g., r = .66; van beuningen, 2012). the second multi-item scale is the seven-item personal wellbeing index (pwi; international wellbeing group, 2013). the pwi also correlates highly with gls (e.g., r = .60; casas, gonzález, figuer, & malo, 2009) and very highly with the swls (e.g., r = .79; renn et al., 2009). the pwi also has a parallel version for adolescents (cummins & lau, 2005b) and another for people with an intellectual or cognitive disability (cummins & lau, 2005a). using any of these measures to track swb over time yields a single, very predictable, result. the average level of swb is very stable. swb is normally stable the remarkable stability of measured happiness was noted over 80-years ago, when hartmann (1934) reported a 1-month test–retest reliability of .70. this result has since been verified many times, using various measurement techniques, and has both practical and theoretical importance. a practical application of this stability has been to generate normative ranges for swb using the mean and standard deviation (see the pwi manuals). normative ranges may be calculated both for populations, by using multiple survey mean scores as data, and also for individuals (for australian norms see cummins et al., 2013, tables a 2.20/21). the first published normative estimation of swb used population mean scores from several western countries. data were standardized by a formula that transforms response-scale scores into percentage-point scores, denoting responses from no satisfaction (0 points) to complete satisfaction (100 points; cummins, 1995). it was found that the population grand mean was 75 points, with a standard deviation of just 2.5. thus, within the range 70 to 80 points, there is a 95% probability of including any western population mean score. since that time the normative range for swb has been refined in two main ways. first, the inclusion of non-western population mean scores expanded the normal range downward to 60 to 80 points (cummins, 1998b). the main reason for this change is the inclusion of countries with low economic status. however, a second reason for the new lower bound is cultural response bias (lai, cummins, & lau, 2013; lau, cummins, & mcpherson, 2005). this is a systematic cultural influence, causing people to provide either higher or lower responses to questions of life satisfaction. for example, due to the confucian cultural influence, east asian populations report lower swb than do western samples, generally by about 10 percentage points (for a review, see chen & davey, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 15 the second way the normative range for swb has been refined is to make it relevant for individual people. based on the responses from about 60,000 australians, the population mean is 75 points with a standard deviation of 12.5. the normative range (2 standard deviations around the mean) for individuals is thus 50 to 100 points. in other words, most people feel positive about their lives. the practical usefulness of normative ranges is to allow a determination of whether the mean scores of a population group, or the scores of an individual, are normal (within-range) or pathological. such determination has usefulness for policy, in allowing the identification of population subgroups with high levels of pathological functioning (tomyn, weinberg, & cummins, 2015). it also has high relevance for researchers studying the properties of swb because samples high in pathology (below 50 points) exhibit abnormal psychometric characteristics (richardson, fuller-tyszkiewicz, tomyn, & cummins, 2015). while these normative standards have been calculated using general population data, a crucial understanding is that they apply to everyone, including people with a disability (cummins, lau, davey, & mcgillivray, 2010). the reason for this universality is that the level of swb for each person is genetically managed around a set-point (capic, li, & cummins, 2018; cummins, li, wooden, & stokes, 2014). thus, each person’s natural level of swb is set genetically and does not change due to disability. set-points and homeostasis within physiology, it has been understood for over 80 years (cannon, 1932) that body temperature and other biological variables that must be kept at reasonably constant levels are each managed by a homeostatic system. in contemporary terms, and consistent with the authoritative description by mcewen and wingfield (2003), homeostasis can be defined as the management of an essential variable to a set-point representing an optimal level of the variable for the normal physiological operation of each individual. each homeostatic system manages its own dependent variable to a level dictated by a genetic set-point. for core body temperature this set-point is about 37 °c. when forces external to the homeostatic system cause movement of the variable’s level away from its set-point, the system generates counteractive measures designed to return the variable back to its optimal setpoint level. for example, the sensation of feeling cold causes changes in both blood distribution and behavior, for the purpose of retaining more body heat. analogous homeostatic devices have been described that manage the level of swb back to its set-point (see cummins, 2016; cummins, 2017). there has been much controversy over the existence of set-points for swb. while it has long been suggested that swb levels have a strong genetic basis (tellegen et al., 1988), the evidence that such set-points exist has been elusive. however, this has recently changed, with the first demonstration of swb set-points, and the finding that they have a normal distribution international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 16 within the range of about 70 to 90 points on the 0 to 100 point scale (cummins et al., 2014). this has recently been confirmed using a different data set (capic, li, & cummins, 2017). thus, the key component for understanding swb homeostasis is now in place. the second essential component of homeostasis is the system that maintains swb around its set-point for each person. the system recognizes the optimum level of the managed variable, as determined by its set-point, and seeks to return it to that level if displaced. in order to understand this system a deeper understanding of swb is required. the character of swb swb can be described as being normally positive and stable, and mainly comprising mood. the positivity and stability characteristics have already been described. understanding mood requires further explanation. when most authors define swb, they cite classic publications such as andrews and withey (1976) and diener (1984). these support the statement that swb comprises a mix of high positive affect, low negative affect, and cognition in the form of a global, personal life assessment. this view requires revision. as first demonstrated by davern, cummins, and stokes (2007) and confirmed using factor analysis and structural equation modelling (blore, stokes, mellor, firth, & cummins, 2011; longo, 2015; tomyn & cummins, 2011a), the composition of swb is dominated by mood. it is this mood, named homeostatically protected mood (hpmood; cummins, 2010), that homeostasis is maintaining at a steady level around its set-point. hpmood provides each person with a constant, stable, gentle, background level of affective positivity and alertness. this constant mood can be described as a general feeling of contentment, but also comprises the affects happy and alert. homeostasis is responsible for maintaining hpmood at a level that approximates its set-point for each individual person. this does not mean, however, that swb is stable. while it is postulated that hpmood is indeed stable, as dictated by its set-point in each individual, measured swb shows considerable variation. in a recent review of longitudinal state–trait model analyses, yap, anusic, and lucas (2014) estimated that about a third of the measured variance in life satisfaction is stable even over very long time periods, another third changes slowly over time, and the remaining third is occasion-specific. while these proportions require substantiation, the general model is a plausible initial estimate. certainly there is substantial variation in the levels of measured swb, on a moment-to-moment basis, due to strong emotions causing homeostatic failure. thus, the measured level of stability is consistent with a homeostatic system with limited capacity to prevent acute change, but with a substantial capacity to bring swb back to set-point on a chronic basis. as evidence of this homeostatic capacity, within normal population samples only a very small proportion of australian people lie below the scale mid-point. using data from over 60,000 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 17 people gathered over 13 years by the australian unity wellbeing index surveys (cummins et al., 2013), only around 4% of scores lie below 50 points. it is thus normal for people to feel good about themselves whether they have a disability or not (cummins, mccabe, romeo, reid, & waters, 1997). practical implications the idea of swb homeostasis places great emphasis on how people feel about themselves and, indeed, many authors have proposed that this is the most important aspect of life quality (e.g., brown, 1999; schalock, 1997). clearly, however, the objective side of life is also relevant. if objective life circumstances are poor, normal bodily and mental functioning will be compromised. moreover, if such conditions are severe enough to cause distress, swb homeostasis is likely to be defeated. when this occurs, people lose their normal levels of positivity and may become depressed (cummins, 2010). understanding the relationship between the objective and subjective aspects of life quality is therefore crucial for professionals concerned with facilitating homeostatic resources, such as money, especially in the context of disability services. in discussing this relationship, a useful starting point is to emphasize that life circumstances, including disability, do not change set-points for swb. this is because the level of each individual’s set-point is under genetic control. nevertheless, adverse life circumstances and disability do threaten the maintenance of normal levels of measured swb because they make demands on the available resources. for example, it is likely that the disability will cause a need for additional financial resources to purchase prostheses or pay for help. the disability may also add to the difficulty of maintaining an intimate relationship and of holding a fulfilling job. factors like these add an element of stress that is not as likely to be experienced by someone without such a condition. stress is also cumulative (meile & haese, 1969), so the addition of disability to a normal life is likely to result in a higher level of stress than would otherwise be experienced. note, however, that the experience of higher stress reflects a deficient level of the named resources. if someone with a disability has sufficient objective resources to meet their needs, then their level of swb, ceteris paribus, will be no different from someone without a disability. this description of the operation and defeat of homeostasis provides the means for understanding the relationship between objective resources and swb. this understanding can be summarized as follows: 1. for people operating within their normal set-pointrange, there is never a simple linear relationship between change in their objective circumstances and their level of swb. providing that homeostasis remains functional, any increase or decrease in the objective resource will be rapidly adapted to by homeostatic processes. under such conditions, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 18 chronic level of swb remains close to set-point. this mainly accounts for the commonly observed low-level relationships between objective variables and swb. 2. if the change in objective circumstances is strong enough to defeat homeostatic control, then swb will come under the control of the emotion generated by the event, and will rise or fall beyond the set-point. long-term homeostatic processes, such as adaptation (helson, 1964), are then activated. these are normally powerful enough to return swb close to its set-point over a period of time. 3. for people who remain in homeostatic defeat because the source of their distress is chronic and uncontrollable, their swb will remain below its set-point. such people are at high risk of depression (cummins, 2010). the implications of all this for the allocation of resources is considerable. essentially, if someone is operating within their normal range, the provision of additional resources will not cause a discernible rise in their level of swb. on the other hand, providing such resources to people in homeostatic defeat will normally act to raise swb into the set-point-ranges (see, e.g., tomyn et al., 2015). thus, from this perspective, the baseline swb level of an individual or a group is important information for administrators charged with public resource allocation. measuring subjective wellbeing the simplest measure of swb involves a single question concerning global life satisfaction. devised by andrews and withey (1976), it asks, “how do you feel about your life as a whole?” (p. 66). responses are measured using an end-defined, numerical response scale (jones & thurstone, 1955) anchored by no satisfaction (0) and complete satisfaction (10). while gls is considered a sensitive and reliable measure of swb, it has the psychometric limitation of being a single item. a solution to this limitation is to measure swb by a set of items that, together, represent gls (see cummins & weinberg, 2015 for an expanded discussion). there are two such scales. the first is the satisfaction with life scale1 (diener et al., 1985), which is the scale most widely used to measure swb. in june 2017, google estimated that it had been cited over 17,000 times. unfortunately, however, an authoritative review of this scale by van beuningen, 2012 found that people with low and intermediate levels of education and those who were not native english speakers had a tendency to misinterpret some items. van beuningen concluded that the wording of the swls may be too complex for use with general population samples. this also makes it unsuitable for use by adolescents and people with an intellectual or cognitive disability. 1 a copy of this brief five-item scale may be obtained from http://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/swls.html. http://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/swls.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 19 the second scale constructed to represent gls is the personal wellbeing index2 (international wellbeing group, 2013). the pwi comprises seven items of satisfaction: standard of living, health, achieving in life, relationships, safety, connection to community, and future security. each item is asked in a semi-abstract format, such as, “how satisfied are you with your relationships?”, with no further specification as to how the target (here “relationships”) should be considered. it is proposed that these seven domains are sufficiently universally relevant, in sharing unique variance with gls, to form a valid comparative scale for any group of people (cummins, 1996). when tested empirically, however, the extent of domain contribution to gls is variable (cummins, 2013; international wellbeing group, 2013). fortunately, this only minimally detracts from the validity of the scale. due to its semi-abstract, personal format, each domain is dominated by its content of homeostatically protected mood (hpmood), with the added variance of each target word (e.g., relationships) making only a very small contribution to the prediction of gls variance. thus, despite variable domain cofntributions to gls, the pwi provides a valid estimate of swb due to all of the domains having a common, dominant content of hpmood. in other terms the pwi is psychometrically robust as: (a) the seven items all intercorrelate strongly and almost inevitably form a single factor; (b) the seven target items are all familiar to adults generally; thus, people find all of the domains relevant to their lives; (c) the scale has a parallel version for people with an intellectual or cognitive disability (pwi-id) and another for school-age adolescents (pwi-sc). the golden triangle domains a further characteristic of the pwi is that, when regressing the seven domains against gls, three of the domains — money, relationships, and achieving — are more predictable contributors of unique variance than the other four. these “golden” domains form the “golden triangle”. money: money has the power to protect swb through its capacity as a flexible resource to assist homeostasis (cummins, 2000). having sufficient money allows people to minimize the unwanted challenges that accompany daily life. wealthy people pay others to perform tasks they do not wish to do themselves. because of this, swb rises, from low income to high income, following an asymptotic curve. this power of money is particularly evident for people who are disabled. such people are more likely to encounter discrimination, to be unemployed, and to have ill health and dependence on carers. for these people, therefore, the importance of money to support homeostasis is magnified. 2 all versions of the pwi are available from http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures. http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 20 however, even for people with special needs, more money does not necessarily equate to higher swb. people who are rich experience rapid adaptation to high living standards, so living in a mansion with servants feels luxurious in the short term, but over time it will just feel “normal”. moreover, an increase in wealth cannot shift the set-point to create a perpetually happier person. no matter how rich someone becomes, once their level of income has saturated the wealth-dependent buffering capacity of the homeostatic system, additional wealth will not raise swb further. relationships: the second golden domain encompasses interpersonal relationships involving the mutual sharing of intimacies and support. almost universally, the research literature attests to the power of such relationships to moderate the influence of stressors on swb (sarason, sarason, & pierce, 1990). while such positive relationships are a natural component of family life, within other living environments they are not so predictable. the residents of share-homes, for example, evidence high heterogeneity in this resource. yet their satisfaction with social relationships is strongly associated with happiness (chadsey & beyer, 2001), self-esteem, and confidence (srivastava, 2001). this is why, in institutional settings, facilitating meaningful social relationships is a primary task for responsible staff. aspects of the living environment can be engineered to facilitate friendship formation and maintenance (see, e.g., forrester-jones, 2001). however, the most important facilitating agent is a positive attitude amongst staff towards relationship formation among the people in their care. this is especially crucial for those people with a disability who have limited mobility and difficulty interacting with other people. the positive power of emotionally intimate relationships is most evident when they are absent. when this homeostatic resource is insufficient for people’s needs they feel lonely and excluded. the dreadful consequence is a high susceptibility to depression. achieving in life: the process of active engagement, providing purpose in life, is the third golden domain (trope, 1986). in their review, mcknight and kashdan (2009) conceive purpose in life to be “a cognitive process that defines life goals and provides personal meaning” (p. 242). a voluminous literature attests to the fact that when people are deprived of this homeostatic buffer through, for example, losing an active role in their family group or becoming unemployed (schaffer, 1953), their swb is severely threatened (clark, diener, georgellis, & lucas, 2008). people with a disability are at high risk of failing to secure this buffer, especially if they experience institutional care. when people live in an institution or group home, the simplest and most cost-efficient method of care is for staff to produce routines by conducting all necessary operational procedures. this, however, deprives the residents of the opportunity to contribute to the collective, through which they could gain a sense of purpose and responsibility. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 21 extracurricular, organized activities, are a weak substitute because they lack self-direction. the result of these institutional practices is to reduce residents’ access to this crucial golden domain. practical recommendations not all life domains are equal in their capacity to support swb homeostasis. three preeminent resources of money, relationship intimacy, and life purpose together form the golden triangle. each of these domains has an especially strong ability to support swb homeostasis. unfortunately, adequate levels of these three domains are also the most difficult resources to ensure at the general population level. the difficulty is exacerbated for people with a disability and for families with children. swb and families an authoritative definition of family quality of life (qol; brown & brown, 2014) includes the statement, “family quality of life is concerned with the degree to which individuals experience their own quality of life within the family context” (p. 2195). thus, families can be considered a collection of individuals, each of whom has two sources of influence determining their personal level of swb. one is the level of their set-point, genetically set, and the other is experience of life, which includes the family environment. consider first each family member’s set-point. a recent review (røysamb, nes, & vittersø, 2014) concludes that as much as 80% of the stable level of swb is attributable to genes (p. 19). thus, since the level of each set-point is under genetic determination, it might be expected that the set-point levels of the parents would be a good predictor of the set-point levels of their children. however, this is not so. the reason has been explained by lykken and csikszentmihalyi (2001) who proposed that happiness is an “emergenic” trait. that is, the relevant genes combine in a configural [differing in the relative arrangement of individual genes] rather than a simple additive fashion. such emergenic traits, while strongly genetic, do not tend to run in families: “mom may be holding a full house while dad has a straight flush, yet when junior gets a random half of each of their cards, his poker-hand may be a loser. the value of a poker hand, like the strength of an emergenic trait, depends on how the cards fit together; on their configuration rather than on their sum” (p. 470). as evidence of such diversity, these authors cite data from many dizygotic twin studies (e.g., lykken & tellegen, 1996; nes, røysamb, tambs, harris, & reichborn-kjennerud, 2006). but if family members differ markedly from one another in their genetic component of swb, to what extent does their shared family environment produce a common level of swb? the answer is that it does so only to a very small extent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 22 as proposed by nes (2010), each family member will have a different experience of the shared family environment. just how different was demonstrated by casas et al. (2008) who explored the relationship between the swb of parents and their 12to 16-year-old children using the pwi. they found only a weakly positive relationship. the authors concluded, as did røysamb et al. (2014), that shared family factors contribute little to interpersonal resemblance within families. the above understanding supports the following statements regarding the measurement of family swb: 1. swb is a personal feeling. each family member will have their own level of swb. 2. the only way of measuring family swb is to ask individual family members to rate themselves on an age-appropriate scale. this means using an adult scale, such as the pwi (international wellbeing group, 2013), an adolescent scale such as the pwi-sc (cummins & lau, 2005b), or a simplified version such as the pwi-id for people with an intellectual or cognitive disability (cummins & lau, 2005a). 3. due to cognitive limitations, it is often not currently possible to validly and reliably measure the swb of all family members. excluded are children younger than 12 years (see “measuring swb in children” below) and people who cannot successfully complete the pretesting protocol attached to the pwi-id due to cognitive limitations. moreover, the swb of these persons cannot be validly measured by a proxy adult, such as a parent (see “proxy responding” below). these understandings become caveats when considering how to validly measure family qol. scales to measure family qol there are many scales designed to measure family life quality. the australian centre on qol “directory of instruments”3 lists 22 such scales. the two best known are the family qol survey (brown et al., 2006a; brown et al., 2006b) and the beach center family qol scale (beach center, 2015). both are complex instruments. the former measures well-being within nine domains and across six dimensions, involving various forms of dependent variables. while this scale is not intended to measure swb it does include domains that are highly relevant to families with a child who has a disability. for example, some of the survey’s domains relate to social well-being and community relations. these are important aspects of family qol and will be elaborated by other articles in this special issue. the beach center family qol scale is intended for use with families caring for a disabled family member. it comprises 25 items forming 5 subscales: family interaction, emotional well-being, physical/material well-being, parenting, and disability-related support. items are prefaced by, “for my family to have a good life together --how satisfied am i that -- 3 see http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments. http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 23 .”(summers et al., 2005, p. 780) in other words, one member of the family is providing their own perceptions of the life quality within their family. several matters are relevant to the interpretation of such data because: 1. the result will reflect the respondent’s personal level of swb rather than some global evaluative construct applying to the whole family. 2. the scale has not been constructed using theoretical guidance and it is difficult to determine what it is measuring. it includes items evaluating satisfaction with relationships (e.g., “my family enjoys spending time together”); factual statements (e.g., “family members help the children with schoolwork and activities”); judgements on behalf of others (e.g., “my family members have some time to pursue their own interests”); and statements on behalf of the person with a disability (e.g., “my family member with special needs has support to make friends”). this collation does not represent a measure of swb. practical recommendations while neither of these two scales can be considered to provide a valid measure of swb, both comprise lists of items relevant to family qol. however, whether they validly represent the construct of family qol is also uncertain. neither scale is designed to represent a theoretical definition of family qol. rather, family qol is assumed to be represented by the scale items; an assumption that cannot be tested. moreover, neither scale contains norms against which data can be interpreted. thus, while both instruments are useful for between-group comparisons, the interpretation of results in terms of family life quality is restricted to the scale that has been used. of greater relevance in the context of this paper is the swb of individual family members. swb and parents the pattern of swb levels for parents is well predicted by homeostasis theory. their major resources are represented by the golden triangle domains (money, relationships, and achieving) and the major systematic source of challenge comes from their children. essentially, children need to effectively use parental resources in order to thrive, just as do the progeny of all mammals. for parents, this means that they need more resources than would a childless couple in order to maintain swb within their set-point-range. as a result, when the resources are adequate, children have little influence on parental well-being. when resources are inadequate, however, children place the swb of cohabiting adults at risk. figure 1 demonstrates this balance between two of the golden resources (money and partner relationship) and challenges (children). the data are cumulative over 22 surveys (surveys 9 to 30) of the australian unity wellbeing index, with each survey involving a fresh, geographically representative national sample. these combined results are originally presented in the report of survey 30.0 (cummins et al., 2013; table a3.14). the total number of observations within each of the depicted subsamples is: living with partner only, 10,506; partner international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 24 and children, 10,219; and living as a sole parent, 2,307. the smallest analytic cell is 62, representing sole parents with incomes in the range $151,000 to $250,000. figure 1. the interaction of income with household composition on the personal wellbeing index. the horizontal bar in figure 1 represents the generic normal range for groups. this range is calculated using our 30 survey mean scores as data. this normal range reflects the extent of variability between surveys and represents a 95% probability that any future national survey mean will fall within this range. thus, any australian group mean score can be compared against this range to indicate the degree of its normality. the pwi provides the measure of swb and all results are projected onto a 0to 100-point scale. the results from figure 1 show the power of higher income to lift swb in all groups. this is consistent with the role of money as a systematic homeostatic resource, as has been described. these results provide the following three insights into resources versus challenges for families: 1. the best option, for normal or above normal levels of swb, is to live with a partner in the absence of children. even at an income of less than $15k their well-being lies in the normal range, and at an income of $251 to $500k their well-being has risen by only 6.9 percentage points. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 25 2. living with children adds a level of challenge to homeostasis. this is most evident when household income is low. at an income of $15 to $30k individuals are 4.2 points below the partner-only group and well below the normal range. however, their swb responds positively to increased income. at $31 to $60k they enter the normal range and, at an income of $101 to $150k they are statistically indistinguishable from the partner-only group. 3. both of the above groups contrast markedly with the sole-parent group, where one parent lives with one or more children. here the partner resource is missing and parents only enter the normal range at $61 to $100k. their swb remains 1.2 points below the partner-only group even at an income of $151 to $250k. this group also demonstrates extreme sensitivity to income, rising 14.2 points over the whole income range. in summary, both income and a partner are individually powerful resources for family well-being and their combined effect on swb is additive. either resource without the other is linked to reduced levels of swb. the importance of these resources is even more pronounced for informal carers. swb and informal carers an informal carer is a person, other than a parent, who provides unpaid support to family members or friends who have a disability or are frail (carers australia, 2017). such care involves assistance with varied aspects of daily life, but most commonly includes physical and personal care. informal carers are also often responsible for the daily management of medical conditions, and the provision of emotional and financial support. it is evident that the task of caring is a source of challenge in the carer’s life, covering some of the same dimensions as the role of parenting. thus, as in the previous section, the question of whether this caring role threatens swb homeostasis depends on the balance between the relative strength of such challenges and the available resources. this common context allows the question as to whether this role is more challenging than the role of parent. in answer, it is evident that carers are far more likely than parents to be deprived of the key golden resources. taking data from the most recently released (2015) census data in australia (australian bureau of statistics, 2016), the comparisons are as follows: wealth: whereas 26% of non-carers have a household income in the lowest 40% of the population, this applies to fully half of primary carers (carers with primary responsibility for the person in care). moreover, a majority of carers depend for their income on a government pension or allowance. relationships: the provision of care to a dependent person in the home will often restrict the maintenance of other personal relationships outside the home. such restrictions may well be more severe when caring for an adult than for a child. in general, children can more easily international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 26 accompany a parent on visits to friends or shopping centres than can an infirm adult. the census data also show that the more hours of care provided each week, the lower is the likelihood that the carer will be involved in activities outside the home. achieving: when the carers were asked the reason for taking on the caring role, the primary carers nominated: a sense of family responsibility (66.9%), a feeling they could provide better care than anybody else (50.3%), and a feeling of emotional obligation (44.2%). thus a majority were performing the role as a duty. while most of these carers would certainly feel a sense of purpose and achievement in their role, it is also unlikely that they would find this as fulfilling as an activity that was freely chosen, such as parenthood or employment. employment is especially relevant in this context since it is commonly a source of all three golden resources. it provides money, a ready source of friends, and a sense of achievement. it is thus highly relevant to note that the labour force participation rate for primary carers is around 50%, compared to 80% for non-carers. from this sobering set of statistics, it is predictable that these people have an increased likelihood of experiencing homeostatic failure, and this has been confirmed by many studies. as a recent example, hammond, weinberg, and cummins (2014) reported a study of over 4,000 informal carers, conducted in 2007 (cummins et al., 2007) in collaboration with carers australia. using the pwi, the group as a whole had the lowest mean level of swb we have recorded (58.5 points, as against a normal range for the population of 73 to 76 points). as confirmation of the link between low swb and depression, the median swb of the carers corresponded to being moderately depressed, using the depression anxiety stress scales (lovibond & lovibond, 1995). in short, swb homeostasis for carers has very commonly failed due to inadequate support in terms of money, relationships, and personal achievement. practical recommendations it is evident that informal carers require more key resources in order to experience a normal level of life quality. the national disability insurance scheme (ndis; australian government, 2013), certainly one of the most important social reforms in recent australian history, was established to address this problem. the ndis creates a uniform system of disability services across australia “based on individual aspiration and choice” (national disability insurance scheme, 2015, p. 2). it is jointly funded by the federal government and the states and territories through a national levy (0.5% of income), introduced in 2014 (madden, 2015). funds provided may be managed by the participant, the ndis, a registered plan management provider, or a nominee of the participant. supports are provided by registered providers in a competitive market. the philosophical approach is to facilitate a person’s inclusion in society, rather than focusing on their disability (ndis, p. 28). an evaluation of the effectiveness of the ndis (mavromaras, moskos, mahuteau, & isherwood, 2018), conducted within the five states and territories initially targeted for the trial, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 27 has reported generally positive outcomes. in june 2018, western australia became the final state to join the ndis (buckmaster & clark, 2018). crucially for the current discussion, the scheme targets the golden triangle domains, as buckmaster (2017) explained: money: the ndis is an uncapped (demand-driven) scheme, providing individualized packages of support. the participants meet with the ndis to identify a set of supports agreed as “reasonable and necessary” to meet their goals. clearly, this will remove much of the family’s financial burden. relationships: the scheme supports independence and social and economic participation. this includes the maintenance of informal supports, such as from family and friends, and access to community services, such as sports clubs and libraries. achieving: crucially, the scheme puts the person with the disability in control. under the objects and principles of the ndis act, participants are entitled to exercise “choice and control in the pursuit of their goals and the planning and delivery of their supports”. in summary, there is every reason to expect that once the ndis scheme is fully operational the national level of swb for carers will rise from the dismal levels noted above. swb and adolescents a major concern with swb measurement during adolescence is whether respondents have the cognitive capacity to provide valid and reliable self-report data. the issue of reliability can be answered easily through an examination of data intercorrelations within samples and longitudinally over time. the more difficult issue to address is validity, most particularly construct validity. most crucially, does the scale that is used to measure swb yield data consistent with a nomological net (liu, li, & zhu, 2012); that is, what is the degree to which a construct behaves as it should within a system of related constructs, together forming a theory (cronbach & meehl, 1955). additionally, do the grouped data validly measure swb or some other construct (adler & seligman, 2016)? to our knowledge there is only one scale that meets these specifications, and that is the personal wellbeing index – school children (cummins & lau, 2005b). the nomological net is formed within the theory of swb homeostasis (cummins, 2017). studies using adult data derived from the pwi (international wellbeing group, 2013) have shown that measured swb is dominated by hpmood in both adults (e.g., davern et al., 2007) and adolescents (tomyn & cummins, 2011a). additionally, as has been explained, hpmood is the essence of swb setpoints (e.g., capic et al., 2017). finally, and crucially, the adult and adolescent versions of the pwi show measurement invariance (tomyn, fuller-tyszkiewicz, cummins, & norrish, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 28 a further test of adolescent data validity is whether results conform to the adult normal range. if, as proposed, this range is primarily determined through the distribution of hpmood set-points, then the distribution should not differ between adults and adolescents because the determination of each set-point is under genetic control. this similarity has been confirmed for adolescents in, for example, spain (mean 14.1 years, 79.1 points; casas et al., 2008) and australia (mean 15.7 years, 74.7 points; tomyn & cummins, 2011a). these are reasonable approximations to the normative adult range for grouped data (74 to 77 points). however, while the adolescent range is adult-normal on average, swb levels fall as adolescents grow older (casas et al., 2011; casas et al., 2007; tomyn & cummins, 2011b). at the same time, the incidence of general mental health problems rises (keyes, 2006). most notable is the rising incidence of depressed mood (e.g., greenberger & chen, 1996), which occurs more often during adolescence than at any other time of life (steinberg, 1993). many coincident factors are responsible for this mental turmoil. they include the biological changes of puberty, moving from primary to secondary schools with increasing schoolwork pressures, concerns about belonging and conforming to peer pressure, changing familial relationships, and the uncertainty of earning a living (steinberg, 1993). it is notable that these areas of increasing challenge concentrate on the three golden domains, causing homeostatic maintenance to be under mounting pressure. so the decreasing swb seen during adolescence seems understandable and the consequences predictable. these include lower satisfaction with school (e.g., baker, 1999; huebner, gilman, & laughlin, 1999; jin & moon, 2006) and associated difficulties in scholastic achievement and social development. it also seems likely that these trends will be magnified for adolescents with a disability. swb and children and what of younger family members? the age at which researchers consider children to transition into adolescence varies quite widely with era and culture, spanning at least the ages of 10 years (e.g., kasser et al., 2014) to 13 years (e.g., casas, baltatescu, bertran, gonzález, & hatos, 2009). the most common is 12 years and that will be adopted for the discussion to follow. do the same discovered properties of swb homeostasis apply to children? certainly it is expected that the set-points of newborn children are at the adult level. however, several of the conscious homeostatic processes in children will be limited by cognitive immaturity. these include the internal homeostatic buffers of secondary control (rothbaum, weisz, & snyder, 1982), which only gradually become available to children as they transition from early school age to adolescence (altshuler & ruble, 1989; band, 1990; marriage & cummins, 2004). thus, it would not be expected that homeostatic control would reach full strength until at least adolescence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 29 a similar maturational issue is raised by the measurement of swb itself. the questions used for this purpose are quite abstract (see pwi; international wellbeing group, 2013) and so clearly are not understandable by young children who are thinking in concrete terms. one way to counter this is to make the measurement scale questions more concrete, with a simpler response format. measuring swb in children the australian centre on quality of life (2017) lists over 100 self-report instruments designed to measure the well-being of adolescents and children. some of these are designed to measure swb and, for adolescents aged 12 and older, such scales are generally age-appropriate. however, one of these, the pwi-sc (cummins & lau, 2005b), includes the important caveat that responses by children under the age of 12 may be unreliable. this caution should be applied generally for this younger age-group. the reason for this age limitation is that swb comprises mainly the positive-activated mood of hpmood. moreover, the swb questions, devised to gauge this mood, have the character of being semi-abstract items that pertain to the self. the archetypal item is gls (“how satisfied are you with your life as a whole?”), which is clearly beyond the comprehension of young children. moreover, if the question is simplified to make it more concrete (e.g., “how happy are you with your toys?”), the response will reflect the target of the question (toys) rather than hpmood. thus, making questions more concrete means that the answers only weakly reflect swb. an explanation of this age barrier lies within developmental psychology. children under the age of 12 are considered to be at the concrete operational stage, with reasoning limited to concrete examples rather than abstract or hypothetical concepts (lópez-pérez, sánchez, & gummerum, 2016). beyond this age, in adolescence, they enter the formal operational stage (piaget, 1952) and can reason about abstract concepts without needing concrete examples. how, then, might this maturational barrier be overcome to enable the valid measurement of swb in younger children? the common solution is to ask parents to provide proxy responses on behalf of their child, such as through the use of a child diary, kept by the parent, that records daily child mood (lämsä, rönkä, poikonen, & malinen, 2012). unfortunately, such devices are invalid measures of swb. proxy responding proxy responding, or providing answers for another person, may well be reliable when the information sought is objective (e.g., “how often does trixy get out of the house with her friends?”). however, both reliability and validity plummet when the information sought is subjective. this has been systematically documented in relation to both children and adolescents; several reviews have concluded that proxies cannot be reliably substituted for self-reports either international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 12–39 30 in relation to behavioral/emotional problems (achenbach, mcconaughy, & howell, 1987) or the feelings experienced by children with disabilities (yuker, 1988). a review of proxy responding by the present author (cummins, 2002) is more wideranging. it examines data covering many different situations where proxy responses have been used. across all situations, no evidence was found supporting proxy responding as a valid technique. several reasons for this were advanced, including the obvious fact that the proxy has no direct access to the required information and so must rely on indirect cues and personal knowledge about the target person, all of which are inherently unreliable for such a purpose. further, systematic personal biases in relation to the person being rated distorts proxy estimates. it is concluded that the process of proxy responding in relation to swb is inherently flawed and should not be used. practical recommendations while a large number of scales claim to measure the subjective life quality of children under the age of 12, their reliability and validity for this age group have not been adequately demonstrated. this is due to the cognitive limitations imposed by concrete operational processing. in addition, estimating levels of swb from proxy responses is invalid. in summary, it is not currently known how to scientifically measure the swb of children under the age of 12. conclusion the swb of adults with normal-range cognitive abilities can be measured with great assurance using the pwi-adult (international wellbeing group, 2013). moreover, the swb of adolescents can be measured with the pwi-sc, a factorially-invariant 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(1988). mothers' perceptions of their disabled children: a review of the literature. journal of the multihandicapped person, 1(3), 217–232. doi:10.1007/bf01102625 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00751.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1031 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9235-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9668-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9804-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0619-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01102625 a federal historical perspective on crime prevention 21 an historical overview of crime prevention initiatives in canada: a federal perspective michel vallée abstract: the author provides an historical overview of crime prevention activities in canada that have led to the federal government’s current direction in crime prevention policy. drawing on more than 30 years experience as a federal public servant with the ministry of the solicitor general and justice canada, the author traces more than 100 years of canadian federal crime prevention efforts, with an emphasis on both internal and external government documents and historic material from the royal canadian mounted police. this brief history of crime prevention efforts in canada shows a clear trajectory from the mid-1980s onward, towards support for more comprehensive and integrated communitybased crime prevention activities. the interventions are increasingly aimed at community safety, health, and well-being while involving the police, other service providers, as well as community members in the process. on july 5, 2001, the government of canada announced an investment of $145 million in the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention (referred to as the national strategy). this funding added to the national strategy’s previous allocation of $32 million per year. the government of canada reported that this additional funding fulfilled a promise in the speech from the throne, which had committed the federal government to strengthening its effort to support communitybased responses to crime. the federal expectation was that this new funding would increase the national strategy’s capacity to provide communities with the knowledge, tools, and support mechanisms required to address some of the root causes of crime and victimization. some view the government’s actions as the culmination of years of various federal efforts and reflection upon more effective ways to deal with crime and victimization. the focus in this article is to provide an historical overview of crime prevention activities in canada that have led to the federal government’s current direction in crime prevention policy. while the present article provides a brief historical portrait of canadian crime prevention efforts, the focus is on federal involvement in crime prevention. for the most part, the focus is on activities under the direct responsibility of the federal department of justice (justice canada) and the then ministry of the solicitor general of canada (msg), presently called public safety and emergency preparedness canada. other departments have also supported crime prevention initiatives, such as: health canada; heritage canada (and its predecessor the secretariat of state); human resources and development canada (and its 22 predecessor employment and immigration canada); the department of indian and northern affairs; and status of women canada. these departments, however, have never had a formal lead policy role, nor have they formally documented their specific involvement in crime prevention, except possibly very recently. these departments have provided information, support, and resources to victim services and advocacy groups across the country through several major federal policy initiatives such as the victims of crime, child development, and the family violence initiatives, among others. it should be noted that describing the canadian experience in crime prevention through the eyes of the national federal government, constitutionally responsible for the criminal law, does not negate the important and critical role that provincial or territorial and municipal governments have played over time. for example, provincial and municipal police forces have made important contributions to crime prevention across canada. while this analysis of more than 100 years of canadian federal crime prevention efforts represents only a partial picture of crime prevention activities in canada, it does reference a vital part of those activities. most of the information introduced in this chapter comes from the following sources: the author’s work experience, which spans more than three decades in both the msg and justice canada; many informal internal documents that do not lend themselves to formal referencing; and formal internal and external publications. in reviewing the material for this chapter, it soon became evident that the annual reports of the two key departments and their agencies offered little information on crime prevention activities prior to 1970. however, the rcmp quarterly provided useful and consistent information on federal policing and crime prevention work. the article is therefore, divided into five key historical periods: 1. the early years (up to the mid-1960s); 2. the police-community relations era (mid-1960s to mid-1970s); 3. the community crime prevention era (mid-1970s to mid-1980s); 4. the policy development era (mid-1980s to the early 1990s); and 5. the new directions era (mid-1990s to the present day). the early years: up to the mid-1960s until the mid-1960s, there is little readily available information on early federal crime prevention efforts within the department of justice or the ministry of the solicitor general of canada. it should be remembered that the ministry of the solicitor general did not exist during the early years. early efforts are implicitly linked to the work done by the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) and its predecessors, the royal north west mounted police (rnwmp) and the dominion police. the law enforcement system in canada originated in its colonial structure. prior to confederation, territories or quasi-colonies, such as “la nouvelle-france”, then later 23 nova scotia, new brunswick, québec, and ontario, relied primarily upon the military to patrol their towns and cities. dickson (1987, as cited in griffiths & verdun-jones, 1994, p. 56) indicates that the first police officers were deployed on the streets of québec city in 1651. after the conquest of nouvelle-france by the british in 1759, the governor and his council adopted law-making and law enforcement roles. it was not until after confederation in 1867, in particular the late 1800s, that organized police forces were established. sheriffs, police chiefs, and constables reported to locally elected or appointed officials. in some parts of the country, the provinces stepped in and created boards of commissioners of police. generally speaking, it was only after world war i that canada appeared concerned about having one national police force. thus, in 1920, the royal north west mounted police became a force responsible for all of canada through the absorption of the dominion police. the new force became known as the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp). the headquarters for the newly created force were relocated to ottawa. the creation of the rcmp brought policing to rural canada. while there is little if any direct reference to preventive work (as we now define it) in the rcmp annual reports before the early 1960s, there are occasional references to preventive-type work with the department of interior in the northwest territories. in addition, there is frequent reference to the work of the prevention services branch from its creation in 1932, to the latter part of the 1960s. additionally, as far back as the 1930s there are numerous references in the royal canadian mounted police quarterly to “prevention of crime and prevention work”. it is noteworthy to mention that the first reference to actual prevention work that the author was able to trace is found in 1897, with the creation of “prevention services” as a branch of the old customs department. aside from protecting revenues, its “new” mandate was to patrol the lower gulf of the st. lawrence and the atlantic seaboard. this early preventive force operated until 1921 on a small scale, when the inland revenue department merged with the customs department forming the department of customs and excise. vernon (1936) mentions that prevention services was taken over by the rcmp in 1932, at which time its officers were given the additional power of the customs and excise prevention officers. during the 1930s, we begin to find more documented information on crime prevention activities. one of the notable articles is found in the premier edition of the rcmp quarterly, july 1933, authored by prime minister r. b. bennett. prime minister bennett states: “the history of the part played in the administration of justice by the mounted police proves that they are as intent on conciliation as on accusation; their efforts have been almost as much devoted to the prevention of disputes and of crime as to the apprehension of those who have broken the law” (bennett, 1933). during this period, crime prevention is also associated with the advent of new equipment and technology. during the 1930s, many articles in the rcmp quarterly 24 refer to the preventive role of police in relation to the acquisition and use of patrol boats, cruisers, and aeroplanes, as well as technical advances such as fingerprinting and automobile tire marking. there are a few references to the so-called causes of crime, both biological and environmental, in addition to the need to prosecute criminals for the purpose of preventing more crimes and the need to seek the help of local citizens in identifying the distinctive operating methods of criminals. the need to identify criminals’ operating methods becomes a topic of discussion during the second half of the 1930s. the prevention services branch of the rcmp appears to be the only section to have a formal prevention mandate during this era, primarily interested in preventive work as it pertained to the question of “revenues”. kelly and kelly (1973) note that much of the prevention effort was spent on reducing or eliminating bootleggers and smugglers (called “rum-runners”). this concern over the “revenue” side of governmental operations continues to the mid-1960s. at this time, the rcmp still had full responsibility for the administration of the following federal statutes: the customs act, the excise act, the income tax act, the canada shipping act, and the estate tax act (government of canada, 1967). prevention efforts during the 1940s are marked by three themes: (a) the prevention of juvenile delinquency; (b) the prevention of possible sabotage, as well as the counterfeiting of money, gas, and food coupons during the war years; and (c) the post-war prevention and detection of soviet espionage. delinquency prevention and youth crime topped the rcmp list of preoccupations during this period. a number of articles in the rcmp quarterly highlight a variety of issues pertaining to juvenile delinquency. crime causation and acting out appear to form the basis of the force’s concern. they were also concerned with the most opportune time to take preventive measures. there are references to such factors as: home environment; mental development; not being able to attend school; facing unemployment; and the “dangerous years” for youth crime (identified here as between 15 and 21 years of age). in 1940, rcmp constable l. binham suggests: “the policeman should be a guiding force in the life of the youth, encouraging his interests in sports and constructive worthwhile subjects, at the same time instilling in the minds of the youth a respect for the rights and property of others as well as a clean sense of values” (binham, 1940). we begin to see a desire to promote an education and reformation role within juvenile courts, rather than the strictly punitive role the courts were taking in dealing with young persons. prevention becomes linked to rehabilitation, which was also now associated with psychological factors, called “appetites” (e.g., thirst, hunger, and sex); there are also references to “attitudes” (e.g., withdrawing and approaching), emotions (e.g., fear, rage, and love), and self-tendencies (e.g., negative and positive). we also note an early interest in what some referred to as “petty crimes” (wilson, 1942). for example, a concern about shoplifting (then called “boosting”) was discussed, as well as the means of preventing and apprehending shoplifters. 25 by the mid-1940s, the rcmp (sometimes referred to as the “force”) becomes more articulate about the causes of youth crime and the means to prevent or reduce such crimes. with the advent of the “youth and police movement”, the rcmp began to promote a number of programs and approaches with the aim to decrease the amount of juvenile delinquency. the force became concerned about “urban youth”. local constables were encouraged to be role models for youth through engaging in such local activities as coaching boys in sports, assisting as scout masters, and helping out at the local church. the rcmp philosophy about youth is eloquently summarized in the following quote: today more than ever before, canada’s cities are awakening to the need for teen-age centres of recreation, places more conducive to the young person’s well-being and more enticing than juke joints and cheap cafes and dance halls, where our young people are given the opportunity not only to associate with others of their own age but to develop their talents along lines in which they have aptitudes (moore, 1945). during the 1940s, we see an increasing belief that a youth’s environment has a significant impact upon future criminality; and toward the end of the 1940s, references are made to the new concept of the “suburb” as a collection of homes, churches, schools, and stores. in this context, references are also made to drugstores with soda fountains and to “bobby-soxers” with their male counterparts. during this time of social, moral, and technological change, the rcmp began to perceive that technological advances could serve as tools in preventing crime. this was particularly true of the new radio telephone. during the early 1940s, equipping police cars in western canada with radio telephones was viewed as so successful in increasing policing efficiency and reducing crime that it quickly expanded. the policing trend of “youth recreation” continued throughout the 1950s, while concurrently dealing with other social dilemmas such as increasing drug trafficking and the “management” of post-war european immigration. these represented challenges for the policing of urban areas. with the publication and national distribution (in both english and french) of an illustrated booklet entitled, crime in your community, the force began expanding its public communication efforts attempting to reach the broader public. in particular, it sought the cooperation of householders, merchants, and businessmen in crime prevention. kelly and kelly (1973) note that the demand for these booklets far exceeded the supply; soon, a second booklet, was published and distributed (called beware of bad checks). thus began a new era of community-focused crime prevention efforts for the rcmp. it is not until the mid-1960s, however, that such policing efforts become formalized. kelly and kelly (1973) suggest that from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, the force’s primary concern is drug trafficking (both hard and soft drugs), organized crime, 26 white-collar crimes, spies, politics, and security. consequently, a general crime prevention focus appears to have taken a back seat to these priorities. when prevention activities do take place, they are directed to prevent the aforementioned types of crime. this conclusion is reinforced by an analysis of the report of the proceedings of what appears to be the “first” national conference on the prevention of crime, convened from may 31 to june 3, 1965, by the university of toronto’s centre of criminology, in collaboration with the conference of the chief justices of canada. of interest, the formal list of participants includes judges, federal and provincial justice or attorney general legal representatives, academics, a few politicians, the deputy commissioner of the rcmp, and the commissioner of the ontario provincial police (opp). as well, police representatives were in attendance from several major cities including vancouver, regina, toronto, hamilton, montréal, moncton, and halifax. three key issues were identified at the beginning of the conference: first, all the available evidence pointed to a continuing increase in the amount of indictable crime committed across canada. second, there was a realization that society was faced with the sobering fact that in the area of crimes against property, the forces of criminal law had, for several years, fallen further and further behind in bringing malefactors to account for their misdeeds. third, a mounting concern was expressed by the country’s senior police officers, both in public and more vividly in their annual reports, as to their ability to keep up with, let alone get on top of, the growing number of indictable offences (centre of criminology, 1965, pp. 7-8). does this sound familiar – if not the terms at least the ideas? a reading of the agenda gives an indication of the interest in assessing police relationships with the public and the general attitudes of ordinary citizens toward the police. a review of the agenda indicates that only one portion of the conference’s first day was devoted to specific discussions on crime prevention. the conference organizers’ statement to the press, suggests at least three key conclusions: first, citizen rights must necessarily involve attention being given to each person’s commensurate responsibility for the safety and protection of his neighbours in society; second, there is a question of to what extent the changing picture of crime in our modern society requires a lessening of the insistence on the inviolable maintenance of the individual’s rights and privileges in order to secure greater protection for society as a whole; and, third, the discussion groups gave some consideration to the question of whether some restrictions should be placed on the reporting of court proceedings in the news media during the preliminary hearings of indictable offences (centre of criminology, 1965, pp. 69-72). it appears that the conference proceedings reflected the preoccupations of the day, similar to concerns and issues expressed in several articles (cited previously) written for the rcmp quarterly during the 1950s and 1960s. participants at the conference did, however, reach a consensus concerning the increase in crime and the fact that youth play a significant role in this increase. participants also agreed on the role played by some of the social changes occurring, namely, increased urbanization, the lack of family and religious ties, the disparity between the “haves and the have-nots” of 27 society, and the lack of responses available to youth courts. these social changes are cited as sources of the increase in indictable offences. concerns begin to be raised about the increase in negative public perceptions and attitudes toward the police. according to conference participants, the media is a contributing factor in these negative perceptions. finally, since few of the participants came from non-judicial or non-legal backgrounds, it is difficult to ascertain the full impact of the conference discussions upon the direction taken in subsequent federal policy. this is a period where there is little federally focused or federally sustained interest in policy relating to crime control issues. the exception, of course, is the rcmp. the police-community relations era: mid-1960s to mid-1970s beginning in the early 1960s and through to the mid-1970s, there are numerous references to the prevention services branch of the rcmp. these references are found in either the rcmp gazette or rcmp annual reports. the work of the branch, however, appears to have little to do with the more recent views on crime prevention; “crime prevention” meant dealing with the administration of federal statutes such as the customs act, the excise act, the income tax act, the canada shipping act, and the estate tax act. it is rare to find any direct reference to crime prevention in the rcmp gazette and the rcmp annual reports. the last reference to crime prevention in the force’s annual reports is in 1961 under the heading, “other investigative and administrative assistance”. it reads as follows: “work of a preventive and educational nature such as inspection of explosives, magazines, certain drugstores and hospitals, public buildings (for provincial fire and safety regulations), conducting anti-safe breaking and preventive services patrols, and escorting prisoners or mental patients for other police forces” (government of canada, 1961, p. 21). with regard to the ministry of the solicitor general of canada (msg)1 there is reference to prevention in its early years, though it is couched implicitly in terms of youth delinquency and support for the work being done by the committee on juvenile justice, then under the authority of the department of justice canada. the creation of the correctional consultation centre (ccc) during the 1968-69 fiscal year appears to signal the beginning of a federal interest in crime prevention. the ccc was first located in the departmental headquarters (dh) of the then ministry of the solicitor general of canada and was subsequently integrated into the ministry secretariat as the consultation centre in 1973-74. the ccc’s mandate highlighted the need to gather and disseminate information on prevention and the need to support “demonstration projects” aimed at implementing new methods in the prevention of crime. greater attention to public involvement and youth in police training was now emphasized. a reading of the msg’s annual reports during this period indicates a strong push for police-community relations, with an emphasis on the youth population. several major demonstration projects focusing on the role of the police in schools received funding from the msg. 28 a review of the policy mandate of the msg’s correctional consultation centre suggests “finding solutions to a recognized set of problems is the federal field of responsibility consistent with the objectives of achieving sound social defence measures, i.e., the protection of society and rehabilitation of the offender” (government of canada, 1971, p. 7). this was slowly becoming a high policy priority for the federal government. there appears to be little change in direction or interest, however, on the part of the msg during the first half of the 1970s. youth and police-community relations continue to be the focal point for demonstration projects and research. some financial investments were made in prevention programs aimed at youth and the police by the msg’s correctional consultation centre. one example is the funding provided to the montréal ymca, in order to assess the value of a street-work approach to reducing juvenile delinquency. funding was also provided for three conferences, considering the community role and training and research requirements related to “the police function in our changing society” (government of canada, 1973). the community crime prevention era: mid-1970s to mid-1980s in the mid-1970s, we begin to see some federal efforts to understand what is actually happening in the area of crime prevention, particularly by examining the types of crime prevention efforts being promoted in the united states and the united kingdom. in addition, we observe the beginnings of a leadership role on the part of the msg’s ministry secretariat. several pilot projects were funded (for example, there were some relating to crime prevention through environmental design and target hardening). as well, a major team policing/zone-policing project was funded in burlington, ontario. these efforts, and the apparent desire to expand its involvement in crime prevention, led the msg to provide funding to the university of toronto’s centre of criminology for the first comprehensive national crime prevention workshop, held may 21 and 22, 1975. gordon watson set the tone at the start of the conference (which the author attended), by stating that the conference’s purpose was “to review developments in the field of crime prevention over the last ten years; to assess these new developments in terms of both their efficacy and their ethics; and, to establish research priorities for the years to come” (watson, 1975, p. v). assessing the nature and scope of conference participants and range of topics discussed, it appears that it did indeed make a significant contribution to the future direction of crime prevention in canada. b. c. hofley, assistant deputy minister, ministry of the solicitor general of canada, presented the federal position on crime prevention. mr. hofley asked the participants, “to join the federal government in making a commitment to the cause of crime prevention so that together we can work towards a reduction in the overall social and economic costs of crime” (hofley, 1975, p. 65). he suggested that the federal 29 government was concerned about costs: the high costs of administering the criminal justice system; the costs of financial loss for victims; the costs of security and prevention measures in public institutions, private enterprises, and residences; costs of insurance; the loss of the wage earnings of confined offenders and incapacitated victims; and the consequent increased welfare burden imposed upon the families of those incarcerated. mr. hofley (1975) went on to suggest greater investment in “front-end” interventions, which were to include diversion programs and more police training to promote a service and prevention orientation, both within the rcmp and other police forces. in addition, he highlighted the need to gain more knowledge about crime and its effects. it was thought that this could be accomplished through victimization surveys and by evaluating the effectiveness of crime prevention programs. he also made a link between prevention and the need to take a more concerted approach to young persons in conflict with the law. one cannot help but notice how similar these ideas are to recent debates on the cost and impact of crime and victimization to society. as we will see later, the issue of the cost of crime was part and parcel of the federal government’s decision to launch the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention in 1993. participants at the 1975 conference on crime prevention identified the need for research in the area of urban design and crime prevention. the conference participants proposed a definition of crime prevention that included efforts to reduce the desire to commit and the opportunity for criminal activities, along with decreasing the extent to which the criminal justice system is used to deal with crime (macfarlane, 1975, pp. 125-127). notwithstanding the “renewed” federal interest and related policy statement, what really appears to have had the most impact on the federal involvement in crime prevention is the introduction by the solicitor general, on february 24, 1976, of the peace and security program, introduced along with the msg’s youth employment program. the peace and security program led to the creation of the preventive policing program later in 1976. this was the forerunner of what would later be referred to as the solicitor general’s crime prevention initiative. it was located in the ministry secretariat and, for the first time, the federal government made public five measures designed to prevent the commission of crime (government of canada, 1976, pp. 5661): • development of a national clearinghouse of information on police programs; • development of training programs in community relations, crisis intervention, and preventive policing; • development and dissemination of model preventive policing programs; • promotion of crime prevention through environmental design; and • the implementation of victimization surveys. 30 the latter event was a significant expansion of the federal government’s youth employment program, which included the allocation of departmental-based resources for youth employment. the rcmp began to make extensive use of the ministry’s summer employment and activities program (sseap), by hiring special constables to work with regular members on a variety of crime prevention and general policing projects (government of canada, 1976, pp. 24-25). it is in 1977-78, with the advent of the federal labour intensive program (flip), that the msg and the rcmp receive significant resources to support summer students (their first priority) and unemployed youth (in the following year), under the job corps program. these youth were engaged in crime prevention programs and policecommunity relations programs. the impact of this appears more important for the msg’s secretariat, since it redistributed these resources through the funding of a large number of crime prevention projects. these projects were under the supervision of municipal and provincial police forces, as well as community organizations, and provided the impetus for supporting a number of community-neighbourhood crime prevention strategies such as neighbourhood watch, operation identification, “lock it and pocket the key”, security check systems, seminars on the protection of business premises, and other programs all across the country. the 1986 crime prevention initiative evaluation report states, “the secretariat has been interested in crime prevention for many years, as was evident by the establishment of a causes and prevention research section in 1974. it was not until the preventive policing program was initiated in 1976 that crime prevention begins to become a programming priority” (government of canada, 1986b, p. 2). during this period, there is also an investment in projects that are early examples of situational crime prevention interventions, mainly with respect to such crimes as shoplifting and residential break and enter. the rcmp continued its community relations and community prevention emphasis, while also initiating other programs, such as youth and community involvement, youth safety, and school drug prevention, among others. in addition, during the latter part of the 1970s, both the rcmp and the msg ministry secretariat began to test and implement programs that considered issues of domestic violence, crimes against children and the elderly, vandalism, crisis intervention, and victim awareness. during the latter part of the 1970s, there is also an increasing provincial interest in crime prevention programming. while it is true that the ministry secretariat had an emphasis on crime prevention and was moving toward promoting and expanding community involvement by disseminating information and expanding some useful pilot programs to other communities, it is the provinces that took a leadership role in the actual development of crime prevention programs and services. such a provincial role is confirmed in the 1986 msg evaluation report, which essentially suggests that the provinces and citizens groups were taking a leadership role in the development of crime prevention activities (government of canada, 1986b). 31 in the early 1980s, interest in crime prevention increased. there is a greater emphasis put on victims of crime and in particular, “wife assault victims” (as it was then called), as well as on children who were victims of sexual and physical abuse. both the federal government and the provinces were experiencing increased pressure by victims’ advocates and “experts” to give more attention to measures supporting the needs of victims of crime. while crime prevention activities may have initially been viewed as the logical “chapeau” for victims support programs, this changed with the publication of the 1984 federal-provincial/territorial task force report on victims of crime in canada and the subsequent successful effort to develop a stand-alone victims of crime initiative. the introduction, by the msg, of a national crime prevention week and the solicitor general awards, led the way for an enhanced crime prevention initiative launched in 1984-85 and 1985-86. this initiative focused on three major goals: (a) the development and promotion of policies and programs contributing to the reduction of crime and the impact of crime on canadian society; (b) the development of a more effective, efficient and humane criminal justice system; and (c) increased public understanding of and participation in the criminal justice system (doherty, 1986). from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, federal crime prevention efforts were concentrated mainly on communicating crime prevention, opportunity reduction, and target hardening strategies. during the latter part of this period, the msg was giving increased attention to finding appropriate ways to prevent youth from developing attitudes and behaviours “suggestive” of future delinquency. the apex of msg crime prevention efforts appears during the first half of the 1980s. we see an emphasis on community policing and “specialized and targeted” crime prevention programs, although the specific nature and extent of these are difficult to trace in departmental documents. by its own admission, the msg recognizes that: thus far the development in canada of community policing and crime prevention has been uneven. nor has there been complete acceptance of these approaches. there remain large pockets of resistance and even where crime prevention units have been created they are often under-resourced and viewed by the police as “dead ends” for career development. (government of canada, 1986c, p. 6). to summarize, during this era of community crime prevention, there is limited federal interest in the assessment of these crime prevention measures. the possible exceptions are the few anecdotal, self-evaluation efforts that suggest, “the program was very successful in the eyes of both students and force members” (government of canada, 1977, pp. 23-24). as well, there are a few evaluations of demonstration projects such as the london police-family court crisis intervention unit. the limited interest in evaluation of crime prevention efforts is equally true for the ministry secretariat. it is primarily in 1986 that the then office of audit and evaluation 32 completed its first formal evaluation of the msg crime prevention efforts (government of canada, 1986a). the policy development era: mid-1980s to mid-1990s – toward a comprehensive federal policy on crime prevention the 1986 msg evaluation report states that the ministry’s crime prevention approach included research and development, awareness and information, as well as community and social development and coordination. on the surface, the community and social development and coordination approach appears to be more a statement of intent or a wish than a reality. in concrete terms, most of the high profile crime prevention activities focus around the national crime prevention week, established in 1983, along with the solicitor general crime prevention awards, the national crime prevention resource centre, and the partners in prevention crime newsletter. the msg did obtain additional resources for their crime prevention efforts, including sponsoring a national conference on “crime prevention through social development”. a national workshop on crime prevention through social development, organized by the canadian council on social development (ccsd) and the canadian criminal justice association (ccja), with financial support from the ministry of the solicitor general canada (msg), was held in hull, québec, february 4 to 6, 1987. this conference brought together approximately 175 people – researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners – involved in criminal justice, social service, health, employment, education, and housing. the objective of the conference was to explore the concept of crime prevention through social development itself, as well as looking at current knowledge in the field. consideration could then be given to future steps that should be taken to enhance a commitment to crime prevention though social development (canadian council on social development & canadian criminal justice association, 1987, p. 1). while the seed for a broadening of the federal policy interest and efforts relating to crime prevention appears to be sown by the msg, a subsequent political decision in the latter part of 1986 paved the way for the formal transfer, on april 1, 1987, of federal policy responsibility for crime prevention to the federal department of justice (justice canada). this de facto transfer from the msg to justice canada appears to lead to a “slow-down” in crime prevention efforts and to confusion in stated policy and program development efforts over the next few years. little documented evidence on further policy and/or program activities pertaining to a social development approach is available from either msg or justice canada during that period. in the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s, non-governmental organizations (ngos), assisted by federal funding, provided much of the leadership in crime prevention activity. this was accomplished through several key national initiatives related to crime prevention through social development. these activities included the national workshop (referred to previously), as well as a variety of publications such as the report on the european and north american conference on “urban safety and 33 crime prevention” (held in montréal, october 1989) and the report entitled, national social strategy for crime prevention for canada, released in 1989. the canadian criminal justice association (ccja) prepared this latter report, which was one of the initiatives signalling the importance of social programming in planning a comprehensive agenda for safer communities. there is, however, documented evidence that federal crime prevention efforts involving both the msg and justice canada were continuing, with a focus on supporting community crime prevention activities. as well, there are interdepartmental policy and program development initiatives, that are part of a crime prevention policy agenda, that deal with aspects of crime, including substance abuse, drinking and driving, and the sexual abuse of children, among others. despite extant programs, federal crime prevention initiatives during this period appear somewhat diffuse and poorly coordinated, with little evidence or information on what really works. hastings (1991) reports the following: the conclusion to be drawn from the four evaluation reports that were reviewed is that, by 1987, the ministry of the solicitor general knew a great deal about how people felt about the way things were being done, but very little about whether it was having any impact on crime or the fear of crime in our communities. much was known about how to plan and manage an initiative, and about how to implement specific projects, but there was less certainty about just what exactly needed to be done substantively in order to prevent crime. (hastings, 1991) from 1987 to 1993, federal crime prevention policy and program development efforts, particularly those of justice canada, appear to be influenced as much by external events as by internal forces. the limited number of policies and program development efforts that are documented in justice canada files support this conclusion. during this period, information is more anecdotal and its sources come principally from personal discussions and recollections. one example of an influential external event occurred in october 1989. in 1989 as referred to previously, canada hosted the european and north american conference on urban safety and crime prevention. it was organized by the federation of canadian municipalities (fcm), the european forum on urban safety, and the u.s. conference of mayors, in collaboration with the montréal urban community, five international organizations of cities, and more than 30 other partners. agenda for safer cities (a document coming out of this conference) proposed concrete action to prevent property and violent crime, to reduce the demand for drugs, and to decrease the feeling of insecurity within cities. as well, there were suggestions and specific strategies given, based upon the concept of crime prevention through social development (canadian council on social development, 1990, p. 8). this conference both proposed and initiated the creation of the international centre for the prevention of crime (icpc). 34 the 1992 paris conference subsequently followed the strategic montréal conference on crime prevention. again, canada was an active participant. coming out of the paris conference was the suggestion that, among other things, “…governments declare a child and youth policy to promote community implementation of programs and services in education, including pre-school and head start programs, health, housing, drug use prevention, recreation, training, and employment” (liberal party of canada, 1993). the conference also confirmed the initiative to invest in setting up the icpc in montréal. this occurred on september 11, 1994. amidst all of these activities, justice canada, and to a much lesser extent the msg, continued to fund crime prevention projects. most of the federally funded projects centred on the community and on young offenders, or focused on both youth and the community. during this period, justice canada significantly enhanced its policy development work. it stimulated inter-departmental and federalprovincial/territorial relations, and it began improving the coordination of activities related to crime prevention. for example, in february 1992, justice canada set up a working group called the interdepartmental committee on crime prevention. it was felt that the main objectives of the federal government’s crime prevention policy should be: (a) to improve the unfavourable social and economic conditions that are linked to crime, such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and racism; (b) to improve the ability to protect individuals and society by reducing opportunities for individuals to commit crimes; (c) to provide effective law enforcement in communities; and (d) to reintegrate offenders into the community as law-abiding citizens. another external force was the work of the house of commons standing committee on justice and the solicitor general. from november 1992 to february 1993, this committee undertook a national study on crime prevention. the report, called crime prevention in canada: towards a national strategy (the horner report), recommended that canada develop and promote a national strategy to reduce opportunities for crime and to respond to underlying factors contributing to crime (government of canada, 1993c). in addition, the horner report recommended the promotion of a national strategy involving partnerships and information sharing among all levels of government, all agencies in the criminal justice system, as well as ngos and special interest groups. the standing committee also supported the “safer community approach”. here, the community is seen as the focal point for effective crime prevention activity by encouraging problem identification and resolution through inter-agency, citizen, and business community partnerships. the horner report also suggested that crime prevention strategies include activities such as reducing the opportunities to commit crime, engaging social development investment and community policing, and the continuing use of traditional legal measures. the committee further recommended an incremental federal investment of its share of the criminal justice system costs, recommending up to a 5% increase over a five-year period. it is important to emphasize 35 that justice canada officials were closely involved in and supportive of the work done by the standing committee. as previously mentioned, justice canada had hosted a national symposium on community safety and crime prevention on march 10 to 12, 1993. as stated by the then minister of justice and attorney general of canada, pierre blais: the result was an exceptional consensus that lasting improvements can only be achieved through a partnership that involves many disciplines and sectors of society, and supports community action to address the causes of crime. delegates expressed marked support for the report of the standing committee on justice and the solicitor general entitled crime prevention in canada: toward a national strategy. (government of canada, 1993a) mention should also be made of a report produced by the ad hoc advisory committee for a national strategy on community safety and crime prevention, called community safety through crime prevention. the ad hoc advisory committee was created in order to continue the work begun at the symposium. it submitted its report in october 1993, endorsing a community-driven approach to crime prevention, giving priority to the development of partnerships and coordination at all levels. while justice canada was spearheading these efforts, the msg was continuing to reflect on its role in crime prevention. in january 1993, a draft paper on the need for a national strategy on crime prevention was circulated internally. the internal working group that produced the paper suggested that, among other things, the msg build upon the experience and success of the past while recognizing the gaps and limitations inherent in that experience. the paper not only identified the need for a national strategy on crime prevention and fear reduction but also offered suggestions as to how such a strategy might be developed. for example, it suggested a broadening of all leadership roles within the criminal justice system and the various levels of government. as well, it suggested that the private sector and the community also play a more significant role and that leadership was also required in order to identify gaps, recognize emerging trends in crime, and deal with cross-jurisdictional implications. it identified the need to manage a coordinated response by all partners in crime prevention (government of canada, 1993b, p. 7). during this period, the rcmp was continuing its community crime prevention efforts, though not documenting these activities very well. with a few exceptions, such as the police vocational ventures/rovers program in partnership with scouts canada, and the formation of community consultative committees to enhance interaction between police and community, there are few direct references to crime prevention work in the rcmp’s annual reports. 36 it would be remiss, however, not to mention some of the other broad federal interdepartmental initiatives launched during this period, which, in the author’s view, impacted the effort by justice canada and the msg to develop a comprehensive crime prevention policy. probably the best known of the federal strategies, all containing elements of crime prevention, are the third enhanced victims of crime initiative (1987-1993), the brighter futures and child development initiative (1992-1997), and the family violence initiative (1988). although it is not the objective of this chapter to describe and assess how these initiatives relate to crime prevention, it is important to recognize their existence and their subsequent influence on the development of a comprehensive, national, federal strategy on crime prevention. in january 1994, the government of canada’s speech from the throne included a commitment to take measures to address the needs of canadians on the issue of community safety and crime prevention. in a 1995 justice canada program evaluation report, we read, “in his response to the speech form the throne, the then minister of justice and attorney general of canada, allen rock, indicated his support for crime prevention through social development and for the establishment of a crime prevention council” (government of canada, 1994d, p. 3). in the following months, in order to foster the development of a national strategy on community safety and crime prevention, justice canada (taking the lead role) and the msg held a number of interdepartmental consultations. this was done at the federal level through the previously referenced working group and a steering committee composed of assistant deputy ministers. additionally, a number of federal-provincial/territorial consultations occurred, including discussions on a future national crime prevention council. this was to be facilitated by means of a federal-provincial/territorial working group that would meet with a committee of deputy ministers and ministers responsible for justice. these federal efforts culminated in a document called, outline of the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention (government of canada, 1994b). this document described the progress achieved in developing six key elements for the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention including: • coordination and communication; • public education and awareness; • project development; • research and evaluation; • legislative reform; and • mandates and funding. in the report, cooperation with the jurisdictions was deemed important, especially in light of their responsibilities for service sectors, which have a great impact on community safety and crime prevention (e.g., health, education, social services, administration of justice, municipal affairs, and others). the result of all these federal 37 efforts led to the may 1994 announcement, by the federal cabinet, of its approval of a comprehensive national strategy on community safety and crime prevention. provinces were also quite active and several provinces began developing and implementing their own provincial crime prevention programs and policies with a social development orientation. for example, all provinces and territories implemented and supported a crime prevention week. many provinces were actively promoting strategies aimed at preventing crime and victimization. three examples are: in new brunswick, a number of initiatives to prevent and reduce all forms of family violence, in operation since 1987 (government of new brunswick, 1997, p. 3); in april 1994, the manitoba attorney general, james c. mccrae, brought forward a discussion paper that made reference to the potential creation of a crime prevention centre, as well as the need for coordinated crime prevention programs and information in manitoba, in both the government and voluntary sectors (government of manitoba, 1989, pp. 4-5); and in 1993, the québec round table on crime prevention report (gouvernement du québec, 1993) suggested a series of measures focusing on a mix of prevention strategies related to situational and social development with a structure to support crime prevention. the new directions: mid-1990s to the present day –toward a national policy on crime prevention after the may 1994 decision by cabinet and before the formal public announcement, work continued in order to finalize the organizational arrangements for the national strategy including the creation of the national crime prevention council. as one of the key elements of the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention (national strategy) (government of canada, 1994d), the minister of justice and attorney general of canada and the solicitor general of canada, allan rock and herb gray respectively, announced on july 5, 1994 the creation of a 25-member national crime prevention council (ncpc). professor ross hastings of the department of criminology, university of ottawa, was appointed the council chair, and madame johanne vallée, directrice générale, association des services de réhabilitation sociale, was appointed vice-chair. other members of the newly created council came from a variety of sectors, and included child development experts, community advocates, police officers, lawyers, academics, medical doctors, and business people. all the members were appointed for a three-year term. the goals of the council, as stated by professor hastings, were to, “help governments at all levels coordinate their efforts to prevent crime and reduce victimization, and to help communities develop practical solutions for the problems they face in these areas” (government of canada, 1995b, p. 1). a review of the external and internal documentation on the national strategy (including the july 5, 1994 press release) indicates that this was to be an information gathering clearinghouse, involving public education and a policy development phase. the expectation was that the ncpc 38 would work closely with all levels of government to identify trends and successful strategies as well as to propose future directions and priorities. this is exactly what it appears they did. it is also evident that the national strategy was expected to take a community focus and promote partnerships. additionally, the national strategy was to focus on a comprehensive approach in dealing with crime and victimization, one that included community safety, crime prevention, and social development measures. the level of financial resources allocated to the national strategy (i.e., $9.61 million over five years from 1994-95 to 1998-99, including $5.86 million for justice canada and $3.75 million for the rcmp) was a far cry from the recommendation in the report by the house of common’s standing committee on justice and the solicitor general in 1993. these resources were primarily meant to support the national crime prevention council (ncpc) and a small secretariat, program or project development, crime prevention conferences, databases, and public information and awareness. also included were crime prevention seminars and workshops sponsored by the rcmp. specifically, the rcmp was responsible for several major community-based programs: aboriginal shield intervention program (a culturally-based substance abuse prevention program); rcmp community suicide intervention program (a five-day workshop to help police officers, aboriginal service providers, and advisors to better assess the risk of suicide and provide intervention); the development of educational materials on dating violence; and holding various workshops aimed at community problem solving (government of canada, 1998, p. 4). the first six months of the national strategy’s work was spent on internal federal consultations, arranged through the interdepartmental working group. this process consisted of consultations with the federal-provincial/territorial working group and collecting information on federal crime prevention related activities (government of canada, 1994b), along with developing priorities and work plans. the ncpc quickly moved toward defining children and youth as a priority focus in its preventive response to crime. in its first annual report (government of canada, 1995a), it stated that interventions at all age levels (0 to 6 years, 6 to 12, and 12 to 19 years of age) should be explored with the underlying philosophy that every child is entitled to high-quality and consistent nurturing within a physically secure and emotionally safe environment. it was felt that such an environment would improve each child’s opportunity to succeed, reducing the chance of later involvement with the criminal justice system. the ncpc also identified the need to promote the social and economic benefits that could be gained through canada’s investment in crime prevention through social development. it decided to devote some energy on what was termed “topical issues in social justice reform”, for example, firearms control, proceeds of crime, and social security review. finally, while it continued to focus on children and youth, the council voiced its intention to pursue its mission of developing comprehensive communitybased responses to the problems of crime and victimization. a small number of 39 “demonstration projects” were funded and a significant consultative network developed. several months later, justice canada submitted its annual report (government of canada, 1995b) on the first year of the national strategy. this was a treasury board of canada requirement. as the federal centre with the responsibility for crime prevention in canada, the ncpc secretariat described the work of supporting various advisory and coordinating bodies to the national strategy, including its support of the council. it also described work relating to public legal education, communications and consultations, departmental project development, research efforts, and community and aboriginal policing by the rcmp. in reality, however, most of the energy in the national strategy was spent on setting up, organizing, and developing a network of experts across canada. in the next few years, the ncpc and its secretariat were active in the following areas: the promotion of crime prevention through social development; building partnerships; producing a series of policy documents; and producing community-based problem solving and development manuals and tool kits. as well, there was some testing of new intervention models, particularly those involving children and youth. while progress and accomplishments were evident, it became apparent that there were challenges, along with weaknesses in the activities being pursued. the october 1993 justice canada mid-term program evaluation report indicates, “that [while] the implementation of the national strategy is on track, this cannot be stated with certainty because there is no real evidence that the performance indicators are used systematically” (government of canada, 1994f). communication and coordination difficulties were also identified within justice canada, the federal structure, and at the federal-provincial/territorial level. in short, the focus of the assessment was on the implementation process because the strategy was really too “young” to generate adequate information about its [program] impact over such a short time period. a year later, the key message voiced in the ncpc’s second annual report was, “that consensus focuses on three issues: the goals of prevention, the means to achieve them, and the delivery strategy most likely to accomplish them” (government of canada, 1997). this report reaffirmed the goals of the ncpc, which were to help design a comprehensive and coordinated strategy that would enhance the quality of life, focusing on the safety and security of individuals and their communities. from statements provided in the report, it appears the council was looking to reaffirm its mandate, while at the same time recognize its limitations. the report stated, “however, a great deal remains to be done to translate the rhetoric of prevention into concrete support for community-based prevention initiatives” (government of canada, 1997). in january 1997, a justice canada program evaluation report suggested that [surveyed] respondents had indicated that the national crime prevention council had been successful in advising the federal government [on crime prevention]; that it had been successful in its public education and awareness efforts, in setting up a national 40 clearinghouse capacity, in promoting multidisciplinary partnerships and in establishing subcommittees to deal with important crime prevention areas. more than half of the council’s membership, however, felt the national strategy did not have access to sufficient resources to do its work effectively. in addition, there remained confusion about the relationship between the council and the national strategy. this appears evident when we consider the responsibilities of the ncpc in fulfilling the objectives of the national strategy. during this period the appointments of the council members were reviewed while discussions were also occurring about its mandate. notwithstanding the expressed limitations, much was accomplished during these first two and a half years of the national strategy. it became evident that priority should and would be given to children and youth, as well as to their families, in addition to community-based problem solving and multi-partnership intervention. the “gut feeling” was that the strategy was working, despite the fact that the real evidence of success was not readily available and probably would not be available until a more significant investment was made in developing and implementing comprehensive local crime prevention strategies. this was a key recommendation at the council’s final meeting in june 1997. accomplishments of the strategy are echoed in the september 1998 justice canada summative evaluation report (government of canada, 1998). program evaluators felt that the national strategy did indeed support an extraordinary amount of work in the area of crime prevention, given the level of funding provided, not to mention the fact that the ncpc had only operated for three years. it appears that they were very successful in developing partnerships and in achieving a consensus on priorities, which included children, youth, and their families, as well as communitydriven programming. more importantly, this was occurring within a social development framework. evaluators did find weaknesses in the design of the organizational structure of the strategy, primarily because no one person was charged with the overall responsibility for its success. also, the role of the ncpc was not clear with respect to the other funded partners and various working groups. in addition, it was felt that the national strategy made limited use of its performance-measuring framework. both the rcmp and justice canada were able to leverage internal and external financial and in-kind support for their activities. it is worth mentioning that this program evaluation was conducted after the expansion of the national strategy into its second phase. more importantly, interest in expanding the national strategy is observed occurring well before the 1998 summative evaluation report. as the report indicates, it can be traced to the june 1997 liberal party of canada’s commitment to the strategy, securing our future together, along with the subsequent reference to the expansion of the national strategy in the september 1997 speech from the throne. 41 for the federal government, this became an opportune time to reconsider and reassess its commitment to crime prevention. one must keep in mind that two parliamentary committee reports – the justice and the solicitor general in 1993 and justice and legal affairs in 1997 – had recommended that the federal government allocate to crime prevention measures 1% (in the former report) and 1.5% (in the latter report) rising to 5% of annual federal expenditures to the police, courts, and corrections, insisting that wherever possible such allocation be directed to communitybased crime prevention efforts. thus, in early 1998, the federal cabinet reviewed and approved a proposal for a national strategy on community safety and crime prevention, phase ii (national strategy ii). in june 1998, with an initial investment of $32 million per year over a five-year period, the government of canada launched phase ii of the national strategy. the goal was to build on the work of the national crime prevention council to increase individual and community safety by “equipping canadians with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to advance crime prevention efforts in their communities” (government of canada, 2002). at this time, the national strategy ii was put under the operational responsibility of justice canada. this was done through a newly created national crime prevention centre, with an external advisory body called the national steering committee, chaired by barbara hall. the national strategy ii was provided with several funding mechanisms: the community mobilization program (the largest of four funds providing grants to communities of no more than $50,000); the crime prevention investment fund (providing more significant contributions to implement and evaluate comprehensive community-based crime prevention approaches); the crime prevention partnership program (providing grants and contributions to support the active involvement of ngos interested in pursuing community crime prevention activities); and the business action program on crime prevention (targeting the professional and business sectors, which currently invest significant resources into crime prevention). a promotion and public education program was also included in the expanded strategy. surprisingly, while the national strategy ii continued to be officially cosponsored by justice canada and the msg, no specific levels of resources were being allocated either to the latter ministry or to the rcmp, as had been the case in the initial phase of the national strategy. this was corrected, after internal discussions led to a joint memorandum of understanding between the ncpc, justice canada, and the msg including the rcmp. the rcmp would be provided with $400,000 a year for three years to promote greater police involvement in, and support for, crime prevention through social development. the national strategy ii continued to promote early intervention for children, youth, and their families; but it also broadened policy and program orientations to include greater emphasis on aboriginal people, and girls and women’s personal security. the social development framework and the focus on community-based 42 problem solving remained pillars of the strategy in its second incarnation. the need to expand crime prevention efforts and address the root causes of crime was continuously reinforced by monique collette, the newly appointed executive director of the ncpc. as she herself suggested, “it is only by working with the community that government can truly help in fostering crime prevention environments” (m. collette, personal communication, 2002)2. in short, the strategy was designed to prevent crime by encouraging multipartnership approaches, community-based problem solving, and to increase public awareness of effective social development approaches to crime prevention. a review of various press releases and related documents indicates that the expansion inherent in national strategy ii was viewed as contributing to the government’s overall priorities of children, youth, aboriginal communities, women’s personal security, as well as to the government’s social and economic union initiatives. federal officials also felt that sufficient linkages had been made to other programs (the national children’s agenda, the family violence initiative, the youth employment strategy, the young offenders program, and aboriginal head start, to name a few). whether feasible or not, federal officials affirmed that departmental linkages would ensure that duplication of funding would not occur and that crime prevention objectives would be integrated within other programs, with the lead role to be taken by other federal departments. as previously mentioned, these considerations serve to reinforce a previous observation, namely, that while lead responsibility for crime prevention was assigned to justice canada and the msg, this did not negate the fact that other federal departments were also involved in activities related to crime prevention, some to a significant extent. one of the unique characteristics of the national strategy ii is that the provinces and territories played a significant decision-making role related to project funding. this was particularly the case with the community mobilization program. in addition, a great number of projects were funded over the following two and a half years. in fact, by the end of 2000, more than 1,300 projects, located in over 450 communities across canada, had received federal funding. given this significant financial investment, it is more than appropriate to find out whether this phase of the strategy actually met the expectations of the parliamentary committees, the members of the previous national crime prevention council, the government of canada, and most importantly, the individuals, neighbourhoods, and communities most affected by crime and victimization. the january 2001 justice canada mid-term evaluation provides insight into the impact of phase ii activities. for example, evaluators found widespread support among key stakeholders. further, the canadian public was being informed about crime prevention through a social development approach, as advocated by the national strategy. grants and contributions to local community efforts were viewed as an 43 appropriate means to provide support for community mobilization and problem solving efforts. moreover, the evaluation acknowledged that an immense amount of work had been accomplished over the first two and a half years of the second phase of the national strategy. on the downside, the report suggests that the national strategy needed to better tailor the strategies and resources required for high need, low capacity communities and for those communities whose first language is neither english nor french (government of canada, 2001)3. as well, the important issue of program and community sustainability was raised as a key challenge for the national strategy. the issue of further investing in the national strategy’s organizational structure in order to bring services closer to communities and to facilitate the gathering, monitoring, and dissemination of information pertaining to the ongoing performance of the strategy was discussed and emphasized. the program evaluators concluded their assessment by stating that: the national strategy has accomplished a great deal to date. the focus of its efforts during the reminder of its five-year agenda will be to improve on its current operations, to enhance ongoing monitoring and evaluation of its work, to tailor its activities to targeted groups and communities, and to capitalize better on what it has learned to ensure its ongoing development. (government of canada, 2001) the government of canada, however, was already assessing the need to further increase the resources provided through the national strategy ii. it appears from the official public documentation available, that the “overwhelming success” of the national strategy, the continuing need for new crime prevention efforts, and the advancement of knowledge about crime prevention was the rationale for the government of canada’s decision (officially announced in july 2001) to invest an additional $145 million over four years (2001-2005) in phase ii of the initiative. take note that the government had previously indicated its commitment to expand the national strategy for community safety and crime prevention in its 2001 speech from the throne. the liberal plan for the future of canada indicated its commitment to gradually increase funding for the national strategy by $145 million over four years. this time, the msg and the rcmp received a small portion of the new resources, totalling $5.6 million or 4% of the $145 million over four years. the 2003 building safer communities publication entitled, ncps highlights: building on progress, charting the future (government of canada, 2003, p. 2) suggests three key priorities: • promoting the integrated action of key governmental and non-governmental partners to reduce crime and victimization; • assisting communities in developing and implementing community-based solutions to problems that contribute to crime and victimization, particularly as they affect children, youth, women and aboriginal people; and • increasing public awareness of, and support for, effective approaches to crime prevention. 44 this second thrust of the national strategy ii encouraged the development and implementation of numerous activities and initiatives. for example, the ncps highlights document (government of canada, 2003) indicates that the national strategy supported activities in over 780 communities and funded approximately 45 large-scale projects and their evaluations. in addition, the national strategy had also engaged in the development of knowledge in several areas such as bullying and schoolbased anti-violence. in a recent article, léonard, rosario, scott, and bressan (2005) discuss the numerous lessons learned from the national strategy’s funded activities. the authors highlight the many challenges of community-based initiatives and their related effectiveness. they further suggest: because of challenges in program implementation (maintaining a random assignment, retention and attrition rates of participants, program monitoring) and evaluation of community-based projects (associated with the quality of program implementation and difficulties in securing the involvement of participants), it is often difficult to assess whether projects produce or sustain their impacts or effectiveness over the long term. (p. 242) during that period, it appeared increasingly clear that the national strategy pursued stated objectives, but with a renewed interest in the application of knowledge and evidence-based intervention. more specifically, as indicted by leonard et al. (2005): it is also clear that a national strategy must chart a strategic course in crime prevention and community safety and that it must have a resource commitment that undergirds a will to develop and utilize evidence-based knowledge and the determination to reflect and respond to arising political and policy challenges. (p. 246) finally, from what little information is available, it appears that the advent of the harper government is having a significant impact on the national strategy’s direction, for example through an increased focus on issues such as drug-related crime, youth gangs, and gun violence. we should note that several years ago the national strategy was the subject of a review by the federal cabinet and by treasury board but little has officially transpired from this review with the exception of a few new areas of interest being identified for consideration, i.e., youth gangs and gun violence. parallel to this review process, the national crime prevention centre invested time and effort in a strategic review process in the fall of 2006. the results of this review were made public in 2007 through a reformulation of the ncpc mission statement by public safety canada (psc) via its website, which now indicates that, as of december 6, 2009, the “ncpc's mission is to provide national leadership on effective and cost-efficient ways to both prevent and reduce crime by addressing known risk factors in high-risk populations and places.”4 45 further, psc states that, “to achieve its mission, the ncpc develops policies; gathers and disseminates knowledge to canadian communities; and, in cooperation with the provinces and territories, manages funding programs that support community crime prevention projects through time-limited grants and contributions” (government of canada, 2009, p. 1). in 2008, the budget for ongoing funding of crime prevention was $30 million, which means that the government of canada “effectively doubles the national strategy’s permanent funding base to $63 million per year” (government of canada, 2009, p. 1). it appears that the major changes that have occurred since the harper government came to power have been to focus the ncpc’s effort on funding and evaluating interventions to prevent and reduce offences among those most at risk with an emphasis on issues such as drug-related crime, youth gangs, and gun violence. as well, the emphasis is on supporting crime prevention interventions that have been shown to be effective through research. while investing significant resources in evidence-based crime prevention interventions appears to be an appropriate strategy, it does represent a significant departure from previous community safety and crime prevention efforts. importantly, it will limit financial support to communities who wish to test out new ideas and approaches directed toward their particular needs, as well as potentially limit the traditional support provided through the national strategy to communities in need of capacity building if they are unable to put in place “proven crime prevention programs”. this is particularly true for northern and isolated communities as well as inner-city neighbourhoods faced with major socio-economic and crime problems. discussion and conclusion canada’s efforts in crime prevention emerged slowly with early activities focused on the enforcement of statutes and existing laws. from the late 19th century to the latter part of the 1930s, crime prevention consisted primarily of activities spearheaded by the rcmp. during the 1930s, crime prevention was associated with acquiring new equipment and technology to help in the enforcement of statutes, particularly with respect to reducing or eliminating “rum-running”. by the 1940s, prevention efforts were marked by three themes: the prevention of delinquency; the prevention of sabotage and the counterfeiting of money, gas and food coupons; and post-war prevention and detection of soviet espionage. during the 1950s and 1960s, general crime prevention took a back seat to prevention-related activities focusing on drug trafficking, organized crime, white-collar crime, spies, politics, and security. however, the national conference on the prevention of crime held in 1965 at the university of toronto, drew attention to the role of the community in dealing with crime and its prevention. throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, preventive efforts continued to emphasize the enforcement of statutes and laws especially with respect to the rcmp. 46 at the same time, however, the creation of the correctional consultation centre in 1968-69 signalled the beginning of a growing recognition of the importance of the social causes of crime. as well, this period was one in which there was a growing awareness of the role of the police in activities beyond enforcement. in addition, children and youth were often the focal point of prevention strategies. by the early 1980s, crime prevention began to emerge as an important topic in the academic and law enforcement literature, and notions of social development began to gain support. during the early 1990s, the national crime prevention council (ncpc) was established, beginning a process where national attention was paid to crime prevention in canada. the initial success of the ncpc led to continued support and the announcement of phase ii of this initiative. at the same time, a social development approach gained popularity and national support. this was emphasized in the approval of phase ii of the initiative by the federal cabinet, which provided an additional $90 million over three years. while, the fundamental pillars of the initiative remained intact (namely, community partnerships, high-risk populations including children and youth, and social development), increased emphasis was placed on encouraging more comprehensive interventions that include more shortand medium-term prevention strategies. as well, there was support for the development of inclusive community governance structures and the application of knowledge-based intervention strategies. in more recent years, we observe an increasing attention to high-risk behaviour such as youth gangs and gun violence on the part of the federal government and on implementing and evaluating the impact of proven crime prevention programs. this brief history of crime prevention efforts in canada shows a clear trajectory from the mid-1980s onward, toward support for more comprehensive and integrated community-based crime prevention activities. the interventions are increasingly aimed at community safety, health, and well-being, while involving the police, other service providers, as well as community members in the process. the future of crime prevention activity in canada will no doubt build on this rich history. the development of policy in this area will include the need to be accountable for the resources devoted to crime prevention activities. this will require acceptance of an evidence-based intervention philosophy and the ongoing use of thorough and systematic evaluations to assess the long-term viability and effectiveness of the crime prevention activities undertaken. moreover, crime prevention efforts will need to demonstrate that they are addressing the concerns of key stakeholders regarding questions of crime and victimization in canadian communities. at the present time, there is widespread support among the public and the police community for crime prevention activities that address the root causes of crime through a social development approach. whether this continues in the future will depend upon the effectiveness of the actions of stakeholders and policy-makers in addressing this issue of vital concern to canadian society. 47 references bennett, r. b. 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(1993). pour un québec plus sécuritaire: partenaires en prévention. rapport de la table ronde sur la prévention de la criminalité. québec, pq: ministère de la sécurité publique du québec http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cp/res/ssincps-amosnpc-eng.aspx� http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cp/res/ssincps-amosnpc-eng.aspx� http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cp/res/ssincps-amosnpc-eng.aspx� 50 griffiths, c., & verdun-jones, s. (1994). canadian criminal justice (2nd ed.). toronto: harcourt brace & company, canada inc. hastings, r. (1991). an inventory of crime prevention and community policing projects 1974-1991 in canada (final report, vol. 1). ottawa: solicitor general of canada. hofley, b. c. (1975). presentation of the federal position. in d. macfarlane (ed.), second national crime prevention workshop: report of the proceedings, may 2122, 1975. toronto: centre of criminology, university of toronto. kelly, n., & kelly, w. (1973). the royal canadian mounted police: a century of history (1873-1973). edmonton, ab: hurtig publishers. léonard, l., rosario, g., scott, c., & bressan, j. (2005). building safer communities: lessons learned from canada’s national strategy. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 47(2), 233-250. liberal party of canada. (1993, april 22). crime prevention and urban safety (announcement of a crime and justice policy package). ottawa: author. macfarlane, d. (ed.). (1975). second national crime prevention workshop: report of the proceedings, may 21-22, 1975. toronto: centre of criminology, university of toronto. moore, e. r. (1945, october). rcmp quarterly, 11(2). moore, e. r. (1946, january). rcmp quarterly, 11(3). vernon, m. h. (1936, january). rcmp quarterly, 3(3). watson, g. (1975). foreword to the report of the proceedings. in d. macfarlane (ed.), second national crime prevention workshop: report of the proceedings, may 2122, 1975. toronto: centre of criminology, university of toronto. wilson, d. j. (1942, january). rcmp quarterly, 9(3). 51 endnotes 1 the ministry of the solicitor general of canada and its departmental headquarters were created in fiscal year 1966-67. the departmental headquarters was replaced by the ministry secretariat in fiscal year 1973-74. 2 this quote was provided by ms. monique collette at the request of the author to help summarize her thinking around the role of government in crime prevention. 3 in the january 2001 program evaluation report, reference is made to the fact that “for the purposes of this evaluation, the term ‘high needs communities’ is used to refer to communities at risk that possess limited resources and capacity for change and that are isolated or marginalized from the mainstream society due to geography (rural/remote locations) and/or due to a combination of socio-economic and cultural factors.” 4 public safety canada. national prevention crime centre. 2007. a blueprint for effective crime prevention. ottawa: public safety canada. 52 an historical overview of crime prevention initiatives in canada: a federal perspective the early years: up to the mid-1960s the police-community relations era: mid-1960s to mid-1970s the community crime prevention era: mid-1970s to mid-1980s the policy development era: mid-1980s to mid-1990s – toward a comprehensive federal policy on crime prevention the new directions: mid-1990s to the present day –toward a national policy on crime prevention discussion and conclusion microsoft word 07 radical_care.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120340 radical care and decolonial futures: conversations on identity, health, and spirituality with indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth jeffrey ansloos, deanna zantingh, katelyn ward, samantha mccormick, and chutchaya bloom siriwattakanon abstract: the spirituality and health of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit people occurs within and responds to contexts of extreme colonial violence. however, few studies have examined the relationships among the identity, health, and spirituality of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth and their perspectives and activism work in relation to the context of this violence. this study aims to better understand the importance of the connections among identity, health, and spirituality and their role in supporting indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit leadership in the enactment of care practices to promote health amidst colonial violence and the worlding of decolonial futures beyond and outside it. informed by key insights from the grassroots movements and fields of indigenous feminism, indigenous queer thought, and radical resurgence, this study brings these insights into conversation, via qualitative interviews with five indigenous youth activists (18 to 35 years old) from across the part of turtle island now known as canada. our analysis results in four themes: (1) identity, (2) spirituality, (3) the multidimensional nature of colonial violence, and (4) radical care. we delineate activating practices for decolonial futures, and signal the value of grounded, context-reflective, culturally safe, and intersectional health and youth services. this research demonstrates that spirituality is constitutive of and foundational to the identity and health of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, and shows that health promotion and youth services must address the multidimensional nature of these needs if they are to truly support indigenous young people, their movements of radical care, and the creation of a decolonial elsewhere marked by belonging, love, self-determinism, responsibility, and joy. keywords: two-spirit; queer youth; trans youth; indigenous youth; health and spirituality; indigenous health jeffrey ansloos phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor of indigenous mental health and social policy, department of applied psychology and human development, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, 252 bloor st w, toronto on m5s 1v6. email: jeffrey.ansloos@utoronto.ca deanna zantingh is a phd student in the faculty of theology at the university of st. michael’s college at the university of toronto, 81 st. mary st., toronto on m5s 1j4. email: deanna.zantingh@mail.utoronto.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 75  katelyn ward is a phd student in clinical & counselling psychology, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, 252 bloor st w, toronto on m5s 1v6. email: katelyn.ward@mail.utoronto.ca samantha mccormick is a phd student in school & clinical child psychology, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, 252 bloor st w, toronto on m5s 1v6. email: samantha.mccormick@mail.utoronto.ca chutchaya bloom siriwattakanon holds an ma in adult learning and community development from the ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto. chutchaya works remotely from bangkok, thailand for international labour rights organization verité, 106 kamias road, quezon city, philippines. email: bloom.t.k.@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 76  in full metal indigiqueer oji-cree poet joshua whitehead (2017) intervened in the white heteropatriarchy of the colonial nation state, invoking the language of indigiqueer “in order to rebeautify and re-member queer indigeneity” (p. 1). they explained, “for me, to take the word ‘indigenous’ and braid it with ‘queer’ is a new type of worlding” (2018, para. 9). queer latinx theorist josé esteban muñoz (2009) has similarly suggested queerness is a “ ‘not yet here’ that critically engages pragmatic presentism” requiring a “revival of queer political imagination” (p. 1). the queer political imagination of indigenous peoples was renewed in the 1980s within twospirit movements and with the guidance of two-spirit teachers (laing, 2018), and with the development of the fields of indigenous feminist and queer studies. both the two-spirit movement and its intersection with indigenous queer studies have raised the need for considering the health of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people who are enduring colonial violence in settler societies like canada. as kwagiulth scholar sarah hunt (2016) explained, “two-spirit health must be understood within the dual context of colonial oppression, which is rooted in heteropatriarchy, and the vibrant resurgence of two-spirit peoples’ gender roles and sexual identities” (p. 4). while the two-spirit movement began alongside movements for indigenous peoples’ rights and lgbtq+ freedoms in the 1980s and 1990s, the movement draws on a broader history of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies that indigenous queer studies seeks to articulate (wilson, 1996, 2008). to be indigenous and queer has long been deeply interconnected with conceptions of spirituality and health, and a key concern for indigenous queer studies is how to promote health and spiritual well-being for queer, trans, and two-spirit people, especially youth (walters et al., 2006). as whitehead’s (2017, 2020) indigiqueering work signals, indigenous queer, trans, and twospirit young people are reclaiming these traditions and reframing the health and spirituality of indigenous queer life in new and important ways. indigenous queer worldings are replete with the radical possibilities of queer political imagination in which indigenous peoples exist beyond colonialism, while embodying, and indeed, enriching indigenous life in the colonial present. as muñoz (2009) suggested, “the here and now is simply not enough” (p. 96) and indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth across turtle island are worlding an elsewhere. in this article, we present findings from a qualitative study with a group of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth activists from across canada. through a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with these young people, our study sought: (a) to deepen understanding of how they are storying their identities as indigenous and queer people, regarding the realities of colonial histories and colonial presents, as well as anti-colonial futures; and (b) to consider how they are queering concepts of health and spirituality in the context of their activism. our analysis yielded important themes that nuance our understanding of the multidimensionality of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit identities: the importance of spirituality, radical care, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 77  activating practices in navigating colonially entrenched homophobic and transphobic violence, as well as being guided by the ethics of love and sovereignty in worlding anticolonial futures. our study examines how indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are broadening understandings of health and spirituality, and emphasizes their relevance for youth care practice and the promotion of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth well-being. literature review the two-spirit movement and indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth identity in order to engage meaningfully with indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth identity, spirituality, and well-being, it is important to contextualize the activism of these young people and its intersection within the broader history of indigenous queer movements. as alex wilson (2008) reminded us, the history of queer indigenous activism meaningfully intertwines struggles for indigenous lgbtq+ rights with traditions of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. the existence of rich queer indigenous traditions is crucial to acknowledge. whereas cisheteronormative society regards queer life as something new or evolving, indigenous queer studies contends that indigenous nations have understood gender and sexuality in their own terms — namely as fluid, socially and spiritually driven constructs (fieland et al., 2007). people who expressed fluid gender roles often had respected ceremonial roles as a “spiritual healer” or a “helper” within their communities (cannon, 1998). however, european colonialism imposed western gender binarism and white cis-heteropatriarchy on indigenous communities (cannon, 1998). consequentially, indigenous knowledge systems, ceremonial practices, and cultural identities related to gender and sexuality were pushed into hiding (mcleod, 2017). despite this, queer indigenous peoples over the last half-century have resisted the imposed cis-white heteropatriarchy of the colonial nation state. mcleod (2017) stated that in the late 1980s “wherever there was indigenous activism … you would find queer activists participating in the action” (p. 5) and that by the 1990s, queer indigenous people began to engage in community organizing to achieve the goal of reclaiming their sovereignty by bringing indigenous knowledges of gender and sexuality from various nations. the emergence of the contemporary two-spirit movement in canada and indigenous queer advocacy grew out of the 1990 international gathering of american indian and first nations gays and lesbians in winnipeg (depelteau & grioux, 2015). at this gathering, “two-spirit” emerged as an umbrella term for indigenous gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, nonbinary, queer, and trans community members across turtle island (north and central america). encompassing all aspects of these identities, two-spirit has a special connection to ceremony, responsibilities, and spirituality (laing, 2018; wilson, 1996). while there have been tensions regarding how two-spirit identities are to be defined (depelteau & grioux, 2015), two-spirit was not intended to eclipse distinct identities within indigenous communities. rather, two-spirit is a term that is “marvellous and malleable” (mcleod, 2017), signifying the ways in which queer and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 78  indigenous peoples stand in solidarity against oppressive colonial cis-heteropatriarchy. rather than “coming out”, wilson (2008) draws the distinction that queer indigenous people “come in” to be “two-spirit” in order to “be in” places of cultures and histories. from the 1990s until the present, two-spirit people have been on the front lines of indigenous and queer advocacy. in line with the burgeoning aids crisis during the late 1980s, two-spirit activists established two-spiritand hiv-focused organizations in canada to promote and support well-being for people in indigenous and queer communities; many of these organizations continue to this day (depelteau & grioux, 2015). throughout the 1990s, a group of two-spirit advocates successfully lobbied the royal commission on aboriginal peoples1 to address discrimination against indigenous and two-spirit people in canada (depelteau & grioux, 2015). the rise of two-spirit movements is understood as a reclamation of indigenous queer people’s identities, bodies, spiritualities, health, and land sovereignty (wilson, 2015). a growing body of research has examined the important role two-spirit youth have played in reclaiming indigenous and queer identities. in dana wesley’s (2015) work, two-spirit youth conceptualize two-spirit as embodied, lived, and as “more a way of moving through the world than a singular self-definition” (p. 2). in interviews conducted by wesley (2015), two-spirit youth expressed, among other ideas, that their gender was too expansive to be limited to a category, and described “a gray way of life” (p. 52), alluding to holistic ways of being tied to gender, sexuality, and indigenous identity. these youth suggested that rather than defining “twospirit”, it is better to consider what this identity and the community associated with it does to make relations possible. this relationality is exemplified in the work of marie laing (2018), who considered how indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth actively engage in creating community and spaces for themselves. laing found tremendous diversity in the perceived responsibilities of two-spirit youth. in her study, youth described the importance of indigenous methodologies, and did this in a variety of ways. for example, some youth described learning words in indigenous languages, and ceremonial roles from traditional elders and their nation’s two-spirit community members. other two-spirit participants described not knowing traditional roles but creating new roles such as community work and activism. two-spirit youth inherit an important role within indigenous queer community and advocacy work (laing, 2018; wesley, 2015; wilson, 2015). today, youth often step into the work and spaces created by two-spirit mentors and elders who began the work of building these spaces and communities in the early 1980s. while being two-spirit is political, it is intergenerationally so. across generations, two-spirit peoples have asserted a dynamic understanding of community, identity, language, land, and place — not merely (as anthropology might frame it) as a cultural practice, but rather, as a political worlding of indigenous sovereignty. 1https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/royal-commission-aboriginalpeoples/pages/introduction.aspx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 79  towards indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth studies while indigenous studies and queer studies are fields with extensively documented advocacy and activism work, indigenous queer studies constitutes a newer body of research that has emerged from the activism of indigenous people’s resistance to the cis-hetero foundations of settler-colonialism and the worlding of futures rooted in decolonial methodologies. understanding this field of work and its methodological aims is critical when articulating the distinct ways that indigenous queer young people are expanding conceptual and theoretical knowledge. to describe the relationship between queer and indigenous studies, qwo-li driskill (2010) utilized the metaphor of a cherokee basket-weaving technique known as “doubleweaving” — two separate baskets woven together with a common rim — to describe the union between indigenous studies and queer studies. in the doubleweave technique, balance is a crucial aspect of design: one basket cannot exist without the support of the other. when indigenous studies, as the first “basket”, focuses on acts of personal and collective sovereignty or self-determination, then the second “basket” — queer–indigenous activists, movements, and studies — also direct themselves toward this same goal. the connection to queer studies emphasizes that personal and collective sovereignty is inextricably connected to sexual and gender sovereignty and liberation from cis-heteropatriarchy. to carry these two baskets together is to carry a basket full of important gifts and tools that help in working toward self-determination for all indigenous peoples; gifts that are crucial to the dismantling of colonial gender and sexuality frameworks and the harms they continue to inflict. to be queer and indigenous is to simultaneously assert indigenous sovereignty in the most powerful way imaginable: rejecting colonial subjugation and providing access to indigenous identities, bodies, and spiritualities. indigenous feminism also shaped indigenous queer thinking (driskill, 2010). indigenous feminism examines sovereignty and indigeneity through the critical lenses of gender, sexuality, and identity in decolonization (driskill, 2010). in contrast to other forms of feminism, indigenous feminism focuses on the restoration of cultural traditions and self-government (st. denis, 2007). while indigenous feminists have consistently called for critiques of colonial patriarchy and its effects upon all aspects of life, they also situate gender violence within the more pressing concerns of their daily lived experience: colonization, racism, and economic disadvantage (st. denis, 2007). at the core of their aim to decolonize through the restoration of cultural traditions is the call to restore traditional gender relations (monture-angus, 1996). as driskill et al. (2011) noted, “the models of dissent offered by indigenous feminists support the work of indigenous glbtq2 critics to hold heteropatriarchal legacies accountable to change and thereby support the collective sovereignty of indigenous people” (pp.18–19). the implications for queer young people are substantial, as the intersection of not only their gender but also their sexuality interfaces with an often ageist exclusion where adults are frequently prioritzed over young people in various social and community contexts, as well as in the conceptualization and theorization of their own lives, health, and well-being (laing, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 80  indigenous activist and scholarly work aimed at asserting indigenous sovereignty must also affirm indigenous sovereignty over indigenous bodies and sexualities. as simpson (2015) asserted, “indigenous women and two-spirit/lgbtq people have consistently spoken out and organized around the idea of ‘sovereign bodies’ as a result of the biopolitics (race, gender, and sexuality) of colonialism” (p. 20). for indigenous peoples, the quest for sovereignty is also a battle about making decisions for and about our bodies (arvin et al., 2013). as a whole, queer indigenous studies contributes profoundly to transforming indigenous/native studies from a field that describes native peoples to a methodology that critiques colonialism and its modes of description and structures of power (driskill et al., 2011); therefore, queer indigenous studies provides a conceptual foundation for indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth to expand upon. a key feature of indigenous queer studies is the analysis of colonial structures of gender and sexuality and the ways in which these structures are rooted in racism and sexism. as driskill et al. (2011) suggested, “when linked, queer and two-spirit invite critiquing heteronormativity as a colonial project and decolonizing indigenous knowledges of gender and sexuality as one result of that critique” (p. 3). this is because two spirit is a threat to this hetero and cis-patriarchal system at its core (hunt & holmes, 2015). in the words of one two-spirit youth, “[two-spirit] prioritizes indigenous sovereignty in a way that no other term does. i think that’s one of the most important things about the term” (interview quote in laing, 2018, p. 129). driskill et al. (2011) also described how, “by disrupting colonially imposed and internalized systems of gender and sexuality, indigenous queer and two-spirit critiques can move decolonizing movements outside dominant logics and narratives of nation” (p. 19). this is especially significant in that settler colonialism locates indigenous queer peoples within colonially asserted patriarchy. two-spirit people defy both coloniality and patriarchy in actively asserting identity in indigeneity and queerness (wesley, 2015; wilson, 2008). while the colonial white heteropatriarchal lens classifies sexuality and race in terms of “normal” and “abnormal”, and “white” and “other”, queer indigenous knowledges refuse to be defined through these classifications. rather, they assert that all indigenous people are key to their lives and communities and are as diverse as their own diverse indigenous nations (driskill et al., 2011). this makes two-spirit people crucial to the success of indigenous social movements and the actualization of indigenous sovereignty. reclaiming indigenous sexualities and gender expressions comprises a refusal to allow colonial systems to continue to describe and create “worlds” for indigenous people to “live” within (simpson, 2017). indigenous queer people invite their communities and kinship networks into a collective refusal of the heteronormativity of the colonial system (driskill et al., 2011). as such, the reclamation of diverse sexualities and gender expressions is a vital mode of collective decolonization that is being led by indigenous queer leaders. by reimagining kinship networks and asking how family ties invite relationship across difference, indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are “rejecting colonial insider/outside binaries” and presenting methods for affirming diversity outside of heterosexual norms (driskill et al., 2011, p. 20). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 81  central to the task of decolonization is the ability to exercise personal and communal agency towards self-determination (simpson, 2017). for indigenous queer young people, “body sovereignty is inseparable from sovereignty over our lands and waters. it means that we are reclaiming and returning to traditional understandings of our bodies as connected to land” (laing, 2018, p. 58). two-spirit entails reclaiming all parts of identity, holistically. laing (2018) also wrote about how two-spirit is a bridge, a unifying term for queer, non-gender-conforming, and non-sexual-identity-conforming indigenous people to rally around. in refusing the colonial violence of cis-heteropatriarchy, indigenous queer leaders are affirming active participation in embodying and creating indigenous futures for “everyone — children, elders, grandparents, parents, aunties, uncles, the ones that are waiting to be born, beautiful people of all genders, sexual orientations and abilities, everyone” (simpson, 2015, p. 21). they are affirming their role of helping communities move toward collective healing. they are affirming their own sacred ability and innate freedom to make decisions. they are saying yes to the responsibilities of their kinship networks, their clans, their nations, and their lands. they are embracing sovereignty, both individually and collectively, to create worlds outside of colonial domination that will create a good life for everybody — and every body. indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth health indigenous queer studies’ attention to the politics of body sovereignty is useful in evaluating the current status of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth health research. health research enacted on indigenous peoples, especially indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, has been understood through the lens of colonial conceptualizations of health (hunt, 2016). colonial health care systems, in both design and delivery of care, are embedded within the heteropatriarchy, thus creating barriers for queer and two-spirit youth (hunt, 2016). two-spirit youth persistently encounter gaps in services, and health resources that do not adequately allow for a holistic view of health. it is imperative that queer and two-spirit health be conceptualized in relationship with intersecting marginalized identities as well as the broader social determinants of health (hunt, 2016). in a study that sought to understand the hiv healthcare experiences of two-spirit youth in toronto, teengs and travers (2006) identified migration, unemployment, homelessness, sexual abuse, racism, poverty, and inaccessible services as specific barriers to two-spirit youth health and wellness. from a systemic perspective, such barriers must be understood in the context of erasure, with an understanding that ongoing health inequalities persist in part due to the omission of queer two-spirit voices. furthermore, where queer-focused social resources are concerned, there is a gap within overall indigenousfocused services, a gap that also persists within indigenous community services (teengs & travers, 2006; wilson, 2008). these gaps lead to poor recognition of two-spirit lives in both indigenous and non-indigenous contexts (hunt, 2015). the narrow perspectives of colonial health practice and the erasure of two-spirit peoples enforce youth displacement, extending colonial violence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 82  for many indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, the maintenance of health and wellness rests on the foundational elements of advocacy, self-determination, and sovereignty. despite the debilitation of indigenous positionality within settler-dominant societies, two-spirit youth continue to take on important roles within the indigenous and queer community’s advocacy work, proactively creating the world that they want it to be (laing, 2018; wesley, 2015; wilson, 2008). many two-spirit youth report that participating in ceremony is important to them and is a health practice within an indigenous methodology (laing, 2018). queer and twospirit youth are proactive in disrupting narrow views of gender and sexuality, effectively decolonizing these health and wellness domains (hunt, 2016). despite the desire to participate in indigenous ceremony, homophobia and transphobia are barriers to accessing and participating in healing methodologies for many indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth (laing, 2018; wilson, 2008). the emerging field of indigenous health calls for strengths-based and culturally informed approaches to indigenous health, approaches that draw on cultural connection and continuity. cultural connectedness is associated with indigenous youth mental health, beyond other social determinants of health (snowshoe et al., 2016). this was attested to by kirmayer and colleagues (2003), who found evidence that building a connection to identity, community integration, and political empowerment can also play an integral role in improving mental wellness for indigenous youth. in view of this, hunt (2016) called for a need “to center indigenous youth perspectives using a strength-based approach” (p. 18). as hunt suggested, indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are actively resisting harmful narratives that problematize indigenous youth. the resurgence of indigenous gender roles supports the broader projects of reclamation of cultural knowledge and power, and the rebuilding of community that respects queer life (hunt & holmes, 2015; simpson, 2012). wesley (2015) suggested that in resisting pathologizing, queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are not “waiting to be saved, they are theorizing their own lives into futures that center indigenous concepts of nationhood, traditions, and ceremonies” (p. 43). identity, spirituality, and health are linked as core components of understanding indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit well-being. wilson (2008) emphasized that acceptance or affirmation of two-spirit identity is a process of “coming in” and being a valued member of indigenous communities. further, the work of wesley (2015) draws on the need to connect queer identities to language and culture, with some participants asking for the help of community elders and language learners in the translation of the term “two-spirit” into indigenous languages, or with finding similar terms embedded within their own indigenous nations. this emphasizes the desire for culturally and spiritually integrated identities and locates these individuals within diverse indigenous traditions (laing, 2018). within the broader scope of indigenous health literature, many scholars have explored how indigenous health is best understood as holistic, placing equal emphasis on emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual components (ansloos, 2017; lavallee & poole, 2010). within indigenous health, the importance of community and identity cannot be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 83  overlooked, as what one person experiences as a community member affects the whole community, and vice versa. building a strong positive cultural identity connection is an essential component of indigenous youth health and life promotion (wexler, 2014). wexler discussed how culture promotes “identity, feeling of commitment, and purpose” (p. 73), even when culture is transformed and adapted to match changing and contemporary expressions of that culture. for indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, whose experience of colonialism has created cultural dislocation, it is increasingly clear that positive queer and indigenous identities, and positive and integrative queer–indigenous identities, are essential for health and life promotion (laing, 2018; wilson, 2008). indeed, to live in the face of colonial violence and go beyond it is an act of resistance that is life affirming for queer, trans, and two-spirit people (hunt & holmes, 2015; simpson, 2015). this review has raised several important dimensions relevant to our current study. first, it reveals the activism of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth as it occurs in relation to rich two-spirit histories and movements, and elucidates decolonial practices which advance personal and communal self-determination for all indigenous peoples. our review also shows that research that calls attention to and amplifies young people’s engagement in these practices is needed. the emergence of the field of indigenous queer studies, and the important methodologies and roles it is generating when it comes to fostering the indigenous political imagination beyond colonialism, are of profound relevance in engaging with indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people. the contributions that this context can make to the creation of more politically explicated understandings of indigenous queer youth health, spirituality, identity and activism are significant. further, the emphasis that indigenous queer studies places on the process of knowledge production that centres indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit people is greatly needed in the areas of health and spirituality. for this reason, our research has focused on amplifying indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth reflections on their daily practices of resistance in their lived experiences and their worlding of decolonial futures. methodology context the project that is described here is a component piece of a program of research, led by the first author, entitled manitou2manidoo: conversations with indigenous youth activists, which focuses on conversing with a group of 15 indigenous young people who are activists identified as leaders in their communities and in their understanding of spirituality, identity, mental health, and community. this program of research was funded by the social sciences and humanities research council through the canada research chairs program, and all aspects of the research were approved by research ethics boards. interviews were conducted between 2019 and 2020 by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 84  the first author, as well as by a team of researchers under his supervision. not all of those involved in the research process contributed to this article as authors. the current study five young people who participated in the interviews are expressly involved in taking up matters related to two-spirit, queer, and trans identity, community, and health; four of them explicitly identified themselves as two-spirit, trans, or queer people. a fifth participant explicitly made the connection between their identity, sexuality, spirituality, health, and work. for the purposes of the findings presented in this article, herein referred to as the study, we, the research team, are drawing on an analysis of these five interviews only, as we seek to highlight the voices and perspectives of those with lived experience of identity and activism within two-spirit, queer, and trans communities. research team positionality the research team, as well as this group of authors, includes queer, trans, two-spirit, indigenous, black, and racialized people, as well as some who identify as white and as settlers. at the time of submission of this article, all research team members were residing in tkaranto, turtle island, and ranged in age from 20 to 36, variably self-identifying as young adults, youth, and those who are no longer youth. we are a collective of people that includes mad, disabled, and neurodivergent folks. some of us are religious, spiritual, and traditional, while others are none of these. we are all engaged in longstanding community work with indigenous people, and are committed to anti-oppressive, anti-colonial, queer, and feminist practices. our biases are many, and our commitments diverse, but we are aligned in reflecting on the limitations and privileges of our positionality as folks who have access to institutional power and research resourcing, and who have been socialized, and indeed colonized, by disciplinary perspectives. we contest the colonizing forces of education, psychology, religious studies, child and youth studies, and health sciences. our commitment is to attend to the effects of bias and power imbalances, to include forms of accountability in research through consensus-based reconciliation approaches, and, as researchers who use participatory practices, to engage in feedback and input, and contribute to knowledge creation. participants in accordance with our informed consent process, participants did not need to provide any descriptive or demographic information to participate in this study provided that they were indigenous persons between 18 and 35 years old. participants were recruited through community peer-referent sampling. consideration was given during sampling to recruitment of activists doing work within indigenous queer and trans communities. disclosure of participant’s gender, sexuality, age, and other demographic information was not solicited; participants volunteered some information without prompting. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 85  after they were interviewed, all participants were provided with a copy of their transcripts in order to make any changes they wished. all five were invited to anonymize their interview through the creation of a pseudonym or to provide permission for the use of their own name alongside their quotes. while this practice reduces the confidentiality of their contributions, it simultaneously upholds principles of respectful research with indigenous peoples. chelsea, smokii, kairyn, and tunchai chose to use their own names; one participant chose to use the pseudonym oz. the informed consent process also provided a description of the ways in which the interviews and transcripts could be used in the future so that participants could indicate which uses they consented to. all interview transcriptions drawn on for the purpose of the current article have been granted permission for use in the manner in which they are presented here. conceptual framework our conceptual framework is grounded in two principles. the first asserts that indigenous queer futures are rich with political imagination: when queer indigenous activists choose to share their stories, to listen well is to listen for the ways that political imagination takes shape in all aspects of life as they imagine daily resistance to the colonial present through reassertion and reimagining of indigenous lifeways and futures. our second principle is that, as youth share their stories, our role is to make evident the various forms and expressions of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth political imagination by drawing on important tools and methods used in indigenous feminism and indigenous queer scholarship. as driskill et al. (2011) explained, “indigenous feminists support sovereignty struggles when they argue that decolonization for indigenous people will follow declaring sovereignty from the heteropatriarchal politics, economics, and cultures, inherited from colonization” (p. 8). in making evident the futures being worlded by the political imagination of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, our work has been crucially conceptualized through indigenous feminism’s use of methodologies that are “dynamic and multi-faceted” and involve “responding to changing political and social contexts and issues” (st. denis, 2007, p. 35). such methodologies produce rich possibilities that continue to redefine indigenous feminism, and by extension, indigenous studies, as they dialogue with indigenous conceptions of gender and indigenous queer people, theories, and practices. this centres — both within our project and within indigenous studies — an attention to the experiences, methods, and knowledge production of indigenous queer people, as well as the often ignored “pain of the doubly and triply marginalized” (belcourt, 2020, p. 140). throughout this study, we attend to the ways in which queer indigenous young people are making meaning, the language they use to do so, and the dynamic relationship between their lived experiences and structural factors (e.g., colonialism) identified through their interviews. after transcription of the interviews, we engaged in thematic analysis to understand two key domains: (1) how youth narrated their identities as indigenous and queer people, especially regarding the realities of colonial histories and colonial presents, as well as anti-colonial futures; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 86  and (2) how these indigenous young people are queering concepts of health and spirituality in the context of their activism. method of analysis thematic analysis was selected as the method of analysis for a variety of reasons:  it supports the development of exploratory research through the analysis of commonalities across a research sample;  it is flexible when generating knowledge from larger sources of qualitative data (e.g., multiple interview transcripts);  we valued the consensus-based and participatory nature of interpretation, which supports collective approaches to research and includes accountability processes to address bias;  it affords an opportunity for the involvement of participants in knowledge creation processes through member checking. of course, there are also limitations to this method. given the ways thematic analysis seeks to establish themes across the sample, it risks abstraction and the erasure of nuance and particularity. procedurally, we utilized braun and clarke’s (2006) method of thematic analysis, whereby the research team repeatedly read the interviews to form initial impressions and ensure familiarity with them, and then utilized nvivo to code the interviews line-by-line, drawing attention to content relevant to the research questions. to assess inter-rater reliability, codes were examined for differences, which were duly reconciled. codes were then organized into broader themes through a consensus-based decision-making process. descriptions of themes were developed and used to annotate conversations that provided salient narrative examples. conceptually, then, we have used certain tools to listen to queer indigenous stories with the understanding that the stories have the power to reshape these very tools. in our conceptual framing, we have tried to honour the methods of queer–indigenous people who are profoundly transforming indigenous studies from a field that describes indigenous people to a method that critiques colonialism and imagines a world beyond it. indigenous queer activists are worlding a future whose political imagination is bursting into the now, into the space offered within indigenous feminisms and indigenous studies. as this political imagination unfolds, it invites everything in its vicinity into its political reimagining of spaces and places where indigenous bodies, communities, and lands can thrive. findings our analysis yielded four themes in our conversations with indigenous queer, trans, and twospirit youth: (1) identity, (2) spirituality, (3) the multidimensional nature of colonial violence, and (4) radical care and activating practices for decolonial futures. these themes elucidate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 87  indigenous young people’s perspectives on identity and the intersections of colonial histories, presents, and futures, as well as the ways they are queering concepts of health and spirituality in the context of their work in communities. identity in conversations with the five young people in our study, identity was taken up in a variety of important ways. foremost, these young people spoke to the multidimensionality of being queer and trans and emphasized that as indigenous people this identity is best understood not in individualistic terms but in terms of role and of obligation to community. as kairyn explained, “two-spirit is very deeply tied to culture, tied to community, and tied to roles within the community, within the ceremony…”. of course, these roles and responsibilities are not static, but are evolving and sociorelationally constituted. speaking of their movement between masculine and feminine roles in ceremony, smokii explained, “i think, in all of this, what i’ve come to understand my role is as a two-spirit person is that i have the ability to do whatever role is necessary in that moment.” identity in this sense is above all about being in relationship, not only with oneself, but also with the temporal spiritual needs of one’s community. further, kairyn explained: the first time i heard that i was two-spirit i was 6 years old and that was my auntie telling me that. she already knew long before i did and that was a sacred thing and she let me know. i realized the power that spirit has. that’s where my understanding comes from. it’s from my family and from those teachings. this anecdote demonstrates that identity for indigenous young people is something that is not merely self-articulated but emerges and is reflected upon in relational contexts which uphold the dignity of two-spirit and, indeed, queer life. it is inappropriate for non-indigenous people to claim identities such as two-spirit. as kairyn made clear, this is appropriative violence: maybe there’s a word in your culture, whatever culture you have, to explain better what you’re feeling. maybe you should look it up, and then leave two-spirit alone. [chuckles] i’m like, “let us claim that identity because it’s ours.” young people in our study also emphasized the tremendous diversity that exists across and within indigenous nations, communities, and contexts in articulating two-spirit, queer, and trans identities, and acknowledged the role of indigenous language in navigating this diversity. according to kairyn, “if you go into any community and you ask about their language and the history of that language, you’ll find so many different definitions for what they believe to be like the equivalent of what two-spirit is.” the five young people in our study, who themselves diversely identified as trans, queer, and two-spirit, emphasized the importance for them of reawakening their linguistic connections to culture, and how that process supported the resurgence of indigenous notions of sexual and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 88  gender identity, which differ from contemporary white homonormative perspectives. as kairyn explained: i was coming out to my cousin and my aunt was there and i said i’m gay. she said you’re not gay, you’re two-spirit. i said, “what is that?” she said, “my boy, you’re so feminine and you’re so much like your mom.” she said, “that second spirit you have, that’s your mom’s spirit. it’s inside of you and it’s with you all the time. that’s why you remind us so much of her. that’s energy,” she said, “and that’s power.” that’s another example of just like learning about spirit and learning how that drives you and how that completes you as a person and how even though you pass on, that spirit doesn’t just go, it doesn’t just disappear. it stays in this realm. in kairyn’s account, there is a clear departure from framing sexuality in terms of “coming out as gay” towards a culturally situated notion of gender and spirituality, which centres their life within a spiritual identity and intergenerational connection. similarly, smokii was deeply concerned with reframing queer and trans lived experiences of connection to community, from the tropes of developmental milestones or rites of passage of “coming out” to affirmations of community responsibility to create safety for and take care of diverse indigenous life: i just want to abolish the idea that we need to have this coming out in order to like to start our lives as who we are because we really don’t. i almost envision a society of, especially for my community, the indigenous community, just having young people naturally take up those roles like they used to and having the community recognize at a very young age, these unique people — and protecting them and fighting for them and fostering them like how they used to. indigenous queer and trans young people often experience a conflict of identity, which stems from alienation from their own community, experiences of homophobia and transphobia within and beyond their community, and a positioning of identity as non-intersectional. speaking of their early teens, oz explained: i still didn’t know what it meant to be an indigenous person, because i was also very conflicted with my indigeneity and my sexuality and my gender, because i was told at a young age that i couldn’t be two-spirit … i couldn’t be gay and i couldn’t be native. coming out as a process is often situated within an identity politic that invisibilizes indigenous young people’s intersectional identities as racialized people. in conversations with indigenous queer and trans young people, connection to identity is work that requires intentional reawakening and reconstituting of cultural traditions, language, and community relations. as smokii has alternatively suggested, “the work that i do is on coming-home narratives.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 89  spirituality the five indigenous young people included in this study discussed matters of spirituality in several important ways. first, these young people emphasized that cultural resurgence was critical to their understanding and experience of spirituality. as chelsea explained: to be able to interact with communities and continue to have capacity, is to really be looking within and having that sense of cultural grounding. i see that that is one thing that i really try to intentionally focus on in different places and engagements. that’s what keeps me calm and that’s what keeps me going, is embodying cultural grounding. of course, this emphasis on cultural grounding, while important in and of itself, doesn’t occur in a sociohistorical vacuum. young people in our study were acutely aware of the ways that cultural connection and resurgence is a tactical response to the impositions of colonialism. as chelsea explained: i’m learning my language, because i had family on both sides up until my grandparents and my parent on one side of the family attended residential school. that had a huge impact on the language and connection to our culture not being passed on. in order to understand the central importance of resurgence work for indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people, it is essential to understand intergenerational experiences of colonialism. smokii explained that, “my mom, who is indigenous, had gone to college and learned about residential schools and learned about some things and then came home and pulled me out of catechism and was like, ‘we’re not doing that any more.’ ” this refusal, or at times in conversations with other young people, rejection or reconstitution, of colonially imposed religion was a key dynamic of indigenous resurgence processes. we also see in our conversations with young people that this complex relationship to colonialism has had pervasive effects within indigenous communities’ spiritual traditions and practices, which have been and are being shaped by colonial ideologies. as oz suggested, “questions around spirituality for so many people are so closely tied to the history of colonialism. some communities the closer you get to ceremony and spirituality, the closer you also encounter issues like homophobia.” so, for many young people, in as much as resurgence is a move away from colonialism, it is also a practice of resisting the internalization of colonialism within indigenous communities — a type of decolonizing spiritual practice. another important contribution of young people in this study is their nuanced theorizing of spirituality from their own perspectives and lived experience. importantly, these perspectives were offered from the vantage point that spirituality is lived and is a pathway, journey, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 90  process. as kairyn said, “i think that at the core of who i am that spirit is always growing and that spirit is constantly looking for things.” or, as smokii suggested: the best part about spirituality is that it’s a constant learning and that there’s never … you never get a phd in spirit. even elders are learning right up to the end, and after too, some teachings say a year, or others 4 years, until someone does their learning on that side too, to become a helper, an ancestor. i think we’re always learning and that’s the other piece that i love so much about it is that it continues. this pedagogical positioning of queer, trans, and two-spirit spirituality is in itself a philosophical shift beyond the anthropological encoding of spirituality as a particular religious dogma or ideological position that exists beyond lived experience. rather, young people’s intervention here helps to reframe assertions about spirituality — indeed, about living — as dynamic: they are subject to change and revision. indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people also brought to bear the language of relationality as a primary framework in describing their understanding of spirituality. beginning with the subjective, young people emphasized the importance to spirituality of integrated identity and belonging. they emphasized that spirituality was about self-awareness, and connection of themselves and their own spirit to broader relations. as kairyn indicated: i oftentimes look at my spirit as fire and ice. i use that analogy a lot because it’s something that really resonates with me and helps me understand it better myself. i think anybody you ask they’re going to have a different answer for what their spirit is and what that understanding of spirit is going to mean in their life. for me personally it’s this drive, it’s this fire inside of me that makes me who i am. sometimes it’s dull and it’s quite little. it’s like a little flicker but sometimes it’s a forest fire and no matter what i’m always feeding that spirit. here kairyn is making an important assertion about concepts of personhood, which includes a spiritual life. as smokii suggested, attending to this dynamic is a type of reciprocity where “we care for the thing that is caring for us. whatever it is, it’s that consistent balance.” it is from this place of recognition of the spiritual life that indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people make the suggestion that relationality extends outwards and intersubjectively. chelsea explained: to be connected to the people around me ... it’s very decentralized in that way. it’s not only thinking about the self and the individual in relation to the community and creator, or the universe or source, but it’s to be conscious of my own life, and then also what’s around me, and how the work, and the things that i do, and how that has a connection to my relations. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 91  in this sense, spirituality is also deeply connected to other relations, including family and community. indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people drew attention to the importance of intergenerational expressions of spirituality. smokii explained that this relational and intergenerational connection is life sustaining: i do not think i would be here. i have no doubt that i would not be here, had i not been able to start walking this road, and been gifted with the teachers that i had and been able to see it and really witness it. this intergenerational relationality is multidirectional, as kairyn shared: “you can learn from a 2-year-old and you can learn from a 90-year-old. we’re all just trying to learn about each other, and so i just want to make it easier for people to do that.” in many conversations with young people, this relational dimension of spirituality also extended from and beyond human relations, towards land-based relations. as chelsea explained: i have that connection mostly to the land that i’m on. into this territory because a lot of my family lives here, and so that’s where i think of where my spirit resides and where my spirit is enmeshed to the earth’s energy. in a greater sense, i’m also connected to the spirit of indigenous people across turtle island and across canada. this is a vital linking of personal spirituality to the spirituality of land — both as a place and space. as young people expressed it, land is a material territory, where one resides, and has embodied connection. land is also immaterial and connects young people to broader spiritual stories of beginning, such as creation stories of turtle island. a spiritual relationship to place and space holds the potential to shape emotions and affective relations, even in ways that might be described as healing. as smokii explained: i was like two days sober. i got sober in winnipeg. it was quite the time. i went, “oh, i should smudge by the water. i should smudge.” because i had been taught on coast salish territories to do this. i sat by the great lakes, which, i mean, i go … if you want to feel spirit, go sit by that because i just went, “oh, they mean great!” i had never been around them and i grew up in the rocky mountains. it was the first time i understood what people feel when they come here because it was like, “oh, this is something. this is a different energy.” these place-based and spatial relations are generative, expansive, and reciprocate relationally and affectively. as smokii elaborated: then also the land [is] sustaining us. i think i made that comment about a chair and that’s standing out to me recently because it’s like, well, would we call the chair holding you up “love”? i don’t know, but at the same time, maybe. now that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 92  i’m thinking about this because i think in these ways, the ways we can start thinking about how big it is. even just spending time witnessing the buds because it’s springtime right now, so i’m like, “the world is love. this is so beautiful.” young people like smokii address the radically transformative possibilities of land-based relations in seemingly inconspicuous places. they reveal that a spirituality of everyday life is possible when attending closely to the relationality of place and space, even indirectly, with objects and materials that come from the land. as kairyn suggested: from when i was really young, we were always taught that everything has spirit, everything. look at that rock, look at that tree. everything has a spirit. you have a spirit. you are spirit. i think that goes for most indigenous young people who are growing up. you’re always hearing that everything has a spirit. rather than following the descriptive impulse driving anthropological studies of indigenous spirituality, the conversations about spirituality with young people in our study focused on the ways that relationality with land, spirit, ancestors, and nonhuman relations helped them position themselves in the world and emboldened them to move through it with greater consciousness. as smokii reflected, “i always went to the water, always was in the ocean and these bigger things, bigger than me.” or as oz suggested, spirituality is “kind of like ‘the force’ where everyone is connected, in a sense. and if you do something over here, that it’s going to have a ripple effect over there.” perhaps most profound was the way that queer, trans, and two-spirit youth described spirituality in language that conferred dignity upon one another. speaking of their own lived experience and coming to terms with spirituality as a two-spirit person, kairyn said: let me give you this teaching — this gift, of your grandma’s grandma and your great grandma’s grandma, and this idea that they had that was so beautiful within our community. let me tell you why you’re not only not a mistake, you are sacred, and you are so valuable. in order for our people to continue you are a huge key component of that. your ancestors are standing right behind you and you have all of that power behind you. indeed, queer, trans, and two-spirit young people demonstrate how their spirituality is an enlivening and nourishing presence in their own lives, and in the places and spaces of their lives. the multidimensional nature of colonial violence in discussing their identity and spirituality, young people described the ways their lived experience included dimensions of colonial violence, both historical and present-day. in their experience, colonial violence intersected with the discrimination they had encountered as sexually diverse and gender-diverse people in ways that signal the intergenerational effects of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 93  residential schools and the imposition of homophobic and transphobic ideologies upon indigenous communities. as oz explained: you can’t dance. you can’t sing, you can’t drum, you can’t wear regalia. you can’t do any of that, any of that, you can’t come to ceremony, you can’t come to lodge. because you’re gay, because my family tells me that that’s wrong. and that if you want to come to ceremony, and if you want to come to pow wow, then you have to hide that part of yourself. as oz’s words make clear, colonialism produces a relational alienation from culture and community, which, in this context, is based on gender or sexual orientation. young people also described experiences of colonial violence through the marginalizing and invisibilizing force of heteroand cis-normative attitudes. kairyn explained: it’s confusing a lot of people who aren’t in the community because white cisgender people who are heterosexual, who don’t know anything about the community will come in and say, “oh, it’s a trans woman. she’s a lesbian because she has a boyfriend”, even though that’s not how it works. the people just don’t understand sex, gender, sexual orientation. it’s just this big scary world that they just don’t have any desire to learn about or they don’t take the time to educate themselves on it. like kairyn, other young people described multiple experiences of stringent reinforcing of gender binaries and heterosexuality as normative, despite their own presence and differing lived experience; often they felt forced to hide or disappear. oz elaborated: … like as an indigenous person, as somebody who’s brown enough to be racialized by other people, and somebody who is queer and sometimes feminine, because i’m also trans fluid, uh, gender fluid, and, and it’s just — it’s just really difficult because i can’t always be who i want to be in this — all the time. and — and i wish i could. and if more people were aware, then more people wouldn’t fall through the cracks. and more people can care and more people, again, can show that kindness. queer, trans, and two-spirit young people make clear that often experiences of transphobic and homophobic violence, as well as cis-heteronormativity, are meaningfully connected to racism, and a distinctive expression of white supremacist violence. as kairyn explained: you find that the world isn’t really made for you sometimes and you face a lot of racism, a lot of systemic racism.… it’s just a bunch of white people driving trucks with aggression and a lot of gerald stanleys running around who just like they see a brown face and they just get angry. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 94  as kairyn made clear, white settler-colonial rage marks indigenous lives and the bodies of queer, trans, and two-spirit young people for extinction. in referencing gerald stanley, who was acquitted for the 2017 murder of 22-year-old colten boushie (barrera, 2018), kairyn reminded us that violence motivated by anti-indigenous prejudice is not only material, but is institutional, systemic, and structural: it pervades aspects of the justice system, education, and health care. as chelsea shared, “there’s a lot of systems that need healing because of colonialism, and colonization is a structure, not an event.” radical care practices and activating decolonial futures queer, trans, and two-spirit young people in our study were selected in part for their leadership as indigenous activists and the ways that they are imagining and organizing change in their communities. this lived experience is reflected in a key theme that emerged in our conversations with these young people: we noted a range of radical care practices that activate decolonial futures and enliven their sense of vitality even in the midst of colonial occupation. in terms of radical care, queer, trans, and two-spirit young people recognized the dynamic ways that care practices not only preserve life but convey value and help people to reconnect spiritually. as smokii put it, “those spaces of community care, that’s what i think spirit gives. again, not just human physical community care, but that knowing that i’m okay, and knowing that i’m here, and that i’m taken care of is so deeply important.” their expansive understanding of care practices indicates the radical view of care held by these young people. notably, the young people in our study were highly active in the areas of mental health and wellness promotion; however, their notions of mental health care disrupt the colonial notion of mental health management, especially with regard to professionalization and biomedicalization. as kairyn described it: “we have a knowledge keepers council complete with seven knowledge keepers in the community who can provide counselling services to indigenous youth, two-spirit youth.” who provides counselling supports for queer, trans, and two-spirit young people matters deeply, as these knowledge keepers are often important interlockers of cultural knowledge and community connection. later kairyn also reiterated the importance of elders in radical care: yeah, my auntie, she was a, a two-spirit person and an elder in her community. she passed away, last year unfortunately, but she’s a, she knew right — right away that i was also different, that i was also one, “one of us”. there is a way in which this linking to two-spirit elders activates a particular sense of community and possibility for indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people. this grounded sense of well-being is also deeply connected to spirituality. as tunchai explained, “the process of colonization has entirely disconnected indigenous people from that place of spirit. in order for anybody to heal, and any communities to heal, any indigenous young people international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 95  to heal — they need to call back or reconnect with that spirit.” similarly, kairyn explained about their work with young people: we just want you to blossom and to take on that leadership and to own your life. you won’t believe the amount of young people who resonate with that and how many people feel like wow this makes sense. wow, i’m not alone. then they start realizing those things that are inside of them, all of these questions that they have growing up they realize that none of that is like bad. that’s all exciting. it has so much cultural significance tied behind it. that’s how we save lives, their mental health, their well-being, all of these things. they start to fall into line because they start seeing it as necessary changes within their lives rather than things that need to be pushed away or things that need to be hidden or stifled. we can start celebrating them rather than simply tolerating them. i think that’s the effect that teaching of spirit and that understanding of spirit is having on young people. another key feature of radical care practices that we noted in our conversations with young people was the central importance of opportunities for cultural connection, grounding, and relationship in the promotion of mental health and well-being. discussions of cultural ceremonies, practices, and spiritual teachings were rarely framed in instrumentalizing language, but rather in stories and lived experiences. as smokii explained: “there’s a movement in vancouver that’s the culture saves lives is what they say. there’s a downtown east side where they’re talking about how do we get lodges into recovery houses, and detoxes, and this kind of thing. i super believe we need it everywhere … when you come into the lodge, i often talk about this when you start opening up to it. it’s very much about ourselves at first. i need healing. i’m struggling. please help me. i needed that. i needed people to help me. i needed that unconditional love and support. once that is happening, once i’ve been gifted with that, and i start to be able to stand on my own in that, my responsibility is to continue that cycle and create that space and then really be listening and learning. grounded and relational connection to cultural ceremonies, practices, and spiritual teachings is not merely about consuming a particular form of care, but about activating communities of care. the promotion of care is not linked only to the psychotherapeutic. as oz suggested, “i think about wellness in that way and i think about wellness in a physical sense: have i connected to mother earth recently? have i connected to mother earth today? felt the sun, felt the ground, been outside, seen other people?” attending to land-based relations is a key feature of queer and trans wellness promotion. care can look different for different people. as oz explained, “it’s not just ceremonies and it’s not just lodge. for some people it’s writing, for some people that ceremony is athletics, it’s, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 96  it’s, uh, it’s governance. it’s — it’s — it’s studying, it’s academic, it’s art.” similarly, kairyn suggested, “healthy relationships looks like basic needs being met. that means housing. that means love. that means purpose. that means education. that’s what i would define as wellbeing as having all of those needs met.” sexual health promotion was another key activating practice of radical care for indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people. all five participants were involved in providing training, advocacy, and peer education around sexual health and harm reduction. as kairyn explained, “we make sure that we are a hub for resources for mental health and sexual health”, and as oz emphasized, this work is to help young people “empower themselves as a community”. empowerment is an important aspect of the ways that these radical care practices activated young people to begin organizing and advocating for themselves and other young people. all five indigenous young people in our study actively situated themselves and their work as engaged in social movements. as chelsea described it, this is a “decolonial education”, which is about “figuring out the ways in which both indigenous and non-indigenous people can learn what their individual roles are in dismantling those systems and creating and holding space for indigenous youth.” for the young people in our study, this activation took the form of direct action, mutual aid, service on community boards, and vocational service to organizations. woven throughout the stories of the five indigenous young people in our study was a clear set of ethical principles that, when embodied, activated much of their mobilizing work in communities. as smokii explained, “the goal is to do everything with a gentle loving nature because that’s how people learn.” similarly, tunchai reflected, “that connection to spirit has saved me, and i know it’s what can save communities — connecting young people to that sense of love, belonging.” joy also serves a similar purpose, as chelsea reflected: “we’re always laughing, and that’s what really brings that spirit into the space.” while the work of these indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people was complex and the challenges of the violence they faced were relentless, it is striking that they spoke of their work in tender and responsible terms. as oz said, “it’s the importance of trying to walk gently — being mindful of others, being mindful of your words and your actions and the impact they have on others, and even in your inactions.” discussion in this study, by focusing on what we learned from these five young people, we have sought to better understand how indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are making sense of questions of identity, health, and spirituality within a particular structural reality — and beyond the colonial violence that it embodies. as de finney (2014) suggested of indigenous girlhoods, the young people in our study were navigating challenges and creating vital community and care practices both within and beyond “the shadow of empire” (p. 8). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 97  at the intersection of identity, our study makes clear that indigenous queer, trans, and twospirit young people are diverse in understanding and articulating identity, but they share in situating sexual and gender identity as a communal, relational, and spiritual role and responsibility. this is consistent with walters et al.’s (2006) findings that highlighted the interconnectedness of being indigenous and queer with spirituality and wellness. queer, trans, and two-spirit young people in our study also engaged in explicit resistance to white homonormative framings of sexuality and gender, and instead grounded their understanding of identity within cultural, linguistic, and social and place-based relations. laing (2018) has similarly emphasized that two-spirit youth are active in resisting white supremacy and cisheteronormativity by claiming and living connected cultural and sexual identities. our study elaborates on this by emphasizing that there are significant challenges associated with navigating identity development in the context of existing forms of structural violence, including colonialism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and patriarchy. the contributions of the queer, trans, and two-spirit young people in our study evinced an understanding of spirituality closely linked to their beliefs about the importance of cultural resurgence and indigenous self-determinism. their stories suggest that the best way to understand spirituality is not through anthropological means, but through grounded and lived-in, place-based, spatial and relational means. this is an important contribution because it conceptually challenges the impulse behind much of anthropological and religious studies, and the dominant forms of western christian practice that shape the realms of health, politics, religion, and education in which indigenous youth live, and in relation to which they are worlding an elsewhere. in their contribution to queer indigenous studies, these five young people follow leanne simpson (2015) in offering critiques and conceptions of spirituality that have important potential for understanding the nature of colonial cis-heteropatriarchy in its many forms. the theoretical views held by indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth, together with their lived experiences, provide critical methodologies with which to disrupt the cisheteronormativity of the colonial state, to disengage from colonial modes of thought, and “to rebalance indigenous communities” (driskill et al., 2011, p. 18). the queer, trans, and two-spirit young people in our study showed that although colonialism has had a profound negative impact on indigenous young people’s relationship to spirituality, it is also the case that cultural identity development and resurgence are linked to its reclamation. decolonization is spiritual work. and while spirituality as a discursive framework carries the baggage of the harms of colonial religious interventionism, for the young people in our study, spirituality and the relationality that they enact through everyday commitments are lifepromoting and pedagogical, and foster self-determination. this is an important finding because it means that indigenous youth wellness promotion needs to begin from the presupposition that spirituality, understood in place-based and relational ways, is a mode of resilience and empowerment. as simpson (2017) suggested, to decolonize is to be rooted in grounded normativity and indigenous self-determinism, and in being aware of — and growing in — one’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 98  ability to exercise personal and communal agency. the people in our study enact a queer imagination in spirituality, which sustains them in the ever-present realities of colonialism while also helping them to grow, learn, and world decolonial elsewheres. on the topic of colonialism, our study also shows the profound and far-reaching nature and effects of multidimensional colonial violence. hunt (2016) showed that colonialism is a structural driver of inequality and a negative social determinant of health, and consistently, we saw in our study that for these five young people, the violence of colonialism was pervasive in everyday interpersonal, communal, material, institutional, and systemic ways. furthermore, these young people made clear that colonialism has produced and continues to produce disruption and dislocation of cultural connection and relations. as chandler and lalonde (1998) suggested, this has profound impacts on well-being; as our study has uncovered, this produces psychosocial distress in indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people’s lives. it is not surprising that the violence of colonialism has far-reaching health effects on indigenous peoples, which include, as simpson (2012) has demonstrated, the negative influences of rigid gender roles and heteropatriarchy. however, our study reveals that there is concurrently an important dimension of this process in which sexual and gender-based violence intersect with racism. aligned with cannon (1998) and mcleod (2017), the five young people in our study affirmed an explicit link between transphobic and homophobic violence, cis-heteronormativity, racism, and white supremacy. as cannon (1998) indicated, settler colonialism is deeply racist, and this racism is linked to the ways gender and sexuality are regulated and resisted. we began this study acknowledging muñoz’ (2009) suggestion that queerness is a futuredriven phenomenon or a “not yet here … insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (p. 1). however, our study points to the decolonial elsewheres and worlds that indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth are prefiguring through various forms and expressions of radical care. indigenous feminist scholars have long pointed to the need for methods that are inclusive and healing, and show genuine care for all (green, 2007). further, hunt and holmes (2015) suggested that decolonial practices occur “in the intimate spaces of daily life” (p. 156), particularly in close relationships. our study makes clear that what makes care practices radical is not wellness promotion but the linking of wellness to undoing the effects of colonialism and prefiguring an anticolonial vitality and livability in the everyday present as a means to usher in a decolonized future world. as belcourt (2020) suggested, surviving colonialism and life beyond it will require “a radical remaking of the world” (p. 139). in our study, indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people activated the creation of these livable worlds through an array of practices in mental health promotion and sexual health promotion. in stark contrast to dominant approaches followed in the mainstream, the young people in our study, like the young people in laing’s (2018) and wesley’s (2015) studies, described their mental health and wellness practices in culturally grounded terms that focused on promoting connection to community and cultural teachings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 99  sharing story work, narrative practice, and lived experience is a vital means of activating spirituality and cultural resurgence. decolonizing care practices are not merely enacted in response to colonialism, but are desire-based. as tuck (2009) described, this involves “documenting not only the painful elements of social realities but the wisdom and hope” (p. 416). our study similarly points to the ways in which creative actions of resurgence are worlding community, futurity, and care within and beyond colonialism. these practices are manifold and responsive according to the diverse needs of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people. radical care practices are meaningfully connected to negotiations of power: radical care practices that pertain to sexuality and gender cannot be examined in isolation from the power dynamics of a person’s age, language, society, history, spirituality, and culture, especially when these things have been deeply impacted by colonial occupation. queer indigenous political imagination uses approaches based in futurity to unsettle settler colonialism, which includes the unsettling of colonial gender and sexual politics through the assertion of radical care and sovereignty over indigenous sexuality and gender. in keeping with the methodological practices of decolonizing that emerge from indigenous feminist scholarship, the young people in our study emphasized the negotiation of power relations through decolonizing and queering education, direct action, community service, and vocational commitments. as such, they enliven a critique of the unlivability of “the world”, which as belcourt (2020) noted, is not a passive concept, but “a unit of power … [that] harbours the toxins of history” (p. 104); it is a world that can be otherwise, a world that the young people in our study are bringing into being. love, joy, belonging, tenderness, responsibility, mindfulness, and sovereignty were central to guiding the imagination and actions of the five young people in our study. the good life is grounded in loving, and that loving, manifested by young people even during the colonial present, is a type of worlding. like muñoz’s (2009) queer imagination, and whitehead’s (2017) queer “re-membering” of indigenous relations, this centring of indigenous social ethics in the work of young people prefigures a powerful decolonial “elsewhere”. implications for indigenous health promotion and youth care our study also offers several important applied contributions to supporting indigenous youth health promotion. when indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people spoke about identity, health, spirituality, and culture, it was clear that, for them, these concepts were highly interconnected. this has major implications for health promotion and youth services, contexts in which care practices often fail to integrate these multiple dimensions, and therefore become less relevant. our study signals the value of grounded, context-reflective, culturally safe, and intersectional health and youth services. when indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people discussed matters of health, identity, and culture, spirituality was a grounding concept, a foundation in all contexts. ironically, spirituality is probably the least considered aspect of preparation for health care and youth service providers. significantly, our study echoes what international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 74–103 100  other indigenous health scholars have argued: that spirituality may be a protective factor in mental health and life promotion (ansloos, 2017). our study also makes clear that there are colonial forms of homophobic and transphobic violence that produce harms and major social inequities in the lives of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people. the solutions needed to address these are multisystemic but must include young people and should attend to the solutions that are already being enacted in forms of radical care and decolonial action. finally, our study also makes a strong case for the provision of land-based, culturally focused, language engaged, and relationally enhanced youth care and services. it is evident that anti-oppressive work with indigenous youth needs to meet diverse needs and include material, relational, cultural, and spiritual supports. further, indigenous youth work is political work in that it is meaningfully entangled with projects of worlding decolonial futures and resisting multiple forms of violence. practitioners need to be critically reflective about their own power, to resist the performativity of allyship, and to enact radical care through redistributions of the power and resources that are needed to support indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit young people’s already emerging decolonial work. conclusion in conclusion, our study shows how indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth narrate their stories about their identities, spirituality, and well-being. their stories demonstrate that identity, spirituality, and radical care practices are critical means by which young people resist and navigate colonial, homophobic, and transphobic violence. spirituality is constitutive of and foundational to the identity and health of indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth. health promotion and youth services must work to address the multidimensional nature of well-being if we are to truly support indigenous young people, their movements, and their creation of decolonial elsewheres. grounded in culture, people, and place, young people are forging powerful new ways of living, and lifting each other up in the process. our findings detail applied implications that can serve to support indigenous queer, trans, and two-spirit youth in strengthening indigenous youth health promotion, and youth care and services. the wisdom of these young people is that their political imagination is characterized by 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(1996). how we find ourselves: identity development and two-spirit people. harvard educational review, 66(2), 303–317. https://www.hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvardeducational-review-volume-66-issue-2/herarticle/identity-development-and-two-spiritpeople_278 wilson, a. (2008). n’tacimowin innan nah': our coming in stories. in p. a. monture & p. d. mcguire (eds.), first voices: an aboriginal women’s reader. inanna publications. wilson, a. (2015). our coming in stories: cree identity, body sovereignty and gender selfdetermination. journal of global indigeneity, 1(1), 4. https://ro.uow.edu.au/jgi/vol1/iss1/4 introduction to the special issue on involving children and young people in research international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 605 introduction to the special issue on involving children and young people in research cara blaisdell, jeni harden, and e. kay m. tisdall cara blaisdell is a ph.d. student in social policy at the university of edinburgh, spss cmb, 15a george square, edinburgh, united kingdom, eh8 9ld. e-mail: c.b.blaisdell@sms.ed.ac.uk jeni harden, ph.d. is a senior lecturer at the centre for population health sciences and co-director of the centre for research on families and relationships, at the university of edinburgh, teviot place, edinburgh, united kingdom, eh8 9ag. e-mail: jeni.harden@ed.ac.uk e. kay m. tisdall, ph.d. is professor of childhood policy and co-director of the centre for research on families and relationships, at the university of edinburgh, spss cmb, 15a george square, edinburgh, united kingdom, eh8 9ld. e-mail: k.tisdall@ed.ac.uk the status of children and young people in social research has been a key area of debate since the emergence of the “new” sociology of childhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. sparked initially by work in sociology and anthropology, the sociology of childhood rapidly spread to become an interdisciplinary area of interest, now commonly referred to as “childhood studies”, to recognize its increasing multi-disciplinary spread (punch & tisdall, 2012). with the emergence of this paradigm, new ways of conceptualizing and theorizing childhood were linked to changes in how research with children and young people was conducted. researchers considered how their own understandings of childhood, constructed by “culturally and historically specific beliefs and assumptions” (harden, scott, backett-milburn, & jackson, 2000, 2.4), affected the way they engaged with children and young people in the research context. the concept of children’s agency was enthusiastically adopted by the nascent childhood studies community (james & prout, 1997) and underpinned attempts to allow children and young people a “more direct voice and participation” (prout & james, 1997, p. 8) in research about their lives. this agenda stood in contrast to historic – and cross-disciplinary – research practice, which relied on the perspectives of adult researchers, professionals, or parents (woodgate, 2001). there were also strong links with a children’s rights mailto:c.b.blaisdell@sms.ed.ac.uk mailto:jeni.harden@ed.ac.uk mailto:k.tisdall@ed.ac.uk international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 606 perspective, a core element of which is children and young people’s “right to be heard” (united nations [un] committee on the rights of the child, 2009). over time, it has increasingly become routine for children and young people to be involved more directly in social research, in ways that go beyond them being the objects of study. simultaneously, childhood researchers have identified benefits, limitations, and tensions that arise from this involvement. overlapping issues include: the utility and necessity of using specific methods when researching with children and young people (mauthner, 1997; punch, 2002; thomson, 2007); the stages of research in which children and young people are invited to participate (coad & evans, 2008; davis, 2009; kellett, 2010); and ethical issues, including, for example, the impact – or lack thereof – of children and young people’s participation in research on the conditions of their daily lives (alderson & morrow, 2011; davis 2009; percy-smith 2006). discussion of these issues has been underpinned by an ongoing consideration of how researchers themselves view both childhood and adulthood. in particular, the emphasis on children as agents has been critiqued for reinforcing “the myth of the autonomous and independent person” (prout, 2005, p. 66), which itself is tied to dichotomous, mutually exclusive conceptualizations of what it means to be a child or an adult (gallacher & gallagher, 2008; prout, 2005, 2011; uprichard, 2008). new trends in contemporary childhood studies have moved toward exploring the role of interdependence and relational processes between adults and children (mannion, 2007; mayall, 2012; prout & tisdall, 2012). overview of the special issue we are pleased, therefore, to contribute to the ongoing discussion with this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies. for this issue, authors were asked to examine critically the direct involvement of children and young people in their research. while each paper is inextricably linked to the method(s) used, the articles go beyond technical advice, weaving together practical, epistemological, and ethical considerations. the six articles presented in this issue arose from the international conference of the centre for research on families and relationships (crfr), held at the university of edinburgh in june 2013. the conference theme was “researching families and relationships: innovations in methods, theory and policy relevance”. over three days, 122 delegates from over 20 countries came together to discuss contributions from research, policy, and practice perspectives. to guide contributions to the special issue, we provided a broad set of questions, hoping to push forward methodological considerations in childhood research: • after 20 or so years of involving children and young people as “social actors” in research, what are the tough questions we need to ask? • what accepted practices do not live up to their presumed advantages? • what role do new technologies have in researching with children and young people? http://www.crfr.ac.uk/ international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 607 • how can we move on our methodological (and thus also ethical) approaches to working with children and young people? the abstracts we received reflected the diversity of contemporary childhood studies research, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches. however, we found that the articles based on qualitative research best met our criteria for inclusion in the special issue, perhaps due to the strong tradition within qualitative research of questioning data generation, analysis, and explanation (mason, 2002). in fact, while this was not planned, several of the articles we included in the special edition deal with similar methodological approaches, but from different angles, highlighting the breadth and depth of debate when conducting qualitative research with children and young people. the special issue opens with marja leena böök and johanna mykkänen’s article, which looks critically at employing photo-narratives as a participatory method in family research. they discuss various tensions that occurred in their research: balancing the involvement of children and parents, power differences revealed during attempts at coconstructing data between researchers and children and young people, and complications caused by using visual data when addressing ethical issues such as informed consent and anonymity. ulrike zartler also writes about using photography in research with children, in her article. she focuses specifically on the process of relating children’s photos with their talk about those photos. she looks at her research through a participatory lens, discussing some practical barriers to children’s participation in the research, and how she attempted to address them – acknowledging that there could not be a simple resolution. alice maclean and jeni harden then critically examine the process of conducting family group interviews. they highlight children’s agency in negotiating and constructing family relationships in the interview context, challenging the assumption that children’s voices are silenced when interviewed alongside their parents. they explore the challenges faced by the researcher in negotiating family dynamics, as well as relationships between researcher and participants. sophie sarre and jo moran-ellis also reflect on the use of family interviews, in a different way. their article looks critically at the relationship between practical issues (e.g., recruitment and gatekeeping) and epistemology, namely social constructionism. drawing on examples from their empirical research, they argue that contradictions arising from operationalizing an epistemological standpoint can create deep potential for the researcher, revealing aspects of the phenomenon being investigated. marlies kustatscher follows this by relating her attempts to move beyond a contractual model of informed consent with children in a primary school. using a system of magnets, she attempted to re-frame consent as an ongoing process over the eightmonth course of ethnographic fieldwork. in her paper, she deconstructs the relational dynamics that complicated informed consent as she moved beyond a simple opt-in/optout model. susan elsley, michael gallagher, and kay tisdall close the special issue by considering the use of digital media in research with children and young people. drawing international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 608 on cultural-social-economic and materialist approaches to understanding digital media’s characteristics, they flag up both practical and ethical dilemmas, and how these overlap and inform each other. research in digital contexts may require considerations, conversations, and collaborations with children and young people that push researchers outside of their comfort zones. a note on terminology: the default position for the special issue is to use the phrase “children and young people”, rather than “children”. broadly, we use the phrase “children and young people” to refer to children under the age of 18, following the un convention on the rights of the child. we invited authors to deviate from this should they have good reason, for example if their research involved young children. closing thoughts crfr supports both established and early career researchers, and we are pleased that a mixture is represented in this special issue. as each author or group of authors unpack how their approaches to involving children and young people in research have played out in practice, some common ground emerges. in each article in the special issue there are threads of what guillemin and gillam (2004) call “ethics in practice” (p. 269): acknowledging and thinking through the day-to-day ethical issues that arise during research. notably, all of the articles come from european contexts and all offer a reconsideration of the childhood studies mantras that have developed from this context. children and young people’s participation is a clear theme: several articles specifically espouse a participatory approach, examining what that meant in practice. others touch on the topic more implicitly, particularly in the context of involving children and young people in data analysis. another common theme is how authors have attempted to listen to, interpret, and represent “the voice of the child” through verbal, observational, digital, and visual methods. the articles explore the concept of children and young people’s agency and autonomy, when placed in the context of relationships between families and peers, and between researchers and participants themselves. rather than offering answers or tidy resolutions, this special issue foregrounds complexity and uncertainty. research happens in a complicated tangle of dynamic relationships, between researcher and participants, between ethics and epistemology, between theory and practice. the articles in this special issue carve out space for open conversations about these complications in research that involves children and young people. the centre for research on families and relationships is a consortium research center, based at the university of edinburgh, with partners at the universities of aberdeen, glasgow, glasgow caledonian, highland & islands and stirling. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 609 references alderson, p., & morrow, a. (2011). the ethics of research with children and young people. london: sage publications. coad, j., & evans, r. (2008). reflections on practical approaches to involving children and young people in the data analysis process. children & society, 22(1), 41–52. davis, j. (2009). involving children. in e. k. m. tisdall, j. m. davis, & m. gallagher (eds.), researching with children and young people: research design, methods and analysis (pp. 154–185). london: sage publications. gallacher, l., & gallagher, m. (2008). methodological immaturity in childhood research? thinking through “participatory methods”. childhood, 15(4), 499–516. guillemin, m., & gillam, l. (2004). ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. qualitative inquiry, 10(2), 261–280. harden, j., scott, s., backett-milburn, k., & jackson, s. (2000). can’t talk, won’t talk? methodological issues in researching children. sociological research online, 5(2). retrieved september 15, 2014, from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/5/2/harden.htm james, a., & prout, a. (1997). preface to the second edition. in a. james & a. prout (eds.), constructing and reconstructing childhood: contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (pp. ix–xvii). london: falmer press. kellett, m. (2010). small shoes, big steps! empowering children as active researchers. american journal of community psychology, 46(1/2), 195–203. mannion, g. (2007). going spatial, going relational: why “listening to children” and children’s participation needs reframing. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 28(3), 405–420. mason, j. (2002). qualitative research (2nd ed.). london: sage publications. mauthner, m. (1997). methodological aspects of collecting data from children: lessons from three research projects. children & society, 11(1), 16–28. mayall, b. (2012). an afterword: some reflections on a seminar series. children’s geographies, 10(3), 347–355. percy-smith, b. (2006). from consultation to social learning in community participation with young people. children, youth and environments, 16(2), 153–179. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/5/2/harden.htm text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446268377 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2006.00062.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446268315 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568208091672 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077800403262360 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-010-9324-y text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596300701458970 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.1997.tb00003.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2012.693383 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 605–610 610 prout, a. (2005). the future of childhood. london: routledge. prout, a. (2011). taking a step away from modernity: reconsidering the new sociology of childhood. global studies of childhood, 1(1), 4–14. prout, a., & james, a. (1997). a new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? provenance, promise and problems. in a. james & a. prout (eds.), constructing and reconstructing childhood: contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (2nd ed., pp. 7–33). london: falmer press. prout, a., & tisdall, e. k. m. (2006). conclusion: social inclusion, the welfare state and understanding children’s participation. in e. k. m. tisdall, j. m. davis, m. hill, & a. prout (eds.), children, young people and social inclusion: participation for what? (pp. 235–246). bristol: the policy press. punch, s. (2002). research with children: the same or different from research with adults? childhood, 9(3), 321–341. punch, s., & tisdall, e. k. m. (2012). exploring children and young people’s relationships across minority worlds. children’s geographies, 10(3), 241–248. thomson, f. (2007). are methodologies for children keeping them in their place? children’s geographies, 5(3), 207–218. united nations committee on the rights of the child. (2009). general comment no. 12: the right of the child to be heard. office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights [online]. retrieved march 19, 2013, from http:www2.ohcr.org/english/bodies/crc/comments.html uprichard, e. (2008). children as “being and becomings”: children, childhood and temporality. children & society, 22(4), 303–313. woodgate, r. (2001). adopting the qualitative paradigm to understanding children’s perspectives of illness: barrier or facilitator? journal of pediatric nursing, 16(3), 149–161. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.4 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781861346629.003.0013 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568202009003005 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2012.693375 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733280701445762 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2007.00110.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/jpdn.2001.24178 overview of the special issue closing thoughts a canadian perspective on intervention strategies to respond to children at risk for serious criminal offending international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 162 introduction: canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices raymond corrado and alan w. leschied bala, carrington, and roberts (2009) convincingly summarize the evidence that the canadian youth criminal justice act (ycja), introduced in 2002, has been effective in reducing the number of custodial sentences for young offenders. coincidental with this finding, youth crimes plummeted and serious violent offending remained relatively stable or in the least did not increase. in effect, this complex law has succeeded in reducing the number of youth who would have been charged with minor property offences. along with either young offenders convicted of moderate property crimes, or violent offenders who were given alternate community sanctions and programs, they have been diverted from the system thus averting custodial sentences. the ycja is complex, not only reflected in its considerable length but also because it incorporates principles from all of the major youth justice models (corrado, bala, leblanc, & linden, 1992). it explicitly directs police officers to use informal and formal warnings for minor offences. it also encourages the use of extra-judicial measures with consenting youth that includes diversion to a variety of community programs based on restorative justice designed to reduce the risk for offending. this non-judicial processing reflects corporatist model principles. for more serious but still moderate property and violent offences, youth are afforded a full array of fair procedural or due process rights including access to defence counsel. prior to guilty pleas or convictions, crown counsel or prosecutors, along with sentencing judges, have a large number of extra-judicial sanctions, again emphasizing non-custodial options, based on victim and community involvement. these include access to community-based resource programs. raymond corrado, ph.d. is a professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, vancouver (burnaby), british columbia, canada. alan w. leschied, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of western ontario, london, ontario, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 163 however, for still more serious but typically not extreme violent offences such as murder with aggravating circumstances, judges, prosecution, and defence counsel can agree to reduce the length of the custodial sentence in exchange for the young offender agreeing to participate in intervention programs beginning in custody and continuing into the community. in effect, this option combines justice model principles of due process and sentencing proportionality along with the welfare model’s central principle, that being rehabilitation, which is now viewed as being consistent with the goal of protection of the public. finally, for the most extreme violent offenders, youth court judges at the request of crown counsel can impose an adult-length custodial sentence, again reflecting justice model proportionality principles and crime control’s emphasis on public protection (corrado, gronsdahl, & macalister, 2007). canadian-based researchers were engaged in varying ways during the protracted and intense political debate regarding the ycja. two of canada’s pre-eminent researchers, professors nicholas bala and tony doob, were seconded from their academic positions to assist officials of the federal department of justice and their provincial policy counterparts in developing the ycja. the involvement of canadian researchers in the construction of canadian youth justice law and related provincial statutes, as well as the establishment of the specific administrative structures and processes, began in the 1970s. one key early initiative was the federal government’s funding of criminology departments and research and graduate programs at the universities of montreal, ottawa, toronto, alberta, waterloo, and simon fraser university. these criminology departments and programs have been instrumental not only in educating undergraduate and graduate students for the past 35 years, but also in undertaking federally funded research projects on youth justice. this involvement dated from the national study in 1980 of the six provincial systems under the 1908 juvenile delinquents act. this and other projects set the precedent for federally funded university-based research on important policy themes related to criminology. in addition, the federally created and funded social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) and more recently the federal/provincial/private major funding of multi-university centres of excellence and endowed canada research professorships, established a strict academic peer reviewed option to conduct basic research in canada, which included a focus on health, psychology, and criminal justice policy. in effect, there is a long tradition in canada for the direct and indirect support by the federal government for research initiatives. with certain exceptions, academics whose research is based on theoretical perspectives that are inherently critical of the canadian political or economic system, especially with respect to criminal justice matters, have been supported. this relationship is perceived as constructive and largely devoid of biased policy research. more recently, however, there are increasing concerns that this traditional relationship is being altered and may be further threatened, both in terms of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 164 funding level reductions and project selection bias because of the current ideologically polarized federal political climate. minimum age intervention strategies: a legal conundrum and the need for non-coercive primary or tertiary prevention in canada and most european countries, the minimum age of legal jurisdiction for youth justice laws is either 12 or 14. up to 1982, the minimum age in canada under the juvenile delinquents act (jda) had been 8 years. the justification for this middle childhood minimum age for coercive interventions by the juvenile court was predicated on the welfare or “best interests” of the child and the absence of punishment. raising the minimum age generated some controversy initially when the young offenders act (yoa) was passed into law in 1982, and was raised again during the period leading up to the proclamation of the youth criminal justice act (ycja) of 2002. it no longer serves as a politically sensitive issue and is only cited in those rare cases where a child under the age of 12 is involved in a serious violent incident, such as a recent british columbia case where a violent young offender who had just turned 12 had over 100 prior contacts with the police regarding serious delinquent incidents. the outstanding media and political issue in that instance was the question of why nothing had been done to respond to this child despite the mother’s apparent repeated requests for intervention from the provincial ministry of children and family development. however, neither youth probation officers nor social workers from this ministry had the legal authority to place this youth into any intervention program without his voluntary participation. in other words, unlike the jda, there was virtually no legal authority for any intervention by the police. the more general policy issue, therefore, relates to the potential to respond to cases where children under 12 years of age engage in serious delinquent behaviours that typically would result in criminal charges for youth 12 and older under the current ycja. a growing appreciation for risk and protective factors cohort studies in canada and elsewhere have clearly established that serious delinquencies begin before the age of 12 years for a small group of children who subsequently develop serious criminal trajectories into later adolescence and adulthood. whether characterized as conduct disordered children by lacourse (lacourse, nagin, tremblay, vitaro, & claes, 2003), or life course persistent offenders by moffitt (1993), these children who engage in early onset serious delinquent behaviours typically have numerous risk factors for serious and violent offending trajectories and, conversely, few protective factors to moderate this outcome. one common policy response has been to utilize specific or focused school-based primary intervention strategies where all students, usually older children, are exposed, for example, to anti-bullying programs. in addition, there are tertiary-level school programs for students who bully that include restorative justice concepts (morrison, 2007). this restorative justice approach is particularly relevant in canadian contexts where there are higher concentrations of aboriginal students. these programs provide a culturally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 165 sensitive response to discipline incidents generally and for those who have more serious delinquent and criminal offending specifically. in addition, aboriginally-aware schoolbased programs increasingly appear to be among those promising approaches that reduce the appeal of aboriginal-based youth gangs in those provinces where such gangs have become institutionalized. these programs are now appearing in manitoba and saskatchewan. however, there is the concern that waiting until aboriginal students are in middle and high schools when they have already experienced poor school performance and/or school dropout in order to provide programs to reduce their risk and increase their protective factors against joining gangs, reduces their effectiveness (cohen & corrado, 2011). this concern applies equally to non-aboriginal students regarding gang involvement, especially among youth from low social capital families, and from visible immigrant minority ethnic groups in major canadian cities such as montreal, toronto, and calgary, who reside in neighbourhoods with adult or youth gangs engaged in drug trafficking. this focus on school interventions in canada has been part of a longer tradition of cohort studies that have identified the earliest risk factors for serious and violent offending across the life course. the most notable ongoing research is the work of richard tremblay, professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, and psychology at the university of montréal and the director of both the research unit on children's psycho-social maladjustment and health canada's centre of excellence for early childhood development. tremblay’s pioneering research reported that toddlers who were aggressive could have their trajectories successfully altered when parents received appropriate intervention. this intervention resulted in dramatic reductions in all types of aggression. however, for those children whose aggression did not abate, school experiences with teachers and students were more likely to be negative since their aggression evoked withdrawal by peers, social isolation, and discipline by teachers. according to tremblay, chronic physical aggression (cpa) was important in explaining poor school performance, accumulated learning deficits, and attraction to anti-social peer friendships that were often associated with school-related bullying. while cpa among children from all income strata and neighbourhoods has been identified, the concentration of cpa in certain schools and neighbourhoods is also found to be associated with low social capital families portrayed as having lower education, higher levels of unemployment, and social isolation, along with additional health, mental health, and/or substance abuse problems. they were also found to reside in neighbourhoods with higher levels of social disorganization, economic disadvantage, and delinquency/criminality. boys, particularly from young single mothers with this risk profile, were at a higher risk for cpa. these critical relationships regarding cpa in childhood are characterized by certain family structures, neighbourhoods, and schools, and have been the focus of policy research in the related disciplines of psychology, medicine, education, sociology, and criminology. one important policy rationale is based not only on a concern for the victims of cpa children, but also the likelihood that cpa is strongly associated with long-term serious and violent offending trajectories and incarceration, accompanied by higher rates of victimization and engagement in harmful international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 166 high-risk behaviours. without effective interventions, this criminal trajectory increases the likelihood of the intergenerational transmission of risk factors. for example, having a parent involved in criminality is among the strongest predictors of children’s likelihood of criminality (farrington, 1998). following tremblay’s landmark research that has stretched over 35 years, several more recent research projects focused on the transition from childhood to adolescence have informed policy both in canada and internationally. the québec longitudinal study of child development (qlscd) is one such prospective longitudinal study of a representative sample of infants born in the province of québec in 1998 involving 2,000 families and 2,100 children (japel, tremblay, & côté, 2005). the first age in this study was 5 months and waves of interviews have continued to, most recently, 2010. early child developmental risk and protective factors such as school readiness, development of literacy, vocabulary, and school achievement have been identified as related to patterns in childhood and adolescent emotional, cognitive, behavioural, social, and school adjustment. a related research project is statistics canada’s national longitudinal survey of children and youth (2010), which involved an initial sample of 22,000 children ages 011 years. this sample is supplemented with newborns in succeeding waves every other year. this study is designed to both construct developmental trajectories and provide immediate data of risk and protective factors covering a wide range of ages regarding developmental health, education, and other policy-relevant social problems for children. these two major research projects have essentially confirmed that risk and protective factors are multi-level, involving individual, family, neighbourhood, regional, and multiple other domains. in addition, for policy purposes, inequalities in early development were evident by kindergarten age and developmental problems increased as family income decreased. however, while the children with the greatest number of risk factors were most evident at the bottom of the family income spectrum, these risk factors were also evident, albeit to a far lesser degree, in middle-income families. from a policy perspective, programs aimed at reducing risk and increasing protective factors need to involve at-risk children generally and not solely those from the lowest income families. late childhood, serious delinquency, and adolescent criminality given that both the yoa and ycja minimum age jurisdiction was and is age 12, early onset delinquency and adolescent criminality has been a major focus of other preeminent canadian researchers including marc leblanc and marcel fréchette (1989) from the university of montréal. leblanc utilized a large sample of adjudicated delinquent youth from montréal, québec as the basis of his innovative contributions to the early developmental theories. in the 15-year follow-up of his original sample, kazemian and leblanc (2004) identified two developmental pathways between adolescence and midadulthood. the organized pathway is characterized by individuals with utilitarian motives who resort to the serious planning of their crimes. this is in contrast to the disorganized international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 167 pathway, characterized by individuals who are hedonistic, thrill seeking, and poorly organized with a high propensity for alcohol and drug use. somewhat surprisingly, increasing disorganization with age was evident in both pathways. crime contexts such as situational components and criminal opportunities, rather than individual characteristics, were better predictors of patterns of criminality into adulthood. leblanc’s pathway models contributed to the current wave of research exemplified by fellow university of montréal researcher eric lacourse (lacourse et al., 2003), who has also identified additional adolescent and adult onset pathways to criminality. professors john hagan and bill mccarthy undertook a major study of “street kids” in vancouver and toronto that revealed the survival basis of most of their criminality, as well as the importance of intensive programs for these youth to reduce both their criminality and high rates of victimization (hagan & mccarthy, 1997). hagan elaborated his theory of the powerlessness of high-risk youth, which was further confirmed by the more recent research of steve baron on street youth in edmonton, alberta. baron (2004) however, utilized agnew’s strain theory to explain this high-risk lifestyle and criminality amongst vulnerable youth. canadian researchers sibylle artz (1998), marlene morretti, and candice odgers (moretti & odgers, 2006; moretti, odgers, & reppucci, 2010) have undertaken studies of the developmental patterns of girls, including those engaged in serious violence. while profiles of risk and protective factors predicting female criminality were somewhat different from those for boys, there was considerable overlap. female criminality still was far less violent than male criminality and treatment interventions had a greater likelihood of being effective if key gender differences were considered, irrespective of risk or protective profiles. the use of broad-based surveys to influence policy more generally, canadian researchers and government-related funding agencies have emphasized multi-method approaches including population-based surveys, longitudinal surveys, linked-data approaches, and, in certain cases, integrated information systems from individual ministry data sets to evaluate risk and protective factors. these include the key provincial ministries in such areas as health and education, children and families, and criminal justice. in addition, canadian researchers have been at the forefront of the social indicators approach for the evaluation of risk factors. the composite learning index (cli) is one such example using social indicators to provide educational policy and basic research data drawn from national and regional perspectives (canadian council on learning, 2010). the use of social indicators is a helpful guide for provincial policy in british columbia based on the early development instrument (edi). the edi (janus & offord, 2007) involves information on kindergarten students examining five developmental domains: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication and general knowledge. both singularly and in combination, these methodologies have formed the basis of information for prospective developmental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 168 trajectories in several theoretical and policy domains including the child delinquent to adolescent and adult serious and violent offending trajectories. the b.c. ministry of education is mobilized to adjust their policies and funding priorities according to specific school districts and neighbourhoods according to their identified patterns of risk for learning problems and needs. linking research to policy in canada there is a tradition in canada linking multi-disciplinary basic research on children under 12 to both theory development and policy research on delinquency and subsequent serious criminal trajectories into adolescence and adulthood. however, despite this tradition there are few provincial programs regarding serious delinquency explicitly focused on reducing child risk and increasing protective factors. instead, as discussed above, most programs respond indirectly to this outcome by responding to the health needs of families and children, poverty-related risk factors, domestic violence and child maltreatment, early childhood learning problems, and school performance. canadian crime prevention centre the canadian crime prevention centre (cpc) within the federal ministry of justice has a mandate to support research concerning youth criminal trajectories and the related reduction of risk, along with the enhancement of protective factors to either prevent the onset of long-term criminality or moderate it once it has taken place. as a result, cpc has initiated several studies with prominent researchers across canada representing a variety of disciplines to review key theoretical and policy themes involving youth criminality in canada. a major emphasis is on canadian programs that have been effective or, in the least, promising. in 2008, a conference was held in ottawa during which researchers shared their work with policy officials from many of the federal ministries and non-governmental agencies that are involved with youth at risk for serious criminality. these projects will either have been, or are about to be, published in cpc reports. in addition, the cpc encouraged the selection of certain reports for revision to journal publication in canada to reach the widest possible national and international professional audiences. the co-editors of this special edition approached professor sibylle artz, co-editor of the international journal of children, youth and family studies, who enthusiastically supported this special edition. the co-editors based the choice of articles according to their contribution to understanding the canadian context of key policy themes and, more generally, to their representation of several major canadian themes of theory, policy, and research that have gained international recognition. the current special edition this supplemental edition of the international journal of children, youth and family studies represents recent work by some of canada’s outstanding researchers in the area of youth at risk. it focuses on the further refinement of our knowledge with respect to the trajectory of youth crime, the specific correlates of youth violence, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 169 calculating the costs of crime in the context of certain trajectories, assessment strategies, and the development of an effective intervention for youth under the age of 12 years. longitudinal studies. the study by macrae, bertrand, paetsch, and hornick on non-criminally involved youth, and with youth beyond their entry level point for a range of services within the youth justice system is far-ranging. they share a common purpose in advancing an appreciation for the diversity in the pathways that can lead to a certain offending profile and/or persistence in offending, along with an understanding of the nature of the offences that are incurred. corrado and freedman provide youth risk prediction and profiling in relation to policy development. consistent within the historical context summarized above, these two authors conclude, “the literature is now sufficiently developed and specified within a developmental framework to provide a degree of specificity as to what prevention strategies at which developmental points will best target appropriate risk in the context of evidence-based strategies.” youth violence. leschied summarizes the correlates of youth violence in drawing on relevant literature that ranges from maternal health and pregnancy to health, developmental, social, educational, and sex determinants. a summary is provided of the correlates as they relate to intervention strategies that are developmentally appropriate and meaningful. cost of crime. craig, schumann, petrunka, khan, and peters address the complex area of attaching costs to youth crime. they draw on a sample from the better beginnings, better futures research within a framework that identifies different trajectories of youth offending. reporting on children ranging from 8 through 14 years of age, craig and her colleagues at queen’s university factor differential costs associated with youth offending by accounting for six separate trajectories of offending and the costs associated with each trajectory reflected in service utilization and justice processing, health care, and social assistance. assessing risk. the cracow instrument for multi-problem violent youth, reported by lussier, corrado, healey, tzoumakis, and deslauriers-varin, moves beyond the assessment of general criminogenic risk and focuses on the risk and need factors associated with very young children with respect to their potential for later aggression. these test developers view the cracow as holding potential for differentiating particularly highly physically aggressive children within the family environment and parenting domains, and further view its future development as filling a void for instruments that can be used in helping to screen for the needs of very young, highly physically aggressive children. secondary prevention strategy. augimeri, walsh, and slater provide a summary of the components of a community-based treatment strategy that integrates research and evaluation within service delivery to check for the integrity of findings, and ultimately, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 170 addresses the question of what it takes to support the portability of a successful intervention. references artz, s. (1998). sex, power and the violent school girl. toronto: trifolium. bala, n., carrington, p. j., & roberts, j. v. (2009). evaluating the youth criminal justice act after five years: a qualified success. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 51(2), 131-167. baron, s. (2004). general strain, street youth and crime: a test of agnew's revised theory. criminology, 42(2), 457-483. canadian council on learning. (2010). the composite learning index (cli). ottawa: author. cohen, i., & corrado, r. r. (2011). school based prevention and intervention programs for gang involved aboriginal youth. unpublished report for indian and northern affairs, canada. corrado, r. r., bala, n., leblanc, m., & linden, r. (eds.). (1992). the young offenders act and juvenile justice in canada. toronto: butterworths & co. corrado, r. r., gronsdahl, k., & macalister, d. (2007). the youth criminal justice act: can the supreme court of canada balance the competing and conflicting models of youth justice? criminal law quarterly, 53(1), 14-66. farrington, d. p. (1998). predictors, causes, and correlates of male youth violence. in m. tonry & m. h. moore (eds.), youth violence (crime and justice: a review of the research: vol. 24) (pp. 421-475). chicago: university of chicago press. hagan, j., & mccarthy, b. (1997). mean streets: youth crime and homelessness. new york: cambridge university press. janus, m., & offord, d. r. (2007). development and psychometric properties of the early development instrument (edi): a measure of children’s school readiness. canadian journal of behavioural science, 39(1), 1-22. japel, c., tremblay, r., & côté, s. (2005). quality counts: assessing the quality of daycare services based on the québec longitudinal study of child development (qlscd). ottawa: institute for research on public policy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 162-171 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 171 kazemian, l., & leblanc, m. (2004). exploring patterns of perpetration of crime across the life course. journal of contemporary criminal justice, 20(4), 393-415. lacourse, e., nagin, d., tremblay, r. e., vitaro, f., & claes, m. (2003). developmental trajectories of boys’ delinquent group membership and facilitation of violent behaviors during adolescence. development and psychopathology, 15, 183-197. leblanc, m., & fréchette, m. (1989). male criminal activity from childhood through youth: multilevel and developmental perspectives. new york: springer-verlag. moffitt, t. e. (1993). adolescence-limited and life course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomy. psychological review, 100, 674-701. moretti, m. m., & odgers, c. (2006). sex differences in the functions and precursors of adolescent aggression. aggressive behavior, 32(4), 373-375. morrison, b. (2007). schools and restorative justice. in g. johnstone & d. van ness (eds.), handbook of restorative justice (pp. 325-350). cullompton, uk: willan publishing. national longitudinal survey of children and youth. (2010, november). ottawa: statistics canada. odgers, c., moretti, m. m., & reppucci, n. d. (2010). a review of findings from the “gender and aggression project”: informing juvenile justice policy and practice through gender-sensitive research. court review: the journal of the american judges association, 42(1-2), 6-10. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818639 family quality of life in practice: a practical application of the fqol-2006 survey kierstyn butler abstract: as families are increasingly recognized as the primary caregivers for their family members with disabilities, family quality of life (fqol) research has focused on the impact of disability within the family. this field of research seeks to gain an understanding of the complex challenges and successes families have, with the goal of assisting families in expanding their fqol. to accomplish this task, the fqol survey (fqol-2006) was created. developed in 2000 and later revised, the fqol-2006 survey has been used in over 20 countries to explore the perceptions of families, parents, and main caregivers of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. while there has been considerable research using the fqol-2006 survey, there is limited research that focuses on integrating the survey into practice. this article discusses a possible application of the survey in practical contexts by reflecting on some of the qualitative data collected from my recent fqol master’s thesis study. specifically, the article highlights the mutual benefits that service providers and families could receive by integrating the fqol-2006 survey into service models, as it could allow professionals to establish a framework for assessing each client-family’s overall quality of life, including their greatest supports, strengths, challenges, and needs. this application provides a new research opportunity for the fqol field for both researchers and professionals. keywords: family quality of life, intellectual and developmental disability, fqol-2006 survey, life transition kierstyn butler ma is a consultant with children’s autism services of edmonton, 7451 103 ave nw, edmonton, ab t5s 1j4. email: kierstynbutler@gmail.com mailto:kierstynbutler@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 41 one of the ways disability professionals might increase their service’s effectiveness is by making an assessment of overall family quality of life (fqol) to carefully explore and understand the challenges and needs as well as the successes of family and individual life. one such tool is the fqol-2006 survey, which provides professionals with the ability to better understand their client-family’s social, cultural, and community contexts. the fqol-2006 survey has three key features that support its usefulness as a beneficial service tool. first, it allows families to identify and evaluate areas of family strength and support (e.g., accessible recreation services, family relationships). second, it allows families to consider and communicate about challenging areas of their life (e.g., limited respite services, underinvestment in siblings’ activities). third, it enables families to discover previously unconsidered facets of their fqol by encouraging a broader, holistic analysis of the family’s well-being. together, these features of the fqol-2006 survey can support disability professionals by giving them the knowledge necessary to facilitate more effective practice and services. in this article i will draw on research and my professional experience within the disability sector to argue for the positive contribution that the integration of an fqol service model, using the fqol-2006 survey, would provide within disability organizations and services. family quality of life families are increasingly being recognized as the main caregivers of their family members with disabilities (knox, 2000); samuel, rillotta, & brown, 2012). family members have been taking on increasing roles and responsibilities in caring for their family members with disabilities, and many are in need of assistance from professional and community-based services that address the entire family’s welfare. as discussed by brown and schippers earlier in this issue, the fqol framework’s adoption of a holistic, family-focused approach enables the identification and amelioration of family challenges that limit members’ ability to provide effective and consistent disability support within the family. the field of fqol research was developed with the aim of assessing families’ greatest strengths and greatest challenges in order to determine the conditions that best enable a good fqol. towards that end, fqol research explores family members’ perceptions of how disability influences family life for both the individuals and the family unit (brown & brown, 2004). to facilitate improvements in families’ quality of life, the fqol field advocates for family-centered services. background literature the concept of fqol has been applied through the fqol-2006 survey to various family structures, socioeconomic levels, geographic regions, and time frames. for example, samuel, tarraf, and marsack (2018) evaluated the fqol-2006’s analytical effectiveness by studying the effects of lower socioeconomic status on fqol. as expected, families with lower socioeconomic status have less access to supportive resources for their children, and thus, their fqol is relatively low compared with other families. geography similarly influences the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 42 quantity and quality of supportive resources that families may access. the fqol-2006 survey has, therefore, been translated and applied internationally. for example, ajuwon and brown (2012) applied it in nigeria; bertelli, bianco, rossi, scuticchio, and brown (2011) applied it in italy; and svraka, loga, and brown (2011) applied it in bosnia and herzegovina. lastly, a family’s resource needs gradually change across lifespans, affecting both the primary supporters and their family member with a disability. therefore, research has examined the fqol of families with children with developmental disabilities (brown, macadam-crisp, wang, & iarocci, 2006), parents and siblings with a family member with intellectual disability (werner et al., 2009), and adults with developmental disabilities and their families (clark, geake, smith, greiner, & yost, 2013). within this literature, however, there is as yet little research that attempts to integrate the fqol-2006 survey into a practical service model for disability professions — service providers, advocacy organizations, and support programmers. fqol-2006 survey what is the fqol-2006 survey? as described by isaacs et al. (2007) the international family quality of life project created the fqol-2006 survey to provide families with a tool for identifying aspects of their life that are meaningful and supportive; as well, it allows for the identification of areas that are challenging or need to be enhanced, as previously discussed. the survey is lifespanand culturally-sensitive. it is adaptable and can therefore be applied in several contexts, regardless of the subjects’ age, education, family structure, and so on (giné et al., 2015; wang & brown, 2009). specifically, the fqol-2006 survey assesses fqol across nine domains of family life, including (a) health of the family, (b) financial wellbeing, (c) family relationships, (d) support from other people (e) support from disability-related services, (f) influence of values, (g) careers and preparing for careers, (h) leisure and recreation, and (i) community interaction. within each of the nine life domains, six dimensions (or indicators) are used to examine how family members or caregivers perceive their fqol. these dimensions include (a) importance, (b) opportunity, (c) initiative, (d) stability, (e) attainment, and (f) satisfaction. the survey collects both quantitative and qualitative data on each of the nine life domains using a 5-point likert scale and with space for open-ended questions. within this space, families are invited to provide in-depth written responses for each of the nine sections. this research structure gives families the opportunity to clarify or expand on their experiences. as a practical tool, the fqol-2006 survey could be mutually beneficial for families and disability professionals, as it provides families with the opportunity to assess the secondary implications of disability within their family’s structure. unlike traditional service frameworks, which individualize care models for family members with disabilities, the fqol-2006 survey strives to assess how those individuals’ service needs are conditioned by and influenced by their families’ sociocultural contexts. concurrently, it provides professionals with a framework for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 43 assessing how a family’s disability service needs are partially determined by such external factors as limited access to public transportation networks or educational opportunities. moreover, it seeks to identify how disability service needs influence other family relations or commitments, for example, a sibling’s access to recreational programming. with such information, service providers could allocate resources to non-disability factors that affect the family’s needs, thereby ameliorating other challenges within their fqol matrix. lastly, various service providers or community groups could coordinate their resources to develop a comprehensive care model for the family to bring together previously isolated supports. practical survey results to demonstrate some of the qualitative results produced by the fqol-2006 survey, i will draw from my recent master’s research (butler, 2017) at the university of victoria’s school of child and youth care. in it, i examined the fqol of parents and caregivers of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who were transitioning from youth to adult disability services. although this research involved a small sample of 10 families, the excerpts below from the study’s qualitative results help to illustrate the type of information gained and its potential value for professionals in the disability and allied fields. all families have areas of strength; however, they often struggle to recognize these areas or the social and community resources that support such strengths. the fqol-2006 survey draws families’ attention to these areas by providing an opportunity to reflect on what the family does well, what supports they have, where they are resilient, and what coping methods they apply. many families commented on the positive aspects of their fqol. as one participant wrote: activism equals empowerment and a sense of control. it also connects you with other families, which reduces isolation and builds connections and the sense you are part of a larger community. in addition to assisting families in recognizing their strengths, the fqol survey can provide families with an avenue for exploring how strengths are interconnected — how strengths enable strengths. as one participant wrote: “with supportive caregivers, we are bringing the level of responsibility to where we would like.” that is, consistent and stable access to service providers, such as group homes and day programs, enable parents and guardians of adult individuals with disabilities to allocate some responsibilities to others — career skills development, public transportation awareness, recreational training, and so on. once these services are in place, parents and guardians can reallocate time to previously underserved or unaddressed responsibilities and opportunities. as well as identifying strengths, the fqol-2006 survey assists families in identifying challenges, that is, areas where they need the most support or where they experience an imbalance. for example, one of my participants wrote, “as our son needs constant supervision, it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 44 is almost impossible to have a regular exercise routine for myself”, while another stated, “we are able to participate [in recreation and leisure activities].” between these comments, we can observe that although some families are able to participate in recreational activities, for instance, those commitments have opportunity costs. prioritizing one commitment means another goes unrealized. because disability care is essential, those opportunity costs are often paid by foregoing other personal commitments. as one research participant wrote, “it is usually time and energy on paperwork [and] caregiving that doesn’t allow for everyone’s needs to be met.” here, we observe how the survey assists families in recognizing and voicing the challenges their family is facing, and how it allows them to pinpoint the barriers to their family’s well-being. with this information, service providers can begin to develop a service plan that addresses the challenges, prioritizing those with the greatest impact and the most tangible resolutions. as with strengths, challenges are often difficult for families to identify. for instance, one survey participant stated, “with several years of dialogue, research, and advocacy, i have located programs and services that [my child] attends and enjoys.” in this comment, the participant has highlighted a current strength, the daughter’s access to compatible programming. but within this comment there is the challenge of locating those services over several years. this trend of parents and guardians struggling to locate services that fulfil their family member’s unique needs could be ameliorated through a practical application of the fqol-2006 survey. while parents and guardians often cycle through various services and programs to assess their compatibility with the family member’s unique disability needs, this cycle is also influenced by non-disability factors, such as location, costs, and scheduling. by encompassing the entire family’s needs, the fqol-2006 survey could help mitigate such challenges by identifying and resolving potential conflicts. benefits for service providers developing effective services and supports for families requires input from both professionals and families (blue-banning, summers, frankland, nelson, & beegle, 2004). professionals bring experience and knowledge of their field, whereas families are the experts on their family’s strengths and needs. together, they can build supportive relationships, create common goals, and develop plans to enhance each family’s fqol (gatmaitan & brown, 2016; robinson, mcinnis, clark, duncan, & henderson, 2013). however, families are unique: no two families have the same dynamics, values, beliefs, expectations, and priorities. therefore, it is critically important that the professionals understand, as best they can, their client-family’s sociocultural context before developing a care plan. the fqol-2006 survey provides practitioners with a framework for engaging in dialogue with families. from the picture created by this dialogue, practitioners can develop an informed care plan that prioritizes the tangible solutions to key challenges by leveraging areas of strength. for example, one family in my study said, “we are lucky enough to have access to waterfront recreational property, which has acted as a family bonding experience.” practitioners international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 45 could make use of this positive resource by integrating it into other goals, such as recreation or nature education. the fqol-2006 survey can reveal the challenges some families are facing. one research participant wrote, “we are tired. we must keep working to provide for our son. we must keep him at home, so our ability to interact with adults our age (empty nesters) is limited.” in this comment, the family appears to be struggling with maintaining in-home disability care as they age. specifically, the continuous care requirement creates a barrier to socializing with peers. their family could benefit from support and services, such as respite or other housing options, which would support the primary supporters and, thereby, improve the entire family’s quality of life (qol). some practitioners will encounter challenges that exceed their organization’s mandate. for example, one research participant commented: we would benefit from more support from the community (i.e., natural support such as friends and neighbours). also, it would be wonderful to have some intense guidance around developing our son’s skill set to lead to eventual semi independence (at the very least). service providers likely cannot help this family develop better rapport with their natural friends and neighbours to create additional support options. however, practitioners could address the ancillary challenges of career development and self-help and independence; that may, in turn, reduce the family’s need for those supports. also, practitioners could direct the family to support groups or family-based programming within the disability community to encourage additional friendships that are grounded within a shared experience. the current fqol-2006 survey focuses on families with members who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. however, the essential holistic notion of fqol is not restricted to those types of disabilities or even disability itself. practitioners in related human services fields could use the fqol-2006 survey to assess how physical disabilities or age-related medical conditions influence fqol. hopefully, other researchers will undertake such possibilities to further expand the fqol field, both in theory and in practice. altogether, a deeper understanding of their client-families’ sociocultural contexts could enable service providers to respond more effectively to each family’s unique needs by leveraging strengths, exploring challenges, and reallocating resources. by supporting families as the primary care providers, disability professionals can increase quality of care for the individual with disabilities, since such support will improve the families’ overall qol. practical limitations of the fqol-2006 survey although the fqol-2006 survey provides many benefits for both families and practitioners, the survey has practical limitations for organizations, primarily due to its international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 46 comprehensiveness. the survey is long and therefore time-consuming for both families and service providers. this is especially true when the survey is conducted face-to-face, an option that may be necessary for families with language barriers or where follow-up interviews are required. retrieving information from families this way may exceed an organization’s financial resources. furthermore, some families may be unable to complete the survey thoroughly, or families may find the effort and time necessary to complete the survey too burdensome. to resolve these potential limitations, service providers may prefer to use a shortened version of the survey. researchers expanding the fqol field into this potential practical application should be encouraged to develop a shortened version to correspond with their studies’ evaluative structures. toward this end, they may look to supplementary fqol research to determine which dimensions could be removed or modified while still obtaining sufficiently in-depth information to improve supports for families. as wang and brown (2009) suggested, the domains and indicators could be used to shape questions during initial interviews or general conversations with families. of course, the survey’s modifications would differ between different human services sectors, organizations, and regions. conclusion families are the primary care providers for individuals with disabilities or related challenges, and therefore, increasing the family’s overall qol will correspondingly improve the quality of primary disability care. as family members’ roles and responsibilities as caregivers increase, their need for support necessarily increases as well. to be effective, disability professionals must assist families in creating a resilient foundation for supporting their family members with disabilities. families should “function as a unit” (wang & brown, 2009, p. 150) insofar as disability care should be mutually accommodating with the family’s other commitments and responsibilities. by developing a practical fqol-2006 survey, disability professionals will gain a holistic care model that accounts for the family’s strengths and challenges. through this information, they will likely find opportunities for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of disability care. this should strengthen families’ fqol which will in turn strengthen the quality of care for individuals with disabilities. this possibility constitutes a new avenue for the fqol field and a practical application of the fqol-2006 survey. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 40–48 47 references ajuwon, p. m., & brown, i. 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(2009). family quality of life among families with a member who has an intellectual disability: an exploratory examination of key domains and dimensions of the revised fqol survey. journal of intellectual disability research, 53(6), 501–511. doi:10.1111/j.13652788.2009.01164.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1468-3148.2000.00001.x http://www.pbsc.info/isp/manual/isp_manual.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2011.01486.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01942638.2017.1311393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2011.01434.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10522150902874842 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01164.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01164.x gendered family roles and expectations in transnational somali refugee families: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 296 gendered family roles and expectations in transnational somali refugee families: an exploratory multiple-site study ellinor rask, mubarak warsame, and klas borell abstract: studies of transnational families, in which members of the family live in different countries, have mostly focused on families who live apart as a result of economic globalization. however, transnational family life is not only a consequence of the global division of labor but also a consequence of increasing refugee flows. this explorative study is based on interviews with couples in three transnational somali families, in which different family members either live in their destination country, sweden, or the transit country, kenya. the study shows that the geographical distance between the somali couples has led to a new division of power and duties. the men have less control over the family’s economic and social resources, which has allowed the women to exert greater informal power. these changes cannot, however, be seen as permanent changes. the women interviewed worry about how their new life and lifestyle will work out when the family is finally reunited. keywords: transnational families, refugees, somalia, sweden, gender roles klas borell, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor of sociology and social work at jönköping university, box 1026, 551 11, jönköping, sweden. phone: +46 (0)36 10 19 47; cell phone: +46 (0)70 324 06 05. e-mail: klas.borell@hlk.hj.se ellinor rask is a social work student at mid-sweden university, östersund, sweden. e-mail: ellie.rask@qmail.com mubarak warsame is a social work student at mid-sweden university, östersund, sweden. e-mail: duubcad@hotmail.com https://wwwpost.miun.se/owa/redir.aspx?c=35c8c646608a4d2782ee88200fd0ac26&url=mailto%3aklas.borell%40hlk.hj.se international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 297 since the 1990s, most migration scholars recognize that contemporary migrants often participate in relationships that extend across borders, at the same time as they become part of the places in which they settle. migration is transnational (for research reviews, see glick schiller 1997; kivisto, 2001; levitt & jaworsky, 2007). the family is one of those social fields that crosses national borders and the transnational family has become an increasingly important part of transnational migration studies (for a research review, see carling, menjivar, & schmalzbauer, 2012). but what is meant by the concept of the transnational family? a frequently quoted definition states that transnational families are members of the family nuclear unit (mother, father, and children) “that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’, even across borders” (bryceson & vuorela, 2002, pp. 3–4). the transnational family illustrates, therefore, the basic conditionality of the relationship between families and households. families are groups of people bound to one another through emotional ties and moral commitments; households are groups of people bound to a place. family commitments can coincide with the boundaries of the household, but family relations may also incorporate several households (borell, 2003). to acknowledge that family relations can be maintained in spite of the fact that the members of the family are geographically separated is not, however, the same thing as saying that they are unaffected by these conditions. when the members of the family live in different households in two or more countries the relationship between the couple and between other members of the family will be affected in many different ways. the physical distance between the members of the families often also represents changes in the access to resources, in which those that remain in the country of origin are often dependent on those who have employment in the new country (see, for example, abrego, 2009; parrenas, 2008; schmalzbauer, 2008). furthermore, this sort of structural change within the family is complicated by the fact that the married couple and other members of the family are no longer able to communicate face-toface on a daily basis. the members of a transnational family are obliged to use long-distance communication, these days usually via cheap mobile phone calls (see, for example, baldassar, 2007; midianou & miller, 2011). research into transnational families has been dominated by studies of the experience of economic migrants, and the transnational family form has frequently been exclusively regarded as a consequence of structural forces of economic globalization. among others (cf., ho & bedford, 2008; parrenas, 2001), schmalzbauer (2004) writes that transnational families, “represent a new family form born out of the global economy and reproduced by means of dependence on a transnational division of labor” (p. 1329). but transnational families are not only a consequence of global economic conditions. refugee flows have increased since the end of the cold war (castles, 2003) and contemporary transnational families are, increasingly, a result of this process. the way in which refugees manage to maintain family structures across distance is, however, an understudied issue in migration research (but see, heger boyle & ali, 2009; muller, 2008), which has limited the understanding of the challenges facing transnational families. although economic migrants and refugees may share many common experiences, their situations also differ significantly. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 298 when families choose to live in two or more countries for economic reasons, they often see this as a temporary arrangement, which will be replaced by a forthcoming reunion either in their country of origin or in the destination country. however, the tougher migration policies in europe and north america have made it harder for families to reunite in the destination country, which means that transnational families with economic motives now have to face a more long-term separation (carling et al., 2012). the situation is often even more complicated for refugee families. war and other conflicts often make it impossible for them to reunite in their country of origin, but it can also be difficult for them to reunite in their destination country. the geneva convention does in principle grant refugees in one country the right to also bring in their immediate family members, but only if they can prove their identity. this is often very difficult. in a country like somalia, which is one of the world’s largest sources of refugees, there is no state and therefore no authorities that can issue identity papers. as a result of this situation, many refugee families are obliged to live apart in different destination countries or transit countries or in their country of origin. refugee families that have been split up often face a risk of long-term separation and the uncertainty that a long waiting period involves. how does uncertainty of this kind affect the possibility of maintaining “familyhood” across borders? and what changes arise in the roles of the various family members due to such a prolonged separation? in earlier research on transnational families much emphasis has been placed on the tenacity of traditional roles within the family (see, for example, dreby, 2006; perrenas, 2001). an interesting question is whether this picture of relative continuity in the gender-based roles within the family also applies to transnational refugee families, or if the greater degree of uncertainty these families face obliges them to accept deeper changes in the structure of their gender-based roles. the aim of this explorative study is to examine issues of this sort through interviewing the members of separated somali families whose members live either in sweden, their destination country, or as transit refugees in kenya. somalian refugees somalia gained its independence in 1960. after a turbulent period of democratization, the country was taken over by the military in a coup d’état in 1969. in the beginning of the 1990s, the military regime collapsed and since then the country has been without an effective central government (abdullahi, 2001). during the last 30 years, somalia has experienced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. years of fighting between rival warlords, foreign interventions, terrorism, and famine have led to the deaths of up to one million people. the situation in somalia has generated the world’s largest number of refugees, after afghanistan and iraq: more than a million people have fled the country and an estimated 1.4 million somalis, in a nation the united nations estimates to have a population of nine million, are internally displaced (united nations high commission for refugees, 2012). as a consequence, many somalis depend on money sent home by relatives from abroad for their survival. this dramatic situation has had many serious consequences for social relations, including gender relations. the majority of inhabitants in somalia live as nomads in the countryside, just as their ancestors did (abdullahi, 2001). the traditional nomadic society has strongly affected the gender and family patterns that have developed. men and women are seen as complementary opposites, where the women take care of the home and family while the men look after all the contacts with the society at large. somali men learn at an early age to take responsibility for the security and welfare of their wives. this is demonstrated by the close similarity between international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 299 the somali words for wife and responsibility (abdullahi, 2001; abdi, 2007). islam is closely related to the somali identity and has helped to give legitimacy to the patriarchal structure of society (abdullahi, 2001). the humanitarian catastrophes that somalia has suffered during the past 30 years have also given rise to increasingly extreme interpretations of islam, which have contributed to making somali women increasingly subordinate to men (abdi, 2007). at the same time, somali families in exile have had to face challenges that have led to totally different changes. these challenges, however, differ greatly from one another. somali refugees are now living in many parts of the world under radically disparate conditions: in north america, australia, africa, europe, and in the middle east. there are many somali refugees living at present in kenya, either in refugee camps in northeastern kenya, near the somali border, or in the capital, nairobi. many somali refugees choose to go to nairobi in the hope that they may be able to take a more active role in improving their life situation. these refugees often lack the protection that official refugee status affords; they are undocumented immigrants and often end up in the suburb called eastleigh, or “little mogadishu”. this suburb is famous for its thriving commerce and for the central role it plays for the transnational network of the somali diaspora. but eastleigh is also a place with a high level of crime and with serious social problems (horst, 2006); undocumented somali refugees do not have the right to health care and their children have little or no access to the education system (lindley, 2007). innumerable somali refugees come to eastleigh hoping to be able to get from there to a country in the west. the increasingly restrictive refugee policies in the west, however, oblige many somalis to remain in eastleigh, which results in more and more separated refugee families. data and method to our knowledge, the few studies that have been made of transnational refugee families have been based exclusively on interviews with those members of the families who have been granted asylum or residence in a country in the west: heger boyle and ali (2009) have interviewed members of separated somali families in minnesota, usa, and muller (2008) has interviewed members of separated afghani families in the netherlands. this must be seen as a serious limitation. a transnational refugee family should, of course, be seen as one unit, but it is nevertheless a unit in which the individual members live apart and in which everyday life is characterized by radically differing social, political, and economic conditions. in view of such asymmetry in the situation of the different family members, it is difficult to make a fair analysis if only those in one place are interviewed. in order to give a more fullscale picture of transnational refugee families, this study has chosen to adopt the multiple-site approach that has become relatively common in studies of the transnational families with a background in economic migration (see, for example, parrenas, 2008; schans, 2009; schmalzbauer, 2008; wong, 2006. for a general discussion on multi-sited studies, see marcus, 1995). this small exploratory study is based on data from repeated interviews with couples in three somali families whose members live in kenya and sweden: in two of the families the children live together with their mothers in kenya, while their fathers live in sweden, and in the third family the son lives together with his father in kenya while the daughter lives with her mother in sweden. 1. the first family is composed of faduma and ali and their eight children. faduma lives with the children under harsh social conditions in eastleigh, kenya. she has no income of her own, but is completely dependent on the money that her husband, ali, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 300 can send her from sweden. ali is studying swedish for immigrants and is looking for employment, so far without success. 2. the second family is composed of isniino and abshir and their six children. isniino lives as a single mother with their six children in one small room in eastleigh. abshir lives in sweden where he is studying swedish and seeking employment. 3. the third family is comprised of salaad and asho and their two children. salaad lives with their son in eastleigh. he does not have a job and is dependent on financial support from asho. asho lives with their daughter in sweden where she is studying swedish and plans to get a driving license. two rounds of interviews were carried out. the interviews in the first round were conducted during the summer and early autumn of 2011: the spouses in eastleigh were interviewed in june and the spouses in sweden were interviewed from august to the end of october. the interviews were carried out face-to-face and took on average about 50 minutes. the conversations were generally conducted in somali and were relatively unstructured. the interviews were made at a location of the participant’s choosing. a general interview guide approach was used (patton, 2002). each of the interviewees was asked to describe their life situation, the contact they have with their partner, their relationship to their children, and how they see their future. themes that arose in the first round of interviews formed the basis for additional questioning in the second round. these follow-up interviews, which were carried out at the end of autumn in the same year, were telephone interviews and took on average about 40 minutes and were also mainly conducted in somali. each of the audio-recorded interviews was transcribed verbatim and translated. a comparative analysis was used to identify themes that emerged from the data (strauss & corbin, 1990); interview data were coded and codes were compared within and between interviews, and were abstracted into concepts and themes. all names in the study have been replaced with pseudonyms. transnational refugee families transnational family life is not a new phenomenon. split household migration was already an integrated part of the experience of polish migrants a century ago, as can be seen in thomas and znaniecki’s (1927) classic work the polish peasant in europe and america. for a study of the wide scope of experiences of transnational family life in the history of chinese migrants, see for example nakano glenn (1983). but possibilities for bridging the geographical gap between separated family members are now very different. modern communications make it easier for couples and other family members to stay in touch with one another. in particular, mobile phone calls and international phone cards have enabled the somali families interviewed to keep in regular contact with one another. when they have not been able to afford telephone cards they have at least been able to keep in touch via msn messages. ali, who lives in sweden, tries to ring his big family in eastleigh as often as possible. when he can afford it he speaks to his wife and to each of his eight children to hear how each of them is doing, but when he is short of money he makes short calls to his wife or sends an msn message instead of having an extended call. regular phone calls and msn messages fill a number of functions. all of those interviewed mentioned the emotional importance of talking on the phone. telephone calls replace face-to-face communication and confirm and maintain the ties between the couple. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 301 they also help to break the isolation experienced by parents that are obliged to live far away from their children. asho, who lives with their daughter in sweden while her husband lives with their son in eastleigh, says, however, that the telephone calls cannot “replace the longing i feel for the rest of my family”. for members of families that have been obliged to live parallel lives in two very different societies for a long time, difficulties can arise in understanding one another. asho says that sometimes the conversation can “cause difficulties” and says for example: when my husband asked our daughter what she wanted for her birthday, she said that she wanted a hello kitty computer. he had never heard of that. he had expected her to say that she wanted sweets, which he thought was what all little girls wanted. the spouses in both sweden and eastleigh talk about the difficulty in achieving a common understanding of the family’s economy: the spouses in eastleigh question whether their partner in sweden really does all that he/she can to help them, while the spouses in sweden do not know how to explain the limitations of their financial situation. a recurring issue in their conversations is, of course, the possibility of the family being reunited in sweden. both partners tell each other about their contacts with the immigration authorities in sweden and with the swedish embassy in kenya and they try to work out what the future holds for them, but an equally common topic of conversation are their worries concerning the difficult living conditions in eastleigh. a situation without a foreseeable end isniino, who lives with her six children in eastleigh, says that the social network that she had in somalia no longer exists in eastleigh. she adds that most people are fully occupied with their own worries and that her neighbors do not respect her because she is a single mother with six children. when they first came to eastleigh from somalia they saw it as short stopover until the family could be reunited in sweden. now they have begun to see life in eastleigh as a temporary situation without a foreseeable end. the members of the family that live in eastleigh are obliged to accept that they will be living there for an extended period, although they do not have official refugee status, which would give them access to health care and schools for their children. “we can’t return to our country of origin and we have no rights here in kenya,” says salaad, who lives in eastleigh with his son. faduma, who lives with her eight children in eastleigh, describes the same desperation regarding their uncertain future: they [her children] have no future here, we don’t have money to pay for their schooling. we aren’t here to stay, and that feeling doesn’t make it any easier for us to create a future here. isniino describes the harsh living conditions there: it is a tough life here, but it is allah that decides how we shall survive it. but it isn’t easy. i live alone with my eight children on the fifth floor and every night i worry about what might happen. the police can make a razzia at any moment. the spouses that live in sweden are constantly worried about the security of their family members in eastleigh, and they also experience frustration over not being together with their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 302 families so that they could influence the situation in which they find themselves. faduma’s husband, ali, disclosed how frightened he was when his daughter was arrested by the police because she had engaged in a fight with a kenyan girl, and how he had to send money to his wife so that she could bribe the police to let his daughter go. self-esteem the strained economic and social conditions that characterize the lives of the family members living in kenya also affect the lives of those living in sweden, as shown in the above example. like numerous other somali refugees, abshir has not managed to find employment in sweden, but still sends three-quarters of the social security benefits that he receives from his swedish municipality to his family in eastleigh. “my husband”, says his wife isniino, “does his best. but he doesn’t have a job and lives on social benefits, and so he sends us a share of the little that he has. but it by no means covers our costs for room and board.” ali says: i live for my children – they are the reason for my existence. i know how their lives are, without any future, and i can’t help them […] my ambition has been to be a caring father who lives with his children, but war and misery has split up my family and ruined my chances of being a good father. i feel all the time that i am not a good father to my children. i ask myself: how can i cause my children to suffer this? but i have no control over the situation. the hardest question, which keeps me awake at night, is when my children ask me: “father, why do you spend so much time far away from us? don’t you love us any longer?” the three men interviewed all express a strong feeling of being at the mercy of a situation that is beyond their control. this feeling of a lack of control is closely related to a feeling of losing their masculinity. the fact that their family has been split up constitutes a challenge to the men’s self-esteem as men. ali, who like abshir, has not found steady employment in sweden either, says that he feels that his man’s role is called into question: a real man protects his wife and children. i am not able to do that. i can’t support my family. i was brought up to believe that a man should work hard to provide his family with everything they need, but do i do that? no! i can hardly support myself. i and all my family survive thanks to the mercy of the state, which is not exactly what a real man should do. i have done everything, absolutely everything, i can to find a job, but it is impossible. abshir dreads the thought of his wife seeing him losing face. “i don’t want,” he says, ”my wife to find out that i can’t help her […] that is something that i can’t accept, but what shall i do when this becomes a reality?” salaad, who used to support his family as a fishmonger in mogadishu, but who now lives without any possibility of finding work with his son in eastleigh, is now supported by his wife who lives in sweden: it isn’t something i am proud of […] and in my heart of hearts it’s difficult to accept it […] it is my responsibility as a father to give my children a secure childhood and when i can’t do that i have failed as a father […] a father is always obliged to support his wife and children, not vice versa. it is a quite different thing if i buy toys for my son with money that my wife has sent us, from if i buy toys for him with money i have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 303 earned myself […] i will always feel inferior as long as i know that it is my wife that has sent us money and not i that have earned it. new roles both the wives that live in eastleigh, as previously mentioned, discuss how vulnerable they feel living apart from their husbands. but the overall picture they give of their lives is considerably more complex. while the women describe their situation as vulnerable, they also make it clear that they are proud that they manage to take care of their children alone. faduma says: my husband would never manage living alone with so many children. in spite of the situation and the uncertainty in which we live, i manage to take care of my children […] i manage to be both mother and father to them. at the same time, she is uncertain what the consequences of her new lifestyle will be. has she crossed over a borderline between the male and female roles that can threaten her marriage? like the other women interviewed, she is worried that her husband may choose to take another wife, which somali law gives him the right to do. she hopes that her husband will not feel that a significant change has taken place: i sometimes feel that i do things that a woman shouldn’t have to do, according to our traditions, such as negotiating with men, renting an apartment, taking out money and bringing up children in a foreign country […] but i don’t think it will have any negative consequences for my relationship with my husband. i feel secure in my role as a woman and i don’t think my husband will think that i have changed. the changes have been even greater for asho who lives in sweden with one of their children. she tells how she was brought up as a young woman to be a good wife and to always take care of her husband. now, she says, she has other priorities: to help her husband salaad and her son in eastleigh to survive. asho says that telephone calls with her husband, salaad, can sometimes be strained, but she adds that she tries not to be angry with him “now when he is a single parent with a child in a foreign country.” at the same time as asho looks forward to being reunited with her husband, she wonders how their future relationship will be and how he will cope with the new lifestyle that asho has established in sweden. “i have become used to being free and have a new lifestyle that differs from that i had when i lived together with my husband.” asho tries to visualise the problems that will face her when they are reunited in the future and how she will tackle them: i am a bit worried that he will find the changes too big and too difficult, as it is he that will have to change a lot […] it’s going to be tough for both of us, but i think we’ll manage it in the end. or i hope that we will. i can do without some of the minor things if they would cause my husband to leave me. for example, the driving license that i am studying for and hope to get. i know that my husband cannot prevent me from getting a license, but if he was against it i could do without it. not only, or primarily, for his sake, but for my children’s future and their security. discussion and conclusions the transnational approach that gained ground in the 1990s has in many ways contributed to a more complex picture of international migration. but, as with all new and innovative approaches, the transnational approach has often been be overused. researchers, according to levitt and jaworsky (2007), have tended “to see transnational migration international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 304 everywhere, when, in fact, the range and scope of transnational practices of migrants vary considerably” (p. 131; see also portes, guarnizo, & landolt, 1999). no matter how transnationalism is defined, families having homes in two countries must be a key dimension of transnational migration research. transnational family life is not a vague, arbitrary indication of cross-border experiences, but a systematic and enduring aspect of relations across international borders. from this perspective, it is not surprising that special attention has been paid to transnational families within transnational migration research. but, although research on transnational families focuses on one of the key elements of transnationalism, it is also characterized by a significant one-sidedness. transnational families are often assumed to be economic migrants and the transnational family form is seen simply as a result of economic globalization. however, transnational families are not exclusively a result of economic globalization, but also a consequence of present day refugee flows. the few studies that exist on transnational refugee families are based exclusively on interviews with the members of the families living in the west. the present study is an attempt to use a multiple-site strategy to investigate the asymmetric situation that emerges when members of the same family live under radically differing conditions and how this affects their gendered family roles. gendered family roles are not fixed, static roles. like all social roles, roles in the family are ultimately a question of dynamic relations between people. when certain duties or rights are added or withdrawn from a member of the family the power structure is changed, and this may mean that their role in the family may also alter (see, for instance, turner, 1990, 2001). this study shows that the geographic distance between the somali couples has resulted in a new division of power and duties: the men’s control over the economic and social resources has diminished, which has allowed the women to exert greater informal power. the men feel that they have failed in their role as providers for the family, while the women combine their traditional role in the home with a set of new external tasks. consequently, the men and women interviewed have had to face difficult issues concerning masculinity and femininity. the men interviewed all express a common frustration over the fact that as refugees, separated from their families, they are at the mercy of factors beyond their control. this loss of control is primarily seen as a loss of their masculinity. a “real” man should support his wife, not be supported by her. if becoming a refugee and separating from the family is experienced by the men as a decrease in their sense of self-worth, the women experience almost the reverse. their lives without their husbands have obliged them to take on new tasks, to become both “mother and father”. wives sometimes feel that life without their husbands has admittedly made them more vulnerable, but has also given them pride in the fact that they have managed to take over many duties that were previously the exclusive prerogative of their husbands. their pride, however, is combined with concern over the consequences of their overstepping the traditional boundaries between men’s and women’s roles. all of the somali wives interviewed are concerned in different ways, and to a greater or lesser degree, about the long-term consequences of this breach of tradition: in the future, when the family is reunited, will my husband accept my new lifestyle and the person i have become, or will our reunion demand a return to the old order? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 305 in comparison with transnational families that arise through economic migration, transnational refugee families must face greater insecurity. transnational refugee families cannot reunite in their country of origin and they may have to wait years for the members of the family in a transit land to be reunited with the members in a destination country. in view of this situation, one can say that the somali refugee women live in two worlds. on the one hand, they are living in the present for an indefinite period of time, and in order to take care of their families they are obliged to perform tasks outside the traditional woman’s role. on the other hand, they are also living in the future and have to consider whether their new life and lifestyle will be acceptable if the family is eventually reunited. the women are not, at least at present, prepared to challenge the patriarchal family system, but instead question how much of their current life they will be able to retain without risking their family life and their children’s security. in contrast to earlier studies of transnational refugee families that are based entirely on interviews with family members in a country in the west, the present study attempts to simultaneously consider the importance of different geographic locations. the multiple-site approach of this study gives a more realistic view of the challenges facing transnational refugee families. however, the study also has various limitations. an obvious limitation is the small number of participants involved; the study it is based on repeated interviews with only three families and the results should be interpreted with caution. another limitation, equally important, has to do with the time frame. the present study shows how the couples try in different ways to visualize the consequences of a future reunion of the family. longitudinal studies would provide important new insights into how these expectations match with the actual challenges resulting from a future reunion. unfortunately, longitudinal studies of transnational family life are complicated, but we hope to be able to contribute to this perspective in the near future. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 296–307 306 references abdi, c. m. 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pedagogy in austria, which shows some differences from the german history of social pedagogy. in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, the development of social pedagogy led to interesting approaches in the field of children’s residential care. during the national socialist era, the emergence of social pedagogy was cut short. after the end of the second world war, social pedagogy developed step by step into its currently established form, without ever reviving the thinking of the 1920s and 1930s. nevertheless, i would like to show how the basic concepts of that period offer some inspiration for work with children and young people today. based on a single case example, i propose a specific approach to social pedagogy, one that seeks to enable educational processes by reflecting and using the opportunities offered by social environments conducive to education. this focuses less on working with and upon the child, and more on changing the relation between child and environment, the “child/ environment nexus”. keywords: child and youth care, child/environment nexus, self-education, history of social pedagogy stephan sting phd is a professor of social pedagogy at the alps-adriatic university of klagenfurt, universitaetsstrasse 65-67, a-9020 klagenfurt, austria. email: stephan.sting@aau.at http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818122 mailto:stephan.sting@aau.at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 109 in austria, the development of social pedagogy is closely linked to the history of youth welfare work. from the beginning of the 20th century, care for young people in need of particular support or growing up outside conventional families has been seen in austria as a pedagogical task that is connected to reflection on social circumstances and that includes the shaping of the social conditions in which people grow up (scheipl, 2003; sting, 2015). i would like to show that a specific historical austrian approach to social pedagogy might offer some interesting inspiration for modern developments in the field of family support. the attempt to describe specific developments in social pedagogy in austria first comes up against the question of what sozialpädagogik (social pedagogy) actually means in the setting of the social and pedagogical occupations. the answer is complicated by several factors. first, in contrast with germany, scholars in austria have not systematically developed any theories on social pedagogy. though there is widespread everyday understanding of social pedagogy, its precise meaning has not been elucidated in the austrian context. while there are legal regulations for certain social occupations, to date the term sozialpädagoge [social pedagogue] has not become established as a fixed occupational description. the issue is that social pedagogue is a “term in general use” that cannot be given special protection (hofmann, 2003, p. 488). social pedagogy is thus more a pedagogical field than an unambiguous professional category. second, there is a tendency in austria to establish very specific training courses in social pedagogy that have different levels of qualification based on a variety of practical requirements. some are found only within a certain region. there are, for example, specific training courses for family assistants, childminders, foster parents, those working with out-of-school youth, and those working in the field of leisure activities. a large number of social pedagogical training courses have sprung up, but few general, uniform concepts have been accepted, making it hard to compare the different lines of work or to develop a satisfactory overview (see scheipl & heimgartner, 2004, p. 132). third, the theoretical discourses are closely interlinked with the general german-language discussion. in this discussion german approaches and perspectives are dominating and austrian contributions cannot readily be identified as such. this situation leads to terms and theories being imported that hide any specifically austrian developments (see winkler, 2010, pp. 45–46; scheipl, 2011, pp. 1342–1343). the development of austrian social pedagogy led to some interesting approaches in children’s residential care in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s. during the national socialist era, the development of social pedagogy was cut short. after the end of the second world war, social pedagogy was taken up again, and evolved step by step into its currently established form, without ever reviving the thinking of the 1920s and 1930s. in what follows i show how the concepts current during that period might inspire work with young people today. based on the case example of a 24-year-old woman, called “chantal” in this paper, i propose a specific approach to social pedagogy as a means of reflecting upon educational processes, and enabling them to take international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 110 place by making use of the opportunities offered by social environments conducive to education. the focus is less on working with and on the child, and more on changing the relation between child and environment, the “child/environment nexus”. development of social pedagogy in the context of the discussion on “wayward youth” in austria, the history of social pedagogy is closely linked to the emergence of state child and youth care. in germany, the social pedagogical career profile of the erzieherin [educator] covers work in kindergartens (kindergarten teacher) as well as other child and youth care work (child and youth care worker). in austria, meanwhile, kindergartenpädagogik [early child care education] has followed its own course of professionalisation, starting in 1872 with specialist courses for kindergarten workers at state colleges of education, leading to separate courses at educational institutions for kindergarten workers (scheipl & heimgartner, 2004, p. 128). until today, the pedagogical career profile of austrian kindergarten workers is therefore unlike that of an austrian teacher, and has few overlaps with other social pedagogical careers or fields of work. the genesis of professionalisation among social pedagogues is marked by two conferences on child protection, one in vienna in 1907 and the other in salzburg in 1913. according to baernreither (1907), the background to the conferences, and thus the origin of social pedagogical thinking in austria, was a public impression that “youth waywardness” was on the increase (pp. v–vi). to gain an overview of the situation, reports were compiled by the different regions of the habsburg empire. the roots of waywardness were seen as being in the “general social conditions”, the main issue being economic problems that made it impossible to maintain the “moral unity of the family” or to raise children effectively. other issues included poor parenting, and genetic factors directly affecting the children and young people themselves (baernreither, 1907, p. 3 et seq.). to solve these problems, bringing up the next generation was declared a task for society as a whole, one that required a systematic state policy on child-raising. plans were made to establish a comprehensive welfare system concentrating on three fields: child protection (mainly dealing with regulations for foster children and foster parents), correctional education (dealing with residential care), and juvenile criminal law, where the aim was to reinforce the perspective of education when responding to youth delinquency rather than that of punishment (baernreither, 1907, pp. 19–20). accordingly, the emergence of social pedagogy is linked to the establishment of a state policy on child-raising that sees the problems of children and young people as childraising problems resulting from social problems and unfavourable living circumstances. after the end of the first world war, these initial social pedagogical ideas were taken up and developed, especially in vienna. the theory behind social pedagogical questions was studied especially intensively in the context of the psychoanalytic movement. siegfried bernfeld and august aichhorn, who worked on a theory of waywardness and endeavoured to reform children’s residential care in the 1920s, were key figures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 111 bernfeld (1929/1971) expanded the psychoanalytic point of view with his concept of the “social place”. in bernfeld’s view, many cases of waywardness or criminality require not therapy but pedagogy; the psychological and behavioural problems seen in children and young people are the result of a “breakdown in the educational influence of their surroundings”, a “lack of proper contact between the children and their surroundings” (bernfeld, 1926, p. 277). bernfeld also felt that problems arose from a conflict between the values and social leanings experienced in the milieu of childhood and the values and social leanings in the adult milieu. he felt that children needed to be “re-educated” to deal with these problems (bernfeld, 1929, p. 202). this theory centres around establishing a positive social environment or milieu which influences the child’s upbringing and education: children “must be brought into an environment where they find people whom they can love, treasure and admire; a community it is worth living in … ” (bernfeld, 1926, p. 278). aichhorn, who developed a psychoanalytic educational program for children’s residential care, was especially influential (scheipl, 2011, p. 1343). like bernfeld, aichhorn (1925) believed that residential care work was first and foremost about “re-education”: to aichhorn, the “waywardness” of youth was not a medical problem but one of upbringing (p. 14). he describes child-raising as an “art” that requires a certain level of ability (involving, e.g., impartiality, catering to individuality, understanding, and empathy [aichhorn, 1972, pp. 97–98]), but in which the significance of psychology is often overestimated. “residential care work is a field with many ramifications, involving not only psychological problems but also many psychiatric, sociological, politico-cultural and politico-economic problems” (aichhorn, 1925, p. 15). as well as rejecting the concept of pathological waywardness, aichhorn (1925) believed that wayward youth were not “criminals” against whom society needed to be protected but “people who have been overburdened by life, whose negative attitude and hate against society was justified, and for whom a milieu thus had to be created in which they could feel at home” (p. 130). he viewed wayward youth as normal young people whose problems resulted from difficult social milieus and traumatising experiences of life. accordingly, re-education starts with the creation of a positive social milieu — a social environment that opens up the possibility of positive social experiences. in the institution run by aichhorn in hollabrunn, “every single group” was to be organised so that “merely living in the group, without any particular child-raising activities, reduces waywardness” (aichhorn, 1972, p. 124). aichhorn’s educational program consisted in creating “experiences” for youth, arising from living with pedagogues or other people with whom they had positive emotional relationships. the context for this was a suitable social milieu. “if the pupils are to have experiences, they need to get out into life instead of being put in an institution that is out of touch with life, however pleasant it is. the less institutional the milieu is, and the closer it comes to being a free community of people with a positive attitude to life, the less alienated the dissocial individual is from real life and the more likely he is to be healed and later return to society” (aichhorn, 1972, p. 131). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 112 neither aichhorn nor bernfeld developed an explicit theory of social pedagogy. their ideas about child-raising are, however, based on a social pedagogical outlook that views social circumstances and the conditions of people’s social environments as key causes for problems in their behaviour and development. for this reason, pedagogical work began to centre around creating an educationally productive social environment. the central significance of the social environment or milieu with regard to processes of development and education is also emphasised in other austrian studies on youth in the 1920s and 1930s, such as those by charlotte bühler, hildegard hetzer, or paul lazarsfeld (maierhofer, 1996, p. 4). the new era of social pedagogy, signs of which can be seen in the 1920s and 1930s, did not lead to the field becoming lastingly or widely established in austria. there were several reasons for this. first, the psychoanalytic reform movements were restricted to vienna and met with little interest in other austrian regions. second, although aichhorn set up specialist courses for his staff as early as 1921, and there were other courses for child care workers, for example, in religious institutions, no overarching, uniform vocational training method in social pedagogy was established (scheipl & heimgartner, 2004, p. 129). third, though child and youth care work initially leaned strongly towards social pedagogy, near the end of the 1920s a view based on social hygiene and medicine became increasingly established (scheipl, 2003, p. 31). fourth and finally, national socialism led to the end of the psychoanalytic movement. many of its protagonists were banned from their places of work or were forced to emigrate. residential care work was turned into traditional institutional education on the basis of national socialist ideologies. it pivoted on the ideas of social and racial hygiene, which were directed not at the wellbeing of the child but at the wellbeing of the nazi state. classical correctional education was linked to selection strategies aimed at singling out volksschädlinge [pests harmful to the people], gemeinschaftsfremde [aliens to the community], and individuals described as ballastexistenzen [dead weights] (kreitner, 2006, pp. 98–108). in the vienna residential care home am spiegelgrund this led to the killing of some 700 children in the period from 1942 to 1945. the threat of death was deliberately used in this setting as a pedagogical means of dealing with insubordinate behaviour (neugebauer, 2000, p. 149). this dark chapter in the history of children’s residential care in austria only began to be acknowledged and discussed at the end of the 1970s (scheipl, 2007, p. 148). restoration and establishment of social pedagogy after the second world war there were no signs of a revival of social pedagogy. instead, the first step taken was to restore the basic conditions needed for everyday work. one difficulty was that there was no general profile defining what made a professional social pedagogue. until the beginning of the 1960s, social pedagogical training took place in the form of short courses and staff training, sometimes organised by individual federal states but mostly arranged by the institutions and sponsors themselves. this not only resulted in poor-quality qualifications but also made the erzieher [child care workers], as they were now known, extremely dependent on their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 113 employers (gnant, 2003, p. 464–465). the first signs of an austria-wide professionalisation of child care workers came in 1962, with the introduction of courses at the level of the fachschule [professional school] (gnant, 2003, p. 463). after the end of the second world war, the practice of children’s residential care was dominated by large, institutional homes. in the wake of the 1968 student movements, the “homes campaign” arose in vienna, calling for opening up and decentralising the institutional homes. in 1972 the first supported group home was established in vienna, with other group homes following in other federal states. in the 1970s this development led to the large institutions gradually being closed and the types of care available becoming more varied. increasingly, facilities were run by private organisations (scheipl, 2007, p. 149 et seq.). at the same time, the reform of residential care played a key role in stimulating the foundation of other kinds of social pedagogical support. changes in pedagogical practice led to discussions about the quality and level of training, though this did not give social pedagogy a consistent academic structure or professionalisation. from the 1980s on, existing courses for child care workers were moved to the level of higher education or colleges. in 1993 these training centres were renamed “social pedagogy education institutes” (gnant, 2003, p. 467 et seq.). according to the austrian school organisation act (schog), these are intended to train students for “child care work in after-school centres, residential homes, day centres and the care-related aspects of full-service community schools, as well as youth work outside schools” (schog quoted in gnant, 2003, p. 462). as well as occupational training, there were signs that social pedagogy was developing independently at austrian universities. social pedagogy is first mentioned explicitly as a specialist pathway as part of the degree course in educational science offered in the city of graz from 1978 onwards. other specialist pathways in social pedagogy were introduced in innsbruck, vienna, salzburg, and klagenfurt, though some were later dropped (scheipl & heimgartner, 2004, p. 135– 136). the only professorships and masters courses in social pedagogy today are in graz and klagenfurt. another professorship in social pedagogy was established in 2013 in salzburg. in other words, a firm academic basis for social pedagogy was created relatively late in austria. so far, professionalisation has taken place at a relatively low level, with each course having a rather narrow focus. in addition, there are still regional differences and a heterogeneous landscape of social services, occupational titles, and training courses that are not subject to any overall austrian regulations or organisation. alongside social pedagogy, the field of social work has also followed a separate path towards professionalisation since the start of the twentieth century, first in the form of specialist courses, then as social academies, and since 2001 in the form of courses at universities of applied science. since the reforms of the bologna process and the introduction of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, courses in sozialarbeit [social work] have been renamed, and are now courses in soziale arbeit. this relates to developments in german theory according to which the term soziale arbeit international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 114 stands for an overarching, integrative outlook combining social work and social pedagogy (füssenhäuser & thiersch, 2011, p. 1638). so far, however, no steps have been taken in austria towards achieving the aspiration this implies for qualifications in the field of social work and social pedagogy as a whole. soziale arbeit has developed from the tradition of social work, and does not so far involve many pedagogical aspects, whereas social pedagogy focuses on “pedagogical professionality” (see sting, 2015). one consequence of this is that at some universities of applied sciences, there are now not only courses in soziale arbeit, but also some courses in social pedagogy, which differ both from existing courses at the social pedagogy education institutes and from courses in social pedagogy that are offered in the framework of educational science at universities. social pedagogical perspectives for work with children and young people: inspiration from austrian history this brief outline of the historical development of social pedagogy in austria demonstrates that though there is a vague general understanding of the subject, there is no one consistent concept for this field in austria. it thus seems foolhardy to try to draw any general conclusions from the historical background. for this reason, in the following i would like to take some of the historical ideas behind current developments and problems in work with children and young people, and show their continued relevance. one basic principle in bernfeld (1926/1971, 1929/1971) and aichhorn’s (1951, 1972) social pedagogical concepts was that work with children and young people is primarily about pedagogy, not about therapy. as psychoanalysts, both were familiar with the psychological damage that can result from unfavourable circumstances in children’s development. nonetheless, they argued in favour of a less methodological approach, believing that psychological and behavioural problems are due not only to one’s individual traits but also to one’s relationships with one’s environments and social circumstances. accordingly, they believed that favourable developmental processes could be initiated through positive changes to the child/environment nexus. these could be achieved by creating a positive milieu or social environment that would foster the children’s wellbeing. the creation of this social environment did not focus on any particular pedagogical means or treatment. the key component was supportive, emotionally stable, social relations. in this context, bernfeld (1926, 1929) laid the emphasis on the “solidaristic community”, while aichhorn (1951, 1972) underlined the importance of children living with people with whom they had positive emotional relationships. these ideas correspond with modern findings from both attachment theory and the theory of symbolic interactionism on the status that “significant others” can gain in processes of development. the idea that even serious behavioural problems and psychological irregularities can be corrected by creating a social environment that encourages development and enables people to establish emotionally beneficial, supportive, social relationships implies that ultimately it is the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 115 people involved who go through a process of change. this change thus results less from any external pedagogical effect and more from a process of selbstbildung [self-education], which, though it can be externally precipitated, has to be initiated and achieved by the people themselves. the preeminence of self-education in processes of personal development is at the heart of thought on education in the german-speaking countries and is gaining in importance in recent research on youth welfare in germany and austria (see zeller, 2012; köngeter, mangold, & strahl, 2016; sting, 2016). personal development through changes in the self-environment nexus: the example of chantal the idea that creating a suitable social environment with positive social relationships can initiate processes conducive to personal development does not suggest that treatments are ineffective or that therapy for psychological problems is unnecessary. nonetheless, a self-initiated dynamic of change or an element of self-education also seems to be required to stimulate a lasting process of development. in this context i would like to describe one example from a current study we are carrying out at the university of klagenfurt on educational opportunities in, and social contexts of, care leavers’ educational processes, focusing on how formal educational processes are interlinked with educational careers. the example in question is a biographical interview with “chantal”.1 at the time of the interview, chantal was 24 years old. she lived with a flatmate in her own flat in another european country, where she worked as a deputy sous-chef in a restaurant. at the age of 13, following a suicide attempt, she spent two years in psychiatric care for children and young people, with a few brief breaks. during her time in psychiatric care, she spent her free weekends at a crisis intervention centre rather than with her family. after a failed trial run in a residential group home, at the age of 15 she entered another supported group home, where she lived until becoming independent at 18 and a half. she left mainstream schooling due to serious behavioural difficulties, and next attended a school run by the psychiatric clinic, though this also failed. chantal associated school attendance with disinterest and rejection, which led to interruptions, non-attendance, provoking teachers, alcohol consumption during lessons, and even burning a fellow schoolgirl’s hair and setting fire to a school bus. eventually, while in the psychiatric clinic, she was given individual lessons by a teacher working for the hospital. a serious change occurred when chantal moved to a supported group home. chantal initially rejected this change, but in retrospect she described it as the “best chance” of her life. there, she “started to learn how to deal with other people like normal without hitting each other or whatever and talking and kind of seeing things differently” (chantal, lines 137–138). in order to bring her school career to a successful close, the leader of the group home worked to ensure that chantal could complete her school education through lessons at the psychiatric clinic. chantal felt 1 the name has been anonymised. the study was carried out from april 2016 to january 2018; in this research project i worked with maria groinig, wolfgang hagleitner, and thomas maran. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 116 as if the carers at the group home “had her back” in a way that she stated she never experienced at home, in her family. eventually she managed “to get through somehow and apparently everyone else thinks it’s great” (chantal, line 284). in the group home, chantal evidently found a social environment that enabled her to have positive social experiences and where she experienced social esteem and recognition. to allow her to complete her school education successfully, an unconventional arrangement was established: she lived in the supported group home and was taught at the psychiatric clinic. according to chantal, this social setting led to “something going click in my head” (chantal, lines 362, 366– 367); these are the words she used to describe a self-education process through which she initiated a change in her self-environment nexus. as a result, this development was reinforced in that successfully finishing school allowed her to experience agency: she got to know more “great people”, entered a supportive relationship with a partner, and received “good feedback” during the next steps in her training as a cook, which gave her confirmation that she could “do good work”. she stated: then i thought that i really wasn’t going to like knock that down by cocking things up again and that, by getting back in that rut again. so i just stuck with it and just made an effort to finish it as well as i could. (chantal, lines 368–370) in chantal’s case, creating a suitable social environment with positive social relationships appears to have initiated a process of self-education that was conducive to her development. she did, of course, undergo regular therapeutic treatment at the psychiatric clinic and while in the group home, and this undoubtedly contributed to the process of change, but chantal herself did not say much about it in her biographical review. the chance to pass her school-leaving exams led to an experience of self-efficacy and agency that decisively stabilised and reinforced this positive developmental process. recent studies on successful care leavers have shown that a suitable social environment does not necessarily have to be provided by the youth care services: some young people find and help create social environments themselves where they can discover positive social experiences, continuity, and their own agency. interestingly, when young people are successful at school, the school may be one such social environment. in this case, the school is not just a place to acquire skills but a place of normality and continuity that enables young people to have social recognition and positive social relationships. the study higher education without family support, which was carried out by köngeter and colleagues (2016) at the university of hildesheim, makes this clear. in contrast to their often chaotic experiences in their families of origin and the special world of the youth care institution, school offers young people contact with “normal” peers, socially accepted tasks and expectations, and a predictable daily structure. in this context, scholastic success can lead to the acquisition of social esteem and help them gain a better socioeconomic status than their families of origin, whose educational opportunities were often limited. at the same time it allows them to experience their own influence or agency as they learn to manage generally accepted social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 117 expectations (köngeter et al., 2016, pp. 113 et seq., p. 169). for one young man in our study this meant that although he had left his family at an early age and moved from one youth care placement to another several times, he completed all his upper secondary level schooling at the same school. for him, the most important condition whenever he moved to a new placement was that he could stay at his school, and the staff at the school in question supported him strongly. social environments other than school can also constitute a beneficial social space. in one case a young man found support in his friend’s educationally inclined family; he went on holiday with them and they supported his efforts at school. in some cases, a motivating, supportive relationship with siblings creates a social environment that is conducive to education (köngeter et al., 2016, pp. 132–133; see also leitner, loch, & sting, 2011). conclusions in child and youth care, a sensitivity to the formation of social environments is necessary. these are places where positive social experiences are made possible; this in turn can spark developmentally beneficial processes of self-education. positive personal developments do not result only from pedagogical or therapeutic work with the child; instead, they evolve out of changes in the child/environment nexus. although the child/environment nexus can be encouraged to change by organising suitable group and living arrangements in the context of youth care, biographical studies indicate that social environments such as school, friendships, and certain elements of the context of origin (e.g., relationships with siblings or grandparents) should also be considered. biographies reveal a topography of heterogeneous social environments that can provide continuity, esteem, social connections, and an experience of agency, and thus trigger developmentally beneficial processes of self-education. drawing from the concepts of milieu formation and the significance of the social environment as found in the austrian history of social pedagogy, professionals working with children and youth need to recognise, maintain, and productively use the resources that are to be found in the biographical topographies of individuals’ social environments. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 108–120 118 references aichhorn, a. 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(2012). bildungsprozesse von mädchen in den erziehungshilfen [educational processes among girls in child and youth care]. weinheim, germany: beltz juventa. http://soziales-kapital.at/index.php/sozialeskapital/article/viewfile/394/678.pdf http://soziales-kapital.at/index.php/sozialeskapital/article/viewfile/394/678.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718075 let’s talk food: elementary school students’ perceptions of school and home food environment and the impact of the harvest of the month program on their dietary attitudes and behaviors amanda margolin, keiko goto, cindy wolff, and stephanie bianco abstract: this study aimed to further knowledge about elementary school students’ views on food environment, and the effects of the harvest of the month (hotm) program on their dietary attitudes and behaviors. three focus groups were conducted with a total of 24 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students from low-income schools in northern california who received the national school lunch program and hotm during the school year. focus groups were tape-recorded, transcribed, and coded for specific themes. following the intervention, participants expressed a desire for more healthy food options in the school cafeteria and wanted to receive more school and family support for healthy eating. the hotm program created a positive environment that appeared to influence their dietary attitudes and behaviors, peer and family perceptions of healthy eating, and participants’ attitudes toward their schools. specifically, cooking demonstrations, tasting activities, and take-home recipes provided them with a means to share with their parents what they had learned about fruits and vegetables. school food policy interventions may become more effective if they are combined with interventions based on nutrition education. future research should focus on exploring effective and synergistic ways of implementing both types of interventions among children. keywords: focus groups, primary schools, nutrition interventions amanda margolin ms is a pediatric dietitian at providence pediatric neurodevelopment institute, 9205 sw barnes rd, portland, or 97225, usa. email: ablairg@gmail.com keiko goto phd (the corresponding author) is the assistant director of research and evaluation, center for healthy communities, and professor and graduate coordinator, department of nutrition and food sciences, california state university, chico, ca 95929, usa. email: kgoto@csuchico.edu cindy wolff phd is the executive director, center for healthy communities, and a professor in the department of nutrition and food sciences (nfsc), california state university, chico, ca 95929. email: cwolff@csuchico.edu stephanie bianco ms is the associate director, center for healthy communities, and an associate professor in the department of nutrition and food sciences, california state university, chico, ca 95929, usa. email: sbianco@csuchico.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718075 mailto:ablairg@gmail.com mailto:kgoto@csuchico.edu mailto:cwolff@csuchico.edu mailto:sbianco@csuchico.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 155 childhood overweight and obesity have become global public health concerns since overweight and obese children are a growing group at risk for the same health complications, such as heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, as overweight adults (pan, blanck, sherry, dalenius, & grummer-strawn, 2012). the global prevalence of overweight and obesity for children and adolescents (ages 2 to 19 years) rose by 47.1% from 1980 to 2013 (ng et al., 2014). the united states has one of the highest prevalence rates in the world (ng et al., 2014). the prevalence of obesity among u.s. children and adolescents was 17% in 2011 to 2014 (ogden, carroll, fryar, & flegal, 2015). in the united states children spend, on average, over six hours each day at school. there they are exposed to various levels of physical activity as well as many food and beverage choices. thirty million children in the united states consume at least one meal at school each day, in addition to snacks and other supplementary foods, through the national school lunch program (nslp) and the national breakfast program (nbp). these programs make important contributions to students’ daily overall dietary intake, especially for children with low socioeconomic status who experience food insecurity at home, many of whom are of minority ethnicity. therefore, the foods children receive at school strongly impact their overall diet (clark & fox, 2009; hussar & bailey, 2009). in the united states, a social ecological model was developed by mcleroy, bibeau, steckler, and glanz (1988) to address both individual and social environmental factors for health promotion interventions. it focuses on the importance of interventions directed at changing interpersonal, organizational, community, and public policy factors that affect healthy and unhealthy behaviors (mcleroy et al., 1988). this model has been proposed as a framework for dietary interventions, specifically for nutrition strategies aimed at promoting the adoption of healthy eating behaviors in the united states (story, kaphingst, robinson-o’brien, & glanz, 2008). individual behavior change can be achieved by addressing the environmental context and conditions in which people live and make choices (story et al., 2008). thus, the social ecological model is useful for conceptualizing the many food environments and conditions that influence individual food choices, as well as developing environmental and policy interventions addressing population-wide improvements in eating (story et al., 2008). previous research has identified that theory-driven, behavioral educational strategies are a necessary element of successful school-based intervention programs across the globe (pérezrodrigo & aranceta, 2001). specifically, multicomponent school-based intervention programs have been implemented to promote better nutrition and prevent obesity among children and adolescents (chen et al., 2014). past research has shown that such programs with farm-to-schoolcentered curricula are effective at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption among children (goto, wolff, frigaard, & bianco-simeral, 2012; graham, feenstra, evans, & zidenberg-cherr, 2004; heim, stang, & ireland, 2009; nicklas, johnson, myers, farris, & cunningham, 1998; perry international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 156 et al., 1998). children’s food perceptions, the cafeteria environment, and their eating habits determine their food choices, and encouraging children to taste and develop a preference for fruits and vegetables may increase their intake of healthy foods (shannon, story, fulkerson, & french, 2002; mckinley et al., 2005). despite the strong evidence from those quantitative studies supporting the use of such programs, there have been few evaluations using qualitative methods to identify possible factors that may better explain the impact of programs on dietary behaviors of children. the use of qualitative research for the interpretive enrichment of quantitative studies, as well as for the development of quantitative studies, has proven to be fruitful (béhague, gonçalves, & victora, 2008). considering the complexity of the environmental contexts and conditions in which children make choices, qualitative research may contribute to the effective development of school-based nutrition interventions for student dietary behavioral changes. the harvest of the month (hotm) program, funded by the united states department of agriculture, is a multicomponent school-based nutrition program targeting youth in low-income schools. using the social ecological model, the hotm program in the study area included five key monthly elements aimed at addressing environmental and personal factors associated with healthy eating: educator newsletters, family newsletters, farmers of the month (fotm) newsletters, classroom workbooks, and cooking demonstrations (california department of public health, 2016). each element was developed using the social ecological model as a framework and is intended for implementation in areas where nutrition education can make the biggest impact — classrooms, cafeterias, homes, and communities. the current study qualitatively examined the perceptions of elementary school students regarding the foods served in the cafeteria, barriers to healthy eating, and their perceptions of the impact of the hotm program on their dietary attitudes and behaviors. the authors aimed to gain an insight into factors that influence the dietary behavior of children and adolescents, as well as to evaluate the perceived impact of the hotm program on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors associated with those identified factors. methods study participants the study population included fourth, fifth, and sixth grade male and female students from three low-income elementary schools in northern california that received the nslp and the hotm interventions during the school year. informed consent was obtained from the parents of participants. a convenience sample of 24 students from three schools (eight from each) participated in the study, with 50% boys and 50% girls from each school. this study was approved by the human subjects research committee at california state univdersity, chico. focus groups focus groups were used in order to provide a rich understanding of student perceptions of the foods served in the cafeteria, barriers to healthy eating, and the impact of the hotm program on their dietary attitudes and behaviors. the focus group technique allows more in-depth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 157 exploration of issues relevant to children, regardless of their literacy skills, than less interactive data collection tools such as surveys (mckinley et al., 2005). a focus group guide was developed to explore fruit and vegetable consumption among children both inside and outside the school environment and how the hotm program might have impacted student dietary behaviors. the focus group guide consisted of questions regarding students’ (a) beliefs and practices regarding the overall school lunch and the foods and beverages offered; (b) views about the hotm program, fruits and vegetables, and knowledge obtained from the curriculum; and (c) values implemented in the home environment, specifically regarding fruits and vegetables. focus groups were held at on-campus locations such as classrooms or libraries. the focus group guide was used to direct the discussion; where the researchers thought it advisable, supplementary probing questions were added in order to ensure thorough responses. to maintain the attentiveness and interest of the participants, each session was limited to approximately 45 minutes. all three focus groups followed the same format. prior to each focus group session, a brief activity — the naming of favorite fruits and vegetables — was used to build rapport among participants and trust in the facilitator. trained research staff served as facilitators, audio-recorders, and note-takers for the three focus group sessions. data analysis thematic analysis, a systematic approach for qualitative data analysis (mills, durepos, & wiebe, 2010), was used to analyze the focus group data. two trained researchers (first and fourth authors) analyzed data independently. identified themes and subthemes were then carefully reviewed by all authors in order to make sure that all responses were dealt with even-handedly and that one participant’s response was not privileged over another’s (pilnick & swift, 2011). the themes and subthemes were further organized and compared across each of the three focus groups. for each category or overarching theme identified, summary statements were written and quotes were extracted to further illustrate the themes and subthemes in order to convey the overall participant perspective. results the themes identified from the focus groups were divided into three key categories: (a) student views of food items in the school cafeteria; (b) peer and family influences on food behaviors; and, (c) the school food environment. study participants also discussed their perceptions of the impact of the hotm program on these identified categories. student views of food items in the school cafeteria availability of fruits and vegetables: students were asked to describe their perspectives on food items available to them during school lunch. all participants felt positive about fruits and vegetables, were able to describe and name their favorite fruits and vegetables, and also indicated the desire for more fruits and vegetables to be available in both variety and quantity. the lack of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 158 availability and the limited variety of fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria were identified as barriers to consumption. when asked about the quantities of fruits and vegetables students are allowed to take, one child stated: and they make, like, a limit on what you can get … i mean, i think they should let us take more because not a lot of kids like fruits and vegetables so the fact that we want more should actually be kind of cool, and they should let us. (female, school 1) i don’t like the milk here. i only like the milk my parents buy. (female, school 3) desire for fresh local foods: students expressed a strong preference for fresh foods, specifically, recently harvested produce from gardens and produce available at local farmers’ markets. students were probed for locations where fruits and vegetables were eaten outside of the home to determine students’ knowledge of local food, and locations where fruits and vegetables are available to them. primarily, students formulated their notions of healthy foods as being fresh, good tasting, and locally sourced, as indicated by their distrust surrounding processed foods. additionally, children felt safer consuming produce from the school garden or local farmer’s market because that produce was less processed. responses from children included: the garden’s more healthier. you don’t know what they do in the factory … and the foods and stuff might be sprayed. (male, school 1) the salad bar is way more healthy and you can see the food being grown at the school. (female, school 2) such statements expressed the children’s views on the importance of knowing the origin of their food. a majority of the children identified the importance of having high quality, good-tasting foods served to them for school lunch. many children expressed disappointment in the quality of entrée items served, describing these foods as greasy, cold, salty, soggy, and stale. the children identified entrée options as “disturbing” and “[it] bothers me a lot”. one girl (school 1) objected, “we have to pay for our lunches, so we should get good things, not gross things.” healthfulness of cafeteria foods a major concern of students regarding the entrée items was the unhealthiness of the items served. when the students were asked what they would change about the entrée items, responses included less cheese, no grease, less salt on french fries, more rice, remove rotten items, and for the items to remain warm. one boy (school 2) remarked regarding the greasy food, “it’s so much grease it’s like a big puddle of grease on top of the pizza.” other students chose to eat more salad bar items in an attempt to offset some of the perceived unhealthiness of the entrée. one girl (school 2) remarked, “i go [to the salad bar] every time because like getting a side salad makes me feel better if i’m eating something bad for me.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 159 however, the children acknowledged the possible limitations of serving food to large numbers of students during the school year by comparing it to the summer school lunches. the children unanimously agreed the summer school lunches were better and healthier and reasoned that this was because, as one girl (school 1) said, “there’s less days … there is way less people … so it’s a lot easier to make good food.” quality of milk at the cafeteria: the children were asked to describe their typical milk selection and consumption patterns. taste was identified as a key determinant of milk consumption during school lunch. many of the children expressed adverse feelings towards the milk served at school due to the fact that they viewed the milk offered as being quite different from the milk they consumed at home. the milk offered at school was further described as watery, warm, and weird tasting; the chocolate milk was said to taste even more disgusting than the white milk. however, the children felt that these characteristics might be due to the milk being served in cardboard cartons. when students were asked about aspects of the school lunch they would like to see changed, the overwhelming response was with regard to having to purchase water. students stated that the water from the drinking fountains is warm and that since they have a strong dislike of the milk served at school they often choose not to drink at all. students also indicated that it was unfair for the school not to allow them to take several servings of fruits such as strawberries and kiwis. impact of the hotm program on students’ knowledge and dietary behaviors: students expressed excitement about trying new fruits and vegetables, particularly when it came to eating new foods prepared in ways they weren’t accustomed to. the hotm program appeared to have had a positive impact on students’ knowledge by promoting local fruits and vegetables. when students were asked to define the term “local food” a majority of the students were able to contribute a variety of descriptions of their notion of local, such as “organic”, “grown in your town”, “safer”, and “foods you can get at the farmers’ market”. students stated that the hotm program gave them the opportunity to try new local foods, and this gave them insight into what kinds of foods they would prefer to have in their salad bar at lunch. one boy (school 1) remarked, “they [the hotm program] also have, like, they have, like, different foods than at school that i would want in here because they taste better.” students also provided positive feedback about the hotm books and cooking demonstrations, and in that way demonstrated knowledge about produce and of how fruits and vegetables grow. comments included: some of the foods that they have in the books are different from the school fruits, and that’s, like, what we would want … and you get to learn about the fruits and vegetables. (male, school 1) it’s kind of cool because it tells you what they look like, what they are, how to identify them, um, how to tell this kind of fruit from this kind of fruit, how to tell international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 160 what a fruit is and what a vegetable is, just like different comparisons, and it’s cool because it just helps, and it’s kind of like one big scavenger hunt because, like, you’ll be walking and you’ll be like, “oh, that’s a potato. oh, that’s something.” (female, school 1) peer and family influences on food behaviors perceived “uncoolness” of fruits and vegetables among peers: when the students were asked about their peers’ opinions about fruit and vegetable consumption, the overwhelming response was that fruits and vegetables were often viewed as being “uncool.” many students felt that their peers would not support them in choosing to consume fruits and vegetables at lunch. one student remarked: a lot of the kids don’t like vegetables or anything, like, at all, and so i think it’s kind of cool when you hang out with somebody that likes the same things you do, even when it’s as simple as fruits and vegetables. (female, school 1) this perception of “uncoolness” may be experienced more strongly among the older students, as is evidenced by one girl (school 1) stating, “especially like sixth grade, not all people like vegetables because, you know, you have to be all cool and stuff.” parental food preferences: students noted that a few families were more likely to buy a variety of produce for the children while the majority purchased a more limited selection. parental fruit and vegetable preferences impacted overall purchasing of produce for the entire family. many students felt their families discouraged them from consuming fruits and vegetables; they viewed their parents not purchasing their produce preferences as a lack of support. students expressed that they asked their parents to purchase different varieties of fruits and vegetables, some of which they had been exposed to at school, but parental tastes dictated whether the item was bought. one girl (school 2) said, “then i wanted [my dad] to buy me [a pineapple] but then he hates pineapple, and he thinks i won’t be able to eat a whole pineapple on my own.” financial concerns among families: due to economic concerns, some families were limited in their ability to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, but financial means also influenced where purchasing was done. one boy (school 2) said, “i ask them to buy pineapple but they never do because they’re not on sale.” when asked specifically if their families purchased produce at a farmers’ market, a girl (school 2) replied they did not because, “we don’t have a lot of money for that. well, like, my family can’t really afford the more expensive, healthier veggies and fruits.” other students had similar economic concerns and stated that they couldn’t afford fresh produce and consumed frozen vegetables. impact of the hotm program on peers and families: the hotm program provided students with the opportunity to taste and learn about a produce item each month in the classroom. the classroom activities appeared to have had a positive impact on students’ overall attitudes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 161 toward consuming fruits and vegetables. students expressed how they enjoyed the classroom cooking demonstrations because it gave them the opportunity to try new foods as a group. regarding the tasting activity, students observed that it was an exciting experience, that the foods provided health benefits, and that it gave them knowledge they could share with friends and family. furthermore, after each monthly cooking demonstration students were supplied with a recipe card to take home and share with their families. students appreciated this aspect of the program because it provided them with a means to share with their parents what they had learned about fruits and vegetables. comments included: if [i] try something, and i like it, i’ll be like, “hey mom, can we go get this. we tried it at school, and it was really good.”… i think the hotm kind of helps the parents because when we talk about the things that we like, it helps them, kind of know what we like. (female, school 1) school food environment communication between students and food service staff: students did not feel they could openly express their concerns to those who provide the meals in the cafeteria. as a result, many felt the only recourse was either to eat less of the entrée or to skip the entrée entirely. there were divergent views from students about voicing their opinions to food service staff about their concerns in the cafeteria. there was an evident lack of communication between students and staff regarding food quality. the lack of communication was a result of the students being afraid and nervous to talk to the staff. after being asked if the students had ever voiced their concerns, students remarked: we don’t really, nobody really talks to the lunch ladies other than to tell them what they, what we want. so normally we tell, we just talk about it to the yard duties. (female, school 1) he’s just, like, so uptight and scary. (male, school 3) students also expressed concern over the way food was handled in the cafeteria. many students reported that food service staff would not always wear gloves when handling food items. one boy (school 2) remarked, “i mean they don’t put their gloves on but they don’t wash their hands and i don’t feel comfortable finding hairs and nails and the food is just disgusting.” impact of the hotm program on the school environment: the hotm program had a positive influence on students’ attitudes toward their schools and school staff. some students appreciated the program because they felt it demonstrated the school’s concern for their health and well-being by encouraging them to try a variety of fruits and vegetables. students also noted that the hotm program helped them better communicate with school staff regarding healthy eating. one girl (school 1) commented, “it’s kind of cool that the school wants to help us just try new stuff.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 162 in summary, participants expressed a strong desire to receive more school support for healthy eating and wanted their voices to be heard. the hotm program created a supportive environment that appeared to influence their food behaviors, perceptions of healthy eating among their peers and family members, and their attitudes toward their schools and the school staff. discussion multicomponent school-based nutrition programs are designed to improve the dietary behaviors of school-aged children. this qualitative study was intended to gain a better understanding of factors that affect dietary behaviors of children, as well as to qualitatively evaluate the impact of the hotm program on knowledge, attitude, and behaviors. findings reveal a wide range of factors influencing the food choices of school-aged children, including appearance, taste, availability, quality, and socioeconomic status. findings also suggest positive implications for the use of school-based nutrition programs. as reported by other studies, children made a distinction between healthy and unhealthy foods; fruits and vegetables were viewed as healthy whereas pizza and hamburgers were seen as unhealthy (harrison & jackson, 2009; mckinley et al., 2005; molaison, connell, stuff, yadrick, & bogle, 2005; neumark-sztainer, story, perry, & casey, 1998; noble, corney, eves, kipps, & lumbers, 2000). children expressed dissatisfaction with the food items available in the cafeteria, specifically the entrée items, in terms of lack of availability of healthy options. consistent with findings from mckinley et al. (2005) and chapman and maclean (1993), meals eaten at home, in general, tended to be viewed as higher in nutritional quality than those eaten in the school environment. negative comments were similar to findings from power, bindler, goetz, and daratha’s (2009) study in which students stated that some entrée items such as the pizza and taco bowl were overly “greasy”, which caused the students to skip lunch altogether. consistent with osowski, göranzon, and fjellström (2012), when the children were speaking negatively about the food in the cafeteria, the word most commonly used to describe the foods was “disgusting”. students also tended to associate the taste of food items, such as milk from cartons, with objects like cardboard and paper, and they perceived these tastes as different from what they consumed at home (osowski et al., 2012). this study documented students’ perceptions of processed foods compared to local foods, a topic that to our knowledge has not been widely explored in elementary school students. students expressed a strong preference for fresh foods, specifically recently harvested produce from school gardens and produce available at local farmers’ markets. the current study revealed that students have negative perceptions of school cafeteria entrée items as primarily consisting of processed foods. this indicates that there may be a need to reform school lunch policy regarding entrée items. a key environmental factor identified as a barrier to fruit and vegetable consumption in the cafeteria was the influence of peers. specifically, when students were asked about the opinions of their peers regarding fruit and vegetable consumption, the overwhelming response was that these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 163 foods are viewed as being “uncool”. this finding is similar to the results of other research in which students did not feel healthy eating was an attractive option (mckinley et al., 2005) and that friends were a major influence on students’ eating patterns (power et al., 2009). results from our study indicate that consumption of fruits and vegetables in the home may be directly related to the purchasing habits of parents and, therefore, to the availability of these foods at home. the reported influence of parents’ purchasing habits on fruit and vegetable consumption in the home was also observed in other studies (young, fors, & hayes, 2004; molaison et al., 2005). in the current study some students stated that their families buy a variety of fruits and vegetables, but the majority of students reported that parental preferences and economic concerns contributed to a lack of produce in the home. the current study aimed to qualitatively evaluate the impact of the hotm program on factors such as school food perceptions, peer and family influences, and school food environment. the hotm program provided students with nutrition awareness. specifically, the classroom cooking demonstrations allowed students to develop taste preferences for new foods and provided them with insight into additional produce options they might like that were available in the school cafeteria. this is evident through their strong preference for fresh fruits and vegetables and their increased desire for a wider variety of produce options in the cafeteria. this finding may prompt schools to offer more fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria and not restrict the amount students may take. the most effective programs should intervene at multiple levels and so should include not only students and the school environment, but also parents (mckinley et al., 2005; power et al., 2009). a lack of availability of produce items at home was a concern among study participants. hotm provided students with recipe cards and parent newsletters to share with their families; the recipe cards did appear to have a positive influence. future interventions aimed at school-aged children should incorporate a stronger parental component by identifying other mechanisms for reaching parents, such as family tasting events and nutrition-related homework activities. similar to findings from potter and colleagues (2011), students expressed appreciation for the hotm program because they felt that, through encouraging them to try new fruits and vegetables, the school was demonstrating concern for their health and well-being. students felt that the schools should offer more healthy food options as part of the school lunch program; specifically, produce items they had tasted through the program. to obtain optimal impact, such programs should incorporate hotm produce items into the cafeteria as well as generally making food in the cafeteria more appealing and more produce available. the current study has several limitations. the number of study participants was small and the study was conducted in one rural area in northern california. as a result, study findings may not reflect the larger population of elementary school children in the united states. in addition, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 164 the current study employed a qualitative method; an experimental study needs to be conducted to further assess or confirm the effectiveness of the hotm program. conclusions the findings from this study indicate that changes in school nutrition policy and interventions such as the hotm program effectively complement each other for student dietary behavioral changes. school-based experiential nutrition interventions such as the hotm nutrition program provide students with a positive and supportive environment that may influence their dietary behaviors, peer and family perceptions of healthy eating, and attitudes toward their schools and the school staff. on the other hand, some challenges, such as the lack of availability and the unattractiveness of healthy foods in the school cafeteria, need to be addressed at the policy level through nutrition legislation reform. the current study indicates that such policy changes can become more effective when combined with experiential nutrition interventions such as classroom tasting activities, cooking demonstrations, and nutrition education. our study participants’ strong preference for locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables and their desire for more produce options in the cafeteria appear to be largely due to their participation in the hotm program. thus, increasing the availability of fruits and vegetables through school food policy changes alone may not be effective in improving children’s fruit and vegetable consumption in school. when developing nutrition intervention programs for school-aged children it is critical to address parental and environmental influences that discourage students from practicing healthy eating habits. parents’ unwillingness to buy certain fruits and vegetables due to their own taste preferences warrant the inclusion of parental education in nutrition intervention programs. future research should focus on exploring effective and synergistic ways of implementing both nutrition legislation reform and nutrition intervention programs. our study participants’ strong desire to have their voices heard for a better school food environment suggests youth engagement for both nutrition policy and education interventions is key to achieving successful dietary behavioral changes among students. additionally, more research is needed to further investigate the differences between the home and the school environments regarding food availability and choices. overall, a multicomponent school-based nutrition intervention program can be a useful approach to improve dietary behaviors among elementary school students. acknowledgements the harvest of the month study was funded by federal financial participation reimbursement funding through the united states department of agriculture supplemental nutrition assistance program (snap) via a contract with the california department of public health’s nutrition education and obesity prevention branch. the authors wish to thank the staff and student interns at the california state university, chico and our study participants for their support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 154–167 165 references béhague, d. p., gonçalves, h., & victora, c. g. 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however, a unified understanding of what gender is and how gender identity is developed continues to spark debate and discussion for practitioners and academics (e.g., braun & wilkinson, 2005; diamond & butterworth, 2008; fausto-sterling, 2012; jeffreys, 2012; langer & martin, 2004). current understandings describe gender as a dynamic, interactive process between an individual and the social environment in which that individual exists (bem 1993; butler 1990; fausto-sterling, 2000, 2012). although biological sex has long served as a looking glass through which individuals view decisions about how to think about and interact with others (bem, 1993), there is a wide variance in how individuals embody gender in their own lives (fausto-sterling, 2000). gender is considered to be a complex aspect of identity that one learns and develops throughout one’s lifetime, and not necessarily representative of one’s biological sex (butler, 1990; de beauvoir, 1953/1989; fausto-sterling, 2000). consistent definitions of what gender means, how gender identity is developed, and the role gender and gender identity plays in the lives of individuals are widely lacking throughout the literature (carr, 2007; diamond & butterworth, 2008). diamond and butterworth (2008) state the “difficulty in making sense of individuals with multiple identities, multiple subjectivities, and multiple social locations is manifested in the lack of language to describe such experiences” (p. 373). as such, language describing gender difference and gender variance typically falls into diagnostic categories that pathologize variance from prescribed social norms (drescher, 2010). nevertheless, scholars and activists continue to push towards a wider understanding of gender and identity (devor, 2002; drescher, 2010; langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012), outside of dichotomous categories and beyond binary ideals, arguing that pathologizing gender-atypicality when there is a lack of consensus on genderappropriateness is untenable (diamond & butterworth, 2008; drescher, 2010). this review initially examined the literature from the past 10 years that discusses gender identity, development, and language in order to explore what words, language, and terminology are currently being used to discuss gender. it is based on a literature search that was conducted using the keywords: “gender identity”; “development”; “language”; “identity formation”; and “narrative”. this search provided 46 peer-reviewed journal articles. from these, articles were selected based on publication date (published after 2003) and the use of gender as a term denoting a social role, resulting in 21 articles being selected for review. after noting commonly cited sources amongst the literature search results, additional sources (published prior to 2003) were reviewed in order to include significant research in the area of gender. although the literature search generated articles discussing a wide variety of issues relating to gender and gender identity development, a common theme was an absence of language allowing individuals to describe themselves outside heteronormative1, binary ideals of gender without resorting to the use of the diagnostic categories and language to describe and explain gender variance (carr, 2007; diamond & butterworth, 2008; drescher, 2010). despite 1 heteronormative refers to the social and cultural expectation that individuals are heterosexual and, therefore, fall into one of two distinct and opposite sex and gender categories (oxford dictionary, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 334 the recent removal of gender identity disorder2 (gid) from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) (american psychiatric association, 2013a), the manual continues to include a similar diagnostic category of gender dysphoria (to be discussed later in this paper under the heading, comparing gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria). the debate about the necessity of the inclusion of this diagnosis in the dsm is ongoing with several scholars arguing for the removal of this diagnosis due to the parallels between the inclusion of gender variance diagnoses and the prior inclusion of homosexuality in the dsm (drescher, 2010; jeffreys, 2012; langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012), despite recent amendments to the language of the diagnostic criteria (american psychiatric association, 2013b). with recent media attention to the issues of acceptance of sexual diversity and trans*3 awareness (e.g., canadian broadcasting corporation, 2013; dudash, 2013; fleischer, 2013; sheldon & krop, 2013), the discussion of diversity is a central issue within such human services fields as child and youth care (cyc). child and youth care scholars and practitioners have suggested that “work in gender issues is not done” (de finney, little, skott-myre, & gharabaghi, 2012, p. 132). this literature review examines current understandings of gender and the use of diagnostic categories in the description of gender variance in order to further understand the complex role language plays in the development and understanding of gender identity. defining gender the term gender was introduced by feminist theorists to describe a social role and is considered to be a term connoting context (bem, 1993; butler, 1990; drescher, 2010). gender is a process of learned behaviour gleaned from an individual’s life experience (butler, 1990; de beauvoir, 1953/1989; gilbert & scher, 1999). described as a dynamic, interactive process between an individual and the social environment in which the individual exists, gender is not a static trait within an individual (butler, 1990). the realities of social life are products of language and meanings agreed upon. butler (1990), reminds us that “to claim that gender is constructed is not to assert its illusoriness or artificiality” (p. 45), but to remind us that gender is an ongoing discursive practice. this relational or contextual point of view suggests that what a person is, or what gender is, is always relative to the constructed relations in which this is determined (butler, 1990). “as a shifting and contextual phenomenon, gender does not denote a substantive being, but a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations” (butler, 1990, p. 14). the categories of male and female are central to social thought, “entering virtually every domain of human experience and structuring human relationships . . . [g]ender categories serve to label, define and rank” (hare-mustin & mareck, 1990, p. 184). while cross-cultural studies 2 gender identity disorder was included in editions iii and iv-tr of the dsm (byne et al., 2012; american psychiatric association, 2000). 3 trans* “is an umbrella term that attempts to capture the complexity and diversity of gender identity and expression by those who transgress gender boundaries. the term trans* may encompass (but is not limited to) those who identify as transgender, genderqueer, trans, transsexual, androgynous, agender, bigender, two spirit, and gender nonconforming. the asterisk is used as a visible signifier of the diversity within trans* communities. trans* people can be of any race, class, (dis)ability, faith, culture, sexual orientation, or citizenship status, and can have a vast variety of gender identities and expressions” (trans* awareness project, n.d.). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 335 have revealed a wide range in how gender is conceptualized, discussed, and embodied around the world (fausto-sterling, 2000), it appears that the “possession of a single sex [or gender] is a necessity in our social order” (dreger, 1998, as cited in fausto-sterling, 2000, p. 42). this literature review has identified that despite ongoing debate and discussion around the construct of gender (braun & wilkinson, 2005; carr, 2007; diamond & butterworth, 2008; fausto-sterling, 2000), there appears to be limited understanding of how the language and narrative around gender impacts and influences gender identity development in children and youth. drawing on ideas from narrative theory (e.g., white, 2007), language can be understood as a powerful tool in the construction of self-concept and identity. the words that individuals use to describe gender for themselves and for others can have an enormous impact on how individuals see both themselves and others, and on how they interact with the world around them (derrida, 1995; hansen, 2006). as language is arguably a system used to label and define, linguistic practices and social roles are delineated along a binary ideal of gender and sex (barthes, 1979, as cited in hare-mustin & mareck, 1990). wittig (1984) discusses how individuals cannot be signified within language without the mark of gender: an individual is either one gender or the other, one is either a woman or a man. the difficulty in grasping the meaning of gender is further complicated by the pervasive cultural belief that gender differences are due to underlying biological differences, leading to conventional meanings of gender that typically focus on the difference between two distinct gender categories (hare-mustin & mareck, 1990). this leaves little or no opportunity for individuals to describe gender identities and experiences that may fall outside hegemonic, binary ideals of masculine and feminine, without being subjected to diagnoses (carr, 2007; wiseman & davidson, 2012). gendered bodies despite ongoing discussion and debate around the constructs of sex and gender, gender identity continues to be “assumed to be predicated on the prior existence of dichotomously sexed bodies” (braun & wilkinson, 2005, p. 509). in dismantling this idea, fausto-sterling (2000, 2012) has cited the wide variation in physical bodies and the culturally specific gendered behaviour deemed appropriate. nevertheless, gender and sex continue to be used interchangeably in medical, academic, and colloquial contexts (fausto-sterling, 2000). while many scholars contend for the acceptance of gender as separate from sex (e.g., butler, 1990; fausto-sterling, 2000, 2012), several studies (e.g., braun & wilkinson, 2005; carr, 2007; collier, bos, & sandfort, 2013; diamond & butterworth, 2008) have found complex links between gender, sexuality, and biological sex stating that an individual’s physical features may be a determining factor in how they consider their own gender. while braun and wilkinson (2005) and wilson et al. (2010) discuss the relationship between physical appearance (i.e., genitals) and a shared identification with a gender group, conversely, paechter (2003) discusses the complex interplay of biological bodies with social performative roles. paechter (2003) claims that although we may want to separate bodies from behaviours, bodies and behaviours remain connected: the body must be considered a medium from which gender is performed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 336 the idea of physical bodies and biology is intertwined with the idea of gender identity throughout much of the discussion of gender and gendered identity in the literature (e.g., drescher, 2010; fausto-sterling, 2000; wilson, 1998), particularly in articles that discuss the diagnosis of gid (wiseman & davidson, 2012). the controversial link between gender identity and physical selves is cited throughout many articles (e.g., drescher, 2010; langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012) as the essential argument for the inclusion of gids in the dsm (american psychiatric association, 2013a). to facilitate medical intervention for individuals seeking surgery and/or hormone therapy in order to “align” their physical selves to their experienced gender (drescher, 2010), the existence of a diagnostic label must be present (british columbia ministry of health, 2013). while many feminist, queer, and critical theorists work to deliberately displace biology, therefore opening the body to social and cultural shaping (fausto-sterling, 2000), wilson (1998) suggests that we must develop a theory of mind and body, connecting an account of how the brain and biology work within cultural and social environments. as fausto-sterling (2000) examines in depth, not only is bodily sex malleable, existing on a continuum, but so, too, is our conceptualization of what sex and gender mean. scientific narratives continue to transform in order to conform to the evolution of our cultural and social expectations of what it means to be normal and what it means to be deviant (fausto-sterling, 2000). “bodies . . . only live within the productive constraints of certain highly gendered regulatory schemas” (butler, as cited in faustosterling, 2000, p. 75). that it is to say, the physical body of an individual exists within a social world and is subject to social regulatory practices, categorizations, and expectations (faustosterling, 2000). although some argue that there “is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (nietzsche, 1969, as cited in butler, 1990, p. 34), gender identity continues to be an important aspect of self-concept and an integral part of existing within a social world. diagnosing difference wilson et al. (2010) identify gender and gender expression as core constructs that impact health and health promotion efforts; however, noted throughout the literature is a lack of language that describes gender and gender expressions that differ from hegemonic norms and an acknowledgment of using gid and gender dysphoria as a means of describing gender experiences that fall outside binary, heteronormative gender roles. researchers (e.g., jeffreys, 2012; wiseman & davidson, 2012) argue that using the medical model through assessment and diagnosis to “promote acceptance of gender difference perpetuates the use of binary gender discourse as well as associating gender difference with the stigma associated with mental illness” (wiseman & davidson, 2012, p. 532). “diagnosis, utilizing binary concepts of sex and gender . . . provokes a dilemma for clinicians” working with gender-variant individuals (wiseman & davidson, 2012, p. 532) as binary formulations of gender lead to etiological theories that use heteronormative standards to marginalize nonheterosexual, non-binary expressions of gender (drescher, 2010). nevertheless, individuals whose gender identities fall outside of binary norms experience high levels of stress, depression, self-harm behaviours, and other poor mental health outcomes (drescher, 2010; bandini et al., 2011). receiving medical interventions to help with these negative experiences is stated as one international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 337 of the primary reasons for seeking a diagnosis of gid or gender dysphoria (drescher, 2010; wiseman & davidson, 2012). diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders with the recent publication of the fifth edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-5), the american psychiatric association (2013b) released a statement justifying the controversial removal of gid from the manual and replacing it with a markedly similar gender dysphoria (langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012), stating that “part of removing stigma is about choosing the right words” (american psychiatric association, 2013b). one of the key arguments against the continued presence of gender dysphoric diagnoses in the dsm is that it parallels the previous inclusion of homosexuality as a diagnosis in the past editions of the dsm4 (wiseman & davidson, 2012). at the root of this controversy is the lack of available language describing natural variance in social behaviour and identity expression (carr, 2007; diamond & butterworth, 2008; drescher, 2010; wiseman & davidson, 2012). with a large divide in theoretical and practical understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality (fine, 2010), a widely used diagnostic manual – that is, the dsm-5 (american psychiatric association, 2013a) – is used as a determining voice in the categorization and understanding of what it means to be masculine, feminine, or any gender in a modern society. trans*, a generally accepted gender identity term amongst the queer5 communities (trans* awareness project, n.d.), stems from the term transgender (devor, 2002; drescher, 2010). despite the frequent colloquial use of trans* and transgender, neither word is present in any edition of the dsm. nevertheless, individuals who identify as trans* and wish to receive medical interventions such as counselling, cross-sex hormones, gender reassignment surgery, or social and legal transition to the desired gender require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (formerly gid) in british columbia (american psychiatric association, 2013b; british columbia ministry of health, 2013). while the american psychiatric association (2013b) states that “persons experiencing gender dysphoria need a diagnostic term that protects their access to care and won’t be used against them in social, occupational, or legal areas” (para. 8), researchers have identified consistent links between receiving a mental health diagnosis and social stigmatization (wiseman & davidson, 2012). research has shown that individuals who identify as trans* and/or have been diagnosed with gid or gender dysphoria experience high levels of mental health challenges – for example: anxiety, body dissatisfaction, depression, and self-harm – as well as maltreatment and victimization (bandini et al., 2011; wiseman & davidson, 2012). although the causal relationship between receiving a diagnosis of gid or gender dysphoria and the experience of maltreatment and poor mental health outcomes are inconclusive (bandini et al., 2011), there is research which supports the view that receiving a mental health diagnosis leads to social stigmatization (wiseman & davidson, 2012). 4 homosexuality was removed from the dsm in 1973 (drescher, 2010). 5 queer is used in this context as an inclusive term acknowledging the diversity amongst the community of individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning, asexual, and allies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 338 while many researchers (e.g., drescher, 2010; langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012) critique the continued inclusion of gender variance diagnoses (i.e., gender dysphoria) in the dsm-5, some research suggests that individuals may experience a sense of relief and/or certainty and acceptance of the gender identity with the diagnosis of gender dysphoria (or gid), as it allows individuals a means to describe and categorize their experiences (drescher, 2010). nevertheless, other researchers continue to critique these diagnoses for polarizing gender experiences into two categories and failing to allow for fluidity in the expression of gender (jeffreys, 2012; lafrance, 2005; wiseman & davidson, 2012). jeffreys (2012) provides a critique of the medical interventions used as treatment for individuals diagnosed with gid, or gender dysphoria, arguing that individuals that are subjected to these practices can be seen as being forced into conforming to heteronormative standards of gender and sex. jeffreys argues that, although these issues have been taken up as an issue of positive human rights, these practices should actually be seen as practices that violate human rights, especially when children and youth are the subjects of such interventions. similar to arguments against the inclusion of gid (particularly gid in children) and gender dysphoria, administering treatment of these disorders based on the dsm-5 (american psychiatric association, 2013a) diagnostic categories can be seen as a means of preventing homosexuality and/or adult transsexualism (drescher, 2007; jeffreys, 2012; mass 1990; sedgwick; 1991). comparing gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria although currently not utilized as a diagnosis, gid (american psychiatric association, 2013a) was “characterized by a strong and persistent identification with the opposite sex” (bandini et al., 2011, p. 277). despite continued discussion about the concepts of sex and gender, defined by diamond and butterworth (2008) as “orthogonal constructs” (p. 371), diagnoses, medical models, and researchers often use the terms gender and sex interchangeably (diamond & butterworth, 2008). a notable confusion of the gid construct is the continued link to sex and biological bodies (fausto-sterling, 2000, 2012). if gender can be considered as solely a social role, then the discussion of physical appearance should be nullified; however, as the body can be considered a medium from which social roles are enacted and expressed (paechter, 2003), the idea of body dissatisfaction, medical intervention, and the need for a diagnostic label become viable (drescher, 2010; jeffreys, 2012). the american psychiatric association (2013b) has stated that “replacing ‘disorder’ with ‘dysphoria’ in the diagnostic label is not only more appropriate and consistent with familiar clinical sexology terminology, it also removes the connotation that the patient is ‘disordered’” (para. 3, quotes in original). gender dysphoria can be understood as a less stigmatizing diagnosis (american psychiatric association, 2013b). despite changes to the language describing diagnostic categories, as already noted above, individuals who are perceived to be different are often victims of maltreatment and marginalization (bandini et al., 2011; collier et al., 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 339 marginalization and victimization perceived difference is often a risk factor for victimization and marginalization in social groups (collier et al., 2013). gender is a severely policed form of identity expression (carr, 2007) and perceived or actual difference in gender expression has been explored as a risk factor for victimization, marginalization, and maltreatment. although literature about the effects of victimization and maltreatment on gender identity development is limited (bandini et al., 2011), several studies have examined the relationship between gender variant behaviour and victimization, marginalization, and maltreatment (e.g., bandini et al., 2011; collier et al., 2013). bandini et al. (2011) examined the relationship between diagnosed gid and childhood maltreatment. although their findings demonstrated a positive correlation between experiencing maltreatment in childhood with gid, body dissatisfaction and poor mental health outcomes, these authors do not claim a causal link between childhood maltreatment and gid in adulthood. on the contrary, they suggest only that gender-variant behaviour may be a risk factor for experiencing childhood maltreatment. similar findings were demonstrated in collier et al.’s (2013) study on homophobic name-calling among secondary students. collier and colleagues found that individuals who displayed gender non-conforming behaviour were common subjects of homophobic name-calling and peer victimization regardless of sexual orientation and suggest that victimization may be based on perceived difference. furthermore, rieger, linsenmeier, gygax, garcia, and bailey (2010) suggests that gender non-conformity is often interpreted as evidence of minority sexual orientation, whether the subject of the victimization identifies this way or not. despite common experiences of homophobic name-calling in trans* and gender non-conforming youth (collier et al., 2013; grossman & d’augelli, 2006; mcguire, anderson, toomey, & russell, 2010), it is unclear whether name-calling is meant to address the gender non-conforming behaviour, the perceived sexual orientation, or both (collier et al., 2013). although difference and gender non-conforming behaviour are cited as possible risk factors for peer victimization and childhood maltreatment (bandini et al., 2011; collier et al., 2013), it is as yet unclear, in all probability because of a scarcity of research in this area, what the effects of victimization are on the development of gender identity (bandini et al., 2011). thus, ewing lee and troop-gordon (2011) found that some forms of peer victimization and rejection lead to increases in gender non-conforming behaviour, whereas, several other studies suggest that gender non-conforming behaviours cease in response to peer victimization (pilkington & d’augelli, 1995; wyss, 2004). these findings suggest a connection to the idea of social modelling and acceptance within a social group. paechter (2003) explores the idea that gender identity is developed through a process of modelling and social learning. paechter presents a model of socially acceptable gender norms being continually enforced through individuals seeking recognition as “legitimate” members of a social group. as individuals are marginalized, victimized, and/or ostracized based on perceived or actual difference (bandini et al., 2011; collier et al., 2013), they may engage in a process of active modification of gender expression, gender role assumption, and personal conceptions of gender identity (moore, 2003; paechter, 2003). moore (2003) draws on this idea in a study conducted at a summer camp: by observing how children “policed” and “enforced” acceptable gender norms in the context of a summer international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 340 camp, moore explored the ideas of gender boundaries, gendered articulations, and gender separation. braun and wilkinson (2005) argue that “a dichotomous [gender] system is sustained not only through cultural representations and medical models and procedures, but also through everyday taken-for-granted talk and practices” (p. 510). drawing on current themes throughout the literature, it is suggested that exploring how language is used to describe gender experiences and identities could promote a greater awareness of issues surrounding gender-based violence and gender diversity (mallon & decrescenzo, 2006) and may also promote gender identity exploration for individuals (diamond & butterworth, 2008). diversity of experience throughout the literature reviewed, it was identified that despite a lack of language to describe gender variance, there is great diversity in the experience of gender in individuals’ lives (fausto-sterling, 2000, 2012; mallon & decrescenzo, 2006). scholars, such as diamond and butterworth (2008), suggest using a theory of intersectionality6 in the conceptualization of gender and gender experiences in order to acknowledge the fluidity and multiplicity in gender identity and the inherent change processes that occur throughout identity formation. as kimmel (2008) states, many of the differences between genders that we observe in individuals and use to categorize them everyday are not gender differences but rather are differences that are the result of being in different social locations. fausto-sterling (2012) suggests that understanding the complex pathways that lead to variation in human identity development could provide a greater tolerance of variability among individuals. while research suggests a need for language and terminology that describes gender and gender identities outside of binary categories (wiseman & davidson, 2012), some scholars (e.g., diamond & butterworth, 2008; mallon & decrescenzo, 2006) suggest that having new language to describe alternate gender expression may lead to further categorization and labelling of individuals, ignoring the fluid nature of gender and gender expression. the idea of one “true gendered self” is debatable (lafrance, 2005; wiseman & davidson, 2012), with many researchers suggesting that gender can be a fluid aspect of identity, which may change with an individual’s changing social roles and expectations (diamond & butterworth, 2008). future directions for practice and research in the competencies for professional child and youth care practitioners (association for child and youth care practice, 2010), actively promoting respect for cultural and human diversity is considered a key element to professional practice within the child and youth care field. gender identity is an area of diversity that continues to be explored and examined in many helping fields, including child and youth care (de finney et al., 2012). despite much research and academic discussion in this area, as noted in this literature review, heteronormative, binary ideals of gender continue to be a dominant force in the understanding and interpretation of 6 intersectionality is defined as the study of the intersection of multiple aspects of identity, usually related to marginalization, to form a unique experience of oppression, discrimination, and/or marginalization (diamond & butterworth, 2008) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 341 gender in the helping field (mallon & decrescenzo, 2006). there is an identified need for new language and terminology that can describe gender experiences outside of a limiting binary framework (wiseman & davidson, 2012). this review of the current literature suggests a need for research exploring the relationship between gender variant behaviour and childhood maltreatment as well as adolescent and adult marginalization and victimization (bandini et al., 2011). further research is needed to explore the link between gender identity formation and available language, as some researchers suggest (e.g., diamond & butterworth, 2008) that access to language describing gender as a fluid identity trait may lead individuals to further explore their gender identities and expressions. with researchers and scholars still debating the use of diagnostic categories in the description of gender variant behaviour, more research is needed to explore the causal relationship between receiving a mental health diagnosis, stigmatization, and poor mental health outcomes (diamond & butterworth, 2008; drescher, 2010; wiseman & davidson, 2012). upon review of the literature, a scarcity of research addressing practical applications and suggestions for promoting a wider understanding of gender and identity was noted. many scholars call for language that describes gender and gender variance outside of dichotomous categories and beyond binary ideals (devor, 2002; drescher, 2010; langer & martin, 2004; wiseman & davidson, 2012), which would allow individuals who experience gender variance to describe themselves outside of diagnostic categories. by continuing to explore how language shapes and informs gender identity development, practitioners in child and youth care, and other allied professions, will be better prepared to support children and youth in the development of their own identities (mallon & decrescenzo, 2006). utilization of a lexicon that describes gender outside of binary, heteronormative categories will promote diversity awareness and support community appreciation for difference (mallon & decrescenzo, 2006). by gaining a deeper understanding of how language impacts and informs gender identity development, practitioners in child and youth care and other allied professions can best support individuals through navigating the gender identity formation process without labelling or limiting their experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 332–345 342 references american psychiatric association. 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(2004). “this was my hell”: the violence experienced by gender non-conforming youth in u.s. high schools. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 17(5), 709–730. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(199501)23:1%3c34::aid-jcop2290230105%3e3.0.co;2-n text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-008-9405-2 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/466296 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-009-9291-3 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1359104511424991 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0951839042000253676 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818643 “special” families and their “normal” daily lives: family quality of life and the social environment femke boelsma, alice schippers, menco dane, and tineke a. abma abstract: this article focuses on the social and societal factors that influence family quality of life (fqol). in this qualitative study from the netherlands, a multiple case study design was used, in which members of families having a child or children with intellectual and developmental disabilities talked about their experiences during interviews. the data were analysed through a rigorous inductive thematic analysis. our findings relate to the families’ experiences with their social environment and especially with the support they received. we argue that processes of acceptance and understanding play a role in fqol. also, we illustrate how the family members experience their interaction with the community, and how moral norms and values could influence the lives of the families. the families reflected on notions of normality and being different, and sometimes struggled with the implicit norms and values of society, which can impede acceptance and understanding by others. in turn, these norms and values influence the level of support from other people and the possibilities for social interaction with the community. keywords: family, quality of life, qualitative research, social environment, acceptance, social inclusion femke boelsma msc (the corresponding author) is a researcher at the department of youth & lifestyle, institute of health sciences, free university amsterdam, de boelelaan 1085, 1081 hv amsterdam, the netherlands. email: f.boelsma@vu.nl alice schippers phd is general director of the disability studies in the netherlands foundation and senior researcher at the department of medical humanities, amsterdam umc, free university amsterdam, amsterdam public health research institute, de boelelaan 1117, 1081 hv, amsterdam, the netherlands. email: alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl menco dane msc is a research partner at the department of medical humanities, amsterdam umc, free university amsterdam, amsterdam public health research institute, de boelelaan 1117, 1081 hv, amsterdam, the netherlands. email: mrdane@xs4all.nl tineke a. abma phd is professor of participation & diversity and research director at the department of medical humanities, amsterdam umc, free university amsterdam, amsterdam public health research institute, de boelelaan 1117, 1081 hv, amsterdam, the netherlands. email: t.abma@vumc.nl mailto:f.boelsma@vu.nl mailto:alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl mailto:mrdane@xs4all.nl mailto:t.abma@vumc.nl international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 108 family quality of life (fqol) is an emerging concept that is used to understand and improve the well-being and quality of life (qol) of families. fqol originated from the concept of individual qol which incorporates both subjective and objective components and is a multidimensional concept that reflects the perceptions of a person on their life (schalock et al., 2002). individual qol domains include: emotional well-being, interpersonal relations, material well-being, personal development, physical well-being, self-determination, social inclusion, and rights (iassid sirg-qol, 2000; schalock et al., 2002). four more domains were added to form the concept of fqol, which are: daily family life, parenting, family interactions, and financial well-being (poston et al., 2003). in the fqol field, two main fqol instruments have been developed: the beach center fqol scale (beach center on disability, 2005; hoffman, marquis, poston, summers, & turnbull, 2006) and the fqol survey-2006 (brown et al., 2006). zuna, i. brown, and r. i. brown (2014) defined fqol as: for the most part, families consider their lives to be happy and fulfilling if all members are healthy, have a safe place to live, have a stable income, enjoy their lives together, have opportunities to learn and improve, benefit from their community supports and resources, and experience fulfilling social relationships with others. (p. 162) most research in the fqol field has focused on families with one or more children with an intellectual or developmental disability (id/dd), because families are increasingly fulfilling a central role in the support and care of their children with id/dd (brown et al., 2006). the beach center fqol scale and the fqol survey-2006 include questions relating to the support within a family, but also rate the importance, satisfaction, and attainment of support from other people. results from various countries of the fqol-2006 indicate that while support from other people is rated as being important, it scores low on satisfaction in almost all countries (brown, kyrkou, & samuel, 2016). a study in australia found that social support from others is needed in order to be included in the community and it contributes to the resilience and good health of family members. at the same time, families indicate that it is difficult to acquire social support from others (faragher, broadbent, brown, & burgess, 2014). a study by brown, anand, fung, isaacs, and baum (2003) reported that this is partly due to urban lifestyle, which often provides few opportunities for social support. also, some families stated that they did not want to ask other peoples’ help because they had found other people unable to relate to them, which contributed to their feelings of isolation (brown et al., 2003). being able to participate in the community in a meaningful way and being accepted by others are also important factors for the qol of young people with a disability (king et al., 2002). for every person it is important to have a sense of belonging and having connections with others, and this is also true for families who have a child with id/dd (king et al., 2002; woodill, renwick, brown, & raphael,1994). a lack of opportunity to participate in community activities influences the qol of families (brown et al., 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 109 schippers, zuna, and brown (2015) found that families are in continuous interaction with their (social) environments and suggested that micro (the family), meso (community and organisations), and macro elements (policies and government) are all important for understanding the lives of families because the three different levels interact with one another (see bronfenbrenner, 1976). if we want to understand why families are dissatisfied with their support from others and with community interaction, the continuous interplay between these levels needs to be studied in more detail. in the netherlands, it is not just the families who are involved in the care for their family member with id/dd. recent political developments that move towards creating a “participation society” mean that society in general has to provide more informal support. the creation of a participation society places a strong requirement on people’s informal networks and social communities. also, the dutch government wants people with a disability to be included in regular work, instead of in sheltered workplaces (delsen, 2016; rijksoverheid, 2013; verhoeven & tonkens, 2013). these ideas have been launched by the government, but practical implementations have only just started. given the scientific and societal relevance of the fqol concept, we have studied the societal factors that influence the fqol of families in the netherlands, as part of a larger qualitative study in the netherlands on fqol of families who have a child with id/dd. we feel it is important to take an in-depth look into what factors influence the interactions of families with the community and the support they receive. in this article we therefore focus specifically on the factors that influence support from others and interaction with the community. methods study design a qualitative case study of multiple families was undertaken to gain insight into the experiences and needs of families with regard to their fqol. case study research is a good strategy to gain in-depth knowledge of a unique and bounded entity in a real-life context (abma & stake, 2014). the family was the unit of analysis, in which the perspectives of multiple family members were included. the families formed a “naturalistic” case study, which means that the families were studied in their daily and normal lives (abma & stake, 2014). we have chosen a multiple case study design (baxter & jack, 2008), because it enabled us to compare the findings across the participating families and also to make a more meaningful contribution to theory (stake, 2013). data collection qualitative semi-structured interviews were used. in total, 54 family members (33 parents, 14 siblings, and 7 children with id/dd) were interviewed from 25 families, and 10 people were interviewed twice, those being cases in which the first interview did not cover all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 110 the topics (n = 64 interviews). the main researcher carried out 36 of these interviews, and two undergraduate students and one master’s student did the other interviews. some participants were interviewed together with their spouses, on their request. we recruited families through schools for special education, because almost all dutch children with id/dd are enrolled in such schools. we provided flyers and we also recruited people face-to-face during parent coffee times or meetings in schools. some parents were also recruited during after-school activities for children with id/dd. we wanted the families to be as diverse as possible, and our convenience sample did include many types of family — families with one child, multiple children, one parent, more children with an id, same-sex parents, and families with various cultural backgrounds such as dutch, moroccan, and indo-surinamese. demographic characteristics are provided in tables 1 to 3. table 1 demographic characteristics of parents variable parents (n = 33) age (n), range (years) 38–61 30–40 3 41–50 8 51–60 4 61–70 2 missing data 16 gender (n) female 23 male 10 relationship to children (n) biological mother 23 biological father 10 employment (n) full-time or part-time 14 not working 10 missing data 9 cultural origin (n) dutch 16 moroccan 7 netherlands antilles 1 indo-surinamese 4 ethiopian pakistani 2 nigerian 1 missing data 2 table 2 demographic characteristics of siblings international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 111 variable siblings (n = 14) age (n), range (years) 7–25 5–7 1 8–10 2 11–13 4 14–16 2 17–19 1 20–22 2 23–25 2 gender (n) female 10 male 4 position in relation to child with disability (n) older 10 younger 4 cultural origin (n) dutch 6 moroccan 6 indo-surinamese 1 ethiopian 1 table 3 demographic characteristics of children with id/dd variable (n) children with id (n = 7) age (n), range (years) 11–22 11–13 1 14–16 2 17–19 2 20–22 1 missing data 1 gender (n) female 4 male 3 cultural origin(n) dutch 5 moroccan 1 indo-surinamese 1 during the interviews, a topic list was used to check whether all topics had been covered, but it allowed enough room for the personal stories of the family members. topics included: daily routines, diagnosis of the id/dd of the child, relations between family members, things international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 112 that are important for family life, connections with other people and community, support, personal goals and wishes, and future of the family. with regard to the data on social support and the social environment, we asked general questions about what family members needed in their daily lives, and what things could be improved. these open questions often led to discussions about the presence or lack of support and understanding from others, on which we will elaborate in the findings section. also, we checked the fqolsurvey-2006 and the beach center fqol scale for specific topics regarding social support and community interaction, which we could use for probing or as a main question during the interviews. the main items regarding social support and the social environment from these two instruments were included in our topic list: what kind of practical and emotional support the family received from friends, (distant) family members, and neighbours; and how the family members experienced their contact with people from their communities (see full topic list in the appendix). the interviews lasted between 45 and 150 minutes and usually took place in the homes of the families. after receiving consent, all interviews were recorded and transcribed. data analysis the interviews and field notes were analysed twice with the principles of inductive thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) and inductive category development (mayring, 2000). first, for each family, the main researcher extracted all main topics from the interviews and participant observations. after that, the data and quotes were formed into clusters and themes, based on the main topics, that connected the data of all family members within one family. when needed, new topics were formed, or follow-up questions were adjusted. this resulted in a separate family analysis per family. these family analyses were combined in a main frame of analysis with topics and subtopics. second, all the data were analysed for a second time with the above frame of analysis in mind, and after the final main themes were confirmed and adjusted, subthemes were formed that included part of the transcripts and quotations. the main researcher coded all the material; the three involved students and one other researcher read all the data (each a different part) and checked whether the final interpretations matched. the author team was involved in interpreting the data, a procedure known as inter-rater reliability (hsieh & shannon, 2005). for this article, we focus on findings about the social environment: support, acceptance, understanding, community interaction, and cultural norms and values. other parts of the analysis that relate to internal family dynamics are discussed elsewhere (see boelsma, caubo‐damen, schippers, dane, & abma, 2017). quality procedures to improve the validity of the interviews, a member check was sent to the interviewees to check for inconsistencies and to check whether the interviewees felt their story was correctly represented (barbour, 2001). some respondents made minor adjustments to the member check, but otherwise all respondents agreed to the member checks. the data were independently analysed by multiple researchers and the author team to reduce personal bias. before the start of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 113 the research, the research ethics committee of the vu medical centre in amsterdam, which is attached to the vrije universiteit amsterdam [free university amsterdam], approved the project. findings in this section we present our findings relating to the experiences of the families with their social environment and especially with the support they receive. we will illustrate how processes of acceptance and understanding play a role. also, we will show how the family members experience their interactions with the community, and how moral notions and values are underlying factors. pseudonyms are used to ensure anonymity. support almost all families found support, both emotional and practical, important for their fqol. some families described being very closely connected to their extended families, who were available for support when needed. mother marieke explained, for example, that when her son martijn, who has an intellectual disability and autism, was young, her parents were very supportive: “i had a lot of support from my parents. when i came home, they had already given martijn his meals. my mother would cook, my father would wash and bathe martijn. my father was like a father to martijn.” others described how good friends provided emotional and sometimes practical support when it was needed, as father henk illustrated: “we have two very good friends, they live very close to us, and besides the fact that we are very good friends, they also provide practical support.” some parents worried about the “participation society” in which the social network of people is expected to support families with a child with an id/dd. mother maria explained that her family is trying to support her, but they are not obliged to: the government wants to make cuts in healthcare, and that is why they want family members to help out. but it is not mandatory, so the participation law just does not work. my sisters both work a lot — everybody has to work. so you cannot expect too much support from them. while most families received some form of support from family members, there were a few families that had very little support from other people, and this seemed to be connected to the lack of understanding by others of what their family life was like. acceptance and understanding lack of acceptance and understanding seemed to be underlying factors that impeded the support of the social environment, and influenced the fqol of the families. in some families, the friends, extended family members, and acquaintances withdrew from the family when the son or daughter with an id/dd was born. parents explained that sometimes other people acted scared, or did not know how to behave towards the child with an id/dd. mother ans said in this regard, “the first two or three years, we lost contact with more than half of our friends. this was because of a lack of understanding.” anne-marie, a mother with two daughters with an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 114 intellectual disability, experienced a lack of understanding from her family: “the family really does not get it at all, they find it especially difficult to understand the behaviour of roos.” her third daughter mila found that her current friends are sensitive towards her situation at home, but at her secondary school she felt this had been very different: “i remember that in secondary school, people really did not get it. they did not understand what it meant to have an intellectual disability, and that having my sisters around affected my home situation.” family members observed that they often experienced a lack of understanding and acceptance in their interactions with other people in their communities. for example, father ed explained what happened when he took his daughter janet, who had down syndrome, to a regular primary school1 for the first time: people were scared, it is something they do not know: “our children in the class with a child with an id, that is not possible!” and the worst thing is: they were jealous because they thought my daughter would withdraw attention from others in the class. once they got to know her, everybody loved her. some parents explained that they felt their employers were supportive and flexible in case of an emergency at home, but other parents felt that their colleagues were unsupportive and showed a lack of understanding, as anne-marie explained: “i get sick of colleagues saying: you only have half a job. then i think, well, when i get home i have the other half! they just do not understand.” besides feeling understood, acceptance was also important according to the family members. father bas, who has an id like his son jack, explained that when jack had to go to special education, he lost his friends in the neighbourhood: “they don’t accept him anymore. he had a lot of friends here at the regular primary school, but when he had to go to special education he lost them all. very strange.” jack confirmed this: “they bully me. when i had to leave the regular school, they suddenly were not friends of mine any more. because i was special.” community interaction often, it is not immediately visible to strangers that a child has an id/dd. many family members found this difficult, because other people might have expectations of the child that cannot be met. father theo, for example, said, “because jesse looks normal at first sight, people expect him to behave in socially accepted ways.” another father, piet, said at first that he did not think people treated their family differently because of their son martin with an id, who is 15 years old. martin was able to participate in traffic with his bike, but piet noticed that sometimes people gave strange looks because he acted differently in traffic than did other adolescents. quite a few parents said that they wished their child had a visible intellectual disability like down 1 in the netherlands, children with an id usually go to schools for special education. after a couple of years of regular education, janet transferred to such a school. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 115 syndrome, so other people would know that the child had an id and behaved differently than other children. also the children with id/dd themselves sometimes felt unable to meet expectations from others in their interactions in the community. maria, an adolescent with an id, was afraid to travel by bus because she was afraid that people would ask her things and she would not know what to say. also, at times the interactions with strangers led to funny and positive situations, as sister anis illustrated when she talked about her younger brother with id: when we are in the bus, he will just talk to anyone, and when people talk back he has that immediate connection with them. i remember one time when he talked to a woman in the bus, and when she got out of the bus he gave her a hug, and everyone in the bus was like, “ah, how sweet!” societal norms and values case example parents sanne (63 years old) and theo (62 years old) have two children: son tom (21 years old) with an id and daughter ingrid (23 years old). both parents have a high education and above-average income. sanne and theo explained that when tom was young, they unconsciously tried to make him as “normal” as possible. sanne said: “i believe that i was someone who, when he was a little boy, was very busy with how to make him as normal as possible. how to use all of his talents, and that deep down you hope that a day will come that he will become a normal person. even though you know, of course, when you get the diagnosis, that that is not going to happen. and when i think back on it, i wonder if we did the right thing.” her husband theo continued: “we had a lot of talks about that: how normal do you want him to be.” sanne said that this is partly because of the expectations society has: “it is an imposed idea: that a normal person is a valuable person. in that sense these are societal expectations, also from your own upbringing, that a normal person can participate in society.” theo experienced these societal rules and expectations also in the social education of his son: “one time at the school for special education, we were told that we had not raised tom well because he did not use the polite form of ‘you’ when he talked to people. he clearly has no idea of what that means.” their daughter ingrid sometimes goes shopping with tom, and she found that people often look at them funny: “because tom looks quite normal, people think, ‘he is acting weird’. the other day i went to buy shoes with him, and that is always very difficult because he is very sensitive. he feels every little bump in the shoes. and he also has a small size for a man, so that is difficult. i am used to him trying on a shoe for 10 minutes, but every time the shopkeepers really don’t get it, so i need to tell them, ‘just come back in 10 minutes, he needs more time to try it on.’ luckily this time tom did not make a scene, but this is a situation in which you know that people are thinking, ‘what an odd couple!’ but i just don’t care.” various family members felt that the social community has certain norms and values that people are expected to live up to. family members sometimes felt stared at or frowned upon in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 116 their interactions with others. sister samira said that her brother nabil evoked such reactions from other people: “in the outside world people can look like: ‘who is that?’, and ‘why is he like that?’ ” jack, who has an id, said he felt like everyone else, but that other people treated him as being different. families sometimes had trouble “fitting in”, and some recalled that at times they had tried to be a “normal” family like others, until they realized that this was unrealistic and undesirable. family members also felt that their “special” family characteristics had enriched them: parents and siblings, for example, felt that they experienced a more diverse perspective on life than many other people, and some had found talents in themselves that they otherwise would not have found. parents with a non-dutch background sometimes felt pressure from specific social expectations in their culture that may differ from the dutch culture. a few mothers with moroccan roots, for example, explained that in moroccan culture family members are expected to visit one another on a regular basis. families with children with an id/dd found that they could not always meet those expectations because they lived a different family life. also, it is common in some cultures that the father is the one who takes care of the financial needs of the family, and the mother is more involved in household chores and caretaking. in families with a child needing more attention and care, fathers often took up more household chores. other family members sometimes found this hard to understand, and mother hathisa explained, for example: when i could not do it, my husband did everything at home. when i had my eldest daughter, we went on holiday to his parents in morocco. and my husband would carry my daughter and change her diapers. well, they looked at him as if he was from mars: “you do not do that! your wife is supposed to do that!” and he said, “why? she is as much my daughter.” societal developments, which sometimes inhibit certain cultural norms and values, also influenced the lives of the families. some parents expressed their concern about new technological developments like non-invasive prenatal testing (nipt) which can detect down syndrome at an early stage of pregnancy. anne-marie said in this regard: i think that having a child with down syndrome, with all the technological means that are available to detect and prevent it, is not something that is welcomed by society. i think that we are moving towards a society in which children who are predicted to have a certain disability are not welcome any more. father ed explained that anne-marie and he knew that their daughter tess would be born with down syndrome. ed said, “i still meet people who tell me, ‘i don’t understand that you chose to have tess’. even though she is such a sweetheart. the society thinks, these children are expensive. yes, so what? they have no right to life?” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 117 our findings may indicate that moral norms and values in society (e.g., about “normality”, socially accepted behaviour, and cultural norms about gender roles and family relationships) are reflected in the way the community accepts and understands the families. it might be difficult for other people to understand and accept that “special” families deviate from these societal norms. in turn, this lack of acceptance and understanding might affect how the social community is willing to be involved in supporting and interacting with the families. discussion in this study we found that a lack of acceptance and understanding can be impeding factors for the fqol of the participating families. these factors could also contribute to experiences of having a lack of social support. because of a lack of understanding, connections with friends and extended family members are sometimes lost. moreover, families reflect on notions of normality and being different, and sometimes struggle with the implicit norms and values of society, which their child with id/dd and their family cannot always live up to. davis (1997/2006) indicated that “we live in a world of norms” (p. 3), and argued that the concept of “normalcy” is of recent origin, arising in part from the rapid development of statistics in the early 19th century: the current meaning of the word “normal” entered the english language only in 1840. the concept allows the ranking by society of desirable and undesirable characteristics of people, and the classification of people as “normal” or “abnormal”. statistics made available the calculation of the arithmetic mean, which could be used to measure the extent to which a characteristic deviated from this norm (davis, 1997/2006). the families in our study felt confronted by these norms in their daily lives through their interactions with others. our findings have some resemblance to studies on parents with children with autism, who often feel isolated from “normal” life (gray, 1993, 1997; woodgate, ateah, & secco, 2008). woodgate and colleagues (2008) found that this was partly due to a lack of understanding shown by extended family members. however, gray (1997) found that parents perceive themselves as not being able to live a normal life due to their families, while in our study the families felt that it was also the social environment that imposed these norms of normality. one could argue that “normality” is a myth, and that the variations between people actually enrich society. along the same lines, barnes and mercer (2001) advocated the concept of “disability culture”, a culture in which the norm is questioned and actions are undertaken to celebrate the diversity of people. studies on community participation and social inclusion of people with an id/dd have found that acceptance is indeed one of the important factors in interaction with the community (abbott & mcconkey, 2006; cobigo et al., 2016; hall, 2009; link & phelan, 2001). however, these studies include the perspectives of the main caregiver and/or adults with an id/dd, but not the perspectives of additional family members. our study shows that interaction with the community is relevant to the quality of families’ lives. family members experience feelings of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 118 not being a “normal” family; and sometimes they feel criticised by the social environment and experience a lack of social integration of their family. acceptance and understanding of others for their situation are important for the social inclusion of families, and this is especially the case in a society in which people are expected to support others in their community, like the “participation society” that the dutch government is striving for. the two well-known fqol instruments, the beach center fqol scale and the fqol survey-2006, have found that social support and community interactions are scored low by families; however, these instruments do not include items about acceptance and understanding of others, which could be underlying processes that are a prerequisite for support and social participation. it might therefore be valuable to include these topics in (qualitative) follow-up interviews or studies. acceptance and understanding are important factors to consider when understanding fqol because they provide additional contextual information about the families. community interaction, which is also generally scored low by families, is part of the fqolsurvey-2006; the domain focuses on the effort families take to participate in society and what options are available for them to do so. these indicators are broadly formulated, but do not zoom in on whether people and families feel accepted by society and if, for example, they feel that they are perceived as “normal”. in surveys, respondents can expand on this in the open field provided within the instrument, but few systematic reports about these qualitative data have been made. it would be very valuable if researchers could expand and reflect on these additional data more often. limitations a limitation of this study is that the findings with regard to the social context and cultural values and norms are specific to the netherlands. it is possible that the norms of dutch society differ in relevant ways from those of other countries. at the same time, we expect that families in other countries may have similar experiences of their interactions with the community and their support from people. another limitation is that the data from children with an id/dd were less substantial than the data from their parents and siblings with regard to their perspectives on support and their social environment. also, the use of multiple interviewers could be a limitation because there might be small variations in the use of the topic list and probing by the different researchers. conclusions and implications our study shows that it is important to consider that societal factors influence the lives of families. we have focused on the perspectives of the different family members, but in follow-up research it would be interesting to study the social environment of families as well — extended family members, friends, neighbours, professionals, and others — to get a better idea of their perspectives and more insight into how inherent norms of normality are mechanisms in the social and support contacts between people and how these are linked to the fqol of families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 119 second, our study shows that a lack of acceptance and understanding concerns not only the person with an id/dd, but affects the whole family in their daily interactions with people and the support they receive. it is important to include the perspectives of family members with regard to their social inclusion: do they feel accepted and understood as a family? what kind of processes of inclusion and exclusion do they encounter in their daily family life? and how do those processes influence the support received by the family and their feelings of belonging to society? we would recommend that care workers and other professionals that work with families be sensitive to these issues. when evaluating the qol of families, it can be useful to use an fqol instrument. the two existing fqol instruments both have the goal of evaluating services and support for families, focusing on both emotional and practical support. in the netherlands, support will devolve more and more onto the informal network of people, supplementing professional support, and this calls for an evaluative instrument that is sensitive to the underlying processes that inhibit or foster the extent to which the social networks of families are inclined to provide support. changing the focus of support may prove difficult, because it is not only professional institutions that need to be receptive to change, but also the community. in this line, our findings might also be relevant for professionals that work with other disadvantaged groups struggling to meet the dominant societal norms about normality, such as families with a family member with a different disability or mental illness, single parents, or lgbt parents. they may encounter similar problems with regard to understanding, acceptance, and support, which in turn could influence their fqol. we learned from our study that acceptance and understanding could be important underlying factors for the support that families with a child with an id receive. also, implicit and explicit cultural norms and values could potentially influence the way society includes and supports 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(draw mindmap.) 7. can you tell us something more about these important things and what would you like to see different? 8. could you describe what things impact your family life in a negative or positive way? 9. what tasks are assigned to the different family members? how do you experience your own role in the family? 10. does your family receive support from others, or professionals? if so, what kind of support, how satisfied are you, and how important is this support for the family? 11. how do the individual needs in the family relate to the needs of the family as a whole? 12. did having a child with id/dd impact the possibilities of a personal career of (one of) the parents? 13. how do you see the future of your family? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 107–124 124 individual quality of life 14. what things are important for you to have a good and fulfilling life? 15. how do you experience your own personal life at the moment? what are the things you are (not) satisfied with? 16. at what moments do your family circumstances influence your own personal well-being? 17. when you think about the best moments with the family, what comes to mind? exploring young adults’ experiences and consequences of near injury situations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716855 young adults’ experiences with near-injury situations: a critical incident study in sweden richard allan dale, annette sverker, marie hasselberg, gunnel östlund, and gunnel hensing abstract: as injuries are the main health threat for young adults (18–29 years) in industrial countries, a better understanding of injury risk is needed for this population. using the critical incident technique, this study explores how young people experience situations that have the potential to cause physical injury (i.e., near-injury situations). clearly, understanding how and why nearinjury situations arise can be used to develop strategies to help prevent severe injury. content analysis was used to categorize the characteristics of the experiences into unexpected risk in ordinary tasks, duty first, and price for learning. young adults’ exposures to new or unusual environmental conditions, especially in unexpected risk in ordinary tasks, should be considered when planning injury prevention strategies. a combination of individual, social, and contextual demands and expectations was identified in both workand sportsrelated experiences with near-injury situations. the price for learning, which arises from the added risk involved in learning situations, is another condition that was identified and requires further attention. the critical incident technique proved to be a useful method for identifying near-injury situations that might otherwise have been difficult to recall. young adults’ efforts to display their ability to handle difficult situations at work and in their everyday lives was identified as a major contributor to near-injury situations. keywords: young adults, lived experiences, near-injury, critical incident technique, qualitative study richard allan dale phd is public health manager in the city of gothenburg and lecturer in the section of epidemiology and social medicine, sahlgrenska academy, university of gothenburg, box 100, s-405 30, gothenburg, sweden. email: allan.dale@afh.goteborg.se annette sverker phd (the corresponding author) is a lecturer in social medicine in both the department of medical and health sciences (department of activity and health; department of rehabilitation medicine) and the department of social and welfare studies (social work division) at linköping university, linköping, sweden. the address for correspondence is rehabilitation section nsc, county council of östergötland, 58185 linköping, sweden. email: annette.sverker@liu.se marie hasselberg is associate professor of epidemiology in the department of public health sciences, karolinska institutet, sweden. email: marie.hasselberg@ki.se gunnel östlund is associate professor in the school of health and social welfare, mälardalen university, s63105 eskilstuna, sweden. email: gunnel.ostlund@mdh.se gunnel hensing phd is professor of social medicine in the section for epidemiology and social medicine, sahlgrenska academy, university of gothenburg, box 100, s-405 30, gothenburg, sweden. email: gunnel.hensing@gu.se http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716855 mailto:allan.dale@afh.goteborg.se mailto:annette.sverker@liu.se mailto:marie.hasselberg@ki.se mailto:gunnel.ostlund@mdh.se mailto:gunnel.hensing@gu.se international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 98 worldwide, injuries are the leading cause of premature death in young people (connor & casswell, 2009; hasselberg, laflamme, & weitoft, 2001; koehoorn, breslin, & xu, 2008; mulye et al., 2009; salminen, 2004; wisqars, 2010). however, fatal injuries represent only a small proportion of total injuries. annually, 7.5 million young people (15–24 years) are treated for an injury in european union hospitals (european association for injury prevention and safety promotion, 2013), mainly due to events that occurred at home or when participating in leisure or sports activities. hospital data from the european countries show that nonfatal injuries are the leading cause of permanent disability and reduction in quality of life among those aged 15 to 24 (european association for injury prevention and safety promotion, 2013). these injuries can result in long-lasting health-related conditions that may hinder the injured from reaching their full potential while also imposing heavy societal costs for treatment and other kinds of support (european association for injury prevention and safety promotion, 2013). studies specifically examining non-fatal injuries that occur during the time when young people emerge into adulthood are not readily available, as relevant studies, including reports from the world health organization, either analyse data from young adults (18–29 years) along with data from adolescents, or collapse the young adult into data gathered on the general adult population. this lack of consistency makes it difficult to observe the injury risk for adolescents, reducing the possibility that the data can guide the development of targeted injury prevention programs for this age group. emerging adulthood (18–29 years) is now an established concept describing the period between late adolescence and adulthood (arnett, 2007; arnett, zukauskiene, & sugimura, 2014; douglass, 2007; walther, 2006). the concept has been widely used in developmental psychology in characterizing the life of this age group and has been described by arnett (2007) as “the most heterogeneous period of the life course because it is the least structured”. during this period of life most people in the northern part of europe leave their parents’ homes and may lose parental financial support (iacovou, 2010; le blanc & wolff, 2006). emerging adulthood entails developmental challenges: it is a period of life when people form their identities while encountering many types of new situations and environments. it may also carry an increased risk of injury. another factor that may increase the risk of injury is a propensity for risk-taking behaviours. it has been suggested that young adults who engage in risk-taking behaviours generally underestimate their vulnerability (benthin, slovic, & severson, 1993; kontos, 2004; sjoberg, 2000), feel little fear of serious consequences (benthin et al., 1993; sjöberg, 2000; slovic, finucane, peters, & macgregor, 2004), perceive that they have more control over risky situations than they actually have (benthin et al., 1993; kontos, 2004; sjoberg, 2000), and become involved in risky situations due to reward responsiveness associated to peer influence or seeking group acceptance (reniers et al., 2017; slovic et al., 2004; wild, flisher, bhama, & lombard, 2004). research focusing on young adults’ injury risk is important for public health policy, especially when it comes to injury prevention related to high-injury risk and the high societal costs of injuries at this age (loss of earnings, loss of productivity, as well as medical and other costs), given that severe injuries can be predictable and preventable (european association for injury prevention and safety promotion, 2014). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 99 one approach to gaining a better understanding and deeper knowledge of the circumstances surrounding injury events has been to study injury-risk situations that did not lead to actual injury — that is, near-injury situations (alamgir, yu, gorman, ngan, & guzman, 2009; jones, kirchsteiger, & bjerge, 1999; wagner, capezuti, & ouslander, 2006; wright & van der schaaf, 2004). near-injury situations have mainly been studied in the context of occupational safety (alamgir et al., 2009; jones et al., 1999; wagner et al., 2006; wright & van der schaaf, 2004) based on the assumption that the causal pathways are the same for nearinjury events as for events that result in severe injuries, the so-called common cause hypothesis (heinrich, 1931). if that hypothesis is accepted, injury prevention should rely on information from near-injury events rather than just actual injuries. we have adapted this hypothesis here; as far as we know, this is the first study to investigate how near-injury situations can be used to understand actual injury situations and ultimately to develop injury prevention strategies for young adults, an especially vulnerable age group. there are several public health incentives for seeking in-depth knowledge based on young adults’ own experiences. therefore, the aim of this study is to explore, describe, and categorize circumstances associated with young adults’ experiences of near-injury situations. methods design the critical incident technique (cit; flanagan, 1954) was chosen to be the most suitable method for data collection for this exploratory study. cit is a systematic, inductive, and flexible research method for collecting subjective experiences (flanagan, 1954; byrne, 2001; bradley, 1992). previous studies have shown that cit helps interviewees recall present and former lived experiences in a clear and detailed way (hensing, sverker, & leijon, 2007; suvivou, tossavainen, & kontula, 2007; sverker, hensing, & hallert, 2005). although cit has been used in some specific hazardous fields, this is the first time, as far as we know, that it has been used to explore the common daily situations that give rise to the majority of nearinjury situations. data were collected through semi-structured interviews, which enabled the participants to describe detailed experiences of the near-injury situations they had encountered. the study was approved by the ethics committee at the university of gothenburg, sweden (approval no 626-06). participants to ensure a broad variation of near-injury situations, a random sample from three sources was used: a local register of university students in a semiurban municipality, a register of employees in a food factory in a rural area, and injured people attending an emergency room at one of the local hospitals between january 2008 and june 2009. the study took place in the skaraborg region, a mainly agricultural and manufacturing area in sweden. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 100 table 1 summary of characteristics of participating young adults, sweden 2008–2010 characteristic female 18–20 female 21–24 male 18–20 male 21–24 number 8 3 5 3 living alone 0 0 0 1 living with someone 8 3 5 2 living in the city 4 2 4 3 living outside the city 4 1 1 0 studying 6 0 2 2 working 1 2 3 1 both studying and working 1 0 0 0 not studying or working 0 1 0 0 from the register of students and the register of employees, a random sample was chosen to receive written information about the study. as well, written information was sent to injured people who were willing to participate in the study when asked by a nurse at the emergency room. after two weeks, personal telephone contact was made and the time and place for the interview was decided with the participants’ input. during this interview, the participants were again fully informed about the study, and told that their participation was voluntary and they could withdraw at any time. those who declined to participate did so mainly due to lack of interest or time. twenty people were interviewed (see table 1for a summary of the characteristics of the participants). one interview was excluded since no near-injury situation was described. data collection all interviews opened with questions about situations in which participants had been physically injured. next, they were asked to describe experiences when they came close to but escaped being physically injured. the interviewees were then asked to report at least two specific injury situations in great detail and to describe as many subjective experiences of the near-injury situations as possible. follow-up questions were asked to encourage the interviewee to describe each situation in more detail and how the interviewee managed the situation. the interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes and were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. all data were collected between march 2008 and june 2010. data analysis the analysis was guided by the manifest content analysis approach (graneheim & lundman, 2004). we read the transcribed interviews several times to become familiar with the data and to obtain a sense of the whole. nonspecific or incomplete experiences (when the interviewee could not provide detailed information of a specific situation) were excluded from the analysis. the data were organized into categories and subcategories. to ensure that the classification was as free from bias as possible and could be replicated, we identified and categorized the near-injury situations in the following way: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 101 1. the content of each subjective experience was scrutinized line-by-line by two of the authors, and meaning units were identified, condensed, and codified with keywords. 2. the keywords were compared and sorted into tentative categories and subcategories for each theme. 3. the findings were then discussed by all the authors. a continuous movement back and forth between the transcribed material and the tentative findings was done during the analytical process and when forming the results. 4. the categories were compared and revised until the final classification was determined. results the young adults in this study described a wide range of near-injury situations in great detail. from these descriptions three main types of near-injury situation were identified: unexpected risk in ordinary tasks, duty first, and price for learning (see table 2). unexpected risk in ordinary tasks this category included near-injury situations that happened suddenly while the participant was performing an everyday life task, such as walking, running, jumping, dancing, riding a bike, or driving a car. the participants described situations in which they suddenly found themselves in a risk-zone because they hadn’t recognized how dangerous the situation had become. two subcategories were identified: “sudden unfamiliar situations”, and “lack of concentration”. most of the near-injury situations happened when what seemed like a familiar situation suddenly became unfamiliar. many of these sudden unfamiliar situations were described as being due to bad weather conditions while walking, driving a car, or riding a bike, and often included a combination of several negative external factors such as darkness, rain, wet roads, and another vehicle behaving in an unfamiliar way (quote i, table 2). other near-injury situations featured unexpected encounters with wild animals when driving a car on rural roads, or other people’s risky behaviour or negligence. in the subcategory “lack of concentration”, the second kind of unexpected risk encountered while engaged in ordinary tasks, the participants described finding themselves in a risky situation because they were not attentive (quote ii, table 2). for example, one participant related an experience of nearly being hit by a car while chasing a friend during a snowball fight. in another case, a participant was talking with friends while trying to cross a street during rush hour. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 102 table 2 characteristics of near-injury situations experienced by emerging adults exemplified by quotations from individual interviews, sweden 2008–2010 near-injury situation subcategory quotes from individual interviews unexpected risk in ordinary tasks (42) sudden unfamiliar situations (40) i. it was pretty early in the morning when i left my work to go home ... it was dark and raining when i was driving my small car on the highway, and suddenly a big truck was behind me ... the driver forced me to go faster with his lights and by driving very close to me ... and suddenly there was a lot of water in the way, so i lost control of my car and drove off the road. (adult aged 22) lack of concentration (2) ii. friday after school ... i was crossing a street with two friends. we used the crosswalk. there were a lot of people and cars. we were talking, and while we were in the middle of the street, a car came very fast from the left side. the driver stopped very close to us. (adult aged 19) duty first (16) solving work-related problems (13) iii. i was passing nearby and saw that a box was stuck in the machine, so i stopped the machine, went in alone, and when i took away the box another box fell down a few centimetres from me. (adult aged 22) managing sport duels (3) iv. it was an important football match for us … the ball was coming in my direction and a girl from the other team also wanted the ball, so i jumped and turned my body in the air against the other girl ... i wanted to prove to the others on my team that i was determined to win the game. (adult aged 18) price for learning (12) trying new skills (3) v. during my first diving lesson i had to go down five metres deep and take off my mask, and instead of doing it slowly i pulled my mask straight off and lots of water came in — scary — and i more or less panicked and began to swim upwards, and the dive master was behind me and grabbed me and put the regulator in my mouth so i could breathe. after that he took me up to the surface. (adult aged 24) improving skills (9) vi. it was practice. i fell backwards. i had pretty good speed and i lost balance and fell backwards, so i scraped up my back a little and got a mark here. (adult aged 20) duty first the near-injury situations identified as “duty first” happened while performing under pressure. these situations occurred either at work or while engaged in team sports, when the participants wanted to live up to their own expectations or what they perceived to be other people’s expectations. often in describing these situations participants talked about feeling pressure to complete a work task as fast as possible and of being unsure when and if they were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 103 allowed to ask for help. this time-related pressure to perform well was also described as leading to stress-related failures and increased clumsiness. interviewees who experienced near-injury in work-related duty-first situations recalled experiencing stress due to tight work schedules, lack of staff, or feeling that it was their responsibility to solve the situation without guidance. these self-generated pressures led to situations where they did things on their own initiative like using unfamiliar equipment such as a truck or trolley. for example, one participant described a near-injury situation when, on his own initiative, he decided to fix a problem involving a large machine. the participant was almost hit by a falling object even though he thought he had played it safe by turning off the electricity (quote iii, table 2). another example was provided by an interviewee who, as a new employee at a home for the elderly, was almost injured when attempting to lift a patient without help from other workers. clearly, both these young people required more supervision and training. sports-related duty-first near-injury situations typically involved team sports, especially hockey and football. during the sports-related near-injury events, participants felt they had to prove to their teammates that they were tough, so they took chances that put them at risk (quote iv, table 2). participants were even more likely to put themselves at risk if they had a leading role in a team. these self-generated performance-based expectations put extra pressure on the participants, placing them at greater risk of injury. price for learning the third identified type of near-injury situation was labelled “price for learning” because it includes situations that happened when the participant was trying to learn something new or to improve a specific skill. in many of the examples, the participant was trying an activity for the first time, such as diving into a swimming pool, jumping on a trampoline, or learning deep diving techniques (quote v, table 2). for some participants, price-for-learning situations occurred when the participant had some experience with the activity but was trying to improve through practice. these near-injury situations sometimes happened when the participants left their “safe zones” in order to improve skills; for example, learning new skating moves (quote vi, table 2). discussion an inductive analysis of the collected qualitative data was done to learn more about the conditions behind young adults’ near-injury situations in everyday life. the three main categories that emerged from our analysis will be discussed individually here, along with methodological considerations. unexpected risk in ordinary tasks overall we found that sudden unfamiliar situations were the most common near-injury situations experienced by the young adults. exposure to new environmental conditions put the participants at risk due to their lack of experience, which also might have influenced their subjective interpretations of hazardous situations. young drivers’ greater tendency than older international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 104 drivers to engage in risky driving has been explained by their lack of experience, and consequent lack of a holistic understanding of the risks (borowsky, shinar, & oron-gilad, 2010). while studies have found that some people, regardless of age, will take an active decision to involve themselves in a risky situation due to their self-perceived ability to control the situation (dejoy, 1989), it may be important to keep in mind that for young adults especially, engagement in risky situations might be associated with their incomplete appreciation of the level of risk (johnson, mccaul, & klein, 2002). earlier studies have suggested that active decision-making based on the perception both of the level of risk and of potential benefits is an important factor behind people’s involvement in risky situations (benthin et al., 1993; jones et al., 1999; sjoberg, 2000; slovic et al., 2004). according to this line of research, perception of risk is based on a complex interaction between rational and emotional systems — between what people think about the situation and how they feel. this line of reasoning also suggests that states of mind are associated with certain situations and activities (benthin et al., 1993). thus when young adults move from being passengers to being drivers, they might underestimate the complexity of the activity since they are used to being a passenger. the inexperienced driver still has the responsibility to be safe, but those who provide young drivers with their first-time opportunities to drive must keep in mind the risks that come with novice driving. previous research suggests that young adults’ perception of benefits, such as social prestige in a group or having fun, has more influence on their behaviour than their perception of risks (parsons, siegel, & cousins, 1997). our sample has reported priorities not found in previous research, and seems to point to the need for a complementary perspective in safety and preventive research. such a perspective would focus on processes of adaptation to situations and social contexts that relate to a wish to belong, do well, develop, and perform as a mature person. we do not mean that the “having fun” driver is unimportant, but that the attention it has been given might have overshadowed the more mature ambitions of young adults. the age of the population under study might also help to explain this effect. we have already mentioned that a further refinement of categories and their conceptual affiliations would be valuable. however, we also suggest that our findings be taken further by the development of a questionnaire for an epidemiological survey to assess the prevalence and distribution of these experiences over gender, socioeconomic background, educational level, and other relevant factors. furthermore we believe that our data can provide a foundation for the future development of scales that measure fine-tuned aspects of each of the categories, such as clusters of subcategories, grades of intensity of a certain experience, and emotional associations of an experience. our findings open avenues for further research and the associated development of new knowledge concerning both near-injury situations among young adults and the best focus for safety and preventive work. duty first interestingly, we found that young adults were influenced by their surroundings more than we expected. for example, when performing tasks in the company of other people, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 105 participants were less observant of hazardous situations. trying to live up to others’ expectations emerged as an important contributing factor to near-injury, seemingly because the desire to perform well in the eyes of others trumped any assessment of hazards. this desire to meet expectations and perform well has seldom been discussed as a possible contributing cause of injury. instead, research often focuses on such patently negative factors as taking too many risks, and operating in a risky physical environment (haddon, 1980; peek-asa & zwerling, 2003; runyan & zakocs, 2000). we therefore suggest that future research continue our line of inquiry to refine categories and confirm their demarcations. there is also a need to further define the conceptual classification at more abstract or structural levels; in other words, to elucidate how the categories can be understood from different disciplinary perspectives and whether the different categories can be seen as representative of the individual, group, or even societal level. the classification of the categories should contribute to better understanding how preventive interventions can be designed. qualitative categories are often based, as in our study, on experiences and thus are concrete. however, research needs theoretical definitions to move the perspective from the concrete and experience-based to the more abstract and theoretical in order to develop and test hypotheses in other populations and contexts. more specifically, it is important to know whether the desire to perform well or meet expectations is best understood as individual psychology, social psychology, or microsociology in order to pursue theoretically wellgrounded suggestions for safety and preventive work. we abstain at present from considering how the question of disciplinary understanding could be settled; we do not think that our data is appropriate for this, and the issue can only be resolved by future studies. another interesting finding of this study was that psychosocial working conditions such as stress and time pressure were identified as potential injury-risk factors, especially when we consider the fact that young adults often work in insecure and precarious job situations. earlier research has shown that temporary contracts are potential injury-risk factors for young workers (salminen, 2004). under temporary contracts, young workers may encounter situations that increase potential risks in line with our findings; situations that entail performing under pressure, adapting to social expectations, or trying to impress others. the willingness to adapt to other people’s expectations and the desire to impress others regardless of performance pressure or social expectations naturally differs among individuals. however, young adults are particularly vulnerable in this respect, since they are at an age of transformation and identity formation and in need of economic self-sufficiency. from a preventive perspective, more research is needed on how psychosocial, organizational, and employment factors affect young employees’ injury risks at work, and to advance knowledge regarding young employees’ experiences with their work environment. further, the adjustment to duties could be viewed as a safety risk for young adults, and could be understood as a knowledge gap in safety-risk prevention research. the pressure to hold a job can impact safety negatively if it results in safety arrangements being set aside. similarly, young adults place themselves in risky positions when, in an attempt not to be perceived as overdependent or unqualified, they avoid asking for needed guidance and help. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 106 these considerations support the findings of previous studies focusing on safe work environments for adolescents and young adults that have recommended taking into account the characteristics of the young workers, not only the characteristics of the workplace and their assignments (runyan et al., 2000; salminen, 2004). wanting to be seen as competent and as performing well for others were also factors in potential injury-risk situations in sports duels, common in football, handball, and many of the other team sports participants mentioned. the presence of internal (psychological) and external (social) pressures was evident in the young adults’ descriptions of sports-related risky behaviours. it is known that sport injuries are common in young people. (darrow, collins, yard, & comstock, 2009; steffen, myklebust, olsen, holme, & bahr 2008). our findings about the pressures that our participants described may help to explain these injuries. some participants mentioned that sports coaches challenged competitors to show their desire to win and to be seen as an asset to their teams. earlier studies have found that the psychological interplay between a coach and players is associated with the players’ performance (balaguer, duda, atienza, & mayo, 2002; barnett, smith, & smoll, 1992). thus, pressure to perform is not exclusive to work-related experiences. since many work positions are conceived of as requiring teamwork, it is possible that the interplay between a supervisor and young workers is similar to that between a coach and players; the desire to meet or exceed expectations (e.g., win a game, deliver a product, or keep a position on the team) might then put young workers and young players alike at higher risk of injury. according to the young adults in our study, supervision and guidance are protective factors; they expressed a desire for supervision when performing new work tasks and when learning new leisure activities. these findings fit with earlier studies that have recommended close supervision to reduce the impact of injury-risk situations on young workers (salminen, 2004; wegman & davis, 1999). given our findings and those of previous researchers, injuries to inexperienced workers could be reduced if employers and work managers took care to emphasize job safety and to maintain an open climate where inexperienced workers are encouraged to ask for help. price for learning we also found that learning new leisure activities or improving sports skills through independent practice are injury-risk factors for young adults. leisure activities (e.g., improving skateboard techniques) often involve some kind of risk. however, reflecting about possible near-injury situations might help young adults (and people in general) to better anticipate risk. instructors must take care to provide information on safety when needed to keep the student safe in particular activities (e.g., learning how to dive). the presence of another person and, in particular, the role and behaviour of this person before and during an injury-risk situation, could be an interesting focus of future studies that aim to understand risks and opportunities for prevention in both workand sports-related injury-risk situations for young adults. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 107 methodological considerations at first, most of our interviewees had difficulty identifying near-injury situations, but they eventually provided detailed and colourful descriptions of minor as well as major nearinjury situations. cit made it possible to collect a wide range of subjective experiences, which provided rich material for the analysis of the young adults’ experience with near-injury situations in everyday life. the variety and richness in detail of the collected near-injury situations illustrates the importance of collecting lived experiences of near-injury situations, a strategy that previous research ignores. although the use of a data collection methodology based on interviews might be vulnerable to recall difficulties and recall errors, retrospective methods are nonetheless well suited to collecting subjective experiences. moreover, the time elapsed since the experience might be less of a consideration since a perceived risk of injury was involved: one’s recall of fearful situations is often more accurate than that of ordinary events (flanagan, 1954). given how well cit worked for us, we now believe that cit could also be used when developing and evaluating preventive strategies based on self-reported risky situations. conclusion this study shows that cit is well-suited for collecting information about near-injury situations in young adults’ everyday lives. we found that young adults’ lived experiences of near-injury situations were associated with performance pressure more distinctly than expected given the findings from earlier studies. the young adults who participated in this study wanted to adapt, to keep out of trouble, and to perform well, possibly in order to keep their jobs or to win a sports competition. their efforts to display their ability to handle difficult situations at work and in their everyday lives was identified as an important contributor to near-injury situations. these results can be used when planning and designing injury prevention strategies. executives at work and in sports should be aware of young adults’ willingness to adapt as a factor that might lead them to go beyond their capacity, placing them at higher risk of injury. the early stages of independence and adult life are demanding in multiple ways, and carry new physical hazards that may result in near-injury situations as categorized in this study. more studies are needed to refine the categories we identified and to assess quantitatively their prevalence and association to other risk factors. acknowledgements this study was supported by the swedish civil contingencies agency and the public health office in the region of västra götaland. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 108 references alamgir, h., yu, s., gorman, e., ngan, k., & guzman, j. 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(2004) associations among adolescent risk behaviours and self-esteem in six domains. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 45(8), 1454–1467. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12195 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 97–111 111 wisqars. (2010). leading causes of death, fatal and non-fatal injury reports. atlanta, ga: centers for disease control and prevention, national center for injury prevention and control, u.s. department of health & human services. retrieved august 23rd, 2010 from http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/ wright, l., & van der schaaf, t. (2004). accident versus near miss causation: a critical review of the literature, an empirical test in the uk railway domain, and their implications for other sectors. journal of hazardous materials, 111(1-3), 105–110. http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/ young adults’ experiences with near-injury situations: a critical incident study in sweden richard allan dale, annette sverker, marie hasselberg, gunnel östlund, and gunnel hensing methods design participants data collection data analysis results unexpected risk in ordinary tasks duty first price for learning discussion unexpected risk in ordinary tasks duty first price for learning methodological considerations conclusion acknowledgements references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716739 adolescents negotiating romantic relationships in a culturally diverse, urban community catherine ann cameron, toupey luft, dana dmytro, neringa kubiliene, and winni chou abstract: in this study we examined the negotiation of romantic relationships by urban youth, as discussed in focus groups, in a multicultural community. we compared these urban-student findings for an emergent fit with previously reported findings from more homogeneous groups of rural students. the unifying category, wrestling with gender expectations, which was identified in the rural studies, also emerged in the present study. a new unifying category represented urban participants’ balancing cultural expectations in the contexts of their families and social groups. three categories from the former rural studies emerged in the present urban study: making sacrifices, showing respect, and standing up for oneself; and a new category emerged: communicating. while the rural students identified media as critical contextual conditions for romantic relationships, the current urban teens identified digital and social media as crucial contextual conditions in dating relationships. together, these findings suggest the importance of considering cultural and contextual aspects of youths’ dating processes for developing a grounded theory that reflects aspects of teens’ relational lives. implications of this emergent theory are explored, and directions for future research are suggested. keywords: adolescents, romantic relationships, relational processes, gender, focused discussions, culture, digital social media catherine ann cameron (the corresponding author) is honorary professor in the psychology department, 2136 west mall, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: acameron@psych.ubc.ca toupey luft is associate professor in the master of counselling program at city university of seattle in canada, 120-1040 7th ave sw, calgary, ab t2p 3g9. e-mail: toupeyluft@cityu.edu dana dmytro is a school psychologist working in collaboration with the university of british columbia, 2136 west mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: ddmytro@sd35.bc.ca neringa kubiliene is a phd student in interdisciplinary graduate studies at the university of british columbia, 2080 west mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z2, canada. email: neringa.ubc@gmail.com winni chou is a master of occupational therapy student at the university of british columbia, 2329 west mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4. email: winni_w_chou@hotmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs81201716739 mailto:acameron@psych.ubc.ca mailto:toupeyluft@cityu.edu mailto:ddmytro@sd35.bc mailto:neringa.ubc@gmail.com mailto:winni_w_chou@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 2 adolescents’ processes, experiences and conceptualizations of navigating romantic relationships are developmentally significant because they inform and shape their current and future romantic relationships (connolly & mcisaac, 2011; madsen & collins, 2011). moreover, personal and interpersonal resilience and thriving depend on the degree to which romantic relationships are either enriching or disruptive (dmytro, luft, jenkins, hoard, & cameron, 2013; friedlander, connolly, pepler, & craig 2013; johnson, giordano, longmore, & manning, 2014). much of the current literature on adolescent romantic relationships is focused on the problem of dating aggression and violence, where the perpetrators in heterosexual relationships are usually male. for instance, bonomi, anderson, nemeth, rivara, and buettner (2013) studied the effects of a history of dating violence victimization on health in late adolescence. recent research has focused on the link between use of digital and social technology and perpetrating abuse in these media (lucero, weisz, smith-darden, & lucero, 2014; stonard, bowen, lawrence, & price, 2014). when gender is one of the variables under investigation, it often characterizes differences in the nature of perpetration and victimization (hickman, jaycox, & arnoff, 2004; reyes, foshee, niolon, reidy, & hall, 2015). gender socialization research contains some acknowledgement that gender role adherence, in which males show more traditionally “masculine” behaviours and females show more traditionally “feminine” behaviours, is associated with dating violence (peralta & tuttle, 2013). there are few studies that focus on teens’ engagement in and negotiation of healthy relationships, though barber and eccles (2003) provide a review of educational interventions in this area. in addition to the gap in understanding adolescents’ processes in creating healthier romantic relationships, there is also a dearth of data regarding canadian adolescents’ dating initiation, prevalence, and duration. it is difficult to obtain current data on prevalence and on relevant characteristics of canadian teenagers and their relationships. one primary source of information regarding north american teens’ dating experiences, however, is the u.s. national longitudinal survey of adolescent to adult health (add health). data obtained from add health and reported by carver, joyner, and udry (2003) showed that romantic relationships are common among american adolescents and the proportion of adolescents who report being in romantic relationships, as well as the duration of these relationships, increases with age. in a u.s.-based study, short, catallozzi, breitkopf, auslander, and rosenthal (2011) also reported that adolescent relationships are common, but indicated that several important elements are often ignored in current studies on teen intimacy, including the voices of the adolescents themselves, and the effect of gender on how intimate opposite-sex relationships evolve. in light of the above concerns the current study adds to the scholarly literature by including the voices of teenage boys and girls regarding their views on romantic relationships. previous research and rationale for current study connolly et al. (2014) concurred with carver et al. (2003) that a majority of adolescents engage in romantic relationships. connolly and her colleagues outlined canadian youths’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 3 developmental sequence of romantic involvement in four stages: early adolescence (ages 12–14), middle adolescence (ages 15–17), late adolescence (ages 18–20), and emerging adulthood (ages 21–25). they reported that canadian teens in early adolescence explore romantic feelings in the context of a group — not usually going on individual dates but socializing in mixed gender groups. peers are the most common influence on those in the early adolescent years. according to connolly et al., “middle adolescents begin to form special romantic connections with other group members to whom they are attracted” (p. 11). peers continue to be a strong influence when negotiating romantic relationships, while parents begin to exert more influence, especially in terms of monitoring romantic interchanges. in late adolescence and early adulthood, parents increasingly act as role models for relationships (connolly et al., 2014). the authors called for romantic relationship research that is focused on two “emerging themes” (p. 15): the influence of technology, and examining youth experiences from a transcultural perspective (connolly et al., 2014). two recent grounded theory studies (dmytro et al., 2013; luft et al., 2012) focused on rural teens and romantic relationships. in these studies, canadian rural adolescent girls’ and boys’ processes of forming romantic heterosexual relationships were explained through a central organizing category: wrestling with gender expectations based upon what their peers expect of them. this overarching category was, in turn, represented in six communicative subcategories: determining responsibility/non-responsibility for interactions, keeping it in/letting it out in sharing feelings, standing up for oneself/backing down under pressure, making sacrifices/not making sacrifices for a relationship when dealing with family and friends, building trust/not trusting within a couple, and showing respect/showing disrespect for a partner. participants identified media, including music videos, movies, and television shows, as a contextual condition (corbin & strauss, 2008) that influenced how they struggled with gender expectations. specifically, participants described how media’s portrayals of gender, especially portrayals of females, influenced the ways in which they thought they should look or behave in the context of romantic relationships. a significant disadvantage of these two studies from the standpoint of generality was the lack of diversity in the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of these rural participants. the current study therefore provides canadian data from 2014 on teens’ negotiation of romantic relationships in an urban, multicultural environment. we wanted to understand the views on developing and maintaining intimate relationships of adolescents from an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous environment. additionally, since our rural studies in 2006, the use of digital and social media such as texting, facebook, instagram, and twitter as methods of communication had increased significantly (davis, 2013), and we were interested in whether they would play a greater role in the communications of these urban youth. participants in this study discussed views on romantic relationships in researcher-facilitated, semi-structured focus groups held at school. following wuest (2000), we took into consideration the earlier analyses of rural teens (dmytro et al., 2013; luft et al., 2012), and expanded upon the existing theory to incorporate how cultural influences might affect teens and their expressed views on romantic relationships. using a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 4 process of emergent fit (charmaz, 2008; wuest, 2000), we present a grounded theory incorporating the new data with the central strategy of “balancing cultural expectations”. we used a constant comparative method (corbin & strauss, 2008; wuest, 2000) to develop a relevant theory grounded in the data (and the existing literature) that has wider applicability than a theory generated from only one source of data (cf. wuest, 2000). the emergent fit approach to developing a theory was grounded in the words of the participants. thus, we opted for a more emergent and constructivist model of data analysis, as advocated by charmaz and wuest, rather than the more prescriptive data analysis approach outlined by corbin and strauss. the specific differences in foci between these two models of grounded theory methodology appear in the study’s data analysis and interpretation, and we highlight procedural intentions when appropriate. method participants following patton’s (2002) strategy for purposeful sampling, the researchers sought participation from those who were interested in discussing intimate relationships. eligible participants were teenagers who were students in one public high school in a western, multicultural canadian city of approximately 600,000 inhabitants. fifty adolescents (27 female) ranging in age from 16 to 18 years (m = 16.38) took part in this study. participants were enrolled in grades 11 (72%) and 12 (28%). in this sample, 22% were foreign-born, mostly from asia. forty-six percent of the total sample self-identified as asian, 18% as south asian, and 16% as caucasian. the remaining 20% of the sample included five students of mixed ancestry, two pacific islanders, one hispanic student of latin american ancestry, one student of african ancestry, and one of thai ancestry. home family-language reports indicated that 30% of the students in our sample spoke english at home, while the other 70% spoke one of more than 20 language groups at home. ninety-four percent of the students identified themselves as heterosexual, while 6% identified as bisexual. with regard to dating history, 58% reported not having dated and 10% reported going on romantic dates less than 10 times a month; 16% had a steady partner for less than six months; and 14% had a steady partner for more than six months. two percent did not respond to this question. data collection and analysis permission to meet with the participating students and to hold focused group discussions with them on the general topic of adolescent romantic relationships was obtained from the local school board and the school principal, who introduced the researchers to a teacher agreeable to facilitating small-group discussions during classroom periods. the collaborating teacher scheduled five focused discussion sessions for researchers to meet with participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 5 two groups were mixed gender, one group was male, and two groups were female. one mixed-gendered discussion was held during a psychology class, and the other mixed-gendered discussion was held with students during a home economics class. the single-gender discussions were held simultaneously during a psychology class. prior to participating in the study, students submitted consent letters signed by their parents in addition to personally signing participant assent forms. on the day of the discussions, the research assistants who served as group facilitators introduced themselves to the participants. the facilitators stated that the purpose of the study was to gain further knowledge regarding how teens make sense of romantic relationships. the research team also assured participants that there were no adverse consequences for not participating and that they were free to withdraw at any time. the youths were asked to discuss dating relationships, regardless of the extent of their personal dating experience or sexual orientation. in the event that students did not have personal dating experience, they were encouraged to share the dating experiences of their peers without identifying those involved in the stories. next, ground rules were established that highlighted respectful listening and respectful speaking. it was emphasized that everything said in the room should stay in the room and, to broaden and facilitate discussion and to maintain confidentiality, participants were asked to speak in the third person and to talk about others without using names. to prompt the discussion, a very brief ice-breaking skit was conducted. facilitators asked for two volunteers from the class, (one boy and one girl, prior to splitting into single and mixed gendergroups), who enacted a situation where one dating partner became jealous because the other partner seemed to be suspiciously sending text messages to someone else on their phone. all discussions were audiotaped and then transcribed verbatim by members of the research team independently who then checked for consensus on the accuracy of the transcriptions with another member who had been present during the focus discussions. names of participants mentioned during the group discussions were not recorded in the transcripts to protect participants’ anonymity. data analysis proceeded concurrently as transcripts were produced. data were analyzed using the constant comparative procedure utilized when developing a grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 2014; wuest, 2000). congruent with emergent fit methodology, relevant scholarly literature was reviewed to compare for emerging fit with the developing theory (cf. charmaz, 2008; wuest, 2000). the systematic review of the transcripts resulted in the development of codes and categories. these codes and categories were compared to those that came from the previous studies with rural youth in a more ethno-culturally homogeneous sample. we were informed by the methods of charmaz (2008), glaser (1978), and wuest (2000) in attending to the new data to ensure that we were not enforcing a pre-existing theory on the data — instead, we carefully ensured that the emerging theory was grounded in the current data. if categories of the previous theory (dmytro et al., 2013; luft et al., 2012), did not fit conceptually with the emergent categories observed here, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 6 they were not included. further, we expanded on some of the previous theory’s categories based on our new information. findings although we invited discussion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (lgbtq) romantic relationships, no students explicitly mentioned or discussed such relationships. this omission is addressed in the discussion section regarding future research. analysis of the current study’s discussions revealed that engaging in and carrying on romantic relationships is a complicated, multi-faceted process for urban teens in a multicultural community. there are a number of contextual factors that influence the participants, including socio-cultural and religious expectations, gender role adherence, and the use of social media. the influence of these factors will be outlined further in the discussion of the emerging theory’s categories below. we utilize the term “cultural factors” with the understanding that culture does not just refer to people varying on the basis of race or ethnicity. following arthur and collins (2010), we start from a balanced approach on culture and cultural inquiry in that we acknowledge that there are many ways that people can vary, and we do not make assumptions about what these many variations mean to them (religion, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, etc.). we recognize that there are some common factors among members of a cultural group, but that there are also commonalities across cultural groups, and that both might inform our understanding (collins, 2010). a majority of the processes outlined in dmytro et al. (2013) and luft et al. (2012) remain central contextual factors relevant to the present group’s views on romantic relationships. in particular, gender roles and related expectations stand out in the present data as they did in our earlier work. however, current participants’ responses to gender roles and related expectations were mediated by one or more cultural factors that will be outlined further below. balancing cultural expectations for participants, figuring out how to balance cultural expectations with regard to potential romantic relationships was identified as a central process influenced by their interactions with peers and with family members. balancing cultural expectations involves considering factors pertaining to the self, and then deciding how to proceed, even though there may be peer or parental pressure to choose conventionally. in general then, the participants spoke of considering the cultural expectations of peers and parents when negotiating romantic relationships, but in the end stated that they would probably follow their own will in their romantic interactions. a small number of participants explained that if there were familial disapproval of their partners, they would hide their romantic relationships from their parents, even though it would result in relational tensions within the family. this applied to situations where parents might disapprove of a potential romanticinterest candidate from an ethnicity or religious background different from the participant. as one participant said, “you kind of just don’t tell them.” several students agreed with this strategy, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 7 explaining that they would rather make individual choices for getting involved in romantic relationships, and then hide their actions from their parents to retain both their autonomy and familial harmony. as one boy stated, “if your parents don’t approve [of] someone that you are in a relationship with, you might have to keep them more secretive”. on a more broadly cultural level, one of the girls offered: yeah, and also in my culture, it’s okay if you marry your cousin, so, it’s a bit weird. so when i see some in my culture not following the rules, then i’m like, “then why am i still doing this?” another small number of participants stated that they would communicate openly with their parents, and a small number would even seek relationship advice from a parent. our current multi-ethnic sample of participants expressed more hesitation regarding initiating and engaging in romantic relationships than the more culturally homogeneous and rural youths in the dmytro et al. (2013) and luft et al. (2012) studies. these urban adolescents weighed the costs and benefits of dating within the social systems of their peers and members of their family. wrestling with gender expectations in cultural context as in our earlier work (dmytro et al., 2013 and luft et al., 2012), the teens in this study’s urban, multi-ethnic sample spoke of gender roles being a consistent consideration in dating. gender expectations were intertwined with cultural norms. eaton and rose (2011), through their analysis of dating literature over the past 35 years, found that gender scripting has been a highly influential factor when people of any age are engaged in intimate relationships. further, gevers, jewkes, mathews, and flisher (2012) highlight the primacy of gender role expectations reported by teens in south africa as they negotiate heterosexual dating interactions. the transcript data from this study of urban teens in a multicultural community show confirmations of the present relevance of gender roles, as well as clear expressions of moving away from them. first, the participants in the current study mentioned discomfort about what the other gender expects in a heterosexual relationship. one female student complained, “[girls] always need to look good … [boys] expect that from a girl.” some boys expressed concern over media portrayals perpetuating “manly men” stereotypes. these boys felt that those who did not adhere to masculine stereotypes of being the more powerful or directive one in a heterosexual relationship were prone to ostracism by others: “manly men are kind of in charge more.… [some people] alienate anyone different from the stereotypes.” some girls spoke of boys’ struggles in conforming to gendered expectations, as evidenced by treating girls certain ways, for example, by making grand gestures or buying gifts for them. second, although some youths commenced the focused discussions by mentioning gender stereotypes such as women cooking and men paying for a first date, as the discussions progressed, these stereotypes began to be contested. for example, a girl asserted that, “both should pay, like international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 8 you pay this one, i will pay the next one.” there were thus indications of urban youth gravitating toward a more egalitarian view, despite initially expressing ingrained gender stereotypes. this is consistent with eaton and rose’s (2011) findings of some slight deviation from strict gender roles, such as more women initiating dates. communicating communicating with romantic partners was a relational process that initially emerged from rural adolescents’ discussions, and appeared again in the urban teens’ groups. in the rural discussion groups, girls described the benefits of open, reciprocal communication, or letting it out (luft et al., 2012), whereas boys emphasized processes of keeping it in, which signified not sharing as many details with an intimate partner (dmytro et al., 2013). for the urban teens in this study, this process of communicating was less about choosing from just two options (such as keeping things to oneself or not). overall, the urban participants seemed to value communication skills, particularly being “assertive” as opposed to “passive aggressive”. one girl indicated that she would communicate assertively if she were worried about something going on in the relationship: don’t ask them if they’re hiding anything just discuss [it] with them, “are you okay?” “is there something going in the relationship or is there something else that you’re not comfortable telling me yet?” but just don’t be all sneaky. communicating effectively was portrayed as a process whereby both parties in a relationship enter into negotiations in their communications. participants often mentioned communicating effectively when discussing the importance of trust in building romantic relationships. participants agreed that mistrust in an intimate relationship leads to passive or aggressive communication strategies and isolation. these consequences of poor communication were similar to what the rural sample outlined in the process of not trusting. in the rural teens’ discussions, building trust/not trusting referred to the process of building confidence and assurance in a dating relationship partner. similarly, urban students considered building trust through communication to be a fundamental part of a healthy relationship. one boy stated, “a relationship can only grow to a certain point if there’s no trust involved.… trust is kinda the foundation of a relationship or a friendship.” social media are deployed to mediate communication strategies for these urban teenagers. for many, social media represent a less direct way to communicate in a relationship. according to participants, casually texting instead of having “real” (face-to-face) communication could create conflicts over such matters as changing one’s relationship status on facebook. several participants lamented teenagers’ lack of confidence in engaging in direct communication; they found verbal conversations, either over the phone or face-to-face, challenging. making sacrifices within the rural teens’ discussions, this process involved giving up something for the wellbeing of a romantic relationship. urban youths made sacrifices to enhance their romantic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 9 relationships but they also described how one might make sacrifices in the context of their family. sacrifices made to enhance one’s relationship were undertaken to promote relational positivity. as one boy said: if this person had club activity every day from (i don’t know), 8 to 8, 24 hours, or whatever … and suddenly the person he’s in a relationship with wants to do something at the exact same time. he must be able to give up that activity for that time to spend time with the person he’s in a relationship with, because that shows he’s willing to sacrifice things and therefore promote a healthy relationship by commitment. urban teens said that overall, romantic relationships require sacrifices from each member and a failure to make certain sacrifices can sour the relationship. the following quote from one participant illustrates how refusing to make sacrifices could result in acrimony: my friend, every single sunday she comes to church and her significant other [says], “oh, let’s hang out on sunday or something” and [she says], “no i gotta go to church.” and [he says], “no just skip church and blah, blah, blah …” thus, the couple started an argument rather than resolving the issue by coming to a mutual understanding of each other’s priorities. as indicated previously, sometimes teens sacrificed being open with their families about being in a relationship. however, not everyone felt the need to conform to parental cultural and religious values. one participant stated that ultimately, individuals should decide on their own partner because: “if you truly do want to be with that person, then maybe you have to let your family get used to it because in the end you are not going to be spending every day with your parents”. standing up for oneself and showing respect or disrespect in the rural youths’ studies, these two categories involved how participants negotiated responses to situations that they saw as controlling or abusive, while for the urban participants, these categories were closely intertwined and were collapsed into one unit during data analysis. the urban teens spoke of relational abuse and how both intimate “cheating” and verbal and physical abuse were clear ways of a partner showing disrespect. one girl spoke of a partner who was “always like questioning, ‘oh, what are you doing? why are you doing this?” as a sign that the relationship was unhealthy and as an indication of a need to stand up for oneself. generally, for the urban participants, fewer actions were recounted with regard to “standing up for themselves”. the discussions focused more on hypothetical examples than on actual actions taken in relationships. this may be due to the fact that many participants had not yet engaged in a long-term intimate relationship. though both male and female participants seemed equally aware of respect issues that might arise in relationships, it was primarily girls who spoke in detail of the factors surrounding international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 10 respect. for instance, urban girls saw “sub-tweeting” — intimate partners posting derogatory messages online — as disrespectful, passive aggressive, and unacceptable. urban girls also discussed other issues related to respect, agreeing, as one participant expressed, that it is “probably important to set boundaries with each other” as a way of standing up for oneself in the relationship. religion and culture, and standing up for oneself religious and cultural affiliation were also discussed by participants as factors for how young people engage in showing respect or disrespect; or as factors constraining how one might “stand up for oneself” in an intimate relationship. for example, some saw arranged marriages as showing disrespect by the family for the dating process: … because he never had a chance to get to know the person or choose a person to actually be with to have kids with and have a whole family.… it’s a big boundary and it’s a really big argument and conflict. one girl stated that boys have more freedom to stand up for themselves by dating anyone they want. “guys have the authority to change into a different religion. girls can’t.” this perceived relative lack of freedom to stand up for oneself due to being female was highlighted by another girl in the quote given earlier, also expressing her desire to overcome it: “so when i see some people in my culture not following the rules then i think, ‘then why am i still doing this?’” another spoke of how she deals with the pressure within her culture to have a partner: “well i don’t really care, i just ignore them.” some youth mentioned how being in canada has made their parents more openminded. one participant offered: well, since like the old times i think my parents … oh they’re more open-minded now, because of culture and like … they’re in canada right now too, so like it influences you, where you are, how people treat each other and stuff i guess. another participant challenged the idea of gender inequality in religions by stating, “religion-wise, at least from my religion, it’s always equal, means they become more open-minded.” finally, one boy spoke of the importance of being accepting of all cultures, avoiding extremism and cultural exclusivity. overall, the participants’ views showed some commonalities with regard to certain aspects of culture — specifically, ethnic groupings, religion, and gender. however, they also acknowledged some common factors between members of these groups, pointing out the importance of respect and communication. digital and social media as a contextual condition this study takes place in an era when digital and social media are emerging as prevalent methods of communication that are far more personal and sharable than print media, television and movies (davis, 2013). this context lies in contrast to the setting of the rural youth participants, who were interviewed just a few years earlier, when digital and social media were less developed and pervasive than today. the urban youths’ discussions revolved a great deal around digital and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 11 social media, which currently play significant roles in these adolescents’ romantic relationship processes. participants in this study spoke of texting as a way to begin a relationship, and as a significant indication of dating progression. as one girl put it, “i feel the interest starts in the real world, and then if you guys start texting, it’s kind of like, ‘now we’re texting.’” these participants felt that the onset of texting signalled the true beginning of the relationship. posting frequent relationship updates on facebook or other social media can create problems. as another girl said, “[in such cases,] there’s no privacy in your relationship — you’re just sharing it to the world”. not sharing relationship updates on social media can also be problematic, as in one girl’s example showing that this can lead to the false impression that one is available to date: they got criticism just because they didn’t change their [social media status], and they’re like, “oh are you trying to expose yourself as ‘oh, i’m still free?’” problems can also arise when individuals “like” or comment on someone other than their partner’s posts or pictures. the participants indicated that confusion and conflict sometimes occur when they look at their partner’s texts or facebook messages, or read a tweet and wonder if the message is directed at them. it is regarded as not uncommon for adolescents to post relationship issues indirectly (such as sub-tweeting) and to engage in passive-aggressive communication online. overall, the urban adolescents in the study used digital and social media to establish and maintain communication with partners and others, and sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, to sabotage their relationships. discussion the urban teens in the current study, residing in a multicultural, metropolitan city, described the central process of balancing cultural expectations; both this process and that of wrestling with gender expectations permeated all subcategories that emerged: communication, making sacrifices, and standing up for oneself and showing respect/disrespect. in the studies with rural groups, discussions of romantic relationships focused more on the two dating partners and highlighted media influences as contextual conditions on these partner interactions, whereas the urban teens identified how digital/social media as the contextual condition is instrumental in influencing intimate relationship processes and focused more on how to approach intimate relationships, reflecting their less direct interpersonal experience compared to the rural youth. considering the demographics of the urban sample, this finding would be consistent with previous findings that asian canadian youth are less actively involved in romantic relationships compared to european canadians (li, connolly, jiang, pepler, & craig, 2010). results of the current study revealed both similarities and differences in relationship processes compared to the rural teens. urban participants in a multicultural setting discussed the role of cultural norms and expectations in their decision-making process related to their relationship navigation. similar to the rural teens, the urban youth described wrestling with gender expectations; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 12 however, this process was influenced by cultural norms specific to participants’ gender. the urban girls in particular identified gender-specific issues in their process of wrestling with gender expectations, influenced by both parents and cultural dictates regarding intercultural relationships. in spite of their awareness of stereotypical gender norms, these participants’ attitudes seemed to be somewhat egalitarian, consistent with eaton and rose’s (2011) findings. communication was discussed in a more nuanced way by the urban teens than the rural teens. whereas rural girls described the benefits of open communication and boys advocated more restraint, urban teens of both genders highlighted the importance of communication in building trust. communication for the urban teen participants is also an essential strategy used to balance cultural expectations, in that they are required to negotiate their own desires and their parents’ expectations, in addition to negotiating and communicating these issues with their partners. although these participants seemed keenly aware of the importance of communication skills in building healthy relationships, previous studies have found a discrepancy between teens’ knowledge and their actual communication skills (cameron et al., 2007; dmytro et al., 2013). the central role of family for urban teens was also indicated in their discussions of making sacrifices. both urban and rural teens discussed making sacrifices for the sake of their partners; however, the urban teen sample also talked about the necessity of making sacrifices for the sake of one’s family. for example, urban teens at times feel the need to hide relationships from their parents, or disengage from dating someone altogether based on their parents’ expectations, which may be strongly influenced by cultural values. the rural teens gave many more examples of their experiences regarding the need to stand up for oneself in the context of a romantic relationship, whereas the urban teens mostly discussed hypothetical situations. showing respect or disrespect and standing up for oneself were interrelated for the urban teens, and they discussed setting boundaries when partners show disrespect. for the urban teens, the unique issue discussed was their need to stand up to their parents when balancing their own and their parents’ dating expectations, which are primarily influenced by cultural values. urban teens, due to the rise of social media, were also keenly aware of the potential for disrespect to be shown through online forums, such as facebook and instagram. these concerns are echoed in stonard et al.’s (2014) discussion of the role of electronic communication technology in facilitating teen dating violence and abuse. because the rural and urban data were taken several years apart, secular trends could explain some of the urban–rural differences in digital and social media adoption. while rural teenagers did not mention digital and social media just a few years earlier, these media sources emerged as a significant part of the context of urban teens’ dating discussions. implications: digital and social media today’s urban adolescents face numerous relational challenges that reflect not only interpersonal concerns, but also cultural and media influences. however, these challenges might international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 13 effectively be addressed with the help of youth-friendly and media-aware families, educators, and community leaders. the results of this study suggest it is important to focus specifically on issues arising from digital and social media in adolescents’ intimate relationships, since our results show that increasingly, youths are using these media platforms to initiate, display, and manage their relationships. educational measures involving communications awareness, media (and social media in particular), media literacy, and skill development can support adolescents’ healthier use of media. an online website, media smarts: canada’s centre for digital and media literacy (n.d.) provides curricula, action guides, and training programs that educators can access for use in their classrooms (see steeves, 2014). austin, pinkleton, hust, and cohen (2005) and pinkleton, austin, chen, and cohen (2013) found that adolescent education on media literacy led to their more critical consumption of media related to tobacco use and of media related to sexual behaviour. educational curricula can focus on increasing adolescents’ awareness that media can create trends and norms, and that not all of them are desirable. strategies can be presented and discussed by trusted adults and peer facilitators to assist adolescents in resisting those issues that they find incompatible with their personal and cultural core values. an exploration of core values in the context of critical adolescent identity development can include topics of great interest to many adolescents. educators can assist adolescents in identifying and developing ways to instantiate foundational values, such as trust, in their romantic relationships, in order to enhance their desire to engage in healthier relationships, rather than model their dating behaviour on gender and cultural norms conveyed through the media. on another level, youth advocates can become catalysts for facilitating such conversations not only at school with their peers, but also at home and in the larger community. to help adolescents see the importance of determining boundaries between private and public spheres and learn how to protect themselves online, community partners can engage with them through casual conversations, planned workshops within existing curricula, and community-sponsored youthoriented public discussions. finally, teenagers can be encouraged to reflect on the risks and rewards of digital and social media in open discussions that can provide relevant lessons through real-life cases of online exposure, self-disclosure, and fraud. implications: youth in a multicultural setting urban youths in this study spoke about engaging in a process that involved balancing individual preferences with parental expectations. in contrast, the rural youth from the earlier work did not identify or describe such a process as being a part of their dating relationships. educators and counsellors should be aware of the influence of culture and religion on the youths with whom they work, and also consider that teens may be unaware of the ways in which they are influenced by cultural norms. as arthur and collins (2010) advocate, educators and counsellors should develop specific awareness and competencies regarding various aspects of culture such as race, religion, and gender. they need to remain mindful that their own cultural identity will likely international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 14 influence how they see other people and what they value when working with others professionally. as much as counsellors and educators are called to learn about various cultural factors, they must also take care to ask a client or student how they define themselves and to begin to think of identities as “intersectional” (hulko, 2009). for example, those who work with youth from an intersectional perspective can take into consideration how social class intersects with ethnic background, and consider how the former may not be as significant as the latter from the youth’s perspective. treating students or clients with respect and not making assumptions about how cultural factors may influence them can allow educators and counsellors to move towards social justice in their work (arthur & collins, 2010). our sample included many asian and south asian students who generally start dating at a later age than students of caribbean or european origin (connolly, craig, goldberg, & pepler, 2004). dhariwal and connolly (2013) found that this later onset of dating behaviour held for adolescents in china and in india as well. connolly et al. (2014) attributed asian adolescents’ later engagement in romantic relationships to the more collectivistic nature of eastern culture, whereby familial input is of great importance to dating initiation and choices. bicultural students may feel caught between two worlds if they try to adhere to more traditional cultural or religious values at home while their peers expect them to evince different values at school (cone, buxton, lee, & mahotiere, 2014; sharabany, eshel, & hakim, 2008). this experience of being caught between family and school cultures and contexts can be intensified if the students have emigrated from a traditional community, or if they are born to immigrant parents (bauer, loomis, & akkari, 2013). limitations two of the five discussion groups were mixed-gender, which may have attenuated the expression of gender differences compared to the rural youths in the earlier study, who engaged exclusively in single-gender focus groups. overall, there was a tendency in both rural and urban discussions for girls to be more talkative than boys. boys in an all-male group with a male facilitator tend to be more expressive than boys in mixed-gender discussion groups (cameron, 2004). thus, single-gender focus groups are recommended in research on gendered topics such as intimate relational processes, as has been suggested by several of the present authors (cameron, 2004; luft et al., 2012; dmytro et al., 2013). in 2017, rural youths also participate actively in social media. future research may reveal even greater prevalence of social media in negotiating adolescent relationships, wherever those relationships develop (o’sullivan, 2012). further, the influence of the ethnic and cultural diversity in the current urban sample potentially overpowers differences from the rural sample that might otherwise be attributed to community size and setting. finally, it is necessary to challenge and augment the heteronormative nature of these findings by more explicitly inviting the voices and perspectives of lgbtq youth on intimate relationships. as gender-variant people and those with non-dominant sexual orientations are often the targets of bullying at school (wright & perry, 2006), it would be important to engage in more international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 15 anonymous ways of gathering such data so that young people who identify as queer or questioning would feel safer about participating. future directions collins, welsh, and furman (2009) and connolly et al. (2014) emphasized the need to speak with ethnically diverse participants. our study explores a multicultural sampling of youth in one canadian city. future research could extend this inquiry to other urban centres. ultimately, cross-national samples could be investigated. from our urban youth discussions, there is a clear need for a deepened exploration of differing ethnic groups’ parent–teen struggles, as well as more research on youths’ negotiating intimate partner relationships. many of our urban, multicultural youths were first-generation canadians, placing these teens in a particularly challenging position wherein they attempt to adapt to both their parents’ traditional culture, and to the majority culture as it is portrayed in media; as it is experienced with their school peer groups; and as it is required elsewhere in their lives. inter-ethnic dating relationships are on the increase (uskul, lalond, & konanur, (2011), and cultural differences can compound relational differences in communication styles. also, differing views on sexuality increase the potential for conflict. the youths in this study expressed concerns regarding the influences of gendered expectations, culture, and media, and they spoke about resistant actions they might take to counter oppressive aspects of those influences. future research in this area could examine how best to assist youth resisting the more pernicious influences of gender stereotypes, media distortions of dating, and cultural expectations regarding romantic relationships, in order to continue to create healthier dating relationships. this work could involve identifying and supporting how youth use social media to resist some of the cultural and gender limitations, or the oppression they experience. ultimately, research of this kind will ground interventions for healthier teen dating relationships in the words and actions of teens themselves. acknowledgements this research would not have been possible without the participation of the teenage students, the collaborating teacher, the high school principal, and the school district involved. we heartily thank them all for their contributions and cooperation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(1): 1–19 16 references arthur, n., & collins, s. 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method participants data collection and analysis findings balancing cultural expectations wrestling with gender expectations in cultural context communicating making sacrifices standing up for oneself and showing respect or disrespect religion and culture, and standing up for oneself digital and social media as a contextual condition discussion implications: digital and social media implications: youth in a multicultural setting limitations future directions acknowledgements references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717878 the role of schools in shaping the settlement experiences of newcomer immigrant and refugee youth erwin dimitri selimos and yvette daniel abstract: this paper draws on focus groups and interviews with newcomer immigrant and refugee youth between the ages of 16 and 22 to consider how schools shape their settlement processes and their sense of social inclusion and belonging. in particular, the paper focuses on newcomer youth’s perspectives and experiences of schooling in a medium-sized immigrant-receiving city in canada. analysis reveals that schools function as sites of both inclusion and exclusion in ways that produce ambivalence in immigrant and refugee youth with respect to their sense of social inclusion and belonging to community life. one recommendation emerging from the analysis is that educational practitioners and other community stakeholders interested in supporting the social inclusion of newcomer youth should develop and implement esl and eld programs and ensure adequate funding of these essential programs. there is also a need for collaborative, dialogical practices that provide all relevant stakeholders, including newcomer youth themselves, opportunities to come together to create new possibilities for understanding and cooperative action. keywords: newcomer immigrant and refugee youth, schools, settlement, social inclusion and exclusion erwin dimitri selimos phd (corresponding author) is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of sociology, university of alberta, 116 st. and 85 ave., edmonton, ab t6g 2r3. email: selimos@ualberta.ca yvette daniel phd is associate professor of educational administration and policy studies, faculty of education, university of windsor, 401 sunset ave, windsor, on n9b 3p4. http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs82201717878 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 91 countries that receive young migrants, including canada, are faced with the challenges of integrating these populations socially, culturally, and economically. in canada, as well as internationally, there has been increased focus on local community capacity to enhance the social inclusion of immigrants and refugees (george, selimos, & ku, 2017); united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization, 2016). given this reality, there is a need to explore the effectiveness of community services that support the social inclusion of young migrants in order to design better service provisions and supports. while some research has focused on how communities cultivate and enhance immigrant inclusion (george et al., 2017), less research has considered how immigrant and refugee youth experience the practices that aim to support their settlement (ngo, 2009). schools are central institutions of community life and play a critical role in the social inclusion of newcomer immigrant and refugee youth (brewers & mccabe, 2014; devine, 2011; levasseur, 2008). in fact, the importance of schooling to the social inclusion of newcomer youth can be seen in both canadian studies (anisef & kilbride, 2003; garnett, adamuti-trache, & ungerleider, 2008; krahn & taylor, 2005; sweet, anisef, & walters, 2010; wilkinson, yan, ka tat tsang, sin, & lauer, 2011) and international studies (devine, 2011; fangen, johansson, & hammaren, 2012) that examine immigrant youths’ educational challenges, needs, and outcomes. however, research rarely situates newcomer youths’ schooling experiences within the larger community context in which their settlement and inclusion unfolds. any consideration of how communities can support the settlement of newcomer youth must consider how schools shape their social inclusion processes within community life. drawing on focus groups and semi-structured interviews conducted with newcomer youth, this paper explores their experiences of schooling in a medium-sized immigrant-receiving city in ontario, canada. in particular, it contributes to international and canadian literature on migrant youth inclusion by exploring how newcomer youths’ sense of social inclusion and belonging to community life is shaped by schools. the paper is guided by three main questions:  how do schools attempt to facilitate the settlement and social inclusion of newcomer immigrant and refugee youth?  how do newcomer youth experience their education and schooling within this institutional framework?  what effects, if any, do schools have on young immigrants’ and refugees’ sense of identity, social inclusion, and belonging to community life? our analysis shows that schools function simultaneously as sites of social inclusion and exclusion. the placement of newcomer youth into specific “immigrant-receiving schools”, as well as their placement into distinct language-learning classes within those schools, tends to segregate them from other youth. the effect is to create spaces of inclusion and belonging within the school and community (places newcomer youth can come together), while simultaneously engendering international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 92 their exclusion from what many participants referred to as “real canadians”. this semipermeable and dynamic social segregation produces feelings of support, inclusion, and belonging, but these are made ambivalent by concurrent feelings of stigmatization and marginality. newcomer youth, social inclusion and exclusion, and schools settlement is defined here as the long-term, dynamic process through which immigrants attempt to achieve full participation in various domains of social life in the society of permanent residence (murphy, 2010, p. 11). in this sense, settlement presumes processes of social exclusion and inclusion. social exclusion refers to the process by which individuals and groups are disconnected from social relations and institutions (silver, 2007). at the level of social participation, social exclusion includes being denied access or confronted with barriers to participation in the various institutions of society, including education, the labour market, community life, and political decision-making. at the symbolic level, social exclusion is expressed through experiences of being disrespected, and marked as different in derogatory ways (fangen et al., 2012, pp. 7 & 10). davis and hill (2006) note that the nature of our social relations can also serve to integrate people into support networks and social and economic institutions (p. 4). social inclusion can be thought of as a process of building social connections, participating in social institutions, and being recognized as a rightful member of a community. the social exclusion of immigrant and refugee youth is well documented internationally in research showing that migrant youth are systematically denied access to and participation in education, the labour market, the political system, and even some public spaces (fangen et al., 2012). canadian scholarship discusses the various barriers newcomer youth face to social, economic, and political inclusion, such as: the challenges and difficulties of learning english (anisef & kilbride, 2003); limited services and resources (francis & yan, 2016; walsh, este, krieg, & giurgiu, 2011); discrimination (shahsiah, 2006; tomic, 2012); peer victimization and bullying (mckenney, pepler, craig, & connolly, 2006); and multifaceted barriers to labour market participation (lauer, wilkinson, yan, sin, & ka tat tsang, 2012; taylor & krahn, 2013; wilkinson et al., 2011). when newcomer youth settle in a new community, they are often circumscribed by their dual status as both young people and new immigrants. they often lack social connections and knowledge of their new communities of residence; schools are the main institutions where they develop this cultural knowledge, build social connections, acquire social capital, and begin to participate in their communities (brewers & mccabe, 2014). in school, newcomer youth are socialized into the norms of the host society, are offered specific targeted supports, such as language training and work experience programmes, and find avenues to participation in community life through volunteer opportunities, field trips, and extracurricular activities. the importance of schools to the social inclusion of immigrant and refugee youth is reflected in the many canadian studies that examine their educational experiences and educational outcomes (anisef & kilbride, 2003; garnett et al., 2008; hebert, sun, & kwoch, 2004; krahn & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 93 taylor, 2005; sweet et al., 2010; wilkinson et al., 2011; wilkinson, 2002) and their educational concerns and struggles (kanu, 2008; ngo & schliefer, 2005). overall, these studies detail the factors that hinder immigrant and refugee youths’ educational achievement, including lack of familiarity with schooling norms in the host society, lack of access to adequate english as a second language instruction, racism and discrimination, peer exclusion and bullying, and limited participation in school activities (see ngo & schleifer, 2005 for a detailed summary). however, the learning that happens in schools must be conceived more broadly than simply the development of skills, language proficiencies, academic knowedge, or the opportunity to participate in the larger society. as devine (2011, p. 133) reminded us, schooling involves a process of subjectification in which young people come to understand their relations to other people and their position within the social order (see also lave & wenger, 1991; willis, 1977). overt administrative and pedagogical practices (e.g., specialization and differentiation among schools, course streaming, and classroom teaching) and covert practices (rituals, routines, and social relations) tacitly communicate values, beliefs, and norms to young people, including newcomer youth, in ways that position them “in relation to a number of identity constructs and classificatory systems” (hall, 2002, p. 89). through these practices, schools intentionally or unintentionally impose conditions on young people’s possibilities and pathways for establishing relations with others (see sedano, 2012, p. 383). in this way, schools help produce subjectivity among those defined as “normal” or as “different” (hall, 2002, p. 89). the city and its architecture of educational supports for newcomer youth this research took place in a medium-sized, immigrant-receiving city in ontario, canada. in recent years, the city has experienced significant economic issues, including high levels of unemployment, due to the decline of the auto-manufacturing industry in north america. the city has a rich cultural and migratory history, including first nations people, english and french colonization, and waves of european immigrant settlement, including italians, greeks, eastern europeans, and middle eastern immigrants from lebanon, producing a layered ethnocultural diversity made even more complex by the continual arrival of new immigrants. in fact, despite its economic struggles, the city remains an important immigrant destination in ontario, especially among those outside the greater toronto area, and is exemplary of multicultural canada. the city’s migration history and continuing role as an immigrant destination site has led to the development of a robust infrastructure to help with the settlement of newcomer immigrants. seven main agencies provide settlement services, which include language classes, orientation and citizenship programs, and employment assistance. settlement agencies throughout the city offer programs specifically targeting newcomer youth, including homework support, access to computers and the internet, employment help, counselling services, and extracurricular activities such as drumming circles, art classes, and field trips. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 94 table 1 student population characteristics by high school amoved to canada within the last three years from a country other than australia, great britain, ireland, new zealand, or the united states. bmoved to canada within the last three years from a country other than belgium, benin, bulgaria, burkina faso, burundi, cambodia, cameroon, ca pe verde, central african republic, chad, comoros, congo, democratic republic of the congo, cote d'ivoire, djibouti, dominica, egypt, equatorial guinea, france, gabon, guinea, guinea-bissau, haiti, laos, lebanon, luxembourg, madagascar, mali, mauritania, mauritius, republic of moldova, monaco, morocco, niger, romania, rwanda, sao tome and principe, senegal, seychelles, st. lucia, switzerland, togo, trinidad and tobago, vanuatu or vietnam. population characteristics provincial average (%) public high schools 1 – 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 percentage of students who live in low-income households 16.9 24 29 13 27 36 10 23 13 11 23 22 11 18 20 20 22 12 n/a percentage of students whose parents have some university education 35.6 26 20 21 21 17 40 19 25 26 21 20 37 17 24 23 31 25 n/a percentage of students who receive special education services 14.9 16 16.1 19.5 98.4 13 15.1 5.6 13.4 24.8 n/a 3.3 7.6 17.1 12.8 21.6 17.3 19.2 n/a percentage of students identified as gifted 1.4 0.7 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 0.5 0.3 n/a n/a n/a 2.9 n/a 0.4 0.4 n/a n/a n/a percentage of students whose first language is not english 23.9 20.9 48.3 6.7 5.3 55.1 13.9 24.6 18.6 15.2 3.9 13.8 43.3 8.6 6 9.4 84.6 41.8 n/a percentage of students whose first language is not french 96.7 99.5 100 99.9 100 98.6 99.3 100 99.9 99.3 100 99.5 99.2 99.3 99.9 99.2 80.8 70.1 n/a percentage of students who are new to canada from a non-english speaking countrya 3.0 1.5 24.5 0.7 0.3 29.7 0.7 1.0 0.6 0.6 n/a 3 2.8 0.2 0.8 n/a 13.5 2.7 n/a percentage of students who are new to canada from a non-frenchspeaking countryb 3.1 1.8 23.1 0.9 0.5 26.8 0.6 1.0 0.7 0.7 n/a 2.7 2.8 0.5 1.0 0.4 n/a 1.4 n/a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 95 table 1 demonstrates the differentiation of student populations in the city’s high schools. the table data were drawn from the ontario ministry of education’s school information finder: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sift/. two local english-speaking high schools play a key role in the settlement and social inclusion of immigrant and refugee youth. in relation to other schools in the city, these two schools (schools 2 and 5 in the table) have among the highest percentage of students who live in low-income households and among the lowest percentage of students whose parents have some university education — two widely used indicators of social class. a major difference remains the “newness” of the school population, as recent immigrants are largely concentrated into these two high schools. the overview in table 1 suggests both the spatialization and concentration of poor, racialized, and newcomer youth into particular schools. the social significance and effects of this concentration on immigrant and refugee youth identity will be explored later in the paper. when immigrant and refugee youth arrive, they are placed into one of three academic streams based on an assessment of their educational levels: english language development (eld), english as a second language (esl), and “regular” or “mainstream” programs. eld programs specifically target students with significant gaps in their previous education and those who speak very little or no english. these students require intensive specialized literacy and english language instruction. the esl program is designed primarily for students who have received a steady and consistent education but require english language instruction. in high school, both eld and esl programs have five levels, a through e. when students are in the first two levels (a and b), they are typically placed in “sheltered classrooms” in combination with some regular non-academic classes such as art, physical education, and drama. sheltered classes allow for intensive targeted language instruction. participation in these select mainstream classes provides additional social engagement opportunities. when students enter the c, d, and e levels, they begin to take more regular academic or non-academic classes. by level e students usually take only one eld or esl course and are enrolled in regular classes. regular courses offer three streams: applied, academic, and essential. students who graduate from the eld program typically enter either the applied or the essential stream, while students who graduate from the esl program typically enter the applied or the academic stream. students who complete essential-level courses are awarded a certificate of completion and move directly into the workforce upon completion of their studies. in addition to the english language and development curriculum, the schools in our study offer various supplemental services and programs that assist immigrant newcomer youth, such as free breakfast and lunch programs and transportation vouchers. these schools also have partnerships with settlement workers in school, a program funded by citizenship and immigration canada that places trained settlement workers into schools in order to provide a direct point of access to various settlement services for young immigrants and their families. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sift/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 96 overview of the study this paper draws on focus group and interview data collected as part of a larger study that examined the migration, settlement, and social inclusion experiences of immigrant and refugee youth living in the city (selimos, 2017). the research study included three focus groups with a total of 35 newcomer youth and 30 in-depth interviews with newcomer youth; a total of 65 youth (m = 30, f = 35) participated in the study. there were also 18 interviews with teachers and social workers who work closely with immigrant youth living in the city. participants in the three focus groups were recruited through local settlement agencies. they were between 16 and 22 years of age, with 17 males and 18 females. during these group conversations, participants were asked to discuss a series of questions that explored their migration and settlement experiences with particular attention to their schooling experiences. participants were also asked to comment on the challenges they faced coming to live in a new country and a new city with respect to various spheres of their lives, including family, school, peer relations, and community. the 30 newcomer youth interview participants were recruited through a local high school and through various settlement agencies in the city. interview participants ranged from 16 to 22 years of age. thirteen males and 17 females participated in the interviews. semi-structured interviews sought to generate insights into the personal stories of migration and to understand how youth participants made sense of and experienced their migration, settlement, and social inclusion in canada. in particular, interview participants were asked to reflect on their premigration lives and their current lives in canada, including their experiences with schools and their future aspirations and goals. topics of discussion included their families, friends and peers, schools, neighbourhoods, employment experiences, and their overall impressions of the city. in addition to focus groups and interviews with immigrant and refugee youth, interviews with 15 teachers and 3 youth settlement workers were conducted. although we do not feature their voices prominently in this paper, we used these interviews primarily as “factual interviews” (kvale & brinkmann, 2009, p. 150) in order to gain a contextual understanding of the range and the types of services and educational programs available to young immigrants and refugees in the city. most newcomer youth participants had lived in canada for less than five years. their countries of descent were diverse, including iraq, congo, somalia, ethiopia, albania, guinea, haiti, eritrea, china, lebanon, sudan, liberia, russia, jordan, haiti, burundi, el salvador, the dominican republic, and the philippines. forty percent of the participants arrived as refugees; the remainder entered canada through family sponsorship programs or as dependents of parents who immigrated to canada through the skilled workers program. there was considerable variation in the size and composition of their families in canada: with parents, in a one-parent household, without parents, with relatives, and in a large family with many siblings. some had parents who were highly educated professionals or who came from, as one participant remarked, “distinguished international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 97 families” in their countries of origin. others had parents with limited university education who had worked in non-professional fields or were small business owners in their home countries. many of the participants’ parents were attending english courses and were either looking for work or, if already working, looking for more reliable, full-time employment, suggesting a significant degree of financial insecurity. all interviews and focus groups were conducted in english. the resulting data were transcribed, and analyzed according to themes that produced insights into participants’ migration and settlement experiences. the analysis provided in this paper focuses specifically on participants’ experiences of education and schooling pertaining to the three guiding questions listed above. in order to protect the anonymity of research participants, all names used in this paper are pseudonyms, and any information that could be used to identify the participant has been removed or altered. findings participants consistently framed canada as a place of opportunity and stressed education as the central arena in which their dreams and desires for a better life could be fulfilled. they spoke of their desire to achieve academic success, their high educational aspirations, and their strong valuation of education (krahn & taylor, 2005), insights that align with other scholars who have suggested that the very decision to migrate “is indicative of a ‘goal directed’ activity that is centered on working actively toward improving familial life chances, which will in itself be reflected in positive orientations and work effort in school” (devine, 2011, p. 136–137). overall, our findings point to how the everyday practices and social organization of schooling produce contradictory effects on newcomer youths’ sense of themselves, their aspirations, and their feelings of inclusion and belonging. in order to demonstrate these simultaneous and contradictory processes, we examine (a) the manner in which participants’ spoke about the position of their schools within the larger community, (b) the nature of peer relations among students within their schools, and (c) the complex relationships participants forged with school officials, focusing particularly on teachers. schools as sites of belonging and stigmatization newcomer youth identified their schools not just as places of learning, but as central sites of their settlement, social inclusion, and belonging. it was at school that they learned english and learned about the community and larger canadian society, and they appreciated the supports they received in these schools. tahir, 19, originally from iraq, summed up a general feeling among many participants when he declared: i think it’s a place. they gave me like experience. it’s the place that taught everything about, i don’t want to say the outside world, but it’s a place that taught me mostly everything. how to interact with people, how to make friendships… international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 98 high school for me in canada was beyond just getting lessons and marks.… like they teach you things that are not in the books.… i would say they teach you to be involved in the community. perhaps because of these supports, newcomer youth developed deep attachments to their schools and it was common for participants to describe their school as a second “home” that “helps a lot” and “feels like a family.” many spent most of their days at school, arriving early to study or socialize and staying late to be with friends or participate in extracurricular activities. the multicultural nature of their schools and the presence of other immigrant youth were highlighted as features that made participants feel a sense of comfort and belonging. participants saw themselves reflected in the peers around them and felt that fellow students and some school officials shared an understanding of the problems and pressures they faced. school was a place where “everybody was from somewhere else” and where cultural differences were accepted as a normal feature of everyday life. aniso, 19, a refugee from somalia who had lived in canada for nearly five years, expressed the common feeling of belonging that resulted from the presence of many other immigrants in her school: when i am with people from all around the world, i don’t know it’s just, i don’t know how to describe, it’s just a feeling that i get, it just makes me, automatically i feel comfortable around with them. multicultural celebrations, hallways decorated with flags and maps from around the world, and citizenship ceremonies contributed to a feeling that their schools were international places that valued diversity. although participants took tremendous pride in the multicultural nature of their schools, many also recognized that their schools were somehow different from other high schools in the city. as several teachers suggested, “to be different is to be normal here”, and “to be the minority is to be in the majority” — sentiments often reiterated by the young people interviewed. in fact, throughout the interviews and focus groups, newcomer youth referred to their high schools as the “multicultural schools” while the other high schools were where “canadians” go. although this perception ignores the complex social and cultural diversities characterizing other schools in the city, as well as the presence of long-term residents and canadian-born youth in the “multicultural schools”, it highlights a common perspective amongst both staff members and immigrant youth that their schools were somehow “marked off” from mainstream canadian schools. many teachers and newcomer youth, especially those who had lived long enough in canada to become aquainted with the larger community, were sensitive to negative stereotypes surrounding their schools. their schools were often seen as poor, non-academic, drug-riddled, and violent. such characterizations mixed classist, xenophobic, and racialized discourses with stereotypes about the particular ethnic and racial groups that attended these schools. participants shared with me some of the nicknames others in the community had for their schools: “welfare international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 99 high”, “little mogadishu”, and “terrorist high”. as one teacher who had worked in one of the immigrant-receiving schools for over 30 years commented: we get stuff when we go to other schools. you know people cheer, “they will blow-up your house!” just this year we had one of our kids, a basketball player, he was a tall skinny kid, and they started cheering, “he’s hungry, he’s hungry, he’s hungry!” you know, ridiculing the kid.… or we go to games and they cheer “e-sl, e-s-l. what do our kids do [in response]? s-t-ds, s-t-ds. so we get that crap. “people assume things from the outside,” another teacher told me. “they hear the stories that there are gangs and all that stuff going on in our building.” one youth participant noted that people “look at the school as a place [that is] academically poor, a place where all disputes and fights take place.” he continued, they always try to find the bad things within the school. that’s what i’m looking for. while other schools that have bad things too, they don’t focus on the bad things that happen in other schools.… i actually don’t have an answer for that. i have no idea. … maybe, just because they are immigrants. you know what i mean? so it’s that would make a difference. school stigmatization shaped how youth understood themselves and their place in the larger community. for one season, the first author assisted in coaching soccer teams at one of the “immigrant-receiving” schools. the following conversation was documented after our team lost a match that was perceived by the players to be poorly and unfairly officiated: player: they always treat us like this. they hate us.” author: what do you mean they hate you? player: they hate [our school]. author: why do they hate [the school]? player: because we’re multicultural. participants responded to these stereotypes by asserting that all schools have problems and that, in fact, their schools were much safer and had much less of a drug-use problem than many of the other schools in the city. immigrant and refugee youth suggested that they were much more appreciative of teachers and the educational opportunities that were available to them than were canadian students, who in their opinion were more likely to feel a sense of entitlement, and be disrespectful and unappreciative of teachers. although most students were not interested in leaving their schools, some transferred or attempted to transfer to other schools in the city after completing their language courses. this was usually because those other schools were closer to their homes or because they believed that those international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 100 other schools offered more advanced academic courses, which they thought would better improve their chances of attending university. participants had varying experiences of transferring from their “multicultural schools” to these “canadian” schools. gideon, for instance, contrasted the diversity of his old school to his new school in the city, framing his experience primarily as an opportunity to learn about canadian culture: [my old school] was very different because it was like everyone was from all over the world. so i got to learn a lot about different cultures.… but at [my new school], it feels like everyone is the same. it’s mostly like one culture, like canadian people. at [name of school] you actually learn more about canada, which is good for me because i really lack a lot of stuff about canada. amina, on the other hand, relayed the negative experience she faced when she attempted to register at another school in the city: i am not in esl anymore.… i went there. i gave all my papers and [the principal] looked at me in a dirty look way, because i wear hijab. my level of english, honestly, it’s not that good. i know that. i have an accent. [mocking the voice of the principal]: “in here, we have to measure the language of how you speak and how you read. our students, they have a really high-speaking english.” i know what was meant: “i don’t think you should be here.” … actually it was my dream school. … there it’s like the same thing as college. what you’re taking, it’s really hard. … i was dreaming about it even, honestly. but what [the principal] said ruined my day. i even cried. i just walked away. moti shared a similar experience: i went by myself and then [they] saw my mother with the hijab … [the principal] is smiling at me like this and then sees my mom walking from the back. [their] face changes. … right away, i knew that [they] wouldn’t accept me. … so you just deal with it and go back to your school. in sum, participants developed strong attachments to their schools, both a strong sentiment of school belonging related to the support they received, and the solidarity emerging from the presence of other immigrants, co-ethnics, or people from similar regions in the world. simultaneously, however, the concentration of newcomer immigrant and refugee youth into particular schools reproduced categories of “mainstream” and “other”, a division which participants incorporated into how they spoke of their schools and themselves. peer relations in school: complex inclusions and exclusions the concentration of newcomer youth in specific schools in the community, as well as the daily structure of school life, which for many included targeted edl or esl instruction, shaped the everyday interactional opportunities for newcomer youth. newcomer youth tended to develop international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 101 friendships with other newcomer youth, often across different cultural or linguistic backgrounds. friendships formed around “shared tastes” (harris, 2013, p. 42–45) in school matters, music, film, sport, or fashion, and the common experience of migration and settlement. participants noted the normality of routine intercultural encounters and highlighted the high levels of civility and appreciation for cultural differences, especially in their english language learning classes. many told stories of how they supported each other in school by helping with homework, re-explaining assignments, and providing each other with information about the school system and the larger community. however, some suggested that outside of structured school activities, as joseph put it, “kids want to hang out with their own kind. arabs want to hang out with the arabs. mexicans want to hang out with the mexicans.” recent immigrants were more likely to “hang out” with their own ethnocultural groups or with students who shared similar cultural, religious, or regional affiliations; this effect may be due to a natural tendency to seek comfort in the company of those who share cultural or linguistic similarities, especially in the early period of settlement. often, these young people were not judged negatively by their immigrant peers, as many could empathize with the feeling of seeking comfort in people who shared a similar background. some identified strong social pressure to hang out with peers from their ethnocultural background. they told stories of being teased, gossiped about, or criticized on occasions when they sought to make friends with other peers. in some cases, these interactions impacted their desire to build friendships outside of their ethnocultural group. others said that they distanced themselves from people of their own cultural or linguistic background, actively seeking friends among those who did not share it. they found their co-ethnic peers “gossipy”, judgmental, and jealous. participants reported that intercultural conflicts among newcomer youth were quite rare. when conflicts did occur, participants often downplayed the role of interethnic hostilities and usually explained these events as the result of personal disagreements. however, some participants did speak of being the target of racial name calling from other immigrant students. for example, michael, originally from ethiopia, experienced several months of racialized teasing from a group of immigrant peers after first arriving in canada. however, as he established himself as a willing student and connected with these peers over a mutual interest in basketball, they became his friends. this narrative suggests that racialized teasing may be experienced more acutely during the “first phase of strangeness and adaptation” (sedano, 2012) and fade as common bonds are formed and as new students enter into peer culture. close friendships between newcomer youth and canadian-born youth were relatively uncommon. participants cited a range of reasons for this phenomenon. first, they highlighted the lack of opportunities to interact with canadian-born or long-term residents given that most of their school time was spent in edl and esl courses. it was only after they successfully transferred out of these courses into a regular stream that they had more opportunities to interact and build friendships. second, lack of english language skills and a lack of confidence in their communication skills meant some felt too intimidated and embarrassed to approach “canadian” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 102 students. they worried about being teased or criticized for linguistic errors. third, “canadian” students belonged to already established, close-knit groups that often stretched back to grade school. these groups had formed around identities, interests, and norms and were not necessarily open to new members. as wahid, 21, reported: see the thing is you would see arabs who were born here and they are friends with canadians, like white people who were born here. it’s mostly like the people who are born here, as a group, and then the people who were not born here is another group. i think it’s an obvious reason. most people you see at [school], they come from the same grade school. it’s your grade school friends who come out with you to grade nine. they attended grade school and they would obviously hang out together rather than hang out with someone new. some participants were wary of getting too close to certain long-term resident or canadian-born youth, including those who shared a similar ethnic or racial background. they took issue with certain behaviours they thought were characteristic of these youth, such as being disrespectful to teachers, doing drugs, drinking alcohol, swearing, or being sexually permissive. a few spoke of racist slurs or xenophobic comments made by canadian youth toward them, such as being told they were terrorists, to take off their hijabs, or to “go back to the jungle”. although most saw these racist insults as the actions of a few “bad apples” — reaffirming that they believed canadians were “very nice” — these incidents did have the effect of qualifying with whom they wished to become friends. some participants succeeded in forging friendships with canadian-born or long-term resident youth. in many cases, this was a result of a canadian peer reaching out and introducing himself or herself, and typically this friendship formed after several years of living in canada. often, such friendships formed when newcomer youth transitioned from english language learning classes into mainstream courses. participants also formed friendships with long-term resident youth through participation in extracurricular or leisure activities, especially team sports. participation in these activities encouraged interaction and provided a common interest around which friendships could form. in summary, participants typically divided their discussion of friendships between, on the one hand, their relationships with other newcomer youth and, on the other hand, the nature of social relationships between them and canadian-born or long-term resident youth. this is perhaps not surprising given that the daily structure of educational spaces limited opportunities to interact with canadian-born or long-term resident youth, so most developed friendships with other newcomer immigrant peers, often across complex social and cultural differences. these friends understood each other’s struggles; the common experience of migration and settlement was a central feature of their collective bonds. furthermore, the perceived exclusiveness of alreadyexisting peer groups made it difficult for immigrant and refugee youth to forge friendships with canadian-born or long-term resident youth. for some, experiences of racism, xenophobia, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 103 islamophobia were felt as direct threats to one’s reputation and sense of self. in response, immigrant and refugee youth searched for friends who provided a safe environment, and this sometimes meant selecting friends who were socially and culturally similar. student-teacher relationships: providing support and reproducing dependencies the majority of participants viewed mastering english and achieving english fluency as the most important step towards“making a life” in canada and being able to assist one’s family in the daily activities of life outside school. given the high priority of english language learning among participants, it is not surprising that many participants spoke highly of the english language supports they received at school, particularly the close relationships they developed with their english language teachers, often identifying by name the teachers who really “helped them out”. in fact, it was common for participants to speak about how they “loved” certain english language teachers and considered some of them to be like second mothers or fathers. as aniso said, “teachers are like my family” who “tell me what canada is”. in addition to teaching newcomers “the gift of language,” as one participant remarked, english language teachers represented for many the key source of information about canada, and a critical node of care and support during their initial, difficult transition to canadian society. ayaan, 18, originally from somalia, expanded on this point: when i came here i wasn’t knowing the language.… if i need to talk [to] someone, a student bullying me, i would always go and talk to my teachers. they help me, and they were always telling me what canada is. how people is. they teach me a lot about canada. so, i would say [my school] was part of my life being in canada. participants also commented on the “extra help” many teachers provided, which included assisting students after school with homework, providing assistance with filling out various application forms, discussing future career plans, attending sporting events, giving advice, supervising afterschool clubs, providing rides home (especially in the winter months), and even giving young people money to buy lunch, school supplies, or a bus ticket. however, participants also spoke about the ways teachers and school practices discouraged, thwarted, and limited their aspirations. many spoke of feeling that some teachers treated them in ways that communicated they were somehow less intelligent than canadian-born or long-term resident youth. the impact of teacher judgements was particularly salient when participants spoke about course placements. some participants reported feeling that they were unfairly placed by school officials into course streams below their perceived abilities and in contrast to their academic and career goals. this issue related to placement in english language learning courses (eld vs. esl), as well as content-area courses such as mathematics and the sciences. furthermore, in cases where some newcomer youth felt they were placed in courses below their competencies or wishes, many found it difficult to convince school officials to switch them out of those courses, especially those who did not have family members or adults who could international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 104 advocate on their behalf. immigrant youth were particularly upset about being streamed into nonacademic classes because they knew that to achieve their high educational aspirations, they needed to be in academic classes. analysis of interview and focus group data suggests that racialized youth were more likely to remark on issues of course placement. samuel, a refugee from the democratic republic of the congo, told a long story of being placed in an applied mathematics course, despite the fact that he felt he had sufficient grades to be placed in a more advanced class. despite meeting with his teachers and expressing his concerns, he was unable to transfer out of the class and is now trying to upgrade his courses through distance education. other participants shared stories of being told that their expectations were too high and that they should aim to become plumbers or welders. moti, originally from ethiopia, observed, “all the people who come from africa, they put them in eld. the people who come from european countries who don’t speak english goes to esl.” amina, originally from somalia, told us that her friend and her sister were both placed into workplace english even though her sister “passed with 80 in her esl” and that she “should go to academic or applied classes.” she stated that the experience was very disheartening: “they started crying, you know, [because it meant] you can’t go to college until you’re 21.” in sum, newcomer youth juxtaposed the benevolence and support they received from teachers with school practices and attitudes that thwarted or blocked their future prospects. teachers were sources of critical support and guidance, but their decisions also helped reproduce newcomer youths’ dependencies in ways that limited their social pathways. in the context of our research, racialized youth were more likely to identify course placements as an issue of significant concern. discussion this study foregrounds a complex picture of the myriad ways in which schools shape the social inclusion of newcomer youth. the study offers three important insights that show how schools function simultaneously as sites of inclusion and exclusion in ways that produce ambivalence in newcomer youth with respect to their sense of social inclusion and belonging. first, the concentration of newcomer youth into particular schools marked them out from other youth populations in ways that reproduced categories of “mainstream” and “other”. although other schools in the city are diverse in terms of the social, cultural, and economic background of the students and staff, the participants in this study understood their schools to be the “multicultural schools” while other schools were where “ordinary canadians” go. participants incorporated this distinction — this sense of ”being other” — into how they spoke of their schools and themselves. within this context of school differentiation, participants developed strong attachments to their respective schools. this sense of belonging related to the social and cultural recognition they received in their schools and the solidarity emerging from the presence of other immigrants, cointernational journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 105 ethnics, or people from similar regions in the world; it was also perhaps a reaction to the stigmatization of their schools within the larger community. second, within the immigrant-receiving schools, the daily structure of educational programs limited newcomer youth’s opportunities to interact with canadian-born or long-term resident youth. most developed friendships with other newcomer peers, often across complex social and cultural differences, by bonding over the common experience of being a newcomer immigrant. while their sense of being a newcomer certainly influenced these friendship dynamics, other factors also shaped with whom newcomer youth formed friendships. the perceived exclusiveness of established peer groups made it difficult for newcomer youth to forge friendships with canadian-born or long-term resident youth. moreover, linguistic insecurity, the fear of being teased or humiliated, and concerns over experiences of racism, xenophobia, and islamophobia further limited interactions. in order to avoid humiliation or embarrassment, some chose friends who would provide a safe environment, which sometimes meant selecting friends who were socially and culturally similar. what emerges are complex peer group inclusions and exclusions that produce feelings of support, inclusion, and belonging, as well as stigmatization and marginality. third, participants consistently formed positive relationships with their teachers, especially with their english language teachers. however, several racialized newcomer youth also commented passionately on the effects of low expectations on their self-confidence and sense of future opportunity. these findings corroborate previous research showing that racialized minority youth, immigrant or not, are often stereotyped by school officials in ways that shape and limit their educational experiences and opportunities (dei, mazzuca, mcisaac, & zine, 1997). krahn and taylor (n.d.) noted inconsistent findings in statistical research regarding course streaming, with some studies indicating that immigrant youth can be disproportionately found in educational streams that would restrict their educational options, while other studies suggest that these young people are encouraged to “aim high”. while this qualitative research study cannot demonstrate the frequency of these reported phenomena, it demonstrates that issues of low expectations among teachers remain a recurrent and passionate topic of concern among many newcomer youth. limitations we would like to draw attention to the fact that we did not use translators, primarily due to budget restrictions. hence, acceptable english proficiency was an important selection criterion for interview and focus group participation; immigrant youth who lacked english abilities could not be included. the young people who participated in this study also attended english-speaking high schools in the city. the city has a relatively substantial french-speaking immigrant population, and some young french-speaking immigrant youth attend french-speaking high schools in the city. the social inclusion experiences of these newcomers is an important area of future inquiry. gender and race/ethnicity emerged as important factors shaping young immigrants’ migration and settlement experiences, including their schooling experiences. although this study identified the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 106 complexity and heterogeneity of participants’ experiences, it did not provide a detailed gender or race analysis. how, for example, do gender and race shape how newcomer youth experience schooling, peer groups, and community life? these important questions deserve heightened attention in future research. conclusion what then are the policy and practical implications that we offer as a result of this study, which has emphasized through youth narratives the complexities of how schools shape newcomer youth inclusion and exclusion? educational policymakers and practitioners at all levels must comprehend and be willing to deal with the complexity of the factors that come into play as they create and implement programs and practices geared to the settlement and social inclusion of newcomer youth. the first practical implication of this study is that robust educational supports and services for initial settlement needs such as language learning are, according to newcomer youth themselves, appreciated and highly welcome. youth narratives confirmed the effectiveness of these supports and point to the important role they play in their lives. educational practitioners and other community stakeholders interested in supporting the social inclusion of newcomer youth should develop and implement esl and eld programs and ensure adequate funding of these essential programs. while educational supports for initial settlement needs are essential, attention should also be paid to the long-term inclusion of newcomer youth. it is a major challenge for communities to create practical approaches that do not contribute to social segregation or limit the social pathways of newcomer youth. while the challenges identified in this paper are not unique to the site of the research study, these complexities play out within the unique social, cultural, economic, and institutional arrangements that characterize the host communities. educational practitioners should critically examine how extant structures create both inclusionary and exclusionary practices and seek a synthesis of ideas among various stakeholders, including youth, teachers, administrators, and those within the larger community who are interested in the well-being of newcomer youth. there is a need for collaborative, dialogical practices that provide all relevant stakeholders, including newcomer youth themselves, opportunities to come together to create new possibilities of understanding and cooperative action. educational practitioners must join together collaboratively with young people and interested stakeholders within the community to create opportunities and mechanisms for ongoing dialogue and action. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(2): 90–109 107 references anisef, p., & 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incorporates international trends in disability-related policies and practices and proposes a quality of life framework for implementing the approach, which consists of input, throughput, output, and outcome components. guidelines for implementing the approach are presented, along with an example of its use. keywords: children, adolescents, quality of life, personal well-being, systematic approach robert l. schalock phd (the corresponding author) is professor emeritus at hastings college, po box 285, chewelah, washington 99109, usa. email: rschalock@ultraplix.com jos van loon phd is an adjunct research professor in the department of special needs education, university of ghent, henri dunantlaan 2, b-9000 ghent, belgium. email: vanloon.jos@gmail.com remco mostert ba is a master trainer at the arduin foundation in the netherlands and is an instructor in the faculty of education, health and social work, university college, university of ghent, geraard de duivelstraat 5, 9000 ghent, belgium. email: remcomosteret@gmail.com mailto:rschalock@ultraplix.com mailto:remcomosteret@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 189 children and adolescents with an intellectual or closely related developmental disability (idd) and their families face a number of challenges related to acceptance, placement, educational opportunities, and experiencing a life of quality. despite significant changes over the last few decades in policies and practices regarding these individuals, many still experience segregated environments and fewer opportunities for personal development, participation in regular environments, and involvement with peers who are non-disabled. the purpose of this article is to address these ongoing challenges by integrating recent international changes regarding disability policies and practices into a systematic approach that policy makers and educators can use to enhance the well-being of children and adolescents with idd. this article is divided into four sections. in the first, we identify five recent international changes that are currently influencing disability policies and practices. we incorporate these changes into our systematic approach to enhancing the personal well-being of children and adolescents. in the second section, we provide an overview of the quality of life (qol) concept and the rationale for using this concept as an underlying principle and framework for the systematic approach. in the third section, we describe the four components of the approach and include implementation guidelines for each component. in the final section, we present an example of the approach. throughout the article we focus primarily on the educational system and the education reform movement, while realizing that children and adolescents with idd live and interact in multiple environments that involve home living, community living, leisure, and recreation. although we do not address these other environments in detail, we believe that the systematic approach we describe here is applicable to these other environments. international changes influencing current disability policy and practices recent changes in several areas affect current disability-related policies and practices. these changes, international in scope, influence how services and supports are provided to children and adolescents with idd. the areas in which relevant changes are seen include professional attitudes to disability, increased knowledge about disability, disability policy, the supports paradigm, and the education reform movement. in table 1, we summarize the potential influences of trends in each area on enhancing the personal well-being of children and adolescents with idd. a listing of relevant references is also provided. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 190 table 1 international trends influencing services and supports to children and adolescents area of change potential influences relevant references professional attitudes to disability  person-referenced policies and practices (e.g., self-determination and empowerment)  system-referenced policies and practices (e.g., universal human and legal rights; equal and inclusive education) claes, vandenbussche, & lombardi (2016); shogren & turnbull (2014); turnbull & stowe (2014); united nations (2006); verdugo, navas, gomez, & schalock (2012) increased knowledge about disability  multifactorial approach to etiology  the socioecological model of disability  demonstration that with opportunity development and appropriate supports over time, the life functioning of persons with disability will generally improve nussbaum (2011); schalock & keith (2016); thompson, schalock, agosta, teninty, & fortune (2014); wehmeyer (2013) integrated approach to disability policy  special education goals encompass equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency  post-graduation measurable outcomes relate to education status, employment status, and independent living status shogren, luckasson, & schalock (2015; 2017); test et al. (2009); turnbull & stowe (2014) supports paradigm  any person-environment mismatch that results in needed supports can be addressed through the judicious use of individualized supports rather than focusing on “fixing the person”  the focus of supports should be on bridging the gap between “what is” and “what can be”  children and adolescents should be approached on the basis of the type and intensity of their support needs luckasson & schalock (2015); mpofu (2016); shogren, wehmeyer, schalock, & thompson (2017); stancliffe, arnold, & riches (2016); thompson et al. (2014) education reform movement  the centrality of communities of equality, respect, and social support  creation of inclusive educational environments whose structure is to provide opportunities and support people; whose function is to enhance participation, involvement, and development; and whose culture is reflected in respect for the student, student centeredness, and a commitment to enhance the student’s personal well-being  strength-based models of disability  capacity and potential of students  contextualized strategies that address the requirements of specific contexts and situations  relevance of the qol concept as an integrating framework in both special education and inclusive education bogdan & taylor (1989); bryant, smith, & bryant (2007); danforth & naraian (2015); noddings (1995); nussbaum (2011); pazey, schalock, schaller, & burkett (2016); shogren et al. (2015; 2017); vaughan, bos, & schumm (2010); wehmeyer (2013); yell (2012) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 191 an overview of the quality of life concept and its relevance the conceptualization and measurement of the qol of children and adolescents with idd has historically been approached from three perspectives: health-related, social indicators, and subjective well-being (wallender & koot, 2015). over the last three decades, the present article’s authors have been involved in the conceptualization, measurement, and application of the qol concept across age and diagnostic groups. in this work we have used a definition of individual qol that encompasses these three historical approaches: quality of life is a multidimensional phenomenon composed of core domains that constitute personal well-being. these domains are influenced by personal characteristics and environmental factors. one’s quality of life is the product of these factors and can be impacted positively through quality enhancement strategies that encompass developing personal talents, maximizing personal involvement, providing individualized supports, and facilitating personal growth opportunities (schalock, verdugo, gomez, & reinders, 2016, p. 2). the qol conceptual model used in this article includes eight core domains: personal development, self-determination, interpersonal relations, social inclusion, rights, emotional wellbeing, physical well-being, and material well-being. each domain has associated culturally sensitive indicators — the behaviors and conditions that give an indication of the person’s wellbeing, and provide the items for assessing domain-referenced outcomes (gomez & verdugo, 2016; schalock et al., 2016). the rationale for using a qol framework as an underlying principle and framework in implementing the systematic approach described in this article is that a qol framework: (a) integrates the five trends summarized in table 1 through its emphasis on fundamental principles related to equity, inclusion, empowerment, and self-determination; (b) incorporates a holistic, positive approach to individuals based on positive psychology and strengths-based models of growth and development; (c) provides a framework for person-centered planning; (d) allows one to evaluate the impact of various individual and environmental variables on personal outcomes: (e) reflects the individualized nature of personal well-being; (f) aligns thought and action through a “quality of life language of thought and action” whose basic concepts include human and legal rights, equity, inclusion, empowerment, and self-determination; whose relationships involve interactions, social networks, community participation, valued roles, and positive experiences; and whose spatial concepts reflect inclusion, active participation, and being in and of the community; and (g) has an extensive literature base regarding its conceptualization, measurement, and application (bigby & beadle-brown, 2014; bigby, knox, beadle-brown, & bould, 2014; brown, hatton, & emerson, 2015; claes, van hove, van loon, vandevelde, & schalock, 2009; pazey et al., 2016; reinders & schalock, 2014; schalock & keith, 2016; wehmeyer, 2013). because of its strengths and applicability, the qol concept is increasingly being used as a universal indicator of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 192 success whenever we intend to advance the well-being of children and adolescents through interventions, programs, and policy (schippers, zuna, & brown, 2015; wallender & koot, 2015). components of a systematic approach to enhancing personal well-being this section describes the four components of the proposed systematic approach, and includes implementation guidelines for each component. as the reader will find, the input component focuses on what we refer to as outcome drivers, the throughput component on practices, the output component on characteristics of inclusive education environments, and the outcome component on the assessment of qol domain indicators. input traditionally, inputs regarding education and rehabilitation programs have been viewed as resources related to fiscal and social capital, time, expertise, and technology. while these types of resources are critical, three other factors act as inputs that drive valued outcomes: foundational principles, the alignment of policy and measurable outcomes, and the pattern and intensity of the individual’s assessed support needs. foundational principles. articles contained in the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disability (uncrpd; united nations, 2006) provide a basis for those principles that drive valued outcomes for children and adolescents with idd. these involve human rights and fundamental freedoms (article 7), inclusive and equal education (article 24), participation (article 30), and freedom of expression (article 21). these four articles are consistent with the core qol principles of inclusion, equity, empowerment, and selfdetermination. alignment of policy goals and desired outcomes. this alignment can serve as a framework that enables policy makers, education providers, and support teams to begin with the end in mind and ask, “what needs to be in place for the desired outcomes to occur?” one constructive way to operationalize this alignment is to match qol indicators (i.e., desired outcomes) with core qol domains. this alignment is shown in table 2. the exemplary indicators listed are from the kidslife scale (gomez et al., 2016) and the personal outcomes scale for children and adolescents (claes, van loon, schalock, & mosteret, 2015). table 2 alignment of quality of life domains and domain indicators quality of life domain exemplary quality of life indicators personal development demonstrates self-help skills and has opportunities to learn and grow self-determination makes decisions, sets personal goals, expresses personal feelings interpersonal relations has close friends, interacts socially, is part of family interactions social inclusion participates in family and community activities, receives assistance and help from others international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 193 quality of life domain exemplary quality of life indicators rights treated the same way as his or her peers, has a pet if he or she wants one emotional well-being feels safe and secure, home and school environments are predictable, expresses satisfaction, contentment, and happiness physical well-being participates in physical activities, eats healthy food, uses supportive technology if needed (e.g., glasses, braces, wheelchair) material well-being has enough money to buy personal possessions, has own physical space pattern and intensity of support needs. the extensive work done with the supports intensity scale for children (thompson et al., 2016) has helped us to achieve a better understanding of the support needs of children and adolescents. table 3 provides an overview of support need categories and specific support need areas assessed on this scale. table 3 overview of support needs of children and adolescents with idd support need category exemplary support need areas exceptional medical needs respiratory care, feeding assistance, skin care exceptional behavioral needs externally-directed destructiveness, internally-directed destructiveness home life activities eating, dressing, toileting community and neighborhood activities moving around the neighborhood, community participation, using public services school participation activities being included in general education classrooms, participation in activities in common school areas school learning activities learning academic skills, completing academic tasks health and safety activities maintaining physical fitness, emotional wellbeing, health and wellness social activities maintaining positive relationships with others, respecting the rights of others advocacy activities making personal choices and decisions when studying table 3 it is important to note that the pattern of needed supports for children and adolescents with idd is not unlike that of children without a disability, with the possible exception of those related to exceptional medical and behavioral conditions. the intensity of those support needs will vary, however, depending on the individual’s impairment and level of functioning. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 194 implementation guidelines: input  develop school-related policies based on foundational principles embedded in the uncrpd and the qol concept.  align policies and practices to measurable outcomes.  assess the pattern and intensity of support needs. throughput the throughput component focuses on educational and support practices that encompass education reform foundational priorities, the provision of individualized supports, and the characteristics of an inclusive education environment. education reform foundational priorities. the education reform movement is based on a number of foundational priorities that include communities of equality, respect, and social support; strengths-based models of disability that build on the student’s capacities and potential; contextualized strategies that result from a contextual analysis that identifies those factors that hinder change and those that facilitate change; and the need to develop 21st-century skill sets. these foundational priorities influence both the provision of individualized supports and the characteristics of an inclusive education environment. provision of individualized supports. the provision of individualized supports involves the planned and integrated use of support strategies and resources composing a system of supports. elements of such a system include natural supports, technology, prosthetics, education across the life span, reasonable accommodation, dignity and respect, personal strengths and assets, and professional services. specific examples of these support strategies are found in lombardi, chiu, schalock, and claes (2017) and schalock and luckasson (2014). a system of supports model focusing on the provision of individualized supports provides the structure to increase opportunities and enhance performance elements that are interdependent and cumulative. the provision of individualized supports is facilitated by a support team that: (a) is composed of the student, one or more family members, teachers and teacher aides, a supports coordinator, and relevant professionals; (b) is characterized by being involved, informed, organized, accountable, and empowered; and (c) incorporates a quality improvement process that involves evaluation and adjustment to maximize the positive impact of support strategies on valued personal outcomes (schalock & verdugo, 2012). characteristics of an inclusive education environment. an inclusive education environment is built on those education reform foundational priorities just described, and provides a system of individualized supports. furthermore, it is characterized by its structure, function, and culture. specifically, its structure is a regular education classroom that provides opportunities and supports students through assistive technology, modified curricula and teaching methods, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 195 other elements of a system of supports. its function is to enhance participation, involvement, and development by mediating access to education and community resources, facilitating everyday participation in regular education activities and relationships, supporting opportunities for selfdetermination, and allowing students to build social capital. its culture is based on respect for the student, student centeredness, and a commitment to enhance the student’s personal well-being. this culture should embed strong leadership, shared responsibility, teamwork, and openness to ideas and change (bryant et al., 2007; danforth & naraian, 2015). implementation guidelines: throughput  base educational practices on education reform foundational priorities.  recognize that supports can be administered by everyone who interacts with the child or adolescent. this includes family members, teachers, friends, and professionals.  use a “user-friendly” plan such as a one-page individual supports plan or an education plan-at-a-glance that lists the specific support strategies provided and who is responsible for their implementation (including the individual and his or her family, and the teachers and support staff).  develop the supports or education plan using a qol framework in which specific support strategies are provided to enhance each qol domain.  use the characteristics of the inclusive education environment for strategic planning, organization transformation, and output evaluation. output the output component of the systematic approach focuses on the product of an inclusive education environment in which interventions, services, and supports are provided to enhance the individual’s participation, involvement, and development — and thereby enhance personal wellbeing. the evaluation of the output component of the proposed systematic approach involves assessing the status of three characteristics of an inclusive education environment using the following measurable status indicators:  structure: the degree to which the classroom provides opportunities and supports students through assistive technology, modified curricula and teaching methods, and other elements of a system of supports.  function: the degree to which the classroom enhances participation, involvement, and development through mediating access to education and community resources, facilitating everyday participation in regular education activities and relationships, supporting opportunities for self-determination, and allowing students to build social capital. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 196  culture: the degree to which the classroom reflects respect for the student, student centeredness, and a commitment to enhancing the student’s personal well-being. at this time, inclusive education environments are a reality in some jurisdictions, a short or long-term goal in others, and only a dream in still others. the authors recognize the reality of this continuum, but also feel that the goal is a worthy one. the value-base is there, the education and reform movement and outcomes-driven policy formulation have begun, and the characteristics of such an environment are becoming clearer. thus, readers of this article might consider the following implementation guidelines as they strive to implement inclusive education environments whose output would be evaluated in terms of measurable results from the status indicators in the three areas of structure, function, and culture. implementation guidelines: output  conduct a contextual analysis of the current environment and determine the factors that facilitate change and those that hinder change. examples for inclusive education can be found in shogren, schalock, and luckasson (2018) and verdugo, jenaro, calvo, and navas (2017).  analyze the current environment in terms of its structure, function, and culture. the analysis should be based on operational definitions of these three characteristics of the inclusive environment: (a) structure: to provide opportunities and support people; (b) function: to enhance participation, involvement, and development; and (c) culture: to create environments that enhance personal well-being.  use the results of this analysis to determine significant discrepancies between the listed characteristics and current practices.  use strategic planning and organization transformation strategies to reduce the discrepancies. examples are presented in reinders and schalock (2014) and schalock and verdugo (2012). outcome one of the fundamental changes associated with the education reform movement is the evaluation of personal outcomes that reflect the personal well-being of children and adolescents with idd. outcomes evaluation is based on the need to demonstrate a program’s effectiveness and requires the alignment of policy goals with measurable outcomes. outcomes evaluation is defined as assessing changes and benefits that follow as a result of some activity, intervention, or service (gomez & verdugo, 2016). outcome information obtained from reliable and valid assessments can be used for multiple purposes including monitoring and reporting, quality improvement, and research (schalock et al., in press). the advantage of using a qol framework for outcomes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 197 evaluation is that its multidimensionality represents a whole-life approach to outcomes measurement, and thereby results in a more comprehensive approach to status evaluation, quality improvement, and research (pazey et al., 2016; reinders & schalock, 2014; schalock & keith, 2016). the outcome component of the proposed systematic approach operationalizes a whole-life approach through the standardized assessment of culturally sensitive indicators associated with each of the eight qol domains. (a listing of these domains and exemplary indicators was presented in table 2.) each of these indicators is assessed on a 3 to 6 point scale such as: (a) yes, depends, no; (b) yes, more or less, no; (c) frequently, sometimes, seldom or never; (d) very safe, somewhat safe, not safe; (e) very good, okay, not good; or (f) always, sometimes, seldom or never. depending on the person’s age, each indicator is scored based on either the person’s input (“selfreport”) or the input of a family member or teacher (“report of others”). depending on the instrument, domain scores can be reported as raw, transformed, or percentile scores. qol scores can be used for multiple purposes. for example, an individual profile summarizing qol domain scores provides information to the student and the student’s family that reflects a holistic picture of the person across the eight qol domains. the profile can also be used to form a dialog with the student or family about personal goals and desired outcomes, and about implementing support strategies to enhance them. raw or transformed scores can be used as dependent variables in research studies to determine the specific predictors of successful educational practices, effective support strategies, or characteristics of the inclusive environment. at the aggregate level, qol domain and total scores can be used for monitoring and reporting, establishing quality improvement strategies, and conducting research. in the following section, we present an example of a whole-life approach to assessment using a standardized qol assessment instrument. the example reflects the following guidelines. implementation guidelines: outcome  align policies and practices with measurable outcomes.  use a whole-life approach to assess those outcomes.  use an assessment instrument that is based on a well-formulated and validated conceptual model, uses culturally sensitive indicators, employs a standardized scoring metric, has good psychometric properties, and has standardized administrative procedures (claes et al., 2009; gomez & verdugo, 2016).  use outcome measures for multiple purposes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 198 applying the systematic approach the example presented in this section incorporates the four components — input, throughput, output, and outcome — of the proposed systematic approach to enhancing an individual’s personal well-being. these four components and associated processes are shown graphically in the logic model presented in figure 1. the advantages of using a logic model to organize the systematic approach is that a logic model articulates the operative relations among policies, practices, and outcomes; aligns the operative relations among input, throughput, output, and outcome; and enables all stakeholders to understand what must be done to achieve the desired goals and associated outcomes (schalock & verdugo, 2012). figure 1. a systematic approach to enhancing the personal well-being of children and adolescents. input anna, a 9-year-old girl with down syndrome, lives at home with her parents, brother, and two sisters with whom she frequently plays. anna is strong-willed. she has a visual impairment and moderate to mild intellectual disability. anna is very sensitive to sensory stimuli. she goes to a regular school, and is in a regular classroom supported by a support worker from arduin, a community-based program in zealand, the netherlands, that provides services for people with idd. values personal goals policy goals profile and intensity of support needs policy makers and services/support providers creating environments that provide opportunities for participation, involvement, and development support teams providing individualized supports within those environments adjust evaluate inclusive environments in which supports are provided to children and adolescents to enhance their participation, involvement, and development quality of liferelated changes or benefits to children and adolescents from the throughputs and outputs throughput output outcome resources input international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 199 anna’s support needs are measured using the supports intensity scale – children’s version (sis-c; thompson et al., 2016). the sis-c was completed by her mother and a support worker who has known anna for four years. as indicated in the sis-c information summarized in table 4, anna has moderate to high support needs across the nine support need categories. table 4 summary of anna’s support needs support need category standard score (range=1–16) home life activities 8 community and neighborhood activities 10 school participation activities 10 school learning activities 11 health and safety activities 10 social activities 10 advocacy activities 11 exceptional medical and behavioral needs* 4 *anna has no exceptional medical support needs other than some support for irritable bowel syndrome. in reference to exceptional behavioral support needs, she needs some support for maintaining mental health treatments at school, and extensive support for her sensitivity to stimuli. throughput education reform foundational priorities. according to the wet passend onderwijs [appropriate education act] adopted in the netherlands in october 2012, there should be a place in a regular school for every child to fit the child’s competencies. to make this possible for anna, there is a partnership between regular and special schools. arduin provides the extra support needed for anna to participate in a regular school. provision of individualized supports. individualized supports are provided through a support worker who implements an individual support plan (isp) that is developed by anna’s parents, her personal director (i.e., case manager), and her support worker. the isp aligns anna’s goals and assessed support needs with specific support strategies. table 5 summarizes the parameters of anna’s isp. characteristics of the inclusive environment. the supports a child such as anna gets in a regular classroom are based on the child’s education plan and isp. the composition of the support team is dependent on the child and family’s personal goals and the child’s assessed support needs. in anna’s case, the support team is composed of the remedial teacher, the support worker, her parents, the personal director, a psychologist (provided by arduin), and a speech therapist. anna also gets support at home. anna’s parents want as normal a life for their daughter as possible. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 200 table 5 parameters of anna’s individualized support plan support need category objective specific support strategies exceptional behavioral needs reduce sensitivity to stimuli use the relaxation strategy to calm anna, using a special vest if necessary to give her a sense of control. provide a daily schedule to increase predictability and control. home life activities keep self occupied during unstructured time at home provide an ipad; invite anna to participate in an activity; assist her in riding her tricycle community and neighborhood activities increase compliance with basic community standards, rules, and laws encourage and facilitate contact with other people; advocate for anna in important matters; prevent conflicts with others through redirection school participation activities increase participation in common school activities (e.g., playground, hallways, cafeteria) structure anna’s day through supervised participation in common school activities school learning activities increase completion of academic tasks, including time, quality, neatness, and organizational skills support participation in classroom activities; use a validated teaching method such as leespraat en rekenlijn [reading talk and calculating]; provide an incentive program for completing academic tasks health and safety activities maintain physical fitness involve in physical activity and recess programs; provide close supervision while on her daily walks; provide very close supervision in crossing streets social activities increase communicating with others in social situations involve in peer groups; supervise and provide active feedback when participating in social activities advocacy activities increase choice and decision making provide choices for anna; assist in making a decision by pointing out the results of the choice made; reinforce decision making output the output component focuses on the product of the inclusive environment. in anna’s case, the output is evaluated on the basis of: (a) maintaining placement in the inclusive environment with individualized supports; (b) maintaining the partnership among the family, school, and arduin; and (c) anna’s increased community participation and expanded social capital. outcome the personal outcomes scale for children (pos-c; claes, van loon, schalock, & mostert, 2015) was used to measure anna’s qol. as the pos-c prescribes for a child below the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 188–205 201 age of 12, the report of others version of the scale was used. the respondents were anna’s mother and her support worker. domain scores on the pos-c can range from 6 to 18. anna’s domain scores were as follows: personal development (12), self-determination (16), interpersonal relations (15), social inclusion (15), rights (16), emotional well-being (18), physical wellbeing (15), and material well-being (16). as reflected in these domain scores, anna’s assessed qol using the pos-c is quite high, with needed attention given to personal development. summary and conclusion this is a time of change regarding policies and practices focusing on children and adolescents with idd. these changes are influenced by ideological changes, increased knowledge about disability, an integrated approach to disability policy, the supports paradigm, and the education reform movement (see table 1). the changes in these five areas provide the rationale, content, and framework for the proposed systematic approach to enhancing the personal well-being of children and adolescents. four components of a logic model are used to operationalize the systematic approach. the input component is based on foundational principles, the alignment of policy goals and measurable outcomes, and the assessment of the pattern and intensity of the individual’s support needs. the throughput component is based on educational reform foundational priorities, the provision of individualized supports, and the characteristics of an inclusive education environment. the output component focuses on the products of an inclusive education environment and is evaluated on the basis of the environment’s structure, function, and culture. the outcome component focuses on the evaluation of personal and valued outcomes related to the qol domains of personal development, self-determination, social inclusion, interpersonal relations, rights, emotional well-being, physical well-being, and material well-being. although anna provides just one example of using the systematic approach to work with a student with a disability who is being supported in a regular classroom, her example highlights the changes that will enhance other children’s personal well-being. fundamental to these changes is the need to develop policies and practices that align the un convention on the rights of persons with disabilities with a service framework such as the qol concept; 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(2012). the law and special education (3rd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0885728809346960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1352/2326-6988-2.2.86 https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1352/1934-9556-55.4.234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2012.01585.x http://dx.doi.org/%20%20%20%2010.1016/j.cpr.2015.11.007 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs111202019475 youth conceptualization of resilience strategies in four lowand middle-income countries panos vostanis, sadiyya haffejee, hikmet yazici, sajida hussein, munevver ozdemir, cansu tosun, and john maltby abstract: the concept of resilience is increasingly influential in the development of interventions and services for young people, yet there is limited knowledge of how resilience-building strategies are conceptualized by young people across different cultures, particularly in lowand middle-income countries. the aim of this study was to capture 274 young people’s voices in disadvantaged communities in kenya, turkey, pakistan, and brazil through participatory research methods. young people defined strategies in response to 4 adversity scenarios reflecting socioecological systems (young person, family, school, and community). template analysis, underpinned by thematic design, was used to establish three broad themes of intrapersonal (self-management, cognitive re-appraisal, agency), interpersonal (social engagement, informal supports, formal supports), and religious resources. proposed strategies were largely similar across the sites, with some contextual differences depending on the scenario (stressor) and cultural group. the findings support an ecological systems approach to resilience, which is consistent with the development of multimodal interventions for vulnerable youth and their families in disadvantaged communities in lowand middle-income countries. keywords: young people, resilience, participatory research, psychosocial, crosscultural, lowand middle-income countries panos vostanis md (corresponding author) is a professor of child mental health at the university of leicester; george davies centre, university road, leicester le1 7rh, uk. email: pv11@le.ac.uk sadiyya haffejee phd is a research fellow at the university of kwazulu-natal, 238 mazisi kunene rd, glenwood, durban, 4041, south africa. email: sadiyya.haffejee@gmail.com hikmet yazici phd is a professor of psychological counselling and guidance at trabzon university, 61335, trabzon, turkey. email: hyaziciktu@gmail.com sajida hussein phd is a director in the child development programme, hussaini foundation, karachi, pakistan. email: sajida79@googlemail.com munevver ozdemir ma is a research assistant at trabzon university, 61335, trabzon, turkey. email: mnvr.ozdemir@outlook.com cansu tosun ba is a research assistant at trabzon university, 61335, trabzon, turkey. email: cansu.tosun@ktu.edu.tr john maltby phd is a professor of differential psychology at the university of leicester, george davies centre, university road, leicester le1 7rh, uk. email: jm148@le.ac.uk mailto:pv11@le.ac.uk mailto:sadiyya.haffejee@gmail.com mailto:hyaziciktu@gmail.com mailto:sajida79@googlemail.com mailto:mnvr.ozdemir@outlook.com mailto:cansu.tosun@ktu.edu.tr mailto:jm148@le.ac.uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 93 globally, there is growing recognition of the need to increase the priority of addressing the mental health needs of young people (patel & rahman, 2015). young people are potentially at risk for a range of adverse psychosocial outcomes resulting from exposure to complex vulnerability factors — such as adverse living conditions, poverty, violence, migration, and exposure to environmental hazards and communicable diseases — coupled with limited access to appropriate services and supports (getanda et al., 2017; kieling et al., 2011). recent years have thus seen an expansion of research focused on factors that enable and support children’s resilience in the face of personal, familial, and environmental hazards (ungar, 2004). in spite of considerable academic disparity in defining and explaining resilience processes, there is increasing consensus that resilience is not an inherent, static trait that resides within an individual (garmezy, 1991; masten, 2006; rutter, 2006; theron, 2018; ungar, 2011; werner, 1989). researchers in this field concur that resilience is a complex phenomenon that is sensitive to and dependent on sociocultural and contextual factors (maltby et al., 2016; panter-brick, 2015; theron, 2018; ungar, 2011). in this way, resilience researchers acknowledge, to varying degrees, the role of the environment in nurturing resilience. ungar (2011, 2012, 2015) urged a shift in our understanding of resilience by highlighting the seminal importance of both context and culture in his socioecological theory of resilience (sert). ungar (2011, 2012) thus held that resilience is a dynamic, culturally entrenched process shared between an individual and their context; in sert, he introduced principles of decentrality and cultural relativity. decentrality advocates for a shift in focus, away from the children themselves and towards what is happening around them that facilitates resilience, while cultural relativity suggests that adaptation is embedded in culture. masten and wright (2010) identify six universally occurring adaptive systems that inform resilience: the presence of supportive attachment relationships; the individual’s cognitive aptitude; self-regulation skills; the ability to make meaning; agency and mastery; and the influence of culture and traditions. the way these systems operate, however, varies across contexts and periods, and their use in analysis thus needs to be grounded in contextual awareness (theron, 2018; theron & theron, 2013; ungar, 2015). this focus on cross-cultural understanding of resilience is becoming increasingly popular, as it enables a more nuanced understanding of adaptive processes across cultures and nations (sirikantraporn et al., 2018). the development of culturally sensitive and contextualized interventions requires a clearer understanding of how resilience and resilience-building are characterized by young people, families, and communities, especially in life circumstances of conflict and disadvantage (tamburrino et al., 2018). youth in these contexts experience different adversities and have access to different resources. like adversity, resilience is thus conceptualized differently depending on context and culture (huang, 2018). what may be seen as resilience in one context might not be seen that way in another. context and culture determine the meaning apportioned to manifestations of resilience (panter-brick, 2015). for example, studies conducted with youth in sub-saharan international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 94 countries highlight the importance of social and kin relationships and of education in the resilience processes of youth (theron & phasha, 2015; theron & van rensburg, 2018; van breda & theron, 2018). for young people in pakistan, sharing problems with families was ranked highly, in contrast to the value placed upon independent decision-making in western cultures (sahar & muzaffar, 2017). for child labourers in brazil, libório and ungar (2014) found that protective processes related to resilience were partly present as a result of the “pattern of protagonism among these youth” (p. 682). four types of protective processes were identified: improving behaviour and view of oneself, increasing positive engagement with others, actively participating in the community, and engaging in cultural activities including the practice of artistic skills. based on these findings, libório and ungar (2014) concluded that resilience processes for youth in brazil are products of the individual’s subjectivity, their active engagement in interpersonal relationships, and their participation in valued cultural practices; hence resilience processes work in harmony with a facilitative social ecology. despite the increasing interest in young people’s resilience across the world, and how this could be informed by the socioecological systems model, there is limited knowledge on how different resilience strategies could be devised by youth across cultural contexts and socioecological levels. there is also sparse evidence on how different types of resilience strategies may be linked to help-seeking patterns and to existing supports and services, particularly in low and middle-income countries (lmic) and areas of disadvantage. in recent years, we have developed a global program of mental health service transformation for vulnerable young people in lmic, called world awareness for children in trauma1 (wacit; vostanis, 2018, 2019). this program is based on an interdisciplinary scaled service model (united nations high commissioner for refugees, 2013; world health organization, 2008) to address young people’s mental health needs at different socioecological levels by intervening through the young person and their family, school, and community. to date, we have captured the perspectives of adult stakeholders who have identified key barriers to access to mental health care. these included the stigma of mental illness, lack of awareness, lack of parental engagement, and absence of interdisciplinary cooperation (vostanis, maltby, et al., 2018). so far, young people’s voices have been absent in informing culturally appropriate and engaging interventions and services in lmic. this study, therefore, attempts to fill this gap by exploring how young people across four culturally and contextually different communities in kenya, turkey, brazil, and pakistan conceptualized resilience strategies. 1 www.wacit.org http://www.wacit.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 95 method the study aimed to address the following research questions: 1. how do young people formulate resilience strategies when faced with different adversity scenarios reflecting the levels of the socioecological model? 2. how do these strategies contrast across cultural groups in four lmic? consistent with these research questions, while placing the method in a person-centred and culturally appropriate context, a participatory research design was adopted. this research tool enables groups collectively affected by a problem to “participate” in the process of developing “actions” to address that problem. consequently, this approach enables the active engagement of community members to raise awareness of the issues, and relies on them as a source of expertise in facilitating possible solutions (reason, 1994). the process of engagement and co-production recognizes the relevance and importance of language and shared meaning, as well as emphasizing and valuing participants’ voices. consistent with this, therefore, a social constructionist personcentred theoretical framework underpinned our methods. this approach to data collection and the analytic process identifies and illuminates the constructed accounts of the young participants (burr, 2003). participatory research is increasingly used to cooperatively address problems affecting individuals who are marginalized or excluded from service planning and implementation, such as youth from disadvantaged lmic communities (rhodes et al., 2015; willow, 2013). participants do not focus on merely understanding a given problem; rather, participants and researchers develop actions collectively (kidd & kral, 2005). context and participants young people were selected from four lmic across the socioeconomic spectrum (organization for economic cooperation and development, 2016). the sites were partners to the previously described wacit program. within each country, a host non-governmental organization (ngo) acted as facilitator and gatekeeper to the study. the target population included young people in disadvantaged urban communities in nakuru, kenya; rio de janeiro, brazil; trabzon, turkey; and karachi, pakistan. in pakistan, young people in care were also included as an additional representation of young people with complex psychosocial needs. this research focused on young people’s voices, as it is important to understand how they define resilience strategies and help-seeking, in order to develop engaging, youth-friendly interventions and services. young people were recruited from schools in collaboration with a host ngo, which also acted as the partner of the wider wacit program in each country (vostanis, o’reilly, et al., 2018). although we aimed to include age groups of mid-to-late adolescence in each country, this was not possible in brazil, where the collaborating school was a primary education setting, so we international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 96 included their oldest grade. in total, 274 young people between the ages of 10 and 17 years took part. their characteristics are described in table 1. table 1. characteristics of participating young people (n=274) country location n groups gender f gender m age kenya school 1 19 3 9 10 14 kenya school 2 48 6 19 29 15–17 turkey school 1 32 5 16 16 16 turkey school 2 35 5 18 17 16 brazil school 1 17 4 8 9 10–11 pakistan school 1 23 6 18 5 13 pakistan school 2 34 4 19 15 13–14 pakistan care home 66 6 66 0 10–13 research procedure young people were asked to define resilience strategies in response to scenarios that were considered common and easily understood within their sociocultural context. the scenarios were underpinned by the ecological systems framework; that is, they were developed to reflect stressors at four levels representing distinct socioecological locations: within the young person, their family, their school, and their community (bronfenbrenner, 1979). scenarios were created based on the literature, then revised in consultation with the host facilitators. it was concluded that three scenarios relating resepctively to the young person, the family, and the school were universal to all countries, while the fourth, concerning the community, varied even within each country. for this reason, the community scenario was customized by each of the four host facilitators. young people were asked how they could feel better, or advise another young person in the same situation to feel better, if faced with the following scenarios, each at a different socioecological level: • young person: feeling sad or unhappy, without being aware of a specific trigger. • family: parents, caregivers, or other adults arguing verbally or physically at home. • school: another young person calling them names or hurting them at school (all groups understood the word “bullied”). • community: scenarios were codeveloped, depending on the context and common events in each country and community: o kenya: no water in the neighbourhood or community. o turkey: fire in the neighbourhood or community. o brazil: violence in the neighbourhood or community. o pakistan schools: criminality in the neighbourhood or community. o pakistan care home: frequent power breakdowns (lasting more than 8 hours). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 97 ethics approval was granted by the university of leicester psychology research ethics committee following the ethical principles of the declaration of helsinki, with the host agencies acting as gatekeepers. parents (or legal guardians for young people in care) and young people provided consent to take part. within each workshop, young people were asked to break into small mixed-gender groups of 6–8 participants each. they were given pens and a large piece of paper for each exercise. young people were free to interact and discuss their responses, but were encouraged to write them down (“there is no right or wrong”). they were encouraged to support their written statements with drawings if they found it useful to do so. this option was mainly used by the youngest group, in brazil. each small group had a young facilitator in the discussion, who was also responsible for collating co-produced responses in writing. in kenya, the discussions were largely in english, and partly in swahili; all collected material was in english. in turkey and brazil respectively, discussions and collected material were in turkish and portuguese; these were subsequently translated into english. in pakistan, the school participants carried out their discussions in english and urdu, and wrote in english; while in the care home, the young people spoke and wrote in balti (figure 1), and their materials were translated into english. figure 1. example of materials created in response to scenario 1 (feeling sad) in pakistan international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 98 analytic approach because of the required participatory methods, the age and cultural diversity of the participants, and the complexity of the evidence surrounding resilience in lmic, it was deemed appropriate to utilize template analysis to address the research questions. template analysis is a form of thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) that identifies salient issues in the data and the literature to represent the key topics at stake (king, 2004). its emphasis is on participant meaning creation; to this end, it provides a structural framework to create a template of categories. the initial template was shaped and informed by the adopted conceptual framework (ecological systems and the four related scenarios). however, the template was bidirectional, in the sense that it was further influenced by the social-constructionist theoretical framework and by the youth perspectives that emerged through the participatory techniques. the template analysis thus allowed the research agenda and evidence base to influence the initial template design. this further encouraged the refinement and redevelopment of the template through the iterative inclusion of participant views to map and distinguish between relevant concepts (johnson et al., 2013). the template was codeveloped within the team, as first-order categories were identified by authors tosun and vostanis. these were then subjected to second-order analysis by authors haffejee and vostanis to establish the final themes and subthemes across domains and countries, thus arriving at the final template. the analysis was data-driven: the emerging themes and subthemes were not mapped onto existing resilience theories during the analytic stage, although the findings are critically considered in the context of key theories and classifications in the discussion section of this article. results template analysis was thus utilized to identify common resilience-building strategies (categories) across the four scenarios, as put forward by the 274 young people from the four lmic. emerging categories at the first analytic stage were combined into three themes and six subthemes in the second-order analysis, as presented in table 2. themes had different numbers of subthemes and categories. for example, religion was considered a conceptually independent theme, despite the smaller amount of data and lack of subthemes or categories. there is potential overlap between some categories, either because of conceptual similarities or because of lack of supporting context or reported examples regarding the defined strategies. these are discussed below, as well as the rationale for choosing these categories, subthemes, and themes. key terms used and characteristic responses are also presented in table 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 99 table 2. resilience-building strategies proposed by young people in four lmic (n=274) subtheme category key terms characteristic responses theme 1: intrapersonal resources selfmanagement individual free-time activities music, eat, food, read, film, mobile, tv, study, keep busy listen to cool music read some comic books eat something sweet emotional regulation cry, yell, calm down, cool down cry to release the pain scream out loud calm down, so i do nothing wrong unburden what you feel humour funny, joking, going out cheer the person up tell him funny jokes so that he becomes happy read funny jokes make him laugh, smile, and when he is comfortable then we can ask the problem cognitive reappraisal good moments, happy memories, assurance, selfesteem try to see the good side of life, even in your darkest hours talk about good things see the good side of life thinking of a good time remember happy moments to feel better agency active adaptive solve problem, understand reason, negotiate, patient, tolerate, control, educate, explain, face educate them on importance of a peaceful family try to reconcile them tell him that he can change behave oppositely discuss and give a solution stay safe non-active stay away, sleep, ignore, avoid, don’t care, apologise walk away and avoid them do nothing leave home change schools run away active maladaptive fight, beat, harm, selfharm, swear, humiliate fight him back beat people who do this turn it on him/herself hurt him back laugh at his stupid face theme 2: interpersonal resources social engagement fun, enjoy, party, park, game, go out, friends to go and enjoy, so that it [their distress] can come out hanging out with friends play in a friend’s house have a party informal supports talk, advice, ask, share, help, comfort, hug, friends, parents, grandparents, elders talk to someone who understands, especially elderly people go to the neighbour’s house stay with someone i care for formal supports tell, report, complain, authority, counselling, community elders report to teacher talk to peer counsellor report to chief and village leaders engage services of a pastor complain to nearest authority such as police international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 100 subtheme category key terms characteristic responses theme 3: religion praying, god, recite pray and forget about it encourage him to pray what goes round comes round allah see you and allah punish you by the leave of god theme one: intrapersonal resources young people drew on a range of their own resources across sites and scenarios. these included the subthemes of self-management, cognitive reappraisal, and agency, with the young person placing themselves as central to the solution, whether through introspection or through interaction with their environment. the first subtheme of self-management included the use of individual free-time activities, emotional regulation, and humour. individual free-time activities appeared to act as generic strategies for space or distraction. these largely consisted of reading, listening to music, and eating. a developmental (teenage) connotation in these strategies appeared to transcend culture (listen to “music”, “good music”, “cool music”, “funk”). some strategies were framed in the third person, as if recommended to another young person facing the stressor (“focus on his own activity”). maybe because of their younger age, this category was mostly put forward by participants in brazil. interestingly, it was not mentioned at all by young people in care, perhaps because of the care home structure and lack of opportunities to function individually. emotional regulation or containment mainly included crying across all groups, followed by screaming (“yell”, “scream out loud”, “shout”). these seemed to have a cathartic connotation rather than being focused on emotional reprocessing. in contrast, some proposed strategies included a regulatory function (“crying to release the pain”, “unburden what you feel”). several statements indicated relaxation techniques such as “calm down”, “take a deep breath”, or “count to 10”. no differences were detected in the use of emotions in dealing with stressors or in distinct emotion-focused strategies at any of the four sites. children in the care home group did not report any emotion-focused strategies in response to the scenarios. emotional strategies were evenly reported across the four scenarios. humour was the least reported category, but we considered the content of the statements to underpin a distinct concept. strategies were usually placed in a social context, by “telling jokes” or “making and listening to jokes”, or by referring to another young person (“cheer the person up”, “we should tell him/her funny jokes, so he/she becomes happy”). a more complex strategy led to tackling the problem: “we will make him laugh, smile, and when he is comfortable, then we can ask the problem.” reframing bullying with humour included “say thank you for giving beautiful name to me” and “i love the name you give me”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 101 the second subtheme of cognitive reappraisal differed from the first in that there were contextual differences among the first three scenarios. in response to inner feelings of sadness, cognitive strategies included positive appraisal (“see the good side of life”, “thinking of a good time”), or forgetting “bad things”. an interesting application of cognitive reappraisal of feeling sad was the “happy game” quoted by a brazilian young person, according to which “in your worst times you try to see the good side of life, even in your darkest hours”. when faced with adversity at the level of the home or family, responses included some of the previous strategies of positive appraisal and forgetting, as well as context-related “assurance”, potential self-blame (“think whether it is your fault”), distraction (“not concentrate on their arguments”), and recollection of positive family memories (“we can see good memories in the album”). in relation to being bullied at school, the majority of statements reflected internal coping strategies such as minimizing the impact (“we don’t mind what he is saying”, “will not take seriously”), feeling stronger (“having high self-esteem”), and using moral arguments (“keep the respect of humanity”). some cognitive responses were directed at the aggressor in “forgiving”, “think that person is mad”, or “not mind what he is saying”. the third subtheme of agency largely included independent and active responses to the given stressor. young people thus considered a range of active strategies. these were the most frequently reported in response to the family, school, and community scenarios. categories were similar across countries, although their content (application) sometimes varied according to the context of the scenario. strategies common to the scenarios were understanding (“ask reasons”) and solving the problem, or a combination of the two (some of which overlapped with interpersonal strategies): “… and when he has more fun, and when we had a lot of fun together, then he can easily share, and will try to solve his problem”. faced with adversity in the home (parental arguments or fighting), the first steps were neutral listening (“to both sides”), talking (“i kuongekiesha wazazi” [“talking to parents” in swahili]), and showing love (“hug them”; “mum, i’m sorry, i love you”; “give a kiss”) or offering comfort (snack, ice cream, watch tv). these were followed by active attempts to stop the argument or fight by “reconciling”, “educating on importance of peaceful family”, or “calming them down”. the third step consisted of pointing out the impact of the family conflict on the young person: “it is [having an] effect on my study and behaviours”, “try to divert grown-ups attention towards him/her”, “i’m gonna run away”, and “live on the streets”. the above three processes also emerged in relation to facing adversity at school. understanding, talking, tolerance (“behaving oppositely”), patience, and attempts at reconciliation (“do an agreement with him to stop bullying”) were commonly reported. education and advice were often interlinked (“… that he can change”, “the effects of bullying”, “importance of keeping peace and respect”, “explaining that i also hurt”). the third and more active — albeit not confrontational, in contrast with a later subtheme — approach emphasized “facing the bully with bravery and intelligence” and being willing to “stand up for your rights”: insist on respect, issue a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 102 warning, but also “smile in front of him”. an interesting wider stance was “raising awareness about the effects of bullying”. strategies responding to the community and neighbourhood scenario were responsive to the local context, but shared conceptual similarities. solutions to lack of water and electricity showed willingness to actively participate rather than first seeking adult involvement: for water, fetch more from boreholes or rivers, or buy it; for electricity, light candles/lanterns, switch on a generator, or use an emergency light. community and proactive actions were also suggested such as digging boreholes, planting more trees to attract rain, installing solar energy, and arranging electricity beforehand. facing crime or a natural disaster predominantly involved safety-first reactions: for crime, staying in the house, locking up doors and windows, and not letting strangers in; for fire, raising the alarm and escaping from the fire. nevertheless, young people also offered altruistic solutions such as keeping their younger siblings in a room and “acting like a security guard” in the face of violence, raising community awareness against violence (e.g, with a poster), or helping to put a fire out and save other people. whether the strategies included in the next subtheme of non-active responses had an adaptive or maladaptive function was often not clear in the absence of elaboration from the young people regarding behaviours such as running away from an incident or leaving a room where parents are arguing. the most common responses denoted distraction and hope for comfort, largely by “doing nothing”, sleeping (“hope to see nice and sweet dream”, “so cannot be scared”), or keeping busy. active but maladaptive strategies came up in every group in response to conflict and aggression. these were verbal, physical, or internalized. when faced with parental conflict, young people considered shouting, involving themselves in the fight, warning parents that they would also fight, being “mischievous”, or “slapping both of them”. a number of young people from turkey considered self-harming as a way of acting out their distress. the majority of responses in this category were directed at bullies: arguing, teasing, shouting, swearing, hitting back, punching, hurting, or humiliating the bully (“tell him he is ugly”, “laugh at his stupid face”). certain responses to community violence were particularly aggressive in brazil (“kill bad guys”, “kill [name of local drug lord]”), and pakistan (by keeping weapons, although one young person stressed that they should be legal). theme two: interpersonal resources three subthemes are reported here: social engagement, informal supports, and formal supports. social engagement was similar to individual free-time activities in not targeting the stressor, whilst providing the young person with relief and comfort in the presence of others, usually peers. this strategy was predominantly used in response to feeling sad, and occasionally when faced with environmental stressors. strategies included having “fun”; going on outings international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 103 (friend’s house, “hanging out with friends”, park, playground); and participating in play or games, creative activities (drawing, dancing), or sports. some participants defined strategies in relation to helping another young person (usually one who was feeling sad) by giving a gift, telling a story, or organizing a party. in contrast, seeking informal supports was directly related to the stressor. when feeling sad, friends were almost always the first contact point (“unburden”) to talk, share, or “hug”; and occasionally parents also filled this role. when parents argued with each other, grandparents were instead most commonly mentioned, usually for help and advice, although some young people used the words “complain” or “report”. the bully’s parents were commonly stated as the equivalent contact in the third scenario. in cases of community adversity, parents, community elders, neighbours, friends, and community experts (“rainmakers” in kenya) would be equally likely to be consulted. interestingly, young people in care did not specifically mention residential staff as sources of informal support. they mainly connected with their peers (“consider her problem ours”), occasionally their parents, and often non-specific others (“someone” or “adults”), but did not name them as caregivers. no external formal supports were suggested for the first scenario of feeling sad: these were proposed only in response to external stressors that could not be dealt with through other mechanisms. the boundaries between informal and formal supports were not clear for some sources, namely teachers, elders, and community or spiritual leaders. however, the context of the quotes largely indicated the next step up the help-seeking pathway by using words like “seek”, “report”, and “complain”. a range of school officials and professionals would be sought to address bullying, including a student prefect (a more formal role than peer), class teacher, duty teacher (if urgency were needed), deputy or head teacher, peer counsellor, and teacher with responsibility for guidance and counselling. teachers were also viewed as a source of help for family conflict, and even as mediators to call the police (which was likely to indicate concerns for domestic violence). community and religious leaders, and “the nearest authority” — usually the police — were commonly considered as available recourses in response to family conflict. counsellors, psychologists, and couples therapists were also reported. responses to community adversity involved the young people themselves seeking help from relevant agencies (fire service, ambulance, police, water or electricity company), or community elders to address the problem (“put the criminals away for the safety of our society”). young people would directly approach or “complain to” the government, involve the media, and appeal to political leaders (this response came predominantly from the oldest age group in kenya). interestingly, young people in care nominated the electricity company as an external source of support, but no other agency. theme three: religion despite some overlap with cognitive reappraisal, religion was conceptualized as a distinct theme, with similarities across the two major religions of the participating countries (islam and christianity in two countries each). religious strategies were evenly mentioned in response to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 104 four scenarios. praying was the most commonly used. specific readings (quran, bible) or islamic prayers like naat, namaz, and dua, were considered. some young people elaborated on the function of praying in relieving fear (“so the fear goes”, “to be away from fear”), as a way to “feel better” and help “forget about it”, and as a reminder of “stopping you from sins” (in response to parents arguing). in the case of external stressors, religion-related cognitions helped young participants to feel protected (bullying : “allah see you and allah punish you”), or to endure the adversity (family conflict: “we think and make ourselves feel good that fights are the deeds of devil, and god is not happy with it”; community violence: “if you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die”). young people in brazil used concepts from a different religion to their own to help them cope with bullying (“wait for karma”, “everything that goes round, comes round”). young people in kenya prayed “that god bring rain” and “to god for water”. overall, no gender differences were detected in the use of resilience-building strategies in response to the four scenarios. however. possible methodological explanations and constraints are considered below. discussion in this study, we captured the voices of young people from four lmic on how they defined resilience-building strategies in the face of different scenarios of adversity. the participants gave a range of responses and supporting examples that were themed under intrapersonal, interpersonal, and religious resources. the themes, subthemes, and categories that emerged were broadly consistent across the four cultural groups. young people sought solutions from different ecological systems, although this also depended on the identified stressor. for example, they would predominantly rely on self-management such as cognitive reappraisal or emotional regulation in response to internalizing problems, but also seek support from family, peers, or elders. conversely, when faced by external threats and aggression, they would largely access interpersonal resources in addition to seeking external supports, but were less likely to use intrapersonal resources. these findings thus add support to the dynamic linkage between resilience strategies across the ecological systems (folke, 2016). this theory is not mutually exclusive with viewing resilience strategies as contextualized; that is, as taking place in a particular sociocultural context. instead, these findings may indicate that broad resilience-building strategies are similar across cultural groups, but are specifically applied depending on the young person’s life circumstances. theron (2018) thus proposed that an ecological systems approach to resilience that is also sensitive to contextual determinants would be a useful model to help young people adapt to apparently intractable risks. several concepts could be used in conjunction. for example, young people often linked religious and cognitive responses. it is well established that religion is posited as a specific coping mechanism, with both positive and negative elements, but there are also conceptual differences between religion and cognitive reappraisal; hence we maintained religion as a distinct theme in the analysis (pargament, 1997; pargament et al., 2005). the function of certain strategies could be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 105 viewed according to the underpinning theoretical framework. for example, the type of response that we defined as “maladaptive” (mainly responding with verbal or physical aggression) could be classified under ungar’s (2015) concept of “atypical resilience”. atypical resilience refers to alternative forms of adaptation. while this may appear to be counter-indicative to resilience in certain contexts, it can also be functional in particular contexts of adversity (ungar, 2011). responses across all four sites suggest that, in addition to identifying external resources that they would draw on when faced with adversity, youth did not see themselves as passive recipients of help. their agency was apparent in the active manner in which they considered each given scenario. for example, young people articulated solutions that involved them as actors instead of merely referring the problem to adults. this was evident across stressors within the family, the school, and the community. they similarly put forward agentic responses to helping their peers and other people when faced with natural or human-induced threats, as well as in regard to enhancing safety and natural resources in their communities. emerging differences between contexts need to be acknowledged too. for example, young people in turkey appeared to adopt more externalizing (fighting back) or internalizing (self-harm) responses to parental arguments and bullying than the other groups. in accordance with this finding, one study conducted in turkey reported that expressing negative emotions such as swearing and shouting was a common coping strategy among adolescents (öngen, 2002), although this result was not replicated in a more recent study (şahin & hepsöğütlü, 2018). in contrast, research in turkey has been consistent in finding that adolescents commonly seek social supports (altun & özdemir, 2018; kuyumcu et al., 2017; öngen, 2002). the group of young people (all female) in care from pakistan appeared to rely more on interpersonal and peer-related resources, but chose not to turn to their residential caregivers for help and did not know how to access external supports. these vulnerable young people did not consider individual activities, which may have been unavailable because of the structured residential regime. they did not use emotional regulation strategies either, which would be consistent with their multiple traumatic experiences, disrupted attachment relationships, and emotional dysregulation. worryingly, they did not consider themselves as agents, which could reflect their submissive role within the care system. limitations of the research include the relatively heterogenous sampling, and the data collection approach that prevented us from fully understanding either the process through which young people came up with their strategies or the context of their resources. developing an approach that allows more time and the recording of interactions throughout the small group discussions should be a focus of future research. sampling variables should also be addressed in more depth. for example, it was not possible to establish the extent of differences between the groups. age variation was one factor, as the youngest age group from brazil appeared to suggest more concrete or linear, instead of multilevel, responses; whilst the oldest age group in kenya considered political protests in response to environmental concerns. however, thr age range of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 92–111 106 sample was developmentally too wide to address this factor, as it varied from the onset to the end of puberty. these developmental stages can also be culturally-influenced (sabageh et al., 2015), so future studies should explore children’s resilience-building strategies within more targeted age and culture groups. a similar limitation was the lack of in-depth consideration of gender-related issues, whilst acknowledging that the care home participants were all female although no gender differences were detected from this dataset, the scenarios were possibly too broad to elicit gender-specific responses. children’s first-line responses could have been followed up by further questioning to understand whether girls and boys used similar or different strategies in response to the same stressor, such as family conflict or school bullying; the participants could also have been asked to formulate gender-specific scenarios (rizvi et al., 2014). finally, as both traditional and western influences were detected in the data, it would also be interesting to explore young people’s own explanations of the impact of these influences. conclusion several implications for practice and services tentatively arise from these findings. active participation from young people, indeed from children, is paramount in influencing decisions on their care (united nations, 2014). several studies have shown that, when engaged and involved in a developmentally appropriate and sensitive way, even young children can formulate recommendations based on their experiences of psychosocial interventions and services (bone et al., 2015). in this study, young people responded positively to the participatory research method of participants negotiating their answers in small groups rather than having individual interviews. the finding that resilience strategies for the same stressor included both informal and formal sources of support indicates the importance of establishing pathways and networks within and across families, communities, and services for young people to receive prompt and comprehensive help. it is recognized that multimodal interventions and scaled service provision are particularly appropriate for young people with complex needs (hussein et al., 2012; o’connor et al., 2018; reed et al., 2011) living in lmic without access to substantive specialist resources (vostanis, 2017, 2018; world health organization, 2008). such a service model is consistent with 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(the corresponding author) is an associate professor at the department of public health, university of southern denmark, niels bohrs vej 9, 6700 esbjerg, denmark, and a senior lecturer at the department of nursing, health and culture, university west, trollhättan, sweden. e-mail: leklund@health.sdu.dk mikael andersson is a bachelor of science, university west, department of nursing, health and culture. kungsgatan 31, 461 30 trollhättan, sweden. e-mail: andersson.erik.mikael@gmail.com josefine johansson is a bachelor of science, university west, department of nursing, health and culture. address: olof gransgatan 30, 461 41 trollhättan, sweden. e-mail: johansson.josefine85@gmail.com mailto:leklund@health.sdu.dk mailto:andersson.erik.mikael@gmail.com mailto:johansson.josefine85@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 260 south africa has more than 50 million inhabitants of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions. approximately one-third of south africa’s population is younger than 15 years, and only 7.4% is older than 60 years. although the population in south africa grows annually, the upward trend has reached a plateau and the population might decrease in the future due to a heavy disease burden that includes the hiv/aids epidemic (landguiden, 2012). the world health organization (2010) estimates that 17.8% of the population is hivpositive. the high prevalence of hiv/aids is a major reason for south africa’s low life expectancy estimates of 54.9 years for males and 59.1 years for females (statistics south africa, 2011). according to harrison, newell, imrie, and hoddinott (2010), the hiv prevalence among 15to 24-year-old south africans is among the world’s highest, even though these youth are knowledgeable about sexual health risks (campbell & macphail, 2002). eaton, flisher, and aarø (2003) concluded that at least 50% of young people are sexually active by the age of 16 years, and that between 50% and 60% of sexually active youth report never using condoms. macphail and campbell (2001) have identified lack of perceived risk, peer norms, condom availability, adult attitudes to condoms and sex, gendered power relationships, and the economic context of adolescent sexuality as the main factors hindering condom use. furthermore, studies of south african youth show that they are affected by sexual violence, forced sexual initiation, and rape (andersson et al., 2004; jewkes & abrahams, 2002; jewkes, penn-kekana, & rose-junius, 2005), which also increase the risk for hiv. south africa’s battles with public health problems and a heavy disease burden are important areas of work for the vast number of domestic non-governmental organizations (ngos) (swilling & russel, 2002). the non-profit sector is a major force in south africa. more than two million people are estimated to volunteer their time and expertise to ngos annually (ngopedia, 2009). the gap between the rich and the poor remains significant, with wide gaps between the education level and employment status of the white (european) minority and the non-white (african, multi-ethnic, and asian) segments of the population (world health organization, 2009). still, compared with other countries in the sub-saharan region, south africa is relatively well developed. although the country is riddled with great injustices and inequalities, it has the continent’s strongest economy, primarily due to its rich natural resources (world health organization, 2009). poverty is a prevailing problem, especially in the areas known as “townships”, which are located outside city centres. the townships in south africa were created during the apartheid era (1948 to 1994) when the african, european, multi-ethnic, and asian segments of the population were ordered to live separately by law (united nations, 2012). these areas are characterised by high rates of unemployment, poverty, and a high density of people living in deficient environments in which housing, water, and sanitation are far below the standards of the richer areas of the city (campbell & macphail, 2002; landguiden, 2012). some residents live in houses, whereas some reside in shacks that are built of corrugated iron, wooden poles, and other available building materials. still others live on the streets due to a lack of personal property. schools are free of charge but are often underfunded and stressed with large classes and under-qualified teachers (campbell & macphail, 2002). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 261 the leadership south programme the leadership south program (lsp) was founded in 1986 and is a registered ngo. over the last 26 years, the organisation has developed and conducted a range of programmes and activities that have focused on such area as conflict resolution, reproductive health, lifeskill training, and peer education programmes. lsp training targets 13to 18-year-old students, and the sessions are typically held in contracted schools after the scheduled school hours. the duration of the lsp’s peer education programme is 3 years with an annual start-up for new peers, and approximately 1,500 peer educators have completed the programme. the lsp provides this education programme at 16 schools in the townships around cape town. the lsp’s overall mission is to enable and equip adolescents to train and educate youth leaders (i.e., “train the trainers”) who will act as role models, providing guidance and support to their peers. an important goal for the lsp is to increase knowledge about hiv/aids in south africa by educating healthy sexual behaviour among the youths (leadership south programme, 2010, 2011). to accomplish this goal, the lsp provides education programmes that are based on an approach that contributes to the adolescent’s selfempowerment and strengthening of self-confidence. the lsp defines this approach as the “mental, physical, and spiritual coordination of self that equips each person to make a constructive difference in the development of their own lives and of those around them to uplift their communities and society in general” (leadership south programme, 2011, p. 1). the core of the peer education training is to strengthen youth leaders by sharing their experiences with their peers and others in their community, and in this way, to increase knowledge about, for example, the hiv/aids pandemic, risks for hiv, and how to make healthy decisions regarding sexual behaviour (leadership south programme, 2010, 2011). throughout the entire education process, the participants exercise teaching, mentoring, and facilitation skills to support the participants to make a constructive difference in their own lives and the lives of those around them (e.g., learning to cope with group pressure and how to avoid hiv contamination and practice safe sex). the programme consists of the following components: • year 1, junior. in the first year, the learner is provided with training in basic skills such as speaking in front of an audience, mediating and supporting behavioural change (e.g., from unsafe to safe sexual behaviour, avoiding and/or getting out of “gangsterism”, coping with alcohol and drug consumption problems, etc.), acting as a role model, employing strategies to overcome barriers, and using pedagogical methods for sharing experience and knowledge within a group. • year 2, senior. in the second year, students continue to improve upon the skills that they acquired during the first year. this year focuses on the continuation of sharing of experiences, engaging the younger learners in the learning process, and disseminating information. a government-regulated, accredited curriculum and course plan steer years 1 and 2. • year 3, mentor. the government does not regulate the third year, and a syllabus is not mandatory. the peer educators learn to train the junior and senior students. the mentor serves as a facilitator for group discussions concerning subjects such as healthy sexual behaviour and behavioural change. a continued focus on sharing experiences and individual knowledge exists during this year. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 262 the training occurs in schools directly following the scheduled classes. each township high school where the lsp was active is also co-operating with a primary school, where older students teach a group of younger students concerning such subjects as healthy sexual behaviours, everyday problem solving around conflicts with siblings or other family members, and bullying (leadership south programme, 2011). this approach is in line with harrison et al.’s (2010) systematic review of hiv prevention interventions targeting youth in south africa since 2000. that review concluded that such programmes should more strongly emphasise engaging schools in participatory learning. the peer educators arranged various sessions and theme days that became a part of their own technical training. during the holidays, the lsp arranged camps of up to 60 participants. at these camps, all individuals had responsibilities based on their interests and individual training. empowerment empowerment is a widely used concept in health promotion and public health (laverack, 2006; loukanova & bridges, 2008; wallerstein, 2006; wiggins, 2012). this term has been defined as both an outcome and a process through which individuals and communities gain greater control over health and the capacity to make or resist change (tengland, 2007, 2008). empowerment as an outcome refers to an individual’s control over the determinants of his or her quality of life. empowerment as a process refers to creating a professional relationship through which the individual or community takes control over the change process and determines both the goals and means of this process (tengland, 2008). through this process, individuals, organisations, and communities gain power and control over decisions and resources of concern to them (rappaport, 1987; zimmerman & rappaport, 1988; oladipo, 2009). prilletensky, nelson, and peirson (2001) added that the notion of power also includes opportunities for participation and self-determination as well as experiences of self-efficacy and competence. empowerment is viewed as a multi-level construct that can be applied to individuals as well as organisations, communities, and social policies (zimmerman & rappaport, 1988). zimmerman (1990) labelled the individual level of empowerment “psychological empowerment” (pe). he claimed that pe depends on the context and group of individuals included in the process. pe can be conceptualised to contain intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioural components (zimmerman, israel, schulz, & checkoway, 1992). the intrapersonal component concerns thoughts about one’s capacity to change or affect important political and social systems. this component includes motivation and perceived competence. the interactional component includes the development of problem-solving and decisionmaking skills for active engagement in the social environment. the behavioural component refers to the individual actions that one takes to influence his or her environment (zimmerman et al., 1992), for example, by doing volunteer work for the lsp. empowerment at the individual level is linked with that at the organisational and community levels through one’s development of personal competence to act, and development of interpersonal, social, and political skills, and social support (kieffer, 1984), as well as one’s desire to influence and control the socio-political environment and willingness to take collective action (zimmermann & rappaport, 1988; wallerstein, 1992). oladipo (2009) argued that pe is a prerequisite for achieving economic or community empowerment in general society. oladipo (2009) further stated that when people are psychologically empowered, there will be a change in attitude, cognition and behaviour, which most assuredly will lead to a positive change in value orientation, increased patriotic actions, ability to postpone gratification of one’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 263 desires, improved self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-consciousness as well as better psychological well-being, which culminate in a peaceful and developing society. (p. 122) thus, empowerment must be investigated not only as an individual change but also as change in the social setting in which it appears (wallerstein, 1992; zimmerman, 1990). empowerment is most often gradually developed as an active, dialogical, educational development process that is inspired by the freirian pedagogy for critical consciousness (freire, 1993). freire argued that a prerequisite for a positive behaviour change is the development of critical consciousness, which comprises the ability to critically reflect on the conditions that shape people’s lives, the perceived capacity to effect social and political change, and collective action to change these conditions (watts, diemer, & voight, 2011). freire (1993) emphasised the importance of critical consciousness for achieving social equality and justice. his pedagogy was intended to transform and empower vulnerable people from a position of oppression or helplessness to one of awareness and mastery of their own lives. thus, the premise is that not only individual empowerment but also collective peer empowerment are important foundational principles for action. peer education and empowerment according to the literature, interest is growing in participatory peer education as an hiv prevention strategy among young adult populations throughout the world (e.g., ebreo, feist-price, siewe, & zimmerman, 2002; ochieng, 2003; wegner, flisher, caldwell, vergnani, & smith, 2008; hatcher et al., 2011; watts et al., 2011; wiggins, 2012). empowerment through education for critical consciousness might be the key for the success of this peer education strategy (campbell & macphail, 2002; campbell & cornish, 2010; hatcher et al., 2011; macphail, 2006; mohajer & earnest, 2009; visser, 2005, 2007; watts et al., 2011; wiggins, 2012; wilson, minkler, dasho, wallerstein, & martin, 2008). visser (2007) claimed that peer education is an appropriate hiv/aids prevention method among adolescents because youth may find it easier to discuss personal issues with peers than with adults, and they use a shared language. drummond, mizan, brocx, and wright (2011) added that the peer education approach might be successful in the area of sexual health topics that are generally considered “taboo” or overly sensitive to discuss. compared with traditional health education, peer education is an attempt to incorporate numerous individual opinions within a group process that consists of dialogue, argumentation between peers, and exchange and discussion of each other’s experiences (campbell & macphail, 2002). peer education provides a forum in which participants are able to assess their opinions about behavioural options with their peers. peer education aims to create a negotiated collective identity that includes shared peer group norms, which then guide health behaviours rather than individual choices (campbell & macphail, 2002). according to campbell and macphail, collective identity functions as a tool for social change. peer education efforts should focus particularly on developing participants’ critical consciousness of socially constructed gender-related norms that determine youth sexual behaviours (campbell & macphail, 2002; selikow, ahmed, flisher, mathews, & mukoma, 2009; harrison et al., 2010). this recommendation is in line with a growing body of research that shows a clear correlation among african adolescents’ gender-related socialisation, power relationships, and risky sexual behaviours (varga, 2003). campbell and mzaidume (2002) as well as campbell (2004) argued that peer education should aim to create supportive social environments. this goal can be accomplished international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 264 through: alliances between peer educators and influential groups (campbell & mzaidume, 2002); collaborations between stakeholder groups at local, national, and international levels (campbell, 2004); and partnerships between marginalised communities and support agencies such as ngos (nair & campbell, 2008). according to campbell, foulis, maimane, and sibiya (2005), health-supporting social environments encourage young people’s social and political participation, facilitate their empowerment, and promote affirmative attitudes toward youth and their sexuality (see also, campbell & cornish, 2010). campbell, gibbs, maimane, nair, and sibiya (2009) suggested that projects that seek effective youth participation in hiv/aids leadership should first understand the psychosocial preconditions for such participation and how material, symbolic, and institutional environments either facilitate or hinder such participation. the extant literature indicates that using peer educators is an appropriate approach for empowering young adult populations (e.g., cornish & campbell, 2009; ebreo et al., 2002; ochieng, 2003; wegner et al., 2008; hatcher et al., 2011; watts et al., 2011; wiggins, 2012). however, evidence also shows the opposite effect (ebreo et al., 2002) or little or no effect of peer education interventions compared with other types of interventions (ochieng, 2003). although many hiv/aids peer education programme evaluations exist and their results are documented, few studies have assessed the effect of these efforts on the peer educators themselves (ebreo et al., 2002; mohajer & earnest, 2009). the purpose of the current paper is to describe the peer educators’ experience related to lsp training. the aims were to analyse the peer educators’ perceived self-empowerment, to explore their perceptions of their own learning and development, and to describe their strategies for peer empowerment. the primary focus of this paper was individual empowerment because it is the link between, and prerequisite for, the other levels of empowerment. however, it was also important to know whether the empowered peer educators were successful in empowering further the youth who participated in the peer-led programs by supporting them (e.g., to change their sexual behaviours from unsafe to safe). the present investigation selection of the study approach a qualitative approach was selected for this study as it creates a condition that gives broader and richer descriptions by providing the participants with a possibility to express their thoughts freely, whereby interesting tracks can appear (alvesson & deetz, 2000). alvesson and deetz point out the importance of getting close to the participants of the study but, still, keeping a certain distance in order to have an objective view of the situation. grounded theory (gt), as described by glaser and strauss (1967) as well as charmaz (2006), inspired the methodology of our study. charmaz’s (2006) version of gt was useful at the start of the analysis because it contains methodological guidelines and hands-on advice that can be used as a set of tools. charmaz (2006) bases her interpretation of gt on the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism. she states that researchers are part of the world and that the collected data and every theory are constructions of the studied world rather than an exact copy of it. however, our initial aim was not to produce a complete theory grounded on the data as is required in the orthodox gt procedure (glaser & strauss, 1967). rather, we aimed to find certain themes or patterns across the data to characterise respondent experiences as peer leaders and to highlight their learning, participation, and empowerment. thus, after the initial coding phase, the current analysis was similar to the thematic content analysis described by braun and clarke (2006). this analysis is considered to be suitable for examining experiences, meanings, and the realities of participants, as well as a range of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 265 ongoing discourses within society (braun & clarke, 2006), for example, the discourse concerning gender roles, poverty, and their influence on sexual behaviours and hiv risk. sampling and participants two former south african lsp mentors and facilitators with local knowledge, language skills, and contacts with the networks of peer educators, (i.e., gatekeepers) handpicked approximately 30 respondents they knew were available, interested, and who suited the purpose of this research. this subjective sampling technique is effective in reaching an elusive population (denscombe, 2009) and is used in situations where the researcher already has some knowledge of the people or phenomena to be investigated. the researcher deliberately hand-picks some of these people as it is considered likely that these will have the most valuable data to illuminate the research question. the strategy used to locate respondents was also the most appropriate choice, given that we had a limited amount of time to conduct the study. denscombe (2009) supported this type of respondent selection when he argued that a researcher should consider all resources, including assistance, transportation, time, and budget, when conducting a study. the gatekeepers served as cultural guides, interpreters, and advisers also during data collection. thus, the gatekeepers were indispensable because legitimising the study would have been much more difficult to achieve in south africa without their assistance. the peer educator participants in this study included 13to 18-year-old boys and girls who had completed the lsp training programme. the participants were fluent in english and xhosa (their native tongue). data collection the data collection was conducted in two phases. first, open-ended questionnaires were administered. then, qualitative interviews were conducted using an interview guide. this approach is an effective way to elicit data from respondents who prefer to express themselves in writing instead of speaking (charmaz, 2006). we also considered that a method combination might provide a more complete description and/or explanation of the phenomena studied. this way, the results are more likely to respond to a wider range of issues and provide a more comprehensive account of what is being investigated (denscombe, 2009). a total of 27 questionnaires were distributed, and 26 were completed and returned (by 13 male and 13 female 13to 18-year-olds). the open-ended questionnaire included questions concerning peer educators’ experiences of leadership and participation (in the education programme and the community in general), motivation, and the development of personal skills. the questions were presented in a historical and visionary manner to facilitate respondents telling their leadership stories from the past to the present, their thoughts about their leadership roles in the future, and the desired support and training for their future peer leadership/educator roles. the questionnaire was based on zimmerman and rappaport (1988), who stated that a high level of involvement in community activities and organisations affects one’s sense of empowerment. the data from the open-ended questionnaires were entered into a computer and reviewed several times before progressing to the second phase (the qualitative interviews). the objective of the additional data collection was to obtain greater detail regarding peer educators’ subjective viewpoints, experiences, and perceptions concerning their development and performance. those who answered the open-ended questionnaires were asked about their interest in participating in the qualitative interview as a further chance to share views and experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 266 of the 26 respondents, 23 agreed to be interviewed. six of these interviews were not analysed due to noise and interruptions, or failures to record the interviews such that they could not be fully transcribed and used as reliable data. the final dataset consisted of 17 complete interviews. the average interview was 35 minutes, resulting in approximately 10 hours of interview recordings. english was the primary language used during the interviews, although certain words required interpretation by the gatekeepers. a written interview guide was used. it was constructed according to the same structure as the open-ended questionnaire including the same concepts. the concepts of motivation and participation were based on the article by zimmerman and rappaport (1988). both concepts are considered important in the individual-focused empowerment theory. leadership, education, and personal skills were also included in the interview guide. the interview guide was piloted with two respondents, which resulted in the addition of an item concerning context, experiences in the community setting, and community participation. the interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. thematic content analysis the thematic content analysis was conducted along the lines described by braun and clarke (2006). two researchers carefully read the data and conducted the initial coding of words, lines, and incidents. during this initial phase, the researchers searched for actions, asked questions about what was occurring in the data, and concisely named the codes. in the second step of the analysis, the researchers examined larger segments of the text, and the most frequent initial codes were selected for additional coding when they captured a patterned meaning or theme that moved the analytic process forward with regard to the research questions. this process included inductively identifying emerging themes, coding them as appropriate, and discussing the codes and themes jointly with the research group to identify similarities and common attributes across them. the recurrent themes were then grouped to form subcategories and main categories. for example, one code regarding motivation was “having power to continue with training”. as an increasing number of codes emerged from the data, codes with similar meanings were grouped for a higher level of abstraction. finally, the codes were used to generate categories. as the coding proceeded, changes in the categories or the development of new categories occurred. these procedures were conducted by constantly comparing the data with the additional codes generated from the data. the aforementioned example code was ultimately categorised as “strengthening motivation”. ethical considerations the participants completed and signed an informed consent and indemnity form prior to data collection. the form stated the research objectives, how the results would be used, and that no personal information or names would appear in the study. the signature of a parent or legal guardian was obtained for those participants under 18 years of age. findings the results describe how peer educators who participated in the lsp experienced the training process and their own empowerment. these findings are presented within the framework of the study aims. perceived self-empowerment the results revealed that participation in the lsp strengthened the peer educators as follows: the respondents reported that their feelings of self-efficacy increased, their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 267 motivation to engage in programme activities became stronger, they learned to overcome their fears, and they felt healthier and happier. the respondents also explained that participation in the lsp was meaningful for them and the local community. the results indicated that the peer educators were empowered at the individual level. many of the respondents stated that they were glad they had joined the lsp and that their participation in the programme contributed to their increased self-esteem. the data also showed that involvement in the lsp made the participants feel good and affected their lives in a positive manner: participation in the lsp made me stronger. when i was doing lsp, i was a bit shy, but the programme helped me to grow as a person, and now i know how to speak in front of people. in the past, i had a problem: my self-esteem was low. but then i joined the leadership programme, and it helped me a lot. i gained a lot of knowledge on how to live my life and knowledge and experience with how to help people. when i joined lsp, the peer education programme was dealing with hiv and leadership and dialogue. i took part in it, and it really changed me because before i joined lsp, i couldn’t stand in front of people; i was not able to say what i wanted to say. but after i joined lsp, i changed through their teaching. the quotes above indicate that the lsp helped the peer educators overcome such fears as speaking and presenting in front of a group. the respondents reported that the training improved their self-confidence. furthermore, the respondents stated that their interest in leadership and the other topics that they discussed during the programme (e.g., hiv/aids prevention, femininity/masculinity, psychology of health behaviours, and gender roles) provided them with new knowledge, which inspired them to continue with their training: every session motivated me and changed my life in so many different ways. i used to think negative thoughts and say to myself, “i´m weak and helpless”. but now i know that i can change. i am grateful. i feel good. i have changed from what i was. now, i am someone who can act as a role model for others. leading programme has taught me a lot, and i want to proceed with learning more. you, as the peer educator, assist with decision-making, and let the person choose from the options that you have given. then, later on, that person can make his or her decisions him or herself. i want to continue to do this. being a leader has made me realise how precious life is. since i´ve been in the leading phase, i have learned a lot about life and the challenges that it brings/has for us. i have met so many people with similar stories like mine: abuse, parents who drink, and other problems that we as youth face. so, being a leader boosts my self-image and self-esteem. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 268 perceptions of learning and development as a peer educator participation in the lsp increased learning and self-development. the respondents reported that they gained improved communication and problem-solving skills, learned how to behave in a healthier manner (e.g., improved knowledge concerning healthy choices in different situations), acquired leadership skills, gained increased self-consciousness, and gained knowledge about healthy sexual behaviours. the respondents explained that their improved knowledge and skills were crucial for serving as role models for other adolescents. the most common skills that the peer educators considered to be important were those related to communication, support, and facilitation. the respondents also viewed the problem-solving methods as useful. they stated that their problem-solving strategies included consultation with the person having a problem, providing information regarding relevant issues of concern, and coaching him or her to find solutions. they teach me, like, more about how to be a leader for others and how to communicate and keep myself up to date. now, like, i can even advise others when they have problems because of leadership south. every session motivated me and changed my life in so many different ways. i used to think negative thoughts and say to myself, “i´m weak”. but now i know that i´m great. i experience that you can live life without having sex, and you can enjoy your life to the fullest if you are keeping yourself busy always. they gave us training on how to solve a problem or how to counsel someone. they gave us methods on how to solve a problem, and i am still using those methods. another important lesson that the respondents learned was how to treat people equally by respecting all people and their values rather than judging them. their involvement in the lsp broadened respondents’ ways of thinking and their understanding of others’ interests and views of life. the participants also expressed that they gained the courage to share their own experiences and stories to support others. many respondents stated that encouraging others increased their understanding of themselves (i.e., self-consciousness). the lsp taught the peer educators how to simultaneously handle different situations and support their peers. caring for others resulted in strengthened beliefs about their own abilities. this situation was a “win-win” for the peer educators because they were empowered as individuals by supporting and consulting with others: peer education and peer counselling have given me a broader way of thinking, listening abilities, and skills for providing to and receiving information from others. from now on, i can guarantee that i can offer good leadership. it feels good because when you teach children, you also learn yourself. so, it also teaches back to you. i’ll make sure that i involve myself with different people so that i will be able to understand them, but not end up judging them… because, like, when people don’t know you, they start to judge you. so, like, i try to put myself in a level that they will understand me and i will understand them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 269 in addition to behavioural skills, the lsp taught peer life skills, with a major focus on hiv/aids issues. many of the peer educators were aware of the severity of the aids situation in africa and reported being engaged in helping to disseminate and inform other peers regarding healthy sexual behaviours. the respondents mentioned that they had learned how to manage sex and hiv/aids as a part of their life skills training. they also emphasised the importance of avoiding sex before marriage. thus, the respondents challenged the prevailing socially derived norms and peer pressures regarding sexual behaviour. according to selikow et al. (2009), abstinence from sex and the delay of sexual debut are typically undermined by adolescents’ strong need to belong to a social group because sexual activity gives adolescents access to a group. the results also indicated that the peer educators were successful in advocating and integrating new norms regarding sexual debut into their new collective identity (campbell & macphail, 2002), which can further serve as a basis for solidarity and collective action (watts et al., 2011). all respondents mentioned that the sharing of information was the most crucial aspect of hiv/aids prevention. the peer educators showed great interest and sufficient knowledge regarding the hiv/aids issue. their improved cognitive and social skills boosted their ability to understand the information and critically use it in their health promotion work: if i get something from lsp, like, knowledge about hiv, yes, i do share this with my class and conduct a debate about it. i like to know everything, like, especially about hiv. i wanted to be mostly involved in hiv, to tell people how not to get infected by hiv because i´ve seen how south africa struggles with hiv. i want to make a change. this is what i tell myself when i go to this organisation, like, i tell myself that i want to make a change. i´ve been part of the lsp, and i´ve been teaching my peers about hiv and aids and telling them, for example, that sex is not a right thing to do until you get married. experiences with the process of empowering others one of the aims of the lsp’s work is to train peer educators to share experiences and transfer skills and knowledge to others, with the overall mission of improving the community. the trained peer educators are, in turn, expected to facilitate and enable their peers to strive toward empowerment (leadership south programme, 2011). according to the results, the informants pursued their mission with great seriousness. they mentioned that when serving as a peer educator, listening, advocating good choices, and supporting and advising others were the most important strategies: it is all about helping your peers to learn from other people’s experiences and ideas, sharing information with them and ensuring that they get the relevant information and that they are also sharing information with others. the nicest thing is that you never see me sitting alone. i always try to sit in groups with other people. i always try to involve myself in many things, so i share my skills, okay. i do most talking, but i don’t just talk. the talk is about a lot of things, things that other people are talking about. to inspire and affect others, the peer educators reported that they purposefully acted in a positive and respectful manner so that others could follow their example. due to the lsp’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 270 training regarding how to support and encourage others, the peer educators felt confident in their mission and combined this feeling with a sense of power. many peer educators stated that they motivated others in the same way that they were motivated by their family, friends, and teachers, or by sharing their own mistakes and experiences. i think motivation is like giving someone the power to do what they would like to do. not exactly giving them the power, but making them feel confident about what they want to do and supporting them with their ideas. well, it becomes hard if i don’t know the person but to motivate others, i always try to motivate a person. even if i don’t know what to say, like, even if that person doesn’t know where to go or is feeling down or something, i always try to convince him: “now, it will be okay!” but sometimes i feel like, “okay, what am i saying to this person? did i scare him?” but then i usually come around. i don’t like talking negatively, so i always try to bring the positive side to something. i like to motivate people because i don’t want to see them go the wrong way like i did. that’s why i motivate people to go, to do right things. i don’t want them to do the wrong that i´ve done. according to the data, the lsp influenced and changed many participants’ lives. by joining the programme, the informants acquired a broader understanding of sexual behaviours, leadership, and peer education as well as a more accepting manner of thinking with regard to other people's ideas, norms, and behaviours. certain participants experienced a change in their views and preconceptions about others. some participants stated that the lsp was a turning point in their lives. regardless of the participant background (i.e., poor, middle or upper-class families), the lsp was perceived as an important mechanism of support. the participants explained that the support from the lsp enabled them to use their peer educator skills in other situations: i’ve been, like, doing bad things and want life to change me. i think the programme is about how to change and about learning how to be yourself. i feel good because i help other people to help themselves. i used to hang out with friends that drink alcohol and use drugs, but now i… only now when i came back from the sessions i participated, i just can tell them that “guys, you need to change because this is not the way to live life; you can really have so much better lives than this, ’cause now you don’t have the choice like doing drugs and all that kind. you know, it’s not like going to take you somewhere in life, it’s just gonna, like, ruin your life and… you know, you end up being nothing and useless to people…” i was not doing good things. so, i wasted my whole two years doing that thing and then i realised that at the end of the day, i will be alone…. i feel like i don’t know what i’m doing when i’m in “gangsterism”, just because when you are a gangster, you don’t tell yourself, “now, i’m a gangster”. someone forces you to be a gangster. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 271 according to the respondents, many of their classmates were behind in their studies and attended grade levels with younger students: i was hanging around, not studying, so i became involved in “gangsterism” for two years. i am actually supposed to be in grade 11. the respondents explained that many adolescents in the townships dropped out of school because they had no relationships with their fathers. they often had to work in the rural areas around cape town. their fathers left them with the major responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings. i do have some responsibilities at home, yeah, after school i have to do the washing first, and then i cook for them (my siblings). along with poor schools with underqualified teachers, the respondents indicated that a shortage of school meals and too many students in each class were common. these factors were perceived as barriers to their studies. the respondents expressed that participation in the lsp with other adolescents who were in similar situations provided them with support to attend school and motivated them to take control over their own education. discussion the current findings showed that the lsp peer education program improved both the motivation and competence of the participating peer educators. these educators experienced increased self-esteem, learned how to overcome their fears, developed the competence to act respectfully, and found an increased meaningfulness in their peer educator role. these results confirm many of the advantages of peer leadership through peer education as described by ocheing (2003). however, residence in a township environment highly marked by poverty, injustice, and inequalities (e.g., campbell & macphail, 2002; campbell, gibbs, et al., 2009) as well as a poor school environment and a lack of parental support might have negative effects on adolescent perceptions of their own capacities and beliefs that community change is possible. due to these structural and contextual barriers, some respondents doubted their longterm capabilities to organise and implement the course of action required of peer leaders. although participation in the lsp positively affected the peer educators’ feelings of selfefficacy and self-esteem, it seems that an intervention longer than 3 years would be necessary in order to strengthen their belief in community change, which according to the results were shown to be vague. this finding is in line with campbell and macphail’s (2002) call for longterm peer education activities that build adolescents’ confidence and ability to take control over their life situations. thus, time and practice are crucial for developing empowerment (kieffer, 1984). the data revealed that informants believe that because of their participation in the lsp, they had developed improved communication skills with their peers and community members, better leadership and problem-solving abilities, and increased knowledge about hiv and healthy sexual behaviour. the lsp succeeded in developing participant confidence with regard to making healthy decisions and the belief that these choices lead to positive outcomes. it seems that the participants had gained a feeling of being able to better control their environments and personal circumstances (e.g., in dealing with group pressure), which according to koelen and lindström (2005) increases the likelihood of making healthy choices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 272 our study indicates that the use of peer educators was an effective way to build the competencies that are useful in leading peers and generate sustainable attitudes supporting healthy sexual behaviour. this finding corroborates ochieng’s (2003) conclusion that peer leadership can change attitudes toward hiv/aids and other health-related matters. thus, peer education strengthened the interactional component (zimmerman et al., 1992) of psychological empowerment. the behavioural component refers to an individual’s participation in organisations and activities to influence his or her environment (zimmerman et al., 1992; oladipo, 2009). our results demonstrated that peer educators are willing to commit to the work of the lsp to improve their community. participation in the activities of this ngo improved adolescents’ psychological empowerment. this finding emphasises the importance of the work conducted by ngos and other organisations similar to the lsp (ochieng, 2003). ngos provide the support environment required for a successful empowerment process where alliances and partnerships between peer educators and influential community agencies (campbell, 2004; campbell & mzaidume, 2002; nair & campbell, 2008) can be established. ngos can also provide spaces where peer educators can fulfil their desires to belong to a group (selikow et al., 2009) and simultaneously learn the positive norms that are essential when serving as peer role models. the lsp training program enabled participants to assimilate knowledge and skills for a more reflective and investigative approach to their environments. according to freire (1993), this knowledge is a prerequisite for positive behavioural change. the training aims to create conditions for the development of the critical consciousness of youth through activities such as involvement in preparing syllabi, exercises, discussions, and training/lectures. participants’ process of empowering their peers most often took the form of sharing experiences and thoughts within a group. the literature (kieffer, 1984) claims that this behaviour is the essence of the empowerment learning process. we believe that the peer educators reached the psychological level of empowerment (as described above) and then used it as a resource to empower others. in addition, when a student chose to participate in the lsp, he or she had already reached the first level of self-empowerment: the awareness of a need to change. kieffer (1984) called this level the era of entry. this first level of empowerment is followed by the sharing of experiences with other like-minded peers. using kieffer’s (1984) terms, we interpreted this activity as the advanced era of empowerment, which is characterised by mentoring relationships, increased critical consciousness of social and political relationships, improved strategic and leadership skills, and a matured ability for critical thinking. the data also indicated that the peer educators were committed to applying their new abilities in everyday situations. methodological considerations the various data coding steps were complicated, and developing an understanding of the informants’ language and statements was time consuming. however, we ensured the validity of our interpretation by continuously discussing our interpretation of the data – including the coding procedures, the selection of themes, and category creation – and our results with the research group. the researchers found that it was difficult to remain open-minded and avoid preconceived thoughts (i.e., bracketing; charmaz, 2006); this limitation might have affected the trustworthiness of this research. although we attempted to remain neutral, it is likely that our underlying values partially affected the study. according to charmaz (2006), the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 258–278 273 researcher always represents the field in which he or she is trained; therefore, the results are always constructed in concert with the respondent data and the prior knowledge of the researcher. conclusions this study examined whether the training provided by the lsp increased peer educators’ perceived positive feelings of empowerment. many hiv/aids peer education programmes have been used to deliver information and training to adolescents; however, few researchers have studied the effect of these programmes on peer educators themselves (ebero et al., 2002; ochieng, 2003). the current study helps us to understand the effects of one such programme on peer educators and indicates the need for additional research on programmes such as the lsp. the results indicated that peer educators’ empowerment through the intervention increased their self-esteem and autonomy, their capacity for critical thinking, and their perceived self-efficacy concerning healthy choices. the study also showed that the lsp had positive health effects on the peer educators and their peers. these effects might, in turn, positively affect community development, thereby promoting the health and well-being of the local community. the youths who participated in the lsp gained knowledge and tools for coping with a variety of situations, such as conflict management, how to manage peer pressure, and how to say no to sex. in many respects, the environment where these youth live is burdened with negative influences (e.g., poverty, unemployment, crime, drugs, poor schools, and a lack of leisure time activities). however, the lsp training resulted in opportunities for a better future. nearly all respondents had visions of obtaining good-paying jobs, such as those held by social workers and politicians, to contribute to a better society. many respondents felt that they had gained the power and ability to influence and change their environments through the lsp. however, the practice, support, and guidance provided by the intervention/training organisers over several years were crucial for achieving sustainable results (e.g., training a peer educator who is committed to his or her role model tasks even after completing the formal training). our conclusion is that education based on peer trainee resources and strengths successfully promotes healthy behaviours and fosters health promotion among the adolescents living in the township areas. however, the sustainability of these results remains unclear because its verification would need a long-term follow-up 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(1992). further explorations in empowerment theory: an empirical analysis of psychological empowerment. american journal of community psychology, 20(6), 707–727. zimmerman, m. a., & rappaport, j. (1988). citizen participation, perceived control and psychological empowerment. american journal of community psychology, 16(5), 725–750. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00942234 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00930023 empowering adolescents to engage in healthy behaviours through peer leadership training in the townships of cape town researcher always represents the field in which he or she is trained; therefore, the results are always constructed in concert with the respondent data and the prior knowledge of the researcher. conclusions social and familial inclusion of children and adolescents in alternative care: advances and challenges of professional practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 421 social and familial inclusion of children and adolescents in alternative care: advances and challenges of professional practice in brazil today isa maria f. r. guará and dayse cesar franco bernardi abstract: this article focuses on the advances and challenges of familial and social inclusion of children and adolescents in residential care in light of the new legal framework for services in brazil. it also discusses the new framework’s application to professional practices at different levels of management and decision-making in the social protection system in brazil today. the authors’ experience in creating and conducting training courses for educators and social managers who work directly in social protection programs or in the justice system provides inputs for an interpretive analysis of family inclusion of children who live away from parental care, seeking to understand the progress and challenges and their applications to residential care services. taking into consideration the data available in research and publications that provide an overview of the situation, as well as everyday professional practice, we specifically discuss the individual care plan [plano individual de atendimento] as a tool for implementing the rights of children and adolescents and for planning processes for their socio-familial inclusion. individual care plans have contributed to improved and shortened stays in residential care according to judicial experts. keywords: brazil, residential care, adolescents, children, inclusion isa maria f. r. guará is a lecturer in the master’s degree program adolescents in conflict with the law at unian, são paulo, brazil, and expert advisor at the center for studies on children and adolescents [núcleo de estudos da criança e do adolescente, neca]. e-mail: isamariaguara@gmail.com dayse cesar franco bernardi is a lecturer on legal psychology at the sedes sapientiae institute, são paulo, brazil, and expert advisor at the center for studies on children and adolescents [núcleo de estudos da criança e do adolescente, neca]. e-mail: daysecfbernardi@uol.com.br mailto:isamariaguara@gmail.com mailto:daysecfbernardi@uol.com.br international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 422 the main brazilian legislation for protection of children and adolescents is the estatuto da criança e do adolescente [statute of children and adolescents] (eca)1, which came into effect in 1990. it is based on the principles of the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) and other international treaties. it has been an important lever for the reorganization of the structure of care and social policies for children and adolescents, bringing to the public agenda the fulfilment of their needs as guaranteed rights. movements and proposals aimed at ending child labour, combating domestic and sexual violence, and guaranteeing a life within the family and the community, especially for those with higher social vulnerability, have been putting pressure on governments and the justice system to accelerate changes in order to transform this legislation into actions and objective responses that attend to the needs of children and adolescents. among the major violations of the rights of children and adolescents who are in a vulnerable situation in brazil are the lack of support and security on the part of family and community and the low education level of children and adolescents, which is detrimental to their future social and economic inclusion and negatively impacts their emotional and social development. many children and adolescents still live in environments in which they are subjected to different forms of domestic and sexual violence and are in a state of material and emotional abandonment. many are on the streets. a series of national standards and complementary legislation aimed at creating new structures and services to streamline the processes of inclusion and social protection of this population has been drawn up. regional ordinances and local regulations derived from the national standards aim to guide and control the deployment and appropriateness of services, activities, and child-care programs; and to avoid violations of rights with the support of the new political-legal paradigm. social and familial inclusion has become the heart of the social welfare and protection system2 in brazil. we define social and familial integration as the process of a child or adolescent who was separated from parental care returning to live within his or her family and community or with an adoptive family. all efforts and legal measures seek to strengthen biological families in regaining their protective capacity so they can take back the children who have moved away from their family space of affection and protection. for social and familial integration the extended family is also considered. grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives assume the protective role in a large number of cases (fontes, 2008; bazon, 2000; araújo & dias, 2010)3. in the cases of children and adolescents whose chances of family reintegration are considered remote, it has been proposed that a gradual transition take place from the institutional model of residential care to the so-called “repúblicas jovens” [youth group homes], in which a group of young people are supported in their process of achieving autonomy and social attachment. besides the legal, structural, and political changes, tools and procedures are planned to accommodate each unique case, and to expand monitoring and control over actions carried out. one of these tools is the plano individual de atendimento [individual care plan] (pia), which must be prepared by professionals from residential care or shelters and monitored by agents of the justice system: legal practitioners, prosecutors, and judges of childhood and youth. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 423 monitoring is to be carried out through “concentrated hearings”. in this model, the judge of childhood and youth coordinates the discussion of each case with the entire network of services involved in the individual plan. the pias will facilitate the full protection, restoration, and socioeducation of children and adolescents who are in care services, and support the main goal of promoting family reintegration. we present here a brief inventory of the main legal rules and parameters that guide brazilian public policies geared towards children and adolescents who live in residential care services and shelters. from the empirical field, we have added information collected in 26 training meetings conducted by the núcleo de estudos da criança e do adolescente [center for the study of children and adolescents] (neca) in 2014, which were attended by 1,200 judicial technicians from the state of são paulo. data were categorized by content analysis (rocha & deusdará, 2005), according to the assumptions of social pedagogy, and with the awareness that in those meetings the methodology was similar to that of action-research (caliman, 2006). this makes it possible to analyze the socio-familial integration of children and adolescents in the context of secondary research data and national surveys, and also in light of the questions and categories emerging in the discourse of those involved in the services and shelters. concepts, legal framework, and social policies for social and familial insertion of children and adolescents in the 1980s and 1990s, large residential institutions for children, of the type analyzed by foucault (1987) in his famous book discipline and punish, were criticized and denounced by many researchers (fonseca, 1987; silva, 1997; altoé, 1993; guirado, 1986). these studies contributed to social knowledge by discussing the ways that isolation, the impact of mass culture, and the absence of family and community life damage the development of marginalized children and adolescents. these and other references supported the legal changes made in the care system laid out when the eca came into force in 1990. other researchers (pilotti & rizzini, 1995; baptista, 2006) in different fields showed the need to end the segregation and subordination of impoverished children. until this is accomplished, families will continue to be stigmatized and held solely responsible for violations of their children’s rights. the ethical-political dimension of inclusion (sawaia, 2001) manifests itself here, indicating the need to deal with the ethical and political suffering derived from situations of exclusion4, so that that re-inclusion in the family is not thought of just as a legal mandate, disconnected from the desire of the family to establish links and provide protection. reintegration with the family must be seen as a real possibility. the difficulty of guiding mothers of children who are in shelters regarding good parental care, when they themselves did not have this positive experience in their childhood, was one of the recurring themes in the discourse of participants in the training meetings. they talked about the emotional toll and human suffering present in the stories of neglect and deprivation, often magnified by violence and humiliation. to deal humanely with such situations requires a greater understanding of human subjectivity than the formal judicial process can muster. personal contacts are often bureaucratized, which leads to blaming the families, who actually require help as much as their children. regarding adoption5, inclusion in a new family requires quality interventions consistent with legal requirements and with the best interests of the child or adolescent6 who, at all times international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 424 during the process, should be duly heard and informed about the meaning of entering a new family. the personal history of the child or adolescent must be taken into account7. moreira et al. (2013) studied how the protective measures prescribed by the eca unfolded in family systems and found “badly told stories”, in which the absence of complete records on the family situation and the fact that families and children were not heard by qualified personnel led to “hasty decisions for separation or inadequate return to the family of origin” or even “to decisions regarding adoption without the participation of the child, the birth family and the adoptive family”. an untold story, the authors conclude, can lead to a prolongation of the child’s time in institutional care (pp. 70–71). in recent years, a variety of legal and regulatory instruments have had an impact on the process of family integration of children in residential care8. in 2009, the conselho nacional de justiça [ national council of justice] (cnj) regulated the establishment of a cadastro nacional das crianças e adolescentes acolhidos [national register of children and adolescents in care]. in 2013, the cnj made it mandatory to hold concentrated hearings to review cases of institutional placement (cnj, 2013). held biannually for each foster child, the hearing will reassess the individual plan with the child or adolescent, the family, and representatives of the justice system all present. under these new regulations, which attempt to guarantee the right to a family life for all children and adolescents (presidência da república, 2009), the decision to take a child or adolescent into alternative residential care services becomes a direct responsibility of the child and youth judge. according to the plano nacional de proteção, promoção e defesa do direito de crianças e adolescentes à convivência familiar e comunitária [national plan for the protection, promotion, and preservation of the rights of children to family and community] (pncfc), socio-familial support programs are designed to strengthen the family by establishing, in a participatory manner, a work plan or family development plan that values the family’s uniqueness and its ability to find its own solutions for the problems it faces, given professional and institutional support (presidência da república, 2006). the pncfc also emphasizes the need to link various basic social policies, in particular those concerned with public health, social assistance, and education. national surveys and studies on residential care services have been a source of analyses and observations regarding the status and real experience of resident children, service providers, and the professionals who work with them. in a 2003 survey by the instituto de pesquisa econômica aplicada [institute for applied economic research] (ipea), among the most frequently-cited reasons for child and adolescent residential care were the family’s lack of material resources (24.1% of cases) and abandonment by parents or guardians (18.8%); a smaller number (7%) of the resident children came from an experience of life in the streets. most of these children had a family (87%) and many maintained bonds with it (58.2%) (silva, 2003). in 2008, the núcleo de estudos da criança e do adolescente [study center for children and adolescents] (neca) conducted an investigation of tensions in the care placement process and of the relations between those deciding and those executing the special protection services of residential care (one of the forms of alternative care) in the city of são paulo, with the participation of around 200 professionals (neca, 2009). the survey revealed a demand for providing services through articulated networks in response to disconnected institutions and a need to work directly with the families, both to prevent the need for institutional care and to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 425 ensure the possibility of family and community reintegration of children and adolescents who had been taken into care. the levantamento nacional das crianças e adolescentes em serviços de acolhimento [national survey of children and adolescents in residential care], conducted by the oswaldo cruz foundation (fiocruz, 2010) and the ministério do desenvolvimento social e combate à fome [ministry of social development and the fight against hunger] (mds) showed that in 2010 a total of 36,929 children and adolescents were taken into care in 2,624 institutions providing residential care services in 1,157 brazilian municipalities. most children and adolescents taken into care had a family and most of them maintained affective bonds with it, even though some had been in the institution for long periods of time. this is a sign of both the low effectiveness of community-oriented social policies aimed at guaranteeing family reintegration and of the true complexity of the cases. a point worth noting is that 96.5% of the services were acolhimento institucional [institutional residential care] and only 3.5% were família acolhedora [foster care]9, most of which has been implemented in the last six years (fiocruz, 2010). it is worth noting that there is no research on the reasons why there are so few foster care initiatives, but some researchers point to the culture of caring for children within the extended family (sarti, 1996) and the temporary circulation of children among relatives (fonseca, 2004) as possible reasons. martins et al. (2010) add that the support of the extended family “requires less professional effort and economic spending from public authorities” than a program such as foster families; moreover, it keeps children in their cultural and social context. fonseca (2004) also notes that in brazilian legislation there is no focus on foster family placement, but a priority is placed on the birth family. despite the explanations and testimonies in surveys about the use of foster families, there are still many difficulties in understanding the aim of a service of this nature. valente (2012) suggests that the lack of debate on this issue shows that there is little information to generate the necessary clarity to differentiate the use of residential care, adoption, circulation of children, informal foster care, or even custody in the extended family or in a significant social network. in spite of the significant number of institutional care services, both residential care and casas-lares [group homes], the debate is still contradictory and the need to seek legitimacy is constant. siqueira and dell’aglio (2006) conducted a review of the literature of recent decades on these institutions and their influence on the development of children and adolescents. the results show both the harms of life in an institution on the development of children and adolescents and that “the institution can be a positive alternative when the family environment is disorganized and chaotic” (p. 71). we have heard testimonies from educators about children who have lived through family conflicts and usually fled and broke the bonds of belonging with close relatives to avoid situations of suffering and rejection from their families (guará, 2008). this reinforces the ambivalence between the recommendation for lowering the priority of residential care for children and adolescents and the increasing social demands for this type of care. children in residential care, in the words of motta et al. (2006), “need someone who understands the nature of their suffering and is sincerely interested in them”. the loneliness of a life marked by emotional instability and insecurity requires a new pedagogy, such as that proposed by costa (1987) in his book pedagogia da presença [pedagogy of presence], which has become a reference for social educators in brazil. anglin (2002), in his study on residences international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 426 for children in canada, also acknowledged that the response to behavior motivated by pain is an important psychosocial process in care work with children in residential care. the discourse of children and adolescents about their own experience in host institutions highlights the importance of recovering the validity of residential care institutions as places “of possibilities, refuge, affection and protection” (arpini, 2003, p. 70). despite much research, little is yet known “about the plurality of the ways of life, the trajectories, the dynamics and structure of the bonds and the family networks of those who have their children placed in residential care”, according to vitale (2006, p. 70). a number of different training and institutional intervention projects (neca, 2012) aimed at practitioners and social agents have revealed an absence of unity regarding the scope and responsibilities of those who work with families towards the recovery of their protective capacity, and an excess of competing solutions and approaches. the lack of coordination is an obstacle to effective social and familial integration. a variety of situations and structural conditions must be addressed if childcare services are to be effective in integrating children and adolescents into their original or adoptive families. in the field of social policy, social welfare as a public social protection policy10 has been promoting substantial changes in the ways that the expansion of social rights and universal access to the services are facilitated: by setting minimum standards of quality for the services and the social benefits; and by attracting increased state commitment to the system, leading to a greater degree of state provision of goods and social services. the tipificação nacional dos serviços socioassistenciais [national grading of social assistance services] (fiocruz, 2009) defines the structure of basic-, medium-, and highcomplexity social protection services (in which are placed institutional or foster care services) and guidelines for work programs with families, as can be seen in the table below. table 1 social assistance services by complexity level basic social protection 1. serviço de proteção e atendimento integral à família [family protection] (paif) 2. serviço de convivência e fortalecimento de vínculos [strengthening bonds] 3. serviço de proteção social básica no domicílio para pessoas com deficiência e idosas [people with disabilities and senior citizens] special social protection medium complexity 1. serviço de proteção e atendimento especializado a famílias e indivíduos [individual and family protection] (paefi) 2. serviço especializado de abordagem social [social approach] 3. serviço de proteção social a adolescentes em cumprimento de medida socioeducativa de liberdade assistida (la) e de prestação de serviços à comunidade (psc) [adolescents in conflict with the law] international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 427 4. serviço de proteção social especial para pessoas com deficiência, idosos(as) e suas famílias [people with disabilities and senior citizens] 5. serviço especializado para pessoas em situação de rua [homeless people] special social protection high complexity 1. serviço de acolhimento institucional [institutional residential services] 2. serviço de acolhimento em república [youth group home services] 3. serviço de acolhimento em família acolhedora [foster family service] 4. serviço de proteção em situações de calamidades públicas e de emergências [emergencies and calamities] source: national grading of social assistance services (mds, 2009). legal, political, and administrative changes were added to ethical and judicial demands. their indicators can be summarized as follows: individualization of care; overcoming the culture of institutionalization and standardization; expediting decisions and referrals regarding the lives of children and adolescents; expansion of possibilities to protect and prevent further abandonments; accountability of those involved in the care and fate of children and adolescents; a belief in the possibility of child and family participation in building present and future life projects; and support for the recovery or maintenance of the protective capacity of the family. although with some delay, and unevenly in the different brazilian states, the reorganization of residential and protective services has been guided by these indicators. nonetheless, there certainly are still major challenges for achieving quality care that is consistent with the needs of children and adolescents and with the variety of situations they experience. in the early years of this century, many advances were seen in residential institutions (guará, 2005). they included the adaptation of physical facilities, hiring specially-trained professionals, a reduction in the number of children and adolescents served, a change in the care regime, and the expansion of institutional relations between care programs and services and the judiciary. however, the changes in the structure of the service were more significant than those in other areas: the qualifications of the professional staff; the development of methodologies for working with families towards strengthening their emotional and protective bonds; and the creation of an effective liaison between the residential institutions and the network of public social programs. currently a significant change in the profile (age/gender) of care is under way, which requires an interprofessional team approach and also a public policy of continuing education. in the survey conducted by the conselho nacional do ministério público [national council of the public attorney’s offices] (cnmp) in 2013 regarding age, the age group of children taken into care was wide, with a “greater number of boys and girls between 0 and 15-years old and a higher incidence of boys between 6 and 11-years old and girls between 6 and 11 and 12 and 15-years old” (cnmp, 2013, p. 36). the prosecutors who gathered the data also pointed out that there are many cases of special conditions, namely, “physical, sensory or mental disability, mental patients, drug addicts, children with infectious diseases, homeless, with death threats, and pregnant teenagers or with children” (cnmp, 2013, p. 40). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 428 in cases of abandonment or neglect, as a matter of law, the family concerned is referred to guidance and support services in an attempt to help construct a family environment of affection and belonging for the child. since there are insufficient programs and care services for families and their complex demands, solving problems takes longer than desirable and institutional care of the child remains a recurring option. a strategic shift in the application of justice in these cases has consolidated in recent years with the mandatory preparation of individual care plans by the professionals in charge of residential care11, and the obligation to hold concentrated hearings by the juizados da infância e juventude [child and youth courts] (cnj, 2013). the professionals in the judicial teams, who are mostly social workers and psychologists, are responsible for monitoring the development and implementation of the individual care plans of children and adolescents taken into care. the cases are reassessed every six months in concentrated hearings. the child and youth judge coordinates discussion of each case with the entire network of services involved to make possible comprehensive protection and education of the child or adolescent, and to promote family reintegration. children, adolescents, and families are now considered active participants in the hearings so that their perspectives can be taken into account in the individual care plan, making it a better resource for building increasingly selfsufficient life projects. whether to place the child or adolescent in an institution or with family is a prerogative of the judiciary, except in urgent cases, when the decision can be made by the guardianship counsellors12. given the temporary nature of the placement, the law imposes a maximum limit of two years, subject to extension if necessary, in order to avoid a long-term placement in the services and to stimulate the rapid reintegration of the child or adolescent with the family. however, the departure of the child or adolescent from the care regime assumes a reasonable prospect of reintegration, which may not exist. the departure from the care regime is monitored for a period of time to allow the recovery of effective ties and the restoration of protective practices in the family. to aid with successful reintegration, the family is supported and connected with appropriate social networks, so that it is prepared to receive the child back and is able to keep him or her protected. social and familial integration following the individual care plan: advances and challenges the project encontros de formação – plano individual de atendimento para as medidas de proteção [training meetings – individual care plan for protection measures] (neca, 2014), geared to judicial interprofessional teams, aimed to provide technical and legal support for the preparation, monitoring, supervision, and evaluation of the individual care plans of children and adolescents subject to protection measures13. dialogical and classroom training meetings with professionals from all judicial and regional districts of the state of são paulo were conducted at the headquarters of the administrative regions of the judicial court. the project, which was carried out between august and november in 2013, took place in two stages, with 26 meetings and a total of 156 hours of classroom training for 1,013 judicial practitioners. an initial survey was conducted on the first stage – the development of individual care plans – with space for suggestions for improving and enhancing work in the justice system and coordination with enforcement agencies and the community. to do that, neca produced an oninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 429 line tool for data collection with 59 questions (including two open questions) that were answered by the participants and systematized by the project coordination team. the methodological strategy focused on hearing the professionals’ opinions through the initial survey, and on their participation in open discussions and group work during the meetings, where they shared experiences and innovative practices in different child and youth courts in the state. stimulating the debate allowed professionals to express their ideas, experiences, and perceptions of how the individual care plan in protective measures is managed and monitored, and to discuss actions that impact the effectiveness of judicial decisions. delays in solving cases and the resulting “abandonment” of children in care services were cited by work group participants as a decisive factor in justifying many of the legal changes that were made; therefore, the two-year limit was one of the aspects discussed. both justice agents and the children themselves are often disappointed by the slow progress of cases, or with the substance of technical assessments and the indicated referrals, particularly when the assistance network is still fragile. on the other hand, the professionals reflected on the danger of setting and rigidly adhering to the time limit of two years for social and familial reintegration because the impact of the focused intervention on the subject could be lost. there is a risk that the strict application of a general rule will conflict with the uniqueness of individual stories, and be detrimental to the specificity of interventions. when care services are ended too early, the possible adverse consequences include new abandonments, victimization, and unsuccessful adoptions. this complexity was addressed many times in the training sessions and gained prominence in the experiments that the teams presented in the second stage of the project, when they were invited to submit their work. this was done through a procedure produced by neca, with a script for recording the presentations, aimed at enhancing the exchange of experiences among the groups. the data collected indicate improvements in the structure and the operation of networks, in the work of the judicial court, in the technical and pedagogical action of institutional care services, and in the process of preparation and monitoring of the individual care plan. the judicial teams recognize the need for ongoing action of the judiciary in monitoring the compliance of the goals of municipal policies. they also believe that it is possible to make the individual care plans more effective by leveraging actions shared by organizations that are part of the social safety net, suggesting that this may be done through agreements signed across sectors or even through judicial levies, from civil actions taken by the public ministry. major advances the main advances identified by the teams can be summarized as follows: • the individual care plan makes possible the formalization of objectives to be achieved and can improve the quality and development of the care service network. it has become a technical tool for socio-familial integration that enables and extends the guarantee of the rights of children and adolescents in care; • recent changes encourage a more humanized perspective, with network teams more aware of the need to understand the real lives of the subjects receiving care; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 430 • the decision of the national council of justice to review each case every six months has been a qualitative as well as a quantitative leap, since it requires the involvement of judges and prosecutors in children’s lives, greater participation in intersectional relationships, broader dialogue with service networks, visits to residential placements, and listening to children in care. in other words, this decision mandates a more careful consideration of the individuality of children and adolescents removed from parental care; • the joint elaboration of an individual care plan requires dialogue between judicial interprofessional teams and municipal institutions, bringing the professionals from children’s courts closer to the teams, care services and guardianship counsellors; • thanks to the joint elaboration of the individual care plan, data recording has been reformulated, especially in the regional courts of the city of são paulo. there, the technical sectors evaluate and monitor the plan, making possible continuous reviews of cases and individualized care of children, adolescents, and their families; • mandatory concentrated hearings are decisive for understanding the competences, and for greater involvement, of the network and family in developing the individual care plan. the preparation of concentrated hearings (for the approval or revision of individual care plans) increased dialogue between network partners and the technical team, and the team was valued as a partner in the process of building the protection network; • because of the interdisciplinary action of judicial practitioners with complementary perspectives on the same case, knowledge of local realities is expanded, and there is greater proximity to the institutional network for the resolution of cases and the implementation of individual care plans; • the new legal norms and the technical guidelines (conanda, 2009) have brought about an improvement in the professionalism of care services. most care services now have technical teams for individualized attention, resulting in a decrease in the number of children in care, a reduction of time spent in residence, and an increase in the number of cases of social-familial integration; • the benefits of working in a network were widely appreciated. the professionals saw a need to find support in fields of knowledge and organizations other than their own, and in coordinating actions that complement each other. the best strategies for coordinating the network are initiatives to conduct regular, systematic, intersectional meetings to stimulate collaboration. some challenges regarding social and familial integration the main challenges identified by the teams can be summarized as follows: • recent legal changes and changes in the definition of social care policies have been assimilated very slowly by the intersectional policies of municipalities and, as a consequence, judicial teams adopt very different practices even within the same region or district; • the elaboration and monitoring of an individual care plan is often not carried out regularly, depending on the routine determined by the jurisdiction’s child and youth judge, and also on the quality of the intersectional relationships established in the locality; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 431 • the judicial interprofessional teams have different understandings of their roles and how to work in adverse conditions, with a small pool of professionals, and a high demand for care. difficult cases and a lack of time hinder the teams’ efforts to do more in cases of institutional or foster placements; • although there is broad recognition of the need and importance of carrying out proper hearings of children and adolescents themselves, and of ensuring the involvement of families in the elaboration of individual care plans, there is no consensus regarding the best strategies or the most opportune time for this inclusion, so as to give voice to the child and family without creating unrealistic expectations or unwarranted fears; • the actions specified in individual care plans are not always performed effectively, with the risk of undue departure of children and adolescents from the care services and their inevitable reinstitutionalization; • there is a lack of financial, physical, and material support to the care services and to a public policy of continued training to change the culture of care. thus there is a risk of ritualizing practices, rather than transforming services as is needed. the judicial practitioners reported that the challenges they face in answering the needs of children with regard to their planned social and familial reintegration fall into a number of key work areas. the comparison chart below has been prepared from data systematized in the institutional relations special symposium: justice system, public policies and shelters, conducted by neca in são paulo (neca, 2006), and the final report of the project training meetings (neca, 2013). table 2 judiciary technicians’ perceptions of the critical components of an effective institutional service aiming at social and familial integration 2006 2013 work in network work in network working with family maximum time in family and focus on family reintegration information flow individual care plans (pia) competing competences concentrated hearings age and specificity of care in residential care services qualified/professional hearing of the child and adolescent placement of child or adolescent postresidential care participation of children and family tensions in daily life and human relations source: neca (2006, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 432 as can be seen, the perception of the need to work with networks remains; however, the legal changes have inspired new themes, including social and familial inclusion within a given time, mandatory individual care plans, concentrated hearings, and listening to and engaging children, adolescents, and families in this process. conclusions the existence of advanced legal regulations in accordance with the united nations convention on the rights of the child (united nations, 1989) does not in itself ensure that actions taken by local governments are effective in guaranteeing the fundamental right to family and community coexistence. this is especially true in a setting that features a wide range of care service conditions in municipalities of different sizes and different cultures. the fundamental right to family and community coexistence, as homogeneous objectification14, defines a formal, normative reference that does not capture the needs dictated by the complex and heterogeneous contexts of each location, nor the specifics of the individual cases. however, our observations in this article show that the legal changes are an important lever for advancing the humanization of care and ensuring a more nearly adequate socio-familial integration, in spite of all the limitations and challenges still present. the concentrated hearings mandated by the national council of justice bring to the dialogue circle all the involved parties who can contribute to a better decision about the child or adolescent’s future, with a shared review of the individual care plan and commitments agreed upon that, once made, become legal obligations. these obligations are designed to address and remove the primary reasons for placements in care by providing the services necessary for family and community coexistence. arpini & silva (2013), in a recent study, confirm the perception that the movement generated by federal law 12010 (presidência da república, 2009) and the individual care plan has raised the importance of the voices of children, adolescents, and family on the public agenda. social participation is a human right inscribed in un international treaties. a formal hearing, with each individual’s possibilities respected, guarantees the right to be informed, to be heard, and to have one’s opinions taken into consideration. the goal is to guarantee each individual’s participation in these life decisions, whether in the elaboration of the individual care plan, in the concentrated hearings, or in individual sessions. many challenges remain when it comes to grappling with the complex and critical issues that confront the social welfare and protection system in brazil. one challenge is the necessity of coping flexibly with diverse individual stories. another is to successfully implement a more participatory and empowering approach to judicial decision-making that ensures the respect and dignity of vulnerable children and families. the integrated theoretical framework crucial to understanding the socio-familial inclusion of children and adolescents must be developed. to create such a framework, more studies of the daily life of care services and families are needed. it must be acknowledged that significant changes presuppose a slow, complex process of negotiations, adjustments, new understandings, and attitude shifts amongst all involved. there are contextual and political determinations that an action focused on individual cases cannot reach. it is worthwhile, therefore, to focus on two areas: first, improving the formulation and execution of the individual plans; and second, promoting advances in the local care-services structure by means of a political-institutional action with a broader range. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 433 lastly, it should be remembered that the improvement of care services and collective care networks is central to the struggle 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(2010). sistema de proteção social brasileiro: modelo, dilemas e desafios. seminário internacional do bpc. november 8–10. brasília: mds. retrieved from http://www.mds.gov.br/saladeimprensa/eventos/assistencia-social/seminariointernacional-bpc/sobre-o-evento/apresentacoes/arquivos/maria carmelita yazbek protecao social.pdf/view?searchterm=sistema de p http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s0101-66282012000300010&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s0101-66282012000300010&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es http://www.neca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/livro7.pdf http://www.mds.gov.br/saladeimprensa/eventos/assistencia-social/seminario-internacional-bpc/sobre-o-evento/apresentacoes/arquivos/maria%20carmelita%20yazbek%20-%20protecao%20social.pdf/view?searchterm=sistema%20de%20p http://www.mds.gov.br/saladeimprensa/eventos/assistencia-social/seminario-internacional-bpc/sobre-o-evento/apresentacoes/arquivos/maria%20carmelita%20yazbek%20-%20protecao%20social.pdf/view?searchterm=sistema%20de%20p http://www.mds.gov.br/saladeimprensa/eventos/assistencia-social/seminario-internacional-bpc/sobre-o-evento/apresentacoes/arquivos/maria%20carmelita%20yazbek%20-%20protecao%20social.pdf/view?searchterm=sistema%20de%20p text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0 101-66282012000300010 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 438 endnotes 1 the statute of children and adolescents (federal law 8069/90) proposes a system of care and a guarantee of rights based on the doctrine of integral protection. it establishes care in the basic social policies (health, education, culture, sport, leisure, housing, and work) and covers social assistance policy of a supplementary nature. special protective actions for children and adolescents are provided in varying situations of personal and social vulnerability. 2 brazilian social security covers “different social contingencies that can reach people in their life cycle, their working career and in situations of insufficient income.…social assistance is noteworthy, as it is an innovative extension of the non-contributory social protection, through the recognition of rights of its members in the legal frameworks of citizenship” (yazbeck, 2010, p.14). one special type of social protection is the health care service designed for families and individuals in situations of personal and social risk due to neglect; physical, mental, or sexual abuse; use of psychoactive substances; lack of compliance with socio-educational measures; homelessness; and child or youth labour; among others. this special health care service handles cases of medium and high complexity (ministério do desenvolvimento social e combate à fome [ministry of social development and fight against hunger], 2004). 3 the national plan for family and community coexistence defines “family” on a broad socio-anthropological basis. “the family can be thought of as a group of people who are united by ties of consanguinity, alliance and affinity. these ties are made up of representations, practices and relationships that involve mutual obligations.” (presidência da república, 2006, p. 24). 4 ethical-political suffering does not have its genesis in individuals but in socially defined inter-subjectivities that are molded in daily life, especially when the pain arises from the social situation of exclusion and feelings of social inferiority. (sawaia, 2001, p. 104). 5 adoption, whether national or international, is irrevocable and gives the adopted child the status of a natural-born child, with the same rights and duties, including inheritance. 6 since the enactment of federal law 12010 (presidência da república, 2009) adoption is intended to be an exceptional measure, whose implementation should only occur when the possibilities of return to the birth or extended family, or even the child or adolescent’s significant network, are exhausted. 7 applicants who wish to adopt should have been selected and accredited, and be ready to establish an inclusive, loving relationship with the adopted child or adolescent. applicants must be prepared to combine their needs and desires with those of the adopted child or adolescent. adoptions must be supervised professionally for a period of time, according to the specifics of the case. 8 we highlight the following regulations: federal law 12010 (presidência da república, 2009); the technical guidance document: shelters for children and adolescents (conanda, 2009); the national grading of social assistance services (mds, 2009); and the national plan for the protection, promotion and defense of the right of children to family and community living (pncfc) (presidência da república, 2006). 9 the foster care family falls under the purview of the national social assistance (brazil, pnas, 1004) and is subject to the regulations and rules described in note 8. 10 with a decentralized structure regulated by national parameters, brazilian social assistance, as a policy of social security and provision of resources to meet basic needs, is a strategic policy in tackling social exclusion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 421–439 439 11 federal law 12010/2009 modifies article 101 of the eca and includes in sections § 4, § 5 and § 6 the requirement to prepare the individual care plan, aiming at family reintegration, except for taking into account the views of the child or adolescent and listening to his or her parents or persons responsible for him or her. 12 according to article 131 of the eca, “the guardianship board is a permanent, autonomous, non-jurisdictional body, charged by society to ensure the respect of the rights of children and adolescents, as defined in this law.” they are community representatives elected to defend the rights of children and adolescents in the municipalities. 13 the specific protective measures are specified in article 101 of the eca: i transfer to the parent or guardian by disclaimer; ii guidance, support and temporary monitoring; iii compulsory enrollment and attendance in government elementary schools; iv inclusion in community or government programs of the family, child and adolescent; v requisition of medical, psychological or psychiatric treatment in a hospital or outpatient setting; vi inclusion in government or community assistance program, counselling and treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts; vii shelter in institutions; viii placement in a foster family. 14 the concept was developed by agnes heller in her book the theory of needs in marx (1986). social and familial inclusion of children and adolescents in alternative care: advances and challenges of professional practice in brazil today concepts, legal framework, and social policies for social and familial insertion of children and adolescents social and familial integration following the individual care plan: advances and challenges major advances some challenges regarding social and familial integration conclusions references endnotes microsoft word 06 editorial.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120332 introduction: possibilities, futures, and queer world-making in child and youth care wolfgang vachon and mattie walker abstract: in this introduction, the authors situate this special issue within the current sociopolitical contexts of child and youth care (cyc) and offer potentialities through “queering cyc”. they consider how cyc might be analyzed through a queered lens, outline ways cyc has, and has not, taken up queer theory, and imagine what a queered cyc might (un)become. the authors provide context for this issue and invite queer generosity in reading how queering can be in conversation with cyc. keywords: queer cyc, generosity, queering care, sexuality in cyc wolfgang vachon (corresponding author) is a professor of child and youth care at humber college, 3170 lake shore blvd. w., etobicoke, on m8v 3x8. email: wolfgang.vachon@humber.ca mattie walker ma is a graduate of the school of child and youth care and a current phd student in the social dimensions of health program at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty rd., victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: mattiew@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 2  this is the first special issue in any child and youth care (cyc) journal that explicitly seeks to “queer child and youth care”. the idea for this special issue came out of a conversation sparked by vachon’s (2020) call for our field to consider what queering care in cyc might do and walker’s (this issue) exploration of how queer and trans topics are currently being discussed in the cyc literature. our editorial committee, made up of four individuals involved in various forms of cyc practice (current and past practitioners) and academia (students, mid-career, moving to retirement), was brought together through a shared wondering, “where is the queerness of cyc?” our conversations started in the spring of 2020, in the early months of the covid-19 global health crisis. coming together over zoom video, from the traditional territories of songhees, esquimalt, and w̱sáneć peoples, the huron-wendat and petun first nations, the anishinaabe, and the six nations of the haudenosaunee, as well as the mississaugas of the credit first nation and the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷmәθkʷәjˀәm (musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (squamish), and sәl̓ilwәtaɂɬ (tsleil waututh) nations. we started our conversation with the backdrop of international movements calling for racial justice, demanding accountability for police brutality, and pushing back against hundreds of years of white supremacy. starting in january 2020, indigenous activists from the wet’suwet’en nation catalyzed action across canada in response to the coastal gaslink pipeline, and black lives matter activists protested the murders of george floyd and breonna taylor. these actions renewed ongoing social justice conversations and small changes began happening across turtle island, which continued into 2021 with recognition and responses to anti-asian racism, the “discoveries” of buried bodies on the land of former residential schools, and the ongoing systemic discrimination in many realms including health care and child welfare. these movements draw attention, once again, to the ongoing injustices faced by racialized communities and show how policy, policing, and governance — steeped as they are in white supremacy — continue the colonial project of normalization. last year, 2020, was the deadliest year on record for trans people, with over 40 reported murders of trans people in north america and at least 350 trans people killed worldwide, continuing a trend of annual increases (clifton, 2020; sonoma, 2021). we live in a time that calls on those in positions of privilege and power to acknowledge the ongoing injustices faced by many people, and a demand for communities and individuals to do better in our own lives. within this context, our editorial group came together to wonder, with the desperate need for social change in our current political climate, what might queering cyc do for us as a field? it is distressing, although perhaps not surprising, that this is the first explicitly queer-themed special issue in cyc. much of the cyc agenda historically has been a project of normalization. as many of the papers in this special issue point out, this is still prevalent in many contexts throughout cyc, including practice, literature, education, and research (e.g., see zaman and anderson-nathe’s discussion in this issue of the potential for using queer theory as an analytic to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 3  deconstruct developmentalism in the context of cyc). there have been increasing calls over the past decade and a half to confront this history, and over the last several years this has moved from call, to demand, to accountability, with action being taken that shifts how we think of and enact cyc (along with the predictable pushback). in this we are beginning to see training for practitioners and educators that is focused on anti-black and anti-indigenous racism, challenges to entrenched child welfare practices, conscious and active hiring practices in post-secondary cyc programs, changes in publication patterns, and increasing numbers of conversations within and across cyc demographics. many of these conversations are focused on racial politics (amponsah & stephen, 2020; batasar-johnie, 2017; daniel, 2018), indigeneity and decolonizing practices (de finney et al, 2020; ineese-nash, 2020), white supremacy and whiteness in the field of cyc (hillman et al., 2020; mackenzie, 2019; skott-myhre et al., 2020), and the legacy of these dynamics in cyc (hyder et al., 2019; munroe, 2016). this has been accompanied by discussions regarding ability and disability (erlich, 2019; marshall, 2019), misogyny, and who has been setting the agenda of cyc ideas over the past several decades, although few of these later conversations have made it into the formal literature. we sit uncomfortably within these contexts, as a white editorial board with our own intersecting identities and positionalities, wondering how discussions of queering cyc might connect with and continue the conversations about decolonizing cyc, addressing racial injustices, and acknowledging and holding space for the work of black, indigenous, and people of colour (bipoc), and queer, trans, bipoc (qtbipoc) practitioners and scholars? we also recognize, from our various positionalities, that bringing together a special issue on queering cyc is a risk, but from our various standpoints, we have decided we can afford this risk and leverage our perspectives to push back into the cyc field by presenting questions, considerations, and critiques for a field that has historically aligned itself with normalization. muñoz (2019) offered that queerness is “an insistence on potentiality” and the possibility for another world (p. 1). with this in mind, we wonder, in queering cyc, what possibilities emerge for pushing back against a history of normalization, for challenging care that is harmful (de finney et al., 2011), and for making visible the individuals and communities that have been erased and ignored from our cyc discourse, practice, research, and pedagogy. embodied cyc several of the writers in this special issue point out that the visible body reveals much about the person inhabiting the body — and those who interact with it (see, e.g., the articles by gemar and by longoria). the body becomes a locus for homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, misogyny, colonialism, and other forms of supremacy. the intersections of race and queerness, as revealed by qtbipoc and two-spirit writers (belcourt, 2020; johnson & rivera-severa, 2016; mccready, 2013; pico, 2019; puar, 2017; simpson, 2020; whitehead, 2018), make possible an understanding of heterosexism, transphobia, and binary gender systems “as manifestations and tools of colonialism and genocide” (driskell, 2016, p. 25). these qtbipoc and two-spirit critiques draw attention to the ways in which embodied experiences of intersecting identities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 4  position individuals and communities in importantly different perspectives. the practice of positioning as constitutive of queer theory (or queering theory) can be understood through ahmed’s (2006) discussion of queer as an orientation, as articulated in queer phenomenology: not just a sexual orientation, but an orientation to how bodies take up space, are oriented towards or away from certain ideas, and are aligned or “out of line” with what is expected. we wonder, if cyc had not been forced into conversations about identity, politics, and theory previously, would this special issue exist? in cyc, we see few writers, educators, or public figures who are “out” or who centre their queerness in their writing and work. at the same time, we recognize that there are several such cyc practitioners (cycps), and we are immensely grateful for those leaders in the community. unlike race and many forms of disability, one may be able to hide, or deemphasize, one’s sexual and affectional orientation or gender identity, and given the legacy of cyc, it may be safer or more comfortable to not focus on that aspect of who we are. while this may be a privilege at times, it also acts as a powerful force in invisibilizing, and consequently erasing, queer and trans individuals within cyc. we know there are many practitioners who are lesbian, gay, bi, or twospirit, or are trans, gender-queer, non-binary, or otherwise not cis-gender, working directly with young people; however, their experiences, voices, and practices have not always had a visible presence within our field. in putting this special issue together, we recognize the important intersecting ways that power, privilege, and oppression make themselves known in the work of writing and researching. while many queer, trans, and, importantly, qtbipoc cycps are a part of the field, they may not be compensated for time put towards writing, researching, and publishing. this highlights how privilege enacts which voices are heard and which bodies are seen in academia — and consequently, which perspectives are presented in cyc education and training. in editing this issue, we were reminded of the economics of publishing, of how relationships serve knowledge production, of academic racism, and of the reality that few qtbipoc cycps have the time and resources to take on unpaid writing for scholarly journals. all of these elements perpetuate privilege. only a limited number of the qtbipoc people we reached out to for articles were able to contribute. in this, we see the complex politics of wanting to change who authors cyc literature, and the reality that academic writing is generally unpaid labour that only those with the time, resources, financial means, or institutional support can pursue. this is part of the reason that the literature of cyc has been written predominantly by white, able-bodied, heterosexual people tied to the academy. the institutional (and societal) structures that allow only certain people the time to write, to edit, and to peer-review are exploitative. we wonder about these dynamics when we consider the submissions received. most of them are from students, and the few that are not are from people employed in the academy, as are the editors. in short, everyone who worked on this project is receiving some sort of “compensation”. some are paid within their academic positions, which entail expectations of publishing; some will receive publication credits on cvs, which will be taken into consideration for the next steps in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 5  their career trajectories, be that further schooling, academic positions, tenure, or recognition for contributions made to the field as they look for work. the privilege that allowed us to be the editors of this issue needs to be acknowledged and to continue to be addressed. there are increasing demands being placed on qtbipoc cycps to write, to educate, to present, to teach on issues and topics that directly impact them, frequently without any or only minimal compensation. this is yet another form of racism, privilege, and supremacy revealing itself: asking those who have been most impacted by racism or other forms of discrimination to teach those who are benefiting from it, sometimes in hostile environments, and frequently without adequate compensation. no normo due to the limited number of texts within cyc written through queer-coloured glasses, it is worth taking a moment to lay out what we mean by queer and how we understand cyc. queering, as we are using it in this special issue, is a process that involves analyzing a given topic through a queer theory lens. broadly speaking, in this case, the topic is cyc. queer, as you will see throughout this special issue, is a contested and amorphous term. almost 20 years ago nikki sullivan (2003) wrote: while queer theory may now be recognized by many as an academic discipline, it nevertheless continues to struggle against the straightjacketing [sic] effects of institutionalization, to resist closure and remain in the process of ambiguous (un)becoming … queer is a discipline that refuses to be disciplined. (p. v) this (un)becoming continues and recent forays into queer theory, trans theory, and queer methodologies highlight the ongoing contestation in the field (barker & scheele, 2016; ghaziani & brim, 2019; keegan, 2020). the term queer comes from the german word quer, whose contemporary meaning is “to cross” (heckert, 2010, p. 42), taking up the idea of bridging, inbetweenness, and crossing of boundaries, stabilities, and knowledges. queer theory resists definition because just as it understands sexuality, gender, and identity as “a discursive social construction, fluid, plural, and continually negotiated” (chandler & munday, 2011), queer theory also challenges the notion of a fixed, core identity. this challenging does not stop at identity, however: “for many, ‘queer’ refers to more than just sexuality and gender. rather, it refers to a position of dissent and critique against norms” (ball, 2016, p. 36). part of queer theory’s distinctive semantic clout and political efficacy comes from what jagose (1996) articulated as its resistance to definition and “the way in which it refuses to stake its claim” (p. 1). we can see the possibilities these approaches present when thinking of research, for example (ghaziani & brim, 2019). as mayo (2017) noted, there continue to be complications in “how we each define, study, and theorize sexuality, gender, gender identity, and other intersecting categories of subjectivity like age, race, class, ethnicity” (p. 530). identity categories are constantly being stabilized and destabilized across different approaches to research methodologies, including both quantitative and qualitative projects (mayo, 2017). taking up a queer approach, as well as acknowledging the work being done in queer communities as research, may offer researchers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 6  different spaces and capacities to think beyond the limitations of identity categories, while holding complexity as a tool (lather, 2009) that can push researchers to consider new practices. thinking beyond identity categories opens up possibilities while causing disquieting ruptures. such complexity challenges some of what we wrote above regarding identity, and also presents ways to consider the historical focus of cyc, as we will discuss below. trans theory can be helpful in navigating the dynamics of identity, recognizing “how transgender studies departs from queer theory’s deconstructive mode to place high value on constative self-knowledge, or how this value developed as a political response to the specific medical narratology of transgender (i.e., transsexual) life” (keegan, 2020, p. 350). thus, we see trans theory centering, rather than collapsing identity (ellison et al. 2017; stryker & bettcher, 2016). much of this is in response to queer theory’s cisgenderism and whiteness, where identity deconstruction may be a privilege granted more readily to some bodies than others. in this issue, we hold space to critique identity, and understand the necessity of constative self-knowledge and people’s enactments of self, including identity. the word “queer” has carried multiple, at times hurtful, meanings. in the 1980s and 1990s, during the early days of hiv/aids, lgbt activists started to “reclaim” the word queer and invert the meaning from one of denigration to one of liberation. groups such as queer nation1 and act up2 refused to wait patiently as people died, casting off calls for “respectability” in their resistance. queer activists raised money, staged die-ins at churches, educated the public, invaded pharmaceutical companies, mourned the dead, and covered streets in red paint demanding access to drugs, to health care, to being recognized; activists engaged in what david román (1998) called acts of intervention: the fundraiser, the protest, the memorial. this resistance grew from several decades of lesbian and gay activism, including the now famous stonewall riots (duberman, 1993), which were primarily led by racialized trans folx alongside gay cis men who were fed up with police harassment. queer theory drew on these activist roots and developed from a theoretical lineage of existentialism, feminism, black feminist & poc critiques of feminism, sex and sexuality discourse, deconstructionism, intersectionality, and post-structuralism (barker & scheele, 2016). queer work continues to draw from critical theories as it responds to the ever-changing landscapes of life across the globe, and “is constantly troubling what we take for granted, and constantly refusing what is taken as solid” (ball, 2016, p. 46). alexander (2018) understood queer theory as: engaged in an active process of contesting scholarship and politics, contesting categories, contesting identity, contesting liberalism, contesting truth, contesting history, and contesting subjectivity. in its most idealist and liberatory impulse, queer theory pivots on the following logics. queer is used not only as a gendered 1https://queernationny.org/history 2https://actupny.com/contact/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 7  identity location but also as resistance to orthodoxy — expounding, elaborating, and promoting alternative ways of being, knowing, and narrating experience. (p. 278) within the idea of queer, we challenge and question boundaries in a way that offers a language for holding space full of complexity within the contexts of cyc. queer theory is about thinking, approaching, and negotiating knowledges. as heckert (2010) stated, “theory is a battlefield” (p. 42), and it is on this battlefield that we may contend with ideas that help us to grasp the world that we find ourselves a part of, “a way to conceive and to change our lives” (may, 2005, p. 517). one might think of queer as noun and verb, with the noun signifying what something or someone is (while simultaneously rejecting categorization) and the verb signifying what someone does. being queer is a way of understanding and experiencing one’s desire, identity, sexuality, theory, and politics (vachon, 2020). doing queer is bringing a set of ideas, approaches, and perspectives to a topic: to queer something is to do something (sullivan, 2003). this special issue contains all of these ideas, some explicitly and some less obviously. we invite you to consider these elements as you read through the rest of this introduction and the ensuing articles. the queer shows up in many ways. child and youth care theory cyc started from different theoretical orientations, agendas, and positions than those that animate queer theory. rather than a field of contestation and refusal, cyc was born of alignment and acceptance. cyc emerged, and continues to emerge, from multiple intersecting and complementary theoretical lineages. white (2015) situated cyc as coming “out of a euro-western, liberal humanist tradition [which] has been strongly influenced by colonial logic and the ideals of the enlightenment” (p. 501). for skott-myhre & skott-myhre (2012), “one of the central theories that define the field of child and youth care is that of developmental psychology” (p. 172). zaman and anderson-nathe (this issue) critique developmental frames, asking how does one queer developmentalism? kouri (2014) observed that the “field, inclusive of practice and academic domains, is generally concentrated on direct, caring, and holistic therapeutic relationships with children, youth, and families informed by developmental perspectives, systems theory, and a strengths-based approach” (p. 1). to this list, he added “self … as having a central place in cyc theory and practice” (p. 1). stuart (2013) in her book foundations of child and youth care wrote, “the primary influence on the profession is psychoanalytic theory, with some moderation by humanist theory, symbolic interactionism, and behaviourism” (p. 34). cyc has always been informed by theory, although this has not always been acknowledged. for example, garfat (2012) drew extensively upon phenomenology, from which he has developed a whole approach to working with children and youth based upon “moments” and “experience”, yet little of his work outside of his phd dissertation mentions phenomenology. cyc presents itself primarily as practice-based, with a literature that clearly situates cyc as a way of doing: “child and youth care practice is based on helping people think about and live their life differently, as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 8  they are living it... it is a focused, timely, practical and, above all, immediately responsive form of caring” (garfat et al., 2018, p. 11). anglin (2001) wrote of five characteristics that differentiate cyc from other helping professions: child and youth care…  is primarily focused on … growth and development …  is concerned with the totality of a child’s functioning …  has developed a model of social competence rather than a pathology-based orientation to child development …  is based on (but not restricted to) direct, day to day work with children and youth in their environment …  involves the development of therapeutic relationships. (para. 4–8) cyc has long seen itself as a field that is about doing, being with, and working in “the lifespace”, utilizing an approach that is based on “moments” in the “co-created space” between a cycp and a child, youth, or family member (garfat et al., 2018). more recently people have begun questioning this seemingly apolitical framing of cyc through reflecting on their experiences as practitioners (batasar-johnie, 2017; hillman et al., 2020; munroe, 2016) and as system-involved young people (cherry & vachon, 2020; chung, 2017; see also the audio-drama “tuning into cyc”3). this has led to asking what may be revealed about the cyc project through utilizing different analytical tools to consider what cyc does, and what it could be. de finney et al. (2012) bring decolonial and indigenous theory to both practice and thinking in cyc, challenging many of the governing principles they see embedded within the field. little (2011) is one of the first authors to invoke the need for queer theory (among other critical lenses) in cyc, writing: for my training in cyc, i had to look elsewhere to queer heteronormative perspectives … i needed a language outside cyc to speak to relational interaction and meaning making in a manner that acknowledged their complexity … and i needed a critical race perspective that transcended a multicultural, singular discourse diversity lens. (p. 12) fortunately, we are now starting to see critical race perspectives within cyc, and what is being laid bare reveals what many racialized practitioners, students, and educators have known for many years: racism, colonialism, ableism, and whiteness infuse the cyc project. amponsah and stephen (2020), writing about the concept of “ally” in cyc, made explicit that: white racial experience is the lens through which possibilities and limitations for different social relations are discussed and acted upon. this approach normalizes 3https://tuningintocyc.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 9  whiteness as the entry point into goodness, understanding, and change, and poses many challenges for the field of child and youth work by contributing to the maintenance of a stagnant space of practice amidst rigid concepts of care. one example of such an outcome is the depoliticized and dehistoricized content that is taught in child and youth care curriculums, which ignores the importance of historically constituted sociopolitical realities. (pp. 7–8) queering cyc requires looking at where we come from and asking where we want to go. as august a. suggests in this issue, critically querying the implications of history can “(re)affirm the possibilities for queer and trans youth in the future”. for anderson-nathe (2019a), the vision of a queered cyc results in a “transformed practice in all the settings and contexts in which cycs work” (p. 158). as you read this special issue, you may note that many, if not all, of the authors agree with anderson-nathe. within this focus on “how you are; who you are; when you do; what you do” (garfat & fulcher, 2012, p. 1) it has been noted that written theory has at times been perceived as extraneous or unnecessary to cyc practice (little, 2011). while this may be the perception of some, amponsah and stephen (2020) have pointed out that ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of the field allows formative theory to go unexamined, and obfuscates the disciplining work it does. from the pragmatic to the ideational and the therapeutic to the systemic, cyc draws upon multiple theoretical and practice constructs to serve (or not) children, youth, families, and communities. while there have been accusations of an atheoretical, even antitheoretical, bent to cyc (de finney et al., 2012), it is not so much that cyc is atheoretical, but rather that the theory it rests on sees itself as the norm. as the above very brief lineage tracing suggests, there are numerous tenets informing thinking, practice, writing, and education. we understand these tenets as forming a normative-orienting alignment. despite cyc originating from normative epistemological roots, increasing numbers of practitioners, writers, researchers, and educators now challenge this historical intellectual orientation and work with diverse ideas to “develop” and rediscipline the corpus of knowledge. that is to say, cyc has clear and articulated theoretical foundations that inform practice, pedagogy, policy, and research; however, these are privileged and normalized positions that locate themselves as the unquestioned norm. at the same time, the field constantly brings in new ideas when they are attractive to practitioners or pedagogues. rather than styling cyc as atheoretical, it might be more accurate to recognize cycs western colonial roots, and then ask if cyc is aligned with an expansionist project of “discovering” and “collecting” theories and practices, with the intention of redisciplining them into “the field”. through this reading, cyc can be understood as seeking out and then homogenizing and absorbing the other into our agendas, adopting theories and seeking to discipline them through a western, developmental lens; thereby cramming different ontologies into the same normalizing practices. such an approach would not be transdisciplinary; rather, it would be a form of neocolonial disciplining, of aligning. if this is indeed the case, we can reread the atheoretical indictments that have been raised as a resistance to the invisibilizing of the logics informing cyc and as a call to acknowledge our lineage. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 10  queer generosity we sought to queer our process from the beginning. in crafting our call for submissions, we collaborated on articulating an invitation to bring queerness into cyc, well aware that we were venturing into unfamiliar worlds for our cyc field. we sought to centre care by considering how we as editors would engage with authors. early on we decided to offer authors an open review process, asking if they wanted to know who reviewed their manuscripts. we were also intentional, when inviting reviewers into the process, to be aware of positionalities, such as identification with the queer community, race, and indigeneity. we opened the process to address the different communication dynamics that arise when author and reviewer are, or are not, known to each other. referencing rodriguez’s (2012) writing on trans generosity, longoria (this issue) writes about queer generosity where our presences become life-sustaining acts moving towards liberation and futurity. generosity is a concept that all reviewers might consider, particularly when engaging with manuscripts that are personal and provocative. how do we care for those who are bringing us new ways of thinking about cyc? román (1998) wrote of critical generosity when considering the performances coming out of the gay community in response to aids in the 1980s and 1990s. román was writing in resistance to judging such performances as though they were proscenium theatre. he argued that the standards used to assess an explicitly provocative, time-bound, life-and-death performance in response to the aids crisis are different than those applied to more traditional forms of theatre. while we are now in a very different time, and writing for an academic cyc journal is not the same as staging a die-in, the need for action and the need for generosity both still exist. the morning i started writing this section, i (wolfgang) received an email from a student who had been kicked out of their home because of their sexuality; homelessness and parental rejection is still real for queer youth (abramovich & shelton, 2017). the murder rate of trans people and particularly trans women of colour continues to reach new highs each year (sonoma, 2021). these are the people that we work with as cycps. yet, as walker shows in this special issue, we rarely speak about trans, queer, two-spirit, and gender-creative folx. we also consider generosity in how we read, and how we invite you to read, the pieces in this issue. some of the structures and styles of the pieces included are very different from those in other academic journals. this is an area in which some of the authors pushed back at us as editors. they made compelling arguments as to why the structures they used were the right ones for their manuscripts, despite the feedback they had received. if we claim to queer and to be generous, we must start with the submissions and the people writing them. in writing about unfamiliar topics, the writing will sometimes look unfamiliar. queer cyc identity identity is frequently present in discussions of queerness, and we are increasingly seeing the necessity of these discussions within cyc. sometimes these are based on visible factors, such as race, ethnicity, and observable disability; at other times, they are linked to less obvious forms of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 11  lived experience, such as child welfare history, mental ill-health, and “invisible” disability. this extends to multiple and overlapping forms of queerness, including sexuality and gender identity, which may be more or less visible. many, but not all, of the authors in this issue self-identify as queer, some resist this categorization, some prefer different nomenclature, and some do not explicitly state any form of identity. all of them are looking at cyc and asking questions about it. several of the articles take an explicitly queer approach, such as playing with form or pushing the boundaries of what we think of as cyc, while others sit more obviously within cyc and can be read as residing within a traditional social science format. as noted above, most of the submissions for this special issue were from students. we find this intriguing, and perhaps revealing. we wonder, where are the queer practitioners who have left school and how do they situate themselves after leaving? queer and gender diverse youth continue to push researchers and practitioners to consider new practices and approaches that utilize the complexity and ever-expanding understanding of sexuality, romantic connection, gender, gender identity, and gender categories in order to refuse the simplicity of regularized identities (mayo, 2017). mayo (2017) has offered that “theories are research” (p. 532) and help shape how we think about ourselves and our world, providing a way to “start conversations on the shortcomings of self-understandings” (p. 532). we take the pieces in this special issue as conversation starters, many rooted in theory responding to experience, resulting in stimulating manifestations of praxis. disability is another identity-infused, underconsidered area of cyc addressed in this issue (see gemar). some of the most intriguing work on care, queering, and disability is being done by “queer crips” (clare, 2017; kafer, 2013; mingus, n.d.; piepzna-samarasinha, 2018; withers, 2012). a brilliant example of resisting the normal in a pedagogical context is gemar’s story of holding a class with students physically gathered in gemar’s bedroom while they taught from their bed for disability-related reasons (this issue). it is an instructive reimagining of what a queer crip cyc could be. in the hybrid that is cyc, there is much to learn about how to work from a queer, trans, and disability perspective (vachon & mcconnell, 2018). disability has been, and continues to be, a contested, and complicated discourse in cyc (erlrich, 2019; gharabaghi, 2018; newbury, 2018). disability activism and research has brought awareness to the eugenic agenda embedded in much of the “care system” (clare, 2017; withers, 2012), a system that actively worked (and still works) to fix, cure, or remove anything considered not “fit”, “healthy”, or “normal” (chapman & withers, 2019; clare, 2017). cyc did not evade this historical movement and at times has been complicit in furthering an agenda based in multiple and intersecting forms of supremacy (charles, 2015). a queered cyc is a field where normal is not the goal, or perhaps where normal is reimagined. this reimagining of the norm moves beyond disability to questioning all calls for fitting in, being respectable, behaving properly, dressing right, and being good. we say this with recognition of the complex dynamics that exist in this call. some behaviours can lead to harming others and these need to be addressed by caring cycps. further, we are not suggesting that we do not support people in understanding the implications of their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 12  actions and helping them to coand self-regulate when they are having difficulty doing so. we are suggesting that we look beyond the goals of compliance and acceptability in our work with young people (as many cycps do). pushing the bounds of normal requires an understanding of the institutions and systems that are implicated in projects of normalization, and the consequences of challenging them. in this regard, we look at the complex and nuanced conversations happening in bipoc communities regarding “acceptability politics”, intersectionality, and how white supremacy can lead to the murder of particular bodies who dare to question. violence may ensue when one does not conform. this violence can be from peers, strangers, and those in positions of authority. to fit in (to pass, to “code switch”, to not be “clocked” or “read”) can be a necessary skill for many queer young people navigating a world that does not always embrace difference. cyc thus has the opportunity to be a field that celebrates the differences that exist within young people. as cycps, we have known many young people who dress against their identity at home, only to don their identities when they are in safer spaces. this is certainly not unique to queer young people. identity formation is important to all young people: we do harm when we restrict how people are allowed to express identity. we thus also honour their identity expressions when the young person returns home, changes clothes, asks us to interact with them differently in different contexts. we recognize that we have a responsibility to support their agency. it is not up to us to demand that they be “out”, in the same way that it is not up to us to demand that they fit in. sexuality in cyc sex and sexuality are rarely celebrated in cyc, and these topics are taken up remarkably little in this special issue. sexuality is a topic that continues to be fraught, to be considered “out of line”. this taboo is certainty not confined to queer affections exclusively. there are few group homes, foster homes, or youth detention facilities where young people are formally permitted to have sex, although we wonder if these might arguably be safer spaces than the alternatives young people are forced to seek out. opportunities to ask about sexual dangers and risks are numerous; invitations to ask about sexual joys, techniques, and positive experiences less so. based on informal conversations with colleagues, it seems few are prepared to talk about the pleasure and processes of sex at all, let alone queer sex. indeed, some appear to worry that their jobs would be at risk if they were “too graphic” about the hows of sex. we wonder what the impact would be if cyc were explicitly sex positive and celebrated sexuality. we think this would result in cycps being better prepared to support young people to develop sexual agency, practise consent, and embrace their sexuality in healthy and safe ways. discussion and teaching about sexuality and sex in cyc classes is also rare. one of the editorial committee members shared that she received a low grade for an early cyc paper she submitted on sexual development in young trans people on the grounds that the topic was inappropriate for a cyc developmental studies course. if we are to be training and teaching practitioners working with young people — young people who do indeed have desires, have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 13  sexuality, and whose sexual orientation is not just a theoretical concept but a lived experience in relationship — how can discussions about sex and sexual development be inappropriate for cyc? we see this as another example of normalization, a shadow of the moralistic values that are invoked to keep practitioners, and the children, youth, and families they work with, “in line”. with sexual orientation and gender identity (sogi) curriculum being introduced to school districts in different regions of the country since 2014 (cbc news, 2018; marshall, this issue; ontario ministry of education, 2019), we have seen enormous pushback, discomfort, and fear from various communities, signalling the ongoing tension present when we begin to talk about sexual and gender identity for young people. while these programs have the goal of reducing discrimination and suicidal ideation for students, a protest in 2018 at the british columbia legislature accused the sogi curriculum of “indoctrination” and “sexualizing children” (cbc news, 2018). similar responses were seen in reaction to the ontario liberal government’s 2015 health education curriculum changes (see marshall’s insightful discussion of the ontario responses in this issue). numerous studies have shown that queer and trans youth are more likely to experience harassment, victimization, and bullying than their cisgender heterosexual peers (e.g., day et al., 2018; toomey & russel, 2016). school-based organizations such as gender and sexuality alliances (also known as gay–straight alliances) and school policies focused on support for 2slgbtq+ students have been identified as important and effective ways for improving school climates, not just for 2slgbtq+ but for all students (day et al., 2018). nevertheless, conversations about sex, sexuality, and gender continue to be a point of tension and pushback, or even of silence, in schools and in other sites of cyc practice. when we leave sex out of the conversation, we are erasing important experiences of not only identity, but also of community and relational care. we invite you to consider how you can bring into cyc celebratory stories of sex, including queer sex, that revel in joy, care, love, and passion. while we see a move towards not only acknowledging but celebrating sexuality in cyc practice as holding great potential for change and for care, we also acknowledge the tension involved in recognizing that sexualizing and eroticizing the “other” has been used to subjugate and marginalize people based on their race, gender, or other aspects of their identity (collins, 2020). sex has been weaponized as a means of power and control. for some, sex has become intertwined with violence. eroticism has similarly been used to dehumanize and fetishize identities, thus ignoring the humanity and dignity of the persons embodying eroticized identities (mock, 2014). however, here we push back against this and consider sex and the erotic as an avenue towards care and empowerment while naming sexual and gender-based violence for what it is: violence. nevertheless, as with many things queer, we hold this pushback with complexity, knowing that discussions about and around sex need to be conducted with respect, consent, and care for others’ experiences and perspectives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 14  cyc futurity: (un)knowing, (un)doing, and (un)becoming speculative world-making has been generative in queer theory. through imagining what might be, the utopian project of queer futurity moves towards an envisioned future, naming and initiating the change so that it can begin to happen. we see this issue as celebrating queers and queerness, which has not always been the position taken by cyc. when discussed at all, 2slgbtq+ themes have often been taken up as an “issue”, a “problem”, or a “concern” to be “addressed”, as anderson-nathe pointed out in his 2019 presentation at the “child & youth care in action vi” conference hosted by the universtiy of victoria, british columbia (anderson-nathe, 2019b). queerness is too frequently seen through the lens of bullying, homelessness, suicidality, isolation, drug use, problematic sexual activity, or some other issue, and too frequently understood primarily as something that requires intervention. this special issue resists these positions. while we recognize the ongoing challenges faced by 2slgbtq+ young people, we queer to imagine what else cyc might be beyond the pathologizing and interventions. we imagine how we can continue the changes we are seeing in cyc and speculate towards the world we want to live in. futurity is often a dialogue with our past, which guides us through the foundations it lays. one such cornerstone text of cyc literature is white’s (2007) “knowing, doing, and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care”. finding its way into many cyc undergraduate and graduate course reading lists, it outlines an ethic of practice for the cyc field that emphasizes the complexity, unpredictability, and value-laden work that is cyc. we offer here a beginning towards queering this praxis model and invite a vision of cyc futurity that considers the ongoing complexity of cyc and the possibilities that may be present when we relax practice alignment by stepping “out of line”. mayo (2017) offered that “complexity, instability, and relationship have been queer practices for a long time” (p. 530). queering cyc offers a vision of possible future practice. (un)knowing as white (2007) articulated, “there are multiple ways of thinking about knowing and types of knowledge that guide cyc practitioners in their everyday work” (p. 231), noting that it is the development of specialized knowledge that defines and shapes a profession. in queering the knowing cyc, we suggest that perhaps to be out of line with this, is to step into un-knowing. if, as some scholars are starting to recognize, the “care” of cyc has been and continues to be harmful in some respects (de finney et al., 2012, vachon, 2020), perhaps what is needed is a move to unknowing what cyc has built itself to be, a step towards reimagining a cyc futurity that questions normalization, queers our practices, and pushes back against dangerous and damaging oppressive systems of care. “queer is a term that can and should be redeployed, fucked with and used in resistant and transgressive ways” (browne & nash, 2010, p. 9). ironically, the resistance and refusal of definition is how queer theory, and queer identity, is demarcated in that it knows what it is not and what it refuses (perhaps) more than it knows or wants to know exactly what it is. in refusing an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 15  essentialist or core understanding of itself, it is constituted from refusal and resistance to the powerful norms it pushes against, thus becoming itself through its active protestation of being pinned down. perhaps it is time for cyc to also consider itself in terms of what it is not (and not just as the ongoing definition that cyc is not social work!). in what ways might we fuck with cyc as a term and as a field? what does cyc need to (un)know in order to know what it is not? what does it mean to practise from a place of unknowing? we see a future through what cyc refuses to be. (un)doing white (2007) outlined the specific skills that are required for cyc work — in addition to the multiple types of knowing — that demonstrate the competencies necessary for “ethical, self-aware, responsive and accountable practice” (p. 236). while critical thinking, reflection, and analytic skills are inarguably essential to the work of cyc, a queering of this process seeks to consider situations when cyc has felt exclusionary, been inaccessible, or been harmful and damaging. perhaps what is needed alongside the skills and the doing of the work is an active practice of undoing harmful practices. practitioners actively working at unknowing damaging techniques and strategies of practice are undoing the work from a place that seeks not only to do differently but to actively acknowledge, repair, and undo what has been historically harmful, oppressive, or violent in cyc. marshall (this issue) provides a powerful exemplar of (un)doing from the position of a self-identified “white, straight, cis-gendered, and non-disabled settler with european colonial roots”, through an autoethnographic research process looking at her own heterocisnormativity. (un)becoming queer theory and methodology are often associated with explorations of differences and the resistance and contestation of normalizing discourses, strict categories, and rigid boundaries, while emphasizing the fluidity of spaces and the process of “becoming” (browne, 2008; haritaworn, 2008). heckert (2010) drew on deleuze and guattari (1994) to conceptualize becoming as embracing “learning to ‘be comfortable with uncertainty’ (chödrön, 2002), a process which is never finished, accomplished, achieved” (p. 42) but is always in process, “experienced in the present and in presence” (p. 43). white (2007) introduced the idea of being in cyc practice by emphasizing the importance of the relational qualities that define cyc work. white offered that the work of cyc is about “ ‘being with’ as opposed to ‘doing to’ ” and that the issue of “knowing how to be” is a key element of cyc praxis (p. 239). here, through queering cyc, we offer that perhaps the question again is not a “knowing how to be” but starting from a place of knowing “how not to be”, and at times actively (un)knowing how to be. (un)becoming suggests stepping out of line with what is expected; queering might well be seen as an unbecoming position, given cycs historical focus on acceptance. we embrace this refusal to accede to our accepted role and step towards a vision of cycps as embodying an (un)becoming (through our unbecoming bodies) that allows for an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 16  imperfect, but active, process of practising cyc. in the dissolution through (un)becoming, we see the possibility of a new emerging. queering cyc is a speculative project of imagining and then manifesting (alexander, 2018). as ansloos et al. write in this issue: indigenous queer futures are rich with political imagination: when queer indigenous activists choose to share their stories, to listen well is to listen for the ways political imagination takes shape in all aspects of life as they imagine daily resistance to the colonial present through reassertion and reimagining of indigenous life ways and futures. reading this special issue is an act of listening, imagining what can (un)become, and heeding the calls to care. in listening to the contributors of this special issue we are invited towards new ways of being cycps and of understanding cyc. queering cyc, then, is a project of futurity, of “cruising utopia”, as muñoz (2019) famously wrote. more than a review of the present moment, this issue seeks to imagine the future and then (un)become. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 1–22 17  references abramovich, a., & shelton, j. 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(2018). jonny appleseed. arsenal pulp press. microsoft word 09 beating_broke.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120232 beating broke by getting out? examining the relationship between personal debt and community outmigration alyssa gerhardt and karen foster abstract: scholarship on young people’s geographical mobilities tells us that young adults move away from their childhood communities for a complex mix of economic “push-pull” reasons, including relationships, aspirations, attachments to place, identity, and belonging. in this abundant research, particularly that which focuses on youth outmigration from rural and peripheral communities, there is surprisingly little attention paid to an issue that is top-of-mind for many young adults today: personal debt. in this paper, we draw insights from extant literature on youth mobilities to make the case for a greater examination of the role of personal debt in young people’s migration decisions. we hypothesize that youth and debt increase a person’s likelihood of moving away from peripheral regions. we test this hypothesis using data from a 2019 survey of atlantic canadians and find some support for it, and some interesting nuance, suggesting that there is good reason to examine debt’s role in youth mobilities in greater detail. keywords: community, outmigration, personal debt, atlantic canada, mobilities, youth acknowledgement: this paper draws on research supported by social sciences and humanities research council. alyssa gerhardt ma (corresponding author) is a doctoral student in the department of sociology and social anthropology, dalhousie university, rm. 1128, marion mccain arts and social sciences building, 6135 university ave., halifax, ns b3h 4r2. email: alyssa.k.gerhardt@dal.ca karen foster phd is an associate professor of sociology, canada research chair in sustainable rural futures for atlantic canada, and director of the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university, rm. 1128, marion mccain arts and social sciences building, 6135 university ave., halifax, ns b3h 4r2. email: karen.foster@dal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 26  youth outmigration can be a pressing policy concern wherever populations are shrinking, aging, or not growing “fast enough” to meet expectations. from an economic development perspective, population decline or stagnation is problematic because population growth is strongly linked to gross domestic product (gdp) growth. from a community perspective, population decline can lead to loss of tax revenue, loss of services, loss of community identity, and loss of quality of life (elshof & bailey, 2015; gibson et al., 2015; harling stalker & phyne, 2014). these problems are apparent mainly in rural communities, but they also crop up in larger regions where populations are shrinking, aging, or stagnant and where economies are heavily dependent on exogenous markets. in many countries, including australia and canada, population decline in shrinking communities compels scholars to focus their attention on population renewal, and accordingly, on local youth, whose decisions to stay or leave will have the most impact on a shrinking community’s demographics. there was a tendency in early research on youth mobilities to reduce youth outmigration to purely economic factors — the “push” of high unemployment in the area and the “pull” of opportunities elsewhere. that narrow understanding of why people move was subsequently expanded by scholars who urged their fields to consider intersecting economic and non-economic factors (foster & main, 2018; halfacree, 2004). after the 1990s, studies that attended to young people’s identities, feelings of belonging, relationships to others, and attachments to place proliferated (annes & redlin, 2012; cairns, 2014; elder et. al, 1996; ní laoire, 2000). additionally, more critical and complex articulations of economic determinants of mobility emerged, with scholars conceptualizing mobility as a social and economic resource that is not equally distributed (evans, 2016; norman & power, 2015), and observing that the predisposition to migrate may well be biographical (ní laoire, 2000) but is also deeply related to class and shaped by an individual’s socioeconomic status (evans, 2016; foster & main, 2018). despite the primacy of scholarly focus attending to the economic factors of outmigration — such as employment opportunities, local labour markets, and education — there is little to no research that examines the role of personal debt in an individual’s decision to stay or leave their current community. this is surprising given the prevalence of debt in everyday life and growing sociological inquiry into this topic; as adkins (2016) stated, debt is “central to understanding the lived present” (p. 319). debt — student debt, mortgages, credit cards, etc. — is central to contemporary life. it inherently shapes future possibilities and people’s understandings of their futures (see, e.g., adkins, 2017; davis & cartwright, 2019; kirwan et al., 2019; kotsko, 2018; lazzarato, 2015). on this basis, we propose that debt is a missing piece of the puzzle for discussions about community outmigration, as it could affect motivations to migrate (e.g., to earn more money to repay debts as a result of declining local economies) or it could act as a barrier to mobility. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 27  this paper uses quantitative data from a regional survey conducted by the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university on work and community in atlantic canada to assess the role of personal debt in plans to stay in or leave communities in the region (foster et al., 2020). the data’s limitations prevent us from making any grand conclusions, but our findings do support our main contention that personal debt might have some underexamined impact on youth outmigration. we begin this paper by reviewing the literature on rural outmigration, with a focus on socioeconomic factors such as labour markets, employment, and educational opportunities. we then review scholarship on the role of debt in 21st century economies and societies, before turning to the presentation of our own survey data and analysis. youth outmigration from shrinking places most of the literature on youth outmigration is about young people growing up in rural communities — the “countryside”. we contend that the findings and theories that emerge from this field of study apply as well to young people growing up anywhere that population loss or stagnation is a concern. this is apparent to us as residents of nova scotia, in canada’s atlantic region. despite having a number of cities (although no major metropolitan areas), and despite some modest population growth in the past few years, the four provinces that comprise atlantic canada — new brunswick, nova scotia, prince edward island, and newfoundland and labrador — have been labelled canada’s “incredible shrinking region” and have, accordingly, been very concerned about population aging and loss (ibbitson, 2015). the scholarship on rural youth outmigration, especially that led by scholars in the united kingdom, ireland, australia, and canada, has evolved into a body of literature that resists homogenizing rural youths’ experiences and identity construction (leyshon, 2008; looker & naylor, 2009), emphasizes that young people have agency (jones, 1999), and appreciates that not only economic factors, but a number of intersecting non-economic and economic factors may influence decisions to stay in or leave one’s community (foster & main, 2018; halfacree, 2004). for the purposes of brevity and focus in this paper, we concentrate on factors that might be categorized as “economic” — those that pertain to employment and education — even though these are only analytically separable from relational and subjective factors; in real life, all of these factors blur together. employment is a major economic factor. job or career opportunities are recognized as major challenges facing youth in rural communities. employment in rural and peripheral places is often characterized as being of lower quality: short-term, part-time, and casual, with lower pay (alston & kent, 2009; bednaříková et al., 2016; culliney, 2017; evans, 2016; looker & naylor, 2009). importantly, in most jurisdictions there might bewith employment problems, the real issue is not the lack of jobs, but the lack of good jobs (harling stalker & phyne, 2014; norman & power, 2015). work in rural communities is often concentrated in either service industries, which tend toward worse working conditions and remuneration, or primary industries, which can suffer from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 28  stigma of “unskilled”, dirty, or dangerous work that is typically gendered (johansson, 2016; measham & fleming, 2014; rauhut & littke, 2016). even if there are technically enough jobs available, and even if they pay decently and are enjoyable, they can still be stigmatized as the jobs a rural young adult falls into when they have no “better” option (looker & naylor, 2009). young people have been found to underestimate the available job opportunities in rural and peripheral places; both an actual lack of good jobs and a perceived lack of jobs have been consistently found to influence young people’s propensity to leave their communities of origin (foster & main, 2018). turning to education, there are similar challenges of access and stigma, with impacts on young adults’ migration decisions., people who stay are much less likely to access post-secondary education than those who make the decision to leave home to reside in urban areas (abbottchapman et al., 2014; byun et al., 2012; corbett, 2010; geller, 2015; hektner, 1995; khan, 2015; petrin et al., 2014; punch & sugden, 2013; sherman & sage, 2011; theodori & theodori, 2015). in part, this is because there are fewer post-secondary institutions in rural communities, but that is not the whole explanation. in some cases, (e.g., for young people from lower income households) affordability is an issue, because of the high cost of post-secondary education and a lack of financial resources (alston & kent, 2009). yet, there are other factors besides access and affordability influencing the decision of whether to pursue post-secondary education. because getting educated is associated with outmigration, rural young peoples’ aspirations toward post-secondary education are affected by place attachment, self-identity, and family relationships (san antonio, 2016). michael corbett’s work in atlantic canada has shown that compulsory schooling sorts rural students on the basis of their cultural capital, and directs those with the kind of cultural capital valued in local markets toward traditional local jobs (and thus, staying “home”), and those with cultural capital valued in urban centres toward higher education (and thus, outmigration; corbett, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2010). students who are successful in secondary school effectively “learn to leave” (corbett, 2007b), while, for those who feel out of place in the classroom and whose knowledge and interests do not “resonate” there, opportunities outside the local community become “mute” (rosa, 2019). relatedly, wanting to leave has been linked to having parents who are from, or have lived in, an urban area, and to having parents with post-secondary education, suggesting that families pass on an appreciation for, and openness to, mobility, as well as the cultural and economic capital to make mobility happen (foster & main, 2018; jones, 1999). corbett (2007b) found that there is also a gendered dimension to the “learning to leave” phenomenon, with men much more likely to feel alienated at school and rewarded in the local, traditional milieu; this manifests as a gendered bias in mobility, evident across the youth outmigration literature. young women are more likely to move to urban areas (looker & naylor, 2009), and young women who stay in rural communities can have a more difficult time accessing educational and economic opportunities than their male counterparts (alston & kent, 2009; corbett, 2007a; looker & naylor, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 29  both corbett (2007a) and norman and power (2015) found that for young women living in atlantic canada, upward mobility was associated with outward mobility, especially in terms of formal education. in a more recent study, power and norman (2019) examine how gender relations in rural areas inform possible mobilities, particularly in the context of resource extraction industries. embedded practices over the life course result in conventions of men working outdoors with their hands, and in contrast, women working indoors, often in positions where they provide care and services to others. gendered structures of labour, opportunity, and social relations intersect with forms of discrimination and patterns of inequality, such as those associated with race and sexuality (annes & redlin, 2012; cairns, 2013), but we must limit our discussion of these factors as our data do not permit any further analysis along these lines. for our purposes, the takeaway from the foregoing discussion is that young people, and especially women, leave their home communities in pursuit of, and then because of, higher education. moreover, income can be expected to impact migration: people from extremely low income households might be compelled to migrate to earn more money, while those who have very high incomes are expected and able to move in pursuit of opportunities. we do not dispute these well-established points, but we do wish to illuminate one factor in household and individual resources that does not get much attention in youth outmigration research: personal debt. personal debt debt is central to everyday lived experience in the current phase of capitalism, which is often characterized by scholars as “neoliberal” (bowsher, 2018; chakravatty & ferreira da silva, 2012; lazzarato, 2012, 2015; soderberg, 2014). in a brief history of neoliberalism, harvey (2007) regarded this era as having begun approximately four decades ago, in the late 1970s to early 1980s. although fleshing out the term neoliberalism — which is notably contested and complex — is beyond the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to explain that neoliberalism is both a theory and a practice (which harvey refers to as “neoliberalization”), in which a market rationale is imposed onto both the state and the social world (brown, 2006; harvey, 2007). market terms come to decipher and define non-market relations as the terms find application beyond the economic and into the social, political, educational, and cultural realms of society (brown, 2011; foucault, 2008). scholars have noted the importance of debt as a mechanism for capitalist accumulation in the neoliberal era. debt servicing — the interest and principal amounts paid on debts by wage earners — facilitates the precaritization and flexibilization of labour (barba & pivetti, 2009) and the capture and redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, while making it possible for capital to cross space and time in unprecedented ways (barba & pivetti, 2009; federici, 2014; kotsko, 2018; lazzarato, 2012, 2015; williams, 2004). at both the macro and micro levels, the “intensification” of debt over time — more people have it, and more of it — results in what kotsko (2018) referred to as “temporal colonization”: in a world where there is increasingly no outside to colonize, no significant territory that has yet to be incorporated into the capitalist order, we can view the explosion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 30  of debt as a form of temporal colonization, using the future itself as a site of primitive accumulation. this temporal colonization, like its geographical development, serves a productive purpose in the capitalist system; so too can variations in life chances be converted into varying levels of “risk” to be incorporated into complex financial strategies — in subprime loans, for instance, which actually prove more profitable, not despite but because of the fact that they are less likely to be paid off. (p. 122) in the context of stagnating and falling wages, and the defunding and privatization of the welfare state and social services in many “advanced” nations, debt also serves the function of maintaining consumption levels crucial to the continuance of capitalism (barba & pivetti, 2009; lebaron & roberts, 2012). people can continue to buy more goods even when their incomes are falling short. there has been growing sociological inquiry on debt since the 2008 financial crisis, and a growing body of scholarship has emerged. debt, according to lazzarato (2015), captures not just both wealth and future profitability, but also “possibility” (p. 23); it reorganizes the experience of time and people’s views of the future (adkins, 2017). this especially impacts young people, who are often viewed as standing at the threshold of their adult lives with numerous possible futures before them. davis and cartwright’s (2019) qualitative study of young and precarious workers found that indebtedness inhibited progress in life narratives and delayed important biographical goals and life milestones. similarly, in another qualitative study, kriwan et al. (2019) found that the quantitative expansion of debt levels was less important to research participants than the inability of the indebted to imagine a stable future where they had the ability to repay their debts. debt is increasingly normalized; this is obvious when one considers the ubiquity of student debt. in canada, in the year ending july 31, 2017, over a million and a half people carried student debt (employment and social development canada, 2019). nowadays, it is usually only by entering into creditor-debtor relations that individuals can afford major items that are perceived as essential (houses, cars, education), or can access the credit needed for building wealth (dwyer, 2018). however, the experience of debt varies across social locations. various laws and policies, in conjunction with some conditions of accessing credit, have either excluded certain populations from participating in credit markets altogether on the basis of gender, race, or class position (e.g., “redlining” or subprime lending), or have required them to participate on unequal terms (chakravartty & ferreira da silva, 2012; dwyer, 2018; dymski, 2009). the literature on debt also presents a hierarchization and classification into “good” and “bad” debts. participants in davis and cartwright’s (2019) study associated good debts with the purchase of an appreciating or secure asset (e.g., a mortgage). in contrast, bad debts were often associated with unsecured forms of lending used for the purchase of consumer goods or depreciating assets (e.g., credit card debt). participants also related different kinds of debts to socially and culturally appropriate norms over the life course. the “good” types of debt (e.g., student loans) were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 31  recognized as providing opportunities for social mobility, while the “bad” debts may prevent this type of mobility or delay appropriate steps in the life course (davis & cartwright, 2019). summarizing the complex relationship between credit and debt, dwyer (2018) wrote: “even at their best, credit and debt entail tensions between investment and risk, resource and liability, security and insecurity, freedom and trap, democracy and dependency” (p. 240). despite scholarly focus on economic factors in decision-making around youth outmigration, and the growing sociological inquiry into personal debt and its role in our everyday lives, there is little to no research into the intersections of these two fields of study. our research begins to fill this gap in the literature. atlantic canada as a case study we selected atlantic canada as a case study for this exploratory study of debt and outmigration. the region provides a suitable and interesting context for this inquiry as it is characterized by some of the lowest wages, highest unemployment rates, highest tuition fees, and persistent youth outmigration in canada; it also offers an abundance of work that is both precarious and seasonal (conference board of canada, 2018; foster, 2018; saulnier, 2018, 2019). the region has seen some population growth in recent years, especially in nova scotia’s capital city of halifax, but looking over the past decade, the region lags behind the rest of the country; the enduring view of its four provinces — an unfair one, perhaps — is that they are economic laggards (conference board of canada, 2017). these circumstances, coupled with debt accumulation, could have implications on choices to outmigrate from the region, yet analysis that connects these dots is rare in the literature on migration and mobility (see foster & main, 2018). in the atlantic region, the last comprehensive report on personal debt in its four provinces was released over a decade ago, in 2008. using statistics canada data, tran and colman (2008) found that atlantic canadian households were accumulating debt at a rate faster than the national average, and that a greater proportion of households in the region were in debt compared to other canadian regions. therefore, debt could be an important, underexamined factor shaping the lives and livelihoods of atlantic canadians. methods the data analyzed here were collected in a telephone survey conducted by the rural futures research centre at dalhousie university on community, work, and income in atlantic canada (foster et al., 2020). the survey was conducted in 2019 and included a total of 1,277 respondents from the four atlantic canadian provinces: prince edward island, nova scotia, new brunswick, and newfoundland and labrador. respondents were located in urban, suburban, and rural communities and were recruited through a random selection of landline and cellphone numbers assigned to the sampled region. those aged 16 or over who resided in one of the four selected provinces were eligible for participation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 32  comparing descriptive statistics from the sample to the 2016 census profiles of each atlantic canadian province (statistics canada, 2016; see tables 4 and 5 in appendix), we find that women participants are overrepresented in our sample by approximately 8%, and men underrepresented by approximately 8%. the sample is underrepresentative of atlantic canadians who are employed by approximately 9%, but closely reflects the average unemployment rate of the region. while our sampling frame was different from the census (in that we exclude anyone under 16), a rough comparison shows that younger people are underrepresented in our sample, and older people are overrepresented. the middle-age categories of “40–49” and “50-59” in the sample most accurately reflect the atlantic canadian region. although our objective is to contribute to the youth outmigration literature, we include older adults in our analysis for two reasons: the first is that only studying the youth in our sample would yield too small a sample for much further analysis. the atlantic provinces have the oldest populations in canada (statistics canada, 2020), and our full sample reflects that. the second, and the rationale for proceeding with this sample at all, is that it is important to establish whether or not young people have a distinctly “young” relationship to debt compared to older people. including all ages in the analyses means we can control for age and determine its influence on results within the sample. the outcome variable in our analysis is propensity to leave, a binary variable (yes = likely to leave; no = not likely to leave) created by combining the results of two questions asked of participants related to leaving their current communities. the first question was, “do you think you will ever move away from your current community?” with options of yes, no, or maybe. the second question asked their level of agreement, on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with the statement: “i often think seriously about moving away to earn more money.” in the resulting propensity to leave variable, the “yes” category includes the responses from (a) those who answered “yes” and “maybe” when asked if they thought they would move from their current community, and (b) those who answered “strongly agree” or “agree” to the statement that they often thought seriously about moving away to earn more money. the “no” category includes (a) those who responded “no” to planning to move from their current community, and (b) those who answered “strongly disagree” or “disagree” to the statement that they often thought seriously about moving away to earn more money. neutral responses on the 5point scale were excluded from the analysis (n = 86). we used three explanatory variables in our analysis. the first measures personal debt. the survey asked all participants whether they had any personal debt that they were partially or fully responsible for paying off (yes or no). the second explanatory variable measures types of debt by asking participants to indicate which of six different kinds of debt (mortgage, student loan, credit card, bank line of credit, payday loan, and car payment) they carry. the third explanatory variable measures participants’ comfort with debt levels. participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with the statement, “i am comfortable with the amount of debt i currently carry”, again international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 33  on a 5-point scale. the responses were then collapsed into three main categories for analysis: strongly agree/agree, neutral, and strongly disagree/disagree. informed by both the outmigration and debt literature, we controlled for participant socioeconomic status. we measured this with three variables: employment status, income level, and education level. for employment status, participants indicated whether or not they were currently employed (yes or no). if they indicated they were unemployed, they were asked a second prompt question, listing options that best reflected their current situation. those who indicated they were fully retired, or retired from a career but still working part-time, were categorized as “retired”, and all others were categorized as “unemployed”. income level was measured by participant’s reported household income, and this variable was then coded into seven income groups from the lowest group of “$20,000 or less” to the highest, “$150,000 or more”. education level measures the highest level of education obtained by the participant. this variable was then coded into four main categories: less than high school, high school, college/trade, and university. age, as previously mentioned, was measured in order to compare young people to older people. the age variable, from a question that asked respondents to report their age, has been recoded into four categories (29 and younger, 30-49, 50-69, 70 and older). given the demonstrated importance of gender in the literature on community outmigration and personal debt, we also controlled for gender. although we did not delve into the literature on race and ethnicity, we also included two binary variables meant to capture these characteristics (visible minority and indigenous). the community variable was used to account for participants’ self-reported community type (urban, rural, suburban). we used cross-tabular analysis and binary logistic regression as methods of our inquiry. the analyses were conducted using the statistical software, stata. we began with a basic cross-tabular analysis showing the individual relationships between the explanatory and control variables and the outcome, propensity to leave (see table 1). next, we prepared two tables of logistic regression models. table 2 presents the odds ratio results for participants carrying personal debt and their propensity to leave their communities, while accounting for measures of socioeconomic status, sociodemographic characteristics, and community type. to avoid collinearity of variables in the analysis, the explanatory variable personal debt is presented in a separate model from the other explanatory variables that examine the characteristics of personal debt. the second logistic regression table, table 3, presents the types of debt participants indicated they were carrying, along with the indicated comfort level with current debt amounts and the effect on their propensity to leave, while also controlling for all other measures. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 34  results first, we examine basic cross-tabular relationships between the independent variables and the propensity to leave variable (see table 1). table 1. cross-tabular relationships: explanatory variables and propensity to leave explanatory variable propensity to leave: yes (%) personal debt no 31.25** yes 43.94** type of debt mortgage 44.50** student loans 68.97** credit card 42.95 line of credit/bank loan 44.33* payday loan 64.71 car payment 57.01 comfort with debt strongly disagree/disagree 52.40** neutral 46.95** strongly agree/agree 34.26** socioeconomic status employment status employed 51.21** unemployed 49.62** retired 26.06** income $20,000 or less 43.69* $21,000 -$40,00 30.00* $41,000-$60,000 34.65* $61,000-$80,000 44.12* $81,000-$100,000 46.85* $101,000-$150,000 46.99* over $150,000 48.91* explanatory variable propensity to leave: yes (%) education less than high school 15.73** high school 38.14** college/trade 42.86** university 54.63** sociodemographic traits age 29 and younger 84.62** 30-49 56.39** 40-69 36.95** 70 and older 20.89** gender male 44.64* female 36.79* visible minority no 39.61 yes 43.02 indigenous no 38.16 yes 40.00 community type urban 40.84 rural 38.39 suburban 40.09 *p < .05, **p < .001 the data show that a higher proportion of those with personal debt have a propensity to leave their current community: 43.9% of participants who carried some form of personal debt had a propensity to leave, compared to 31.2% who reported having no debt. looking at the type of debt a participant carried and their propensity to leave, a higher proportion of participants carrying student debt reported having a propensity to leave their communities (68.9%), followed by those who carried payday loans (64.7%). there is also a bivariate relationship between participants’ debt international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 35  comfort levels and propensity to leave. a higher proportion of participants who said they were not comfortable with their current debt level had a propensity to leave (52.4%) in comparison to those who said they were comfortable with their current debt amounts (34.3%).almost equal proportions of respondents who were employed (51.2%) and unemployed (49.6%) reported having a propensity to leave, compared to those who were retired (26%). we next examine participants’ income levels and the relationship with propensity to leave. bivariate results here support the findings of previous outmigration studies: people with very low incomes (under $20,000/year) and people with higher incomes ($61,000 and over) were more likely to anticipate leaving than people with incomes in the middle ($21,000–$60,000). there is also a clear pattern involving participant education level and propensity to leave: as education level increases so does the proportion of participants who have a propensity to leave (e.g., 15.7% in the “less than high school” category, compared to 54.6% in the “university” category). in contrast to the education level pattern, as age increases, the proportion of participants with a propensity to leave decreases. for example, 84.6% in the age category “29 and under” had a propensity to leave compared to only 20.8% in the “70 and older” age category. when we examine gender, we see that a higher proportion of men (44.6%) had a propensity to leave than women (36.7%). both visible minorities (43%) and indigenous peoples (40%) reported a propensity to leave in slightly higher proportions than non-visible minorities (39.6%) and nonindigenous people (38.1%). similarly, looking at the relationship between community type and propensity to leave, there is surprisingly little variation between participant community types and proportion of participants with a propensity to leave (40.8% for urban, 38.3% for rural, and 40% for suburban). this suggests that our decision to include all community types is warranted, as the cities in atlantic canada, which are small by canadian standards, face problems of outmigration similar to their rural counterparts. when we consider statistical significance for the population, while our sample is not representative, we can see that most relationships in table 2 are statistically significant with the exception of certain variable relationships involving debt types, visible minority, indigenous, and community type. to further examine whether debt affects odds of having a propensity to leave, we present two logistic regression models which account for the various explanatory variables measuring debt, while also controlling for other factors identified in the literature that may affect the odds of having a propensity to leave. table 2 looks at whether having personal debt affects the odds of having a propensity to leave while accounting for participant socioeconomic status, sociodemographic characteristics, and community type. from this model we see that participants with personal debt are 28% more likely to have a propensity to leave their current communities than someone without any personal debt; however, this is not statistically significant for the population. those who are employed have increased odds of approximately 30% to have a propensity to leave compared to retirees, while those who are unemployed have increased odds of 13% compared to retirees. controlling for other variables, all income levels have decreased odds of having a propensity to leave compared to the reference category of “$20,000 or less”. for example, those in the income international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 36  category of “$101,000-$150,000” have decreased odds of approximately 50% compared to the lowest income category. looking at the education variable, an increase in education level is associated with higher odds of having a propensity to leave; for example, those with a university education are almost four times as likely (or = 3.834) to have a propensity to leave than those in the reference category of “less than high school”. on the other hand, a categorical increase in age decreases the odds of having a propensity to leave. participants in the youngest age category of “29 and younger” are approximately 20 times more likely to have a propensity to leave compared to the oldest age category of “70 and older”. table 2. logistic regression: personal debt and propensity to leave y: propensity to move model odds ratio p personal debt no ref. yes 1.280 .100 socioeconomic status employment status employed 1.307 .128 unemployed 1.132 .637 retired ref. income $20,000 or less ref. $21,000 -$40,00 0.520 .023 $41,000-$60,000 0.522 .025 $61,000-$80,000 0.692 .227 $81,000-$100,000 0.682 .216 $101,000-$150,000 0.497 .025 over $150,000 0.564 .096 education less than high school ref. high school 2.745 .004 college/trade 3.135 .001 university 3.834 < .001 y: propensity to move model odds ratio p sociodemographic traits age 29 and younger 19.963 < .001 30-49 3.566 < .001 40-69 1.942 .001 70 and older ref. gender male ref. female 0.915 .510 visible minority no ref. yes 1.139 .622 indigenous no ref. yes 0.812 .475 community type urban ref. rural 0.948 .715 suburban 0.811 .307 note. n = 1,178. n is smaller than the total sample of 1,277 as certain variable responses (e.g., “don’t know/refused”) were coded as missing when doing the regression analysis. ref. = reference category. gender has little effect on the odds of having a propensity to leave: women have a decrease in odds of only about 8.5% compared to men. identifying as a visible minority increases the odds of having a propensity to leave by approximately 14% compared to non-visible minorities, while identifying as indigenous decreases the odds of having a propensity to move by approximately 19% compared to non-indigenous people. finally, residing in rural and suburban communities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 37  decreases the odds of having a propensity to move compared to those residing in urban areas in atlantic canada, by approximately 5% for rural residents and 19% for suburban residents. in table 3, we examine how the characteristics of debt, and comfort with carrying debt, affect the odds of having a propensity to leave one’s current community, while controlling for socioeconomic status, sociodemographic characteristics, and community type. table 3. logistic regression: characteristics of debt and propensity to leave community y: propensity to leave model odds ratio p type of debt mortgage 1.284 .018 student loan 1.179 .545 credit card 0.702 .032 line of credit/bank loan 0.915 .577 payday loan 1.499 .233 car payment 0.879 .419 comfortable with debt strongly disagree/disagree 1.703 .003 neutral 1.367 .113 strongly agree/agree ref. socioeconomic status employment status employed 1.261 .194 unemployed 0.977 .934 retired ref. income $20,000 or less ref. $21,000 -$40,00 0.502 .022 $41,000-$60,000 0.551 .048 $61,000-$80,000 0.715 .288 $81,000-$100,000 0.693 .257 $101,000-$150,000 0.550 .067 over $150,000 0.629 .199 y: propensity to leave model odds ratio p education less than high school ref. high school 2.484 .011 college/trade 2.859 .003 university 3.441 .001 sociodemographic traits age 29 and younger 17.556 < .001 30-49 3.933 < .001 40-69 2.054 < .001 70 and older ref. gender male ref. female 0.906 .474 visible minority no ref. yes 1.037 .893 indigenous no ref. yes 0.800 .452 community type urban ref. rural 0.952 .741 suburban 0.828 .369 note. n = 1,144. n is smaller than the total sample of 1,277 as some observations in variables (e.g., “don’t know/refused”) were coded as missing when doing the regression analysis. ref. = reference category. from this model we see that there are increased odds of having a propensity to leave associated with mortgage debt (odds increase of 28%), student loans (odds increase of 17%), and payday loans (odds increase of 49%). the level of comfort a participant had with their current debt affected the odds of having a propensity to leave their current community. those who disagreed or strongly disagreed that they were comfortable with the amount of debt they currently carried had increased international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 38  odds of 70% of having a propensity to leave their current community compared to those who agreed they were comfortable with their debt. similar to the results presented in table 2, those who are employed have increased odds of having a propensity to leave by 26% compared to retirees. all income levels show decreased odds of having a propensity to leave compared to the lowest income level of “$20,000 or less”. the models presented in tables 1 and 2 show similar trends in both the education level and age variables. as education level increases so do the odds of having a propensity to leave. those with a university education are again almost four times as likely to have a propensity to leave than are those with less than a high school education. participants in the younger age categories have increased odds of having a propensity to leave their current communities — approximately 17.5 times greater for participants “29 and under” than for participants “70 and older”. in the second model, gender has a smaller effect than education level and age on participants’ propensity to leave their current communities. the odds for women are decreased by approximately 10% compared to men. similarly, the odds of visible minorities having a propensity to leave are only 3% greater than the odds for others, while indigenous people have decreased odds of 20% of having a propensity to leave compared to non-indigenous people. finally, the effect of community type on having a propensity to leave is similar to that in the previous model. those who reside in rural and suburban communities have decreased odds of having a propensity to leave compared to urban residents — decreased by approximately 5% for rural residents, and 17% for suburban residents. overall, our analysis demonstrates that there is a relationship between carrying debt and having a propensity to leave your community in atlantic canada. for the participants in the sample, carrying personal debt increased the odds of having a propensity to leave their current communities, but this relationship is not statistically significant for the population when controlling for other variables. the type of debt carried by participants affected the odds of having a propensity to leave their community. for example, there are higher odds associated with mortgage debt and this is statistically significant for the population. our analysis also shows that comfort with personal debt may be more important than actually carrying debt. those who reported they were not comfortable with their debt had higher odds of having a propensity to leave than those who reported they were comfortable, and this too is statistically significant. two control variables showed an important effect on the outcome variable across both models: education level and age. this finding aligns with the general literature on social mobility and outmigration discussed earlier. having a higher education level and being in a younger age category increased the odds of having a propensity to leave. income, gender, visible minority status, and indigenous status had a smaller effect on the propensity to leave. interestingly, we found little variation between community type and the odds of having a propensity to leave, especially between urban and rural communities. although age is statistically accounted for and controlled for in the models, this might be explained by the fact that rural residents are more likely international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 39  to be older. it might also stem from the fact that the atlantic provinces (which, as explained earlier, are perceived as being peripheral to the canadian economy) have only small urban centres compared to metropolises such as montreal, vancouver, and toronto, and so perhaps contrast less with rural areas than do those larger cities in other provinces. this finding challenges the rural– urban binary in studies of rural outmigration and is worth investigating further. conclusion this research sought to understand whether personal debt can be considered as a factor in decisions to outmigrate. using atlantic canada — a region with persistent outmigration — as a case study, we found that carrying debt, having certain types of debt, and comfort levels with debt affect the odds of having a propensity to leave the current community. despite some workers in the field beginning to acknowledge more complex and subjective aspects of migration (foster & main, 2018), economic factors remain prevalent in the literature on outmigration. it is important to consider personal debt as an additional economic factor in outmigration. this is especially true given debt’s ubiquity in the lived realities of 21st century capitalism. this research has therefore laid the groundwork for future scholarship in this area, demonstrating that there is a relationship between personal debt and propensity to leave. future research, using a sample that includes more youth, and including data on intended destination (e.g., urban or rural), or focusing on 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(2004). debt for sale: a social history of the credit trap. university of pennsylvania press. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 46  appendix table 4. descriptive sample statistics by atlantic canadian provinces and statistics canada 2016 census data for sampled provinces demographic trait nb sample (%) nb statcan (%) nl sample (%) nl statcan (%) ns sample (%) ns statcan (%) pei sample (%) pei statcan (%) employment status employed 49.85 54.70% 46.82 49.50 43.29 55.20 41.27 58.20 unemployed 12.61 11.20 10.98 15.60 9.71 10.00 4.76 12.30 retired 37.54 n/a 42.20 n/a 47.00 n/a 53.97 n/a gender male 39.30 48.50 42.77 48.40 40.03 47.90 41.27 48.90 female 60.70 51.40 57.23 51.50 59.97 52.10 59.73 51.10 age 15-24 4.69 12.50 4.62 12.20 2.29 13.50 3.17 14.20 25-29 3.52 6.16 1.73 6.30 2.86 6.80 1.59 6.30 30-39 12.32 13.40 9.25 13.50 6.57 13.00 7.94 13.20 40-49 13.49 15.60 13.29 16.30 11.57 15.09 11.11 15.20 50-59 19.06 19.01 23.12 19.10 20.00 19.10 12.70 18.70 60-69 25.51 17.20 27.17 17.80 29.71 16.80 34.92 17.00 70-79 16.72 9.50 16.76 9.60 20.00 9.50 15.87 9.40 80-89 4.11 4.30 3.47 3.70 6.00 4.30 11.11 4.30 over 90 0.00 1.03 0.00 0.62 0.71 1.03 0.47 0.92 note. sample data taken from seeing a future dataset 2019. statcan data from statistics canada census profiles (2016) new brunswick, newfoundland, nova scotia & prince edward island international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(2): 25–47 47  table 5. descriptive sample statistics for atlantic canadian region and statistics canada 2016 census data averages for region variable sample (%) statcan (%) gender male 40.27 48.42 female 59.73 51.52 employment status employed 45.42 54.40 unemployed 10.42 12.27 retired 44.08 age 16-24 3.29 13.10 25-29 2.82 6.39 30-39 8.54 13.27 40-49 12.29 15.54 50-59 19.81 18.97 60-69 28.50 17.20 70-79 18.48 9.50 80-89 5.40 4.15 over 90 0.47 2.92 note. sample data taken from seeing a future dataset 2019. statcan data from statistics canada census profiles (2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818118 “otherwise i might not have been able to cope at all”: a research project on the residential care of children and adolescents silke birgitta gahleitner, christina frank, katharina gerlich, heidemarie hinterwallner, martha schneider, and hermann radler abstract: today, residential care for children and adolescents is under scrutiny to a far greater degree than was the case only 20 years ago. psychosocial trauma approaches — especially in the german-speaking countries — have become far more widespread over the past few years. but how do they in fact work? this was the subject of a recent austrian research project that looked for “examples of best practice” in a mixed-methods study. the quantitative part of the study comprised symptom-oriented questionnaires. within the qualitative part of the study semistructured interviews as well as group discussion were conducted. this article reflects some specific results of the study in the light of theoretical aspects of the psychosocial trauma approach; in germany, this is also called the “traumapedagogical approach”. keywords: psychosocial trauma work, residential care, mixed-method designs silke birgitta gahleitner phd (the corresponding author) is a professor at the alice salomon hochschule berlin – arbeitsbereich psychosoziale diagnostik und intervention, alice-salomonplatz 5, d-12627 berlin, germany. email: sb@gahleitner.net christina frank mag. is a predoctoral researcher at donau-universität krems – department für psychotherapie und biopsychosoziale gesundheit, dr.-karl-dorrekstraße 30, a-3500 krems an der donau, austria. email: christina.frank@donau-uni.ac.at heidemarie hinterwallner mag. is a predoctoral researcher at donau-universität krems – department für psychotherapie und biopsychosoziale gesundheit, dr.-karl-dorrekstraße 30, a3500 krems an der donau, austria. email: heidemarie.hinterwallner@donau-uni.ac.at katharina gerlich phd is a researcher at donau-universität krems – department für psychotherapie und biopsychosoziale gesundheit, dr.-karl dorrekstraße 30, a-3500 krems an der donau, austria. email: katharina.gerlich@donau-uni.ac.at martha schneider mag. is a predoctoral researcher at donau-universität krems – department für psychotherapie und biopsychosoziale gesundheit, dr.-karl-dorrekstraße 30, a-3500 krems an der donau, austria. email: martha.schneider@donau-uni.ac.at hermann radler is a member of management at therapeutische gemeinschaften wien, grinzingerstraße 30, a-1190 wien, austria. email: h.radler@t-gemeinschaften.org http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818118 mailto:sb@gahleitner.net mailto:christina.frank@donau-uni.ac.at mailto:heidemarie.hinterwallner@donau-uni.ac.at mailto:katharina.gerlich@donau-uni.ac.at mailto:martha.schneider@donau-uni.ac.at mailto:h.radler@t-gemeinschaften.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 32 in 2014, 29,476 children and adolescents in austria received support from the public child care services, and 10,810 children and adolescents were placed in so called “full care”, with almost half of them in foster families, and the rest in family-like residential care homes. studies have shown that over 60% of these young people in full care have youth psychiatric disorders requiring treatment, approximately 80% have experienced trauma, and approximately 60% have been multiply traumatised (schmid, 2007, 2010). under the new austrian child and youth welfare act all services provided by the child and youth welfare authorities must fulfil the requirements of academic expert opinions and methods that are recognised in the relevant areas of professional expertise (kinderund jugendhilfegesetz, § 17 sub-section 1 and § 51 subsection 2). to date the main focus of enquiry has been the state of health of the clientele (see, for example, the who youth health survey: richter, hurrelmann, klocke, melzer, & ravenssieberer, 2008; and the recent kiggs study carried out by the robert koch institute: hölling, schlack, petermann, ravens-sieberer, & mauz, 2014); there have also been numerous outcomeoriented studies on residential care and more generally on child and youth welfare services (macsenaere & esser, 2012). these studies have revealed that there has been a sharp increase in the need for psychosocial welfare services in the german-speaking countries. in the reality of their daily practice professionals are confronted with the fact that their tasks are becoming “more difficult” (pauls, 2012). children and adolescents with severe and very severe psychosocial distress situations and crises confront professionals with sustained challenges. a central concept in this context is the “new morbidity” (see haggerty, roghmann, & pless, 1975; for new morbidity in children and adolescents see the kiggs study: thyen & scriba, 2007). for some years psychosocial trauma care plans have been becoming more widespread. the goal is to help social work professionals fulfil their demanding tasks both by providing further and continuing training, and by creating viable structures in the institutions. a research project in austria that was conceived as a collaborative undertaking between a university1 and an institution providing care set out to take a closer look at the effects of this attachmentand trauma-sensitive approach in the context of a residential care institution run by the child and youth welfare authorities. thus attention was directed particularly to the “most difficult” young people, including them in a joint search for “best-practice examples” in a mixed-methods study. following a brief introduction to the basic elements of the psychosocial trauma approach or trauma-pedagogical approach, and to the program employed by the facility being studied, we shall present some specific results of the study and then compare them with existing aspects of the theory of the trauma-pedagogical approach. 1 this research project was carried out from 2013 to 2016 as a collaboration between the therapeutische gemeinschaften e. v. and donau university krems, department for psychotherapy and biopsychosocial health (gahleitner, frank, hinterwallner, gerlich, & schneider, 2016). all quantitative results and cited interview passages have been taken from this report. details of the methodological procedures are also given. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 33 the basic trauma-pedagogical elements of the program of the facility studied excursus: trauma and disorganised attachment psychological trauma is a “vital experience of discrepancy between threatening situational factors and the individual’s coping strategies” (fischer & riedesser, 1998, p. 79) that occurs as a result of a harrowing event and is associated with loss of control, horror, and fear (of death). the extent of the traumatisation is dependent on the type, circumstances, and duration of the event and the stage of development of the victim at the time it occurs. the circumstances also include whether there were protective factors before, during, or after the traumatisation. however, one central protective factor — stable attachments — is missing for many children and adolescents who have experienced the traumatic events of violence and abuse in childhood. in fact, violence towards children occurs mainly in close (attachment) relationships; that is, within the family. it is especially these early and long-lasting traumata that occur in the children’s intimate social environments that lead to the phenomena of psychological fragmentation and disintegration and fundamentally shatter their sense of safety and security in the world. the lack of availability of stable attachment figures not only increases the risk of trauma, but is itself a trauma risk and makes it more difficult to cope with life later on. a destructive vicious circle develops. disorganised behaviours arising from disturbed attachment are in fact found more frequently in children who have been traumatised, abused, or neglected in early childhood (schleiffer & gahleitner, 2010; ziegenhain & fegert, 2012). many children living in residential institutions, in particular, show symptoms of highly insecure attachment or other attachment disorders and severe traumatisation (solomon & george, 2011; van ijzendoorn, schuengel, & bakermans-kronenburg, 1999). the changes are manifested at all levels, including the neurophysiological structures of the children and adolescents (perry & pollard, 1998; yehuda, 1998). the psychoanalyst, pediatrician, and psychiatrist john bowlby (1973), who repeatedly encountered neglect and separation and also trauma in early childhood in socially disadvantaged children (see also gahleitner, katzbernstein, & pröll-list, 2013), made similar observations. based on his work with families living in poverty, bowlby developed attachment theory in his trilogy attachment and loss (1969, 1973, 1980). the therapeutische gemeinschaften the therapeutische gemeinschaften [therapeutic communities] are a non-profit organisation that was founded in 1999. the aims of this charitable association concern bringing up children and adolescents in family-like structures individually, continuously, and without relationship break-ups. male children and adolescents requiring special treatment due to social and psychological difficulties live in group care homes. the children can be as young as preschool age at intake; care ends at the age of 16. children with behavioural or other types of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 34 psychological disturbances are accepted for care. most of the children come from lower austria, vienna, and burgenland. in specially justified cases, children from anywhere in austria can be admitted. the services provided by the therapeutische gemeinschaften include residential care in sociotherapeutic residential communities and external supported living. the therapeutische gemeinschaften also offer in-house school education and an in-house advice centre for parents. in the therapeutische gemeinschaften, “full child-care” (austrian federal child and youth welfare act 2013, §19: ger.: b-kjhg, §19) is carried out. all the children and adolescents in care have experienced severe stress. the goal of the therapeutische gemeinschaften is to help them establish, with their participation, a basis for leading a life outside of residential care. the four main focuses of the work are:  work on the clients’ personal problems;  social learning through interaction in small groups;  reflection on their different roles in life, including confrontation with maladaptive behaviours; and  psychodynamic imaginative trauma therapy for children and adolescents (pitt-kid; krüger & reddemann, 2007). the work in the therapeutische gemeinschaften focuses on relationships. while the clients’ histories have an influence on the carers’ actions, the main emphasis is on the pedagogical activities in the here-and-now. the small groups in which the young people live together have immense potential. through their participation in the development of these groups (including being taken into the group, getting to know one another, finding one’s position) the residents can learn how to handle relationships. group processes are considered by the carers to be a central sphere of learning. many of the children and adolescents have difficulties at school. for these clients there is a special learning programme that is carried out mainly in in-house teaching sessions. in addition to in-house teaching and therapeutic care, the clients are also able to receive psychotherapy offsite. the services offered are completed by a wide range of leisure time activities for the children and also work with their parents, which is considered to be a central element. the after-care programme is designed to support the young people as they find their way out into adult life. the therapeutische gemeinschaften consider it to be their task to create a healing social environment for children and adolescents in their care; one that is participative in nature, but also enables the clients to learn high levels of independence, organisational ability, and to take responsibility for themselves. the care workers endeavour to show the children and adolescents alternative ways to behave. however, the heart of the pedagogical and therapeutic process in the therapeutische gemeinschaften is an attitude of working with the residents, using traumainternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 35 pedagogical principles, to seek the sources of their behavioural disturbances and address them dialogically, both in daily life in the group and in therapy with residents and their significant others. the effective factors of psychosocial trauma work according to the programme attachment and relationship. in child and youth welfare services it is well known that healing and beneficial processes essentially arise in human encounters and relationship activities (here and in what follows, where not indicated otherwise, see gahleitner, 2016b). a closemeshed network of positive and reliable relationships, woven with the aid of a satisfactory socialisation structure and sound knowledge about the respective problems (ak twg, 2009), denotes a care facility where best practices are followed. positive attachments create a feeling of inner security and thus provide a basis for fundamental emotional and cognitive control processes (ziegenhain & gloger-tippelt, 2013). in traumatised children and adolescents, inner security is lacking, and emotional and cognitive control processes are therefore severely limited or impaired. as a rule, children and adolescents who are admitted to residential youth care institutions have had consistently negative relationship experiences. however, even in this situation “hopeful attachments” (hart, 2006) can form, providing a basis for confronting the past traumatic experiences with new positive experiences in a process of “re-socialisation”. such attachments are therefore the basis for all successful pedagogical activities. however, such a process cannot be successful unless all the professional care workers are informed about the basic principles of attachment theory and aspects of traumatic experiences, stress, and potential coping strategies (gahleitner, 2011). for some time attachment theory was criticised for being too individual-centred and too ethologicallyand norm-oriented (see, in particular, beck-gernsheim, 1981). today, however, attachment theory has taken on a substantially more social orientation (for a recent review see drieschner, 2011); it can also be understood as a developmental theory in the sense that it is concerned with broadening experiences of interaction and includes societal and historical perspectives. trauma-pedagogical approaches focus particularly on establishing a “fabric of psychological security” (grossmann & grossmann, 2004, p. 612). the residue of successful and less successful interactions thus becomes the basis for organising the entire subsequent development — including the whole period spent in residential youth care — if the traumapedagogical approach is correctly used by the care staff. it is therefore not surprising that research has repeatedly shown that such “corrective emotional experiences” have a decisive influence on the success of professional care (alexander & french, 1946; cremerius, 1979; grawe, 2004; orlinsky, grawe, & parks, 1994). the pedagogical and therapeutic milieu. a positive milieu can evolve on the basis of sound attachment work. at conferences and in discussions among colleagues the term international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 36 “therapeutic milieu” is frequently wrongly understood to mean the effect of psychotherapeutic interventions alone, and not, for example (as actually meant in milieu intervention programmes) healing or beneficial processes that take place in ordinary life (see. here and in what follows, where not indicated otherwise, gahleitner, 2016a). the main focus is on “the 23 hours outside the psychotherapy session — because that is when and where most of the milieu is”, as trieschmann emphasised as early as 1969 (trieschmann, whittaker, & brendtro, 1969, p. 1). redl (1971), one of the founders of the programme, demanded early on that all interventions should be specific and tailored to fit the respective child; and also collaborative — with the participation of the child. the “therapeutic milieu” can thus be seen as an umbrella term covering all aspects of an overall pedagogical and therapeutic system (becker, 2005), a “democratic residential community that is low on repression … and draws its stability essentially from the personal bonds that have been reflected upon therapeutically” (müller, 1999, p. 406). böhnisch (1994, 2008, p. 439f.) gives four dimensions of a “pedagogical milieu”:  a personal understanding dimension, in which the children and adolescents are accepted and understood, and “new milieus” become alternatives for “old” ones;  an activating dimension, in which new resources are brought together;  a pedagogical and interactive dimension, in which a beneficial social climate is created by a shared positive milieu; and  a dimension that is oriented towards infrastructure and provides the necessary networking and a structural framework. in addition to attachment theory, the theraputic milieu must also include elements of network theories and theories of social support (laireiter, 2009; nestmann, 2010; röhrle, 2001). these considerations are very similar to recent trauma-pedagogical conceptualisations (e.g., weiß, 2016). an intervention with children and adolescents that is oriented towards them not only works on the relationship dyad but also shapes the way the clients conceptualize their past, present, and future relationships. in work with children and adolescents it is important that the interventions be successfully institutionally embedded in child and adolescent welfare services (see gahleitner & homfeldt, 2012, 2016).creating successful attachment processes sounds very simple, but has wide-ranging implications as regards both content and practical implementation. making exploration and new development possible. children and adolescents who have been exposed to desolate circumstances at an early age are existentially dependent on social resources capable of guaranteeing stable psychosocial security as a positive counteractive experience (keupp, 1997). in this way clients’ development can progress on the basis of extensive attachment work and the provision of a pedagogical and therapeutic milieu. “the youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 37 workers, especially, and other important persons, including those outside of the close nuclear family, play a decisive role” (grossmann & grossmann, 2001, p. 51). figure 1. psychosocial interventions for traumatised children and adolescents (gahleitner, 2011, s. 95; see also, for example, butollo, krüsmann, & hagl, 1998; lebowitz, harvey, & herman, 1993; wintersperger, 2006). successful relationship situations — irrespective of whether they occur in therapy, in residential care, or in foster care — thus develop step by step into a fundamental scheme of emotional, social, and cognitive development. such processes are also termed “mentalisation processes” (fonagy, gergely, jurist, & target, 2002). if sequences of experiences that are emotionally important — as seen from the standpoint of attachment theory — are empathetically supported at an early age, “inner emotional states … [become] ‘available’ to the child on the level of conscious linguistic discourse” (grossmann & grossmann, 2004, p. 419). however, in order to be able to develop in this way children who have had traumatic experiences need as many “emotionally corrective experiences” (brisch, 1999, p. 94) as possible. these alternative experiences can include “protective island experiences” (gahleitner, 2005, p. 63); that is, spaces in which the children feel understood and can again and again find their way to constructive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 38 opportunities for change arising out of everyday situations. for this to happen, what is needed are not only individual dyadic relationships, but also, as mentioned above, broad networks of relationships that extend right into constructive network settings between institutions that reintegrate clients into everyday life. this system of networks is also included in a tried and proven model of coping with trauma, one that was originally developed for psychotherapy but has now also been elaborated for trauma-pedagogical work (see figure 1; for a summary for the field of youth care work, see gahleitner, 2011). kühn (2009) and lang (2009) speak of the “safe place” as a framework for encounter. the safe place is a concept very similar to that of the protective island experience (weiß, 2016). in such spaces corrective experiences can occur step by step in “emotionally oriented dialogues”, and new abilities and skills can be developed (kühn, 2009, p. 31). the concept of selfempowerment that weiß (2016) has further elaborated and brought into trauma-pedagogical work builds on these ideas. a new awareness of self can also lead to stabilisation of abilities such as representations of the body, expectations of self-efficacy, social skills, and capacities for emotional and sensory perception and emotional regulation. methods and results research methods the research question for this project was: how do adolescents, their parents, and their carers perceive the process of residential care for children and adolescents, and what is their judgement of its success? using an exploratory approach to outcome research (otto, albus, polutta, schrödter, & ziegler, 2007; see also eppler, miethe, & schneider, 2011; sommerfeld & hüttermann, 2007), a reconstructive, qualitative social research approach was chosen as a complement to quantitative research methods with their focus on generalisable results on parameters of living circumstances and environment (pauls, 2006). the qualitative approach provides access to subjective interpretations (bock & miethe, 2010). problem-centred interviews and group discussions (witzel, 1982, 2000) were selected for this qualitative procedure. the adolescents were asked to recount their life histories (see sgolik & buchholz-graf, 2010). the main focus was on their perceptions of their experiences and behaviour and how they had changed during their time in the therapeutische gemeinschaften. a total of 20 participants were interviewed in individual interviews and group discussions. the staff caring for the adolescents, the management staff, and the adolescents’ parents were also included in this process. all interviews, and in particular those conducted with the adolescents, were analysed with the aid of mayring’s (2000, 2002) content analysis with a casecontextualising intermediate step (see mayring & gahleitner, 2010). the goal of the quantitative part of the study was to provide insight into the extent to which the therapeutische gemeinschaften are effective in their work with traumatised children and adolescents. to this end, diagnostic measures were employed, including some already used international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 39 by the therapeutische gemeinschaften, and measures such as the child behavior checklist (cbcl; döpfner, schmeck, & berner, 1994), which has been already validated (see döpfner et al., 1994 for an overview of the psychometric properties of this test). a detailed discussion of the individual measures is included in the research report (gahleitner, frank, hinterwallner, gerlich, & schneider, 2016). an outcome-oriented questionnaire on case development with which good results had already been obtained in previous studies (e.g., ak-twg, 2009) was also employed. the investigation period extended from autumn 2013 (t1) to spring 2016 (t3). within this period questionnaires were filled in approximately every third month (t2). results as mentioned above, the therapeutische gemeinschaften provides care for children and adolescents with serious problems; that became evident in this study. a total of 77.42 % of the children and adolescents had already been in residential psychiatric treatment, and an almost equally large percentage had also been in other residential youth welfare institutions. a total of 67.14% were on medication. figure 2 shows the most frequent reasons for admitting the children and adolescents to the therapeutische gemeinschaften. this diagram also explains the high rate of traumatisation among these children and adolescents in residential treatment. figure 2. the 11 most frequently reported reasons for admission to the therapeutische gemeinschaften (one or more answers possible). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 40 the children and adolescents in care possessed resources of their own. the most prominent of these were their cooperative behaviour (83.8%) and their positive relationships with staff (93.33%). in addition, only a small fluctuation in the number of children in this institution was found, which is a mark of quality that stands in contrast to the numerous youth care institutions in which the clients had previously been placed. stability of placement helps the children to prevent attachment disruptions. these outcomes are underpinned by the comprehensive services and activities that the institution offers to its clients, including activities that structure their day, experiential adventure-based and therapeutic interventions, regular counselling sessions with both the children and their parents (see figure 3). figure 3. participation in social therapy interventions, one or more answers possible. it is therefore not surprising that the level of outcome for the therapeutische gemeinschaften was good. of the 30 children and adolescents in the institution, the problems of two thirds were very successfully or successfully reduced. in 9 cases, more than 50% of problems (see figure 4) could be solved; 11 cases were between 10% and 50% successful; and only 10 cases (one third) showed no success (see also baur, finkel, hamberger, & kühn, 1998; macsenaere & esser, 2012). the severity of the problems of the children and adolescents admitted to the institution must also be taken into account. this becomes evident when we look at the range of problems addressed at this institution (see figure 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 41 figure 4. problems requiring intervention (one or more answers possible, presented in %). we have selected only one type of symptom-oriented measurement to report in detail here. a total of 25 cases were included in the analysis of the cbcl results. on the physical problems subscale significant differences were found between the periods (see figure 5; f(56, 2) = 3.089, p = .053). significant differences were found between t1 and t2 (t = 1.061, df = 51, p = .025) and between t1 and t3 (t = 1.080, df = 76, p = .041). however, no significant changes were found on the social problems, schizoid-obsessional, attention problems, dyssocial behavior, aggressive behavior, and externalising subscales. this is likely due to the small sample size. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 42 figure 5. the temporal course of the physical problems. however, the trauma-pedagogical programme figured particularly prominently in the results for the qualitative part of the study. the youths described painstakingly how their carers tried in everyday activities to see their clients’ symptomatic behaviour against the background of their previous histories, with a trauma-informed and dialogical stance. the relationship work was done within the framework of an overall structure that provides security and authentic, participative dialogue. for example, benedikt (names of residents have been changed to protect confidentiality) said, “well, those people. actually they’re er really super … the care staff are nice. i can’t complain.” the basic attitude of the staff at the institution was demonstrated even more clearly by the fact that the children and adolescents retained a sense of being in a safe place in the institution. franz put it this way, for example: “and now [i] have actually got better, that is, i held out for five or six years, so that i stayed in the therapeutic community and wasn’t thrown out after a time, that is, also bad periods. and then i was almost thrown out but they kept me after all because, otherwise i might not have been able to cope at all.” he went on to say that he used to be “pretty challenging”; “and now i’ve got better. i used to be a strenuous child …, i flipped out almost every day. that is, that i really took everything and shot back at the carers or attacked them with a knife … . i know that it used to be like that, but then it got good again. now all that happens is that i start shouting or go on arguing for a long time, i always argue, for a long time, and then it (laughs) really takes a long time. but then the carers simply turn round and say, ‘we’ll try again in ten minutes’ or ‘we’ll see’. yes, and so in such situations i start shouting, but otherwise actually no more than that. … but i say: i don’t want to be like that any more, really truthfully, i wouldn’t be able to do it (laughs). otherwise i wouldn’t be where i am now.” behind this history was a well thought-out programme for thorough relationship work, as is shown by the results of the group discussions with the care workers. one member of staff described the individual sessions as follows: “to take the time to say, ‘come on, let’s work out international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 43 some goals, where do we want to be, where are we now, what do you want for yourself, what do you want to achieve? but not in 20 years, we’ll look at the next six months and set ourselves some small milestones — both for your school work and your social relationships. and then keep updating and reexamining that: is it still right for you, how far have we got? that demands a lot of work from the care staff, of course … when you know that there are fewer kids around. two of us work on a shift, then i take him off for an hour and work with him.” how far this attachmentand trauma-sensitive work has been translated into a milieu that supports development and growth became clear when we saw how the children and adolescents spoke enthusiastically about past weekends when they had spent their free time together, and their holidays. “the excursions … we go on an excursion twice or three times — that is, on both days at the weekend … climbing park. or the cinema, if the weather’s not so nice. swimming. now we can go swimming there anyway. the other day we went to a climbing park — four metres high. with a real — belay and everything. or in the winter we go to the indoor swimming pool or other things” (benedikt). from the experience of going on group excursions in this way a group structure of mutual acceptance and tolerance developed. in the group home achim, for example, reported experiencing considerable respect, not only from the care workers, but also from his peers. “and all the children in the group home here, they respect me a lot”. discussion and prospects for the future the results of research on psychosocial interventions can appear to be either banal or outlandish, depending on whether they are either very similar to or contradict the practical knowledge of everyday life. it is nonetheless important, both in research and for the justification of coherent practice models, to conduct an empirical reexamination of things that have come to be taken for granted. whether a good feeling that the helping professionals experience in their daily work is shared by the young clients for whom they are providing care is important for how they construct their programmes. it is also important to allow oneself to be inspired by results that deviate from expectations. another point of doing research on “everyday banalities” lies in further differentiating the existing practical knowledge by gaining more precise knowledge and capturing how daily life is experienced in practice. the present study provides new insights in all these areas. while it is well known that work on relationships is a central dimension of the process in residential youth care, it is not known what exactly such attachmentand trauma-sensitive relationship work looks like in detail or how it can be transferred to a pedagogical and therapeutic milieu in such a way that the “safe place” (kühn, 2009; lang, 2009) called for in trauma-pedagogical interventions can be established. in the present study not only was the core aspect of residential youth care — the handling of the relationships with the children and youth — confirmed both qualitatively and quantitatively, but numerous interview sequences revealed further that it can promote a capacity for exploration and self-empowerment (see also corrective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 44 experiences as described by alexander & french, 1946; cremerius, 1979; grawe, 2004; orlinsky et al., 1994). importantly, in contrast to many previous results (cremerius, 1979; grawe, 2004; orlinsky et al., 1994), this study found that psychotherapy is not the only intervention that can bring about symptom reduction. on the contrary, both the care workers and the youths recounted having experienced scenes and moments in everyday life that brought about change (see also gahleitner, 2016a). thus the “therapeutic milieu” — or, to put it more exactly, the “pedagogical and therapeutic milieu” — evidently means “expressly … pedagogically based care programmes” (gahleitner, 2011, p. 9). in light of this, the practice often found in residential child and youth care contexts of employing a costly child and adolescent therapist and filling the care worker posts with a badly paid and poorly qualified “ground crew” is clearly not destined to achieve the desired result. on the contrary, our results indicate that facilities employing a trauma-pedagogical approach implemented competently by the staff in their everyday interactions with their clients create the actual framework required to further the development of the children and adolescents in their care. in the facility investigated in this study, the main interest is focused on the “other 23 hours” of the day (see trieschmann et al., 1969), and on reflection by the care workers together with the youth about the process they are sharing in their daily activities (krumenacker, 2001), which is what gives what happens in their relationships and what happens between them its decisive effect. many of the sequences of the interviews with the youths and their carers show how leisure-time activities can be effective in this process. the main focus of the work is thus on the daily life and care work in the facility, which, however, was designed to construct a pedagogical and therapeutic milieu (gahleitner, 2016a). following the classical triangle of trauma treatment (see gahleitner, 2011 for a summary of how this can be implemented by care workers), at the end of the youth’s period in care the process culminates in integration into everyday life outside of residential care (see figure 1). how successful the previous peer work and networking has been plays an important role in this process (laireiter, 2009; nestmann, 2010; röhrle, 2001). adolescents who have been able to build up a sizeable network of peers, who have found a way to get along with their relatives again, despite all ups and downs, and who can depend on institutions that have proved reliable for them have much better chances of successfully navigating this step. in regard to the programme, the study shows that working on relationships within a structure that provides stability, a pedagogical and therapeutic milieu, a genuinely participative dialogue, networking and professional skills, and diversity in terms of staff, discipline, and methods, are decisive criteria of quality. if positive collaboration is possible, a social network that provides stability, everyday experiences, and leisure time experiences that create a positive atmosphere plays the greatest role in socialisation efforts (see also brousek, 2013, 2014; gahleitner, radler, gerlich, & hinterwallner, 2014). in order to be able to work competently in such institutions, psychosocial professionals need (a) a combination of skills in the areas of attachment and relationship work, (b) specialised knowledge in psychological trauma, (c) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 45 provision of structure, (d) team spirit, (e) networking skills, and (f) the capacity for selfreflection and mental hygiene. if they are to work effectively, staff also need further and continuing training, supervision, peer supervision, authentic discussions within the team, and adequate opportunities for recuperation in their private lives. in sum, professional youth care workers do work that is demanding and challenging. we should give them the respect that they deserve, and the resources they need to be effective. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(1): 31–53 46 references alexander, f. g., & french, t. m. 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(2013). bindung und handlungssteuerung als frühe emotionale und kognitive voraussetzung von bildung [relationships and action control as an early emotional and cognitive requirement of education]. zeitschrift für pädagogik, 59(6), 793–802. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/1530/168_212.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.1.1132 change, relationships and implications for practice: the experiences of young people who use multiple services international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 447 change, relationships and implications for practice: the experiences of young people who use multiple services katie stevens, robyn munford, jackie sanders, linda liebenberg, and michael ungar abstract: despite the range of life changes experienced by young people who are multiple service users (msu), many demonstrate remarkable levels of optimism. this article reports on the changes in living arrangements (including out-of-home placements), schooling, and social workers, experienced by a sub-sample of 16 multiple service using young people with complex needs who participated in a mixed methods study (n = 605). case file data and qualitative interviews were analysed in order to understand young people’s experiences of change and the factors that supported them to adapt positively to these. the findings revealed that change disrupted service delivery but that the active involvement of family and at least one service provided more effective support for young people experiencing change than either of those resources alone. memories and imaginations of family may act as an emotional co-presence or identity resource when active family support is unavailable. the findings provide an argument for relationship-based, long term service involvement with young people with complex needs which complements or supplements family relationships particularly when these are inactive. keywords: young people, change, resilience, service delivery, child welfare acknowledgements: the authors thank the ministry of business, innovation and employment for funding this research programme. they also gratefully thank all the young people and their supporters who participated in the research. they acknowledge the contribution of the donald beasley institute, the victoria university research trust and its staff, youthline auckland, kapiti youth support, and all the other researchers who helped with the research. finally they thank child, youth and family for providing access to case files and for providing very valuable feedback and peer review of this paper. katie stevens, msw, (the corresponding author) is a principal analyst at the families commission, working with the practice research hub at massey university, palmerston north 4474, new zealand. e-mail: k.a.stevens@massey.ac.nz robyn munford, ph.d. is professor in the school of health and social services, massey university, palmerston north 4474, new zealand. e-mail: r.munford@massey.ac.nz jackie sanders, ph.d. is associate professor in the school of health and social services, massey university, palmerston north 4474, new zealand. e-mail: j.sanders@massey.ac.nz linda liebenberg, ph.d. is co-director of the resilience research centre at dalhousie university, 6420 coburg rd., p.o. box 15000, halifax, nova scotia b3h 4r2, canada. e-mail: linda.liebenberg@dal.ca michael ungar, ph.d. is professor of social work at dalhousie university, 6420 coburg rd., p.o. box 15000, halifax, nova scotia b3h 4r2, canada. e-mail: michael.ungar@dal.ca mailto:k.a.stevens@massey.ac.nz mailto:r.munford@massey.ac.nz mailto:j.sanders@massey.ac.nz mailto:michael.ungar@dal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 448 young people with complex needs who become involved in multiple services have commonly had at least one experience that has shaken their lives. while enhancing stability is a key goal of most interventions, young people with complex needs often experience changes in living arrangements, educational services, and workers during their journey through services. despite these changes, some young people demonstrate remarkable levels of optimism and an ability to survive (ungar, 2001). this article explores the factors which helped young people to positively manage change, including the resources and relationships they drew on, and considers implications for social work practice. findings are based on analysis of data collected for the qualitative component of a mixed methods study of young people who use multiple services in new zealand (sanders et al., 2013c). the effects of change on young people’s outcomes while for most young people changes in circumstance, such as moving home or school, can be disruptive, they are nonetheless commonplace. times of change, for example a move to boarding school, may even provide improved opportunities (plumridge & james, 2011). for young people with complex needs, however, there is evidence that change and mobility are correlated with poorer outcomes (plumridge & james, 2011; stein, 2006). effects of placement changes the experience of multiple placements is well researched within the looked-after children literature, with evidence of correlations between multiple placement moves and negative outcomes for young people. these include behavioural problems, offending, poor educational achievement, unemployment, and mental health problems (cashmore & paxman, 2006; rock, michelson, thomson, & day, 2013; stein & munro, 2008). short-term placement instability (occurring soon after a young person enters care) may not be harmful if there is a positive reason for change that the young person understands and accepts. however, prolonged instability has negative effects (barber & delfrabbo, 2006). research suggests placement instability affects young people’s outcomes in part by undermining existing support networks and minimising opportunities to develop new relationships; repeated changes may cause young people to become disillusioned (holland & crowley, 2013; rock et al., 2013) but also self-reliant (jakobsen, 2012). as driscoll (2011) states: having been let down, as they saw it, both by their birth families and professionals, self-reliance was regarded as a positive attribute, recounted with some pride and emphasised particularly by the boys. (p. 25) self-reliance as a consequence of placement changes is not entirely positive. schofield and beek (2009) note young people who become prematurely self-reliant are unlikely to thrive with only personal resources to draw on. placement instability has been a concern in new zealand and internationally (atwool, 2010; rock et al., 2013; tarren-sweeney, 2008). while placement stability is important, young people’s perceived security has been identified as a more significant predictor of outcomes (cashmore & paxman, 2006). cashmore and paxman (2006) suggest placement stability contributes to “felt” security by building young people’s access to relationships, sense of belonging, and long-term support networks (cashmore & paxman, 2006; schofield international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 449 & beek, 2009; stein & munro, 2008). they identify placement stability and continuity as “the best default options” for “felt” security (cashmore & paxman, 2006, p. 239). effects of changes in education changing schools can result in disruptions to a young person’s education with negative consequences for their academic outcomes and future opportunities (driscoll, 2011; plumridge & james, 2011). this, combined with other factors such as low expectations from teachers and problematic relationships with carers (driscoll, 2011), contributes to poor outcomes for children in care. school changes disrupt relationships with peers (fernandez, 2006) and with key adults in the school setting who provide support to students. the literature suggests that where there is education and placement stability, care leavers are more likely to remain at school and move into higher education (driscoll, 2011; stein, 2006). effects of changes in social workers and services young people with complex needs often experience changes in social workers and caregivers during their involvement with services. these changes, including discharge from a service, are likely to be experienced as a loss and where clients perceive that their needs have not been met, such endings can “reactivate feelings of being abandoned” and increase vulnerability (solomon, 2010, p. 178). multiple worker changes are strongly correlated with placement instability (rock et al., 2013) which in turn is correlated with poorer outcomes for young people (stein, 2006). change and relationships attachment and identity theories (ainsworth & bell, 1970; chen, lau, tapanya, & cameron, 2012; erikson, 1965; schofield & beek, 2009) provide insight into how change impacts on young people’s development and on their relationships. attachment theory proposes infants need to develop a relationship with at least one caregiver in order for normal psycho-social development to occur, and that children use their “attachment figure” as a “secure base” which they return to after exploring their environment (ainsworth & bell, 1970; schofield & beek, 2009). based on early attachments, people develop an internal working model – essentially a guide, based on experience – of how to understand the world, what to expect from relationships, and how to take part in these. poor early relationships with or changes in caregivers can upset the capacity of infants and children to experience good quality attachments and relationships in the future and deprive young people of a secure base to draw on during times of change. later relationships with caring and supportive adults or peers can have a compensatory effect (stein, 2006), in particular by offering belonging, family membership, and a secure base (schofield & beek, 2009). movement and change can also impact on a young person’s sense of belonging and identity which is formed within the context of relationships with families, carers, friends, and communities (chen et al., 2012; schofield & beek, 2009; smith, kumar, nicholson, & kumar, 2006; snow, h, s, j, a & p, 2013). when these relationships are constantly shifting young people may find it difficult to know where they belong which militates against them being able to form a consistent identity: constant changes can hardly fail to reinforce the impression that nothing can be expected to endure, including a sense of self-persistence. (ward, 2011, p. 2516) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 450 without a strong sense of self to anchor them, young people in care may experience low selfesteem or be profoundly distressed by change. (schofield & beek, 2009) resources that mediate outcomes and change studies suggest young people’s resilience resources help mediate their outcomes and moderate the effects of risk they face within their lives (ungar, 2005). such resources include factors in young people’s individual make-up (for example, individual skills), relationships (for example, with family), and wider social environments (for example, cultural and community connections; engagement with education) and the way these interact. given that change is correlated with negative outcomes for young people in care (stein & munro, 2008), it could be argued that change acts as a risk for young people with complex needs and the resilience resources described above may moderate its effects. for young people with complex needs, relationships with adults are a particularly important resource (ungar, 2004), especially those that offer continuity, contribute to perceived security (cashmore & paxman, 2006), and provide young people with a secure base (schofield & beek, 2009) through periods of change. the relationships young people have with service providers (including caregivers) and their families are of particular interest in building an understanding of the factors that promote positive outcomes in youth. there is evidence that services that work effectively with young people, harnessing their existing resources to provide them with support, are more likely to have a positive influence on young people’s outcomes (sanders et al., 2013b) and that positive relationships with “reliable” workers can contribute to young people’s sense of security (schofield & beek, 2009, p. 257). the role of family relationships on young people’s outcomes and experiences of change is complex. regardless of damaged relationships or limited contact, there is some evidence to suggest that family continues to play a role in the lives of young people with complex needs. previous studies (biehal & wade, 1996; holland & crowley, 2013) suggest young people in care, a group of youth with particularly complex needs, often hold an idealised view of family. as holland and crowley note: the young people in our study often powerfully envisioned families they lived by, sometimes in the form of their birth families and the imagined alternative lives they might have lived with them, a longed for, stable substitute home or an imagined future family of their own. (p. 59) these young people described an “emotional co-presence” (holland & crowley, 2013, p. 61) of family in the form of memories and imaginations. there was also evidence that young people’s interwoven biographies with their family played a particular role that was difficult to replicate in other relationships (holland & crowley, 2013, p. 64). the role of young people’s relationships with their siblings is also important and should not be overlooked when attempting to understand the way in which relational supports can contribute to better outcomes for youth with complex needs. evidence shows sibling coplacement reduces young people’s negative behaviour, while separation is correlated with placement instability, although sibling conflict may also contribute to placement breakdown (rock et al., 2013). perhaps more importantly, holland and crowley (2013) found sibling relationships represented the most positive birth family relationships for children in care and described profound emotional consequences for some young people where these relationships international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 451 were lost as a result of placements, particularly when one sibling had played a caregiving role. given that change and negative outcomes are correlated, that resources and positive outcomes are correlated, and that relationships are a particularly important resource for young people with complex needs, this article explores young people’s experiences of change, the resources and relationships that had a positive bearing on their experiences of change, and considers some implications for social work practice. methods this article is based on findings from the new zealand pathways to resilience research programme (ptrp). the ptrp is a mixed methods study investigating the role that services (child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and mental health delivered by both statutory and non-government organisations) play in mitigating the effects of adversity and in maximising young people’s resources and the potential for good outcomes in youth with complex needs. the ptrp is a cross-sectional study which will be advanced by the forthcoming youth transitions study which examines changing patterns in young people’s risk, resilience, and service use over time. ethical approval for the ptrp was granted by the massey university ethics committee. the quantitative phase of the ptrp consisted of a survey of 605 multiple service using youth (msu), a survey with a matched comparison group of youth (n = 605), and a survey with a person nominated by the youth as knowing the most about them (pmk). young people were aged between 12 and 17 and at the time of the research were clients of two or more service systems (juvenile justice, child welfare, alternative or special education services, or mental health services, both statutory and non-governmental). youth were recruited from six geographical locations around new zealand. multiple service using youth faced high levels of risk located at the individual level (including delinquency, substance abuse, and depression), the family/whānau level (abuse, neglect, and poverty), and the community level (violence, social disorganisation, disengagement from education). the survey captured demographic information, young people’s patterns of harm, their experiences of service use, their relationships with family and friends, and the role of material, social, and emotional resources in achieving functional outcomes including involvement in school, civic engagement, pro-social behaviour, positive peer group, and future aspirations (opportunities and optimism). it was administered by a trained interviewer. the qualitative phase of the research involved interviews with young people (n = 109), case file reviews, and interviews with a pmk. young people were identified for inclusion in the qualitative sub-sample based on their risk and resilience scores calculated from their responses to the survey. those with the highest risk and the highest or lowest resilience scores were included in this sub-sample. the young people in the qualitative subsample gave permission for case file reviews to be completed for up to four of the services with which they had been involved (sanders et al., 2013c). case file review data was collected using a template that included dates, description of the file item, and a summary of the file entry. summaries captured the following information: why the service became involved, processes of assessment and investigation that informed decisions, interventions with the youth, and the rationale for case closure. file excerpts used in this article are summaries of file data made by researchers; they are not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 452 verbatim records from files for confidentiality reasons. both the qualitative interviews and the file reviews were coded and analysed in nvivo, a qualitative data analysis software package. the analysis used in this article is based on the case file reviews and interviews of 16 young people included in the qualitative sub-sample and comprises the eight young people with the highest resilience scores and the eight with the lowest resilience scores. this selection enabled comparisons to be made of differences in experiences of change and resilience resources for the group of msu youth with the highest risk and with the highest and lowest resilience. changes of living arrangements, schools, workers, and support services – and the young people’s experiences of these according to their files and interviews – were analysed. case files spanned between one day and 16 years. thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. the findings reported in this article represent the major themes that emerged in this analysis. pseudonyms have been used. findings young people’s experiences of change the young people in the sample experienced a broad range of change in their lives including: changes in living arrangements, housing, schooling, relationships and support networks. these changes were the consequences of events both within and beyond their control (for example, a parent going to prison, family violence, and/or the young person’s own behaviours). table 1. median number of changes by resilience group higher resilience group n = 8 lower resilience group n = 8 median number of years known to a single service 8.6 4.1 median number of changes in living arrangements 7 4.5 median number of social workers in a single service 3.5 4 median number of changes in educational settings 4 4 as shown in table 1, young people who scored higher on resilience measures and had more resilience resources (higher resilience group) experienced a similar volume of change (of placements, schools, and workers) to those who scored lower and had fewer resilience resources (lower resilience group). however, the higher resilience group had longer histories of service involvement than the lower resilience group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 453 changes in living arrangements while just under a third of the young people included in this analysis had never lived outside of their parents’ care, the remainder, from both the higher and lower resilience groups, experienced between two and 37 moves. these were often a combination of moves instigated by families, placements instigated by services, and changes organised by young people themselves such as those that resulted from absconding from a previous living arrangement. some young people experienced changes prior to their involvement with the services included in this analysis. these changes may have taken place when the young person was involved with a different service, when case files were closed or as the result of family court decisions. more so than other types of change (for example, of school or social worker), changes in living arrangements had flow-on effects. moves to new communities often resulted in changes of schools or educational settings, support services, interventions, and importantly, changes to young people’s relationships and social networks as illustrated by the following file summary: anton moved continuously as a child due to mother’s controlling behaviour. mother was diagnosed with a mental illness. due to constant moving anton did not settle into school/peer relationships. young people exhibited a range of responses to the changes in their living arrangements. caregivers reported challenges in managing young people’s behaviours, young people themselves made complaints or requested moves, and some absconded. in both the files and the interviews there was evidence of youth sabotaging placements in an effort to return home, demonstrating control over their environments and identities (ungar, 2001), or rejecting relationships with new carers before they had a chance to be rejected themselves (solomon, 2010). other young people responded well to particular placements and some reflected sadly on changes to placements where they had a good relationship with carers or with local peer groups. the following excerpt from a file summary illustrates the benefits youth gained from positive placements and also the desire youth had to return to those places that had contained good experiences: paoroa was clear that [residential placement] changed his life and outlook. lots of activities – diving, fishing, hunting, doing things for community, counselling, group therapy. felt like second home and secure. company from the [elders]. paoroa would go back if he could. data from both the file analyses and the qualitative interviews revealed that placement changes were often unplanned and frequently reacted to crises. managing placement changes and responding to disruptions to these dominated much of recorded social work practice with young people. it was clear that considerable time and energy was expended on trying to secure consistent living arrangements for these youth. changes in living arrangements appeared to have more far-reaching effects for young people than changes in schools and social workers which are discussed in the following sections. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 454 changes in schools changes in schooling or educational services were a common experience. of the 16 cases examined, only three young people had no recorded changes while three experienced at least seven changes in schools or educational services. young people in the higher resilience group had more changes to their schooling, although this likely reflects that several of the young people in the lower resilience group no longer attended school and therefore did not experience school changes. changes in schools were sometimes related to a young person’s transient lifestyle with their family and had consequences for both academic progress and peer relationships. the following file summary illustrates this: anton participated well at school, was described as bright and academically able, but had not progressed in education due to his mother’s transience. schooling changes were also commonly a result of placement moves as noted in the previous section. school expulsion and changes in educational services typically resulted from “acting out” behaviour; this trend was noted more frequently for young people in the lower resilience group. in many cases young people had experienced a trauma which contributed to the challenging behaviour they exhibited prior to being expelled. files indicated that often a young person’s use of alcohol or drugs precipitated a school expulsion. in these cases there was commonly a requirement by substance and mental health treatment services that youth attend all clinic appointments to retain their place in the service; youth were discharged from these services after three non-attendances regardless of whether their needs had been met. these practices had implications for education, welfare, and justice providers who were left managing the youth without clinical interventions. most of the young people expressed a desire to participate in education as a means to becoming independent and/or employed in the future; in a few cases young people’s behaviours reflected this motivation. in one example, a young person spoke of his anxiety regarding the disruption his drug and alcohol rehabilitation was having on his ability to complete academic credits. following the completion of his treatment he successfully reengaged with mainstream education. schools themselves had a role to play in whether or not young people experienced change. youth and pmk did describe some schools and particular teachers as making great efforts to support youth to keep attending school. others were less willing to “go the distance” particularly where young people displayed challenging behaviour, as described in the file excerpt below: mother did not want her son to go to [name of high school] because he was not wanted there and from experience she knew that when the school did not want a young person they would give up when things got hard. young people’s responses to school moves were mixed. files provided evidence of young people struggling to settle into new schools particularly where there was instability in other parts of their lives (for example, placement moves, court appearances, substance abuse) but also of young people responding well to school changes and making efforts to engage, particularly when other aspects of their lives (for example, placements) were stabilised. the following file excerpt demonstrates this: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 455 jim seemed settled in residence and workers noted he participated well in activities such as creative writing with a staff member. he was described as enjoying the school programme and the structure of residence. in addition to changes in living arrangements and schools, many young people experienced changes in workers, as described in the following section. changes in workers as shown in table 1, most of the young people had worked with multiple social workers; six young people had six or more workers within one service. the young person who had the most social workers (19) had been involved with one service for over 16 years; that service’s involvement ranged from providing protective responses and placement options through to managing the young person’s criminal offending. young people commonly had multiple workers across agencies, or from different parts of the same agency (for example, a social worker, psychologist, counsellor, and residential social worker). reasons for changes in worker included allocation of more appropriate workers (those with greater experience, or better cultural or gender matches), previous workers leaving the service or changing roles, or as a result of files being transferred between offices when young people moved to a different geographical location. in a number of the files reviewed, the transfer of cases from one office to another (and consequent changes in workers) resulted in challenges, particularly regarding responsibility for funding (e.g., for school uniforms) and completion of case-related tasks. a number of files noted concerns from families or other professionals about the quality and timeliness of practice and the consequences (e.g., financial stress) for some families during periods when workers changed or cases were transferred. as noted, changes in living arrangements, schools, and social workers impacted on young people’s relationships; these impacts are discussed in the following section. impact of change on family relationships and service delivery for many young people, family relationships persisted where other relationships (for example, with caregivers, peers, school support networks, and social workers) fell by the wayside as the result of change. in the 16 files explored, most young people had some form of ongoing contact with their parents, although there were differences in the regularity and quality of this contact. it was particularly notable that the young people with higher resilience scores had more active and/or positive involvement with a family member than young people with lower resilience scores. many young people also had relationships with extended family (siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents). the resilience measure specifically captured information on a range of caregiving relationships and included both psychological and physical caregiving dimensions, so youth who had a wider range of family available to act in these roles scored higher on the resilience measure. family, both nuclear and extended, were often a first port of call for young people despite sometimes troubled relationships and histories. it is notable that in both the higher and lower resilience groups birth fathers were often absent from young people’s lives. change did, however, affect service delivery. the following file excerpt demonstrates how a single, short-term change had a number of flow-on effects: guy had three placements in 12 months. he had not attended school as his behaviours international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 456 were deemed by the school to place other students at risk. he had been with a tracker daily and this started to become difficult. guy had one appointment with the mental health service, in [town a]. when he was placed in [town b] with maternal family members, he was assessed by a psychiatrist who diagnosed him as having a severe conduct disorder and prescribed him medication. guy then moved back to [town a] where the mental health service required a new full assessment. he appeared to be in a state of limbo. not only were guy’s physical circumstances and relationships disrupted, but therapeutic interventions were also delayed, limiting his ability to progress in other areas. despite intensive and multiple agency involvement, this file summary points to the difficulties in providing adequate services when a young person’s life lacks stability (james, fraser, & saville-smith, 2011). services may be unwilling to begin or persist with work if placements are short term and time can pass quickly with what appears to be little improvement for a young person. young people may find it difficult to engage with and commit to placements, schools, services, and relationships if their experience has been that carers, workers, or programmes do not “last the distance”. in such situations services may be unconsciously mirroring young people’s experiences (ruch, turney, & ward, 2010). conversely, without intervention it may be difficult to create stability for a young person who demonstrates challenging behaviours or who lives in a family that is experiencing difficulties. relationship resources for managing change the role of family evidence from the case file summaries and the interviews with young people suggested many perceived family as a key support during periods of change and valued the ongoing nature of these relationships, sometimes regardless of their quality and even when they had experienced harm within family settings. families appeared to play different roles in supporting young people through change: as caregivers and/or providers of material support, as providers of emotional support, and in their least active forms as an “emotional copresence” (holland & crowley, 2013, p. 261). the notion of belonging was central to these relationships. in this regard, they comprise a critical dimension that service providers must take account of in their work with young people. young people in the higher resilience group tended to have more positive and active relationships with at least one adult member of their extended family although not necessarily their parents. in most cases family cared for young people full time, providing them with material and emotional support. situations were not always ideal however. some file summaries showed evidence of family violence or parental substance abuse within home settings and in other instances, young people were dealing with their own issues of sexual abuse, addiction, mental health, or learning disabilities. there were two sub-groups within the lower resilience group; those with ambivalent relationships with family and those for whom family was largely unavailable. in the first subgroup, young people were cared for by their family who provided them with material support and maintained involvement in their lives; despite ambivalent or poor relationships, young people recognised the support their family provided. for these young people, living with family who provided a continuous or familiar living environment despite certain challenges international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 457 was preferable to living independently or in out-of-home care; young people felt comforted by familiar behaviours, norms, and expectations (holland & crowley, 2013; snow et al., 2013). in the second sub-group, family was largely unavailable for reasons including parental death, imprisonment, mental health issues, addictions, family violence, patterns of harmful behaviour across the extended family, or where family had rejected youth. some of these young people did not perceive their family settings as harmful despite evidence to the contrary. they held idealised views of their families and longed to be with them, experiencing them as a comforting emotional support or co-presence (biehal & wade, 1996; holland & crowley, 2013). young people absconding from placements to return home was a common occurrence among these youth as demonstrated in the following file summary: social worker visited angela and found that she had been residing with her mother [who has serious mental health problems] and maternal grandmother for past 6 weeks, and had not informed the social worker of this. file noted that angela stated she would “vote with her feet” if she was placed back with caregivers, as she wished to remain with her mother. in a number of instances families acted as emergency placements when other placements broke down. this occurred even when those same families had previously requested young people be placed elsewhere, or when social workers had, in the past, deemed family placements inappropriate. in the case of the latter, additional supports or safety plans were usually put in place. the need to belong was a key theme amongst young people who had the least involvement with their families as demonstrated by this file summary: ngaio was described as really distressed, didn’t want to go in residence, felt very lonely, had no-one to belong to…. she was then placed with another new caregiver. her worker stated she was very much wanting a long term placement, was “sick of feeling that no-one wants her”. for this group of young people, family was a representation, a longed for dream: maree said that throughout her childhood she would often, and sometimes still does, look at others and wish she had a “normal childhood”, “a happy childhood”; she is not sure what a normal childhood looks like but she would describe it as “a life that’s not mine” [excerpt is a summary from an interview where a recording device could not be used]. despite the harm they had experienced in their care, these young people commonly identified parents as important people in their lives. the complexity of these relationships can be difficult to grasp but the role of parents or families of origin in such cases may be as an identity resource (chen et al., 2012; snow et al., 2013), offering young people “interwoven” biographies (holland & crowley, 2013, p. 64) which contribute to their sense of self (ruch et al., 2010) and potentially to their sense of security (cashmore & paxman, 2006). this may also explain the important role that relationships with siblings play for these young people. as one young person stated in an interview: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 458 it’s hard because i miss my family and you don’t get to see your family much…not the little kids, the ones that i love so much. these notions are the basis for arguments that support continued contact between young people and their families once they have been placed in care. however, evidence regarding the effects of contact on long-term placement stability is mixed (rock et al., 2013) suggesting care must be taken in how young people’s expectations of such contact are managed. families appeared to provide increasing levels of material support as young people transitioned into adulthood, a period of significant change. despite many young people having at some stage been in care, at the time of the research over half lived with their parents or other family (the remainder lived independently, in residential care, or were homeless). some file summaries raised questions about the extent of support offered to families to help them overcome original issues of concern particularly where a young person’s return home was unplanned. interestingly, a number of the young people in the higher resilience group had experiences similar to young people in the lower resilience group including repeated safety concerns, parents suffering from mental health issues or addictions, and multiple changes to living arrangements. the key difference appeared to be the contextual support available to young people in the higher resilience group, and in many cases the active work by services to provide the young people with a safe environment or to support families to support their young people. relationships with services young people in both the higher and lower resilience groups described being supported through periods of change by a range of services. one emerging theme was that of worker persistence and commitment. the following file summary illustrates the way in which a school provided extensive support for ruby, giving her stability during a period of change: social worker had spoken with ruby’s teacher who said ruby [was] missing her father…. the teacher reported there was a plan for ruby to have dinner at her grandmother’s home; her caregiver also supported this. ruby was due to start counselling. she had reported nightmares/sleeping problems as well as other symptoms. school had found a clinical psychologist who was willing to work with her. school was working on specific future orientated tasks with ruby on an informal level. ruby was able to access the school counsellor and deputy principal for support. school was going to investigate medication with her doctor. persistence and commitment may also enhance a service’s engagement with young people, as demonstrated in anton’s file where the social worker made weekly home visits over a sixmonth period (prior to anton turning 17). while it is not possible to attribute causality, it is notable that anton reported favourably on their relationship and the worker’s ability to listen. after the research interview, anton elaborated on this, as captured in the following field note: anton finds current social worker very helpful. after [the research interview] tape was stopped he elaborated and said she was really good – in terms of a service that has stood out. she listens, doesn’t make judgements, hears what he says. he said that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 459 the social worker “has the ability to listen without thinking she knows best, she knows how to listen”. these findings are consistent with ruch’s et al. (2010) research into relationship-based practice which suggests worker persistence aids in developing effective relationships, modelling to clients a “reliable, engaged and constructive relationship” (ruch et al., 2010, p. 15) and enhances their ability to regulate their own lives. in attachment terms such a relationship contributes to a “secure base” from which, over time, the client will be able to develop their own internal working model and provide stability for themselves (ruch et al., 2010; schofield & beek, 2009). knowing a service is available to them on an ongoing basis was reassuring for some young people, as demonstrated in the following interview quote: i can just ring [service], they said i can come back any time so if i do get in the shit i can just ring them up the next couple of days after my call they will come pick me up…i am gonna go back. even after when i’m off their books i’m gonna go back. ’coz they’re like [family] to me, i look up to them, they’re like family. his connection to the service enabled this young man to plan for the future; he was motivated to stay out of trouble by the prospect of living independently from his family and with the support of the service. in cases where young people do not have an active family relationship or where family connections are poor, long-term relationships with services may be even more important, acting as “guardians of narrative threads in the lives of children” (hurley, martin, & hallberg, 2013, p. 267). it is notable that of the 16 files reviewed, young people with higher resilience scores generally experienced longer term involvement with services than those with lower resilience scores (although this involvement was not usually continuous) and were more likely to have recent or current involvement with a service. over half of this group also described having a good relationship with at least one service. while this may suggest that positive, ongoing involvement with services plays a role in building young people’s resources, it may also reflect that young people who have more resources to begin with have greater capacity to negotiate involvement with services (sanders et al., 2013b; ungar, 2005). the examination of the role of long-term service involvement in good outcomes for youth with complex needs is an important area for further investigation. families and services: combined resources while most young people had some level of connection with their family of origin, the file analysis revealed that those with higher resilience scores were more likely to have enduring relationships (long term, active, and relatively positive) with both family and a service provider. in contrast, young people with lower resilience scores were more likely to have only one form of support or to lack enduring adult support altogether. this is consistent with previous findings (sanders et al., 2013a; cashmore & paxman, 2006). the following interview excerpt illustrates the positive effects of complementary support from both family and a service in helping one young person cope with her long-term residential placement. while in care, sonia’s basic needs (food, shelter, safety) were met, which in the past she and her family had struggled to provide. members of her family visited international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 460 regularly and it was clear the statutory service also supported them, empowering them to support their daughter. sonia stated: it’s safe for me and i feel like the staff are supporting me. while i’m here, caring for me… they help me,…tenderly care for me…helping my family out... in this case, the service took account of and built on sonia’s existing resilience resources, particularly those of her family. this cooperative approach to supporting sonia may have contributed to her positive engagement with both her family and the service, building up her network of enduring relationship resources for the future. in contrast, where services and family are unable to work together effectively, a young person’s resources and ability to manage change, such as moving toward independent living, may be reduced. the following file summary captures this: a pattern was noted where his mother wanted him to be cared for by someone else, and then when he was moved away from her she wanted him back. when he returned she would refuse to work with agencies to ensure that the return was successful and that his needs were met. in this case the service was considering closing the file because they were unable to engage with the family; a relationship-based approach (ruch et al., 2010) would encourage services to further explore how to positively engage with the young person’s mother. services may supplement the roles of family relationships (as providers of care, emotional support, or emotional co-presence) as required but particularly when families are unavailable as a resource. services may provide a secure base to young people and in doing so contribute to their sense of security (cashmore & paxman, 2006). while noting that there may be risks of fragmentation where multiple agencies are involved with a young person, there are implications for ensuring young people with complex needs continue to have a relationship with at least one service as well as with their family where possible, as they move toward independence. the ways in which different factors influence young people’s future orientations as they move into independence will be explored in detail in the youth transitions study which follows the group of multiple service using youth for up to six years (see www.youthsay.co.nz). discussion and implications for social work practice a key finding of this study is the importance of enduring relationships, particularly those with family and services, as resources in supporting young people through periods of change. at first glance the implications appear straightforward: that family, services and other adults involved with young people with complex needs should strive to support young people through change by providing and nurturing enduring relationships. solutions are more nuanced than this however, particularly with regard to young people and their families. some families may require support in order to offer their young people enduring relationships and workers can provide this in a number of ways: through relationship counselling, interventions to address underlying problems that affect family relationships (for example, treatment for parental alcohol abuse, or addressing issues of family violence), or, as in sonia’s case, providing guidance and physical resources to families (for example, transportation) to enable them to have meaningful contact with their young person. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 461 in other cases, workers may feel cautious about young people idealising the memories of family who have in the past caused them harm, been unavailable to care for them, or rejected them. these young people may have the most to gain from enduring relationships with services, including stable placements with long-term caregivers. placement stability is likely to create stability in other aspects of young people’s lives, contributing to their sense of security (cashmore & paxman, 2006). cashmore and paxman (2006, p. 239) suggest “timely decisions” are needed when young people enter care, rather than prolonged instability. in new zealand, home for life policy developments (child, youth and family, 2012) provide guidance about timely decision-making regarding placement permanency and address the need for continuity of the caregiving relationship. schofield and beek (2009) advocate for a model of long-term foster care that offers young people with complex needs, who are unable to return home, a sense of security throughout their lives. many young people in care will, however, go on to have contact with their families (cashmore & paxman, 2006; schofield & beek, 2009; stein & munro, 2008) and services that work towards enhancing these relationships or that equip young people with the skills and resources to negotiate safe, healthy, and enduring future relationships including complex family relationships (fernandez, 2006) will contribute positively to young people’s outcomes. in terms of relationships between young people and services (including caregivers and mentors), the findings encourage longevity even in the face of challenge. relationship-based social work (ruch et al., 2010) holds promise for services in engaging challenging clients and building enduring relationships. grounded in psychodynamic, systemic, and attachment theories, this approach values the relationship between services and clients as a therapeutic intervention in itself. it requires workers to work “in and with” often stressed relationships (ruch et al., 2010, p. 9). both this and long-term foster care approaches can be emotionally demanding, time consuming, and resource intensive, requiring workers and carers to be well supported and supervised. however, there are other challenges to sustaining service-client relationships at an organisational level. contemporary organisational pressures, “performative” trends (cooper, 2010, p. 229) and “increased prescription and bureaucratic processes” (munro, 2011, p. 87) have moved social workers away from relationship-based approaches to focus instead on completing prescribed tasks, despite experts suggesting that there should be a greater focus on assisting social workers to work effectively with their clients (munro, 2011). examples of performative trends were evident in the analysis of case file data. notes on several files stated that the service’s involvement would be withdrawn because the young person had not attended clinic appointments, their family was unwilling to engage with the service, or because the service believed it wasn’t making a sufficient difference to the young person’s life. in several instances the existence of other support networks for the young person (for example, family or other agencies) was given as a reason for services withdrawing. in other cases, services withdrew when agreed plans were completed despite young people continuing to demonstrate support needs. in none of these cases were problems “solved”. some files, like guy’s, demonstrated the challenges of multiple system involvement with young people with complex needs, revealing the pitfalls of inadequate planning and disjointed service delivery. integrated service delivery – which utilises a lead agency, follows a carefully designed plan that takes into account a young person’s full range of needs and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 447–465 462 existing resources (including the needs of parents or carers), and identifies appropriate services to work with those resources – may provide a starting point in such cases. as the findings here suggest, services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health, and education in both statutory and non-government agencies) need to be prepared for longterm involvement with young people with complex needs and to “stay with” these relationships even during periods of change and tension until desired outcomes are achieved. the potential for such arrangements to occur in new zealand may be enhanced by recent announcements under the children’s action plan (new zealand government, 2012) for shared accountability for vulnerable children across multiple government agencies (social development, health, education, police, and justice). conclusions change is correlated with poor outcomes for young people with complex needs and can undermine a young person’s support networks (james et al., 2011; stein & munro, 2008). this analysis provides evidence that relationships that endure, particularly those with family and some services, provide support in a range of forms for young people and assist youth through difficult processes of change. young people with complex needs are most well equipped to navigate change when they are supported by enduring relationships with both family and a service, at least until the young person is able to develop an internal working model of stability (ruch et al., 2010; schofield & beek, 2009). equipping young people in this way is a complex process. families may only have the capacity to provide young people with an emotional co-presence in the form of memories and imaginations during times of change. the challenge for services working with young people is to help them to develop adaptive strategies to manage sometimes conflicting emotions and family relationships. relationship-based practice encourages workers, supported by their organisations, to “stay with” clients during these difficult times and in doing so build the enduring relationships young people require. there are practical challenges to such an approach however, such as age-related service thresholds. it may be timely to explore opportunities to work beyond such thresholds, to provide the most empowering services and support for young people during critical periods of their development. even when relationships are not ideal, they may be able to contribute to the range of resources young people have to draw on. as gilligan (2006) notes: given how difficult it is to engineer positive futures for vulnerable children that prove effective and sustainable, our approach should be to draw on as wide a repertoire of resources as possible. we should be striving to paint the future from a broad palette of existing and new possibilities. our goal should be to maximise the range of social and emotional assets the young person can call upon. 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(2008). retrospective and concurrent predictors of the mental health of children in care. children and youth services review, 30(1), 1–25. ungar, m. (2001). the social construction of resilience among “problem” youth in out-ofhome placement: a study of health-enhancing deviance. child and youth care forum, 30(3), 137–154. ungar, m. (2004). the importance of parents and other caregivers to the resilience of highrisk adolescents. family process, 43(1), 23–41. ungar, m. (2005). pathways to resilience among children in child welfare, corrections, mental health and educational settings: navigation and negotiation. child & youth care forum, 34(6), 423–444. ward, h. (2011). continuities and discontinuities: issues concerning the establishment of a persistent sense of self amongst care leavers. children and youth services review, 33(12), 2512–2518. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2007.05.014 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2004.04301004.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10566-005-7755-7 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.08.028 methodological insights from researching temporality in families with teenage children international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 666 methodological insights from researching temporality in families with teenage children sophie sarre and jo moran-ellis abstract: the often unremarked processes through which gender and generation play out in families with teenage children in, through, and over time, was the topic of a mixed qualitative methods study, drawing on the accounts of multiple family members – 14 and 15 year olds and their resident parent(s). using this as a case study the paper critically considers a number of methodological, ethical, and political issues faced in undertaking the research, particularly with respect to research with children. these pertain to challenges of a social constructionist approach and to research from multiple perspectives. we argue that there are paradoxes and contradictions that arise between a social constructionist approach and the practicalities of carrying out research into dynamic phenomena, such as “generationing”, particularly when trying to understand this from multiple perspectives. but rather than consider these as flaws we show how they are in fact opportunities for insight into the interplay between the structural and the dynamic nature of intergenerational relations. keywords: family life, sociology of childhood, social construction, multiple perspectives, mixed methods, temporality, teenagers acknowledgements: the study used to illustrate the arguments in this paper was funded by a studentship from the economic and social research council (grant number es/i900888/1). we would like to thank geoff cooper for his valuable supervisory contribution, the participants in the research for their commitment, and the editorial team of this special issue for their work and their helpful suggestions. sophie sarre, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a research associate at king’s college london, national nursing research unit, faculty of nursing & midwifery, 57 waterloo road, london, united kingdom, se1 8wa. e-mail: sophie.sarre@kcl.ac.uk jo moran-ellis, ph.d. is professor of sociology at the university of sussex, brighton, united kingdom, bn1 9rh. e-mail: j.moran-ellis@sussex.ac.uk mailto:sophie.sarre@kcl.ac.uk mailto:j.moran-ellis@sussex.ac.uk international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 667 since the 1990s there has been a growing momentum to the sociological move to: engage with childhood as a simultaneously socially constructed phenomenon and a structural division; position children as social actors; explore the ways in which their capacity to be agentic is played out or resisted; and work with the implications of that for theorising the nature of the social and society (see alanen & mayall, 2001; hutchby & moran-ellis, 1998; james, jenks, & prout 1998; james & prout, 1990; qvortrup, 1994). this interest in childhood and children’s lives has necessarily been accompanied by developments in methods and methodology (alderson, 1995; christensen & james, 2000; davis, 1998; harden, scott, backett-milburn, & jackson, 2000; kellett, forrest, dent, & ward, 2004) including multiple perspectives studies involving children (brannen, 1996; gabb, 2008; gillies, holland, & ribbens mccarthy, 2003; gillies, ribbens mccarthy, & holland, 2001; harden, maclean, backett-milburn, & cunningham-burley, 2012; zeiher, 2001). however, as this special issue suggests, over this time there has perhaps been more emphasis on the utilisation of these methodological approaches than there has been on critically reflecting on the contradictions and paradoxes which are inevitable given the embedded assumptions within social constructionism as a perspective, multiple methods as a methodology, and research with children as the empirical expression of a theoretical endeavour to locate children in society in a more sociologically informed way than previously. in this paper we take up two particular challenges which we believe need to be addressed: firstly, the resolution of tensions between a social constructionist approach to dynamic phenomena and the realities of research design and practice that rely on pre-existing categories; and secondly, the challenge in multiple perspectives research of positing the accounts of participants alongside each other such that children’s voices are as recognised and valued as adults’ voices, both individually and as members of family households. we explore these two challenges using the example of a qualitative mixed methods study looking at temporality in the lives of teenage children and their parents. after sketching out the background, aims, and methods of the study, we examine these challenges at different points of the research process: recruitment, generation of data, the pragmatics of research, and means of analyses. we conclude that the paradoxes and contradictions that arise in carrying out research on the social construction of generation, and doing so from multiple perspectives afford us greater insight into the interplay between the structural and the dynamic nature of intergenerational relations. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 668 the study the study explored temporality in families with a 14or 15-year-old child, living within or across households (sarre, 2011)1. it was premised on a conception of “timescapes” (adam, 1998, 2000, 2004), or temporal landscapes, in which time is multi-dimensional, shifting, and subject to manipulation. for instance, time is not solely a measure of duration, pace, and rhythm. it can also be used for political ends – to control, to punish, and to discipline. other dimensions, or qualities, of time arise from our subjective experience of it (whether we feel harried, or whether time seems to drag). time is also imbued with meanings – timeliness, giving appropriate time to show we care, special times, and so on. the term “temporality” is used here to describe the coming together of the temporal and the social, whereby different dimensions of time not only provide a context that may shape or colour our experience, but a resource we draw upon and manipulate to “go on” in social living. existing research shows that gender and generation are reflected and produced in the ways that mothers and fathers, adults and children: use their time (office for national statistics [ons], 2008); experience their time (craig, 2007; davies, 1990; jurczyk, 1998; southerton & tomlinson, 2005; sullivan, 1997); and in the legitimacy afforded to their uses of time (daly, 1996; gershuny, 2004; sarre, 2013). family life is one, arguably distinct, arena in which time, gender, and generational relations intersect. it has also been argued that creating familiality requires a certain kind of temporality (everingham, 2002; galinsky, 1999; southerton, 2003), or the operation of certain “temporal principles”, such that “family practices” (morgan, 1996) also have an important temporal dimension (morgan, 2011). specifically, then, the study set out to answer three related questions: 1. what are the dimensions of temporality in families with teenagers (including but not restricted to the temporality of family practices)? 2. how do mothers’, fathers’, sons’ or daughters’ timescapes differ, and in what ways are they similar? 3. how might temporality operate (or be made to operate) in families to position family members as more or less gendered and/or generational beings (or to resist, modify, or obscure these positions)? children, mothers, and fathers were placed alongside each other in terms of the research focus, the data collection, and the analysis. with respect to research focus we were interested in the contribution of children to the (re)construction of generational and gender ordering through temporal processes. in terms of methods the study aimed to explore the research questions from the perspectives of teenage children and their resident parent(s), and used data collection tools designed to engage all parties. in the analysis it was seen as important to treat each person’s account of their experience as having equal worth, and to try to “hear” mothers, fathers, and children’s voices at equal “volume”. 1 this was a doctoral study carried out by sophie sarre under the supervision of jo moran-ellis and geoff cooper at the university of surrey (sarre, 2011). the design of the research and research tools, and all recruitment and data collection, was carried out by sophie sarre (referred to here as ss). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 669 data collection the study used a number of qualitative methods to generate data. first 14and 15year-old children and their resident parent(s) were asked to participate in a joint task-based interview (the household portrait) followed by individual semi-structured interviews at home. all participants were also invited to complete either or both of two additional tasks – a personalized inventory of time-related objects (pito) and a reflective time diary. because of the extra burden they represented, diaries and pitos were presented as optional extras, flagged in recruitment material but not a necessary condition of participation. the household portrait – rendering timescapes, temporalities and their negotiation visible. doucet designed the “household portrait” (hhp) to explore gendered divisions of labour (doucet, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2006). it is essentially a joint, task-based interview which provides opportunities for the creation of visual data, discussion, and reflection. both alone and in combination each of these aspects offers a number of benefits. first, both the process and the output provide valuable data. also, visual materials created by participants can act as mediators between researcher and participant (christensen & james, 2000). they make something “manifest” both to the researcher and the participant, and can be discussed as a “joint referent”. lastly, by allowing respondents to see and reflect on the data that they produce, they are enabled in carrying out a degree of primary analysis on their data (doucet, 1996). this study used an adapted form of hhp which included children as social agents. an excised, pseudonymised version of a completed hhp is represented in figure 1. (a slightly adapted form was used in lone-parent families). participants were asked to decide together, through discussion, who (alone or in combination with another) tended to perform each of several time-related tasks or have responsibility for time-related decisions in the household. the items were chosen as common temporal themes in family life around: synchronising time with the family (red); regulating the child’s time (blue); anticipating (green); reacting (orange); and keeping tabs (yellow). participants were invited to add any time-related activities or responsibilities which they felt were significant in their family life. once all the rows had been completed participants were asked: whether they felt this categorization captured time in their household; whether the hhp they had created reflected the allocation of these types of tasks more generally within their family, beyond the specific tasks asked about; and whether they were surprised at the picture that emerged. they were also encouraged to talk about reasons behind the pattern of time in their family. these reflections generated further data. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 670 figure 1. extract from a completed household portrait interview table. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 671 interviews – eliciting timescapes, temporalities, and articulations. individual interviews were based around: the temporal impacts of paid work and school work in the household; the temporal effects of having or being a child and how these may have changed over time; values on time-use; making time together and taking time apart. following solberg (1996), the children’s interview schedule was as “generation-neutral” as possible in order to get behind age-related assumptions, and better explore when age or generation “mattered”. personalized inventory of time-related objects – keeping track of time and time management. a third research tool was designed to capture something of the way that an awareness of time permeates our lives; and also to supplement the hhp in getting at how time is measured, regulated, and monitored in families, and who were the performers and subjects of such practices. the pito was essentially a spreadsheet in which participants were asked to note all the things they used to keep track of time, how often they used them, and the reasons for using them. reflective time diaries – temporality as lived experience. finally participants were invited to create a reflective time diary over a period of up to one week. according to preference, people could choose to do this by means of an audio diary, a written diary, or by e-mailing diary entries to the researcher. the remit given to diarists was wide, but respondents were steered towards their experiences of time – for instance, whether they felt rushed, nostalgic, bored; whether there was anything to do with time that had made them frustrated, annoyed, glad; whether they had been reminded of or looked back on things in the past or had spent time thinking about the future. analysis the multiple datasets created by each person were used to build a more rounded picture of the participant, while remaining sensitive to the different research contexts. data were also collated and analysed by family to create a picture of each family’s timescape and its negotiation from multiple perspectives. finally, data were also analysed across families, from different standpoint perspectives. some of the benefits and challenges of multiple perspectives analysis are discussed further below. recruitment recruitment aimed at children was attempted through youth organizations (with ss attending regular scheduled activities and approaching individuals on an ad hoc basis) and through schools (via published material). given the failure of this recruitment approach (discussed further below) parents were then targeted through community events, online fora, e-lists, newsletters, snowballing, and word-of-mouth. the sample parents and teenage children living in 14 households in london and the south east of england took part in the study. nine were two-parent household families and five were loneparent household families. fieldwork was carried out between february and october 2010. statement on ethical issues the study was given favourable opinion by the university of surrey research ethics committee. ethical engagement is emergent and situated. a number of ethical considerations came to light during the processes of ethics committee approval, research design, recruitment, international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 672 data collection, analysis, and choosing terminology in writing this paper. reflecting this, rather than imposing a false bracketing off of ethical issues, we consider them as they arise in the narrative of this paper. researching social construction in family life the study took a social constructionist perspective on the constitution of family, gender, and generation, which is now somewhat the convention in childhood studies. drawing on this empirical study we discuss here three related “problems” that routinely arise out of this particular stance, and which have received less attention than they should in the field. firstly, social construction emphasises “doing”, context, salience, and emergence in creating and reshaping social positions. but labels and categories used to select cases in which to study those processes rely on and perpetuate, to some degree, a priori constructions (in this case “teenager”, “mother”, “father”). secondly, and similarly, researching from standpoints also assumes meaningful pre-existing differences, even though the making of these is the object of study. lastly, we address the problem of producing the very phenomenon under consideration through the mechanisms of the research process. this last point arises out of what giddens (1993) argues is the double hermeneutic with which social science in particular has to grapple. in effect, he notes, in describing social phenomena in the world, the social scientific concepts used contribute to the existence and shape of that phenomenon. giddens explains this as an interdependence between the ideas with which social science works, and the subject matter with which it is engaged: sociology … stands in a subject-subject relation to its “field of study”, not a subjectobject relation; it deals with a pre-interpreted world in which the meaning developed by active subjects actually enter into the constitution or production of that world; the construction of social theory thus involves a double hermeneutic… (p. 154) hence in researching time in families from the perspective of mothers, fathers, and teenage children, these categories are all partially constituted in and through various elements of both the methodology of the research and the conceptual apparatus with which it works. despite this being a well-established issue in social scientific thinking, it generally receives little attention in writings about research with children. so, in this section we explore how on the one hand these three tensions have to be tackled as a question of pragmatics and practice, while at the same time they afford analytic insight into the phenomenon in action. categories the tension between capturing emergent processes (such as the ongoing construction of generation and gender) using prior categories (teenage child, mother, father) is eased through the use of criteria that are mutually recognised by the researchers, participants, and gatekeepers. following henwood, griffin, and phoenix’s (1998, p. 7) definition of standpoint, recruitment to this study was based on the assumption that mothers, fathers, and 14to 15-year-old children have, to some degree, concrete, materially grounded, or shared experiences and/or socially defined group identities, even if not collectively articulated political viewpoints. with respect to children, despite an emphasis on generation and generational categories as emergent, this study was not unusual in sampling based on age category both for theoretical and pragmatic reasons. the choice of the particular age bracket was based on previous evidence (lewis, noden, & sarre, 2008; lewis, sarre, & burton, 2007; sarre, 2010) that 14 or 15 year olds had a distinctive relationship to time. furthermore, given that schools international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 673 were to be used as a recruitment pathway, a narrower band of specific year groups made it easier for schools to administer. this sampling strategy reflects a societal condition under which generational categories are structurally fixed in particular contexts, for example in schooling in the united kingdom. this structural demarcation also extends to processes of research with children, whereby ethics committees treat people under the age of 16 as a special category requiring, for instance, police checks to be carried out on the researcher. so, whilst we can argue that generational categories emerge through interaction, this also acknowledges that structural conditions (re)produce generational orderings. furthermore, there is a degree of shared experience that arises through the operation of this structural ordering. children live in a context of age-specific policies and are organised into age cohorts in schools, sports, and leisure activities. age is thus a meaningful part of children’s lives (james et al., 1998) and is contingently emergent and/or fixed. this study revealed the processes by which age (and birth order) operated as a meaningful category both in its contingent and fixed forms, as well as highlighting the ways in which this played out in the temporal landscapes of multiple family members, as the extracts below illustrate: i’m a kid and i don’t have to – i’m a teenager, sorry, sorry – i’m a teenager so i don’t have to go to work. (son interview) i suppose the whole point of adolescence is getting to a point where you take responsibility for these things yourself. (mother interview) i think most older children get the slightly rough end of the stick because they’re teaching their parents how to be parents. (father interview) they hit, sort of, 12, you know there’s that funny feeling when you go out for the first time and you leave them alone […] every couple of years you let go of another thing. (mother interview) in the face of this pull toward categorization, the conceptual and methodological approach taken in the study aimed to minimise the “objectification” of mothers, fathers, and children by: taking a relational approach based on the assumption of agency as well as constraint for all family members; looking at family relations from the perspective of several family members; treating each account as of equal worth; and inviting participants to influence the research agenda through the reflective creation of artefacts. the tension between category and emergence persists even in writing about the study. conventionally the practice would be to use the term “young people” for those participants who are 14 and 15 years old. however, throughout this paper we use the word “child” when referring to these participants. this does not belie assumptions about the nature of children’s pre-adult identity. rather it is because the focus of the study was children’s place in family ordering, generational relations, and the ongoing situated processes of positioning on a generational continuum of what is regarded as “child-like” – “adult-like”. we also use the term “teenager”. although we may balk at imposing the term to characterise respondents of a certain age, especially in the light of the negative connotations frequently associated with the label, it had clear cultural significance. the 14 and 15 year olds and parents frequently used the term to refer to themselves and their children, as well as to “generalised other” teenagers; and the “teenage years” were regarded as a somewhat distinct period of childhood, not least with respect to time-use and time sovereignty. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 674 the double hermeneutic here we argue that by taking a reflexive approach to researcher/participant interactions in the research process, analytic use can be made of the moments where the play of the double hermeneutic becomes visible in the dialogic data. for example, where the research process elicits a reaction from the participants, the dynamic of this can serve as another level of data to be analysed. we present here two examples from hhp interviews to illustrate our point. in one lone-parent household the hhp exposed considerable historic and ongoing tension, and elicited overt conflict. the researcher had asked whether and how the mother and son knew about each other’s whereabouts when not together: i: either one of you may be mum: he doesn't care where i am. [talking at the same time] i: in or out as it were. son: you don’t always know where i am. i’ll sometimes say “oh i’m in town” but where that could be – mother: no, but i do want to know. you’re supposed to call me when you’re going to be somewhere where i wouldn’t expect you to be. son: i’m in year 11 now though. if i just say “i’m in [the neighbourhood]”, that’s fine, right? i don’t need to tell you exactly where in [the neighbourhood] i am. mother: [to son] are we arguing about this or are we trying to come up with an answer? i: well it’s very interesting to have the argument actually! [mother and interviewer laugh nervously] mother: well, if i did know where he was all the time it would be entirely down to my effort. i: right, ok, that’s interesting. son: maybe – mother: he occasionally remembers to call me to say “i’m going out”, but more often than not – son: on days where it’s given that i’m going out, like on fridays when i go out before football, i don’t really want to tell you because i’m just going out anyway. you know that. we can make two observations about this extract. firstly, the study found that sharing time, putting in time, and making time available built a sense of togetherness. the encounter illustrated in the above extract demonstrates inverse processes at work (both in terms of the interview interaction and in terms of the “story”). these processes pertain to keeping oneself apart, refusing to account for your time to another, and asserting your autonomy, which are international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 675 all perhaps necessary to establish a sense of individuality (rather that togetherness). this endeavour is perhaps particularly pertinent in terms of generation, where children are trying to assert their autonomy and independence from within social, moral, and legal frameworks of dependence. secondly, it is included as a reminder that joint interviews may not only reveal but elicit family interactions that can be difficult to manage (harden et al., 2012). the presence of the interviewer may foster this conflict through being regarded by one or both parties as a kind of mediator or witness. at the same time, the participants are both performing the kinds of negotiating that produces their generationally ordered relationship to time spent together/apart/at home/elsewhere, and recognising that this as not a unified answer but a process of arguing. herein lies the double hermeneutic: in seeking an account of time, the participants reproduce the dynamics of conflict over time (and location) and the researcher becomes enrolled in nominating this as data in itself, but out of a move that both “saves” the situation diplomatically and adheres to the initial reassurance that there are no right answers. thus, we see the complexity of the hermeneutics of the participants’ interaction and the researcher’s. in our second example disagreement was aired in a light-hearted way. knowing that the researcher had a son of a similar age to the boy being interviewed2 (and perhaps assuming that her views and experiences would align with their own), mother and son each goodhumouredly attempted to use the researcher to support their own positions. but the scenario is more than an ethically uncomfortable encounter. the process of the research elicits one of the themes of enquiry (in this instance the dynamics of contested constructions of an “appropriate bedtime for a 14 year old”), and once laid bare this provides valuable data: son: [reading from the chart] “deciding what time [child] goes to bed”. well i have absolutely no input on that! dad: me neither. son: that's going straight into mum's one! for the tape, i go to bed far too early for a 14 year old. you should put this on the news! i: what time do you go to bed then? son: too early dad: don't ask me mum: what time does your son go to bed? i: oh no i'm not going to get embroiled in these ... son: no just tell. just say. i: not as early as i think he should. son: is it 9:00 or over? i: no, i can't possibly start wading into family disputes. 2 depending on the recruitment pathway, for a number of reasons ss decided to reveal to potential participants that she was a mother of teenage children. in other instances participants tended to ask about this on the telephone or at the first meeting. the subject of the research, and the fact that interviews were carried out in people’s homes, contributed to such conversations. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 676 son: it's probably ... what time is it? just tell us. please. please. mum: tell us, we won't mind i: [hesitatingly] he goes to bed at 9.30 mum: [to the sound of handel’s messiah] hallelujah!! hallelujah!! see. see. see son: he's younger than me. what year's he in? 8 or 9? i: 9. mum: [triumphant] yes!! son: it's still too early though dad: unlucky son. this exchange illustrates giddens’ (1993) claim that: “lay actors are concept-bearing beings, whose concepts enter constitutively into what they do; the concepts of social science cannot be kept insulated from their potential appropriation and incorporation within everyday action” (p. 13). the participants are working with the notion of “bedtime” and the management of that (one feature of the research), and at the same time are engaged in an exchange in which the relevant norms to be applied to the concept, and the meaning of the concept of bedtime, are contested between the three participants, with (eventually successful) attempts to enrol the researcher as a further “lay actor” who can lend weight to one side of the argument or the other. the idea of bedtime being meaningful in respect of normativity and age/generation/household structure is both a social scientific one and a lay one, and there is exchange and appropriation between these domains. hearing the child in researching family life we now focus on what we see as a second tough question: how to integrate the child’s perspective into both the method and in the analysis. as we show below, this challenge also presents itself across the research process, at the stage of recruitment, in relation to the practicalities of conducting the research, and in relation to analysis of the multiple datasets generated by the research design described above. difficulties and limitations in recruitment when children are invited to take part in research they are commonly accessed through parents or through schools. family life and school life are also common themes in research involving children. this study does not break with either of those conventions. we make no apology for the subject matter of the research, particularly since teenagers (especially those teenagers unencumbered by the labels troubled or troublesome teenagers) are under-represented in family research. but it is worth considering some of the difficulties faced in recruiting children to the study. as a deliberate political stance, signalling an interest in children’s voices and children’s significance as social actors and agents, initial recruitment strategies were directed towards the 14and 15-year-old targets. concerted efforts were made to recruit children through settings beyond home and school. twelve youth and community groups were contacted (youth centres, sports clubs, music organizations, adventure playgrounds, a local authority youth council, and a community expo). in all but one case permission was given for international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 677 the researcher to spend time at these sites, speaking to children about the research and inviting them to participate using an information sheet aimed at the children (though this made clear that parental consent would be required). nobody took up the invitation. in a parallel recruitment strategy three secondary schools were also approached, and one agreed to distribute 180 information sheets addressed to children. nobody took up the invitation. several months later this exercise was repeated with another year group. nobody took up the invitation. in the end, although over 400 information leaflets had been distributed to target children, and many hours had been spent attempting face-to-face recruitment with this group, all families who participated were accessed through appeals to parents (some of whom were themselves accessed through school-based communication channels)3. given her initial drive to target children in order to emphasise children’s agency, ss has to admit that the majority of children appeared to vote with their feet and decline to participate. unwilling to abandon what she felt was a key element in the research design (including the voices of children) she therefore pursued children through parental gatekeepers. although she does not believe that any child took part in this study against his or her will (and she refused some interviews proffered by parents on presumed consent), the study clearly did not provide enough incentive to children in this age group to participate without additional input from parents. this raises questions about autonomy, motive, inducement, and representativeness in research with children, and the balances between them, which researchers need to address. of the reasons researchers attribute to participants’ engagement in qualitative research (clark 2010) perhaps economic interest was the most resonant with children considering taking part in this particular study. given that, the financial inducement (the chance to win a prize draw) may have been too remote. participation in research is also likely to be linked to a person’s sense of their contribution being valuable and valued. children’s lesser sense of authority in the research process is suggested in the following sections. multiple (but uneven) perspectives research from multiple perspectives can capture in detail the processes by which macro-level social constructions of family life (and of gender and generation within it) are played out, re-enforced and negotiated in families. ribbens mccarthy, holland, and gillies (2003) note that multiple perspectives arise: between different standpoints – for example, mothers, fathers, teenagers; between different members within a family (mother x, father x, daughter x, and son x); between different families (possibly characterized by standpoints of say class or ethnicity); and within individual accounts. a multiple perspectives approach in this study allowed the analysis of data within and across families. from a standpoint perspective it allowed us to compare and contrast the views and experiences of mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, and also those of lone-parent households versus couple households4. but the fact that respondents were in family groups had additional advantages. we could use all of the datasets for one family together to see a picture of how the household operated as a unit, while at the same time maintaining the integrity and visibility of individual experiences. family-level analysis was invaluable for understanding the processes at play in doing family, gender, and generation, and the complex temporal interconnections between 3 in a previous study with children in the same age category recruited solely through schools, using a variety of recruitment pathways, the highest rates occurred where information composed by the researchers was sent out by the school on its own notepaper to parents at their home addresses (lewis et al., 2008). 4 the sample was too small to allow any meaningful analysis of class or ethnicity. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 678 family members and the “outside world”. it allowed us to focus on the subjective and relational construction of family positions: what are the processes that lead to the instantiation of mothering, fathering, and being a (teenage) son or daughter; and how do individuals negotiate their own and other family members’ position in the gendered and generational family order? finally, researching from multiple perspectives also allowed us to explicate both agency and constraint for all family members, regardless of their positioning in the familial or social hierarchy. within a context of generational power relations operating beyond and within the research encounter, one of the challenges in research from multiple perspectives is in positioning the child’s perspective alongside all other participants as an equal player in the research. in what follows we reflect on how this played out in this study on family life. firstly, to set the scene, we point out that the presentation, focus, location, and methods of the research may have enhanced the “family as joint project” perspective and led participants to focus on the familial. in the individual interviews family members sometimes: expressed worries about being overheard; remained acutely aware that the researcher is a possible source of information on other family members’ accounts; and that the researcher will be considering what each interviewee says alongside the accounts of other family members. whilst a consideration of the influence of methods on the data produced is relevant to all research, here we reflect on whether these considerations may articulate differently with parents and with children. certainly we heard less about resistance to parental authority in children’s accounts than in a previous project involving interviews with children of the same age band only (and not their parents) in a school setting (lewis et al., 2008). in the current study, on more than one occasion an adult interviewee asked the interviewer what a child or a partner had said in response to a question (this information was not disclosed), while children made no such enquiries, perhaps indicating their lesser sense of authority within the interview process. we have argued above that researching family processes entangles the researcher in family dynamics and hierarchies, and that these experiences should not be bracketed off as ethical issues, because they are also important data. with reference to this, adults’ requests for information on their children or partners illustrate how the interview process becomes an arena for the enactment of generational hierarchies and notions of coupledom (the double hermeneutic). lastly, while the research did not assume a “hierarchy of credibility” (becker, 1967, p. 241) based on generation, we cannot be sure whether children perceived this, nor predict how this may have affected their accounts. conversely, parents may have assumed that the researcher would “side” with them. the following example from an hhp suggests that this may have been the case, although the interviewer was also able to use the joint interview to elicit the views of the child which may otherwise have been drowned out: i: [reading from sheet] monitoring school progress and homework son: me with mum’s input. mum: do you think? i don't. i: [to son] so do you think – you think that’s not right? [to mum] so lewis thinks him with a bit of you. mum: [to son] how often do you say “i'm going to do my homework”? never. how often do i say “get that homework done!”? quite often. son: so it's me and you shared. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 679 mum: no! it's me! son: that's not fair! mum: yes it is fair! son: no it's not. because i'm the one actually doing it. mum: if sophie had been here the day before yesterday. […] because you only do it when i'm breathing hard down your neck. son: alright, alright. dad: how about [mum] with lewis’ input? son: yes. mum: yeah go on then. dad: i think that's looking a bit favourably on the situation, but... mum: but it’s on there [pointing to the tape recorder]. the conversation’s on there. researching family life from multiple perspectives gives invaluable insight into social processes of doing family, generation, and gender, and how these processes are perceived. but extra effort is required to both capture and hear the voices of children. this reflects their position in the familial and social hierarchy and also the fact that commonly parents (mothers) are seen as having ultimate responsibility and accountability for family life and are therefore granted a high degree of authority in representing it. the utility of particular research tools in hearing children’s voices as noted at the start of this paper, the study was based on an understanding of temporality as multifaceted (including duration, pace, juncture), and as possessing political, moral, symbolic, and experiential dimensions. the use of multiple qualitative methods served to “widen the net and tighten the mesh” to better capture this range and complexity. on the one hand the different research tools were designed to capture different aspects of temporality. but there was also a degree of overlap between the data produced in each of them, which increased the chance of capturing data on any one issue. multiple methods allowed for the integration of data from different sources on single topics, or on different dimensions of the phenomenon. this produced accounts which reflected multi-vocality and multi-facetedness and commonalities (see moran-ellis et al., 2006 on integrating data generated via multiple methods). in this section we reflect on the utility of the different research tools in meeting the challenge of hearing children’s voices and learning about children’s lives. diaries as research tools hold a number of advantages. they afford the research participant greater control of the “research agenda”, facilitate reflexivity (elliot, 1997), and can tap into respondents over time and, therefore, in a number of contexts and moods (alaszewski, 2006). rather than the more retrospective interview accounts, diaries record “an ever-changing present” (plummer, 1990, p. 18). in this study the diaries allowed for very rich data. some were particularly good at capturing writers’ awareness of other people’s needs and preferences, for example “active sensibility” (mason, 1996), as well as the moral economy of time-use. they also revealed frustrations and resentments that had not emerged international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 680 in interviews. but only seven participants submitted diaries, and these vary considerably in the amount of detail and reflexivity involved. this is likely to reflect different communication preferences and competencies, but also varying degrees of confidence in expressing one’s experiences in this way to an outsider, and feeling that these have value. although generation was not the only issue here, the two children’s diaries in particular tended to be more like a list of events, suggesting that they were not a good way of tapping into children’s subjective experience of time. children’s reluctance to open themselves up further to the researcher’s gaze (by limiting the detail in diaries, or declining to complete them at all) may also reflect the structural conditions of their lives that position them as surveilled and accountable – a position which was often at an acute stage of renegotiation for the 14 and 15 year olds in this study, as we have argued above. the pito complemented diaries in picking up what mason (1996) calls the “sentient activity” involved in relational care, and in taking responsibility for the management of (own and other people’s) time; for instance, “keeping an eye on the kitchen clock as i get ready to go to work” and “looking at the stuff stuck to the fridge to see whether [x] needs a packed lunch today”. the pitos gave a strong indication of the link between the roles of primary carer and time manager. these dual responsibilities were highly generationed (as well as gendered) since analysis across the datasets indicated that, while children in the study were fairly self-sufficient in managing their own time, they did not engage in managing other people’s time. we suggest that this reflected the generationed hierarchy within families. the fact that more pitos were completed by primary carer/time managers than others (nine of the 14) possibly signifies their greater affinity with and interest in the roles that the pito revealed. in other words, because of their structured family position, the pito appeared to lack salience for child participants in the research, and that silence is itself revealing. the hhp interview technique worked well on a number of levels. this was always done first. harden et al. (2012) chose to do sole interviews before joint family interviews in the hope that research relationships established in one-to-one interviews would facilitate group discussion, and make children in particular feel more empowered to speak in the group setting. we found that doing the hhp first allowed participants to orientate themselves to the researcher and to the research as a group, rather than in isolation, which seemed to put children at ease quickly. it may also have been reassuring for parents to get to know the researcher in this way before she interviewed their child. the very hands-on, informal nature of the process (with its chart, coloured stickers, and scissors) usually done around a kitchen table, aided in establishing a relaxed atmosphere and led to what appeared to be open discussion and negotiation (which were treated as data). the researcher always invited the child to be the one in charge of the stickers, which gave them a greater degree of control in shaping or closing discussions. the fact that participants created an artefact which they could then reflect on gave all participants greater ownership of the data than straightforward interviews; adult and child respondents quite often took the opportunity presented to them to shape the research tool (by putting two stickers in a row or for creating new columns or rows) or to interrogate the selection of tasks included in the hhp. discussion and conclusions as we hope to have shown in this paper, whatever the substantive focus, sociological research with children and on generationing must engage with the challenges that arise out of attempts to operationalise particular epistemologies. there is a constant danger that “research with children” is treated primarily as a question of methods. here we have tried to draw attention to the sometimes contradictory and paradoxical relationship between methods international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 681 (based on fixed categories) and epistemological theories (such as social constructionism). the contradictions that arise between using fixed categories to investigate dynamic practices and aspects of the social world have to be managed, since categories are part and parcel of the production of high quality research: sampling frames, ethical practice requirements, instrument design, and so on. this demands more than a rationale for selecting an age group, or a particular method in advance of entering the field. as the social interaction on the appropriate bedtime for a 14 year old illustrates, the ways in which a construct intersects with a social constructionist approach to intergenerational relations in the process of doing the research can itself reveal aspects of the phenomenon that might otherwise pass unnoticed. in this respect such interactions can be positioned as data, and analysed to examine the interplay of structure and agency, and the materiality and conditions of intergenerational relations. similarly, the efforts needed to recruit children to the study, to provide them with salient methods with which to tell us about their experiences, and to hear their voice amid the throng of parents’ voices, tell us much about generational positioning. whilst these issues are not confined to childhood research, they are perhaps intensified here, due to the societal positioning of children and of intergenerational relations (structural, material, and discursive). working dialectically with these contradictions can also provide points of intersection between childhood studies and sociology more generally, where sociological theory can be informed and enriched by the contradictions of empirical research with children. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 666–685 682 references adam, b. 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(2001). dependent, independent and interdependent relations: children as members of the family household in west berlin. in l. alanen & b. mayall (eds.), conceptualizing child-adult relations (pp. 37–53). london: routledge. dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.2005.00511.x dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038597031002003 methodological insights from researching temporality in families with teenage children sophie sarre and jo moran-ellis abstract: the often unremarked processes through which gender and generation play out in families with teenage children in, through, and over time, was the topic of a mixed qualitative methods study, drawing on the accounts of multiple family members ... keywords: family life, sociology of childhood, social construction, multiple perspectives, mixed methods, temporality, teenagers acknowledgements: the study used to illustrate the arguments in this paper was funded by a studentship from the economic and social research council (grant number es/i900888/1). we would like to thank geoff cooper for his valuable supervisory contribu... the study data collection the household portrait – rendering timescapes, temporalities and their negotiation visible. doucet designed the “household portrait” (hhp) to explore gendered divisions of labour (doucet, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2006). it is essentially a joint, task-based ... interviews – eliciting timescapes, temporalities, and articulations. individual interviews were based around: the temporal impacts of paid work and school work in the household; the temporal effects of having or being a child and how these may have ch... personalized inventory of time-related objects – keeping track of time and time management. a third research tool was designed to capture something of the way that an awareness of time permeates our lives; and also to supplement the hhp in getting at ... reflective time diaries – temporality as lived experience. finally participants were invited to create a reflective time diary over a period of up to one week. according to preference, people could choose to do this by means of an audio diary, a writt... analysis recruitment the sample statement on ethical issues researching social construction in family life categories the double hermeneutic hearing the child in researching family life difficulties and limitations in recruitment multiple (but uneven) perspectives the utility of particular research tools in hearing children’s voices discussion and conclusions references addressing the phenomenon of gangs 204 addressing the phenomenon of gangs the youth and street gangs project: history, basic principles, and major developments of a prevention project based on community social development sylvie hamel, marie-marthe cousineau, and sophie léveillée, in collaboration with martine vézina and julie savignac abstract: the authors discuss the apparent proliferation of street gangs, noting that society’s first reflex is to try to eradicate the phenomenon through repression, which is sometimes necessary when gang activities become truly dangerous, but is insufficient to truly eliminate the problem. they trace the evolution of the youth and street gang project in three districts of greater montréal and analyze the new and instructive information it provides. this innovative project aims to help the communities develop a prevention model, but also makes research an integral part of the process, so the process can be described and analyzed as its various stages unfold. based on a number of years of data, the authors argue that while the project is designed essentially to prevent the phenomenon of gangs, its ultimate challenge is to find ways to encourage youth to integrate and join their communities, in the same way that they integrate and join gangs. although it is not new, the phenomenon of street gangs has been the object of unprecedented attention in québec and canada, particularly over the past ten years. during this period, the presence of gangs has become increasingly obvious; in some neighbourhoods, it has reached the point where social and community activities have become almost paralyzed. how, then, does one describe this phenomenon? has it greatly increased? is it a matter of greater visibility? have our youth changed? perhaps the answer is a bit of all three. statistics, with all their faults and qualities, seem to indicate that we are witnessing an increase in the phenomenon, particularly when it comes to gang-related violence. it is also obvious that the media and agents of social control (both formal and informal), as well as the researchers, are paying much greater attention to the issue. finally, it would appear that youth have also changed. it is no longer rare to hear experienced educators say that they cannot relate to their students, or to have parents admit that they cannot cope with their children any more. in the face of this apparent proliferation in the number of gangs and the subsequent increased concern on the part of citizens when they feel threatened, the first reflex was to try to eradicate the phenomenon. attempts were made to nip in the bud the apparently greater and more widespread activity of gangs. an essentially repressive approach was adopted whereby authorities attempted to dismantle gangs by attacking the hard-core elements involved. while taking such action is sometimes necessary, particularly when 205 gang activities become truly dangerous, it is certainly not sufficient to eliminate the problem. one must understand that the more or less delinquent activity of gangs represents only one facet of their organization. indeed, behind every gang are gang members, and behind every gang member is a young person, who is, in turn, part of today’s so-called changing and difficult to understand youth. it is in the context of these facts and considerations while also enriched by extensive writings (hébert, hamel, & savoie, 1997) and by a survey of present and past youth gang members, as well as street youth interveners working with these youth (hamel, fredette, blais, & bertot, 1998) that the youth and street gangs project was conceived. in the following pages, we trace the project’s evolution and analyze the new and instructive information it provides. although the project has been described as innovative, it was nonetheless inspired by recommendations made by numerous experts in the field. a large number of articles and studies concerning gangs have been produced since the 1980s, but the fallout from the impact of the phenomenon, fanned by media coverage, would appear to have delayed the comprehensive implementation of these recommendations. indeed, gangs have been the topic of a number of studies since the 1980s, most of which attest to the alarming growth of the phenomenon in north america. as a result, public opinion has been put on alert. one should be cautious when interpreting these studies, since the data they are based on is inevitably affected not only by the incredible diversity of types of gangs and the ways in which they manifest themselves, but also by the methodology used to collect such data. it is difficult to produce a single all-encompassing definition of gangs since they are so dissimilar and constantly change their make-up, modus operandi, and orientation. as a result, studies that analyze the extent of the phenomenon, because they are generally based on different definitions, do not reflect the true picture. in any case, the undeniable discomfort and worry experienced by the general public – and here we include experts, social workers, parents, and former gang members themselves – necessitates that new action be taken in addition to complementary repressive intervention. therefore, the youth and street gangs project has been conceived at an opportune moment. the youth and street gangs project the proponents of the youth and street gangs project propose to combat the phenomenon of gangs through a prevention program based on community social development1 . to this end, community groups were approached in each of the three communities in the greater montréal region where pilot projects were underway. for the benefit of their communities, including their youth, it was suggested that they devote their combined strength and expertise to developing a renewed understanding of the phenomenon of gangs as well as a joint action plan to combat the phenomenon. in other words, the youth and street gangs project is an opportunity to develop and test a social theory based on the principles of empowerment, organization, and cooperation. these principles are considered indispensable ingredients in preventing the formation of gangs and their associated problems, in particular violence and youth crime. the youth and street gangs project is not only innovative in terms of the prevention model it aims to help the communities develop, but also in making research an 206 integral part of the process, so as to describe and analyze the process as its various stages unfold. the youth and street gangs project team faces the challenge of managing and structuring the research process, which will take the form of a participatory evaluation, while being careful not to influence and direct the process itself. this means that the researchers have to be constantly aware of their actions and of the influence that they can have over the other stakeholders, who generally have never been involved in research in this manner, i.e., as an equal partner concerned with the betterment of society, where gangs would have neither the right nor, better yet, the reason to rule. more often than not, researchers working in this area apply and test preconceived notions that correspond to their own vision. obviously, while this vision has been developed based on rich and indepth knowledge, it is nonetheless generic and often out of context. as a result, making practical use of the research becomes difficult, or even impossible, for those working in the field. given the above, the stakes for the research project are high; the biggest and most important challenge is, without a doubt, to identify the role and place occupied by research in the processes that are, in fact, the principal goal of the study. this explains why we decided to go into more detail in this article than is normally done when presenting a project. a status report, or even a description of the objectives and general orientation of the youth and street gangs project, did not seem a sufficient foundation on which to base an analysis. consequently, we decided to first describe the history and sociological framework that define the research (as well as its theoretical foundation) as influenced by the research team’s reference points and training. it was at this juncture that the first signs of the influence of the research itself became apparent, since the results generated during the first analyses not only reflected the approach chosen by the researchers at the outset, but also influenced the recommendations for action and prevention. in addition, since the prevailing context opened the door to the possibility of new financing, the research team had the opportunity to develop the new recommendations presented to the montreal urban community police department (spcum) into a five-year action plan on street gangs. we will discuss this plan in more detail later on. however, this meant that the team would be required to manage the project launch and promotion. to do so, the team would need to develop a clear message that communicated its vision of the problem, possible solutions, and its role in the process per se. as a result, the research team occupied a unique and influential position within the project – one that we propose to identify and document in this article. the origins of the youth and street gangs project it is important to remember that a number of years have passed since our first research project was undertaken, resulting in the launch of the youth and street gangs project, as currently funded by the departments of justice canada and public safety canada (formerly the solicitor general of canada). in response to a call for tenders initiated in 1995 by the montréal urban community police department (spcum)2, the “centres de jeunesse de montréal” (montréal youth centres) (cjm), the “institut universitaire dans le domaine de la violence chez les jeunes” (an unofficial translation would be university institute on violence among youth), and the “institut de recherche pour le développement social des jeunes” (an unofficial translation would be research 207 institute for the social development of youth) (irds) were given the mandate to carry out an initial study that involved creating an inventory of the existing literature about street gangs. this inventory would be used to help draw up a five-year strategic plan designed to prevent the development of the next generation of criminals in greater montréal. specifically, the spcum wanted to know how gangs had been defined in the literature to date. it wanted information on the forms, types, and characteristics of the phenomenon, the way such groups are set up and structured, the desirable and undesirable aspects of gangs from the perspective of youth, the changes in the criminal world linked to the amplification of the phenomenon, and finally, the solutions known to be effective and promising in combatting the phenomenon. these aspects of the phenomenon of gangs were documented based mainly on the u.s. literature, supplemented by a few articles from canada and québec (hébert, hamel, & savoie, 1997). for one of the first times, the phenomenon of gangs was analyzed from a psycho-socio-criminological perspective. this was done in response to a request from the spcum, which believed that the adoption of a more broad-scale approach was a necessary part of the overall objective of formulating a process that differed markedly from those undertaken to date in québec. the objective was to develop viable and effective prevention projects. this type of analysis would probably not have been undertaken if one of the researchers had not been trained as a social worker, and the other as a psychologist. the same perspective was adopted in conducting a second study, this time in the field. in may 1997, shortly after the first report was tabled, the spcum granted a new research mandate to its partners (cjm and irds), who in turn invited a researcher from the international centre on comparative criminology (cicc) to join them. thus, a new research team was formed based on an alliance between psychology, sociology, and criminology. as part of this second research project, the spcum wanted to conduct interviews with former gang members among youth in the montréal region. its goal was to verify to what extent the youths’ experience within gangs (the phenomenological aspect of their experience) and the measures they recommended to counter the phenomenon (the cognitive aspect) corresponded to the information already gleaned from the literature, as well as the first steps taken to counter the phenomenon. the overall goal was to tease out the aspects that would best apply in the greater montréal context, and this time the research was to result in a concrete proposal for a five-year strategic plan based on the body of knowledge accumulated since 1995. thus, meetings were set up with 31 youth (21 boys and 10 girls, including 23 ex-gang members and 8 active gang members). the objective was to learn about their experience within gangs, the reasons for and results of joining a gang, and their opinions on possible solutions and measures to combat or reduce the phenomenon of gangs. the youth described how and why they joined and, in some cases, left the gang. they also described ways to prevent youth from being tempted by the adventuresome allure of being a gang member, and how to help those who wanted out. 208 following this, it was deemed appropriate to supplement the knowledge gained from the literature and the youths’ experience with that of 15 key stakeholders from within the police, educational, judicial, social services, and community services sectors. these individuals agreed to participate in a semi-directive interview where they were invited to share their knowledge and perceptions of the experience of youth in gangs, as well as their recommendations on how best to address the issue. the report, tabled in may 1998 (hamel, fredette, blais, & bertot, 1998, in collaboration with cousineau), highlighted a surprising consistency among these three sources of knowledge (the literature, the youth, and the key stakeholders). all this accumulated knowledge formed the basis of the five-year strategic plan – more commonly known today as the youth and street gangs project – which is the subject of this article. theoretical principles our initial research project, one of the few such large-scale attempts to deal with the phenomenon of gangs in montréal, was aimed at analyzing the complex question of gangs by trying to shed light not only on the violence and criminality of these groups, but also on the experience and satisfaction derived by the youth, as well as the quality of relationships they had with their environment. this approach inevitably reflected the influence of the theoretical models that inspired us. first of all, one of our reference points was maslow’s (1973, p. 207) theory of human motivation; this theory states that to ensure their survival, balance, and integrity, humans are motivated to struggle continually to meet their basic needs. maslow identifies five categories of fundamental needs. psychological needs (basic needs such as eating, protecting oneself from cold and heat) come first. other types of needs follow, including those related to personal safety and security, the need to associate and belong (social needs), self-love (the need for self-esteem), and the need for self-actualization and realizing one’s potential (self-achievement). next we adopted bronfenbrenner’s (1979, p. 330) model of social ecology as a basis for action. the social ecology model posits that we should consider not only the individual (with his or her characteristics, personality, and needs), but also the community and, above all, the interaction between the two, which shapes and transforms what is known as social integration or affiliation. this model proposes that the individual and his or her environment (the ecosystem) are in constant interaction and that each influences the direction and development of the other. furthermore, the ecosystem is in turn driven by the influence of other micro-systems (family, school, work, network of friends), by the quality of the relationships among them, and, in a larger sense, by the influence of beliefs, laws, and policies. these two models contrast with other theories generally associated with the field of delinquency and most often used by researchers when addressing the issue of gangs. a key theory among the latter is that of social control. this theory holds that when youth 209 have strong links with conventional institutions, thereby making illegal activities unacceptable, they are less inclined to join gangs and, as a result, are less likely to be subject to the influence of their peers (elliot, 1979, 1985, 1989, as cited in covey, menard, & franzese, 1992). in the same order of logic, another dominant theory when it comes to explaining the phenomenon of gangs is that of social disorganization (mckinney, 1988). this theory states that the inability of a society to contain and control the deviant behaviour of its members is an indicator of a disorganized society. such a society provides fertile ground for the development of deviant subcultures, i.e., milieus and micro-systems where delinquency and the resultant illicit activities become a tradition and a way of life (cohen, 1955; cloward & ohlin, 1960). thus, certain neighbourhoods by their very nature generate gangs, and individuals living there are forced to join regardless of their needs and wishes. the gangs become the law in these milieus (moore & garcia, 1978, p. 239; vigil, 1988, p. 202). the theory of differential opportunities is also crucial when studying gangs. this theory maintains that in a context where economic and social opportunities are few or non-existent, the most disadvantaged youth believe that they have more to gain from joining gangs than the community at large. these advantages are derived from their status as gang members, as well as from the power, excitement, and pleasure that stem from belonging to a group. although this is close to the “needs theory”, the benefits and opportunities sought by youth do not seem to be seen as essential needs, which would legitimize somewhat the desire to fill them. finally, thornberry (1998), in his work based on the social facilitation model, argues that gangs act as a gateway to criminal activity. to some extent, such groups present opportunities for deviance and delinquency, which is particularly attractive to a certain category of youth who, because of their specific personality and characteristics, are attracted to marginality and the world of gangs. although the above comments are no more than a broad-brush overview of the main models generally used to explain the phenomenon of gangs, they nevertheless point to several clear trends. on the one hand, there is no acceptance of the fact that youth may have legitimate reasons, such as stability and adaptation, for joining gangs; this despite the fact, acknowledged notably by leblanc (1991) that joining a group is a normal and healthy reflex during adolescence. if youth join gangs, it is because they are grappling with a deviant personality or other personal difficulties that cause them to be particularly attracted to power and easy solutions. accordingly, such individuals do not have the qualities required to change (or even have a grasp on) their environment, particularly since this environment appears to be relatively immutable, disorganized, incapable of containing violence and crime, and conducive to the emergence of deviant subcultures. it would appear from this overview that the individual and his or her environment do not influence each other or, at the very least, that this relationship is not of great interest to those researchers who adopt the models we have just described. the hypotheses underlying these theories of delinquency run counter to the premises of the models on which we chose to base our research into the phenomenon of 210 gangs. our view is more in tune with constructivist paradigms of the type that inspired sociological studies by touraine (1992) and dubet (1994), which hold that members of the human community have the ability to take their lives in hand and to define their own goals in life. these paradigms also assume that people are empowered and can impact the external conditions that affect and influence their course in life, in order to achieve their individual and collective dreams (dallaire, 1998). knowledge developed on the phenomenon of gangs within the framework of our research despite the challenge presented by adopting such an approach, which was inspired by a paradigm rarely applied to the phenomenon of gangs, the outcomes of the initial research carried out through the youth and street gangs project are strikingly clear. they basically show that beyond the violence and crime, the phenomenon of gangs is associated with another, equally important problem: the fact that youth join gangs to find a way to meet their most basic needs (a sense of belonging, acknowledgement, and validation) – needs that they are unable to meet elsewhere in their environment (family, school, community). the personal and social characteristics of youth who join gangs at the outset, these results help to flesh out the portrait of youth who join gangs, indicating that in addition to their propensity for violence, these youth also stand out because of their isolation, or even exclusion. apart from their network of friends and acquaintances, they have very few ties and share very few of the values of the institutions around them. their family ties have been weakened over time by repeated ruptures, and school neither validates nor interests them. their violence and the risks they seem ready to take in facing death and constantly pushing their limits appear to be the only way they have of validating their existence, i.e., of feeling alive. prior to joining a gang, none or very few of their life experiences had taught them their true value or given them the opportunity to achieve their dreams. the gang experience thus, when one looks at the roots of the violence and criminal acts committed by young gang members, and analyzes the context in which such acts occur, they can be seen in another light. from this perspective, it would appear that they are generally part of a dynamic whereby youth are often forced into this behaviour because it prevents or postpones the breakup of the group, and therefore the loss of ties. these youth are literally intoxicated by the intensity of the relations they develop within these groups, and they are willing to do anything to protect them. preventing the death of the group is equivalent to protecting their own existence. it should also be pointed out that violence and crime are not the only activities of young gang members. even today, and despite the changes that have occurred in terms of issues and vocations, these groups continue to serve as a place for youth to socialize and 211 to go about building their identity and personality. moreover, it is acknowledged that the experience of youth in these groups is influenced by the latter’s orientation. indeed, only a small percentage of groups in the world of gangs regularly engage in violence and crime, and these groups have a strong and stable structure designed to allow them to control illegal markets. as for the rest, even in the most criminal groups, the structure and level of organization necessary for their operation means that members occupy different social ranks (leader, peripheral members, and associate members) and play different roles (occasional or specific delinquency, recruitment, enforcement of rules, planning or carrying out of crimes). this being the case, the experience in gangs may not necessarily be linked directly to aggression, but rather to the avoidance of aggression (some youth occupying intermediary positions are able to avoid certain situations or tests) or to the avoidance of its consequences (here one thinks of the young women who prostitute themselves to meet the economic needs of the group, or of the young men who are forced to get involved in turf wars). affiliation with respect to affiliation, the phenomenon of gangs appears first and foremost to be a matter of belonging and identification for youth. one can even state that the main reason youth join a gang is to obtain protection that is not forthcoming from their entourage. and if their judgment concerning their environment is in fact correct, it can only serve to reinforce the negative perception they already have of the world in which they live. seen from this perspective, gangs feed on the attraction felt by youth by projecting an image of strength, care, and attention. moreover, the majority of the youth we met told us that they saw gangs as an opportunity to build a new family. many described their experience in terms of a true love story, recalling the pleasure they felt in being supported, united, understood, acknowledged, and respected…for the first time! this forced us to rethink our preconceived notion that the only reason youth joined gangs was because they felt threatened and intimidated; on the contrary, it would appear that in most cases they are won over gradually in a seductive and friendly manner. disaffiliation similarly, youth recounted their departure from gangs with nostalgia, saying that they still felt a terrible emptiness as a result of the rupture. it is true that leaving a gang can certainly be brutal, since it is generally triggered by a climactic event accompanied by violence and danger through an arrest or an institutional intervention (child welfare). but at this stage, the departure is only physical. stunned and dazed, these youth must first get their wits about them before completing their disaffiliation process. some feel empty at this point; they had been so devoted to and dependent on gangs, and had lived such high-intensity experiences (strong emotions, risk-taking, and adventures), that they had completely lost touch with themselves. indeed, although leaving gangs can cause great disarray, it is not so much because of the fear of reprisals, but rather because it forces these youth to reclaim their sense of self. 212 recommendations for action and prevention these results placed the angst of these youth at the very centre of our attention. apparently youth join gangs to create ties and to find a sense of belonging that they do not seem to find (or are not able to develop) elsewhere. at the same time, these results reinforced our belief that it is possible to prevent the phenomenon of gangs only by setting in place the conditions required for youth to join and integrate into their community in the same way they join and integrate into gangs. even before we had met these youth and the key stakeholders involved, the writings of the most respected experts in the field of gangs (spergel, 1995; howell, 2000) had already pointed us in this direction. what we have retained from these experts is the great value they place on taking a community-based approach. it is their view that such an approach can target a number of variables at once (youth, their families, schools, and communities) and include a number of possible strategies, the most important of which would be mobilizing the community, social intervention, creating significant opportunities for youth, organizational development, and repression when necessary. they believe that this set of conditions is necessary if one wishes to prevent the phenomenon of gangs. in their view, once such conditions have been brought together and incorporated over a continuum of intervention, the ability exists to create synergy among the various institutions; this synergy, in turn, is indispensable for the true integration of youth into the community. under these conditions, gangs would appear less attractive. this is why we based our proposal, which had been presented to the spcum in the form of a five-year strategic plan, on the principles of the community development approach (or what we prefer to call the “community social development” approach). we prefer this latter terminology because it better highlights the possibilities for change and advancement that we attribute to the approach. these possibilities stem from the empowerment of communities (local or regional) that get organized and take themselves in hand, thereby increasing their chances of developing significant and appropriate solutions. in other words, community social development paves the ways for actions and interventions that are tailor-made, personalized, and coherent. furthermore, the conditions are perfectly adapted to the complex nature of the phenomenon of gangs and to the objective that must be sought – to encourage the participation of all youth in society. the initiative that we are proposing draws inspiration in particular from a model of positive social development called communities that care (hawkins & catalano, 1992). it was developed within the framework of a program that was designed to prevent delinquency and drug abuse, which often go hand in hand. this model proposes a specific frame of reference intended to assist in a concrete process of community mobilization and social development. moreover, we were undoubtedly guided by the arguments its proponents make with respect to the pertinence – if not the necessity – of creating a positive social environment around youth. regardless of who they are, this would be a way of satisfying their needs and ensuring that they recognize the opportunity that their 213 community is offering them to learn, to build their lives, and to effect change. in such an environment, delinquency would in fact tend to lose its vitality, as would all the other associated problems. following the lead of the model’s designers, we endorse five fundamental objectives that have been proven effective (hawkins & catalano, 1992) in contributing to the development of a positive social environment for youth. they include: 1. to encourage links with adults (by identifying individuals and role models); 2. to offer youth real and concrete opportunities to integrate into the community (by giving them responsibilities and having confidence in them); 3. to train youth to develop the necessary skills so that their integration is a success; 4. to recognize their efforts to integrate (reinforcement); and 5. to develop clear values and role models so that youth are truly tempted to adopt them (coherence of messages). in even more concrete terms, the five-year strategic plan presented in 1998 proposes that pilot projects should be carried out in three communities in the greater montréal region. these communities were chosen on the basis of two criteria: firstly, because we knew that they were concerned in different ways by the phenomenon of gangs, and secondly, because they were known for their experience in working collectively. these two ingredients seemed essential, since the main goal was to create – based on the experience of these three communities – a model for preventing the phenomenon of gangs that is built upon the principles of community social development and raises the twofold challenge of cooperation and partnership. as a result, these communities were chosen based on a certain number of criteria. there was no provision for comparing them to a “control” community, since the objective was not to experiment with a project but to actually build one with each of these pilot communities using their expertise and know-how (which would be identified through a detailed analysis of the processes involved). initiatives to follow up on the project the month following the tabling of the five-year strategic plan, the department of justice and the department of the solicitor general of canada launched a $32 million crime prevention program. this program was part of a process initiated in 1994 aimed at implementing the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention. the national strategy had three main objectives: 1. to encourage collaboration among key government and non-governmental partners in order to reduce crime and victimization; 2. to help communities develop and implement local solutions to problems that contribute to crime and victimization; and 214 3. to increase public awareness and support for effective crime prevention measures. among the measures adopted to implement the national strategy, the federal government set up a number of programs for financing innovative projects. one of these programs, the crime prevention investment fund, was set up to identify and evaluate social development approaches likely to prevent crime. its first mandate was to collect reliable data on effective or promising ways to reduce risk factors related to crime and victimization. given the great similarity between the objectives of the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention and the recommendations that we had just presented to the spcum concerning the prevention of the phenomenon of gangs, the research team felt that it should take action. the crime prevention investment fund clearly offered a unique opportunity to implement the five-year strategic plan. indeed, breaking with the often-criticized tradition of short-term funding, the crime prevention investment fund was open to projects of up to four years in duration. furthermore, since it was designed above all to facilitate the evaluation of social development approaches, it was up to the research team to take the lead role. it would appear that if this opportunity for financing had not presented itself, the researchers would never have taken such an initiative. they might well have waited for the spcum to give the green light to the fiveyear strategic plan, as it had done for the previous two phases. but the spcum had other priorities at that time, particularly linked to the major restructuring it had undertaken with a view to becoming a community police service. on the other hand, the research team could not and would not attempt to go it alone. for one thing, the team wanted to follow the same principles of partnership and collaboration it had been espousing; for another, adhering to these principles was a precondition set by the federal departments concerned when considering any applications for funding. the first ally of the research team turned out to be the centres jeunesse de montréal (montréal youth centres – cjm). in fact, the team was already affiliated with the cjm since they sit on the board of directors of the irds, along with the université de montréal and the université de québec à montréal. the cjm attempted to pave the way for the researchers by putting them in touch with two coordinators working in regions that included two of the communities targeted by the five-year strategic plan. as a result, a contact person from cjm introduced the research team to the villeray-la petite patrie committee to prevent violence, itself a member of the table de concertation jeunesse (tn – an unofficial translation would be youth dialogue coordinating committee). the cjm contact person had been a member of both the “table…” and the “committee...” for several years and had an excellent reputation in the field. the first meeting took place at the beginning of 1999, in other words nine months after the five-year strategic plan had been presented to the spcum. from then on, members of the research team participated regularly at meetings of the villeray-la petite patrie committee to prevent violence, allowing them to become familiar with their new and future partners. the committee was told right from the beginning that the research 215 team wanted to submit a letter of intent to the two federal departments with a view to implementing the five-year strategic plan, and wanted to do so with the support of local groups. the letter was sent in july of the same year, with the support of not only the “table de concertation jeunesse villeray-la petite patrie”, but also that of the “la petite patrie clsc” (“centre local de santé communautaire”) and of pact de rue, a community group from the same community. other supporters included the “centre jeunesse de montréal” (cjm), service de police de montréal (spm), “centre international de criminologie comparée" (cicc), and the “institut de recherche du développement social” (irds). finally, the visa-jeunes committee, part of the “table de concertation jeunesse de montréal-nord”, also supported the initiative. links were established with this second community a month before the letter was sent via a local clsc community organizer who had been approached by one of the researchers. thus, the five-year strategic plan began with the participation of two communities. the third community in longueil on the south shore of montréal joined the project during the second year of funding. it met the same criteria as the first two pilot communities, in other words, it had stakeholders that were concerned with the gang phenomenon in their milieu and was known for working in a collaborative fashion. funding was officially granted in june 2000. prior to this, the research team had written an addendum to the letter of intent sent in september 1999, had been authorized to submit an application in january 1999, and had won the commitment of the cjm, spm, cicc, and irds to contribute human resources (along with other partners from the two communities) and material resources that the funding agency wanted to include in the overall budget requested as part of the local contribution. the message june 2000 marked the beginning of an experience whose funding was ensured for four years, at least with respect to the evaluative research process. this process took the form of a participatory evaluation that ran parallel to the research process, since this is the main mandate of the crime prevention investment fund. although this was good news for the research team, the community groups were not exactly jumping for joy. obviously the strength of the project would depend not only on the associated research, but also, and above all, on the energy devoted by the key stakeholders in terms of developing the best activities and creating the best networks of partners. why, then, was only the research segment funded? this problem, which had already been pointed out by the community groups, led the researchers to set aside a portion of the first draft budget for paying community group representatives to attend committee meetings. but in the view of the funding agency this was not justified; it felt that the pilot communities had been chosen precisely because they already had established networks, which the youth and street gangs project should simply join. the researchers then had to come up with another plan to ensure that the project would function smoothly. this took the form of hiring liaison officers. chosen and appointed by the community groups (in collaboration with the research team, since they 216 were to be paid out of grant monies), the role of the liaison officers would be to lighten the workload of the respective community groups in the overall process. accordingly, the liaison agents took charge of tasks related to organizing meetings, and attempted to facilitate the work of the partners by providing support between meetings. they collected information and met with certain partners that had decided not to work with the committee on a regular basis. their role was also to guide and educate the researchers on certain aspects likely to influence the process, particularly with respect to the culture of collaboration within the community, as well as key historical events. with this in mind, they listened, interpreted, and responded to the concerns of the community groups. they also made presentations to other committees that were concerned with the issue of gangs and with whom it was important to build support – notably the table de concertation jeunesse – to explain the orientation and progress of the partners’ work. on several occasions they even provided research assistance by helping to collect data. in a context where funding for research is experienced by many as a veritable paradox, this shows how researchers must adapt and attempt to find strategies that, without completely fulfilling the desire of community groups to be acknowledged, at least makes the research process more attractive to them. it is understandable that researchers would want to work closely with these groups; in fact, they have no choice. let us not forget that this goes to the very heart of the analysis that the research team was mandated to carry out: to chart the evolution of a project initiated by the groups themselves, and carried out based on their expertise and strengths. with this in mind, the researchers made a point of acting in an open fashion. first of all, they laid their cards on the table as to their understanding of the phenomenon of gangs, as well as their view of the preventive action and approach to be taken in order to address it. their message was the same as that described above. as well, the researchers told the community groups that they were not approaching them with the idea of implementing a preconceived program. rather, the role that the research team wanted to play was to provide the groups with resources and infrastructure, and to support them during a process that would enable them to formulate and implement their own action plan. in other words, the research team wanted to support them in formulating and implementing their own action plan by making available the team’s resources. the contribution made by the research team took several forms: adoption of a number of strategies designed to ensure the smooth functioning of the process already underway; ongoing and instructive evaluation based on observations recorded as the experience unfolded; ideas concerning the choices to be offered; clarification of the information required to enable the communities to move ahead with their project; and finally, the sharing of knowledge with the stakeholders involved concerning program evaluation. this process should force those involved neither to set up new projects nor to allocate new resources. rather, it is a matter of reviewing and exchanging, explaining what has been done in the past, deciding how much of this can be used in an action plan based on a renewed understanding of the phenomenon of gangs, and determining how the 217 actions or services can be organized. in this way, a program can be hammered out within a coherent, integrated framework that is adapted to the reality of the milieu. thus, in accordance with the recommendations of the experts, action plans must not only be applied locally, but must also be drawn up and decided upon by local stakeholders. this is because to a great extent these groups create and are aware of their own situation and their own resources better than anyone else. in other words, the researchers encourage these groups to embark on a process rather than to target a specific destination; at the same time, the team members expect to be carried, guided, and influenced in a direction that they would not want to determine on their own. they contribute as much as possible, in the hope that the communities do the same. this way of proceeding can be explained not only by the fact that the researchers do not see themselves as the only experts involved, but also because of the fear of repeating past errors. for example, by setting themselves up as leaders and experts, researchers in the past may well have evaluated and generated knowledge, but they also neglected to leave a lasting contribution or heritage behind when they left. in such situations, once projects had been completed and hypotheses tested, the only thing left behind were feelings of abuse and abandonment that exacerbated the resentment and suspicion with which research was viewed. in contrast, if the research being proposed in this case was successfully carried out in line with its principles and clearly demonstrated that its hypothesis was well founded, then when the project was completed in 2004, the participating community groups would be strengthened. furthermore, they would want to continue their struggle to prevent the phenomenon of gangs and would also be capable of guiding other communities wishing to follow the same path. this context and these reasons were more than sufficient for the researchers to adopt an interactive and participatory approach, despite the fact that it was a new way of operating. it meant that they had almost no concrete examples to guide them, and thus would have to make do with general principles. the challenge would be to integrate these principles into the process without losing sight of their original vocation or their credibility as researchers. right from the beginning, the research team announced that the community groups would be called upon throughout the process. they would be asked to participate actively in the project evaluation, by helping to plan the project, build the necessary tools, and interpret the results. in return, the team members hoped that the groups would buy into the research and help them to formulate and structure their ideas, review certain aspects of their process, systematize certain actions, take stock of their action plan, verify to what extent the established objectives were met, and evaluate the impact of their actions. designed in this way, the research project would help to support and to feed the overall process by encouraging it to develop and unfold, by documenting its phases and outcomes, and by identifying models and benchmarks for other communities that might want to try to prevent the phenomenon of gangs. given the size of this challenge, the research team took the initiative of proposing to the communities that another committee be set up. this committee would not be local 218 in nature. rather, it would bring together representatives of regional or supra-regional institutions able to provide an overview of the situation and willing to provide their support to the local groups. the members of this committee would be required to respect the initial agreement established with the communities, i.e., that the latter would retain control over the action plans throughout the process, both with respect to their orientation and their implementation. moreover, one representative from each local action committee would be designated to sit on the regional or supra-regional committee, thereby ensuring consistency. the regional or supra-regional committee could take a number of actions to fulfill its mandate: implement protocols or policies to encourage the cohesion and coordination of activities at both the local and regional level; contribute a variety of services; help find financing required to implement action plans; and finally, help communities to solve problems that might arise. as well, the members of this committee could question local stakeholders as to the orientation and implementation of their action plan, provide constructive criticism, give their point of view, and even share information about their own projects and experiences. the committee would not ultimately be formed until later on during the first year of the project – a year that would be devoted essentially to strengthening ties, forming networks, and completing the initial planning phases. in particular, this would involve preparing a status report, developing a common vocabulary, clarifying priorities and objectives, making an inventory of the resources available, and possibly even choosing the change indicators. in any case, this is what we were able to announce in terms of the subsequent steps, based on our generic understanding of all the stages to be completed. we did so reluctantly, however, because at that time we wanted at all costs to avoid overly influencing the process and the choices adopted by our partners. we did, however, have to respond to the community groups’ need to have a concrete illustration of the road ahead, so that they could make an informed decision as to their level of commitment. we were already finding it necessary to compromise when it came to all our cherished principles and theories, and to learn to adapt as quickly and efficiently as possible to community realities. conclusion the youth and street gangs project is designed essentially to prevent the phenomenon of gangs. but the project’s ultimate challenge is to find ways to encourage youth to integrate and join their community, in the same way that they integrate and join gangs. this is the project’s leitmotif. our previous research on gang-related literature and our own survey work previously discussed lead us to believe that, in order to deal with the gang phenomenon, the path we chose was the correct one. thus, our project, which is based on various principles including partnerships, empowerment of individuals and the community, represents the ultimate road to potential success. more broadly, this project was built upon a social development and community foundation. 219 as these words were written, the project was entering its fifth year. the details of this adventure are included in a report authored by hamel, cousineau, and vézina (2006) in which an in-depth analysis of the three community pilots is presented3. more specifically, the report describes the experience of the project’s three local action committees whose members joined their efforts to help their communities and youth through research and the development of action plans aimed at dealing with the gang phenomenon. the report concludes that the local action committees were able to develop and implement coherent action plans that included promising projects that were well adapted to local needs and sufficiently resourced. from this foundation and their solid communications network, the committees even appear to have established an ongoing base of support for their activities. with time, their networks have grown considerably, absorbing new human and financial resources in support and embellishment of their action plans. the most evident sign of success of the “project jeunesse et gangs de rue” lies not only in the continued existence of the three local committees but also in their capacity to extend a helping hand to other communities demonstrating an interest in joining the adventure. our observations from the early days of the pilot project continue to be valid. three criteria are required to ensure success in a prevention strategy based on a community social development approach. the first criterion involves taking the necessary time and resources to realistically evaluate the size and complex nature of the tasks to be accomplished. at the time we tabled the youth and street gangs project (project jeunesse et gangs de rue) evaluation plan, we had already identified a number of aspects that still require documentation in order to have a clear and precise grasp of the size and complex nature of these tasks. they include: (a) the chronology of events, since it is a matter of time, steps to be accomplished, preparation, and implementation; (b) the dynamics among the stakeholders, which must be correlated with their perceptions of the project’s evolution, since it is a matter of consensus building (this involves explaining, promoting, and negotiating one’s point of view); and (c) the links existing among the stakeholders at the outset, along with the new links they develop (since it is a matter of combining everyone’s skills in order to increase the collective capacity to act). moreover, it is likely that other aspects will prove to be just as important as the project unfolds. the second criterion has to do with the importance of analyzing the context in which the project is taking place. in the absence of detailed and appropriate information concerning the context, it would be impossible to disseminate or transfer knowledge of any kind whatsoever. the processes, stakeholders, and research components of the project must all be seen in their context. in concrete terms, no one would truly be able to profit from the analysis of the processes without first being aware of the framework, conditions, and limits within which they are to be achieved. 220 finally, the third criterion concerns acknowledging the specific nature of participatory evaluation research, and the fact that the research itself is a part of the process that it is describing and that it claims to evaluate. this position imposes an additional task – that of being a stakeholder and a partner in the project – which must not be neglected if the team wishes to give itself the best chance of meeting its objectives. consequently, since the researchers are obliged to help prepare the very project that they will be observing, describing, and evaluating, they must be doubly rigorous when it comes to their scientific method. with this in mind, we chose to be proactive in assuming this unique position. rather than trying to reject or avoid it, we decided to integrate it into the analysis as one of the variables that could influence the processes being studied. roles within the research team were clearly and precisely defined. for example, it was agreed to exclude certain members from the project implementation processes so that they would be free to carry out their analysis. if it is too early to reach conclusions on the full impact that the project had on montréal youth street gangs, we can nevertheless conclude that we were successful in establishing a solid, structured, and efficient network for dealing with the gang phenomenon through the adoption of a common vision and new ways to resolve the problem. 221 references bronfenbrenner, u. 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[issues related to the evaluation of social development and community development projects: differing viewpoints. presentation to the quebec public health association colloquium on social development and communities, montréal: actors or spectators?] covey, h. c., menard, s. w., & franzese, r. j. (1992). juvenile gangs. springfield, il: charles c. thomas. dallaire, n. (1998). enjeux et voies d’avenir de la promotion/prévention dans la configuration socio-économique actuelle. université de montréal, sciences humaines appliquées, école de service social. thèse de doctorat. [issues and opportunities for promotion/prevention in the current socio-economic context. unpublished doctoral dissertation in applied humanities, university of montréal, school of social work.] de bousquet, m.-h. (1965). le service social [the social service]. (que sais-je?, no. 1173). paris: presses universitaires de france. dubet, f. 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(1978). homeboys: gangs, drugs, and prison in the barrios of los angeles. philadelphia: temple university press. spergel, i. a. (1995). the youth gang problem: a community approach. new york: oxford university press. 223 thornberry, t. p. (1998). membership in youth gangs and involvement in serious and violent offending. in r. loeber & d. p. farrington (eds.), serious and violent juvenile offenders (pp. 147-166). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. touraine, a. (1992). critique de la modernité [a critique of modernism]. paris: a. fayard. vigil, j. d. (1988). barrio gangs: street life and identity in southern california. austin, tx: university of texas press. endnotes 1 conseil de la santé et du bien-être du québec (québec council on health and welfare) (2001) stated that: “a social development approach means that solutions must necessarily involve the community in a given territory”. however, we prefer the term community social development. we believe that this term more clearly and unequivocally refers to the essence of what is common to a given social group. social development covers a number of concepts, including social prevention, mutual assistance, and community development. the definition that we prefer for community social development is quite similar to that given by the office de la langue française for community development: “the set of processes by which the inhabitants of a country combine their efforts with those of the various levels of government in order to improve the economic, social and cultural situation of communities, to associate these communities with the life of the nation and to enable them to contribute fully to the progress of the country”. these processes presuppose two essential ingredients: that the citizens participate actively in efforts undertaken to improve their quality of life, and that these efforts are left…to their own initiative; technical and other services are provided with a view to encouraging and making the initiative, personal efforts and mutual assistance more effective (de bosquet, 1965, p. 64). 2 known today as the city of montreal police department (svpm), following the municipal mergers. 3 a guide for inter-sectorial action aimed at preventing the gang phenomenon (hamel, cousineau, & vézina, avec la participation de léveillé, 2007) was developed in the report. it represents a plain-language version of the report to help those interested in developing similar interventions. it provides tolls that are adaptable to local situations where similar problems and limited resources can be found. addressing the phenomenon of gangs it is important to remember that a number of years have passed since our first research project was undertaken, resulting in the launch of the youth and street gangs project, as currently funded by the departments of justice canada and public safety ... these aspects of the phenomenon of gangs were documented based mainly on the u.s. literature, supplemented by a few articles from canada and québec (hébert, hamel, & savoie, 1997). for one of the first times, the phenomenon of gangs was analyzed from... international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818216 facing the generation chasm: the parenting and teaching of generations y and z rika swanzen abstract: the millennials, or generation y, have been receiving increasing attention as these young people have entered tertiary institutions and the workplace over the past decade. their behavior towards authority is coming under sharper scrutiny as they prepare to move into leadership positions. for example, their assertiveness received both positive and negative attention in the south african media during the “fees must fall” campaign. while parents, caregivers, teachers, and employers wonder about the best approach to millennials, generation z are also entering post-secondary schools. parenting approaches and the role of technology are being reevaluated. within this context the article provides strategies that might be used to understand and guide these generations, thus helping avoid a generation gap that would threaten healthy relationships with our youth. after highlighting the differences between the attributes of these generations of young people and the generations who raised them, concepts such as character qualities, digital nativeness, and global civic engagement will receive attention. the convergence of such concepts will be used to recommend strategies for use in the parenting and teaching of generations y and z. keywords: millennials, generation gap, transformational learning rika swanzen phd is the cluster manager for human and health sciences at monash south africa and is adjunct associate professor with the department of social work at caulfield, monash university, 144 peter road, ruimsig, gauteng, 1725, south africa. email: rika.swanzen@monash.edu mailto:rika.swanzen@monash.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 126 in every generation, the profile of youth changes, and the nature of parenting and community involvement changes as well. teaching in schools and universities seems slow to change, with little understanding of how big the generation gap between the student and teacher is becoming. how young people learn is inseparably linked to their future opportunities and wellbeing. for this reason, it is critical to consider for each generation who they are, how they process the world around them, how they engage with authority, how this impacts the family and the community, and what should be done to maximize the likelihood of them achieving their goals. in this paper, a number of concepts will be brought together in an attempt to find teaching opportunities in the diverse and complex influences on the learning processes of the 21st century learner. i shall focus on three generations: generation x (gen x, 1965–1985); generation y (gen y, 1978–2000), also known as the millennials; and generation z (gen z, 1995–2012). see table 1 for an overview of the generations. i will give a brief description of who gen y and gen z are, then explore the characteristics of the generations and the effects of parenting and culture on them in order to develop recommendations for teaching strategies, keeping in mind that, as parents, teachers, and employers, gen x has a great influence on gen y and gen z. a brief overview of current educational opportunities and the role of civic engagement are also included to broaden the context of the discussion. because the emphasis of the paper is on understanding the young generation seeking to be taught, “teaching” here includes both parents’ and teachers’ attempts to influence these young people: both parenting and teaching influences are discussed with a view towards providing recommendations for teaching strategies. the youngest members of gen y and the members of gen z are currently entering training, higher education, or the workplace. i believe that, as caregivers and teachers, this is the moment to reflect on what we have learnt about gen y so as not be caught off guard by gen z. when i discuss teaching strategies, it will become clear that teachers and caregivers may not have adjusted well to the millennial generation. it cannot be considered ideal that it has taken more than a decade to respond to the unique needs of a generation of young people. generations in the 20th and 21st centuries gen y are sometimes also called “the millennials” because they would have begun reaching the age of eighteen and entering college or the adult workforce at the turn of the millennium. as the children of baby boomers, their number is expected to exceed even that of the large baby boomer generation. the pew research centre estimated, from 2016 u.s. census bureau projections, that the millennials will overtake the aging baby boomers in numbers in 2019 (fry, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 127 according to devaney (2015) there are some likely differences between younger and older millennials. the oldest millennials entered the job market during the multiyear recession beginning in 2008, while the youngest are still obtaining their education. millennials have responded to the recession in different ways, such as engaging in social protests, moving back in with their parents, delaying marriage, delaying buying first homes, and starting their own businesses. the millennials are expected to become the most educated generation ever, and are also the generation with the most student debt (devaney, 2015). since the early 2000s universities have faced the challenge of accommodating the baby boomers, gen x, and gen y, three distinct generations, as teachers and students (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004). the technologically savvy gen y students have new requirements and expectations of the learning environment (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004). in the past decade, teachers focused on adapting to the new teaching needs while still fulfilling the educational expectations of students with more traditional requirements. the next decade will see another generation entering universities, with the previous cohort of students from the baby boomers and gen x now being the lecturers of gen y and gen z (shatto & erwin, 2016). according to dziuban, moskal, and hartman (2005, p. 87): generation x experienced a significantly different set of markers from the baby boomers and was the first generation to feel the profound impact of technological developments. they encountered events such as watergate, antiwar protests, excessive inflation, massive layoffs, the challenger tragedy, the energy crisis … [and] aids.... after school they became resourceful, since both parents were working, forming the first “latch key generation.” as a result, genxers grew up skeptical and mistrustful of established organizations, institutions, and traditions. gen x stand up for themselves in the workplace and do not put much faith in future job security. interestingly, the unprecedented media exposure to scandals and dishonesty in industry and the government also influenced gen y to challenge traditions, institutions, values, and people in authority (dziuban et al., 2005). jonas-dwyer & pospisil (2004, p. 194) summarize key trends of the 1990s and 2000s that influenced millennials, such as “a focus on children and the family; scheduled structured lives; multiculturalism; terrorism; heroism; patriotism; parent advocacy and globalism”. shatto & erwin (2017) add that the millennials and gen z possess characteristics that are unique to growing up in the digital age. information is shared and streamed in real time, with civil uprisings being organized via social media. on the other hand, non-traditional families and exposure to different cultural perspectives makes gen z more accepting and open-minded of differences, leading to the most diverse generation (shatto & erwin, 2016, 2017). dorsey (tedx talks, 2015) stated that they are so accustomed to diversity, that they don’t take note of diversity unless it is absent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 128 table 1 20th and 21st century generations century generation sub-/micro-generations born between notable occurrences 20th greatest generation g.i. generation 1900–1927 wwii in adulthood silent generation 1925–1945 wwii in childhood civil rights movement great depression baby boomers boom generation hippies 1946–1964 space exploration first modern counterculture woodstock women’s liberation movement economic prosperity generation x baby busters lost generation latchkey generation 1965–1980 vietnam war cold war independence / unsupervised after school / self-care at a young age mtv generation boomerang generation 1975–1985 rise of mass media lessening cold war tensions graduated during a recession family instability xennial gen catalano 1977–1983 analogue childhood and digital adulthood bridged the generation gap generation y echo boomers generation mcguire generation me 1978–1990 rise of the information age/internet war on terror/iraq war rising gas and food prices millennial net gen 1981–2000 school shootings novel modes of communication 21st generation z gen 2020 post-millennials igeneration 1994–2007 dot com bubble digital globalization cyber bullying centennials homeland generation new silent generation 2005–2012 declining birth/fertility rates movement towards nationalism great recession physically inactive online time generation alpha gen tech digital natives 2010–2025 shifts in global population new climate of connectivity note. adapted from isacosta, n.d.; matthews, 2008; shafrir, 2011; howe, 2014; stankorb & oelbaum, 2014; sterbenz, 2015; jenkins, 2017; and zeigenhorn, 2017. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 129 see table 1 for an overview of the generations of the 20th and 21st centuries, including world events that influenced each generation. this division of generations is defined in the context of western culture, but eastern and european definitions of cultural generations, based on other political, cultural and economic influences, have characteristics and behaviors that match their global peers more so than was the case in previous generations (jenkins, 2017; tedx talks, 2015). jenkins (2017) further highlighted that these are generalisations and that variations probably exist within generations. for this reason, the sub-generations (or microgenerations) cited from various sources are also included in table 1. table 2 lists the needs of gen x and gen y in the workplace. it provides a snapshot of the preferences of the two generations that currently find themselves in a multigenerational study or work environment. table 2 also provides insight into the different approaches required by the gen x teacher and the gen y learner. the understanding of gen x forms an important background as the likely educators of gen y and gen z (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004). table 2 work needs of gen x and gen y how to care for gen x how to care for gen y communicate by voicemail or email reward with free time & opportunities support training & growth give them freedom think globally don’t micromanage give timely, specific feedback provide the latest technology make it fun value diversity use instant messaging or text give awards & certificates coach and support them be collaborative value civic duty provide flexibility be motivational value their technical savvy care about their personal goals promote volunteerism note. adapted from colligan, 2013a, 2013b. furthermore hess (tedx talks, 2011) explains some of the differences between gen x and gen y that can lead to misunderstanding between the generations. jenkins (2017) also enumerates the characteristics of the two generations and these are listed with the mentioned differences in table 3. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 130 table 3 differences between gen x and gen y gen x gen y self-reliant described as “slackers”: leaning backward creative – ask ‘why’ described as “engaged”: leaning forward cliquish sceptical and judgemental inclusive and tolerant entrepreneurial anti-corporate “commerce must be lubricated by conscience” parents were authoritative, setting boundaries parents are friends and helpers, cheerleaders note. adapted from hess (tedx talks, 2011) and jenkins, 2017. jenkins (2017) noted that gen z’s approximate age by 2017 was younger than 19 years. while gen y and gen z have much in common, table 4 shows some of the differences between them. table 4 differences between gen y and gen z gen y gen z tech savvy: 2 screens think in 3d tech innate: 5 screens think in 4d collaborative pragmatic & cautious radical transparency: share all judiciously share (geoloco off) slacktivists active volunteers multicultural blended (race & gender) tolerance togetherness immature mature communicate with text communicate with images share stuff make stuff have low confidence have humility now focused future focused optimists realists want to be discovered want to work for success team orientation collective conscience note. lolarga, 2016. two differences that are already noticeable between the generations of the 20th and 21st centuries are the need for the older members of gen y and gen z to involve themselves in society in a meaningful way and their increased acceptance of diversity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 131 in south africa, when it was proposed that university fees be raised, the response of the millennials enrolled at public universities made society aware of their plight in a very visible way. through social media, a diverse group of students, supported by members of the public, quickly brought the protests to national attention and challenged mainstream media (see https://memeburn.com/2015/10/feesmustfall-how-sas-students-are-using-social-to-subverttraditional-media-narratives/). their actions led to the government calling for special meetings to discuss the “higher education crisis”. not only did the young students demand a waiving of university fees, but they also demanded a decolonialization of the higher education (he) curriculum. since a media analysis does not fall in the scope of this article, i am only sharing from personal observations of social media between october and november 2015 and the start of 2016. there was some tension between those representing institutions, who thought that students wanted services for free and were following hidden political agendas, and the students, who felt frustrated with what they perceived to be empty promises and with being excluded from university because of unpaid debt. while for many students the “fees must fall” campaign was a call to activism, there was also a section of the student population who did not participate and who were disturbed by the fact that an academic year was lost through the obstruction of access to classes by their fellow students. characteristics of gen y and gen z jonas-dwyer and pospisil (2004) stated that: according to howe (2003) the millennial generation are confident, happy, and optimistic. they are “risk-averse, … and like to work with the best and latest hightechnology gadgets. the millennials are into teamwork, group projects, servicelearning, and community service.” (p. 196) furthermore, they are described as “sociable, optimistic, talented, well-educated, collaborative, open-minded, influential and achievement-oriented” (raines, 2002 in jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004, p. 195). these authors find the communication preferences of gen y to be electronic, positive, motivational, and goal-focused. their modes of email and instant messaging, which they use for socializing and teamwork, should be catered to (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004). shatto and erwin noted that, “the use of social media sites such as tumblr and twitter are gaining popularity as a way to have students connect with each other as well as post reflections and answer questions” (p. 26). gen z prefers social networks like snapchat, whisper, and secret, while a quarter of 13 to 17 year olds are estimated to have left facebook in 2017 and the most used website is youtube (valdeavilla, 2017). gen y has a global orientation and understands the need for interconnectivity in the worldwide market (nicholas, 2008). dziuban and colleagues (2005) mention that millennials are seen as “stimulus junkies”, gamers, confident, sheltered, and demanding immediate response. virginia matthews (2008) quotes keith dugdale from kpmg (uk): “although they have been https://memeburn.com/2015/10/feesmustfall-how-sas-students-are-using-social-to-subvert-traditional-media-narratives/ https://memeburn.com/2015/10/feesmustfall-how-sas-students-are-using-social-to-subvert-traditional-media-narratives/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 132 dismissed as the ‘silent generation’ on account of the time they will spend online, gen z may prove to be more imaginative than the rest of us”. influence of technology while gen x was the first to be exposed to widespread digital technology, the personal use of that technology has had a much greater impact on millennials. skinner (2015) said: the millennials have never known a world without computers, the internet, mobile phones and other mobile devices. their daily lives are all about being digital. they share their experiences on facebook; read yelp reviews before making purchases; and tweet about the service they receive from retailers, banks, restaurants … the term millennials has been used to describe young people (most of them born after 1980) who hold a strong influence over older generations and are paving the way for their elders to be just as digitally savvy. (p. 31) according to shatto and erwin (2017), millennials were the first generation to have computers in their schools and, together with gen z, are characterized by a propensity to multitask. both generations also seem engaged when given the autonomy and freedom in their use of digital technologies. nicholas (2008) stated that millennials prefer a blend of collaboration, interdependence, and networking; their technology, like instant messaging and chat rooms, brings them together. the baby boomers specifically struggle with quickly changing technology, and this, “coupled with differences in work habits and learning styles, can cause conflict between members of older and younger generations” (shatto & erwin, 2017, p. 25). while gen x students tended to cynicism but were less apt to use critical thinking, gen y students’ use of technology caused disruption during learning experiences in class (robey-graham, 2008). millennials are technologically savvy, and their high expectations pose a challenge for educational institutions, as jonas-dwyer and pospisil (2004) explained: the aging infrastructure and the lecture tradition of colleges and universities may not meet the expectations of students raised on the internet and interactive games.… students who have grown up with technologies have an information-age mindset, therefore demands on academic staff teaching the new millennial generation of students will be many — the requirement to increase their technological skill-base, to design teaching and learning activities to meet the change in students’ learning styles and expectations, the need to be able to communicate with students through a range of media, and to interact and provide support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (pp. 196, 200, 201). as these authors also point out, the level of adjustment by academics will be dependent on their willingness to innovate and to experiment with new teaching and learning approaches. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 133 parenting the other significant influence on the millennial generation is parenting. jason dorsey (tedx talks, 2015) stated that “parenting is the greatest trend that influences behavior across generations.” reflecting on the parenting of one generation also provides insights for the next generation of parents. nicholas (2008) claims that millennials present as entitled and empowered, and that this is partly due to being included in decision-making since childhood. they also get their sense of realism from the influence of the baby boomers’ pragmatism and the gen xers’ skepticism. exposure to real-time war, reality television, and relative wealth has influenced their outlooks (nicholas, 2008). as the children of “helicopter parents” who “hover” over their children in every aspect of their lives, this generation’s experiences in school and society have been guarded, with less free time than any other generation. on the other hand, “howe (2003) says the environment in which they have grown up has placed them under considerable pressure to achieve. he also says they are goal-oriented and pressured, worried about their security and sleep-deprived whilst in high school.” (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004, p. 196). jenkins (2017) describes the baby boomers as driven, questioning authority, optimistic, efficient, team players, and great consumers. these traits undeniably shaped parenting behaviours. according to howe (2014) the push for greater sheltering by the authoritative baby boomer parents was followed by generation x parents who further emphasized protection, with a focus on adopting measures that did not exist or were not needed in earlier times, such as keeping baby bottles and toys free of substances like bisphenol a and using state-of-the-art strollers. this trend seems to favor a more traditional style of parenting, in terms of bedtimes, scheduled mealtimes and playtimes, stay-at-home moms, home-schooling, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting (howe, 2014). boomers tended to emphasize spending quality time with their children. rather than adopting the boomer’s drive to raise “perfect” children, gen x focus more on the quantity of time spent with children, and with employing tangible practices to keep children safe and wellbehaved (howe, 2014). malone (2007) wrote about the childhood of gen z in suburban homes with fenced backyard spaces and limited interactions with other children in the neighbourhood streets and parks, which were viewed as unsafe for unsupervised children. malone acknowledged that the australian context of her study differs from that of a country like germany where most children are allowed to travel by themselves. in a large study of 8.44 million adolescents in seven nationally representative surveys, it was found that the developmental pathway of adolescence had slowed, with childhood lasting longer and young people taking on adult responsibilities later in life (twenge & park, 2017). lolarga (2016) provided an interesting viewpoint on gen z as likely to grow into adulthood much earlier than gen y, as they are being raised by more pragmatic gen x parents who encourage their gen z children to be more independent. these parenting styles have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 134 had an influence on these students’ teaching preferences. valdeavilla (2017) proposed that 42% of gen z children will follow their parents’ example as compared to the 36% of gen y children. changes in the education environment jonas-dwyer and pospisil (2004, p. 195) observed that, “for a number of years now the technological revolution has been a catalyst for change in universities, but research has shown that introducing new educational technologies alone does not improve teaching and learning outcomes.” on this basis they suggest a holistic approach to teaching, and the development of blended learning environments, which will receive attention in a later section. in south africa the council of higher education (che) released a report in 2016 on the previous 20 years of transformation in he: the government’s espoused policy of pursuing “fee-free education for the poor” has led to widespread misunderstanding of what is intended, and added fuel to the many student protests related to demands for government “to open its coffers”.… the student protests are often volatile and some have led to violence and damage to property. indeed, this and the harder edge to charges of racism and calls for institutional transformation have contributed to potential instability in the system twenty years after the change to democracy. the combination of limited financial assistance, poor throughput rates and pressure to increase participation has created arguably the most difficult challenge for the higher education system to manage. (che, 2016, p. 29). a well-managed transformation implemented by the higher education sector resulted in the increase in the number of students entering from diverse backgrounds, many of them firstgeneration immigrants, and from previously disadvantaged demographics. this necessitated changes in organizational structures, the size and shape of systems, curriculum, mode of delivery and pedagogy, and research (che, 2016). changes included the large-scale introduction of bridging and foundation programs; more relevant and outcomes-based curricula; open learning or blended approaches to teaching; short courses to supplement workplace experiential learning; more explicit and transparent expectations and criteria for assessment; external quality assurance, considering fit for purpose; and a reconsideration of the relationship of institutions with external communities (che, 2016, pp. 10, 12, 16, 30). the increase in the complexity of he becomes evident when all of these changes in the last two decades are considered. added to this is the new call for: african scholarship, or what it means to be a university in south africa and what knowledge is appropriate for this context. yet there are also strident calls for a transformation of the curriculum that berate eurocentricism, some of which appear international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 135 to endorse a fairly narrow view of what is appropriate in a local context. (che, 2016, p. 15) some of the discourse reflected on by the report also involves the reimagining of what possibilities exist, with a rapidly growing global middle class, for “developing curricula that are simultaneously relevant to current south african students and which lead to extending the boundaries of current knowledge in a way that transcends the local” (che, 2016, p. 15). not only is the training institution required to establish a relationship with the community, but the millennial student also requires a relevant curriculum, while gen z expects to be actively involved in service to society. millennials prefer teamwork, group projects, service-learning, and community service. thus higher education institutions should be prepared for these students who expect a lot, and should stress good outcomes, use social norming, and create the expectation of success for all (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004, p. 196). to place the expectation for servicelearning and community service into a context of learning, civic engagement will be discussed before moving to an inclusive discussion on and illustration of teaching strategies. civic engagement according to bringle, phillips, and hudson (as cited in swanzen & graham, 2016): service-learning is a course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community goals. reflection is used for the student to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. (p. 285) both the community and students need to be beneficiaries, and the goals include both service and learning. a reciprocal relationship occurs in cycles of contact and collaboration under favorable conditions and takes place through negotiation, agreement, and mediation with communities (smith-tolken & bitzer, as cited in swanzen & graham, 2016, p. 285). swanzen and graham (2016, p. 299) considered various core concepts that describe the relationship between active citizenship and service-learning in higher education resulting in the following core definition of student active citizenship through service-learning: understanding, acknowledging and safeguarding the rights and responsibilities of the student and the community (separately but also in their relationship together) in the student’s active learning in and civic engagement with the community whilst always being mindful of serving the public good. implementing active citizenship in the classroom involves long-term sustainable partnership development work. matthews (2008) predicted that “political life will become less significant as gen z-ers exercise power via their online identities, not the ballot box”. insights international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 136 from mcmillan and stanton (2014) and from mitchell (2008) were considered by swanzen and graham (2016), and some of the guidelines are summarized as follows:  to understand how the community fits into the larger power environment or political landscape;  to ensure that the essential nature of the student is visible and present in the learning process and to focus the curriculum on understanding (knowledge), doing (skills), and being (self), with most of the emphasis on the latter;  to resist the pressure to prioritize goals and outcomes at the expense of sustaining relationships; and  to have a commitment to dialogue (formal and informal exchanges in and out of the classroom), self-awareness (acknowledging how our backgrounds and personal prejudices may influence our perceptions and actions), the capacity for critical reflection (questioning our beliefs, assumptions and values as well as our motivations and intentions in our community engagement), and solidarity (students use their service experience to generate a genuine desire for broader social justice). according to jonas-dwyer and pospisil (2004), a holistic approach that looks at teaching and learning strategies from an integrated perspective may offer the greatest impact. such an approach uses multiple strategies, and also requires taking into account the changing student generation. teaching strategies to accommodate the communication and learning preferences of the 21st century student, various strategies have been suggested. jonas-dwyer and pospisil (2004) postulate that, gen y having been exposed to new technologies, they would likely expect academic staff to be comfortable with a wide range of current technologies and to utilize them in their teaching. however, skills in technology are not the only expectation of this generation, which is why these authors propose holistic development, as discussed later. dziuban et al. (2005, p. 97) observed that “some characterize the millennials by their technological empowerment” and preference for multitasking, while “others … suggest that millennials are not proficient in higher order thinking, and are unwilling to take intellectual risks and view problem-solving as a series of choices on a monitor.” shatto and erwin (2016) stated that, more than any other modern generation, gen z students learn by observation and practice and not through reading and listening. their ability to obtain information from online sources seems impressive, but they lack the ability to critique the validity of the information, and are likely to get frustrated if answers are not clear immediately. thus, keeping the attention of the student and developing higher order thinking skills are critical components of successful teaching. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 137 multigenerational learning approach: in her doctoral study, robey-graham (2008) defined “transformational learning” as a process where students moved from being unaware of the world around themselves to embracing new perspectives which changed their lives. the process included constructing meaning of their world; reflecting on personal assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, feelings; discourse to discuss old and new ideas; and action based on new lenses for viewing their world. (p. 27) three results emerged from robey-graham’s doctoral study (2008, p. iii): (a) the advantage of the synergy that occurs in multigenerational classrooms, which impacted the potential for transformational learning; (b) how multigenerational learning impacted theoretical perspectives and how the faculty can incorporate generational theory as they design learning activities; and, (c) how and why some millennial students’ behaviors related to the use of personal technology not only caused them to avoid transformational learning, but also adversely affected the learning of others in the classroom. key to this author’s proposed theoretical foundation for her study was that transformational learning can serve as a bridge between the different generations found in a classroom. robeygraham (2008) explained that change is brought on by critical reflection by the learner on his or her own assumptions that are then tested through engagement with others, leading to acting upon the new meanings allocated to the experience: transformational learning theories emphasized the critical importance of the learners’ experience and moving learners through phases that helped them reflect on their own assumptions and biases as they grew more aware, engaged in discourse to discover new ways of thinking, and then moved to action. (p. 8) facing the generational chasm involves recognition of the power of transformative interactions between learner and teacher. blended-learning approach: dziuban and colleagues (2005) were of the opinion that “designing a blended-learning course that maximizes the potential of both the face-to-face and online components raises questions: what is the best definition of blended learning? how much of each modality should comprise a course?” (p. 96). they also felt it important to consider how best to integrate the face-to-face and online elements of a course. a reason for the diminished acceptance of blended learning by gen y is their need for a team orientation, while the he milieu persists in emphasizing individual accomplishment (dziuban et al., 2005). the “challenge, then, is to develop teaching and learning strategies for the blended learning environment that will capitalize on the millennial students’ strengths while accommodating their immaturity” (dziuban et al., 2005, p. 97). jarvela and niemivirta (1999) indicated that self-regulation in learning is not given by the learning environment, but lies in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 138 dynamic interaction between the student’s motivation and situational interpretations being produced. students do not passively absorb knowledge but actively construct it from previous experiences. the learning environment should therefore provide opportunities for the student to test new conceptual understanding (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999), and this constructivist approach should remain part of the creation of a blended-learning environment. situational learning: because radical constructivism has been criticized for separating knowledge from the situations in which it is learned and used (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999), it is further necessary to place learning within the framework of a service-learning and civic engagement context as previously discussed. in a social constructivist approach, the cultural context of the student becomes an important filter through which meaning is applied. such an approach lends itself to concepts of situated learning, where the aim is to turn learning situations into challenging and interesting projects requiring authentic problems to be solved (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999). a learning situation is not only a mental performance for the student, but also a motivational and emotional challenge (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999). while social and emotional learning theory will not receive attention in this article, it is worthwhile to note the need to consider the influence of learning theories on the creation of a learning environment. what is given a focus in the learning environment should also be considered in assessing the impact of generational and cultural constructions on self-regulation during the learning process. “because learning is determined as a communal function of keeping up cultural traditions, institutional learning, too, should take place in authentic and complex social contexts” (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999, p. 62). collaborative and cooperative learning: earlier research on the development of expertise has shown that a “prerequisite for the accumulation of higher order knowledge and taskoriented commitment is partnership in a social environment” (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999, p. 62). previously, it was feared that the need of 21st century students to participate in collaborative learning, both formal and informal, would lead to weakened motivation; however, what is essential is not the social context or collaboration per se, but how the activities are harnessed to enhance intentional learning (jarvela & niemivirta, 1999). igel and urquhart (2012) indicated that within social learning, collaborative learning occurs when students work in groups, while cooperative learning is highly structured to ensure even participation among members. “when teachers use cooperative learning properly, they are more likely to reengage students who have become marginalized while better preparing all students to be successful in their future endeavours” (igel & urquhart, 2012, p. 17). igel and urquhart (2012) outlined three principles for the successful implementation of cooperative learning, and how each could be accomplished:  teach group processing and interpersonal skills: teach small group skills with task management and role differentiation towards collective problem solving.  establish cooperative goal structures within groups: promote interdependence, linking outcomes among group members and sharing of resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 139  provide mechanisms for individual accountability: limit groups to three to five members, have groups determine non-redundant roles upfront, and highlight the importance of unique contributions. while social learning is not a new concept, it should not be forgotten but retained and pursued more purposefully in the light of new knowledge. in the case of social learning, the relationship with new concepts like service-learning, civic engagement, and cultural intelligence can be highlighted. especially in the construction of a blended-learning environment, the focus cannot shift to offering merely the transfer of knowledge, whether face-to-face or in an online forum, but must remain on integrating relevant knowledge and nurturing intentional learning. as an approach to multigenerational learning, transformational learning could be triggered by significant events or by exposure to other people who have different lenses on the world. dialogue is the means for a shared relationship between teacher and student who together explore their common reality within a sociocultural context (robey-graham, 2008). when cooperative learning is pursued the generational differences should be utilized as part of the creation of a socially constructed and situation-based learning experience. transformational learning can occur because of the generational difference that becomes evident where two sets of social frameworks interact. environmental scanning: litshani (2017) stated that a responsive teaching environment considers not only the aspects of the subject matter and the learner, but also how economic and sociocultural aspects impact classroom practice. she suggested that the educator use environmental scanning, in which an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (swot) is carried out on the various aspects of a teaching environment: global, continental, regional, institutional, and discipline or subject. an example of a weakness in the global aspect might be a lack of exposure to international conferences; a threat might be that globalization increases competition. continentally, an opportunity could be that there is a synergy among networks, while weaknesses in the regional and national aspects could include unanswered communications and unclear policies and procedures. a strength in the institutional and subject matter aspect could be the presence of well-qualified teachers. (litshani, 2017). for each of these aspects the following questions should be answered for the enhancement of effective teaching (litshani, 2017):  how competent am i in each aspect and where are the gaps in my knowledge?  what are the opportunities in this environment and what do i stand to gain or lose if they are pursued?  does the teaching and content respond to what learners are required to know in the job market? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 140 curriculum orientation: the significance of understanding the needs and strategies for teaching lies in curriculum responsiveness. litshani (2017, p. 16) explained that: every curriculum is a product of its society’s beliefs, needs and challenges … curriculum responsiveness entails some positively formulated benchmarks against which we might be able to judge whether our educational programmes are meeting the needs of a transforming society. litshani (2017, pp. 17–18) explains that there are three main orientations towards curriculum:  curriculum as a product that is dependent on the setting of behavioral objectives, often presented in modularized forms.  curriculum as process that focuses more on the interaction between the student and teacher; it is therefore an active process, and links with practical forms of reasoning and meaningmaking.  curriculum as praxis and as epistemic, meaning that it does not make statements about the theoretical interests it serves. the development of the curriculum through a dynamic process of reflection and action leads to a diverse and socially inclusive curriculum. it should be clear from the above description that meeting the different teaching needs of 21st century students requires making a choice about the curriculum orientation that is to be followed on a more macro or institutional level (see figure 1). the young domenico randazzo (tedx talks, 2016a) questions the ability of the education system to meet the learning needs of millennials. he sees creativity and passion as two key areas for personal development that is not encouraged by what he calls the “over saturation of wellroundedness”. he proposes a vertical alignment of the curriculum to appeal to different fields of real-world interests. we can ask ourselves whether the subject choices in schools and even universities differ from 10 and 20 years ago. according to lindsay pollak (tedx talks, 2016b), in a 2012 survey, pricewaterhousecoopers “asked millennials, ‘what is the most important factor to you in deciding to take a job?’. the number one answer by far was the opportunity for personal development: ‘i want to grow’.” she further spoke of a high-school football coach who shared during a media interview that he adjusted his style because he recognised that millennials do not respond to punishment and yelling. considering this, pollak highlights the shift that is occurring in development and coaching functions. for example, some companies are replacing the annual performance review, which is viewed negatively, with real-time positive feedback through the use of technology, like instant messaging. it is clear how such trends should influence the way in which students are taught, especially with regard to consistent guidance and prompt feedback. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 141 recommendations for teaching gen y and z the 21st century student’s learning needs have been explored by different authors, whose contributions are integrated in tables 5 and 6. as an introduction, the “10 signs of a 21st century classroom”, are listed by goertz (2015) in his blog under the following headings: “technology integration, collaborative environment, opportunities for creative expression, inquiry-based approach, justification for answers, writing for reflection, use of a problem-solving methodology, hands-on learning, teacher as facilitator, transparent assessment.” while this list will generally serve both gen y and gen z in the classroom, table 5 addresses the more specific learning needs of gen y, while table 6 deals with gen z. table 5 integration of guidelines for instruction and teaching needs for gen y guidelines for teaching teaching needs educate yourself about the concept of generational differences. want to have a say in their education. recognize the environmental and cultural forces that affect the millennial learner. often have higher levels of digital literacy than their parents or teachers. understand how potential intergenerational tension may impact learning: avoid references to prior learning with little context. expect transparency in their parents, teachers, and mentors. millennials need guidance and focus in their learning: can get content, but need help to synthesize, analyze, and apply. want you to tell them when you have messed up, apologize for it, and move on. identify your teaching or life philosophy: share and connect. don’t care as much about having a job as they do about making a difference. learn how to utilize current elearning technologies. demand the freedom to show their creativity and avoid rote learning. recognize that millennials value (and expect) aesthetically appealing educational presentations. want to connect with others in real time on their own terms. emphasize opportunities for additional help and support: raised by helicopter parents, comfortable with asking for help. collaborate well and like to multitask. encourage curiosity and exploration: “while the correct solution is important, the process by which one gets there is equally of interest and worthy of attention”. appreciate a “trial and error” approach to learning new skills and learn by doing. recognize the importance of team dynamics and encourage collaboration: have a “can do” attitude. thrive in an atmosphere of controlled challenge. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 142 guidelines for teaching teaching needs less limited by preconceived notions of roles. be fair and straightforward: scandals and fallen leaders are common. have multicultural awareness and appreciation. increasingly aware of the world around them. identify the limits of multitasking: retention and recall fail. open to change. know where to go to find information. are equal parts “consumer” and “creator”. expect interdisciplinarity. note. adapted from eaton, 2012, and roberts, newman, and schwartzstein, 2012. as we are in a way still adjusting to the requirements needed for educating gen y, and as the younger part of gen y has joined the higher education or work sectors, the older part of gen z is already leaving school for work or studies. strategies proposed by a number of authors for better aligning higher education with the needs of 21st century students have been included in this paper, but there are some who warn against such suggestions. naomi baron as cited in barnes, marateo, and ferris (2007, p. 2) felt that “the move to incorporate technology, reduce lecture time, and reshape assignments to engage impatient net geners merely caters to a lack of discipline”; frequent use of electronic tools does not mean increased literacy or critical thinking skills. shatto and erwin (2017) indicate that innovative teaching using different forms of technology is required to fully engage gen z. examples of forms of teaching technology are incorporated in table 6. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 143 table 6 integration of teaching needs and guidelines for instruction for gen z guidelines for teaching teaching needs use mobile technology and apps when possible. feedback according to the individual student’s needs. use readings that can be completed on tablets or smart phones. collaborative learning. encourage collaboration or cooperative learning through use of social media sites such as facebook, tumblr, twitter, blogs, and discussion groups. methods such as flipped classrooms and active learning allow students active participation (e.g., case studies, group projects, use of clickers for voting, blogs, and critical thinking assignments). have students either find or make a youtube video about whatever subject they are studying. reinforce concepts with youtube videos. use interactive games such as jeopardy, kahoot, and socrative to encourage critical thinking. learning process in a fun and modern way. incorporate laboratory skills into the classroom. a reliance on internet search engines and videos for research. videotape working professionals displaying work skills and have students reflect and report on it. learn more by observation and experiential practice. limit readings to include only necessary information. teacher must interact more and lecture less. include discussions on inclusiveness and tolerance. expect immediate answers. use narratives and storytelling when teaching students from diverse backgrounds. need to know the relevance of information to their course. use group work that focuses on varying viewpoints. want to learn by doing. use an inquiry-oriented lesson format such as webquest to help students locate information from the web. born into a digital world, they need to learn how to engage with the information that is easily accessible. let students act as scribes of the lecture and material — have students write the course book for other students. note. shatto & erwin, 2016; barnes, marateo & ferris, 2007. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 144 holistic academic development figure 1. an integrated holistic academic development model. adapted from jonas-dwyer and pospisil, 2004, p. 202; magano, mohapi, and robinson, 2017, pp. 16–17; robey-graham, 2008, p. 8; swanzen and graham, 2016. a holistic approach to academic development or overall learning by the student would include all the factors that impact teaching, with a consideration of multiple strategies that are applied simultaneously (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004). buckley (as cited in jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004, p. 202) suggests that “adopting strategies that lead academic staff to a more learnercentred approach can be successful when aligned with the needs of staff and the institution”. jonasdwyer and pospisil (2004) identify “seven factors [that] contribute to a holistic academic development approach” (p. 202; see non-orange parts of figure 1), and start with the statement that the success of creating optimal learning environments is dependent on the goals and quality of the institutional program. the university or any other learning institution’s strategic direction 1 consider the learning institution’s strategic direction 2 know the culture of the learning institution 3 know the students characteristics & culture 5 encourage staff to be aware of their preferred teaching style and philosophy and to experiment with other approaches 7 become conversant in applying educational design principles, or engage expert educational designers to assist 9 consider technological innovations 10 investigate the learning institution’s infrastructure to establish feasibility 6 build authentic universitycommunity partnerships to enable service-learning & student active citizenship 8 design an enabling communication strategy that facilitates support for learning & transformative interactions 4 create a blended teaching environment that balances individual & team learning international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 145 needs to be considered in relation to all the other factors in figure 1. awareness of the current and evolving academic and university culture is critical, insofar as it impacts the success of any initiative. to know the characteristics of the student will help to determine the most appealing and successful teaching and learning strategies, as well as an awareness of the communication tools and styles that students use. academics also need to be willing to experiment with styles that differ from their own teaching philosophies, and this must be done with the necessary institutional support. academics need to become competent in applying educational design principles with the assistance of experienced educational designers. teaching and learning that emphasizes the development of the whole person typically includes “collaborative and cooperative learning, active and service learning, learner-centred, lifelong learning, experiential, interactive and authentic learning, educational technology, internet integration, outcomes based education, knowledge of whole systems, emotional literacy, metacognition, multiple intelligences, and learning styles (hanna, 2003; weimer, 2002; poindexter, 2003; holistic education network of tasmania, 2003).” (jonas-dwyer & pospisil, 2004, p. 203). the implementation of technological innovations should be coordinated with corresponding staff development activities. the school infrastructure should be explored to establish feasibility for the adoption of innovations. figure 1 shows all these factors, and i have made adjustments (in orange) to include other factors from previous discussions in this article. these include a specific consideration of blended and cooperative learning as a strategy for teaching the 21st century student, the importance of the influence of culture, and a consideration of the need for significant partnerships with the community to assist with teaching in real-life situations. also, because the change in the preferred style of communication by students is so significant, another factor that needs specific mention is the development of a communication strategy. considering the communication needs of gen y and gen z, and employing resources such as instant messaging, will facilitate the transformative interactions to bridge the generational divide. the orange circle around the blue circle at the center of figure 1 represents two major influences when the 10 factors feeding into holistic academic development are considered. i propose that, for the purposes of this article, these are horizontal and vertical influences. the vertical influence involves environmental scanning (as discussed previously) of the various structures impacting the learning institution (global, continental, regional, and institutional). there is also a horizontal influence that involves decisions about the curriculum orientation, discussed at the end of the teaching strategies section. decisions about curriculum can be considered laterally across different parts of the curriculum (benchmarks for responsiveness across teaching and assessment activities) and even across different disciplines and communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 146 conclusion numerous aspects relating to the teaching of generations y and z have been shared in this paper with the aim of demystifying the gap caused by the different perceptions held by the generations teaching or raising them. in addition, a number of teaching strategies have been provided to help bridge the chasm that can challenge the relationships between diverse generations. after considering the role of parenting, civic engagement, the 21st century student’s needs, and influences from the environment, the key factors were incorporated into an integrated illustration showing how the holistic academic development of the 21st century student can be achieved. this can be used to approach transformation in a comprehensive and responsible manner. while the focus has been on teaching, the generational insights are also relevant for parents who need to facilitate the learning of their child in the 21st century. it has been predicted that the generational spans are likely to decrease to 5 to 10 years instead of the traditional 15 to 20 years, because of increasing exposure to global events and innovations worldwide (jenkins, 2017). pollak (tedx talks, 2016b) stated that by 2025, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce. because of the pace of change in society, dorsey (tedx talks, 2015) indicated that instead of the usual 3 or 4 generations present simultaneously in the workplace, it is likely that there will be a rise to 6 or 7 generations in the future. he further claimed that the influence within generations is now upward — the youngest generation influences the older ones. given the role that higher education plays in the employability of graduates, it is critical that a flexible but focused approach to the teaching of the 21st century student be adopted. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 125–150 147 references barnes, k., marateo, r. c., & ferris, s. p. 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(2017). the decline in adult activities among u.s. adolescents, 19762016. child development, 00(0), 1–17. doi:10.1111/cdev.12930 valdeavilla, c. (2017, november 14). generation z. [video file]. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tguvqmirzfs zeigenhorn, t. l. (2017). there’s now a name for the micro generation born between 19771983. did you know? [blog post]. retrieved from https://didyouknowfacts.com/theres-nowa-name-for-the-micro-generation-born-between-1977-1983/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12930 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tguvqmirzfs%20 https://didyouknowfacts.com/theres-now-a-name-for-the-micro-generation-born-between-1977-1983/ https://didyouknowfacts.com/theres-now-a-name-for-the-micro-generation-born-between-1977-1983/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918809 beauty and the beast: misrepresentation and social responses in fairy-tale romance and redemption linda coates, shelly bonnah, and cathy richardson abstract: violence perpetrated in romantic or intimate relationships is common, dangerous, chronic, and gendered: males tend to commit this violence against females. we critically analyze scenes from the beginning of the 1991 film beauty and the beast using the theory of response-based practice to show how the film uses misrepresentation and social responses to disappear violence and advance the narrative of a fairy-tale love story. in response-based practice, the actions of social responders — people who respond to victims and perpetrators — are recognized as important for understanding the actions of the victims and perpetrators themselves. in this film, the servants are social responders and their actions are critical to the narrative of the film. we show how the servants actively use mutualization and misrepresentation to reformulate events, conceal the beast’s abusive or violent actions, and obfuscate his responsibility for those actions: the beast is held responsible merely for being uncouth in difficult circumstances. each misrepresentation and each social response join together to create a story that is understandable as romance and redemption. in doing so, the tale can be understood as supporting many myths about violence against women and girls in intimate relationships. the film produces and reproduces common misrepresentations of violent social interaction, perpetrator actions, victim resistance, and the violence itself. keywords: response-based practice, feminine socialization, social responses, resistance to violence, violence linda coates phd (corresponding author) is an associate professor at okanagan college, department of psychology in salmon arm, 2552 10th avenue n.e., salmon arm, bc vie 2s4. email: lindaresponds@gmail.com shelly bonnah phd is an associate faculty member at city university of seattle, 677 seymour st., kamloops, bc v2c 2h1. email: sbonnah@rbpinterior.com cathy richardson/kinewesquao phd is an associate professor in social work at the university of montreal, pavillon lionel groulx, 3150 rue jean brillant, montreal, qc h3t 1n8. email: catherine.richardson@umontreal.ca mailto:lindaresponds@gmail.com mailto:sbonnah@rbpinterior.com mailto:catherine.richardson@umontreal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 120 violence in intimate relationships is a serious problem: it is too frequent, too dangerous, and too chronic. this form of violence is gendered: typically, it involves men exerting coercive control over or violating women and children (perreault. 2015; who, 2017). it has also become clear that this form of violence is not limited to adult relationships. people report violence in dating relationships as early as grade school. while both girls and boys report physical, psychological, and sexualized1 victimization in relationships, the victimization rates are substantially higher for girls (see centers for disease control and prevention, 2015; dekeseredy & kelly, 1993; kelley, 2006). there is also a connection between adolescent victimization and suffering future assaults. being physically assaulted as a young person is correlated with being raped, physically violated, or stalked by an intimate partner as an adult (turpel-lafond, 2012). moreover, problems in adolescent romantic relationships are connected to suicide risk: a review of the 89 suicide and selfharm cases of youth in government care in british columbia revealed that “approximately onethird of the youth had a romantic conflict in the 24 hours preceding their suicide or self-injury” (turpel-lafond, 2012, p. 5) this study did not define “conflict” but on the basis of our research, consulting, and clinical experience it is likely that the mutualizing term (coates, 1997) also includes actions that fit the definition of family violence such as coercive control and assault. given the importance of romantic or intimate relationships and the pervasiveness of violence in these relationships, it is fitting that we critically analyse what we have taught children, adolescents, young adults, and adults about romantic or loving relationships. to that end, in this paper, we briefly analyse some of the early scenes from the 1991 movie version of beauty and the beast from a response-based practice perspective (coates & wade, 2007, richardson, 2008; richardson & bonnah, 2015). in particular, we will show how misrepresentation and social responses are used to reformulate violence and create a love story in the film. in-dignity: response-based practice response-based practice is a social science theory that was developed from research and clinical practice. the theory emphasizes contextual analysis of social interaction to gain understanding of people and their actions (coates & wade, 2004, 2007). one of the areas we have focused upon in our clinical and consulting practices is interpersonal violence, including intimate partner violence. we work with a wide range of clients, including victims, perpetrators, adults, and children who come from diverse cultural, economic, and gender identity positions. we incorporate into our practice research, training, document analysis, therapy, assessments, and investigations. a comprehensive explanation of our theory is beyond the scope of this paper, but table 1 lists 1 in the 1980s coates began using the term “sexualized” violence rather than “sexual” violence because “sexual” is a mutualizing term. violent social interactions are unilateral, not mutual. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 121 some of the tenets of response-based practice that are most relevant to this analysis, which will focus on social responses and representation. table 1 selected tenets of in-dignity or response-based practice term tenet social interaction violence occurs when a perpetrator applies force against a victim within a particular social interaction. interactants to understand violence, one must examine the actions of the perpetrator and the victim. resistance when violent interaction is examined, we see that victim resistance is ever-present. whenever people are mistreated, they resist. contextual analysis meaning is contextual. consequently, social interaction, including violence, must be examined within its context. micro and macro relevant context includes both micro and macro details of the person’s situation and social world. social responses how other people respond is important to both perpetrators and victims. both perpetrators and victims take into account actual and anticipated social responses. representation is a potent social response. mutualizing violence is frequently misrepresented as mutual; that is, as a joint action of the perpetrator and the victim. note. adapted from coates & wade (2007). when people are mistreated, especially when a person has been victimized through violence, how other people respond, or are anticipated to respond, is a vital concern. the quality of actual and anticipated social responses influences what perpetrators, victims, and others do, say to others, and think. the term “social responses” refers to the actual and anticipated responses of other people to victims and perpetrators of violence, abuse, and other forms of adversity (richardson & wade, 2008). the range of social responders is immense and includes, but is not limited to:  members of social networks (e.g., family, friends, neighbours, workmates),  members of social institutions (e.g., child protection services, police services, prosecution services, medical services, therapeutic services, advocacy services, educational services, administration and support services),  members of the media and entertainment industry (e.g., novelists, screenplay writers, journalists),  individuals present during violence (e.g., bystanders, interveners, witnesses), and  individuals who gain knowledge of perpetration or victimization (e.g., classmates, friends, general public). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 122 social responders are integral to affirming that the violence was wrong, that the victim was not responsible, that the victim is worthy of social concern and redress, and upholding the social meaning of the actions. through social responses, others may provide victims comfort and safety, reassert victim dignity, uphold the violence as wrongful, and aid in the management of offenders. how individuals act in relation to both the victim and offender can ensure that institutional responses are fair, just, and effective. given the important functions of social responses, it is not surprising that both victims and perpetrators take into account actual and anticipated social responses in forming their “situational logic” (de certeau, 1984). to understand, for example, why victims of sexual assault and harassment did not publicly speak out until the “me too” movement, one needs to understand offender actions and social responses. when victims anticipate or know from experience that perpetrators can prevent them from getting jobs, that authorities will refuse to fully investigate, that judges will acquit no matter the quality of the evidence, and that journalists will hurt rather than help, victims are far less likely to come forward. when the social responses to victims publicly began to change, more and more victims of sexualized violence came forward to describe the violence perpetrated against them2. how other victims respond is directly connected to the quality of the social responses received by those coming forward. one important social response is the act of representing violence. giving meaning by fitting words to deeds, music to situations, images to scenes, and so on is an inherently political practice. offering or giving meaning to events inevitably characterizes victims and offenders, characterizes the nature of the social interaction, attributes cause, and connects the events in question to other events (fowler, hodge, kress, & trew, 1979). in particular, professionals, including screenplay writers, put forth written, verbal, auditory, and visual representations as a routine part of their practice. these representations can have profound consequences for victims of violence. coates first recognized the importance of social responses to violence in the 1980s when she was researching legal responses to sexualized assault. coates and colleagues found then as now that misrepresentations of violence are ubiquitous in media (e.g., novels, films, articles), legal documents, therapy sessions, school responses, and more (see coates, 1996; coates, 1997; coates & wade, 2007, 2012). we have found in our research, consulting, and clinical practice that interventions are more likely to be consistent with false representations of the violence than with the accurate details of the violence itself. for example, sexualized violence, spousal assault, and other forms of violence are frequently misrepresented as mutual, not unilateral, acts of violence (see coates, 1996; coates, 1997; coates & wade, 2007). such false representations have important 2 we would like to recognize journalist ronan farrow for providing a positive social response to victims of violence by exposing sexualized violence. we note with interest that farrow’s experiences in his family may be directly connected with his refusal to be silenced. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 123 consequences for victims of violence. thus, how we represent or misrepresent violence is of significant social importance. one point that must be addressed here is our use of the terms “perpetrator” and “victim”. many academics and practitioners today do not like these terms, in part because they are too often used as identity terms. that is, they are commonly used as if having been victimized or having committed violence comprises the person’s whole identity. such uses of these terms are indeed problematic. however, in response-based practice, as set out by coates and wade (2007), these terms are used as interactional terms: in a specific interaction (or set of interactions) one person (the perpetrator) victimized another person (the victim). these experiences do not comprise the person’s whole identity. nor are they static: one person can be a perpetrator in one interaction and a victim in another. therefore, the terms clearly describe the person’s actions within the interaction. moreover, the term “victim” rather than “survivor” is chosen because victim carries the connotation that a wrong was done to that person. we want to recognize the wrong done to the victim by accurately conveying the experience of victims. we understand accurate representation as a social justice and human rights practice. beauty and the beast the 1991 walt disney feature animation, beauty and the beast, is a children’s film described on wikipedia as “an animated musical romantic fantasy” (“beauty and the beast (1991 film)”, 2015). the story draws on universally human themes of love and redemption. the prince in the story is cursed for his cruel behaviour and he must love and be loved in order to break the curse. the appeal of beauty and the beast translated to sales. the film earned $608,435,483 in worldwide box office sales and an additional $221,444,278 in video sales in the united states alone (“beauty and the beast (1991)”, 2018). it is considered to be one of disney’s most successful animated movies — both financially and socially. it has been hailed as a classic by critics and has been described as bringing together “traditional fairy tales and feminism” (smoodin, 1993, p. 190). nevertheless, it is not an unproblematically feminist tale. instead, beauty and the beast reproduces many of the current societal problems in our social responses to male violence in intimate relationships. for example, it obscures and reformulates the violence to benefit the perpetrator. below, we present an analysis of some of the opening scenes of this animated movie to show how misrepresentation and social responses are used to accomplish the disappearing of violence and set viewers up to understand this tale as one of redemption and romance. analysis: misrepresentation and social responses in the film, the prince’s physical appearance is changed to that of a beast when he is placed under a curse. in order to break the curse, he must love and be loved (which appears to mean he must share a kiss with a woman). there is also a deadline: he will remain a beast forever unless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/animation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/musical_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/romantic_fantasy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 124 the curse is broken before the last petal falls from a magic rose. some time after he is cursed, he imprisons a young woman, belle. the rest of the film is about belle and the beast “falling in love”. the story begins with the narrator explaining how the prince came to have the outward appearance of a beast. despite appearances, this past is not simply replayed in a neutral fashion, but is created by the words, sounds, and images the writers have chosen to describe the prince’s deeds. the narrator’s representation of this past event is the first social response to the beast that viewers encounter within the film itself. it is offered to frame the story — it points viewers to certain events and away from others. for example, the narrator tells us that an enchantress came to the prince’s castle disguised as an old beggar woman needing “shelter from the cold”. in exchange for shelter, the woman offered the prince a rose. the prince, who is described as “spoiled, selfish, and unkind”, “sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away”. we are not told what he said nor given details of what he did. we are not told whether he ridiculed her, assaulted her dignity, or beat her. we are not told anything about who else was present or how they responded. we are told that after the prince “turned her away”, the old woman warned the prince “not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within”. she then revealed herself as a “beautiful enchantress”; after he saw that she was beautiful, the prince “apologized”. but the enchantress cursed him so that his inner ugliness was visible to all. the enchantress’ warning is not only the underlying moral of this story, it is also the first time we see misrepresentation and social response used together to create a false understanding. the narrator misrepresents the events: the prince is cast as acting immorally in part because he did not look past the physical appearances of the enchantress to see her hidden, inner beauty. yet, in reality he behaved unjustly because in his position of ultimate privilege, he did not help a person in need. had he helped the enchantress only because she was attractive, his actions would not have been moral. his immorality arose from his failure to help someone in need when that need was made apparent to him. despite the fact that it is a misrepresentation, the narrator’s version of the enchantress’ warning provides viewers with an orientation to the rest of the movie: they are to undertake to look past appearances. incongruously, the beast never has to learn to look past appearances to find inner beauty because belle is described as physically beautiful. belle, however, must not only look past the beast’s physical appearance but also his brutish and violent behaviour. these careful misrepresentations and characterizations are integrated with social responses to advance the narrative of the film. another incongruency in this opening narration is that power abuse is obfuscated. in the narration, the enchantress unjustly curses the castle servants. the servants are literally objectified by turning them into animated household objects. female servants become a wardrobe, a tea pot, and a feather duster. male servants become a mantle clock and a candelabra. but this injustice is never explained or focused upon. trapping the servants in the castle and physically changing them into objects is simply glossed over: the enchantress “placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 125 who lived there”. this abuse of presumably innocent people is never addressed. nor are we told what will happen to them if the beast does not break the curse before the time limit runs out. minimizing the unjust cursing of the servants allows the filmmakers to engage in another form of misrepresentation: the obfuscation of motivation. the servants clearly have a personal stake in supporting the development of a romantic relationship between belle and the beast —when the beast breaks the curse, the servants will also be set free. yet, in the film, the servants appear to be motivated by fondness for the beast and belle rather than a desire to be free of the curse. we do not see the servants as pimp-like beings who are willing to sacrifice a young woman for their own self-gain. instead, they come across as knowing friends or mentors of the beast, who know the truth about the situation and the beast himself. in the scene below, misrepresentation and social responses continue to be used to advance the narrative and make the tale sensical to viewers. belle has been imprisoned in the castle, and has been ordered by the beast to attend dinner: “you will join me for dinner. that’s not a request.” belle is in her “room” (which is still a “cell”) with the woman wardrobe. the woman wardrobe pressures belle to comply with the man who has unjustly imprisoned her, first by falsely representing the events and then by simply acting as if belle will comply. woman wardrobe states: “well now ... what shall we dress you in for dinner?” in this way, abduction, false imprisonment, and coercion are reformulated into mutual and pleasurable social interaction (see coates, 1996; coates, todd, & wade, 2003; coates & wade, 2007). one might be forced to eat in the presence of someone who has abducted, imprisoned, and abused her or him but this is not “sharing dinner”. viewers are distracted from fully grasping the pressure the woman wardrobe is exerting on belle by the insertion of a humorous scene where woman wardrobe delivers the double entendre, “ooh ... let’s see what i’ve got in my drawers!” her words are accompanied by humorous actions that even young children could understand as humorous. woman wardrobe then picks out a pink dress and says, “you’ll look ravishing in this one!”, thereby bolstering the idea of mutual social interaction (e.g., “sharing dinner”) and adding the notion of violent sexuality in a form all too accepted in western cultures. according to the oxford english dictionary (2012), to ravish means to “seize and carry off (someone) by force”— this phrasing and depiction has been commonly used and supports the myth that women enjoy being raped (e.g., see kuntz, 1995, or other critiques of gone with the wind). for example, gone with the wind depicts scarlett o’hara both being sexually assaulted by and falling in love with rhett butler (kuntz, 1995). the reality of rape is rendered invisible by the many novels and films such as gone with the wind that romanticize and mystify it (kuntz, 1995, p. 4007). belle responds to and resists woman wardrobe’s pressure. she picks up the polite tone of woman wardrobe’s talk and uses it: “that’s very kind of you ...”. arguably, politeness is a very smart form of resistance by belle. in situations of violence, being polite helps to remind people that there are limits on behaviour and obligations to other people — even when these norms have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 126 been broken. it would be unacceptable, in polite company, for example, to beat or rape belle. in this way, belle could be understood as resisting the beast’s violence by increasing her safety. the mutualization (see coates & wade, 2007) of the ongoing social interaction as “going to dinner” that was first used by the beast, and then picked up and used by woman wardrobe, is also picked up by belle. she not only uses the term “dinner” but also uses the mutualization to pretend that she has been issued an invitation that she could refuse without potentially dangerous consequences. she politely tells woman wardrobe that she is going to “decline” the false invitation: “that’s very kind of you ... but i’m not going to dinner.” for a moment, the pretense is up and woman wardrobe gasps, “but you must!”. before the audience can critically attend to this scene, it is broken up by cogsworth (the man who looks like a mantel clock) coming in and dispelling the moment of clarity by furthering the false, mutualizing representation. with formal politeness, he announces, “ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem. dinner ... is served.” in the next scene, we see both cogsworth’s and the beast’s responses to belle’s resistance. cogsworth is hesitant, unsure how to tell the beast that belle has refused the pretense. he begins with politeness: “uh ... good evening.” the beast immediately begins to look angry. and he demands impatiently: “well ... where is she?” cogsworth stutters and then finally states that belle is not coming: who? oh! (nervous laughter) the girl. yes ... uh ... well, actually, she’s in the process of ... uh ... circumstances being what they are ... [hesitantly] she’s not coming. cogsworth’s response to the beast reveals that he fears the beast. he is dysfluent, struggling to find a way to tell the beast that belle is not coming. when he does answer, he protects himself (as the messenger) and belle (as the victim) by: (a) misrepresenting the beast’s actions as “circumstances” rather than deliberate action; and (b) saying, “she’s not coming”, a phrasing that downplays belle’s agentive resistance as opposed to saying, “she has refused to come.” by downplaying belle’s agency, cogsworth arguably increases her safety. that cogsworth was right to fear the beast is clear when the beast responds by roaring, “what?!” and angrily charging upstairs to confront and further threaten belle. if these scenes had been placed in the movie sequentially as we have just described them, the pretense of mutuality would have been harder to create. the intervening scene, described below, focuses on the servant’s responses to the beast and his responses to the social responders (his servants). this scene shows the beast as behaving non-violently, listening to, and trying to do what his servants are telling him to do. the scene opens with the beast pacing back and forth in front of the fire asking himself why belle has not come down. he then turns to lumiere (the candlestick) and mrs. potts (the teapot) and asks impatiently, “why isn’t she here yet?” both servants use misrepresentation as they plead with the beast to behave better. mrs. potts alludes to belle’s false imprisonment but omits mentioning that the beast is the agent of that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 127 violence: “oh, try to be patient, sir. the girl has lost her father and her freedom all in one day.” lumiere highlights a more self-serving motivation for the beast to show patience: “uh, master? have you thought that perhaps this girl could be the one to break the spell?” the beast responds, “of course i have! i’m not a fool.” lumiere injects humour by excitedly and romantically saying, “good! so ... you fall in love with her, she falls in love with you, and — poof! — the spell is broken. we’ll be human again by midnight!” while acting it out. while this scene conveys that the servants are highly motivated to connect belle and the beast by any means necessary to break the curse, the “romantic” humour works to diminish the servants self-interest. lumiere stresses the urgency of the connection by saying, “the rose has already begun to wilt”. the beast is then depicted as forlorn when he says, “it’s no use. she’s so beautiful, and i’m ... well, look at me!” here, the beast is focused on as a victim who should be pitied rather than a perpetrator. in response to the beast’s apparent misery, lumiere and mrs. potts rush in with advice: mrs. potts: oh, you must help her to see past all that. beast: i don’t know how. mrs. potts: well, you can start my making yourself more presentable. straighten up, try to act like a gentleman. [beast sits up straight and looks more gentlemanly.] lumiere: ah, yes, yes, when she comes in give her a dashing, debonair smile. come, come, show me the smile. [beast moves his mouth in an awkward-scary looking smile — as if he does not know how to smile.] mrs. potts: but don’t frighten the poor girl. [beast shakes his head.] lumiere: impress her with your rapier wit. [beast nods.] mrs. potts: but be gentle. lumiere: shower her with compliments. mrs. potts: but be sincere. lumiere: and above all ... both: you must control your temper! international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 128 [the door creaks and opens. beast looks at the door expectantly.] lumiere: here she is! but it is not belle who comes in but cogsworth. by the end of this scene, the writers have begun transforming the beast from threatening and frightening to romantic and enchanting. they do this by evoking from us a sympathetic response to the beast because we see him worrying about how he looks. also, when he is spoken to quite bluntly by the servants (e.g., when they instruct him to make himself presentable, be a gentleman, smile, impress her with wit, be gentle, compliment her, and be sincere), the beast responds well. he listens to these instructions rather than asserting his power. in this way, the beast’s violent behaviour gets reformulated to merely uncouth or unknowing behaviour. he lacks refinement because he does not know how to be well mannered. but he is willing to learn (as he demonstrates by doing what his servants instructed). this scene functions to depict the beast as a kind of diamond in the rough, who only needs polishing to be something or someone spectacular. the offered characterization of the beast is dependent upon the beast’s violent behaviour being minimized and reformulated into actions consistent with being uncouth. for example, in this scene we see his violence characterized by the servants as “temper”. the film relies on and reproduces several myths about men who use violence against intimate partners: namely, that they do not engage in deliberate acts of violence, that they do not mean to hurt their partners (so it is not really violence), and that they are not truly violent men because they are not violent all the time. in fact, men who use violence do so deliberately — not out of ignorance or lack of knowing (see coates & wade, 2007). except perhaps in rare cases, men who use violence also know how to be respectful and kind. given the deliberateness of intimate partner violence and that these men have social competencies, it is not surprising that in real life, men who use violence are not violent all the time. instead, their use of violence tends to be a strategy for exerting coercive control over intimate partners. in the next scene, we see the beast use deliberate violence in an attempt to coercively control belle. because this film is about redemption, it also includes moments where if you look, you clearly see the beast’s violence. for example, when belle uses the beast’s mutualization to resist his violence by not going down for the “dinner”, the beast responds with anger. the servants run after him, but they do not do anything to stop him, as you would expect if he were truly dangerous. but even, within these scenes, the beast’s abusive and violent actions are misrepresented. as the beast runs up the stairs, the servants follow him and plead with him: cogsworth: your grace! your eminence! let’s not be hasty! [beast ignores him and bangs forcefully on belle’s door and growls at her.] beast: i thought i told you to come down for dinner! international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 129 [the servants look at each other and shake their heads.] belle: [through the door and in a defiant tone] i’m not hungry. beast: [in a loud and threatening tone] you’ll come out or i’ll ... i’ll ... i’ll break down the door! thus, we see that the beast is continuing to use violence and the threat of violence against belle and that that violence is misrepresented (e.g., “let’s not be hasty” versus “beast, do not threaten or hurt belle”). the servants respond to his threats against belle by pleading with the beast: lumiere: master ... i could be wrong, but that may not be the best way to win the girl’s affections. cogsworth: [pleadingly] please ... attempt to be a gentleman. [beast responds by blaming belle, not himself and his violent behaviour.] beast: [in a menacing tone] but she is being so difficult! [mrs. potts encourages the beast to change his tone and he does, somewhat.] mrs. potts: gently ... gently. beast: [in a petulant tone] will you come down to dinner? belle: no! the beast then points to the door while looking at the servants as if to say, “you see, it is her fault.” in this way, he continues to blame belle and not himself. the servants respond by continuing to try to influence the beast’s behaviour: cogsworth: ah, ah, ah ... suave. genteel. beast: [bowing at the door; in a formal voice] it would give me great pleasure if you would join me for dinner. cogsworth: [softly and quickly] ahem, ahem, we say “please”. beast: please. [belle resists, still using politeness and the safety it offers.] belle: no, thank you! beast: [furiously] you can’t stay in there for ever! international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 130 belle: yes i can! beast: fine! then go ahead and starve!! when he does not get what he wants, the beast threatens belle directly with starvation and instructs the servants to withhold food from her: beast: [to servants] if she doesn’t eat with me, then she doesn’t eat at all. [beast growls and runs back down the hall, slamming a door and causing a piece of the ceiling to fall on lumiere.] mrs. potts: oh dear. that didn’t go very well at all, did it? from this scene, we are taken to another where the beast is shown in a room by himself. he talks to himself, not about his own violent behaviour but about the unreasonableness of belle’s resistance: beast: i ask nicely, but she refuses! what a — what does she want me to do — beg? he then further abuses belle by violating her privacy and surveilling her. he picks up a magic mirror and says, “show me the girl.” the mirror shows belle in her room, clearly upset, and talking with woman wardrobe who is actively trying to advance the agenda of breaking the curse: woman wardrobe: [to belle] the master’s really not so bad once you get to know him … why don’t you give him a chance? belle: [upset] i don’t want to get to know him! i don’t want to have anything to do with him! throughout the film, the servants continue to exert pressure on belle to connect with the beast. this scene ends with the beast being depicted as pitiful rather than violent. he ends his surveillance of belle and then says softly and sadly, “i’m just fooling myself. she’ll never see me as anything ... but a monster.” after he says this, a rose petal falls to show viewers that he is running out of time to break the curse. he then says, “it’s hopeless.” he puts his head in his paws and looks despondent. the story comes across as romantic and humorous. it ends with a kiss and the breaking of the curse. its success in misrepresenting and reformulating the beast’s violence is not limited to the movie itself, but is clear in the social responses of viewers and writers of online plot summaries. in the words of one website: belle is a bright and beautiful young woman who’s taken prisoner by a hideous beast in his castle. despite her precarious situation, belle befriends the castle’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 131 enchanted staff — a teapot, a candelabra and a mantel clock, among others — and ultimately learns to see beneath the beast’s exterior to discover the heart and soul of a prince. (“beauty and the beast (1991)”, 2018) here, the summary begins with an accurate description: the beast took belle “prisoner” in his castle. but, the seriousness of this situation begins to be downplayed. the summary describes belle’s situation not as “dangerous”, “grave”, or “grievous”, but as “precarious”, which connotes risk but also uncertainty. it is uncertainty, not danger, that is carried forward in the summary and belle is described as “[learning] to see beneath the beast’s exterior to discover the heart and soul of a prince”. thus, as written, it is belle’s perception that needed to change, not the beast’s abusive and violent behaviour. movie theater sites post a summary by tribune media service (2018) that describes the prince as merely “arrogant”, not violent or abusive. it falsely represents the beast as being in “isolation” and credits belle for “[drawing] out the cold-hearted beast”. this description disappears the beast’s violence and arguably misrepresents belle actions as drawing out the beast rather than resisting his violence. conclusion we have not presented an exhaustive analysis of this film; instead, we have focused on misrepresentation and social responses in the foundational, early scenes of the movie. these scenes prepare viewers to accept that the beast could fall in love with belle and she with him. we showed how violence, abuse, and self-serving motives in the film are talked away; that is, they are misrepresented and reformulated. the beast’s abusive, threatening, and violent actions are minimized (e.g., “temper”, “hasty”), distanced or completely severed from his agency (e.g., belle “lost her father and her freedom”, “let’s not be hasty”), and obfuscated (e.g., “circumstances”). misrepresenting the self-serving motivations of the beast and his servants for breaking the curse on all of them is key to also successfully misrepresenting the beast’s violence. it is through the servants, rather than directly from the beast himself, that much of the misrepresentation and reformulation is accomplished. the servants befriend belle and use their friendships with her to exert pressure on belle to go along with the beast’s demands for the appearance of a courtship. they misrepresent the situation and the beast’s actions in ways that further their agenda of having the curse broken. in the guise of friendship and support, they put pressure on belle to go along with their agenda. the self-gain underlying both the beast’s and the servants’ actions are never addressed. instead, the beast is depicted as earnestly engaging in romance and the servants as earnestly supporting and helping a romance. in this way, beauty and the beast is a means of socialization. ideas about how men and women should behave and the meaning of those actions in romantic or intimate relationships are conveyed. thus, each misrepresentation and each social response is like a strand in a spider web, each joining with the others to ensnare belle and unsuspecting viewers in a fairy tale about romance and redemption. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 132 the misrepresentation and social responses in beauty and the beast are foundational to having the tale make sense to viewers. through these processes, the filmmakers change the meaning of the events so that viewers can accept that a man who imprisons, abuses, and threatens a woman could actually not mean any of those actions; that is, they are not deliberate acts of violence but acts of ignorance and even positive intention. we can make sense of the beast falling in love with belle, and even more importantly we can make sense of belle falling in love with the beast. like the filmmakers, we once again ask our readers to look beyond — this time to hold the harsh realities of violence as central to the meaning-making process and to look past the countless myths that minimize, romanticize, and mutualize male violence against women in intimate relationships. the real-life lessons to be learned are not those sold by disney. surveys show us that some men and boys beat and rape women and girls they date. in real life it is not the women’s and girls’ actions that cause the men and boys to beat, rape, or otherwise abuse them. in real life, there is not such a neat binary of opposites, no marriage of complementary characteristics. in real life, those who choose to use violence do not undergo a metamorphosis caused by women and girls’ resistance to their violence. if this were the case, then all people who use violence would be transformed the very first time they abused or violated someone else. and in real life the abusive person is very unlikely to turn into a kind prince. these sobering realities of violence must be taken into account in any depictions, developmental theories, and other social responses. to do otherwise is to risk completely misunderstanding people. theories or assessments that do not take into account the person’s full context are biased — what we call the “benign-world-bias” (coates & wade, 2012). the benignworld-bias is the false assumption that the person lives in a world where people are kind, considerate, and helpful, or at the very least neutral. the consequences of adopting this bias, which most theories of human development do, would be something akin to the socially constructed cultural biases in theories and assessments. where violence has occurred, the negative consequences of adopting the benign-world-bias may be even more problematic than adopting a cultural bias. when one adopts the benign-world-bias, one denies the extreme nature of violence, obfuscates the social and material ensuing circumstances, and ignores the social responses to victims and perpetrators. the social response of ghetto-izing violence is profoundly negative and has resulted in great distortions of people (including their lives, characters, and actions) and the violence itself. as parents, professionals, and community members, we need to understand ourselves as influential social responders to victims and perpetrators of violence. far too often, we use language that minimizes teen violence and abuse, largely due to an adopted dominant discourse and the sociopolitical structures that are in place. for example, we call harassment and assault “bullying”, which minimizes the degree of violence and abuse as well as the harm done to the victim. there is widespread, accepted language for sexualized assault, such as “date-rape”, which presents the motive of rape as somehow connected to romance and possibly some degree of consent — as if it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 133 was a simple misunderstanding rather than a calculated attack. our culture frequently mutualizes beatings as “conflict” which presents the victim as having a role in the conflict and being responsible for the conflict (and the corresponding solution). adult, adolescent, and child perpetrators of violence are often excused and victims blamed. for example, people will dismiss abuse and violence as “kids will be kids”. even judges have minimized sexualized assaults against girls by saying that “boys will be boys”, as if sexualized assault and rape of girls is a natural consequence of being a boy (coates, 1996). in schools, teachers and administrators have mutualized violence and suspended victims from school along with the perpetrators — ironically, on the grounds of “zero tolerance for violence” policies (for a description of these policies, see national association of school psychologists, 2001). in our homes and communities, we negatively label people who seek safer people and places as “needy” or “dramatic” (charuvastra & cloitre, 2008; moore, 2014; ullman, 2010). these responses, even when done with the best of intentions, are not helpful and can be very harmful to victims. as described in the analysis, the 1991 disney film beauty and the beast reproduces versions of many myths about men’s and boy’s violence against women and girls in intimate relationships. it also connects to flawed academic theories and constructs. for example, in depicting belle and the beast as a binary of opposites, the story maps on to the flawed but widely used cycle theory of violence (walker, 1980, 2009). in walker’s terms, beauty and the beast could be seen as having complementary characteristics that held them together. in this film, however, belle acts outside of the imputed complementary characteristics by overtly resisting the beast’s orders. belle acts as if he will not hurt her, kill her, rape her, or retaliate with any other forms of violence or abuse when she refuses his orders and demands. in doing so, belle does not act in ways that preserve the imputed complementary characteristics between abuser and abused and so the binary is broken and the beast is saved. another flawed concept that this fairy tale maps onto is “stockholm syndrome”, which is a psychological construction invented by swedish criminologist and psychiatrist nils bejerot (1974). bejerot invented this concept to explain why hostage kristin enmark was critical of the police and other officials (including bejerot) who handled this six day hostage crisis in sweden. this concept has been picked up and used uncritically around the world to claim that people, perhaps especially women, become emotionally aligned with their captors. such claims rely on decontextualized descriptions of what actually happened. they do not take into account perpetrator actions, victim resistance, and the role of social responses. we have critiqued this flawed construct in various presentations (see wade, 2015). in this article, we have shown how misrepresentation and social responses are used to disappear the beast’s violence against belle and advance the narrative of a fairy-tale love story. the beast is depicted as an uncouth man who can be taught manners rather than a violent man who can choose to stop being violent. belle becomes a young woman who learns to see through appearances to find inner beauty rather than a victim of violence who must play along to gain some international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 134 measure of safety in a dangerous situation. this tale represents a large and troubling social problem of people misrepresenting perpetrator actions, victim resistance, and the violence itself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 119–136 135 references beauty and the beast (1991). 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(2017). violence against women. retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women https://www.dohafilminstitute.com/films/beauty-and-the-beast https://rcybc.ca/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/reports_publications/trauma_turmoil_tragedy.pdf https://rcybc.ca/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/reports_publications/trauma_turmoil_tragedy.pdf https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs93201818276 viewing habits and identification with television characters among at-risk and normative children and adolescents gila cohen zilka and shlomo romi abstract: this study examined the relationship between participants’ negative or positive identification with television characters and their behavior, and how their reactions in times of anger — whether simply negative or physically violent — varied between at-risk participants and normative ones. participants were 86 children and adolescents from israel who filled in four questionnaires on the topics of viewing habits, attitudes, self-image, and aggression. the findings revealed that at-risk children and adolescents reacted with more anger than did their normative counterparts, and that their reaction became stronger when they identified with a character’s negative behavior. it was further revealed that the more they watched, the higher their identification with the character and the greater their negative reaction during anger. a violent physical reaction in times of anger is more strongly associated with viewing alone than with viewing with friends. the findings also revealed that identification with the character is a mediating variable between the amount and type (solitary or with friends) of viewing and negative and violent reactions. at-risk children and adolescents tend to choose programs that show violent behaviors, and such programs could ultimately lead them to exhibit violent reactions. the question is how can the amount of children and adolescents’ viewing be limited while avoiding arguments and punishment? the key to success is finding a solution that will be formulated with the children and adolescents’ full cooperation. keywords: at-risk children, viewing habits, tv programs, identification, wellbeing, television characters gila cohen zilka phd (the corresponding author) is director of the department for teaching social science, sociology and communication at bar-ilan university, achva academic college, ramat-gan, 5290002 israel. email: gila.zilka@gmail.com shlomo romi phd is head of the institute for education and community research, school of education, bar-ilan university, ramat-gan, 5290002 israel. email: shlomo.romi@biu.ac.il mailto:gila.zilka@gmail.com mailto:shlomo.romi@biu.ac.il international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 48 this comparison of at-risk and normative youth examined the relationship between viewing habits and identification with tv characters, and the relationship between negative or positive identification and the participants’ characteristic reactions when angry, either simply negative or physically violent. the basis for the examination was uses and gratifications theory (ugt; leung. 2013; mcquail, 2010; west & turner, 2007), which makes the underlying assumption that children and adolescents are consumers who choose from an available selection. this approach recognizes the viewer’s power to choose what and when to watch. a guiding principle in ugt is that viewers selectively expose themselves to media, and this exposure is motivated by the needs they want to satisfy. ugt is the basis for many research studies around the world. four categories of needs motivate the choice of medium and viewing content (leung, 2013; mcquail, 2010; west & turner, 2007(: 1. cognitive needs: needing to strengthen knowledge and comprehension. 2. affective needs: needing to strengthen emotional experience, enjoyment, and aesthetic experience. 3. integrative needs: needs relating to strengthening trust, confidence, stability, and status, as well as needing to strengthen ties with family, friends, and others. 4. escapist needs: needing to break away from the physical environment and escape to “a different reality”. review of the literature recent studies conducted in europe, the united states, and many other places around the world (comstock & scharrer, 2007; livingstone, 2007, 2009; millwood hargrave, 2007; millwood hargrave & livingstone, 2009; zilka, 2014, 2016, 2017a) have shown that children and adolescents prefer tv to other forms of media, logging over 15 hours a week of viewing time on average. therefore, in order to understand the day-to-day behavior of children, whether at risk or normative, it is important to clarify, examine, and compare viewing habits, so that adults can use an informed approach to the issue of tv viewing and better understand the factors involved. ugt served as the lens through which the viewing habits of children and adolescents were examined. according to ugt (leung. 2013; mcquail, 2010; west & turner, 2007): 1. individuals choose which medium (internet or tv) they will watch, in addition to choosing the programs and the time spent watching. it is the individuals’ needs that dictate the mode of exposure, the preferred medium, the degree of exposure, and the choice of content, a choice made from the selection offered. for example, children and adolescents may choose international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 49 — in accordance with their needs — to watch an action movie, a soap opera, or a variety show. 2. individuals’ needs change and are affected by intrapersonal and interpersonal factors as well as by environmental ones such as fatigue, stress, social circumstances, time of viewing, the time a program is broadcast, and the day of the week. 3. individuals choose how they will spend their leisure. tv programs, whether seen on tv or online, provide one way of spending free time. at times, people may choose alternative ways to spend their free time; these ways must meet their needs. 4. to one degree or another, people can control their needs and decide how their needs are satisfied. parasocial interaction children and adolescents have a need to understand the society in which they live: tv programs meet this need and serve as a supplemental socialization process. in the 1970s, researchers around the world became aware of this source of socialization and claimed that tv programs provide an extended family of sorts, one that represents a microcosm of society as a whole (bandura, 1971, 1986; nobel, 1976). television programs are an arena where a child creates parasocial interaction with a large number of stable and transient characters. the one-sided relationships that a viewer develops with tv characters are parasocial interactions. viewers feel that they know the characters, and perceive that they have the same feelings toward them as they do toward flesh-and-blood acquaintances, but they are not worried that the tv character will criticize them (bandura, 1971, 1986; cole & leets, 1999; hough & erwin, 2010; livingston & das, 2010). the attachments that children develop for tv characters are similar to the relationships children used to have as part of an extended family within a tribe or a clan (cole & leets, 1999), but without concern over the possibility of criticism that could be embarrassing or even humiliating. parasocial interactions, which can provide opportunities to examine “how to behave” in a variety of situations, play a similar role for children and adolescents as real social interactions. they provide essential social learning: how to react to the extended social group, how to integrate into society, and how to avoid certain situations. although tv programs can present models for every social role, they do not provide consumers with a mirror image of themselves nor with the feedback necessary for total development (morgan & shanahan, 2010; rideout, foehr, & roberts, 2010; vandewater, bickham, & lee, 2006; wilson, 2011; zilka, 2014). reality shows have been gaining popularity. researchers (coyne, robinson, & nelson, 2010; haridakis & rubin, 2009; hough & erwin, 2010; nelson, springer, nelson, & bean, 2008) have found that these programs, devoid of script, staging, and editing, are rife with aggression, gossip, tale-telling, exclusion, and social manipulation, to a much greater degree than prerecorded international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 50 programs. research has revealed that children identify with the characters on reality shows and with their behavior. children and adolescents whose tv viewing is unbalanced — watching for many hours, preferring to watch on their own without including parents or friends — could be harmed thereby (conners-burrow, mckelvey, & fussell, 2011). research has indicated that parents may be inclined to remove the tv or computer from their children’s rooms or limit their viewing hours, but have difficulty proposing alternative activities; in addition, the children and adolescents perceive the time limitation and removal of the tv or computer as a punishment, creating a source of confrontation between them and their parents (bybee, robinson, & turow, 1982; dorey et al., 2009; epstein, paluch, kilanowski, & raynor, 2004; jason & fries, 2004; livingstone, 2009; livingstone & das, 2010a, 2010b; miller et al., 2007). parents have reported fights and other difficulties, and that the children rejected the alternatives proposed (dorey et al., 2009; evans, jordan, & horner, 2011; jordan, hersey, mcdivitt, & heitzler, 2006). not only are limits on viewing hours difficult to impose and a source of confrontation, they are often ineffective as the children and adolescents find a different medium or go elsewhere to watch the program (jago et al., 2008; jordan et al., 2006). this can create another problem: reality programs viewed online are not censored in any way, whereas there is some censorship when the same program is broadcast on tv. as mentioned, children and adolescents prefer tv to other media (livingstone, 2007, 2008; millwood hargrave & livingstone, 2006, 2009; zilka, 2014, 2016). they spend more than 15 hours a week watching tv, increasing to over 17 hours for viewers aged 12 to 15. television is part of children’s everyday environment, and plays a role in shaping their personalities in conjunction with other, interacting, environmental factors. studies (australian communications and media authority, 2007; alexander & hanson, 2003; anderson & murphy, 2003; bryant & zillman, 2002; fowles, 2003; mcquail, 2010; office of commmunications, 2006, 2007, 2008; potter, 2004) have shown that while a certain program affected one child, no effect was found on another, while yet another showed delayed effects. the degree to which a program will affect a child is determined by his or her needs. the difficulties involved in limiting viewing have led researchers to suggest parents try different types of mediation model for children’s viewing (hancox, milne, & poulton, 2004; marshall, biddle, gorely, cameron, & murdey, 2004; zilka, 2014). two such models are evaluative mediation and unfocused mediation (bydee et al., 1982). in evaluative mediation, parents discuss the program with their children and talk about the characters, distinguishing between facts and interpretation, as well as between objective information and commercials. parents using unfocused mediation will say something occasionally, but there is no dialogue between parent and child. the three types of mediation — limiting viewing, evaluative, and unfocused — have all been found to be only partially effective (ableman & pettey, 1989; valkenberg, krcmar, peeters, & marseille, 1999). unfocused mediation is most frequently used; however, evaluative mediation — the least frequently used — is the most effective of the three (bybee et al., 1982). http://www.tandfonline.com/author/mckelvey%2c+lorraine+m http://www.tandfonline.com/author/fussell%2c+jill+j international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 51 at-risk children and adolescents the definition of at-risk children used in this study is based on some 20 clauses from the 1989 united nations convention on the rights of the child, and on the report of the schmidt committee (2006). both documents define at-risk children as those from birth to age 18 years who are living in situations in which they are in danger from their family or environment. under these conditions, many of their basic rights for physical existence, health and development, and belonging to a family may not be upheld; nor may their rights to learn, acquire skills, enjoy personal health and well-being, belong to society and participate in it, and be protected from others and from their own behaviors. among the conditions that may lead to a child being at risk are inadequate parental functioning, a parent’s illness or death, neglect on the part of those responsible for the child, behavioral problems, problems of adjustment, financial difficulties, academic difficulties, social variance, immigration, belonging to a minority group, disability, transition from one setting to another, living in poverty, and living in a dangerous environment. the outcomes for children may include defective functioning in various areas, passivity, aggression, and even social deviance; moreover, children who have been exposed to neglect and abuse are at greater risk of developing mental disorders and have difficulty developing a healthy lifestyle (ben asher, zionit, & kimchi, 2007; grupper & romi, 2015, 2015; harel, molcho, & tilinger, 2003; romi, 2001, 2007; romi, savicki, grupper, & caspi, 2007; zilka, 2015, 2017b). the present study focuses on a comparison between at-risk children and adolescents and their normative peers regarding viewing habits, identification with tv characters, and day-to-day behavior. in addition, we compared the two groups as to viewing habits and reaction to the content viewed, and examined the association between viewing habits and identification with the tv characters, and that between negative or positive identification and negative and violent reactions in times of anger in both groups. finally, and still comparing youth at risk to their normative peers, we went beyond the direct association to search for indirect associations between three factors — identification with a tv character, amount of viewing, and viewing habits (alone or with friends) — and negative reactions and violent reactions. method research population the research population comprised 86 children and adolescents from israel aged 9 to 18. of these, 32 were at-risk children and adolescents who were sampled in complementary facilities run by the ministry of welfare. these children had been in risk situations in their homes and environments, due to parental dysfunction, a parent’s illness or death, child neglect, behavioral problems, adjustment problems, financial difficulties, academic difficulties, or transitions from one setting to another. the other 54 were normative adolescents attending regular state schools. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 52 tools for this study, we used four research tools, which served to create representative measures through exploratory factor analysis with a varimax orthogonal rotation. viewing habits questionnaire: this 50-item questionnaire has been in wide use among researchers around the world (bybee et al., 1982; van den bulck & van den bergh, 2000). statements regarding parental mediation and viewing habits (solitary, with parents, or with friends) were rated on a 5-point likert scale (1 — not at all, 5 — always; sample statement: “while we watch tv together, my parents talk to me about what i see.”) the number of hours of viewing was listed from 1 hour to 7 hours or more (sample question: “on the average, how many hours a day do you watch tv on weekdays?”). the questionnaire yielded three 5-question measures for viewing habits: 1. viewing habits and average number of viewing hours: 3.65 on a 5-point likert scale, sd = 1.12, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .85. 2. interactive viewing with friends: 2.34 on a 5-point likert scale, sd = 0.89, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .97. 3. solitary viewing: 2.4 on a 5-point likert scale, sd = 0.73, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .70. attitudes toward identification with favorite characters: statements on this 55-item questionnaire (block, 1995) were rated on a 5-point likert scale (1 — not at all, 5 — very much so; sample statement: when my favorite tv character is sad, so am i.). two identification measures, suitable for this study, were chosen from this questionnaire: 1. positive identification with the character measure: 18 items; m = 3.76, sd = 1.07, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .93. 2. negative identification with the character’s behavior: 22 items; m = 3.76 (on a 6-point scale), sd = 1.25, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .97. forms of aggression (foa) questionnaire: this questionnaire (verona, sadeh, case, reed, & bhattacharjee, 2008) includes 40 self-report items about the participant’s involvement in various forms of aggression when angry. participants rated the frequency of their aggressive behavior on a 5-point scale (1 — never, 5 — always; sample statement: when i’m upset with other people or angry with them i: starting hitting / physically threaten them). a factor analysis yielded two measures for propensity toward aggression: 1. negative reaction: 17 items; m = 2.36, sd = 0.91, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .97. 2. violent physical reaction: 23 items; m = 1.54, sd = 0.78, cronbach’s alpha reliability = .96. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 53 sociodemographic and socioeconomic questionnaire: this questionnaire included 16 self-report items, among them personal data, parents’ marital status, parents’ occupation, name of town of residence, number of people at home, and number of rooms at home. in addition, there was one question about the degree to which the participant was at risk, a question answered by the personal mentor of each participant. procedure the children’s parents were approached and were asked to give their consent to filling out the form. after the parents signed, the questionnaires were distributed, and each participant received an explanation of the questionnaire and how to fill it out. the children at risk filled in the questionnaires in the presence of their mentors in their therapeutic settings; the normative children, in the presence of an adult research assistant. it took an average of about 25 minutes to fill in the questionnaire. results the χ2 tests conducted to examine differences in percentage of frequency of at-risk participants by demographic variables yielded the following statistically significant findings: 56% of the at-risk participants and 11% of the normative ones were children of divorced parents (p < .01). participants in the at-risk group had low (43%) and medium (48%) academic achievement, whereas most of the participants (62%) in the normative group had high achievement (p < .01). at-risk participants were characterized by a low-medium level of behavior, as compared to high levels among the normative participants (p < .01). the homes of at-risk participants had fewer rooms than those of their counterparts in the normative group (p < .01). no significant differences were found between the groups in number of siblings and socioeconomic level of town of residence, but significant relationships were found between variables indicating the family’s economic situation (parents’ occupation, type of dwelling, and child’s definition of financial status) and being at risk (p < .01). measures of tv viewing and reactions to viewing: comparing at-risk and normative participants to examine differences among all research variables between at-risk participants and their normative counterparts, a manova and an anova were conducted. the differences between the groups in tv viewing and reactions to the viewing are presented in table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 54 table 1 measures of tv viewing and reactions to viewing: differences between at-risk and normative participants *p < .05. a look at table 1 reveals that no significant differences were found in viewing habits from either the overall manova (p < .05) or the anova (p < .05) for each viewing measure (solitary, with friends, and interactive). in addition, no differences were found in overall identification — either positive or negative — with the characters (p < .05). only the measure for propensity toward aggression showed significant differences in the overall manova for a general negative reaction — p < .05, f(2,168) = 3.22. it was found that participants in the at-risk group had stronger negative reactions in times of anger than their normative counterparts — p < .05, f(1,84) = 4.41, whereas there was no difference in violent physical reactions (p < .05). correlations between viewing habits and identification with favorite characters the correlations between viewing habits and identification with the characters are presented in table 2. the table shows significant positive correlations between solitary viewing and interactive viewing with friends and identification with the character (r = .27, p < .05 and r = .43, p < .01, respectively). in addition, a positive relationship was found between solitary viewing and identification with the character’s negative behaviors (r = .24, p < .05). no relationship was found between viewing with friends and positive or negative identification, nor was a relationship measure normative participants (n = 54) at-risk participants (n = 32) anova df(1,84) m sd m sd p 2ƞ manova p 2ƞ tv viewing habits solitary viewing 2.48 0.75 2.29 0.68 1.34 .02 interactive viewing with friends 2.10 0.99 2.12 0.78 0.01 .00 0.01 .00 viewing with friends, without interaction 3.03 0.68 3.03 0.96 0.00 .00 identification with characters identification with the character’s negative behaviors 2.85 1.25 2.73 1.29 0.18 .00 positive identification with the character 3.59 1.01 4.03 1.13 3.82 .04 aggressive tendencies negative reaction in anger 2.19 0.87 2.65 0.89 4.41* .06 3.22* .07 violent physical reaction in anger 1.48 0.83 1.66 0.67 1.11 .01 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 55 found between interactive viewing with friends and identification with the character’s negative behaviors. table 2 viewing habits and their coefficients with identification with the character’s negative behaviors and positive identification with the character viewing habits identification with negative behaviors positive identification with the character solitary viewing 0.24 * 0.43 ** interactive viewing with friends 0.06 0.27 * viewing with friends 0.06 0.21 *p < .05. **p < .01. relationship between viewing habits and reactions in times of anger the relationship between viewing habits and negative reactions and violent physical reactions in times of anger is presented in table 3. table 3 participant’s at-risk status, tv viewing habits, social behavior, and identification and their coefficients with negative reaction and violent reaction in times of anger explanatory variables negative reaction in anger violent physical reaction in anger at-risk child 0.25 * 0.11 solitary viewing 0.29 ** 0.43 *** interactive viewing with friends 0.23 * 0.26 * viewing with friends 0.15 0.05 identification with the character’s negative behaviors 0.51 *** 0.42 *** positive identification with the character 0.53 *** 0.38 *** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. the findings presented in table 3 reveal significant positive relationships between three variables — solitary viewing, interactive viewing with friends, and positive identification with the character — and negative reaction and violent reaction. conversely, viewing with friends is not related to a negative reaction or a violent one. the participant’s at-risk status is related only to negative reactions and not to violent ones. path analysis model for television viewing problems by the participant’s at-risk status the path analysis model was designed to help us understand how viewing habits lead to identification with the tv characters and how negative or positive identification leads to negative and violent reactions in times of anger, with these relationships examined among both at-risk and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 56 normative participants. to examine the research assumptions through a full set of equations, we developed a model using path analysis based on the measures presented and examined above. figure 1. path ansalysis model to describe predictive relationships among the measures studied. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. the findings according to the model at-risk participants had higher positive identification with the character than their normative counterparts (β = 0.25, p < .01). in times of anger, the at-risk participants experienced greater negative reactions and violent physical reactions (β = 0.23, p < .01 and β = 0.17, p < .01, respectively). these results are direct, and independent of the number of hours of tv viewing or viewing habits (solitary or with friends). it was also found that at-risk participants had greater positive identification with the character than did their normative counterparts; however, identification with the character’s negative behaviors was not found to be explained based on the participant being at risk or not. in times of anger, at-risk participants had more negative reactions and more violent physical reactions than did normative participants. a relationship was found between negative reactions and violent physical ones (r = .59, p < .001). the amount of tv viewing directly explained identification with the negative behaviors of tv characters (β = 0.27, p < .05) as well as explaining violent physical reactions in anger (β = risk tv viewing interactive viewing with friends solitary viewing identification with the character’s negative behaviors positive identification with the character negative reaction in anger violent physical reaction in anger .23** .17** .27* .38*** .55*** .17* .28** r2=.12 r 2 =.45*** r 2 =.39*** r 2 =.33*** international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 57 0.20, p < .05). in other words, the more a participant watched tv, the higher the direct identification with the character’s negative behaviors and the more there was a violent physical reaction to anger. the amount of tv viewing did not explain positive identification with the character. it is thus not possible to predict the mediating variables solitary viewing, interactive viewing, and overall viewing based on a participant’s belonging to the at-risk group or to the normative one. the mediating variables must be regarded independently of which group the viewer is in. the predictive level of a violent physical reaction in anger is higher with solitary viewing (β = .27, p < .05), followed by overall viewing (β = .20, p < .05), and finally, interactive viewing (β = .17, p < .05), which was a moderate mediating predictor. the normative group followed the same patterns but the intensity of the reactions was different. solitary viewing and interactive viewing with friends explained positive identification with the character (β = 0.37, p < .001 and β = 0.18, p < .05, respectively), although solitary viewing better explained identification with the character than did viewing with friends. in addition, solitary viewing and interactive viewing with friends had similar positive effects on violent physical reactions in anger (β = 0.27, p < .05 and β = 0.17, p < .05, respectively). again, violent physical reactions in anger were better explained among solitary viewers than among those viewing with friends and interacting with them. it was further found that the level of negative reaction in anger was explained by an increase in the level of identification with the character’s negative behavior (β = 0.38, p < .001) and to a lesser degree by positive identification with the character (β = 0.24, p < .05). positive identification with the character and identification with the character’s negative behaviors generated a negative reaction in anger. conversely, a true violent physical reaction was explained only by identification with the character’s negative behaviors; the intensity of the participant’s negative reaction was therefore explained by this identification and not by overall positive identification with the character. analysis of indirect effects in addition to the direct relationship presented above in the path analysis model, we wanted to demonstrate that identification with the character is a variable mediating between the viewing amount and viewing habits (solitary or with friends) and negative and violent reactions. to do so, we estimated indirect relationships as part of the path analysis. viewing and violent reactions were found to be significantly and positively related, yet a mediating relationship was found through identification with the character’s negative behavior (ind = 0.07, p = .05), so that this relationship is only partial. in addition, a full mediating relationship was found between viewing with friends and negative reaction in anger through positive identification with the character (ind = 0.09, p = .05). when the amount of viewing with friends increased, identification with the character increased as did the negative reaction in anger. similarly, there was a mediating relationship between the amount of viewing and negative reaction in anger through identification with the character’s negative behaviors. the direct relationship international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 58 between the amount of viewing and the negative response was not found to be significant, but in the presence of the negative identification this relationship was found to be significant (ind = 0.10, p = .03). in other words, increased tv viewing strengthened the predictive relationship between identification with the character’s negative behaviors and a negative reaction: when the amount of viewing increased so did identification with negative behaviors and negative reactions. this was a fully mediating relationship, because no significant direct relationship was found between the amount of viewing and a negative reaction. if it were to occur, a negative reaction to viewing would be identification with the character’s negative behaviors. identification with the character is thus a variable that mediates between the amount of viewing and the viewing habits (solitary or with friends) and negative and violent reactions. however, while the negative reaction can be reached directly, too — in accordance with the amount of viewing — a violent reaction would only take place through the mediation of the identification variable that acts as a catalyst to the violent reaction. discussion this study was an examination of the relationship between viewing habits and identification with tv characters, and the relationship between negative or positive identification and negative and violent reactions in times of anger. these relationships were examined among at-risk participants and normative ones. the findings revealed relationships between tv viewing habits and the degree of identification with the characters, and between whether or not the child was at risk (comparing at-risk participants to normative ones) and amount of viewing tv and reactions to the viewing. a path analysis model, constructed for tv viewing patterns by whether the participant was at risk, was designed to explain how viewing habits relate to identification with the characters on screen and how negative or positive identification relates to negative reactions of anger and violence among at-risk participants compared to normative participants. tv viewing and reactions to viewing: comparing at-risk and normative participants statistically significant differences were found in all measures of tv viewing habits regarding the participants’ propensity to aggression. at-risk participants reacted with greater levels of anger than did normative ones, and had a greater tendency to react violently in anger. this violent reaction increased with the amount of tv viewing and with identification with the character’s negative behaviors. the findings reveal that among at-risk viewers, violent physical reaction was related to lower socioeconomic status, amount of viewing, and negative identification with the character. conversely, among normative participants, a better socioeconomic situation was associated with lower negative reaction, suggesting that such viewers have a greater tendency to manage anger. this finding was supported by johnson, cohen, smailes, kasen, and brook (2002), who found a stronger relationship between a low socioeconomic status and more intense anger than among normative participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 59 reactions to viewing: differences between at-risk and normative participants the findings revealed that at-risk participants had more negative reactions in times of anger, and more physically violent reactions in anger than did their normative counterparts. the amount of viewing directly explains identification with a tv character’s negative behaviors and also directly explains violent physical reactions in anger. in other words, the more one watches tv, the greater the direct identification with the character’s negative behaviors and the greater the chance of a violent physical reaction in anger. this is consistent with livingstone and das’ (2010a, 2010b) findings on the relationship between a greater amount of viewing and stronger identification with the on-screen characters. the relationship between amount of viewing and negative and violent behaviors was also shown by hough and erwin (2010). bandura’s (1971, 1986) cognitive-social learning theory can be used to explain the finding regarding the relationship between amount of viewing and identification with a tv character’s negative behavior: when children and adolescents watch their favorite tv programs, the characters become “part of their lives”. they love their favorite characters, identifying with them and with their motives and behaviors, and hate the characters that “annoy” their favorite characters. they feel a need to watch the program and meet the characters again and again to create a para-social interaction (a one-sided relationship) with the characters. even when a favorite character behaves inappropriately and others condemn this behavior, these viewers defend the character, justify it, and explain the reasons for the behavior and the chain of events that led up to it. bandura’s model includes cognitive components that affect social learning: in order to learn a new behavior, the viewer must pay attention to the role model, retain the expected behavior, and retrieve this information to be able to act upon it. therefore, viewers’ cognitive skills will affect their ability to learn new behaviors through social learning. accordingly, the way tv role models are presented is important. violent characters, presented in a positive and prominent way, get the viewer’s focused attention, which in turn increases the chance that the behavior seen on screen will be imitated in life. bandura (1971, 1986) also demonstrated that children and adolescents can see a behavior and then imitate it from memory at a later date, so that even if copying the behavior is not immediately evident after the exposure to violence, the behavior could be stored in the viewer’s memory and be manifested under other circumstances. wilson’s (2011) findings are similar to bandura’s. morgan and shanahan (2010) found that worldviews presented on tv entrench viewers’ fears. therefore, children and adolescents who watch tv frequently, and who are exposed to levels of violence onscreen greater than in their own lives, may develop the view that the world is a dangerous and violent place. a violent physical reaction in times of anger occurred more among solitary viewers than among those viewing in interaction with friends. it was also found that the level of negative behavior in anger was explained by the increase in level of identification with the character’s negative behavior, and also, to a somewhat lesser degree, by positive identification with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 60 character. both positive identification with the character and identification with the character’s negative behaviors yielded a negative reaction of anger. however, a true violent physical reaction was only explained by identification with the character’s negative behaviors. in other words, the intensity of the participant’s negative behavior was explained by identification with the character’s negative behaviors and not by an overall positive identification with the character. similar relationships between viewing habits and negative reactions of anger and violence were found by johnson et al. (2002) and watkins (2009). path analysis model for television viewing problems by whether a child is at risk as part of the path analysis we estimated indirect relationships, in addition to the direct relationships presented in the path analysis model. identification with the character’s negative behavior mediated the relationship between viewing and violent reaction, positive identification with the character mediated between viewing with friends and negative reaction in anger, and character’s negative behaviors mediated between the amount of tv viewing and a negative reaction in anger. haridakis and rubin (2009) reported similar findings of direct and indirect relationships between the amount of viewing and negative and violent reactions. conners-burrow et al. (2011) found that watching inappropriate and violent content generated negative behaviors and even a violent reaction. johnson et al. (2002) found that children and adolescents identify with the characters and are influenced by the characters’ behavior. conclusion despite the study’s limitations — the small sample size and the wide age range of the participants — important findings emerged. we found that at-risk participants react with more intense anger than do normative participants, and tend to react violently when angry, when their amount of tv viewing increases, and when they identify with a character’s negative behaviors. we learned that children and adolescents watch tv programs because these programs answer various needs, some of which are not met in any other way. on the one hand, watching tv broadens children’s horizons, and enables them to see various models of self-development. on the other hand, children feel that their immediate environment does not provide them with sufficient information on managing in the world, and these feelings are intensified by watching some types of programs. at-risk children and adolescents tend to choose programs that show violent behaviors, perhaps from a need to learn how to protect themselves or how to hurt others; when children identify with a character’s negative behaviors in such programs, it could lead to violent reactions. the question is how can limits be placed on the amount of children and adolescents’ viewing while avoiding arguments and punishment? an analysis of these findings in accordance with the ugt (leung, 2013; mcquail, 2010; west &turner, 2007), which regards the viewer as a consumer whose choice of tv program is motivated by his or her needs, indicates that perhaps others in the young viewers’ environment, such as parents, could help them to find other ways to meet these needs. however, to do so, parents would first have to identify the needs and then find suitable alternatives. if this could be accomplished, it would eliminate many hours of tv viewing, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 61 and avoid the conflict and punishment often associated with reducing tv viewing. in order to identify the needs and find an appropriate answer, a dialogue must be carried out with the children and adolescents. they must be listened to, allowed to choose, and be given positive reinforcement and encouragement. the dialogue must be existential, of the type that explains to the children and adolescents that those around them are aware of their problems and needs, and regard these needs with empathy and respect. the key to success is finding a solution that will be formulated with the children and adolescents’ full cooperation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 47–67 62 references abelman, r., & pettey, g. r. 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(2017b). the elements way: empowering parents, educators, and mentors in the age of new media. issues in informing science and information technology,14, 101–119. doi:10.28945/3702 http://dx.doi.org/10.26634/jet.14.3.13855 http://dx.doi.org/10.28945/3702 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019719 on whose authority? a collaborative self-study into service-user involvement and simulation-based learning in child and youth care education jasmine ali, kerry boileau, miranda haskett, shani kipang, denysha marksman-phillpotts, and wolfgang vachon abstract: this study offers a preliminary investigation into a simulation-based, service-user-involved teaching model within a post-secondary child and youth care program. using the method of collaborative self-study, this research draws on the diverse perspectives of six co-researchers, documenting our experience of this model through the lenses of student, professor, youth trainer, and facilitator. this study uses praxis (the cycle of action and reflection) and dialogic learning (learning through dialogue) to unpack personal and professional questions of expertise, participation, professional development, and anti-oppressive practice. keywords: child and youth care, youth work, simulation-based learning, experiential learning, consumer involvement, user-involvement, expert by experience shani kipang (corresponding author): faculty of social and community services , humber college, 3170 lake shore blvd. w., toronto, on m8v 3x8. email: shani.kipang@humber.ca note: given the objectives of their research, the authors of this article have chosen not to include the customary biographies or to position their research in relation to their institutional affiliations or status. the reasons for this choice are further explored in the article itself. about:blank mailto:shani.kipang@humber.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 193 traditionally, processes of knowledge production in child and youth care and social service education — including research, teaching, training, and curriculum development — have been led, almost exclusively, by those considered to hold appropriate academic and professional qualifications. however, as frameworks of critical pedagogy have broadened, models of inclusion and participation now extend beyond traditional boundaries of academic and practitioner stakeholders. particularly outside of north america, there are well-established movements towards forms of service-user involvement — direct participation of current or former service users in social service classroom-based training, assessment, and curriculum development (duffy et al., 2017). this trend has also intersected with growing interest in simulation-based learning — an experiential learning approach involving students in enactments of “real-world” professional scenarios (bogo et al., 2014; logie et al., 2013). within social work and social service education the most institutionalized use of simulation-based learning has involved standardized actors and scenarios developed by faculty and practitioner partners (bogo et al., 2014). however, recent models have added new possibilities to this field. one such model is the toronto-based program, acting out (liang et al., 2016; vachon, 2011). this collaborative project has been maintained through a partnership between a post-secondary child and youth care program and a local arts-based community organization for marginalized and streetinvolved youth. using popular-education and popular-theatre frameworks, acting out draws upon the expertise of “specialized youth trainers” (hereafter referred to as “trainers”) — young people with current or previous direct experience as service users within youth social service systems including child welfare, shelters, group homes, and youth justice. with the support of a front-line youth worker acting as facilitator, these “system-wise” youth are trained to deliver pre-service and in-service workshops. workshop scenarios are based on trainers’ experiences of social services and developed using techniques drawn from playback theatre, improvisation, and storytelling. based on identified knowledge gaps in our field, the purpose of this study was to conduct preliminary research into a simulation-based, service-user-involved model within child and youth care education. using the method of collaborative self-study (louie et al., 2003), our goal was to draw on the perspectives of six co-researchers, who had each had direct experience in acting out either as youth trainer, facilitator, child and youth care student, or professor. through these diverse voices and experiences, this paper explores the strengths and challenges faced by a unique model of child and youth care education, one of service-user involvement. background whose knowledge counts? the role of service users in child and youth care education while the framework of user-involvement has received relatively little interest in north america, it has been the focus of widespread attention in other regions, particularly the united kingdom and eastern europe (duffy et al., 2017; robinson & webber, 2013; schön, 2016). within the united international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 194 kingdom, service-user involvement is not only an accepted mainstream component of the classroom experience but is legislated into the accreditation process of social work programs (robinson & webber, 2013; schön, 2016). models of service-user involvement have taken various forms. these include more traditional roles, such as guest speakers who discuss personal testimonies and experiences (agnew & duffy, 2010), but also extends as far as participation in admissions processes (schön, 2016), facilitating or co-facilitating student workshops or training (brkić & jugović, 2009), development of curriculum (irvine et al., 2015; robinson & webber, 2013; schön, 2016), and even student assessment (duffy et al., 2013; skoura-kirk et al., 2013). across models and approaches, studies suggest that students generally have positive perceptions of service-user participation within their educational processes, including positive perceptions of learning experiences and opportunities (anghel & ramon, 2009; moss, 2000; skilton, 2011); perceptions of increased practical knowledge (agnew & duffy, 2010; mackay et al., 2009); increase in student confidence, with self-perceptions of increased skill and self-awareness (matka et al,, 2010); and perceptions of increased empathy towards the experiences and challenges of service users (anghel & ramon, 2009). data on the experiences of service users also suggest largely constructive experiences, including an increase in confidence and practical skills (matka et al., 2010) and feelings of being respected, valued, and contributing meaningfully to students’ education (general social care council, 2005; moss, 2000). though more limited, data from social work lecturers suggest they attribute value to service users’ participation in student training (anghel & ramon, 2009) and perceive a user-involvement model to incorporate a beneficial “reality check” (matka et al., 2010). learning by doing: the case for simulation-based learning following professional fields such as nursing, medicine, and psychology, a growing number of social work and child and youth educators have explored simulated learning as a tool for more integrated learning (bogo et al., 2012; nimmagadda & murphy, 2014; wehbi, 2011). as gaba (2007) described, simulation can be used “to replace or amplify real experiences with guided experiences, often immersive in nature, that evoke or replicate substantial aspects of the real world in a fully safe, instructive, and interactive fashion” (p. 126). within social service education, the use of role-play and other non-standardized simulation approaches have been historically popular, with their evidence base increasing in recent years. in studying the use of applied theatre approaches in teaching child and family practice skills, leonard and colleagues (2016) found that exposing students to case scenarios drawn verbatim from sexual abuse survivors’ testimonies had encouraging results in student self-reported perceptions of emotional skills development; students felt they had increased capacity for reflection and selfefficacy. in other reflective accounts, social work educators employing large-group simulations described positive feedback from students (moss, 2000; wehbi, 2011), encouraging responses indicating integration of the activity’s lessons outside of the classroom (wehbi, 2011), and perceptions from practice teachers of increased confidence (moss, 2000). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 195 in north america, simulation-based learning has taken a central seat in social work education through the development of the objective structured clinical evaluation (osce), a standardized tool that uses trained actors for simulation-based assessment of student competencies (bogo et al., 2012). in this model, social work interventions are simulated through a standardized (script-based) approach, using scenarios developed by educators or in collaboration with practitioners in the field (logie et al., 2013). this paper focuses on simulation-based learning, which uses actors (including current or former “service users”) to enact situations that learners then engage with; we see it as distinct from role-play, in which students perform the role of the “other” or “client”. the acting out model fusing the goals of simulation-based learning with the philosophy of popular education and critical youth work, the toronto-based program acting out (liang et al., 2016; vachon, 2011) offers a unique pathway for experiential child and youth care education. building on the health care model of “patient-trainers” — the use of actual patients in medical classroom simulations (bokken et al., 2009) — the goal of this model is to expand the learning outcomes of child and youth care education by drawing on the experiential knowledge and expertise of system-involved young people. the acting out model draws on applied theatre frameworks (duffy & vettraino, 2010; kilker, 1980; prendergast & saxton, 2016), building on concepts of dialogic learning (learning through dialogue) and praxis (the learning cycle of action and reflection). acting out is based on the expertise of specialized youth trainers — young people with direct social service involvement who are trained in improvisation, theatre techniques, and feedback processes. potential trainers are contacted through various means, including physical outreach, recruitment flyers, professional networks, and personal networks among young people. all candidates need to have experience in child welfare, youth justice, immigration and refugee systems, residential care, mental health systems, or related youth-service sectors; they must also be willing to discuss to some extent what their time in these systems was like. following these initial steps, group and individual auditions are held. these include improvisation activities, theatre games, scenarios from workshops, and conversations. trainers and facilitators then make collective decisions on which candidates are best suited to fill trainer roles. in contrast to standardized models of simulation-based learning — in which scenarios are generally developed by educators in collaboration with practitioners — scenarios in the acting out model are developed collaboratively among trainers and facilitators based on amalgamated personal experiences. when acting out visits college classrooms and social service, child welfare, and related agencies, current and future practitioners engage in simulations and receive feedback directly from trainers, peers, and facilitators (liang et al., 2016; vachon, 2011). as part of this structure, a consistent relationship has been maintained with a local public post-secondary institution. two of the authors are faculty in this institution; one of these was also an acting out facilitator and instrumental in bringing the program into classes. through this relationship, a series of acting out workshops was built into the first-year curriculum of a diploma course. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 196 while research on this model is limited, initial reports suggest strong potential. for example, based on 189 student feedback forms and anecdotal reporting, vachon (2011) reported that while many students found the scenarios and feedback process to be challenging and “intense” (p. 26), the results in terms of student’s self-perception of value (4.9/5, p. 25) and effectiveness of learning format (4.7/5, p. 25) were extremely high, with unanimously positive results in favour of continuing the program for future semesters. our research project this study is a collaborative project, based on the self-reflective research of the six co-authors. this paper documents the first-cycle findings of our ongoing action-research project, which has two central goals: 1. to draw on diverse perspectives in exploring the opportunities and challenges facing a service-user-involved, simulation-based learning model within child and youth care education. 2. to explore how the process of collaborative research and co-authorship can be used to inform broader questions around participation, power, and knowledge production in child and youth care education. through reflexive research on the acting out model, the current paper addresses our first research question. while not the focus of this paper, it is relevant to note that the next cycle of this action-research project will address our second “process-based” research question. by analysing our group’s own collaborative research process (through meeting transcripts, analysis of personal reflections, and multidirectional interviewing) our hope is to gain new learnings about the ways in which power and participation function as part of the knowledge-creation and co-authorship process. researchers this project was initiated as part of a phd thesis. the founding member of our research group (a child and youth care professor and phd student) was interested in the process of knowledge production in child and youth care education, and particularly in the impact of models such as acting out. with the goal of exploring these questions collaboratively, our research group was formed through informal recruitment and networking. as collaborators, none of us has received financial compensation for our participation in this project. we have come together through our own interest in participating in the larger conversations and academic discourse impacting our field — conversations which most of us were unlikely to be invited into. each member of our six person research group has had direct involvement with the acting out program. as outlined in table 1, several of us have held multiple roles within or in relation to the program, and therefore have more than one position from which to analyse it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 197 table 1. researcher experience researcher acting out trainer acting out facilitator cyc student* cyc professor 1 x x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x x *student at time of acting out program, now graduated. methods collaborative self-study this research project was completed using methods of collaborative self-study. though almost every member of our group was unfamiliar with this methodology, we found it gave our group the tools we needed to gain useful insights from data we already had available — our own diverse experiences as educators and learners in child and youth care classrooms. collaborative self-study has become a popular research tool for teacher-educators but is minimally used outside the field of education. as bullough and pinnegar (2001) proposed, this methodology represents a trend away from “assumptions about legitimate knowledge and knowledge production” moving instead toward “broadening what counts as research” (p. 13). to this end, selfstudy borrows from research traditions such as narrative inquiry and action research, employing methods such as journalling, autobiography, peer-interviewing, and observation (bullough & pinnegar, 2001; fletcher & casey, 2014). acknowledging the benefits of peer interaction to the reflective process, the methods are most often engaged in collaboratively (louie et al., 2003). here, critical peer input is seen as a means to “provoke, challenge, and illuminate rather than confirm and settle” (bullough & pinnegar, 2001, p. 20). collaborators are selected based on their ability to provide diverse perspectives, preventing the researcher from becoming too “committed to a single interpretation, and thus open to ‘the dangers of narcissism …’ (connelly & clandinin, 1990, p. 10).” (louie et al., 2003, p. 161). while collaborative self-study has gained popularity as a form of scholarship grounded in realworld issues and questions, it has also been critiqued. within traditional academia, the most obvious criticisms surround the premises of “rigour” and “validity”. as bullough and pinnegar (2001) described, researchers face the difficulty of “representing, presenting, legitimating, analyzing, and reporting one’s own experience as data — and of doing so in honest, not self-serving, ways” (p.15). this connects, as the authors further cautioned, to the sometimes slippery slope between autobiographical narrative and the romantic “hero story” (p. 18). as a form of self-study, such selfinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 198 confirming autobiographical accounts offer little by way of new learnings or questions, as they fail to dive deeply into the complex challenges and flaws of our practice and teaching models. in contrast, self-study researchers are encouraged to embrace the intricacies of their practice and to tackle difficult questions, even though they may not be able to answer them. this more realistic and complete self-study creates new knowledge and learnings not only from our successes, but also from the “borders, limits, defects, and disabilities” of our practice (lopate, 1995 in bullough & pinnegar, 2001 p. 19). while collaborative self-study research is usually conducted by groups of professors, for our own project we felt our questions could best be answered by increasing the diversity of perspectives and “interpretations” (louie et al., 2003) included. thus, our group is made up not only of professors and educators (facilitators, and system-wise trainers) but also those who can speak to the impact of these teaching methods as learners. we understand that data from any one of these groups could be attained through more conventional research methods. however, in keeping with the underlying goals of the collaborative self-study methodology to create “challenge and change” (coles & knowles, 1996), our hope in this project was to start a new conversation from the ground up — one that both includes, and is guided by, diverse voices. our project involved biweekly audio-recorded group sessions. within each session we explored a different question related to our experience of the acting out program. this generated discussion of key moments, memorable challenges, and successes. in several cases, and as discussed below in our findings, pivotal events or “moments” that were experienced by more than one member of the group were explored through multiple perspectives. in other cases, individual reflections were unpacked through multidirectional interviewing, with each member of the group having a chance to ask questions around points that interested us. transcripts of these meetings were then reviewed by the group over the course of two full-day sessions. through these sessions we identified our key themes and findings. composite narrative as a means of depicting data through stories, the composite narrative approach offers a way to explore the “embodied or contextual human qualities” (wertz et al., 2011, p.1) of research data. as wertz and colleagues (2011) described: this novel method is employed to re-present narrative data and findings from research through first-person accounts that blend the voices of the participants with those of the researcher, emphasizing the connectedness, the ‘‘we’’ among all participants, researchers, and listeners. these re-presentations allow readers to develop more embodied understandings of both the texture and structure of each of the phenomena and illustrate the use of the composite account as a way for researchers to better understand and convey the wholeness of the experience. (p.1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 199 for our unconventional research group, this approach offered a way to tell a story of our findings, in language outside of the traditional academic jargon that most of us find alienating, and at times inaccessible. through exploring the interaction between our experiences and the nuances within them, we thought that this framework was best suited to the unique objectives and structure of the current research project. our group has also operated from the assumption that arts in general, and theatre in particular, can provide means of engagement — including for research — that other mediums cannot (leavy, 2018; prendergast & saxton, 2016). this is not to prioritize simulation-based training over personal disclosure, or narrative over academic prose. however, given the roots of our group and the emphasis our research has placed on learning through dialogue, we decided it was most natural to present our findings in the form of a narrated script. using an active engagement process similar to the acting out program, we have translated the key themes and pivotal moments from our data into scripted scenes. as a group, we developed the context of and characters in each scene to reflect these themes. our next stage involved supported improvisation. using a version of “side coaching” (spolin, 1999) two or more members improvised the scene while others called out keywords, drawn from our key themes, to help guide its direction. the recordings of these improvisations were then transcribed and developed into what became our final script. the scenes of this script have been divided according to themes. each scene is presented in the findings section, accompanied by discussion. a note on power the approach of this research project has been largely framed by foucault’s (1978; mills, 1997) concept of “regimes of truth” — what knowledge is worth knowing within a given system, and who is given the power to decide that. we believe this question has important implications for models like acting out, and for the larger work and pedagogy of child and youth care. considering this, we have been interested in using our own process as a way of exploring these questions, and in particular the nuanced ways in which power can impact and shape processes of knowledge production. given our research interests, ensuring diversity of social locations was a central factor in forming our group. each member of our group could speak not only to different experiences of the acting out program, but also different intersections of marginalization and power — those connected to age, race, sexuality, gender, educational and employment status, and so on. furthermore, though in our current capacities we have come together as colleagues, most of the previous relationships which originally brought us into each other’s lives have been shaped by our power imbalances (youth– youth worker, professor–student, facilitator–trainer). given these power dynamics, we were aware of the increased ethical risks of our chosen methods. individually and as a group, we have considered what we were willing to share in this process, and what we were not. as a way to give space to our individual voices and experiences, we have included in our discussion sections direct excerpts from our group dialogue. in doing so, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 200 however, we have decided not to identify ourselves by name, but simply by the role, or perspective, from which we are sharing (trainer, student, professor, etc.). in attempting to carve space for our experiences within an academic platform, we have also had to make difficult decisions about the overall language, structure, and content of our paper. we are well aware of the risks we have taken. we understand that in speaking to certain audiences we will probably lose others. we also understand that in attempting to speak as a collective “we”, we have largely lost our own unique, natural voices (willis, 2018) and have allowed those with certain forms of power (e.g., fluency in the language of academia) to largely shape our narrative. we have, in some ways, attempted to address this risk: in addition to incorporating our individual voices through direct excerpts, we have tried to find a balance in our “collective” voice between academic jargon and language that is clear and accessible. we have pushed to present our findings in a creative structure that feels connected and meaningful to us. moreover, we have chosen not to categorize and divide ourselves according to our “rank” and institutional affiliations, understanding that without doing so, our contributions may appear less weighty to some. aside from these somewhat small efforts at resistance, we remain aware of the contradictions in our approach. we assumed that this process would be messy and problematic. however, our goal is not just to acknowledge the inevitable power dynamics and challenges of this group process. ultimately, through the second cycle of our research, we are interested in unpacking and examining them in the hope of arriving at new learnings. findings scene 1 two child and youth care students look for seats in a crowded classroom. zahra looks towards the back of the room, but dani pulls her to a seat in the second row. as another student, vanessa, takes a seat next to them, the students notice a group of unfamiliar guests enter the room. two of them look younger even than the students and seem out of place at the front of the classroom. one is over 6 feet tall with long pink and purple hair and a pierced septum. another wears slacks and has locs covered by a baseball cap. vanessa: you see those guys that just came in? those are the youth trainers from the acting out program. they’re gonna do, like, role-plays with us or something. zahra: shoot, is that today? crap. dani: what? are you nervous to go up? zahra: obviously. dani: seriously — why? zahra: i don’t know. i just don’t want to. what if i say something dumb? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 201 dani: honestly, so what? isn’t that the point of going to school?? isn’t it better to make a mistake here than when it’s your actual job? zahra: yeah, but it’s different. when you’re actually doing it you don’t have an audience. dani: honestly, i don’t really care if i mess up in front of you guys. i’d rather do it now than later. zahra: (pauses) ok … but, whatever, it doesn’t really make it any easier … vanessa: honestly i’m not even nervous i just don’t really get the point. i didn’t sign up for drama class. and i heard we each had to pay $30 for the semester to pay these guys. dani: yeah, so? vanessa: i just don’t really get that … i mean, i get the idea of paying for other trainings or even when we have guest speakers who are already working in the field, like when the woman came from children’s aid. but why are we paying money for kids to teach us? dani: are you serious? vanessa: yeah, i am. zahra: wow… vanessa: what? dani: how do you think you’re gonna be good at your job if you don’t listen to the youth you’re working with? vanessa: whatever. obviously i listen to them. but this is different. this is school. and i’m paying to learn. as dani begins to respond, the students see their professor enter the classroom and approach the guests. he stops and smiles warmly, shaking hands with one of the guests, whom the students presume is the facilitator. he talks for several minutes to the same guest, then continues to his podium without greeting the other two. discussion addressing performance anxiety as a model of learning, some of us have experienced challenges with simulation-based learning. from a student’s perspective: [all i could think was] oh my god, i don’t know what to say … panic, panic, panic … but also because everyone is looking at me. i know everyone in the class is having judgments … i know the teachers are having judgments. i know, probably the youth that were doing the scenarios were judging me, because that’s what they were there for … to give criticisms and, and to give positive feedback and that kind of thing. so international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 202 i knew they were judging me. and that stressed me out so much to the point where i couldn’t even get to the point of being like, well, if this was a real scenario, what would i do? (group session transcript, april 10, 2019) hearing about performance anxiety from students opened up many avenues in our conversation.we discussed the benefit of exploring different options for student participation. for example, while participation in acting out workshops has often been mandatory (all students in the class must participate in at least one simulation), an approach that has been recently explored is making particpation optional but attaching an incentive (e.g., 2% extra credit). as this option addresses the challenge for students who experience debilitating performance anxiety, we agreed that this is a structure that would be worth exploring further. however, some of us in the group felt that the performance anxiety experienced in classroom simulations could be considered important preparation for the situations often experienced in the field when child and youth care practitioners have to make quick decisions or respond in front of an “audience” such as youth, colleagues, or the public. this reality was seen in the reflections of one of the graduates in describing their experiences as a practitioner since leaving the program: we’re always the new guy, and we’re always in really tough situations … like, the kid i’m with now … my whole first week i was with him he would stand in the hallway and try to escape and scream and cry at the top of his lungs. and people would come out of classrooms and are staring at me, like, do you need help? are you ok? and my ears are hot and sweaty and i have no idea what to do with this kid who’s screaming. and i’m panicking because i know they’re all watching me.… so it’s the same idea right? standing or sitting in front of your whole classroom of people, and they’re all watching you as you’re sweating and panicking. (group session transcript, april 10, 2019) as we know, high-pressure situations are an inevitable part of our work. though little research has been done on performance anxiety among child and youth care practitioners, findings from other social service fields suggest that this is an important area for attention. for example, in studying the impact of anxiety on social work students, baird (2016) suggested that “the concept of performance is important to consider to understand how social work students learn to perform as social workers and attend to the needs of individuals and communities, when impacted by anxiety” (p. 723). we also know that serious risks can exist when this pressure is not well handled in the field, including unnecessary escalations that too often lead to the criminalization of young people (doucet & pratt, 2018; turpel-lafond & kendall, 2009). from this perspective, several members of our group felt that sheltering students from this high-pressure situation in the classroom may remove an important learning opportunity that is generally not provided outside of fieldwork. a point on which there was agreement in the group was that more could be done to support students through this anxiety and provide strategies that could be transferred into the field. echoing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 203 other researchers (baird, 2016; mcgarrigle & walsh, 2011), we believe it would be useful to explore additional course content, such as guest workshops, class activities, and curriculum, that are focused on mindfulness and tools for processing anxiety and stress in high-pressure environments. the devaluing of service-user voices one of the most discouraging outcomes of this research is how much commonality we saw in how service users’ voices are minimized in multiple youth-serving and educational sectors. such minimizing is done by students, professors, administrators, and practitioners. while these findings are not new (see humphreys, 2005; robinson &webber, 2013; schön, 2016), it was illuminating for us to compare our experiences of the ways in which “knowledge” and “experience” in our field continue to be organized along hierarchies of power. this occurs even in institutions and among practitioners that claim strong anti-oppressive and youth-centred philosophies of practice. in these cases, we have learned how large the gap can be between the rhetoric of an organization and the real, demonstrated ways in which young people’s and service users’ contributions are valued. this was conveyed by a former youth trainer in our group, who described their experience of transitioning into a facilitator’s role, and working with certain professors who could not accept this shift in power: she would constantly undermine me, talk over me. i eventually refused to work in her class.… it was too painful to constantly be stepped on by this supposed “ally” in front of the class, who didn’t believe that a young person could facilitate a class. (notes from group conversation, january 27, 2020) this bias against a service-user-involved teaching model was seen not only in classrooms, but also in the field. as a facilitator shared: when we first started and right to the end, we had people say, “we’re not gonna hire young people to train our staff, right? like, why would we do that?” and, “we’re not gonna hire people who might be clients of ours.” (group session transcript, february 27, 2019) as came up often in our group discussions, this resistance to seeing young people and service users as “educators” has had a direct impact on the sustainability of the acting out model and the ability to secure fair compensation for trainers. as shared by a former trainer, in describing the process of negotiating fair contracts with agencies and educational partners: it’s like, no one’s saying we’re not doing good work. no one’s saying that what we’re doing isn’t effective. no one’s saying i don’t see the point in this. everybody sees the point. just nobody wants to pay us for it. or believes we deserve to be paid. (group session transcript, march 13th, 2019) these findings have important implications for service-user-involved teaching models. as researchers brown and young (2008) have suggested, the effectiveness of these models is dependent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 204 on sustainable, equitable, funding structures. but these, in turn, would require a reappraisal of who, and what form of knowledge is “valuable” enough to be compensated. scene 2 the professor walks to the front of the room and introduces the group to the guests: sam is the facilitator. she wears ripped jeans and has tattoos covering both arms. cris, the one with the pink hair and pierced septum, is introduced as a trainer. jamal, with the baseball cap, is the second trainer. sam introduces the acting out model to the students. she explains that each scene is a compilation of real experiences, created by the young people who experienced them. the trainers will begin by acting out an “anti-model” — a scene during which the worker utilizes oppressive, dismissive, and ineffective approaches. after the anti-model, students will have an opportunity to critique the scene and discuss alternative strategies, which can then be enacted by a student doing a second take on the same scene. the first scene is introduced to the students: a resident of a group home (played by jamal) sits at a table across from their child and youth care practitioner (cycp; played by cris). the young person has lost privileges for missing curfew and will not be able to visit their mother on the weekend. the facilitator explains that the first run of the scene will be an example of the antimodel. sam invites the students to watch the scene, consider what is oppressive, dismissive, and ineffective, and think about how they might engage differently with jamal’s character. jamal [trainer, playing group home resident]: this is so fucked up. you know it wasn’t even my fault, i told you i missed the bus! cris [trainer, playing cycp]: hey, watch it. don’t talk to me like that. you need to calm down. jamal: like what? cris: you know what i’m talking about. don’t swear at me. i’m not going to talk to you if that’s how you’re going to talk. jamal: what the fuck … seriously?? who cares if i’m swearing? is that all you care about? i haven’t even talked to my mom in two weeks. do you even care? cris: look, of course i care. i wouldn’t be here if i didn’t. but you know there’s nothing i can do. it’s not my fault you missed curfew. and if you swear at me again you’re gonna need to leave this office. jamal: you guys are all the same. you don’t care [covers eyes with hands and sits silently, as if covering tears]. this is bullshit. cris: that’s it, you need to leave. we can talk about this when you’re ready to treat me with some respect. jamal: what? why? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 205 cris: you know why. for swearing at me. jamal: i didn’t swear. cris: you just did, you said “bull-s”. jamal: holy. even when i try it doesn’t matter. whatever. fuck this! the facilitator walks to the front of the room and announces: end scene. the facilitator then asks the group what they thought about the scene. how did the staff do? was there anything they thought was effective? anything that wasn’t effective? anything they would do differently? after hearing from the students, the facilitator then asks for a volunteer to replay the scene in the role of the group home staff. after a few seconds of anxious silence and friendly prodding from the facilitator, dani’s hand slowly raises. she walks to the front of the room and takes a seat across from jamal. as soon as she sits down, her heart starts to race. in her head, she knows that the scene she’s about to act out isn’t “real”, but it seems like her body doesn’t know. somehow, it does seem real. her heart still racing, she suddenly feels herself beginning to sweat. she looks nervously at the facilitator, who announces: scene. playing the role of the cycp, dani acts out the scene with jamal. she tries her best to convey empathy and attentiveness and use creative problem-solving to address the situation with the group home resident by arranging for them to use the staff phone to call their mother. when the scene is finished, the facilitator (sam) walks to the front of the room. she explains to the group that the next activity will involve a debrief of the scene. first, she asks dani, the student, what she thought went well. dani: (laughing nervously) honestly, i don’t even know! i was a little nervous so i don’t know if i did anything right! sam: (also laughing) well, i think you did a lot right! but i want to hear from you — what worked for you, what seemed to be effective? dani: well, i was trying really hard not to escalate the situation. i didn’t really think it was worth getting mad about the swearing considering why he was mad. if that was me, i know that would probably make me so frustrated if i was trying to open up to someone and they kept telling me to watch my language. and i wanted him to understand that i took him seriously and that i understood what he was going through … so … yeah … sam: ok, great. was there anything that you would change? dani: i don’t know. i wish i could have come up with a better solution or a way for him to see his mom. maybe i should have made an exception this time, since he hasn’t seen his mom in two weeks? i dunno. i just feel kind of bad that in the end i didn’t really fix the problem i just sort of offered a little tidbit to make it not quite so messed up. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 206 sam: hmm (nodding). ok, great. let’s hear from jamal. jamal, what do you think went well? jamal: honestly, i think you did great. i felt valuable and recognized when you looked me in the eyes the whole time you were talking to me. like, i appreciated how you weren’t looking at the clock or looking at the door like you needed to escape or something. that was really calming and i felt trust which encouraged me to open up to you more. and yeah, i also like that you didn’t bother addressing the swearing. oh, right (looks at sam, and smiles), right, “feeling words” … i felt … relieved when you didn’t address the swearing. since i wasn’t really swearing at you, i was more venting, i think you made the right choice by just ignoring it, at least in the moment, ’cuz that would have really put me over the top. i guess i felt heard, not just listened to. and i like that … um, i felt supported when you didn’t just cop out by saying there’s “nothing you can do” ’cuz usually there is something that a worker can do, even if it’s really small. and yeah … this isn’t really one of those situations that you can magically fix, and i think it’s good that you acknowledged that. unfortunately, a lot of the rules in group homes suck and are stupid but you can’t go around changing them every time someone gets screwed or else you’d probably get fired. there wasn’t really any way i was going to walk out of that room totally happy. but i like the idea you came up with for me to use the staff phone … it was a good mid-way. and that made me feel like you genuinely cared … um, i felt care … so yeah … that was really great. sam: ok, great! jamal, was there anything that you think dani could have done differently? jamal: well … one thing you said a lot of is, “i know how you feel” and “i understand”. i was kinda triggered by that. i started to feel angry, or maybe not quite angry, but like, annoyed. a lot of workers say that when they really have no idea how you feel. like, they’ve never lived in a group home or been a prisoner in their own home so i don’t like when they say that. you don’t need to know how i feel to care that i feel it. in the future i’d like you to find different words, and try not to make assumptions about how you think i feel, you know? dani: (nodding thoughtfully) yeah, absolutely. i guess i’ve never really thought about it that way before. but … now that i think about it, i did say that a lot, i don’t even know why … and yeah, that totally makes sense. jamal: and … i don’t think it was the best idea to promise me that there wouldn’t be a problem when i tried to use the staff phone. ’cuz i know how group homes work: even if you make a note for the other staff, people might still miss it. and then it’s me that’s gonna get in trouble if a staff person doesn’t believe me. so yeah … i think it’s good that you thought ahead to communicate with the other staff, but instead of promising me that there won’t be a problem i would suggest just telling me what to do if there is a problem. like, tell me where the note is or something, so i can tell the other staff where to find it if they don’t believe me. that would have made me feel better … um, safer … (pause) … yeah, i think that’s all … you did really good! sam: ok, great! thanks jamal (turns to class). are there any other thoughts about this scene? student in second row raises hand. sam smiles and nods to go ahead. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 207 student: i think she did well. you could tell she really cared and was trying to help. and she didn’t get mad or anything. like, i really didn’t like in the anti-model how the worker kept telling him to “calm down”. i know when whenever someone says that to me when i’m mad it basically makes me want to punch them in the face or something! sam (laughs and nods in agreement. after taking a few other student comments, she looks to the professor): anything you’d like to add? professor: no, i don’t think so. dani, you did a good job navigating this one. i really like how you made use of questions. that was one of the tools we talked about last week, it was great to see you using it. discussion the benefits of experiential learning consistent with the literature (bogo et al., 2012; nimmagadda & murphy, 2014; wehbi, 2011) our findings suggest that learning through simulations can help students connect with content in ways that other teaching methods cannot. student, trainer, and facilitator perspectives from our group described this in ways that were often visceral. for example, a facilitator described their experience in the workshops in the following way: i learned both from myself and other people that even when you know something’s a simulation, and you’ve walked into it, knowing “this is all fake” — your body doesn’t always know. and your body will have physical responses to this fake situation.… it feels very real, even when you know it’s gonna end in three minutes. (group session transcript, feb.27, 2019) based on our experiences and observations we have seen that experiential learning (learning by doing) is an effective way of learning and teaching. we also believe that this embodied connection, and the link between “textbook content” and “real-world practice” is an important learning strategy that could be used more in child and youth care and social service education. students in postsecondary classrooms spend much of their time sitting, listening, and engaging with textbooks. what we have seen as learners and educators is that approaches that provide opportunities to engage handson are an important and essential complement to the curriculum. as shared from a student perspective: i know, in the program, we went through many different things: we did powerpoints, we did textbooks, we did the acting out. and i think the acting out provoked the most thought for me, because it was so hands-on. i think if we had just had the teachers sit there and talk “at” us about the scenarios, then i wouldn’t have gone as deep into thought about it, as introspective as i did. so for me, that was one of the most important things. (group session transcript, feb. 27, 2019) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 208 elsewhere, we heard from a professor about their experience of seeing their first acting out workshop. in describing their emotional response to the scene — a young black girl being teased on the schoolyard for her natural hair, while the teacher looks on — they shared: and i think the moment was just so powerful, because it felt so real to me in a way that most of the curriculum doesn’t.… and so, seeing that moment played out in front of me and in front of the students, and giving them the chance to think about it and hear directly from those who can speak to the impact of those types of moments, and then having the chance to reflect and strategize before they encounter those scenarios in real life. it was just, i don’t know … i can’t describe it.… (group session transcript, feb. 27, 2019) the re-positioning of expertise we have discussed the resistance this program has faced in positioning young people and service users alongside other educators. however, our findings also suggested the often transformative impact of this positioning. through our various experiences with this model, we have seen ways in which the traditional hierarchies of knowledge and experience can be turned on their heads. through this model, system-involved young people take a role in the classroom not simply as guests to tell stories of their “bad lives” for the “edutainment” of students, but as paid educators with a specific skill set. the form of expertise they bring is positioned alongside other forms valued in our programs (including what is often referred to as “front-line” experience — as though doing child and youth care is akin to fighting war). in this way, young people’s contributions become more than just an interesting “add-on” or exploitation of their stories. we have heard the impact this re-positioning can have, both for learners and trainers. from a former trainer’s perspective: another big thing i learned was that i was smart enough and capable enough to go to post-secondary school. i never thought i could go to college, let alone university. i didn’t know anybody who had gone to college or university. it just wasn’t around me. i had never even stepped foot in one before. and it wasn’t until the first day we had the workshops and i walked into a college and i was just like, oh, that’s it? like, it was a huge, mystical space for me. but now i'm like — this? i can do this. i could sit there and learn these things. so it was really empowering, because it was like, i can do this. i am smart enough. i’m smart enough to stand here in front of them, so i’m definitely smart enough to sit there and learn from other folks. so that felt really good. (group session transcript; february 27, 2019) while our study has documented some of the struggles and bias that youth trainers in this model face, realizations such as those above demonstrated for us why these struggles are valuable. this is something most of us in the group have learned through our own unique experiences as educators and learners while trying to find a footing in homogeneous learning spaces, and coping with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 209 “imposter syndrome”, our voices seeming likely to be devalued and the legitimacy of our presence seeming to be continually in question. what we have also learned, however, is that the very act of occupying these spaces can in itself be a form of resistance. from our observations, the acting out model offers this potential for resistance by its very structure. in its ability to create opportunities for those who have traditionally been outsiders in these environments to carve space for themselves within them — and thus create an opportunity to revision themselves and their knowledge — we believe there is significant transformative potential. scene 3 the trainers come to their last simulation of the day, and sam introduces the scene: a young person, meeting with their school cycp, is questioning their sexual identity. after the anti-model is acted out — in which the cycp exhibits a clearly heteronormative approach, bordering on homophobic — sam solicits feedback from the students, then asks for a volunteer to play the scene a second time. vanessa volunteers, then walks to the front of the room and takes a seat across from cris. as cris (playing the role of the student) begins to share, vanessa responds confidently and seems intent to convey an attentive, helpful approach. at one point, cris tells vanessa that they are worried about how their father would react if they brought a girl home. they disclose that their father is sometimes so rigid in his beliefs that he “scares” them. in response, vanessa tells cris that “you should be proud of who you are”. “it’s 2019!” she says. “things have changed! you should never have to hide who you are!” when the scene finishes, vanessa is smiling. she tells the facilitator that she believes she did well and tried her best. then the facilitator asks for cris’s feedback. after providing some positive feedback on tone of voice and use of empathetic language, cris pauses. then, looking matter of factly at vanessa, they say, “i’m sorry, but you still have a lot to learn.” vanessa looks shocked and seems immediately on the verge of tears. sam, the facilitator, glances at the professor. this particular instructor has told sam in the past that he doesn’t like to see students “pushed too hard”. aware of the professor’s stern gaze and the emotional state of the student, sam makes eye contact with cris, as if to send a message that they should “take it easy”. cris continues with the feedback: “i think you need to think more about safety”, they tell the student. “i know you’re trying to be helpful, but you know, you could get a kid killed with what you said. not everyone has the luxury of being themselves all the time or having parents who accept them for who they are. trust me.” cris looks ready to continue the feedback, but sam can see that the professor is becoming upset. gesturing to cris, sam adds a few brief comments to wrap up the feedback process, then thanks the student. vanessa quickly returns to her seat, looking angry and flustered. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 210 after the workshop finishes, sam and the two trainers walk to a nearby coffee shop to debrief. sam jumps in: sam: so, what did you guys think of how it went today? cris: mmm … i think the first scene went really good. jamal: yeah, me too. sam: yeah i liked that one too. jamal, your whole “sandwich” feedback, and use of feeling words was awesome … (pauses) what did you guys think about the last scene? cris: ok, to be honest? … i thought you were way too easy on the girl who did that scene.… i just thought she was really unhelpful and patronizing. and there was no mention of safety. i just kind of felt like you gave her a pat on the head and told her she did a good job. but she didn’t … like, at all. sam: yeah, that was a tough one.… i agree, i really could have handled that better.… (pauses) you know this prof, right? he’s always worried about us upsetting his students.… i guess that was in my head and it made me drop the ball.… you know what i mean? cris: yeah. but seriously, i don’t think we’re here to make friends. it’s not our responsibility to make sure they don’t cry or feel bad. i mean, do you know how many workers have made me cry? jamal: and if they want to get paid to do this work shouldn’t they start learning now that doing it well is hard? sam: yeah, i hear you.… but we want them to learn too, right? i think it’s kind of like a balancing act … you know, challenging them but not pushing so hard that they shut down. jamal: yeah, i guess.… but i agree with cris. i still think we let that girl off way too easy. and what kind of message does that send? that it’s ok to put kids at risk as long as they mean well? sam: i agree. i’m sorry guys, i messed up on this one.… cris: it’s ok. i know, it happens.… sam: yeah.… (pauses thoughtfully) but ok … luckily we’re going back next week … what if we revisit the scene then? cris: yeah, i think we need to. but we could just do, like a good model. no anti-model. like, what we would have liked our ideal cycp to do. sam: that’s great. ok, let’s do that at rehearsal this week. think about our ideal response, and we’ll explore that. anything else? the group continues to debrief, talking about what worked, their feelings, areas for improvement, and how they will address these sorts of moments in the future. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 211 discussion learning from mistakes and dialogue one theme that was consistent in our discussions — and that we all agreed was one of the most important learnings from our self-study — was the role that mistakes and challenges play in our work. whether as students, instructors, trainers, or facilitators, each of us shared stories of times when we had messed up or encountered a situation in our work that we were not initially equipped to handle effectively. in some cases, we learned through our group dialogue of times we had messed up when doing acting out workshops or trainings. in one session, a former student shared their memory of a workshop that they did not feel was effectively facilitated. in this workshop — in which a trainer played a student questioning their sexual identity, and a classmate played the role of the school guidance counsellor — the student felt that their classmate was not sufficiently challenged on an approach which was felt to be patronizing and potentially dangerous (not acknowledging safety issues around disclosure, etc.). as they shared with our group: as a queer person, who was in school and looking for guidance … in my head, i was like, maybe this should have been explored a little differently. the feedback was like … yeah, maybe you could have done this … but you did good otherwise. i also found empathy for [the student], who was clearly terrified of the simulation. and so then i was like, ok, maybe nobody else is thinking about it in the way i was thinking about it … so i didn’t say anything. but i definitely thought it should have been addressed. that they should have been challenged more, in a sense. (group session transcript, march 27, 2019) reflections such as those above offered us meaningful opportunities to evaluate our practice and our roles in contributing to anti-oppressive learning spaces. this, in turn, connected to discussions around the impact of constructive dialogue in confronting limitations and mistakes. we found it interesting how often shame is associated with mistakes or lack of knowledge, even in learning spaces. as we have seen, students are often afraid to make mistakes in the classroom, or to ask questions, or to admit their own knowledge gaps or ignorance. as seen in the student experience shared above, this shame can also extend to the mistakes of others. in this way, publicly sharing a concern or highlighting the mistakes of someone else (a peer or an educator) is often seen as a form of “calling out” — that is, a way to challenge or undermine them. we believe this framing can create an environment in which critical, constructive dialogue can become seen as a form of combat. it can also minimize the perspectives and observations students are willing to share, for fear of being seen as “disruptive”. in this way, many students learn to hand over control of their learning to the professor, with the assumption that the professor’s own perspective, knowledge, and feedback can sufficiently inform their practice. as a student shared: i guess i just always put the onus on the instructor. and i think maybe that’s wrong of me … i don’t know … but i sit there and say, well, it’s not my job. my job is to learn. and their job is to teach … [so] i’m going to stay here and let the bullshit go by and hope that they deal with it. (group session transcript, march 27, 2019) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 212 reflections such as this reveal real dangers in our learning spaces. when students undermine their own perspectives or wisdom or choose to remain silent rather than contributing to the learning and growth of others, we lose the valuable opportunities that a group learning space offers. based on our findings, we believe there is value in learning models that are built around diverse sources of knowledge and feedback. we also believe there is value in learning models that are premised on the inevitability of mistakes and continual learning. many of the reflections in our group touched on this. from multiple roles, it was found that a significant strength in the acting out model was the central role given to the collaborative feedback and debrief process. this was the case even when the process was challenging or did not go as planned. we understand that for some educators, the unpredictability of such an “open” process may be a deterrent. while this is understandable, we have found through our own experiences that accepting and then making use of this unpredictability in our classrooms seems better suited to preparing students for the realities of real-world engagement. this position is supported by educational theorists such as boler (1999), who argued that embracing “discomfort” in our classrooms, and disrupting the need for constant predictability, can model for students the tools of imaginative, adaptable work. closing thoughts in documenting the first findings of this experimental research process, we are aware that this paper offers more questions than answers. however, we believe that these questions — around our understanding of experiential learning, professional development, expertise, and anti-oppressive practice — have implications for our own work and the future directions of child and youth care education. overall, our findings suggest that a simulation-based, service-user-involved pedagogy has the potential to inform professional development in unique ways. though the scope of our research has been small, we have seen the impact this framework of learning can have for educators and learners. we have learned the sense of connection it can create — the opportunity to see a reflection of our own experiences in learning spaces that we know are otherwise prone to disconnection and homogeneity (henry et al., 2017). we have heard from students about the benefits of simulations for active learning; they expressed an appreciation of the hands-on engagement and real-time feedback. this strengthens the case that is made consistently by educators in social service fields for more experiential learning in our classrooms (bogo et al., 2012; nimmagadda & murphy, 2014; wehbi, 2011). and we have heard the ways in which a model such as this can turn perceptions of knowledge and power on their head, challenging notions of what is worth learning and who is fit to teach. particularly in north america, where service-user-involved educational models continue to be overlooked (duffy et al., 2017), we believe the findings presented in this paper offer important avenues for future inquiry. more research is needed to examine the large-scale impact of simulation-based learning and service-user involvement in child and youth care education. our study has also revealed important international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 192–217 213 questions around these approaches, some of which surround structure, content, and teaching strategies. these include: what role should the “audience of peers” play in simulation-based learning? how can child and youth care students be better supported (through curriculum or teaching approaches) in managing anxiety in high-pressure situations? and how do educators find balance between “support” and “challenge” in the feedback process? we believe further exploration is also needed into the current frameworks of child and youth care education. more research is needed to see the ways in which our professional mandate of antioppressive, collaborative practice aligns with what, and how, we are teaching in the classroom. this would open the door to questions including: how does our curriculum support dialogue-based learning? how do our professional ethics align with the ways different knowledges are integrated into our content? whom do we consider worthy of being “educators” in our classrooms, and who is simply allowed to be “guests” in the learning process? and lastly: how does resource allocation (who we are willing to pay, and who we believe is worth being paid) fit into this equation? 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(2011). the composite first person narrative: texture, structure, and meaning in writing phenomenological descriptions. international journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being, 6(2), art. 5882. doi:10.3402/qhw.v6i2.5882 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2012.690388 https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2011.614205 https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794118787711 https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v6i2.5882 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918805 an intersectional analysis of responses to intimate partner violence in two marginalised south african communities taryn j. van niekerk and floretta boonzaier abstract: this paper aims to investigate the responses available to urban and rural community members in the western cape province of south africa after witnessing, experiencing, or hearing about intimate partner violence (ipv) against women. it explores the social and material spaces that make ipv against women possible in these communities, which have a complex history of multiple forms of violence, including institutional, symbolic, and interpersonal. seven focus group discussions with community members are analysed, using thematic narrative analysis, to explore the social and collective features of ipv and how it emerges within community responses to this violence. constructions of ipv as an “everyday” event surfaced in the data, and mutualising language was often employed to construct ipv as a reciprocal activity with no clear distinction between attacker and victim. also, a reconciliatory “kiss-and-make-up” narrative emerged in the data, representing how community members responded to this violence. in addition, the temporary nature of the violent event was emphasised by participants, and the aftermath was described as an opportunity for the victim and perpetrator to “reunite”, thereby providing justification for non-intervention in future violent events. by asking questions about responses to ipv, this paper offers insight into, and recommendations about, key forms of community intervention and engagement for gendered violence. keywords: community responses, intimate partner violence, response-based approach, south africa, thematic narrative analysis; urban and rural geographies taryn j. van niekerk phd (corresponding author) is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology at the university of cape town, private bag x3, rondebosch 7701, south africa. email: taryn.vanniekerk@uct.ac.za floretta a. boonzaier phd is a professor of psychology at the university of cape town, private bag x3, rondebosch 7701, south africa. email: floretta.boonzaier@uct.ac.za mailto:taryn.vanniekerk@uct.ac.za mailto:floretta.boonzaier@uct.ac.za international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 27 high levels of intimate partner violence (ipv) in south africa demand new and innovative ways of addressing and understanding the problem. ipv is a pervasive phenomenon that permeates all corners of the globe; it affects the individuals immediately impacted by the violence physically, psychologically, and emotionally, and also affects their families and communities (butchart, garcia-moreno, & mikton, 2010). research on ipv, particularly from epidemiological and public health perspectives, has employed the language of cause and risk when attempting to understand the effects that ipv may have on the victims, their families, and others in the immediate environment (hydén, gadd, & wade, 2015). although public health research on ipv has made great strides in explaining broader patterns of ipv, the full complexity of understanding ipv cannot be accounted for by a language of risk factors and cause and effect. causal language works to diminish men’s responsibility in ipv incidents by constructing the act of ipv as influenced by external forces. for example, jewkes (2002) noted that, “violence is frequently used to resolve a crisis of male identity, at times caused by poverty or an inability to control women” (p. 1423). similarly, in regard to a language of risk, a statement such as, “poverty is the exception and increases risk through effects on conflict, women’s power, and male identity” (p. 1423) may have the inadvertent outcome of pathologising impoverished groups as more likely to encounter ipv and may work to decontextualise the act of ipv from the gendered and intersectional context in which it occurs. therefore, a shift in understanding ipv against women is necessary. responsebased work offers an alternative to understanding the experiences of those affected by ipv through asking questions about how individuals respond to this violence, and the resistance strategies available to them (hydén et al., 2015). the social context in which ipv is located is an important site of analysis, as the conditions of those experiencing or witnessing this violence shape the kinds of responses that are possible (van niekerk & boonzaier, 2015). this paper explores the social, material, and collective spaces that make ipv against women possible, particularly in the context of communities that have a complex history of multiple forms of violence, including institutional, symbolic, and interpersonal. in addition, it asks questions about the responses available to urban and rural community members after witnessing, directly experiencing, or hearing about ipv against women. in focusing on community responses to ipv, we aim to better understand how communities make meaning of this violence, and how “victims” and “perpetrators” are represented in the south african context. it should also be noted that the use of the terms victim and perpetrator have been critiqued, particularly from a poststructuralist perspective, for their restricting categories, limiting the individual to a single aspect of identity and to the impossibility of the idea that an individual could shift between those positions (mchugh, livingston, & ford, 2005). in addition, the term “victim” may suggest a positionality that invokes helplessness and passivity (boonzaier & de la rey, 2003). in a similar fashion, the naming of men as “violent” draws attention to one aspect of their identity, potentially obscuring other identities that may have been more salient for both the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 28 men and the women, as noted in boonzaier’s (2008) study. while recognising the importance of gendered power dynamics in the perpetration of ipv, we also acknowledge that these terms are not static, and therefore the terms “victim” and “perpetrator” are at times employed inside quotation marks. fundamentally, this paper shows that a focus on community responses to ipv shifts the lens away from constructions of violence as emergent from individual pathologies to a focus on the social and institutional mechanisms that provide sanction for the high levels of gendered violence in south africa. community responses to violence against women in south africa south africa’s history of colonisation and apartheid has produced a context in which violence has played an integral role in social relations and conflict (vetten & ratele, 2013). although the political transition that ended apartheid may have curbed the violence plaguing the country at that time, vetten and ratele (2013) argued that interpersonal violence, and specifically ipv, had not been similarly curtailed. some south african research has drawn attention to the construction of masculinities, femininities, and violence, as well as to “victim” and “perpetrator” accounts of ipv (e.g., boonzaier, 2008; lau & stevens, 2012; ragnarsson, townsend, thorson, chopra, & ekström, 2009). this trajectory of research that contextualises ipv through gendered and sociocultural norms is well established, and acknowledges that this violence does not occur in a vacuum but that it ought to be understood within its broader context. an emerging field of scholarship that builds on the importance of contextualisation is one that understands individual responses to ipv to be part of broader social, community, and institutional responses to this phenomenon. a recent study focusing on community responses to ipv in a working-class community in cape town found that negative and stigmatising community representations of victims reinforced discourses of victim-blaming and made it possible to see perpetrators as almost blameless (van niekerk & boonzaier, 2015). it was also found that some survivors of ipv internalised these victim-blaming representations, which resulted in the silencing and (re)subjugation of women survivors (van niekerk & boonzaier, 2015). similarly, boonzaier (2014) illustrated that abused women engage with and sometimes internalise circulating narratives about themselves and their positioning in violent relationships, resulting in implications for their subjective positionings and the possibilities for change that they are able to imagine and enact. the findings from the above studies provide insight into how survivors’ responses to the violence perpetrated against them are shaped by community representations of “victims” and “perpetrators”, as well as the material and sociocultural conditions in which they find themselves. coates and wade (2015) argued that, in order to leave violent relationships, women survivors of ipv depend on positive social responses such as comfort, protection, and empowerment to “affirm the meaning of violence as wrong” (pp. 178–179). negative responses, on the other hand, have the capacity to further harm survivors and sanction future acts of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 29 violence. indeed, responses to ipv against women send messages not only to “victims” but also to “perpetrators” of this violence. these may include messages that certain behaviours and acts are permissible (hydén et al., 2015). individuals’ responses to ipv are additionally shaped by their geographies and the social locations in which they find themselves. studies have drawn attention to how the geographical isolation and lack of services encountered by survivors of ipv in rural settings might exacerbate the emotional, physical, and psychological vulnerability these individuals are likely to experience (grossman, hinkley, kawalski, & margrave, 2005; lanier & maume, 2009). furthermore, grossman and colleagues (2005) noted that immigrant women residing in rural areas are likely to experience greater vulnerability due to intersections of geographical location and other oppressions such as race, class, and immigrant status. although the above studies on rural and urban geographies have made some inroads into understanding individual responses to ipv in various places and spaces, pruitt (2008) suggested that research on the perpetration of ipv still tends to assume an urban norm and positions rurality as the “other”. in normalising urbanity, the social and material conditions in rural settings that make violence possible and affect the aftermath of this violence are obscured. this study situates its analysis of community responses to ipv in the context of urban and rural communities that find themselves on the socioeconomic and geographical margins. furthermore, as the rural ipv research has been carried out predominantly in the global north and australia (sandberg, 2013), we argue that this paper adds to our knowledge about ipv, and individuals’ responses to it, in rural and urban communities in a global south setting. this paper additionally recognises that community norms, discourses, and narratives on violence may act as powerful psychological resources taken up by community members to construct and maintain personal meanings and identities (humphreys, 2000). as a result, this work takes seriously the knowledges that communities have of ipv against women and engages with them. in addition, we ask questions about the responses available to urban and rural community members after either witnessing, directly experiencing, or hearing about ipv against women. the ways in which individuals use these community beliefs around ipv to construct personal identities is also of significance in this paper. method the recognition of “place” as a social location in feminist violence research requires further development, as suggested by sandberg (2013). rural and urban geographies have not been central to intersectional research on ipv against women (sandberg, 2013); therefore, our analysis of ipv against women in rural–urban settings attends to this gap by applying an intersectional approach. this approach refers to the core theoretical tenets put forward by second-wave black feminists who posited that social identities and oppressions derived from sexuality, ethnicity, gender, class, race, disability, geography, and so forth intersect and are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 30 “interdependent and mutually constitutive” (bowleg, 2008, p. 312; collins, 2010; crenshaw, 1994). intersectional theory has been central to critical race studies, black studies, and postcolonial studies and has had particular relevance in south africa, especially in relation to race, class, and geographical positioning (vetten & ratele, 2013). in this paper, we not only seek to investigate sociocultural responses to ipv but we also remain critical of systems of power, domination, “othering”, and resistance embedded in such responses (sokoloff & dupont, 2005). we find the intersectional approach useful in its capacity to critique the normalisation of urban settings as “modern and gender equal and as a consequence less violent” (p. 359) and the naturalisation of rural settings as traditional, backward, and patriarchal. the “diversity of ruralities” (p. 350) and urbanities is therefore acknowledged, allowing for an awareness of how power is reinforced in these classifications (sandberg, 2013). a qualitative research approach is employed, in which emphasis is placed upon developing an in-depth understanding of participants’ subjective experiences (willig, 2008). much research on ipv in south africa finds itself within the field of epidemiology and psychology, and often takes a quantitative research approach (e.g., abrahams, jewkes, laubscher, & hoffman, 2006; dunkle et al., 2004; sawyer-kurian, wechsberg, & luseno, 2009). the language of risk factors and cause and effect associated with this trajectory of research may not only oversimplify the phenomenon but also obscures the gendered and intersectional context in which ipv occurs, promoting harmful ideas about victim-blaming and passivity for those experiencing violence. rather, a critical investigation into a language of responses presents opportunities for participants to speak about forms of resistance and agency. critical qualitative methods provide the necessary tools to ask questions about responses to ipv, allowing this violence to be understood within the social, cultural, and historical context in which it occurs (boonzaier, 2014; van niekerk & boonzaier, 2015). on the margins: the urban and rural study settings this paper draws on data from two larger studies undertaken in two impoverished and historically marginalised western cape communities, namely a semirural area called vlottenburg in the stellenbosch winelands region and an urban community on the cape flats1 called hanover park. the two communities are predominantly afrikaans-speaking. while the two townships share similarities regarding their social composition, their histories are different. geographically situated on the cape flats, hanover park has been described as a coloured2 1 an area developed over the 1960s and 1970s in the name of the group areas act of 1950, which acted as a “dumping ground” (p. 76) predominantly for the group categorised as coloured south africans (jensen, 1999). these cape flats townships are often characterised by poverty, social disintegration, and violence. 2 “coloured” is a racial term created during apartheid that referred to people of mixed-race origin and grouped particular south african citizens according to their skin “colour” (hendricks, 2001; lewis, 2001). since the abolition of apartheid this term is still in use; however, it is predominantly conceived of as a social construction that serves particular political purposes (hendricks, 2001). this paper refers to “coloured” as a south african group, with histories and experiences of oppression during apartheid and in current day south africa. it is not inferred that racial categories have any anthropological or scientific root. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 31 community, located on the periphery of cape town and lodged within the boundaries of the cape town municipality. it was established in 1969 and was one of the many areas to which black south africans were forcibly moved as a result of the apartheid group areas act of 1950 (jensen, 1999; lewis, 2001). the semirural community of vlottenburg is in many ways representative of the farming communities in the western cape. the majority of residents who live in vlottenburg are farm labourers who either work on farms or live in informal settlements in the area. harsh conditions characterise life for individuals in these areas; these include substandard housing and amenities, and high levels of poverty, ill-health, alcohol abuse, and violence. in 2011, a human rights watch report illuminated some of the abuses and harsh conditions experienced by people working in the agricultural sector in the western cape. the report describes farm labourers as being in a precarious situation, earning the lowest wages in the country and often entangled in exploitative and paternalistic relations with farm owners (human rights watch [hrw], 2011). the position of women farm workers is especially oppressive and treacherous as they are paid less than their male counterparts and face greater levels of insecurity through lack of permanent employment as well as through being placed in positions of dependence on partners who may be abusive. migrant women farm labourers are seldom granted residence rights, although these may be granted to men labourers. despite their geographical disparities, both hanover park and vlottenburg display many symptoms of impoverished areas through their physical environments and the high degree of social and structural disintegration. these townships are characterised by high levels of unemployment, violence, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse. in particular, through our personal observations we have noted how hanover park has entered public discourse in local news reports featuring gang shootings in the area, which at times have fatal outcomes for innocent bystanders. this study situates its analysis of community responses to ipv in the context of these urban and rural communities that find themselves on the socioeconomic and geographical margins. given that a comparative analysis of ipv in hanover park and vlottenburg has not yet been carried out we aim to undertake an analysis that illustrates the kinds of responses that emerge from these contexts. although the data used in our study were initially collected for different purposes, we find a re-analysis using a response framework useful in its capacity to foreground the social, material, and cultural contexts of rural and urban settings as important sites of analyses, as these conditions shape the kinds of responses to ipv that are possible for community members. in addition, we take this re-analysis as an opportunity to investigate the nuances unique to each community, and to offer insights into any contrasts between the rural and urban data. sample and data collection procedures seven focus groups were conducted in the two communities studied, each 60 to 90 minutes long. nineteen women participated in the vlottenburg focus groups, and 22 women and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 32 4 men participated in the hanover park groups. focus groups were held at the local church in the vlottenburg area and at a community organisation in the hanover park area. to be considered for participation in the focus groups, community members had to be comfortable communicating in english or afrikaans, and they had to be 18 years of age or older. in vlottenburg, a member of the community who had been involved in assisting with previous research efforts in the area provided a convenience sample, which included only women. however, the snowball sampling method was used for the hanover park focus groups, which included both men and women. we thus acknowledge that the conclusions drawn about responses to ipv in the rural setting will be limited by the sample of women only. the demographic profile of participants from both communities appeared more similar than different. women from vlottenburg were younger on average but participants from both communities had low levels of education and a high likelihood of being unemployed. the average age of the vlottenburg women who participated in the groups was 33 years. five of the 19 women (26%) were employed, mainly in domestic work or cleaning. some women reported having completed grade 12, but overall low levels of education were reported, with one woman reporting no formal schooling. the average age of the hanover park participants was 39 years. more than 60% of the participants reported having been unemployed at the time of their participation, while just under a quarter of the sample reported being employed full-time, parttime, or in the informal sector. the remainder of the participants described themselves as pensioners, housewives, or “other”. in terms of education, 85% of the participants reported not having completed secondary education. the group discussions were semi-structured and covered the following areas: why men commit violence against female partners; how ipv affects their community; how they would define the act of abuse; where ipv normally takes place in their community; and how community members, as onlookers, respond to public or private acts of ipv against women. opinions were often relayed in the form of personal experiences and stories, and frequently featured other members in their communities. the context of participants’ storytelling was important as it was often framed by the immediate audience of focus group members and facilitators, and largely involved the co-construction of narratives amongst the focus group participants. to ensure confidentiality, pseudonyms were used and personal identifiers were removed from the data. data analysis the focus group data were analysed employing a thematic narrative analysis. a narrative approach allows for the acknowledgement that constructions of ipv in individuals’ stories can be seen as grounded in the common stories contained in a particular culture or society (lászló, 1997). studies have suggested that community narratives and norms act as powerful psychological resources used by community members to construct and maintain personal and collective identity (humphreys, 2000; stuber, 2000). the analysis is also motivated by a feminist international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 33 poststructuralist approach, one that places emphasis on language, power, subjectivity, and the coconstruction of meaning (weedon, 1987). in addition, we focus upon the storytelling context as it shapes what is said in the focus groups and the interactions between participants. our analysis was guided by riessman’s (2008) delineation of thematic narrative analysis where a focus is placed on what is said by participants, rather than how narratives are relayed. after transcription, the coding process began and was followed by the identification and refinement of themes. the themes were further analysed from a narrative approach, by acknowledging the centrality of language, subject positions, knowledge, and power in shaping responses to ipv, and the tensions, complexities, and resistance implicated in these responses. given the centrality of power to the analysis, we offer a reading into the intersections of class, race, gender, heterosexuality, location, and other axes of power and inequality to understand how responses to ipv are forged. an analysis of community narratives of ipv mutualising language — as termed by coates and wade (2004) — was frequently employed to represent ipv as reciprocal in the focus group discussions. the labels of “victim” and “perpetrator” were often obscured as participants described why and how violence happens through talk that mutualised this violence. in addition, we found that participants’ talk about incidents of ipv against women — and its aftermath — featured a narrative of “kiss and make up” that defined how community members responded to this violence. in this narrative, participants referenced ipv as a “fight” and as a “lover’s quarrel”, often obscuring the severity of the violence and rather emphasising the aftermath, which was described as an opportunity for the victim and perpetrator to “reunite”, using sexualised references and romantic language. the temporary nature of the violent event was emphasised, and the idea that everything returns to “normal” post-event provided justification for non-intervention in future violent events. the analysis to follow aims to further explore the meaning behind these response narratives amongst community members through the following themes: alcohol as a “cause”3 and response to violence, shock and laughter as responses to violence against women, and questions about bystander intervention. these are discussed below. alcohol as a “cause” and response to violence although this paper focuses on responses to ipv rather than risk factor or causal language, participants did offer their perspectives on the “causes” of ipv in their communities 3 in foregrounding the central argument in this paper around the problematics of causal language, we place this term in quotation marks to acknowledge the complexities around meaning and the implications for these socially constructed narratives. although we are centring the meanings of ipv shared by participants, there are moments where we attempt to question and disrupt “causal” and reductionist language that serves to decontexualise ipv and that could be harmful in terms of reducing accountability when it comes to the perpetration of violence against women (see boonzaier, 2008; hydén, 1994; o’neill, 1998, p. 464; stamp & sabourin, 1995). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 34 and subsequently showed how these perceived “causes” framed their responses to this violence. alcohol is present in all participants’ accounts of violence in their community4, particularly with respect to ipv. primarily, it was portrayed as a precursor to ipv: the consumption of alcohol gives men the opportunity to bring up issues or problems that may have been bothering them, as expressed in all seven focus groups. for example: diana: in the week he just sits and listens to what’s happening. the weekend when he has a drink and then ... erica: ... then the whole week’s stuff comes out diana: ... yes! like that! (fg1; vlottenburg) diana and erica co-construct a narrative about alcohol as a gateway for their male partners to express their issues regarding the relationship, which at times led to the perpetration of violence against the women. there appears to be shared experiences where alcohol consumption was regarded as the perceived “cause” of arguments in their relationships. qualitative research has shown that men who have perpetrated ipv under the influence of alcohol have used this as a way of justifying their violence as an uncontrollable, impulsive act (boonzaier, 2008; hydén, 1994; stamp & sabourin, 1995). other research shows the ways in which alcohol and other drugs may have a disinhibiting effect on the perpetration of ipv against women. although violence may have been considered wrong when sober, when men are abusing alcohol, they may be more likely to perpetrate ipv (jewkes, levin, & penn-kekana, 2002; rich & grey, 2005; sawyerkurian et al., 2009). as well, the evidence suggests that men who have been drinking and taking drugs at the time of assault inflict more serious violence on partners (sawyer-kurian et al., 2009). alcohol was understood to be a precursor to men’s violence against women partners in terms of perpetration but it also represented a precursor to women’s victimisation. according to participants, when women had been drinking (with or without their partners) they were more likely to become victims of violence: pam: because she was drinking with her friends, they will think, no, it’s her, she’s the problem, she caused it, so she can just get a hiding. anna: yes. pam: because she drinks. (fg2; vlottenburg) 4 the prevalence of substance use in the lives of the participants should be interpreted in its historical context. until the 1990s when the dop-system [tot-system] was abolished, farmers compensated black employees with alcohol in full or partial payment for their labour — a form of exploitation that still persists in some rural areas of south africa today (boonzaier & van schalkwyk, 2011; haupt, 2001; hrw, 2011). boonzaier and van schalkwyk (2011) and haupt (2001) argued that this system played a vital role in consigning communities to a cycle of social, economic, and alcohol problems. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 35 the participants refer to “they” — the “other” — who respond to ipv against women through a discourse of victim blaming, thereby positioning women who drink as responsible for the abuse perpetrated against them. pam and anna delivered a sociocultural narrative that appeared to be a dominant discourse in their community, although it is not clear whether they too subscribed to this particular response that blames women victims of violence. jewkes and colleagues (2002) observed in their cross-sectional study across three south african provinces that women were more likely to experience ipv if they drank alcohol and if they held liberal views on “women’s roles”. furthermore, according to ratele and colleagues (2007), young schoolboys from a township in the western cape drew on norms that constructed drinking as an improper behaviour for girls and women, and boys preferred girls who did not subscribe to these perceived “rough” behaviours. women’s consumption of alcohol as a precursor to their victimisation may then be interpreted within traditional gender norms of femininity. while drinking might be an acceptable and sometimes respectable activity for men, scholars have observed that it is often not regarded as acceptable for women (campbell, 1998; lindegaard & henriksen, 2009). narratives about alcohol consumption also allowed community members to blur the distinction between “victims” and “perpetrators”. in two focus groups, hanover park community members mutualised violent acts between men and women partners particularly when both partners had been consuming alcohol or drugs: velma: you get a case where the woman is the abuser […] you get it but it’s like 10 out of 1000. kim: it all depends the situations, she does it because sometimes they drink together, they drug together and so on (fg5; hanover park) matthew: it happens on a daily basis. if i go to the terminus i see guys hitting his lady there. because they’re, all of them are on drugs man […] daily basis. megan: even if they’re drinking together also. like on the yard they’re drinking and now they’re getting drunk and now they perform with each other now. and they hit, the guy hit now the [woman], “you can drink like this and you drink and so” and so and so on. interviewer: are they hitting each other? janine: no the guy hits the lady, “you can’t drink any more just go home”. (fg7; hanover park) participants explained that public violence between drunk or drug-abusing couples occurred on a “daily basis” in their community, with the couple “performing” with each other or the man “hitting” the woman in order to discipline her for drinking. these violent acts were constructed as mutual — particularly by megan — in that both the man and woman often participated in drug use or drinking together in their community, and it consequently made the subject positions international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 36 of victim and perpetrator unclear in the event of violence. however, upon clarifying whether this violence that occurs between two drunken partners is in fact mutual, janine explains in the above extract that this violence is generally one-sided, perpetrated by the man. both vlottenburg and hanover park residents appear to draw upon dominant community narratives that position women who partake in alcohol and drugs as punishable by male partners. although the focus group participants did not explicitly align themselves with this discourse, they did not articulate their opposition to this response narrative. while alcohol was seen as a precursor to men’s violence both in terms of perpetration and women’s victimisation, it was also constructed in this vlottenburg group discussion as a way in which the violence or the harm caused by the violence can be defused: interviewer: what happens after he hit you? sophia: then he buys us two beers and then he goes to lie down [everyone laughs]. (fg2; vlottenburg) the participants described how, after a violent incident, the parties would go and drink together, which implied that the conflict had been resolved. in the above extract, sophia relays her subjective experience of the aftermath of violence against her. wendt (2009) found that in the context of smaller rural communities, “gossip networks” might impede women from revealing their experiences of ipv or from seeking help. however, the data above show how a vlottenburg woman, in the presence of fellow community members who may have encountered similar experiences of ipv, disclosed her experience of violence, which was followed by laughter from all participants in the group. the response of laughter or humour by the women may have offered a way of coping with the potentially negative social and community responses to women who find themselves victims of ipv. in addition, the participants’ laughter could have arisen from some discomfort or embarrassment that the participants felt at what was said in the group. these narratives expressing the normalised occurrence of ipv and alcohol consumption are further unpacked in the next theme. shock and laughter as responses to violence against women across all focus groups, certain kinds of stories about violence against women provoked strong responses of shock, dismay, and helplessness by participants, as illustrated in the vlottenburg focus group below: pam: the woman is lying with a long stick inside her. i was the first person on the scene ... the woman laying ... and the stick is this long, pushed inside her [...] do you know, that woman’s face is smashed in! (fg2; vlottenburg) pam: sarah’s murder [...] that woman was murdered so terribly ... then we had, a week after sarah, we had a young girl also, here in the pear orchard [...] raped and killed. and then we had another girl who went to the shop one night, nine o’clock, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 37 seven o’clock, it’s winter, never came home. the saturday her mother looked for her, saturday afternoon someone came to say that there’s someone in the vineyards. so it was this girlie. [...] she’s nine years old, laying in the vineyards, face full of cigarette holes [...] she was horribly raped, oohh!! it was heartsore. nobody was convicted for that. (fg2; vlottenburg) it is notable that, although these incidents were described by one woman (who happened to be a dominant member of the group and also appeared to be an elder in the community), many of the other group participants knew about the cases she was describing and there was some contestation about the details of some of the cases. studies on ipv in rural communities have illustrated that individuals in smaller communities can experience less privacy, which has the likely outcome of individuals’ identities as the “abused” or “abuser” being revealed to others in the community (pruitt, 2008; wendt, 2009). pruitt’s (2008) and wendt’s (2009) findings resonate with the above extract in the way that pam uses the first names of the victims (sometimes the perpetrators of the crimes were also known by name), illustrating that she and the other community members were not distanced from the violence. on the one hand, there appeared to be a clear sense of helplessness in the ways in which the narrating women responded to these violent acts, which was amplified in the comment at the end of the extract: “nobody was convicted for that”. on the other hand, women also responded to the violence by indicating that they were fearful about walking around in their community after dark and that they consequently restricted their movements. ipv was seen as part of a continuum of violence in the community. in contrast to the above accounts of murder, participants represented ipv as a regular and “everyday” occurrence; narratives of ipv as a routine event were emphasised through the use of mutualising language. this is aptly illustrated across the focus groups through the ways in which the aftermath of the violent incidents was described and through the laughter that often occurred: pam: we argue over simple things. he pushed me and i fell, and er … the window of his van also broke, i smashed the window of his van and then he pushed me. okay, and then when i fell he still kicked me in the stomach. i picked up my shoe, and er, the sandal, obviously the shoe broke. and then went we went to lay, and er, the two of us were at it, then he was already very drunk. but i tell you, i took that same shoe that broke and i hit him! i hit him with that shoe. he can never hit me like that. i’m just happy that he didn't do it in front of his friends, he did it when they left. then i told him— anna: —and afterwards when you were done fighting? pam: … stukkie-stukkie! (translated as “small piece-small piece” which in afrikaans is a colloquial way of indicating that you are talking about having sexual intercourse) [everyone laughs]. (fg2, vlottenburg) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 38 marie: ... no, those two are just characters [emma: hmm!] marie: hey, they fight now! later then they— emma: —then they are lovey dovey [laughter] marie: tonight they fight then they are lovey dovey again. (fg3; vlottenburg) in the above extracts, as well as across two focus groups conducted with hanover park participants, narratives on ipv appear to focus on the typical, everyday occurrence of ipv and the recurring nature of violent incidents. the aftermath of this violence was described through “kiss and make up” stories about “reuniting” in a loving or sexualised way. moreover, in the first extract, anna’s interjection illustrates that in moving beyond the story of the violence to the aftermath where the couple “make up” by having sex, a shared understanding about how the violence unfolds is demonstrated. in addition, the specific language participants used to describe the violence is also a clear signal of how they were constructing the violence. for example, the term “fight” is frequently used in the above extracts to describe the violence, and is used to signal violence as a mutual activity. constructing the violence as such suggests a “reciprocal activity with no clear distinction between attacker and victim” (hydén, 1994, p. 104) and obscures the dominant–submissive relations between the partners. this mutualising language also fails to depict the unilateral nature of the violence or the victim’s experience of those acts (coates & wade, 2004). for example, in coates and wade’s (2004) analysis of legal judgements and media analyses, it was found that verbal partner abuse was described as “a disagreement”, while the physical assault and self-defence of the victim was rephrased as “exchanging blows”. when ipv is constructed as mutual, then issues of victimhood are not clearly delineated, and blame can be placed onto the victim (boonzaier, 2008). while women use the term “fighting” to connote relationship violence as a mutual activity and while they also use the term “fighting” as a rhetorical device, there are instances where women clearly represent men’s violence as a form of abuse against women partners. for example, “that woman gets a hiding every week” (fg2; vlottenburg) illustrates that the woman is clearly positioned as a victim of the violence perpetrated by her male partner. the term “hiding” is more closely associated with the way in which children are physically beaten and may, therefore, provide commentary on the woman’s assumed subordinate status in relation to her male partner. we argue that although participants’ representations of “victim” and “perpetrator” might not always have been clearly delineated, these ambiguous references do offer insight into the complexities of “victim” and “perpetrator” positioning in the violent event, and their potential to be taken up interchangeably. the presence of laughter and humour in the focus groups appeared to be a frequent response in the above extracts, especially to personal stories of ipv. although this laughter might have added to the “othering” of women victims of violence, billig (2005) and robinson (2009) have noted that humour is also a sociocultural resource drawn upon by people to cope international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 39 with and resolve challenging situations. the act of shared laughter allows for the reinforcement of social solidarity and is sometimes employed to counter awkwardness or feelings of restrictiveness when dealing with sensitive and taboo topics (robinson, 2009). in terms of the current data, with violence being a fairly regular occurrence (most weekends) and with the available responses to it generally having low efficacy (e.g., police response erratic and ineffective, and a lack of options for seeking outside assistance), humour may be the only resource available to help women deal with the fact that they are all potential victims of violence. however, participants seemed to regard this response of laughter as only appropriate for certain kinds of stories, such as the “kiss and make up” narrative where the violent act is constructed as reciprocal. stories about sexual violence and femicide appeared to evoke contrasting responses of shock and fear amongst participants, indicating not only the cultural appropriateness of certain responses but also the ways in which those responses serve to reinforce the everyday position of ipv on the continuum of violence. thus, the ways in which participants talk about violence, as illustrated above, may be a response to the “everydayness” and predictability of ipv against women that they themselves both witness and experience. the next theme notes how these constructions of ipv as an everyday, normalised event has implications for how community members respond to and intervene in this violence. bystander non-intervention the positioning of ipv as an everyday form of violence in this study’s data has implications for how community members in vlottenburg and hanover park might consider responding to the violence. for example, in regard to whether a neighbour would interject or call the police when witnessing a man being violent toward his partner, participants said: linda: … look there’s the law around woman abuse and you have the right to phone the police. me as a neighbour (woman neighbour), if my (male) neighbour hits his wife then i have the right to call the police to say— sara: —yes but then you’re in trouble the next day linda: … that man can kill that woman next door [mmmm mmm! (others interject)] … and i did nothing. the law says that — same with the child laws — if that woman abuses that child then you must call the police. sara: okay, but if you do it hey, then people will turn [linda and others: i know, i know!] … that’s what i’m saying – so people are very, you know, “must i call or not?” (fg1; vlottenburg) marie: … you know people are very funny, if you want to talk to them about things, it’s not that you want to stick your nose in their business but you are trying to help. but then they want to know nothing about that problem that they have. (fg3; vlottenburg) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 40 the above extracts illustrate the lack of agreement in how community members narrate “appropriate” responses to ipv. because of the frequency of occurrences of ipv and the way in which it is constructed as being normalised, community members are reluctant to intervene by calling the police. there appears to be disagreement, however, with some women indicating that it is important to intervene to end the violence but many also suggesting that the one who intervenes will become an outcast and may risk danger. the participants appear to be referencing “community codes” of loyalty, interdependence, self-sacrifice, and mutual respect for each other’s “privacy”. they also provide insight into how individuals are judged by their willingness to stay true to these codes of behaviour. whether ipv perpetration is a private or a public matter was also called into question. when community members live in very close proximity to each other (which sometimes means a lack of privacy) and ipv against women sometimes happens in the streets or in full view of other members of the community, ideas about the privacy of the family or the intimate relationship become central to why people do not intervene in others’ “fights”. this was particularly so in terms of public displays of ipv where hanover park community members also feared that becoming involved could make them targets of violence and could compromise their safety: megan: i don’t know if you know john? it is sad to see how he abuses his wife. janine: in the open air he hit her. he hit her. then she stands with the one baby on her arm and the other one as well. interviewer: these things happen in public for everyone to see? all participants: yes! janine: we talk to them and then they swear at us. [cross talk] matthew: basically, it’s not your business so why you want to stick your nose in their business and so if you’re going to say something, then they just say, “but it’s not your business, what are you looking for here” or “you don’t belong here, it is me and my wife”. janine: “it’s my family”. interviewer: do you try to intervene? megan: no, never, never, never […] matthew: maybe you will get hurt, unnecessarily injured. (fg7; hanover park) the participants’ co-constructed narrative of public violence shows that the decision to intervene and stop the violence is complex and involves a contemplation of immediate threat. furthermore, the hanover park residents appeared to be in consensus that the decision to intervene during the perpetration of domestic violence is based on the potential intervener’s assessment of harmful international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 41 risk, especially where the privacy of married relationships or family is concerned. the danger of harm to witnesses who intervene should not be underestimated in contexts such as hanover park, where gang involvement and interpersonal violence is a reality for many. megan continued narrating about the tendency of couples to thwart any intervention by bystanders: megan: i once tried to stop a fight between girlfriend and boyfriend, then they told me “yes, shut up, this isn’t your business and do not get involved because i don’t tell you what to do”. (fg3; hanover park) it was noted across three hanover park focus groups that participants’ narratives about couples who responded by hindering interventions used mutualising language (i.e., “they” and “fight”). these mutualising narratives were also called upon to ambiguously contend that both parties (the man and the woman) object to this “interference”: “they don’t like people to … interfere ... because then they get more aggressive” (fg4; hanover park). dominant narratives circulated across these focus groups about limited intervention in violent incidents involving married couples as this was perceived as an even bigger intrusion on privacy than if the couple weren’t married (matthew: “you don’t belong here, it is me and my wife”; janine: “it’s my family”). in many ways, the findings noted in rural ipv research resonate with the data emerging from both vlottenburg and hanover park. in researching the support networks of rural women who experienced ipv, bosch and bergen (2006) found that social networks that were supportive for some life events were likely to respond unsupportively in cases of ipv as this issue was considered taboo in the community. nonsupportive networks kept women in abusive relationships and obstructed women’s help-seeking behaviours (bosch & bergen, 2006). similarly, the findings that emerge from the present study suggest that community members who often know the “violent couple” personally are unlikely to intervene and respond supportively in incidents of ipv. although scholars such as grossman and colleagues (2005) have pointed out that, in contrast to those residing in urban contexts, rural victims of ipv are often more geographically isolated and well known in their smaller communities, our findings illustrate strong similarities between the marginalised communities of hanover park and vlottenburg in terms of the blurred private and public divide and the associated impact on responses from community bystanders. the data illustrate that, despite their disparate geographical locations, hanover park and vlottenburg residents express similarities in their narratives with regard to responses to ipv and with regard to the ways that social, cultural, and material conditions intersect to allow for the particular experiences of and encounters with ipv in their communities. furthermore, although community members respond to ipv as something they should not interfere in (i.e., as “other people’s business”), some participants clearly recognise violence as being unacceptable, leading to the expressed disagreement around non-intervention: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 42 emma: and then he does it sometimes with the child on the arm, if she sits with the child. we sat there then he does it with the child on the arm, then he hits her in her face, with the child on her arm. that’s not right. i say, we don’t interfere in their marriage, but when i see what he does, it is wrong. (fg3; vlottenburg) emma responds with contestation to the dominant narrative of non-intervention. she explicitly expresses an instance where she feels most conflicted about not interfering: when a child is present during the violent incident and in harm’s way. there were very few examples in the data where participants conveyed this kind of narrative of being at odds with how to respond to ipv and few exceptions to the community code of non-interference. this theme shows how justification for non-intervention through mutualising language and through “kiss and make up” narratives works to understate a victim’s experience of ipv. it could also be that there is an assumption that help is always available to victims; however, the findings of this study suggest that fear silences bystanders, limiting possibilities for immediate social responses to ipv. the implications of these response narratives are further examined as we offer recommendations for future research. recommendations and conclusions we investigated community responses to ipv against women in two marginalised communities in the western cape province of south africa, using an intersectional approach. this study was largely motivated by the need to study the social and collective features of ipv against women in the south african context. in hanover park and vlottenburg community members’ response narratives to ipv, the “everydayness” of this violence was expressed through “kiss and make up” narratives and, at times, through the participants’ laughter. this response of laughter appeared to be regarded as “appropriate” in the case of “kiss and make up” narratives, whereas stories about sexual violence and femicide evoked contrasting responses of shock and fear. this contrast in participants’ responses indicates not only the cultural appropriateness of certain responses but also the ways in which the everyday position of ipv on the continuum of violence is reinforced. in providing narratives about the habitual, routine practice of ipv perpetration, we argue that the seriousness of this violence is silenced at the community level; therefore, responses to this violence are similarly shifted to reflect these representations of ipv. violence against women (both intimate and public) is a problem in the communities studied, yet it is not clearly articulated as one of the more serious problems facing these communities. the findings reported here appear to be consistent with work done on battered women of colour in the united states, where domestic violence is seen as less serious than other problems people face in their communities, such as poverty, racism, and crime (richie & kanuha, 1997). in addition, the complexities of “victim” and “perpetrator” identities were illustrated in how these subject positions could change from situation to situation. the use of mutualising language by participants furthermore reinforced this notion of indistinct “victim” and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 43 “perpetrator” positionings. symbolic violence emerges within a relationship of domination and often does not have a clear “perpetrator” and “victim”, making it difficult to spot this violence (bourdieu, 2001). furthermore, an intersectional approach also allowed for the symbolic violence of societal exclusion and inclusion to emerge more clearly in the investigation of sociocultural responses to violence against women in urban and rural communities. the symbolic violence of which some women in the communities of vlottenburg and hanover park appear to be victims occurs within a complex system of patriarchy. community interventions aiming to address and end ipv against women must take into account community responses to ipv. an important impact of this work will be to use the knowledge gained about community responses to improve how we intervene in ipv cases. programmes for perpetrators and survivors of violence frequently employ models that have been developed in the anglo-american context, with limited applicability in the local context where our study took place. these models work with survivors and perpetrators on an individual basis, largely removed from their social networks and, in particular, communities. in the design of prevention programmes and interventions for survivors and perpetrators, community organisations can draw on our findings to take full account of the social mechanisms and responses that may maintain violence or counteract it. we show the importance of engaging with rural and urban dynamics in terms of questions around power and inequality. dominant community narratives about ipv emerged similarly in both the hanover park and the vlottenburg focus groups, signalling that the social, cultural, and material dynamics intersect to make experiences of ipv similar in these communities. although hanover park can be characterised as an urban community, it may overlap with rurality in many ways, including: its position on the cape flats, which is distanced from the privileged centre; its limited access to services; and its being a smaller community. findings from this study show strong similarities in how ipv is experienced in the urban and rural settings under investigation, and further research should continue these qualitative investigations into community responses across various urban and rural settings in south africa and other global south contexts to explore the potential for varied outcomes. furthermore, future research might benefit by furthering the intersectional approach and asking questions about ipv in rural and urban settings focusing on the interplay between race, class, and poverty and how this impacts the prevention of and intervention in ipv. this study shows how a focus on responses to violence shifts the lens from individual “perpetrators” and “victims” by focusing on the knowledges that communities have about ipv against women and how they shape the kinds of responses that are possible. the continuation and replication of this research will make important advances to our understanding of why, when, and how this violence continues to happen, and the kinds of responses that may be necessary for it to cease. following this line of research will complicate our understandings of individual risk or protective factors by showing how these play out in the context of particular communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 26–48 44 references abrahams, n., jewkes, r., laubscher, r., & hoffman, m. 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(2008). introducing qualitative research in psychology: adventures in theory and method (2nd ed.). maidenhead, england: open university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(200009)28:5%3c507::aid-jcop4%3e3.0.co;2-g http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2013.813769 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.11.001 government costs associated with delinquent trajectories international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 263 government costs associated with delinquent trajectories wendy craig1, lyndall schumann1, kelly petrunka2, shahriar khan2, and ray peters2 abstract: the objectives of this project were to: (a) identify early trajectories of delinquency for both boys and girls at ages 8 (grade 3), 11 (grade 6), and 14 (grade 9) in a longitudinal sample of 842 at-risk youth from a multi-informant perspective (i.e., parents, teachers, selfreported youth ratings), and (b) estimate the costs associated with each delinquency trajectory on utilization of resources in the criminal justice system, remedial education, health care and social services, and social assistance. the results indicated six distinct trajectories of delinquency: two low groups, two desisting groups, an escalator group, and a high delinquency group. there were significantly more females than males in the two low delinquency trajectory groups, p < .05 for both analyses. furthermore, both the youth from the two desisters trajectory groups (13% of the sample) and from the two most at-risk trajectories (escalators and high delinquency, 5% of the sample) each accounted for approximately 40% of the estimated costs to government. it is interesting to note that 80% of the estimated criminal justice costs were due to the high delinquency and escalators trajectory groups. antisocial or delinquent girls cost society more money than antisocial or delinquent boys in all domains, with the exception of the social assistance domain. implications for crime prevention are discussed. key words: delinquency, trajectories, costs, risk, and protective factors acknowledgement: we would like to acknowledge the following funding agencies that have contributed to this research over the last 20 years: public safety canada (2007-2010); ontario mental health foundation (2006-2008); ontario ministry of children and youth services (2005-2006); ontario ministry of health and long term care (2000-2004); and ontario ministry of community and social services (1990-2000). we are grateful to the research families, youth, and teachers who have participated in this research. correspondence should be addressed to wendy craig, psychology department, 62 arch street, kingston, ontario, k7l 3n6, wendy.craig@queensu.ca 1 queen’s university, psychology department, 62 arch street, kingston, ontario k7l3n6 2 queen’s university, better beginnings, better futures, 98 barrie street, kingston, ontario k7l3n6 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 264 delinquency is one of the most prevalent problem behaviours engaged in by canadian youth. statistics canada (savoie, 2006) indicates that over one-third of youth have been involved in some form of delinquency by the age of 14 and that childhood delinquency tends to predict violent behaviours throughout the course of a lifetime. although delinquency covers a wide range of behaviours, many of which do not go reported to the police, about 5% of canadian youth have been charged with federal offences (savoie, 2006). engaging in delinquent behaviour has been linked to negative psychological, emotional, health, social, academic, employment, and criminal outcomes (boyd et al., 2005; lacourse, nagin, tremblay, vitaro, & claes, 2003; marti, stice, & springer, 2010). there are significant individual, criminal, health, social, and societal costs associated with delinquency. the high intra-personal, interpersonal, and societal costs highlight the need to increase our understanding of delinquency behaviour before it emerges. in this paper, we examine the developmental trajectories of delinquency and provide an economic analysis of the costs tied to early pathways associated with delinquent behaviours, in order to inform prevention and intervention. the objectives of this project were to: (a) identify early trajectories of delinquency for both boys and girls at age 8 (grade 3), age 11 (grade 6), and age 14 (grade 9) in a longitudinal sample of 842 at-risk youth from a multi-informant perspective (i.e., parents, teachers, self-reported youth ratings); and (b) estimate the costs associated with each delinquency trajectory on utilization of resources in the criminal justice system (i.e., arrests and court appearances), remedial education (i.e., grade repetition and use of special education services from grades 1 to 8), health care and social services (i.e., visits to a family physician, hospital emergency room use, serious injuries, overnight stays in a hospital, and family’s involvement with the children’s aid society), and social assistance (i.e., families’ receipt of welfare and disability payments). development of delinquent behaviours a theory of delinquency needs to explain how differences in the frequency and severity of antisocial and criminal behaviours are associated with gender and age (e.g., moffitt, 2001). males are much more likely to commit crimes than females. nonetheless, most of the literature agrees that the shape of the age-related changes is roughly the same for males and females (maldonado-molina, piquero, jennings, bird, & canino, 2009; jennings, maldonado-molina, & komro, 2010). recently, postlethwait, barth, and guo (2010) presented evidence that changes in delinquent behaviour may vary by level of depression and discipline for females and by level of substance use for males. the frequency of offending increases with age through to late adolescence, peaks around the age of 16, and then begins to decline, continuing throughout adulthood (carrington, matarazzo, & de souza, 2005; moffitt, 2001). furthermore, not all children participate in delinquent behaviours, but those involved at a young age are most at risk for further delinquent behaviour throughout their lives (carrington et al., 2005; loeber & farrington, 1998). research also shows that most people who are arrested for criminal offences begin their criminal behaviour in their teenage years and desist in their 20s (loeber & farrington, 1998; moffitt, 2001). a small group of mostly male offenders exhibit prepubertal antisocial behaviour and commit a disproportionate number of serious and often violent offences as adults; among adult offenders, this latter group is the most persistent (e.g., carrington et al., 2005; moffitt, 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 265 although the typical age-crime curve is depicted by a single line joining the rates of crime across the age range from early adolescence through adulthood, it reveals little about the development of criminal behaviour and about the variability in youths’ level of involvement in delinquent behaviour. the goal of this paper is to identify the early trajectories of delinquency to increase our understanding of the developmental pathways of those who are most at risk for persisting in their offending patterns. recent methodological advances have allowed for a new statistical approach (proc traj1 several studies have used trajectory analysis to distinguish individual patterns of delinquent behaviour from childhood to adolescence (e.g., hoeve et al., 2008; jennings et al., 2010; schonberg & shaw, 2007; wiesner & windle, 2006). a review of these studies highlights several important themes. first, on average, between three and six groups tend to be identified by the trajectory methodology, slightly more with self-reports than official records. although there was a range in the number of trajectories found in each of these studies, there are three consistent trajectories identified (although differentially labelled). these trajectories include a low delinquency group (representing the majority of individuals who rarely engage in delinquent behaviour), a high delinquency group (representing a small minority of individuals who start high on delinquent behaviour and increase over time), and a desisting delinquency group (representing a minority of individuals who start with a fairly high level of delinquency but this behaviour decreases with time). in studies where more than three trajectories have been found, the three consistent groups are usually subdivided into other groups. for example, lacourse et al. (2002) found six trajectories that included the three above as well as the low rising, low decline, and medium decline. schonberg and shaw (2007) identified four trajectories that included a moderate level that stays relatively consistent but engages in more delinquent activities than the abstaining group. jennings et al. (2010) looked at seven different trajectory categories, and categorized them generally as increasing, stable, or desisting. the second important consistency across studies is that by the end of adolescence, most trajectory groups are on ) to understanding the individual developmental patterns of delinquency. previous studies categorizing children as delinquent have employed predetermined cut-off points in defining delinquency group membership. while these classifications may be theoretically reasonable, they do not necessarily exist naturally, and may be based on potentially misleading categorizations. advancements in methodology for examining individuals’ developmental trajectories provide researchers with the ability to transcend the use of these categorization procedures for identifying individual patterns of delinquency. another advantage of this technique is that in contrast to hierarchical and latent growth curve modelling, it makes no assumptions regarding a continuous distribution of trajectories and therefore allows for the identification of distinct mixtures of trajectories within the population (nagin, 1999). as well, instead of assuming heterogeneity among different trajectories, this method identifies the existing differences among groups. in addition, it is well suited for censored normal distributions in which a small, yet significant proportion of the population is affected (e.g., if 10% of children are engaged in serious, persistent delinquent activity). finally, it treats missing data as random, thereby making full use of the data and reducing the need to over-sample for attrition. 1 proc traj is a statistical program that is designed to analyze data using a semi-parametric group-based trajectory approach (jones, nagin, & roeder, 2001; nagin, 1999, 2005) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 266 the decline with respect to delinquent behaviour2 there are, however, key methodological differences in these studies that may account for some of the differences in results. first, while all the studies included self-report measures, some also included court records (hoeve et al., 2008) and teachers’ and parents’ ratings (lacourse et al., 2002). second, the studies varied with the geographical region. for example, some studies have participants from urban united states (hoeve et al., 2008; jennings et al., 2010) or urban french-speaking canadians (lacourse et al., 2002). third, the studies varied with respect to the age of participants and have primarily focused on older students. fourth, with the exception of jennings et al. (2010) and wiesner and windle (2006), all of the studies only included boys. although fewer girls than boys engage in high levels of problem behaviours, those girls who do start early and persist in antisocial behaviours experience mental health problems at levels equal to their antisocial male counterparts (jennings et al., 2010; odgers et al., 2008). thus, there are limited data available on the trajectories of delinquency in girls. fifth, some of the studies conceptualized delinquency broadly and examined externalizing behaviours (i.e., conduct problems, physical aggression, oppositional behaviour, hyperactivity) as opposed to delinquency (defined by violations of the criminal code). sixth, studies varied with respect to the number of assessments and the timing of assessments used to derive the trajectories. thus, the operationalizing of delinquency and the study design may in part influence the differences in the shape and the number of the trajectories. despite these methodological differences across studies, the consistent finding of at least three similar trajectories on different populations and cultures provides strong test re-test reliability to these three trajectories. the current paper furthers the research by using multiple informants in identifying the economic cost associated with each different type of delinquent trajectory, starting from an early age. . third, across studies, there are more groups than proposed originally by moffitt (2001). estimated costs associated with delinquency despite the well-documented individual, psychological, physical and mental health, social, and criminal outcomes of engaging in delinquent behaviours, there are limited data available in canada on the costs associated with it. there is also a paucity of research on the costs of delinquency beyond costs savings of early prevention programs on future delinquency, and the costs to the criminal justice system. antisocial youth tend to be multiple offenders and cohen (1998) found that the average delinquent commits 68 to 80 crimes over their delinquency time period and costs society between $1.3 million and $1.5 million. cowell et al.’s (2010) study of teenaged arrestees found evidence that intervention programs targeting youth after their first arrest are slow to reduce juvenile justice costs for these individuals. early intervention programs, on the other hand, do have the potential to reduce the long-term costs of delinquency. cohen and piquero (2009) estimated that a beneficial prevention program of diverting a 14-year-old high-risk juvenile from a life of crime could save from $2.6 million to $5.3 million (u.s. dollars). few studies of early childhood prevention programs for children in the u.s. and only one in canada have included an economic analysis (e.g., karoly, kilburn, & cannon, 2005; mrazek & brown, 2002; peters et al., 2010; waddell, hua, garland, peters, & mcewan, 2007). four notable 2 with the exception of jennings et al. (2010), who found that virtually all of the males who were assigned to any of the delinquent trajectories were either maintaining their rates of offending or increasing their offending by the end of the 7th and 8th grade school year. this result may be explained by the fact that the participants were not followed to the end of adolescence as was the case in the other studies. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 267 exceptions in the u.s. are the elmira prenatal/early infancy project (peip; karoly et al., 1998); the carolina abecedarian project (barnett & masse, 2007; masse & barnett, 2002); the chicago childparent centers program (cpc; reynolds, temple, robertson, & mann, 2002); and the high/scope perry preschool project (ppp; barnett, 1996; nores, belfield, barnett, & schweinhart, 2005). the canadian study is on better beginnings, better futures (bbbf; peters et al., 2010). all these early childhood intervention studies have reported economic analyses based on follow-up data for children, and in some cases their parents, to the child’s age of 15 (bbbf and peip), 21 (abecedarian and cpc), and 40 (ppp). economic analyses results from these studies provide the rationale to policy-makers for investing in early childhood interventions. for most economic analyses of early childhood education programs, economic benefits are typically divided into three categories: benefits to program participants (e.g., increased income from improved education); benefits to non-program participants (e.g., reduced costs to crime victims); and benefits to government/taxpayers (e.g., decreased remedial education costs, decreased costs to the justice system). the costing perspective of the canadian bbbf economic analysis was the government/taxpayers; karoly et al. (1998) refer to this analysis as cost-savings analysis to differentiate it from the more traditional cost-benefit analysis. in this paper, we will examine the social, health, educational, and juvenile justice costs for each of our trajectories based on data from the bbbf study. this is the first study in canada to include girls in this type of analysis. of particular note, cohen, piquero, and jennings (2010) have recently looked at the costs of adult criminal offending of unique trajectories disaggregated across gender and ethnicity. they found that chronic offenders who did not desist in their late adolescence, went on to commit more serious crimes and ultimately cost far more than low-frequency chronic offenders. the present study aims to extend this methodology to a canadian sample using parent, teacher, and youth informants, and, for a more comprehensive cost estimate, to include more cost measures than solely the cost directly accrued from an offence. in summary, most studies of juvenile delinquency over the past two decades have focused on older, serious, and violent juvenile offenders. younger delinquents have been ignored partly because their number is relatively small and their threat is not as immediate. however, whereas the number of very young offenders is small compared with older juveniles, child delinquents present unique challenges that need to be addressed. intervening before minor offences become more serious and before the occasional offender becomes a chronic offender is important, and more effective. furthermore, past studies have focused on the cost-benefit analysis of individual prevention programs, but not the comprehensive (including social, health, and educational) cost-savings analysis of particular delinquent trajectories, using multi-informant data. understanding the trajectories and costs of delinquency at a young age is paramount to developing efficient strategies that target individuals at young ages to improve the outcomes of those in high-risk groups. method participants in the bbbf sample, the longitudinal research cohort was comprised of a focal cohort and a following cohort. children in the focal cohort (n = 721) were born in 1989 and were recruited to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 268 longitudinal study between junior kindergarten (jk) and grade 3, mostly through the school system. children in the following cohort (n = 238) were born in 1990, and were recruited to the longitudinal study when they were in grade 3. for this study, there were 842 participants (396 girls and 446 boys), representing 88% of the original sample. these participants represent the longitudinal followup of the bbbf study and had data at ages 8 (grade 3), 11 (grade 6), and 14 (grade 9). attrition was mainly due to two factors: families relocated and the researchers were unable to contact them or families declined to be interviewed. as a test for attrition bias, we employed logistic regression to examine socio-demographic differences in children and families who dropped out of the research cohort between grades 3 and 6 and between grades 6 and 9, and families who completed all years of data collection. these analyses indicated no significant differences in sociodemographic variables between the retained and lost cases. approximately 30% of the households were headed by single parents, 34% of parents did not complete high school, 59% of families were living below the statistics canada low income cut-off line, and 19% were living in public housing. there were no significant gender differences on any of the demographic variables. measures delinquency. child delinquency measures were created using items from the national longitudinal survey of children and youth (nlscy; statistics canada, 1995). three different measures were created, one for parents, one for teachers, and one for the youth themselves. ratings in grade 3 were provided by teachers only, while ratings in grade 6 were provided by parents, teachers, and youth, and ratings in grade 9 by parents and youth. items for the parent and teacher versions and the grade 6 youth version were rated on a three-point scale: 0 = never or not true, 1 = sometimes or somewhat true, and 2 = often or very true (e.g., “vandalizes”, “steals”, “destroys things”, and “tells lies or cheats”). at grade 9, the youth indicated whether or not in the past 12 months, they were part of a gang (0 = no, 1 = yes) and the remaining nine items were rated 0 = never, 1 = once or twice, 2 = three or four times, or 3 = five or more times (e.g., “stayed out all night without permission”, “stolen something”, “sold drugs”, and “intentionally destroyed/damaged things”). using principal component factor analyses, delinquency items from teachers, parents, and youth were combined separately at each of the three grades to create grades 3, 6, and 9 delinquency scales: the grade 3 delinquency scale was created by combining three teacher-rated items; the grade 6 measure had 13 items (6 parents, 5 teachers, and 2 youth); and the grade 9 measure of delinquency included 16 items (6 parents and 10 youth). all three scales had high inter rater and test re-test reliabilities. estimated costs of government resources associated with delinquency. we identified 12 measures in our data set that could be monetized to reflect children’s and parents’ utilization of government resources in health care and social services, remedial education, the criminal justice system, and social assistance (see table 1 for summary). these measures were collected from children and their parents beginning when the children were in junior kindergarten (jk) up to and including grade 9 (more specific details on how each of the 12 outcomes was monetized can be requested from the authors). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 269 table 1. estimated costs of government resources government resource estimated costs in canadian dollarsa health care and social services visits to a family physician $29.44 per visit in ontario based on 2001 dollar figures (browne, gafni, & roberts, 2002) hospital emergency room use $195.76 per visit in ontario based on 2001 dollar figures (browne et al., 2002) number of serious injuries the average cost of an unintentional injury in canada was $4,000 in 1996. (angus et al., 1998) number of overnight stays in hospital $816.35 per overnight stay in a hospital in ontario based on 2001 dollar figures. (browne et al., 2002) visits with a nurse practitioner $19 per visit in ontario based on 2001 dollar figures (browne et al., 2002) family involvement with children’s aid society $60 per visit in ontario based on 2001 dollar figures (browne et al., 2002) remedial education grade repetition $6,151 per year in ontario based on 2002/03 school year dollar figures. use of special education services $6,794 average cost per child receiving special education services in ontario based on 2001/02 school year dollar figures. criminal justice system arrests $500 canadian national average cost per police investigation in 1998 (hepworth, 2000) court appearances $1,250 canadian national average court costs (hepworth, 2000) social assistance programs international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 270 social welfare assistance $842 per month in ontario based on 2003 estimated minimum value of basic social assistance for a single parent with one dependent child (national council on welfare, 2004) ontario disability support program $829 (single parent with one child) and $940 (two parents with one child) per month in ontario based on 2003 estimated minimum payments (ontario ministry of community and social services, 2003) a a 3% discount rate was applied for all estimated cost data. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 271 data analysis to identify the trajectories of delinquency, we used the semi-parametric group-based trajectory approach (jones et al., 2001; nagin, 1999, 2005). in this modelling, the dependent variable was the total standardized delinquency scale score at grades 3, 6, and 9. the censored normal distribution was used to model the trajectories to account for the censoring at the lower and upper bounds of the delinquency scale. a polynomial relationship was used to link age to delinquency behaviour. we compared models with different numbers of groups using a bayesian information criterion (bic) (kass & raftery, 1995). a large bic value corresponds to a good model with a large log-likelihood value and not too many parameters. we tested competing models of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 groups of delinquency to determine the “best” model based on bic criterion; we found that the bic values for two-, three-, four-, five-, and six-group models were, respectively, -886.8, -881.2, -894.4, -851.8, and -838.2. application of the maximum bic for model selection indicated that the six-group solution was the “best” model for the combined sample of girls and boys. to estimate costs associated with each trajectory of delinquency, we estimated an average cost/child/trajectory for each of the 12 monetizable government resources described in table 1. for each child, we estimated the costs of utilizing the government resource by multiplying the unit cost available from a secondary source (e.g., $29.44 for an appointment with a family physician) by the occurrence of the event. all dollar figures that we report were discounted at a rate of 3%. this discount rate falls within the range of rates commonly used and recommended in public policy analysis (e.g., karoly et al., 1998; karoly et al., 2005; reynolds et al., 2002). all missing values, including the values of the missing grades (such as grades 4, 5, 7, and 8 when no data collection took place), were interpolated, given that there were at least 60% data points present. each gradespecific cost figure was then combined and reclassified into three major groups – jk to grade 3 (ages 4 to 8), grade 4 to grade 6 (ages 9 to 11), and grade 7 to grade 9 (ages 12 to 14) – and presented by delinquency group trajectories and child’s gender. we used the following equation to estimate the average cost for each of the 12 measures of utilization of government resources for each grade. the cost values are based on the value (v) of each outcome as outlined in table 1 (e.g., $29.44 for a visit to a family physician), multiplied by frequency of occurrence (o) of that outcome for each child for that year. (1) where, vo = average cost for an outcome measure in a grade; i = number of children (1, …, n); n = sample size; v = value of outcomes ($); o = occurrences of the outcome. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 272 results trajectories of delinquency according to the statistical tests, the six-group solution was the “best” model for the combined sample of girls and boys. figure 1 depicts the distinct developmental trajectories of the six-class model for delinquency. children in two of the trajectories had very low ratings of delinquency across time; we labelled these groups the lowest delinquency group and the second lowest delinquency group. two other trajectories showed a similar pattern of delinquency ratings that was decreasing over time. in the moderate desisters group, children had moderate levels of delinquency at grade 3, followed by low levels of delinquency at grades 6 and 9. in the highest desisters group, children had the highest level of reported delinquency behaviours at grade 3, followed by a marked decrease in reported delinquency at grades 6 and 9. the fifth trajectory group, labelled escalators, had very low levels of reported delinquency at grade 3 and increased markedly in their reported delinquency over time. by grade 9, children in this trajectory had the second highest delinquency scores. the final group, labelled high delinquency, started with moderate levels of reported delinquency at grade 3, marked by the highest reported levels of delinquency at grades 6 and 9 of any of the trajectory groups. see figure 1. figure 1. delinquency trajectories of at-risk youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 273 table 2 depicts the percentages of children in each of the groups. chi-squares tested for gender differences in the group membership of each trajectory group; a significant group by gender effect was found, that is, that there was a significant difference in the proportion of males compared to the proportion of females (p < .003). we then compared whether the proportion of males versus females differed for each of the six trajectory groups separately. there were significantly more females than males in the two low delinquency trajectory groups, p < .05 for both analyses. there were more males than females in the four remaining trajectory groups, but only the differences for the trajectory groups showing marked decreases in delinquency over time were significant (the moderate and highest desisters), p < .05 for both analyses. table 2. percentage of boys vs. girls in each trajectory trajectory group males % (n) females % (n) lowest delinquency* 6.7% (30) 10.6% (42) second lowest delinquency* 70.4% (314) 76.5% (303) moderate desisters* 13.5% (60) 8.1% (32) highest desisters* 3.4% (15) 1.0% (4) escalators 4.0% (18) 2.8% (11) high delinquency 2.0% (9) 1.0% (4) * p < .05, therefore significant sex differences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 274 estimated costs associated with delinquency trajectories table 3 provides a summary of the government expenditures by general domain by trajectory group. to briefly summarize the results, government expenditures were highest in the remedial education domain (64% of costs), followed by health care and social services (29%), social assistance (6%), and criminal justice system (1%). the two lowest delinquency trajectories (82% of the sample) accounted for only 19.4% of the estimated government costs. in other words, approximately 80% of the estimated costs to government were from 18% of the sample. specifically, we found that youth from the two desisters trajectory groups (13% of the sample) accounted for 40% of the estimated costs to government; and youth from the two most at-risk trajectories (escalators and high delinquency, 5% of the sample) accounted for 40.6% of the estimated costs to government. it is interesting to note that 80% of the estimated criminal justice costs were due to the high delinquency and escalators trajectory groups. we also found that antisocial or delinquent girls cost society more money than antisocial or delinquent boys in all domains, with the exception of the social assistance domain. specifically, summing across all six trajectory groups from ages 4 to 14, we estimated that girls cost $244,056 while boys cost $229,236. in addition, we estimated that girls’ criminal justice costs were almost twice those of boys ($4,835 vs. $2,408). table 3: results of estimated utilization of government resources by trajectory group jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all health care and social services v is it s t o a f a m il y p h y s ic ia n 2nd lowest delinquency 110 103 107 58 54 56 52 48 50 220 205 212 escalators 125 150 134 67 59 64 54 44 50 246 253 249 high delinquency 108 156 128 51 57 53 51 45 49 209 259 230 moderate desisters 116 107 113 56 54 56 55 52 54 227 213 222 lowest delinquency 110 107 109 51 47 49 32 39 36 192 193 193 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 275 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all highest desisters 93 45 82 61 60 61 64 46 60 218 151 203 group total 662 668 673 344 331 338 307 274 299 1,313 1,273 1,310 h o s p it a l e m e r g e n c y r o o m u s e 2nd lowest delinquency 261 237 250 107 99 103 97 92 95 465 428 447 escalators 370 448 384 164 196 175 139 138 138 673 782 698 high delinquency 474 78 355 215 8 167 172 3 125 861 89 647 moderate desisters 203 123 184 62 65 63 66 74 69 331 261 317 lowest delinquency 176 210 194 71 61 65 60 28 41 307 300 301 highest desisters 440 78 380 166 128 158 119 62 108 725 268 646 group total 1,923 1,174 1,748 785 557 732 653 397 576 3,362 2,128 3,056 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 276 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all n u m b e r o f s e r io u s i n ju r ie s 2nd lowest delinquency 2,328 1,659 2,009 2,087 1,405 1,759 4,890 4,363 4,637 9,305 7,427 8,405 escalators 2,476 987 1,904 3,595 1,756 2,903 8,932 11,055 9,714 15,004 13,799 14,521 high delinquency 30 1,499 427 1,628 4,783 2,299 6,188 17,343 8,410 7,846 23,625 11,136 moderate desisters 1,130 1,382 1,195 882 890 885 5,092 3,609 4,556 7,104 5,882 6,636 lowest delinquency 718 1,125 889 774 1,299 1,073 3,478 1,468 2,326 4,971 3,893 4,288 highest desisters 1,542 1,086 1,507 1,906 969 1,740 3,976 6,327 4,271 7,424 8,382 7,518 group total 8,223 7,738 7,930 10,873 11,103 10,659 32,558 44,167 33,915 51,654 63,008 52,504 n u m b e r o f o v e r n ig h t s t a y s i n h o s p it a l 2nd lowest delinquency 348 482 414 92 172 131 144 226 184 584 881 728 escalators 160 234 190 245 26 163 1,062 448 834 1,467 709 1,187 high delinquency 0 5 1 0 51 10 0 1,480 296 0 1,536 307 moderate desisters 1,098 255 874 206 134 188 134 66 110 1,437 455 1,172 lowest delinquency 893 210 547 378 64 206 475 8 208 1,746 283 962 highest desisters 4,586 761 3,928 848 1,046 892 143 305 177 5,577 2,112 4,998 group total 7,085 1,947 5,955 1,769 1,494 1,590 1,957 2,534 1,810 10,811 5,975 9,355 v is it s w it h a n u r s e p r a c t it io n e r 2nd lowest delinquency 12 15 13 4 5 5 3 6 4 19 25 22 escalators 14 11 13 6 9 7 9 7 8 29 27 28 high delinquency 13 1 8 1 19 4 0 27 8 14 47 20 moderate desisters 10 4 8 3 5 3 2 5 3 14 14 15 lowest delinquency 9 8 9 4 5 4 3 5 4 16 18 17 highest desisters 3 18 7 4 1 3 5 12 6 11 31 16 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 277 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all group total 61 56 57 21 43 27 21 63 34 103 162 118 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 278 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all v is it e d b y a c h il d r e n ’s a id w o r k e r 2nd lowest delinquency 10 10 10 7 7 7 7 8 8 25 26 25 escalators 7 93 36 20 39 27 39 76 53 66 208 117 high delinquency 23 108 61 41 13 37 64 59 64 128 179 163 moderate desisters 18 16 18 13 14 13 11 15 12 42 45 43 lowest delinquency 13 7 10 1 0 1 0 0 0 14 8 11 highest desisters 10 57 22 50 41 48 34 20 31 94 119 102 group total 81 291 158 133 115 134 156 179 169 370 585 461 remedial education g r a d e r e p e t it io n (h is to ri ca l re p e ti ti o n d a ta fr o m j k t o g ra d e 9 ) 2nd lowest delinquency 932 869 900 escalators 2,024 1,864 1,971 high delinquency 1,660 3,429 2,250 moderate desisters 1,559 1,385 1,501 lowest delinquency 578 185 351 highest desisters 1,259 2,597 1,546 group total 8,012 10,328 8,519 u s e o f s p e c ia l e d u c a t io n s e r v ic e s (f ro m g ra d e 1 t o g ra d e 9 ) 2nd lowest delinquency 5,813 5,777 5,807 5,606 5,067 5,363 4,496 4,027 4,278 15,915 14,871 15,447 escalators 8,557 5,297 7,285 8,373 6,294 7,651 7,571 9,184 8,101 24,501 20,775 23,037 high delinquency 9,405 6,642 8,927 8,606 7,994 8,476 8,180 15,830 10,348 26,191 30,466 27,751 moderate desisters 8,037 8,643 8,223 7,227 9,381 8,032 6,225 7,006 6,522 21,490 25,031 22,776 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 279 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all lowest delinquency 5,586 3,647 4,595 3,920 2,092 2,898 3,248 1,090 2,104 12,754 6,830 9,596 highest desisters 10,701 14,482 11,700 13,956 13,673 13,908 12,654 17,341 13,430 37,311 45,496 39,038 group total 48,099 44,489 46,537 47,688 44,502 46,327 42,375 54,477 44,782 138,162 143,468 137,646 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 280 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all criminal justice system n u m b e r o f a r r e s t s (g ra d e 9 o n ly ) 2nd lowest delinquency 43 63 53 escalators 335 949 555 high delinquency 755 1,869 1,059 moderate desisters 189 72 147 lowest delinquency 72 0 30 highest desisters 180 0 154 group total 1,573 2,953 1,997 c o u r t a p p e a r a n c e s (g ra d e 9 o n ly ) 2nd lowest delinquency 12 26 19 escalators 135 719 345 high delinquency 404 1,078 588 moderate desisters 67 60 65 lowest delinquency 0 0 0 highest desisters 216 0 180 group total 834 1,883 1,196 family social assistance s o c ia l w e l f a r e (g ra d e 9 o n ly ) 2nd lowest delinquency 1,093 1,054 1,074 escalators 2,320 4,210 3,037 high delinquency 3,093 0 2,142 moderate desisters 1,326 2,738 1,811 lowest delinquency 600 0 250 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 281 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all highest desisters 2,320 0 1,856 group total 10,752 8,001 10,169 o n t a r io d is a b il it y (g ra d e 9 o n ly ) 2nd lowest delinquency 709 660 685 escalators 0 2,753 1,044 high delinquency 0 0 0 moderate desisters 904 577 792 lowest delinquency 675 302 458 highest desisters 0 0 0 group total 2,288 4,292 2,978 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 282 domain total and grand total jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all h e a l t h c a r e a n d s o c ia l s e r v ic e s 2nd lowest delinquency 3,070 2,505 2,802 2,354 1,743 2,061 5,194 4,743 4,978 10,618 8,990 9,841 escalators 3,152 1,923 2,661 4,098 2,085 3,340 10,235 11,769 10,798 17,484 15,778 16,800 high delinquency 647 1,846 980 1,936 4,931 2,570 6,476 18,957 8,953 9,058 25,734 12,503 moderate desisters 2,575 1,887 2,392 1,222 1,161 1,209 5,359 3,822 4,804 9,156 6,870 8,405 lowest delinquency 1,919 1,669 1,758 1,280 1,477 1,398 4,048 1,548 2,616 7,246 4,694 5,772 highest desisters 6,674 2,044 5,927 3,035 2,246 2,902 4,340 6,774 4,654 14,050 11,064 13,483 group total 18,036 11,875 16,521 13,925 13,643 13,480 35,652 47,613 36,802 67,613 73,130 66,803 r e m e d ia l e d u c a t io n 2nd lowest delinquency 5,813 5,777 5,807 5,606 5,067 5,363 4,496 4,027 4,278 16,847 15,739 16,348 escalators 8,557 5,297 7,285 8,373 6,294 7,651 7,571 9,184 8,101 26,525 22,639 25,008 high delinquency 9,405 6,642 8,927 8,606 7,994 8,476 8,180 15,830 10,348 27,851 33,895 30,001 moderate desisters 8,037 8,643 8,223 7,227 9,381 8,032 6,225 7,006 6,522 23,049 26,416 24,277 lowest delinquency 5,586 3,647 4,595 3,920 2,092 2,898 3,248 1,090 2,104 13,332 7,014 9,947 highest desisters 10,701 14,482 11,700 13,956 13,673 13,908 12,654 17,341 13,430 38,571 48,094 40,584 group total 48,099 44,489 46,537 47,688 44,502 46,327 42,375 54,477 44,782 146,175 153,797 146,165 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 283 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all c r im in a l ju s t ic e s y s t e m 2nd lowest delinquency 55 89 71 escalators 470 1,668 900 high delinquency 1,159 2,947 1,647 moderate desisters 256 132 211 lowest delinquency 72 0 30 highest desisters 395 0 334 group total 2,408 4,835 3,193 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 284 jk – grade 3 ($) grade 4 – grade 6 ($) grade 7 – grade 9 ($) all grades ($) male female all male female all male female all male female all f a m il y s o c ia l a s s is t a n c e 2nd lowest delinquency 1,802 1,714 1,758 escalators 2,320 6,963 4,081 high delinquency 3,093 0 2,142 moderate desisters 2,230 3,315 2,603 lowest delinquency 1,275 302 708 highest desisters 2,320 0 1,856 group total 13,041 12,293 13,147 a l l d o m a in s (1 2 m e a s u r e s ) 2nd lowest delinquency 8,882 8,282 8,609 7,960 6,809 7,424 9,690 8,769 9,255 29,323 26,532 28,018 escalators 11,709 7,220 9,946 12,471 8,380 10,991 17,806 20,953 18,899 46,800 47,047 46,788 high delinquency 10,053 8,488 9,907 10,542 12,925 11,046 14,655 34,786 19,301 41,162 62,576 46,292 moderate desisters 10,612 10,530 10,615 8,449 10,543 9,240 11,585 10,828 11,326 34,691 36,733 35,496 lowest delinquency 7,504 5,316 6,352 5,200 3,569 4,296 7,296 2,639 4,720 21,925 12,010 16,457 highest desisters 17,375 16,527 17,628 16,991 15,919 16,810 16,995 24,115 18,084 55,336 59,158 56,257 group total 66,135 56,364 63,058 61,613 58,145 59,807 78,027 102,091 81,585 229,236 244,056 229,308 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 285 discussion delinquency is a serious problem in our society. over one-third of youth have been involved in some form of delinquency by the age of 14 (farrington, 1989). furthermore, childhood delinquency tends to predict violent behaviours throughout the course of a lifetime (farrington, 1989). consequently, understanding the developmental pathways that lead to delinquency is a critical issue. the current study was designed to identify the delinquency trajectories of boys and girls living in disadvantaged communities in ontario from ages 8 to 14, and examine the estimated costs associated with each trajectory. key messages from findings are that: 1. children who are at risk for involvement in delinquency start early and can be potentially identified early in their development; 2. early identification and investment may make a difference and reduce the number of children who may go on to be delinquent; 3. the costs of children at risk for delinquency begin early and are high; and 4. early investment in education and families is important to prevent long-term criminal justice costs. developmental trajectories of delinquency our first objective was to examine the trajectories of delinquency in boys and girls from ages 8 (grade 3) to 14 (grade 9). our results confirm the heterogeneity of the development of delinquency and are generally consistent with previous research. we found six groups of delinquency. as expected, two groups, lowest delinquency and second lowest delinquency, representing the majority of the youth (≈82% of the sample) reported consistently low levels of delinquency over time. two other trajectories (highest desisters and moderate desisters) showed a similar pattern of delinquency ratings decreasing over time, representing the desisters (≈13% of the sample). another group, the escalators (≈3.5% of the sample), had very low levels of reported delinquency at grade 3 and increased over time. finally, the high delinquency group started with moderate levels of reported delinquency at grade 3 and had the highest reported levels of delinquency at grades 6 and 9 of any of the trajectory groups. the high delinquency group represented approximately 1.5% of the sample. it may be that the low percentage of youth in the high delinquency group reflects the fact that we only have data up until the youth are in grade 9, or approximately 14 years old. thus, many youth may just be at the beginning of engaging in delinquent acts. we hypothesize that with more longitudinal data points, the proportion of youth in the high delinquency group would increase and likely more closely resemble other research findings. this study supported the trajectories of delinquency reported in other studies, but also identified some key differences. similarities included that: (a) the majority of youth were involved international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 286 in no or limited delinquent activities; (b) females were less likely than males to be involved in delinquency (i.e., there were more females in the low delinquency and second lowest delinquency trajectory groups); (c) there was a group of individuals who desisted from involvement in delinquency; and (d) there was a trajectory of consistently high engagement in delinquent behaviour. the key differences from previous literature were the number of groups that had low levels of delinquency (i.e., there were two groups – low and second lowest – that engaged in minimal delinquent behaviours). second, the escalators and high delinquency groups had equal proportional representation of males and females. typically, research reports that males are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour than females and, thus, we expected to have more males than females in the high delinquency group. third, the shape of the high delinquency trajectory group was surprising, as there was a peak in delinquency in grade 6. we expected that the peak would not be present, and if we had extended longitudinal data, we would have expected to see it at around age 18. there are several possible interpretations to this early peak. first, no other study on delinquent trajectories has been conducted starting at such a young age. second, the current study included girls, which no other study of delinquent trajectories has done. third, this study was based on community sampling conducted in high-risk, low socio-economic status neighbourhoods. lastly, it is possible that there are unique sample characteristics in the participants and the results may reflect this sampling. nonetheless, more longitudinal research is required that begins as early as this research to validate our findings. with our longitudinal analyses, we also examined differences in the distributions of boys and girls within the diverse trajectory groups. we found no gender differences in the distribution of boys and girls in the high delinquency group (2% of males and 1% of females), or in the escalators group (4% of males and 3% of females). this pattern is inconsistent with the general developmental trend reported by silverthorn and frick (1999) who found that girls tend to experience a later onset of delinquency than boys, and the general finding that boys are more likely to be involved in high delinquent behaviour than girls. the discrepancy may arise because we have used a multi-informant approach, and have taken a person-oriented approach (as opposed to a group-oriented approach), allowing us to examine heterogeneity within the development of delinquency. the small minority of at-risk girls in our sample demonstrated these problems as early as boys. consistent with other research, we found that girls were overrepresented in the two low delinquency groups. however, we found there were significantly more males in the two desisters groups. trajectories increase our understanding of delinquency development and identify behavioural patterns that emerge in individuals on a specific trajectory. once these trajectories are identified, specific factors pertaining to the individual, peers, family, and community in general can be explored to determine which factors heighten the risk of delinquency (i.e., the chronic or increasing trajectories) or act as a protective factor against the involvement in delinquency (i.e., low, noninvolved, or declining trajectories). estimated economic costs associated with delinquency trajectories the second objective of this study was to estimate the costs to government associated with each delinquency trajectory on utilization of government resources in the criminal justice system, remedial education, health care and social services, and social assistance. the majority of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 287 estimated costs associated with each of the trajectories were in the educational system – 64% of the costs were for remedial education. in contrast, the percentage of the estimated costs associated with the other domains was 29% for health care and social services, 6% for social assistance, and 1% for the criminal justice system. it was the desisters groups (highest desisters and moderate desisters) who received the most special educational services, and this likely was a positive and preventive investment. approximately 80% of the estimated costs to government were due to the two desisters trajectory groups (highest desisters and moderate desisters) and the youth from the two most at-risk trajectories (escalators and high delinquency) who represented 18% of the sample. specifically, we found, first, that youth from the two desisters trajectory groups (13% of the sample) accounted for 40% of the estimated costs to government (primarily driven by education costs, a preventive response); and, second, youth from the two most at-risk trajectories (escalators and high delinquency, 5% of the sample) accounted for 40.6% of the estimated costs to government. a review of the specific estimated health care costs indicates that the escalators in particular had the highest costs associated with visiting their doctor, going to the emergency room, having serious injuries, and visiting with a nurse practitioner. these are reactionary costs (as opposed to preventive costs) in the sense that a significant event has happened. furthermore, for girls in the high delinquency group, some costs were estimated as being much higher than for boys (e.g., the number of serious injuries, and overnight stays in hospital). atrisk girls may be particularly vulnerable to medical problems associated with delinquency involvement compared to at-risk boys. high-risk girls were also more costly with respect to the criminal justice system. compared to boys, the total estimated costs at age 14 (grade 9) for girls were almost twice that for boys ($4,835 vs. $2,408). the data revealed that girls in the two high-risk groups (high delinquency and escalators) were much more likely to have higher costs associated with both being arrested and appearing in court. it appears that girls, once arrested, were also much more likely to enter the criminal justice system. admittedly, our sample of girls was small and may not be representative, but it does reflect the developmental course and costs associated with a small sample of very high-risk delinquent girls. the high-risk boy groups also had the highest estimated costs, but not as high as those of the high-risk girls. in summary, our findings suggest that girls cost the government more money than boys in all domains (except social assistance). specifically, summing across the six trajectory groups, we estimated that, between the ages of 4 and 14, girls cost $244,056 while boys cost $229,236. additionally, 80% of the estimated criminal justice costs were due to the high delinquency and escalators groups. even though the estimated criminal justice system costs to government were relatively low as of grade 9 (only 1% of the overall costs), these two groups may just be getting started and the costs associated with these groups can only increase. interestingly, the high delinquency and escalators groups accounted for 46% of the reactive costs (such as criminal justice system, health care, and social services) compared to 32% for the two desisters groups and 22% for the two low delinquency groups; for the preventive costs (e.g., remedial education), the high delinquency and escalator groups accounted for 38% of the costs compared to 44% for the two desisters groups and 18% for the two low delinquency groups. the implication is that investing early in prevention costs such as remedial education may provide at-risk children and their families the opportunity to have more positive developmental outcomes and desist from delinquency involvement. as a consequence, investing in prevention can save the government money in the long international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 288 run. the most at-risk groups did not receive sufficient early support and consequently the costs associated with them were reactive and costly. limitations there are many strengths to the current research: the bbbf research sample comprised disadvantaged and at-risk communities; the communities were diverse (francophone, aboriginal, recent immigrants, and multicultural); the sample had both boys and girls; and the data allowed for economic analyses to be conducted. this is the first on a canadian sample. however, some of the trajectories had a small sample size and hence the results may not be generalizable. for example, in the high delinquency group, the costs of delinquent behaviour in girls were high relative to boys. it may be that this is an atypical group that had many arrests, or in fact, it may be representative of an extreme group of girls that to date have been neglected by research. there are early indicators to the developmental pathways for delinquency. this research suggests that delinquency involvement does not just emerge, but develops over time, and without intervention, the costs associated with these problems accumulate and are serious and significant as early as grade 9. investment in prevention, such as educational support, can reduce delinquency involvement. the most at-risk groups for delinquency involvement (e.g., escalators and high delinquency) accounted for the majority of reactive costs (e.g., criminal justice) and not the preventive costs (e.g., remedial education). furthermore, although more research is needed to understand the developmental delinquency trajectories of girls, they appear to require more support than do boys. although our sample of high-risk girls was limited, there are some preliminary indications from this research that they were costly and may be experiencing emotional problems, criminal activity, and court system involvement. the costs associated with their problems may be higher than for boys because they appear not only in the criminal justice system, but also in the health care system. traditionally, we have estimated only the criminal justice costs. it may be that this venue does not reflect the full range of costs associated with female delinquency. this research indicates that pathways to delinquency begin early. it is well known that for the early onset of offending, youth tend to persist and desist at a later stage, and as such impose a greater social and criminal justice costs on society (tremblay, van aken, & koops, 2009). to address crime and antisocial behaviour, welsh (2007) has suggested that the “most hopeful” methods (derived from research in the united states and canada) are those designed to counter “specific risk factors”, such as home visiting by health professionals, pre-school programs to stimulate thinking and reasoning skills in young children, parenting education programs, cognitive and social skills training to teach children to consider the consequences of their behaviour, and teacher training and anti-bullying initiatives in schools. thus, crime prevention needs to occur early in development and be ongoing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 289 although we have made a great deal of progress in understanding individual differences in antisocial behaviour and linking these to interventions, much work remains to be done. research that continues to monitor the development of these trajectories could be informative as youth transition into early adulthood. the mental and physical health and other needs of children at risk for delinquency involvement should not be ignored. their behaviours greatly affect families and communities and are costly. an examination of the youth who desist from delinquency provides strong support for the value of investing early in children to prevent negative long-term outcomes. even modestly successful prevention and intervention investments, such as in education, yielded significant benefits, including decreasing future costs associated with delinquency, improving the well-being and safety of families, children, and youth in a community, and reducing crime and delinquency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 263-293 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 290 references barnett, w. s. 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theoretical principles created from everyday practice in hungary. it examines similarities between this model and the cornell care model from the united states in relation to such aspects as the basic needs of children in residential care and the long-term orientation to building practice methods within agencies. a practical approach with a system-oriented perspective developed in hungary for implementing the principles is presented. this includes a plan-docheck-act cycle model-quality assurance system designed to meet the needs of children, and furnishes an example of how information technology software can support the daily job of employees in terms of administrative and supportive activities. the article discusses weaknesses, threats, or challenges that can occur during implementation and threaten the program’s aims of helping both children and staff. this analysis uncovers the underlying role and importance of positive identity and self-esteem among staff, with a strong focus on personal and professional integrity. in conclusion, findings are presented that indicate some possible solutions for the problems discussed, comparing these qualitative results to previous quantitative evidence found in research studies measuring the effectiveness of the care model, and drawing some commonalities from the two approaches. keywords: child and youth care (cyc), therapeutic residential care (trc), organizational development in trc, professional identity in cyc, bridging theory and practice zsolt b. major is a psychologist working in residential child and youth care, and a phd student at the social communication doctoral school, corvinus university of budapest, fővám tér 8, budapest, 1093 hungary. email: 4081237@t-email.hu mailto:4081237@t-email.hu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 2 child and youth care (cyc) has struggled to be identified as its own unique science and profession for some time (anglin, 1999). there has also been much debate both within and beyond cyc as to whether residential care can be an appropriate solution for children temporarily placed out of their biological families (fice,1985). many authors have examined these questions and some of them have concluded that perhaps residential care has more drawbacks than advantages. for example, ryan and his colleagues raised questions about the use of group homes for victims of physical abuse and neglect (ryan, marshall, herz, & hernandez, 2008), while whittaker (2000) has summarized the arguments that have been made for and against residential care over a 30-year period. in describing why attempts to eliminate residential care have not been successful, anglin (2013) offers an image of the child welfare system as an iceberg whose tip is residential care; if the tip were to be removed, the iceberg would simply rise up until a balance was re-established. this article takes the position that since residential care exists and will continue to exist, our task as cyc professionals is to determine how it can work in the best interests of children and help them to live their own lives well in the future (whittaker et al., 2016). anglin has several times discussed the uniqueness of the cyc profession, which has developed knowledge, methods, and perspectives that are different from other professions like social work, education, and psychology (anglin, 1999, 2014). this article seeks to supplement his arguments with an important additional dimension. following bourdieu’s (2004) investigation into the sciences as separate fields of forces, we can assert that cyc has its own field of force. in bourdieu’s terminology, the evidence for this is the clearly observable “entering tax” that must be paid by everyone who starts work in cyc. as workers in cyc, we can understand the concept of the entering tax easily if we think about our beginner times: we were faced with types of children’s behavioral problems that we had never met before. we had to pay the tax by starting to develop a totally new point of view and approach, learning new knowledge and skills to handle the difficult situations that can arise. in line with anglin’s thoughts, we need to recognize that cyc is one of the more complex sciences (anglin, 2014). while having its own knowledge base, it also needs to create and apply a unique alloy of other sciences. in residential care, we have to mix in principles from education, social pedagogy, special pedagogy, and psychology, and at the same time add the social work point of view focusing on social aspects with an individual therapeutic approach. through this process we are creating a new gestalt and a holistic applied science. this paper’s presentation of an organizational development process implemented in several children’s homes in hungary — the therapeutic residential care (trc) model named “armchair” — and findings from implementing that model, are aimed at increasing the rank and acceptance of cyc, partly by bridging theories and practice. in accordance with whittaker’s appeal and suggestions (whittaker, 2017), this paper outlines one possible way that residential care can be done well, and gives examples of good practice in applying theoretical principles to everyday situations. it also marks further steps researchers could use to reinforce this process by designing and carrying out research that looks for academic evidence of the effectiveness of trc. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 3 a hungarian trc model for residential cyc practice: “armchair or armrest?” in 1997 in hungary there was a reform of residential placement in cyc: small “familial” group homes replaced the impersonal big institutions. few studies have been done, but the number of group homes began increasing at that time. the story of the model being presented here began in january 2003, when the author found himself “accidentally” in front of twelve teenage girls with serious behavioral problems in a residential group home. i had no idea what to do with them. my studies as a psychologist were almost completely useless in that situation. i had studied nothing practical about child care and neither had my colleagues. they did what they could from instinct. even today hungarian universities do not have enough professors experienced in actual practice, and there are few available practical guidelines in this area. there was even less in hungary in those earlier years. although i had not learned practical methodology during my student years, i was lucky with my teachers and supervisors, because they taught me that i must not give up even in situations that seem inexplicable at first sight. so i started to observe what solutions were available and why they worked, “by instinct”, and i looked for logical explanations behind the surface behavior. my aim was to help my colleagues who struggled with the same problems, as that seemed to me to be part of my job as a psychologist. i believe this even more deeply today. now i am familiar with a larger part of the international, english-language professional literature of residential care, and i know that several different professional models exist concerning treatment processes. one of the summarizing papers, for example, is james’ (2011) article, “what works in group care? — a structured review of treatment models for group homes and residential care”. this recent holistic paper of working models and approaches is in whittaker, del valle, and holmes’ (2015) book, therapeutic residential care for children and youth: developing evidencebased international practice. i have become more familiar recently with models such as holden’s (2009) care model and anglin’s (2002) framework for well-functioning group homes. i will refer to these in more detail below. but i did not know about these when i was faced with the problem of how to help the girls. i had to analyze what was observable, and create a solution on the basis of my previous knowledge. it was clear from the first minute that i could not be a “don quixote” as a psychologist: i could not help the children on my own. such a task requires team work. my work was supported by evidence coming from the children about their situation: they referred to themselves many times as intézetis (in effect, “institutionalized waifs”). this term often has negative connotations, but if we look deeper we find the key to the solution: the children know very well that they are living in an institution and they react to the effect of the whole home. this fact is represented in the name i chose for the model i developed: “armchair or armrest?”. i wanted to express in the name of the model that we must take care to look at the whole system. when we look at an armchair, we see a holistic picture, not a collection of components. we have to understand and respond to children’s needs at an organizational level too (major, mészáros, & tatárné, 2008). my aim first of all was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 4 to help the helpers in their daily work with children placed in residential care by drawing on appropriate theoretical principles in an easy-to-understand, practical way. over the past 15 years, i have recognized sadly that cyc is an undervalued area everywhere in the world: our social and economic systems give little respect or value to this work. gilligan (in his foreword to whittaker et al., 2015) makes the point that despite the bad reputation and bad press, society does need residential treatment for some children and youth, and, therefore, we have to continue our research into trc to find out what types of problems can be addressed by it, and in what cases it can be the appropriate solution. following on from the recommendations of whittaker et al. (2015) to collect and share valid and useful knowledge, models, and methods of trc, i present my model and the findings to date on its effectiveness. i also make recommendations, hoping to contribute to future research and model-building, and to inspire and support professionals in their jobs, for the sake of the children’s well-being. theoretical principles: international parallels once i had an argument with an academic professor about the basic needs of children in residential care. he did not want to accept my assumption that deep behind the surface of a child’s problem behaviours, every child who is in the situation of having been taken away from his or her biological family has shared, core needs. the disagreement was about children with different socioecological backgrounds. my firm position that core needs exist was still mostly an unproven belief. so, it was a reassuring surprise when i discovered trc models from the united states and canada, and recognized significant similarities with my thoughts and beliefs. i am referring specifically to the children and residential experiences (care) program model, developed in the united states by martha holden (2009) and her colleagues at cornell university, utilizing some of james anglin’s framework for responding to children’s psychoemotional pain and pain-based behavior, and for “creating well-functioning residential care” (anglin, 2004, 2013). while my focus on these two frameworks for understanding out-of home-care is selective, and does not encompass the full range of trc models that exist internationally, i believe they offer a set of core principles that are based upon strong research and that may be of wilde crosscultural relevance. trauma-informed professionalism and the core needs of children i find that a helpful way of analyzing and responding to children’s needs is to ask, “why? what? how?” as the first step — before doing anything else — we have to look behind the surface and understand why our children in residential care often display such problematic behaviors. for this, we have to look deep behind the symptoms observable by our eyes, as the origins of the behaviors will often be found in the past; in most cases, in early childhood. if we can capture the deep structure of the situations we face, it will help lead us to an understanding of what we should do in the present. we thereby become better able to implement and transform this knowledge into international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 5 the methodology of daily practice, both at the individual and organizational levels; thus we can find out how to make the residential service more effective and “well-functioning” (major et al., 2008). this approach seems to align with the findings of anglin and holden as indicated earlier. anglin (1999) has mentioned that the realities children face have not traditionally been seen, nor have their voices been adequately heard. holden and many more authors use the “traumainformed” expression as a core principle of the trc system (holden, anglin, nunno, & izzo, 2015; murphy, moore, redd, & malm, 2017). a trauma-informed therapeutic approach means that we have to analyze the reasons behind the children’s behavioral problems, and we have to establish our treatment and care processes based on this knowledge. in the armchair model the starting point is the recognition of the common core dimension in the situations of children living in out-of-home care. this dimension is the powerlessness of a “victim position” (major & mészáros, 2017). verena kast (2014) lucidly describes what it means to be a victim. she has stated that at some point every person finds himor herself in a victim position (e.g., having a bicycle or pocketbook stolen, being robbed, being fired from a job). it is easy to see that children in residential care, living away from home, are all in a victim position, even if they are not being abused physically, emotionally, or sexually. drawing on kast’s statement, major and mészáros (2017) described the psychological consequences of powerlessness in a victimized person. people in such situations miss the satisfaction of such basic needs as feeling secure, in control, competent, and joyful. in residential care, children (a) do not feel safe in their problematic circumstances; (b) have lost control because they did not want to leave their families (even if they asked to be placed in residential care, that is not what they really wanted as their destiny); (c) feel they were not able to solve the situation; and (d) lose the ability to be happy due to the resulting distress and angst (angst and joy are on the same continuum, but at opposite ends; it is impossible to feel both at once). this analysis answers the “what” question, about what we would have to provide to meet the needs of children in the present circumstances. but it is far from answering the question of “how” to implement this in our daily practice. in order to find some possible answers, we have to define in a practical way what these needs really mean. briefly:  feeling secure means, “i do not have to defend myself” and “my environment‘s (re)actions are stable and predictable.”  control means, “i do have rights and i have opportunities to make decisions for myself.”  competency means, “i am able to solve situations and to create things.”  joy means, “i am able to be happy, at least for moments or in certain activities.” if we were successful in making this transformation in children’s lives, it would be because we have found simple ways to satisfy these needs in the present. everyone feels safe in himor herself when listened to with empathic attention (even without any answer). we feel in control, to some degree, when we can make decisions even in the simplest everyday situations, such as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 6 choosing pasta or soup for dinner, choosing what to play on a weekend afternoon, and so on (major & mészáros, 2017). the armchair model works with this dynamism, as does the care model (holden, 2009). long term approach: a specialty of cyc the outcomes of residential care are difficult to assess due to its inherent complexities, and few rigorous studies, such as that of havlicek and courtney (2016), have been undertaken of its long-term effects. this situation has affected the reputation and scientific status of residential care. in hungary, unfortunately, up to this time there is no academic-level longitudinal research that has measured the effectiveness of residential care services. there are many anecdotal accounts of young people making important life changes in the years after leaving residential care; however, it is not possible to demonstrate a causal effect without more rigorous research (courtney & hook, 2017). while important evidence is emerging now (inter alia: berridge et al., 2016; clark, smith, & uota, 2013; farmer, murray, burns, ballentine, & rauktis, 2017; glisson & green, 2011; glisson, green, & williams, 2012; glisson & hemmelgarn, 1998; holden et al., 2015; holden et al., 2010; izzo et al., 2016; nunno, smith, martin, & butcher, 2017), we need to keep building upon qualitative analyses and practice wisdom. cyc work depends upon staff who have qualities of patience and tolerance, who take a relational approach with a sense of professionalism and pride in their important roles despite inevitable failures. part of the uniqueness of cyc is its deep belief in the worth of every young person along with a commitment to offering quality professional support (major & mészáros, 2017; major et al., 2008). meeting core needs of children at the organizational level in order to offer quality care, we need to pay close attention to the organizational climate and culture. there is no formal research available comparing residential settings internationally on corporate dimensions, such as corporate culture, the complexity of coordinating work processes, and interorganizational communication. i will refer to my own personal observations in hungary and my impressions from relevant literature. glisson and colleagues’ perceptive works and their findings about the corporate climate and its effects on positive outcomes in trc are a useful source of information (glisson & green, 2011; glisson et al., 2012; glisson & hemmelgarn, 1998). these authors have demonstrated convincingly in a number of studies that the organizational climate influences outcomes, and in particular that a positive climate leads to more positive outcomes, more satisfaction of staff with their jobs, and more commitment to the organization from staff (glisson et al., 2012). however, glisson and green (2011) also indicated that there is a need for further research about understanding how aspects of the organizational climate link to specific outcomes. glisson and hemmelgarn’s (1998) findings suggest that increasing the interorganizational service coordination will not show a correlation with positive outcomes. in the following section, i present a possible way to coordinate the professional activities of a residential system with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 7 attention to staff’s needs and a focus on corporate climate. the description will emphasize hungarian experiences, as it is those with which i am most familiar. goals and processes: the plan-do-check-act quality assurance system after a presentation on this topic at the fice vienna conference in 2016, one man came up to me from the audience and said, “finally a model which presents not just ‘what’ to do, but offers concrete examples too about ‘how’ to implement the principles.” this appears to be a need not only in hungary, but in cyc around the world. children in residential care have core needs that have gone unfulfilled. in accordance with these needs, the armchair model summarizes those activities that can meet the needs or best interests of children at an organizational level in a transparent manner. this model offers a practical guide for implementing activities in daily practice, with particular attention to the climate of the agency (major et al., 2008). one of the main needs of children is “feeling safe”. as they react to the climate of the whole system, there is a need for the professional processes in the organization to try to build a sense of security. implementing the principles of “safety science” in residential care settings seems to be a possible good pathway, as some professionals have already suggested (aven, 2014; cull, rzepnicki, o’day, & epstein, 2013). the armchair model uses the plan-do-check-act (pdca) model of organizational process development, as presented in papers by raluca and adriana (2015) and ning and hu (2013). the steps when using this approach are: (a) create a plan — a clearly structured description of the main professional activities and processes; (b) offer technical methods for how to do the professional activities and processes; (c) put in regular check points to monitor whether they are working in an appropriate way; and (d) always be ready to act with a development intervention if needed. in order to implement a trc model that follows these steps, it was recognized that the use of computer technology would be required. given the longer-term nature of our ultimate goals with children, we need to separate the goals from the activities that will guide the organizational approach to achieving the goals. the list of activities can then be defined and structured so that they are able to satisfy one or more unmet needs. how they can be carried out in an appropriate way can also be defined (along with the type of documentation and a schedule of check-in times). a core feature of the model is its flexibility. the number of topics and involved processes is expandable in every moment according to the assessments of professionals (staff and management). the use of the system includes its continuous and sustainable development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 8 figure 1. sample of logbook developed for quality assurance system. 7th of march_2018, wednesday colleague: starting time of working.: house in appropriate condition – yes / no, signature: ending time of working: unusual episode was / was not, signature: to do’s done / signature children medic. out time back time where? learning activity hobby activity keep in touch with family jane sample 14:00 15:30 classmate history: greeks in the 1st century english: grammar practice hip-hop dance richard model 15:00 18:00 football no football sylvia template 13:00 14:00 shopping math: geometry biology: gender of humans no 14:30 16:00 mother x etc. episodes: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 9 figure 2. sample of analytical description of organizational activities. s figure 3. sample of quality management monitor meeting report. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 10 in practice, this means that the realization of the professional activities is documented in the logbook of the group in a “user-friendly” way. staff usually only need to mark keywords into a dedicated place in a prestructured logbook (see figure 1). this means there is no need for more effort from the staff than is absolutely necessary. moreover, during the check-in procedure in a team meeting, the staff members of a group home or residence can, when necessary, look for developmental activities together. examples for the administrative working process of the system are also shown below (see figures 2 and 3). the pdca-based quality assurance system is able to efficiently support residential children’s homes in being ready to address challenges, even those still unknown, and to realize the vision of a “learning organization” as recommended in some cyc studies and articles (claiborne, auerbach, lawrence, & schudrich, 2013; mcpheat & butler, 2013). the dynamic structure of the system integrates the core principles as mentioned in the cited trc models. the list of involved corporate activities includes, for example:  team meetings for staff,  involving children as expert partners in their treatment meetings with the staff,  maintaining contact with the family,  organizing family days, and  engaging in public relations with the wider environment; for instance, by organizing an “open day” inviting school teachers, neighbors, classmates, and so on. the list can be enlarged at any time, and the dynamism of using the system automatically ensures that it will avoid becoming too rigid. as an example, the system can be configured to fit the core principles of the care model: developmentally focused, family-involved, relationship-based, competence-centered, traumainformed, and ecologically oriented (holden et al., 2010). it can also be configured to fit anglin’s three dimensions of group-home work: basic psychosocial processes, interactional dynamics, and the levels of group-home operation (anglin, 2004). overall, experience to date indicates that implementation of this system has created a clear, transparent, and sustainable framework. it is easy for the staff to use and, due to its working procedures, it can contribute to the positive climate of the home. unfortunately, there is still no evidence-based research in hungary to confirm the efficiency and efficacy of the model, but there are many similarities and parallels with other researched quality assurance models (e.g., ahn, hartzel, carter, & reiman, 2016; farmer et al., 2017; holden et al., 2010; izzo et al., 2016; williams & glisson, 2014). such further research is recommended. qualitative findings coming from observation and staff feedback will be presented in the following parts of the article. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 11 before we explore these findings, the question of how the armchair model is employed needs to be addressed. the system encompasses the administration and transparent operation of all professional activities in the residence. in addition, in hungary we are developing further systems, based when possible on information technology (it), to support everyday processes in group homes, such as the system presented in the next section. in accordance with the findings of williams and glisson (2014) with regard to the supportive effects of good system administration, a multidisciplinary team created original software to support the administration of the model. our aim was to increase the level of safety by providing exact information and by saving time formerly spent in manual calculation. resource management: it-based support for staff in their everyday activities when i decided to be a psychologist, my intention was to contribute to other people’s jobs by supporting them in their activities. this was also my approach during the period when i worked as vice-director of a children’s home. on my first day of work as leader, i was horrified by how many working hours staff spent on administration instead of in professional work with the residents. one of the most time-consuming activities was logging the monthly working hours of colleagues, and then summarizing them following labyrinthine rules, all by hand. the children’s home comprised several group homes, each of which submitted a monthly report that took them at least three hours to prepare. my own part of this process, summarizing the administrative reports from the group homes, required about three working days a month. i realized that much of this time could otherwise have gone to more important activities. i decided then to design a solution for automating both the logging of hours and the calculating. it took 5 years to go from idea to working system, but finally this has been successfully accomplished. now colleagues in all the children’s homes of budapest use the developed software. our aim was to create a system that would not take excessive time and energy, and would generate summary reports automatically. the tasks were to:  increase the efficiency of communication and data-retrieval;  decrease errors of calculation; and,  reduce deviation from regulations (e.g., instances of inappropriate use of time). our multidisciplinary team worked on the software development with continuous consideration of future users’ feedback and suggestions. some selected colleagues regularly tested the completed modules of the program and shared their experiences as we worked towards a userfriendly design and functionality. the result is a custom-designed web-based software for group homes. it provides almost all of the necessary information for planning and summarizing a schedule of working hours, including an automatic alert in case of deviation from the regulations. we hope use of the software will contribute to and support the achievement of the quality assurance system’s goals, aligning with the earlier described methodology (see figure 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 12 figure 4. illustration of software interface. the text is in hungarian. each of the four wide columns represents one care worker’s details and hours worked. red indicates an error, and the pop-up message provides details about it. the use of the software has led to the saving of an estimated three working hours per group home per month (compared with an assumed expert use of ms excel, as a “semi-professional” it support for calculating). in budapest alone there are about 150 group homes, so at least 450 hours, or about 56 working days, are saved each month. this is a significant quantity of time from the point of view of management and service delivery; moreover, the availability of additional information provided by the system is increasing the homes’ ability to meet their core goals in accordance with children’s needs. the system matches well with gillingham’s (2016) perspectives and recommendations about designing software to support the activities of staff in residential homes. smith and eaton (2014) summarize the recent papers on this topic, and their findings and conclusions correspond closely with our qualitative observations in hungary. we experienced broadly similar reactions, and even at a broadly similar rate, from our staff. for example, many colleagues have a strong overall reluctance to use the computer, and little willingness to become more familiar with it. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 13 reasons they offer are similar to those found by smith and eaton, namely, that the use of it takes time they see as better spent on interacting with the children. on the basis of smith and eaton’s (2014) findings and our own experience, it is evident that it takes years for staff to accept and be familiar with an it-based administrative system, and to recognize that it works to their benefit. as one of my colleague’s confessed recently: you know, at first you wouldn’t want to have heard what we thought about you when we encountered the software. now, more than 9 months later, we are just beginning to discover how useful it is for us, and now we do believe that it works in our interest. the it development team continues with this work, developing further software modules for managing general data storage, the use of corporate cars, the upkeep of the houses, financial transactions, and the children’s personal data during residency. this last feature could be expanded in time to other parts of the social service system; for example, to “twilight homes” for seniors. there is even a plan to develop an e-logbook for the children’s homes, following the pattern presented in figure 1. all the applications are being expanded to the national level. in addition, the e-logbook, for example, holds an extraordinary amount of data and thereby provides many opportunities for designing academic research projects in the future. the developmental team adheres to a safety policy focused on data security and privacy (e.g., by anonymizing data provided to researchers). smith and eaton’s (2014) findings that a “community of practice” (cop) approach to supporting the process of adopting it into trc holds promise. training in the core methods of the quality assurance system (see detailed description below) may be able to help the community to develop into an effective cop. however, to support the work of a cop, we need to take a deeper look behind the negative comments made by cyc workers when first incorporating it into their practice, and establish an analysis of possible further reasons for resistance against these developments. method: participant observation in order to uncover these possible further explanations, i gained valuable information by taking on the position of a “participant observer”. participant observation is a well-accepted method in ethnography, as the many research studies based on it show (reischauer, 2015), even in the field of organizational analysis (watson, 2012). users of the method sometimes interpret their methodological approach as a “scale,” with the pure observer on the one end, and active participator on the other (evans, 2012; johnson, avenarius, & weatherford, 2006; moeran, 2007) there are many advantages to the researcher becoming an active part of the organization, as this presents opportunities to get more detailed and deeper information than would be available to the analyst as a non-participating observer. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 14 as the armchair model was developed in the middle of everyday practice, my position was closer to the participant end of the methodological scale. as i did development work on the model, such as leading training sessions, designing the information tools, and so on, i was able to gain a deeper understanding of the organization, and became aware of aspects i had previously not encountered. in the following section, i will report the findings of the qualitative factor analysis i did on the contents of my observations during the years spent in organizational development. at this point, there is no quantitative analysis of these observations; i hope they may form the basis of further research in the future. results: observed weaknesses, threats, and challenges prior published research, as well as our findings, indicate that staff do not welcome innovations like it services that increase transparency in the organization. several aspects of transparency need more examination, and will be discussed in the following sections. integrity during my participant observation process i noticed a strange cultural value existing within the community of cyc staff: the presence of a kind of “favoritism”. favoritism can be defined as one of the lighter types of “corruption”: it is not actually illegal, but it takes inappropriate advantage of opportunities in the operation of the organization. when we use the term “corruption”, we do so very broadly to address a wide range of inappropriate or immoral activities, whether or not they are actually illegal. many times these activities have a positive intent, for instance when the working schedule is planned in a way that favors (gives more working hours to) those who are earning less money and don’t have non-salary benefits. this may be acceptable in an environment where the salaries are under the subsistence level. however, those who take advantage of it have a reason to oppose any increase in transparency. also, the quality assurance system, with its requirement of thorough documentation, can at first create a feeling among the staff that “big brother is watching”. especially when the professional self-esteem or identity of colleagues is not well enough established, the possibility of increasing oversight of daily activity can cause fear and anxiety, rather than a sense of safety and security; the negative feelings may perhaps filter down to the experience of the children as well. as far as i am aware, there is no specific research on the “corruption” dimension of corporate culture in residential cyc. however, we can consider discussion and results on this topic from other workplace contexts. recent studies tend to prefer a change in approach from a “fight against corruption”, to a “fight for integrity” (chapman & samira, 2016). for pallagi (2012), integrity means “that a person has conscious and consistent values that guide his or her decisions and action” — both in personal and professional life. she describes it as follows: integrity management in the public sector is based on four pillars: accountability, ethics, competence and the exclusion of corruption: accountability means that the system allows stakeholders to track whether an organization is doing what it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 15 supposed to do, and responds to legitimate internal and external expectations; competence is the sum of all professional skills that enable the organization to do a good job; ethics means that the organization performs its activities ethically. (pallagi, 2012, pp. 2–3.) we can see here some similarities with the fundamental principles of trc. we can also find articles reporting concrete benefits — even in financial terms — deriving from an effective fight for integrity (barlow, 2015). if we transform these findings into the language of cyc, we can say that creating integrity in residential homes is the best way to achieve our professional goals and to create an environment for the children where they are able to grow and evolve their own strengths, skills, and competencies for living their own lives. to implement these principles at the operative level, we have to consider several other concepts and processes as well: the “fraud triangle”, the professional identity of cyc workers, and their empowerment. fraud triangle the “fraud triangle” describes those factors or components that influence the willingness or probability of the members of an organization to commit fraud during their professional activities. it encompasses the full range of inappropriate or immoral activities, from minor infractions of policy or procedure to seriously illegal acts. although research on this topic is focused primarily on the economic sector (roden, cox, & kim, 2016), the concepts and findings also seem to be applicable in residential cyc. especially significant are the parallels regarding the effects of the triangle on the institutional climate (murphy & free, 2016). the climate has a reciprocal interaction with elements of the fraud triangle, or, in a more recent development of the same concept, the “fraud diamond” (ruankaew, 2016). the four elements of the diamond represent the intersections that will result in the magnitude of willingness or likelihood for fraud:  opportunity — the vulnerabilities of the system, which can be exploited;  pressure — motivation or incentive to commit fraud (including the social context’s pressure also as a factor affecting inner pressures);  rationalization — justification of dishonest or improper actions;  capacity — the skills or knowledge needed to exploit the vulnerabilities. these factors constitute a dynamic system. for the success of organizational development, we have to take care both with these particular elements and with the dynamic relations amongst them. the system presented in this paper is able to decrease the number of opportunities for improper conduct. the best results can be achieved if we make a point of addressing a key element — the personalities of the staff members, especially their identities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 16 identity of cyc professionals identity refers to how we think about ourselves. it includes all the factors that may influence our integrity: the values we hold and follow, the emotional attitudes that shape our behavior, and other factors that result in particular kinds of behavior (for example, rationalization, the third vertex of the fraud diamond). identity is developed by our social representations. moscovici (1988) has explored this concept, and has evolved and expanded his interpretation of identity continuously over the past decades (moscovici, 2010; moscovici & marková, 1998). his approach has the advantage of not focusing on the individual’s self-concept as a static cognitive representation, and of having instead a flexible frame for understanding in a more dynamic way, keeping the social context and its effects on cognitive representations in mind. in brief, moscovici’s theory considers the social environment as creator of representations; that is to say, as an active part or component of the ongoing identity formation process. in practical terms, this means that our self-concept (identity) is not independent of the attitudes — we can say “judgements” — present in the society around us; they are in active reciprocal interaction. this understanding is particularly helpful when examining the identity of social helpers. some of moscovici’s followers have used this approach to map the identity formation process (breakwell, 2011). one of the most illustrative findings comes from leigh’s research on exploring the identities of child-protection social workers (leigh, 2014). in her research, leigh (2014) used the narrative interview technique to analyze the factors and labeling of social workers’ identities as described by themselves. the starting point of her research is the effect that news presented in the press about child care has on their self-concept. usually, the images and stories are not predominantly positive. she cites negative news about a social worker who was blamed and punished after the murder of a girl who had been placed back with her family at the social worker’s direction. the power of social judgement is evident given that this story from the 1970s still has an ongoing effect. the situation is similar in hungary. if we search in google on any given date for “article or news, children’s home”, more than 50% of the results will be negative, with many outright “horror” stories. one reads that staff have injured children, that children have no food, and so on. in the first five results of several searches undertaken by the author, the rate of negative news was 90% or more. cyc has very little good press. this affects the evolution of our identity, in accordance with the dynamics of social representation. if society does not accord honor and respect to child protection, nor to those people practising the professions involved, it will not help them to build up strong, stable, trustful, and resilient personalities. it will render more difficult, indeed almost impossible, the creation of a positive climate in the residential organizations that are seeking to offer a positive environment and identity to the children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 17 this negative and detrimental process is illustrated graphically (and, unfortunately, in accordance with my own experience) by the cited interview contents in leigh’s research (2014). the interviewees recite mostly negative emotions,including powerlessness, defensiveness, and even shame (not being proud to be a child protection professional, and keeping it a secret in their circle of friends). when they were asked to talk about the help they got from their organization, they showed anger and other negative feelings because they felt left alone without any support. however, hope can be taken from the willingness of the staff to develop coping mechanisms for this stressful situation: they created their own supports and achieved the feeling of belonging to an “exclusive club” as a cyc professional. to keep this hope alive, and to support cyc professionals in their struggle for integrity at both the personal and professional levels, such methods and approaches in organizational development as we are talking about here need to be implemented; ultimately, they will serve the best interests of children as well as staff. empowerment another important aspect of the developmental process is that the ideal staff for a children’s home are committed and self-regulated, with inner motivation coming from a stable personality. blanchard et al. have used the expression “empowerment”, within an economic and business environment, to mean a method of gaining the maximum from the staff’s potential in order to accomplish the organization’s interests, by having self-motivated colleagues characterized by a kind of “owner-minded attitude” (blanchard, carlos, & randolph, 1998). to achieve such a motivated workforce is not simple, and will not happen automatically. blanchard’s experience indicates that it “takes more than a minute”, because people need clear roles and firm but flexible expectations in order to “learn by doing”. our findings in hungary show, in accordance with other research findings, that this process in fact requires several years. the quality assurance system, which is based on the best interests of children, it support, and its operational techniques (see below), is intended to support this process. positive findings a period of years sometimes seems too long; at times it can feel like a “mission impossible” to achieve concrete results. in keeping with an evidence-based approach, this paper cites preliminary results that provide some evidence for the effectiveness of the hungarian armchair model. these qualitative illustrations come from actual practice under the model, and perhaps represent a starting point for future research efforts. other relevant research results: collateral affirmation the care model, which was introduced earlier in comparison to the armchair model, has been researched quite extensively (holden et al., 2010; izzo et al., 2016; nunno et al., 2017). the results of these research studies show, on the one hand, that the model can contribute effectively international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 18 to the development of a positive organizational climate due to increasing the motivation and commitment of staff, based on a deeper understanding of the meaning of children’s “pain-based behavior” (anglin, 2002). on the other hand, studies of the care model have also assessed “harder” indicators that confirm the efficacy of the interventions. holden and colleagues (2010) found that implementing the care model (a) increased the knowledge of staff about children’s behavior and psychoemotional factors; (b) increased the numbers of contacts with family; and (c) decreased the incidence of punishment. izzo et al. (2016) found that care decreased the number of behavioral incidents on the part of children — one of the best predictors of the quality of the organizational climate. the shifts in the thinking of staff after working under the care model are illustrated by anecdotal descriptions from colleagues about their changed attitudes and approaches, and the resulting changes in their responses in problematic situations, which have led to successful problem-solving. one illustration: a student left the school without permission at 12:15 p.m. and went to the cottage area. i went and found him in his room playing the piano. playing piano!!! one thing leads to another and before i knew it, both he and i were banging out songs on the piano. we are both fans of each other now and as i left to return to the school, the student asked, “can i come back to school now?” at 12:45 p.m., student back in school. (nunno et al., 2017, p. 8.) behind the hard numbers and facts, these changes in mindset are at the heart of the developmental process. they can be brought about only by the regular personal presence of the change facilitators. continuous, regular, ongoing support for staff both in the case of the care model (holden, 2009) and the armchair model, regular, multi-occasion training and consultation sessions for staff at all levels of the organization have been found to be critically important. training and consultation means not only providing necessary information (for example, in lecture-style presentations), but also creating a range of occasions when the participants come together to solve problems through creative teamwork. for example, experiencing in simulated form the emotions of children can internalize newly acquired knowledge, skills, and empathic understanding, and so prepare for their use in future practice. these kinds of training are the core methods in other models of trc development as well (berridge, 2016). the armchair model provides several related areas of content (e.g., communication and conflict-resolution, leadership, quality assurance, organizational development), all proceeding from a detailed, easy-to-understand description of the background of everyday challenges. when the model is introduced and implemented in a given children’s home, at least six multiple-day international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 19 training sessions are offered. this is about the same amount of time as other models appear to take. training for staff at regular intervals, as has been adopted by some institutions, should be considered for wider use. over the past four years, two large children’s homes have decided to continue training staff on an ongoing basis to work with the model. clark et al. (2013) found that providing regular professional development opportunities to the staff generally creates better retention, a significant advantage for the organization. such training reduces inconsistencies within the staff group that can seriously impair the children’s need for a safe, predictable, and stable environment. in our recent application of the model, we provide one-day or half-day training occasions for the staff of the group homes every two to three months. these address the core structure of the quality assurance system by focusing on the most important organizational activities. the training sessions also provide opportunities to discuss actual challenges or problems that staff members may be facing. our experience indicates that the trainer for such occasions should be expert both in trc within cyc and in training leadership skills. such a person, who is ideally either an external trainer or an employee reporting directly to the main director, needs to create a good learning atmosphere during the sessions in order to improve the corporate climate in addition to strengthening the staff’s sense of identity, as discussed earlier. it is important to underline that the structure of the quality assurance system provides only the framework: it gives reference points for discussion, but the essence is stimulating learning from each other’s good practices — as a community of practice. anecdotal data on positive outcomes in this section, i offer some actual comments from staff feedback on the process; it is important to recognize that these shifts took between two and four years to happen. the significance of sharing real stories with positive outcomes during the training process is crucial. it is evident, that you were in similar — many times felt unsolvable — situations, as us … now i wonder what this training will lead to. (a participant at her first training session) it is so good to feel, finally, that the organization is caring about us! (a staff member of a group home after starting the regular training sessions) i can tell you, i was not sure it would be successful, but the training has started something: people are talking about the training sessions, and finally has increased the communication between them, both inside the staff group and with us as supportive professionals. (a special pedagogue who works in parallel in several group homes within the organization) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 20 some of the shifts in professional activities that have happened are illustrated from two specific projects. these initiatives offer some evidence of how an organizational development process based on a quality assurance system such as ours can help bring about a shift in the desired direction: we decided to organize “open-days” as part of the quality assurance system and professional activities, with the target of “at least one in a half year”. on regular training occasions, we reminded ourselves of this goal assiduously (we can say “doggedly”), every 3 months. and we noticed, that nothing happened, not on the following occasion, nor for the next one, and so on. but after almost two and a half years, something happened. we were talking about the difficulty of building up good relations with school pedagogues, and at this point i made mention of the importance of “open days”, explaining how they could help to build up the relations the staff were talking about, during and after a pleasant afternoon spent together, when the pedagogues would have experienced how a group home looks, how it works, and what it is all about. at this moment, i could catch the moment of “lighting up” the minds of staff members, as they recognized the relational importance of coming together in this way. in two months, that group home had organized its first “open day”, and in half a year several other homes have followed the example. (worker, project 1) there was a similar situation with the “family day”. we had talked many times about the importance of supporting the biological parents as well, wherever possible. it took several occasions to demolish the wall of resistance. comments such as, “it is not my job; i have no time for it. it has to be done by the social workers of the family services…”, and so on were heard as excuses and evasions. but once they discovered that there were available positive examples about family intervention related to their tasks (major et al., 2015), this opened their minds. a few months later, the first family day was organized. on the first occasion, they felt the difficulties and challenges of holding such a day (for example, how to encourage attendance even by parents with low cooperation), but the shift has provided a base for further developmental conversations and actions. (worker, project 2) conclusion in the international literature of cyc there is a range of evidence that cyc, and within it the trc, is a unique, individual discipline and profession (anglin, 1999; holden, 2009; whittaker et al., 2015). findings and results presented from the hungarian armchair model indicate parallels in the challenges experienced when facing the problem of serving the best interests of children in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 21 residential care, and when developing possible solutions and good practices during implementation. the author feels validated in this work and reinforced to be an active part of the academic and practice community of the international cyc field, all of us working in this area of residential care can profit from each other’s experiences and knowledge, and we can also contribute many mutual professional benefits. as a result, the author is planning to design and implement academic research studies related to the topics and methods presented in this paper. using largely qualitative methods, such as focus groups and narrative interviews, further plans include:  confirm and assure the efficacy of the armchair organizational development model in residential cyc, with special focus on: (a) system development and quality assurance, (b) training, and (c) it support; and  design a longitudinal, follow-up research study, based on current findings, to describe and understand in a deeper way the interests of children, with the intention: (a) to translate this understanding into daily practice to help and support the staff, and (b) to integrate the findings into the university degree education of future colleagues (ideally in several “departments of child and youth care”). in summary, the aim is to raise the status of cyc to its deserved level and rank amongst disciplines, hopefully using this research to provide evidence for such a social change, which will, in turn, lead cyc workers to be proud of their place in society. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 22 acknowledgement this paper is based on the author’s presentation at fice congress in vienna in 2016 with the title: "trees or forest?" how can an iso-based quality assurance system help meet the needs of children in residential homes? practical results from hungary. i cannot list all of the people — masters, teachers, friends, and colleagues — who are part of my professional life, and who inspire and support me. you know who you are, and i thank you. however, i would like to declare my special thanks and acknowledgement to those institutions that implemented the quality assurance approach presented in this paper, and that offer me the possibility and support to implement the ideas at an operational level. these include:  győr-moson-sopron county’s childcare center, győr, hungary  bokréta children’s home and group home center, budapest, hungary  economic support organization of the hungarian capital’s child care services  general directorate of social affairs and child protection, capital’s department, budapest, hungary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 1–27 23 references ahn, h., hartzel, s., carter, l. m., & reiman, s. 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(2016). therapeutic residential care for children and youth: a consensus statement of the international work group on therapeutic residential care. residential treatment for children & youth, 33(2), 89–106. doi:10.1080/0886571x.2016.1215755 williams, n. j., & glisson, c. (2014). testing a theory of organizational culture, climate and youth outcomes in child welfare systems: a united states national study. child abuse & neglect, 38(4), 757–767. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.09.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0886571x.2016.1215755 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.09.003 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818213 insights into structurally identical experiences of residential care alumni: the paradox of becoming autonomous in a residential care facility andrea nagy abstract: in this study, which is part of my phd thesis project, i used the documentary method of interpretation to analyze a discourse on the prospect of leaving care and living autonomously that emerged from group discussions among youth living in a residential setting in alto adige [south tyrol], italy. the documentary method of interpretation not only examines the explicitly expressed contents of the discourse, but also reconstructs the young person’s implicit, or atheoretical, knowledge underlying and orienting habitualized social action. the method focuses on group-based social patterns that, when applied in care-leaver research, give valuable insights into structurally identical experiences young people in institutions of residential care share that concern the normative educational goal and expected learning outcome of autonomy. the analysis of the group discussions suggests that becoming autonomous in a residential institution is, from the perspective of the young people, a paradoxical arrangement with compulsory character, and that they have developed group-specific patterns and strategies to manage it. this article will present those social patterns and strategies. an understanding of the influence of the paradox is necessary if we are to improve outcomes of the social pedagogical treatment model in residential care settings and thus improve the life chances of residential care alumni and the experience of leaving care for young adults. keywords: residential care, residential care alumni, care leaver, transition to adulthood, autonomy, experiences of residential care alumni andrea nagy phd is a full-time lecturer and course leader of social pedagogy in the department of social sciences, university of applied sciences, matthias corvinus-straße15, a-3100 st. pölten, austria. email: andrea.nagy@fhstp.ac.at mailto:andrea.nagy@fhstp.ac.at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 62 young people who have received long-term group care in residential homes have significant difficulties in taking steps toward autonomous living, steps they must take earlier in life — and thus with less preparation — than youth living in mainstream families, even though insufficient preparation has been proven to be detrimental to care leavers’ future possibilities. stein (2006) offered some reasons: they are more likely than young people who have not been in care to have poorer educational qualifications, lower levels of participation in post-16 education, be young parents, be homeless and have higher levels of unemployment, offending behaviour and mental health problems (p. 273). tänzler & luckner (2012), who investigated “nine lives after [residential youth] care”, concurred that some factors are likely to cause social exclusion after care: low or missing qualifications after compulsory education, lack of integration into the first job market, poverty, problems finding housing and jobs, particularly among ethnic minorities, bad health care services and a high risk for delinquency1 (p. 139). some current international literature on care-leaving concentrates on the policies and legal frameworks of various countries, including european ones (e.g., barbarotto & mineo, 2012; lerch & stein, 2010; munro, stein, & ward, 2005; stein & munro, 2008). in several countries, those studies revealed a lack of statistical data about care leavers and their processes of leaving care, which hampers the establishment of a broad research base for the issue. there is little research focused on group residential facilities in general and a lack of evidence-based research on outcomes for youth placed in such settings. as south tyrol has a substantial german-speaking majority, many schools are germanspeaking, and a strong connection is maintained to german culture. because the german tradition of social pedagogy is upheld in professional work there, the german literature is relevant to the current study. in germany the five best-known studies on effects of residential care are planungsgruppe petra (1988), the so-called jule study (baur, finkel, hamberger, kühn, & thiersch, 1998), the jugendhilfe-effekte-studie [youth welfare effects study], called jes (bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend, 2002), the evaluation erzieherischer hilfen [evaluation of educational aids] called evas (macsenaere & knab, 2004) and the bundesmodellprogramm wirkungsorientierte jugendhilfe [federal model program impactoriented youth welfare] (albus et al., 2010). the mentioned studies have a wide range of methodological approaches and are of varying scope. in the studies where care leavers are actually interviewed, their individual retrospective views on the residential care setting are the main focus. this is also true for international care leaver studies, and for the majority of the 33 empirical studies 1 all translations from german are my own international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 63 in various (mostly european) countries that are discussed by harder, köngeter, zeller, knorth, and knot-dickscheit (2011), who described — for the first time systematically — the methodological approaches that have been used in care-leaver research. the selection of the studies was not itself based on systematic research, but was informed by the international research network on transitions to adulthood from care at loughborough university. harder et al. (2011) warn of the difficulty of making valid causal inferences in such studies: since many studies on transition from care into adulthood include only one sample of young people and relatively small sample sizes, it is difficult to draw causal inferences between the care that is being offered and the outcomes that are achieved. (p. 2439) furthermore, there is insufficient literature about the characteristics of the various settings, services, and youth served. the social pedagogy model and autonomy as an educational goal group care practice in many european countries employs the social pedagogy model, which provides a “methodology based on an intervention project with pedagogical planning and involves well-grounded goals, working models, activities, and techniques” (del valle, 2014, p. 2955). in contrast to some english-speaking countries, where those working in residential care programs often have no specific qualifications (del valle, 2014, p. 2955), alto adige [south tyrol], italy, where the investigation took place, provides a university degree and “qualification in social pedagogy …, which equips its holders to work with dependent populations, notably those in child residential care” (del valle, 2014, p. 2955). in the italian language the qualification is named educatore sociale [social educator]. in the social pedagogy model of preparation of future care leavers, autonomy is a normative educational goal, one that encompasses life-skills, decisionmaking competencies, responsible social behaviour, and more. as wolf (2002) phrased it: autonomy is a central objective of education … education which fails to ensure that children reach autonomy, is not successful. … particularly in residential group care the question of ‘how children reach autonomy?’ is a precarious question. considering educational plans (helping plans) which are directed to youth, transition to autonomy emerges everywhere. (p. 9) in the present study young people in residential care were asked about autonomy and their lives after care. contrary to the institutional expectation that young people in residential care institutions will undergo a smooth process of competence acquisition towards the desired objective of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 64 autonomy, a structurally identical experience2 among young people in institutions of residential care is that becoming autonomous in a residential institution is a paradoxical arrangement with compulsory character. in order to manage it they have developed the group-specific sprachliche handlungsmuster [patterns of communicative action] portrayed in this study. method as elaborated earlier, pathways of youth leaving care (both foster care and residential care) are usually investigated on an individual biographical level from a retrospective perspective. this qualitative study presents a different research approach, one that looks ahead to the impending transition from care, and focuses on the group rather than the individual level. the aim of the investigation has been to analyze specific and significant group discourse and to utilize the knowledge gained to enhance the effectiveness of group care practice in relation to the preparation of young adults for leaving care. the research is based on an analysis of group discussions with three groups of young care leavers (20 young people, aged 12 to 19 years) in a residential setting in south tyrol. the young people were asked to discuss amongst themselves their prospects with regard to leaving the care setting and living autonomously. six group-specific patterns of communicative action emerged as an answer to the paradoxical situation they were in regarding the educational objective of autonomy. the data were analyzed using the documentary method of interpretation (bohnsack, 2014, p. 222), which allows not only interpretation of the explicitly expressed contents, but also the reconstruction of the young person’s implicit or atheoretical knowledge, which underlies and orients habitualized social action. the formal frame of communication in group discussions (which always takes the form of passages from the initiation to the conclusion of a topic) offers a relatively constant framework in which to distinguish particular implicit meanings or rules among a group through a sequence analysis of the transcribed text of the group discussion. there are two consecutive steps in the analysis: the formulating interpretation, which reveals the topical structure of the text by asking what was said in a communicative manner; and the reflecting interpretation, which reveals with which structure the topic is dealing. bohnsack (2014) explained that an utterance is determined by the reaction of the other participants, respectively, by a sequence of reaction and re-reactions; the interpretation of the relation between an (empirically observed) utterance andan (empirically observed) reaction opens up access to the constituted implicit meaning or the implicit rule (p. 223). 2 bohnsack explains that structurally identical experiences result from “being involved in a specific every day practice” (bohnsack, 2014, p. 222), such as the residental care setting. his term for such a milieu is a “conjunctive space of experience”, which can be traced in a sequential analysis of the linguistic expressions in group discussions. this study detected few structurally identical experiences in the group of young people living in the residential group home. in fact, only one was identified among the 20 participants: the paradoxical arrangement with compulsory character in relation to the normative educational objective of autonomy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 65 he also noted that: individuals sharing a common a-theoretical knowledge and experiences, and thus a habitus, are connected by the elementary form of sociality, which we call “conjunctive knowledge” or “conjunctive experience” [to be distinguished from the communicative level of interaction]. they understand each other immediately. (pp. 221–222) in the analysis this emerges in the form of homologous reactions (bohnsack, 2014, p. 224) in a case-internal comparative analysis (bohnsack, 2014, p. 228). questions answered in this step of the analysis are: what kinds of orientation can be traced? what is the group’s mindset in reference to each topic? through comparative analysis between cases (each discussion constitutes one case) it is possible to analyze how the different groups perform differently in relation to the same topics. a common frame of orientation that has been arrived at by comparing different cases is called a type. the sociogenetic typification eventually tries to answer the question of what is typical about the orientation or habitus. in conducting group discussions the aim is to create an almost natural conversation among the group members so that they can develop their own discourse organization, which can be reconstructed afterwards. the moderator has to formulate the initial question vaguely enough to prevent a proposition, which would necessarily impose a predetermined orientation upon the group. in the case of the group discussions in this study, the question on autonomy amounted to a proposition because autonomy is a normative learning objective in the participants’ institutional context. that, among other factors3, meant that the group discussions effectively became a reenactment of the care setting and the transcribed text became mainly a source for reconstructing how the groups deal with the hierarchical structure of the setting and with definitions of autonomy as imposed through the institutional authorities. the groups used different patterns of communicative action, as defined by ehlich and rehbein (1979): patterns of communicative action are forms of standardized options of actions, which are actualized and realized in concrete actions. the actors realize their ends in their actions. the single patterns form a potential for the realization of ends, they are utilized by actors in their actions. each pattern is related to a specific end of potential actors and is structured through this end. this relation can also be briefly termed like this: the pattern has its end; it is functionally oriented toward that end. (p. 250) 3 i, as one of the moderators of the group discussion, had been a former educator of the participants in one of the three groups, and the setting of the group discussion did not obscure the institutional setting. even though participation in the discussion was voluntary and informed consent was given, it took place in the institution where most of the young people are non voluntary clients. this paper is based on my thesis research, which was admitted by the doctoral advisor and advisory committee at the university of innsbruck, which included an ethical check and approval of the project. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 66 patterns of communicative action are collective in nature: they are not developed through individual action. the patterns refer to ends that are not arbitrary, but have been developed in specific contexts, like that of group care in the residential home with its specific demands. in the discussions multiple levels overlap; these are separated out in the analysis. there is the level of the orientation frame of the institution, which was imposed upon the group in the beginning of the discussion, and which they have to wade through until they are able to develop their own points of relevance in the discourse. there is also the level of the orientation frame of the young people themselves, which is defined by affirmation of and resistance to the orientation of the institution. participants in group discussions there were 20 participants in the group discussions, in three natural groups of six, eight, and six youth who lived together in the care setting as flatmates. table 1 shows who took part in which group discussion, and how the groups are constituted. table 1 participants in group discussions participant age birth place school or job discussion group lm 16 venezuela vocational school “xmas”  16 to 18 years  4 male, 2 female  50% from local background (according to birthplace)  1 unaccompanied minor refugee km* 17 morocco apprenticeship ym 18 south tyrol a vocational school cm 17 south tyrol vocational school tf 17 south tyrol high school ef 18 kosovo apprenticeship am* 18 afghanistan waiter “ostern”  14 to 18 years  2 male, 6 female  63% from local background (according to birthplace)  1 unaccompanied minor refugee anm 18 germany internship mf 17 south tyrol apprenticeship jf 18 south tyrol high school stf 14 south tyrol vocational school pf 15 brazil internship kf 14 south tyrol junior high school vf 16 south tyrol internship gm 19 south tyrol housekeeper assistant “silvester”  12 to 19 years  4 male, 2 female  83 % from local background (according to birthplace) dm 18 russia b vocational school om 12 south tyrol junior high school cf 14 south tyrol vocational school af 16 south tyrol junior high school nm 13 south tyrol junior high school totals 10 male youth (50%) 10 female youth (50%) 13 youth born in south tyrol (65%) and 7 in other countries (35%) — 5 male and 2 female 2 male unaccompanied minor refugees (10%) note. each participant is identified by an abbrevation (upper-case character) and gender (lower case character m or f). asecond generation immigrant; parents from morocco and tunisia. badopted as a baby by south tyrolean parents and grew up in south tyrol. *unaccompanied minor refugee. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 67 recurring patterns of communicative action in the xmas group what was expressed during the discussions represents primarily the explicit content, which is — according to the documentary method of interpretation — analyzed through the first step of the formulating interpretation. in this step the communicative contents are explored. through the subsequent reflecting interpretation the meaning of an utterance is explored in relation to the group context in which it was expressed. if, for example, an utterance was validated by the group or there is a shared conclusion to a sequence, there is shared meaning. metaphors or other utterances with conjunctive knowledge relate to specific everyday life contexts in which specific shared experiences have been developed. one shared experience across all three groups is the paradoxical demand of becoming autonomous in the institution. young people find themselves in a situation where they both ought to — and want to — be autonomous. if they act autonomously and as selfsufficient individuals and resist demands to become autonomous, they are thereby perceived as not self-sufficient. if they accede to demands to become autonomous, they are regarded as selfsufficient but are actually directed by others. there is no escape from this paradox, and the impression of being processed through the institution was enacted strikingly by the xmas group: their drainpipe noise served as a metaphor for their situation. communicative action patterns of irony and self-debasement as well as self-aggrandizement were preferentially used by the xmas group in order to manage the imposed framework. these patterns were employed through the reenactment of the care setting and the corresponding relationships between educators and youth through the question of autonomy. an imposed framework is a power-based discourse that can be traced in the analysis with the documentary method of interpretation (fremdrahmung, as cited by bohnsack, 2003, p. 234). at the beginning of the group discussion with xmas in lines 1 to 5, km identified himself as the second “karin”, an allusion to a young woman with a learning disability who had left the group. her ability to live autonomously was seen as limited. the reduced degree of autonomy that karin had acquired, as perceived by the group, was used in this utterance as a standard for general success in the acquisition of autonomy, which was recognized as a major objective of educational processes in the institution. the irony of that utterance was understood by everyone in the group and validated through laughter. 1 moderator: so, i would like to invite you now to the group discussion on the issue of 2 becoming autonomous in the group or, um, being autonomous. 3 various participants: l ((whispering during that sentence)) 4 km: i am the second karin 5 tf and various participants: l ((laughs))4 4 transcriptions in this article were created according to the guidelines for transcription in the documentary method of interpretation as outlined in nohl (2017, p. 123). lower case is used throughout including at the beginning of sentences. l indicates an interjection. a parenthesized dot (.) indicates a pause for one second; a parenthesized number denotes a pause for multiple seconds. text surrounded by at-signs indicates an exclamation with laughter (e.g., @yes@). unclear speech is denoted by ( ), while doubled parentheses indicate remarks by the transcriber. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 68 the joke is based on conjunctive understanding as a result of shared insider information and as a result of being involved in a specific everyday context inside the institution. km’s indication that he would be the second karin, implied that autonomous young people are produced in the institution as on an assembly line. he would be the second one off the assembly line in that logic, and the implication was that the production of autonomy functions suboptimally, or with little success. in lines 13 to 17, km added another ironical statement in reaction to the moderator’s statement that a lot of young people had already left the group in order to live autonomously. his answer carried the connotation that those remaining were leftovers, which functioned as an ironic self-debasement: 13 moderator: and all of you, especially when you have been here for longer have seen people 14 coming and going, your colleagues left 15-17 km: l we are the only ones remaining. in lines 21 to 24, a metaphor for the group residential home — a drainpipe noise —was validated by all participants through laughter. the metaphor viewed life in the group home as a downward spiral, an undertow that led inevitably down. this descent could be associated with a social decline, or just the feeling of being processed and spat out. the comment “this is the [name of residential home]” was validated with laughter by all participants. the laughter and the comment occurred at the same time. it is both irony and a self-debasement of their group residential home, and their shared life world. 21 km: listen! 22 ((drainpipe noise in the background)) 23 various participants: ((laughs)) 24 km: l this is the [name of residential home]. later in the discussion, in a passage considering what life would be like if there were no rules (lines 618–639), the xmas group played with the picture of “ending up under the bridge”, which emerged as a shared negative orientation or image connected to care-leaving in all three group discussions. in a passage self-initiated by the group, where they considered living together “like in a normal shared flat”, they developed an idea about what would happen if they lived together not in a residential home, but in a shared flat without any educators around. they fantasized fighting over something, ending with the picture of each one walking alone onto his or her bridge. the stigmatizing image that young care leavers would end up under the bridge is here taken on and changed in its meaning. if they had a struggle each of them would not end up under the bridge but would “walk onto his bridge”. self-determined and active walking was portrayed, bold indicates a loud voice; text enclosed with ° indicates use of a lower voice; and underlined text was spoken with a higher intonation. punctuation at the end of an utterance also indicates intonation: lowered (period), raised a little (comma), or raised a bit more (question mark). an elongated syllable is indicated by ::: within the word. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 69 instead of a passive ending up, and it is one’s own bridge that one walks onto, not under, but still all alone, and at one’s own behest. the stigmatizing attribution of society towards youth leaving care is at the same time both exaggerated and reinterpreted in that talk. to walk onto one’s bridge is like an act of heroism: the participants have played with a stigmatizing image and transformed it.5 618 ef: imagine that we would all for instance be together 619 but without the educators 620 tf: l like in a normal shared flat 621 ef: l that would be fun, wouldn’t it?. 622 lm: l bo::tte::ga:[swearword, without specific meaning] 623 tf: really 624 ym: (.)then we would have to make rules among us 625 ef: yes but would this work out?, 626 lm: yes ((and at the same time someone says no)) 627 ef: who would have for example ( ) 628 ym: l no:: perhaps not, perhaps 629 someone says at one day, i don´t do what i ought to do because °it sucks° 630 completely 631 tf: l i think so too 632 ym: l and one says you asshole, you jerk, i certainly do 633 nothing for you, it is none of my business and then we fight each other and 634 separate from each other, 635 tf: l i think so too. 636 ef: l what really? 637 ym: l °and then anyone° 638 walks onto his bridge all alone. 639 tf, various participants: l ((laughs)) in the last passage, “drug-death fantasy” (lines 2214–2253), the xmas group developed a heroic end-time scenario. one participant performed a drug-death fantasy, obsessed with his own effect and reducing everyone else to passive spectators. there were no more relationships among the group but only roles and the reflections of the hero on himself. the scenario “our drug party”, was constantly questioned by one participant, but they were all given roles by ym, the main actor in his scenario. many participants imagined the scenario but in the end only ym “really wants to end like this”, while the other participants distanced themselves from that, or questioned ym and “never want to end up like this”, or commented with “oh god”, or “oh green”. 2214 ym: our drug party 2215 tf: yes exactly 2216 moderator: mmh how would it be if you would live together in a shared flat? 5 in german, to “land under the bridge” is an expression used in the passive voice to describe the inception of homelessness, implying that homeless individuals are themselves to blame for their situation. the young speaker changes this expression to “walks onto his bridge”, an active, self-reliant role. he decides where he is going and there is no consideration of guilt or shame. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 70 2217 ym: l if you come in the floor would already be sticky 2218 tf: l we all together? i would move out 2219 ym: l smoke. imperial cocaine 2220 ef: l mmmh 2221 lm: yeah when you two are together 2222 ym: the floor full of cocaine, no furniture with a syringe pinned 2223 tf: very autonomous [ym’s name] very cool! 2224 ym: certainly that’s how i, how we end up when we are together in a flat. 2225 lm: l whore 2226 ym: bottles everywhere 2227 tf: before i asked you if you would end up like this and you said no. 2228 lm: i can imagine already where it would be 2229 ym: l for sure god 2230 ym: full bottles, everywhere cigarettes on the floor, no furniture any more 2231 ?: blood 2232 ym: we have sold everything 2233 ef: ( ) 2234 ((laughs)) 2235 ym: sold everything to buy drugs 2236 km: this was all 2237 ef: before the girls take him ( ) 2238 ym: l and to mainline 2239 lm: ( ) 2240 ym: the girl friend is tattooed and pierced everywhere, that’s the girl friend. 2241 ((laughs)) 2242 tf: you find her like that 2243 ef: i can imagine you being there 2244 tf: am i fitting in well? 2245 ef: yeah i think he fits in well as well 2246 ym: you have to see my bed with the syringe and kiss next to it ( ) 2247 tf: that’s how you want to end up? 2248 ym: yes 2249 tf: very autonomous, before you did say something different 2250 lm: oh you never 2251 ym: that’s how i really wanna end up, that’s cool 2252 tf: oh my god 2253 km: oh green recurring patterns of communicative action in the ostern group whereas the xmas group used irony and self-debasement as well as self-aggrandizement in their communicative action concerning imposed framework conditions, the ostern group utilized very different patterns of communication, namely the neutralizing of an uncomfortable topic through fantasy and positive thinking. examples of the usage of these types of communicative action are shown below. lines 428 to 440 display the positive thinking pattern used by the ostern group. a negative (uncomfortable) topic was introduced, which seemed to have a disturbing emotional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 71 effect on some of the participants. the uncomfortable topic was immediately circumvented using the comment, “now we should speak about [kf’s name] fingernails.” (line 435). this comment followed a discussion (beginning in line 379) about a young man, a previous member of the ostern group whom many knew. a group member told the group that this young man did not earn enough money to afford his own room or flat. he then spent the night wherever he could, began drinking excessively, and eventually became homeless. this story was then associated with a perceived concurrent social crisis in italy that was understood to make it very difficult to afford housing even when employed. the story prompted other exchanges: first, regarding the danger of drinking excessively; and second, regarding the fact that care-takers are no longer concerned about care leavers after they have moved out of the institution. the discussion was rapidly concluded with the comment, “hey, come on — look what you have got us talking about!”, “let’s talk about [kf’s name] fingernails”, at which point the disturbing topic was laid to rest. 409 am: i’m telling you this because he, because he said that he was happy when he 410 was living here, because all the care-givers helped him. they told him that they 411 could perhaps him find a place to stay. but since the day he moved out they 412 forgot all about him. where is he staying? what is he doing? 413 vf: he hasn’t died, has he? ((laughs)) 414 am: no he hasn’t died, but 415 stf: but i see him sometimes on the street at night (.) drinking beer. 416 group: (2) 417 am: that’s not good. when you have problems, beer won’t help you solve them. 418 you know? 419 (2) 420 vf: yes [am’s name], that’s true 421 stf: yes [am’s name], that’s true 422 kf: l yes 423 vf: yeah really 424 kf: l yes that’s true 425 am: but if ((laughs)) 426 vf: it doesn’t seem as if you’re doing much... 427 stf: that’s right, we’re having a crisis, [am’s name] 428 am: l no, i don’t. and i don’t drink either, cause… 429 stf: l that’s why we’ve got the beer. 430 vf: ((laughs)) 431 am: hey, come on – look what you have got us talking about! (laughs) 432 stf: l it’s what you have to talk about every night 433 mf: ( now everybody’s awake ) ((laughs)) 434 group: (7) ((laughs and groaning)) 435 vf: and now let’s talk about [kf’s name] fingernails. i think in order to be able 436 to wear fingernails you’ll need — ((laughs)) there was also an effort made in lines 638 to 651 to change the subject of the discussion. the question arose: “which is more important for autonomy — freedom and money, or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 72 employment?” the topic was apparently found uninteresting, for it was not willingly discussed, raising comments like, “let us be!” and “leave us alone!” more interesting topics included the television series supernatural, sexuality, and a particular care-giver, whose conduct often seemed to be an issue. 638 vf: please leave us alone! 639 mf: ((laughs)) 640 vf: i swear, i feel like i’m in handcuffs. 641 stf: no, not really. in handcuffs?(2) no, because i stand up when i want to. 642 vf: yeah, but what would they do to us? right there is the camera. it will record us 643 as we leave. let’s go! bye ((looking into the camera)) ((laughs)) no i am joking! 644 group: (9) 645 pf: one. i’m counting sheep. 646 stf: ((laughs)) 647 vf: ((laughs)) 648 am: so, i’m going to give you a massage. stay still 649 ?: let’s count sheep. 650 pf: see, no one can concentrate on this stuff. 651 let’s go. a crisis was the topic of conversation in lines 227 to 253, which included a discussion of whether to buy a house “with a hundred men”. this drifting off into fantasy is seen repeatedly in the ostern group, and can be psychoanalytically interpreted as a group-based equivalent of a defence mechanism, which in this case would serve the function of protecting the ego. defence mechanisms are defined in psychoanalysis as mechanisms in which information can be processed unconsciously so as not to upset the delicate psychological balance. this balancing helps to reduce anxiety arising from stimuli, such as fear, shame or guilt. (wenninger, 2000) laplanche and pontalis (1999) define the term defence mechanism in their vocabulary of psychoanalysis as all of the mechanisms dedicated to the limitation and/or suppression of any and all modifications which could endanger the integrity and steadfastness of the biopsychological individual. if the ego is an entity which strives to achieve and maintain this continuity, it can function as both an active and a passive factor in these mechanisms. generally, defence mechanisms should guard against inner irritation/anxiety, possibly resulting in a situation which is contrary to the ego’s inner balance and therefore harmful. (p. 24) the usage of the term defence mechanism has evolved over time, expanding the original concept to include a range of similar meanings. tolerance of ambiguity and defence mechanisms are seen by lothar krappmann (2005, p. 133) as building one of the four categories of identity-promoting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 73 capabilities6. krappmann’s predominantly sociological perspective is not derived from the rigid psychoanalytical definition of identity development based upon step-by-step psychosexual development. his concept of identity implicates a dynamic process of “continuous establishment of balance between the norms and expectations required of each social individual, and the personal needs of the individual which are outwardly projected in order to limit or reject these social stipulations” (krappmann, 2005, p. 68). the objective of this process-oriented identity is the capability of experiencing the integrity of the self, and the self’s integration in the outside world. the definition of “defence mechanism” used in this study is derived from this concept. the situation in which a group discusses a topic that is first, not interesting for the group members, and second, imposed upon them by (perceived) institutional representatives, could trigger a defence mechanism. various forms of individual defence mechanism have been observed and described in the literature using both the psychoanalytical and krappman’s (2005) perspectives. the following presents a similar event of shared communications within the group. analogous to the defending and protecting of a personal individual identity that are required in certain circumstances, tajfel and turner (1986) theorized that a shared group identity or social identity may also be shielded and secured. the ostern group’s preferred pattern of action can be described as drifting off into fantasy7; it can be interpreted as a group-based active competence that strives to achieve a balance between the imposed expectations of the institution (taking part in a group discussion) and the group’s desire not to participate. 227 am: yes, because in italy it’s too expensive. there aren’t any jobs. and when there 228 is some job, they don’t pay you enough. if you earn one thousand euros it’s not enough to live 229 vf: l yes and there are lots of people who 230 give up trying and just stay home. 231 am: l yeah but i know lots of people who really work 232 and just can’t make ends meet. one guy who earns one thousand euro – what can he do 233 with one thousand? his rent is eight hundred, plus gas, plus expenses, plus clothes. and that’s 234 why he has to live with his family, even though he doesn’t want to. 235 (3) 236 pf: i’m just going to enjoy myself. 237 am: and one who doesn’t feel good at home with his family 238 some: l ((laughs)) 239 am: l if there are problems with the family. do you hear me? (2) we have a 240 hard time with that in italy. (2) do you hear me [kf’s name]? 241 kf: no 242 am: you’ll probably be thirty five years old before you understand that. 243 stf: l we live in crisis times, that’s why there’s beer. 244 am: l oh no. no i don’t live for a crisis, 245 stf: l ((laughs)) 246 kf: l that’s why i’m waiting for you to get a place so i can stay with you 6 krappmann's (2005) four categories of identity-promoting capabilities are role distance, role acceptance and empathy, ambiguity tolerance, and defence mechanisms, also including identity portrayal. 7 fantasy is also described as a defence mechanism in zastrow (2011, p. 148). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 74 247 sometimes. 248 stf: l that’s what [am’s name] said 249 am: great! i thought the same thing. let’s just buy a house all together! 250 pf: l yeah! with a hundred men! ((laughs)) 251 am: no! no! we don’t want to make babies. 252 pf: l a hundred and fifty. 253 stf: l @ [jf’s name] is here with her kindergarten.@ 254 kf: what no. 255 jf: i’m going to be a teacher no @kindergarten@. 256 (3) 257 am: yeah, right. 258 kf: but you can teach my child. 259 jf: yeah well let’s just wait and see what happens. 260 kf: let’s say in eight years. 261 (4) in lines 703 to 721, another example for the group-based equivalent for a defence mechanism was found, in which the group searches for a way out of the town where the institution is located, “into the universe” so they can find a place “away from everything normal, to live on the moon”. here is also an example of the group choosing fantasy over discussion of realistic possibilities for action. 703 moderator: do you talk to each other about autonomy/independence, or about your projects? 704 vf: no, not really. 705 stf: l well, usually we just say no, no. usually we say that we want to get away, 706 because here it’s like they put us in handcuffs. 707 here inside. 708 vf: 709 l i’ll just say what i always say: i can’t wait to get away from here [the town where the 710 institution is located]. that’s what i always say, you hear it from me every day. 711 jf: i think that is the same for all of us (.) 712 vf: l because [name of town where institution is located] has nothing to 713 offer for young people 714 mf: l you have to get away from [name of town where institution is located] 715 – that’s what everyone says because everyone knows that. 716 717 ?: no 718 pf: l let’s get out of the world. let’s travel to the universe. 719 ?: get away from [name of town where institution is located]? 720 stf: let’s go to umbrien. it’s not normal there, it’s like being on the moon. 721 group: ((wild disorder)) (12) recurring patterns of communicative action in the silvester group whereas the xmas group used irony and self-debasement as well as self -aggrandizement in their communicative action concerning an imposed framework, and the ostern group neutralized an uncomfortable topic through fantasy and positive thinking, the silvester group international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 75 repeatedly used ritualized conclusion, normalization, and regression as their preferred tools. examples of the usage of these types of communicative action have been included below. in lines 28 to 41, after finding themselves in disagreement over the sense (or senselessness) of the topic under discussion, many of the group members chose a ritualized conclusion by expressing “humpf” as a reaction. this type of ritualized conclusion was repeated later on in the discussion as group members emitted words such as “bah!’”, clucked like chickens, and made similar animal noises. przyborski (2004) asserted that ritualized conclusion prohibits contradictory reference points from being expressed. this action, when containing performative elements, can be very impressive (p. 74). the silvester group preferred to use performative, ritualized conclusions to end a contentious discussion or to shift reference points when there didn’t seem to be a consensus among the group members. in the course of the following discussion, performative aspects take on a more regressive character when they are examined using the psychoanalytical definition of defence mechanisms as a reference. the following situation begins with om asking the group what it means to be pro and contra something. dm repeats the question. 28 dm: l what is pro and contra of a subject! 29 af: l against something 30 dm: what is bad on a topic. 31 nm: ( ) advantages and disadvantages 32 group: (.) 33 om: where do you learn that? in third grade (.)? in which (.) subject? 34 nm: german, yeah 35 af: german 36 dm: but that is not the topic right now. (.) yes 37 group: (6) 38 ?: humpf 39 ?: humpf 40 ?: humpf ((again three times from someone, the last two times from cf and om)) 41 dm: yeah, topic, no humpf. humpf is not a topic. (.) in lines 142 to 159 while further discussing the present topic (though not the official topic), the group became loud and expressive, which would seem to indicate an important phase. following a dispute over who must learn to be self-reliant or independent, normalizing statements were expressed, such as, “everyone must learn to be autonomous”, and, “everyone is here to learn to be autonomous”. by the term “normalizing”, i mean that the principle that everyone must learn to be independent was transformed into a general rule to be followed. normalizing can also be found in lines 803 to 810 concerning the topic “assisted living”, as well as in lines 252 to 272, indicating that normalizing is a pattern of action repeatedly used by the silvester group. 142 af: but there are lots of people in this place who °need to learn how to be autonomous, 143 not just. him° 144 (2) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 76 145 dm: yeah. everybody, right? 146 cf: ((laughs)) yes everyone is 147 dm: l here to learn to be autonomous, yeah 148 af: well, [name of gm] already is ( ) 149 cf: l yeah he sometimes sets the breakfast table 150 om: l ((laughs)) 151 dm: stop playing with the cell phone. that is not autonomous. ((to om)) 152 om: yeah you. who do you think you are? 153 cf: l ( yeah. who do you think you are? you’re just a cow ) 154 om: l yeah, what are you? you are a cow. 155 dm: l yeah. autonomous 156 cf: l cow 157 om: you’re a cow, rabbit, pig, horse – all of them mixed. 158 dm: l is that a topic? 159 ((the group makes random animal sounds)) in lines 803 to 810, the topic autonomy in assisted living was described using phrases such as “everyone must” and “whoever hasn’t yet … learns then”. living in the institution, learning how to be independent, and the learning of autonomy while living in the institution are described as “normal” and “obvious” frameworks of potential interaction, although it is dubious whether the goal of becoming autonomous can be best achieved in such a controlled living situation. 803 cf: yes, you really must with the ( ) 804 af: so – anyone who’s ((laughs)) not yet autonomous learns how to be autonomous when 805 she/he must do everything by her/himself. 806 nm: l ( ) i went to do my kitchen chores and then 807 cf: yes, when you’re in assisted living, you have to do everything by yourself 808 af: shopping 809 cf: l shopping, yeah you learn to shop with the care-giver, but (.) 810 af: you also learn how to solve problems by yourself in lines 259 to 267, the phrases “everyone knows”, “everyone should”, and so on serve the function of normalizing, representing the norm in relation to the context. similarly, “everyone does” and “no one does” imply a moral stance on the topic of autonomy in the institution. 259 om l autonomy 260 never again alcohol, drugs, drinking (.) everything ( ) 261 cf: l yeah. e::veryone knows 262 what she/he does 263 ((noise)) 264 cf: and everyone is responsible 265 dm: l ( ) for what one does 266 af: l everyone should know where the borderline is. 267 cf: l yeah. right. (.) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 77 regression is described in psychoanalysis as a defence mechanism that helps one to master undesirable experiences. it is impossible to judge objectively if a type of behaviour is a defence mechanism or simply a creative construct; the same behaviour can be interpreted one way or the other depending upon the professional context. the childish behaviour of making silly noises can be seen as a regression by the silvester group that, by demonstrating unity, helped to resolve a discord in the group in relation to both the discussion topic and the compulsory character of the discussion setting. 647 moderator: is this somehow connected to autonomy or what? 648 group: ((the group members all say “baah”)) (15) 649 cf: de be 650 om: (you see, this is difficult for me. debe) 651 cf: money money money 652 om: mmmm mania mania mania 653 dm: gack gack gack gack 654 cf: moo 655 om: we are wild animals! a wild tiger: meow 656 group: ((laughs)) 657 cf: you want me to punch you? 658 dm: ((makes a sound like a horse)) 659 cf: ((laughs)) you’re a cow 660 dm: does this sound like a cow? no, a pig. a pot-bellied pig. 661 om: l yup. that’s a pig. 662 ((more animal noises are made and commented upon)) lines 856 to 870 end the discussion: 856 moderator stay here please. now we’ll ah now i’ll ah...i have something to...,should we, has anyone 857 anything else to say? 858 group members simultaneously – no 859 moderator well then 860 dm: yeah. baah yes baah 861 group: ((many group members simultaneously – baah)) 862 moderator has anyone got anything else 863 group: ((many group members simultaneously – baah)) 864 moderator ((laughs)) ok well then 865 group: ((many group members simultaneously – baah)) 866 moderator i’ve got a few questions for you 867 group: ((many group members simultaneously – baah)) 868 cf: be quiet!!! 869 moderator: today you can all do this by yourselves, here are the papers 870 group: ((many group members simultaneously – baah)) (8) after having examined the individual group discussions and viewed their differing and unique discourse tendencies, orientations, and recurring patterns of communicative action, the focus will now be directed to a cross-case comparison. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 78 sociogenetic typification and comparative analysis group xmas group xmas consisted of four male and two female youth ranging in age from 16 to 18 years, with 50% from the local area according to their birthplace. xmas formed the most inhomogeneous group in relation to geographic, cultural, and spoken language backgrounds, and the most homogeneous group in relation to their age-span of 2 years. their recurrent patterns of communicative action in reference to imposed framework conditions were irony and selfdebasement as well as self-aggrandizement. the paradox that goes along with the institutional demand that they ought to want to be autonomous, and the shared perception of being processed in the institution, was expressed, even performed, through creative means and caricatured, but partly also taken on as a possible orientation and form of social action. youth-specific topics that were addressed in all groups, like sexuality and sexual orientation and identity, were discussed extensively in this group and were negotiated on the basis of gender roles. different real-life chances were discussed in connection to gender roles and assigned to them. the topics cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs — means of addiction — also took some time in the discussion, which ranged from a drug-death scenario to the “after-work beer”. money was addressed with the question of how to afford to rent a house or apartment. the negative orientation of ending up under the bridge was addressed twice in this group: first, as a form of radical self-sufficiency that could take place only outside the institution, where one pays for oneself, and if one sleeps under the bridge then one sleeps under the bridge; and second, ironically transformed into self-determined action to walk onto the (their own) bridge all alone after struggles with flatmates. xmas was the only group where every member of the group participated in the discussion. the most involving and intense of the group discussions, it lasted over one and a half hours, and this group gave positive feedback to the setting and method of group discussion. they seemed to enjoy talking to each other about a defined topic. group ostern group ostern consisted of two male and six female youth ranging in age from 14 to 18 years, with 62.5% from the local area according to their birthplace. ostern was the only group with a female majority, and the only one in which most members had an italian language background. there were two people who spoke little during the discussion, a young man from germany and a young woman from south tyrol. when group members participate only minimally in the discussion it is not clear whether they agree or disagree with the organization and meaning of the group’s discourse. as it is integral to the documentary method of interpretation to focus on group patterns, it is not possible to address single participants in group discussions directly and ask for their comments or opinions. the ostern group circumvented some topics; a recurrent pattern of communicative action in order to manage imposed framework conditions and the paradox was the neutralizing of an uncomfortable topic through fantasy and positive thinking. the orientation frame in that group was an ambivalence between wanting to leave the group and fearing to be abandoned. the idea of autonomy as total freedom outweighed the simultaneously held idea international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 79 in which taking responsibility for oneself was emphasized in regard to autonomy. the group perceived that it would be impossible to make a living (be financially autonomous) in an “italy of crisis”. the topic of money was discussed extensively, including the prices of different things and how to afford them, possible ways to make money, and the legal prohibition of child labour, which means that young people are not allowed to take on a job before the age of 16. that was seen by the group as a barrier to earning money. two of the youth-specific topics that were addressed in all groups, sexuality and identity, were used in this group as an alternative discussion option, which was seen as more attractive than the imposed topic of autonomy. the group mentioned that sexuality would have been a more congenial topic to talk about, and that “to be able to have sex, whenever one wants” was seen as an expression of freedom from institutional control. sexual orientation and gender roles were not discussed; identity was discussed in relation to the tv series supernatural, and specifically the character and look of the actors in that series. in contrast to the xmas group, the ostern group did not make a connection to real-life chances in the future. the topics of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs — means of addiction — were discussed in relation to the price of cigarettes and in relation to beer as a potential trouble-maker or problem-solver. the issue of drinking was connected to the story of the former group member who became homeless. his story also raised the issues of not being able to make a living because life is too expensive in italy even when people have jobs, and of not being supported any longer by the institution, even after living in it for years. this also led to a discussion of the negative orientation — shared by all the groups — to end up under the bridge or on the street. group silvester group silvester consisted of four male and two female youth ranging in age from 12 to 19 years, with 83% from the local area according to their birthplace. silvester formed the most homogeneous group in relation to geographic, cultural, and spoken language backgrounds, and the most inhomogeneous group in relation to their age-span of 7 years. this group used only german (except for some swear words in italian). according to group dynamics it seemed to be the youngest group member who had the greatest power. their recurrent patterns of communicative action in reference to imposed framework conditions were normalizing and ritual actions that acted as a form of regression. one distinctive trait of the silvester group was the use of ritualized actions (shared singing and emitting of imitative animal sounds, and the collective transfer of topics to an animal analogy). in confrontation with the paradoxical demand by the institution that “residents should desire to be independent”, this group reacted by normalizing or creating norms on the one hand, and utilizing ritualistic conclusion, which can also display a regressive character, on the other hand. these reactions occur predominantly in cases where insurmountable inconsistencies in the group members’ orientations exist. a major point in the orientation framework of the group was support and guidance in the achievement of autonomy through the involvement of both parents and care-givers. the participants felt that this involvement was intended to make the transition to autonomous living easier for them. regarding the topic of money, the participants agreed that one must learn how to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 80 deal with money and should not spend it all at once, but rather make a smart plan and spend carefully. table 2 summary of communicative action patterns utilized by discussion groups in reaction to imposed framework conditions group characteristics group-specific pattern of communication communicative actions: examples “xmas”  the most inhomogeneous group in relation to geographic, cultural, and spoken language backgrounds  the most homogeneous group in relation to agespan (2 years)  male majority ironische selbstentwertung (ironic self-debasement) “i am the second karin” (meaning i am the second piece of assembly-line autonomy production in the institution — and function suboptimally, like karin) selbst-überhöhung (self-aggrandizement) “that’s how i really wanna end up, that’s cool” (“heroic” end-time scenario in which a young man orchestrated a drug-death fantasy, obsessed with his own effect, and reduced everyone else to passive spectators) “ostern”  a relatively homogeneous group in relation to geographic, cultural, and spoken language backgrounds  a relatively homogeneous group in relation to agespan (4 years)  the only group with a female majority fantasie (neutralizing of an uncomfortable topic through fantasy) “let’s just buy a house all together!” “yeah! with a hundred men!” (after a passage in which the “crisis in italy” was discussed, and that it would be impossible to afford a flat even with a thousand euro wage, and therefore one would be forced to live with family, and if there are problems in the family then it’s a real problem.) positiv denken (neutralizing of an uncomfortable topic through positive thinking) “hey, come on — look what you have got us talking about!” (a former colleague in the institution who started drinking and ended up homeless) “let’s talk about [kf’s name] fingernails.” “silvester”  the most homogeneous group in relation to geographic, cultural, and spoken language backgrounds  the most inhomogeneous group in relation to age-span (7 years)  male majority normalisierung (normalization) “everyone is here to learn to be autonomous.” “everyone is responsible” (for his own behaviour) regression (using group rituals in a regressive manner) “we are wild animals” [and that’s performed in the group] “money money money …” “mmmm mania mania mania…” “gack gack gack gack…” “meh...” (sounds like cows) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 81 the subject areas of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs — means of addiction — were dealt with in diverse contexts: when the camera showed am lighting his cigarette during a discussion; when the group members discussed how old one should be to drink and smoke and which colleagues were smokers; in relation to autonomy — how can one take care of oneself, to be responsible for oneself by “knowing what to do”; and finally in the acceptance of the obligation to protect oneself through abstinence from drugs and alcohol. the topics of sex and sexual orientation and identity were first broached jokingly in respect to sexual organs (testicles and ovaries) and then in relation to the question, “who is like which animal and which animal is better — for instance a rooster or a ’staller8”? further discussion involved sexualized language clearly used to create a borderline between the adults in the context and the peer-context (“fuck you hard”). the group also sang a song together with sexual content (including the words “naked” and “fucking”). there was also a metadiscourse about one group member’s presumed lesbian relationship. the topic of identity was considered when om, the youngest in the group, presented a story of a beggar living in a garbage container. the group began to speak of how it would feel to be forced into living like that. the story was initially rejected by the group, because it didn’t have to do with the topic at hand, but then they did discuss it. in fact, it represents the negative orientation across groups, the image of “ending up under the bridge”. the beggar, given the name bippo, had to survive under a bridge at the bottom of a garbage can as well as he could. when one of the group members ridiculed the beggar, the other members wondered how that member himself would feel if his own mother threw him under the bridge into the garbage can. although not all members agreed, the group then found a rational reason why a person would sleep in the garbage can: it was better than dying of exposure. however, one group member said he would prefer death. conclusion the analysis of group discussions based on the documentary method of interpretation revealed power-based hierarchical arrangements in the care setting through the detection of imposed framework conditions in the text. the initial question asked by the moderator in the group discussions reproduced the care setting by asking the young people exclusively about autonomy, which, as the main educational aim of the institution, engenders a demand that the young people ought to want to be autonomous. this creates a paradoxical situation in relation to the aim of autonomy, with which the young people must come to terms. in managing the paradoxical situation, and in reacting to the imposed framework conditions in the discussion, the participants utilized group-specific patterns of communicative action, which were reconstructed in the analysis. a compilation of the typology of the patterns of communicative action used by those in group care in residential homes would need a multitude of other cases for comparison. different groups in 8 in the area where the research took place, ”staller” is a slang term for a peasant with out-of-date views. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 82 residential homes, and also reference groups in other institutions like schools, where similar but divergent structures and paradoxical arrangements might exist, could be included in investigations. carers must become aware that autonomy as the social pedagogical objective and learning outcome of youth in group care cannot be pursued directly and without obstacles. ideally, those caring for young people will agree to an open-ended process, keeping autonomy in mind and accepting existing struggles for autonomy. the patterns identified in this study, as well as additional patterns, could be identified as a specific competence of youth residing in group care residential homes and could perhaps become a transferrable skill for care-leaving transition and in life after care. empowerment of the care leaver should include articulation and recognition of their experiences and their knowledge, and should further support them in taking a role in the political discourse surrounding the professional care sector. the international youth assembly, which took place in vienna in 2016 before and during the 33rd fice international world congress, can be seen as an important step in the development of a political voice for care leavers. fifty-three young people from 15 countries, who either lived in care at the time or had recently lived in care, presented their concrete suggestions, as experts through experience, for the improvement of the professional and political context of child welfare (koch, 2016, p. 304). their 10 statements included, “all care leavers should be supported in becoming aware of and acknowledging their own potential, so that they are able to grasp the chance to develop it further” (koch, 2016, p. 305). that the youth are capable of acting within the paradoxical arrangement of institutional care has been demonstrated in this study. an understanding of the influence of the paradox is necessary if we are to improve outcomes of the social pedagogical treatment model in residential care settings and thus improve the life chances of residential care alumni and the experience of leaving care for young adults. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 61–85 83 references albus, s., greschke, h., klingler, b., messmer, h., micheel, h.-g., otto, h.-u., & polutta, a. 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(2011). social work with groups: a comprehensive worktext (8th ed.; brooks/cole empowerment series). boston, ma: wadsworth cengage learning. http://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/psychologie/abwehrmechanismen/112 all children are equal, but some are more equal than others: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 361 all children are equal, but some are more equal than others: minoritization, structural inequities, and social justice praxis in residential care sandrina de finney, mackenzie dean, elicia loiselle, and johanne saraceno abstract: this article draws on our practice and research experience in diverse residential settings to examine structural inequities facing children and youth in residential care. our overall goal is to conceptualize residential care as a site for radical advocacy and social change. we track the impact of minoritization by exploring links between historical structural inequities and the positioning of minoritized groups as being in need of professional intervention. drawing on queer, anti-racist, indigenous, postcolonial, and feminist theories, we explore how interplaying processes of racialization, gendering, classing, and sexualization (among others) produce unequal circumstances for some groups of children and youth in residential care. we situate our critique in an analysis of two important structural forces that shape contemporary social services in the west: neoliberalism and neocolonialism. we propose that employing a critical social justice analysis in our engagement with children, youth, families, and communities – and with the systems in which they and we are embedded – can open alternative possibilities for residential care praxis. keywords: child and youth care, residential care, social justice/injustice, child welfare, diversity correspondence should be addressed to dr. sandrina de finney. sandrina de finney, ph.d. is assistant professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria bc canada, v8w 2y2. sdefinn@uvic.ca mackenzie dean is a graduate student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. mldean@uvic.ca elicia loiselle is a graduate student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. elicia@uvic.ca johanne saraceno is a graduate student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. jsaracen@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 362 it’s like our story that we had as natives. my whole family’s been in the system, like seriously, my whole family, my brothers, cousins, aunts, all that . . . and my parents were in the residential schools. the same story that gets passed down from each generation. . . . it’s really, really sad because you kinda think, it makes you think like . . . why us? (dylan, first nations youth in care)1 certain groups of children and youth – indigenous, racialized minority, queer, poor, and those with disabilities and special needs – are chronically overrepresented in residential care settings. why? why are they and their families so often depicted as inherently deficient and blamed for inequities over which they have little control? and what is the responsibility of residential care practitioners to intervene in these inequities? in this article, we consider these important questions through a critical exploration of structural inequities in the lives of children and youth in residential (out-of-home) care in a canadian context. our focus is the minoritization2 of children and youth who fall outside of white, heterosexual, able, middle-class norms, and who, as a result, face high indicators of social exclusion such as poverty, racism, and homophobia, and are chronically overrepresented in residential care. we focus on residential care settings because they are microcosms of the ideologies, practices, and policies that guide social services for those children, youth, and families most often characterized as “at risk”. we propose two goals with this article: first, to problematize the systemic minoritization of certain groups of children and youth to understand their overrepresentation in residential care; and second, to contribute to the conceptualization initiated by others (see, for example, gharabaghi, 2009; newbury, 2009; reynolds, 2010; skottmyhre, 2004, 2008) of child, youth, and family services as a site for radical theorizing, advocacy, and social change. our analysis is grounded in our own experiences as queer and first nations child and youth care (cyc) practitioners and researchers. in this article, we include quotes and examples shared with us in our work with practitioners and minoritized children, youth, and families in diverse rural and urban out-of-home and residential care settings in canada. we track minoritization’s impact by exploring links between structural inequities and the positioning of minoritized children and youth as being in need of professional intervention. we question why those who fall outside of normative white, heterosexual, able, middle-class ideals of family and childhood are so drastically overrepresented in residential care. our critical exploration of minoritization shows that, in fact, who ends up in care and why they end up there is neither a coincidence nor the exclusive result of individual failings, but rather is an outcome of a system designed to reproduce normative roles for children, youth, and families and for those who serve them. we situate our critique in an analysis of the two most important structural forces to have 1 the descriptors used for the quotes vary according to how each speaker has chosen to be identified. 2 minoritized groups are positioned as outsiders to dominant norms and consequently seen to fall short of the standards of the dominant group. when difference is the basis for exclusion, a social context is created where certain groups are privileged and others subjugated or minoritized (i.e., seen as “less than” or “other”) based on their positioning in a normative social hierarchy (harley, jolivette, mccormick, & tice, 2002). these exclusions produce drastically unequal outcomes for certain groups of children, youth, and families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 363 shaped contemporary life (and thus social services) in the west – neoliberalism3 and neocolonialism.4 to show how ideas about normativity (i.e., what is considered normal) are intimately linked to neoliberalism and neocolonialism in canada, we apply our analysis to an indepth exploration of the overrepresentation of indigenous children in care. next, we problematize the taken-for-granted roles of the residential care system and its service providers in reproducing the systemic minoritization of certain groups. our goal in putting forth this analysis is to trouble the positioning of our work with children, youth, and families as inherently benevolent. we question why the residential care system generally fails to target structural inequities and instead equips service providers with tools to help clients “fit” and “rehabilitate” into normative standards of health, wellness, development, and family. these standards are problematic, first, because they so often remain elusive to minoritized individuals who are marked as irrevocably outside the norm, and second, because they fail to acknowledge that minoritized communities may have quite different goals and values for their own development. in dealing with these complexities, the notion of diversity competencies in which residential care is often grounded proves woefully inadequate; in fact, diversity competencies may reproduce historical inequities by constructing “diversity experts”. we argue that this construct offers an illusion of competency centred on reifying problematic, superficial notions of culture rather than on addressing systemic issues such as those that contribute to racialization, sexualization, and heteronormativity. in our final section, we explore how employing a more critical, politicized analysis in our engagement with children, youth, and families in care might open alternative possibilities of praxis5 3 neoliberalism is the dominant ideology shaping our social, economic, and political systems under globalization. based on free market values and the supremacy of globalized corporations, it enshrines values of competition, privatization, individual responsibility, surveillance, and managerialism (phoenix, 2004). neoliberalism is posited on the notion that everybody has equal opportunities to succeed. “what is most discouraging is the sense most people have that not only is there no other alternative, but that this is the best system ever imagined. . . . inequities are simply swept out of sight” (said, 2000, p. 5, as cited in phoenix, 2004, p. 228). to support us in responding to structural inequities and processes of minoritization. we contest concerns – familiar in an applied field such as ours – that critical analysis detracts from practice. we argue that ignoring links between social inequities and the realities of children and youth in care reasserts the dominance of euro-western psychological norms and inevitably reproduces processes of minoritization that are so harmful to the communities we work with. it is to this dilemma that we dedicate our conclusion, not with hopes of providing a definitive answer, but rather to add complexity to easy conclusions and invite others into an ongoing dialogue. 4 neocolonialism is closely linked to neoliberalism and refers to both ongoing and new forms of colonialism. in countries that remain actively colonial, such as canada and the united states, it is inaccurate to think of colonialism as having occurred in the past. as indigenous activist bobby sykes famously asked, “post-colonialism? what? have they left?” the progress of canadian society continues to rely on the subjugation and relocation of entire indigenous societies, which sustain a system of chronic poverty, social exclusion, and political and cultural disenfranchisement. far from being resolved, many of these problems are worsening over time. 5 praxis is a way of talking about theory and practice as fundamentally interconnected and mutually constitutive. white (2007) defines praxis as “ethical, self-aware, responsive and accountable action, which reflects dimensions of knowing, doing and being” (p. 226). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 364 some children are more equal than others6 poverty is the main reason kids come into care, i think – which means that kids who are more likely to be poor are the ones we end up working with. i see a lot of black kids, aboriginal kids, kids with single moms. disadvantaged kids, that’s who ends up in group homes – their parents can’t care for them right? so they need to be there. (a residential care practitioner with five years experience) before we explore the history of residential care, it would be useful to clarify the concepts and theories that inform our analysis. our use of the term “minoritization” conveys the effects of social relations of power in producing hierarchies of normativity that result in certain children, youth, and families being excluded from mainstream notions of well-being and success and position them as in need of professional help. the premise of our title, that some children are more equal than others, is a reference to systemic and structural inequities embedded in sociocultural, economic, and political structures (e.g., social institutions, governmental discourses and policies, human services, family systems, etc.). rather than operating simply at an individual level, structural inequities take hold as social reality with deep-seated, systemic effects on minoritized groups. for example, “poor” and “racialized” 7 are mutually constituted; although racialized groups, particularly first nations and recent immigrants of colour, are a demographic minority in most canadian cities, they represent up to 75% of all children in low-income households (access alliance, 2007; statistics canada, 2003). these individuals are more likely to be poor not because of some innate characteristic, but because of the relationship between racism and economic exclusion; this relationship results in reduced access to quality housing, employment, education, social and counselling services, life skills training, recreational activities, and child and health care services, among other things (galabuzi, 2004). the systemic exclusion of minoritized children and youth not only affects them materially, but also has consequential effects on their development and future prospects (unicef canada, 2010). the unequal distribution of power and resources is a root cause of social injustices that place children, youth, and families at risk and contribute to the very conditions (poverty, family breakdown, mental health issues, substandard housing, neglect, etc.) that residential care systems hope to address. thus minoritization is neither a natural quality nor a fixed process, but rather is socially constituting and constituted, meaning that minoritized groups “do not occupy the position of minority by virtue of some inherent property (e.g., of their body shape, culture or religion), but acquire this position as an outcome of a socio-historical process” (chantler & smailes, 2004, p. 34). to uncover how dominant social discourses operate under neocolonialism and neoliberalism, we employ a transtheoretical critical framework which integrates an analysis of 6 we pay homage to george orwell’s (1945) satirical novel, animal farm, in which “all animals are created equal except that some are more equal than others.” we apply orwell’s critique of social hierarchies under communism to our analysis of social stratifications under neoliberalism/neocolonialism. 7 we contest the notion of race as an innate biological reality and focus instead on racialization as a process which involves being categorized as different, inferior, or other by the dominant group based on perceived sociocultural and physical characteristics such as skin and hair colour, language and accent, clothing, religious markers, citizenship status, performance and intelligence measures, and inferred “personality” traits, among others (miles, 1997). similar processes to racialization operate to sustain hierarchies based on economic and social class, ability, gender, and sexuality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 365 power relations and subject formation (foucault, 1978, 1980) with sexuality studies and queer theory (charles, 2010; renold & ringrose, 2008; robinson & davies, 2007) and indigenous, postcolonial, and poststructural feminisms (grewal, 2005; hernandez & rehman, 2002; lawrence, 2004; mohanty, 2003; schutte, 2007; smith, 2004). this conceptual framework helps us to unpack euro-western psychological theories of development that underwrite our field and scientifically “validate” dominant social discourses, such as those related to gender, sexuality, race, ability, class, and age (burman, 1994; morss, 1996). skott-myhre (2004) stresses that developmental theories have provided working models for the colonial project throughout the past 300 years. by excluding other forms of knowledge of what child development or healthy families might look like (morss, 1996), the hegemony of euro-western developmental theories maintains a power imbalance that, as pereira (2008) explains, allows the dominant group to recognize, control, and discipline minoritized groups through systems of intervention that are disconnected from their needs and realities, and reassert normative standards. defining out-of-home and residential care i think the goals of residential care are to try to connect with the kids and do whatever you can to help them get out of the group home – to move back home or out on their own. group homes aren’t the best places, not ideal anyways. you want to help them get back to normal – no trouble at school, no behaviours that get them in trouble, healthy coping strategies – you know, so that they can make it on their own. (a residential care provider with nine years experience) out-of-home care settings and practitioners are incredibly diverse in their goals, approaches, and policies, yet a common history and a set of principles and competencies characterize the field of residential care and those it serves. it is these commonalities upon which we focus our analysis. we recognize, however, that we use imperfect language that warrants problematization. for instance, we acknowledge that terms we use in this article such as “worker,” “client,” “resident,” and “in care”, among others, are loaded and open to debate. we choose to write through such tensions because the cost of intellectual and practical paralysis that might result from ignoring them is greater than the limitations of our analysis. we do not expect to resolve these tensions here, but rather hope to engage with them as a starting point for a radical rethinking of what praxis with the most “at risk” of minoritized children, youth, and families might look like. throughout history, settings have existed to provide care for children and youth who were not, for various reasons, living with and/or being provided for by their family of origin. orphanages are an early example of what we today call out-of-home care. anglin (2002) states that in canada’s early residential institutions, “the primary emphasis was the provision of housing and basic care for the homeless, orphaned, and impoverished. for the socially deviant, the goal was segregation from mainstream society and ‘correction’ ” (p. 10). many children and youth who fell outside the norm have historically been institutionalized for the purpose of segregation and correction; for instance, children and youth with disabilities have a lengthy history of being placed in out-of-home care arrangements, particularly those known as asylums, hospitals, and treatment centres (strong-boag, 2007). religious groups have also provided outof-home care. the residential schools that many indigenous children in canada were forced to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 366 attend in the 19th and 20th centuries are one such example. administered by christian churches, one of their primary goals was to forcefully convert “heathen indian children” to christianity (lawrence, 2004). homes for children and youth who were deemed to be socially deviant, including young unwed mothers, were also run by religious groups (anglin, 2002). in a canadian context, this care responsibility has become separated, for the most part, from religious organizations and now falls to government through the child welfare system. residential care as it is known today can be defined as settings in which children and youth live on a regular or part-time basis and where the primary intervention or “treatment” is the milieu itself (burns, 2006). for the purpose of this article, we consider foster homes, group homes, treatment homes, institutions, and juvenile justice/custody programs all to be venues in which out-of-home care is delivered. a continuum of care is provided within these settings which ranges from the less formal foster or surrogate family approach to the more formalized institutional treatment or correctional context, where care is provided by paid professionals (anglin, 2002). these diverse settings have traditionally been the primary site in which child and youth care practice occurred and from which its approach was first theorized (see anglin, 2002; maier, 1967; trieschman, whittaker, & brendtro, 1969). residential care programs are typically regarded as a last resort where children and youth from the most difficult circumstances are cared for so that they might benefit from the programs’ presumed therapeutic value (frensch & cameron, 2002). while each case is unique, these children and youth frequently have in common the experience of social exclusion based on their differences from dominant norms. alarming statistics show that children and youth with special needs and disabilities, and those with indigenous, racialized minority, low-income, queer and gender-nonconforming backgrounds are disproportionately present as clients within the child welfare and residential care systems when compared to the dominant population (lavergne, dufour, trocmé, & larrivee, 2008). for example, the representative for children and youth (2009) reports that in british columbia almost 72% of youth in the youth justice system and 65% of children in continuing custody were diagnosed with a mental health disorder. the child welfare league of canada (2003) reports that 3,000 young people with disabilities are taken into care each year in canada, and, further reports that an estimated 30% to 40% of the in-care population across canada is indigenous, even though indigenous people constitute less than 5% of the total canadian population. of even greater concern is the reproduction, over generations, of cycles of residential involvement, where individuals who were children in residential care are overrepresented in adult correctional and treatment facilities. in a review of longitudinal studies of outcomes for children who grow up in foster care, fechter-leggett and o’brien (2010) found that “former foster children have lower educational achievement; higher rates of unemployment and underemployment; are overrepresented in the homeless; have higher rates of arrest and conviction; and suffer from more mental health issues such as ptsd, depression, and substance use than the matched comparison groups of non-foster children” (p. 207). we do not take these statistics or their affiliated categories of identification as static and innate; we understand them as fluid and mutually produced, and reified through engagement with the system. we also know that the statistics to which we do have access fail to capture the true level to which minoritized children and youth are present in the residential care system. child welfare regulations, for example, differ in each of the provinces and territories, leading to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 367 inconsistent definitions and documentation of identifiers such as “special needs” and “ethnic minority”. also, the canadian child welfare system is under-researched from a critical perspective, rendering processes of minoritization virtually invisible in the available data. little information exists, for instance, about queer and gender-nonconforming8 children and youth in the canadian child welfare system. one american organization reports, however, that lgbtq9 are overrepresented in the foster care system, and are more likely than other foster youth to be placed in group homes and other congregate care facilities. [in addition, an] overwhelming majority of lgbtq youth report they were victims of violence, and all have been victims of verbal abuse, based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, while in group care. (family builders adoption network, n.d., para.1) youth: the absence of information about children and youth who do not conform to dominant gender and sexuality norms in systems of residential care powerfully illustrates how a dominant culture of “don’t ask, don’t tell”10 effectively minoritizes young people who do not fit dominant norms of gender and sexuality. it is also important to recognize that “don’t tell” is a survival strategy used by many of these children and youth to escape the very dangerous consequences of being “out”, particularly within a system of care that does not recognize their existence, let alone adequately address barriers to their safety. we do know that queer youth are more likely to drop out of school and more likely to be homeless (centre for addiction and mental health, 2004). they are also more likely to contemplate or attempt suicide; an estimated 32% of them do compared to 7% of straight youth (centre for addiction and mental health, 2004). heteronormativity and homophobia are inextricably linked to these negative outcomes. even these incomplete statistics demonstrate that minoritization and its effects are significant structural contributors to the “need” for professional intervention in the lives of these children and youth (newbury, 2009). we acknowledge that a diversity of approaches exists among programs and care providers within the residential care sector, and that creative methods are often employed to resist dynamics of minoritization. but surely there is a common link, since the chronic and systemic overrepresentation of minoritized groups across diverse residential systems and contexts is neither coincidental nor the result of innate deficiencies. as the quote from an experienced residential care provider at the beginning of this section illustrates, a systemic analysis emphasizes that the purpose of residential programs remains firmly rooted in society’s need to identify those children and youth deemed to be in need of interventions 8 just as we contest notions of race, we also problematize gender and sexuality as innate biological realities. binary gender categories (boy/girl) reify the hierarchy of male, then female, while excluding a broad spectrum of gendernonconforming people such as transgendered or gender queer people. similarly, heteronormativity privileges straight over bi, gay, lesbian, queer, and two-spirited sexualities, among others. thus heterosexuality is privileged through interconnected dominant expectations of gender and sexuality (e.g., appropriate masculinity equals being tough and straight). gender-specific programs and interventions tend to reify normative gender categories and the heteronormative status quo. this both constrains possibilities for unfixing these categories and marginalizes young people who do not identify with them. 9 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning. 10 although “don’t ask, don’t tell” is best known as a u.s. military policy related to glbtq personel, it reflects a pervasive ideology of silencing and denial that is communicated to children at a very early age and is often reproduced in systems of care in a canadian context. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 368 intended to promote their eventual reinsertion into the very societal conditions that led to their overrepresentation in care in the first place. it is this mutual construction of “in need of care” and “care provision” that requires unpacking. we see the need to ask critical questions about how we conceptualize the entangled relationship between normativity and service provision. what are the needs of minoritized children and youth in care, and what criteria are used to determine them? who provides this care and what do they define as appropriate or normal functioning? what does the young person, family, community, or broader society consider normal? how are alternative or contested notions of health, wellness, and development considered in planning and delivering care? what are the social inequities – such as poverty, colonialism, racism, and heteronormativity – faced by these children and youth, their families, and their communities? how do these realities contribute to the neglect, abuse, or various “at risk” behaviours that have led to the children and youth being taken into care? these questions are too seldom seriously considered, and we find it problematic to conceptualize care as the rehabilitation of minoritized children and youth into unquestioned norms (griffin, 2004). of particular concern is the relationship between these norms and the impact of neocolonialism and neoliberalism on minoritized populations. skott-myhre (2004), linking neoliberal capitalism to the growing corporatization of social services, reflects that capitalism has “always included the ability to discipline, exploit, assimilate, and exclude various populations” (p. 91). wade (1995) points out the “very close and mutually supportive relationship between colonialism and the so-called helping professions” (p. 168). in the following section, we demonstrate the links between capitalist ideologies, neocolonialism, the child welfare system’s inherent goal to “rehabilitate” children and youth who do not meet normative standards, and the chronic overrepresentation of indigenous children and youth in care. the case of indigenous child welfare i do see how these first nations families, they are so wounded. they really have been told “what you have to offer is not good enough for your own children”. to see these families thinking they’re not good parents for things like [they] don’t have an extra bedroom or their culture is different from white people. (a residential care provider with 15 years experience) to illustrate how minoritization operates in canada’s residential care system, in this section we track the minoritization of indigenous11 11 under the canadian constitution, “aboriginal” designates first nations (both on and off reserve), metis, and inuit peoples. the concept of aboriginality is deeply contested, both for its conflation of hundreds of distinct first peoples and because their constitution as objects of colonial control has evolved over centuries through concerted settlement and assimilative policies that reproduce their political, economic, and sociocultural exclusion. therefore, in this article and in our work, we choose instead to use the terms “indigenous” and “first peoples” to refer to original societies, not only in a canadian context, but worldwide. this usage makes visible the impact of european colonialism on over 85% of the world’s indigenous communities, as well as a growing political solidarity among indigenous peoples across the world. children, youth, and families over centuries international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 369 of colonial policies and practices. we explore how neocolonialism contributes to the disproportionate numbers of indigenous children and youth in our residential care system. we argue that this extreme overrepresentation cannot be considered apart from the history of violence and assimilation that have been critical to the colonial project of building canada. canadian society is dominated by normative social values and practices that have systematically, over many generations, positioned indigenous cultural and social norms as inferior (downe, 2005; lawrence, 2004). centuries of colonial policies have included: forcefully removing entire communities from their homelands to allow european immigrants to access desired territories; forced sterilizations; conducting scientific experiments on children without consent; deliberately infecting entire communities with lethal diseases such as smallpox; barring indigenous people from voting, studying, travelling, meeting in groups, practicing their culture, and participating in business; and incarcerating thousands of children in residential schools where they were subjected to multiple physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and cultural abuses (downe, 2005; lawrence, 2004; smith, 2004). far from occurring only in the past, these colonial policies are deeply embedded in current conditions and ideologies that affect the lives of indigenous people (schutte, 2007; sinclair, 2007). indeed, indigenous peoples in canada are still governed by the 1876 federal indian act, which “rests on the principle that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the state” (1876 annual report of the department of the interior, as cited in indian and northern affairs canada, 2008, p. 172). the racist ideology of the indian act characterizes a contemporary context in which indigenous children continue to be grossly overrepresented in child welfare cases and out-of-home placements (trocmé et al., 2006). they are currently removed from their homes in such high numbers that the term “millennium scoop”12 (sinclair, 2007) is increasingly used to emphasize the extent of the problem, which fast and collin-vézina (2010) view as “a continuation of the residential school system, only under a different pretence” (p. 128). in the past decade, for example, more indigenous children were placed in out-of-home care than were enrolled in residential schools at the height of its movement (blackstock & trocmé, 2004). of any group of children in canada, indigenous children and youth also face the highest rates of suicide,13 poverty, substandard housing, school dropout, and exposure to various forms of violence, including racism (aleem, 2009; blackstock & trocmé, 2004; downe, 2005; fast & collin-vézina, 2010; gross, 2003; sinclair, bala, lilles, & blackstock, 2004). despite these risk factors, they are chronically underserved and underfunded. contrary to popular media representations, on-reserve social services for children and families receive 22% less funding than services for non-aboriginal canadians (blackstock, prakash, loxley, & wien, 2005). 12 this term is used to invoke a new cycle of the devastation incurred through the “sixties scoop” (ordolis, 2007), the phenomenon of the 1960s in which legislation facilitated the forced removal of staggering numbers of indigenous children from their homes by government-appointed authorities. most were placed in white homes, and many were adopted internationally, mainly in the united states and europe. 13 while statistics vary by individuals and by community, we emphasize an overall historical pattern and high levels of mobility of indigenous peoples across diverse communities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 370 some initial efforts have been undertaken to address the overrepresentation of indigenous children in care.14 most significantly, indigenous-managed child protection agencies have been created for onand even off-reserve indigenous families; however, service delivery remains problematic. for one thing, delegated agencies must comply with provincial legislation, and thus they uphold the state’s authority and standards. as noted by de finney, green, and brown (2009), “despite growing efforts to indigenize child and family services, much of the current research that underlies policy and evidence-based practice remains euro-western in its subject matter and methodological orientation” (p. 161). child welfare should start from a place of transforming the colonial legacies that mediate the lives of indigenous families. this is not to negate the critical importance of an authority that can intervene in cases of child victimization and abuse. our argument is not whether such interventions are necessary – they are – but rather that their current design and delivery is clearly not meeting the needs of indigenous communities and, in fact, is reproducing their very minoritization. this point is particularly important since leading national studies in child welfare have found that indigenous families do not have higher rates of physical and sexual abuse than other families (trocmé, knoke, & blackstock, 2004). rather, the majority of indigenous children are taken into care under the “neglect” category – a category that is particularly difficult to assess and that involves more chance of bias than the assessment of abuse. further, neglect is inextricably tied to poverty because it relates to issues such as frequent moves and the lack of a suitable bedroom, supervision when parents are working multiple jobs, safe housing and adequate clothing and food, and consistency. the fact that these are some of the leading indicators of neglect in indigenous families points to ongoing practices of social injustice where racialization and systemic inequities are conflated with contemporary middle-class conceptualizations of abuse and neglect. as hessle and vinnerljung (2000) emphasize, understandings and definitions of abuse and neglect are always embedded in the cultural context and time in which they are considered. it is clear that the overrepresentation of indigenous children in care in canada today can be accounted for, in part, by sociocultural “perceptions of neglect” (fast & collin-vézina, 2010; trocmé et al., 2004). these perceptions are compounded by the watching over of indigenous people by “concerned or caring citizens” that results in disclosures to child protection authorities at rates disproportionate to those of non-minoritized groups (fast & collin-vézina, 2010). further, a legislated duty to report neglect positions workers as government agents upholding colonial norms. this obligation inevitably imbues workers with state authority and undermines their attempts to work constructively with families through a collaborative approach that engages families’ expertise and considers the social and historical contexts of their struggles. consider the following example, the subject of a 2009 investigation report by british columbia’s representative for children and youth: a two-month-old baby boy lived in a small first nation community in b.c. in which his family had significant cultural ties. due to 14 many initiatives are underway across canada to integrate the voices of indigenous communities, including children and youth, in a transformation of child welfare from the ground up. see, for example, the first nations child and family caring society (www.fncfcs.com/), the indigenous child welfare research network (web.uvic.ca/icwr), the mamow sha-way-gi-kay-win project (www.northsouthpartnership.com), and the yellowhead tribal services agency (www.ytsa.ca). http://www.fncfcs.com/� http://www.northsouthpartnership.com/� http://www.ytsa.ca/� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 371 “historical child protection issues” that involved relatives in the home where the parents and baby were staying, the home was judged unsafe and the parents were asked to find other housing. when the social worker visited the parents, the “child looked well and both of his parents were attentive to their baby” (representative for children and youth, 2009, p. 11). the child’s mother stated that they planned to reside with a close relative while they were looking for off-reserve housing, as no housing was available on reserve apart from sharing with extended family. she was eligible to receive social assistance from her band as long as she lived on reserve, but no onreserve homes were available. over 200 people were on the list for housing on this reserve, and many homes accommodated more than a dozen people, “not by choice, but out of necessity” (p. 35). when the parents were unable to find other housing, the baby was removed from their care. in the first three months after being apprehended, the baby was placed in three different foster homes, all of them non-first nations, even though the local delegated aboriginal agency had secured a first nations caregiver. during his last placement, the infant was admitted to hospital with a severe brain injury. the foster home was investigated and closed, and one of the foster parents charged, when it was determined that the baby had been shaken. he now lives with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and significant sight and hearing impairments. he will require lifelong support. he has since been returned to his parents, who now live in subsidized housing and who, ironically, have now been deemed capable of caring for him. the report of the representative for children and youth (2009) states that the child welfare system entered this child’s life in response to child protection reports, but: its ongoing impact on the child’s life related to his parents’ poverty and inability to afford housing that met the ministry’s standards. there was no suggestion that this baby’s parents were abusive, or neglectful of his care, or unsafe . . . . there was no clear focus on assisting this young family in solving the key problem that prevented them from living with their baby – lack of a safe home. as a result, the baby was separated from his parents, his community and his culture, and he was critically injured [while in foster care]. (p. 34) the report goes on to state that “immediate income assistance, a short-term housing grant and positive supports would have been a sensible and appropriate approach . . . for young aboriginal parents willing to and capable of caring for their infant son” (p. 53). although this case had a particularly tragic outcome, it is not an anomaly; it represents a problematic cycle of intervention that negatively impacts thousands of indigenous families. the case tellingly illustrates the interaction of every factor we have described in this article, namely the power of normative standards of wellness, development, and family to fuel the “need” to remove minoritized children and youth from their families, communities, and cultures. is it a coincidence that roughly half of child protection cases occur in families who are or have been on income assistance, and that half are also indigenous (representative for children and youth, 2009)? how is it that, due to underfunding, apprehensions are too often the only child welfare service provided to indigenous communities? how is it that the preferred intervention perpetuates a cycle of cultural dislocation, poverty, and family alienation? trocmé et al. (2006) state that the fact that “neglect is the primary type of child maltreatment experienced by first nations children calls for a reorientation of child welfare research, policy and practice to develop culturally sensitive and effective responses” (p. 12). from our perspective, a reorientation is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 372 indeed needed, one in which we completely rethink the structure and function of child welfare values and services in canada. otherwise, indigenous families will continue to experience child welfare contact as “intrusive and culturally inappropriate” (simard, 2009, p. 44), limiting the capacity to build meaningful partnerships that might sustain more comprehensive social change strategies. interventions to address the broader inequities that underlie neglect would do much to redress the centuries-old legacies of colonial policies that have so deeply damaged the sociocultural, economic, and political structures of first peoples’ societies. indigenous communities and advocates argue that in order to be effective, such transformations must honour the self-determination and diverse knowledge and needs of indigenous nations (simard, 2009). problematizing residential care practice we had a transgender youth in one of our group homes, and that individual was isolated to their own bedroom, whereas everyone else in the home shared a room with someone who was the same sex as them. the staff didn’t really support that youth in the same way [as they did other youth]. that youth was often bullied by staff and other youth…. the staff didn’t agree with the trans thing at all. they thought it was the cause of all of his problems, like if he wasn’t [transgendered], he wouldn’t be so messed up. i was like, hello, maybe the consistent negative and abusive reactions he gets for being a trans guy are the cause of his problems. (a residential care practitioner with nine years experience) what is most troubling about minoritization, as the examples we have shared in this article demonstrate, is the cycle of social exclusion, state intervention, and institutionalization it reproduces. it is through this logic that the residential care sector sustains an entire industry of programs and policies designed to help colonized populations cope with colonialism, rather than challenging its very premise. these critical links are too easily lost in the constant demands of everyday practice. too often children and youth become stereotypical emblems of the “bad” part of town, the “problem” family, or the “resistant” cultural group. “at risk” – which we understand to mean risk embedded in conditions of social inequity – becomes understood as an inherent characteristic rather than a result of structural inequities. their ghettoization along intersecting lines of class, gender, sexuality, ability, and race leads to the paradox that minoritized communities are at once hyper-monitored by service providers, yet critically underserved. burman (2003) stresses that that “the very articulation of the position of ‘other’ implies the marking of differences, whose explicit or implicit devaluation demands rectification” (p. 294). situated as “residential care experts”, practitioners become administrators of the dominant paradigm of social order who monitor clients, employing our professional gaze to label and treat. thus residential care marks and individualizes the differences of minoritized children, youth and families so that they can be readily categorized as in need of professional help. this categorization serves in turn to justify necessary interventions, evidencing how we, as practitioners, benefit from practices that serve our professional interests by maintaining the demand for our specific skills and training (kivel, 2007). schutte (2007) argues that, “we must assume moral responsibility in acknowledging the degree to which any of us is ideologically or materially complicit with the power and goals of neo-liberal global capitalism” (p. 171). since, as gharabaghi (2009) argues, social service work is implicated in social injustice because it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 373 depends on it for its very existence, are social justice and social care destined to be mutually exclusive? it is this issue of complicity – whether conscious or not – that warrants a critical unpacking. it is not our intention to individualize the problem of minoritization and place blame on individual service providers or agencies, but rather to make visible our involvement in the systemic structures of minoritization as they operate under neoliberalism and neocolonialism. gharabaghi and krueger (2010) explain that, “our interventions with children, youth and families increasingly resemble those undertaken by the very formal and informal institutions that have failed them in the first place” (p. 29). and so we ask, what role might practitioners play in challenging these dynamics? given the pervasive historical silencing of minoritization, we want to acknowledge how difficult it is for practitioners to incorporate a critical analysis of the neoliberal and neocolonial agenda in which their work is embedded. as discussed by reynolds (2010), policies at all levels often restrict the ability of front line workers to act creatively and in line with their ethics, and the notion prevails that the policies of residential settings cannot be changed from the front lines. no matter how dedicated or passionate about our work we might be, we often come face to face with the deeply embedded nature of these barriers, the difficulty of building strategic partnerships, a lack of knowledge, skills, resources, and supports to enact change, and backlash when we challenge the status quo. when this happens, our work is depoliticized and its potential for lasting social change is restricted. notions of diversity and cultural competence – so prevalent in the human services, including child and youth care – are inadequate to address these tensions. the “culturally competent” practitioner is a contested concept because it asserts that diversity is something to be figured out in a limited set of individualized competencies. such practice ideals too often ignore histories of colonization; they portray our social landscape through a neoliberal lens as a multicultural land of equal opportunity where culture and difference are celebrated and embraced and where power relations – such as those we have discussed in our examples – are rendered invisible (robinson, 2004). this invisibilization of power relations is of great concern given that notions of diversity competency are often foundational to the goals of therapeutic intervention and rehabilitation. another problem with the idea of diversity competence is that it negates the multiplicities of any given culture; it suggests that cultures are natural, static, mutually exclusive entities that can be pinned down in “culturally sensitive” programming. this approach, typical in assessments and treatment planning, assumes that a child, youth, or family will be able to describe their “culture” in coherent and accessible terms, leading to stereotyping and tokenism. an emphasis on cultural competence also often renders invisible the many aspects of diversity that exist outside of culture, since the term “culture” itself is vague and tends to be associated only with factors like ethnicity, language, and/or religion while ignoring diversities of gender, sexuality, and ability, for example (johnson & munch, 2009). the culturally themed dinners and celebrations that often occur in residential settings tend to oversimplify cultural complexities in this way. while paying attention to the cultural histories, values, and contexts of all children and youth is critical to effective connections, cultural safety must address structural inequities since the barriers that affect the lives of those in residential care are not cultural, but systemic and structural. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 374 yet level systems, token economies, and social skills trainings, for example, all legacies of dated behavioural and social learning theories that tend to ignore broader macro-level forces, continue to be used in residential and treatment programs as means of socializing children and youth in a manner deemed to be in their best interest. these interventions send messages that the minoritized experience is the client’s responsibility, and the therapeutic benefit is therefore lost. because the social realities that underpin the client’s problem behaviour remain hidden and thus unaddressed in these approaches, practices of this nature can be seen as acts of social regulation or control (chantler, 2005). as burman (2003) points out, “talk of difference is not about all differences, but about those that, within dominant discourses, are marked . . . as deviant or deficient” (p. 294). let us consider again the goals of residential settings: they centre on keeping children and youth “safe” and “healthy,” and on working in individuals’ best interests to support their integration into society. burman (2003) points out that a focus on social integration tends to “overlook a critical appraisal of precisely what it is those designated ‘excluded’ are to be included into” (p. 294). the agency of children and youth is rendered invisible in this system and their attempts to resist or speak back to the norms being forced on them are often labelled as antisocial or rebellious. instead, interventions are designed to help them adjust their “maladaptive”, “harmful”, or “problem” behaviours to fit into dominant societal norms. this includes ignoring or pathologizing acts of resistance and labelling them as disordered or deficient. it also serves to depoliticize children, youth, and families, and silences their perspectives on their own lives and care. for example, the scenario that the residential care practitioner describes in the quote that begins this section relates the labelling of a transgendered youth in a group home. the staff’s discomfort with nonconforming expressions of gender and sexuality place a young person in a position of being judged and victimized within the therapeutic milieu. the youth’s actions and identity are not viewed positively as a form of resistance against normative gender roles and expectations, but are pathologized and discouraged, thought ultimately to be the root cause of the youth’s difficulties. davis, saltzburg, and locke (2009) explain that, “the portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (glbt) lives as a normative variance of human experience is often overshadowed by the disparaging imagery historically attached to being glbt” (p. 1030). the care the young person receives in this setting is influenced by a deep-seated belief that nonconforming gender expressions are something to be corrected. even if this belief is only expressed covertly, it fails to acknowledge the role of heteronormativity in creating and maintaining the difficulties that confront the young person. skott-myhre (2004) asserts that rooted within the dominant euro-western paradigm of the helping professions is the task of forced assimilation. he argues that human services work is inherently colonial; its central goal is to control and discipline bodies and minds to “comply with the interests of the nation, the corporation, the family, or the agency” (p. 90). arieli (1997, as cited in skott-myhre, 2004, p. 90) stresses that the worker’s task is to bring together those who are “properly socialized” with those “who are not”; the ones who know the “proper” social codes (i.e., care providers) are expected to generate change in the ones who do not (i.e., those in care) by intervening in the course of their maturation. as practitioners taking up the dominant (white, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 375 heterosexual, middle-class, able) paradigm of the field, we are precluded from seeing ourselves inside this privileged category, as it is rendered invisible through the social construction of care as inherently benevolent and unproblematic. what greater altruistic position than to care for the most marginalized of children and youth? our position of power makes the struggle to “make sense from within” (davies, 2000, p. 23) unnecessary, because the legitimacy of our role is taken for granted through the assumptions that relational care is unproblematic. our participation in the regulation of our clients is supported by the planned environments we create, the training tools we employ, and the instruments we use to measure the success and failure of interventions. these are “mechanisms of power … disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand and alter him [or her]” (foucault, 1977, p. 199). walkerdine (1984) implicates all learning environments in this process: the parameters of practice are given by the common sense of child development which is everywhere, in apparatuses from teacher training, to work cards, to classroom layout. the apparatuses themselves provide a norm, a standard of good and possible pedagogy. we would find no classroom [or program/intervention] which stood outside the orbit of some constellation of discursive and administrative apparatuses. (p. 162) within the dominant neoliberal, neocolonial apparatuses, the success of the helping relationship is contingent on the individual’s or family’s choice to work either “with us or against us”. discourses of diversity inundate us with a rhetoric of equality that fails to acknowledge both the constructed quality of difference and the consequences this construction has in the lived experiences of minoritized groups. burman (2003) argues that, “talk of difference or diversity codes for power inequalities, but precisely through this euphemistic coding it loses its critical analytical edge” (p. 295). only through our active interrogation of these coding processes can we begin to move from a regulatory practice to a radical praxis of social justice concerned with disrupting hegemonic power across the multiple sites of our work. a new praxis of social justice so they’re all, teachers and stuff, like, oh talking about racism is too hard, it confuses the kids so we should not do that to them, like we’re too dumb to understand what happens to us every day? i think it’s more like an opposite situation, like i mean they don’t want to talk or they’re scared about racism because they’re the group of power. they don’t give us . . . credit that we understand and yeah we need to talk about it! (priya, 16, social justice activist) for practitioners to challenge the primacy of neoliberalism and neocolonialism in all its many effects and forms, skott-myhre (2004) states, we must “step outside the frameworks of colonial youth work and engage a different set of ideas, beliefs, and practices” (p. 92). to achieve this goal, it is essential “to decolonize youth work . . . to engage in what might be called radical youth work” (p. 92). the same ideas apply to radical social justice praxis in residential care. skott-myhre stresses that radical human services work signifies an intentional shift away international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 376 from safety and the normative force that safety implies. letting go of the safety provided by normative standards reveals the complexity of social advocacy and activism. as jones de almeida (2007) underscores, “radical social change … is much more than just ‘social’ – it is also personal and political, and about money and privilege, and about sexuality, race, and gender, and about the relationship between our minds, bodies, and spirit” (p. 194). from this perspective, social change is complicated, multifaceted, and politicized. it cannot be reduced to individualized, singular definitions and prescriptive measures. given our assertion that critical analysis is essential to challenge minoritization, in our concluding pages we explore in more detail what a multifaceted social justice praxis of residential care might look like. residential care comprises a tremendous diversity of practice settings, approaches, and practitioners. we are aware of this inherent diversity, but our goal here has been to focus on systemic, historical issues that shape our field. we recognize that, even in the familiar confines of a given field, no absolute footing exists for any of us; at any moment in any given context, we may find ourselves dancing along the spectrum of social change versus social regulation, implicated in structural inequities while we work to unravel them. our efforts to extricate these complexities will inevitably make visible their contradictions – and the impossibility of addressing every issue in detail. for instance, in this article we have focused on minoritization in general, rather than on specific debates within each of the fields of race, gender, disability, and sexuality studies. before moving on, we want to emphasize that these discussions are equally important, but they exceed the scope of this article. the tension between social justice as both ethical obligation and unattainable ideal is a tangible reality in our practice and our theoretical work. reynolds (2010) advances an ethic of solidarity, while cautioning practitioners not to step into righteousness or “replicate the kinds of dominance we hope to alleviate; accommodating people to lives of poverty, and participating in practices that can serve as social control” (p. 2). for us, as queer and first nations practitioners and researchers, this focus is not only about social justice for those with whom we work, but a matter of personal struggle for us and our communities. the dilemma of how to translate a commitment to social justice into action has been taken up by others in child and youth care (among others, see gharabaghi, 2009; newbury, 2009; skott-myhre, 2005, 2008) who have argued that socially just practice should include a politicized, systemic focus. our responsibility to care operates not only in everyday practice with individuals, but extends to political action and other forms of advocacy. reconceptualizing care as both an applied and political endeavour has helped expand definitions of what it means to work in the best interest of children, youth, families, and communities, including our own. despite these efforts, much work remains. social justice too often remains peripheral, rather than being a central component of our practice frameworks (newbury, 2009). while projects like the north american certification project or nacp (mattingly & stuart, 2002) draw attention to the importance of concepts like advocacy and diversity in practice, a commitment to social justice is not explicitly articulated in large-scale efforts to define or standardize practice in the north american context, nor is an understanding of how processes of minoritization influence our work and the lives of children, youth, and families. consequently, there is an urgent need to document the diverse and creative ways practitioners engender social justice in their practice. in our work on minoritized girlhood, we provide our own examples (de finney, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 377 loiselle, & dean, in press) of how social justice might be enacted both explicitly and subversively at the micro level of practice. but we also argue that an exclusive focus on individualized justice-doing (reynolds, 2010) risks reifying the myth that front line workers are powerless to generate broader forms of social change. equally critical to individual efforts is the sort of analysis we and others in this volume have mapped out, informed by critical theories that do not come out of normative euro-western psychological traditions. such theorization provides urgently needed counter-hegemonic understandings of minoritization by linking everyday practice to structural power systems such as colonialism. while it is not in itself sufficient, we strongly feel that the sort of transtheoretical analysis presented here is integral to addressing the failure of residential care interventions to target historical social inequities. we contest the all too familiar concern in an applied field such as ours, that critical analysis is a barrier to effective practice. from our multiple positions as practitioners, researchers, and activists, we see that ignoring links between social inequities and the realities of children and youth in care reasserts the dominance of euro-western psychological norms that is so harmful to the communities we work with. as priya reminds us at the beginning of this section, discomfort with critical analysis is exactly the kind of thinking that renders minoritization so difficult to name and contest, and that reproduces the very conditions practitioners hope to address. in other words, if we do not name it, how will we work collectively to change it? conclusion critically examining the work to which so many of us dedicate ourselves can be uncomfortable. but as thomas and green (2007) assert in their exploration of socially just practice from an indigenous perspective, social justice work “should always be complicated and uncomfortable” (p. 91). we can understand this to mean that, while we are aware of the contradictions and messiness of our efforts to explore social justice praxis, we recognize that we cannot not do the work. addressing power “requires a commitment to complex analysis and the letting go of wanting everything to be simple. segregation simplifies; integration requires that we come to terms with multiple ways of knowing, of interaction” (reynolds, 2010, p. 53). given our desire to trouble the borders between realms of practice and theorization, and our disinclination to adopt one-dimensional solutions, how do we move out of paralyzing dichotomies and into a new (albeit imperfect) understanding of praxis that offers room for multiple, overlapping strategies of social change? we tackle this question not in an attempt to provide a definitive resolution, but in the spirit of expanding and making more complex what counts as social justice, and, by extension, what is considered effective residential care practice. we hope this is only the beginning of an evolving discussion that includes many voices and strategies. gharabaghi and krueger (2010) emphasize that a “new politic” of practice is warranted to address the reflective nature of social justice in our practice. this, they argue, would focus practitioners and academics on the social realities that impact our work and would better prepare them to provide ethical care for children, youth, and families. we see this as an urgently needed step forward. without it – without a critical unpacking of minoritization and relations of power – we will continue to walk through the doors of residential care settings and see the same faces staring back at us. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 361-384 378 references access alliance. 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(2006). mesnmimk wasatek: catching a drop of light. understanding the overrepresentation of first nations children in canada’s child welfare system: an analysis of the canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect (cis-2003). toronto, on: centre of excellence for child welfare. unicef canada. (2010). the unicef innocenti report card 8. retrieved from http://www.unicef.ca/portal/smartdefault.aspx?at=2250 wade, a. (1995). resistant knowledges: therapy with aboriginal persons who have experienced violence. canadian western geographical series, 31, 167–206. vancouver, bc: ubc press. walkerdine, v. (1984). developmental psychology and the child centred pedagogy. in j. henriques (ed.), changing the subject: psychology, social regulation and subjectivity (pp. 153–202). london: methuen. white, j. (2007). knowing, doing and being in context: a praxis-oriented approach to child and youth care. child and youth care forum, 36(5-6), 225–244. http://www.unicef.ca/portal/smartdefault.aspx?at=2250� some children are more equal than others5f defining out-of-home and residential care the case of indigenous child welfare problematizing residential care practice a new praxis of social justice conclusion references an evidence-based approach to community safety 53 an evidence-based approach to community safety rick linden abstract: the author notes that despite the fact that the fight to move crime prevention to a more prominent place in the public agenda has been partially won after decades of effort, there is nonetheless a significant segment of the population and legislators who still believe that “cracking down on crime” is the best way to protect society. some policy-makers have now been convinced that crime prevention is a better way of controlling crime than tinkering with laws and fine-tuning the justice system, but unless crime prevention advocates can continue to demonstrate that the time and money now going to crime prevention produces results, the author argues there is a risk of losing what has been gained. he describes some of what we know about the causation of crime and delinquency, links these findings with crime reduction strategies, and looks at some of the evidence concerning the effectiveness of these crime prevention programs. he observes sardonically that if reducing crime were a simple task, canada would have become crime-free many years ago. after decades of effort, the fight to move crime prevention to a more prominent place in the public agenda has been partially won. some policy-makers have now been convinced that crime prevention is a better way of controlling crime than tinkering with laws and fine-tuning the justice system. however, many political leaders and a significant segment of society still believe that “cracking down on crime” after it happens is the best way to protect society, and they are eager to criticize the “softer” preventive approach. unless crime prevention advocates can continue to demonstrate that the time and money now going to crime prevention produces results, there is a risk of losing what has been gained. while it is hard to be critical of good intentions, the sad truth is that much of the time and money spent on crime prevention has been wasted. despite the successes of the last decade, efforts to prevent crime haven’t been nearly as successful as they might have been. there is ample research demonstrating that most crime prevention programs fail to prevent crime (rosenbaum, 1986; sherman et al., 1997). a major reason for this is that prevention programs often have no theoretical or empirical connection with the factors that cause crime1. programs are adopted for a variety of reasons: some are fashionable; some have strong lobbies2; some are set up for political reasons (such as showing the public that government is doing something, or putting politicians in the spotlight by allowing them to present cheques to the community). evidence-based crime prevention means that we select programs that are demonstrably likely to be successful. this means that planners must analyze crime and disorder problems, determine likely causes of those problems, and implement programs that address these causes. this paper will describe some of what we know about the causation of crime and delinquency, link these findings with crime reduction strategies, and look at some of the evidence concerning the effectiveness of these crime prevention programs. 54 while this volume focuses on social development programs, it is worth noting that a wide variety of other crime prevention strategies have also been shown to be effective. these include situational crime prevention (i.e., environmental design), community-based strategies (i.e., neighbourhood watch), administrative/legal strategies (i.e., zoning bylaws), and police-based strategies (i.e., offender-oriented policing). a long-standing debate in the field of crime prevention has been whether prevention programs should focus on immediate problems or if the root causes of crime should be addressed. unfortunately, this debate has often been framed in “either/or” terms when in reality a multi-faceted approach is necessary. dealing with the root causes of crime takes time and often depends on actions which can be very difficult to achieve, such as reducing unemployment and improving the education system. to wait for these changes to take place would mean that nothing would be done to prevent victimization in the meantime. also, even if all the changes proposed in a social development “wish list” could be implemented, the pool of motivated offenders would only be reduced, not eliminated. on the other hand, many of the defensive crime prevention strategies, particularly those involving target hardening, can isolate members of a community from one another, as those who can afford it barricade themselves in locked apartments with security systems in buildings guarded by doormen and policed by private security guards. there are several other reasons why strategies must deal with the underlying causes of crime. first, even when opportunity reduction strategies are effective, they may result in some displacement to other parts of the community. second, most crime prevention programs are targeted at property crimes and do not address the serious problem of interpersonal violence3 . finally, community-based crime prevention can be very difficult to accomplish – programs are often hard to implement and even harder to maintain. this is particularly the case in disorganized communities with high crime rates. it is by no means a sure thing that organizing neighbours, or marking property, or altering housing design will be successful, so there is a need to find ways of reducing the number of potential offenders. ideally, a mix of strategies will be used so that short-term needs can be addressed through situational and police-based strategies while the number of potential offenders is reduced over the longer term. also, there are many situations in which the distinction between social development approaches and situational strategies may be an artificial one. while some see social development approaches as the most valuable ones and reject the others, strategies such as more effective police tactics and target hardening may play a critical role in the social development of communities. for example, in a recent volume looking at youth violence in the united states, moore and tonry (1998) point out the importance of cultural supports for violence. they feel that a culture of violence has grown up in some communities because of the emergence of violent street drug markets, particularly those associated with crack cocaine. young people growing up in such communities will find violence very difficult to resist. in these circumstances, creating a safe, orderly environment is a necessary first step toward changing the neighbourhood. in very disorganized communities, this means that police and environmental design strategies may actually be vital components of a social development strategy. unless order is restored, local residents and organizations will be unable to rebuild their communities. 55 kelling and sousa (2001) concluded that police strategies were responsible for significant reductions in crime in new york4 and they feel that it is likely these crime reductions will help neighbourhoods to regain the social capital they need to keep rates of crime at a lower level. in a similar vein, an experiment in a british community (painter & farrington, 1997) showed that improving street lighting reduced crime significantly in a public housing project compared to a control project where the lighting was not changed. not only did crime go down, but residents also reported feeling much safer, and pedestrian traffic (particularly females) increased. somewhat surprisingly, rather than being displaced to the poorly lit neighbouring control estate, the numbers of young people who gathered at night in the experimental estate actually increased significantly. thus the improved lighting helped to strengthen the social capital of the estate and to reduce crime. the situational tactics that are normally called secondary prevention may be the catalysts needed to initiate a “virtuous cycle” of prevention that will lead to changes that would be categorized as social development. what we know about the causes of crime and delinquency criminologists have found that a small proportion of offenders commit the majority of serious crimes. studies have shown that from 5% to 10% of young people are responsible for 50% to 70% of offences (waller, 2006). research on the causes of crime among these persistent offenders has looked at a wide range of factors including individual characteristics and social variables such as the neighbourhood, the family, the peer group, and the school. our knowledge in this area is now well established. over the last decade much of the early research on correlates of crime has been replicated many times and there is a high degree of consensus about the risk factors that should be addressed in prevention programs (cf. surgeon general, 2001). the most important of these risk factors are: 1. neuropsychological factors. there is some evidence of neuropsychological correlates of offending, particularly chronic offending. these can be caused by a variety of factors including heredity, maternal drug or alcohol abuse, exposure to toxic materials, and poor prenatal nutrition. some of the behavioural correlates include learning disorders, attention deficit disorder, impulsivity, and hyperactivity (moffitt, 1990, 1993). 2. family factors. family variables are important predictors of crime and delinquency. among these family variables are: lack of supervision and monitoring of children’s behaviour (linden, 2004); harsh and/or inconsistent punishment (thomas, 2004); poor communication; parent-child conflict; family violence; family dependence on welfare; and parental criminality (howell & hawkins, 1998). in their review of longitudinal delinquency studies, lipsey and derzon (1998) found that the strongest predictor of youth violence was the quality of parent-child relations. 3. school factors. early school failure is predictive of subsequent violent behaviour (maguin & loeber, 1996). many other measures of school adjustment and school success are also correlated 56 with delinquency. 4. peer factors. crime and delinquency are strongly influenced by peer groups. (a) gangs increase the likelihood of delinquency even more than other peer groups (huizinga, 1997; thornberry, krohn, lizotte, & chard-wierschem, 1993). (b) much of the violence that takes place among young people is caused by the need to maintain “respect” from their peers. the street code of conduct is difficult for any young person to resist (anderson, 1998). 5. neighbourhood factors. crime and delinquency breed in disorganized communities where community members cannot exercise control over things that happen in their neighbourhood. (a) poor neighbourhoods with high rates of residential mobility have high crime rates (sampson, 1995). (b) neighbourhoods with high rates of single-parent households have high crime rates (sampson, 1995). (c) neighbourhoods with high anonymity and minimal relationships among people will have high rates of crime and delinquency (sampson, raudenbush, & earls, 1997). 6. economic factors. while there is almost no correlation between crime and broad measures of social class, there is evidence that those at the very bottom of the class ladder are much more likely to become involved in criminal behaviour than the rest of the population (clelland & carter, 1980). successful crime prevention programs must address these causal factors. there are two ways of approaching these correlates or risk factors for crime and delinquency. first, we can try to change the factors directly. for example, if we conclude that poor parenting skills contribute to crime in a community, we can develop parenting programs that help to teach parents to deal with their children more effectively. changes in the operation of schools can help some children perform better socially and academically. second, when we cannot change risk factors such as the presence of fetal alcohol syndrome5 or chronically abusive parenting, our only option is to identify at-risk youth and prescribe protective measures. for example, intensive education programs can moderate some of the effects of fas and if parents cannot or will not provide them with love and support, these must be provided in other settings. the importance of an environment that mitigates the impact of risk factors is suggested by research such as that cited by reiss and roth (1993) who conclude that children affected by prenatal trauma or pregnancy complications will only have higher than normal rates of violence if they are raised in unstable homes. evidence-based crime prevention: what do we know? the first step in preventing crime is ensuring that programs address the risk factors that lead to crime. the second is ensuring that prevention programs are based on research 57 demonstrating their effectiveness. in this section, i will discuss the research evaluating programs that have addressed the risk factors for crime and delinquency. following the lessons learned elsewhere will help to ensure success in preventing crime. however, solutions cannot just be adopted off the shelf. each community is different, so it is also important that people planning prevention programs first conduct an intensive analysis of their community’s problems and resources so that programs can be modified to suit local circumstances. programs to improve parenting many studies have shown the importance of the family in the causation and prevention of crime and delinquency. for example, in their review of research on the predictors of male delinquency, loeber and dishion (1983) found that parental family management was the best predictor of delinquency involvement. other research has found that the strength of family ties, parental supervision and discipline, and the role model provided by parents are all related to delinquency (linden, 2000). there have been few evaluations of programs directed at improving parenting. one promising start was made by gerald patterson and his colleagues at the oregon learning center. based on his experiences treating several hundred families of anti-social children and on very detailed observation of interaction patterns within these families, patterson (1980) concluded that “since anti-social acts that are not punished tend to persist” the key to changing the behaviour of these troublesome children was to teach their parents how to discipline them. this process consisted of teaching parents to (a) monitor the child's behaviour; (b) recognize deviance; and (c) deal with such behaviour. in a properly functioning family, parents understand this process and the system is activated by the bonds of affection and caring which exist between the parent and the child. the key is not just punishment – it was found that many parents of problem children punished them more often and more harshly than did the parents of normal children. however, the parents of problem children did not know how to punish their children, and punishment actually made things worse. working with the families of preadolescent problem children, patterson developed a program in which parents are taught how to shape their children’s behaviour by using nonphysical punishments, by rewarding good conduct, and by interacting more positively as a family. the results suggest the program has potential. one evaluation showed that stealing was reduced from an average of 0.83 incidents per week to 0.07 incidents per week. the treatment effects persisted for six months, but by one year stealing rates had gone back to pre-treatment levels (moore, chamberlain, & mukai, 1979). this finding suggests that parental retraining may be necessary. patterson's methods were tested among french-speaking montréal youth by tremblay et al. (1992). all kindergarten teachers in 53 low-income montréal schools were asked to rate the disruptive behaviour of their male students. the 30% most disruptive were randomly assigned to a treatment group, a no-contact control group, and an attention-control group. when the boys 58 were entering their second year of elementary school, intervention was provided with parents and in school. over a two-year period, parents were given an average of 15 parenting training sessions based on patterson's work. social skills training was given to the boys in school in small groups of pro-social peers who met 19 times over the two years. an evaluation of the program was conducted when the boys were 15 years of age. the treated boys showed less self-reported delinquency involvement from ages 10 to 15. while the number of boys charged under the young offenders act was very low (8%) there were no significant differences between treatment and control groups. the program appeared to have other positive effects that diminished over time. teacher-rated disruptive behaviour was less from ages 10 to 13, but the difference disappeared at 14. school adjustment was also better for the treatment group from ages 10 to 12, but this difference also disappeared. as with patterson's work, this study suggests that ongoing or repeated training may be needed in order to maintain program effects. another study took place in the united kingdom from 1995 to 1999 (scott, spender, doolan, jacobs, & aspland, 2001). this trial involved children from 3 to 8 years of age who were referred to the local mental health service for anti-social behaviour. the program involved small groups of parents who met for two hours each week for three to four months. the parents learned techniques for dealing with their children more effectively and were given tasks to practice at home. following the intervention, the parents were much more likely than the control parents to use praise rather than inappropriate commands. the children showed major improvement in anti-social behaviour, while the control children showed no change. a recent development in the treatment of high-risk youth is multisystemic therapy (mst). mst is an intensive home-based service that involves the family as well as the other groups that have an influence on the young person, such as the school, the peer group, and the neighbourhood. mst therapists are available 24 hours a day and work very intensively with the youth and his or her family as well as with the other groups. the ultimate goal of mst is to “empower the family to take responsibility for making and maintaining gains.... parents are encouraged to develop the requisite skills to solve their own problems rather than rely on professionals” (leschied & cunningham, 2002, p. 9). evaluation results have been mixed, with several u.s. studies showing significant reductions in criminality, institutionalization, and drug abuse (farrington & welsh, 2003) while other research, including a large randomized trial in london, ontario (leschied & cunningham, 2002), did not show any difference between treated and untreated young people. where it has been successful, the mst program is very costeffective. the washington state institute for public policy (1998) has estimated that mst could potentially result in a net gain of $21,863 per program participant. positive results have also been obtained for a similar program called functional family therapy that also includes a variety of interventions with youth and their families (surgeon general, 2001). this is a short-term intervention that has lowered rates of offending for foster care and institutional placement by 25% to 60% (alexander et al., 1998) compared with controls who did not receive the services. 59 another important parenting issue concerns foster care, as a relatively high proportion of children in trouble are also in care. one improvement is making foster care more stable. it is not uncommon to encounter young people who have lived in ten or more foster care homes. foster parents need to be trained and monitored and support should be provided so that children can stay with the same foster parents until they can return to their natural parents or live on their own. several communities in the united states have implemented a multidimensional treatment foster care program for chronic young offenders, which is similar to the mst program discussed earlier in this report. those responsible for this program work with foster parents, biological parents, and with the young people themselves. an important component of this program is the role played by a community liaison worker who coordinates the different people and agencies involved with each young person (surgeon general, 2001). compared with a control group, participants in this project were less likely to use hard drugs, were only one third as likely to run away from their programs, and had 60% fewer arrests in the 12 months following the program (chamberlain & mihalic, 1998). several studies have focused on prenatal and perinatal parenting. although delinquency was not used as an outcome measure in most of these studies, the research did show that some of the programs reduced risk factors, so they at least have a potential impact on delinquency. in the best known of these studies, olds et al. (1997, 1998) studied the effect of a home visit program in rochester, new york. nurses made home visits every two weeks to a treatment group of mothers who had one or more of the following problems: young age, single-parent status, or low socioeconomic status. families were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups. one treatment group received prenatal care home visits and postnatal transportation for care; a second treatment group received biweekly visits until the child was 2 years of age. the program was very comprehensive and dealt with a variety of health and social issues including trying to involve the mothers’ friends and relatives and to refer families to medical and social service agencies. a 46-month follow-up demonstrated that the home visits had an impact on a wide range of outcomes. the visited mothers were less likely to punish their children, had fewer hospital emergency visits, and had fewer episodes of child maltreatment than the control mothers. the visited mothers also had better employment records and fewer subsequent pregnancies. a subsequent 15-year follow-up found that the postnatal visit group showed significantly lower levels of neglect and child abuse. the mothers in this group also had fewer subsequent births, lower need for aid for dependent children, and less use of alcohol and illegal drugs (olds et al., 1997). the program also had a significant impact on the criminal and anti-social behaviour of the children (olds et al., 1998). the children in the postnatal visitation program had fewer instances of running away, fewer reported criminal violations, arrests6 and convictions, and lower rates of consumption of cigarettes and alcohol. parents reported their children had fewer alcohol and drug-related problems than those in the comparison group. the programs discussed here suggest that it is possible to improve parenting skills and to support parents who may be having a difficult time coping with the simultaneous demands of poverty, isolation, and child-rearing7. however, this is not a problem that can be considered apart from other social ills. one cannot separate parenting from other issues related to resources and skills. for example, many persistent delinquents come from single-parent families typically 60 headed by females. even if parenting skills could be taught, it can be extremely difficult for a poor parent, acting on her or his own, to effectively manage a household consisting of several children without outside help. currie (1985) has pointed out that the relationship between broken homes and crime is due to the history of conflict prior to the break, and to the fact that the parent with custody of the children may lack the financial resources and support systems to do an adequate job of child rearing. thus family problems may be caused outside the family and may be amenable to change if support programs are provided. in a similar vein, wilson (1982) has concluded that poor supervision on the part of parents is a result of chronic stress, unemployment, disabilities, and poverty. thus the ineffectiveness of parents who do not properly supervise their children may itself be a result of the parents' social situation. programs such as big brothers, big sisters have demonstrated that they can be successful in providing extra support for single parents. an evaluation of the big brothers, big sisters program showed that young people who had been in the program for 18 months were less likely to use drugs and alcohol or to hit someone, and had better relationships with parents, peers, and their schools than young people in the control group (mcgill, mihalic, & grotpeter, 1998). research by furstenberg (1993) has added a new dimension to the relationship between parenting and crime. he observed that in our society parenting is viewed as a very private matter. however, his work showed that conditions outside the family interact with parental competence in that where parents live affects how they manage their children. neighbourhood characteristics such as the availability of resources, the extensiveness of social networks, and social trust all affect the support parents receive. if neighbourhood supports are weak, parents must be highly effective if they are to raise their children successfully. sampson (1995) also found the importance of a network of families in collectively contributing to the supervision of the community's children. he feels these networks are a form of social capital that contributes to the effective socialization of children. this work suggests that in addition to teaching parenting skills to high-risk families, it is also important to rebuild the neighbourhood social institutions that support families. it is likely that changes in housing and neighbourhood structures will also have an impact on social development factors such as families, education, and employment. strong communities help their members in many different ways. the research also speaks to the need for strengthening the family economically. employment and upgrading training for those who are unemployed or underemployed is a necessary step. single-parent families and those families in which both parents work, require adequate day care and flexible work schedules. single mothers, whether employed or at home, may benefit from support programs where they can get child care and counselling. programs such as communal kitchens, which offer contacts outside the home, can help to break down the isolation that is often a problem for poor single parents, as well as helping with nutrition. economic problems can also be alleviated if provinces more aggressively pursue maintenance and child support orders against husbands who attempt to avoid paying. the evidence suggests that it may be possible to improve parenting skills and to support parents who are having a difficult time coping with the simultaneous demands of poverty, isolation, and child rearing. while the research supporting most social development programs, including parenting programs, is limited it does suggest that carefully designed programs do have 61 great potential. however, the research does tell us clearly that unless these interventions are substantial in nature and continued over time, there is no chance they will be effective8. programs to improve educational adjustment and outcomes like the family, the school plays a major role in socializing young people and is an important predictor of delinquency. the school is a pervasive influence in a child's life. for most of the year, children spend all day in classes and often return to the school after classes to participate in sports and social activities. more importantly, the school is an arena in which a child's performance is constantly being judged. those who are successful are given prestige by teachers, parents, and other adults, as well as by many of their classmates. those who do well in school and who enjoy their educational experience are less likely to be involved in delinquency while those who fail and who dislike school are more likely to be involved in delinquency. the correlation between school failure and delinquency is relatively strong and has been replicated in canada (gomme, 1985; kupfer, 1966), britain (hargreaves, 1967), and the united states (hirschi, 1969; polk & schafer, 1972). the school has an impact on delinquency in two distinct, but related ways. first, the school is one of the major factors that determine an individual's future social and economic position. second, the school affects the daily life of the child. for some, the school experience is interesting, pleasant, and enriching. for others, it is irrelevant, degrading, and humiliating. those who have bad school experiences may react by getting into trouble both inside and outside the school setting. there are a number of ways in which the school can help to reduce delinquency. there is some evidence that teacher style can play a role in provoking deviance or in obtaining cooperation, and that schools which allow pupils to participate in decision-making will be more successful (rutter & giller, 1984). the curriculum and the way it is taught may also make a difference in school performance and delinquency. weis and hawkins (1979) have recommended that schools make greater use of such programs as performance-based education, which involves establishing learning goals for each student and developing individual programs with rewards for improvement. they also suggest the use of cross-age tutoring and other ways of involving students in the operation of the school, thus enhancing their level of commitment. preschool programs recent research tracking subjects from childhood to adolescence has shown the importance of early childhood intervention in reducing delinquency. tremblay (2000) has summarized these findings: children who fail to learn alternatives to physical aggression during the preschool years are at very high risk of a huge number of problems. they tend to be hyperactive, inattentive, anxious, and fail to help when others are in need; they are rejected by the majority of their classmates; they get poor grades; and their behaviour disrupts school activities. they are thus swiftly taken out of their “natural” peer group and placed in special classes, special schools and institutions with other “deviants”, the ideal situation to reinforce marginal behaviour. they are among the most delinquent from pre-adolescence onward, ... the most 62 at risk of dropping out of school ... being violent offenders ... [and] being charged under the young offenders’ act. (p. 23) one area that appears to have great potential to reduce crime and delinquency is that of preschool programs for children from deprived backgrounds9. one of the few programs that has undergone a long-term evaluation is a michigan program called the perry preschool project. the students were 123 african-american children from poor families. at ages 3 and 4 the children in the program attended a preschool with an active learning curriculum five mornings a week and teachers visited the children’s homes once a week. the program lasted 30 weeks each year. a control group did not receive these services. the most recent follow-up of the perry preschool project looked at the participants at age 40 (schweinhart et al., 2005). far fewer of the program participants than controls had been arrested five or more times (36% versus 55%) and had less than half the arrest rate for drug offences (14% versus 34%). the program group had higher incomes, were more likely to own their own homes, and were less likely to have been on welfare. they had greater educational achievement and lower rates of illiteracy. program group members were more likely to have had stable marriages and females had lower rates of out-of-wedlock births. the costs of the program were more than recovered because of gains in reduced welfare costs and increased earnings of the graduates. schweinhart et al. (2005) estimate that the saving was over $17 for every dollar invested in the program10. the researchers responsible for this program suggest that the intervention must be made while the children are young, and must be thorough enough to overcome the range of disadvantages faced by the participants. one very important factor in the success of the program was the fact that it combined education with training and support for the family. thus the work done in school was reinforced in the home. several other programs combining these two services also had positive effects (lally, mangione, & honig, 1988; seitz & apfel, 1994; and johnson & walker, 1987). tremblay and craig (1995) reviewed the results of 13 educational prevention experiments with delinquency outcomes (including the perry preschool study). while most were schoolor daycare-based, they typically also involved intervention with parents outside the school setting. half the studies showed a beneficial impact on delinquency. the success rate was highest for programs for pre-adolescents, with five of the seven programs having lower delinquency rates for program youth than for controls. the successful programs were of long duration – from six months to five years – and involved intense interventions aimed at children, parents, and teachers. programs for older children one of the most common responses to the problems of children and youth is to establish inschool programs to educate students about the nature and consequences of their problem behaviour. unfortunately, there is little evidence that these educational programs have any positive impact. for example, dare (drug abuse resistance education) is the most widely used drug prevention program in schools across north america. however, research has shown that dare has had no impact on drug use (surgeon general, 2001; west & o’neal, 2004). 63 after several years of resisting these findings, the dare organization is currently evaluating a new dare program that has taken into account some of the criticisms (www.d.a.r.e.com). as tremblay and craig (1995) have observed, the evidence shows that preschool programs have been more effective than school-based programs for older children. there is some evidence that alternative classes or schools might be better for high-risk older children. a major review of crime prevention programs conducted for the united states congress (sherman et al., 1997) concluded that the following types of programs had an impact on delinquency: (a) programs that build school capacity to initiate and to sustain innovation; (b) programs that effectively communicate appropriate behavioural norms; and (c) programs that teach social competency skills such as problem solving, communication skills, and decision-making. outside the immediate school environment, mentoring programs have also shown some success (sherman et al., 1997). school-based peer programs such as peer counselling and peer mediation have been found to be ineffective at reducing youth violence and other risk factors. however, cross-age tutoring programs in which older children tutor younger ones have led to academic gains for both groups (surgeon general, 2001). as with parenting programs, evaluations of school-based programs show that multi-faceted programs are the most likely to be effective. for example, work continues on the implementation and evaluation of three school-based programs designed for young people aged 6 to 12. these were the success for all program, the fast track project, and the seattle social development project (howell & hawkins, 1998). the success for all curriculum is enriched in many ways and special help is quickly provided to children who are having difficulties (www.successforall.net). there is also a family support team consisting of a variety of helping professionals who work with the parents to teach them to support the efforts of the school and who provide support to children and to families. program evaluations showed the program was successful in improving academic achievement (borman & hewes, 2001). while no conduct measures were reported, this improved academic achievement may have an impact on delinquency. the fast track project (www.fasttrackproject.org) is designed to serve high-risk children in high-crime communities. like the other successful intervention programs, the fast track project is multi-faceted. teachers try to improve thinking processes and emotional and problem solving skills; parents are trained to reinforce the lessons from the school and to better manage their children’s behaviour; and positive peers are involved in social and academic activities. the intervention was very intensive and continued for five years. research summarized on the project website indicates that: significant progress was made toward the goal of improving competencies of the children receiving intervention services and their parents. compared to the control group, the intervention children improved their social-cognitive and academic skills, and their parents reduced their use of harsh discipline. these group differences also were reflected in behavioral improvements during the elementary school years and beyond. compared with children in the control group, children in the intervention group displayed significantly less http://www.d.a.r.e.com� 64 aggressive behavior at home, in the classroom, and on the playground. by the end of third grade, 37 percent of the intervention group had become free of conduct problems, in contrast with 27 percent of the control group. by the end of elementary school, 33 percent of the intervention group had a developmental trajectory of decreasing conduct problems, as compared with 27 percent of the control group. furthermore, placement in special education by the end of elementary school was about one-fourth lower in the intervention group than in the control group (fast track, 2010). this improvement continued into adolescence. by the eighth grade there were modestly favourable differences between participants and controls in arrest rates and substantial differences in serious conduct disorders. the seattle social development project (http://depts.washington.edu/ssdp) is also a school-based program with several components. these include training teachers in classroom management and effective instruction, helping children to develop a variety of learning and coping skills, and training parents in behaviour management and academic support (howell & hawkins, 1998). the program has been evaluated since the early 1980s. positive long-term outcomes include: reducing anti-social behaviour including drug abuse; improving academic skills, attachment to school, and school behaviour; and increasing bonding to conventional others. finally, the quantum opportunities program is a program for older students. the program encourages disadvantaged young people to complete high school and to go on to post-secondary education. the quantum program is very intensive, involving 750 hours per year over a four-year period. program activities include tutoring, computer skills training, life skills training, and community service. participants received a small hourly stipend for their time and some financial support for post-secondary education. the program had very positive educational outcomes and male controls had six times more convictions than program participants (lattimore, mihalic, grotpeter, & taggart, 1998). a subsequent evaluation was not nearly as positive and showed no impact on crime. in fact, program participants had higher rates of drinking and drug use than controls11 (maxfield, schirm, & rodriquez-planas, 2003). however, the evaluators found that the replication sites did not implement the program as intensively as had been done in the pilot program. because of the potential of the program, the eisenhower foundation has funded another replication. while the implementation is not yet complete, initial results are once again quite positive (eisenhower foundation, 2006). as with parenting, there is an obvious connection between education and broader community issues. the community finances the education system and instills general attitudes about the role and value of education that affect students’ attitudes toward learning. the schools also rely on the community to reinforce the lessons and values they teach. for example, housing policy can be a critical factor in education, as unstable housing can be very detrimental to learning. in the inner city winnipeg school division, 22% of students changed schools at least once during the 1994-95 year. one school had a 44% turnover among its 500 students. this obviously makes the classroom situation very difficult for students and teachers and can also be emotionally trying for students who are constantly losing friends, trying to fit into a new 65 environment, and struggling to catch up with the disrupted studies. housing and foster parenting policies that reduce this turnover can be beneficial to children and the community in many ways, including reductions in crime. employment while research clearly shows that positive experiences at home and in school reduce the likelihood of delinquency, the link between employment and crime is less clear. for example, there is no consistent pattern in the relationship between employment rates and crime rates. that is, an increase in the rate of unemployment does not necessarily translate into a corresponding increase (or decrease) in the crime rate. further, the evidence indicates that having a job does not constrain high-risk offenders from committing criminal acts. in his review of the research concerning the relationship between crime and employment, currie (1985) concludes that, “…it is not just the fact of having or not having a job that is most important, nor is the level of crime most strongly or consistently affected by fluctuations in the national unemployment rate. the more consistent influence is the quality of work – its stability, its level of pay, its capacity to give the worker a sense of dignity and participation...” (p. 116). even this conclusion is based on very limited research, as it is very difficult to isolate the effects of employment on behaviour. by the time they get to the age of employment, many highrisk youth have already had serious criminal involvement, and behaviour patterns have been established which can be very difficult to end. if a youth has a lengthy record of serious offences, a limited education, and poor work habits, it is difficult to find anyone willing to give him or her the kind of meaningful work described by currie. however, it does seem apparent that the shortrun training and job placement programs, which are most commonly used, are ineffective (mcgahey & jeffries, 1985). while the research correlating crime with unemployment rates and looking at the impact of jobs on an individual's involvement in crime are not conclusive, there is substantial evidence that inequality is related to crime. a number of researchers have documented the fact that serious violent crime is correlated with the inequality of income in a city. further, there is also evidence that serious crime is most likely to be committed by those at the bottom of the social class ladder and that crime rates are highest in neighbourhoods with high unemployment (mcgahey, 1986). economic inequality is also linked with racial inequality – the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in the canadian criminal justice system is due both to their position at the bottom of the class system and to the history of racism that is a major cause of their poverty. the policy implications of the research on the economic correlates of crime are simple to state, but difficult to implement. the research tells us to reduce the inequality of incomes, to minimize the effects of racism, and to provide meaningful and stable jobs for as many people as possible. these are difficult tasks in a world where most new jobs are in the service industry and where global competition puts pressure on companies to reduce wages and to keep the labour force as small as possible. one large-scale study has examined the impact of the provision of employment assistance 66 to disadvantaged young people. the u.s. job corps program is a national program for disadvantaged young people between the ages of 16 and 24. it is a residential program that offers a broad range of training in academic, vocational, and life skills as well as transition and job placement assistance after graduation. in addition to its other benefits, including increased employment and earnings compared with control groups, the job corps program also had an impact on crime. the evaluators found that there were 100 fewer arrests per 1,000 participants in the program and that program participants were also less likely themselves to be victimized by crime (mcconnell & glazerman, 2001). recreation while many people assume that recreation programs will prevent crime, there is surprisingly little evidence supporting this belief. in fact, a u.s. congressional review pointed out that recreation programs may actually increase criminality if high-risk youth are allowed to mix with low-risk youth without a strong intervention to establish positive group norms (sherman et al., 1997). regular supervision may help some high-risk young people, but children most in need of help are also the most unlikely to choose to participate in these programs. the limited research that is available does suggest that recreational programs will not be effective unless they are very intensive. that is, a program that involves young people for an hour or two a week will not be effective. there is some evidence that programs such as outward bound, which allow youth to test themselves in a wilderness setting, may help. in manitoba, the summer fly-in sports camps run by university of manitoba physical education students on reserves in northern manitoba showed significant declines in crime rates compared with reserves that did not have the programs (murray, 1993). this program involved very intensive recreation activities that were run over an entire summer. finally, the congressional review found that after-school recreation programs operating in high-crime areas by community-based organizations such as boys and girls clubs may have a positive impact on crime, but here again the intervention must be substantial if it is to have any effect (sherman et al., 1997). an ottawa study also provides evidence that properly run recreation programs can have an impact. for almost three years, low-income children 5 to 15 years of age living in a public housing project took part in an intensive after-school program that offered sports, music, dancing, and scouting. the children were compared with young people in another public housing project with minimal services. arrests in the program site declined by 75% compared with the two years prior to the program while they rose by 67% in the comparison site. however, within 16 months after the program ended, these positive effects had worn off (jones & offord, 1989, as cited in howell, 1995, p. 95). another program that shows the benefits of recreational programming is britain’s youth inclusion program, which uses recreation as one element of a more comprehensive intervention (morgan harris burrows, 2003). this program was implemented in 70 of the most deprived communities in england and wales. program staff identified the “top 50” young people in each neighbourhood based on a risk assessment process and asked them and their parents to become involved in the program. other young people who were not assessed as being in the “top 50” 67 were also allowed to participate in the program. on average, the “top 50” were involved in 10 hours of activities per week. the most common activity was sports, but young people were also involved in many other things including mentoring, family projects, education and training, health and drug education, arts and cultural activities, and environmental activities. while the evaluation did not include a control group, the results were quite promising. arrest rates dropped by 65% for the “top 50” young people who stayed actively involved with the program compared with a drop of 44% for those identified as being in the “top 50” who were not engaged in the program. the offences for which program participants were arrested were less serious than the offences they committed prior to the program. neighbourhood revitalization in their discussion of the merrill neighbourhood in beloit, wisconsin, weisel and harrell (1996) have drawn a poignant picture of a community in decline: in this all-too-common story, areas once home to stable families, manifesting the vibrant spirit of community associated with the traditional american neighborhood, enter a downward spiral of decay typified by declining housing stock, the frequent abandonment of dwellings, or a proliferation of properties allowed by absentee landlords to deteriorate and become overgrown with weeds. these neighborhoods gradually begin to show other signs of neglect, such as trash and litter, abandoned cars, and gang graffiti defacing walls. most conspicuous in such communities is the absence of normal neighborhood activity: there are no children on the playgrounds and no older people sitting on their porches. instead, seemingly ubiquitous groups of young men congregate idly on street corners. taken together, these components too often constitute the visible indicators of rising crime and fear. (p. 18) the connection between the social condition of a neighbourhood and crime was drawn decades ago by researchers such as shaw and mckay (1942) who attributed the high rates of crime in slum communities to the failure of neighbourhood institutions including families, schools, and churches, to provide adequate social controls. shaw and mckay established the chicago area project to assist local residents to work together to improve the manner in which their communities were organized. a number of more recent attempts at crime reduction have followed this tradition. most notably, in britain the national association for the care and resettlement of offenders (nacro) used a community development approach to deal with crime on housing estates in england and wales. nacro contended that “crime reduction flows from the structure and communality that are injected into run-down housing estates; on a wellmanaged estate with a stable population, there is likely to be a degree of neighbourliness conducive to good neighbour relations. it is argued by many that the gradual development of neighbourly behaviour and informal networks of support among tenants is the most effective deterrent of anti-social behaviour” (safe neighbourhoods unit, 1993, p. 86). typical of the work sponsored by nacro was the bushbury triangle project in wolverhampton. the project involved a modernization program, improvements in home 68 security, new fencing, and a variety of community activities run by the residents from a newly designated community house. during the modernization, it became apparent that behaviour on the estate was not improving. planners realized that the project needed more consultation with the residents so they would develop a sense of ownership of the improvements. to facilitate this ownership, part of the estate – the triangle – was designated as a separate community and physical changes were made that encouraged pedestrian circulation within this area. these changes appeared to make a substantial difference. crimes reported to the police dropped by onethird compared with other parts of the estate which had been modernized but which lacked the community component. victim surveys showed substantial reductions in crime, and crime fear declined by 50%. these findings were also supported by the community response in meetings with small groups of residents and by interviews with officials of various local social agencies. another example of neighbourhood change comes from the work of oscar newman (1992). crime had increased dramatically during the 1980s in the dayton, ohio neighbourhood of five oaks. five oaks is a formerly middle-class neighbourhood which had become a favourite commercial location for drug dealers and prostitutes. in 1991 oscar newman was hired to help develop a plan to reduce these problems. a planning team, working in consultation with the community and with civic officials, came up with the idea of using street closures and other design changes to divide the area into ten mini-neighbourhoods. each had three to six streets that could only be accessed through one entry portal; other entrances were blocked by iron gates that could be unlocked for emergency access. pedestrian access was not affected. internal streets were redesigned into culs-de-sac. this redesign was intended to make access more difficult for criminals and also to encourage residents to make more use of the area. other elements involved police cooperation with the community and aggressive action against the prostitutes and dealers, better enforcement of building code regulations (because many houses had been illegally converted to multiple family rental units), and a city program to encourage residents to own their own homes. the impact of these changes was dramatic. over a one-year period violent crime dropped by 50%, non-violent crime dropped by 24%, traffic accidents dropped by 40%, and house prices increased by 15%. residents liked the changes and many noted that resident involvement in the community had increased. we should not see redesign as a panacea, particularly for very deteriorated, high-crime areas. it may be most useful in neighbourhoods such as five oaks which still have some sense of community, high percentages of strong families and home ownership higher than in the city core, and which have the potential to be turned around relatively quickly. one key factor in projects such as five oaks is that they involve a rapid and major change, which can help convince residents that their efforts to improve their neighbourhoods are supported and which can help motivate their further efforts conclusions the papers in this issue clearly show that it is not easy to prevent crime. delinquency and crime do not have simple causes and hence cannot have simple solutions. put another way, if crime is a result of an interrelationship of the individual with his or her family, school, peer group, and neighbourhood and is influenced by larger forces such as the global economy, then a 69 midnight basketball program (or amendments to the youth criminal justice act) will not be sufficient to eliminate it. this paper has provided some information about the causes of crime and about some of the things that might reduce it. even though this information is quite accessible, crime prevention programs are rarely based upon evidence that they will have an impact on delinquency and crime. those responsible for criminal justice policy are reluctant to heed the lessons that we have learned over the years about crime prevention and that must be applied if we want to be successful: lesson 1. puny interventions will not work. reducing crime is not easy and it is naïve to believe that underfunded and understaffed prevention programs will have any impact. evaluation of the multi-site u.s. weed and seed program found that the most successful programs were those that targeted their resources on a limited number of people in a small part of the community (dunworth & mills, 1999). a british study looked at 21 burglary prevention programs and found that the more intense the intervention, the more likely it was to have succeeded (bowers, johnson, & hirschfield, 2004). corollary 1. social development programs should deal with more than one part of the young person’s environment. the most successful education programs had a component that involved the child’s family. corollary 2. since money is always limited, the best strategy will involve major interventions in small, carefully targeted areas. interventions are more likely to be successful if they are targeted directly at children and parents rather than at changing community institutions. thus programs that foster community empowerment or other process goals will not necessarily have any impact on children in that community (beauvais & jenson, 2003). lesson 2. short-term programs won’t make a lasting difference. projects that have had short-term funding usually have short-term futures. in his study of community crime prevention programs in vancouver, schneider (2004) found that much of the time of program coordinators was spent on fundraising rather than on developing and implementing programs. one of his respondents reported that, “about 75% of my time is spent on fundraising, not on crime prevention” (p. 167). there is no evidence suggesting that underfunded, short-term programs will be successful in reducing crime. lesson 3. programs should not be implemented unless there is a reasonable body of evidence suggesting that they are likely to be effective. this should not preclude innovative programs as long as there is a rationale as to why they should be successful. however, these innovative programs should be evaluated. lesson 4. we should not be doctrinaire about what kinds of programs to adopt. those 70 wishing to prevent crime must look at all types of programs. there are several reasons why a wide range of options should be considered: 1. evaluations have shown that a wide variety of programs have been successful in preventing crime. to give just one example, the situational tactic of caller id is a much more effective way of quickly reducing the problem of obscene phone calls than any type of social development program. 2. communities that have high crime rates have a broad range of needs. any single strategy is quite likely to be swamped by the other things that are taking place in the community. 3. different types of strategies operate over different time frames. while social development programs are extremely important, they can take years to have an impact on crime rates. people who are afraid to go outside after dark are not going to be satisfied with a prenatal program that might make them safer in 14 years. on the other hand, situational strategies will not be nearly as effective if nothing is done to reduce the number of motivated offenders. thus communities should try to use a combination of strategies that have both short-term and long-term outcomes. an example of this kind of programming is the u.s. weed and seed program that combines social development programs with intensive, targeted work by the community and the police to deal with immediate problems. what should communities do if they wish to make a serious effort to reduce crime? first, they must diagnose their community’s problems and try to fix them with solutions that have been demonstrated to be effective. how would we view the competence of a doctor who treated us without finding out the nature of our problem? would it be appropriate for a doctor to prescribe a particular treatment without any diagnosis because “everybody else was doing it, or because the government would fund it, or because the pharmaceutical representatives said it was good”? second, we must take a comprehensive approach to crime prevention. this means that if a community is trying to work with young people, they must address as many facets of their lives as possible. the most successful early intervention programs, such as the perry preschool project, deal with the children’s families as well as with an enriched school program because the family plays such a critical role in reinforcing the school’s lessons. the comprehensive approach also means using as many different types of programs as possible. auto theft is best addressed by a combination of situational techniques such as mandatory immobilizers, social development programs targeted at youth, efforts by police to shut down chop shops, and inspection by customs to prevent the export of stolen vehicles (linden & chaturvedi, 2005). finally, most crime prevention efforts are under-resourced and many are funded for short periods of time rather than simply being a part of the way in which communities conduct their affairs. these “puny” interventions are a waste of time and money and have virtually no chance of success. if reducing crime were a simple task, canada would have become 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(1979). preventing delinquency: the social development approach. seattle: center for law and justice, university of washington. weisel, d. l., & harrell, a. (1996, august). crime prevention through neighborhood revitalization: does practice reflect theory? national institute of justice journal, 231, 1823. west, s. l., & o’neal, k. (2004). project dare outcome effectiveness revisited. american journal of public health, 94(6), 1027-1029. wilson, h. (1982). delinquency and public housing: initiatives for future research. in m. hough & p. mayhew (eds.), crime and public housing: proceedings of a workshop held in september, 1980 (research and planning unit paper 6). london: home office. 77 endnotes 1 other reasons include such things as failure to target programs properly, failure to implement programs, and failure to evaluate programs. 2 a notable example is the dare (drug abuse resistance education) program which will be discussed later in this paper. research on dare showed that the program had no impact on adolescent drug use, but this research was attacked by the program’s proponents and tens of millions of dollars continued to be spent on the program each year. 3 although clarke (1995) has suggested a number of situational prevention programs targeted at violent crimes. these include preventing the congregation of people in small areas at pub closing time; controlling items such as guns and knives and substances such as alcohol that facilitate crime; using caller id to reduce obscene phone calls; and providing personal alarms to domestic violence victims. 4 some researchers disagree with kelling and sousa (e.g., rosenfield, fornango, & baumer, 2005). 5 this is not to say that working with future mothers will not reduce the incidence of fas/fae. here i am referring to children who already suffer from fas/fae which is not reversible. 6 according to farrington and welsh (2003), “at the age of 15, children of the higher risk mothers who received the program incurred fewer arrests than their control counterparts (20 as opposed to 45 per 100 children)” (p. 136). 7 while this study was successful, bernazzani, côté, & tremblay (2001) reviewed several other studies in this area that were less successful. their conclusion is that more research is required before we can conclude that parent training programs will reduce delinquency. 8 for example, latimer (2001) has shown that while family intervention treatment did help to reduce the recidivism of young offenders, the effect was inversely related to the power of the evaluation. that is, the more rigorous the research design, the less likely programs were to show positive effects. 9 five daycare/preschool programs met the criteria for inclusion in the farrington and welsh meta-analysis. four of these programs reported successful interventions (farrington & welsh, 2003). 10 an earlier evaluation of the perry preschool project was the source of the often-made claim that “research shows every dollar spent on crime prevention will save seven dollars”. this claim should be limited to this particular program because many crime prevention programs do not save any money and others may be more or less costeffective than the perry preschool project. 11 the evaluators suggest this may have been the result of under-reporting of drug and alcohol use by controls. an evidence-based approach to community safety rick linden evidence-based crime prevention: what do we know? programs for older children microsoft word 06 queer_potentialities.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs123-4202120341 toward queer potentialities in child and youth care bobbi ali zaman and ben anderson-nathe abstract: arguably, from the invention of adolescence at the beginning of the 20th century, developmental theory has served as the foundation of disciplinary study and professional practice with children and youth across the global west. despite their founders’ assertions that development is culturally constructed, in educational and youth work practice contexts stage-based trajectories of normative human growth are largely erroneously accepted as ahistorical, apolitical, naturally occurring, and universally applicable. this paper presents critiques of developmentalism from historical, reconceptualist, and queer perspectives, calling into question the underlying principles of normalcy and abnormality that run through the developmental project. we pay particular attention to the potential of queer theory as an analytic to deconstruct developmentalism in the context of child and youth care, opening new possibilities for critical engagement with children and youth outside the context of development. keywords: child and youth care, early childhood education, queer theory, developmental theory, developmentalism bobbi ali zaman med (corresponding author) is a phd candidate in the school of social work, portland state university, 1800 sw 6th ave., portland, or 97201. email: zaman@pdx.edu ben anderson-nathe phd is professor in the department of child, youth and family studies, portland state university, 1800 sw 6th ave., portland, or 97201. email: banders@pdx.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 105  developmental theory is ubiquitous across academic disciplines and practice fields concerned with children and youth. but its underlying principles of normalcy, abnormality, and linear progression from immaturity to maturity are not often troubled. queering developmentalism offers an opportunity to expose and destabilize these principles, opening new possibilities for engagement with young people. but how does one “queer” developmentalism? or how would one go about queering the developmental assumptions that lie within a psychological framework? in considering how queer has been used theoretically to question the stability of any structured categories or to trouble a subject by making it “strange”(somberville, 2014) , what would it mean to queer the structure of developmental psychology today? developmental theories have been troubled by many critical scholars in child and youth care (cyc; pacini-ketchabaw, 2012; pence & white, 2012). queer and trans studies have also looked at children and youth in relation to their sociopolitical subjectivity alongside developmentalist narratives (gill-peterson, 2018; meadow, 2018; owen, 2020; stockton, 2009). yet queer and trans studies have rarely connected with, or made impacts on, professional practice, perspectives, and pedagogies in cyc. therefore, this article seeks to expand on current postmodernist inquiries by considering a queer perspective as the foundation for critical interrogations of developmental theory in cyc. we suggest that queer potentialities do exist in interdisciplinary queer and trans scholarship and can link with the critical engagements of cyc to interrogate the dominant developmentalist narratives and frameworks within that field. in doing this we aim to connect cyc with queer and trans conceptualizations of children and youth through prior resistance movements and through critiques of developmentalism in early childhood education (ece), childhood studies, youth studies, and education. in this paper we follow a path towards what queer scholar josé esteban muñoz (2009) has conceptualized as queer idealities — the potential of a queer future beyond the present. we do so by first outlining a brief history of developmentalism and common developmental themes and practices within cyc and ece and focus on its direct relation to conceptualizing children and youth as socially constructed subjects. we specifically look to the national association for the education of young children’s (naeyc) developmentally appropriate practice (dap) as a contemporary example of developmentalism in early childhood practice that is used across various programs globally. following our examination of dap, we explore both the reconceptualizing early childhood education (rece) and post-developmentalist movements as counternarratives for developmentalist theories and practice frameworks in ece. we then pivot to an introduction of queer and transgender studies and their scholarly engagements with the figure of the child, childhood, and developmentalism and hope to spark critical curiosities about these approaches within the field of cyc. finally, we conclude with a discussion of how these prior resistance movements in ece and queer and transgender scholarship allow for a conversation about queer potentialities in cyc. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 106  for lanser (2018), “queering” entails the disruption of an entity by rejecting its categories, binaries, and norms. our intention in this article is to encourage an active engagement with queering in cyc as a tool for critically examining the field and its understanding of sexualities, identities, difference, and development. we believe that queer theory, as an analytic approach, has a place in cyc in relation to developmentalist frameworks that are commonplace and taken for granted in the field. in order to explore a potential queer future in cyc, we first need to understand the history of developmentalism, its modern frameworks for practice, and the contemporary resistance movements that seek to disrupt developmentalist hegemony within the field of ece and in research. the developmental project since its antecedents emerged in the late 18th century, developmental theory has become ubiquitous in the global north and west, and occupies a position of nearly unquestioned hegemony in psychology, the social sciences, the human services professions, and education. the central notion of development — that humans are born into a nascent state (full of potential but not yet fully themselves) and develop over time through a series of predictable and orderly stages into the realized potential of accomplished adulthood — is accepted a priori across most sectors of society (epstein, 2007; owen, 2020). colloquial applications of developmentalism also position the notion of development itself (stage-based change from an incomplete to a more complete state) as largely natural and universal, and the successful navigation of the challenges associated with its stages (whether biological, psychological, emotional, moral, or educational) as essential to human well-being (lesko, 1996, 2001; owen, 2020). while developmentalists from erikson (1950, 1968) forward have grounded their theory in claims that development is culturally and contextually bound (e.g., schachter, 2005), these claims largely speak to how development occurs, accepting as a starting point the notion that it occurs. this is to say that while human growth and change certainly occurs over a lifetime, development is a construction, a way of conceptualizing change that has at its core the idea of movement from a non-developed state to a developed one. in this way, the developmental project presupposes that the young are undeveloped, and that their growth is oriented toward a future developed state that privileges their potential (future adulthood) over their actual (present youth) experience. understandings of the meanings, significance, and navigation of childhood, youth, and adulthood differ across culture and geography, across time, and across social and economic conditions, and have not always been organized within the logic of development (epstein, 2007; finn, 2009; o’loughlin & van zile, 2014; wyn & white, 1997). our understanding of childhood, now conceptualized as a time of idealized imaginative innocence in which children must negotiate fundamentals of attachment and agency, has changed drastically in the west over the past several centuries (epstein, 2007). likewise, as lesko (1996, 2001) demonstrated, adolescence is a social construction, a product of the late-19th century that represents the culmination of a number of (gendered and racialized) social, economic, national, and political factors including but not limited to industrialization, urbanization, and their associated shifts in economic systems; the creation of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 107  compulsory schooling; and more. lesko cautions against accepting any of what she names “confident characterizations” of adolescence without interrogating the cultural, historical, economic, and geographic conditions that gave rise to them. adolescence is not, she argues, universal, nor is it naturally occurring. it is a social product, which globalization and colonization have exported across the world. from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, developmental theory gained traction across a variety of domains and disciplines, including education, the youth criminal justice system (with the creation of the juvenile court), and, of course, psychology itself. as indicated by the requirements for child and adolescent development coursework in most education and youth service curricula, much of the theory base in ece and in cyc, including the fundamental construction of youth as “adolescent”, rests on developmental precepts. this adherence to a developmentalist framework is also reflected in the hiring requirements in the field where, for example, a quick internet search of cyc job postings in vancouver, british columbia,1 reveals positions calling for coursework “relevant to child development” or “knowledge and understanding of child development principles and techniques” . similarly, position titles for youth work employment in the united states often include “adolescent” as a main descriptor of their focus population. in practice, this reliance on developmentalism shows up in the use of dap in ece, and in the contemporary discourse on the “adolescent brain” in youth services. discourse on the adolescent brain that completely accepts developmental constructs of adolescence effectively renders these constructs as biodeterministic: such discourse asserts that the origins of developmental constructs rest in the undeveloped brains of young people (males, 2009; sercombe, 2010). put differently, constructing the brain as “adolescent” provides a preexisting interpretative frame for findings that the brain changes over time. for example, developmentalist assumptions about young people may lead to findings about the brain’s plasticity being interpreted as explaining adolescent indecision or impulsivity, and not in terms of creativity or adaptability (males, 2009). these associations between the young adult brain and adolescent behavior depend upon an accepted interpretation of adolescents as inherently impulsive and lacking in cognitive maturity; absent this interpretative framework of adolescence, impulsivity could be interpreted as curiosity and cognitive maturity could be viewed as signaling intellectual stagnation. this is not to suggest that brain research teaches nothing, but rather that how we interpret findings means as much as or more than the findings themselves (sercombe, 2010). nevertheless, the discourse of neuroimaging (brain imaging) which provides evidence of physiological differences in the human brain at different ages is now so thoroughly orthodox as to be introduced as evidence in the u.s. supreme court (e.g., roper v. simmons, 2005; terrell v. state of ohio, 2018). we are interested in queering developmentalism and challenging its ubiquity in our field by considering who, and how, children and youth are in the immediate moment, rather than staging 1https://ca.indeed.com/jobs?q=child+youth+care&l=vancouver%2c+bc international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 108  them along a trajectory towards a predicted future outcome. we suggest that new possibilities for cyc could be opened by critically examining developmentalism and examining cases of children and contexts that do not conform to the tidy benchmarks offered up by ages and stages orientations. this project not only opens space to queer “how” development occurs, but also for queering the notion that young people’s growth and change must by definition constitute “development” in the first place. early childhood education and developmentally appropriate practice in considering stage-based developmentalism’s hegemony, we can look to ece and its historical relationship with developmental psychology, specifically the work of swiss psychologist jean piaget (mooney, 2005). piaget has not only influenced how the child is understood to develop cognitively, but how practice-based approaches in teaching and education should be appropriately constructed. in ece, in other words, determinations of what is good or bad, and appropriate or inappropriate, in curriculum, social-emotional education and intervention, and even center design, are made according to assessments of children’s locations along a fixed developmental trajectory. jean piaget and dap one cannot complete an ece, cyc, or social work college or university training program in north america without exploring theories that derive from piaget’s cognitive developmental concepts (council on social work education, 2015; mattingly, 2010; national association for the education of young children, 2020). piaget still plays a monumental role in how teachers are trained and evaluated in ece (burman, 2016), bringing to ece a focus on cognitive developmental theory consisting of specific stages following a predictive trajectory through which children move, and articulating how cognition develops towards appropriate cognitive “functionality” (piaget, 1952). for piaget, a stage is a period in which the child’s thinking and behavior, in a variety of situations, tend to reflect a particular type of underlying mental structure (miller, 2016; piaget, 1952). these stages illustrate a linear progression of adaptation through cognitive development that is believed to be universal, and that follows a sequence in which each stage is derived from the previous stage and is a part of a larger whole (miller, 2016). piaget’s background in zoology, biology, and epistemology (piaget, 1952; singer & revenson, 1996) is reflected in his application of biological principles of adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium to human cognition and development as analogies to parallel how human intelligence works (miller, 2016; piaget, 1952; singer & revenson, 1996). in short, common assumptions made in piaget’s work promote a biological understanding of the “natural” stages of human development, thus emphasizing adults as mature, rational, and competent while children are viewed as “human-becomings”, incomplete or in progress (tisdall & punch, 2012). an example of piaget’s influence on practice and early childhood knowledge can be seen in the development of the naeyc’s renowned dap framework. sue bredekamp, the past director of accreditation and professional development of naeyc, established the grounding and central principles of dap as the primary author of the first (bredekamp, 1987) and second (bredekamp international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 109  & copple, 1997) editions of the official publications. child psychologist and dap advocate david elkind (2015) outlined the history of dap by highlighting the “giants” who inspired its foundational principles. piaget is noted as being one of the “most well-known and influential of the giants” (p. 159). by 2009, dap had become ubiquitous in ece, grounded as it is in piaget’s ideas of child development (copple & bredekamp, 2009; national association for the education of young children, 2009). while several other theorists — also “giants” — such as montessori, freud, erikson, dewy, and vygotsky (elkind, 2015) have influenced and been foundational to dap over time, piagetian theory is the most pervasive theoretical framework for dap’s primary principles and applications (sanders & farago, 2018). although naeyc’s (2020) most recent dap position statement no longer directly references piaget’s work, his ideas remain implicitly embedded in dap and across the peer-reviewed articles, books, blog posts, and media promoted through naeyc (bohart & procopio, 2017; devries & sales, 2010; koralek et al., 2015; schaefer, 2016). early critiques of dap challenged the reliance on developmentalist frameworks for researching, representing, and engaging children’s lives across various fields (burman, 2016; flavell, 1992; prout, 2005). critical psychologists and sociologists called for continual interdisciplinary engagements of childhood and looked to postmodern philosophies and their deconstructive tendencies (lyotard, 1984) to question what critical and feminist psychologist valerie walkerdine called “the scientific story of children’s development” (1993, p. 452). walkerdine elaborated on this critical engagement of developmental psychology: what is important here is the kind of story which developmental psychology claims to be: a grand, totalizing story … but this is no mere debate about true scientific stories versus false pseudo-scientific or ideological ones. rather, it is about the place of developmental psychology stories not in telling a biased or distorted story, and so obscuring a true and proper story about children, but in actually producing, fashioning “the child” and “development”. (p. 452) in other words, this postmodern perspective reorients the question from asking which frameworks should be employed to understand the child, to instead asking how existing developmental frameworks were constructed in relation to their social, political, and historical context. critical early childhood educators have for some time now engaged with postmodern philosophy as a way to “problematize the beliefs and practices that have guided the field of ece to uncover hidden histories, biases, and illusions [that] risk supporting a restrictive and narrow perspective” (cannella, 1997, p. 2). a concern that is shared by early childhood researchers and educators is this field’s overwhelming prioritization of the psychological sciences and a lack of interest in alternative perspectives (jipson, 2001). in response to the absence of ways for early educators to critically discuss their field through journals, books, and conferences, a movement began to “reconceptualize” ece in ways that allow for an interdisciplinary questioning of the primary principles and the truth claims that dominated their fields (bloch, 2013; reconceptualizing early childhood education, n.d.). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 110  reconceptualist and postdevelopmentalist critical histories in ece in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a series of conferences and special journal publications, organized by critical scholars and educators, began to question developmentalism and the absence of diversity in ece practices (pacini-ketchabaw & pence, 2005; swadener & kessler, 1991). often seen as constituting a resistance movement in ece, critical scholars began to trouble the unquestioned modernist assumptions and privileged euro-american knowledge that rooted dap. as a way to create space for alternative and othered voices within ece, these scholars called on us to reconceptualize ece as a way to create a community of resistance that focuses on the sociopolitical impacts of developmental frameworks in their fields. this reconceptualization was reflected in their engagements with critical and feminist theory (kessler, 1991) and with postmodern perspectives (lather, 1991), which they used to critique the dominance of dap. key themes of the reconceptualist movement jipson (1991) outlined the reconceptualist movement’s historical context during a wave of mass dap standardization protocols in ece programming and research. early reconceptualists, inspired by such scholars as jacques derrida, michel foucault, and jean-françois lyotard, addressed their concerns with dap and laid a theoretical grounding for their critique that focused on equity, social justice, and resistance. as jipson noted some 30 years ago in referring to the 1980s: the past decade of “reconceptualizing [ece]” has involved an intensive, scholarly rethinking of childhood education, with multicultural, critical, feminist, [post]colonial, and postmodern early childhood researchers calling to question dominant ideologies, knowledge, and educational practices. this recent work [in ece] has opened up dialogue in the field by focusing on such issues as power relations within the adult/child dichotomy, the manifestation of social fears and obsession about curriculum content, and the control of women and children through the construction of educational standards. (pp. 3–4) foundational early childhood reconceptualist gaile sloan cannella and colleagues (2007) highlighted the movement’s postmodernist grounding, which sought to challenge the domination “of enlightenment, modernist and western interpretations of the world that assume the existence of universal truths or natural laws as applicable and generalizable to all human beings” (p. 693). in contrast to the objective and stable universal “truths” claimed by positivist research and structuralist paradigms within ece, the reconceptualists adopted a social constructionist understanding of the human world that troubled privileged knowledge, such as scientific certainty, or what michel foucault named “regimes of the truth” (1975). by deconstructing developmental regimes of truth, and taken-for-granted certainties in their fields, reconceptualists reframed children in research as social constructions and suggested that their identities reflect the social, historical, and political condition in which they exist (burman, 2016; cannella, 1997). at the same time, it should be noted that in doing this reconceptualists are not dismissive of science, they are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 111  instead trying to acknowledge the complexity and multiplicity that is our reality and formulates our understanding and ways of making sense of the world beyond a universalized truth contrived from an enlightenment/modernist perspective (cannella, 1997; dahlberg et al., 2007; janzen, 2008). the calls to reconceptualize ece not only addressed the domination of developmental psychology in the global north, but also its ethnocentric implications regarding certainty of knowledge and truth, which constitute what is an appropriate teaching practice for young people around the world. the reconceptualist movement began to deconstruct the euro-american historical and cultural traditions that have been continually reflected and imposed in early childhood developmentalist frameworks. these interrogations of developmentalism revealed a privileging of the “euro-american middle-class … masculine ways of interpreting and being in the world” (cannella et al., 2007, p. 694) that had reoriented already existing early childhood knowledge and practice towards euro-american values and developmentalist logics (cannella & viruru, 2004). w a developmental narrative that the reconceptualists began to trouble in their field was the “globalization of childhood” (boyden, 1997) and the concept of the idealized child as understood through developmentalism, who is the benchmark against which all global children are compared. this universalization results in privileging u.s. and global north models of child care and educational practices that often conflict with and devalue traditional and local cultural understandings of care and learning. studies have noted this conflict and described the oppositional stances taken by affected communities to the globalization of the child, which has tended to disregard cultural values in the global south and favor developmentalist frameworks that have been imposed onto children and families (henward et al., 2018; meyer, 2017). the reconceptualists are foundational in revealing the domination of global north conceptualizations of the child and the taken-for-granted assumptions within developmentalist practice models (e.g., bloch, 1992; swadener & kessler, 1991). in employing social justice and equity frameworks, they have sought to understand and challenge the impact of the sociopolitical context that has resulted in the universalization of a singular contemporary iteration of developmentalism. it is from their scholarship that those who followed and expanded on the reconceptualist movement began identifying their own work as “postdevelopmentalist”: scholarship that sought to identify itself beyond the confines of linear developmental frameworks by using feminist poststructuralist and queer theoretical conceptualizations of gender and sexuality in ece. postdevelopmentalism and feminist poststructuralism postdevelopmentalism emerged as a way of recognizing the postmodern shifts occurring within the field of ece while “emphasizing ethical issues, cultural contexts, and the struggle for equity in the provision of learning experiences” (edwards et al., 2009, p. 55). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 112  postdevelopmentalsim also denotes a theoretical understanding of children’s learning and development that is derived from the vygotskian-inspired cultural–historical theory (rogoff, 2003) along with critical, poststructural, and postmodern thinking (edwards et al., 2009). these “alternative theoretical frameworks” for teaching and understanding children focus on the childin-context, often politically, rather than focusing on the child through developmental norms and on planning for individual developmental needs (wood, 2009). postdevelopmentalism distinctly prioritizes feminist and queer theorizing, as exemplified by blaise’s (2005a, 2005b, 2009, 2010) critiques. blaise (2005b) followed the reconceptualists’ path by introducing new theoretical frameworks to inform research and teaching in ece. as a postdevelopmentalist, blaise’s use of feminist poststructuralism and queer theory presents alternative frameworks that explore identities, diversity, and learning of children and youth while centering equity and social justice (blaise, 2005b, p. 3). in blaise’s (2005b) book playing it straight, she used a feminist poststructural approach — one that engages both poststructuralism and feminism in understanding gender inequity (weedon, 1997) and queer theory — in ece research to help us focus on “how young children make sense of the politics of femininities and masculinities, and … the complex ways they are doing gender in their everyday lives” (2005b, p. 4). blaise and affrica taylor (2012) discussed their application of queer theory as a way to investigate “young children’s gender construction” in order to become “aware of how the children behave in agreement with dominant gender discourses, negotiate the power relations of these discourses, and at the same time behave in accordance with the overarching discourse of heterosexuality” (p. 91). in relation to cyc, a postdevelopmentalist perspective in ece, or a feminist poststructuralist one, could use queer theory in similar ways to go beyond developmentalist narratives in reconceptualizing the field. through feminist poststructuralist and queer theoretical frameworks, blaise (2005b) not only analyzed gender construction in the classroom but also the reliance on both biological (“they’re just born that way”) and socialization-based (“they’re just doing what they see”) theories of gender development (pp. 11–14). as noted by blaise, both of these approaches are considered “simple explanations”, or “essentializing theories”, of children’s gender development, which have the failing that they ignore child autonomy and children’s ability to “distinguish for themselves ways in which the social world is organized and how they take an active part in the construction of gender” (p. 14). in this way, blaise challenged traditional western understandings of biological and socialized sex development —sex and gender — and invited resistance to these “simple” understandings in favor of more political and social contextual understandings. blaise (2005b) suggested that children negotiate gender, or “play it straight” (p. 27), through their interactions with adults and peers in an attempt to meet gender expectations. her works suggest that sex and gender are political, dynamic, and socially constructed, in contrast to gender development and developmentalist notions that often isolate children from their social, cultural, and political context, which may be seen as an “extra”, or not integral to “good” early years practice (browne, 2004, p. 17). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 113  a lot has changed in ece in relation to gender equity since the publication of blaise’s (2005a, 2005b, 2009) work on gender construction in the classroom. for example, guides and models for supporting gender diversity in ece have been researched and considered by scholars and educators in the past decade; nevertheless, early childhood teacher education, and guidance for early educators and practitioners, is still limited in its understanding of gender in early childhood (chapman, 2021) in that gender is often couched within a broad narrative of recognition as a way of addressing contemporary shifts in gender expression and gender-transgressive visibility in early childhood environments. for example, the naeyc’s (2020) most recent dap position statement suggested that “the historical and current inequitable distribution of societal power and privilege on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, language, disability, and other social identities results in limited opportunities and harms children” (p. 4) and needs to be “recognized” and “understood”. a narrative that encourages recognizing and understanding inequalities is a step forward, but still incomplete when it comes to making a practical shift in dap. what is still needed is a queering of developmentalist models that questions the political and gendered assumptions within these frameworks while engaging with contemporary gender and sexuality scholarship in order to develop critical conceptualizations that allow for queer(er) engagements in ece and cyc and a more gender-inclusive future. postdevelopmentalists have contributed to making such a change by seeking to go beyond developmentalism through making room for other perspectives, such as feminist and queer theoretical strategies that promote gender equity. in doing so, they have helped to change the landscape of ece practice today. blaise’s (2005a, 2005b, 2009, 2010, 2014) work on children, gender, and society is part of a larger conversation about future possibilities in queering developmentalism. the ways that postdevelopmentalist’s have deployed queer theory in ece by questioning developmental narratives leaves room for growth and queer(er) potentialities for contemporary applications in cyc. for example, blaise (2014) noted that, “while postdevelopmental research has made significant contributions to challenging the assumptions of developmental approaches to gender, it still often leaves the privileged western lens in place” (p. 125). in queering developmentalism in cyc, a postdevelopmentalist future requires a decentering of the western lens that has often dominated the field. while the reconceptualists and postdevelopmentalists focused on reconceiving ece, their philosophies and perspectives are a part of a critical past that can inspire a queer(er) future for interrogating cyc’s reliance on developmentalist frameworks. in acknowledging that the postdevelopmentalist scholarship shared here is in response to past conversations in ece, it should also be noted that these scholars’ use of queer theory has had a major impact in ece and can potentially have an impact on cyc in taking the field forward towards critical engagements with queer theory and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 114  queer studies, transgender studies, and child and youth developmentalism many queer scholars are not unfamiliar with children, youth, and development (edelman, 2004; gill-peterson, 2018; probyn, 1995; sedgwick, 1991; stockton, 2009), yet queer scholarship within cyc is limited. queer studies — the examination of issues related to identity, sexuality, and lgbtq+ people and cultures — has its home in the humanities but has expanded into other disciplines. within queer studies, queer theory has developed as an analytical viewpoint that uses poststructuralist philosophy and analysis to question the socially constructed categories of sexual identity (such as gay, lesbian, straight, heterosexual, normal, abnormal; branch, 2003; burgett & hendler, 2020). inspired by social movements that addressed the aids crisis in the late 20th century, specifically act up2, queer theory sought to bring together deconstructive practices and grass roots organizing (ghaziani & brim, 2019). queer theory, often used intersectionally, quickly developed as a critical lens to question not only sexual identities, but all categories that are seen as “stable, transhistorical, or authentic”, including racialized categories and the categories of child and adult, which are intrinsically connected with sexuality (somberville, 2014, p. 206). owen (2010) developed this intersection by stating that “queer theory understands the categories of gender and sexuality not as stable, but as shifting, malleable, contextual — and i see that theorized complexity as belonging to the child” (p. 255). while some queer theorists situate the child at the center of their work, their analyses are often distant from the practical implications of queer theory in the everyday lives of children and youth, and, as noted above, queer theory has challenged dap within ece (blaise, 2014; janmohamed, 2010, 2011; robinson, 2005). as well, in critical youth studies, owen (2020) has queered adolescence in pursuit of new possible conceptualizations of young people. nevertheless, this scholarship remains limited in impact and often remains exclusively within the academy. meeting at the intersections of queer and the child queer scholars disrupt the existing categories of gender and sexuality, often destabilizing various binary assumptions and social constructions within dominant discourses. in its destabilizing aim, queer theory deconstructs the gendered and sexual constructions of the child and childhood through queer readings of children’s literature and media. for example, queer scholars have looked to jacqueline rose’s (1992) feminist interrogations of children’s literature and her understanding of how the figure of the child and childhood are operated and constituted through fantasy and fiction. rose (1992) argued that the conceptualization of the child and childhood emerges through adult desires. most importantly, what rose emphasized in her work is how certain taken-forgranted assumptions about childhood, such as innocence, are considered not a given “property of childhood but … a portion of adult desire” (rose, 1992, p. xii). through adult desire, “children’s fiction sets up a world in which the adult comes first (author, maker, giver) and the child comes 2see https://actupny.com/contact/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 115  after (reader, product, receiver)” (rose, 1992, pp. 1–2). this relationship between the adult and the child benefits the adult as they are granted the power to build the “image of the child inside the book … in order to secure the child who is outside the book” (rose, 1992, p. 2). through this relationship, rose’s work suggests that the figure of the child “works to conceal cultural anxieties around sex and identity” (rudd & pavlik, 2010). in a queer scholarly engagement with rose’s work, gabrielle owen (2010) stated that, “queer theory is concerned with the ways of being and relating that are possible when the normative sequence of heterosexual romance, marriage, and reproduction renders those who do not follow the sequence invisible, irrelevant, or impossible” (p. 259). in analyzing those who “do not follow” normative sequences of development, owen looks to the figure of the child and suggests that children are tasked with the important role of maintaining that sequence along with the separation from the adult, or all “that which is before heterosexuality” (owen, 2010, p. 259). this separation situates childhood as a maintained stage in which the child is assumed to be asexual, naive, and innocent. in looking at socially constituted conceptualizations of child and adult development, queer theorists have become interested in examining the child who does not follow such normative developmental sequences and frameworks, which have often rendered queer children invisible. by constituting both normalized and atypical childhoods through stories and fantasies in children’s literature, queer scholars often look to the figure of the child, instead of the child as such, in considering how children become. this framing of analysis allows queer scholars to consider the language and the contextual elements that are used to define the “normal child” against those who deviate from such conceptions. through critically examining rose’s scholarship, and that of others who have analyzed the cultural understanding of the child within literature (e.g., kincheloe, 1992), queer theorists consider who constructs the literary, scholarly, and social narratives that dictate the cultural understanding of the child and childhood and all who stray from such conceptual boundaries. queer theorist kathryn bond stockton (2009) also described the child as socially constructed but drew from various media sources, not necessarily designed for or aimed at children, to analyze how children are constructed alongside and against queerness. in bringing the child and queer together, stockton argued that all children are “strange”, or queer, and that all children are framed as fundamentally in need of adult interventions steering them towards an appropriate linear pathway of growing up, “towards full stature, marriage, work, reproduction and the loss of childishness” (p. 4). according to stockton, “growing up” can be seen as the normative orientation of developmentalist trajectories that situate all children as asexual, then youth as hyper(hetero)sexual, and finally adults as maturely (hetero)sexual. stockton troubled linear narratives of growth by delving into children’s “sideways growth” (p. 11); that is, their deviation from normative and developmentally appropriate behaviors and desires towards various versions of the “queer child”. stockton went on to consider adult control of such strangeness through “children’s legally enforced delays” (p. 4), which place the queer child on a disciplinary path of regulations and restraints that intend to thwart inappropriate, alternative, sideways growth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 116  through stockton’s “queer child”, childhood and youth are understood as states of straight becoming where youth are both “not-yet-straight” and “not allowed to be sexual” (p. 7) until “we say it’s time” (p. 6). in essence, stockton suggested that developmentalist frameworks view all children as queer, strange, and threatening, and as such children are regulated and moved through imaginary chambers of development constructed as childhood until they are recognizable as adult. the queer child, then, is one “who…can’t ‘grow up’ [and instead] grows to the side of cultural ideals”, resisting “stable” identity formation and developmental stages that construct childhood, youth, and adulthood (p. 13). similarly, regales (2008), in writing about experiences of young trans zine writers, queered notions that a fixed or stable identity is a hallmark of successful navigation of the developmental tasks associated with adolescence and suggested that many young people’s well-being rests precisely on embracing identity as fundamentally unstable, partial, and situated, or as the title of her paper suggests, “fluid as fuck”. as regales showed, for these writers, imposing the developmental trajectory of adolescence restricts young people and serves as a tool of normalization rather than a description of human growth and change. donald and krahn (2014) also queered developmental understandings of young people’s growth as linear and ordained along a normalized trajectory. taking stockton’s (2009) notion of “growing sideways” as a starting point, donald and krahn conceptualize growth and change in rhizomatic terms, in which individual growth occurs alongside, in complex relationships with, and often sideways to the growth of others. in this context, children may not grow up as much as they grow with their environments. this queered critique of developmentalism challenges the central precept of the notion of adolescence: that the developmental task of adolescence involves differentiation. it asks us to consider youth whose traditions and cultures foster cohesion and rhizomatic growth over individuation. owen (2020) also emphasized the potentials for young people’s relational futures offered by queering adolescence and adolescent theory “in order to imagine alternate ways of conceptualizing the stages of human life” (p. xv). in their recent scholarship, hannah dyer (2017) directly addressed dap as “destructive to some children’s imaginative and social capacities when not attuned to their possible queer presents and futures” (p. 291). dyer’s use of “queer” in their work “is not only meant to register a child’s potential desire for same-sex relations or lgbtq identity but also gestures toward more expansive ways to account for children’s deviances from normativity” (p. 293). as dyer attempted to “undo the innocent child” (p. 293), they situated the queer child as one who is excluded from the traditional formation of childhood innocence and simplicity, who becomes instead a surplus that “can’t be explained or contained by developmental theory” (dyer, 2020, p. 26). in situating the queer child in this way, dyer showed that developmentalist frameworks are limiting and noted a concern raised by critical scholars in ece that studies of children’s education are “keen on securing knowledge concerning developmental stages and building professional capacities for realigning children’s growths that occur along calculated, horizontal, and heteronormative lines” (p. 292). dyer suggested that queer sexualities in ece settings are erased and ignored by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 117  prioritizing such knowledge. while dyer mentioned the large amount of literature that concerns lgbtq teachers and parents as “its subjects of inquiry” (p. 292), they suggested pushing the use of queerness in ece further as “a methodological approach to child development and education [that] can more generally disrupt teleologically constructed narratives of growth that require a developmental sequence which culminates in normalcy” (p. 292). according to dyer, such an analysis, rooted in queer theorizing, has the potential to step back from calculating “the child’s future before it has the opportunity to explore desire” (p. 292) and allows for a possible scholarly and applied future between “queer” and “childhood” that is beyond developmentalism. in showing that queer and transgender children are often understood as those who deviate from and disrupt developmentalist frameworks because of their failure to fully achieve a fixed and stable self, queer scholars and activists politicize dominant conceptualizations of children, childhood, and youth. as they investigate the social and political conditions in which transgender children and gender transgressive children exist, they decenter and disrupt a white heterosexual politic that has historically dominated cyc and developmentalist orientations. in engaging in critical and interdisciplinary conceptualizations of the transgender child, these scholars offer us a reorientation of our understanding of what constitutes the child within developmentalist frameworks and take us closer to a queerer future in cyc. the transgender child, transgender studies, and developmentalism in the first volume of tsq: transgender studies quarterly, transgender studies is described as a research approach that “revolves around the category ‘transgender’ itself — its history, dissemination, application, uptake, logics, politics, and ongoing definitional and categorical transformations” (stryker & currah, 2014, p. 5). while transgender studies have “taken shape … in the shadow of queer theory” (p. 214) by sharing similar histories, methods, and methodologies, these studies have distinguished themselves as a separate field of study (keegan, 2020a, 2020b; stryker, 2004). transgender studies are not an addendum to queer studies, but instead, are a way to consider a specific understanding of children and youth in relation to a developmentalist framework. they offer us an approach that analyzes the historical contexts and the current social and political contexts surrounding transgender and gender-transgressive children, an approach that helps us to acknowledge children who queer development and who queer childhood and to understand how their lives have been shaped by being marked as trans, queer, intersex, nonnormative, strange, and so on. transgender scholars often look to the history of transgender children and the role of psychiatric interventions in the lives of these children in the 20th and 21st centuries. in assisting us with the relatively new contemporary understanding of the “transgender child” in euroamerican society (gill-peterson, 2018; meadow, 2014), transgender scholars show us that transgender children are outside the developmentalist orientation as it is understood in the medical and psychiatric fields and thus have often been identified as “effeminate boys” and “masculine girls” (sedgwick, 1991). as well, in her book, histories of the transgender child (2018), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 118  transgender historian jules gill-peterson showed us that transgender children are not a new phenomenon and that “multiple trans childhoods” (p. 95) have long existed and played a crucial role in the forced medicalization of sex and gender during the 20th century. developmentalist narratives have been critiqued as models in which transgender children are maneuvered into designated positions without agency or autonomy (meadow, 2014). as claudia castañeda (2014) showed, the mode of control within developmental frameworks emphasizes the child’s process towards becoming and the movement of the child from birth to adulthood is premised on their fixed gender at birth and their successful performance of that gender into maturity. thus, to “become fully gendered” (p. 59), one must follow a normal developmental pathway into mature adulthood; before adulthood, the child is never seen as fully formed, nor its gender as fully “matured”, and is therefore “seen as not fully capable of knowing its own gender” (p. 59). seen through this framework and understanding, children are denied control of their own bodies and deemed to lack an understanding of gender. even if children seek medical methods towards transitioning, castañeda observed that the objective of treatment is to put the child “on hold until it reaches a more fully adult state of reason”, or treat only “to a degree that the process may be reversed” and potentially “put back on course” (p. 60). it is because they see children as being in a state of becoming that modern medical professionals design treatments to guide gender performances that adhere to normative gender constructions. as conceptions of appropriate gender and identity development have become taken for granted, children who deviate from them become targets for social control. the naeyc’s (2020) dap statement does note that educators should be aware of their own and others’ “implicit biases”, “social inequalities”, and potential “microaggressions” in the classroom while focusing on “diversity” and “equity” in relation to gender (p. 12). however, the statement does not expand on how dap addresses trans and queer identities or queer families. while the naeyc’s dap statement suggests that, based on “current knowledge and research in the field of ece, child development, and related disciplines” (p. 86), it is important for educators to “recognize” and “respect” the “unique qualities” of non-normative gender expression or identity within a developmentalist framework, the child continues to be viewed as being in an individualized and apolitical state of gendered becoming. so, while the recent dap position statement does expand on the acknowledgement of systems of power and privilege, the emphasis is still on doing this within a developmentalist framework. the political implications of dap for children and youth have not as yet been examined; thus, dap is still a potential site for queering and for the purposeful inclusion of transgender studies in ece and cyc. by queering dap, we can support moving beyond the apolitical borders of the still-dominant developmentalist framework in these fields and work towards creating an active historical and political understanding of the children and youth that we care for. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 119  implications for queering developmentalism in cyc in a recent issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies, wolfgang vachon (2020) addressed queer futures in cyc by inviting “readers to consider a queer cyc imagination, one that recognizes, perhaps even celebrates, desire, sex, identity, theory, and politics” (p. 64). we understood vachon’s five “initial flirtations” (p. 74) as methods by which one can queer the often apolitical, neoliberal, heteronormative, and racialized developmentalist conceptualizations of children, youth, and care. as we move to understanding our place in the “growing tension between ‘development’ and ‘social justice’ approaches to cyc practice” (p. 76), we recognize that queer engagements within cyc are tasked with demanding critical inquiries within the field to address the social injustices that are connected to formulating children’s and youth’s experiences in terms of developmentalist notions of growth. we question developmentalism and its role in cyc, its contemporary iteration in cyc scholarship, and its practicality for current cyc practitioners (cycps). following in the path of reconceptualists, postdevelopmentalist, and queer and transgender studies scholars, we suggest that queering has the ability to plant the seeds to grow the queer imagination within cyc that can be found in the nascent reluctance to rely on developmentalist frameworks in practice and research. the histories of resistance and critical scholarship introduced in this article show that in cyc it is now impossible to nullify the queer imagination and the political actions, desires, and critiques that have been growing for decades in various youth care and educational fields — critiques that signal a vast horizon before us in which a queer(er) future is possible. thus, in following the continued disordering, deconstruction, and queering of developmentalist frameworks, we see glimpses of other practices and possibilities that are not yet present in cyc but that have been felt, and should be encouraged as a way to expand the field in a vital direction. as noted above, developmentalist frameworks situate the child as becoming. we return to our introductory question: what would it mean to queer the reductionist understanding of a young person as one who is becoming, and an adult as one who has arrived? with regard to queering perceptions of the child, we turn to castañeda (2014): transgender childhood becomes a threat to normative gender development and so to (normal) gender itself; if gender can shift away from the expected normal binary of male and female associated with particular bodily signs, then how can we know the gender of any child-body? (p. 60) we take this to mean that we can queer developmentalist frameworks by questioning how we have come to know the child through developmentalist frameworks. in asking “how can we know?”, we suggest that we submit to “not knowing” and relinquish our perceived knowing of “normal” and of fully understanding gender. for if we cannot know the “child-body”, it would be advantageous to queer and interrogate developmentalist impulses in cyc. recognition of the transgender child, the queer child, and all children who do not fit neatly within the developmental frameworks signals a critical juncture within cyc at which the question international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 120  shifts from one that asks, “which developmental models should we use in understanding the child?”, to one that instead asks, “how have we have come to conceptualize the child in relation to professionalism, care, politics, and society?” looking to past resistance movements, counternarratives, and queering practices, we invite scholars to answer the call to move towards a queer political future in which we make strange our knowledge claims in order to align cyc with contemporary commitments to social justice and equity for children and youth. we also note that these queering conversations are not isolated from, nor in contrast to, the critical and burgeoning anti-racist, post-humanist, and post-colonial scholarship in cyc today (daniel, 2020; james, 2020; murris & borcherds, 2019; saraceno, 2012). instead, a queering of developmentalism joins with such critical work in cyc: it too grows from a history of resistance in ece and cyc that intersects with the political and cultural complexity of working with children and youth in relation to race, gender, sex, and coloniality. it must also be noted that many, but not all, of the authors of critical ece histories and the queer scholars centered here are predominantly white or are from euro-western, global north contexts. queer of color scholars have critiqued queer studies and the domination of white queer theoretical engagements in their field and are pushing scholars and researchers to see how race and western-centrism shapes the categories of sex and gender (ferguson, 2003; mayo, 2017). a queering of developmentalism in cyc through queer of color engagements in conjunction with two-spirit and indigiqueer scholars has the potential to further the work of decentering white domination. the call to queer developmentalism draws on and extends the critical histories of ece and cyc. with this queer reflex, we can contest existing categories, and thereby open new theoretical interrogations that contribute to the continual decentering of euro-western, global north perspectives in cyc scholarship. as vachon (2020) stated, “caring is not neutral” and “caring is a political act” (p. 73). the intersections of systems of care and political systems are not unfamiliar in cyc: berry and colleagues (2018) acknowledged that “caring in the field of child and youth care requires a radical shift in how we as cycps situate ourselves within an increasingly precarious global landscape” (p. 49). in conjunction with current critical scholarship, intersectional queer political engagements can be an important part of a needed radical shift in cyc, especially in questioning dominant narratives in the field and listening for and to the voices that are left on the margins. we also foresee queer of color engagements within cyc, as the queering of developmentalism is not isolated from understanding racialized practices, politics, and research in cyc. while developmentalist frameworks continue to be situated in cyc practice as neutral and apolitical tools, a queer political imaginary within cyc broadens our field and can point the way towards a queer future in which developmentalism is interrogated for its political implications in our current global landscape. queering cyc allows for a possible future in the field that is beyond developmentalism. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2021) 12(3/4): 104–128 121  references berry, a., do nascimento, a., & pacini-ketchabaw, v. 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(1997). rethinking youth. sage publications ltd. doi:10.4135/9781446250297 photo-narrative processes with children and young people international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 611 photo-narrative processes with children and young people marja leena böök and johanna mykkänen abstract: this article focuses on the photo-narrative research process with children and young people. the photo-narrative method invites children and young people to answer research questions by first taking photographs and then talking to the researcher about them. we reflect critically on our own photo-narrative study by asking such questions as: in what ways can the photo-narrative method be seen as a participative method? how were the various power relations between the child and the researcher actualized? what methodological and ethical challenges did we encounter during the research process? the study data were photographs and narratives by eight children and young people (aged 4 to 15 years), who were each interviewed twice. in the first interview, each participant was given a disposable camera and they were asked to take photographs of things and situations, persons, objects, and feelings relating to their everyday lives during one week. the second interview was a narrative interview where each participant could select the photographs he or she wanted to talk about. in this approach, interpretation of the photographs was primarily in the hands of the children and young people, while interpretation of the narratives was the responsibility of the researcher. keywords: children, photo-narrative, ethics marja leena böök, ph.d., university lecturer, department of education, university of jyväskylä. postal address: po box 35, fi-40014 university of jyväskylä. finland. e-mail: marja.leena.book@jyu.fi johanna mykkänen, ph.d., university lecturer, department of education, university of jyväskylä. postal address: po box 35, fi-40014 university of jyväskylä 40014. finland. e-mail: johanna.mykkanen@jyu.fi mailto:marja.leena.book@jyu.fi international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 612 our research attempts to show everyday family life from the viewpoint of children, fathers, and mothers, while also further developing and applying participative methods used in family research (rönkä & korvela, 2009). our aim is to find out what forms of, and perspectives on, daily family life are revealed by photographic means, knowing at the same time that it is impossible to capture its constant flow. pink (2012) reminds us that everyday life is neither static nor mundane; instead, it is replete with practices and “ordinary ways of being”, and also constantly changing. using photo-narratives (crane, 2012; kaplan, lewis, & mumba, 2007; rose, 2012; wang & burris, 1997), we hoped to gain a glimpse into the private life of families that would otherwise be difficult to access. the photo-narrative method gives participants a voice and encourages them to share their views and experiences with the researcher: each family member takes photographs and talks about them with the researcher afterwards. here, we focus on research with children and young people and, in particular, on how we “used” the photo-narrative method with them. we also focus on some issues that, according to catalani and minkler (2010), are under-studied: specifically, what methodological benefits, limits, and ethical questions emerged during the research process. generally, the lives of children and young people have been explored solely through adults’ understandings. recent qualitative research has highlighted the different perspectives on family life that children can provide (e.g., mason & tipper, 2008; zartler & richter, 2012). multiple realities co-exist within families and relationships, and thus there has been a shift towards gathering multiple perspectives (jamieson, simpson, & lewis, 2011). childhood research has also encouraged us to look critically at the existing conceptualizations of childhood and their influence on how we conduct research in this area (christensen & james, 2008; tisdall, davis, & gallagher, 2009). from the standpoint of childhood studies, childhood is seen as a social construction and children as social actors (e.g., alanen, 1988; james & prout, 1997). james and prout (1997) stress that researchers should treat the child’s “voice” as a necessity, a right and a skill, worthy of being listened to and studied in its own right. as james (2007) argues, the recognition and voices of children have become a symbol of the modern welfare state’s commitment to the values of freedom, democracy, and care. it can even be said to have become a new research orthodoxy, although this is not enough to ensure that children’s voices and views are heard. einarsdóttir (2007) states that qualitative research methodology and new methods of data-gathering have also led researchers to the possibility of seeking the perspectives of children and young people. diverse studies have revealed that young children are reliable informants and give valuable and useful information. children are capable and knowledgeable experts on their own lives, and therefore should be heard. however, children and young people are not a homogeneous group and the “voice” of children and young people is not monophonic. hence it is important to identify and listen to a variety of children and young people’s voices (einarsdóttir, 2007; komulainen, 2007; tisdall, 2011). using photo-narratives in family daily life research rönkä and korvela (2009) reviewed many studies on daily family life and noted that the concept of daily life is often taken for granted and is under-studied, especially from the viewpoints of different family members. verbalising daily life is challenging with adults – not to mention children and young people. photography as a task-centred and participative international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 613 research method has helped children and young people to describe abstract things and the researcher to explore their lives (e.g., cook & hess, 2007; jorgenson & sullivan, 2010; kaplan et al., 2007; zartler & richter, 2012; young & barrett, 2001). our research data consisted of photographs and photo-narrative interviews (kaplan et al., 2007) with children and their parents living in the same household. so far, we have informants (n = 20) from six families. here, we focus on the children and young people’s data: eight children were individually interviewed twice. the first interview lasted between 20 and 40 minutes, and the second 15 to 45 minutes. altogether, the children and young people took 104 photographs. the children and young people varied in age from 4 to 15 years. all came from central finland, and all were from families with full-time working mothers and fathers with relatively homogeneous parental socio-economic status. families were recruited through snowball sampling. interviews were mostly conducted in family homes after the school day, when parents were at home (but in another room). the father of the youngest participant, aged 4, stayed in the same room most of the time. in the first interview, the researcher and the child or young person became acquainted with each other: we obtained some background information on each participant (age, family members, and hobbies) and asked some general interview questions (e.g., “tell me about your daily life? what have you been doing today, right from this morning until now?”). during the first interview, each participant was given a disposable camera. the children and young people were asked to take photographs of things and situations, persons, objects, and feelings that related to their everyday life during the course of one week. after the photographed week, the researcher collected the cameras and printed two sets of pictures, one for the researcher and one for the child or young person. after printing, the second interview, conducted as a narrative interview, was held. first, all the photographs the child or young person had taken were spread out on the table. the first question was framed to elicit talk, for example, “what can you tell me about this photograph?”. the purpose was to create a situation where the interpretation of the photographs would come from the child or young person. we also asked each child or young person to pick out the five most important photographs and to talk about them. nearly all the pictures were taken at home and indoors. over half were of people, and most of these were the child’s parents or siblings. only a few were photographs of the children or young people themselves (mykkänen & böök, 2013). this relative absence can be explained as a consequence of the method, which situates children and young people in the role of a photographer (mizen, 2005). nearly one-third of the pictures were of everyday objects, such as the computer, television, or telephone (mykkänen & böök, 2013). our research method can be seen as embodying three levels of interpretation (white, bushin, carpena-mendez, & ni laoire, 2010). on the first, the children and young people decided what to photograph and where. some wanted to start immediately after receiving the camera; others needed parental reminders to take photographs. on the second level of interpretation, the children and young people picked out at least five photographs from among those brought by the researcher, and talked freely about them. this level of interpretation can be seen as co-constructive: the young participants and the researchers went through the chosen photographs together, following the narrative interview method. the photographs stimulated the children and young people to talk (cook & hess, 2007). in the final level of interpretation, the researchers analyzed the whole data (photographs and narrative interviews) and decided what to report and how (white et al., 2010). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 614 photographing as a participative method research methodology using photography has proliferated over the last few years (catalani & minkler, 2010). various ways of using photography as a data-gathering tool have been presented, including the photo-narrative, the participatory photo-interview, and photovoice (crane, 2012; kaplan et al., 2007; rose, 2012; wang & burris, 1994, 1997). in all cases, the participant is invited to answer research questions by taking photographs and explaining them to the researcher. photographs can be seen as an “ice-breaker”, a medium that creates a comfortable space for discussion (collier, 1997). what is now termed photovoice was originally known as “community-based participatory research” (cbpr), and was developed for health promotion purposes: individuals took photographs to document their lived reality. the goals of photovoice were (a) to enable people to record and reflect their community’s strengths and concerns, (b) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important issues through large and small group discussion of photographs, and (c) to reach policy-makers (wang & burris, 1997). plunkett, leipert, and ray (2013) see photovoice as a useful tool for eliciting data that deepens understanding of lived experience, as it creates spaces and opportunities for marginalized voices to be heard. wang and redwood-jones (2001) distinguish three major theoretical notions behind photovoice: the first is the approach to critical education proposed by paolo freire (1970), according to which the visual image is a tool that enables people to think critically about their life environment and community. the second lies in feminist theory, and the observation that women have less power and are heard less often than men. photovoice is one answer to this because it can bring new or seldom-heard voices and ideas into the public domain (wang & redwood-jones, 2001). the third theoretical foundation is supplied by spence (1995), who described “community photography” as a way of showing how ordinary people can use photography as a personal voice. while aware that photovoice is the original term, we prefer to use the term photonarrative to emphasize the agency of the informants (see foster-fishman, nowell, deacon, nievar, & mccann, 2005), who both take the photographs and narrate about them afterwards. here, narrating means “storytelling” about things and experiences related to what has been photographed; it does not mean telling or describing only what can be seen in the picture – narrative has a plot (riessman, 2008). when participants take photographs that are later looked at and discussed in interviews, the data gathering is more in their hands than those of the researcher. photographs chosen by the research participant are utilized as the main prompts in open-ended interviewing (crane, 2012). the researcher is not present during the photography, and thus the balance of power in this research phase shifts more toward the research participant (see also ohmer & owens, 2013), in this case a child or young person. photo-narrative informants can be seen more as “active” than passive research participants (kaplan, 2008). in our research, the photographs directed the interviews. the photographs chosen can be assumed to represent the children and young people’s perspectives, and hence the children and young people are active in reconstructing knowledge (e.g., einrasdóttir, 2007). nanay (2009) asks how a picture can represent a whole narrative, when it shows only one slice of time and not a series of events? it is also obvious that researchers cannot see beyond or know about the moments that follow or precede a photograph. hence we need the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 615 accounts, experiences, and meaning-makings of the photgraphers – their voices – to complete the narrative surrounding the picture. researching the everyday is a joint experience; it is not only research about people, but also research with people, co-produced ways of knowing (pink 2012). fargas-malet, mcsherry, larkin, and robinson (2010) argue that using participants’ photographs may help to build and maintain rapport between interviewee and interviewer, and may capture the interviewee’s attention more easily and for longer. it also enables interviewees to choose what they talk about. their own photographs are probably more likely to reflect what matters to them. in addition, photographs can evoke emotions. one 10-yearold told about a photograph in which her father was installing a new program in her computer: “this picture, where he (father) is sitting here in this beanbag, this is funny, even though there’s a chair next to him”. emotions arise not only from the things, scenes and people photographed, but also during the whole photographing process. we noticed that most of the children and young people were very eager to take, look, and tell about their photographs. after the second interview, the children and young people received prints of their photographs, and were very happy with them. for example, our youngest participant (age 4) was very satisfied with her photographs, which may also have bolstered her self-esteem: researcher: here are all the photos. you can have these to keep. girl: oh, all of them (surprised)? researcher: yes, all of them. girl: i can put them in my card bag, so they stay in good condition (smiling, happy). however, children and young people cannot be treated as a homogeneous group (warming, 2011). they also engage in different ways with the idea of taking photographs. the method may not suit or interest everyone. if a child or young person is disinclined to participate in the research, is neither interested in nor capable of taking photographs or talking about them, the method to be used will have to be reconsidered (see johnson, pfister, & vindrola-padros, 2012). some children and young people may be confident and experienced with cameras and enjoy using one, while others may struggle to find inspiration and take only a few pictures (barker & weller, 2003; fargas-malet et al., 2010). we discovered that in one case the photographs were not taken by the child but by his mother. afterwards, however, the child was eager to view the photographs and wanted to tell about them (mykkänen & böök, 2013). who, then, was really the participant in the photographing process, the mother or her child, or are these photographs to be understood as co-constructed by the mother and her child? every culture and society has its own social norms and codes. these also shape and influence photographic practices. aesthetic principles may even frame photographs taken for research purposes (jorgenson & sullivan, 2010). here, for example, there were relatively few photographs of parents’ bedrooms, or of saunas, a central part of finnish family daily life. gatekeepers, such as parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, et cetera, may also have assisted in the photographing process and imposed limits on its quality and quantity. the photo-narrative opens some doors and closes others; that is to say, it has benefits and limitations. because photographs show images of people and everyday items, people may international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 616 say less about them than they might say otherwise, because there seems to be no real imperative to explain them (mason & davies, 2009). the photo-narrative method also presents challenges for the researcher: how far should the research participant control production of the data or, conversely, how closely should the researcher adhere to the researcher role when an informant is describing a touching or fascinating image? doing research with children by the photo-narrative method constructs both the participation and roles of researcher and informant. zartler and richter (2012) remind us that photo interviews, like other research approaches utilizing participatory elements, do not automatically decrease power differentials, respect children or young people’s agency, or “empower” them (see also gallacher & gallagher, 2008; punch, 2002). for example, we found that occasionally it was hard – or even impossible – to make photo-watching situations “power-neutral”, meaning that power would be shared (equally) between the researcher and the young participant, even though we let the child or young person direct the interview by choosing which photographs to tell about. as researchers we had the “right” (or power) to ask some questions, and the participant was expected to answer. at worst, we felt that the interview was more like a “hearing” in which the young participant answered in a few words and the researcher quickly asked a new question. after the interview, we talked with the child or young person about how he or she had felt about the interview and taking photos. the children and young people’s comments about the interviews were positive; they did not say anything about feeling obliged or manipulated to answer. it is, of course, possible they were less candid about the experience than if their feedback had been anonymous. the photo-narrative method, like many other research methods, has to be implemented carefully and conscientiously (zartler & richter, 2012), and it neither selfevidently nor automatically entails a more equal relationship between researcher and informant, even if photography is an enjoyable event and social ritual for children and young people (sharples, davison, thomas, & rudman, 2003). at best, taking photographs can be an exciting and fun mode of self-expression (punch, 2002). one 10-year-old girl told how she “had fun" with the camera and with her father: her father took a photograph of her photographing him (mykkänen & böök, 2013) both family members participated in the same study and took photographs during the same week, and according our interpretation they also found this task fun. black photographs and things not visible missing or failed photographs can be seen as a critical issue in photography. however, in our experience not only successful but also “failed” photographs and even missing photographs stimulated dicussion about things that were not represented in the finished product. zartler and richter (2012) describe how photographs encourage children to narrate what is present to them; they comment on visible persons and details. in addition, photographs may invite children and young people to talk about topics that are not in the picture and thus invisible to the researcher but which are important for the participant. thus the photographs stimulated the young participants to talk about things that were not represented in the picture. in the following example, our youngest participant, a 4-year-old girl, talks about a photograph portraying what seems to be half of her father’s face, a section of shelving and a curtain. in the beginning of the extract below, the child says that the daddy is going somewhere (which is not visible in the picture). the researcher asks her several times “where’s mommy?”; the child answers the question and this sets her pondering about her own “workplace” and what she usually does there: international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 617 researcher: well… who’s this here? girl: well, it’s daddy’s face and he is going that way. researcher: okay, what’s he going to do? girl: … in the kitchen, he’s cooking researcher: mm. girl: i took this picture researcher: mmm. where’s mommy here? girl: i don’t know researcher: is she at home all the time? girl: well, not all the time researcher: well, where is she? girl: she sometimes goes to work doing her job. researcher: well, that’s how it is every now and then. girl: my workplace is in the day care centre. researcher: yes, what do you do there? girl: i play and make handicrafts and do, as soon as they are ready i bring them home as a decoration. at the end of the narrative interview we asked each child or young person if there anything was missing, if they wanted to talk about things that were not in the photographs, or if there were things that had not been taken into account when the photographs were taken. our purpose in asking these questions was to give the participant an opportunity to add details or mention something that she or he had not noticed about a photograph earlier during the interview. some children and young people commented that photographs of friends or of calm moments with family members (like watching television, or going for a walk with mommy) were missing. this may mean that spontaneous images of an event are more likely to be captured (punch 2002; sharples et al., 2003) and may direct what pictures are taken. for the researcher, asking about “missing photographs” is a tool to acquire richer and more precise narrative data on the informant’s daily life, or hints regarding the possible social and cultural codes that guide the photographing activity. it is also an opportunity to check how the instructions on the photographing task have been understood. one seven-year-old girl seemed to be worried about whether she had followed the instructions “in the right way”, because she hadn’t taken photographs of her grandmother and friends, and sought reassurance from the researcher: “i didn’t know if i could take those photos, if i was allowed to”. here the child may be trying to “read” the researcher’s expectations or seeking knowledge of the conventions of photographic representation (jorgenson & sullivan, 2010): is it a breach of privacy to take photographs of close relationships? although visual methods are useful with children, the question remains: what is a suitable age for a child to use a camera (sharples et al., 2003)? at first, we wondered if a 4year-old would be capable and competent enough to use a disposable camera. our youngest informant produced five successful photographs out of 27. one was so underexposed that we almost deleted it beforehand. luckily we did not. the 4-year-old child saw something in it and started to tell a story about an everyday evening at home. researcher: what’s this (laughing)? girl: it’s all black. researcher: can you even see where this was taken? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 618 girl: well, of course not. but it is from this room, the photo’s a little dark and a little bit … distorted researcher: mmm. girl: it’s a little bit blurred. researcher: maybe there are no lights on at all. girl: mm-m researcher: could it be evening here? girl: in the evening we girls are all the time going here and there … researcher: you girls go there, did you say that? girl: yes. we move around all the time in different places. researcher: you move around in different places girl: back and forth, i just laugh with [name of sister], we go that way, so that we almost fall [laughing while talking]. researcher: well, what happens then? girl: [name of sister] and i just laugh and laugh. our eyes try to go that way, so that i can’t see any more. it was interesting to notice that the children and young people did not want to discard any photograph as a failed one. unlike their parents, who participated in the same study and collected their own data, the children and young people did not think any of their pictures had failed or were “not good”. some parents said, “if i’d had a digital camera, i’d have deleted this one”. the meaning of “a good picture” or “an aesthetic photograph” is different for different people, in this case children and adults. or perhaps the invisible power relation between researcher and participant prevented explicitly labelling photographs as “failed”. even we, as researchers, thought that some of the photographs had failed and contained nothing to tell; however, every photograph taken seemed to be meaningful for the children and young people and they were active in constructing meanings for their photographs. sharples et al. (2003) showed in their research that for the children it was more a matter of “capturing the moment”, of showing their involvement with the subject, or of having fun than creating a conventionally posed picture. ethical questions informed consent the photo-narrative method is grounded in fundamental ethical principles. it respects informant autonomy, the active promotion of the positive and the avoidance of harm (wang & redwood-jones, 2001). guillemin and gilliam (2004) distinguish between “procedural ethics” and “ethics in practice”. the first involves seeking approval from ethics committees and review boards. “ethics in practice” refers to the everyday ethical issues that arise when conducting research (phelan & kinsella, 2013), which is our focus here. some key ethical issues in photo-narrative research, such as consent, anonymity, and the ownership of visual data, are highlighted in this section. in addition, we describe our experiences of interviewing children in the home setting. ethical questions arise all the way from the planning to the reporting of research: for instance, how to secure the participants’ consent during the research process; where and for how long you have permission to use the photographs; what to report and how, and from whose perspective. when starting research with children and young people, the researchers must first seek the co-operation of a range of gatekeepers, such as parents or school staff international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 619 (cree, kay, & tisdall, 2002; fargas-malet et al., 2010). in our research, we first contacted and informed parents and asked if they would be willing to participate as a family in our study. however, for participants, the meaning of the term “informed consent” may be somewhat fuzzy, as they may not be fully aware of what they are committing themselves to, for example, knowing beforehand what they are going to be asked to talk about (josselson, 2011). it is also important to remember that, typically, research participants do not have the same academic background as the researcher (marion & crowder, 2013). it was for these reasons that we sought verbal permission to conduct and record the interview beforehand, and afterwards asked for written consent. at this stage of the study, consent was given by each participant. each child or young person was told that we were interested in her or his family life, and were gathering this information for a scientific study. the children and young people also signed an informed consent – even the youngest one wrote her first name on the consent form, and was very proud to do so. this does not, of course, mean that the child or young person has understood her or his rights. cocks (2006) also argues that the notion of consent might exclude some potential participants, such as refugee or disabled children and young people, since in those particular contexts it might not always be possible to obtain informed consent. when children and young people agree to participate in a study that evolves over a period of time, their consent should be treated as an ongoing process and open to review during the course of the study (einarsdóttir, 2007). during the interviews, we made it clear that the child or young person was not required to participate against her or his wishes. informants could also unilaterally decide to end the process. but was this really an option? did the youngest ones really understand that this was their right? if an adult asks a question, is the child or young person obliged to answer? can answering adults be a learned habit? there is always an imbalance, a hierarchic relation between researcher and participant – especially when the latter is a child (see helavirta, 2007). at the first interview, our 4-yearold participant refused to participate, but nevertheless wanted to take the photographs. asking if she would take part next time, she promised to think about it. when the next time came, she was the first in her family to participate. the informed consent was updated during the research process, especially with respect to the photographs. the researchers went through every photograph with every child and young person, each of whom made the decision to accept or not to accept the photograph in question. the consent forms were signed and dated by the children and their parents. but do children really have the possibility to refuse or consent without their parents’ permission? ultimately, is children’s permission always in their “parents’ pocket”? for example, a child may give permission for the use of a photograph showing where she is playing, while her parents may not. visual culture and visual research methods have been utilized in many disciplines (rose, 2012). although culture has always had a strong visual component, lister and wells (2004) have argued that over the past few decades the whole of western culture and everyday daily life has become increasingly visualized. nowadays, children and youth are used to producing and watching all kinds of visual materials (lister & wells, 2004). the use of images in digital media has changed people’s attitudes to using visual material, so that nowadays many people are comfortable being filmed on social networking sites or being seen international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 620 in online photo galleries (muir & mason, 2012; wiles, coffey, robinson, & heath, 2011). for example, in the present study, consent was refused in the case of only a few photographs. before publishing, we asked participants for their consent once again. in this way we tried to ensure that the children and their parents know what they are “committed” to. the researcher has a responsibility to protect her informants, especially children and young people. it is also possible that children and young people want to be seen. as wiles et al. (2011) argue, this may be the participant’s wish, while it is also the participant’s right to be visible. to summarize, in our research participants’ informed consent was obtained at three points. the first was written consent to be interviewed and recorded. the second was consent to the analysis of the photographs. the third was consent to publish the final text and photographs. this final consent was important, as it enabled the researchers to be sure that the text and photographs were understood in the agreed research context and in accordance with the children and young people’s meanings (see also wang & redwood-jones, 2001). as marion and crowder (2013) have noted, images can be perceived differently by viewers, who may also see different outcomes than anticipated by the researcher. the home as a site of research using the home of a child or young person as a research location can present some challenges. home interviews may be more time-consuming. a researcher has to negotiate her social position as a guest in the home, since this is not clearly defined (fargas-malet et al., 2010). the way a researcher presents himself or herself, uses language, dresses, interacts with the child or young person, and the context of the interview can all influence the balance of power in both a positive and negative way (phelan & kinsella, 2013). we usually conducted the interviews in places preferred by the children and young people: often in their home and own room, which is usually a fairly private and quiet space. we acquainted ourselves with the youngest ones through a book or a board game. we met the children on literally the same level – for example, sitting on the floor – and talked and played, which laid a foundation for trust and, eventually, sharing and listening. home as a private place, and at the same time as a site of research, may affect the power relation between the child and the adult. home interviews with children and young people may be seen by parents as giving the latter permission, or even obliging them, to take more of a hand in controlling the research process. parents, for example, may ask the researcher or the children about the content of the interview. this, in turn, may induce stress in both researcher and young participant (fargas-malet et al., 2010). for example, in our study, one father asked the researcher what his children had said about him as a father. he was worried that he had not been able to spend as much time with all of his children as he thought he should have. in all cases, we explicitly gave both the children and their parents our assurance of confidentiality. however, our ability to ensure confidentiality was limited: for example, we had no control over what happened after the interview. visual and textual data and their ownership photographing may pose ethical challenges regarding confidentiality, since informed consent is difficult to obtain from all the people who appear in photographs (fargas-malet et al., 2010; wiles et al., 2011). clearly, individuals in photographs are identifiable, which conflicts with what is perhaps the issue of greatest concern: the guarantee of informant anonymity (rose, 2012). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 621 there were a few pictures of friends, and we promised, as researchers, that we would not publish them anywhere, as this might contradict the values that underlie photo-narrative. wang and redwood-jones (2001) have argued participants should be advised to get people’s permission before photographing them in a private space. here, the concern is a possible loss of spontaneity that can prevent the researcher and the photographer from capturing the intended idea. the researchers do not own the photographs taken by their participants. legal ownership resides with the photographer, and hence the researcher has to negotiate with the copyright holder before reproducing the image (rose, 2012). if pictures and photographs are subject to copyright and questions of ownership, then so too, it can be argued, are narratives. josselson (2011) sees ethical dilemmas in narratives, and asks: who owns the story? as she sees it, there are two accounts: the participant’s and the researcher’s. on the one hand there is the participant’s understanding of his or her story, and on the other hand the researcher’s interpretation of that life experience. the storyteller weaves experiences together, but the result is never the whole picture or absolute truth, meaning that it is only possible to represent partial selves. an interview always contains many interwoven layers of meaning, which sit alongside or underlie a person’s intentions. josselson (2011) asks, “how could a participant possibly know, for example, that we will be paying close attention to the gaps in their speech, their use of ‘i don’t know’, the sequence of topics they address or the ways in which words or images are repeated?” (p. 38). the participant can say that she did not mean any of that. whose voices are found in narratives, and whose are left unheard, will depend to some extent on who the participant thinks the audience is (josselson, 2011). thus, truth is primarily a matter of perspective. as in this study, as researchers, we bring our own meaning-making horizon along with us. together, we create a dialogue between aspects of ourselves and aspects of our participants. anonymity and public presentation because we are unsure how the child or young person might feel five to 10 years later when a picture is published (e.g., in an online article), we have chosen only to publish photographs in which it is hard to identify the child. in our recent article (mykkänen & böök, 2013), we sought to resolve this problem by sending the finished (not yet published) manuscript to the informants, and obtaining a further consent to publish the photographs and their textual interpretation. wiles et al. (2011) argue that photographs used without identifying names or other contextual material offer a very limited risk for the identification of an individual. they ask why visual images are seen as more personal or threatening than written text, in the form of quotes, about an individual’s thoughts or feelings. however, we have noticed when reporting our results that using photographs in combination with authentic examples of speech from the same person can be more revealing and identifying than photographs or interview data alone. this heightens the risk that detailed extracts from the interview transcripts, together with photographs, may enable identification of the child or young person and threaten his or her confidentiality and right to privacy (see also phelan & kinsella, 2013). respect for respondents includes respecting their autonomy over their lives, their right to privacy, the voluntary nature of participation, and ensuring their dignity and well-being (wiles et al., 2011). some children and young people in the present study were conscious international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 622 also of ethical questions: for example, one girl (aged 11) refused to let us use three photos of her friends in our research: girl: firstly, i wouldn’t like that photo to be there at all. and not that either, yes, and perhaps also not that. researcher: well, yes. i’ll take these three photos away. would you like to tell me why you really don’t want to let me to use these photos? girl: well, in general, if i make some kind of collage of various pictures, and then i show it to everyone, or if i make one kind of power point presentation, i don’t include terribly many pictures of humans, because it isn’t nice. researcher: would you tell me why it isn’t so nice? girl: well, you should have some privacy and that kind of thing. the ethical issues that researchers encounter are situated and emerge always in relation to the specific contexts of individual research projects (wiles et al., 2008). punch (2002) reminds us that reflexivity should be an important part of the research process with children and young people: researchers should reflect on their roles and assumptions as well as their choice of methods. conclusion there has been a turn towards the visual both in so-called “voice” research (e.g., cook & hess, 2007; pink, 2007; spyrou, 2011; young & barrett, 2001) and in childhood research (e.g., einarsdóttir, 2005; luttrell, 2010; punch, 2002). visual images, like photographs, may elicit different responses than those elicited by speech or writing, and may also evoke strong emotional responses. in addition, children and young people may find that photographs allow them to express themselves more easily and make their participation in research more comfortable (thompson, 2008). a visual storytelling approach also encourages young research participants to select and contextualize issues that are important to them (johnson, 2011). at its best, it also facilitates children’s expression, supports their empowerment, awareness, and efficacy, and increases their sense of control over their own lives (foster-fishman et al., 2005). for example, trusting children and young people by giving them their own cameras, we wanted to send them the message that they were strong agents in the data-gathering process (drew, duncan, & sawyer, 2010). of course, good intentions are not always realized. there are many factors that can affect this: for example, various gatekeepers, the ages of the children, their motivation and the life-situation of their family. notwithstanding, it was evident in our research process that the different family members had fun photographing each other and their daily life. this can strengthen relationships, encouraging interaction between family members and thus contribute to family well-being (see garcia et al., 2013). the photo-narrative method has the potential to diminish power imbalances between the researcher (adult) and the researched (child). photographs taken and told about by a child or young person can give participants more control over the research process. photo-narrative researchers, however, should not take children and young people’s agency for granted: power differences are present in all research encounters between young participants and adults (spyrou, 2011). during the research process, children and young people can be simultaneously vulnerable and competent; however, their positioning is more likely to be in the hands of adults (james, 2007; komulainen, 2007). during the research process, we met international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 623 most of these children and young people only twice: in order to guarantee their agency and position as co-researchers, we would need more encounters and also would need to plan the implementation of the research with them. according to wiles et al. (2011) a key ethical issue in visual research is anonymization. while the use of visual and textual data share some ethical issues, visual data, including photographs, present particular challenges, such as those outlined above. there seems to be an ethical tension between the desire to protect young research participants and the desire to give them a “voice” (wiles et al., 2011). the researcher has to respect the voluntary participation and right to privacy of children and young people, and ensure their well-being throughout the research process. in analyzing photographs, or pictures in general, certain issues merit special attention. komulainen (2007) reminds us that all verbal interpretations of images are selective representations and, like all other texts, not authentic depictions of social reality. according to rose (2012), “interpreting images is just that, interpretation” (p. xviii). in addition, the whole social world is always embedded in visual images. researchers cannot escape everyday life. clearly, we are not able to see the children and young people’s daily lives as a whole; however, we can try to understand parts of their lives, for example through the ways they interpret experience and narrate it, not only through “successful”, but also through missing and “black” photos. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 611–628 624 references alanen, l. 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(2012). my family through the lens. photo interviews with children and sensitive aspects of family life. children & society, 28(1), 1–13. doi: 10.1111/j.1099-0860.2012.00447.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2011.564423 abstract: this article focuses on the photo-narrative research process with children and young people. the photo-narrative method invites children and young people to answer research questions by first taking photographs and then talking to the resear... using photo-narratives in family daily life research black photographs and things not visible ethical questions informed consent the home as a site of research visual and textual data and their ownership anonymity and public presentation conclusion 403 forbidden<br> a study of youth reoffending in calgary international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 172 relating risk and protective factors to youth reoffending: a two-year follow-up leslie d. macrae, lorne d. bertrand, joanne j. paetsch, and joseph p. hornick abstract: this article presents findings of a retrospective longitudinal study of youth reoffending in calgary, alberta, canada. increasingly, the examination of risk and protective factors in the youth reoffending literature is grouped into five general domains: individual, family, peer, school, and community. for purposes of the present study, data on each of these factors were obtained from interviews and probation file reviews for a sample of 123 youth who had various levels of involvement in the youth justice system. these baseline data were collected from july 2006 to july 2007. reoffending was tracked for two years following the interview using police contact data. descriptive findings indicated that, overall, youth who possessed risk factors in each domain had a higher average rate of reoffending. stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that in the individual domain, a history of purchasing illegal drugs, stealing a car or motorcycle, and committing an assault with a weapon, as well as a diagnosis of add/adhd, were significantly related to the extent of reoffending. in the peer domain, gang affiliation was significant. in the community domain, the presence of gangs in the community was significant. none of the predictors in the family or school domains were significant. implications for future canadian research are discussed. key words: youth, reoffending, risk factors, longitudinal study acknowledgement: the authors would like to acknowledge the city of calgary and the alberta law foundation for funding this project. leslie d. macrae, m.a. is the coordinator of alberta-based research projects at canadian research institute for law and the family. lorne d. bertrand, ph.d. is the senior research associate at canadian research institute for law and the family. joanne j. paetsch, b.a. is a research associate and administrator at canadian research institute for law and the family. joseph p. hornick, ph.d. is the executive director at canadian research institute for law and the family. contact information for authors: canadian research institute for law and the family, suite 510, 1816 crowchild trail, nw, calgary ab, canada, t2m 3y7, phone: 403-216-0340, email: crilf@ucalgary.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 173 youth crime in canada has undergone considerable scrutiny in the past decade, both in the media and in terms of policy. in 2003, the youth criminal justice act (ycja) replaced the young offenders act as canada’s legislative response to youth offending, the objectives being to restrict the use of the courts by diverting minor cases and facilitating reintegration and rehabilitation. it also had the goal of reducing the incarceration rate by providing more meaningful and effective responses for serious and violent young offenders (department of justice canada, n.d.). studies examining the impact of the yjca (e.g., degusti, 2008; bala, carrington, & roberts, 2009) report that, though the number of youth charged, convicted, and sentenced decreased, particularly those involved in minor offences, practice based on the ycja continues to struggle in effectively addressing the complex needs of repeat offenders. recent reports from british columbia (british columbia representative for children and youth & provincial health officer, 2009), nova scotia (nunn, 2006), and ontario (mcmurtry & curling, 2008) reveal the significant impact that youth violence and youth offending continue to have in canada, prompting a need for further development of effective responses to this particular group of young offenders. among the recommendations in alberta’s crime reduction and safe communities task force report (2007) was the need to understand the characteristics that distinguish young people who engage in criminal behaviour from those who do not – the factors that “buffer young people from risks and promote positive youth development” (p. 34). though studies from the united states, the united kingdom, and australia provide a solid foundation for research in this area, there is a demonstrable need for canadian research on identifying risk and protective factors for youth offending and reoffending, risk factors and youth reoffending increasingly, the examination of risk and protective factors in the youth offending literature is grouped into five general domains: • individual factors, which include demographic characteristics (age, gender, socioeconomic status), aggression and impulsivity, substance abuse, and mental and emotional health; • family factors, which include family function and stability; • peer factors, which include peer associations, gang involvement, and social experiences; • school factors, which include school experiences, success, and attachment; and • community factors, which include community safety, degree of organization, and attachment. individual factors. the examination of individual demographic factors, such as gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status has a long history in the youth offending literature. gender is consistently examined in studies of youth criminality, with males commonly associated with offending and reoffending. however, the advent of specialized studies on criminal trajectories and life course persistent offending reflects that females are increasingly represented among international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 174 offender typologies (carr & vandiver, 2001; happanen, britton, & croisdale, 2007; howell, 2003; jennings, moldonado-molina, & komro, 2010). longitudinal studies suggest that a different set of factors predict male and female chronic reoffending (sharkey, furlong, jimerson, & o’brien, 2003; trulson, marquart, mullings, & caeti, 2005; tyler, johnson, & brownridge, 2008). along with gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status are common factors predicting offending and reoffending among youth, with both poverty and ethnic minority status being significantly linked to youth reoffending (benda & tollett, 1999; livingston, stewart, allard, & ogilvie, 2008; trulson et al., 2005). however, similar to gender, studies examining differences between minor reoffending and chronic reoffending have raised questions regarding the ability to distinguish between these two groups on the basis of socio-economic status and ethnicity (mullis et al., 2005). howell (2009) suggests that the impact of ethnicity and socio-economic status is best understood if examined within a developmental context. other individual factors such as mental and emotional health and substance abuse are important. howell (2009) suggests that approximately 65% to 70% of youth in juvenile correctional facilities in the united states experience mental health and/or substance use disorders, one-quarter of whom have disorders that significantly impair their ability to function. a toronto study of criminal trajectories (day, bev, theodor, rosenthal, & duchesne, 2008) revealed that 82% of the youth studied met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder. specifically, attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (add/adhd) and oppositional defiant disorder (mullis et al., 2005; putnins, 2005), as well as neuropsychological conditions such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (turner, hartman, & bishop, 2007), are linked particularly to chronic reoffending, with substance abuse being consistently linked with a risk to reoffend (howell, 2009; denning & homel, 2008; putnins, 2005; sharkey et al., 2003). finally, among the most potent predictors of future offending is past delinquent or antisocial behaviour, and this is particularly true of serious repeat offenders. studies have demonstrated that repeat offenders habitually commit a number of different antisocial acts, often having previous contact with the justice system and well-documented behavioural issues (benda & tollett, 1999; mullis et al., 2005). family factors. there is a substantial body of literature suggesting that poor family management and supervision, family breakdown, parental separation, and physical abuse or neglect are significant predictors of reoffending among youth. a number of studies have shown that the experience of family violence is common among youth who are chronic or persistent offenders (arnull et al., 2005; lemmon, 2006; macrae, bertrand, paetsch, & hornick, 2008). recent literature from australia (stewart, livingston, & dennison, 2008) reveals that youth who experience maltreatment during adolescence are more likely to reoffend than those who experience maltreatment prior to adolescence. factors related to family disruption and breakdown are also linked to reoffending. macrae et al. (2008) report that serious habitual offenders are more likely to have family histories of divorce, separation, or never married parents compared with one-time offenders or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 175 youth who had been diverted from the justice system after contact with police. jennings and colleagues (2010) found that not living in a birth parent household increased the likelihood of being on a delinquent trajectory. arnull et al. (2005), in their large-scale study of persistent offenders in england and wales, revealed that one of the most telling risk factors for reoffending was a history of family disruption. ward and day’s (2010) study suggests that family disruption, specifically in childhood, increases the likelihood of youth following a moderate course of offending, and in adolescence, a low course of offending. conversely, carr and vandiver’s (2001) study of protective factors and recidivism revealed that those who do not reoffend are more likely to have a higher average number of familial protective factors (e.g., structure, support, and supervision). ward and day (2010) also report that contact with the child welfare system in childhood and alternative care in adolescence increased the likelihood that a youth would follow a higher offending trajectory, which is in line with the findings of a recent study of youth justice outcomes for children in care (british columbia representative for children and youth & british columbia provincial health officer, 2009). similar findings can be found in u.s. studies regarding the relationship between child welfare placements and future offending. one u.s. longitudinal study found that youth in care, particularly those who had experienced familial mistreatment, were more likely to reoffend than youth who were not in care (ryan, 2006). ryan, hernandez, and herz’s (2007) study of developmental trajectories of male adolescents reported that leaving foster care and placement instability were among the most important predictors of reoffending. howell’s (2009) developmental model of serious delinquency reinforces the notion that a child or youth having a non-intact family (i.e., not living with biological parents) is an important predictor. other important family factors include living arrangements and parental support or supervision. howell’s (2009) model of serious delinquency suggests that not residing in a home with two parents increases the risk of serious delinquency. jennings and colleagues (2010), in their study of criminal trajectories, suggest that spending greater amounts of time without parental supervision increased the likelihood of a youth being on a delinquent trajectory. a number of studies have also shown that poor family attachment (e.g., running away from home, not residing with parents) is more common among those youth who persistently reoffend (macrae et al., 2008; tyler et al., 2008). peer factors. peer factors, including gang affiliation and association with deviant and often older peers, have long been discussed as contributing factors to youth engagement in delinquent behaviour, and more recently as a factor predicting reoffending (arnull et al., 2005; chung, hill, hawkins, gilchrist, & nagin, 2002; denning & homel, 2008; howell, 2009; johnson, simons, & conger, 2004; macrae et al., 2008; mullis et al., 2005; sharkey et al., 2003). in recent work examining peer influence within a developmental context, howell (2009) suggests that gang membership and affiliation, as well as negative peer influences, may have more of an impact in adolescence. johnson and colleagues (2004) suggest that for youth with a history of involvement in the justice system, having deviant peer associations, particularly as the youth gets older, is a significant predictor for persistent reoffending. this speaks to the possible international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 176 role of the justice system (especially custodial) in exposing youth to other negative peers, and the subsequent effect such encounters can have on future behaviour. in a related way, gang affiliation or involvement has also been shown to have a significant influence on offending, with studies demonstrating that youth who are persistent reoffenders are more likely to have ties to gangs (benda & tollett, 1999; howell, 2003; macrae et al., 2008; trulson et al., 2005). benda and tollett (1999) suggest that, although gang membership is a significant predictor of continued offending among serious and persistent youth offenders in particular, the frequency, intensity, duration, and priority of gang membership, as well as the type of gang, should be considered in order for gang affiliation to be a more accurate predictor. it is important to note the available findings related to the protective influence of positive peer or social relations. in comparing non-repeat offenders to repeat offenders, carr and vandiver (2001) reported that positive peer selection acted as a protective factor. macrae et al.’s (2008) calgary study of youth offenders found that those youth who had a record of chronic and serious habitual offending were markedly less likely to report involvement in organized after school activities, adult-coached sports, organized non-sport activities, and clubs with adult leadership. this compares to the minor offenders in the sample who were more likely to associate with prosocial peers and commonly participated in sports and groups in their spare time. school factors. school is a key domain to consider in youth development, one where early signs of future antisocial behaviour may be evident. risk factors in the school domain include low investment and commitment to school, early academic struggle and/or failure, problem behaviour in school, poor attitude, and truancy. research has suggested that youth who proceed to serious offending experience significant disciplinary, attainment, and learning challenges in school (arnull et al., 2005; macrae et al., 2008; mullis et al., 2005). as discussed previously, diagnoses of add/adhd and learning exceptionalities are common among reoffending youth (putnins, 2005), which also has a significant impact on school investment and success. further, truancy has been identified as a common concern among reoffending youth (mullis et al., 2005; macrae et al., 2008). frequent school transitions or lack of school stability was observed by mullis and colleagues (2005) as a common experience among persistent reoffenders. community factors. finally, community factors such as neighbourhood disorganization, safety, and availability of drugs and weapons have a significant impact on a youth’s offending behaviour. a number of studies in the past decade (benda & tollett, 1999; chung et al., 2002; mcmurtry & curling, 2008) have examined the impact of these community influences, finding that youth who live in disorganized, unsafe neighbourhoods, particularly where drugs or weapons are readily available, are more likely to become chronic offenders. moreover, not surprisingly, carrying a weapon in the community is associated with serious reoffending (benda & tollett, 1999; macrae et al., 2008). a recent study by grunwald, lockwood, harris, and mennis (2009) reported that neighbourhood-level factors such as concentrated disadvantage and social capital have a differential impact on reoffending types, having the most significant impact on drug offence recidivism. further, as both patterson, reid, and dishion (1992) and turner and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 177 colleagues (2007) note, community influences are often mitigated by the presence of a number of other factors that tend to decrease the impact of negative influences present in the community. patterson and colleagues (1992) suggest the effect of violent or crime-ridden neighbourhoods is mitigated by the presence of parents who effectively supervise and discipline their children, as opposed to children who experience poor parental management. turner and colleagues (2007) suggest that disadvantaged neighbourhoods often interact with other risk factors (e.g., neuropsychological deficits and family disadvantage) to place a child at increased risk for serious reoffending. method sample data for this study was generated from a three-year study of high-risk youth in calgary (macrae, bertrand, paetsch, hornick, & degusti, 2009). in this study, a cohort of 123 youth was classified into four different study groups depending on levels of involvement in the youth justice system. the study groups were: 1. gateway clients under extrajudicial measures (n = 20); 2. one-time offenders (n = 42); 3. chronic offenders (n = 41); and 4. serious habitual offenders (shos) (n = 20). gateway is a pre-charge extrajudicial measures program under the youth criminal justice act (ycja) that operates in all eight police districts in calgary. under this program, youth are diverted by the police from the traditional youth justice system to over 25 community agencies that have agreed to offer services to youth. youth are referred to this program for offences ranging from theft under $5,000, to mischief, break and enter, and minor assault. gateway is a partnership of city of calgary community and neighbourhood services and the calgary police service. one-time offenders include youth who have one substantive (i.e., criminal code) offence or incident under the controlled drugs and substances act of which he or she has been found guilty in youth court (with no subsequent charges pending). chronic offenders include youth who have five or more substantive offences or incidents of which they have been found guilty (not including shos). an incident was defined as all charges pertaining to the same person and having the same date of offence. administration of justice incidents (e.g., breaches, failures to appear) were not counted as substantive incidents. shos included youth involved in the calgary police service serious habitual offender program (shop), the goal of which is to identify youth at risk of a career of crime. the program provides access to resources in order for these offenders to become successful members of society. referrals to shop are made by various agencies, and each referring agency is required to complete an intake form providing information on historical risk factors (e.g., violent acts or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 178 offences, exposure to violence), social and contextual risk factors (e.g., peer delinquency, parental management, personal support, etc.), and individual risk factors (e.g., emotional difficulties, attitudes, risk taking, substance use, etc.). referral information is received by the calgary police service shop unit, who check the youth’s criminal history. if appropriate for the program, the youth’s information is forwarded to the multidisciplinary resource team (mdrt), who review and assess the youth’s records and determine whether he or she is appropriate for shop. youth who are targeted by the program are profiled, with responses based on these profiles being developed to support the youth’s successful reintegration. these youth are regularly monitored by the calgary police service. gateway participants were identified and recruited through the gateway program. onetime and chronic offenders were identified through the city of calgary youth probation services. shos were identified with the help of the city of calgary youth probation services and the calgary police service. informed consent was obtained from all youth participating in the study, and parental consent was obtained for youth under age 16. for the purpose of this study, to determine which risk factors differentiate youth who reoffend from those who do not and the extent of reoffending behaviour, the four original study groups were analyzed together as the number of subjects in each group was not sufficient to examine between-group differences in risk factors. the majority of the sample was male (82.9%). at the time of data collection, the mean age of the youth was 16.5 years. in terms of ethnicity, three-quarters of the sample were identified as caucasian (74%), with smaller proportions identifying themselves as native (8.9%), asian (4.9%), metis (3.3%), middleeastern (2.4%), mulatto (2.4%), hispanic (2.4%), and african (2.4%). the substantial majority of youth (93.5%) were born in canada. measures the original study utilized a number of methodologies to develop a profile of youth offenders in calgary. most relevant to this examination of youth reoffending are the data collected from interviews and probation file reviews. life history interviews were conducted with all 123 participants from july 12, 2006 to july 18, 2007. the interview schedule was developed by the researchers, with questions covering seven main topic areas: basic facts (i.e., demographic, familial); community (i.e., community characteristics, feelings of safety); school (i.e., school status, experience); social life (i.e., friends, activities, delinquency); offending history (i.e., contact with the criminal justice system); gangs (i.e., knowledge and experience of gangs in calgary); and future plans (i.e., goals). interviews were conducted in person with the exception of gateway participants, who were interviewed by telephone. participants were each paid $20. probation file reviews were conducted for each youth interviewed for the study, with the exception of the gateway sample (who were not under the jurisdiction of city of calgary youth probation) and a small number of youth in other groups whose probation files could not be accessed. the file review measure provided supplemental and validating data to the interview. a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 179 probation file review form was developed following a preliminary examination of probation files. the form included demographic, familial, social, and offending information. file reviews were conducted at youth probation offices. researchers examined each probation file and filled out the electronic review form with the necessary information. conviction data was obtained from the justice online information network (join) to distinguish between the one-time and chronic offender groups. for the purposes of the offender profiles, analysis of the interview and file review data was conducted descriptively by offender type, with the goal of establishing defining characteristics for each group of offenders. a number of social, individual, and historical factors explored the differences among the four groups of offenders, covering eight main areas: demographic characteristics; family characteristics; educational experience; social life; community characteristics; self-reported delinquency; knowledge of gangs; and justice system involvement. data on the reoffending patterns of the 123 youth interviewed for this study from the date of their interview through october 31, 2008 was obtained from the calgary police service’s police information management system (pims). data obtained from pims were for chargeable incidents, which refer to contacts between offenders and the police where there was sufficient evidence for an information to be laid, whether or not an offender was actually charged. only substantive incidents are included in the database and therefore administrative offences (e.g., breaches) are excluded. initial interviews were conducted during the period from july 12, 2006 to july 18, 2007; thus, the length of time available for youth to reoffend from the date of their interview to october 31, 2008 varied across participants in the study. in order to compensate for this artefact, data were initially examined according to three reoffending time periods: within 12 months after the interview; within 12 to 18 months after the interview; and within 18 to 24 months after the interview. all 123 youth were in the study for a sufficient period of time to be eligible to have data in the 12 months after the interview and 12 to 18 months after the interview time intervals. a total of 89 youth had a sufficient time period following their interview to potentially have reoffending data in the 18 to 24 months after the interview time interval. results a total of 58 participants (47.2%) reoffended at least once during the time period between their interview and october 31, 2008. for the youth who reoffended, the number of reoffences ranged from 1 to 24 (mean = 4.55, standard deviation = 4.84). factors associated with reoffending the relationship between factors relevant to the five domains identified in the literature (i.e., individual, family, peer group, school, and community) and youth reoffending was examined using a series of forward stepwise linear regression analyses with the number of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 180 reoffences as the dependent measure and a series of binary predictor variables within each domain serving as independent variables. this procedure allowed the identification of the predictors within each of the domains that accounted for the greatest proportion of variance within the dependent variable. predictor variables were obtained from either the young offender interview or the youth probation file review. individual factor domain. several potential risk factors for reoffending classified within the individual domain were examined. these factors fell into five general categories: personal characteristics; drugand alcohol-related behaviour; property-related delinquency; person-related delinquency; and mental health characteristics. table 1 presents the average number of reoffences for three personal characteristics falling within this domain. there was a trend for males to exhibit a higher number of reoffences than females and for non-caucasian youth to reoffend to a greater extent than caucasian youth. however, when these three variables were entered into a stepwise regression, none emerged as being significant predictors for reoffending. table 1 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by personal characteristics personal characteristics number of reoffences mean sd n gender female 0.95 1.43 21 male 2.39 4.33 102 ethnicity caucasian 1.82 3.92 91 othera 3.06 4.22 32 employment status at time of interview employed 2.22 3.57 59 not employed 2.08 4.41 64 a “other” includes native/métis (n = 15), hispanic (n = 3), african (n = 2), mulatto (n = 3), asian (n = 6), and middle eastern (n = 3). sources of data: youth offender interview, youth probation file review and police information management system. table 2 presents the relationship between alcohol and drug risk factors and reoffending. the substantial majority of all youth in the study reported that they had consumed five or more alcoholic drinks on at least one occasion (91.9%) and had ever used an illegal drug (87.8%). three-quarters of the youth had bought illegal drugs (74.8%) and over one-half (56.1%) had sold international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 181 drugs. when these four predictors for reoffending were included in a stepwise regression, the only variable entered into the regression equation was having bought illegal drugs (adjusted r2 = 0.04, beta = 0.21, t(121) = 2.40, p < .05). youth who stated they had bought illegal drugs prior to their interview were likely to have a higher number of reoffences following the interview than youth who had never bought illegal drugs. table 2 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by drug and alcohol related behaviour behaviour number of reoffences mean sd n had five or more alcoholic drinks on one occasion no 0.50 1.27 10 yes 2.29 4.14 113 ever used illegal drugs no 0.27 1.03 15 yes 2.41 4.21 108 ever bought illegal drugs no 0.68 1.35 31 yes 2.64 4.48 92 ever sold illegal drugs no 1.50 3.26 54 yes 2.65 4.48 69 sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. table 3 presents the relationship between engaging in several property-related delinquent behaviours at the time of the initial interview and the extent of subsequent reoffending. for all types of delinquency, there was a trend for youth who reported having engaged in property crimes to have a greater number of reoffences. when these eight predictors of reoffending were entered into a stepwise regression, the only variable that emerged as a significant predictor of the extent of reoffending was having stolen a car or motorcycle (adjusted r2 = 0.10, beta = 0.33, t(119) = 3.85, p < .001). youth who had stolen a car or motorcycle prior to their interview were more likely to have a greater number of reoffences following the interview than youth who had never engaged in this delinquent behaviour. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 182 table 3 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by ever engaging in property-related delinquent behaviour delinquent behaviour number of reoffences mean sd n damaged/destroyed property on purpose no 1.79 3.07 42 yes 2.33 4.43 81 broken into a house no 1.25 2.76 68 yes 3.25 4.97 55 stolen something worth less than $50 no 1.44 2.72 39 yes 2.37 4.39 83 stolen something worth more than $50 no 1.50 4.00 42 yes 2.38 3.92 80 stolen car or motorcycle no 0.84 1.67 64 yes 3.47 5.18 57 stolen something with a group of friends no 1.72 2.96 43 yes 2.28 4.43 78 ridden calgary transit without valid ticket no 0.92 1.64 24 yes 2.44 4.36 99 damaged/vandalized/tagged calgary transit property no 2.04 3.65 92 yes 2.45 5.01 31 sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. table 4 presents the relationship between engaging in several person-related delinquent behaviours at the time of the initial interview and subsequent reoffending. for all behaviours, there was a tendency for youth who reported engaging in person offending to have a higher average number of reoffences. these seven predictors of reoffending were included in a stepwise international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 183 regression procedure with the number of reoffences as the dependent measure. the only predictor significantly associated with the number of reoffences was having assaulted someone with a weapon (adjusted r2 = 0.08, beta = 0.30, t(105) = 3.21, p < .01). this result indicated that youth who had ever assaulted someone with a weapon prior to their interview were likely to have a greater number of reoffences following the interview than youth who had never assaulted someone with a weapon. table 4 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by ever engaging in person-related delinquent behaviour delinquent behaviour number of reoffences mean sd n taken/tried to take something by force/threat of force no 1.98 4.40 60 yes 2.47 3.71 49 harassed, threatened, or bullied someone on calgary transit no 1.74 3.35 88 yes 3.24 5.33 34 threatened someone with a weapon no 1.49 3.00 71 yes 3.04 4.98 52 assaulted/hurt someone with a weapon no 0.92 2.04 66 yes 3.63 5.17 56 assaulted/hurt someone on calgary transit property no 1.68 3.89 85 yes 3.27 4.17 37 assaulted someone with friends no 1.27 2.53 59 yes 2.95 4.90 64 with a group of friends, fought with others no 2.02 4.58 44 yes 2.22 3.69 79 sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 184 a number of mental health factors were examined to determine their relationship to the extent of reoffending following the initial interview (see table 5). for most of these factors, there was a trend for youth who exhibited mental health disorders to have a greater number of reoffences. it should be noted that certain mental health diagnoses were present in very few youth, and thus these results should be interpreted with caution. when these 11 predictors were included in a regression analysis with the number of reoffences as the dependent variable, only a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (add/adhd) was significantly related to reoffending (adjusted r2 = 0.04, beta = 0.23, t(89) = 2.17, p < .05). this finding indicated that youth with a confirmed diagnosis of add/adhd were more likely to have a greater number of reoffences than youth without this diagnosis. table 5 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by mental health characteristics mental health characteristics number of reoffences mean sd n ever had a psychological assessment no 2.51 4.63 47 yes 2.35 3.68 48 ever received counselling no 2.13 4.45 15 yes 2.49 4.13 80 diagnosis of mental health problems no 2.20 3.94 46 yes 2.61 4.34 56 depression no 2.80 3.96 74 yes 1.63 4.87 24 learning disability no 2.41 4.34 85 yes 3.15 3.26 13 attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder no 1.79 3.54 62 yes 3.75 4.98 36 conduct disorder no 1.99 3.60 67 yes 3.65 5.17 31 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 185 fetal alcohol spectrum disorder no 2.42 4.20 93 yes 4.20 4.38 5 anger issues no 2.74 4.44 80 yes 1.50 2.83 18 post-traumatic stress disorder no 2.40 4.25 90 yes 3.75 3.69 8 attachment disorder no 2.53 4.19 92 yes 2.17 4.83 6 sources of data: youth probation file review and police information management system. family factors domain. table 6 presents the factors related to family characteristics of the youth by their average number of reoffences following their initial interview. in all cases, youth with factors associated with family breakdown tended to have a greater number of reoffences following their interview than were youth who did not have these factors. however, when these seven factors were entered into a stepwise regression analysis, none of them emerged as being statistically significant predictors with the extent of reoffending behaviour. table 6 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by family characteristics family characteristics number of reoffences mean sd n marital status of parents married 0.89 2.01 37 othera 2.72 4.54 85 current living arrangements at time of interview both parents 0.71 1.80 34 otherb 2.70 4.48 89 history of family violence/neglect no 1.70 2.98 37 yes 2.90 4.72 58 contact with child welfare no 1.04 2.99 56 yes 3.07 4.52 67 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 186 history of foster care no 1.51 3.17 89 yes 3.82 5.36 34 history of residence in group home no 1.41 3.25 71 yes 3.15 4.73 52 ever run away from home no 1.49 3.61 47 yes 2.55 4.22 76 a “other” includes never married/common law (n = 32), separated (n = 11), divorced (n = 32), and widowed (n = 10). b “other” includes one parent/siblings (n = 54), extended family (n = 4), foster/group home (n = 10), independent/partner (n = 7), incarcerated (n = 12), and other (n = 2). sources of data: youth offender interview, youth probation file review and police information management system. peer group factors domain. several factors were identified as related to the youths’ leisure time and peer group activities, and their relationship with reoffending behaviour is presented in table 7. youth who were not involved in organized activities with adult leadership such as sports, clubs and groups, and lessons exhibited a greater amount of reoffending following their interview than youth who were involved in such activities. in addition, youth who stated that most of their friends were older than themselves, that their friends belonged to a gang, and they had ever been a gang member themselves tended to have a greater frequency of reoffending. when these seven predictor variables were entered into a stepwise regression analysis, the only factor that was a significant predictor of extent of reoffending was whether their friends belonged to a gang (adjusted r2 = 0.03, beta = 0.19, t(115) = 2.10, p < .05). this finding indicated that youth who stated that some of their friends belonged to a gang had a higher average number of reoffences than youth whose friends were not gang members. table 7 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by leisure time activities and gang involvement activities number of reoffences mean sd n organized activities no 2.43 4.13 84 yes 1.54 3.73 39 sports with adult coaching no 2.35 4.20 99 yes 1.29 3.36 24 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 187 clubs/groups with adult leadership no 2.28 4.15 113 yes 0.60 1.00 10 lessons in dance, music, hobbies, other nonsport activities no 2.33 4.14 113 yes 0.10 0.32 10 age of closest friends younger/same age 1.90 3.87 91 older 2.97 4.51 30 friends belong to a gang no 1.53 3.32 66 yes 2.91 4.70 54 ever been a member of a gang no 1.63 3.48 79 yes 2.85 4.65 41 sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. school factors domain. table 8 presents the school-related characteristics of youth by their average number of reoffences following their initial interview. in most cases, youth with factors related to problems at school had a higher average number of reoffences than youth who did not have these factors. however, when these six predictors were entered into a stepwise regression analysis with the number of reoffences as the dependent measure, none of them emerged as significant predictors of the extent of reoffending behaviour. table 8 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by school-related characteristics school characteristics number of reoffences mean sd n considered dropping out of schoola no 1.89 3.74 37 yes 2.60 4.52 50 ever been suspended from schoola no 0.91 2.13 23 yes 2.94 4.87 64 ever been bullied in school no 2.56 4.61 68 yes 1.64 3.11 55 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 188 ever been in fights at school no 0.60 1.50 20 yes 2.47 4.29 102 ever taken a weapon to school no 1.49 3.24 72 yes 3.08 4.79 51 gangs at school no 2.02 3.69 64 yes 2.13 4.36 55 a these questions were only asked of youth who were attending school at the time of the interview. sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. community factors domain. three community-related factors were identified as potential predictors of the extent of youth offending behaviour (see table 9). youth who reported feeling safe in their community tended to have a higher average number of reoffences than did those who reported feeling at least somewhat unsafe. there was a trend that youth who reported that they had carried a weapon in their community and that there were gangs in their community had a higher number of reoffences following their interview. when these three variables were entered into a stepwise regression analysis predicting the extent of reoffending, only the presence of gangs in the community emerged as a significant predictor (adjusted r2 = 0.05, beta = 0.23, t(119) = 2.58, p < .05). this result indicated that youth who stated that there were gangs in their community had a higher average number of reoffences than youth who indicated that there were no gangs in their community. table 9 mean number of reoffences since youth offender interview by community-related characteristics community characteristics number of reoffences mean sd n feelings of safety in community sometimes unsafe/unsafe 1.52 3.40 23 safe 2.29 4.15 100 ever carried weapon in community no 1.60 3.55 73 yes 2.94 4.54 50 gangs in community no 1.28 2.59 64 yes 3.14 5.08 56 sources of data: youth offender interview and police information management system. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 189 discussion the presence of risk factors associated with reoffending was explored among a sample of 123 calgary, alberta youth with various degrees of involvement with the justice system. data was obtained from life history interviews, probation file reviews, and police contact data. factors measured the five domains consistently discussed in the literature – individual, family, peer, school, and community. a series of forward stepwise linear regression analyses were conducted using the predictors in each domain to determine whether the presence of each factor predicted greater reoffending among the sample. first, individual factors were explored. the factors tested fell into five general categories: personal characteristics, drugand alcohol-related behaviour, property-related delinquency, person-related delinquency, and mental health characteristics. the current study did not find any personal characteristics to be significantly related to reoffending. with regard to gender, the absence of a significant finding may be in line with recent studies demonstrating that gender is not as substantial a predictor of reoffending as it has been traditionally (carr & vandiver, 2001; haapanen et al., 2007; howell, 2003; jennings et al., 2010). the analyses also examined substance use and involvement with drugs. though a substantial proportion of those who had reoffended used drugs and alcohol, these were not found to be significantly related to reoffending in the model; however, having bought illegal drugs was found to be significant. similarly, when self-reported property offences were examined, youth who had reported engaging in behaviours such as stealing cars, property damage, and theft tended to have a greater number of reoffences. when the predictors were examined within the regression model, having stolen a car or motorcycle was the only significant predictor. these findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that repeat offenders often commit habitual antisocial acts and have lengthy histories of behavioural concerns (e.g., benda & tollett, 1999; mullis et al., 2005). for those who are substance addicted, offending may provide the resources necessary to support the addiction. for more serious, person-related offences such as robbery or assault, those in the sample who had engaged in these behaviours tended to have more reoffences. when all the measures were entered into the regression analysis, having ever assaulted someone with a weapon was found to be a significant predictor. this study also adds to the literature on the relationship between mental health factors and youth reoffending. data from the first stage of this research (degusti, macrae, & hornick, 2008) indicated that complex mental health disorders (i.e., multiple diagnoses) were common among youth more seriously involved in the justice system. this report also showed that virtually all of the youth with a diagnosis of fasd had reoffended. however, the regression model used in the current study suggested that among the many diagnoses that were tested, only add/adhd was significantly related to greater reoffending. this finding is in line with mullis et al.’s study (2005), where 60% of their sample of chronic youth offenders were diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (odd) or add at some point. putnins’ (2009) study assessing risk for recidivism among juvenile offenders also confirmed that add/adhd is a significant risk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 190 factor for an elevated risk to reoffend. putnins (2009) points out that the symptoms of add/adhd (poor concentration, restlessness, impulsivity) overlap with low self-control, a concept posed two decades ago by gottfredson and hirschi (1990) to explain reoffending. however, it should be cautioned that the finding in the current study is somewhat limited by the fact that some mental health diagnoses were present in very few youth. the regression analysis of family factors did not yield any significant predictors of reoffending. however, the analysis did demonstrate that those youth who possessed characteristics related to family breakdown, such as not living with both parents, having been involved with the child welfare system, having been in foster care or a group home, and having experienced family violence, consistently had a higher average number of reoffences. research has consistently reported links between family violence or breakdown and reoffending among youth (arnull et al., 2005; carr & vandiver, 2001; benda & tollett, 1999; howell, 2009; macrae et al., 2008; mullis et al., 2005; turner et al., 2007; stewart et al., 2008; ward & day, 2010). increasingly, the significant impact of involvement with children’s services is being discussed (ryan, 2006; ryan et al., 2007; ward & day, 2010). a recent longitudinal study of a cohort of over 50,000 children in british columbia conducted by the british columbia representative for children and youth and the provincial health officer (2009) revealed that “a higher proportion of children and youth in care in b.c. become involved with the youth justice system (35.5%) than graduate from high school (24.5%)” (p. 7). despite being a distinguishing family characteristic in the original descriptive study (macrae et al., 2008), as well as being a common risk factor reported in previous literature (arnull et al., 2005; stewart et al., 2008; ward & day, 2010) family violence and neglect were not significant factors associated with reoffending in the present study. the data on family violence and neglect were limited in that they were not collected by self-report, but rather from the probation file review. though probation files often report this type of information, it is possible that violence or neglect may have occurred that was not recorded in the probation file. further, youth who have longer histories with youth probation tended to have more background information and more extensive probation files. therefore, any youth with shorter probation histories (e.g., one-time offenders) may not have this detailed type of information recorded in their file. additionally, the sample of gateway youth did not have probation file information and therefore were not included in the analysis of family violence. thus, the data on family violence and neglect may not be a true reflection of its incidence among the study sample. overall, though the current analysis did not demonstrate any significant predictors, the findings still point to an important story regarding the impact of family disruption. the descriptive findings related to social and peer factors were also consistent with the literature. youth who were not involved in structured activities tended to have approximately twice the average number of reoffences as those who were, pointing to the protective influence of organized activities such as clubs, sports, or lessons. examination of peer characteristics and gang involvement also revealed that youth who have older friends, friends who belong to a gang, and friends who had themselves ever been a gang member had higher average numbers of reoffences. having friends who belong to a gang was the only peer factor found to be significant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 191 in the model. this is consistent with a number of studies examining the impact of negative peer affiliation and gang involvement on reoffending (benda & tollett, 1999; howell, 2003; johnson et al., 2004; trulson et al., 2005). it is important to note that the factors in the individual, family, school, peer, and community domains that place a youth at risk for gang involvement are often the same factors that place a youth at risk for persistent reoffending, and that these factors often have a cumulative and interactive effect. the regression model on school factors also did not yield any significant predictors. however, the descriptive analyses demonstrated that youth who have had problems at school with truancy, suspensions, getting into fights, taking a weapon, and have considered dropping out of school tended to have a higher average number of reoffences than those who did not. this is consistent with the literature suggesting that school difficulties are often associated with criminal behaviour among youth (arnull et al., 2005; mullis et al., 2005). further, the significance of a diagnosis of add/adhd in relation to reoffending would also have an impact on school performance and success; this finding was confirmed by mullis et al. (2005). these notable behavioural and learning concerns speak to the importance of the school as a point of prevention and early intervention. finally, factors related to the youths’ community were examined in relation to reoffending. feelings of safety in the community, presence of gangs, and carrying a weapon in the community were tested, with the presence of gangs emerging as a significant predictor. however, the literature suggests that protective factors such as parental supervision and discipline may buffer the effects of community risk factors (patterson et al., 1992). turner and colleagues (2007) suggest that community factors often interact with other factors to place a youth at risk for reoffending. recent work by grunwald and colleagues (2009) demonstrates that neighbourhood factors have a differential influence on the type of reoffending (e.g., drug, property, violent). though the available data were not sufficient to test these effects, the impact of the community environment was demonstrated. limitations and future directions the analyses yielded a number of important observations among all five risk factor domains. however, though a number of studies (chung et al., 2002; lipsey & derzon, 1998; turner et al., 2007) have pointed to the importance of examining combinations and interactions of factors, and in particular, their developmental influence, the current data did not allow for a developmental analysis. recent u.s. studies (haapanen et al., 2007; howell, 2003; mullis et al., 2005; ryan et al., 2007) have closely examined the developmental stages at which certain characteristics begin to manifest or at which significant critical events occur (e.g., family breakdown, family violence). findings such as these can promote more targeted and effective prevention and intervention programs. british columbia’s recent longitudinal study of a cohort of over 50,000 youth has demonstrated the value of this approach (british columbia representative for children and youth & provincial health officer, 2009), as has the study by day and colleagues (2008) of the criminal trajectories of 378 male youth offenders in toronto. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 192 future canadian studies with this focus would contribute significantly to this growing body of literature. the longitudinal nature of this study provides a valuable contribution to the canadian literature. however, it is important to note that the follow-up data were limiting in that only reoffending data were collected. since the youth were not re-interviewed, their individual, family, peer, community, and school situations may have changed, thereby impacting their offending behaviour. however, by collecting longitudinal reoffending data, this study was able to illustrate factors that are important for stakeholders to address, permitting more targeted prevention efforts and more effective interventions for youth already involved in the justice system. given that youth who reoffend manifest risk factors in a number of domains of their lives, schools, families, community agencies, and children’s services are in a unique position to identify youth at risk and provide the opportunity to intervene early. this study was also limited by the heterogeneity of the subjects, who ranged from being diverted from the formal court process through extrajudicial measures to being serious habitual offenders. the entire sample was combined for the analysis, which was necessary given the relatively small total sample size (n = 123). though combining the groups increased the statistical power and allowed for greater variability in reoffending, heterogeneity of the group may have impacted the confidence interval that was used in reporting results in the study. further, since the original study focused on comparison among four distinct groups, ranging from youth diverted to extrajudicial measures, one-time offenders, chronic offenders (having five or more substantive incidents), and serious habitual offenders, youth who fell between one-time and chronic offenders were not studied. this may also have had an impact on the analysis. future studies of reoffending would benefit from a larger, more inclusive sample. conclusion the current study explored risk factors associated with reoffending among a sample of youth offenders in calgary, alberta. when considered together, these factors paint a picture of complex and disadvantaged youth who lack structure, support, and stability, and who require specialized, targeted interventions. youth reoffenders, particularly those who do so persistently, consume a disproportionate amount of youth justice system resources and have a significant impact on their victims. in an era when the youth criminal justice act and its effectiveness are under scrutiny, it is important to establish a comprehensive understanding of the youth who are impacted, or potentially impacted, by this legislation in an effort to ensure that well-informed policy and practice decisions are made. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 172-196 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 193 references alberta crime reduction and safe communities task force. 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(2010). criminal predictors and protective factors in a sample of young offenders: relationship to offending trajectories. toronto: ministry of children and youth services. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 1–2 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs104.1201919282 the crisis of syrian youth and child refugees in jordan: inside and outside refugee camps i am thankful for the opportunity to produce this special issue on refugees in jordan, and grateful to professor sibylle artz, editor of the international journal of child, youth and family studies, who motivated and encouraged me. the issue includes four articles that focus in general on the problems and challenges that are encountered by syrian youth and children who reside in jordan either inside or outside the refugee camps there. focusing on children and youth, both male and female, is important to the literature on syrian refugees in jordan because this age group has been neglected and overlooked by scholars since syrian refugees first fled to jordan in 2011. furthermore, the challenges and problems of children are both culturally critical and morally sensitive, and that is why this special issue has extra importance. in jordan’s conservative social and cultural environment, certain research topics relevant to the refugee camps are regarded as unlawful and prohibited: sexual harassment, underage marriage, child employment and exploitation, youth unemployment and deprivation, and other violations against children and youth. i use the term “crisis” to draw attention to the fact that the harsh living conditions endured by syrian refugee children and youth inside and outside the camps is a multidimensional existential problem. this problem lies in meeting essential needs like shelter, food, and security, and providing necessary psychological and social support. speaking of “crisis” attracts attention to a situation in which people feel that their identity is threatened. such feelings and awareness are accompanied by permanent fearfulness because identity represents the essence of existence and lifeworld. thus, only by supporting their full human rights is it possible to reduce the impact of crisis on refugees, especially child and youth refugees. the first article in this special issue, “manifestations of lifeworld crisis among syrian male youth in jordanian refugee camps”, explores the conditions faced by these youth in the za’atari refugee camp. based on habermas’ legitimation crisis theory, the authors employ four dimensions of the crisis: loss of meaning, psychological distress, anomie, and lack of gratification. to these the authors add coping strategies as a fifth dimension to explore youth responses to the conditions of the camp in everyday life. this article, which is based on a comprehensive examination of living in the camp, shows the extent to which the conditions in refugee camps indicate the absence of a commitment to youth human rights and serve only to destroy their present and future lives. the second article, “sexual harassment of syrian female youth in jordanian refugee camps”, highlights sexual harassment as one of the most sensitive topics in refugee camps, albeit one of the least discussed. this contribution is, in fact, a confrontation with both the mainstream culture and the authorities in the refugee camps. the lack of regulation and control in these camps international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 1–2 2 and the ubiquity of the sexual harassment, abuse, and violation that female youth are subjected to is in conflict not only with the law but also with public morals and values. this article focuses on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in the camps, the motivational environment of harassment, and the responses of females to this harassment and violation. although the jordanian press and some international agencies that work with refugees have previously recorded sexual harassment in refugees camps, this contribution documents the topic scientifically. the goal of the third article, “identity crisis and assimilation problems among syrian refugee women residing outside refugee camps in jordan”, is to highlight issues of social and cultural assimilation that young syrian refugee women encounter, and to reveal the causes of the identity crisis outside the refugee camps. highlighting the question of identity not only offers a great opportunity to understand the situation of refugees, but also provides necessary input for planning social and educational systems that facilitate assimilation, interaction, and unity on the basis of diversity. the authors of this article discuss four problematic issues of social and cultural assimilation experienced by syrian refugee women: (a) compatibility in community, (b) acceptance by others, (c) good social relationships, and (d) the similarity of customs and traditions. the issue’s final article, “refugee children in crisis: the challenges facing syrian refugee children residing outside refugee camps in jordan”, focuses on the economic, health, education, and social challenges tthat syrian children encounter outside the camps. the authors examination of these challenges shows to what extent the ways these children have been neglected has not received appropriate attention. many syrian children work for low wages to help meet their families’ economic needs, and are subject to exploitation and deprivation. because the children often work long hours in hard and unhealthy conditions, most are not able to continue their education. furthermore, they are unable to lead normal social lives that include friends and entertainment. these children are overburdened with an economic role that deprives them of their childhood, and this is the core of the crisis. these four articles provide an introduction to a critical approach toward the circumstances of syrian refugees. this approach focuses on the concept of crisis, which means that the miserable conditions of refugees are produced by the failure of social policy to provide refugee youth and children with real empowerment and opportunities to enhance their well-being and address their sociopsychological needs. in fact, we know very little about the conditions faced by child and youth refugees in jordan, so i trust that these courageous articles will provoke scholars’ attention to these sensitive, important, yet too often hidden topics. sincerely, mohammed al-hourani editor precious: the complexity of resilience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 346 film review: precious: the complexity of resilience reviewed by catherine taylor catherine taylor, is a graduate from the family relations and applied nutrition program at the university of guelph, and is currently completing her master's degree in child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: taylorca@uvic.ca lee daniels’ award-winning film, precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire is a powerful and controversial cinematic narrative of resilience. after its release at the 2009 sundance film festival, daniels recruited oprah winfrey and tyler perry as executive producers to help promote this independent, african-american art film (mask, 2012). precious was released nationwide on november 6 of that year, and won academy awards for best supporting actress (mo-nique) and best screenplay. the film is based on sapphire’s 1996 novel push, which tells the story of claireece “precious” jones, an overweight, illiterate, african-american 16 year old growing up in harlem in the 1980s. according to sapphire, in telling this story push does not beat people over the head with a heavy-handed political commentary, but instead opens people’s hearts (push pictures, 2009). as a faithful adaptation of push, the film portrays the world from precious’ perspective and, although understated, sapphire’s critical social commentary comes alive through precious’ story (push pictures, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 347 despite its commercial success (grossing over $63 million world-wide), precious is a highly controversial film and has instigated a “sociopolitical firestorm” (mask, 2012, p. 97). reviews range from descrbing the film as a “genuine work of art” (scott, 2009, para. 6) to a film full of deplorable stereotypes that highlight what the author jill nelson calls “black pathology” (as cited in reed, 2010, para. 2). one particularly scathing review argued that the film offers up precious’ misery “for the audience’s delectation [and the result is] something uncomfortably close to poverty porn” (stevens, 2009, para. 4). while these criticisms have merit, they have been thoroughly addressed in academic reviews elsewhere (e.g., mask, 2012). the current review focuses on precious as a unique case study of resilience. i argue that even with its flaws, precious goes far beyond the classic hollywood “rags-to-riches” fairy-tale narrative, and portrays the complex, socio-ecological nature of resilience. despite popular belief, research clearly demonstrates that resilience is not the result of extraordinary personality traits that enable certain exceptional people to overcome trauma (an idea frequently propagated by hollywood). instead, resilience is a dynamic, ecological process of adaptation within the context of considerable hardship (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000; masten, 2001). most recently, ungar (2013) conceptualized resilience as, “the capacity of both the individual and their environment to interact in ways that optimize the development process” (emphasis added, p. 256). this view values personal characteristics like motivation and agency, but asserts that resilience occurs when there is an “opportunity structure (an environment that facilitates accesses to resources) and a willingness by those who control resources to provide what individuals need in ways that are congruent with their culture” (ungar, 2013, p. 260). this review analyzes the film precious from the socio-ecological perspective of resilience and demonstrates that precious’ narrative captures the complexity, ambivalence, and dynamic nature of resilience. first, i argue that it is only after the character’s social ecology shifts that she begins to experience resilience and empowerment. secondly, i argue that the film rejects the idea of a binary movement from vulnerability to resilience. film summary through creative use of first person narration, voice-overs, fantasy sequences, and subjective camera angels, daniels gives viewers a glimpse into the inner life of claireece “precious” jones, an illiterate, obese, 16-year-old girl growing up in harlem in the 1980s. precious is pregnant with the second child resulting from sexual abuse by her biological father, who began abusing her at the age of 3. she lives with her abusive mother, mary, who is portrayed by daniels as nothing short of a monster. precious is kicked out of public school where she had been able to hide her illiteracy; she begins attending an alternative school called “each one teach one”. here, she discovers a supportive community and builds friendships with the eccentric girls in her ged class and her angelic, light-skinned teacher, ms. blue rain. ms. rain teaches precious how to read and write and cultivates precious’ voice by encouraging her to write in a daily journal and participate verbally in class. after leaving her abusive mother and moving into a halfway house with her newborn son, precious learns that her father died of hiv and that she has contracted the virus. shortly after receiving this news, precious confronts her mother, gains full custody of her two children (baby abdul and 4-year-old mongo, who has international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 348 down syndrome), and walks out of the social welfare office triumphantly, vowing to make a new life for her family. resilience as context-dependent as a result of the film’s intentional focus on the central character’s perspective, some critics have claimed that the film is “not an examination of social problems” but a story of precious’ personal strength and her ability to overcome trauma (e.g., scott, 2009, para. 10). by contrast, i would argue that precious’ story rejects this problematic and individualistic resilience narrative and captures the dynamic role of the socio-ecological context in facilitating resilience (ungar, 2013). daniels accomplishes this in two ways. first, he highlights the dominant structural and cultural systems that contribute to the character’s oppression. secondly, daniels uses fantasy sequences to demonstrate that while precious has always had a strong voice, it isn’t until she discovers the nurturing environment of “each one teach one” that she is able to express her voice and become resilient. from the outset of the film, we are exposed to the oppressive reality in which precious resides. she lives in the harlem ghetto in the 1980s when crack cocaine had started to decimate the neighbourhood; precious and her mother make frequent comments about the “damn crack heads” that keep ringing their buzzer. precious lives in poverty and falls through the cracks of the public school system. the influence of racism is also evident in the film; it becomes clear that precious has internalized dominant social norms as she repeatedly expresses a desire for a “light-skinned boyfriend”. in her journal she dreams of one day being “real skinny, with light skin and long hair”. in wellington’s (2010) review, he wrote that precious is aware of the “weight of whiteness – an intangible and insidious sense that society is rule by white privilege [and this is a] double burden upon the black poor” (para. 25). while daniels paints a clear picture of many of the environmental and structural forces that constrain precious’ ability to be resilient, his one-dimensional and villainous portrayal of mary (her mother) leaves little room for viewers to empathize with mary’s story or to understand the role of context in her ability to respond to adversity. it is troubling that mary is depicted as a “welfare queen”, a term ronald reagan (u.s. president from 1981 to 1989) used to describe a lazy woman who refused to get a job and took advantage of the social welfare system (blake, 2012). we do not learn mary’s story in the film, as it is the story of precious that is in the foreground. despite the missed opportunity to highlight the influence of context in mary’s life, we can clearly see how precious is marginalized and excluded by her context. in addition to this exclusion, precious experiences horrific abuse in her home. mary constantly berates precious, screaming, “you are a dummy bitch. you will never know shit. don’t nobody need you don’t nobody want you. i should have aborted your motherfucking ass”. while some critics have described precious as “a passive, if sensitive, receptor” (zacharek, 2009, para. 7) of this abuse, daniels’ creative use of fantasy sequences demonstrates that precious resists this oppression with strength, even if her resistance is initially confined to her fantasy world. in the midst of a fragmented but vivid flashback to her father raping her, the celling above precious disintegrates and she retreats into a dream world where she walks down a red carpet in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 349 a colourful gown. she is in complete control as the paparazzi beg for her attention. instead of passively submitting to her flashback, precious creates a world where she, an obese black teenager, is empowered, beloved and heard (kanagawa, 2012). without minimizing the significance of her resistance, this empowerment narrative is short-lived; her fantasy ends and precious re-enters the dark apartment where the abuse continues (kanagawa, 2012). precious’ empowerment is restricted to her fantasies as her oppressive environment constrains her capacity to be resilient. ungar (2013) writes that “the personal agency of individuals to navigate and negotiate for what they need is dependent upon the capacity and willingness of people’s social ecologies to meet those needs” (p. 256). while precious’ resistance is initially confined to her fantasies, when she starts attending “each one teach one”, her environment shifts and her empowerment narrative begins to take place in reality (kanagawa, 2012). as precious enters this classroom for the first time, ms. rain invites precious to sit at the front of the class, which kanagawa (2012) suggests is a space typically reserved for “normal girls” (p. 127). ms. rain then invites all the girls to share a little bit about themselves. precious speaks aloud in school for the first time: precious: “can i go?” ms. rain: nodding precious (voice-over): i wish i could sit at the back of the class again. precious: “my name is clarieece precious jones. i go by precious. i live in harlem, i like yellow … (stuttering) … i have problems at my other school so i come here.” ms. rain: “something you do well?” precious: “nothing” ms. rain: “everybodys’ good at something, come on.” precious: “well i can cook … and i never really talked in class before.” ms. rain: “how does that make you feel?” precious: “here. makes me feel here.” this moment marks the start of precious’ resilience as she discovers a space where she is seen and heard outside of her colourful fantasy world. by deciding to speak, precious “establishes her presence in the classroom” (kanagawa, 2012, p. 129); there is space for her to claim. to rutter, an advocate of the socio-ecological view of resilience, this moment constitutes a “turning point… when individuals encounter the serendipity of opportunity in otherwise impoverished environments” (as cited in ungar, 2013, p. 257). ms. rain teaches her class to read and write and encourages them to compose journals about their experiences. for the first time in her life, precious has access to language and she uses it to express her voice and develop agency. as precious is able to slowly re-author her story, her narrative becomes one of empowerment and resilience. when her mother attacks her (again) shouting, “you ruined my fucking life … you took my man and had those fucking babies”, precious verbally resists her mother’s story about her abuse and yells, “i ain’t stupid. i ain’t taking you man. your husband raped me”. here, for the first time, precious takes control over the narrative of her abuse. earlier in the film she had used her mother’s language and told her social worker, “my father gives me these babies” but she now calls it rape. precious takes her baby, leaves mary’s house, and moves into a halfway house. it is only as her environment shifts international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 350 that she is able to reject the “narrative of self-destruction that has been mapped out for her” (wellington, 2010, para. 13). ungar (2013) writes of “active nurturance by the environment that potentiates recovery from trauma [and] helps individuals resist the psychological burden caused by social marginalization” (p. 259). we see this clearly in precious: it is only when she finds a nurturing, challenging, and supportive environment at “each one teach one” that she is able to demonstrate resilience. instead of dreaming of being on the cover of a magazine and having a “light skinned boyfriend”, precious begins to ground her dreams in reality: “i’m going to read to this baby too. and hang colours on his wall. listen baby, mother not dumb, mother love you”. resilience is not static in his book about redemption, mcadams (2006) writes that “we live in a society that expects, even demands, happy endings to tough stories” (p. 230). this sentiment is captured as sandberg, barrera, and volino-robinson (2010) comment, “the film challenges us to endure discomfort while watching scenes of violent abuse, yet throughout the process we are rewarded with an undeniable thread of hope – a happy ending” (p. 329). many film critics have concluded that precious is a film about transformation; reviewers suggest that we witness the character’s movement from silence to voice, from oppression to empowerment, from passivity to agency (berardinelli, 2009; scott, 2009). similarly, oprah winfrey, who has beed called the “queen of redemption” as she personifies the rags-to-riches narrative (mcadams, 2006), promotes the film as a redemptive journey to empowerment. while precious is inspirational, i disagree with these reviewers (and oprah). kanagawa (2012) has argued that precious can be read as a dialectical narrative that disturbs the idea of a teleological progression from girlhood “risk” to “girl power”. here, i extend kanagawa’s (2012) argument and examine how the film rejects the idea that resilience is a linear transition from vulnerability to empowerment. the resilience faciliatated by shifts in precious’ environment as she engages in a continuous struggle to resist oppression. the constant tension between the narratives of oppression and resilience is most evident when the setting changes from a bright, colourful celebration held because precious has won a litaracy award to a cement room where mary tells precious that her father has died of hiv and that precious probably has ‘the virus’ as well. her developing resilience is eclipsed as precious retreats once again into her fantasy world. the abrupt transition back to fantasy is jarring and as kanagawa (2012) writes, “when precious tests positive for the virus, she literally embodies her trauma, bringing past experiences of social and seuxal victimization and powerlessness into the heart of her empowerment narrative” (p. 130). kanawaga (2012) highlights how precious’ subjectivity must be constantly defended and supported, and the same can be said of her resilience. after precious receives her diagnosis, ms. rain tries to affirm that precious is loved and precious says, “please don’t lie to me. nobody done nothing for me. just beat me. rape me, call me an animal, make me feel worthless. make me feel sick”. ms. rain responds by placing the pen into precious’ hand and says, “write”, urging precious to resist powerful forces of oppression and continue to discover resilience. this dichotomous movement between oppression and resilience is both dynamic and ambivalent. resilience is not a static destination where precious arrives; this is consistent with the literature international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 351 suggesting that resilience shifts across the lifespan (hauser, allen, & golden, 2006; masten, 2001). even in the final “triumphant” scene of the film, as precious walks away from mary with her children on her hips, determined to finish her education and be a good mother, we are haunted by an understanding that she is likely to fail as systems of oppression “cannot simply be overcome or trimuphed over because they are embedded in society” (kanawaga, 2012, p. 130). intertwined with her narrative of resilience is a narrative of constant oppression: despite her determination, she remains single, homeless, black, and hiv-positive, a 16-year-old mother living in an economically ravaged ghetto. conclusions the novelist sapphire set out to tell the story of claireece “precious” jones and let the social commentary emerge from the character’s narrative of resilience. this review has demonstrated that despite its flaws, daniels’ film precious does just this. the film resists simplistic, fairy-tale notions of resilience that overemphasize personal characteristics, and instead tells a story of resilience that is congruent with ungar’s (2001) socio-ecological model. initially consigned to her fantasy world, precious’ voice emerges in reality when she finds a supportive environment at “each one teach one”. although precious discovers an environment that facilitates her resilience, her story is not a classic hollywood tale of redemption as the oppressive forces of poverty, classism, racism, and sexism are imbedded in the fabric of society and will continue to constrain her ability to be resilient. precious serves as an excellent case study of resilience. the film demands that we examine the role of social ecology in the development of resilience and avoid blaming individuals for not thriving when there are few opportunities and limited access to resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 352 references berardinelli, j. (2009, november 3). precious [review of the film precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire]. reelviews. retrieved from http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1851 blake, j. (2012, january 23). return of the “welfare queen”. cnn politics. retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/23/politics/weflare-queen/ daniels, l. (director); perry, t., & winfrey, o. (producers). (2009). precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire [motion picture]. united states: lionsgate studio. hauser, s. t., allen, j. p., & golden, e. (2006). out of the woods: tales of resilient teens. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. kanagawa, k. m. (2012). dialectical mediation: the play of fantasy and reality in precious. black camera, 4(1), 117–138. luthar, s. s., cicchetti, d., & becker, b. (2000). the construct of resilience: a critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. child development, 71(3), 543–562. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00164 mask, m. (2012). the precarious politics of precious: a close reading of a cinematic text. black camera, 4(1), 96–116. masten, a. s. (2001). ordinary magic. resilience processes in development. the american psychologist, 56(3), 227–238. doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.56.3.227 mcadams, d. p. (2006). the redemptive self: stories americans live by. new york: oxford university press. push pictures. (2009). precious: based on the novel push (sapphire interview). retrieved december 6, 2013, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj5gbfecrfw reed, i. (2010, febrauary 5). fade to white. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05reed.html?_r=1 sandberg, k. l., barrera, a. m., & volino-robinson, r. (2010). precious. journal of feminist family therapy, 22(4), 319–332. scott, a. o. (2009, november 5). howls of a life, buried deep within [review of the film precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire]. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/movies/06precious.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05reed.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/movies/06precious.html dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.4.1.117 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.4.1.96 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15427609.2006.9683363 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2010.526074 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2): 346–353 353 stevens, d. (2009, november 5). precious: sorry i didn’t like this movie [review of the film precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire]. slate. retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2009/11/precious.html ungar, m. (2013). resilience, trauma, context, and culture. trauma, violence, & abuse, 14(3), 255–266. doi: 10.1177/1524838013487805 ungar, m. t. (2001). constructing narratives of resilience with high-risk youth. journal of systemic therapies, 20(2), 58–73. doi: 10.1521/jsyt.20.2.58.23040 wellington, d. l. (2010, march 8). sex, race, and precious. dissent: a quarterly of politics and culture. retrieved from http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/sex-raceand-precious zacharek, s. (2009, november 5). “precious” mettle [review of the film precious: based on the novel “push” by sapphire]. salon. retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2009/11/05/precious/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818640 health-related family quality of life when a child or young person has a disability margaret r. kyrkou abstract: parents of a child or young person with disability face not only the same challenges as parents of typically developing children and young people, but also the extra challenges of supporting the child or young person with disability in such a way as to maximise both their own quality of life (qol) and family quality of life (fqol) for all family members. health-related quality of life (hrqol) encompasses not only physical health but also mental and emotional health, equally important for fqol. this article builds on information from previous publications, and illustrates relevant issues and the innovative methods parents, caregivers, and professionals have devised to enhance the hrqol for children and young people with disability, and to improve fqol. the author draws upon her personal lived experiences of having two daughters, the eldest an adult with disability, as well as being the medical consultant and manager of a newly created health unit tasked with supporting students with disability, who often have high health needs, in educational settings. the health conditions selected are those that have a major impact, not only on the young person with disability but also on family members. vignettes, all deidentified true stories, will be included to illustrate the multiple issues faced by children and young people with disability, their families and extended families, and treating clinicians. these stories will hopefully resonate with families in particular. keywords: health, disability, quality of life, family quality of life, health-related quality of life margaret kyrkou oam; mbbs, phd is a part-time lecturer in disability and community inclusion, flinders university, gpo box 2100, adelaide 5001, south australia, australia. email: margaret.kyrkou@flinders.edu.au mailto:margaret.kyrkou@flinders.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 50 until the early 1970s, health research focused on the population health statistics of mortality and morbidity (thacker et al., 2006), rather than considering individual quality of life (qol) or family quality of life (fqol). miilunpalo, vuori, oja, pasanen, and urponen (1997) claimed self-rated health status to be a health measure, with self-reported health status predictive of the use of physician services, and of mortality in the working-age population. although this can be equally applicable to children and young people with intellectual and developmental disability (idd), in cases where the child or young person is unable to communicate, reporting relies on observant parents or caregivers. although cummins, gullone, and lau (2002) warned proxy interpretations by a parent or caregiver might not reflect what the person with idd would have chosen to communicate if able, sigelman, budd, spanhel, and schoenrock (1981) claimed that the reliability of self-reporting by people with disability had not been adequately explored; such exploration could better inform efforts to measure self-assessed health-related quality of life (hrqol) by people who have cognitive impairments. until 2001, there was an assumption that disability had to be associated with poor health, but the world health organization’s international classification of functioning, disability and health (icf; 2001) reflected the fact that a person can be disabled but healthy, and introduced the concept that personal participation is an important component of health. for example, a child may have diplegic cerebral palsy (cp), and be unable to walk independently, but may otherwise be healthy if provided with opportunities to participate. the special olympics and paralympics provide many examples of people who have a disability but are able to participate with support. purpose of this article this article is a collation of information and experience that i have gained in a number of ways, including working in a children’s hospital child development unit performing developmental assessments, and working in preschools and schools, particularly special preschools and schools, responding to health-related and disability-related questions from parents and school staff. i was also involved in negotiating health support plans when there was disagreement between parental expectations and what education staff were permitted to do; in other cases, i was able to provide information about referral and treatment options for complex disability and medical situations. additionally, my background includes working with parents, caregivers, teachers, and clinicians in relation to children and young people at the centre for disability health in south australia1, serving on disability-related committees, presenting nationally and internationally at disability conferences, and lecturing in disability studies at flinders university, as well as completing graduate degrees in disability studies. 1 https://dhs.sa.gov.au/services/disability-services/centre-for-disability-health https://dhs.sa.gov.au/services/disability-services/centre-for-disability-health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 51 the intention of this article is to provide as much practical information as possible, including information useful to families trying to support their person with disability as best they can. such information may give them understanding and realistic hope for the future, providing their child or young person with disability does not have a degenerative condition, in which case the trajectory might be different. as published papers and books do not always offer the up-todate simple practical information families are searching for, a number of vignettes are included later in the article. these focus in particular on autism spectrum disorder (asd) and the anxiety usually associated with it. the vignettes all represent true situations, and are written from the perspective of the families. they have been selected to give a better understanding of the impact of health conditions on fqol when there is a person with disability. clinicians who have not had more than brief contact with people with asd tend not to fully appreciate the impact of having a child or young person with asd on fqol. quality of life for the past thirty years, increasing awareness of qol has become an important focus in providing support and planning interventions for people with idd (brown & faragher, 2014a). there are many definitions of qol in the general population, but in the field of idd it is commonly regarded as relating to well-being (social, emotional, and material) as well as health, intimacy, safety, productivity, and community (brown & faragher, 2014b). a child or young person with idd is claimed to have adequate qol when their basic needs are met and they are able to pursue and achieve objectives in major life settings. of particular importance to people with idd are fqol (zuna, brown, & brown, 2014) and the subject of this article, health-related family quality of life (hrfqol). family quality of life fqol has become an increasingly important topic of study with regard to families of a person with idd. numerous fqol studies have been carried out in some 25 countries around the world (parmenter, 2014) using two main information-gathering tools, the beach center family quality of life scale (beach center on disability, 2005), and the family quality of life survey-2006 (brown et al., 2006). most of these studies have examined fqol from the perspective of the main caregiver (usually the mother), and their main findings have been compared through collaborative research roundtables (isaacs et al., 2007). in the past several years, the culmination of qol and fqol research within the idd field has been highlighted in two special journal issues (brown, 2006; kober &wang, 2011, 2012). several key findings inform the approach of using fqol as a foundation for support-based interventions. families without a child with a disability scored higher (i.e., better) on qol domains than families of children with disabilities; however, when comparing children with asd against children with down syndrome (ds), families of children with asd scored much lower than those of children with ds across a majority of the qol domains. external factors (e.g., lack of community services and supports), and internal family factors (e.g., family characteristics) may also impact international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 52 fqol. a child with depression seems to be more challenging to maintaining fqol than does the occurrence of idd alone. researchers also highlighted characteristics such as problem solving, family sense of coherence, positive coping, and positive adaptation as helpful in managing family life and a child with idd. such positive aspects illustrate that families do find ways to positively manage day-to-day life and remain resilient. this finding also supports earlier research in which some families noted experiencing positive perceptions as a result of having a child with a disability. an overview of fqol studies makes it apparent that families around the world respond to fqol measurement tools in much more similar ways than might be anticipated, considering the wide diversity in culture and availability of services as well as economic differences (brown, kyrkou, & samuel, 2016). although raising a family is never without issues and challenges, this is compounded by having children with severe or multiple disabilities. the development of deinstitutionalisation and community inclusion has meant that more parents have again had to take on the primary support role for their offspring with disabilities. the past 20 years have led to a tremendous growth in fqol-related literature based on practice and research, to the emergence of various methods of family support not previously considered necessary, and to consequent changes in policy and practice, including the development of partnerships between parents and practitioners. these developments rely to a large degree on mutual support and cooperation amongst a wide range of authorities whose personnel work with people with disabilities, but the impact of the changes on parents and siblings should be the primary consideration. brown, kyrkou, and samuel (2016) also reported that “fqol includes many concepts and principles, is lifespan in orientation, and requires a seamless service relevant to the health and viability of the family as a whole” (p. 2065). at the same time, fqol is an emerging field of practice requiring ongoing research. data from over 20 countries using the fqol survey-2006 (brown et al., 2006) indicate that the vast majority of mothers who have a child with idd are expected to take on more responsibility than they want, leaving less time for the father and siblings (turnbull, brown, & turnbull, 2004). the nature of disability over the past century has changed significantly due to medical and allied health interventions, education, and, more recently, inclusion of people with disabilities into general society. although this has brought many gains, most parents now have responsibility for the care of their children with idd from birth onwards; they also know that their children are likely to live longer than would once have been the case, and will need educating for adult life. improvements in their qol, and therefore personal development, could mean that some children with idd who survive to adulthood can manage without the total support from parents and health authorities which they would otherwise require. the nature of idd implies the need to ensure that the fqol is preserved, necessitating integrated and inclusive services involving health, social and community services, and education — a challenge requiring changes in policy development. the changing nature of disability, with increasing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 53 severity in some cases along with an increasing lifespan, has implications for the survival and effective functioning of the family as a whole. health-related quality of life and its measurement the literature contains many articles that include “hrqol” in the title but do not offer a definition. where the term “disability” is also included, it is in the context of a disabling physical condition, not idd. efficace and colleagues (2003) claimed there was broad agreement that hrqol referred to the physical, psychological, and social functioning of patients, and to the impacts of disease and its treatment on their abilities and social functioning. according to the centers for disease control and prevention (2011), hrqol can be divided into two levels. the first, the individual level, includes both “physical and mental health perceptions (e.g., energy level, mood); and their correlates, including health risks and conditions, functional status, social support, and socioeconomic status” (para. 4). the second level, the community level, encompasses the “resources, conditions, policies, and practices that influence a population’s health perceptions and functional status” (para. 4). the “gold standard” of generic hrqol measures is the medical outcomes short form-36 (sf-36; krahn et al., 2009), with scores on the eight domains of physical functioning, role-physical, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional, and mental health, plus two summary scores for physical health and mental health. in spite of being considered the gold standard, the sf-36 is less applicable to people with idd, because the physical domain includes questions regarding walking, climbing, kneeling, and lifting, without any distinction between long-term physical impairment and recent deterioration. many people with idd participating in the special olympics and paralympics would probably score low on the sf-36, despite being generally healthy. from health-related quality of life to health-related family quality of life when a family member has a severe, profound, or multiple disability, the impact on the family calls for considerable social community support, as well as effective health and education services. the associated stress may place parents in very difficult circumstances, sometimes resulting in a family living apart from other relatives, or a single mother not having extended family available to provide help. policies have to be developed that take into account not only the needs of the child, but the needs of and resources required by other family members. for example, siblings need to have appropriate opportunities in their own lives in terms of family living, education, and social life. although many countries have developed inclusive education, they have found that some individuals cannot be managed in regular schools. consequently families, generally the mother, are asked to take their child or young person home to protect education staff from abuse, but that policy leaves the mother herself very vulnerable to being verbally and physically abused at home. consider the impact on the family of having a child or young person unable to weightbear or walk. unfortunately, in many such families, a single parent, generally the mother, has to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 54 exist on social services because of limited work options, and cannot afford extra help or equipment. to protect staff from injury, services require all lifting of students or clients to be done using hoists, or if not available, with two-person lifts. in contrast, when the student or client arrives home, it is often the single mother who has to manually lift her son or daughter out of the bus or taxi into a wheelchair. imagine attempting a shopping trip with the child under such circumstances, and contrast that with the ease with which most of us get out of the car, take our typically developing child by the hand, quickly make our purchase, and walk back to the car. parent support groups are often used to meet the emotional and informational needs of families. singer et al. (1999) conducted a multisite evaluation of parent-to-parent support groups, and found that families who are supported by other families in parent-to-parent mentorships achieved greater gains in coping mechanisms, attitudes, and meeting their primary needs than did families lacking parent mentors. parents of children with asd benefitted by sharing and learning from one another, and supporting and accepting one another, as well as learning instructional strategies, communication methods, and behavioural techniques. parent support groups are also a positive source of support for parents of children and young people more recently diagnosed with disability, in that some members will have considerable family life experience and know many informal ways to improve their fqol. they also may have valuable recommendations for improving policy and practice. many families cope well, possibly due to a number of relevant variables such as family values and attitudes, confidence, family coherence, and problem-solving abilities — properties that seem to enable parents and other family members to deal with stress and present what can be termed individual and family resilience. a study by brown, kyrkou, and samuel (2016) reported that when there is a child with idd, “fathers as a rule have very strong feelings and frequently seek ways to support the rest of the family” (p. 2074). they did acknowledge, however, that most informants were mothers; from personal observation, this is not much different to families without a person with idd, as there is usually a preponderance of mothers at parent-teacher interviews and other daytime meetings or functions. when taking my daughter back to her accommodation, i was initially surprised when her house manager stated that my husband and i were “an odd couple”, by which she meant we were still together as a family. in my work role, my experience of fathers of children and young people with idd, mostly asd, has been different. i estimate that approximately 50% of those fathers lived with and supported their family, the other 50% of mothers reported that their husbands had left the marriage when their child with asd was a toddler. the mothers’ descriptions of their husbands in many instances suggested that they also had asd. the researchers also recognised that family attention may be diverted from other family members because of the needs of the individual with disability. many families have to cope with a family member temporarily under stress or in ill health, but when it is prolonged and associated with a child with multiple disabilities and behavioural challenges, such as a child with asd, it becomes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 55 a major issue for fqol, sometimes resulting in some family members moving out of the family home. for mothers in particular, chronic tiredness is a major issue because of constantly having to advocate for services and take the child or young person to appointments, as well as their child or young person not sleeping well through the night. a mother requires sufficient time for other members of the family, and to meet and sustain her personal major interests and needs. without this, her physical and mental health and that of other family members is likely to be compromised. the mental health needs of family members may need to be addressed to limit impacts on family members that would complicate intervention and support. a clinical description does little if anything to convey the impact on the family of a child or young person with disability and related health issues, and clinicians who have not had more than brief contact with children and young people with asd tend not to fully appreciate the impact on hrfqol. this problem becomes more urgent in light of the reports of an apparent increasing incidence of asd, but evidence for the increase is controversial, with gillberg (1999), and wing and potter (2002) both suggesting the apparent increase is due to changing diagnostic criteria, and increasing awareness of asd. gillberg (1999) reviewed studies from 1966 to 1997, finding rates of 0.5 per 1,000 in those born before 1970, but higher rates of 1 per 1,000 in those born after that. in 2006, gillberg, cederlund, lamberg and zeijlon assessed all children in gothenburg sweden, born between 1977 and 1994, finding a rate of 2.05 per 1,000 for the whole cohort, but in those children 7 to 12 years old, the prevalence was 1.23 per 1,000. wing and potter (2002) pointed out that for decades after kanner published his original paper in 1943, autism was considered to be rare, with a prevalence of 2 to 4 per 10,000. however, studies in the late 1990s and in the current century are indicating annual increases, of up to 6 per 1,000 for autism, and even more for autism spectrum disorder, which includes asperger syndrome. i hope the vignettes in the following section prove useful in understanding the impact on hrfqol of having a family member with disability, especially asd. the early years during pregnancy, most parents are anticipating an uneventful delivery of a healthy baby. particularly with the firstborn, even if typically developing, parents worry about minor changes in breathing, feeding, sleeping, movement, or bowels. some parents become aware before or soon after birth that their baby has a disability, others bond before being made aware their baby has a disability. unfortunately, i have met many parents who realised their child had something wrong, but could not get clinicians to recognise this until months or even years later. consequently their child missed out on early intervention services, and the parents were not able to access appropriate information and support, including financial support. in the early years in particular, talking to other parents facing the same issues is very important psychologically, offering the added benefit of information exchange. although there are numerous forms of disability, i have featured children and young people with asd, and the anxiety usually international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 56 associated with it, in many of the vignettes below because of their unpredictable anxiety responses, and extreme meltdowns. parents of children with idd, and particularly asd, have admitted to running themselves ragged trying to get as much therapy and education as possible into their young child, as clinicians have told them that what their child has not learnt by five years of age, their child would never learn. i have had the opportunity to observe students in my daughter’s special school continuing to develop through their school years, and onto post-school options, whereas paediatric clinicians who are not also parents of people with disability generally do not have the same opportunity. parents and caregivers have sometimes reported that information in books, even those relating to people with idd, does not reflect what they are observing. because treating clinicians who do not have long term exposure to people with idd have to be guided by the literature, when parents give history not consistent with the literature, there is a disappointing tendency for their observations to be discounted. a young child with idd initially attended a day centre for children with cp, but once she began walking at 22 months, the service no longer suited her. to be enrolled in a special preschool, she had to be registered with a specific government disability agency, where she was offered in-home therapy. the therapist soon realised she was very adept at avoidance. when she did not want to cooperate, which was often, she would sing, and everyone would be so taken with her melodic singing voice that they overlooked the fact that it was avoidance behaviour. alerted to it, the family was no longer distracted by her avoidant singing. intellectual and developmental disability versus autism spectrum disorder i became aware from my formal development assessment training that, except for those children and young people with degenerative conditions, the child or young person with idd progresses through the same developmental pathway as typically developing children and young people, albeit more slowly, and they continue this mostly predictable progress through adulthood. over the years i have become very aware of many children and young people who were known to have idd, and had been assessed for suspected asd when young, but whose parents had been told their child did not have asd. some clinicians dispute the need for a second label, but from my personal experience, for the first 14 years of my daughter’s life with a diagnosis of idd, clinicians and our family struggled with her resistance to complying, and her lack of imitation skills. our family’s worst experience came when our daughter was 4 years old, and a respected psychologist demonstrated how to control her resistance, by placing her face down on the carpet, and pinning her down by kneeling on either side of her body. as soon as she was released, she consistently went back to what she was doing. when she was diagnosed with asd at 14, the management difficulties we had experienced largely disappeared because we understood the underlying mechanisms, and approached the issues differently. an example of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 57 our changed approach was to wait longer for her to process a request, such as getting out of the car, and not to repeat the request using different words, as she would then have to process the new wording. i saw a number of teenagers with idd referred to the centre for disability health for a psychiatric assessment of challenging behaviour. most had been assessed for asd when young, but their parents had been told their child did not have asd. taking a history often brought to light a number of features of asd, and a diagnosis of asd would then be confirmed by accredited clinicians. being able to explain to parents that the behavioural difficulties were mostly due to asd, and helping them work out strategies to improve fqol for all, or referring the teenager to a psychologist, meant only a few teenagers still required psychiatric services. the mother of a 15-year-old female with idd and severe epilepsy who was returning to school after many years of home schooling made a simple comment: “i don’t know how i am going to convince her not to have her hair washed on tuesday mornings.” i had known the student and her mother for many years, and knew the mother did not make exaggerated claims. this passing comment led me to ask more questions about possible asd, leading to a diagnosis. the confirmation of asd meant her needs at school were better understood. the father of a 5-year-old boy with idd rang me in panic one afternoon, saying his son with idd had tried to kill his younger brother, and the parents were afraid to keep the 5-year-old at home any more. it turned out that the boy always watched a disney movie at midday on sunday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. he turned on the television, and his program came on, but when he only saw black-and-white instead of colour, he went into blind panic mode, and ran away from the television. he was oblivious to his younger brother being in his way. the boy was awaiting an assessment for asd, so the father was not worried when i mentioned asd as the possible cause of the episode. the same boy’s mother recounted an episode where she could not understand what had gone wrong. her son had been attending speech pathology without incident for many months, but she felt very embarrassed when he screamed continuously for two successive sessions. talking it through, she realised that the speech pathologist had usually worn a black skirt, but on one of the two days she had worn a red skirt, and on the second day she had changed her hairstyle: she had not realised that children with asd do not cope well with even minor change. i was asked to visit a 3-year-old girl because of the child and family health nurse’s concerns that she might have asd. the backyard had a very high fence, and there were graders working close by. her siblings ran to the fence and climbed up, but the girl ran to the swing, signalling for her mother to push her up high. as soon as she was as high as the top of the fence, she turned to look over the fence. she had an asd assessment, but was not given a diagnosis of asd. at the age of six years, school staff re-referred her for an asd assessment, and she was diagnosed with asperger syndrome. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 58 i had just completed a developmental assessment on a 3-year-old boy. as he was leaving he grabbed a toy car from the table, but his mother made him put it back. he picked up a ball and walked out into the waiting area, but then, as i anticipated, he came back through the door of the consulting room, approached the table, threw the ball to the other end of the room, grabbed the car, and ran off. when his mother took the car from him, he had a meltdown; he was subsequently confirmed to have asd. a 9-year-old aboriginal boy with idd attending a special school had repeatedly attempted to run away by jumping a high fence bordering a busy road. school staff attributed this behaviour to the fact that he was aboriginal, as stories of aboriginal people absconding had often appeared in the media. i did not suspect that he had asd until he had to have blood taken. it was difficult to get blood from him, but he sat silently until it was finished, then went out into the passage, going onto his knees and just rocking silently. a child with idd screams under those circumstances, unlike this boy, and a subsequent asd checklist showed many features of asd. his running away took on a different meaning when staff realised it was due to asd, anxiety, and sensory overload. with his difficulties being better understood, and with appropriate therapy, he matured into a capable teenager, participating successfully in the special olympics. communication, qol, and fqol facilitating a person with idd to communicate is the underlying basis for enhancing qol, improving the person’s self-image, self-esteem, and social-emotional development. improved capacity for communication may lead to the person being able to indicate symptoms of health problems earlier, potentially reducing their long-term impact. many people with asd seem to expect others to know what is wanted without having to indicate. if the child or young person with asd does indicate by pointing, it is not the customary clear gesture using the index finger, but rather a hand vaguely indicating the direction of what is wanted. in my experience it is often more useful to observe the eye movements of the person with asd, realising that the child or young person may only focus briefly on the desired object and not look at it again. not getting needs met is one cause of a meltdown in a person with asd; another is being told “no” to a request (sometimes terms such as “not jumping” may get less reaction). unfortunately meltdowns can last for hours, and are often noisy, impacting adversely on fqol. some parents and clinicians are unaware of the many, mostly nonverbal, behaviours that precede spoken language, but also are of the opinion that a child with idd taught to sign will never learn to speak. on the contrary, the use of signing helps the child understand the number of syllables in the words being learnt, and helps the development of words. parents have spoken of taking their child with idd and asd to a clinician or therapist, pleased at the nonverbal progress their child has made, including using consistent vowel sounds in a word, such as “ee” for “cheese”. they feel deflated and belittled when it becomes obvious the clinician or therapist does not recognise the progress the child has made because the child is not using clear words appropriately. many children and young people with asd do not understand that using international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 59 deliberate communication, even if nonverbal, would convey their needs more effectively and lead to less frustration and fewer meltdowns. paediatricians and paediatric registrars2 who have completed formal developmental assessment training are more likely to recognise the significance of preverbal skills. a paediatric registrar who had just completed developmental assessment training in our unit relayed his experience in a gastroenterology unit. during the ward round he realised the 3-year-old patient was not speaking, but that fact had been overlooked with the focus on the child’s gastrointestinal tract. in the longer term, the lack of communication would possibly have been more of a problem for both the child and family than the gastrointestinal disorder. hospital, medical, and therapy services hospitals are an important service for children and young people with disability who require medical or therapeutic supports, but there can be lack of continuity of clinicians when the child or young person is not being managed by a dedicated unit for children and young people with disability. although some admissions are planned in advance, many are the result of acute admissions through the emergency department, which means the patient is admitted to whichever ward has a vacant bed. once my daughter was admitted in the early evening, after a prolonged seizure, and was still febrile, and thus at risk of further seizures. as she was wheeled into the geriatric ward, the charge nurse came out to say she couldn’t possibly go into the ward, as she would wake up the elderly patients; she had to go into the side room. needless to say, i stayed the night, dozing in an uncomfortable lounge chair. the following day a nurse was allocated to “special” her, which meant keeping an eye on her all the time. that afternoon, as i walked out of the lift i happened to see a patient in a white gown running fast down the long corridor, followed at a distance by a nurse. my daughter was very fast at seizing an opportunity to escape, often catching the person looking after her by surprise. she would not stay in bed once awake, even at home, and she was too strong to try walking alongside holding her hand. while she still fitted into her stroller, i walked her along the corridors in that, but after that i had to wait for a vacant wheelchair. one day an elderly patient was getting into the ward wheelchair, which my daughter thought should be for her; she was going to try to wrest it from the woman until i intervened. ten years ago my daughter developed marked muscle weakness, so had her own wheelchair to take to hospital. waiting for appointments was always challenging with my daughter. when she was young the neurology department had a large rocking horse that she loved, but she didn’t understand why she had to share it with other children also waiting. when she had an appointment with her ear, nose, and throat specialist she was too noisy to be in the waiting area when hearing tests were being done, so we walked up and down stairs and along the outside 2 in the australian medical system, a registrar is a doctor who has completed a residency and has joined a specialist training program. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 60 balconies until we were called for her appointment. ringing ahead of such appointments to check whether one should arrive later reduces stress on everyone. medication people with asd tend to be very sensitive to medication dosages, but doctors who have not had experience with people with asd assume their ability to tolerate medication is no different from that of people in the general population, so they prescribe the recommended doses, sometimes resulting in serious side effects. increasing and decreasing medication dosages also needs to be done more slowly than for patients in the general population. in the early years, my daughter had frequent major seizures (status seizures) for which she was taken to emergency by ambulance, and often admitted. she was on sodium valproate (epilim), and carbamazepine (tegretol), with both doses being gradually increased in hospital. she was very agile, and usually had no difficulty getting herself up from the floor, but on two occasions about two hours after her night doses of medication, she could not get off the floor, and her pupils were very dilated. another night she was all right when she went to bed, but an hour or so later we heard highpitched screaming that reminded me of patients with cerebral irritability. the screaming increased when we touched her, or the ambulance officers tried to check her pupils. she was then heavily sedated and was so non-responsive overnight that we worried about what she might be like when she woke up. fortunately she was all right, but her neurologist noted that with the two earlier episodes her carbamazepine level was 41 (recommended range 20–40), and with the cerebral irritability her level was 43. medically we would not be concerned about those levels when they were only minimally above the recommended range. the neurologist decided to gradually withdraw her carbamazepine but she had so much trouble with withdrawal seizures that he decided to keep her on a lower dose. each time she was taken to emergency with a seizure, her blood levels would be checked, and her carbamazepine levels were low, so the dose was appropriately increased. three weeks later (the time interval until the increased dose would be effective), school staff contacted me to see if her dose could be reduced again, as she was so hyperactive. she was also hyperactive at home, and went from being a good sleeper to having difficulty sleeping. this is just one example of the many medication interactions and reactions my daughter has had. medical conditions there is a tendency for any health or behavioural issues to be dismissed by clinicians as just being part of the child or young person’s disability, and therefore not requiring specific treatment. some conditions are more common in children and young people with certain disabilities, but they still require specific management, while other conditions occur with the same frequency as in the general population. as early as 1995, beange, mcelduff, and baker published a population study of the medical disorders of adults with mental retardation, showing, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 61 for example, that up to 50% had undiagnosed and untreated vision or hearing defects. dr. helen beange was one of the first doctors to integrate clinical practice with research in the idd field. epilepsy in families without a child or young person with disability, events can generally be expected to occur as planned, without the need for contingency plans. children can confidently look forward to their birthday parties, knowing they will happen. in families with a child with disability who may require emergency management, on the other hand, parents often attempt to avoid building up expectations when they cannot guarantee that an event such as a party will happen. when my second daughter was in preschool, she was asked to be a model for development assessment training. although she performed very well, the assessor expressed surprise that she did not know when her birthday was, but understood why when i explained we avoided building up too much anticipation because her birthday was in the summer, when our daughter with disability was more prone to having seizures requiring urgent admission to hospital. families with a child or young person with idd and epilepsy soon learn to work around whatever happens, often having to change plans at the last minute. for example, one january, family from another state were arriving to celebrate my elder daughter’s birthday that night. as it happened, a heat wave occurred and the air conditioning in her accommodation broke down. having fever-aggravated seizures, she had a major seizure and was transported to hospital by ambulance. emergency department staff knew her quite well from previous attendances, and knew that her seizures persisted if she was febrile. she was given rectal paracetamol (acetaminophen) only, even though i pointed out that she was still very stiff and probably going to have a further seizure. a short time later, she did indeed have another seizure, with the consultant unsuccessfully trying to insert an intravenous line into my daughter’s jerking body. my suggestion of giving intramuscular midazolam was gratefully accepted by the consultant, and two hours later we all enjoyed celebrating her birthday with family. things many families take for granted in terms of planning, such as holidays, cannot be taken for granted when there is a person with idd and epilepsy in the family. the unpredictability of seizures in children and young people causes difficulties for families, including not being able to travel by plane, or travel too far from medical support in case the child or young person should have a major seizure. consider the situation of a single mother of four young girls, separated because of her husband’s violence and abuse. her youngest daughter has severe epilepsy requiring transfer to hospital, frequently at night. the three girls are too young to be left at home alone, and the ambulance is unable to wait for the maternal grandmother to get there, so the sisters have to go to hospital with their mother, following the ambulance, and taking their sister’s wheelchair, which the ambulance cannot. having been up most of the night, the sisters are too tired to go to school the next day, but their sister is usually kept in hospital several days, so their grandmother has to pick them up and look after them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 62 the father of a young boy with cp and epilepsy was sitting in a shopping centre, with his son in his wheelchair, waiting for a taxi to take them home. they could not afford a car, as neither parent was able to work when they had to be on call to go to their son’s school if he had a major seizure, and there were two younger children at home with no options for them to be looked after at short notice. when the boy had a major seizure, his father was able to bring it under control rapidly by administering intranasal midazolam; then he sat nursing his son until he recovered. the father said he got some odd stares from people but that didn’t bother him — he was just relieved his son didn’t need to go to hospital by ambulance. if his son had needed an ambulance, it would not have been able to take his son’s wheelchair. the father would have had to take the wheelchair to the hospital in a taxi at full fare because his son wasn’t travelling. tube feeding the advent of tube feeding for people with swallowing difficulties has revolutionised their medical care, with improved qol and longevity. during the middle to late 1980s (minard, 2006), the practice arose of placing feeding tubes surgically for better results. since then there has been little change in the protocols, although placement has been enhanced by endoscopic, radiologic, and laparoscopic modifications. over the past two or three decades, medical progress has been such that increasingly premature babies have survived, but many had cp and breathing or swallowing difficulties. many of these babies had weak cough reflexes, so that food and fluid went into the lungs (aspiration) instead of down the oesophagus to the stomach. this often caused pneumonia. every episode of aspiration, as well as every episode of pneumonia, damaged more lung tissue, progressively reducing the ability of the lungs to provide oxygen to the body. if aspiration, or the potential for aspiration, is recognised in the young baby, preventative measures need to be put in place immediately to avoid recurrent episodes of pneumonia. current options include not only careful positioning in relation to feeding, and feeding of thickened fluids, but also feeding through either a nasogastric tube or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (peg). in the education setting, the mother of an 8-year-old boy who was wheelchair-bound due to disability approached our program for help because he had put on so much weight that he was virtually wedged into his wheelchair. this occurred in the early days of our program supporting students with disability, but after speaking with his mother, looking at his feeding regime, and speaking with his dietitian, it became obvious that at that stage all the dietary guidelines were written for able-bodied, typically developing children who were physically mobile. this situation gradually improved once the dietitian’s plan included adjustment for the activity levels of the child or young person. as part of my work at a health unit, i was tasked with supporting students with disability, who often had high health needs, in educational settings. the mother of a 4-year-old girl rang me the week before her daughter was due to start preschool, an event that she was excitedly looking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 63 forward to. the girl would require tube feeds during preschool, and she would be attending an early intervention service one day per week. at the end of the previous education year we had carefully planned for the preschool and early intervention days to not clash. the mother was upset because the manager of the early intervention service had just rung her to say the therapists had met and decided to change their early intervention day. when the mother pointed out that the early intervention day was the day her daughter was enrolled for preschool, and that a staff member had been allocated for the feeds, the manager told the mother the therapists would not be changing their day, so she had to decide which service she wanted. no mother of a child with disability should have to choose between two services that are equally important for her child. the early intervention service was definitely not client-focused, which was especially disappointing given that it was a long-established and previously well-regarded disability service. fortunately, however, our service managed to change the day of support for the young girl. upper and lower respiratory tract a nonverbal young adult male with idd had appeared to have headaches since his mother had died two years previously. he had early morning wakening and outbursts of violence, punching his ill father and caregivers and damaging property. he was moved from living in his father’s home in a country town to a large city a long way from his home, and was started on antipsychotic medication; however, his condition continued to decline. a brain scan showed sinusitis (infection in the air passages around the nasal areas) and antibiotics were administered. he was also prescribed an antidepressant. the headaches and aggression stopped within 48 hours, too soon for the antidepressant to have started to take effect; unfortunately, he had side effects from the antidepressant and required hospital admission. failure to diagnose the sinusitis, not related to his idd, denied him hrfqol and moved him away from all his familiar supports. whether or not a person has a disability, poor health can markedly impair hrfqol. consider breathing difficulties, for example. breathlessness limits a person’s ability to talk comfortably while walking, exercising, managing physical household duties, sleeping, or holding down a job. as the breathing difficulties increase, the person may require continuous oxygen through a mask or nasal prongs, carrying or pulling small oxygen cylinders everywhere. storage of the highly inflammable oxygen cylinders has to be away from naked flames, and the fire brigade needs to be alerted because of the risk of explosion. the ability to travel is limited by the need to stay close to replacement oxygen supplies. gastro-oesophageal reflux most children and young people referred to the centre for disability health were referred for challenging behaviours, with a request for a psychiatric assessment. in our protocol, exclusion of medical conditions was the first stage of assessment. an 8-year-old boy with asd international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 64 was brought in by his mother because his school staff were all wearing leather arm guards to protect themselves from his pinching and biting. his paediatrician increased his risperidone, but his behaviours continued to deteriorate. on specific questioning, his mother stated that he had reverted to drooling a lot, burped a lot, had sudden rushes of fluid or food regurgitation, often gave a sudden unexpected cough, and woke up with stomach pain during the night. after one month on liquid antacid, his symptoms resolved. his mother gained an understanding of the effects reflux can have, and she was able to start him back on the antacid if his symptoms recurred. another five nonverbal young people with idd also presented with challenging behaviour, and were diagnosed with reflux. one 18-year-old with asd started screaming about an hour after meals, but because he would still only take smooth foods such as yoghurt, and refused to eat the yoghurt if he could smell or taste anything added, i advised his elderly grandmother to check with the pharmacist to select the most bland liquid antacid. one teenage boy with cp had stopped eating, cried excessively at night, and was self-harming; another, also with cp, was swallowing frequently and arching his back while sitting in his wheelchair. one teenager with idd started hitting co-tenants, self-injuring, and damaging furniture, while another was awake all night, crying more, and not eating, but drinking a lot of iced milk coffee (milk is an antacid, but being thinner, it doesn’t stay in the stomach long enough to adequately neutralise the stomach acid.) the symptoms described above were all due to the pain of stomach acid irritating the oesophagus, and all responded to antacid medications. diabetes mellitus type 1 a nonverbal boy with asd and idd was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 2 years of age, but his diabetes had been extremely difficult to stabilise. when a person has type i diabetes, early detection of symptoms means earlier and easier control of the disease, but that relies on the person being able to report symptoms, which this boy may never be able to do. consequently at all times he needed someone with him, either a parent or a trained person able to detect slight changes and respond appropriately. his grandparents were able to look after his siblings, but they were too frightened to look after him without support. without funding to provide a trained caregiver to monitor and manage his diabetes, he was not able to attend after-school care or vacation care with his siblings. because he unpredictably required emergency management, and sometimes hospitalisation, family holidays were restricted to locations close to major paediatric hospitals, and plane travel was not considered safe for him. although his siblings were very understanding, their mother felt guilty that they were missing out on opportunities afforded to children growing up without a person with disability. she also felt guilty that she was not able to attend their school functions, and that they did not want to invite their friends over. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 65 bladder and bowel issues toilet training is accomplished very easily in some children with disability, but for many it is a slow and frustrating process. although typically developing children commonly become toilet trained between the ages of 2 and 3 years, in children with disability toilet training occurs at a developmental age, not the chronological age. sitting the child on a potty or on the toilet after a meal is worth doing to get them used to being on the toilet, but one should not expect any urine or a bowel action to be passed. the child should not sit for longer than 5 to 10 minutes, and should be taken off immediately if frightened or resisting staying on the toilet. until the child is showing some signs of being aware of urine or a bowel action coming, forcing the issue is likely to result in long-term difficulties. one thing we cannot do is make another person void: turning on a tap may work on adults, but generally not on children. summer is generally the best time to start toilet training, when the child can be outside with just ordinary underwear on, and will hopefully associate the feeling of being ready to void with the feeling of urine running down his or her legs. many parents have later regretted allowing their child with disability, especially one with asd, to urinate or defecate out in the garden or other open areas, as the child did not understand the difference between the garden at home, and the schoolyard — unacceptable behaviour at school, but difficult to change. i have seen a number of older children and teenagers who are still wearing disposable pull-ups at night, and may be dry though the day, but will not have a bowel action until their pull-up is put on before bed, a pattern that is also extremely difficult to break once established. many children with disability have constipation, partly due to restricted diets, especially in children with asd. some do not like part of themselves going down the toilet, or the sound of the toilet being flushed. after a meal the gastrocolic reflex pushes food remnants into the bowel, but when the bowel is already full, severe cramping pains result. constipation can also cause a tear in the anus as the bowel action is passing through, with painful spasms occurring every time a bowel action goes through. this can last for weeks to months, causing the person to hold on to the bowel action, exacerbating the constipation. extremely severe constipation can put pressure on the bladder, with back pressure in the ureters going up to the kidneys, distending them, and ultimately causing kidney failure. i am aware of two children with disability who died from kidney failure secondary to severe constipation, so constipation cannot be ignored as not being important to treat. pain parents have told me of their frustration and despair when clinicians, especially medical and dental professionals, either say that people with disability must not be experiencing pain because they do not report having pain; or they say that people with disability have a high pain threshold and do not feel pain, and therefore do not require pain relief. a father contacted me late one afternoon to say that his son who had cp, idd, and epilepsy, had just come back from recovery after having orthopaedic surgery in a major children’s hospital. he was pale and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 66 jerking, and his parents, sure he was experiencing pain, were very worried about him having a major seizure, with the risk of adversely impacting his surgery. they asked the senior surgical registrar if their son could be given some pain medication, but their request was refused. unfortunately their son did have a major seizure, and was then medicated. the following morning, the senior surgical consultant, on hearing what had happened, made the surgical registrar apologise to the parents. points to ponder: did the registrar believe the myth that children with disability do not feel pain? if the boy’s sutures had pulled apart, who would have been blamed? although some people with disability are able to state that they have pain in some or all situations, many are unable to, but the observant parent or service provider will be able to notice the nonverbal indicators of pain, providing they know what to look for. offered the opportunity to complete a master of disability studies at flinders university, south australia, and having been unable to adequately answer questions asked by teachers and parents concerning premenstrual syndrome (pms) in females with disability, i accepted the opportunity to further research the condition. by the end of the study, i realised that what was being labelled pms appeared in some instances actually to be pain, but i was not able to offer readers a reliable means of distinguishing between the two conditions in nonverbal females with disability. i decided to undertake a phd (kyrkou, 2009) to further research aspects of the menstrual cycle and pain in females with disability. the survey included females with ds, asd, cp, and idd, ranging in age from 10 to 44 years, with a median age of 18 years. although 470 surveys were posted or emailed out, the response rate was only 23.8%, which is not surprising as it is such a confronting topic for many mothers of young females with disability; additionally, my survey would have been just one of the many sent to parents of people with disability. on the positive side, the 95 mothers and 7 daughters who responded provided great detail, particularly in relation to puberty and pain — information not previously published. for 66.6% of females breast development was the first sign of puberty, while 31.6% had pubic or axillary hair first (compared with only 10% among typically developing females). the other 5.3% had their first period before exhibiting any breast or hair development. surprisingly, 56.4% had monthly cyclical symptoms before their first period (menarche) — in one case over a span of 30 months — that lessened as the menarche approached. mood changes included irritability, being uncooperative or aggressive, and exhibiting challenging behaviour. physical changes included abdominal cramps, vaginal discharge, increased seizures, vomiting, incontinence (bladder, bowel, or both), weight gain, back pain, and headache. forty females (52%) had their menarche within 12 months of the first sign of puberty, yet the literature states that menarche typically occurs 2 years after the onset of puberty. imagine the distress of the mother of a female with ds aged 10 years when the girl had her first period just 3 months after her endocrinologist had said she hadn’t reached puberty. to elicit behaviours suggesting the female with disability was in pain, i used the noncommunicating children’s pain checklist – revised by breau, mcgrath, camfield, rosmus and finlay (2000) as a basis for the questions (kyrkou, 2009). in the following paragraphs, i report international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 67 findings from my survey, with quotations grouped according to the nature of the disability, as there were some unexpected differences between the four groups in terms of pain presentation. females with down syndrome: hennequin, morin, and feine (2000) claimed that rather than individuals with ds being insensitive to pain, they express pain or discomfort more slowly and less precisely than people in the general population. they cited lind, vuorenkoski, rosberg, paratanen and wasz-hockert who studied the vocal responses of infants with ds and found they needed more stimulation to cause crying, and took longer to react. they also noted that this lack of cry response increases with age: children with ds over 1 year of age do not show the visual responses of grimacing, limb movements, or breaks in respiration seen in typically developing infants. the most common nonverbal indicators of pain observed in my study were: not moving, being quiet or less active, seeking physical comfort and closeness, and crying moderately loudly. when hurt or unwell, 78.6% were able to say they had pain, but more females with ds were able to point to or touch the painful area than females in the other three groups. survey responses included: yells, kicks, screams with severe pain (when she broke her arm). surprisingly to me, as she is a very articulate person, she was unable to say her arm was hurting. i now know that she is unable to tell me (or i need to teach her to understand pain signals) when she is in pain. females with autism spectrum disorder: nader, oberlander, chambers, and craig (2004) expressed concern that professional and scientific literature, on which information given to parents is based, states that people with autism are insensitive to pain. this has the potential to result in underestimation of pain, with consequent lack of appropriate assessment and treatment. in my study, the most common observations when the female with asd was considered to be in pain were: not moving, less active, or quiet; and non-cooperative, cranky, irritable, or unhappy. some females with asd when in pain gave a small laugh, easy to miss and with no further sign. one respondent noted, “when in pain has facial pallor, is restless, and has excessive ‘jabber talk’.” females with cerebral palsy: hadden and von baeyer (2005) claimed people with cp are at greater risk than others for undertreatment of pain because of their behavioural idiosyncrasies such as moaning, changes in facial expression, sleeping patterns, and patterns of play that are inconsistent and difficult to interpret because of physical problems. additionally, they observed that society appeared to value the comfort of children with cp less than that of other children. in my study, the main observations for females with cp in pain were: being noncooperative, cranky, irritable, or unhappy; moaning, whining, or whimpering; and making a special sound, cry, or laugh. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 68 females with intellectual disability: the main observations reflecting pain were: not moving, less active, quiet; seeking comfort or physical closeness; and crying moderately loudly. survey responses included: has an abnormally high pain threshold. she recently had to have an appendectomy after she had been mildly unwell, with some fever and “sore tummy”. her appendix was gangrenous and ruptured, and she spent almost 3 weeks in hospital as she developed abscesses, yet [she is] usually able to state she has pain. if injured, occasionally laughs if it is mild pain, becomes agitated and laughs or sings with moderate pain, and screams and whinges with severe pain. something that should be extremely painful, i.e., shut hand in door, burst eardrum, no reaction. something small, i.e., bump into something, cries with tears, yells. respite and social occasions parents of typically developing children are more likely to get breaks away from their children, with child care, preschool, and school as formal activities, and they are also more likely to get informal opportunities with grandparents, friends, or neighbours, as well as birthday parties and play dates. parents do not generally have to worry about the child not being well looked after. by contrast, the parents of children with idd, and particularly asd, get few of those informal opportunities. one mother reported that her parents said they were willing to look after the typically developing grandchildren, but not the child with autism, so she got no break from her caregiving role. even though needing that break, parents often worry about the child being all right, particularly if there are health needs, or challenging behaviours. in one family i worked with, the parents were in desperate need of a break from their young person, but unfortunately, on her first overnight respite, their daughter sustained a broken toe. subsequently her parents would not let her out of their sight. my concern in this situation is for the major impact on the daughter, an only child, when one or both parents die. when i discussed this with the parents, they just shrugged their shoulders hopelessly and said “god will provide.” before we knew our daughter had asd, we went to family gatherings in the evening. one night she became very noisy and distressed, so we went home early. when we got home she sat down quietly, making us wonder if she was being manipulative. once she was diagnosed with asd, we understood the noisy echoing room was bothering her. my sister switched to lunchtime barbecues outside, which made a big difference for all of us, especially until their children outgrew their swing, and it was taken down. during lunch, we would take turns pushing our daughter on the swing, and sitting eating with family. she would not eat with anyone else around, so she mainly ate at home. entertaining at home was often easier, as although friends were empathetic they did not necessarily understand the challenges of going out to homes with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 69 breakables within easy reach. when our daughter was younger she liked the sound of clinking two glasses together, particularly the musical sound of crystal. wanting to be able to watch my second daughter play netball, and realising my daughter with asd would not know that this game did not include her, i decided to park in the school grounds back from the court so that i didn’t miss out watching the game. knowing our situation, other parents understood why i sat in a car with my daughter bouncing around in the back seat listening to her favourite songs, with childproof locks on. unless my daughter with asd was in respite care, my husband and i could not both attend our other daughter’s school functions, or go out together with her, which was disappointing. financial issues families in economically distressed cities or countries often face extreme financial challenges. this is further exacerbated in families including a member with a disability. in a recent study across 14 countries, brown (2012) reported that financial stability was an important factor that substantially contributed to or detracted from fqol. this is concerning, as having a child with a disability usually impacts the employment decisions families make (or are forced to make). brown, geider, primrose, and jokinen (2011) noted that in many families where there is a child with a complex and severe disability, one or both parents might change their work or give up work in order to care for the child. this can lead to financial constraints and increased selfdependence, which restricts social and economic opportunities for all family members and limits resources for their family member with a disability. the fqol principle of holism stresses the interconnectedness of life domains such as income, health, recreation, and community relations; when one domain is negatively impacted this can have a domino effect on other life domains such as financial and emotional well-being. in the many years i have worked with families including a person with disability, i have encountered many distressing circumstances. families in financial need having to choose between providing basic resources such as food, clothing, and shelter for their entire family or providing medication or services for their child with a disability. some single mothers i have met had to survive on social security benefits, rarely with any financial support from their son or daughter’s father. many were in rental accommodation, unable to afford modifications to improve the living situation, and without enough space to manoeuvre a wheelchair, let alone a portable lifter. a worrying number of mothers had partners leave because of the child with special needs. some had more than one child with disability, and were even more financially stretched trying to manage on social services. many lived in the outer suburbs where accommodation was cheaper, but without a car; transport and food were thus often more expensive, and accessing appropriate medical and disability services was more difficult. although caring for my daughter was very challenging with recurrent hospitalisations, severe medication reactions, and unexplained episodes of illness, we were in a better situation than many of the parents i saw. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 70 summary and concluding comments to improve hrqol for people with idd, and therefore hrfqol, the most important requirement is for health and disability clinicians to recognise that the person with idd is the central person about whom they should all revolve as a collaborative team. for many people with idd and their families it feels as if the person with idd is on the farthest edge of the circle, sometimes considered more an “interesting case” than a person. the reader may think there is too much focus on children and young people with asd in this article, but in my experience a high proportion of the children and young people i saw with challenging behaviours had asd. their families were coping with many major issues not only in terms of health needs but also behavioural difficulties, and challenges finding appropriate support services. it is easy for the reader to assume that any individual family in which there is a person with idd has only occasional issues and stresses to cope with, that life is generally plain sailing and predictable, and that positive experiences occur without any effort on the part of the family members. one might also think it improbable that more than one of the vignettes would apply to an individual family. although some issues have been described individually for clarity, the reader should be cognizant of the fact that families are often coping concurrently with many of the situations described. although names have been left out for privacy purposes, each vignette either relates specifically to one individual person with idd or was collated from the similar experiences of a number of individuals. some vignettes are actual descriptions of family life with the author’s now-adult daughter, illustrating the complexities of having a person with idd, autism, and severe epilepsy in the family. although the vignettes are true in every detail, the reader could be forgiven for dismissing them as far-fetched. ours is not the only family supporting a person with disability and complex health needs; such events occur in many other families. i hope the information in this article will provide greater insight for therapeutic, education, and other support staff, as well as clinicians, in supporting such families. the impact of hrfqol issues on the person with disability and the family, including siblings, is often significant, but all are entitled to the support they need to enhance their fqol. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 49–74 71 references beach 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(2014). family quality of life in intellectual and developmental disabilities: a support-based framework to enhance quality of life in other families. in r. i. brown & r. m. faragher (eds.), quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges (ch. 6). new york, ny: nova science. running head: introduction international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 1 introduction to the special issue on early developmental prevention of antisocial behaviour ray corrado and patrick lussier in her recent 2010 report to the british columbia provincial legislature, the representative for children and youth, judge mary ellen turpel-lafond, reported that the government of this province had failed to implement key provisions of the 2006 hughes royal commission report (leyne, 2010). this failure, she asserted, put too many children at risk for abuse – or even death – especially within the most vulnerable families, such as those headed by impoverished, ill-housed, young and/or single mothers with little of the social capital typically needed to raise healthy children within b.c. communities. further, a recently released federal report stated the canada had among the highest rates of child poverty among the leading advanced industrial countries (unicef, 2010). finally, while incarceration rates for young offenders in canada, generally, have dropped substantially during the last decade, those youth in custody disproportionately have been from the above multi-problem families, especially aboriginal families (e.g., doob & cesaroni, 2004). two key policy issues among many others emerge from this canadian context: first, provincial governments, and, to a lesser degree, successive federal governments, have restructured their child welfare protection laws and policies, along with criminal law and youth justice systems, to respond to the needs of these multi-problem families. yet, despite noted successes (e.g., reducing the number of incarcerated young offenders from these backgrounds), serious and violent young offenders continue to emerge disproportionately from these disadvantaged families. second, despite the enormous advances in theories and empirical research on delinquency and serious, violent offending, there remain fundamental difficulties translating these advances into effective policies and related programs. ray corrado, ph.d. and patrick lussier, ph.d. are professors in the school of criminology, simon fraser university, burnaby, british columbia, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 2 as editors of this special edition, we have requested articles from distinguished scholars from canada, europe, and the united states who have engaged in innovative theorizing and research concerning the above two issues. of course, it is far beyond the scope of this special edition to address the full range of theoretical, empirical, and policy themes intricately involved in these complex issues. in addition to discussing themes specific to these issues in the following articles, we will discuss some themes not included but essential to the challenges involved in developing policies to reduce serious and violent young offending generally, particularly within the most vulnerable marginalized groups such as aboriginal families and families headed by impoverished single-parent mothers. theories and research to policies: too big a challenge? for most of the 20th century, the dominant theories and research on delinquency, and serious violent offending, focused on their relationship to or association with poverty, family conflict or non-prosocial bonding, neighbourhood social disorganization, gangs, education problems, deviant and violent subcultures, low social capital (i.e., little access to family and friends or neighbours for assistance), gender, and poor self-control. accordingly, in most liberal democratic countries until the late 1960s, juvenile justice laws and related juvenile justice systems emphasized welfare justice model principles such as informal judicial processing, familyand community-based rehabilitation programs, training and industrial schools, head start early education programs, and child care or foster families. even when the initial classic cohort studies, beginning with wolfgang, figlio, and sellin (1972), revealed that a small group of delinquents committed a disproportionate amount of serious and violent offending while most delinquents simply matured away from criminality in their late teens, the laws and related policies focused primarily on traditional family and community programs, and individual counselling. however, the united states was a major exception since of many of its states introduced criminal justice laws based on several crime control principles such as punishment, deterrence, and adult sentences to protect society from the “hard core” serious and violent young offenders. yet, it was and still is this group of young offenders that cause the greatest public, media, political, theoretical, research, policy, and program concerns (e.g., howell, 1997; loeber & farrington,1998). not surprisingly, researchers conducting subsequent cohort studies in the u.s. and also from canada, scandinavian and other european countries, as well as, notably, new zealand, increased the sophistication of their research designs to include risk and protective factors for serious and violent offending far beyond the traditional variables listed above (e.g., arseneault, tremblay, boulerice, & saucier, 2002; capaldi & patterson, 1996; le blanc & fréchette, 1989; loeber et al., 2003; moffitt, caspi, harrington, & milne, 2002). by the mid-1980s, this cohort research had instigated intense and often complex theoretical, empirical, and statistical debates (see farrington, 2005, for a review). these debates concerned the following issues: the existence of “career criminals”; the utility of longitudinal versus cross-sectional research designs to study differences in types of youth and adult offending patterns; the ability to diagnose psychopathic young offenders; the presence of significant differences in risk factors international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 3 associated with frequent or chronic offending and violent offending; the effect sizes or positive changes caused by intervention programs for minor, moderate, and serious offenders respectively. by the 1990s, subsequent research detailed the identification of multiple pathways and fundamental types of young offenders, such as the life course persisters (lcp) and adolescent-limited (al) described by moffitt (1993), as well as the validity of gender-based offending types and related theories of female serious and violent young offenders. for those researchers asked to advise government ministries or departments about laws, policies, and programs to deal with serious and violent offenders, the chief challenge was too often how to translate the above debates into information relevant to policy. typically, many theoretical propositions or their derived hypotheses utilize apparently abstract constructs distinctive to various academic disciplines such as psychology, criminology, sociology, the philosophy of science, or economics. certain complex constructs (e.g., social capital) and their related theories are not easily converted by policy officials into programs despite government policy and research divisions staffed by professionals from many of these same disciplines. another challenge is the tentativeness of the related empirical research. tests of statistical significance and complex statistical analyses, for example, are essential in academic debates and publications, as are the nuanced theoretical inferences made from these analyses. yet, policy officials can see the language of probabilistic findings as limiting their practical use. furthermore, the low effect size for single risk, as opposed to multiple risk factors, represents a real challenge for the development of comprehensive prevention policies. other concerns include: key variables not being measured fully or being absent completely; major research sample design limits (e.g., samples too small for appropriate statistical analyses); and low base rate phenomena such as serial arsonists, rapists, and killers. by the 1990s, these limitations resulted in a small but growing movement among social sciences researchers involved with criminal justice program evaluations to, first, conduct meta-analytical work by combining findings from several research studies, and second, to employ experimental designs, long a mainstay of research in psychology. the birth of the journal of experimental criminology around 2005 is a testimony to this movement. these designs avoid many of the above-mentioned tentativeness issues in advising policy-makers. while this movement is encouraging, there are fundamental obstacles in expanding the use of experimental designs including ethical or legal issues and high research costs, especially when programs designed for serious and violent offenders are being studied or evaluated. by the millennium, all the above themes and challenges for translating research on serious and violent offending into policy-relevant information became compounded by the revolutionary advances in genetics, epigenetics, as well as animal model and human brain research, much of the latter attributed to microscope and scanning technologies at the molecular and cellular levels. regarding genetics, the key breakthrough involved the dunedin, new zealand, prospective population cohort study led by terrie moffitt and avshalom caspi. caspi et al. (2002) reported that they had identified a gene variant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 4 involving the enzyme maoa that is essential in production of the key hormone for suppressing excitability generally, and specifically the often related emotions and behaviours such as anger, aggression, impulsivity, and violence. these researchers found that if only 12% of their male birth cohort had been exposed to severe maltreatment and had the low-activity maoa gene, this group accounted for more than 40% of the entire cohort’s violent convictions up to age 26. this seminal research has been followed by several attempts to validate this key finding with mixed results (e.g., haberstick et al., 2005). however, there continues to be important, and more recent, genetic and epigenetic research with fundamental implications for the policy themes involving serious and violent young offenders. this research, though, has not only added to the complexity of the theories discussed above but also to their translation into laws, policies, and programs. nonetheless, laws such as canada’s youth criminal justice act (2003) and many innovative policies recommended by the u.s. federal agency, the office of juvenile justice programs (ojjdp), reflect attempts to incorporate key policy themes from these theories of delinquency and serious or violent offending (e.g., farrington & welsh, 2006). from developmental models of offending to intervention and treatment the original developmental models concerning transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood are relatively less complicated than the most recent models, which include additional risk factors from not only recent genetic and epigenetic research but also more recent research on perinatal risk and protective factors. for example, loeber’s earliest pathway model (loeber et al., 2003), moffitt’s (1993) dual trajectory model, along with le blanc’s (2005) control theory model, include two to three offender types with few risk factors from the earliest developmental stages (i.e., in utero, infancy, and early childhood). richard tremblay and colleagues, though, proposed a developmental model based on earlier factors by including a set of risk factors in his montréal cohort study that concentrated on physical aggression and violence in early childhood (e.g., tremblay & japel, 2003). critically, these models assisted in the development of innovative treatment programs as well as violence risk prediction instruments and violence risk management instruments (e.g., lussier et al., 2011). three central treatment themes are evident in all these models: (a) identifying the complete risk/protective profile; (b) utilizing (refining or developing) treatment programs appropriate to the developmental stage; and, (c) addressing risk and protective factors as early as possible increases the likelihood that targeted antisocial behaviours will not occur, particularly serious and violent offending. historically, most of the development of risk assessment instruments has occurred in clinical psychology and so have the related treatment programs (e.g., le blanc, 2002; lösel, 2002). the obvious focus of these instruments and programs has been on traditional personality traits and childhood disorders such as oppositional defiant (odd) and attention deficit hyperactive (adhd), and adolescent disorders such as conduct disorder (cd). learning disorders – autistic spectral disorder, fetal alcohol spectral disorder, and attachment disorders – have also become central to risk assessments and treatment for serious and violent young offending. more recently, and controversially, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 5 there have been concerted attempts to measure key psychopathic traits such as callousness and unemotionality as well as the full personality disorder, primarily with the psychopathy check list: youth version (pcly), in samples of children and adolescents, specifically, incarcerated young offenders. part of this controversy is the extreme negative labelling associated with the adult psychopathy construct by the public generally and by the criminal justice system specifically. with regard to the criminal justice context, it is the problematic use of the psychopathy check list by adult criminal courts, primarily in the u.s., to justify lengthy incarceration sentences to protect the public. much of this negative labelling and fear is based on the widespread perception that psychopathic violent criminals have an untreatable personality disorder. moreover, there is the broader and very recent issue concerning the use of adult psychiatric constructs to explain child and adolescent aggression and violence and, consequently, the related use of adult psychotropic drugs to treat “childhood” versions of certain hypothesized psychotic disorders. for example, there is considerable debate among researchers and clinicians about the onset of the bipolar psychosis disorder. traditionally, this disorder presents itself in early adulthood. however, several psychiatrists have asserted that it can manifest in childhood, and can therefore explain uncontrollable episodes of self-harm and violence towards parents, siblings, and peers, followed by severe depression and brief periods of calm. the drug therapy part of the broader controversy stems, in part, from the purported over-diagnosis of adhd and its treatment with drugs such as ritalin during the last several decades (e.g., mayes, bagwell, & erkulwater, 2009). when these drugs do not mediate aggression and violence and when depressive withdrawals also occur, then there is the presumption that a hyperactivity-related aggression and violence masks deeper embedded psychoses such the bipolar disorder. while enormously controversial regarding children, comorbidity is less so for adolescents. as has long been evident in studies of adult incarcerated criminal offenders, teplin et al. (2005) in their chicago cook county juvenile jail study and cesaroni and peterson-badali (2005) in their ontario youth detention study found disproportionately high levels of psychoses, often comorbid with personality and substance abuse disorders, within samples of adolescent incarcerated young offenders. while the research on child and adolescent onset of psychotic disorders remains clearly tentative, there is a growing consensus that there are, at least, predisposing temperaments such as kagan’s (1997) high reactive and low reactive, as well as certain personality traits such as callousness, that begin in early childhood. when these traits interact with family and community risk factors, they increase the likelihood of the early onset of aggression and violence, as well as during later development stages if left untreated (e.g., frick, cornell, barry, bodin, & dane, 2003). again, despite the attendant controversies associated with utilizing this tentative development-based research from psychology and psychiatry, the most recent pathway models have begun to incorporate related childhood risk factors such as types of temperament and personality traits, though not personality disorders. for example, corrado and freedman (in press) maintain that temperament and certain sets of personality traits need to be considered as the starting points for separate or distinctive pathways, each with their own treatment strategies. part of the support for using more controversial psychology-based constructs as the basis for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 6 separate pathways or as risk factors incorporated into existing pathway models is the recent genetic research on aggressive and violent phenotypes. risk factors: trauma, child-in-care programs, gender, and marginalized families a poorly researched though commonly identified risk factor, early childhood trauma, remains an important theoretical and policy theme. for example, a common and all too often tragic policy theme is the inability of government agencies to protect children, especially infants and children under five, from traumas resulting from abusive caregivers, be they parents, foster parents, or extended family members. the vulnerabilities of early developmental stages are obviously related to the inability of these victims to either comprehend their situation or to communicate with adults who would typically protect them from the abuse or trauma. neglect in particular is difficult to identify yet it is by far the most common form of abuse. neglect can also promote the development of several subsequent risk factors for aggression and violence in later age stages. by contrast, physical and sexual abuse are typically more visible thus increasing the likelihood of detection by responsible adults such as other family members, the family doctor, and especially social workers when the risk for abuse already is being monitored. related to trauma, a second research and policy theme is the impact of child-incare programs on serious and violent offending. paradoxically, there is evidence that multiple placements are correlated with substantially higher likelihoods of serious and violent offending. the obvious and troubling issue is whether child-in-care programs are the cause of the increased risk or, at the very least, why these programs do not reduce the risk. a third related policy theme is the disproportionate levels of abuse and child-in-care placements for marginalized families with low social capital, especially from either colonialized (e.g., aboriginal), formerly enslaved (e.g., african-american), or geographically transient (e.g., roma or gypsy) ethnic groups. while poverty and the destruction of cultures are obvious distilled causes for both the marginalization of families and the related higher child-in-care placements, there is enormous variability among the families from these respective ethnic groups. this variability suggests that proximate causes likely consist of other risk and protective factors, especially the latter. more recently, protective factors have been the focus of conceptual discussion and research, most importantly in contexts where youth from high-risk profiles, such as multi-problem families, do not engage in serious and violent offending across developmental stages. central to this discussion are the attempts to conceptually and operationally distinguish between risk and protective factors, and between the latter two concepts and so-called “promotive” factors, that is, factors that prevent the development of the initial risk factors in the first place. these conceptual distinctions are important partly because they are associated with the empirical debate concerning optimal programming (loeber, farrington, stouthamer-loeber, & white, 2008): why are prevention or “primary” programs designed for all children and youth typically less effective in mitigating the likelihood of serious and violent offending than protective or “secondary” programs targeted for children and youth already at risk but not yet serious international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 7 and violent offenders? further, why are tertiary programs that target serious and violent offenders more likely to reduce these behaviours than primary and secondary programs? another theoretical and policy issue involves the existence of distinctive gender pathways for serious and violent offending, and the need for distinctive gender treatment programs. this issue has intensified since moffitt and caspi (2001) asserted that effectively there are no gender pathway differences regarding the most serious and violent offenders despite the continued confirmation of long observed and significant gender disparities in the rates for these offences. while there is a continuing debate about whether the boy-to-girl ratio of serious and violent offending is declining dramatically, and why, the more immediate and independent policy issue is the cost challenge of providing distinctive treatment programs for the still much smaller number of female young offenders, especially in custody settings. overview of articles in the special edition it is impossible to review all the theoretical and policy themes or issues regarding multi-problem families and serious and violent young offenders in an introductory article. however, we had the above themes in mind when we approached colleagues to submit articles based on their research. the article by delisi and vaughn addresses several of the themes concerning revolutionary genetic and epigenetic discoveries related to traditional risk factors, most importantly impulsivity and recklessness, and to protective factors such as high verbal skills and empathy. equally important, treatment programs involving a fuller understanding of the genesis of these risk factors are also discussed. the article by lussier and colleagues reviews pre/perinatal risk factors for early childhood aggression and provides important preliminary data about this relationship from the vancouver longitudinal study on the psychosocial development of children. of importance, the study is showing evidence that the pre/perinatal environment may not only impact the development of aggression, but also the development of sexual behaviours. the authors also discuss diagnostic issues regarding a wide array of risk factors from the perinatal and early childhood developmental stages. kazemian, widom, and farrington utilize the classic cambridge study in delinquent development to examine the relationship between childhood neglect and serious delinquency while controlling for a broad array of other risk factors. descormiers, bouchard, and corrado go beyond the traditional risk factor approach by employing the long-standing and imminent strain theory from criminology to assess whether, in a small canadian sample of incarcerated serious and violent young offenders, these offences are a means of alleviating strain. in other words, does working with other offenders provide criminal social capital that enhances “lucrative “ criminal opportunities? intervention strategies based on their analysis are provided as well. corrado, freedman, and blatier focus on a related theme of the disproportionate number of children-in-care in the youth criminal justice system and use information from a very large cohort study in the canadian province of british columbia to identify the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 8 risk profiles for serious and violent offending of children in care versus children not in care. in a similor vein, van der put and her co-authors utilize a major u.s. study to assess the differences in profiles of risk and promotive factors for males and females across different age groups and provide suggestions concerning potential optimal intervention strategies for each stage. finally, the article by moretti and colleagues reviews the literature on child maltreatment and violence while employing several of their canadian and u.s. data sets to also consider interpersonal beliefs and risky behaviours generally, and regarding girls specifically. based on their research findings, they assert the need for gender-senstive risk assessment tools and developmentally appropropriate treatment programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 1-11. 9 references arseneault, l., tremblay, r. e., boulerice, b., & saucier, j. f. 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(1972). delinquency in a birth cohort. chicago: university of chicago press. . theories and research to policies: too big a challenge? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818644 painting pictures: towards connecting through imagery in dialogues with young people with intellectual disability hanna peels and sofie sergeant abstract: the authors discuss pivotal themes in the use of imagery (visual and verbal) as a method to engage in dialogue with young people with intellectual disability (id). in their discussion they reflect on co-occurring changes in dutch society, the nature of caregiving, and the increasing appeals for empowerment for and by people with id. a critical dialogue is used to analyse experiences with imagery from their previous research, and the possibilities imagery harbours to improve dialogues on quality of life with young people with id. through analysis of the critical dialogue, five themes were identified: leitmotiv, ambiguity, choice, revelation, and distance. to conclude, the authors discuss why family members and professional support workers should consider using imagery as a productive methodology. keywords: imagery, dialogue, quality of life, metaphors, blogs, drawing lab acknowledgements: the authors wish to thank geert van hove, petri embregts, and alice schippers for their critical remarks and support and especially to mitzi waltz for her detailed comments. we wish to thank beau for granting permission to quote excerpts from her blogs. we would also like to acknowledge the very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper which were provided by anonymous referees. hanna peels msc (the corresponding author) is a psychologist at middin (a service provider for people with intellectual and physical disabilities) and a phd researcher at the free university amsterdam, prinses beatrixlaan 16, 2285 vz rijswijk, the netherlands. email: h.peels@middin.nl sofie sergeant msc is a phd researcher at the free university amsterdam and the education coordinator at disability studies in the netherlands, stadsring 2 / meet & discover, 3811 hr amersfoort, the netherlands. email: sofie.sergeant@disabilitystudies.nl note: both researchers contributed equally, and are therefore considered co-first authors. mailto:h.peels@middin.nl mailto:sofie.sergeant@disabilitystudies.nl international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 126 a new soap bubble syndrome has been born, a beautiful dream bursts with an unmistakable bang and consequently takes itself out. at that point i often cannot but lament that when i do not imagine, i will not be anything.1 (beau, 2010b, sentences 15–16) the metaphoric language of beau, written in an online blog about living with disabilities, provides vivid examples of imagery. imagery in any form elicits an instant connection between people that evokes the need for interpretation. the power of imagery, or the ability to narrate with images in different modalities, has been well explored through visual images (stanczak, 2007; wang, yi, tao, & caravano, 1998), music (howe, jensen-moulton, lerner, & straus, 2015), verbal narratives and metaphors (stefán, 2010; dunn & burcaw, 2013), dance (hermans, 2016), and other means. less research has been conducted on the role of imagery in discussions about existential topics, such as life, meaning, purpose, and the future, between young people with intellectual disabilities and their friends, their families, and professionals. however, discussion of these topics is essential to shape support for young people with id and to improve their quality of life (qol), especially in domains such as emotional well-being, interpersonal relations, and selfdetermination (iassidd sirg-qol, 2000). all people, with or without id, think about their lives and what they want in life. atkinson (2005) stated that, “life stories, and the opportunity to tell them, are particularly important for people with learning disabilities because often they have been silent, or silenced, while other people — families, practitioners, historians — have spoken on their behalf.” (p. 7). the opportunity to tell life stories, and discuss them with other people, is an opportunity that does not always come naturally for young people with id. although family members and professionals may presume that they have a fairly good view of what is going on in a young person’s life, the use of imagery in discussing life stories can be a surprisingly revealing and confronting method for challenging these presumptions. using imagery as a method to discover new information (as with the use of blogs, diaries, photo-elicitation, photovoice, etc.) forces the other in the dialogue to relate to the distinctly different position that the young person with id may have in life, and his or her personal interpretation of life events. the objectives of this study were to: 1. sketch the (dutch) context within which the need for an existential dialogue with young people with id emerges; 2. explore the power and possibilities of using imagery in research and dialogue by means of a critical dialogue between the researchers; and 1 beau granted permission to use excerpts (translated from dutch to english) from her blog in this article. the translation was done by one of the authors in consultation with beau; the translated excerpts were presented to beau before using in this article. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 127 3. give practical directions for family and support workers to create an environment in which imagery can be used as a method to engage in dialogue. background changing landscape of care and support strategies working with young people with id in the netherlands has changed drastically from the starting point of charitas [charity]. for centuries, medical care has been at the very core of support for dutch people with disabilities. since in this model the person with disabilities was seen as a “victim” of the disability, the focus of support was to find a cure. since the 1960s, a new socialecological perspective on disability has gradually emerged in the netherlands, following the rise of advocacy movements in america, the netherlands, and elsewhere, and developments in disability studies. this perspective no longer classifies disability as a trait of the person involved, but as a concept that is constructed and influenced by the society in which the person lives (brants, van trigt, & schippers, 2016; hoppe, 2012). the social-ecological perspective prompts professionals to develop new support strategies for young people with id based on concepts of reciprocity and equivalence. people with id are seen as experts by experience: they have useful knowledge to share (de waele, van loon, van hove, & schalock, 2005). ideally, professionals and caregivers are no longer in the decision-making position when it comes to support; the dutch (and global) advocacy movement of people with id has made clear that they have a basic human right to be in charge when it comes to their lives. high demands in society in the netherlands, being able to participate without support is more challenging now than in past decades, due to the fast pace of societal development and high societal demands on citizens. this development has been reported by the dutch national institute for health services research (nivel) in a 2015 report (speet & rijken, 2005), and similar concerns were raised by dowse (2009). in public debates there is much discussion of taking control of one’s life. even in these ideologically driven debates, there is an overtone that tacit expectations should be met by people with id and their caregivers: despite their apparent disabilities, they should be obliged to meet the participatory requirements of a rapidly changing society — and their family members should feel equally obliged to support them in this participation. the fastidiousness of society therefore places a huge pressure on young people with id and their families to transcend their disabilities, to (be able to) participate. however, as the dutch national self-advocacy group for people with intellectual disabilities (the lfb) notes, while there may be ample opportunities for inclusion, the tacit views of other people in society, especially professionals, hinder inclusion (speet & rijken, 2005). disability and communication for young people with id, difficulty with producing and understanding more complex language can lead to friction with family, friends, and professionals (lewis, gaffney, & wilson, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 128 2016). therefore, much emphasis in the dutch context of support is placed on training individuals to acquire a functional level of verbal language. in the light of recent insights into universal design (null, 2013) and universal design for learning (nelson, 2014), this emphasis on functional verbal communication falls short when it comes to dialogues about the meaning of life, achieving a sense of belonging, and discussing qol issues. even though people in the field recognise the potential of approaching these themes using tools that are better suited for the communication abilities and styles of people with id, the application of new ways of communication in daily practice still seems to be uncommon (williams, 2011). in the field of working with people with disabilities, most instruments or programmes that address a thorough conversation with the individual with id seem to be focused on producing an outcome that will give the family or professional practical tools to shape support for the young person. these programmes and instruments are certainly useful, but they fall short of building a true bridge between youngsters with id and their dialogue partners (sergeant & verreyt, 2016). a clear example is the use of pictograms, which are used to support both receptive and expressive communication of people with id. however, the use of pictograms often focuses on the context of instrumental communication — communicative interactions aimed at gaining certain objectives, or facilitating certain activities or interactions. therefore, the way pictograms are currently used constrains the potential communicative power of the images to a certain extent. even if images are used to communicate about emotions, they are mostly used in an instrumental way; for example, to express anxiety or sadness. in the netherlands, fewer examples are seen where images are used to explore the deepest feelings, meanings, and sense of being of the other: the so-called narrative of life. the assumption that meaningful communication with young people with id can (or even should) be simplified to unidirectional choices reflects a tacit underlying idea about the abilities of young people with id, including their ability to engage in complex, diverse, and reflective dialogues. method the authors of this article have years of experience working in services for people with id. they have seen on a daily basis the importance of using various forms of communication to connect to people with id — or people without id, for that matter. starting from this position of engagement, both authors are involved in participatory research with people with id. sofie sergeant has been conducting participatory action research. one of the methods she developed is called tekenlab [drawing lab], an inviting environment in which participants (with or without id) are asked to make a drawing and share their reflections and stories about one of the domains of qol linked to their personal life (sergeant & verreyt, 2016). hanna peels has been exploring the role of people with disabilities in the care system as experienced by people with id. her method has consisted of analysing in various ways a blog about the care and health system in the netherlands in cooperation with “beau”, its author. beau blogs about her own experiences and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 129 thoughts on living in a facility for people with physical or intellectual disabilities. in her blog entries, she often uses metaphors and poems to describe emotionally charged experiences. the authors noticed that even though the forms of imagery used in their respective research differ, their experiences with using imagery in research were similar: the advantages of using imagery seemingly transcend the form. the decision was therefore made to explore these advantages by critically questioning each other through the method of a critical dialogue. karlsson (2001) described the critical dialogue as a process “where the individual examines and verifies his/her own and others’ perspectives and assumptions” (p. 225); he also stated that “the discourse of dialogue is an exchange of ideas and meanings, and the purpose is of learning more than judging” (p. 212). the dialogue in this research was critical in nature, given that the authors not only discussed their research cases but endeavoured to come to a closer understanding of each other’s research. by engaging in dialogue, the authors compared their respective research (drawing lab and blog analysis) as if each of their research projects was a separate “case.” in comparing these cases, the authors discussed their own experiences, values, and learning moments in their research. within the framework of critical dialogue, a general inductive approach (thomas, 2006) was used to develop a framework for the underlying structure and experiences evident in both cases, and in the dialogue about the cases. the researchers questioned themselves critically on their choice of method, the similarities and differences between critical incidents, the impact their research has had on themselves as researchers, and the way the use of imagery helped and inspired the researchers in their research. important and recurring key concepts in the dialogue were clustered. this led to five main themes that will be discussed in findings. comparing cases offered each researcher the chance to reflect on her own research as well as evaluating the other’s. following smaling (2008), the authors kept reminding themselves of the reflexive and analytic nature of their dialogue, and therefore secured empathic cooperation while discussing different insights or arguments. this emphasis on the reflexive nature of the dialogue was an essential step towards using the dialogue in a transformative way. following freire (2005) the authors entered the critical dialogue fully aware that their thoughts and ideas would be changed in comparing the cases. rooted in participative action research, the researchers aim was in fact to change the care and support offered to young people with id, as well as to improve the ways that researchers can make young people with id feel welcome to participate in research. the authors shaped the critical dialogue by using materials gathered into journals they kept during their own research: critical incidents, key quotes, and field notes. to paint a picture of the research that led to the reflexive process described in this article, the authors use quotes and vignettes from their ongoing research. their joint reflexive process, however, provides the framework for this article. target group the critical dialogue revolved around communication with young people with id. like goodley and runswick-cole (2014), the authors acknowledge that many people labelled as having international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 130 id prefer no labels whatsoever. the term intellectual disability (id) is used here because it is a common term applied across the globe. in this article, the term “young people” refers to persons between the ages of 15 and 24, following the definition of “youth” given by the united nations department of economic and social affairs (n.d.). young people were chosen as the target group in the critical dialogue because this is an age range during which people experience the transition from childhood to adulthood. this transition is accompanied by existential questions and doubts about, for example, identity, place in society, work life, and relationships. ethics informed consent was obtained from all participants in both the drawing lab research and the blog-analysis research, following the disability studies netherlands code of practice for researchers 2016–2017 (dsin, 2016). beau granted permission to use excerpts (translated from dutch to english) from her blog in this article. findings we metaphorize, therefore we know. metaphors are primary in relation to our existence as we know it. (dolmage, 2005, p. 110). both family members and caregivers often search for a useful method to guide discussions about existential questions with young people with id. the authors’ own experiences as both professionals and researchers led them to conclude that imagery offers an attractive, rich, and engaging way of connecting. in their critical dialogue, their communication experiences were discussed, leading to the identification of five themes that apply to both verbal and visual imagery: leitmotiv, ambiguity, choice, revelations, and distance. these five themes reveal the possibilities and strengths of using imagery as a means of communicating with young people with id. in presenting these findings, the power of using visual images in engaging in dialogue is disentangled from, and juxtaposed with, that of using metaphors. the argumentative nature of the critical dialogue (smaling, 2008) is reflected in the structure of the results: each discussion of one of the five themes will start with exploration of the theme in visual images, metaphors, or verbally painted pictures, and conclude with some experiences and thoughts. vignettes and quotes from previous research are added to illuminate the findings. leitmotiv the term “leitmotiv” has its origins in music and refers to “the recurring musical themes … attached to characters, objects, situations, and ideas … underlying the wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk” (scher, 2004, p. 185). in discussing imagery the authors found that a coherent cluster of important values and convictions resurfaces each time a meaningful dialogue takes place. the entirety of thoughts, needs, and dreams that a person wants to discuss is similar to a leitmotiv in music. the leitmotiv assures both partners in the dialogue that there is no need to push their agenda forward; the agenda will not disappear, but is there to revisit when needed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 131 figure 1. vignette: leitmotiv. the maker of an image has his or her own agenda, a theme or a message to communicate. when confronted with an image, one may choose to follow that agenda, or find a way to avoid it. the image is central to a personal story, and the interpreter is the director of that story. the reader animates and re-animates the storyline and decides how to interpret it. “metaphors might be seen as bridges on the verbal map. indeed, the greek root of the word, metapherein, means ‘to carry across’.” (dolmage, 2005, p. 109). stories are by definition useful in bridging the experiences of different people. metaphors and stories are often rooted in joint experiences. using shared language has the power to bring together family, support workers, and young people with id. surpassing the practical use and intention of metaphors in support work is the observation that the use of metaphors is close to the heart and nearly unconscious: but metaphors are never disinterested. the author submits that there is more going on than just words when metaphors are used. in other words, the argument is that despite our nearly unconscious reception of them, metaphors carry and construct particular social and cultural meanings. (dolmage, 2005, p. 111) consciously or unconsciously, partners in a dialogue look for the agenda of the other while interpreting the product of imagery. using imagery offers the opportunity to talk about the desired outcome without directly addressing or questioning the truthfulness of the interpretation or agenda of the other. moreover, since the intended agenda is secured in an object (visual image or metaphor), the important themes for the young person with id will reappear when needed. the leitmotiv is an important concept for the simple reason that young people with id, and their families, live with challenging circumstances. this starts from the moment of diagnosis and the person who drew this image was not a good talker. he could only say a few words regarding this image. in the few words he spoke to us, he said, “i am a man. my penis is very important to me. i am a man. look at my penis. i am beautiful. i want to take care of my body. washing and shaving is important. i am a man. my body is important.” he said this while looking very happily and proudly at his drawing. the team learned more about him, without having to ask him who he was and without asking things about “physical well-being” on an abstract level. his leitmotiv showed up through the image. a support worker came to the team members, looked at the image, and smiled: “michel is a man”, she said, “and that is the starting point for all our interventions or support.” leitmotiv international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 132 the beginning of treatment to the experience of an impressive number of professionals entering and leaving their lives. being able to grasp important themes and to have the certainty that they reappear when needed is a vital part of expressing oneself as a person growing up. moreover, the leitmotiv ensures an ongoing dialogue between the young person with id and family members or support workers. figure 2. vignette: ambiguity. ambiguity an image may be seen as an inventory of multiple meanings. “rather than demanding only an objective reading, images also elicit various subjectivities from our participants that — instead of being bracketed away — can be probed and analysed.” (stanczak, 2007, p. 7). the meaning of ambiguity looking at her drawing, the woman in the drawing lab talked to the team about the importance of the sun, and warmth in her life. she loved the sun on her skin; she enjoyed walking and wandering through nature. the researcher interpreted the drawing as a person and a house. however, the woman said, “on the right i drew a baby in a pram.” the person in the drawing turned out to be a flower. the woman explained about her dream of having her own baby, and the possibility of not being able to reach this dream. after looking at the picture again, she started talking about the children in her family, of being an aunt and enjoying this role. in the dialogue she gave several meanings and interpretations of this image of the baby in the pram. her story, and the initial interpretation of the researcher, illustrates the possibility of ambiguously interpreting and reinterpreting the meaning of a drawing and discovering stories hidden in it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 133 an image is neither steady nor stable. depending on who a person is, and how one looks at the image, one discovers other things and stories: “images trigger different insights, depending on the different questions that we ask of them.” (stanczak, 2007, p. 9). meaning is given from one’s own life events, experiences, and prior knowledge. by exploring a drawing, and by drawing further together, more can be discovered with regard to people’s own assumptions or autonomous expression (sergeant & verreyt, 2016). in this way images — unconsciously — force us all to retreat to our own interior worlds and to personal stories. a story, read or told, will evoke different “verbal images” in the mind of a reader or listener. like visual images, the verbal image is coloured by one’s life’s experiences: “a simple way to summarize this point would be to say that we understand metaphors because we share experiences, and we come to experience the world a certain way as a result of how we metaphorize it.” (dolmage, 2005, p. 111). in imagery there is the opportunity to highlight or hide parts of the story that do not suit the author (robertson, 1996; dunn & burcaw, 2013). underhill (2011, p. 26) pointed to the fact that metaphors are not only based on one’s personal experiences, but on shared experiences as well: “in a word, metaphors are embedded in networks of underlying conceptual equations.” in this shared experience, however, lies ambiguity: unspoken suppositions about the experiences of the other may colour our interpretation of the metaphor or verbal image the other one uses. family members are often more familiar with the experiences of a youngster with id than professional support workers are, yet both should be aware of the dangers of making presumptions regarding the meaning of a metaphor. when interpreting imagery, it becomes clear that ambiguity is an inherent and overarching theme: one recognises different pieces of information that the author may or may not have intended to convey. when interpreting a verbal or visual image created by a young person with id, there is the unspoken invitation to translate the meaning of the image to the thought world of the family member or professional in the dialogue. however, that person has to be aware that this interpretation is tinted by his or her own experience; the young person with id might have a different interpretation or purpose with the image or story. being aware of one’s own interpretive view and discussing that view with the young person with id is needed to discover stories and explore different experiences. choice “während die sprache eine sequenzielle ordnung aufweise, zeichne sich das bild durch eine simultanität von formen aus [whilst speech evokes a sequential process of arrangement, the image shows itself through a simultaneity of forms].” (traue, 2013, p. 120). visual images can be frozen in time. to make them come to life, there is a need to connect and to construct visual objects. an image contains multiple objects made synchronously visible to us (freedman & siegesmund, 2015). unlike visual images, metaphors, stories, and other forms of verbal imagery are told in a sequential fashion. as the story develops, the receiving partner develops a mental image of the storyline, characters, and events. the concepts involved in story interpretation are similar to those international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 134 used in image interpretation: there are concepts of form, emphasis, contrast, repetition, variation, and even “colour” (the different styles in which a story can be told). these concepts offer the other in the dialogue the choice to shift the focus during the interpretation, for example to deflect, intensify, or vivify. a clear example is found on beau’s blog. she metaphorises in one of her blogs how the expectations of others, but above all her own expectations, have affected her body and confronted her with her disability. she describes the negative effects, but uses self-mockery to convey the message that she rises above her disability. in discussing the confrontation, she chooses to highlight her achievements with her choice of words — “colour” — in the metaphor: “body parts fly up and down without control, and my legs suddenly seem convinced they have done nothing but establishing records in running all my life. when i look at myself from a distance even i have to smile about it.” (beau, 2012b, sentences 7–8). revelations images, quite literally, offer the opportunity to see what the other saw or wants you to see. like visual imagery, verbal imagery provides the opportunity to glimpse how the other experiences reality. the listener or reader expects to be able to relate to the story of the other, as underhill (2011, p. 28) described: “we often experience metaphors as minor revelations. intuition seems to be unveiling very real similarities in the world.” though the verbal imagery of the young person with id may not always be coherent or complete, stories often reveal to the listener information about the inner world and daily life experiences of the young person — revelations that may be surprising and force the other to redefine thoughts. between the interpreter and the interpreted material there is space for reflection and interpretation; dewulf (2012) called this the “no-man’s land” of imagery, which urges the interpreter to look for words or new images to be able to communicate about the interpretation. an image therefore evokes a natural reflexive process. as noted above, metaphors and verbal images are rooted in both individual and social concepts (dolmage, 2005; underhill, 2011). the recognition of these concepts, and at the same time the recognition of possible differences in interpretation, forces family members and professionals to reflect not only on the needs of the young person with id, but on their own position and narrative in life as well. imagery therefore relates to the inner self of the receiving partner. any form of imagery evokes one’s ability to connect one’s own experiences to the narrative of the object at hand. figure 3 is an example of how mind and body are intertwined in connecting to one’s own experiences. the lives and stories of young people with id and their outlook on life harbour messages and surprises that may teach their families and professionals important lessons about their own lives. the researchers discussed how their work with young people with id influenced their own convictions. a good example is provided by beau (2012a) in one of her blog posts: “except for the fact that we undoubtedly cost money, our unwillingly received life-experience … yields a priceless treasure of information for any support worker” (para. 9). this quote moved the authors, since it clearly values the knowledge learned by experience; the realisation of the wealth of this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 135 knowledge changed how we, as researchers and practitioners, work together with people with disabilities. figure 3. vignette: connection. a visual image may protect the conversation partners from being too intrusive, since the image can be placed at the heart of the conversation. this gives the possibility of looking at the object instead of the conversation partner, but in a socially accepted manner: the so-called “180degree conversation”. instead of having to look directly at the other (which can be experienced as intrusive), one can look at the other via the medium of the picture. since this process is mediated by the image-object, however, it can still feel safe, even if it is unsettling. whereas visual images may create physical distance, verbal imagery creates mental distance from the subject at hand. “when we do not understand, we use metaphors, and they come to stand in for the literal truth, even in something as supposedly ‘pure’ and ‘factual’ as science.” (dolmage, 2005, p. 110). using images or metaphors also creates a certain distance from the intimate meaning of the message. the distance that comes into existence by talking about an object instead of directly talking about one’s life allows less confrontational and intrusive communication: the paper, or in this case the computer screen, has been my best friend for quite some time. if i am not understood, or if i do not want to tell something out loud, the figments of my imagery are penned on paper in no time. paper is my portable therapist, and almost without costs. (beau, 2010a, sentences 7–9) revelations the young woman in front of the drawing lab team had few verbal skills. she looked very long at her own drawing. then she said, “child”, and smiled. she caressed the child on the drawing. she looked again and said, “soft, small child.” every time she looked, she revealed a bit more about what she meant by drawing this child. whilst the researcher was not expecting a meaningful dialogue with this woman, given her lack of verbal skills, she was surprised to notice a deep connection with her through the softness she displayed towards the picture. the tone of the woman’s voice underlined the softness of her movements. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 136 distance figure 4. vignette: proximity. partners in dialogue can revisit the object, image, or story as a focus point in their conversation. since it is inherent to a reflective process that people may wander from the core of the interpretation, or may have too many associations, both partners can use the object to return to the topic at hand. it may, however, be used as an escape as well: by exploring parts of the image, a painful or too intimate part of the story may be avoided or contained. distance not only creates safety, it also allows wonderment to emerge. the drawing or the metaphor becomes a “third party” in the conversation. it is something new that has been created, which has the possibility to surprise even the author by discovering unknown feelings, preferences, or even proportions. for example, the woman in the vignette described in figure 4 was surprised to discover, while discussing her picture with the researcher, that she had drawn the heart so big it almost pushed the people off the paper. paradoxically, the distance created through using imagery has a strong potential to create connection. in discussing the theme “distance”, the researchers realised that by using the safety and wonderment of distance, dialogue partners have the chance to intertwine and become allies: allies in conjoint beliefs, but in newly discovered stories and experiences as well. by discovering the story of the young person with id, a family member or support worker has the chance to bridge their differences in life experiences. discussion and implications for practice perspective in the practice of supporting young people with id, challenges like tacit views, insecurity, time pressure, and presumptions call for a more intense elaboration on how to use imagery as a starting point for a joint reflective process. this article describes the critical dialogue of the the woman in front of the drawing lab team showed them her drawing. she did not look at them, but at her drawing. she smiled when she said, “i am in love.” she talked to the team about her boyfriend: why she liked him so much, what the relationship meant to her. having the heart drawn on paper gave her the ability to avoid eye contact and potential judgement. the researchers, however, recognised the feeling of being flooded with love, and connected with the woman through the picture. proximity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 137 authors. there are many similarities in the background of the authors. since the reflexive process was based on their respective experiences and thoughts, the perspective of the dialogue is heavily embedded in the dutch landscape and history of care. in addition the dialogue is based on only two research projects. however, the authors find that the challenge to connect and engage with young people with id is universal, as is the power of the use of imagery. further research should focus on the application of imagery in research with and support for young people with id in different settings or from different perspectives. the use of imagery offers clear possibilities for facilitating young people with id to express themselves, and for connecting with them. while discussing their previous research, the authors found that essential conditions must be met if the use of imagery is to measure up to intentions. by discussing some keystone considerations in this section, the authors invite readers to reflect on the application of imagery in their own efforts to connect with young people with id, taking into account their own specific circumstances and perspectives (see also boxall & ralph, 2009). enabling environment in order to achieve an honest dialogue with young people with id about their future, their dreams, and even their feelings about belonging (to a family, group, or society), the dialogue partner should be able and willing to embrace the use of enriching and deepening methods of communication such as patience, emotional support, and creativity, and of ways to make the environment more failure-free — when there is less chance for failure, there is less chance of being unable to participate. it is important for support workers to explore the concept of universal design as a framework for the establishment of an adaptive and inclusive environment for everyone, with or without disabilities. universal design aims to have a truly inclusive society; to achieve this, one must view people with and without disabilities as equally normal. as goodley and runswick-cole (2014, p. 13) wrote: “we want to move to a time when thinking about the human will always involve thinking about disability.” the concept of universal design is reflected in beau’s (2010c) comment: another true wish of mine is that we will build more inclusive. inclusive yes, not adapted. the expression “adapted” is out of place since in the use of “adapted” it is implied that certain groups still move outside society — not in it. if we adapt the entrance so you can enter the building: nice, but we should say: “if we build inclusive anyone can come inside the building.” (para. 10) once these conditions are accepted as regular requirements for providing care through connectedness, one could speak of an “enabling environment”. practical considerations the child shall have the right to freedom of expression: this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 138 other media of the child’s choice. (united nations children’s fund, 1990, article 13) an enabling environment not only requires the right conditions and attitude for both dialogue partners, it also requires the right materials to express their image or story. qualitatively good and diverse materials are essential to the process of making an average exchange of ideas into a true dialogue. having sufficient time is important as well. even though lewis et al. (2016) explain that lack of time is not the core factor in communication barriers, having sufficient time surely is a prerequisite if a true dialogue is to develop. presuming competence if you are interested in seeing another’s competence, it helps to look for it. (biklen & kliewer, 2006, p. 184) despite their apparent deficits in cognitive skills, young people with id are more than capable of expressing themselves in diverse and colourful ways, provided they are given the opportunity. in order to allow young people to make use of these ways of expression, however, the partner in the dialogue must first presume competence in the youngster with id. “intimate contact with the person and openness to the person allows you to dispense with the fault-finding, deficitseeking framework of the professional diagnostician and to learn about the person through engagement” (goode, 1992, in biklen & kliewer, 2006). for families, friends, and support workers to really connect and communicate with young people with id on existential themes, it is essential that their preferred way of communication be followed. communication partners must presume that young people with id are competent to paint a picture about what they want in life. belonging recently, views of reciprocity and connectedness have often been incorporated in models that target the quality of support; for example, “positive health” (huber et al., 2016), “humane care” (van heijst, 2005; embregts & hendriks, 2011), and “presence theory” (baart, 2004). the authors, too, encountered these concepts in their respective research processes and experiences. using imagery shows great promise to foster belonging through meaningful dialogue with the young person, as it can shape the emotional and conjunctive power of that dialogue. however, it is important to notice that belonging is reciprocal in nature. in society, young people with id are often perceived as the partner that “takes”: for them to experience belonging, it is important that family members and support workers are open to “receive” from young people as well. for example, the drawing lab research revealed that young people with id did not make drawings about the support they received. instead, they drew about what they can give, what they mean to people, or about their frustration that they cannot engage (yet) in certain relationships or in meaningful work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 139 ownership there is a clear need for the person with id to feel peacefully in control of the dialogue. life experiences have taught them that compared to others, they are often less able to exert power. the other — the support worker, the teacher, the parent — is the one who knows better, while the young person with id is the person who receives instruction. choosing to follow the story and interpretation of a person with id asks caregivers, who often have learned to interpret stories in the light of their own acquired knowledge, to be brave. in order for somebody to be thought of as a fully competent participant in a relationship, they have to be seen as contributing something to the partnership (bogdan & taylor, 1989). the mere choice of the image or story to reflect on is an act of exchange: what is the person with id trying to communicate to the other by choosing that object? what does the image — the made-up lullaby one’s mother sang, the photographs of the house one grew up in, the artwork one made at the activity centre — truly mirror about how the person feels about himself or herself? being able to decide the medium for communication puts the young person with id in charge of the conversation. the person with disability, the client, is now “owner” of the depiction at hand. so in talking to young people with id, the dialogue partner should be prepared to step down from the position of leader to a position of co-pilot in the process of reflection. rocky road in a dialogue on existential themes, there is a need for listening, for true interest, and for having the will to get to know the inner world of the other. whereas family members are confronted with the birth of a child with id, and the consequent appeal for care, professional support workers tend to choose to work in the care system. research about the motivations of support workers indicates that the tacit views they hold influence the way they approach their clients or patients (lewis et al., 2016; dowse, 2012). in the practice of their work, they may be confronted with these views when young people with id behave differently than expected. van den brande (2012) states that inclusion is a fundamental right that evolves around “belonging” and “connectedness”: inclusion is by definition a relational concept. an honest dialogue may be upsetting or unsettling for the youngster with id — yet the right to have an upsetting or unsettling dialogue is part of inclusion. moreover, in an honest dialogue the other partner may be touched as well, or even unsettled or upset; looking for inclusion is not a straightforward process. it may at times be a rocky road, but it is one worth travelling. tacit knowledge there is no medium of expression that is equally suited for all learners or for all kinds of communication. (florian, 2014, p. 482) young people with id are experts by experience at living with id in a complex society. their support workers lack this experience. further research should focus on how the young people’s tacit knowledge can be made visible, and how this knowledge can be applied in society international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 140 to enhance the qol of others. research on how young people with id can be encouraged to take a formal or informal role as teacher and guide for support workers is therefore recommended. conclusion by comparing their respective independent research and experiences as separate cases, the authors found that using imagery is a powerful method to engage people with disabilities in research, as well as a meaningful way for family members and support workers to engage with young people with id. a critical dialogue was used to compare cases, thoughts, experiences, and critical incidents; this led to the identification of five themes that emerged from the dialogue. the theme of the leitmotiv shows that imagery offers the possibility of finding respite from anxiety in a dialogue, knowing that a core set of beliefs, subjects, and ideas will resurface once the drawing or the story is revisited. that images can be interpreted in different ways is shown in the theme of ambiguity, where the authors found that discussing these different interpretations establishes a swift connection between dialogue partners. imagery also offers the option of choice: the author, as well as the interpreter, may choose to highlight certain important parts of the image, or to hide painful or undesired parts. the fourth theme concerns imagery’s power of revelation, be it small or grand. the use of imagery offers the possibility of revealing new information, talents, or questions that the dialogue partners had not previously discussed. distance is the final theme discussed in the article. the use of imagery offers safety: first, through creating a dialogic space where a 180-degree conversation is permissible, and second, in offering a safe object to talk about, a concrete focal point. imagery not only creates safety in offering distance, however; it also is a suitable way of decreasing distance between two dialogue partners, in that shared experiences or ideas evoke recognition. young people with id, though sometimes limited in verbal skills, have no less of an inner world than do young people without disabilities. they possess reflective power on their position in life and society, and their needs, experiences, and wishes. indeed, their very age calls for an open dialogue on life, since it is one of the developmental tasks of young people to wonder and ponder on their future. in the netherlands, the changing landscape of care and support strategies places more emphasis on the need to connect with the inner world of young people with id. the fast pace of dutch society, however, and excessive reliance on instrumental communication in offering support, pose a threat to the realisation of this connection. imagery connects dialogue partners and creates space for safe exchange and exploration on existential themes. based on the findings from the critical dialogue discussed in this article, there is a strong argument for applying more diverse forms of imagery in research and practice, in order to bridge the distance between caregivers and persons with id when talking about existential questions regarding life, purpose, and meaning, as well as more practical questions that require reflection. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 141 it is also important to emphasise that using all possible ways to communicate is not a “special treatment” to be reserved for young people with id. in a way, one could see dialogue with young people with id as an example of good communication in the broadest sense: moving away from the idea of the exclusivity of spoken and written language and towards the idea of using any and all forms of representation to build connection with other people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 125–145 142 references atkinson, d. 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(2011). disability and discourse: analysing inclusive conversation with people with intellectual disabilities. london, uk: wiley-blackwell. http://www.ohchr.org/documents/professionalinterest/crc.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapro/13.1.75 the challenging absence of adults in youth-headed households: the case of dissensions management among the family members of ho international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 354 the challenging absence of adults in youth-headed households: the case of dissension management among the family members of households headed by a sibling in rwanda immaculée mukashema abstract: this exploratory study looks at conflict and dissension occurring in youthheaded households in rwanda. to gather qualitative data about these issues, seven focus group discussions were conducted with the heads of 41 youth-headed households. results show that based on a participant’s personal experiences, conflict and dissension are common in youth-headed households, manifested in poor communication and the absence of positive interaction between members. the most often reported consequences of this conflict and dissension include household members leaving home and becoming separated from the family, coupled with and exacerbated by health problems and poverty. participants also reported feeling psychological distress, social isolation, a lack of motivation, and suicidal thoughts. where there is conflict, participants turn to their own friends or their parents’ friends for support. participants also reported needing economic assistance and psychosocial support. based on the focus group interviews, the researcher concludes that it would be beneficial to set up specific community-based structures that could deal with all issues of daily life and regulation facing youth-headed households. the researcher recommends that the training of youth-headed households in how to take on family responsibilities should be a national policy. keywords: conflict, youth-headed households, siblings, rwanda acknowledgements: i am very grateful to the former national university of rwanda (nur) in general, to the former nur’s research commission and sida sarec in particular, for the financing of this research. many thanks also to professor roger sapsford for his assistance. an early version of this paper was presented to the third asian conference on psychology and behavioral sciences, march 28 to 31, 2013, osaka, japan. immaculée mukashema is a senior lecturer in psychology and mental health at the department of social sciences, college of arts and social sciences, university of rwanda, avenue de l’université, butare, b.p. 117 butare, rwanda. e-mail: i.mukashema@ur.ac.rw dedication: this research paper is dedicated, first, to the child and youth victims of the genocide against the tutsi in rwanda in 1994, second, to the innumerable children and youth who were obliged to assume parental and family responsibilities in its aftermath, and third, to the many more children and youth similarly forced to head families when their parents fell victim to hiv/aids in the years since. while none of these children played any part in bringing about these cataclysmic events, they nonetheless suffered the consequences. may the lessons learned mailto:i.mukashema@ur.ac.rw international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 355 from the tragic experience of my country, rwanda, translate to greater humanity and respect among all people of all nations, in particular for our children. in rwanda, an orphan is defined as a child who has lost either one parent (single-parent orphans) or both parents (double orphans) (ministry of gender and family promotion [migeprof], 2008, 2011). the rwandan population was estimated at 10.8 million in 2010/2011. it is a young population, with 54 per cent aged 19 or younger (national institute of statistics of rwanda [nisr], 2012). about 20 per cent of the rwandan population under the age of 21 are orphans, and among those, 3% are double orphans, with the highest rate by province (4%) being in kigali city (nisr, 2012). according to nisr (2012), the proportion of double orphans in the age range 0 to 20 is 5% in kigali city, 2.6% in the southern province, 3% in the western province, 1.6% in the northern province, and 2.5% in the eastern province. twenty years ago, rwanda had a large number of orphans without any adult relatives (boris, thurman, snider, spencer, & brown, 2006; unicef, 2007) because of the combined effects of the 1994 genocide and the hiv/aids epidemic (unicef, 2009). today, the orphans are no longer a consequence of the genocide; hiv/aids is the main factor. the number of orphans younger than 15 years of age resulting from hiv/aids was estimated to be 203,000 in 2008 (national aids commission [cnls], 2009). not only in rwanda, but also elsewhere in sub-saharan africa, the number of double orphans without any relatives is increasing (unicef, 2006; barnet, 2005). further, existing projections suggest that the number of orphans is likely to continue increasing (unicef, 2009). while on the one hand, the number of orphans in many countries of sub-saharan africa, including rwanda, is increasing, on the other hand there is a move from community-oriented living towards a greater individualization of social organization (see, for example, hertrich & lesclinigand, 2001). in rwanda this move is occurring despite the country’s strong emphasis on community and consensual approaches to problem solving. indeed, the traditional family and extended family structures suffered a grave blow as a consequence of the genocide against the tutsi and its aftermath (migeprof, 2011). traditionally, children and young people were socially involved, and this provided the means for learning practices, manners, and behaviours that the community held as acceptable and “good”. as well, children and youth were seen to be well-integrated into the lives of their families (migeprof, 2011; mukashema & sapsford, 2013). with the decline in the traditional systems that included long-standing approaches to fostering orphans, a new phenomenon has emerged whereby young people are heading households as a “family” without parents. these youth-headed households are seen by many as signalling a breakdown in social stability (roalkvam, 2005). in a youth-headed household, the oldest sibling becomes the head of the household and fulfils the responsibility of caring for the younger siblings (veale, quigley, ndibeshye, & nyirimihigo, 2001; schaal & elbert, 2006). in rwanda, ten years after the genocide against the tutsi, it was estimated by unicef (2004) that 101,000 people were living in 42,000 youth-headed households in rwanda. today, depending on the relationship to the head of household, nisr (2012) suggests that 1.3% (about 140,400) of the rwandan population are brothers and sisters living in siblingheaded households. such youth-headed households are still a relatively new phenomenon about which little is known (evans, 2010; uwera & brackelaire, 2012). however, it is clear that these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 356 households share some principal characteristics: they form a “family” that provides support and continuity (mcadam-crisp, 2006); they deal with the adult responsibilities of supporting themselves at an age when the care and the protection of an adult are normally needed (schaal & elbert, 2006); and they assume an anthropological and psychosocial position for which they were never prepared (boris et al., 2006). however, it is as yet unclear how these youth-headed households deal with conflict. since research shows that conflict is a part of family life where adults are generally present – in that conflict occurs between husband and wife, between parent and child (e.g., canary & canary, 2013; malek, 2010), and between siblings (e.g., canary & canary, 2013; malek, 2010; howe, rinaldi, jennings, & petrakos, 2002; furman & buhmester, 1985) – this begs the question: how do children acting as the head of a family of siblings deal with the inevitable family conflict? not only are these family units made up of siblings, but they are also siblings living in a new form of alternative family (see bartoszuk & pittman, 2010), caring for younger siblings and fulfilling other adult responsibilities in the absence of adult supervision. further, when there is conflict between siblings living in traditional families, parents can intervene; but in a youth-headed household the siblings are obliged to live together, as siblings and as “special” family members, in a lifestyle and pattern of authority initiated by their parents but continued in a non-traditional structure that has been arrived at with no choice in the matter. spouses in traditional families choose freely to get married and live together, while the youth-headed household does not involve choice by all parties. the head of a youth-headed household lacks the moral authority that accompanies public support of the parental role: “you should obey your parent”, but no one says you should obey your brother or your sister. the research described here investigated conflict and dissension between siblings living in youth-headed households as a new kind of “alternative family” (bartoszuk & pittman, 2010). the research sought to answer the following questions: • what are the characteristics of the youth-headed households that participated in the present study? • do members of such households believe that there is undue conflict and dissension in their youth-headed households? • what do household members perceive to be the causes of conflict or dissension? • what are the consequences of these conflicts? • how do youth-headed household members feel when conflict or dissension occurs? • what strategies do youth-headed household members use to deal with conflict and dissension? what can be done to help these families headed by young people to achieve a healthy life? methods field, population of the study, and selection of participants this research was conducted in huye district, in its four administrative sectors: ngoma, mbazi, gishamvu, and rwaniro. huye is one of the districts of the southern province in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 357 rwanda. in huye district, the population is estimated at 319,000 and, as in other districts of rwanda, that population is young, with 52% aged 19 or younger (nisr, 2012). in huye district, 3% of the population aged 0 to 20 years is composed of double orphans, the national rate being 2.7% (nisr, 2012). a qualitative method based on the “basic interpretative research” approach (merriam, 2002) was selected. this approach is recommended for research when little is known on the topic to be explored (grenier, 2005), such as the nature of conflict and dissension management among the members of a household headed by a youthful sibling examined in the present research. this approach also allows an overall holistic interpretation that permits the social significance of the data to emerge (deslauriers & mayer, 2000). we gathered our data in focus group discussions because these interactions are known to help to capturing youth experiences more effectively than structured survey research (see, for example, berg, 1995). further, over time it has been shown that focus group discussion generates data that are extremely rich and of high quality (ashar & lane, 1991), and that this method has a unique ability to generate data based on the synergy and the stimulation of the group interaction (hess, 1968; catterall & maclaran, 1997) because group members influence each other by responding to ideas and comments in the discussion (barnet, 2002; glitz, 1998; krueger & casey, 2000). seven focus group discussions were conducted. these groups were composed of double orphans who were heading households of siblings and who agreed freely and voluntarily to give information about conflict and dissension in their homes. selection and recruitment of participants was facilitated by the local administration in collaboration with two nongovernmental organizations called, respectively, “association modest et innocent (ami)” and “igiti cy’ubugingo centre (iuc)”. these two ngos work with double orphans living in youthheaded households in the four administrative sectors, which were in a rural area. the data collection was carried out between december 2011 and january 2012 at convenient locations in the four administrative sectors. research approach two moderators including the principal investigator and two assistants were recruited from among our colleagues on the basis that they had experiences with the community and were therefore comfortable in engaging the youth participants. the moderators underwent two days of training on how to conduct focus group discussions and on the ethics of research with human being as participants. the moderators were provided with a guiding agenda of research questions in kinyarwanda, the national local language, to use as the tool for the discussions. keeping in mind the overall research objective of seeking to understand conflict and dissension between siblings living in youth-headed households, the research guide was constructed so that participants could answer open-ended questions pertaining to each to the following themes: • the participants’ beliefs about the existence of undue conflict and dissension in their youth-headed households; • the perceptions of the participants as household members with respect to the causes of such conflict or dissension; • the consequences of conflict and dissension on the households; • the feelings of youth-headed household members when conflict or dissension occurs; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 358 • the strategies used by youth-headed household members to deal with conflict and dissension; and • recommendations from the participants on what can be done to assist these families achieve a healthy life. additionally, in order to generate further information, the moderators asked probing questions during the interview sessions to assist with the clarification of ideas. each participant signed an informed consent form, and an authorization permitting the recording of the discussion was obtained at the start of each focus group session. with one exception where only female participants were available, separate and parallel sessions were conducted for each gender, to maximize the homogeneity of group members (brown, 1999) and thus facilitate easy communication. the total number of focus group discussions was seven and included four to seven participants. to promote a relaxed environment during the sessions, participants were given a soft drink as refreshment. at the end of each session participants were financially compensated by receiving 1,500 rwandan francs (rwfs) or about $2 u.s. for the day spent travelling to the location of the session and the time spent in the focus group discussion. data analysis the method of data analysis was based on the approach to content analysis developed by l’écuyer (1989, 1990). this method shows the essential stages of content analysis by identifying themes and subthemes in what is expressed by participants on a given topic. all seven tapes from the seven focus group discussions were transcribed into seven transcripts, producing a total of 94 pages. these were translated from kinyarwanda into english. the kinyarwanda and english versions were then read repeatedly by the principal investigator to “absorb the content” of the discussions (baribeau, 2009). the narratives contained in the transcripts were analyzed in order to locate the points of view given by the participants in response to the questions posed in connection with the objective of the study (duchesne & haegel, 2005). the coding was carried out using nvivo as software for qualitative data coding, which helped in the elaboration of the codes (duchesne & haegel, 2005). every line, paragraph, and/or section of text was given a specific code. as the coding progressed, the code definitions continued to be challenged and new codes were developed when properties were identified in the data that did not fit the existing codes. during the data analysis, there was constant movement between the raw data and the analysis (see glaser & strauss, 1967; l’écuyer, 1989; paillé, 1994; baribeau, 2009) and constant comparison of categories and codes in each new transcript. the purpose was to fully develop overarching categories for each individual group code. the process was continued until no new code emerged. results and discussion data of this qualitative and exploratory research are presented under the following broad headings relating to the semi-structured interview guide previously described: characteristics of the participants; the existence and signs of conflict and dissension in youth-headed households; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 359 the causes of conflict in youth-headed households; consequences which arise from conflict and dissension; the feelings of the heads of households when conflict and dissension occur; means used by youth-headed households to cope with conflict and dissension; the expressed needs of youth-headed households for coping with conflict; and measures that could be taken to help the youth-headed households mitigate the effects of serious conflict and dissension. characteristics and structure of the focus group discussion table 1 summarizes some basic information about the groups. see column d for the total number of participants. in column f, the acronym yhh stands for “youth-headed household”. table 1. characteristics and structure of the focus group discussions (fgds) a b c d e f g identifying # of the fgd* gender of the members of fgd* ages and age range of the participants in fgd* number of fgd members * smallest and largest size of households headed by the participants in the fgds* period headed /lived in the current yhhs (years)* range of monthly income estimations in rwfs ($1usd = approx. 650 rwfs) < means less than* 11 male 19; 20; 21; 24; 26; 17 (range: 17-26) 6 2-5 12; 4; 8; 4; 3; 4 < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000 21 female 28; 31; 22; 23; 17; 23; 21 (range: 17-31) 7 2-8 18; 17; 2; 2; 2; 4; 5 < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000 31 female 24; 21; 21; 29; 24; one missing (range: 21-29) 6 2-4 2; 5; 4; 4; 3 range 10,000-30,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000 41 male 17; 20; 21; 21 (range: 17-21) 4 2-3 3; 4; 1; 17 range 10,000-30,000; range 10,000-30,000; range 10,000-30,000; range 10,000-30,000; 51 female 24; 20; 20; 17; 6 2-5 2; 9; 9; 1; < 10,000; < 10,000; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 360 23; 17 (range: 17-24) 6; 1 < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000 61 female 19; 30; 20; 20; 21; 18 (range: 18-30) 6 2-7 1; 17; 9; 3; 4; 4 range 10,000-30,000; range 10,000-30,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; range 10,000-30,000; < 10,000 71 male 25; 28; 24; 22; 22; 27 (range: 22-28) 6 2-5 17; 15; 13; 4; 17; 6 < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000; < 10,000 total: 41 *explanation of the information contained in table 1: column a shows the number identifying the focus groups discussions from 1 to 7. the first focus group is identified as 11, the second as 21, the third as 31, the fourth as 41, the fifth as 51, the sixth as 61, and the seventh focus group is identified as 71. column b pertains to the gender of the participants and shows that focus groups 11, 41, and 71 are composed of male participants, while focus groups 21, 31, 51, and 61 are composed of female participants. column c lists the ages of all the participants in the study and the age range of each of the focus groups. participants who were 21 years of age at the time of the data collection constitute the largest single age group (7 out of a total of 41 participants), followed by participants aged 20 (6 out of 41), and those aged 17 and 24 (each age contributing 5 participants out of 41). column d shows that the size of the focus groups varied from 4 to 7 participants. for each household headed by the participants in focus group discussions, column e indicates the smallest and the largest number of household members. for example, the smallest size among the households headed by the participants in focus group discussion 11 is 2 people, while the largest household comprises 5 people. similarly, the smallest number of members among the households headed by the participants in focus group discussion 21 is 2 while the largest is 8. looking at the sizes of the households headed by the participants in general in column e, the households ranged from 2 members to a high of 8 members. these household international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 361 sizes limits are similar to the general size of households in rwanda where 84% of households have between two and seven members (nisr, 2012). column f shows respectively the period that the participants have been heading or living in the youth-headed households. the time spent without parents is ranged from 1 to 18 years. the presentation of the ages in column c and the duration of time in column f are done respectively. this means, for example, that the first participant in focus group 11 is aged 19 years (first in column c) and has been living in his youth-headed household for 12 years (first in column f). the next participant in focus group 11, who is aged 20 years (second in column c), has been living in his youth-headed household during 4 years (same participant as second in column f). there are two observations here: some participants lived in youth-headed households before they actually became the head of the household, for example, when the head left the family in order to marry. for this reason, in the table, some participants have the same age or almost the same age as the time they have spent in the current youth-headed household. one 21year-old participant – the third participant in the columns c and f for focus group 11 – said that he had been living in his youth-headed household for 8 years. otherwise, this participant should have been heading his household at the age of 21 years minus 8 years, or at 13 years of age, which was not the case. however, there were also many participants who were less than 18 when their parents died and they had started to act as head of households. this accords with previous observations (see, for example, thurman et al., 2006; ward & eyber, 2009). column g shows the monthly income of each participant as they mentioned it at the time of the data collection. the presentation of the mentioned monthly income is made in the same respective order as in columns c and f. even though there are difficulties with the concept of income in predominantly agricultural countries, and people living on subsistence agriculture may not be good at computing the value of their produce, the majority of participants said they have a household income of less than 10,000 rwandan francs per month (less than $15 u.s. per month); this means that participants are extremely poor. the average consumption per poor adult equivalent in real terms in 2011 was rwfs 123,891 at the national level and rwfs 106,754 in the southern province (nisr, 2102). at the national level, 44.9% of the population are identified as poor, and 56.5% in the southern province (nisr, 2012), where huye district is located. the national institute of statistics report (nisr, 2012) doesn’t clearly state if the average consumption reported is per year or per month. still, overall, there is no doubt, based on the data, that the majority of youth-headed household members are very poor. existence and signs of conflict and dissension in youth-headed households as was expected, conflict and dissension does exist in youth-headed households and tends to manifest in reclusiveness and a lack of positive interaction between members of the household. the experience can be summed up in the following example: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 362 [y]ou prefer loneliness or directly you go to bed, whereas you should share the meal prepared by your brother who remained at home …we can spend all the night brawling; they are quarrelling unceasingly, it is always the brawl between them. (11) causes of conflict in youth-headed households drinking, the use of drugs, harassing others, youth female family members becoming pregnant, the selfishness of the oldest (and some of the other household members), property and disagreement around the sharing of property (and income): these are said to be the causes of conflict in households headed by young people. participants expressed the sources of conflict by saying: as far as i am concerned, i have got an unintended child, i have my little sister and she does not respect me and she always tells me that i have given birth to an illegal child and this always causes conflict. (21) when these children take or use drugs, they enter into perpetual/everlasting conflict and this may even lead them to kill each other. (41) conflict among non-accompanied children may result from the fact that there is no one to teach them to behave, as for most of the time you see them in the same age range. (71) you may live for example with your young brothers and sisters and take care of them, but little by little when you become old enough and mature you become selfish and forget to look after them. (21) as my friends mentioned, when children live alone, sometimes the eldest becomes impossible and feels that he/she can’t get advice from his/her younger brothers/sisters, and thus acts like a dictator towards them. (61) a major source of conflict reported across groups is a lack of agreement on issues related to property left by the parents, such as such the land, the cows – disagreement on the sharing out of property that was held in common in the youth-headed households. these disagreements were described as follows: the dissensions can come from the possessions that your parents left you. if you are the elder one of the family, you may be guided by your own interests to the detriment of your brother. you can for example sell a field [land] without informing your brother. when he finds out, he will complain, wanting to know why you did it without him knowing. thus, conflict may occur between you, because what you do, you do without consulting him, since your heritage is common and shared. (31) when one of the members gets married, it is also said to be a time of conflict/dissension: there were some cows at home and my elder brother got married and then he wanted to take them to his household and we refused and this created conflict among us. (71) siblings in youth-headed households are victims of poverty and hunger that make it difficult for them to get on well. the households are not able to satisfy the basic needs of their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 363 members and that situation may lead them into conflict and dissension. as the participants noted: poverty problems may results in conflict…. it happens that you lack something to eat and conflict may occur from this situation. (21) in concrete terms, it has been said that conflict often results from poverty, which prevent children in the family from getting on well with each other. indeed, you can find children who have no parents but live together in harmony because they are never in need. so, you can’t realize that they are orphans because they don’t come into conflict, thanks to their well-being. (51) in terms of the sharing of responsibility, youth-headed household members think that it is not only the head (who has to be playing the parental role) who is responsible for getting household needs met; each sibling member of the household who is able to do so needs to make a contribution. as one of the participants said: for example, if they want to grow beans, they ask the eldest to buy the seed, but he/she has no means; so, when he/she suggests that everybody should contribute, they disagree with him/her and insist that it’s up to the eldest to provide the seed. and thus the conflict starts. (51) in the youth-headed households as well as in other kind of families, the failure to take and fulfil responsibilities is a source of discord and dissension. consequences that arise from conflict and dissension in youth-headed households consequences of dissension in youth-headed households, as in other families, may include members leaving home and the breakup of the family. examples to illustrate these points are related by participants in the following examples: when there is conflict, a child can flee the family and go in the street to become "a street child”. (11) the first consequence is to leave the family home and to go to wander in the street. (41) they can leave the house, each going his own way, and live a vagabond life. (61) when there is conflict or dissension, some sibling members of youth-headed households do not try to deal with it but leave the home. leaving home may be aimed at searching for better living conditions, but this may end in failure. this failure can be translated, for a girl, in the experience of an unwanted pregnancy: if it is a girl, she may not go in the street but she may fall unintended pregnant because you do not get along suitably in your family…you may find, for example, some child who fails to live in the family and prefers to live and go to town and when she gets pregnant there she comes back and finds you there without any sufficient means to take care of her. (11) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 364 the consequence of conflict/dissension in youth-headed households may be mental suffering and drug abuse, as in these examples: you will understand that he/she has a mental disease like trauma, etc. (71) now, i have stomach pains. very recently, i had a stomach attack …you may feel your heart subjugated by sadness… you may miss the sleep; you may have a generalized malaise, etc. (31) drug abuse as a refuge may lead to or itself constitute health problems expressed in mental suffering and in physical illness: if there are problems in the family, they take refuge in the consumption of drugs and other narcotics. (31) you may start taking drugs in order to soothe the pain and forget many things you meet in life. (71) besides, his/her younger brothers suffer from it enormously. (11) in situation of conflict and dissension in youth-headed households, if members are not fully capable of work this lead to poverty: from this situation, the families members cease to work, become poor, and then conflict increase…. because of living in disagreement and misunderstanding, you do not work, and you become poor. (21) another consequence may be extreme poverty because when there is conflict you cannot work in order to develop yourselves…. a severe consequence, as i told you, from my experience, is poverty. (71) there is the poverty which is due to the misunderstandings in general. (11) the consequence i find is that they never achieve what they had planned, because of those conflicts. (51) feelings of heads of households when conflict and dissension is present in their families the heads of household who participated in this research reported a variety of feelings and emotions. these are related to psychological distress, to social isolation from neighbours and from the support of the authorities, to neighbours who made the conflict between siblings worse, to lack of motivation, and to suicidal thoughts and negative sentiments about themselves as heads of household. one example follows: [it] is the feeling of loneliness and lack of motivation to do something because you do not see any good coming from doing something…lack of people who show they care for you by talking to you, to such an extent that you feeling you are hating all people…. if you have a problem you lack a neighbour who can come and comfort you…. when conflicts occur, frankly speaking, my experience is that no one cares about these orphan children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 365 (71) living in conflict and dissension make the heads of households feel stressed, discouraged, and abandoned by a society that does not care about them. some report feeling like abnormal people. others remarked on an absence of anyone they could approach for comfort, be it neighbours or authorities. they reported that when they needed to talk to an authority figure, they were afraid to approach that person. they feel abandoned and socially isolated. in turn, because of this feeling of social isolation, they prefer to keep quiet and not tell anyone about their conflict-related problems: there are moments when one is really in distress, moments when there is nobody who approaches you to comfort you and even the authorities do not come to see you; you never see them…you feel lost. even when you would need to talk to an authority, you are afraid to approach it…we live in extreme conflict…. i did not understand, i even wanted to commit suicide…. sometimes, one decides to commit suicide. (31) participants reported that in cases of conflict and dissension in their family, the neighbours do not help to solve conflict but instead say things to the elder or younger brother of the head that are intended to worsen the situation and even harm the children’s property: as children living alone, we often face several problems. neighbours despise us, and harm our property because we don’t have any support.... with this, neighbours themselves make life difficult for you, because you don’t have any friend among them who can take your defence.… sometimes you find yourself in a bad neighbourhood, but you can’t do anything about it. you are aware that you live only thanks to god’s will, and not others’ will. (61) this is consistent with the assertion that some neighbours act spitefully toward the young heads of households. youth-headed households feel a lack of motivation to deal with their responsibilities. they have no motivation to work and may fall into depression, realizing that their previous actions are ineffective: [t]he consequence is the feeling of loneliness and lack of motivation to do something because you do not see any good coming from doing something…lack of people who care for you by talking to you to such an extent that you feeling you are hating all people. (71) sometimes sibling members of youth-headed households living in discordant circumstances have suicidal thoughts. this may be due to conflict, but also may also be linked to situations of social isolation, negative emotionality, and depressive symptoms. some household members may decide to move far away from their siblings when there is conflict and dissension in their families. the unhealthy situation can lead the heads of youth-headed households to regret being the eldest of the family, as they fear to approach the authorities to speak about their problems: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 366 most of the time we first lose self-control and regret being the eldest in the family, because of the problems. so, we feel swamped by events but manage to support them, since there is no other solution; sometimes you ask yourself why you are still alive, and you wish you had died. (51) means or strategies employed by youth-headed households to face up to family conflict in order to cope with conflict and dissension, participants reported sharing their concerns with peers and people of the same age enduring the same experience, their own friends or a parent’s friends. members of youth-headed households reported that they mainly prefer to talk to people with the same experience of conflict and dissension, preferably other young people, their peers, when discussing their experiences and seeking help in finding solutions, rather than having recourse to older people: [i]nstead of making recourse to the old people, …better is that young people of your age intervene in your problems (a girl or a boy), contrary to what adults can do.… another means is to invite another young person of your age to come to intervene in your problems in order to help you to reconcile. (11) it is necessary to seek people who have the same problems as you to talk about it. one exposes his; the other does the same thing. after that, each one feels relieved; each one feels calm and less worried in his heart. (31) when heads of sibling households encounter family discord, they can go to their own friends or the friends of their dead parents and ask them to intervene with their advice. in conflict and dissension situations, they would be willing to search for help in the extended family – an aunt or uncle – but in general such family members no longer exist: i run to contact other family members like my aunt because the neighbours do nothing but telling my elder or younger brother things that are intended to worsen the situation.... you try among the family members even though you sometimes lack them. you may lack an aunt or uncle. (71) needs in relation to conflict and dissension between siblings in the youth-headed households youth-headed households reported on what they think can be done in order to assist sibling-headed families to no longer live in serious situations of conflict and dissension. they were clear that what they need most of all is economic assistance and psychosocial support: financial help for poverty reduction is helpful, because most of the time conflict come from poverty. (21) i think that there should be organizations which can deal with the studies of these children since they are intelligent. those who cannot reach secondary studies can profit from vocational training which will help them to fend for themselves in their future like the others. (31) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 367 for my part, i need assistance so that i can get my own home, because i’m about to be chased from where i’m living now.… we need your help because, as the eldest of the family, we are like parents for our young brothers and sisters. when they need something you are unable to find, such as lotion, soap or food, you are overtaken by problems. i think you should help us. (51) clearly, the participants in this study need economic assistance to be helped out of poverty. youth-headed households need to be approached by counsellors and advisers and they need advocacy. heads of household said that they needed advice, counselling, advocacy, and adult guidance: in these problems especially lies the conflict that is found in children-led households…their lack of willingness to solve those problems because these children do not have anyone to advocate for them...frankly speaking, my experience is that no one cares about these orphan children. orphans, as they lack means, should have people who advocate for them in law, in the courts, because there are many people who have problems in courts and lack advocacy because they do not know the laws and are victimized in front of the law. (71) youth-headed households need to be approached regularly and specifically by community leaders, neighbours, and friends. this can help them, especially those who are very young, to overcome the lack of role models, as they put it. it would also help them to deal with the feeling of being marginalized within community structures and give them guidance. as they noted: sometimes, children-headed families lack proper education…. beside this, when one takes drugs, this worsens the situation and makes you live in disagreement or conflict. (41) conflict among children without parents may result from the fact that there is no one to help them in how to behave, as for most of the time you are with people in the same age range. you notice that some of them drink beer or take drugs whereas other do not, which is seen as a problem which has the potential to separate them or generate misunderstanding among them. (71) actions to be taken there is an urgent need for siblings in youth-headed households to be specifically approached in a helpful and supportive way by leaders, counsellors, and advisers. there is also an urgent need for advocacy: i find that it is good that there is an adviser with whom to exchange ideas; but a mature person, who is capable, not a child as we are, so that we can develop. (11) to have counsellors and advisers for everyday life.… there should be people who can train and advise children-headed families about their everyday life and show them how international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 368 they can handle their problems when they occur.… neighbours, friends, people to be near them and advise them to live in peace. (21) we also need advocacy. (71) youth-headed households also need the community leaders to approach them in order to help them in solving their problems: leaders should approach orphans to know their problems in order to solve them properly.… there should be a meeting of children who live together where they discuss their problems. even one meeting in three months may be sufficient. (21) [t]hey [authorities] should set up a secure place where they can find these children.… one wonders how he will live; when you do not have somebody, an authority to listen to you, to look into your problems, you feel lost. thus we would like them to approach us where we are, in our villages, our cells, and our sectors…strongly encourage all the basic authorities to take care of the survival of these children, to know how they live from day to day. (31) they should schedule a day when we can meet and discuss our problems. this is how they can be informed about the problems each child has…. i have never seen any intervention of the authorities when it comes to children to live alone or care for other children. when we are called in general you do not have ways to give your ideas. if you are an authority who cannot take at least one day a year to visit those children, you cannot know their problems. what i am telling you is true…. you cannot know what the child thinks or that there are people who want to harm him in different ways if you don’t talk to him. (71) mentoring interventions cost little, and have been shown to be effective in a variety of settings (dubois, holloway, valentine, & cooper, 2002). successful mentoring programs may also help to renew social interconnectedness in rwanda (boris et al., 2006). specific structures may need to be put in place to deal with the issues of daily life and regulation confronting youthheaded households. the findings of this study suggest that it is very important to pass laws that specifically recognize the existence of youth-headed households and regulate and support their rights and duties in the same way as the laws that govern other kinds of families. these laws should also deal with the property of such households. in a country that has a high number of youth-headed households (unicef, 2009; lee, 2012) that is likely to increase because traditional foster care is declining, such special measures are clearly necessary. as the older members of these households take over the parental role at an early age and in an unusual way, following the death of their parents, they face challenges that sometimes cause them to regret their seniority in the family. specific strategies should be put in place to support them in order to preserve their mental health. one such strategy would be to set up a specific and clear structure for their material and psychosocial support. because so many member of the youth-headed households that participated in this study stated that they feel a lack of motivation to action, a sense of isolation, and a lack of administrative and social support, this research suggests that it is important to set up a specific national structure to employ strategies dealing with all of the daily life issues experienced in such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 369 households. included in these policies and approaches should be a special channel of effective advocacy for youth-headed households. our data shows that there is currently no specific institution that supports youth-headed households; they have nowhere to go where they can find advocacy specific to their needs (see also clinique juridique, 2003). these youth-headed households constitute a new kind of alternative family with a unique structure and social and demographical characteristics that need official recognition and the rights associated with that recognition. these youth-headed households require specific regulations that give them the same rights that are enjoyed by traditional adult-headed households. these rights would enable siblings in youth-headed families to have the same entitlement to socio-economic support – (e.g., the v2020 umurenge program, one of the strategic programs for fighting poverty in rwanda) – as adult-headed families, and thus to emerge from the poverty that is one of the causes of conflict and dissension. further, youthheaded households should be provided with training in family responsibilities, responsibilities like parenting and family management. as one focus group participant explained: counsellors can also help these children by teaching and training them. the government has a role to play as well…we want people who can come closer to us and advise us (71). the main aspects – signs, causes, and consequences – of conflict and dissension are present even in traditional families and in other types of alternative families (malek, 2010; mukashema & sapsford, 2013; commission episcopale justice et paix projet, 2007; slegh & kimonoyo, 2010). the youth-headed households in general and those living in conflict and dissension are unique, however, in that no adult member of any other family can say that he or she needs “adult support” to solve family problems. this means that youth-headed households are constantly aware of their vulnerabilities and lack of resources. on the other hand, they have demonstrated their capacity to cope with life events and, through that, their resilience in the face of a most unfavourable situation, that of being orphans without an adult presence in their family lives. summary and conclusion this study explored conflict and dissension in youth-headed households using focus group discussion as a method of the data collection. seven focus groups were conducted with a total of 41 participants. the objectives of the study were to verify the existence of these families and to learn about the signs of conflict and dissension in youth-headed households, its causes, its consequences, the feelings of the heads of these households when conflict and dissension are present, the means used to face it, their needs in relation to such conflict and dissension between siblings, and the expressed needs of youth-headed households so that they can be helped to no longer live with such serious discord. conflict does exist in youth-headed households. the most common post-conflict responses of family members are withdrawal and lack of positive interaction between members of the household. dissension and conflict are most often triggered by behaviours such as drinking, the use of drugs, harassing others, engaging in sexual activity that leads to unintended pregnancy, the perceived selfishness of the oldest (and some other household members), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 370 different views about property and property-sharing, and disagreement around the property (and income) sharing. additionally, siblings in youth-headed households are often the victims of poverty and hunger that compound the difficulty in getting on well with each other. these young people are unable to satisfy the basic needs of their household members so these privations and conditions of daily life almost inevitably lead to conflict and dissension. the consequences of conflict and dissension in youth-headed households, as in other families, are that family members leave home, endure mental suffering and drug abuse, and that some families break apart. as well, if members are not fully capable of work the family suffers from poverty, underlining and reinforcing the cycle of conflict in the family. the young people who live youth-headed households and experience conflict and dissension experience psychological distress, social isolation from neighbours and a lack of support from authorities, disengagement from neighbours who often make the conflict between siblings worse, along with a lack of motivation, suicidal thoughts, and negative sentiments about themselves as heads of household. young heads of households often lack the motivation to deal with their responsibilities. in order to face conflict and dissension, participants reported sharing with peers and people of the same age and the same experience, their own friends or a parent’s friends. this study shows that youth-headed households are distressed households whose members need economic assistance and psychosocial support. they require outreach from counsellors and advisers and they need advocacy and guidance. it is therefore recommended that specific structures be put in place to deal with all issues in their daily life and regulation. judging by this research, it seems of the utmost importance for the rwandan government to write legislation that recognizes the existence of youth-headed households and enshrines their rights and responsibilities, in the same way that existing laws govern other kinds of families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(2.1): 354–374 commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the rwandan genocide. 371 references ashar, h., & lane, m. 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(2002). focus groups tips for beginners. tcall occasional research paper no.1. bryan, tx: texas a&m university. retrieved from http://www-tcall.tamu.edu/orp/orp1.htm. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs104.1201919287 refugee children in crisis: the challenges facing syrian refugee children residing outside refugee camps in jordan ali jameel faleh al-sarayrah and haya ali falah al masalhah abstract: this study aimed to identify the kinds of challenge encountered by syrian refugee children who are living in jordan but not in refugee camps. a sample of 120 syrian refugee children residing in amman provided the data for this study, which is based on a descriptive approach. the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) was used to analyze the data. we found that the main economic challenges faced by these children were low wages, labor exploitation, difficulties with paying back debts for their families, ongoing poverty, and the high cost of living in jordan. educational challenges were also largely economic and were mainly due to the high cost of education and the priority of work over school attendance. health challenges too were economic and centered on the high cost of health care and the obstacles to obtaining medical insurance. social challenges included lack of interpersonal bonds, an inability to form new friendships, and the absence of entertainment. this study suggests that providing financial support for syrian refugee families consistent with the increasing cost of living in the hosting country would result in better lives for the syrian children, as would creating job opportunities for heads of families in line with memoranda of agreement that jordan has with international organizations. further, public education for syrian refugee children should be made free of charge, particularly in the elementary stages. keywords: syrian children, refugees, jordanian refugee camps ali jameel faleh al-sarayrah phd (corresponding author) is a lecturer in political sociology, al-zaytoonah university of jordan, p.o. box 130, amman 11733, jordan. email: ali.sarairah@zuj.edu.jo haya ali falah al masalhah phd is an assistant professor of development, al-zaytoonah university of jordan, p.o. box 130, amman 11733, jordan. email: h.masalha@zuj.edu.jo mailto:ali.sarairah@zuj.edu.jo mailto:h.masalha@zuj.edu.jo international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 66 this study aims to shed light on the kinds of challenge encountered by syrian refugee children in jordan who are not living in refugee camps. sarayrah (2018) stated that, according to the united nations children’s fund (unicef), there are more than 655,000 syrian refugees in jordan, with 86% of them living below the poverty line, and 10% below the extreme poverty line. according to culbertson and constant (2015), “the number of child refugees is recorded at 287,556 which constitute 51% of the overall number.” the vast majority (78%) of syrian refugees who are living in jordan but not in refugee camps are located in the northern and central areas of the country; half (about 330,000) are younger than 18 years old, while 16% (about 103,000) are younger than 5 years old (valenza & al fayez, 2016). it was found in 2015 that the number of syrian child refugees in jordan without their parents had risen to 4,395 and that most of these had arrived in jordan accompanied by second-degree relatives, but 17% of them had come alone (“a study on the sufferings”, 2015). background omoush (2016) found that 84% of syrian refugees were living in host communities, not in refugee camps. omoush also showed that the challenges these refugees faced included severe poverty, lack of food, lack of health care, the need to beg in order to survive, exploitation, lack of job opportunities, accumulation of debt, and the desire to escape reality. additionally, omoush noted that the core problem, in many cases, is the absence of the primary breadwinner (husband, father, or eldest brother) due to disease, death, or detention; beyond this, most syrian refugees are in financial debt to the homeowners of their rented residences. with average rents of about 350 jod (jordanian dollars), equivalent to about 500 usd (u.s. dollars), per month, “extended families [are] having to share cramped rooms for prolonged periods of time” (norwegian refugee council, 2015, p. 9). the norwegian refugee council (2015) also noted that, “according to official government statistics, rental prices in jordan are estimated to have risen by an average of 14 per cent since january 2013” (p. 7). in mafraq and ramtha (cities in northern jordan), rents went up sixfold because of massive demand by syrian refugees (francis, 2015). moreover, “amman (capital of jordan) is ranked as the most expensive city in the middle east and africa according to the economist magazine in its annual report of the economist intelligence unit (eiu) 2015” (syrian network for human rights & euro-mediterranean human rights monitor, 2016, p. 7). according to a unicef (2018) report: 94 per cent of syrian children under 5 living in host communities are multidimensionally poor, meaning that they are deprived of a minimum of two out of the following five basic needs — education, health, water and sanitation, child protection and child safety. (para. 2) the report also states that 40% of syrian refugees in hosting communities do not have enough food, and 45% of children 5 years old and under do not have convenient access to health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 67 services, including vaccinations and services for the disabled. for reasons that include the high cost of education and lack of room at schools, 38% of these children go to school intermittently or have abandoned schooling (unicef, 2018). in addition, 16% of those 5 years old and under do not have birth certificates, which may result in challenges and obstacles in the future (unicef, 2018). meanwhile, the safety of the 6 to 17 age group is threatened by participation in child labor and exposure to violence (valenza & al fayez, 2016). child labor a study conducted by the euro-mediterranean human rights monitor (2016) showed that reasons for syrian refugee families in jordan putting their children out to work or to beg included the burden of debt, the family’s inability to meet basic human needs, and the risk of adults being detained when working without permits. these researchers stated that “for these refugees, obtaining food must take priority over education, so children are often required to uphold responsibilities that exceed their age and ability” (pp. 11–19). also, more than 70% of syrian refugee families in jordan are without fathers (“the situation of syrian refugee children”, 2013), which means that the role of family head often falls on children. when asked the reasons that force them to work, syrian refugee children answered, “i work to feed my family” (“jordanian concern”, 2014). as well, we have learned from van esveld, martínez and human rights watch, and bochenek (2016) that “60% of syrian families in hosting communities depend on money earned by their children” (para. 14). we have also learned from stave and hillesund (2015) that, rather than attending school, these children are “working in quarries, bakeries, shoemaking, construction, or cleaning to support their families, often at physical risk to themselves” (p. 60). additionally, we know that the terms of employment for such children are typically 6 to 7 days per week, without vacations, and that one third of them work more than eight hours a day for a daily income of 4 to 7 usd (international labour organization, 2014, p. 31). an international labor organization report authored by stave and hillesund (2015) stated that 37% of syrian refugee children are forced to work in construction and 48% between the ages of 15 and 17 work in factories. these authors also found that the probability these children will encounter hazardous work circumstances is high and that their working conditions produce exhaustion in the children, which in the long term may result in other negative health and physical effects. overall, stave and hillesund found that unsafe working conditions have endangered the lives of hundreds of syrian refugee children and led to permanent disabilities. an international labour organization (2014) report stated that “368 working children were subject to injuries that required medical intervention and became unable to return to work due to the injury” (euromediterranean human rights monitor, 2016, p. 19). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 68 educational challenges van esveld et al. (2016) concluded that 97% of syrian refugee children are at risk of abandoning schooling due to the financial difficulties faced by their families. their report also showed that a substantial number of syrian parents cannot afford such education-related expenses as transportation, fees, and uniforms; as well, there is low accessibility to education due to banning, restrictions, and unfavorable locations. in combination, these challenges create a desperate educational reality and an insecure future. although poverty is the overriding problem that keeps syrian refugee children out of school, it is not the only one. the poor infrastructure for education in jordan is a major challenge even for jordanian students; moreover, some parents regard the modest level of education that is available to be inadequate. as well, some refugee children abandon their schooling because of the violence experienced at school (valenza & alfayez, 2016). van esveld et al. (2016) stated that: syrian children described how teachers beat them with sticks, books, and rubber hoses. in other cases, the children faced severe harassment by jordanian students in school or while walking to school; unicef reported that 1,600 syrian students dropped out in 2016 due to peer bullying. (para. 23) the policies in effect in jordan make it difficult for syrian children to attend school because these policies “require school-aged children to obtain identification documents or ‘service cards’ in order to enrol in public schools” (van esveld et al., 2016, para. 8). for the many thousands of syrians who have chosen to leave the refugee camps without having a sponsor, the required documents are difficult to acquire (unhcr, wfp, & unicef, 2014, p. 8).according to the jordanian government’s policies, the required sponsor must be a jordanian citizen or a first-degree relative older than 35 (van esveld et al., 2016, para. 8). moreover: since february 2015, jordan has also required that all syrians obtain new service cards, although schools have allowed children to enrol with older cards. as of april 2016, about 200,000 syrians outside refugee camps still did not have the new cards, and humanitarian agencies estimate tens of thousands of them may be ineligible to apply. (van esveld et al., 2016, para. 8) other policies also make it very difficult for refugee children to attend school: requirements of some school directors that children show official syrian school certificates proving they completed the previous grade are impossible for many families that fled fighting in syria without bringing originals. up to 40% of syrian refugee children in jordan lack birth certificates, which are required to obtain service cards. lack of birth certificates will pose a barrier to enrolment to increasing numbers of children as they reach school age. (van esveld et al., 2016, para. 9) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 69 according to salem (2018), even when syrian refugee children do manage to enrol in school, they often do not stay there: “syrian refugee students leave school due to financial pressure, harassment and discrimination, and lack of normalcy” (p. 4). health care the government in jordan has introduced new systems aimed at ensuring all syrian refugees outside the refugee camps receive identity documentation to help them receive benefits. according to a report by the world bank’s jordan poverty reduction and economic management team (2013), refugees who have received health certificates can access health care, but anyone over the age of 12 years must pay a health care cost of 42 usd. the report also notes that jordan has witnessed outbreaks of a number of contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, and measles (p. 15). providing vaccinations for syrians has been one of the most significant tasks pertaining to health care, and the most expensive introduced for refugees outside the refugee camps (world bank’s jordan poverty reduction and economic management team, 2013). literature review a number of studies have examined the lives of syrian refugees on international, regional, and local levels, but have not focused on the issue of the suffering of refugee children living in jordan but not in refugee camps. some of these studies, such as that of hassan (2018), have shed light on social and economic hardships. hassan’s study, which used a purposive sample of 487 syrian refugees living in the city of zarqa, showed that the social issues experienced by the refugees revolved around their fear of leaving jordan, the difficulty of using recreational facilities, and their fear of returning to refugee camps, while their economic problems revolved around the high cost of commodities and rent. using a sample of 100 syrian refugee children and their parents who were living in jordan, abu tarboush (2014) showed that the severity of social and psychological impacts diminishes with age. this researcher also found no gender differences in impacts. at the same time, abu tarboush showed that the longer a child had been in jordan, the fewer social and psychological impacts were seen; but the more problems a child faced, the more severe were the social and psychological impacts. zughool (2016) investigated a sample of 120 syrian refugee families in the za’atari camp to identify family and economic problems and concluded that the most significant problems pertaining to the family were the inability to meet basic needs and the desire to escape the difficult circumstances in which these families were forced to live. zughool also found that, where the economic dimension was concerned, the main problems were low income, unemployment, child labor, and the need to leave school to provide for the family. saleh, aydin, and kocak (2018) revealed that syrian refugees in turkey, lebanon, and jordan have difficulty accessing much-needed health services and “access to health care services international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 70 varies significantly, depending on the country of asylum.… in jordan, 79% of the 654,582 refugees are living in urban areas or informal settlements with the access to the public health care services” (p. 448). karanja (2010) discussed the educational difficulties experienced by sudanese refugees in nairobi, kenya, where children from sudan “face xenophobia and discriminative urban refugee policies, which preclude their admission into public elementary schools” (p. 147); for these children, private schools are not an option because of their families’ socioeconomic challenges. a 2007 study of iraqi refugees in syria conducted by al-miqdad identified difficult circumstances among the refugees including the prevalence of unemployment, dependence on child labor to help provide for their families, overcrowded housing, and a lack of health care services. similarly, a study published by faraj (2008) drew on a sample of 100 beneficiaries of the refugee organization services in africa and showed that the economic problems faced by refugee families lie in the absence of job opportunities, the inability to meet essential needs, and unmanageable debt. the social problems were represented by the inability to educate children due to high cost as well as the absence of health care (faraj, 2008). valenza and al fayez (2016) conducted a study for unicef on the circumstances of syrian children in hosting communities in jordan using a random sample of 1,201 individuals in the al mafraq, amman, irbid, and zarqa governorates. the study concluded that financial hardship plays the most significant role in discouraging children from entering school and encouraging those who have enrolled to leave, with adolescent children being the most likely to give up their schooling to help support their families. the authors also found that many refugees seek health care services in unofficial ways due to financial and bureaucratic obstacles and that only 45% of families who require medical services can benefit from official health care. these researchers also found that most children who live in unofficial camps lack identification cards and refugee documentation, engage in child labor, and do not attend school. according to sha’ban (2014), a study undertaken by care international revealed that half a million syrian refugees who live in urban areas in jordan were increasingly struggling to adapt to the challenges of inadequate accommodation, substantial debt, and the increasing cost of living in addition to their children’s education costs. a care survey of over 2,200 syrian refugees found that 90% suffered from substantial indebtedness to relatives, landlords, store owners, and neighbors; also, their financial circumstances were worsening due to the depletion of their savings (sha’ban, 2014). syrian refugees do not have tenancy agreements and this exposes them to the risk of evacuation at any point (norwegian refugee council, 2015, p. 11). in 2014, jabbar and zaza identified the types of anxiety and depression symptoms experienced by syrian refugee children. they compared these symptoms to those in children in non-conflict areas near where the refugees had resettled. the study concluded that the za’atari children had the highest scores for depression, being the only group that expressed suicidal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 71 ideation. jabbar and zaza stated the need for more research and action among psychologists and therapists to address the mental health of refugee families and children, and recommended further research into therapeutic interventions among refugees to better understand how therapy can potentially have a healing influence. these researchers also concluded that camp children face more difficult living circumstances than their peers outside the camps. given the findings of the above studies and the reports and studies outlined in the “background” section, we sought to examine the current situation faced by syrian child refugees not living in camps. our goals were twofold: first, to investigate the current forms of challenge encountered by syrian refugee children; and second, to focus on the circumstances of refugee children who live outside refugee camps rather than inside them, noting that official local and international statistics indicate that more than 516,000 syrian refugees live outside the camps (culbertson & constant, 2015). we also sought to gain relevant current information that would assist us with proposing solutions that could alleviate the sufferings of syrian refugee children. overall, our intention was that the findings and recommendations of our study should be utilized alongside other recommendations to end this suffering, particularly in jordan. we therefore aimed to attract the attention of governmental and non-governmental organizations and alert them to the suffering experienced by these children in order to guide and encourage assistance efforts, particularly with regard to funding. method research questions this study addresses five main questions about syrian refugee children in jordan who are not living in refugee camps: 1. what forms of economic challenge do these children encounter? 2. what forms of educational challenge do they encounter? 3. what forms of social challenge do they encounter? 4. what forms of health challenge do they encounter? 5. are there statistical differences in the economic, social, and health challenges encountered by these children that can be attributed to variables of interest, including social category, age, family income, number of family members, work, health status, years of education, and educational level? the tool to collect the data to answer the five research questions of the study, we developed a questionnaire in two parts. the first part included primary data that reflected the sample of the study. it encompassed gender, age, and family income, number of family members, work, and health issues. the second part included the forms of suffering — the economic, social, educational, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 72 and health challenges — encountered by syrian refugee children living in jordan but not in refugee camps. the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) was used to analyze the sample. the population from which we drew our sample consisted of all syrian refugee children in jordan not living in a refugee camp. according to estimates, children under 18 comprise more than 51.4% of the total syrian refugee population outside refugee camps — about 330,000 children; females constitute 48.6% of this number and males 51.4% (valenza & al fayez, 2016). our sample was collected only from amman (jordan’s capital), for which statistics about child refugees are not available. the sample for this study consisted of 120 children ranging in age from 10 to 17 years. the data were collected from the children at their work places after receiving permission from parents via telephone. results the results of the study are given here in 12 tables. table 1 covers the reliability of the questionnaire, table 2 lists the demographics of the participants, tables 3 to 6 detail the forms of challenge — economic, educational, health, and social — the participants faced, and tables 7 to 12 show the statistical differences in the forms of challenge faced according to each of six variables: gender, number of family members, whether living with family or relatives, whether attending school, job income, and age. table 1. reliability of questionnaire variables form of challenge cronbach’s alpha economic 0.83 educational 0.81 health 0.86 social 0.89 overall 0.88 the cronbach’s alpha values in table 1 show that the variables listed are all valid for the purposes of the current study. table 2 shows that about two thirds (67.5%) of the participants were male, and one third (32.5%) female. the largest age group by percentage (47.5%) was 17 years old, while 34.2% were 16 years old. nearly the entire sample (95%) lived with their families; most families (80.8%) had eight members or fewer. all participants were employed, with 51.7% reporting an income of 100 jod per month or less, and the rest (48.3%) earning more. most (95.8%) of the sample only sometimes had enough funds to provide the basic needs of the family. most (80.8%) did not attend school; all had lost study years after the war. none had chronic diseases. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 73 table 2. participant characteristics characteristic f % gender male 81 67.5 female 39 32.5 age 14 12 10.0 15 10 8.3 16 41 34.2 17 57 47.5 living with my family 114 95.0 my relatives 6 5.0 enough funds for basic family needs? sometimes 115 95.8 rarely 5 4.2 do you work? yes 120 100.0 no 0 0.0 wage (jod/month) ≤ 100 62 51.7 > 100 58 48.3 do you go to school? yes 23 19.2 no 97 80.8 did you lose study years after the war? yes 120 100.0 no 0 0.0 number of family members ≤ 8 97 80.8 > 8 23 19.2 do you have a chronic disease? yes 0 0.0 no 120 100.0 in table 3, the economic challenges represented by “i usually receive reduced wages for the job i do”, “i take part in paying back debts for my family”, “the poverty of my family led me to look for a job”, and, “the high cost of living forces me to work” were reported at high degrees ranging from 3.72 to 3.78. the other three challenges were reported at medium degrees from 3.24 to 3.52. the degree of overall economic challenge was 3.60, which is in the medium range. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 74 table 3. economic challenges challenge m sd % degreea i usually receive reduced wages for the job i do 3.78 0.927 75.6 high i take part in paying back debts for my family 3.77 0.526 75.4 high the poverty of my family led me to look for a job 3.73 0.707 74.6 high the high cost of living forces me to work 3.72 0.71 74.4 high the job i do is hazardous 3.52 0.744 70.4 medium i work for long hours at a low wage 3.38 0.972 67.6 medium i work to meet the basic needs of my family 3.24 1.085 64.8 medium overall economic challenge 3.60 0.455 71.9 medium a high: m > 3.66 (% > 73.2), medium: 2.34 ≤ m ≤ 3.66 (46.8 ≤ % ≤ 73.2), low: m < 2.34 (% < 46.8). as shown in table 4, all the educational challenges considered were reported at high degrees, ranging from 3.78 to 4.53, except one, which had a medium degree of 3.48. the degree of overall educational challenge was 4.02, a high value. table 4. educational challenges challenge m sd % degreea my family seeks to reduce expenses, and thus i had to leave school despite my desire to resume my education 4.53 0.501 90.6 high looking for a job is a priority over education 4.43 0.658 88.6 high i was not able to resume my education due to the high cost 3.88 1.542 77.6 high education is not a priority for me currently 3.78 1.111 75.6 high i was not able to resume my education due to lack of registration documents 3.48 1.461 69.6 medium overall educational challenge 4.02 0.631 80.4 high a high: m > 3.66 (% > 73.2), medium: 2.34 ≤ m ≤ 3.66 (46.8 ≤ % ≤ 73.2), low: m < 2.34 (% < 46.8). table 5 shows that three of the four health challenges were reported at medium degrees ranging from 2.58 to 2.72. the degree of overall health challenge was 2.53, a medium value. table 5. health challenges challenge m sd % degree a i was not able to go to the hospital for treatment due to the high cost 2.72 1.396 54.4 medium the travel distance prevents me from receiving treatment 2.72 1.561 54.4 medium lack of health documents prevents me from receiving treatment 2.58 1.406 51.6 medium i am sick and no one helps me 2.10 1.253 42 low overall health challenge 2.53 1.074 50.7 medium a high: m > 3.66 (% > 73.2), medium: 2.34 ≤ m ≤ 3.66 (46.8 ≤ % ≤ 73.2), low: m < 2.34 (% < 46.8). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 75 the social challenges in table 6 were all reported at high degrees, from 3.91 to 4.21. the degree of overall social challenge was 4.05, a very high value. table 6. social challenges challenge m sd % degree a i rarely visit my relatives who live close by 4.21 1.129 84.2 high it is extremely difficult for me to go to recreational places 4.18 0.673 83.6 high i cannot hang out with my friends because i work 4.03 1.065 80.6 high i am not able to make new friendships due to family problems 4.01 1.233 80.2 high i cannot play with my friends because i live alone 3.98 1.181 79.6 high i cannot visit my friends due to my health situation 3.91 1.309 78.2 high overall social challenge 4.05 0.669 81.1 high a high: m > 3.66 (% > 73.2), medium: 2.34 ≤ m ≤ 3.66 (46.8 ≤ % ≤ 73.2), low: m < 2.34 (% < 46.8). the tabulated t-tests shown in table 7 yielded a statistical significance below .05 for all challenges except the educational one. this indicates significant statistical differences by gender in the economic, social, and health sufferings faced by the participants; more sufferings were reported by females in every case. table 7. statistical differences in challenges faced, by gender form of challenge n m sd t df p economic male 81 3.49 0.473 -4.071 118 < .001 female 39 3.82 0.310 educational male 81 3.96 0.563 -1.454 118 .149 female 39 4.14 0.746 health male 81 2.30 1.044 -3.556 118 < .001 female 39 3.01 0.983 social male 81 3.86 0.674 -4.981 118 < .001 female 39 4.45 0.451 overall male 81 3.48 0.425 -5.749 118 < .001 female 39 3.92 0.310 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 76 in table 8, the tabulated t-tests show a statistical significance below .05 for both the economic and educational forms of challenge. this indicates that statistical significance in these challenges is attributable to the number of family members’ variable. for each form of challenge, the degree of suffering was lower in families of more than eight members. table 8. statistical differences in challenges faced, by number of family members form of challenge n m sd t df p economic ≤ 8 97 3.66 0.459 3.163 118 .002 > 8 23 3.34 0.333 educational ≤ 8 97 4.12 0.635 3.986 118 .001 > 8 23 3.57 0.368 health ≤ 8 97 2.58 1.037 0.921 118 .359 > 8 23 2.35 1.224 social ≤ 8 97 4.10 0.700 1.468 118 .145 > 8 23 3.87 0.490 overall ≤ 8 97 3.69 0.459 3.367 118 .001 > 8 23 3.36 0.210 the tabulated t-tests in table 9 yielded a statistical significance below .05 for both the health and social challenges. this indicates that the health and social sufferings of the participants can be attributed to the variable of with whom the child is living. it should also be noted that the degree of suffering appeared to be greater for children who live with their relatives. table 9. statistical differences in challenges faced, by with whom the child is living form of challenge n m sd t df p economic my family 114 3.59 0.466 -0.657 118 .513 my relatives 6 3.71 0.000 educational my family 114 4.01 0.646 -0.722 118 .472 my relatives 6 4.20 0.000 health my family 114 2.46 1.046 -3.601 118 < .001 my relatives 6 4.00 0.000 social my family 114 4.00 0.649 -3.748 118 < .001 my relatives 6 5.00 0.000 overall my family 114 3.59 0.430 -3.608 118 < .001 my relatives 6 4.23 0.000 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 77 the tabulated t-tests in table 10 did not yield a statistical significance below .05 for the economic, educational, and social challenges, but for health, the statistical significance was less than .001. this indicates that statistical differences in the health challenges faced by the refugee children can be attributed to the school attendance variable. table 10. statistical differences in challenges faced, by school attendance form of challenge n m sd t df p economic attends 23 3.59 0.580 -0.060 118 .952 does not attend 97 3.60 0.423 educational attends 23 3.92 0.478 -0.816 118 .416 does not attend 97 4.04 0.662 health attends 23 1.71 0.786 -4.414 118 < .001 does not attend 97 2.73 1.042 social attends 23 4.09 0.150 0.271 118 .787 does not attend 97 4.04 0.741 overall attends 23 3.46 0.340 -2.014 118 .046 does not attend 97 3.66 0.455 the tabulated t-tests in table 11 show a statistical significance below .05 for all challenges, indicating that statistical differences in these challenges can be attributed to the job income variable. those with a job income of 100 jod/month or less experienced greater challenges. table 11. statistical differences in challenges faced, by job income form of challenge n m sd t df p economic ≤ 100 62 3.85 0.380 7.678 118 < .001 > 100 58 3.33 0.365 educational ≤ 100 62 4.31 0.701 5.935 118 < .001 > 100 58 3.71 0.338 health ≤ 100 62 2.84 0.978 3.405 118 < .001 > 100 58 2.20 1.081 social ≤ 100 62 4.19 0.585 2.334 118 < .001 > 100 58 3.91 0.726 overall ≤ 100 62 3.86 0.387 7.415 118 < .001 > 100 58 3.37 0.342 note: job income is reported in jod/month. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 78 the tabulated f-ratio in table 12 yielded a statistical significance below .05 for all challenges. this indicates that statistical differences in the health, social, educational, and economic challenges faced by the children can be attributed to the age variable. the challenges were greater for those over 14 years of age in all dimensions except the social, where the suffering was marginally higher in the 15-year-old group. table 12. statistical differences in challenges faced, by age form of challenge n m sd df f p economic 14 12 4.14 0.298 3 11.43 < .001 15 10 3.36 0.376 16 41 3.69 0.392 17 57 3.46 0.435 total 120 3.60 0.455 educational 14 12 5.00 0.000 3 17.059 < .001 15 10 4.20 0.211 16 41 3.98 0.645 17 57 3.81 0.532 total 120 4.02 0.631 health 14 12 3.75 0.261 3 6.826 < .001 15 10 2.63 1.449 16 41 2.44 1.099 17 57 2.33 0.932 total 120 2.53 1.074 social 14 12 4.58 0.261 3 8.274 < .001 15 10 4.67 0.351 16 41 3.83 0.724 17 57 3.99 0.613 total 120 4.05 0.669 overall 14 12 4.39 0.024 3 22.582 < .001 15 1 0 3.77 0.527 16 41 3.57 0.451 17 57 3.48 0.267 total 120 3.62 0.442 discussion as shown in table 2, the majority (67.5%) of the sample were male. as the data for this study were collected from participants in workplaces, this finding presumably reflects the fact that males seek jobs more than females do. all of the children worked to meet the needs of their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 79 families, but about half (51.7%) earned low incomes (≤ 100 jod/month) despite the high cost of living in jordanian society. this reflects the scarcity of available job opportunities and the surplus of job seekers. the responses collected in table 3 illustrate the exploitation of the children. this was represented in the low pay they received while working long hours (67.6%) and in not receiving full payment for work performed (75.6%), amongst other violations of their rights. the findings show that the reason most often given for putting children out to work was to pay back family debts (75.4%), which were related to the high cost of such necessities as rent and medical treatment. the second most common reason given for children being forced to work (74.6%) was the high cost of living. high prices affect every aspect of life even for jordanians, not just for syrian refugees in the host communities. among the syrian families, however, the struggle for survival has led to new adaptation strategies, such as pulling children out of school (80.8%) and forcing them to get jobs (100%). the findings presented here are in accord with hassan’s (2018) conclusion that the high cost of living, especially rent, was the leading economic challenge faced by families living in the zarqa governorate. several other studies noted in the literature review, such as those by zughool (2016), and faraj (2008), also agree that poverty is a main cause of children having to work. a study conducted by care international (2014) revealed that the living circumstances of syrian families were worsening because they had run out of savings. the main reasons for participants not being in school were the high cost of education, and the perception that education is futile for them (table 4). looking for work had priority over education for children in the sample. the results here are in agreement with a study by valenza and al fayez (2016), who concluded that “the largest obstacle which prevents children from going to school is a financial one” (p. 11). one barrier preventing participants from receiving medical treatment was high cost (table 5). medical insurance could help decrease that cost, but lack of official documents makes insurance difficult to obtain. as many studies that have tackled the health situation of syrian refugees have concluded, the main barrier to acquiring the needed documents is that the jordanian government has put in place complicated procedures for applicants. in the present study, some participants stated that lack of documents prevented them from receiving health care. these findings are in agreement with valenza and al fayez (2016), who concluded that financial and bureaucratic obstacles lead many refugees to seek health care by unofficial means. the participants had difficulty maintaining social relations with their relatives and friends (see table 6). as we have seen, many children are burdened with economic responsibilities within the family. this reduces their opportunities to form and maintain friendships with their peers, and to participate in social interactions with their families. participants also reported difficulty in accessing recreational facilities. one reason might be the cost, which must be weighed against that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 80 of necessities like food and rent. hassan (2018) also concluded that social problems are represented by the difficulty of using recreational places. in order to answer research question five, variance analyses were performed (see tables 7–12) to show the statistical difference in each form of challenge — economic, educational, health, and social — attributable to each of six variables. in regard to the gender variable, the reported sufferings of the female participants exceeded those of the males for all four forms of challenge, which might be due to the amount of responsibility syrian girls are often required to uphold. the patterns of power have begun to change in syrian refugee families; girls have responded to the pressures of asylum by taking on more responsibilities. in regard to family size, economic and educational suffering were greater for families of eight members or fewer, perhaps because the fewer the members of the family, the more responsibility each must take on. additionally, the data showed a statistically significant effect on the health and social challenges of participants living with relatives or acquaintances rather than their own families. these so-called “friendly children” often face exploitation or deprivation. participants who did not go to school faced significantly greater health challenges, presumably because those children may be exposed to safety hazards and other unhealthy conditions at work. significantly higher suffering of all four forms was associated with lower job income (≤ 100 jod/month). as noted by the researchers, syrian children are often obliged to accept exploitative wages when their families are in severe poverty, particularly when burdened with debt payments. job insecurity aggravates the suffering of the children. with regard to the age variable, in the economic, educational, and health dimensions, the highest reported suffering occurred at 14 years of age. for the social dimension, the suffering was marginally higher in the 15-year-old group. this result is expected, as older teenagers (16 and 17 years) are more likely to work and have income. the findings are in agreement with those of abu tarboush (2014), who concluded that the social and psychological impacts on syrian refugee children diminish with age. conclusion this study aimed to identify the economic, educational, social, and health forms of suffering encountered by syrian refugee children living in jordan but not in a refugee camp. the findings reveal that the children’s economic sufferings included low income, their need to accept whatever work was available, and long working hours. educational challenges included the high cost of schooling, which led most families to push their children to seek paying work rather than an education. in these families, education was no longer a priority. health challenges included lack of official documents, which made it difficult for the refugees to obtain health insurance, and therefore appropriate medical care, since the families could not bear the high cost of treatment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 65–84 81 unaided. the social challenges faced by the children included a lack of opportunities to create friendships and an inability to maintain connections with friends and relatives due to spending most of their time at work. the economic, educational, social, and health sufferings endured by the syrian refugee children were obstacles to their ambitions and future. years spent outside their own homeland had often led to the deterioration of the families’ livelihood. the income many families obtained through their children’s labor contributed to meeting their commitments, particularly their outstanding debts, whilst in jordan. despite following a number of adaptation strategies aimed at decreasing costs, the longer the refugees stayed, the more burdens they were required to bear. the forms of suffering faced by children reflected those of the families, and their suffering would not end until the families received financial support. this was particularly true for families that lacked food security, and those that had mounting debt. recommendations in light of the findings concerning the forms of suffering faced by syrian refugee children in jordan who are not living in refugee camps, we present a set of recommendations to alleviate these sufferings: 1. provide financial support for syrian refugee families consistent with the increasing cost of living in the hosting country. such support will be reflected in better lives for the syrian children. 2. create job opportunities for heads of families by implementing existing memoranda of agreement with international organizations. 3. make public education for syrian refugee children free of charge, particularly in the elementary stages. 4. provide health insurance 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(2016). “we’re afraid for their future”: barriers to education for syrian refugee children in jordan. new york, ny: human rights watch. retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/08/16/were-afraid-their-future/barriers-education-syrianrefugee-children-jordan world bank’s jordan poverty reduction and economic management team. (2013). moderate economic activity with significant downside risk. jordan economic monitor, fall. retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/worldbank/document/mna/jordan_economic_m onitor_fall_2013.pdf zughool, a. (2016). the problems facing syrian refugees at za’atari camp (unpublished master’s thesis). university of jordan, amman, jordan. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/08/16/were-afraid-their-future/barriers-education-syrian-refugee-children-jordan https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/08/16/were-afraid-their-future/barriers-education-syrian-refugee-children-jordan https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/worldbank/document/mna/jordan_economic_monitor_fall_2013.pdf https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/worldbank/document/mna/jordan_economic_monitor_fall_2013.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718076 perceptions of neighborhood characteristics and the perceived psychosocial and academic outcomes of u.s. children and adolescents godwin s. ashiabi abstract: data from the 2007 national survey of children’s health were used to examine a model of the ways in which neighborhood structural characteristics and social processes (nscsp) impact children’s (age = 6–11; n = 27,752) and adolescents’ (age = 12–17; n = 36,233) social adjustment and school engagement via parenting and family processes (i.e., parent–child interactions).the questions investigated were: how are distinct aspects of nscsp associated with parental stress and well-being, and with youth social adjustment and school engagement? are parental stress and well-being linked with family processes, and are family processes predictive of youth social adjustment and school engagement? finally, does age moderate the associations linking nscsp to developmental outcomes via parenting stress and well-being and family processes? results from a multigroup structural equation model supported the general nature of hypothesized relationships: distinct aspects of nscsp were differentially predictive of children and adolescents’ social adjustment and school engagement. furthermore, the direct effects of nscsp were mediated (some partially and others completely) by parenting stress and well-being and family processes. finally, age moderated the effects of social cohesion on both social adjustment and school engagement; as well, age moderated the effects of parenting stress and well-being on family processes, and on the effects of family processes on social adjustment and school engagement. keywords: family processes; parenting stress and well-being; school engagement; social adjustment; neighborhood structural characteristics and social processes. godwin s. ashiabi phd is an associate professor of psychology at the gulf university for science and technology, department of humanities and social sciences, w1-211, block 5, building 1, p.o. box 7207, hawally 32093, kuwait. email: ashiabi.g@gust.edu.kw http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718076 mailto:ashiabi.g@gust.edu.kw international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 169 a large volume of empirical and theoretical work has associated neighborhood structural characteristics and social processes (nscsp) to community levels of delinquency (bursik & grasmick, 1996; sampson & groves, 1989; sampson, morenoff, & earls, 1999; sampson, raudenbush, & earls, 1997; wilson, 1996) and children and adolescents’ development (caughy et al., 2012; kohen, leventhal, dahinten, & mcintosh, 2008; mcnulty & bellair, 2003; tolan, gorman-smith, & henry, 2003). since the classic work of shaw and mckay (1942) linked neighborhood social disorganization and social control to crime rates, researchers have continued to investigate the association between neighborhood characteristics and social processes and youth development. contemporary research within the sociological tradition (bursik & grasmick, 1996; sampson & groves, 1989; stark, 1987; wilson, 1996) has reinterpreted and extended social disorganization theory by including the notion of neighborhood social processes, thereby increasing our understanding of the connections between neighborhood characteristics and social processes and delinquency (kubrin & weitzer, 2003). the systemic view of social disorganization (bursik & grasmick, 1996) has suggested that different forms of weakened social control serve as a mediator between neighborhood disorganization and youth development. cantillon, davidson and schweitzer (2003), using a systemic model of social disorganization, reported that a sense of community (a feeling of belongingness, that one matters, and shared faith of one’s needs being met) mediated the effects of neighborhood disadvantage on adolescent outcomes. within the social capital and collective efficacy model of social disorganization (sampson & groves, 1989; sampson et al., 1997, 1999), sampson and groves (1989) tested a mediational model of the social control aspect of social disorganization theory. utilizing data from great britain, they linked structural aspects of neighborhoods (poverty and residential mobility) to social control (friendship networks and teenage peer groups) and found an association with criminal victimization. they argued that neighborhood social disorganization reduces social capital and collective efficacy; these, in turn, increase the rates of criminal victimization. sun, triplett, and gainey (2004) examined and extended sampson and groves’ (1989) hypothesis that neighborhood structural disadvantages and low social control will be predictive of increased crime rates. using data from seven u.s. cities, sun et al. reported that social disorganization mediated the effects of neighborhood structural characteristics more effectively on assault than it did on robbery. other investigators using the social disorganization framework have explored the relations among neighborhoods, family life, and youth development (mcnulty & bellair, 2003; tolan et al., 2003). mcnulty and bellair (2003) reported that the effect of concentrated disadvantage on violence was mediated by family well-being. tolan et al. (2003) in their developmental-ecological model reported that parenting practices partially mediated the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 170 relationship between nscsp and gang membership. chung and steinberg (2006), in a study of how nscsp, parenting, and peers influence adolescents’ development, reported that weak neighborhood social organization was related to delinquency through its associations with parenting behavior and peer deviance. researchers with an individual developmental orientation have also sought to understand parental, family and child level factors that mediate or moderate the association between nscsp and individual development (anthony & nicotera, 2008; booth, ayers, & marsiglia, 2012; caughy et al., 2012; dorsey & forehand, 2003; gonzales et al., 2011; kohen et al., 2008; vieno, nation, perkins, pastore, & santinello, 2010). developmental research on neighborhood effects on child and youth development have found a mediational path via parental psychological distress, family processes, and parent–child relationship constructs (kohen et al., 2008; kotchick, dorsey, & heller, 2005; law & barber, 2007; white, roosa, weaver, & nair, 2009). kohen et al. (2008) reported that lower neighborhood cohesion was associated with maternal distress and family dysfunction, which, in turn, were correlated to poor quality parenting behaviors, and ultimately, poorer child outcomes. kotchick et al. (2005), using family stress theory, examined a longitudinal model of the associations among neighborhood stress, maternal psychological functioning, and parenting (with social support as a moderator) among african american single mothers. they reported that higher levels of neighborhood stress were related to greater psychological maternal distress; maternal distress was then related to less positive parenting practices. a moderating effect also emerged for social support. white et al. (2009) also tested the family stress theory to examine the associations between neighborhood, economic, and acculturative stressors and parenting behaviors. their findings supported the hypothesis that the negative impact of economic stress on parenting was via parental depressive symptoms. other developmental studies have focused on the (perceived) safety or dangerousness of neighborhoods (booth et al., 2012; ceballo & mcloyd, 2002; dorsey & forehand, 2003). violence or the threat of violence has been implicated in the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes of children (richters & martinez, 1993; schechter & willheim, 2009). exposure to violence is related to internalizing disorders (cooley-quille, boyd, frantz, & walsh, 2001; fitzpatrick, piko, wright, & lagory, 2005) and to physical and mental health problems (berenson, wiemann, & mccombs, 2001; salzinger, feldman, stockhammer, & hood, 2002). booth et al. (2012) reported that the influence of neighborhood safety on adolescents’ psychological distress was partly mediated by their feelings of powerlessness, social isolation, and mistrust. dorsey and forehand (2003) in a study of how social capital, neighborhood dangerousness, and positive parenting relate to children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors reported that social capital was associated with child adjustment difficulties through positive parenting and neighborhood dangerousness. in an italian study that explored the associations between neighborhood social capital, safety concerns, parenting, and adolescent antisocial behavior, vieno et al. (2010) reported that social capital was inversely related to safety concerns and positively to parental support and solicitation. in turn, safety concerns were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 171 positively related to parental support and solicitation. social capital and safety concerns had indirect effects on children’s antisocial behavior through their effects on parenting. both within the social organization and developmental literatures, little attention has been paid to the developmental significance of the built physical environment (gorman-smith & schoeny, 2009). however, environmental psychological research (nasar & fisher, 1993; nasar, fisher & grannis, 1993) and theoretical reviews (evans, 2006; ferguson, cassells, macallister, & evans , 2013) have demonstrated the developmental significance of the deterioration of the built physical environment. investigations suggest that deteriorated physical environments contribute to fear among residents (nasar & fisher, 1993; taylor, shumaker, & gottfredson, 1985). the persistent experience of fear has been linked to cognitive and academic (shonkoff, boyce, & mcewen, 2009) and social and emotional difficulties (arnsten, 2009). those working within the social disorganization framework have generally focused on the effects of nscsp at the community level, not on individual development (gorman-smith & schoeny, 2009). additionally, a majority of these studies have focused only on youth in urban, disadvantaged neighborhoods (gorman-smith & schoeny, 2009), with a predominant emphasis on atypical outcomes rather normative outcomes (caughy et al., 2012). as well, most studies have not explored the multiple dimensions of neighborhoods, nor addressed the processes that link these dimensions to specific developmental outcomes (cuellar, jones, & sterrett, 2015; leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000). furthermore, a majority of studies have used aggregate census data to link neighborhoods to particular outcomes (hadley-ives, stiffman, elze, johnson, & dore, 2000; leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000); however, the aggregate approach has limited utility in helping to unravel specific neighborhood effects on development (booth et al., 2012; hadley-ives et al., 2000). the present study the current study draws on social disorganization (sampson & groves, 1989; sampson et al., 1977, 1999; wilson, 1996) and family stress theories (conger & elder, 1994; mcloyd, 1990), environmental psychology (evans, 2006; nasar & fisher, 1993; nasar et al., 1993), and theoretical formulations (cuellar et al., 2015; leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000) to examine the processes via which neighborhood structural and physical characteristics and social processes influence developmental outcomes. the present study advances prior research in several ways: it employs a developmental framework (6to 11-year-olds vs. 12to 17-year-olds); focuses on normative developmental outcomes; and includes multiple dimensions of neighborhoods and their associations with development via parental and family factors. a multigroup structural equation model (sem, figure 1) was used to examine the relations among dimensions of neighborhoods (neighborhood quality, resources, social cohesion, and safety), parenting and family factors (parenting stress, parental well-being, and parent–child interactions) and developmental outcomes (social adjustment and school engagement). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 172 given that nscsp (cantillon et al., 2003; sun et al., 2004) have been found to be associated with parental and family well-being (cuellar et al., 2015; leventhal & brooks-gunn, 2000; tolan et al., 2003) and consequently children and adolescents’ developmental outcomes (booth et al., 2012; caughy et al., 2012; kohen et al., 2008; vieno et al., 2010), several research questions are investigated: 1. how are distinct aspects of nscsp associated with social adjustment and school engagement? 2. how are distinct aspects of nscsp related to parental stress and well-being? 3. are parental stress and well-being linked with family processes (i.e., parent–child interactions)? 4. are family processes predictive of social adjustment and school engagement? 5. does age moderate the associations linking nscsp to developmental outcomes via parenting stress and well-being and family processes? the solid and dotted lines in figure 1 are representative of the effects of exogenous factors (predictors) on the endogenous ones (outcomes). the dotted lines are used to make it easier to read the model (they have the same meaning as the solid lines). figure 1. model of associations among constructs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 173 methodology data and sample data used were taken from the national survey of children’s health (nsch), 2007, a telephone survey sponsored by the maternal and child health bureau of the health resources and services administration, that intended to examine the physical and emotional health of children ages 0 to 17 (child and adolescent mental health initiative, 2007). the survey emphasizes factors that may relate to well-being of children (blumberg et al., 2012). the nsch used the sampling frame from the national immunization survey, a large-scale random-digitdialed telephone survey designed to collect immunization history for children (blumberg et al., 2012). computer-assisted telephone interviewing resulted in 91,642 completed child-level interviews. a letter was mailed prior to telephone calls. potential responders used this number to alert interviewers that there were no children in their household, to ask questions about the study, or to complete an interview (blumberg et al., 2012). consent for participation was obtained when it was determined that a household contained an age-eligible child. the respondent was the adult in the household who was most knowledgeable about the sampled child’s well-being (mother, father, or guardian). for the present study data on children ages 6 to 11 (n = 27,792) and adolescents ages 12-to-17 (n = 36,284) were used. table 1. demographics and socioeconomic status by age group descriptive 6–11 years 12–17 years n % n % demographics race/ethnicity hispanic white, non-hispanic african american, non-hispanic multi/other, non-hispanic 3587 13.1% 3770 10.6% 18420 67.4% 25369 71.1% 2740 10.0% 3710 10.4% 2565 9.4% 2824 7.9% family type two parent, biological or adopted two parent, step family single mother, no father present other family type 19128 69.3% 22910 63.5% 2098 7.6% 3974 11.0% 4502 16.3% 6421 17.8% 1893 6.9% 2755 7.6% sex of child male female 14323 51.6% 18969 52.4% 13429 48.4% 17264 47.6% socioeconomic status income-poverty 0-99% fpl 100-199% fpl 200-399% fpl 400% fpl or greater 3365 12.1% 3673 10.1% 4904 17.6% 5739 15.8% 9594 34.5% 12272 33.8% 9929 35.7% 14600 40.2% parental education less than high school 12 years/high school graduate more than high school 1989 7.8% 2617 7.9% 5030 19.7% 7352 22.2% 18575 72.6% 23180 69.9% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 174 table 2. socioeconomic status, neighbourhood, parenting, and schooling by age group descriptive 6–11 years 12–17 years m sd n m sd n socioeconomic status past year employed 50 weeks or more .91 .28 27458 .91 .29 35861 neighborhood resources sidewalks, walking paths exist in your neighborhood 0.70 0.46 27538 0.70 0.46 35954 parks or playgrounds 0.80 0.40 27538 0.77 0.42 35960 recreation, community center or clubs 0.65 0.48 27130 0.64 0.48 35604 library or bookmobile 0.88 0.33 27495 0.87 0.34 35923 neighborhood quality litter or garbage in street or sidewalks 0.16 0.36 27525 0.15 0.35 35952 poorly kept or rundown housing 0.14 0.34 27493 0.14 0.35 35904 vandalism broken glass or graffiti 0.10 0.29 27522 0.10 0.30 35945 neighborhood safety feel safe in community in the neighborhood 3.40 0.74 27482 3.45 0.70 35902 feel safe at school 3.63 0.60 26804 3.41 0.69 34960 neighborhood social cohesion people in neighborhood help each other out 3.36 0.74 27270 3.34 0.74 35605 we watch out for each other’s children 3.49 0.75 27238 3.46 0.75 35533 there are people i can count on 3.55 0.77 27310 3.55 0.76 35655 adults nearby whom i trust to help 3.62 0.73 27295 3.64 0.69 35634 parenting stress coping with the demands of day-to-day parenting 1.43 0.53 27701 1.47 0.55 36153 child much harder to care for than most children 1.52 0.81 27031 1.58 0.85 35121 does things that really bother you a lot 2.03 0.82 27404 2.10 0.83 35579 how often felt angry with child 2.16 0.73 27594 2.16 0.75 35963 parental well-being general health status of mother 2.10 0.97 25793 2.21 1.02 33371 mothers mental and emotional health 1.96 0.89 25765 2.01 0.92 33353 parent–child interactions frequency of attendance at child events past 12 months 3.59 0.68 23667 3.39 0.81 31304 how well talk about things that matter 3.75 0.49 27728 3.60 0.58 36220 school engagement cares about doing well in school 4.55 0.72 27742 4.37 0.88 36225 does all required homework 4.62 0.68 27678 4.28 0.90 36203 social adjustment shows respect for teachers and neighbors 4.68 0.61 27776 4.61 0.68 36251 gets along well with other children 4.42 0.67 27779 4.48 0.67 36251 tries to understand other people’s feelings 4.13 0.86 27734 4.09 0.90 36210 tries to resolve conflicts with classmates, family, or friends 3.92 0.95 27648 3.99 0.95 36060 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 175 measures socioeconomic status (ses): used as a covariate, this latent construct was assessed with three items: anyone in the household employed at least 50 weeks (0 = no, 1 = yes), income-poverty partitioned into eight levels based on the u.s. department of health and human services guidelines (0 = at or below 100% of poverty to 8 = above 400% poverty level), and parental education categorized into three levels (0 = less than high school to 3 = more than high school). perceptions of neighborhood structural characteristics and social processes (nscsp) subjective questions were used to assess the distinct dimensions of nscsp. subjective assessments are advantageous over aggregate census data because they examine respondents own perceptions and focus on aspects of the neighborhood that may be salient to respondents (cummins, macintyre, davidson, & ellaway, 2005). as well, aggregate data may not accurately reflect neighborhoods as experienced by residents as conditions may change between periods of collecting aggregate data (hadley-ives et al., 2000). neighborhood resources: neighborhood physical resources, such as libraries and parks, have been found to contribute to healthy development (anthony & nicotera, 2008) and play a role in shaping observations and interactions with other residents (curley, 2010). four items asking about the availability or presence of: (a) sidewalks or walking paths, (b) parks of playgrounds, (c) recreation, community center, or clubs, and (d) library or bookmobile were used as indicators of the latent construct of neighborhood resources. these items have been found to be a reliable means to assess the physical environment (echeverria, diez-roux, & link, 2004; ross & mirowsky, 2001). questions were answered no (0) or yes (1). neighborhood quality: objective, aggregate data like crime rates do not measure the quality of neighborhood life as experienced by residents (buron & patrabansh, 2008; mast, 2010). the construct of neighborhood quality was indicated by three questions answered no (0) or yes (1) that asked about the following: (a) litter or garbage in street or sidewalks, (b) poorly kept or rundown housing, and (c) vandalism — broken window glass or graffiti in the neighborhood. these items have been used in prior research and found to be associated with increased crime (coulton, pandey, & chow, 1990; hadleyives et al., 2000) and adverse developmental outcomes (coley, leventhal, lynch, & kull, 2013). higher scores indicate a perception of poorer neighborhood quality. neighborhood safety: survey questionnaires that measure respondents’ assessments of their neighborhood have been used (booth et al., 2012; molnar, gortmaker, bull, & buka, 2004), and found to be reliable and to be associated with objective indicators of neighborhood safety (echeverria et al., 2004). two questions that asked about (a) feelings of safety in community or the neighborhood and (b) feeling safe at school were used to indicate this latent construct. these questions were answered on a 4point scale, from 1 (never) to 4 (always). higher scores indicate feelings of safety. neighborhood social cohesion: the items included in the construct are indicative of the expectation of the willingness of neighborhood residents to act in support of each other (larsen, 2013; sampson et al., 1997, 1999), a sense of trust, and the extent to which neighbors help each other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 176 (larsen, 2013; henry, gorman-smith, schoeny, & tolan, 2014). the questions used as indicators of social cohesion asked respondents their level of agreement with the following statements: (a) people in the neighborhood help each other out, (b) we watch out for each other’s children, (c) there are people i can count on, and (d) there are adults nearby whom i trust to help. the responses, on a 4-point scale were reverse-coded, from 1 (definitely disagree), to 4 (definitely agree), such that a higher score represents increased neighborhood social cohesion. perceptions of parenting and family constructs parenting stress: parenting stress was assessed with four questions that asked about the parenting experiences and the negative impact of the focal child on feelings about parenting (abidin, 2012). thus, there is an implication that challenges presented by the child are associated with parenting stress (baker et al., 2003). the questions asked about (a) coping with the demands of day-to-day parenting, (b) if child is much harder to care for than most children, (c) if child does things that really bother parent a lot, and (d) how often parent felt angry with child. these four questions were answered on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (very well) to 4 (not very well at all). higher scores indicate increased parenting stress. parental well-being: two questions that asked about (a) parental emotional and mental health and (b) the general health status of parent were used to indicate this factor. parents rated their emotional and mental and physical health on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (excellent) to 5 (poor). higher scores indicate poorer parental well-being. parent–child interactions: the items loaded on this factor can be said to represent elements of parental monitoring, investment, and warmth — a proxy for family processes (cuellar et al., 2015); and involves sensitivity to the child’s interest and affect, and active participation on the part of the parent (rosenberg, robinson & beck, 1986). the two questions asked were: (a) frequency of parental attendance at child events past 12 months, rated on a 4-point scale from 1 (never) to 4 (always), and (b) how well parent and child talk about things that matter, reverse-coded on a scale from 1 (not very well at all) to 4 (very well). higher ratings are indicative of more positive parent–child interactions. perceptions of psychosocial and academic outcomes social adjustment: this is a global and multifaceted construct, and can be conceptualized as the ability to get along with others and be liked (blumberg, carle, o’connor, moore, & lippman, 2008). behaviors indicative of social adjustment occur in particular contexts (oppenheimer, 1988); thus, it is important to assess multiple competencies: affective (understanding others’ feelings), behavioral (getting along with others), and cognitive (conflict resolution; blumberg et al., 2008; caplan & weissberg, 1988). four questions were used to indicate social adjustment: (a) child shows respect for teachers and neighbors, (b) child gets along well with other children, (c) child tries to understand other people’s feelings, and (d) child tries to resolve conflicts with classmates, family, or friends. these questions were answered on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). higher ratings indicate an increased display of socially competent behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 177 school engagement: two aspects of school engagement were assessed: behavioral and cognitive (fredricks, blumenfeld, & paris, 2004). behavioral engagement involves participation in school-related activities and involvement in academic or learning tasks, whereas cognitive engagement consists of an investment in learning and a desire to master difficult skills (fredricks et al., 2004). school engagement was indicated by two questions: (a) child cares about doing well in school, and (b) child does all required homework, responded to on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). higher ratings indicate increased levels of engagement. two caveats regarding the measures used in the present study are in order. first, the questions or items used to measure the different constructs in this study are limited in scope (not broad enough); the narrow focus of these items enables the assessment of large samples in a large nationally representative survey. that, however, has the disadvantage of not being able to capture all aspects that may be germane to each construct. second, as is common with most large surveys that aim to be nationally representative, the data comes from a single source – parents or guardians of children and adolescents. thus, as the accuracy of results depends on the extent to which parents or guardians are accurate in their descriptions of children and adolescents experiences, this study may suffer from a single source bias. analytic approach a multigroup sem was conducted using amos 16.0 program with maximum likelihood estimation procedures (arbuckle, 2005). a three-step analysis was used to examine three issues: configural, measurement, and structural invariance. in terms of configural invariance, the question investigated was: is the structural pattern of causal associations among the constructs similar for children and adolescents? the issues of measurement (factorial) and structural invariance assessed whether or not parts of the measurement model, structural model, or both were invariant across agegroups. the unconstrained full model (step 1) was used as a baseline model against which ensuing (nested) models in steps 2 to 3 were compared using the chi-square (χ2) difference test (a significant χ2 means the groups differ in some manner; byrne, 2001). in step 2 (invariant factor weights), all the factor loadings were constrained equal across groups, and the fit of this model was then compared to the baseline model. in step 3 (invariant structural weights) cross-group equality constraints were imposed on structural paths, and the fit of this model was then compared to the baseline model. these steps (2 to 3) are analogous to testing for moderation effects in multiple regression. the χ2 statistic was used to assess overall model fit; however, the χ2 value is affected by sample size increasing the likelihood that a target model would be rejected. but, a significant χ2 is not a reason by itself to modify a model; alternative fit indices have to be considered to determine if they provide a good fit to the data (kline, 1998). consequently, the comparative fit index (cfi), the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), and probability of close fit (pclose) were used to augment the χ2 index. for a good fit, hu and bentler (1999) suggested a cfi value of at least .95 and rmsea of p < .06; and loehlin (1998) argued for pclose of p > .05. maccallum, browne, and sugawara (1996) have used rmsea values of .01, .05, and .08 to indicate excellent, good, and mediocre fit, respectively. marsh, hau, and wen (2004) contend that there is no golden criteria for cutoff values for fit indices, consequently, multiple criteria should be used. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 178 results configural invariance (baseline) model the baseline model was used to investigate whether the associations among the latent constructs in the hypothesized model were equivalent across age groups (6–11 years vs. 12–17 years; see tables 3 & 4). given the large sample size, the chi-square test (χ2 [746, n = 63,985] = 33912.05, p < .001; cfi = .92; rmsea = .026; pclose = 1.00; see model 1, table 3) showed that the model differed slightly from the data. also, the cfi value was slightly less than the recommended .95. however both the rmsea and pclose values suggest that model is reasonably consistent with the data (that is, has a good fit), which implies that the pattern of factor loadings and structural associations among the latent constructs is reasonable. the constructs in the model (see figure 2) explained 65% of the variation in perceived social adjustment for children and 63% for adolescents. where school engagement was concerned, the factors explained 44% of the variation for children and 37% for adolescents. table 3 goodness-of-fit tests goodness of fit test of close fit modeling steps/labels df χ2 p cfi rmsea pclose model 1: unconstrained model 746 33912.05 < .001 0.92 0.026 1.00 model 2: invariant factor weights 766 34413.66 < .001 0.92 0.026 1.00 model 3: invariant structural weights 790 34859.53 < .001 0.92 0.026 1.00 table 4 comparsion of model 1 with model 2 and model 3 comparative test of fit models δdf δχ2 p(d) model 2 versus model 1 20 501.61 < .001 model 3 versus model 1 44 947.48 < .001 covariate (ses) effects for both children and adolescents, higher ses was positively associated with perceptions of increased levels of neighborhood resources (children: β = .16; adolescents: β = .13), social cohesion (children: β = .28; adolescents: β = .27), and neighborhood safety (children: β = .23; adolescents: β = .27), and negatively with poorer neighborhood quality (children: β = −.32; adolescents: β = −.33). a comparison of unstandardized coefficients suggested that the effect of ses on perceptions of neighborhood safety was stronger for adolescents than for children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 179 figure 2. model of associations among constructs for children (ages 6–11) and adolescents (ages 12– 17). standardized coefficients (top for children and bottom for adolescents) and r2 for outcomes are reported. * p < .05, ** p < .01. the results focus on perceptions of parents (or guardians) regarding nscsp, the stress associated with parenting and their own well-being, as well as the quality of parent–child relations and child outcomes. to limit the repetition of the words “perception” and “perceived”, all constructs are to be understood as based on parental or guardian perceptions only, and not on objective measures or information from multiple sources. results for research question 5, which deals with the moderation of pathways by age, are included in the discussion of results for research questions 1 through 4. research questions 1 and 2: associations of nscsp with parental stress and well-being, and with social adjustment and school engagement, are shown in figure 2. increased neighborhood resources was negatively associated with higher levels of parenting stress (children: β = −.02; adolescents: β = −.03) and poorer parental well-being (children: β = −.11; adolescents: β = −.10), and positively associated with higher levels of social adjustment (children: β = .03; adolescents: β = .03) and school engagement (children: β = .02; adolescents: β = .02). higher levels of neighborhood social cohesion were negatively associated with higher levels of parenting stress (children: β = −.07; adolescents: β = −.07) and poorer parental well-being (children: β = −.13; adolescents: β = −.13). however, the positive relations between higher levels of neighborhood social cohesion and social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 180 adjustment (children: β = .03; adolescents: β = .06) and school engagement (children: β = .01, ns; adolescents: β = .03) were a bit weaker for children than for adolescents (z = −2.82, p < .01) and (z = −2.68, p < .01), respectively. for children (β = .04), but not adolescents (β = .0004, ns), poorer neighborhood quality was associated with increased levels of parenting stress; for both children and adolescents, poorer neighborhood quality was correlated with poorer parental well-being (children: β = .14; adolescents: β = .13). the associations between poorer neighborhood quality and social adjustment (children: β = −.001, ns; adolescents: β = .02, ns) and school engagement (children: β = −.004, ns; adolescents: β = .01, ns) were non-significant, but also reversed the direction of coefficient for adolescents only. increased neighborhood safety was negatively associated with higher levels of parenting stress (children: β = −.21; adolescents: β = −.25) and poorer parental well-being (children: β = −.20; adolescents: β = −.23), but was positively associated with social adjustment (children: β = .03; adolescents: β = .04), and had no significant association with school engagement (children: β = .01, ns; adolescents: β = .02, ns). research questions 3 and 4: associations of parental stress and well-being with parent–child relations, and of parent–child relations with social adjustment and school engagement are shown in figure 2. higher levels of parenting stress were negatively associated with better parent–child relations (children: β = −.71; adolescents: β = −.80), but the effects were weaker for children compared with adolescents (z = −9.55, p < .001). poorer parental well-being was negatively associated with better parent–child interactions (children: β = −.09; adolescents: β = −.05), but the effects were stronger for children than for adolescents (z = 2.34, p < .01). better parent–child interactions were associated with an increase in social adjustment (children: β = .79; adolescents: β = .77) and school engagement (children: β = .65; adolescents: β = .60). however, the effect of parent–child interactions on social adjustment was stronger for children than for adolescents (z = 8.11, p < .001), whereas its effect on school engagement was stronger for adolescents than for children (z = 9.33, p < .001). discussion and conclusion the current study used data from a national sample of children and adolescents to investigate the processes through which nscsp are correlated with children and adolescents’ social adjustment and school engagement via parental stress and well-being and family processes. integrating ideas from social disorganization theory, family stress theory, and environmental psychology, several questions were investigated: how are distinct aspects of nscsp associated with parental stress and well-being, and with youth social adjustment and school engagement? are parental stress and well-being linked with family processes, and are family processes predictive of youth social adjustment and school engagement? finally, does age moderate the associations linking nscsp to perceived developmental outcomes via parenting stress, parental well-being, and family processes? in totality, the findings supported the hypothesized pathways, after adjusting for the effects of ses. higher ses was associated with perceptions of increased levels of neighborhood resources, social cohesion, and neighborhood safety, but negatively with poorer neighborhood quality. these findings suggest that higher ses affects the resources neighborhoods have (e.g., parks or libraries), and the social cohesion and sense of safety international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 181 experienced by residents. conversely, those with higher ses are less likely to reside in neighborhoods that experience physical decay (litter or garbage in the street or on the sidewalk, or poorly kept or rundown housing). in regard to the questions investigated: first, increased levels of neighborhood resources, social cohesion, and safety (but not neighborhood quality) were directly associated with higher scores on perceived social adjustment; the effects of social cohesion on perceived social adjustment and school engagement were stronger for adolescents than they were for children. second, higher levels of neighborhood resources, but not neighborhood quality or safety, were directly correlated with higher ratings on school engagement for children and adolescents. these patterns of findings, in relation to how distinct aspects of nscsp were related to perceived social adjustment and school engagement, suggest that it is important to parse out contextual factors to understand their unique associations with different developmental outcomes. furthermore, the observed moderation effect between neighborhood social cohesion on the one hand, and perceived social adjustment and school engagement on the other, suggests that effects of neighborhood social cohesion on developmental outcomes may vary based on individual characteristics. specifically, the level of social cohesion of a neighborhood may be more beneficial to the perceived social adjustment and academic outcomes of adolescents compared with children. that may be the case because neighbors are more likely to assist and intervene before adolescent issues get out of hand (byrnes et al., 2013; cantillon, 2006). additionally, the lack of significant direct associations (noted previously) could also indicate that the paths between these factors and perceived developmental outcomes were fully mediated by parenting stress, parental wellbeing, and parent–child interactions (baron & kenny, 1986). together, these results provide support for the extant literature linking nscsp to developmental outcomes (caughy et al., 2012; kohen et al., 2008; mcnulty & bellair, 2003; tolan et al., 2003) in relation to the effects of nscsp on parenting, higher levels of neighborhood resources, social cohesion, and perception of neighborhood safety were associated with lower levels of parenting stress and better parental well-being, whereas poorer neighborhood quality was linked with higher levels of parenting stress and poorer parental well-being. these results are consistent with evidence from other researchers showing that the structural characteristics and social processes of neighborhoods can have an effect on parental functioning and well-being (chung & steinberg, 2006; kohen et al., 2008; kotchick et al., 2005; law & barber, 2007; white et al., 2009). higher levels of parenting stress and poorer parental well-being were associated with poorer parent–child relations. however, the effect of higher levels of parenting stress on parent–child interactions was stronger for adolescents than for children. conversely, the effect of poorer parental well-being on better parent–child relations was stronger for children than for adolescents. furthermore, better parent–child interactions were associated with perceived improvements in social adjustment and higher levels of school engagement. but the association between better parent–child interactions and perceived social adjustment was stronger for children than for adolescents, whereas the effect of better parent–child interactions on higher levels of school engagement was stronger for adolescents than for children. these findings, in concert, are consistent with research on economic distress (conger et al., 1992; gonzales et al., 2011; kohen et al., 2008; kotchick et al., 2005; mcloyd, 1990) and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 168–189 182 neighborhood disadvantage (chung & steinberg, 2006; mcnulty & bellair, 2003; tolan et al., 2003) and their impacts on parenting and family functioning. specifically, these lines of evidence suggest that economic or neighborhood structural disadvantages place parents under increased stress, thus compromising their emotional well-being. additionally, parental stress and emotional difficulties are detrimental to family functioning, with adverse effects on youth development (conger et al., 1992; gonzales et al., 2011; mcloyd, 1990; mcnulty & bellair, 2003; tolan et al., 2003). consistent with bronfenbrenner and ceci’s (1994) and bronfenbrenner and evans’ (2000) contention that the parental and family context interacts with child characteristics to influence developmental outcomes, the present study found that (a) the effects of higher levels of parental stress compromise positive parent–child interactions to a greater extent among adolescents than among children; (b) the effects of diminished parental well-being on positive parent–child interactions had a stronger adverse impact on perceived well-being of children compared to adolescents; (c) the effects of higher levels of parent–child interactions on perceived social adjustment were stronger for children than for adolescents; and (d) the effects of higher levels of parent–child interactions on increased school engagement were stronger for adolescents than for children. although the present study adds to the existing literature, there are some limitations worth noting. first, because the study was a secondary analysis of survey data, it suffers from the limitations one usually encounters when using pre-existing data. for example, nsch was not designed to measure parent–child interactions in their entirety; consequently, the construct of parent–child interactions utilized in the study fails to capture many relevant dimensions. second, the study suffers from having a single source of information: all measures used in the study were provided by parents. as a corollary, the constructs were measured at the individual level, so may not reflect aggregate measures of nscsp. third, the study was cross-sectional, thus it cannot address issues related to the direction of effects; specifically, how nscsp influence development. the study did not consider reciprocal effects between parenting and perception of child outcomes, nor can it rule out the possibility that constructs omitted from the model, or equivalent models with different variables and links, could also account for the variation observed (raykov & penev, 1999). given these limitations, it would be of interest to examine the model using aggregated measures of nscsp to determine whether the findings are supported. notwithstanding these limitations, this study investigated the associations among perceptions of nscsp, parenting and parent–child interactions, and children and adolescents’ social adjustment and school engagement in a way not previously tried. specifically, it examined how distinct aspects of nscsp were associated with positive developmental outcomes via parenting stress, parental wellbeing, and parent–child interactions. this study contributes to the literature by focusing on positive developmental outcomes, and reveals that the effects of nscsp on development may be diverse rather than singular: these associations are mediated by parenting stress, parental well-being, and family processes, and moderated by the age of the child. the results presented in this study have implications for programs or interventions that are directed toward families; they suggest that such programs should also focus on dimensions of the neighborhood or context because of their salutary effects on ameliorating parental stress, improving parental well-being, and consequently parent–child interactions, which ultimately impacts the 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(1996). when work disappears. new york, ny: vintage books. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1987.tb00824.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.39.2.274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20366 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00580.x strain and social capital as predictors of opportunities to make money from crime international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 83 strain, social capital, and access to lucrative crime opportunities karine descormiers, martin bouchard*, and raymond r. corrado abstract: general strain theory (gst) posits that the experience of strains cause negative emotions that individuals try to alleviate through various strategies, including delinquency. gst predicts that the choice of delinquency as a coping solution will be more likely in certain conditions, including those where criminal opportunities are more abundant. the current study considers the role of strain as a direct predictor of lucrative criminal opportunities. because we are specifically interested in lucrative, as opposed to routine criminal opportunities, our theoretical framework is also informed by research on criminal achievement which posits that offenders with more social capital are more likely to make money out of crime. drawing from a sample of 170 juvenile offenders incarcerated in british columbia, our results show that strain experiences are significantly associated with daily access to lucrative criminal opportunities, even after controlling for other factors, including negative emotions such as anger. our results also indicate that criminal social capital – that is, the ability and willingness to collaborate with co-offenders in criminal pursuits – is strongly associated to access to lucrative criminal opportunities. the number of delinquent peers, however, did not emerge as a significant predictor. theoretical and empirical implications for understanding and preventing juvenile delinquency are discussed. keywords: social capital, delinquent peers, criminal opportunities, general strain theory, delinquency, juvenile offenders * corresponding author karine descormiers, kda24@sfu.ca , martin bouchard, ph.d., mbouchard@sfu.ca , and raymond r. corrado, ph.d., corrado@sfu.ca , school of criminology, simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, british columbia, canada, v5t 1s6, fax: 778-7824140. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank patrick lussier, as well as the anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments made on an earlier version of this paper. mailto:kda24@sfu.ca� mailto:mbouchard@sfu.ca� mailto:corrado@sfu.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 84 the main thrust of general strain theory (gst) is that the experience of various types of strain creates negative emotions that lead individuals to delinquency as a way to cope with strain1 (agnew, 1985, 1992, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2006). the theory further asserts that strains directly affect other risk factors for delinquency such as the temporary reduction of social controls, and exposure to delinquent others. although gst treats them as secondary predictors, those mechanisms are potentially more powerful in predicting delinquency than given credit for. beyond the creation of negative emotions that require individuals to cope, we argue that many of strains experienced are directly linked to the creation of criminal opportunities through unsupervised time spent away from authority figures – figures who are often the very sources of strain. the above hypothesis is based on two premises: (a) access to lucrative illegitimate opportunities is not equally available to potential offenders; and (b) this access is an outcome of central importance to strain theorists2 . for the purpose of this study, access to lucrative illegal opportunities is said to occur when, on a given day, potential offenders perceive that they have a tangible opportunity (offered or created) to earn money from a criminal activity. within such a framework, access to criminal opportunities – not delinquency – becomes the dependent variable of interest. in effect, strain is argued to be a direct predictor of access to criminal opportunities, and not necessarily of negative emotions. because we are interested in lucrative criminal opportunities more specifically, we draw from research on criminal achievement – the analysis of variations in success from crime – for guidance on other factors influencing the ability to access money-oriented crime opportunities. this research has confirmed that the offenders who are most successful in crime have the strongest ability and willingness to collaborate with others in the criminal enterprise (bouchard & nguyen, 2010; mccarthy & hagan, 2001; morselli & tremblay, 2004; morselli, tremblay, & mccarthy, 2006). this cooperative ability is not merely a function of the number of co-offenders but rather, the ability to mobilize and use resources in one’s social network for profit is a form of social capital (lin, 2001). it is hypothesized that the inability to cooperate with others will prevent even duly motivated (or “pre-disposed”) offenders from having regular access to lucrative illegitimate opportunities. with regard to gst, therefore, we are asserting that the ability of individuals to access criminal opportunities is an essential component of strain theory because it intervenes between strain and delinquency or criminality. while gst recognizes that the experience of strain may increase the likelihood of associating with delinquent peers (which may in turn increase a conditioning variable, as opposed to an explicit factor predicted by the experience of strain – the opportunities for delinquency), the differential access to criminal opportunities is treated as a reformulation of criminal opportunities. as a separate outcome of strain, if empirically substantiated, this has direct implications for crime prevention by emphasizing prevention efforts 1 although the revised version of strain theory has itself undergone a series of revisions between agnew (1985) and agnew (2006), we refer to the most recent version throughout this paper for reasons of clarity and consistency. 2 variations in access to illegitimate means was the main focus of cloward’s (1959) extension of merton’s (1938) anomie/strain theory. importantly, cloward reminded us that profitable criminal opportunities, like legitimate ones, are not equally available to everyone. however, access to opportunities was considered as a conditioning factor, not the main outcome of interest as it is here. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 85 regarding the management of time in addition to the traditional focus on the management of emotions. strain and access to criminal opportunities agnew’s (2006) general strain theory encompasses a wide range of sources of strains and stress as predictors of delinquency, as opposed to classical strain theory which mostly emphasized the strain caused by the inability of individuals to achieve their monetary goals (merton, 1938; cloward, 1959; cloward & ohlin, 1960). by asserting that frustrations in general are conducive to crime, agnew (2006) extends the sources of strains to include (a) the loss of something valued, (b) exposure to negative treatment by others, and (c) the failure to achieve positively valued goals. in the current study, like the majority of contemporary strain studies, we focus on the second category, and examine a variety of negative life events as potential sources of strain. gst predicts that each type of strain may cause anger, frustration, and other negative affective states. crime can be a coping strategy for adolescents because it directly reduces negative emotions that resulted from their strains (at least temporarily) through the satisfaction of revenge against either those who have wronged them, or against more vulnerable substitute targets (agnew, 2006). non-delinquent responses are, of course, also possible. in the most recent version of gst, agnew (2006) specifies three types of factors influencing whether strained individuals will choose crime or not: 1. the ability to cope in a legal manner; 2. the costs of criminal coping; and 3. the disposition for criminal coping. although the link between strain and negative emotions is the primary and the most theoretically distinct component of strain theory, agnew (2006) extends the direct effects of strain to the social control domain, and to the social learning of crime. most importantly for our hypothesis, agnew (2006) makes the explicit prediction that experiencing specific types of strains may reduce the level of social control thus increasing the likelihood of delinquency. even though most types of social control are usually stable over time, strain can temporarily disrupt social control, most notably when agents of social control (e.g., parents) are the source of strains. these strains can temporarily reduce (a) emotional bonds to conventional others, (b) investment in conventional institutions like school or work, and (c) direct control, for example, by spending less time with parents and at school or at work. note that agnew (2006) specifies that one of the characteristics that makes a strain more likely to cause crime is if it leads to a reduction in social control (the other characteristics being whether the strain is high in magnitude, is seen as unjust, or creates direct pressure for criminal coping). in the current study, the focus is the relationship between the experience of strains with institutions of social control (e.g., parents and educational institutions) and access to lucrative criminal opportunities. it is argued that negative relations with parents result in more time spent away from them, which increases access to criminal opportunities. thus, we follow osgood, wilson, o’malley, bachman, and johnston’s (1996) theory of unstructured socializing which international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 86 posits that individuals do not have to be particularly motivated to engage in delinquency but rather simply have to be present when delinquent opportunities occur. most importantly, spending time with peers in the absence of social control agents provides just such opportunities. whether these opportunities are lucrative may well depend on other factors, such as the amount of social capital one has available. social capital and access to lucrative criminal opportunities the fundamental idea behind social capital is straightforward: sociability and social networks can have positive benefits for individuals. where human capital refers to the skills and knowledge embedded within individuals enhancing the probability of generating positive returns such as higher income levels (becker, 1993), social capital is concerned with resources embedded within the social relations of individuals. as such, social capital truly exists only when it is mobilized for action, when individuals reach out to others in order to facilitate goals (coleman, 1990; lin, 2001). when used as an asset of individuals (as in the current study), social capital may be defined as the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures (lin, 2001; portes, 1998). the value of a social network thus goes beyond mere potential. for such resources to become “capital”, they have to be used for benefit. while the number of delinquent peers may provide a proxy measure of one`s potential social capital, a better measure of social capital also taps into the ability of individuals to make use of their social networks for purposive actions, such as obtaining a better job (granovetter, 1973), or having access to the most profitable criminal opportunities (mccarthy & hagan, 2001; morselli & tremblay, 2004; morselli et al., 2006). in their study of 390 canadian street youths, mccarthy and hagan (2001) used a measure of social capital operationalized as the willingness of offenders to cooperate with others in criminal pursuits. collaborative offenders were shown to be more active, inclined to, and effective in transforming their network resources into capital, that is, using their connections with others to increase their criminal earnings (mccarthy & hagan, 2001). importantly, these authors show that social capital acquired from association with skilled offenders is more likely to contribute to illegal success than conventional capital does (for example, family ties and years of education). while their measure of social capital differed (i.e., tapped into the idea of structural holes – offenders being strategically located within their criminal networks), similar results were found by morselli and tremblay (2004) in a sample of incarcerated adult offenders. the current study departs from those previous efforts in examining access to profitable opportunities as the main outcome of interest, as opposed to criminal earnings. such an extension should prove to be fruitful in specifying the mechanisms through which offenders are able to reap higher benefits from crime. it is hypothesized that offenders who have more social capital will have access to more lucrative criminal opportunities. the experience of strain is expected to be important in providing potential offenders with increased exposure to such opportunities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 87 data and methods participants and procedures the current study draws on data initially collected from 500 young offenders who were serving a custodial sentence at a detention facility in british columbia, canada, between 1998 and 2001. all offenders serving a custody disposition at two open and two secure custody units were approached to participate in this study. participation was voluntary and respondents signed an informed consent form prior to participating. the study achieved a high 93% consent rate, most probably a result of the research team being onsite for a long time period – the team had the luxury of knowing the daily schedule of inmates and of asking them to participate when it was known that offenders were available. the data consists of self-reported information provided by offenders during one-on-one interviews with a trained research assistant, as well as official data from the correctional files. the information collected includes: demographic factors, educational history, substance use and dependence, mental health issues, delinquency, family problems (see corrado, cohen, glackman, & odgers, 2003, for more details on the data collection). because different questionnaires were introduced at various times during the study period, not all respondents were exposed to the same set of questions. a total of 170 young offenders were included in this current study because they completed the collaboration and criminal opportunities scales introduced in early 1999, 12 months after the data collection started. subjects included were mostly caucasian (58.9%), were 16 years old on average (sd: 1.2), and most were males (70.3%). the nature of the data collection makes this sample overrepresented by serious juvenile offenders, although the nature of the current offence is almost evenly divided between violent (32%), property (37%), and other offences (31%). dependent variable access to lucrative crime opportunities classical strain theory portrays delinquency as a means to achieve valued goals, such as wealth and monetary achievement, when legal options are blocked or unavailable (cloward, 1959; merton, 1938; see also: mccarthy & hagan, 2001; tremblay & morselli, 2000). for the purpose of this study, the dependent variable is whether or not a respondent has access to daily opportunities to make money illegally on the street. the measure mirrors a similar one used by mccarthy and hagan (2001) in a study of street youth offenders. respondents were asked to answer the following question: how often do you have a chance to make money illegally on the street? responses were numerically coded (0 = no chance, 1 = less than once a month, 2 = a few times a month, 3 = a few times a week, 4 = a few times a day). because the sample is composed of serious juvenile offenders, a majority had regular access to lucrative criminal opportunities. but not all of them had daily opportunities. because the distribution was highly skewed towards access to daily crime opportunities, the variable was recoded into a dichotomy: offenders who had access to daily opportunities (62%) vs. all others (38%) (see table 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 88 independent variables strain variables the questionnaire contained a few indicators of strain. most reliable and consistent with our argument were two types of strain measured for the purpose of this study: family and schoolrelated strain. these have been identified as two of the most important sources of strain for adolescents, and most likely to lead to delinquency (agnew, 2006). first, agnew (2006) identified the family setting as a potential aversive environment for adolescents (such aversive stimuli as parental rejection, parental discipline, parental conflict, or harmful experience at home). adolescents do not have a lot of legal options to escape such an environment in order to avoid these noxious situations. three yes/no items were meant to measure home-related strain. respondents were first asked if they had already left home of their own volition to live somewhere else. a total of 134 respondents indicated that they had (78.8%). the second question was: have you ever been kicked out from home? a total of 83 respondents answered reported they had (48.8%). the third question asked whether respondents got along well with their parents. a total of 64 respondents answered positively to this question (37.6%). those three questions tap into a potentially chaotic family setting that can strain adolescents and, in addition to creating negative emotions, encourage them to spend time away from this environment. second, we turned to school as a potential aversive environment. school strain was measured by three dichotomous variables. respondents were asked if they were or were not enrolled in school at the time of the current offence (the one for which they were incarcerated). a total of 93 respondents were not enrolled in school (54.7%). then they were asked if they had ever been in trouble with teachers at school (42% had) and finally, whether they disliked school in general (40% did). respondents who are not attending school have potentially more time for seeking and seizing criminal opportunities. the same logic can be applied to those who are experiencing numerous problems at school, and explicitly dislike school: they are more likely to give up, to be suspended, and to spend time elsewhere. a principal component factor analysis of the six strain variables indicated that a clear two-factor solution best fit the data which explained 43% of the variance in the sample3 . the eigenvalue was set at one and the orthogonal method of rotation was used. the three homerelated strain indicators converged as one factor, and the three school-related strain variables converged to produce the second factor. the kaiser-meyer-olkin’s measure is .59, very close to the standard limit for sample adequacy at 0.60, and the bartlett’s sphericity test (30.07) is significant at p < 0.05, indicating the suitability of this solution. anger general strain theory emphasizes the importance of negative emotions such anger as a mediator variable (although it is usually introduced as a direct predictor in statistical models) between strain and delinquency (agnew, 2006). according to agnew (2006), the presence of these emotions increases the likelihood of committing crime. for example, anger may reduce the 3 these items were also factor analysed using maximum likelihood analysis and orthogonal methods of rotation, but the principal component method provided a better fit to the data. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 89 ability to cope with legal strategies; it may also affect the efficiency of communication with others, and the accuracy of situational assessment. in addition, angry individuals are less concerned with the negative impacts and the costs of crime. two anger-related questions were asked to respondents: (a) have you ever been described as having a bad temper? (b) would you say you get angry easily? a total of 131 respondents answered positively at the first question (77.1%) and 91 respondents to the second question (54.5%). based on the (yes/no) answers to these two questions, a two-item anger scale was created (mean of 1.31, see table 1). the cronbach’s alpha indicate a moderate but acceptable reliability for this scale (a = .62). social capital social capital refers to the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures (lin, 2001; portes, 1998). as argued by portes (1998), social capital is not intrinsically positive – it can also be used for benefit in illegal endeavours (bouchard & nguyen, 2010; mccarthy & hagan, 2001). our indicators of social capital replicate mccarthy and hagan’s (2001) measure of concepts examining respondents’ willingness to collaborate with others in their criminal endeavours (the willingness to help, teach, or provide protection). six items from mccarthy and hagan (2001) were used to create our measures, all related to property crimes or drug selling, offences offering opportunities to potentially make money from crime: 1. have you ever offered to teach someone to steal? 2. have you ever offered to help someone sell stolen goods? 3. have you ever offered to help steal? 4. have you ever offered to teach someone to sell drugs? 5. have you ever offered to provide protection for someone selling drugs? 6. have you ever offered to help someone sell drugs? all of those items were measured from “never” to “all the time” (0 = never, 1 = once or twice, 2 = a few times, 3 = often, 4 = all the time). the six collaboration items were factor analyzed using maximum likelihood analysis4 . the eigenvalue was set at one and an orthogonal method of rotation was used. a two-factor solution provided the best fit to the data, explaining 73% of the variance. the three items for property crimes and for drug selling split into two factors to produce variables describing (a) social capital related to property crimes, and (b) social capital related to drug supply. the kaiser-meyer-olkin’s measure is more than adequate at .799, and the bartlett’s sphericity test (483.4) is highly significant at p < 0.001. for completeness and consistency with previous strain and peer influence studies, we also added a variable measuring the number of delinquent friends that our respondents had. respondents were asked how many delinquent friends they had: 0 = none, 1 = hardly any, 2 = some, 3 = most, 4 = all of them. a total of 13 respondents indicated that none of their friends 4 the same two-factor solution was obtained by using principal component analysis. the same group of items was also factor analysed using an oblique rotation technique. the loading was a little bit lower than what was obtained with the orthogonal rotation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 90 were delinquent, 21 respondents answered “hardly any”, 112 mentioned that “some” or “most” of their friends were delinquent, and 24 respondents reported that all their friends were delinquent. this item is, as expected, positively associated to social capital (the higher the number of friends, the more potential for finding and using network resources). the moderate correlation (r = .29, p < 0.01, r = .34, p < 0.01), however, suggests that these remain distinct concepts to be measured separately, as we do here (see appendix/table 4). table 1: descriptives and coding of variables variables mean standard deviation gender (female = 1) 0.28 0.45 age 16.21 1.23 ethnicity (caucasian = 1) motivation for crime is money = 1 daily opportunities to make money from crime = 1 0.62 0.60 0.64 0.49 0.49 0.48 school strain (factor) 0.00 1.00 family strain (factor) 0.00 1.00 anger scale (0-2) social capital – drug supply (factor) 1.31 0.00 0.79 1.00 social capital – property crimes (factor) number of delinquent friends (0-4) ( none to all) 0.00 2.33 1.00 1.14 control variables consistent with past research on strain theory, and as shown on table 1, our multivariate analyses control for age (mean is 16.2), gender (female = 28%), and ethnicity (caucasian = 62%, others = 38%). another control variable measured in this study is whether respondents perceived crime as a way to obtain money. the importance of this control is to isolate the effect of motivation to make money out of crime, and the effect of our main independent variables (strain and social capital) on access to lucrative criminal opportunities5 . respondents were asked if they agree or disagree with the following item: when i do crime, it’s to get money or things. a total of 103 respondents (60.6%) reported doing crime to obtain money. 5 in other words, highly motivated individuals may create opportunities for themselves independently of the level of strain they experience, or the amount of social capital they have. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 91 table 2. bivariate results predicting daily opportunities to make money out of crime daily opportunities to make money from crime no yes f /χ2 gender (female = 1) 23.4% 31.1% 1.2 age 16.2 (1.4) 16.3 (1.1) 0.4 ethnicity (caucasian = 1) 51.6% 68.9% 5.1* motivation for crime is money 46.9% 68.9% 8.1** school strain -0.3 (1.0) 0.2 (1.0) 7.7** family strain -0.3 (1.0) 0.2 (0.9) 10.5*** anger scale (0-2) 1.0 (0.8) 1.5 (0.7) 12.4*** social capital – drug supply -0.4 (0.8) 0.2 (1.0) 17.7*** social capital – property crimes -0.4 (0.9) 0.3 (0.9) 24.5*** delinquent friends (0-4) 2.0 (1.1) 2.5 (.01) 9.7** *p<0.05. **p<0.01. ***p<0.001 results we first consider the bivariate associations between our independent variables and daily access to criminal opportunities to make money from crime (table 3). first, notice how demographic characteristics do not appear to be associated with lucrative criminal opportunities. only ethnicity may play a role as caucasian respondents are more likely to be found in the daily opportunities category. offenders who report being motivated by money are also more likely to have daily access to lucrative criminal opportunities. a positive, significant association is also found between both of our strain and social capital indicators, suggesting that all of those factors may, as expected, increase access to lucrative criminal opportunities. next we consider whether those associations also hold at the multivariate level. the analysis proceeds in three steps. the first model is the baseline model including only the control variables (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity, motivation for crime is money). the second model adds the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 92 strain factors and the anger score to examine if they are predictors of access to lucrative opportunities. the third model adds delinquent friends and the two social capital indicators to examine the independent contribution of each factor to access to lucrative criminal opportunities. the baseline model is significant (chi-square = 16.2, p < 0.01), with both ethnicity and financial motivation emerging as positive predictors of access to lucrative criminal opportunities. adding the strain and anger components (model 2) significantly improves the model (x2 = 35.9, p < 0.001). the cox and snell r2 is increased from 9% to 19% and the overall classification is improved as well (from 65% to 69%) – although it remains relatively poor overall. model 2 shows that the significant effect of ethnicity and financial motivation for crime disappear after controlling for strain. two predictors are significant at the p < 0.05 level: family strain and anger, indicating that experiencing family-based strain and anger increases the likelihood of access to daily lucrative crime opportunities. the school strain factor also is positive as predicted, but only marginally significant (p = 0.06). table 3. logistic regression predicting daily opportunities to make money out of crime model 1: baseline model model 2: strain & anger model 3: social capital b se wald sig exp (β) b se wald sig exp (β) b se wald sig exp (β) gender .677 .393 2.97 .085 1.968 .659 .418 2.49 .115 1.932 .887 .473 3.52 .061 2.428 age .152 .136 1.24 .265 1.164 .236 .147 2.56 .109 1.266 .125 .170 .539 .463 1.133 ethnicity .725 .339 4.57 .032 2.065* .638 .367 3.02 .082 1.893 .504 .412 1.50 .221 1.656 motivation for crime is money 1.01 .343 8.70 .003 2.751** .679 .380 3.20 .073 1.973 .371 .433 .732 .392 1.449 school strain .348 .186 3.51 .061 1.416 .123 .202 .370 .543 1.131 family strain .497 .195 6.52 .011 1.643* .439 .215 4.17 .041 1.551* anger .567 .233 5.92 .015 1.763* .447 .270 2.75 .097 1.564 social capital-drug supply .703 .234 9.03 .003 2.019** social capital property crimes .838 .243 11.9 .001 2.311*** delinquent friends .015 .205 .005 .943 1.015 constant -3.84 2.41 2.54 .111 .021 -5.635 2.602 4.69 .030 .004* -3.651 3.070 1.42 .234 .026 -2 log likelihood 207.987 189.316 166.008 x2 16.2** 35.9*** 59.2*** cox & snell r² .091 .190 .294 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 93 overall classification 64.7% 68.8% 75.9% *p<0.05. **p<0.01. ***p<0.001 model 3 adds the social capital indicators, as well as the number of delinquent friends. doing so significantly improves the model and the classification, indicating the importance of social capital indicators for access to lucrative criminal opportunities. both the drug selling social capital (b = 0.703, p < 0.01) and the property crime social capital (b = 0.838, p < 0.001) are strongly associated to access to crime opportunities. the family-based strain factor remains significant, but anger falls to marginal significance. a surprising result relates to the number of delinquent friends, which does not come out as a significant predictor of being exposed to daily lucrative criminal opportunities. this result is consistent with the argument that the ability to mobilize resources in one’s social networks (i.e., social capital) matters more than the mere size of the network, at least when assessing the opportunities to make money out of crime. discussion and conclusions general strain theory (gst) posits that the experience of strains cause negative emotions that individuals will try to alleviate through various strategies, including delinquency (agnew, 2006). gst predicts that the choice of delinquency as a coping solution will be more likely in certain conditions, including in situations where criminal opportunities are more abundant. the current study does not contest this mechanism. instead, we alter the logic to consider the role of strain as a direct predictor of criminal opportunities. instead of taking the presence of opportunities as an external factor to the experience of strain (e.g., living in a high crime area with a large concentration of potential co-offenders), we argue that the very experience of negative life events may directly expose individuals to criminal opportunities (with or without the experience of negative emotions). drawing from a sample of 170 serious juvenile offenders incarcerated in british columbia, our results show that strain experiences are significantly associated with daily access to lucrative criminal opportunities, even after controlling for other factors (including the experience of negative emotions such as anger). our results show that family-related strains appear to be more closely associated with access to criminal opportunities than school-related strains. in order to better understand this result, we re-analyzed separately the family and school indicators to examine whether the results were driven by one or more of the items. the results (not presented) showed that three out of the six items were more strongly related to our dependent variable: being kicked out of one’s home, leaving home of one’s own volition to live somewhere else, and not being enrolled in school at the time of the offence. the other three indicators of strain were more focused on negative relationships (with parents, teachers, with school in general), especially those that may cause negative emotions. the three indicators found to be significant point towards events that lead juveniles to spend more time away from authority figures. these negative life events may just as well be interpreted as indicators of unstructured socializing, which have been shown to increase delinquency through increased exposure to criminal opportunities (e.g., osgood et al., 1996). in other words, these negative life events do not have to lead to negative emotions to create incentives for delinquency, they simply have to lead to decreased levels of social control. the fact that anger does not come out as a significant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 94 predictor of criminal opportunities in our final model is consistent with this interpretation6 . while the possibility of strain directly affecting levels of social control is raised by agnew’s (2006) most recent version of gst, the theoretical and empirical consequences of this have not been carefully assessed (as mentioned by agnew himself). the current results raise the possibility that specific types of strains may be associated with specific situations conducive to crime outside the creation of negative emotions, which, if replicated in future studies, invite further revision of the theory. because the current study focused on differential access to lucrative criminal opportunities, our theoretical framework was also informed by recent research on criminal achievement. studies which paid attention to offenders who were more successful at making money out of crime were clear on where to look for predictors: social networks (mccarthy & hagan, 2001; morselli & tremblay, 2004; morselli et al., 2006). by looking at social networks, these researchers did not mean to merely look at the number of co-offenders, but at the relative ability of individuals to use co-offenders in their network for criminal benefits. in other words, the ability to transform social resources into capital in criminal pursuits is key to understanding who benefits from crime. our results are very much consistent with this idea. both of our social capital indicators – measured as the ability to collaborate in lucrative criminal pursuits such as drug selling and property crimes – were shown to be the strongest predictors of daily access to lucrative crime opportunities. note that the reverse association may also be true: the more access to lucrative criminal opportunities, the higher the willingness to teach, mentor, and collaborate in criminal endeavours. in this vein, tremblay and morselli (2000) argued that successful offenders are more likely to supply criminal temptations and opportunities to other occasional, less successful offenders. the social contagion for this aspiration to monetary success in crime is an important issue to be explored in future studies. in contrast, a measure of the number of delinquent friends in adolescents’ social networks was not shown to predict access to lucrative criminal opportunities. beyond numbers, what matters first and foremost for lucrative criminal pursuits is a proved willingness and ability to collaborate with co-offenders. future research efforts on peer influence would be wise to incorporate more detailed measures of co-offending which tap into the idea of social capital. development in the analyses of adolescent networks (e.g.. haynie, 2001, 2002) should prove to be a fruitful way forward for research on juvenile delinquency. another area for future research using longitudinal research designs would be to predict the development of criminal social capital, net of criminal network size. the causal mechanisms underlying the development of criminal social capital should prove crucial to our understanding of the parallel development of persistent, successful criminal careers. the combined positive effect of strain and social capital deserves attention7 6 as noted by one of the reviewers, anger is nonetheless a positive, marginal predictor of access to lucrative criminal opportunities, suggesting that an angry disposition is not inimical to lucrative criminal opportunities. in fact, the results suggest that anger may be a more powerful motivational factor in accessing lucrative criminal opportunities than a direct predictor of financial motivation to commit crimes. . our findings are important because they suggest that, when comparing offenders with the same amount of 7 we are grateful to one of the reviewers for attracting our attention to a variety of hypotheses to further explain these findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 95 criminal social capital, the more strained offenders have a higher likelihood of obtaining access to the most attractive criminal opportunities. but why is this so? one possibility is that adversity may have weakened access to legitimate opportunities in the labour market, and increased the search for illegitimate opportunities. the fact that we also control for strains experienced in school (a likely determinant of future job prospects) and “desire for money”, suggests that this hypothesis may not be the right one. another possibility would be that overcoming precocious family adversity – increasing resilience, in other words – may provide a key training background for coping with the uncertainties of criminal life (or coping with “criminal-related strains”). strain may provide the stamina, determination, and resolve necessary to gain access to the more attractive and available criminal opportunities. social capital may provide the ability to maintain, manage, and seek the social relationships that are necessary for steady and reliable access to such opportunities. the current study has a few limitations that should be acknowledged. first, the study was based on self-reported data of young incarcerated offenders and faced accuracy and generalizability issues. the sample cannot be considered as representative of juvenile offenders in general, or other adolescents who are non-incarcerated. future studies should try to replicate our findings with other types of adolescent populations. school-related strain, for example, may become more important for samples of adolescents recruited in secondary schools. second, it should be noted that the initial purpose of the questionnaire was to assess recidivism among serious and violent offenders, not to test strain theory. in that sense, some of our measures are not ideal indicators of strain, and the number of items used could be considered as insufficient. by contrast, agnew and white (1992) used 37 strain-related scales. finally, we rely on crosssectional data – causal mechanisms cannot be determined with accuracy. as mentioned above, we expect that increased access to lucrative criminal opportunities may produce feedback effects affecting relationships with co-offenders, but also with agents of social control. overall, our results offer support for the argument that adolescents who experience strain at home are more likely to have regular access to lucrative crime opportunities. the implications of this finding for crime prevention are important. they suggest that as a target for intervention, focusing on how adolescents spend their time may be just as, or more important than direct interventions aimed at controlling their emotions. in addition, the more time away from authority figures, the greater the likelihood that collaboration in criminal endeavours has a chance to be nurtured and developed. early success in crime may further reinforce offenders’ perceptions about the inefficiency of legitimate channels to achieve their monetary goals, and strengthen their criminal beliefs. prosperous criminal careers are not created in a vacuum. they usually are nurtured early, making the analysis of variations in access to lucrative criminal opportunities and criminal success a key object of inquiry for studies in developmental criminology. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 96 references agnew, r. 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(2000). patterns in criminal achievement: wilson and abrahamse revisited. criminology, 38(2), 633-660. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 83-98 98 appendix: table 4: correlation matrix *p<0.05. **p<0.01. ***p<0.001 note: effect size reported; cramer’s v for categorical x categorical, eta for categorical x continuous, pearson’s r for continuous vs. continuous. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. gender (female = 1) 1.000 2. age -.210** 1.000 3. ethnicity (caucasian = 1) -.026 -.057 1.000 4. motivation for crime is money -.148* -.012 .087 1.000 5. daily opportunities to make money from crime .083 .014 .165* .213** 1.000 6. school strain -.154* -.005 .198* .063 .215** 1.000 7. family strain .174* -.209 .078 .164* .225** .000 1.000 8. anger .048 -.071 -.037 .204** .243** .194** .052 1.000 9. delinquent friends .050 -.119 -.062 .212** .227* .209** .053 .311** 1.000 10. social capital – drug supply .046 .082 .032 .050 .297** .213** .053 .233** .288** 1.000 11. social capital – property crimes -.158* .018 .198* .264** .330** .265** .088 .121 .343** .014 1.000 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs142202321469 parental and social factors predict thriving during the transition to university harleen gill, kerri ritchie, elizabeth gerhardt, kaitlyn wilson, and catherine ann cameron abstract: this study investigated, through an attachment theoretical lens, the relationship between first-year university students’ personal and academic adjustment and 3 psychosocial resources: parental attachment, student resources (parental support, social support, ways of reducing loneliness, emotion regulation, coping strategies, locus of control), and gender. participants answered questionnaires relating to their psychosocial resources and post-secondary adjustment in first and second term. these data were analysed using a planned regression analysis. in term 1, paternal attachment predicted students’ emotional adjustment, with social and personal resources accounting for this relationship, and was related to academic adjustment via locus of control. maternal attachment predicted academic adjustment. gender and locus of control predicted academic performance (as measured by grade point average [gpa]). in term 2, parental attachment predicted emotional adjustment, with social support accounting for this relationship, but academic adjustment was no longer related to paternal attachment. overall, gender and locus of control predicted academic success. suggestions are made for developing transitional theoretical models that address psychosocial processes that will help shape responsive institutional programming and planning in support of incoming college students. these recommendations include designing more personalized programs to match students and their family systems where possible and keeping parents/guardians informed of helpful supports for students’ experiences when needed. keywords: parental attachment, thriving, adolescent transitions, academic adjustment, social support harleen gill bsc is a research assistant in the department of psychiatry, university of british columbia, 2255 wesbrook mall, vancouver, bc v6t 2a1. email: harleengill@alumni.ubc.ca kerri ritchie phd is a clinical, counseling, and health psychologist and senior psychologist at people health and wellness, the ottawa hospital. email: kritchie@toh.ca kaitlyn wilson ba/bsc is a phd student in the department of psychology, university of new brunswick, 38 dineen drive, fredericton, nb e3b 5a3. email: kwilson5@unb.ca elizabeth gerhardt ba is an msc student in the department of psychology, saint mary’s university, 923 robie st, halifax, ns b3h 1g3. email: elizabeth.gerhardt1@unb.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 46 catherine ann cameron phd (corresponding author) is honorary emerita professor of psychology, department of psychology, university of british columbia, 2136 west mall, vancouver, bc v6t 1z4 and emerita professor, university of new brunswick, 38 dineen drive, fredericton, nb e3b 5a3. email: acameron@psych.ubc.ca note: a portion of these findings were presented as a poster at the 2018 canadian psychological association (cpa) convention, halifax, nova scotia, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 47 for many canadian youth, the transition to post-secondary education is a major life event that bridges adolescence and adulthood (katz & somers, 2017). over 2,000,000 students are registered in canadian post-secondary institutions (statistics canada, 2017); in atlantic canada alone, 76,595 undergraduate students are enrolled in universities (association of atlantic universities, 2021). however, entry into college or university does not guarantee that a student will graduate with a degree, as the attrition rate for high-school graduates who proceed to post-secondary education is approximately 50% in both the united states and canada (dave et al., 2019; statistics canada, 2013). the transition to university requires adjustment beyond that of coping with new academic requirements. adolescents must create new social networks, balance life and school, consider future occupations, and deal with financial challenges; moreover, they must accomplish all these while establishing independence from their family, often for the first time (dave et al., 2021; moilanen et al., 2021). regardless of whether students eventually succeed or fail, the initial transition to university has been identified as a common source of stress as they attempt to establish equilibrium in their new environments (maymon et al., 2019). academic failure, or failure to thrive in university, is often due to lack of psychosocial adjustment rather than intellectual challenges (mcmillan, 2016). purpose of the study successful university adjustment is associated with many factors, so we selected some potentially important ones to examine: (a) parental attachment, (b) student resources (parental support, social support, ways of reducing loneliness, emotion regulation, locus of control, coping strategies), and (c) gender. this choice of psychosocial factors reflects an attachment theoretical framework: • parental attachment: youth often critically depend upon familial supports in the transition to young adulthood. the relationship between parental attachment and adolescent functioning during the transition will be assessed to help inform families about ways of effectively supporting youths during post-secondary education. • student resources: we seek to identify which factors differentiate between trajectories for success and failure so that academic institutions can better support the development of essential skills that will help incoming students. the goal is to establish critical interventions that will ameliorate students’ transitional challenges and improve institutional retention. • gender: previous research has found gendered differences in post-secondary success, which we expect to verify. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 48 literature review adjustment in university as with other major life changes, success in the transition to university (defined by emotional, social, and academic adjustment) is determined by myriad factors. emotional adjustment is important, as students who cannot effectively manage their emotions in a new environment may become overwhelmed (wintre & yaffe, 2000). psychosocial adjustment is also considered, as transitional students must acquire new social practices and social networks while releasing some older ones (scanlon et al., 2020). finally, academic performance (grade point average [gpa]) is used as an indicator of success, as it relates to expectations, motivation to perform well, and the ability to meet new scholastic demands while adjusting to new freedoms (van rooij et al., 2018). successful adjustment to university is critical to youths’ socioemotional and economic future, as failure to thrive is related to significant social, psychological, academic, and economic distress (dyson & renk, 2006), while success can be “the single most influential determinant in … ending the cycle of poverty” (leonhardt & chinoy, 2019, p. 1). attachment processes attachment theory focuses on difficult transitional periods across the lifespan (howe, 2011) and identifies how security-seeking behaviours can be significant facilitators of thriving (cameron, 2008; cameron et al., 2013; schore, 2017; schore & schore, 2008; vicedo, 2017). attachment theory highlights the importance of parental and psychosocial support; thus, it is apposite in examining this critical transitional period in late adolescence (kochanska & kim, 2013). parental attachment, defined as the relationship between offspring and their parents, has been consistently implicated as playing a key role in human adjustment (mattanah et al., 2011). it typically develops early in life, as children require a stable guardian who is better able to cope with the world than they are (bowlby, 1988). according to bowlby (1988), it continues to influence how individuals act throughout their lives, especially during stressful life events. attachment security, a form of psychological stability that derives from one’s parental attachment relationships, is commonly measured in adolescents using the inventory of parent and peer attachment (armsden & greenberg, 1987), which assesses the qualities of trust, communication, and hostility as reported by youths in their relationships with their parents. securely attached individuals perceive high levels of trust, good quality communication, and low levels of anger and alienation between themselves and their parents (mattanah et al., 2011). secure attachments are also associated with higher academic proficiency (chen, 2017). in contrast, according to heister et al. (2009), those with insecure attachments report lower levels of trust and communication, and higher levels of anger and alienation between themselves and their parents. hiester et al. reported that students who had fewer positive relationships had poorer academic, personal, and emotional adjustment, and were more prone to depression and anxiety than those with secure relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 49 student resources parental support. in addition to early parental attachment, the level of current perceived parental support influences student adjustment. parental support not only provides access to emotional and tangible help, but also to validation (harper et al., 2012). therefore, parental attachment can influence youth’s adaptation to new situations based on their learned expectations for support. further, maymon et. al. (2019) found that students who felt supported by parents were significantly better adapted to university than those who did not. social support. in addition to parental support in university, youth require satisfactory peer social support. social support is defined by the existence of formal or informal helping relationships and whether support from the individual’s peers is available (olsson et al., 2016). the presence of personal social support mediates the impact of stressors such that students with greater social support report better university adjustment than those reporting fewer social supports (bernardon et al., 2011; lee at al., 2018). loneliness. most first-year students experience some feelings of loneliness and isolation, especially during the early stages of the transition to college (hysing et al., 2020; vasileiou et al., 2019). emotional loneliness is the subjective feeling of being alone or isolated, while social loneliness can be operationalised as a lack of successful engagement in a social network (ditommaso & spinner, 1997). the presence of feelings of loneliness is a critical factor to examine as students who perceive relationships with others as negative or unavailable are at a higher risk for a range of health concerns and have poorer academic performance than youth with positive relationships (holt-lunstad, 2017; mcmillan, 2016). emotion regulation. the capacity to regulate emotion effectively is a key element of healthy psychological functioning (desteno et al., 2013). it includes conscious and less-conscious strategies that individuals use to increase, decrease, or maintain emotional responsivity (gross, 2001). bowlby (1988) proposed that effective emotion regulation is influenced by parents: children whose caregivers do not teach them to soothe themselves will struggle to monitor and evaluate emotional experiences effectively later in life. ames et al. (2011) found that students who perceived, regulated, and openly communicated positive and negative feelings were more responsive to university transition programs. coping mechanisms. coping mechanisms used by students can further influence how well they adapt to post-secondary education (compas et al., 2014; fullerton et al., 2021). coping can be classified as either emotionor problem-focused (dyson & renk, 2006): individuals using emotion-focused coping attempt to manage their emotions in response to stressful situations, while problem-focused individuals cope by appraising a situation, isolating a problem, and trying to correct it. active problem-focused coping has been reported to enhance positive college adjustment (dyson & renk, 2006; katz & somers, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 50 locus of control. as locus of control is a relatively stable trait, it is a good predictor of adjustment in stressful situations (ryon & gleason, 2014). individuals reporting an internal locus of control believe that they are agents responsible for controlling their own life events (wang & su, 2013). bal and barušs (2011) found that students reporting a strong internal locus of control were more likely to adapt positively to university than those reporting an external locus of control. gender although gender may not affect university adjustment or performance directly, it can moderate the effects of other factors, such as attachment and perceptions of social support. significant gendered differences have been reported for university adjustment. compared to men, women are regularly found to have higher gpas (eriksson et al., 2020; katz & somers, 2017), report higher levels of general attachment relationship quality (shannon et al., 2016), and report lower levels of emotional adjustment (katz & somers, 2017). shannon et al. (2016) reported that for women only, relationship quality with mothers was directly related to university engagement, while fathers were indirectly related through promoting self-regulation. the present research no single factor, nor constellation of factors, can reliably predict success during major life transitions. however, several internal and external factors have been identified as playing a consistent role in successful adaptation to university. mediating variables are commonly needed to clarify the ways in which specific variables, such as attachment relations, explain differences in students’ behavioural and emotional outcomes (baron & kenny, 1986; pardo & román, 2013). this study develops an attachment-focused model of the psychosocial pathways upon which university success may depend by examining certain core factors that influence successful academic transitions. research questions how do parental attachment, student resources (parental support, social support, ways of reducing loneliness, emotion regulation, coping strategies, locus of control), and gender relate to university adjustment and academic performance? hypothesis 1 proposes that student resources will mediate the relationship between parental attachment and students’ university adjustment and performance. this hypothesis will be investigated in four steps: step 1: parental attachment will predict university adjustment and performance. step 2: parental attachment will affect student resources. step 3: student resources will predict university adjustment and performance. step 4: when entered with student resources, parental attachment’s effects on university adjustment and performance will be non-significant. hypothesis 2 proposes that there is a relationship between gender and students’ university adjustment and performance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 51 method participants this research was conducted in accordance with canadian psychological association (cpa) and society for research in child development (srcd) regulations for research with human participants, specifically children, families, and youth. after receiving approval from the university ethics review board, we recruited 317 first-year students in term 1. after three multivariate outliers were eliminated, the term 1 sample comprised 314 students (196 women, 118 men; mean age = 18.7 years; range = 17–58 years). of these students, 104 returned to the study during term 2 (59 women, 45 men; mean age = 19 years; range = 18–58 years). no mean differences in variable reports were detected between term 1 and term 2 participants. the 58year-old student was an outlier in terms of age; however, their responses on measures were not discontinuous from the rest of the sample, and thus were kept in the analysis. most students were european canadians, reflecting the general population of new brunswick, the canadian province in which the university is located. most of our sample were first-generation students (the first in their family to attend university) and the rest were second-generation; some lived in residence and others off-campus. students living in residence were more likely to participate in the term 2 data collection than those living off-campus: 66% and 76% of participants lived in residence in term 1 and 2, respectively. the arts (33%), business (20%), and kinesiology (20%) faculties were represented, among others (27%). procedure at the end of september, recruitment signs were posted in students’ residences and announcements of the study were made in introductory psychology courses. volunteers were surveyed in groups of approximately 12 to 25 in their residences or in classrooms. participants were informed that the study examined first-year university adjustment and that they would be invited to participate in a similar study in the future. in both terms, they signed informed consent forms that included a release of their gpas from the registrar’s office. in march, students were recruited to complete the study’s second phase through the e-mail addresses they had provided, or through their places of residence. following engagement in the study, students were given course participation points if applicable (51% and 50% of participants in term 1 and 2, respectively). during both phases, students completed questionnaire packages that included measures of attachment, support, loneliness, mood regulation, and adjustment to university. the order in which the instruments were presented was counterbalanced to control for order effects. students were informed that the questionnaires would take approximately 45 minutes to complete but that they could take as long as needed. following this, they were debriefed with a detailed written description of the study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 52 power analysis a power analysis was conducted for the planned regression analyses that would use the largest number of variables. using an alpha equal to .05, a sample size of 266 was required to achieve a power level of .80 for a medium effect (es = .30) on adjustment and performance. measures parental attachment the inventory of parent and peer attachment (ippa — mother, father, and peer version; armsden & greenberg, 1987) has three 25-item self-report questionnaires measuring current maternal, paternal, and peer attachments. maternal and paternal scales are individually scored, then combined to form parental attachment scores. the peer subscale was not used. questions are answered on a 5-point scale where higher numbers represent stronger levels of attachment. in this study, maternal attachment had an internal consistency reliability in term 1 and 2 of .96 and .95 respectively. alpha coefficients for paternal attachment were .95 in both terms. social support the perceived social support from family scale (pss-fa; procidano & heller, 1983), a 20item scale, measures the extent to which an individual feels close to and supported by family members. in this study, internal consistency was .91 in both terms. the interpersonal support evaluation list — student version (isel; cohen & hoberman, 1983), a 48-item questionnaire, taps into individuals’ perceptions of the availability and accessibility of social supports. respondents indicate whether statements are “probably true” or “probably false” with respect to themselves. in this study, internal consistency reliability was .85 in term 1 and .84 in term 2. perceptions of lack of social support the social and emotional loneliness scale for adults — short form (selsa-s; ditommaso et al., 2004), a 15-item measure of social and emotional loneliness, evaluates both romantic and familial aspects of loneliness. items are rated on a 7-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly), regarding how they had felt in the last two weeks. internal consistency reliabilities were: familial loneliness, .80 both terms; social loneliness, .76 term 1 and .77 term 2; romantic loneliness, .89 term 1 and .91 term 2. emotion regulation the generalized expectancy for negative mood regulation scale (nmr; catanzaro & mearns, 1990) is a 30-item scale with responses on a 5-point likert scale, from 5 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). it measures beliefs of an individual concerning their ability to control or overcome upsetting emotions. internal consistencies were .90 in term 1 and .92 in term 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 53 adaptation to university the student adaptation to college adjustment (sacq; baker & siryk, 1984), a 67-item questionnaire, gauges four aspects of college adjustment: academic adjustment, social adjustment, personal-emotional adjustment, and institutional attachment. students respond to questions using a 9-point likert scale that ranges from 1 (doesn’t apply to me at all) to 9 (applies very closely to me). internal consistency reliabilities were .83 and .84 for emotional adjustment and .80 and .79 for social adjustment for term 1 and term 2 respectively. for academic adjustment, the internal consistency reliability was .84 for both terms. while the institutional attachment scale was administered, it was not included in analyses. gpa first term and full year gpas, used to reflect academic performance, were obtained from the university registrar’s office with the consent of participants. data analysis regression analyses (baron & kenny, 1986; pardo & román, 2013) examined whether the relationship between two variables (e.g., parental attachment and university adjustment) is mediated by other variables (e.g., student resources). term 1 variables were used to predict term 1 outcomes, and term 2 variables to predict term 2 outcomes. analyses were conducted separately for emotional, social, and academic adjustment, as well as for gpa. results analyses were conducted for all variables in both terms unless otherwise stated. for clarity and concision, only significant effects are reported in this paper. here, semipartial correlations are used to represent the relationships between the variables, as they take other predictor variables into account when measuring the relationship between predictor and dependent variables by statistically holding the other predictor variables constant. hypothesis 1 step 1: parental attachment will predict university adjustment and performance multiple regression analyses with parental attachment (combined, maternal, paternal) were entered simultaneously; university adjustment (emotional, social, academic) and performance (gpa) each served as dependent measures. combined parental attachment and university adjustment and performance: in term 1, combined parental attachment accounted for 4.5% of the variance in emotional adjustment (f [2, 3111] = 7.387, p = .001); in term 2, it accounted for 6.0% (f [2, 101] = 3.227, p = .05). for 1 sample sizes vary due to removal of outliers from the original samples of 314 participants in term 1 and 104 in term 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 54 variance in academic adjustment, combined parental attachment accounted for 7.1% in term 1 (f [2, 311] = 11.924, p < .001), and 12.7% in term 2 (f [2, 101] = 7.349, p = .001). in term 1 only, combined parental attachment accounted for 4.6% of the variance in social adjustment (f [2, 311] = 7.434, p < .001). it did not predict gpa in either term. paternal attachment and university adjustment and performance: paternal attachment accounted for 2.2% of the variance in emotional adjustment in both term 1 (sr[313] = .15, p = .009) and term 2 (sr[103] = .15, p = .009). it accounted for 2.2% of the variance in academic adjustment in term 1 (sr[313] = .14, p = .01) and 4.8% in term 2 (sr[103] = .22, p = .02). in term 1, paternal attachment only accounted for variance in social adjustment (2.6%; sr[313] = .16, p = .006). it did not predict gpa in either term. maternal attachment and university adjustment and performance: maternal attachment only accounted for 2.0% of the variance in academic adjustment in term 1 (sr[313] = .16, p = .004). it did not predict gpa in either term. summary: these findings lend partial support to step 1’s sub-hypothesis: combined, paternal, and maternal attachment predicted some, but not all, aspects of university adjustment. no parental attachment type (combined, paternal, maternal) predicted university performance in either term. there being no relationship between parental attachment and university performance for student resources to mediate, gpa was not included in further analyses. step 2: parental attachment will affect student resources maternal and paternal attachment were entered simultaneously to predict student resources: parental support, loneliness (familial, social, romantic), social support, emotion regulation, coping strategies (emotion-focused, problem-focused), and locus of control (internal, external). as expected, there were numerous significant semipartial correlations, as reported in tables 1 and 2. maternal attachment and student resources: maternal attachment accounted for parental support variance in both term 1 (43.6%; sr[313] = .58, p < .001) and term 2 (30.2%; sr[103] = .55, p < .001), as well as emotion regulation variance in both terms: term 1, 4.4% (sr[313] = .21, p < .001); term 2, 5.8% (sr[103] = .24, p = .01). however, maternal attachment only accounted for variance of social support in term 1 (3.6%; sr[313] = .19, p < .001). regarding loneliness, the variance in familial loneliness was accounted for by maternal attachment in both term 1 (17.6%; sr[313] = .42, p < .001) and term 2 (18.4%; sr[103] = .44, p < .001); however, variance in social loneliness was accounted for only in term 1 (2.6%; sr[313] = .16, p = .003). variance in coping strategies was accounted for by maternal attachment only in term 2: 3.6% of emotion-focused coping (sr[103] = .19, p = .04); and 4.8% of problem-focused coping (sr[103] = .22, p = .04). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 55 table 1. term 1 correlations between predictor and mediator variables variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. maternal attachment .360** .691** .516** .249** .025 .284** .294** .146* .151* .152* 2. paternal attachment .423** .352** .276** -.018 .305** .278** .141 .149* .216** 3. parental support .613** .270** .052 .407** .375** .277** .375** .281** 4. familial loneliness .406** -.023 .429** .409** .142 .175** .158* 5. social loneliness .134 .570** .449** .183** .141 .248** 6. romantic loneliness .212** .095 .052 .056 .060 7. social support .500** .234** .246** .392** 8. emotional regulation .334** .246** .372** 9. emotion coping .654** .138 10. problem coping .228** 11. locus of control note. n = 314. *p < .01, **p < .001. table 2. term 2 correlations between predictor and mediator variables variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. maternal attachment .379** .649** .529** .204* .232* .195* .295** .282** .320** .219* 2. paternal attachment .371** .326** .307** .186 .254** .163 .269** .312** .230* 3. parental support .478** .255** .152 .357** .280** .258** .312** .230* 4. familial loneliness .388** -.030 .370** .195* .061 .150 .361** 5. social loneliness .105 .596** .253** .319** .310** .008 6. romantic loneliness .248* .207* .319** .310** .008 7. social support .358** .214* .275** .358** 8. emotional regulation .503** .430** .371** 9. emotion coping .430** .371** 10. problem coping .348** 11. locus of control note. n = 104. *p < .05, **p < .001. paternal attachment and student resources: in term 1, paternal attachment accounted for the variance in parental support (3.6%; sr[313] = .19, p < .001), emotion regulation (3.2%; sr[313] = .18, p = .001), and internal locus of control (2.9%; sr[313] = .17, p = .002). variance in social support was accounted for in both term 1 (4.8%; sr[313] = .22, p < .001) and term 2 (4.4%; sr[103] = .21, p = .03). regarding loneliness, 3.2% of the familial loneliness variance was accounted for in term 1 (sr[313] = .18, p < .001); while 4.0% of social loneliness variance was accounted for in term 1 (sr[313] = .20, p < .001) and 6.2% in term 2 (sr[103] = .25, p = .01). paternal attachment accounted for the variance in coping strategies in term 2 only: 3.6% of problem-focused coping variance (sr[103] = .19, p = .04). summary: these findings provide partial support for step 2, as parental attachment affected some, but not all, student resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 56 step 3: student resources will predict university adjustment and performance student resources — parental support, loneliness (familial, social, romantic), social support, emotion regulation, coping strategies (emotion-focused, problem-focused), and locus of control (internal, external) — were entered simultaneously into the multiple regression analyses. emotional, social, and academic adjustment each served as dependent measures. emotional adjustment: student resources accounted for 26.5% of the variance in emotional adjustment in term 1 (f [9, 304] = 12.12, p < .001) and 22.0% in term 2 (f [9, 94] = 2.92, p = .003). in term 1, emotional adjustment was predicted by greater social loneliness (sr[313] = .15, p = .003), accounting for 2.2% of the variance. greater adeptness in emotion regulation (sr[313] = .20, p < .001) and greater internal locus of control (sr[313] = .18, p < .001) predicted emotional adjustment in term 1, accounting for 4.0% and 3.2% of the variance respectively. in term 2, emotional adjustment was only predicted by social support (sr[103] = .23, p = .01) which accounted for 5.3% of the variance. social adjustment: in term 1, student resources accounted for 28.2% of the variance in social adjustment (f [9, 304] = 13.30, p < .001), and in term 2 they accounted for 28.1% of the variance (f [9, 94] = 4.03, p < .001). greater social loneliness predicted social adjustment in both term 1 (sr[313] = .19, p < .001; 3.6% of variance) and term 2 (sr[103] = .24, p = .008; 5.8% of variance). larger social networks also were predictors in both terms: in term 1, bigger social networks accounted for 4.4% of the variance of social adjustment (sr[313] = .22, p < .001), while in term 2 social networks accounted for 2.9% of the variance (sr[103] = .17, p = .05). only in term 2 was social adjustment predicted by lower romantic loneliness (sr[104] = -.17, p = .05), accounting for 2.9% of the variance. academic adjustment: student resources accounted for 32.9% of the variance in academic adjustment in term 1 (f [9, 304] = 16.56, p < .001), and 37.9% of the variance in term 2 (f [9, 94] = 6.30, p < .001). a greater internal locus of control predicted academic adjustment in university for both term 1 (sr[313] = .30, p < .001; 9.0% of the variance) and term 2 (sr[103] = .31, p < .001; 9.6% of the variance). summary: these results partially supported the sub-hypothesis in step 3, as student resources predicted university adjustment. step 3 also predicted that student resources would predict university performance; however, as stated in the step 1 summary, university performance is excluded from the analyses as no relationship was found between it and parental attachment. step 4: when entered with student resources, parental attachment’s effects on university adjustment and performance will be non-significant the final multiple regression analyses explored mediation involving maternal and paternal attachment with student resources — parental support, loneliness (familial, social, romantic), social support, emotion regulation, coping strategies (emotion-focused, problem-focused), and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 57 locus of control (internal, external) — entered simultaneously. the three dependent variables to predict university adjustment are: emotional, social, and academic adjustment. parental attachment did not predict university adjustment in either term. the relationships between student resources and university adjustment were like those in step 3. emotional adjustment: parental attachment and student resources together accounted for 26.7% of the variance in emotional adjustment in term 1 (f [11, 302] = 9.99, p < .001) and 23.7% in term 2 (f [11, 102] = 2.57, p = .005). in term 1, emotional adjustment was predicted by greater emotion regulation (sr[313] = .20, p < .001) and internal locus of control (sr[313] = .18, p < .001), accounting for 4.0% and 3.2% respectively. social loneliness also predicted emotional adjustment (sr[313] = .15, p = .004), accounting for 2.2% of the variance. in term 2, only greater social support predicted emotional adjustment (sr[103] = .25, p = .008), accounting for 6.2% of its variance. figures 1 and 2 illustrate the mediation model for emotional adjustment in term 1 and 2, respectively. social adjustment: in term 1 (f [11, 302] = 10.87, p < .001) and term 2 (f [11, 102] = 3.4, p = .001), parental attachment and student resources respectively accounted for 28.4% and 29.0% of the variance in social adjustment. greater social loneliness accounted for 3.2% of the variance and predicted social adjustment (sr[313] = .18, p < .001) in term 1. in term 2, 4.8% of the variance in social adjustment was accounted for and predicted by social loneliness (sr[103] = .22, p = .01). greater social support predicted social adjustment in term 1 (sr[313] = .21, p < .001), accounting for 4.4% of the variance; in term 2 (sr[103] = .17, p = .05), it accounted for 2.9% of the variance. only in term 2 did lower romantic loneliness predict social adjustment (sr[103] = -.19, p = .04), accounting for 3.6% of the variation. academic adjustment: parental attachment and student resources accounted for 33.0% (f [11, 302] = 13.49, p < .001) of academic adjustment variance in term 1, and for 40.4% of variance (f [11, 102] = 5.69, p < .001) in term 2. in both terms, academic adjustment was predicted only by internal locus of control, accounting for 9.0% of the variance in term 1 (sr[313] = .30, p < .001) and 9.6% in term 2 (sr[102] = .31, p < .001). summary: these findings lend support to the mediation hypothesis in step 4. when parental attachment was entered into the regression analyses alongside student resources, the initially observed relationships between parental attachment and university adjustment became nonsignificant. following baron and kenny (1986) and pardo and román (2013), the relationship between attachment and university adjustment was mediated by student resources, as predicted. hypothesis 2 one-way analyses of variance (anovas) were used to test for differences between women’s and men’s responses. in term 1, women reported higher academic adjustment (f [1, 313] = 7.29, p = .008; women m = 139.4, sd = 26.6; men m = 131.7, sd = 20.9) and higher gpas than men (f [1, 287] = 11.48, p = .001; women m = 2.7, sd = .89; men m = 2.3, sd = 1.1). in term 2, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 58 only group gender difference was women’s higher gpas (f [1, 97] = 4.98, p = .028; women m = 2.6, sd = .91, men m = 2.2, sd = 1.1), lending support to hypothesis 2. figure 1. mediation model for students’ term 1 emotional adjustment figure 2. mediation model for students’ term 2 emotional adjustment discussion attachment theory our results are consistent with past and present attachment framework research (e.g., mattanah et al., 2011; siegel et al., 2021; sorokou & weissbrod, 2005) as they support the hypothesis that certain aspects of parental attachment predict the emotional, social, and academic adjustment of first-year university students. parental attachment effectively predicted emotional and academic adjustment, but failed to predict gpa directly, suggesting that although parental attachment may associate with student motivation, it may not be sufficient to predict actual achievement. duchesne and larose (2007) also reported significant effects of attachment on academic motivation but not performance, suggesting that other environmental and personal elements contribute to gpa. the expectation that parental attachment would relate to student resources was also supported: parental attachment predicted parental support, familial loneliness, social loneliness, and social support. maternal and paternal attachment differentially related to student resources with stronger maternal attachments predicting greater parental support, familial loneliness, emotion regulation, and utilization of both emotionand problem-focused coping, as bernardon et al. (2011) and paternal attachment internal locus of control emotion regulation social loneliness sr =.20 sr =.17 sr =.19 sr =.15 sr =.18 sr =.20 sr =.15 emotional adjustment emotional adjustment social support sr =.23 sr =.21 sr =.15 paternal attachment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 59 compas et al. (2014) also found. stronger paternal attachments predicted social support, loneliness, and problem-focused coping and were uniquely associated with locus of control, suggesting promotion of a greater sense of personal responsibility. these traits, in turn, may lead students to explore new social situations more widely and aid in emotion regulation in stressful situations (duchesne & larose, 2007). attachment theory commonly designates the mother as the central attachment figure, while simultaneously diminishing paternal attachment. however, many researchers have reported divergent parental attachment roles such as those observed here. for example, gordon and cui (2012) reported that adolescents transitioning to high school highlighted relationships with their mothers, but not their fathers, as a source of emotional comfort and support. perhaps fathers play a more instrumental role that has greater impact after the initial emotional distress of transition decreases; or, as duchesne and larose (2007) suggested, father attachment may be better viewed as operating within a practical context (e.g., discussions about future directions) rather than ameliorating general affective distress. student resources our study confirmed that, among student resources, loneliness, social support, emotion regulation, and locus of control predict university adjustment. however, the relationship between social loneliness and emotional adjustment was not in the direction expected: students who had greater first term emotional adjustment reported being more socially lonely, but believed they could regulate negative emotions, and reported greater internal locus of control. paradoxically, greater social loneliness as well as more social support networks predicted social adjustment in both terms. greater loneliness may signify that relationships were more important to these students, which would predict their actively seeking strong current social support systems in order to develop new relationships. social support predicted social adjustment and emotion regulation, as more social support related to greater resiliency under stress. mediational relations between attachment and student resources together predicted university adjustment. initially, social loneliness, emotion regulation, and locus of control predicted emotional adjustment, but in term 2, only social support predicted emotional adjustment. in both terms, greater social loneliness and social support predicted greater social adjustment. students reporting lower romantic loneliness also reported greater social adjustment. overall, internal locus of control predicted academic adjustment. when parental attachment was entered into the regression analyses alongside student resource variables, the associations between parental attachment and university adjustment that were initially observed lost significance. the effects that parental attachments have on university adjustment are mitigated by certain student resources, suggesting that implementing support for development of strong student resources would help all students, perhaps especially those who do not feel they have adequate familial support in their initial transition. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 60 anecdotal reports from student services personnel of overparenting having deleterious effects on student independence and adjustment to university should be considered alongside these findings. at the department level, staff reported parents coming to them with interpersonal and social concerns, while at the university administration level, they had to deal with parents challenging student grades. rousseau and scharf (2015) described overparenting as a developmentally inappropriate level of involvement that focuses on relatedness while disregarding autonomy, leading to such research on the effects of overparenting on youth development as van ingen et al. (2015). renk et al. (2005) found that students who were too close to both parents were likely to experience decreased life satisfaction during adulthood transitions, while closeness with mothers led to an increased risk of depression. programs for new students and their parents could incorporate encouragement for students to develop broad networks of support for independent academic functioning (măirean & turliuc, 2011). encouraging development of broad social networks is especially important given findings that student resources are more valuable for longterm adaptation than is parental attachment. limitations and secondary questions for future research further study is encouraged about the role and differential effects of parental attachment and other mediating factors on university adjustment. this may lead to a better understanding of how parenting influences locus of control, emotion regulation, and social support, which can significantly affect successful university transition. future research should expand the participant pool to balance participants between those who live onand off-campus and among those who are pursuing various areas of study. future research would benefit from maintaining students throughout the entire year of study, as the sample size reduction from term 1 to term 2 reduces confidence in the term 2 associations between variables. however, the lack of differences between terms with regard to reports of the independent measures encourages some confidence in the overall findings. potential research to pursue includes examining the paradoxical relationship between social loneliness and having many social networks, both of which predicted social adjustment both terms. perhaps more loneliness represents a reflection of lost earlier relationships, which prompts rather than prevents making new friendships. questions remain about how youth balance these connections and whether there is another explanation for how loneliness benefits university adjustment. future research might also investigate how parental attachment loses its association with university adjustment as student resources develop. university student services policies and implications for parents services and seminars for successful university transitions should be evidence-based. both familial and peer social support systems, and personal locus of control, could be encouraged and facilitated though experiential programming for both students and families. the current findings may guide the development and improvement of educational programs for student transition and retention. they may also guide parents, helping them decide when to intervene and when to stand international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 61 back and encourage independent functioning. strong transitional university programs exist that can help parents appreciate the importance of supporting independence through all transitions. programs should be sensitive to individual differences between students, including differences in their family systems, since family connections can differentially influence which transitional aids are effective. parents could receive information about continuing youth development and the tools available to assist in weathering university transitions. learning about events that can cause increased student stress, and how it can be mitigated, may be especially important for parents of first-generation students. parents might also receive guidance regarding which issues are best left to students to discover and navigate for themselves, and when it is advisable to intervene. this paper has focused on how youth succeed in their transition to university, with the knowledge that some students struggle more than others due to previous experiences and mental health. as regehr et al. (2013) reported, 50% of university students experience significant levels of stress that influence their emotional and mental health and their university adjustment. in recent years, social media have been a source of psychological concern for some university students (closson & bond, 2019); more recently, the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the psychological stress of university students (zhang et al., 2021). our findings indicate that effective coping mechanisms and supports can aid emotion regulation and lead to better university adaptation. by providing effective transitionary aid, universities can increase students’ likelihood of success. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 45–67 62 references association of atlantic universities. 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(2021). psychological stress of university students in the hardest-hit areas at different stages of the covid-19 epidemic. children and youth services review, 125, article 105980. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.105980 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 doi: https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs93201818736 tourism, charity, and fathers’ fundraising strategies for their children’s education on the kenyan coast njeri chege and cornelia schweppe abstract: increasing empirical evidence shows that child-raising and children’s formal education are influenced by and embedded in cross-border processes and constellations. in kenya’s south coast region, widespread support for children’s education is taking place through the long-term relationships local men and women are establishing with tourists from the global north. in this regard, seemingly casual beach encounters initiated by local fathers — who invite western tourist acquaintances to visit their villages and homes — have become a common parental strategy for engaging with tourists who have the potential to become sponsors for their children. in this article we look at the social, economic, and political background against which the quest for sponsors through “village visits” has emerged. we unveil the complex and interrelated factors at global, national, and local levels that shape these livelihood strategies. based on a case study in which we analyze a beach worker’s efforts to engage tourists as sponsors for his child’s formal education during a village visit, we argue that these village visits are fundraising strategies that are similar to those employed locally by child-oriented non-governmental organizations, and are shaped by the region’s deeply rooted “culture of charity”. keywords: tourism, charity, kenya, transnational childhood, children, education, sponsors, village visits, poverty, social inequality acknowledgement: we would like to thank the university of mainz, germany for the funding of this project. njeri chege phd is a social science researcher, and was a research associate at the institute of education, university of mainz, 55099 mainz, germany. email: njeriche@gmail.com cornelia schweppe phd (corresponding author) is a professor of social pedagogy at the institute of education, university of mainz, 55099 mainz, germany. email: schweppc@unimainz.de https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs93201818736 mailto:njeriche@gmail.com mailto:schweppc@uni-mainz.de mailto:schweppc@uni-mainz.de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 101 it was a hot afternoon on the kenyan south coast, a prominent and wealthy international tourist destination marked by both extreme poverty and social inequality. we were seated at a beach bar, talking to rajabu1, a beach worker in his mid-thirties. as a father to three daughters, his eldest was attending a private primary school, while the younger two were attending a government-funded school. he was narrating to us how he managed to have the eldest daughter attend a costly private school, despite the fact that he was not employed and did not have a stable source of income. his daughter’s schooling was being financially supported by a german couple who were visiting the south coast when rajabu met them. since the turn of the century, “transnational childhoods” has become a prominent field of research. empirical evidence has shown that children’s upbringing and formal education are influenced by and embedded in cross-border processes and constellations. such evidence is provided by, for example, studies on parents who emigrate with the aim of securing better living conditions and especially better formal education for their children (parreñas, 2005); or who relocate their children abroad in efforts to offer them high quality education (huang &yeoh, 2005; sun, 2014; tsong & liu, 2009; yeoh & lin, 2013; zhou 1997, 1998). rajabu’s narrative points to another related phenomenon: support relationships that emerge when tourists from northern countries and the local inhabitants of the locations they visit in the global south, come into direct personal contact2. transnational child-raising and transnational educational support develop through the long-term relationships the local men and women establish with tourists from the global north (chege, 2014). in this article we look at how seeking to establish transnational support relationships has become a popular practice among struggling households in kenya’s south coast region. we specifically focus on “village visits”, which have become increasingly common among local parents, especially fathers, in their attempts to secure the financial support of western tourists3 for their children’s formal education. during village visits, men take tourists for walks in their 1 to assure the research participants’ anonymity, “rajabu” and other names used in this article are pseudonyms. similarly, any information that could be used to identify the participants has been removed or altered. 2 by global south we refer to countries and regions of the world that today are also referred to as “developing”, “less developed”, or “least developed”. previously, they were termed “third world”. they include those in africa, asia, latin america, and socioeconomically poor regions within richer countries of the global north. our use of global north refers to countries and regions of the world that are termed “developed” and were previously termed “first world”. they include canada, the usa, western and northern european countries, new zealand, and australia. 3 in this article we use the terms “western tourists”, “western sponsors”, and “westerners” in a large sense in reference to white men and women from european or north american countries. in kenya, the popular term used to designate them is wazungu [white people]. in doing so, we do not discount the fact that there are significant social, cultural, and geographical heterogeneities among people coming from the different countries. similarly, we use the terms “local parents”, “local fathers”, and “local men and women” in reference to kenyan men and women living in kenya’s south coast region, who are predominantly mijikenda. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 102 residential neighbourhoods, popularly termed “village(s)”, and visits to their respective homes are often included. we unveil the complex and interrelated processes at the global, national, and local levels that inform and influence these livelihood strategies. in particular, we show how conditions within the kenyan south coast region — a high level of poverty, social inequality, and a history of limited access to formal education, alongside its inhabitants’ high dependency on tourism — have provided a fertile ground for the massive entry of charity organizations4, many of which are particularly active in the field of formal education, both primary and secondary (berman, 2017). as elsewhere in the country, private schools — low cost and high cost schools that promise, and are perceived as offering, better quality education compared to public schools — have increased in number (berman, 2017; ngware, 2015). a number of studies show that such private schools offer better quality education when measured by students’ success rates in the kenya certificate of primary education (kcpe) examinations5 (berman, 2017; ngugi, mumiukha, fedha, & ndiga, 2015; ngware, 2015; ngware, abuya, admassu, mutisya, & musyoka, 2013; sang & kipsoi, 2017). however, the financial burden for children’s access to private schools is (expected to be) borne by parents and families (ngware, 2015; ngware et al., 2013). we show that in this respect, parents resort to a model that is already present in the region: looking for sponsors among tourists from the global north (berman, 2017). as such, the aforementioned village visits are a fundraising strategy, one that is shaped by the region’s deeply rooted “culture of charity” (berman, 2017). in what follows, we situate the focus of our paper theoretically within the literature on transnational childhoods and children’s education in cross-border constellations. we then present our research methods. we move on to provide the contextual backdrop by discussing the dynamics of education and humanitarianism on the kenyan south coast. this provides the social, political, and economic background to explain the local parents’ search for western tourists’ financial support for their children’s education. the presentation of our empirical findings follows, with a case study of how rajabu found the german couple who were sponsoring his daughter’s private school education. we then tease out some similarities between the strategies employed by him and many other men to secure support for their children’s education from western tourists, and those employed by some of the local child-centred nongovernmental organizations (ngos) in their fundraising appeals for donations from sponsors from the global north. we conclude that village visits are a fundraising strategy of individual 4 concrete examples of charity organizations include the german association watoto e.v. which founded the mekaela academies, comprising a total of five schools (three primary and two secondary); projekt schwarz-weiß e.v. which founded the nice view children’s village, kindergarten, and primary school; girls hope e.v. which started the diani maendeleo academy (a secondary school for girls); the italian ngo fondazione germano chincherini, which founded a children’s village and primary school; and the french association hakuna matata which, among others, supports existing struggling community schools. 5 kcpe is a nation-wide examination taken by students at the end of their 8 years of primary school education. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 103 struggling households and are derived from the practices of charity ngos in the region, whose activities focus on assuring a continuous flow of donors and donations from the global north. child-raising and children’s education in cross-border constellations as a field of research, transnational childhoods came into focus mainly through the attention given to the migration processes of parents whose children remained in their countries of origin (see heymann et al., 2009; hondagneu-sotelo & avila, 1997; lahaie, hayes, markham piper, & heymann, 2009; mazzucato, 2014; mazzucato & schans, 2011; orellana, thorne, chee, & lam, 2001; parreñas, 2001, 2005, 2008). research has shown that children often provide the motivation behind such migration; many parents emigrate in order to provide better quality education and better living conditions for their children and, more specifically, to improve their financial situations (mazzucato & schans, 2011; parreñas, 2001, 2005). research findings have also shown that geographical distance by no means signifies the fading away of parental responsibility. emigrant parents maintain diverse relationships with their children and engage in their care and upbringing in many ways (fresnoza-flot, 2009; nobles, 2011; parreñas, 2001; schmalzbauer, 2004). studies have highlighted the enormous and rapidly growing financial transfers from immigrants to family members and especially to children left in the regions of origin (global commission on international migration, 2005; mazzucato & schans, 2008; schweppe, 2011). this has led to concepts like “transnational motherhood” (hondagneu-sotelo & avila, 1997), “transnational fatherhood” (parreñas, 2008; pribilsky, 2012), and “transnational parenthood” (carling, menjívar, & schmalzbauer, 2012). findings on the impact of migration and subsequent transnational family constellations have been ambivalent. it has been shown that there are significant material improvements in the upbringing of children as a result of parents’ financial transfers, which can have positive effects on children’s schooling and formal education. however, parents’ prolonged absence can also result in high emotional costs, coming from feelings of abandonment and parental avoidance (borraz, 2005; donato & duncan, 2011; dreby, 2007; graham & jordan, 2011; heymann et al., 2009; lahaie et al., 2009; mazzucato, 2014). other studies situated at the intersection of migration, family, and education in east and southeast asia have shown that over the last three decades, children’s education has gained a very significant place for parents, warranting the relocation of individual children (aged between 7 and 18 years) with or without a parent, to another country. through these migration processes parents seek to offer their children high-quality education abroad; they consider that foreign educational qualifications and cultural capital will increase their children’s chances of future socio-economic success (huang & yeoh, 2005; proyrungroj, 2017; sun, 2014; tsong & liu, 2009; yeoh & lin, 2013; zhou, 1998). in addition, there are other forms of cross-border child-raising and educational support constellations that necessitate neither parents’ nor their children’s international migration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 104 international tourism and humanitarian activities are key to the existence of these other forms. an example can be seen in orphanage “voluntourism”, where travellers from the global north combine their desire for travel within a southern country with working as volunteers in children’s orphanages, schools, or after-school centers (guiney, 2012; guiney & mostafanezhad, 2015; proyrungroj, 2013; sinervo, 2011; voelkl, 2012). these child-oriented organizations raise funds through the significant amounts volunteers from the global north pay in order to participate as volunteers (cheney & rotabi, 2014; guiney, 2012; guiney & mostafanezhad, 2015; voelkl, 2012). additionally, as scholarly, governmental, and intergovernmental organizations’ research points out, organized trips and visits to orphanages are often offered to tourists who, once on site, are encouraged to make generous donations. children are thus used as income-generating resources for the orphanages (cambodia mosvy & unicef, 2011; guiney, 2012; reas, 2015). research conducted by scholars and developmental organizations, and press reports on orphanage tourism and voluntourism in countries of the global south, indicate that significant numbers of children in orphanages are not orphans, but rather are entrusted to these institutions by parents who are poor and who particularly want their children to have access to formal education, english language learning through contact with volunteers, health care, and, overall, better life chances (cambodia mosvy & unicef, 2011; forget me not australia, 2016; guiney, 2012; holmes, 2016; pattison, 2014; schyst resande, 2013). in this article we look at a different form of cross-border child-raising and educational support, one that is to be found when tourists from more economically affluent countries come into direct contact with the residents — parents and children — of the touristic regions they visit in the global south. the transnational upbringing and educational support of children then develops through the long-term relationships local men and women (who are dependent on tourism for subsistence) establish with tourists from richer countries (many of whom are return tourists or reside in the area for longer periods). reference to the existence of such constellations is implicitly made or presented as a side-issue in studies on sex tourism in, for example, southeast asia, particularly thailand (ervik, 2013; hoang, 2010), and central america and the caribbean (e.g., brennan, 2004; cabezas, 2009, 2011; frohlick, 2007; sanchez taylor, 2006), where the focus is specifically on the relationship dynamics between tourists and sex workers or persons employed within the tourism sector. these studies show how sex workers or persons working within the tourism sector seek to establish relationships with people from richer countries (which often takes the form of intimate relationships or marriage), as a means of lifting their families out of poverty-related living conditions. more concrete evidence of these child-support-oriented constellations is presented in the work of chege (2014, 2017), whose focus is on male beach workers on kenya’s south coast region. chege shows how these men’s quest for long-term relationships with tourists is to be understood as part of their livelihood strategies that are specifically geared to securing or improving their children’s access to quality formal education. children are made a part of these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 105 relationships, not only because they benefit from the material resources, but also because they serve to create stronger ties between the parents and the westerners (chege, 2014, p. 284, p. 288). these long-term relationships may be sexual, or may be based on non-sexual friendships, with tourists who locally are termed “family friends” (chege, 2014, 2017). our study picks up on the education component of these relationships. sources and methods this paper presents partial results from our study entitled “transnational upbringing in kenya”, which analyzes the roles and significance of relationships between tourists and local inhabitants in the upbringing of children in kenya’s south coast region. the project’s focus is twofold. on the one hand, it aims at a deeper understanding of the social and political factors that have led to the emergence of transnational educational support between local parents and tourists from western countries on kenya’s south coast. on the other hand, it focuses on understanding the strategies involved, and the negotiations that go into establishing this support, as well as the significance of the ensuing relationships for children’s upbringing. for data generation we conducted narrative-generating guided interviews with male beach workers6 in kenya’s south coast region in 2016. beach workers were chosen as interviewees as they had already been identified as the main link between tourists and local inhabitants (chege 2014, 2017; eid bergan, 2011; peake, 1989; tami, 2008). the interviews aimed at generating narratives about the men’s family and parental lives, their contact and interactions with tourists, and their views on the support received for their children from visiting westerners. in addition, we asked about each interviewee’s socio-demographic situation (age, family status, occupations and sources of livelihood, number and age of children). data generation took place during a four-week field stay in the region. gaining access to the interviewees involved two different approaches. first, we established contact with some participants through spontaneous encounters on the beach. second, contact with other participants was facilitated by mwaka — a beach worker and father who was receiving support from a german sponsor for his daughter’s primary school education. we conducted a total of 19 interviews with male beach workers. this number was based on having reached saturation in relation to the identification of new themes across the interviews. the men’s ages varied from late 20s to early 40s. none had post-primary school education, with the large majority having had only a few years of primary school education. all interviewees had children (aged between 2 and 15 years), and most were living with a wife or “girlfriend” (mother 6 one of the 19 men had stopped working on the beach several years earlier. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 106 of their children). the interviews were conducted in english and/or in kiswahili7, and were transcribed verbatim. in addition to the interviews with beach workers, we also conducted interviews with three mothers, a village head (chairperson), two teachers, the headteacher of a public school, and the manager of a western-funded community school. our data analysis followed a two-step approach. the first step consisted in a close, comprehensive reading of each interview transcript, identifying key themes within each interview and coding them respectively. this was followed by a comparison of the themes we identified across the different interviews, the aim being to check for variations and commonalities in the men’s practices and experiences. since village visits emerged as a prominent topic in the first part of the analysis, in the second step we wanted to get a deeper understanding of the social meanings beach workers ascribe to their involvement with tourists for their children’s educational support and the processes involved. we therefore selected those parts of the interviews in which the interviewees focused on village visits. data analysis then followed a sequence analytical approach (schütze, 1983). as a prominent method of data analysis in qualitative research this approach is particularly suitable for reconstructing meanings of social actions and social processes. it consists in a line-by-line interpretation through which the underlying patterns and processes, as well as the meanings of a social phenomenon, are reconstructed on a step-by-step basis. at the end of this second step we condensed our results into comprehensive case studies. in order to understand the local parents’ search for western tourists’ financial support, particularly in relation to their children’s education, we will first discuss the social, political, and economic background against which this support is pursued, before presenting the research results. dynamics of education and humanitarianism on the kenyan coast since kenya’s independence from british colonial rule in 1963, the south coast region has developed into a prominent and wealthy international tourist destination. however, it is simultaneously characterized by extreme poverty and social inequality (berman, 2017; chege 2014). it is part of what was formerly administratively known as the coast province8, which was one of the country’s most neglected regions with regard to the central government’s spending and its provision of basic services (education, health care, water, electricity, and transportation), relative to the region’s economic contribution to the country (chege, 2014; eisemon, 2000; meilink, 2000; mghanga, 2010). 7 as is common in everyday verbal communication in kenya, the interviews involved code mixing and code switching, that is, constant mixing of, and switching between the two languages. 8 under the former highly centralized system of governance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 107 the first two post-colonial kenyan governments (under presidents jomo kenyatta and daniel arap moi) identified tourism as a potential driver for socio-economic development (kibicho, 2009). however, through tourism development and political patronage, in the coastal region, members of the local mijikenda communities have been progressively losing ownership of, and access to significant amounts of land, notably seafront land (which is the most profitable), to expatriates as well as to the kenyan political and economic elite (berman, 2017; chege, 2014, 2017; kanyinga, 2000; syagga, 2006, 2011). as several scholars have shown, access to education in the coastal region is marked by a long history of neglect and inequality relative both to other regions of the country and to its contribution to the country’s economy (alwy & schech, 2004; chege, 2014, 2017; eisemon, 2000; mghanga, 2010). this has been attributed to a combination of factors. first, while formal education was introduced to the coastal region by christian missionaries much earlier (in the mid 19th century) than within the kenya interior, it did not flourish. the region had been under islamic influence for centuries, hence christian missionaries’ educational initiatives were resisted by the then dominant afro-arab community (eisemon, 2000, p. 251). second, under british colonialism kenya had racially segregated schools and different education systems for europeans, asians, and africans (alwy & schech, 2004; chege 2014, 2017; eisemon, 2000). following kenya’s political independence, unfruitful attempts were made by the first and second post-colonial governments under presidents kenyatta and moi to address educational inequalities across the country (alwy & schech, 2004, p. 270). third, the political dynamics and implementation of the postindependence education policies were such that the regions and ethnic communities that benefited the most from educational resources and opportunities were those that had well-placed civil servants and strong political figures within the government — predominantly those of kikuyu and kalenjin ethnicities (alwy & schech, 2004, p. 269). with particular reference to the south coast region, chege (2014, 2017) shows that, among other factors, the cumulative effect of the mijikenda’s poor access to formal education since the country’s independence has led to very limited employment possibilities for both men and women in the formal employment market (including within the formal tourism-oriented business in the region), thus compromising their life chances and overall social well-being. like elsewhere in the country, access to formal education for south coast inhabitants has been influenced by national and international policies. kenya was among the 189 member states of the united nations (un) who committed themselves to ensuring the attainment of the eight millennium development goals (mdgs) by the year 2015; attainment of universal primary education was a central component (kenya ministry of devolution and planning, 2013; unmdg, 2010). it is also one of several african countries to have performed remarkably well with regard to the attainment of the education component of the mdgs. as a presidential candidate in 2002, mwai kibaki promised kenyans free primary school education during his presidential campaign. once in office, his government implemented the free primary education policy in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 108 20039. from an international perspective, the government worked to conform with internationally defined development goals, by showing its commitment to achieving universal primary education (upe; chege, 2014, p. 285). in 2003, the government began subsidizing the cost of children’s public primary education. concretely, this meant that poor or struggling households that previously could not afford school-related costs in public schools were able to send their children (back) to school. the subsidized primary school education attracted massive enrolments and re-enrolments in public schools (chege, 2014, p. 285; kenya ministry of education, science, and technology [moest], 2005; ngware et al., 2013, somerset, 2008). according to kenya’s ministry of education, prior to 2002, the gross enrolment rate (ger) for primary education was on the decline; however, in 2003, that of public primary schools rose to 98.1% , and to 101.5% in 2004 (kenya moest, 2005, p. 9)10. in the coastal region, between 1999 and 2002, ger for primary schools also showed a downward trend and the ger for boys remained superior to that of girls. following the reforms, boys’ ger increased from 68% in 2002, to 90.8% in 2003, and remained at 90.8% in 2004, while that of girls for the same period was 57%, 67.8%, and 77.6% (kenya moest, 2005, p. 10)11. similarly, according to the country’s 2013 mdg status report, there was a remarkable improvement in the primary education net enrolment rate, from 67.8% in 2000 to 95.9% in 2013 (kenya ministry of devolution and planning 2013, p. 8). however, what these figures do not reveal is the fact that the rapidly increasing enrolments were not complemented by the building of new schools and hiring of more teachers. this resulted in very high teacher–pupil ratios in public schools countrywide, with particularly high ratios in certain rural areas, remote, and informal settlement areas (chege, 2014, p. 288; kenya moest, 2005; ngware et al., 2013; somerset, 2008). hence, while kenya attained a high score where the upe goal is concerned, the quality of education did not follow suit, since on promising free primary school education, the kibaki government — as research indicates — had not effectively anticipated and planned for the corresponding additional infrastructure, human, and financial resources (ngugi, 2015; ngware, 2015; ngware et al., 2013). as an unequally developed peri-urban region, where the large majority of local inhabitants’ residential areas are remotely situated, the south coast saw the entry and subsequent burgeoning of charity initiatives (by individuals and organizations) into the field of pre-primary, primary, and secondary school education. the founders and participants of these initiatives were mainly from germany, switzerland, france, and austria, but some were also from the uk and 9 this was not the first free primary education initiative in the country’s history. the first and second initiatives were launched in 1974 and 1979 during jomo kenyatta and daniel arap moi’s respective presidencies (somerset, 2008, p. 2). 10 for a concise explanation as to why ger may exceed 100%, refer to https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/114955-how-can-gross-school-enrollment-ratios-beover-100 11 gers for primary schools that are specifically for the south coast are unavailable. https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/114955-how-can-gross-school-enrollment-ratios-be-over-100 https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/114955-how-can-gross-school-enrollment-ratios-be-over-100 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 109 the usa. the entry of these education-oriented charity initiatives has to be considered as part of the already significant presence of humanitarian activities in the region (berman, 2017). berman (2017), who conducted research on the social and economic involvement of germans12 in the south coast region, points out that: today diani13 is characterized by a pervasive “culture of charity” … shaped primarily by expatriate residents and repeat visitors who initially came as tourists…. [the] culture of charity, in one way or another, structures most social and economic relations in diani, for there is no family in the area that does not benefit from the formal and informal humanitarian activities of germans and other europeans. (p. 73) berman sees this as closely linked to the touristic development of the region, as tourism is often the point of contact for humanitarian activities. when tourists become aware that even seemingly insignificant amounts of money can have a significant impact locally, they enthusiastically engage in philanthropic activities that include financially and materially supporting schools, children’s homes, orphanages, and dispensaries, and supporting the provision of clean water (berman, 2017, p. 78). in the field of education, humanitarianism is at work both publicly and privately. berman (2017) notes that, “there is not a single public or private school in the area that does not have a sponsor, usually european, whose name is stamped on school desks or acknowledged on the entrance wall of the building” (p. 78). most of these activities are carried out by what she terms “contraband humanitarians”. she uses this term “because most of the activities of contraband humanitarians occur outside the official structures of development (be they governmental or nongovernmental) and at times include outright illegal activities.”14 (2017, p. 78). these humanitarians raise their funds exclusively through private donors in their countries of origin. berman affirms that almost every family in the diani area has been touched in some way by their work and that, in the absence of such donor support, the projects would fall apart, with erected infrastructure crumbling from lack of maintenance funds (2017, p. 79, p. 88). according to the regional kwale county government (2018), there are currently 415 primary schools in the south coast region, of which 363 are public and 52 are private. the ger is estimated at 99.7%. the government cites “the performance in national examinations which is very poor” as a major concern. poor and inadequate school infrastructure (classrooms, toilets, 12 included are germans, austrians, and swiss-germans. 13 diani is one of the many areas that make up the south coast. others include tiwi, galu, kinondo, msambweni, and ukunda. the bulk of tourist activities, amenities, and businesses are concentrated in the diani area. 14 she uses the term in reference to what polman calls mongos (my own ngo; polman, 1979, cit. in berman, 2017, p. 79), whereby individuals rather than governmental or non-governmental organizations are the driving force behind the humanitarian activity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 110 and desks) and an insufficient number of teachers are considered to be the main additional challenges. in citing a teacher–child ratio of 1:52, the local government makes no distinction between the high ratio that is characteristic of public schools and the lower one that characterizes private schools. through such generalizations, the complexity of inequality in education provision and schooling in the region is obscured. in the south coast region, humanitarian activities concerned with education have led to an increasing number of community schools that are financially and materially supported by european individuals and european associations. there has also been an increase in the number of private schools, both low cost and high cost, that are financially and materially supported, run, and/or owned by european individuals, associations, or by small ngos. this has resulted in what one could consider to be a three-tiered system of schools in the region: public schools, low cost private schools, and high cost private schools15. a number of private schools in the latter category are more successful in qualifying pupils in national examinations, given their lower student–teacher ratios; their better paid, and therefore more motivated, teachers; their adequate learning materials and equipment; and their provision of other social or health services (berman, 2017; motuka & orodho, 2016; sang & kipsoi, 2017). hence, numerous parents in the region seek out possibilities for their children to attend costly private schools. however, due to their limited resources, this is only possible with financial support. findings all the men we interviewed were engaged in relationships with tourists at the time of the interviews or had been in the past, and were receiving or had received some form of financial support from them. those who were not engaged in relationships with tourists at the time of the interviews said they were actively seeking new ones. when asked about their reasons for pursuing these relationships, the explanation they gave was almost uniform: “to support the education of my children.” the large majority linked this support to their children being able to attend a private primary school. their relationships with tourists were either intimate/sexual or family friend (chege, 2014, 2017) relationships. they were not limited to the duration of the tourists’ vacation period and varied from a few months to several years in length. village visits were a common strategy in the men’s attempts to engage tourists in providing longer-lasting financial support. given the popularity of village visits in the region, we chose to learn more about them and their rationale, so as to understand why they are prevalent and why they have become a “successful” way “to find a sponsor”. what follows is a detailed analysis of an excerpt of rajabu’s narration in which he described how he was able to secure the financial support of a visiting german couple during a village visit, which then enabled him to enrol his eldest daughter in a private primary school. 15 for a comparison with schools found in informal urban settlements, see ngware et al., 2013. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 111 rajabu’s case study like hundreds of other men seeking tourist-oriented livelihoods informally on the beach, rajabu explained that he was a versatile worker and was always ready to offer his services to tourists. they ranged from preparing coconut drinks or a meal of fresh sea food, to acting as a middleman for foreign visitors and beach workers selling artisan products or those organizing tours and game-viewing safaris, to procuring small amounts of drugs for tourists’ personal consumption16. he explained why he worked on the beach, ascribing his presence there to the lack of an alternative. “you must have a certificate and then you get a job but me i have no certificate so i have to come on the beach ...”. he saw having a job and the corresponding generation of income as ultimately dependent on formal education, and attaining a certain level of it, which could be attested by a certificate17. given the place accorded to education certificates in securing jobs requiring skills in the region’s formal hospitality sector, for someone like him who did not have any certificates, this implied “that he has to come to the beach”. he therefore pointed out two clear-cut alternatives: to secure a job one required a school certificate, and in the absence of a certificate, one had to come to the beach. that one “has” to do so implies that rajabu saw no other alternative. how to get a sponsor: the village tour rajabu began his narration on how he found a sponsor as follows: so i meet these tourists here [on the beach]. as you know on the beach if new tourist come on the beach many people go everywhere asking for the business … but for me the tourist i didn’t show them the business. i just took [them on] some walk on the beach just to see the beach. he indicated the close connection between tourists and business, categorizing tourists as a group that was linked to the generation of income. he also specified that it was not only he who went to the beach, but that it was a place that was frequented by “many people”, and consequently “asking for the business” (understood as seeking to sell goods, services, or both to tourists) was a common practice. in contrast to the many people who sought to sell goods or services to tourists (“asking for the business”), rajabu did not try to sell his services to the tourists in question (“i didn’t show them the business”). instead, he “just took [them on] some walk on the beach just to see the beach”. although his way of approaching the tourists sounds and appears to be casual and 16 for a comprehensive presentation and discussion on what beach workers’ activities and their tourist-oriented livelihoods entail, see chege (2014, 2017), eid bergan (2011), and tami (2008). 17 he did not specifically refer to a primary school or a secondary school certificate. one can infer that he was referring to the latter, as this could have enabled him to secure low-skill jobs in the formal sector. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 112 insignificant (through his repeated use of “just” and because he did not “show them the business”), rajabu did take an active part in the encounter: he accompanied them on a beach walk, which tends to facilitate rapport-building. rajabu continued, “then the next day i took them to the village.” by the “village”, he was referring to the neighborhood where he lived, situated roughly 400 metres from the beach18. his initiative to take the tourists to the village the following day is a manifestation of his continued active involvement in shaping the encounter. the significance of taking them to the village became apparent in the succeeding part of his narration, in which he indicated that the walk through the village included a visit to his own home. this home visit proved to have been of central importance in securing support for one of his children’s primary school education. an important element that is inherent in taking tourists to the village and to one’s home is a pattern that one can describe as “showing, seeing, giving”. showing, seeing, giving rajabu continued his narration: “then the next day i took them to the village and then they saw my family. i showed them that i have children.” thus, the visit to the village was closely related to his private life: the tourists “saw” his family and he “showed” them that he had children. it is interesting to note that rajabu said he showed the tourists “that” he had children. as such, what seems most important, is not, for example, that the tourists and his children met and talked on that day, but rather that he made the tourists aware of his status as a father. seeing that rajabu had children led to the tourists asking rajabu questions about them. this is evident in the immediate connection rajabu made between having shown them that he had children and their questioning him about the children: “so they ask me the questions about the children,” which was presented as an almost automatic reaction to the german couple having been made aware of his status as a father. prior to mentioning the questions the tourists had asked him, rajabu interjected, “as you know, the tourists, they like the children to learn.” while this statement was used by rajabu to introduce the topic of “children’s learning”, which seemed to be of key importance during the village visit, it also shows that he had specific knowledge about the importance western tourists placed on children’s learning. with this knowledge he was able to view the situation from their perspective (partly) and contextualize (as well as explain to the interviewers) the tourists’ next questions. the couple then asked about his children’s schooling: “so they ask me how they go to school, my children,” and rajabu contextualized this question (for us) by mentioning that his children were not in school on that day. he explained the tourists’ question against his background knowledge of the importance westerners are generally known to place on children’s learning, and the fact that the german couple had seen that his children were not in school. 18 most villages are situated further inland (at least a kilometer or more from the beach). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 113 hence, what the tourists saw did not match their presumed favourable attitude towards children’s formal education and school attendance. rajabu did not give a direct answer to the tourists’ question. he rather contextualized his children’s school attendance through his personal attitude towards their formal education and his personal life situation: “i told them how i am poor, i like my children to learn but i can’t afford; because there were three children.” in vocalizing his positive attitude towards his children’s learning, he positioned himself as a father who considered his children’s education important. in this regard, his attitude towards his children’s learning coincided with that of the tourists. simultaneously, he informed the tourists of his poverty-stricken life situation that did not allow him to reconcile the importance he placed on his children’s education with their actual school attendance. in pointing out this discrepancy, he implied that his children’s absence from school was not the result of him being unfavourable towards their schooling and education but was rather a consequence of his very restricted financial resources. in the last part of his narration, rajabu took stock of the village tour. he implied a close relationship between “seeing” — a sensory experience — and “giving” when he said, “so the tourists they saw my living situation how i live with my family (…) and then they decide to promote my old girl [eldest daughter].” a crucial precondition for securing the tourists’ support was rajabu’s initiative to take the tourists to his village and to show them his family’s living environment. similarities between local inhabitants’ and ngos’ fundraising strategies rajabu’s narrative reveals a number of elements that were important in securing the tourists’ financial support for his daughter’s education. first, by showing the village, his home, and his family to the tourists, rajabu exposed them to different aspects of poverty and a social reality that was different from their own. second, of equal importance was rajabu’s knowledge about what tourists “like” and his subsequent positioning of himself as a father who placed high importance on his children’s learning, but who lacked the financial resources to send them to school. third, the preceding was conveyed and experienced as a very personal, direct, and sensory encounter. for the tourists, village visits included a direct visual and physical exposure to different aspects of poverty, as well as a personal interaction with those affected by it. in this regard, there are striking similarities between how rajabu engaged the support of tourists for his daughter’s private school education and the fundraising strategies employed by charity organizations in the region, notably, those supporting schools, children’s homes, or both. in what follows, our analysis is based on an examination of how child-oriented charity organizations position themselves (principally through their websites) as well as their concrete fundraising practices. the following passages, in which some of these organizations introduce international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 114 themselves on their internet home pages are insightful with regard to how they position themselves: shikamana primary school … was founded in may 2002 … in order to provide education for children, who due to poverty would otherwise not be able to attend school. (http://www.shikamanaschool-dianikenya.com) founded by kerry wanjala (watson) from burton-on-trent, england – [footprints orphanage] provides not only shelter, food and water for orphaned and vulnerable children, but also the quality education, love, security and hope for the future they truly deserve, in a family environment. (www.footprintsorphanage.com) the diani children’s village was started in 1994 with an objective of providing orphans, neglected and abandoned children with a home. the home caters for basic needs; health care, education, recreation, skill building opportunities etc. this is to give the children hope and provide a foundation for a future independent life. (http://www.dianichildrensvillage.org) two elements are at the heart of these introductory messages. first, they indicate that the organizations address existing unfulfilled basic human needs in the region (food, water, shelter, health care, and education). second, they point out their actual work in mitigating these social hardships: they provide formal education, contribute towards educational infrastructure, and intervene in assuring child protection and children’s future well-being. as part of charity organizations’ fundraising strategies, the visual and personal exposure of potential donors to the organizations’ work has become a common strategy. as an example, let us consider footprints orphanage, a child-centered not-for-profit organization that is registered in both kenya and the uk as a children’s charity organization. alongside the orphanage, which is situated in a rural part of the south coast, it also previously ran a primary school. like other charity organizations in the region, it is perpetually seeking sponsors from the global north for its projects, as well as for individual children. to this end, it encourages tourists (via its website) to pay them a visit through its “visit footprints for the day programme”, which is announced as follows: let us show you a slice of the ‘real’ kenya during your holiday. if you are staying in the diani area on holiday we welcome you to visit footprints orphanage for the day.… kerry will show you around footprints children’s home where you will meet our ‘family’ of staff and children, and see how we overcome the challenges of our rural location, where there is no mains electricity or water supply.… the afternoon can be spent visiting the local village or playing with the children before being taken back to your hotel. (http://footprintsorphanage.com/visit-us-and-volunteer.html) http://www.footprintsorphanage.com/ http://www.footprintsorphanage.com/ http://www.footprintsorphanage.com/ http://www.dianichildrensvillage.org/ http://footprintsorphanage.com/visit-us-and-volunteer.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 115 two points are important in relation to this citation. first, it is suggested that being shown footprints children’s home would amount to seeing “a slice of the ‘real’ kenya”. given that the organization devotes itself to “orphaned and vulnerable children” and is located in a rural area “with no mains electricity and water supply”, it is implied that the organization’s intervention is a response to a social reality of the “real” kenya, with social problems such as the presence of orphaned and vulnerable children and a severe lack of basic infrastructure and public services. also implied in this formulation is the idea that the living conditions tourists are generally exposed to, through their stays in tourist resorts, beachfront hotels, or private holiday rentals in the region are far from representative of life in the region or in the country as a whole. the second point is related to “seeing” the contribution footprints is making towards alleviating these socio-economic problems (“see how we overcome the challenges of our rural location, where there is no mains electricity or water supply”). as pointed out before, these two dimensions (exposing human hardship and showing the contribution of the organization towards its alleviation) are at the core of charity organizations’ fundraising strategies. in this respect, the visits are a very personal, direct, and sensory exposure to these dimensions. tourists’ visits to schools and children’s homes in the region are often effective in perpetuating respective organizations’ fundraising. the following comment titled “sponsorship of a school near ukunda” posted by a traveller from the uk on a popular travel website is one of many that give insights into the functioning and effectiveness of tourists’ visits to schools and orphanages: myself and my husband have just returned from a holiday in diani. whilst there we visited a school about 15 minutes away from maweni, called millennium children’s rescue academy. we were so taken with the school and what they had already achieved in a short time and how little the school had in the way of resources, that we decided we would like to help. 19 it shows how the personal and sensory experience (seeing) evokes strong feelings (“we were so taken”) which in turn triggers the decision to help. other related fundraising strategies are pursued through the websites of charity organizations running orphanages and schools in the south coast region. children’s photos are characteristic of almost all home pages belonging to these organizations, and readers are encouraged to browse through images of children via links titled “our children” or “meet the children”. for example, on the footprints website, readers can not only view group and individual photos of children, but can also familiarize themselves with the children’s development, presented in terms of from where each child started her or his life, to what she or he has achieved while living at the orphanage. 19 https://www.tripadvisor.com/showtopic-g775870-i12044-k5098303-sponsorship_of_a_school_near_ukundadiani_beach_ukunda_coast_province.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 116 such are the logics and practices underlying charity organizations’ showing, and tourists’ seeing and giving. these logics and practices are similar to those underlying the showing and seeing that takes place during village visits initiated by beach workers. in contrast to the ngos, rajabu could not yet show the tourists the positive impact of donations. however, by positioning himself as a father for whom his children’s education was important, but who lacked the financial means to assure their schooling, he presented himself as a father worth trusting. what can be inferred from the similarities between the practices and logic behind the fundraising strategies of charity organizations, and the village visit initiated by rajabu to secure financial support for his daughter’s education? at first, rajabu’s narration of his encounter with the tourists comes across as singular and coincidental. however, the active role he assumed in shaping the encounter (initiating the village visit and showing the tourists his family and children) suggests that there might be more to it. in fact, later in the course of the interview, rajabu mentioned that, “at that time i had no sponsorship (…) i really looked for a sponsor.” the village visit can thus be considered a part of his active and intensive search for, and intentional effort towards securing the support of visiting westerners. rather than a singular or coincidental encounter, the village visit can be considered a fundraising strategy; in this case, not pursued by charity organizations but by individuals whose practices and strategies are similar to those used by charity organizations. our analysis suggests that the strategies of charity organizations in the region, whose activities are dependent on the continuous flow of donors and donations from westerners, have spread beyond the boundaries of organizations and have been adopted and incorporated into the livelihood strategies of the local population. in other words, faced with unemployment, lack of livelihood opportunities, poverty, social inequality, and inadequate support from the government, the local inhabitants have resorted to what has been developed in the region as an answer to inadequate and unfulfilled basic human needs and poverty: the search for donors from the global north. conclusion and perspectives on the kenyan south coast, village visits as a fundraising strategy are a manifestation of parents’ struggles with poverty and social inequality, and of their desire and efforts to assure brighter futures for their children, through quality education. in this region that is highly dependent on international tourism and has a deeply rooted culture of humanitarianism, village visits can be considered microcosmic representations of the complex interrelations between the global, national, and local. village visits are at the end of a long chain of interrelated developments. the visits are framed by the strong emphasis on and importance accorded to formal education worldwide, as expressed through global instruments and policies such as the mdgs promoted by the un and their implementation and impact at the national level. the kenyan government’s implementation of the educational component of the mdgs resulted in high rates of enrolment and re-enrolment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 117 in primary schools that were not accompanied by a corresponding higher quality of education. in areas like the south coast, a historically neglected region, formal education remained precarious. alongside the pre-existing significant presence of humanitarian activities in the south coast, the free, low quality primary school education has attracted the inflow of a large number of charity initiatives from the global north, whose activities include setting up schools beyond the existing public schools. differences between public and private schools continue to deepen, with the latter being considered by far the better option. given the importance accorded to formal education in relation to children’s future life prospects, as well as what is valued as good quality education, it comes as no surprise that parents strive to have their children attend private schools, as these are perceived as the more promising option. however, these private schools are not free and enrolling one’s child in them entails much higher costs relative to public schools. it is left to the responsibility of individual parents or households to generate the funds required for their children’s enrolment and participation in private schools. given the limited economic resources of households in the region, this is not possible without external sources of income. therefore, struggling fathers like rajabu resort to the tried-and-tested practices of charity organizations: they seek western sponsors to enable their children’s access to private schools. the widespread practice of village visits as a means of finding individual donors from the global north indicates that both the provision of schools that offer good quality education, and access to good quality education have fallen into the realm of charity. this reality explains the efforts by the region’s local inhabitants to establish long-term relationships with western tourists, who then become determinant actors where children’s education and life prospects are concerned. the support offered is not risk-free. our research indicates that parents whose children’s education was being catered for by individual sponsors or family friends were involved in imbalanced, paternalistic relationships, since significant components of parental responsibility were yielded to sponsors. this can be seen in the tendency for sponsors to select the private school that the child will attend; pay school fees and other education-related expenses (transportation, uniform) directly to the school; and define conditions for maintaining their support, notably those requiring fathers to communicate their sponsored child’s academic progress to them on a regular basis. for instance, rajabu had to send a weekly fax to the family friends with a report from his daughter’s school, so that they could “see how she [his daughter] learns and how she did”. the men we interviewed were conscious of the fragility of the educational support their children were receiving from sponsors. failure to comply with a sponsor’s wishes (whether related or unrelated to a child’s education) and misunderstandings between the father and the sponsor, resulted in sponsors’ withdrawal of support. furthermore, some fathers felt obliged to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 100-125 118 stay in imbalanced, psychologically challenging relationships with their donor family friends due to their financial dependence on them for their children’s educational support. at the community level, there are indications that such child-specific educational support creates and reinforces social inequality. some children received support from sponsors while others did not, thus creating education inequalities among children in the same village or residential area. also, through particular strategies, fathers whose children were getting educational support were able to receive some of the superfluous money sent to their children’s schools by the respective sponsors, which they then allocated to household consumption. this resulted in improved living conditions for certain households, but which, as offshoots of the educational support, remained volatile. furthermore, child-specific educational support creates inequalities within households. when one child is attending a private school and her or his siblings are not — as was the case for rajabu’s children — it creates education inequality not only in the present, but also in relation to each child’s life prospects. one cannot overlook the frustration unequal support generates among the unsponsored siblings attending public schools. indeed, rajabu told us that his other two daughters also wanted to attend private school and that “the young one also cries sometimes”. much remains to be learned about how the children involved, experience the support as well as the inequality it generates. together, the children, their parents, and sponsors make up child-raising constellations that are embedded in charity. this comes 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held, 2006; noddings, 1984/2003, 2005; ruddick, 1980/2002; tronto, 1993). some of the pedagogies that have taken up these feminist perspectives in their calls for an ethic of care in the classroom continue to trouble the care and gender relationship (cameron, moss, & owen, 1999; dahlberg & moss, 2005; moss & petrie, 2002; noddings, 2005). while these pedagogies importantly challenge simplified, uncontextualized notions of both gender and care, they do not necessarily attend to the complexity of children’s increasingly global, mobile, technological worlds (see blaise & taylor, 2012; taylor, 2013; taylor & blaise, 2014; taylor, blaise, & guigini, 2012; taylor & guigini, 2012) as they are stuck in individualistic human-centred accounts and strategies. to unstick early childhood pedagogies from these individualist and child-centred pedagogies, i play with the dolls that angus plays with to rethink the apolitical and developmental logics that underpin “doll early childhood pedagogies”. it is both their historical and current dominance in early childhood practices and their materialsemiotic i links to gender and care that make dolls such a significant material to think-with. i argue that taking dolls seriously might teach us something about our pedagogies, our taken-forgranted knowledges, and ultimately about our becoming of caring gendered subjects. it might lead us, as haraway (1994) says, to become worldly or to make our pedagogical choices and practices of the world. throughout the article, i follow histories and trajectories of the dolls that live in angus’ classroom to ask: 1. how might dolls deepen our understandings of children’s relations with the world? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 784 2. how might emerging ideas in feminist science studies assist early childhood education to respond to interconnected ideas of gender and care that emerge through thinking-with dolls? i begin this article with a brief overview of my theoretical framework and a description of the research study that i draw on throughout. i consider the abundance of dolls and their expected role within early childhood settings, as well as some of the gendered critiques that have emerged. i then further explore the complexity of dolls through their plasticity and attend to some difficulties such as: consumerism, production, health issues related to plastics, pollution, and inequitable working conditions. i conclude the article with thoughts about practice as a complicated, socio-historical, political, and ethical endeavour where actions and decisions are made every day that must be about children’s well-being and beyond. choosing with care. theoretical framework and mode of inquiry this article is inspired by theoretical positions that attend to the material and discursive as co-constituted, what some refer to as new materialisms (e.g., coole & frost, 2010; van der tuin, 2008) or material feminism (e.g., alaimo & hekman, 2008; taylor & ivinson, 2013). while these are contested terms ii, with ideas embedded in a rich theoretical genealogy beyond the scope of this paper, there are particular resonances that permeate through it. of significance is the recognition that both matter and discourse matter (barad, 2007); neither is privileged at the expense of the other (hekman, 2010). mattering is understood as always-becoming, a co-constitutive emergence (taylor & invinson, 2013). importantly, within this conceptualization, matter itself is not understood from a representational or social constructivist perspective, where matter is “out there” to be known or to construct knowledge about, but rather as agentic (see barad, 2007; bennett, 2010). paying attention to what bennett refers to as “the force of things”, produces a flattening of human and non-human hierarchies and challenges the anthropocentricism of much anglo-western theorizing and researching methodologies. material feminist approaches engage with the insights of linguistic constructionism (hekman, 2010) and the “very rich history of feminist engagements with materialism” (barad, as cited in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012, p. 13). “knowing and being are not isolable; they are mutually implicated” (barad, 2007, p. 185). i ask the questions noted above and create new trajectories for dolls in the classroom as i draw on the work of donna haraway, and other feminist scholars who have also drawn on her work, to engage with matter and discourse (barad, 2007; puig de la bellacasa, 2009, 2010, 2012). indeed, thinking-with dolls is a haraway-inspired articulation and effort. “haraway’s thinking-with creates new patterns out of previous multiplicities, intervening by adding layers of meaning rather than questioning or conforming to ready-made categories” (puig de la bellacasa, 2012, p. 200). my utilization of dolls as a figure to think-with is indebted to haraway’s (1997) use of figurations as “performative images . . . condensed maps of contestable worlds . . . to make explicit and inescapable the tropic quality of all material-semiotic processes” (p. 11). through such figures as cyborgs (haraway, 1991), oncomouse (1997), and international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 785 companion species (2008), haraway problematizes dualisms and challenges “the categorical purity of nature and society, nonhuman and human” (haraway, 1994, p. 66). haraway’s serious play with figures foregrounds relationality. humans, nonhumans, language, technology, past, presents and futures do not exist in isolation but are entanglements, always in-the-making through their intra-action iii (see barad, 2007, 2011) within naturecultures iv. as haraway (1994) aptly suggests, “human and nonhuman, all entities take shape in encounters, in practices; and the actors and partners in encounters are not all human, to say the least” (p. 62). working within a post-qualitative research perspective (davies et al., 2013; jackson, 2013; lather, 2013; lather & st. pierre, 2013; maclure, 2013; st. pierre, 2011, 2013), i am not interested in gender and care in terms of an individual autonomous subject but rather in terms of entanglements and the materialization of naturecultures. the inseparability that figures throughout haraway’s work is of profound importance for rethinking how gender and care are always already “in the making”, both “built into practice” (haraway, 1994, p. 67). with haraway (1988), dolls, children, gender, and care cannot be conceptualized as bounded entities or as causally related. this perspective helps to unstick constructions of gender and care from social/biological binary explanations, as well as loosen the ties that bind gender constructions as explanations for care and vice versa. considering “what gets to count as nature and who gets to inhabit natural categories” (haraway & goodeve, 2000, p. 50) is of utmost importance for pedagogies of care working to attend to the complexity of our increasingly technological, mobile, and global worlds. from the perspective of materialsemiotic relationality, gender and care can be conceptualized as performatively emerging through the iterative intraactivity of “bodybrains and the material and temporal environment” (hultman, 2009, p. 25). this isn’t to say that human bodies are unimportant in (re)constructions of gender and care but rather, as puig de la bellacasa (2010) suggests, “living in naturecultures requires a perspective on the personal-collective that, without forgetting human individual bodies, doesn’t start from these bodies but from awareness of their interdependency” (p. 167). it is from this perspective that i consider dolls and children together in situated histories, situated naturecultures, in which all the actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of the patterns of their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter. all the dancers are redone through the patterns they enact. (haraway, 2008, p. 25) in line with my haraway-inspired theoretical approach and with post-qualitative research perspectives, i follow a diffractive methodology (barad, 2007; haraway, 1994, 1997; haraway & goodeve, 2000) in this article through the telling of stories. to think with diffraction v is to attend to the effects of differences and relationalities, “to get at how worlds are made and unmade, in order to participate in the processes, in order to foster some forms of life and not others” (haraway, 1994, p. 65). i pay attention to everyday small encounters, events, and relations among children and dolls in the classroom and trace the geohistorical trajectories of these events (children and dolls) to international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 786 find out how they came to be there and investigate their interrelations, interdependencies, and co-shapings. i also link these encounters to the developmental and gendered logics that have shaped them. through my storytelling and tracings, “diffractively reading insights through one another for patterns of constructive and deconstructive interference” (barad, as cited in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012, p. 12), i generate new insights about children and dolls, caring and gendered practices, and the kinds of worlds that children inherit and inhabit. as haraway (2012) suggests, “there is no innocence in these kin stories, and the accountabilities are extensive and permanently unfinished” (p. 311). i do not tell these stories as truths of practice, but rather as partial, incomplete knotted stories, with the belief that through sharing stories of complexities in practices, we can generate new knowledges and work toward actualizing new material realities. the ordinary and mundane classroom stories i tell, such as the one in the opening narration, is one of several child-doll encounters that occurred during a collaborative research study that engaged with pedagogical narrations to explore how children, educators, and things emerge as gendered caring subjects within early childhood practices (hodgins, 2014). pedagogical narrations is a process of observation, documentation, interpretation, dialogue, and (re)interpretation, wherein a group (e.g., researchers, educators, and children) work collectively to experiment with interpretations and questions (for an overview of pedagogical narrations as a methodology, see hodgins, 2012; hodgins, kummen, rose, & thompson, 2013). this study took place in a small urban city in western canada at a childcare program with 10 children aged 18 months to 3 years, and with four full-time early childhood educators. all four of these educators participated as co-researchers. over the course of a month, the educators and i documented moments of practice through photographs, videos, and written observations. we shared our initial and ongoing (re)interpretations with each other and the children in several ways (e.g., photographs printed and displayed in the classroom, videos and photographs projected on a classroom wall, informal conversations on the floor, e-mail and written notes, scheduled recorded meetings) through that initial month within the classroom and two months that followed. the educators and i looked at the data generated in/with/through pedagogical narrations not as representative of “what was going” but rather as traces of events. the classroom stories i share here through narratives emerged from those moments and dialogues. they are interspersed among the other doll stories i tell to be diffractively read through each other, with the aim to interfere with the expected, add layers of meaning, challenge assumptions, and raise questions of implication and response-abilityvi (haraway, 2012). i begin by briefly touching on the “sometimes-joined” heritages (of dolls, children, ecce, research) and consider the taken-for-grantedness of dolls in early childhood care and education (ecce). then, i address some of the ways that dolls, gender, and care have been, and continue to be, entangled. the section that follows attends to the plasticity of the dolls to argue that this material is as situated, political, and problematic/contradictory as the dolls themselves. the article concludes with more questions about the implications this storying may hold for pedagogies and the emergence of gendered caring subjects. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 787 dolls, dolls, dolls: why so many dolls? the act of playing with a doll is like no other act. nor is it like any other type of play that happens in the early years of our little ones. giving a child a doll is like giving a child a tool from which he can express himself and give himself full range of the many facets of adulthood that he can mimic and weave into his learning experiences. (disch, 2012, para. 1) in this section i consider the dolls in our research study and their past-present entanglement with developmental psychology, education, marketing, and the governing of practices related to early childhood. dolls have been part of most cultures throughout history: as sacred objects used for ceremony or ritual, tools for information sharing, and as toys for both adults and children (jaffé, 2006). dolls remain a popular toy choice for children in the home and in childhood settings, in spite of the enormous selection of toys available to children. dolls designed, produced, marketed, bought, and played with come in numerous shapes, sizes, colours, qualities, and personalities, and a browse through any local or online toy store will highlight the multitude of doll possibilities that exist today. a child interacting with baby dolls among bubbles in a water table, like angus and the dolls in the opening narration, is likely a familiar scene for those who have spent time in a childcare centre in western contexts. in curriculum guidelines for educators who work with young children, baby dolls are listed and described in a taken-for-granted way as a standard material to provide children in what are referred to as developmentally appropriate ecce practices (e.g., beaty, 2012; bundy, 1989; copple & bredekamp, 2009; government of british columbia, 2009, n.d.a, n.d.b.; government of manitoba, n.d.). within these guides, dolls and doll paraphernalia are typically included as part of a dramatic play area and their play (education) value is varyingly categorized as supporting children’s socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. parents are also taught about the variety of ways that miniature figures such as dolls purportedly support children’s developmental well-being through information guides for parents produced and distributed by government (e.g., government of british columbia, 2007) and the growing number of parenting blogs (e.g., disch, 2012; mama ot, 2012) and websites (e.g., babycenter canada, 2013; the bump, n.d.). so the developmental value of dolls in a water table need not be reserved for toddlers in an ecce setting like angus; parents can provide opportunities for pretend baby doll bathing that will support the development of fine motor skills, self-care, and the knowledge of body part names (babycenter canada, 2013). parents and educators can also be reminded of the developmental value of doll play by retailers and manufacturers who overtly promote the “importance of doll play” (corolle, 2012, para. 2) and assure customers that they have dolls to support each “age and stage” of children’s development (see corolle, 2012; zapf creation, 2009). while manufacturers, parenting blogs, and parent and educator guidebooks do not necessarily ignore that dolls may be a toy that is enjoyable to play with, the discourse of play as a function in developmental (e.g., psychological, sociological, physical) processes is the overriding message (for an overview of the relationship between developmentalism and the rhetoric of play, see sutton-smith, 1997). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 788 the inheritance of this need for, or legitimization of having, dolls in an ecce setting comes from progressive education ideals and the child study movement at the turn of the 20th century. dewey was a leader in the progressive education movement and his early work at the university of chicago laboratory schools was instrumental in shaping ideas about education and children. one of the ideals of progressivism was that curriculum should be derived from children’s own experiences and interests (e.g., dewey, 1897, 1912, 1915), which impacted the didactic materials that were made available in schools. by the 1920s and 1930s, the curriculum in liberal kindergartens (those most aligned with progressive movement ideals) included dolls as a material for what was termed “household arts” – today often referred to as the home corner, house area, or daily living area (prochner, 2011). the closest canadian equivalent to dewey’s lab schools and other child study schools in the united states in the 1920s and 1930s was the child study institute at the university of toronto (rubin, 1975). with william blatz as director of the institute from 1926 to 1964 (rubin, 1975; winestock, 2010), the research conducted through its nursery school and parent education program (strongboag, 1982) was extremely influential in shaping views and practices related to childcare in canada (varga, 1997). among many publications, blatz with his colleagues dorothy millichamp and margaret fletcher produced a treatise on nursery education theory and practice that outlined the developmental value of dolls as a tool for imaginative play suitable for both younger (2to 3.5-year-olds) and older (3.5to 5-year-olds) children (blatz, millichamp, & fletcher, 1935). according to these authors, linguistic, social, physical, and cognitive development are all (potentially) supported through doll play, and as a child’s maturation brings increased capacities, the play and the play objects can (and should) become more sophisticated. arguably, this psychologizing begins with american psychologists g. stanley hall and a. caswell ellis when they conduct a rather large study about doll play and theorize its significance for “both psychology and pedagogy” (ellis & hall, 1896, p. 129). this reflects the child study movement’s reach beyond psychology to the scientization of pedagogy and parenting, in particular mothering (see pacini-ketchabaw, 2005; strong-boag, 1982; varga, 1997). one example of dictating scientific motherhood is a 1934 resource booklet produced by the canadian welfare council aimed at helping “canadian mothers at risk” with appropriate materials and play spaces for preschool-aged children (mitchell, 1934/1942). according to the resource, “toys are essential” at this stage in a healthy child’s development. this government resource also highlights the entangled relationship between psychology (e.g., the developmental value of particular forms of play), progressive education ideas (e.g., child-sized materials that mimic the adult world), and marketing (e.g., the overt promotion of brands of toys). thrift (2003) notes john locke is usually credited with introducing the notion that (particular) toys (should) have developmental value but the child study movement of the early 20th century greatly impacted the spreading of this idea. designing, marketing, and selling toys for didactic purposes have certainly added to the (western) abundance of toys in general through the 20th and now the 21st century (thrift, 2003). the milton bradley company (mbc) is one example of this, targeting both the home and the classroom consumer. bradley himself was an early kindergarten advocate and his company published many books international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 789 about kindergarten, in addition to producing many of the “necessary” materials for the kindergarten classroom (prochner, 2011). included in offerings of the 1927 mbc catalogue were “bradley’s kindergarten dolls” which the company assured met the standards of the “international kindergarten union standardization committee”. doll play in itself was approved for kindergarten and primary grades by leading educators (as cited in prochner, 2011, p. 371). a baby doll lies in an oval handled basket. the basket is just the right size for the doll. the handle nicely suits the size of the hand that lifts and carries it throughout the centre. the basket baby doll carrier sits on the floor of the classroom, waiting for block building to be done. eventually, fingers grab the handle and then it’s nestled into the crook of an arm. perfect to carry and walk: to wander through different areas and rooms of the centre to the back corner where a set-up of paper and bingo dabbers awaits. basket baby doll carrier now sits on the table, on top of the already painted paper. the red dabber is picked up and used to dot, dot, dot, dot the baby doll lying in the basket carrier. doll troubles dolls are overtly connected to nurturance and often considered a gender-typed toy to study such constructs as gender differences, same-sex friend/peer group preferences, gender stereotyping, and gender role behaviour (e.g., banerjee & lintern, 2000; banse, gawronski, rebetez, gutt, & morton, 2010; blackmore, 2003; cherney, 2003; eisenberg, murray, & hite, 1982; golombok, rust, zervoulis, croudace, goulding, & hines, 2008; kuhn, nash, & brucken, 1978; martin, eisenbud, & rose, 1995; miller, 1987; taylor, 1996; theimer, killen, & stangor; 2001). from a developmental perspective, through engaging with dolls, children are imitating what they see or experience from the adult world; in other words, practicing for their adult life to come (blatz et al., 1935; bundy, 1989; ellis & hall, 1896). this has helped to foster the enduring belief that by playing with (baby) dolls, children are practicing the skill/duty/pleasure of physically and emotionally caring for others. the aim of this section is to further highlight the complex web of dolls and children by sharing stories that highlight a few knots related to gender and care. basten (2009) highlights, “young girls playing with dolls [as] probably one of the most visibly familiar images of early child interaction with childbearing and nurturing” (p. 2). this “familiar image” is plastered throughout current doll advertising (e.g., corolle, 2012; toys r us canada, n.d.; zapf creation, 2009) where photos of smiling girls playing with dolls in a sea of pink, that quintessential marker of girlhood, advertise dolls “for the littlest mommies” (corolle, 2012). while boys do play with dolls (almost every boy in the centre played with a doll at some point during the research) and have for quite some time (see blatz et al., 1935; ellis & hall, 1896), they are rarely marketed to as the consumer of dolls. in formanek-brunell’s (1993) overview of doll production in the u.s. from 1830 to 1930, she assesses that by the 1920s, nearly all american doll manufacturers were marketing their dolls “to emphasize domesticity, maternity, and femininity” (p. 181). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 790 a review of several eaton’s cataloguesvii (t. eaton co. limited, 1897, 1909, 1920, 1934) illuminates a similar marketing trend, as well as the increase in infant doll production, in the early 20th century in canada. the eaton’s 1897 christmas catalogue includes a small section for toys that advertised a few “kid body dolls” (t. eaton co. limited, 1897, p. 18) but by the 1934-35 fall and winter catalogue, dolls are no longer advertised as toys for “the little folks” but are now promoted under the page heading: “every little mother will fall in love” (t. eaton co. limited, 1934, p. 258). rather than selling the technical details of the dolls as earlier catalogues emphasized, the marketing of maternity becomes overt, and rather similar to what we see in marketing today. this connection between dolls, girls, and nurturing has certainly received comment and criticismviii including early feminist critic de beauvoir (1949/2011), who considered how dolls were implicated in the indoctrination of girls “to become caring, maternal, and passive” (wagner-ott, 2002, p. 251). with de beauvoir’s (1949/2011) infamous assertion “one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one” (p. 283), previously accepted assumptions of the “naturalness” of gender hierarchy/relations could now be theorized as “a social condition constituted through relations of power, thus open to critique and the possibility of change” (dietz, 2003, p. 401). this possibility of change does not get missed within discourses and practices related to dolls. one way these ideas get taken up is to include boys in the dolls and nurturing discourse and practices, exemplified in charlotte zolotow’s (1972/2002) children’s picture book william’s doll, an adaptation of which was included in the early 1970s liberal feminist collection of iconic stories, songs, and poems known as free to be you and me (see hart, pogrebin, rodger, & thomas, 2008). the grandmother’s explanation is clear that boys need dolls so they can “practice being a father” (zolotow, 1972/2002, p. 286) presumably just the way girls have had the opportunity to practice being a mother. this challenges the exclusion of boys from the nurturing/caring discourse and practices related to dolls, but perpetuates the notion that playing with dolls is preparatory for a future parenting self. when efforts to change gendered behaviour (such as boys should play with dolls to develop their nurturing capabilities) “fail”, biological determinism is often called upon to explain behaviour (macnaughton, 2000). biological determinism is generally rooted in discourses of essential, universal difference: developmental difference, biological difference, emotional difference, functional difference (eidevald, 2009). as sommers’ (2012) online article title suggests, “you can give a boy a doll, but you can’t make him play with it”. the past-presents (presence) of dolls teaching/playing in ecce is not outside gendered discourses and practices of care. woven into the fabric of developmental value discourses with respect to dolls are gendered questions (assumptions) of who will (should) care for dolls that parallel questions of who will (should) care for children. dominant biological and social theories of gender do little to disrupt the male/female binary associated with care (see cameron et al., 1999; johnson, 2011). to unstick care from this dichotomous gender quarrel, a more expansive view of gender and care that can account for the complexity of material-semiotic becomings is required. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 791 a wooden dollhouse sits on the floor of the classroom. three children walk around the dollhouse driving die-cast cars on the dollhouse roof. baby cars they have come to be called. a “baby car” pokes in through the dollhouse window only to re-emerge quickly, back to roll over the roof. walking. rolling. some talking. mostly just baby cars on the dollhouse roof. a plastic baby doll wrapped in a blanket is tucked under one of the children’s arms as she drives her baby car on the roof. a knotty tale of plasticity this story takes as its starting point the plastic material of the dolls with whom the children of this study engage. while it is a material that largely influences the play possibilities (e.g., water table bathing dolls) in ecce, it is also one embroiled in controversy. considering (critiquing) dolls in ecce typically rests within developmental and (dominant) gender logics: exceptions include taylor and richardson’s (2005) poststructural and queer theory analysis and gallacher’s (2006) deleuzian analysis of home/doll corner. in this section, my aim is to consider the plasticity of the dolls, and in so doing add several more sticky knots to the complicated, sometimes contentious, web of dolls, children, gender, and care. as puig de la bellacasa (2009) suggests “these worlds of collective feeling, relational processes that are far from being always caressing, have something specific and situated to teach us” (p. 310). depending on the resources available and the cultural tradition of the people involved, dolls have been made from: wood; paper; food, such as cornhusks and apples; terracotta and clay; porcelain china; rags and other kinds of cloth; rubber; and various kinds of plastic (fraser, 1966; jaffé, 2006). with the development of polymers (i.e., polyurethane in the 1930s, followed by polystyrene, and by the 1950s polypropylene) which could support various types of molding and be mass produced cheaply, hard plastics overtook doll production by the mid-20th century (jaffé, 2006). plastic production is implicated in the variety of doll shapes and sizes and the abundance of dolls available then and today in ecce classrooms and homes. plastic also helped to facilitate different play possibilities as the dolls were now lighter and easier to carry or move around; they could be washed and left outside in the rain without (much) worry; they did not break (as easily) and therefore could be played with under less supervision than porcelain dolls (formanek-brunell, 1993). originally marketed as better for children’s play – plastic is hygienic, safe, durable, and cheap – today, plastic dolls are embedded in multiple controversies related to physical and environmental health. in terms of physical health, chemicals found in plastics, such as bisphenol a (bpa) which is used as a binding agent in polycarbonates, are increasingly being associated with delayed puberty, growth retardation, cancer, diabetes, obesity, as well as reproductive and neurological problems or diseases (see grossman, 2009; knoblauch, 2009; kovacs, n.d.; schmidt, 2011; white, 2009). phthalates, a chemical compound used to soften plastic in the production process, is also of concern. like bpa, phthalates are not chemically bound to the plastic and therefore in different ways leach into the environment, including migrating into the body through saliva (schmidt, 2011). in terms international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 792 of environmental health, producing plastic consumes a large amount of non-renewable resources, such as petroleum and coal, both for the actual product and the process of production (knoblauch, 2009; kovacs, n.d; white, 2009). not only are non-renewable resources used to make plastic products but major air, water, and soil pollution is also created through their production and disposal, which is also impossible to disentangle from human and non-human health (allsopp, walters, santillo, & johnston, 2006; grossman, 2009). much of the general concern related to plastic production gets directed toward china, as the world’s largest producer of plastics (pop, 2011). dolls are among the many plastic products whose manufacturing has migrated to china over the last 20 years in the pursuit of reduced production costs (jaffé, 2006; van patten, n.d.). among the health and environmental problems that have been raised are strong concerns about the conditions related to toy production in china, which is estimated to be 80% of the world’s toy production (bjurling, 2005, 2009; jaffé, 2006). most production occurs within the guangdong province and severe working conditions have been reported that often violate chinese legislation, international conventions, as well as companies’ own codes of conduct: extremely long working hours, little to no days off from work (particularly in peak season), lack of safety and health education, and low-wages (bjurling, 2005; ekelund & bjurling, 2004). added to this is concern for the health of the 105 million permanent residents (as of 2011) of the guangdong province due to severe soil, air, and water pollution (chow, 2012; fung, 2013; gong, 2013; mcgeary, 2013). it is difficult to not see a dichotomy here between the plastic baby dolls played with in a childcare centre on the west coast of what is regularly described as “beautiful british columbia” and the highly polluted province of guangdong where these dolls in all probability came from. pressure from public reporting, such as ekelund and bjurling (2004), and other safety issues, such as a massive recall of toys containing lead in 2007 which saw the largest toy manufacturer mattel recall 21 million toys made in china (bjurling, 2009) have led to many efforts to improve working conditions (bjurling, 2009, 2011; toloken, 2012). they have also led to growing concern about consumers supporting production from china as portrayed in mainstream media (e.g., rosevelt, 2006; thottam, 2007), ece newsletters (e.g., stoecklin, 2008), and parenting or mommy blogs (e.g., bernadette1, 2013; cool mom picks, 2007; journey to crunchville, 2007; mommy footprint, 2012; morris, 2012; sarnoff, 2003). bernadette1 (2013) asks her readers where a doll “not made in china” can be acquired. journey to crunchville (2007) notes that a recall of plastic baby dolls accelerated her move to rid the house of her daughter’s “gazillion plastic babies” (para. 1). sarnoff (2003) describes the first night that followed her daughter being given a plastic baby doll by well-intentioned but ill-informed grandparents: “all night i smelled baby ava as she emitted a powdery chemical scent so powerful it made me gag. baby ava was off-gassing” (para. 4–5). suffice it to say that baby ava was gone the next day. sarnoff (2003) clearly indicates there are simply two doll purchasing choices: “potentially lethal lead poisoning or organic cotton options” (para. 3). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 793 with cotton and wool handmade dolls such as waldorf dolls (bernadette1, 2013; disch, 2012) and bamboletta dolls (cool mom picks, 2007; mommy footprint, 2012) costing upwards of $700 each (elton, 2013), deciding which doll to buy becomes an issue of access as well as sustainability. furthermore, what happens to all the plastic dolls in our caring efforts to “go green” or “choose wisely”? in a growing push to shift from plastic materials to natural ones in early childhood environments (e.g., cotton, wool or wood dolls; wood blocks; wood play structures and furniture) (e.g., smart baby, smart kid, 2013) where does all the plastic go when we make this adjustment? where did baby ava go in sarnoff’s (2003) efforts to protect her infant daughter from “off-gassing”? to another child whose parent or educator is less informed or enlightened? to a recycling depot or a landfill? are we as consumers prepared to see and take action around our culpability – what we purchase, from where we purchase, and how we dispose – in this knotty tale of plasticity? what are our “obligations of care” (haraway, 2008, p. 70)? one of the challenges associated with adhering to international standards and ethical calls for “good practice” is an unwillingness to share (i.e., among manufacturers, retailers, and consumers) the accompanying extra costs (e.g., increasing wages, assuring safe working conditions and materials) that ultimately result in increased prices for goods manufactured, like dolls (bjurling, 2009; toloken, 2012; van patten, n.d.). as puig de la bellacasa (2010) suggests, “the obligation ‘to care’ is more than an affective state, it has material consequences” (p. 165). ruby holds one of the baby dolls in her hands, sitting with her and trying to add another dress to the dolls’ layers. she looks at terry, the educator in the room who is near to ruby and asks for help getting another dress on to the doll. terry helps wiggle the dress onto the doll. ‘there you go’. she smiles at ruby and hands her back the doll. ruby continues to play with the baby doll but then asks terry for help to wrap the doll into the blanket she has on her lap. ‘oh, does your baby need a blanket’? terry helps ruby by carefully wrapping the doll with the baby blanket. ‘there’s your baby’. she hands the baby doll back to ruby, who scoops the baby into her arms. she places the baby doll down on the carpeted floor and then lies down beside her. ‘are you having a nap with your baby’? ruby smiles, not at terry or i, but at her baby. following trajectories with dolls in this article, i have told several stories of child-doll encounters from the classroom that each, in varying ways, could be interpreted as moments of pleasure, enjoyment and contentment. while there are many ways to interpret children’s doll play, like that of angus, ruby, “baby cars”, what i am most interested in is that these seemingly pleasurable, multiple ways of being with dolls exist alongside and within the partial, incomplete tale of plasticity i have just told. in our obligations to care, whom do we care about in these practices? the children’s enjoyment with the plastic doll that can be soaked and painted and kicked and cuddled with relative ease? the working conditions under which this doll was likely produced? the environmental hazards of this doll’s production, use, and disposal? how do we weigh the care/concern of one over the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 794 other? and is one over the other the only option we have? puig de la bellacasa (2012) suggests that, “where there is relation there has to be care, but our cares also perform disconnection. we cannot possibly care for everything, not everything can count in a world, not everything is relevant in a world” (p. 204). what might caring pedagogies look like, then, in this world of dis/connections? drawing on emerging ideas in feminist science studies, caring pedagogies might respond to interconnected ideas of gender and care by thinking with care which, as puig de la bellacasa (2012) proposes, invites us to consider how “our cuts foster relationship” (p. 204). this is about our implication and response-ability but it is not about categorical blame or romanticized visions of seamless relations. we will not be able to care for all, all of the time, but we can pay attention to the mattering of our practices. barad (as cited in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012) explains it this way: “performing the labor of tracing the entanglements, of making connections visible, you’re making our obligations and debts visible, as part of what it might mean to reconfigure relations of spacetimemattering” (p. 20). in other words, barad’s assertion, like haraway’s (1994) call for “getting at how worlds are made and unmade” (p. 65), stresses the importance of making visible how (certain) practices come to matter, not simply as a form of critique but “in order to participate in the processes, in order to foster some forms of life and not others” (p. 65, italics added). through mapping our partial connections with the question “to what and whom is a response required?” (gane & haraway, 2006, p. 145), we can do the work to reconfigure more liveable common worlds. this is not to suggest that if we work hard enough we will be able to disentangle the knots and smooth out the complexity (of, for example, children, dolls, plastic, gender, care). caring pedagogies require that we stay with the complexities, share in the suffering. maybe sharing suffering is about growing up to do the kind of time-consuming, expensive, hard work, as well as play, of staying with all the complexities for all of the actors, even knowing that will never be fully possible, fully calculable. staying with the complexities does not mean not acting, not doing research, not engaging in some, indeed many unequal instrumental relationships; it does mean learning to live and think in practical opening to shared pain and morality and learning what that living and thinking teach. (haraway, 2008, p. 83) i have argued that taking dolls seriously might teach us something about our pedagogies, our taken-for-granted knowledges, and ultimately about our becoming of caring gendered subjects. the many doll stories i have shared suggest several things, including that dolls are more than merely developmental tools for future selves. by tracing some of dolls past-presents (presence) in ecce, developmental psychology, production and marketing, the becoming of caring gendered subjects is made visible as a materialsemiotic entanglement. through thinking-with dolls, children’s relations with/in the world as situated within materialsemiotic practices in, near, and far from the classroom become evident. we – dolls, children, educators, researchers – “become who we are in the dance of relating” (haraway, 2008, p. 25); becomings that are not bounded entities, preformed, predestined, or transcendent of the ethics and politics of being of the world. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 795 references ahmed, s. 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(originally published 1972) http://collectdolls.about.com/od/babydolls/a/madeinchina.htm http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/dangerous-plastics-safe-%09plastics-zmaz09aszraw.aspx#axzz2ewmhhmsm http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/dangerous-plastics-safe-%09plastics-zmaz09aszraw.aspx#axzz2ewmhhmsm http://www.zapfcreation.com/en/parent-s-guide/ text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1321088 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 806 endnotes i haraway (2010) remarks of “all those copulating-words-without-benefit-of-hyphen, all those resignified ordinary words: are they really necessary?” (p. 53). the hyphen has been used to join words together to indicate their relationship in an effort to avoid privileging one over the other. barad (2007) does so with material-discursive, which is akin to haraway’s (1994) material-semiotic, “emphasiz[ing] the absolute simultaneity of materiality and semiosis” (haraway & goodeve, 2000, p. 137). removing the hyphen takes the visual representation of this relatedness further, marking the words (phenomena) as not simply connected but inseparable. for example barad’s (2007, 2011) term spacetimemattering, and haraway’s (2008, 2010) naturecultures and materialsemiotic (haraway, 2010). haraway tells her reader: “what i’m interested most of all are ‘naturecultures’ – as one word – implosions of the discursive realms of nature and culture” (p. 105). in this spirit, one of the ways in which i play with language in this article is with term past-presents(presence). connecting the words in this way is an effort to highlight that pasts and presents, as in time, as well as presence, as in being “there”, are intra-active in their iterative becoming (see barad, 2007). jackson and mazzei (2012) discuss this conceptualization of inseparability (drawing on barad, 2007) in terms of how it shifts thinking about data analysis. they write: the implication for how we think data differently, given this entangled state, is to move away from thinking the interview and what is told discursively, toward a thinking of the interview and what is “told” as discursive, as material, as discursive and material, as material  discursive, and as constituted between the discursive and the material in a posthumanist becoming. (jackson & mazzei, 2012, p. 126) ii st. pierre (2013) has expressed caution about the notion of the “material turn”, a quick sweep of condemning researchers and theorists from the 1970s and 1980s as “too discursive” without acknowledging the attention paid to the material by many of the “post” thinkers of the “discursive turn” (see also hekman, 2010). ahmed (2008) criticized what she perceived as a lack of careful reading of early feminist writings by new materialism writers. van der tuin’s (2008) response to ahmed includes: i call this new materialism a third-wave materialism. i have chosen to do so, not because i want to set up another (feminist) progress narrative, but rather to signify the non-dualistically organized epistemic realm to which rosi braidotti has alluded. this is the feminist epistemic realm where we do not find the constitution of a (historical) materialism “proper” or the uncritical celebration of feminist standpoint theory, nor do we find feminist biologies of the past. what we find here is feminist generation. (p. 415) while i applaud ahmed’s call for careful reading, and her pointedly observed comments about which writers get particular, deep, “thinking-with”, i think her critique is overly simplified, albeit important. barad (whom ahmed takes to task in her critique, pointing perhaps un-carefully to pieces of her earlier writing) is also cautious of the take up of the term “new” (see juelskær & schwennesen, 2012). like van de tuin (2008), barad is interested in the generation of new knowledges, not as a “breaking with the past, but rather a dis/continuity, a cutting together-apart with a very rich history of feminist engagements with materialism” (juelskær & schwennesen, 2012, p. 13). it is with this perspective that i engage with theoretical insights and troublings both recent and previous from within feminism, science studies, and early childhood education. as maclure (2010) suggests “definition is problematic, if not downright disreputable, as far as postfoundational theories are concerned. this is because definition, as a practice, assumes a secure distinction between words and the things or concepts to which they refer. . . . definitions falter, meaning shifts. the impossibility of defining theories, and knowing the precise difference between one and another, is not therefore a fatal error but an unavoidable issue” (p. 279). iii barad’s (2007) term intra-action “signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies” (p. 33, italics original). barad makes clear that, “in contrast to the usual ‘interaction’, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action” (p. 33). this is mattering as always-becoming, co-constitutive emergence, mentioned in the article’s introduction. iv haraway (1997) writes of gender, “with all its tangled knots with other systems of stratified relationships” (p. 27). her work attends to the entanglement of gender, race, sexuality, politics, and economics, among many other “categories”. “gender is the relation between variously constituted categories of men and women (and variously arrayed tropes), differentiated by nation, generation, class, lineage, color, and much else” (haraway, 1997, p. 28). elsewhere i attend to this entanglement in greater detail than there is space for within this article. other thinking-with dolls analyses address the entanglement of gender, care, racialization, class, and sexuality, in relation to past-present practices and discourses of production and curriculum (hodgins, 2014). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 782–807 807 v barad (2007) explains diffraction as relating to the way waves (any kind of waves: sound, light, water) combine and spread out when they encounter interference: “when waves meet, they don’t disrupt or obstruct each other, no impact or collision occurs, as in the case of two particles. on the contrary, the whole point is that the waves can coexist unhindered by each other’s presence; they can overlap in a common spatial region – indeed at a single point” (p. 417). another important point that barad (2007) makes is that a quantum understanding of diffraction recognizes that, in certain circumstances, matter manifests wave behaviour and, conversely, light manifests particle behaviour. this is referred to as the “wave-particle duality paradox” (p. 83) and suggests the “complexity and profundity of diffraction phenomena” (p. 83). vi as mentioned (endnote i), haraway is purposeful in her use of a hyphen or a slash for resignifying words. her recent (haraway, 2012) use of response-ability emphasizes the “response” element, an actual doing, within the notion of responsibility. she write of “a praxis of care and response – response-ability” (p. 302). vii according to library and archives canada (2007)[note: not on reference list], the t. eaton company was the first canadian retailer to distribute a catalogue in canada (the first one distributed in 1884 and the last in 1976), and was an important vehicle for merchandising across the vast and sparsely settled country. viii for an overview see formanek-brunell (1993). for a few recent critiques about the “pink aisle” see crozier (2014), dockterman (2013), and gruver (n.d.). for critiques and comments about the gendering of dolls, see sweet (2012). eisenberg, n., murray, e., & hite, t. (1982). children's reasoning regarding sex-typed toy choices. child development, 53(1), 81–86. ellis, a. c., & hall, g. s. (1896). a study of dolls. pedagogical seminary, 4(2), 129– 175. elton, s. (2013, march 15). waldorf dolls: an anti-consumerist icon for $700? whimsical and wholesome, waldorf dolls provoke a cabbage patch-style frenzy. maclean’s. retrieved from http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/03/15/an-anticonsumerist-icon-for-700/ gilligan, c. (1993). in a different voice. boston: harvard university press. (originally published 1982) golombok, s., rust, j., zervoulis, k., croudace, t., goulding, j., & hines, m. (2008). developmental trajectories of sex-typed behavior in boys and girls: a longitudinal general population study of children aged 2.5 – 8 years. child development, 79... gong, j. (2013, july 10). china’s guangdong comes clean on soil pollution. caixin online. retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-guangdongcomes-clean-on-soil-pollution-2013-07-15 knoblauch, j. a. (2009, july 2). plastic not-so-fantastic: how the versatile material harms the environment and human health. scientific american. retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plastic-not-so-fantastic prochner, l. (2011). “their wooden little bricks”: a history of the material culture in kindergarten in the united states. paedagogica historica, 47(3), 355–375. schmidt, s. (2011, january 18). canada's federal government to ban toxic chemical additive to plastic children's products. retrieved from http://www.canada.com/health/canada+federal+government+toxic+chemical+add itive+plastic+children+products/41227... epilogue 224 epilogue crime prevention and community safety: some implications for children and youth michel vallée and tullio caputo, guest editors a wide range of issues related to the safety, health, and well-being of children and youth are explored by the papers in this collection. they include the views of researchers and academics from various disciplines who bring a great deal of passion and commitment to their work. surprisingly, though the authors come from different disciplines and consequently employ diverse terms and concepts, they share numerous similarities. for example, it is clear from the articles in this collection that an ongoing focus on children and youth in canada is reflected in the types of policies and programs that can be found in the different fields represented here. in the case of crime prevention, children and youth are often the focus of policies and programs, as well as community-based interventions. the papers collected here promote the idea that policies and interventions should be more sensitive to the diversity and particularities of children's everyday lives. many of the authors argue that problems associated with current universal conceptions of childhood have to be avoided if we are to develop more flexible and child-sensitive policies and programs in the future. part of this discussion includes a recognition, widely shared among the contributors to this collection, that children in our society occupy a marginal position often lacking power and voice. the challenges and consequences of such a position are amplified in the case of poor, aboriginal, and other minority youth. for ameliorative action to occur, this marginalization and inequality has to be addressed. like notions of childhood, the authors carefully scrutinize the concept of community in this volume. while many hold high expectations for community-based interventions, the concept itself is often problematic. it is ambiguous and poorly conceptualized and the tendency is to invoke the notion of community as a panacea – a solution to all problems of contemporary society. it is clear from the analyses presented here, that “community” is neither a panacea nor an automatic site for effective intervention. the articles in this collection rightly examine the potential offered by the concept of community and encourage a careful consideration of the role of this concept in the lives of children and youth. the focus on community safety and crime prevention highlights a number of challenges faced by policy-makers, researchers, and those working in communities. first, there is evidence that some crime prevention strategies do work. indeed, a body of empirical evidence is building up and this should form the basis for future strategies. it is also clear that the police in canada play a central role in crime prevention activities, especially in relation to the safety and wellbeing of children and youth. the papers in this volume, however, note that the police cannot and should not act alone in this effort. indeed, many authors noted the importance of partnerships at the community level and the need to involve children and youth in a meaningful way. the need for comprehensive policies and programs sensitive to diversity was reiterated in the context of community-based crime prevention initiatives. such initiatives should reflect the changing social and political realities including the changing needs of young people. 225 with respect to the existing responses of the various institutions in this country to children and youth, much needs to be done. it was noted time and again that young people face systemic barriers in general and that some young people are especially marginalized by the existing institutional order. particular attention should be paid to the needs of a diverse population of young people. their issues and concerns should not be obscured or overshadowed by those of adults, families, or communities. instead, institutions and organizations should promote flexible and comprehensive strategies that recognize and even celebrate the diversity in the youth population. a holistic and multidisciplinary approach should be fundamental here. it is clear from the analyses presented in this collection that policy-making and program development for children and youth should be based on empirical evidence. a number of articles note the importance of evidence-based decision-making, notwithstanding the lack of such an approach in areas like community safety and crime prevention. at the same time, both theoretical and methodological issues related to producing evidence-based results need to be addressed. in particular, the authors emphasize appropriate methodologies for including young people in the research process and most of the articles in this collection discuss the need for a comprehensive approach, one that includes the involvement of key stakeholders in the research process. children and youth are key stakeholders. it is evident that an exchange of ideas among policy-makers and researchers is essential. this project began with the notion of promoting an ongoing dialogue among policy-makers and researchers. while the focus was community safety, health, and well-being for canadian children and youth, the outcome was a far more thoroughgoing engagement with basic issues of citizenship and social justice. importantly, these issues emerged by applying an analytical lens that reflected the experiences children and youth. while the analyses presented in this collection indicate that much needs to be done, they also provide a direction that will help us move forward toward a safer and healthier environment for young people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 1–4 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918849 special issue: understanding and responding to painbased behaviour in child and youth care work issue editors: james p. anglin and lilia m. zaharieva we are grateful to dr. sibylle artz, editor of the international journal of child, youth and family studies, for the invitation to produce a special issue on pain-based behaviour in child and youth care work. since the term was created and published in 2002 (anglin, 2002), the notion has entered the literature, the research, and, perhaps most importantly, the practice of child and youth care internationally. the eight articles in this issue come from ireland, australia, the united states, and canada, and offer a broad range of perspectives. after receiving the invitation to compile this issue, we scanned the recent child and youth care literature and readily identified 13 publications — articles and books — using the term painbased behaviour. there are undoubtedly many more, however we believed the authors of these publications would present a significant cross-section of perspectives on understanding and responding to pain and pain-based behaviour. we are excited and honoured that the authors represented here were able to contribute articles to this issue. the first article by larry brendtro is vintage brendtro. readers of this journal will be familiar with the extensive publications and international training seminars larry has contributed to the field over the past 50 years. in fact, 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the classic publication the other 23 hours that larry co-authored with alfred trieschman and james whittaker (trieschman, whittaker, & brendtro, 1969) when larry and james were graduate students. since that time, larry has kept abreast of the child-related literature across many disciplines, including education, psychology, sociology, juvenile justice, and brain science, continually searching for the core elements of human development and the helping professions that need to be understood, preserved, and further developed through research and innovative practice. in his article, he offers a multi-disciplinary tour de force in which he explores a broad range of psychosocial issues and perspectives in an integrative manner. he also considers the historical evolution of key concepts and suggests that children’s emotional pain derives from unmet needs. modestly, we placed our own co-authored article second in the roster. this article is presented in largely a dialogical format, reflecting the process that produced it. in 2017, jim was asked to do the opening morning for a two-day norwegian mental health conference titled “expressions of pain” based on his research. as outlined in the article, jim then approached lilia to engage in a literature-informed experiential conversation weekly over four months in order to explore more deeply the notion of pain-based behaviour. we hope that our contribution may assist others to find ways to bridge the worlds of youth with lived experience in care and the worlds of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 1–4 2 professional helpers, perhaps resulting in “binocular vision” encompassing both inside-out and outside-in experiences and perspectives. heather modlin’s article introduces robert kegan’s cognitive-developmental theory through her research on supervision in residential child and youth care with a focus on worker mindset development. kegan’s work provides a well-researched approach to assessing people’s ability to manage complexity and ambiguity, two central dimensions of child and youth care work. heather’s study revealed two quite different approaches to understanding and responding to pain and pain-based behaviour depending on the cognitive-developmental level of the workers (i.e., those with a socialized versus those with a self-authoring cognitive system). her insights provide valuable information for those managing programs or working in supervision roles, as well as for educators and trainers seeking to enhance the skills of practitioners and the functioning of child welfare agencies. we anticipate that many readers of this article will want to access heather’s doctoral dissertation (modlin, 2018) on which her article is based, as well as perhaps consult some of kegan’s publications. in the following article, martha holden and debbie sellers of the bronfenbrenner centre for translational research at cornell university provide an overview of a new residential care program model (care) designed to strengthen an agency’s capacity to respond to young people’s trauma, pain, and pain-based behaviour through creating developmental and therapeutic experiences. this principle-based model requires leadership and supervision characteristic of a self-authoring mindset (as explored by modlin, above), and is implemented through a holistic and agency-wide process. all staff, whatever their positions in the agency, need to be congruent in their commitment to and application of the core care principles. rigorous research, some of which is presented in the article, has resulted in the care approach being classified by the california evidence-based clearing house for child welfare as a promising practice that is highly relevant for residential care work. maurice fenton follows with his deeply reflective analysis of his journey in residential care work, and especially his encounters with pain and the process of personal and professional development required to become an effective worker and supervisor over a 28-year career. maurice models for other practitioners an openness and commitment to learning based in humility, transparency, and persistence. he demonstrates how one’s personal struggles with pain and loss need to be understood as important aspects of professional growth. as editors, we had the privilege of witnessing maurice’s growth as he wrote his way to completing this article, with each draft incorporating new insights and creative linkages. we expect that further articles will emerge from maurice based on the excellent material that had to be left out of this one. moving from the irish context to the state of victoria, australia, annette jackson, raeleen mckenzie, and margarita frederico present a new emotional-relief first aid tool using the acronym pain (predicting and preparing; acknowledging and putting words to feelings; informing, and nurturing and noticing). the authors explore the invisibility of psychoemotional pain, some of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 1–4 3 the neuroscientific basis for understanding pain, and the challenges of people trying to articulate their pain to others. their innovative approach to supporting children, families, and workers is accompanied by some step-by-step practice-based examples, emphasizing the importance of learning to apply theory in day-to-day child and youth care practice. they also highlight the movement across australia to develop therapeutic residential care (trc) to respond more effectively to the needs of children in out-of-home care. next, another australian, howard bath, shines a spotlight on an aspect of trauma-induced pain too often overlooked or ignored in the literature and practice: shame. howard has for many years conducted workshops and training sessions on trauma and trauma-informed practice, and has co-authored a recent book, the three pillars of transforming care: trauma and resilience in the other 23 hours (bath & seita, 2018). howard takes a thoughtful and research-informed approach to his work while always focussing on the needs of children and the needs of the practitioners who work with them. his emphasis on creating environments of safety, relational connections, and coping skills is infused with the wisdom of practice experience that makes his writing accessible to practitioners, trainers, and researchers alike. the final article by james anglin and angela scott addresses some critical issues relating to researching pain. the two authors share aspects of their learning as researchers that both challenged them personally and led to important insights in their research studies. the authors draw on the little-known work of george devereux (1967) to suggest that social science research, especially that of a qualitative nature, always involves the researcher in very personal ways in both the data-gathering and the data-analysis processes. when researching pain, researchers need to be prepared to experience their own pain, and to view this aspect as a valuable and necessary part of understanding the pain of others. in brief, social research is intervention, and involves re-searching the researcher as well as engaging intimately with others. summary many common threads weave themselves across the eight articles in this issue, including (to mention but a few) the centrality of relationships, especially loving ones; the transgenerational nature of trauma; the importance of naming our pains and having a language of pain; the need for shared and reciprocal connections; the integration of mind, body, spirit, and brain; the ecological and contextual nature of pain-based behaviour; the challenges of complexity and ambiguity; the stresses of caring in painful situations; the positive uses of pain experiences; and the imperative for human growth and healing involving children, families, researchers, practitioners, and communities. as co-editors, we have learned much from each and every article in this issue, and we hope readers will share our feeling that we are not just better informed, but are somewhat better people for the experience. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 1–4 4 references anglin, j. p. (2002). pain, normality and the struggle for congruence: reinterpreting residential care for children and youth. new york, ny: routledge. bath, h., & seita, j. (2018). the three pillars of transforming care: trauma and resilience in the other 23 hours. winnipeg, mb: faculty of education publishing, university of winnipeg. devereux, g. (1967). from anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences. paris, france: mouton & co. modlin, h. (2018). exploring the experiences of child and youth care workers in residential care through a constructive-developmental lens (doctoral dissertation). university of victoria, victoria, bc. retrieved from: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/160 trieschman, a. r., whittaker, j. k., & brendtro, l.k. (1969). the other 23 hours: child-care work with emotionally disturbed children in a therapeutic milieu. new york, ny: aldine de gruyter. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/160 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 718–721 718 introduction to the special issue on materiality in early childhood studies laurie kocher, veronica pacini-ketchabaw, and sylvia kind, guest editors acknowledgements: the editors would like to thank the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for their support. materials live in the world in multiple ways. they can evoke memories, narrate stories, invite actions, and communicate meanings. materials and objects create meeting places. in early childhood education we gather around things to investigate, negotiate, converse, and share. materials – a block of clay, pots of paint, a brush, a colourful wire, a translucent sheet of paper, a rectangular block – beckon and draw us in. materials are not immutable, passive, or lifeless until the moment we do something to them; they participate in our early childhood projects. they live, speak, gesture, and call to us. (kind, 2014, p. 865 of this issue) this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (ijcyfs) focuses on non-traditional approaches to materiality in relation to learning in early childhood education. the articles emerged, in large part, from a three-year study funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc), entitled encounters with materials in early education, through which the editors conducted a visual ethnography study in two early childhood centres in western canada. that research provoked interest in exploring more broadly how notions of materiality are taken up in different contexts. laurie kocher, ph.d. is an instructor and coordinator in the early childhood education faculty at douglas college, 1250 pinetree way, coquitlam, british columbia, canada, v3b 7x3. e-mail: kocherl@douglascollege.ca veronica pacini-ketchabaw, ph.d. is a professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: vpacinik@uvic.ca sylvia kind, ph.d. is an instructor and atelierista in the department of early childhood care and education at capilano university, 2055 purcell way, north vancouver british columbia canada, v7j 3h5, e-mail: skind@capilanou.ca mailto:vpacinik@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 718–721 719 a primary goal of the encounters with materials project was to engage in an artbased collaborative inquiry to broaden understandings of the role that materials play in early childhood classrooms. thinking with materials provokes different ways of thinking about early education and about how materials and young children live entangled lives in classrooms, transforming each other through various encounters. we have strived to reassemble early education spaces as vibrant social-ecological environments where humans and nonhumans are always in relation. materials, objects, and physical (non-human) elements have been important components of early childhood educational practices since programs for young children were developed. this materiality, however, has been invisible and under-theorized when thinking about learning. central questions, which permeate all of the articles in this special issue, are: what are materials capable of in the early childhood classroom? how does the relationality of materials with the social, cultural, and discursive aspects reconceptualize learning in early childhood education? what if the human role in shaping materials is not as central as we believe? what if materials shape us as much as we shape them? how might we experience materials differently if we saw them as joint participants in our interactions with them? what happens when we choose to see materials, not as lifeless objects, but as events? how might a shift in perspective on materiality – including our own materiality – change the ways we interact with materials, with young children, and with other educators? and how might such shifts in perspective change the nature of our engagement with society and the environment? overview of the special issue this special issue, then, is comprised of nine articles that take up such questions. contributions include five theoretically-based, academic articles, combined with four essays that embody the voices of practitioners (we have called these “ideas from the field”), plus one book review. the practitioners, authors in the “ideas from the field” section, were invited by the editors to add their perspectives to this collegial conversation about materiality. most articles are from western canada, but there is also a submission from belgium. the contributions herein address materiality from a variety of perspectives: historical, pedagogical, critical, and artistic. materials are understood not as static substances passively awaiting our signification; they are agential, participatory, active. as such, the focus throughout these articles is the performativity of materials, what materials are capable of. the articles philippe noens and stefan ramaekers, with their contribution the family as a “gathering”: how the life of an object makes a family, seek to develop a pedagogical answer to the question: what is it that constitutes a family? in their research they do not start from a substantial definition of the family; rather, they shift from a structural and institutional perspective on what the family is (or should be) to concrete socio-material practices that actually make a family. they see the family as a gathering of some sort where people are actively gathered around some-thing or some-one. in this article, they international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 718–721 720 show how the family is “made” when inhabitants of a house are being gathered around the “life” of some object. in contemporary early childhood contexts, children’s photography is often seen as a democratic practice that incorporates children’s photographs as representations of children’s inner experiences of thinking, feeling, and learning. in rethinking photography as event, kim ainsworth outlines tensions arising from photography inquiries that took place within a canadian preschool setting. within the context of early childhood education practice, anthropocentric, representational views of photography and childcentred practice are critiqued and contrasted with a relational materialist stance. vanessa clark, veronica pacini-ketchabaw, and b. denise hodgins think with the specificities of paint to tell stories about entanglements of settler colonialism and paint and painting in early childhood art education in their article, thinking with paint: troubling settler colonialisms through early childhood art pedagogies. they essay a messy, nonlinear picture of their work with children through a process of storytelling. taking inspiration from contemporary artists and from antiracist and indigenous scholars they portray their attempts to respond to and stay with the trouble their stories bring forward, gesturing toward hope and decolonizing strategies. in her article, playing with dolls: (re)storying gendered caring pedagogies, b. denise hodgins shares ordinary classroom stories of child-doll encounters that occurred during a collaborative research study that explored how children, educators, and things emerge as gendered caring subjects within early childhood practices. the historical and current dominance of dolls in early childhood practices and their links to gender and care make dolls such a significant material to think-with. the article works to unstick early childhood pedagogies from individualist and child-centred pedagogies, and rethink the apolitical and developmental logics that underpin “doll early childhood pedagogies”. implications for caring pedagogies are considered, including the necessity for making visible the interconnectedness of gender and care, tracing how (particular) practices come to matter, and responding within the complexity of knotted webs of relationality. kathleen kummen considers how mattering and meaning are mutually constituted in the production of knowledge in her article, when matter in the classroom matters. drawing on a research project with first-year early childhood education students in a university setting, kummen argues that material-feminism offers a lens through which pedagogical practices can be reconceptualized as more than anthropocentric endeavours. her research explores the processes that occurred when, together with a group of early childhood education students, they engaged with and in pedagogical narrations, attempting to make visible and disrupt the hegemonic images of children and childhood they recognized that they held. ideas from the field materials are entangled within complex assemblages that are constantly in motion. kelsey wapenaar draws on the notion of an “event” being a time where relationships between bodies of materials and people come together in intersection, attending to the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 718–721 721 dialogue between materials and human bodies, in entanglements of time. this time of intra-actions becomes alive and entangled, moving beyond chronological time to a rhythm of multiple time flows. to bring a feeling of tangibility to this idea, the article explores a series of events from kelsey’s work as an educator at a childcare centre, as well as her work as an artist. specific encounters from these experiences are woven as a narrative throughout the article, illustrating the idea of material as an event where materials play an active role in assemblages and act with a sense of agency. thinking also of entanglements, adrienne argent describes a collective of adults and very young children that spend their days together in constant partnership with objects that are also active participants. in dogwood room entanglements, adrienne invites us to understand curriculum as an entanglement of time, place, bodies, materials, and more. curriculum is not situated outside the child; rather, the two become enmeshed, (re)acting and transforming each other. vanessa clark and narda nelson represent a conversation between a group of educators with their contribution, thinking with paint and water. throughout the dialogue, the educators reflect on their year’s work with paint and water, discussing themes of rethinking their practice, challenges and struggles associated with the project, and the importance of working together as a team. they discover that playing with the possibilities, engaging the boundaries and limits, and challenging taken-for-granted pedagogical lenses, all offer up new means by which early childhood educators, can move towards increasingly meaningful and transformative experiences in their work. hearkening back to the opening words presented here, materials live in the world in multiple ways. in her visual essay, material encounters, based on an exhibit arising from the sshrc-funded project described above, sylvia kind presents the reader with images and text that demonstrate how materials can evoke memories, narrate stories, invite actions, and communicate meanings. materials and objects create meeting places around which educators gather to investigate, negotiate, converse, and share. materials are not immutable, passive, or lifeless until the moment we do something to them; they participate in our early childhood projects. they live, speak, gesture, and call to us. finally, marion selfridge reviews nancy lesko’s 2012 book, act your age! a cultural construction of adolescence. conclusion what does it mean to think with things? how does each material evoke particular invitations and provocations? how does each material live differently among/with/between other things and among/with/between young children? how are materials implicated in a classroom’s movements? or in a family’s movements? these questions and resulting ideas are threaded throughout this special collection of articles. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 1–2 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918803 life matters: acknowledging victim resistance and the power of social responses welcome to this special edition of the international journal of child, youth and family studies. we are delighted to bring you this edition, which focuses on exploring interpersonal violence in its broader context. the situational and sociopolitical context of interpersonal violence includes an understanding of the importance of positive social responses for the victim. the term “social responses” refers to the things family, friends, and professionals do during and after disclosure: these responses can strengthen or undermine the well-being of the person who has experienced violence. these articles are based on certain assumptions about interpersonal violence. one important assumption is that victims — people who are targeted by violence — are not to blame. victims of violence resist mistreatment, try to preserve their dignity, and enact responses that maximize their safety and the safety of others, even when there is very little room to maneuver. these articles were adapted from presentations at the responses to interpersonal violence conference held at the university of montreal in may 2016. this conference was accompanied by a meeting of the international responses to interpersonal violence network, headed by margareta hydén from the university of linköping in sweden. in this issue, we have 11 contributors. the edition begins with an article by conference organizers elizabeth fast and cathy richardson. this article investigates the topic of victimblaming and presents ways to ensure that perpetrators, not victims, are held accountable for the violence, and that safety can be established. safety is highly dependent upon networks of community and service provision, often including police, courts, protection orders, women’s shelters, supportive friends, and diligent family members. drawing from response-based analysis, developed by allan wade, linda coates, nick todd, and shelly bonnah, the authors discuss the importance of accurate language, studying interaction, and eliciting accounts of responses and resistance. moving to cape town, the next contribution, by south african researchers floretta boonzaier and taryn van niekerk, highlights their research on responses to violence victims in two marginalized communities in south africa, including an analysis of various social systems and structures that either promote or impede safety and justice. in 2012, floretta boonzaier and margareta hydén organized a network meeting in stellenboch, south africa. the research and ideas behind a number of these articles began during that period. third, we have an article from the quebec countryside, in which philippe roy, emilie duplessis-brochu, and gilles tremblay document and analyse the experiences of farming men and how gender stereotypes are both applied and contested. in the following article, edward ou jin lee, a professor at the university of montreal, writes about the experience of migrating to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 1–2 2 canada. his ongoing research documents the pitfalls of the immigration system, in relation to social justice and human rights, with particular emphasis on the multiple sites of oppression for queer and trans immigrants. the fifth article, by elizabeth fast and marie-ève drouin-gagné, operationalizes coates and wade’s four operations of discourse model to analyse how violence and mistreatment remain hidden and unaddressed within the educational system and that teaching about colonial histories is a responsibility that unless addressed becomes akin to being a bystander of violence. finally, the last article, “beauty and the beast: misrepresentation and social responses in fairy-tale romance and redemption”, takes up the idea that many stories and images misrepresent violence and give the false message that girls and women can change violent men. authors linda coates, shelly bonnah, and cathy richardson discuss particular myths that surface through these representations, such as the idea that if you can just stick it out, the abusive man might become a prince, and that it is the role of the woman or girl to tame her man. we trust that these articles will be thought-provoking, demonstrate the application of responsebased analysis, and assist us, as members of various societies, to address violence and assist in their recovery those who have been harmed. sincerely, cathy richardson and elizabeth fast editors book review international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 878 book review: act your age! a cultural construction of adolescence (2012) nancy lesko reviewed by marion selfridge marion selfridge, msw is a ph.d. student in the social dimensions of health program, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: marions@uvic.ca in her book, act your age! a cultural construction of adolescence, nancy lesko argues that adolescence is socially constructed within a historical and cultural context that frames the way that much of the world looks at youth. lesko’s central question is: “what are the systems of ideas that ‘make’ possible the adolescence that we see, think, feel and act upon?” (p. 8). this invites a consideration of notions of youth present in american modern culture using post-structural, feminist and post-colonial theoretical frameworks. as a social worker engaged in outreach with youth, this book provides me an opportunity to step back and examine how i think about the population i have been working with. although lesko’s primary audience may be professionals involved in education, act your age! creates an opportunity for anyone engaged with youth to explore how foundational theorists such as stanley hall, sigmund freud, and erik erikson have framed adolescence. lesko also gives the reader an opportunity to engage with critical theorists including michel foucault, stuart hall, homi bhaba, and franz fanon, using their concepts to unravel the concept of youth. the book traces two dominant understandings of adolescence. first, the biological view assumes that youth aged 12 to 18 have naturally occurring, biologically generated characteristics, behaviours, and needs. lesko argues that youth are viewed as hormonally overwhelmed, growth-spurting individuals outside of society and history. the developmental framework, discussed in stages of cognitive, psychosocial, or pubertal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 879 growth, occurs at the intra-individual level, moving our focus away from collective social practices and “individual responses to broader social contexts” (p. 182). for educators, child and youth care workers, and parents, youth are not to be trusted or expected to act responsibly as they are a hormonal mess, prone to moodiness and overwhelming sexual desires. this prevents us from expecting youth to have sustained and critical thinking and to assume responsibilities, thus limiting their potential agency. the second framework – a socio-historical one – constructs youth from child labour laws, industrialization, and union organizing that “gutted apprenticeships, which had been the conventional way for youth to move from dependency to independence” (p. 6). lesko argues that although this economic-based perspective does provide space to consider class, race, and gender from institutional arrangements and contexts, it does not “inquire into how the naturalized, biological adolescent was ascendent” (p. 6). left out is an interrogation of the dominant view of adolescence, including its relationship to the “broad cultural transformations of time, race, gender, and citizenship” (p. 7). lesko employs foucault’s (1979) work in discipline and punish to highlight her post-modern interpretation, attempting to shift from an actor-centred to discourse-centred critique, calling into question ”the belief in progress and its place as an unquestioned assumption in the human sciences” (p. 7). this considers language – either talk or discourse – as a site of power and conflict rather than a neutral medium. helpful to those using this book as an opportunity to explore critical theory, lesko defines and compares post-modernism and post-structuralism, noting that post-structuralism provides some analytical and political strategy to move beyond the nihilism or an “inability or unwillingness to distinguish among alternative political and ethical practices” (p. 14) that is criticized in post-modernism. it is intriguing to follow through the book the argument that the modern development of adolescence is tied up with foucault’s highlighting of the creation of a “self-governing, morally directed individual” (p. 7). although we have moved away from torture to incarceration and rehabilitation as forms of punishment, lesko traces foucault’s thesis that we have shifted to a society where increasing surveillance creates individuals that are disciplined and self-regulated. in her article “politicizing canadian childhood using a governmentality framework”, janice hill (2000) describes foucault’s governmentality as “a particular technique of government unique to the modern liberal state, in which power, knowledge, and state processes work together to shape the behaviour of individuals” (p. 174). power relations, either negative or positive, are involved in all human interactions. when power relations operate negatively they restrict human interactions and curtail behaviours to create “normal” behaviours. hill elaborates: “although training can take many forms such as physical punishment, discipline, reward, social exclusion, education and selfdiscipline, all are united by the common goal to instil in children the desire and capacity to behave normally” (p.175). tracing this influential notion leads lesko to stanley hall, the so-called father of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 880 adolescence. hall, a psychologist and the president of clark university, invented the field of adolescent psychology and defined adolescence as a universal, unavoidable, and extremely precarious stage of human development (hine, 1999). hall thought that behaviour that would indicate insanity in an adult should be considered normal in an adolescent. he provided a basis for dealing with adolescents as neither children nor adults but as distinctive, beautiful, dangerous creatures. hall’s boldest, most original, and most influential idea was that people in their teens should be considered separately from others (hine, 1999). lesko describes his pedagogical directives for discipline and instruction for each stage of boyhood and adolescence, including the notion of working against precocity. prolonging boyhood with organizations like the boy scouts worked to keep youth intellectual challenged, dependent, and asexual. hall was part of the new group of thinkers that defined the modernism of the 1900s, evidenced by revolutions in commercial, transportation, and industrial worlds and the tidal wave cultural and societal shifts. lesko’s book uses striking imagery and examples to describe how frameworks had to be created to counteract the threat that white middle and upper class men would lose control of their power in these shifts. the great chain of being was a rank ordering of species from the least primitive to the most civilized, based on evolutionary theory. this locates white european men and their societies, norms, and values at the pinnacle of civilization and morality. this also sets up the binary of progress/decline where all of the great changes of the time – mass immigration and the move of populations from rural to urban, shifting from slavery to sharecropping, the advent of labour strikes – mean huge challenges to race, class, and gender relations. lesko argues that adolescent development became “a space for reformers to talk about their worries and fears and a space for public policy to enact new ideas for creating citizens and a nation that could lead and dominate the particular problems and opportunities of the modern world” (p. 18). recapitulation theory, widely believed by both scientists and the public until the early 1900s, is used by lesko to demonstrate how scientific understanding was used to reinforce ideas of hierarchy: the growth of an individual child into an individual adult recapitulates the development of humankind – from “savage” to “civilized”. the description of “primitive as child” was used in racist arguments to justify slavery and colonization, not to mention the divide between adult, bourgeois, civilized, white, and male, versus lower class, immigrant, tribal, and female. lesko argues that our fascination with adolescence is because adolescence “was singled out as a crucial point at which an individual (and a race) leaped to a developed, superior, western selfhood or remained arrested in a savage state” (p. 29). there is an imperative, then, to support, survey, conform, and control youth – to mold them into the idealized notion of developed, superior, western selfhood. lesko argues that the “adolescent came to occupy a highly visible and recognizable place, as a being who was defined as ‘becoming’, as nascent, unfinished, in peril … [or] in today’s terms, ‘at risk’” (p. 41). the term “becoming” is a thread running through the book: youth are “constantly ‘budding’, evok[ing] physicality and sexual charge” (p. 57), mired in religious functionless “endeavour” busywork (p. 53), not living international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 881 in the present but existing only in the discourse of “growing up” (p. 137). for me, this is perhaps the most salient concept of the book, this notion of “becoming” as it gets to how we continue to remove responsibilities from youth, attempting to keep them safe, driving them to and from school, and demanding less responsibility than in the past. how have we compartmentalized this point in time in a young person’s life? how in our new service-focused, specialized technological world do we lose opportunities to have youth experience work, showing up for a paper route, dealing with a variety of adults outside of their private sphere? are we extending this idea of youth longer and longer, with a larger list of expectations of achievements before adulthood can start? lesko argues that erik erikson’s work on development and psychological stages is synonymous with modern adolescence and keeps us trapped in this mentality of youth “becoming” as a holding pattern. although lesko describes various aspects of her idea of “becoming”, she never situates it within the post-structural theorists who have taken up the word and explicitly invite dynamic, unstable ontologies of “becoming”. deleuze, the most infamous theorist to use the word postulates an idea of “becoming” not as a way-station to adulthood, or an unformed possibility of something desired, but rather as “those individual and collective struggles to come to terms with events and intolerable conditions and to shake loose, to whatever degree possible, from determinants and definitions … to grow both young and old [in them] at once” (deleuze, 1995, as cited in biehl & locke, 2010, p. 317). the experience of the population i have worked with – street-involved youth – is often one of experimentation with possibilities: what it means to leave family, to give up identities within communities and forge new ones based on chance encounters and new lived spaces. although much of street life is very gendered and dangerous, where opportunities sometimes narrow due to victimization and violence (gaetz, 2004), i have met a few youth who explore living in communal houses run through group consensus and anarchy, who explore gender roles and choose new ways to live with or without partnership, who question deeply their role as a young person on the planet and explore how they can create new ways of being in the world. in “becoming”, as deleuze saw it, one can achieve an ultimate existential stage in which life is simply immanent and open to new relations and trajectories, to camaraderie. “becoming” is not a part of history, he wrote: “history amounts only to the set of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in order to ‘become,’ that is to create something new” (deleuze, 1995, as cited in biehl & locke, 2010, p. 317). although many of the youth i have worked with will have trajectories towards early death, poverty, and few opportunities towards school and work, there is within this immanent swirling world of colliding cultures and ages, of street corner shamans and wise women recently released from psychiatric hospitalization, of friendships forged at knife point and psychedelic realizations under bridges, incredible possibilities beyond history, where new understandings of suffering may lead to entirely new ways of thinking and being in the world. deleuze suggests mapping out movement through space, time, and social fields. this cartographic approach makes space for possibility, what could be a crucial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 882 dimension of what is or what was. it brings crossroads – places where other choices might be made, other paths taken – out of the shadow of deterministic analytics. it brings alternatives within reach (biehl & locke, 2010, p. 323). when i have spent time with individuals who chose other ways not often explored, my experiences in these environments have given me opportunities to see a wide variety of alternatives and although many of them are troubling and less than comfortable, they still remind me of the choices we all make all the time, without a second thought. time is the final concept that lesko reconceptualizes for the reader. in her book, lesko chooses to narrate her argument by weaving her story in a non-linear fashion. although most of the book is focused on the progressive era of the late 1800s and early 1900s, she also touches on cold war containment culture linking to erickson’s theory of rebellion and self-determination, rock ’n’ roll and sexual exploration, the turning points document that guided middle school educational policy in the 1980s, and her own research on the role of jock culture and male athleticism in the 1990s. she repeats how in each of these eras there was a demand for slow, steady development, temporally fixed in rigid notions of how youth should “grow up”. lesko argues that young school-aged mothers disturb our sense of the “right time” as they have not followed along the correct path of school completion, job, relationship, and perhaps even home ownership before rearing children. lesko uses homi bhaba’s notion of the disjunctive present: the “unmasking of the constant drive toward the future and the interpretations of past and present tied to that future-drive” (p. 136) to explain our discomfort with young mothers. adolescence is an emblem of this linear modernity and time its defining role. teenage mothers disrupt the discourse of “growing up”: of living in the future and the not the present. how can one still be “becoming” when one of our main markers for understanding moving beyond “becoming” is childbearing after marriage? all of these markers of adulthood are being troubled in the 21st century as the economy, student debt, and shifting social norms mean that people are again living with parents longer, are marginally employed, and are cohabitating and procreating without marriage (hine, 1999). lesko’s book jumps back and forth into different time periods, attempting to demonstrate the new ways of considering time that she describes. perhaps because i am so firmly entrenched in a linear framework, it seemed that the book was both scattered and repetitive. although her argument was coherent throughout, the first, more historical sections resonated much more deeply and seemed better researched. because lesko focused on the turn of 20th century and from the 1980s to the 1990s, she just grazed by the changes in technologies of television, film, and music. this means that her work downplays the making of youth through consumption and the ever-growing neo-liberal globalization agenda. all youth, she says, no matter race or other marginalizing features, are seen through the white male lens and thus she focuses on how that lens was and continues to be formed. it was disappointing to see the absence of glbtq youth and specific non-white populations in her project, especially youth beyond the u.s. perspective. she does, however, challenge us as practitioners to see the connections in how we see marginalized groups: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 883 thus the sallow, self-abusive, undisciplined, urban hooligan joined the homosexual, the new woman, and the uppity african-american as problematic groups for new professionals to describe, diagnose and redeem. (p. 33) this, then, is the challenge for readers: to use the arguments she puts forward and the critical theorists she links with to examine our own experiences with youth. to critique how we as workers create what we imagine youth to be – emerging like swelling tree buds, controlled by raging hormones, gaze focused squarely within their peer group, and principally signified by their age. i am challenged to consider the stereotypes of youth that are draped over my interactions with adolescents, to notice all the ways they move beyond these stereotypes and the vast differences between them. in her summary, lesko encourages us to take this notion of “becoming” and apply it to all of us, coming more closely to deleuze’s ideas. are we not all emerging into new identities, into new ways of being, perhaps not any better or more progressive than in the past, but by examining with feminist, post-structural and post-colonial lenses, more aware of how we are shaped by our histories and how the youth around us are created by this post-colonial world? lesko challenges us to take on the work of advocating for youth, by working with youth as “active participants (not tokens)” (p. 186): to shift institutions including schools and juvenile justice or child welfare systems; to create space for youth to take on more adult-like responsibilities; to work together to shift policy and systems that do not serve youth well. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 878–884 884 references biehl, j., & locke, p. (2010). deleuze and the anthropology of becoming. current anthropology, 51(3), 317–351. foucault, m. (1979). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: vintage books. gaetz, s. (2004). safe streets for whom? homeless youth, social exclusion, and criminal victimization. canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 46(4), 423–455. hill, j. (2000). politicizing canadian childhood using a governmentality framework. social history, 33(65), 169–182. hine, t. (1999). the rise and decline of the teenager. new york: bard. lesko, n. (2012). act your age! a cultural construction of adolescence. new york: routledge. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/651466 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.46.4.423 overview of part ii i overview of part ii the six articles in part ii examine the response of the child welfare, health, and youth justice systems to issues surrounding the safety, health, and well-being of children and youth. in the first paper (chapter 5), mike boyes, joseph p. hornick, and nancy ogden discuss the results of their evaluation of a sample of healthy families early intervention projects. they note that while crime prevention models have included early intervention as a component, the incorporation of a development perspective is new. the development perspective provides insights into longitudinal causal mechanisms related to the risk of involvement in criminal behaviour. they note the importance of identifying risk and protective factors but argue that we must go beyond simply identifying these to developing a greater understanding of the multiple contexts in which development occurs. boyes, hornick, and ogden then define what they mean by developmental prevention and consider how this concept can be used in crime prevention. they examine a number of specific programs that address such factors as stress, family functioning, and child development. the healthy start program in hawaii is discussed in this context. they emphasize the fact that longitudinal reviews of developmental and early intervention approaches have been shown to be very effective. in the next paper (chapter 6), sibylle artz, diana nicholson, elaine halsall, and susan larke draw on a number of studies they have conducted that focus on the perspectives, experiences, and needs of children and youth. these include a project focusing on the development of a gender-sensitive tool for needs assessment as well as a project that examined the experiences of children and youth with school and communitybased violence. they note that conducting needs assessments and matching needs to services is difficult, pointing out that needs are often confused with risks and that the child welfare system is paying attention to assessing and reducing risk. they argue that this puts additional emphasis on the process of conducting appropriate needs assessments. artz, nicholson, halsall, and larke go on to review four key policy documents that address current responses to children and youth. they discuss the following factors that have contributed to the success of interventions: positive partnerships; working with, not for, children and youth; exploring promising practices; and employing caring and collaboration approaches. their research shows that the programs they examined have been extremely successful, contributing among other things, to a 40-50% reduction in school-based violence. the development of a gender-sensitive needs assessment tool was seen as extremely important. they also stress the need for a participatory approach to research and point out that despite cuts in funding many of the projects they have been involved with continue to work effectively because of the efforts and commitment of those involved. in chapter 7, yasmin jiwani, helene berman, and catherine ann cameron present the results of their work as part of the alliance of five research centres on violence. their focus was on violence and the canadian girl child. they begin with a discussion of ii the social and historical context of the girl child and then describe the methodological and theoretical basis of their research. they present the details of their findings as well as a discussion of the policy and programming implications of their work. jiwani, berman, and cameron argue that unless policies, programs, and practices are especially gender sensitive, they may not be hitting the mark. indeed, they caution us about generic violence prevention programs. jiwani, berman, and cameron conclude by noting that the research undertaken by the alliance of five research centres on violence shows an urgent need to direct funding and services to address the situation of girls in this country, especially as this relates to protecting them from violence. they provide a detailed and extensive set of recommendations, addressed to all levels of government, that provide insight and direction for future developments in this area. in chapter 8, bernard schissel discusses the consequences for young people in the criminal justice system. he argues that children and youth are treated as political and economic scapegoats in our society. in particular, he states that this scapegoating is racialized with serious consequences for african-canadian, aboriginal, and other non-white children and youth. to support this claim, he presents his research on young offender files including a subset of young people, mainly street youth from saskatoon, charged for being involved in the sex trade. according to schissel, the results show extremely negative consequences for these young people at the hands of the justice system. schissel concludes by asking how powerful people end up stigmatizing and controlling young people either intentionally or unintentionally. the impact of such actions is especially significant for youth living on the margins of society such as street youth. he states that the actions of the powerful represent a moral condemnation of these young people, identifying them as less deserving and redeemable than others. he argues that changes to the justice system must be based on a profound understanding of the impact that poverty, racism, and marginality have on youth. next, susan reid, in chapter 9, presents a detailed review of some of the risk and protective factors discussed in the literature on youth crime and victimization. she argues that if we are serious about supporting resilient youth, we should tap into the potential that exists in our communities. according to reid, we are segregated into age specific categories, which tend to isolate us from each other and may lead to mistrust and even to hostility. she explores how making connections with others could help high-risk youth address their own risk factors and increase their resiliency. more specifically, she looks at the potential for reducing the distance between young people and older adults. she also explores the possibility of involving high-risk youth in working with other young people, based on her work on peer helping done in conjunction with the national youth in care network. reid stresses that when we attempt to intervene in the lives of young people, we should strive to reinforce the bonds that exist between young people, their siblings, friends, and adults in their communities. iii finally, in chapter 10, sylvie hamel, marie-marthe cousineau, and sophie léveillée, in collaboration with martine vézina and julie savignac, focus on youth involvement in gangs. they discuss their experience with the youth and street gangs project which was based on a participatory research approach. this project responded to youth gangs through a community-based crime prevention program using a social development strategy. community groups and young people in three communities in the greater montréal area participated in pilot projects. hamel, cousineau, léveillée, vézina, and savignac provide a detailed account of how this project was conceived and developed, including a consideration of the methodology used and the theoretical models employed. the authors’ experience in this project highlights a number of key issues involved in the justice system response to youth, especially with respect to gang members who represent a serious challenge to community safety. overview of part ii international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818641 family quality of life and nurturing the sibling relationship nicole kyrkou abstract: research that gauges family quality of life in families that include a child with a disability has often focused on the relationship between parents and the child, but in doing so they underestimate the importance of the sibling relationship: siblings are in each other’s lives generally for a much longer period of time than parents are. the sibling relationship is not intrinsically positive or negative, but it is a dynamic and critical bond; from it children can learn to understand and advocate for themselves and each other in the context of the disability. the sibling relationship is a lifelong one. nurturing it in the early stages of development will not only support family quality of life, but will set the foundation for healthy adult sibling relationships that can create positive outcomes for all members of the family. the important aspects of nurturing the sibling relationship are considered from the viewpoint of both sibling and parent. the assumptions that inform sibling relationships are discussed, and suggestions for nurturing them are provided. keywords: siblings, disability, family dynamics, quality of life nicole kyrkou msc is a developmental educator and a medical student at flinders university, sturt road, bedford park 5042, south australia, australia. email: kyrk0002@flinders.edu.au mailto:kyrk0002@flinders.edu.au international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 76 my purpose in writing this article is to bring together decades of sibling wisdom cultivated through personal experience, connecting with other siblings, and talking with their families. my own experience as a sibling led into volunteering and then working in the disability field within a range of services, from case management for future planning to provision of a crisis response; and across a range of disability experiences, from intellectual and physical disability to complex health and palliative care. quality of life research shows that families without a child with a disability have higher levels of satisfaction across all domains in comparison to families where there is a child with a disability (brown, macadam-crisp, wang, & iarocci, 2006). in the growing body of research that focuses on the perspective of siblings of children with a disability, there is evidence to suggest both positives and negatives, as well as a general understanding from siblings of the family dynamic and how having a sibling with a disability has influenced this (luijkx, van der putten, & vlaskamp, 2016; wofford & carlson, 2017). when a child in the family has a chronic health condition, the health of a sibling without disability is often overestimated by parents in comparison to the siblings’s own perceptions (limbers & skipper, 2014), which can have an impact on the siblings and their relationship with each other. because of the tendency to overestimate, it is important to draw on first person accounts when considering the sibling perspective. the main focus of this article is to discuss some of the practical aspects of the sibling relationship through the major developmental stages of early childhood, school years, adolescence, and the shift into adulthood. this includes the practical aspects of the sibling experience through a range of perspectives including communication, advocacy, and navigating social situations. the sibling experience there is no single best way to nurture the sibling relationship. the perception that some best approach must exist will ultimately lead to unhelpful feelings of guilt, failure, and inadequacy. no two families will have the same experience of disability or the same expectations of what they need to achieve for family quality of life. for this reason, one must be cautious in making comparisons between families: we do not always see the private day-to-day worlds in which they live. parents of a child with a disability can often see another family’s situation as harder than their own and be quite dismissive of the difficulties of their personal circumstances. as noted above, it is important to consider not just parents’ perspectives but also those of siblings. although these perspectives will change over time they add another layer of information and context for decision-making within the family. nurturing the sibling relationship is not about cramming additional stress into an already jammed day; instead, it can offer a bit of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 77 breathing space for parents and a chance for siblings to just be together and hang out over a shared experience. i make the point that sibling relationships are not inherently either good or bad because so much of what is said about sibling relationships puts them into one of these categories. this takes many forms: for example, an adult supporting her sister in hospital might regularly hear from nurses that she is a good sister for helping out and giving her mother a break from sitting in the hospital. the remark is meant well, but it leaves the impression that by failing to take the commended actions she could be considered a bad sister. this connects with the assumptions that can pervade sibling conversations and add an unnecessary and possibly detrimental expectation into a sibling’s perspective. in any sibling dynamic there is a constant cycling of both positive and negative experiences, as is characteristic of most enduring relationships. how siblings learn to interact with each other and be around each other is shaped by the stories parents create about their interactions. the verbal and non-verbal messages parents use can be powerful in shaping the experiences of siblings. for example, when a child with a disability is being bathed by the mother and a sibling comes in to help by getting the towels out, the sibling wants to help and engage in the activity, but the mother might discourage them from helping because she does not want to burden the sibling with the caring role. if the sibling does not understand the mother’s motives, she or he may feel unwanted or unhelpful. when the sibling does not know how they fit into the family dynamic, it can cause resentment. when there is a child with high support needs, involving a sibling in personal care activities can lead to meaningful interaction with the sibling as well as the parent. while the research can provide themes, and the parents will have their own perspectives, it is important for the sibling voice to be heard. when siblings are close in age they can also offer unique insights into the factors relevant for the child with a disability. parents will sometimes report that the child with a disability will respond more positively to the sibling making a request of them than they would if the request came from one of the parents. developmental stages there are some important milestones to consider as the sibling relationship progresses through the early years, schooling, adolescence, and into adulthood. i discuss each of these areas in relation to the factors a family might need to consider for the sibling relationship, while taking account of the reality that there can be more than two siblings, each at a different stage of development. early years the early years in the life of a child with a disability are associated more with questions than answers not just for parents, but for siblings as well: questions about trying to confirm a diagnosis or just trying to understand the nature of the child’s disability. it can be a time of high international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 78 expectations in trying to find a cure or fix, and of deep devastation upon realising there is not going to be one. while some families may describe feeling that they are on a merry-go-round, others may feel like hostages on a roller-coaster ride. regardless of which ride it feels like, families still need to feel empowered to make choices about how much time and energy should go into the needs arising from their child’s disability as opposed to the family’s other needs. the balance will depend in part on how much crossover these needs have. at one extreme, there are families who will take on extensive therapy sessions and allocate most of their free time to disability needs, and at the other extreme there are families that focus on disability as little as possible. everyone else stands somewhere along the continuum between them. the question each family must decide for itself is how much it can take on as a family. how can the sibling relationship be nurtured in the early years? by giving children knowledge of what is happening with their sibling at an age-appropriate level and in the context of their own development. this needs to be treated as an ongoing conversation that will start early and continue through to adolescence based on the child’s interest and priorities. if the only question a sibling has is whether their sibling with a disability can play cricket with them, the conversation can start from there. a key passage may occur when the typically developing sibling overtakes the sibling with a disability, as this can be a time that generates questions for the siblings or gives them their first insights into their more pervading differences. when it comes to therapy, siblings can often be included in play sessions and can have supported time to develop their play skills. there are also the unscripted times that siblings can just be around each other and interact however they prefer. these times can be squeezed out by too many planned activities, leaving some siblings feeling excluded or isolated from one another. awareness that professionals are involved can lead some children to shy away and feel that they do not know how to be with a sibling. one woman spoke of her discomfort at being around her sister with multiple disabilities, and in particular that her sister was always dribbling. decades later she reported feeling a sense of jealousy that her own children would naturally climb into her sister’s lap for a cuddle and yet she could not be that close to her. had her discomfort been openly discussed with her when she was a child, it might perhaps have become a non-issue. when parents can create an open, non-judgemental atmosphere, siblings will feel free to ask all their questions, which will not only help parents understand their perspectives, but can also help scaffold a successful sibling relationship. what is normal? as the second child in the family, i was never really aware of there being a difference in our sibling experience in comparison to other families. nothing screamed out that this was different or that it did not match up to typical sibling experiences. being asked how it feels to be a sibling is rather like being asked how i might feel about having two arms. the question of how it feels to have a sibling without a disability is one the questioner has probably never really had to consider, or cared to. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 79 “what is it like to be a sibling?” this is a question i have heard many times over the years and often without explicit reference to the sister with disability who makes me “that” sibling. somehow the reference to disability has just been assumed, as if “sibling” has become a word we associate with having another kind — an “other” kind — of brother or sister in the family. the context of having a sibling with disability is taken for granted when you grow up knowing nothing else. even without shared verbal communications, siblings develop an understanding and appreciation of each other through sharing time together in their day-to-day lives. the relationship is maintained with time together and by the support of parents knowing when to step in and support and when to let the children work through a situation together. the siblings’ interactions need to be considered within the family context of what is realistic for the circumstances. a child with a disability who spends most of their time in bed due to medical needs has very different opportunities to interact with their siblings than a child with an intellectual disability who is ambulant and can move around in the home independently. sibling expectations siblings and their relationships are an important part of family quality of life. there is a lifelong connection that can be nurtured and explored for siblings that is unlike any other human relationship. the form that the sibling relationship takes is dependent on the family context, the experience of disability, and the personal perspectives of family members. the everyday language we use reflects our underlying assumptions and this can have an impact on the sibling bond. if a child with a disability were to suddenly cry out in pain, a parent might respond in many different ways: for instance, with curiosity (“show me what happened.”) or with accusatory statements (“what did you do to your sibling?”). these approaches may have very different impacts for the siblings and their relationship. when assumptions shape language, they can lead to communications that show limited understanding for the family dynamics when there is a child with a disability and can prevent the siblings from sharing the experiences of their reality. being told how well they cope with their brother or sister’s behaviour can close off the sibling’s option for sharing their own experience of the behaviour. in my case, my reality shifted not because of my sister or any sense of her difference but because of other people’s reactions to her, and their difficulty in seeing her. i understood my sister, but it became clear to me very early on in my life that other people did not seem to have the same capacity or inclination. as a preschooler, i remember standing in the backyard with my mother, my sister, and a camera crew. this was not our usual afternoon activity! the crew asked me to play with my sister and my expression must have been hilarious: it would have been one part wonder, two parts annoyance that they did not understand the problem with that request. at that time my sister enjoyed pacing, with an occasional run while shrieking, and usually while holding, scrunching, and twirling an item or two that she had chosen. this was not a two-person activity. how was that going to create a play moment on film between preschoolers? just then my sister international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 80 ran off into the yard as she liked to do and the crew, realising the opportunity was slipping away, asked me to run after her. so i ran after her and they got their shot. luckily for the crew my sister did love the swing and from an early age had learnt the phrases “push me” and, when circumstances necessitated it, “push please”. so after the footage of our run into the backyard, the rest of the film showed us on a seesaw swing looking like typical kids playing in their backyard. the film session resulted in a media misdirection that would make all appear normal to an uninformed observer. even at my young age it struck me how odd that request was, because my sister and i did not “play”, but really only gravitated around each other. when, however, i was asked to run after my fleeing sister — well, that i could do. with a sister noted for absconding, and for getting out of the escape-proof child car seat with its five-point harness, chasing her was a well-honed skill. balancing sibling needs this can be an area that creates a lot of unnecessary guilt and angst. siblings are usually well able from a young age to understand that their sibling with a disability needs more time and attention to accomplish things that they themselves can do independently. a sibling with disability requiring more personal care or supervision can take parental time and attention away from other siblings. making sure that each sibling has some quality time with parents can keep this in balance. this does not require grand gestures. it can consist simply of sharing household activities, of having a chat while washing the dishes or walking the dog. comparisons across families with regard to balancing sibling needs must be approached very cautiously, as their experiences may be very different. consider the contrast between the experiences of a family with a child who absconds from home versus one with a child who is likely to fall over, or those of a family with a child with disability who will happily play in their own space for hours without interruption versus one whose child demands ongoing adult attention. how a family creates quality time needs to fit within their own context and make sense for them. there are no hard and fast rules, so families need to be empowered to create the family dynamic that best serves all members, both parents and siblings. school years the school years start with the decision to either have the siblings attend school together or give them space at different schools. geography might limit this choice, as well as the need to consider a special education option. there might even be times that a school transfer needs to be considered for reasons unrelated to the disability. siblings in the same school can be a positive experience in developing a social support network within the school, helping to build the sibling relationship, and fostering greater disability awareness in the local school community. unfortunately, having a sibling with disability in the same school can also burden the sibling with additional caring responsibilities and detract from their own education and social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 81 networks. siblings have been called upon to respond to a child’s difficult behaviour, provide health support, provide yard duty when a teacher has forgotten, or accompany their sibling in the ambulance. if siblings are going to the same school, there needs to be a shared understanding of expectations among teachers, parents, and the siblings themselves. in the school years, teasing and bullying behaviours can present. talking with the siblings about what experiences they may encounter can support them to respond if they find themselves in such a situation. if the children have not been exposed to teasing or bullying personally, referencing movies, media, or other relatable incidents can be useful for starting the conversation. sibling self-advocacy it is through choices and activities in the family context that siblings will learn to advocate for themselves and each other. these opportunities help set the foundation for how siblings will relate to each other, so spending the time early on to develop and reinforce these skills will be beneficial. interactions should be shaped in such a way that they can be transitioned into later life stages as the siblings mature. think about how the children are interacting now and how those same interactions would look if they were ten or twenty years older. behaviours that do not create any concern from this vantage point are probably worth reinforcing. setting children up with a skill for life can minimise the amount of relearning and strengthen the sibling relationship. for example, some of the language siblings use when asking for the toilet or bathroom is appropriate at any age, but saying that they “need to use the potty” has limited appropriateness. the same consideration needs to be given to physical interactions between siblings: a behaviour that looks cute when the children are younger has the potential to look aggressive and threatening when they are bigger. siblings become aware of the differences related to disability partly through experiencing other people’s attitudes in their comments and actions. feeling that their sibling with a disability is not being understood or respected can thrust a child into the situation of having to advocate for themselves and their sibling. examples of situations where siblings feel called upon to advocate can be subtle, as when a child with disability incidentally misses out on an event or experience, or more glaring, such as being intentionally excluded from participating. it can be experienced when there is an omission of gift-giving for the child with disability though the other children in the family receive something, or when there is a phone call ahead of a social event to determine if the child with disability will be attending and what concessions will need to be made for them. the issues giving rise to advocacy may come up at points of social conflict for the siblings. whether a sibling responds outwardly or not, these issues can cause distress for the sibling and may need a follow-up conversation or two. while advocacy may become part of the sibling’s role, it is, of course, not possible for them as disability advocates to right every wrong or to make every uncomfortable person feel international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 82 less uncomfortable in their limited awareness of disability. siblings have no special powers, yet from a young age there seems to be an expectation that they can handle such situations with a few choice words. advocacy needs to be taken on by others, not just siblings, and words alone are not enough — matched actions are required. to show people how to be comfortable with disability and how to have high expectations of others is something that can be modelled by anyone. one must be guided by what a person with disability can do and not what one thinks they cannot do. misguided assumptions are usually somewhere at the bottom of every awkward disability-related interaction. while it can be useful to highlight people’s assumptions and help develop their understanding, there will be other times when it is best for the advocate to just maintain composure and walk away. for example, a sibling was walking out of a funeral service with her sister with disability when a woman behind her tapped her on the shoulder to tell her that people like her sister were usually killed at birth. the sibling maintained composure and moved on. in another instance, a sibling heard derogatory comments from a relative about people with disabilities and reminded the person that she had a sister with a disability, who was also the other party’s cousin. a sibling may be stopped in the street by someone who praises their selflessness for working in the disability field, when in fact they are just out for a walk with their brother — no payment involved. the power of inclusion growing up, it was clear to me that disability was not just in my family. however, as we went about our day-to-day lives, most of the disability we saw was related to our disabilityspecific activities like therapy and special school events, places where it is routine to encounter a high proportion of people with a disability. this did not carry over into the everyday world of shopping or catching the bus to school. in primary school my class put on a show for all the parents and friends, and i recall being almost mesmerised by a young boy in a wheelchair. here was a child with a disability whom i had never heard about, let alone seen, and here he was at our play to see his sibling perform. it struck me that i had not seen this child before now, even though they lived close to the school and were part of the wider school community. seeing that child gave me a sense of connection, that after all it was not just me and my sister in my local community. even though we had completely different experiences — there was no way my sister would have stayed quiet through a school play, let alone sat still for it — it affected me powerfully. over the years many parents have brought their children over to me and told them that i also have a sibling with a disability. although it is done in the kindest of ways to connect siblings and let them know they are not alone in their experiences, it usually ends the conversation right there as there is often not much you can say after that. the most valuable international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 83 sibling connections for me have been the incidental ones where you find out about people through seeing them out and about with their families, or through a disclosure in conversation. in my experience through planned and unplanned events, this has been a consistent factor. siblings do not get together simply because they are siblings; rather, they get together around shared activities that may not even include any discussion of disability. the understanding of siblings comes from the context of seeing the sibling with the child with a disability. that promotes the feeling of a shared experience better than any conversation. being prepared families can make strategic decisions about what events they want to participate in, and what conditions they are prepared to put their family members through. for example, a casual backyard barbeque where the child with a disability can pace along the fence line may sound fine, but a formal three-course birthday dinner might not be worth the stress. that said, it is not about avoiding certain situations, but thinking about what to do if the evening does not unfold as planned. will there be somewhere for the child to withdraw to if needed? is the car parked somewhere it can be used as a retreat? families who manage social outings well usually have a level of planning embedded in the background. this can be anything from a change of clothes or two, items of interest to distract or amuse in necessary moments, drinks and snacks, or even a previsit to scope out the location. being prepared is as much about turning up ready for the event as it is about carefully picking and choosing the events that are worth planning for. a big noisy fair with a child who likes to vocalise might be a better choice than a packed movie theatre where everyone expects audience members to remain generally quiet. on a more practical note, for social events where a change of clothing is likely to be required due to incontinence or messy eating, preparations can include having a few identical clothes on hand so that one can change an older child without having to obviously change outfits. most people would not even realise the clothing has been changed, and any embarrassment the child or siblings might have felt around the need to change clothing is thus avoided. adolescence adolescence can be a difficult time for both child and parent, even without the experience of disability: independence is being sought, parents can be embarrassing, and the peer perspective can be critical. although adolescents may appear to be uninterested, or unwilling to talk, they are still taking in information and trying to make sense of their emerging adult world. questions about their sibling’s future can come up around family supports, finances, and accommodation choices. at the same time, adolescents can get very sensitive about their public profile and how they are seen by others. it can be a time when they seek more distance from their sibling with disability, and can feel put-upon by requests to help out. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 84 in the continuation of the disability discussion that started in early childhood, questions about family genetics and heredity can come up, as well as the issue of future partners and how they will respond to or cope with the sibling with disability. this can also be a good time for parents to consider one-to-one catch-ups with siblings such as a movie day or a special outing that gives full attention to the sibling, and gives the parent an opportunity to explore the sibling’s perspectives, using the distraction of other activities to facilitate the conversation. riding in the car also provides occasions when such communications may take place: talking side-by-side during a drive can be less confronting than face-to-face conversation. as children grow older they begin taking on more responsibility and having more freedom of choice. this is true for both the sibling with disability and the one without. this change needs to be considered and planned for as belonging to a continuum of learning and development, as turning 18 will not magically bring about the ability to function as an independent adult. the planning of what adulthood needs to look like is a process that starts in childhood for all siblings and especially when there is a child with a disability. adulthood as siblings move into adulthood the relationship dynamics can change. living circumstances can shift and parents getting older might require more support themselves. it can be a difficult time to navigate when there is a sibling with disability and a shift in caretaking responsibilities. this is a time when open conversations are needed about each family member’s expectations, their understanding of the reality of the current situation, and their views on what practical steps are possible. in all my years of speaking with parents there have been many different expectations of adult siblings. for some parents there is no question that the sibling will step up to provide care, from financial oversight through to opening their family home and being full-time carers. other families might want the sibling to have nothing to do with day-to-day needs and want to make sure that the sibling is not burdened with providing any support, to the point that the sibling might be excluded from conversations touching on those topics. no matter what the parents’ expectations are, the most important question to ask of parents is what their children’s expectations are. many times i speak with parents who have a clear plan set out for their child with a disability, but they are less clear about having spoken with their other children and having their agreement to the plan. it is a balancing act, as parents will at some point need to relinquish some of the decision making and control to siblings, and siblings need to be clear about what they are prepared to take on. for some families this is an open conversation from early on, while others might need a formal facilitator to have a productive conversation where everyone can be heard. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 85 professionals families are dynamic and unique in how they function. as professionals going into family homes and sometimes seeing families at their worst, it is a privilege to have families so openly share their stories and dreams for the future. in order to provide relevant advice and support for the family, professionals need to be curious and nonjudgemental when trying to understand the family’s current reality and key priorities. in asking about the family, professionals must consider the siblings. if they are too young to give their own perspectives, then they can be observed interacting with their sibling with disability. there are as many similarities as there are differences when you consider any two families. what is really important to remember is that most families are doing the best they can based on what they consider to be the best choices for them. as professionals we can offer an open and non-judgemental perspective to families, which can help them to gain an oversight of the current situation and see opportunities that are not always as easily spotted from up close. for example, a mother who was having a struggle to get her child with disability ready for school each morning decided the solution was to ask for respite care. from the professional perspective, it was apparent that this mother had a very busy morning routine that the children were all being pushed through and it was creating tension between the siblings as they were often late to school. a respite option would have provided some support in the moment but would not have had any impact on the long-term needs of the family. instead, a morning routine was developed for the family so that everyone had their own schedule of activities. this created a new skill set for the child with disability, which reduced the family stress, improved the sibling relationship, created more time in their morning, and got the children to school on time. this was a more sustainable and meaningful outcome for the whole family. sometimes the advice needs to be about what can work right now for a family when they do not yet have the physical, emotional, or financial space to think about and work towards a long-term solution. being non-judgemental is critical to hearing a family’s story and trying to ascertain where they can find opportunities that fit with their priorities and resources. if a family is worried about finances they are unlikely to want to talk about sibling relationships, but if the focus can be about free activities they can easily get to on the weekend, it might be a conversation they are ready to have. when we are on the outside looking in it is easy to get carried away with ideas of what can happen for families, but for families change can be a very slow process, and it can often be about waiting for the right time to introduce an idea or discuss different approaches. there are some simple ways to help siblings without disability feel included. with younger siblings, it can be letting them borrow their own toy from the toy library, giving them a choice of play activities to help shape a therapy session, or asking their assistance to set up a game for their sibling with a disability. for older children it can be about giving them more international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 86 information about decision-making or just asking for their perspective as part of the conversation. concluding remarks quality of life research has been important in understanding the impact a child with a disability has on family dynamics. in turn, the sibling perspective has been an equally important consideration for understanding family quality of life. the impact for siblings is contextualised in the sibling relationships; as the most enduring relationship for a person with a disability, it is important that it is strengthened and supported from the early years and into adulthood. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 75–87 87 references brown, r.i., macadam-crisp, j., wang, m., & iarocci, g. (2006). family quality of life when there is a child with a developmental disability. journal of policy and practice in intellectual disabilities, 3(4), 238–245. doi:10.1111/j.1741-1130.2006.00085.x limbers, c. a., & skipper, s. (2014). health-related quality of life measurement in siblings of children with physical chronic illness: a systematic review. families, systems & health, 32(4), 408–415. doi:10.1037/fsh0000077 luijkx, j., van der putten, a. j. & vlaskamp, c. (2016). “i love my sister, but sometimes i don’t”: a qualitative study into the experiences of siblings of a child with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. journal of intellectual and developmental disability, 41(4), 279–288. doi:10.3109/13668250.2016.1224333 wofford, j. r. & carlson, r. g. (2017). a literature review and case study on the strengths and struggles of typically developing siblings of persons with disabilities. the family journal: counselling and therapy for couples and families , 25(4), 398–406. doi:10.1177/1066480717732167 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-1130.2006.00085.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/fsh0000077 http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13668250.2016.1224333 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1066480717732167 microsoft word 06 reimagining_care_practice.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019517 re-imagining child and youth care practice with african canadian youth beverly-jean daniel and johanne jean-pierre abstract: this article is based on a plenary held during the child & youth care in action vi conference: moving through trails and trials toward community wellness, held in victoria, british columbia in april 2019. it explores how we can re-imagine child and youth care practice with african canadian youth. this emerging paradigm aligns with child and youth care politicized praxis as well as trauma-informed and strengths-based approaches in the field’s literature. we highlight the importance of mobilizing critical and transformative theoretical frameworks along with an africentric worldview to substantially support youth of african descent with a strengths-based approach. moreover, the protective role of black-affirming spaces is developed and articulated. keywords: child and youth care (cyc), youth work, black-affirming space, african canadian, youth beverly-jean daniel phd (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university, 350 victoria st., toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: bdaniel@ryerson.ca johanne jean-pierre phd is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university, 350 victoria st., toronto, on m5b 2k3. email: jjeanpierre@ryerson.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 26  johanne jean-pierre child and youth care professionals provide primary supportive care and engage in relational practice, life-skills teaching, counselling on the go, discipline, and dialogue with children and youth across various human services sectors (krueger, 2007; maier, 1991; mann-feder & litner, 2004). the literature in the field emphasizes frontline work, microsystemic dynamics, and the centrality of relationship building (bellefeuille et al., 2008; de finney et al., 2012; vanderven, 1993). yet children and youth are affected by exosystemic and macrosystemic factors that constrain their development, interests, and aspirations. in fact, whether acknowledged or not, structural barriers and historically entrenched inequalities impact one’s frames of reference and the decision-making processes one employs. everyday frontline interactions, and therapeutic and recreational interventions, are embedded in international, national, historical, social, political, and economic inequalities and inequities (de finney et al., 2012); thus, decisions concerning these actions cannot be solely based on practitioners’ intentions, empathy, formal training, or years of experience. for instance, black canadian youth, also called african canadian youth, are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system (ontario human rights commission, 2018; pon et al., 2011; united nations general assembly, 2017) and experience documented challenges in the areas of schooling, post-secondary education, criminal justice, and employment (bernard & smith, 2018; briggs, 2018; bundy, 2019; collins & magnan, 2018; creese, 2010; james, 2012, 2019; kanu, 2008; lafortune, 2019; robson et al., 2018; schroeter & james, 2015; thésée & carr, 2014; usman, 2012; wortley & owusu-bempah, 2011). perhaps we should decentre our attention from individual life trajectories and risk factors to examine closely the systemic and institutional factors that affect black youth. hence, we open the possibility of dismantling the structural barriers that stand in the way of african canadian youth’s development, well-being, and success. the plenary session entitled “re-imagining child and youth care practice with african canadian youth” at the child & youth care in action vi conference aimed to introduce child and youth care professionals to anti-racist and africentric child and youth care praxis. child and youth care professionals can play a crucial constructive role alongside african canadian youth in enacting and promoting racial equity, social change, positive development, excellence, and wellbeing among black youth from various national, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. in doing so, attendees were invited to be receptive to critical theories and paradigms regarding ethical child and youth care practice. the plenary speakers contended that: 1) an africentric worldview and critical race theory consolidate strengths-based approaches. 2) black-affirming spaces are empowering and beneficial for african canadian youth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 27  critical ethical and transformative practice with youth of african descent conference attendees were invited to reflect on their assumptions about their work, to be open to learning, and to scrutinize their defence mechanisms. sometimes, a child and youth care practitioner might dismiss this plenary’s content because they consider that they already have good intentions, empathy, and relational practice skills. others may estimate that, professionally, they are satisfied with the work that is now being accomplished with african canadian children and youth. in some instances, practitioners with years of experience may believe that because they focus on therapeutic approaches and not advocacy, anti-oppressive theories and an africentric paradigm are inconsequential. others might minimize critical theories because they have personal and intimate relationships with family members and friends of african descent. unbeknownst to the practitioners, who often have a minimal understanding of the historical legacy and contemporary expressions of anti-black racism, these attitudes and beliefs constitute different forms of defence mechanism that perpetuate exclusionary and racist practices. in fact, child and youth care professionals can fail to recognize that a racist incident has occurred, can seem bewildered when someone names racism, and can prefer to leave the issue unaddressed and move on. this indifference in and of itself condones and reinforces racism; inaction after a racist incident takes place or is reported deeply affects black youth (james et al., 2010). one can be tempted to believe that the willingness to engage in a dialogue and listen to individual black youth’s personal stories with great empathy is equivalent to a commitment to equity. yet the former can constitute a type of voyeurism or a consumption of black peoples’ experiences (hooks, 1992) without the critical engagement necessary to understand structural barriers or to commit to act differently. moreover, it puts the onus on people of african descent to disclose intimate and sometimes distressful life events, which may retraumatize them. in sum, empathy and awareness are insufficient and do not adequately prepare practitioners to engage in sustainable meaningful transformation-driven actions with african canadian youth. in order to discover ways to innovate with black children and youth, this plenary built on the agency and strengths of african canadian communities, with an africentric worldview and critical theories. africentric praxis as politicized child and youth care praxis this presentation from dr. julian hasford, travonne edwards, peter amponsah, and juanita stephen provided an insightful and multilayered analysis of what constitutes anti-racist and africentric praxis. drawing from child and youth care literature, the audience was encouraged to decentre the “canonical self ” — “an aggregate of the writings of a small group of cyc theorists that together constitute the dominant conceptualization of the self in the field’s literature” (kouri, 2015, p. 601). kouri (2015) suggested that, as canada becomes increasingly diverse, we should build upon the concept of “praxis”, an ethical way of knowing, doing, and being that involves the integration of theory and practice (white, 2007). kouri further suggested that child and youth care should strive to move towards politicized praxis to address the barriers that inhibit the well-being and development of the youth we aim to support. critical theories can show us how to embrace a politicized and collective approach in child and youth care (de finney et al., 2012; loiselle et al., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 28  2012) as well as how we can learn to name racism and decentre eurocentric hegemony and worldviews (yoon, 2012). this includes the widely shared assumption that human services practices and spaces are “universal” and respond to all children’s needs equally (de finney et al., 2011). principles, practices, and initiatives characterized as universal, and typically derived from eurocentric philosophies (saraceno, 2012; yoon, 2012), are often perceived as the only legitimate or possible guides to professional conduct. yet a politicized approach to child and youth care requires that we examine critically how colonialism and racism have legitimized a eurocentric worldview and that we realize that other worldviews conceive of, organize, and define healing differently. this plenary posited that to work effectively with youth of african descent, it is important to espouse an africentric praxis, which is rooted in african ontology, epistemology, and axiology. black-affirming spaces and racial safety the third presentation, from dr. beverly-jean daniel, emphasized that spaces of racial safety and belonging are central for the holistic and positive development of african canadian youth. black-affirming spaces for african canadians have been discussed in the field of education (codjoe, 2006; finlayson, 2015; henry, 2017; howard & james, 2019), yet black-affirming spaces are less known and implemented in child and youth care. the next section will present the theoretical basis, the inputs, and potential outcomes of black-affirming spaces. beverly-jean daniel black children, youth, and families are disproportionately impacted by child welfare and social services involvement. for example, they experience higher numbers of calls made by school authorities to the police to report presumed parental neglect and abuse, higher levels of removal from families and placement in residential and foster care, and higher levels of crossover from the child welfare system into the justice system (trent et al., 2019). black youth are also disproportionately represented in behavioural disciplinary programs in school systems (agyepong, 2010; baldridge et al., 2011; codjoe, 2001; james, 2012; james & turner, 2017). these patterns of intrusion into black communities are caused by the intersections of race, class, and historic and contemporary anti-black oppressive practices. racism, discrimination, and oppression have negative impacts on children’s emotional and psychological development, self-esteem, and sense of personal efficacy (huguley et al., 2019), and their ability to trust adults and to self-regulate (bath, 2008). trent and colleagues (2019) cited the world health organization’s statement that social determinants of health are shaped by economic, political, and social factors; inequality among these factors, if unaddressed, leads to health inequities. the authors suggested that racism is a social determinant of health, as it has been linked to lower birth weights and higher infant mortality rates; as well, extended exposure to racism-induced stress has negative impacts on hormonal and cellular development. trent et al. (2019) argued that racism affects where children live and learn, the supports and opportunities they have access to, and the assumptions and stereotypes that are imposed upon them and that inform how they are treated, including their access international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 29  to health care and educational attainment. therefore, if we were to explore the idea of racism as trauma, we could find opportunities to implement a trauma-informed perspective in supporting black children and youth. from a child and youth care perspective, the issue of racism needs to be examined as an aspect or form of trauma. van der kolk (2005) defined complex trauma as “the experience of multiple, chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature … and early life onset” (p. 402). racism, according to bryant-davis and ocampo (2005) is a form of complex trauma: it involves repeated microaggressions, it can be intense, and the experience is informed by the relationship to the person who perpetrated the harassment. racism, unlike childhood trauma, is experienced across the lifespan and has been linked to a host of issues related to health and wellness. bath (2008) indicated that many of the children and youth who are involved in child welfare and special education classes have experienced early-onset trauma. according to paradies (2006), who reviewed 138 studies related to self-reported racism and stress, there are links between maternal experience of racism and low birth weight, and experiences of racism were directly related to negative mental health outcomes. child and youth care practitioners encounter children after there has already been some level of child welfare involvement, making it difficult to determine to what extent mental health challenges were present prior to child welfare involvement, were a result of their involvement, or were exacerbated by their involvement. ko et al. (2008) further stated that children who are placed in foster and residential care display increased levels of trauma-related stress and behavioural and emotional challenges when placed in care. therefore, adopting a trauma-informed lens can highlight the role that historical, contemporary, and complex experiences of trauma play in the lives of marginalized communities. child and youth care literature on trauma-informed practice identifies three foundational pillars: the promotion of safety, developing positive connections and relationships, and developing the capacity to manage emotions (bath, 2008). child and youth care literature that focuses on effective ways for individuals to cope with racism identifies the importance of effective racial socialization and positive support networks (collin-vézina et al., 2011). the literature shows similarities in terms of how the impact of trauma and the impact of racism as trauma can be understood; employing an overlapping lens may lead to a more comprehensive form of intervention that recognizes the role of racism in the experiences of black children and youth. neblett et al. (2009) indicated that ethnic–racial socialization provides the framework within which children learn about and make sense of their racial identity and racial group membership and influences the way in which they manage intergroup and intragroup interactions and navigate racialized environments. the researchers indicated that there are four aspects of ethnic–racial socialization: pride and heritage socialization (customs, history, and heritage), bias socialization (teaching children how to anticipate and deal with discrimination), promotion of mistrust (the need for racialized children to be cautious of other groups), and egalitarianism (push towards cultural international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 30  assimilation, which is regarded as a rejection of one’s home culture). they found that exposing children and youth to their history and culture through community-based or family gatherings provided them with a foundation for developing a more holistic perspective on and understanding of their lives. a comprehensive discussion of the history of africans on a global scale provided the children with the information they needed to challenge the stereotypes they were exposed to in all aspects of their world. bias socialization provided an opportunity for children and youth to discuss and develop strategies for dealing with situations in which they experienced racism while simultaneously teaching them to be aware of the behaviour of other groups. huguley et al.’s (2019) summary of findings on the varying forms of socialization indicated that pride and heritage socialization “has consistently been associated with prosocial outcomes” (p. 439). through these socialization processes, children gradually acquire the prevailing ideas and beliefs about their own racial group and those of others. research further indicates that parents play a central role in the socialization process (anglin & wade, 2007; evans et al., 2012); however, family socioeconomic status mediates the form and context of the socialization. middle-class parents are able to expose their children to a range of situations and contexts that provide positive messages about their racial identity, history, and the forms of resilience displayed by black people (sullivan & esmail, 2012; tang et al., 2016). in so doing, parents increase the level of cultural, social, economic, and educational capital their children can access, which can support the development of resilience (masten et al., 2008). this exposure can be regarded as an aspect of safety: the children and youth are supported in exploring and developing positive relationships with the adults in their world, which is a significant factor in reducing the impacts of racism. middle-class status provides an additional buffer that may not be available to those black youth who are living in socioeconomically compromised environments. often, it is children in lowerincome environments who are most impacted by the reality of class and race-based intersectionality and who are overrepresented in terms of involvement with child welfare services (ko et al., 2008). another aspect of trauma-informed practice is relationship building (bath, 2008). according to bath, relationships formed between the child and youth care practitioners and the children and youth they work with can create a model for other healthy relationships and teach the children how to trust adults. similarly, research has shown that relationships are central to reducing the stressrelated impact of racism: some blacks actively seek social support to talk about and challenge racism, which can lead to developing greater self-esteem (paradies, 2006). codjoe (2006), in his summation of the extant literature, argued that there are three types of primary protective factor that foster academic achievement for racially minoritized students: individual factors, such as temperament and self-esteem; familial factors, such as socioeconomic status and parental academic expectations; and social support, including quality of early schooling and the school environment. his research identified another salient feature of black academic success — a supportive environment that reinforces racial pride; this replicates the issues of safety and connections identified in trauma-informed practice. it is in the context of these spaces that youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 31  are provided with the opportunity to discuss issues of racism and to develop differential analytical framings, which can help them make sense of racism at multiple levels and develop strategies for addressing it. these strategies can address racism at the macro and meso levels, but also at the micro, or individual, level. the micro-level interventions or adaptations align well with the concept of managing emotions identified in trauma-informed practice. codjoe’s work highlights the importance for racially minoritized youth of having access to racially affirming spaces at the same time as they are carving out a role and space for themselves in canadian society. the ability to navigate multiple cultural environments in this way has been termed biculturality. similarly, daniel-tatum (1997), in her book why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?, indicated that the saliency of race in society leads black adolescents, as part of their identity development process, to begin to explore the meaning of their racial identity. according to daniel-tatum, the students tended to “self-segregate” (1997, p. 217) as a form of protection from racism, and to get support when they experienced racism or were trying to make sense of racist incidents. in addition, the peer group provides opportunities for them to learn racialized performances of blackness that do not replicate the markers of blackness of their parents and older family members. daniel-tatum did not minimize the important role that parents and family members play; rather, her work highlights the need youth have to be part of peer-based groups that can address the shifting meanings and performances of race in a given time period. harris and krueger (2019) indicated that the existing research shows linkages between positive ethnic or racial identity and academic success: promisingly, african american males who do have positive thoughts and feelings about their racial-ethnic identity may enjoy a range of positive outcomes, particularly in the school context. african american youth who feel good about their racial-ethnic background have higher grades, better peer and teacher relationships, and better longterm academic outcomes (such as attending a 4-year college) than peers who harbor negative feelings about their racial-ethnic identity. (p. 2) although works by codjoe (2006), daniel-tatum (1997), and harris and krueger (2019) focus on the adolescent period of racial identity development and exploration and its relationship to academic success, they make evident that, in the absence of formally constituted spaces of racial safety, black youth develop strategies for creating safety and connections, and learn strategies for regulating emotions. paradies (2006) examination of 138 studies concerning self-reported racism and health across all age groups found that the studies clearly highlight the importance of spaces of safety: they are central to positive racial socialization, enhance the academic performance of black children, and have a positive impact on mental health and well-being. paradies’ analysis of the studies indicated that: having a strong sense of racial/ethnic identity or concept … [and] religious support seeking/instrumental social support … were found to attenuate the adverse effects international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 32  of self-reported racism on depressive episodes … other research suggests that racial socialization (i.e. explicit discussion of race/racism) imparted by parents or caregivers, but not personal beliefs about racial socialization, may attenuate the detrimental effects of self-reported racism on mental health. (p. 893) providing a space for black children and youth to understand and examine the impact of racism is in alignment with the three pillars of trauma-informed practice — safety, connection, and managing emotions (bath, 2008). racism, trauma, and child and youth care a key question that emerges at this juncture is, “given that black children are disproportionately removed from their families and communities, to what extent do we have to explore other sites of racial socialization?” hughes (2003) defines racial socialization as “the transmission of parents’ world views about race and ethnicity to children by way of subtle, overt, deliberate and unintended mechanisms” (hughes, 2003, p. 15). i would like to extend this definition of racial socialization to include forms and sites of positive racial identity programming and supports that facilitate the exploration, critical negotiation, and navigation of race-related concepts that lead to the development of a positive sense of racial identity and self-concept. given that child and youth care practitioners often encounter black children and youth when they are not in the direct care of their parents or community members, these spaces of safety can be developed in schools, community, and residential settings. daniel (2018) used the term “racial oasis” to describe the spaces that provide options for racial socialization developing positive racial identity markers and a sense of community amongst black children and youth and which jean-pierre, above, refers to as black-affirming spaces. the role of the family as a central point of racial socialization has been well documented in american research (constantine & blackmon, 2002; wang et al., 2019; wang & huguley, 2012). however, expanding the notion of safety and potential sites of racial socialization reaffirms the importance of positive racial identifications, and of spaces where black youth can develop these messages separate and aside from the family. the goal of non-parent-based racial socialization is to support the development of cultural and racial pride, while preparing youth to understand and navigate the racial challenges they will experience. the intentional development of racially affirming spaces can promote the development of positive racial identity amongst black youth, while supporting them in addressing the multiple sites of trauma and crisis they are attempting to manage. black children, youth, and families are exposed to a plethora of negative messages via the media and other forms of social discourse, including schools. given the fact that these youth spend significant amounts of time engaging in environments away from their families, it is important to examine the impact of providing racially affirming spaces in community and school contexts, particularly given the importance of academic success to social mobility. vanderven (1993) indicated that theoretical and applied aspects of the field need to be integrated in order to provide the best quality of services to children and youth who are being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 33  supported; such integration can provide opportunities for testing theories, furnish training models, and build new theory. daniel’s (2018) research on the importance of reconceptualizing narratives of blackness provides an example of the theory–practice linkages that are central to the further development of the field of child and youth care and to addressing the needs of black children, youth, and their families. daniel’s research, which is foregrounded within anti-oppressive and critical anti-racist theories, examined the outcomes for students (high school and post-secondary) who were involved in a series of workshops that focused on positive racial identity development and academic guidance. when their preand post-intervention responses were compared, students in the program showed higher levels of positive racial regard, higher levels of self-esteem, and higher awareness of career and academic goals and outcomes. in addition to this, the participants clearly identified the need for spaces that affirmed their racial identities (safety); these provided them with opportunities to meet with other students who had similar experiences (connections); and to discuss strategies to address incidents of racism (managing emotions). ko et al. (2008) spoke to the importance of evidence-informed practice as central to the development of effective trauma-informed practices. vanderven (1993) recognized the resistance that many in the field have to the academic research orientation of other fields and the centrality of in-the-moment relationship-building — a core tenet and practice of the field of child and youth care — to the identity of the field and its practitioners. however, vanderven argued that reflection in action accompanied by scientific inquiry will provide a more solid foundation for the field. harris and krueger (2019) argued for the need to conduct research on the prosocial outcomes of black male youth, and for a strengthsbased focus in research conducted with black youth and communities. strengths-based and ecological frameworks are central aspects of child and youth care theory and politicized practice. they can be pivotal to creating alternative experiences for black children and youth, and can facilitate a framing of those experiences that is connected to their specific racialized contexts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 25–39 34  references agyepong, r. 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(2011). the usual suspects: police stop and search practices in canada. policing and society: an international journal of research and policy, 21(4), 395–407. doi:10.1080/10439463.2011.610198 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 478 homeless young adults in the swiss social assistance system: evaluation of an institution for homeless young adults who have no daily structure renate stohler and milena gehrig abstract: this article presents an evaluation study of a home for young adults who have lost their accommodation. most of the home’s residents are found to have unstable biographies as to housing and education as well as a history of psychological problems and substance abuse. the programme is successful for those who have a daily structure, but fails those who do not, or with psychological problems or drug addiction. an integrated approach is recommended and the accessibility of services questioned. keywords: transition to adulthood, homelessness, housing, labour market integration, accessible services, evaluation. renate stohler, is researcher and lecturer at the school of social work, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8037 zurich, switzerland. tel: (41) 58 934 88 67. email: renate.stohler@zhaw.ch milena gehrig, is research associate at the school of social work, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8037 zurich, switzerland. tel: (41) 58 934 88 57. email: milena.gehrig@zhaw.ch mailto:renate.stohler@zhaw.ch mailto:milena.gehrig@zhaw.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 479 problem identification the transition from youth to adulthood can be seen as “status passage in the institutionalised life course” (buchmann & kriesi, 2011, p. 482), which is characterised by several transitional events such as completion of mandatory school and vocational training, entry into the labour market, leaving the parental home and starting a family (buchmann & kriesi, 2011). buchmann and kriesi further state that living independently and economically while being socially integrated are central attributes of adulthood and therefore socially desired objectives, which young and healthy individuals are expected to fulfil. becoming an adult is a highly complex process whose outcomes depend not only on individual resources but also “largely on the structural opportunities and constraints” (p. 482). high and increasing rates of youth unemployment in european countries indicate that there are vulnerable groups of young adults, whose integration is at risk. this is especially true for young men and women who are not employed or undergoing education or training; they are called neet (a young person who is not in education, employment, or training). therefore the transition from school to work is one of the key topics of social policy and social research in europe. although in switzerland the youth unemployment rate is quite low in comparison to other european countries (organisation for economic cooperation and development [oecd], 2013) the national statistics on public assistance shows that young adults are overrepresented among the social assistance recipients (bundesamt für statistik [bfs], 2009). therefore, there has been an increasing awareness of the precarious circumstances and exclusion risks of young adults in switzerland since the 1990s and various services to support labour market integration have been implemented (bfs, 2009; schaffner & drilling, 2013). although often not explicitly mentioned, a safe and stable place of residence is an important prerequisite in the process of becoming an adult. inadequate housing options or homelessness can prevent young men and women from completing an education or from going to work regularly. therefore an unstable housing situation can jeopardise the integration of young adults into the labour market and hence into society. the consequences of an insufficient integration can be dependency on welfare, homelessness, destitution, and reduced possibilities of participation. the housing situation of young adults can influence their success in completing upper secondary education and therefore their integration into the labour market just as the absence of a daily structure (through further education or employment) can reduce their chances of finding an adequate accommodation. therefore, young adults without a stable place to live and no daily structure are at high risk of failing in the transition from youth to adulthood, that is, to live independently. in this article, the situation of this group of young adults is examined more closely. the literature review focuses on three primary areas in order to establish an understanding of the situation of young adults in switzerland in general and also of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 480 specific situation of young adults without stable accommodation and daily structure. the three areas are: (a) the qualification and labour market situation of young adults, (b) the situation of young adults who receive social welfare, and (c) the housing situation of young adults including an overview of institutions that offer housing to young adults. our main purpose is to present and discuss the results of an evaluation study of a programme that supports young adults who live under precarious circumstances and do not have a stable accommodation or a daily structure. the legal situation and social security system in switzerland in view of the human right of every person to enjoy access to education, without discrimination or exclusion (article 26) and the human right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” (article 25) promoted by the united nations (2014) and unesco (1960), the homelessness of young adults and their resulting exclusion from further education and employment must be taken seriously. in switzerland children and young people have the right to special protection of their integrity and to the encouragement of their development (article 11, bv)1 and to free basic education (article 19, bv). furthermore, everybody who is unable to provide for himself or herself has a right to help in situations of need (article 12, bv). in contrast to other european countries, switzerland does not formally acknowledge a right to housing, but the state is responsible for providing sufficient housing facilities (article 108, bv) (gysi, 2013). the swiss social security system is based on various insurance schemes providing insurance against the major life risks such as old age, invalidity, or unemployment. furthermore, social assistance serves as a last-resort safety net (federal social insurance office, 2014). social assistance, which is financed by public funds, is based on the subsidiarity principle and comes into effect when there are no other financial means (personal capital, contributions from social insurance, and support from relatives) and a concrete individual financial plight can be proved (stadt zürich, 2014). the fragmentation of the social security system has so far caused planning and actions to be primarily influenced by the jurisdiction instead of the aim of achieving the highest possible integration for those affected. in order to improve the integration of unemployed individuals into the labour market and avoid revolving doors and unnecessary duplication, efforts have been made for a number of years now to improve the inter-institutional cooperation between unemployment assistance, invalidity assistance, and social assistance (nationale iiz koordinationsgruppe, 2004). with regard to young adults, the efforts to ensure inclusion are mostly based on education and employment and often do not consider other aspects of inclusion (nadai, 2013; knöpfel, 2013). the fragmentation of the social security system complicates a holistic approach to 1 constitution of the swiss federal state from 18th april 1999 (stand at 3rd march 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 481 integration, which would take into account all aspects of integration into society of the affected person. literature review education and employment of young adults in switzerland in recent years social change and globalisation have strongly affected the labour market in switzerland (friedrich, 2014, p. 15) and therefore also the school-to-work transition of young people, that is, the transition from youth to adulthood (schaffner, 2007; schaffner & drilling, 2013). nowadays a post-compulsory education is the basis of a stable and long-term integration into the labour market. the statistics show that there is a higher risk for unqualified people of becoming unemployed or living on social welfare than for those with training. therefore, since 2006 it has been the declared aim of switzerland’s education policy that, by 2015, 95% of the 25-year-olds should have completed upper secondary education, which is further education after compulsory education corresponding to education level 3 of the isced scale (evd, edi, & edk, 2011). a qualification in upper secondary education provides both access to the next level of education and trains young adults to be qualified workers, and is seen as the minimum requirement to successfully compete in the labour market (bfs, 2013a). since high expectations concerning one’s willingness to pursue education after compulsory schooling to enhance employability has become the norm, while at the same time structural changes cause a shortage of education and training opportunities, the transition from youth to adulthood involves new risks (gazareth, juhasz, & magnin, 2007, as cited in schaffner & gerber, 2014). in switzerland the majority of young people start a post-compulsory education (secondary ii) after completing mandatory school. the post-compulsory education system distinguishes between vocational training for direct entry into the labour market and higher secondary school that prepares for tertiary education (schweizer medieninstitut für bildung und kultur, 2011). in 2011 the majority (about 60%) of young men and women started a vocational training in the first year after leaving mandatory school (schweizerische koordinationsstelle für bildungsforschung, 2014). but since 2005, about one-fourth of the school leavers have not directly started post-compulsory education and thus have ended up doing internships or interim years to try and enter compulsory education a year later, which has been achieved by 70% (schweizerische koordinationsstelle für bildungsforschung, 2014). other young adults start a further education programme, which they change or quit after the first or second year. in a nutshell, the available data reveal that the educational career after compulsory education for 45% of school leavers is characterised by discontinuation such as changes, interruption, and repetitions (meyer, 2009). in 2011, a total of 95.3% of young adults in switzerland at the typical age of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 482 finishing upper secondary education actually graduated on that level, 24% of whom finished a general education (intermediate education or general qualification for university entrance “matura”) and 71.3% vocational education and training (vet), which is a dual apprenticeship training that can be done with or without a “matura” degree to gain access to tertiary education (bfs, 2013b). consequently a group of about 5% of young adults remain without postcompulsory qualification although various services to support the integration of young people into the labour market have been implemented in switzerland over the last 20 years (egger, dreher, & partner ag, 2007). in switzerland there is a strong relationship between social background and school success and therefore school leavers with poor school performance and from socially and economically disadvantaged families are at a higher risk of remaining without a post-compulsory education (moser, 2004; meyer, 2005; schultheis, perrig-chiello, & egger, 2008; suter & höpflinger, 2008) and being unemployed or becoming dependent on social welfare (bfs, 2009). although only few studies on the situation of young people leaving care have been conducted, there is some evidence indicating that they should be regarded as a vulnerable group that also is at a higher risk of exclusion (gabriel & stohler, 2008, 2012). in a meta-analysis of 59 studies on vocational education of young people at risk, häfeli and schellenberg (2009) focus on success factors that must be taken into account when developing support services. the study identifies about 50 success factors in seven areas (personal, family, school and teachers, workplace and professional trainers, advisory and intervention services, leisure time and peers, and society (häfeli & schellenberg, 2009). as already mentioned above, young adults have been overrepresented among the unemployed and among the social welfare beneficiaries since 1990 (bundesamt für statistik, 2009). in switzerland, unemployed adults who are not or no longer entitled to unemployment benefits and who are at risk of poverty receive social assistance. young recipients of social assistance are regarded as a highly vulnerable group with poor prospects for the future (bundesamt für statistik, 2009). therefore, since 1990 the transition to adulthood of young people at risk has been investigated in several studies (schaffner & drilling, 2013). based on the national social welfare statistics, the situation of young social welfare recipients (aged 18 to 25) was analysed in detail for the first time (bundesamt für statistik, 2009). with regard to education, the analysis revealed that 51% of these young adults did not have a secondary-level degree and were also not undergoing education at the time, whereas 23.6% were completing an education, 24.9% had finished an education on a secondary level, and only 0.5% had earned a bachelor or master’s degree (bfs, 2009). the results of the analysis also indicate that the risk of needing welfare assistance is dependent on the system transitions (school-to-work and education-to-labour market) and there is also some evidence suggesting that the young adults’ coping options are influenced by the socio-economic situation of the parental home (bfs, 2009). another study on young adults (aged 18 to 24) receiving social assistance in basel gives a very detailed picture of the young people’s social situation that generally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 483 complies with the analysis of the national statistics (drilling, 2004). in addition, the study indicates that the young men women often had conflicts or problems with their families or parents and about 15% had had experience with child and youth care services when they were minors (drilling, 2004; schaffner & drilling, 2013). the qualitative analysis of education biographies of young social welfare recipients by schaffner (2007) showed that reaching legal age was a critical event in the lives of the interviewed young adults. when they turned 18, almost all young men and women had taken or wanted to take full responsibility for their own lives. most of them had to live independently because they moved out or were thrown out from their parental home, left residential or foster care, or immigrated into switzerland without their families. living independently with little experience and no support caused various problems of coping with daily life in terms of work, food, housing or money, for example; therefore most of the young adults were not able to complete their training or apply for a job (schaffner & drilling, 2013) and became dependent on social welfare. schaffner (2007) found out that the behaviour of these young people has to be regarded as manifestations of developmental coping problems, which are hardly taken into account by the social welfare system (schaffner & drilling, 2013). inappropriate coping strategies for mastering the challenges of an independent life can have serious consequences for young people such as dropping out of a postcompulsory education course, becoming unemployed due to lack of reliability, or losing their accommodation. housing situation and homelessness with the aim of obtaining a better picture of the situation of young adults in europe, several studies have focused on the housing situation of young adults examining the age of leaving the parental home. in 2008, approximately 46% of young adults (51 million) between 18 and 34 years of age still lived with at least one of their parents, 33 million of whom were aged between 18 and 24. in all of the european union, 13% of young adults aged 18 to 34 living in the same dwelling as at least one of their parents were identified to be at risk of poverty. however, living in the parental home can decrease the total risk of poverty. a key factor affecting the decision of young adults to leave their parental home is having a partner, while staying in education, working on temporary contracts, or being unemployed are reasons to stay with the parents for a longer time (choroszweicz & wolff, 2010). the percentage of young adults in switzerland living at their parents’ home is not much different from the situation in the eu. the age of young women leaving parental home and starting a family is between 20 and 30 years, while young men take that step between the ages of 22 and 32 (höpflinger & perrig-chiello, 2008). an analysis of the swiss labour force survey revealed that in 2004, 80% of young adults (aged 18 to 24) lived with at least one of their parents (höpflinger & perrig-chiello, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 484 while at what age young adults leave their parental home in europe has been exhaustively studied, data about the current housing situation of young adults are scarce. housing opportunities vary from living with the parents, living in a single household, living independently in a shared accommodation, living in residential or foster care providing supported long-time accommodation and temporary shelter, and homelessness. in the 1990s, homelessness of children and young adults was discussed in the media in germany (mücher, 2010) and also in switzerland (gabriel, stohler, aeschbacher, lörincz, & lang, 2004). in switzerland the number of young homeless people is unknown but estimated to be low. in a survey of childand youth-care institutions, 64 children, youths, and young adults (aged 13 to 25) who lived on the street permanently or over a longer time period could be identified in zürich in 2004. about half of them were 16 or 17 years old (gabriel et al., 2004). from the perspective of the interviewed social workers, the young people had various problems, but family conflicts and domestic violence were regarded as the most important reasons for living on the street (gabriel et al., 2004). in 2010, there were reports in the media about young adults seeking refuge in shelters for homeless people in the major swiss cities. for example, in berne 25 young adults aged 18 to 25, mostly from a migrant background and affected by poverty, were reported to be living in such a shelter (berner zeitung, 2010). homeless young people are not considered an urgent social problem because there are only a few such cases in switzerland, which is attributed to the well-developed childand youth-care system (excerpt from the minutes of the zurich cantonal council’s meeting on february 6, 2013). the statement, “we don’t talk about housing, we just do it [author’s translation]” (löpfe & moser, 2012, p. 11) describes the common socio-political way of understanding and treating the topic of housing. housing and the housing environment affect individual development opportunities. therefore, a disadvantage in the housing situation may lead to further disadvantages in other areas of life such as unemployment, poverty, homelessness, inferior education opportunities, and health (brändle-ströh, 1999, as cited in gysi, 2013), which affect different areas of social work. but despite this, there is no focus on adequate housing in social politics. as mentioned before, the efforts to ensure the integration of young adults are mostly education-based or employment-based, which is apparent in various existing programmes that support labour integration. although there are countless institutions offering help to homeless people (wolf, 2011), a closer look at the numerous institutions in the canton of zurich that offer housing for young healthy adults without disabilities shows that an existing external daily structure generally is a prerequisite for admission. most of the long-term housing facilities only take in young adults enrolled in a post-compulsory education programme. several institutions for long-term housing focus on young adults with a disability or a psychological illness and require a certified need for assistance and care or an official declaration of entitlement to disability insurance. institutions offering accommodation for young people without any restrictions are considered short-term shelters in situations of emergency. they do not offer any daily structure or focus on employment integration, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 485 nor do they specialise in young adults. in view of the shortage of institutions specialising in young adults and offering accommodation that goes beyond short-term shelter, and that also takes in young adults without any daily structure and/or a certified need for assistance and care, a few institutions that focus on that target group have been established in switzerland in the recent years. the present study background in 2009, a new concept for a home for young adults with no housing facility, no daily structure, and other multiple problems was established in a swiss city. its target group are young adults, aged 18 to 24, without a stable dwelling. the young men and women can neither live with their family nor independently and do not want to live in residential care or in a foster family. furthermore, they have little or no daily structure and often have debts, are psychologically unstable and consume marijuana or alcohol. the home is designed to be a voluntary transitional opportunity offering shared accommodation for a total of 28 young men and women. housekeeping and food has to be arranged independently (and individually). allocation to the institution is done by the case management of the social assistance service; assistance and regular status reviews (progress reviews) are the responsibility of the individual reference person of the institution. while the reference person’s primary task is giving advice and assistance, the case manager from the social assistance service is given more responsibility to make decisions and impose sanctions. institution objectives and research questions the main objective of the institution and also the indicator of the institution’s effectiveness is the young adults’ integration in a long-term living solution within 12 months. further objectives are to strengthen social and personal competence, stabilise the situation and prevent further harm. in this evaluation study, the achievement of the main objective of the institution, integration in a long-term living solution, was examined. the research questions were the following: 1. what effect does the institution have and which problem constellations have a positive effect on the achievement of the main objective? 2. what are the difficulties in the cooperation with placing institutions and how can the cooperation between the case management of the social assistance service and the social worker of the institution be optimised? method international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 486 within a qualitative study design, several perspectives and various approaches to collect data were included. all former inhabitants who left the institution between january 2011 and january 2012 were contacted by the institution. out of the 14 young adults who agreed to participate, six contrasting cases were selected. about half a year after the subjects left the organisation, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the aim of portraying the experiences and perspectives of the young adults as well as collecting information about the process after leaving the institution and about their current situation. in order to gain insight into the former biographies and problems of the young adults, the files from the selected former residents were analysed. moreover, guided telephone interviews with the case managers from the social assistance services (n = 6) and a group discussion with the staff of the institution (n = 5) were held to include the experts’ experience with the institution and their estimation of the effects both from an outside and an inside point of view. the data gathered was assessed by means of content analyses (mayring, 2008). common points and differences, across the different data sources, have been identified, evaluated, and discussed. results the focus of the analysis was put on four primary topics: the young adults’ history, the reason for their entrance into the institution, the process during their stay in the institution, and the effects of the institution from both shortand long-term perspectives. regarding the history of the former inhabitants of the institution (data from file analysis and interviews), it is noticeable that all of them have very unstable housing biographies with stays at different institutions combined with living with different family members (n = 3) or several stays at different institutions combined with stays with the mother (n = 2). apart from one person, all subjects have had experience with childand youth-care institutions (i.e., they were in temporary residential care or boarding school and returned to their parental home). just one person continuously lived at his or her mother’s place. in most of the cases, the transition from compulsory to upper secondary education has not been successful (i.e., they dropped out of vocational education and training or an interim solution, or they had not yet managed to find a vocational education). only two persons succeeded in the transition from compulsory to upper secondary education and were enrolled in a vocational education programme or temporarily employed before starting a vocational education course prior to entering the institution. other noticeable aspects of the subjects’ histories are psychological problems and the consumption of cannabis and/or alcohol, which is mentioned in the majority of the files. the main reason why the young adults entered the institution was that they had been made to leave their parental home mainly due to arguments or because their apprenticeship had been terminated. some of them did not have any employment at all. thus the main reason for being homeless or living in an instable situation is the absence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 487 of a daily structure. only two of the young adults were doing an apprenticeship or had a job as an interim solution until the apprenticeship started: in one of these cases, arguments in the context of the mother’s alcohol addiction and in the other case financial difficulties – and thus inability to pay the rent due to the sudden absence of the mother – were the reason for entering the institution. none of the young adults had an alternative possibility of accommodation. based on the various data sources, the extent to which the programme’s main objective (integration in a long-term housing solution within 12 months) and the further objectives (strengthening social competences and personal competence, stabilising the situation, and preventing further harm) have been reached has been assessed. the data indicate that the programme provides safety and support in case of endangerment; it enables the young adults to gain distance from their parental home and focus on their own person; social competences, personal competences, and housing competences are strengthened, and professional orientation as well as professional integration of the young adults are promoted. most of the young adults later transferred to an agreeable housing solution, which, however, in some cases was an emergency or interim solution. two of the young adults dropped out of the programme because they had repeatedly violated internal rules and or the law. the programme has therefore reached its further objectives, whereas the main objective, which was the integration in a long-term housing solution within 12 months, has not been reached in all cases. as a stable integration into society requires residential integration as well as employment integration, the effect of the programme on both aspects of integration at the time when the young adults left the programme and at the time the interviews with the former inhabitants were conducted (5 to 11 months after leaving the programme) is examined more closely. all young adults who left the programme in a regular manner (n = 4) had both a follow-up housing solution (with one parent, with relatives, or in a girlfriend’s family) and a job or an apprenticeship when leaving the programme. at the time of the interview (5 to 11 months after leaving the programme) all young adults who left the programme in a regular manner still had accommodation even though two persons had moved out from their follow-up solution (one person had moved into another shared accommodation and another person now had his own flat). regarding the labour market integration, in two cases some progress was observed (from the apprenticeship to fixed long-term employment and from a temporary job to an apprenticeship); two young adults, however, lost the jobs they had had when leaving the programme. both of them are facing trouble at their current place of living due to their unemployment and the resulting lack of a daily structure and financial difficulties. it is remarkable that those young individuals who already had a job when entering the programme proved themselves in the labour market after leaving the programme. although all young adults who had lost their apprenticeship prior to entering the programme were able to find a new apprenticeship or temporary job, 5 to 11 months after leaving the programme they had lost their jobs again. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 488 of the two young adults who quit the programme in an irregular manner, one person was homeless at the time of the dropping out and the other was taken into custody. although both of them made some efforts towards their professional integration during their participation in the programme, neither of them succeeded in acquiring employment. at the time of the interview (5 to 11 months after dropping out of the programme), one of the young adults still did not have a permanent accommodation or a job. in the other case, however, some progress had been achieved both in terms of residential and of work integration as this person has joined an assisted youth group and started an apprenticeship. considering the two cases of irregular discharge, it can be noted that both of them had already had multiple problems (with the daily structure, no training or workplace, mental health issues) before entering the programme and disobeyed the rules required for staying in the programme. overall, it can be ascertained that the programme is suitable for young people who already have a daily structure or can be adapted into one, who are independent and willing to change their situation. however, the programme is inappropriate or unsuccessful for young people who do not strive to change their situation, are not cooperative, suffer from psychological problems or drug addiction, have never worked before or have had problems with their daily structure for a long time or repeatedly dropped out of suitable programs. for young people with such multiple problems, it is difficult to find an adequate solution; moreover, they find it difficult to adhere to the requirements for staying in the programme. the measured effect of the programme depends on the indicators and on the time of the measurement. if only the main objective of the programme, namely the residential integration when leaving the programme, is considered, four persons were successfully integrated whereas 5 to 11 months later five people were successfully integrated into the housing market. regarding the professional integration, four persons had succeeded in finding a job when leaving the institution; 5 to 11 months later only three persons were still successfully integrated in an education programme, training, or job. thus, while the residential integration appears to be more stable in the long-term perspective, it can be jeopardised due to a setback in the work integration. conclusion the results of this study raise various t questions at different levels. on the one hand the indicator of the programme’s effectiveness can be called into question. if only the main objective of the programme, namely the young adults’ integration in a long-term living solution within 12 months, is considered for measuring the programme’s effectiveness, other case-related progress or reversals at other levels (e.g., strengthening social and personal competence) remain invisible. considering that social integration is based both on residential as well as on labour-market integration, focusing on only one outcome or goal is too narrow. therefore we maintain that indicators in the area of employment should be taken into account when evaluating the effectiveness of the programme. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 489 the second question is whether the limited stay of 12 months meets the needs of the young men and women. this study shows that already achieved successes may not be stable in a long-term perspective, especially if addressing labour market integration. it can therefore be assumed that already achieved successes could be stabilised through a prolonged stay. as well, it can be assumed that due to the complex problems of young adults a stay of more than one year in the institution may be needed to achieve the agreed goals for some young men and women. therefore a length of stay that is adapted to the individual needs could perhaps improve the impact of the programme’s sustainability. at the level of the individual case, the study suggests that the programme is inappropriate for young people with serious problems of acclimating themselves to a daily structure, with multiple burdens, and with hardly any social network. often these young people are not able to comply with the requirements of the institution because they have – as schaffner (2007) shows – never learned to master important developmental tasks and resort therefore to strategies which do not agree with the rules of the institution. as a matter of fact it has to be asked what sort of assistance these young people need in order to enable them to solve the developmental tasks. the challenge for the institution is to provide an open structure, which is accepted by the young adults, as well as to guaranteeing enough support to build up a daily structure. young social assistance recipients are regarded as a challenge for educational, social, and labour market policy (schaffner & drilling, 2013). there is a need for early interventions with children and youth at risk and their families in order to prevent exclusion. because of the interdependency of residential and labour market integration, an integrated approach is required. further, the strengthening of self-competence and of the social networks should be identified goals of the program (böhnisch, 1999). therefore high quality case work, which is supported by inter-institutional cooperation in the areas of education, employment, and social assistance, is needed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 478–493 490 references berger, f. 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(2014). the universal declaration of human rights. retrieved from: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#atop wolf, a. (2011). wohnungslosigkeit. in h. u. otto & h. thiersch (eds.), handbuch soziale arbeit. grundlagen der sozialarbeit und sozialpädagogik, 4. völlig neu bearbeitete auflage (pp. 1756–1764). münchen basel: ernst reinhardt verlag. http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/sd/de/index/beratung/sozialhilfe.html http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/sd/de/index/beratung/sozialhilfe.html problem identification the transition from youth to adulthood can be seen as “status passage in the institutionalised life course” (buchmann & kriesi, 2011, p. 482), which is characterised by several transitional events such as completion of mandatory school and vocational ... the legal situation and social security system in switzerland literature review education and employment of young adults in switzerland housing situation and homelessness the present study background institution objectives and research questions method the data gathered was assessed by means of content analyses (mayring, 2008). common points and differences, across the different data sources, have been identified, evaluated, and discussed. results conclusion international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 686 informed consent in school-based ethnography: using visual magnets to explore participation, power and research relationships marlies kustatscher abstract: this paper contributes to current ethical and methodological debates on informed consent in research with children and young people. it draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with young children (aged 5 to 7) and specifically on the use of photo-magnets which asked the children to indicate their ongoing opting in and out by moving magnetic pictures on a surface in the classroom. using excerpts from field notes, the paper reflects on how the children’s engagement with the magnets produced insights into their constructions of participation in research, power dynamics and the entanglement of informed consent procedures and research relationships. the paper concludes with stressing the importance of creating a space for conversations around these issues to happen as part of doing research. keywords: research with children, informed consent, visual methods, magnets, participation, power, research relationships acknowledgements: i would like to thank my ph.d. supervisors, professor liz bondi and professor kay tisdall from the university of edinburgh, for their continued support and feedback. this research was funded through a principal’s career development scholarship from the university of edinburgh. marlies kustatscher is a lecturer in childhood studies at the university of edinburgh, moray house school of education, edinburgh, united kingdom, eh8 8aq. e-mail: marlies.kustatscher@ed.ac.uk mailto:marlies.kustatscher@ed.ac.uk international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 687 in the past two decades, a growing body of research has discussed children and young people’s participation in research and the ethical and methodological challenges arising in this process. informed consent procedures in particular have become a generally accepted premise for ethical conduct in this kind of research, although their practicalities have been increasingly criticised and problematized by researchers in the field, as outlined in more detail below. in line with the overall aims of this special edition to re-evaluate accepted research practices in the childhood studies field, this paper contributes to such ethical and methodological debates in research with children and young people. it critically revisits the notion of informed consent by offering an illustrative account of informed consent procedures, particularly a visual practice using movable magnets, in school-based ethnographic research. through embedding informed consent in epistemological debates, both in relation to childhood studies as well as around the co-construction of fieldwork interactions and knowledge(s), the paper illuminates the entanglement of children and young people’s participation in research with power differences and research relationships. while it does not offer a “solution” to the problems of informed consent as a concept and process, it makes the case for the importance of sharing such ethical and methodological practices in research as a means of considering and accounting for the complex and multiple dynamics at play in our research contexts. since the paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with young children (aged 5 to 7), participants are referred to as “children” (rather than children and young people) throughout as a more appropriate term for this age group. informed consent in research with children: challenges and tensions in recent years, a growing body of literature has discussed issues around informed consent in relation to research with children and young people. drawing on a review of the relevant literature, gallagher (2009) describes four core principles of informed consent: 1. consent involves an explicit act of expressing participants’ willingness to take part in research. 2. it is based on participants’ understanding of what they are consenting to. 3. it is given voluntarily and without coercion. 4. it must be renegotiable throughout the research process. alderson and morrow (2011) define consent as “the invisible activity of evaluating information and making a decision, and the visible act of signifying the decision” (p. 101). the informed aspect of consent refers not only to the participants’ comprehension of the research process, but also includes an understanding of “why their participation is necessary, how it will be used, and how and to whom it will be reported” (british educational research association, 2011, p. 5). this constitutes an ambitious claim, requiring that not only participants, but first and foremost researchers, know the purpose and direction of their international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 688 research at all times during the research process. from this perspective, the informed aspect of consent has been criticised as a construct which is impossible to realise in qualitative research studies (malone, 2003). most current social research ethics frameworks have originated from medical research ethics and are rooted in the first international code on research ethics, the declaration of helsinki (world medical association [wma], 1964/2013). the differences between medical and social research, however, produce specific tensions and challenges for ethical social research conduct and the notion of informed consent in particular. especially in qualitative, ethnographic or open-ended studies, limitations of informed consent have been acknowledged in terms of the unpredictable nature and direction of this kind of research (alderson & morrow, 2011; gallagher, 2009; gallagher, haywood, jones, & milne, 2010; malone, 2003). in addition, researchers have pointed out the gaps between formalised institutional review boards, relying on abstract principles and codes, and the ethical challenges and “messiness” of doing research in practice (guillemin & gillam, 2004; guillemin & heggen, 2009; hem, heggen, & ruyter, 2007; mason, 2002). guillemin and gillam (2004, p. 265), for example, distinguish between “procedural ethics” and “ethics in practice”, arguing that the former are insufficient and need to be complemented by a focus on their practical implications. they further state that reflexivity, applied to what researchers consider “ethically important moments” of day-to-day practices of research, can be a useful conceptual tool to achieve continuity between procedural and practical ethics. procedural ethics (guidelines, codes, et cetera), particularly informed consent procedures, have also been accused of stifling debates around ethical issues and of serving to safeguard researchers and institutions rather than participants (homan, 1991). malone (2003) argues that institutional review boards which require qualitative researchers to fit their questions and dilemmas into a one-size-fits-all framework may even prevent debate around such issues, and thus serve neither researchers nor researched. while the above can be seen as general challenges of informed consent, it has been argued that doing research with children and young people specifically amplifies inherent problems of the informed consent paradigm (gallagher et al., 2010; thomas & o'kane, 1998). in the past two decades, research in the childhood studies field has generally been framed by a “new” ontological paradigm which views children and young people as competent social actors, recognises the social construction of childhood, and acknowledges the diversity within this group (james & prout, 1990). in line with this paradigm, it has been argued that participatory research approaches, which recognise children’s competencies, may assist in overcoming ethical problems in research with children (thomas & o'kane, 1998). viewing children as social actors, as full human beings rather than “becomings” (qvortrup, 1994), has also led to a greater recognition of their human rights, especially civil and political rights, and there is thus a close affinity between the childhood studies and the children’s rights fields (tisdall, 2012). while childhood studies recognises children’s abilities to participate actively in research processes, the children’s rights field stresses their entitlement to participation (lundy & mcevoy, 2012), in line with the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc). however, there remain tensions between, on the one hand, ethical frameworks and social discourses that view children and young people as in need of protection from harm and as a particularly “vulnerable” group of research participants, and, on the other hand, the childhood studies and children’s rights field which promote children’s agency and participation. bell (2008), appealing to researchers’ obligations to protect and promote children’s rights, argues that ethical research frameworks should be explicitly informed by international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 689 children’s rights principles. similarly, skelton (2008) claims that institutional review boards have failed to integrate adequately the increasing recognition of children’s competence into their frameworks. in research on topics that are considered to be sensitive, and when participants are perceived as particularly “vulnerable”, these tensions between research epistemologies and ethical frameworks tend to be especially marked (powell & smith, 2009). researchers’ commitment to children and young people’s participation may also be compromised through negotiations with gatekeepers (heath, charles, crow, & wiles, 2007; ost, 2013). however, such participatory approaches have also been critically discussed due to their potential tendency to implement adult researchers’ agendas, whilst claiming to empower children and young people as participants (gallacher & gallagher, 2008), as well as a potential neglect of considering how power differences permeate and influence even child-centred, participatory approaches (holland, renold, ross, & hillman, 2010). issues around power differentials were particularly explored in debates on adults’ roles in research with children, ranging from (contested) claims to a “least-adult role” (mandell, 1988) to those of “friend” (fine & sandstrom, 1998) or “unusual adult” (christensen, 2004). researchers have called for a greater acknowledgment of these limitations of informed consent, in order to: revise “the standard notions of research ethics that blur ethical sensibilities” (malone, 2003, p. 812); give credence to feelings of unease about ethical dilemmas arising during research, while being critical of one’s own and others’ practice (guillemin & heggen, 2009); and, finally, achieve a greater awareness of the challenges produced by the specific research context (gallagher et al., 2010). while these challenges of informed consent procedures are not limited to research with children and young people, it can be argued that the scrutiny under which researchers are placed from ethics review boards when working with this group of participants, as well as the particular attention to ontological and epistemological framings of research in this field, serve to highlight such complexities. this paper contributes to these debates by offering an in-depth case study of using magnets to visualise informed consent in a school-based ethnography, and by reflecting on insights this allowed into the children’s constructions of their participation in the research, power dynamics, and research relationships. the research context: introducing magnets to visualise informed consent this paper draws on my research which explored how ethnicity, gender, and social class intersect in young children’s social identities and relationships in a culturally diverse primary school. in order to explore this thematic focus, i conducted eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in a scottish urban primary school with a composite p1/2 class of circa 25 5to 7-year-old children. my fieldwork consisted mainly of participant observation in the classroom, lunch hall, playground, and other spaces of the school, as well as interviews with the children and staff. in terms of “procedural ethics” (guillemin & gillam, 2004), i sought ethical approval from my university’s ethics review board and the department of education services within the local city council. i then negotiated access with the headteacher of the school and the teachers of this particular class. i sought informed consent, through opt-out forms, from the parents whose children i wanted to involve in the research. a small number of parents opted out, but were still happy for me to have conversations with and include their children in any research activities, as long as i would not use these as data (dilemmas arising from this will be discussed below). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 690 after successfully passing through the above ethical procedures, i began my fieldwork by coming into the classroom one afternoon a few weeks after the school year had begun. sitting in a circle on the floor with the children, i handed out copies of a colourful information booklet to everyone and together we read through it. this involved introducing myself (as a researcher from the university who wanted to learn about children’s everyday lives) and the purposes of the research (gaining understanding of what matters to children and about children’s friendships). i invited and answered the children’s questions and asked them to think about our conversation, and whether they would be interested to take part in this research over the course of the following days. a few days later, i came into the classroom again and revisited the information booklet. this time i pointed toward a space on the last page where i invited them to place a sticker (i provided a few attached to every booklet) if they wanted to take part in this research. this would involve speaking to me, and me taking notes about what they were doing and saying. i stressed that regardless of their decisions at this point, they would be able to change their minds at any time later. almost all children opted in. after this initial, rather traditional and contractual model of seeking consent, i started to increase my presence in the classroom until i went there on an almost daily basis. over the course of the following weeks, i developed a routine for my participant observation, and it became clearer, both for the children and me, what this involved. from the beginning, i had perceived the information booklet and sticker consent form as an initial but not sufficient step in the consent process, and the first few weeks of fieldwork indeed illustrated some of its shortcomings. as i began to know the children better, it became clear that some were keener than others to be around, speak, and play with me. i did not know if this was due to their wish to take part in the research, to spend time with me as an “unusual adult” (christensen, 2004), or both. i also did not know the motivations of those children who did not seek much contact with me, maybe because they were shy, because they did not like to be observed, or for other reasons. in addition, i came to realise that a number of explanations for my presence in the classroom circulated amongst the children, for example that i wanted to write a children’s book or that i wanted to learn how to become a teacher. unsatisfied with the transparency of my role in the classroom and the research process, i searched for a way to clarify these issues, to prompt the children to consider their options within this process, and to communicate their choices to me. inspired by gallagher’s (2009) use of colour-coded stickers worn by children on their clothes, i decided to introduce a visual system of movable magnets (kustatscher, 2013, 2014). incorporating an available space in the classroom, i marked the top drawer of a filing cabinet in the corner with a green-encircled magnetic picture of me as the “opt-in” drawer, and the second drawer with the same, but red-encircled and crossed-out magnetic picture of me, as the “opt-out” drawer. each child received a magnetic picture of themselves and i invited them to move these pictures between the two designated surfaces (see figure 1), depending on whether they wanted me to speak to them and take notes about them (i left the “speaking to” part relatively open on purpose, as it would have proven difficult not to interact with someone at all, but i was very clear that i would not take any notes about someone on the opt-out drawer). the teacher was supportive of the system, and since the class generally worked in groups moving freely around workstations in the classroom, the children were encouraged to walk over to the cabinet and move their pictures throughout the day. the magnets were clearly visible from most corners of the classroom. since the majority of the children’s magnets were generally on the “opt-in” drawer of the filing cabinet, i made it a habit to glance at the “opt-out” drawer before joining individual or international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 691 groups of children and to avoid those who had opted out. before moving to other spaces of the school (such as the playground or lunch/gym hall), i memorised or took a note of the children who were opting out at that moment, and did not approach them. occasionally, however, children came up to and spoke to me despite having moved their magnet to the “opt-out” drawer. in such situations, i did remind them of their “opt-out” status, and asked whether they were happy for me to record our interactions or not. these practicalities of implementing the magnets already point to some of the challenges and limitations of an optin/opt-out conceptualisation of consent: on the one hand, it assumes that participants are able to make clear decisions between opting in or out, and that, even if shifting, these decisions are relatively stable over short periods of time, which may not be the case. on the other hand, this conceptualization also presupposes that researchers are able to rigorously respect participants’ decisions of opting in or out, which in practice may not be so straightforward; as ethnographers, our interpretations may be influenced by observations of events, whether we explicitly include them in our field notes or not. the following sections explore some of the benefits and limitations of the magnet model, and particularly the insights it produced into such challenges and limitations of the process of informed consent. figure 1: movable magnetic photographs on a filing cabinet in the classroom international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 692 insights into consent decisions: context, compliance, and constructing participation from conversations with other researchers, as well as engaging with the relevant literature, i had become aware of how conducting research in a school context shapes the process of negotiating informed consent in particular ways. valentine (1999), for example, argues that institutions, as gatekeepers, can prevent children from consenting by denying researchers access in the first place, but they may also operate on the opposite end of the spectrum by coercing children to take part in research. moreover, school-based research with children often employs rather pedagogical methods, both in the construction of what counts as information, as well as in other consent procedures such as consent leaflets, and thus also ties into the specific power dynamics at play in such contexts (david, edwards, & alldred, 2001). mindful of such dynamics, i carefully negotiated my role in the classroom with the management and teaching staff of the school prior to the start of my fieldwork. this included negotiating that i would not take on teaching assistant tasks which involved teacher-like roles and responsibilities, such as supporting children with academic tasks or being “in charge” of otherwise unsupervised groups. rather, i constructed my role in the classroom as one of researcher, student/learner (learning from and about children), and as an “unusual adult” (christensen, 2004, p. 174) interested in the children’s world, games, and interests, but without ”dubious attempt[s] to be a child”. despite my attempts to avoid positioning myself as an authoritative person, the children’s initial use of the magnet model was heavily shaped by issues of compliance. similar to gallagher’s (2009) use of stickers, opting out was generally associated with being “bad” or “naughty”, and opting in as “good” or “well-behaved”. especially at the beginning, the magnets enjoyed a novelty status and received much attention from everyone in the class, and opting in or out was therefore not just privately negotiated between individual children and me, but was publicly visible and debated. this led to situations in which some children pointed out to me that other children “did not want to talk to me”, and so both tried to denigrate others as well as positively distinguish themselves. sometimes children also asked me for permission before moving their magnets. i tried to react to such incidents by repeatedly stressing that every option was equally acceptable, and that i would not be upset or angry if someone “did not want to talk to me”. i also asked the teacher, as an explicit authority figure and representative of the school as an institution, to back up my statements in order to emphasise the legitimacy of both opting in or out. however, not all children seemed to perceive the pressure of compliance as negative, and i had the impression that some thoroughly enjoyed being given the power to say “no” to an adult in this context and to perform what was perceived as a subversive act without any repercussions. as the novelty status of the magnet model decreased over the course of a few weeks, issues of compliance and ascribing value to consent decisions seemed to retreat into the background and this allowed insights into other reasons for the children’s choices. in particular, it became clear that the children negotiated a number of different roles and demands within their lives at school, and that taking part in the research was perceived as a distinct addition to these and, as such, was carefully considered. for some children, taking part in the research seemed to have a playful or leisurely meaning, as the following excerpt from my field notes shows: international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 693 raphael, lorna and patrick1 are sitting on the carpet in front of the magnets and giggle. patrick stands up, takes his magnet and puts it on the opt-in drawer. lorna says to me: marlies, we are silly! i think she is referring to them chatting, giggling and not being silent and working. patrick says, pointing at the magnet: yes, that’s why we want to talk to you marlies! in this situation, lorna and patrick constructed taking part in the research as “silly”, although with a positive connotation. similarly, my interactions with the children often consisted of “fun” activities, such as playing games, and it seemed that many were enjoying such unusual, playful interactions with an adult in the school context. in such moments, opting into the research seemed to offer a different and popular space to construct relationships and identities within the school, and created a bond between us based on the withdrawal from academic roles and performances. while these examples show that taking part in the research was often perceived as a leisurely aspect of life in school, other situations illustrated that sometimes the research also seemed to present an additional demand on top of the children’s intense academic schedules. on one occasion, sarah moved her magnet to the opt-out drawer when she was given a worksheet by the teacher and, after having completed it, opted back in, saying “marlies, now you can talk to me again”. this illustrates that she may have perceived taking part in the research as a distraction or weight in addition to her academic tasks, and she clearly prioritised the latter. on another occasion, i witnessed how eleanor explained to aamil, who was pondering whether to opt-in or opt-out, that both decisions were fine, but suggested to opt-out “if you’re tired or so”, indicating that she too perceived taking part in the research as an additional, demanding task which required a certain amount of energy and commitment. the fact that the children distinguished and prioritised between different roles and demands, such as doing academic tasks, playing games, and taking part in the research, was in contrast to my own expectations prior to the fieldwork: since i had intended to observe children’s everyday lives at school, i had conceptualised their participation in the research as automatically comprising all their different roles within this context. the use of the magnets illustrated, however, that the children constantly constructed their different social and educational identities within the school, as well as their participation in the research, and that this involved engaging actively with and assuming responsibility for the participation in my research and the resulting co-construction of data. thus, while i had anticipated the children would participate in the research in a specific way, they took an active part in co-constructing and negotiating their participation. this meant that also the process of informed consent, forming part of our interactions during the fieldwork, was coconstructed between the children and me, and therefore the use of the magnets inevitably went beyond my pre-conceptualised ideas and was negotiated and transformed by the children, as illustrated further in the following paragraphs. 1 all names are pseudonyms. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 694 problematizing assumptions about power differences power relations, between children and adults, and participants and researchers, are of central importance in doing research with children and other groups. power differentials range from adult researchers being able to choose their theoretical and epistemological standpoints (mayall, 2002; morrow, 2008) to the specific power relations at play in the research context (gallacher & gallagher, 2008; gallagher, 2009). the way in which we as researchers conceptualise and address power dynamics is also closely linked to how we position ourselves in relation to the above-described tensions between protective frameworks on the one hand, and rights-based or participatory approaches on the other hand (cocks, 2006; ost, 2013; powell & smith, 2009; skelton, 2008). in line with holt (2004), this paper advocates a complex understanding of power beyond the binaries of powerful adults/researchers and powerless children/participants. power relations do not only exist between researchers and participants but, in the case of research with children, often involve gatekeepers as third parties. as heath et al. (2007) illustrate, gatekeepers or institutional practices may undermine researchers’ commitment to child-centred practices. in my research, an example of this was the fact that a very small number of parents opted out of the research on behalf of their children. however (presumably in order to avoid the stigmatization of their children in the classroom), they were still happy for me to interact with them and include them in any activities with the rest of the class. this meant that they were also using the magnets, but – without their knowledge – i had to overrule their opt-in in order to observe the ethics protocol of the school and council as gatekeepers. while this left me feeling deeply uncomfortable about my ethical practice, i considered it to be the ethically most appropriate way forward in this situation. i justified this decision, firstly, through the fact that it would avoid the children feeling stigmatized or excluded from activities that the rest of the class were taking part in. secondly, i was aware that, although these children did not appear as “characters” with pseudonyms in my thesis, they inevitably still informed my understanding and thinking. as pointed out previously, ethnographers are able to decide what to include or exclude from their field notes, but they may not be able to stop themselves from observing, and being influenced by, interactions and events in the field. for example, despite having been “optedout” by their parents, these children played an important role for my reflections on the informed consent process, which ultimately led me to writing this paper. apart from showing the complex power relations at play in the primary school, this example therefore also illustrates that a clear-cut opting-out or in may not be possible in ethnographic studies, as these children were neither completely “out” nor “in” my research. introducing the magnet model was an attempt to adopt “empowering research relations” (holt, 2004, p. 18). while as an adult researcher i could be considered powerful in many ways in this context, i was also aware that the children ultimately acted as gatekeepers to their own worlds of games and relationships, rendering me relatively powerless (fine & sandstrom, 1998). the magnets were intended to visualize this form of power of the children, to make them aware of it and able to communicate it. while the previous section showed that this was realised to some extent (e.g., children telling me openly when they were [not] willing to engage with me), the magnets also brought some inherent power differences to the fore. this is illustrated, for example, in the following excerpt from my field notes: every now and then i remind the children what the magnets are here for. i ask if anyone has any questions about the magnets. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 695 paola raises her hand: marlies, why do you have a big one? i am taken aback for a moment. i have never considered that this would be a sign of unfairness or power difference. but i have given myself a magnet three times as big as the children’s ones, with a different shape and colour! paola seems to have perceived this as some sort of privilege. taken by surprise, i produce a stuttering explanation: i thought i’d take a bigger one so it is more clear and you can see it better… i had designated the opt-in and opt-out drawers both with a magnetic picture of me which, without much thought, i had designed much bigger than the children’s magnetic pictures. i believe that, partly, i was driven by an intention to make the purpose of the drawers highly visible, although this process can also be viewed as my own “unconscious reproduction of dominant identity” (holt, 2004, p. 13). however, for paola, and maybe other children, having a bigger magnet was perceived as desirable and privileged. thus, i had overlooked some basic underlying power differentials because they had not seemed significant to me, but they evidently were for some of the children. a few months into the fieldwork i was pointed towards another dimension of such underlying power differences: sarah sits next to me in the classroom. nodding her head, she points over to the magnets, and says: marlies, i wanted to talk to you yesterday but you were not here. while i came into the school almost every day during my fieldwork, there were days when other commitments prevented me from doing so. i had considered this in relation to what i might be missing on those days and in terms of the continuity of my relationships with the children, but i had not reflected on how my absence might be perceived from their perspectives. sarah’s casual comment made me realise that, while aiming to de-centre power on the participants, the choice between opting in or out was ultimately dependent on my own presence in the classroom and thus was limited in scope. this was illustrated even further when, over the course of my fieldwork, some children started to adapt their magnets to my presence, that is, they opted out when i was away and opted back in when i was there. while problematizing my pre-conceptualised ideas about the informed consent process, the magnets thus also served as a tool for allowing conversations around ethics, participation, and power to happen between the children and me. these conversations revealed to me my own lack of awareness on the one hand and, on the other hand, the children’s sensitivity to how my taken-for-granted practices were permeated by power differences and adult/researcher interpretations. while trying to de-centre power, or at least the perception of power through the visibility of the magnets, i was not able to de-centre my own place within the authority structures of the research context. nevertheless, the children were able to exert some forms of power through their interpretations and appropriations of the magnet system. in the same way as we cannot know ourselves fully as researchers despite our striving for reflexivity (rose, 1997), such permeating power differences may be impossible to be brought to the fore or even “resolved”. however, these research experiences international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 696 highlighted the importance of creating a space for conversations and negotiations of our preconceived research designs as part of an ethics as process. the entanglement of informed consent and research relationships in recent years, increasing attention has been drawn to relationships and emotions in research, and their place in constructing and interpreting research data (bondi, 2005). qualitative research is heavily dependent on “good” research relationships characterised by trust and respect (guillemin & heggen, 2009) and, particularly in ethnographic research, much consideration has been given to establishing such rapport between researcher and participants (hammersley & atkinson, 2007). as ethnographic researchers, we are not only “looking at” our participants, but rather are “being with” them (wang, 2013). this means that our relationships with participants do not only allow us to “access” them, but become part of our data. during my fieldwork, interactions around the magnet model brought relational dynamics, both among the children as well as between them and me, to the fore. i have already described peer pressure and compliance as relational factors for the children’s decisions to opt-in or opt-out. however, on other occasions, such as in the following example, the magnets’ scope for the expression of consent was amended in favour of expressing inclusive and exclusive dynamics in the children’s peer relationships: fatima tells tahira that it was her turn at playing bingo (a maths activity this week), but tahira ignores her. fatima starts to cry. tahira ignores the crying for a while, and finally says in a sharp tone: fatima, it’s just a game! fatima gets up and walks over to the magnets. she takes her magnet, which was next to tahira’s, and moves it far away from her. they are both on the opt-in drawer, but since there is not much space left there (and especially not much space to get far away from tahira’s magnet) fatima moves her magnet on the opt-out drawer. in this situation, fatima used the magnets to underline and publicly display her resentment towards tahira. removing her magnet from proximity to tahira’s meant to opt-out from the research, although in this case visualizing her relationship (or non-relationship) with tahira appeared to override, or at least permeate, the magnets’ meaning of giving or denying consent. situations such as this one brought the entanglement of informed consent procedures and relationships to the fore. the magnets’ scope for the expression of ongoing consent was mediated by, and inseparable from, relational dynamics – not only between the children, but also with me as a researcher. similar to the above excerpt, the magnets also served to visualise relationships between the children and me: just before break time, the children gather on the carpet and drink their milk. i sit at the back of the group, close to the filing cabinet with the magnets. lilly sits close to me and now turns around. she looks over to the magnets and i follow her glance. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 697 she gets up and moves her magnet – it is already on the top drawer but now she moves it right next to the magnet with my picture, so that they touch each other. she says: marlies, i’m close to you! alba, sucking on her milk next to us, now gets up and moves her magnet (which was on the opt-out drawer) up to lilly’s, and says: i am close to you too! she pushes lilly’s magnet a bit away because it takes up space next to mine, and lilly protests. they both move around the magnets for a bit until they are both squeezed in next to mine. the example illustrates how closely relational dynamics are linked to the process of informed consent. alba opted into the research in order to “be close to me”, and it seemed that this closeness was more important than the aspect of (not) consenting to the research. lilly’s “i am close to you” may also be interpreted as an ownership claim on me, and indeed the ensuing struggle of shifting the magnets closer to me showed a competitive dynamic between the children. such events pointed to the fact that, as the children got used to the magnets and our relationships developed over time, the meanings of the magnet practice also developed and changed. in some cases, the developing relationship between me the children and me, including the developing trust that opting-out would not be disciplined and detract from our relationship, may have increased their confidence to opt-out. on the other hand, the magnets became a visualization of relationships in the classroom, both between the children and with me as a researcher. this meant that the magnets were always moved, and therefore consent decisions always made, in relation to others. guillemin and heggen (2009), drawing on the work of the danish philosopher løgstrup (1956/1997), use the metaphor of “inner circles” to describe the relationships between participants and researchers. these inner circles are imagined as different degrees of intimacy in social relationships, from the outer zones of our public selves, to the innermost zone of our deepest private thoughts. within this metaphor, all human beings are potentially vulnerable if they allow others to enter into their inner circles, and thus vulnerability is not a “weakness” to overcome, or a characteristic of particular groups, but a fundamental principle of being human. i find it useful to apply this metaphor to the process of informed consent, since it follows that consent is not only about saying “yes” or “no” to participation in research, but also about making a decision about which inner circles participants allow researchers to enter into, and therefore about establishing and managing a relationship with the researcher. informed consent processes are based on the participants’ understanding of the implications of engaging and participating in the research, or withdrawing from it. in ethnographic research, relationships – interactions, emotions, thoughts – become part of the data. as researchers, we prefer to centre our own knowledge of the participants’ understanding (i.e., we assume to know what they know) in order to legitimise the principle of informed consent. however, viewing informed consent as a fundamentally relational process, as illustrated by the children’s use of the magnets, also means to recognize that while it may be possible to opt-out of the research aspect, it may be impossible to withdraw from a research relationship once access into one’s “inner circles” has been granted. this means that the children are tied into participation in the research at least in some form, and the idea of flexibly opting in and out of the research becomes illusory. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 698 conclusion informed consent procedures have become an accepted premise for ethical conduct in social research generally, and tend to be especially highlighted and debated in research with children and young people. in this paper i have offered an in-depth case study of how i have approached these procedures in my research, and the challenges and insights this produced. through introducing movable magnets for opting in or out, i have attempted to visualize and make communicable the children’s ongoing consent decisions. while indeed the children made use of the magnets in ways i had anticipated to some extent, the magnets also highlighted complex and unpredictable dynamics around informed consent. in particular, they allowed insights into the children’s motivations for opting in and out, and the ways in which they actively constructed their participation in the research. they also helped to illuminate how taken-for-granted assumptions about power differences permeate the underlying principles of the consent model, and how consent and relationships are intrinsically entangled. paying attention to epistemological assumptions underlying both our methodological as well as ethical frameworks, and potential inherent tensions, does not necessarily lead to more clarity or “solutions” for problems of informed consent as a concept. acknowledging the co-constructed and relational nature of our fieldwork interactions, consent procedures and power dynamics, however, means to recognise and accept that such problems cannot be resolved or predicted. using the magnets proved useful in creating a space in which it was possible for such conversations, around participation, power and research relationships, to emerge between the children and me, and to allow glimpses into the experience of research from my participants’ points of view. this paper contributes to a growing body of literature which debates and challenges issues around informed consent, in research with children and young people and beyond. i hope that with my illustrative account of using movable magnets to visualise informed consent, i have not only showed the importance of creating a space for conversations around these issues to happen in the classroom, but also made the case for creating and preserving this space for conversation in the academic community concerning these issues in a range of contexts and from multiple perspectives. sharing our experiences of research and ethics in practice may, while not solving epistemological tensions, help to reassess and develop our approaches further as a community of researchers. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 686–701 699 references alderson, p., & morrow, v. 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(1964/2013). ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. wma declaration of helsinki. ferney-voltaire, france: world medical association. abstract: this paper contributes to current ethical and methodological debates on informed consent in research with children and young people. it draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with young children (aged 5 to 7) and specifically on the use o... informed consent in research with children: challenges and tensions the research context: introducing magnets to visualise informed consent insights into consent decisions: context, compliance, and constructing participation problematizing assumptions about power differences the entanglement of informed consent and research relationships conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs104.1201919284 manifestations of lifeworld crisis among syrian male youth in jordanian refugee camps mohammed abdel karim al-hourani, abdel baset azzam, and rania jaber abstract: this study explores manifestations of lifeworld crisis among a sample of 362 syrian refugee male youth in the za’atari camp in jordan. it fills a gap in research about the conditions of syrian refugees in the camps. the findings reveal that the first-rank manifestation of the crisis was psychological stress: participants reported feeling fearful, distrustful, absent-minded, threatened, and worried, and having difficulty falling asleep. second, the youth suffered a lack of gratification with regard to food, money, comfortable accommodation, water for drinking and cleaning, health care, and clothes. third, they had a loss of meaning in their lives, including loss of interest in surrounding events, of hope about the future, of motivation to do things, of quality of life, of friendships, and of freedom. fourth, they suffered from anomie, which implies loss of respect for moral rules, rights, and regulations, and the loss of physical security, social stability, and human dignity. coping strategies used by participants to overcome these circumstances included religiosity, belief in returning home, accepting the situation as representing god’s will, regarding the camp as the best alternative, and controlling their feelings. keywords: youth refugee, refugee crisis, syrian refugees, jordan mohammed abdel karim al-hourani phd (the corresponding author) is an associate professor of applied sociological theory in the sociology department at the university of sharjah, p.o. box 27272, sharjah, uae. email: malhourani@sharjah.ac.ae. professor al-hourani can also be reached at yarmouk university, irbid, jordan. email: mhorani@yu.edu.jo abdel baset azzam phd is an assistant professor of political sociology at yarmouk university, irbid, jordan. email: abdazzam72@yahoo.com rania jaber phd is an assistant professor of development in the sociology department, university of jordan, amman 11942, jordan. email: rania.jaber@ju.edu.jo mailto:malhourani@sharjah.ac.ae mailto:mhorani@yu.edu.jo mailto:abdazzam72@yahoo.com mailto:rania.jaber@ju.edu.jo international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 4 in “syria’s displaced: a photo essay”, nina berman (2016) described the early days of the camp to which many syrian refugees were sent when they arrived in neighboring jordan: in late july 2012, the first syrian families arrived at the za’atari refugee camp, a barren strip of land twelve kilometers from the syrian border and seventy kilometers from the jordanian capital, amman. at the time, andrew harber, unhcr’s country representative in jordan said, “we are the first to admit that it is a hot desolate location. nobody wants to put a family who has already suffered so much in a tent in the desert, but we have no choice.” (p. 102) living conditions in the camp are harsh. not only do the refugees lack a home, a nation, and citizenship, but they also lack “proper social power, proper voice, proper face” (soguk, 1999, p. 243). the lifeworld (shared daily experience) of the camp doesn’t meet the fundamental needs of syrian refugee youth and allows few possibilities for solving their problems. hence, the term “crisis” is used to draw attention to the fact that the camp is a multidimensional existential problem in itself: the problems of youth refugees arise not only in meeting physical needs like shelter and food, but also in meeting social, cultural, and psychological needs. literature review the syrian refugee crisis has been described as one of the worst since world war ii (amnesty international, 2015). however, there is limited literature on this crisis (yazgan, utku, & sirkeci, 2015), and especially on youth in the refugee camps, as complicated procedures are required to access participants and collect data. for this reason, most studies have focused on the situation of non-camp refugees and the cultural, social, and economic context of the host societies and policy responses. furthermore, the impact of syrian refugees on the host societies has received much attention, as have the challenges that syrian refugees are facing in the host society (abu tarboush, 2014; al-hourani, 2017; smeran & smeran, 2014; yazgan et al., 2015). after wars and other traumatic events, refugees in affected regions, including syrian refugees, have suffered threats to security and life, death of family members and friends, anxiety, disruption of education, depression, deprivation, exploitation, economic suffering, hunger, exile, and displacement (beiser, 1999; egeland, 2015; farwell, 2001; liebkind, 1996). furthermore, research on refugees in the camps has revealed that they have suffered from lack of freedom while feeling resentment, restlessness, and doubt about their self-worth; these feelings charged those restricted refugees with hostility and aggressiveness (abdi, 2008; crisp, 2000; george, 2010). young refugees, whether in a camp or not, face social, cultural, and academic adjustments that are often exacerbated by racism, conflicting cultural values, educational gaps, language difficulties, culture shock, health problems, poverty, isolation, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) arising from war, violence, or loss of family members (ngo & schleifer, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 5 psychological stress is one of the most important dimensions of the crisis in the refugee camps. when refugees arrive at the camps, they encounter problems that can cause such stress, including the lack of accommodation, of basic necessities like clean water, and of employment (ghumman, mccord, & chang, 2016). studies conducted on syrian refugees in the za’atari camp in jordan revealed that they were suffering from symptoms of psychological distress including anger, fearfulness, nervousness, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, hopelessness about the future, and spells of terror and panic (basheti, qunaibi, & malas, 2015). furthermore, syrian refugees in the camp suffered from mental disorders, depression, social isolation, feelings of insecurity, worries about children, lack of fulfilment of basic needs, and unemployment (al adyleh & al zghoul, 2017; momani & al-fraihat, 2016). reese masterson, usta, gupta, and ettinger (2014) conducted a cross-sectional survey of syrian refugee women in lebanon and found that, in relation to mental health, more than 75% of the women reported having all seven stress-related symptoms covered in the survey: feeling constantly tense, being sick or tired, feeling worried or concerned, being irritable or in a bad mood, suffering from loss of sleep or sleep disorders, having reduced ability to complete normal tasks, and beating or taking anger out on children. the study also showed that women who experienced violence had statistically significantly higher mean stress scores; however, only 9.2% of them received psychological support and mental health services (reese masterson et al., 2014). an assessment report of syrian refugee youth in the za’atari camp conducted jointly by the norwegian refugee council (nrc) and reach1 (2016) revealed that, although youth in the oldest age bracket (25 to 32 years) commented on formal education as being important, their level of interest tended to be the lowest. male youth often reported feeling an expectation and responsibility to provide for and support their families through seeking gainful employment (nrc & reach, 2016). in mrayan’s (2016) study, syrian refugee females referred to their lives at the za’atari camp as “living in the stone age” — primitive and surrounded with hardships. faced with the absence of male protection and support, and with the responsibility of providing for their families, the females had to abandon their sheltered lives and look for ways to survive. by “making do to get by”, as many participants referred to their coping strategy, they came to lead a life they would never have thought possible before the war (mrayan, 2016). researchers have found that many refugees demonstrate an ability to cope with circumstances. in mrayan’s 2016 study, religious faith was one of the central coping mechanisms reported by refugees as helping them achieve a sense of purpose, meaning, and control. other research on refugees’ coping strategies has also indicated that the use of religion and spirituality 1 renewed efforts against child hunger and undernutrition (https://www.reachpartnership.org/it/home). https://www.reachpartnership.org/it/home international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 6 is very common among this group (goodman, 2004; khawaja, white, schweitzer, & greenslade, 2008). moreover, syrians living inside the za’atari camp moved their tents in order to live in closer proximity to their families, friends, and extended communities; they thereby maintained elements of their customary social networks and social structures (sultani, 2012). as well, they sustained a network of social support by maintaining various paths of communication with the outside world and with each other: broadcast media, mobile phone contact with their relatives in syria, and face-to-face and mobile phone contact with other syrian refugees (sultani, 2012). the growing body of research on syrian refugees has generally focused on scattered dimensions of the refugee problem in the camps: education, violence, unemployment, family separation, and so on (alpaydin, 2017; cassity & gow, 2005; lee, 1988; marlow, 2010). the term “crisis” seems to be fruitful since it gathers these dimensions under one comprehensive concept. both policy and research increasingly recommend focused investigation on the impacts of refugee camps on youth (cooper, 2007). this follows from the fact that youth may be particularly vulnerable to physical and psychosocial risks, including military and paramilitary recruitment, sexual abuse, delinquency, and depression (crisp, 2003; harrell-bond, 2000; norwegian refugee council, redd barna, & unhcr, 1999). international non-governmental organizations working in the za’atari camp have reported that syrian refugee youth face challenges such as disrupted education and emotional growth, and limited livelihood development and earning opportunities. in 2016, reach, a joint initiative dedicated to informing more effective humanitarian action, stated: it is against this challenging backdrop that humanitarian actors are working to enhance youth well-being and meet psychosocial needs, by providing youth with opportunities to complete their education, develop necessary technical and life skills, and actively participate in their communities (p. 2). at present, we know very little about the circumstances of syrian refugee youth in the za’atari camp and lack the literature necessary to inform the work of humanitarian actors in the refugee camps in jordan. we therefore undertook this study in order to fill this gap and to focus specifically on male youth since syrian culture, historically, has attached the meaning of productive power in all domains of life to male youth, and it is regarded as shameful for a young man to be unemployed or dependent on his family this feeling of shame could be expected to exacerbate the stresses on male refugees. furthermore, few studies have focused on male youth in syrian refugee camps. it is the intention of this study to help fill the gap and expand the scope of the literature on syrian male youth refugees. we note also that another study in this issue, “sexual harassment of syrian female youth in jordanian refugee camps”, helps us to understand the experiences of females in the camps. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 7 the main goal of this study is to explore both the circumstances (the difficulties and challenges) that embody the manifestations of the lifeworld crisis that syrian male youth suffer while living in the camp, and the coping mechanisms used for overcoming these circumstances. thus, this study addresses two main questions: (a) what are the manifestations of lifeworld crises for males in the camp and how do syrian refugee male youth rank them? and (b) what coping mechanisms are used by syrian refugee male youth to overcome the difficulties and challenges of living in the camp? the za’atari syrian refugee camp in jordan the za’atari camp was established in july of 2012. as described by mrayan (2016), it stretched over two miles and was located in the northern part of jordan in the mafraq desert. due to its proximity to the za’atari village, a small town in the mafraq governorate, the camp came to be known as the za’atari camp … and became the most concentrated site for syrian refugees in jordan…. the camp was initially designed to house 5,000 refugees. however, after one year of establishment it was housing more than 30,000 refugees. within two years, it had become the world’s second largest refugee camp and the largest in the region with over 100,000 refugees. as of today, the camp has become jordan’s fourth largest city. it has six hospitals, three schools, eight mosques, [and] a number of public facilities. (unhcr, 2015) a report issued by reach (2017) stated that “as of february 2017, 656,170 syrian refugees were registered in jordan. according to unhcr, 79,737 or 15% of them are registered in the za’atari camp.” this represented a slight increase from the previous year when reach (2016) reported that: 655,833 syrian refugees have registered with unhcr in jordan. among them, 56.9% are under the age of 18. approximately 20% of syrian refugees in jordan have settled in the refugee camps of al zaatari in mafraq governorate, and of azraq in zarqa. three quarters of these camp populations are below the age of 35. (p. 2) approximately 36,000 refugees were school-aged children in 2013; however, only 22% of them were actually enrolled in school (education sector working group, 2013). according to schmidt (2013), the reasons children did not attend school included harassment and violence while traveling to and from school and during school; abuse and corporal punishment from teachers; a desire to remain with family; needing to work to support the family; travel distance; and inadequate toilet facilities. ledwith (2014) found there was little formal employment available within the camp. thus, refugees monetized what they had — possessions, supplied aid, labor, and even their own bodies. child labor was common. some refugees, including experienced merchants and electricians, could international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 8 start successful business enterprises, though many of the commercial activities were questionable, or actually illegal. according to ledwith, crime was a problem in za’atari. even though it had become safe enough for aid workers to live in the camp with the refugees, many forms of crime still existed. smuggling, theft, violence, sexualand gender-based violence, and armed-forces recruiting had all been observed (ledwith, 2014). mrayan (2016) reported that refugees’ expectations affected their experience during resettlement. because of jordan’s reputation as a refugee haven, syrian refugees came with high hopes. upon encountering the camp’s lack of preparedness during the first year, these gave way to growing bitterness and resentment, and increasing hostility towards aid workers, camp officials, and camp properties, as well as each other (mrayan, 2016). understanding the refugee camp as a crisis this study was inspired by habermas’ (1973) legitimation crisis theory with its focus on the kinds of social crises that are anchored in an absence of the administrative capabilities and resources needed to maintain legitimate structure and order. this is often regarded as a normative theory — one that concerns what ought to be in general. however, several authors, including grant (2007), leydesdorff (1996), and seidl and becker(2006), have pointed out that although habermas’ theory includes applicable issues such as anomie, alienation, and solidarity, this applicability was neglected. in fact, we found that manifestations of the crisis addressed by habermas (see figure 1) correspond closely to the immediate and pressing problems facing refugees in the camp. in previous studies about refugees (e.g., al adyleh & al zghoul, 2017; momani & al-fraihat, 2016), each manifestation was measured separately. these studies showed that syrian refugees in the camp were suffering mental disorders, depression, social isolation, feelings of insecurity, worries about children, lack of fulfilment of basic needs, and unemployment. but what distinguishes habermas’ theory is the gathering of these manifestations of crisis — which are experienced as personal problems — in a comprehensive framework, which includes tracing complex interconnections between reproduction processes (those that maintain the social pattern) and structural components to analyze the emergence of crisis. the social and cultural contexts in which people produce and reproduce their identities is very important for generating the meaning of their lives. there is no doubt that living in the camp excludes people from these contexts in which they experienced the institutionalization of their identity, and this situation represents an existential crisis for all who live in the camp. according to habermas, “only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crisis” (habermas, 1973, p. 3). at the same time, when we speak of crisis we speak of lifeworld crisis, since lifeworld for habermas is “the milieu where actors are taking part in interactions through which they develop, confirm, and renew their membership in social groups and their own identities” (habermas, 1987, p. 139). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 9 in his analysis of the crisis, habermas (1987) gave a central signficance to the expression “the requisite quantity” when evaluating whether a crisis point has been reached. the phrase “refers to the extent, quality, and temporal dimension of the respective system performances (value, administrative decision, legitimation, and meaning)” (habermas, 1973, p. 49). from this perspective the crisis is a consequence of the fundamental needs that the respective system cannot satisfy: the economic system does not produce the requisite quantity of consumable values; or, the administrative system does not produce the requisite quantity of rational decisions; or, the legitimation system does not provide the requisite quantity of generalized motivations; or, the sociocultural system does not generate the requisite quantity of action-motivating meaning (habermas, 1973, p. 49). in his theory of communicative action, habermas (1987) expanded his analysis of legitimation crisis to formulate more generalized manifestations of crisis. he suggested three reproduction processes with complex interconnections in three domains of structural components of the lifeworld (see figure 1). thus, disturbances of cultural reproduction manifest in a loss of meaning and lead to corresponding legitimation and orientation crises. disturbances of social integration manifest themselves in social anomie and corresponding conflicts. in such cases it would be difficult to meet the need for coordination that arises with new situations from the inventory of legitimate orders. disturbances in the socialization process manifest in psychopathologies and corresponding phenomena of alienation (habermas, 1987, pp. 140–141). domain of disruption structural components dimension of evaluation culture society person cultural reproduction loss of meaning withdrawal of legitimation crisis in orientation and education rationality of knowledge social integration unsettling of collective identity anomie alienation solidarity of members socialization rupture of tradition withdrawal of motivation psychopathologies personal responsibility figure 1. manifestations of crisis when reproduction processes are disrupted. adapted from the theory of communicative action (vol. 2; figure 22, p. 143) by j. habermas, 1987, boston, ma: beacon. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 10 four manifestations of the crisis were derived from habermas’ (1987) theory in order to develop the instrument used in this study (see appendix a): 1. loss of meaning. this manifestation is measured by disturbances that prevent “continuity of tradition and coherence of knowledge sufficient for daily practice”. such disturbances include multiple losses: interest in surrounding events, hope about the future, motivation to do things, quality of life, friendships, and freedom. 2. psychological distress. this is manifested in tensions that threaten psychological security, such as feeling permanently fearful, distrustful, absent-minded, threatened, and worried, and having difficulty falling asleep. 3. anomie. this is manifested in loss of respect for moral rules, rights, and regulations, and loss of physical security, social stability, and human dignity. 4. lack of gratification. this is measured by lack of food, money, clothes, comfortable accommodation, health care, and water for drinking and cleaning. the lifeworld of the refugee camps emerged accidentally as a problematic time-space of living for the refugees who had suddenly lost everything they had built (turner, 2015). therefore, in addition to the manifestations listed above, we investigated the coping mechanisms that represent the reactions and responses of refugee youth toward their situation. these are manifested in beliefs and behaviors that reduce the stresses and tensions of the crisis, such as beliefs regarding fate and god’s will, acceptance of the status quo, helping others, prayers, hiding feelings, and convincing oneself that living in the camp is the best available option. method participants a volunteer sample of 362 syrian male refugee youth, aged 18 to 32 years, agreed to participate in this study; all were living in the za’atari camp. participants were recruited by visiting the tents of refugee families, and by using the relationships among the youth to extend the sample. sociocultural considerations led to the decision to limit the sample to males. the structure of the syrian family is still a patriarchal one, in which males are the holders of authority, and usually the primary income-earners of the household. the shame that male refugees feel at being unemployed increases the impact on them of lifeworld crisis in the camp. instrument the lifeworld crisis questionnaire consists of 32 items representing four dimensions of crisis and one dimension of coping mechanisms. each item is measured on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (to a large degree). dimensions of the scale were: anomie (a), loss of meaning (lm), psychological stress (ps), lack of gratification (g), and coping strategies (cs). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 11 to assure the content validity of the scale, 15 specialists judged the suitability of each item in measuring the dimension to which it belongs. the scale has discriminant validity; correlation coefficients between items and the subscales to which they belong were significant (p < .001). with regard to reliability, the scale has excellent internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha = .92) for the four dimensions of crisis. the total scores of cronbach’s alpha for the subscales were: a = .93; lm = .86; ps = .87; g = .87. for the coping strategies, cronbach’s alpha was about .70. results descriptive statistics (see table 1) reveal that the majority (201; 55.5%) of the syrian refugee male youth in the sample were more than 25 years old. from a syrian cultural perspective, they were of an age for employment, productivity, responsibility, and family support. hence, it may be expected that male youth in the camp are particularly vulnerable to psychological stress. table 1. research variables category n percent age less than 25 years 161 44.5 more than 25 years 201 55.5 years of living in the camp 1–3 years 93 25.7 4–7 years 269 74.3 educational attainment no education 30 8.3 elementary 84 23.2 basic 159 43.9 secondary 58 16.0 higher education 31 8.6 currently studying no 309 85.4 yes 53 14.6 currently working 188 51.9 no 174 48.1 yes all family members live in the camp no 89 24.6 yes 273 75.4 loss of family members during the war no 232 64.1 yes 130 35.9 number of family members in the camp 3 or fewer 47 13.0 4–6 156 43.1 7–9 125 34.5 10 or more 34 9.4 total 362 100.0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 12 the majority of youth in our sample (74.3%) had lived between 4 and 7 years in the camp, and thus had ample experience of living in the camp and had been affected by the hard conditions. furthermore, although the majority had basic education (43.9%), the vast majority (85.4%) did not continue their education in the camp. in a youth assessment reported by reach (2016), male youth in the camp indicated that they preferred gainful employment in order to support their families (p. 4). still, 48.1% were unemployed, which would presumably intensify their feelings of psychological stress, especially since the majority (75.4 %) were living with their entire family in the camp. the fact that almost half (43.1%) were living with 4 to 6 family members, and 34.5% were living with 7 to 9 family members, indicates that the youth bear a heavy burden of responsibility. table 2. means and standard deviations of lifeworld crisis manifestations manifestation m sd degree rank psychological stress 2.87 .862 medium 1 lack of gratification 2.72 .756 medium 2 loss of meaning 2.59 .921 medium 3 anomie 2.52 .984 medium 4 total score (1–4) 2.68 .668 medium descriptive statistics (see table 2) indicate that the total score from the 4-point scale used for the manifestations of lifeworld crisis in the camp is significant (m = 2.68, sd = 0.668). this confirms that syrian refugee male youth in the za’atari camp are indeed suffering from the four dimensions or manifestations, and we are justified in speaking about the living conditions in the camp as a crisis. for the subscales of the crisis, psychological stress ranked first (m = 2.87, sd = 0.862). this indicates that they were fearful, distrustful, absent-minded, feeling threatened, having difficulty falling asleep, and worried, a result consistent with other research (basheti et al., 2015; ghumman et al., 2016). the second-ranking manifestation of the lifeworld crisis is lack of gratification (m = 2.72, sd = 0.756), which is shown by lack of food, money, comfortable accommodation, water for drinking and cleaning, health care, and clothes (al adyleh & al zghoul, 2017; momani & alfraihat, 2016). loss of meaning is the third-ranked (m = 2.59, sd = 0.921) manifestation of the crisis. this dimension represents loss of many things: interest in surrounding events, hope about the future, motivation to do things, valued living, friendships, and freedom (crisp, 2000; egeland, 2015). fourth-ranked (m = 2.52, sd =0.984) is anomie: the loss of respected moral rules, protection, obvious order, human dignity, and respected rights and prohibitions (abdi, 2008; george, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 13 table 3. correlations between research variables and lifeworld crisis manifestations variable loss of meaning psychological stress anomie lack of gratification age pearson correlation .022 .001 .015 -.045 sig. (2-tailed) .678 .985 .773 .396 years of living in the camp pearson correlation -.201** -.133* -.324** .052 sig. (2-tailed) .000 .011 .000 .322 educational attainment pearson correlation -.168** -.281** -.152** -.291** sig. (2-tailed) .001 .000 .004 .000 currently studying pearson correlation -.024 -.062 -.019 .003 sig. (2-tailed) .643 .237 .719 .954 currently working pearson correlation .039 .001 .018 .024 sig. (2-tailed) .463 .982 .731 .650 all family members live in the camp pearson correlation .090 .049 .059 .123* sig. (2-tailed) .086 .353 .260 .019 loss of family members during the war pearson correlation .071 .048 -.056 .015 sig. (2-tailed) .177 .361 .287 .770 number of family members in the camp pearson correlation .003 .047 -.044 .040 sig. (2-tailed) .955 .375 .407 .448 note: n = 362 * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) results revealed several correlations between research variables and the dimensions of the lifeworld crisis in the camp (see table 3). the more years the youth had spent living in the camp, the lower were their assessments of loss of meaning, psychological stress, and anomie. the higher their educational attainment, the lower their assessments of the four dimensions of the lifeworld crisis in the camp. moreover, length of camp residency and living with all family members correlated with higher assessments by the youth of their lack of gratification. table 4. means and standard deviations of coping mechanisms coping mechanism m sd degree rank praying hard for a good ending to the situation 3.96 0.186 high 1 retaining the belief that i would return home 3.56 0.765 high 2 accepting the situation because it embodies god’s will 3.49 0.891 high 3 helping other refugees in the camp 3.45 0.758 high 4 convincing myself that the camp is currently the best alternative for us 3.26 0.890 high 5 doing my best to control and hide my feelings 2.93 1.030 medium 6 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 14 coping mechanisms (total) 3.44 0.508 high as shown in table 4, the coping mechanism the syrian youth used most was “praying hard for a good ending to the situation” (m = 3.96, sd = 0.186). in the second rank was “retaining the belief that i would return home” (m= 3.56, sd = 0.765). the third most-used mechanism was “accepting the situation because it embodies god’s will” (m = 3.49, sd = 0.891). thus, consistent with mrayan’s 2016 study, our results indicate that religious faith played a major role in building resilience among syrian refugee male youth in the za’atari camp. the fourth mechanism used was, “helping other refugees in the camp” (m = 3.45, sd = 0.758). the fifth mechanism was “convincing myself that the camp is currently the best alternative for us” (m = 3.26, sd = 0.890). although these five coping mechanisms were ranked preferentially, they were all estimated highly (m=3.44, sd=0.508) by the syrian refugee male youth, indicating that they used these mechanisms frequently in building their resilience. the lowest-ranked coping mechanism was “doing my best to control and hide my feelings” (m = 2.93, sd = 1.030). table 5 shows that there were several correlations between the research variables and the coping mechanisms. older participants, gave a higher ranking to helping other refugees and convincing oneself that the camp is the best current alternative. more years of living in the camp correlate with higher rankings for accepting the situation as an expression of god’s will. moreover, the more the participants were studying, the lower they ranked helping other refugees, convincing oneself that the camp is currently the best alternative, and doing their best to control and hide their feelings. discussion the findings show that syrian refugee male youth were undergoing lifeworld crises in the za’atari camp: the four manifestations of crisis measured in this study are integrated and interrelated in the lifeworlds of those in the camp. although participants ranked the four manifestations hierarchically, the results of this study direct attention to the camp as a crisis in itself and the four dimensions as a holistic crisis that violates and threatens identity, human dignity, freedom, and existential security. the longer youth remain in the camp, the less humanity and dignity they feel. although they are engaged in helping other refugees, and see living in the camp as a manifestation of god’s will, they recognize that living in the camp is not consistent with human dignity. believing in god’s will does not mean that they are satisfied about their situstion as a whole. the findings of this study are consistent with other studies in the field (al adyleh & al zghoul, 2017; beiser, 1999; egeland, 2015; farwell, 2001; liebkind, 1996; momani & al-fraihat, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 15 table 5. pearson correlation coefficients between research variables and coping mechanisms variable praying hard will return home accepting the situation helping other refugees camp is the best alternative controlling and hiding feelings coping mechanisms age pearson correlation .096 .045 .057 .128* .158** -.001 .111* sig. (2-tailed) .068 .388 .279 .014 .003 .990 .034 years of living in the camp pearson correlation -.012 .215** -.009 .016 .024 .262** .159** sig. (2-tailed) .827 .000 .862 .767 .646 .000 .002 educational attainment pearson correlation .074 -.125* -.020 -.029 -.087 -.161** -.124* sig. (2-tailed) .160 .018 .709 .582 .100 .002 .019 currently studying pearson correlation .038 -.042 -.057 -.143** -.140** -.154** -.153** sig. (2-tailed) .472 .427 .279 .006 .008 .003 .004 currently working pearson correlation .097 .040 .036 .129* .083 .054 .101 sig. (2-tailed) .067 .450 .501 .014 .115 .307 .055 all family members in the camp pearson correlation .097 .110* .056 .026 .060 .061 .097 sig. (2-tailed) .066 .036 .288 .621 .252 .244 .065 loss of family members during the war pearson correlation -.072 .076 -.057 -.080 -.040 .022 -.020 sig. (2-tailed) .171 .147 .281 .128 .452 .673 .700 number of family members in the camp pearson correlation .058 .071 -.067 -.025 .010 .104* .039 sig. (2-tailed) .271 .177 .201 .632 .849 .048 .457 note: n = 362 * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 16 although psychological stress was assessed as being at the first rank of the crisis, it is also a reflection of the other dimensions of the crisis. in the camp, participants encountered many existential problems capable of causing the symptoms of psychological stress that they experienced. its manifestations included anger, fearfulness, nervousness, difficulty falling or staying asleep, hopelessness about the future, and spells of terror or panic (basheti et al., 2015). the longer the youth had been living in the camp, the lower their rankings of the dimensions of the lifeworld crisis, except that the ranking for lack of gratification remained high especially when family members were also in the camp. this could indicate that they were to some extent adapted to the conditions of the camp, but that prolonged lack of gratification was still a stressor for them, especially when they saw that their family members were suffering and struggling to achieve their basic needs. the majority of syrian youth in the za’atari camp were from the dara’a governorate, just across jordan’s nearby northern border with syria. this proximity to home, together with their previous familiarity with jordan, mitigated their stress to some extent. furthermore, the majority of the youth had cell phones and were able to maintain contact with their families, relatives, and other refugees outside the camp. these contacts were very important as they provided the youth with networks of social and psychological support (sultani, 2012). the results indicate religious faith was at the first rank as a coping mechanism for the syrian male youth in the za’atari camp. using religiosity and spirituality to cope is very common among refugees everywhere (goodman, 2004; khawaja et al., 2008; mrayan, 2016). the syrian youth refugees are all muslims; therefore, the precepts of islam are at the core of their culture and everyday life. this culture is religious and fatalistic, so it is not surprising that prayers would be the first-ranked coping mechanism. furthermore, the syrian male youth participants believed that their stay in the camp would be temporary and they would ultimately return to their homes. this belief worked as a coping mechanism, even though returning home was not immediately possible. the older the syrian male youth and the higher their educational attainment, the higher they tended to rank the coping mechanisms of helping other refugees and of convincing themselves that the camp was the best alternative for them. it could be that older and more educated male youth are more likely than others to think logically and rationally. they know that they cannot return to syria because of the war and the hard living experienced by other refugees who have returned; at the same time, they have no other place to go and therefore cannot leave the camp. helping each other, making friends of acquaintances, and accepting the status quo thus served to minimize tensions and suffering (sultani, 2012). furthermore, the longer youth live in the camp, the more they become aware of the complexities of the situation and the fact that it is not in their power to bring about a change in their circumstances. in this problematic situation, the coping mechanism adopted by our participants was to attribute being in the camp to god’s will. this type of thinking is deeply rooted international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 17 in islamic culture: people learn to accept hardships and events beyond their control by regarding them as determined by fate. conclusion for syrian youth, life in a refugee camp includes the manifestations of crisis noted above: loss of meaning, psychological distress, anomie, and lack of gratification. this means that living in a camp is not an appropriate solution for refugees and violates human rights and dignity. moreover, living in a camp constrains young people’s energy and productivity because refugee camps don’t include facilities and empowerment for youth to be productive. although the crisis of living will not be eliminated completely as long as youth stay at the camp, supporting and empowering them will reduce the impact of the crisis, and should be regarded as an interim solution for the situation of these youth. in future research on syrian refugee youth, there is a need to focus on female youth and compare their situation with that of their male counterparts. furthermore, the research sample should be collected from all refugee camps in jordan, not just the za’atari camp. in addition, research should compare the manifestations of crisis among youth in camps and those outside camps. the research findings suggest several recommendations for authorities and practitioners working with syrian youth in refugee camps. first, these youth should be involved in training workshops that enable them to engage in productive projects. second, camp authorities should exert more effort to control the camp and enforce order and security. third, in the light of the findings of this study, practitioners and authorities should bear in mind that youth in the camp should be supported with regard to basic needs and facilities that reflect human rights, such as sufficient food, water, clothes, and playgrounds. furthermore, youth should be empowered to continue their education through being involved in programs that can provide ongoing educational support. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 18 references abdi, a. m. 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(june,2014). the impact of syrian refugees on jordan. paper presented at the conference of humanitarian relief between islam & international law, al al-bayt university, mafraq, jordan. soguk, n. (1999). states and strangers: refugees and displacements of statecraft. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. sultani, g. (2012). the case of syrian refugees in the za’atari refugee camp, jordan [field study report]. york, uk: post-war reconstruction & development unit, university of york. turner, s. (2015). what is a refugee camp? explorations of the limits and effects of the camp. journal of refugee studies, 29(2), 139–148. doi:10.1093/jrs/fev024 yazgan, p., utku, d. e., & sirkeci, i. (2015). editorial: syrian crisis and migration. migration letters, 12(3), 181–192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fev024 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 22 appendix a questionnaire 1. age 2. years of living in the camp 3. educational attainment 4. are you currently studying? 5. are you currently working? 6. do all your family members live in the camp? 7. did you lose any of your family members in the war in syria? 8. number of family members in the camp 1. loss of meaning 1. i do not give attention to the events around me in the camp and outside the camp 2. i do not have ambitions regarding my future 3. i do not have motivation to do anything inside the camp 4. i feel depressed about the quality of life in the camp 5. i do not have motivation to make new friendships in the camp 6. nothing is worth living for in the camp 2. psychological distress 1. i feel fearful permanently 2. i always feel distrust of everything around me 3. i feel continuously absent-minded 4. i have difficulty falling asleep 5. i feel worried about my family members in the camp 6. i feel that i am threatened in the camp 3. anomie 1. there is a lack of respected moral rules in the camp 2. there is no protection from crime in the camp 3. there is no obvious order in the camp 4. living in the camp causes a loss of human dignity 5. nothing ensures people's rights in the camp 6. normally prohibited behaviors become legitimized in the camp 4. gratification 1. there is not enough food available for my family members 2. we do not have enough money to cover our basic needs 3. the tents provided are not appropriate for human living 4. the tents do not protect us from cold in winter and heat in summer 5. residents in the camp lack health care services 6. we face difficulties in obtaining drinking water 7. there is not enough water for cleaning and personal hygiene 8. we do not have enough appropriate clothes for winter and summer international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 3–23 23 5. coping mechanisms 1. praying hard for a good ending to the situation 2. retaining the belief that i will return home 3. accepting the situation because it embodies god’s will 4. helping other refugees in the camp 5. convincing myself that the camp is currently the best alternative for us 6. doing my best to control and hide my feelings photo interviews with children: relating the visual and the verbal from a participation perspective international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 629 photo interviews with children: relating the visual and the verbal from a participation perspective ulrike zartler abstract: the integration of visual prompts into qualitative interviews is regarded as a useful tool in attempting to give children the possibility of verbalizing memories and describing abstract issues. furthermore, photo interviews are supposed to promote children’s participatory research experiences. less attention has been paid to how visual and verbal elements may be interrelated throughout the research process. drawing on data from an austrian empirical study with 50 children aged 10 years, the objective of this paper is to describe the combination of visual and verbal data in detail. special emphasis is put on identifying factors that influence children’s participation. the potential and limitations of photo interviews as a participative method of conducting research with children are elaborated. although this approach does not per se decrease power differentials, enhance participation, or respect children’s agency, it has a high potential to facilitate such action, if applied carefully, critically, and conscientiously. keywords: children, photo interviews, qualitative interviews, participation, agency ulrike zartler, ph.d. is an assistant professor of family sociology at the university of vienna, department of sociology, rooseveltplatz 2, a-1090 vienna, austria. e-mail: ulrike.zartler@univie.ac.at international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 630 research with children is often based on qualitative interviews. integrating visual prompts into these interviews is regarded as a useful tool, as photo interviews yield considerable advantages. they support children in verbalizing memories and describing abstract issues, are able to increase children’s engagement with scientific studies, contribute to a pleasant atmosphere, and are assumed to support participative elements in research with children (cappello, 2005; clark-ibáñez, 2004; cook & hess, 2007; croghan, griffin, hunter, & phoenix, 2008; eldén, 2012; thomson, 2008). however, less attention has been placed on the question of how to relate the visual and the verbal throughout the research process. drawing on data from an austrian empirical study1 with 50 10-year-old children, i explore the potential of this method and describe how photos can be used in combination with an open, storytelling interview method. the aims of this paper are twofold: (a) to provide a detailed description of the ways in which visual and verbal elements were related in a photo interview study, and (b) to explore whether and how a thorough combination and consideration of both parts throughout the research process can contribute to participatory aspects. photo interviews in research with children research with children is often based on qualitative interviews, which are regarded as an adequate tool to gain direct access to children’s perspectives (christensen & james, 2008; fraser, lewis, kellett, & robinson, 2004; greig, taylor, & mackay, 2007; qvortrup, corsaro, & honig, 2009). yet interviews also have disadvantages: it may be challenging for children to verbalize memories or to find the right words to describe abstract processes and circumstances vis-à-vis an adult researcher; children may tire quickly during interviews; and it may prove difficult to keep their interest for a longer period of time (cappello, 2005; fuhs, 2000; heinzel, 2000). one way of overcoming these difficulties is to give children the possibility of visualization. over the past few years, it has become increasingly popular in qualitative childhood research to combine verbal and visual data. the method of incorporating a photograph into a research interview has been termed photo-elicitation interview (clark-ibáñez, 2004; harper, 2002), participatory photo interview (jorgenson & sullivan, 2009; kolb, 2008), autophotography (worth & adair, 1972; ziller, 1990), autodriven interview (clark, 1999), or photovoice (wang & burris, 1997; wang, ling, & ling, 1996). while it is common to use photographeror researcher-produced visual prompts for interviews with adults (harper, 2001; schwartz, 1989, 1992), it is especially recommended to use participant-produced pictures in research with children, and thereby invite children themselves to give insights into different spheres of their lives (cappello, 2005; clark-ibáñez, 2004; cook & hess, 2007; croghan et al., 2008; eldén, 2012; harper, 2002; thomson, 2008). photographs or drawings are 1 the research team consisted of the author who was one of the project leaders, two other researchers (andrea marhali, johannes starkbaum), and the second project leader rudolf richter. the study was funded by the austrian federal ministry of economy, family and youth. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 631 applied for this purpose, the latter appearing to be particularly adequate for younger children (backett-milburn & mckie, 1999; punch, 2002a). the possibilities of combining visual and verbal elements in photo interviews with children cover a wide spectrum. a reduced number of pictures may be employed as a teaser that helps the respondents start to talk, while all produced photos may be used during the interview with the aim to talk in detail about each picture. photos may be pre-selected by the researcher – in combination with specifically prepared questions regarding each picture – or alternately be selected by the respondent. furthermore, different importance is assigned to the different elements: while some researchers regard it as crucial to discuss participant-produced pictures with the children who created the photos (white, bushin, carpena-méndez, & ní laoire, 2010), others ask children to write short comments on each photo explaining why they took it and what they intended the picture to say (darbyshire, macdougall, & schiller, 2005). the principal benefits said to be associated with photo interviews in research with children can be summarized as follows: 1. relating to pictures during the interview is intended to enrich the process of reflection and to support children in verbalizing their thoughts. images are assumed to evoke other and deeper elements of human consciousness than do words, and therefore to enhance the process of remembering (clark-ibáñez, 2004; harper, 2002). the use of photographs allows respondents to reflect on associations they would not see as related without a visual template. thus, the images may trigger a relating to content that otherwise may remain poorly understood, overlooked, or even concealed from the researcher (collier, 1967; mannay, 2010; schwartz, 1989). recently, photo interviews have also been shown to be fruitful in the exploration of particularly challenging research issues, such as the perspectives of young refugees (mcbrien & day, 2012) or sensitive aspects of children’s family lives (zartler & richter, 2014). 2. the use of photos and the process of taking them are supposed to be amusing for children (cook & hess, 2007). thus, photo interviews are regarded as a method that may increase children’s interest in participating in a study, intensify their engagement with a scientific research project, and maintain their interest throughout the research process (cappello, 2005; clark-ibáñez, 2007; croghan et al., 2008; einarsdóttir, 2005; harper, 2002; newman, woodcock, & dunham, 2006; white et al., 2010). 3. the incorporation of photos into research interviews with children is argued to contribute to a pleasant atmosphere for interviews. talking about a visual prompt may also ease the strangeness of being interviewed by an adult, as this provides a common focus for the interviewer and the respondent (clark-ibáñez, 2004; cook & hess, 2007; wuggenig, 1990). 4. the use of participant-produced photographs is particularly assumed to support participative elements in research with children, to enhance research that regards children as active and competent participants, and therefore to decrease power differentials between interviewers and respondents (cappello, 2005; packard, 2008; pink, 2013). when children take photos themselves, they are in the role of active experts who can explain their self-produced photographs to the researcher(s) (cook & international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 632 hess, 2007; hill, 1997). respondents have a clear, tangible prompt in preparing for the interview, which gives them the opportunity to reflect on the research topic beforehand. this may balance previous background knowledge of the researcher and the researched. moreover, photo interviews are often particularly regarded as considering, or even promoting, children’s competency and agency. these are essential topics in research with children (eder & fingerson, 2001; lange & mierendorff, 2009; valentine, 2011), as they are increasingly regarded as persons who actively shape their own lives and their social surroundings (james, 2009; james, jenks, & prout, 1998; kuczynski, 2003; morrow, 2003; shehan, 1999). in accordance with this perspective, a debate on children’s participation in social science research has emerged, and a considerable body of literature has been produced with regard to the need for a critical examination of the ways in which children’s participation is theorized and practiced in the social sciences (christensen & james, 2008; gallacher & gallagher, 2008; hill, davis, prout, & tisdall, 2004; holland, renold, ross, & hillman, 2010; james, 2007; powell & smith, 2009; thomas & o'kane, 1998). in the framework of this discussion, it has been shown that research using participatory elements is also often and largely managed by researchers and does not necessarily “empower” children (gallacher & gallagher, 2008; holland et al., 2010; punch, 2002b; thomson, 2007). in particular, a need to conceptualize participation as a dialogic encounter has been expressed, promoting a shift from listening to children to establishing dialogues in research (cooper, nazzari, kon kam king, & pettigrew, 2013; graham & fitzgerald, 2010; neale, 2002), while considering children’s views on participative research methods (hill, 2006; warming, 2011). furthermore, research phases that are especially challenging with regard to children’s participation have been identified. one such example is the recruiting process, as researchers’ access to children is usually tightly controlled, and children mostly cannot be approached directly (alderson, 2005; sinclair, 2004). as a consequence, particular groups of children are already excluded from research before fieldwork has even been initiated. scholarly work on the potential exclusion of particular (groups of) children has thus been on the increase (powell & smith, 2009; roberts, 2008). although photo interviews provide considerable advantages and are widely used in research with children, less attention has been paid to the question of how visual and verbal elements may be related throughout the research process. responding to this challenge, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, as based on an austrian study, to describe in detail the ways in which visual and verbal elements can be exactly related; and second, to explore whether and how a combination and consideration of visual and verbal elements may contribute to children’s participation in social science research. data and methods the present study is empirically based on photo interviews with 50 austrian children aged 10 years. the study aimed to explore various aspects of family life and included such topics as family activities, organisation and challenges of everyday family life (e.g., family time, children’s participation in family decisions), relationships between family members, and attitudes towards different family forms. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 633 this stands in relation to scholarly work analyzing children’s lives and relationships within their families (morrow, 1998; rigg & pryor, 2007; smart, 2006). the children took photos within their families and during leisure time. these photos then provided the basis for the interviews. additionally, interviews based on topic guides were carried out with the children’s parents, and at least one parent was interviewed for every child (71 parents in total; these data are not considered for this paper). the parents did not see the photos that their children produced in the framework of this study. if parents asked questions about the photos or speculated about contents, the interviewers referred to confidentiality. the recruitment of participants was based on initial contacts with children in a classroom setting. twenty boys and 30 girls were interviewed. the participating children had various background characteristics in relation to family forms, social background, migration status, and parental working conditions. the respondents were interviewed at school, as we were allowed to conduct the interviews during school hours and to use schoolrooms the respondents were familiar with. the interview duration was between 30 minutes and one hour. we used an interview type that brings together photo interviews and semistructured interviews based on topic guides. the children were asked to take pictures with a disposable camera according to a specific schedule, covering the following categories: 1. who is part of my family? 2. what i like about my family. 3. what i don’t like about my family. 4. how we spend our time during the week. 5. how we spend our time on weekends. these categories were formulated by the research team and were based on our experiences during the pretest. the categories were considered to cover a broad range of topics with regard to children’s families, while giving the participating children the allowance to choose the subjects of their photos relatively autonomously. the participating children received an instruction sheet with information on how to handle the camera, the number of 27 photos per camera, and the categories to take pictures of. the respondents were requested to produce at least one picture per category. we provided the children with a timetable and smiley-face stickers that were used to mark completed categories on their instruction sheets. our intention in using photographs was not, as clark-ibáñez (2004) mentions, to give the children the opportunity to “present the very best parts of their lives” (p. 1508), but rather to establish a broad, kaleidoscopic insight into their family lives (holland, 1997; mason & tipper, 2008). in sum, the study comprises 1,030 photos, 992 of them being useable (see below). their manifest content was analysed and described, including also children’s comments. all interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. data analysis was based on the transcripts of all interviews, combining a grounded theory approach and content analysis (froschauer & lueger, 2003; strauss & corbin, 1990; see also zartler, 2010, 2014). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 634 combination of the visual and the verbal in photo interviews with children the following section explores how the combination of visual and verbal parts in photo interviews with children – along with participatory aspects of this research method – can be pursued throughout the research process. its aim is to present in detail how the research was conducted in this respect. preparing for interviews one indispensable precondition for the combination of visual and verbal elements in research with children is to ensure wide access to the generation of the visual parts, and to create conditions for all children to participate. while interviews are usually open to all participants who are able to express their thoughts verbally, access may be limited for methods requiring technology, such as photo elicitation on the basis of participant-produced photos. in the study at hand, it was essential to consider in detail how the interviews should take place and to provide enough time for detailed pre-interview considerations within the research team. one main concern was to avoid excluding particular children in choosing participant-produced photos as an approach. factors that need to be taken into account in this regard are the availability of technical equipment, children’s technical competencies and visual literacy, as well as adequate ways of recruiting respondents. in terms of available technical equipment, the use of mobile phones for photoshooting was considered as one option when designing the study. in the course of predata collection conversations with children, teachers, and parents in several schools, it became apparent that some ten-year-old children would possibly be excluded; for example, those with technology-averse parents or those with a disadvantaged socioeconomic background who do not have camera-equipped devices of their own. researchers are thus called to explore ways to provide children with technical equipment in order to give them a chance to participate in such settings. another essential consideration addresses children’s technical competencies and knowledge, which may vary within a group of ten-year-olds. the type of camera to use is an important decision in photo interview projects with children. disposable cameras are practical, as they require little technical experience and training, are easy to handle, and are available at low cost. as disposable cameras are designed for adults, some models are too complicated for use by children, do not fit well with their anatomy, and require too much physical strength or distinctive fine motor skills. we checked different types of cameras in a pre-test with children and selected the preferable model. during initial contacts at school (see below), we showed this camera to the children, let them try to take pictures, and provided them with detailed information on their photo-shooting task (e.g., categories to be portrayed, limited number of photos on the film, use of the flash). it was of particular importance to remind the children that the use of analogue cameras made it impossible to take an unlimited number of photos or to delete photos once they were made. all participating children had the opportunity to test and practice the camera handling together with the research team. seven to 10 days after distribution, the research team collected the cameras. the photos were developed, and each child’s set of photos was kept in a separate envelope. the analysis was prepared by numbering every single picture with international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 635 the child’s code and a consecutive number for every single photo. this was important in order to avoid confusion between different respondents’ pictures during the analysis. in sum, the 50 interviewed children produced 1,030 photos. the photo-taking action was very successful in terms of useable pictures, which may be related to the children’s ability to test the cameras beforehand under the researchers’ guidance, as described above. only 38 photos (4% of all pictures) were not useable, mainly due to missing flash or unintended pressing of the release. nearly 1,000 photos displayed recognizable motives and were finally used for analysis. on average, every participating child produced 21 photos. another matter affecting possibilities of participation is children’s visual literacy and expressive ability. commenting on a photo requires the ability to describe the picture and to verbalize one’s related thoughts. from a developmental point of view, 10-year-old children are supposed to have acquired these abilities (birney & sternberg, 2011; denham et al., 2011; piaget, 1972). furthermore, at the age of 10, children in the austrian educational system have spent four years together with their classmates and are thus in a familiar surrounding. therefore, it was supposed that both children’s abilities and the educational framework would render the classroom setting with 10-year-old respondents particularly suitable. nevertheless, combined with the strangeness of talking to an adult researcher, it may intimidate children to perform the described tasks during an interview situation. thus photo elicitation – though not an exclusively verbally oriented method – favours children who master verbal expression well, and may exclude children who have problems in adequately applying speech for communication (morris, 2003; rabiee, sloper, & beresford, 2005). these factors are difficult for the research team to influence, but can be eased by attempting to create a comfortable atmosphere (eder & fingerson, 2001; lewis, 2009; ribbens mccarthy, holland, & gillies, 2003). the ways of contacting and recruiting children for a photo interview study are also related to their possibilities of participation. we preferred to approach the children directly instead of via their parents. in accordance with legal and ethical requirements, parents as well as school authorities were first briefly informed about the contents of the study and gave their permission to contact children at school. the respondents were approached in a classroom setting (for a detailed description, see zartler, 2010) where the research team presented the planned study. we informed the children about the research contents and their task of taking pictures according to a specific schedule. the children were encouraged to ask questions regarding the study and to share their thoughts about participating in the research. children were in turn requested to pass on an information sheet to their parents, which contained details of the study, contact dates, and a permission slip to sign if they agreed to participate. the children thus invited their parents to take part in the study. this worked out well, as the children were enthusiastic about participating in a research project and producing photos for this purpose (zartler, 2010). while lewis (2009) stated that children would prefer to be approached by a parent rather than a stranger, our experience was that children appreciated being contacted directly. the research team was in contact with the children several times before the interview took place: when presenting the study, when distributing the cameras, and when collecting the cameras. this was advantageous, as the children became familiar with the research team. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 636 summing up these experiences in preparing photo interviews with children, it is particularly important to provide carefully pre-tested, child-friendly technical equipment and comprehensible instructions for handling the cameras, as well as to create an adequate interview atmosphere. otherwise, a child’s ability to participate in such a research project is limited. carrying out interviews in the study at hand, the interviews were structured by the respondents according to the photos, with the researchers always bearing in mind the topic guide covering the principal themes of the study (see above). after children had allocated the photos to the different categories, we let the photos thematically guide the interview. interviewers did not ask questions, but left it up to the respondents to determine the issues and the level of detail. as the topic guide and the instruction sheets for taking photos were structured similarly, it was relatively easy to consider all main topics during the interviews. if children elaborated in detail on specific aspects, their narrations were always prioritized against an attempt to collect elaborations of similar length on every topic. from our experience, encouraging children to engage in a narrative conversation went together well with the more constrained categorizing of photos, as most children liked the categorization part during the interview. all remaining questions were asked in the last part of the interview once the children had completed their accounts. this method combines narration-based interviews with topical interviews. it gives children a scope and offers them the opportunity to put a focus, to talk about their own agendas, to choose narrations independently, and to consider their own relevance systems (flick, 2014; lamnek, 1995). the interviews were conducted approximately one week after the children had finished the photo-taking phase. when starting the interview, we first asked every child about his or her experiences with taking the pictures. in general, the participating children answered that they liked the photo-taking phase and were very engaged in this task. they took their job seriously and often found it difficult to choose the subject of their photos and to decide about the next picture to be taken in order to complete the instruction sheet. most children reported that they felt important when handling the camera and contributing to a scientific study. some of them complained that the given time for producing the photos was too short, but in general the interviewed children did not report any problems in understanding the instructions and performing their photo-shooting tasks. from the interviews with parents, we could reconstruct that parents knew about the photo-taking schedule and that some parents reminded their children to take photos in order to finish their photo-shooting task. however, no evidence for a parental influence on the photographed topics could be found. neither children nor parents in their interviews mentioned resistance that photos were taken at home and in private situations. however, a selective effect was evident, as parents who had reservations about the photo-taking action did not give their consent to participate in the study. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 637 we handed the photos over to the child, referring to matters of confidentiality and emphasizing that the parents would not see the pictures during their interviews. at the time of the interview, the researchers had not looked at the pictures, but had seen only the reverse side of the photos when numbering them (see above). this was considered important in order to avoid researchers’ advantage in knowledge and to attribute the power of selection to the children. respondents were told that the research team kept digital copies for the analysis. the photos were regarded as creative materials that belonged to the children personally and were only to be used by the research team for scientific reasons. the children were then asked to allocate the photos to the five categories listed on the instruction sheet. it was clearly explained to the children that the researchers did not regard any photo as unfitting or inappropriate. all taken photos, also the few blurred ones, provided the basis for selection, and children could freely decide on the specific photos they wanted to comment on. the children could choose to use only a selection of photos for narrations, which they usually did. the respondents were also free to comment on the pictures, their significance, and the reasons for creating them in a narrative way during the interview, thus producing detailed conversations with some children about their thoughts when taking the photos. most respondents liked the allocation task and categorized the photos rather quickly, often within several minutes. several challenges were connected with this interview phase. at times, children had difficulties remembering the category for which a particular photo had been produced; some respondents allocated one photo twice because they wanted a picture to be present in more than one category. this was accepted, but the interviewer tried to reconstruct whether children elaborated on a preferred categorization during the interview. it is important to notice that, in children’s narrations, photos were not exclusively used in connection to the category they had been allocated to. the pictures often rather had the function of a trigger that initiated narrations on other topics than those that were manifestly displayed (see zartler & richter, 2014). after the allocation task, the children usually explained some photos in detail, whereas other pictures were grouped together and commented on in an overview style. most respondents started by using portraits of their family members and friends in order to make their social embedment explicit to the interviewer, and then elaborated on the photos representing activities in their spare time and on weekends. the children could choose the topics they wanted to elaborate on and determine the levels of detail. the interviewers listened carefully and encouraged the children to speak freely and to comment on the photos in an open and storytelling way. from time to time, the respondents were asked to refer to the number on the back of their photos, a piece of information that was important in order to facilitate the allocation of photos to verbal categories during the analysis. in most cases, the children made lively comments on the photos portraying their family members, which often evoked detailed narrations about the persons displayed. other issues that were elaborated on vividly were family activities. yet the photos not only supported the children in verbalizing their thoughts but also stimulated narrations about sensitive topics, such as critical aspects of family life, international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 638 negative views towards family members, criticisms of parental behaviour, or violent disputes among siblings (zartler & richter, 2014). these are issues that usually are difficult to address in interviews with children. at the end of the interviews, the children were asked about their motivations for participating in the study. the reasons for the children’s eagerness to participate in the study were their general interest in scientific work and the content of the project, but also their enthusiasm about taking photos and explaining them to the researchers. the interviewed children appreciated their active involvement in data production and the adults’ confidence in their abilities to handle the camera. analyzing interviews detailed interview protocols were prepared after conducting the interviews, containing information on the interview atmosphere, the course of conversation, specificities of the children or the photos. these protocols were essential in the process of analysis, as they also included references to the photos which made it easier to relate the relevant pictures to the children’s verbal comments. during the analysis, visual and verbal elements are closely interlaced, as it is difficult to determine what children mean without knowing the pictures they refer to. reciprocally, it is nearly impossible to analyze photos that were taken in such a research context without making connections to the verbal parts of the interview. for example, a portrait of a family member only becomes meaningful in the analysis when researchers have knowledge about that person’s relationship with and significance to the interviewed child, the reasons for portraying this person, et cetera. nevertheless, methods of analysis usually concentrate either on verbal or on visual data. in the present study, we continually related the photos to the verbal transcripts during the interpretation process. we returned to the pictures when analyzing the interviews on an individual level and performed a descriptive analysis of all photos and all interviews, constantly comparing and relating verbal and visual material. as an initial step, the pictures produced by each respondent were categorized and allocated to the five main categories, according to the children’s accounts. the interview text was intensively used in the course of categorization. although the pictures could sometimes be allocated to several categories at a first glance, the interview transcripts supported the researchers in determining the category a particular photo was produced for. in the end, every photo was only coded once, in close relation to the interview text. the main criterion for categorization was children’s allocation of photos to the categories during the interview, which was never overruled by the researchers’ interpretations. although most children had allocated the main part of their photos to categories, some photos remained uncategorized. these photos were then allocated by the researchers during the analysis. thus, every single photo was categorized – a large majority by the interviewed children, and the remainder by the research team. secondly, sub-categories were developed, emerging from the photos in order to make the description more precise and detailed. for example, the category “who is international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 639 part of my family?” was divided into close relatives (mother, father, brother, sister), extended family (grandparents, uncle, aunt, cousins), and others (pets, friends, childcare persons who were considered as being part of the family). subsequently, it was explored (a) how many children took photos of a specific (sub-)category and (b) how many photos were taken and allocated to a specific (sub-)category. the categorization was carried out by the author together with one other project team member, whenever possible relying on children’s narrations and allocations. constant comparison was used in order to check the validity of categorization. the categorization was followed by a description of the content and the motives, relying on all photos allocated to a specific (sub-)category: what exactly did the children photograph? in which ways were the different categories presented (e.g., family members together on one photo, individual portraits of every family member, photos with mixed groups of relatives, et cetera)? which similarities and differences could be identified? how did the children explain their motivations for producing the photos for this specific (sub-)category? some questions, in particular the last one, could only be answered in relation to the interview text. the analysis revealed that a major part of the photos referred to (a) children’s family members and friends, (b) children’s living and housing situations (their own room, their house, parks in the vicinity), and (c) activities within the family, (e.g., playing, going on excursions, pursuing hobbies, cuddling with their parents, helping in their parents’ business, et cetera). table 1 gives an overview of the percentage of pictures that were taken with regard to each category. table 1 percentage of photos allocated to a category category % who is part of my family? 44 how we spend our time during the week. 29 how we spend our time on weekends. 15 what i like about my family. 9 what i don’t like about my family. 3 based on n = 992 photos with identifiable motives the most unpopular category was “what i don’t like about my family.” only half of the children took photographs on this issue, although we had asked them explicitly to take at least one picture for each category. thus, the request to picture critical aspects of family life might have overburdened a considerable proportion of the participants, perhaps due to its sensitivity, as they found it difficult to capture their feelings of dislike in a visible format, or simply because they did not feel like taking such pictures. most children who did not take any photos regarding this matter argued that they liked everything about their family. several children who had not taken photos on this subject used others (e.g., portraits of their parents) to elaborate on critical aspects regarding family members during the interview. in general, the interviewers tried to address categories that were not represented on the photos. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 640 discussion: aspects of children’s participation during the research process as explained above, photo interviews are often regarded as a method that is particularly effective in enhancing children’s participation. based on the experiences gathered in the study presented here, i argue that it is crucial to consider this important issue throughout the entire research process and that an adequate combination of visual and verbal elements in preparing, guiding, and analyzing the interviews may facilitate children’s possibilities for participation. photo interviews with participant-produced pictures, in particular, have the potential to support participative elements in research with children. in the study at hand, children felt acknowledged due to their active involvement in data production, and appreciated the fact that adult researchers relied on their competence to handle the cameras, to take the photos according to the specified schedule, and to act as competent narrators during the interview. this may support an empowering research experience, as the children explained the photographs taken in their own life spheres to the interviewers. they had the opportunity to make their own perspectives explicit to an adult researcher. when using photo interviews, the ways for participation are developed at a very early stage of the research, even before approaching the respondents, which require detailed reflections within the research team. during the preparation phase, it is of importance not to exclude particular (groups of) children by designing the whole research setting as openly as possible. nevertheless, even the most thorough consideration of research methods, respondents’ characteristics, and recruitment strategies cannot overcome differences between children, (e.g., with regard to verbal abilities or their willingness to share their thoughts during an interview). such variations were also noticeable in the study at hand: some children talked more eloquently while others remained relatively silent, and the photos were of differing quality. in the end, the research team endeavored to treat all contributions equally. during the research process, it was evident that the “quality” of photos or interviews could not be judged at first glance. at times, for example, photos stimulated narrations on issues that were not displayed, and silence spoke louder than words (see zartler & richter, 2014). children’s active participation is also imperative when conducting the interview. while in this study, specifications were made for the production of the photos, the interviews were structured in accordance with the children’s conceptions and their preferences in talking about the pictures. rather than asking children to provide written comments on their photos, we argue in favor of integrating the participant-produced photos into a research interview and encouraging the children to comment on them in an open and storytelling way. the consideration of children’s participation during the analysis of interviews presents a particular challenge, as in most research studies their active involvement is usually not foreseen during this phase. thus, in a setting in which researchers analyze the interview transcripts among themselves, children are excluded. due to financial restrictions, it was not possible to integrate children directly into the analysis. nevertheless, the children participated indirectly by discussing the data they had international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 641 collected and categorizing their pictures. the researchers then re-coded the photos, always prioritizing the children’s own interpretations. to the best of my knowledge, settings that include children in analysis meetings are relatively rare in scientific research (for an exception, see thomas & o'kane, 1998), though more often used in assessment processes on a policy level or in terms of strongly policy-related research settings (sinclair, 2004). attractive possibilities in order to further children’s participation during this research stage would be to analyze parts of the interviews together, or to organize a discussion for feedback on the results with children who participated in the research. as such assessments ideally include several respondents, an important consideration is to guarantee anonymity in order not to expose particular individuals. furthermore, the composition of such groups of children should be a matter of consideration. in their work on participatory methods, gallacher and gallagher (2008) refer to several activities with regard to photo interviews that cannot be described as “participation”: children may do a range of things with cameras: take pictures of things they find interesting; take pictures of what they think the researcher wants to see; take pictures of their friends; explain to the researcher why they are taking each picture; take lots of pictures but say nothing about them, even when asked; ask the researcher to take pictures for them; give the camera to someone else; take no pictures; they may even break the camera deliberately. (p. 507) in the study at hand, repeated contacts between researchers and children as well as the endeavor to make the use of the cameras and their significance within the study transparent, helped to minimize challenges arising from the described issues. one further aspect possibly is selection, as children who were not interested in taking photos did not participate in the study. it is the researchers’ responsibility to design the research in a way that allows for different and unexpected ways of participation, provides ample space for a range of possible settings, and does not set up norms of “appropriate” forms of participation. it seems crucial to reflect the researchers’ and the children’s activities and interventions, and to regard participation as a matter of course during the whole research process. participation is not an option that should be granted to children by a generous researcher, but should represent one of the inherent principles that guide research with children. conclusion drawing on data from an austrian empirical study with 50 10-year-old children, i explored the potential of an interview type that brings together photo interviews and semi-structured interviews based on topic guides. several benefits were shown to be connected with this approach. for example, a thorough combination of visual and verbal elements offers children the opportunity to take part in the research process as active participants and is able to overcome some of the disadvantages that conventional “words-alone” interviews with children present. during different research stages, possibilities for participation vary and need to be international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 642 considered adequately. one crucial issue is to combine the visual and the verbal in a way that respects children’s autonomy. despite the considerable participative and inclusive potential of photo interviews in research with children, there are also limitations, and photo interviews are not inherently superior to any other research method. it must be considered that this method does not “solve the fundamental problem that language remains the dominant medium of communication and representation” (warming, 2011, p. 50), thus favoring verbally inclined children (also see james, 2007). even the most thorough combination of visual and verbal parts cannot overcome this weakness. nevertheless, it contributes to balance both aspects and to consider photos as not merely simple supplements of verbal expression. summing up, although aiming at decreasing power imbalances between the researcher and the researched (packard, 2008; pink, 2013; prosser & schwartz, 2006), the method does not per se decrease power differentials, enhance participation, or respect children’s agency (gallacher & gallagher, 2008; holland et al., 2010; punch, 2002b; thomson, 2007). nevertheless, photo elicitation has a significant potential to facilitate such action if applied carefully, critically, and conscientiously. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 629–648 643 references alderson, p. 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(1990). photographing the self: methods for observing personal orientations. newbury park, ca: sage. dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/109019819702400309 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468794109356735 abstract: the integration of visual prompts into qualitative interviews is regarded as a useful tool in attempting to give children the possibility of verbalizing memories and describing abstract issues. furthermore, photo interviews are supposed to p... photo interviews in research with children data and methods combination of the visual and the verbal in photo interviews with children preparing for interviews carrying out interviews analyzing interviews discussion: aspects of children’s participation during the research process conclusion references girls preparing for social reintegration international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818217 preparation for social reintegration among young girls in residential care in india satarupa dutta abstract: this study focuses on the preparation for social reintegration of young indian girls about to leave their residential care homes. it assesses the level of preparation by capturing the perception of readiness of 100 girls in institutions: whether they expect to complete higher education, and whether they believe they have acquired such skills as searching for a job, managing finances, problem solving, and maintaining satisfactory relationships. it also explores the impact of different factors, such as the present age of the girls, their self-esteem, and the availability of support networks, on the preparation for their social reintegration. overall, the findings revealed that the girls felt better prepared with life skills and access to housing after leaving care, but were not so hopeful about their psychological well-being and ability to access higher education, social support, employment, and financial independence. factors such as age, educational qualifications, self-esteem, and availability of support while in care had a positive relationship with their preparation for social reintegration. interestingly, the girls’ level of preparation varied significantly across the eight residential care homes studied. the study is intended to help address gaps in the existing literature and to play a significant role in informing future legislative decisions. keywords: young people, care experiences, social reintegration, residential care satarupa dutta phd is an assistant professor at the centre for equity and justice for children and families, school of social work, tata institute of social sciences, sion-trombay road, deonar, mumbai 400088, india. email: datta.satarupa@gmail.com mailto:datta.satarupa@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 152 in india, the ministry of women and child development (n.d.) has estimated that there are over 10 million children in residential care. every year, many of these children are expected to leave care upon attaining adulthood. a few receive extended support for a longer period but this decision is made on a case-by-case basis. after leaving care, the youths either return to their biological families or, if there is no family support, start living independently. to support and help these youths prepare for smooth transitions, various policies and services are provided by law. the integrated child protection scheme of 2009 and the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act, 2015 have outlined detailed provisions on preparation for social reintegration and aftercare for children in institutions in india. however, little academic research has measured the readiness of youth for effective social reintegration into society. the focus of this study is the preparation for social reintegration of girls who have been in care for a substantial period of their childhood and will be leaving care within two years. the term preparation for social reintegration has been used to signify the readiness of these girls to adjust to society after a period of disassociation. this study assesses their level of preparation, in the areas of education, work, and life skills, to face the challenges of the outside world. it also examines the different factors that may facilitate or hinder their preparation. empirical and theoretical background worldwide research studies have indicated that children in care experience educational, behavioural, and mental health problems; poorer social relationships; and difficulties in finances and housing (cashmore & paxman, 2007; courtney & dworsky, 2006; fowler, toro, & miles, 2009; mendes, 2009; stein, 2006a, 2006b, 2008; zeira, arzev, benbenishty, & portnoy, 2014). when the youth leave care, their disciplined lives and daily routines are also left behind, and they can find themselves in a vacuum. stein (2008), however, has argued that young people leaving care can be categorised into three different groups: “moving on”, “survivors”, and “victims”. the moving on group are the ones considered most likely to become well adjusted and successful in their adult lives. their readiness to leave care is one of the key factors in their ability to achieve a settled future. these findings signify the need to study the readiness of youth for independent living and the factors contributing to it. a few studies have tried to understand youths’ perception of readiness to leave care and have identified certain factors associated with it. for example, iglehart (1994) found in a study with 152 adolescents that school performance, working hours, and contact with the biological father were positively associated with preparedness to leave care, while mental health problems and the numbers of placements were negatively associated. in another study, with 174 youths, iglehart (1995) found that youth in three different settings — foster care, kinship care, and non-foster care — showed no differences in the perception of readiness to leave care. however, mech, dobson, and hulseman (1994) reported that the life-skills knowledge of youths in apartment placements was the highest, followed by youths in foster-family placements, while international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 153 youths in group home or institutional placements scored lowest. benbenishty and schiff (2009) concluded that israeli foster-care youth felt comparatively well prepared for employment, access to housing, and daily living after leaving care, but less confident about finding financial resources for higher education and accommodation. their study reported that school performance, peer support, and acceptance of youth by foster-carers were positively correlated with readiness. dinisman and zeira (2011) studied the readiness to leave care of 272 israeli adolescents and found that their preparedness was mostly explained by individual characteristics such as self-esteem and their present employment status. support from peers and residential staff also had a positive impact on their preparedness. zeira and benbenishty (2011) explored the perceptions of professional staff about the readiness for independent living of adolescents residing in youth villages. according to them, the youth were relatively confident about completing their education and creating positive interpersonal relationships but were less sure about tangible skills like finding a place to live, budgeting, managing finances, and so on. sulimani-aidan and colleagues (2014) conducted a longitudinal study on israeli youths’ transition out of care. they interviewed the participants in two waves. the first round of interviews, conducted a few months before the adolescents were to leave care, assessed their preparedness for independent living. the second wave of interviews was done one year after the participants had left care, to capture the ways in which they had adjusted to their new lives. the findings revealed that higher readiness to leave care, optimism, and support from mother and peers were positively correlated with better economic status and satisfaction with accommodation after leaving care. in this study, the concept of preparation for social reintegration has been drawn from studies conducted by various researchers (benbenishty & schiff, 2009; newman & blackburn, 2002; rutter, giller, & hagell, 1998; stein & wade, 2000). the preparation for leaving care is a critical phase in the life of every care-leaver because it provides an opportunity for planning and for learning new competencies and life skills (such as personal hygiene, sex education, shopping, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, developing new relationships). therefore, imparting practical knowledge and training for independent living is essential for improving their life prospects. benbenishty and schiff (2009) have proposed a model that defines a person’s readiness for independent living as the ability of that person to fulfil his or her needs and social roles in different relationships. one can achieve these goals by acquiring certain skills and abilities. benbenishty and schiff have identified different tangible skills (job search, budget management) and intangible skills (social skills, problem solving) that must be developed to enable adolescents leaving care to face the outside world. the objectives of this study are: (a) to measure the level of preparation for social reintegration among the girls by capturing their perceptions about their own abilities: whether they expect to complete higher education, and whether they have acquired such skills as searching for a job, managing finances, problem solving, and maintaining satisfactory relationships; (b) to identify the different factors associated with their level of preparation for social reintegration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 154 methodology face-to-face interviews were conducted with 100 respondents selected from eight different residential care homes based in two metropolitan cities of india, mumbai and kolkata. within each organisation, almost all the girls who were expected to leave care in the next two years were interviewed. only those who were not available or refused to participate in the study were excluded. the organisations were sampled purposively to include variations in characteristics such as model of care, source of funding, and nature of support. basis of selection of the residential care homes model of care: in the institutional model, represented by 6 of the 8 organisations in this study, the number of children varied between 10 and 100, with all the children staying together in large dormitories under a single roof. in the group home model, the organisation housed the children in different group homes, with each group home having 20 to 25 girls of varying ages under the care of one or more housemothers. in the hostel model, a part of a school was reconstructed with a living area, kitchen, and toilets where underprivileged children could stay and continue their education. one group home and one hostel were included in the study. source of funding: two of the eight organisations were government institutions, which are primarily operated through government funds and receive additional donations from philanthropists. the remaining six were residential care homes run by non-governmental organisations. three of these facilities received some funding from the government while the remaining three depended on private funding only. nature of support: all the organisations provided basic facilities such as education, vocational training, extracurricular activities, recreational facilities, and so on. however, there were differences in the nature of their services. for example, 3 of the 8 had an age limit of below 10 years for admission: new admission of older girls was generally not allowed. two institutional homes only admitted girls who had a legal guardian. they did not have any orphans or destitute children in their care. four of the organisations had an aftercare facility and supported girls until 21 years, while the others generally terminated support at 18 years. in the latter case, there were provisions for transfer to aftercare homes, but such a transfer was conditional, and depended largely upon the judgement of the management of the residential care home or government officials. instruments used different types of scales and indexes were used to measure the respondent’s preparation for social reintegration and the associated factors that impacted the process. initially, an exhaustive list of items required by indian girls in residential care for their effective preparation for social reintegration was developed by the researcher. the list was based on field work, personal experience, and a review of the literature. it was distributed to academicians, field practitioners, social workers, and counsellors working with children and youth in care in india. they scored each international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 155 item for its appropriateness as a measure of social integration using a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 was the most appropriate and 1 was the least. the highest-scored essential items with the lowest standard deviations were taken into consideration for developing the preparation for social reintegration index. the preparation for social reintegration index: this instrument was designed by the author, inspired by benbenishty and schiff (2009), and has been used in another study by the author (dutta, 2017). it was administered orally during the interview process. it has 26 items, each starting with, “when you leave care do you think you will…”. each of the items allows three possible responses: “yes”, “no”, and “more or less”. however, the scoring was dichotomous, with yes = 1; more or less and no = 0. the means of all items were added to compute a preparation for social reintegration score. the higher the score, the better was the preparation for social reintegration. the overall internal consistency (cronbach’s α) of the instrument was .748. the following areas were included:  education and vocational training — 4 items (e.g., be able to go to school or college daily),  life skills — 9 items (e.g., know how to shop for vegetables and groceries),  psychological well-being — 4 items (e.g., have a bright future to look forward to),  financial arrangements — 2 items (e.g., have savings for your future),  employment — 2 items (e.g., know how to search for a job),  support network — 4 items (e.g., be able to make friends who are close to you), and  living arrangements — 1 item (e.g., have a place to live). medical outcomes study: the medical outcomes study (mos; sherbourne & stewart, 1991) was used to measure the level of social support available to the girls. it was slightly modified so that it could be adapted to the indian context. it consists of 12 items pertaining to various types of support. the mos 4-point scale assessed how often each type of support was available to the girls, from 1 (never) to 4 (always). several dimensions were captured: tangible support, emotional support, affectionate support, and positive social interaction. cronbach’s alpha for this study was .731. rosenberg self-esteem scale: the 10-item rosenberg self-esteem scale (rosenberg, 1965) was used to measure different aspects of each girl’s confidence level, satisfaction with self, and attitude. each item was answered on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). the cronbach’s alpha score for this study was acceptable at .528. analysis at the first level, various descriptive statistics were used to portray the quantitative findings, along with the distribution of the preparation for social reintegration index. at the next stage, tests were applied to validate associations or differences between the dependent and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 156 independent variables (newton & rudestam, 1999, p. 103). all the scores and variables were subjected to a normality test. it was found that most variables had an approximately normal distribution with moderate skewness and a kurtosis value within the acceptable range. as most of the data and scores did not violate normal distribution assumptions, parametric tests such as correlation, anova, and regression were used. in a few cases where a slight skewness was visible in the data, non-parametric tests were computed to confirm the parametric findings. since the results were similar, the parametric findings were reported (newton & rudestam, 1999, p. 184). however, the findings are not meant to be generalised to the populations from which the samples were drawn (newton & rudestam, 1999, p. 120). findings profile of the respondents the average age of the sample selected was 17.91 years (sd = 1.65). the respondents followed different religious practices: hindu (56%), muslim (26%), christian (8%), buddhist (8%), and other (2%). the majority of the girls were either in high school (48%) or junior college (36%); the remaining 16% were pursuing education at the graduate level. at the time of the interview, 87% of the sample were students, while 8% were working and 5% were involved in other activities. family background out of the 100 respondents, 76 girls had families. the rest either had no family or did not wish to reveal anything about them. out of these 76 girls, there were variations in the types of families: 16 (21.05%) had at least one parent and siblings as well as relatives; 39 (51.32%) had at least one parent and siblings but no relatives; 4 (5.26%) had siblings and relatives; 6 (7.9%) had only siblings; and, 8 (10.52%) had only relatives. the family occupations of these 76 girls were also varied: 34.2% of families worked as labourers, 26.3% were in service, and 19.7% were self-employed. twelve girls (15.79%) had families who were not working or were employed in other jobs, and three girls (3.95%) had no idea about the occupation of their family members. forty-four respondents (57.89%) did not know their family income. the mean monthly income of the families of the remaining 32 girls was 8,550 rupees (about $130 usd) but there was wide variation, ranging between 500 rupees (about $7) for a family of four to 40,000 rupees (about $600) for a family of eight. experience of care the respondents’ average age at joining residential care was 8.15 years (sd = 4.16), with 32% entering care below 5 years, 38% between the ages of 6 and 10, and the remaining 30% in their teens. multiple factors were identified by the girls as reasons for entering care; some of these self-reports were cross-checked with their case files. the single highest factor reported was having a single parent (23%); closely followed by dysfunctional family situations such as divorce, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 157 separation, domestic violence, and substance abuse (18%); and being orphaned (18%). before entering residential care, 10% had run away from home, 9% were living in the street or coping with severe poverty, and 7% were trafficked for child labour and sex work, not only from india but also from neighbouring countries such as nepal and bangladesh. nine percent had entered residential care in order to receive a quality education. the remaining 6% entered the care facility due to various other reasons such as incest rape, or being affected by hiv-aids; two girls who refused to divulge why they had entered care were also included in the “other” category. on average, the respondents had spent 9.82 years (sd = 4.11) in residential care, with the shortest stay being 3 years, and the longest 22 years. a majority of the girls (62%) had lived in one residential home, 34% had lived in two residential homes, and only 4% had shifted institutions twice or more. overall, the girls self-reported being happy with their lives in residential care. on a happiness scale ranging from 1 (extremely unhappy) to 4 (very happy), only 3% of the girls reported being extremely unhappy and 4% reported being unhappy, whereas 55% were moderately happy and 38% were very happy. preparation for social reintegration among the respondents, 86% of the girls were aware of what their exit process from the residential homes would be. however, only 35% felt that they would be consulted before they were asked to leave, 52% did not think they would have any say in the transition process, and 13% were not sure how the process would unfold. when asked about the ideal time to leave care, 10% of the girls were not sure, 33% wanted to stay in residential care until they had a job, 21% preferred to wait until finishing their junior college, and 18% wanted to leave after completing their graduation. the rest of the girls (18%) felt that they would leave whenever they were asked to go; all of these 18 girls had family support. table 1 shows the distribution of the girls’ responses on a series of questions regarding their perceived preparation to leave care. it was computed as the 26-item preparation for social reintegration index (cronbach’s α = .748), with scores ranging between 4 and 26 (m = 14.66, sd = 4.53). the better the preparation for reintegration, the higher the score. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 158 table 1 distribution of girls’ responses — preparation for social reintegration reintegration skills and abilities yes (%) no (%) m sd education and vocational training be able to go to school/college every day. 27.0 73.0 0.27 0.45 be able to understand when someone speaks to you in english. 37.0 63.0 0.37 0.49 know a vocation which can help you earn money if you need to. 66.0 34.0 0.66 0.48 be trained in basic computer operations. 55.0 45.0 0.55 0.50 life skills cook regular food items like dal, rice, roti, and vegetables. 67.0 33.0 0.67 0.47 know how to manage monthly budget. 72.0 28.0 0.72 0.45 know the emergency numbers like the police, ambulance, fire brigade, etc. 57.0 43.0 0.57 0.50 be trained about the importance of nutrition and balanced diet. 75.0 25.0 0.75 0.44 know how to shop for vegetables and groceries. 71.0 29.0 0.71 0.46 know how to open and operate a bank account. 35.0 65.0 0.35 0.48 know how to avoid drugs and alcohol. 66.0 34.0 0.66 0.48 be trained in sex education and know how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases like hiv-aids. 61.0 39.0 0.61 0.50 know how to take care of yourself when sick. 76.0 24.0 0.76 0.43 psychological well-being have a goal which you want to pursue and achieve. 75.0 25.0 0.75 0.44 be satisfied with your life and your future. 47.0 53.0 0.47 0.50 be able to help friends when they are in need. 76.0 24.0 0.76 0.43 have a bright future to look forward to. 55.0 45.0 0.55 0.5 financial arrangements be able to get financial assistance if you need. 57.0 43.0 0.57 0.50 have savings for your future. 36.0 64.0 0.36 0.48 employment know how to search for a job. 32.0 68.0 0.32 0.47 be trained to succeed in a job interview. 39.0 61.0 0.39 0.49 support network be able to make friends who are close to you. 74.0 26.0 0.74 0.44 share your problems with the organisation’s social worker or counsellor. 45.0 55.0 0.45 0.50 get support from the organisation in the future. 40.0 60.0 0.40 0.49 get assistance to prepare a plan for independent living. 45.0 55.0 0.45 0.50 living arrangements have a place to live. 80.0 20.0 0.80 0.40 note. items under reintegration skills and abilities begin with “when you leave care do you think you will…”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 159 seven different dimensions were identified in computing the preparation for social reintegration score: education and vocational training (m = 1.85, sd = 1.10), life skills (m = 5.80, sd = 2.29), psychological well-being (m = 2.53, sd = 1.10), financial arrangements (m = 0.93, sd = 0.70), employment (m = 0.71, sd = 0.82), social support (m = 2.04, sd = 1.17), and living arrangements (m = 0.80, sd = 0.40). education and vocational training: a small proportion of girls (27%) felt that they would be able to attend regular school or college after leaving the residential home. at the time of the interview, about one third of the girls (37%) thought that they could understand if someone spoke to them in english. more than half of the girls (55%) felt they had received a basic computer education, while a larger majority (66%) reported having a vocation that could help them earn money in the future. life skills: overall, two thirds of the girls were confident they could carry out everyday tasks and take care of their daily needs, including managing a monthly budget. their knowledge of emergency phone numbers was slightly lower (57%). confidence about money management — opening and operating a bank account — was quite low (only 35% were sure that they could do it). psychological well-being: most girls had a goal that they wanted to achieve (75%). although over half (55%) felt that they had a bright future to look forward to, their confidence about a satisfying life was a bit lower (47%). whatever the circumstances, most girls reported being willing to help their friends whenever needed (76%). financial arrangements: only one third of the girls (36%) had any form of savings. the savings were kept in a bank, usually in a joint account with the organisation. almost all of these girls (92%) wanted to use the money for their higher education. half of the respondents (57%) perceived that they would be able to get financial assistance in the future, from either their families (36%) or their organisations (21%). employment: although 75% of the girls had goals they wished to pursue, only 63% had made plans to fulfil them, either on their own (36%) or with the help of others (27%), including social workers (22%), family members (3%), and friends (2%). but only one third (32%) of participants felt equipped to search for a job effectively and only two in five (39%) had the training to succeed in a job interview. at the time of the interview, 15% were working in the private (5%) and the development (10%) sectors. one third of these girls reported that vocational training learnt at their organisation had helped them get a job. the range of average monthly income varied between 130 rupees (about $2) and 12000 rupees (about $180). the median income was 700 rupees (about $10) per month. on average, the girls had been working for 1.13 years (sd = 1.26). in 80% of cases, the organisation had helped them find a job. for three respondents, their family members or friends had assisted them. all but one of the girls were satisfied with their current employment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 160 support network: most of the girls (75%) had confidence they would be able to make close friends after leaving their organisations. however, they were not so sure about getting support from their organisations in the future (40% thought they would) or being able to share their problems with the social workers or counsellors (45% felt they would). only 45% expected to receive help from any of their various support systems in planning their future and transitioning to independent living. living arrangements: most girls (80%) were sure that they would have a place to stay after leaving the organisation, 13% were more or less sure, and only 7% had no idea where they would go. out of the 76% of girls in contact with their families, 75% (57) wanted to return home. the rest did not wish to go home because they did not feel secure (42%), felt unhappy and had adjustment issues (37%), or had financial problems (21%). among the remaining 43 respondents, 33 girls (76.7%) expected that the organisation would help them, and 3 girls (6.9%) thought they would be supported by their friends.the remaining 7 girls (16.2%) felt that they would have to find accommodation on their own. factors affecting preparation for social reintegration in this section, the relationships in the data are examined to identify the factors associated with preparation for social reintegration. these factors relate either to the girls’ personal characteristics or to their environment. demographic indicators: the age of the participants had a significant positive association with the preparation for social reintegration (r = .257, p = .010). there was a significant association between the educational qualifications of the girls and their preparation for social reintegration (f[2,97] = 16.659, p = .001). the post-hoc comparisons using the tukey hsd test indicated that the mean score for the high school girls (m = 12.58, sd = 3.84) was significantly lower than for those in junior college (m = 15.56, sd = 4.09). again, the social reintegration scores of girls in junior college were significantly lower than those of the girls with college education and above (m = 18.88, sd = 3.96). residential care: eight residential homes were approached for the study. the mean preparation for social reintegration scores of the girls varied significantly across the homes (see table 2). a one-way anova was conducted to compare the significance of the differences in scores among the four organisations in mumbai (i to iv) and the four in kolkata (vi to ix). the structure, model, and nature of the services provided by an organisation had a significant effect on the preparation for social reintegration score (f[7, 92] = 6.31, p = .001). post-hoc tukey comparison showed that: (a) the girls in organisations mumbai i, mumbai iii, and kolkata viii had significantly lower scores than those in mumbai iv; (b) the girls in organisations mumbai ii, kolkata vii, and kolkata ix had significantly higher scores than those in kolkata vi; (c) the girls in mumbai iv had significantly higher scores than those in mumbai i, mumbai iii, kolkata vi, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 161 and kolkata viii; and (d) the girls in kolkata vi had significantly lower scores than those in mumbai ii, mumbai iv, kolkata vii, and kolkata ix. mumbai iv (where the mean preparation for social reintegration scores were the highest among the sample organisations) was a group home care facility caring for girls up to 25 years of age. they provided a wide range of services to the girls for their effective reintegration. on the other hand, kolkata vi (where the mean scores were the lowest among the sample organisations) followed an institutional model of care where over 150 girls were housed together in large dormitories under minimal supervision. the girls were expected to leave the facility at 18 years. the services provided by the institution were basic, with little scope for the holistic development of the child. table 2 mean and standard deviation of preparation for social reintegration scores across different types of residential care homes organisation model of care number of girls m sd mumbai i institutional 13 13.00 2.80 mumbai ii institutional 15 17.07 4.17 mumbai iii institutional 11 13.18 5.84 mumbai iv group home 6 20.16 4.40 kolkata vi institutional 12 9.92 2.35 kolkata vii hostel 21 15.90 3.48 kolkata viii institutional 8 13.13 3.80 kolkata ix institutional 14 15.50 3.88 social support network: the literature review showed that the support system played a critical role in a girl’s preparation for social reintegration. four different dimensions were identified in computing the support network score using the adapted version of the mos instrument: tangible support (m = 12.79, sd = 2.75), affection (m = 5.86, sd = 2.03), positive interaction (m = 7.64, sd = 2.55), and emotional support (m = 7.24, sd = 2.07). overall, the mean score of the mos instrument was 33.53 (sd = 6.29). the full score achievable on the mos is 48.0, which indicates access to the highest levels of social support as perceived by the respondent. a pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between the social support available to a girl and her preparation for social reintegration. there was a positive correlation between the two variables (r = .231, p = .021), indicating that the girls who perceived better access to social support also reported better preparation for social reintegration. self-esteem: the rosenberg self-esteem scale was used to measure self-esteem among the respondents. the mean score on each item varied between 0.80 and 2.31. the average score on the rosenberg self-esteem scale was 17.86 (sd = 3.29). the full score achievable on the instrument is 30.0, which indicates the highest level of self-esteem as perceived by the respondent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 162 a pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was calculated to assess the relationship between the a girl’s self-esteem and her preparation for social reintegration. there was a positive association between the two variables (r = .409, p = .001) indicating that the girls who perceived better self-esteem also reported better preparation for social reintegration. predictors of preparation for social reintegration finally, to determine the significant predictors of preparation for social reintegration, a stepwise multiple linear regression was computed based on the respondents’ present age, social support network, and self-esteem (see table 3). a significant regression equation was found (f[97,99] = 12.699, p < .001 with r2 = .207). participants’ predicted social reintegration score was equal to −4.728 + 0.527 × (present age) + 0.558 × (self-esteem), where present age was measured in years, while self-esteem was the score from the rosenberg scale. social support network did not have a significant relationship with the dependent variable. table 3 regression analysis summary for independent variables predicting girls’ preparation for social reintegration variable b se b β t p selfesteem 0.5 27 0.1 26 .38 2 4.1 87 .00 1.0 00 age 0.5 58 0.2 50 .20 3 2.2 29 .02 8 from the regression findings, it can be established that within the given sample the preparation for social reintegration may have been better for those respondents who were older and had higher self-esteem. discussion the perception of youth with regard to their preparation for social reintegration depended on a number of factors. the girls were better prepared in life skills and access to housing than in other areas; they were not so confident about their psychological well-being, ability to access higher education, social support, employment, and financial independence. interestingly, the findings revealed that each girl’s preparation for social reintegration was impacted by various factors operating at different systemic levels. while some of these factors functioned in the participants’ subjective environment, and varied across individual cases, others were societal factors that had a general impact on their lives. a youth’s profile and personal characteristics also played a critical role in the transition. bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory (bronfenbrenner, 1979) has been used to understand the impact of the individual characteristics and environmental factors on the level of preparation for social reintegration. the factors explaining the preparation for social reintegration can be divided into three ecological levels: individual (micro-level), institutional characteristics and social support (meso-level), and the role of the state (macro-level; see figure 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 163 the factors affecting preparation for social reintegration at each level were dependent on the processes operating at other levels. for example, the age for leaving care was dependent on the institutional characteristics and services available at the meso-level, which was affected in turn by the actions of the state in terms of legislation and policies. the significant variations in preparation for social reintegration scores across the eight residential care homes clearly indicates that there were considerable differences in the type and quality of skills imparted to the girls to facilitate their social reintegration. the discrepancies in the services provided by the homes points to the lack of standardisation of practices across the organisations. figure 1. factors affecting preparation for social reintegration at different systemic levels. micro-level chronological versus developmental age: mendes, johnson, and moslehuddin (2011) have shown that being developmentally ready to leave care has no link with chronological age. forcing young people in care to leave prematurely and abruptly led to their involvement in criminal activities. another study by dutta (2017) showed that girls who left care in their early twenties were more equipped to adjust to their lives after leaving the residential home than those who left care in their teens. this research also reported a positive association between a girl’s age and her effective preparation for social reintegration. overall, the participants who were in their early twenties and still in care tended to have a higher preparation for social reintegration index score than those who were in their teens. factors at macro-level factors at meso-level factors at micro-level  support and involvement of the state  characteristics of residential care home and available services  available support system  age  educational achievements  self-esteem international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 164 educational achievement: lemon, hines, and merdinger (2005) noted that educational achievement among care leavers after leaving care, and their ability to fulfil academic goals, were dependent on their motivation for education while in care. the findings of this study revealed that higher educational qualifications had a positive association with preparation for social reintegration. personal characteristics: due to a background of poverty, neglect, abuse, and other traumatic events, children in out-of-home care often displayed mental health problems (melzer, lader, corbin, goodman, & ford, 2004, burns et al., 2004). they performed below their academic ability and became involved in juvenile delinquency (gilligan, 2007). low self-esteem as a result of limited experiences of socialisation while in care had a negative impact on care leavers’ ability to form new relationships and enhanced their fear of independent living (prisyazhnaya, 2007 as cited in stepanova, 2014). similar findings were observed in this study, where self-esteem had a positive association with preparation for social reintegration. meso-level institutional characteristics: stein (2006a) has emphasised the importance of aftercare support in helping care leavers to address relationship issues and providing structural assistance for seeking employment and housing. such support was particularly important for those who had problematic transitions from care. persistent professional relationships helped in better social reintegration (stein, 2008). in this study, preparations for social reintegration of the girls varied significantly across the eight residential care homes. in the group home, where girls received individual attention and were cared for until 25 years, they were better prepared for social reintegration than those housed in institutional settings in dormitories under minimal supervision. in the latter homes, girls were expected to leave care upon attaining adulthood (18 years), and aftercare services were very limited. it was also observed that the support received by the girls in the group home was not simply generic but was adapted to the individual person. the study revealed that the variation in services provided by the institutions had an impact on the girls’ preparation for social reintegration. recently, under the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act, 2015, efforts have been undertaken to standardise the services being provided by the organisations, but their impact at the field level is yet to be assessed. support network: developing social capital for young care leavers as a crucial factor for their subsequent well-being has been highlighted by researchers time and again. ridge and millar (2000) emphasised that, in the absence of family bonds, friendships in care are important for an effective transition out of care. along with peer support, the assistance of staff members of residential homes has been identified by dinisman and zeira (2011) as a positive influence affecting the readiness for social reintegration. schiff and benbenishty (2006) have further established that when the staff had a positive impact on the adolescents’ lives, their skills and general well-being improved. in this study too, the availability of a multi-branched support international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 165 network that includes staff, peers, family, and relatives, had a positive association with preparation for social reintegration. macro-level involvement of the state: unfortunately, in india the government has no uniform database on the number of children in residential care homes at a given time. out of millions of children in care in 2012 to 2013, the ministry of women and child development only had data on 75,052 children residing in 1,195 statutory homes (committee on the rights of the child, 2014). there is no available data about the number of children residing in private residential homes run by nongovernmental organisations. the juvenile justice (care and protection of children) act, 2015 and the integrated child protection scheme 2009 are epitome pieces of legislation providing guidelines for children in care in india. the latter had provisions for the creation of an aftercare fund, which has been placed at the disposal of each district child protection unit. initially, an amount of 100,000 rupees has been allocated as an aftercare fund for each district. the amount of financial support for aftercare is 2000 rupees (about $31) per child per month. however, most of the residential homes studied complained about irregularity in fund disbursement from the government. they also felt that the amount was insufficient in view of rising prices for basic necessities and education of the children. the good news is that there are steps being taken to improve the facilities for child care in india. since india became a signatory to the united nations convention on the rights of the child in 1992, the government has been making efforts to amend its laws and legislations in accordance with the convention provisions. national programmes and policies have also come under global scrutiny through the mandatory periodic reports submitted to the committee on the rights of the child that outline the processes the government has undertaken for protecting the rights of children and young people. implications for practice and policy one major gap in the indian context is the paucity of scientifically documented literature on social reintegration of children in care. very few research reports have been circulated over the years (e.g., ahuja, 2013; azavedo, 2005; kochuthresia, 1990; nagrath, 2005; ravi, 2011). unfortunately, the few studies available depict a very dismal situation, emphasising that efforts for effective social reintegration are currently very limited and unregulated. therefore, assessing the preparation for social reintegration among these girls was important at all levels. at the individual level, it would be useful to prepare a plan of intervention at an early stage to meet individual requirements. at the systemic level, this study can provide a framework to policy makers, an overview of the level of preparation at the present time, and a guide to identifying areas of challenge where focused efforts are needed if there is to be improvement. in assessing the life chances of care leavers, this study makes apparent that there is a growing and continued need for comprehensive and specialised national legislation detailing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 151-170 166 transparent policies, procedures, and guidelines for effective social reintegration. it is essential that there be clear communication about the preparatory processes required, especially in the areas of life skills, education and training, employment, and housing. aftercare provisions must be made mandatory rather than discretionary. last but not least, flexibility and extension in the chronological age 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(2011). readiness for independent living of adolescents in youth villages in israel. children and youth services review, 33, 2461–2468. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.08.018 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10641/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0312407x.2013.868011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2013.834283 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0312407x.2013.863956 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.08.018 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918806 responses to adversity faced by farming men: a gender-transformative analysis philippe roy, émilie duplessis-brochu, and gilles tremblay abstract: the values that characterize the traditional and stereotypical image of rural masculinity put pressure on farming men to engage with risky behaviours, both physical and mental, and reduce their willingness to seek help. this paper investigates individual and social responses to adversity, under the lenses of response-based practice and gender-transformative health promotion. our method is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 32 farming men and 2 focus group interviews with 14 experts on men’s health, farming, and rural social work. results suggest gender is negotiated through individual and social responses to adversity, with fluid transitions between conformity and resistance with regard to traditional masculinity. individual responses to adversity can include negative or positive coping strategies. social responses can be supportive, or they can be marginalizing, such as the devaluation of farming. for farmers facing adversity, there is a disparity in social support, with communal solidarity being evident in a material crisis, but not in a personal one. some community-based responses are highlighted for their ability to support farming men in coping with adversity. keywords: gender, masculinities, men’s health, social responses, rural, farmers acknowledgements: authors are thankful to participants and colleagues who shared their experience and expertise and made this study possible. financial support was provided by the canadian institutes of health research (institute of gender & health, and public health and the agricultural rural ecosystem); fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture; masculinities and society research team; fondation desjardins; and the faculty of social sciences at université laval. additional gratitude is expressed to catherine richardson/kinewesquao and the organizing committee of the responses matter conference for the opportunity to develop and share the content of this paper. philippe roy phd (corresponding author) is associate professor and lecturer in social work at université du quebec à chicoutimi, 555 boulevard de l’université, room h4-1080, chicoutimi, qc g7h 2b1. email: philippe1_roy@uqac.ca émilie duplessis-brochu llb, msc is a graduated master’s student at the school of social work, université de montreal, pavillon lionel-groulx, 3150 rue jean-brillant, montreal qc h3t 1n8. email: emilie.duplessis.brochu@umontreal.ca mailto:philippe1_roy@uqac.ca mailto:emilie.duplessis.brochu@umontreal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 50 gilles tremblay phd is a professor in the school of social work and criminology at laval university, pavillon charles-de koninck, 1030 avenue des sciences-humaines, bureau dkn5444, quebec city, qc g1v 0a6. email: gilles.tremblay@tsc.ulaval.ca mailto:gilles.tremblay@tsc.ulaval.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 51 “men have no emotion and farmers even less. we’re not supposed to”, said gabriel sarcastically. the tough-looking farmer was speaking about his motivation for taking a few hours out of his very busy schedule to participate in a study on farming men’s experiences of stress and their ways of coping. this statement resonates with a growing body of media coverage and academic literature exploring connections between masculinities and mental health in the context of farming men facing adversity — excessive financial pressure, increasing work overload, family–work strains, lack of social recognition, and so on (alston, 2012; garnham & bryant, 2014; sturgeon & morrissette, 2010). new ways to investigate the issue emerge by combining responsebased practice (richardson & wade, 2016) and gender-transformative health promotion (barker, ricardo, nascimento, olukoya, & santos, 2010; tannenbaum, greaves, & graham, 2016). response-based practice pays attention to the actions by which individuals and communities respond to adversity and oppression (coates, 2016; richardson & wade, 2016). for example, when farming men experience depression, their work colleagues may react by telling them to “stop whining, take it like a man, and go back to work”, causing possible shame and social withdrawal, in addition to the initial symptoms of depression. the quality of social response is crucial because it can either support resistance to oppression and adversity, or exacerbate those forces, inflicting additional burden or trauma. gender-transformative health promotion is a framework that seeks to question and transform restrictive gender norms and to promote more gender-equal relationships between individuals (barker et al., 2010). this paper aims to highlight farming men’s adversity as a serious social issue, and to offer new perspectives on social and individual responses to adversity that mainly involve negotiating “masculinities” — gender identities aligned in conformity or resistance to traditional masculine ideology (levant & habben, 2003; pleck, 1995; robertson, 2008). the term “masculinities” is understood as denoting socially constructed configurations of social practices that are fluid, situational, and sometimes contradictory (connell & messerschmidt, 2005; gough, 2013; robertson, 2008). the sections below detail concepts of rural and farming masculinities, followed by their implications with regard to farming men facing adversity. background challenges and adversity in farming context farmers of all genders are likely to face adversity at the family and business level — farms are often family businesses — as well as the social and political levels. farm-related stressors include long working hours and the concomitant pressure on family–work balance, conflicts with farming and non-farming rural residents, an increasing burden of legislation and paperwork, dependence on weather, climate change, financial pressure, and the increasing complexity of farmrelated business (canadian agricultural safety association, 2005; haggerty, campbell, & morris, 2009; magnin et al., 2017; sturgeon & morrissette, 2010). additionally, knowledge related to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 52 mechanics, biology, genetics, and computers — all necessary for modern agriculture — is increasingly complex (lafleur & allard, 2006). many farmers feel that their profession is criticized and devalued, and that their lifestyle is marginalized (droz, miéville-ott, jacques-jouvenot, & lafleur, 2014; jacques-jouvenot & laplante, 2009); they demand better social acknowledgement (parent, perrier, & rousseau, 2010). farmers are affronted by negative views; this is well documented in media coverage of farmers’ public advocacy and protests reporting slogans such as “no farmers no food” (k. boisvert, 2009) and “we feed you but we die” (lamothe, 2016). farming is considered one of the most stressful occupations (canadian agricultural safety association, 2005); this is not surprising given the adversity farmers face and the negative views they encounter. farming men’s mental health from a gender perspective studies on responses to adversity among farming men have pointed out that masculinities can have either a positive or negative impact. the literature on rural men’s health is consistent in maintaining that traditional and stereotypical ideals of rural masculinities are built on values of independence, stoicism, self-sufficiency, pride, strength, competition, relentless work, and economic success (courtenay, 2006; fraser et al., 2005; garnham & bryant, 2014; kennedy, maple, mckay, & brumby, 2014; robertson, elder, & coombs, 2010; roy, tremblay, oliffe, jbilou, & robertson, 2013). such agrarian values shape rural masculinities grounded in extreme resourcefulness (excessive autonomy and self-reliance) and endurance through adversity. the pressure to live up to these stereotypical expectations constitutes a double risk for farming men as it pressures them to engage in risky behaviours — both physical and mental — and deters farming men from seeking help (creighton, oliffe, ogrodniczuk, & frank, 2017; kennedy et al., 2014; sturgeon & morrissette, 2010). farmers who align more rigidly with traditional masculinity are prone to stoically deny mental health problems or endure pain until it reaches a critical point (judd et al., 2006; roy et al., 2013; sturgeon & morrissette, 2010). it is theorized that traditional masculine practices appeal to farming men due to their professional insecurity, relatively low education, and low political power (campbell, mayerfeld bell, & finney, 2006). compared to non-farming rural and urban men, farming men are more likely to experience accidents, both fatal and non-fatal; high levels of psychological distress; suicidal ideation; and mortality (alston, 2012; garnham & bryant, 2014; kennedy et al., 2014; prévitali, 2015; roy et al., 2013). however, this international trend was not found in rural china, where women had higher suicide rates than men up to 2005, but have had lower rates since then (wang, chan, & yip, 2014). among farming women in rural china, risk factors include discrimination and oppression (qin, jin, zhan, yu, & huang, 2016). thus, the situation is complex and gender appears to be a key element for investigation and advocacy. across australia, new zealand, india, north america, and europe, many farmers’ unions and associations raise awareness about the adversity faced by farming communities. in most media reports and academic work, a strong focus remains on “problem-describing” (bourke, humphreys, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 53 wakerman, & taylor, 2010). while this is a crucial step, it seems little is known yet about current social and individual responses to adversity faced by farming men. moreover, since gender is known to be a major social determinant of health, these responses are likely to be influenced by masculinities intersecting with occupation (farming) and place (rural). to be able to explore the role gender plays in farming men’s responses to adversity, it is necessary to describe both individual and social responses with gender-transformative and response-based approaches. methodology data collection at an early stage of the research process, the first author began field work with an exploratory phase based on 10 discussions with key informants including doctors, social workers, and community services staff in rural areas across the province of quebec, canada. the first author also spent a day on a farm with a farming couple involved in community-based suicide prevention. these activities were important for gaining a better knowledge of the farming ecosystem and to locate the research in its context. recruitment was done with the collaboration of farming unions, mental health community services, and key informants. posters were distributed through social media and through newsletters (by email). potential participants were invited to contact the research team by email or phone. the initial contact answered the respondent’s questions about the study and scheduled a time and place for the interview. thirty-two farming men agreed to take part in semi-structured interviews. participants had the choice of place for the interviews. most of the interviews (29) took place at the participant’s home or farm (in most cases, these were the same location). two interviews were conducted by phone and one took place at a university near the participant’s home. when the first author arrived at a participant’s home, he would ask for a guided tour of the farm. beyond his personal curiosity and interest in farming, the purpose of this request was to build rapport with the participant in a casual, non-hierarchical, conversational interview. it is widely acknowledged farmers are passionate about their farming. thus, the farm tour enabled the first author to demonstrate genuine interest in the participant’s passion and pride in farming: business, animals, land, home, and family. this is consistent with the research interview as a practice of masculinity with a wide range of meanings that could occur, such as taking control of the interview, emphasizing stoicism, or emotional disclosing (oliffe & mroz, 2005). particular attention was paid before, during, and after the interviews (i.e., during results dissemination) to positioning participants as experts of their lives. after the farm tour, ethical protocols were explained to all participants and consent forms were reviewed and signed, with a copy provided to each participant. ethical protocols included strategies in case of emotional distress (which did not occur). the semi-structured interviews lasted on average 120 minutes. interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed for data analysis with nvivo qualitative data analysis software. openend questions were used, with the aim of having participants begin a discussion on farming life, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 54 masculinities (usually in relation to their social role as father, son, partner, friend, or worker), adversity in farming, and their responses to it. a debriefing was systematically done to get participants’ impressions of the interview and assure their well-being; a list of psychosocial resources was provided to all participants at the end of each interview. table 1 farming men’s sociodemographic data and background attribute n % age groups 25-34 5 16% 35-44 10 31% 45-54 7 22% 55-65 10 31% marital status married / in a relationship 19 59% divorced / separated 12 38% single 1 3% children none 3 9% one 1 3% two 12 38% three 11 34% four and more 5 16% education unfinished high school 2 6% professional diploma (high school) 7 22% college 16 50% university 5 16% missing data 2 6% productions dairy 12 38% mixed productions (poultry, pig, grain, dairy, maple) 10 31% lamb 3 9% wine 3 9% pig 1 3% grain 1 3% maple 1 3% fruits and vegetables 1 3% agriculture type conventionnal 27 84% organic 5 16% total 32 100% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 55 sample details a total of 44 individuals took part in this study. individual interviews were done with 32 farming men; 14 practitioners and researchers participated in two focus groups with 6 and 8 people respectively. these focus groups were formed to comment on the farmers’ interviews and shed light on outcomes for research and practice. participants were personally invited based on their experience with farming, rural social work, or men’s mental health. farming men’s sociodemographic details are provided in table 1; participant details are in table 2. table 2 participants’ attributes attribute n % gender woman 8 57% man 6 43% background men's mental health researchers 5 36% rural mental health workers 3 21% farmers and mental health workers 2 14% graduate students 2 14% farmers' union advisor and farmer 1 7% public health advisor 1 7% total 14 100% analysis analysis started after the first interview, in line with the general inductive approach (thomas, 2006). saturation was gradually obtained halfway (interview 15 of 32) when new analytical categories decreased and existing categories were growing. initial coding was closely aligned with the interview guide’s themes and questions. main themes were developed and these are discussed in the following section. repeated readings with the research question in mind enabled the addition of theoretically relevant coding layers. specific attention was devoted to position in and movement towards or against traditional masculine ideology among participants and within each participant’s discourse. given the nature of semi-structured interviews, data were assumed to be co-constructed by interviewer and participant (savoie-zajc, 2003). the interviewer raised awareness about his self-location regarding gender practices, social position, and background (caucasian, self-identifying as masculine, coming from and currently living in an urban area, pursuing doctorate studies). reflexivity about self-location was important to assure horizontal, non-hierarchical relationships between interviewer and interviewees. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 56 results1 farmers’ discourse on masculinities farming men’s discourse is presented as follows: traditional masculinity is used as a reference point based on which results are positioned on a continuum between conformity and resistance (robertson, 2008). between those poles is a space for ambivalence and questioning. all participants were aware of the stereotype of the farmer as embodying a traditional masculinity expressed mainly by pride in hard, physical, relentless work. the father of a large family (more than four children), yvon ran a dairy farm in a remote town in quebec. when giving a tour of the farm, he showed great pride in the technological improvements he had made recently. he explained that the man’s place is outside the house and the woman’s place is inside. this vision was consistent with his lived reality in which he worked outside on the farm and his wife was a stay-at-home mother doing the domestic work inside the home. his discourse was most closely aligned with traditional masculinity when it came to sharing his vision of farming men. popular role models on tv2 brought him to question his embodiment of traditional masculinity in local practices (in everyday life): farmers are machines, work all the time, relentlessly and it’s a pride to work hard like this. you can’t be a wimp. if you are sick you work anyways. it’s different with the younger generation, they want quality of life, work less hours … i thought showing emotion was showing weakness. maybe i shouldn’t see it this way. society changes, on tv men are not the same any more, they cry now. it’s questioning. being a tough man, stoic, a real guy, is this good or not? (yvon) yvon’s discourse mostly conforms with traditional masculinity, but his questioning can be interpreted as the precontemplation of more open masculinities. further in the interview, he explained that the ideal man displays a balance between no emotional control and complete stoicism. when facing tough times on the farm, he turned to his children for a hug to wipe away his negative mindset and restore his good mood. responding to adversity by connecting with his family for emotional support suggests a distance with traditional masculinity. thus, yvon demonstrated movement along the masculinities continuum from conformity towards ambivalence. most participants’ discourse stands in the ambivalence/questioning zone of the continuum. division of labour between partners is a domain in which participants are able to position and 1 this article is based on a paper presented at the responses matter conference in montreal, canada, may 18, 2016. three of the quotes in this section have been published previously (see roy & tremblay, 2015; roy, tremblay, robertson, & houle, 2015). they are included here to support the description and discussion of the results. 2 the participant did not discuss any specific role models on tv. for a gender analysis of masculine role models on tv (united states, canada, and quebec), see s. boisvert (2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 57 navigate masculinities. maxime runs a lamb farm in a beautiful, remote village. married, and the father of teenage boys, this broad-shoulder farmer questioned his practices as a husband and father: in the house, i’m a big zero. i don’t initiate any household chores if i am not told to and it’s not ok. i should have been a better model to my boys. well, a few years back, when the boys didn’t clean their rooms, i was doing it after them. i did a bit here and there. my wife has always been more active to support me in the farm than me supporting her in the house and i blame myself for this. in today’s society, my boys will be handicapped like their father if they don’t take responsibilities in the house. they are going to meet a girl and she won’t be there to wipe after them for [swear] sake. it’s equal now and it’s all right. (maxime) he severely criticized his lack of involvement in the household and his negative impact as a role model to his sons. few other participants disclosed such self-blame for perpetrating an unequal division of labour in and out of the house. socialization based on traditional masculinity trains men to stay away from household chores. but this trend is countered by new generational ideals and by farmers’ emphasis on being autonomous and resourceful. in regard to emotional disclosure, there was consensus among participants that complete stoicism is not ideal and may lead to violent outbursts. participants assumed men should be able to control whether they disclose their emotions or not depending on the situation. some participants openly demonstrated resistance towards traditional masculinity as embodied by other farmers, their fathers, and, more generally, men from previous generations. roy, tremblay, and robertson (2015) provided an illustrative example: for instance, pascal, a divorced farmer in his early forties, was open about his consultation with a psychologist following his divorce. he reflected on a media report he had recently seen stating that farmers face more stress than the general population and are less likely to seek help for this: my relation with help-seeking is influenced by my environment: my friends are not all farmers, i attended school in the city, and my girlfriend is from the city. this non-farming environment surely influenced me because i don’t recognize myself among many other farmers who value a certain mentality … redneck, stubborn, close-minded, we work, we work. but not every farmer is like this. people involved in the farmers’ union are more open-minded. (pascal) pascal’s discourse represents a view shared by many participants, who showed pride in distancing themselves from traditional farming mentality. such was the case of bernard, a man in his early forties who ran a large farm with diverse livestock. years before, in a short period of time, he had faced many stressful events: a major accident, a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 58 divorce, and his farm going down in flames. through this adversity, he learned a lot about himself and about masculinities. he was proud of the road travelled since then with the help of men’s support groups he participated in: i used to be a part of the traditional masculine mold when i started working with my parents. i feel manlier now to build my own identity. we (men) got to be more sentimental sometimes. my girlfriend says i am too much emotional, that i am the girl and she’s the guy but i am that kind of man. we should not be afraid to roll back our sleeves and assume who we really are. (bernard) this quotation from bernard discloses the social embeddedness of an ideal masculinity and how others maintain it, in this case his girlfriend. many participants expressed their disconnection with the stereotypical farming mentality and their pride in engaging in a form of masculinity that legitimized their emotional disclosure. out of the 32 participants, 14 sought professional psychological help. these men were more likely to acknowledge their full range of emotions and their connections with family and friends beyond the strict provider and protector role associated with traditional masculinity. some even suggested that the human aspect of farming should be studied in farming schools. this vision was more commonly disclosed among younger farmers, those below 50 years of age, the mean age of farmers in canada (beaulieu, 2015). both focus group discussions highlighted that younger farmers were critical of their elders who put so much value on doing relentless work. to the contrary, younger farmers tended to value a balanced life between work, family, and friends. sexual orientation as a theme was brought up few times by participants, such as isaac. he was openly gay, something his friends, family, and broader community were aware of. isaac explained that he always knew he was gay. at the beginning of adulthood, he was “in the closet”, he said, and had to move to a larger city, known for its gay village, to experiment with his sexuality. back home, he disclosed being gay to his parents and friends who responded with open arms. he did not face discrimination for being gay, but for something else: with my closest male friends, we give each other kisses and i never have been discriminated, never lost any friend.… i get picked on a lot more often because i run an organic farm than because i am gay. that’s a fact. being organic shakes conservative farmers’ beliefs. (isaac) this comment echoes the views of a few other participants who, when discussing masculinities, insisted that being gay was no big deal for them. according to isaac, he was more discriminated against for running an organic farm than for being gay. thus, gender ideals and practices were spread out on the continuum between conformity and resistance towards traditional masculinity. fluidity was also observed as some farming men disclosed different alignments depending on the situation. this dynamic was echoed in the social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 59 practices used to face adversity. in the next sections, individual and family responses are presented first, followed by social responses. individual responses to adversity on the individual level, participants experiencing adversity described engaging in negative and positive strategies. negative strategies included denying symptoms of stress, social withdrawal, excessive investment in work, and contemplating suicide; positive strategies included engaging in self-help actions such as taking work breaks, doing sports, and visiting self-help websites. they could also seek support from family, friends, and professionals, such as doctors, psychologists, or social workers. the story of jocelyn is salient in this regard. this farmer in his mid-fifties took pride in his physical strength despite his skinny physical appearance, which he used to make an analogy with his resilience against adversity. in the year before the interview, his dairy cows were ill and he was not allowed to sell the milk: it took a while before i realized it was a depression. i didn’t have regular hours for work, sleep, and rest. i could milk the cows at odd hours, sometimes once a day. i could have washed myself and changed my clothes once a week. i saw that i was sick but i thought i could solve it on my own. then i thought about killing myself. (jocelyn) the contemplation of suicide as a means to solve farming-related problems was brought up by five other participants. all of the participants could identify one or more farmers who killed themselves. jocelyn was very isolated, disconnected from his ex-wife, children, and the wider local community. the negative coping behaviours began to decrease as he remembered the trauma he had experienced when he discovered the body of his neighbour who had completed suicide. then he began to contemplate reasons to live and positive coping strategies: i thought suicide would end all my problems. but it leaves a big one. i have found my neighbour’s body after a completed suicide. and another neighbour also killed himself. i realize now, i lived for my cows around me. during the christmas holidays, i called a psychologist i used to see. she was aware i was alone for the holidays and she referred me to a crisis center [temporary shelter]. from there, i was connected with local health services and reached out to an old friend of mine. (jocelyn) jocelyn’s coping trajectory could be depicted as a “u” shape, in which the initial phase was, in his words, a “vicious circle”, with increasing depression as he engaged in excessive work and contemplated suicide. these strategies are aligned with traditional masculinity’s values of relentless work and norms of stoicism and radical behaviour. hitting rock bottom gave him the impetus to seek other positive coping strategies such as connecting both with his herd and with a friend, and seeking professional help. he greatly appreciated the practitioner he met with for her calm, peaceful attitude and her ability to present a positive outlook. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 60 jocelyn’s story is unique among participants because he strongly conformed to traditional masculinity, and then distanced himself from this alignment, and eventually enjoyed his connection with a friend and a professional. in sum, farming men resist adversity by negotiating health behaviours according to their alignment with traditional masculinity. conforming with traditional masculinity means facing adversity with silence, denial of distress, social withdrawal, and overinvestment in work; resisting such conformity increases the social acceptability of engaging in healthy behaviours and seeking support from family, friends, and professionals. engaging with others was described as a crucial part of recovery by a wide majority of participants. while there is ongoing questioning about what farming men do individually to face adversity, the importance they put on social support suggests how much social responses matter. social responses to adversity solidary movements and gestures have arisen to address adversity faced by farmers, although many gaps remain in terms of social responses. this section presents social responses on the social, political, and community levels. many participants denounced the devaluation of farming nowadays as imposing a double burden. producing food for the population is extremely demanding, even exhausting, and farmers often feel marginalized by a part of the population. it is difficult to feel noble about working hard to feed people when those very people stigmatize farming and farmers, accusing them of living off state grants and having unethical farming practices in terms of animal rights and the environment. also, farming activities sometimes clash with “neo-rural” dwellers (newcomers) looking for quiet time in the countryside. denis had faced many periods of adversity across his lifetime as a farmer. this 50-year-old man discussed the evolution of social representation of farmers: back in the day, we felt supported by the people, by the department of agriculture, with policies and promotion. my dad used to work happy, not stressed like nowadays. we felt we had a role to play … until we became considered as less than prison inmates, less than people on the welfare, and i have nothing against them [prison inmates and people on welfare]. (denis) his story highlights the devaluation of farming in society, a position echoed by many participants. denis pushed forward with this theme, connecting misrepresentations of farming with the acute adversity he once faced: people think we’re rich because they see the machinery. they don’t understand, nobody can bear this [financial] pressure. most people don’t pay to work, we do. it costs us everything we have. and this brought my first depression, wandering under the barn’s beam to hang myself. it was horrifying, i haven’t seen it coming. just like a flu. my wife didn’t see anything. (denis) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 61 to reduce suicide contemplation, denis called his brother saying everything is messed up, he “sees black”. ten minutes later, a community practitioner phoned denis, who burst into tears. his brother rushed to denis to provide support and so did his parents. this discourse exemplifies the adversity of farmers’ double burden of work that is demanding yet unacknowledged, and the consequence of this double burden on farmers’ mental health. suicidal ideation may be prevented by the intervention of professionals. in a short period of time, bernard went through a car accident, a relationship break-up, and a fire on the farm. he described what type of social response made sense for him at that time: the car was a total wreck, few days later the wife was gone with the children and my flock was down to ashes. at the fire, the policeman on the scene gave me his phone number. it meant, “you are in deep shit. call me before you do anything stupid, like suicide.” it shook me, so i sought help with a men’s support group. it really helps me to connect with other people who are not into farming. (bernard) the intervention of this policeman is an illustration of a specific pattern of social support. when his wife left with the children, bernard — and many participants in the same situation — did not receive much social support. but for the material crisis, the barn on fire, volunteer firefighters and the whole community rushed to help without asking. this highlights a disparity of solidarity in which social support is openly offered for a material crisis, but not for a personal crisis such as a break-up. bernard explained that the break-up left deeper scars than the fire and the car accident. what shook me the most was the break-up. everything crashes, no more solid ground … so i got lost in work, no real support from the people around me at this moment. (bernard) on a wider level, social responses are directly linked to the extent to which farmers’ mental health is considered a social issue by political and farming authorities and health agencies. during data collection for this study, an interesting debate occurred at the province of quebec’s national assembly on a political response to farmers’ psychological distress. when asked in the national assembly whether the government was aware of the growing problem of psychological distress, and the mounting suicide rate, among quebec farmers, the minister of health and social services answered that they were aware, because of newspaper articles. however, while acknowledging the seriousness of these issues, the minister felt that anyone in quebec in psychological distress should seek help from appropriate professionals (assemblée nationale du quebec, 2012). this exchange is meaningful in regard to the social representations of adversity faced by farmers. adversity faced by farmers is reformulated as an adaptation problem, individualizing the situation without proposing any type of social and political responsibility. barriers to access and social acceptability of mental health services remain completely neglected. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 62 meanwhile, despite lack of action by politicians, the practitioners and researchers in the focus groups were unanimous that there was an emerging grassroots movement in farming communities to raise awareness of, and to prioritize, the mental health and well-being of farming men and their families. two promising community-based responses are highlighted here. the implementation of travailleurs de rang3 [rural social workers] is a notable contribution in this direction. rooted in generalist practice and with a rich knowledge of farming life, rural social workers intervene in many different ways: promoting farming’s social recognition; supporting community sustainability; assisting in financial issues related to farming; and providing therapeutic services in group, family, and individual practice, including crisis intervention (labrecque-duchesneau, gagné, & picard, 2011). these programs are mainly funded by local or regional communities. the second community-based response is the adaptation of the sentinelles4 [gatekeepers] program to farming communities. volunteers are trained to identify, contact, and accompany people in distress who are at risk of suicide to appropriate community services (e.g., shelter) or health and social services (e.g., hospital). however, a social response to farmers’ adversity may come from an unexpected source. the qualitative design of this study enabled a unique observation during data collection: the research process itself helped counter stigma and strengthen participants’ sense of dignity. many expressed their gratitude during and after interviews as they felt their voices were rarely heard in this way. this suggests that participants needed a better social acknowledgement of the burden they were facing and that they hoped their voices could make a difference. in sum, two opposite trends emerge: social responses have both negative and positive impacts on farming men and their families. a negative impact is observed from the devaluing discourse of farming and from the response of political leaders to the crisis of farmers’ high rates of psychological distress. on the other hand, a positive impact emerges from the awareness raised by advocacy and community-based initiatives to support farmers. discussion this study aimed to bring a gender analysis of individual and social responses to adversity faced by farming men. it suggests that farming men are part of the global change in masculine identities and practices. traditional masculinity seems to be losing its legitimacy to impose its standards on farming men, as with other groups (anderson, 2009; anderson & mcguire, 2010; brandth, 2016). some results suggest change is happening through fathering practices, similar to other rural canadian and norwegian studies in which traditional masculinity is challenged by 3 https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1115039/des-travailleurs-de-rang-pour-soutenir-la-sante-psychologique-desagriculteurs 4 https://www.aqps.info/aider/devenir-sentinelle.html https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1115039/des-travailleurs-de-rang-pour-soutenir-la-sante-psychologique-des-agriculteurs https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1115039/des-travailleurs-de-rang-pour-soutenir-la-sante-psychologique-des-agriculteurs https://www.aqps.info/aider/devenir-sentinelle.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 63 alternative or progressive configurations of practice (brandth, 2016; bye, 2009; creighton et al., 2017). gender transformation is salient in the individual responses to adversity by which farming men departed from practices aligned with traditional masculinity (i.e., denial, stoicism, social withdrawal) and chose to open up about their emotions and connect with family, friends, and professionals. examination of social responses highlights a wide range of practices, from devaluing of farming by a part of the population to individualization of farmers’ issues by some politicians. this observation is global: farmers in europe, north america, and australia have responded to the devaluation of their occupation and lifestyle by promoting different versions of the same message: “no farmer no food” (droz et al., 2014; judd et al., 2006; kennedy et al., 2014; mclaren & challis, 2009; price, 2012; roy et al., 2013). on the other hand, some politicians team up with farmers and members of farmers’ communities to mobilize, raising awareness of the adversity faced by farmers, taking action, and advocating. farming communities respond to high rates of distress and suicide by tightening the social net with innovative strategies like the gatekeepers program and rural social workers. the gatekeepers program has been highlighted as one of the strategies with the strongest proof of success in preventing suicide in rural communities (nhs health scotland, 2013). the ongoing gatekeepers project in the province of quebec started only in 2016, so evidence of success is not yet available. the rural social worker program started in 2011 and an evaluation of the program suggests positive results, notably on destigmatizing help-seeking and providing a proactive outreach to those people less likely to engage with professional services (viens & lebeau, 2012). globally, there is evidence that mental health services and information, along with mental health literacy, require further attention to effectively reach farming men and their families (alston, 2012; garnham & bryant, 2014; kennedy et al., 2014; national centre for farmer health, 2016; prévitali, 2015; roy et al., 2013). this represents an important challenge for mental health promotion especially in the area of stigma reduction. in terms of direct intervention, farmers’ helplines have been implemented in australia, canada, and france, a response that facilitates both access and social acceptability. our participants’ discourse aligns with the idea that, at the community level, a sense of belonging and social support are key protective factors against mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and suicide (mclaren & challis, 2009; price & evans, 2009; roy, tremblay, & robertson, 2014). recommendation for research and practice we offer some recommendations for both future research and practice. results suggest that when a farmer faces adversity, there is a critical opportunity to question and deconstruct the restrictive and rigid alignment with traditional masculinity that is connected with negative health and well-being outcomes. deconstructing those aspects of traditional masculinity should not be attempted without also promoting the strengths and benefits of more open and inclusive masculinities. as such, restrictive masculine norms dictating men’s mental health practices (i.e., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 64 stoicism and excessive self-reliance) need to be redefined in order to position help-seeking as a human, positive, and rational response to adversity. the ambivalence and resistance towards traditional masculinity described by participants can be used to leverage interventions and social change. it may be used to challenge and extend the idea of what it means to be or act like a man in regard to health practices (e.g., questioning the ideas that help-seeking is womanly or that men do not get depressed). it may be seen as a small step towards the deconstruction of the binary, homogeneous, and mutually exclusive vision of gender. while the present study focused on stressrelated coping, a few participants brought the conversation towards sexual orientation and changes in gender identity over time. future research can focus on these topics in greater detail. on a more global scale, in the context of modern farming, serious questions are raised about the psychosocial impacts of the neoliberal economy. the crisis of farmers’ high rates of psychological distress is actually worsened by an aggressive neoliberal approach to mass production that is causing many farmers to operate at a loss (hunt, rosin, campbell, & fairweather, 2013), imposing adverse living conditions that cannot be reduced to farmers’ individual psychological issues. this situation is addressed in a study that elucidates the psychological impacts of farming policies in switzerland, france, and the province of quebec in canada (droz et al., 2014). in canada, voices have been raised among farming organizations to defend the family-owned, human-scale farming business, as opposed to mass production. thus, promoting farmers’ mental health and well-being requires social justice work at every level: individual, collective, social, and political. implementation and assessment of programs based on recognized practice such as gatekeepers and rural social workers are promising avenues that must be pursued. given the high suicide rates in farming populations, bereavement programs such as australia’s “ripple effect” are likely to help farming men open up about their experiences and to reduce isolation and stigma (national centre for farmer health, 2016). priority should also be given to advocacy for farming communities’ well-being, including support for crisis response and prevention programs at local and national levels. accordingly, more investigation is needed regarding social responses by communities and by the health and political authorities who have the power to legitimate (or not) adversity faced by farmers as a social issue and to provide resources for appropriate and innovative responses. finally, development of male-friendly practice should capitalize on the value of solidarity beyond its material dimension to include personal crisis as a circumstance that calls for solidarity. conclusion the aim of this paper is to highlight adversity faced by farming men as a serious social issue and to offer new perspectives on social and individual responses to that adversity through a response-based and gender-transformative analysis. some limitations must be considered. as with any qualitative study, generalization is not possible. those farming men who were the most international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 65 reluctant to open up might not have responded to the invitation to participate in the study as frequently as others would who were questioning and resisting traditional masculinity. also, faceto-face interviews raise the issue of social desirability bias. the strategies that the interviewer used to counter social desirability bias were to mention that there are no right or wrong answers and to welcome different points of view verbally and non-verbally. despite these limitations, the study offers an innovative approach to better understanding the interaction between gender, place, and occupation in the context of farming men facing adversity. farming men are active in the transformation of masculinities by questioning their own social practices and by assuming an open resistance to restrictive, unequal aspects of traditional masculinity. these acts of resistance are echoed in individual responses such as negotiating gender practices and relations and in social responses in the form of social support from families, communities, health services, and political advocacy. combining response-based practice with gender-transformative health promotion sheds a new light on the lives of farming men; furthermore, it sparks new questions about other marginalized groups in rural settings like farming women or non-farming rural residents. farming and, more widely, rurality are complex and diverse realities and more work is needed to distil contexts of privilege and marginalization, and oppression and resistance. finally, the words of a participant, jean-françois, are relevant to inspire reflection for future research, advocacy, and practice. after the interview, he explained why academic responses to farmers’ adversity matters: “it’s great because you [the interviewer] don’t come from a farming background and yet you show interest not only for what we live but what we think. it’s rare and important.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 49–69 66 references alston, m. 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(2014). suicide rates in china from 2002 to 2011: an update. social psychiatry & psychiatric epidemiology, 49(6), 929–941. doi:10.1007/s00127-013-0789-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajr.12008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/soru.12045 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1557988315619677 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12874-016-0247-7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1098214005283748 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00127-013-0789-5 does is matter where i live international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 375 does it matter where i live? comparing the impact of housing quality on child development in slum and non-slum areas in ghana farouk r. braimah and elaine t. lawson abstract: deteriorating physical characteristics and limited access to social services are said to typify a substantial number of the housing types in ghana. the impact of these on vulnerable groups such as children remains largely unresearched. this paper compares the quality of houses in a slum (old fadama) and a non-slum (asylum down) community and its impacts on child development. data was collected from 150 children between the ages of 9 and 17 years with the aid of semi-structured interviews. the findings showed housing quality was directly linked to income levels. hence children in non-slum communities lived in better quality houses, had better access to sanitation services, and had better access to education and recreational facilities. the results served as the basis for a theoretical discussion and recommendations for improving child development through the provision of better quality houses, access to improved sanitation, and facilities for recreation. keywords: children, education, ghana, housing, non-slum, quality, sanitation, slum farouk rabiu braimah, m.a. is the executive director, people’s dialogue on human settlements, accra, ghana, and west africa focal person, slum dwellers international (sdi). email: rabiu_farouk@hotmail elaine t. lawson, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an environmental scientist who works as a research fellow at the institute for environment and sanitation studies, university of ghana, legon, p. o. box lg 209. she also works closely with children through the kinder creative exchange, a child rights organization in ghana. e-mail: elaine_t@ug.edu.gh. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 376 the factors that impact on a child’s life – family income, effective parenting, and a safe and secure environment – are all directly or indirectly influenced by a family’s housing conditions (harker, 2006). at the united nations world summit on children in 1990, governments were encouraged to develop interventions that help and protect children. in addition, the declaration on the survival, protection and development of children sought to commit all member nations to improve child health and security, to enhance the role of the family, to develop appropriate education, to mount an attack on poverty, and to protect the environment. in a follow-up united kingdom implementation report in 1992, it was acknowledged that work in the areas of education, health care, water supply, and sanitation need to be central to international development strategies to help children. goal 7 target 11 of the millennium development goals aims at making significant improvements in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 (ssewanyana & younger, 2008). slum dwellers, particularly women and children, are vulnerable to natural disasters, such as floods, poor access to potable water and sanitation, and are prone to water-borne and respiratory diseases in urban areas. thus the issue of good housing is key to any efforts to protect children. housing, poverty, and children’s well-being are interrelated (jack, n.d.). according to un-habitat (2010), adequate housing is one of the most basic of all human needs and is fundamental in order to enjoy all other human rights. without adequate home and supportive nurturing environments in which to grow, children’s education and physical development are difficult to maintain, health is precarious, and social and moral development is impeded (centre on housing rights rights and evictions [cohre], 2000). article 11(1) of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr, adopted by the united nations general assembly in 1966) provides for the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for themselves and their family, including adequate food, clothing, and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. article 27 (1 and 3) of the united nations convention on the rights of the child (1989) also highlights the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development. according to bradley (2006), in order to assure well-being for children, parents must: (a) provide for their safety, (b) provide sustenance and other health-promoting supports, (c) foster socio-emotional competence, (d) provide stimulation and supports for learning, (e) monitor their activities, (f) supervise their behaviour, (g) provide routines, guidance, and directions that give structure to daily life and ongoing activities, and (h) provide social connections to key persons and institutions that facilitate the child’s adaptive functioning and long-term productivity. in ghana, many households continue to live in poor housing conditions, where they lack a supportive nurturing environment and adequate housing. at the national level, the 1992 ghanaian constitution, specifically article 28, section 1(d), stipulates that children and young persons must receive special protection against exposure and physical and moral hazards. also, the children’s act 560, 1998 provides for the best interest of children and protects the survival, protection and development of the child (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2000; government of ghana, 1998). the draft national housing policy document, for instance, estimates the slum population in 2001 to be 4,993,000, at the annual growth rate of 1.83% (government of ghana, 2009). the figure is predicted to rise to 5.8, 6.5, and 7.1 million by 2010, 2015, and 2020 respectively. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 377 currently it is estimated that there are about 25 slum settlements in accra, the capital city, and about 10 in kumasi, which is the second largest city in ghana. the country has experienced quick slum formation as a result of rapid urbanization and reclassification of villages as towns and cities (ghana statistical service, 2002). most of what is known about housing quality and how it affects child development comes from research done in north america and europe (evans, 2006). the relationship between housing and child development in ghana is often underestimated. the result has been that, in spite all the numerous institutions, policies, and programmes focusing on child well-being and development, the housing conditions and living environments within which many children in urban ghana live and grow continue to compromise their protection from physical hazards and hamper their social, moral, and cognitive development. secure housing of good quality plays an important role in people’s well-being, but many children in ghana find that they do not have sufficient access to such housing. this paper compares the housing context of children from a slum community (old fadama) and a non-slum community (asylum down) to understand the interplay between quality housing and child development in ghana. the significance of this research lies in its contribution to existing work on housing and the child development, which has received little attention, especially in ghanaian academic discourses. secondly, it highlights policy issues that could serve as important entry points to advocate for an improvement in housing conditions for children and other vulnerable groups. theoretical issues children’s rights issues have become a significant field of study in recent decades, largely due to the adoption of the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) in 1989. generally, children’s rights are regarded as human rights of children, which mainly focus on the rights of special protection and care afforded to children. children’s rights include biological needs as well as the basic needs for food, education, health, safety, and social protection (bandman, 1999; huchzermeyer, 2006). conceptually, children’s rights issues have become quite pronounced in the last decades (franklin, 2001). mangold (2002) hints that children’s rights are still not well defined, with no singularly accepted definition or theory of the rights held by children. this assertion is also supported by rai (n.d.). children’s rights have been explained differently by various authorities. these definitions cover a wide range of issues including civil, cultural, economic, social, and political rights. however, mangold (2002) identified two distinct types of children’s rights: (a) those rights which see children as autonomous persons under the law and (b) those placing a claim on society for protection from harms perpetrated on children because of their dependency. freeman (2000) provides classifications of rights that children should enjoy. the classifications include the economic, social and cultural rights, and the environmental, cultural and developmental rights. the former category includes conditions necessary to meet basic human needs such as food, shelter, education, health care, and gainful employment. the latter relates to the right of children to live in safe and healthy environments and the rights to cultural, political and economic development. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 378 housing and human rights according to gready and ensor (2005) housing has been largely regarded as a human rights issue and comes within the context of a rights-based approach to development. however uvin (2002) argues that the rights-based approach is part of the “good governance agenda” promoted by the world bank, which “was explicitly designed to be the complement, the political extension, of structural adjustment programs”. according to brown (2003), the problem of inadequate or non-existent housing has reached crisis proportions globally. the un human settlements programme estimates that 600 million urban residents and one billion rural dwellers in developing countries live in overcrowded housing with poor water quality, a lack of sanitation, and no garbage collection. inadequate housing can be considered a multifactorial epidemic – rapid urbanization, economic restructuring, natural disasters, and political events such as regime changes and wars all have contributed to the crisis. in developing countries, overcrowding and poor ventilation can encourage the growth of disease vectors such as mosquitoes, parasites, bacteria, and viruses. noise and sheer physical safety, including vulnerability to violent crime, contribute to anxiety and depression in both developed and developing countries (brown, 2003). brown further asserts that some of the worst environmental health problems associated with housing, especially in developing countries, are unsafe water supplies, lead exposure, and poor indoor air quality (along with related dust and moisture problems). housing and children’s well-being there have been a number of studies that have attempted to link housing with well-being. some has assessed the relationship between housing and health in both developed countries and developing countries (dunn, 2002; lawrence, 2004; mathee, von schirnding, montgomery, & rollin, 2004; ssewanyana & younger, 2008; herrin, michelle, amaral, & arsene, 2013). a little improvement in the quality of basic housing can considerably increase sleep quality and quality of life among slum dwellers (simonelli et al., 2013). this also applies to children who are even more vulnerable to the impacts of poor housing. hence understanding sleep and daily life conditions in informal urban settlements could help to define what kind of low-cost intervention may improve sleep quality, quality of life, and reduce existent sleep disparity (simonelli et al., 2013). the growing interest in issues that affect child development has been partly due to a movement toward accountability-based public policy that requires increasing amounts of data to provide more accurate measures of the conditions children face and the outcomes various programmes achieve. thus the issue of the measurement of the well-being of children becomes crucial in developing interventions to shape the growth process of children, particularly with respect to the subject of housing for children (ben-arieh, 2000). according to barnes, butt, and tomaszewski (2010), improving children's living standards is a top priority for government policy-makers. these authors noted that whilst the presence of a link between bad housing and child outcomes has been acknowledged in a number of studies, there is little evidence on how long children live in substandard housing and whether the duration of living in such housing is associated with other poor outcomes for children. using five waves of panel data from a study on families and children in britain, the evidence showed that the longer children live in a bad housing environment, the more vulnerable they are to a range of other negative outcomes such as poor education and poor health, among many others. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 379 they contended that policy-makers need to focus on reducing the substantial number of children who live in substandard housing for long periods, and that interventions in housing provision for families are likely to lead to improvements in many other aspects of children's lives (barnes et al., 2010). overcrowded conditions have been linked to slow growth in childhood, which is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease in later life (harker, 2006). in addition, almost half of all childhood accidents are associated with physical conditions in the home. families living in properties that are in poor physical condition are more likely to experience a domestic fire (harker, 2006). the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) and the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) are significant reference points for the enjoyment of the right to housing. the import of the provisions in these two documents is twofold: first, everyone, living everywhere, should enjoy some measure of entitlement not to be deprived of shelter; second, housing is an essential element for health and well-being. according to these two provisions, housing is a right and like all other rights, state parties are obliged to promote, protect, and fulfill the right to housing. unfortunately, however, although it provides a clear and articulate safeguard, this conception suffers from a lack of clarity and enforcement mechanisms by states. unlike the international covenant on civil and political rights (iccpr) where most of the rights are justifiable and can be enforced in law courts, the icescr is more ambiguous. housing context in ghana much of the housing stock in ghana has been described as deteriorated with limited access to social services (twum-baah, kumekpor, & de graft-johnson, 1995). according to fiadzo (2004), rapid urbanization, low income levels, and the gradual withdrawal of public funds for housing have contributed to deteriorating housing conditions in the sub-saharan countries of africa. indeed, the declining physical quality of the housing and lack of access to social services remain characteristic of much of the current housing stock in many of these countries (twumbaah et al., 1995; government of ghana, 2009). in ghana, shelter is one of the critical challenges currently faced by the majority of both urban and rural inhabitants. this challenge, according to the draft national housing policy (government of ghana, 2009), is attributable to rapid population growth and increasing urbanization. consequently, overcrowding, poor housing quality, and lack of access to adequate sanitary facilities, water, and warmth to meet daily physical needs are the main characteristics of much of the housing stock in the country (government of ghana, 2009; un-habitat, 2010). currently, the annual housing deficit in the country is variously estimated to be in excess of 500,000 units with supply figures hovering around 40,000 units. this is against the annual requirement of 120,000 units. this suggests an annual housing supply to demand ratio (for new housing) of about 35% (government of ghana, 2009). the lack of adequate housing, particularly in urban ghana, has forced many households in the cities to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions leading to the creation and expansion of slums. as noted previously, the slum population for ghana was estimated at 4, 993,000 people in 2001, growing at a rate of 1.83% per annum, and anticipated to reach 5.8 million by 2010 (government of ghana, 2009). the deplorable housing situation in the country exerts a heavy economic, social, and psychological burden particularly on children whose wellbeing has been directly correlated with the quality of the physical conditions of the living international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 380 environment including housing. evidence shows that adequate housing can protect children and families living in dense urban areas from communicable and chronic diseases as well as injuries and accidents. positive environments promote social interaction, limit psychological stress, and bolster the overall health of populations (united nations children’s fund [unicef], 2012). this revelation has serious repercussions for children particularly those living in slums and other informal settlements where majority of the dwellings can be considered non-durable. research design study areas this paper uses the definition of a child in the ghana’s children act, 1998 (act 560), which is “a child is a person below the age of eighteen years”. the study was undertaken in two communities in accra, the capital city of ghana and the country’s administrative capital and seat of government. the city accommodates 17.7% of ghana’s total population of 24,223,431 (ghana statistical services [gss], 2012). this places a huge pressure on the already heavily backlogged housing stock and socio-economic facilities in the city, including education, health, sanitation, and utilities, with a resultant proliferation of slums as 38.4% (1,652,374 people) of the city’s population live in slums (government of ghana & un habitat, 2011). old fadama is an informal settlement in accra. according to an enumeration report compiled by people’s dialogue on human settlements (2010), the community has a population of 79,684 with a population density of 2,424.18 persons per hectare. on may 28, 2002, the residents of old fadama were served with an eviction notice by the accra metropolitan assembly (ama). in response to the eviction notice, letters of protest were written by a number of organisations to the government of ghana and the ama outlining the international legal obligations that would be violated if the forced eviction of the old fadama community were to take place. a number of violations were also identified: namely, the lack of feasible alternatives to the planned eviction, short advance warning, poor consultations with slum dwellers, and a lack of housing alternatives. at the time of writing, old fadama was still a vibrant informal settlement, and still not captured in the city’s plans. narrow and twisted roads, poor sanitation, wooden structures, and an apparent lack of environmental health facilities are visible. on the other hand, asylum down is a formal and non-slum settlement located within accra metropolis. the area accommodates a high proportion of business and corporate offices in accra. residential patterns are of acceptable standards with functional drainage and sanitation conditions. this paper is based on a descriptive and comparative study, designed to investigate the interplay between the housing quality and the development of children in the old fadama and asylum down communities. a three-stage sampling approach was to be used to select respondents for the study. these included the following: 1. stage one: selection of enumeration areas under the household selection, the enumeration area (e.a.) map of both old fadama and asylum down was used. in each of the study areas, three enumeration areas were randomly selected. these enumeration areas were delineated based on the fact that there are marked international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 381 differences in terms of the physical conditions of housing and other social amenities found in each enumeration area in each community. this sampling strategy meant that data could be gathered from different areas in each community. this ensured that the data captured was a true representation of the conditions existing in each community. 2. stage two: selection of households from each of the randomly selected enumeration areas, a total of 25 households were purposively selected. the criteria for the purposive selection were the presence of a child between the ages of 9 years and 17 years in the household and the ability of the child to respond to a questionnaire. 3. stage three: selection of children given that a total of 150 households were selected from the study areas, a child was purposively selected from each of the households making a total of 150 children. the main criteria for the selection of a child were that the child was between the age of 9 years and 17 years and had the ability to respond to a questionnaire. respondents for key informant interviews were also purposively selected from diverse fields within the housing and child rights protection context. these included respondents from each the following: a. ministry of gender, children and social protection b. department of social welfare c. civil society organisations; one from each community d. united nations human settlements programme (un habitat) e. ghana health service (one health facility serving each community) f. accra metropolitan assembly (planning department) data collection an interview guide, which also doubled as a questionnaire, was designed based on preliminary analysis of available housing and its relationship with children’s education, health care, and social interactions of children. the process of designing the interview guide also involved consultations with key civil society organisations in the area of housing rights and academics and professionals in the field of housing. ten questionnaires were pilot tested in each community after which the necessary changes were made to the structure and language of the questionnaires. it had four main sections: personal profile of respondents, assessment of participation in education, health care issues, and social life experiences such as issues of deviant behaviours. the questionnaires, made up of both open-ended and closed questions were administered to 150 children in both old fadama and asylum down. in asylum down, 75 children were interviewed comprising 34 males and 41 females. on the other hand, the 75 respondents interviewed in old fadama were made up of 27 males and 48 females. a second interview guide was designed to elicit qualitative data from policy and development practitioners on the subject of housing and child rights policy context. it highlighted issues of the child right policy environment in ghana, housing policy and children’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 382 issues in ghana, as well as education and health issues of children as they relate to housing environment. secondary data sources involved a review of relevant literature and statistical data on the subject matter. textbooks, journals, magazines, reports, policy documents, and other printed materials on the subject were consulted. data was also gathered from the internet to boost the quality of work. ethical considerations it is important to consider the fact that the primary research was carried out with vulnerable people, living in very difficult conditions, often with many of their basic needs not being met. it was therefore necessary to consider the impact that the research had on the participants, how the research could benefit the respondents, and how the research could be disseminated once completed (mayoux, 2006). given that this is a child sensitive research project, it was of utmost importance to provide adequate protection for respondents. in the first place data collected from children were treated with anonymity and confidentiality. the appropriate ethical clearance arrangements were made with the department of social welfare and the department of children before the administration of instruments. an arrangement was made for post-counselling of respondents who might be traumatized or experience discomfort during the survey. all field assistants were trained on child sensitive research methodologies before embarking on the data collection. data analysis quantitative data from the survey were analyzed using cross-tabulation analysis for areas of comparison between the occurrence of phenomena in old fadama and asylum down using statistical package for social scientist (spss) version 16.0. relationship studies such as establishing the relationship between housing condition and participation in school and social life was done using cross-tabulation. data generated from key informant interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis where the emerging variables were coded and constituted into major themes as they related to the study objectives. results socio-demographic characteristics of respondents the age distribution of respondents indicates that respondents were predominantly between 10 and 12 years (table 1). females constituted the majority of the respondents in both communities. the female population was higher in old fadama where 36% of the respondents were males and 64% were females. in asylum down males constituted 45.3% of the respondents and 54.7% were females. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 383 table 1: age distribution of respondents educational level of respondents the educational levels of respondents can be found in table 2. the majority (41.3%) of respondents from old fadama were in upper primary (classes 4 to 6) compared with 42.7% from asylum down. it must, however, be noted that while only 1.3% of respondents in asylum down did not attend any school, 22.7% of respondents in old fadama did not attend school. table 2: level of education of respondents old fadama (%) asylum down (%) pre-school 2.7 2.7 lower primary 17.3 21.3 upper primary 41.3 42.7 junior high school 14.7 29.3 senior high school 1.3 2.7 n/a 22.7 1.3 old fadama (%) asylum down (%) 7-9 years 26.7 16 10-12 years 30.7 45.3 13-15 years 32 36 16-18 years 10.7 2.7 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 384 ethnic background of respondents more than half of respondents from asylum down were akan, followed by ga. in old fadama 48% of respondents were dagombas. this finding is confirmed by numerous studies carried out in the old fadama community which show that dagombas who are migrants, form the majority of the population (tutu, 2010; people’s dialogue on human settlements, 2010). parents’ occupation although the informal sector is the biggest employer in ghana controlling over 80% of the labour force, its low contribution to gross domestic product (gdp) points to the sector’s low productivity. in addition, the sector is characterised by a lack of access to credit, a low level of technology, lack of social protection, high insecurity, and vulnerability. in view of the low educational levels needed for entry, the sector remains dominated by youth and women. in order to understand the socio-economic context within which children live and grow, it is important to examine the occupation of their parents or guardians. the results showed that majority of the fathers from both communities were self-employed or found in the informal sector. in old fadama, this constituted 66% compared with 48% in asylum down. their occupations include casual labourers, artisans, petty traders, businessmen and women, among others (table 3). while only 2.7% of fathers in asylum down were unemployed, about 10.7 % were not working in old fadama. table 3: occupation of respondents’ fathers old fadama (%) asylum down (%) casual labourer 12 21.3 artisan 10.7 9.3 petty trader 9.3 2.7 civil/ public servant 9.3 18.7 business person 34.7 14.7 clergy 4 0 unemployed 10.7 2.7 others 9.3 30.7 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 385 similarly the majority of the mothers were self-employed, 80% in asylum down compared with 86% in old fadama. petty trading remains the biggest occupational choice for mothers in both communities (table 4). unemployed mothers constituted 12% in old fadama as compared with 5.3% in asylum down. these findings have varying economic implications for child development in both communities. the ability of a child to enjoy good health and social amenities such as potable water and good sanitation, as well as good schools, all depend on a parent’s ability to afford them. table 4: occupation of respondents’ mothers old fadama (%) asylum down (%) casual labourer 14.7 6.7 artisan 1.3 0 petty trader 56 65.3 civil/ public servant 1.3 6.7 business person 14.7 8 no occupation 12 5.3 others 0 8 respondents’ housing type of housing significantly, many studies have linked the type of housing to the well-being of occupants (fiadzo, 2004). thus in the study, an attempt was made to examine the type of housing where children live in the study areas. the study assessed the following housing characteristics: (a) the type of dwelling and the main materials used in house construction; (b) occupancy status; and (c) household sanitation. of children interviewed in asylum down, 68% lived in compound houses as compared to 74.7% of respondents from old fadama. this is consistent with the national statistics of housing type in ghana. according to the ghana living standards survey (ghana statistical services, 2008), about 79% of households in ghana lived in compound houses. living in compound houses is associated with the sharing of toilets and kitchens which impacts the wellbeing of children. children are exposed to high noise levels, poor hygiene, and crowded areas. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 386 it is estimated that only about 10% of households in ghana live in bungalows, semi-detached houses, and flats or apartments, predominantly in higher-class urban areas. about 22.7% of respondents in asylum down lived in houses described as semi-detached as compared to 5.3% in old fadama. whilst 2.7% of children in asylum down lived in separate bungalows, none of the children in old fadama did. this shows that respondents from asylum down were relatively better off in terms of housing type. of children interviewed in old fadama, 58.7% indicated that there was only one room in their house while 18.7% and 12% had two and three rooms in their houses respectively. in asylum down, however, only 8% of respondents mentioned that their houses contained one room, with 14.7% of the children living in houses containing two rooms. on the basis of using the number of people occupying a room as an indicator for defining a slum, 50.6% of these children could be described as living in slum households; 25.3% of respondents in old fadama maintained that they shared a room with four people, 16% in asylum down did so. also, 20% of sampled children in old fadama shared space with five other people compared with 12% in asylum down. a congested room means that children in old fadama comparatively have less private space in their rooms to study and play, which could have long terms debilitating effects on their academic and social abilities. also, communicable diseases could easily spread and affect many children in living in this community (freeman, 2000; harker 2006). quality of housing the housing quality was assessed by determining the materials used for constructing walls, roofs and the general living environments. the findings showed that 93.3% of houses in asylum down had their walls constructed of sandcrete blocks with 2.7 % and 4% respondents indicating that the walls of their houses were made up of wood or bamboo and metal sheets respectively. this is in sharp contrast to old fadama where about 66.7% of respondents indicated the walls of their houses to be made of wood or bamboo and 28% constructed of sandcrete blocks. poor construction materials expose children to accidents (unicef, 2012). of respondents from old fadama, 82.7 % mentioned iron sheets as roofing materials for their houses compared with 69.3% in asylum down. while most children in asylum down lived in houses with tiled roofs, those in old fadama have to contend with houses mostly roofed with mud, bamboo, and corrugated iron sheets. hence houses in asylum down are roofed with more durable materials than old fadama. while a majority of respondents from both communities described their roofs as well sealed without any leakages (52% for old fadama as against 74.7% for asylum down), 16% of respondents in old fadama reported that their roofs leaked badly as compared with 1.3% in asylum down. in asylum down 57% of respondents described their living environment as poor with uncovered drains and no proper streets or alleys; 40% described it as fairly clean and decent with 2.7% characterizing their living environment as having well-covered drains and good streets. however, in old fadama, about 70.7% of children interviewed described their general living environment as poor with uncovered drains and poor streets. in addition, 22.7% maintained that the general living environment of old fadama was fairly clean and decent while 6.7% described it as having well-covered drains and good streets. further, 5.3 % of children in old fadama international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 387 described their housing environment as very good compared with 13.3% in asylum down. on the other hand 30.7% of children in old fadama described their housing environment as very bad compared to 9.3% from asylum down. the perceptions of the children of their housing environments can be found in figure 1. figure 1: respondents’ perception of their housing environments availability of toilet facilities the availability of toilet facilities in a house is a good indicator of sanitation (ferguson, cassells, macallister, & evans, 2013). analysis of the results from the two communities shows that only 5.3 % of children interviewed in old fadama had toilet facilities located inside their houses or dwellings compared with 88% in asylum down. for dwellings with toilet facilities in old fadama, only 2.6% had flush toilets as compared with 70% in asylum down. hence 77.3% of the children in old fadama relied on public toilets. poor access or a lack of sanitation facilities has been consistently associated with diarrhea in children who live in poor countries (bradley & putnick, 2012). children’s vulnerability to pathogens from contaminated water and poor sanitation relates both to their exposure level (children actively explore their environments and are unaware of problems pertaining to sanitation) and their level of immunity. since children have a limited capacity to withhold bowel movements, the lack of toilet facilities in their homes affects their physical and mental health (bradley & putnick, 2012; ludwig, fernando, firmino, & joao tadeu, 1999). children in homes without toilets are exposed to gastrointestinal sicknesses such as diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid fever. this assertion is confirmed by the findings of the study as 73.3% of children in asylum down and 77.3% in old fadama mentioned malaria/fever as the most common illness. in addition, 13.3% of respondents in old fadama reported to suffer from diarrhea or gastrointestinal diseases as compared to 10.7% in asylum down. these findings international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 388 could largely be linked to the general housing conditions examined previously in this paper. children in old fadama live in poor quality housing as compared to those from asylum down. poor housing exposes children to mosquitoes and other vectors as well as the unfavourable weather that may persist out of the home. the finding is further confirmed by un-habitat’s (2010) state of the world cities report in which bad living conditions in urban slums were found to be responsible for more than half of the global child mortality caused by pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, and hiv/aids. examination of children’s school attendance children’s participation in education is essential if they are to realize their full potential as useful adult members of the society. however, a number of interrelated variables come into play to determine the quality as well as the level of children’s participation in education in any community. one such variable is housing. this section of the study therefore examines the interplay between housing quality and participation in schooling. the results showed that 98.7% of children interviewed in asylum down were in school compared with 77.3% in old fadama. table 5: school attendance old fadama (%) asylum down (%) do you attend school yes 77.3 98.7 no 22.7 1.3 the high level of non-attendance recorded in old fadama could be attributed to the several factors. the first was poverty. the inability of parents and guardians to pay the school fees, buy uniforms, books, and other necessary educational materials meant that the children had to stay at home. interestingly, the location of school did not significantly influence children’s school attendance in both communities. tiredness was mentioned in both places, being attributed to too many household chores. examination of children’s access to recreation play, both spontaneous and organized, is an important component of healthy child development. when children play, they reap the benefits of physical exercise, develop advanced motor skills, and find relief from stress and anxiety (unicef, 2012). play also promotes children’s cognition, creativity, and socialization. in urban settings, public play spaces can help mitigate the effects of overcrowding and lack of privacy in the home, and may enable children to mix with peers of different ages and backgrounds laying the foundation for a more equitable society (unicef, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 389 access to recreational facilities such as parks and gardens, playing grounds, or amusement parks enhance the psycho-social development of children. in old fadama 62.7% of children interviewed did not have access to any form of recreational facilities as compared to 38.7% in asylum down. inaccessibility to recreational facilities for the children in old fadama can be attributed to the unplanned nature of the settlement, a squatter settlement which has been denied legal access to municipal services and infrastructure in the city. the few open spaces in this community are being used for residential and commercial purposes. the lack of recreational facilities can negatively affect the ability of children in this community to socialize, compete with children from other communities, and develop the necessary social skills needed for meaningful adult life in society. children need plenty of opportunities for exercise and play to help them grow healthily and learn intelligently. thus, comparing the opportunity for play and exercise between children in old fadama and asylum down, those in old fadama compare less favourably and risk being less healthy and intelligent than their counterparts in asylum down (bradley & putnick, 2012). of children sampled for this study in old fadama, 85% did not have access to toys and other playing materials that are generally believed to enhance intellectual development in children. children in the asylum down community are therefore at a greater advantage when it comes to having access to toys and playing materials and hence enhancing their intellectual development. the lack of access to playing materials for most children in old fadama can be attributed to the generally high poverty levels among parents and guardians. it could also be attributed to a lack of knowledge on the part of parents regarding the importance of the use of playing materials by children. conclusion this paper has sought to understand how location can influence children’s access to quality housing thereby affecting their development. all children have a right to safe housing of good quality; however, most of the children of the slums live in poor quality houses, in overcrowded spaces with poor access to sanitation. mainstream approaches to development often view all children in urban areas as a homogeneous group and use statistical aggregates to determine resource allocation and programming actions. an equity-focused approach is needed to direct solutions precisely to those children who are hardest to reach (unicef, 2012). at the national level in ghana, the 1992 constitutional provision on the protection of the child is not explicit on the kinds of legislative support or protection for children’s shelter needs. our discussions with the key informants highlighted some policy options. for example, the housing needs of children have not received the same attention when compared to issues around health, education, and prohibitive practices. yet these issues are all related, requiring a holistic approach in tackling them. the ministry of gender, children and social protection has the mandate to promote and protect the rights of children in ghana. as such, the ministry through its children’s department collaborates with many agencies and organizations for child promotion and protection work. however, the study noted that there is the need for further collaboration in the areas of children’s shelter needs. the governments at the local levels, which are the district assemblies, need to work closely with the relevant ministries, departments and agencies in improving the quality of housing for children. currently, collaboration and partnerships in terms of child programming international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 375–393 390 between the relevant metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (mmdas), as well as with the traditional authorities, is weak and occurs occasionally and informally. this was a policy gap identified by all key informants in the study. the adoption of a child-friendly planning approach, which will ensure that children’s needs such as quality housing are mainstreamed into the planning processes, was also recommended. child support legislations and policies must recognize this slum proliferation and the impact living in slums can have on children. this requires two directions for policy: firstly, slum upgrading should be promoted and pursued in all urban centers while, at the same time, 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(2002). on high moral ground: the incorporation of human rights by the development enterprise. praxis, xvii: 1-11. retrieved from: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/praxis/archives/~/media/fletcher/microsites/praxis/xvii/uvin.pdf http://www.femindia.net/uploads/1/0/2/1/10215849/history_of_child_rights_and_child_la http://www.femindia.net/uploads/1/0/2/1/10215849/history_of_child_rights_and_child_la dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781849208925.n13 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.5665/sleep.3124 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejm004 dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.3923/jas.2010.620.627 developmental pathways towards crime prevention: 97 developmental pathways towards crime prevention: early intervention models mike c. boyes, joseph p. hornick, and nancy ogden abstract: in examining the role of early intervention in children’s social development, the authors discuss the results of five broad-based intervention programs based on the healthy families model originated in the state of hawaii. these programs were directed toward families at moderate levels of risk when dealing with the arrival their first child and were situated in charlottetown, prince edward island, whitehorse, yukon, and at three sites in edmonton, alberta. the authors state that their experiences with this project have led them to question a number of traditional assumptions regarding past theory and research in this area as it pertains to crime prevention. more specifically, they discuss how the developmental model helped to identify the various developmental pathways of positive change that were being demonstrated by families in the healthy families program sites. they agree with other researchers that early childhood intervention is viewed most appropriately as an individualized strategy and not as a developmental panacea. it is most timely that this impressive group of researchers and policy-makers gathered to chronicle our collective efforts in deciding how best to prevent the development of delinquency and criminality. the history of efforts to intervene early to reduce delinquency and criminality has been long and varied. we have tried many different programs and strategies, and our efforts have been increasingly well documented, as has our understanding of the importance of thorough evaluation as a means for knowing what works, what doesn’t work, and why. now is an ideal time to step back and take in the larger picture of our intervention efforts to date and to plan for future research, policy development, interventions, and evaluations. elsewhere in this collection of articles, the traditional theory of social development was called into question. we would like to add our voices to those of others in this special issue and the collected wisdom of the national research council and institute of medicine in the united states (shonkoff & phillips, 2000) in this regard. it is clear that the assumption that development is a single linear progression of stages is an oversimplification of many children’s realities. we now know that development, particularly in children’s early years, progresses as an ongoing interplay of nature and nurture. we are coming to the end of a three-year longitudinal evaluation of five healthy families program sites across canada. these healthy families sites have been running a broad-based early intervention program primarily directed toward families at moderate levels of risk, coping with the arrival of their first child. five agencies were involved in the delivery of the program on three sites: charlottetown, prince edward island; whitehorse, yukon; and edmonton, alberta. in edmonton, the program was delivered by three agencies that considered themselves as one program. however, in terms of evaluation definitions, they were actually viewed as three 98 different programs and were analyzed separately. our experiences with this project have led us to question a number of traditional assumptions regarding past theory and research in this area. in our work developing and conducting an evaluation of a sample of healthy families early intervention programs, we have benefited from reports of past early intervention efforts. we have also benefited from existing broad models or theories of the contexts and pathways of development from infancy and the early prenatal period, through childhood, and into adolescence and young adulthood. those interested in crime prevention now have enough information to take a larger scale look at the crime prevention domain from this newly available developmental perspective. crime prevention models have included early intervention components for years, but it is only recently that a developmental perspective has been applied to crime prevention models. an advantage of developmental models is that they inform crime prevention models by providing an understanding of the longitudinal causal mechanisms that increase or decrease the risk of a developing child being identified as criminally at risk. developmental models can inform intervention efforts at all ages and stages and can assist in the development and appropriate targeting of new and existing intervention efforts. it is no longer enough to simply count risks and protective factors. it is important to understand the multiple contexts (e.g., ecological systems) in which development occurs. this is needed to make sense out of what constitutes risk or resilience factors, or vulnerability or protective factors, within particular age ranges. it is also needed to guide intervention efforts to the places and issues that are of particular developmental importance at a given age or developmental stage. much of this is done in the course of identifying needs and designing interventions for particular groups (e.g., new parents, preschoolers, etc.). however, unless an explicitly developmental model is adopted, the program runs the risk of missing intervention opportunities as well as experiencing difficulties explaining how their interventions might link up with programs and institutions at the next developmental level, or how they can benefit from information flowing through from previous developmental phases. we will approach these issues by first describing the trends in the early intervention domain that caused us (and others) to rethink our overall strategy in this area. we will then identify what is meant by the term developmental prevention and how it can be used both to inform interventions and to link interventions that are otherwise distinctly focused on different parts of the life cycle. we will discuss how an ecological model provides insight into where and how to intervene. an ecological model for developmental prevention highlights the risks and protective factors and provides frameworks for identifying those that are of particular developmental relevance within any targeted developmental period. to illustrate this, we will discuss how the developmental model helped us to identify the various developmental pathways of positive change that were being demonstrated by families in the healthy families program sites we were evaluating. finally, by way of connecting our work more directly with the schoolage focus of this group, we will discuss the developmental linkages between early (age) intervention programs and early school-aged intervention programs. 99 trends in the early intervention domain the most significant influence on work in this area has been the renewed focus upon the early years and, in particular, the crucial role that early experience and relationships seem to play in the continued formation and optimal development of the structures of children’s brains. the details of this important interaction between infants’ basic natures and their environmental circumstances are spelled out in the early years report (mccain & mustard, 1999), and in the previously mentioned report by the american national research council and institute of medicine entitled, from neurons to neighborhoods (shonkoff & phillips, 2000). the early years report makes a number of key points regarding the importance of the aspects of brain growth and development that occur after children are born and in the context of their relationships with their parents and other caregivers: how the brain develops hinges on a complex interplay between the genes you are born with and the experiences you have. …early experiences have a decisive impact on the architecture of the brain, and on the nature and extent of adult capacities. …early interventions don’t just create the context, they directly affect the way the brain is wired. …brain development is non-linear: there are prime times for acquiring different kinds of knowledge and skills. (mccain & mustard, 1999, p. 28) the importance of the early years for development of many of the foundational aspects of the brain and brain functioning is becoming clear. for example, the visual system does not fully develop until after the infant has been exposed to a broad range of complex visual stimuli in the first years of life. the neural networks that form the foundation of later cognitive development are being continuously formed and elaborated throughout the preschool years. as well, the development of the frontal lobe areas of the brain, which are essential for reflection and response inhibition, continue to develop and be open to influence throughout the elementary school years (mccain & mustard, 1999). those writing in this area are very careful to remind us that early development is best viewed as an inextricable interaction of nature and nurture (i.e., of genes, brain cells, and early relationships and experiences). as well, the idea that parents and other caregivers are doing nothing less than growing their infants’ brains is a very powerful message likely partly selected for its prescriptive force. the only drawback to this forceful message is the public’s general tendency to view issues of the brain as genetic and therefore as more biological than social. this runs the risk, in the minds of the parent consumers of this message, of actually de-emphasizing the other, equally if not more important, side of this argument – that what parents must do, or be helped to do, is to build and maintain complex, consistent social connections and ongoing relationships with their infants. this means that our interventions with infants and preschoolers are child-parent system directed (and mainly parent focused early on). it also means we can do much at the level of the neighbourhood and community that will support the effective 100 development of positive nurturing relationships between parents and infants. these points lead directly to a consideration of just what is meant by a developmental approach to intervention and to what sorts of models might best guide us in planning, implementing, and evaluating our efforts in this important area. developmental prevention developmental prevention “refers to interventions designed to inhibit the development of criminal potential in individuals” (farrington, 1996). aside from assisting programs in deciding where, when, and how to best focus their intervention efforts, a developmental approach to prevention by both programs and policy-makers provides access to a rich source of concepts and studies that could help to identify a new range of questions at all points in the prevention planning and evaluation process (tremblay & craig, 1995). developmental prevention also includes the idea that development is not a continuous or uniform process. rather, development proceeds in jumps, steps, and stages and it is important to seriously consider the regular points of developmental transition (e.g., the shift from infancy to the preschool years and the “terrible twos”, school entry, movement to junior high school, etc.). these transitions provide opportunities for interventions aimed at moving children (either directly or through their family, peers, or community) in the direction of positive developmental pathways. what goes on between the transition points within developmental levels can be mapped out using a version of an ecological developmental model. ecological development models the saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” does more than simply suggest that it is a task requiring a lot of work. what it points to is the essential importance of considering both the direct contacts that children have as they develop and the multiple contexts in which those contacts occur if you are to properly see what facilitates or hampers optimal development. ecological developmental models such as bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory, sameroff’s transactional model (sameroff, 1987; sameroff & chandler, 1975; sameroff & fiese, 1990), zigler’s ecological developmental approach (emens, hall, ross, & zigler, 1996; zigler & berman, 1983; zigler, taussig, & black, 1992), or ramey and ramey’s biosocial developmental contextualism (c. t. ramey & s. l. ramey, 1994) are attempts to sketch out this sort of broader perspective on development. from this perspective, risk, opportunity, and development must be considered in the contexts that consist of the child and his or her immediate family, friends, neighbourhood, spiritual community, and school. other influential contexts include aspects of social and physical geography such as weather, local and national laws, social conventions, and cultural and subcultural values and ideals. how all of these contextual forces interact with the child’s physical makeup determine the actual developmental trajectory or course taken by that individual child. it privileges neither the biological nor the social – neither nature nor nurture. it “…encourages us to look beyond the individual to the environment for questions and explanations about individual behaviour and development” (garbarino, 1990, p. 78). 101 interventions: reducing risks and bolstering protective factors an ecological perspective suggests that we view a child’s actual developmental trajectory or the potential developmental pathways open to him or her as a matter of “fit,” that is, as a contextual question of how children exist within or move between the various contexts in which they are found. in this model, risks can be seen both as direct threats to the developing child or as a lack of access to normal, expectable developmental opportunities. bad prenatal experiences or physical disabilities can represent developmental risks, but so can poor family relationships and the possible attendant loss of support and role models. in bad times or bad developmental circumstances, interventions may not be able to mitigate all risks, but it may be possible for the intervention to assist the at-risk children in finding alternative routes to adaptive development, maturity, and citizenship. the ecological perspective can also help us to see relationships, influences, or intervention opportunities that we might have otherwise missed with a more singular focus. we may find that a proposed intervention strategy may actually add to rather than reduce levels of risk. workable intervention strategies that are suggested by an ecological perspective may actually seem counterintuitive if viewed in isolation. finally, an ecological model could point out collaborative opportunities between programs and existing social groups and institutions whose efforts are directed either at the same aged children or at consecutive points along children’s developmental pathways. the importance of early relationships the initial love and nurturing children receive from their families, and other early caregivers, are central to their cognitive, emotional, and physical development. if infants live in such environments they learn to trust their caregivers; this makes infants feel secure. security is vitally important for children’s sense of well-being. when infants feel safe they explore the environment, using the caregiver as a secure base (ainsworth, 1968). this pattern is part of the normal development of infants and very young children and is essential for healthy growth and development. as children get older their social needs change, but security continues to be important to them. most children are nurtured by their parents and live in secure, loving, trusting environments and these children are said to be securely-attached. however, not all infants and children feel safe. large numbers of infants and children experience maltreatment at the hands of those who they depend upon. these children are said to be insecurely-attached. documented cases of child abuse and neglect indicate that infants without adequate social interaction with other human beings are unable to develop fully human characteristics. in order to develop such characteristics, an infant or young child requires an ongoing relationship with at least one adult that provides unconditional love and support. child maltreatment includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. research on the community, family, and individual causes of violence in the lives of children and youth emphasize the importance of the family as an agent of socialization. deprivation from caregivers during infancy predicts anti-social behaviour in children. deprivation can occur 102 through events such as extended separation from the mother or other primary caregiver, neglect, maternal depression, etc. (holland, moretti, verlaan, & peterson, 1993). furthermore, poor parenting practices and dysfunctional family interaction are associated with the development of anti-social and delinquent behaviour (snyder & patterson, 1987). not everyone from an abusive, dysfunctional, or violent home will experience these outcomes. the relationship between family violence and substance abuse and/or criminal behaviour is not absolute so these consequences are not inevitable. in an attempt to determine just who is at risk, researchers assess the presence or absence of two types of variables: risk factors and protective factors (also called resilience). in infants’ and children’s lives, risk factors in their family, school, and/or community include variables such as discrimination, family violence and dysfunction, poverty, lack of supervision, violent neighbourhoods, and multiple moves. the presence of any of these risk factors significantly increases children’s later risk for negative outcomes such as depression, mental illness, conduct problems, suicide, delinquency and criminality, substance abuse, and aggressive and/or violent behaviour. the greatest risk factor for the development of nearly all forms of behavioural problems is poverty. child poverty continues to increase in most industrialized nations, including canada (canadian council on social development, 1997). the national longitudinal survey of children and youth (1994, as cited in canadian council on social development, 1997) reports that poverty has a negative impact on family functioning and school performance. family dysfunction and parental depression are significantly higher in families below the poverty line. moreover, poor children have lower scholastic and verbal skills on school entry than do their more advantaged counterparts. the presence of four or more risk factors increases the risk of negative outcomes tenfold (smith, lizotte, thornberry, & krohn, 1995; sameroff, 1987). the prevalence of serious delinquency and substance abuse is strongly associated with increased numbers of risk factors. many risk factors are interrelated. for example, family breakdown is related to high levels of juvenile delinquency. however, family breakdown is also related to high conflict, lowered income, and parental absence, each of which in turn is related to juvenile delinquency (gabarino, dubrow, kostelny, & pardo, 1992). thus the factors involved in criminal offending are complex and cumulative, and can be explained both through individual and social history. an excellent example of the interrelationship between individual and socio-cultural influences is the relatively recent research documenting the destructive consequences of children’s exposure to community violence (sheidow, gorman-smith, tolan, & henry, 2001; bell & jenkins, 1993; osofsky, wewers, hann, & fick, 1993). there is substantial discrepancy in the degree and extent of exposure to violence among children and youth living in inner-city communities. nevertheless, the canadian council on social development (1997) reports that one in four canadian children live in an area that is considered unsafe after dark. characteristics of the neighbourhood (such as the percentages of families working or living below the poverty level, the stability of the neighbourhood, etc.) and family functioning are important influences in how children develop within their local community environments. how important is the family as an agent of socialization in violent communities? unfortunately, the importance of family functioning is not independent of neighbourhood characteristics. sheidow et al. (2001) report 103 that in inner-city communities without positive social processes, the risk of exposure to violence cannot be assuaged by family functioning. that is, for many children exposed to violence within their communities, it does not matter how their family is functioning; these children are at risk simply by living within their community. children in functional families are at risk; children in dysfunctional families are more at risk. these observations underscore the importance of understanding the social ecology of development for identifying how risk factors relate to outcomes (gorman-smith, tolan, & henry, 1999; national crime prevention council of canada, 1995) and serve as an important reminder that the family is not the only agent of socialization affecting children. complete coverage of all pertinent research on violence and criminality is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter. nonetheless, evidence does indicate a primary role for families and parents. child abuse and neglect are particularly significant risk factors predicting later involvement in juvenile crime and chronic criminal behaviour. children exposed to chronic violence are more likely to be violent. the impact of violence on children differs with the type of violence, the pattern of violence, the presence of supportive adult caretakers and other support systems, and the age of the child (perry, 1995). children at risk at an early age are in greater jeopardy for multiple negative outcomes later in life. this is due in part to the fact that the younger child has fewer defensive capabilities (perry, 1995). for example, a random sample of 3,300 ontario children indicated that between the ages of 4 and 11, family problems such as poor parenting or family dysfunction or violence were the most significant risk factors for developing later psychiatric disorders. however, for children between the ages of 12 and 16, later psychiatric assessments were more closely tied to more conspicuous parental problems such as criminality and mental illness (grizenko & fisher, 1992). early risk and resilience children at risk for later negative outcomes can be identified through particular sets of risk factors. are researchers equally adept at identifying those factors that will protect children from inferior environments? the answer is, in part, yes. factors such as high intelligence, secure attachment, average to above average family income, educated parents, etc. can serve as protection for children in destitute environments causing them to be more resilient. in fact, most studies of protective factors (see, for example, losel & bliesener, 1990) suggest that under adverse circumstances, 80% of children will “bounce back” from developmental challenges. this assumption is proving to be overly optimistic (garbarino, 2001; perry, 1994). for instance, resilience is drastically diminished under conditions of extreme risk accumulation or if children receive inadequate care in the first two years. garbarino suggests that these observations could be interpreted to mean that the children and youth best able to survive functionally are those who have the least to lose morally and psychologically. the data yielded from his conversations with youth incarcerated for murder and other acts of violent crime confirm his theory. he reports that the crimes were unaffected by moral compunction or emotional responsibility for others. these young people did not experience shame, guilt, remorse, regret, or contrition for their criminal acts (garbarino, 2001). the work of perry and his colleagues (1994, 1995) has documented the impact of early neglect and abuse on the development of the brain. this research contends that the brains of 104 infants and children are more plastic (i.e., receptive to inputs from the environment) than more mature brains. this means that the infant or child is most vulnerable to disadvantaged environments during the first three or four years. these developmental experiences determine how the brain will be organized and therefore how it will function. early trauma can produce inadequate development of the brain’s cortex (the part of the brain that controls higher abilities such as abstract reasoning and impulse control) by stimulating a stress-related hormone – cortisol – that impedes brain growth. these findings have implications for research, intervention, and prevention. for example, the earlier an intervention occurs, the more effective and preventive it is likely to be (blair, ramey, & hardin, 1995; kiser, heston, & millsap, 1991; mcfarlane, 1987) and thus the more enduring its impact. furthermore, insightful socio-cultural and public policy implications should arise from understanding the critical role of early experience in socializing infants and children as they mature and acculturate or identify as traumatized and maladapted, thereby affecting our society for ill or good. perry forcefully argues that we must stop accepting the “myth” that children are resilient, that evidence contradicts such assertions, and children are irrevocably affected by maltreatment. “persistence of the pervasive [political acceptance of] maltreatment of children in the face of devastating global and national resources will lead inevitably, to sociocultural devolution” (perry, 1994). in canada, where children and youth comprise 23% of the population, nearly one-quarter of assaults reported to police are visited upon children and youth (statistics canada, 2002). while this statistic is disturbing enough, of greater concern however is the belief of officials that many incidents of maltreatment are not documented because they are neither observed nor reported, leading to an underestimate of the extent of the problem. some types of maltreatment, for instance emotional maltreatment, are difficult to document. also, factors such as the secrecy surrounding the issue, the dependency of the victim on the abuser, as well as a lack of knowledge about potential sources for help, contribute to under-reporting. we can conclude that the ramifications of maltreatment of children involve tremendous personal and socio-cultural costs. the financial costs are also staggering. the national crime prevention council, in its report preventing crimes by investing in families (as cited in ontario association of children’s aid societies, 1998), conservatively estimates that the annual cost of crime in canada is in the range of 46 billion dollars. family violence escalates social and economic costs to the health care system, impacts the civil and criminal justice systems, and creates immeasurable human suffering. the prevention of crime translates into meaningful reductions in human anguish, community victimization, and money spent on services for young offenders and their families. society must rethink its priorities with respect to dedicating adequate time, energy, and resources to every aspect of prevention. programs that support families and parents of very young children can significantly reduce child abuse. the importance of secure attachments has recently been used to ascertain levels of vulnerability for those at risk of serious criminal behaviour. many young offenders have been abused or have witnessed abuse in their homes. as already discussed, family violence is a problem that can create lasting physical, psychological, and/or economic repercussions for children and for the larger society. sexual assault, physical assault, emotional abuse, and neglect 105 can lead to physical and/or mental health problems, problems with relationships, or social functioning. the impacts of child abuse are experienced throughout the individual’s lifetime. for example, 50% of those who were abused as children reported also being abused as adults (mccauley et al., 1997). research regarding the developmental impact of early maltreatment is particularly sobering when considering juveniles who commit violent crimes. in a study completed in the united kingdom, one-third of sexual offenders had experienced sexual and/or physical abuse as a child (dolan, holloway, bailey, & kroll, 1996). the abused offenders, when compared to the non-abused offenders, had experienced more dysfunctional upbringing and demonstrated higher levels of personal disturbance. for example, 58% of firesetters had a history of physical or sexual abuse. the majority of firesetters demonstrated high levels of personal and family disturbance with poor interpersonal relationships with parents/caregivers. of 20 adolescent perpetrators of homicide, one-quarter had experienced either physical or sexual abuse. overall, the group convicted for homicide demonstrated high levels of disturbance, high levels of interpersonal conflict with parent/caregivers, and neglect or separation from caregivers. garbarino (1999) reported that extreme aggression in boys was related to dysfunctional parenting (abusive experiences and/or abandonment by parents) that began in early childhood. this emphasis on the critical importance of early childhood has led researchers to study children and youth who perpetuate violent crimes from a developmental model relating to psychosocial risk and vulnerability (kazdin & weisz, 1998; dolan et al., 1996; bailey, 1992). developmental pathways within early intervention models specific programs aimed to reduce stress, enhance family functioning, and promote child development were the logical first step in implementing theoretical developmental models. the healthy start program in hawaii was designed to improve family coping skills as well as family functioning and aimed to promote positive parenting. its stated purpose was to reduce child abuse and neglect. the program identified high-risk families for abuse and/or neglect by screening newborns and their families in the hospital, and then followed up with communitybased home visits from family support services. families were linked to family physicians or to nursing clinics and connected to a number of community services. families were followed until the child was 5 years of age. evaluation of the program revealed that the high-risk families that participated in the program had half the state average for child maltreatment and abuse, whereas the rate of abuse for high-risk families that did not participate in the program was twice the state average. from its inception in 1992, healthy families america inc. modelled its programs on the groundbreaking hawaii initiative and implemented nearly 200 programs throughout the united states. however, due to escalating health costs in a country without socialized medicine, the healthy families america inc. program interventions became increasingly focused on helping low income, at-risk families to access state-funded health services. the health insurance association of america estimated that by the year 2007, 53.5 million people in the united states were uninsured with over one-third of these people being children (denavas-walt, proctor, & smith, 2007). coupled with the fact that at both the state and federal levels child and family services (i.e., child welfare) are less broadly organized in the american system, this indicated 106 that modifications to the healthy families initiative would be necessary were it to come to canada. canada has a system of socialized medicine that guarantees universal health care and is strongly supported through efficient community public health support. in fact, canadian children at all income levels make the same average number of visits to doctors, whereas insured american children are eight times more likely to visit a doctor than are uninsured children (canadian council on social development, 1997). moreover, canada boasts more formally organized child and family ministries. these differences enabled canadian researchers to redefine program objectives and allowed them to focus more intensely and more broadly on the other issues involved in assessing risk. the department of justice canada, through the national crime prevention centre (ncpc), financed a healthy families demonstration project through the crime prevention investment fund. the main goal of the investment fund is to establish effective programs for reducing delinquency and crime. three sites were chosen to pilot the project: “best start” in charlottetown, prince edward island; “healthy families” in whitehorse, yukon; and “success by six healthy families” in edmonton, alberta. each of these three programs and the people they serve were chosen because they represent very different types of communities. the prince edward island program is in a small urban centre with a large rural population and was later expanded province-wide, the yukon program serves an aboriginal community, and the edmonton program is in a large urban community. in 1999, the canadian research institute for law and the family (crilf), located in alberta, began a three-year project to complete process and outcome evaluations of these healthy families pilot programs. the healthy families program utilizes trained paraprofessional visitors to provide home visitation services to families identified by the public health system as requiring assistance. healthy families programs administer initial and follow-up screenings and establish schedules for home visits. the model requires that the entire child-raising system be assessed. evaluators from crilf utilized existing measures and developed measures to assess the risk and protective factors present for each child that could potentially influence a less than optimal developmental trajectory, potentially influencing the child’s vulnerability to delinquent and criminal behaviour. caseworkers help parents access information and make referrals to health and social programs. they help parents develop practical parenting skills, and help them to develop or strengthen existing networks of support. parents are also encouraged to participate in a career planning program. the overall mandate of all healthy families programs is to optimize the development of young at-risk children and their families to increase the children’s opportunities for later success by early screening, assessment, and intervention. the canadian focus has been on the transition to parenting, enabling parents to become more effective caregivers in a number of ways. first, the program empowers parents and enables them to access a broad range of community programs and resources (e.g., community kitchens, library reading programs, parenting support groups, etc.). second, the program has an intense focus on the interaction between the parent and the child, with an eye to identifying issues and facilitating positive parent/child interaction and healthy growth and development for both. program personnel are trained to identify and address maladaptive parenting attitudes and behaviours. 107 as already stated, a child’s vulnerability to victimization and criminal behaviour involves a number of risk factors including: young single parents; inadequate family income and support; unstable housing; undereducated parents; parental history of substance abuse or psychiatric care; marital problems; and maltreatment (caledon institute of social policy, 2001). a key issue underlying the healthy families project in canada (and the united states) is whether early experience and intervention make a difference to later occurrence of delinquency or crime. the answer in a recent comprehensive longitudinal review of developmental and early intervention approaches conducted in australia is unequivocally “yes” (national crime prevention, 1999). recent canadian evaluations of the healthy families program for canada, the results of the initial three-year evaluation of the healthy families program piloted in prince edward island, alberta, and the yukon were published in the report entitled evaluation of healthy families programs in selected sites across canada (elnitsky et al., 2003). overall, the findings regarding the effectiveness of the healthy families programs presented in this report lead to the conclusion that the programs were successful at achieving some but not necessarily all of their stated objectives. the detail and quality of the data from child welfare services especially provided significant support for the effectiveness of the edmonton success by six and the p.e.i. best start programs. further, the report states: …our experiences in evaluating these programs left us with the impression that the programs had provided the skills and support necessary for their clients to cope with the crises of everyday life and had, as well, helped the clients achieve goals that we were not able to clearly document. in part this was due to the heterogeneous nature of the clients and their unique needs. however, it may also be due in part to the fact that the complexity of what these programs do is not easily evaluated. interestingly, as we expanded the evaluation design, we were able to further document outcomes achieved by the programs. (elnitsky et al., 2003, p. 171) in the fall of 2002, crilf, funded by ncpc, began the evaluation of the prince edward island province-wide expanded best start program. this evaluation of the expanded program built on the three-year pilot project also funded by ncpc that began in 1999 and was completed march, 2002. as a condition of the agreement with ncpc, crilf contributed the services of the data analysts, and the best start program contributed the resources of the home visitors for collecting and inputting data for the standardized instruments into a computerized management information system (mis). in march of 2006, crilf published a report (hornick, bradford, bertrand, & boyes, 2006) presenting results from the comprehensive evaluation of the p.e.i. best start healthy families program for an additional three years. the report had two major objectives as follows: 1. to present a process analysis, which documents the implementation of the program, including program inputs, activities, and outputs. 2. to present an outcome analysis of the program to determine effectiveness based on the following: 108 • short-term outcome data from a set of standardized instruments (child 0 to 3 years old); • long-term outcome data from a set of standardized instruments (child 3 to 6 years old); • a survey of best start clients’ experiences and views of the home visitation program; • involvement with child welfare services; and • utilization of health care services. to accomplish these objectives, both a process analysis and an outcome evaluation based on a program logic model study were conducted. during the previous three-year pilot study of the best start program and programs at other sites across canada, it was very difficult to demonstrate the effectiveness of the early intervention programs for at least four reasons: (a) the nature of the clients themselves; (b) the difficulty in accurately identifying what services were received; (c) the difficulty in identifying and tracking relevant outcomes and benefits; and (d) the effects of history (e.g., changing societal events) on the clients over time. the previous evaluation (elnitsky et al., 2003) indicated that client families who received the healthy families programs were a very heterogeneous group. even though these client families were all assessed as “families at risk”, the specific strengths and weaknesses of the individual families were unique and only a few characteristics were commonly shared, i.e., most clients were young, single, poorly educated, and had children with difficult temperaments. this made these families both difficult to serve and difficult to evaluate. further, because of the unique needs of these families, the specific program goals and activities differed significantly from family to family. standardized measures were first administered to clients early in the program (most within the first three months) to provide a detailed picture of the clients’ needs. this picture indicated that few clients shared the same pattern of needs. thus, since all instruments were standardized and “normed” on large samples from the general population, it was possible to determine cut-off scores or predetermined boundaries for each instrument which distinguished between those clients who “needed to improve” on any specific scale from those who were in the normal range and had no need to improve. given that the sample of best start clients was relatively large, we were able to dichotomize the sample for each instrument by those clients who needed to improve, to compare them with those who did not need to improve, and to identify what change occurred over time. this approach was employed for analyzing the standardized outcome instruments when possible. conclusions: process analysis despite an initial delay in the implementation of the province-wide best start in prince edward island due to an extension of negotiations concerning funding, and the subsequent freeze in funding that necessitated limiting the program to families with children under 18 months old, the program had made considerable progress and was successfully implemented. all components of the original healthy families model were being used and there was considerable consistency 109 between the charlottetown, prince edward island, program and the other best start sites both in terms of the services offered and the demographic profiles and risk levels of the clients being served. finally, the projected number of clients to be served had been reached. successful implementation was due to a number of circumstances including the following: • the best start program adopted a well-developed model for home visitation, i.e., healthy families, and tailored the program for families at risk in p.e.i. • the public health nurses in p.e.i. have been highly committed to the best start program and helped to achieve universal screening and consistent assessments of families. • all of the children and family resource centres recognized the importance of this primary prevention program and have entered into partnership with best start in implementing the program province-wide. • the best start program had attracted support not only from the host agencies but also from both government and community agencies. • capacity building in the community occurred on many levels, e.g., the public health nurses who do the risk screening and assessments; the best start supervisors and workers; and the families who benefit from the support and resources of the best start program. • the development and implementation of an on-line mis, as well as the development of the best start core content, provided the supervisors and best start workers with new skills and an understanding of how useful these skills are. conclusions: outcomes short-term outcome analysis measured the improvement of the clients located in charlottetown, in comparison with a low risk non-participant comparison group during their first year of involvement with the program using a number of standardized instruments. the comparison group was located in summerside, p.e.i. improvements for the best start clients were noted in two of the four areas, i.e., knowledge of child development on the child development inventory (hornick et al., 2006) and the accurate perception by the parents of the child’s temperament according to the carey temperament scale (hornick et al., 2006). in the other two areas, i.e., family functioning and social support, there was no difference at post-test. it is important to note we were limited to just two test periods at a 12-month interval since this was the maximum time for follow-up with the non-participant comparison group. it is possible, particularly with family functioning, that it takes longer than 12 months to achieve significant positive change. previous research (gomes, hornick, wagner, boyes, & billings, 2005) suggests that family functioning measured by the family assessment device (hornick et al., 2006) increased the most in the second year of the edmonton home visitation program. interestingly, knowledge of child development in the edmonton study increased the most in the first year. 110 long-term outcome analysis measured how best start clients who completed the program at 36 months compared to the summerside comparison group. further, both of these groups were also tested 12 months later to identify whether completed clients declined after leaving the program. generally, the findings regarding long-term outcomes were positive although not statistically significant, most likely due to the small number of cases in the two groups analyzed. parents’ adjustment (psoc) at time 1 was higher for the completed program group as predicted and over time it increased slightly overall. social contact (sni) was also higher for the completed program group at time 1. both groups, however, decreased slightly over time. in terms of use of community resources (ccrt), at time 1 the completed program group reported higher involvement with health, education, and spiritual/cultural resources whereas the summerside comparison group reported higher contact regarding basic needs, child care, family/parent support, and recreation. over time the completed program group increased the use of resources, especially child care, while the comparison groups tended to decrease contact with the exception of education. stress in the family was high for both groups, especially in the areas of financial, career, and home issues. further, these did not decrease significantly over time. finally, the behaviour profiles of the children from the two groups were both “normal” although the summerside comparison group had slightly higher scores on the “withdrawn” and “somatic problems” scales at time 1. the satisfaction of clients was measured by the parent survey, which was administered to a sample of clients active in the program more than 12 months. overall, the respondents were very positive about the program indicating that it helped them “very much”, particularly in dealing with the baby’s difficult temperament. most clients (approximately 90%) felt that the program helped “somewhat” or “very much” with their ability to deal with stress and problem solving. further, they highly valued the relationship with the home visitors. since the beginning of the first pilot study (elnitsky et al., 2003), the overall involvement of best start clients with child welfare increased significantly from 5% at november, 2001 to 20% at december, 2004. this increase is most likely due to the following two factors: (a) the larger number of older children in the current study; and (b) because the program focus had evolved and the program was working much more closely with child welfare, it was less likely than before that families would be excluded from the program because of child welfare involvement. the increased involvement in comparison with the earlier study was both an expected and positive finding since it indicated that the program workers were working closely with child welfare in accurately identifying children in need of protection and monitoring these cases over time even though a formal policy and protocol had not been adopted. interestingly, the percentage of best start clients involved with child welfare was comparable to the edmonton programs, which reported 31% involvement for a similar time period (gomes et al., 2005). further, in terms of overall involvement with child welfare, it should be noted that of the initial 190 investigations, only 66 cases were founded – in need of protection, and those resulted 111 in only 14 placements, 3 of which were the result of an apprehension. domestic violence was the primary reason for investigations and it appeared that the best start workers’ training regarding domestic violence was helping them to identify risk situations. in order to facilitate measurement of whether the best start programs were effective at reducing the probability of clients’ involvement with child welfare, two comparative analyses were conducted. first, a comparative analysis was conducted using a sub-sample of best start clients whose children were born during the same time period as the non-participant comparison group. the non-participant comparison group, however, was a significantly lower risk group at pre-program than the best start clients making comparison between the groups difficult to interpret. the best test of the effectiveness of the best start program in reducing child welfare involvement was achieved by comparing the completed program group with the summerside comparison group. these groups had children between four and six years of age and both had high-risk profiles at the pre-program stage, with the completed program group being somewhat higher risk than the summerside comparison group. overall, the differences between the two groups at december 2004 were very significant. the summerside comparison group involvement with child welfare was almost double the completed program group’s involvement (58% compared to 31%). rates of founded – in need of protection were comparable (31% and 33%); however, in terms of action, the completed program group had no actions taken (only one informal placement) compared to six actions for the summerside comparison group. at the time of the birth of the child, the best start program group mothers were clearly at higher risk than the general population. the mothers were younger, had more previous pregnancies, tended to smoke and drink during the pregnancy, over 10% used street drugs, and they gave birth to smaller babies. despite the fact that these mothers and infants were at higher risk at birth, their utilization of health care, including emergency room visits, hospitalizations, visits to family physicians for health promotion, and average number of specialist visits were very similar to the general population – more so than any of the other study comparison groups. since there was no direct measure of appropriate utilization of health care research, we assumed the general population utilization was “average”. that being the case, the nonparticipant comparison group appeared to underutilize services. in contrast, the completed program group and the summerside comparison group appeared to have much higher health care utilization. the best test of the effectiveness of the best start program in achieving appropriate utilization of health care resources was the comparison between the completed program group and the summerside comparison group – both “high” users as noted above. first, it is interesting to note that the summerside comparison group generally used more health services than the completed program group, with the exception of hospitalization where a referring physician would make the decision about utilization. the biggest difference was the use of emergency room service, which may indicate an inappropriate use of services. 112 overall conclusions overall, the above findings and conclusions are very encouraging. while some of the differences between those who received the program and those who did not were not statistically significant, the pattern of findings over the various measures of outcomes were consistent particularly with respect to child welfare and health care utilization. those who received the program performed better than those who did not. the magnitude of these findings should be viewed within the context of the calls in prior research that we “should maintain modest realistic expectation for home visiting services” (gomby, 1999, p. 23). compared to other evaluations, the best start program has performed well. further, it should be noted that the findings of this evaluation are quite consistent with the previous research. gomby (2003), in a review of meta-analyses focusing on the effectiveness of home visitation, concluded: effects are most consistent for outcomes related to parenting, including the prevention of child abuse and neglect (depending upon how child maltreatment is measured). home visiting programs do not generate consistent benefits in child development or in improving the course of mothers’ lives. families in which children have obvious risk factors (e.g., they are biologically at-risk, developmentally delayed, or they already have behavior problems) appear to benefit most. some studies also suggest that the highest-risk mothers (e.g., low income teen mothers; mothers with poor coping skills, low iqs, and mental health problems) may benefit most, but probably only if the program offers services tailored to address the needs of the mothers. (p. 31) linkages between different programs and developmental levels or transition points transition points are markers where children move from one developmental level to another and/or from one developmental context to another. these transition points are opportunities for families and children to confidently move on independent of the supports provided by interventions in previous developmental levels. there are also opportunities for earlier intervention programs to assist their families and child clients in making these transitions through the provision of information and support. for example, head start or kindergarten programs can benefit from information about the vulnerabilities and protective factors that characterize their incoming students. as well, the parents of these children, as a result of their experiences with a home visitation intervention, may be more active and effective in their child’s transition to the new school setting. it is becoming increasingly clear that the best way to view the purposes and efforts of early intervention programs is to adopt a population health model where the general parameters or variables that contribute to outcomes are known and understood (vulnerabilities and resiliencies), but where it is also recognized that there is no single normative pattern in which these factors come together in the developmental stories of individual children and their families. this means that it does not make sense to look for a particular pattern in the interplay of vulnerability and resilience factors along children’s developmental pathways. rather it makes sense to monitor the 113 ways in which families of children at risk address and cope with the array of risks, challenges, and crises they encounter as their children develop. it is in those processes of coping and in the relationships and programs (i.e., connections to home visitors and other early parenting support programs, for example) that support them in these efforts that we will begin to more clearly see how these programs bolster the adaptive processes and outcomes of the children and families with whom they are involved. this also means that family profiles of vulnerabilities may not change over the course of their involvement with a home visitation or other early intervention program. rather, it may be that their program experiences and the connections or relationships they build with their home visitor act by strengthening their abilities to cope and to adapt more effectively to their roles as parents and as facilitators of their children’s development. in the final analysis, early childhood intervention is viewed most appropriately as an individualized strategy designed to increase the probability of a desired outcome, and not as a developmental panacea for all children under all circumstances. 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(1992). early childhood intervention: a promising preventative for juvenile delinquency. american psychologist, 47(8), 997-1006. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-205-x/85-205-x2003000-eng.pdf� developmental prevention ecological development models interventions: reducing risks and bolstering protective factors the importance of early relationships developmental pathways within early intervention models microsoft word 07 desettlering_conference.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019521 de-settlering ourselves: conference reflections kathleen skott-myhre, scott kouri, and hans skott-myhre abstract: this article explores the complexities of settler relations within the context of an academic conference hosted by indigenous hosts and inclusive of indigenous ceremony and content. the authors explore a range of questions related to their settler identities as participants in the conference. how are we as settlers to engage in a conference entitled “cyc in action”, held at an institution constructed on indigenous land, and dedicated to the promulgation of western thought and culture? how are we to encounter the ghosts of those indigenous peoples destroyed and removed from this very geography? how are we to be positioned in relation to our indigenous colleagues who are reclaiming fragments of this colonized space through ceremony, buildings, and the introduction of sacred objects and totems? should we adopt the studied neutrality of scholars, the moral high ground of activists, or the inclusive posture of the “good” settler? do we find ways to be comfortable in the space? is it an option to seek to be comfortable? is our “whiteness” as settlers our passport to enter indigenous space and claim a right to be there as “friends”? under the contested relation of a conference taking place on stolen lands that includes both the thieves and the survivors of the theft, who is the host and who determines the conditions of inclusion? acknowledgement: we would like to thank sandrina de finney for many years of profound insights that have influenced our reflections in this paper. kathleen skott-myhre psyd is an associate professor of psychology and associate dean of social sciences at the university of west georgia, 1601 maple st, carrollton, ga 30118. email: kskott@westga.edu scott kouri phd (corresponding author) is an instructor in child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: scott.kouri@gmail.com hans skott-myhre phd is a professor in the social work and human services department at kennesaw state university, 1000 chastain road, kennesaw, ga 30144. email: hskottmy@kennesaw.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 95  it is with humility and some degree of ambivalence that we have engaged in this writing. the three of us attended the recent child and youth care (cyc) in action conference at the university of victoria, and we found ourselves both moved and troubled by the experience. we were moved by the clear focus on justice and equity in the conference content and by the centrality given to indigenous leadership. we were also taken with the number of women leading events, workshops, and activities, as well as the plenary presentation on afro-canadian cyc. we were ambivalent about how we were to manage ourselves respectfully as settlers in relation to the vital work being done by our indigenous colleagues and colleagues of color, whose work has been so marginalized in the cyc literature and so little acknowledged in our professional conversations, conferences, and meetings. it was humbling to be reminded of the legacy of theft (land and culture) that has been our settler legacy thus far, and to seriously entertain the possibility of decolonization through land repatriation and the institution of sovereign relations with indigenous peoples. similarly, we were reminded of the necessity of reparations for the horrors of slavery and colonialism to people of color, as well as the imperative to provide ever-increasing spaces for non-cisgendered voices and women’s ways of knowing. these reminders are powerful, but for us, in the end, they are insufficient. it is useful to be humbled, to be reminded of our accountability to our colonial past and present practices, and to strive to step aside to make room for our non-settler colleagues. however, to the degree our thoughts and actions skim along the surface — so that we are more concerned with being polite, saying the right things, reiterating the right ceremonial greetings without acknowledging (if only to ourselves) how the irony of our very presence on indigenous land saturates our experience — then our actions do little towards actual decolonization or even the de-settling of our cultural and social positioning (tuck & yang, 2012). we would suggest that, as settlers, attending the indigenous ceremonies at the beginning and ending of the conference, accepting invitations to join in the dancing and drumming and to witness sacred blessings, listening to indigenous elders speak to us, and learning to identify our status by the land we occupy is to start in the middle of a highly painful and contested set of relations. it is to skip to the part where we, as settlers, appear to belong here, as though we could personally bypass the still-extant historical effects of our people on this land and on our indigenous friends and colleagues. we settlers are quick to forget, and quick to insist on being forgiven. it is as though we want to be the “good” settlers and not be associated with the “bad” settlers, to leave our history at the door and join with our indigenous colleagues in moving forward on an equal footing. however, we would argue that there is no equal footing to be found and that it is offensive and dangerous to forget that there can be no quick reconciliation, indeed, no reconciliation at all, without a massive reconfiguration of the north american settler colonial regimes. it is convenient to think that if we are polite and respectful, we can get a pass for the lives we live at the daily international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 96  expense of our indigenous friends and colleagues. for us, we want to acknowledge that there is no pass, just spaces of truce in which settlers and indigenous peoples can open dialogues of possible reconciliation. perhaps we as settlers need to ask the settler equivalent of the question posed by jen deerinwater (2017). she asked herself “what it means to be a native woman in white, colonized, feminist spaces” (para. 1). we might wonder, “what does it mean to be a settler in native spaces?” this question is not one we have seen asked very often, if at all. ironically, just as whiteness can be understood as an all-pervasive but invisible identity (mcintosh, 1988), being a settler can allow for an assumed centrality of identity that ignores indigenous contexts except as an interesting (perhaps even compelling) historical and cultural anomaly (arvin et al., 2013). our presence on the land is assumed to be natural and uncontested. our struggle for equity and justice is founded in our citizenship in a settler state that can control its borders and manage the landmass within which it exists. the nation-states of canada and the united states of america confer on us rights and privileges to enter a space, claim it as our own, and do with it what we will according to the laws and mandates that are the colonial legacy of “disappear[ing] the indigenous peoples that are there” (arvin et al., 2013, p. 12). how are we as settlers to engage in a conference entitled “cyc in action”, one that was held at an institution constructed on indigenous land and dedicated to the promulgation of western thought and culture? how are we to encounter the ghosts of those indigenous peoples destroyed and removed from this very geography? how are we to be positioned in relation to our indigenous colleagues who are reclaiming fragments of this colonized space through ceremony, buildings, and the introduction of sacred objects and totems? should we adopt the studied neutrality of scholars, the moral high ground of activists, or the inclusive posture of the “good” settler? do we find ways to be comfortable in the space? is it an option to seek to be comfortable? is our “whiteness” as settlers our passport to enter indigenous space and claim a right to be there as a “friend”? under the contested relation of a conference taking place on stolen lands that includes both the thieves and the survivors of the theft, who is the host and who determines the conditions of inclusion? as progressive scholars with publications, pedagogy, activism, and, of course, conference presentations on feminism, radical youth work, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, human rights, and so on, how are we to see our work in the context of indigenous space? certainly, there has been a significant and cogent critique of settler discourses that focus on obtaining more rights and privileges for settler women, lgbtq people, young people, and even non-indigenous people of color. often, these struggles occur within a context that naturalizes the fact that they occur on occupied land. it is profoundly problematic that these struggles are founded on a colonial logic that obscures, ignores, and absents the foundational struggle for sovereignty for people indigenous to this land. as arvin and her colleagues (2013) put it: indigenous communities’ concerns are often not about achieving formal equality or civil rights within a nation-state, but instead achieving substantial independence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 97  from a western nation-state — independence decided on their terms. the feminist concerns of white women, women of color, and indigenous women thus often differ and conflict with one another. in other words, within the context of land and settler colonialism, the issues facing indigenous women, as inseparable from the issues facing indigenous peoples as a whole, are resolved via decolonization and sovereignty, not (just) parity. (p. 10) if we, as settlers, are to honor the space reclaimed (however provisionally) within the confines of an academic conference, what is our obligation to that reclamation? how loudly do we speak? how much knowledge do we claim? how do we honor our inclusion in this effort at ceremonial decolonization of that most western of institutions, the university? in the edifice of the institution, are there spaces, cracks, interstices, where the weeds that open capacities for desettlering can take root? can we find a way to respectfully step beyond the inside and the outside of the ceremonial circle without inadvertently exercising the colonial mandate so deeply woven into our very subjectivity? are we capable of the kind of sober restraint necessary? in their work on breaking the spell of capitalist sorcery, stengers and pignarre (2011) pointed out “the necessity of casting the circle, of creating the closed space where the forces [we] have a vital need for can be convoked” (p. 138). they were discussing the possibility of neo-pagan witchcraft having a role in challenging and undoing the pernicious effects of global capitalism, which puts us in mind of two provocations and worries. in the first, we wonder whether the minor traditions of european peoples that were eviscerated and dispersed by the colonial project, such as older women’s ways of knowing, have a role to play in desettling our colonial modes of subjectivity. that is to say, are there traditions and cultural heritages that existed alongside and even contested the colonial imperatives of rome, the ottoman empire, the holy roman empire, the british empire, and american imperialism? we are thinking of the tribal societies of pre-roman europe that revolted and overthrew the roman empire. those tribal peoples are referred to by western history as barbarians who destroyed the “civilization” of the roman empire, a “civilization” premised in sheer brutality, enslavement, and exploitation of all the people they encountered (frederici, 2005). from the 12th to the 15th century, tribal peoples fought and struggled against the inheritors of the roman legacy, the church and the feudal state, in an ongoing series of revolts and heresies in which hundreds of thousands died resisting the imposition of an emerging colonial logic. of this fight for lived sovereignty across the land we now know as europe, western history recounts two stunning defeats at the hands of the inheritors of the roman legacy: the victims of the inquisition and the thousands of women who were burned as witches (federici, 2005). we wonder if the emergence of immanent feminist modes of spirituality might well be residual echoes of an alternative non-colonial logic that might offer a mode of desettlering. of course, there are many traps here, including a narcissistic investment in stepping aside from our colonial accountabilities, of saying, “see — we were also oppressed, we have also suffered cultural and physical genocide in our history as a people, we are just like you.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 98  this perversity of thought is far too prevalent and must be resisted and contested at every turn. however, if we as settlers are to challenge the logic of our colonial inheritance, we are skeptical that it can be done by the adoption of anyone else’s cultural legacy. we are not the inheritors of indigenous wisdom. it does not belong to us. if it is shared with us, it should serve as a guidepost back to our own neglected and forgotten preand anti-colonial knowing. without a doubt, the road to actual decolonization and desettlering is, as noel ignatiev and john garvey (2007) said, the destruction of the white race, we need to eliminate ourselves as white. to do that, we must research diligently all of the lineages that betray our whiteness. in the vernacular of stengers and pignarre (2011), perhaps this is the circle we need to cast, the closed space that excludes our own whiteness. but not through denial of our privilege and accountability; instead, through an investigation of the ways in which we can go beyond who we imagine ourselves to be. the second provocation and worry about casting a circle of closed space concerns the geoexistential space of the conference. we wonder about the circles within circles being cast. who is included and who is excluded from the multiplicity of circles being cast in the opening and closing, as well as in the individual workshops and the conversations between and after? the casting of the circle as evoked by stengers and pignarre (2011) seeks to produce a closed space. indeed, it seemed to us that the indigenous conveners of the conference deployed the various ceremonies interspersed from beginning to end to make every effort to cast a sacred circle of care, and paid diligent attention to the forces being convened by all who attended, inclusive of the legacies of land, ancestors, and culture. it was to some degree a closed space, in the sense of making every effort to exclude colonial, racist, misogynist, and homophobic interjections. to this end, the conveners centered and valorized a multiplicity of forums for the narratives and practices of multiple intersecting groups: indigenous peoples; feminists; queer, critical, and post-humanist theorists; and afro-canadians and other people of color, as well as other liberatory and desettlering and decolonizing voices. the circle cast created a space “where the forces [we] have a vital need for can be convoked” (stengers & pignarre, 2011, p. 138). however, it was also a semipermeable circle, into which well-intentioned settlers brought large and small gestures of privilege and disrespect, both in workshops and private conversations. in every instance that we were aware of, these racist, misogynist, or homophobic comments or practices were not intentionally hurtful. these settlers were what one of us called “wanna be good guys” (skott-myhre, 2018), unconsciously expressing the ongoing centrality of whiteness that continues to permeate the field of cyc. that said, these relatively small explosions of privileged behavior within the overall context of the powerful circle cast threw white shrapnel1 that had outsized painful effects. on witnessing such inadvertent attacks, we understood the call that was made in the plenary session for all-black spaces (jean daniel, 2019) and the desire for all-female, all-indigenous, and all-queer circles to be cast exclusive of “wanna be good guys”. 1 we are referencing the work on gender shrapnel by ellen mayock (2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 99  without a doubt, the conference was a powerful intervention that was an overt refusal of the erasure of indigenous and other marginalized and disenfranchised voices, but there remains the question of who is including whom (arvin et al., 2013). even within a circle cast with sacred care and attention, settler logic can still emerge in which the settler sees their attendance as a gesture of goodwill through which they are including the “other” in their field of expertise and knowledge. it is almost as though through their participation the settler sanctions and gives permission for the conference to proceed. conversely, we suppose that there were settlers who, by their absence, felt they could minimize or diminish the casting of the conference circle as a significant intervention in the field of cyc, as an overtly political space of decolonization and liberatory practice. for us, the question of the circle as a space of inclusion or exclusion returns us to the question of how we are to handle ourselves in indigenous spaces. are we polite guests who support our colleagues as indigenous, women, queer, and people of color? or, do we engage in proactive activities that strive to desettle our practices and identities? arvin and her colleagues (2013) challenge us to “craft alliance(s) that directly address differences” (p. 19). they ask us, as settlers, to seriously think about our reasons and purposes for working with indigenous communities. they suggest that our indigenous colleagues also take into account the complexity of bringing settlers into their communities of practice. there is undoubtedly trepidation (or should be) on both sides, but there is far more potential for damage and re-traumatization for our indigenous colleagues than for the settlers. it is in that context that we want to acknowledge the fear that can lead settlers to less than full engagement with the processes of desettlering and decolonization (kouri & skott-myhre, 2016). of course, there is the ever-present threat of losing land and levels of social and cultural privilege. however, even among those for whom these threats seem well worth the price there is an existential fear and shame that can negatively impact our capacity to engage fully as allies and even friends. as stengers and pignarre (2011) said: fright may happen when we realise that despite our tolerance, our remorse, our guilt, we haven’t changed all that much. we continue to take up all the space, to occupy all the places. when we ask our victims to pardon us, we like to think of them as “ours”, as if the people that we had destroyed were without history, innocent and peaceful lambs, as if we had been the only active powers in a world which merely provides us with the decor for our own crimes. of course, decolonisation has largely been sabotaged by the putting into place of new modes of exploitation, but how short-sighted and simplistic the slogans that we credited as “words of truth” were, idealising the victims and refusing to take into account anything other than our own guilt: the right to self-determination or the struggle for national liberation. forgetting in the process that terms like “right”, “nation” even “liberation” are ours, always ours. and finding it normal that our truths should be taken up by those who had been our victims. how do we make room for others? (p. 63) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 100  stengers and pignarre (2011) go on to suggest that we cannot answer our fear with guilt. as western subjects, guilt is an ever-present retreat from accountability. instead, they tell us that “fright calls for creation” (p. 63). we need to learn new habits and routines and abandon our familiar modes of practice and knowledge. to do this, we need to understand how colonial modes of power have shaped us. the process is not terminated in the past nor even in the present. not only do systems of power connect across axes of identity, but they are also conjugated over time. as eve tuck, an unangax2 scholar, and her colleague wayne yang (2012) argued, the violence of settler colonialism “is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation” (p. 5). lorenzo veracini (2008) argued that settler disavowal of indigenous histories is used to discredit indigenous political rights and sovereignty and anachronistically position indigenous peoples as entering settler space after the onset of colonization. in a later work, veracini (2011) called this disavowal of indigenous presence and history a “non-encounter” that structures settler colonialism. as a structure, he added, settler colonialism erases the distinction between colony and metropole and works toward self-fulfillment as a settled state. a decolonized account of time and history, however, is about the persistence of indigenous life, land, and culture through time. it is also an account that calls colonialism the genocide it was and continues to be. as settlers, it is up to us to question our neocolonial governments and challenge their claims on legitimacy, which are based on false accounts of temporal priority (kouri, 2015). more importantly, it is also up to us to attend to indigenous peoples’ accounts of time and recognize the legitimacy of the political systems that have endured attempts at colonial erasure. while this accounting of our set of relations as settlers calls us into the present moment with its implications for possible futures, we can only truly access the creative capacities of desettlering and decolonization to the degree that we leave behind western teleological notions of progress and historical imperatives. it is essential to understand that when we enter the circle cast as indigenous space, we are entering a space of radical temporal alterity. time is not the same. in her examination of former prime minister steven harper’s june 2008 “apology”, mohawk scholar audra simpson (2016a) discussed the temporality of recognition, arguing that recognition of historical injustice leaves open the innocence or rightness of the past by making the truth of atrocity a revelation in the present. in a speech that many called a non-apology, harper indicated that the residential school system was a mistake, but did not name the genocide that transpired or any criminal or political intent. far from redressing settler colonialism, such forms of recognition obfuscate historical harms and also obscure the ongoing dispossession and violence of colonialism. simpson (2017) criticized the government’s position for dismissing historical injustice as a fait accompli, and argues that settler narratives enact “notions of a fixed past and settled present” (p. 18). she instead theorized refusal as a longstanding form of indigenous resistance and politics. according to simpson 2 tuck is an enrolled member of the aleut community of st. paul island, alaska. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 101  (2016b), refusal “maintains and produces sociality through time” (p. 329) and is acutely aware of the conditions of production: refusal holds on to a truth, structures this truth as stance through time, as its own structure and comingling with the force of presumed and inevitable disappearance and operates as the revenge of consent — the consent to these conditions, to the interpretation that this was fair, and the ongoing sense that this is all over with. (p. 330) refusal is, therefore, an intervention into the narratives and politics of the past and present that aims to open a “sociality through time” that is not bound to the settler regime. joanne barker (2018) explained that the attempt to set things right in “the future is never about the future” (p. 215, italics in original) but instead is about reclaiming the past and present. it is about indigenous people reclaiming the lands upon which their histories are told, retold, and made meaningful. barker criticized the imperial and democratic utopic vision of a perfected future that can be achieved through eradicating the remaining terror and anarchy of the present. barker has held out an alternative, indigenous vision of a future woven with the “alterity of indigenous reckonings of territorial and by (non)human relational interdependence now” (p. 215). tuck and yang (2016) go further to explain that “justice is a colonial temporality, always desired and deferred, and delimited by the timeframes of modern colonizing states as well as the selfhistoricizing, self-perpetuating futurities of their nations” (p. 6). how do we, as settlers, listen to these indigenous voices, these refusals, and these objections to our lives, our attempts at recognition, and our very presence? as majoritarian people, not only are our engagements with alternative forms of knowledge laden with ethical dilemmas around respectful engagement, appropriation, and issues of identity, but the very consciousness-raising that makes oppression visible to us often comes at the expense of others. these problems are particularly fraught in indigenous–settler relations as indigenous cultures, knowledges, and symbols are increasingly fetishized and commodified. as settlers hoping to bring about material change, we require new forms of listening, taking action, and relating to indigenous peoples and cultures. roderick haig-brown (2010) contrasted deep learning with appropriation, arguing that the former takes years of immersive education in indigenous contexts. such deep learning is in line with cultural protocols, done through lasting relationship, and connected to the places where the knowledge was generated and lives. appropriation, by contrast, is mediated by power imbalances, takes without permission, is dislocated from context, and shows no recognition for context, intellectual or cultural property, or continuity. if we are to seriously engage in the circles cast as indigenous space, we would argue that it is essential to enact a settler ethics that is not appropriative, imitative, or disconnected, but instead accountable and respectful. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 102  for us to connect with the creativity that exceeds our fright, it is necessary to be honest and vulnerable in our failures. to go beyond fear is to articulate a politicized praxis of working with the affects of failure, crisis, and engaging the unknown. as we reflect on the conference, our omissions of our accountabilities to the indigenous space become more visible. in our panel on radical youthwork, we can now see there was a tendency towards inclusion, rather than acknowledgment. in the workshops and papers that we gave, we have to wonder how accountable we were to the circle cast. our reflections on these things have driven our attempts here to articulate our humility and our celebration of what happened there. as we think about the conference and our participation, we acknowledge the profound impact of western scholarship on our work. at times, that impact is detrimental to our processes of desettlering our work. while as settlers it can be important to reconfigure western concepts and ideas to undo colonial patterns of thought without leaning too heavily on indigenous literature and scholarship, settler ethics are also about how we attend to indigenous and other marginalized voices. kathy snow (2018) explained that researching indigenous contexts as a settler ally requires clarity of intention, motivation, processes, and roles. snow also emphasized the importance of being able to sit with discomfort yet continue to commit time, energy, and resources to sustain allyship in the face of resistance. while deep self-reflection is invaluable to personal transformation, it is the messy and complicated work of embodied allyship that produces webs of living relationships capable of resistance and change. for us, settler ethics is an ethical, embodied, affective, relational, and localized process of relating and acting with indigenous peoples, with other settlers, and with the conditions of active colonialism that sustain our current world order. in indigenous spaces such as the conference, this requires that we actually “arrive”. the concept of arrival, which is derived from the cyc literature (garfat & fulcher, 2011; krueger, 2007), calls on us to be fully present in mind and body in the encounter with others. being fully present is a challenging and complex set of practices that requires that we be attentive to how we feel in our bodies, how we are affected by and affect others, and the thoughts that arise as we act and feel. it calls on us to be immanently attentive and responsive to the circle of care, resistance, and concrete material change that is the imperative of living allyship. we acknowledge that we enter indigenous spaces composed of elements and locations. to overcome our fright and engage in ethical, creative desettlering includes taking our own locations as white cis male settler, white cis female settler, and mixed-race cis male settler as the starting point for an analysis of our subjectivities, actions, and thoughts. this is work that should precede entry into indigenous spaces. it should be a kind of taking inventory of our colonial subjectivity so that we know where it all is and how it works before we inadvertently trouble indigenous spaces with our colonial ambivalences and messy sets of guilt, shame, reactionary acts, and settlersplaining. in short, we propose that before engaging in the circle cast by our indigenous colleagues, we attempt to undo the overlay of colonialism that continues to wedge contradictions between ourselves and the horizon of an ethical life. our learnings from working with young people in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 103  various contexts can inform us about the importance of arriving into people’s lives. we might remind ourselves how those young people that we have engaged in our work have taught us how colonialism continues to cause harm in their lives. we can learn as settlers to reflect on how we continue to be complicit in perpetuating the current world order in our work. if we pay attention, the lived space of our work with young people is saturated with racialized, gendered, and colonial experiences that perpetuate a system we as settlers continue to benefit from. while these experiences can bring guilt and shame, they also bring heightened awareness and ethical incitement that can move us to creativity over fear. the process of ethical desettlering calls for ongoing self-reflexivity that goes well beyond western narcissistic forms of self-care or self-actualization. we are concerned that our tendency as western settlers includes hundreds of years of assuming the world and other peoples were there for our benefit. we have exploited and appropriated without mercy species, other humans, and geographies. it is far too easy for us to fall into patterns that call for others to care for us in our interactions with indigenous colleagues, people of color, and women. we need to reverse the polarity. we do not require self-care as much as we require learning to care for all of us. we do not require self-actualization as much as we require actualizing an equitable world for all persons, species, and lands. some would argue that to do this, we need to care for ourselves and become all we can be as evolved human beings. we would argue that these ideas are saturated with a peculiar variety of western psychosis that holds us aside from the rest of the world and isolates us within the individual body in painful loneliness and isolation. entering the circle cast as indigenous space as desperately lonely and isolated individuals is likely to skew all our relations into complexities of emotional and cultural exploitation. to prepare ourselves as western settler subjects to enter indigenous conference space, we might well consider scrutinizing the ways that our westernized settler identity informs our research and how our affects and emotions, interests, and investments are involved in knowledge generation and action. of course, this would be easier and probably more effective if we as settlers engaged in forums where we collectively worked on the processes of desettlering. however, the very premise of the problem, which is rooted in toxic masculinist rugged individualism, can preclude such possibilities. indeed, attempting such scrutiny can alienate us from our settler peers and bring about backlash and even blacklisting within segments of the cyc community. we regard this as a predictable outcome of confronting our shame. despite this, we would suggest that we not turn to indigenous people, women, or people of color for support and healing. it is our work to do, and we have already taken so much. we, as settlers, must find ways to discuss, account for, disrupt, analyze, unsettle, and challenge settler identities. we need to work toward new ways that cyc settlers can get together to explore and amplify how we are challenged to undo our heteronormative, racial, class, and colonial attachments and, through our work, open onto new practices of supervision, solidarity, and peer collaboration (kouri & smith, 2016; reynolds, 2010a). it is our work as settlers to find ways to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 104  connect our lines of creative desettlering with the circles cast by our non-settler colleagues and friends. carrie gaffney (2016) argued that allyship begins with identity as a means of locating power and standing with people or groups who are experiencing oppression. this “standing with”, however, requires commitments to complex, ongoing processes that resist institutional power, silence, and violence. it means holding one another accountable for ensuring material change for colonized peoples (tuck & yang, 2012) and opening doors only to get out of the way so that indigenous people might determine their processes, responses, and paths of transformation. desettlering includes showing up, making connections between different forms of oppression, supporting resistance and resurgence, and working with other settler people on our forms of witnessing, being present, taking action when appropriate, and representing our relationships. indeed, as karlee fellner and colleagues (2016) have noted, “a key difference in ethical professional practice between non-indigenous and indigenous counsellors is that the latter observe the same traditional ethics both inside and outside the office” (p. 138). living a life outside our places of cyc work and research that is congruent with our ethics is precisely a learning we might carry with us as settler cyc workers. to prepare to enter indigenous spaces, we might well investigate how our work might be grounded in principles and processes whereby settlers become accountable for their embodied subjectivity within reiterations of colonialism. after years of working in indigenous academic and practice contexts, we have become aware of how the axioms of colonialism are so ingrained that they can perpetuate themselves even when settlers are seeking to be allies. one example, particular to our conference reflections, is how settlers can advance their academic and practice careers by knowing and speaking about indigenous issues. with the privileges of access to higher education and safer spaces for critical debates, white settlers quickly advance their academic knowledge of indigenous issues and can reiterate the language of decolonization. with the power and privilege of access to publishing in academic journals, settlers often have greater access to speaking about indigenous issues than indigenous people themselves. the reiteration of colonialism is nearly impossible to prevent, particularly in hyper-colonized spaces of privilege like research universities and professional practice settings. we need to be always mindful and name how colonialism and capitalism will appropriate even efforts to contest them. reynolds (2010b) talks about imperfect allies, noting that there will always be mistakes when allies attempt to buffer the effects of power and to be mindful of the space that those in power take up. it is up to allies to work with other people in power and prevent the continual usurpation and misuse of power and space, thereby making greater space for those who are oppressed to speak and seek justice. practices of solidarity and building cultures of critique are two ways in which reynolds inspires us to think about how our conversations with young people and each other can be more fully connected with justice movements. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 105  we have much to learn from allyship, activist, and solidarity literature and practice. deep, selfreflective, collective reflection and community action are necessary aspects of undoing settler comfort and privilege as we consider entering indigenous space. smith et al. (2016) explained that allies have two main characteristics. first, they desire to support social justice and eliminate inequalities by promoting the rights of nondominant groups. second, they offer support through meaningful relationships with those who welcome their support, and they show accountability to those people. allyship is aspirational and a designation that is given rather than claimed. smith and colleagues warn that settlers must avoid appropriation, taking leadership, interfering, seeking emotional support, or having expectations. by focusing on our undoing of and intervening in the reiteration of colonial subjectivity, we might well begin to stop interfering in the spaces and processes of indigenous decolonization. leanne simpson (2011), nishnaabeg writer, academic, and musician, explains that ideas of social movements or political mobilization are inadequate in theorizing indigenous resistance and resurgence because they are founded on western epistemology and ignore indigenous politics and culture. she explains that “at their core, indigenous political movements contest the very foundation of the canadian state in its current expression, while most theories of group politics and social movements take the state for granted” (p. 16). simpson explains, in line with audra simpson’s refusal, that what is needed is not settler sanction, recognition, funding, or “a friendly colonial political climate” (p. 17). what is needed are indigenous elders, languages, lands, and vision. in light of this statement, we reiterate that settlers need to develop our own practices and spaces out of the way of such a movement, to work at undoing our systems of capture and domination, and to move our people to a place of readiness for accountability and transformation. we need to critique reconciliation talk that absolves us of the difficult work of unmaking ourselves, our state, and our globalized markets. simpson (2016b) suggests that interrogations of violence be directed to the perpetrators rather than the victims of harm. as settlers, we must take up this work and analyze how we have perpetrated, and continue to perpetuate, colonial violence through our institutions, policies, and practices. we must make the workings of our settler subjectivities, states, and institutions visible and take action to change the conditions of everyday life for indigenous and racialized peoples. moreover, we must call other majoritarian people into the practice of naming and transforming ourselves. as we reflect on the complexities of the conference in all its richness and ambivalence for us as settlers, we want to end with an acknowledgement. one of the central persons casting the circle that was the conference was shanne mccaffrey, who cohosted with martin brokenleg. throughout the conference, shanne brought us continually back to the importance of ceremony and sacred investment in our collective effort together. she did this with both grace and humor. her work and thought as an indigenous scholar and practitioner have informed us deeply and profoundly as we have reflected on the circle she cast at the conference. one of us (scott kouri) had the opportunity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 106  to speak at length with shanne during his undergraduate and graduate studies, and we would like to close with her reflections. shanne lives a cree and buddhist philosophy, and she brings this approach into her work, openly upholding the practical importance of spirituality in cyc theory and practice. pertinent to our work of desettlering and our sense of the loss of european spiritual immanent practice, shanne acknowledges the traumas of spiritual devaluation and the undermining of indigenous healing practices and cosmology through colonization. shanne sees indigenous cultural and spiritual revitalization as necessary for healing and good relations on this land. she demonstrates how spiritual and cultural healing is necessary for all children, youth, families, and communities that are affected by colonization, including indigenous peoples, settlers, and people with other relations to this land. spiritual and cultural revitalization was a central organizing principle of the conference and a key element in casting the circle that gave rise to this writing. also directly relevant to our writings here about the importance of affect to the process of desettlering is shanne’s teaching about the importance of working with people’s suffering. she explains that suffering is related to attachment to temporary things — ego, place, ideals, environments, and contexts. if we can release attachment, we can move with greater strength, and lessening attachment to the ego can lead to the growth of humility. furthermore, shanne teaches that everyone experiences suffering, and if suffering is worked with in a good way, it can often become medicine that people can use to help others. cree and buddhist teachings say that pain and suffering “come to settle in” our spirit as medicine. this attentiveness to suffering as medicine means that, in cyc, conversations about personal, familial, and community suffering and healing need to have a more prominent place. shanne stresses the need for collaboration in regard to transforming suffering into healing, both within the academy and between academics and community members. she also expressed a hope to see more conversations about suffering, healing, and spirituality in cyc. in our reflections about the conference, we have attempted to stress the importance of locating and situating ourselves as settlers. in shanne’s teaching, she shared what she called her blanket metaphor. blankets, she said, are sacred for many indigenous peoples, as well as for people of many other cultures. shanne used the idea of a blanket to conceptualize a person’s identity as part of a historical and cultural context. she explained that we all walk with a blanket, a tapestry that is a rich symbol of our historical and cultural context. some people you meet, shanne said, understand your blanket and its symbols and therefore understand your story; some people, however, do not see your blanket. according to shanne, for cyc practitioners as people providing care to others, the crucial questions are, “how can we work to see your blankets? how can we work as interpreters of blankets?” similarly, in our teaching, if we do not recognize students’ strengths, then we do not see their blankets, their spirits, or their stories. in our reflections here we are suggesting that for settlers to enter indigenous space, we need to learn to see our blankets as well as the blankets of others with clear and sober eyes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 94–110 107  finally, shanne brings to her work the cree laws connected to having good relations with other humans, plants, and animals. her teachings focused on how and why one does not do harm, and how to go about specific kinds of takings in a good way when they are necessary. she described the strong connection she feels between buddhist and cree teachings regarding living in mutual relationships with other humans, plants, trees, animals, the land, earth, and water. shanne privileged teachings that are shared orally, and she explained the importance of being with people and taking the time to teach in a personal way. it is on this last point that we complete our reflection. our attendance at this conference and its circle-casting of what we have termed indigenous space has opened an entire ecology of relationships and practice. it is our hope that these kinds of engagements open us to the world as it is: a rich, vibrant set of mutual relations infinite in capacity for worlds to come and founded in worlds we sometimes fail to see. we would argue that our settler ways blind us in ways that are toxic to ourselves and others. this writing is a call to our fellow 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(2011). introducing: settler colonial studies. settler colonial studies, 1(1), 1–12. doi:10.1080/2201473x.2011.10648799 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019987 elements in school principalship: the changing role of pedagogy and the growing recognition of emotional literacy alexander schneider and einat yitzhak-monsonego abstract: this paper examines the changing role of pedagogy and the growing recognition of emotional literacy as an element in school principalship, as perceived by school principals. a model of the “principal’s toolkit” based on three “pillars” of leadership, management, and pedagogy was used, but with the addition of a fourth pillar, emotional literacy. here we report on a survey of 63 principals and educational executives that was designed to examine principals’ views regarding which tools are required for school principalship, the way they prioritize those tools, and the weight accorded to each. the survey, which took place from september 2009 to july 2010, was conducted through a questionnaire and interviews. quantitative processing of the questionnaire results was performed, as was content analysis of the open questions and the interviews. the findings clearly define and rate the components of the essential toolkit for principalship as perceived by the principals. leadership and emotional literacy were rated highest and pedagogy and management lower, which is at odds with the prevailing attempt by the israeli ministry of education to establish pedagogical leadership as the central element in principalship. this paper will explore and explain the phenomenon of change in principalship elements that entails the changing role of pedagogy and the increasing importance of emotional literacy as an element in school principalship. keywords: leadership, management, pedagogy, school principalship, emotional literacy, principal training and development alexander schneider phd (corresponding author) is an educator and educational researcher at the beit berl research and evaluation unit, beit berl academic college, post beit berl 4490500, israel. email: drschneidera@gmail.com einat yitzhak-monsonego phd is a researcher at the beit berl research and evaluation unit, beit berl academic college, post beit berl 4490500, israel. email: einat@beitberl.ac.il mailto:drschneidera@gmail.com mailto:einat@beitberl.ac.il international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 38 the first decades of the 21st century have witnessed a change in educational approaches in the western world, a change that has led to a substantial and continuous growth in the responsibilities that school principals are expected to assume, leading to substantial changes in the nature of the work. in addition to the traditional responsibilities of the role, engagement with the local community and with society in general has come to be among the ordinary duties of principalship (bisschoff, 2014). davies (1997) pointed out the implications of these changes for the world of education: in this world the globalization of economic systems, technological advance and the increased expectations that society has of its education system have replaced past certainties with new and uncertain frameworks. dynamic changes have become the order of the day. how do leaders and managers meet this challenge and develop approaches in order to operate successfully in this new environment? (p. 11) traditionally, the “school principalship toolkit” was based upon three pillars: leadership, administration, and pedagogy (campbell, 1999). however, changes in the role of school principal seem to have reduced the weight placed on pedagogy as a main element in school principalship, leading to the recognition and implementation of the newly defined element of emotional literacy as a fourth pillar (schneider, 2004; schneider & burton, 2008). the hebrew word for school principal is menahel, literally, “manager”, although they have generally been thought of as “head teachers” or “senior teachers. under past practice, the principal was selected from among the teachers to serve as a central figure whose main role was to focus on providing pedagogical, methodological, and didactic guidance (in which he or she was expected to be expert) to the teaching staff. principals’ leadership came primarily from their position within the teaching circle, based on their pedagogical seniority. this fact formed and shaped, to a great extent, the range of responsibilities principals carried in the school system. the ministry of education tried to help with school organization tasks by freeing the principals from administrative and personnel-related responsibilities, allowing them to devote most of their time and energy to pedagogical issues (schneider & barkol, 2007). this approach has changed in the last decade with the tendency to move toward self-governed schools, which will be more independent financially; the plan has been that this independence would enhance the school’s academic success (schneider & barkol, 2007). before examining the way, school principals prioritize their roles, we must clarify and define the main skills school principals need to carry out their responsibilities: leadership, management, pedagogical, and emotional literacy skills. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/tom_bisschoff international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 39 leadership abilities popper (2007) dealt with two fundamental levels of influence, or types of leadership, that exist between leaders and followers: transactional leadership and transformational leadership. transactional leadership is based on the understanding of mutual benefits. according to bass (1985), transactional leaders motivate their followers by rewarding them for performing required tasks, and the act of rewarding is of benefit to both sides. transformational leadership originates from the ability to create a high level of commitment between leader and followers. in the complete range of leadership, a model developed by bass and avolio (1993), the connection between leadership and efficiency is examined; they concluded that combining the two levels of influence brings about more effective leadership. as leadership is fundamental to principalship, we must explore the kind of leadership required in the field of education, where we regard the leadership of the principal as a unique kind of interaction between the principal and the school. according to middleton (2001), “the role of leadership is to maintain the school community’s energy and nurture the core purpose of increasing ability of all children and preparing students for the future” (p. 130). nathan (2002) and frank (2013) viewed leaders as innovators and developers, people who challenge the status quo. according to them, leaders are initiators who take a long-term view focusing on the horizon; they are people-oriented and inspire trust, and they tend to ask “what?” and “why?”, make their own decisions, and do the right thing. leadership is recognized as a required quality in principalship (frank, 2013). management abilities parames (1975) defined management as “a crossroad for heterogeneous knowledge, science and technology, of a pragmatic nature, available for those who have to make decisions and solve problems” (pp. 11–12). in the financial sector, management is measured by comparing input and output, which, according to levacic (1997) should not be applied to education, where the connections between educational inputs, processes, products, and results cannot be meaningfully measured by such means. rather, educational management measures values. many in the field of education fear that the “good principals” of the past, who were mostly “good and humane teachers” (kydd, 1997, pp. 116–117), would have no place in today’s climate of systematic administrations (oplatka, 2017). managers, according to nathan (2002), tend toward conservatism, maintaining the status quo, focusing on the system, setting short-term goals, attending to the “bottom line”, relying on control, and asking “how?” and “when?”. school principals tend to see themselves as leaders rather than managers (armstrong, 2016), a view that affects the way they prioritize management elements in their mission. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 40 pedagogical abilities van manen (1991) defined pedagogy as “a kind of leading [in which] the pedagogue walks behind the one who is led” (p. 37), and saw pedagogical authority as an educational leader’s ability to motivate individuals and a whole community to deal with challenges and to advance toward solving them. but is the same kind of pedagogy that is implemented by the classroom teacher suitable for the pedagogical needs of the whole school? selznick (1957) assigned importance to pedagogy in school management. speaking of “creative leadership”, he wrote: the inbuilding of purpose … involves transforming men and groups from neutral, technical units into participants who have a peculiar stamp, sensitivity, and commitment. this is ultimately an educational process. it has been well said that the effective leader must know the meaning and master the techniques of the educator. (pp. 149–150) what we put forth here is the question of whether principals are only experts in pedagogy or also pedagogical leaders (berkovich & eyal, 2015). sergiovanni (1996) argued that pedagogy, when implemented as a form of pedagogical authority (which is a kind of leadership), has its own unique characteristics. in a previous study, we found that school principals tended to separate the two elements — leadership and pedagogy — rather than combine them (schneider & yitzhakmonsonego, 2010). emotional literacy abilities according to gardner (1983), in order to manage or lead people, one requires, among other things, two types of intelligence: interpersonal and intrapersonal. interpersonal intelligence is the ability to gauge other people and to identify their mood, temperament, emotions, motives, and intentions, and to relate to all of these. one can also call this ability “social intelligence” (armstrong, 1994, p. 239); it contributes substantially to increasing output by fostering cooperation among members of a community or group. “intrapersonal intelligence allows us to value our being — who we are, what feelings we have, and why we are this way” (armstrong, 1994, pp. 239–240). the strengths of intrapersonal intelligence lead us to introspection and selfreflection that can guide us to develop high self-esteem and enable us to lead, solve problems, and meet challenges (armstrong, 1994; naicker et al., 2013; optalka, 2018; tai & omar, 2018). the recognition of emotional literacy as a necessary element in school leadership (schneider & burton, 2008) and in pedagogy is part of a dialogue continued today in emotions in teaching and educational leadership (oplatka, 2018), which emphasized the unique benefits to educational leadership of employing that ability. the ability to work with, to lead, or to manage people, results from a combination of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. west-burnham (2001) pointed out the relationship between leadership and emotional literacy (interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 41 if leadership is seen as moving people from compliance to commitment, from acceptance to active engagement and from task completion to professional involvement, then inter-personal intelligence is the vital medium. it is impossible to conceptualize any model of leadership that does not have inter-personal intelligence as a key component. (west-burnham, 2001, p. 13) traditionally, principals who possessed the skills of leadership, pedagogy, and management, were considered equipped to lead their schools; today, emotional literacy may also be regarded as necessary. the degree of importance that principals assign to each of these skills is what characterizes their individual styles. the aim of the research presented here is to examine the place emotional literacy now has in a profession that has traditionally embraced pedagogy as its foremost element (schneider et al., 2013; schneider & yitzhak-monsonego, 2010). the position emotional literacy holds will be juxtaposed with the position that educational policymakers have accorded pedagogy as empowering principals in their work and a contributing factor for raising the level of achievement in schools. method participants the study was conducted in in the research and evaluation unit of a teachers education college in central israel from september 2009 to july 2010. there were 63 participants: five school principals and one supervisor participated in an interview, four principals were interviewed and also answered the questionnaire, and the other 53 principals only answered the questionnaire. the participants included both active and retired principals. the 16 men and 47 women ranged in age from 43 to 62 and varied in level of education, tenure, and type of school (see table 1). participants were recruited through personal requests to answer the questionnaire, which was sent to school principals at the central and tel aviv districts for answering. participation in the study was voluntary. quantitative processing of the questionnaire results was carried out, as well as content analysis of the questionnaire and the interviews. as seen in table 1, most of the participants were women. the dominant age bracket (38.1%) was 51 to 60 years. most (69.8%) were principals of elementary schools, 79.4% had eight years tenure or more, and 76.2% were still active; 77.8% held a master’s degree. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 42 table 1. participants’ background details % f variable gender 74.6 47 female 25.4 16 male age 41.3 26 50 and under 38.1 24 51–60 20.6 13 over 60 tenure 20.6 13 1–7 years 41.3 26 8–12 years 38.1 24 ≥ 13 years employment status 76.2 48 active 23.8 15 retired school 69.8 44 elementary 30.2 19 junior/high school education 9.5 6 ba 77.8 49 ma 12.7 8 phd note. n = 63. instruments questionnaire: the research questionnaire had three parts: (1) demographic information, (2) an open question in which participants were asked to list three to five traits required for the appointment of a school principal, (3) participants were asked to rate (on a 1to 10-point scale from least important to most important) four key traits (schneider, 2004; schneider & burton, 2005) associated with school principalship (leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy) by their importance to the task of managing a school, and to explain their answers. while processing the data, a few additional traits came up that were counted for the number of times they, or synonymous terms, were mentioned. these were grouped in the category “personal traits”. interview: after the researchers had received all questionnaires, a group interview was conducted with 13 principals and one supervisor, aimed at validating the questionnaire results. triangulation was then carried out between the questionnaire results and the results of the group interview. the group included nine active and four retired principals; four of the active principals had also answered the questionnaire. combining the questionnaire and the interviews allowed us to identify, using statistical data, the participants concept of school principalship, with the interviews pinpointing the details of their positions and emotions. the technique of combining questionnaires and interviews transcends mere data integration, as it allows in-depth findings over a broad area as well as validation of the obtained findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 43 findings participants were asked to list three to five traits required for a school principal to be appointed. the responses included varied phrasings of the four key traits, or trait categories, that make up the role of principal: leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional leadership. a few additional traits were also mentioned, which were counted as personal traits (see table 2). content analysis was conducted, in addition to counting the number of times each trait was mentioned. table 2. the number of times a trait associated with a key trait was mentioned % count key trait 31 44 leadership 26 37 emotional literacy 18 26 personal traits 16 22 pedagogical abilities 9 12 management skills 100 141 total note. the number of answers is larger than the number of respondents (57) because respondents mentioned traits more than once, or not at all. table 2 shows that traits associated with leadership were those most frequently mentioned by respondents, followed by emotional literacy and personal traits, and finally, pedagogy and management skills. these findings agree with the four pillars model, developed by schneider and burton (2005). respondents mentioned a wide range of qualities and characteristics that we associated with leadership. these included: charisma; the ability to manage teams using dialogue, power, personal responsibility, and personal example; being a visionary person; having good perception of systems and organizations, improvisation, leadership, and a high quality of service; self-confidence and the ability to show it; entrepreneurship, taking the initiative, and leading the team to achieving set goals along the way; being attentive and showing empathy to people; effectiveness; assertiveness; ability to delegate authority; capacity to guide and recruit staff, and to motivate, manage, and lead them toward various aims and purposes; and to foster professional growth for the teaching staff. regarding emotional literacy, which ranked second, participants listed the following traits: emotional regulation; good social skills; communicativeness; being capable of conducting reasonable, honest, and unbiased dialogues; having emotional strength and patience; seeing the positive side of things; being sensitive to others; possessing team-work capabilities, tenderness, and the capacity to understand social situations. the qualities associated with pedagogy, the fourth key trait, included: knowledge of current pedagogy; pedagogical knowledge and experience; knowledge and understanding in the fields of pedagogy, education, and teaching; extensive education in the field of education; good articulation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 44 in speech and in writing; a pedagogical approach with faith in one’s way, to the point of making personal sacrifices; getting into the field out of an ambition to do pedagogical work and not out of interest to only promote oneself; and a clear educational vision and ideology. a principal should be the head of the teaching staff; should encourage them to grow and become more professional; and should take on pedagogical responsibility and provide the correct, personally tailored, conditions, knowledge, and environment to allow each pupil to reach their highest capabilities. the principal should have the ability to combine theory with fieldwork, should be a professional in the field of teaching, learning, and evaluating, and should have sound pedagogical knowledge and the ability to combine pedagogical work and management while maintaining emotional quality control. management was ranked fifth (last) in importance among the key traits required by school principals. the managerial capabilities listed were: systemic thinking; organizational capacity; ability to clearly define a desired end product; ability to provide an integrated system vision; familiarity with organizational tools; mastery of administrative tools; familiarity with and understanding of the educational system; familiarity with, understanding of, and ability to implement the laws governing education; and the capacity to define, maintain, and implement budgeting processes. additional traits mentioned were organizational skills; a good approach to systems and organizations; integrative and inclusive perception; good perception of systems and foresight regarding them; an education in management; the capacity to work by goal orientation; organizational attitude and an ability to organize and gather resources, utilizing time and human resources efficiently; good organizational understanding; administrative education; mission orientation; planning, and setting goals and measures; and the ability to work in an environment of regulations (and if regulations are lacking, the ability to provide them) coupled with mental flexibility. beyond these four elements — campbell’s (1999) three pillars with the addition of emotional literacy — participants rated personal traits as third in importance. such traits include determination, self-awareness, consistency, wisdom and a wide intellectual scope, withstanding pressure and stressful conditions, loyalty, influential assertiveness, self-efficacy, personal responsibility, and setting a good example. following this open question, the participants were asked to rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) the importance of each of the following factors as they relate to school principalship: leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy, and to explain their choice of rating. as seen in table 3, participants rated leadership as most important, followed by emotional literacy, pedagogy, and management. these findings were then examined to determine whether the differences in rating were related to participants’ background variables. by gender, women rated emotional literacy higher than did men; with the other elements, no clear differences were found. age did not seem to have an effect, but tenure did, as seen in table 4. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 45 table 3. the importance of the key traits in school principalship sd m key trait 0.83 9.60 leadership 0.89 9.16 emotional literacy 1.44 8.60 pedagogy 1.42 8.16 management note. the questionnaire was answered by 57 participants. as seen in table 4, attributing importance to pedagogy and emotional literacy is strongly related to tenure. in a scheffe test conducted to discover the source of these differences we found that in pedagogy the difference was between those with 13 or more years of tenure and those with 8 to 12 years of tenure, the former rating pedagogy lower than the latter, who gave it the highest rating. in the emotional literacy factor, the test did not find the source of the differences, but looking at the different group averages shows a similar trend to that revealed for pedagogy, with those of 13 years of tenure or more giving it the lowest rating while those with 8 to 12 years of tenure ranked it highest. table 4. tenure and the importance of leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy in principalship: analysis of variance key trait tenure m sd f leadership 1–7 9.77 0.43 .68 8–12 9.61 1.19 ≥13 9.50 0.68 management 1–7 8.38 0.76 .09 8–12 8.56 1.68 ≥13 7.65 1.22 pedagogy 1–7 9.00 1.47 .01 8–12 9.06 0.80 ≥13 7.85 1.72 emotional literacy 1–7 9.23 1.09 .05 8–12 9.44 0.61 ≥13 8.75 0.91 note. the answers of the 53 participants (of 57) who reported their years of tenure are included in this analysis. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 46 discussion in this study we set out to examine principals’ perceptions regarding the importance of each of the four pillars of principalship: leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy. the findings revealed that principals’ ratings contradicted the views of educational policymakers who rated pedagogy as the most important of the pillars: principals rated leadership as most important. we shall turn to examining the principals’ ratings of the four pillars and present some of the reasons they offered to account for them. leadership as the foremost quality middleton (2001) viewed leadership as the main quality required for school principalship. principals’ leadership role, both in the community and in the school, is to preserve community spirit and sustainability and nurture a focused common goal that will bring about better skills and training for the school’s pupils. indeed, leadership was ranked high by most of the participants, as is consistent with the results of a previous study (schneider, 2004). recognizing leadership as the foremost quality (fiarman, 2015) is consistent with mcdonald’s (1998) observation that: school leadership is very much more than the passive acceptance of staff that they must do as the head teacher says simply because the individual concerned has been appointed to that position. a school leader, at any level of the organisation, has won the trust, belief and confidence of staff to a significant degree and these are assets which the staff has given to the leader. (p. 171) the rating of leadership as most important also confirms lambert’s (1998) description of school leadership as incorporating a number of core concerns: creating, among other things, actions that mean collaborative learning; cooperating; joint structuring of meaning and knowledge; fostering opportunities for creative work and development; mediating knowledge and ideas, perceptions and values, beliefs, information, and assumptions using continuous dialogue; questing collaboratively for means to develop novel ideas; managing through a reflective process; and, above all, implementing activities in a climate of shared values and current information. pedagogy as an ambivalent factor the participants rated pedagogy third in the list of traits required for appointment as a school principal. this is consistent with previous findings (schneider, 2004) where both teachers and retired military personnel in career retraining for managerial posts in education rated pedagogy as third in the list of desired traits. pedagogical skills and capabilities listed by the participants included: teaching abilities, the ability to implement pedagogical tools, professionalism, the ability to instruct and provide professional guidance in all matters related to pedagogical issues, and familiarity with school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 47 systems and study programs — knowing and understanding the complexities of a school curriculum and being able to implement it. is pedagogy a necessary element? if the main purpose of the school is to strive for academic achievement, principals should, first and foremost, consider themselves as pedagogues. however, as seen in the present study, both in the questionnaire and the interviews, some principals explained that pedagogy can be picked up on the job, or that, as with management, it is something others can do: management and pedagogy are subjects that can be trusted to others, though not abandoned to their hands. undoubtedly, a principal should be knowledgeable in pedagogy, though if they are lacking in this field, they may appoint someone else who can make up for what they lack. pedagogy and management are very important, but these are areas that people in other positions can deal with, rather than the principal. if the principal is smart enough to surround himself with a professional staff, the staff can do the task well. pedagogy — desirable, but a staff member could also be an expert in it. the vice-principal can take care of the mission, this means that the element of pedagogy is not required for the appointment of a school principal since someone else can. pedagogy can be learnt. i could be appointed principal without first being a pedagogue and catch up on missing knowledge in this area as i perform my duties as principal. others, a minority of the participants, stated that the question is a matter of terminology, a linguistic difference regarding the essence of pedagogy: they felt that principals could not simply put pedagogy aside: it is important for the principal to broadcast and express in his conduct an agendabased leadership alongside professionalism in his field — the pedagogy he leads, guides, and assimilates. … one should have a pedagogical approach and a selected direction in which to lead. it is easy to escape towards management and much more difficult to do pedagogical work. tasks in “management” are measurable, ad hoc, and solvable. tasks in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 48 pedagogy are prolonged and require a change in perception, in goal statements, and in ways of action — not a simple matter.… in today’s post-modern age it is mandatory for every principal to be a first-class pedagogue, before anything else. regarding the question of whether selection of school principals should be based primarily on pedagogical skills, the following answers were offered: i think the area of pedagogy sets us apart, compared to other professions, and therefore i feel it is one of the central themes one should master as they enter into school principalship. a principal who is only a pedagogical leader will not succeed in principalship. it is a complicated question that [will] make principals wonder. i think the pedagogical side is highly important and there cannot be a situation where a principal has no knowledge in this area, but if we look at the reality around us, so many individuals from other backgrounds with no knowledge of pedagogy enter the education system as principals, as educational leaders, and they do quite well. if in the past, a pedagogue was the principal, today that is not the case. there are many other factors which determine success; pedagogy may be important but not the most important. a minority of the participants saw pedagogy as a central element: even if a principal is not fully familiar with the curriculum in every detail, she or he should be a pedagogical leader in that they should know how to empower the forces that may lead the teaching staff in various fields and areas of knowledge. as a pedagogical leader, the principal does not necessarily have to be familiar with all details of school curricula, but should be able to guide the education team while carrying out all other responsibilities. when evaluating teachers, a pedagogue principal should have a pedagogical toolbox, without which their principalship is lacking. the toolbox should include knowledge in evaluating classes and evaluating the interaction between the teacher and the pupils. that is why i think pedagogical knowledge is one of the required skills for a principal. i ask myself in what way is a school principal different from others in management positions in industry or elsewhere? pedagogy makes the difference that sets school principals apart from other managers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 49 the supervisor who was interviewed saw pedagogical leadership as required for the leadership of school principals, and concluded: today’s school principals are required to have more substantial pedagogical leadership than before. five or ten years ago, it was about organizational skills and having good internal and external relations, which were based on emotional literacy. today that isn’t enough. today, in addition to all those management skills which are required for all managers in other industries, a school principal is also required to show pedagogical leadership. it would be desirable for him to know the “curricular outline” of the areas of knowledge, but that is not to say he should know all curricula in all detail. a pedagogical principal can lead a professional dialogue with the staff in order to upgrade teaching processes in the classroom.… a principal is required to evaluate the pedagogical work of a teacher based on observing their class work. without pedagogical knowledge that would not be possible. in addition, one must take into account that school principals are required to teach in class as a part of their job. during those hours they must act as role models and set a personal example of optimal teaching processes, learning, and evaluation. in these classes the principal’s pedagogical leadership is tested by the pupils and teachers. a principal who enters the classroom and delivers a lesson by the power of his authority alone, and not by virtue of his authoritative pedagogical knowledge, cannot serve as a model for others. how could a principal who does not know how to manage a class provide feedback for a teacher after observing their class and manage a pedagogical dialogue in a way that mutual learning will take place? a pedagogical principal should guide the group through a session where there will be mutual inspiration based on his didactic pedagogical knowledge. as a pedagogical leader, the principal must know how to teach and how to manage a dialogue with the staff that will result in continuous upgrading of pedagogical-didactic processes. a dialogue based on knowledge turns the principal into a pedagogical leader of the learning and teaching community. pedagogical skills required if, indeed, a principal must possess pedagogical skills, how do these compare with the pedagogical skills required of teachers? according to the participants: these are obviously two different things, but if you succeeded as a teacher in the area of pedagogy then it is reasonable to assume that you might be able to build on that and develop principalship skills in the field of pedagogy. and again, i think it is one of those things one can attain — the entire field of pedagogy — and until then you should also be able to find those people who fit your needs and could do those things and you’ll just supervise them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 50 i think that a pedagogical leader is a leader. if the principal is a pedagogue and also a leader then, in fact, you have all the aspects you are looking for. i only wish to make one distinction. after all, we as principals of elementary schools were selected until today as teachers who grew to become principals. naturally, pedagogical leadership is such because we grew as such. in a world where managerial positions are a profession onto themselves, the question is whether the most senior pedagogical leader at the school would be not the principal, but another member of the educational team: i have in mind a pedagogical leader … the question is: could she lead the school? and if i understand the question correctly, what would be a sufficient condition … for me to know pedagogy or for me to know how to be a leader? to support a teacher, to give her all she needs so she can be a pedagogical leader in her classroom, is my role as principal. how do i do that? i see her and ask her — how are you? what might you need today? will it suit you to act as such and such, and to do so and so this year? what would you like to do right now? etc. that’s the emotional thing. the principal should master pedagogical abilities. yukl (1998) raised questions about the extent to which skills are transferrable from one type of organization to another, stating that there are difficulties concerning the transfer of lower-level managers due to differences in technical skills. as for high-level management, katz (1955) proposed that high-level managers, possessing good human relations and conceptual skills, can be shifted easily from one industry to another without losing effectiveness. because of variations in ownership, tradition, organizational climate, and culture, yukl (1998) thought that conceptual and technical elements can be transferred to another organization but particular knowledge elements will need to be relearned. the principal as a jazz band leader in an attempt to examine the issue of pedagogical management as a central element in the system, barkol (2010), an education-management researcher, claimed that a multidirectional approach is required when dealing with school management issues because the role of the principal embodies all elements: leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy. the increasing demands of this all-in-one role make it more complex than is implied by the term “pedagogical leader” — suggested by the ministry of education to denote a principal — which omits recognition of management and leadership in the principal’s role, not to mention emotional literacy. as the head of an educational organization, the principal should reflect its uniqueness. educational organizations have a particular set of morals, beliefs, methods, and approaches, and a school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 51 principal must preserve and develop the composite of qualities characterizing these institutions that is not found in other organizations. barkol (2010) stressed that along with the need to function as a member of an organization, an administrator, and a politician, the principal must first of all function as a leader for the teachers, thus becoming also a leader for the pupils. leadership that energizes the teachers will carry a message that will determine the school climate and affect the pupils as well. as for the essential pedagogical aspect of school principalship, this view of leadership is consistent with that of schneider et al. (2013). addressing this pedagogical essence, barkol (2010) argued that the headmaster of the school, as a principal, promotes a learning community; without that learning community there is no ability to promote the organization. a learning community is one whose members all have their eyes open to the environment; that is, they know what is being done around them, study it, decode it, analyze it, and advance the organization accordingly. a school principal today is no longer a conductor of a planned and structured philharmonic orchestra, but a leader of a jazz band where everyone improvises on their own but everyone plays along with a central leader who allows every musician to express their skills and abilities. conclusions and recommendations the purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to determine the essence of the toolkit that is required for performing the role of principal, (2) to examine the changing role of pedagogy and the increasing recognition of emotional literacy as elements in principalship, and (3) to ascertain the importance that principals attribute to each component of classic school principalship — leadership, management, pedagogy — and to the additional component of emotional literacy. our research findings clearly define and rate the essential elements of principalship as perceived by principals: leadership and emotional literacy were both rated above pedagogy and management. our finding that principals gave pedagogy a low ranking deserves special attention. the israeli ministry of education regards pedagogical leadership as the ideal type of leadership for principals. however, our findings reveal that principals do not share that view: they regard pedagogical leadership as much more necessary for teachers than for principals. in a study among aspiring principals, teachers taking a principalship course presented pedagogy as an existing strength (schneider, 2004), and felt that working in classrooms and in schools had given them sufficient exposure to pedagogy and that therefore they did not need extra pedagogical training to become principals. this raises a question that should be looked into. does the same type of pedagogy implemented by teachers in a classroom meet the pedagogical requirements for an entire school? is the pedagogy of teachers the same as the andragogy (adult pedagogy) required by the principal’s role? the principals’ low ranking of pedagogy contradicts the ongoing attempt by the israeli ministry of education to establish pedagogical leadership as the central element in principalship international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 52 and to enhance the importance of pedagogy over other elements in the role of school principal (mendel-levi & bozo-schwartz, 2016). as such, the findings indicate the need for the ministry of education, when formulating policy, to take into account recent changes in the role of the principal. the question arises: what areas should we now be emphasizing when training and developing school principals? meeting the challenge of creating new updated educational institutions will require the establishment of an infrastructure for training principals that can nurture and develop their capabilities in the area of emotional literacy, as well as in the classic skills of leadership, pedagogy, and management. the ability of principals, both active and aspiring, to identify these needs and requirements, as shown in schneider (2004), is a valuable resource. they should be consulted and participate as equal partners in designing the program, and continue to dialogue with the design team during the training program for aspiring principals and later during training and development on the job. principal training is part of a lifelong learning process. it begins with the decision to become a principal, and continues throughout the performance of the role. each principal develops his or her own unique way of performing the role. however, the development of a common knowledge base is the responsibility of training authorities. it should include all four elements of principalship: leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy. at the end of the training, each principal chooses his or her own path and personal way of performing the role. an essential element of principal training is diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, a process performed by the instructors and the candidates together. the candidates rely on their intrapersonal intelligence — an aspect of emotional literacy (armstrong, 1994) — to engage in introspection and self-reflection throughout this process. to the extent that this diagnosis is made accurately, training programs can be successful and address personal needs. identification of the areas of empowerment required for each component of the training program should be carried out with the involvement and partnership of the candidates. candidates should be involved in guiding their learning, involved in the decisionmaking process related to the learning course, and feel that there is a focus on issues relevant to them that allow them to use their rich experience and engage in mutual learning with colleagues (merriam & caffarella, 1999). based on an assessment of the foundations required for preparation and training for principalship in the areas of leadership, management, pedagogy, and emotional literacy, and on an assessment of the qualities of each candidate, it is possible to determine the elements required to prepare and train the candidates to assume the management of an educational institution. these principles should guide us in building and constructing the training process (schneider & burton, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 53 it is not recommended to set a uniform model for principal training and development, or to try and form principals in too rigid a format. only versatility and a wide range of abilities can advance and energize the educational system. there is great danger in establishing a uniform model of the educational leader. principals of educational institutions with leadership and management abilities, appropriate pedagogical vision, and emotional literacy are leaders of students, faculty. and community, and thus should have unique educational characteristics that will allow them, as in the classical greek view of pedagogy, to accompany the youth and bring them to adulthood as whole adults. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 37–56 54 references armstrong, m. 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(2001). interpersonal leadership. ncsl leading edge seminar, nottingham, national college for school leadership. https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/transforming_retired_military_officers_into_school_principals_in_israel/10078349/1 https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/transforming_retired_military_officers_into_school_principals_in_israel/10078349/1 https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/105678790701600205 https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206050190020201 https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020608093263 https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2018.1481535 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs142202321470 child immigrant post-migration mental health: a qualitative inquiry into caregivers’ perspectives nahal fakhari, jessie-lee d. mcisaac, and rebecca spencer abstract: immigrant families and their children experience isolation after migration to canada. inadequate income, unemployment, and underemployment have all been identified as primary challenges to the mental health of immigrant families. this study qualitatively explored the perceptions of six middle eastern immigrant caregivers regarding their children’s post-migration mental health. the research was situated in the constructivist paradigm, and qualitative descriptive design was used to explore participant experiences. interviews were conducted in english with three farsi-speaking and three arabic-speaking caregivers. reflexive thematic analysis was performed. three themes were developed: (a) parents feel their children are isolated and lonely; (b) caregivers’ limited access to resources impacts their children’s mental health; and (c) community connections enhance families’ mental health. findings suggest children’s experiences with family separation and exposure to racism contributed to children’s loneliness. children’s isolation was exacerbated by caregivers’ limited access to resources to support their children’s transition into canada. caregivers identified social support as an asset to their families’ mental health. this research highlights the importance of culturally responsive health, employment, and education policies, together with programs to provide resources for immigrant families to support their children’s mental health after migration. keywords: immigrant children, immigrant families, mental health, postmigration experiences, discrimination, racism acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank the caregivers who participated in this research and shared their stories and their children’s experiences after migration to nova scotia. nahal fakhari ma (corresponding author) is a phd student in the dalhousie university faculty of graduate studies, room 314, henry hicks academic administration building, 6299 south street, po box 15000, halifax, ns b3h 4r2. email: nahal.fakhari@dal.ca jessie-lee d. mcisaac phd is an assistant professor in the department of child and youth study at mount saint vincent university, 166 bedford highway, halifax, ns b3m 2j6. email: jessie-lee.mcisaac@msvu.ca rebecca spencer phd is a senior instructor at the school of health and human performance at dalhousie university, 5981 university ave, halifax, ns b3h 4r2. email: becky.spencer@dal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 69 researchers have shown concern for immigrant children’s mental health following migration (islam, 2015; patterson et al., 2013; yang, 2019). children’s development is influenced by their environment and experiences, and caregivers and communities are important in shaping those experiences (bronfenbrenner & evans, 2000). immigrant children’s mental health is impacted through the isolation and exclusion often experienced following migration (islam, 2015; salami et al., 2022; yang, 2019) due to both their own direct interaction with the new environment and their caregivers’ exposure to post-migration challenges. research indicates that the unique preand post-migration experiences of immigrant children result in poorer mental health than is seen in their non-immigrant peers (islam, 2015; patterson et al., 2013; yang, 2019). for example, immigrant children often experience isolation and exclusion at school, where they face discrimination based on race, culture, religion, and language; they may be bullied, excluded, and physically and verbally abused (islam, 2015; jacobson, 2021; kiakeating & ellis, 2007; patterson et al., 2013; stewart, 2012; walker & zuberi, 2020; yang, 2019). in a study conducted in manitoba, teachers and immigrant students expressed concern about the spatial segregation of classrooms into immigrant and non-immigrant students (stewart, 2012). more recently, african immigrant parents also shared challenges regarding their children’s encounters with unequal treatment from teachers and other students at school (salami et al., 2022). many immigrant families face structural discrimination in accessing adequately paid employment, health services, and other necessary resources. inadequate income, unemployment, and underemployment have all been identified as primary challenges to the mental health of immigrant families (adler & rehkopf, 2008; de maio & kemp, 2010; khanlou, 2010; link & phelan, 1995; long, 2010; salami et al., 2019). while immigrants in canada do have access to universal health care, lack of income may restrict their budget for transportation, dental and eye exams, medication, and mental health services (de maio & kemp, 2010; khanlou, 2010; long, 2010; salami et al., 2019). for example, african immigrant parents in western canada believed that unemployment restricted their ability to invest in materials essential for their children’s mental and emotional development (salami et al., 2022). structural discrimination against immigrant families is a barrier to accessing necessary resources, negatively influencing their mental health. in particular, systemic discrimination in health systems influences immigrant caregivers’ capacity to support their children’s mental health as they have limited use of relevant services (brown et al., 2020; khanlou, 2010; long, 2010; rezazadeh & hoover, 2018). structural discrimination within health services can take multiple forms, including cultural and language differences, and lack of diversity among health providers (khanlou, 2010; klassen et al., 2012; long, 2010; salami et al., 2019). for example, through interviews with service providers in alberta, salami et al. (2019) found that immigrants had especially low access to mental health services due to different cultural conceptualizations of mental health. similarly, klassen et al. (2012) found that cultural differences between parents and healthcare providers regarding international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 70 disclosure of children’s diagnoses to children were a source of tension and stress to some immigrant parents. adverse childhood experiences (aces) influence children’s mental health. while definitions of aces vary, they are commonly understood as childhood exposure to events such as violence, abuse, chronic stress, and parental depression, and the negative outcomes associated with them (boivin & hertzman, 2012). people exposed to aces may experience helplessness, depression, anxiety, and affective disorders in adolescence or adulthood (flouri & kallis, 2011; mclaughlin et al., 2012); for instance, depression symptoms among caregivers can decrease family warmth and quality of parenting, and may lead to neglect (levendosky et al., 2003; owen et al., 2006). individuals exposed to aces may feel uncertain about their future and experience disruption of their emotional regulation skills (bucci et al., 2016; sonu et al., 2019; thompson et al., 2012). caregivers’ poor mental health is an ace, and has negative implications for the mental health of their children. the literature suggests that access to social networks enhances immigrant families’ capacity to support their mental health, since social support facilitates their integration into canada (immigration, refugees and citizenship canada, 2015; khanlou, 2010; stirling cameron et al., 2022). some research suggests that the informal support immigrant families receive from social circles helps them gain employment and enhance social and cultural connections (dastjerdi & mardukhi, n.d.; immigration, refugees and citizenship canada, 2015; khanlou, 2010). in stirling cameron et al.’s (2022) study of postnatal experiences of syrian refugee women in nova scotia, social connections proved to be critical as friends provided emotional support after a birth and also provided child care, cleaned house, and cooked food for the mother and her family. in a scoping review, brown et al. (2020) suggested that social networks help immigrant families access information about programs for their children. the importance immigrant families attach to access to social support is evident in their preference for living in metropolitan cities like toronto that have larger immigrant communities (dastjerdi & mardukhi, 2015; khanlou, 2010; statistics canada, 2017). in canada, the number of immigrant children from the middle east is increasing; 74% of immigrant children under the age of 15 are from mainly non-english speaking countries, including those of the middle east (statistics canada, 2017). immigrants to canada have tended to live in metropolitan cities like toronto, vancouver, and calgary; however, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of immigrants, including those from the middle east, that have chosen to live in atlantic canada (statistics canada, 2017). with the increase in middle eastern immigrant children, there is a need to understand their mental health post-migration in order to better support their transition into canada. the purpose of this study was to explore the perspective of immigrant caregivers in atlantic canada regarding the impact of their post-migration experiences on their children’s mental health. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 71 method conceptual framework this research follows the constructivist paradigm. the constructivist ontology is relativism, meaning that there is no single truth or reality, but multiple ones (allen et al., 1986; wahyuni, 2012). the paradigm was suitable for this research as participants came from different cultural and language backgrounds that informed their perceptions. the strategy chosen was qualitative description, which is helpful for understudied research topics that require less philosophical interpretation of events (sandelowski, 2000, 2010; willis et al., 2016). interviews were conducted in english, the participants’ second language. using qualitative description, the researchers analyzed participants’ experiences with minimal interpretation. participants this study recruited six middle eastern caregivers. participants were invited based on several inclusion criteria. they had to have migrated to canada as legal non-refugee immigrants. immigrants with work or student visas were not included, as they have different experiences based on their immigration status. participants must also have migrated directly from the middle east region to atlantic canada and lived there for at least 3 years, giving them some time to adapt to canadian conditions. further, participants must have had at least one child under the age of 11 at the time of migration; in order to reduce recall errors, that child had to be still under 18 at the time of the study. finally, this study only included participants who had conversational english proficiency. a broad range of methods was used to recruit participants, such as contacting settlement agencies and cultural communities across atlantic canada. although it was not our intention to exclude participants based on gender, all six caregivers in this study identified as mothers, so the perceptions of fathers are missing from this research. the authors acknowledge that this concept could have been explored more fully by employing feminist theory; however, it was beyond the scope of this research. it would be useful to explore the intersection of this study’s findings with gender-based analysis in future projects. all participants resided in nova scotia except one who resided in new brunswick. three of the participants were farsi speakers from iran, and the other three were arabic speakers from libya, palestine, and the united arab emirates. two participants had one child, three had two children, and one had five children. three participants had lived in atlantic canada for less than 5 years, two for 7 years, and one for 9 years; ages ranged from 37 to 47 (m = 42; sd = 4.3). each caregiver had a postsecondary degree from their home country; however, all but one participant worked or studied in a different field following migration. semi-structured interviews were conducted in september 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic. though data collection occurred between waves of the pandemic, there were concerns about the growing number of cases at that time, and the pandemic had caused disruptions in children’s schooling, challenges in accessing services, and isolation due to social distancing. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 72 context atlantic canada includes the provinces of nova scotia, new brunswick, prince edward island (pei), and newfoundland and labrador. all participants were from nova scotia except one who was from new brunswick. while nova scotia is the second smallest province in canada (the canadian encyclopedia, n.d.), in 2021, with the help of a recent influx of immigrants, it attained a population of 1 million (thevenot, 2021). however, the number of immigrants in the province remains lower than in larger provinces like ontario, british columbia, quebec, and alberta: with the exception of canada’s three northern territories, the atlantic provinces have the lowest immigration rates in the country (statista, 2023). it is therefore likely that the study participants would have met with significantly different experiences in metropolitan cities with populations diverse in spoken language, ethnicity, and religion. data collection the qualitative description approach can offer insight into an understudied topic — in this case, mental health in immigrant populations — through semi-structured interviews (willis et al., 2016). five interviews were conducted using microsoft teams; the sixth was conducted in person. each interview lasted from 70 to 90 minutes. in addition to answering the predetermined questions from our interview guide, interviewees also had the freedom to discuss issues that had not been anticipated (wahyuni, 2012). interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim using microsoft’s expressscribe software. all identifying information was removed, and pseudonyms were assigned for presenting participants’ quotes. transcripts were transferred to qualitative analysis software, max qda, for data management, organization, and analysis. data analysis researcher’s positionality i (nahal fakhari) identify as an immigrant who has faced post-migration challenges. after migration, i felt helpless and hopeless, especially when my family could not navigate the health, education, and employment systems in nova scotia. further, as an early childhood educator, i empathised with the experiences of immigrant mothers and saw immigrant children’s efforts to connect with others. these experiences shaped my interpretation of the data and informed the reflexive thematic analysis employed in this research. reflexive thematic analysis this work draws on my master’s thesis (fakhari, 2022). while my co-authors, jessie-lee mcisaac and rebecca spencer, provided methodological guidance and mentorship, the analysis is primarily presented from my perspective. the reflexive thematic analysis discussed in the subsequent paragraphs was influenced by my subjectivity and positionality, as outlined above. the researchers used reflexive thematic analysis to describe the participants’ experiences (braun & clarke, 2006, 2021; maguire & delahunt, 2017; mauthner & doucet, 2003). the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 73 analysis process was reflexive, ongoing, and iterative. as this research employed qualitative description, the codes and themes remained close to the data and the participants’ words; however, some interpretation was required to understand the participants’ perspectives (braun & clarke, 2021; mauthner & doucet, 2003). in order to generate meaningful codes, the researchers read the transcripts many times to familiarize themselves with the shared meaning of participants’ realities. then, the researchers focused on the relationships between codes to understand how they could combine to form themes representing most of the data. the researchers reflected on the developed themes to decide if they needed to be merged with other themes, broken down into separate themes, or even supplemented with new themes. coding and theming were ongoing processes as the researchers’ insights evolved along with their understanding of the data (braun & clarke, 2021). ethical considerations ethical approval was established through dalhousie university research ethics board (reb file #2021-5721). the risks associated with taking part in this research were expected to be minimal; however, it was deemed possible that paticipants could experience distress or discomfort when recalling their post-migration experiences. to mitigate this, during the verbal consent participants were made aware that during the interview they could take a break at any point, skip any questions they did not feel comfortable answering, or stop participating in the interview. questions were open-ended, and so participants did not need to talk about specific events or experiences that they were not comfortable disclosing. in addition, a list of mental health resources was created and shared with participants prior to their interview session in case they needed someone to talk to after participating in the interview. as part of the informed consent process, participants were also reminded of the procedures to protect their privacy and confidentiality. the verbal consent form, audio recordings, and transcripts were saved in a onedrive folder and shared only among the research team. to ensure confidentiality, the research team encouraged participants not to use specific names, and all identifying information, such as participants’ names, children’s names, and locations, was removed from the transcripts and replaced with pseudonyms. all data and information related to the study will be retained in the onedrive folder shared among the research team for up to 5 years. after 5 years, the folder will be deleted. results three themes were identified as the product of reflexive thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006, 2021): (a) parents feel their children are isolated and lonely after migration; (b) caregivers’ limited access to resources impacts their children’s mental health; and (c) community connections enhance families’ mental health. to illuminate participants’ perceptions of their children’s mental health after migration, this section begins by summarizing our findings regarding participant definitions of mental health. we then go on to describe the three themes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 74 parents’ definition of mental health since our participants came from a variety of cultural backgrounds, to further our understanding of how they perceived their children’s mental health post-migration, they were asked to describe mental health in general. for these participants, environment, including their interactions with people, was part of their definition of mental health. for example, farah said, “[mental health for me] is the environment [where] people around me [are] supporting and understanding the different [sic], and [they] don’t judge [but try] to understand you.” in addition, all participants defined mental health in relation to their feelings and emotions in response to their environment. for example, they referred to feelings like disappointment, loneliness, and confusion in relation to their mental health after migration. as her definition of mental health, tara shared: “[for mental health], i would refer to the feeling and mostly what i felt inside me.” participants agreed that when they live in an environment where differences are respected, and have what they need to care for their families, family mental health is stable. theme 1: parents feel their children are isolated and lonely after migration the participants believed their children were isolated, excluded, and lonely following immigration. they described how factors like children’s experiences with family loss and racism contributed to their children’s mental health challenges by triggering feelings like isolation and loneliness. the following sections describe each of these experiences. loss of pre-migration connections the participants thought that their children’s isolation and loneliness was related to their loss of pre-migration connections with relatives who had played significant roles in their children’s lives before migration. more than half of the participants explained that, before migration, their children were close to their grandparents, uncles, and aunts. in addition, relatives provided the children with a sense of identity and belonging, which may have been challenged following separation. for example, farah recalled how much her daughter missed her family back home: since i came here, she’s always asking me each year, “i need to go back. i need to live there.” and, uh, from the beginning, she’s all, she was crying. “why? when we are here in canada, why you bring us here? why didn’t we then stay with my family? i need to enjoy, especially the good moment: it weddings or eid and see all the kids and all the family gathering.” she’s crying. she’s lonely. according to these caregivers, their children have felt lonely in canada due to missing out on spending time with family during cultural celebrations or participating in significant family gatherings, like birthdays and weddings. experiencing discrimination some caregivers were also concerned about their children’s exposure to racism. three caregivers reported that their children have faced discrimination that has provoked feelings of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 75 isolation and exclusion. two shared that teachers had made false assumptions about their children’s language ability, nationality, immigration status, and pre-migration education. for instance, aliyah recalled that her daughter’s school mistakenly thought that she was a syrian refugee with no education because she spoke arabic. thus, they placed her in a math class for lower grades. aliyah recalled her feelings about visiting her daughter’s school and speaking to her teacher: i was shocked, and i went to camp [the school], i spoke to the counselor. i say, she got 17 because she’s only one month here. and she has, she doesn’t speak english, like what [do] they expect from her? and a lot of the math problems are word problems. and he was, “oh my god?” and i said, “yes, like, what did you expect? my daughter is, she’s a genius in math. she’s good at math.” i was angry. these participants agreed that their children’s exposure to racism led to experiences of stress, isolation, and loneliness. some participants also felt other children at school seemed hesitant to socialize with their children. three participants shared that their children faced challenges building relationships at school due to language or cultural differences. for example, aliyah recalled how lonely her daughter felt at school when she could not connect with her peers: my daughter is very sociable and she’s very … she wants to be engaged in everything. and she had higher expectations. she thought, once we come … when she comes here, she will be friends with everyone, no matter what their colour or background or race. but she felt that she was rejected because of the fact that her english was imperfect and she’s an immigrant. finding friends was also difficult for children with adequate english. shima had come to canada with her one-year-old daughter, who was able to speak english by the time she started school. shima was upset that her child felt lonely: “[my child’s] alone. finding friend here is too hard. i cannot become so close to the canadian because they don’t want to be so close. i have to find somebody for her, and she’s always coming to home and crying.” according to these participants, unfair treatment from teachers and difficulty developing friendships led to children’s exclusion and loneliness. theme 2: caregivers’ limited access to resources impacts their children’s mental health all participants felt that the accessibility of resources influenced their capacity to support their children’s mental health following migration. income, the health system, and social networks were the primary resources discussed by these caregivers. participants emphasized the critical role that their cultural networks play in their families’ settlement. accessing social support as a necessary resource for families’ mental health therefore warrants its own theme and is presented separately international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 76 as theme 3. the participants’ accounts of how challenges in finding income and using the health system impacted their children’s mental health are discussed below. participants believed their financial situations influenced their ability to support their children’s mental well-being. two of the participants reported that their children either became anxious about their family’s financial difficulties or felt different from their peers because of their families’ low income. for example, farah explained, “[my child] is not finding herself like the other kids …. sometimes, she’s asking for program that her friend go, and i can’t offer that money.” further, participants felt that they did not have the emotional and physical capacity to support their children while navigating employment. for example, aliyah shared, “i remembered myself crying all the time … at the same time, i had to care for my kids who were new to the school, and they were facing challenges.” some participants also were not able to be physically present to support their children as they had to either go to english classes or go back to school to gain canadian accreditation to find employment. for example, shima shared: “the association asked for a canadian certificate, so i go [sic] back to school and i was forced to leave my daughter with my mom, i had to study … i couldn’t spend much time with my child.” addressing the barriers they faced in earning an income limited the financial, physical, and emotional capacity of immigrant caregivers to support their children’s mental health. participants outlined challenges they had faced when attempting to access mental health care in canada to support their children’s and their own mental health. one of those challenges was a lack of language and cultural diversity. for example, aliyah shared: about mental health, i feel i need to talk to someone who speaks my language and understands where i’m coming from. i’ve never thought about services here cause i know there’s no one that i could talk to in my language. sara and shima also decided to connect with virtual services from their home countries to address their difficulties in interfacing with the canadian mental health system. for example, sara stated: “[my son] after my separation … spoke a bit [to] a counsellor in my country through online ... because this counsellor already know about everything about us.” high fees related to counselling was another issue for participants. farah said: “[therapists are] very expensive. i can’t afford it. so, i called and then i found it expensive. so, i said, no, it’s too much on me.” overall, participants saw value in counselling services for them and their children, but felt that the system’s unfamiliarity with their cultures and languages, along with high fees, limited their access to these services. caregivers’ exposure to overt racism at work or in their daily lives was another factor that influenced their emotional capacity to support their children’s mental health after migration. three participants shared that their direct experiences with overt racism caused fear, stress, and low selfesteem. for example, aliyah, who worked as a school settlement worker, felt that her qualifications as an immigrant with post-secondary education were not appreciated by the school international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 77 counsellor: “there’s a hierarchy here.… you are an immigrant, you have a lot of experiences to help but because you are a support worker, they don’t consider me as valuable.” moreover, farah, who identified as an immigrant single mother, recalled that her director did not treat her equitably and was inconsiderate of her immigration status, asking her to work long shifts: sometimes they ask us to work late. i said, “i can’t, i have to take my kids.” [the director said,] “don’t put excuse as single mom”, but i am an immigrant, single mom is common but they [single moms who are not immigrants] have people that help. it is possible that the negative feelings highlighted in the above comments limited the caregivers’ emotional and mental capacity to support their children’s mental health after immigration. theme 3: community connections enhance families’ mental health participants believed their connections with others in the community enhanced their capacity to support their children. participants considered these connections to be an asset to their families’ mental health, a source of emotional, informational, and caregiving support that facilitated their transition into canada. the caregivers believed new relationships enhanced their emotional capacity to support their children’s transition. for example, tara said: “when i feel bad i prefer to spend some time with immigrant friends. it really help me a lot.” caregivers also encouraged their children to build friendships to overcome their loneliness. aisha shared: “i usually take my kids to a program [for immigrant children] that takes care of the leadership skills and personal skills.… it also helps them to build new friendships [with] people in the community.” connecting with people from the same cultural backgrounds was a positive experience that enhanced the sense of belonging among some families. participants who valued connecting with people from the same cultural backgrounds identified the small size of middle eastern immigrant populations in atlantic canada and the covid-19 pandemic as barriers to enhancing their social connections. for example, as shima stated, “i never get a chance to make any friendship relation with a person because, we have a very limited population of iranian [people here].” in terms of the pandemic, farah said, “due to covid-19, we lost a lot of connections; we couldn’t travel to halifax, and we didn’t visit them [our friends], we were affected.” the caregivers also highlighted the role other middle eastern immigrants played in accessing resources like income and information that contributed to their capacity to support their families’ mental health. farah, aliyah, and aisha discussed how their new friends helped them to find employment. for example, aliyah, who struggled to find employment upon arrival, found a job through her friend’s connections: “i applied for many places, but no one gets back to me until i met a friend, this friend so she told one of the managers about me and this supervisor accepted me.” some caregivers also discussed how their friends provided information regarding navigating international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 78 canadian systems. for example, farah said, “… [my egyptian friend] was translating to me because i came no english. she was translating [for] me at court [and] at hospitals, and i got the pr [permanent residency] through her too.” these caregivers highlighted the role played by their new friends in providing the knowledge they needed to take care of their families following migration. on some occasions, participants also received child care support from their friends while working or attending classes. farah and tara shared that their friends provided child care for their children and offered emotional support during pregnancy and during challenging situations like divorce. tara, who had a difficult pregnancy, said that her friends helped her as a family member would: “[my friends] had a baby shower for me, they visited me at hospitals. uh, they took care of my daughter when i was not at home.” farah also stated, “when i was studying english as a second language, [my friend] was babysitting my son, so we became as a family, they are very close to me, supporting me.” accessing informal child care enhanced these caregivers’ ability to address their families’ post-migration needs and increased their capacity to support their children post-migration. discussion this study aimed to explore the perspectives of middle eastern immigrant caregivers in atlantic canada regarding the impact of their post-migration experiences on their children’s mental health. the study participants believed that mental health providers’ lack of familiarity with their cultures and languages, and the high cost of counselling services, were the primary barriers to accessing mental health services. the participants also discussed the fact that their difficulty in securing employment negatively impacted their financial and psychological capacity to support their children’s mental health after migration. studies have suggested that immigrant populations in canada may have negative attitudes toward mental health services due to stigma, making it more difficult for them to access to mental health support (livingston et al., 2018; salami et al., 2022; salami et al., 2019). livingston et al. (2018), for example, blamed low use of mental health supports among asian immigrants in british columbia on stigma toward mental illness. o’mahony et al. (2013) reported that the stigma held by migrant women in canada toward mental illness negatively influenced their use of mental health supports after giving birth. in contrast, the findings of this study suggest that stigma was not a barrier, as these participants demonstrated awareness and willingness to support their families’ mental health after migration. moreover, some caregivers tried to cope with the high fees and the lack of compatible professionals by finding free-of-charge counselling services or connecting with therapists from their home countries. as noted, although some previous research has suggested that low engagement with mental health programs among immigrant populations is due to the stigma they associate with mental illnesses, this was not a finding of our study. one possible explanation for this difference could be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 79 related to our participants’ demographic homogeneity — in their ages, countries of origin, levels of education, and employment situations. the participants were all from the middle east, and it is possible that mental illnesses are less stigmatized in this region than in regions covered in other studies; for instance, salami et al. (2022) and salami et al. (2019) focused on immigrants from africa. our participants also differed from those in other studies in that they were all in early middle age, had post-secondary education, and were either employed or studying at the time of their interviews; significantly, in livingston et al.’s (2018) study of asian immigrants in vancouver, stigma varied with age and employment status. it is also possible that views may be shifting due to improved public discourse regarding mental health, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. finally, it is possible that caregivers with negative views of mental illnesses did not choose to participate in this project. some studies have discussed poverty and lack of access to secure income, which are social determinants of health, as major post-migration issues for children’s mental health (chang, 2019; choi et al., 2014). beiser (2005) also identified poverty as a significant factor for depression among immigrant children in canada. similarly, african immigrant parents in western canada believed that unemployment restricted their ability to invest in materials essential for their children’s mental and emotional development (salami et al., 2022; salami et al., 2020). our study also found that families’ poverty and lack of access to secure income were also an issue for immigrant children in nova scotia and new brunswick. some participants thought their children had become concerned about their families’ financial needs, while others felt their low income contributed to their children’s isolation and exclusion as they could not afford to register their children in activities that required fees or materials. the 2020 report card on child and family poverty in nova scotia showed that the highest child poverty rate was among recent immigrant children (frank et al., 2020). in contrast, study participants did not talk in their interviews about their experiences with extreme poverty. the reason for this difference could be that these participants were highly educated, were employed at the time of the interview, and had immigrated voluntarily; it is possible that they had some knowledge and resources to help navigate canadian systems and were able to find employment faster than, for example, refugee populations who were forced to migrate. nevertheless, the participants agreed that their challenges in securing adequate income limited their capacity to support their children’s mental well-being after migration. implications interventions that enhance immigrant children’s experiences at school and facilitate immigrant families’ integration into canadian society will support immigrant children’s mental health after migration. schools, as one of the first services that immigrant children access in canada, can play an important role in supporting their mental well-being. trauma-informed practices within the school system have been found helpful in addressing the unique needs of immigrant children, who often experience social, emotional, educational, and behavioural issues after migration (cole et al., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 80 2013; jacobson, 2021; stewart, 2012; walker & zuberi, 2020). immigrant families’ access to mental health counselling services may be increased if services are free and offered by counsellors who are familiar with families’ cultural and language backgrounds (hynie, 2018; rezazadeh & hoover, 2018; salami et al., 2022). this study gave voices to families to reflect on their own postmigration challenges and examined their perceptions of the impact of migration on their children’s mental health; nevertheless, more research needs to be done to understand the first-voice experiences of immigrant children in atlantic canada schools where the majority of students, teachers, and administrators are white. study strengths and limitations this study provided space for an underrepresented group to share their understandings of mental health, and their perspectives on the understudied topic of mental health among children from marginalized populations. nevertheless, a limitation of the study is that it examined the mental health of children from their caregivers’ perspectives only. considering that children are capable and experts in their own lives, this research could have better understood their realities if children themselves had been interviewed. as well, some participants might have had more than one child who met the inclusion criteria, so it is possible that participants mixed up their children’s experiences. this research is strengthened by the first author’s insider voice in this project: as an immigrant, she also felt and experienced many of the challenges that the participants faced after migration. however, budget restrictions precluded hiring interpreters, and thus only participants who had english proficiency for day-to-day conversation were selected. therefore, the voices of caregivers with more limited english proficiency were missed. finally, this study employed constructivism and qualitative description as the theory and the strategy of inquiry, whereas employing feminist theory or critical theory would have been helpful to further analyze the intersection of gender with research findings by exploring caretaking roles, traditional gender norms, and the relationship between separation and maternal responsibilities. such analysis should be considered for future research. conclusion this qualitative study explored the perceptions of six middle eastern immigrant caregivers on their children’s mental health post-migration. these caregivers felt that their children’s direct experiences with family separation and exposure to racism at school contributed to their feelings of loneliness and isolation. further, these participants believed that their children’s isolation was increased by their families’ limited capacity to access resources to support their transition into canada. nevertheless, the participants considered social support to be an asset to their families’ mental health. this research indicates the importance of culturally responsive programs and policies in various government systems like education, health, and employment in supporting immigrant children’s mental health after migration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 68–85 81 references adler, n. e., & rehkopf, d. h. 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(2019). is childhood migration a mental health risk? exploring health behaviors and psychosocial resources as pathways using the cross-sectional canadian community health survey. social science research, 83, article 102303. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.04.016 psychological adjustment of expatriate children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs111202019471 psychological adjustment of expatriate children in cultural transitions anu warinowski and eero laakkonen abstract: the aim of the current study was to define the factorial structure of the psychological adjustment (pa) of finnish expatriate children (ec) and to construct a model consisting of three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving). survey data concerning finnish ec (n = 324) who had lived temporarily abroad were gathered from the ec’s parents. the mean age of the children was 4.8 years in the expatriation context and 8.2 years in the repatriation context. pa was examined using the zung self-rating depression scale (zsds). survey data were subject to a confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) and structural equation modeling (sem). a hypothesized two-factor structure (physiological and affective factors) of pa was fitted for the sample using the cfa. a sem of pa was presented, where the child-level explanatory variables were the age of the child, school success, and attitude toward moving. the main findings were the following: first, there is a two-factor structure of finnish ec’s pa with both physiological and affective factors. second, a model of pa with three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) was constructed. the results contribute to the understanding of pa in general and ec’s pa in particular. this study increases our understanding of ec’s pa in unique and novel contexts of dual cultural transitions. this comprehension is important in an increasingly globalized world, especially in clinical and other support contexts, where professionals work for children’s mental well-being. keywords: psychological adjustment, expatriate children, cultural transition, expatriation, repatriation anu warinowski phd (the corresponding author) is head of faculty development in the faculty of education at the university of turku. address: assistentinkatu 5, 20014 university of turku, finland. email: anu.warinowski@utu.fi eero laakkonen is special researcher in the department of teacher education at the university of turku. address: assistentinkatu 5, 20014 university of turku, finland. email: eerlaa@utu.fi mailto:anu.warinowski@utu.fi mailto:eerlaa@utu.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 2 we are living in a global era of increasing international mobility and intercultural contact (e.g., ward & kagitcibasi, 2010). contemporary migration has become diverse, complex, and temporary in nature. because of globalization, the number of internationally mobile employees has increased worldwide (e.g., warinowski, 2011a). thus, contemporary migration includes millions of short-term immigrants connected by their global working lives, including expatriates and their family members (e.g., ward & kagitcibasi, 2010). in the present study, expatriates are defined as contemporary labor-based temporary migrants, a subgroup of migrants in general (warinowski, 2011a). although they have many similarities with other migrant groups, they do have two distinct features: the temporal nature of the move, and work as the reason for moving. expatriates typically move with their families, which include a spouse and at least one child (e.g., suutari & brewster, 2003). expatriate children (ec) refers to children who move abroad temporarily with their families because of a parent’s work. in previous studies, several terms have been used for these children, such as american-based “third culture kids” (tck; for the history of this term, see kano podolsky, 2004; brown & lauder, 2009) and “global nomads” (fail, 2007). given that the cultural situation that is part of living abroad differs for american english-speaking children and finnish finnish-speaking children, these concepts do not suit the finnish ec’s context because of differences in language situation (english as a lingua franca vs. finnish as a minor language) and expatriate community size (large american expatriate communities vs. few other finnish expatriates; warinowski, 2011b). however they are conceptualized, all these children serve as agents of globalization (kano podolsky, 2004; see also brown & lauder, 2009). nevertheless, few studies that are linked with acculturation have focused on ec. in our study, acculturation is defined according to chirkov (2009a) as a multifaceted, continuous process that begins after one enters a cultural context that differs from the cultural context where one was initially socialized. we understand “culture” as dynamic, situated, and context bound. it includes multifaceted in-group differences in, for example, ethnicity, language, and family dynamics (e.g., nieto, 2008). with this in mind, transitions between two cultural contexts (finland and abroad) are conceptualized in our study as cultural transitions, and ec in cultural transitions are viewed as undergoing diverse, simultaneous changes of different forms (grimshaw & sears, 2008; nette & hayden, 2007). as a number of seminal studies have noted, cultural transitions connect conceptually with the notion of adaptation (ward & kennedy, 1993a, 1993b; ward et al., 1998). ward and colleagues (1998) made a broad distinction between two types of adaptation — psychological and sociocultural — that are required during cultural transitions (see also chiu et al., 2013; searle & ward, 1990; ward & kennedy, 1993a, 1994; ward & searle, 1991). accordingly, acculturation research has traditionally examined two adaptational outcomes in cultural contexts: psychological adjustment (pa) and sociocultural adaptation (e.g., searle & ward, 1990; schwartz et al., 2010). although these two dimensions of adaptation are linked, it has also been suggested that one should approach them as separate theoretical concepts (ward & kennedy, 1993a). in making the needed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 3 distinction between the two dimensions, pa is conceptualized as an affective process in cultural transitions and is linked with a person’s psychological well-being; it is defined here as a person’s psychological well-being and emotional contentment (ward & kennedy, 1993a; ward et al., 1998). it encompasses depression, life satisfaction, self-esteem, loneliness, and negative affect (nguyen & benet martínez, 2013). in short, pa focuses on “feeling well” in a transitional context (chiu et al., 2013). typically, difficulties in pa constitute the main problems with immigrant children’s adjustment (e.g., berry et al., 2006). this is why our current study also focuses on pa. although there has been extensive research on cultural transitions, it has tended to focus on first, a single transition (e.g., könig, 2009), and, second, the effects of transitions on adults (dobson, 2009) rather than children. the present study tries to fill these two gaps with its focus on children and on the linked transitions of moving from one’s culture of origin (expatriation) and afterwards, having lived in the other culture, returning to the original location (repatriation) with perhaps a very different way of experiencing the world. expatriation research has used the concepts of expatriation and repatriation widely. as a phase of cultural transition, expatriation is defined here as moving away from one’s passport country; repatriation, then, means moving back to the passport country. thus, for ec, important changes occur not once but twice. this dual nature of ec’s cultural transitions gives them extra challenges compared with a person having only one transition. in expatriation research, the focus has tended to be on the expatriation stage only, thus largely neglecting repatriation (szkudlarek, 2010). only a few studies have emphasized both transitions. these studies considered cultural identities in the processes of expatriation and repatriation of american teachers who sojourned in japan (sussman, 2002) and children (fail, thompson, & walker, 2004; kanno, 2000; see also könig, 2009). the extant research allows us to compare adults versus children in cultural transitions. changing residences is widely known to be a stressful experience for adults (e.g., oishi et al., 2012). for children, who normally lack control over decisions about moving, it is bound to be more demanding, possibly even traumatic (oishi et al., 2012). transitions can have more severe and long-lasting effects on children than on adults (grimsaw & sears, 2008; nette & hayden, 2007). nevertheless, acculturation studies have mainly focused on adults (dobson, 2009). futhermore, until shah and lund (2007) and haslberger and brewster (2008) began to look at expatriate families, expatriate research largely focused on single individuals. despite this development, in the field of expatriate research, children are generally viewed as “luggage” — something that adults must take with them when they move abroad and when they return to their country of origin (selmer & lam, 2004). from the viewpoints of both childhood studies and current cross-cultural psychology, individuals are seen as active agents in cultural transitions, and acculturation and adjustment are seen as active processes. individual acculturation is a process that an agentic individual executes (chirkov, 2009a). in cultural transitions and within the context of the current study, ec are seen international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 4 from a dynamic and agentic view, combining a contextual, cultural view with a child-level approach (kagitcibasi, 2005). many childhood studies have used qualitative data, but there has been a recent demand for more methodological variation (e.g., clark et al., 2014). taking a childlevel approach in research and using quantitative data are techniques that have not often been applied in this research area. thus, in the present study, we used quantitative data to analyze the child-level variables for pa. also, the pa experiences of ec have not been sufficiently researched in the context of ec in general and in the finnish ec context particularly. previously, we have studied the correlations of pa with several familyand individual-level variables (warinowski, 2012). among these correlations, individual-level variables of age, school success, and attitude toward moving were found to be worthy of more thorough research. present investigation the aim of our study was to define the factorial structure of finnish ec’s pa and construct a model consisting of three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) in cultural transitions of expatriation and repatriation. from these objectives, related research questions arise. the first research question is: (q1) what is the factorial structure of the pa of finnish ec? for pa, the zung self-rating depression scale (zsds; zung, 1972; see “measures” below) was used. cross-cultural studies have been adopting this scale for decades (macbeth & gumley, 2012). it is a traditional and still widely used measure for pa. indeed, it remains one of the most prevalent scales for measuring pa (e.g., demes & geeraert, 2013). colleen ward, a pioneer of the pa research field, has used this scale in her studies on pa (e.g., ward et al., 1998; ward & rana deuba, 1999). ward has continuously demonstrated the reliability of this scale in her sojourner studies (ward & kennedy, 1992; ward et al., 2004; ward & searle, 1991). although the zsds has been in use for decades, the factor structure of the zsds remains unestablished (see “measures” for the factor structure used in this study). there have been different findings regarding the factor structure of the zsds. researchers have found two-factor (chida et al., 2004; zung, 1972), three-factor (kitamura et al., 2004; ward et al., 2004; ward & rana-deuba, 1999), and four-factor structures (passik et al., 2000; romera et al., 2008). they have also found cultural variations in the factor structure (e.g., zung, 1972). however, two factors — affective and cognitive — have been fairly consistent in several studies (kitamura et al., 2004). a hypothesis in the present study is that (h1) a two-factor structure of the zsds (chida et al., 2004; zung, 1972) could fit the sample. this hypothesis is based on the results of previous studies, contents of the items, and the preliminary examination of the items (for the preliminary analyses, see warinowski, 2012). the second research question is the following: (q2) what kind of a model can be constructed using three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) that link with ec’s pa in the cultural transitions of expatriation and repatriation? although researchers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 5 have been studying pa for decades, they have neglected the psychological mechanisms that explain the relationship between acculturation and psychological well-being (yoon et al., 2008). we hypothesize that (h2) a model of pa would consist of the child-level variables of age (e.g., warinowski, 2012), school success (e.g., fröjd et al., 2008; mccarty et al., 2008), and attitude toward moving (e.g., warinowski, 2012). our research examines three child-level variables: age, school success, and attitude toward transitions. these three variables are potentially important predictors of pa; warinowski (2012) found that they correlate with pa. however, the fact that few previous studies linked these variables with pa makes it difficult to predict the exact contribution of each one to pa. age: age is linked with other time measures, such as the duration of living abroad. although pa does not follow a special temporal stage model (searle & ward, 1990; ward & kennedy, 1992, 1993a, 1994), some studies have shown that immigrants’ psychological adjustment increases over time. however, this pattern is not clear among adolescents. school success: concerning children’s success in school, research has uncovered the mutual interplay between failure and psychological functioning (mccarty et al., 2008). past studies have also revealed links between psychological adjustment and achievement (costigan et al., 2010). attitude toward transitions: children’s attitudes toward moving abroad and back to their country of origin are part of the affective processes of pa (warinowski, 2012). ec’s attitude toward moving can have some relevance to their pa. in a previous study, one-third of the ec reacted negatively, but the researchers found no correlation between attitude and well-being (nathanson & marcenko, 1995). in addition to its close links with acculturation psychology and cross-cultural psychology, our study included research from other disciplines such as childhood studies and expatriate research to better understand the cultural transitions that ec undergo. indeed, there is a general consensus that multidisciplinary research is important for enhancing acculturation research (bhatia & ram, 2009; chirkov, 2009a; weinreich, 2009). subjects and procedure the target group of our current study was finnish expatriate families, especially their children. although cultural contexts matter, previous acculturation studies have largely ignored the context of the acculturation process (bhatia & ram, 2009; chirkov, 2009a, 2009b; weinreich, 2009). researchers have criticized a “one-size-fits-all” perspective on acculturation and suggested using a more nuanced approach (chirkov, 2009b). both the tck research and the cultural transition research (allik, 2013; yoon et al., 2011) have had an america-centric context, whereas the european perspective has been largely absent. in particular, a pressing need for research on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 6 non-english-speaking mobile children’s issues has been previously identified (cf. murphy, 2003). hence, the present study concentrates on a non-english-speaking, european group of ec. although the finnish context characterizes the ec in the current study, it merely refers to the children’s background as a sampling criterion. we kept in mind two criteria concerning the families of these children: at least one of the child’s parents had to be of finnish descent, and the family had to speak finnish at home. it must be acknowledged that these children do not necessarily share a “finnish” cultural identity (warinowski, 2012). the expatriate families that participated in our study had returned to a large city in finland after a period abroad. the children in these families were attending a school of basic education (grades 1–9, ages 7–16) at the data-gathering stage of the research. our study is thus an ex-postfacto investigation. this research setting was selected for practical reasons; for instance, it had to be possible for us to obtain responses covering different stages of the transition processes. previously, a longitudinal research setting was attempted, but there was a dramatic drop-out rate of parents in the expatriation context. for the present study, we gathered the data using an online questionnaire that the parents completed after repatriation. parents worked as the raters of their children’s pa in transitions. because some of the respondents were young children and the respondents had to reflect on feelings after several years, the children themselves could not be the respondents. in finland, there are no exact statistics about ec. thus, we obtained the parents’ contact information through 399 schools of basic education in eight large finnish cities. the finnish compulsory schooling system consists of 1 year of pre-primary education for 6-year-olds and 9 years of basic education for children aged 7 to 16. most of the schools of basic education are public schools. the cities were chosen because the urban environment is a typical space for locating expatriates (cf. beaverstock, 2002). the response rate of the schools was 78%, and the response rate of the returned questionnaires was 73%. the final sample comprised 324 children and their families. before enrolment in the research, parents gave written consent. ethical principles like anonymizing data were strictly followed in the research process. most of the families in our sample were nuclear families (90%). while living abroad, half of the families (49.5%) lived in europe, and one-fifth lived in north america (22%). a little over half (54.2%) of the families had lived abroad for 1 to 3 years. the number of girls (54.2%) and boys (45.8%) were similar although there was a slight overrepresentation of girls. half (49.2%) of the children who were in school while living abroad had attended a local school. most (83.1%) of the ec were in a school of basic education after repatriation to finland. thus, international schools were not the dominant schools for the finnish ec in our sample. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 7 measures to collect the data, we administered an online questionnaire (webropol1). we examined pa using the zsds (zung, 1972). the zsds uses a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (almost always), where higher scores indicate lower pa. the zsds consists of 20 items dealing with the affective, physiological, and psychological components of pa (ward et al., 2004). other studies have named these three components differently, for example, as affective, physiological, and cognitive (ward & rana-deuba, 1999) or affective, somatic, and cognitive (kitamura et al., 2004). nevertheless, across studies, affective and cognitive symptoms have been fairly consistent (kitamura et al., 2004). as noted earlier, the number of factors extracted in previous investigations varied from two to four. there have been critiques of the “old” adaptation scales, and appeals for shorter versions of these scales (demes & geeraert, 2013). accordingly, the zsds in the present study consisted of 12 items instead of 20 (see table 1). of those items, we chose 11 from the original scale. the selection was based on three rationales. first, we looked at the symptoms mentioned in the previous tck research. second, some items fit well in the finnish cultural context. third, because there were several scales and measures in the questionnaire for parents, the number of items had to be restricted. we added one item (“putting on weight”) to complete the scale with a similar but opposite item (“decreased appetite”). the scale was in finnish. the translation from english to finnish was done using a forward–backward translation method (to finnish then back to english) with two translators (beaton et al., 2000; see also warinowski, 2012). the design of the questionnaire was aimed at gathering data on the ec’s pa in relation to expatriation and repatriation and to age, school success, and attitude toward expatriation and repatriation. the measures for the child-level factors examined age, school success, and attitudes toward moving abroad and back to finland. for age, the age of the child in years (with one decimal when needed) was used. for school success, the traditional finnish evaluation scale linked with school success (from 4, the worst, to 10, excellent) was used; this scale has been used in every finnish school for decades. thus, it was used in the current study because of its familiarity among parents. for questions about attitude toward moving, a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive) was employed. data analyses all statistical analyses involved the use of the ibm statistical package for the social sciences (ibm-spss) version 23.0 and mplus 7.4. the tests for the measures of the ec’s pa comprised two stages. first, to test the hypothesized two-factor structure of the measures for pa, we performed separate confirmatory factor analyses (cfas) for the measures concerning expatriation and 1 webropol services can be found at https://webropol.com/ https://webropol.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 8 repatriation to test the two-factor measurement models in the expatriation and repatriation contexts. second, we constructed a structural equation model (sem) to analyze the associations of the child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) with the factors of pa and their contribution to pa. a sem offers a general and flexible analytical framework for analyzing the hypothesized relationship between the variables, including not only directly observed variables but also latent constructs. some main advantages of a sem are that it can handle the measurement error of the variables, that the models can include multiple dependent variables simultaneously, and that it can handle data with missing values and non-normality effectively (e.g., kline, 2015). according to a wide content analysis of acculturation research, only 6.6% of acculturation studies have used a path analysis or sem as a data analysis method (yoon et al., 2011). thus, the present study broadens the methodological scope of the research on pa in cultural transitions by using a sem (cheung & rensvold, 2000). we evaluated the goodness-of-fit of the estimated confirmatory factor analysis model and sems according to the following criteria: (a) a chi-squared test, (b) the comparative fit index (cfi), (c) the tucker-lewis index (tli, aka nnfi), (d) the root-mean-square error of approximation (rmsea), and (e) the standardized root-mean-square residual (srmr). cfi and tli values above 0.95 indicate a good model fit (e.g., hooper et al., 2008; hu & bentler, 1999; little, 2013). for the rmsea, values below 0.05 indicate a good fit between the hypothesized model and observed data (hu & bentler, 1999; little, 2013). finally, srmr values below 0.08 indicate a relatively good fit (hu & bentler, 1999). we performed comparisons of the nested models using the satorrabentler scaled chi-squared difference test (s-b δ χ2 test) and the difference of the comparative fit index (δcfi). there is evidence for a more restrictive model if the results of the s-b δ χ2 test is nonsignificant or if the value of the δcfi is less than 0.01 (cheung & rensvold, 2002; meade et al., 2008). results the present study investigated ec’s pa in the cultural transitions of expatriation and repatriation to answer the two research questions regarding the conceptual structure and role of three child-level variables. as noted above these questions were: (q1) “what is the factorial structure of the pa of finnish ec?” and (q2) “what kind of a model can be constructed consisting of three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) that link with ec’s pa in the cultural transitions of expatriation and repatriation?” the presentation of the results follows the order of the research questions and hypotheses. factor structure of expatriate children’s psychological adjustment table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of the ec’s pa in relation to q1. concerning the ec’s pa in general, the expatriate parents had a positive view of their children’s pa. as table 1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 9 indicates, some items of the zsds had a rather low mean, while the standard deviation in the present study varied from 0.096 to 0.676. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 10 table 1. means and standard deviations of the zsds items zsds items in this study original zsds items in english zsds i (expatriation) zsds ii (repatriation) m sd m sd zsds1 depressed affect 1.24 .48 1.24 .55 zsds2 crying spells 1.40 .63 1.23 .52 zsds3 sleep disturbances 1.19 .48 1.24 .52 zsds4 decreased appetite 1.12 .39 1.11 .40 zsds5 putting on weight 1.10 .42 1.07 .32 zsds6 pains, e.g., stomach ache, headache 1.30 .60 1.29 .55 zsds7 fatigue 1.38 .58 1.39 .61 zsds8 psychomotor agitation 1.26 .53 1.26 .56 zsds9 hopelessness 1.09 .35 1.08 .33 zsds10 irritability 1.45 .66 1.47 .68 zsds11 isolation 1.17 .46 1.14 .43 zsds12 panic attacks 1.01 .10 1.01 .12 note: scale range 1 (never) to 4 (almost always); n = 321–325 table 2 shows the correlations of the zsds items in general. there are many significant correlations between the items, especially in the repatriation context. these correlations would allow for testing a possible factor structure of pa at two time points (expatriation and repatriation). for example, depressed affect (zsds1) and isolation (zsds11) have significant correlations with several other items. items such as panic attacks (zsds12), which have low correlations with all other items, may be difficult to fit into the factor solution (low factor loadings). moreover, an item such as irritability (zsds10), which correlates with all other items, could also be problematic in the factor analysis because this item may have equally high loadings in several factors (equal size cross-loadings). table 2. correlations between the zsds items zsds1 zsds2 zsds3 zsds4 zsds5 zsds6 zsds7 zsds8 zsds9 zsds10 zsds11 zsds12 zsds1 .55 .38 .32 .15 .44 .44 .31 .59 .55 .56 .01 zsds2 .35 .38 .27 .09 .30 .37 .42 .29 .51 .29 -.03 zsds3 .21 .41 .43 .14 .33 .48 .31 .24 .40 .15 -.03 zsds4 .23 .31 .40 -.06 .34 .42 .23 .26 .31 .22 .04 zsds5 .28 .07 .15 .04 .14 .25 .18 .21 .21 .08 -.02 zsds6 .20 .29 .23 .38 .24 .47 .22 .33 .36 .22 -.04 zsds7 .36 .27 .27 .34 .29 .44 .42 .33 .53 .27 .08 zsds8 .20 .39 .39 .30 .13 .20 .37 .22 .47 .14 -.03 zsds9 .48 .27 .15 .17 .19 .12 .26 .20 .38 .44 -.02 zsds10 .48 .48 .29 .39 .16 .33 .48 .52 .43 .50 .10 zsds11 .47 .21 .16 .32 .18 .26 .32 .21 .42 .47 .09 zsds12 .09 .15 .09 .05 -.02 .17 -.06 .07 .16 .24 .04 note: correlations for expatriation are shown in the lower part; repatriation is shown in the upper part [italics]. with n = 325, p < .05 if |r| > .11, p < .01 if |r| > .15, p < .001 if |r| > .19. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 11 we fitted a two-factor structure of pa to the data in both transitions. the hypothesized structure was based on the contents of the items, results of previous studies, and the preliminary examination of the items using an exploratory factor analysis (for preliminary analyses, see warinowski, 2012). the first hypothetical factor is the physiological factor consisting of zsds items number 2 (crying spells), 3 (sleep disturbances), 4 (decreased appetite), 6 (pains), 7 (fatigue) and 8 (psychomotor agitation) in both the expatriation and repatriation contexts. the second factor is the affective factor, consisting of items number 1 (depressed affect), 9 (hopelessness), and 11 (isolation) in both contexts. we estimated the cfa models separately for each time point and evaluated the fit of the models. there was support for the two-factor cfa model at both time points: the goodness-of-fit of the model was acceptable in both the expatriation context, χ²(26, n = 325) = 45.25, cfi = 0.94, tli = 0.92, rmsea = 0.049; and the repatriation context, χ²(26, n = 323) = 31.94, cfi = 0.98, tli = 0.97, rmsea = 0.045. the cronbach’s alphas for the factors in expatriation (zsds i) were 0.74 for physiological problems and 0.71 for affective problems. in repatriation (zsds ii), they were 0.77 (physiological) and 0.76 (affective). table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of those two factors computed as the sum score variables based on the cfa model at both time points. table 3. descriptive statistics of the zsds factors (1 = expatriation, 2 = repatriation) factors n minimum maximum m sd physiological 1 322 1.00 3.17 1.27 0.36 physiological 2 317 1.00 3.17 1.25 0.36 affective 1 325 1.00 3.00 1.17 0.34 affective 2 320 1.00 3.67 1.15 0.37 considering that the zsds questionnaire was intended to be used within the whole population, it was important to ensure that the measurement properties functioned similarly in the different subgroups of ec. thus, we tested the model in two sets of subgroups, organized by gender into female (n = 175) and male (n = 149) ec, and by time into expatriation (n = 325) and repatriation (n = 323) subgroups. we examined the measurement invariance using multigroup and longitudinal cfa models with configural (m1), metric (m2), and scalar invariance (m3; e.g., van de schoot et al., 2015). for the gender subgroups, there was support for the model with strong measurement invariance (configural, metric, and scalar invariance: equal form, equal loadings, and equal intercepts) at both measurement points (table 4). between the measurement points, the model did not yield full scalar invariance. however, there was partial scalar invariance (m4) when the inequality of the intercepts was allowed for one item: zsds2 (crying spells). in other words, there was a time dependence for this one item. however, because five more items relating to physiological factors passed the scalar invariance test, the results support the invariance of the model (e.g., little, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 12 table 4. zsds: measurement invariance χ2 df cfi tli rmsea s-b δ χ2-test δcfi measurement invariance between gender, expatriation m1: configural invariance 75.87 52 .926 .898 .053 m2: metric invariance 72.95 59 .957 .948 .038 1.00 (7); p = .995 .000 m3: scalar invariance 81.92 66 .951 .946 .039 9.20 (7); p = .951 .006 measurement invariance between gender, repatriation m1: configural invariance 65.26 52 .965 .952 .040 m2: metric invariance 70.03 59 .971 .964 .034 5.66 (7); p = .580 .000 m3: scalar invariance 77.12 66 .971 .968 .032 5.59 (7); p = .589 .000 measurement invariance in time m1: configural invariance 167.11 120 .955 .942 .035 m2: metric invariance 175.80 127 .953 .943 .034 9.03 (7); p = .250 .002 m3: scalar invariance 200.15 136 .938 .930 .061 32.90 (9); p < .001 .015 m4: partial scalar invariance 183.67 135 .953 .947 .033 5.45 (8); p = .709 .000 model of three child-level variables in expatriate children’s psychological adjustment next, we used sem to examine the associations between the three child-level variables — age, school success, and attitude toward moving — and the factors of pa, as well as their role in predicting pa. the main descriptive statistics of these three variables are as follows: on average, the ec were 4.8 years old (sd 3.24, min 0, max 14) in the expatriation context and 8.2 years old (sd 2.30, min 6, max 15) in the repatriation context. according to their parents’ assessments, the ec’s success at school was mainly (62.7%) “good” or “praiseworthy” while living abroad (m 8.82, sd 0.97, min 5, max 10, on a 7-point scale from 4 to 10). according to their parents, the ec’s attitude toward moving was also quite positive for all measuring points (m 3.84–4.25, sd 0.94– 1.19; min 1, max 5, on a 5-point scale from 1 [very negative] to 5 [very positive]). figure 1 shows the sem of the ec’s pa. the goodness-of-fit of the model was acceptable, χ²(df = 217, n = 241) = 306.52, cfi = 0.92, tli = 0.91, rmsea = 0.04, srmr = 0.07. as figure 1 shows, all the regression paths were significant save for two. in the expatriation context, figure 1 shows that ec’s attitudes toward moving were linked with both the physiological and affective factors of pa. moreover, ec’s age before moving abroad was connected with the affective factor of pa: older children had more affective problems living abroad. success in school (schsucc in figure 1) while living abroad was also linked with the affective factor. figure 1. the sem of the ec’s pa international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 13 note: the sem of the three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) of ec’s pa (physiological and affective factors; * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001) in the cross-cultural transitions of expatriation and repatriation (0 = in finland/before expatriation, 1 = living abroad/after expatriation, 2 = in finland/after repatriation). in the repatriation context, ec’s attitudes were connected with both the physiological and affective factors of pa. age before repatriation was linked with both factors as well. the paths from success in school while abroad to the pa factors after repatriation (aff2 and phys2) were left out from the final model as the path coefficients were nonsignificant and the likelihood ratio test supported the model without these connections, χ²(df = 2, n = 241) = .95, p = .621. the longitudinal paths of the pa factors were significant between the same factors; that is, the autoregressive paths from aff1 to aff2 and from phys1 to phys2. the cross-lagged paths between the pa factors (longitudinal paths from aff1 to phys2, and from phys1 to aff2) were not significant, and they were omitted from the final model (the coefficients were nonsignificant and the likelihood ratio test supported the model without these connections, χ²(df = 2, n = 241) = 2.08, p = .354. this means that the physiological state at repatriation was predicted by the physiological state while abroad but did not have a longitudinal association with the affective factor. correspondingly, the affective state while abroad predicted the affective state after moving back. the estimates of the standardized autoregression coefficients, b = .65 and b = .56 for physiological and affective factors respectively, indicated that the measured phenomena are quite stable over time: for example, children who had more physiological problems while abroad were likely to have them after repatriation too. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 14 discussion and conclusion the focus of the current study was on examining ec’s pa in dual cultural transitions involving both expatriation and repatriation. the study aimed at transcending the two limitations of previous studies on cultural transitions that focused on a single transition, or only on adults. the study has two main results. first, a two-factor structure of pa comprising physiological and affective factors was extracted. second, a model of pa with three child-level variables (age, school success, and attitude toward moving) was constructed. the study highlights the relevance of the factor-structural examination of pa of finnish ec by showing that a two-factor structure of the zsds fit the data pertaining to ec (chida et al., 2004; zung, 1972). this two-factor cfa model received support in both the expatriation (zsds i) and repatriation (zsds ii) contexts. additionally, our findings indicate that pa has similarities in the factor structure, regardless of the participants’ backgrounds. however, the two-factor structure in the current research for finnish ec is different from that in previous studies, where common cognitive and affective factors have been found (e.g., kitamura et al., 2004). the current research did not highlight common cognitive variables. in addition, physiological (also called “somatic” in previous studies) symptoms were found to be quite significant in our study. this was partly a matter of conceptual grouping; for example, in kitamura et al.’s (2004) study, there were symptoms of fatigue in the affective factor, while in the current research, they belonged to the physiological factor. the present study broadens conceptual knowledge of pa by making visible both physiological and affective factors; we believe that these broad dimensions require further refinement. as well, the measurement model of pa showed a good model fit and full configural and metric invariance in the investigated sample of ec. concerning the second research question, the main finding of the present study was that child-level variables could apply to a model of pa for ec. the model indicates that for younger ec, positive attitudes toward moving and good success in school ease their pa. the ec’s attitude toward moving emerged as a major variable in our model. in addition, we showed that pa appears to be an active process, where, as per the quantitative data, the child has an agentic role. this shows that children don’t just passively “adjust”: ec’s attitudes play a part in the adjustment process. these findings have practical importance for clinicians and health care practitioners for both prevention and treatment activities. typically, childhood study perspectives with an agentic view on children have employed qualitative methods (e.g., clark et al., 2014). now, through the use of quantitative methods, we have shown that it is also possible to consider children’s agency. methodologically, this broadens the scope of the research on pa in cultural transitions using sem analyses. we believe that the main strength of our study is that it will expand the focus of pa research. from a broad cultural perspective, the current study has special theoretical and practical relevance from two viewpoints. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 15 first, the study compared two transitional processes. previous research has mainly focused on only one transition of adult migrants, namely expatriation. in examining the dual processes of expatriation and repatriation of ec, our study provides further knowledge about two cultural transitions. summarizing the findings from this dual viewpoint, the factor structure was identical for both processes (q1). the study also showed that the factors had similar means between the two time points (table 4). in addition, both the physiological and affective factors were permanent in both contexts in the pa model (q2). this suggests that expatriation and repatriation may have some similarities where pa is concerned. but we also draw attention to our finding that ec’s attitudes are especially important in the repatriation process and therefore suggest that the repatriation process merits more attention. the second strength of this study is that it helps us to put the children of expatriate families in the spotlight. we highlight here that children’s attitudes are involved in the pa process that they experience. children are not just “luggage” that adults take with them when they move abroad and when they return to their country of origin (selmer & lam, 2004). we also believe that given the strength and generalizability of our findings, further investigations into children’s experiences of expatriation and repatriation should employ both qualitative and quantitative methods. moreover, emotional and other kinds of support should be offered to children in the expatriation context, and even more so in the repatriation context. parents should pay attention to their children’s feelings in the contexts of expatriation and repatriation, listen to them, give emotional support, and make time for being together. limitations we also acknowledge that our study has some notable limitations. first, the research was an ex-post-facto study, which can affect the findings because of the difficulty of remembering details after several years have passed. unfortunately, this limitation could not be avoided because a longitudinal research setting was not an option (see the “subjects and procedure” section). second, the parents evaluated their children’s pa, whereas researchers have typically used the zsds as a self-rating scale (see the “subjects and procedure” section for the rationale behind the decision to have parents as respondents). parents’ view of their children’s pa in general was that there were only a few pa problems on a large scale. in what we report here, parents’ views of their children differed from the interview data gathered from children in an earlier part of this project in that the parents’ quantitative assessments were more positive than their children’s qualitatively expressed views (warinowski, 2012). it would therefore be important to get data from older children by using the zsds to know whether this difference is a matter of measuring differently or indicates real differences between parents’ views of their children and the children’s views of themselves. third, the present study concentrated on only one european group of ec: finnish ec. it is hard to know how context-specific these results are, or in other words how important the cultural finnish context of the children is. it may be helpful to consider only finnish ec, european ec, or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 16 ec in general. as non-english speakers, finnish children differ, at least with respect to their language situation, from english-speaking american or british ec with schools and expatriate communities where their own language is used. we therefore believe that more studies concentrating on non-english and european ec’s pa are needed. the results and limitations of the present study lead us to suggestions for further studies on ec’s pa: dual transition processes merit further examination in pa studies. furthermore, future studies should include qualitative approaches to uncover the experiences of the ec themselves (warinowski, 2012). additionally, contextual approaches, such as family-level studies, warrant more thorough investigations (warinowski, 2012). to examine adjustment and adaptation processes, future studies should employ more process-oriented methods when studying pa in cultural transitions. finally, we believe there is a need for further studies involving cultural comparisons of ec’s pa in different cultural contexts. overall, the results of the present study contribute to the understanding of pa in general and ec’s pa in particular. in the era of increasing global mobility, ec are not the only children or individuals undergoing multiple transitional processes that involve pa. the unique contribution of the current study is that it produced knowledge about ec’s pa in novel contexts of dual cultural transitions. in an increasingly globalized world, the findings concerning pa processes in the present study are significant in clinical and other support contexts where professionals are working for the mental well-being of children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(1): 1–22 17 references allik, j. 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(1972). a cross-cultural survey of depressive symptomatology in normal adults. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 3(2), 177–183. doi:10.1177/002202217200300206 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2008.12.006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002202217200300206 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 7–28 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019936 an evaluation methodology for measuring the longterm impact of family strengthening and alternative child care services: the case of sos children’s villages rosalind willi, douglas reed, and germain houedenou abstract: until recently, sos children’s villages international, like many organisations in the social sector, lacked a rigorous and systematic approach to gauging the long-term impact of their services. with this in mind, sos children’s villages international developed a social impact evaluation methodology in 2014 to measure the long-term effects of its services on children and their families and communities, as well as the social return on investment. this evaluation methodology has been tested and applied to similar service types across 15 low-, middle-, and high-income countries worldwide. the findings are regularly consolidated, in order to derive trends and learnings for the global organisation and to inform strategy and policy. the present article will discuss the evaluation methodology and the related limitations. conclusions regarding the validity of the methodology will be offered in terms of the measurement of social service impact and the way forward. keywords: social impact, evaluation, social services, alternative care, family strengthening rosalind willi (corresponding author) is a phd candidate and a research and learning advisor at sos children’s villages international, c/o international office, brigittenauer lände 50, 1200 vienna, austria. email: rosalind.willi@sos-kd.org douglas reed msc is head of research and learning at sos children’s villages international, c/o international office, hermann gmeiner strasse 51, 6020 innsbruck, austria. email: douglas.reed@sos-kd.org germain houedenou is a phd candidate and a research and learning advisor at sos children’s villages international, c/o international office region, po box 25445, dakar, senegal. email: germain.houedenou@sos-kd.org mailto:rosalind.willi@sos-kd.org mailto:douglas.reed@sos-kd.org mailto:germain.houedenou@sos-kd.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 8 trying to measure the hard-to-measure evaluating effectiveness [of social services] sits uncomfortably between … [the] imperative for measurement and efficiency within a market economy and agencies’ own need to reflect on their practice and respond to the views of their service users. (cree et al., 2019, p. 599) there is an increasing need for social service providers and non-governmental organisations to measure and report on the results of the services they are providing, and furnish proof of efficiency gains and of whether they have ultimately had a positive impact on the lives of their intended beneficiaries. public and private donors and “duty-bearers” (state and other actors with responsibility for human rights) have called in recent years for more rigorous use of evidence to prove results, as well as to inform decision-making and future investments in children and families in social services and development cooperation. this is also closely related to an increasing professionalisation of social services, using performance-based logistics, in a number of european welfare states (e.g., albus & ritter, 2018; rogowski, 2011). at the same time, non-governmental organisations and service providers themselves, who in their very missions aim for a positive impact in the lives of the people they serve, strive to learn and improve through evidence measurement. social services, and interventions involving social development more broadly, are not easy to measure, however, and it is no simple feat to gauge their impact. in the development cooperation field, results measurement and evaluation have become standard practice, partly as a result of public administration reforms aimed at greater transparency regarding public spending (e.g., in the late 1980s and 1990s). the millennium development goals were a pinnacle in this regard, and instigated a widespread shift from monitoring inputs to measuring quantifiable results (organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd), 2014). when it comes to social work practice, it is widely accepted that evaluation is integral (e.g., shaw & lishman, 1999). nonetheless, ever since its origins as a profession in europe, social work has been shaped by discussions related to the measurement of effectiveness and results, and that remains so today. over the course of the 20th century, these debates were informed by studies that generally showed little positive effect from social work and lacked consensus regarding appropriate measurement models. as the 21st century approached, evidence-based practice grounded in research and evaluation became more strongly embedded in social services. however, there is still no consensus concerning terms such as “evidence”, “effectiveness”, and “research”, and thus little agreement as to what should actually be measured and how measurements should be made. social work professionals have concerns over being required to employ measurement criteria imposed on them by researchers, and the evaluation of their work being subject to political influences as well as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 9 management control (davies, 1974; shaw & lishman, 1999). there is now greater acknowledgement of the fact that, with many definitions, approaches, and measurement methods to choose from, the measurement of effectiveness in social work requires a nuanced and critical view (moriarty & manthorpe, 2016; shaw & lishman, 1999). when it comes to studies of the measurement of effectiveness and results, much of the research related to evidence-based social services is from western europe and north america. this is partly due to the fact that the social work profession in many parts of the world is still relatively young. for instance, as reported in spitzer (2017), as of 2017 in the eastern african community region there were only 44 bachelor and master’s programmes in social work and no phd programme; burundi, the last country in that region to establish social work training, did not take that step until 2004. social work practice in the region still relies heavily on theory and models imported from the west, and there is little evidence regarding the effectiveness and results of services in different sociocultural contexts (spitzer, 2017). such evidence is lacking for the two social services that are the focus of this article: family strengthening and alternative child care. regarding the latter, there is a stark lack of data on the numbers and circumstances of children in the various forms of alternative care around the world, and especially in lowand middle-income countries (better care network & unicef, 2009; desmond et al., 2020; martin & zulaika, 2016; nowak, 2019; petrowski et al., 2017). because sector-wide consensus definitions of the different care settings (e.g., residential care, institutional care, foster care, small group homes) are lacking (cantwell et al., 2012), terms are often used interchangeably and inconsistently. this not only makes counting children across different care settings difficult (desmond et al. 2020), but also means that research on different care settings and their suitability is not comparable (gale, 2019). the evidence is also patchy when it comes to measuring outcomes of children who grew up in different care settings, due not only to differences in national contexts, policies, and amount of support when leaving care, but also to the wide array of research methodologies deployed, not all of which are sufficiently rigorous. in addition, many studies lack a holistic view of the child, and do not take into account contextual circumstances and previous care placements (gale, 2019). “the consistent call for additional and improved research is a further indication of the lack of definitive knowledge regarding the comparable quality and effectiveness of alternative care settings” (gale, 2019, p. 4). the picture is also bleak when it comes to research on family strengthening. also termed “family support” interventions, family strengthening services are generally understood as a set of public services aimed at improving the social and psychological well-being of families by promoting positive and healthy child development in a nurturing family environment. families at risk are empowered to help themselves and their children through multidimensional services 1 (daly et al., 2015; dunst, 1995). over the past two decades, family support services have found their place in the child welfare policies and practices of many states, and different models of 1 family support services oriented towards economic support, such as cash transfers, are not considered here. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 10 family-related services have developed globally. significant gaps remain, however, and policies to accelerate care reform through the deinstitutionalisation of large-scale residential care institutions have not always focused sufficiently on the simultaneous development of familyand community-based support (chaitkin et al., 2017). this goes hand in hand with the need for more evidence on a global perspective of family support, how it can be contextualised adequately, and what works best for families and children on the ground; this can be achieved by including their voices and opinions in the discourse (canavan et al., 2016; daly et al., 2015). while there is a substantial body of evidence confirming the positive effects of broadly standardised parenting programmes in developing countries and in some lowand middle-income countries (see knerr et al., 2013 and rebello britto et al., 2015 for some notable examples), there are still considerable gaps in evidence on family support interventions in lowand middle-income countries and their effects on various levels of society. in particular, there are shortcomings with respect to the conditions that are necessary for the sustainability of outcomes and services (daly et al. 2015). against this backdrop, for an international organisation that provides social services and works in development cooperation, offering evidence-based and quality services for children can be challenging. by using the case example of sos children’s villages international (sos), this article aims to provide an insight into a measurement approach designed to gauge the impact of social services and related challenges. readers should bear in mind that the authors are themselves co-workers with sos. some background: sos children’s villages sos is a non-governmental organisation operating in almost 600 locations in 136 countries and territories across the americas, africa, asia and oceania, and europe. the organisation provides the aforementioned social services, family strengthening and alternative care, to children who have lost parental care or are at risk of losing it (sos children’s villages international, 2019), and works across a range of alternative care options, such as family-like care, foster care, small group homes, and short-term crisis care. currently, approximately 70,000 children are reached through these services worldwide. the most widespread care form is “family-like care”2, which was established in post-world war ii central europe as an alternative to the large-scale orphanages that were predominant at the time. with the growth of sos in ensuing years, this care form was established in many countries across the globe (honold & zeindl, 2012). the children, who are often siblings, stay in small groups that resemble a family with a stable main caregiver. these smaller family groups are 2the term “family-like care” is contested. as most commonly defined, the term refers to children living “in largely autonomous small groups under conditions that resemble a family environment as much as possible. one or more surrogate parents serve as caregivers, although not in those persons’ normal home environment.” (cantwell et al. 2012). the way that family-like care is positioned along the continuum of child care is also ambiguous in practice; this varies according to the local legislation. depending on the country context, family-like care can be positioned as a distinct care form, as residential care, or as institutional care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 11 embedded in a psychosocial support structure, composed of a multiprofessional team and peersupport network. as opposed to foster care, sos provides accommodation for a number of family groups, either clustered together or scattered throughout a town or city. family strengthening services for families at risk of separation have gained traction in sos since the late 1970s as a complementary service to alternative care. in essence, the aim is to prevent child–family separation from the outset, and avoid placement in alternative care where possible. family strengthening services have grown considerably, now reaching almost 500,000 children and their families across 112 countries (sos children’s villages international, 2019). the primary objective — preventing child–family separation — is achieved through strengthening and improving parenting skills, child–parent and family relationships, and community-based support mechanisms. while this objective remains similar across all contexts, local adaptations of the services vary, depending on local resources, available partners, the social protection system, donor interests, and sociocultural realities. in this regard, some interventions are carried out by professional social workers and staff, but there are also community-based organisations with volunteer staff who carry out and coordinate formal and informal support services. the latter may include home visits; psychosocial, nutrition, and health services; capacity building; and peer support groups. in sos, initiatives to track the impacts of social services in the area of alternative care had already started several decades ago, most notably in a large-scale research project called “tracking footprints” (lill-rastern & babic, 2010), which was carried out in more than 50 countries during 2002 to 2009. young people with care experience from sos services were interviewed through standardised questionnaires on their current life status and their experiences in care. additionally, individual research projects and evaluations on former programme participants have taken place in and across specific countries and regions. however, until recently, there was no common approach to, or methodology for, measuring the long-term effects and impacts of services on beneficiaries and the wider community, as well as the social return on investment, in a way that allowed comparison across a variety of locations. in addition, a culture of results measurement is still relatively new in the organisation. this has led sos to develop a comprehensive long-term social impact measurement approach for the two main services of family strengthening and alternative care, and to apply the approach in various locations across 15 low-, middle-, and highincome countries3. 3 benin, bolivia, bosnia and herzegovina, côte d’ivoire, eswatini, ethiopia, italy, mozambique, nepal, palestine, peru, senegal, sri lanka, togo, tanzania. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 12 finding ways to measure the social impact of child care services i have never been asked about my life experiences in so much detail before. in a way, i am feeling very rejuvenated to be part of this social impact assessment and sharing my life experiences. i will eagerly look forward to understand about findings and conclusions of the assessment. (young adult who grew up in alternative care, nepal) the internal aim behind the development of a specialised impact measurement approach within sos was to use such evaluations formatively, in order to inform service improvement for future service users and also give them the opportunity in the long term to voice their perspectives and concerns. on a higher level, the consolidation of findings across various locations enables the identification of trends and areas for learning and improvement. this type of information is very valuable for informing strategy, policy, and management decision-making, as well as further research. this section will detail the key terms, definitions, and principles used in this approach, and outline the key pillars of the methodology. challenges and limitations related to the methodology and implementation will also be explored. here, the term “impact” refers to the long-term effect of an intervention on people’s lives. this is reflected in various definitions of impact, such as, “positive and negative, primary and secondary long term effects produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended” (oecd, 2013). impact is commonly defined as part of — or synonymous with — a results chain: from inputs and activities to outputs, to outcomes, to impact. as such, it is expected that the various outcomes will result in certain long-term effects on the beneficiaries of (or participants in) the intervention, and on broader society as well. the impact evaluation essentially also tests the validity of the theory of change of an intervention. while assessing impact by collecting evidence about the contribution of an intervention to observed changes, strategies must be found to determine causal attribution and eliminate the “attribution gap” (i.e., the extent to which results are due to factors other than the activities of the organisation itself, such as collective action or other external forces) as far as possible. in this sense, impact assessment can be regarded as the most challenging part of intervention evaluation, but is crucial in order to determine what remains and what follows after a participant is no longer receiving the service. there are multiple ways of measuring “social impact” with a variety of degrees of rigour, ranging from randomised control trials and quasi-experimental designs, to non-experimental designs (e.g., rogers, 2014). the initial methodology designed by sos was based on an experimental design with the use of a control group. however, during the pilot assessments in eswatini and ethiopia it became apparent that it was practically impossible, especially for the alternative care service, to locate a sufficient number of individuals who may have needed alternative care when they were younger and who had a minimum set of shared characteristics. in addition, it was not possible to secure a sufficient number of care leavers of other service providers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 13 where the setting was sufficiently comparable and the sampling could be done credibly. the current methodology can therefore be classified as a non-experimental mixed-methods design. social impact at sos children’s villages (2018) is evaluated in terms of: a. impact on the lives of individuals: the long-term effects of the intervention4 on former participants, whether these individuals are still dependent children (under the care of a primary caregiver responsible for supporting and guiding their development) or already independent adults (responsible for taking care of their own development needs, and above the legal age of adulthood); b. impact in communities: the long-term effects of the intervention in the communities with which the services have been interacting and working; c. social return on investment (financial): a forecast of the social return that can be expected, measured in monetary terms, for the amount spent in the programme. the assessment methodology also covers the following areas, which go beyond impact.  evaluation of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, and sustainability: complementary to the results of a, b, and c above, the effects of the intervention are compared with predictions of the theory of change, as outlined in the programme plan or log frame (oecd & dac network on development evaluation, 2019).  analysis of the contribution to selected sustainable development goals  additional topics, per local need while the methodology of evaluating a to c has been defined in considerable detail, it remains subject to continuous improvement. with this in mind, external researchers conducting the assessments were asked to put forward any recommendations for the further improvement of the methodology. the approach is modular; therefore, depending on the focus area, particular elements can be conducted separately or in combination. however, the module on the social return on investment cannot be performed as a standalone element, since it relies on the collection of primary data through a and b. five main principles guide the methodological approach. the approach must be:  fair: compliance with ethical standards related to research with children (graham et al., 2013) is required, as well as adherence to internal policies and procedures related to child safeguarding and the code of conduct; 4the term intervention is used here to mean a single service in a given location, be it family strengthening or alternative child care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 14  useful: the learning needs of service participants, community, and staff are the highest priority; balance is required between local adaptation and international comparability for global learning;  participatory: the voices of former participants and local staff must be considered throughout, from design to implementation of the findings. this is accomplished through kick-off workshops with local teams to adapt questionnaires and indicators to the local context, and through results validation and learning workshops with former participants and staff; evaluation tools are tailored to the ages of child respondents;  systematic: reliability, quality, accuracy, and validity of assessments is key; there is close monitoring of assessments by regional and international offices of the organisation;  independent and impartial: external researchers are selected following a national and international tender process, and are responsible for the final report. the assessment process usually lasts from 5 to 8 months. it includes the following key steps: 1. locations for the assessments are determined based on an evaluability assessment; 2. recruitment of researchers together with local staff (could be local or international research institutions); 3. local participatory workshops to adapt the indicators and related scales, and the assessment tools, to the local context and respondent groups; 4. field phase including individual interviews, focus group discussions, and further participatory methodologies as proposed by the researchers; 5. participatory results workshops to validate, discuss, and take forward the findings; 6. regular follow-up on the implementation of the evaluation results. the next section will focus on methodological components a to c, as these form the heart of the social impact assessment methodology. a: impact in the lives of individuals the social impact assessment approach measures the long-term well-being of children and families who benefitted from the services of sos in the past. the majority of former participants from family strengthening tend to be dependent children and the majority from alternative care tend to be independent adults (care leavers), although there are cases where this pattern does not apply, such as in family reunifications. for manageability purposes, there are slightly different sampling approaches for the two services types. for family strengthening, which has a relatively large number of participants, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 15 expected number of former participants who have left services 1 to 5 years previously should be sufficiently high that a representative sample can be drawn. although the sampling should be based on a random selection, it needs to reflect representativeness of the entire group of former participants, at least in terms of age (children below the age of 8 are usually not interviewed), gender, type of family, and reason for exiting the service. this means that the sample should include both those who have left “successfully” and those who did not, and the balance of reasons for “exit” should, as far as possible, be representative of the intervention reality. the only usual precondition for all selected former participants is that they have participated in the programme for at least 2 years, in order to be able to attribute impact. for participants who exited alternative care, a census is taken of all former participants who exited from the programme within the last 2 to 6 years, with the precondition that they had participated in the programme for at least 2 years. the number in a given location is usually manageable in this regard; that is, the numbers usually range between 30 and 50 former participants that meet the criteria. although family strengthening and alternative care are distinct services with different target groups, the social impact assessment methodology measures the impact of the services across eight common dimensions of well-being: care, food security, accommodation, health, education and skills, livelihood, social protection and inclusion, and social and emotional well-being. sos aims to have a positive impact in all these areas of well-being: individualised service, building on case management, aims to provide or coordinate services where needed across all areas of life, and across both the family strengthening and alternative care approaches. a key underlying assumption of the methodology is that children who grow up in inadequate care situations, including lowquality alternative care, will generally not do well across these eight dimensions of well-being, a belief supported by studies from around the world (see, e.g., bicego et al., 2003; cluver et al., 2008; kang et al., 2014; lionetti et al., 2015; skinner et al., 2013; and whetten et al., 2011, for some notable examples). the eight dimensions of well-being and associated indicators (see table 1) are largely based on dimensions, indicators, and rating scales used in the existing sos monitoring and evaluation systems and the child status index (csi; o’donnell et al., 2014). the csi is a tool developed for service providers to assess the well-being of children systematically, in particular to: assess the vulnerabilities and needs of children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by hiv/aids. the child status index, intended for use by governments, programs, or projects providing support to vulnerable children and their families, provides a framework for assessing child well-being and creating outcome-directed service plans for individual children and the households in which they live. (o’donnell et al., 2014, p. 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 16 the csi gauges childand household-specific information, and can be used for service planning as well as evaluation. the csi’s indicator matrix was adapted and incorporated into the sos internal monitoring database, which is a case management tool for social workers in the various service types. in this way, the organisation can not only track progress of children and families over time in an intervention, but can use the same assessment dimensions in the impact evaluations. as sufficient data is captured in the central monitoring system, a “counterfactual analysis” (i.e., comparing actual results from an intervention with those expected had the intervention not occurred) can also be done during the social impact assessments. as well as the dimensions of well-being in the csi, other indicators were incorporated into the social impact assessment framework. these were based on the existing sos internal monitoring and evaluation system and on knowledge requirements; they include indicators related to selfesteem, happiness, employability skills, social support networks, and fulfilment of parental obligations (if the care leaver is already a parent). in addition, the questionnaires cover the relationship to the family of origin, as well as to the former alternative caregiver. these additional indicators were based on assessment areas in commonly used assessment scales. for instance, the indicator of self-esteem was composed based on the rosenberg self-esteem scale (rosenberg, 1965); the indicator of happiness was largely inspired by the oxford happiness questionnaire (hills & argyle, 2002) and by the children’s happiness scale, which applies to children in care, receiving social care support, and living away from home in boarding or other residential schools or colleges (morgan, 2014). in fact, during the pilot assessments the rosenberg self-esteem and oxford happiness scales were used as supplementary questionnaires. however, their use was considered too resource intensive to include as standard instruments in every assessment. former participants are interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires that include open and closed questions. researchers assess their status on a rating scale of predefined indicators ranging from 1 to 4. participants with a rating of 1 and 2 are considered to be “doing well”, whereas those scoring a 3 or a 4 are “not doing well”. the complete data set of a dependent child includes both questions addressed to the former participant (e.g., education and health), and questions addressed to the caregiver (e.g., livelihood). for an independent adult, all questions are addressed to the former participant. emerging and unexpected topics are captured by the researchers and further explored through participatory focus group discussions and results validation workshops with the former participants and staff. this enables a qualitative component of the methodology, permitting the analysis of open-ended answers and triangulation with the quantitative results according to the indicators. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 17 table 1. overview of dimensions and indicators measuring impact in the lives of individuals dimension of well-being description indicators care strong, stable, reliable relationships that provide emotional support active involvement of caregiver in the life of the child, protecting and nurturing the child, and fulfilling all parental obligations family relationships and support networks parental obligations health in good health health food security sufficient number of meals a day as per local standards does not go to bed hungry food security accommodation adequate and stable shelter as per local standards stability living conditions education and skills regular school attendance and performance as per individual strengths and abilities post-secondary, tertiary, or vocational education, and sufficient employability skills educational attainment (independent adults) preparation for employment (independent adults) performance (dependent children) attendance (dependent children) livelihood (economic security) sufficient funds to cover survival and development rights employment status income, livelihood protection and social inclusion safe from abuse, exploitation, and discrimination abuse and exploitation discrimination legal identity social and emotional well-being positive outlook on life happy happiness social behaviour self-esteem note. see willi et al., 2017a for guiding questions related to the dimensions and indicators. the assessment results are also meant to be benchmarked against comparable national and regional statistics wherever possible. generally, comparative data is more readily available for the following indicators: young people neither in education, training, nor employment (neet); educational attendance; educational attainment; income; and employment status. while national averages are a good starting point, given the backgrounds of children who came from disadvantaged families or who grew up in alternative care, regional averages or certain lower quintiles (of, e.g., the income distribution) may be more appropriate reference points depending on the indicator. the contracted researchers are asked to check to what extent and for what development areas reliable data might be available. it is recommended that the check on reliability be done with local experts (either from the programme or community stakeholders), or with national labour or other statistics experts. in essence, this means a “virtual” comparison group is constructed by comparing participant outcomes with comparable groups in the population. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 18 prior to each evaluation, researchers are required to analyse the pool of services received by the former participants; if participants were not supported in certain areas (i.e.,, accommodation), impact cannot be attributed in those areas. moreover, the organisation works in partnership with local stakeholders; therefore, the impact can never be attributed to the organisation alone (this is known as the “attribution gap”). efforts have been taken to minimise this uncertainty by, for instance, taking the role of partners into consideration when calculating monetary impact and by involving them in the assessment (see sos children’s villages international, 2019; willi et al., 2017a). b: impact in communities the roles of sociocultural contextual factors and systems, such as communities with services and supports for families and children, and cultural contexts that provide positive standards, customs, norms, relationships, and supports, are crucial in the promotion of resilience (e.g., masten, 2014) and thus are important to consider when measuring the social impact of a social service. therefore, sos decided to go beyond assessing its impact in the lives of individuals to assess the effects of its work in communities, since it aims at building up — strengthening — a stable network of stakeholders to ensure sustainability and adequate mechanisms to support children who are either without parental care or at risk of losing it. consequently, a second key component of the social impact evaluation methodology is the assessment of key dimensions related to community awareness, social support mechanisms, and questions around the sustainability of services, as highlighted in table 2. table 2. dimensions and indicators measuring the impact of sos in communities dimension description indicators community awareness key stakeholders in the community are aware of the situation of children without parental care or at risk of losing it, and have a clear view on how their situation may be improved. community awareness community-based support systems individual and collective actions are taken to address the situation of children without parental care or at risk of losing it; network of relevant stakeholders is in place, which actively addresses the situation of children without parental care or at risk of losing it; a formal system for child safeguarding (protection) is functioning in the community. civic engagement community networks child safeguarding mechanisms progress towards sustainability key implementation partners are able to run interventions without direct involvement of sos and are able to secure sufficient resources to do so; key activities are continuing or would continue if sos withdrew. key implementation partner programme-related activities alternative care fewer children are placed in alternative care than before the services (in particular the preventive services) started in that location. alternative care note. see willi et al., 2017a for guiding questions related to the dimensions and indicators. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 19 apart from the services per se and their potential influence on the community, individuals who participated in the services may also contribute to the community in various ways, which are also measured in the assessment approach. see table 3. table 3. dimensions and indicators measuring contributions of former service users to community wellness dimension description indicators giving and volunteering former service users are giving back to the community through donations or volunteer work. volunteerism giving (donations) next-generation benefits the children of former service users are growing up in a caring family. next-generation benefits note. see willi et al. 2017a, for guiding questions related to the dimensions and indicators. information about the community impact of services is collected in a desk review of the initial situation in the community through needs assessments, baseline studies, research reports, and similar, and of the current situation in the community through national and local statistics. information is also collected through semi-structured interviews with staff, community stakeholders, and former participants, and through further methodologies as proposed by the researchers (e.g., participatory focus groups, used in most cases). the ratings of the indicators (also on a scale of 1 to 4) are based primarily on the findings of the primary research. the ratings are supplemented by illustrations or case studies, providing more qualitative information to explore the “how” and “why” of the impacts. ratings should also be made for the situation before and the situation after the engagement of sos services with the community. the above dimensions were developed based on consultations with practitioners across the organisation. these dimensions are also adjusted to the local context in a participatory workshop, as they strongly depend on the local context, and the existing child welfare system and related mechanisms; certain dimensions may thus not be fully relevant in a given context. c: social return on investment (sroi) during the last decade, the use of social return on investment (sroi) calculations for development cooperation and social services has become more widespread. first pioneered and developed between 1996 and 2001 by the roberts enterprise development fund (now redf), the approach seeks to express in monetary terms the values created by social organisations and returned to communities. in ensuing years, the approach was further refined by the new economics foundation, which is based in the united kingdom, and various practitioner groups. today, there are multiple frameworks and approaches to measuring sroi (brouwers et al., 2010). the sroi aims to measure social impact in the community in financial terms. it compares the total costs of services with the projected financial benefits to society. in contrast to the return on investment (roi), which is often measured in a business context, the sroi does not account for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 20 the profits accruing to the organisation itself, but rather evaluates the benefits accruing to its beneficiaries and society at large. as a social development organisation, sos lacked expertise in the measurement of sroi. this was addressed by working with the boston consulting group (bcg) in the development of the sroi aspect of the sos social impact assessment methodology. bcg, an international consulting firm, had developed an sroi framework for complex interventions in the development cooperation field (bcg, 2008; villis et al., 2009). this framework was then adapted to the specific context of the services sos provides, enhancing the assessment of impact on the lives of individuals and on communities. figure 1 outlines the key parameters that are measured to gauge the benefits and costs of interventions. figure 1. components of sroi calculation note. adapted from willi et al., 2017a. various factors are applied to maximise the robustness and validity of the calculation. for instance, the approach assumes that related benefits to society can only be expected to be sustained by former participants who have positive educational and livelihood outcomes, these being reliable predictors for the economic success of individuals over time. therefore, when calculating the social benefits of an intervention, only the benefits for those individuals who are doing well in these two areas of well-being are monetised, whereas the costs of all participants are used in the calculation, including costs incurred for former participants who may not be doing as well as hoped in terms of their job status, educational outcomes, and livelihood. further factors include: the application of a discount factor, which allows for comparison of monetary flows occurring at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 21 different times; an attribution factor if other service providers are providing similar or associated services in the same location; benchmarking with local income and education levels, as well as other comparable external data; and finally the application of three scenarios to ensure sensitivity of results, in particular for those benefits where there is no definitive projected value (for more information, see willi et al., 2017a). it must be noted that non-financial benefits in the lives of children, their families, and their communities that cannot be quantified are excluded, but remain important. in this sense, sos never conducts the sroi calculation as a standalone element and always includes it as part of a broader impact assessment. challenges and limitations applying this evaluation approach across various locations and contexts while working with a wide array of different researchers has not been without challenges, and certain limitations of the methodology have become evident. as mentioned previously, sos is taking the approach that measuring long-term effects is a continuous learning process, meaning that the methodology is adapted and refined with each assessment. individual impact predetermined well-being dimensions: by predetermining the assessment areas, the participatory scope of the assessment is limited, as is the potential for unexpected findings that are sensitive to the local context in terms of social and cultural specificity. in more recent assessments, children and parental caregivers have been asked to validate and rate the different areas of wellbeing, as well as to suggest additional ones. however, in future, this element will have to be streamlined more consistently in the methodological approach to ensure that the voices of children and young people are also considered in the design. trade-offs between the range and depth of the dimensions: covering eight dimensions of well-being, and multiple indicators, unfortunately limits how deeply each can be explored and assessed if the individual interviews are to be of a manageable length, especially when interviewing children. this means that the assessment of dimensions such as social protection and inclusion, and social and emotional well-being, is only possible on a high level. also, certain topics related to a particular target group (e.g., those that particularly affect care leavers) cannot be explored deeply. rating dimensions and their interpretation: dimensions related to emotional well-being and protection are particularly difficult for interviewers to rate; in-depth training is required. in addition, an adult’s or child’s description of emotional difficulties or problems can be strongly affected by cultural or social expectations, language, and understanding. therefore, it is very important for the care workers to discuss the ratings and possible nuances related to child international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 22 behaviour with the researchers to ensure a consensus on which types of behaviour are “normal” or “worrisome” in a particular context (see also o’donnell, 2014). interviewing children with their parental caregiver: having a parental caregiver present may sometimes influence the answers children give related to their care and well-being. however, since it cannot always be guaranteed that the recruited researchers are experts in interviewing children of various age groups, this approach was favoured in order to protect the rights of the child. working with different researchers: working with different researchers, with various disciplinary backgrounds, knowledge, and skills has particular challenges and requires close monitoring to ensure methodological consistency for the consolidation of results across different assessments, as well as to maintain general quality standards. reaching former participants and potential for bias: former participants cannot always be located due to missing or incorrect contact information or to having moved. an analysis of the effects of these missing participants on the representativeness of the sampled participants vis-à-vis the whole population is a requirement. for former participants who do not wish to take part in the evaluation, the reasons for their abstention must be recorded and included in the analysis of the findings, as far as possible, in order to take account of potential bias. securing baseline data: in some locations, securing baseline data for the former participants has been difficult and, in some cases, the data had to be reconstructed by the researchers. data constraints when benchmarking: the ability to benchmark the results vis-à-vis comparable local statistics is sometimes limited depending on the availability and robustness of local data collection frameworks. consolidating findings from different contexts: the consolidation of results across locations carries the risk of leading to generalisations and misinterpretations, and is therefore only possible to a limited extent. one benefit of sos is that the services themselves are relatively comparable across locations, due to their similar scope, target groups, and service designs. in this phase, the focus is on statistical consolidation of the indicator ratings across the dimensions, as well as qualitative content analysis outlining high-level trends, further illustrated by anecdotal examples related to individual case stories. the methodology is not all-encompassing: while the analysis of contextual factors and their effects on social services should be taken into consideration, the extent to which this can be done is restricted by the limited timeframe. impact in communities measuring community impact where sos is still engaged: in communities where the organisation is still operating, researchers do not have the advantage of being able to assess the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 23 situation after exit. in these cases, researchers are asked to carry out a comparative analysis of the initial and current situation based on a methodology of their choosing. social return on investment use of the sroi: for many practitioners on the ground, the sroi is controversial, as many benefits, such as self-esteem, happiness, and family relationships, cannot be monetised. therefore, it is crucial that the sroi component of the evaluation does not play an exclusive role in the methodology and in the communication of the findings. further limitations are that calculating the sroi is resource intensive and adds a layer of complexity to the assessment. attribution of the findings to sos: there is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty regarding the extent to which the impact of an intervention can be attributed to the work of sos and its partners, and how much results from external factors. attribution of impact is more credible when it comes to the alternative care services, since these are more comprehensive (providing 24-hour care and a range of support services directly to a child) than the family strengthening services. for family strengthening, the attribution is more difficult to determine due to the more flexible service approach and the involvement of more stakeholders. therefore, in spite of the calculation of an attribution factor in the sroi analysis, some degree of uncertainty will necessarily remain in the attribution of impact to the organisation. the results are therefore largely built on the experiences of the beneficiaries and stakeholders themselves and what they regard as the impact of the services, as well as the observations of independent researchers. overall impact resource intensity of the impact assessments: the social impact assessments are quite resource intensive in terms of human resources and financial costs. current and future outlook in general, the social impact assessement methodology has generated valuable learnings and insights for service development and improvement, locally, nationally, and more widely across the organisation. following each assessment, action plans are formulated by the affected national organisation to take forward the relevant recommendations in the assessment location as well as other locations. the findings are also used for fundraising, external communication, and advocacy. at the same time, the methodology is contributing to capacity building in results measurement across the organisation. the results are regularly consolidated on an international level. so far, two consolidation rounds have taken place. the first, in 2016, brought together the findings from social impact assessments across seven locations in africa and asia: abobo-gare (côte d’ivoire), dakar (senegal), hawassa (ethiopia), kara (togo), mbabane (eswatini), surkhet (nepal), and zanzibar (tanzania; willi et al., 2017b). the second consolidation took place in 2019, bringing together the findings of an additional eight assessments in abomey-calavi (benin), santa cruz de la sierra international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 24 (bolivia), sarajevo (bosnia and herzegovina), vicenza (italy), tete (mozambique), bethlehem and rafah (palestine), lima (peru), and nuwara eliya (sri lanka; willi et al., 2019). this consolidation also brought together the results of the previous impact surveys (“tracking footprints”) for the occasion of the organisation’s 70th anniversary (willi et al., 2019)5. in terms of the international level, the findings have informed the development of the organisation’s strategy towards 2030 and programme policies, as well as the determination of the global research agenda, which aims to improve the organisation’s global impact. while the existing methodology has its limitations, it is continually being refined based on learning through experience. in this sense, it is also beneficial to work with a range of different researchers, as this helps to bring fresh perspectives, insights, and ideas to improve the methodology. currently, four additional social impact assessments in kyrgyzstan, indonesia, nicaragua, and the philippines are ongoing. future possibilities include returning to some countries where assessments have been previously carried out, to compare the status of former participants over time and to assess service improvements. moreover, it is envisaged that the methodology can be used to evaluate results in and across various types of services and with different service providers. in latin america, some assessments have already evaluated different approaches to family strengthening. when it comes to formal alternative care, so far only one type has been assessed. it would be interesting to evaluate different types of alternative care, such as family-based care and other alternative care options, to better inform the efforts of sos and other service providers to engage with the range of different care options, especially in the context of care reform. as more evidence is gathered on different responses to the situation of children without adequate parental care, it becomes increasingly possible to support children to stay in the care of their families, and to offer the most suitable alternative care for those who cannot. “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. it is what difference we have made in the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” (nelson mandela) 5a follow-up publication has been planned for 2020, outlining the findings in more detail and also analysing the results against the background of existing literature. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 7–28 25 references albus, s., & ritter, b. 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(the corresponding author) is a graduate of the department of family science and human development, montclair state university, montclair, nj 07043, usa. email: eva.apelian@gmail.com olena nesteruk ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of family science and human development, montclair state university, 1 normal ave., 4036 university hall, montclair, nj 07043, usa. email: nesteruko@mail.montclair.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs83/4201718002 mailto:eva.apelian@gmail.com mailto:nesteruko@mail.montclair.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 80 parents usually die before their children, but in some cases bereavement takes place at an early age. the experience of losing a parent is especially challenging to accept and grieve when it occurs prematurely; such a loss strongly impacts children’s lives (lawrence, jeglic, matthews, & pepper, 2005; raveis, siegel, & karus, 1999). there are approximately 153 million children around the world who have lost one or both parents (gimenez, chou, liu, & liu, 2013). in the united states, 2.5 million children under the age of 18 have experienced the death of a parent (koblenz, 2015). in canada in 2011, less than 1% of children aged 0 to 14 had lost one parent to death; there were 29,600 foster children aged 14 who had lost both parents (statistics canada, 2015). although in canada in 2016, nearly one fifth (19.2%) of children aged 0 to 14 were part of a lone-parent family — a family created following a separation, a divorce, or the death of a parent (statistics canada, 2016) — death is not the main cause of lone-parent families. it is important to learn about and understand children’s grief experiences, as unresolved grief may lead to severe repercussions later in life such as psychiatric issues, health problems, and depression (lawrence et al., 2005; mcclatchey & wimmer, 2012). for example, early life stressors such as early parental death are known to contribute to suicide, which was the tenth leading cause of death among youth in the united states in 2011 (hollingshaus & smith, 2015). in canada, 24% of deaths among people aged 15 to 24 years of age are attributed to suicide; a common risk factor for suicide is a significant loss, such as the death of a parent (mediresource, 2017). although the death of a parent may have adverse repercussions (koblenz, 2015; saler & skolnick, 1992), it can also lead to children becoming more resilient (greeff & human, 2004; hope & hodge, 2006; raveis et al., 1999). the term resilience is used in multiple ways, however; it is argued that it often occurs in the presence of adversity (masten & powell, 2003; ungar, 2008). in one usage, resilience is a trait of children who grow up successfully despite being faced with disadvantaged circumstances during childhood (ungar, 2008). second, resilience can refer to capability when subject to stress (ungar, 2008): resilient children may show proficiency despite dealing with threats to their well-being. third, resilience can indicate positive functioning and an effective recovery post-trauma (ungar, 2008). resilience is associated with factors that support human health and promote psychological health (greeff & human, 2004). studies show that resilient families perceive crises as manageable challenges rather than devastating tragedies (greeff & human, 2004). it is therefore crucial to study the effects of parental death on children in order to alleviate severe health and psychological issues and promote resiliency. the rationale for the present study is to further understand the overall experiences of young adults grieving the death of one of their parents. this subject is not discussed enough in everyday life and has not received much attention in the scholarly literature (koblenz, 2015; lafreniere & cain, 2015). the effects of death and the grieving process are unique to each individual; thus this study further informs how individuals cope with the death of a parent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 81 literature review there are many factors that affect a child’s grief process after the death of a parent, such as the child’s family, the deceased parent’s gender, the gender of the child, and the circumstances of the death (osterweis as cited in raveis et al., 1999). for example, a child is less likely to develop problems after the death if the surviving parent is available and supportive and if the child has adequate social support (silverman & worden, 1992). among the factors that contribute to successful grieving, researchers identified support and communication from various family members, peers, and therapists; the stability of the child’s environment after the death; and the circumstances of the death (greeff & human, 2004; hope & hodge, 2006; koblenz, 2015; silverman & worden, 1992). immediate effects on children following parental death daily and lifestyle changes: after the loss of a parent, a child may face immediate effects such as health and psychological issues (raveis et al., 1999; silverman & worden, 1992), changes in routine and a disruption in the stability of their environment (silverman & worden, 1992; worden, 1996). these short-term effects may adversely impact the child and make grieving a longer and more difficult process. families that experience loss may be faced with many daily changes such as relocation and change of schools; decrease in surviving parent’s emotional availability; arguments and disruption in communication; increase in household chores, especially after the death of a mother; possible need for employment for adolescents; and changes in bedtimes and mealtimes (lafreniere & cain, 2015; mcclatchey & wimmer, 2012; raveis et al., 1999; worden, 1996). adolescent girls who have lost a mother may take on a maternal role and become the family’s caretaker, a burdensome responsibility at an early age (edelman, 1994). a family’s financial situation after the death of a parent affects the family’s grieving process. if financial resources have been drained due to medical bills, or if the deceased parent was the primary breadwinner, this can be extremely stressful for the remaining family members (greeff & human, 2004). children from wealthy families were found to experience fewer sleep disturbances after the death of their parent, concentrate better in school, and have fewer learning difficulties than children from less affluent families (greeff & human, 2004; raveis et al., 1999). the more the daily environment is disrupted after the death, the more difficult it is for children to adjust well (lafreniere & cain, 2015; silverman & worden, 1992). health and psychological issues: following the death of a parent, children may experience distress, anxiety, depression, and difficulty focusing in school (raveis et al., 1999; silverman & worden, 1992). depression is very common among children after the death of a parent: about half of bereaved children become depressed in the year following their parent’s death, and 16% remain depressed after the year has passed (pfeffer, jiang, kakuma, hwang, & metsch, 2002). anxiety disorders are also common, especially among younger children who lack the developmental maturity to understand and cope with the changes after the death (jacobs et al., 1990; raveis et al., 1999). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 82 the role of communication and support after parental death the post-death family environment can significantly influence how well a child will adapt and adjust to parental death (hope & hodge, 2006; koblenz, 2015). children and adolescents need to feel supported and taken care of by their surviving parent after the other’s death. a stable environment, a similar routine to the one before the parent died, and open communication and support from the surviving parent can allow the child to grieve in a healthy way (bugge, darbyshire, rokholt, haugstvedt, & helseth, 2014; lafreniere & cain, 2015; saldinger, porterfield, & cain, 2004). surviving parent: the surviving parent’s adjustment to the death of a spouse plays an important role in the children’s ability to adapt to the death of a parent; they must model the grieving process for their children (bugge et al., 2014; hope & hodge, 2006). parents must find a way to be emotionally available for their children while dealing with the loss of a spouse at the same time. it is therefore essential for the parent to find his or her own support system (hope & hodge, 2006). children need to feel emotionally supported by their surviving parent and be able to openly communicate about their deceased parent (koblenz, 2015; hope & hodge, 2006). sharing feelings and talking about the deceased parent allows the child to process grief in a healthier manner and thus adapt more successfully to the loss (saldinger et al., 2004). children who are able to openly communicate with their surviving parent about the deceased parent and about their sorrow surrounding the death have a lower risk of developing depression in adulthood (saler & skolnick, 1992). siblings: research on sibling relationships in parentally bereaved families has been contradictory, with some studies showing the benefit of having a sibling to share the tragic experience with (hurd, 2002; mack, 2004), and others showing the burden of having a sibling after the death of a parent (connidis, 1992; scharlach & fredriksen, 1993). when the death of a parent occurs in childhood, the effect on siblings can be complicated, as some sibling relationships will experience positive outcomes while others will experience negative ones (ross & milgram, 1982). hurd (2002) found that siblings can assist each other in grieving in a healthy way and avoiding depression; thus they become a very strong source of support, especially when the surviving parent is too preoccupied with his or her own grief. parental death may result in siblings becoming closer and strengthening their sibling bonds (hurd, 2002; mack, 2004); however, the death may also create distance between the siblings, especially if the deceased parent occupied the role of kinkeeper in the family (scharlach & fredriksen, 1993). extended relatives: extended family members can be an important support system for bereaved children and adolescents by providing “practical assistance, companionship, and a sense of security and solidarity, which can assist the family to adjust to the loss” (greeff & human, 2004, p. 37). relatives such as grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles may provide an outlet for grief that makes it easier for a bereaved child to cope with the loss of a parent (greeff & human, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 83 2004; eppler, 2008). families who lack a such a supportive extended network are not able to cope as well with the death (walsh & mcgoldrick, 2004). peer support: a supportive social network of siblings and friends can be effective in helping the child grieve (silverman & worden, 1992). children, adolescents, and young adults are involved with other peers and friends on a daily basis; these relationships provide opportunities for grieving youth to find support in their peers (lafreniere & cain, 2015). for some adolescents, peers were the most helpful source of emotional support after the loss of their parent: time spent with friends allowed them to feel normal and less isolated (dopp & cain, 2012; gray, 1989). parentally bereaved adolescents with good quality peer and romantic relationships report fewer depressive symptoms (schoenfelder, sandler, wolchik, & mackinnon, 2011). grief camps can be a helpful resource for parentally bereaved children and adolescents, who can spend time with other mourning children and relate to each other (koblenz, 2015; mcclatchey & wimmer, 2012). being able to share their feelings with other children who had similar experiences allows children to feel more understood and less alone in their grief. coping strategies coping styles influence the well-being of bereaved individuals and their adaptation to the death of a parent (howell, shapiro, layne, & kaplow, 2015). lazarus and folkman (as cited in lawrence et al., 2005) identified three coping styles: active/approach, support seeking, and avoidant. an individual with an active/approach coping style acknowledges that the death happened and finds ways to deal with it (lawrence et al., 2005). bereaved adolescents who used this style of coping were found to experience fewer depressive symptoms than adolescents who used other types of coping strategy (herman-stahl, stemmler, & peterson, 1995). individuals using the avoidant coping style do not acknowledge the death, instead using strategies to avoid thinking about the death and to try to focus on positive things in their lives (glyshaw, cohen, & towbes, 1989). non-acknowledgment of the death may lead to psychological distress later in life (kaplow, gipson, horwitz, burch, & king, 2013). an individual who uses a support-seeking coping style reaches out to peers, friends, and family for support and comfort (lawrence et al., 2005). this coping strategy is associated with positive outcomes for the bereaved. long-term effects on children following parental death in addition to the short-term effects, the premature death of a parent may also have longterm effects on the children. much research in the death and bereavement area has focused on the immediate and short-term effects of losing a parent, while the lifelong process of coping with the death of a parent has received limited attention. milestone events: milestone events and transitions may trigger a grief response in those who have lost a parent. for example, entering or graduating from high school, applying for college, or experiencing a first romantic relationship are events that may be difficult for children who no longer have one of their parents (biank & werner-lin, 2011). other milestone events, such as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 84 graduating from college, getting married, and becoming a parent, may regenerate feelings of grief as well (raveis et al., 1999). to date, very little research has been conducted on the impact of major life events on parentally bereaved children and adolescents, although these milestone events may in fact have a substantial impact (biank & werner-lin, 2011; raveis et al., 1999). the death of a parent has a multitude of effects on bereaved young adults; the road to adaptation is complex and varies among individuals. there is a lack of studies that explore the perspectives of young adults reflecting on the death of a parent and how it has affected them. we also need to know more about social and familial supports that promote youths’ positive adaptation to parental loss, and the role of milestone events in potentially triggering grief responses in bereaved young adults. current study the present study seeks to address the gap in the literature on the loss of a parent in adolescence and related grief and adaptation experiences. the purpose of the present study is to give a voice to parentally bereaved young adults and to explore their reflections on coping with grief. specifically, this study seeks to answer the following questions: how did parental death affect surviving adolescents both in the short term and into early adulthood? what resources and coping strategies did parentally bereaved children use and how have they adapted to this loss? death is a subject that is not usually openly discussed, especially at a younger age, and therefore it is crucial to build a better understanding of the path leading to positive adaptation in order to provide more pertinent help to bereaved adolescents and young adults. theoretical framework phenomenology guided the researchers in investigating the lived experiences of young adults in relation to the phenomena of parental loss, grief, and adaptation (creswell, 2013; daly, 2007). consistent with the phenomenological approach, we relied on in-depth interviews with open-ended questions to elicit detailed descriptions of each participant’s reality and the meanings they bring to it (daly, 2007). during the data analysis process, as we attempted to make sense of the phenomena and discussed emerging concepts and themes, we realized that they fit well with the double abc-x model of family stress and adaptation, as developed by mccubbin and patterson (1983) from hill’s (1958) original abc-x model. thus, we decided to use the double abc-x model and theoretical framework of family stress to further examine thematic concepts and build a coherent interpretation of the data. the original abc-x model of family stress, as developed by hill (1958), focused on a family’s reaction to a particular stressor event (a), their perceptions of the event (c), and their ability to adapt to the situation based on the resources available (b). hill’s model postulates that there is a crisis-provoking event (a factor). a stressor is not necessarily an event that is traumatic; rather, it is an event that creates a change in family dynamics and has a potential to destabilize the family. the stressor event then interacts with the family’s access to and use of resources (b factor), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 85 such as individual, familial, and community resources, all of which may help a family deal with the crisis. the family’s ability to cope with the stressor (a) also depends on the family’s definition of the event (c factor). this is the way a family unit interprets and perceives the event it is faced with. the perception (c) of the event (a), along with availability and use of resources (b), will have an impact on the family’s ability to adapt to the situation at hand. factors a, b, and c all play a role in whether or not a family will fall into crisis after being exposed to the stressor event (boss, 2002). families often have to deal with a pile-up of additional stressors after an initial stressor event occurs. the double abc-x model of family stress and adaptation by mccubbin and patterson (1983) accounts for that complexity and includes the components that accompany family adaptation post-crisis. the pile-up of demands (aa) refers to the multiple stressors a family may experience after the initial stressor event occurs (mccubbin & patterson, 1983). families also have resources (bb) which allow them to meet their needs and demands following a crisis, including some resources, such as health professionals, that may become available after the event. mccubbin and patterson (1983) identified three kinds of resources:  family members’ personal resources — money, education, health, personality characteristics, and self-esteem;  family system’s internal resources — the family’s ability to communicate and their adaptability to the situation; and  social support — support from social networks such as extended relatives and the community. families give new meaning to their situation post-crisis; the way they perceive (cc) the crisis (x) will affect how they adapt to the situation. individuals and families may use various coping strategies to adjust to the crisis, such as avoidance, elimination (a family’s effort to remove the stressor or change its meaning), and assimilation (mccubbin & patterson, 1983). the final phase of the double abc-x model is adjustment, when families make changes to their existing family structure in order to adapt to the crisis. this restructuring may include modifying roles, rules, goals, and patterns of interaction (mccubbin & patterson, 1983). the outcome of the crisis is based on the multiple factors (aa, bb, cc) that interact with one another and result in the family functioning on a continuum between positive adaptation, called bonadaptation, and negative adaptation, or maladaptation (mccubbin & patterson, 1983). compared with the original abc-x model, the double abc-x model is more effective in explaining a family’s reaction to a traumatic life event when multiple stressors are occurring (mccubbin & patterson, 1983). using the double abc-x model, the present study will discuss the effects of a particular type of crisis — parental loss during adolescence — and what resources and coping strategies were helpful, from the perspective of young adult survivors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 86 methodology guided by a phenomenological approach, we aimed to examine participants’ lived experiences with loss, grief, and adaptation through their eyes (creswell, 2013; daly, 2007). in order to gain an understanding of the parentally bereaved young adults’ adaptations, a qualitative research design with in-depth personal interviews was used. recruitment and interview procedures after institutional review board approval was obtained, participants were recruited through personal connections of the first author and using snowball sampling. inclusion criteria required that: (a) participants were young adults between the ages of 18 and 30; (b) participants had lost a parent after the age of eight (otherwise they would have limited memories of the parent); and, (c) at least two years had passed since death (to allow some time for coping). prior to the interviews, participants filled out a consent form and a demographic information sheet. face-to-face semi-structured interviews lasted about an hour and took place in the home of either the first author or the participant. the interview guide consisted of 14 questions pertaining to family relationships before and after the death, support from social networks, daily life changes after the death, and so on (see appendix). the interview questions were created prior to the use of the double abc-x model. the order of the questions and the wording were altered as needed during the interview; follow-up questions asking for details or clarification were used. interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed verbatim. field notes with observations about interview sessions were written. conducting in-depth interviews on such a sensitive topic requires trust between the researcher and study participants. the first author’s “insider” status as a parentally bereaved adolescent was shared with the participants, which facilitated positive rapport during the recruitment and interview process. description of participants eleven participants who fit the recruitment criteria were interviewed for this study. eight of the participants were recruited in montreal, canada, and three in northern new jersey, united states. five participants were female and six were male, with a mean age of 27 (range 18–34). the average age of the participants at the time of the parental death was 16.4 (13–20); an average of eight years had passed since the death (1–17). although the inclusion criteria established at the beginning of the study set a maximum age of 30 years for participants and the passage of at least two years since the death of a parent, we expanded these parameters slightly to include three participants in their early thirties and one participant who had lost a parent less than two years ago. considering the difficulty of finding and recruiting individuals for research on such a sensitive topic, it was decided that these were acceptable deviations from the original criteria for participation. six participants had experienced loss of a mother and five had lost a father. for seven of the participants the death of a parent had been expected due to a long-term illness (e.g., cancer, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 87 lung disease); for four of the participants the death was sudden and unexpected (e.g., aortic aneurysm, heart attack). ten of the participants had one or more siblings; one participant was an only child. all of the participants were either currently in college or had completed a bachelor’s degree and were employed. data analysis following transcription, interviews and demographic data for each participant were organized into files and analyzed using a phenomenological approach (merriam & tisdell, 2016). phenomenology directs researchers to explore the world from the perspective of the participants in order to develop an in-depth understanding of their lived experiences and circumstances (creswell, 2013; johnson & christensen, 2004). participants’ experiences are analyzed and compared to understand the essences of a particular phenomenon studied (merriam & tisdell, 2016) — in this case, the adaptations of parentally bereaved youths. phenomenological analysis also requires the researchers to “bracket”, or suspend, their biases in order to be open to the experience and to get to the essence of the phenomenon without judgement (tufford & newman, 2010). being aware of one’s position is important in reducing a bias that may influence data collection and analysis (daly, 2007). like the participants in this study, the first author is a young adult who experienced the loss of a parent in adolescence. her “insider” status facilitated participants’ recruitment and promoted rapport during interviews. the second author contributed her “outsider” perspective to the topic, which was beneficial during research meetings and data analysis. the beginning of the analysis process was inductive, as we attempted to search for categories and themes using pieces from the data (merriam & tisdell, 2016). the first author read each transcript several times in order to fully grasp the data before beginning the analytical coding process (merriam & tisdell, 2016). while rereading the transcripts, codes consisting of words and phrases in the data were assigned. field notes and codes were studied and grouped for similarity. this process was repeated for all transcripts in order to verify whether the same codes were present in each previous transcript. the codes assigned throughout each transcript were then merged in order to create a primitive outline of recurring patterns in the study (merriam & tisdell, 2016). emerging codes and themes were further explored in regular collaborative discussions with the second author. both authors agreed that the themes that emerged from the data were closely linked to the factors within the double abc-x model. we therefore reviewed emerging codes and themes through the framework of the double abc-x model, identifying which factors from the model were represented in the data (e.g., aa, bb, x), which were less relevant (e.g., cc), and why. during discussions, we shared our perceptions of meanings behind the codes and themes, and whether the double abc-x model was reflective of the participants’ reports of their families’ adaptations post-crisis. a deductive mode was applied to data analysis until a sense of saturation was reached and we no longer found anything new (merriam & tisdell, 2016). at the last step of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 88 the analytical coding process, recurring patterns found in the transcripts were finalized into themes and aligned with the appropriate factors in the double abc-x model. findings the findings of this study are presented using the double abc-x model of stress (mccubbin & patterson, 1983) that describes family adaptation post-crisis (see figure 1). the death of a parent is conceptualized as the stressor event (a) for the participants. we will further describe the pile-up of stressors and the use of social support and coping strategies, and will conclude with a theme that describes participants’ adaptation. pile-up of stressors aggravates grieving following the death of a parent, participants and their family members were confronted with many daily changes and a pile-up of stressors that made grieving more difficult. some of these stressors included financial issues, increased responsibilities, and complicated grief. financial issues: families who lost their breadwinner had a difficult time coping with the death, as they also had the added stress of dealing with a financial burden. for example, samar and his mother struggled financially following the death of his father and had to sell the house and relocate, “it was pretty hard, there were a lot of financial issues because there was nobody working in the house.” the loss of the father meant that the role of provider had to be taken on by the mother. as several participants shared, mothers often became overwhelmed by new financial responsibilities and had difficulty fulfilling their other roles in the family. this also meant that adolescents had to take on household chores that were previously done by mothers. in contrast, participants whose families were financially secure spoke of having an easier time adjusting to the loss of a parent, as explained by liam: “knowing that you’re still gonna go to school, everything is gonna be paid … that helped us, and we were really able to focus on grieving.” increased household responsibilities: the loss of a mother often meant that responsibilities related to the running of the household had to be picked up by fathers and children. participants spoke about having to assume new responsibilities such as cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, and cleaning. sofia shared, “the fridge was always empty, [my father] was never there. i would always have to do the groceries.” similarly, daniel reported how the loss of his mother impacted his daily life in that he had to do a lot of housework at a young age, “there wasn’t anybody to do the dishes or do my laundry, clean [the house] and put my clothes away, [take out] the garbage, grocery shopping.” those participants who lost the parent who was responsible for household chores found they had to spend more time on chores than previously. while some participants reported that their families worked together to adjust and split the burden of these responsibilities, others reported that they had little help from their surviving parent. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 89 figure 1. adaptation of the double abc-x model for grieving families. x crisis time a stressor: death of a parent b existing resources c perceptio n of “a” pre-crisis a a pile-up  financial issues  increased responsibility  strained relationships b b existing and new resources  surviving parent  sibling(s)  extended relatives  friends coping  hard work  isolation  friends bonadaptation adaptation  maturity  strength  growth  different perspective on life x x maladaptation c c perception of x + aa + bb post-crisis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 90 complicated grief: some participants said that their surviving parent was not a supportive resource to help them cope with the death. in a few cases, adolescents also had to assume the daunting responsibility of ensuring the safety of a widowed parent. for example, juliette’s mother became depressed after her husband’s death and made several suicide attempts. juliette was afraid to lose her mother and had to always be around her, which impacted her grieving experience: “the first three years we were not able to grieve because we were taking care of her.” this burden did not allow juliette and her brother to focus on their own grief or fully cope with the loss of their father; eight years later, she reports still grieving. overall, participants’ narratives show that losing a parent who played a significant role in the household, and whom the family depended on emotionally and financially, had an important influence on the family’s adaptation to the loss. the pile-up of financial, household, and emotional stressors made it harder for families to deal with their grief and sadness. benefits of social support participants reported that they needed a strong support system to help them cope with their loss. main sources of support came from their immediate family members, extended relatives, and friends. surviving parent: the support of the surviving parent is crucial in helping children cope with and adjust to the loss of a parent. during the interviews, many participants spoke about strengths of their surviving parents who “kept it together” following the death. these young adults stated that because their widowed parents managed to maintain a certain level of normalcy and daily routine, and were emotionally supportive, they were able to cope with the loss and “move forward”. in these cases, the experience of surviving the death resulted in stronger families that developed very close relationships: “[my mother and i] are really, really close, like partners, she likes to call it.” at the same time, some families were crushed by the loss because they were incapable of communicating and finding support in each other following the death. instead of uniting and supporting one another, they became distanced, as in the case of akiko, whose relationship with her father became strained after her mother passed away: “we kind of stopped communicating … we struggled for almost ten years.” it was the loss of her father’s mother years later that brought them together and helped them rebuild their relationship. siblings: it is common for siblings to become closer and lean on each other for support after the loss of a parent, especially if their surviving parent is unavailable or emotionally preoccupied. this was the case for several participants in the study, whose siblings became a source of support for each other following their parent’s death. their relationships got stronger because they shared a painful grieving experience. one said, “we are the only two people who actually understand what it’s like to go through this kind of pain, so we have a strong bond.” extended relatives: for the participants whose surviving parent and siblings were not available or helpful, their extended relatives became a source of support. for example, daniel’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 91 two sisters were living on their own at the time of their mother’s passing away, and his father avoided his parental role. daniel’s aunt was the one who helped him on a regular basis by providing emotional and financial support; she made sure he had clothes and got to school to receive an education. he said, “i don’t know where i would be without [my aunt], because she’s by far the most important person in my life.” friends: some participants, who lacked support from immediate family or extended relatives, found their friends to be very helpful in coping with the death of a parent. molly shared that her brother was experiencing depression and her mother was dealing with financial issues and grieving the loss of her husband. as a family, they were unable to support each other emotionally. molly found that support among her friends: “i had a lot of friends at the time, which was really helpful [then] and [continues to be helpful] even as life has gone.” all participants commented that they needed emotional support from someone to cope with their grief. if immediate family members were not available, then the support usually came from extended relatives or friends. coping strategies used by the participants after the loss of a parent, people develop coping mechanisms to help them grieve and cope with the loss. the main coping strategies described by the participants were working hard in school, using friends as a distraction, and isolating themselves when needed. focusing on schoolwork: many of the participants used their academics as a coping outlet and a distraction from the loss; for many, the loss occurred during the time of their lives when grades were important for their future. when faced with the loss of a parent, something they had no control over, these adolescents turned to their schoolwork as something they could control. participants spoke about focusing their energy on schoolwork, an outlet that allowed them to focus on something other than the pain of parental loss, as described by william: “i think one of my ways to sort of get my mind off things was just to work like crazy. i’ve never studied so hard as in that one, two years of my life.” focusing solely on his academics kept him distracted from the sad reality. friends as a distraction: many participants reported using their friends as a distraction. their friends provided fun and activities, which allowed the participants to take their minds off the death: “my grieving process is distraction. just hanging out with friends, doing things i like to do, my hobbies and such.” for many of the participants, spending time with their friends and peers in leisure was reported as a helpful coping strategy. they wanted to feel normal and not be viewed as outcasts. the death of a parent set them apart from most other students, so maintaining their friendships with a certain degree of normalcy was important and helpful. isolation to grieve on one’s own: several participants felt the need to isolate themselves from others, in order to grieve on their own. although support was available to them, they chose international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 92 not to use it and instead coped using solitude, spirituality, or music. lucas noted that his isolation was not unhealthy, as he accepted the fact that his mother was dead and he needed to cope and realize this on his own: “i kind of put up that wall where i didn’t need anybody. i became a little more spiritual, found relief through good music. that was the way i dealt with it.” emma felt that she needed to cope with her loss on her own in order to be stronger: “if you’re alone for a couple of weeks and you’re feeling down, then it builds character in my opinion.” adaptation following the loss of a parent: personal growth and maturation an average of eight years had passed since the participants lost a parent. although for some young adults in the study it was still difficult to talk about their loss, most reported that they had learned to live with it and had adapted well. a common theme ran through all of the participants’ narratives: the first two years were the most difficult, but their loss had made them stronger, helped them gain maturity, and fostered a different perspective on life. participants spoke about acquired resilience and personal growth: “suffering makes you learn a lot about life, about yourself, about others, about everything — it makes you grow.” participants equated the loss of a parent at a young age with the loss of their childhood. they felt that this experience pushed them into adulthood rapidly compared to peers who had not experienced such a tragedy. children and adolescents who had lost a parent faced many challenges following the death and had to figure things out on their own, depending on the support they received from their surviving parent. juliette spoke about how she lost her “life coach” the day her father passed away as he was an important figure who advised her and guided her in decisionmaking: “i became an adult the day he passed away. the two first years i was not able to take any decision because my father was my mentor. [in time i had to learn to make] my own decisions.” another participant spoke similarly about her mother: “it’s hard because usually when you doubt, there’s always your mom. [but] now there’s no one to advise you.” retrospectively, all participants felt that the death of their parents changed them, accelerating their maturation into adulthood. losing a parent in childhood was an experience that also propelled these youths to change their perspective on life: “you kind of change your vision on life, you really try to enjoy the moment.” the theme of maturity and growth as a result of surviving the death of a parent at a young age was prevalent in every single interview. positive adaptation depended on many factors, such as availability and use of resources, coping strategies, and the pile-up of other stressors. discussion this study explored the reflections of young adults on the experience of parental loss during adolescence. personal interviews with in-depth, open-ended questions were used to allow the participants to reflect on how the death of a parent affected their families and how they coped with this loss. the themes that emerged from the data were consistent with the factors in the double abc-x model of family stress and adaptation (mccubbin & patterson, 1983): the pile-up of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 93 stressors following parental death (financial, household, and grief-related), use of social support (relationships with family, friends, and peers), and coping strategies (focusing on school, friends, or isolation). generally, positive adaptation was reported by the participants, and was dependent on many factors, such as severity of the pile-up of other stressors, availability and use of social support resources, and a variety of coping strategies used by the participants. the death of a parent is a tragic loss that is often followed by additional stressors in the family system, thus complicating each individual’s journey through grief and bereavement. many participants of the current study reported dealing with multiple stressors following a parent’s death, such as changes in daily routines, increased responsibilities and household chores, financial difficulties, and relocation. parentally bereaved adolescents often had to become responsible for many more household chores than they were used to. they also witnessed their surviving parent struggling with financial and other issues, which in turn created additional tension in the household. this situation made grieving more difficult for the surviving parent and children as the added stress overwhelmed them and prevented them from focusing on coping with their loss. these findings are consistent with previous research that found that a disruption of the daily environment after the death of a parent can make the grieving process more difficult for children (lafreniere & cain, 2015; mcclatchey & wimmer, 2012; raveis et al., 1999; worden, 1996). a majority of the participants expressed the utmost importance of family or friends as sources of support. consistent with previous research, all participants in this study relied on the surviving parent, siblings, friends, or extended relatives for emotional support to help them cope with the loss of a parent. the importance of the surviving parent’s role in the post-death family environment in particular has long been established (hope & hodge, 2006; koblenz, 2015), and was evident in the interviews. participants reported becoming closer with their only surviving parent, who offered open communication, security, a stable environment, and support, all of which are important for parentally bereaved children, as previous studies have found (saldinger et al., 2004). at the same time, some participants were unable to rely on their surviving parent for emotional support due to strained relationships, and it took several years before their relationship with a surviving parent was mended. if the surviving parent was not emotionally available, the participants turned to their siblings, extended relatives, or friends for support. previous research on sibling relationships following the death of a parent was contradictory, with some concluding that it created distance between the siblings (connidis, 1992; scharlach & friedriksen, 1993), while others found that it strengthened sibling bonds (hurd, 2002; mack, 2004). the findings in the present study were consistent with the research demonstrating the benefit of having a sibling to share the experience of parental loss. ten of the participants had siblings and most of them expressed the value of their sibling’s support in working through their grief, which strengthened their sibling bond. in terms of coping strategies helpful in times of grief, participants spoke about focusing their energy on academic achievements and working hard in school as well as using friends as a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 94 distraction, both of which allowed them to forget their loss for a time and feel “normal”. these findings are consistent with previous studies that found seeking support from family and friends to be a positive and valuable coping strategy (gray, 1989; lawrence et al., 2005). studies also found that an avoidant coping style, in which bereaved adolescents focus on other things in their lives, can be psychologically detrimental (glyshaw et al., 1989). however, this coping style was effective for some of the participants in the study. even though social support was available to them, a number of participants reported that they needed to grieve on their own. thus, they found solitude, spirituality, or music to be helpful coping strategies (lawrence et al., 2005); this is consistent with studies that have found spirituality to be beneficial for bereaved children and adolescents’ coping and meaning-making (holder, coleman, & wallace, 2010). previous research found that children may become resilient after the loss of a parent, but it depends on various factors such as constant communication, especially about the death, support from family and friends, and a stable environment (greeff & human, 2004; hope & hodge, 2006; lafreniere & cain, 2015; raveis et al., 1999). many participants expressed that losing a parent was like losing their guide, which accelerated their growing up and forced them to make decisions on their own. all participants stated that the traumatic experience of losing a parent contributed to their personal growth, maturity, and the development of a new perspective on life. many relied on some form of support system after the death, whether it was their surviving parent, siblings, friends, or extended relatives, a finding consistent with research on resilience (greeff & human, 2004). the double abc-x model helped organize the themes and provided a visual aid to understanding the process bereaved children go through as they grieve over their parent’s death and adapt to a new reality. limitations this study was based on a small sample of individuals who chose to participate and thus may have been more open to talking about their experiences or had an easier time adjusting to the death than those who did not participate. also, the experiences of these college-educated young adults may differ from those who have not attended college. the participants in this study lost a parent due to different causes — some to a long-term illness, others to a sudden heart attack. the differences in whether the death was sudden or anticipated may have complicated the mourning process for some, but this was not brought up by the participants during the interviews. another limitation of this study is that some of the participants had trouble reflecting on their relationships prior to and following the death of their parent, as some were young and several years had passed since the event. finally, one of the initial intentions of this study was to explore the impact of milestone events (e.g., graduation, marriage, having children) to find out whether they triggered any grief responses. some participants anticipated that getting married and having children would be difficult events without their deceased parent, and some shared that special events such as birthdays and holidays were emotionally trying. however, due to the young age of the participants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 95 that were recruited, little information about the grief responses during milestone events such as marriage and parenthood emerged. future studies may be able to explore the impact of milestone events by recruiting participants who are older than 30 years of age and who are married and have children. implications research in the area of grief can aid families and practitioners in creating intervention strategies to help deal with the pile-up of stressors that may occur after a death, as well as strategies to help individuals and families cope with the loss. parentally bereaved families should be encouraged to focus on building open communication and supportive parent–child and sibling relationships. participating in grief camps or group therapy can be valuable for bereaved children as it allows them to relate to other children who have lost a parent (koblenz, 2015; 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(1996). children in grief: when a parent dies. new york, ny: gilford press. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/n2gw-n9we-ueup-9h4d http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/n2gw-n9we-ueup-9h4d http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10964-009-9503-z http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0079304 https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2014001/article/11919-eng.htm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016006/98-200-x2016006-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016006/98-200-x2016006-eng.cfm http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1473325010368316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcl343 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 8(3–4): 79–100 100 appendix interview guide 1. how did your relationship with your sibling(s) change after the death of your parent? did your relationship(s) get stronger? or did the death create a distance between you and your sibling(s)? a. do you feel like you can talk to your sibling(s) about the death of your parent? if so, has that helped you grieve in any way? b. (for those who have no siblings) if you had had a sibling, how do you think this could have changed your grieving process? did you miss having someone other than your parent to talk to and confide in? 2. explain how your social network helped you through your grieving process (relatives, friends, teachers/professors, and/or therapists). 3. how would you say your relationship with your surviving mother/father was impacted? a. do you think your surviving parent has helped you grieve? if so, how? b. can you talk to your surviving parent about the death? 4. please explain any daily changes you experienced after the death of your parent (relocation, financial issues, increased responsibility/chores, emotions). a. did you find this difficult? or did it help you with your grieving process? 5. what milestone events have occurred in your life since your parent passed away (graduation, marriage, career/job, baby, moving out, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays)? a. did it make you feel like you were grieving again? did it make you think about your parent? did you wish he/she was there with you in this important moment? how did these moments make you feel? 6. how do you think the death of your parent has changed you? a. has it made you stronger or weaker? b. what advice would you give to other children going through this? what would you say helped you the most? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs92201818214 impact of residential care culture on quality of life of care leavers ivan lukšík and lucia hargašová abstract: the quality of life of young adult residential care leavers is influenced by several factors. the impact of the residential care environment can be conceptualised as organisational culture. in our empirical study we explored how organisational culture affects the quality of life of care leavers. the research was conducted using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in 8 selected residential care facilities in slovakia, and among 39 young care leavers. data from semi-structured interviews were analysed using methods associated with grounded theory, and data obtained via questionnaires were analysed using statistical methods. the results show that adequate material conditions, adherence to facility rules, the space to act independently, responsive care, support in planning for the future, mutual assistance, and social support from peers and others are all likely to contribute to a higher quality of life for care leavers. keywords: residential care, quality of life, care leavers, organisational culture, substitute parenting acknowledgement: this research was made possible by the support of the slovak research and development agency, agreement no. apvv-0368-12, project: “training of young people in children’s homes and re-education centres: analysis and innovation”, and slovak research agency vega, agreement no. 2/0027/17, project: “traditional and alternative parenting in the 21st century: motivation, dilemmas and consequences”. ivan lukšík phd (the corresponding author) is a professor at the institute for research in social communication, slovak academy of sciences, dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 bratislava, slovakia. email: ivan.luksik@savba.sk lucia hargašová phd is a postdoctorate researcher at the institute for research in social communication, slovak academy of sciences, dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 bratislava, slovakia. email: lucia.hargasova@savba.sk mailto:ivan.luksik@savba.sk file:///c:/users/lucia/downloads/lucia.hargasova@savba.sk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 87 a survey conducted by eurochild in 30 european countries found that there are approximately one million children in alternative care (1% of the child population; eurochild, 2010). experts have repeatedly questioned whether being placed in care is beneficial for the child. the concern is whether this kind of care helps children deal with the problems that accompany them into care and whether it prepares them sufficiently for later life. some children are placed in care to protect them from negative influences in their home environment. such placements may arise because of poverty, pathology of the family environment (parental alcoholism or other addictions, domestic violence, neglect, or child abuse), or nonfunctioning, poor, or non-existent family support, among other reasons (barth, wildfire, & green, 2006; our home association, poland, 2008). in slovakia in 2013, the main reason for children being placed in residential care was neglect, accounting for 55.4% of cases (fico, 2016a). the lack of preventative work with families struggling to cope is a serious problem (kriglerová, 2015). some research has indicated that residential care can have unintended consequences; for instance, children may not be sufficiently protected against violence, bullying, and abuse (andersson, 2007; johansson, 2007; kendrick & hawthorn, 2012). jackson (2010) lists the following problems relating to residential care: children are trained for poorly paid jobs with low hiring prospects, they have irregular school attendance and gaps in their learning, teachers and social workers have low expectations and aspirations for them, and they feel they have little control over their lives. there is also evidence that indicates residential care can have a positive influence on children and young people (kendrick, 2012; shaw, 2007). for instance, the psychosocial functioning of children and young people placed in care was afterwards found to have improved (knorth, harder, zandberg, & kendrick, 2008). being placed in care can provide young people with a time-out, or temporary protection, when the family cannot provide adequate care (škoviera, 2011). group work on dynamics in closed groups can help children acquire new, more effective behavioural strategies and work through trauma and hurt (kratochvíl, 2009). children placed in care often have problems that continue once they leave care. these young people are often at risk of psychosocial problems such as homelessness, delinquency, unemployment, health problems, early parenthood, and others (eurochild, 2010; farrugia, greenberg, chenn, & heckhausen, 2006; festinger, 1983; stein & dixon, 2007; stein, pinkerton, & kelleher, 2010). studies conducted in slovakia indicate difficulty finding employment, settling into the new environment, and coping with the challenges of everyday life, as well as more serious problems like addictive substance abuse and difficulty in maintaining long-term social and partner relationships (brajerová, 2013; lukšík, 2013). young people who have been in care are not automatically destined for a life of failure, social exclusion, or employment difficulties (fico, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 88 2016b). despite the risks, they may find their situations stabilised, especially those in supportive partnerships (jahnukainen, 2007). a key question is how the various models and types of care contribute to young people’s quality of life once they leave residential care. there are many kinds of care: residential care, foster care, kinship care, adoption, and so on. this study looks only at residential care, specifically at the organisational culture of residential care facilities and the impact it has on post-care quality of life. fisher and alford (2000) listed 164 definitions of “organisational culture”. essentialist definitions are common, such as those that view organisational culture as a set of broadly shared attitudes, values, assumptions, and norms that give rise to specific behaviours and physical manifestations, and become part of the thinking and practices of members of the organisation (wick & bradshaw, 2002). similarly, trice and beyer (1993) state that organisational culture is ideological in nature; that is, informed by the emotionally shared beliefs, values, and norms that drive people to perform certain activities and justify them to themselves and to others. culture is thought of as a deeply rooted phenomenon that is omnipresent, influential, and difficult to change (schein, 2010). others define organisational culture more simply as established habits that form part of the everyday lives and behaviours of the employees (bělohlávek, košťan, & šuler, 2001). although organisational culture has been explored in businesses and also in education (school culture), organisational culture in residential care is a peripheral, albeit not entirely unresearched, topic (lukšík, 2012; sekera, 2008; pytka, 2000; mišíková, 2008; killett et al., 2014). clearly, investigations of organisational culture in residential care should take account of both the normative conception — the rules and principles that help the children and young people develop; and the anthropological conception of something shared by all members of the organisation that ensures repeated behaviour patterns (brinkmann, 2007). škoviera and pukančík (2012) divide the factors that shape organisational culture in residential care into 15 cultureforming spheres: the location, interior, clients, staff, structure of life, boundaries, material security, use of personal items, management policy, rules, relationships, success status, connection with the real world, language, and, lastly, traditions, rituals and symbols. a number of authors have highlighted the effect organisational culture and climate have on staff well-being and the organisation’s outcomes (carr, schmidt, ford, & deshon, 2003; hartnell, ou, & kinicki, 2011; sackmann, 2011), including outcomes for those in the child welfare system (glisson & green, 2011; glisson & hemmelgarn, 1998; glisson, hemmelgarn, green, &williams, 2013; yoo & brooks, 2005). james (2011) described various models of group care in relation to child outcomes; for example, positive peer culture (transforming a negative peer context into a positive peer culture), the teaching-family model (emphasising family-style living and learning, with clearly defined goals), the sanctuary model (creating organisational culture through a trauma-informed method), the stop-gap model (breaking the youngster’s downward spiral and preparing the post-discharge environment for integration), and the re-education model (focusing on competence and learning, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 89 building relations, and developing a culture of questioning and informed, or data-driven, decisionmaking through a strength-based approach and an ecological orientation). elements with a positive effect on the lives of children in residential care include parental engagement (jenson & whittaker, 1987), educational attainment (trout, hagaman, casey, reid, & epstein, 2008), placement stability (ward, 2009), peer relations in care facilities (bayer, hjalmarsson, & pozen, 2009), and expected duration of treatment (lindquist, 2011). affirmative and supportive family relationships help children develop and maintain an interest in education and academic accomplishment (gilligan, 2007, jackson & martin, 1998, samuels & pryce, 2008). similarly jahnukainen (2004) stated that although the risk of exclusion among residential care leavers is reduced by factors such as education and social service provision, the formation of close informal relationships outside the facility also has an important effect. in their study of care leavers in israel, sulimani-aidan, benbenishty, dinisman, and zeira (2013) showed that optimism, preparing for independent life whilst in residential care, and support from the mother were beneficial to the social integration of care leavers with regard to economic status, accommodation, and adjustment to military service. the concept of quality of life was originally associated with economic and socioeconomic research and used as a population indicator in statistical analyses of large population groups. later on it was adopted in social science and became part of public policy. the world health organization (who) quality of life definition and associated measures were used in these fields, with quality of life being defined as “the individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns” (who, 1997, p. 3). “it is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their relationship to salient features of their environment” (who, 1997, p. 3). in her analysis of this definition, bačová (2004) highlights the need to take account of people’s social inequalities and their sources as well as the relationship between their quality of life and their value systems, goals, desires, and expectations in life. it is usual to distinguish between the objective and subjective dimensions of quality of life. the objective dimension captures the person’s material sufficiency, social acceptance, and physical health. subjective quality of life usually concerns feelings, well-being, and satisfaction (bačová, 2008). hartlová and hartl (2000) defined quality of life as equivalent to happiness with life, with the most common characteristics being self-sufficiency in caring for oneself, mobility, degree of selfrealisation, and spiritual harmony — the level of life satisfaction. research into quality of life carried out in great britain (bowling, 1995) suggested several important areas that can be observed when investigating quality of life, such as relationships with family and friends, personal health and the health of loved ones, finances, accommodation, living standard, relationships, work opportunities, free time, job satisfaction, education, religion, and environment. a study on health-related quality of life among adolescents in residential care indicated that a significant number of young people had health risks, and that gender (female) and psychotropic medication worsened the overall score (nelson et al., 2014). children who had been international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 90 maltreated in residential care reported a lower quality of life compared to the reference groups (greger, myhre, lydersen, & jozefiak, 2015). however, some findings are counterintuitive. carroll, duffy, and martin (2014) found that quality of life in certain groups in residential care was higher than in adolescents from mainstream schools. the highest scores were reported among children in a day-group setting, followed by children in secure placements, while children from mainstream schools came third (comparison group), and the worst results were found among the young people in the residential group. the quality of life in residential care leavers may be affected by objective difficulties relating to living conditions in areas such as accommodations (biehal & wade, 1999, wade & dixon, 2006), employment, education (jackson, 2008), income, and health (dixon, 2008); as well as by subjective satisfaction with life — self-respect, mental health, partner relations, social support, desires, expectations, and meaning of life (dixon, 2008). despite displaying trends similar to those found in other european countries, residential care in slovakia has its own particular features. in 2013 there were 14,074 children (1.4% of the child population) being cared for outside their own families in slovakia. since 2000 the proportion of children being brought up in care has risen (in 2002, it was 0.99%); however, there has been a decline in the proportion of children in residential care and a rise in the proportion in foster care (fico, 2015). there are two main kinds of residential care in slovakia: children’s homes (chs) and re-education centres (rcs). chs are a type of care for children up to the age of 18 (or 25 if attending university). placements are made on the basis of a court ruling in situations where parents do not or cannot care for the child themselves, and end once the child becomes independent or can be returned to the rehabilitated family. an rc is a special centre for children up to 18 years of age who have behavioural difficulties and long-term social issues. placements are made on request by the child’s legal representative or as a result of a court ruling. the aim is to train and educate the children, including vocational training, and for them to subsequently return to their original social environment. at the time of data collection there were 66 children’s homes in slovakia, which in 2013 provided shelter for 4,798 children. a further 1,394 children were placed with foster families under the supervision of chs. in 2013 there were 572 children placed in 12 rcs (fico, 2015). there has been a strong move to deinstitutionalise residential care services in slovakia, just as in other european countries. it is hoped that residential care will improve with the deinstitutionalisation of care and the transformation of large facilities into smaller family-type units. however, slovakia’s case shows that this may not turn out to be a panacea. the transformation policy primarily affects chs and only to a much lesser degree rcs. in comparison with other developed countries, the aftercare provided for residential care leavers in slovakia is modest. records are not kept on how care leavers adapt to ordinary life, whether they find work, or what their quality of life is. residential care staff sometimes maintain contact with care leavers but this is generally on an individual basis with no systematic information available. this is despite the fact that how young people settle into ordinary life is an important criterion for assessing residential care providers on the quality of their services and their effectiveness in preparing young people for life after care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 91 method the aim of the empirical research was to ascertain the post-care quality of life in residential care leavers and how it relates to the culture of the care facility they were placed in. we concentrated on their quality of life one to two years after they had left care. the research was conducted in three stages. first we investigated the organisational culture of the eight residential care facilities in the study (five chs and three rcs). then we looked at the quality of life of care leavers from these facilities, and finally we investigated the organisational culture of the care facilities whose leavers had a higher quality of life. to operationalise organisational culture we used the important culture-shaping elements of an organisation (škoviera & pukančík, 2012). we thus took account of both the normative side (rules) and the anthropological side (social relationships) as well as specific aspects of residential care. we investigated 10 different areas of organisational culture from various perspectives (views of the different actors in residential care) and using a variety of methods (questionnaires, interviews, observations). the 10 areas of organisational culture are: physical environment; social setting; individual privacy, and control over personal affairs and finances; care provided to children by staff; daily routine, social boundaries, and norms; contact with the outside (family, friends); social relationships (formal and informal, close relationships); conflicts and conflict resolution; stress management and coping with difficulties; and preparations for leaving residential care. in stage two we ascertained quality of life among young residential care leavers. since quality of life can relate to positive life values (bačová, 2004), we included questions about young people’s value preferences in the interviews as well as general questions. in the third stage of the research we again investigated the components of the organisational culture of the facility, comparing the facilities where care leavers had a higher quality of life with those where care leavers had a poorer quality of life in order to identify the characteristics of the better facilities. research method and sample to research organisational culture we used a combined qualitative and quantitative methodology and several methods (observation, interview, questionnaire). we used triangulation of methods and triangulation of respondents to ensure validity of results. the research methods were observations (a researcher spent several days at the facility; filled out structured record sheets and noted down his or her open comments), semi-structured interviews, and anonymous questionnaires assessing satisfaction with the various aspects of organisational culture. in a total of eight facilities — three rcs and five chs — we interviewed 34 prospective care leavers, nine directors or deputy directors, 14 carers, five social workers, six psychologists, and two teachers. we also obtained 104 completed questionnaires from young adults and 95 from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 92 carers and directors or deputy directors on satisfaction with the organisation’s culture (10 basic areas were specified in greater detail and broken down into 33 items, such as food, accommodation, health, free time, peer relations, and leaving preparations). in the interviews we asked the young adults about the 10 areas of organisational culture with the aim of deepening our knowledge of the facility, the young adults, and their preparations for leaving care. to enhance the validity by triangulating the sources we also interviewed other actors (carers, directors, psychologists, etc.) about the organisational culture of the residential care facility. the observations relating to these areas covered physical environment, social environment, contact with external environment, activities, rituals, and rules and regulations. the second stage of the research involved 39 residential care leavers who had spent at least one year in the care facility where we conducted the research and who had been out of care for at least one year. we contacted the care leavers using information obtained from the care facility and the snowball method. the research methods used were interviews (27 participants) and group discussions (12 participants). the research focused on their recollections of life in the care centre, their preparations for leaving, and events occurring immediately after departure, and finally looked at the nature and quality of their current life, which was the subject of our analysis. the research was conducted by five researchers who had multiple previous experiences of performing similar research. the interviews were held once informed consent had been obtained and after stressing that participation was voluntary and anonymous, and that the interview would take place in a private area of the facility. the research was conducted face-to-face and by telephone. once the researchers had established rapport with the young person they freely moved on to topics and questions, whilst making an effort to keep the conversation natural and giving the young people space to freely express themselves. the research was conducted once informed consent had been obtained from the facility director, acting as the legal representative of the boys and girls, and also from all those participating in the research. in slovakia, there is no requirement to obtain permission from an ethics commission; nonetheless, we proceeded in accordance with the code of ethics issued by the slovak academy of sciences. method of analysis the interviews and discussions from the first and second research stages were recorded and transcribed verbatim. the observation notes were written out. the analysis was conducted using grounded theory methods devised by strauss and corbin (1999): open coding and the constant comparative method (strauss, 1987) with the help of the atlas.ti software. in the first step of the analysis of organisational culture, 88 categories were identified through open coding, including trust, information, contact with a social worker, departure preparations, rules contravention, rituals and celebrations, suggested care improvements, difficult life situations, and so on. in the second step of the analysis, seven categories were obtained: physical and material environment; social relationships; organisational rules, methods, and rituals; care and education; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 93 contact with home environment; conditions for self-realisation; and borderline situations and solutions. data from the satisfaction questionnaire were processed using standard statistical methods and spss. the open coding of the care leavers’ responses produced 44 codes, including, for example: future, plans, accommodation, having a child, important events, values, reasons for being in care, and finances. in the second stage of the analysis 11 categories were obtained: accommodation, finances, work, free time, education, worries and fears, enjoyment of life, satisfaction with life, important positive values, and difficult life situations, both resolved and unresolved. during the analysis a new category emerged, which we labelled “competences for handling life situations”. subsequently, the young people’s views of these areas were categorised as positive or negative. quality of life was then generated from the total positive scores minus the negative ones in the 12 categories listed above. results quantitative analysis of organisational culture in the first stage, the quantitative analysis, we analysed how the young adults and carers in the facilities viewed the organisational culture in terms of satisfaction with its various aspects, measured on a likert scale ranging from 1 (excellent) to 5 (inadequate). the results are presented separately for the five chs and the three rcs; for both analyses, a mann–whitney test was done (p ≤ .001). children’s homes: the quantitative analysis of satisfaction among the young people and carers with various aspects of life in chs found a high level of satisfaction in both groups with the following categories: accommodation (young adults: x̄ = 1.69, sd = 0.86; carers: x̄ = 1.42, sd = 0.66), education (young adults: x̄ = 1.71, sd = 1.02; carers: x̄ = 1.61, sd = 0.76), information about life outside the facility (young adults: x̄ = 1.80, sd = 1.13; carers: x̄ = 1.73, sd = 0.64) and fostering independence (young adults: x̄ = 1.80, sd = 0.99; carers: x̄ = 1.59, sd = 0.70). lower levels of satisfaction were found for the system of rewards and punishments (young adults: x̄ = 2.67, sd = 1.53; carers: x̄ = 2.16, sd = 0.79), the system for working with children (young adults: x̄ = 2.42, sd = 1.38; carers: x̄ = 2.06, sd = 0.78), and the possibility of using specialist services outside the facility (young adults: x̄ = 1.69, sd = 1.31; carers: x̄ = 2.26, sd = 1.34). in a number of areas, though, satisfaction levels varied between the young adults and the carers in chs. the greatest differences (mann–whitney u test, p ≤ .001) were that, compared to the carers, the young adults expressed greater satisfaction with progress made whilst in care, with peer relations in and outside the care facility, and with the possibility of using specialist services outside the care facility. but the young adults were less satisfied with clothing, finances, health care, carers helping solve problems, contact allowed with family, and fulfilment of religious needs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 94 re-education centres: the quantitative analysis of satisfaction of the young people and carers with aspects of life in the rcs showed high rates of satisfaction in both groups regarding the following areas: physical health (young adults: x̄ = 2.05, sd = 1.101; carers: x̄ = 2.00, sd = 0.86), exercise opportunities (young adults: x̄ = 2.11, sd = 1.132; carers: x̄ = 1.93, sd = 0.90), carers helping solve problems (young adults: x̄ = 2.16, sd = 1.19; carers: x̄ = 1.89, sd = 0.685), and system of working with children in the centre (young adults: x̄ = 2.18, sd = 0.940; carers: x̄ = 2.18, sd = 0.86). low levels of satisfaction were found in relation to food (young adults: x̄ = 2.98, sd = 1.40; carers: x̄ = 2.57, sd = 0.93), fulfilment of religious needs (young adults: x̄ = 2.82, sd = 1.27; carers: x̄ = 2.56, sd = 0.93), accommodation (young adults: x̄ = 2.77, sd = 1.33; carers: x̄ = 2.79, sd = 0.957), and possibilities for contact with specialists outside the centre (young adults: x̄ = 2.53, sd = 1.123; carers: x̄ = 2.87, sd = 0.96). in a number of areas, though, satisfaction levels in rcs varied between the young adults and the carers. the greatest differences (mann–whitney u test, p ≤ .001) were higher satisfaction rates in the young adults than the carers on progress made whilst in care, peer relations in and outside the care centre, family relations, and preparations for leaving care. by contrast the young adults were less satisfied with the system of rewards and punishment and with relations with carers. qualitative analysis of organisational culture the content analysis of seven categories produced the following findings:  physical and material environment were not important. they were generally substantially better than the children’s home environments, especially in chs; in rcs, however, there was a low level of satisfaction with the food.  social relations with the carers were positive: most of the children had someone close to them in the facility, especially in chs. carer attitudes to roma children and prejudice about their roots was a problem in chs.  rules were a critical part of the organisational culture. there were problems concerning the levels of trust among the children and young people regarding the handling of personal information. in chs, the fact that life was conducted in small family groups acted as a barrier to the development of wider social contact and cohesion in the facility as a whole, especially with regard to the setting of rewards and punishments and the young people’s involvement in this. also, in chs, the provision of care suffered from an excess of bureaucracy to the detriment of one-toone work between carer and child.  the main aims in the care facilities were to ensure that the children’s and young people’s basic needs were met, that they were healthy, and to stress the importance of finishing school and the need to prepare for life after care. in chs, overly attentive care, in which the children were “handed everything on a silver platter”, discouraged international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 95 them from developing their independence and a sense of humility. an excessive focus on discipline in some chs ran counter to the expected family atmosphere. the education the children and young people obtained did not always provide them with good employment prospects.  care was taken in the facilities to ensure that the children and young people had contact with their original family but, in general, relations between them did not improve greatly. there was capacity for making it easier for children and young people to have contact with specialists and organisations outside the facilities to help them prepare for life after care.  the children and young people generally felt that the carers encouraged them to be independent when seeing to their basic needs such as food and clothing.  the facilities also had borderline cases where children and young people came into contact with drugs, bullying, and racism. quality of life and competencies in residential care leavers the first year after leaving care was characterised by change: moving between different kinds of accommodation, with periods of employment and periods of being out of work with no income. the quality of accommodation depended on the young person’s financial situation, which could have been improved by learning about finances and planning the next steps whilst still in care — savings, careful management, social support, and so forth. family, acquaintances, siblings, friends, non-profit organisations, charities, and carers could all significantly help care leavers deal with their situations. young adults faced problems finding work locally. some resolved this by travelling to other regions or going abroad. even after surviving the initial period of upheaval, some said they still worried about their future financial security, maintaining their jobs, their ability to finish school, and whether they would be able to bring up their own children. the values that were important to them were family, a support system and stability, and to help people close to them. some care leavers expressed dissatisfaction with their level of education and had aspirations to study in the near future. we used 12 areas to determine quality of life scores. in our interview transcripts we identified positive and negative experiences in each area for each participant and then allocated a plus or a minus point for each qualitative answer. the sample of 34 care leavers was then ranked from highest to lowest quality of life using these total scores for the 12 areas. this analysis showed that two facilities had care leavers with high quality of life scores. the positive scores related mainly to satisfaction with accommodation, work, free-time opportunities, and being able to resolve difficult life situations. their responses provided more examples of a good life than those of other participants. care leavers who reported a better quality of life (11 out of the total research sample of 34 young adults) stood out in terms of several skills and competencies. they reported being able to: form, maintain, and sustain a relationship with a partner; take joy in everyday life; improve their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 96 living conditions; pursue hobbies; support a household and family financially while staying within the law; help other children from the care facility; and cope with loneliness after leaving care. moreover, these young adults described having a sense of belonging, team spirit, responsibility, caution, determination, and emotional stability; they had decided not to break off supportive relationships with care staff. culture of residential care facilities where young people had a higher quality of life once we had identified care leavers with higher quality of life scores, the next step was to analyse the organisational culture of the care facility they had spent time in — one ch and one rc. the characteristics of these facilities are described in the following paragraphs. physical and material environment: these facilities were clean and tidy (rc) and had better equipped living areas (ch). the young people chose the equipment (ch) and had their own personal items, such as music, toiletries, clothes, and toys (ch, rc); they had opportunities to earn money and manage their own finances (ch). social relationships: it was deemed important that each young person have the support of at least one person in the care facility and one outside the care facility, and that the children mutually support and assist one another (more in the ch, less in the rc). relationships between the children were based on mutual trust (rc, ch) and affection (ch), and they formed relationships with people outside the facility that were not weighed down with negative experiences (rc). they valued the carers’ professional but human approach (rc). organisation rules, methods, and rituals: the facilities stated that all rules were to be respected and that distinctions were not made on an ethnic or racial basis. the established rules were subject to regular revision, and placed clear expectations on children and staff alike (rc). there was potential for the children to be more involved in creating the rules (rc, ch). the young adults were critical of the shared responsibility rule (rc) — a rule imposing group sanctions for non-compliance by an individual. turnover of care staff sometimes led to problems with adherence to rules (ch). many children were not used to rules and daily routines in their previous lives and only gradually became used to them (ch). regular group meetings were held on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis for different purposes. these included welcoming or bidding farewell to residents, sharing news and providing updates on progress in education and behaviour, publicising events, and discussing the rota. carers operated from the principle that “boredom is the source of bad behaviour” (rc). compulsory duties for the young adults included gardening, helping in the kitchen, and cleaning (rc), and children were encouraged to perform these duties as well (rc). care and education: the emphasis in care was on completing education (rc), treating the young adults as adults rather than as children, and providing them with the space to act independently (rc). efforts were made to perform the functions of a family (rc), to operate as a family (ch), and to develop loving relationships to compensate for any lack of parental love (ch). showing an interest, respecting the child, and providing help and advice were more important than international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 97 meting out punishments and bad marks. the care regime involved turning negative thinking and behaviour into positive thinking and behaviour (rc), improving communication with close family relations and friends where relationships are difficult, making realistic plans for the future, and preparing to leave care (rc and ch). conditions were in place for the young people to talk through their problems with carers, including intimacy-related concerns (rc and ch). experts were invited to the facilities to give talks on topics such as drugs and hiv/aids (rc, ch). a number of leisure activities were on offer (especially rc). sessions with a psychologist were compulsory, and the young adults had conflicting views on this (rc). personal occasions were celebrated semiformally, for example, with a cake and a song organised by the staff and children of the facility (rc); or informally by the young adults, who would decide for themselves whether and how to celebrate the event, often in flat units without staff (ch). the carers and teachers did not see their work as just another job, but went beyond their duties to help the children (rc). however, they felt that the administrative burden of their work was increasing, and creating a barrier to caring for the children (ch). although improvements could have been made in the area of education (e.g., by expanding the limited number of subjects on offer to improve employment prospects), it is important to note that positive attitudes to education were encouraged (rc), that the young people had the motivation to finish school (rc), that they received assistance when preparing for school (ch), and that they viewed education as a means of having a better life in the future (ch). various staff members assisted the young adults with their preparations for leaving care (ch and rc). contact with their social environment: the facilities provided general support for the children to maintain contact with their biological families (ch, rc). young adults could also maintain contact with peers outside the facilities with the carers’ consent (ch). conditions for self-realisation: the children and young adults could pursue leisure activities (sport, reading, looking after animals), and this is seen as a means of escape from everyday routine (ch, rc). the young adults also had opportunities to earn money (ch). borderline situations and solutions: when conflicts and borderline situations occurred (ch, rc), they were resolved on the spot, then considered again later at the evening meeting (rc). discussion and conclusion the research has shown that it is not possible to form an entirely uniform view of organisational culture in these selected care facilities. differences were found between the organisational cultures of the chs and rcs and in the way they were perceived by the children and young adults and the staff. for aspects of the organisational culture in chs, positive agreement between residents and staff was found in relation to meeting the resident’s basic needs (e.g., food, housing, clothing), trying to maintain an optimal standard of living, the emphasis on education, the information international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 98 supplied about life after care and encouragement to become independent, and the importance of having close relationships in the facility and contact with the original family. in the rcs there was also positive agreement that the children’s basic needs were met; however, here this referred more to health and exercise. in terms of the social and educational side in the rcs, important aspects were: carers helping the children solve problems, the system of working with the children, and contact with the original family. also, some importance was attached to preparations for leaving care and the support given to children and young people to satisfy their ordinary needs. problem areas in the chs that the actors agreed on were: the treatment of roma children, children being isolated in small groups and lacking a sense of belonging and solidarity with the other children, staff doing too much for the children, an excessive focus on discipline, weak progression in family relations, the organisational rules being too strict, issues of trust between the carers (particularly psychologists) and the children, and opportunities to have contact with specialists outside the facility. problem areas in the rcs were: the standard of living, the fulfilment of religious needs, opportunities to have contact with specialists outside the centre, the complexity and inflexibility of the organisational rules, and issues of trust between the carers (particularly psychologists) and the children. although having a positive relationship with the original family (jenson & whittaker, 1987) and other positive social bonds (jahnukainen, 2004) are considered important factors in preparing for independent life, in the facilities investigated in this research, developing positive family relationships had proved difficult and only peer relations were viewed positively by the young adults. schooling and educational attainment, which have been shown to be key aspects of preparing for future life (jahnukainen, 2004; trout et al., 2008) were only emphasised in the chs in our research. one interesting finding was that the young adults, in both the chs and the rcs, expressed greater optimism about the progress they achieved whilst in care and about their peer relations in and outside the facility than did the carers. the young adults in the chs were also more optimistic about the use of specialist services outside the facility, and the young adults in the rcs viewed their relationships with their families more positively than staff did. this finding suggests there is hope of a successful outcome for young people leaving care, as the experiences of leavers with a better quality of life suggest that optimism and hope contribute to a higher quality of life. equally, though, the divergent views of the carers and children on this may indicate that the children have a less realistic view of their lives now and in the future. sulimani-aidan et al. (2013) pointed out that other studies have shown that optimism and being prepared for independent life are also important for the social and workplace inclusion of residential care leavers. given this finding, we can question whether supporting optimism among children might better prepare them for life after care than a policy of teaching them to plan their futures more cautiously. our research shows that coping well with the transitional first year after leaving care was important for quality of life. we recorded indications that care leavers experienced fluctuations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 99 and sought stability in the three linked areas of work, finances, and accommodation. supportive relationships, an ability to focus on positive values, determination, and being content with modest conditions all feed into the enjoyment of everyday life among care leavers. the main elements of residential care that promote future quality of life mentioned by care leavers were preparing for departure whilst still in care and continuing support from staff. care leavers who reported a better quality of life overall did not generally have better financial situations but were better able than other participants to deal with difficult life situations. one explanation for this may be the use of cognitive mechanisms and affective components in assessing quality of life, which enables a person to experience personal well-being despite adverse living circumstances (džuka, 2004). the research shows that young people placed in some facilities (which we shall call type q) had better post-care quality of life than others, and that these facilities had some special characteristics. non-type q chs were physically and materially equipped to the same standard. problems with the food and accommodation were identified in rcs. we found that conditions were similar in type q facilities but that the young people in them were additionally able to make their own decisions, had their own personal items, and, in chs, they could earn money and manage their own finances. in terms of social relationships the facilities were generally careful to ensure all residents had at least one person to whom they were close, and this was especially the case in chs. in type q facilities we also found that the relationships between children were built on trust, that the carers adopted a professional and human approach, and that important relationships were established with people from “outside” who had different life experiences. these are key characteristics of the positive peer culture model (james, 2011); however, the model has not so far been implemented systematically across the board in slovak care facilities. the organisational rules of the facilities were generally criticised. in type q facilities it was stated that all actors had to respect the rules. staff members in these facilities were ethnically sensitive in contrast to the attitudes to roma children that are widespread in residential facilities in slovakia; this is not conscious discrimination but clear distinctions are made between roma children and others, both implicitly and symbolically in everyday practice (kriglerová, 2015). type q facilities also had established rules but they were regularly reviewed and the children and young adults had some say in this. the rules were learned gradually during the initial transitional stage of the placement. in type q facilities there were regular social, work, and leisure gatherings. in non-type q facilities children expressed dissatisfaction with the system of care. the system was aimed at ensuring the children’s needs were met and that they were educated. we also found both restrictive and excessive approaches to care. in type q facilities attempts were made to emulate the family and also to develop loving relationships. in these facilities relations with the young people were based on partnerships, and the approach was more appreciative than restrictive. the young adults took up opportunities to confide in someone and were able to have contact with specialists who visited the facility. the staff paid attention to preparing the young people for their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 100 future lives. although the quality of the education was a problem in these facilities, support for pursuing an education was deemed important. in both q and non-q type facilities, contact with the biological family was encouraged; however, progress in forging better relations between the children and family members was poor. in the type q ch, contact with peers outside the home was supported. in non-type q facilities young people did have free time to themselves but they often spent it attending to their basic needs (clothing, personal care, etc.) in type q facilities free time was accorded greater importance and seen as a means of escape from everyday life (e.g., hobbies, sports, spending time with people outside of the facility). in one of these facilities young people were able to earn extra money during their free time. in both types of facility there were also situations involving drugs, bullying, and racism. in type q facilities a system had been set up to deal with conflicts and problem situations. these findings are similar to those of škoviera (2014): in order to improve the quality of the organisational culture and its effect on children and young people, one has to look at the way life is organised in the facility because it is accepted and internalised by the children and forms the basis upon which they organise their own lives and come to respect social norms. traditions, rituals, and symbols create order in life and also provide experiences that are a break from the ordinary and connect the facility to real life. our findings underline the importance of two elements of residential care that are associated with resilience and social inclusion (ungar, 2005): regular schooling and recognising that education is the best path to a better life. other important elements are contact with more successful peers, developing interests and hobbies to improve young people’s social skills and bring them into contact with a wider range of people outside the family and school environments, and meeting important adults who can offer support and encouragement and who model certain behaviours. limitations this study has a number of limitations. one of the most serious is the fact that it is very hard to establish a clear causal effect between organisational culture and quality of life once the individual has left a particular facility. quality of life in young adults leaving a facility can be affected by a number of other factors including the influence of the original family setting, the influence of people important to that person, access to resources, and so on. we presume that quality of life is higher in care leavers who are contactable than in those who are hard to reach. there is also a time-lag problem. we investigated the care facilities one year after discharge and changes could have occurred during that time. we attempted to overcome the time lag by comparing the views of care leavers with those still in care. further longitudinal research could produce more detailed findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 101 conclusion the results indicate that a number of factors in the organisational culture of a facility can contribute to quality of life among care leavers. it is important that emphasis should be placed on: finishing education, providing room for independent action, adopting an accommodating approach to care that can substitute for parental love, encouraging positive thinking, fostering better relationships with the original family, encouraging promising social ties, promoting planning for the future, developing mutual assistance and support between the children in the facility, and encouraging hobbies and ways of earning money so that the young people can gradually “arrange” their own lives whilst still in care. it is also important that no ethnic or racial distinctions are made in the facility and that conditions are in place for the children and young people to talk through their problems. ensuring that the facility has the appropriate material conditions and that everybody respects the rules is also important. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(2): 86–108 102 references andersson, b. 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(2005). the role of organizational variables in predicting service effectiveness: an analysis of a multilevel model. research on social work practice, 15(4), 267–277. doi:10.1177/1049731505275868 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.07.009 http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/63482/1/who_msa_mnh_psf_97.4.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731505275868 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818645 the experiences of children with disabilities and primary caregivers on the social inclusion of children with disabilities in ethiopia belaynesh tefera, alice schippers, marloes van engen, and jack van der klink abstract: this article presents the findings of a qualitative study on the social inclusion of children with disabilities in addis ababa, ethiopia and how this affects their achievement of valued life goals. the study is based on focus group discussions with children with disabilities and primary caregivers of such children. the thematic analysis is based on family quality of life and the capability approach, which are used to explain the effects of social inclusion (and exclusion) on children with disabilities and their families in three areas of quality of life: being, belonging, and becoming. the study also looked at how the social inclusion of children with disabilities can be actualised. the results of the study confirm the existence of considerable challenges to the social inclusion of children with disabilities in addis ababa, which is reflected in their capabilities. the results suggest that children with disabilities need assistance and support to achieve a good quality of life. they also indicate the need for the involvement of the wider community to support children with disabilities and their families to enhance the capability of such children, and so improve their family quality of life. keywords: quality of life, capability approach, lowand middle-income countries (lmics), ethiopia, social inclusion belaynesh tefera phd (the corresponding author) is an instructor in the school of commerce, faculty of business and economics, addis ababa university, po box 3131, addis ababa, ethiopia. email: elkumikibetty@gmail.com alice schippers phd is a coordinating senior researcher at the disability studies unit of the medical humanities department of the vu university medical center in amsterdam, 1880 de boelelaan 1105, amsterdam, the netherlands, and at disability studies netherlands, 3811 hr amersfoort, the netherlands. she is also the general director of disability studies in the netherlands. email: alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl marloes van engen phd works in the department of human resource studies, faculty of social and behavioral sciences, tilburg university, 5037 ab tilburg, the netherlands. email: m.l.vengen@tilburguniversity.edu jack van der klink phd is full professor in the tilburg school of social and behavioral sciences, tranzo (centre for care and welfare), tilburg university, 5037 ab, tilburg, the netherlands. email: j.j.l.vdrklink@uvt.nl mailto:elkumikibetty@gmail.com mailto:alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl mailto:m.l.vengen@tilburguniversity.edu mailto:j.j.l.vdrklink@uvt.nl international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 147 social inclusion is an important element of well-being for children (biggeri, ballet, & comim, 2011). the world bank (2013) defines it as “the process of improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of people, disadvantaged on the basis of their identity, to take part in society” (p. 4). social inclusion is a key component of the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (hendricks, 2007) and, as a stated right, is a legitimate goal for community-based services and support (cobigo, ouellette-kuntz, lysaght, & martin, 2012). people with disabilities face many barriers to full participation in society and are likely to face social exclusion (islam, 2015) by family, friends, communities, and the government. in a study of 25 belgian families, their social networks were found to comprise mainly family members and professionals (steel, poppe, vandevelde, van hove, & claes, 2011), although the latter are rare in developing countries (samadi & mcconkey, 2011). children with disabilities and their family members often experience bullying, stigmatisation, and discrimination (kinnear, link, ballan, & fischbach, 2016). the intersection of disability and poverty aggravates their situations, making children with disabilities and their family members who live in poverty vulnerable and isolated (trani et al., 2015). as a result, children with disabilities experience high rates of social exclusion (chamberlain, kasari, & rotheram-fuller, 2007). the presence of a child with a disability in a family also affects the lives of other family members (valicenti-mcdermott et al., 2015). members of families with children who have disabilities, especially in developing countries such as ethiopia, are at risk of increased stress, social isolation, and stigmatisation, as well as decreased qol and psychological well-being (gupta & singhal, 2005). furthermore, children with disabilities often need support and guidance from their families long after they have reached adulthood (aldersey, francis, haines, & chiu, 2017). this draws attention to the ongoing need to support parents and primary caregivers across the lifespan of the person with a disability (bayat, 2007; singer, ethridge, & aldana, 2007). one way to address these issues is to integrate the family quality of life (fqol) theory and the capability approach. since disability impacts the whole family (summers et al., 2005), investigating the lives of children with disabilities and their family members, and constructing a contextual fqol based on the values and culture of the society in which they live (shogren & turnbull, 2006), is crucial to enabling children with disabilities to enjoy the “beings” and “doings” that they value (sen, 1992). although there are indications that low social inclusion is a problem (simplican, leader, kosciulek, & leahy, 2015), there is a dearth of up-to-date research and scientific literature on the nature and severity of the social exclusion of children with disabilities in developing countries such as ethiopia. in fact, even in developed countries, where there are in general numerous studies on social inclusion, research on the social inclusion experiences of children with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 148 disabilities is scarce. the studies available mostly focus on the requirement of social inclusion for the fulfilment of the educational needs of children with disabilities. this study attempts to fill this gap by building on the findings of a preliminary study in addis ababa, ethiopia to explore the beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and experiences of children with disabilities and their primary caregivers in relation to the social inclusion of children with disabilities. it also aims to investigate how social inclusion tends to bring positive life changes to both children with disabilities and their families (king et al., 2003; schalock, 2004). the specific research questions addressed were: (a) how do children with disabilities experience social inclusion?, and (b) what are the primary caregivers’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours in relation to the social inclusion of their children with disabilities? method conceptual framework social inclusion was conceptualised for the purposes of this study using the theory of fqol and the capability approach. social inclusion is a critical component of qol (schalock, 2004; verdugo, schalock, keith, & stancliffe, 2005) and gives children with disabilities opportunities to be involved in valued life domains (sen, 1992). it also contributes to fqol. this investigation is based on the qol domains identified by raphael, renwick, brown, and rootman (1996) that are also applicable to fqol. the two constructs, capability approach and fqol, are explained using the three themes of being, becoming, and belonging, as those themes have social contexts that are important to the qol of children with disabilities and their family members (brown, cobigo, & taylor, 2015). the capability approach, developed by nobel laureate amartya sen, is an ethical framework that states that social justice should focus on supporting the capabilities of all individuals to conceive, pursue, and achieve their life plans (sen, 1999; venkatapuram, 2011). capabilities are understood as the opportunity to fulfil functionings — “beings and doings people have reason to value” (sen, 1992, p. 40) — that are feasible for a person to achieve. the capability approach looks at how people can attain goals that are valuable to them. the approach states explicitly that it is the shared responsibility of the individual and the social context to facilitate the building up of a person’s capability set so that they can be enabled to achieve a valuable life. this makes a claim about society that is in line with the claims of the world bank (2013) and cobigo and colleagues (2012). according to sen’s (1999) capability approach, resources (the means to achieve a valuable life) such as income and wealth, but also health, only have meaning because of what individuals can be and do using them, converting them into outcomes. for sen, equity in opportunities and capabilities (i.e., the “freedom to achieve” the important goals that people have) is central, not equality in means, as in most economic and political philosophical theories. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 149 thus, instead of focusing exclusively on the means or instrumental value of goods, the capability approach advocates for a focus on what we really value and care about, and on what individuals are practically able and enabled to be and do — on what they can achieve. moreover, the desire to be valued in one’s society, for example by peers, has traditionally been explained by the existence of natural instinct: the need for social inclusion is considered a normal part of every person’s identity. in addition, being socially isolated means having limited access to external supports (chenoweth & stehlik, 2004), which makes children with disabilities dependent only on their families; this in turn affects fqol. being, belonging, and becoming, the domains of fqol identified by raphael et al. (1996) and used in this paper, explain the effects of social inclusion (and exclusion) experiences on children with disabilities and their families. based on the same authors, these three themes are further classified into subthemes:  being: physical, psychological, and spiritual;  belonging: physical, social, and community; and  becoming: growth, practical, and leisure. the same domains of being, belonging, and becoming can also be explained in terms of the capability model: being is similar to the “means to achieve” in the capability approach; belonging is partly similar to “conversion factors” and partly to “capabilities” (“freedom to achieve”); and becoming is similar to “functionings” (“achievements”). thus, the three areas of fqol suggested by raphael et al. (1996) appear to fit nicely with sen’s (1999) capability model. focus group participants and setting the methodology used was focus group discussions with children with disabilities and with primary caregivers of children with disabilities. the focus group discussions were conducted in the conference room of the school of commerce, addis ababa university. a representative of the ethiopian national disability action network (endan) chose the participants from those who had been put forward by various nongovernmental organisations (ngos) under the umbrella of endan. the representative met the children with disabilities and caregivers, and informed them about the general objective of the study and the major theme of the focus group discussion. those who agreed to participate were selected for the focus group discussion. nine children with disabilities participated in the first focus group discussion: eight of them were 12 to 17 years old, and one was 18 years old; two were deaf (male), two had leg problems (both female, one a wheelchair user), and five were blind (female). in the second focus group discussion, eight primary caregivers of children with disabilities participated: six were mothers, one was a blind woman who runs an ngo taking care of blind children, and one was an uncle of a child with a disability. the duration of the focus group discussion with children with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 150 disabilities was 1 hour and 48 minutes; the discussion with primary caregivers lasted 2 hours and 6 minutes. in what follows, the result of the analyses of the two focus group discussions are presented together and the most expressive excerpts are used for all themes and subthemes. procedures at the beginning of each session, a moderator (a blind woman) facilitated the focus group discussions and elaborated on what social inclusion means in the context of the study. there was also a sign language translator present for children with a hearing impairment. the first author controlled the voice recorders and took notes. a semi-structured interview guide was used to provide general direction for the focus group discussions. the focus group discussions were performed in amharic (the native language of both the interviewer and interviewees). the recorded focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and translated from amharic to english by a language professional. the first author carried out the final check on the translations. ethical review procedures in order to ensure that ethical practices were followed and maintained throughout the research, various procedures and actions were taken to maintain the security and trust of the participants. for the focus group discussions, a letter of consent was signed by the ngo representative on behalf of each child participant and by each primary caregiver participant. prior to signing, the focus group participants were advised that they could withdraw from the study at any time. permission to record the focus group discussions was sought both as a courtesy and to make the nature of the study and the researchers’ intent clear to the participants. ethical approval was granted by the school of social and behavioural sciences ethics review board of tilburg university, the netherlands. data analysis a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis was used (fereday & muir-cochrane, 2006). the methodological approach integrated data-driven codes with theorydriven ones. first, the interview questions were designed based on the theory of fqol and the capability approach, focusing on the social inclusion experiences of children with disabilities. second, themes were identified based on the manuscripts of the two focus group discussions. third, the identified themes were reframed using the three domains of being, belonging, and becoming. the analysis process began with translating the voice-recorded focus group discussions into manuscripts, followed by repeated readings of the text data by the authors. the next step was to identify specific text segments related to the objectives and to code them (thomas, 2006). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 151 to create categories, the segments of text were labelled by bringing together similar and repeated passages, taking care to minimise overlap and redundancy among the categories; we then created a model that incorporated the most important categories (attride-stirling, 2001; green et al., 2007). from these, themes were identified (larossa, 2005). these categorised themes from the general coding were then recategorised (edmunds & brown, 2012) using the three domains of being, belonging, and becoming. this was followed by differentiating the excerpts using different colours for the three themes (burnard, gill, stewart, treasure, & chadwick, 2008; green et al., 2007). next, the most expressive quotes were selected for presentation. moreover, the subthemes within each of being, belonging, and becoming were applied. finally, the findings were analysed and interpreted in relation to the conceptual framework. results the findings from the analysis of the three themes of coded data that emerged were categorised under the qol indicators of being, belonging, and becoming (raphael et al., 1996). the analysis also follows the interpretations given to being, belonging, and becoming by raphael et al. (1996). the same authors explain that these three themes are intertwined, which was also observed in this study while categorising the excerpts under the three themes. in addition to the intertwined nature of the three themes, the focus group discussions resulted in overlaps between the themes due to the fact that the focus group discussions focused on social inclusion, and because of the complexity of the life experiences of the participant children with disabilities. for example, in the following excerpt the three major themes (being, becoming, and belonging) are all represented: since i cannot hear, i’m not able to talk most of the time, so i don’t play that much with those who do hear. but i play just by looking. i mostly talk with those who have a hearing impairment. the others laugh at me when i talk so i don’t want to talk to them. i want to spend the time in silence. i play with my father and mother a little. other than that, there is nothing else that i do. (child 8) the first statements (“since i cannot hear, … impairment.”) relate to both being and becoming, while the subsequent statements (“the others laugh at me … that i do.”) relate to belonging and becoming. with the statement “since i cannot hear”, the child appears to identify with being deaf. by continuing with “i am not able to talk most of the time so i don’t play”, the child relates his “being” (hearing impaired) to the inability to “become” (to take part in playing with children without a disability). being both groups of participants in the focus group discussions (children with disabilities and the primary caregivers of children with disabilities) described the theme of “being” in relation to the impact of having a disability, coping with it, and being confronted with the irrational beliefs around it. the participants agreed that the general physical condition or disability affects the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 152 social inclusion of children with disabilities. some child participants indicated that their disability barred them from being included in society: i say that we are not much included in society. because i have a hearing impairment, there is nothing much i can talk about with others in society. this is because when i talk using sign language they laugh at me. i cannot hear so i feel it very much. (child 7) this statement explains the impact that hearing impairment has on the social inclusion of the child. the participant reveals that he cannot communicate with people who cannot use sign language and that sometimes when he tries to communicate, people laugh at him. he also says that the impact of his disability affects his feelings. some impacts of disability can be due to irrational beliefs and fears about disability, as explained by a primary caregiver, the mother of a child with blindness: the doctor said that her pupil has been damaged and that this was hereditary.… “it is god who passes it to us from above. we can’t buy and bring disease, it is hereditary”, ho-ho.... i also took her to another hospital, but they told me that nothing could be done as her pupil is damaged. (primary caregiver 4) this irrational explanation of the cause of the child’s disability was given by an educated physician, indicating the low level of awareness about disability in ethiopia. another primary caregiver explained that physicians often equate disability with inability to perform simple tasks: someone from here goes with them when they [children with disabilities] go to a hospital. there is a girl who is their assistant. as they are teenagers and young, there might be secrets they want to share with the doctor. but there are doctors who ask the assistant to come in the room and undress these girls. when this happens the girls feel bad and ask why it is necessary, as they can do it themselves. after they come back here, they laugh about how undressing is thought of as a difficult thing, but they feel it at the time. being visually impaired doesn’t stop you from being able to dress and undress yourself. the doctors are happy to talk with them when their assistant is present, but not when they are alone. these things hurt their morale in some way. (primary caregiver 3) this participant highlighted some of the misguided beliefs of physicians about children with disabilities, such as children with blindness, who are often considered incapable of performing simple tasks like undressing, and illustrates the lack of understanding of their feelings. the children explained that their disability is generally considered to be the result of a curse, which presents different challenges, as indicated in the following excerpt: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 153 i lost my sight when my mother took traditional medicine, when she gave birth to me. they used to say this is a curse, it’s because you are cursed. she just keeps quiet and doesn’t say anything. when the people around the area meet me, the children think and do mean things. they insult me and knowingly lead me into a ditch. (child 2) there are people who believe that the disabilities of children are contagious, as explained in the following excerpt: people around my neighbourhood also say, “go away, we don’t want to play with you”. when someone holds my hand they say, “don’t hold her — it will be transmitted to you”. so they don’t hold me. (child 3) another child explained that her disability was always considered to be an inability and that people tried to give her money, as most people in ethiopia assume that children with disabilities are beggars, even if they are able to do many things: the other thing i don’t want to miss saying is that in areas outside the city, around rural areas, they think that we can’t do anything, so wherever they see us they give us money without asking us. they see us as beggars. thank god we can do work. so it would be good if they were educated — if education is given to the whole community. (child 1) an excerpt from the mother of a disabled child in a focus group discussion illustrates the widely held belief that children with disabilities cannot be educated: “there was someone who told me that it was impossible for my daughter to learn; i was very sad at that time. but i thank st. gabriel, now i am very happy” (primary caregiver 6). many primary caregivers shared similar stories regarding the judgements passed by society in relation to children with disabilities. for example, one primary caregiver described the difficulties experienced by children with disabilities when buying clothes: when these children get money, they go to shopping centres. they tell me that the shopkeepers tell them that the item isn’t suitable for them or they can’t afford it. how can others know if they can’t afford it by looking at them? the children relate this to their physical disability. (primary caregiver 3) this again illustrates the illogical beliefs held by society in relation to the capability of children with disabilities. the above excerpts reveal the social exclusion of children with disabilities and their families that is due to misconceptions about disability. these misconceptions and related practices also affect the psychological well-being of children with disabilities. the following excerpt indicates the uneasiness felt by children with disabilities when others stare at them: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 154 in addition, around the amhara region when a blind or physically disabled person comes, they circle that person and stare. and that person will wonder why. they make them think, “what is wrong with me? do i have dirt on me?” (child 3) the misconceptions of society about disability also affect the psychological well-being of the family members of children with disabilities. for example, in the focus group discussion with primary caregivers, a mother who was partially blind, and had a daughter with blindness, described the emotions she felt when they were insulted because of their disability: they insult her saying that she is blind and her mother is also blind. why doesn’t the government find a solution for this, as we are the ones holding the problem? we are carrying our disability in our homes on our own, but why? why do we get shunned in the place where we are born, the government should do something about this. every person should have rights. our rights should not be taken away from us [crying]. (primary caregiver 4) belonging belonging describes the aspects of the physical, social, and community environment that influence inclusion. with regard to physical belonging, most of the participants repeatedly mentioned belonging at school. one of the children in the focus group discussion pointed out that children with disabilities can do what others do in school as long as they are equally included and have equal access: i want us, the children with disabilities, to have equal rights. because we don’t have to convince ourselves that we can. but even if we can, we need people to support us. the support we want is regarding braille books and to help us copy by reading to us. we want to be equal. we want them to see us as equal. we don’t want them to be repulsed by us. we can do anything. there is nothing missing from us. we have to try to do things first by ourselves. we have to believe that we can do it first. (child 2) from this excerpt we can infer that children with disabilities in addis ababa are not included equally at school. they do not have equal access to educational resources such as braille books, which they regard as necessary if they are to belong physically at school equally with other children: i am going to say something like she said. for the visually impaired we are usually challenged by books. i want books to be given to us equally. the other thing is roads, so that the roads are convenient. (child 5) the other issue mentioned in the focus group discussion with children with disabilities in relation to physical belonging was difficulties in communication: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 155 mostly those who work at the dil betigil library have hearing impairment. and it is difficult for the visually impaired to communicate with them. sometimes when i go to ask for a book it is very difficult for me. the librarians use sign language and we cannot see and communication is very difficult, thus, i should go and get it, what i want to communicate with the librarian with hearing impairment, written down. (child 2) from this we can see the lack of inclusion of children with disabilities in school. it seems that schools in addis ababa do not recognise the presence and needs of blind students. the accessibility of toilets in schools was another issue raised by participants in relation to physical belonging, as expressed by child 9: “the toilet is not convenient. since the kids also make it dirty, it is not convenient.” the same child also mentioned that she avoids drinking when she has to go to school, as it is impossible for her to use the toilet in her school. on the other hand, the primary caregivers who participated in the focus groups talked about housing issues in relation to their physical belonging in the community. one primary caregiver shared the difficulty of renting a house if one has a child with a disability: it is difficult if you have a physically disabled child. i was looking to rent a house after getting out of my previous home. i made a down payment to the owner who was going to rent me the house, but she gave me back my money the next day just because i told her that i have a child with disability. she told me that her grandchildren come to the house for vacation and they might go through something if they see my daughter. so she gave me back my money. it is very painful to have a child with disability. there was a day when they insulted me, saying why don’t i keep silent and just raise my child with a disability. (primary caregiver 7) this illustrates that the whole family can be socially excluded due to the presence of a child with a disability. the social belonging of children with disabilities was expressed by participants in different ways. it included links with the social environment and a sense of acceptance by intimate others, family members, friends, the neighbourhood, and the community. some children with disabilities expressed a secure sense of belonging to their families and neighbourhood: there is no problem in the family. kids from our neighbourhood also come so that i won’t fall down. they come close to me so that i won’t have to go far. and i play with them. (child 1) however, others described their belonging to other family members as limited: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 156 regarding family, i say it’s ok. it’s in the middle. sometimes i encounter things; for example, there is nothing on tv for the hearing impaired. my family watches tv and they laugh when there is something funny. but i don’t have anything that i laugh at. so i feel left out. i usually don’t spend much time in the house. i go home when it is very late. i stand at the door until it is 7:30 p.m. this is because there is nothing i can play with at home. (child 7) another child explained that the belonging he had with his family members was traditional in the sense that they lacked knowledge about disability: they don’t know that much. they talk to me traditionally. for example, they may even call out at me like, “you, deaf kid!” these things make me very angry. since it is traditional and they don’t have that much knowledge, they don’t know sign language that much too. they only know common words like eat or drink. (child 8) another child in the focus group discussion explained that she did not feel any belonging in her family except with her mother: in the family i am not included. they don’t include me in anything. since we live in a rural area, my father doesn’t include me at all. now, he has divorced my mother; he took all the children who are visually abled and gave me to my mother. he said, “take your share, and i have taken my share.” she agreed and took me. she went through a lot of trouble and got me into a school around oromia area. i learned there and came here. he doesn’t allow my brothers and sisters to come and greet me. he tells them not to go to my house. he is not happy that i was born. he doesn’t think i can do anything. he is amazed even how i move around from place to place. (child 3) most of the children with disabilities who participated in the focus group discussion explained that they felt a greater sense of belonging with their mothers: most of the time i talk with my mother. she is the one i am close to. my mother tells me to buy bread. we speak in traditional language. but i don’t talk with other people who are outside. for example, if i go to the market and ask for bread, i may say something else. when he brings it and i say this is not what i want, the shopkeeper gets angry. so it is difficult for me to communicate. (child 7) all of the primary caregivers said that they had a great sense of belonging with their children with disabilities. for example: my children are comfortable around me and i am also comfortable around my children. i also have other children who can hear. they also love me and i also international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 157 love them. we live together by understanding one another. they live by having good relations with the neighbours. they also have good relations within the family. (primary caregiver 2) primary caregiver 8 explained that her high level of belonging with her daughter isolated her from other family members, who urged her to give her child to an organisation or abandon her: her change is good. i was not ashamed of her even when she was very small. i used to carry her on my back from merkato to kera and take her to school. i am not ashamed of her. family members used to tell me to give her away to organisations or to leave her. but i told them i wouldn’t leave her and i would raise her even if i had to beg. we don’t meet with our family because of her. they don’t want to be close to me. (primary caregiver 8) the other part of social belonging expressed by the participants related to community belonging, which represents access to resources usually available to community members, such as social services. regarding community belonging, the participants in the focus group discussions raised issues related to health services, roads, and transportation. participants in the focus group discussions described problems that people with blindness had with the design, construction, and maintenance of footpaths, crossings, paved areas, and streets, and how these affected their mobility: what i want to say is concerning roads. the area that i live in, shiromeda, has narrow streets.… when we take the corner of the street, there are people there who lay out clothes to sell. as we touch their clothes they push us towards the cars saying go over there. if we go towards the cars they will hurt us, so it would be good if the road is adjusted and wider sidewalks and roadways made. (child 3) while discussing social inclusion in relation to roads, a mother of a child who used a wheelchair explained the need to accompany her child to school and back, even though the child believed that she could make the journey alone: i am very happy since my daughter started school, but i am the one who takes her there. she worries and tells me that she can go on her own as the road is ok. but it is not safe. i tell her not to worry, as it is not difficult for me, even if they say [the disability] is hereditary. (primary caregiver 8) transportation was the other aspect of community belonging discussed in the focus groups. without accessible transportation, children with disabilities are more likely to be excluded from services and social contact: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 158 those who have a hearing impairment have transportation problems. we see mekanisa [street name] posted on the taxi and we get in, but the taxi is going in another direction. the postings should be correct, as they are posted to help us. we hear using our eyes. we talk using sign language. so what we hear with our eyes is what we see. (child 8) the participants also believed that they were socially excluded in relation to access to health care centres. for example, a child with deafness explained that those who were deaf could not communicate with doctors in the health care centres, as no one there knew sign language: the second is on health centres. it would be good if they [health facility staff] are educated. if someone who has a disability is sick, how are they going to communicate? if he [the person with deafness] comes and asks, they may give him another medicine. he may go because they [health facility staff] could not understand each other. it would be good if more people knew sign language or a translator was available. (child 7) one of the primary caregivers explained the need for community belonging in relation to disability-related support as follows: there are not enough wheelchairs or crutches. if there is a way that organisations for people with disabilities could produce these materials it would be good. a visually impaired child cannot go to school without a slate, a stylus, and a cane. a physically disabled child can’t go to school without a wheelchair. they have already described sign language in a good way. it is good if these kinds of things are widespread. but the main thing that motivates parents and children — i am saying this because i think it will help your study — there is no social security in our country. there is something that started called safety net [a small amount of cash transfer for some families of children with disabilities], but i don’t know to what extent it is in place. (primary caregiver 4) another primary caregiver suggested the need for government intervention: the government is the main one. it should arrange these things. there is a lot of talk about disability, but not much practical work can be seen. we see there is good growth in our country for healthy people. the buildings and roads which are being built are very good, but even these don’t take into consideration people with disabilities. we can see it starting from the hospitals, roads, and buildings. just like my sister stated earlier, how is it possible to live on the fourth floor with a child with a physical disability? the government should take action on these issues instead of talking about it. we are all talking about it. (primary caregiver 6) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 159 becoming the becoming section of the analysis covers growth becoming, practical becoming, and leisure becoming. it describes the actual activities that can be carried out in school, at home, and in the neighbourhood. the majority of children with disabilities who participated in the focus group discussion described accomplishment in education as their major growth becoming. they said that this achievement would contribute to changing society’s beliefs about children with disabilities: what is expected from us as children with disabilities is to be strong and get educated so that we can achieve our goals. whenever we grow, the community will start changing. in some places they only see adults with disabilities, they don’t think about those who are children. (child 8) even though being educated is the primary “becoming” valued by children with disabilities, participants in the focus group discussions mentioned different obstacles that they faced in school. the first was the inaccessibility of schools, including the unavailability of slates and styluses for students with blindness, the inaccessibility of school buildings for students who used wheelchairs, and the limited number of teachers who could use sign language. these obstacles made it more difficult for children with disabilities to achieve their full growth potential in relation to “becoming” in education: we are learning in school through a translator. but the translators are few. there should be more translators. in our school we have four translators, but we don’t know how many periods they will teach. we have seven periods per day. it is better in our school than in other places, where they have only two translators. firstly, they [the translators] are overworked and secondly we don’t get information correctly. if translators are hired, it should be in bulk. or all the teachers in school should know how to teach in sign language. (child 7) in the focus group discussion with primary caregivers, the mother of a child with a disability stressed the need for government intervention to provide educational opportunities for all children: i would be happy if the government intervenes and everybody gets an education. my child is very happy to learn with others. i can’t speak [sign] language, but i can understand and communicate with him because i am his mother. but his sister has learnt [sign language] and he communicates well with her. he communicates with those who know how to speak sign language, but not with other children in the neighbourhood. i would be happy if everyone could learn this form of communication. then my son would be able to communicate freely everywhere he goes. (primary caregiver 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 160 practical becoming was the other important issue raised by the participants in the focus group discussion. the two main aspects of practical becoming expressed by the participants were handling domestic activities such as household chores and participating in school clubs. child 4 explained that she handled some household chores, as her mother understood what disability means: since my mother is a little bit educated, i tell her to give me some chores. she says, “i know you can do it, but you’ll be tired.” i tell her that i will do what i can and when i get tired i will leave it. i do some chores and she lets me; she doesn’t say anything. she wouldn’t even say anything if i went to the lake to bring water. but other people are amazed. they say, “how can she tell her to do this, how can she move?” … this amazes them. (child 4) child 2 also described handling some household chores: “i also do chores there. but they tell me not to. they say, ‘you’ll hurt your hand.’ ” while the children who participated in the focus group discussion said that they knew about the presence of clubs in schools, they said that they did not participate: there are clubs. but as i have a communication problem, i don’t participate. they have asked me a lot of times. but as i don’t ask them the details, like what time it is, i don’t participate. (child 8) child 3, who was blind, said that she did not participate in school clubs: “there is a club, but i’ve only heard of those who can see participating. i’ve never seen those who have a visual impairment participate.” the other aspect of “becoming” discussed as part of social inclusion was leisure becoming, which includes leisure-time activities that promote relaxation and reduce stress. these include short duration activities such as neighbourhood walks or family visits, and longer duration activities such as vacations or holidays. some of the children with disabilities revealed that they played at home, in the neighbourhood, and at school: “they let me play both at home and at school. i play with everybody in my neighbourhood. i also play at school.” some others said that they tried to play even if it did not last for long: “i play with them. they first gather around, then they leave me and go.” primary caregivers pointed out the need for playgrounds for children with disabilities. one mother explained that she wanted to take her child to a playground, but was limited because the playgrounds available in addis ababa were not suitable: if i want to take my child to play, she can’t play anywhere. it is not only my child, but all children with disabilities. is there a playground which is suitable for the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 161 visually impaired? is there a playground for children with a hearing impairment? is there a playground for children who have disabilities on their arms and legs? but there are many playgrounds for the children without disabilities. why doesn’t the government intervene here? aren’t the physically disabled also citizens? aren’t the physically disabled also born as children? there is nothing for children with disabilities. (primary caregiver 7) primary caregivers also explained the need for games and care centres for children with disabilities: let us talk about games and child care centres for our physically disabled children. would they take them? there is no one. they wouldn’t consider it, i am telling you the truth. they are for the healthy ones, but they wouldn’t think anything for the physically disabled. so if these things are included, if my child had a place where she could play and if there was some place i could take her, i would be happy. (primary caregiver 8) discussion this study aimed to explore the social inclusion of children with disabilities through the combined lens of fqol and the capability approach. data were gathered about social inclusion of children with various disabilities using two focus group discussions. the results indicate that children with disabilities are often socially and societally excluded, although most reported that they have a high level of social inclusion within their families. in addition, the results indicate that the family members of children with disabilities also face social exclusion. this study highlights the need of children with disabilities to be socially included, not only as a capability in itself, but also in order to achieve different capabilities or “functionings”, including leisure activities, communication, social activities, education, and mobility (trani, bakhshi, bellanca, biggeri, & marchetta, 2011). however, not all of these capabilities are available to children with disabilities. for example, the results of the focus group discussions highlight the reality of rejection for children with disabilities, who spoke of their experiences with bullying, exclusion, and sometimes violence (e.g., playmates leading a child who is blind to a ditch). children with disabilities are also excluded as being “different” from other community members, as they do not perform certain functions (chenoweth & stehlik, 2004). children with disabilities reported that they did not participate in school clubs and organisations, seldom got together with peers outside the classroom, and were less involved in all school activities. this is because the school environment hinders the participation of children with disabilities and the resources needed to support their participation are inadequate (coster et al., 2013). however, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 162 society assumes that it is their incapacity that keeps them from participating in school activities. those who have had the opportunity to participate in education take pride in it and have formed their own subgroups with siblings or with other people with impairments, which act as support groups for them. these results suggest that the opportunities for, or capabilities and functionings of, children with disabilities in low-income countries such as ethiopia are limited. this, in turn, affects the qol of families of children with disabilities; hence the need for supporting the whole family, which helps to create favourable conditions for the social inclusion of the children (heiman, 2002; xu 2007). the participants in both focus group discussions voiced the need for empowerment. the results of the study indicate the strengths of children with disabilities; despite all of the problems, they still believe that they can do everything, especially if they can get support. from the results, it is clear that supporting primary caregivers is important to empower children with disabilities and their family members. primary caregivers of children with disabilities in developing countries such as ethiopia experience a double challenge: meeting the financial and emotional needs of the entire family while coping with the demands of caring for a child with special needs, with fewer opportunities for support from relatives, the community, and the government than they might have if they were in a developed country (divan, vajaratkar, desai, strik‐lievers, & patel, 2012). the results of the present study indicate that children with disabilities have a high level of motivation to participate socially, such as by learning, participating in social activities, and playing. there are minimal barriers for social inclusion on the part of the children themselves. these strengths of children with disabilities can be used in structuring supporting family-centred services. the focus group discussions also brought forward that fathers are often not willing to financially support their children, which lowers the financial means and hence the qol of the family. lack of support services can make children with disabilities overly dependent on family members (wang & brown, 2009) and can prevent both children with disabilities and their family members from being economically active and socially included. limitations and strengths of the study even though the study covered many areas of social inclusion of children with disabilities and their primary caregivers, it would have been more comprehensive if the focus group discussions were not limited to participants under the umbrella of one ngo. the strength of this study is that it fills a gap in information about social inclusion and fqol issues of children in lowand middle-income countries, particularly since the study incorporates the views both of children and of their primary caregivers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 163 conclusion qol for families and their children with disabilities, with regard to achieving capabilities and valuable functionings, has emerged as a useful indicator of the success of implementation of policies regarding disabilities. primary caregivers of children with disabilities sometimes need support so that they can raise their children at home and fully participate in community life. consequently, considering the involvement of primary caregivers of children with disabilities and determining what factors influence the well-being of such children is indispensable for the improvement of interventions, facilities, services, and support; this is an area of analysis that requires further study. children with disabilities in addis ababa believe in themselves and their ability to achieve when they have access to the necessary means (e.g., resources such as braille text books and services such as those of an interpreter). thus, the opportunity and freedom to achieve important goals (capabilities), such as being educated, are important factors to address in improving the social inclusion of children with disabilities. based on the results of this study, the following practical recommendations are made:  support children with disabilities and their family members by adopting a family-centred approach to service provision and by using fqol in terms of achieving capabilities as an indicator of the level of social inclusion of such children.  raise the awareness of children with disabilities so that they know themselves — their strengths, weaknesses, needs, and preferences — and have the capability to decide what is important to them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 146–167 164 references aldersey, h. m., francis, g. l., haines, s. j., & chiu, c. y. 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care have risk profiles consistent with criminal justice involvement. this article provides an overview of the prevalence of exposure to risk factors related to mental health, education, and antisocial behaviour among children in care, in addition to risk factors that are distinctive to those placed in child protection services. a recent large cohort dataset from british columbia, canada, is utilized to examine these risk profiles. recommendations to identify those involved in child protection services most at risk for criminal justice involvement, with the use of risk management instruments such as the cracow instrument, are discussed. in addition, several other important policy themes regarding diagnostic and case management challenges are explored. key words: children in care, education, mental health, antisocial behaviour, criminal justice involvement ray corrado, ph.d. is professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, vancouver (burnaby), british columbia, canada. lauren f. freedman, m.a. is a ph.d. student in the school of criminology at simon fraser university. catherine blatier, ph.d. is professor in the school of psychology at université pierre mendès, grenoble, france. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 100 for more than 50 years (j. mccord, w. mccord, & thurber, 1960), it has been evident that placement in child protection services, or becoming a child in care (cic), is associated with involvement in the youth and/or adult criminal justice systems (cjs). more recent research confirms that cic are at greater risk of engaging in antisocial behaviour in adolescence and adulthood than those (non-cic) who have not been placed in care (alltucker, bullis, close, & yovanoff, 2006; barth, 1990; davis, 2009; jonson-reid & barth, 2000; newton, litrownik, & landsverk, 2000; taussig, 2002). yet, despite the consistency of the research regarding this relationship, the question of why such a large proportion of cic become involved in the cjs remains unclear and is an increasingly controversial policy issue. the controversy largely involves the apparent paradox that cic placement programs somehow are either ineffective, or worse, actually increase the likelihood of cjs involvement across both the adolescent and the adult life stages. equally disconcerting is the fact that this negative program relationship is disproportionately evident for vulnerable minority children, primarily for example among aboriginal children and youth in canada and australia, african american children and youth in the united states, and roma in many european countries (british columbia, 2006; cusick and courtney, 2007; lu et al., 2004; tilbury, 2009). this disproportion has raised obvious issues about possible continued, but unofficial, systematic policy discrimination. given the tragic official policies directed at aboriginal families for at least two-thirds of the last century, including residential schools in canada and forced adoption of mixed-race aboriginal children in australia, such unintended cic policy consequences are even more disconcerting. yet this discrimination-related hypothesis loses primacy in a discussion of trends over the last 20 to 30 years, primarily because of public awareness, media scrutiny, national constitutional protections, national and international human rights tribunals, and, most importantly, the strengthening of aboriginal and racial/ethnic minority political organizations at all levels of government in liberal democratic nations generally. alternatively, there is the assertion that the remedy to this issue requires theories and specific empirically testable hypotheses that focus on the developmental theoretical perspective concerning serious antisocial risk factors and cic to cjs involvement. additionally, policy shifts will be necessary to overcome the inherent difficulties of multi-ministerial government and non-governmental agencies providing time sensitive resources to families who are at high risk of having their children placed in care. the developmental perspective includes an array of theories that posit a wide range of family-level risk and protective factors to identify families where children are at risk of engaging in antisocial behaviours across and throughout developmental stages. from a risk perspective, one hypothesis is that children and adolescents who become cic have similar risk profiles for antisocial and/or criminal behaviour as non-cic who become seriously involved in the youth and/or adult cjs. another is that either entry into care itself constitutes a risk factor, or that it interacts with, or compounds, previously existing risk factors to increase the likelihood of involvement in cjs. from a policy perspective, there are several important hypotheses related to these developmental perspective theories. most importantly, it is asserted that ministries and associated agencies (including early child care workers, public health nurses, and early childhood educators) responsible for young children and cic are in a unique official or legal position to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 101 become involved with families during the crucial initial developmental stages. this assertion is based on recognition that they are typically responsible for the protection of newborn children and, in some jurisdictions, vulnerable and pregnant mothers (i.e., with respect to their exposure to poverty, mental illness, self-abuse, or abusive partners). with few exceptions, developmental theories assert that early interventions (i.e., administered during pregnancy or infancy), can reduce the onset of key risk factors for antisocial behaviours such as prenatal exposure to alcohol, resulting in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd), or ineffective bonding between mother and child. yet an important related policy hypothesis is that there is a pervasive failure of cic agencies to provide appropriate interventions not only in the initial development stages, but also throughout subsequent stages up to and including young adulthood. it is typically asserted that this occurs because these agencies’ programs lack the necessary diagnostic capabilities and corresponding required resources (corrado, roesch, hart, & gierowsky, 2002). in addition, there is the ministerial “silo” hypothesis, which argues that government agencies do not share information, resources, or case plans. accordingly, even when familyfocused resources are available, other non-family risk factors (e.g., school, housing, special education needs, income/employment assistance, and/or criminal justice involvement) are often present and require corresponding resources. however, these resources may not be routinely or easily accessible across ministries, and, therefore, despite the critical nature of coordination of services to many cic case managers, access to coordinated services is not always feasible. in other words, it is inherently difficult to obtain routine individual planning and resources across the numerous ministries and agencies mandated to respond to the wide range of risk factors. the recent publication of a series of reports by the politically independent office of the representative of children and youth in british columbia on indicators of health (british columbia, 2006), education (british columbia, 2007), and criminal justice involvement (british columbia, 2009) of a cohort of british columbia youth forms the empirical basis for an examination of several of the above theory and policy themes. this data permits a comparison of health and education risk factors for criminal justice involvement, and differences between cic and non-cic in criminal justice involvement. because of restrictions in accessing the original data sets, it is not possible to examine key hypotheses about health and education with nondescriptive statistical analyses. nonetheless, there is a sufficient theoretical and research literature that allows for tentative policy inferences to be drawn from descriptive data. also, these reports constitute one of the few multi-ministry data sets based on a rare large population cohort beginning in childhood. as mentioned above, a pre-eminent hypothesis about the strong relationship between cic and cjs involvement is that cic have similar risk profiles for antisocial behaviour as those noncic who are most likely to become seriously involved in the cjs. while there are numerous risk factors for antisocial behaviour, several are predominant among children in care, and thus will be the focus of this discussion. mental health and substance abuse mental health issues among cic mental health factors are a major developmental theme for understanding the relationship between cic and the cjs. their immediate impact involves parental reaction to the mental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 102 health issues of children, and the reaction of children to mental health issues of their parents. the reaction of parents to their children during the initial stages of infancy and early childhood is extremely important in preventing or reducing exposure to risk factors for placement in care, and for the early onset of serious antisocial behaviour. the mental health profiles of parents and children are also important in understanding how children are likely to react in various residential placements (e.g., foster family, group home, or adoptive family). there are numerous policy-related issues; however, given that many children return to live with their parents after entry into care, an assessment of the safety of the parental home is of prime importance. treatment concerns also require immediate attention. in late childhood and early adolescence, substance abuse is usually an additional concern affecting treatment and placement decisions. in the b.c. health cohort study, cic were more likely to be exposed to perinatal risk factors than non-cic (12% compared to 3% non-cic). there is a substantial and rapidly growing body of research that supports causal links between perinatal exposure to risk factors and mental disorders such as fasd and those involving learning deficits and/or hyperactivity (mick, biederman, faraone, saye, & kleinman, 2002; needleman, riess, tobin, biesecker, & greenhouse, 1996; streissguth et al., 2004). the practical mental health concern is the nearly two-thirds (65%) of cic with diagnosed mental disorders, compared slightly less than one-sixth (17%) of non-cic. children in care are more commonly – and for longer periods of time – prescribed medications to treat depression, anxiety, neurosis, tension, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). for example, cic were prescribed respiratory and cerebral stimulants (i.e., ritalin and similar medications) 8.5 to 12 times more and psychotherapeutic medications (i.e., anti-depressants and tranquilizers) 5.5 to 8.5 times more than non-cic (british columbia, 2006). it is not evident whether these varied pharmacological treatment approaches reflect differences in the seriousness of the disorders being treated or a greater reliance on medications for cic. additionally, when compared to non-cic who have been hospitalized for mental health issues, cic are more commonly admitted to hospitals for mental health issues, albeit for shorter periods of time, potentially due to an increased reliance on medications for these youth (british columbia, 2006). evidence of disproportionate mental health issues among cic was observed in a study involving nearly 40,000 children and youth in the united states. children in care in this sample were significantly more likely than non-cic to be diagnosed with depression, adhd, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder (harman, childs, & kelleher, 2000). another american study found that cic were more likely to have experienced psychiatric symptoms, particularly those relating to conduct disorder, within the year preceding data collection than non-cic. disturbingly, a higher degree of suicidal ideation was also evident among the children in care and, not surprisingly, there were four times more suicide attempts by cic than non-cic (pilowsky & wu, 2006). with regard to the relationship between mental disorders, other mental health factors, and criminal justice involvement, arseneault, moffitt, caspi, taylor, and silva (2000) found that young adults (21 years of age) meeting the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia or substance dependence committed violent acts with greater frequency and intensity compared to those who did not meet these diagnostic criteria. in addition, a relationship has been observed between symptoms of conduct disorder presenting before 15 years of age and violent offences, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 103 wherein an increasing number of symptoms was associated with an increased risk of being convicted of a violent crime (hodgins, cree, alderton, & mak, 2007). not surprising, mental disorders have been found to be more prevalent among samples of incarcerated adolescents than the general population. in a large study of youth in chicago’s cook county juvenile facility, nearly two-thirds of incarcerated boys and three-quarters of incarcerated girls had a psychiatric disorder, excluding the pervasive symptoms of conduct disorder so common among samples of incarcerated youth. disruptive disorders, affective disorders, and substance addictions were particularly prevalent (teplin, abram, mcclelland, dulcan, & mericle, 2002). in their meta-analysis of studies on mental disorders among adolescents, fazel, doll, and långström (2008) confirmed that youth with mental disorders were vastly over-represented in custodial settings. specifically, incarcerated adolescents were nearly 10 times more likely to suffer from psychosis than those in the general population. family history of mental health problems among cic a family history of mental health issues, particularly among parents, is related to an increased risk of child abuse and therefore an increased likelihood of being placed in care. maternal depression in the postpartum period is common, even pervasive to some degree, given the stresses on mothers as primary caregivers. this is of concern because parental depression is associated with an increased likelihood of abuse in both singleand two-parent households (berger, 2005). in particular, persistent maternal depression is associated with more diverse and serious types of child and adolescent violence (hay, pawlby, angold, harold, & sharp, 2003). as mentioned above, the bonds formed between parents and children in the early developmental stages can have long-lasting impacts on behaviour. specifically, mental disorders experienced by parents may contribute to poor bonding between parents and children and, subsequently, increase the likelihood of children engaging in externalizing and internalizing behavioural problems such as self-harm and aggression towards others (campbell, cohn, & myers, 1995). canadian statistics of child abuse indicate approximately one-quarter (24%) of abused children had at least one parent who was diagnosed with, or suspected of having, a mental disorder (trocmé et al., 2001). in addition to increasing the risk of abuse, mental health issues among family members increase the risk of behavioural problems among children and youth. chronic maternal depressive disorder has been linked to poor behavioural outcomes among children (murray, cooper, wilson, & romaniuk, 2003). as children exposed to maternal depression aged, for example, there was a greater propensity for these behaviours to develop into more severe and diverse types of violence (hay et al., 2003). as mentioned above, the association between maternal mental disorder and child antisocial behaviour can be understood in terms of the barriers that maternal depression can create for parent-child bonding (campbell et al., 1995), but it also may be related to the physical environment, since parental mental illness is associated with children committing serious violence after exposure to community violence (preski & shelton, 2001). this association appears to be exacerbated by the role that parental mental disorders play in impeding the ability of parents to effectively monitor their offspring, thereby increasing the risk that children in socially disorganized neighbourhoods will witness and participate in violence and informal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 104 antisocial networks. there are, therefore, multiple pathways and explanations for the relationship between parental mental disorders and the increased risk for being placed in care, and in turn, an elevated risk for being involved in serious and violent offending and the cjs. substance abuse among cic substance abuse is prevalent among cic according to two american studies: nearly half (40%) of cic had a recent history of substance abuse (thompson & auslander, 2007) while cic were five times more likely to have been diagnosed with either symptoms of substance abuse disorders or the full disorders (pilowsky & wu, 2006). as with the mental health risk factors discussed in the preceding sections, the relationship between substance abuse, cic, and cjs involvement is complex. one explanatory perspective is that substance abuse, for a substantial proportion of children and adolescents, is a form of self-medication in response to severe, often familial trauma, that they have experienced directly or vicariously as a witness (e.g., intimate partner violence). the attraction to substances as a mechanism for self-medication can also occur subconsciously at a biological level. serious neglect in the early life stages may disrupt the development of healthy neurotransmitter circuitry (i.e., the dopamine receptors in the midbrain and frontal lobe), which is associated with substance abuse. in effect, major substance use neurochemically and temporally mitigates poor dopamine production (blanc et al., 1980; meaney, brake, & gratton, 2002). early childhood relationships with caregivers can also negatively influence the development of the brain structures that respond to stress, which, in turn, can increase the likelihood of engaging in substance abuse to moderate unmanaged stress (perry & pollard, 1998). another perspective involves the abuse of substances to mitigate abnormal arousal levels involved in certain mental disorders such as extreme expressions of adhd (putnins, 2006). as well, truancy and associations with substance abusing peers are related to substance abuse among cic (thompson & auslander, 2007). within a sample of incarcerated aboriginal young offenders in b.c., more than half of whom with at least some past contact with child care services if not a cic placement, the use of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine was associated with physical and sexual abuse, mental illness, and family criminality. this high prevalence of drug use was evident as early as 11 years of age for many of these incarcerated young offenders (corrado & cohen, 2002). substance abuse is an important risk factor for serious delinquency among children and for serious and violent offending among youth in general (arseneault et al., 2000; farrington, loeber, jolliffe, & pardini, 2008; margo, 2008; neff & waite, 2007). it is also possible to argue that this risk factor then increases the probability of being placed in care, in part when it attenuates parental inability to respond to delinquent and violent behaviours, especially when family abuse and/or related major family mental health problems are also evident. as discussed previously, the higher rates of mental health problems among cic appears to reflect in part the pervasiveness of depressive disorders within families generally, as well as other disorders such as substance abuse (berger, 2005). special education needs children in care in b.c. are disproportionately more prone to special education needs than non-cic; one-quarter of cic in the province had special education needs compared to less international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 105 than one-tenth (8%) of non-cic. these needs involved disabilities that impact learning because of either intellectual, physical, sensory, emotional, or behavioural impairments, learning disabilities and exceptional educational talents. in particular, the special educational needs of cic most commonly involved behavioural difficulties or serious mental health problems, while non-cic needs most commonly involved exceptional educational talents. a major developmental learning difference is that cic are substantially less likely to have schoolreadiness skills entering kindergarten, which untended, fundamentally inhibits the establishment of foundational learning skills necessary for future school success. by grade 4, for example, cic with special education needs are less likely to develop the foundational reading, writing, or numeracy skills eventually needed to complete high school. as such, it is not surprising that by grade 9, a large proportion of cic with special education needs are held back, and by grades 11 and 12, they begin to drop out in large numbers. even those cic who graduate from high school are more likely have grade point averages one letter grade below non-cic (british columbia, 2007). part of the explanation for the disproportionate special education needs of cic is child maltreatment since it is a strong predictor of special education needs. while there are several forms of child maltreatment, the general theme observed is that severe maltreatment negatively impacts physiological and emotional well-being and may result in trauma-related disorders (perry & pollard, 1998). the impact of the associated physiological and emotional strain may extend to the point where normative education skills development and school performance are impaired (jonson-reid, drake, kim, porterfield, & han, 2004). a wide array of other disorders, including those related to prenatal and perinatal exposure to toxins that impede infant development, those directly caused by birth complications, and learning and education deficit factors associated with low socioeconomic status (ses), affect both school readiness and subsequent designations of special education needs. birth complications, including anoxia (insufficient oxygen), forceps delivery, preeclampsia (i.e., hypertension leading to anoxia), can cause brain damage and subsequent antisocial behaviour throughout the life course if untreated (raine, 2004). this damage can be evident in low verbal and/or performance iq in the early childhood developmental stage when learning trajectories are their steepest and are foundational for success in the more complicated learning stages that follow. verbal iq is particularly important for initial positive school performance and experiences, because it involves general factual knowledge, vocabulary, memory, abstract thinking, social comprehension, and judgement. it is critical for antisocial behaviour because children with low verbal iqs have difficulty expressing themselves, remembering information, and conducting abstract reasoning. in turn, it is more difficult to develop and maintain the prosocial relationships that typically require accurately processing social information and cues. instead of weighted or reasoned decisions being routinely made in peer and authority relationships, fundamental difficulties in communicating result in frustration, hostile attributions, and aggressive responses, which can impede school success (agnew, 2008). low general iq, too, is linked to the antisocial/delinquency dynamic relationship with poor school performance (koolhof, loeber, wei, pardini, & d'escury, 2007; mcgloin, pratt, & maahs, 2004). as well, the emotional difficulties not uncommon with birth complications can be related to maternal rejection especially in unwanted pregnancies. maternal rejections, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 106 characterized by unwanted pregnancy, unsuccessful abortion, or the infant being institutionalized for four or more months in first year of life, compounded by birth complications, are associated with offspring who are substantially more violent (raine, brennan, & mednick, 1997). fasd is characterized by persistent difficulties or deficits in: applying abstract reasoning, anticipating negative consequences, controlling pronounced impulsivity, developing normative language skills, and the presence of general learning ability (center for disabilities, 2002; streissguth et al., 2004). children with learning disabilities in general are at heightened risk for emotional distress, disruptive behaviours, and violence (baker & ireland, 2007; sundheim & voellere, 2004; svetaz, ireland, & blum, 2000). fasd exacerbates the frustrations typically experienced by those with learning disabilities and milder expressions of learning difficulties, giving rise to extreme impulsivity and more frequent violent behaviours (chartrand & forbes-chilibeck, 2003). not surprisingly, fasd children will very likely be categorized as having special education needs. fasd has been found to be disproportionately evident within a cic sample that was also found to be at an increased risk of presenting with social and learning needs (kvigne et al., 2004). in addition, children with fasd are more likely to enter into care by 2 to 3 years of age and remain in care for at least five years (ernst, grant, streissguth, & sampson, 1999; habbick, nanson, snyder, casey, & schulman, 1996). socioeconomic status may also play a role in the higher prevalence of special education needs among cic samples. for example in b.c., nearly all cic (88%) received income assistance before 19 years of age (british columbia, 2009). across canada, slightly more than one-third (36%) of parents with children who had been abused or neglected relied upon social assistance or unemployment insurance as a primary source of income, while a similar proportion (39%) of these parents, even with full-time jobs, could be classified in the low ses category (trocmé et al., 2001). it is of particular relevance that socioeconomic status has been linked to the development of communication skills. specifically, toddlers raised in low ses households were found to make fewer hand gestures, typically copied from parents, than higher ses households; these gestures are extremely important communication skills used by non-verbal children and are precursors to developing normative verbal and reasoning skills (rowe & goldin-meadow, 2009). in addition, lower paid, less educated parents expose their children to more television and engage in fewer discussions with their children (hoff, 2003; huttenlocher, vasilyeva, waterfall, vevea, & hedges, 2007; pan, rowe, singer, & snow, 2005; schmidt, rich, rifas-shirman, oken, & taveras, 2009). in effect, from the earliest developmental stage, lower ses households are less likely to expose their children to stimulating opportunities to develop the language and communication skills necessary for normative school readiness. as mentioned above, without remedial programming exposure, the children lacking normative communication and learning skills are more likely to accumulate learning deficits in each successive grade, independent of learning disorders and other disorders discussed. there is a strong relationship between special education needs and antisocial behaviour (farrington et al., 2008; hemphill, toumbourou, herrenkohl, mcmorris, & catalano, 2006). for example, in a recent dutch study, students who misbehaved in the classroom were more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour outside the classroom as well (weerman, harland, & van der laan, 2007). misbehaviour in the classroom, poor school performance, and antisocial behaviour have each been linked to poor self-control or the inability to regulate behaviour (felson & staff, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 107 2006). the widespread prevalence of poor school performance among a sample of incarcerated serious and violent young offenders in b.c. was evident because, at the time of the offence for which they were incarcerated, only slightly more than half of the young offenders were enrolled in school (corrado & cohen, 2002), and many of them were already at least one academic year behind other students their age (corrado, cohen, & mccormick, 2008; corrado, cohen, & watkinson, 2008). for cic in b.c., the relationship between special education needs and involvement in the cjs is especially pronounced: nearly all (87%) of cic involved in the cjs have been identified as having special education needs (other than exceptional talents) compared to less than two thirds (62%) of cjs-involved youth not placed in care. a far greater and disturbing disparity regarding special education needs and serious mental illness, and/or behavioural problems more generally, for cic involved in the cjs is overwhelmingly evident: nearly three-quarters (72%) of cic involved in the cjs had educational special needs as a result of intense behavioural problems or serious mental illness compared to a negligible 2% of youth who had been neither in care nor in the criminal justice system (british columbia, 2009). exposure to maltreatment and antisocial parents children in care who have experienced abuse are at a higher risk of engaging in antisocial behaviours compared to those placed in care who did not experience abuse (grogan-kaylor, ruffolo, ortega, & clarke, 2008; simmel, 2007). children and youth who have been abused, particularly those abused recurrently or exposed to harsh parenting, are more likely to be extremely aggressive, seriously antisocial, and violent (benzies, keown, & magill-evans, 2009; berger, 2005; farrington, 1996; lansford et al., 2007; mulvaney & mebert, 2007; ryan & testa, 2005). however, important qualifications to note are: (a) that aggressive children may be more likely to elicit harsh disciplinary practices from their parents, thereby perpetuating a cycle of abuse; and (b) that abusive parents may wrongly view their children’s behaviours as aggressive. in effect, parents may misinterpret the actions of their children, view their behaviours as aggressive, and, therefore, intensify and also perpetuate their children’s violent behaviour (berger, 2005). extreme maltreatment is particularly damaging when it causes potentially permanent neurological changes that increase the development of impulsive and aggressive behaviours. traumatized individuals who act on impulsive and aggressive tendencies rooted in neurological changes as a result of trauma in adolescence and/or adulthood, may essentially be punished for their trauma when they are incarcerated for engaging in violent behaviours. yet, even extreme forms of maltreatment, especially when it involves severe emotional neglect in infancy and early childhood, are too often undetected. severe forms of maltreatment can result in a cycle of violence and even intergenerational transmission of violence when the abused child, as a parent, repeats the violence against their children (perry, 1997). parental antisocial attitudes and related behaviours are also an important risk factor for both being placed in care and cjs involvement. in a canadian study, approximately one-tenth (11%) of children in care, who had in any way been abused, had at least one parent who had been incarcerated, and nearly two-thirds (34%) had at least one parent who had been diagnosed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 108 with, or was suspected of having a substance abuse problem (trocmé et al., 2001). criminal behaviour by any family member is strongly predictive of antisocial behaviours among adolescents generally, although the antisocial behaviours of the father are the most predictive (farrington, jolliffe, stouthamer-loeber, & kalb, 2001; preski & shelton, 2001). additionally, family criminality has been found to predict early onset antisocial behaviours (alltucker et al., 2006), and substance abuse among incarcerated boys appears to be more common among those whose fathers also engage in substance abuse (preski & shelton, 2001). the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviours is related to the continuity of risk factors. successive family generations replicate the profile of risk factors including poverty, single-parenthood, and use of harsh and/or ineffective parenting styles (farrington et al., 2001). risks unique to cic part of the disproportional cic involvement in the cjs can be explained by the presence of many of the key risk factors for serious antisociality in childhood and serious and violent behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. however, there are unique factors as well, most importantly multiple placements in care (jonson-reid & barth, 2000). even for those who entered care without the standard attitudinal and behavioural risk factors, placement instability contributed to harmful internalizing and aggressive externalizing behaviours (newton et al., 2000), particularly among boys (ryan & testa, 2005). unfortunately, there are few studies of why or how placement instability increases the likelihood for cjs involvement. however, residential mobility may partially explain the impact of placement instability since adolescents in general exhibit higher rates of violent behaviour and are at an increased likelihood of associating with antisocial peers (haynie & south, 2005). this relationship has been linked to disruptions in parent-child bonding and resultant negative attachment styles associated with antisocial behaviour (ainsworth, 1969, 1991; bowlby, 1951, 1969, 1973; moretti & peled, 2004; vando, rhule-louie, mcmahon, & spieker, 2008). in addition, cic are at an increased risk of developing attachment problems because their parents are less available for a variety of reasons. these may include major mental health problems, frequently compounded by substance abuse, and physical absences due to incarceration (davis, 2009). conversely, cic who develop stronger relationships with caregivers are at less risk for developing antisocial behaviours, but the likelihood of forging strong bonds may diminish as youth experience multiple placement shifts (grogan-kaylor et al., 2008). part of the disruptive social experiences caused by multiple placements is the sense of rejection, unworthiness, and negative labelling, whereby the child or youth may be considered “bad”, “difficult”, or “disruptive”. importantly, some cic are placed in care not because of abuse or neglect, but because they have been kicked out of their family homes. higher rates of geographic and school mobility are likely to cause further social and related emotional disruptions because of the inherent difficulties of maintaining old friendships and establishing new ones. antisocial peers within school contexts as well as “street kid” contexts can then become important alternative sources of friendships or surrogate families (baron & hartnagel, 1998; hagan & mccarthy, 1997). finally, while rare, indifferent or, worse, abusive care placements, are obvious in-care risk factors (g.hobbs, c. hobbs, & wynne, 1999). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 109 cic and cjs involvement given the prevalence among cic of so many risk factors for antisocial behaviour generally, and serious and criminal offending specifically, it is not surprising that the british columbia study (2009) confirmed the disproportional cjs involvement of cic: nearly half (41%) of cic had been recommended for charges versus approximately one-twentieth (6%) of those who were never in care. in other words, cic are nearly seven times more likely to be charged with criminal offences than non-cic. additionally, cic are recommended for more charges by police on an individual basis, with cic being recommended for charges an average of ten times in adolescence compared to 4.5 times for non-cic. even more disturbing, approximately one-tenth (10.4%) of cic were sentenced to custody, compared to a minuscule 0.5% of non-cic. from another perspective, a greater proportion of cic in british columbia entered the cjs than graduated from high school. on average, cic also become involved in the cjs approximately one year earlier than non-cic. the majority of cic involved in the cjs had their first contact with police after being placed in care or the same year that they entered into care. this early cjs onset evident among cic in b.c. is consistent with the observed early onset of delinquency among cic in a recent u.s. study (alltucker et al., 2006). in addition, a disproportionate number of either cic, or former cic, who had been in subsidized independent living as older adolescents, had high likelihood for involvement in the adult cjs. moreover, this likelihood of adult cjs involvement is higher for those young adults who had serious mental health problems and related needs for continuous mental health/health services, housing, income assistance, and appropriate employment (courtney & heuring, 2005; doyle, 2006; lawrence, carlson, & egeland, 2006; sweetman, warburton, & hertzman, 2007). conclusion the british columbia reports confirm that children in care have disproportionate health, mental health, and special education needs, and greater involvement in the youth criminal justice system. even without the multivariate analysis of cross-sectional data and time series analysis of this cohort data, arguably, there is sufficient empirical support to make several theoretical and policy inferences concerning key outstanding policy issues related to the link between cic and the cjs. regarding the over-representation of cic who have similar risk profiles for serious and violent behaviours as non-cic youth who become involved with the cjs, there is convincing evidence for the need to utilize diagnostic instruments that cover the broad range of identified risk factors across developmental stages. while risk management instruments for children, adolescents, and adults exist for a variety of aggressive and violent behaviours, such as sexual aggression and repeated physical assaults, there are few risk management instruments that cover the complete range of risk factors for all the developmental stages discussed in this article. there have been recent developments such as the earl-20b and the earl-21g risk management instruments for the late childhood stage of 8 to 12 years old. these tools provide valid assessments and related intervention strategies to assist government and non-government agencies in responding to aggressive and violent children who are either not subject to the jurisdiction of the youth cjs because they are 12 years of age or under, or engage in minor aggression and/or violent behaviours that typically international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 110 do not warrant youth cjs intervention. yet these behaviours are, nonetheless, important risk factors for more serious and violent behaviours. because there were no risk management instruments for children and adolescents that covered the complete set of developmental stages, the cracow risk management instrument for multi-problem children and youth at risk for serious and violent behaviour was created in 2002. this computer-based instrument is designed to provide information on risk factors from all service providers across ministries and agencies that have the responsibility to assess risk factors, and to devise and implement a service plan (corrado et al., 2002). for example, public health nurses often have the responsibility to visit pregnant mothers to assess their general health and provide vital health information. family doctors, along with obstetricians and paediatricians, have similar health-related responsibilities regarding the pregnant mother and newborn. in addition, social workers and, less frequently, police officers too, have the responsibility to monitor families with histories of conflict and abuse that may put family members, particularly children, at risk for their safety. teachers at the preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle school, and high school levels also have a responsibility to provide information to appropriate school officials (i.e., counsellors and administrators) to respond to school-related risk factors. each of these service providers would complete the sections of the cracow instrument that pertains to their individual legally mandated responsibility to identify risk factors and then devise appropriate service plans. strict confidentiality mechanisms must be in effect to ensure that shared information in preparing individual case plans do not violate privacy rights. it is beyond the scope of this article to expand on the privacy concerns about sharing information among agencies. nonetheless, a main policy theme of this article is that without more complete information on cic, specifically those who are disproportionately involved in the cjs, effective case planning to reduce this involvement is diminished. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 99-118 111 references agnew, r. 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(2007). misbehavior at school and delinquency elsewhere: a complex relationship. criminal justice review, 32(4), 358-379. abstract: placement in child protection services, or becoming a child in care, is associated with a disproportionate involvement in youth and adult criminal justice systems. while there is not extensive research on this relationship, there is evidence... mental health and substance abuse mental health issues among cic family history of mental health problems among cic substance abuse among cic special education needs exposure to maltreatment and antisocial parents risks unique to cic cic and cjs involvement conclusion references the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship matters, even for adolescents beginning the transition to adulthood international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 466 parenting styles and offspring’s polysubstance use in biological and adoptive families nozomi franco cea and gordon e. barnes abstract: from the perspective of socialization theory, one aspect of the family environment that has been hypothesized to be one of the strongest predictors of offspring’s substance use is parenting style. this study examined the associations between offspring’s perspectives of fathers’ and mothers’ parenting styles and the polysubstance use (psu) in biological and adoptive families by youth and young adults. long-term influences of the parenting styles of fathers and mothers were also investigated by using longitudinal data on offspring’s psu. results of structural equation modelling analyses showed that offspring’s time 1 psu scores were significantly related to both positive and negative parenting styles, whereas overall time 2 psu scores were more strongly related to offspring’s age and gender than parenting. in both time 1 and time 2 models, different paths were found to be significant for paternal and maternal parenting models. only adopted offspring psu scores were found to be significantly influenced by parenting of both fathers and mothers when offspring became older. these findings confirm: (a) the uniqueness and potential vulnerability of adopted offspring in relation to psu, (b) the difference in influence for fathers’ and mothers’ parenting on offspring’s psu, and (c) the long-term influences of parenting style on adopted offspring. keywords: parenting, polysubstance use, young adult, adopted, longitudinal acknowledgements: the first wave of data collection of the vancouver family survey (vfs) was funded by health canada through the national health research and development program (nhrdp). the second wave was funded by a community alliance for health research grant from the cihr and a new emerging team grant (#ra79917) funded by cihr (institutes of neurosciences, mental health and addiction, institute of aboriginal people’s health, institute of human development, child and youth health), the canadian centre on substance abuse, and the canadian tobacco control initiative. resources in support of this study were also provided by the centre for addiction research of british columbia. nozomi franco cea (the corresponding author) is a ph.d. student in the school of child and youth care and the centre for addiction research of british columbia at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: nkido@uvic.ca gordon e. barnes, ph.d. is a professor in the school of child and youth care, a research scientist with the centre for addiction research of british columbia, and faculty associate with the centre for youth and society, at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: gbarnes@uvic.ca mailto:nkido@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 467 the abuse and misuse of a wide variety of illicit substances have been a major public health problem all over the world (kendler et al., 2012). research in the field of substance use has focused on the use of specific single substances such as tobacco (smoking), alcohol, marijuana, etc. however, an increasing number of studies have been reporting that polysubstance use (psu) is a growing problem in the general population (e.g., schensul, convey, & burkholder, 2005). there is an increasing awareness and recognition of psu and problems associated with this behaviour (e.g., pape, rossow, & storvoll, 2009). more importantly, population-based research conducted in the united states and canada has shown that psu is common in the general youth population (e.g., brière, fallu, descheneaux, & janosz, 2011). from the perspective of socialization theory, the environment that parents create and develop through parental socialization (i.e., parenting) has been hypothesized to be one of the strongest predictors of youth and young adult psu (e.g., barnes, hoffman, welte, farrell, & dintcheff, 2006). in the last three decades, a significant number of studies have investigated the predictors of initiation, trajectories, and severity of youth and young adults psu. predictors examined have included families’ socio-economic status (e.g., patrick, wightman, schoeni, & schulenberg, 2012), parental influences (e.g., bahr & hoffmann, 2010), peer influences (e.g., barnes, jansson, & stockwell, 2011), behavioural genetic factors (e.g., creemers et al., 2011), and psycho-social development (e.g., jones, 2011). it has been commonly assumed that as children get older, parents begin to play a less important role, and other influences such as peers and media trends become more powerful forces in directing and leading young people’s behaviours (lac, alvaro, crano, & siegel, 2009). due to this assumption, even parents themselves might doubt their importance and feel less confident. however, evidence from two studies indicate that parents do, in fact, play an important role in terms of the development of their adolescent offspring (hair, moore, garrett, ling, & cleveland, 2008; padilla-walker, bean, & hsieh, 2011). moreover, a number of researchers in the field of behavioural genetics have been reporting on the combinations and interactions between parental behaviours, heritability (genetic influences), and shared (family) environmental influences (e.g., creemers et al., 2011; kendler et al., 2012). parenting styles and polysubstance use family socialization is a broad concept that consists of numerous components that can have an important role in predicting offspring substance use patterns. for example, based on their systematic review of longitudinal studies of adolescent alcohol use, ryan, jorm, and lubman (2010) identified that parental modelling, monitoring, parental disapproval of drinking, general discipline, and parental support, as well as parent-child relationship quality and communication, were significant factors for both initiation and the levels of drinking in late adolescence and young adulthood. other studies have examined different aspects of family socialization or similar aspects under different terms such as cohesion, overprotection, care, warmth, autonomy granting, etc. (e.g., barnes et al., 2006; creemers et al., 2011; jiméneziglesias, moreno, granado-alcón, & lópez, 2012; latendresse et al., 2010), and have found that those aspects of parenting are significantly associated with adolescent substance use. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 468 another common way to examine the influence of parenting patterns on offspring outcomes is to employ the four general categories of parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful (bahr & hoffmann, 2010; patock-peckham, king, morgan-lopez, ulloa, & moses, 2011; piko & balázs, 2012b; zeinali, sharifi, enayati, asgari, & pasha, 2011). research by bahr and hoffmann (2010) shows that authoritative parenting (highly demanding, highly responsive, monitoring closely, providing high levels of support and warmth) diminished the likelihood of adolescents choosing to engage in risky forms of substance use, even when they had friends who use alcohol or other drugs, thus showing that parents can be a significant influence on the risk-taking behaviours of their adolescents. the influence of parents, and particularly fathers, has been highlighted by padilla-walker et al. (2011). this study highlighted the importance of positive fathering – suggesting the unique importance of fathers, particularly in relation to externalizing and internalizing behaviours (padilla-walker et al., 2011). in other words, the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship matters, even for adolescents beginning the transition to adulthood. these parenting patterns were not only predicted by earlier parenting, but appeared to represent distinct and important aspects of parenting during adolescence (hair et al., 2008). this suggests that despite the increased distance between children and parents during adolescence, parenting continues to be strongly related to adolescents’ personal characteristics and behaviours. further evidence for this is discussed below: parenting, peer influences, and psu. although several studies have suggested that association with deviant peers may play a more important role in adolescents’ polysubstance use than parents, more research has found that parenting styles remain a primary determinant of polysubstance use across adolescence (cleveland, feinberg, & greenberg, 2010), and parents still have a significant influence on their offspring’s substance use after controlling for association with deviant peers (barnes et al., 2006; dorius, bahr, hoffmann, & harmon, 2004; piko & kovács, 2010). additional support for the importance of parental influence is provided by grace barnes and her colleagues (2006) who examined six waves of longitudinal data from 506 adolescents about their alcohol use, illicit drug use, delinquency, parenting styles (support, communication, cohesion, and monitoring) and peer deviance. barnes et al. concluded that the effects of parenting do indeed buffer the influence of peer deviance on the upward trajectory of these problem behaviours during adolescence. there is also strong evidence that “positive parenting” (i.e., high levels of parental knowledge or low levels of inconsistent discipline) is linked to the types of friends that adolescents associate with, further protecting their child from engaging in substance use (cleveland, feinberg, osgood, & moody, 2012). taken together, research indicates that parents serve a vital function in that they may decrease, or even increase, the likelihood of their offspring’s initiation and trajectories of substance use even when offspring get older (lac et al., 2009). additionally, based on their review of research on parental styles and substance use, becoña et al. (2012) concluded that “an adequate parental style helps to cushion the influence of peers or of personal problems that may be related to substance use…. there is no doubt that parental styles can increase the risk of drug use or help to protect against it” (p. 2). monitoring. monitoring is a concept widely used to describe a parental child rearing strategy, yet it is not uniformly defined. in existing studies, monitoring contains various international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 469 components, and monitoring itself is an aspect of various concepts of parenting; thus, a variety of measures have been utilized to assess this construct. it has, for instance, been defined as parental knowledge of children’s activities/whereabouts/peer relationships (e.g., dorius et al., 2004; bohnert, anthony, & breslau, 2012; patock-peckham et al., 2011), discipline, that is parents’ use of clear and consistent rules (cleveland et al., 2010), control or parents’ attempts to direct, guide, and modify behaviour in their children – including suggestions, instructions, commands, rules, threats, and punishments (e.g., dorius et al., 2004), and/or “a way of transmitting behavioural norms for children” (piko & balázs, 2012a, p. 353). moreover, this commonly used concept has been reinterpreted by numerous researchers over the last decade. for instance, jimenez-iglesias and her colleagues (2012) defined monitoring as a bidirectional communication and relationship between parents and offspring. meanwhile, kerr, stattin, and burk (2010) interpreted it as a twofold parental knowledge gained via both parental solicitation (parents’ tendencies to actively seek information about their children) and offspring’s disclosure of information. in spite of this inconsistency, monitoring (or its absence) is the most frequently studied and identified predictor for adolescents’ substance use (e.g., barnes et al., 2006; bohnert et al., 2012). according to the contemporary studies, parental monitoring (particularly knowledge of children’s whereabouts) was the most significant protective factor for adolescents for smoking, binge drinking, and marijuana use (e.g., piko & kovács, 2010). jiménez-iglesias et al. (2012), who conducted their study with 15,942 spanish adolescents, indicated that perceived parental knowledge of a young person’s whereabouts was negatively associated with substance use and had, in most cases, greater importance for the prediction of consumption than the adolescents’ gender. therefore, perceived parental knowledge was, along with age, the most relevant variable in substance use. the literature on parental monitoring, therefore, suggests that such monitoring, although used less as an adolescent gets older, is a highly significant method of preventing an upward trajectory of substance use even if such a trajectory has already begun, and can be an important deterrent for substance use in older adolescents (barnes et al., 2006). still, although parenting style is clearly important, it is not the only factor that plays a role in the development of substance misuse issues. also significant are inherited genetic traits. behavioural genetic approach in the field of substance use studies, the behavioural genetic approach makes its contributions by studying the inheritance of behavioural traits through twin studies or adoption studies, and through the rapidly evolving new field of molecular genetics (plomin & colledge, 2001). in fact, substance use is one of the most active areas of behavioural genetic research (dick, prescott, & mcgue, 2009). quantitative genetics. twin studies typically look at influences of genetic, shared environmental, and non-shared environmental factors. in their twin study of adolescent substance use, derringer, krueger, mcgue, and iacono (2008) found weak heritability early in adolescence, but increasing heritability later in adolescence. in other words, adolescents are more influenced by environmental factors than adults, but over time, heritability becomes more significant, especially if environmental factors have not assisted in mitigating heritable issues. further, several studies found that the strongest genetic influence has generally been found for heavier stages of substance use, and the relatively stronger influence of shared environmental international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 470 factors has been found on initiation, use, and non-diagnostic problematic substance use (creemers et al., 2011; derringer et al., 2008; dick et al., 2009). molecular genetics. by employing the molecular genetic strategy, ducci et al. (2011) examined the developmental change in gene effect by looking at the role of genetic variation within two gene-clusters on smoking in adolescents and mid-adults. their findings suggested that these gene-clusters were involved in different stages of the process leading to nicotine addiction. one cluster was found to have a significant impact on smoking in adolescence (initiation and novelty seeking), but its impact declines with age and becomes undetectable in mid-adulthood. the other cluster was found to be significant for the mid-adult sample only. in other words, this gene-cluster impacts on continuation of smoking and/or increasing severity, but not on initiation. this study shows that different gene-clusters may affect behavioural outcomes differently at different points in our lifespan (ducci et al., 2011). gene-environment interaction. while some behavioural genetic studies have been providing strong evidence for the importance of environment, it is now widely accepted that both genes and the environment play an important role in predicting substance use and dependence (plomin & colledge, 2001), and these “genetic and environmental influences are likely to combine in complex ways” (dick et al., 2009, p. 445). gene-environment interaction implies that environmental stimuli can modify the importance of genetic influences on substance use. creemers et al. (2011) investigated gene-environment interactions in adolescence. they found that carrying genetic risk markers was not directly related to adolescents’ substance use, but certain parenting styles were. overprotection increased the risk of regular alcohol use, whereas the risk of cannabis use was enhanced by parental rejection, and buffered by emotional warmth (creemers et al., 2011). these findings confirmed that “some environments exacerbate the expression of genetic predispositions, whereas others are protective” (dick et al., 2009, p. 445). although new knowledge is constantly being added to our understanding of geneenvironmental interactions, findings from existing studies about adopted offspring, particularly their substance use patterns and/or overall well-being are not consistent or conclusive. for example, fergusson, lynskey, and horwood (1995) reported that adopted children had a higher rate of substance use behaviours than children from biological families. however, the colorado adoption project found that adoption status did not appear to be a predictor of substance use in adolescence (wadsworth et al., 1997). more recently, kendler et al. (2012), in their large-scale adoption studies of substance use, found evidence for gene-environment interaction even though their initial aim was not to find out whether adopted youth were at higher risk than their biological counterparts. thus the findings of kendler and colleagues show that adopted children with a high genetic risk for substance misuse are more sensitive to the deleterious effects of adverse family environments than those with a low genetic risk. in other words, genetic effects on substance abuse were “less potent in low-risk than in high-risk environments” (kendler et al., 2012, p. 695). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 471 challenges (gaps) in the current parenting–psu studies mother/father parenting. mothers’ care-giving behaviour and/or “mothering” are often considered as “parenting” behaviour as a whole (hair et al., 2008; latendresse et al., 2010). additionally, most studies examining parenting styles and influences examine these variables with mothers and fathers lumped together with the word “parents” at the item level (e.g., barnes et al., 2006; patock-peckham et al., 2011). for example, mothers who participate in research are often asked to report on the parenting strategies of the children’s fathers. research has demonstrated, however, that reports of paternal parenting differ for mothers and fathers (mikelson, 2008, as cited in pougnet, serbin, stack, & schwartzman, 2011). further, several studies have found that mothering had greater influences than fathering; however, they also suggested that separating mother and father variables could provide more nuanced insights into the influence of parenting (e.g., patock-peckham et al., 2011). one of the earliest studies of mother/father parenting, conducted by bogenschneider, wu, raffaelli, and tsay (1998) found different aspects of parenting styles to be significant for mothers and for fathers. mothers’ responsiveness was found to be associated with adolescents’ closeness to and relying on peers over parents, which, in return, predicted adolescents’ substance use. whereas, fathers’ closer monitoring was directly associated with lower substance use, with stronger effects among fathers’ more disapproving values regarding adolescents’ alcohol use (bogenschneider et al., 1998). today, fathers’ influence and unique parenting functions are receiving more attention such that fathering variables are now more often included and fathers are also participating more frequently as informants (participants) in more studies (hair et al., 2008). this inclusion of fathers has generated a variety of findings: 1. dorius et al. (2004) showed that only closeness to father moderated the association between peer substance use and adolescent marijuana use. closeness to mother and parental support (mother/father not separated) were found not significant. these findings suggested that during adolescence, father involvement may be particularly important in helping adolescents resist peer pressure to use drugs (dorius et al., 2004). 2. patock-peckham et al. (2011) found that for sons, only mothers’ low level of monitoring was indirectly linked to alcohol-related problems through high impulsiveness, whereas, for daughters, only fathers’ monitoring was directly and indirectly linked to alcoholrelated problems through impulsiveness. 3. piko and balázs (2012b) conducted a study on the role of authoritative parenting style (responsiveness and demanding-ness) in adolescents’ depressive symptomatology. they found that, for boys, only mothers’ responsiveness was a significant predictor. for girls, however, fathers’ responsiveness and demanding-ness were both found to be significant protective factors (piko & balázs, 2012b). these studies showed the importance of parental gender difference as well as the importance of opposite sex parental influence (patock-peckham et al., 2011; piko & balázs, 2012b). we believe that we must recognize that the style of child rearing may vary for father and mother, and that even the same parenting style can affect offspring differently depending on which parent uses which particular parenting styles. therefore, the effect of the different styles of both father and mother need to be studied further and more in-depth. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 472 age. also important to our understanding of the impact of parental factors on the development of substance abuse issues is the age of the child. as hair et al. (2008) stated, it is still unknown or not well studied whether or how these parental factors influence substance use behaviours for older adolescents and young adults because most of the studies are cross-sectional and tend to focus only on young adolescents (hair et al., 2008). based on their review of behavioural genetic studies, dick et al. (2009) also pointed out that the heritability estimates are consistently higher in adulthood than in childhood/adolescence and that the importance of different environmental factors also may vary across the lifespan. therefore, the developmental stage (age) of the participants appeared to be of critical importance. one of these environmental factors, parental influence, is widely thought to lessen in adolescence (patock-peckham et al., 2011). to challenge this assumption, patock-peckham and colleagues explored the possibility that parental influences and the effects of adequate parenting styles may extend into “emerging adulthood”, a stage in which the parents may not always be present to engage in active monitoring. based on their study of university students, they found that parental monitoring reduces alcohol-related problems when offspring may be beginning to show signs of independence (patock-peckham et al., 2011). given these findings, we suggest that there is a need to study these relationships longitudinally, and to include older offspring (youth as well as young adults). in summary, numerous studies provide evidence that parenting directly affects offspring’s substance use, and also buffers the influence of peer deviance. various parenting components and behaviours are found to be important protective or risk factors. there is growing recognition of the importance of behavioural genetic studies in this topic, which investigate the effects of both heritable and environmental factors on substance use and their interaction effects. despite the fact that there is an extensive literature regarding the associations between parenting and substance use, studies which can control heritability (genetics), which investigate mother’s parenting and father’s parenting separately, and which consider these association in the lifespan by studying older offspring are scarce. based on the consideration of the limitations and critiques of studies, the current study endeavours to deepen our understanding of the relationship patterns between parenting styles, offspring’s adoption status, and substance use by examining this relationship at two points in the lifespan (ages 14 to 25 and 21 to 33). the main objective in the current study was to examine “how are parenting styles in the first 15 years of offspring’s lives related to offspring’s polysubstance use?” the conceptual model of the current study is presented in figure 1. the following were the research questions of the current study: 1. do fathers’ and mothers’ parenting styles influence offspring differently? 2. do parenting styles influence biological offspring and adopted offspring differently? 3. do parenting styles have significant influences on offspring polysubstance use at adolescence (time 1) and later in life – young adulthood (time 2)? method the data for the current study are taken from the vancouver family survey (vfs). the vfs was conducted as a two wave longitudinal survey in vancouver, british columbia, canada. the primary objective in the vfs was to examine the associations between the family international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 473 environment and the risk for substance use in biological and adoptive families in a general population sample (barnes, murray, patton, bentler, & anderson, 2000). participant selection in the original design for the vancouver family survey (vfs), gordon barnes, david patton, and sheila marshall proposed to screen over 100,000 families to identify a sample of intact families with children in the 14 to 25 age range living at home (barnes, patton & marshall, 1997). the sample for the data collection was identified through a directory of telephone listings in the greater vancouver area. the data collection was restricted to intact families to allow an examination of the influence of both parents on the development of offspring. children in the adopted families had to be adopted before the age of five and most adoptions occurred early in the first year of life. the sample excluded adoptive families where there existed any biological relationship with one of the parents. the participants were also restricted to respondents who were fluent enough in english to answer the questionnaires. in the end, this process yielded a large (n = 5,120) sample of biological families eligible for participation, but only 177 adoptive families. biological families were then selected at random for recruitment into the study, along with all of the identified adoptive families (barnes et al., 1997). families were contacted by telephone and an attempt was made to arrange a visit to each family to administer questionnaires to both parents and the youngest child in the 14 to 25 age range. families were only included if all three family members were willing to participate. this procedure yielded data on a sample of 477 biological families and 75 adoptive families (participation rate of 53%). due to the fact that the screening process was very costly, the recruitment strategy was expanded to include recruitment through newspaper advertisements and referrals. this process produced an additional 57 adoptive families. demographic comparisons were made between the random and non-randomly selected adoptive families. there were no differences between these groups except on mothers’ education (15 years of education versus 14 years in the random sample) (barnes et al., 1997). in the process of data cleaning, three randomly selected adoptive families, one non-randomly selected adoptive family, and one biological family were dropped for not meeting the inclusion criteria of this study. this produced a final sample of 601 families at wave 1. beginning in 2003, follow-up data at wave 2 were collected for the young adult sample of participants in the vfs (now ages 21 to 33). a total of 215 females and 190 males (n = 405) were re-interviewed, either in person or by use of the mail-out method. this represented 67% of the participants originally tested in time 1. the refusal rate for this project was 18% with the remaining 15% of the sample lost for other reasons including death or failure to locate the individual (barnes, anderson, & jansson, 2008). the final data was comprised of 328 offspring from biological families and 77 offspring from adoptive families. data for time 1 participants who did not participate at time 2 were excluded from this analysis. in the vfs, data on parenting patterns were collected in the first wave of interviews only. in the current study, only offspring’s perspectives of parenting styles were analysed due to the fact that several parenting style variables were only available from offspring’s perspectives in the vfs data set. potentially significant variables, such as monitoring and coercion were not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 474 included in the parents’ questionnaire. measures substance use. alcohol consumption was measured with the volume-variability index (cahalan & cisin, 1968) report on alcohol consumption patterns in the past year. based on responses to these questions, a score measuring the daily volume of alcohol consumption was calculated. smoking scores were derived based on the number of days smoked and the average number of cigarettes consumed over the past 30 days. marijuana and other illicit drug use (cocaine or crack, lsd, speed, heroin) were assessed by items regarding the frequency of use for these substances in the past 12 months. marijuana was treated as a separate drug use item, and the other drugs were combined to form an “other illicit drugs” scale. for both the first and the second wave of data collection, exactly the same scale items were administered and scores were calculated by the same procedure. based on these four substance use data, the standardized polysubstance use (psu) variables for each wave were created by researchers who were also analysing vfs data (m. jansson, personal communication, november 28, 2011). these variables were created by using the following strategies: (a) compute standardized individual scores of alcohol use, smoking, marijuana and other drugs; (b) calculate average overall score based on these four individual standardized scores; and (c) standardize this overall average score. demographics. age (14 to 25 at time 1 and 21 to 33 at time 2), gender, and adoption status were used for the current study as demographic predictors. parenting styles. parenting style data consists of 10 parenting variables measured by three different measurement tools. all data on parenting styles were based on respondents’ perspectives on their parents’ parenting styles in the first 15 years of their lives. cohesion. family cohesion defined as “the emotional bonding that family members have toward one another” (olson & tiesel, 1991, p. 1), was assessed by utilizing the family adaptability and cohesion evaluation scales ii or faces ii (olson & tiesel, 1991). it was a joint measure of “parents’ cohesion” instead of father/mother separated cohesion. test-retest reliability for the cohesion scale over a four week period is r = .83 (olson & tiesel, 1991). in the vfs, internal consistencies for the cohesion scale were .88 (barnes et al., 1997). care and overprotection. the parker parental bonding instrument or pbi (parker, tupling, & brown, 1979) was utilized for assessing care and overprotection. the pbi contains 13 items measuring parental overprotection and 12 items assessing parental care. high care is defined by affection, emotional warmth, empathy, and closeness. high overprotection has been defined as control, intrusion, excessive contact, and prevention of independent behaviour. testretest reliability of the care and overprotection scales over a three week interval are r = .74 and r = .69 respectively (parker et al., 1979). in the vfs, offspring filled the instrument out twice, once for each parent. internal consistencies of the care and overprotection scales were as follows: maternal care .90; paternal care .91; maternal overprotection .85; paternal overprotection .80 (barnes et al., 1997). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 475 support, monitoring, and coercion. parental support and control (monitoring and coercion) items taken from grace barnes and farrell’s study (1992) were also completed by offspring. mother and father support were separately measured, each consisting of four items. mother and father coercion were also measured separately with three items each (cronbach’s alpha = .52 for mother coercion and .58 for father coercion). monitoring consists of two items about “parents’ monitoring” instead of father/mother separated items (cronbach’s alpha = .71); “how often did you tell your parents where you’re going to be after school?” and “how often did you tell your parents where you’re really going when you went out evenings and weekends?” (barnes et al., 1997). analysis procedures the first step in the data analysis involved examining the patterns of perceived parenting styles and substance use in biological and adopted offspring. these patterns were examined with multivariate analysis of variance (manova). the between-subject independent variables were offspring’s gender, adoption status (biological vs. adoptive), and their interactions. in addition, the bivariate associations between predictors, parenting style, and the substance use dependent variables were calculated in order to determine which variables were correlated with each other and needed to be included in the further analysis. the next step involved building a structural equation model by utilizing eqs 6.1 (bentler, 2004) using the maximum likelihood solution. first, we looked at the measurement structures in each of the domains. we executed confirmatory factor analysis for parenting styles and substance use. the substance use measures seemed to fit together on a polysubstance use latent factor; however, since standardized composite psu variable showed better overall fits in the later analysis, this variable was selected instead of the latent factor. in the proposed conceptual model (see figure 1), the parenting style variables fit onto four latent factor variables: positive parenting (cohesion, monitoring, support, and care) by father; positive parenting by mother; negative parenting (coercion and overprotection) by father; and negative parenting by mother. however, the potentially most significant variables (monitoring and cohesion) were assessed by father/mother joint measures in the original vfs, hence, not available separately for father and mother; at the same time, we particularly wanted to test whether these variables fit onto both father and mother latent variables. therefore, in the end, the mother and father models were built and examined separately. both models contained monitoring and cohesion loaded on the latent factor – positive parenting. coercion and overprotection variables each from father and mother were considered to be potentially negative parenting variables; however, these two variables did not fit well onto a joint latent factor. therefore, these variables were examined as independent predictors in each model. in the following stage, we began to build the structural pathways in the overall model. the pairwise covariance matrix was employed to handle missing data. the lagrange and wald test as well as the comparative fit index (cfi) and the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) guided us to add and subtract paths in the models until the model reached a satisfactory level. it turned out that this structural pathway model works for both time 1 and time 2 models as well as for both mother and father models. in the final stage of model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 476 building, we employed the multiple group constraints model – adopted offspring group and biological offspring group, for all four models. to achieve a “good fit” in the constrained models, paths were modified and constrained paths were determined. some non-significant paths were retained in models when they were significant in other models such as direct paths from gender to psu and offspring age to psu. criteria used to judge the fit of a final solution included reaching a χ² to degrees of freedom ratio of less than two to one, a cfi of over .90, and rmsea of less than .10 (byrne, 2012). results comparisons between biological and adoptive samples the results of the manova (see table 1) showed that in both parenting styles and substance use tests, there were significant multivariate between-subjects effects by adoption status (parenting: f = 2.30, p < .05; psu: f = 13.47, p < .001); and gender (parenting: f = 2.44, p < .01; psu: f = 3.84, p < .05). the univariate anovas showed that adopted offspring scored lower than biological offspring on cohesion (f = 7.24, p < .01) and monitoring (f = 10.17, p < .01), but higher on mother coercion (f = 4.93, p < .05), father coercion (f = 4.90, p < .05), time 1 substance use (f = 18.88, p < .001), and time 2 substance use (f = 22.03, p < .001). males scored lower on cohesion (f = 4.34, p < .05), monitoring (f = 8.66, p < .01), and father care (f = 6.38, p < .05), but higher on mother coercion (f = 4.57, p < .05), father coercion (f = 5.56, p < .05), and time 2 substance use (f = 7.36, p < .01). a significant “adoption status by gender” interaction occurred on cohesion (f = 7.86, p < .01), father support (f = 9.44, p < .01), and father care (f = 6.08, p < .05). particularly interesting to note is the fact that presumably protective factors, such as cohesion, father support, and father care, were reported at significantly lower levels in the adopted male offspring (see table 2). based on t-tests, the gender differences noted in table 2 were found to be significant in the adoptive group, whereas, there was no significant gender difference in the biological group. correlational analyses the correlations of the demographics and parenting styles with the polysubstance use measures are shown in table 3. in both biological and adopted samples, high scores in psu time 1 shows significant correlations with low scores in cohesion, monitoring, father care, and mother care. in addition, high mother support, low father coercion, and low mother coercion were significantly correlated with low psu in biological offspring, whereas, in adopted offspring, neither coercion scores are significant, but high father support is. the difference between biological and adopted offspring was more noticeable at time 2. for biological offspring, no parenting styles had significant correlations with psu except monitoring (high monitoring-low psu), whereas, for adopted offspring, four parenting variables had significant correlation with psu – cohesion, father support, father care, and mother care. moreover, adopted offspring data showed psu to be significantly correlated with father support at both time 1 and time 2, but not with mother support at either time. biological offspring data showed a significant correlation with mother support, but not with father support at time 1. these correlations suggest that there are different influences of parenting from mothers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 477 and fathers. lastly, both biological and adopted offspring data show significant correlations between time 1 and time 2 psu. this implies that time 1 psu is predictive of time 2 psu; however, the aim of this study is to examine the influence of parenting over time, but not moderation and mediation effects of earlier psu (time 1). therefore, we decided to analyze time 1 and time 2 psu in separate models and compare results. based on these findings, the final version of the structural equation model analysis was determined to consist of four separate multiple group constrained models (i.e., paths for biological and adoptive groups were constrained to be the same) – time 1 father parenting, time 1 mother parenting, time 2 father parenting, and time 2 mother parenting. multiple group constraints model analyses once all four overall models – (a) time 1 father, (b) time 1 mother, (c) time 2 father, and (d) time 2 mother) – were found to fit the data reasonably – (a) cfi = 0.95 rmsea = 0.08; (b) cfi = 0.93 rmsea = 0.10; (c) cfi = 0.95 rmsea = 0.08; and (d) cfi = 0.93 rmsea = 0.10, respectively – these models were tested as two-group (adoptive versus biological) constrained models. at first, the four models were tested for both biological and adoptive groups separately to make sure each model worked for both groups. this process also shows different patterns of significant paths between the two groups. placing constraints on the structural paths means that these paths are the same in both groups. therefore, differences in path coefficients between groups would make it necessary to remove the constraints on these paths. the lagrange multiplier test guided us to release constraints when it was necessary. results of the final structural equation models are presented in figures 2, 3, 4, and 5. in the four models, the tested paths are the same even though the respective coefficients may differ. in these figures, unconstrained paths were displayed as bold lines and showed path coefficients for both the adoptive group (a) and the biological group (b). in the figures, only significant path coefficients are shown. if a path is constrained and not significant for both groups, a dotted line is shown. time 1 father parenting model. the fit indices for the solution of time 1 father parenting model were considered to be a “good fit” based on recommended criteria: χ² = 84.005; df = 44; cfi = 0.95; rmsea = 0.07; r2 = 0.18 (see figure 2). this model showed that gender was significantly associated with monitoring (low for male) and coercion (high for male) for both biological and adopted youth. for the adoptive group, gender was also significantly associated with all three positive parenting variables, whereas for the biological group it was only associated with overprotection (low in male). as expected, the independent monitoring variable and the father positive parenting factor were both found to be directly associated with psu as protective factors for both biological and adopted offspring. the independent cohesion variable was a significant direct predictor for the adoptive group only. father coercion was found to be a risk factor for psu for the biological group only. one unexpected result occurred with father overprotection, which turned out to be a significant protective factor for both biological and adopted offspring. all five covariance paths (shown as curved arrows in the models) were significant for both groups. time 1 mother parenting model. the fit indices for the time 1 mother parenting model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 478 suggested a moderately good fit: χ² = 98.783; df = 45; cfi = 0.93; rmsea = 0.08; r2 = 0.15 (see figure 3). this model shows that the predictor patterns were relatively similar to those found in the father model. however, the mother parenting model yielded several differences with the time 1 father model. in particular the association between gender and mother overprotection was constrained and not significant overall in the mother parenting model. moreover, mother overprotection was not a significant direct predictor of psu in either biological or adopted offspring in the mother model. the covariance path between support and care was not significant in this model. time 2 father parenting model. the fit indices for the time 2 father parenting model showed a good fit: χ² = 77.103; df = 45; cfi = 0.96; rmsea = 0.06; r2 = 0.07 (see figure 4). in this time 2 model, offspring’s gender and age became significant direct predictors of psu. higher time 2 psu scores were associated with male gender and younger age in both biological and adoptive samples. monitoring, father positive parenting, father coercion, and father overprotection were no longer significant direct predictors for either group; however, cohesion was still a significant protective factor for the adoptive group. time 2 mother parenting model. the fit indices for the time 2 mother parenting model showed a moderately good fit: χ² = 94.950; df = 45; cfi = 0.94; rmsea = 0.07; r2 = 0.06 (see figure 5). by comparing this model with the time 1 mother model and father models, there are several noticeable differences. in the same manner as the time 2 father model, monitoring and positive parenting are no longer significant for either biological or adopted offspring; however, not only did cohesion remain significant, but also mother coercion and overprotection became significant though only for the adoptive group. discussion the current study attempted to deepen our understanding of the relationship patterns between parenting styles, offspring’s adoption status, and substance use for youth and young adults of the vancouver family survey (vfs). it was intended to establish possible differences between father and mother parenting, biological and adoptive groups, and differences by time (maturation). this study also extends the hypothesis of the socialization theory (i.e., that offspring internalize norms and expectations learned through their interaction with parents at a young age and convey them to other contexts later in their lives). overall estimate data shows that environmental factors (parenting styles in the first 15 years of offspring’s lives) have significant influences on psu in adolescence (time 1), but these factors become less significant in a later life stage (time 2). r² of both the time 1 father parenting model and time 1 mother parenting model are much higher than the time 2 father and mother models (0.18 and 0.15 versus 0.07 and 0.06 respectively). in the current study, variables such as monitoring, both father/mother positive parenting factors (cohesion, support, and care), and father overprotection, significantly predicted the psu time 1; however, only offspring’s gender and age showed significant paths to psu at time 2. these findings are consistent with the suggestions made by the behavioural genetic approach, namely that adolescents are more influenced by environmental factors than adults (e.g., derringer et al., 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 479 to examine if the influences of father’s and mother’s parenting styles are different, separate father and mother models were employed in the current study. although both models appeared to be similar, father’s and mother’s parenting styles were shown to have differential influences in the current study. the influence of both father and mother overprotection were noteworthy. since overprotection indicates fearfulness and anxiety for the safety of offspring, and may therefore engender guilt and be experienced as intrusive, it is suggested that this type of parenting might hinder the development of a sense of autonomy, and be linked to various psychological maladjustments and misbehaviours (creemers et al., 2011). however, despite the findings of other studies that a higher level of parental overprotection is significantly associated with a higher risk of adolescent alcohol use (e.g., visser, de winter, vollebergh, verhulst, & reijneveld, 2013), in the current study, father overprotection was found to be a significant protective factor at time 1 in both groups, while mother overprotection was so for the adopted offspring group at time 2. one possible explanation for this contradictory finding could be ages of respondents in the current and other studies. at the time of parenting data collection, offspring in the vfs were aged between 14 and 25. since all data on parenting styles were based on respondents’ perspectives on their parents’ parenting in the first 15 years of their lives, for most participants, their perspectives are retrospective in nature. however, participants in both the creemers et al. (2011) and visser et al. (2013) studies were younger (10 to 12 years of age) and reported “current” parenting practice at the data collection. it is possible that perception of the overprotection variable is developmentally sensitive and changes through time. this finding indicates that more studies with older adolescents and young adults need to be conducted in order to identify each parenting variable as a protective or risk factor. beyond what we have described above, we suggest that one of the most interesting and important contributions of our study is the comparison between biological and adopted offspring with regard to parental influences on their polysubstance use. firstly, it appears that adopted offspring showed significant gender associations with five out of six parenting variables. this might suggest potential direct and indirect influences between male adopted offspring’s psu and their low perceived scores of positive parenting variables. secondly, all four of our models consistently show the significant protective influence of family cohesion on psu (time 1 and time 2) in the adoptive group. this is particularly interesting because cohesion showed no significant influence at all for the biological group. in summary, the adoptive group seemed to be more sensitive or more strongly influenced by various parenting styles and other familial environments than the biological group. it is also interesting that parenting styles keep influencing their adopted offspring even as they enter young adulthood. this finding is consistent with the findings of enoch (2012) and kendler et al. (2012). this could be explained by the socalled “differential susceptibility hypothesis” which claims that “genetic background may make some individuals more susceptible to good and bad environmental influences” (enoch, 2012, p. 155) as well as by the developmental change in gene effect (ducci et al., 2011). the current study was not without limitations. our monitoring variable does not allow us to examine how and why offspring provided information to their parents which became parental knowledge and ultimately “monitoring” in the current study. the measure could encompass parent-solicited information as well as voluntary disclosure by offspring based on the quality of the parent-child relationship (bohnert et al., 2012; kerr et al., 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 480 furthermore, it should not be overlooked that there is a two-way effect of upbringing between children and parents, since the characteristics of the child can facilitate or complicate the type of parenting style used by the parents (barnes et al., 2006; becoña et al., 2012). there is a possibility that a child’s prior interest in or use of substances might have caused parents to increase their monitoring levels (bohnert et al., 2012) and/or their psychological control (albrecht, galambos, & jansson, 2007). in addition, given that some parenting behaviours are subject to change during adolescent development and in reaction to the behaviour of the child (o’connor, 2002), future studies need to focus on the change in parenting behaviours during adolescence and on the interplay between parenting and child characteristics (albrecht et al., 2007; creemers et al., 2011). the findings from the current study suggest that parenting programs should pay close attention to positive parenting aspects such as monitoring (parental knowledge), cohesion, care, and support, as well as father involvement. parents should be encouraged to be confidently involved in their offspring’s development even as offspring get older. these findings will be useful for training programs for parents as well as for professionals working with children, youth, and families. furthermore, based on the findings about the potential sensitivity and susceptibility of adopted offspring towards parenting and its long-term influence, it is crucial that all personnel who work with or live with adopted or foster children and youth are aware of the direct and indirect impact of parenting as well as that of the whole family environment. these personnel include professionals such as child and youth care (cyc) workers and social workers, adoptive parents, foster parents, and other family members. only if all professionals such as cyc workers as well as all parents including current and future adoptive or foster parents can easily access parenting programs as preventive and proactive measures, will we be more effective at reducing the prevalence of psu than we are now by using reactive interventions and treatments for youth and young adults. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 481 references albrecht, a. k., galambos, n. l., & jansson, s. m. 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(2011). the mediational pathway among parenting styles, attachment styles and self-regulation with addiction susceptibility of adolescents. journal of research in medical sciences, 16(9), 1105-1121. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(97)00050-0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 486 table 1. parenting styles and psu patterns by adoption status and gender (manova) dependent variable f adoption status gender adoption x gender multivariate test parenting styles 2.30* 2.44** 1.38 substance use 13.47*** 3.84* 1.89 between subject effects parenting styles cohesion 7.24** 4.34* 7.86** monitoring 10.17** 8.66** .06 mother support 1.46 1.32 2.24 father support .86 3.04 9.44** mother coercion 4.93* 4.57* .03 father coercion 4.90* 5.56* .35 mother care 1.77 .52 2.35 father care .38 6.38* 6.08* mother overprotection .60 .40 .01 father overprotection .00 .53 .70 substance use psu t1 18.88*** 3.62 3.74 psu t2 22.03*** 7.36** 1.39 * = p < .05, ** = p < .01, *** = p < .001 table 2. comparisons of mean scores by adoption status and gender adopted offspring biological offspring male mean female mean male mean female mean cohesion 2.97 3.88 3.97 3.84 father support 11.47 13.54 13.14 12.51 father care 21.58 26.37 24.39 24.57 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 487 table 3. correlations between demographic variables, parenting variables and polysubstance use 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 gender .07 .04 -.17† .09 .02 .12* .14* -.01 .04 -.10 .04 -.00 .12* 2 age -.14 .04 -.03 -.04 .02 .03 .05 -.07 .09 -.07 -.07 .04 -.11* 3 cohesion -.26* .11 .32‡ .55‡ .50‡ -.14* -.18† .58‡ .48‡ -.20‡ -.23‡ -.17† -.06 4 monitoring -.16 -.13 .35† .20‡ .37‡ -.16† -.22‡ .17† .24‡ -.05 -.04 -.27‡ -.13* 5 father support -.29* -.05 .53‡ .42‡ .50‡ -.10 -.06 .75‡ .30‡ -.17† -.10 -.08 -.02 6 mother support -.17 -.03 .47‡ .36* .52‡ -.14* -.30‡ .37‡ .70‡ -.16† -.27‡ -.18† -.04 7 father coercion .18 -.12 -.18 -.17 -.23* -.27* .47‡ -.27‡ -.14* .39‡ .12* .14* .08 8 mother coercion .14 -.15 -.30† -.09 .21 -.41‡ .50‡ -.14* -.42‡ .24‡ .40‡ .23‡ .11 9 father care -.30† .05 .63* .34† .83‡ .45‡ -.27* -.27* .43‡ -.30‡ -.21‡ -.18† -.03 10 mother care -.16 .17 .59‡ .34† .44‡ .78‡ -.33† -.50‡ .60‡ -.35‡ -.50‡ -.21‡ -.08 11 father overprotection .04 -.14 -.29* -.28* -.28* -.36† .39‡ .38† -.39† -.54‡ .55‡ -.04 -.03 12 mother overprotection .08 -.09 -.31† -.30* -.26* -.42‡ .11 .49‡ -.34† -.54‡ .55‡ .05 .09 13 psu t1 .19 .05 -.40‡ -.46‡ -.23* -.22 .06 .08 -.27* -.28* .07 .14 .55‡ 14 psu t2 .16 -.15 -.33* -.11 -.26* -.13 .09 -.19 -.33† -.26* .09 .09 .49‡ psu: standardized polysubstance use correlation coefficients for adopted offspring are below the diagonal; for biological offspring are above the diagonal *p < .05; † p < .01; ‡ p < .00 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 488 figure 1. conceptual model for data analysis gender of offspring adoption status age of offspring young adult polysubstance use adolescent polysubstance use parenting styles father mother positive parenting positive parenting cohesion monitoring support care cohesion monitoring support care negative parenting negative parenting coercion overprotection coercion overprotection international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 489 figure 2. time 1 father parenting model .76 .66* .76 .40* -.15* .13* -.30* -.17* .32 -.27* -.27* .54 .24* monitoring cohesion support coercion overprotection χ²= 84.005; df = 44; cfi = 0.95; rmsea = 0.07; r2 = -.07 (a; -.25*) (b; -.02) -.08 (a; -.01) (b; -.10*) .02 (a; -.25*) (b; .08) -.02 (a; -.22*) (b; .03) .07 (a; -.02) (b; .11*) -.36* (a; -.48*) (b; -.33*) care .03 (a; -.25*) (b; .09) .93 .91 .99 .99 .64 .84 .65 offspring gender psu1 father positive parenting offspring age international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 490 figure 3. time 1 mother parenting model .94 .54 .41* -.09 (a; -.04) (b; -.09) .14* -.47* -.17* .31 -.26* -.13* .70 .20* monitoring cohesion support coercion overprotection χ²= 98.783; df = 45; cfi = 0.93; rmsea = 0.08; r2 = 0.15 .00 (a; -.14*) (b; .04) -.02 (a; -.15*) (b; .01) -.02 (a; -.25*) (b; .04) .11 (a; -.05) (b; .16*) -.52* care -.09 (a; -.34*) (b; -.02) .94 .92 .99 .99 .33 .71 .84 offspring gender psu1 mother positive parenting offspring age international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 491 .77 .66* .76 .40* -.10* .13* -.30* -.17* .34 .59 .24* monitoring cohesion support coercion overprotection χ²= 77.103; df = 45; cfi = 0.96; rmsea = 0.06; r2 = -.07 (a; -.28*) (b; -.02) -.08 (a; -.01) (b; -.10*) .02 (a; -.27*) (b; .08) -.02 (a; -.24*) (b; .04) .09* -.35* (a; -.48*) (b; -.33*) care -.06 (a; -.27*) (b; .00) .93 .97 .99 .99 .64 .81 .65 offspring gender psu2 father positive parenting offspring age figure 4. time 2 father parenting model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 466–492 492 figure 5. time 2 mother parenting model .94 .10* .54 .41* -.02 (a; -.08*) (b; .05) .14* -.47* -.17* .31 -.09* .71 .19* monitoring cohesion support coercion overprotection χ²= 94.950; df = 45; cfi = 0.94; rmsea = 0.07; r2 = .00 (a; -.15*) (b; .04) -.02 (a; -.16*) (b; .02) -.02 (a; -.26*) (b; .04) .09 (a; .11*) (b; .06) -.52* care -.10 (a; -.28*) (b; -.01) .94 .97 .99 .99 .33 .70 .84 offspring gender psu2 mother positive parenting offspring age the importance of neuropsychological deficits and temperament to the prevention of serious antisocial behavior international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 12 the importance of neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament to the prevention of serious antisocial behavior matt delisi and michael g. vaughn abstract: the current article is a targeted review of two biosocial constructs, neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament, which as demonstrated by prior researchers are importantly related to antisocial behavior, importantly related to other constructs that influence antisocial behavior, such as aggression, and importantly related to prevention efforts. we explicate what is known about neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament specifically vis-à-vis prevention and early intervention programs that seek to preclude the development of costly antisocial careers. keywords: temperament, self-control, prevention, neuropsychological deficits, conduct problems the basic logic of prevention studies is to target populations that present with an assortment of risk factors for antisocial behavior and provide educational, medical, and psychological services and other treatment modalities that will theoretically mute the likelihood that the risk factors will manifest in problem behavior. from an array of disciplinary and even ideological perspectives, prevention is hailed as a humanistic, costeffective, and demonstrably effective way to prevent antisocial conduct and related social problems (delisi, 2005; earls, 1998; elliott, 1998a, 1998b; farrington & coid, 2003; farrington & welsh, 2007; litschge, vaughn, & mccrae, 2010). moreover, prevention programs figure prominently in criminal justice policies that span across the various components of the justice system including law enforcement and corrections (e.g., braga, 2008; foley, 2008; mears, 2007; mears & bacon, 2009; mears & barnes, 2010; worrall et al., 2009). a major reason for the appeal of prevention stems from its cost-effectiveness at forestalling the development of costly criminal careers. in a seminal study on the value of crime prevention, cohen (1998) calculated that the average costs imposed by a serious delinquent offender ranged from $1.5 to $1.8 million in terms of victimization costs, criminal justice system expenditures, productivity losses, and quality of life reductions. matt delisi, ph.d. is assistant professor in the department of sociology and coordinator of the criminal justice studies program at iowa state university. michael g. vaughn, ph.d. is assistant professor in the school of social work at saint louis university. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 13 subsequent monetization studies have largely confirmed that an individual serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offender can inflict costs in excess of $1 million (cohen, 2005; delisi & gatling, 2003) with dramatically higher monetization estimates found for adult career criminals and homicide offenders (cohen & piquero, 2009; delisi et al., 2010; welsh et al., 2008). in sum, the social and correctional expenditures and more important human toll created by serious offenders warrant investment in prevention programs not only to save social dollars, but also to preclude the suffering and victimization that accompany crime. the promise of prevention across an array of studies, the evidence for the value of prevention is compelling. initiated in 1962, the high/scope perry preschool project traced the development of 123 impoverished african-american children who at ages 3 and 4 were randomly assigned into a treatment/program or control group (schweinhart, barnes, weikart, barnett, & epstein, 1993). the treatment group received the high/scope active learning preschool program consisting of 15 hours of classroom time per week in addition to a 1.5-hour home visit per week. children in the control group remained at home with their family and received no preschool program. both groups were assessed for follow-up until age 10, and again at ages 14, 15, 19, and 27. through age 27, the differences in life circumstances across groups are stark. weikart (1998) found that whereas 7% of those who received the high/scope preschool program accumulated five or more arrests, the prevalence for those who did not receive the program was 35%. there were also significant differences in terms of ever being on welfare (59% for program and 80% for controls), graduating from high school on time (66% for program and 45% for controls), earning more than $2,000 per month (29% for program and 7% for controls), and home ownership (36% for program and 13% for controls). in addition to these benefits, for every dollar invested in the high/scope perry preschool project, $7.16 in criminal justice and social welfare costs were saved. in a series of landmark studies, olds and his colleagues (olds et al., 1997) found that young, at-risk mothers in rural new york state who received home visits from nurses during their pregnancy and through their child’s second birthday experienced significantly better life chances than controls evidenced by reduced welfare dependency, reduced child abuse and neglect, reduced criminal behavior, and fewer subsequent pregnancies. the program also significantly improved the quality of parenting and the overall health of their children through the preschool period (olds, henderson, & kitzman, 1994). more importantly perhaps, the beneficial effects also extended to the children of mothers who received the nurse home visits. compared to controls, adolescents born to mothers who received the intervention had fewer arrests, less criminal justice system involvement and reduced criminal justice system noncompliance, reduced incidence of running away, fewer lifetime sexual partners, and reduced alcohol and cigarette use (olds et al., 1998). replications of the study among primarily african-american women in memphis, tennessee yielded similarly impressive effects. women who received nurse home visits international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 14 demonstrated greater social competency, less welfare dependency, and greater family stability. moreover, children of mothers who received nurse home visits demonstrated higher intellectual functioning and lower aggression, and these effects endured through age 6 (olds et al., 2004). through age 12 compared to controls, children of mothers who received nurse home visits reported reduced usage of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana, fewer internalizing disorders, better reading and math scores, and higher reading and math scores on standardized tests. curiously, there were not significant differences for externalizing or total behavioral problems (kitzman et al., 2010). over the years, a range of prevention studies have yielded impressive and, at times, long-term benefits toward the reduction of delinquency and related maladaptive behaviors. although some prevention programs are comprehensive and require considerable financial, labor, and time investments, others are relatively brief and inexpensive. for instance, walton et al. (2010) conducted a recent randomized controlled trial examining the effects of an emergency department visit to at-risk youth on violent delinquency and alcohol use. a control group of youths received an instructional brochure containing information about the risks of violence and alcohol use. treatment groups received either a 35-minute computerized instruction or therapist-delivered instruction with follow-up at three and six months. participants who received the therapist intervention demonstrated the greatest improvements in behavior including reduced peer aggression and violence at three months and reduced alcohol usage at six months. compared to controls, youths who participated in the computerized intervention also reported reductions in alcohol problems at six months. today, prevention is a primary example of translational research where theory and practice meet. the limits of prevention despite the widespread respect that prevention is accorded, there are limitations that are important to consider especially when the outcome measure of interest is serious antisocial behavior. to date, the bulk of prevention studies have targeted at-risk mothers and their children with a general aim to improve parenting skills and behaviors that are importantly related to the psychosocial health of the family and to improve the educational, social, and cognitive functioning of the children (olds, 2002). and it is in these areas where the bulk of prevention’s success resides. but when the constructs of interest center on the antisocial propensity of youth, success is more difficult to achieve. as discussed earlier, in the nurse-family replication in memphis, there were not significant externalizing behavioral differences between treatment and control youths. the null effects of prevention programs on conduct problems are not unique to that program. in a recent review, tremblay (2006) made pointed observations about this issue: there is as yet no research on the effects of preschool education programs that would help children at risk of chronic physical aggression to learn alternatives to physical aggression…some have shown long term impact on antisocial behavior, but most, if not all of these experiments, have not assessed or reported on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 15 development of physical aggression. also, to my knowledge, none have shown a reduction of physical violence during adolescence. (p. 486) an important point of consideration should be taken from tremblay’s (2006) critique. tremblay notes that prevention programs have been less successful reducing conduct problems that are associated with individual-level constructs, such as aggression. this is suggestive that biopsychological constructs like aggression are potentially more resistant to interventions than social process constructs like parenting. concomitantly, this speaks to the relevance of biological and biosocial phenomena to these individuallevel factors that appear resistant to the treatment-oriented mechanisms of the program.1 tremblay is not alone in this regard. it is understood that antisocial conduct is a multifactorial outcome influenced by biological factors, social factors, and their interaction (caspi et al., 2002; dodge & mccourt, 2010; moffitt, 2005; moffitt, caspi, & rutter, 2006; shaw & gross, 2008). moreover, it is believed that biological constructs are central to the unfolding of conduct problems over time. for instance, in a recent metareview of life-course-persistent offending, eme (2007, p. 621, emphasis added) concluded, “there is strong scientific consensus that life-course persistent cd [conduct disorder] represents the most virulent type of cd, that this type of cd is virtually an exclusive male phenomenon, and that biological variables play a major role in its development.” although life-course-persistent offending per se has not been a target of prior prevention programs, it is precisely the kind of multifaceted problem syndrome that programs do attempt to preclude. current focus with this in mind, the current article is a targeted review of two biosocial constructs, neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament, which as demonstrated by prior researchers are importantly related to antisocial behavior, importantly related to other constructs that influence antisocial behavior, such as aggression, and importantly related to prevention efforts. the current research purpose is to explicate what is known about neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control and temperament, specifically vis-à-vis prevention and early intervention programs that seek to preclude the development of costly antisocial careers. 1 our approach is not original in that prevention researchers and other scholars are similarly interested in these constructs (see tremblay, 2010; tremblay & szyf, 2010; wachs & kohnstamm, 2001). for instance, olds (2002) discussed child neurodevelopmental impairment as consisting of emotional/behavioral dysregulation and cognitive impairment which are analogs of temperament and neuropsychological deficits respectively. but, in olds’ (2002, p. 155) model, these were the outcomes of prenatal health-related behaviors of the mother, birth/perinatal complications, and child abuse and neglect injuries. although these environmental effects are important, they fail to mention that neuropsychological deficits and temperament are also heritable and thus have a strong biological/genetic basis (kagan, 1994, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 16 neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control neuropsychological functions broadly refer to cognitive and self-regulation processes, such as concentration, motor and cognitive planning, attention, goal formulation, self-awareness and self-monitoring of behavior, and perhaps most importantly, the suppression or modulation of cognitive and behavioral impulses (see ishikawa & raine, 2003). of particular importance for understanding neuropsychological functioning in antisocial or delinquent individuals are lower-order executive functions including behavioral impulsivity, cognitive impulsivity, and operant decision making. in the developmental psychopathology literature, the emotional, affective, visceral processes demonstrated by antisocial persons are referred to as “hot” components of executive functioning (see séguin, arsenault, & tremblay, 2007). in moffitt’s (1993) seminal developmental taxonomy, neuropsychological deficits are a central causal factor for the social, cognitive, and conduct impairments demonstrated by individuals with lifelong problem behaviors, in her model known as the life-course-persistent prototype. children who have neuropsychological deficits present with a range of problems relating to verbal skills, receptive language, sustaining attention, memory, response inhibition, and self-control (see also, barker et al., 2007; moffitt & henry, 1989; moffitt & silva, 1988; séguin, nagin, assaad, & tremblay, 2004; h. white, bates, & buyske, 2001; j. white et al., 1994). in school settings, these deficits create a host of problems for the child whose cognitive deficits and the maladaptive behavioral responses to those cognitive problems set into motion a dynamic, negative process whereby the youth becomes estranged from school and conventional peers. this cascade of negative interactions between the neuropsychological deficits and the responses to them also occur at home and in other social settings and contribute to aversive, often punitive responses from adults. consistent with theoretical expectations, neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control are strongly related to antisocial dispositions and diverse forms of externalizing behaviors and psychopathological conditions (barkley, 1997; beaver, delisi, wright, vaughn, & boutwell, 2008; hinshaw, 1987, 1992; hinshaw, carte, sami, treuting, & zupan, 2002; ishikawa & raine, 2003; nigg, hinshaw, carte, & treuting, 1998). in a comparative study of children with adhd only, odd/cd only, comorbid adhd and odd/cd, and controls, clark, prior, and kinsella (2000) found that the most severe group – children with both adhd and odd/cd – demonstrated the greatest neuropsychological deficits compared to their peers with and without neurobehavioral disorders. drawing on data from 325 individuals selected from the pittsburgh youth survey, raine et al. (2005) found that males on the life-coursepersistent pathway had significantly greater neuropsychological deficits compared to behaviorally less severe comparison groups. specifically, life-course-persistent offenders scored significantly worse on four measures of intelligence, two measures of spatial memory, and one measure of executive functioning. the life-course-persistent group also had a higher prevalence of adhd diagnosis, higher child abuse victimization, higher child neglect victimization, more extreme family poverty, and had a greater number of head injuries that resulted in unconsciousness. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 17 in a longitudinal designed study with nationally representative data, beaver, delisi, vaughn, and wright (2010) found that deficits in verbal skills were predictive of delinquency, violent delinquency, and low self-control across two waves of data that extended through adolescence. in a latent class analysis of data from the early childhood longitudinal survey-kindergarten class, vaughn, delisi, beaver, and wright (2009) found that 9.3% of kindergartners comprise a severe impairment group characterized by deficits in verbal skills and attendant problems with higher impulsivity, higher externalizing behaviors, reduced self-regulation, reduced cognitive abilities, and greater classroom difficulties. in criminological research, a neuropsychological profile including but not limited to impulsivity, externalizing behaviors, and reduced self-regulation are so central to crime and delinquency that a sociologically-informed self-control construct (gottfredson & hirschi, 1990) was recently reformulated into a theory of lower-order executive functioning (beaver, wright, & delisi, 2007). fortunately, there is evidence that neuropsychological deficits relating to selfcontrol can be targeted for prevention and intervention. for example, the tools of the mind curriculum targets inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility among at-risk preschool children. the tools of the mind curriculum consists of 40 activities that are designed to promote lower-order executive functioning, including dramatic play, memory and attention tasks, and self-regulatory private speech which involves telling oneself out loud what the appropriate behavior is. a recent evaluation indicated that children who are placed in the tools of the mind program demonstrated improved functioning compared to peers who were not in the program. indeed, program involvement accounted for more variance in neuropsychological skills than age or gender (diamond, barnett, thomas, & munro, 2007). the general logic of targeting neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control is also at the core of the promoting alternative thinking strategies (paths) curriculum. designed for school entry through fifth grade, paths is a comprehensive educational program taught three times per week for a minimum of 20 minutes per day. among its targets are instruction on delaying gratification, controlling impulses, self-talk, self-awareness, reading and interpreting social cues and the needs/perspective of others, verbal skills, nonverbal communication, problem solving, and decision making. improvements in these target areas contribute to an assortment of positive program outcomes, including improved self-control, reduced conduct problems, reduced anxiety/depression symptoms, and reduced aggression, and paths is hailed as a model prevention program (greenberg, kusche, & mihalic, 2006). moreover, the program costs are just $45 per student per year. despite their moderate to strong heritability2 2 the behavioral genetics of neuropsychological deficits are beyond the scope of the current article. however, it is important to note that neurological deficits demonstrate high heritability, and the genetic covariation between cognitive deficits and allied , neuropsychological deficits relating to self-control can be targeted even among older adults. for instance, focused attention international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 18 meditation training is theorized to enhance the ability of individuals to focus their attention for greater intervals without relying on executive skills to purposely regulate attention during lapses. since self-regulation problems centering on impulsivity are importantly related to school performance and conduct problems, increases in attention skills can serve to enhance school performance. recently, lutz et al. (2009) evaluated the effects of a 3-month intensive training in focused attention meditation among adult respondents. they found that the program increased the stability of attention, reduced the effort required to sustain attention, and sharpened brain responses (as measured by electroencephalography) to task-related sensory inputs. the most promising implication is that if the program is effective among adults (average age was 41), it would likely be more effective among children whose neural development is in a state of greater plasticity. indeed, children with greater attention skills are better able to regulate themselves emotionally and behaviorally (calkins & keane, 2004). temperament from a panoramic purview, temperament encompasses the ways that an individual self-regulates and responds or reacts to the environment. temperament is defined differently by researchers (for reviews, see clark, 2005; tackett, balsis, oltmanns, & krueger, 2009; wachs & king, 1994; wachs & kohnstamm, 2001) but is consistently theorized to include activity level, global mood, approach or appetitive behaviors, and withdrawal behaviors. seminal personality researcher allport (1961) defined temperament as, “the characteristic phenomena of an individual’s nature, including his susceptibility to emotional stimulation, his customary strength and speed of response, the quality of his prevailing mood, and all the peculiarities of fluctuation and intensity of mood, these being phenomena regarded as dependent on constitutional makeup, and therefore largely hereditary in origin” (p. 34). a host of temperament models exist including rothbart and colleagues’ psychobiological model (rothbart, derryberry, & posner, 1994), depue and collins’ (1999) neurobiological model, cloninger’s (1987; cloninger, svrakic, & przybeck, 1993) tripartite model, strelau’s (1994) arousal model, and gray’s (1982) behavioral inhibition system (bis), behavioral activation system (bas), and flight-fight system (ffs). although there are important differences, there are constructs are also moderate to high (haworth & plomin, 2010). for instance, plomin, colledge, and dale (2002) found that 50% of the variance between language disability among children is shared with general cognitive disability. and heritability estimates of h2 = .92 have been found for language and performance delay (or broader neuropsychological deficits) among preschool children (eley, dale, bishop, price, & plomin, 2001). the heritability of hyperactivity is also high at about h2 = .80 (price, simonoff, waldman, asherson, & plomin, 2001). the heritability of specific dimensions of temperament is also differentially heritable. for instance, goldsmith, lemery, buss, and campos (1999) found that soothability was 0% heritable and based entirely on shared and nonshared environment. however, other dimensions including negative affect (h2 = .64), distress to novelty (h2 = .58), activity level (h2 = .55), distress to limitations (h2 = .66), and duration of orienting (h2 = .45) were moderately heritable. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 19 also important commonalities across models that center on three temperamental constructs. the first relates to activity level that is characterized by high-intensity approach behaviors. variously known as extraversion or surgency, activity level manifests in impulsive, sensation-seeking behaviors. the second broad dimension of temperament centers on negative emotionality, which is characterized by feelings of anger, fear, sadness, discomfort, and anxiety. individuals with high levels of negative emotionality are more aversive or annoying, traits that are conducive for negative social interactions. the third global dimension is known as self-control, effortful control, or inhibitory control and it relates to the ability of an individual to regulate and modulate behavior in the face of impulses. the pioneers of the contemporary study of temperament are alexander thomas and stella chess (1977). their new york longitudinal study examined 141 infants over a period of six years and utilized a reciprocal understanding of temperament where infant reaction patterns – assumed to be innate or biologically-driven – interacted with environmental conditions, such as the responses from their parents. based on their observations, thomas and chess indentified nine dimensions of infant temperament that were believed to have strong implications for their psychological and social development. their nine dimensions were: (a) activity level; (b) regularity in terms of eating, sleeping, and elimination; (c) adaptability characterized by responses to changes in their environment; (d) responses to novelty (e.g., approach or withdrawal); (e) responsiveness threshold; (f) intensity of reaction to others; (g) mood quality; (h) distractability; and (i) task persistence. in addition, thomas and chess (1977; thomas, chess, birch, hertzig, & korn, 1963) suggested three general types of children with relatively coherent temperamental profiles. easy children were well-adjusted and unlikely to display or develop conduct problems, difficult children were prone to conduct problems and externalizing conditions, and slow-to-warm children were more cautious, inhibited but still generally wellfunctioning and prosocial. decades later, the same three profiles can be observed albeit using sophisticated latent profile analyses that locate unobserved groupings in data. researchers in the netherlands found a well-adjusted “typical” group, an “expressive” group with increased externalizing problems, and a “fearful” group at risk for internalizing problems (van den akker, dekovic, prinzie, & asscher, 2010). another critical contribution of thomas and chess was the concept of “goodness of fit” where caregivers were cognizant of temperamental biases of children and could modify parenting behaviors to facilitate good outcomes and minimize opportunities for maladjustment. it is during the first year of life that the temperamental seeds of both positive and negative behaviors are seen. it is also during the first year of life that parents respond to the temperamental cues from their infants, and adjust their parenting behaviors accordingly. infants who are agreeable and unfussy, and predictable in their behaviors – suggesting self-regulation – are at very low risk for problem behaviors later in life. such children are also relatively easy to parent because caregiving is a relatively facile experience. on the other hand, infants who are fussy, irritable, and more difficult to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 20 predict in terms of their day-to-day behavior are more challenging. far from a facile experience, parenting a child with a more difficult temperament leads to aversive parentchild interactions (patterson, 1982) and sets into motion the coercive family dynamics that are linked to problem behaviors occurring through adolescence (lahey et al., 2008).3 the temperament literature is voluminous, and there are many examples of the continuity and stability of temperamental profiles. to illustrate, caspi, silva, and their colleagues (1996) tracked a birth cohort from dunedin, new zealand and explored their personality and temperamental paths from ages 3 to 21. they found three types that were consistent with those developed by thomas and chess (1977). the well-adjusted type included children who were capable of self-control, were adequately self-confident, and were generally fine when faced with new situations or upon meeting new people. the inhibited type included children who were fearful, socially reticent, and easily upset by strangers. the undercontrolled type – 10% of the sample – included children who were impulsive, restless, negativistic or disagreeable, and emotionally labile. these were their characteristics at age 3. between ages 5 and 11, the undercontrolled children were consistently and significantly rated by parents and teachers to have externalizing problems. by ages 13 to 15, the undercontrolled at age 3 group continued to be noteworthy for their externalizing behaviors in addition to internalizing problems. by 18, undercontrolled children had low constraint, were admittedly reckless and careless, enjoyed dangerous and exciting activities, scored high on negative emotionality, were aggressive, and felt alienated and mistreated by others. at 21, formerly undercontrolled children reported employment difficulties and conflicts with family and romantic partners. they were described as conflict-prone, unreliable, and untrustworthy. they had problems with alcohol and often had extensive criminal records. similar continuity was observed for the other two groups. inhibited children developed into lives characterized as depressive, lacking agency and social connection, and prone to internalizing problems. they comprised 8% of the dunedin sample. the well-adjusted type developed into normal young adults (caspi, 2000; caspi et al., 2003; caspi, & silva, 1995). temperamentally-based behavioral observations made at age 3 also significantly predict adult outcomes. for instance, caspi, moffitt, newman, and silva (1996) conducted a longitudinal-epidemiological study where 3-year-old children were classified into groups based on their behavioral disposition and reassessed at age 21. those who were described as undercontrolled or impulsive at age 3 were 2.9 times more likely than non-impulsive children to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at age 21. 3 it is important to note that these effects are meaningful across generations. for instance, drawing on data from three generations of the oregon youth study, kerr, capaldi, pears, and owen (2009) found linkages between a difficult temperament and conduct problems over three generations. in generation one, there was an association between parenting styles, the child’s difficult temperament (e.g., high activity level, high impulsivity, high anger, and low inhibitory control), and antisocial conduct during both childhood and adolescence. by the third generation, there remained significant linkages between the respondent’s temperament and his or her involvement in externalizing behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 21 moreover, they were 2.2 times as likely to be repeat offenders and 4.5 times more likely to be convicted of a violent crime. compared to a control group, formerly impulsive children were also more likely to attempt suicide and have alcohol problems. in this sense, serious adult psychopathology was the outcome of readily observable impulsivity problems at age 3. these effects were also seen at age 26 (caspi et al., 2003). in a classic study, caspi, elder, and bem (1987) examined longitudinal data spanning 30 years on boys and girls ages 8 to 10 who had frequent temper tantrums. were temper tantrums merely a passing phase of late childhood or did they have enduring meaning? the results were alarming. they found that the explosive, poorly tempered outbursts of childhood also emerged later in adulthood under contexts when people had to subordinate themselves such as work and school settings. having a bad temper as a child predicted middle adulthood occupational mobility (i.e., frequent job changes due to quitting or firing), educational attainment, and divorce and these effects were similar for males and females.4 additional investigators using different data have similarly found difficult temperamental profiles observed in the first years of life can have enduring and negative consequences through kindergarten (berdan, keane, & calkins, 2008), elementary school (rende & plomin, 1992; slomkowski, nelson, dunn, & plomin, 1992), middle school (séguin, pihl, harden, tremblay, & bulerice, 1995), and adulthood (kagan, 1994, 2010). the temperament concept of effortful control is important because it conceptually relates to a construct that has greater currency in criminological research: self-control (gottfredson & hirschi, 1990). drawing on data from the national institute of child health and human development early child care research network study of early child care, vazsonyi and huang (2010) recently examined the stability of selfcontrol over a 10-year period when the children were ages 4.5 to 10.5. over a period that began during the preschool years and extended toward the end of elementary school, they found considerable stability in self-control. preschoolers who were characterized by very low levels of self-control (measured as one standard deviation below the mean) remained that way throughout the study period. more importantly, by age 10.5, they were most discrepant from their peers. similarly, children who were average and those who were above average (measured as one standard deviation above the mean) were stable across the six years. self-control also was strongly associated with deviance. 4 temperament is also a useful variable for understanding the sheer differences between males and females in conduct problems. for instance, the prevalence of life-coursepersistent conduct problems is dramatically higher among males than females, with a sex ratio ranging from 10:1 to 15:1 across studies (see eme, 2010). the constellation of traits of youth who develop lifelong conduct problems are captured by gender differences in temperament and these gender differences clearly disadvantage males. for example, meta-analytic research found that males have significantly lower levels of effortful control than females and males have significantly higher levels of surgency/activity than females (else-quest, hyde, goldsmith, & van hulle, 2006). both of these temperamental biases are associated with externalizing behaviors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 22 given the two-pronged importance of temperament to problem behaviors, independently and interactively with parenting, it is a critical target for prevention (also see, blair & diamond, 2008). in this sense, a focus on prevention takes the standard procedures from traditional prevention programs and tailors them to the “goodness of fit” between the temperamental disposition of the child and their rearing environment. although temperament is a moderately heritable construct, it is amenable to program change as evidenced by prior research. for example, the temperament intervention for parents study (tips) at arizona state university college of nursing was designed to help parents modify the problem behavior of their children by understanding their temperament. tips involved randomized groups of parents who received no information (controls), an information group that received instruction on parent management strategies, and a nurse intervention group that received personal intervention on their child’s temperament from a pediatric nurse. although the program was not formally evaluated, a focus on the child’s temperamental responses and strategies to reduce problems can enhance parenting, improve parent-child relations, and reduce the occurrence of problem behaviors (melvin, 1995). in a randomized, controlled study, landry, smith, and swank (2006) found that mothers who received videotaped problem-solving training during 10 home visits increased their responsiveness to their infants between ages 6 and 13 months. the increases in maternal responsiveness enhanced the competence of the children to lay a foundation for prosocial behavior. moreover, the responsiveness training theoretically helped to guard against the coercive processes that can engender conduct problems. indeed, van den boom (1995) found that a parent-skills training provided to mothers of irritable infants in the first year of their children’s life had enduring effects on parent responsiveness, parent attachment, and child cooperation. similarly, the family foundations program is a universal prevention program that consists of eight interactive psychoeducational skills-based classes for expectant couples. in addition to parenting, parent and child well-being, and parent-child relations, family foundations also targets temperamental concepts relating to infant orienting ability, infant soothability, and infant sleep. evaluation of a randomized study found that infants in families that received the intervention demonstrated greater duration of orienting, greater soothability and closeness with fathers, reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms with mothers, and overall greater coparental support. the largest effect size was for reductions in father-reported dysfunctional interaction with the child (feinberg & kan, 2008). more dramatic effects have been shown for interventions that target temperamental inhibition. kennedy, rapee, and edwards (2009) conducted a study of 71 children ages 3 to 4 who met diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder and who had a parent with a current anxiety disorder. the children were randomly assigned to an eightsession intervention that provided training on the understanding and treatment of excessive anxiety in children and ways to cope with it or to a wait-list control condition. children in the intervention showed significant alterations to their inhibited temperament including increased speech or talkativeness, increased interaction with an adult stranger, and increased distance from their mother during social interaction. although it is an overly uninhibited temperament that is associated with externalizing conditions, an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 23 extremely inhibited temperament with its attendant anxiety and depressive symptoms is strongly associated with internalizing disorders (kagan, 1994, 2010). a policy focus on temperament can also yield reductions in problem behaviors occurring among adolescents. for example, evaluations of a large-scale longitudinal study – tracking adolescents’ individual lives survey (trails) – of dutch adolescents have shown that good parenting practices and higher socioeconomic status can moderate temperamental risks such as frustration (or general negative emotionality) and fearfulness. teens at risk for delinquency and other externalizing behaviors remained crime free when buffered by parents who provided emotional warmth and higher socioeconomic status (sentse, veenstra, lindenberg, verhulst, & ormel, 2009). these parent and socioeconomic effects are important because left unchecked, temperamental profiles clearly distinguish adolescents with externalizing problems. specifically, youths with high levels of negative affect and low levels of effortful control are significantly at risk for problem behaviors. in the end, prevention programs can also seek to produce outcomes that are consistent with temperamental profiles linked to well-adjusted, high functioning persons. a well-adjusted temperament is an established protective factor that offers resilience in criminogenic environments that contribute to problem behaviors among youths (arthur, hawkins, pollard, catalano, & baglioni, 2002). indeed, in a study of the relationships between temperament and social competence among preschoolers in head start, corapci (2008) found that children with temperaments characterized by low impulsivity and low inhibition demonstrated high levels of interactive peer play, which is suggestive of general sociality. in addition, teachers rated children with low impulsivity/low inhibition as more socially competent, and these are youths most likely to develop into functioning, prosocial adults. discussion prevention is a rare commodity in the world of public policy in that it enjoys proponents from all points of the political spectrum. it is humanistic to invest in social programs to improve the life chances of young people and their children, especially when those interventions are cost-effective compared to the costs of supervising and controlling offenders over their offending career. there is much to be excited about regarding the prevention literature, and if there is a common point to take away from prevention studies, it is that modest investments that target parenting practices not only improve the behavioral outcomes of young parents, particularly mothers, but also the behavioral outcomes of their children. but a less sanguine conclusion is drawn from interventions that address the neurobiological traits of more severely behaviorally disturbed at-risk youths. this concern has been raised previously (e.g., tremblay, 2006, 2010; tremblay & szyf, 2010) and we suggest there is similar concern about neuropsychological deficits relating to selfcontrol and temperament. the immediate and long-term consequences of these constructs on serious antisocial behavior are alarming. for instance, keenan and wakschlag (2000) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 24 reported that preschoolers as young as 30 months present symptoms that are consistent with serious behavioral disorders, such as adhd, odd, and cd. in their study of 79 clinic-referred preschool children ages 2.5 to 5.5 years, nearly 50% met criteria for conduct disorder and 75% met criteria for odd. nearly 27% met diagnostic criteria for all three disorders. some of these children were so aggressive and uncontrollable that they were expelled from preschool. similarly, campbell and ewing (1990) found that 67% of children who were rated as hard-to-manage at age 3 met diagnostic criteria for externalizing disorders at age 9 and the diagnostic data were validated by maternal and teacher reports. hard-to-manage preschoolers display a troubling set of characteristics that lend themselves to prolonged antisocial conduct and compromised prosocial development. mothers, fathers, and teachers report that hard-to-manage children as young as age 3 are noteworthy for their poor impulse control, oppositional tendencies, poorly developed social skills, inattention, and school problems (campbell, 1994). these characteristics are not likely to dissipate merely because of increased family resources, improved parenting, and improved parentchild relations. although it is easy to suggest that more intensive intervention begun early may help these children with difficult-to-manage temperaments, there is little empirical evidence that this is the case. a more efficient approach for building prevention programs is to use principles derived from a biosocial understanding of the family dynamics and person-specific characteristics of those at risk of becoming habitual offenders is needed (see caspi et al., 2002). this paradigm for increasing intervention efficacy and reducing serious violence is beginning to gain traction. for instance, from an epigenetics perspective, where processes such as dna methylation and histone acetylation turn off or turn on genetic transcription, well-known prenatal risk factors including alcohol, drug, and tobacco use, poor nutrition, and maternal stress can be understood as “markers of environmental effects during development, including assessment of preventive and corrective intervention effects” (tremblay, 2010, p. 356). in other words, these problems can be targeted not only for their role in the development of antisocial behavior from a traditional prevention and temperament perspective, but also for their contemporary role in biosocial understanding of the ways that genes, environments, and epigenetic environments play out. we have not reinvented the wheel here. a clear focus on neuropsychological deficits and temperament sheds insight on the unifying ways that individuals consistently behave and consistently respond to their environments. this is well established in the temperament and developmental psychopathology literatures, and also appears on the radar screen in the prevention literature. but the primacy of biosocial constructs is relatively new to criminology and criminal justice. and although many of the constructs that were discussed in this article are under moderate to strong genetic influence, variance in these constructs is also importantly explained by environmental factors. future research and intervention on modifying environmental factors in the hopes of producing beneficial outcomes would fruitfully benefit from including temperament and neuropsychological factors. doing so would result in greater specification of the most international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 12-35. 25 important environmental factors that could influence dispositional traits such as a difficult temperament. moreover, in relation to what once seemed like fixed, constitutional factors that were impervious to change, the current review discussed several promising programs that directly address the 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(2009). crime trends and the effect of mandated drug treatment: evidence from california’s substance abuse and crime prevention act. journal of criminal justice, 37(2), 109-113. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 96–120 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019940 using participatory methods to develop and implement research on historical compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland patricia lannen, clara bombach, and oskar g. jenni abstract: many of the child welfare policies and practices in switzerland before the law reform of 1981 were rather invasive and were exercised under a legal context that sometimes threatened basic human rights. the inclusion of survivors of such measures in the research process has been vigorously requested in switzerland. therefore, four individuals who had been placed in institutions as children have been included in the process of preparing a recently initiated, 60year follow-up study of individuals placed in infant care institutions in switzerland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. using focus interviews and “thinkaloud” methods, the interviewees commented on two parts of the planned research process: (a) how to contact the cohort, and (b) finalising the assessment instruments. data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. interviewees felt their participation was a sign of recognition of their experience and expertise. their input contributed to the research in a host of ways. for example, they helped to make documents more understandable, identified errors and redundancies, and pointed out wording that might cause insecurities or negative reactions. they also pointed to shortcomings in some of the items used in the assessment instruments. in addition, they made significant contributions regarding how best to approach and work with the cohort. this study shows that, when researching historical compulsory social measures, the inclusion of formerly institutionalised individuals in development and implementation is not only feasible, but is of significant benefit to the quality of the research. keywords: participatory research, institutional care, infant care, compulsory social measures patricia lannen phd is deputy director and head of research at the marie meierhofer children’s institute, kulturpark zürich west, pfingstweidstrasse 16, 8005 zurich, switzerland. email: lannen@mmi.ch clara bombach ma (corresponding author) is a research associate at the marie meierhofer children’s institute, kulturpark zürich west, pfingstweidstrasse 16, 8005 zurich, switzerland. email: bombach@mmi.ch oskar g. jenni md is director of the child development center at the university children’s hospital zurich and professor for developmental pediatrics at the university of zurich, rämistrasse 71, 8006 zurich, switzerland. email: oskar.jenni@kispi.uzh.ch mailto:lannen@mmi.ch mailto:bombach@mmi.ch mailto:oskar.jenni@kispi.uzh.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 97 before the law reform of 1981, many of the child welfare policies and practices in switzerland were rather invasive and were exercised under a legal context that sometimes threatened basic human rights1 (hauss et al., 2018). formally, these practices were referred to as “compulsory social measures and placements”. they included a host of measures such as placements in care institutions and foster families on farms (verdingkinder [contract children]), or committing individuals to psychiatric hospitals, medication trials, forced castrations, or forced adoptions. these measures served to intervene in family and personal circumstances that, from the point of view of the authorities, were “liederlich” [slovenly] or “verwahrlost” [bedraggled] and should be “disciplined” (lengwiler & praz, 2018; ramsauer, 2000; unabhängige expertenkommission, 2019). even though the survivors2 of the compulsory social measures and placements have been calling attention to their often difficult experiences, historically, they have only rarely been able to make their voices heard. we will outline the perspectives of survivors of the compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland from the early 20th century to the 2010s, and also describe the historical and scientific reappraisal efforts undertaken since 2013. the purpose is not to document the full history, but to illustrate, with some examples, how swiss society has dealt with the concerns of survivors over time. in particular, we will also highlight the emerging voices of survivors who have requested inclusion in research efforts into the compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland. a century of trying and failing to be heard in 1897, the 17-year-old carl albert loosli, who had been living in a child and youth home in switzerland since the age of 12, stole 50 centimes3 from a store. as a consequence he was given psychiatric treatment and sent to the trachselwald forced education institution, a state “rescue centre for malicious young people” (schoch, 1989, p. 91). in 1924, as a 44-year-old writer and journalist, loosli published a pamphlet entitled anstaltsleben [life in an institution]. a year later, he released his book ich schweige nicht! [i will not remain silent!]. in these tracts, he brought forward several reform proposals which were largely received condescendingly and rejected by educational institutions.4 1 the swiss civil code, introduced in 1912, allowed access to “conduct that is assessed as deviating from the norm” and granted authorities considerable leeway in their interpretation and justification of the removal and placement of a person (seglias 2018, p. 23). in 1981, this law was amended, thus fulfilling an important requirement of the united nations convention on human rights (seglias, 2018, p. 31). 2 in german, individuals affected by such measures are referred to as betroffene (literally, “those affected by such measures”). we have opted to translate the term as “survivors”, a more common way of referring to such individuals in the english language (see, e.g., sinclair, 2007). 3 as of 2019, approximately 0.47 euro, or 0.51 usd. 4 for more on the articulation and publications of individual survivors in the 20th century, see ammann et al. (2019, p. 8), and unabhängige expertenkommission (2019). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 98 in 1944, the magazine die nation [the nation] published a report with pictures of the sonnenberg reformatory in kriens that revealed the problematic conditions of residential institutions. for a short period of time, the professional world talked of an “institutional crisis”, but public attention to the conditions of remanded children in switzerland soon waned again. in the late 1950s and early 1960s, psychiatrist dr. marie meierhofer, the city physician of zurich, examined over 400 infants in 12 orphanages in zurich. her dissertation on the well-being of institutonalised infants included numerous photographs; she subsequently produced a documentary film about her research, which attracted attention far beyond the borders of switzerland. the film, whose release followed some of the groundbreaking research on attachment and the effects of deprivation by pioneers such as john bowlby (1951) and rené spitz (1945), showed the impacts of deprivation on children’s behavior. meierhofer succeeded in drawing attention to the problematic situation in swiss institutions and its negative effects on children’s well-being and development. her work contributed to a nascent swiss movement in which the conditions of care institutions were questioned as systemic and not merely isolated cases of institutional malfeasance (bombach et al., 2018; schoch, 1989). in the early 1970s, the journal der beobachter [the observer] published statements by roma mothers who reported that their children had been taken away against their will. galle (2016) authored a comprehensive historical reappraisal of the hilfswerk für die kinder der landstrasse [relief organisation for rural children], which was a project of the swiss foundation pro juventute, under whose auspices these children had been removed from their homes. she showed that, although der beobachter prides itself to this day on having uncovered a scandal in switzerland with their report in the 1970s, the mothers of the abducted children had tried to draw attention to their fate as far back as the 1940s. they had contacted the media at the time, including der beobachter, but were not given a hearing (galle, 2016, pp. 16–18). it was not until the 1970s that “perceptions arose of the measures as scandalous, closely linked to societal changes, in particular increasing criticism of institutions that grew out of debates over reform of switzerland’s prison system at the end of the 1960s” (galle, 2016., p. 17). until 1981, however, the legislation related to care measures remained intact: “it allowed the authorities to withdraw individuals from their freedom, without them having committed a crime” (unabhängige expertenkommission, 2019, p. 35). in the 2000s, more and more survivors turned to the public and raised their voices in the media (seglias, 2018, pp. 26–27; ziegler et al., 2018, p. 19). the voices of survivor-led organisations became louder: artists, authors, and journalists addressed individual stories in movies, memorials, exhibitions, autobiographies, and portraits in magazines (botschaft zur volksinitiative, 2015, pp. 106–107; seglias, 2018, p. 27). as recently as 2004, despite welldocumented problems related to institutional care, the swiss parliament “refused to allow scientific research into the placement of children and young people, and did not agree to an already drafted federal law on the rehabilitation of forced sterilisation” (seglias 2018, p. 27). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 99 the swiss reappraisal since 2013: listen, look, and slowly become active in 2013, federal councillor5 simonetta sommaruga, head of the swiss federal department of justice and police, initiated the movement towards a comprehensive reappraisal of the history of compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland. she criticised the long period of looking away from reported abuse in switzerland and demanded a historical reappraisal: “we all need to know what happened to the ‘verdingkinder’ (‘contract children’) and other victims of coercive care measures in switzerland” (sommaruga, 2013, p. 2). she “wholeheartedly apologized” on behalf of the government, the first swiss public official to ever make this kind of public declaration (sommaruga, 2013, p. 3). although sommaruga’s 2013 declaration was welcomed more openly than ever before, it reflected the delay in public engagement with the darkness of the swiss history of coercive measures in comparison with other european countries (businger & ramsauer, 2019, p. 10). between 2013 and 2018, the so-called “swiss round table on compulsory social measures” brought different groups together to exchange views and discuss how the demands of various stakeholder groups could be taken into account and included in the rehabilitation of survivors. the round table adopted a catalogue of measures. one tenet was that scientifically investigating the past was “indispensable” and should contribute to an understanding of how the measures were developed and how they affected survivors. furthermore, the involvement of survivors in the research was called for, including interviews with contemporary witnesses (businger & ramsauer, 2019, p. 42). in 2014, a survivor named guido fluri launched the “reparation initiative”, which, along with other initiatives, led to new legislation. swiss federal act on the reappraisal of compulsory social measures and placements before 1981 in 2017, the swiss federal act on the reappraisal of compulsory social measures and placements before 1981 (bundesgesetz über die aufarbeitung der fürsorgerischen zwangsmassnahmen und fremdplatzierungen vor 1981 (afzfg), 2017; hereinafter referred to by the german acronym afzfg) came into force. a reparation payment of 25,000 swiss francs, known as a “solidarity contribution”, could be claimed by formerly institutionalised people provided they could demonstrate their “victim status”. researchers investigating the biographical histories of former children in care criticised this procedure, arguing that this undue burden of proof had the potential to reactivate stigmatisation and traumatisation (bombach et al., 2018d; bombach et al., 2020). according to the federal council, the aim of the legislation was “to support victims and other affected persons in coming to terms with their own history” (botschaft zur volksinitiative, 2015, p. 103). 5 the federal council is the highest executive authority in switzerland and comprises seven members. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 100 independent commission of experts, academic research, and “the expertise of victims” the afzfg (2017) stipulated in article 15 paragraph 1: “the federal council shall ensure that the compulsory social measures and placements prior to 1981 are comprehensively researched.” in 2018, the 4-year mandate of the independent commission of experts (ice) on administrative care, appointed by the federal council, came to a close (unabhängige expertenkommission, 2019). the ice recommended paying special attention to the perspective of survivors. in its final publications, the ice stated: “in the opinion of the persons who were victims of coercive welfare measures and who were interviewed in the course of the ice scientific investigation, the loss caused by the injustice suffered is immeasurable and therefore irreparable. rather, the challenge is the rehabilitation of the people who have been excluded and stigmatized by the society and silenced by an organized system of coercion” (unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019, pp. 8–9). emerging from this 4-year study, one of the first publications of the ice was an illustrated book that narrated individual life histories — an impressive way of giving voices and faces to people who had not been heard for a long time (ammann et al., 2019, p. 11). a 2019 documentary film 6 , also produced by the ice, included commentaries from survivors who reflected upon the importance of having the opportunity to publicly voice their experiences: the increasing public interest and sensitivity to their experiences relieved them of the burden of silence and stigma. as an outcome of its mandate, the ice formulated several recommendations, which focused on the perspectives of survivors (unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019). one of these recommendations was specifically related to research: conducting scientific research … with the participation of persons who were victims of coercive measures of care, i.e., with methods that are based on their experiences, grants them professional competence that can be treated on the same level as scientific expertise. this expertise of the victims should be recognised both in the production of knowledge and in compensation. (unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019, p. 43) as part of the historical reappraisal in recent years of compulsory social measures and placements up to 1981, it is now finally recognised that survivors have exceptional expertise. by allowing insights into their personal fates and life histories, survivors have provided important motivation for research and have also promoted understanding for their sometimes difficult life situations (bombach et al., 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2020). despite the emergent acknowledgement of their expertise, which is defined by their biographical experiences, the demands of survivors and recommendations of the ice researchers to include survivors in research have been accepted and implemented only cautiously. 6 https://www.uek-administrative-versorgungen.ch/begegnungen-projekte/film https://www.uek-administrative-versorgungen.ch/begegnungen-projekte/film international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 101 while attention has been focused on the overall history of compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland up to 1981, placement into institutions during infancy has been almost entirely ignored, even in more recent works (e.g., akermann et al., 2014; arnold et al., 2008; furrer et al., 2014; hafner, 2011; schoch, 1989). this was not least because, unlike other groups of survivors, these men and women may not remember the events due to their young age at the time. they are historical witnesses of that time, without the ability to explicitly provide us with a historical testimony. national research programme “welfare and coercion” and the study “life histories” in 2017, 2 years before the publication of the ice report, the swiss national science foundation (snsf) launched the national research programme (nrp76) with 18 million chf in funding for research projects under the umbrella of “welfare and coercion — past, present, future”. the nrp76 funds research that analyses “the characteristics, mechanisms and effects of swiss welfare policy and practice in their various contexts. possible causes for welfare practices that violate and promote integrity are to be identified and the effects on those affected investigated”7. this funding represents a societal-level recognition of the problematic histories of coerced welfare practices in switzerland. the present study received funding under this programme and is a continuation of the aforementioned work begun by dr. meierhofer more than 60 years ago. at that time, she studied the developmental and life circumstances of infants under the age of 3 (n = 421) institutionalised in the canton of zurich (meierhofer & keller, 1974). between 1971 and 1973, she studied a subset (n = 150) of these children for a second time (meierhofer & hüttenmoser, 1975). meierhofer compared this assessment with a study of the 1954–1956 cohort of children living with families, which was undertaken by the university children’s hospital’s zurich longitudinal studies (zls), as discussed in wehrle et al. (in press). in 2013, researchers at the marie meierhofer children’s institute conducted an interview-based study with 16 individuals of this cohort (ryffel & simoni, 2016). in the current study, we reanalyse the historical data with modern statistics and locate former study participants, now in their early 60s, to learn about how their lives have developed (lannen et al., in press). concurrently, the zls is also contacting and recruiting the individuals of their 1954–1956 cohort. this research design allows for a 60-year follow-up of individuals with different starting conditions in early life. the inclusion of survivors in the research process has been vigorously demanded by survivors themselves (hauss, 2018, p. 219; seglias, 2018, pp. 30–31; unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019, p. 43; wigger, 2018; ziegler, 2018, p. 71; ziegler et al., 2018, p. 12). while social sciences in switzerland have by and large committed to a participatory model of research, there is still a dearth of good research 7 http://www.nfp76.ch/en http://www.nfp76.ch/en international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 102 practices to draw from when developing research methodologies and approaches designed to include survivors in research related to compulsory social measures and placements (lengwiler, 2018, p. 175). as part of the 60-year follow-up study, we worked with four survivors, who provided input during the preparatory stage of the project. through this inclusion, we hope to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of collaborating with survivors in the research process. method four survivors, one woman and three men, aged between 54 and 60, were involved at the beginning of the research activities. three of them had been placed in care institutions as infants between 1959 and 1965, and one of them both as a toddler and as an adolescent. one person was part of the original meierhofer study and had been in contact with the research team of the marie meierhofer children’s institute since the exploratory study in 2016 (ryffel & simoni, 2016). two others were known to the research team through private contacts. another had become involved in the reappraisal of compulsory social measures and placements in switzerland, and had contacted various research institutions demanding to be included and heard. at the marie meierhofer children’s institute this request was welcomed and the individual was invited to participate in the preparations for this study. we would like to take this opportunity to thank them once again for their commitment to and support of the study. using focus interviews (atteslander, 2010, pp. 133–134; flick, 2014, pp. 211–212) and “think-aloud” methods (charters, 2003, p. 68), the four interviewees contributed to the research planning process, offering suggestions on how to contact the cohort and how to finalise the assessment instruments. focused interviews took place in a one-to-one setting, in a location chosen by the interviewee. at the explicit request of some of the interviewees, joint exchanges in a group setting did not take place. material was either read by the interviewee or read aloud by the researcher. table 1 shows which “prompt materials” were presented at which interview times. the think-aloud method was applied in order “to try to see into the minds of individuals. participants are asked to voice the words in their minds” (charters, 2003, p. 68). interviewees were asked to respond spontaneously to what they had just heard or read. the interviews each lasted up to 2.5 hours. the interviewees each received 100 swiss francs plus travel expenses, and a fixed-expense allowance for participation in parts of the study (completion of the questionnaire: 80 swiss francs; on-site health assessment: 80 swiss francs). the study has been approved by the ethics committee of the university of zurich. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 103 table 1. chronology of preparation for focused interviews interview time material initial contacting of the cohort (spring 2019) information about the study on the marie meierhofer children’s institute website recruitment procedure for study participants letter 1 with response slip letter 2 with response slip informed consent documentation flyer with information on support and access to archives finalising assessment instruments (summer 2019) study logo questionnaires on health and well-being; for details see lannen et al. (in press) on-site health assessment (neuropsychological tests focused on cognitive and motor abilities); for details see lannen et al. (in press) the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim in swiss german, with annotations on emotions and pauses. the interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis (mayring, 2015) and coded with the help of maxqda, a software program for analysing qualitative data. this allowed us to work with the different data sources (transcripts and emails). we used an initial inductive process to develop overall content categories. in the next step, subcategories were formed, which were used for structured content analysis and a deductive process of applying categories. categories were then reviewed and expanded. contacting the cohort (spring 2019) the first prompt materials (flick, 2014, p. 213) were presented in the order shown in table 1. in some cases, the documents were either read aloud on request or the interviewee read the documents themselves. more detailed questions followed, related to comprehensibility, clarity, irritations, and suggestions for change. this mostly resulted in an open discussion about what the text triggered in the interviewee or could trigger in another reader. as the amount of information provided by other documents increased, we referred back to earlier documents, put them into context, and discussed their differences. as soon as the detailed discussion on one document was completed, another was presented and the reading and questioning session was repeated. finalising assessment tools (summer 2019) the interviewees were asked to look at the questionnaire, and fill it in if they chose. the questionnaire was sent to the interviewees’ homes, to create a situation similar to that of future study participants. interviewees were then able to express their impressions of the procedure and of the content and scope of the questionnaire by telephone, by email, or on-site at the marie meierhofer children’s institute. interviewees came to the institute to take part in neuropsychological testing; at that time, they were presented with proposed designs for a logo for this study, and their feedback was requested. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 104 results the response of the formerly institutionalised individuals to being invited to participate was overwhelmingly positive. all four individuals immediately agreed to participate. when asked how they felt about being invited to participate in the study preparation phase, they said they thought it was a sign of recognition for their cause, their experience, and their expertise — a response to the request of survivors to be included in research (unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019). interviewees saw themselves as skilled partners who could inform the research process: “well, i am proud to be able to do this and i find it exciting. it’s a new challenge for me and i’m really curious about what’s next” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 8). it was crucial for all interviewees that their opinion be taken seriously and that it not be a pro forma exercise. to shape the study preparations, they put themselves in the shoes of future study participants, and drew on their own experiences. the interviewees emphasised their conviction that research on this topic was done well and appreciated the opportunity to participate: “well, i did insist on being included in the project in advance. and that it’s also important that people like me are involved who are critical of the whole issue.… it is important to me that the work is now done right.” (interviewee a, spring 2019, 23) wording, formatting, and visualisation the input of the interviewees contributed in a host of ways to the research undertaking. they provided a barometer of progress, indicating that we were on track and that preparations were being done diligently. in documents created to communicate with potential participants, they identified errors and redundancies as well as pointing out wording that might cause insecurities or negative reactions. for example, we discussed how best to refer to neuropsychological testing. after the interviewees raised the concern that “testing” would be associated with negative judgment, we came up with an alternative term: “on-site health assessment”. the discussion about the study logo (see figure 1) included a reflection on what particular associations and emotions might be triggered. there was a sense that some of the imagery depicted belittlement, or that images of infants suggested that no time had passed. it was important to the interviewees to recognise themselves in the study today, and they emphasised that they wanted to be reflected in the study logo as adults who have since left behind their childhood, however formative it may have been. “quite spontaneously, i immediately decided on the version with the photos, because it shows a funny collection of fictitious photos from later life, one of them even on the smartphone, based on the loving and colored caricature of the toddler, which i find particularly contemporary and appealing. the overall presentation is more stimulating to me than the tree of life, under which the toddler still lies” (interviewee c, spring 2019, 3). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 105 figure 1. two possible versions of the study logo biographical experiences were sometimes triggered through certain wording or approaches. for example, interviewees commented on the formatting and the language of the letter and thought that the initial version too closely resembled a letter from authorities. they thought that the language needed to be simplified: “i just find, the way it has been written is too complicated” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 714). it reminded them of some of the negative experiences they had had with authorities, who were involved in the decision to place them into the institutions. for example, remarking on the fact that the letter stated that we had found the individual’s name and year of birth in the archive and were hence contacting them once again, interviewee b stated: “well, one might ask themselves: what is this? what kind of documents are these?” (spring 2019, 280). motivating the cohort in addition, interviewees made significant contributions to determining how best to approach the cohort. for example, they helped shape the narrative in the invitation to participate, suggesting a shift from “sorry to bother you” to “here is an opportunity to remain in the study”. they also suggested emphasising the chance for participants to have their voices heard as adults in a way that had not been possible when they were children: i would probably formulate it more positively, so the motivation again: “you are already in the study anyway. and we’re looking at a new time now. we’ll also look at many other points in time” — something like that — “and now you just answer the questions. it’s wonderful to have you back!” something like that. (interviewee c, spring 2019, 203–205) they also guided the contact process towards a balance between being assertive enough to optimise the response rate and overwhelming the participants. interestingly, in several instances international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 106 we had taken a more careful and conservative approach than was suggested by the interviewees. for example, we suggested coding someone as a “passive decline” after three unsuccessful attempts to contact them by phone, under the assumption that they did not want to participate and that we should therefore discontinue our efforts to engage them. the interviewees insisted that we should send another note to let potential participants know that we were unable to reach them and ask them to get in touch, so that those wanting to share their views were not left out because they did not pick up the phone. the interviewees were also helpful in guiding our attempt to communicate further details of the study: the available internal and external support systems and the different ways someone could decline participation. they thought that mentioning the availability of psychological support might be useful, but cautioned that if it were mentioned too often it might increase the sense of risk related to participating in the study. they also strongly advised against providing a leaflet with information on available support to every study participant, suggesting instead that it should only be offered when someone indicated distress: “and if you read the form now, i think the majority of people would conclude: ‘i am in desperate need of psychiatric help.’ ” (interviewee a, summer 2019, 43). interviewees also provided feedback in relation to the ability to opt out at any time. they agreed that although it is important to make explicit that participants can opt out at any time, overstating it could deter some who would otherwise have been willing to participate: “well, that’s just the danger of something like … ‘now i’m being asked to get out again. now i’ll get out.’ ((laughs)) ((pause: 3 seconds)) i’d take that out” (interviewee c, spring 2019, 241). including different perspectives interviewees stressed that participants of the study would exhibit a range of ways of coping with the past, which would shape their reaction to being contacted. interviewees stressed that the approach needed to be flexible enough to respond to these varying reactions. when reflecting on including survivors in the research process itself, they stressed the importance of including multiple individuals. ideally, each participant’s experiences and ways of dealing with their past and present would be unique, giving the research team the opportunity to reflect on a range of issues and perspectives: i think it’s a damn difficult question now. because everyone’s different again, aren’t they? on the one hand, as i said, there are those who call out and demand again, but cannot say: “hey, because of this and that we have a claim.” … and then there are those who say (speaks softly and carefully): “oh, now we have to shut up and not say anything.” and there are also those who say: “hey, i’m not sick hey.” are they okay? are they crazy? and then there are others who think, “oh yes, i’d be glad.” (interviewee a, spring 2019, 309–317) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 107 the four interviewees also made explicit efforts during the interviews to take different perspectives themselves and consider how others would respond: “my siblings, they are also in the study, and i’m trying to put myself in their shoes and see what it would take to get them to participate” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 147). interestingly, they also acknowledged limitations when they sensed that they did not have the skills or experience to comment on a specific issue: “yeah, i’m just not that spontaneous (laughs). you know, certain things i just can’t say” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 207). interviewee a addressed it even more clearly: “i cannot say anything, i am not competent. and if there’s nothing to say, i think you should shut up” (spring 2019, 143). feedback on data collection each interviewee expressed their personal likes and dislikes in terms of assessment method (questionnaire, on-site health assessment, or interviews), according to their own image of what these assessments comprised and what purpose they would serve: “i always find questionnaires, no matter who makes them, no matter how brilliantly they’re done, i always find them wrong” (interviewee a, spring 2019, 159); “the tasks (in the on-site health assessment) were unexpected, with many that i didn’t know, naturally, and very tricky and interesting (laughs)” (interviewee d, summer 2019, 8); “i would fill in the questionnaire at home and then bring it with me to the interview” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 90). there was scepticism in relation to the value of some of the items in the questionnaires: i ask myself: what’s the point? now i fill out the form and now they ask me stupid questions.… yes, just (laughs) just. one should just think about it: “does the question really need answering or can’t i put it differently?” (interviewee a, summer 2019, 83) being misunderstood was a concern: some felt it was not possible to capture what was truly going on for them using a standardised format. the interviewees did not want to go back to being “just one of many”, as they had been in the institutions, where an individual’s fate, development, and preferences carried little weight. there was a tangible concern about being purposely misled or being judged by the researcher — a concern that may reach back to their institutional experiences: “for me, this is a trick question.… if i were to say ‘true’, then they’d think i was a psycho.… i assume people won’t answer truthfully” (interviewee a, summer 2019, 271). the feedback also revealed more serious shortcomings and the inappropriateness of some of the items used in standardised questionnaires with this population. for example, one item referred to leisure activities and mentioned playing golf. this triggered an intense reaction in one of the interviewees. he was appalled at the assumption that someone in their situation would have the financial resources to play golf. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 108 the responses revealed some limitations of attempting to capture what is going on in the lives of survivors through these methodologies. one interviewee referred to a questionnaire item that asked about the experience of his parent’s death. he argued that evaluating the experience of a parent’s death can be interpreted very differently, depending on how the relationship with the parent had been. if someone checked the box “it was a good experience”, was that out of relief that the beloved parent no longer had to suffer, or that the parent, who had caused one so much suffering, was “finally gone”? while it may not be possible to change some things in the research study, particularly when using standardised measures, the honest and direct exchange between interviewees and interviewers provided an opportunity for collaboration to find creative solutions. in the case of the concerns with data collection, possible solutions were inserting comment fields and information in the instructions emphasising to participants that there are no right or wrong answers, and no negative consequences, no matter what items in the questionnaires they check off or how they perform in the on-site health assessments. expertise the use and meaning of the term “expert” was discussed extensively. the research team initially used the term “experts” to refer to the survivors providing input. while those individuals were confident that they had something significant to add to the study, they either did not recognise themselves in the term “expert” (and thought it referred to the researchers) or explicitly mentioned that they thought it was “a bit too much” (interviewee b, spring 2019, 66). it became clear that the term “expert” somehow had a negative connotation and triggered memories of unequal opportunities and power. individuals made the connection to their own biographical experiences of institutional placement by authoritarian decision-makers during early childhood and youth. these experiences are still present for them as part of the historical reappraisal process of care practices in switzerland. when asked what term to use instead, the importance of “empathy” in contrast to “expertise” surfaced: “i’m going to throw the term empathy into the room, empathy, that’s something. or an ‘effort to be empathetic’, maybe. so that we don’t have to proclaim right away to have attained empathy already” (interviewee a, spring 2019, 93). the question of what the statements of survivors as experts are worth monetarily, and the question of financial renumeration in general, was discussed at length, at least with one participant. this followed an initial decision of the study team to issue gift cards rather than cash for a number of practical reasons. upon reconsideration, we issued a cash reimbursement as the participant in question had vigorously requested. he thought that gift cards were a form of heteronomy: many individuals who have experienced institutional placement live in poverty; researchers earn money (salaries) and recognition (titles, publications) from the work they do international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 109 with survivors and their hardship. there was a sense that survivors were being fobbed off with gift cards: as i said, the money is of course important to me, but the thought of money is not in the foreground. the appreciation, you know? that.… i can’t have people who don’t understand the story doing a study. do you understand? i have to be honest with you. because it’s just important that people notice that. (interviewee a, summer 2019, 346–348) scepticism about and increasing understanding of research activities all interviewees expressed the importance of transparency in relation to research intent and research process. one interviewee initially thought, for example, that we were purposely omitting information. it was only through their feedback that we realised that our wording had not been clear and that this lack of clarity had made possible a host of misinterpretations. there were also instances where interviewees questioned researchers’ skills and sometimes science in general, imparting their feeling that researchers do not and cannot understand the perspective of a survivor. a strong call to researchers’ responsibilities also surfaced: interviewees emphasised the “power” researchers have to convey messages on their behalf and also emphasised how important it is that this research into the social compulsory measures and placements for the purpose of historical reappraisal be done well. however, as the process went on, we found that the interviewees were making efforts to understand the methodological and ethical complexity of the research process: “well, it’s a hell of a situation, yeah. it’s just another one of those situations where you can’t do it right” (interviewee a, spring 2019, 388). they also expressed appreciation for the research effort: “yes, i think it is madness that there are people who are actually devoting themselves to this research now … who really take on this work and bring to light something that was done systematically many years ago” (interviewee c, spring 2019, 8). discussion this study adopted a methodology that sought to include in the development and implementation of a research project the perspectives and experiences of individuals who are normally viewed as research subjects. while the research project on formerly institutionalised individuals is still ongoing, the inclusion of survivors has led to significant learnings and successes in its initial stages. overall, the study shows significant benefits of participatory methods for the implementation of research on historical compulsory social measures and placements. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 110 evaluation of methods and approach overall, the methods and setting chosen worked well. on the one hand, they allowed us to concentrate on the content, the documents at hand, and our specific questions; on the other, they were flexible enough to provide space for interviewees to relate their biographical narratives. some interviewees found it challenging to come up with thoughtful, spontaneous feedback during the interviews, but followed up with additional insights afterwards. they appreciated the iterative approach that allowed us to report to them how we had integrated their feedback from the previous round of data collection. the approach required significant extra time and resources, which were made possible through the snsf. the introduction of feedback loops added to the complexity of the preparation process. the interviews tended to be lengthy, especially when individual biographical experiences were triggered. it was essential to conduct the interviews patiently in a quiet setting. it also proved important that we remain available and in contact after the formal interviews. during the focused interviews, we experienced a constant back and forth between focused input and narrations of individual stories. it became clear (once again) that triggering terms could be found in contact letters that seemed innocuous to researchers; this revealed the importance of listening. creating space and time for individual experiences and biographically relevant topics to find their place and be heard was critical, even if the purpose of the interview was ostensibly to discuss procedural research details. we as researchers needed to be familiar with potential biographical themes in order to act as a sounding board and to express empathy and understanding. the experiences of compulsory social measures and placements continue to affect the lives of individuals, even after many years, and need space and time for expression (bombach et al., 2017; bombach et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). by listening to survivors, we learn of experiences that can be triggered with even our most carefully constructed questions. for example, many of those affected have had the experience of not being believed when they were children and adolescents. as waisehüsler [those who live in an orphanage] they were labelled “chronic liars”; they described to us the suffering that arises when one is not believed. recent research using biographical interviews describes the scepticism of interviewees who have questioned whether their statements in the interview are taken seriously (bombach et al., 2017). bombach et al. (2020) uncovered social scepticism, which can become entrenched over the course of a lifetime, and is marked by distrust of others, but also of oneself. even in adulthood, survivors often would not discuss their own experiences of being placed in an institution; even with their closest friends and family, there was the fear of having to explain something for which they bore no guilt and yet continued to feel “guilty”. silence — treating the subject as taboo and not to be discussed — was a path chosen by many. however, other survivors wanted to make themselves heard after a long silence in adulthood; they wanted to make the years of inner struggle visible and to accuse international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 111 those whom they felt should be held responsible for it. cautious scepticism, restraint, frustration, and anger may be some of the emotions that confront researchers when they meet survivors and ask critical questions, whereas other survivors might express gratefulness to be heard — all of these emotions are quite justified in the light of the biographical narratives of the people affected. participatory research contrary to researchers, who generally tend to keep their private experiences separate from their professional roles, survivors generally do not make such a distinction. in the framing of our research, this turned out to be an asset. we are aware that with this form of involvement of survivors in the research process we are only beginning down the path towards achieving the desired participation levels. our study has only just begun and there is still a lot of work ahead of us if we are to claim to take the needs and experiences of survivors into account in the way the ice demands (unabhängige expertenkommission [uek] fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen, 2019, p. 43). for some years now, participatory research in social sciences has been experiencing an upswing (e.g., bergold & thomas, 2010; chiapparini, 2016). however, full inclusion of survivors of compulsory social measures and placements in the research process is still rare. many researchers regard the process of including survivors with caution, or interpret it as a sign of weakness when a researcher acknowledges being a survivor or a relative of someone who has been affected. some argue that different perspectives cannot be included in the research process because they will blur the personal and the professional, the researcher and the researched, the subject and the object. successful models can be found in canada, for example, where indigenous researchers who have themselves been affected by similar intrusive care — such as the sixties scoop and residential care movement (arsenault, 2015) — have been at the forefront of documenting the effects on survivors as part of a reconciliation process (sinclair, 2007). we also identified some limitations of this type of approach. one was the role we gave the interviewees: they came in as “consultants” at particular stages, and were not all equally informed about the study objectives and approach. some were only briefed in detail on the study objectives and methodology during the interviews. sometimes, they would challenge our expertise as researchers and our choice of methods, and suggest changes that were not possible to make, either because they would modify the core of the study (which had been funded and approved in this way), or because of the standardised nature of the instruments. furthermore, some of the ideas and activities that the interviewees suggested were not suitable for research activities, but were more appropriate in advocacy, or peer–survivor networking. this led to the conclusion that it is important to be very explicit about the scope of everyone’s role: what it entails and what it does not. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 112 added value to research projects including survivors in the beginning stages of our study provided significant benefits. we got to know and appreciate the interviewees as skilled sounding boards with excellent theoretical, historical, political, and pragmatic knowledge and wisdom. particularly noteworthy are their contributions to sharpening the narrative of how to approach the cohort: they helped us shape the narrative to convey a sense of inviting the participants to remain part of an ongoing, joint undertaking and to speak up as adults about their experiences and perspectives, given that they had been unable to do so as small children. overall, having the interviewees vet the approach, wording, and instruments improved our approach to the cohort and is expected to significantly increase recruitment numbers. including survivors in the process can also provide researchers with confidence and help participants to trust them, as it attunes researcher´s intentions with the needs and priorities of survivors. further, survivors may be able to act as intermediaries since they can provide information about the study, its relevance, and its objectives to their peers. interviewees further challenged us to think through the risks of the study more deeply. for example, we discussed the risk of disclosing an institutional placement to a survivor who was not aware of it, due either to their age at the time or to repression of memories (freyd, 1996). interviewees provided input on how to minimise disruption, provide opt-out solutions, or provide just a minimum of information to allow an individual to convey that we must be mistaken in terms of their identity, while still affording those who wanted to have their voices heard an opportunity to participate in the research. importantly, interviewees encouraged us not to assume that all individuals are fragile. while they fully supported our cautious approach, they reiterated that individuals are generally able to take responsibility for self-protection. this is in line with statements from other research with trauma survivors: there is often the implicit assumption that survivors are not emotionally stable enough to assess risk or seek help (black & black, 2007). however, evidence suggests that participants can and do decline to participate when they are concerned about becoming upset (brabin & berah, 1995; dyregrov et al., 2011; jorm et al., 2007; omerov et al., 2014). while remaining sensitive to vulnerabilities and any distress the study might cause, it was crucial to see interviewees as competent and skilled, to appeal to their resources and strengths, and to foster in them a desire to share their stories. our work with the interviewees reaffirmed the soundness of our salutogenic approach to the study. antonovsky (1979) coined the term “salutogenesis” after observing “how people manage stress and stay well”. he noticed from his studies that not all individuals experience negative health outcomes in relation to stress. some people achieve health despite their exposure to potentially disabling stress factors, and are able to stay well despite, or maybe even thanks to, coping with illness or disability (antonovsky, 1987). similar findings come from the 40-year longitudinal study by emmy werner (2013) and have given rise to research related to resilience as a broad conceptual umbrella related to positive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 113 patterns of adaptation in the context of adversity (masten & obradović, 2006). this notion lies at the core of our way of working with this cohort. our intention is to document life trajectories, no matter what beginning they might have had or what course they might have taken. empathetic experts while survivors intuitively engaged in both key aspects of empathy — perspective-taking and emotional literacy (steiner & perry, 1999; watt & panksepp, 2016) — as part of being interviewed, we as researchers learned to refocus our interaction with survivors in that way as well. the interviews helped us reflect and grasp more fully the responsibilities we have towards our research subjects. they helped us to reflect upon our roles, recognising the limits of our skills and competencies, and were an opportunity to accept critical feedback. we also learned that, in order to create lasting, meaningful collaboration, it is of paramount importance to respond to individual needs with compassion and empathy. the interviewees taught us some humility, revealing limitations to our expertise and skills and making us keenly aware how expertise from survivors complements research expertise. on the other hand, interviewees showed growing understanding of the complexity of the decisions we as researchers had to take and an increasing appreciation of the pragmatic approaches that researchers must engage in to complete the tasks at hand. in the end, mutual respect and understanding grew tangibly over the course of these focused interviews. strikingly, it became clear that, for survivors, it was primarily neither their own expertise nor the expertise of the researchers that was most relevant — it was empathy. this relates to the beautiful remark by annegret wigger, member of the round table: “recognition of past injustice … becomes tangible for survivors if the person they share their story with actually lets themselves be touched by their suffering” (wigger, 2018, p. 155). instead of remaining distant and untouchable, the researcher becomes humanly approachable. acknowledgement we would like to thank in particular the four survivors for their commitment to and support for the study. this project was funded through a grant from the swiss national research program nrp76 “welfare and coercion” of the swiss national research foundation (number 407640-177293, the impact of infant institutionalisation and educational practices mid 20th century in switzerland — a 60-year long-term follow-up study). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 96–120 114 references akermann, m., jenzer, s., vollenweider, j., & meier, t. 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(2018). einleitung [introduction]. in b. ziegler, g. hauss, & m. lengwiler (eds.), zwischen erinnerung und aufarbeitung. fürsorgerische zwangsmassnahmen an minderjährigen in der schweiz im 20. jahrhundert [between memory and reappraisal: compulsory care measures for minors in switzerland in the 20th century] (pp. 9–16). chronos. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs93201818277 a report about intimate partner violence in southern and western rwanda immaculée mukashema abstract: the present paper reports on intimate partner violence (ipv) in 3 districts of southern province and western province in rwanda. qualitative data were obtained via 3 focus group discussions conducted at the headquarters of each district, and 10 individual interviews with key informants, community leaders who worked in the districts. the types of ipv discussed were physical, economic, sexual, and psychological harassment. community leaders stated that the women in their communities had no hesitation in reporting economic abuse and physical violence, but noted that the women needed support from other people to report sexual violence, and generally did not report psychological harassment, perhaps because they accepted it as the norm. they also noted that men generally did not report ipv and that the main victims of ipv in all its forms were children and women. the community leaders suggested a number of measures to reduce ipv: empowering females so that they are financially independent; educating and sensitizing family members about their responsibilities and community leaders about laws and human rights; educating all community members about gender equality and ipv, including premarital instruction; increasing access to services; putting in place a law that protects free unions by giving them legal status after a period of cohabitation; setting up a specific institution to deal with ipv; improving both support to the victims and follow-up of reported cases, along with instituting punitive responses to deter potential new perpetrators. keywords: domestic violence, intimate partner violence, rwanda acknowledgement: this research was conducted through the facilitation of the rwandan gender monitoring office’s research initiative. immaculée mukashema phd is associate professor of psychology in the department of social sciences, school of social, political, and administrative sciences, college of arts and social sciences, university of rwanda. avenue de l’université, butare, b.p. 117 butare, rwanda. email: imukashema@yahoo.fr mailto:imukashema@yahoo.fr international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 69 intimate partner violence (ipv), also referred to as domestic violence, denotes abusive behavior by either partner or both partners in an intimate relationship (shipway, 2004). it is defined by the american centers for disease control and prevention (2015) as: a serious, preventable public health problem that affects millions of americans. the term “intimate partner violence” describes physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. this type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy. ipv is a pervasive and devastating health and social problem that affects every population category in all nations (bragg, 2003). some cases end in the death of the victim by murder or suicide (futures without violence, 2012; garcía-moreno et al., 2013). the gravity of ipv’s effects are recognized in the latest version of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, dsm-5, which recognizes marital conflict with violence as a new relational disorder, and thus identifies this behavior as pathological (american psychiatric association, 2013). ipv violates the fundamental rights of its victims, and has been identified as a public health problem present in all societies (garcía-moreno et al., 2013; krug, dahlberg, mercy, zwi, & lozano, 2002). for example, the united nations office on drugs and crime (2013) reported that, in japan: in subsequent surveys in 2005 and 2008, over 10 per cent of married women and approximately 3 per cent of married men reported that they experienced either “physical assault”, “mental harassment or frightening threats”, or “sexual coercion” by their spouse on many occasions. more than one in five married women and approximately 15 per cent of married men reported having experienced spousal abuse on one or two occasions. (p. 56) in france, as reported by molinié (2016), one woman dies every 3 days under the blows of her companion, and one man dies at his spouse’s hand every 17.5 days1. rwanda has committed in the last two decades to dealing with ipv through legislation, policies, and strategies aimed at prevention and intervention. attention is given to the full spectrum of ipv, including physical and economic violence, and also to the collateral damage inflicted on children: (a) a law “regarding matrimonial regimes, liberalities, and successions” (republic of rwanda, 1999); (b) a law determining the use and management of land (republic of rwanda, 2005); (c) a law on prevention and punishment of gender-based violence (republic of rwanda, 2008); (d) a law relating to the rights and protection of the child (republic of rwanda, 1 translated from french by the author. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 70 2012); (e) a national policy against gender-based violence (ministry of gender and family promotion [migeprof], 2011a); (f) a national policy for family promotion (migeprof, 2005); and (g) a national strategic plan for 2011–2016 (migeprof, 2011b). rwanda’s ministry of gender and family promotion deals with issues relating to the promotion of gender equality and family welfare, including prevention of ipv. article 185 of the constitution of the republic of rwanda established the gender monitoring office (gmo) as an independent rwandan public institution with responsibility for monitoring and supervising compliance with governmental measures that support ensuring gender equality (republic of rwanda, 2003). however, despite the rwandan government’s orientation and commitment to the prevention of ipv, it remains a challenging issue (migeprof, 2011a). data generated by a survey conducted in 2010 show that more than 50% of female respondents reported that they had experienced ipv, while 38% of male respondents reported having committed ipv (sleght & kimonyo, 2010). as noted by shipway (2004), conflict between spouses is often cited as a cause of ipv. in rwanda, mukashema and sapsford (2013) have shown that ipv-related marital conflict rates are rising, as is the number of husbands who kill their wives and the number of wives who kill their husbands (migeprof, 2011a). this rise in spousal homicides has been a cause of public alarm (mukashema & sapsford, 2013). among the existing studies that provide information about the conditions associated with ipv in rwanda, some focus on violence against women, connecting it specifically to hiv infection among women (e.g., kayibanda, bitera, & alary, 2012). among other studies, thomson, bah, rubanzana, & mutesa (2015), in examining the factors associated with physical or sexual ipv in rwanda between 2005 and 2010, noted that in addition to the already occurring ipv-focused initiatives in the health and legal sectors, campaigns are needed to shift public perceptions towards deterrence; that is, towards ending ipv. these deterrence-focused campaigns are especially necessary given umubyeyi, persson, mogren, & krantz’s (2016) finding that even if legislative measures have been instituted to protect women from abuse, many rwandan women do not benefit from those efforts. additional studies investigated ipv specific to pregnant women in rwanda (e.g., ntaganira et al., 2008) and ipv toward women and its relationship to the mental health of victims and perpetrators (verduin, engelhard, rutayisire, stronks, & scholte, 2012), while still others focused on the perspectives on ipv and marital conflict of psychologists, social workers, and medical professionals (e.g., mukashema & sapsford, 2013). despite the ongoing investigations of ipv, scholarly reports that provide an overview of ipv in rwanda are few; examples include the annual reports produced by the canadian centre for justice statistics (sinha, 2012, 2013), and studies that examine the impacts of existing legislation and policies focused on ipv prevention at the community level (e.g., picon et al., 2017). with community impact in mind, the study described here investigates the awareness of ipv among community leaders and examines their perspectives and points of view about what further steps should be taken to deal with ipv in rwanda. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=rubanzana%20wg%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=26511348 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 71 methods participants the participants in the study who joined focus group discussions (fgds) or provided individual interviews were local leaders and community-based workers who dealt with ipv, gender issues, and child protection and human rights affairs in their daily activities. the invitation to participate in the research was presented at the district level by the staff representative of the ministry of gender and family promotion who worked most closely with each prospective research participant; this approach helped by communicating official support for the study. each focus group was composed of some of the following members at the district level: a representative of the access to justice bureau; a representative of the national women’s council; a community health worker; a staff member responsible for citizen registration; a land officer; a staff member in charge of good governance; people holding gender focal point positions; representatives of faith-based organizations and of the “guardian angels” 2 ; a representative of haguruka [stand up], a local nongovernmental organization offering legal support to vulnerable children and women; and a representative of pro-femmes / twese hamwe [pro-women together], which is an umbrella organization working for the advancement of women, peace, and development in rwanda. data were collected in the nyamasheke district of western province, and in the nyaruguru and huye districts of southern province. individual interviews with key informants were conducted with representatives of stakeholders of the gmo and other public and civil society organizations. each of the following institutions was represented in the interviews: the access to justice bureau, the national public prosecution authority, the national police, the national women’s council, the national human rights commission, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, the gmo, and the ministry of gender and family promotion. table 1 number of participants in fgds and in individual interviews place/district males in fgd females in fgd males in interviews females in interviews district a 7 3 3 0 district b 2 4 2 1 district c 3 3 3 2 total 12 10 8 3 total number of participants in fgds: 12 + 10 = 22 total number of participants in individual interviews: 8 + 3 = 11 2 in 2007 the imbuto foundation, chaired by the first lady of rwanda, jeannette kagame, initiated a network called malayika murinzi [guardian angels] in order to create a protective environment for children who do not have appropriate care by promoting adoption and foster care. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 72 a total of 22 people including 12 males and 10 females participated in the three fgds. eleven people including eight males and three females participated in 10 individual interviews. in one interview, two people working in the same office for prevention of ipv chose to participate together, as they wanted to complement each other in giving their views. districts were represented by letters a (nyamasheke), b (nyaruguru), and c (huye) in the data presentation and in the discussion. as table 1 shows, the gender distribution of the participants included more males than females (12 males and 8 females in the fgds; 8 males and 3 females for the individual interviews). this reflects the actual gender distribution at the time of data collection among those occupying the roles in the areas of interest of the research: local leaders and community-based workers who dealt with ipv, gender issues, child protection, and human rights affairs in their daily activities, as well as representatives of stakeholders of the gmo and other public and civil society organizations. research approach data collection was conducted in may 2013. a moderator (the present author) and a notetaker (a research assistant) together conducted the three fgds (one at the headquarters of each of the three districts) and the 10 individual interviews with key informants. the following questions were asked: 1. what is your understanding of intimate partner violence? 2. what are the different forms of intimate partner violence perpetrated in your district? 3. are all cases of intimate partner violence reported? 4. what is the gender distribution of the victims? who are the victims and perpetrators (men, women, or both)? 5. what strategies do you suggest should be put in place in order to combat intimate partner violence? we developed interview guides relating to the research questions; these were used for both fgds and individual interviews. ethical considerations of participation and confidentiality in research with human beings as participants were complied with. participation was freely consented to and confidentiality was respected. participants were not identifiable as research subjects in their workplaces because they participated in the study very much as part of their daily routine. from the outside a meeting with us looked like any other meeting, albeit somewhat longer so that we could cover the interview questions in our guide. to preserve confidentiality, participants’ names were not mentioned in the collected data. fgds and individual interviews were recorded with the permission of the participants. all the discussions were convivially conducted. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 73 analysis techniques the recoded data from the fgds and individual interviews were transcribed and translated from kinyarwanda into english. thematic content analysis, a process for systematically examining text data using codes to facilitate retrieval of similar information across the data, was conducted (miles & huberman, 1994; rubin & rubin, 1995, 2005). first, the analysis considered the data from the fgds separately from the data from the interviews. throughout the analysis process, the location of the information given by the participants was recorded along with each of the identified themes and subthemes related to the research questions and objectives (baribeau, 2009; l’ecuyer, 1989, 1990; duchesne & haegel, 2005). codes were compiled into subcategories, then compared, and combined into broader categories. second, the analysis of the fgds yielded themes and ideas corresponding to each question; these were grouped with similar themes and ideas for the same question from the individual interviews for use in the report presentation and discussion. results and discussion the results from the fgds and the interviews are presented and discussed under the following categories: understanding of ipv; forms of ipv; extent of reporting of cases; the gender distribution of both victims and perpetrators (men, women, or both); and suggested strategies to combat ipv. for each category, data from the fgds are reported first, followed by data from interviews. understanding of ipv in both fgds and interviews, participants spoke about their understanding of ipv. for them, ipv was an act of violence conducted by one spouse against the other, an act that inflicted harm and deprived the victimized spouse of their human rights. for me, intimate partner violence is when either spouse, husband or wife, is deprived of his or her rights by the other. (fgd in c, female) i think it is any act done by someone to harm his or her partner. (fgd in a, male) i understand this as an act of depriving one’s partner of his or her rights, it is harming one’s spouse. (fgd in b, male) for me, it is violence committed against a partner, a man against his wife and vice versa. (interview in a, male) for me, it is a violence committed in violating the rights of a person against his intimate partner. (interview in c, male) it is a violation of the rights of the woman or of the man, but the definition must be consulted in accordance with the law. (interview in c, female) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 74 the participants’ understanding of ipv fits with the who definition, which states that ipv “violates the fundamental rights of the victims” (garcía-moreno et al., 2013; krug et al., 2002). forms of ipv physical violence: physical harm — beating and in other ways harming the body — of one partner by the other was identified by participants as a type of ipv present in rwanda. there are perpetrators who beat their victims, mainly the wives, and harm their body. beating or harming the body is intimate partner violence. (fgd in b, male) there are times when the husband beats his wife and hurts her so that she has to go to the hospital. (fgd in b, female) to all the other types of violence cited discussed so far, i would add another type which is to harm the body, such as burning the body of one’s spouse or other action to physically harm the body. (fgd in c, female) physical ipv is not specific to rwanda; previous studies have included physical violence as a category of ipv in other countries as well (ganley & schechter, 1996; krug et al., 2002). rwanda national police released a report indicating that in 2016, out of all reported cases of battered intimate partners, 254 were women beaten by their husbands, while 52 were men beaten by their wives (igihe, 2017). in the two-year period from 2009 to 2010, 818 women were battered by their husbands and 188 men were battered by their wives (migeprof, 2011a, 2011b). from 2012 to 2013, 25 men and 67 women were killed by their spouses3. the numbers above show that battering of intimate partners seems to be decreasing. however, it is not known, and will not be easy to determine, whether this is a true decrease in battering or is only due to decreased reporting. economic violence: participants identified several kinds of economic ipv, such as: nonagreement between intimate partners on the uses of economic goods, lack of access to family income by one of the intimate partners, and the exclusive management or use of shared property by one of the intimate partners (usually the man). spouses’ disagreements on the uses of the economic goods they have in common often lead to constant harassment of one by the other. (fgd in a, male) the two spouses can be both civil servants and earning wages, but the husband puts himself in a position of being the head of everything, to the point where the woman, even to be able to buy salt or sanitary napkins, has to beg for it from her 3 http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2014-12-11/183917/ http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2014-12-11/183917/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 75 husband. the two partners are entitled to their wages, but the woman finds herself in a position of dependency. (fgd in b, female) often women work very hard for the economic production, but the outcome of their efforts is not managed equitably by both men and women. the woman is not entitled to know the financial proceeds from the sale of their common goods. even to have access to the property to be mortgaged can be impossible even though that property was acquired by both of them. (fgd in b, female) there are partners (mostly women) who do not have access to family income and property. thus, the lack of access to family income and to property is an intimate partner violence. (interview in a, male) apart from the cases that we receive here, from information we have seen on television, we realize that in the countryside, women are the victims, they have no wage labor and the conflicts and violence taking place there are mainly related to economic affairs. (interview in c, female) the intimate partner violence is mainly based on economic aspects. men are perpetrators against their wives and women are perpetrators against their husbands. about 99.9% of the complaints we receive in our daily activities are economic, especially land-related. (interview in b, male) previous studies agreed that issues related to economic exclusion, such as economic coercion of one partner by the other, are a type of ipv (ganley & schechter, 1996; bragg, 2003; garcía-moreno et al., 2013). systematic gender inequality in africa is often reinforced by cultural traditions that place men in the role of head of household in charge of family finances and decisions (bowman, 2003). killing of intimate partner: participants in this study were aware that some people are killed by their intimate partners. such a death seems to be understood as a catastrophic human behavior toward the intimate partner, going beyond the other physical aspects of ipv because it makes an end to the victim’s life. physical violence can end in the murder of one of the intimate partners, the man killing the woman or the woman killing the husband. (fgd in a, male) death due to killing is an intimate partner violence; there are victims who are killed, murdered by their intimate partners, killers are mainly men. (fgd in c, male) murder of intimate partners is seen as a new phenomenon in rwanda. according to a report released by the rwanda national police (igihe, 2017), 45 women and 19 men were killed by their spouses in 2016. in 2011, 121 women were murdered by their husbands, and 91 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 76 men were murdered by their wives (migeprof, 2011a, 2011b). these numbers appear to be not especially high given the rwandan population of 12,085,195, although one might argue that even a single such case is too many. the murder of one intimate partner by the other is a serious problem not just in rwanda but around the world (molinié, 2016; united nations office on drugs and crime, 2013). the world health organization (who) identifies ipv as an epidemic — one that can be fatal. thirty-eight percent of all murdered women were killed by their intimate partners (garcíamoreno et al., 2013). there are as yet no studies showing clearly the reasons for intimate partner killings in rwanda. rubanzana, ntaganira, freeman, and hedt-gauthier (2015) conducted a study of risk factors for homicide victimization in post-genocide rwanda. they state that homicide victims tend to be relatively young and that the proportion of female victims is one of the highest in the world (rubanzana et al., 2015). these authors argue that even in the context of residual effects from a mass genocide, homicide victimization risk factors are not unique to rwanda. thus, further research on the factors contributing to killings as one type of ipv in rwanda would be of great interest. sexual violence and sexual forcing: participants described several forms of sexual violence, mainly involving men who forced their female partners into unwanted sexual relations. the participants regarded this as a form of rape, with consequences such as injury to the sexual body areas of the victim. some spoke of men who felt that their payment of a dowry to the wives’ families justified their making use of their wives’ bodies as and when they saw fit, even when the women were not physically or psychologically ready. in rwanda, 22% of women in the reproductive age range reported ever experiencing sexual violence (national institute of statistics of rwanda, ministry of health, and icf international, 2012, p. xxiv). when there is a disagreement on sexual practices between spouses, or forcing, generally by men, in unwanted sexual relations, rape, harm on the sexual body parts — that is intimate partner violence. (fgd in b, male) there are spouses who do not communicate before intercourse, which ends up creating conflict between the spouses. the husband can tell his wife that as he gave the dowry to have it, he can dispose of his wife’s body as and when he … wants. ( fgd in a, male) the husband may think that he is the chief or master of sexual relations with his wife, that he is the one who has the say over it, and that the woman must show submission whenever the husband feels like it. whether the woman feels like it or not, her husband’s wishes become an imperative to be followed and complied with. (fgd in b, female) in my routine activities, i learn that there are some men who practise unusual and harmful sexual relations. this happens after those men have learned different international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 77 unusual sexual practices from outside, such as in prison, and want to practise what has been acquired on their wives. negatively surprised, the victim comes to me telling that she wants to leave her partner because he has changed. (fgd in b, female) there are participants who spoke of men going beyond the traditions and laws that placed them at the “head of the household” to thinking that they were the master in all aspects of life, including sexual relations. men go beyond the traditional law that gave to them the right to be called the [head of the household] and use it in forcing sexually their wives while these wives are not in normal conditions, either they are tired or sick and then they are not in a situation to agree to sexual relations. (interview in a, male) on this point of heading the household, it is encouraging to note that a new household management scheme was recently put in place in rwanda. it specifies that spouses jointly provide management including moral and material support to the household, and also provide for its maintenance (republic of rwanda, 2016). as the public become familiar with this law, it may contribute to a change in the mindset of men with regard to the power relation between them and their intimate partners. psychological and spiritual violence: participants identified different types of psychological ipv, including harassment, degrading language, putting the victim in a position of suffering, lack of care towards a partner, forcing adherence to a set of spiritual practices, obliging a female partner to wait without sleep for the male’s return until late at night, irresponsibility in supporting wives in domestic activities, polygamy, and harassing of wives because of the sex of the baby she gives birth to. on the other side, however, some participants felt that women who indulge in activities such as watching movies rather than taking care of their husbands should be considered when discussing ipv. conjugal harassment may consist of degrading language or other action directed at the psychological suffering of the victim. there are victims of harassment who sleep outside the house, and the next day they go about their activities like everything is okay, nothing bad happened to them, they do not report officially, but only talk about it among them as ladies. (fgd in b, female) there is absence of care toward men by women spending lot of time in the night watching series films on television while the husband is waiting for her in the bedroom very late in the night. (fgd in c, male) there are husbands who harass wives because of giving birth to only one sex. (fgd in b, male) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 78 can you imagine? i know an unfortunate case of intellectual spouses .… imagine that one is a lawyer who knows the laws, his wife is an economist. do you know what they have for disagreement? this is because the woman bears only daughters! so, if an intellectual can say this how do you think that will be the situation for the people of the countryside, who are not intellectuals? … i asked the following question to this man: do you know that it is the man who gives the sex of the child, do not you know that at least through the books? he did not answer my question, he kept silent, now they are separated when they had three girls together! (fgd in c, male) we see intimate partner violence on faith where the husband forces his wife to be in his faith orientation. for example, two people may marry but have different religions. after marriage, the husband may forcibly require his wife to join him in his own belief church. (fgd in b, male) there are men who, when they are outside the home during the night, oblige their wives to wait for them until they come. the wives are obliged by their husbands to wait for them and are not allowed to sleep before the husband comes even if it is very late in the night . to me that is a type of intimate partner violence. (interview in c, female) there are irresponsible spouses, especially men, who do not take care of nor support their wives in domestic activities. (interview in a, male) not helping women with the household chores is a form of intimate partner violence. (interview in b, male) polygamy is a great problem that ends sometimes in the abandonment of one spouse — the previous one — for another. such a situation happens especially when a spouse wants to be with another partner who seems to be richer than the previous partner. (interview in a, male) psychological and spiritual violence are unhealthy, and amount to a public health problem. the who (krug et al., 2002) includes psychological harm as a category of ipv. extent of reporting of cases of ipv reporting in terms of the gender of the victim of ipv: women are said to report incidents of ipv much more often than men do. as one participant stated: in terms of gender reporting, women are the main victims who report about intimate partner violence and the cnf [national women’s council] helps in this. men do not, maybe because of culture — they do not want to let it be known that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 79 they are victims of their partners. they do not want to be seen as victims of females. (fgd in a, female) reporting in terms of the type of ipv: ipv is not always reported as soon as it happens. often, the victim herself is not able to report her own case; rather, the help of someone who can advocate for the victim is required. the psychological suffering of the victim is not disclosed unless it has resulted in physical consequences. unlike psychological violence, economic violence is generally reported by the victims, and these are again mainly women. especially when it is a case of sexual intimate partner violence, female victims are the ones who report their cases. but note also that, even so, women do it only when the situation has already become intolerable. intimate partner violence cases are not automatically reported; they are not reported as soon as they happen. (fgd in a, male) when it comes to types of intimate partner violence, sexual violence is not systematically reported. when it is a sexual intimate partner violence, victims start by telling it to a confidante. then this confidante may advise the victim to report to the maj4 or to police. the victim can’t take the initiative of reporting his or her own case: this needs the help of cnf or of anyone who can help in doing advocacy for the victim about the violence faced. (fgd in a, male) intimate partner harassment, which may consist of degrading language or other action aimed at the psychological suffering of the victim, is not disclosed, it is not put out, it is not reported. this type of intimate partner violence becomes known only in the case of extreme physical consequences — of injury or death of the victim … there are those who are victims of harassment who do not tell the authorities, there are some who are forced to sleep outside the house; the next day they go to their activities as if nothing had happened. (fgd in b, female) the harassment between intimate partners that may be of the man against his wife or wife against her husband is not said — it is not reported. this is different from when the cases are related to economic violence. women who are the main victims of economic violence now know that they can be assisted if, for example, the husband has unilaterally sold an economic good, the victim goes to the authority and denounces the husband’s action and asks for advice on the procedure to follow for this violence to be resolved. (fgd in b, male) i feel it is hard. i, who live in the countryside, i see that the situation is complicated for the woman who lives there in the countryside. the woman who 4 maj means (in french) maison d'accès à la justice [house of access to justice]; it is a service whereby people are freely assisted with legal services. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 80 lives in the countryside has a baby on her back, sometimes she is even pregnant, she went to the field with her husband if she is lucky enough to be accompanied by him for the work. being back at a house, the husband asks the woman for food while they have both just arrived at home, having been working together in the field for agricultural activities.… even if the husband beats her, she must be silent, she must not denounce her husband, for fear of not being able to escape. she thinks that if her husband sends her away, she will not have a place to go, especially since even her own parents, especially her mother, informs her that this is how marital life works, that the difficult situation must be kept as it happens. so she lives in that situation … the woman who lives in the countryside suffers, especially from economic violence. she works a lot for conjugal production, but her share of the product of her work is limited. (fgd in b, female) not all cases report themselves, many of the victims keep silent about intimate partner violence because the culture tells them that it is normal to live in such a situation of being violated by their husbands. because of the influence of culture, many cases are not said, many keep silent because they say: “niko zubakwa [that’s how homes work]”! (fgd in c, male) cases of intimate partner violence we are aware of in our hospital services are those which ended in physical violence, or in transmissible diseases; they are generally sent to us by the police. (interview in a, male) other factors inhibiting the reporting of ipv: other factors that may keep a victim from reporting ipv are the psychosocial environment, intimidation of the victim, and the insufficient quality of the client care received from the people who handle reports of ipv, especially the lack of normal follow-up on the reported cases. reporting intimate partner violence is a very delicate situation. the administration is making efforts against intimate partner violence, but the result is not tangible. the victims are intimidated by the perpetrators who tell them that if they denounce them, they will kill them. thus, the victims look at the consequences that they incur when denouncing the violence of which they are victims and choose to not report. (fgd in c, male) the way victims are helped may discourage other victims from telling about their case. there are people who receive the victims in bad ways which are not in accordance with the situation of the intimate partner violence. (fgd in c, female) reporting intimate partner violence also depends on how those who state their cases are accompanied, helped. i think there are problems here. i will give you an example. i once accompanied a woman who had been dangerously beaten by her intimate partner. when the victim arrived at the police station, a woman who was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 81 also at the police station at that time and who knew the victim said, “but why is this woman rushing to report the violence she is suffering from when she is not married legally with the man?” the police officer, who heard the reaction of that woman, took that opportunity to ask the victim, “madam, are you not married legally?”, and the victim replied that she was not. so the policeman said, “well, be beaten to die, you whore!” … imagine the situation that had just been created, and that mother who had just been called a whore rather than being assisted on the acts of violence.… fortunately the commander arrived at that moment and, observing the victim, he sympathized, and the situation became more or less relaxed.… the way in which the victims are helped is problematic: rwandans in general think that women can be beaten by their partners. (fgd in c, female) there are also times when repeated acts of violence take place and the local authority who receives repeated complaints from the same victim comes to have had enough, and can say to the victim, “but we help you and you do not stop your violence.” this seems as if the situation of violence does not finally have definitive solutions and it is probably discouraging for the victim. (fgd in c, male) we lack sometimes a model in the handling of intimate partner violence cases. sometimes, you report the case of violence at the administrative sector level, but sometimes the person you’re addressing yourself to does the same thing: he lives in the intimate partner violence situation. what help can that person bring? i do have a proposal: the counselors should be numerous because everyone is sick … the reactions we see today shown on children, on men, on women … they missed psychosociological assistance, they missed having someone to listen to them, and their situations degenerated. permanent counseling is needed. (fgd in c, female) adequate support and follow up of reported cases and support to victims is an issue. that is what i observe and it grieves me much. follow-up of cases: reported cases have no appropriate follow-up system. i do not know if this is because there are no consequences against the authority that does not take appropriate action on the case that is reported. i do not know whether this is due to the fact that he is not a model, or that he does not care about this case, or the fact that it may be due to the lack of knowledge about intimate partner violence. there are reported cases that are not treated, but are classified by the one who should follow it up.… there is no follow-up system that i know of. i am now in my third term as women's representative … but i do not know any follow-up system. for example, one [official] can receive a case: he promises that this problem will be followed up and that stops there, nothing else is done after there. at one point after, we hear that a victim has just been killed, or a girl has just thrown her baby in the toilet; there are many reactions when cases of intimate partner violence are not followed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 82 up. the woman we visited at the hospital who had been burnt by her husband by pouring a pot of potatoes on her face, she was burned on her face, on her breasts, but i tell you the truth, it has not had any continuation. (fgd in c, female) i learned that he asked for forgiveness and that he received it. (fgd in c, female) i too learned that he was forgiven to the police and that is all. this kind of person — a professional who interceded for forgiveness when he was the one who would have punished the crime — should be answering this, he should be accountable to this. (fgd in c, female) several factors influence whether an ipv incident will be reported. the gender of the victim plays a role. most of the victims who report ipv are female; men tend not to report, perhaps due to the influence of the culture: men may deny being victims to avoid being known as the victims of females. this is consistent with the findings of umubyeyi, mogren, ntaganira, and krantz (2014), who, with regard to men’s lower reporting, stated that men’s denial of incidents could be explained by the gender role pattern. sexual and economic violence are the types of ipv most likely to be reported. sexual abuse by a partner is more often reported by female than by male victims, but the reporting is not automatic, nor does it usually take place immediately. instead, the female victims tend to keep silent until the situation has become more and more catastrophic and reaches a breaking point. they take rarely the initiative on their own to report, but need support from other people, especially from organizations dedicated to women’s development such as cnf (conseil national des femmes [national council of women]) and from any person in a position to advocate for the victim. indeed, consistent with the present findings, it has been reported that only 42% of women who have ever experienced physical or sexual violence sought help from either formal or informal sources; the majority of women preferred informal sources of help, such as family, in-laws, friends, or neighbors (umubyeyi et al., 2016). however, while the present study found that in order for female victims of ipv to report they need the assistance and support of others, thomson et al. (2015), in a study on correlates of ipv against women during a time of rapid social transition in rwanda, analyzed the 2005 and 2010 rwanda demographic and health surveys and found that rwanda has one of the highest self-reported rates of ipv against women worldwide, and that multiple forms of current or past violence are reported by the same women. this suggests a need for further studies on the conditions leading to cases of ipv being reported. the victims of economic violence are usually female; there is less reluctance to report this type of ipv. intimate partner harassment, on the other hand, is not generally reported to authorities. this type of ipv is usually recognized only when it leads to extreme physical consequences — the injury or death of the victim. cultural influences play an important part in the underreporting of cases, especially in the countryside, where women are less educated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 83 female victims are exhorted to live with the ipv they suffer from because, as the saying goes, “niko zubakwa [that is how homes work]”. for male victims, it is not culturally easy to accept and reveal that one is the victim of a female intimate partner. other factors also play a role in discouraging the reporting of ipv. these relate to the psychosocial environment, and intimidation of the victims by the perpetrators. if the perpetrators tell the victims that if they denounce them, they will be killed, the victims will probably choose not to report. this is consistent with the statement that women feared revealing abuse to anyone, either within or outside the family, as this would bring shame to the family and worsen their overall life situation (umubyeyi et al., 2016). umubyeyi and colleagues recommended that a study be carried out on gaps in legislation aimed at supporting abused women; they also suggested the need for a study on gaps in the involvement of health care professionals in supporting abused women (2016). untrained or insufficiently trained staff, or staff whose moral values negatively impact their relationships with the victims, will lead to unsatisfactory client care and will handicap the reporting of ipv cases. it is of great importance that professionals who deal with ipv cases should receive the right training to develop the needed skills. previous authors have made similar recommendations. for example, in the medical aspect of ipv, umubyeyi et al. (2016) recommended that health care professionals should be better prepared through further education, and guidelines on how to handle such cases. with regard to reported cases of ipv, thomson et al. (2015) conducted an analysis of the 2005 and 2010 demographic and health surveys. they concluded that there had been a doubling in self-reported violence between 2005 and 2010, and that it coincided with major political and social gains in rwanda. however, they also recommended that additional research be conducted to tease out to what extent-increased self-reports of ipv are due to increased ipv incidence rather than greater empowerment by women to report violence. they also stated that research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of ipv interventions such as police station gender desks and district hospital isange [feel welcome] one stop centers5 in reducing the incidence of ipv (thomson et al., 2015). participants suggested that good follow-up of reported cases is necessary in order to avoid extreme consequences, such as death. there is a need to expand the number of locations where justice services can be accessed, so that in each two or three administrative sectors there are justice services to support victims in the local area. there is a need for psychologists at police offices and for a multidisciplinary team to deal with ipv. as bragg (2003) suggested, this could be beneficial in such areas as crisis counseling and interventions, support groups, medical and mental health referrals, legal advocacy, vocational counseling, and children’s services. 5 the isange one stop center is a multisectoral and interdisciplinary program aimed at providing psychosocial, medical, police, and legal services to adult and child survivors of gender-based violence and child abuse in rwanda. the first one was created in july 2009 at kacyiru police hospital in kigali. currently, there are 16 isange centers at established district hospitals (http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2016-01-06/195864/). http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2016-01-06/195864/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 84 the status and gender distribution of victims and perpetrators of ipv participants felt that children were incontestably victims of ipv. when asked to rank the main victims of ipv by importance, they put children first, women second, and men third. this is apparent from the fgd and interview data, but also from the energy that was put into talking about the issue of victims of ipv. participants unanimously reported that the victims of ipv include both female and male partners, and that the children of violent intimate partners are collateral victims. when discussing “who are the victims” of ipv, both nonverbal behaviors and the tone of the conversation clearly showed the insistence of the participants that children and women are the main victims of ipv, with men in third place. children are the main victims of intimate partner violence. in terms of gender of the victims of intimate partner violence, both men and women are victims. (fgd in a, male) when i look at it, i realize that children are the first victims. a child who lives in a marital home where there is a ivp, he gets hurt psychologically, fails to be properly educated by his parents. then he will not be able to properly follow his lessons at school. he grows up in an environment of conflict.… when he sees that his parents are still fighting, he may think that when the day comes when he will have his own marital home, the situation will be the same, which puts him in a situation of [psychological discomfort]. (fgd in c, female) to me, victims of intimate partner violence are women and children. even if the female was the perpetrator of the intimate partner violence, her nature as a female means that she also became the victim of the situation she created herself. (fgd in a, female) to me, whether the intimate partner violence is perpetrated by men or by women, the victims are children and women; if i try to make a kind of proportion, i can say that 90% of victims are women and children and 1% or 2 % are men victims of intimate partner violence. (fgd in b, male) the victims of intimate partner violence are firstly children, women secondly, and men thirdly. but this depends on the perpetrator of the intimate partner violence. (fgd in a, male) here in our district, if i compare it with other districts i’ve worked in, i realize that it all depends on the district.… i have tangible cases where both sides are undergoing intimate partner violence. intimate partner violence is not committed against women only, men also come and tell us that they are the victims of intimate partner violence by their wives. women give a mistaken interpretation of gender equality: she now knows that she is the equal of man. as the man international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 85 approaches her, she calls the police saying her husband has just beat her and the rumors are circulating as well.… today, there are men who have made the decision to leave the domestic home leaving their wives behind them.… the reference i can give you is that of about four requests for divorce, one can be a man. (fgd in b, female) women are the main victims. yes, there are some cases of men who are victims, but the majority of victims of intimate partner violence are women, and most of the perpetrators are men. (interview in a, male) most of the victims we receive in our services are female; only about 1% are male. (interview in b, female) most of the time, the victims of intimate partner violence are women. the reason for this is that, generally speaking, in the rwandan mentality, the husband is the head of all.… but with regard to the new law of the family on the two spouses as chiefs.… he may want to use conjugal economic assets as he wishes, unbeknownst to the woman. so if the woman presents resistance to her husband, she ends up being violated by him. it is in this way that the violence begins. (interview in b, male) but there are also women who want to seize and use only matrimonial goods, under the pretext that the law protects them. (interview in a, male) women and girls are the main victims of ipv, and children are the main victims of the consequences of intimate partner violence. we regularly face these types of violence. even when we do interventions with people who are facing intimate partner violence, we want to help mainly their children. (interview in c, female) children and women are said to be the main victims of ipv. men are said to be the usual perpetrators even if they also are sometimes victims. this finding about the gender of the victims and perpetrators of ipv is consistent with umubyeyi and colleagues’ (2014) study conducted in rural and urban areas of rwanda’s southern province. the authors found that both men and women were exposed to ipv, although men to a considerably lesser extent than women. ipv exposure, in the form of repeated acts of physical, sexual, and psychological violence, was commonly faced by women, while men reported only single incidents of violence. in sub-saharan africa, women are more exposed to ipv than men (were et al., 2011). men report less exposure to physical and sexual violence while psychological violence exposure is more evenly distributed, irrespective of the time span under investigation — for example, the past year, or a lifetime (see, e.g., nybergh, taft, & krantz, 2012). some researchers have suggested that female victims are also often perpetrators of violence and that the victim and perpetrator roles can be played by both men and women (see, e.g., bélanger, mathieu, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 86 brisebois, 2013). while it is true that ipv is perpetrated by both women and men, the majority of cases worldwide are perpetrated by males against their female partners (garcía-moreno et al., 2013). proposed strategies against ipv: effective preventive measures participants suggested a number of measures as effective preventive and responsive actions for ipv. these include fighting against poverty, educating and sensitizing family members about their responsibilities and community leaders about laws and human rights, involving the churches in the fight against ipv by promoting mutual respect, training and educating people about gender equality and ipv, increasing the access to social services, reducing the distance to access help in cases of ipv, and improving telephone and other communications facilities. they also proposed putting in place a law discouraging and protecting free unions, the creation of a specific institution in charge of ipv, premarital education, adequate follow-up of reported cases and supporting of victims, and the punitive response. fighting against poverty a woman who does not make economic inputs to the home, even if she is in charge of rural field work and other domestic activities, is not given value in the home. (fgd in c, female) women do not yet have the same economic resources as men.… they have begun to make economic contributions to their homes, but they have not yet reached the same level as men. (fgd in c, female) we see many people living in poverty. so when the wife asks her husband for something while the husband does not have the financial means to satisfy his wife’s request, both spouses begin to denigrate each other. i think fighting poverty would be a solution to the intimate partner violence related to the impossibility of meeting the economic needs. (interview in c, male) in their study, umubyeyi et al. (2014) also suggested that income generating activities and access to financial credit would contribute to women’s empowerment. educating and sensitizing families members about their responsibilities and community leaders about laws and human rights educating men and women so that everyone knows about their conjugal duties, … the man has the responsibility to produce for and protect the home.… the solution is to try to educate.… our contribution as a church is to educate. at least my son understands who the woman is, and who the man is. this is to avoid that, as we have seen that children are the first victims of intimate partner violence, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 87 that if they see their father beating their mothers, these children do not think that this is how it should be. (fgd in c, male) it is important that the laws are explained to the people who are the beneficiaries. the laws are potentially good, they come to regulate marital and family problems, but people do not have the same interpretations regarding the laws. men and women, and even children, must have the same understanding and interpretations of the law governing the family. the laws are not explained in ordinary language, laws are not sufficiently disseminated.… you see that there are even intellectuals who act badly, more than those who are not educated.… when the laws are not explained to the population, this creates difficulties.… it is said that a law has gone out in the gazette, … but how many read the gazette? laws are good, but lack of knowledge about them by beneficiaries is a problem. (fgd in c, female) i agree with the same point, it is urgent to educate and explain the laws on the family.… to speak on radio and television is not enough.… even among those who listen to the radio or watch television, … many are interested in other shows like football. (fgd in c, male) to educate people on different contents of laws for human protection, at the village level. (fgd in a, male) there is a need for sensitization of local government … and the population on human rights. (fgd in b, male) it is important to educate people about their rights. someone may be confronted with intimate partner violence and believe that their torturer has the right to do so. it is important to know their rights and to know how to seek help in the case of intimate partner violence in order to claim rights when they are baffled. (interview in b, male) we must continue to raise awareness so that people know the rights of others. this is because, for example, there are men who believe that all rights belong to them, forgetting that women have rights also. (interview in c, male) it is necessary to educate the population on the right way to live. they should also be made aware of the types of intimate partner violence. a woman can publicly denigrate her husband and the husband does not know that this is a form of intimate partner violence. this affects the harmony of their life. (interview in a, male) since they have not learned this at school, it is necessary that local authorities should be educated about intimate partner violence. in turn, these local authorities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 88 have to educate, to sensitize the population about intimate partner violence. (interview in a, male) educational awareness on gender equality and human rights issues would contribute to women’s empowerment (umubyeyi et al., 2014). involving the churches in the fight against ipv by promoting mutual respect churches should help people to change and family members to be patient with each other. (fgd in c, male) in addition to the existing administrative institutions and the specific body dealing specifically with intimate partner violence, churches would help to educate the faithful on the fact that no one among intimate partners is an angel. (interview in c, female) training and educating people about gender equality and ipv the gender concept needs to be well understood: men think that gender [equality] is only to the advantage of women and causes women not to respect those men. men say that gender gives power to women. (fgd in b, male) increasing access to social services, reducing the distance to access help in cases of ipv, and upgrading telelphone and other communications facilities to increase maj so that each two or three administrative sectors should have a maj service near the population. (fgd in a, male) people travel long distances to reach police stations and maj services. for example, you see we are now at 10 a.m., but it is possible that someone who is coming here may be still on his way to here. it would be good to make available at least more than one bureau of maj, at least one maj bureau for two administrative sectors. however, it is necessary to sensitize the population about the opportunity they have … to use the calling way [a free telephone call] to police stations in order to report cases and get assistance. (interview in a, male) proposing a law both discouraging and protecting free unions there should be a law discouraging and protecting free relational unions. for people who live without being legally married, there is a form of instability that takes place in them and which influences their lives. this instability makes neither partner feel responsible for their household. why cannot we decide by law that if a couple who are not legally married has spent a certain amount of time international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 89 together, the household will be legally recognized as a home. we need to protect these families.… this is a problem we often hear about … here. every year we officially legalize illegal relationships, there is nothing preventing these types of disorderly relationships. thus, if a man has decided to live with a girl, thinking that this is only a way for him to acquire the satisfaction of his sexual enjoyments, he has to feel engaged in responsibilities, that it will not be easy to get rid of her should he wish it. and for the girl, she will have to understand that if she engages in this type of relationship, it involves responsibilities, and that if she has spent a certain time with that man, he will be her legal husband. (fgd in c, female) i was in an administrative sector of our district. i had discussions with people in charge of the civil registry, community police, and so on. i asked them the following question: a young man and a girl decide to live together as husband and wife, how will you behave in this situation as a responsible action? … i addressed this question to about four people randomly chosen in the assembly and their answers were the same: we will try to hunt this strange girl … so understand that that girl becomes a victim of violence.… i added another question: and if she ever became pregnant in the time she was with that man, what will become of the child she carries.… all answered that he will be a street child … and you see, those are leaders … there were pastors, executive secretaries of the administrative cells, development officers at the level of the administrative unit … and we have conducted such discussions in all the administrative sectors … by bringing together all these categories of people.… it is a problem, they said … but who can be sure that this pregnancy is not due to someone other than this young man? (fgd in c, female) proposing a specific institution to address ipv it would be helpful to set up a specific institution in charge of intimate partner violence so that it may be managed well, because it seems that in some existing institutions, intimate partner violence is given less importance … and this may be because there are more important problems for those institutions to handle. (interview in c, female) what i can propose is that there will be a specific body in charge of awareness and prevention of intimate partner violence. there should also be a specific law to punish intimate partner violence, for the population to become seriously aware of the problem of intimate partner violence. there should be a specific focus on intimate partner violence as there is, for example, a specific body for cases about trade. (interview in b, male) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 90 undoubtedly, one can say that the problems [of intimate partner violence] do not resolve.… it is not easy to know exactly where is the blocking … many of them remain in suspense. at least, you never see someone saying that his intimate partner violence problems have found solutions at 100%.… we think it would require a specific body dedicated to intimate partner violence and marital problems. i think that if intimate partner violence has not been solved as it is wished and wanted, maybe it is because the normal channels [of justice], which have to cope with varied problems of varied weights, can be overwhelmed if there are [many domestic violence cases] in addition to robbery and other serious crimes. when this happens, those other serious crimes receive much more attention; household crimes receive little importance if [the authorities] are involved in these other cases of crimes of particular gravity. this is the reason why we say that it could be fruitful if there was a specific body for solving conjugal problems. existing institutions deal with many other crucial, important issues. when intimate partner violence cases arrive at police stations, in existing courts, and there are serious cases other than intimate partner violence, they [ipv cases] receive little attention beyond what is considered important in their [the courts] particular context. just as there was a particular body that came to solve specific cases, the gacaca [community justice court] came to solve specific problems of genocide and it was effective according to what was expected from them. a task force to deal with these domestic problems at the sector or district level, this would depend on the institutionalization, discussions focused on these problems; i think this may have good results, better than we see today. (interview in c, female) premarital education what i can add on the topics of community education, is that there should be specific themes for those who are getting ready to get married … so that they understand the concept [of] gender … so that everybody marries knowing what awaits him in married life and what he will have to do in order to avoid annoying the other, his spouse. (fgd in c, female) premarital education should be conducted early and many times. there is a need for family counselors and for setting up a good methodology to improve education on family dynamics — living together. (interview in c, male) adequate follow up of reported cases and supporting of victims it would be helpful to follow up reported cases to avoid extreme consequences, such as death. (interview in b, male) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 91 there is a need for a psychologist at police stations, and there is a need for a multidisciplinary team that can make what is called a one stop center. (interview in c, female) punitive response it would be important to consider intimate partner violence as a criminal act to be punished before the population in a public place. (fgd in b, male) what i can add is that all intimate partner violence should be considered as criminal cases. we support the forgiveness that can be given by a victim of intimate partner violence, but there are no lessons that this can give to others.… see for example that man overturning a boiling pot of sweet potatoes on his wife and sometime later, he said to his wife, “pardon me, my wife, you know that we have children together” … and the victim forgives.… in these conditions, another man will do the same thing because he will tell himself that women are like that, they are violated and they forgive. the perpetrator must be punished and the victim must be protected. (fgd in c, male) i, too, would like to argue that intimate partner violence should be considered as criminal. the prosecution must recognize the value of forgiveness, but he should also recognize that forgiveness is not enough in cases of intimate partner violence, and that punishment is necessary. intimate partner violence must be seen as criminal and punished as such. (fgd in c, male) discussion of the proposed strategies one available preventive measure is that of addressing the problem of poverty. although rwanda has embarked on a policy of empowering women, they have not yet reached the same status as men. thus some are still dependent on men financially. when women are obliged to beg money from their male partners, this may lead to underestimating the value of women as human beings. the value of women is sometimes estimated in terms of the income they can bring into the household. each intimate partner needs to be educated about his or her responsibilities in the relationship. it is important that children have good role models so that they will behave properly when they have their own households. the role of family education in preventing ipv is crucial. the laws, especially the laws regulating the family, need to be explained to those who will benefit from them. although a law may have the potential to do good, unless people at all levels of instruction and all degrees of social status know and understand the law, that potential will not be realized. local leaders in particular, and the population in general, need to become international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 92 knowledgeable about ipv, human rights, and what steps to take when human rights are violated by ipv. the concept of gender needs to be well explained, because there are men and women who misunderstand it. the misunderstanding of the gender concept can lead to inappropriate behaviors in a relationship between intimate partners. rwandan psycho-socio-medical professionals have emphasized the importance of making the concept of gender well understood in order to prevent conflict and violence linked to misunderstanding of gender by men and by women (mukashema & sapsford, 2013). the need for education and sensitization as a measure to prevent family conflict leading to violence was also noted (mukashema & sapsford, 2013). religious institutions can help to prevent ipv by promoting attitudinal change and mutual patience among family members. advocacy efforts such as public awareness campaigns, collaborating with community services providers, and efforts to secure safety for victims and their children (bragg, 2003) can help raise awareness about ipv. to succeed, strategies to reduce partner violence need the combined commitment of all actors, such as government and civil society (abramsky et al., 2011). the helping services in cases of ipv, such as maj and police stations, should be as nearby and accessible to the population as possible. rwanda has set up a communications strategy that allows ipv victims to report offenders with a free telephone call. putting in place a law discouraging and protecting free relational unions, by giving them legal recognition after a period of cohabitation, would be good for the prevention of ipv against women and would especially benefit the children of those unions. formal marriage needs to be emphasized as a protective factor against ipv (abramsky et al., 2011). the participants suggested that a specific institution in charge of ipv should be created. they felt that ipv is not given enough importance, perhaps because institutions that are handling ipv also handle other serious issues to which they give more weight. an institution focusing only on issues of ipv and domestic violence could reduce this problem. these important suggestions come at a time when there is an effort to address ipv already underway in rwanda, with a number of laws formulated to this end. for example, in 2008, a law regarding the prevention and punishment of gender-based violence was put in place. in 2009, a one stop center project offering free, integrated medical, psychosocial, and legal services to victims of ipv and child abuse was created. almost all police stations now staff a gender desk with trained, usually female, personnel in order to help victims of ipv and other forms of domestic violence. the need for such measures indicates that ipv in rwanda is an alarming issue. indeed, it impacts negatively on the family, the smallest social unit and the foundation of a normal and harmonious nation. participants emphasized the importance of sufficient time for premarital education for people wishing to get married. premarital education was also suggested in a previous study as a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 93 method of preventing marital conflict in rwanda (mukashema & sapsford, 2013). for the purpose of premarital education, there is a need for family counselors who would set up a methodology for education about family dynamics (living together) in rwanda. this premarital and family education should protect the children from ipv. abramsky et al. (2011) suggested that early experiences of abuse for children are a strong risk factor for ipv in adulthood. protecting and supporting victims and their children is a necessary responsive action to ipv (schechter, 2000). all reported cases of ipv should be followed up to avoid extreme consequences, including death. a multidisciplinary team, consisting of staff well trained in handling ipv, should be in charge of the cases to ensure good and comprehensive client care and adequate support to victims. while the rwandan health and legal sectors have multiple initiatives to support victims, additional campaigns may be needed to shift public perception and reduce perpetration of ipv (thomson et al., 2015). even in recognizing the value of forgiveness in relationships, punishing ipv is needed as an example to other potential perpetrators. participants believed that public punishment would discourage domestic violence. suggested responsive actions to ipv from previous studies included improving the legal and criminal justice response (e.g., schechter, 2000), accountability for perpetrators of ipv through societal and criminal sanctions, and systematic changes to combat ipv and to promote victims’ rights (bragg, 2003). women who survive ipv feel more empowered to report by the protection provided by the laws, and, as a result, an increase in the number of arrests for non-lethal spousal violence has occurred (united nations office on drugs and crime, 2013). conclusion ipv was understood by the participants in this study as an act characterized by the deprivation of spouses’ rights and involving violence, physical or otherwise, by one spouse against the other. one noted, however, that the definition given by law must also be kept in mind. physical ipv may consist of beating and harming the body of the victim, which can end in the death of the victim. the identified features of economic ipv are non-agreement between intimate partners on the uses of their economic goods; lack of access to family income by the victim, who is generally female; and the selfishness of the perpetrator in the management and the use of their common property. sexual ipv consists mainly of unwanted sexual relations perpetrated by men. some men think that the payment of a dowry to the wife’s family confers on them the right to control their female intimate partners and even abuse them. some also cling to the traditional male role as head of the family, with the right to dictate practices in the area of sexual relations. psychological ipv includes harassment, degrading language, failing to take care of one’s partner, imposing spiritual adherence, and the persecution of wives according to the sex international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 94 of their babies, as well as irresponsibility in supporting the victims (generally the wives) in domestic activities. participants noted that the victims who report ipv are most often women. however, sexual violence frequently goes unreported. victims may initially keep silent, then make a report when the situation has become unbearable. female victims of sexual violence generally need support from other people before they report. economic violence is the form of ipv most readily reported by its victims, who are generally female. harassment, on the other hand, is not generally reported to authorities, even though it may lead to a degenerating situation with extreme physical consequences including injury to or the death of the victim. to some extent, failure to report cases of ipv is influenced by culture, especially in the countryside, where women are less educated. they may be told by elders, especially their family members, that being violated is not unusual for a wife, and that it is simply how homes work (niko zubakwa). men generally do not report ipv. this is probably linked to traditional cultural influences that lead men to deny being the victim of a female intimate partner. the rwandan government is making efforts against ipv, especially in raising awareness among victims of the benefit of reporting ipv, but the results are not yet tangible. some factors that explain the underreporting of ipv include intimidation, the psychosocial environment, and the nature of client care. if the perpetrators tell the victims that if they denounce them, they will be killed, the victims will probably choose not to report the violence. some issues relating to the quality of the client care obtained by victims from the people dealing with ipv, as well as the way reported cases are followed up, are said to be factors that discourage ipv reporting. the first victims of ipv are the children, the collateral victims, followed by the women and then the men. participants proposed a number of measures aimed at preventing ipv: fighting against poverty, educating and sensitizing family members about their responsibilities and community leaders about laws and human rights, involving the churches in the fight against ipv by fostering mutual respect between family members, training and educating people about gender equality and ipv, increasing the access of people to the helping services and reducing the amount of travel required, implementing a law both discouraging and protecting free unions, creating a specific institution dedicated to ipv issues, engaging in premarital education, ensuring adequate follow-up of reported cases, and better supporting victims. the criminal penalties for ipv should be strengthened and fully enforced in order to set an example that will inhibit other potential perpetrators. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2017) 9(3): 68–99 95 references abramsky,t. watts, c. h., garcia-moreno, c., devries, k., kiss, l., ellsberg, m., … heise, l. 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(2011). a prospective study of frequency and correlates of intimate partner violence among african heterosexual hiv serodiscordant couples. aids, 25(16), 2009– 2018. doi:10.1097/qad.0b013e32834b005d http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260512469106 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/qad.0b013e32834b005d international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019991 systemic reflexivity in residential child care: a pedagogical frame to empower professional competence laura formenti and alessandra rigamonti abstract: this position paper offers a pedagogical frame to empower professional work in residential child care. jobs in this demanding field are characterized by daily relationships with children of different ages, needs, and cultural backgrounds. there is a need for effective communication and interaction with them, their families, co-workers, other professionals, and care agencies, as well as with the larger community. this complexity brings uncertainty and the necessity of thinking and acting in a sensitive way in order to open possibilities for systemic transformation at the micro, meso, and macro levels. in this framework, we focus on reflexivity as a meta-competence — a set of specific postures, competences, and attitudes that characterize expert professional action. a thorough literature review on reflexivity in social work and child protection is aimed at clarifying the meanings, uses, and features of this concept. we claim that systemic reflexivity can be used as a framework, a methodology, and a set of tools to empower professional work by enhancing emotional, cognitive, and epistemic self-awareness, systemic wisdom, abduction, and active listening. to help workers and teams develop these five competences, a self-directed learning module is currently being designed, based on systemic and narrative perspectives, and transformative learning theory. keywords: residential child care, reflexivity, competence, systemic approach, narratives laura formenti phd (corresponding author) is a professor of general and social pedagogy at milano bicocca university, piazza ateneo nuovo, n. 1, 20126 milano, italy. email: laura.formenti@unimib.it alessandra rigamonti phd is a research fellow at milano bicocca university, piazza ateneo nuovo, n. 1, 20126 milano, italy. email: alessandra.rigamonti@unimib.it mailto:laura.formenti@unimib.it mailto:alessandra.rigamonti@unimib.it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 116 working in residential child care: the need for a systemic pedagogical frame in this paper, we reflect on training educational care workers with a view to creating a basis for designing a solid curriculum aimed at empowering workers, and building a stronger professional identity based on competences. this study is part of a larger project1 about residential child care (rcc), where our task is to develop the pedagogical frame for a massive open online course (mooc) to be offered to workers and agencies to provide self-directed learning both in the workplace and during the passage from university to work. we are persuaded that, in order to guarantee better outcomes in rcc, we must empower workers by offering, besides solid knowledge, a competence-based learning context, where they can develop their reflexivity. our questions are: what do professionals in rcc need in order to become more effective? which competences are entailed by good, or “good enough”, practice? when is a professional considered to be, and able to recognize herself or himself as, “competent”? researchers, professional associations, and experts have developed principles, requirements, and standards about child protection and care, and emphasized the need for trained and experienced workers endowed with complex relational capacities (garfat, 2013; gharabaghi, 2020; mattingly et al., 2012). it is by and large recognized that care workers play a critical role in rcc outcomes (knorth et al., 2010). in many countries, they need a specific qualification at entry level, but there is little standardization as to how the needed competences are defined, assessed, developed, and learnt in the workplace. although specific requirements depend on the country’s welfare policies and dominant cultural models, there is a push towards professionalism. for example, in italy, since 2017 all these workers must have a bachelor of arts in educational sciences; they are named “professional educators”, while in other countries workers may be social workers or nurses, or assistants having either no specific qualification or a generic degree. professionalization can be described as a composition of different dimensions: awareness of role, professional identity, juridical framework, commitment to excellence, and competence. the latter is our focus here, but all dimensions interact in entangled ways. for example: a worker may be recognized as competent by colleagues and clients, but a weak juridical understanding and low status could interfere with his or her agency, a component of competence. increasing bureaucratization, on one side, and academic training, on the other, can undermine or undervalue relational competences in favor of other attitudes. professionalization can thus create manifold problems having complex dynamics. professional empowerment entails being recognized as a competent practitioner, as well as feeling and acting like one; it comprises cultural, relational, and communication skills, but skill is 1 “empowering residential child care through interprofessional training”, funded by the european union’s erasmus plus program. the principal investigator is eeva timonen-kallio. for more information, see https://ercci.turkuamk.fi/en/ https://ercci.turkuamk.fi/en/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 117 not synonymous with competence, which is more complex, context-based, and transferrable. timonen-kallio and hämäläinen (2019) define six areas of competence informed by a social pedagogy framework: educating for community; promoting participation in daily life; planning and maintaining the child’s social integration process; implementing specific and intentional educational interventions; collaborating in internal and external multiprofessional teams; and continuing professional learning and education. these authors value relationships, the quality of daily life in a homelike context, and collaboration between different professionals, all of them orientated to children’s well-being and participation. other authors highlight the need for knowledge based on solid evidence (akin et al., 2016; del valle et al., 2015; james, 2017). these differences evoke paradigms and hidden pedagogical models. the traditional model in child care is based on a strongly relational profile, too often downplayed as “the good-hearted type”, but the push towards specialization and evidence-based practice exhorts practitioners to be objective, and base their decisions on the application of models and rules derived from research. this binary divide is mirrored in training: on one side, it is aimed at developing life skills such as communication, listening, sympathy, responsiveness, and emotional self-awareness; on the other side, it seeks to enforce the application of specific techniques and acknowledged models. the dichotomy is not helpful: too often, it creates a clash of paradigms in the community of child protection, especially among professionals with different curricula and experience. we consider rcc a complex system, needing both rational and relational answers, different kinds of research, and a strong connection between theory and practice. it also has a strong commitment to social justice: this means that ethical and political issues cannot be eliminated from the framework. reflexivity is a way to connect different forms and levels of knowledge within a larger framework, so it can be helpful in overcoming the opposition between the “good old” relational practitioner and the “new” skilled and trained one. critical thinking is an essential part of reflexivity. care work entails certain inherent contradictions; for example, harder et al. (2017) signalled the need to balance rules and freedom. our research with care leavers (formenti et al., 2020) shows that a competent social worker must embody layered and contradictory dimensions. the influence of personal assumptions and values, cultural biases, and power issues is strong. how do workers in rcc learn to connect their knowledge, skills, and abilities, their motivations and values, with the capacity to act in ways that are useful and effective, and consistent with emerging needs and demands, while keeping in view a possible transformation towards the good? competence can only be recognized when it is enacted in a real situation and its outcome is satisfying for different actors and from different perspectives. we therefore focus our attention on reflexivity as a meta-competence and a tool for professional growth. we search for differences between reflection and reflexivity, and for criteria to define and operationalize reflexivity in a systemic framework. we connect reflexivity to the learning potential of narratives and use transformative learning (formenti & west, 2018; mezirow, 1991) as a basis for training design. our final aim is to suggest that systemic reflexivity can be international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 118 supported by exercises, using stories and questions that help practitioners to develop their awareness, relationality, responsibility, and agency. literature review: reflexivity and reflection in child protection and social work reflection is the capacity to think about an action and its conditions, and to select an action conducive to desired outcomes; when we reflect, we ponder what we know (i.e., conscious information) from both external sources and introspection, and we make judgements that may eventually guide our actions. reflection is difficult and does not come automatically: it is a construction, an act of interpretation that entails some practice. schön’s (1983) seminal work established reflection as relevant to professionals in general, and gave rise to an extensive literature exploring the concept. reflexivity, as a concept, is far less clear. the word is sometimes used as a synonym of reflection, but may also be introduced to signal another meaning. for example, one of us offered a view of reflexivity in the area of adult learning and education (formenti, 2017; formenti & west, 2018) as a more-than-cognitive competence, entailing memory, perception, interaction, emotion, imagination, and the use of presentational languages. it includes unconscious processes and ongoing interaction with a material and human context. if the need for reflection in social work practice now seems universally accepted (ferguson, 2018), the need for — or even a definition of — reflexivity is less widely shared. despite the presence of this term in social work literature since the 1990s, it is often used without a careful and critical effort to define it. in doing this literature review, our questions are: what does reflexivity mean? which presuppositions and perspectives of meaning, which criteria and dimensions of reflexivity, are defined in the literature? how can they enhance social work, educational care, and child protection? since our aim is to highlight the role of reflexivity in training rcc workers, this review is mainly based on papers that use “reflexivity” and “reflection” in relation to practice in child protection and care. we set aside other contexts, for example, research — where reflexivity has gained prominence after the turn to interpretivism (alvesson & sköldberg, 2000; maton, 2003; simon & chard, 2014), but we did look into family therapy, for its influence on social work (bingle & middleton, 2019; partridge et al., 2019; watson, 2019). reflexivity is referenced in papers about theory, research, practice, or training in social work, management, psychological intervention, and supervision, whereas reflection is generally referenced in relation to the improvement of professional practice, often within a frame of social justice and emancipation. in their literature review, d’cruz et al. (2007) chronicled multiple meanings for “reflexivity”, “reflectivity”, “critical reflection”, and “reflection”; they deplored the lack of clarity and interchangeable use of these terms. they described three “variations” of meaning: (1) the ability of social workers, via an intrapsychic process, to acquire information and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 119 make choices based on knowledge in a given relational situation; (2) critical and self-critical approaches to practice, questioning the neutrality of knowledge and recognizing the role of power in the relationship; and (3) self-awareness and practitioners’ active use of their emotional responses — instead of repressing or controlling them — and their position in the relational process. by questioning the relationship between knowledge and practice, reflexivity introduces the theme of uncertainty. in the first variation above, the uncertainty arises from the complexity of life in contemporary society; in the second and third variations, it is due to awareness of the situated construction of knowledge that characterizes practice and makes any account a partial one. we acknowledge the risk of fuelling relativism (d’cruz et al., 2007), but we will show how a systemic, relational, and situated approach to reflexivity can help one avoid adopting an “anything goes” position. some authors offer specific terms, whose meaning is peculiar to their approach. for instance, kondrat (1999) uses “critical reflective” to characterize social work that is connected to and aware of the sociohistorical context. fook frames “reflectivity” (2002) and “critical reflection” (2012) as processes that turn the experience of practice into learning; she suggests (2002) that “reflection/reflectivity” comes from case management and the need to improve practice, while “reflexivity” comes from qualitative and ethnographic research and the need to locate the observer in the picture. in our analysis, we used systemic and constructivist lenses to highlight different layers of construction and interpretation of reflexivity, based on the micro, meso, and macro levels of systemic functioning (formenti & west, 2018): • the microlevel focuses on the individual as a system. here, reflexivity is constructed as a process connecting emotional, cognitive, physical, biographical, and situational aspects in the individual social worker’s experience. • the mesolevel focuses on interaction and the circularity of human communication, especially in systems with a history of relationships. reflexivity is co-constructed by communication and conversations within a social organisation and collective mind — a family, team, or group. these systems tend to stabilize in time and develop their own scripts, myths, rules, and identities, along with a sense of belonging (“us”). an rcc unit can be regarded as such a system. • the macrolevel refers to the larger context: cultural, social, economic, political, and legal factors impinge on social work. here, reflexivity relates to the awareness of the role of social structures, discourse, dominant perspectives, and societal myths in shaping practice. in addition to this analysis, we identified two main topics: the influence of the systemic approach in shaping reflexive and reflective practices and the relationship between reflexivity and narrativity. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 120 self-reflexivity as a feature of the microlevel many authors have addressed the need to build awareness of how practice is shaped by each professional’s unconsciously held assumptions, as well as personal ideas and theories. bingle and middleton (2019) defined self-reflexivity as a position enabling workers to distance themselves from the dominant language of child protection that pushes them to find “the right answer”. roets et al. (2017) studied the capacity to connect perception, interpretation, and communication in practice, which may be sustained by the creation of stories. for example, when writing a report, it may be more useful to view it as a practice of storytelling, not a bare recitation of facts. defining and solving a problem entail engaging in an ongoing construction; therefore, an approach involving the blind application of protocols and case management rules is likely to be ineffectual. reflexivity creates a frame for bringing attention to everyday practice and developing a capacity to interrogate, present, and defend one’s own ideas (magnuson et al., 2012). some authors (andrew, 2015; taylor & white, 2001) have questioned the dimension of judgement — unavoidable in social work — and its moral and emotional implications: how do we develop our ideas, how do we bridge knowledge and feelings, values and actions, and what are the consequences? according to ferguson (2018), the reflective process is triggered by the sensorial, emotional, and experiential impact of social work. for example, anxiety is frequently mentioned by social workers and becomes problematic when they are unable to start an internal supervision — ferguson’s term for a process beyond generic reflection — which gives containment to ideas and feelings. papp and rácz (2016) considered self-reflexivity to be a supportive background and protective factor for social workers: without it, they would not be aware of the importance of expressing themselves, taking a position, or making a statement. along the same lines, kearns and mcardle (2012) considered reflexivity to be a key feature of resilience, enabling professionals to think in depth and make explicit statements or correct them. the title of their paper — “doing it right?” — alludes to the construction of a problematic (disempowering) narrative that may haunt newly qualified social workers. shared reflexivity as a feature of the mesolevel social work is a relational and organizational job, entailing many systems and levels of interaction. enduring relationships, groups, and organizations constitute systems that self-organize and learn: reflexivity, then, is not only a feature of the individual, but it can be (and needs to be) implemented in the organization of social work so that feedback and circularity of communication can sustain transformation. many papers make reference to systemic theories and practices (bingle & middleton, 2019; dugmore et al., 2018; jude, 2018; papp & rácz, 2016; partridge et al., 2019; watson, 2019) that bring to the forefront relationships and contexts rather than individual features. the systemic approach to social work defines problems as relational and social, not intrinsic to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 121 person. the constructionist paradigm is used to say that reality is not fixed — not “out there” — but is co-created. partridge et al. (2019) considered the reflexive process to be a key systemic principle, a collective action that raises the whole system’s capacity to respond to needs by enhancing shared awareness. dugmore et al. (2018) promoted a model of embedded and embodied systemic supervision that fuels reflexivity, resilience, and a relationship-based practice. this reflexive (rather than prescriptive) practice of supervision is potentially transformative for the team and any others involved. it creates a pause and a space for “safe uncertainty” (mason, 2015, as cited in dugmore et al., 2019). the composition of different voices, theoretical perspectives, and domains of action helps the practice overcome the risk of searching for a single truth. truths are always provisional and open to revision. lack of certainty may be the first step towards hope. this framework allows social workers to take an open stance in their ongoing relationships with children, families, colleagues, and other agencies, avoiding the stagnation or stereotyping of programs and the disempowering posture of “zombie social work” (forrester, 2016). feedback and circularity characterize social work practice: the effectiveness of an intervention or program is collectively evaluated by the whole staff using a variety of sources. group reflective supervision (bingle & middleton, 2019) offers the possibility to exert curiosity and be open to the existence of multiple interpretations of reality — sometimes called “the multiverse”, a term we have adopted in this article. several authors (bingle & middleton, 2019; dugmore et al., 2018; partridge et al., 2019) have associated reflexivity with the professional stance of “curiosity”, a concept proposed by cecchin (1987) as an advancement of systemic “hypothesizing” (selvini et al., 1980). the latter, initially introduced as a guideline for conducting family therapy interviews, is suitable for rethinking social work intervention as based on the multiplication and interconnection of different ideas. it introduces a second-order perspective that amends linearity and welcomes multiple truths, calling for respect and recognition of the value differences in the collective mind (family and team). curiosity facilitates teamwork in the consideration of all the complex relational and contextual factors entering the evaluation of a situation and in taking shared decisions about the intervention. it is related to “being in relationship” (and not only doing) with other professionals and clients. it sustains the development of new ideas and possibilities in intervention; for example, involving the family in the reflexive process hence allowing the cocreation of new directions instead of blaming, patronizing, or giving instructions to parents. a relevant issue in social work is power, both in relationships with clients and among professionals. when professionals work towards emancipation, participation, and voice in child protection, shared reflexivity questions the impact of power, without forgetting the ultimate authority of statutory and legal aspects in the context of intervention. the very notion of “child at risk” raises issues of power as a discursive construct shaping practice (roets et al., 2017). the complexity of dealing with child protection while enhancing parents’ competence frequently gives rise to dilemmas in social work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 122 watson (2019) addressed the issue of keeping an ethical and effective position towards children and towards parents, who might feel forced to follow instructions because of the threat of child removal if they do not comply. reflexivity allows the sharing of authority between therapists (or social workers) and parents. professionals can support families’ reflexivity about parenthood and care. ferguson (2003) defined the addressees of intervention as potentially “creative reflexive citizens”: it is the professionals’ task to involve them in their own life-planning, to invite them to disengage from toxic relationships or the psychological inheritance of trauma, and learn how to act critically, to reflect on their actions, and reshape their biographies. cultural reflexivity as a feature of the macrolevel when reflexivity is enacted, one can hardly avoid considering the larger system and challenging the dominant discourses in social work, whereby expert professionals are expected to wield persuasive, even coercive, power over vulnerable and powerless families or individuals. in 1997, ferguson had already suggested that institutions and social environments are parts of the reflective process; he criticized reflection as overly individual, conscious, and intentional, but saw reflexivity as entailing the collective, institutional, and social levels. reflexivity reveals the influence of structures and discourses — as shaped by the institutional, legal, social, and historical contexts — on social work. epistemic reflexivity, a cornerstone of pierre bourdieu’s work (maton, 2003), highlights the hidden role of dominant knowledge in the professional construction of practice (white, 1997) and helps to overcome some limits of “mere reflection” that arise from the overly individualistic and even narcissistic features of many contemporary reflective practices. reflexivity needs to be epistemological and collective and show how the relations between knowledge and practice are mediated by social discourse. any knowledge depends on epistemological conditions, and the latter are related to cultural and social frameworks. taylor and white (2001) pointed out that practising reflexivity in social work means to interrogate the construction of interpretation as a feature of any process of description. how was a certain description and interpretation achieved, and which authority was used to claim knowledge or understanding? the social and historical context affects the way practitioners build their knowledge, and act and react to families and children (taylor & white, 2001). they are expected to use assumptions from attachment theory, child development theory, biological psychiatry, and established professional models in interpreting children and families’ lives and in taking practical decisions towards them. knowledge, research, and theories that are historically constructed (hence, limited) become pillars of practice, used to understand, interpret, and evaluate the clients’ actions and reactions, as well as to justify choices. monson (2020) imagined the possibility of creating spaces of reflexivity for professionals to challenge discourses — for example, developmental discourses and dominant family models — in order to build positive attitudes. these spaces should be part of service delivery or constructed informally, but in either case, they need to be supported by the organization. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 123 systemic reflexivity in social work practice the systemic approach is not new in the supervision, training, and practices of social work and child protection (bingle & middleton, 2019; cameron et al., 2016; goodman & trowler, 2012; munro, 2011; partridge et al., 2019; santello et al., 2017; sebba et al., 2017). this approach, embedded in second-order cybernetics (von foerster, 2003) and focused on circular dynamic processes of communication and interaction, considers persons, groups, and institutions as interacting dynamic systems (i.e., minds; see bateson, 1979) following coherent paths of learning, differentiation, and transformation. it is a family-focused approach, based on strengths and giving parents and children the capacity to cope with their situation (sebba et al., 2017). “good enough” evolving relationships and an atmosphere of trust, hope, playfulness, and creativity are central to systemic child and family care. reflexivity is, then, a key systemic principle (mcnamee, 2009; partridge et al., 2019). krause (2012) introduced the history of this concept by referring to gregory bateson (1972, 1979) and his anthropologic work. bateson questioned his own field observations from the point of view of the observed, concluding that we cannot be sure of our interpretations of another culture, since any explanation depends on the observer’s culture and perspective. there is no neutrality or objectivity when it comes to observing the other. however, bateson did not abandon the idea of understanding this fundamental recursivity (reflexivity) in human knowledge, a “second-order principle” (von foerster, 2003) that includes the observer in the domain of knowledge construction. knowledge is mediated by our senses and cultural perspectives, we cannot escape our cultural frameworks when we observe, evaluate, and interpret a situation, an interaction, a family, or a program of intervention. the awareness of our partiality, its roots and consequences, reveals our “posture” or “positioning”, illuminating the “what” and “how” in our doing as well as in our feeling, thinking, and reflecting, always in relation to others’ feelings and reactions — that is, in a situated context. the process of reflexivity allows the observer — and the observing group, community, or institution — to grasp an opportunity to question the practice and its effects. so, reflexivity is observing observation and reacting to it (burnham, 2005; von foerster, 2003). a specific definition of reflexivity comes from the systemic theory of coordinated management of meaning (cmm), based on the hierarchy of different contexts of communication. pearce and cronen (1980) identified six hierarchical levels, beginning with the content of a message, which is defined by its command, which is defined by the episode, and continuing with the relational, biographical, and cultural levels. in the management of meaning, the lower level is framed by the higher, which provides the context in which to interpret it correctly. however, a “reflexive loop” (one that is directed or turned back on itself) happens when two levels are organized in such a way that each of them acts as the context for the other (cronen et al., 1982). this entanglement adds the complication of recursion, but instead of seeing this as a problem, the authors invite us to recognize this as a constitutive feature of human communication. recursivity is always present in the process of meaning construction: meaning affects interactions and is recursively (reflexively) affected by them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 124 in accordance with this framework, daniel (2012) proposed that cultural reflexivity, rather than self-reflexivity, should be a feature of therapy: the meeting of different belief systems requires a negotiation of cultural identities, which may result in the creation of new meanings and new ways to engage with otherness and difference. when we interrogate the dominant culture and its way of building otherness, we see ourselves in the eyes of the other and learn to identify some aspects of our habitus that might otherwise remain invisible. all professional interactions are in some way cultural interactions, entailing power and the impact of remote and recent histories of oppression, racism, and marginalization. so, cultural reflexivity can sustain professionals in learning openness, transparency, and reciprocity. in order to communicate across differences, they also need to take risks and leave their comfort zones. daniel (2012) focused on therapy, but the same principles can be applied to social work. all of us, indeed, should aim for greater sensitivity with regard to how “othering” operates in favor of dominant groups. burnham (2005) also contested “self-reflexivity” as an internal activity and proposed “relational reflexivity” to include others in the reflexive process: children, families, colleagues; indeed, the whole system. relational reflexivity is an intention, a desire, a process, and a practice of reciprocal engagement and coordination of resources, where professionals and clients co-create a space to explore and experiment with their relationship (burnham, 2005). an example of relational reflexivity is “questioning the question”: burnham’s approach was to ask the family if a certain question was correct, and propose different formulations for them to choose; his intent was to create a reflexive space and trigger family members’ reflexivity (as in ferguson, 2003). this opens new possibilities, new words and languages to name processes or actions, using imagination. by questioning how to go on in a specific situation, the professional is “recalibrating” their communications and actions with the other’s help. in accordance with burnham (2005) and daniel (2012), clients need to feel that professionals are sensitive to their responses and that there is some freedom to engage in ways that make sense to them in terms of family and cultural values, scripts, style, myths, and so on. empowerment and participation are key principles of child protection (arbeiter & toros, 2017; fuller & zhang, 2017; jackson et al., 2020; lehtme & toros, 2020; platt, 2012; toros et al., 2018). systemic reflexivity is a relational practice (munro, 2011; ruch, 2012; wonnacott, 2014) that comprises emotions and intuitive knowledge. jude (2018) referred to interpersonal neuroscience to balance logic and abstract thinking with the contribution of senses, nonverbal signals, and embodied knowledge. bateson (1972) proposed the term systemic wisdom for the capacity to combine rationality (conscious purpose) with stories, art, play, humor, and the “reasons of the heart” in order to not destroy the delicate balance of living. systemic reflexivity, then, encourages an active form of research based on holistic attention and “presence”, connecting the mind and the body, the conscious and the unconscious, with the relational ongoing context (formenti, 2017; jude, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 125 as a consequence, following procedures in a linear way and praising reasoning that is based on facts and objective, neutral knowledge may be dangerous and irresponsible in social work, where delicate balances are already jeopardized, and sometimes we cannot even “give proper names to what we are dealing with” (shotter, 2014, p. 99). respect for mystery and complexity has to be integrated into social practice and educational care: there are no universally right or wrong answers, or procedures that always work regardless of context. reflexivity and narrativity: the power of stories so far, this literature review has highlighted the deep connections between narratives and reflexivity. although we did not find an explicit emphasis on stories, a narrative approach has been proposed as a tool for intervention, a methodology, or an epistemic stance by many authors. language and communication are considered to be key tools with which to question ourselves and our practices, and to imagine alternative ideas and actions (mcnamee, 2015). watson (2019) combined systemic ideas with conversation analysis to show the role of talk in fostering change. language is a determinant resource for therapy and social work: a word can shape or redirect a whole conversation, and systemic techniques offer suggestions for how a conversation can be structured in order to open possibilities; for example, by using certain kinds of questions. white (1997) developed a hermeneutic approach to social work, based on the narrative therapeutic approach (epston & white, 1992), by which people’s accounts of their problems are treated as stories that can be listened to and reedited, recognizing in them the influence of hidden and “taken for granted” assumptions. change can happen when these assumptions are revised through narrative means, revealing that many problematic situations are socially constructed and reproduced through language. abduction (metaphors, literary and artistic tools, nonverbal communication) overturns the dominant idea that “simple stories” or “lay accounts” are inferior to professional constructions. characterized as “thinking in stories” by bateson (1979), abduction is a process of knowledge that militates against destructive linear interventions. what kinds of stories are built when working with families and children? white (1997) uses bourdieu’s epistemic reflexivity to show how a situation can be assessed, under the interpretative paradigm, in a way that fits lay accounts. for example, interpreting a parent’s request for daycare as a form of manipulation is inappropriate. social workers should abandon a naive realist epistemology based on a linear correspondence between reality and its description. reality is storied. the narrative approach suggests that a given situation has multiple interpretations. so, the professionals’ task is to search for a more hopeful, more helpful, story (pocock, 1995). helpful stories change from case to case and follow the situation as it evolves in time, so the process of helping a client cannot be reduced to recipes. as an example, a child’s challenging behavior might be defined as a response to anger over her parents’ separation, which is more useful than considering her to be “bad”, misbehaving, or even mentally ill. here, the story is moved from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 126 child to the family system. however, a baby’s persistent crying may be more usefully narrated as resulting from colic than as a demonstration of the mother’s inability (pocock, 1995). looking for more helpful stories does not hinder the use of established scientific theories and models (attachment theory, trauma theory, etc.), but it reduces the damage caused by blaming parents for their children’s difficulties, which can create guilt and hopelessness. some narratives create prisons and are especially disempowering for parents who are unaware of their personal strengths and convinced that they are useless, unlovable, or guilty (pocock, 1995). settling on a better story for one person, however, could make things worse for another, perhaps leaving them more vulnerable. alleviating a mother’s guilt must not be allowed to result in harm to the child. therefore, social workers need to avoid both naive objectivism and anarchic relativism when using stories to nurture creativity, imagination, and hope in open conversations. reflexivity helps them to analyze their knowledge claims and practices (taylor & white, 2001): what do i (or we) really know? and how? professional knowledge needs to be scrutinized in each situation and never taken for granted. although taylor and white (2001) do not mention the narrative method, they do present stories in the form of interviews, letters, and case studies. narratives can be used to assist professional growth. we have already mentioned roets et al. (2017), whose dialogical storytelling approach to report writing increases the observer’s awareness of her or his own contribution to the interpretation of a situation. another narrative method of enhancing reflexivity is the model of systemic supervision proposed by partridge (2019): here, the case presenter is seen as a storyteller offering genograms (enhanced family trees) and stories to the supervision group. this technique works best when the presenter is specific about his or her dilemma and provides sufficient detail in telling and contextualizing the story. kearns and mcardle (2012) used narrative inquiry (reflexive dyadic interviews) to explore the construction of identity and resilience in newly qualified social workers based in statutory child welfare services. their stories of transition from university to the workplace show how newcomers learn to make sense of their experiences. here again, the focus is on the interpretative process, not on workers’ lives as such; these stories highlight the narrators’ struggles to position themselves in a new social role within the organization and the larger system. for kearns and mcardle (2012), reflexivity is understood as the researcher’s position in interpreting and communicating: the reflexive dyadic interview is a conversation between peers, rather than just an exchange of questions and answers. participants identified their own reflexivity as a growing capacity to recognize their personal investment in the job and manage its emotional demands. for example, understanding and naming emotional reactions to challenging situations was thought of as a resource, especially in the beginning of the practice. one aim of this kind of research is to push readers to open their minds and reimagine their practice, reinterpreting their lived experience. in this way, narrative research can become an educational tool. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 127 kondrat (1999) encourages practitioners to scrutinize their current narratives — the stories they tell about themselves in a specific situation — using situational self-awareness to be explicit about their narratives and metaphors to themselves and others, revealing how experience is coconstituted in each situation and worlds of meaning are co-created. also the clients’ reflexive process can be supported by narratives; according to ferguson (2003), the most vulnerable members of society can become reflexive citizens if they experience a safe relationship with practitioners and welfare agencies, leading to active participation in their own life planning and to them reediting some key aspects of their narratives. bingle and middleton (2019) used stories in relation to systemic hypothesizing: by evoking and composing different versions of reality and resisting dominant discourse and metaphors, it is possible to recognize that some clients’ stories are “subjugated” by professional intervention and by the power of context. new metaphors can disrupt normative structures and unhelpful stories. participation in the multiverse — the reality where many and conflicting stories coexist — can be transformative; the role of social workers is not to establish the truth, or to give instructions, but to be present, alongside parents and children, and provide a space for the co-creation of new stories, meanings, and actions. discussion the literature review highlighted some features of reflexivity in social work and child protection, and how reflexivity differs from reflection: while reflection is cognitive, individual, and mainly devoted to improving practices, reflexivity aims at creating new meanings and possibilities in a complex system. reflection is based on reasoned adaptation of actions to desired outcomes; it takes into account meaning and values, and a critical appraisal of the process. in contrast, reflexivity is based on calibration of action (bateson, 1979) within a changing context or relationship. it is a compositional (formenti, 2017), second-order, competence: individual and collective; epistemic (i.e., revealing hidden assumptions) as well as embodied and emotional; and connecting different but interdependent levels (micro, meso, and macro), aspects (theory, knowledge, practice, research, learning, languages, and narratives), and dimensions (conscious and unconscious). we call it “systemic reflexivity”, in part because the systemic approach is adopted by most papers using the concept of reflexivity. reflexivity is a professional posture, attitude, and competence that encompasses reflection; there is a need, in fact, to nurture individual self-awareness and critical thinking, along with the capacity to integrate one’s cognitions, emotions, and actions, knowing that they are shaped by the practitioner’s biography and by values and assumptions acquired through participation in previous learning contexts. however, the influence of the meso and macro levels contributes to reflexive competence. at the meso level, the quality of teamwork, specific organizational measures and methods, the creation of informal and formal spaces for dialogue, and supervision and case work help the team of co-workers to clarify and challenge the assumptions, theories, and metaphors that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 128 shape their workplace and practice. relationships are constitutive of reflexivity since the other is needed if one is to challenge previous perspectives. these relational spaces have delicate balances: they must be safe, open, and sustained by dialogue and reciprocal engagement. reflexivity also enables a focus on power issues that arise between professionals, and with families and children; roles are built through interaction and affected by interpretations. dominant discourses and structures must be reflexively deconstructed to open possibilities. reflexivity enables social workers to take a researcher’s position in their practice and to bring ethical and political awareness to it. to sum up, systemic reflexivity is a comprehensive (krause, 2012) meta-competence with several facets: • it encompasses recursivity in the process of interpretation. • it encourages self-reflexivity of both professionals and clients. • it fosters the critical analysis of multiple contexts and their hidden assumptions. • it sustains transformation in intervention and in research. reflexivity, feedback, and calibration as noted above, while reflection is mainly devoted to improving practices by adaptation, reflexivity is related to calibration of action (bateson, 1979): both entail circularity of experience and meaning, of action and thought; they are based on self-corrective sequences of action, effect, and feedback. feedback is fundamental to any professional practice since action is related to desired outcomes. adaptation happens when error is identified and corrected. calibration comes into play when direct feedback is not enough. in education and care settings, only rarely can errors be detected and corrected immediately; more often, we must compile and interpret information from different senses and sources. in many cases, it is not the single action that needs to be assessed or modified, but the category of actions, the context, and the relationship. with calibration, to achieve any improvement, correction must be performed upon a large class of actions … by long practice, [the professional] must adjust the setting of his nerves and muscles so that in the critical event, he will “automatically” give an optimum performance. (bateson, 1979, p. 2016) competence needs calibration. it is built over time, combining multiple streams of information from outside and inside, in different contexts where similar actions are interpreted as belonging to the same class. applying action correctly or achieving a result does not of itself indicate a competent practitioner. a pedagogical frame based on competence does not define learning as primarily the cumulative acquisition of knowledge and skills. rather, learning is seen as the capacity for adaptation and calibration within a particular context, using both familiar and new sources of information in a skilled and deliberate way to not only achieve a desired result but to redefine it if necessary. competence brings interpretation into the unconscious: while newcomers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 129 need to be aware of what they do, step by step, experts can take rapid decisions by intuition even before their rationality is called into action. intentionality, however, is always present in the background: competent professionals accept responsibility for continuously assessing their own actions at some level. competences from earlier learning and previously handled situations and tasks are integrated in new experiences; human beings tend to use what has already worked in other circumstances, generalizing and transferring it to new situations. without a re-examination of previous experience and the resulting learning, a professional may forget how a specific competence was acquired; once this is done, however, he or she can connect it to a present situation, and eventually transform it for application to future situations. this meta-competence is thus a basis for opening new possibilities. towards a learning module on reflexivity within the ercci project, we developed a module on reflexivity for the mooc. the module is designed to be used in a self-directed way by new and experienced professionals in the workplace. it combines mezirow’s (1991) theory of transformative learning with a systemic and narrative approach; it implements the idea of constructing stories about complex situations in rcc and then using reflexivity in several ways: to search for hidden assumptions in the stories (and in the learner), to connect different sources of knowledge, and to develop a critical interpretation and position at each level: micro, meso, and macro. to develop the module, we gathered stories from interviews, focus groups, and participatory workshops attended by some 50 experienced professionals, who were asked to identify competences and learning needs in rcc, and give examples related to them. their varied stories are emotionally and cognitively engaging; they tell of successful and unsuccessful actions; situations whose meaning is not clear; and errors, accidents, and uncertainty; as well as positive achievements. each story was processed by a group of 10 practitioners who were also students in pedagogical sciences and collaborators of the project: they explored together different meanings entailed by the stories, using writing, abduction, and dialogue in order to multiply and clarify interpretations. for each story, they used questions as interpretative guidelines to encourage reflection, reflexivity, and a research orientation: • what happened in the situation? how would you represent it? how would you behave in similar circumstances? what can you learn from this story, as told? (reflection) • how many points of view and interpretations emerged? do these reveal assumptions at a micro, meso, and macro level? are there conflicts, dilemmas, or alternative views? what can be learnt by integrating all these interpretations? (reflexivity) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 130 • are there other possible narratives? how would you search for new versions of the situation? what would you need to know, to do, or to learn in order to open more possibilities? (research) this process brought us to a long list of competences, from which we have chosen five reflexive competences that we intend to focus on and help students to develop through our learning module (composed of five units): (a) responsivity; (b) reciprocity in relationships; (c) creative conflict management; (d) multiplying descriptions and making systemic hypotheses; and (e) developing the cycle of intervention. a short presentation of each competence in relation to our definition of reflexivity as the meta-competence follows. responsivity a competent rcc worker is sensitive to feedback (burnham, 2005; jude, 2018) and able to communicate effectively in an emergent situation. it can be defined as emotional presence (krueger, 1994), openness, attunement, attention, embodied action, context reading, and interpersonal intelligence. it entails a capacity of being, doing, and interpreting “with” (garfat et al., 2018) children, families, and other professionals. it goes beyond listening or empathy, as it recognizes circularity and interdependence, so that practitioners take responsibility for their contributions in each situation. it is also related to rhythm in being a shared experience of engagement in a dynamic interconnection (krueger, 1994; maier, 1992) that respects different temporalities, identities, and expectations. the reflexive focus is on the ongoing interaction, movements, and feedback, nurtured by emotional, cognitive, and epistemic self-awareness. rcc professionals are constantly called to join in the flow of multiple actions. responsivity helps them to recognize their present position, state of mind, and feelings in relation to others and to take responsibility for the climate in the workplace and the effects of their choices, without claiming a false neutrality or, on the other side, control of the situation. reciprocity in relationships reflexivity entails relationality (burnham, 2005; ferguson, 2003; jude, 2018) — the awareness of interdependence in human relationships. positions are not neutral: they are shaped by gender, class, culture, and previous experience. formenti (2017) identifies four relational postures adopted by learners in educational care: • awaiting — accepting being taught, guided, and assessed by someone who “knows”. • taking refuge — complying by doing what is needed, asked, and planned in order to achieve an agreed result. • being intentional — bringing one’s interests, desires, or needs; asking to be listened to. • giving up control — being curious, open, and willing to play on a peer-to-peer basis. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 131 each of these positions also depends on the other’s positioning: there is a learner–educator complementarity between awaiting and teaching, taking refuge and coaching, being intentional and listening, giving up control and reciprocating. “relational reflexivity” (burnham, 2005; jude, 2018) allows us to name our own positioning and that of the other, and to sustain the evolution of the relationship. self-reflexiveness (why do i take this position? how did i learn it? how can i develop a richer relational repertoire? and what about the other?), as well as shared and cultural reflexiveness, help move the relationship to a new stance. in this view, there is no good or bad position: what is interesting is our capacity to change and find what is helpful in the situation. for example, the position of awaiting entails being able to receive, stay silent, be humble, give power to the other, and accept that the other knows more. it may be used to confirm power, but also to reverse the power dynamic. for a worker in rcc, awaiting directions from management may feel right, comfortable, and sometimes even helpful, but may also be irresponsible on many occasions. taking refuge entails being guided by expert knowledge. an expert knows the situation, context, rules, and tasks; the expert’s role is to prescribe attitudes and behaviors, encouraging the client to do what is needed. in rcc, a newcomer may take the posture of refuge towards an experienced colleague; however, this could make it harder to challenge hidden assumptions. educational care welcomes intentionality as the expression of self-knowledge and personal responsibility. in rcc, it is a desirable outcome for everybody: for the children, to achieve autonomy in the long run; for parents, to nurture responsible parenting; and for professionals, to sustain deliberate action. it may become a problem when intentionality does not consider other points of view, constraints, or organizational rules. here again, reflexivity helps to enact the multiverse and sustain shared, system-wise, decisions. giving up control is a playful posture that happens when we are relaxed, trusting, and able to leave our comfort zone. in rcc, learning from each other is always a possibility, but learning may be precluded by discourses of control, child protection and safety, roles, power, and family blaming. abduction (bateson, 1979; pocock, 1995; white, 1997) — using play, art, body language, metaphors, and stories — helps to smooth defensiveness and ease rigidity, sustaining the practitioners’ capacity to interact playfully, to get involved, and to take on challenges. reflexivity sustains playfulness when controlling talk and defences can be named, shared, and transformed. creative conflict: emotional self-awareness, active listening, and humor creative conflict management (sclavi, 2008) requires the capacity to welcome conflict — not avoiding or denying it but taking it as an opportunity to transform our frames of meaning. active listening, emotional self-awareness, and humor help one recognize the cultural frameworks of meaning that produce conflict. we learn from each other if we adopt a dialogic method, nurturing humor (i.e., a distancing from our assumptions) as a cognitive, emotional, and epistemic competence. in rcc, playfulness and humor are very relevant; they bring lightness and a livable climate, but they need intelligence and attunement to balance between, on the one hand, providing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 132 a contrast to heaviness, worries, moralism, and negative thinking and, on the other hand, avoiding superficiality or underestimation of personal struggles. “thick active listening” is different from empathic listening. it recognizes complexity and the multiverse: the same situation has different meanings for different actors. in rcc, empathy is highly desirable, but also a risk: the observer never escapes his or her framework, and thus must never take for granted being able to “really understand” the other. multiplying descriptions and making systemic hypotheses a main feature of systemic reflexivity is curiosity (bingle & middleton, 2019; dugmore et al., 2018; partridge et al., 2019): a story may be permeated by a single narrow viewpoint or structured by dominant views, so the capacity to listen to multiple voices and combine different sources of knowledge (jude, 2018) brings recognition that any story presents just one version of reality. multiplying stories is a way to enact the multiverse (bingle & middleton, 2019), allowing critical analysis (fook, 2012), cultural reflexivity (daniel, 2012), and transformation. hypothesizing helps rcc workers to distance themselves from naive interpretations of a situation and open up possibilities. abduction is also a way to multiply stories (bateson, 1979; pocock, 1995; white, 1997). in rcc, there may be silenced stories and voices; there is a high risk of building stereotypical stories (e.g., taking for granted that parents have not properly cared for their children). teamwork is a good setting in which to elaborate systemic hypotheses, bringing different perspectives to the workplace; however, this needs time, a methodical approach, and specific organizational measures. developing the cycle of intervention reflexivity invites professionals to become researchers of their own practice (fook, 2012; jude, 2018; shotter, 2016) rather than allow bureaucracy and managerialism to limit their critical thinking. good child care intervention is planned, monitored, and evaluated as part of an ongoing assessment of the situation. individualized educational planning, a common tool of intervention, can be empowered by a participatory reflexive approach, connecting different data and narratives within systemic hypotheses and involving all the actors (children, families, rcc workers, other professionals, and agencies). the reflexive approach — between professionals and with clients — shapes all the phases of intervention, including monitoring and evaluation. intervention is described as complex and recursive, not as the mere delivery of a service. in sum, these five competences (the learning module’s units) will sustain learners in questioning professional action and interaction; they will nurture complex understanding and the capacity to use reflection, reflexivity, and research when acting within complex relational environments. the next phase (from january to june 2021) will be the implementation and testing of the module, by which we expect to collect evidence that learning these reflexive competences empowers professional growth and awareness in rcc. the final version of the mooc should be available online in october 2021. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 133 conclusion the complex situations that rcc workers deal with are often overwhelming and disorientating. they are called daily to act deliberately and ethically, with intelligence, heart, imagination, and a pragmatic attitude; and they are required to take timely decisions, solve unexpected problems, and transform conflicts and crises into learning opportunities. a “good-hearted” profile does not on its own guarantee the best experience to children and their families. in child protection, many struggles and conflicts concern rival interpretations of what is going on or what should be done. the desire to achieve an ultimate truth and “do the right thing” haunts the learning experience and professional growth of newcomers. however, relationships are inherently subject to change and uncertainty (rothuizen & harbo, 2017); there are no recipes to manage this complexity. reflexivity is a way to learn by complexity, when it is seen as a constitutive feature of life and of human relationships, and not as a problem. educational care is the work of a team. the systemic approach is critical of the dominant individualistic view of education, which focuses on the one-to-one relationship between an adult and a child. life in a residential unit is a collective experience that needs coordination. groups and subgroups play a fundamental role; conflicts, alliances, and coalitions are common. practitioners must coordinate their actions with co-workers and managers, administrators, families, and other professionals and agencies. a pedagogically explicit model based on reflexivity can sustain coordination. in addition, reflexivity allows one to compose different models and overcome binary thinking and the clash of paradigms. while the relational perspective is still dominant in rcc, professionalism, specialization, and evidence-based practices are increasing, as well as bureaucratization and standards. a systemic and critical approach, calling for more participation of children and families, and bringing to the forefront social justice, personalization of treatment, and respect for cultural differences, is also valued. in this evolving frame, a team of reflexive professionals is empowered by their capacity for calibrating their actions in relation to specific situations; taking overt positions; recognizing circularity and interdependence in relationships with children, parents, and colleagues; welcoming conflicts as opportunities; and using emotional selfawareness, thick active listening, and humor to sustain transformation. they will also be able to use stories, play, and aesthetic languages to multiply descriptions and celebrate differences, develop reciprocal trust, and overcome ideological truths, while striving to bring about desirable outcomes for all concerned. we defined reflexivity as a second-order competence that entails a capacity of calibration of action, enacted within a context, sensitive to meaning, and open to the new. we proposed using reflexivity to overcome individualism and integrate the group (meso) and culture (macro) in the thinking that orients practice. competence is transferrable: what is learned reflexively can be used in other contexts. last but not least, this model of reflexivity is contagious: when practitioners become competent in it, it becomes natural for them to propose the same to children and families, offering innovative spaces for voice and transformation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 115–139 134 references akin, b. a., brook, j., byers, k. d., & lloyd, m. h. 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(2014). developing and supporting effective staff supervision. pavilion. https://doi.org/10.1177/146801730100100104 https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2019.v7.1.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.03.011 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12244 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs102-3201918850 pathways from pain to resilience larry k. brendtro abstract: abraham maslow was among the first to hypothesize that most emotional and behavioral problems stem from unmet needs. now, a large body of research on brain science, trauma, and resilience validates this concept. humans experience emotional pain when their needs are frustrated. the most basic biosocial needs are for attachment, achievement, autonomy, and altruism. when these needs are met, children thrive. when they are not met, children experience pain-based emotions, thinking, and behavior. this article explores research and practical strategies for responding to the needs beneath pain-based behavior instead of reacting to problems. keywords: developmental needs, pain-based behavior, attachment, autonomy, altruism, achievement larry k. brendtro phd is professor emeritus at augustana university, 2001 s. summit ave, sioux falls, sd 57197. he is currently director of the resilience academy, and works with the non-profit organization reclaiming youth at risk (www.reclaimingyouth.org). email: larry.brendtro@gmail.com mailto:larry.brendtro@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 6 universal developmental needs most serious problem behaviors among children and youth are tied to disruption of brainbased needs, which are critical to growth and well-being (jackson, 2014). university of pittsburgh researchers li and julian (2012) reviewed studies showing that the active ingredient in all successful work with children and youth — now as well as throughout human history — is the developmental relationship. as defined by bronfenbrenner (1979), this includes four essential elements, which are listed below with corresponding biosocial needs in parentheses:  a close emotional bond (attachment)  increasingly complex tasks (achievement)  shifting the power to the learner (autonomy)  a relationship of reciprocity (altruism) when these needs are met, individuals thrive. but if frustrated, humans experience pain and revert to reactive coping strategies, which james anglin (2002, 2014) has described as pain-based behavior with children and adolescents in conflict. abraham maslow (1943) proposed a hierarchy of human needs that, after three-quarters of a century, is still the world’s most-cited model of human motivation (cory, 2000). at the base of the pyramid are physiological and safety needs. above these survival functions are higher growth needs for belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. earlier in his career, maslow had extensively studied the blackfoot, an indigenous people in canada, and had marveled at their generosity and emotional health. in the last year of his life, he corrected his oversight by placing selftranscendence — commitment beyond self — at the highest level of his hierarchy (koltko-rivera, 2006). a powerful principle articulated by abraham maslow (1959) is that most problem behavior results from unmet needs, and effective treatment must focus on these. maslow further observed that since needs are biologically based, they would be tied to universal values. this is shown in the table 1, which notes the consilience of biosocial needs, maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and circle of courage values that were also derived from indigenous wisdom (brendtro, brokenleg, & van bockern, 2002). table 1 consilience of needs and values biosocial needs maslow hierarchy of needs circle of courage values attachment belongingness belonging achievement esteem mastery autonomy self-actualization independence altruism self-transcendence generosity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 7 the human social brain is hard-wired to meet biosocial needs for attachment, altruism, achievement, and autonomy. but we, like all living creatures, also have brainstem survival programs for approach (seek pleasure) and avoidance (escape pain). approach circuits motivate us to take risks; this is necessary for survival since without new experiences one cannot learn to cope with challenges. avoidance circuits designed to prevent harm react to perceived threats by triggering defensive fight/flight/freeze reactions. traditional coercive behavior management systems manipulate pain and pleasure for compliance and control. in humans, unlike other animals, the social brain has evolved in such a manner that our primitive pain and pleasure circuits are closely tied to higher biosocial needs (brendtro & mitchell, 2015). thus, meeting these needs is a powerful source of positive emotions, such as the joy of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. on the other hand, deprivation of these needs is profoundly painful, as described in the following paragraphs. attachment: since humans need their fellow humans to survive, we have evolved brain structures that make positive relationships richly rewarding. social bonds release a rush of oxytocin and other pleasure chemicals that create well-being and even elation. in contrast, rejection or loss of a loved one can trigger a wide range of pain-based behaviors. for example, feeling rejected triggers shame while belonging triggers pride. pain-based emotions from loss of a loved one can lead to grief, hopelessness, or shame. achievement: developing talents, solving problems, and learning skills are directly related to life success and thus are intrinsically rewarding in the brain. nicholas hobbs (1982), founder of the re-education philosophy (re-ed), a model for working with troubled youth, once exclaimed that academic success to a youth who had only known failure is exhilarating, motivating, and joyful: “it is like spitting from the top of a windmill” (hobbs, 1982, p. 287). in contrast, the frustration of ongoing failure can create anger, avoidance, or a debilitating sense of being stupid and unvalued. failing students often try to repair their self-respect by hostile behavior, defying teachers, or breaking school rules (gold & osgood, 1992). of course, these behaviors are ultimately self-defeating. autonomy: the sense of personal power starts with self-regulation, and, with maturity, leads to growing confidence and self-efficacy. having a sense of power is a major contributor to pride and self-worth. but, persons who feel powerless and unable to shape their destiny have a sense of learned helplessness that can lead to depression and hopelessness. in other cases, the pain of powerlessness is directed outward as youth become defiant and rebellious. research shows that powerlessness has life-long effects on health and well-being (keltner, 2016). further, developmental trauma, by definition, involves a combination of threat with feelings of helplessness. altruism: charles darwin (1871) proposed that compassion for others was the strongest instinct in humans. contrary to popular myth, he never used the term “survival of the fittest”, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 8 which was coined by social darwinists to justify theories of racial superiority (keltner, 2009). after the death of his daughter, darwin became absorbed in studying compassion for others, which he called sympathy. he concluded that this instinct was even stronger than self-interest in most persons. in the descent of man, he wrote that “those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish the best” (darwin, 1871, p. 130). over thirty years ago, our team began studying the impact of peer helping programs (vorrath & brendtro, 1985). most recently, christoph steinebach and colleagues (2018) published a german-language book on positive peer culture. a central theme in this latest work is that generosity is the master variable that enables humans not only to survive but to thrive. indigenous cultures enlisted children and youth in helping others, with the recognition that this was essential to creating positive citizens in a community. the only way youth can prove their sense of worth is to be of value to others — all other avenues are paths to purposelessness. urie bronfenbrenner (2005) explains the emptiness of growing up in a materialistic, self-serving culture: in the united states, it is now possible for a youth, female as well as male, to graduate from high school or university without ever caring for a baby; without ever looking after someone who was ill, old, or lonely; and without comforting or assisting another human being who really needed help…. sooner or later, and usually sooner—all of us suffer illness, loneliness, and the need for help, comfort, and companionship. no society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings. (p. 53) an international body of researchers summarized converging evidence that generosity is a cultural universal motivated by the design of the human brain (aknin et al., 2013). as boehm (2012) described, our brains were well established in their current form 45,000 years ago. we evolved motivation systems to thrive in egalitarian cultures. but since some persons have highly authoritarian tendencies, traditional cultures developed systems of power leveling to insure that aggressive persons would not be allowed to wield unchecked power. such is the core value of democracy. with the advent of agriculture and industrialization 10,000 years ago, great inequities in wealth and privilege emerged. while our culture has drastically changed, our brains have not (gluckman & hanson, 2008). we are genetically designed for altruism — equipped to live in egalitarian groups (boehm, 2012). our well-being is directly related to creating a shared community of respect instead of a hierarchy of dominance and subjugation. a society with great disparities in power and wealth is dysfunctional; as robert sapolsky quips, “translated from social science-ese, marked inequality makes people crummier to one another” (2017, p. 292). while we may not be able to change the larger society, we can build microcommunities in our families, schools, and communities that better fit the human brain with universal values of the golden rule. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 9 we will only thrive when we meet universal needs and values for belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. discovering the need beneath the problem is the ultimate antidote to pain-based behavior. pain-based behavior hurt people hurt people. (native american proverb) in an intensive study of 10 canadian programs for youth at risk, james anglin concluded that every young person without exception “had experienced deep and pervasive psycho-emotional pain” (2002, p. 111). anglin coined the term pain-based behavior to describe acting out or withdrawal reactions, which are a residue of unresolved past trauma. essentially, most of what has traditionally been labeled as deviance or disorder is better understood as pain-based behavior. when attention is focused on defiant or destructive actions, the young person is seen as the problem because of the pain he or she is causing others. as nicholas hobbs (1994) observed, when children disturb or disrupt us we label them as disturbed or disruptive. locked in a deficit mindset, we ask, “what is wrong with you?” but the more important question is, “what has happened to you?” once we gain a window into the inner world of a youth in distress, a very different picture emerges. attuned to another’s pain, we shift from blame to empathy. and when reactive behavior is understood as a coping strategy, we discover hidden resilience; the new question becomes, “what is strong with you?” (bereiter & brave heart, 2017). pain is a very powerful motivator that permeates emotions, thinking, and behavior. in a toxic cascade, a youth might experience painful feelings of rejection, painful thoughts of being bad and unworthy of love, and react with pain-based behavior by hurling hostility at others. painful emotions include fear, anger, sadness, disgust, hopelessness, helplessness, hatred, shame, and guilt. while there are myriad labels for negative feelings, most are variations of a handful of basic aversive emotions. painful thinking includes distressing thoughts such as worry, anxiety, distrust, pessimism, blame, vengeance, denial, and defensive rationalization. pain-based behavior puts painful emotions and thinking into action as an attempt to escape from pain, defend against pain, reciprocate pain, relieve pain, or eliminate the problem causing the pain. acting out anger is the most common behavior as it appears less risky than showing vulnerability (brendtro & larson, 2006). although children may present a tough and threatening front, they are still vulnerable on the inside. describing troubled emotions as painful is more than a metaphor, since the phrase “hurt feelings” is literally true. researchers at the university of california, los angeles found that physical and social pain use the same deep brain circuits to signal that the individual is in danger international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 10 (eisenberger, lieberman, & williams, 2003). they studied brain scans of students playing a computer ball-tossing game who were excluded by peers. this simulation of social rejection led to reported feelings of distress and a burst of activity in the brain region that processes physical pain and is closely tied to the amygdala, the brain’s danger detector. research shows that disrupting the need to belong can trigger not only short-term pain but even illness (ryan & deci, 2017). for young people in pain, life is a daily struggle to handle distress; they often use coping strategies which might be considered as reactive resilience. actions that seem senseless to others make perfect sense in their private logic, to borrow a term coined by alfred adler (1930). all behavior serves some purpose, even if it causes further problems. abraham maslow (1959) observed that most so-called “symptoms” of emotional problems are attempts to cope with unmet needs. here are several examples of pain-based behavior which may be linked to frustration of circle of courage needs for belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity: disrupted belonging: nick prevents the pain of rejection by keeping people at bay. felicia medicates her loneliness with alcohol and other drugs. lawanda replays past rejection by joining in ridiculing others. disrupted mastery: maria avoids the pain of failure by skipping school. rusty masks a sense of inadequacy by frenetic efforts to achieve. ramon is a successful entrepreneur in the drug trade. disrupted independence: lynnette wallows in learned helplessness and hopelessness. lionel struggles to exert power by defiant rebellion. rick misuses his power to hurt and abuse others. disrupted generosity: kevin conceals his emptiness in the wild pursuit of pleasure. shelly stifles empathy by justifying her self-centered lifestyle. shandra feels her life has no purpose. unfortunately, many who work with such young people are not trained to recognize or respond to the pain concealed beneath these problems. the typical intervention is either a sharp reprimand or the threat of consequences. thus, adults easily become drawn into battles with the very children who most need encouragement. pain-based behavior is met with pain-based discipline, which is the essence of punishment. punishment as pain ironically, “punishment” (from the latin word poena meaning both punishment and pain) is the administration of more pain as a consequence of pain-based behavior. effective intervention requires a deeper understanding of the origins of this pain-based behavior. although trusting social bonds are the first step in helping these young people heal, punishment is a typical way of dealing with difficult behavior. even the founder of behavior modification, b. f. skinner (1971), international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 11 contended that punishment was likely to produce unintended side effects. likewise, fritz redl (1966) described how punishment of children can easily backfire as seen in the table 2 below. table 2 intent of punishment versus effects of punishment supposed intent of punishment unintended effects of punishment youth experiences pain from physical punishment, loss of privileges, exclusion, time out, or reprimand. youth is impervious to pain, shows toughness by battling authority, seeks negative attention or exclusion, or believes he or she deserves abuse. punishment motivates the youth to evaluate his or her behavior and learn from this unpleasant experience. youth directs anger at the punisher instead of owning behavior and reacts with fury, avoids relationships with the adult, or runs away. the youth feels remorse and vows to reform behavior: “i won’t do something dumb like this again.” youth fails to recognize a problem or accept responsibility and becomes sneakier, vowing: “i won’t be so dumb and get caught next time.” later when tempted, the youth recalls the previous incident and shows self-control and responsible behavior. those lacking self-regulation and prosocial values continue to engage in irresponsible behavior that causes harm to self or others. certain potentially destructive practices are sometimes rationalized as “evidence-based” because some research study shows they can affect behavior — for example, time out (embry & biglan, 2008). but no technique is justified unless it supports positive goals for growth. for example, exclusionary time out may suppress undesirable behavior but is counterproductive when used to isolate upset children and adolescents who need emotional support. in 1890, william james wrote that “the great source of terror in infancy is solitude” (bowlby, 1978, p. 378). john bowlby observed that children are bound to their caregivers by brainbased attachment systems essential to survival. they seek proximity to the caregiver, and separation is the primary anxiety of children (bowlby, 1962). this need for human closeness persists throughout the lifetime, although it is most notable in times of crisis or loss. a wealth of research on the neuroscience of relationships supports the role of love as the primary mechanism for behavioral change and growth (perry & szalavitz, 2011). many parents regard time out as an opportunity for the child to engage in self-calming and self-reflection, which may be effective if the child does not interpret separation as rejection. children secure in the love of their parents can adapt to a wide range of disciplinary strategies. however, developmental psychologist martin hoffman (2000) considers discipline by love withdrawal as more toxic than power assertion since it threatens the most basic need for social bonds. whatever the rationale, social isolation is usually perceived as a punitive consequence, which of course is often the disciplinary intent. denis stott (1982) studied 100 delinquent youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 12 in england and found that many had been threatened with abandonment and were acting out to test the loyalty of their caregivers. youth exposed to parental rejection showed high levels of hostility. social isolation to manage behavior is still widely used in many residential, day treatment, and special education programs. our colleague david miller (1986) studied the perceptions of children placed in a time out room in an ohio treatment program. children produced drawings of their experience which conveyed feelings of fear and abandonment. explaining their pictures, children described themselves as “sad and mad”, “kid crying”, “i get scared”, “reminds me of dead people”. while some described time out as a time for calming down, this was inconsistent with their descriptions of drawings and related emotions. miller concluded that exclusionary time out is seldom if ever therapeutic. instead, children in emotional distress need supportive interventions where they can communicate with trusted adults and reflect on their behavior (hoffman, 2000). some might contend that using time out as a behavioral consequence is appropriate with normal children. florida state university researchers readdick and chapman (2009) studied preschoolers’ perceptions and feelings about time out in 11 childcare centers. children were more likely to be isolated for noncompliance than for aggression. most expressed painful thoughts — feeling alone, disliked by their teacher, and ignored by peers. time out was generally seen as a punishment and produced feelings of sadness, shame, and fear. ironically, many were unable to say why they were in time out, making it ineffective in inhibiting future misbehavior. in their classic study, the aggressive child, fritz redl and david wineman (1957) described the use of proximity, touch, and affection to calm upset emotions. this was roundly criticized at the time. in behavior modification mythology, showing such affection was interpreted as social reinforcement of attention-seeking behavior. yet building relationship beachheads is the pivotal event in healing pain. trauma researcher bessel van der kolk (2014) describes physical touch as the most powerful means humans have for support and healing, yet this is proscribed in many schools and treatment settings. he also challenges the widespread reliance on medicating emotional pain which only blunts sensations instead of teaching persons how to deal with distress. further, research showing that social engagement calms fear and rage (bath & seita, 2018) is calling into question the widespread use of exclusionary time out as a means of managing misbehavior. conflict cycles the way others respond to challenging behavior can either intensify pain or help develop resilience. talking to a supportive peer or adult can calm an agitated brain. yet, without training, many are likely to react to negative feelings. our social brains have evolved to operate on the “titfor-tat” rule which fosters cooperative behavior (axelrod, 2006; rapoport, 1974). thus, we react to positive or negative emotions of others in a mirror image fashion: friendliness invites friendliness while hostility evokes hostility. the tit-for-tat principle is simple: when first international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 13 encountering another person, act friendly. after that, match the other person’s friendly or hostile reactions. humans are by nature highly sociable and seek friendly interactions. tit-for-tat offers a simple means for turning strangers into friends. but letting down our guard could make us vulnerable if others have hostile intentions. thus, humans have an inbuilt self-protective option. at the first sign of danger or threat, we are biologically programmed to stop being friendly and react with fight, flight, or freeze behavior. this natural process is upended when children who have known trauma and hostility react to our good intentions with distrust or disrespect. if a child’s emotional distress leads to aversive pain-based behavior, this triggers similar painful emotions and reactions in the adult. in seconds, conflict escalates as each person mirrors the other’s emotions. once tit-for-tat hostility is triggered, conflict is self-perpetuating until one party disengages or is defeated. tit-for-tat may have survival value when meeting strangers but is a terrible way of dealing with troubled children. “if you respect me, i’ll respect you” may sound like common sense but backfires when a child has little experience of being treated with respect. nicholas long (2014) developed the conflict cycle to describe how hostility can escalate. we have adapted this with the acronym clear, which is based on how the brain copes with stress. this is shown in figure 1 with labels added from anglin’s (2014) concept of pain-based behavior. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 14 figure 1. clear conflict and calming cycles. a conflict cycle begins with some stressful event that registers in the brain’s amygdala. the amygdala alerts the logical brain and the emotional brain, triggering painful thoughts and feelings. these lead to an action, in this case, pain-based behavior. if adults and peers react by reciprocating pain, stress intensifies, and parties become locked in an escalating conflict cycle. but responding to a person’s needs instead of reacting to problems can have a calming effect. long uses the analogy of a thermometer and thermostat to describe two opposite responses to angry conflict. when the environment heats up, a thermometer rises — but it takes a thermostat to turn down the heat. this involves learning to override innate brain programs that motivate us to match hostility with hostility. to avoid escalation of pain-based behavior, both adults and young people need to understand how to prevent and disengage from conflict cycles. from rancor to respect recent research shows that the human brain has a polyvagal circuit which is designed to determine if another person has hostile or friendly intent (porges & dana, 2018). visual cues of facial expressions and eye contact as well as the tone of voice trigger instant judgments of threat. when a person is seen as safe and trustworthy, this activates the social engagement system which international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 15 is the preamble to building positive attachments. this new science is informing approaches to trauma and relational child care. research on parenting, teaching, treatment, counseling, and group or team work shows that the tone of nonverbal and verbal interactions strengthens or damages social bonds. french psychologist paul diehl (1987) describes the first step in restoring harmony in relationships as removing any sign of rancor from interactions. while youth realize they have faults, a tone of rancor fuels pain-based behavior. thus, diehl describes the first step in his work with caregivers or teachers as securing agreement from the adult that any tone of rancor would cease. rancor is a demeaning reaction which conveys hostility and rejection. examples are aloofness, irritation, annoyance, scolding, sarcasm, mocking, rolled eyes, insults, superiority, belittling, and lack of concern. rancor triggers pain-based reactions including feelings of rejection, inadequacy, humiliation, and worthlessness. respect is an esteeming response which conveys empathy and positive regard. examples are warmth, sympathy, humor, encouragement, kindly criticism, and gestures of liking, affection, and generosity toward the other person. respect produces feelings of acceptance, competence, confidence, and self-worth and builds social bonds. rancor stifles empathy while respect conveys benevolence. it is essential in working with children in pain that one communicates warmth and respect instead of rancor (brendtro & du toit, 2005). yet without self-reflection, adults may not be aware that they are sending potent signals that trigger amygdala alarm. even very young children can read these cues of rancor or respect. table 3 shows the stark contrast of these two types of reactions. table 3 aspects of rancor versus respect rancor respect hostile friendly blaming empathizing demeaning encouraging impatient patient arrogant humble dominating empowering indifferent interested provocative calming argumentative cooperative vengeful forgiving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 16 while children in pain may be difficult to nurture, an abundance of resilience research shows that positive adult support is essential if they are to heal and thrive. emmy werner and ruth smith (1982) conducted decades of longitudinal studies on children from the island of kauai who grew up in high-risk environments. those who elicited mostly negative responses from others were highly vulnerable, while those who received primarily positive responses were likely to show resilient life outcomes. and, in one of her final publications, emmy werner (2012) described how positive life outcomes in the children of kauai were closely tied to meeting needs as expressed in the circle of courage. these young people at risk experienced supportive relationships, mastery, responsibility, and a spiritual purpose. alan sroufe, byron egeland, elizabeth carlson, and andrew collins (2005) at the university of minnesota conducted an extensive study of youth development and concluded that most emotional problems among children were the result of experiencing too much stress with too little support. stress and adversity the starting point for pain-based behavior is stress, which activates defensive survival circuits (ledoux, 2015). this state of physical and psychological arousal signals some challenge or difficulty. stressful events make up the fabric of normal life, and successful coping builds resilience. but when stress becomes too intense and lasting, this can have toxic effects. such is seen in figure 2 below which is adapted from the harvard university center on the developing child (2018). figure 2. the path to trauma. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 17 hundreds of stressors surround children. the adverse childhood experiences (aces) screening questionnaire provides a quick way of tabulating 10 common stressors that children experience before age 18. the accompanying list was developed by felitti and colleagues (1998) in research on adults, in cooperation with a health insurance provider and the centers of disease control and prevention.1 this ongoing research seeks to determine how adverse childhood experiences affect life-long physical and mental health. ten key adverse events were correlated with problematic health, social, and behavioral outcomes, as shown in table 4. table 4 adverse childhood experiences household dysfunction childhood abuse and neglect substance abuse psychological abuse parental separation or divorce physical abuse mental illness sexual abuse domestic violence physical neglect criminal behavior emotional neglect one can find a person’s ace score simply by tallying the number of these experiences which occurred before age 18 (regardless of the frequency or severity of these events). to compute an ace score, one can use the quick form available on the internet.2 in general, there is a linear relationship between the number of aces and various health and psychological problems. for example, only 6% of persons with an ace score of zero become involved in illicit drug use while this jumps to 27% for those with an ace score of four or more (bath & seita, 2018). adverse events create stress, which is a confusing word with two opposing meanings. some kinds of stress can be exciting and challenging (eustress); but too often stress is an unpleasant state of worry, frustration, and fatigue (distress). while most persons can manage a limited number of adverse events, chronic and extreme stress create allostatic overload, which is the technical term for “wear and tear on the body and brain from being stressed out” (mcewan, 2005, p. 315). while the ace score targets adverse events tied to the family, there are many other stressors in school, peer group, and community. some have suggested that encounters for kids in pain with social service, mental health, or correctional systems often create the eleventh ace risk: they are retraumatized by iatrogenic treatment. in this vein, bessel van der kolk (2005) specifically adds school neglect to the list of causes of relational trauma. one could list hundreds of adverse experiences, but the harmful impact of these boils down to this: adverse childhood experiences interfere with meeting basic developmental needs. 1 a useful website with publications and practical resources on aces is www.acesconnection.com. 2 https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/ https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 18 since the original ace research was conducted on a sample of mostly middle-class individuals, ongoing studies are seeking to identify additional adverse experiences related to growing up in economically deprived inner-city environments. the philadelphia urban ace survey (phmc, 2013) found that 40% of adults witnessed violence when growing up (e.g., a person being beaten, stabbed, or shot). many reported discrimination based on their race or ethnicity. almost 3 in 10 did not feel safe in their neighborhoods or did not trust their neighbors during childhood. this suggests that many urban environments are traumagenic. painful environments poverty produces pain as these families have few resources to buffer the inevitable crises of life. for example, welfare reform forced single mothers into the workplace without corresponding child care resources, leading to the unintended effect of what nina bernstein (2002) calls “no-parent families.” as desmond (2016) noted, in many urban areas, families are precipitously removed from housing at the whim of landlords. for example, a woman was evicted because her boyfriend beat her up. further, if one family member has encounters with the justice system, the entire family can be removed from public housing. the national academy of pediatrics (2015) considers nutrition a matter of health and safety. children growing up with food insecurity have lifelong health problems. further, inadequate nutrition impairs concentration and intelligence and is linked to higher levels of behavioral and emotional problems from preschool through adolescence. the disaster of lead pollution in the drinking water of flint, michigan, demonstrates the critical need for children to be safe from exposure to toxic chemicals that are in everyday use (lu, 2015). modern technology has produced innumerable substances that are not natural in the history of human development, and these can have wildly unpredictable effects on growth, development, and health (grandjean & landrigan, 2014). exposure to certain common toxins, both in parents and their offspring, is related to aggressiveness, intellectual decline, and autism (grandjean & landrigan, 2014). these harmful effects can be passed to subsequent generations through the process of epigenetics where the environment changes gene expression. the leading researcher in this field, michael meaney (2012), contends that so-called “side effects” of prescription drugs are gene expression gone awry. the prenatal stage where thousands of neurons are being created every minute abounds with epigenetic influences. the safety and health of the developing child can be impaired by all of these: drugs, stress, poverty, nutrition, bereavement, natural disaster, and cultural disruption. the solution for all such problems is to rear children in the kind of safe, nurturing, and healthpromoting environments in which humans are meant to live. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 19 coercive and restorative environments the alliance for children and families commissioned a study of behavior management methods employed with troubled youth, which identified a potpourri of pain-based forms of discipline used widely, even in well-staffed schools and treatment programs (brendtro, 2004). the coercive methods fell into three categories that increased physical, emotional, and developmental stressors. physical stressors disrupt the body’s well-being. these include physical maltreatment, illness, hunger, lack of sleep, crowding, food insecurity, and dangerous environments. emotional stressors produce psychological pain including fear, anxiety, anger, grief, guilt, and shame. these pain-based emotions trigger pain-based behavior. social stressors disrupt normal biosocial growth needs by impeding the development of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. brendtro and du toit (2005) contrasted coercive versus restorative climates. they document how coercive climates increase levels of physical, emotional, and social stressors. frequently, these interventions have toxic effects and trigger pain-based behavior. physical coercion produces physiological distress. this involves physical punishment, deprivation of physical needs, and physical restraint or seclusion. in contrast, physical support fosters protection, nurturance, and freedom. emotional coercion produces psychological distress and interferes with the normal development of emotional resilience. this includes threat, hostility, and blame. in contrast, emotional support involves trust, respect, and understanding. social coercion interferes with universal needs for belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. these coercive practices include exclusion, frustration, domination, and unconcern. in contrast, social support is essential in meeting developmental needs. bernard and kurlychek (2010) provide a historical perspective on a century of debate about how to deal with problem behavior. with predictable regularity, public opinion and professional interventions have cycled between periods of leniency followed by eras of harsh treatment. in pendulum fashion, each extreme falls short and triggers its opposite. yet it has been known since classic studies by lewin, lippitt, & white (1939/1999) that democratic relationships between adults and young people are more effective than either permissive or coercive approaches. there is every reason to believe that recycling of failed methods will continue if folk psychology and political posturing distract us from meeting the core needs of our children and youth. ironically, indigenous peoples were able to rear the young in cultures of respect that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(2-3): 5–24 20 spanned millennia (bolin, 2006; brokenleg, 2012). this was because these societies were organized to meet the developmental needs of children (rogoff, 2003). while we may be unable to transform our authoritarian society, we have the capacity to create restorative environments in schools and child-caring settings where young people in pain can heal and thrive. as li and julian (2012) observed, 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(1992). overcoming the odds: high-risk children from birth to adulthood. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. when matter in the classroom matters: international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 808 when matter in the classroom matters: encounters with race in pedagogical conversations kathleen kummen abstract: this article considers how mattering and meaning are mutually constituted in the production of knowledge (barad, 2007). drawing on a research project with first year early childhood education (ece) students in a university setting, i argue that material-feminism, as understood through the work of barad (2007, 2008), offers a lens through which pedagogical practices can be re-conceptualized as more than anthropocentric endeavours. the research project explores the processes that occurred when a group of ece students and i engaged with and in pedagogical narrations over one academic term as we attempted to make visible and disrupt the hegemonic images we held of both children and childhood. in the doing of pedagogical narrations, artefacts were produced that were not merely representations of our collaborative thinking. rather, the artefacts that emerged-in between the material, the discursive and the participants, were themselves agentic; they invited us to shift our gaze and our conversation, and thereby new meanings and realities were produced. i provide one example that discusses how the presence of the artefacts invited “race” into a conversation of childhood in a way that reverberated in our thinking, feeling, and being. the article concludes by considering the pedagogical implications for learning, for both children and those learning to work with children, when matter comes to matter in the classroom. keywords: early childhood education, material-feminism, pedagogical narrations, post-qualitative research kathleen kummen, ph.d. is the coordinator for the early childhood care and education (ecce) program at capilano university, 2055 purcell way, north vancouver, british columbia, canada, v7j 3h5. her research activities and interests include early childhood teacher education, pedagogical narrations and issues of social justice in the early years. e-mail: kkummen@capilanou.ca mailto:kkummen@capilanou.ca international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 809 [s]ince each intra-action matters, since the possibilities for what the world may become call out in the pause that precedes each breath before a moment comes into being and the world is re-made again, because the becoming of the world is a deeply ethical matter. (barad, 2007, p. 185) this article explores how mattering and meaning are mutually constituted in the production of knowledge (barad, 2007). drawing on a research project with first year early childhood education (ece) students, i argue that material-feminism, as understood through the work of barad (2007, 2008, 2011, 2012), offers a lens through which pedagogical practices can be re-conceptualized as more than anthropocentric1 endeavours. material-feminism asks us to understand learning as more than internal cognitive processes of the individual learner or cognitive processes arising from encounters with other humans. rather, we are called to also consider the agentic force of the matter of learning, such as text, images, space, time, and so forth. with our attention drawn to learning as more than an anthropocentric phenomenon, we then have the ethical obligation to consider what knowledges and realities are produced in the encounters with humans, matter, non-human others, and discourses in our practices with children (lenz taguchi, 2010). this article begins by introducing the reader to the research project and the practice of pedagogical narrations2. then thinking with3 barad (2007, 2008), i engage with the following analytical question: how did the material presence of the artefacts intra-act with ourselves, the texts, the images of children and childhood to make and unmake our understanding of children and childhood? the article concludes by considering the pedagogical implications for learning, for materials, children and those learning to work with children, when matter comes to matter in the classroom. a practice of disruption: the narration of the pedagogical narrations the inquiry emerged from my curiosity as a teacher of ece students, a curiosity that was initiated when students shared with me the anxieties and tensions they experienced in their encounters with young children during their practica. it was further provoked by reading the work of reconceptualizing early childhood education (rece) scholars (e.g., cannella, 1997; cannella & viruru, 2004; dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999, 2007; lenz taguchi, 2010; macnaughton, 2003, 2005a; pacini-ketchabaw & nxumalo, 1 anthropocentric or humancentric is a belief in human supremacy whereby humans are positioned above all other matter both living and non-living. this position also places “the human subject viewing the world from a privileged and foundational point of view” (hultman & lenz taguchi, 2010. p. 526) 2 in british columbia, canada, the provincial early learning framework adopted the term pedagogical narration. the term narration highlights the dialogical aspect of the practice of pedagogical narrations, while the use of the plural form narrations emphasizes the ongoing and multiple nature of the practice. see, for example, hodgins (2012) and hodgins, kummen, rose, and thompson (2013). 3 i employ the term thinking with in the manner described by jackson and mazzei (2012). they suggest that this walking alongside a theory (more simply than drawing on or referencing a theory), is a way to think methodologically and philosophically which challenges “qualitative researchers to think with their data (or to use data to think with theory) in order to accomplish a reading of data that is both within and against interpretivism” (p. vi, emphasis in original). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 810 2010; pacini-ketchabaw & pence, 2005), who asserted that hegemonic discourses of children and childhood regulate ece practice so that other – and perhaps more just – ways of living with young children are silenced. as an instructor/researcher, i became interested in engaging with students around the practice of pedagogical narrations as an apparatus that could make visible and disrupt the taken-for-granted assumptions the students and i held around children and childhood. this research project took place at a small urban teaching university where i am employed as an instructor in early childhood care and education (ecce). the participants were 32 students enrolled in a first-year course that has been a part of my regular teaching assignment for the past five years. the course introduces students to early childhood education history and the philosophies that guide the practice of early childhood care and education. as well, the course asks students to begin to critically reflect upon the roles and responsibilities of the early childhood educator in the reconceptualized framework of ece. the research project was introduced to the students at the beginning of the term at the same time they were introduced to other course activities and assignments. permission from the students to use the artefacts they had constructed as pedagogical narrations was requested after the course had finished and final grades were posted, in accordance with university procedures. in this way, consent for their participation in the research process was not requested because it was part of the course requirements. however, their consent was requested to use the data generated by the research process. as research participants, the students shared commonalities and differences, both known and unknown. all but three students were in their first year of either the diploma or degree program and had not yet completed a practicum in ecce; all 32 students selfidentified in their registration papers as female. some students were of aboriginal descent or heritage, some were born in canada, some were permanent residents, some were new citizens of canada, and some were international students. students of nonaboriginal heritage generally, though not exclusively, identified as having a heritage from asia, the middle east, or europe. in addition to english, the most common languages spoken in the classroom were korean, chinese, mandarin, farsi, arabic, and hindi. the group’s diversity was critical to the study because the pedagogical practice of pedagogical narrations is predicated on individuals bringing to the group their different experiences, knowledge, and so forth in order to be able to engage in a collaborative learning process. for example, in describing pedagogical documentation (a process very similar to pedagogical narration), olsson (2009) writes, “each child contributes to the process in his or her specific and absolutely singular ways, but the contribution is caught up in the group’s process” (p. 21). in the third week of the 15-week term, the process of creating pedagogical narrations began by asking the students to bring their image of the child to the classroom in the form of drawings, photos, and texts. each student showed their image to the other students in her group while the other students wrote down their thoughts, questions, and assumptions, focusing on what understanding of childhood was being portrayed by the image, what the image’s origins were, and how the concepts of natural or normal international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 811 childhood were understood (macnaughton, 2005b). this process was repeated until each student had shown her image to her group. the forum then opened up to allow the group to share what they had written and engage “in acts of contesting, disrupting and negotiating meaning” (macdonald & sánchez, 2010, p. 26). here, students engaged in dialogue using the course readings4 to assist them in making visible the assumptions, values, and beliefs embedded in the images. the 20to 30-minute discussion ended with the students being asked to share their thoughts as to how these images ask educators to perform particular pedagogical practices and inhibit other practices. by the start of the fourth week, one student per group was randomly assigned to transcribe the discussion and post the text online in the class moodle site (an online bulletin board). as well, all students were required to post their image of a child within their moodle discussion group with an accompanying fourto five-sentence description of how the image connected to the student’s understanding of children or childhood. when the term concluded, i began re-viewing the students’ pedagogical narrations, thinking with barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism. within agential realism, barad sees matter and the discursive as mutually constituted, whereby neither is privileged and neither exists in the absence of the other. barad (2007) contends that, “matter is produced and productive, generated and generative. matter is agentic, not a fixed essence or property of things” (p. 137). this article attends to my analysis of the agentic force of these initial artefacts, which became empirical material that formed the foundation for the content of the pedagogical narrations and existed as tools to guide the research project. pedagogical narrations: a material-discursive apparatus i use the term pedagogical narrations to describe the practice the students and i engaged with. central to my understanding of pedagogical narrations is lenz taguchi’s work with the concept and practice of pedagogical documentation. drawing on barad’s (2007) agential realism, lenz taguchi (2010) posits that pedagogical documentation is a material-discursive apparatus (written with a hyphen to assert their inseparability). thinking with physicist bohr, barad (2007) writes that apparatuses are “the material conditions of possibility and impossibility of mattering” (p. 148). in extending bohr’s understanding of the term apparatus, barad writes that apparatuses are more than laboratory tools that enable measurements and represent ideas; they are materialdiscursive practices that “produce differences that matter” (p. 146). barad extends foucault’s (1971, 1972, 1980) concept of material-discursive practices and explains that an apparatus is itself a material-discursive practice that produces – rather than simply represents – meaning and knowledge, and the objects and subjects of such meanings and knowledge. in this way, barad understands an apparatus as a material-discursive practice whereby it is not merely an object, but is part of the process of intra-active performativity. barad uses the term intra-action, not interaction. the latter refers to the encounter between two presumed discrete and pre-existing entities, while intra-activity implies that entities are not distinct and inseparable, but exist in an ongoing becoming in which 4 course readings were taken from two text books written by glenda macnaughton (2003, 2005a), as well as articles from scholars such as lenz taguchi (2010) and dahlberg, moss, and pence (2007). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 812 entities do not precede each other but “emerge through their intra-action” (barad, 2007, p. 33). in my analysis, thinking with barad’s notion of intra-action, i considered how material intra-actions among humans, text, and images make and unmake understandings of children and childhood. within an agentic realism perspective, barad (2007) extends and challenges an anthropocentric understanding of agency, whereby “agency is cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit. agency is not aligned with human intentionality or subjectivity” (p. 177). agency, for barad, “is a ‘doing’ or ‘being’ in its intra-activity. it is the enactment of iterative changes to particular practices” (p. 178, emphasis as in original). this understanding of agency is significant to this research project in that it allows me to attend to the agentic force of both matter and discourse circulating in the practice of pedagogical narrations. lenz taguchi (2010) asserts that the text, images, and photographs produced “put things in motion by means of its own agentic force and materiality. thus new possibilities for intra-action with other matter and organism will emerge” (p. 64). inspired by lenz taguchi’s work, i developed a research project to explore the potential of pedagogical narrations to act as an apparatus for/in/with the generation of new knowledge and the transformation of practices among a group of first-year students in an ece course. to provoke our thinking as the students and i engaged with the practice of pedagogical narrations, i developed three working questions to guide our process: 1. how will the students and i come to understand disturbances to our images of children and childhood as we collectively engage in pedagogical practices that may displace the discourses of children and childhood we hold? 2. how will the students and i interpret and revise our thinking as we deconstruct the discourses that become visible in our collective learning? 3. how will the students and i construct and adjust our practices with children as we participate in these pedagogical practices in a collective learning process? one of the course’s main learning objectives was to consider how societal values and beliefs (e.g., gender, race, and culture) affect educational practice; this objective provided me with space to engage with/in my research questions as part of the regular course delivery. the students and i collaboratively engaged with theoretical readings and multiple images (e.g., metaphors, stories, photographs, drawings) of children and childhood to displace or unhinge our taken-for-granted notions of children and childhood. new questions and provocations emerged in response to the ideas, images, readings, and so forth that were part of our collective learning. these questions were often unexpected, and they disrupted our thinking in unanticipated ways. inviting barad into the postsecondary classroom: emergent implications i engaged in this inquiry in what st. pierre and jackson (2014), thinking with deleuze and guattari (1980/1987), refer to as post-coding analysis: a “non-technique and international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 813 non-method that is always in a process of becoming as theories interlink, intensify, and increase territory” (p. 717). employing a process articulated by jackson and mazzei (2012) as thinking with the theory, i read and revisited three chunks of data alongside theories from barad. barad’s (2007) attention to the relationship between the discursive and the material extended my thinking about the agentic force of the matter of learning, such as text, images, space, time, and so forth. in particular, it extended my thinking about how the process of pedagogical narrations operated as an apparatus or tool for change. further, agential realism allowed me to attend to learning as a collaborative process that involves encounters with other humans and the more than human5. in this study, engaging with pedagogical narrations as a material-discursive practice and thinking with barad prompted the following analytical question: how did the presence of the particular artefacts produced in the practice of pedagogical narrations intraact with us, the texts, and the images to make and unmake our shapings and coshapings of children and childhood? reconfiguring/repositioning artefacts in a pedagogical context, when teachers and students are seen as the agentic force in the classroom, matter such as materials, books, images, and so forth are rendered as tools of humans (lenz taguchi, 2010, 2011). challenging the anthropocentric lens shifts the gaze to how the matter of learning matters: how matter in an intra-active pedagogy produces new possibilities for learning and meaning making. when we see matter as mattering, the materials, books, and images that are included or excluded from the activity of learning matter. the learning conversations are entangled with the matter, and in their entangled relationship with humans, realities are created. in this way, agency is not simply understood as humans choosing to act or not act in a particular fashion. rather, humans and non-humans are entangled in a relationship that is not divisible, but that relationship entails responsibility and is therefore political. as barad (2007) writes, “the attribution and exclusion of agency – like the attributions and exclusions involved in the construction of the human – are a political issue” (p. 216). different viewpoints, questions of rights, and priorities are mobilized depending on where agency is seen to be located. barad argues that prior assumptions of what is and is not agentic have political consequences. consider current debates on the state of the world’s environment. an anthropocentric view that looks at how humans can make change to better care for the environment for the sake of all humankind champions different rights and perspectives than an ecocentric view (leopold, 1949/1986) that focuses on a biotic as a whole in which human existence is not seen as distinct from the rest of the world. for example, the anthropocentric position would seek to protect water, not for the sake of water in a relationship with/in the world, but for its utility to humans. this example of the political consequences of the assignment of agency is no less relevant in the classroom. thinking with barad as i revisited the data allowed me to attend to how the matter in the classroom mattered; in particular, how race could have been silenced from the classroom had it not been for some matter. 5 the term more than human is used in this article to “refer broadly to all that exceeds the human, including non-human matter, relations, meanings and understandings” (pacini-ketchabaw & nxumalo, 2014, p. 132). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 814 the concept of race is controversial and contested, reflecting an entangled history of colonization, politics, evolutionary theory, white supremacy, economics, and so forth (ahmed, 2007). i acknowledge that race is entangled in this present-day inquiry and that it shapes and reshapes our understanding of issues of whiteness, diversity, and so forth. for the purpose of this study, i relied on an understanding of race that emerges from the work of m’charek (2010) whereby “differences, such as race, sex or sexual differences, are neither stable nor given” (p. 318). m’charek, elaborating on donna haraway’s (1992) notion of diffraction and interference, and annemarie mol’s (2002) concept of multiplicity, explains how specific histories and practices enact certain versions of bodies. she argues that objects and bodies do not have an essence but “rather they are enacted in specific practices as effects of interferences. differences materialize in the form of relations between various interferences” (p. 318). race, then, is more than body markers (such as phenotypes) and social constructions (such as racial terms that label skin colour). race and how race is understood emerge with/in relationships with practices and technologies that attend to differences. for example, the camera lens in the hands of kevin carter (1993) produces a particular version of race, gender, and africa in his photo showing a vulture stalking a young girl in the sudan. in revisiting the data with barad, i am able to attend to how the artefacts produced within the practice of pedagogical narrations reconfigured my teaching agenda in a way that pushed the students and me into unforeseen conversations that, in turn, generated new understandings and meanings. in this way, pedagogical narrations enacted agentic cuts producing different phenomena as differential patterns of mattering (barad, 2007, p. 140). that is, the intra-action that occurred with/in the texts, images, and humans with/in the practice of pedagogical narrations co-shaped different realities that emerged as classroom curriculum. barad’s (2007) concept of agentic cuts was made evident by the construction of a collage that evolved out of my desire to present to the whole class all the original images of children and childhood that the students brought to class early on. for reasons of efficiency, i decided to put all of the images of human children (both photos and drawings) into one collage and all the non-human images into another collage. i sat with the collage for some time, gazing at the children’s faces and bodies. i was somewhat disturbed by the collage, and yet i could not articulate the source of the disturbance. as i looked at the collage, in my mind i could see the view from the front of our classroom. from that position, i looked out at a classroom filled with 20 students who self-identified as students of colour and 12 who self-identified as white. as i juxtaposed the image of our class in my mind with the images in the collage, the overwhelming “whiteness” in the collage of children became evident. as i closely examined each photo, there were children who appeared to be non-white, yet there was an overwhelming “whiteness” that was visible. there were 23 images of children, and i could only discern three children who, from my perspective, were children of colour. (in rereading this statement, and thinking with the work of pacini-ketchabaw and nxumalo [2010] and nxumalo [2012], perhaps the overwhelming whiteness reflected a default position on my part due to my own whiteness). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 815 at about this time, i was travelling with a colleague to a conference in another country. wanting to prepare for the next few classes, i took the collage and some course materials on the trip. sitting on the plane, i showed the collage to my colleague. she too gazed at the bodies and faces of the children presented in the collage. we sat together on a plane filled with people like those people in the city we had just flown from, whose skin tones were a multitude of shades. as my colleague sat in a plane that reflected racial diversity, the collage spoke to her, reminding her as it did me of the relationship between childhood, whiteness, and normality. our observation that images of “typical” children and childhoods exclude race is far from being scientifically relevant. certainly the work of critical race scholars in education (see, for example, ahmed, 2006, 2009; applebaum, 2006, 2012; picower, 2009) provides ample indication that racism is normalized in education so that white privilege/supremacy is dominant. the work of these scholars contains copious assertions that white is the standard of normality from which all people are judged. yet, as i sit here rereading the data with barad, what appears important to me is that race became visible through the practice of pedagogical narrations. barad (2012, as cited in an interview in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012) speaks of “performing the labour of tracing the entanglements, of making connections visible, you’re making our obligations and debts visible, as part of what it might mean to reconfigure relations of spacetimemattering” 6 (p. 20). as an apparatus of meaning making (barad, 2007), pedagogical narrations became entangled with/in me, the students, and spacetimematterings to produce a collage – an artefact. this artefact itself then had an effect: its presence unexpectedly invited a conversation about race where, without its presence, race had been silenced. the class focus was to consider how post-structural theory could help us reconceptualize our understandings of children, childhood, and early childhood education. with foucault haunting me and with guba and lincoln (2005) reminding me of the issues of trustworthiness and authenticity in qualitative research, i have to confess to the reader that race, racialization, and whiteness were not concepts i had planned to focus on in my 13 weeks of instruction as i raced against the time constraints to meet the learning outcomes of the course. yet, the collage entered into the classroom and its power to disturb me disrupted my agenda. i reassigned the readings for the next few weeks, asking the students to read a chapter by glenda macnaughton (2005b) looking at her notion of seeking “the otherwise”. i was curious how the students would respond when they revisited the images after they had read and thought about macnaughton’s question, “what is your relation with whiteness?” (p. 187). would we/they invite race and colour into the discussion? would the whiteness of the images call out to them? as for my colleague, i cannot help but wonder if or how the presence of diversity (the people with us on the plane) spoke in unity with the exclusion of diversity (in the collage) in that moment. was she as startled as i was by the contrast of the physical presence of a diverse world and the seeming homogeneity resonating from the collage? did her own research, readings, and history become entangled with the collage, causing race to call out to her? when i revisited these images, how did my history with skin 6 barad (2011) uses the term spacetimemattering to underscore how space, time, and matter are “mutually constituted through the dynamics of iterative intra-activity” (p. 12) international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 816 colour and my unquestioned use of the term race become entangled with the images? was i fixated on phenotypes, categorizing and classifying people on the basis of skin tone? did i assume that diversity was merely the presence of non-white faces (ahmed, 2009)? a curious assumption on my part, given that my sister’s skin tone identifies her to many people as aboriginal, while my skin tone identifies me as european. these questions will never be answered, nor is this an attempt to represent that moment in order to name the truth of it. what matters is that the artefact produced in the materialdiscursive practice of pedagogical narrations mattered. lenz taguchi (2010) refers to this as intra-pedagogy whereby the interaction and relationships between students and teachers is “inclusive of the performative agency of the material in the intra-actions of learning events” (p. 65). she asserts that, most often, pedagogy is assumed to be an individual cognitive process or something that happens in a relationship where at least one person has something to teach the other(s). this view of learning does not account for the entanglements that learning and teaching humans have with things, materials, furnishings, artefacts, and environments within an entanglement of spaces and time (barad, 2007; lenz taguchi, 2010). thinking with this notion of material as having an agentic force allows attention to be drawn to the collage in its intra-action with me, my colleague, and, of course, the students. the refiguring/repositioning continued the following week the collage entered the classroom with me as a slide that was projected onto the wall at the front of the classroom. as i mentioned previously, i had switched the assigned readings and the students were now reading a chapter by glenda macnaughton (2005b) looking at her notion of seeking “the otherwise”. at the beginning of the class, i asked the students to reflect on the collage, thinking with the ideas they had read in the chapter. my field notes reveal that the whiteness of the images remained silent. the students commented that the images reflected childhoods void of disability, illness, poverty, and unhappiness. yet, the work of ahmed (2006, 2007, 2009) and other critical race theorists reminds us that the silence of whiteness indicates the collective discrimination of those who are identified as non-white others. or perhaps, as picower (2009) suggests, the students had been schooled to know that to bring up race was taboo. i then read to them excerpts from macnaughton’s (2005b) chapter in which a young girl of vietnamese heritage chooses a white doll as the doll that most looked like her from a group of dolls that were racially diverse. i concluded by reading with the various interpretations of this scenario by early childhood professionals who identified as white and those who did not identify as white. the room became quiet, and the large group discussion that usually ensued after the lecture part of the class stalled. macnaughton’s text became entangled in our thinking, joining in with the images, the previous readings, our own histories, and so forth. another agential cut was made, repositioning our gaze and our thinking, and therefore reconfiguring our world. the addition of macnaughton’s text repositioned the entanglement; human speech was stalled. to support further conversation, i asked the students to get into their small working groups to consider macnaughton’s (2005b) question, “what is your relation with whiteness?” (p. 187). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 817 my field notes reflect my wandering around between the groups as they shared their responses to the collage. some of the students wondered if the reason that so many of the images were white could be attributed to the google search engine privileging images of white children. others contemplated whether race was really important when considering childhood as a concept. perhaps the prevalence of white children in the images was not as important as issues such as disability and social class. the text and images were pushing us to attempt to rework race in our classroom, and we resisted by pushing back with our use of / being with race. our words re-enacted the text we had read about the child and the doll. the students also wondered if there were reasons other than race for the child to choose that particular doll. i moved through the groups, listening and joining in to their conversations. in each of the groups, i asked them to look at the collage and consider whether this was the only image of children in our classroom. what message would the poster relay to people entering our classroom? what would the collage tell people about our relationship with whiteness? as i later revisited the students’ narratives as artefacts that were part of the practice of pedagogical narrations, i could feel the disturbance of the collage as it reverberated in our thinking, feelings, and being. sitting on colonized land, with students whose ancestors were the colonized and/or the colonizer, with students whose families had been subject to head taxes and internment camps within our province, the artefacts created turmoil in our thinking. group f confessed to a past omission of race as they wrote: “as we look back at the majority of our images we now understand that there are specific equity issues. with the majority of images being caucasian white middle class children, is this what we believe is our ‘perfect childhood’?” following the collage and the reading, the recorder for group a (all names used in this article are pseudonyms) shared the following childhood memory: as an asian canadian, i understand that race plays a big part in life. i grew up in canada and all my beliefs and values are similar to a white canadian’s. even at home my mom would always joke around saying how i am just like a banana, yellow on the outside and white on the inside. when i was younger i did not understand why people like to group different racial groups by colours. until that one time in elementary school, i was practicing my writing on the chalkboard during break, a girl classmate came up to me and said, “you don’t know how to write in english, you don’t belong here, go back to china!” i was really upset about her comment but i didn’t know why. at that very moment i wanted to be like her, a white canadian. now looking back at that situation my story is very similar to kim’s story. i wanted to change myself to fit in, and no child should want to change itself to fit in. (yi-min, group b, 2011) these texts and the other narratives then joined the collage as artefacts to revisit, coming out at other times to haunt us, to challenge us to re-image notions of race. race continued to be present in our classroom through the new images and new narratives that entered, and through the students’ re-remembering of childhood experiences that spoke of new understandings and meanings. the notions of diversity and inclusion moved beyond international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 818 issues of developmental differences (for example, diverse learning styles and including children with disabilities) to include issues of race, colonization, and white privilege. (re)encounters with race: new complexities and tensions the collage became part of each group’s collection of artefacts, brought out for small group discussions and occasionally being displayed on the wall as part of the lectures. as mentioned, group a’s narrative also became a tangible piece of matter in our classroom. we had begun to consider race as something that mattered as thoughts and realties were being reconfigured and repositioned. barad (2007) writes that, “it is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the components of phenomena become determinate and that particular concepts (that is, particular material articulations of the world) become meaningful” (p. 139). in this way, race did not enter into the curriculum as a result of human agency alone; it entered through a complex set of intra-actions that rearticulated race as something that mattered. stewart (2010) eloquently expresses this notion of agency in the following: everything depends on the dense entanglement of affect, attention, the sense, and matter. this is not exactly intended or unintended, not the kind of pure agency we imagine marching forward . . . but a balling up and unraveling of states of attending to what might be happening. it’s an attunement to possibilities opening up and not necessarily good ones. but, maybe. (p. 6) for example, group e wrote, “we are more and more talking about race”. petra and misty echoed this observation as they explained that the collage, the readings, and their discussions had provoked them to attend to race and to celebrate difference as they went into childcare centres. misty recalled how race lived in the centre in which she was observing as she shared a moment with a child that confirmed her “new understanding that children attended to race”. she wrote: in my centre, there is a girl lynn who has chinese parents. when i met her at the first time, she asked me “are you a chinese girl?” i replied that “i’m a japanese girl”. (misty, group e, 2011) i do not mean to suggest that such conversations had not occurred previously, but rather the students felt that they were now significant enough to be documented. they mattered. in their mattering, these conversations invited new thoughts, ideas, images, and matter – race – into the entanglement that was pushing and shaping the classroom curriculum into unforeseen places. with our excitement about welcoming race into the conversation came new anxieties and unforeseen challenges. now that we were talking about race, the racial assumptions, values, and beliefs we brought to our work with children and families began to emerge. group e captured this new fear. “how do we work with race?” they asked of the class and themselves. “how do we avoid assumptions when they are everywhere? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 819 can we think about children without thinking ‘race’? can we look at children without thinking of their colour? can we interact with children without thinking about their background?” their words came to class as artefacts for all of us to read and think with. we turned to macnaughton’s (2005a, 2005b) writing about foucault’s ideas to consider how truth, power, and knowledge are connected. macnaughton’s words, text, and stories became part of the larger material arrangement with/in our classroom. her work became intertwined in the ongoing material-discursive practice of pedagogical narrations in our classroom, enacting an agential cut to produce the space for questions of politics, inequity, and racism. it would seem that in the doing of the pedagogical narrations as a material-discursive practice, we began to engage in micro-political acts that created an opening for different ways of being in the world with race and education. barad (2007) elaborated on bohr’s notion of apparatus by asserting that “apparatuses are the material conditions of possibility and impossibility of mattering: they enact what matters and what is excluded from mattering” (p. 148, emphasis in original). the pedagogical narrations were an apparatus in our classroom, enacting agential cuts and materializing different phenomena. new images of children entered the classroom through the students’ revised images in the pedagogical narrations. these images now included children of colour. looking at the data and thinking with barad, i was drawn now to nine of the revised images of children. five images showed young children of colour in places far removed from our classroom: city streets, working in mines, hauling bricks, and carrying semi-automatic rifles. four of the photos showed the smiling faces of a group of children reflective of many races and cultures. thinking with the text we had been reading in class that focused on “othering7” and race, i placed a poster for disney’s it’s a small world that was part of one student’s revised image beside the face of child carrying a semiautomatic rifle from another student’s revised image. revisiting the data in this way and following barad’s understanding of agency, i was able to appreciate how another unexpected repositioning and reshaping occurred as the artefacts of our pedagogical narrations engaged with us and we engaged with them. returning to the data, these nine images of children drew my attention back to the ideas, tensions, and questions that emerged as we engaged with them and other artefacts that were part of our practice with pedagogical narrations. it would appear that we struggled with how to represent the notion of race in childhood. in particular, four of the nine photos presented one of the dichotomies we faced as race entered our thinking of childhood. those four images, showing smiling children holding hands encircling globes, reflected a celebration of multiculturalism whereby the similarities of all children erased any differences caused by culture and race, while the other five photos in the group of nine seemed to resonate a “single story of tragedy” (adichie, 2009). adichie refers to the notion of a single story of tragedy to describe the tendency of the media to focus on 7 the term “othering” is used to refer to the conscious or unconscious action of delegating another person or group of people as being different or apart from oneself. the text that we were reading by macnaughton (2005a) uses the term to discuss racial inequities in the early childhood classroom. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 820 issues of famine, war, or genocide when describing the countries of the african continent, excluding the possibility that there could also be stories of joy and triumph. barad’s notion of agency helped me to attend to the conflict that these images created in our thinking. on one hand, we talked about the importance of classrooms that promote issues of equity and celebrate differences. my course notes reflect our conversations as we considered how writers such as derman-sparks (1989) warned that multiculturalism as “an event” can maintain other cultures as exotic8. we considered with burman (2008) our position in the world, and with macnaughton (2005a, 2005b) we struggled with our relationship with whiteness, yet we were drawn back to single stories of tragedy as being somehow embedded in race. this tension was raised as i became aware that while the majority of students self-identified as non-white, when asked to select images of children that reflected diversity, they mainly selected photographs of children of colour living in extreme conditions of poverty. the majority of photographs that were brought to class to reflect diversity showed, for example, children of colour in ragged clothes working in terrible conditions or carrying weapons of war. there were no photographs of white children living a story of tragedy. our thoughts and ideas were recorded and became artefacts to be revisited in our classroom and on moodle. further agential cuts were made, shifting and repositioning us in the world with race, children, and education so that the multiple (and perhaps even new) realities that were being enacted in the event were made visible. an ethical obligation: attending to the matter that matters in post-secondary classrooms material feminism asks us to understand learning as more than a cognitive process that occurs within an individual; lenz taguchi (2010) explains that it is instead the phenomena that are produced in the intra-activity taking place in between the [learner], its body, its discursive inscriptions, the discursive conditions in the space of learning, the material available, the time-spacerelations in a specific room of situation organisms, where people are only one such material organism among others. (p. 35) with our attention thus drawn to learning as more than an anthropocentric phenomenon, lenz taguchi asserts that we then have an ethical obligation to consider what knowledges and realities are produced in the encounters that occur among humans, matter, and discourses in our practices with children. this research project begins to examine the implications of attending to the matter of intra-active learning in the education of early childhood educators. as noted previously, artefacts emerged in-between and among the material, the discursive, and the participants, and were themselves agentic. they called out to us, drawing our gaze and our discussions, so that new meanings and realities were produced. the collage described 8 derman-sparks (1989) promotes the notion of an anti-bias curriculum, whereby culture is not seen only in a yearly celebration of difference in which the unique differences between cultures are put on display. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 821 was a material document and, as prior (2003) reminds us, documents do something. within this study, tangible objects spoke to the students and me and invited us into political action with their presence, thereby creating a political space for discussions (berger, 2010), in this case to attend to the material aspects of race. this study invited educators of ece student teachers to attend to the matter that is in classrooms in which the students are engaged in learning how to be early childhood educators. as haraway (2011) contends, “it matters what matter we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties” (p. 4). further studies are needed to examine what matter matters in the education of early childhood educators. what is included and excluded in the storying of early childhood education? for example, in the history of ece in canada, are stories of residential schools as visible as stories of froebel’s first kindergartens? do stories of school readiness include stories of colonization? whose faces grace the covers of textbooks? as barad (2007) writes, “the attribution and exclusion of agency – like the attributions and exclusions in the construction of the human – are political issues” (p. 216). the purpose of this study was to disrupt the students’ thinking and my own, though i would argue that this disruption was not a process of capturing or representing our thinking so that we could engage in the act of self-critique. i am indebted to karen barad’s assertion that critique alone is not helpful in beginning conversations that might welcome collaborative engagement with new possibilities and opportunities. barad’s declaration, in a 2012 interview with juelskær and schwennesen, that she is interested in building relationships with “scientists of good will, scientists who care deeply about using science for the purpose of mutual flourishing” (p. 14) strongly resonates with my intention in building relationships with students in early childhood education. in speaking about her work with students learning to engage in the sciences, barad (as cited in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012,) notes that the students have an interest in issues of social justice within science and that what is needed in their education “is a deep appreciation of the entanglements of facts and values (p. 15)”. in my work with students in early childhood education, i have found that they, too, are deeply committed to issues of social equity and justice. thinking with barad throughout this journey, i believe that what is needed in the education of future early childhood educators is a curriculum that attends to “how values matter and get materialized, and the interconnectedness of ethics, ontology, and epistemology” (barad, 2012, as cited in juelskær & schwennesen, 2012, p. 15). when the matter of learning matters, students and instructors are decentred as the focal point of cognitive process. rather, they are considered to exist in relationship with/in the texts, images, materials and the other more than human forces that intra-act in an ever-emerging world. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 808–825 822 references adichie, c. 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(2010). atmospheric attunements. rubric: writing from unsw, 1(1), 1–14. retrieved from http://rubric.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/atmosphericattunements.pdf http://rubric.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/atmospheric-attunements.pdf http://rubric.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/atmospheric-attunements.pdf text box http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9780857020222 running head: postdictive validity of the cracow instrument international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 294 the cracow instrument for multi-problem violent youth: examining the postdictive validity with a sample of preschoolers patrick lussier*, raymond corrado, jay healey, stacy tzoumakis, and nadine deslauriers-varin abstract: the cracow is an assessment tool used to identify the risk/need factors in youth at various developmental stages, with the goal of developing individual, familial, and community interventions for violent youth. the cracow is comprised of three sections measuring the risk/needs of the youth, treatment and intervention options, and externalizing behaviours. the current postdictive validity study of the first section of the cracow examines the extent to which risk/need factors identify the most physically aggressive preschoolers. the study is based on the first 100 children (boys, n = 58; girls, n = 42) recruited as part of the vancouver longitudinal study on the psychosocial development of children conducted in vancouver, british columbia, canada. a series of latent class analyses (lca) suggests the presence of three groups of physically aggressive children: a low-, medium-, and high-level group. subsequent analyses suggest that children in the highly physically aggressive profile were more likely to have risk/need factors in the following five domains: (a) pre/perinatal, (b) socio-economic, (c) family environment, (d) child psychological functioning, and (e) parenting. findings are discussed in light of the scientific literature on the early prevention of antisocial and aggressive behaviour. key words: aggression, assessment, early childhood, parenting, pre/perinatal, prevention, risk factors, violence *contact information: patrick lussier, ph.d. is associate professor, school of criminology, simon fraser university (sfu), 8888 university drive, burnaby (british columbia), canada, v5a1s6, phone: 778-782-3018, e-mail: plussier@sfu.ca raymond corrado, ph.d. is a professor in the school of criminology at sfu. jay healey, stacy tzoumakis, and nadine deslauriers-varin are ph.d. candidates at sfu. mailto:plussier@sfu.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 295 the cracow in its earlier form originated from an advanced research workshop funded by the scientific affairs division of the north atlantic treaty organization (nato). this research workshop involved more than 30 scholars from 16 different countries and was held in the summer of 2000 in cracow, poland (corrado, roesch, hart, & gierowski, 2002). the purpose of the workshop was to create a procedure for assessing the risks and needs factors of violent youth. although specific risk instruments were available at the time, researchers felt that these instruments failed to address multiple developmental periods and were not comprehensive enough in either their nature or scope (corrado et al., 2002). following the discussions and presentations held at the workshop, a comprehensive instrument, named the cracow, was proposed. the instrument was designed to assist and guide government and community agencies in developing individual, familial, and community interventions intended to reduce the risk of youth violence. youth violence was defined as the actual, attempted, or threatened physical harm of another person perpetrated by a child or an adolescent (corrado, 2002). while the instrument’s aim was to inform policy-makers about the risk/needs factors of youth violence, it was recognized that the instrument would lack some degree of specificity considering that violent youth also tended to be involved in serious but nonviolent delinquency. not surprisingly, there is some overlap between the risk factors of youth violence and those of chronic offending (capaldi & patterson, 1996), serious offending (loeber & farrington, 1998), and sexual offending (van wijk et al., 2005). the instrument, however, was neither designed nor intended for the assessment and management of youth involved in minor forms of antisocial, criminal behaviours (e.g., drug use, minor property crimes, truancy, etc.). rather, the instrument was specifically designed for assessment (i.e., evaluation of the individual and his or her environment for the purpose of determining the risk for future violent behaviour) and management purposes (i.e., intervention to reduce the risk of violence). the current study examines the postdictive validity of the cracow framework with a small sample of preschoolers as part of the vancouver longitudinal study on the psychosocial development of children. developmental risk/needs assessment tool. the cracow instrument aimed to be multistage by representing the risk/needs factors in youth at various developmental stages, starting at the pre/perinatal period. most of the current instruments used for assessing youth, such as the structured assessment of violence risk in youth (savry) (bartell, borum, & forth, 1999), the youth level of service/case management inventory (yls-cmi) (hoge & andrews, 1999), and the measure of social and personal adaptation for adolescents in québec (maspaq) (leblanc, 1995) were developed for a population aged 12 to 18 years. more recent studies have proposed instruments designed for the 6to 12-year-old population (earl-20) (augimeri, koegl, webster, & levene, 2001). these instruments are developmentally informed, reflecting developmental factors that are specific to the developmental stages they target. while these instruments are developmentally-informed, they are limited to one particular developmental period, that is, the current period of the youth (i.e., middle/late childhood; adolescence). as a result, some aspects of the dynamic development of aggression and violence are not incorporated in the instruments. of importance, these instruments may be missing the risk/needs factors that are present in the earliest stages of the child’s development, which are associated with aggression and violence (corrado, 2002). the cracow aims to address this limitation by incorporating the risk factors that are salient at various life stages during childhood and adolescence. the cracow was designed to recognize the fact that the aging child is exposed to an increasing number of risk factors that may influence the risk of youth violence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 296 the instrument recently changed from its original framework (odgers, vincent, & corrado, 2002) to reflect current developments in the field of aggression and violence. more specifically, the latest version of the cracow is organized to include risk/needs factors that encompass birth to the end of adolescence. the cracow was also designed to characterize the dynamic development in youth, to incorporate a wide array of risk/needs factors of youth violence, and to be in line with a developmental perspective on youth violence. the instrument was thus designed to be comprehensive and parsimonious, while being theoretically and empirically guided. these are all important components of sound assessment tools for youth (leblanc, 2002). figure 1. cracow instrument for multi-problem violent youth, revised model international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 297 the theoretical/empirical rationale of the cracow aggression/violence involves a dynamic process. in its current and revised version, the cracow (figure 1) incorporates four developmental periods: birth/infancy, early childhood, middle/late childhood, and adolescence. this conceptual framework is built around five organizing and overarching principles about the risk/needs of violent youth that are embedded in the developmental-life-course perspective of offending. these principles suggest that the risk of aggression and violent behaviour entails a dynamic process, involving qualitative and quantitative behavioural changes over time that are multi-determined as a result of the accumulation of a series of age-graded risk factors. we review these principles and how they relate to the assessment of risk/needs. the relation between childhood aggression and violence during adolescence and adulthood is well established but not completely understood (farrington, 1994; huesman & eron, 1992; loeber & stouthamer-loeber, 1998). aggression and violence are dynamic and a developmental process best describes their occurrence. three key processes characterize the development of aggression: (a) activation phase (i.e., the level at which the behaviour is manifested from its onset); (b) persistence phase (i.e., continuity of the behaviour over time); and (c) desistance phase (i.e., the slowing down and the termination of the behaviour over time). in other words, aggressive and violent behaviours can be plotted as a trajectory that can increase, reach a plateau, then decrease over time. longitudinal studies show that the general trend of physical aggression can be represented by an increase from 17 to 30 months, followed by a gradual decline up to the school entry (tremblay et al., 1999; tremblay & nagin, 2005). there are individual differences characterizing patterns of activation, persistence, and desistance, which can be represented by developmental trajectories. different trajectories have been identified for the early to middle childhood period typically characterized by four to five groups: one or two groups of low-level; one group of moderate desisters; one group of high-level desisters; and one group of high-level persisters (shaw, gilliom, ingoldsby, & nagin, 2003; national institute of child health & human development [nichd], 2004). similar patterns have been observed for the middle to late childhood period (i.e., 6 to 12 years old) where three to four trajectories are typically reported (broidy et al., 2003). using data from six different studies collected in three different countries, broidy et al. (2003) found that the prevalence of a high-level or chronic group varied between 4% and 11% in samples of boys and 0 to 10% in samples of girls. during early childhood, the group of high-level physically aggressive children have been found to constitute 16.6% of a representative sample of canadians from ages 2 to 11 (côté, vaillancourt, leblanc, nagin, & tremblay, 2006) and 14% in a sample of boys and girls followed from 5 to 42 months (tremblay et al., 2004). all trajectories of aggression and violence can be characterized by an onset, a plateau, and desistance, but at different levels. risk assessment should account for the presence of different trajectories as well as the three main mechanisms characterizing its development – activation, persistence, and termination. aggression/violence is relatively predictable from past behaviours. while there are quantitative changes in aggression and violence characterized by different patterns of activation, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 298 persistence, and termination, there are also important qualitative changes over time (leblanc & loeber, 1998; loeber & leblanc, 1990). from a developmental perspective, manifestation of aggression and violence develops along a continuum with behaviours constantly evolving as the child ages and persists. hence, there is a series of age-graded manifestations of aggressive and violent behaviours that follows a relatively predictable path. these manifestations change as the aging child is exposed to different social contexts, settings, and opportunities (moffitt, 1993; patterson, 1993). this process has been referred to as heterotypic continuity, or the persistence of conceptually similar but different behaviours over time. the qualitative changes in aggression and violence have been extensively described and documented by loeber and colleagues (loeber et al., 2003; loeber & hay, 1997). these researchers found evidence of a three-pathway model that can account for most delinquent patterns: (a) authority-conflict pathway, (b) covert pathway, and (c) overt pathway. most children will not go through all the stages as termination of the behaviour tends to occur at the earliest stages for most children. hence, as aggression and violence develops along a developmental pathway, past behaviours may inform risk assessors about the behaviour that may follow if the child persists in being aggressive and violent. we concur with leblanc (1999) in saying that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. trajectories of physical aggression are linked to those of violent and nonviolent delinquency during adolescence (brame, nagin, & tremblay, 2001; broidy et al., 2003). in fact, physical aggression has been shown to be linked to violent and non-violent juvenile delinquency, even after controlling for potentially confounding factors such as nonaggressive conduct problems, and being oppositional and hyperactive (broidy et al., 2003). aggression/violence is multidetermined. the risk of aggressive and violent behaviours involves a combination of individual and environmental factors. this is often referred to as the principle of equifinality or the possibility of various causes leading to the same outcome. this idea is consistent with the observation that a single risk factor typically shows a small-to-modest effect size (hawkins et al., 1998; lösel, 2002). generally speaking, criminologists have emphasized the role of six key developmental processes. a comprehensive risk assessment tool should include items tapping these six key mechanisms: 1. biological vulnerabilities: genetic and/or biological deficits that may affect the neuropsychological development of children (e.g., moffitt, 1993); 2. economic deprivation: the low socio-economic situation – a poor educational background, difficulties finding a job, or low family income – that may have several negative influences on the child’s development, such as causing stress on the family and disrupting the quality of parenting (e.g., farrington, 2005; leblanc, 2005); 3. personality development: the movement away from a purely egotistic and self-centred perspective to one characterized by prosociality, empathy, and concern for others (e.g., lahey & waldman, 2005; leblanc, 2005); 4. bonding: the psychological and social attachment between the child and parents, as well as the child and social institutions (e.g., farrington, 2005; leblanc, 2005); 5. modelling: exposure to aggressive and violent models which may reinforce the use of such behaviours in the child, especially when these aggressive or violent manifestations lead to compliance of the person being coerced or victimized (patterson & yoerger, 1993); and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 299 6. constraining of the behaviours: the development of adequate cognitive and behavioural skills to self-control urges to act in an aggressive or violent way (e.g., gottfredson & hirschi, 1990; leblanc, 2005). aggression/violence is the result of an accumulation of risk factors. aggression and violence are the results of an accumulation of risk factors starting at the earliest developmental stages (farrington, 2005; lösel & bender, 2006). hence, the risk of elevated levels of activity, persistence, or delayed termination of aggression/violence should be understood as the accumulation effect of multiple risk factors and not the result of one specific risk factor. individuals vary in terms of the number of risk factors they are exposed to, the number of risk factors that accumulate from one developmental period to another, but also the strength of these risk factors (loeber, slot, & stouthamer-loeber, 2008; thornberry & krohn, 2005). in line with caspi and roberts (2001), we understand the accumulation of risk along three dimensions: the genetic makeup (i.e., biological vulnerabilities, personality development); the social environment (i.e., economic deprivation, modelling, bonding, constraining); and the person-environment transactions. person-environment transactions involve three facets of developments that may impact the likelihood of aggression and violent behaviours (caspi & roberts, 2001; lahey & waldman, 2005; moffitt, 1993). the first facet, reactive transactions, refers to how an individual’s temper, in combination with life experiences, will favour the emergence of particular interpretations or scripts of social situations and interactions (caspi, 2000; caspi & roberts, 2001; crick & dodge, 1996). evocative transactions refer to the process by which the child evokes certain reactions from the environment. as the child ages and behaviours and attitudes persist, these reactions may be experienced in different contexts and settings (e.g., daycare, home, school, workplace). proactive transaction involves the process by which the aging child selectively chooses settings, contexts, and social environments that may reinforce rather than change his or her current behaviours, such as delinquent peers, gangs, organized crime, etc. the aggressive child, therefore, might come to interpret social interactions as negative and hostile, evoke negative reactions from others that may confirm these scripts, and, as a result, select specific environments that may entrench his or her disposition towards aggression and violence. these processes influence how risk factors are maintained over time, but also how new risk factors may be added. risk should be developmentally-informed. developmentalists such as loeber et al. (2008) understand development as comprising a series of life transitions to which the aging child is gradually exposed. as such, developmentalists typically distinguish the following life transitions: (a) birth, (b) preschool, (c) elementary school, (d) middle/secondary school, and (e) early adulthood. each of these periods has been associated with specific risk factors associated with aggression and violence (loeber & hay, 1997; lösel & bender, 2006; farrington, 2005). the domains of risk may change from one developmental period to another (thornberry, 2005; loeber et al., 2008). therefore, the aging child is exposed to an increasing number of risk factors over time (thornberry & krohn, 2005). similarly, life-course theorists understand life transitions as opportunities for change that may be more powerful than the developmental history (sampson & laub, 2005). in this regard, elder (1998) argued that individual differences are minimized in life transitions when the new circumstances resemble a total institution, that is, for example, reform school, military service, or prison (see also, sampson & laub, 2005). developmentalists, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 300 however, have challenged this view by stressing the importance and the role of cumulative deficits (caspi, 1998; moffitt, 1993). the child’s difficulties and deficits are likely to spill over and influence his or her ability to confront new risk factors and adapt to the new transitions, a process often referred to as cumulative deficits. hence, children exposed to a higher number of adversities from birth may have more difficulties in developing the set of skills necessary to prepare for school entry. while long-term prediction of violent behaviours is far from being perfect, as a result of the dynamic processes associated with the development, it still shows that early childhood risk factors are linked to violent behaviours 40 years later (lussier, farrington, & moffitt, 2009). the persistence and accumulation of new risk factors across developmental periods should be an integral part of an assessment tool. the reverse is also true as life circumstances might change from one period to another and certain risk factors might be removed or stopped. aim of the study the aim of this study is to provide baseline information about the validity of the cracow instrument at the earliest developmental stages. more specifically, this study is focused on the concurrent validity of the assessment tool in the identification of highly aggressive children. the study examines the convergent and postdictive validity of five domains of risk/protective factors: (a) pre/perinatal; (b) social structure; (c) family environment; (d) child’s psychological functioning; and (e) parenting skills. in doing so, the study will examine the validity of each of those domains but also the effect of the accumulation of risk factors through the total score on the cracow instrument. methodology sample the study is based on the first 100 children (boys, n = 58; girls, n = 42) recruited as part of the vancouver longitudinal study on the psychosocial development of children (kd-bear project) conducted in vancouver, british columbia (b.c.), canada. the kd-bear project (i.e., kids’ development of behavioural, emotional and aggression regulation) is an ongoing longitudinal project that aims to inform policy-makers about the key early risk and protective factors of aggression and violence in at-risk children from the earliest developmental periods. this project was initiated by the b.c. ministry of children and family development and the b.c. ministry of health, in collaboration with researchers affiliated with the b.c. children’s hospital and the school of criminology at simon fraser university. all children included in the study were recruited between february 2008 and april 2009. two samples were recruited for this study. first, a clinical sample (n = 14) was recruited from the infant psychiatric clinic at the b.c. children’s hospital. clinical practitioners informed the primary caregiver about the kdbear project. the inclusion criteria were as follows: 1. the child is currently being assessed and/or treated for any externalization spectrum disorder. 2. the child is between 3 and 5 years old. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 301 3. both the child and the primary caregiver have a reasonable understanding of english. 4. the child and the primary caregiver reside in and around the city of vancouver and the greater vancouver regional district (gvrd). for the majority of this sample (58.3%), concern over the child’s aggressive behaviour was one of the main reasons cited for referral to the clinic for assessment/treatment. based on the clinical assessment conducted at the clinic, this sample of children was mainly characterized by attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (adhd, 63.6%) and oppositional defiant disorder (odd, 18.2%). second, the research program also includes a community sample (n = 86) for comparative purposes. the community sample was recruited within vulnerable neighbourhoods in the city of vancouver and the gvrd. more specifically, the recruitment took place in seven cities: burnaby, coquitlam, new westminster, port coquitlam, port moody, vancouver, and surrey. in each of these cities, the neighbourhoods ranked in the lowest 25% by two provincial surveys were selected for those studies (kershaw, irwin, trafford, & hertzman, 2005). this survey ranks the neighbourhoods according to various indicators related to the socio-economic status of the family and the psychosocial development of preschoolers. based on the results of this survey, we established a catchment area of daycares in vulnerable neighbourhoods. local managers of community daycares were contacted to participate in the study. in each of the participating daycares, the research team put up posters informing parents about the study. the inclusion criteria were similar for the community and the clinical samples with the exception that having been referred for an externalizing spectrum disorder was not a requirement for the community sample. it is important to stress the fact that the neighbourhoods, not the families or the children, were sampled for the study. it was therefore expected that, in spite of targeting vulnerable neighbourhoods, the community sample would still get a reasonable range of families in terms of risk factors (i.e., low-risk, medium-risk, high-risk). procedures the present study focused on the first wave of data. one in-person interview was conducted with each research participant. simultaneous interviews with the primary caregiver and the child were conducted as part of the wave 1 data collection. the vast majority of primary caregivers interviewed were the biological mothers of the children (88.1%). in rare instances, the biological father (7.0%) or an adoptive parent (5.0%) was interviewed. on average, the primary caregiver interview lasted about two and a half hours. the interview protocol was standardized across research participants and the data were collected using a computerized questionnaire. the child interview protocol was also standardized and lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. the interview protocol included a series of tasks and tests to assess the child’s cognitive and selfregulation abilities. both the primary caregiver interview and the child interview were conducted by trained research assistants. the study was conducted according to the ethical guidelines set by simon fraser university, the university of british columbia, and the b.c. children’s hospital. participants were either referred from the child infant psychiatry clinic at b.c. children’s hospital or they responded to posters describing the project distributed in the community. because of the unsolicited nature of the sampling procedure, refusal rates are unknown. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 302 participation in the study was voluntary and the participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time. the primary caregivers were paid $40 for their participation in the study. they all signed a consent form indicating that the information was confidential and collected for research purposes only. measures covariates. several covariates were included in the study to explore possible individual differences in the level of aggression. two sets of characteristics were examined. first, child characteristics included four general individual characteristics: (a) gender (0 = male, 1 = female); (b) age (i.e., coded as the child’s age at the time of the interview; (c) ethnic origin (0 = caucasian, 1 = non-caucasian); and (d) sample (i.e., whether the child was a clinical referral or recruited from the community; 0 = clinical, 1 = community). second, we also included sociodemographic characteristics of the family environment: (a) a variable controlled whether the biological mother was interviewed (0 = no, 1 = yes); (b) the annual familial income was examined; (c) the covariates also included a variable measuring whether or not single parenthood reflected the family structure of the child (0 = no, 1 = yes); and (d) the study controlled for the presence of one or more siblings (0 = no, 1 = yes). cracow. the cracow (corrado, 2002; lussier & corrado, 2009) was coded based on an interview with the primary caregiver. the section referring to the risk management of aggression/violence was not included for the current study. the risk/needs section of the cracow was completed by the interviewers. for preschoolers, the section includes five domains or risk/needs factors: (a) pre/perinatal (mean = 2.10, standard deviation = 1.57, range = 0-8); (b) socio-economic situation (m = 2.06, sd = 2.73, range = 0-9); (c) family environment (m = 2.84, sd = 2.18, range = 0-9); (d) child psychological functioning (m = 3.90, sd = .230, range = 010); and (e) parenting (m = 1.21, sd = 1.24, range = 0-5). the pre/perinatal domain (five items) includes factors that may lead to or are associated with neuropsychological deficits of the child (i.e., maternal substance use during pregnancy, pregnancy-related complications, birth-related complications, low birth weight, and premature birth). the socio-economic situation (five items) measures the presence of socio-economic deprivation in the family (i.e., low occupational status, low family income, poor parental education, familial adversities such as large family size or high residential mobility, and economic dependency). the family environment (six items) taps the criminogenic aspect of the family of origin (i.e., mental health problems of one or both parents, antisocial behaviours of one or both parents, criminal history of one or both parents, presence of intimate partner violence, poor familial support, and antisocial parental attitudes). the child psychological functioning (six items) refers to the following: low verbal intelligence, callousness, negative emotionality, daring and risk taking, attention deficits, and hyperactivity. the parenting domain (four items) includes risk/needs factors that measure: the presence of a hostile parenting style, the lack of consistent discipline, the lack of positive involvement with the child, and the presence of inadequate norms or rules. each of the items for the five domains of risk/needs factors were scored using a threepoint scale: (0) absence of the risk factor; (1) risk factor is somewhat present; and (2) the risk factor is definitely present. each domain was completed and scored by a research assistant using international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 303 the information collected during the interview and following the scoring procedure of the instrument (lussier & corrado, 2009). the score of the risk/needs factors were summed to create the total score of the cracow scale (26 items, alpha = .77) for the preschool period (mean = 12.11; standard deviation = 6.19; range = 3-29). physical aggression. in line with earlier studies on physical aggression in childhood (broidy et al., 2003; lussier & healey, 2009; tremblay et al., 2004), four indicators were used to measure the level of physical aggression: (a) kicked, bitten, or hit anyone; (b) shoved, pushed; (c) fought (physically); and (d) thrown things at other people. the primary caregiver was asked to determine the frequency of each of those four manifestations using a four-point scale: (0) never; (1) a few times; (2) several times; (3) very often. the majority of the children sampled for this study had kicked (64%), shoved (68%), fought (22%), or thrown things at someone (51%) at least once in the past year. as a group, this sample of children had been physically aggressive only a few times in the past year: kicked (mean = 1.13, standard deviation = 1.03, range = 0-3); shoved (m = 1.22, sd = 1.03, range = 0-3); fought (m = .42, sd = .85, range = 0-3); and thrown things (m = .83, sd = .93, range = 0-3). these averages, however, masked the fact that about one-third of our sample had, at least on several occasions, kicked (38%), shoved (32%), fought (16%), or thrown things at someone (28%) in the past year. preschoolers were more likely to kick/shove than to fight (p < .001) or to throw things at someone (p < .001). they were also more likely to throw something at someone than to fight (p < .001). analytical strategy latent-class analysis. a series of latent-class analyses (lca) were used to identify the presence of latent profiles of physically aggressive children. lca is a statistical technique used to identify a set of mutually exclusive classes of individuals based on their responses to a series of categorical observations (goodman, 1974). lca analyses allowed the computation and estimation of two sets of parameters: (a) γ (gamma) parameters representing class membership probabilities, and (b) ρ (rho) which refers to item-response probabilities conditional on group membership. more specifically, lca predicts subjects’ subgroup membership based on their responses to a set of observed categorical variables and produces mutually exclusive and exhaustive (non-overlapping) latent classes of individuals (dayton, 2008; goodman, 1974). the aim of this study was to examine the presence of mutually exclusive classes of preschool children based on their level of physical aggression in the past year. four items were used to examine the presence of profiles of physically aggressive children, that is, the frequency of kicking, shoving, fighting, and throwing objects. those items are in line with previous empirical studies on the trajectories of physically aggressive children (e.g., côté et al., 2006). the correlation between those four indicators of physical aggression was first screened and did not reveal the presence of redundant information (i.e., range r = .26-66) for lca. considering the small sample size for this study, only a baseline model was created with no covariates included. based on previous empirical studies on the presence of trajectories of physically aggressive children (e.g., broidy et al., 2003), a two-to-six group solution was examined. in other words, a model with two groups was first examined, followed by a model with three groups, then a model with four groups, and so on. the optimal solution was then determined using the likelihood-ratio g2 statistics, akaike’s information criterion or aic (akaike, 1974), and the bayesian information criterion or bic (schwarz, 1978), along with class size probability and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 304 interpretability of each class identified. the analyses were conducted using proc lca, a procedure developed for sas 9.2 by lanza, collins, lemmon, and schafer (2007). results profiles of physically aggressive preschool children table 1 presents the results of a series of latent class analyses. the goodness-of-fit information was examined for models with a two-to-six solution. for each solution, the likelihood g2, the degrees of freedom, the aic, and the bic are presented. the likelihood ratio g2 statistic dropped substantially from a two-group solution to a three-group solution, then declined more gradually relative to the degree of freedom. furthermore, the aic was the lowest for the three-group solution. the bic, however, suggested a twoor a three-group solution. following recommendations by lanza et al. (2007), the estimation was then repeated using different seeds (n = 4) to try different sets of starting values. the three-group model was identified as the dominant solution that was arrived at most frequently among the various sets of starting values. taken together, these findings suggested that a solution consisting of three groups of physically aggressive children was the optimal solution for this dataset. an inspection of the parameters estimates from the three-group model suggested that the classes are distinguishable and non-trivial (i.e., no class with a near-zero probability of membership), and that meaningful labels can be assigned to each class found. the final three-group model selected presented high classification accuracy (entropy) based on posterior probabilities (see table 2), confirming its stability and relevance. table 1. latent class analysis of physical aggression in early childhood no. of latent classes likelihood ratio g2 degrees of freedom aic bic 2 129.94 230 179.94 245.56 3 98.56 217 174.56 274.31 4 80.01 204 182.01 315.88 5 68.79 191 196.79 364.79 6 63.01 178 217.01 419.14 note. aic refers to the akaike information criterion. bic refers to the bayesian information criterion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 305 table 2. average assignment probabilities based on posterior probability note: boldfaced type indicates the entropy, referring to the average classification accuracy when assigning participants to classes. values closer to 1.00 indicate greater precision. the differences between the three groups of preschoolers were significant and easily interpretable (figure 2). the first group, the low-level, consisted of 36% of the sample and showed a low frequency of kicking, pushing, fighting, and throwing objects at people, with all scores on these four items being close to 0 (i.e., never). the second group, the medium-level, represented 34% of the sample. this group included preschoolers who were occasionally physically aggressive in the past year, especially in terms of kicking and pushing others. their average scores for these two behaviours were higher than 1.00. finally, the third group, the highlevel, represented 30% of this sample. the preschoolers included in this group were regularly physically aggressive in the past year, with average scores close to or higher than 2.0 for three of the four items of physical aggression (i.e., kicking, pushing, and throwing objects at people). groups latent classes number assigned % (n) low level medium level high level range low-level group 36% (36) .96 (.11) .02 (.09) .01 (.07) .57-1.00 medium-level group 34% (34) .04 (.06) .94 (.10) .02 (.07) .67-1.00 high-level group 30% (30) .01 (.04) .13 (.18) .86 (.18) .51-1.00 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 306 figure 2. average level of physical aggression in early childhood international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 307 the three groups of preschoolers were then compared on a series of socio-demographic and descriptive factors relating to the child and his or her family (table 3). the low-, medium and high-level groups were compared as to the child’s gender, ethnic group, the composition of the family and the presence of siblings, whether the biological mother was interviewed, the family annual income, and most importantly, whether the child was a clinical referral or not. the group comparison analyses revealed few significant differences across the three groups of children. in fact, the three groups differed only on two of these characteristics. first, the lowlevel was the only group where children were not mainly caucasians. second, and not surprisingly, a significantly more important proportion of children recruited at the infant psychiatry clinic of b.c. children’s hospital were included in the highly aggressive children. still, the clinical referrals represented only 30% of this group, meaning that children recruited from the community characterized the majority of those included in the high-level group. the high-level group was not more likely to include boys, children with siblings, children living in a single-parent family setting, or children living in families with a lower annual family income. table 3. descriptive statistics of the three groups of children groups low level medium level high level group comparison 1. gender (male) 50.0% 61.8% 63.3% x2(2)= 1.49, ns 2. ethnicity (caucasian) 33.3% 54.5% 63.3% x2(2)= 6.40, p<.05 3. biological mother interviewed 91.7% 91.2% 93.3% x2 (2)= .11, ns 4. one of more siblings (yes) 66.7% 67.6% 70.0% x2 (2)= .87, ns 5. single-parent family (yes) 13.9% 23.5% 23.3% x2 (2)=1.31, ns 6. source (clinical referral) 8.3% 5.9% 30.0% x2 (2)=9.20, p<.05 7. annual family income $90,142.86 $68,951.52 $62,666.67 f(2,99)=2.08, ns international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 308 items of the cracow instrument and physically aggressive children a series of analyses of variance were then conducted to determine whether the cracow instrument could help in identifying highly aggressive preschoolers. the three groups of preschoolers were compared on all the items of the five domains of risk/needs factors (i.e., pre/perinatal, socio-economic situation, family environment, child psychological functioning, and parental skills) included in the cracow. under conditions of heterogeneity of variance across groups, the welch statistic was analyzed followed by a non-parametric test (i.e., kruskall-wallis one-way analysis of variance) to confirm or not the presence of group differences. when significant differences were found, a stringent post-hoc test (scheffe) was performed to determine which groups significantly differed from one another. the results are presented in table 4. first, we examined the pre/perinatal section of the cracow instrument. two of the five risk factors helped discriminate the three groups of children: the scores on the maternal substance use during pregnancy and on the birth-related complications scales. post-hoc analyses showed that the high-level group was more likely to have been exposed to maternal substance use than the low-level group (p < .05). furthermore, the highand medium-level groups were more likely to have had birth-related complications than the low-level group (p < .07 and p < .05, respectively). table 4. level of physical aggression and items of the cracow instrument 1. pre/perinatal items lowlevel (n=36) medlevel (n=34) highlevel (n=30) f-test (2, 99) posthoc test partial eta squared 1.1. maternal substance use .64 (.72) .76 (.78) 1.13 (.78) 3.66* h>l .075 1.2. pregnancy related complications .61 (.77) .62 (.65) .87 (.68) 1.35 .024 1.3. birth related complications .14 (.42) .56 (.70) .50 (.73) 4.57* h, m>l .087 1.4. low birth weight .06 (.23) .12 (.41) .10 (.31) 0.34 .012 1.5. premature birth .11 (.32) .09 (.29) .10 (.31) 0.49 .001 2. socio-economic situation items international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 309 2.1. low occupational status .39 (.60) .44 (.70) .57 (.77) .56 .009 2.2. low family income .25 (.50) .35 (.60) .47 (.68) 1.08a .019 2.3. poor parental education .14 (.35) .35 (.64) .43 (.63) 3.37*a h>l .057 2.4. familial adversities .22 (.48) .38 (.60) .37 (.56) 0.90 .042 2.5. economic dependency .50 (.61) .65 (.74) .97 (.85) 3.43* h>l .068 3. family environment items 3.1. parents mental health problems .50 (.84) .44 (.70) .67 (.88) 0.65 .011 3.2. parents antisocial behaviours .53 (.61) .62 (.65) 1.07 (.69) 6.28** h>m,l .107 3.3. criminal background of parents .28 (.57) .35 (.64) .60 (.81) 1.99a .044 3.4. intimate partner violence .42 (.73) .29 (.63) .37 (.72) 0.27 .008 3.5. poor familial support .39 (.73) .41 (.66) .57 (.86) 0.53 .015 3.6. parental antisocial attitudes .25 (.44) .35 (.49) .57 (.50) 3.61*a h>l .076 4. child psychological functioning items 4.1. low verbal iq .61 (.69) .50 (.61) .67 (.55) 0.60 .016 4.2. callous .37 (.55) .56 (.56) .80 (.61) 4.55* h>l .090 4.3. negative emotionality .60 (.65) .91 (.62) 1.03 (.76) 3.60* h>l .071 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 310 note: post-hoc analyses were conducted using sheffe’s test. h refers to the high-level group, m to the medium-level group and l to the low-level group. *p < .05; **p < .01. (a) welch statistic used due to assumptions of homogeneity of variance not met. 4.4. daring/risk taking 76. (.61) .91 (.67) 1.30 (.65) 5.83** h>m,l .092 4.5. attention deficits .20 (.53) .47 (.75) .90 (.84) 7.80**a h>l .146 4.6. hyperactivity .31 (.53) .47 (.66) .63 (.72) 2.08a .043 5. parenting skills items 5.1. hostile parenting .11 (.40) .15 (.36) .50 (.63) 4.50*a h>m,l .122 5.2. lack of consistent discipline .29 (.57) .65 (.64) .60 (.67) 3.32 m>l .055 5.3. lack of positive involvement .19 (.47) .35 (.60) .23 (.43) 0.77a .024 5.4. inadequate norms/rules .11 (.32) .29 (.52) .20 (.41) 1.63a .040 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 311 next, we examined the items comprising the socio-economic situation section of the cracow. the scores of two of the five items differed across the three groups. the total scores on the parental education and economic dependency scales statistically differed across groups. children included in the high-level group were more likely than those in the low-level group to have caregivers with poor educational background, as well as showing significant evidence of economic dependency (both at p < .05). looking at the family environment, two of the six items helped in discriminating the three groups of preschoolers. analyses of variance showed that the high-level group significantly differed from the low-level group (p < .05) on parental attitudes. they also significantly differed from both the medium(p < .05) and low-level groups on the measure of parent’s antisocial behaviours (p < .01). in both cases, the high-level group showed higher scores on the scales suggesting that their parents are more likely to manifest antisocial behaviours and antisocial attitudes. the psychological functioning section of the cracow produced some of the most important differences across the three groups of preschoolers. the analysis of variance showed that the preschoolers in the high-level group were consistently higher than those in the low-level group on the measures of callousness (p < .05), negative emotionality (p < .05), daring/risk taking (p < .01), and attention-deficits (p < .01). the high-level group was also showing a marginally higher score than the medium-group on the measure of daring/risk taking (p < .06). no significant differences were found for low verbal iq and hyperactivity. finally, the last section of the cracow examined as part of this study, the parenting skills section, also revealed significant differences across groups. first, highly-aggressive children were more likely to have been exposed to hostile parenting than the mediumand low-level groups (both at p < .05). second, the children in the medium-level group were somewhat more likely to have been exposed to an inconsistent form of discipline compared to those in the low-level group (p = .55). the difference was marginally significant and the interpretation of this result should be made accordingly. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 312 table 5. domains of risk factors and total score on the cracow note: post-hoc analyses were conducted using sheffe’s test. h refers to the high-level group, m to the medium-level group and l to the low-level group. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. (a) welch statistic used due to assumptions of homogeneity of variance not met. domains of risk/needs factors lowlevel (n=36) medlevel (n=34) highlevel (n=30) f-test (2, 99) posthoc test partial eta squared 1. pre/perinatal section 1.56 (1.32) 2.15 (1.69) 2.70 (1.51) 4.72* h>l .080 2. socio-economic situation 1.39 (1.61) 2.09 (2.43) 2.80 (2.57) 3.96*a h>l .060 3. family environment 2.36 (2.22) 2.47 (1.64) 3.84 (2.41) 4.81* h>m, l .095 4. psychological functioning 2.79 (1.63) 3.82 (2.07) 5.33 (2.52) 11.88*** h>m, l .206 5. parenting skills .72 (.91) 1.44 (1.42) 1.53 (1.22) 4.71* h, m> l .095 total score cracow 8.83 (4.46) 11.97 (5.76) 12.11 (6.19) 14.84*** h>m>l .228 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 313 sections of the cracow next, we examined group differences on the total scores for each of the five sections of the cracow. findings of the analyses of variance are reported in table 5. the findings showed significant group differences on the total pre/perinatal risk scores (p < .05). more specifically, post hoc tests showed that the high-level group had higher scores on the pre/perinatal scale than the low-level group (p < .05). similarly, group differences were also observed for the scores of the socio-economic situation section (p < .05). more specifically, the high-level group showed higher scores than the low-level group (p < .05), thus suggesting their dependency to be exposed to a higher number of social risk factors. furthermore, the three groups were also significantly different on the total score of the family environment (p < .05). the analysis of variance and post hoc tests revealed that the preschoolers in the high-level group were showing more risk factors representing a criminogenic family environment than those in the mediumand low-level groups (both at p < .05). significant group differences were also found for the psychological section (p < .001). the high-level group showed a significantly higher score than both the medium(p < .05) and the low-level groups (p < .001), thus suggesting that highly aggressive children were more likely to exhibit early deficits in this area of functioning. finally, the analysis of variance also indicated significant group differences for the parenting section of the cracow instrument (p < .05). indeed, both the highand medium-level groups had higher scores than the low-level group (p < .05) on the parenting section. in other words, the highly and occasionally aggressive children were more likely to have been exposed to parents showing inadequate/poor parenting skills than the low aggressive children. not surprisingly, considering previous results, when looking at the total score for the cracow scale, significant differences were found between the three groups (p < .001). the high-level group had more risk/needs factors than the medium-level (p < .05) and the low-level group (p < .001). note that the medium-level group also showed a marginally higher score on the cracow than the low-level group (p < .07). screening highly aggressive preschool children the postdictive screening accuracy of the cracow was examined in two ways. first, the total scores of each of the five domains of the cracow and the total score of the instrument were analyzed separately with respect to their correlation with the level of physical aggression. the aim of this procedure was to determine whether the scores on the instrument were related in a linear way to the frequency of physical aggression in the past year. to do so, the frequencies of the four items of physical aggression (i.e., kick, push, fight, throw things) were totalled to create a composite scale of physical aggression. correlations between the scores of the cracow instrument and the composite score of physical aggression are reported in table 6. the correlations between the domains of risk factors and physical aggression ranged between .23 for the family’s socio-economic situation, and .59 for the child psychological functioning. the correlation between the total score of the cracow and the measure of physical aggression was moderate to substantial [r (100) = .54, p < .001]. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 314 table 6. postdictive accuracy of the cracow note: n = 100. correlation (r) conducted by using a sum of the scores on the four items of physical aggression to create a composite measure of aggression as the criterion for these analyses. roc curves were conducted by merging the low-level and the medium-level groups into one category and the high-level group in the other. therefore, the roc curves represent the ability of the items of the cracow in screening the highly aggressive children from the other children. auc = area under the roc curve. se = standard error of the auc. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. postdictive accuracy domain r auc se range 1. pre/perinatal .30** .68** .06 .56-.79 2. socio-economic situation .23* .63* .06 .52-.75 3. family environment .26** .65* .06 .53-.77 4. psychological functioning .59** .74** .06 .63-.84 5. parenting skills .24* .62* .06 .50-.75 total cracow score .54*** .77*** .05 .67-.86 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 315 next, the screening accuracy of the instrument was analyzed using a series of roc (i.e., receiver operating characteristics) curves. the total scores for each of the five domains and the total score of the cracow instrument were plotted individually against group membership to the high-level category of physical aggression. in order to conduct these analyses, the low-level and the medium-level groups were merged together. therefore, the roc curves were aimed at examining the postdictive screening accuracy of the instrument in identifying the highly aggressive children from the other preschoolers. results are presented in table 6. most of the domains of risk factors included in the cracow instrument showed roc curves in the .60s, suggesting modest predictive accuracy taken individually. the child psychological functioning section was revealed to be the most accurate domain by itself with an auc in the mid-.70s. not surprisingly, the total score of the cracow instrument showed the highest screening accuracy with an auc of .77, thus showing modest-to-good postdictive accuracy. these results suggest that as the scores on the cracow are increasing, so are the probabilities of the child being highly physically aggressive toward others (figure 3). figure 3. prevalence of the highly aggressive children and scores on the cracow we then tested whether the total scores and the screening ability of the cracow instrument might be influenced by possible confounding factors (table 7). therefore, a logit regression model was conducted by examining the predictive accuracy of the total score of the cracow tool, while adjusting for the following covariates: (a) child’s gender; (b) child’s ethnic origin; and (c) whether the child was a clinical referral. the logit model produced a good-fit of the data [-2ll = 86.09, df = 4, p < .001, nagerfelke = pseudo r2 = .32]. this model showed that the cracow total scores can efficiently screen highly aggressive children, even after adjusting for those covariates. in fact, for every one-unit change on the scores of the cracow tool, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 316 probabilities of the child being highly aggressive increased by a factor of 1.18 (p < .001; range: 1.07-1.30), regardless of the child’s gender, ethnic origin, and source (clinical referral or not). none of the three covariates were statistically significant at p < .10. table 7. postdictive accuracy of the cracow, adjusting for covariates predictors log (b) odds ratio 95% (c.i.) p value cracow (total score) .17 (.05) 1.18 1.07-1.30 .001 child’s gender (male) .09 (.52) 1.09 .39-3.02 .867 source (clinical) -.87 (.70) .42 .11-1.66 .215 ethnic origin (caucasian) -.78 (.51) .46 .17-1.25 .129 model goodness of fit nagelkerke r2 .32 -2ll 86.09 df 4 p value .000 note: n = 100. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 317 discussion the current study examined some of the properties of the cracow instrument with a small sample of at-risk preschoolers. the purpose of the study was to examine the level of physical aggression in two different at-risk samples (clinical, community) and to determine whether the cracow could identify the preschoolers showing the highest level of physical aggression before school entry. the inclusion of a clinical sample enabled the examination of the nature and frequency of physically aggressive behaviours in children characterized by an externalizing spectrum disorder. in addition, the inclusion of an at-risk community sample permitted the assessment of physical aggression in children exposed to environmental adversities. in doing so, the research was designed to oversample children with a diversity of risk/needs factors thus allowing an examination of the role of various items of the cracow that may otherwise have a base rate too low to be analyzed with general populations of preschoolers. what can we tell about the physical aggression of at-risk children? this study did not investigate trajectories of physical aggression, but did examine the frequency of the behaviours at a specific time point early in development. from that point on, the findings from longitudinal studies have suggested that, albeit within-individual changes, between-individual differences (or the rank-ordering of children in terms of their level of aggression) in physical aggression remain relatively stable during childhood, (tremblay et al., 1999; tremblay & nagin, 2005). therefore, with a short follow-up period of a few years, it is expected from prior studies that the high-level group would remain the group showing the highest level of physical aggression. in the current study, the high-level group was more important in prevalence (30%) than typically reported in earlier investigations with general population data or samples drawn from low socio-economic neighbourhoods (e.g., broidy et al., 2003; côté et al., 2006; tremblay et al., 2004). this is probably a result of our sampling, which includes clinical cases and children from at-risk neighbourhoods. furthermore, the majority of the clinical cases, not surprisingly, were found in the high-level cases. this result somewhat overshadows the fact that 70% of the high-level group consisted of preschoolers recruited in at-risk neighbourhoods. the high-level group of preschoolers recruited in the community showed the same level of physical aggression as the clinical cases without having been referred to or assessed for their physical aggression. note that the cracow assessment tool was not affected by the overrepresentation of clinical cases in the high-level group. in fact, after controlling for cracow scores in multivariate analyses, the differences between the clinical and the community groups were no longer statistically significant, suggesting that the between-individual differences responsible for the overrepresentation of clinical cases within the high-level group might have been accounted for by the items included in the cracow instrument. it also suggests that the tool might have promising properties that would allow the assessment of both clinical and at-risk community cases of children. further studies, however, will be needed to inspect these aspects of the cracow. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 318 what are the most promising risk/needs factors of the cracow? the current findings were generally in line with previous longitudinal studies looking at the developmental risk factors of youth violence (hawkins et al., 1998; farrington, 2005; lösel & bender, 2006; loeber et al., 2008; repucci, fried, & schmidt, 2002). considering that aggression is multidetermined, we would not expect large effect sizes from single items of the cracow assessment tool (see lösel, 2002). taken individually, these between-individual differences accounted for a small but significant proportion of the level of physical aggression in early childhood. as such, the average partial eta squared (partial η2 – i.e., percent of variance uniquely accounted by the risk/needs factor) of the 26 items examined was .05 (sd = .04), and varied between .00-.15. the most significant risk/needs factors were: the presence of attentiondeficits characteristics (partial η2 = .15), hostile parenting (partial η2 = .12), parents’ antisocial behaviours (partial η2 = .11), birth-related complications (partial η2 = .09), child’s callousness (partial η2 = .09), child’s daring/risk-taking characteristics (partial η2 = .09), child’s parents’ antisocial attitudes (partial η2 = .08), and maternal substance use during pregnancy (partial η2 = .08). these findings, therefore, depict the highly physically aggressive child as someone having been exposed to multiple risk factors before birth, coming from a criminogenic family environment characterized by poor parenting skills, having self-regulation difficulties, and lacking concerns for others. other significant factors were associated with physical aggression with effect sizes ranging from .06 to .07 – that is, economic dependency, poor parental education, lack of a consistent discipline, and the child’s level of negative emotionality. therefore, both the individual and familial risk/needs factors of the cracow tapped aspects of the highly physically aggressive children. in sum, these findings might not come as a surprise to most developmental criminologists. while previous longitudinal studies have shown the role and importance these risk/needs factors have in middle to late childhood and adolescence, the current study shows that these risk items are operating sooner and can be detected early in the child’s development with a sound risk/needs assessment tool. furthermore, these risk/needs factors are operating on physical aggression in childhood, a significant and important precursor of youth violence. is the cracow capturing risk factors at the earliest developmental stages? from its onset, a rationale of the cracow was to capture the risk/needs factors of children at risk of youth violence at the earliest developmental stages (corrado et al., 2002; corrado, 2002). more specifically, the cracow was designed to bridge gaps between the scientific literature from different disciplines (i.e., criminology, health, and child psychiatry). the current study shows promising findings supporting the value of a multidisciplinary perspective to approach the issue of youth violence. in that regard, the pre/perinatal risk/needs domain of the cracow was shown to help, albeit in conjunction with other risk domains, in the identification of the most physically aggressive children. the overall predictive accuracy, however, was relatively modest, but similar to those observed for the familial environment domain of the cracow. two items of the pre/perinatal showed value that is more promising in discriminating at-risk children in terms of their level of physical aggression. maternal substance use refers to a series of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 319 unhealthy behaviours during pregnancy such as the use of tobacco, alcohol, soft/hard drugs, as well as non-prescribed medication. birth complications, on the other hand, refer to problems occurring at the time of labour and delivery (e.g., the umbilical cord around baby’s neck, the baby not breathing, convulsions, etc.). although the causal mechanisms remain unclear, such pre/perinatal factors can affect the brain development of the foetus resulting in subtle neuropsychological deficits. the use of nicotine, alcohol, and drugs (brennan, grekin, & mednick, 2003; gibson & tibbetts, 2000; orlebeke, knol, & verhulst, 1999; tremblay et al., 2004), birth complications (arsenault, tremblay, & boulerice, 2002), and low birth weight (piquero & tibbetts, 1999) have all been shown to be linked to characteristics associated to a large array of negative outcomes such as aggression, antisocial behaviours, and criminal behaviours. the effect sizes found, while significant, are not large (e.g., hodgins, kratzer, & mcneil, 2002; lussier, tzoumakis, healey, corrado, & reebye, 2011; pratt, mcgloin, & fearn, 2006). one way to address this issue is to look at potential mediator and moderator factors (rutter, 2003). pre/perinatal risk factors might prove more detrimental on the child’s development when acting in combination with adversarial family factors (arsenault et al., 2002; hodgins et al., 2002; piquero & tibbetts, 1999; raine, brennan, & mednick, 1997). this is consistent with the hypothesis that aggression and violence are better understood as an accumulation of risk factors than the result of a single set of risk factors operating. maternal substance use and birth complications, therefore, might characterize at-risk pregnancies for highly aggressive children. is the cracow capturing familial risk/needs factors of physical aggression? several aspects of the familial environment captured by the cracow helped in distinguishing the highly physically aggressive children from the others. the highly physically aggressive children were exposed to more risk factors tapping into the economic deprivation of the family environment. they were also more likely to have been exposed to a criminogenic family environment characterized by poor parenting skills. previous studies on the early familial risk factors of physical aggression have focused on the socio-economic characteristics and the parenting skills of the home environment. the presence of specific familial risk/needs factors have been shown to be related to high levels of physical aggression during childhood, even when measured at the time of the child’s birth (tremblay et al., 2004). for example, low maternal education has been shown to be linked to a high level of physical aggression (benzies, keown, & magill-evans, 2009; côté et al., 2006, nagin & tremblay, 2001; nichd, 2004; however, see tremblay et al., 2004; shaw et al., 2003), and also to distinguish the children who remained highly aggressive throughout childhood and adolescence (nagin & tremblay, 2001). those factors, therefore, might have an effect on both the onset and the persistence of high levels of physical aggression. previous studies also suggest that socio-economic risk factors have a main effect that is not mediated by other family risk factors such as parenting (nagin & tremblay, 2001; côté et al., 2006), something not explored in the current study. furthermore, and in line with our findings, previous reports have shown that hostile (e.g., being annoyed or getting easily and promptly angry at the child) and coercive (e.g., raising voice, shouting, spanking or shaking the child) parenting are typically associated with higher levels of early aggression (benzies et al., 2009; côté et al., 2006; tremblay et al., 2004; romano, tremblay, boulerice, & swisher, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 320 observational measures of maternal rejecting parenting (e.g., harsh, hostile, lack of warmth) have not been shown to be linked to initial levels of overt antisocial behaviour, but helped distinguishing high-level desisters and chronic, with the latter group more subject to this type of parenting (shaw et al., 2003; nichd, 2004). this result suggests that rejecting parenting behaviours might play a distinct role in the persistence of aggression. the criminogenic aspect of the family environment has not been the subject of many empirical investigations. tremblay et al. (2004) have shown that antisocial mothers are more likely to have highly aggressive children, which is in line with our findings. based on these results, we can then conclude that the highly aggressive children are those exposed to a multitude of risk/needs familial factors. these risk/needs identified are both structural (i.e., socio-economic situation) and dynamic (i.e., parenting skills) and may facilitate the intergenerational transmission of aggression and violence through the role and importance of the presence of a criminogenic environment. is the cracow capturing individual risk/needs factors of physical aggression? not all children respond in the same way to their environment. our study suggests that highly physically aggressive preschoolers present with a constellation of psychological functioning difficulties. the child psychological functioning section of the cracow appeared as one of the most significant in distinguishing highly aggressive children from the other preschoolers. our study indicates that highly aggressive children tend to show high levels of negative emotionality, daring/risk taking behaviours, and callousness. this constellation of difficulties is reminiscent of the propensity for disorderly conduct behaviours as proposed by lahey and waldman (2005). negative emotionality refers to the tendency to experience, intensively and without provocation, negative mood/states and having difficulties in regulating those moods (caspi et al., 1994). daring/risk taking refers to behavioural disinhibition and the child’s tendency for sensation and novelty-seeking behaviours (farrington, 2005; lahey & waldman, 2005). callousness, consistent with lahey and waldman’s (2005) conception of prosociality, refers to the child’s tendency to disregard other people’s feelings and emotions and to show less concern for others. this constellation of psychological functioning dimensions may lead to situations where children’s interactions can quickly escalate to acts of physical aggression. while these three dimensions have been examined with older children and have been shown to be related to conduct disorder and antisocial behaviours (farrington, 2005; lösel & bender, 2006), few studies have examined whether these three features relate to physical aggression in preschoolers. previous studies have shown that the presence of a difficult temperament (e.g., easily upset, easy to calm, unstable mood) measured at five months can distinguish, with some reliability, highly aggressive children in early childhood (tremblay et al., 2004). furthermore, observational measures of low behavioural inhibition have been shown to be linked to high levels and persistence of overt antisocial behaviour during early childhood (shaw et al., 2003). taken together, these behavioural manifestations suggest that these children might be more demanding, more subject to anger outburst, and, as a result, might exacerbate more hostile, negative reactions from the environment, including parents. this might explain why physically aggressive children are more likely to be subject to maternal hostility compared to their siblings (romano et al., 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 321 limitations this empirical study is not without methodological limitations and the results should be interpreted accordingly. first, the analyses were based on a small sample of at-risk canadian preschoolers. these results, therefore, cannot be generalized to preschoolers at large. while this may be interpreted as a limitation, the research design was not intended to capture a general representation of the population, but to oversample families and children at risk of showing highlevels of aggression, especially at the earliest developmental stages. moreover, the current study was based on retrospective data, albeit using a short recall period (one year) to minimize biases caused by poor memory recall with respect to the parent’s assessment of physical aggression. furthermore, due to the cross-sectional nature of the data (at this point), the current study only examined the between-individual differences associated with physical aggression. longitudinal studies with repeated measures of aggression will follow to determine the predictive validity of the instrument while inspecting its ability to detect within-individual changes in the level of aggression over time. also, only one informant (i.e., the primary caregiver) was used to measure the frequency of aggression. consequently, some aggressive behaviour might have been overlooked, minimized, or simply not observed by the informant. finally, the statistical power of the current study was characterized by the small sample size. as a result, only a few covariates were analyzed. therefore, replication of these findings with a large sample of preschoolers using longitudinal data with multiple informants will be important in future studies to better understand the properties of the cracow assessment tool. conclusion in contrast to screening methods (leblanc, 2002; van domburgh, vermeiren, & doreleijers, 2008), assessment tools such as the cracow aim to present a more extensive, comprehensive, and individualized description of a youth. when looking at the aggressive behaviours in the past year of two selected at-risk samples of preschoolers, the cracow performed relatively well at identifying the most physically aggressive children. the findings further suggest that the instrument performed as well for the clinical and the at-risk community samples of children. the focus on preschoolers was pivotal in examining the properties of the cracow with this population as it characterizes a period when children learn to inhibit their aggressive behaviours and, as such, are likely to manifest some level of physical aggression before school entry. therefore, the ability to screen and assess children at risk of future aggression at this developmental stage is a challenge but has crucial implications for both prevention and intervention. there are currently no risk/needs assessment tools designed to assess the likelihood of future violent behaviour that can be applied at these earliest developmental stages. preliminary findings of this study suggest that the cracow shows some promise in filling this gap. in fact, the cracow identified risk/needs factors that have been shown to be related to serious and violent delinquency during adolescence. it would seem, therefore, that certain of these risk/needs factors are indeed operating earlier than many criminologists might have believed relative to the research, which has concentrated its focus for understanding the prevention of youth violence upon the period of adolescence. these findings therefore should give encouragement to those who are exploring early intervention strategies in the prevention of later youth violence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 294-329 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 322 references akaike, h. 1974. a new look at the statistical model identification. ieee transactions on automatic control, 19(6), 716-723. arseneault, l., tremblay, r. e., & boulerice, b. 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(2008). screening and assessments. in r. n. loeber, n. w. slot, p. h. van der laan, & m. hoeve (eds.), tomorrow’s criminals: the development of child delinquency and effective interventions (pp. 165-178). farnham, uk: ashgate figure 1. cracow instrument for multi-problem violent youth, revised model the theoretical/empirical rationale of the cracow aim of the study methodology sample procedures measures analytical strategy profiles of physically aggressive preschool children table 1. latent class analysis of physical aggression in early childhood table 2. average assignment probabilities based on posterior probability figure 2. average level of physical aggression in early childhood table 3. descriptive statistics of the three groups of children items of the cracow instrument and physically aggressive children table 4. level of physical aggression and items of the cracow instrument table 5. domains of risk factors and total score on the cracow sections of the cracow screening highly aggressive preschool children table 6. postdictive accuracy of the cracow figure 3. prevalence of the highly aggressive children and scores on the cracow table 7. postdictive accuracy of the cracow, adjusting for covariates discussion what can we tell about the physical aggression of at-risk children? what are the most promising risk/needs factors of the cracow? is the cracow capturing risk factors at the earliest developmental stages? is the cracow capturing familial risk/needs factors of physical aggression? is the cracow capturing individual risk/needs factors of physical aggression? limitations references brennan, p. a., grekin, e. r., & mednick, s. a. (2003). prenatal and perinatal influences on conduct disorder and serious delinquency. in b. b. lahey, t. e. moffitt, & a. caspi (eds.), causes of conduct disorder and juvenile delinquency (pp. 319-344).... leblanc, m. (1999). les comportements violents des adolescents. in j. proulx, m. cusson, & m. ouimet (eds.), les violences criminelles (pp. 319-353). sainte-foy, qc: presses de l'université laval. running head: dilemmas of practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 475 dilemmas of practice in the ecology of emancipatory youth-adult partnerships jeanette roach, esayas wureta, and laurie ross abstract: this article explores dilemmas that arise when using a participatory, experiential neighborhood problem-solving and planning program in settings that have different expectations and beliefs about youth and adults partnering in organizational and community decision-making. using bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecology of human development and wong, zimmerman, and parker’s (2010) pyramid of youth participation, a series of dilemmas are explored. these dilemmas include: negotiating challenges of power; scaling up youth-adult partnerships into organizational decisionmaking and governance; reconciling tensions between practices, principles, and values when disseminating a program from one organization to another; dealing with organizational events that occur outside the youth program; and succumbing to pressure to achieve funder-derived outcomes. two insights emerge from the analysis of these dilemmas. first, young people embrace adult-provided structure when adults and young people are not ready to work in emancipatory youth-adult partnerships. second, as we move toward emancipatory youth-adult partnerships, the developmental sphere of youth programs has to expand to include the activities, relationships, and roles that traditionally have been limited to organizational leadership and governance. likewise the developmental sphere of the governing body has to incorporate the activities, relationships, and roles of what has typically been the youth program. keywords: youth-adult partnerships, ecological analysis, organizational readiness jeanette roach is a graduate student in the department of international development, community, and environment at clark university, 950 main street, worcester, massachusetts, usa 01610. e-mail: jroach@clarku.edu esayas wureta is a program and outreach specialist at peace corps in washington, dc, usa. e-mail: ewureta@peacecorps.gov laurie ross, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an associate professor in the department of international development, community, and environment at clark university, 950 main street, worcester, massachusetts, usa 01610. e-mail: lross@clarku.edu mailto:jroach@clarku.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 476 youth-adult partnerships are multi-dimensional with many sets of competing forces to manage (ross, downs, tejani, dezan, & lowe, 2010). youth characteristics, adult characteristics, organizational features, and societal norms and dynamics can facilitate and/or constrain shared decision-making and democratic processes between youth and adults. an ecological framework is useful to analyze the ways identities, values, beliefs, practices, roles, and relationships intersect within and across multiple settings in the context of power differences (bronfenbrenner, 1979). in this article we apply an ecological analysis to explain dilemmas and challenges we faced in our attempt to forge authentic youth-adult partnerships during the urban community action planning with teens (ucapt) program. ucapt is a participatory, experiential program designed to engage young people, who are affected by oppressive conditions in their communities, in a neighborhood problem-solving and planning process in partnership with adults (ross, 2002; ross & coleman, 2000). we have used the ucapt program with groups of young people in an economically distressed northeastern city in the united states called union1. during our time facilitating ucapt, we have been both participants and observers2. occupying the dual role of youth worker and researcher, we have had unique insider and outsider status, in which we have gone through continuous cycles of action and reflection. once the programs were completed, we spent time reflecting on the extent to which we were able to forge authentic partnerships with the youth as well as to achieve community change outcomes. the two case studies presented below are the result of this retrospective reflection. applying an ecological framework to ucapt case studies an ecological framework is based on the idea that human development occurs in an environmental context consisting of a set of nested structures (bronfenbrenner, 1979). the first structure is the microsystem – or the child’s immediate development contexts, such as the family, the school, the peer group, and neighborhood. the basic infrastructure of a microsystem consists of the activities, relationships, and roles within that context. the second is the mesosystem – or the relationships among microsystems (e.g., the nature, structure, and level of congruence in the relationships between the family and the school or between a neighborhood and a peer group). the third is the exosystem, defined as the contexts in which the child is not immediately present, but which directly influence the microsystem (e.g., parents’ employment situation; school board 1 all names of people (aside from the authors), organizations, and locations have been changed to protect the identity of individuals and the context in which this work took place. 2 the “we” in this case refers to esayas, an eritrean graduate student in his mid-20s who was hired to run ucap-a at the union youth center; jeanette, a graduate student and staff member of the union youth center in her early 20s who grew up in union; and laurie, a professor at a local university who developed the urban community action planning for teens (ucapt) curriculum. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 477 policies). the fourth is the macrosystem, defined as the consistencies in the form and content of micro, meso, and exosystems at the level of the subculture or the culture as a whole. case one involves esayas’s work at the union youth center. three dilemmas emerged in this case. two of the dilemmas revolve around esayas’s challenges to relinquish his power while simultaneously convincing the young people that they had power in the ucapt program. the third dilemma consists of the struggles he observed the youth facing when they attempted to exercise their new disposition and skills in working in partnership with adults in the larger organizational context. the ecological framework helps to explain how there can be different understandings, expectations, and practices in the extent to which youth and adults engage in shared decision-making in the context of one organization. case two involves jeanette’s work at the oak hill neighborhood center. this case poses a set of dilemmas about what happens when an organization actively seeks to adopt the ucapt curriculum in their youth development programs without having a mission and practices that are fully aligned with youth-adult partnership. in case two, the ecological framework allows us to examine microsystem and exosystem factors that explain why an organization would be attracted to ucapt but face significant challenges implementing the program with fidelity to its underlying values and principles. case one: negotiating power and scaling up youth participation in the union youth center during summer 1991, a large group of youth gathered in front of the union court house to pass the idle summer days. their presence was unwelcomed by the larger public, however, and the young people were arrested and charged with loitering. as a result of this highly publicized incident, a group of youth and adults started to meet to tackle issues ranging from the lack of youth spaces to police harassment and unemployment. they called themselves the young adult action group (yaag). after several years of meetings and research, this group of young people and several adults opened the union youth center. the center was to be free of charge to any young person in the city and to be a safe space where everyone agreed gang affiliations and turf issues would be left at the door. most importantly, they retained the yaag as the organizational structure that ensured youth would participate in operating the organization, shaping programs, and delivering activities, and that youth would also be voting members of the board of directors (ross, 2002). for many years, young people literally ran the center. however, as the organization grew and operations became more complex, the governance and leadership roles young people played diminished. the yaag became more of a youth leadership program than an organizational decision-making body. today, the union youth center serves hundreds of union youth and young adults as an educational and social facility that provides activities such as martial arts, a recording studio, a dance studio, recreational activities, and structured education, leadership, and workforce development programs. while the center remains committed to youth voice, their input is more limited to the realm of programming and planning activities rather than governance. ucap-a, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 478 one of the structured programs and the focus of this case study, is a youth leadership program that infuses the arts as a medium for social change within the framework of urban community action planning with teens (ucapt). urban community action planning – arts (ucap-a): program design and implementation esayas: the organization’s executive director conceptualized and designed ucap-a based on her love for the arts, her connections with the arts community, and the organization’s commitment to using the ucapt curriculum in its structured programs. she realized that many of the youth in the center possessed strong arts skills, but for various reasons were not receiving the necessary training, and lacked opportunities to utilize their passion and skills for personal and community development. she believed that the arts could be a powerful motivating force to engage young people in social change efforts in their communities. the director partnered with the union art museum to create such an opportunity. ucap-a incorporated social change and the arts with elements of work readiness and experiential learning for the purpose of fostering leadership skills and developing more protective measures in young people’s lives. we held the program twice a week. one of the weekly sessions focused on engaging the youth in community analysis. the other weekly session was spent at the union art museum, where the youth learned about various art media. the 15 youth participants, made up of males and females ranging from 15 to 20 years of age, included a mix of long-time union youth center members, as well as students of area public high schools who were recruited for this program. i conveyed to the group right from the beginning that ucap-a would be led by them, and that they would be engaging in community analysis. i made it clear through my words and a variety of team builders and icebreakers that the youth would be making important decisions. i often told them, “this is a program for you and by you, and so you have to take the initiative.” on days that were focused on community analysis, i facilitated discussions, community walks, mapping exercises, and consensus-building activities in order to identify an issue that the group would address collectively. while engaging in community walks, we observed distinct differences between neighborhoods where the ucap-a participants lived and those “on the other side of the city.” the housing stock in the neighborhoods where the ucap-a participants lived was inundated with trash, litter, and illegal dumping. the young people talked about how others saw their neighborhoods as full of gang activity, as bad, and as unsafe. while they recognized that the issues were complex, they chose trash and littering as the subject for an intervention because they felt more likely to have an impact on that issue. after reaching consensus on trash, jeanette and i helped the youth conduct research to understand the trash collection system in union. during this research phase, the young people were also receiving art lessons at the union art museum. at first, they spent time in the museum learning various art media and interacting with artists. their arts education would soon take a practical direction as they developed ideas for projects. they decided to address trash and littering by creating a video that taught younger youth the environmental and community effects of littering, and holding an art exhibit that expressed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 479 their outrage about the social and environmental effects of the abundance of litter in their community. we initiated a third project to increase the number of trash receptacles in the community, but after working on this initiative for a month the youth chose to focus on the other projects given the costs, time, and complexity associated with the endeavor. the culmination of the program was the completion of a short video project and an art exhibition at the center held in conjunction with artists and staff from the union art museum. sixty members of the community came out to support the work of the young people, including the funder, union youth center staff, board members, youth members, and their families. ucap-a program participants reported a sense of pride in their artwork. the youth were eager to display the products of their work, and discuss the ucap-a process with attendees. the ucap-a program was a success to the extent that it allowed youth the space to think critically and address issues that affect their lives and community. the emancipatory and experiential learning aspects of the program contributed to the many positive outcomes. below are some outcomes achieved by youth involved in the program: • 70% of youth partners increased by a letter grade in one subject or more. • 100% of youth partners who were seniors in high school enrolled in college (7/15). • 100% of youth partners who were out of school and unemployed obtained employment after the program (2/15). • 100% of youth partners who were involved in the juvenile justice system did not reoffend (3/15). in addition to these individual-level outcomes, the group produced sculptures that depicted their perceptions of causes and consequences of trash and inequities in the trash collection system in the city. they raised their own as well as the community’s awareness of the problem and demonstrated that youth are concerned and want to address trash and littering. dilemma #1: getting youth to believe they have power while the above description of ucap-a process and outcomes appears to be relatively smooth, we now discuss challenges we faced in the program. an initial barrier we encountered was youth’s mindset about their lack of decision-making power vis-à-vis adults. the youth-adult partnership aspect of the program intrigued many of the youth, yet, they were dubious about the “power” they were told they now possessed. as one participant, cara, stated, “adults say you have power, but they never mean it. when it comes to actually using your power, they are quick to take your ‘power’ away.” to address this tension, we provided opportunities that would build group camaraderie and egalitarian social relations. we started each meeting with an icebreaker that focused on team building and experience sharing, and we supplemented the formal meetings with field trips and potlucks. we realized we had to permit ourselves to be present with the youth and not always focused on moving to the next step of the program. being present allowed us to hear youth concerns and ideas, and helped foster an atmosphere of mutual respect. being present allowed us to joke and play with youth and, at times, to be the subject of their humor. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 480 even with these intentional activities, youth were quick to revert to typical youth roles and expectations, that is, to follow adult instruction and not behave as partners. for example, in the weeks leading up to the group’s decision to discontinue the trash receptacle project, youth questioned why we let them pursue the project if it was not realistic. they had expected that we would make the decision for them and stop the project. dilemma #2: getting the adults to relinquish decision-making power allowing young people to make decisions, even if we as adults do not think they are the right decisions, is a critical component of youth-adult partnerships. this became evident during ucap-a while hiring museum artists to partner with the youth on their projects. initially, jeanette and i selected an artist we thought worked very well with youth and possessed a high caliber of art skills. we made this decision without the approval of the youth. when we informed the group, the youth put the brakes on the process. they sat us down and stated their preference for another artist. although we believed the artist we had chosen had the experience to better deliver program outcomes, we honored the youth preference because it was more valuable than program outcomes such as high quality artwork. in the end, we worked well with the youth’s preferred artist, and more importantly, it allowed the youth to engage in real decision-making. we realized that at the heart of our challenge to relinquish decision-making power was our concern about fulfilling the programmatic outcomes expected by the funder. our move to be open and honest with the youth about funder mandates opened a whole new space for dialogue about how one works within boundaries set by outside actors. we were able to explain why we made the decision we did about the artist. rather than thwarting youth voice or hiding information from the youth, we found that being clear and open about funder requirements actually proved to be liberating in that the youth had the information they needed to make good decisions about the direction of their project. by the end of program, cara, the same youth quoted earlier, stated that the program, “left me feeling very confident in my abilities. it pushed me to create something that was solely me. in reflecting, i feel like because of this program i can do anything.” youth were able to form authentic relationships with adult partners within the space of the program. the processes involved in ucap-a allowed for an organic engagement that dispelled traditional youth adult relationships and empowered both adult and youth partners in becoming active agents of change in their communities. dilemma #3: scaling up youth-adult partnerships the ucap-a program created a space where youth and adult partners could equitably engage in community change. unfortunately, the feelings of emancipation and power that were exercised in the ucap-a program faced contestation in the greater union youth center. marla’s experience exemplifies this challenge. she had been a regular participant for several years and had participated in almost all the programs available prior to her involvement in ucap-a. marla easily embraced the relinquishing of “adult power” and accepted the responsibilities that came with taking leadership. once the program was over, however, marla had a difficult time international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 481 navigating the structures of the center. having grown accustomed to taking leadership and maneuvering the ucap-a program, her relationship with the director and other staff members became almost confrontational. the deterioration of marla’s relationship with adults in the organization was caused by the difference between youth and adult interactions in the center as a whole compared to the ucap-a program. although the center embraced youth-adult partnerships in the context of one program, other programs operating in the center did not follow such a philosophy. moreover, the organization’s structure, staff, and management did not fully internalize youth-adult partnership and thus failed to create an organizational culture that catered to such a philosophy. for example, while the organization’s by-laws call for a certain number of youth to sit on the board of directors, it had been years since a consistent group of youth participated on this governing body. further, the yaag – which at one time had been the heart of youth-adult decision making at the organization level – had largely been defunct for at least a year prior to the ucap-a group starting. as a result of the ucap-a program, youth reported a sense of empowerment and ability to affect change in their communities. without supportive systems at the organization level, however, youth-adult partnerships realized in ucap-a did not scale up to equitable relationships among youth and adults in the center as a whole. although the center has some structures for youth inclusion, this has not translated to an overall culture or practice where youth are truly partners in the operation of the organization. case two: reconciling tensions between practices, principles, and values in the context of organizational events and pressure to achieve measurable outcomes at the oak hill neighborhood center jeanette: oak hill neighborhood center is a neighborhood-based, multi-service community center providing low-income children and families in union with a full spectrum of programs and services. individuals and families often turn to oak hill neighborhood center for assistance in meeting their critical basic needs, to obtain shelter and transitional housing, and for after-school and summer recreational programs for young people. historically, the organization’s youth programming has functioned as an alternative to the street and focused solely on providing sports and recreational opportunities. more recently, the organization has undergone a grant-funded restructuring process, and created the child, youth and family services department. within this restructuring, a principal goal emerged to shift oak hill neighborhood center toward the delivery of high quality youth development, leadership, and education programs for teens and young adults ages 14 to 18. as the child, youth and family services department took shape, the director of the department engaged in conversations with the executive director of the union youth center regarding the possibilities for organizational collaboration. together, they identified ucapt as the first programmatic step for the newly created department, and they envisioned it as the youth-led planning model for the development of an oak hill neighborhood center youth leadership program. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 482 management from oak hill neighborhood center and the union youth center partnered to design the initial phase of ucapt. i was identified as the union youth center staff member who would support oak hill during the implementation of the pilot program due to my experience with esayas facilitating ucap-a. after the initial pilot, it was envisioned that oak hill neighborhood center staff would maintain the program. as conceived by upper level leadership within oak hill neighborhood center, the program’s primary objective of adopting ucapt was the formation and promotion of an ongoing youth peer leadership team. the program was intended to allow young people to plan, shape, and lead future programming, and to provide a means through which to formalize the roles of young people as leaders within the organization. the pilot ucapt program would provide the initial context for developing youth-adult partnerships essential for achieving this goal. during the early implementation stage, however, many organizational challenges emerged. beginning with recruitment and ending with the completion of a group project, issues around organizational and staff capacity issues emerged. the challenges included a disconnect between the principles underlying ucapt and the actions of leadership and staff, communication barriers among stakeholders, inadequate time and resources, and particular events that transpired during implementation. ucapt implementation prior to the first session with youth participants, i provided ucapt training to two of the newly hired oak hill neighborhood center teen program staff members who were to be cofacilitators of the program. david, the oak hill recreation director, was responsible for youth recruitment. unfortunately, he had not attended the ucapt training, and potential participants were told that the program would consist of community service projects. they were not told that they would be working in partnership with staff to understand and address neighborhood issues through the design of a youth leadership program. the young people therefore came into the program with an erroneous understanding of program expectations and goals due to staff not fully understanding the principles underlying the program. despite challenges recruiting and retaining young people in the program, a core group of six youth, both male and female, met twice per week for 11 weeks. i led these sessions with the assistance of an oak hill neighborhood center staff member, amanda. having participated in ucap-a, i was able to facilitate the same set of team builders and neighborhood analysis activities that had been used by esayas. through the ucapt process, the group determined that youth gangs and disrespect for the neighborhood by residents were the main issues they wanted to tackle. by the eighth week of the program, the group had begun to realize that they had a role to play as youth leaders within oak hill neighborhood center. they discussed the importance of positive role models in ending the cycle of young people entering gangs; in particular, youth began to formulate ways they could be the role models for younger children attending oak hill neighborhood center. in this process, they highlighted how david had played an important role in preventing them and other youth in oak hill from joining gangs, and how he had engaged them in positive activities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 483 the neighborhood analysis portion of the program discussed above progressed more slowly than it had for the ucap-a group in the union youth center. the incorrect program description used during recruitment contributed to the slow pace, and many of the young people expressed frustration with the format of the program. originally told that the group would go out to various places in the community to perform service, the young people recruited were initially resistant to the idea that they would explore their neighborhood and select the issue(s) to address. as a result, i had to facilitate additional team-building activities and engage participants in more intensive discussions about neighborhood strengths. we took several field trips to community organizations, including the union youth center, before they could begin to visualize their ability as youth to have an impact in the community. these factors, in addition to the staff turnover that postponed the program launch, pushed back the solution generation portion of the program. with the pressure to have a tangible product completed by the end of the program, the director of child, youth and family services handed a project to the group. the data collection and action planning portions of ucapt were cut short, and the focus of the group turned from addressing gang issues to redesigning oak hill’s teen space, a project that had recently received grant funding. though the young people did not develop the project idea, they made it their own and carried it out by brainstorming ideas for how to transform the room, selecting paint and furniture, creating a scaled drawing of the new layout, and painting the space. given their struggles during the problem identification and solution generation phases of ucapt, and having articulated feelings of powerlessness in discussions around community issues, youth participants welcomed the clearly defined project. just as the task of painting the room was undertaken, the program ended. oak hill neighborhood center had begun its summer programming, and the staff would no longer be able to commit time to the ucapt program. from start to finish, this pilot revealed some of the issues and dilemmas that can arise when an organization attempts to adopt innovative programs and practices without first internalizing the underlying principles and processes. dilemma #1: reconciling tensions between practices, principles, and values even though oak hill leadership desired organizational change, they seemed unready to adopt the key elements of ucapt. communication barriers and time constraints prevented stakeholders at all levels of the organization from coming to agreement about the purpose and principles of ucapt both prior to and during implementation. senior leadership was often consumed by broader organizational operations and did not have time to engage in reflective dialogue with staff and the youth. as a result, little shared understanding of ucapt and youthadult partnerships emerged and staff had unclear expectations about their roles and responsibilities. this issue became evident during the recruitment process for ucapt during which young people were given an inaccurate description of the program. it became even more evident during program implementation where staff never fully viewed young people as partners in ucapt. amanda took a more traditional approach to youth work. whenever a young person behaved inappropriately according to her expectations, such as being loud, using profanity, or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 484 joking around with others in the group, she would quickly reprimand them. her reactive approach meant that she consistently asserted her authority rather than processing and redirecting negative behavior. this precluded relinquishing power; the staff member saw her role as maintaining order and attending to behavioral issues rather than engaging in a partnership with young people. for their part, youth participants were also accustomed to the traditional approach, and were more responsive to instruction than collaboration within the program. dilemma #2: dealing with organizational events during the ucapt pilot, it became clear that events within the organization but external to the program can have unanticipated impacts on processes and outcomes. at the height of the program, the morale of the youth and staff involved in ucapt was dealt a serious blow with the firing of david. though this staff person was not directly involved in ucapt beyond recruitment, he was a central institutional figure for all of the young people involved. with his unexpected departure, many in the group shared sentiments that the oak hill neighborhood center leadership did not care about their wants and needs. as a result, they felt that their input and voices were not important, thereby undoing a great deal of the progress that had been made in the program. though the group had begun articulating the leadership roles they could play in the organization – as role models for younger children, for example – this event undermined their fragile sense of power. unaccustomed to incorporating young people’s voices in organizational decision-making, oak hill leadership did not create the space for the youth leaders to share their grievances, let alone participate in the decision. dilemma #3: succumbing to pressure to achieve tangible outcomes through the processes of neighborhood problem and strength identification, young people partnering in the ucapt program reached a point where they were beginning to articulate the role that the oak hill neighborhood center plays in their community. they were also beginning to identify the roles that young people can play in the community, and the contributions they could make to oak hill. despite this achievement, the act of having a predetermined project handed to the group undermined the burgeoning youth-adult partnership and its underlying processes. during the eighth week of the program, the teen space redesign project was handed to them as the final task. with the program’s end looming, we decided to take it on because of pressure to achieve a tangible outcome. although the project was pushed onto them, youth exercised their agency by embracing the process to accomplish the task through the planning and design process. they seized the opportunity to design the teen space as they saw fit, from the choice of paint colors to the furniture and layout of the room. in the end, the project undertaken by the group represents a missed opportunity for shifting the oak hill neighborhood center from providing services to young people to a space where they collaborate with adults. rather than having a legitimate opportunity to impact the youth programming and policies of oak hill as intended, the project they were given channeled the group’s energy into completing a one-time assignment. the project itself was very successful, and had the potential to be an important component of team-building and fostering youth-adult partnerships. what should have been a “small win” as the group of young leaders progressed during ucapt unfortunately became the end in and of itself. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 485 analysis of the case studies in the two case studies, youth and adults were confronted with a series of dilemmas when attempting to work in partnership. ucapt – as a set of activities – was a constant in the union youth center and the oak hill neighborhood center cases. yet, the types of youth-adult relationships that emerged in the ucap-a group differed from those within the union youth center as an organization, and again from those that formed in the ucapt program at the oak hill neighborhood center. if the program (ucapt) in all three contexts was the same, and there was even some overlap in adult staff involved in the two cases, then what accounts for the different outcomes we saw in the types of youth participation and youth-adult partnerships that emerged in each case? in order to answer this question, we join bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecology of human development and wong, zimmerman, and parker’s (2010) pyramid of youth participation into an ecological model of organizational readiness for youth-adult partnerships. in case one, it appears that youth and adults were able to achieve what wong et al. call a pluralistic form of youth participation in the ucap-a program: although youth–adult partnerships may have varying degrees of youth and adult control within them, shared planning and decision making is what differentiates the pluralistic type from other participation types.... the shared control between youth and adults provides a social arrangement that is ideal for positive youth development and empowerment. in this type, adults are involved at a level where the purpose of their presence is to maximize conditions and opportunities. (p. 109) within the ucap-a microsystem, adults worked intentionally to create a space where young people understood the funder-driven parameters in which they could work and then ceded as much power as possible to them. this is not to say the adults stepped back and let the young people do whatever they wanted. to the contrary, adults made a conscious decision to “be” with the young people, to work alongside them. an excellent example of the youth’s decision-making ability was when they expressed their dissatisfaction with the artist that was chosen for them by the adults. the adults heard them out and then, as a group, they hired the artist that the youth felt would be a better match. an interesting clash between microsystems happened, however, when young people who had been through the ucap-a program attempted to make decisions at the level of the organization. these young people found that while they were listened to, they did not play a role in setting the agenda at board meetings, or in creating organization-wide policy. this caused frustration for some of the youth. we see that while the organization espouses a youth-led model, in practice, young people’s participation can be characterized as symbolic: [y]outh have the opportunity to voice their perspectives about problems and their potential solutions, and be heard by decision-makers. adults may, for example set up formal or informal structures for youth to express their opinions and experiences…but in the end youth often do not have much power in the decisionmaking or agenda-setting process. (wong et al., p. 108) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 486 there appeared to be firm boundaries between the microsystem of the ucap-a program and the exosystem of organizational leadership, including the board of directors. the center’s history of youth-adult partnership and culture of deep youth involvement supported the pluralistic relationships within ucap-a but did not guarantee such relationships at the level of organizational decision-making and governance. turning to the second case, we see that the oak hill neighborhood center actively sought to incorporate the ucapt program as a foundational element of its newly revitalized youth development programming. oak hill leaders genuinely were interested in deepening youth involvement both in the organization and in the community. yet, young people’s participation was not fully realized. youth involvement in the program could be described as what wong et al. call vessel participation: “the main objective of youth presence is to advance an adult-driven agenda” (p. 106). oak hill neighborhood center appreciated the idea of youth involvement and wanted to develop a youth leadership program but the organization had not made a fundamental shift in culture that embraced or understood authentic youth participation. staff continued to take the role of maintaining order and control in the group, rather than working in partnership with the young people. similar to the union youth center, there was a firm barrier between the microsystem of the group and the exosystem where organizational decision-making and governance occurred. decisions and activities in the exosystem (e.g., funding directives and hiring or firing decisions) negatively affected the extent to which young people could engage in authentic participation and decision-making in their program. in contrast to the union youth center, where youth involvement – albeit a symbolic form – had become the norm, we found that the oak hill neighborhood center operated in a more traditional mode with adults having all of the decisionmaking power. indeed, oak hill neighborhood center revealed some of the issues and dilemmas that can arise when an organization attempts to adopt innovative programs and practices without first internalizing the underlying principles and processes (zeldin, petrokubi, & macneil, 2008). discussion we have joined bronfenbrenner’s ecology of human development and wong et al.’s pyramid of youth participation into an ecological model of organizational readiness for youthadult partnerships. we illustrated the importance of analyzing different ecological levels – particularly the microsystem and exosystem – to understand the extent to which young people and adults forge pluralistic relationships and whether their efforts have emancipatory effects at the individual, group, organization, and community levels. the joining of these two frameworks into an ecological model of organizational readiness reveals both how different forms of youthadult partnerships can coexist within one organization, as well as the benefits and consequences of these various forms of youth participation. analyzing dilemmas in this way provides a more nuanced understanding of the practice of working in youth-adult partnerships than much of the current literature provides. two interesting insights can be derived from analyzing these dilemmas through an ecological model of organizational readiness for youth-adult partnerships. first, the literature international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 487 suggests that youth disengage when they are not allowed to have voice and decision-making power, particularly in a program that is geared toward promoting youth leadership and youthadult partnership (zeldin, 2004). however, this is not what happened in the oak hill neighborhood center case, in spite of the vessel form of participation that young people exercised. in fact, they actually seemed to embrace adult-provided structure and projects. we found that neither the young people nor the adults were ready to work in a youth-adult partnership in which the adults cede power in order for the youth and adults to contribute and participate equitably and appropriately given their roles and status. second, and perhaps of deeper significance to our understanding of emancipatory youthadult partnerships, our cases suggest that to achieve pluralistic youth-adult partnerships the microsystem needs to expand to include what would typically be the exosystem in other settings. for example, there would not be a separate space where decisions about funding and staff are made. rather, the functions of youth programs and governing boards would overlap. in the ucap-a case, we did see the microsystem of the group expand to include exosystem-type decisions – such as the hiring of a particular artist and having the information needed to negotiate funder expectations. interestingly, the oak hill case presented similar personnel challenges and the need to negotiate funder expectations; however, all decisions and information about these topics remained firmly in the exosystem, to the detriment of the formation of authentic youthadult partnerships. these insights have implications for understanding organizational readiness and for guiding additional research into youth-adult partnerships. staff and leaders in the organization from top to bottom need to fully consider the extent to which the principles that underlie authentic youth-adult partnerships are compatible with the setting in which they are being introduced. if there is not yet compatibility, then the organization needs to engage in deliberate dialogue until there is a sense of shared perceptions among actors regarding these core values, principles, and processes. successful incorporation of youth-adult partnerships in organizational governance and decision-making also requires that the organization fully considers the time, energy, adult qualifications, and youth readiness it takes for pluralistic participation (zeldin et al., 2008). finally, the move toward emancipatory youth-adult partnerships involves the expansion of the developmental sphere of youth programs to include the activities, relationships, and roles that traditionally have been limited to organizational leadership and governance structures. likewise, the developmental sphere of the governing body has to take on activities, relationships, and roles of what has typically been the youth program. achieving this merging of youth program microsystems and governance exosystems will require new types of ecologically informed research and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 475–488 488 references bronfenbrenner, u. (1979). the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ross, l. (2002). rebuilding communities, shaping identities: the impact of a participatory neighborhood planning process on young, low-income adolescents of color in x, massachusetts. unpublished dissertation. university of massachusetts, boston. ross, l., & coleman, m. (2000). urban community action planning inspires teenagers to transform their community and their identity. journal of community practice. 7, 29–45. ross, l., downs, t., tejani, a., dezan, r., & lowe, k. (2010). trust, preparation, transparency, and reflection: negotiating roles in youth-adult partnerships for social and environmental justice. in w. linds, l. goulet, & a. sammel (eds.), emancipatory practices: adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (pp. 183–198). rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. wong, n., zimmerman, m., & parker, e. (2010). a typology of youth participation and empowerment for child and adolescent health promotion. american journal of community psychology, 46(1/2), 100–114. zeldin, s. (2004). youth as agents of adult and community development: mapping the process and outcomes of youth engaged in organizational governance. applied developmental science, 8(2), 75–90. zeldin, s., petrokubi, j., & macneil, c. (2008). youth-adult partnerships in decision making: disseminating and implementing an innovative idea into established organizations and communities. american journal of community psychology, 41(3/4), 262–277. jeanette roach, esayas wureta, and laurie ross abstract: this article explores dilemmas that arise when using a participatory, experiential neighborhood problem-solving and planning program in settings that have different expectations and beliefs about youth and adults partnering in organizational... ross, l. (2002). rebuilding communities, shaping identities: the impact of a participatory neighborhood planning process on young, low-income adolescents of color in x, massachusetts. unpublished dissertation. university of massachusetts, boston. immigrant family in distress: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 1 immigrant family in distress: assisting immigrant parents of juvenile delinquents liat yakhnich and meir teichman abstract: this exploratory and descriptive paper depicts a unique pilot program in israel aimed at assisting and supporting immigrant families from the former soviet union (fsu) whose children have been involved in criminal behavior after the immigration. the program is a joint venture of the immigrant parents forum association, the welfare services department at the ministry of immigrant absorption (mia), and the juvenile probation service (jps) at the ministry of welfare and social services. it provides structured help to the families of these youngsters, including mediation with the jps and other officials and public bodies in the community, parental training, guidance, and emotional support. the program description, including case illustrations, is based on the program's internal documents and interviews with the following key figures: the chairwoman of the immigrant parents forum, two program coordinators, the program supervisor, the director of the jps, the deputy head of the regional jps office in charge of implementing the program on a trial basis, and the regional social worker at the ministry of immigrant absorption. although the program is implemented in a particular social and political context, it may offer ideas about assisting immigrant parents regardless of origin, ethnicity, and specific social circumstances. keywords: immigrant adolescents, immigrant parents, youth delinquency, probation service liat yakhnich, ph.d., (the corresponding author) youth development department, beit berl academic college, beit berl 49905, israel. e-mail: liatyakhnich@yahoo.com meir teichman, ph.d., professor emeritus, tel-aviv university school of social work, tel-aviv 69978, israel. e-mail: teichma@post.tau.ac.il mailto:liatyakhnich@yahoo.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 2 the children of immigrant parents account for approximately 10% of all children in israel (cosher, ben-arie, & cohen, 2011); 53% of these are from the former soviet union (fsu): in other words, 5.3% of all children. studies of this population reveal high levels of risk-taking and anti-social behavior that is manifested in high dropout rates from school, delinquency, substance abuse, etc. (cosher et al., 2011; edelstein & bar-hamburger, 2007; horowitz & brosh, 2011; mirsky, 2012). these findings are consistent with those of other studies around the world, which point to high levels of risk-taking and anti-social behavior among adolescent immigrants by comparison with their parents or their non-immigrant peers (bankston, 1998; janssen et al., 2004; killian, 2002; van leeuwen, rodgers, bui, pirlot, & chabrol, 2014 ). however, a few authors suggest immigrant adolescents’ adaptation may be as good as, and sometimes even better than, that of their peers. this phenomenon has been referred to as the “immigrant paradox” (sam, vedder, liebkind, neto, & virta, 2008). immigrant youth and anti-social behavior immigration can pose enormous challenges to an adolescent’s psychological and social functioning. differences in language, values, norms, and rules of social interaction can hamper his or her development. the immigration experience is especially complex for adolescents, since their mental equilibrium is more delicate than that of adults and they require a more stable environment to develop normally (mann, 2004; mirsky & peretz, 2006). in addition, immigration can undermine an adolescent’s process of identity formation (mann, 2004; mirsky & peretz, 2006; tsang, irving, alaggia, chau, & benjamin, 2003). one of the adverse consequences observed in this context is the high incidence of antisocial behavior among immigrant youth. the literature explains this phenomenon as follows: the criminological view sees variables such as conflicting values, exposure to discrimination, social marginalization, and lack of social control as significant factors (killian, 2002); while the psychological approach attributes it to the sense of loss and grief experienced by the immigrant youth (henry, stiles, & biran, 2005); to developmental challenges and the immaturity of adolescence (mirsky & peretz, 2006); and to the cultural characteristics of immigrant youths (tartakovsky & mirsky 2001). according to titzmann, raabe, and silbereisen’s (2008) model of delinquent behavior among immigrant youth, there are three major factors that can either foster or inhibit the emergence of anti-social behavior: peer influence, school involvement, and family relationships. an immigrant youth subjected to negative peer influences has fewer normative social networks to counter the negative impact. his or her parents have fewer means and ability to be involved in their child’s life, they may lack the social support network needed to deal with his behavioral problems, and they are often too preoccupied with their own adaptation problems to provide effective parental oversight. similarly, the immigrant youth who is exposed to risk factors within the family will have fewer external resources to counter the negative impact at home. the support that he might receive in school may be hampered by language difficulties, lack of positive feedback from teachers, and classmates’ rejection – all of which may disrupt the process of internalizing pro-social norms of the sort usually acquired at school. in these circumstances, the immigration experience can become a kind of transition period in which previous behavioral patterns are disrupted, requiring the youth’s entire developmental system to be reconfigured (granic & patterson, 2006). as a result, the positive effect of the social environment, which would normally curb the negative effects through oversight or support, is undermined, and risk factors associated with criminal behavior come to the fore (titzmann et al., 2008). http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=van%20leeuwen,%20nikki http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=van%20leeuwen,%20nikki http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=bui,%20eric http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=bui,%20eric http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=chabrol,%20henri international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 3 one of the factors extensively studied in relation to the adaptation of immigrant adolescents is their cultural and national identity (phinney, horenczyk, liebkind, & vedder, 2001; walsh & tartakovsky, 2011). the findings are consistent with the main claims of berry’s acculturation theory (berry, 1997), which posits four possible strategies of cultural adaptation (acculturation) among immigrants. the strategy that has been found to be the most likely to promote the immigrant’s normal psychological adjustment is integration, meaning identification with both the culture of origin and the host culture (berry, 1997; van leeuwen et al., 2014). adolescents’ positive relationship with both identities (identity of origin and identity of the host society) is essential to a normal process of adaptation (walsh & tarta-kovsky, 2011). conversely, the marginalization strategy – a sense of not belonging to any culture – is thought to be a risk factor for anti-social behavior among immigrant youths. adolescents with a marginal identity are in a state of diminished social supervision (edelstein & barhamburger, 2007). many of them feel alienated toward both the host society and the culture of origin, and anti-social behavior offers them a means of expressing anger and anomie, a sense of belonging, a social status, and an alternative culture. parents’ attitude can do much to contribute to the youths’ positive connection with their cultural identity (phinney et al., 2001). the parents’ openness to the host culture, while maintaining a positive (and coercion-free) connection with the culture of origin, correlates to well-being among young immigrants (henry, stiles, biran, & hinkle, 2008). in this context, it would be important to mention the phenomenon of “third culture kids” (tck) who develop a unique cultural identity that synthesizes aspects of their home and host cultures, but differs from both (hoersting & jenkins, 2011). these children often form a cross-cultural identity and feel a sense of belonging to a tck cultural group rather than to home or host cultures (pollock & van reken, 1999). the phenomenon sometimes is named “cultural homelessness” (hoersting & jenkins, 2011). similar to youth whose acculturation strategy is marginalization (berry, 1997), these youngsters live in a framework that may include experiences that do not belong to any specific cultural reference group (vivero & jenkins, 1999). there are both positive and negative aspects of this uniqueness. the positive experiences associated with “cultural homelessness” are being multilingual and demonstrating cross-cultural competence. the negative aspects are a sense of not belonging to any group, and feelings of loneliness and disorientation (hoersting & jenkins, 2011). the family context of anti-social behavior among immigrant adolescents anti-social behavior among adolescents is strongly linked to familial factors. according to the theory of social control, family cohesion, a strong positive relationship between the youth and parents, and parental monitoring significantly reduce youth engagement in negative behavior (hirschi, 1969; ward & laughlin, 2003). conversely, a negative relationship with parents increases the risk of the youth’s engaging in negative behavior. studies conducted in israel have found that the family of origin plays a key role in explaining delinquency among immigrant adolescents. a study by horowitz & brosh (2011) found that a significant percentage of immigrant youths have difficult family environments. non-normative behaviors in the youth were related to multiple conflicts, financial hardship, and a harsh perception of immigration experience and of family life. a study by edelstein & bar-hamburger (2007) found a significant negative association of family cohesion and parental monitoring with psychoactive substance use and delinquent behavior among immigrant adolescents. their conclusion was that adolescent immigrants at risk often feel anger toward http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=van%20leeuwen,%20nikki http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=hoersting,%20raquel%20c. http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/science/article/pii/s0147176710001227#bib0185 http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=hoersting,%20raquel%20c. http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/science/article/pii/s0147176710001227#bib0035 http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/science/article/pii/s0147176710001227#bib0280 http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/science/article/pii/s0147176710001227#bib0280 http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=hoersting,%20raquel%20c. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 4 their parents and the host society, and that anti-social behavior offers them a means of displacing this anger (edelstein & bar-hamburger, 2007). immigrant families with adolescent children must contend with two formidable situations at once: a youth in the throes of socialization and identity formation, and parents struggling to redefine their own identity within the new country. these challenges are compounded when the immigrant parents are also emotionally inaccessible to their adolescent children and unable to provide for their developmental needs, including supervision and containing their negative impulses (mann, 2004). the fact that children acquire the language and an understanding of the local culture faster than their parents significantly affects the family relationships, deepens the social and linguistic divide between them and, in many instances, results in role reversal within the family (oznobishin & kurman, 2009; trickett & jones, 2007). this gulf puts the adolescent in a position of authority within the family. in oznobishin and kurman’s (2009) study, immigrant subjects reported having a more dominant position in their relationship with their parents, and less family support, compared to their non-immigrant peers. they also characterized the experience of acting as their parents’ translators in negative terms, citing embarrassment, psychological burden, and perception of their parents as dependent and weak. this combination of linguistic mediation on the parents’ behalf, and the low levels of family support, was found to be linked to the low self-esteem possessed by immigrant children (oznobishin & kurman, 2009), and to their higher emotional distress (jones, trickett, & birman, 2012). portes and rumbaut (2001) argue that the social adjustment of children of immigrants depends on the following factors: the social context (attitudes of the society and support by the local immigrant community); the personal resources (educational level, professional skills, etc.) of the children’s parents; and family factors such as extended family availability and the presence of significant adult figures. adjustment problems (e.g., anti-social behavior) are more typical among children who encounter hostility and a lack of support during their absorption, and come from broken and dysfunctional families, whose parents have low human capital. these children may experience a dissonant acculturation, characterized by rejecting their families’ language and values. in families where parents have failed to learn the new local language, this situation may result in the loss of their parental authority and an inability to influence their children (portes, fernandez-kelly, & haller, 2009). fsu immigrant families immigrant families from the european parts of the former soviet union are typically small, consisting of one or two children. the parents are highly motivated to invest in the children’s upbringing, especially their education (yakhnich, 2010). these families often delay the onset of the child’s independence (see leipzig, 2006; mirsky, 1997), and relations between parents and children are often characterized by a high degree of protectiveness and involvement (occasionally over-involvement), coupled with a demand for obedience and selfdiscipline (slonim-nevo, sharaga, & mirsky, 1999). these cultural attributes may heighten the distress felt by immigrant youths when exposed to the local culture, which is typically much less authoritarian and encourages them to rebel against their parents and the values they represent. indeed, in their study of fsu immigrant adolescents, dwairy and dor (2009) underline that the discrepancy between their parents’ parenting style and the permissive nature of israeli society creates difficulties for these children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 5 another factor that may make parenting more difficult in immigrant families is changes in the parents’ image of the “adaptive adult” – that is, the concept reflecting parents’ ideal image of how their children should be as adults (roer-strier & rosenthal, 2001). this image guides parental child-rearing practices, and is shaped by their own cultural background. in the case of fsu immigrants, the image of the “adaptive adult” is typically one of self-discipline, conformity, strong work ethic, and academic excellence (yakhnich, in press). the parent is perceived as having an authoritative and didactic role, setting clear norms of behavior and responsible for their implementation through enforcement, encouragement, and personal example. when a family arrives in a new society, the parents may preserve certain parts of the “adaptive adult” image and parental roles that they brought from the country of origin, while adopting other aspects of the local culture as a result of interaction with the new society (strier & roer-strier, 2005). this can result in undesirable changes in patterns of parenting, such as an abrupt transition from an authoritarian parenting approach with strict boundaries and limited communication with the children, to a highly permissive one with no rules and an egalitarian relationship with the adolescent. such sudden transitions may leave the child confused and directionless, undermine the parent’s authority and status, derail essential parental involvement and supervision, and possibly give rise to anti-social behavior (yakhnich, in press). immigrants from the fsu seem reluctant to refer to public psychosocial services (sakin, 2009). there are fundamental differences between such services in the fsu and in western countries, including israel, which is perhaps why many immigrants find it difficult to establish a proper relationship with them (sakin, 2009). those who do approach the authorities for help are deeply mistrustful of them. the therapeutic relationship with fsu immigrants typically involves fear of stigma, the sense of loss of control, difficulty in creating trust and discussing personal issues, and a high degree of ambivalence (leipzig, 2006; sakin, 2009). anti-social behavior on the part of an adolescent child is often perceived as tarnishing the entire family, and therefore the tendency is to avoid discussing it with “strangers” such as professionals (bronshtein & bar-on, 2008; sakin, 2009). accordingly, we assume that families with adolescent children who are most at risk, due to difficulties in adjusting to the new country, may avoid seeking help for themselves and for their children, or refuse to cooperate with officials who instigate the initial contact. treatment of delinquent youth in juvenile probation the juvenile probation service in israel is a social-therapeutic service with powers of enforcement provided by the ministry of social affairs and social services (2013). it handles minors at the age of criminal responsibility (12 to 18 years), who have been referred to it by police or by the court after indictment or conviction for a criminal offense and have been placed under a care order. in israel, juvenile probation officers are social workers who specialize in care for juvenile delinquents. their operational assumption is that juvenile delinquency is a symptom or product of difficulties and hardships experienced by minors at the personal, family, and social levels (ministry of social affairs and social services, 2013). accordingly, the probation officer’s task is to identify, diagnose, treat and help these minors tackle these difficulties, by all appropriate means of treatment and rehabilitation, with a view to returning them to normative function. the juvenile probation service (jps) provides the following services: evaluation of the psychosocial status of youth; individual and group-based care according the type of offense committed; assistance and counseling to the youth’s parents; and arranging placements outside the home. it also collaborates with community ageninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 6 cies to arrange personal mentoring for youths, employment training, integrating them into educational frameworks, and so forth. the experimental “family assistance program” the experimental family assistance program is the brainchild of the forum of immigrant parents (fip) – “a nonprofit organization established in 1995 by immigrant parents, educationalists and intellectuals from the fsu to support and advance immigrant families” (forum of immigrant parents, 2014). its purpose is to help the families of immigrants from the fsu whose children are in trouble with the law, in the belief that by helping and empowering the parents, they can help rehabilitate the juvenile delinquent child. the program was developed in collaboration with the ministry of immigrant absorption (mia), and the juvenile probation service (jps) at the ministry of social affairs. as mentioned previously, this paper is exploratory and descriptive, and is not based on research. information about the program was derived from the program's internal documents (e.g., program brochure, annual reports, etc.) and interviews with the following seven key figures: the chairwoman of the forum of immigrant parents, the program coordinator, two of the counselors, the director of the juvenile probation service, the deputy district officer in charge of implementing the program, and a district social worker of the ministry of immigrant absorption. the interviews were conducted by one of the authors. some officials were interviewed only once; others were interviewed several times (personally and by telephone) in order to complete the essential information. the program’s aims are: 1. to promote collaboration between parents and probation officers and other officials involved in the adolescent’s rehabilitation, and to enable parents to take advantage of the help and rehabilitation services offered by the jps. 2. to help the family as a whole create the necessary environment for the youth to be rehabilitated by facilitating communication between parents and children. a program coordinator (a psychiatrist and group facilitator by training) and three counselors of varied professional backgrounds but with a shared affinity for educational work run the program. it has been operating on a trial basis for some years in several communities, and after evaluation its scope is expected to widen. since it was launched the program has helped about 600 families, in close collaboration with the jps. currently, the program is handling about 150 families. the sole criterion for acceptance into the program is for the youth’s family to have immigrated from the fsu after 1990. it should be noted that apart from exceptional cases, most of the adolescents whose families participate in the program immigrated to israel at a young age (some have been born in israel), and got involved in criminal behavior after the immigration. when such a youth is referred to the jps in one of the towns where the program operates, he or she is automatically redirected to the program. the probation officer approaches the family for its permission and refers it to the counselor in their region, detailing the areas in which the program help is needed. the counselor then contacts the family and arranges an introductory meeting, where they map out the family’s needs for intervention or help. the counselor’s role covers three main areas: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 7 1. mediation between the family and the jps. some of the youths’ families refuse to cooperate with the service, due to language problems, unfamiliarity with the service, or simple suspicion and apprehension. part of the counselor’s job is to explain to the family what the jps does, and to encourage them to cooperate, for the youth’s sake. they then organize a series of joint meetings with the probation officer, in which they serve as mediator. the counselor, who speaks russian and is familiar with the family’s culture, manages to win their trust and supports their relationship with the probation officer. in addition, he helps the probation officers – who are usually not members of the “russian” community themselves – to understand the distinctive cultural reasons behind the families’ function and behavior. 2. mediation between the family and community services, such as the national insurance institute, schools, police, and others. the counselor helps the family to form relationships with these officials and make use of available services that it may not know about, and refers individual family members to other professionals as required. they also help other children in the family by arranging public extra-curricular activities and courses, help with schoolwork, etc. 3. parental guidance in areas such as interacting with the adolescent child, setting boundaries, handling conflicts, while providing parents with emotional support. counselors also arrange informative meetings where parents can meet professionals and representatives of various public agencies, support groups and other activities, with a view to empowering the parents and supporting them. the underlying premise behind all the work in the program is that strengthening the family is a key to the adolescent’s rehabilitation. it is important to note that the counselor is not engaged in therapeutic work per se though, as few are trained psychotherapists. the relationship with the family can last between three months to three years, with the average being around one year. once the charges against the youth are dropped, the counselor notifies the family that its participation in the program terminates. in most cases, this occurs approximately two months after the legal charges are dropped. a review of program records to date reveals that, since its onset, only one family dropped out of the program prior to the criminal charges being dropped. case illustrations the following cases illustrate the typical actions and involvement of a program counselor with a family. case one: a juvenile probation officer contacted the program coordinator about a 14year-old boy who had been indicted for assault. the parents had immigrated to israel five years before, and were living with their son in a one-room apartment, in highly crowded conditions. they were struggling financially, as both worked at menial jobs for little pay. both had found it difficult to adapt to the country and still spoke no hebrew. when the boy was placed under house arrest, the family's situation deteriorated even further, since one of the conditions of the order was that he be supervised and escorted outside the home by one of the parents at all times, which meant that the father had to leave his job, and the mother became the family’s sole provider. the probation officer had been unable to contact the family, due to language difficulties and because parents were unwilling to meet her. however, the parents were willing to cooperate with the program counselor, to whom they confided their sense of helplessness, disorientation and misgivings about the probation service, which they suspected of colluding with the police and conspiring to take their son away. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 8 the counselor began by explaining the role of the probation officer to the parents, and explaining to the probation officer why the parents had been so suspicious of her. this allowed the parents and the probation officer to begin a process of positive cooperation whenever the counselor was present. as a first step toward building trust, it was decided with the probation officer, to recommend to the court that the boy be permitted to attend school once again, provided his father escorted him there and back. once achieved, the counselor arranged for the family to be reimbursed for transportation costs to and from school – then, with the probation officer, recommended to the court that the father be released from his chaperone duties, and helped him find a new job. these positive outcomes of cooperation increased the parents’ trust in both the counselor and the probation officer. throughout this period the counselor also provided guidance to the parents, with particular emphasis on establishing constructive communication, setting boundaries, and restoring parental authority. over time, the parents reported a significant improvement in the relationship with their son. after seven months, the boy continued to be monitored by the probation service, but the house arrest order was dropped, and the counselor maintained contact with the parents. eighteen months after the family was referred to the program, the boy's criminal record was expunged, with no negative consequences to his future prospects. in a follow-up check three years later, the boy had not been referred back to the probation service. case two: the program counselor was approached by a probation officer about a 15 year-old boy, who was involved in drug abuse. during the meetings, the counselor discovered the boy’s parents each had substantially different educational approaches, which caused multiple conflicts between the two. the conflicts occurred in the boy’s presence, and granted him an opportunity to manipulate his parents and get almost everything he wanted. the boy’s father demonstrated a lack of involvement in his son education, expressed indifference to his situation, and attributed his problems to the “lack of discipline” in israeli schools. the counselor worked with both parents to establish a cohesive educational position and promote cooperation between them, and encouraged the boy’s father to take responsibility and get involved in his son’s life. he informed the father as to educational approaches in the school and helped him to reduce his level of helplessness and frustration. the parents also participated in parents’ group and attended educational lectures held in the program. within a year the parents reported a significant improvement in their relationships with their son. at the same time, the counselor served as a mediator between the family and the school authorities. there was a significant deterioration in the boy’s achievements, he missed school on many occasions, and his teachers expressed doubts as to his ability to advance to a higher class. the counselor met with the school counselor and recruited her support, as well as helped the family to have scholastic assistance for their son. the boy’s schools achievements improved significantly, which contributed greatly to the positive attitude of his teachers and their willingness to support him. the boy graduated his class successfully. he was not involved in delinquent behavior during this period. his charges are expected to be dropped in two months. these two cases illustrate the majority of situations encountered by the program counselors, as well as interventions performed by them. the counselors’ work involves mediation between the family and the jps and other community services, as well as parental guidance. the counselors who were interviewed report positive outcomes in both cases, such as better family environment, improved academic and social functioning, and lack of recidivism on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 9 part of the adolescents. it should be stressed, though, that since this paper is not based on a controlled study, other factors may well contribute to these outcomes. discussion immigrant adolescents are an at-risk population with regard to anti-social behavior (killian, 2002). among the key contributing factors to such behavior are the relationships of these youths with their parents. parents’ emotional or physical unavailability, difficulties in balancing cultural identities, the child’s unwitting transformation into the parents’ cultural and linguistic mediator, among others, can compromise the parents’ ability to be involved with their adolescent’s life, to set clear boundaries, and to provide adequate supervision of his or her conduct. previous studies have found that immigrant youths who have been involved in anti-social behavior have impaired relationships with their parents (edelstein & barhamburger, 2007; horowitz & brosh, 2011). if so, one of the main goals of professional intervention with these youths must be to support and empower their parents with the aim of improving their relationship with their adolescent children. the family assistance program counselors spend much of their time guiding and training parents in matters such as setting boundaries, developing effective communication, resolving conflicts, and understanding the youth’s developmental needs, through private sessions, or group workshops and lectures. by helping parents navigate bureaucratic procedures, and by mediating between them and various public institutions, the counselors relieve the children of the burden of cultural mediation, and bolster the parents’ image as independent figures capable of resolving problems on their own (trickett & jones, 2007). this removes much of the stress that the parents feel while grappling with the pressures and difficulties of adapting to life in israel (yakhnich, 2008), and allows them to become more emotionally involved in their children’s lives. the counseling work with the parents includes discussions about cultural differences between israel and the fsu in such fields as authority and hierarchy in the family; acceptable disciplinary measures; accommodating the child’s emotional needs; the educational system and parents’ role in it, etc. this discourse helps to reconcile the “adaptive adult” image held by the immigrant parents with the confusing and seemingly contradictory messages they receive from the israeli social environment and educational system (dwairy & dor, 2009; roer-strier & rosenthal, 2001). in other words, the program works indirectly to change the adolescent’s behavior and rehabilitate him, by improving the atmosphere at home, the adolescent’s relationship with his parents, and the parents’ function. another key aspect of the program’s work is strengthening the relationship between the adolescents’ families and the jps. due to cultural differences, language difficulties, and a high level of suspicion on the part of immigrant parents (sakin, 2009), probation officers often find it difficult to provide an optimal solution for the children of these families, when parents prevent their children from reaching the jps, object to psychological evaluations, or refuse to divulge what happens within the family. the family assistance program helps the families to see the probation officer as a partner rather than as an adversary, thereby ensuring the youths are not withdrawn prematurely from the program. to this end, the fact that the counselors are themselves former immigrants from the fsu is a crucial advantage. based on the interviews with both probation officers and program staff, it appears that the families trust the counselors much more than they might otherwise, since it means that they can speak in the language in which they feel most comfortable, feel included and understood, and are not subjected to ethnic stereotyping. similarly, the probation officers see the counselors as an indispensable resource when it comes to understanding the cultural reasons behind the families’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 10 behavior, to questioning and examining sensitive issues, and generally as linguistic and cultural go-betweens. in the years since the program began, many close collaborative bonds have formed between program counselors and probation officers, with both sides seeing themselves as working toward a common goal of rehabilitating errant youths and returning them to a normative path, using the unique tools and resources that each party brings to the process. putnam (1995) proposed a concept “social capital”. this concept, referring to characteristics of social structure that encourage coordination and cooperation among people for their mutual benefit, may be useful in understanding the present program. social capital that promotes personal growth of children and adolescents is a product of human relationships in the family, the community, and other social settings, and depends on the degree of mutual trust and commitment of its members (coleman, 1988; putnam, 1995). social capital of children and adolescents is based, in part, on physical presence of their parents, their attention and involvement in their children’s life (coleman, 1988; freistadt & strohschein, 2013; putnam, 1995). if these conditions are not met for any reason, parents will not be able to transfer their personal resources (skills, values, knowledge) to their children. the child’s development is also closely related to resources found outside his family, which is reflected in his parents’ relationships with community settings to which the child belongs (pitt-catsouphes, macdermid, schwarz, & matz, 2006). the family assistance program increases the social capital of immigrant youth involved in criminal behavior by tightening their relationships with their parents, encouraging parental involvement, and strengthening ties between the family and the probation service, which constitutes a significant setting for the children at this stage in their lives. this work is especially important for immigrant families, whose social capital is limited because of disconnection from distant family members, communication difficulties, and sense of alienation and social isolation. although, to date, there has been no evaluation study to provide objective measures of the program’s effectiveness, the feedback from the field – probation officers, educators, and social workers – is encouraging. during the interviews, jps officials have expressed great appreciation for the counselors’ work and hope that its scope will be extended to cover other immigrant populations. another indicator of the program’s effectiveness is that there have been virtually no instances of families withdrawing from the counseling process; indeed, many families have asked to stay in touch with the program counselors even after the criminal charges are dropped, in hope of receiving further parental guidance, emotional support, mediation with public institutions, etc. since the program is still in its experimental stage, it has had to work out various complex issues, such as choosing and training suitable counselors. much emphasis is placed during the recruitment process on the need for counselors with a strong connection with both russian and israeli cultures, since, as the intermediary between the family and the host society, they must represent and feel equally at home in both cultural contexts. in other words, a key criterion when gauging the suitability of a candidate for a counseling position is whether they have a bicultural identity, or as berry puts it, whether they can serve as part of the immigrant’s strategy of integration into the host society (berry, 1997). however, that in itself is not enough: while the current three counselors all meet that first requirement, they vary greatly in their professional background – one holds a ph.d. in educational psychology, another was trained in psychodrama, and the third is a professional mediator with a degree in sociology – which means that they tend to have very different ways of working. to smooth out these differences and ensure consistency in their work as counselors, all recruits undergo professional training with the program coordinator. in addition, a staff meeting is held every week in http://psycnet.apa.org.ezproxy.yvc.ac.il:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.searchresults&latsearchtype=a&term=strohschein,%20lisa international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 11 which the counselors discuss professional dilemmas and formulate appropriate solutions to address the needs of the client families and the program’s aims. these activities constitute significant components of program’s process evaluation. the family assistance program is not the only one offered to immigrant families; there is a wide range of services designed for immigrant youth and their families. whereas, this program focuses on immigrant juvenile delinquents, their parents, and their relationships with the israeli criminal justice services, other programs primarily aim at normative youth not involved in criminal behavior. for example, the immigrant pupils absorption department at the israeli ministry of education operates a variety of programs aimed at promoting immigrant students’ integration in the education system (israeli ministry of education, 2013). a non-profit “yedidim” (meaning, friends) organization initiates original and creative projects designed to encourage the social, educational, and employment integration of immigrant youths (yedidim organization, 2013). an exception is a program called “sicuim” (chances), which is operated by yedidim organization and the jps, and aimed at reintegrating immigrant youth delinquents in a normative society. the intervention is targeted at the adolescents themselves, while the parents are informed about their children’s participation in the program, but don't take part in it (edelstein, 2010). immigrant parents’ needs are addressed by municipal social and psychological services, and sometimes by the schools. the israeli anti-drug authority organizes parents’ groups for russian-speaking parents across the country, with an emphasis on developing parenting skills and preventing risk behaviors (israeli anti-drug authority, 2008). these groups focus primarily on prevention rather than actually dealing with youths’ anti-social behavior, and don't provide assistance and support outside the group activity hours. although this list does not cover all services designed for immigrant parents and their adolescent children in israel, it can be seen that the family assistance program is a unique service providing continuous and extensive guidance for immigrant parents whose adolescent children are involved in crime. this guidance is focused on strengthening the family, mediating between the parents and the jps and other community services, and promoting family integration and proper functioning. these ingredients fit the program exactly to the needs of its target population. in summary, the family assistance program is the result of a tripartite collaboration between the ministry of immigrant absorption, the juvenile probation service, and the forum of immigrant parents association. this unique program addresses the needs of immigrant families from the fsu whose children have encountered trouble with the law. these families have diverse needs involving both cultural adaptation and dealing with their children’s delinquency. the program offers help tailored to the families’ unique needs, with an emphasis on cultural sensitivity and mediation. in its seven years of operation to date, its counselors have helped over 600 families, gained valuable experience, developed effective working methods, and formed positive and constructive working relationships with the juvenile probation service and other community services. to continue the program’s development, to optimize its working methods, and to expand its scope to other geographical areas and sectors of the population, an in-depth evaluation study is needed to examine various aspects of the program’s operation and pave the way to developing it further and mapping out its work in the long term. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 12 implications for practice the pilot program presented in this paper may provide valuable knowledge and serve as an inspiration to social workers, educators, and other professionals involved in helping immigrant adolescents and their families. although the program operates in the israeli social context and is aimed at fsu immigrants, its experience may be widely applicable to other immigration-receiving countries, and with various immigrant populations. its main assertion – that an immigrant delinquent adolescent’s rehabilitation may be achieved through strengthening his family – is compatible with social services professional ideology, as well as with most immigrant populations’ cultural backgrounds (with the majority of immigrants in western countries coming from collectivist societies). in terms of policy, immigrant-receiving states may consider making such a program an integral link in the chain of treating immigrant delinquent youth, with each family being automatically referred to a program counselor. the counselor’s role as language and cultural mediator, his in-depth familiarity with immigrant families’ realities as well as with police, court and probation service functions, coupled with his professional skills, can bridge the gap between the family and the officials, empower the parents and promote the youth rehabilitation process. in terms of practice, it would be helpful to train professional counselors to work with specific immigrant groups, so the counselor and the family share their cultural background and heritage. aside from cultural background, counselors’ personality, their perception of optimal integration, cultural tolerance and sensitivity, as well as their professional background, should be taken into account during recruitment and training. ultimately, program implementation should be thoroughly evaluated in order to promote its efficiency and suitability to immigrant families’ needs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 1–16 13 references bankston iii, c. l. 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(2001). legacies: the story of the immigrant second generation. berkeley, ca: university of california press and russell sage foundation. the family as a “gathering”: international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 722 the family as a “gathering”: how the life of an object “makes” a family philippe noens and stefan ramaekers abstract: despite the obvious importance of “family” in people’s everyday lives, there is little consensus on what family is. nevertheless, every answer to the question has important (social, political, legal) consequences. in our research we do not set out from a substantial description of what “family” is. we shift from top-down perspectives on what the family is (or should be) according to some description of it, to concrete socio-material practices that actually “make” a family. in taking this sociomaterial stance, we: (a) acknowledge human agency and at the same time place family members not above material objects but among them; (b) use the idea of “script”-ing to visualize the life of particular objects in a particular family; and (c) come to understand “family” as a gathering of some sort, that is, as an event in which people are (actively) gathering and simultaneously being gathered around some-thing. drawing on a broad ethnographic exploration we conducted, we will show here how a family is “made” when its inhabitants are gathering and being gathered around the life of an object (in our case here, a newspaper) and hence “become” a family. keywords: the family, childrearing, socio-materiality, script(ing), latour, schatzki philippe noens (the corresponding author) is ph.d. researcher at the laboratory for education and society, research group education, culture & society, university of leuven, andreas vesaliusstraat 2, leuven, belgium, b-3000. phone: (32) 16-32-62-28. e-mail: philippe.noens@ppw.kuleuven.be stefan ramaekers, ph.d. is associate professor at the laboratory for education and society, research group education, culture & society, university of leuven, andreas vesaliusstraat 2, leuven, belgium, b-3000. phone: (32) 16-32-62-18. e-mail: stefan.ramaekers@ppw.kuleuven.be mailto:philippe.noens@ppw.kuleuven.be mailto:stefan.ramaekers@ppw.kuleuven.be international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 723 prologue figure 1. the newspaper at the breakfast table. [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. [researcher’s considerations] the newspaper lies on the kitchen table, pages wide open, inviting those present to read, to jump in a whirl of information – displaying its readability. and yet, nobody does. the newspaper is covering a substantial part of the table, seems to impose itself, stretching itself to the limits of its powers. but mother and her children pay no attention to it at all. granted, the boy is only three years old and cannot yet read. the same sort of goes for the youngest daughter; she just started learning to read. nevertheless, the newspaper also features photographs, cartoons and other expressive prints, offering something for everyone (a children’s section is easily found). moreover, for the moment the newspaper is still a “newpaper”, hot off the press. but again: nobody seems to be bothered about it being there. the children just sit opposite or next to it; mother is moving a chair so her daughter can sit straight. of course, the newspaper is not the only thing on the table. it has to “compete”, so to speak, with bowls of cereal, spoons, a bottle of milk, a towel, a box of cereal. perhaps also, being in a digital world adds to the difficulty for a printed newspaper to be read. but it seems the newspaper does not give up and “stubbornly” continues displaying its readability. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 724 introduction: what “makes” a family? throughout history, philosophers, politicians, and the general public have debated what “family” is (not) and should (not) do. especially during the past half century, a tremendous amount of research has been directed at family-related issues (weigel, 2008). studying the contemporary family, questioning the basic concept of “family”, is a phenomenon that increasingly gains importance (e.g., laidlaw, 2006; newman & grauerholz, 2002). this is hardly a surprise. despite the obvious importance of “family” in people’s everyday lives (thornton & young-demarco, 2001), there is – for well-known sociological reasons, for example, a multiplicity in family forms – little consensus on what family is. nevertheless, every answer to the question has important (social, political, legal) consequences. in general, “family” is explained (or “constructed”) from the “outside” (segrin & flora, 2014). most (sociological) perspectives describe and analyze “family” through (showing the) underlying processes, forces, and (f)actors that are considered to be crucial (and sometimes even essential) criteria in grasping what “family” is all about (e.g., co-residence, the birth of a child, marriage) (e.g., holtzman, 2008; koerner & fitzpatrick, 2004; stephens, 1963). to put it differently, in general there is the tendency to explain – or better yet, to “reveal” family – through underlying factors that are then considered to be prime constitutors, hence describing family, in a certain way, as already being “made” (e.g., by social ties; see morgan, 1996, 2011). the specific “building blocks” involved in this construction are to a large extent already “known” as the “cause” of family (i.e., they are central or essential, the minimum requirement to describe “family”). instead, we want to describe family as a “practice”, that is, as something “in the making”. family, we argue, is a “making” that happens and is made to happen by a group (which we do not define in advance). it refers to the tight “interwovenness” of all sorts of things, since any-thing might potentially connect with anything else and “make” family appear. the term “practice”, by pointing to that which is “in the making”, thus designates the multiplicity and the complexity of relations and how they appear in their emergence (mol, 2002). in sum, rather than describe “family” from the “outside”, using (mainly) sociological concepts that somehow “construct” family, we want to describe family “in the making”, staying close to the process and to the (perhaps unfamiliar or unknown) “building blocks” and hence taking, in a certain way, the idea of “construction” more seriously. research aim this study is part of a broader research project (for more information, see https://ppw.kuleuven.be/ecs/les/onderzoek-1/ot20122016). the focus of this broader project is the omnipresence of the language of learning in the theory and practice of education and on how the traditional institutions of “education” (school, university, family) are being affected by the current discourse and practices of “learning”. the aim there is to investigate how the current evolution towards learning environments is transforming these “traditional” educational institutions. more particularly what is investigated here is how this evolution affects the kind of “gathering” or “association” that is staged and configured within these sites and especially how this affects their pedagogical character. in this article, we do not start from a substantial description of what family is; we acknowledge that these “outside” perspectives on what the family is, does (or should be), are useful but, in a certain way, oversimplify things. to be clear, we do not want to ignore, for instance, the particular form a family may take (e.g., murdock, 1949), the (societal) tasks “family” performs (e.g., parsons, 1955) or the way people “do” (e.g., morgan, 1996) or international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 725 experience family (e.g., bernardes, 1999). rather, we want to extend these perspectives, arguing that “family” is perhaps more than a setting (“out there”), an experience (of “weness”) or an act in itself (a “doing” of some sort). we use the vocabulary of “making” to divert attention from the what (is family) – as an essential core or a minimum requirement, that is, some-thing that is, in a certain way, “in command” of “family” – to the how (is family being forged as a robust alliance with a multitude of still evolving agencies) (latour, 2005). indeed, “family” is not only a cognitive sketch resting in the minds of people; it is also a real entity well tied together. in sum, we use the notion of “making” to underline that “family” is not simply and naturally there as the result of some human or social ingenuity, but that “family” is a “construction” of a sea of “things” (and no-thing is a priori the defining creator). for now, and put in a general way (to be refined later on in this article), it is our intention to articulate the making of a family in terms of descriptions of the interactive relationships between entities. it is a first phase in attempting to understand how, in particular, “things” have the ability to gather people and to understand the kind of gathering that is staged inside the contemporary family. we will clarify our way of thinking by use of a concrete case-study, fully realizing, to be sure that overall conclusions cannot be drawn from it. a socio-material stance in line with our research aim we do not start from a substantial or “fixed” description of the family. we want to avoid analyzing what the family “is” (or should be) “top down” and instead try to describe how family takes shape throughout the day – the assumption being that what happens in and as a family cannot solely (or exclusively) be described a priori, but is highly affected by the way “family” is tied together “on the spot” (i.e., on a daily basis, as a “making”). to be precise, linking up to the recent strand of post-humanist philosophies and theories (we will come back to this below), we want to take seriously the idea of the family as a collective or – to use a more theoretical concept – a gathering of different human and nonhuman elements (latour & weibel, 2005). we therefore refrain from approaching family as a collective of humans held together by social roles and/or socio-economic forces. put differently, the focus is not in first instance on symbolical mediations or inscriptions of relations between family members (e.g., power relations, cultural representations of childhood, the effect of gender on parenting practices). instead, we want to describe “family” as a collective of humans with and through material things. we elaborate our socio-material stance in three sections: (a) the turn to “things”; (b) the “script” of things; and (c) the family as a gathering around a thing. later on, the three sections will return as separate parts of the discussion. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 726 intermezzo 1 figure 2. the newspaper as table-mat. [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. later on, use me as a coaster. protect the kitchen table from grease stains and scratches and use me as a table-mat. i provide a surface on which to place objects with minimal noise. [researcher’s considerations] the mother is sitting on a chair at the kitchen table. her son and oldest daughter are sitting next to her, each on one side. her other daughter sits right across her. all four of them are looking at the place where the newspaper lies. four pair of interested eyes are focused on certain pages that lie open. the youngest daughter is sitting on her knees and bending forward so that she gets a better view while the mother is informing the children what’s on the pages. they are not reading the newspaper, however. instead, their eyes are focused on a children’s book about the human body. it just so happens that the newspaper lies on the exact same spot as the book. to be entirely accurate, before the mother sat down, and a while before the children’s books even appeared on the scene, the newspaper was already lying there. in fact, the newspaper never changed location. the book was placed on top of the newspaper, making the newspaper largely invisible. the children have had breakfast, the table is cleaned up (there is only one cup left), but the newspaper still lies at the exact same spot as before. but again, its presence is unnoticed. to be precise, the newspaper is (still) not being read and serves only as a kind of ‘table-mat’ for a children’s book. perhaps not deliberately, but fact of the matter is that the newspaper disappears under another document which in a playful way tells how the human body works and what it is capable of. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 727 the turn to “things” in a certain way, it is stating the obvious to say that human existence is mixed with materials (since it is hard to imagine our everyday doings without it), but how to deal analytically with the “actions” or effects of things has proved a difficult issue in technology studies (e.g., pinch, 2010). indeed, a persistent and well-defended idea in western thought is that things do not act or perform (outside mechanical causality) and have no “intentions”, meanings, goals, or other rational characteristics – intentionality and rationality are typical human characteristics. therefore, to project agency in entities other than the human subject seems hard to stomach. post-humanists such as latour (1992) and verbeek (2011) attempt to do away with the predominance of human beings as the sole agents in practices by arguing for a symmetry between humans and non-humans. this symmetry does not mean to imply that things are radically equal to human beings (i.e., that things are of the same importance as human beings) in moral sense, traditionally understood. rather, the concept proposes to treat humans and non-humans as equivalent on the level of their “doings”. in other words, it is acknowledged that humans and non-humans are still different from each other, but the difference no longer is situated in a “traditional” dualism (e.g., subject-object, inside-outside, active-passive) whereby the hierarchy is typically decided in favor of humans. instead of using a typical oppositional structure, the perspective taken is that humans and non-humans alike attract, repel, collaborate, or transform one another (e.g., latour, 1992; verbeek, 2011). the emphasis then comes to lie on an overarching activity, namely network-building, rather than on what this or that entity of a constellation is “by nature”. what an entity in a constellation is, or how it should be called, is not something that should be presupposed (e.g., because of a particular type of definition), but is something that is generated in and by the network of relations in which it is situated. some-thing “is” and takes the shape it does by virtue of the relations it has with other entities in the network. be that as it may, attempts such as these to do away with the almost inextricable “agency knot”, nevertheless seem to repress another issue, that is, to think about which particular entities (human or non-human) are essential in this or that circumstance and how to make visible their significance. moreover, even if we accept that humans and non-humans both possess some sort of agency (i.e., agency is distributed over a heterogeneous network of humans and non-humans), we cannot escape the problem that reading agency into things is a human enterprise (e.g., a door is not worried about a wall’s “doings” to stand straight). so, some sort of hierarchy or asymmetry seems to be coming in after all. we are prompted to these comments by schatzki’s (2002) version of theory of practice which proposes that what he calls the social site, that is, “the context as part of which human coexistence inherently transpires” (p. 265), is a mesh of practices and orders. although intimately related – practices maintain and create orders and at the same time orders enable and constrain certain doings and sayings that constitute social practices, thus schatzki – practices and orders are different in the following relevant aspect: schatzki sees practices (i.e., an open-ended set of doings and sayings) as an exclusive human enterprise, while orders “are arrangements of entities through and amid which human existence transpires, in which the entities involved relate, occupy positions, and enjoy meaning” (schatzki, 2002, p. 24). in other words, schatzki’s theory of practice provides an account of the implication of both humans and non-humans (in line with post-humanism) by using the notion of order: an arrangement of (non-)human entities where every-“thing” is active in the constitution of social life. at the same time, schatzki “preserves” the importance of human agency by containing it to practices. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 728 in sum, the socio-material stance we make allowances for takes place in a “middle ground”. it recognizes that “family” is not solely formed between people but through collective activities between humans and non-humans, between family members and the material world that surrounds them. at the same time, we point out that human doings enjoy primary responsibility for developing, maintaining, or transforming the form family takes. the script of things in “shaping technology/building society: studies in sociotechnical change” (1992), both madeleine akrich and bruno latour give extensive consideration to the methodology with which to describe objects; for example: “machines and devices [that] are obviously composite, heterogeneous and physically localized. although they point to an end, a use for which they have been conceived, they also form part of a long chain of people, products, tools, machines, money, and so forth” (akrich, 1992, p. 205). each author however uses a different entry point for describing and analyzing what objects “make” their user do. akrich introduces the concept of script as a way to study the relationships between an object’s designer (writer) and that object’s user (reader) while keeping the materiality of technology (which can be analyzed as a text) in mind. for akrich (1992), “objects define a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they are supposed to act” (p. 208). a script, then, is closely related to the intentions of the designers on how the technology should interact with its user(s) and the use context. how the technology can or should be used is, in a sense, “pre-structured”: designers construct an idea of the future user(s) and objectify this idea in the technological design. in other words, designers “inscribe” their representation of the future user in the technology and as a result, technologies “contain” scripts, that is, prescriptions on what the users are supposed to do with the technology at hand. at the same time, akrich (1992) leaves room for the user as an active “troublemaker”, going beyond the inscriptions of designers or adopting new user roles. nevertheless, it seems that akrich (1992) gives more relevance to the human beings (designer, user) surrounding the objects than to the objects themselves. latour (1992), on the other hand, focuses more closely on the objects themselves. he distinguishes between what he calls “the programs of action” and scripts. a program of action, for latour, is “the set of written instructions that can be substituted by the analyst to any artifact” (latour, 1992, p. 175). for instance, the program of action of the seat belt sensor and accompanying alarm is the following: “if a car is moving, then the driver has a seat belt on” (latour, 1992, p. 152). therefore, a program of action reflects a network of both human and non-human elements like the driver, the car, the seat belt, the red light “fasten your seat belt” and the alarm. a script, for latour, is “shorter”, more object-oriented, and can be compared to the “script” of a movie. as in a movie script where the sentences prescribe what someone does and when, latour holds that an object can “prescribe” what someone does and when. for instance, the script of the speed bump is “slow down”, forcing a driver to hit the brakes. latour (1992) acknowledges that designers inscribe a certain program of action, but such a program of action is deployed by the object itself through its very shape. it is this script (i.e., the possibility that an object takes hold of a passer-by and forces her to act or to perform something) that latour (1992) takes into consideration. in this way, the script is a possibility since it does not fully determine the user’s actions. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 729 in sum, whereas akrich (1992) links the script more with the intentions and assumptions of designers, latour (1992) focuses on the potential of the object itself. but the bottom line is the same: both subscribe to the idea that the concept of script shows how artifacts can shape, or at least influence, human action and behavior. this idea of script seems a very useful conceptual tool to understand how “things” make a family and how things manage to gather a “family” around them, not in the least because both akrich (1992) and latour (1992) also provide useful methodological “tips” on how to actually write a script. according to akrich (1992), we have to go back and forth between the represented user and the real user, between the way the world is inscribed in the object and the way the world is described by the object displacement. according to latour (1992), we describe a script by replacing [the prescriptions encoded in the mechanism] by strings of sentences (often in the imperative) that are uttered (silently and continuously) by the mechanisms for the benefit of those who are mechanized: do this, do that, behave this way, don’t go that way, you may do so, be allowed to go there. (p. 157) in our paper, these methodological tips have already been used so far to describe the prologue and the intermezzos and will be used further in the discussion section. the family as a gathering around a thing now, instead of the terms order (schatzki, 2002) and network (latour & weibel, 2005) to indicate the complex relationship among entities – terms which have a specific ontological meaning and therefore carry the risk to narrow our explorative view – we prefer to see the family as a gathering of some sort. etymologically, in dutch “familie” (gezin) derives from “ghesinde”, which meant a group of people undertaking a journey. a “ghesinde” was composed of people related to one another by kinship, allegiance, servitude, and (financial) dependence. more specifically, family referred to a gathering of people who (figuratively and literally) moved in the same direction. connected to this, we seek to study what kind of gathering the contemporary family is. our choice to treat family as a gathering is not solely based on dutch etymology, but it is also based on heidegger’s (1951/1975) broad description of a “thing”: “the old high german word thing means a gathering, and specifically a gathering to deliberate on a matter under discussion, a contested matter” (p. 174). a thing is never merely a thing, for it gathers in such a way – in its own way – that something comes into existence only by virtue of the thing. the line of thought inspired by heidegger inaugurates a way towards thinking about “things” as a gathering where we, as humans, no longer take center stage. human beings are entities, possibly the most important entities, but not the sole entities, of a gathering. in addition to this, perhaps the family is not only a gathering in itself, but a family is sometimes gathered or shows itself around some-thing. synthesis as seen above, within contemporary perspectives one of the presupposition is that only persons can constitute “family”. what happens in a family, what “makes” a family, can therefore be easily bracketed off from materiality. our contribution, however, is grounded in a more “realist” attitude in the sense that we argue that things co-constitute a persistent international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 730 foundation for some-thing to exist as a family. the socio-material stance places (what we ordinarily think of as) family members not above things but among things. as said, we therefore do not start from seeing “family” as a more or less fixed or stable entity, but instead we want to propose to look at the concrete ways in which members of a family (understood now in a human and non-human sense) endlessly reshape and make our family into a family. we wish to propose seeing the family as an arrangement of human and non-human elements, whereby this family is gathered or shows itself around some-thing or some-one. we use the notion of script to discursively show this gathering, that is, to bring out this gathering in words. intermezzo 2 figure 3. the newspaper and the car crash. [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. later on, use me as a coaster. protect the kitchen table from grease stains and scratches and use me as a table-mat. i provide a surface on which to place objects with minimal noise. in the afternoon, pick me up and carry me outside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. look and discuss a colorful picture of a car crash. point at me when you do so. [researcher’s considerations] after a long day at work, the father sinks down in his favorite sofa in the garden. his oldest daughter and his son are close by. near the father, the boy is sitting on his knees while the girl is standing on her feet. the father is holding the newspaper in his hands. the pages are open. an advertising brochure, which was well hidden between the pages, now lies on the table. the father bends his head slightly to the left, the index finger of his left hand pointing to a picture. although it is difficult to see on the photograph, the image is that of a car crash. more specifically, it shows an accident with a racecar. all three of them are looking at the photo. the daughter and the son are leaning forward so they can have a closer look at what happened with the racecar. the girl holds a storybook in her left hand, which is closed and is dangling between her fingers. just a few seconds ago, she was absorbed by the adventures of a teddy bear, but her attention shifted to the colorful page of the newspaper. at last, the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 731 newspaper “won” and is being used for what it’s made for: giving the reader information. still, “reading” may be overstating what is happening here. at the moment, the father and his children aren’t actually reading the newspaper (and, as said, the boy cannot yet read), they are merely looking at a picture. a battle may almost be won, but the war is still in doubt. methodology in june 2013, we conducted a broad ethnographic pilot study seeking to register and to describe different kinds of gatherings in the family. on the basis of this pilot study we will now describe one day in the life of a thing and the particular way (this) “family” comes into existence by focusing on that thing. in what follows, we describe how we went about doing this. in general, when in everyday language the word family pops up there is still a strong tendency to think of the “traditional” nuclear family of two adults and their dependent children. the traditional image of the family retains much of its ideological power, and it was mostly for that reason that we chose to work exclusively with families of the traditional type1. therefore, our cases encompassed a father and mother living together with their biological children. we are aware of the fact that this in fact represents the institution family in a traditional sense, and that this may actually introduce a bias into our research. this is why, in further research, we also want to include other “family types”. in this particular family, we videotaped two slots of a period of time within which most of the family members (in an ordinary sense of the word) were at home. we chose to videotape one slot in the morning and one slot in the afternoon. the researcher accompanied each (human) family member for a minimum of 15 minutes. the method allowed the researcher to videotape “family” not only when mother, father, and their children were together in a room, but also when each of them was busy on his or her own. hence, it helped us to get a better understanding of “family making” in the context of the home. we were not interested in their point of view about the events having taken place or in the reasons behind their actions. we were interested in the activities they undertook, the things they used or encountered on their path, and the way they were gathered around these things. the participating family consisted of a mother (age 29), a father (age 31) and three children: two girls (age 7 and 5) and a young boy (age 3). in close consultation with the parents two “research days” were chosen: a try-out and the “actual” research day. the latter was a school day. when the researcher started videotaping (7:00 a.m.), the father had already left the house, gone to work. the researcher videotaped the mother waking up the children, how the family members “prepared” themselves in front of the bathroom mirrors, how the children had breakfast, what they did after breakfast, and how they went to school. the researcher stopped filming at the school gate (8.30 a.m.). videotaping started again in the 1 the sample consisted of six families; all families were drawn from one area of east-flanders (belgium). the general aim of the research was to register and to describe in detail each family in practice. hence, a fairly small number of families were included. three methods of inquiry were conducted: (a) videotaping (e.g., aarsand & forsberg, 2010) two slots of a period of time (family a – family b); (b) following one child at the time (e.g., kusenbach, 2003) (family c – family d); and (c) interviewing each family member about his or her day (family e – family f). it was also an objective to see which methods “work” in grasping family as a “continuous making”. given the specific aim of this contribution, we will not go deeper into the ethnographic literature itself. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 732 afternoon (16.30 p.m.). while the mother went to the store, the father looked after the children. after about 30 minutes, the father received a phone call and had to leave again. in the meantime, the mother had returned. together with the children, she took a shower and they pulled on some warm clothes. at that moment, the researcher stayed in the living room and took some field notes. after having had a shower, the children watched television, painted a drawing, and asked for some sweets while the mother prepared dinner. the researcher stopped videotaping at 18.30 p.m. as for to the presentation of our results, we hope it has become clear by now that we have woven these throughout the contribution (prologue, intermezzos, and epilogue) in order to emphasize the interactive relationships between the object of this particular investigation and other entities. to be precise, our research did not start with the notion to intentionally follow “just” a newspaper. instead, while analyzing the data, the newspaper suddenly caught our attention as a “thing” that somehow found its way in a lot of footage. we analyzed the data by watching the footage over and over until, to use the words of the belgian film director luc dardenne, “we lose the company of ourselves together with our typical alertness” (as cited in masschelein, 2010, p. 8, our own translation). we spent days going over the material until we reached a point where we “lost” ourselves as researchers in our research. we got so tired that we no longer (re)searched but simply watched. in a way, the tiredness enabled us to be more present, to be more open and susceptible for the things that took place before the camera. it was not our intention to focus on one particular object, but while watching the videotapes it became clear that the newspaper took part in the making of this family. we chose to present the results as a mosaic of individually framed fragments, but these still frames are nevertheless connected to one another in a chronological chain of events that – accompanied by an extensive description of the happening – can be read as the life of the newspaper. the prologue, intermezzos, and epilogue are fragments of the “marriage” between a newspaper and a family, that is, the way this document attracted and repelled different family members. intermezzo 3 figure 4. the newspaper as a plaything. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 733 [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. later on, use me as a coaster. protect the kitchen table from grease stains and scratches and use me as a table-mat. i provide a surface on which to place objects with minimal noise. in the afternoon, pick me up and carry me outside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. read me while enjoying the sun. look and discuss a colorful picture of a car crash. point at me when you do. afterwards, leave me outside. blow parts of me away. drop me down on tiles and grass. tear me apart. [researcher’s considerations] time flies. so does a newspaper when left outside. the father is long gone, back on the road, on his way to a new client. he left in a hurry and forgot to take the newspaper inside, leaving it helpless and exposed to the elements of nature. also the children are nowhere to be seen. the mother came to collect them and they are taking a shower. a handful of pages are scattered around, lying on the tiles and the grass. other pages are still lying on the table, “using” the protection of the walls and sofa to withstand the blowing wind. for a few minutes the newspaper is a plaything of nature. some pages will be irretrievably lost, others will be wrinkled or slightly torn. discussion as mentioned above, we will come back to the three sections outlined previously, but now specifically focus on the newspaper and the way it has been gathering this family. the three sections act as essential and interconnecting “building blocks” for explaining what a contemporary answer to the question what is family might entail. first, we will (re)turn to the thing itself, the newspaper, as a relational object that throughout the day leaves traces of its doings and that at the same time is in a constant state of being eroded. second, we will discuss the method of “scripting” as a way to make the newspaper talk, that is, to produce de-scriptions of what the document makes “others” (humans and non-humans) do. third, we will focus on the way the newspaper is active in gathering the family members. the turn to a thing: the newspaper the newspaper is first and foremost a consumption good, that is, a product that we purchase to receive information (or to satisfy our need for information), but perhaps we can also say something about the newspaper as an (crucial) element in the study of this family. to be precise, we do not conceive of the newspaper as a source or intake to say something about the morality or the meaning-making of the family (as a family), but instead we want to emphasize the newspaper as a constituent of this particular family. but what does this everyday dealing with the newspaper consist of? as a starting point, we do not consider (the newspaper and) people as autonomous subjects who consciously choose to interact. family members are not separated from the surrounding area of objects. in line with schatzki (2002) we maintain that human agency is primary, but this agency is always carried out within a material world. we, human begins endowed with international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 734 agency, are immediately engaged and entangled with things. in a way, we are the things that surround us. therefore, we are not autonomous selves, but “relational selves” (gergen, 2009). and if humans are a web of relations, perhaps so are everyday non-human things such as a newspaper. as the results show, throughout the day, the newspaper as a relational thing leaves traces of its doings – traces which prompt us to say: the things on the breakfast table are arranged in that specific order because of the newspaper; the children’s book lies a little bit softer on the table because of the newspaper; the children gain more insight in what a car accident might entail because of the newspaper; we are aware that the wind blows because of the newspaper. of course, the newspaper is not the most determining factor here, but nevertheless the arrangements listed here partly come into existence by virtue of the newspaper. in sum, not only the sheets of paper as such, also all the traces are an integral part of what a newspaper is. moreover, if we understand the newspaper as an intersecting node where human and non-human elements meet, we can say something about the specific mode of interacting. between the prologue and the epilogue, the newspaper disintegrates into smaller parts. in the morning, the newspaper was complete, but throughout the day pages and brochures are removed, transported, and deposited in other locations. this process is as much natural (e.g., the blowing of the wind) as human (e.g., the drawing of the child). after entering the house, the newspaper is in an almost constant state of being eroded. the newspaper’s life is fundamentally marked by a process of erosion, that is, by a process through which (the readability of) the newspaper is worn away by the actions of books, children, wind, and so on. the script of the newspaper akrich (1992) and latour (1992) developed script-ing as a specific methodology to make things talk, that is, to offer descriptions of things and of what they make others do. the “words” of objects are therefore equated with what they make us do and not do. scripting thus implies that we “find” the words of the object, that we become aware of the own articulations of things and try to translate these into language. the first sentences of the prologue are carefully chosen2 as the script of the (or possibly any?) newspaper: a few short sentences phrased in the imperative mood that are (silently) uttered by the newspaper to whomever crosses its path. a clear prescription on how to use it. and it works. throughout the day, the newspaper is read (by the father, the mother, but also by the older daughter who tries to read a title of an article upside down when sitting at the breakfast table). if we go back and forth between the design(er) and the user (cf. akrich, 1992), we can also point out another issue. the continuous collision between the artifact and other entities (mainly people) is transforming the script throughout the day. we argue that the initial script still exists, (i.e., read me if you want to know more …), but that throughout the day the script or the scenario expands because different “actors” improvise upon or around it (e.g., the child that is painting, the wind that is “playing”). hence, we want to emphasize script-ing as relational, that is, script-ing is about doing – the interactive relationship between entities – and not so much about having a linear view on how to behave when using the object. the newspaper can (still) be read, but as shown throughout the different intermezzos, the script is dynamically and 2 writing about the interactive relationship between an object and people, as well as trying to depict the tacit “utterances” of an object, is obviously a task inflicted with its contradictions and problems. how can the implicit be expressed and still be considered tacit? indeed, “script’-ing” necessarily involves transformations and abstractions. while focusing on the newspaper, there is the risk of losing the “big picture”. nevertheless, we are convinced that material “things”’ can be grasped in text. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 735 relationally “rewritten”, extended to activities beyond its readability: read me if you want to know more, place a children’s book on me, pick me up and carry me outside (and back inside), point at me with your index finger, talk about me with your children, blow me away, drawn on me, and so on. these are not hidden options or possibilities – they were not present from the beginning, ready to be discovered. instead, the script is “written” in time. like the depth of a scenario unfolds during a play, what belongs to a script becomes clear in time. while the newspaper slowly erodes (falls apart), the script seems to become more apparent. the interactive relationship between the newspaper and “others” can be captured in a script and this text could be used by a director or performer to play the life of this newspaper in this family. in a way, until the newspaper is finally pulverized in the garbage truck, we cannot truly do justice to its script as a description of its “intimate” relationship with this family. the family as a gathering around the newspaper a “thing” in the sense of heidegger (1951/1975) refers to a network of relations or an assemblage. it has the potential to gather people around itself. in other words, some-thing starts to (be of) interest. at first, it seems we are not dealing with a “gathering” at all. the prologue clearly shows that the newspaper, even when taking up a lot of table space, fails to generate interest. we argue, however, that the newspaper does in fact gather (human) family members around itself (as is clearly seen in the picture of the prologue), but, granted, the members are not interested in the newspaper as such. to be precise, the newspaper constitutes a gathering of indifferent people, that is, (human) members who chose to ignore the newspaper or simply used it as a place-mat. nevertheless, the family members’ doings are influenced by the way the newspaper is lying there, by the place it is occupying. what would the scene look like without the newspaper? would the milk bottle, the cornflake bowls, or the spoons then be using the “vacant space”? perhaps the children would be sitting in a different formation. we argue that the newspaper, even if the (human) family members are not aware of it, is there and that its presence is making things (im)possible. intermezzo 2 is giving us a glimpse of another part of the story. by showing a piece of newspaper (or allowing the children to have a look), the father is making cars (crashes)/information visible, and as a result of this is shifting his children’s attention to the racecar. they then start learning something about the wider world. at the same time, the newspaper stops being a pure thing for “daddy” and turns into something that is of interest to a group of people. the newspaper has the power (as is literally shown in the picture in intermezzo 2) to gather the family members as a group of people who are (more) interested and involved (than before). throughout the day, the newspaper is a “thing” that gathers people, but not every gathering consists of interested people. intermezzo 3 shows that the newspaper lost, at least temporarily, its ability to generate attention. the father, the mother, and the children left the scene and the newspaper is ripped apart by the wind. nobody is around, nobody seems to care. of course, after a while the newspaper makes the (human) family members care because most of its pages are picked up by one of the daughters and the newspaper is put back together to the maximum possible extent. even the disintegration of the newspaper brings something positive if we look at the next intermezzo (4). after intermezzo 3, the newspaper is no longer (literally and figuratively) “whole”. the erosion of the object affects the re-writing of the script which here means that after the “intervention” of the wind, a piece of the newspaper can be more easily transformed/used into drawing paper. the newspaper, wrinkled and torn, lends itself better to this new application. once again, we have a gathering with international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 736 interested people, although the children are no longer interested in the content of the newspaper but in the white spaces the newspaper offers. but even this is temporary. after a while (the epilogue), the mother asks her oldest daughter to put the newspaper (at least, what is left of it) in the magazine rack. at that moment, the newspaper gathers the family as a thing which has a “right” place and it needs the mother’s command and her daughter’s moving body to get there, to a place where the newspaper can (be put to) rest after a day of assembling and collecting people. intermezzo 4 figure 5. the newspaper as drawing paper. [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. later on, use me as a coaster. protect the kitchen table from grease stains and scratches and use me as a table-mat. i provide a surface on which to place objects with minimal noise. in the afternoon, pick me up and carry me outside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. read me while enjoying the sun. look and discuss a colorful picture of a car crash. point at me when you do. afterwards, leave me outside. blow parts of me away. drop me down on tiles and grass. tear me apart. in the evening, pick me up and carry me inside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. read a part of me while sitting in a couch. use another part of me as drawing paper. look how the drawing is being made. [researcher’s considerations] after a refreshing shower, the mother and her three children are in the “lounge”: a seating area situated a bit lower than the dining room. the mother is sitting on a white couch and holds a piece of newspaper in her hands (a piece that survived the “storm”). her son, who is sitting next to her, watches television (the tv set is just outside the image). to be precise, the boy is the only one watching television. the other three people in the area are preoccupied by something else (i.e., reading and drawing). the two daughters sit on the parquet flooring. there is a small table. various markers and crayons are in a small box on top of the table. some toy trucks and cars are lying on the ground. indeed, there are many “child-oriented” products within reach. but what is going on in this picture? for a moment, one child ignores international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 737 the printed drawings on the table and instead uses the newspaper as drawing paper while the other child watches closely – which means that part of the newspaper is being read, while another part of it “competes” with “other” drawing papers. conclusion in this article we wanted to propose another way of approaching the “making” of a family, namely how “family” is on a daily basis “put together” and the concrete things involved in this “continuous making of”. in this contribution, we showed how a particular family is made or can be seen when (human and non-human) family members are being gathered around the “life” of a newspaper. it would be an overstatement to say that the newspaper plays a central role in the “making” of this family, but nevertheless it becomes clear that the newspaper is intrinsically and indispensably involved in enabling (inter)actions of many different kinds. first, we focused on the newspaper itself. we argue that the newspaper can be seen as an intersecting node which leaves traces of its doing and that these traces are as much a part of its being (its thingness) as the bundle of paper. also, the relation of the newspaper with the family is a relation based on erosion, that is, a relation by which the readability of the newspaper is worn away by the actions of humans and non-humans. second, we used scripting as a specific descriptive method to bring the newspaper into play. we argue that the script of a thing can expand and that this expansion is related to the act of scripting, that is, a dynamical and relational doing through time where all sort of entities are involved. third, we focused on the family as a gathering around the newspaper. we argue that the newspaper gathers people, even if (human) family members do not seem to be interested. in other words, the newspaper makes possible that people meet each other, but the assembly of persons is not always consciously aware that they are being gathered. in sum, what “makes” a family from our socio-material perspective are our everyday gatherings around and with mundane things such as a newspaper. this is not to say, of course, that things are the only vital component of “family”. we just wanted to put into words the everyday experience that “family” is more than adults and children, that the things that surround us are, in a certain way, also members of our family. these “family members” (dis)appear and make us (not) do things. throughout the analysis it became clear that “family making” is, in a certain way, “distributed” between (non-human) family members. of course, there are 50 shades of grey between full membership and sheer co-existence but “things” are out there, we fill our houses with them, so perhaps it becomes time to acknowledge that we are not only using them while living, but that on many occasions (co-)existence becomes possible because of them. we are not above things, but among them. or to describe it more metaphorically, family is perhaps a continuous re-membering. various members regroup and in doing so they form “family”. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 738 epilogue figure 6. the newspaper in the magazine rack. [script] read me if you want to know more about the world. read me if you want to know more about the past 24 hours, because that’s what i’m for. i will inform you. ignore me. let me be. later on, use me as a coaster. protect the kitchen table from grease stains and scratches and use me as a table-mat. i provide a surface on which to place objects with minimal noise. in the afternoon, pick me up and carry me outside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. read me while enjoying the sun. look and discuss a colorful picture of a car crash. point at me when you do. afterwards, leave me outside. blow parts of me away. drop me down on tiles and grass. tear me apart. in the evening, pick me up and carry me inside. carry me because i don’t weigh much. read a part of me while sitting in a couch. use another part of me as drawing paper. look how the drawing is being made. at the end of the day, thrown a part of me in the bin. put another part of me in the magazine rack. ignore me. let me be. forget about me. [researcher’s considerations] it is almost dinnertime, and the mother asks her children to clean up the “lounge”. the mother asks her oldest daughter to put the newspaper in the magazine rack. to be precise, she asks the daughter to put away the part the mother read. the piece of newspaper that was used as drawing paper is thrown in the bin. the rack hangs on the left side of a kitchen closet and consists of three shelves. other (“old”) newspapers are already in place, waiting for their weary comrade. the girl puts the newspaper on the second shelf where it will remain during the night, losing its relevance as the bringer of new facts. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 722–740 739 references aarsand, p., & forsberg, l. (2010). producing children’s corporeal privacy: ethnographic video recording as material-discursive practice. qualitative research, 10(2), 249–268. akrich, m. 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(2008). the concept of family: an analysis of lay people’s views of family. journal of family issues, 29(11), 1426–1447. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep044 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.01009.x text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192513x08318488 risk profiles, trajectories and intervention points for serious and chronic young offenders international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 197 risk profiles, trajectories, and intervention points for serious and chronic young offenders raymond corrado and lauren freedman abstract: one of the lesser understood research issues about antisocial onset and persistence is whether there are different patterns of risk factors within the broader identified pathways that require distinctive treatment strategies. this article hypothesizes that there are at least five distinct pathways to persistent antisocial behaviour. the pathways are premised upon the developmental perspective and suggest that the experiences of individuals and their exposure to subsequent risk factors are affected by the earliest risk factors to which the individual is exposed. from a policy perspective, development of these pathways focuses on the goal of preventing antisocial onset, or to reduce the likelihood that behaviours will become progressively antisocial, while concurrently encouraging desistance. a key objective is to inform policy-makers about possible program intervention points for specific sets of risk factors, utilizing programs that have already been identified as successful, and developing new experimental programs. key words: young offender, pathway models, intervention, serious offending, chronic offending, violent offending raymond corrado, ph.d. is professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, vancouver (burnaby), british columbia, canada. lauren freedman, m.a. is a ph.d. candidate in the school of criminology at simon fraser university. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 198 by the time they reach adolescence, most youth who are involved in the criminal justice system have been exposed to a multitude of risk factors for serious antisocial behaviour, including violence. a dominant related research theme is that risk factors can accumulate with age and, as the individual transitions through developmental stages, the accumulated risk factors can mitigate the success of interventions (loeber, keenan, & zhang, 1997; lober & leblanc, 1990; stouthamer-loeber, loeber, stallings, & lacourse, 2008; moffitt, 1993; farrington & welsh, 2007; sampson & laub, 1993). another important research theme is the considerable increase in the number of risk factors identified especially during the initial developmental stages including pregnancy, birth, infancy, and early childhood. also, more recent advances in genetic and epigenetic research have added even more complex arrays of risk. much of the theory development and debate about serious and violent offending among adolescents and adults, therefore, has focused on the identification of developmental pathway models associated with shortand long-term criminal trajectories. however, one of the research issues less understood is whether there are different patterns of risk factors within these identified pathways that require distinctive treatment strategies. the distinguishing feature of more specified pathways is that the first major risk factor experienced by the individual affects both the exposure to additional risk factors and how these risk factors are managed in terms of interventions throughout subsequent developmental stages. we suggest that there are at least five distinct pathways for serious and violent young offenders that require different intervention strategies. these pathways begin with the following respective initial major risk factors: prenatal risk exposure, extreme child maltreatment, childhood personality disorder, extreme temperament, and adolescent onset (see figures 1 to 5). although these pathways are distinct, risk factors often overlap among pathways. yet it is the sequencing of these risk factors that affects the differences in how and why individuals within each pathway experience them. for example, poor school performance is associated with antisocial behaviour (hemphill, toumbourou, herrenkohl, mcmorris, & catalano, 2006; corrado, cohen, & watkinson, 2008; weerman, harland, & van der laan, 2007; loeber, farrington, & stouthamer-loeber, 1998), but various types of youth may demonstrate poor school performance for different reasons. youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd), for example, experience difficulty excelling in the classroom because of neuro-cognitive deficits (streissguth et al., 2004). in contrast, negative classroom experiences of youth who have been extremely maltreated but do not have neuro-cognitive deficits are more likely explained by the emotional disorientation and stress caused by transfers arising from placement in foster care (newton, litrownik, & landsverk, 2000). obviously, the treatment strategies for these two pathways are substantially different since fasd is associated with neuro-cognitive disorders and typically requires long-term school and home-based program interventions, while children and youth who have suffered extreme trauma may not suffer from such deficits. thus, responses for difficulties experienced among these latter children and youth more typically involve shorterterm interventions focused on stabilizing the foster care environment, and school-based emotion and social adjustment support counselling. the five pathways proposed in this article are premised upon the extensive research of the likely causal risk factors of serious and violent offending which were first developed from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 199 the cracow multi-problem risk management instrument for serious and violent children and adolescents (corrado, roesch, hart, & gierowski, 2002). the second source is the more recent research on samples of incarcerated serious and violent young offenders, including our 12-year study of over 1,000 youth incarcerated in british columbia. the basic objective in developing these models is to increase the effectiveness of strategies to reduce the likelihood of children and adolescents with serious and violent antisocial and criminal behaviours from persisting in such behaviours into adulthood. these models are premised upon the notion that changes in antisocial behaviour are predictable, hierarchical, and orderly. they emphasize the identification of factors that predate antisocial onset. another underlying assumption is that onset, aggravation, and desistance of violent and serious antisocial behaviour are strongly related to the vulnerability of individuals to specific risks that are embedded in their extant life stages (loeber & leblanc, 1990). the goal is to prevent antisocial onset, or to reduce the likelihood that behaviours will become progressively antisocial, while concurrently encouraging desistance. the pathway models are neither risk prediction nor risk management instruments, but rather are designed to inform policy-makers about possible program intervention points for specific sets of risk factors, utilizing programs that have already been identified as successful and developing new experimental programs. key variables in the models the five proposed pathway models highlight how and why various types of youth experience certain risk factors. prior to discussing the experiences of particular types of youth within each pathway, a brief overview of commonly experienced risk factors across the models is presented and the associated outcome of serious antisocial behaviour is discussed. school performance poor academic performance, truancy, misbehaviour at school, and suspension and/or expulsion from school have been identified as risk factors for both general and violent antisocial behaviour (hemphill et al., 2006; margo, 2008; farrington, loeber, jolliffe, & pardini, 2008; wolke, woods, bloomfield, & karstadt, 2000; nishina, juvonen, & witkow, 2005; henry & huizinga, 2007; weerman et al., 2007). absence from school and poor school performance are common among serious and violent offenders. for example, only slightly more than half of the youth in a sample of incarcerated youth in british columbia were enrolled in school at the time of their offence and many were already at least one academic year behind other students of the same age (corrado et al., 2008). substantial absences from school are also associated with increased time spent with antisocial peers in the absence of adult supervision (hemphill et al., 2006; henry & huizinga, 2007). further, poor school performance, related learning disabilities, and childhood disruptive disorders are associated with serious antisocial behaviours in adulthood (sundheim & voellere, 2004). residential mobility residential mobility among adolescents has been linked to antisocial behaviour whether the youth moves with or away from the family unit. importantly, both placement in the care of child protection services and instability in care (i.e., multiple shifts among placements) have been associated with antisocial behaviour (alltucker, bullis, close, & yovanoff, 2006; newton international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 200 et al., 2000). the association between residential mobility and antisocial behaviour is explained partly by the increased likelihood of associating with antisocial peers and subsequent exposure to their routine high-risk social activities, such as substance abuse and engaging rival groups of youth in public places. residentially mobile adolescents are more likely to associate with, and adopt the behaviours of, antisocial peers because they are more readily willing to accept new members than prosocial adolescents (haynie & south, 2005; farrington et al., 2008). further, youth living independently of parents or guardians are more likely to engage in certain criminal behaviours (e.g., theft, prostitution, fraud) as a means of survival (kempf-leonard & johansson, 2007; baron & hartnagel, 1998). once these youth begin engaging in antisocial behaviours, the risk of engaging in serious antisocial behaviours, particularly gang activity, increases (kempfleonard & johansson, 2007; cohen, 1955; decker, katz, & webb, 2008; klein & maxson, 2006; kvaraceus & miller, 1959). antisocial peers involvement in a delinquent peer group throughout adolescence has been associated with increased violent behaviours (thornberry, lizotte, krohn, farnworth, & jang, 1994; thornberry, lizotte, krohn, smith, & porter, 2003; farrington, 2005; farrington et al., 2008). although removal from such groups is associated with a decrease in violent behaviours, early and prolonged exposure to delinquent peers has long-lasting impacts on the development of persistent patterns of antisocial behaviour (lacourse, nagin, tremblay, vitaro, & claes, 2003). this may be explained in relation to a potentially reciprocal relationship whereby youth engaging in antisocial behaviours are attracted to groups characterized by antisocial activities, which increases the likelihood of escalating behaviours, particularly in the context of gangs (elliott & menard, 1996; gatti, tremblay, vitaro, & mcduff, 2005; thornberry et al., 2003; thornberry et al., 1994). substance abuse adolescent substance abuse is related to high-risk behaviours, antisocial behaviour, and poor school performance (farrington et al., 2008; wiesner, kim, & capaldi, 2005), and is particularly common among incarcerated youth (neff & waite, 2007; corrado & cohen, 2002). in some cases, youth may engage in substance abuse as a form of self-medication to cope with trauma (corrado & cohen, 2002), or as a form of sensation-seeking as a result of low arousal levels (putnins, 2006). substance abuse may impact antisocial behaviours in three ways: youth may engage in antisocial behaviours because they are under the influence of substances at the time of the offence; they may commit crimes to gain money to acquire substances; and/or they may engage in antisocial behaviours associated with the distribution of intoxicating substances (goldstein, 1985). aggressive behaviours both early and previous aggressive and antisocial behaviours have been identified as strong predictors of future antisocial behaviour (hemphill et al., 2006; huesmann, eron, & dubow, 2002; nagin & tremblay, 2001; schaeffer, petras, ialongo, poduska, & kellam, 2003; farrington et al., 2008). in particular, children who are disruptive in kindergarten are at an increased risk of frequent antisocial behaviour as they age (lacourse et al., 2002). persistence of aggressive behaviours may be related to the propensity of aggressive children and youth to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 201 perceive the actions of others as hostile (waldman, 1996), or it could be a reflection of ineffective socialization as a result of hostile or ineffective parenting or other family-level risk factors (benzies, keown, & magill-evans, 2009; côté, vaillancourt, leblanc, nagin, & tremblay, 2006; tremblay et al., 2004). proposed pathway models each of the five pathways will be discussed individually, focusing on three things: first, the prevalence of the underlying first risk factor the individual is exposed to that subsequently shapes future experiences and thus each pathway; second, the impact that this factor has on how other risk factors and behavioural problems are experienced; and third, the intervention techniques and considerations relevant to each pathway. 1: prenatal risk factors there are a variety of risk factors to which children may be exposed in utero that may affect the prenatal stage of development, including lead, cigarette smoke, and poor maternal nutrition (mick, biederman, faraone, saye, & kleinman, 2002; needleman, riess, tobin, biesecker, & greenhouse, 1996; streissguth et al., 2004; raine, 2004). these risk factors can affect the healthy development of the brain, resulting in permanent damage that may heighten the risk of antisocial behaviours in subsequent developmental stages. while smoking and malnutrition are possibly more prevalent risk factors, given the large body of research on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd) discussion of this pathway will focus on fasd as an illustrative example. there is considerable evidence that exposure to alcohol, especially regular consumption and/or binge drinking during mid-stages of pregnancy, can result in fasd. fasd is causally linked to physical developmental delays, neuro-cognitive deficits including learning disabilities, co-morbid mental health problems throughout the life course that are generally associated with antisocial behaviour, and aggressive, often violent behaviours (streissguth et al., 2004). evidence of prenatal risk factor exposure among serious and violent offenders fasd is disproportionately evident among adolescent offender populations. for example, nearly one-third (30%) of youth on probation orders in canada have been identified as having, or being at high risk of having, fasd (the assante centre for fetal alcohol syndrome, 2005). fasd is also overrepresented (23%) among youth in british columbia who have been remanded for psychiatric inpatient assessment (fast, conry, & loock, 1999). this overrepresentation is in stark contrast to the population estimates of the prevalence of fasd, which are extremely low; for example, it has been estimated that only 1% of all live births in the united states are affected by fasd (sampson et al., 1997). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 202 proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders exposed to prenatal risk factors prenatal risk factor  poor school performance  antisocial peers  substance abuse  aggressive behaviours cjs involvement largely because of substantial neuro-cognitive deficits, individuals with fasd are more likely to engage in several antisocial behaviours that increase their exposure to a multitude of risk factors in the early and middle developmental stages. as children, those with fasd are at an increased risk for early entry into the care of child protective services and are liable to subsequent shifts among multiple care placements. one study found that 72% of children with fasd in saskatchewan were placed in care at some point in their lives, often by the age of 2 years, and remained in care for five years on average, during which they experienced multiple placement shifts (habbick, nanson, snyder, casey, & schulman, 1996). similar findings were observed in an american sample (ernst, grant, streissguth, & sampson, 1999). not surprisingly, children with fasd often come under the care of child protective services in response to concerns over the welfare of the child (ernst et al., 1999), which may specifically relate to ongoing substance abuse among their caregivers (salmon, 2008; kvigne et al., 2004). persistent childhood aggressive behaviours cause high levels of stress for caregivers, which also helps to explain the disproportionate number of fasd children and youth in care (paley, o'connor, frankel, & marquardt, 2006; paley, o'connor, kogan, & findlay, 2005). educational special needs and other social deficits also increase the likelihood that mothers and other caregivers will request that their fasd children be taken into care (kvigne et al., 2004; ernst et al., 1999). fasd is further associated with poor school performance and school discipline problems. poor school performance and disruptive behaviours in the classroom among these youth can best be understood in relation to neuro-cognitive deficits that impair language comprehension, reading, spelling, and math abilities (mattson, riley, gramling, delis, & jones, 1998; duquette & stodel, 2005; streissguth et al., 2004). the ability of these youth to develop and maintain peer relationships is hindered by their increased tendency to become frustrated and angry with their difficulties and inability to keep pace with other students in their classrooms. in addition, multiple care placements are associated with more frequent school transfers, changing family environments, and peer social disruptions. in a study of 415 individuals diagnosed with fasd, 55% of adolescents and adults had been in trouble at school for disruptive behaviours, 53% had been suspended, 29% expelled, and 25% dropped out of school (streissguth et al., 2004). fasd is also associated with difficulties relating to the development of prosocial peer relationships because of underdeveloped, or age inappropriate, social skills. for this reason, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 203 youth with fasd are more likely to associate with antisocial peers who are more likely to accept them and then become negative reinforcing role models (thomas, kelly, mattson, & riley, 1998; streissguth et al., 2004). due to poor behavioural controls stemming from neuro-cognitive deficits and difficulties understanding the negative impact of antisocial behaviour, including substance abuse, individuals with fasd may be more susceptible to social pressures. thus individuals with fasd are more likely to engage in early antisocial behaviours such as early onset substance abuse (paley & o'connor, 2009). poor behavioural control across developmental stages among individuals with fasd is largely explained by the damage caused by alcohol exposure in utero, that impedes the development of neural structures that regulate impulsivity and aggression (bookstein, streissguth, sampson, connor, & barr, 2002; berman & hannigan, 2000; schonfeld, paley, frankel, & o'conner, 2006). in effect, fasd inhibits the ability to process social cues that typically delay inconsiderate and inappropriate behaviours. failure to inhibit these behaviours results in negative responses from others that routinely and rapidly frustrate the individual, which is often met with overreaction from the individual with fasd, including aggressive and violent responses. while fasd is associated with poor motivation, an absence of empathy, plus the presence of defiance, anger, and aggression, these traits are overwhelmingly explained by neurocognitive deficits rather than wilful motivation (green, 2007; olson, jirikowic, kartin, & astley, 2007; scott & dewane, 2007). intervention fasd is preventable. interventions typically focus on providing expectant mothers with information and incentives designed to reduce the likelihood of exposure to alcohol during pregnancy. there are currently no known treatments that can reverse the organic brain damage associated with fasd; therefore, subsequent interventions are most effective when they target the accumulation of additional risk factors discussed above, such as poor school performance and substance abuse. given the permanency of the organic brain damage and the accumulation of new risk factors in subsequent developmental stages, interventions designed to reduce the impact of additional risk factors may be helpful to improve positive life outcomes across the life course (paley & o'connor, 2009). initial interventions must first determine the extent of the damage along the fasd spectrum at the earliest possible date with a valid assessment. typically, this requires a family physician who suspects fasd, or a public health nurse or social worker who reports the likelihood of fasd given their awareness of the mother’s alcohol history. there are mild, moderate, and extreme expressions of fasd that are important in determining the most appropriate stage-specific interventions in the short and long term. for example, mild fasd children are more likely to adapt to regular daycare and preschool programs with minimum levels of assistance, while the more extreme cases are more likely to require specialized programs. the second step is the assessment of the ability of the fasd child’s family to either mitigate (with their own resources and those external to the family unit) or intensify the impulsivity and related harmful traits associated with fasd, regardless of external resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 204 regarding the former more positive family context, the interventions include providing the parent(s) assistance to relieve accumulated daily stress in providing developmental learning and discipline experiences to the child, and promoting access to appropriately resourced daycare facilities and schools. in the latter negative family context, where the fasd child is at high risk of being placed in the care of child protective services, it is critical that such families not only be provided with a complete set of in-house and school or community resources, but also that they be carefully monitored to ensure that they are consistently tending to the physical and emotional needs of the child. when the child is placed in care, placement stability is essential. typically, the challenge for foster care providers is having both a complete understanding of the extent of the fasd needs of the child, and access to the internal and external resources necessary to effectively respond. again, lifelong assistance to the caregiver is an important consideration so that even in adulthood, the provision of routine living assistance must be provided as it is needed for the adult to remain in the community and avoid a life threatening “street life” which is likely to result in negative life outcomes, including criminal justice involvement (paley & o'connor, 2009; hannigan & bergman, 2000). as mentioned above, the education system is another crucial intervention resource. there are specialized education environments that increase the learning context by reducing irritability and frustration, and providing for prosocial peer and teacher experiences (paley & o'connor, 2009; green, 2007). the health care system is also important not only for the initial diagnosis but also for the monitoring and treatment of the onset of related childhood disorders such as oppositional defiant, and adult co-morbid disorders often involving substance dependency. 2: childhood personality disorders personality disorders are clinical syndromes with long-lasting symptoms that negatively impact the way the individual interacts with the environment (american psychiatric association, 2000). although there are a variety of types of personality disorders, this pathway will focus on conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and early psychopathic traits because they are most closely associated with externalizing behavioural problems. the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder both refer to a pattern of persistent antisocial behaviour (american psychiatric association, 2000). although early identification of psychopathy remains controversial, psychopathic traits are associated with callous, deceptive, unemotional behaviour (hare, 1993) and there is support for the identification of these traits in adolescence (vincent, odgers, mccormick, & corrado, 2008; corrado, vincent, hart, & cohen, 2004). evidence of personality disorders among serious and violent offenders oppositional defiant disorder is estimated to be present among one in seven children by the age of 5 years (sutton & glover, 2004) and among approximately 12% of incarcerated male youth and 15% of incarcerated female youth (teplin, abram, mcclelland, dulcan, & mericle, 2002). this childhood personality disorder is associated with the later development of conduct disorder, which progresses into antisocial personality disorder in adulthood among approximately 40% to 70% of documented cases (duggan, 2009). both conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder are disproportionately prevalent among incarcerated youth and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 205 adult populations (corrado, cohen, hart, & roesch, 2000; teplin et al., 2002; fazel, doll, & långström, 2008; compton, conway, stinson, colliver, & grant, 2005; torgensen, kringlen, & cramer, 2001; coid, yang, tyrer, roberts, & ullrich, 2006; robins, tipp, & pryzbeck, 1991; fazel & danesh, 2002). not uncommonly, these personality disorders predate juvenile justice involvement (hirshfield, maschi, white, goldman-traub, & loeber, 2006). both oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder are asserted to be precursors to psychopathy. there is an accumulation of research indicating that while the full range of psychopathic traits is not convincingly evident in children and adolescents, several key psychopathic traits are observable in early childhood (tremblay et al., 2005), and even more psychopathic traits can be identified among adolescents, especially in samples of incarcerated serious and violent young offenders (corrado et al., 2004; vincent et al., 2008). it has been estimated that as many as 9.4% of adolescent offenders exhibit high levels of psychopathic traits (campbell & porter, 2004). in addition to engaging in a general range of antisocial behaviours consistent with psychopathic traits, young offenders with this profile are also more prone to recidivism more quickly and more violently than young offenders without this profile (corrado et al., 2004; vincent et al., 2008). proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with childhood personality disorders1 personality disorder  unstable family  inconsistent parenting  poor school performance/ bully behaviour  family criminality cjs involvement  cic placement a chaotic family environment may increase the risk of the development of childhood personality disorders. young children whose mothers experience abuse are significantly more likely to develop internalizing and externalizing behavioural problems (mcfarlane, groff, o'brien, & watson, 2003). also, children in homes characterized by violence often directly witness abuse (fantuzzo & fusco, 2007). one explanation is that unstable households characterized by violence do not provide children with emerging personality disorders the routine structure necessary to develop prosocial skills. as well, parents in chaotic family environments characterized by violence are more likely to apply inconsistent and progressively harsh parenting techniques with their children who are displaying aggressive tendencies associated with personality disorders. in this type of environment, the opportunities for the development of empathy, adaptive self-regulation, and other skills that aid in the suppression of abnormal childhood antisocial outbursts are substantially reduced (hill, fonagy, & safier, 2003). specifically, regarding both oppositional tendencies and conduct problems, increasingly harsh parenting may aggravate the development of externalizing behaviours, because children do not 1 risk factors in dotted lines have likely always been present, but take on new meaning for as others accumulate. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 206 learn to effectively moderate their aggressive behaviours and antisocial tendencies (tremblay et al., 2005; hill et al., 2003). in addition, children reported as aggressive by their parents are more likely to suffer abuse, which may initiate a cycle of aggressive/abusive behaviours in the next developmental stage, which may involve school environments (berger, 2005; lemmon, 2006). children with personality disorders are by definition more likely to engage in authority conflict behaviours in the classroom, particularly with teachers. conflict with peers, in the form of bullying, is also likely. further, the above-noted pattern of inconsistent and harsh parenting often reflects antisocial parental attitudes, particularly towards fighting, which may normalize aggressive behaviours (solomon, bradshaw, & wright, 2008). together, these risk factors substantially increase risk of poor school performance, which is often related to general oppositional attitudes, disruptive behaviours, and disregard for rules and authority, thereby reducing access to prosocial peers and positive reinforcement from teachers, parents, and other authority figures (moffitt, 1993). children and youth with personality disorders are also more likely to be placed in child welfare care either because of parental abuse, parental neglect, or extreme truancy (dodge, 2000). once in the care of child protective services, the aggressive behaviours of these youth often translate into multiple placements as caregivers express an unwillingness to expose themselves, and often other family members, to the persistent angry and manipulative behaviours of the youth (newton et al., 2000). in later childhood and early adolescence, youth with these personality disorders are very likely to become involved in serious forms of antisocial behaviour, including major alcohol and substance abuse (compton et al., 2005; knop et al., 2009), primarily because of poor impulse control (thapar, van den bree, fowler, langley, & whittinger, 2006). critics have argued that conduct disorder is too broad a diagnostic construct (i.e., varying levels of aggressiveness and antisociality cover too many diverse negative attitudes and behaviours) to explain serious and violent antisocial behaviour or to assist clinicians in determining effectively targeted therapies (frick & dickens, 2006). however, it remains a strong predictor of violent behaviour even after controlling for other critical risk factors (hodgins, cree, alderton, & mak, 2007). intervention effective treatments exist for both oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder to reduce the likelihood of these disorders progressing into antisocial personality disorder. the latter is associated with serious and violent offending into adulthood. since the main traits associated with each of these personality disorders are failure to develop prosocial skills and moderate aggressive behaviours, the most effective intervention is training programs designed to teach parents to impart these positive behaviours to their children. however, an obvious limitation of these parental training programs occurs when parents are unable or unwilling to participate in such interventions, or when certain traits of the child impede the effectiveness of parenting training programs (e.g., extreme callousness and unemotional traits). in cases where parenting training programs are not effective or possible, cognitive skills training interventions are appropriate for children of at least 8 years of age (duggan, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 207 in cases where early interventions are neither attempted nor successful, interventions external to the home environment may reduce the likelihood that risk factors will accumulate. again, school is an important intervention context, where programs may focus on enhancing positive learning and social experiences. non-stigmatizing remedial programs attenuate learning problems and increase school performance. for the more extreme cases “alternative schools” provide concentrated teaching resources. yet, it is difficult to avoid stigmatizing and further isolating youth in special programs, especially alternate schools, from prosocial students. another challenge for this pathway is that schools in socially disorganized neighbourhoods, with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged and single-parent families, increase the likelihood that these personality disordered youth will be influenced by the pervasive presence of street-based informal and formal youth gangs. in other words, schools in these neighbourhoods have to compete with highly accessible and powerful antisocial organizations that have particular appeal to youth in this pathway who are searching for outlets for their aggressive and antisocial tendencies. promising programs integrate remedial school and prosocial programs into the larger community to include churches, sports, recreational, and business organizations, thereby creating an interconnected and non-stigmatizing network of support. in cases where antisocial personality disorder is not prevented or in cases of psychopathy, behavioural management strategies must be employed. antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy in particular are extremely difficult to treat and thus they require ongoing attention in the form of continued interventions and monitoring (losel, 2001). however, both individuals with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy tend to develop an oppositional attitude towards authority, thereby making them resistant to change (tyrer, mitchard, methuen, & ranger, 2003; hare, 1993; wong & hare, 2005). some successes in the treatment of antisocial personality disorder have been noted with the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (duggan, 2009), which is also the recommended course of treatment for individuals with psychopathy (wong & hare, 2005). it is important to note that while individuals with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy can potentially learn to limit their antisocial behaviours with appropriate goals and maintenance, in many cases, these individuals will require long-term interventions and monitoring (wong & hare, 2005). 3: extreme child temperament temperament essentially refers to the range of behavioural responses elicited by a particular individual to various experiences as a result of emotional reactivity, first evident at four months of age (kagan & snidman, 2004). there are several definitions of temperament with most definitions stating that it is inherited, evident in early life, and stable across all developmental stages (frick, 2004b). optimal temperament reflects an ability to respond to events in a flexible and adaptive manner that matches the social context (eisenberg & morris, 2002). however, some infants have extreme responses to novel events: high reactive children become tense, cry, scream, and arch their backs in an escape movement, and low reactive children remain physiologically unperturbed, interested, and curious (kagan & snidman, 2004). both extremely high and low levels of emotional reactivity likely increase the risk for antisocial behaviour (frick et al., 2003; loney, frick, clements, ellis, & kerlin, 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 208 while extreme levels of emotional reactivity may be functional and positive in certain contexts (e.g., extreme threats), such reactions are maladaptive when they interfere with prosocial relationships (cicchetti, ackerman, & izard, 1995). although temperament affects child, adolescent, and adult behaviours, and the range of prosocial and antisocial personalities that develop, temperament is not deterministic of antisocial behaviour (kagan & snidman, 2004). however, temperament may be understood as reflecting a spectrum with various psychopathologies associated with each end. anxiety and conduct disorders are examples of high reactivity, while certain callous and unemotional traits, in addition to adhd, are examples of low reactivity (clark, watson, & mineka, 1994; frick, 2004a). in other words, there is very likely a relationship between temperament type and personality disorders, but they are not the same and there are other factors (e.g., environmental) that also affect personality development. the separation between personality disorders and temperament is supported by studies controlling for the overlap in measures and definitions of temperament and psychopathologies, which have found that temperament alone maintains predictive associations of behaviour (lemery, essex, & smider, 2002; lengua, west, & sandler, 1998). further, although children with low reactivity tend to be more distractible, there is no concrete support for the association between low reactivity and adhd (kagan & snidman, 2004). despite the complexity of the conceptual distinctions between temperament and personality disorders, their probabilistic relationships, and the somewhat inconsistent research concerning their respective predictive validity regarding certain psychopathologies generally associated with antisocial behaviours, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the optimal intervention strategies are separate for the temperament pathway and the personality disorder pathway. prevalence children with conduct problems have difficulty regulating their emotions (eisenberg, fabes, guthrie, & reiser, 2000; eisenberg et al., 2001; frick et al., 2003; loney et al., 2003; krueger, caspi, moffitt, white, & stouthamer-loeber, 1996; frick, lilienfeld, ellis, loney, & silverthorn, 1999). individuals with high reactivity are prone to frustration and are more likely to present conduct problems, while those high reactive children with difficulty regulating sadness are more likely to present with internalizing behaviours (eisenberg et al., 2001; kagan, 1994; kagan & snidman, 2004; rosenbaum et al., 2002; eisenberg et al., 1996). in contrast, low reactive children are more likely to display defiant behaviours associated with a disregard for consequences, which tend to be associated with externalizing behavioural problems (kagan & snidman, 2004). both internalizing and externalizing behavioural problems are overrepresented among offender populations (corrado et al., 2000; teplin et al., 2002; fazel et al., 2008; torgensen et al., 2001; fazel & danesh, 2002). proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with extreme child temperament extreme temperament  inappropriate parenting techniques  low income singleparent  early aggressive behaviour  antisocial behaviour international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 209 cjs involvement  cic placement  kicked out/ runs away  substance abuse extreme temperament, either high or low, can create negative parenting responses. parents of high reactive children are more likely to have difficulty inculcating prosocial/normative behaviours from their children because children tend to be so emotional that they are not able to effectively internalize messages communicated by their parents (kockanska, 1993, 1995, 1997). this persistent irritability may be inaccurately perceived as inappropriate and wilful defiance, which can increase the likelihood of parental anger, emotional and physical punishment responses, which then exacerbates the child’s excitability thereby further encouraging aggression or withdrawal (kagan & snidman, 2004; keenan & shaw, 2003). when negative parent-child interaction is continuously repeated, particularly in early childhood, it can lead to a cycle of increasing parental coerciveness and punishment or parental accession to the child’s reactions (i.e., letting the child succeed in rejecting parental prosocial discipline). this cycle of negative parent-child interactions facilitates increasingly coercive responses from both the parent and the child, encouraging the development of antisocial response types from the child (patterson, reid, & dishion, 1992; patterson, 1986; snyder & patterson, 1995). regarding parental reactions to low reactive or “easy going” children, parents often presume these children require little consistent and proportional discipline, which can be associated with their failure to learn how to delay gratification and self-regulate antisocial behaviours (keenan & shaw, 2003). in part, this occurs because parental reprimands are less likely to generate uncertainty, anxiety, self-disappointment, or shame. consequently, for extreme low reactive children, attempts to punish or control their behaviour are often met with anger and tantrums. again, if this cycle continues into subsequent developmental stages, the child may develop an opposition to authority (kagan & snidman, 2004). important additional risk factors in parental responses to extreme reactive children are low socioeconomic status (ses) and/or single-parenthood. parents with very limited social support (e.g., partners, extended family or friends, and neighbours), little access to information concerning prosocial child rearing, and the inability to afford daycare facilities are more likely to have difficulties understanding, communicating, and engaging in prosocial responses to children (hoff, 2003; huttenlocher, vasilyeva, waterfall, vevea, & hedges, 2007; pan, rowe, singer, & snow, 2005). this is particularly important in infancy during crucial stages for mother-child bonding, and throughout early childhood as the child engages in vocabulary development, toilet training, and initial social interactions with peers. poverty and social isolation, especially in socially disorganized and highly economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, are strongly associated with parental stress that further inhibits the ability to respond appropriately to extreme temperament children (hay, pawlby, angold, harold, & sharp, 2003). when transitioning through school grades, children with poor regulation of negative emotions (e.g., anger and frustration) are at a heightened risk of peer rejection (rubin, bukowski, & parker, 1998). in particular, high reactive children and youth are more likely to respond to routine school activities involving teachers and peers with aggressive outbursts, in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 210 part because their intense emotional arousal increases their difficulty in accurately interpreting social cues (i.e., non-hostile) and responding prosocially (dodge & pettit, 2003; dodge, lochman, harnish, bates, & pettit, 1997; waldman, 1996). in the later childhood stage, (10 to 12 years old), high reactivity is associated with substance abuse, in part because of boredom and low self-control (wills, sandy, & shinar, 1999; wills, sandy, & yaeger, 2002). in contrast, low reactivity children are more likely to engage in externalizing behaviours largely because they lack the normative heightened sense of fear of being punished (eisenberg et al., 2001; frick et al., 1999; frick et al., 2003; schwartz, snidman, & kagan, 1996; tremblay, pihl, vitaro, & dobkin, 1994). for these youth, the motivation for high-risk antisocial behaviours and potentially self-destructive behaviours (e.g., excessive hard drug use and driving cars at reckless speeds) is the intense physiological desire to engage in novel and exciting experiences (raine, 2002). low reactive children begin engaging in antisocial behaviours early and disregard age norms, again, largely because they lack fear associated with potential punishment and seek intense stimulation. a small proportion of youth on this pathway experience aggression in the form of bullying, followed later by serious violence in adolescence (kagan & snidman, 2004). intervention despite the evidence that temperament is genetically determined, its relationship to antisocial behaviour is not deterministic. children with extreme temperaments can develop skills to cope with adverse situations either on their own, or as a result of parental intervention (rubin, burgess, & hastings, 2002; kagan & snidman, 2004). extreme temperaments are identifiable at multiple life stages, beginning as early as four months of age with the use of a 45-minute assessment of responses to stimuli conducted by a trained professional (kagan & snidman, 2004). in cases where extreme temperament is undetected at the earliest developmental stage, there are several types of instruments available at the later stages including, for example, cognitive assessments for 4 year olds, teacher and parent questionnaires for 7 year olds, and biological assessments for 11 year olds (kagan & snidman, 2004). thus, there are multiple points of detection, and a range of intervention points which are associated with programs. intervention programs for extreme high reactive children emphasize the minimization of anxiety by avoiding stress-inducing expectations and overly critical reactions to failure by authority figures, particularly parents and teachers. interventions for extreme low reactive children focus instead on structured discipline, and high-energy activities focused on rewards rather than punishment to engage the children (wills & dishion, 2004; kagan & snidman, 2004). 4: childhood maltreatment pathway this pathway focuses on severe or repeated child maltreatment during the early years of life. while there is no common definition or consensus about what constitutes the broad range of acts that define serious maltreatment, typically this concept refers to a one or more incidents of neglect, emotional abuse, physical or sexual abuse. severe maltreatment increases the likelihood of immediate and/or long-term substantial damage to the physical and mental health of the child. one of the difficulties in explicating the severe maltreatment pathway is that cumulative acts of non-severe maltreatment such as hostile and ineffective parenting also have immediate and longinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 211 term effects on aggression and general antisocial behaviour (benzies et al., 2009; farrington, 1996). both recurrent abuse of a less serious nature (ryan & testa, 2005) and experiencing abuse by multiple perpetrators (hamilton, falshaw, & browne, 2002) are associated with antisocial behaviour. in other words, repeated less serious incidents of maltreatment can result in cumulative substantive damage, not unlike single incidents of major maltreatment. the key concern is whether maltreatment contributes to changes in the child’s neuro-anatomical structures or brain chemistry that impact the ability of the brain to moderate reactivity associated with impulsivity and aggression (perry, 1997). children who experience repeated and unpredictable violence are more likely to be hyper-vigilant to threats, thereby misperceiving them and reacting impulsively and aggressively (perry, 1997). prevalence a recent provincial survey in british columbia found that 64% of incarcerated youth had been physically abused, most commonly by a parent or step-parent; 11% had experienced sexual abuse, and 10% had experienced both physical and sexual abuse (murphy, chittenden, & mccreary centre society, 2005). similar findings were observed in a sample of incarcerated youth in england, which found that nearly 55% of youth had experienced abuse on multiple occasions, both by the same perpetrator on multiple occasions and by different perpetrators (hamilton et al., 2002). proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders exposed to child maltreatment 2 extreme maltreatment  poor school performance  singleparenthood  inappropriate bonding  multiple cic placements cjs invovlement  early substance abuse  poor school performance children exposed to repeated maltreatment, particularly in combination with neglect, are at an increased risk of early poor school performance. this relationship is explained by a heightened state of defensive alertness that distracts from the ability to focus on routine lessons needed for positive school performance. early school success is strongly correlated with longerterm academic performance including intermediate or secondary school graduation which, in turn, is associated with decreased likelihood of antisocial behaviour and serious violence (stewart, livingston, & dennison, 2008; jonson-reid, drake, kim, porterfield, & han, 2004; perry, 1997). regarding trauma related to maltreatment, there is a strong relationship between singleparent homes and harsh parenting practices (benzies et al., 2009), and adolescents raised in 2 risk factors in dotted lines have likely always been present, but take on new meaning for as others accumulate. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 212 single-parent households have been found to be significantly more likely to engage in antisocial behaviours (demuth & brown, 2004; fergusson, boden, & horwood, 2007). thus, there is an increased likelihood of stacked risk factors for these youth in the case of single-parent families. however, in both singleand two-parent households, as the emotional and behavioural problems associated with the trauma intensify, the ability of these children to bond with their caregivers diminishes (perry, 1997). this creates a downward spiral, whereby the combination of continued abuse and insecure attachment increases the likelihood of conduct problems (vando, rhulelouie, mcmahon, & spieker, 2008). as chronic maltreatment continues, the likelihood of entry into the care of child protective services increases. given the likelihood of severely maltreated children to display conduct problems, they are also likely to experience a high number of placement breakdowns, which may further reduce the likelihood of school success if placements require school transfers (newton et al., 2000). these youth tend to engage in substance abuse at a young age in an attempt to self-medicate and cope with their trauma. substance abuse, particularly of hard drugs, has been discussed as a form of self-medication among incarcerated youth, who in many cases had experienced trauma (corrado & cohen, 2002). as these youth are shifted among placements in child protection services, unequipped to effectively navigate through social settings as a result of failed socialization techniques by neglectful and abusive parents, they have few anchors to help them avoid antisocial behaviours. their propensity to engage in aggressive behaviours is increased by their tendency to view the actions of others as threatening, thereby eliciting a hostile response. they are unlikely to seek attachments to school, as they generally fail to become attached to school at any point due to their early classroom difficulties. as such, these youth become highly likely to engage in serious antisocial behaviour. intervention initial intervention strategies focus on service agents with most routine access to families, encouraging their ability to integrate efforts to identify families at high risk for child abuse. public health nurses who visit pregnant mothers, family physicians, social workers, daycare workers, and police are critical sources for identifying cases of maltreatment of infants and toddlers. later in childhood, preschool and kindergarten teachers have routine contact with their students that allow them to identify abuse and thus also take on a key role in protecting children. early identification of abuse may be improved with knowledge of particular types of high-risk families, such as those headed by young single parents who are also unemployed or with very limited income, have little familial or friendship support, engage in routine substance abuse, and/or have serious and long-term mental health problems. unstable intimate partner relationships further increase the childhood risk especially if histories of criminality and violence are also evident among one or both of the parents (benzies et al., 2009). single parenthood is pervasive in canada since one-fifth of children in canada in 2004 resided in single-parent homes (vanier institute of the family, 2004). another intervention point is later childhood, just prior to adolescence. this stage is important because children who experience chronic victimization continuing from childhood to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 213 adolescence are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviours than those whose victimization was limited to early childhood or the first year of grade school (verrecchia, fetzer, lemmon, & austin, 2010). parent training programs that focus on improving the ability of parents to identify problematic behaviours in their children and to modify these behaviours accordingly are particularly effective (kazdin, 1997; howell & hawkins, 1998). evaluations of these programs have reported reductions in certain risk factors associated with poor family management techniques (greenwood, 2004). however, when either the maltreatment is extreme or when maltreatment persists despite attempts to improve parenting strategies, child protection services are typically mandated by law to remove the child from the family. while there is considerable controversy over removing a child from parental care quickly, in extreme incidents of severe maltreatment resulting in major trauma including brain damage, the immediate experience of secure and intensely loving caregivers can mitigate and even reverse brain damage, especially for infants and very young children (perry, 1997). another important treatment concern is assessing why some children in care experience multiple placement shifts. the latter are strongly associated with early and even chronic involvement in youth and adult criminal justice systems along with more serious offending and longer sentences. one explanation is that there is a category of maltreated children who suffer post-traumatic disorders and/or present with undiagnosed co-morbid personality disorders, some of which are discussed in the above pathways. foster care providers who are unaware of these disorders or lack the resources to parent these types of children, not uncommonly return them to child services for another placement. in effect, by failing to identify the extent of maltreatment related trauma or childhood and adolescent disorders, the negative impact of the original trauma is compounded because of the continuing experience of “familial” rejection and related emotional/physical disruptions resulting from multiple placements (doyle, 2007; jonson-reid & barth, 2000; newton et al., 2000). an accompanying treatment concern is the need to provide continuing housing, income, and employment assistance along with mental health services for the period of transition from late adolescence to early adulthood (courtney & heuring, 2005). 5: adolescent onset there is a consensus that serious antisocial behaviour, particularly criminal behaviour, most commonly begins during adolescence (moffitt, 1993; gottfredson & hirschi, 1990). the pre-eminent theoretical model of why this occurs is moffitt’s typology consisting of life-course persistent offender and adolescence-limited offender. this adolescent onset pathway is premised upon moffitt’s (1993) identification of an adolescent-onset type of offender: individuals who begin engaging in antisocial behaviours during early adolescence, but whose earlier life experiences were not characterized by exposure to risk factors for serious antisocial behaviour. most adolescent onset young offenders desist by late adolescence or early adulthood because of age appropriate opportunities for mature relationships and independence from parents and other authority figures (moffitt, 1993). however, more recently moffitt, caspi, harrington, and milne (2002) acknowledged a small proportion of adolescent onset offenders who continue offending into adulthood. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 214 prevalence adolescent onset offending is common among offender populations, with estimates as high as 95% of the antisocial population (moffitt, 1993). the typical trajectory for adolescent onset offenders who persist into adulthood (albeit at a reduced rate) is most frequently characterized by desistance around 26 years of age (moffitt et al., 2002). yet a small proportion do not desist during early or middle adulthood, and this is explained in relation to experienced “snares” or certain key risk factors, including substance addictions, incarceration, involvement in adult criminal gangs, and early and overwhelming parenthood responsibilities that hinder the ability of individuals to effectively desist in adolescence or early adulthood (moffitt, 1993; gatti et al., 2005; thornberry et al., 2003). in other words, there are risk factors that increase the likelihood of persistence among those who would otherwise be likely to desist prior to adulthood (lacourse et al., 2003; stouthamer-loeber et al., 2008). proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with adolescent onset3 low income, single-parent, high conflict family  socially disorganized neighbourhood  family criminality  poor school performance  early substance abuse adult gangs  cjs invovlement  antisocial behaviour  multiple cic placements the adolescent onset offender is not typically exposed to family and education risk factors as these youth are more likely to have experienced prosocial parenting, positive early school performance, and prosocial peer relationships. however, there are a significant number of adolescents who express disagreement with their parents. for example, in rutter, graham, chadwick, and yule’s (1976) early seminal isle of wight cohort study, up to one-third of 14 year olds indicated some disagreement with their parents. family stability, successful routine involvement in school and leisure activities such as sports, animal care, and arts, and neighbourhood cohesion, all limit expressions of typical adolescent rebellion. nonetheless, experiencing change (such as that brought on by divorce, changing custody arrangements, health issues, accidents, death, school transfers, bullying, change of residences and/or cities) may sufficiently disrupt daily life, resulting in an increased likelihood of adolescent onset serious antisocial behaviour. often, sudden changes in school performance, such as incomplete assignments and lowered grades, are linked to skipping classes in an attempt to reject authority and establish autonomy. school failure is linked to higher drop-out rates, cumulative skill deficits, reduced employment opportunities, and long-term unemployment (moffitt, 1993; corrado, cohen, & 3 risk factors in dotted lines have likely always been present, but take on new meaning for as others accumulate. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 215 mccormick, 2008; cohen, corrado, & mccormick, 2008). the more excessive expressions of rebellion against authority involve association with antisocial peers, whose lifestyles mimic adult roles without the concomitant responsibilities and resources. to obtain the latter, routine property crime and drug trafficking are resorted to, and, not uncommonly, instigated and organized by life-course persistent young offenders. the lifestyle of the latter also includes illegal substance use, early onset and non-normative sexual activities, along with a range of high risk and violent behaviours. these activities are essential to the explanation of adolescent limited offenders (moffitt, 1993). in extreme situations, these youth are either dismissed from their homes or run away. in early adolescence, and even beginning in late childhood, this reaction increases the likelihood that child/youth care agencies will become involved to place the child in the care of child protective services. however, it is likely that these youth would also run away from care placements and thus also experience multiple placements and shifts across group homes. more disconcerting, some of these youth will become “street kids” where the risk for victimization and criminal offending increase dramatically (baron & hartnagel, 1998; hagan & mccarthy, 1997). a minority of offenders become life-course persistent, such as those who experience the presence of neighbourhood risk factors (e.g., concentrated social or economic disadvantage and ethnic or racial homogeneity), family risk factors (e.g., family criminality and single parenthood), and poor school performance, rendering them more likely to be recruited into informal and formal gangs. the appeal of these gangs stems first from a desire to obtain protection through membership, and membership is sustained by interest in the associated lifestyle or by ongoing threats to survival that appear to be mitigated by gang involvement (howell & egley, 2005; thornberry et al., 2003). this gang involvement is strongly correlated with persistent serious and violent offending, custodial sentences, and criminal trajectories into adulthood (thornberry et al., 2003; gatti et al., 2005). intervention strategy programs based on parenting techniques for behavioural issues that commonly arise on a daily basis for this adolescent onset age group have empirical support (gardner, lane, & hutchings, 2004). specifically, improved parental recognition of risk factors and related parent management skills for devising graduated levels of responsibility and increases in child autonomy are associated with a reduction in negative behaviours at home, disruptive behaviours in the classroom, peer aggression, and improved school readiness and academic engagement. teaching parents to avoid rigid and authoritarian language or behaviours, and establishing normative standards of conduct facilitates effective communication with adolescents. in effect, parental openness to discussion and negotiations with an adolescent can reduce their perceived sense of a lack of autonomy and minimize the desire to prematurely engage in adult behaviours. a key objective is to teach parents how to minimize the likelihood of a continuous cycle of parent-child anger, parental recrimination, and the escalation of language by both parties with the resultant rebellious behaviour displayed by the adolescent (webster-stratton & taylor, 2001; gardner et al., 2004; sanders, turner, & markie-dadds, 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 216 programs focused on the adolescent pathway are often necessary because it is the presence of actual programs that de-escalates the above cycle despite all the best parental intentions. again, schools and other community-based programs can provide opportunities to experience autonomy and more adult-like prosocial excitement. beyond sports programs that are usually highly exclusive and limited to a handful of the best athletes, sports clubs led by older students and supervised by adult mentors can be an important source for positive self-image and autonomy. programs to develop trade skills, along with apprenticeships, can also be targeted at middle and late adolescents to provide another school/community-based opportunity. government sponsored independent living experiences can also be targeted at the small number of older adolescents who have fundamental difficulties remaining at home. conclusion it is not possible in the limited space of this article to explicate the complete series of potential risk factors, intervention points, and related programs appropriate for each pathway. the essential theme of this article is that recent developmental theories, empirical research, and related risk measurement instruments in canada and elsewhere, have provided vitally important information concerning intervention strategies to reduce child and adolescent antisocial behaviours that progress into adult criminal trajectories. indeed, the literature is now sufficiently developed and specified within a developmental framework to provide a degree of specificity as to what prevention strategies at which developmental points will best target appropriate risk in the context of evidence-based strategies (leschied, chiodo, nowicki, & rodger, 2008). another theme is that there are multiple developmental pathways that are hypothesized to require different intervention points, and therefore, different programs are appropriate according to the initial risk factor, despite the numerous risk factors shared across the developmental stages. a key assumption is that valid diagnostic instruments exist to identify risk factors for each pathway, and that there are valid treatment interventions as well. this optimistic perspective, arguably, is embedded in the canadian research presented in all the other articles in this special edition. at a minimum, there is an emerging consensus among developmental theorists and researchers that there is considerable causal heterogeneity among serious and violent young offenders. this diversity is specifically evident in the 12-year sshrc-funded study of over 1,000 incarcerated young offenders in british columbia that the authors have been involved in. finally, these pathways are also designed to stimulate a debate about additional risk factors, the sequencing of risk factors, appropriate treatment strategies, and the identification of additional pathways. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 197-232 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 217 references alltucker, k. w., bullis, m., close, d., & yovanoff, p. 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(2005). guidelines for a psychopathy treatment program. toronto: multi-health systems. risk profiles, trajectories, and intervention points for serious and chronic young offenders abstract: one of the lesser understood research issues about antisocial onset and persistence is whether there are different patterns of risk factors within the broader identified pathways that require distinctive treatment strategies. this article... key words: young offender, pathway models, intervention, serious offending, chronic offending, violent offending key variables in the models school performance residential mobility antisocial peers substance abuse aggressive behaviours proposed pathway models 1: prenatal risk factors evidence of prenatal risk factor exposure among serious and violent offenders proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders exposed to prenatal risk factors intervention 2: childhood personality disorders evidence of personality disorders among serious and violent offenders proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with childhood personality disorders0f intervention 3: extreme child temperament prevalence proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with extreme child temperament intervention 4: childhood maltreatment pathway prevalence proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders exposed to child maltreatment1f intervention 5: adolescent onset prevalence proposed pathway to serious antisocial behaviour for offenders with adolescent onset2f intervention strategy conclusion references lösel, f. (2001). evaluating the effectiveness of correctional programs: bridging the gap between research and practice. in g. bernfeld, d. farrington, & a. leschied (eds.), offender rehabilitation in practice: implementing and evaluating effective ... running head: deliberation models featuring youth participation 1 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 409 deliberation models featuring youth participation denise bulling, lyn carson, mark dekraai, alexis garcia, and harri raisio abstract: there is a growing trend among developed countries to increase the participation of youth in societal and institutional decision-making. the challenge is to move away from an illusion of participation (tokenism) to genuine youth influence. this article transfers knowledge of a relatively new theory to the fields of youth engagement and community development. we pose deliberative democracy as a model to build bridges between youth and decision-makers. this concrete approach offers a platform for youth and adults to engage in a learning process as equal citizens and proactive leaders. deliberative democracy can be understood as an umbrella term for different models of public deliberation. these models attempt to create carefully detailed conditions for increasing the legitimacy of decisions made through deliberation. deliberative models that feature youth participation include youth juries, dialogue days between young people and decision-makers, and adult-youth participatory forums where the youth voice is usually a minority. we explore the role of relationships, collaboration, and leadership in generating democratic spaces for the inclusion of youth in policy formation and reform. the challenges associated with engaging youth are discussed along with examples of models from australia, finland, canada, and the united states that promote effective youth engagement. keywords: deliberative democracy, decision-making, collaborative governance, learning processes, policy reform, youth engagement acknowledgements: for their contributions or editing, the authors wish to thank tarik abdel-monem, stacey hoffman, and ryan lowry. corresponding author: denise bulling, ph.d., public policy center, university of nebraska, 215 centennial mall south, suite 401, po box 880228, lincoln, nebraska, usa, 68588-0228. email: dbulling@nebraska.edu mailto:dbulling@nebraska.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 410 the authors have requested alphabetical listing: denise bulling, ph.d. is a senior research director at the university of nebraska public policy center, 215 centennial mall south, suite 401, lincoln, nebraska, usa, 68508. e-mail: dbulling@nebraska.edu lyn carson, ph.d. is a professor at the university of sydney business school, merewether building, city road, university of sydney, new south wales, 2006, australia. e-mail: lyn.carson@sydney.edu.au mark dekraai, ph.d., j.d. is a senior research director at the university of nebraska public policy center, 215 centennial mall south, suite 401, lincoln, nebraska, usa, 68508. e-mail: mdekraai@nebraska.edu alexis garcia, m.a. is a consultant and researcher on the subjects of dialogue, change management, and democratic and inclusive governance in montreal, quebec, canada. e-mail: garcia.alexis.1978@gmail.com harri raisio, ph.d. is an assistant professor in social and health management at the university of vaasa, yliopistonranta 10, 65101 vaasa, finland. e-mail: harri.raisio@uwasa.fi there is a growing effort in developed countries to increase the participation of youth in political and institutional decision-making. the challenge is to steer away from tokenistic participation and engender genuine youth influence (feldmann-wojtachnia et al., 2010). the goal of these efforts is to develop a real, measurable impact of the input of youth. some have posited that deliberative dialogue and decision-making among youth is limited by their lack of knowledge and experience with social or policy issues worthy of deliberation, or that they underestimate potential negative consequences of either personal decisions or policy choices (huber, frommeyer, weisenbach, & sazama, 2003; ryan, 2010; wolff & crockett, 2011). on the other hand, proponents of involving youth in deliberation assert that youth are too often excluded from important decision-making activities, which contributes to feelings of marginalization and undermines notions of deliberative democracy (frank, 2006; young, 2000). there are various forms of deliberative activities and forums targeting youth, including youth engagement councils in the united kingdom (matthews, 2010; wyness, 2009), youth study circles (wulff, 2003), and online deliberation (edelmann, krimmer, & parycek, 2008; scherer, neuroth, schefbeck, & wimmer, 2009; wells, 2010). practitioners of deliberative discussion and engagement have great interest in using digital and networked media as vehicles and forums for engaging youth (bennett, wells, & freelon, 2009; levine, 2007a; olsson, 2007; a. von burg, r. von burg, mitchell, & louden, 2012). in addition to enhancing youth-adult engagement and improving public policy, these approaches may have an added benefit of leading to the development of civic habits and attitudes among youth (levine, 2007b; mcleod, 2000). mailto:dbulling@nebraska.edu mailto:lyn.carson@sydney.edu.au mailto:mdekraai@nebraska.edu mailto:garcia.alexis.1978@gmail.com mailto:harri.raisio@uwasa.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 411 to ensure youth can productively engage in institutional decision-making, a variety of efforts have been made to enhance their understanding of policy issues, develop the skills needed to engage in effective dialogue, and create opportunities for youth engagement in decisionmaking processes. for example, schools routinely offer classes or implement programs designed to educate students about civic knowledge, responsibilities, and skills (pasek, feldman, romer, & jamieson, 2008; syvertsen et al., 2009; youniss, 2011). service-learning programs and other activities that promote linking students with community activities and issues have also become commonplace (hart & donnelly, 2007; morgan & streb, 2001; waldstein & reiher, 2001). specific curricula focusing on developing deliberative skills have been offered in classroom environments (battistoni, 2004; peng, 2000; rubin, 2007). projects have also focused more intentionally on involving youth in forums outside of school-based programming to promote civic engagement and discussion (ferman, 2005; mohamed & wheeler, 2001). one form of public participation relying on effective dialogue skills of citizens is built around a normative theory called deliberative democracy (chambers, 2003). deliberative democrats strive to create carefully detailed conditions for increasing the legitimacy of decisions created through deliberation. this article examines deliberative democracy as it pertains to youth participation by providing real world examples of its implementation. a brief introduction to deliberative democracy is offered, and then four different examples of deliberative youth participation are presented, each highlighting different characteristics of deliberative democracy. they include deliberation solely for young people, deliberation between young people and decision-makers, and mixed-age deliberations. these four cases are summarized in relation to the three criteria of deliberative democracy (inclusion, deliberation, and influence) to highlight the prospects and challenges of deliberative youth participation (carson & hartz-karp, 2005). defining deliberative democracy practitioners use a variety of terms to describe public engagement processes based on the theory of deliberative democracy including civic engagement, community engagement, public participation, or public deliberation. deliberative democracy is understood as a form of democracy that values discussion, reflection, and consideration over simply voting (chambers, 2003). at its best, this form of engagement should be inclusive of stakeholder populations, meaning that those participating in the deliberation should represent different societal views as much as possible; it should be deliberative, to allow participants to thoroughly consider the topic and weigh different options and the values underlying decisions; and it should have influence, to be genuinely collaborative with decision-makers – in other words it should influence the policy outcome (carson & hartz-karp, 2005). deliberative democratic theory pays particular attention to deliberation, or discussion where one is “to be truthful in what one says, to respect the arguments of others, to give good reasons for one’s own arguments, and to be open to changing one’s position by the force of the better argument” (steiner, 2012, p. 3). deliberation would then take place in an ideal situation, defined by habermas (1999) as everyone having equal opportunity to participate in public discussion; where all participants can present their own views and arguments; and where the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 412 power or status of the participant is irrelevant and the merits of the argument prevail. deliberative democracy has developed beyond its idealistic, classical form and has been applied to real world decision-making (elstub, 2010; bächtiger, niemeyer, neblo, steenbergen, & steiner, 2010; mansbridge et al., 2010). deliberative democracy is understood to produce two kinds of value: instrumental and expressive (gutmann & thompson, 2004). instrumentally, public deliberation is seen as a tool leading decision-makers to achieve good and justifiable decisions. such instrumental purposes can be more specifically understood as informing and legitimizing policy and, in some cases, freeing a paralyzed policy process. as a more expressive purpose, public deliberation is seen to revitalize democracy. public deliberation can help citizens move toward public judgment on specific issues; promote a healthier democratic culture and more capable citizenry; build community; and catalyze civic action (friedman, 2006). however, deliberative democracy is not without challenges: for example, ensuring inclusiveness of participants (clifford, 2012); deciding how to conduct the deliberation when participants speak different languages (addis, 2007); minimizing the use of power and polarization of preferences in deliberation (sanders, 1997; sunstein, 2003); and scaling up the applications of deliberative democracy (friedman, 2006; mansbridge et al., 2012). various methods attempt to deliver the three ideals of deliberative democracy: inclusiveness, deliberation, and influence (carson & hartz-karp, 2005). collectively these methods are described as mini-publics and include 21st century town meetings, citizens’ juries, planning cells, consensus conferences, and deliberative polling. they differ, for example, in the length of the events (generally from 2 to 5 days) and in the number of participants (from a dozen to even hundreds or thousands of deliberators), and the structure of the deliberations, but what connects these approaches are created conditions leading to deliberative processes of high quality (fung, 2003). mini-publics are part of the wider set of deliberative methods used in democratic systems (dryzek, 2010; mansbridge et al., 2012). ideally, systems become stronger when all the different kinds of deliberative mechanisms, and relationships among them, are supported. thus, the diversity of these different deliberative mechanisms should be celebrated and the connections between them fostered (hendriks, 2006). deliberative youth participation is one of these particular mechanisms. applications of deliberative youth participation applications of deliberative democracy focused solely on young people are still few in number (carson, sargant, & blackadder, 2004; eskelinen et al., 2012; raisio, ollila, & vartiainen, 2012). often these applications are traditional mini-publics that strive to include the whole society in miniature. whole society in this case often means those citizens who have reached the voting age, which in many countries is 18 years. four examples of deliberative youth participation are presented here. each case example includes the three criteria of deliberative democracy: inclusion, deliberation, and influence. a brief review of these criteria and the application to the four cases sets the stage for understanding how each fits the deliberative model. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 413 ideal deliberative processes are inclusive, with different societal views represented. commonly, stratified random-sampling is applied (carson & martin, 1999). this is the case with one of the examples, the australian youth jury. the united states deliberation on pandemic influenza set a goal of attracting participants who represented their communities, but did not use random selection. finland’s dialogue day and canada’s deliberation in the indigenous community applied a more open method of participant recruitment. of the four case studies, deliberation on pandemic influenza can be identified as a traditional mini-public, that is, a deliberative model that selects participants from amongst the entire population. young people represent then only one age cohort in the deliberation. canada’s deliberation in the indigenous community resembles enclave deliberation where participants share a “structural location in relation to the issue” (karpowitz, raphael, & hammond, 2009, p. 582). individuals who are affiliated with the topic of deliberation are chosen to participate, in this case people from different parent and youth groups, and community organizations. the youth jury and dialogue day, on the other hand, can be identified more as enclaves of shared identity or as sectoral minipublics (raisio & carson, in review). even though young participants share their thoughts with expert witnesses and decision-makers, most of the time they deliberate amongst themselves. the quality of deliberation can be considered as high in all the case studies. first, skilled facilitation was used ensuring that all the young participants were able to voice their opinions and be heard. a safe space for deliberation was created and participants had time and resources to consider the topics of the deliberations deeply. from the four hours of the deliberation in the indigenous community to three days of deliberation in the youth jury, participants were able to develop their views. also, relevant information was given to participants. for example, in the deliberation on pandemic influenza, in the youth jury, and in dialogue day information packages and presentations by experts or panels of experts were used. influence of deliberation is critical for the success of deliberative youth participation. without influence the risk is that participation will be seen as tokenism. as a result, cynicism will increase and willingness to participate decrease (segall, 2005). participants in all the case studies experienced the powerful sensation of being heard and having their views listened to and valued. the knowledge of participants increased through participation in these deliberative events. additionally, the experience of the deliberation in the indigenous community shows signs of social healing, “a moment of overcoming isolation and becoming whole” (wilson, 2009). instrumental value generated by the deliberative events, that is, the actual influence on policy-making, is difficult to quantify. however, all four case studies applied methods that increase the possibility for policy impact and thus decrease the risk of tokenism. in the youth jury the project team committed themselves to assisting participants to follow through with the recommendations of the jury. similarly in the deliberation on pandemic influenza, the project team traced the use of information gained from the deliberation by interviewing key decisionmakers. dialogue day ended in a facilitated discussion between young people and relevant decision-makers, thus allowing the latter to commit to acting on the suggestions made by the young participants. finally, deliberation in the indigenous community shows how important it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 414 to include relevant stakeholders, such as the chief, from the beginning, and to co-design the deliberative processes collaboratively. we recommend that readers of the following case studies look for elements of inclusiveness, quality processes, and influence of each deliberative model. australia’s first youth jury1 in 2003 australia’s first youth jury was convened in parramatta, near sydney. it was, the organizers believe, the world’s first youth jury to be convened by young people themselves. this case study demonstrates how young people can redesign a mini-public to suit the needs of youth. it also demonstrates how inclusion, deliberation, and influence can be achieved. the youth jury project emerged from a university course, which was taught by the second listed author of this article, at the university of sydney (carson, 2010). the author helped the team apply for funding to transfer their classroom experience to an intractable community problem: racial stereotyping of ethnic groups. once government funds were granted, the author stepped out of the picture. members of the project team were encouraged to make their own decisions within a supportive framework. they were offered training in facilitation techniques and access to expert practitioners whenever they needed additional input. the team was largely self-sufficient but used adults as co-administrators and mentors, to test their thinking and strengthen their practice. the eight people who comprised the project team were almost all in their final year of an undergraduate degree, around 20 years of age, and interested enough in the political landscape to be studying a course within the discipline of political science. in the course mentioned above, they convened a citizens’ jury within the university but were hungry to try it in the real world. eight nervous young people embarked on the organization of this project, which was a youth version of a citizens’ jury. eight confident young people completed it, and 17 even younger people were selected as juror participants. the 17 jurors were 16 to 17 years of age and still in high school. this project was important not only because it was the first youth jury to be conducted in australia and the world’s first youth jury to be conducted by young people themselves; it was also special because of the age of the people being consulted, the age of the people doing the consulting, the innovative deliberative method being used, and the bold adaptations that occurred in the hands of the young organizers and participants. four challenges created context for the youth organizers. first, students had learned the theory of deliberative democracy, believed in the value of community engagement (the practical expression of the theory), and wanted to put theory into practice. second, a city (parramatta) in metropolitan sydney was experiencing problems in relation to its diverse community and this was reflected in the media’s controversial conflation of young people with crime and ethnicity. parramatta city council was looking for ways to empower its young people. third, the young 1 see carson (2010) for initial publication details of this case study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 415 people from ethnic communities in the parramatta area were like most young people everywhere – denied a voice in public debates and policy-making on controversial issues. they were eager to be heard. finally, the australian government was offering grants under its living in harmony program to address the spreading conflict and intolerance that exists in australia because of racist attitudes to its multicultural population. the project addressed all four challenges in a number of innovative ways. the project team successfully applied for funds to conduct a youth jury along the lines of u.s. citizens’ juries that were initiated by ned crosby and the jefferson center in the 1970s (crosby, 2003). australian citizens’ juries have adapted this process, most often reducing the time (typically to two or three days) and number of participants (12 to 20). they have rarely included a dynamic web presence. the citizens’ jury method was chosen because the team wanted to maximize participants’ diversity and provide a deliberative space in which consensus could be built through critique. a citizens’ jury, and therefore a youth jury, enables participants to wrestle with complexity, having heard expert speakers, in the company of a skilled, independent facilitator who ensures a healthy group process (carson, 2003). the project team conducted a preliminary survey to establish the issues that were uppermost for the community. they then called for expressions of interest from 16to 17-yearold youth and actively sought young people whose voices would typically remain unheard. the project team used a variety of selection methods (random selection, surveys, and face-to-face interviews) to maximize the diversity of participants. from this pool of 73 applicants, 17 young people were randomly selected to participate as jurors. three introductory sessions were held during which the jurors were informed about the youth jury process. an environment conducive to sharing and respecting one another’s opinions and ideas was developed. jurors were also exposed to the skills of strategic questioning (peavey, 2005). these sessions prepared the jurors for the deliberative demands of the three-day youth jury. the jurors decided to focus their attention on the media’s portrayal of ethnic communities and the broader community’s response to this portrayal. the youth jury brought together presenters who knew a great deal about the topic (from the media, multicultural organizations, academia, and so on). the jurors listened and asked questions and became increasingly more informed, enabling them to ask probing, intelligent questions of the presenters and each other when they later convened to deliberate. the youth jury deviated from a typical australian citizens’ jury in a number of ways. the project team was committed to giving young people a say about issues that were important to them and they were sufficiently empowered to redefine the three-day jury process to suit their own needs. jurors were encouraged to set the agenda and control the process. this level of control by participants is unusual for a citizens’ jury. independent, skilled facilitation is essential for a citizens’ jury to ensure productive group activity without unhelpful dominance or timidity. the project team developed a system for rotating three moderators during the jury process – constantly supporting each other and reflecting together on their practice. this was unusual as a citizens’ jury usually employs a single facilitator. the process was extremely flexible to accommodate the process needs of young international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 416 participants. this often meant that painstakingly created plans were discarded so that the physical, intellectual, and emotional needs of participants could be better served. the project team developed briefing documents that sought to cover all viewpoints on the topic selected by jurors. when the jurors were demonstrating a single, shared perspective, contrary perspectives were gathered to encourage the jurors to test their opinions. the jurors chose informed presenters who they believed would provide them with the most useful information. this is typical for a citizens’ jury. however, in a further innovation, they invited expert speakers to interact through a panel of speakers, rather than having their words unchallenged by jurors or other speakers. in other words, instead of emulating a citizens’ jury which can sometimes distance the jurors from the speakers (because everyday citizens can be intimidated by experts) and experts from each other (because they speak alone to the jurors and rarely debate each other in front of the jurors), the youth jury created an environment of internal challenge and speculation. the project team also made a commitment to the jurors that they would assist them in following through with their recommendations, promising to act as mentors to each of the highly motivated jurors. this is an unusual extension of the citizens’ jury process – to have the jurors pursue their claims beyond the life of the consultation process. further, all those young people who applied but were not randomly selected as jurors were contacted and given information about possibilities for community engagement in their local area. the recommendations that emerged from the jury were thoughtful and strategic and were handed to the local parramatta community during a public forum. the public forum was as innovative as the youth jury because it used a process of speed dialogue to engage all participants in the next stage of the project: enacting the recommendations. speed dialogue (as students had named it) was a micro-process that had been experimented with during the university course. it was modelled on the world café process (http://www.theworldcafe.com) and enabled participants to move quickly and often from group to group, to deepen their conversations. later, members of both the project team and the jury met the premier of new south wales and on a number of other occasions project team members were asked to speak about their experiences and the innovative process they enacted, often for the benefit of professional public participation practitioners. this project fulfilled the ideals of deliberative democracy. evidence of young people’s enthusiasm for active citizenship was provided by the number who completed participation forms, indicating their willingness to participate in the youth jury. the 15 who eventually participated in the youth jury took on the challenge of seeing their recommendations enacted. the project has been mentioned in state parliament and has received wide media coverage. the youth jury has been publicly recognized by state and federal members of parliament and by numerous organizations, such as local police and the chamber of commerce. members of the project team have been invited to address school groups and community organizations and to be interviewed on radio. the project had positive outcomes for all concerned: members of the project team grew in confidence and in their understanding of how theoretical processes worked when applied in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 417 practice; jurors experienced the powerful sensation of being heard and having their views listened to and valued; mentors and other experienced practitioners were prompted to re-examine their own perceptions and reflect on ways in which they may learn from younger and less inhibited enthusiasts of deliberative democracy. the final word comes from one young participant who observed, “there are massive problems in the world – if people with authority can go with young people on their journey in a positive way, that’s great.” finland: dialogue day convening young people with decision-makers a project was conducted in finland in 2008 to evaluate the possibility of giving young people influence in municipal decision-making (gretschel, 2009). it was financed by the ministry of education and coordinated by allianssi, a finnish service and lobbying organization for youth work. in the project, a new participatory forum, dialogue day, was created. this particular case study demonstrates how dialogue between young people and decision-makers can be achieved in effective and pleasing ways. dialogue day between young people and decision-makers was explicitly designed to be carried out in “the spirit of deliberation” (eskelinen et al., 2012, p. 78). this can be seen in different aspects of dialogue day. first, it is open to all young people. the ideal composition is from 30 to 50 young people. these participants include active young people from youth councils, student unions, youth organizations, and youth centres, along with young people who are not active in any official organization. during the first half of the dialogue day young people deliberate amongst themselves; decision-makers join them later. ideally around 10 decisionmakers, mainly local politicians and administrators relevant to the theme of the dialogue day, would take part. facilitation is an important component of dialogue day. trained facilitators have a strong role in supporting youth participants throughout. by using different methods of facilitation every young person is given an opportunity to express his or her opinion. during dialogue day facilitators ensure that young people have equal opportunities to speak compared to decision-makers (gretschel, 2009). additionally, facilitators press decision-makers to respond appropriately to young people’s questions. the young participants learned much throughout the dialogue day to inform their deliberation. in addition to answering questions, an information package is provided to all participants. also, a detached authority, such as a scholar, may give a presentation introducing the theme of the dialogue day (pipatti, 2012). finally, a real influence in relation to policymaking is sought. the objective is to have a concrete response from decision-makers for every suggestion the young participants make. decision-makers either say they will react to the suggestion or, if they will not, give justifications for their negative decision. if the response to a suggestion is positive, decision-makers decide who will take responsibility for the issue, on what timeline, how young people can be part of the process, and how the results will be monitored (gretschel, 2009). the process of the dialogue day begins when the young people arrive in the morning and are first introduced by the facilitators to the dialogue day and its objectives. participants begin international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 418 to get acquainted with each other and with the facilitators. after the introductions, information relevant to the theme is presented. for the rest of the morning young participants work in small groups. the objective of the discussions is to choose four to six specific topics from the main theme to be discussed together in more detail with the decision-makers in the afternoon. importantly, the topics to be discussed between young people and decision-makers are then decided by young people themselves. this ensures that issues discussed with decision-makers will be those that are important to young people (eskelinen et al., 2012). after the lunch break, the young people continue with a coaching session, during which they are assisted to generate concrete questions, statements, and suggestions about their selected topics. in a similar fashion, the decision-makers participate simultaneously in a coaching session of their own. facilitators explain the objective of the event to the decision-makers, who have a brief discussion of their own on the theme of the dialogue day. for the rest of the day, young people and decision-makers join in a facilitated discussion that follows an argumentation protocol. first, one of the young participants asks a question, makes a statement, or presents a suggestion, after which it is discussed and a decision made whether it will be accepted or declined. when a suggestion is accepted by the decision-makers, actions are decided on and committed to (gretschel, 2010). young participants follow taking turns with the next question, statement, or suggestion, and dialogue continues until the end of the day. dialogue day ends with a plenary circle where all participants, both young people and decision-makers, are invited to reflect openly about the event (gretschel, 2009). the experiences on dialogue days have been positive. in 2008, 18 dialogue days were implemented and evaluated as part of a study, each in a different municipality. in total, 302 young persons and 158 decision-makers participated. feedback from young people and decisionmakers was mostly positive. after having deliberated with young people, decision-makers often made a commitment to take young people’s suggestions forward (eskelinen et al., 2012). however, it is very important that decision-makers begin to act immediately after the dialogue day. otherwise the likelihood increases that the promises made in the event will be forgotten (gretschel, 2009). as a positive outcome, encounters between young people and decision-makers also increased trust in the young people’s abilities and willingness to participate on the part of the decision-makers (eskelinen et al., 2012). it should be noted that there are also negative examples where a few individual decisionmakers have placed little or no value on the engagement of young people because, for example, in their opinion young people would be self-seeking and ultimately not really interested in public participation or in influencing decision-making (gretschel, 2010). however, on the contrary, it seems that young people were willing to take on responsibility in both the decision-making and also in the implementation of these decisions. they did not just make demands on the decisionmakers; they were hoping to be part of the process, for example by working together with adults in a community effort to make the suggestions come true. gretschel (2010) defines dialogue day activities that engage young people with decisionmakers as a reciprocal “competence test” (p. 165). decision-makers judge whether young people are capable of making sense of the issues and responding maturely. young people, on the other hand, judge whether decision-makers take them seriously as worthy collaborators. in the end, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 419 choice is for young people and decision-makers to “try to find each other or to continue miscommunication” (p. 165). dialogue days between young people and decision-makers continue to be conducted in different municipalities in finland. for example, in the spring of 2012 the vaasa region implemented a dialogue day to which young people and decision-makers from eight municipalities were invited to simultaneously participate (pipatti, 2012). the initiative arose from the vaasa youth council with the aim of giving a voice to young people to have an impact on the region’s future. canada: policy reform and inclusive governance in indigenous communities. use of participatory action research for the empowerment and emancipation of youth with special needs this case study is the product of a change process that was developed and implemented in an indigenous territory in canada. this case study illustrates the importance of identifying opportunities to include youth and their familiies in deliberation platforms in order to reform policy and develop more effective and responsive programs. key aspects of implementing this change process are presented from a facilitator’s point of view. deliberative democracy was chosen as the process for this event because the vision was to create a safe, non-hierarchical environment that could impact mental models and paradigms with regard to community services and special needs. the idea of facilitating a dialogue was initiated by a community organization concerned with the early development of children in the territory, specifically parents of children with special needs. the organization members had been working together for over a decade with a local group of youth and parents who were concerned with the future of special needs within the territory. the parents’ dream was for their children to have the right opportunities. the facilitator was approached in 2011 to help design a process to increase the participation of youth and families in shaping the future of people with special needs in the region, and more specifically with the aim of improving their overall access to social services. simultaneously, on a local television show, the chief of the territory publicly suggested convening a group of service providers, community members, youth, and parents to implement a collective dialogue around special needs. this provided the perfect opportunity for starting the change process. the first priority in designing the process was to work within indigenous world views and tailor approaches to include the community as a whole. within three months, working with the local organization and an advocacy group, around 20 influential actors in the field of special needs committed to attending public deliberation meetings to reflect, learn, and act for the betterment of individuals with special needs. the main motivation for attending identified by these actors was to be able to interact and connect with community members. the process began with the implementation of an action research strategy to assess the current situation on the reserve in the area of special needs. this initial step offered essential information that informed the design of the dialogue process as well as the principles that guided the deliberations. information gathered during this phase was related to: (a) the nature of relationships among potential participants, (b) the level of collaboration among interested community groups, (c) the readiness for change and action, (d) group views about building international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 420 collaborative partnerships, (e) the past experiences with facilitators, (f) the past experiences with dialogue processes, (g) the past initiatives toward special needs, (h) what worked and what did not work with respect to those past initiatives, (i) the challenges and strengths as a group, (j) the composition of groups (homogenous or heterogeneous), (k) the nature of dialogue among and between groups, (l) the type of expectations from the different groups, and (m) the feasibility of subjects for discussion. following the initial asssesment, a series of facilitated dialogues was implemented to identify possible actions that would build upon collaboration and interdependency. the basic principle in the dialogues was that everyone could contribute with their experiences and knowledge. it was important to involve elders, parents, youth, and other important actors in the community such as the chief of the council and directors of health institutions. the two immediate objectives for the process included the design of a dialogue event in which participants were able to establish relationships and shape together the notion of collaboration. this dialogue process was an important stepping stone for this community’s movement toward collaborative governance around special needs. for the success of this dialogue, it was important to strengthen relationships between the different actors by building trust and getting to know one another. during the first interactions, participants encountered themselves in a literal dance in which they were able to explore boundaries. during the initial stages of the process, there was an increased need for tangible results. the group needed a facilitator who could guide the group toward results and actions. the group engaged an external, independent party able to facilitate and mediate dynamics among all participants. the facilitator was responsible for generating the proper conditions and environment for productive and welcoming interactions. two different methodologies were used to manage the dynamics among participants during the different meetings and to guide conversations toward possible actions. the first methodology was the “transitional approach’’ of harold bridger (2001). it helped to recognize and manage the hierarchical backgrounds of people and institutions, in addition to affording youth a safe space to express themselves and contribute to the conversation. a second methodology, “appreciative inquiry” (cooperrider, whitney, & stavros, 2008), offered a structure to engage youth from all paths and backgrounds to be part of inclusive, proactive conversations. essentially, appreciative inquiry is about “changing attitudes, behaviours, and practices through appreciative conversations and relationships – interactions designed to bring out the best in people so that they can imagine a preferred future together” (p. 51). for the dialogue event, 20 people from different parent and youth groups, community organizations, political leaders, and influential decision-makers gathered in the board room of a local health institution. during the change process, youth and families were able to share their stories and leave behind decades of segregation and frustration. it was a healing process for many who were able to participate and shape the future of special needs in their community. managers and political leaders were able to engage in a process that generated trust and hope. it was captivating to see first-hand the benefit of working in partnership with community members. through the application of deliberative democracy, all participants were able to develop international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 421 meaningful relationships with each other and move into the future, not as individuals in isolation but as a collaborative team. the key for success in this case study was the capacity to establish non-hierarchical processes and meetings that placed a special emphasis on the inclusion of youth and their parents. this was important because of the complex history that had left many participants living in relative exclusion and segregation. for this reason, deliberative democracy proved to be an excellent methodology to generate trust around the whole process. united states: young adults deliberating on planning for pandemic influenza this case study illustrates a more traditional form of deliberation, the mini-public in which participants generally reflect the communities they are from. it is a mixed-age forum in which youth are asked to engage as equal participants with adults of all ages. in this example, the impact of deliberation on youth opinions of the process and of the subject matter is explored. the case study is presented in a more traditional format with evaluation results used to illustrate how youth voice differs or mirrors that of adult counterparts in mixed-age forums. from 2005 to 2010 the united states centers for disease control (cdc), in partnership with other state and local government entities, sponsored six public engagement projects related to planning for pandemic influenza (keystone center, 2007; university of nebraska public policy center, 2009). deliberative models were used in each of the projects in diverse locations across the united states. each project included participants representing a mix of ages, and featured careful planning, professional facilitation, and evaluation. there have been few studies conducted to specifically identify the impact of deliberation on youth opinions when the age groups are mixed. lessons learned from five of the in-person deliberations hosted as part of the cdc projects offer a glimpse of the differential impact for young adults (ages 18 to 24) as compared to all other age groups. each of the in-person deliberations was facilitated by the same professional group so the approach used to engage participants was consistent over time. facilitators designed and executed a similar format for each of the deliberations. all participants began by completing a pencil and paper questionnaire capturing demographics and probing their existing knowledge of the deliberation topic, social values, and trust in different levels of government. officials welcomed participants and provided an overview of the policy issue and the objectives for the deliberative process. an expert or panel of experts presented information to the entire group about the deliberation topic, and then participants seated at tables in mixed-age groups were presented with key questions of interest to the organizers and asked to deliberate and report their results to the larger group. participants were asked to complete a second questionnaire at the end of the event that included all the questions from the first one plus additional questions about the process. the goal of local and national organizers was to attract participants who represented diverse points of view and perspectives so the deliberative discussions were productive. participants of all ages, including those between the ages of 18 and 24, were recruited by organizers in an attempt to mirror the census proportions for age, race, and ethnicity in the local international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 422 area. in each of these events, the young adult age group ended up being underrepresented. the first challenge for organizers wishing to hold mixed-age deliberations is to use recruiting strategies that appeal to age groups differentially. participants were asked how they learned about the deliberation. youth reported finding out about it most often from friends, family, or through school sources. they were then asked what made them decide to participate. comments generally clustered around opportunities to enhance knowledge related to career training, personal interest in the topic, and a desire to influence policy. several youth participants directly attributed their participation to the stipend they received at the end of the event. organizers assumed that participants would come to the deliberative event with varying levels of knowledge about influenza and pandemics. presentations by experts were designed to level out the amount of knowledge participants had before they began to deliberate. the absolute knowledge increased from the beginning to the end of the day for all age groups including youth. in one deliberation, the youth were less knowledgeable than older adults about influenza both before and after the event, f(1, 811) = 6.404, p = .012. in another deliberation, the knowledge gained by youth was magnified and youth showed a greater knowledge increase overall than older adults, f(1, 184) = 4.840, p = .029. we were not able to tease out the degree to which these changes in knowledge were due to the information presented versus actually participating in the discussions with diverse viewpoints. controlled studies may increase understanding about which aspects of deliberation influence youth the most. another area probed by the questionnaire was social values. these questions involved weighing personal and societal values in the deliberation prior to formulating recommendations. in three of the five deliberations there were significant differences detected between young people and older adults in the area of social values. in comparison to older adults, at the end of the deliberation, young people rated freedom, equality, and utilitarianism higher, and rated safety and security lower. these results were not surprising, and they demonstrate the need to include youth in deliberative processes to give voice to the spectrum of perspectives related to policy decisions. another area probed across four of the five deliberations was trust in government. participants were asked who they trust to make decisions about influenza planning and resource allocation. two of the deliberations resulted in significant differences between youth and older adults about who they trust to make these decisions. in both cases, youth were more likely than adults to decrease trust of governmental entities perceived as distant (e.g., federal government agencies) while increasing trust of those closer (e.g., local public health districts). youth were also more likely than older adults to increase support for individuals making decisions about social distancing options rather than governmental entities. in general, the more knowledge participants had about a topic, the more likely they seemed to be to move their preference for control from a higher to a lower level of government. in three of the pandemic influenza deliberative processes there were significant differences based on age. for example, in two events, young adults had a different view from older adults about who should be vaccinated in an influenza pandemic when vaccine is limited. youth were less likely than older adults to view minimizing social disruption, ensuring public safety, and protecting people from side effects as important factors to consider in policy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 423 development. in a deliberative process on community control measures in the event of a pandemic, youth were less willing to accept measures such as isolating ill persons at home, cancelling events where large groups of people are expected to gather, and not allowing children to congregate outside of schools. the evaluation also assessed perceptions about the quality of the processes. in two of the events there were significant differences in quality ratings based on age. young adults rated the deliberative processes significantly lower than older adults on a number of dimensions. youth were more likely to believe that one or a few people dominated the discussion and were less likely to think (a) the discussion was fair to all participants, (b) the discussion helped them understand the tradeoffs involved, (c) the participants represented a variety of perspectives, (d) the process produced a valuable outcome, and (e) that officials will use their input in their decisions. these results indicate the deliberative process was perceived as less successful by young adults. it is unclear whether the lower ratings by youth were the result of the process being designed more for older participants or whether young adults felt underrepresented in the process. the evaluation results demonstrate the need to design processes, particularly those that involve both youth and adults, to ensure the voice of youth are valued and heard. the ultimate question was whether policy-makers actually used the information from the deliberations. the evaluation attempted to trace use of information through local, state, and federal agencies by interviewing key decision-makers. the information flow was very difficult to document because decision-makers were often reluctant to be interviewed and for those that did agree, they sometimes had difficulty accurately assessing the weight of different processes and key information (e.g., agency interests, expert recommendations, citizen input) used to make decisions. the extent to which the decision-makers relied specifically on youth input from this process was thus impossible to assess. when we traced the path of influence the actual report from the event had on decision-makers, we discovered that individuals with direct responsibility for the events read and knew about the report contents, but higher level decision-makers knew only what was provided to them by the lower level bureaucrats. in many cases this was a onesentence description of results extrapolated from the overall process to meet a specific need for information. probably the biggest impact for decision-makers was for those who actually attended the deliberation events as experts. they reported being moved by the seriousness that participants gave their deliberations, the diversity of opinion, and the coalescing of recommendations based on shared conversation. through these processes we learned that strong evaluation can potentially elevate youth voices in mixed-age group deliberations by pointing out areas of agreement or discord with the opinions of other age groups. through the evaluation process, we determined youth offer fundamentally different perspectives from their adult counterparts. deliberative processes that do not include youth and young adults risk excluding this perspective from policy decisions. the process of deliberative democracy presents an opportunity for involving youth in a forum where they are on equal footing with older adults; however, if youth are underrepresented there is a possibility that the voice may not be heard. more inquiry is required to identify the impact of mixed-age deliberations on youth opinions versus engaging youth in groups with more homogeneity of age. the cdc deliberations surrounding pandemic influenza and vaccine allocation were national in scope, differing from smaller municipal engagement projects only by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 424 the policy target. each deliberation session involved local organizers working in concert with national leaders to recruit participants for each event. inadequate representation of youth became a local and national concern. novel ways of engaging youth were tested in other cdc-sponsored public engagement projects that were not deliberative (on-line gaming; on-line dialogue). although they hold promise for future youth engagement, the face-to-face deliberative model of dialogue may be one of the optimal vehicles to increase understanding across age groups while garnering recommendations based on shared dialogue. discussion in relation to deliberative youth participation, models of inclusiveness represented in the case studies – young people deliberating together with adults and young people deliberating with each other – have their prospects and challenges. in mixed-age deliberation young participants will hear perspectives from other age cohorts and vice versa. as a result, for example, empathy and solidarity between generations may be developed (morrell, 2010) and the risk of group polarization may decrease (sunstein, 2000). however, traditional mini-publics can tacitly concede to prevailing imbalances of power, wealth, and education (sanders, 1997). as a result some voices, such as those from young people, may be minimized during mixed-age deliberations. enclave deliberation has, then, the potential for creating spaces for disempowered or marginalized people (sunstein, 2000; karpowitz et al., 2009). naturally, it also matters if the topic of the deliberation is an issue that touches the whole society or only young people. for example in deliberation on pandemic influenza, as the topic was owned by the whole society, it was natural to opt for mixed-age deliberation. the deliberative democracy model is time and resource intensive but could add a level of informed discourse that will potentially benefit decision-makers, particularly those that actually attend the deliberation. deliberative youth participation situates naturally within wider deliberative systems. however, there is a danger that deliberative youth participation events could become unconnected in relation to wider deliberations or systems of deliberation designed to inform policy. to avoid this, the relationships between different kinds of deliberative mechanisms need to be constantly nurtured with careful planning so everyone’s voices, from youngest to oldest, are heard in a democracy. planning and holding deliberative processes with youth poses challenges. first, it is important to remember the complex diversity within the youth population. as was the case with the example of deliberation in an indigenous community, a special focus is needed to ensure the inclusion of the most marginalized, such as youth with special needs, to achieve an authentic inclusivity. second, when implementing mixed-age deliberation in which young people deliberate with adults, it is important for facilitators to ensure that young people become equal participants in the deliberation, for example by seeing that young people are not dominated by adults when taking turns to speak. youth participation in decision-making can be messy. it is time consuming; it may require the adaptation of traditional data gathering techniques and processes to facilitate youth involvement; and it may produce results that differ from adult inputs. decision-makers who wish to incorporate youth participation in their work often rely upon specialists with expertise in and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 425 access to youth to organize and garner youth voice for them. this can mean that the only youth who end up participating are those engaged with the specialist. policy level decisions are routinely informed by input from adults who reflect the population of interest, but the intentional inclusion of youth voices is not considered routine by most decision-makers. one of the challenges for decision-makers is to consider which decisions could benefit from youth participation, then intentionally plan for youth inclusion. before youth can meaningfully participate in policy level decision-making they must have a sense they are empowered and have a structured opportunity to participate (watts & flanagan, 2007). this sense of agency and empowerment for youth is influenced by their experience with authorities, relationships with adults, and perceived social and economic status. the challenge to policy-makers is to increase personal agency (sense of control) in part by structuring participation in ways that empower youth. this may be particularly challenging for agencies that view youth as passive service recipients. the adult work world often is structured to accept input during traditional business hours. involving youth in decision-making requires time adjustments to accommodate the demands placed on youth related to school, work, family, friends and extracurricular activities. many youth schedules are tighter and more inflexible than those of the decision-makers who hope to involve them. the location of the event is also an important factor influencing the level of youth participation. for example, holding a meeting at a location associated with authority may not be comfortable for youth. the physical location is often clouded by its social environment and connotations that can challenge trusting communication (cockburn, 2007). involving youth in planning and implementing the event can help ensure a welcoming environment and productive process for youth participation; however, involving youth in the planning process has its own challenges. time and space accommodations apply to planning as well as the event. challenges in language are commonplace when decision-makers ask for youth participation. for example, the problem or decision faced at the policy level may make perfect sense when posed to an adult, but jargon, nuanced words, and professional language may not convey the same message to the children or youth who are being asked to participate in the decision-making. there are challenges related to the dialogue and the creative tension produced by the purposeful attempt to make decisions collaboratively. this creative tension can be present in brainstorming sessions or in deliberations, and is usually outsourced by the “process of information exchange created between people” (morgan, 2007, p. 83). although it is important to motivate youth and adults to explore alternatives creatively and collaboratively, this process can represent a source of conflict; so it is important to have tools and structures available for the effective management of these dynamics. finally, as in any kind of public deliberation, it is often difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of deliberative youth participation in actually influencing policy-making. we propose that a virtuous cycle be created to encourage effective deliberation of young people. this virtuous cycle begins with the existence of “process champions” and “enabling leaders” (carson & hart, 2005). process champions are people who have knowledge of deliberative international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 409–432 426 mechanisms, youth participation, and facilitation. most naturally these people would be skilled youth workers. enabling leaders are people who support the implementation of deliberative processes and commit themselves to act on the recommendations developed in the deliberation. process champions and enabling leaders encourage young 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(2011). civic education: what schools can do to encourage civic identity and action. applied developmental science, 15(2), 98–103. http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol5/iss1/art1/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019695 introduction to special issue: an exploration of child and youth care pedagogy and curriculum johanne jean-pierre, sandrina de finney, and natasha blanchet-cohen abstract: this special issue aims to explore canadian pedagogical and curricular practices in child and youth care and youth work preservice education with an emphasis on empirical and applied studies that centre students’ perspectives of learning. the issue includes a theoretical reflection and empirical studies with students, educators, and practitioners from a range of postsecondary programs in quebec, ontario, alberta, and british columbia. the empirical articles use various methodologies to explore pedagogical and curricular approaches, including indigenous landand water-based pedagogies, ethical settler frontline and teaching practices, the pedagogy of the lightning talk, novel-based pedagogy, situated learning, suicide prevention education, and simulation-based teaching. these advance our understanding of accountability and commitment to indigenous, decolonial, critical, experiential, and participatory praxis in child and youth care postsecondary education. in expanding the state of knowledge about teaching and learning in child and youth care, we also aspire to validate interdisciplinary ways of learning and knowing, and to spark interest in future research that recognizes the need for education to be ethical, critically engaged, creatively experiential, and deeply culturally and environmentally relevant. keywords: child and youth care (cyc), youth work, human/social services, pedagogy, curriculum, higher education, praxis, preservice education johanne jean-pierre phd, assistant professor, school of child and youth care, ryerson university sandrina de finney phd, associate professor, school of child and youth care, university of victoria natasha blanchet-cohen phd, associate professor, applied human sciences, concordia university acknowledgements: first, we are grateful to the authors for engaging in research in the field of child and youth care and youth work and advancing the scholarship of learning and teaching. in addition, we want to thank all the anonymous reviewers who have made this special issue possible with their constructive feedback. finally, we acknowledge and honour the invaluable input of the participants who volunteered to participate in the studies featured in this special issue, because research would not be possible without them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 2 aims and scope several college and university programs in child and youth care and youth work aim to prepare future practitioners to work with children, youth, and families using a strengths-based approach, a critical reflexive ethical foundation, and relational practice. while authors have provided insights about how canadian child and youth care preservice programs can achieve these goals (bellefeuille et al., 2014; bellefeuille & mcgrath, 2013; bellefeuille et al., 2008; cookedallin et al., 2000; mann-feder & litner, 2004; mann-feder et al., 2017; phelan, 2005; ranahan et al., 2015; sanrud & ranahan, 2012; stuart & hare, 2004; vanderven, 1993; white et al., 2017), only a limited number of empirical studies have been conducted to assess current learning and teaching practices in child and youth care, and even fewer have examined the experiences of students in these programs (bellefeuille et al., 2018; bellefeuille et al., 2017; lashewicz et al., 2014; ricks, 1997). this special issue aims to address this gap with scholarly articles that examine the viewpoints of students, educators, practitioners, and collaborators on various curricular and pedagogical processes and learning experiences. the featured articles contribute to expanding the literature on transformative and innovative pedagogical and curricular content for enhancing child and youth care and youth work education, and could inform the standards for practice of north american child and youth care professionals (association for child and youth care practice, 2017). most importantly, the studies bring to light the relevance and applicability of interdisciplinarity in child and youth care and youth work postsecondary education across undergraduate and graduate programs in canada. article highlights the articles stem from research conducted in quebec, ontario, alberta, and british columbia, and feature a range of applied, indigenous, innovative, and interdisciplinary pedagogical and curricular activities. in the paragraphs that follow, we outline each article. using an indigenous framework and a storytelling approach, mowatt et al. present the first part of a two-paper series on indigenous landand water-based pedagogies. in response to growing demand for indigenous research and pedagogies and the underrepresentation of indigenous graduate students in postsecondary settings, a year-long indigenous land-based institute coordinated by faculty and led by local w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke nations knowledge-keepers was organized at the university of victoria; gatherings took place in 2019 and 2020. the article centres upon the individual and collective reflections of participants and highlights the strengths and limitations of indigenous landand water-based pedagogies. the stories shared emphasize the significance of indigenous ways of being and learning, relationality, spirituality, ethics, and community commitment to address colonialism in higher education and support the decolonization of learning with indigenous postsecondary students. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 3 de finney et al. present the second part of the two-paper series on indigenous landand water-based pedagogies. drawing on indigenous place-based frameworks and a storytelling approach, this article discusses the possibilities and challenges of resurgent indigenous frontline practice in colonial institutions and contexts. participants in the indigenous land-based institute share how resurgent, decolonial praxis can be exercised with indigenous children, youth, and families. ethical engagement with family, community ontologies, and relational kinship networks were identified by students and the whole collective circle as central to frontline practices that uphold indigenous resurgence. kouri provides a rich, theoretically informed examination of how various decolonial settler practices can expand and enrich child and youth care ethical and teaching practices. he argues that, in a settler colonial context, settler educators have an ethical responsibility to challenge colonialism and critically examine how settler practices of acknowledgement, self-location, appropriation, consciousness raising, and allyship contribute to decolonization. this article can help settler child and youth care instructors reflect on and transform their current practices. it can also strengthen the current state of knowledge in child and youth care regarding critical, antioppressive, and decolonizing teaching and learning practices. using a critical transtheoretical approach, mackenzie’s article focuses on the implications and ethical responsibility of white settler child and youth care practitioners. drawing on semistructured dialogues with 11 child and youth care practitioners conducted in 2018, mackenzie unpacks the difficulties of unsettling colonialism, whiteness, eurocentrism, fragility, and racism in child and youth care everyday frontline work, and proposes ethical pathways to further our understanding of critical, anti-oppressive, and politicized child and youth care practice and teaching. mackenzie suggests that “unontologizing” and white settler discomfort can further child and youth care practitioners’ engagement in the intellectual and emotional work required to promote transformative action. using qualitative data from a mixed-methods study, jean-pierre et al. explore how the pedagogy of a lightning talk can foster advocacy skills that enable child and youth care politicized praxis or radical youth work. in 2019, 70 undergraduate students who were enrolled in two child and youth care courses at a canadian metropolitan university filled out an online questionnaire, including open-ended questions, after they completed the lightning talk. the results point to four areas of learning: public speaking skills, self-regulation strategies, state of preparedness, and advocacy skills. the study shows the value of the lightning talk as a pedagogical tool that enhances students’ metacognitive skills and advocacy competencies. james mobilizes a child and youth care and critical social theory framework to explore students’ learning in response to novel-based pedagogy. using qualitative data from an online questionnaire completed by 38 undergraduate students enrolled in a child and youth care course in 2019, james explored the potential transformative nature of novel-based pedagogy by examining the emotional responses and the connections made by students to previously discussed critical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 4 theories. the findings suggest that novel-based pedagogy can elicit an empathetic connection and contribute to critical awareness. hovington et al.’s study examines students’ experiences of a capstone course that integrates seminar teaching, project-based learning, and internship activities in human service agencies. offered through the graduate diploma in youth work program at concordia university, the capstone course was grounded in the principles of the authentic situated learning and teaching (aslt) framework and the psychoeducation model. the study drew on student surveys, a focus group, and writing to examine the experiences of two cohorts of interns with a total of 24 participants. the findings suggest that the capstone course supported the transfer of learning among students and promoted the planning and delivery of therapeutic activities and interventions in students’ human services placements. using critical and social literacy theories, ranahan explores how students respond to a suicide prevention curriculum tailored for child and youth care practitioners. this grounded theory study took place in eastern canada with 13 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a youth work program during an 18-month study period in 2015 and 2016. several data sources were used, including individual audio-recorded interviews, participants’ written reflections and creative artifacts, and researcher’s observations and reflexive memos. the study points to how learning activities on suicide intervention in a mental health literacy curriculum can shape the processes of becoming and being a youth worker. ali et al. focus more generally on the value of service-user involvement in educational processes, as a means of enhancing practical learning opportunities. they consider simulationbased learning in the form of role-play of case scenarios to be particularly valuable for student engagement. using collaborative self-study, based on the authors’ various levels of involvement in the acting out program, the paper presents three scenes of a script that unpack personal and professional questions of expertise, participation, and anti-oppressive practice. the paper shows the effectiveness of learning through simulation, as it offers hands-on and real-time feedback in ways that challenges conventional processes of knowledge production. overall contributions the articles featured in this special issue contribute to a much-needed body of research and scholarship about teaching and learning in child and youth care and youth work. they showcase the breadth and diversity of modalities and pedagogical practices in college and university settings, as well as across diploma, undergraduate, and graduate programs in canada. a significant learning stemming from the studies is the importance of robust documentation, of evaluation and mobilization of interdisciplinary teaching and learning practices, and of student-engaged and student-focused research in our field. accessible knowledge translation is necessary in order to foster the continued growth and deepening of child and youth care education in the future (white et al., 2017) so that it can remain relevant and responsive to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 5 students’ learning needs. the papers provide a compelling call to action, situating us to respond to new contemporary realities and challenges facing children, youth, families, and communities across the country. historically, theories from developmental psychology like the ecological theory model (derksen, 2010), frontline practice and therapeutic concepts (garfat et al., 2018), and an emphasis on child and youth care-specific content (phelan, 2005) have influenced the development of many canadian child and youth care programs. the articles illustrate that expanding our conceptual lenses with insights from diverse child and youth care and youth work practitioners, educators, and collaborators can significantly and critically deepen and broaden learning and teaching in child and youth care programs. this in turn helps us prepare flexible and ethical practitioners to work in an increasingly globalized, complex, diverse, and interconnected world. another notable contribution of the collection is the promotion of a dynamic, interdisciplinary understanding of child and youth care, drawing from fields such as psychoeducation, indigenous studies and indigenous education, gender and sexuality studies, critical theory, critical whiteness studies, sociology, critical pedagogy, arts-based pedagogies, and many more. thus, child and youth care education is de facto strengthened by interdisciplinarity to foster more reflexive, equitable praxis to address both everyday and macro-structural challenges impacting the diverse children, youth, families, and communities with whom we work. if we hope to address colonialism and racism, we must clearly frame those as learning objectives and select curricular and pedagogical practices that promote these pressing ethical objectives. further, the coauthoring of articles demonstrates the importance of collaborative research and engagement among faculty, sessional instructors, students, and partner agencies and community stakeholders such as elders, social service organizations, and young people. indeed, these articles suggest that enhancing practice will come from intersectoral partnerships and flexible methodologies, and by validating alternative ways of knowledge production. a key point of connection among the studies is their commitment to presenting child and youth care pedagogy, theory, research, and practice as inherently and productively interconnected, rather than as distinct and exclusive domains. finally, while they outline valuable practices, many of the articles also identify salient challenges, indicating the limitations of developing innovative pedagogies and theoretical frameworks in individual, time-limited courses. these challenges reveal the importance of weaving promising pedagogies across entire programs to ensure more robust implementation; sustained engagement of a rapidly changing student body; and enhanced opportunities for integration of learning outcomes across time and across courses, as well as extending learning into practice settings. thus, it is important to examine our current college and university programs, establish explicit learning goals, and intentionally plan curricular and pedagogical strategies across several courses to provide a well-rounded educational path. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 6 a call to continue moving forward this special issue is a step in the right direction to advance our teaching practices. the first four articles encourage us to transform our ethics of care with critical settler–colonial reflexivity, and outline the possibilities of indigenous resurgence. this opens the door to ask critical questions related to power relations, politicized praxis, and equity. how do we develop curricula and pedagogy that prepare students to understand, name, and challenge frontline practices and policies that seem neutral and conventional but that actually perpetuate racism, colonialism, and other forms of exclusion? we still need to develop additional tools to prepare students to work with historically marginalized communities and to exercise politicized child and youth care praxis and radical youth work (bamber & murphy, 1999; de finney et al., 2011; kouri, 2015; saraceno, 2012; skottmyhre, 2006; yoon, 2012). as it is documented that indigenous and african canadian youth are overrepresented in the child welfare and justice systems (ontario human rights commission, 2018; pon et al., 2011; truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015), our pedagogies should be established in partnerships led by members of these communities. for instance, the truth and reconciliation commission (2015) has called on postsecondary institutions to take leadership in redressing their role in maintaining damaging colonial practices and policies. an ethical imperative in this process is ensuring that indigenous and decolonial pedagogical processes and principles are integrated throughout child and youth care programs; that they are initiated and delivered in ethical and meaningful ways with and by indigenous instructors, practitioners, and communities; that instructors avoid homogenizing, tokenising, exploiting, and appropriating indigenous knowledges; and that we examine critically how postsecondary education and frontline practice participate in settler colonialism. moreover, the united nations general assembly report (2017) has recommended that canada address racism, inequities, and the existing gaps between policies and practices in regards to african canadians to promote recognition, development, and justice. across our programs, we can reflect upon how we welcome transformative, justice-oriented, and anti-racist ethos led by and with african canadian instructors, practitioners, and communities to avoid the reproduction of anti-black racist practices. this vital work can be productively supported by a wealth of practice and research worldviews and frameworks that have been historically excluded from the child and youth care canon, including indigenous philosophies, knowledges, and pedagogies (cooke-dallin et al., 2000; de finney, 2015; hansen, 2018; simpson, 2014), or africentric, black feminist, and anti-racist intellectual work and community leadership initiatives (amponsah & stephen, 2020; daniel & jean-pierre, 2020; munroe, 2017). there is also space to examine how we address the specific needs of immigrant and refugee children and youth in urban and rural settings. we suggest that future inquiries investigate the pedagogical and curricular tools that support anti-oppressive equity and enable students to develop transformative, context-dependent, strengths-based practices. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 7 conclusion we are deeply grateful to the authors, students, and collaborators who have invited us to reimagine our current college and university pedagogies and expand our understanding of accountability and commitment. we hope that this special issue will encourage researchers and educators to explore creative and critical pedagogies in child and youth care and youth work programs, to value the perspectives of students and community members in the learning process, and to welcome indigenous, alternative, and interdisciplinary ways of knowledge production. while the studies speak specifically to the canadian context, exploring other countries’ teaching practices can also enrich our horizons and inspire innovation. in fact, international and comparative inquiries could yield interesting insights into how national and sociolinguistic contexts shape postsecondary students’ responses to different curricular and pedagogical practices. this issue also points to the need to further question and examine how we prepare students to engage in frontline work with historically excluded communities and confront intersecting forms of colonialism, racism, and discrimination. in sum, this special issue sparks enthusiasm for pedagogical research in our field and contributes to the vibrant scholarship of learning and teaching in child and youth care and youth work programs. international journal of child, youth 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(2017). risking attachments in teaching child and youth care in twenty-first-century settler colonial, environmental and biotechnological worlds. international journal of social pedagogy, 6(1), 43–63. doi:10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.004 https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.004 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 1–11 12 biographies dr. johanne jean-pierre is an assistant professor in the school of child and youth care at ryerson university. she conducts bilingual research projects in the fields of sociology of education and child and youth studies. her current research program explores postsecondary trajectories and experiences, alternative school discipline practices, and child and youth care pedagogy. her research focuses on the social–cultural dynamics that can inform promising policies and practices to work with refugee and immigrant youth, african canadian communities, and linguistic minorities such as francophone minority communities. dr. sandrina de finney is a faculty member in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, and lead researcher for sisters rising: honouring indigenous body and land sovereignty (sistersrising.uvic.ca), part of an international study that promotes indigenous-led, youth-engaged, landand water-based gender well-being and resurgence. dr. natasha blanchet-cohen is an associate professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university and graduate director of the youth work diploma. she is the co-chair of the quebec youth research network. dr. blanchet-cohen’s work focuses on child rights and participation, resiliency, social inclusion, and systems change and innovation. as an interdisciplinary scholar, she has led national research initiatives on building resilient communities through youth engagement, and holds a particular interest in immigrant and indigenous youth. her work explores the opportunities and limitations for immigrant and indigenous young people’s being change agents in their schools, homes, and communities, as well as the perspectives of youth in providing for rights-based and culturally-safe services and programs. https://sistersrising.uvic.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 132–151 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019942 creating normalcy: foster care for children and youth with disabilities and medical fragility in germany friedegard föltz abstract: in the area of foster care concerning children and youth with special needs due to disability or medical fragility, there is a paucity of knowledge and research. in germany, these groups in foster care who have high special needs are an invisible and neglected population at risk. these children and youth are mostly cared for in residential homes; however, some are living in foster families and benefit from a familial setting. the purpose of the study was to understand how foster parents manage their lives with a child or youth who has special needs, and how they meet the challenges that arise. the qualitative research design used the method of narrative inquiry through in-depth interviews, which were conducted in the german state of saxony-anhalt with 19 foster parents from 15 families. within the framework of grounded theory, the author developed a theoretical structure of the strategies foster parents use for coping. results showed that foster parents dealt with this new and often unpredictable situation by applying one of three patterns of strategies — action-, resource-, or reflection-oriented — based on their personal experiences and worldview. understanding these behavioral patterns gives administrative and supportive entities like child welfare systems and agencies a unique and tailored approach to recruit, retain, train, and counsel foster families adequately, and to strengthen their well-being and their ability to perform well for themselves and their children and youth. keywords: child welfare, fostercare, foster parents, foster children, disability, medical fragility, coping strategies friedegard föltz phd is a lecturer and the head of the bachelor of arts social work program in the department of social sciences, theologische hochschule friedensau, an der ihle 19, 39291 friedensau, germany. email: friedegard.foeltz@thh-friedensau.de mailto:friedegard.foeltz@thh-friedensau.de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 133 the study presented in this article concerns the topic of foster care in the state of saxonyanhalt, germany, especially with regard to children and youth with disabilities or those who are medically fragile. the situation and reality of life in foster families is neither well known nor well studied (braches-chyrek et al., 2010, p. 6; hanselmann & weber, 1986, p. 107). even less studied is the situation of foster families with children and youth who are affected by disability. in germany, children and youth with high special needs who are in foster care are an invisible and neglected population at risk. the subject of this study is permanent care for children and youth who are not only affected by issues like neglect, deprivation, maltreatment, abuse, and trauma that are typically dealt with in foster care, but in addition have high special needs for support and assistance because of a disability or medical fragility. foster parents find themselves under pressure as they deal with psychiatric problems and stressful behaviors like aggressive, obsessive, or self-injuring behavior; movement disorders (e.g., stereotypies); self-endangerment and endangerment of others; extreme restlessness; and feeding and eating disorders (föltz, 2017, p. 297). in such a situation, the needs of the children and their foster parents intensify. the children and youth need differentiated medical, therapeutical, and psychological help, while the foster parents are in need of information and instruction in order to meet the needs of the child adequately and knowledgeably (gadow et al., 2013, p. 165). my research (föltz, 2017) shows that three patterns can be identified in the ways each foster parent develops his or her individual strategies to meet those needs and to create (or recreate) a subjective normalcy in life. these patterns constitute themselves in accordance with the foster parent’s individual view of themselves acquired through their personal experiences and worldview. according to those, schemes of life and actions are carried out (föltz, 2017, p. 5). foster care is provided for children and youth who temporarily or permanently cannot live in their family of origin because of a problematic situation in the family such as neglect, maltreatment, domestic violence, illness, disability, alcohol abuse, or delinquency. through an institutional intervention, those children are placed in another family, usually one unknown to them (sozialgesetzbuch [social law book; sgb] viii, §§27–35). taking a child out of the child’s home is often regarded as providing protection and opportunity, but at the same time it is an intrusion that implies sanction and taking control (trede, 2002, p. 11). in germany, out-of-home care is provided as either residential care (sgb viii, §34); familial care, which can be foster care with its various characteristics (day care, week care, short term care, care on call, permanent care, specialized care such as sociopedagogical or therapeutic care); or kinship care (sgb viii, §33; föltz, 2017, pp.17–23). the term “resource families”, which is used in the united states, is an appropriate description for much of the content dealt with in this study. in comparison to the rest of europe, germany still relies more on residential care than on any form of familial care (trede, 2001, p. 210). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 134 the overall objective of this study was to understand how foster parents handle their lives with a child or youth who has high special needs. out of my personal experiences as a foster parent sharing my life with three children, siblings with mental disabilities due to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, i aimed to shine a light upon this area of foster care that mostly goes unnoticed and unappreciated in daily life and research. a brief literature survey reveals that research about the situation of families with biological children with disabilities is manifold (engelbert, 1999, pp. 11, 18). in a significant number of studies, parents of a child with a disability report more stress and depression than parents of a child without a disability (retzlaff, 2010, p. 59). however, little research has been done in the field of foster care, much less than in comparable fields like adoption and residential care. with regard to foster families with children and youth with special needs, there have only been a few studies done over the last four decades. in 1982, masur and colleagues examined the question of whether the subjective impression that children with disabilities are neglected in the process of placements is true in practice. kwapil (1987) looked at the motivation of foster parents with children with disabilities as well as at pedagogical aspects of this specific form of foster care. in 1999, heinen and höning had a catalogue of questions for 22 foster parents with children with a mental disability. also in 1999, koppe et al. (2000) presented their results from a 1997 study with 694 foster parents with children in special care, which had a response rate of 29%. they emphasized that there is no uniform type of foster family and that this was good news because different children need different families. foster families with children with physical and mental disabilities have different problems and needs than those with children with emotional disabilities. schäfer (2011) studied the situation of 87 foster families with children who had limited life expectancy because of a chronic illness or disability. he was investigating stresses, resources, and essential support measures in the context of both private and societal conditions. sarimski (2014) presented a study with 71 foster and adoptive parents with children affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; compared to another group of foster parents with children with disabilities and chronic diseases, they showed significantly higher stress levels. on the whole there is only sparse research in the specialized field of foster care for children with high special needs, especially research with a qualitative approach, which describes the subjective experiences of foster parents. international developments in the practice of foster care have been insufficiently adopted in germany, and, in general, accepted quality standards like evidence-based measures and procedures are lacking (kindler et al., 2011, pp. 18–19). this study’s objective was to contribute to the research groundwork in foster care in germany in order to shed some light on the needs of foster parents administering care for their children and youth who have high special needs. since the study is regionally specialized with a focus on the state of saxonyanhalt, it would be desirable to have even more regional studies for a comprehensive view on the situation in germany. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 135 study background at the end of the year 2007, 49,673 children and youth lived in permanent foster care in germany and 52,793 in residential homes (statistisches bundesamt, 2009, s. 69). in these statistics, a distinction is made between permanent foster care and special care, but special care is not further differentiated into sociopedagogical care and therapeutic care; therefore, the number of children with disabilities in permanent foster care cannot be ascertained (statistisches bundesamt, 2018, tb. 1.2, 2a). six years later, in 2013, the numbers in germany increased to 67,812 children and youth in permanent foster care and 69,203 in residential care (statistisches bundesamt, 2013, p. 17). in 2018, 75,318 children and youth lived in permanent foster care, and 90,997 in residential group homes (statistisches bundesamt, 2018, tb. 1.2, 2a). the trend in society to even more outof-home care over the years is obvious (gadow et al., 2013, pp. 168, 181). according to the office of statistics of the state of saxony-anhalt (landesverwaltungsamt sachsen-anhalt, 2003), 4,598 children and youth were living in out-of-home care in 2003: 2,034 of them were cared for in foster homes, and 117 (5.75%) of these were children with disabilities. there were 2,564 children and youth living in residential settings (landesverwaltungsamt sachsen-anhalt, 2003). eleven years later, in 2014, 5,666 children and youth were living in out-of-home care, with 2,294 in foster families; among the latter were 138 (6.02%) with a disability (landesverwaltungsamt sachsen-anhalt, 2014). there were 3,372 children and youth in residential group homes, among them 265 (7.86%) in specialized homes for children with disabilities (landesverwaltungsamt sachsen-anhalt, 2014). in the following years, the number of children and youth with disabilities was not determined. in germany, according to the sgb ix, care for children with disabilities who cannot live in their family of origin is provided above all in special group homes, in therapeutic homes, or in specialized institutions, such as those for children who are blind or physically impaired (roos, 1996, p. 197). there is little willingness in the child welfare systems to undertake efforts to place children and youth with disabilities and medical fragility in family-like settings (masur et al., 1982, p. 120). yet it is highly preferable for these children to have experiences and fostering in a familial and manageable framework with primary attachment figures (schönecker, 2011, p. 807; thiersch, 1992, p. 107) for economic, pedagogical, and therapeutic reasons, and reasons of general human dignity (roos, 1996, p. 200). in practice, however, this kind of family-like care is rarely or never granted. not only is the process of the placement itself challenging, the authorities disagree over responsibilities: children and youth with a physical or mental disability are assigned to the realm of social welfare (sgb ix, ch. 13, § 80, while children and youth with an emotional disability are assigned to child and youth welfare (sgb viii, §35a). when there is both a disability and a deficit in parenting skills, it is often not easy to decide whether the disability or the lack of parenting skills accounts for the need international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 136 for help. as a result, it is difficult to determine which authority is responsible, even though the legislation is explicit about how both types of case should be handled. when there are deficits in parenting skills serious enough to cause an institutional intervention, the child and youth welfare system will generally be the responsible authority. for a long time, family care was seen as exclusively a benefit of the child welfare system, and was not part of the social welfare system to which children and youth with disabilites were assigned. however, in 2009, foster care was made possible in the social welfare system, though with temporal limitations. as of 2020, foster care is explicitly part of the social welfare system with no temporal limitation. nevertheless, it can be anticipated that as long as out-of-home care for children and youth with disabilities remains the responsibility of the social welfare system, those children will be at a disadvantage compared to children in the child and youth welfare system. the child and youth welfare system, where children have access to multiprofessional help, should have the authority and responsibility for all children and youth (schönecker, 2011, pp. 807–811). as early as 1980 the fifth youth report of the federal republic (fünfter jugendbericht der bundesregierung, 1980) criticized the fragmentation of help and the corresponding disadvantages for the children concerned. there were even suggestions for remedies. unfortunately, in the last 40 years nothing has changed in this area. one group of foster families has special needs children and youths who are in the care of the better-equipped child and youth welfare system. the other group is families with children with disabilities who are somewhat arbitrarily put into the social welfare system, which is geared towards adults (fünfter jugendbericht der bundesregierung, 1980, p. 97). these families are in a system that does not have an explicit perspective on the child, they get neither the financial resources nor the support and counselling that are available to parents in the child and youth welfare system, and they have developed into a kind of second-class foster family (föltz, 2017, p. 297). the last attempt, in 2018, to solve these discrepancies with reform at the legislative level failed. however, many children and young people with special needs are living in foster families and profiting from a familial setting, but it could be even more. there are still too many being cared for in specialized group homes. method processes of education and individual educational formation are at the focus of educational science research. the research foundations of this study rely on qualitative approaches to biographical and educational research. meanwhile, apart from sociology, biographical research has become a meaningful methodological component of educational science and its partial disciplines such as school pedagogy, adult education, and social pedagogy (krüger, 2006, p. 22). some research questions can be explored more adequately with a qualitative approach than a quantitative one (strauss & corbin, 1996, p. 3). among these are questions that explore issues international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 137 involving personal experiences, as did my research question, “how do foster parents deal with the challenges that are inherent to caring for children and youth with special needs?” the aim of this research question was to generate insights into how foster parents find ways on a personal and a practical level to deal with issues of disability and prejudice, and with the other difficulties they encounter in their daily lives. my study of 2017 took in the whole sphere of life of foster parents: biography, context of living, motivation to care for non-biological children, hopes, wishes, and specific burdens and problems. a qualitative approach may be helpful to generate new insights in well-studied areas or to detect hidden details (strauss & corbin, 1996, pp. 4–5); however, this approach is especially suitable for generating knowledge about an underexposed area and contributing to a better understanding of the issues involved. because of the paucity of research done so far, this investigation was exploratory and its results are descriptive. it reconstructed the subjective patterns of explanations, theories of daily life, and perspectives of foster parents that lie behind the visible aspects of their coping strategies. these strategies were subjectively perceived as appropriate reactions to the challenge of providing care for a child or youth with high special needs. this reconstructive approach aimed to direct attention to the inner processes of foster parents and their families (föltz, 2017, p. 98). the empirical design involved the collection of data using the instrument of narrative inquiry through unstructured in-depth interviews and a standardized catalogue of open-ended questions after the narration was finished. the sample criteria (föltz, 2017, pp. 97–100) included foster parents who had decided to care for children and young people up to the age of eighteen with special needs. children and young people were included who had a diagnosis, or special needs, that required them to attend specialized schools or kindergartens. in this study, i wanted to give space to the communication of individual experiences and not provoke valuations beforehand through artificial classifications of disabilities and impairments. the study used the unspecific terms “disabled or at risk of being disabled” of the sgb ix §2. the only criterion was that the needs of the child for assistance, care, and education exceeded the normal extent, as reflected by a diagnosis or attendance at specialized institutions. therefore, no classification of the type of disability or impairment was applied, to avoid making a subjective judgement too quickly about the severity of a disability, which could result in individual valuations being lost: diagnoses might not correspond to what foster parents see as problematic, and another foster family may have a different view on the same diagnosis. the sample comprises 19 interviews with foster parents from 15 families, 13 foster mothers and six foster fathers, with more than two thirds (14) reporting they had not known in advance about the special needs their child would have. some of those foster parents even explicitly denied wanting to take in a child with special needs (4 out of 14). with six foster fathers in the sample, the proportion of interviewed foster fathers was almost a third. this is notable in the light of studies by silver et al. (1998, as cited in retzlaff, 2010) and cohen (1999, as cited in retzlaff, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 138 their research in the area of families with children with disabilities predominantly involved mothers, who were more likely than fathers to be in contact with medical and therapeutic institutions and were more easily available for investigations (retzlaff, 2010, p. 60). likewise, it was easier for the present study to motivate foster mothers than fathers. most of the foster fathers were hesitant; they wanted to leave the interview to their partner because they found it difficult to “tell stories” (föltz, 2017, pp. 97–98). all collected data were included in the sample and transcribed. because the data were specialized regionally to the state of saxony-anhalt in eastern central germany, differences in the conditions of socialization between new states in the east and old states in the west of germany were not examined. i found no hints in the literature that the ways in which foster families conduct their lives when caring for children with special needs would vary significantly by region within germany. also, there was no indication in the literature that the perspectives of foster parents were likely to differ by gender; therefore, gender-specific perspectives were not examined in this research. access to foster parents was found through the child and youth welfare system, the snowball principle (high willingness of interviewees to recommend other foster parents), and through workshops and speaking assignments. the analysis of the material (föltz, 2017, pp. 108–111) was guided by the analytic style of strauss and corbin’s (1996) grounded theory in the process of dimensioning the interviews by open, axial, and selective coding, and by theoretical sampling. for the open coding step, the maxqda software was used. through this approach, the interviews could be contrasted and compared, the case profiles depicted and clustered, and emerging patterns of strategies and their logic could be described. grounded theory was used in combination with narrative analysis as described by schütze (1983). the latter included the analysis of the transcribed data in five steps: (a) formal analysis of the text, which involves the technique of sequencing; (b) a structural description of the content; (c) the analytical abstraction; (d) the analysis of knowledge (theoretical statements of the interviewee); and (e) the contrastive comparison of the interviews, which draws on the deeper dimensions of the material to create a broader view of the data and allows the patterns therein to emerge. structural features analysis of the material garnered the structural features (or codes) of building community, reflexivity, creating certainty, activating social and emotional resources, coping strategies, and perspectivity. these features served as dimensions for comparing all interviews in order to make the overall patterns visible and elucidate the differences between them.  building community means entering into close social and intimate bonds or commitments, as well as identifying with others around you. how is attachment, bonding, and the relationship with the child approached, arranged, and established? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 139  reflexivity is taken as a thoughtful, analytical reference to the self and the world for orientation, problem solving, self-assurance, or reasoning for decision-making.  creating certainty refers to the individual’s way of gaining certainty in opinion and action. how much chaos and confusion can somebody stand, and how much does he or she need in order to stay flexible? creative processing of experiences is possible only if one can tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty and vagueness in the process. otherwise inflexible routines or rigidly regimented solutions develop.  activating social and emotional resources refers to efforts to access help and support in the personal context, the type and extent of the services sought, and what kind of assisting network is maintained.  coping strategies are ways of reacting to the phenomenon of disability and its challenges.  perspectivity stands for the repertoire of “frames” (goffman 1986), the ability to perceive different frames in interactions (like a social or medical frame, or the frame of issues concerning disability and diversity), and the ability to change perspectives and walk in other people’s shoes. these features generated the discriminatory power to define patterns of specific strategies used by foster parents in reacting to the new and challenging situation they found themselves in. through comparing the dimensions of the structural features, three patterns of strategies could be identified. see table 1 for an overview of the scheme of features and the generated strategies. table 1. features used in each of the three identified patterns of strategies feature pattern a action-oriented pattern b resource-oriented pattern c reflection-oriented building community affectual* affectual/value-rational* value-rational* reflexivity limited medium high creating certainty high medium low resources limited use high use directed use strategies of coping trial and error flexible if necessary flexible perspectivity basic frames differentiated frames multifaceted frames *terms from weber, m. (1988). gesammelte aufsätze zur wissenschaftslehre [collected essays on science], pp. 565–567. j. b. c. mohr (paul siebeck). (original published 1922). results in order to show the variety and richness of the sample, some aspects of the collected data concerning the sample will be pointed out in the hope that they may be of value to further research in the field (föltz, 2017, pp. 262–264). following this, i present three patterns (a, b, and c) of strategies for coping with the challenges of fostering children and youth with special needs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 140 the average age of the 19 interviewees was 43.8 years. the youngest interviewee was 30 years old, the oldest 69. overall, the 15 foster families had taken 26 children and youth with disabilities and medical fragility into their care. the average number of biological children in a foster family was 2.3. three families had no biological children; in four families the biological children had already moved out. in the remaining eight families, a total of 14 biological children were still living in the family home. one foster parent was single parenting; all other 14 families comprised both a female and a male caregiver. regarding the ages of the children at placement, 13 foster children out of 26 (50%) were taken in from birth up to 2 years. four children came into the family aged between 2 and 4 years (15%) and nine children between 5 and 8 years (35%). at the time of doing the interviews, there were six children aged between 8 months and 5 years, 10 children between 6 and 11 years, and 10 children and youth between 12 and 17 years. the professions of the foster parents varied widely, as did their levels of school education. the reported professions were: shepherd, concrete worker, cook, nurse, pediatric nurse, physician´s assistant, homemaker, occupational therapist, accountant, social worker, special education therapist, and retiree. three of the 19 interviewees had a general qualification for university entrance (abitur), 12 had a high school diploma (10. klasse/realschulabschluss), and four had completed a secondary school qualification (achte klasse). it was evident that the strategies did not always correlate with the school level completed. for example, those foster parents with a qualification for university entrance were not necessarily found in the reflexivity-oriented pattern , although interviewees with less schooling tended to be found in the action-oriented pattern (föltz, 2017, p. 263). disability and medical fragility range from developmental delays and learning disabilities, often following alcohol abuse during pregnancy or because of neglect, abuse, and domestic violence, to grave forms of disability and medical fragility that may even have fatal outcomes, and that necessitate intensive medical care. some of the foster children in the study had mental disabilities because of absence of the corpus callosum, alcohol abuse (fetal alcohol syndrome disorder), trisomy 21 (down syndrome), fragile x syndrome, autism, distal 18q(de grouchy syndrome ii), or brachycephaly (föltz, 2017, pp. 263–264). results show that neither the specific form nor the severity of disability or medical fragility necessarily implies a specific level of stress. interviewees reacted differently to comparable tensions, stresses, and challenges, and to the severity of their children’s disabilities. likewise, the form or severity of disability was not found to be associated with the pattern of strategies adopted. rather, personal attitudes shaped the individual response to the challenging situation, as well as the personal meaning that was found in that special responsibility. consistent with the fact that more than two thirds of the interviewees were surprised that their foster child had a disability, they reported firmly anchored prejudices and bewilderment. when foster parents meet a child in need, processes of change in attitude can be observed, depending on the foster parents’ type of reflexivity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 141 and its level. in comparing the cases it became obvious that the different coping patterns were not directed or caused by outward stimuli. likewise, the normative influence of society is not in direct correlation with attitudes towards the phenomenon of disability, nor with the mode of coping. disability did not manifest itself as an objective, static factor, but as a relational, interactive process in which foster parents play an active role, bringing in their personal attitudes and experiences, an observation that goffman stressed (goffman, 1975, p. 12). consistent with goffman´s findings, the study validated the relational aspect in the phenomenon of disability (föltz, 2017, p. 264). regarding the question of the integration of a child into the foster family and the emotional bonding of the child and the foster parents, interviewees reported that the bonding process started during the initial meeting with staff from the child and youth welfare office. getting to know the child’s name and seeing a picture of the child generated the first subjective inner pictures, a feeling of belonging together, and identification with the history and fate of the child. the first visit with the child gave the foster parents a sense of the helplessness of the child. evidence of neglect and the feeling that the child had often felt unwelcome were triggers for caring behavior and concern for the child. subsequent visits to a hospital or another short-term foster family intensified the relationship. the family started longing to bring the child home and to create the relationship on their own. some foster parents reported that they did not take notice of relevant information about a possible disability because they fell in love with the child. “falling in love”, “the right chemistry”, or the fact that both sides immediately liked each other played an important role in the foster parents’ feelings and the decision-making process. other methods of integration can be traced through the acceptance of the foster child by the foster parents’ own children, relatives, and friends. foster parents also realized that their biological children often played a large part in the integration process and the development of the foster child (föltz, 2017, pp. 268–269). patterns since the analysis of the material collected involved the analysis of patterns, the results will be outlined in three exemplary key patterns of strategies, each standing for a cluster of similar strategies used by the foster parents (see table 1). the complementary variations of strategies by minimal and maximal contrast yielded the comprehensive spectrum of the sample (föltz, 2017, pp. 109–110). when labeling the different patterns that were used to cope with new and often unpredictable situations, it was evident that foster parents acted in an action-, resource-, or reflection-oriented way. on a motivational level, it was found that they were trying to create (or recreate) subjective normalcy (föltz, 2017, pp. 260–261). having arrived at these three patterns of coping, an understanding of how foster parents manage, cope with, and master their family life is gained, which answers the research question sufficiently. yet, on a deeper level this leads to the question of why foster parents individually choose a particular pattern. in looking at each individual way of coping, it became obvious that foster parents were aiming to create normalcy in various ways. they obviously attempted to create international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 142 (or recreate) normalcy in the encounter with the phenomenon of disability. this finding constituted normalcy as the key category. all dimensions of comparison — building community, reflexivity, creating certainty, activating social and emotional resources, coping strategies, and perspectivity — could be positioned around and integrated into the key category of normalcy. although the relationship between disability and normalcy was not the focal point of the study, it is compatible with the current discussion (föltz, 2017, pp. 270–281, 286). for the given purpose, looking at how the different ways of coping interrelate with the key category of normalcy, it can be shown that each pattern responds to a specific kind of normalcy. it was found that a normative understanding of normalcy — that presuppositions are shaped solely by society, are not to be doubted, and have to be followed — underlies pattern a. with this strategy, foster parents are concerned about disability as falling short of the norm. pattern b distinguishes itself by a so-called referential understanding of normalcy. when first encountering new phenomena like disability, these foster parents resort to a normative understanding of normalcy and normative valuations. but they are able to free themselves from societal presuppositions and turn to the new, as yet uncomprehended and unknown, reality of their children and explore it. pattern c shows a divergent understanding of normalcy that not only can respect and appreciate otherness, but really welcomes it as a gain, enrichment, or asset, often in conscious opposition to societal expectations (föltz, 2017, pp. 286–288). pattern a pattern a was labeled action-oriented (see table 1). it can be described as building community “affectually” (term from weber, 1922/1988, pp. 565–567) as it comes from a feeling of pointedly unconditional belonging even up to accepting being excluded together with the child (föltz, 2017, p. 271). a high rate of activity is prominent, as are limited reflexivity, concerted attempts to create certainty and to avoid vagueness and chaos, a very limited use of resources, reliance on trial and error, and the use of basic frames for orientation, mostly familial and social. these kinds of views of the world have a binary quality, which reduces complexity, facilitating orientation to new and complex situations. the protagonist foster mother is indeed constantly in action. she tries to tackle things immediately and as well as she can. she is constantly hovering above her foster son to prevent all kinds of situations that might cause damage to him, to others, or to things. the nine-year-old foster son has been living with them since he was 18 months old. he is very lively, constantly moving, can’t sit still. he needs somebody at his side continuously to orient him in time and space and to keep him on track with assignments; and even while playing, so he can maintain his concentration and focus. he tends to have all kinds of accidents. he inflicts severe injuries on himself when he gets into a rage about what may seem like meaningless incidents, which frequently land the family in the emergency room of the nearest hospital. he needs a rigid regimen, rules, and structure. the foster mother is especially happy when things are working out and nothing serious happens during the day. in her opinion, the school, therapists, and official administration are not supportive enough international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 143 and lack understanding of their situation. she complains that she does not receive nearly enough help and encouragement. in her opinion it is the fault of the professionals that her foster son is not able to reach his full potential — to grow into a normal young man who is able to live a normal life, as she calls it. she very much loves her foster son and strongly identifies with him. she defends him fervently against mean comments from people from outside and in all clashes with society (föltz, 2017, pp. 146–182). prominent in this action-oriented pattern is that foster parents possess few resources, which therefore play only a minor part in their lives. the normative understanding of normalcy creates an attitude of demand. when met with difficulties such as refusal of support, withdrawal and frustration results. the most important background is the familial frame, yet this is limited since only part of the family can handle the situation with the foster child. attempts to access resources do not succeed most of the time and take a lot of energy (föltz, 2017, pp. 279–280). the coping strategy of trial and error used in this pattern involves actions undertaken without a coherent plan. these may include: endeavors to gain preventive control of situations by, for example, talking to the store manager before visiting the store; avoidance of occasions such as visiting restaurants, stores, or medical facilities with the foster son; confrontation with political institutions like local municipal authorities; demands that workers like the speech therapist or the schoolteacher put efforts toward “making her foster son more normal”; and delegation of responsibilities like afternoon activities, homework, and hobbies to other institutions. attempts to improve the situation by getting support or influencing institutions are undirected and unsuccessful (föltz, 2017, p. 177). these foster parents require administrative and supportive entities like child welfare systems and agencies to give extensive support, encouragement, and training to enable the family to get the needed assistance from third parties. pattern b then there is a group of foster parents who react in a different way to the challenges at hand. pattern b is labeled resource-oriented (see table 1). this pattern can be described as affectual/value-rational (term from weber, 1922/1988, pp. 565–567) community building, which entails a differentiation between unconditional belonging, high identification, self-doubt, and mental and physical overload and strain, without losing the tight bond. these foster parents not only act on their inner feelings of love for their foster child, as in pattern a, but also describe and explain the inner process of bonding. they talk about “love at first sight” or say that they felt that the chemistry was right. they also state the need to love this child unconditionally in order to be able to withstand all coming challenges and strains. characteristics of this pattern are medium levels of both reflexivity and creating certainty. uncertainty for these foster parents is inherent in the process of their child’s development (e.g., challenges with attachment, or developmental issues), or in their own learning processes (e.g., handling the medical system, or dealing with administrative agencies, schools, or kindergartens): they know that those processes take time and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 144 are not fully predictable. most of all this pattern is notable for high use of resources and external help. coping strategies can be chosen flexibly if circumstances require it. a parent in pattern b is able to perceive differentiated frames, whether personal, social, medical, professional, societal, or institutional. compared to pattern a, many more, and more complex, frames or perspectives on life are found; their outlook is not merely binary but takes in the grey areas as well. however, this makes orientation in complex situations harder. unlike in pattern a, social competencies are highly developed; for example, attempts to improve the situation and get the help needed are addressed to the right person or agency and thus are mostly successful (föltz, 2017, p. 272). prominent in the pattern of features that make up pattern b is a large network of different resources to draw on for support, one that foster parents have searched, developed, shaped, and fostered. in their referential understanding of normalcy, resources constitute a bridge between the normal world and the previously unknown one of disability, in which they often reach the limits of their means and require help (föltz, 2017, pp. 280–281). in this pattern, coping strategies are geared towards working actively on behalf of the child by engaging on a number of administrative levels like school, kindergarten, medical support systems, the communal help system, or the local child and youth welfare bureau. some are even politically active, talking to community leaders or writing petitions. in this pattern, foster parents control the effectivity of their actions and avoid putting energy into ineffective actions: they are aware of what is going on in the inner and outer circles of their life space. these foster parents are also aware of the choices they have and share a broad perspective, creating, using, and fostering their resources constructively. they try to see both sides in a conflict and to be realistic and objective. hence, their attempts to exert influence on institutions to improve their situation are often successful (föltz, 2017, pp. 280–281). the protagonist family of this pattern cares for a foster son who came into the family directly from the hospital with a severe brain growth and a fatal prognosis when he was a couple of weeks old. day and night there have been emergency episodes of near-suffocation, intense medical care, and frequent stays at the hospital together with the foster mother. all of the family is working together in trying to get him through all the critical situations and help him survive and have a life. the foster mother has a good friend who is a pediatrician; the family also has a physiotherapist and speech therapy in place. they found a kindergarten that is ready to take and integrate him. they also have an au pair living with them and other household help. the foster mother worries about the possibility of her biological children being harmed through this stressful family life, and not being able to have enough time for them. the foster parents try to compensate for the lack of time, and for not being able to go on vacations with the children, through special events and extras like having a pool or a sauna at home to make a nice spot in the garden where they can invite friends and have a good time. the family also have good relations with the local child and youth welfare office (föltz, 2017, pp. 183–219). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 145 foster parents using this resource-oriented pattern of strategies need fewer practical interventions from administrative and supportive systems but more conversations and discussions to consider and weigh the options. they need recognition and appreciation of their engagement and endeavors to support the child or youth in their care. pattern c pattern c, which is reflection-oriented (see table 1), is characterized by value-rational (term from weber, 1922/1988, pp. 565–567) community building, which denotes strong identification with the foster children as well as heightened mindfulness of their personality, needs, and rights. a high level of reflexivity, a low level of needing to create certainty, a directed or focused use of resources and external help, and flexible coping strategies make for a high level of effectivity and flexibility in acting and reacting. where pattern b was typified by personal, social, medical, professional, societal, and institutional perspectives, pattern c shows multifaceted options to identify and handle the even more complex structural, ethical, and philosophical frames of reality (föltz, 2017, pp. 273–274, 281). the reflexivity in this pattern is especially prominent in its perspective on the structure of services, relationships, and administrative bodies, in its ethical view of life, and in its engagement with philosophical and political issues relating to fostercare and the experience of being a foster parent of a child with a disability. although additional complexity makes for more uncertainty and less orientation in new situations, such challenges can be tolerated and endured in this pattern. although there are resources available, these parents use them frugally. because of their divergent, more tolerant, understanding of normalcy, the search for help does not seem so urgent. when foster parents in pattern c reach their limits, resources are used purposefully, effectively, and successfully. resources are simply available and play a less significant role than in pattern b, where resources are constantly searched for and maintained (föltz, 2017, p. 280). coping strategies in this pattern are first of all a reflexive procedure that leads to overcoming resistance and finding creative solutions. strategies include changing perspectives for gaining understanding, and maintaining a consciously positive attitude, flexibility, and an awareness of accompanying and fostering a child or youth (föltz, 2017, p. 281). the reflection-oriented pattern c is characterized by a single-parenting foster father of an 8year-old boy he got to know through his work as a physiotherapist at a local residential group home. their bond grew tighter and tighter over time. he actually thought about fostering because his job at the residential home came to an end and he needed to leave for another job. the boy started to refuse to eat and developed behavioral problems. the child welfare office was helpful and flexible in accepting him as a foster father. over time, he discovered that his foster son, in addition to his mental disability, was severely traumatized through his childhood experiences, and that it would take all his strength and creativity to give his son the support he needed. when difficult situations were pending, he sought information and professional help to sort through his preferences and possibilities before he acted. as a result, when acting upon a problem, he was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 146 successful most of the time. his relationship with his foster son was most important to him, and he tried always to take his son’s perspective into account and to learn to see the world through his son’s eyes (föltz, 2017, pp. 220–259). foster parents who use pattern c are less in need of practical help or broad discussions about options but require more recognition of their efforts and a few hints and tips when needed. mostly these families are left alone because they seem to do so well on their own. nevertheless they need some professional attention once in while. conclusion foster care for children and youth with disabilities in germany is a small part of the child and youth welfare system and, as yet, little research has been done on it. the qualitative study presented here generated insights into how a child is integrated into the foster family and how foster parents bond emotionally with their children. it also showed how the mobilization of resources and the development of strategies for handling the challenging situation are evolving. notably, the study generated three patterns of strategies that foster parents use to deal with the challenging situation of having a high special needs child or youth as a result of disability and medical fragility along with traumatic experiences. foster mothers and fathers react in applying an action-, resource-, or reflection-oriented strategy based on their personal biographic experiences and their worldview. understanding these three ways of coping that foster parents use to master the challenging situation will give counsellors and social workers in the administrative agencies and systems a unique and tailored approach to recruit, retain, and train foster families adequately. recruiting new and qualified foster families is a challenge in every european country (küfner & schönecker, 2011, pp. 93–99). some families ( pattern a: action) need more assistance; these families can get very frustrated if this support is not given. lacking support, they may give up or not be willing to foster again. other families (pattern b: resources) need less hands-on help than the families who use an actionoriented strategy. they want to be directed towards the possibilities and resources they need to function well. and still other families ( pattern c: reflection) just want a little encouragement or some suggestions, but otherwise need their space to do it their way. these families appreciate a reflective conversation to discuss a problem and suggest possibilities, but prefer to have the course of events and decisions left to them. they get irritated if too much support is forced upon them and they may also not be willing to take on another placement of a child. by keeping these three patterns in mind, finding the right style of support for every family becomes less of a puzzling individual search for the right thing for a specific family. considering which pattern a family uses could be an effective way to quickly estimate the style of communication and assistance needed in order to recruit, retain, and train foster families. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 132–151 147 these coping patterns are not to be understood as static but 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(original published 1922.) microsoft word 07 reckoning_with_privilege.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019518 reckoning with our privileges in the cyc classroom: decentring whiteness, enacting decolonial pedagogies, and teaching for social justice matty hillman, kristy dellebuur o’connor, and jennifer white abstract: as three white educators working in three different post-secondary contexts, teaching child and youth care (cyc) to diverse undergraduate students, we are interested in exploring the ethical, political, and pedagogical challenges and opportunities of creating learning spaces that can support concrete actions towards decolonizing praxis, social justice, and collective ethics. in order to support each other’s developing praxis, we have recently begun meeting monthly to explore various questions and tensions that exist for us in this work. these meetings have been deeply generative for us in that they have produced a sense of solidary and accountability to each other and our developing pedagogies. this paper attempts to capture some of this experience by sharing three perspectives reflective of the challenges and successes each of us have experienced in our respective institutions. keywords: social justice, pedgogy, collective ethics, praxis, child and youth care education matty hillman ma is an instructor in the child and youth care diploma program at selkirk college, 301 frank beinder way, castlegar, bc v1n 4l3. email: mattyhillman@selkirk.ca kristy dellebuur o’connor ma is a faculty member in child and youth care at douglas college, po box 2503, new westminster, bc v3l 5b2. email: dellebuurk@douglascollege.ca jennifer white edd is a professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty rd., victoria, bc v8p 5c2. email: jhwhite@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 41  we write this paper as three white child and youth care (cyc) educators who have made a commitment to come together to consult, support, and, sometimes, to confront and destabilize each other in our developing pedagogies and classroom practices. collectively we are committed to reckoning with our white privilege in a way that goes beyond acknowledging the unearned benefits that we are afforded based on our skin colour, to make visible the structures, institutions, colonial logics, and practices that sustain white supremacy. through regular phone and video conference meetings, we have created an informal community of practice that serves as a site of joint learning, knowledge creation, and professional development. intensely aware that we live in a world where many (ourselves included) benefit from the oppression of others, we wish to go beyond an analysis of inequalities in the classroom and move to a place where white people like us are actively working to change educational structures and practices that create and sustain antiblack racism, white supremacy, inequality, and ongoing land dispossession among indigenous peoples. our professional relationships with each other can also be considered what vikki reynolds (2014) calls collective accountability. collective accountability requires that individuals work together to move beyond simple awareness of inequality and one’s complicity in supporting systems of injustice to actively changing structures that allow conditions of abuse and oppression to exist (reynolds, 2010). as white, straight, middle-class, cis-gendered, able-bodied, highly educated persons, we occupy privileged positions that provide us with the option of individually deciding when we will speak and act in resistance to inequality. however, as a group of white people who are committed to dismantling white supremacy and colonial violence in our institutions and in our professional practice communities, we aim to foster a form of critical accountability that requires us to answer to each other in our professional practices. in the case of our regular meetings, we create a space where we not only envision and strategize our classroom practices but also share and critique our own intentions and approaches and hopefully learn from the discussions of our pedagogies. the collective solidarity we co-construct as educators can also be an act of resistance to the individually focused, technical rational paradigm of education that is typically grounded in discourses of efficiency and procedural logics (white et al., 2017). this type of critical awareness is especially pertinent in classroms where issues of privilege and social justice are discussed, such as cyc classrooms. diangelo’s (2011) concept of white fragility reminds us that individual and psychological conceptualizations of racism derail conversations about racial inequality when white students experiencing racial stress respond with defensiveness and emotional fragility. further, when dominant definitions within mainstream education conceptualize racism as the problematic personal behaviours of individuals, the economic, political, cultural, and social structures that support inequality are ignored. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 42  ally politics has also been critiqued for supporting the rights-based discourse of individual identity politics (m., 2016). ally politics can create a false binary of oppressed and ally, conflating large and diverse groups into the former while simultaneously asking that they provide leadership and direction to the latter. despite good intentions, one practising individual ally politics risks taking the voice of the marginalized person; or, if they become harmed in this difficult work, can begin identifying as being among the oppressed (reynolds, 2010). consequently, individual responsibility is a limiting concept. it asks us to be responsible only for our individual actions, and places unequal responsibility for action on minority groups. further, because social justice work is demanding, exhausting, and requires resources and contributions beyond those of the individual, a communal effort is required to avoid emotional fatigue and burnout. collective accountability promotes our sustainability by contesting the individualization of responsibility and offers hope for finding ways forward together (reynolds, 2010). as we are discovering through our co-generated learning, while we share much as cyc educators, we are also remarkably diverse and occupy different, multiple, and intersecting social locations. and how could we not? we are diverse in gender, age, education level, and more (our specific social locations will be described below). though our professional practice experiences may all be accurately described as cyc, our work takes place in distinct time periods and settings, and we are always embedded in the complex political and social contexts of the times we are living in. currently we are all educators in cyc, yet we teach at different post-secondary institutions in distinct regions of the province of british columbia. we have varying degrees of experience as educators and consequently teach at various levels (two of us teach undergraduate students and one of us teaches both undergraduate and graduate students). finally, we are all so much more than cyc instructors: one of us is a phd student; one a department chair; one a working artist. we also have families, histories, and personal and practice experiences that have shaped us in different ways. as three white educators who wish to strengthen our commitments to enacting decolonizing pedagogies in the classroom, we meet in a private space based on mutual trust. that allows us to take risks, share our vulnerabilities, ask questions, and articulate our emerging aspirations for the future. by holding ourselves accountable to our own shared ethics around decolonizing praxis and social justice, we hope to strengthen our individual and collective capacity to speak up, take action, and find new ways to make visible our commitments to an anti-racist pedagogy in our classrooms. through these discussions we have begun to sketch out a shared philosophy of teaching that recognizes the importance of white post-secondary educators actively engaging in social justice work in our institutional settings. through our regular meetings, we have also been able to examine various teaching and practice experiences that have provided learning opportunities for both our students and ourselves. it should also be noted that in addition to our regular meetings, we all obtain ongoing support and guidance from other colleagues and community members. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 43  meeting to discuss our teaching practices outside of the institutional spaces we perform them in is useful and significant for several reasons. firstly, the demands of a full-time teaching schedule can limit the time and energy available to critically examine one’s educational practices on more than a surface level. the seemingly never-ending influx of emails, student and colleague correspondence, lesson planning, and grading can dominate the majority of days, especially when working on campus. in our experience, the demands that daily tasks make on an educator’s time can be a barrier to developing a critical and adaptive pedagogy. by taking time to address responsibilities that fall outside the day-to-day demands of our positions, we are creating space for the difficult and demanding task of critical self-reflection. secondly, as educators employed by different institutions, our meetings take place outside the shared social and cultural spaces of our respective colleges and universities. by providing distance between our teaching practices and the locations in which they occur, we are attempting to promote a critical and outsider perspective on our pedagogies and the assumptions that inform them. because reflection on educational practices is highly context specific, the social and cultural context that it occurs in can greatly influence the kind of reflection produced (boud & walker, 1998). when we are both physically and metaphorically removed from the space and institution we are critiquing, a greater sense of safety is created. in turn, this safety fosters the vulnerability necessary to explore diverse and unconventional approaches to inclusive and emancipatory teaching practices. our paper takes the form of three intersecting personal and professional narratives. in each one, we provide examples of some of the questions and tensions present for us as cyc educators, including examples of the limitations and successes we have encountered within the postsecondary environment. the narratives we provide are presented in much the same way that they have been in our group dialogues. as such, we hope reading this paper provides a glimpse into the practice of collective accountability we have been exploring together. each of us begins our section by locating ourselves socially within our various professional and personal positions. in order to move beyond a tokenistic gesture of simply naming our various social locations, we have attempted to provide more elaborate accounts that reflect our deepening understanding that we need to go beyond reciting thin statements, statements that quickly become meaningless for ourselves and our students unless we consistently push ourselves to account for the ways in which we are deeply embedded in a complex colonial matrix of power (mignolo & walsh, 2018). our accounts are informed by our collective ethics that urge us to do more than simply repeat tired and predictable corporate statements that run the risk of excusing us for our white privilege. instead we follow the lead of king, as cited in smoke (2019), who suggested that land acknowledgements and other efforts to locate ourselves in relation to canada’s colonial past and present should be disruptive and personal. they should include our intentions for right relations with the land and each other, including our plans for action. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 44  we situate ourselves as white settler scholars and educators who are living and working on stolen indigenous lands within three different canadian post-secondary, institutional settings. we identify a number of starting premises that have set the stage for our individual and collective work. we engage with one or more of these opening questions to show how we are each reckoning with our privilege as white educators, the shifts we are attempting to make in our own classrooms and institutional contexts, and the joint learning that is emerging. jennifer white i grew up in calgary, alberta on traditional treaty 7 territory, which includes the blackfoot confederacy (siksika, kainai, piikani), the tsuut’ina, the iyarhe nakoda nations, and the métis nation of alberta. i am currently living and working in victoria, british columbia. the university of victoria, where i work, is situated on the traditional territory of the lekwungen peoples. the house where i live with my husband is on the unceded territory of the songhees first nation. i am of anglo-european descent: irish, scottish, and german on my mother’s side and scottish on my father’s side. on my mother’s side, i can trace my european ancestry back at least three generations to when my irish (o’hare) and german (schubert) relatives came to western canada as part of the gold rush in the late 19th century. my relatives were part of the group called the overlanders of 1862. they are described in canada’s history books (leduc, 1981) as a group of settlers who travelled from fort garry, manitoba to the interior of british columbia in search of gold and a better life. my great-great-grandmother, catherine schubert, was the only woman on the trip. she made this perilous journey with her husband and three young children, giving birth to her fourth child, rose swanson (my great-grandmother), after arriving in kamloops (canadian encyclopedia, 2019). as a child learning about this story, i was captivated by the heroism, adventure, and courage of the overlanders who faced many adversities and obstacles on their “fantastic” and “astonishing” journey (metcalf, 1970; gallaher, 2002). this journey has been commemorated with many books, plaques, murals, and a statue on the pubic plaza at kamloops city hall. while i can appreciate my great-great-grandmother’s dedication to keeping her family together and often marvel at the story of her travelling across the rocky mountains on foot and by horseback, while pregnant, accompanied by her three young children, i was never told the full story of my relatives’ arrival in the west. that is because the heroic narrative of brave european pioneers settling and civilizing the west and the (now cringeworthy) significance given to the birth of my great-grandmother rose as “one of the first white babies born in the kamloops district” (leduc, 1981, p. 79) were of a piece with other colonial tools and extractive mentalities designed to erase, displace, and dispossess the first peoples of these lands. specifically, the colonial logic worked to promote the idea that these were empty, uninhabited lands and the birth of a white child evidently heralded the dawn of civilization in the region. by settling in this region, my ancestors were actively displacing the tk’emlups te secwepemc peoples from their homelands. like other european settlers of the time, my settler ancestors obviously believed that the land and resources were theirs for the taking. coming to terms with this story — identifying the lies, myths, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 45  omissions that were embedded within it, and critically reflecting on the specific ways that i have benefitted from the ensuing social arrangements that uphold white supremacy and perpetuate cultural genocide against indigenous peoples — is just one of the ways that i am reckoning with my privilege as a white settler. in my professional life, i am a professor in the school of cyc at the university of victoria, where i have taught courses to undergraduate and graduate students for over 15 years. for the past five years, i have served as the director of our school. prior to that, i served as the graduate advisor for our program. i have come to this conversation with matty and kristy as a co-learner. i attempt to draw on my own experiences as a white educator, working in a post-secondary context in canada in 2019, where my colleagues and i are endeavouring to engage in the work of decolonizing praxis. i bring an open mind and heart to this work as well as a willingness to confront my own racism, white fragility, and ignorance. i acknowledge that i have made mistakes as i have tried to manage racial tensions and respond to subtle and not-so-subtle forms of racism in the classroom and beyond. i am certain i will make different mistakes in the future. i recognize that my white privilege blinds me to many of the day-to-day micro-aggressions and assaults to dignity that racialized and indigenous peoples experience over the course of their whole lives. i have learned so much about canada’s colonial history as well as the enduring spirit of indigenous peoples from my work in the area of youth suicide prevention. i have been blessed to work with generous and wise indigenous and non-indigenous friends and colleagues over the past several decades who have helped me to learn about what it means to be an ally. despite all of these amazing mentors and good intentions of mine, i know that i live and work in a system that is built for my comfort as a white person. for example, there are many invisible structural arrangements that have contributed to my current position in life and continue to benefit me, granting me and my family basic rights and privileges that indigenous families do not always enjoy. these include: the possibility of home ownership; the expectation that my mother tongue, english, will be spoken wherever i go; access to clean drinking water; the ability to shop for healthy and affordable food; freedom to engage in my own cultural or spiritual practices; freedom from the fear that i will be racially targeted or profiled; the expectation of living a full and healthy life; and reasonable access to a range of health, social care, and educational services. in other words, as a white person, i benefit in innumerable ways from maintaining the status quo while others, including many of the children, youth, and families i seek to help and care for, pay a heavy price for my comfort and privilege. it is these kinds of incongruities and contradictions that we need to name and address as part of reckoning with our privilege. as shotwell (2016) said: it is hard for us to examine our connection with unbearable pasts with which we might reckon better, our implication in impossibly complex presents through which we might craft different modes of response, and our aspirations for different futures toward which we might shape different worlds-yet-to-come. (p. 8) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 46  questions for consideration with that in mind, the specific questions that i would like to engage with in this paper is:  if we want to centre decolonizing praxis as a guiding vision for cyc, as white educators, what risks do we need to take in our teaching and writing practices?  what are the conditions that enable and constrain these types of risk? whiteness is a pervasive structure, a system, a site of racial privilege, a performance, and an identity that often goes unmarked (brooks-immel & murray, 2017, p. 316). white discomfort, fragility, guilt, ignorance, and lack of stamina for tolerating racial stress (diangelo, 2011) are all ways that white people ignore, resist, and deny the systems of structural inequality that confer unearned benefits because of skin colour. these are also defensive responses against being thought of as “racist”. the field of cyc is predicated on white, western, patriarchal, and colonial norms (saraceno, 2012). as daniel (2018) recently noted, “the reality is that we live in a society that is and has been marked by race and monitored through the practice of racism” [and] “cyc curricula continue to privilege the perspective of whites” (p. 37). some writers have referred to this as epistemic violence, in which euro-western, patriarchal, christian, white values, beliefs, and understandings are imposed on all people as though these ideas are universal (mignolo & walsh, 2018). i have unquestionably reproduced whiteness in many ways through the courses i have designed, the readings i have selected for students to engage with, the assignments i have constructed, and the classroom dynamics that i have facilitated, or, in some cases, failed to facilitate. in the early days of my career i chose readings without considering the power of “citational privilege” that sara ahmed (2014) discussed. the readings were overwhelmingly authored by white, western academics. when i did introduce indigenous or non-western perspectives, these were often included in a standalone module that did nothing to interrupt or subvert the dominance of white perspectives. setting up the course in this way allowed me to preserve the myth of myself as a “good white person”; a responsible, anti-racist educator. i vividly recall an exchange that occurred when i was teaching one of my first graduate courses, in which a white student in my class claimed she “treated all people the same” and “didn’t see colour”. my response on that day was wholly inadequate. while i knew what the white student had said was a way to maintain her white innocence and i wanted to challenge her, i did not have the skills or the knowledge or the words to respond in the moment. i regret the impact of my limited response on the students of colour in my classroom who were let down by me that day. i failed to name whiteness or white supremacy and neglected to point out the myriad ways that we as white people, including myself, make such “moves to innocence” (fellows & razack, 1998). i am getting better at responding in such situations, but i continue to catch myself when i have been ignorant or stayed silent in the face of subtle forms of racism and i know that this is something i need to actively work on every day. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 47  to wrap my section up, i would like to acknowledge that i am inspired by alexis shotwell’s (2017) book against purity: living ethically in compromised times and by indigenous scholars and thinkers like zoe todd (2016), who have long recognized that our interdependent co-existence requires a relational form of ethics that is messy and compromised from the start. this stance implies a form of risk-taking that i think we can create with our students as we seek to create antiracist and decolonizing classrooms. when we are always already compromised and also collectively responsible, we can hopefully resist the temptation to be pure or good or right, and get on with the messy work at hand. as i have written elsewhere (white, 2019): i propose an ethical vision that is predicated on our deep relationality and interdependence with the whole living world. it is one that is grounded in a recognition that we are always acting under compromised conditions. it is a vision inspired by collective action and accountability for our shared future, and does not shy away from acknowledging and addressing our potential complicity with harm. (p. 198) small, modest, incremental changes that take place in our sites of daily practice can be some of the most revolutionary acts of all. and there is much to be hopeful about. for example, the three of us recently shared classroom moments when we challenged institutional and colonial expectations about what is to count as knowledge in the field of “higher education”. we talked about inviting students to produce creative representations of their ideas, relationships, and their engagement with scholarly texts. we spoke about the tensions and challenges that this evokes in students and faculty who are typically well-trained in producing assignments that map on to predetermined learning objectives and marking rubrics, but also noted the freedom, creativity, and generativity that non-textual representations of knowledge and learning invited. white emotional discomfort and fragility in ourselves, our white colleagues, and our students may be inevitable, but it need not be a fixed or totalized identity (zembylas, 2018). if we read it as part of a broader assemblage of factors and forces (as opposed to an essential psychological quality), there is more room to move.there are always alternative positions and identities that can emerge through other processes. specifically, decolonised pedagogies of discomfort entail making subjugated knowledges key points of reference in the curriculum and engendering pedagogies of solidarity that reject racial essentialisms, while confronting how white supremacy continues to inform what legitimate knowledge is in schools, in academia and in everyday life. (zembylas, 2018, p. 98) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 48  kristy dellebuur o’connor i am a second-generation settler: my grandparents migrated to canada from the netherlands, sweden, and northern ireland in the early 1900s. my parents were born on treaty 1 territory in what is now known as manitoba, on the traditional territories of anishinaabeg, cree, oji-cree, dakota, and dene peoples, and on the homeland of the métis nation. i was born in treaty 4 territory in saskatchewan on the traditional territories of the nêhiyawak, anihšināpēk, dakota, lakota, and nakoda, and the homeland of the métis/michif nation. i currently reside on the unceded traditional territory of the xʷmәθkʷәy̓әm (musqueam), sәl̓ílwәtaʔ (tsleil-watuth), and skwxwú7mesh (squamish) nations of the coast salish peoples. i am a faculty member in cyc and a doctoral student in educational philosophy. as a white cis-female able-bodied person i come to this discussion with curiosity about the ways we are positioned and position ourselves within institutions as teachers and learners influence our ability and willingness to engage racism and white fragility in our learning encounters. i have an undergraduate and master’s degree in cyc and my identity as a cyc practitioner is central to my professional sense of self. at the same time, i experience tension and discomfort with the histories and present-day narratives and practices in cyc that reproduce injustice and harm in the name of “professional care”. as an instructor in a cyc undergraduate program, i often experience myself as caught between the expectations of the institution i work for, the canon of cyc, my students’ needs, and my own ethical commitments and aspirations. the ways i have learned and continue to learn to work in alliance with my colleagues toward decolonizing praxis have not adequately prepared me to navigate the complexities involved. inevitably, there are failures. i often process these in isolation and find myself unsure about how to behave differently. recognizing that my silence and isolation serve to reproduce white supremacy within cyc, i am compelled to resist both. because of the work of black, indigenous, and people of colour (bipoc) scholars and allies the cyc curriculum has shifted — and is still shifting — to reflect a greater emphasis on intersectional analysis of the lives of children, youth, and families than is typical in our historical literature. my own teaching and writing practices have been strongly impacted by the wisdom of my colleagues. however, assumed whiteness continues to pervade our cyc literature, often unexamined, centred, and invisibilized. i experience a powerful tension and uncertainty about how to do ally work in ways that centre the work of racialized scholars who are marginalized by the dominance of whiteness in cyc. how do i disrupt the narratives of white supremacy, to create spaciousness for my colleagues in ways that feel supportive, not appropriative? bipoc scholars continue to do the majority of the work of decolonizing: active engagement by white faculty members in the work of decolonization remains minimal (beyond the prescriptive idea of decolonizing courses by adding articles by indigenous and racialized scholars to the syllabus). in many spaces in post-secondary education, i have witnessed racialized colleagues face international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 49  institutional and interpersonal linguistic violence when they raise the issues we must grapple with in order to move forward in decolonizing curriculum. i stumble my way through learning to be an ally and continue to approach this work with the humility that comes with making mistakes and ethically engaging in acts of repair. i want us to imagine new ways forward for ourselves as educators within cyc, to interrogate our own ethical positions more thoroughly and find ways to enact them transparently within our teaching. this is part of the work that jennifer, matty, and i endeavour to do together in our conversations. questions for consideration the questions that i have been considering and will be responding to in this paper are:  what risks do we need to take in our teaching practices?  what are the conditions that enable or constrain these types of risk? i’m interested in exploring the ethical dispositions of white faculty members in decolonial, anti-racist praxis in cyc classrooms and how these dispositions support the risk-taking that is required of us to decentre whiteness and dismantle settler colonialism in cyc. i’m interested in examining the discourses that are shaping the discussions of decolonization with post-secondary institutions to find out what is stated as possible, and what is not. one risk i believe we need to take in our work is to publicly name our whiteness as a racial identity and to explicitly acknowledge the unexamined dominance of whitestream ideas — ideas from white culture — in our institutions. white supremacy is rarely named in our institutions; when it is, it is often misunderstood as describing only white nationalist groups, which many of us are quick (and i think naive) to dismiss as irrelevant or inactive in our communities. within my institution, i try to open up the discussion about the ways that white supremacy is embedded in our policies and our curriculum, and how we as white faculty embody its practices and ways of being with little awareness of our privileged positions. i try to open up self-reflexive practices with my colleagues through being transparent about my own interrogation of my embodiment of racism as a cyc faculty member and as a community member. i get it wrong a lot of the time. for example, in one of my courses i asked students to examine their social location and how it impacts their cyc practice. my intention in the assignment was to invite students to consider their relationships with power and how their own positionality influences how they engage with cyc work. in my experience, this type of self-reflective assignment is common in cyc courses. feedback i received from several of my students highlighted my racial privilege. they pointed out that there are differential effects, depending on one’s access to power within systems of oppression, of being asked to explore the impacts of colonialism, racism, and heterosexism on one’s daily life. one of my intentions was to help white students understand how white supremacy affords them particular privileges; however, i didn’t pay adequate attention to the fact that bipoc students might experience the assignment — which required them to write about their experiences international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 50  with racism as part of their grade for the course — as itself an act of oppression. in wanting to disrupt the whitestream of cyc, i reproduced it by centring the experience of whiteness, and marginalizing the experiences of bipoc students. this feedback led me to discuss the mistake with my colleagues and my students in conversations where i could name my assumptions and the things i failed to consider because of my own racial privilege. i attempted to find ways to redress the harm that resulted from my gap in understanding. i am practising making mistakes in public, with my students, and engaging in conversations about what it means to act with good intentions that result in hurtful impacts, and engaging in acts of repair publicly, with humility. dr. adrienne keane (2018), cherokee scholar and assistant professor at brown university, described this as consenting to learn in public. i wish consenting to learn in public were getting easier for me; however, i continue to notice my own desire to be seen as a “good white ally” in conversations with colleagues. intellectually, i want to examine whiteness and settler colonialism as discourses shaping our institutions, yet emotionally, i feel pulled to perform my own racial innocence in order to demonstrate my good intentions. in their study of structures and practices that uphold whiteness in higher education institutions, brooks-immel and murray (2017) explored the frequent use of the binary opposition of racist and not racist as a discursive practice among white faculty members. equating personal prejudice with racism, faculty members used this binary opposition to position other white people as “racist” and to establish themselves as “not like those people”. the “construction of racism as an individual phenomenon that a white person either embodies or does not serves to undermine an understanding of racism as institutional” (p. 320). this tension of wanting to be perceived as “the good kind of ally” exists for me here, in the writing of this article as well. i try to turn the volume down on that voice and recognize that in order to learn to do better as an ally, i need to hear feedback on my mistakes and missteps. robin diangelo’s (2018) work on white fragility supports me to notice and interrogate this tendency in myself and to learn to risk being uncomfortable and saying uncomfortable things: because racism does not rely solely on individual actors, the racist system is reproduced automatically. to interrupt it, we need to recognize and challenge the norms, structures and institutions that keep it in place. but because they benefit us, racially inequitable relations are comfortable for most white people. consequently, if we whites want to interrupt this system, we have to get racially uncomfortable and be willing to examine the effects of our racial engagement. (p. 135) i think one of the conditions that enables us to engage in these difficult discussions with our colleagues and students is the creation of a culture of anti-racist pedagogy among faculty and staff within the institution. i’m interested in conversations within and without cyc about how faculty engage with race and racism in the classroom. many of the discussions about decolonization and indigenization in post-secondary education seem to focus on how to add topics about indigenous people to one’s course outline or to hire indigenous faculty members to “do the work of indigenization”. brooks-immel and murray (2017) noted that one of the key mechanisms that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 51  sustains institutional white privilege, power, and supremacy in educational contexts is the mapping of “knowledge, responsibility and actions concerning racism onto people of color” (p. 323). the assumption that indigenous faculty members will help non-indigenous faculty members to “indigenize” their courses implies a freedom from responsibility on the part of non-indigenous faculty members to undertake our own anti-racist work to explore the ways that our courses are reflective of colonial logics and therefore need to be revised. i think we need to disrupt this narrative about indigenous inclusion as the only change needed to dismantle settler colonialism in post-secondary education. we need to think critically about our curricular and pedagogical choices and understand how our cultural histories and worldviews are shaping our decisions. gaudry and lorenz (2018) suggested that most post-secondary institutions are guided by indigenous inclusion policies that focus on hiring indigenous faculty members who are then required to adapt to the colonial structures of the institution: these policies rarely transform universities and colleges into indigenous spaces. gaudry and lorenz invited us to consider that what is required of us in post-secondary education is to engage in “decolonial indigenization [which] envisions the wholesale overhaul of the academy to fundamentally reorient knowledge production based on balanced power relations between indigenous peoples and canadians, transforming the academy into something dynamic and new” (p. 226). mandatory class attendance policies provide an example of how cultural values are embedded in our policies, curriculum, and pedagogies. attendance policies in cyc programs are often justified by an assertion that learning is relational (a core cyc perspective), and that we have responsibility to ourselves and others to commit to the weekly class meetings. i believe transformative learning occurs in relationships within the classroom, and am not suggesting that regular attendance isn’t important. however, i think it helpful to examine the cultural values that are embedded in mandatory attendance policies, particularly colonial, capitalist values that emphasize the importance of prioritizing work and school over the emotional, spiritual, relational, and cultural commitments in one’s life. these policies leave little room for students to live out their responsibilities to their families and communities (e.g., needing to return home for ceremony) and are often presented in ways that categorize the student as choosing either “professional responsibility to their learning” or “family and cultural responsibility”. in my experience, institutions rarely place value on “family and cultural responsibility”; more often, students are described as “not yet ready for the commitment the program requires”, a response that clearly locates the problem within the student and absolves the institution of any need to examine racism embedded within its policies. a critically reflective interrogation of the policy, its intent, and its actual and unintended consequences may lead us to different discussions with students that invite a more decolonizing approach to learning and teaching in cyc. however, we need to engage with these complexities with a thorough understanding of the enabling and constraining structures and discourses within which we function as educators in postinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 52  secondary environments. questions that can help illuminate the structural and paradigmatic possibilities and constraints in this example include:  are we required to implement policies that penalize students for missing more than two classes simply because the institutional policy exists, or do we have freedom to create different policies in our classrooms?  how are our beliefs about our own agency in these types of decisions grounded in colonial frames about what it means to be a faculty member in a post-secondary institution?  what are the ethical questions we ask ourselves as we decide whether to comply or resist? as white educators, how does our racial privilege allow us the freedom to do either without the same sanctions (formal and informal) that our racialized colleagues face for making similar choices? i believe neoliberal discourses of efficiency and productivity also shape these conversations within post-secondary education (shore, 2008): i was recently at a meeting where the issue of land return was brought up as central to the discussion of indigenization. we were quickly told we only had five minutes left in our discussion and needed to come up with three recommendations that could be implemented. sovereignty and land rematriation were dismissed as “too complicated” to address in this time frame, and thus were left off the list of recommendations, despite several of us agreeing with tuck and yang (2012) that without the return of land, any curricular or pedagogical changes were simply settler moves to innocence that avoid true justice. brooks-immel and murray (2017) highlighted the importance of understanding these moments not as “individual acts committed by individual actors who need to be replaced” but rather as examples of ways institutionally embedded social actors “recreate institutionalized racism as structure-in-process” (p. 319). i believe it our ethical responsibility to grapple with our own complicities in settler colonialism and the reproduction of white supremacy in cyc. we need to develop our capacities to engage with questions that unsettle us. supporting each other in asking ourselves difficult questions to help us engage in socially just praxis is one way matty, jennifer, and i are engaging with this ethical imperative. matty hillman i have lived, practised, and learned on sinixt territory in the west kootenay for the last dozen years. one reason this acknowledgement is important is that it supports the declaration that, despite the claims of the canadian federal government, the sinixt people are not extinct. in the kootenay region, no reconciliation with sinixt is possible without recognition of their continued existence in canada (james & alexis, 2018). from a very early age, i had a sense that the world was unjust. specifically, i felt that i, as a male, white, able-bodied person, was somehow considered better than others. i could not articulate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 53  why this was the case, but i remember feeling grateful that i was who i was, because it seemed that it was harder to be others. at the time i was unware that my comfort and ease in life came at the cost of others’ hardship and oppression. my adolescent peer groups idealized and appropriated many pieces of culture from more marginalized groups. we were suburban kids who sang political punk lyrics about social activism that we did not participate in. later, we dressed in the style of, and portrayed ourselves as, racialized minority groups rapping about life in ghettos we would never have to experience. the obliviousness of our privilege is shameful to consider. it took me some time to find my calling to help others. early ingrained patterns of harmful coping behaviours and recurring themes of death in my 20s and 30s prevented me from getting to know myself in any deep way. my education has provided me with the knowledge and language to identify and name privileges that i am afforded. my undergraduate degree introduced me to the ideas of seminal writers like katz and colleagues (2011), crenshaw (1991), hooks (1990), and more. my years at graduate school helped me apply a critical lens to the very field i studied, through the inspiration of cyc writers like loiselle et al. (2012) and skott-myhre (2017), and of post-modern thought. through these experiences, i began to understand the institutional and cultural nature of oppression and violence, my complicity with them, and the benefits i have received from them. like many with a decade of experience in the helping professions, my practice experience is diverse. i have been the underprepared worker in a for-profit group home; i have worked in the underfunded community non-profit with an exorbitant case load of child welfare referrals; i have seen success with young people that has warmed my heart, and i have made decisions in my practice that have hurt others and made me question my capability and career choice. it is through my current position as an instructor in a 2-year human services diploma program that i feel i make the greatest contributions to young people in my community. it is also where i have felt the most supported by a group of experienced and diverse colleagues, many of whom were previously my instructors. as a new post-secondary educator i am increasingly aware that the institution contributes to and replicates structural inequalities through colonial, patriarchal, and capitalistic practices and policies. i am complicit in these practices through my position and privilege. as a white, cis, middle-class male, i am often the most visibly privileged person in the classroom. this contributes to feelings of tension, hypocrisy, and responsibility — responsibility to do more than simply identify this reality. i want to actively seek opportunities to use my position and privilege to educate and encourage students to identify their own privilege and begin to cultivate a critical practice in their personal and professional lives. i regularly explore classroom practices that disrupt some of these institutional norms through decentring myself and dominant euro-western ideas about education and human service work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 54  i find myself becoming increasingly aware of the unequal distribution of success, health, and well-being in the world. as my career trajectory continues, i become more and more aware of areas in my life where i have been privileged to not encounter the discrimination, oppression, and violence that others have. questions for consideration the questions i have been drawn to explore recently in our conversations are:  how do we design pedagogies in cyc that align with a decolonizing ethic that supports learners where they are at?  what specific actions can we take in our everyday teaching spaces in higher education to anticipate and effectively respond to white ignorance, fragility, guilt, and so on? in my teaching, i strive to instil critical thought in students and elicit critical responses from them when examining all theoretical orientations. i often examine syllabi and consider the pros and cons for students when including historically problematic (i.e., colonial and eurocentric) content. for example, piaget’s developmental theory is woefully inadequate and dreadfully ethnocentric, yet it may be necessary for students to understand this concept (along with its shortcomings) in order to be relevant and informed in professional conversations while offering alternative perspectives. i try to use myself as an example when discussing patriarchy and male privilege. my work and learning about violence against women have allowed me to reconsider past attitudes and behaviours and speak to other men, not with judgement, but with vulnerability and accountability. i do anticipate and encounter “what about violence against men?” comments from students (both male and female) when delivering violence prevention content. in responding to these comments, statistics can help but so does redirecting the conversation (through the authority of my position) and centring the conversation on the responsibility of men to end violence against women. i have also made mistakes in attempting to use my social location in support of marginalized groups in the classroom. i often begin classes with a circle check-in activity. students are invited to say something about themselves: their current mood, and recent successes and challenges either in relation to the course or outside of it. anyone is welcome to pass on their turn. on one occasion i invited the students to share their preferred pronouns, first demonstrating by stating that i use the pronouns he, him, and his. as a class, we discussed the intention of statements like these, to identify the speaker as an ally who will respect and address others on their gendered terms. what we failed to discuss (in that moment), and what i overlooked, was the pressure and possible discomfort that an activity like this could have on someone who is not interested in sharing this aspect of their identity with the group. upon reflection and consultation with my colleagues, i again opened the topic up for discussion when the class next met. students were quick to identify how the activity had the cacapity to hurt or even to out participants based on the responses they gave, or even their decisions to pass. i shared my feelings of embarrassment in the sharing cicle, restating my intention international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 55  with the activity and identifying where i failed to have sufficient foresight. the event became a reminder to the students (and myself) that, like them, i am in a constant state of developing and am doing my best to embrace the learning opportunities i am given. to decentre myself as the primary knowledge holder, i often bring additional perspectives to the classroom by including various pieces of media; i encourage students to take an intersectional and critical perspective when consuming media and discussing current events. specifically, i want them to consider how intersecting themes of gender, race, class, ability, and sexual orientation impact privilege and oppression, and how dominant narratives contribute to and normalize inequality. also important, and possibly more challenging, is anticipating and navigating emotional reactions as a result of these learning experiences occurring in a classroom primarily populated by white people. one course has been particularity challenging to instruct from a decolonizing, intersectional, and critical pedagogy. “core concepts in human services” covers some of the foundational theoretical orientations of counselling and psychotherapy. the course moves chronologically from freud to feminism to neurobiology, with most topics steeped in western and colonial values and perspectives. the requirement to cover this breadth of content in a mere 14 weeks permits no more than a surface examination of each theory. students report that the course can feel overly theoretical and at times irrelevant. also, despite efforts to inject supplementary resources into the syllabus and bring in guest speakers, most of the knowledge conveyed in this course is sourced from a single textbook. colleagues who teach equivalent courses at other institutions provided helpful suggestions and anecdotes of similar challenges; after consulting with them, i turned to social media for additional inspiration. in an attempt to create a learning activity that brings the theoretical to the personal and political, and to provide opportunities for students to engage with perspectives outside of those found in the syllabus, i created the following in-class activity. students are tasked with interrogating various pieces of social justice discourse, all gleaned from social media outlets (memes, tweets, etc.), through an intersectional lens. first, as a class, we review some of the various forms of intersecting oppressions and ideologies of colonization, neoliberal capitalism, and white privilege. following this, the students are divided into small groups and each group is provided with a printout of a different meme or tweet. the small groups are given two guiding instructions: 1. research the context of this message. what is happening? who is involved? and so on. 2. applying an intersectional perspective, what dominant ideas are supported or countered within the message? a memorable example of this activity occurred when the class interrogated a meme tweeted by feminist next door (@emrazz; 2018), a self-described friendly feminist whose posts often international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 56  provide topical social justice commentary. the meme showcased photos of convicted college rapist brock turner beside recently appointed supreme court judge brett kavanaugh with the caption: “brock turners grow up to be brett kavanaughs who make the rules for brock turners.” themes that surfaced in the discussion following the turner–kavanaugh meme interrogation included: the self-supporting nature of power, white privilege within the judicial system, the presence of rape culture myths, and how the perpetrators’ socioeconomic status impacted the verdict. feedback indicated that students gained insight into the intersecting nature of the various powers and oppressions revealed through the activity; however, some students became uncomfortable with the subject matter and requested more explicit trigger warnings in the future. due to the homogeneously white demographics of the class, this reaction is neither a surprise nor undesirable. many of the memes explore how marginalized groups experience violence through the very ideologies from which most of the class, myself included, benefit. i see students’ feedback to this activity as supportive of several pedagogical objectives. first, by being exposed to social justice discourse gleaned from current media creators, learners are exposed to voices outside of those traditionally found in this course — including mine. by providing a stage for those involved in activist fronts (whether in real spaces or virtual ones), i am working to decentre myself as the primarily knowledge holder and conveyer. second, the distress that some students experience during this activity is an outcome in line with a pedagogy of discomfort (zembylas, 2018) — the notion that social and political awareness and ultimately personal transformation is encouraged in a learning environment where discomfort is embraced. applebaum (2017) suggested that educators should encourage students to “stay in the discomfort” that vulnerability creates. through highlighting how intersections of identity simultaneously benefit ourselves and oppress others, white students and teachers can begin to consider our complicity in oppressions, ultimately moving towards actions that disrupt these inequalities. discussion most white people do not have to think about the impact of racism because it does not impact us in any tangible way on a daily basis (daniel, 2017–2018). yet it is absolutely endemic in the academy; it is embedded within the leadership, faculty, and board members; it can be found in the administrative and staff levels; it is the foundation of many policies and procedures. daniel (2017–2018) suggested that addressing racism in post-secondary institutions is fraught with challenges including the self-absorption of academics and the fear of exclusion and loss of employment, especially for bipoc. as such, plans for change and resistance to injustice must include self-care, mentorship, solidary, and a strict adherence to one’s moral compass. each of the perspectives presented in this paper explores some of the issues produced through injustices created or supported by post-secondary institutions and provides examples of how the authors have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 40–60 57  wrestled with their own complicity in supporting these injustices. to this end, we have shared experiences where we have fumbled in our not knowing and have also shared promising teaching and learning practices, in the hope that this might prompt readers to engage in similar conversations with their colleagues. as white cyc educators one action we can take to dismantle white supremacy and engage in decolonizing praxis is to use our skin privilege to name racism and its deep embeddedness in our systems, structures, and institutions. we can identify the ways we are complicit and benefit from these arrangements as we have tried to do here. if our institutions would provide support and resources for us to have these conversations with each other as instructors and faculty colleagues (e.g., guidelines for critical conversations on whiteness, professional development workshops, pedagogical consultation, and exemplary modelling from academic leaders and administrators), we believe the conditions would be conducive to making the kinds of shifts and taking the kinds of risks we are envisioning. in this era of truth and reconciliation, taking steps towards decolonizing praxis — which must go beyond territorial acknowledgements to include calls for repatriation of indigenous homelands — is not optional work. it cannot be left to a small group of progressive, radical, justice-oriented cyc scholars, educators, activists, and practitioners. it is collective work that requires effort, energy, and attention from all of us in this professional field. as white people who benefit immensely from our unearned skin privilege, we can use our privilege to speak out against oppression, structural racism, and colonial violence in all its forms. in this way, we have particular responsibilities that are unique to us. for example, as white educators, scholars, and practitioners, we can no longer say that this type of social change work is somehow not relevant to our mission as a cyc field —we know that our collective life depends on reckoning with our fraught pasts and being accountable to our joint futures. this includes recognizing our field’s complicity in replicating dominant, racist, and eurocentric views of “normal childhood development”. it includes acknowledging our role in removing indigenous children from their families and communities, under the auspices of “helping”. it includes working towards a more just, dignifying, and life-sustaining future for all. our hope for this article is that it provokes reflection about the types of risks that are necessary if we want to engage ethically in the classroom in ways that nurture decolonial and social justice praxis. we believe that we need to support each other, hold each other accountable, and act with humility in our not knowing. we need to be curious about the ways we are implicated in power structures that uphold settler colonialism. we need to think deeply with our colleagues about what justice for marginalized peoples means in the present moment in canada. we want to think deeply about what it means to teach students in ways that support critical thinking and action that is 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(2018). affect, race, and white discomfort in schooling: decolonial strategies for ‘pedagogies of discomfort’. ethics and education, 13(1), 86–104. doi:10.1080/17449642.2018.1428714 content and format of the papers to be published: 118 meaningful intervention with children and youth: a reflection on ten years of inquiry sibylle artz, diana nicholson, elaine halsall, and susan larke abstract: it has been known since the early 1970s that youth risk assessment does not necessarily assist us in determining youth needs and services. still, where young people and crime are concerned, interventions are often focused on risk assessment rather than need assessment, especially when these young people face incarceration. in this article we emphasize needs assessment and the development of a youth friendly approach to such assessment. we draw on a number of community-based and community involved studies that were conducted over a tenyear period, studies that focused on the perspectives, experiences, and needs of children and youth, and present as key among these studies a project on the development of a gender-sensitive tool for needs assessment that can aid workers with youth engagement and needs focused intervention. the analysis presented here is drawn from a number of studies conducted over a ten-year period. these research and development projects focused on the perspectives, experiences, and needs of children and youth. key among these studies is a project on the development of a gender-sensitive tool for needs assessment1 inquiries that focused explicitly on the experiences of children and youth from kindergarten to grade 12 with school and community-based violence , but also included are 2, gender differences in perceptions of and experience with aggression and violence3, and their experiences of being incarcerated4 . included in each of these studies were the perceptions, experiences, and practices of workers and, in some cases, parents (nicholson, artz, armitage, & fagan, 2000). all these studies involved partnerships with community-based agencies or institutions. 1 (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002). this study was funded by the national crime prevention centre, department of justice canada. 2 (artz, riecken, van domselaar, & laliberté, 1994; artz, 1998; artz, riecken, macintyre, lam, & maczewski, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000). these studies were funded by the british columbia health research foundation, the vancouver foundation, and the british columbia ministry of education research branch. 3 (artz, riecken, et al., 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000; artz, 1998; artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000a, 2000b). these studies were also funded by the national crime prevention centre, department of justice canada. 4 (artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000a). 119 current thinking our most recent work on the development of a gender-sensitive guide for needs assessment (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002), which encompassed a literature search of over 1,500 journal articles, books, and studies that spoke to needs assessment in children and youth, suggested that understanding these needs is never a “once and for all” undertaking. child and youth care and other human service workers must assess and respond to the needs of those they work with on an almost constant basis. we found that the process of needs assessment and of matching need to service is difficult for a number of reasons, including the lack of a consistent and universal definition of what constitutes a need (colton, drury, & williams, 1995). further, in human services, needs are often confused with risks. as anglin (1999) points out, when child welfare legislation shifted to require the assessment of and response to the possibility of future harm, the child welfare system responded by introducing procedures to assess and reduce risk. hence, the term often used to describe children and youth requiring some form of social services is “at risk”. this emphasis on risk was noticeable during conversations with child and family services workers at the commencement of our needs assessment project. we found that most workers turn quickly to thinking about risk and reducing risk and increasing resiliency when they discuss assessing the needs of youth. our review of the literature on needs assessment also pointed to the prevalence of a focus on risk and resiliency even when document titles implied a needs focus (henderson, aydlett, & bailey, 1994; hodges, 1999; kroll et al., 1999; ottenbacher, taylor, msall, & braun, 1996; towberman, 1992). however, as early as the 1970s, researchers were starting to discuss the fact that assessing for risk does not assist workers in finding the information that they require in order to determine who needs services and what kinds of services might be of the most benefit. garmazy (1971) approached risk assessment with caution and introduced the notion of “flipping the coin of risk statistics” (p. 112), based on his observation that most individuals deemed at risk do not develop psychopathology. garmazy made clear that the presence of a risk factor or an adversarial circumstance in the life of an individual is not predictive of what will happen in the future. this observation has been confirmed by werner and smith (1992) and others. for example, masten (1999) found that more than half of the children studied, who were categorized as high risk, grew up to be happy, successful people. this suggests that a focus on risk factors alone will not help researchers or workers to predict or determine outcome (mangham, mcgrath, reid, & stewart, 1995), nor will it help to determine need. our search of the literature on needs assessment revealed that in the past few years there appears to be a trend toward focusing increasingly on the use of standardized assessment instruments in work with children and youth (cf., sattler & hoge, 2006). this trend concerns us because standardized tools generally focus on the individual without consideration of the context in which they live and how contextual factors influence their needs and capabilities. 120 a welcome departure from standardized assessment is found in berberet’s (2006) integrated assessment approach to program planning. berberet (2006) stresses the importance of including youth’s perspectives on their situations and needs and contrasting these with assumptions made by adults engaged in serving the youth. berberet also points out that many youth workers acknowledge the fact that they don’t understand the needs of the populations they serve. we have heard the same acknowledgement from workers in our research and it was their desire to better understand the populations they serve that provided the impetus for development of our needs assessment guide for youth (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002). thus, along with berberet (2006), we take seriously the challenge of determining need and now turn to some promising current responses to children and youth that we wish to highlight. current responses to children and youth and their effects four key documents are considered here in relation to current responses to children and youth and the effects of such responses: 1. the policy framework from the british columbia ministry for children and families (2000); 2. the policy recommendations from civicus 2001 (sharpe, 2001a, 2001b); 3. the circle of courage (brendtro, brokenleg, & van bockern, 1990) found also in a developmental audit of delinquency prepared for the w. k. kellogg foundation by augustina college and the reclaiming youth institute (van bockern & brendtro, 1999); and 4. the emergent practice planning model (ricks & charlesworth, 2000), an approach to service that takes into account the “emergent”, that is, always fluid nature of intervention. 1. the youth policy framework the youth policy framework (british columbia ministry for children and families, 2000) outlines needs of youth that are similar to those articulated in the national youth policy documents presented at the civicus conference in 2001 (sharpe, 2001a, 2001b). the youth policy framework proposes to address youth's needs within the context of key environmental influences that affect the youth's health and well-being. the influences highlighted are the social and economic conditions in which youth live, play, and work, their sense of control, and their family and social connections. the needs attached to these areas of influence are itemized in table 1 below: 121 table 1: british columbia youth policy framework key influences: needs: social and economic conditions, in which youth live, play, and work. • basic needs met (housing, food, clothing) • safety and security • opportunities for learning, work, and play family and social connections • family and cultural connections • peer relationships • adult relationships • mentors • schools • community sense of control over their lives • value and respect • information, knowledge, and decision-making skills • meaningful participation • opportunities for self-definition • creating positive futures 2. the policy recommendations from civicus 2001 the policy recommendations from civicus 2001 (sharpe, 2001a, 2001b) provided directions for integrating national youth policies into a long-term strategic global perspective for youth. in the primary document, the education of young people (sharpe, 2001a), and the working paper, national youth policies: towards an autonomous, supportive, responsible and committed youth (sharpe, 2001b), similar sentiments are expressed regarding the importance of understanding cultural diversity. sharpe (2001b) states that while “the specific needs of young people will vary from one culture to another, and, indeed from one individual to another depending on circumstances” (p. 8), youth around the world share similar needs for growth and development. sharpe concludes that young people from all environments share the same basic needs to become autonomous, supportive, responsible, and committed adults. the four outcomes associated with these needs are given in table 2 below: table 2: four essential needs in youth (sharpe, 2001a, 2001b). needs outcomes autonomous able to make choices and control their personal and social life as an individual and as a member of society. supportive able to show concern for others, to act with them and for them, to share concerns. responsible able to take responsibility for their actions, keep commitments, and complete whatever they undertake. committed able to assert themselves in respect to values, a cause, or an ideal to act accordingly. 122 3. the circle of courage in 1990, brendtro, brokenleg and van bockern established the circle of courage, a model for understanding the core needs of all young people based on a combination of native american child-rearing practices, psychology, and the research and practices of north american youth-work pioneers. this model is based on the interconnection of four areas or quadrants of influence and experience that are central to all children’s lives, where each quadrant represents “the four overriding needs of young people: belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity” (p. 173). brendtro and his colleagues contend that if any of these needs remain unmet, “the child is at risk and is in danger of being hurt, [and a] hurting child hurts others” (p. 173). thus, need exists before risk surfaces and, therefore, should not be considered solely as a function of risk. van bockern (1998) subsequently examined the needs of youth against the circle of courage by following the paths of two males from youthful delinquency to adult criminality. he found that these young people suffered from a lack of parental support, negative school experiences, and had moved from committing minor offences (shoplifting) to incarceration for murder and assault. van bockern notes that “the bonds that transmit basic human needs from adults to the young began unraveling for howard and bobby during their earliest years” and suggests that as a result these children were seeking to fill their needs for belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity with “gangs and connections to false friends and relationships with adults who will exploit youth” (p. 173). according to van bockern, youth will seek mastery through “snatching purses, stealing chickens, or displaying sexual prowess on the video screen” (p. 173). independence will be represented as “a sense of control sought in drugs and alcohol; generosity is measured by the amount of drugs and alcohol shared with others” (p. 173). while the means to meet these needs by youth may be misguided, van bockern asserts that youth are pursuing “worthy ends… they haven't given up; they are struggling to fix discouraging life situations” (p. 174). van bockern (1998) thus suggests that, rather than focusing upon the deviance and pathology of troubled children, youth would be better served if their behaviours were seen as attempts to cope with very abnormal life situations and circumstances. such an approach would not involve adults “reciprocating with counter-aggression” when the youth responds with rage and rebellion (p. 173). instead, workers would use responses that “disengage and de-escalate conflict” and involve “listening and responding with empathy, while also clarifying for children their needs and feelings and helping them take responsible actions through coping skills” (p. 174). van bockern’s (1998) notions are echoed by literature that focuses on the importance of workers’ avoidance of becoming caught up in children and youth’s challenging behaviours and suggests that they should instead consider these behaviours as indicative of underlying need (richardson, 2001). maier (1991) stresses the importance of seeing youth’s challenging behaviours as unusual rather than as deviant and of viewing challenging behaviours in terms of how they fit into a child or youth’s developmental progression. thus, care workers need an understanding of child 123 development, which allows them to understand a youth’s pattern of coping with specific life situations and therefore helps them to determine what the young person’s next developmental task should be. according to maier, such a developmental focus holds more promise than working towards undoing or correcting unwanted behaviours. 4. emergent practice planning ricks and charlesworth (2000), in their manual on emergent practice planning, note that practitioners’ approaches to need are premised on their preferences for various behaviour change theories and framed by their favourite interventions rather than by their clients’ perspectives and assessment of the situation. ricks and charlesworth suggest that, rather than framing a client’s needs through their own eyes, practitioners should frame their interventions with the client, to see to it that these interventions are related to the client's need(s) and are possible and realistic given the client's present level of functioning and capacity. according to ricks and charlesworth, assessment should focus on working with clients to establish needs and goals so that the formulation of service action plans can promote change in ways that are meaningful to clients. promising practices and approaches for effectively meeting the needs of children, youth, and the community positive relationship development consultation with youth and workers from three vancouver island communities (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002) underlined the point that positive relationships are essential to needs assessment and to meaningful intervention. the importance of relationship was also noted by clarke (2001) who, in his research on 40 years of psychotherapy outcome studies, found that after individual client factors, such as capability, capacity, and potential which account for 40% of behaviour change, positive worker-youth relationship accounts for 30% of behaviour change. along with client factors and relationship, the worker’s ability to instill a sense of self-efficacy and possibility, i.e., hope and positive expectations in the youth, account for 15% of behaviour change. finally, intervention techniques, programs, or models account for the remaining 15%. thus, taken together, client capability, the relationship between client and worker, and hope and expectancy account for 85% of behaviour change, while technique accounts for only 15%. the importance of relationships was also noted in research on school-based violence prevention. students involved in violence prevention appeared to respond more favourably to violence prevention programming if they were systematically positively reinforced by adults for pro-social behaviour, if their teachers and parents were involved with them in a variety of activities, not just violence prevention programs, and if their parents and teachers used respectful communication and conflict resolution skills with them. also important to these students were opportunities to participate in teaching others bully prevention techniques and, especially for girls, to be involved in groupbased social skills training (artz, riecken, macintyre, lam, & maczewski, 2000). 124 positive relationships were also emphasized by youth in custody and girls interviewed in the context of research on their use of violence. these young people expressed great faith in counsellors and teachers who listened to them, took the time and trouble to give them information relevant to their problems, and spent time talking and joking with them. workers and teachers who used put-downs, coercion, and intimidation were described by these young people as contributing to their negative behaviour, as were those who labelled them by using pejorative terms such as “uncontrollable” or “deviant” (artz, 1998; artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000a). youth told us repeatedly that they do not cooperate with workers with whom they have no established connections or with assessments that they believe are disrespectful and intrusive – that is, assessments that ask them to answer what youth described as “irrelevant and demeaning” questions about their personal lives, relationships, and activities. clarke (2001) also recognized this dynamic and stressed a very important point often overlooked by adults: it is the youth’s assessment of her or his relationship with the worker that matters. if a young person doesn’t feel positive about and involved in the relationship with the worker, the relationship doesn’t really exist, regardless of how it may be defined by the worker. clarke (2001) also comments on the reason why diagnoses of problems based on impersonal assessments don’t work: children and youth are active and generative; the severity, magnitude, and frequency of problems are constantly changing, and change itself is a powerful client factor. thus, as he points out, we do young people a profound disservice if we take an approach that represents their problems as static and constant, that is, captured in diagnostic labels, because this implies that their presenting complaints have a quality of permanence that is contradictory to the notion of change. clarke states that worker “expertise continues to be vital and required; but only to guide and raise the three critical ingredients – the tactical triad – of a youth’s resources, perceptions and participation” (p. 26). these critical ingredients should, therefore, be a part of any assessment. workers should not focus on “what is wrong and what a child or youth cannot do,” but instead on what young people can already do, on their resources, on what they think and feel, and on what they are willing to try. the importance of gender and culture gender and culture have long been neglected aspects of research and practice and this neglect perpetuates systemic discrimination (hannah-moffat & maurutto, 2003). our research and that of numerous others showed that gender and culture are important considerations that must be included in any intervention because our individual experiences in each of these areas shapes how we see others and ourselves (artz, 1998; artz, 1999; artz, riecken, et al., 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000; artz, nicholson, & blais, 2000a, 2000b; cf., canada, 1998; garbarino, 1999; gilligan, 1982; kemp, whittaker, & tracy, 1997; leadbeater, blatt, & quinlan, 1995; lezak, 1995; miller, 1976; pipher, 1994; plummer, 1999; pollack, 1998; riecken, 2000; tanenbaum, 1999; taylor, 125 gilligan, & sullivan, 1995). so, too, must sexual orientation (daley, 1998; dubeau, 1998). artz, riecken, et al. (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000) found that gender plays a major role in students’ perceptions of and experiences with violence, as well as in how students respond to violence prevention. gender also plays a role, both in how students and their parents participate in violence prevention, and in how teachers involve themselves in violence prevention, particularly pertaining to intervention. this series of studies conducted by artz and her colleagues showed that females (students, teachers, and parents) were more concerned about violence and participated more in violence prevention efforts; that female students were more receptive to violence prevention programming and changed their attitudes and behaviours toward non-violence to a significantly greater degree than their male counterparts; that male students were more often both victims and perpetrators of violence but less willing to desist from endorsing and using violence; and that male teachers were less intimidated with regard to acting to end a violent altercation between students. reicken (2000) suggests that these gender differences have their origins in a cultural milieu that exposes males to more violence than is the case for females, while also expecting – even demanding – from boys and men a greater readiness to accept and deal with violence. the importance of considering gender and culture was further examined in artz, blais, and nicholson (2000a, 2000b) where it was found that gender and culture play a significant role in how custody workers and probation officers relate to their clients and to each other, and in how youth in custody and on probation relate to each other and to workers. we also previously found that gender and culture play a central role in how assessment is conducted and how and what resources are made available (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002). we believe that, within any given society, there are different expectations and demands for behaviour, beliefs, and adaptations across different situations and subcultures. these differences result in wide cultural and gender-based variation in concepts of self, styles of communication, coping mechanisms, and what is considered adaptive or appropriate (neisser et al., 1996). the need for cultureand gender-based influences to be carefully considered and explored as part of any intervention or service action is, therefore, paramount because unexamined cultureor gender-based assumptions may result in confusion, misinterpretation, and misattribution of labels and causes (lezak, 1995). before conclusions are drawn about clients’ lives, any cultureor gender-based explanations of issues or problems should be explored, examined, and understood (sattler, 1992). each youth has needs that are unique to that individual. a relationship-focused process of assessment enables youth workers to draw out the necessary information to build a continually evolving understanding of where each youth is individually, developmentally, and culturally. we acknowledge that some youth may have pressing needs associated with mental health or developmental challenges. our approach to assessment can be described as inclusionary and differential. by including youth in 126 discussions about their own situations and needs, workers can build an understanding of the influences of culture, gender, and development. our approach to assessment also allows the differential needs of boys and girls from diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences to be considered in matching the needs of youth to effective interventions (reitsma-street, artz, & nicholson, 2005). for example, responsive practice based on the differential and inclusionary assessment approach we promote can involve taking diverse learning styles, cognitive abilities, and emotional maturity of youth into account when planning appropriate interventions (reitsma-street, 2004). nuanced differences in a youth’s ability to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, and authority can all be taken into account when needs assessment permits insights into the differential effects of gender, culture, and development. in this way, our approach can be readily adapted to work with youth that experience mental health and developmental challenges. in our view, recognition of the complex interplay between individuals and their social and physical worlds in the creation of need is the most appropriate starting point for assessing and responding to needs. young people’s needs are dependent upon context and resource. meeting these needs invariably involve working with contexts and even changing contexts rather than merely changing individual behaviours. we therefore suggest an approach to needs assessment that is ecological and inclusionary and highlights an individual’s strengths and ability to negotiate contexts rather than focusing only on personal risks and deficits. ways of establishing or enhancing partnerships caring and collaboration with children and youth, partnerships are initially established and enhanced through a clear and unambiguous message of caring. youth research participants stated repeatedly that only those workers who they believed genuinely cared about them received their trust, and along with their trust, their cooperation (artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000a; artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002). among agency workers, whether that is within or across agencies, the following detractors and facilitators were found to be influential on workers’ ability and willingness to work collaboratively (nicholson et al., 2000, p. 56). 127 table 3: organizational detractors and facilitators of collaborative practice (nicholson, artz, armitage, & fagan, 2000) detractors facilitators organizational factors • high caseloads • low resources • climate of uncertainty around reorganization • lack of administrative support to coordinate/plan meetings and schedules • hiring staff without experience with collaborative approaches • lack of a formal communication structure • having a team structure • protecting team meeting times (individuals are expected to attend) • maintaining a philosophy that mandates family/client involvement in collaboration • allowing choices re: collaboration process • providing a non-competitive environment table 4: individual detractors and facilitators of collaborative practice (nicholson, artz, armitage, & fagan, 2000) detractors facilitators individual factors • not sharing work • not being able to express limits around work and own abilities • needing to control others • needing to work autonomously • needing to have own opinion accepted • flexibility • self-awareness • commitment to collaboration • valuing others • accepting of individual differences • good communication • developing and valuing personal relationships with co-workers • understanding others, their roles, and contributions • educating others about self, own role, and contributions the promising practices outlined above and the detractors and facilitators noted by nicholson et al. (2000) were also identified by teachers, parents, and family counsellors of children under the age of 12 years with severe behaviour problems, who participated in a study with the objective of improving services to these children (artz, 1999). teachers working in behaviour support noted that they highly valued the ability to work as members of a team from a solution focused, rather than a problem focused perspective. also identified by these teachers as central to collaborative work and enhanced partnership across disciplines and professions were the following elements: having rapport with key people in agencies and developing credibility over time; close and open communication with parents; the presence of resource personnel and people who offer a variety of strategies or suggestions; and locating agencies directly in schools (artz, 1999). parents of children in need of behaviour support reported feeling very appreciative of administrators, teachers, and youth and family counsellors who were able to listen to parents, to let them vent if necessary, and to take their concerns seriously. these parents also appreciated the team approach taken by those who worked with their children and believed that such teamwork enhanced their children’s overall chances for positive growth and change (artz, 1999). 128 barriers to caring and collaboration parents and workers noted these issues as barriers to effective work: an inability to listen; negative attitudes and a lack of negotiating skills in anyone involved; difficulties in communication with child welfare ministry workers and constant ministry flux; and haphazard inter-system communication. all parents who had been or were clients of the child welfare ministry mentioned difficulties with having to deal with constantly changing ministry workers. they noted that each time a worker changed, they must start the job of building a relationship again and must repeatedly recount their histories and must once more fight the same battles for needed resources. workers and parents felt that services would be more effective if: knowledge and expertise were better shared; all those who might be involved in service provision and the public were better educated regarding the developmental needs of children and especially children and youth with special needs; a cross-ministerial mechanism were in place for tracking clients and information sharing; and insuring the inclusion in decision making of all interested and involved parties. finally, parents suggested that, since boys in need of behaviour support far outnumbered girls, greater sensitivity to the gendered underpinnings of behaviour would assist all concerned with devising more effective intervention (artz, 1999). working with, not for or on behalf of the success of all the work described here — violence prevention in schools that contributed to a 40 to 50% reduction in school-based violence (artz, riecken, van domselaar, & laliberté, 1994; artz, 1998; artz, riecken, macintyre, lam, & maczewski, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000); the creation of a set of collaboratively developed recommendations for a community-based approach to dealing with violent under 12year-olds (artz, 1999); the development of gender-sensitive professional development workshops by custody centre staff for custody centre staff (artz, blais, & nicholson, 2000b); and the design of a youth and worker friendly tool for needs assessment (artz, nicholson, halsall, & larke, 2002) — was dependent upon an approach to research and development premised on equality of partnership, cooperation, and commitment to working with rather than for or on behalf of community agencies and institutions and those who were research participants. the research and development projects described here were participatory in nature and are still being carried out, at least in part, by the participants, despite the projects having ended and funding having been cut. in the school district that participated in the studies on violence prevention and on developing a community-based approach to working with violent under 12-year-olds, teachers and agency workers remain committed to research and evaluation along with violence prevention and are continuing to develop and evaluate a variety of programs. in the custody centre, despite major adjustments in funding, changes in personnel, and moving from one building to another, staff remain involved in the design and delivery of staff development training. in the three 129 communities that participated in the development of the gender-sensitive needs assessment tool, participants and their supervisors are disseminating the tool, and a ministry-based workshop is planned to assist workers in using the tool. it remains for others to conduct follow-up research on the legacy of these collaborative projects. doing so will allow the replication not only of the successful programming that these partnerships developed, but also the replication of the processes that supported these successful partnerships. 130 references anglin, j. 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(1992). overcoming the odds: high risk children from birth to adulthood. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. table 1: british columbia youth policy framework 2. the policy recommendations from civicus 2001 needs international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 702 the dilemmas of digital methodologies: learning from work on young digital susan elsley, michael gallagher, and e. kay m. tisdall abstract: this article explores common dilemmas facing researchers and practitioners who wish to use digital media in research with children and young people. the article explores both cultural-social-economic and material approaches to digital media. these draw attention to five areas, explored in the article, which raise particular dilemmas and opportunities: networked mobility; interoperability and convergence; corporate involvement; confidentiality, anonymity and privacy; and intellectual property and moral rights. when involving children and young people through digital media, the boundaries between online and offline worlds are increasingly blurred, raising practical and ethical dilemmas. the article concludes that research with children and young people needs to take account of the socio-cultural norms in using digital media and that the tenets of ethical research still apply. keywords: digital, digital media, children, young people, networked, confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property rights acknowledgements: the economic and social research council’s digital demonstrator programme provided funding to create young digital, in the project ‘supporting the use of digital media in research with children and young people’ (es/j009814/1). susan elsley (the corresponding author) is an independent researcher on children and young people and a research associate of the centre for research on families and relationships at the university of edinburgh, 23 buccleuch place, edinburgh, eh8 9ln, uk. e-mail: susan@susanelsley.com michael gallagher is senior lecturer in the early years and childhood studies, faculty of education, manchester metropolitan university, birley building, 53 bonsall street, manchester m15 6gx. e-mail: m.gallagher@mmu.ac.uk e. kay m. tisdall is professor of childhood policy and co-director of the centre for research on families and relationships, at the university of edinburgh, spss cmb, 15a george square, edinburgh eh8 9ld, uk. e-mail: k.tisdall@ed.ac.uk mailto:m.gallagher@mmu.ac.uk international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 703 digital media are now an integral part of everyday life for many people. boundaries between online and offline worlds are increasingly difficult to delineate, with digital media tools now used as part of routine activities and mobile technology no longer restricting the geography of usage, with some provisos of access, inclusion, and location. as researchers with longstanding interests in both research with children and young people1 and experimentation with digital media, we wanted to explore the potential of using digital media in research. the popularity of these media amongst many children and young people, matched with the commitment of childhood studies researchers to gather data in ways that are engaging and meaningful to participants, were significant incentives. to support these interests, since 2010 we have been running a course on using digital media in research with children and young people at the centre for research on families and relationships, university of edinburgh, for researchers from the higher education, public, and non-governmental sectors. the training has provided rich opportunities for collaborative learning and exploration about the benefits and challenges of using digital media in research. that learning informs this article. at the outset of developing our course on using digital media in research, few materials were available to childhood studies researchers who wanted to use digital media and explore their potential. since then, on a year-by-year basis, we have seen a growth in available resources and significant changes in what participants bring to the course, through their own use of digital media and their experimentation in research with children and young people. in order to meet a need for curated resources, we received funding from the economic social research council (esrc) digital demonstrator programme to develop a web resource in 2011. this initiative, young digital (available at http://www.youngdigital.net/), was launched in early 2013 and draws on resources from academic research and learning from other areas such as children and young people’s participation, reflecting wider experience of using digital media relevant for research. this article explores some common dilemmas and debates that have arisen in our work and draws on an increasing body of knowledge on using digital media in research. it draws attention to the evolving use of digital media by children and young people and explores issues which have resonance for our research activities. five areas are explored in this article: networked mobility; interoperability and convergence; corporate involvement; confidentiality, anonymity and privacy; and intellectual property and moral rights. 1 this article generally uses the phrase “children and young people”, following young people’s typical preference to be referred to as the latter in the united kingdom. broadly, “children and young people” refers to children up to the age of 18, following the definition within the united nations convention on the rights of the child. http://www.youngdigital.net/ international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 704 the article considers in what ways these reflect and continue issues raised by traditional offline methods for children and young people’s research, and in what ways they are reformulated or raise new issues when various types of digital media are being used. finally, we suggest areas that researchers might consider when undertaking research with children and young people. defining and theorizing digital media throughout this article, we use the term “digital media”. however, this term is troublesome to define. it encompasses a vast spread of technologies: everything from traffic lights to travel clocks, from elevators to engine management systems, from mobile phones to military drones (kitchin & dodge, 2011). academic researchers have a long tradition of using digital tools for learning, analysis, dissemination, and knowledge exchange. social research, for example, routinely involves digital technologies, such as analytical software packages spss and nvivo, and more general-purpose tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, and databases. these are not, however, the kinds of digital media with which we are concerned in this article. another challenge in defining digital media is their continued evolution, emerging from longer histories. contrary to popular belief, digital media are not phenomena arising only in the last two decades. for example, the mp3 format, now widely used for music distribution, can be traced back to developments in psychoacoustic research and the telephone industry from the early 1900s (sterne, 2012). likewise, meikle and young (2012, p. 3) point out that “the internet which underpins the web is more than forty years old … the history of the mobile phone might be traced back as far as marconi or even morse”. they conclude that “the digitization of media content is now so pervasive and so firmly established that the term [digital media] is unhelpful as a general label” (p. 3). in our work, however, we have retained the term digital media as an inclusive category, with an emphasis on the resources and technological products that children and young people are currently using to exchange information via the internet, such as mobile networked devices, social media, and other web 2.0 technologies. the pervasiveness of digital media applies manifestly to the minority world2 but also to the majority world. in 2011, for example, africa was the second largest market for mobile connections after asia, with year on increases of 30% during the previous decade (gsma-kearney, 2011). although these figures suggest that digital media are increasingly widespread and global, inequalities remain in both the minority and majority worlds in terms of access, inclusion, and availability of technology. in a european study, for example, connectivity, cost (especially for younger children), and access to wireless connections affected children and young people’s access to the internet via mobiles (masheroni & ólafsson, 2013). a recurring theme throughout this article is the blurring of boundaries between online and offline worlds. in the discourses surrounding the popularization of the 2 the terms “majority world” and “minority world” refer to what has traditionally been known as “the third world” and “the first world” or more recently as “the global south” and “the global north”. this acknowledges that the majority of population, poverty, land mass, and lifestyles is located in the former – in africa, asia and latin america – and thus seeks to shift the balance of our world views that frequently privilege “western” and “northern” populations and issues (punch 2003). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 705 internet during the 1990s, a distinction was commonly made between online and offline spaces, expressed in concepts such as virtual space and cyberspace (slater, 2002). this distinction is problematic, since how such boundaries are perceived, enacted, or dissolved will vary between different assemblages of technologies, places, and people. as digital media have become ubiquitous in everyday life, the distinction has been undermined by various factors: the increasing mobility of new technologies; their aggressive marketing as lifestyle accessories; the sheer “diversity of software and hardware” (slater, 2002, p. 534) of which the internet is comprised, undermining any sense of the online world as a single coherent entity; and related changing practices of media use. this is not to argue that divisions between online and offline spaces are no longer being made, but rather that such divisions are increasingly porous, uncertain, and contested. of particular relevance for this article, our research and teaching experiences suggest that children and young people who have never known a world without ubiquitous digital media tend to perceive the distinctions between online and offline as more fluid and less sharply drawn than many adult researchers. this is a broad generalization with many exceptions, but we have found it to be particularly true of those older adult researchers who have substantial experience of the pre-internet era, and whose use of online networked media outside of a work context is limited. as we will discuss in subsequent sections, these differing conceptions of the online-offline divide have significant implications for using digital media in research. in addressing questions about the characteristics of digital media, two approaches suggest themselves. the first is cultural-social-economic, examining the discourses, practices, social, and economic relationships within which digital technologies are embedded. this could be described an outward-facing analysis, examining the wider context surrounding digital media. it might involve enquiries into how children and young people use mobile devices or navigate the public spaces of social media (e.g., boyd, 2007), or critical interrogation of how digital technologies are bound up with wider political-economic structures of capitalism, neo-liberal consumerism, and globalization (dijck, 2013). the second approach is a more materialist analysis of media, exemplified by media archaeology (e.g., huhtamo & parikka, 2011) and certain strains of media ecology (e.g., fuller, 2007). here analysis tends to be more inward-looking, examining digital media themselves, treating them not only as socially embedded tools but as machinic entities in their own right, radically non-human, non-semantic and non-discursive, and with the potential to interact in ways that exceed their designers’ intentions. in directing attention towards media’s technical functioning, a materialist approach can reveal what machines bring to research, and also help to counter the implicit humanism that often characterizes childhood studies (see prout, 2005). combining these two approaches, boyd (2008) writes of the properties and dynamics of “networked publics” that make digital media practices different from other unmediated publics: the properties of persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability; and the dynamics of invisible audiences, collapsed contexts – “the lack of spatial, social, and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts” (p. 34) – and the blurring of private and public. both cultural-social-economic and materialist approaches offer useful and complementary insights for reflexive thinking about the use of digital media in research. in the following sections, we use them to highlight several specific features, international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 706 issues, and dilemmas relating to the mobile, social, and audio-visual digital media with which we are concerned here. as social researchers, cultural-social-economic observations predominate in our account, but with the material and technical aspects of digital media also coming to the fore at points. children and young people’s digital media use digital media offers new opportunities for research. edwards, housley, williams, sloan, and williams (2013) suggest that current thinking about the contribution of web 2.0 technologies to research can be categorized in three ways: it can provide a “surrogate” for existing traditional methods; it can “re-orientate” research so that it considers new populations and data; finally it can “augment” traditional research (p. 245). for childhood studies researchers seeking innovative ways of engaging children and young people, using digital media can be attractive for these methodological reasons. but it is also attractive because children and young people’s use of digital media has grown so rapidly over the last decade, indicating wide interest in these technologies. recent figures from ofcom, the u.k.’s independent regulator for the communication industries, show, for example, that children and young people’s access to smart phones and tablet computers in the u.k. has increased year on year (ofcom, 2013). in 2012, the use of tablet computers by children and young people between the ages of 5 to 15 years had tripled from the previous year (ofcom, 2013); 62% of young people between 12 and 15 years had smart phones, with these devices the most popular for accessing social networking sites (ofcom, 2013). these growing figures are reflected elsewhere, with 53% of children and young people in a study of six european countries likely to own or access the internet every day using a smartphone (masheroni & ólafsson, 2013). children and young people are increasingly digitally well connected. children and young people are often considered “early adopters” of social networking media; they are often also “early adapters”. so the popularity of the social network myspace, once a favorite of children and young people, has declined. the dominance of facebook is now being encroached upon by newer applications, with ofcom reporting more diverse use of social networking sites amongst children and young people (ofcom, 2013). most children and young people are still using facebook, according to research undertaken in the united states, but they are concerned about the “adult presence” and oversharing of information on the platform (madden et al., 2013) and are using other social networking tools to circumvent possible adult intrusion. as of 2014, new applications such as whatsapp, snapchat (launched in 2011) and vine (launched in 2013) are being used by children and young people in greater numbers. being aware of children and young people’s evolving patterns of media use can inform the work of childhood studies researchers, providing them with insights about what is appropriate for research activities. it is a mistake, however, to take these trends as evidence that today’s children and young people are “digital natives”, not only because that concept lacks an empirical basis (hargittai, 2010; helsper & eynon, 2009; selwyn, 2009), but because, as already highlighted, “the digital” is too amorphous and unstable to pin down. there is no reason to suppose that children and young people who are familiar with, say, social media will be capable of programming software or working with big data, nor that their familiarity with current technologies will automatically give them an international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 707 intuitive grasp of new technologies in the future. the notion that children and young people are uber-confident digital citizens, with skills that can surpass those of adults, should therefore be treated with caution. this suggests that researchers should be careful about the assumptions they make about children and young people’s digital media skills. these might be limited to routine everyday use rather than based on indepth understanding of all aspects of digital media. networked mobility the rise of mobile networked devices is changing the geography of digital media. children and young people are using digital media in diverse spaces, including homes, schools, outdoor spaces, on transport systems, in public institutions such as libraries and museums, and at gatherings such as gigs and music festivals. this affords possibilities for data collection to become more mobile and peripatetic, happening wherever children and young people happen to be (plowman & stevenson, 2012). the mobility of smartphones has some continuity with other portable media such as the walkman and portable mp3 player, but a crucial distinction is the capacity of smartphones to enable the creation and sharing of data via the internet whilst on the move, out-and-about, shuttling information between disparate spaces. thinking through the materiality of these technologies, one key issue is that of bandwidth. at the time of writing, for example, mobile data transfer is generally slower than with wired connections. economies of compression thus trump quality and fidelity, a principle evident in everything from the grainy texture of online videos to the 140-character limit of sms text messages and tweets. for researchers used to lengthy surveys, in-depth interviews, and richly detailed data, a key challenge here is to find ways of working with more minimal nuggets of information. taking a more social-cultural perspective, the geographically locative capacities of networked mobile devices have significant implications for research, both in terms of methods and ethics. mobile devices now commonly interface with what has become known as the “geoweb”, using gps technology for navigation, mapping, the locational tagging of media (geotagging), locative augmented reality, and other geographical functions. these technologies are deeply ambivalent. they are powerful tools for the surveillance of civil society by states and corporations, but also afford opportunities for counter-hegemonic and activist practices, such as using satellite imagery to identify geopolitical installations (perkins & dodge, 2009). researchers working with such technologies can use them to track participants’ movements, pinpoint the spaces in which certain responses were made and map research data, thereby extending traditional quantitative epistemologies, with their capacity to turn social action into fixed, calculable knowledge. locative media can also be used to provide interactive, participatory, collaborative, and creative ways of researching people’s relationships with spaces and places, such as through locationbased storytelling (e.g., miskelly, cater, fleuriot, williams, & wood, 2005). geolocation is an area in which digital media has produced novel datagenerating capabilities quite unlike anything that is possible with traditional offline research methods. careful reflexivity is therefore needed around the ethics of using these media, particularly concerning anonymity and privacy. elwood and leszczynski (2011) argue that geolocated media reconfigure privacy in a distinctive way. unlike international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 708 the abstracted attributes of transactional “big” data, geolocated media provide more immediate representations of personal identities, such as the photorealistic visual images of pedestrians and private homes in google’s street view. such data have a particular kind of truth value, purporting to show certain individuals at a given location and time. it is this immediacy and directness, elwood and leszczynski (2013) suggest, that has influenced heated debates about privacy in relation to the geoweb. all of this suggests that, in research with children and young people on sensitive or difficult topics, or where data collection is taking place in children and young people’s private spaces such as their homes, there may be good ethical reasons not to track their locations. some devices and platforms register location by default, so researchers concerned about anonymity and privacy may need to be proactive in disabling such features. interoperability and convergence mobile, social, and audio-visual digital media are increasingly designed to integrate, interact, and exchange data. older media forms tend to be more limited in this respect. the materiality of information printed in a traditional printed book, for example, means that it is not easily transferred out of that format and into a different context, whereas digital formats are highly interchangeable, allowing both for easy cut-and-pasting between files, and for data to float more freely between multiple material-technological assemblages. digital text, images, and audio can propagate across a wide variety of devices, easily copied and shared via social media channels. for example, consider embedded media, whereby content hosted by one social media service can be placed within other websites: photos hosted on flickr can be placed within facebook pages and tumblr posts, or tweets embedded in a blog. more generally, some commentators have identified a trend towards what has been termed media convergence or remediation, whereby networked digital media precipitate the combination and reworking of media forms (bolter & grusin, 1999; jenkins, 2006; meikle & young, 2012). one example is the blurring of lines between television and the internet through catch-up and on-demand services and video sharing platforms such as youtube. harnessing interoperability and convergence for research will involve making technical decisions to use open-ended platforms, standards, and formats that have wide compatibility. this can make for the spontaneous criss-crossing, reworking, and hybridization of data, extending older practices such as collage, remixing, and sampling. encouraging participants to share data may result in a lateral movement of proliferation, even sometimes contagion – things “going viral” – though equally there may be a deflating lack of interest. media interoperability offers lively, emergent potentials, particularly for dissemination, but can also undermine control over research and the contexts within which it is presented. the casual promiscuity of the world wide web can be a shock for those more used to keeping their findings behind firewalls or in filing cabinets. one cultural-social effect of media convergence relates again to the reworking of the distinction between private and public. spheres of life that have traditionally tended to be kept separate offline, such as work, family, and friends, now increasingly converge through online media. participants in our digital media courses have expressed anxieties about managing personal and professional boundaries on social international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 709 media, reflecting a wider sense that public-private divisions in online practices are still evolving, and have yet to settle into accepted norms. the implications of this for research are not fundamentally new. there are precedents in negotiating personalprofessional boundaries in ethnographic research, for example (everhart, 1977; blackman, 2007), and the core issues remain similar. however, digital media add an additional level of complexity to how these issues play out in practice. the convergence and anonymity of networked media, combined with the emerging and changing social conventions in using these media, have produced a situation where many young people use the internet to negotiate and experiment with sexuality, friendships, and family relationships. this involves young people sharing intimate personal information about themselves and others, including through photos and videos. in some cases such material may constitute valuable data, but there is also a danger of research becoming unintentionally invasive or voyeuristic, and of researchers and young people having interactions that feel uncomfortable or inappropriate – either for the researchers, the young people, or both. in thinking through these issues, some questions to consider include: will researchers use an existing personal social media profile or set up a separate one for research? how will researchers respond to facebook “friend” requests from research participants? will researchers give research participants a mobile phone number for exchanging texts? will researchers take their numbers? how much personal information are researchers happy to share? if children and young people send messages or friend requests to researchers’ personal social media profiles, how will researchers respond? how will researchers deal with sociable online interactions such as off-topic chat and flirting? considering these issues at the planning stage, and drawing on digital media protocols from other professionals working with children and young people, may help researchers to be better prepared for some of the consequences of using digital media in their work. corporate involvement the corporate politics and economics of digital media is another culturalsocial issue with major implications for research practice. at present, a small number of multinational companies and conglomerates dominate the market in digital devices and services. the control of media by public and private corporations is nothing new, but the current configuration is distinctive in the unprecedented quantities of data now harvested from users. web 2.0 media: are based on a model where profit margins are maximized the more users join the network (which is why access is free or extremely low cost), and the more demographic data those users provide so that advertising can be targeted at them. in other words, if we are not paying for a product, we are the product. (mejias, 2013, p. 33) for example, facebook’s advertising web pages boast that its user-generated data can enable companies to target their products based on the location, sex, age, likes and interests, relationship status, workplace, or education of facebook members. there is, then, a kind of faustian pact whereby using digital media services to generate research data also involves allowing digital media companies to generate big data for their own commercial purposes. internet interactivity cuts both ways. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 710 tricky ethical questions arise here about how to manage digital research data generated by participants or young people as co-researchers, particularly given the profit-driven motives of the companies in question. the tax avoidance strategies of google, for example, sit uneasily with the publicly funded, social justice orientated nature of much research in childhood studies. dijck (2013) argues that the culture of exchange in social media is based on neo-liberal economic principles, and that the calls of large social media corporations for “more transparency and openness, for maximum sharing and frictionless traffic, are entrenched in a neoliberal political agenda often advocating a downsizing of the public sector” (p. 21). a materialist analysis of digital media also points towards economic and environmental injustices. mejias (2013) highlights a few examples: the appalling labour conditions through which the rare earth minerals required for making digital devices are extracted in congolese mines; the high rate of employee suicide at foxconn’s factories in china, where apple products are assembled; the toxic environmental and health effects of electronic waste. against this background, as researchers we may wish to consider the extent to which we want to allow our activities and those of our participants to be co-opted into generating surplus value for multinational corporations. beyond a simple binary decision about whether or not to use digital media, mejias (2013) observes that a range of decisions are possible such as: a refusal to do business with certain companies, or a rejection of the premise that we must upload our content to the network with the most users. it might actualize itself as the struggle to get corporations to change their terms of service; or the promotion of open-source, open-content, or peer to peer alternatives…. perhaps the movement to disrupt digital networks will be what the slow food movement is to fast food: an opportunity to stop and question the meaning of progress. (pp.158–159) these considerations can be seen within the wider context of the politics and ethics of childhood studies research. confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy one of the most significant cultural-social areas of concern about digital media and research is a series of interconnected issues around confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy. these issues are well known in traditional offline research, where childhood studies researchers discuss, for example, the necessity of ensuring confidentiality and anonymity in the research context, while limiting this when a child or young person is unsafe or at risk (alderson & morrow, 2011). but such ethical issues raise additional challenges in a digital research context. researchers not only have to ensure secure and appropriate approaches in a research environment, but also have to navigate systems which may be outside their control: for example, using commercial tools that are not ultimately secure, and that may therefore breach participants’ privacy. even supposedly secure services can experience leaks, cyberattacks, and data theft. anonymity is difficult to maintain when using facebook or other publicly accessible social networking media. confidentiality can be compromised if data are inappropriately or inadvertently shared by peers in or outside international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 711 the research context. a young person at risk of harm (e.g., vulnerable because of bullying or other forms of violence) could be unsafe if his or her identity is known outside of the researcher/participant relationship. these broad ethical issues are of concern to researchers offline as well as online. however, the commercial and public nature of digital media adds a layer of additional complexity for the online researcher. children and young people may have particular understandings of privacy and anonymity in their interactions on the internet that are different from adults’ understandings. barnes (2006) describes the “privacy paradox” where adults talk of being concerned about their privacy but at the same time have detailed personal information on social network profiles. children and young people may similarly be unaware of the public nature of their identities online. they may not be concerned about or aware of the longevity of their digital futures and the legacy of their childhoods and young adulthoods online. or they may be privileging other advantages, such as establishing and developing relationships, over these concerns. for the researcher, this may mean establishing different practices among children and young people for the research project, contrary to their customary use. so what do these issues mean for research with children and young people? is it ethical to analyze publicly available digital media like youtube, twitter, or facebook pages without privacy settings? it is being done already. if something is interactive, how do we deal with the blurring of privacy and public information, such as photographs being sent from a young person’s mobile without the consent of a person being photographed? it can help to consider, at the planning stage of a research project, how researchers will negotiate these challenges. are there spaces that researchers want to encourage children and young people to use for interacting with the research project? or spaces that researchers want to advise them to avoid using, for reasons of safety, privacy, or comfort for example? such decisions will need to be informed by careful consideration of the topic’s sensitivity and the possible risks and benefits to participants. practical strategies to address some of these challenges include the use of encryption software, password protection, secure servers, exploring privacy settings, encouraging children and young people not to share certain kinds of information online, or investigating the possibilities of using digital media offline, such as through non-networked audio, video, and photography activities. childhood studies researchers can take advantage of standard protocols around internet safety for children and young people, including specific redress mechanisms should a child or young person feel the research has invaded his or her privacy. but it may also be necessary for researchers to tolerate a degree of uncertainty, a difficult challenge for childhood studies’ researchers who are committed to ensuring ethical practice. digital media, their patterns of use and the discourses surrounding them continue to evolve rapidly, requiring an attitude that is open to improvisation, experimentation, and learning through trial and error, although this may not be possible when trying to gain formal ethical approval for research. it also might be problematic in working with other professionals, such as teachers or social workers, who have responsibilities for children and young people and are working within their institutional guidelines around digital media. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 712 intellectual property and moral rights intellectual property rights (ipr) is the final cultural-social-economic issue discussed in this article. whilst ipr affects all research, when using digital media in research with children and young people, ipr gives rise to particular ethical and practical dilemmas. ipr, like design rights or copyright, legally sit within the “property” paradigm (see macqueen, waelde, & laurie, 2007; ng, 2009/10). thus the rights-holder has the right to control the use, possession, or other types of interference with his or her property. as property, the rights-holder can transfer, hire, bequeath, sell it and more. ownership then becomes a critical issue and one with potential economic implications. copyright is a form of intellectual property but is only offered to certain works, which must be “original” and tangible (so ideas are not covered but their tangible expression is likely to be; see jiscdigitalmedia for an accessible summary of u.k. law). originality, as well as who has copyright ownership, thus become key questions. authors may have moral rights, whether or not they have ipr, to have their authorship acknowledged, to object to false attribution, and to not have the work subjected to “derogatory treatment” (copyright, designs and patents act 1998, applying to the united kingdom). moral rights cannot be transferred but they can be waived. authorship, alongside ownership, then becomes another issue. there are counter ideas of authorship, ownership, and originality, however. creative commons has created a “middle ground”, deliberately set up in 2002 to establish norms different from standard law and practice. a range of creative commons licenses allow for copyright to be retained but work to be used without permission and without payment (kim, 2008). this is a useful way of dealing with, for example, the co-creation of wikis, open-source software and certain creative and artistic endeavours in which less importance is attached to the distinction between the passive consumer and the creative author; instead, replication and remixing can be seen as increasing status and reach (kim, 2008; ng 2009/10) or rendering authorship irrelevant (james et al., 2009). rather than seeing creativity as an individual endeavour resulting in an outcome that can be owned and thus sold, creative commons implicitly reflects the notion of creativity as a process, as essentially participatory (biggs & travlou, 2012). this parallels the hopeful aspiration that, despite the dominant online presence of multinational corporations (dijck, 2013), the internet can still create a more open and democratic culture, with free flows of information (see buckingham, 2007). certain of these norms mirror more traditional ideas and legal frameworks, while others run counter to them. at least three dilemmas then arise for research with children and young people. first, by using digital media, researchers are seeking to tap into media that are enjoyed by and familiar to children and young people – ones that children and young people likely use at home rather than school, in their leisure time rather than for work (james et al., 2009). but children and young people’s social-cultural norms when using these media – norms such as copying, changing, or transferring media – may not be legal or may go against (adult) researchers’ own institutional and social norms, such as respecting copyright and seeking formal permission for the re-use of material. second, social science research has tended to privilege the (adult) researcher as author and to offer – but often in fact require – research participants’ anonymity, http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/copyright-an-overview http://creativecommons.org/about international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 713 which is seen as protective to the participants individually (see discussion in gallagher, 2009). counter-arguments have been made in offline research: for example, when children and young people are researchers in their own right (see thomas, 2014); in dissemination activities involving children and young people (see tisdall, 2005); and in recognizing the artist and creator, as arts-based and creative methods remain popular with children and young people (tisdall, davis, & gallagher, 2009). the co-production (from fieldwork to analysis) offered by web 2.0 platforms highlights the problematic default positions of social science research in relation to authorship. (adult) researchers can be accused of being exploitative and extractive, “profiting” from research participants by not publicly acknowledging their authorship and ownership, just as commercial companies are criticized for profiting from the coproduction of young gamers on their platforms (james et al., 2009). third, the use of commercial platforms raises particular issues for ownership and copyright. for example, the small print of “terms and conditions” as you sign up to use a particular platform may well waive or transfer certain of your moral or property rights (e.g., see facebook). thus, if a researcher encourages and uses a particular platform, they and their research participants may not legally retain their rights. the lens of intellectual property rights, and the debates about them within digital media, bring into focus dilemmas about research methods, authorship and ownership, and participation. these are both offline and online dilemmas that encourage knowledge of the legal jurisdictions and frameworks, a weighing up of harms, benefits, and risks, and honest and reflexive engagement with all involved in research to determine how to proceed. conclusion: implications for research with children and young people our training courses, our work on the young digital resource, and co-learning with other researchers, have flagged up practical and ethical dilemmas about using digital media in research. concerns about these issues can deter researchers. however, the possibilities of using digital media are difficult to ignore in a world where the boundaries between online and offline worlds are increasingly blurred and irrelevant, and where children and young people, like many adults, are routine users of digital media, regarding them as part of their everyday lives. the use of digital media in research is not, after all, novel. most researchers are already digitally connected. however, researchers may not always be comfortable using digital media as research tools with children and young people because of the complexity of ethical, technological, and practical issues that confront them. as a result, digital media may be used for discrete purposes, such as analysis, communication, dissemination, and knowledge exchange, rather than being deployed fully as research methodologies involving children and young people as participants or as co-researchers. these limitations are likely to diminish as familiarity with using digital media enables researchers to increase their own competencies and explore the ethical issues. in order to do this, researchers need opportunities to reflect critically on using digital media in their work with children and young people. http://en-gb.facebook.com/terms.php international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 714 many issues that are central to childhood studies’ research and digital media are replicated in wider societal discussions. in all of these, there are concerns about equitable access for all children and young people, the challenges in using a variety of digital media, and the dilemmas in ensuring that the use of digital media is safe, private when we want it to be, and an area of our lives over which we can have control (lobe, livingstone, ólafsson, & simoes, 2008; alderson & morrow, 2011). researchers need to be attentive to these wider debates and explore the implications for their own research practice. the tenets of ethical research still apply in digital contexts. these ethical approaches may require some additional considerations such as: how to ensure confidentiality and anonymity in digital spaces; how to use commercial media, which may have implications for privacy, ownership, and inclusion; and how to respond to concerns about inappropriate use of data now or in the future. these areas need to be explored by adult researchers with children and young people as part of the planning and development of research, throughout the research process and in postdissemination reflections. these are issues to be wrestled with, and we see the use of digital media as emergent spaces for researchers. in five years time, we anticipate that digital media use by children and young people (and adults) will have developed further with new trends emerging. the ethical dilemmas that we have discussed are likely to have evolved in line with personal, societal, commercial, and governmental responses to these core issues. on the other hand, these dilemmas may remain constant through all the digital changes that will occur, requiring researchers to be vigilant in their interrogation of how and when to use digital media. this means that, as childhood studies researchers, we need to be competent users rather than strangers to digital media, attentive to changing norms and their ethical implications. we need to interrogate critically our use of digital media and be alert, principled, proactive, and pragmatic in responding to the challenges that arise. taking these into account, we can then develop our research capacities, utilizing digital media in ways which are current and appropriate for research with children and young people. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 702–717 715 references alderson, p., & morrow, v. 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(2009). research with children & young people. london: sage. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.04.012 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038503037002004 the dilemmas of digital methodologies: learning from work on young digital abstract: this article explores common dilemmas facing researchers and practitioners who wish to use digital media in research with children and young people. the article explores both cultural-social-economic and material approaches to digital media.... defining and theorizing digital media children and young people’s digital media use networked mobility interoperability and convergence corporate involvement confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy intellectual property and moral rights conclusion: implications for research with children and young people international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs104.1201919285 sexual harassment of syrian female youth in jordanian refugee camps mohammed abdel karim al-hourani, abdel baset azzam, and addison j. mott abstract: this study aimed at documenting the sexual harassment of syrian female refugees in refugee camps in jordan. a purposive sample of 187 syrian female refugees in the za’atari camp was selected. the results showed that the environment of the camp played an important role in motivating males to harass females owing to the weakness of the security measures and the lack of sanctions upon deviant behaviors. our findings show that females were subjected to numerous forms of sexual harassment, including hearing sexual jokes and sexual expressions, and being subjected to suggestive looks, sexual letters, and unwanted touching. additionally, our results revealed that participants responded to sexual harassment by keeping silent because they feared making their situation worse by provoking conflict within their families. this left the victims without protection or the chance to obtain justice. keywords: syrian female, sexual harassment, refugees, jordan mohammed abdel karim al-hourani phd (the corresponding author) is an associate professor of applied sociological theory in the sociology department at the university of sharjah, p. o. box 27272, sharjah, uae. email: malhourani@sharjah.ac.ae. professor al-hourani can also be reached at yarmouk university, irbid, jordan. email: mhorani@yu.edu.jo abdel baset azzam phd is an assistant professor of political sociology at yarmouk university, irbid, jordan. email: abdazzam72@yahoo.com addison j. mott is an ma candidate at the school of child and youth care, human & social development building b102a, university of victoria, bc v8w 2y2, canada. email: addisonmott@uvic.ca mailto:malhourani@sharjah.ac.ae mailto:mhorani@yu.edu.jo mailto:abdazzam72@yahoo.com mailto:addisonmott@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 25 the syrian war has forced thousands of syrian women refugees to escape with their families to arab and european countries in search of a safer life. jordan is one of the countries in which thousands of syrian families have sought refuge, settling in camps close to the syrian border. the office of the un high commissioner for refugees estimated the number of fugitives from the bloody war in syria who had fled to neighboring countries — lebanon, turkey, jordan, iraq, and egypt — to have reached 5.6 million, nearly 80% of them women and children (unhcr, 2019). the za’atari camp lies 85 kilometres to the northeast of amman, jordan’s capital. it is the largest syrian refugee camp in the middle east and the second largest in the world. at the beginning of 2015 it included 81 thousand refugee (jordan statistical yearbook, 2015). mas’ood (2017) noted that according to international reports, women refugees in all hosting countries have been exposed to sexual assault, harassment, and trafficking. news organizations have reported that the civil war in syria exposed hundreds of females to sexual harassment and assault (“shocking stories,” 2013). girls between 12 and 16 years old have been sold as servants to people from the gulf countries (al-jundi, 2016). in the za’atari camp, international relief organizations are unable to meet the needs of refugees for food and drink, and for adequate heating facilities — needs that arise from the absence of work opportunities that could allow them enough income to live independently. among other consequences, these factors lead to the spread of diseases in the camp. along with being subject to the harassment and multiple deprivations noted above in the za’atari camp, it has been well documented globally that displaced women and girls are at a higher risk than non-displaced women and girls of sexual and gender-based violence (sgbv) and sexual harassment (united nations high commissioner for refugees, 2008), and that such violence and harassment are used as weapons of war (asaf, 2017). syrian women and girls who are refugees in lebanon, turkey, and jordan face ongoing issues of sgbv and sexual harassment; these risks may be expected to increase as long as the situation in syria continues unabated (samari, 2017; sami et al., 2014). however, only a handful of studies have focused specifically on sgbv and sexual harassment in jordan, and few have focused on jordanian refugee camps. this is indicative of the fact that sgbv and sexual harassment have been understudied and underreported for syrian refugee women and girls compared to other refugee groups (asaf, 2017). a search of the recent literature on the experiences of syrian women and girls after becoming refugees yielded four relevant studies, which are presented below in chronological order, but our current knowledge in this area is still limited. the first study we reviewed is the un women’s (2013) report entitled “gender-based violence and child protection among syrian refugees in jordan, with a focus on early marriage”. this study included an inquiry into sgbv experienced by syrian refugees living in urban settings, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 26 not the za’atari camp. data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to 613 syrian refugees, focus groups, and 45 in-depth interviews with key informants including community leaders and service providers. the report found that gender-based violence (gbv) most often “remains a private and sensitive issue” (p. 2), rarely discussed outside the home. women were significantly more likely “to report any form of violence to other family members, rather than to service providers or the police, and many felt more comfortable reaching out to a religious official” (p. 2). the report concludes that while the need for additional services is significant, the main issue from a service provision perspective is “building trust and reaching out to the communities” (p. 3). the second study was conducted by krause et al. (2015) who studied two syrian refugee sites in jordan, the za’atari camp and irbid city, in order to research the status of the minimum initial service package (misp; inter-agency working group on reproductive health in crisis, n.d.) for reproductive health implementation among the refugees. the misp has been used as a guideline for care in refugee situations since it was published in 1996. krause and colleagues conducted 11 key informant interviews, 13 health facility assessments, and 14 focus group discussions involving 159 participants, which included both female youth (18 to 24 years) and older women (25 to 49 years). with regard to sgbv, krause et al. reported that: in za’atari camp, women expressed concerns about the lack of lighting and their fears of using the toilets at night. in irbid city, women reported feeling unsafe sending their daughters to school on public buses. women said they were fearful of telling their families of sexual violence due to fears of honor killing, or being disowned by the family. the women discussed what they perceived as more cases of domestic violence in the camp than what they observed while living in syria. … additionally, all groups with young women said that they would not tell anyone if they experienced violence. (results, para. 7) the third study was conducted by essaid et al. (2015) who investigated gbv perpetrated against female refugees from syria living in the cities of tyre and sidon in lebanon and ajloun and jerash in northern jordan. these researchers held focus group discussions about participants’ perceptions of violence trends with 94 female participants under the age of 60, all either refugees from syria — including both syrian nationals and palestinians — or gbv case workers. essaid et al. found that: gbv is a significant problem in north jordan and south lebanon for refugee women and girls from syria and frequently restricts their movement, causing them mental and physical distress, and occurs both inside and outside the home. the most common form of violence reported by particpants was emotional violence, however, a large number also reported sexual violence. among those who reported violence, most indicated that they had been subjected to multiple types of violence. … in general, women and girls felt that severe poverty, men’s and women’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 27 inability to perform traditional gender roles, and rising prices, are contributing factors to women’s and girls’ experiences of gbv. (p. 4) participants in essaid et al.’s study (2015) speculated that syrian women refugees who had lost the protection of their families were seen to be “easy targets” (p. 4). finally, participants noted that they “were often reluctant to tell anyone about the violence for fear of being blamed for causing the violence or being blamed for inciting further violence” (p. 5). the most recent study we reviewed was conducted by hattar-pollara (2019). in this study, multiple methods such as focus group discussions, interviews, and observation were used to explore syrian refugee girls’ experiences of barriers to education in the za’atari camp. the study participants included refugee girls aged between 5 and 16 years, their teachers, counsellors, child protective agents, and mothers, and three religious clerks. hattar-pollara found that refugee girls in the camp encountered many barriers to continuing their education. for example, they experienced gender-based physical and psychological violence, and the social barriers of early marriage and poverty. she also found that coercive early marriage, while often viewed as a way of protecting syrian refugee girls, also contributed to the multiple challeges faced by them. furthermore, she noted that girls who had experienced sgbv were more likely to experience posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorders, depression, and anxiety, along with a host of lifethreatening physical health conditions. taken together, this body of literature outlines the pervasiveness of the sgbv and sexual harassment experienced by syrian women and girls living as refugees in jordan. while the literature is still too sparse to allow confident generalizing, existing research outlines how sgbv and sexual harassment in the za’atari camp translate into an ongoing lack of safety in everyday life for women and girls. moreover, this lack of safety is heightened in specific situations, such as going to the washroom. further, syrian women and girls in the za’atari camp experience ongoing fear about reporting instances of sgbv and sexual harassment because of the possibility of inciting further violence. these experiences of sgbv and sexual harassment entail physical and mental health risks and lead to ongoing experiences of violence, exploitation, abuse, and poverty. the literature reviewed here suggests that these constant threats and violations and their related deleterious health outcomes extend beyond the camp itself, indicating that sgbv and sexual harassment are also commonly experienced by syrian women and girls living as refugees in urban jordanian centres. al-jundi (2016) pointed out that, in response to the many serious challenges faced by female refugees, the jordanian women’s union launched “the ‘yes’ campaign to close al-zaatari camp”, calling for alternatives more consistent with the syrians’ human dignity. educated people and lawmen from jordan also demanded the closure of the camp, terming it a disgrace to jordan (al-jundi, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 28 following on the above work, the study that we report on here aimed to answer the following questions: (a) what are the environmental motivations that encourage males to harass females in the za’atari camp? (b) how do female refugees respond to the harassment in the camp? and (c) in what situations are females exposed to sexual harassment in the camp? syrian female refugees in the za’atari camp of the five camps for syrian refugees in jordan, which house 300,000 refugees in total, the biggest is za’atari with 160,000 refugees; the rest are distributed among mereejib al fuhod, alazraq, al-hadiqah, and cyber city (al-shreefeen & al-rifa’i, 2016). according to some accounts, the za’atari camp has the highest incidence of prostitution. participation in the sex trade is widespread among syrian female refugees. hundreds of underaged girls have been victims of this trade, offered by their families to be sold for days or hours at a time in return for money as a bride price (migdadi, 2017, al-ghazali, 2018). the british daily telegraph newspaper reported in 2013 that the za’atari camp had become a market for selling syrian female refugees of 14 years old or younger, with the girls being forced to “marry” for a set period of hours or weeks, or to practice prostitution (sherlock & malouf, 2013) the desperate lives of the syrian female refugees made marriage to wealthy arabs an attractive choice for many of them as a means of escape from the wretchedness of life in the camp. most of these marriages are arranged in the interests of slave owners from other countries, often saudi arabia. such slave owners rent hours for their temporary wives outside the camp and are committed to paying expenditures before the divorce, which take place after a short time (al-jundi, 2016). the jafra news website reported (“syrian women describe,” 2012) that syrian refugee women in the za’atari camp were in some instances obliged to marry men older than their fathers. overall, the proportion of underage marriages among syrian female refugees rose to 35% (about 500 marriages) in 2015 from 18% in 2013 and 25% in 2014 (abu-tarboush, 2014; al-khateeb, 2013). haddadin (2014) reported on a study showing that syrian female refugees are subject to violence as well as sexual harassment, and after having experienced these violations, may be negatively viewed within the community as a consequence. slave owners considered female refugees a cheap commodity in the camp; unfortunately, most of the refugees were unaware of organizations that offer legislative and social guidance and protection from violence (haddadin, 2014). sexual harassment by laborers working at the camp has also been reported. jefra news agency (2012) interviewed syrian female refugees who reported being sexually harassed. fatin, aged 29, wiped away tears as she recalled an occasion when four maintenance laborers harassed her sexually in co-baths in the za’atari camp. “how hard it is for us to be treated as if we were slaves!” she said, adding, “i am afraid of staying here… i always live with nightmares.” she international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 29 recalled the frightening moments of screaming to attract help from people living in nearby tents as the four men tried to rape her. basma, a 20-year-old syrian girl, reported: i came here alone among hundreds of refugees.… my family was killed by cannon fire in da’el town in der’a city, two months ago. … we are suffering humiliation and enslaving of dignity. … we can’t ask the police to prevent people from coming to the camp. … everybody1 comes here pretending to help and offer food and drink. women and girls in the za’atari camp live in fear of sexual violence and sexual harassment. they are afraid of going to bathrooms alone at night lest they should be harassed. doctors have reported that women in the camp suffer an increased rate of urinary tract inflammation due to abstaining from using bathrooms for long periods of time (abu-tarboush, 2014; “amnesty international: syrian refugees”, 2013). an article on al-mada.org (“za’atari camp”, 2013) reported syrian female refugees being subjected to sexual offences in camps outside syria, especially za’atari camp: a lot of women in al-za’atari camp are exposed to sexual offences and rape in the camp, where the idea of the safety and security of which the women dream fades when they enter jordan. the problem is made worse by the fact that the female refugees who suffer such treatment remain silent about it because of the conservative environment they came from. in jordanian newspaper articles concerning syrian female refugees, one notices that the news is reported from a perspective that regards the women as goods, and emphasizes their humiliation rather than revealing them as victims of circumstances beyond their control. one encounters headlines such as, “marrying syrians secretly”, “marrying a female refugee for 150 dollars”, “early marriages spread among syrian female refugees”, “provision of syrian refugees for marriage”, “female refugees for sex”. “forcing female refugees to practise prostitution”, “female refugees for sale”, and “syrian female refugees resort to prostitution in jordan”. such titles give a negative impression of syrian women based on stereotypes of injustice and tyranny (al-hourani, 2016). in order to examine at first hand the current situation that girls and women face in the za’atari camp, we conducted a study aimed at documenting the forms of sexual harassment that syrian refugee girls and women endure in the refugee camps. furthermore, this study aimed to document the extent to which the camps’ environment represents a tolerant context for sexual harassment, and the role of camp authorities in protecting families from being sexually harassed. 1 basma is referring here to service providers such as food and water suppliers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 30 another important goal of the study was to determine how the female refugees responded to the sexual harassment they experienced. method participants a volunteer sample of 187 participants answered the sexual harassment questionnaire, as well as giving demographic information (see appendix a). the sample of this study represented syrian female refugee youth living in the za’atari camp ranging in age from 15 to 24 years. the sample was selected purposively to ensure that the ages of the participants were within the specified range. the researchers were assisted in recruiting participants by some foreign agencies, by the authorities of the camp, and by harassed girls who guided us to their female friends who were also being sexually harassed. the agreement of each participant was secured, and sometimes that of her husband, father, or brother, since the study topic has cultural sensitivity. furthermore, data were collected with private access to the camp as the camp’s jordanian authorities do not allow research into such sensitive topics in the camp. instrument the sexual harassment questionnaire consisted of 27 items representing three dimensions. each item is measured on a 4-point scale, ranging either from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), or from 1 (not at all) to 4 (to a large degree). the dimensions of the scale were: (a) motivational environment of sexual harassment in the camp (lack of control and order in the camp facilitating sexual harassment); (b) responding to harassment; and (c) pervasive harassment incidents in the camp. the questionnaire was written and administered in arabic. table 1. reliability of the three dimensions of sexual harassment in the camp dimension eigenvalue cronbach’s alpha motivational environment of harassment 3.156 .78 victim’s response to harassment 1.756 .75 types of harassment seen as pervasive 1.666 .74 the content validity of the scale was assessed by seven specialists who judged the suitability of each item in measuring the dimension to which it belongs. the scale has discriminant validity: correlation coefficients between items and the subscales to which they belong were significant (p < .001). the reliability of the scale is acceptable with regard to internal consistency as shown in table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 31 results table 2. participant demographics and responses regarding sexual harassment variable category n percent age 15–20 126 67.4 21–24 61 32.6 marital status single 67 35.8 married 108 57.8 divorced 7 3.7 widow 5 2.7 educational attainment illiterate 8 4.3 elementary 31 16.6 preparatory 111 59.4 secondary 25 13.4 university degree 12 6.4 have you ever been harassed in the camp? yes 187 100.0 if you answered yes to the previous question, please also answer the following questions. where you have been sexually harassed? streets 69 36.9 shops (mini market) 79 42.2 restrooms 39 20.9 how many times have you been harassed? once 17 9.1 twice 48 25.7 three times 41 21.9 four or more times 81 43.3 at what time of day did the harassment occur? in the morning 33 17.6 at noon 57 30.5 in the evening 48 25.7 at multiple times 49 26.2 what form of harassment did you undergo? verbal 77 41.2 symbolic (gestures and body language) 34 18.2 behavioral 36 19.3 social media 40 21.4 do you believe that sexual harassment is pervasive in the camp? strongly agree 98 52.4 agree 66 35.3 disagree 16 8.6 strongly disagree 7 3.7 note. n = 187. each question was answered by all participants (100%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 32 the descriptive statistics illustrated in table 2 indicate that most of the participants were 15 to 20 years old (67.4%) and most were married (57%). this result accords with the fact that the marriage of female minors is widespread in refugee camps. furthermore, 59.4% of participants had received only basic education and only 13.4% had attained a university degree; this is consistent with reporting from international agencies indicating that young refugees often don’t complete their education. all participants (100%) reported that they had been harassed in the streets, shops, and restaurants. a large majority (87.7%) strongly agreed that sexual harassment is pervasive in the camp. table 3. motivational environment of sexual harassment rank item m sd estimation 1 there are no sanctions against harassment in the camp 3.18 .848 high 1 males recognize that they are able to violate rules without being punished 3.18 .865 high 3 males recognize that there is an absence of surveillance 3.15 .854 high 4 there are no controlling procedures in the camp 3.12 .830 high 4 males are not regulated by moral guidance from their families 3.12 .934 high 6 there are no clear procedures for punishing harassment 3.02 .967 high 7 the camp environment doesn’t provide the minimum level of deterrence 2.98 .944 moderate 8 males are able to do what they want in the camp 2.94 1.058 moderate 9 there is an absence of official authorities to prevent harassment 2.64 1.285 moderate total 3.04 .427 high table 3 shows that syrian female refugees strongly agreed that the environment of the camp motivates males to commit sexual harassment. they noted that the camp doesn’t include sanctions and controls against harassment, and that males recognize the absence of surveillance and realize that they are able to violate morals and regulations. these findings demonstrate that the camp environment is dangerous and intimidating for females, and threatening to their existential security. we may speculate that this also indicates that the camp authorities don’t prioritise social control and upholding the moral level of behaviour within the camp, and that the one thing that does concern them is controlling the camp boundaries. we may also speculate that under these dire conditions, families in the camp don’t pay enough attention to controlling their sons and preventing them from engaging in offensive or illegal behaviors. table 4. victim’s responses to harassment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 33 rank item m sd estimation 1 being too scared to do anything 3.16 .890 high 2 keeping silent to avoid worsening the problem 3.14 .905 high 3 telling close friends only 3.08 .885 high 4 resisting the man strongly and loudly 2.57 1.274 moderate 5 expressing satisfaction at successfully avoiding further incidents 2.20 1.006 moderate 6 telling family members immediately after the incident 1.95 1.147 low 7 telling official authorities in the camp 1.78 .868 low total 2.56 .410 moderate where victims’ responses to harassment are concerned, participants generally responded to the harassment passively, as shown in table 4. they reported remaining silent, being scared, and telling close friends only. some victims did resist loudly, while others expressed satisfaction at having avoided further assaults. passive responses could be expected to reproduce harassment in the camp and enhance the frequency of assaults and other undesirable behaviors. table 5. pervasive harassment incidents rank item m sd estimation 1 males making sexual jokes within the hearing of females 3.18 .848 high 2 females receiving sexually suggestive and aggressive looks 3.17 .855 high 3 females hearing expressions that make them uncomfortable 3.14 .749 high 4 females being exposed to sexual expressions that violate modesty 3.12 .821 high 4 uninvited pressure for sexual favor 3.12 .902 high 6 males chasing females 3.10 .895 high 7 males luring females to obtain sexual favors 3.10 .905 high 8 females receiving threats to keep silent after being harassed 3.09 .900 high 9 females receiving letters, telephone calls, or materials of a sexual nature 3.06 .887 high 10 males making sexual remarks to females 3.00 .978 moderate 11 males touching females or leaning over them 2.95 .966 moderate total 3.09 .332 high international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 34 females in arab culture routinely face gender discrimination, yet are obliged to maintain the honor of their families, who may regard harassment incidents as damaging to their reputation and even inflict punishment on the female victim as a result. one reason why families marry off their daughters at an early age is to protect family honor from the possibility of such an incident occurring. furthermore, even if a family knows that their daughter has been sexually harassed, they may decide against making a formal complaint to the authorities for fear it will lead to scandal. females in the camp are subjected to many forms of sexual harassment. as listed in table 5, these include sexual jokes, expressions that make them uncomfortable or violate their modesty, suggestive and aggressive looks, pressure and luring to obtain sexual favors, and threats to secure their silence after being harassed. table 6. anova results from table 3 (motivational environment of sexual harassment) variable category m sd f p age 15-20 3.04 .414 .125 .724 21-24 3.03 .456 marital status single 3.05 .368 .286 .835 married 3.03 .452 divorced 2.95 .475 widow 3.13 .645 education illiterate 3.08 .524 .977 .422 elementary 3.11 .428 preparatory 3.03 .398 secondary 3.05 .475 university degree 2.82 .520 where have you been harassed? streets 3.04 .420 .807 .448 shops (mini market) 3.08 .408 restrooms 2.95 .475 how many times have you been harassed? once 3.06 .506 .663 .576 twice 3.09 .363 three times 2.98 .356 four times or more 3.03 .478 at what time of day did the harassment occur? in the morning 2.99 .459 .332 .802 at noon 3.01 .446 in the evening 3.09 .408 at multiple times 3.05 .409 what form of sexual harassment did you undergo? verbal 2.96 .415 2.182 .092 symbolic 3.02 .491 behavioral 3.15 .400 social media 3.10 .399 total 3.04 .427 note: = .05. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 35 the results shown in table 5 are consistent with table 2, which shows that participants felt that males are able to do what they want without risking punishment, that males regard the camp as being without respected order or rules, and that the camp authorities are indifferent to the prevalence of the males’ socially undesirable behaviors. a large majority of syrian refugee youth are unemployed, and most drop out of school early. we therefore speculate that in many cases they fill the resulting vacuum in their lives with deviant or criminal behaviors such as assault, drug addiction, rape, and harassment. the results captured in table 6 show that there are no statistically significant differences in the motivational environment of sexual harassment in the camp with regard to all dependent variables. table 7. anova results from table 4 (victim’s responses to harassment) variable category m sd f p age 15-20 2.54 .413 1.280 .260 21-24 2.59 .403 marital status single 2.52 .354 1.121 .342 married 2.58 .432 divorced 2.43 .459 widow 2.60 .592 education illiterate 2.52 .396 .976 .422 elementary 2.51 .442 preparatory 2.56 .407 secondary 2.66 .393 university degree 2.45 .408 where have you been harassed? streets 2.55 .407 .013 .987 shops (mini market) 2.55 .418 restrooms 2.57 .407 how many times have you been harassed? once 2.58 .499 .851 .468 twice 2.60 .436 three times 2.51 .335 four times or more 2.54 .412 at what time of day did the harassment occur? in the morning 2.55 .468 .129 .943 at noon 2.56 .436 in the evening 2.53 .350 at multiple times 2.58 .401 what form of sexual harassment did you undergo? verbal 2.50 .406 .843 .472 symbolic 2.55 .484 behavioral 2.62 .418 social media 2.60 .335 note: = .05. the results displayed in table 7 show that there are no statistically significant differences in responding to harassment with regard to all dependent variables. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 36 table 8. anova results from table 5 (pervasive harassment incidents) variable category m std f p age 15-20 3.07 .357 6.382 .012 21-24 3.13 .272 marital status single 3.08 .316 .748 .525 married 3.11 .351 divorced 3.08 .219 widow 2.98 .276 education illiterate 3.03 .401 1.277 .281 elementary 3.09 .408 preparatory 3.11 .316 secondary 3.07 .293 university degree 2.98 .313 where have you been harassed? streets 3.02 .335 1.553 .215 shops (mini market) 3.13 .334 restrooms 3.13 .304 how many times have you been harassed? once 3.22 .284 2.465 .064 twice 3.15 .295 three times 3.06 .272 four times or more 3.05 .379 at what time of day did the harassment occur? in the morning 3.15 .356 2.190 .091 at noon 2.99 .367 in the evening 3.16 .269 at multiple times 3.11 .306 what form of sexual harassment did you undergo? verbal 3.07 .372 .627 .598 symbolic 3.10 .295 behavioral 3.08 .265 social media 3.13 .340 note: = .05. finally, the results provided in table 8 show that there are no statistically significant differences in the harassment incidents that are seen as pervasive in the camp with regard to all dependent variables, except for ages 21 to 24. we suggest that the 3 negative results indicate that sexual harassment in the camp is pervasive and occurs in all of its probable forms, in addition to the fact that the camp environment could be described as tolerant of sexual harassment. these negative results indicate that sexual harassment strongly impacts the lives of females in the camp. discussion this study aimed at documenting the self-reported sexual harassment of syrian female refugees in the za’atari refugee camp in jordan. to achieve this goal, a purposive sample of 187 syrian female refugees was selected. as expected, the results showed that the participants felt that the environment of the camp played an important role in motivating males to harass females, owing to the weakness of controlling processes and the lack of sanctions upon deviant behaviors. in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 37 view of participants, the official authorities had relinquished their responsibility to create a safe environment in the camp; at the same time, families had relinquished their role in socialization. participants felt males did not respect the regulations of the camp, or its moral and social norms, and thus felt free to follow their destructive impulses without fear of sanctions or punishment. additionally, our results revealed that participants responded to sexual harassment by keeping silent for fear of making their situation worse by provoking conflict within their families. they reported informing close friends about the harassment, but not their families or the camp authorities. from a gender perspective, females in syrian culture are expected to uphold the honor of the family by behaving morally and responsibly: their behaviors are seen as affecting not just them as individuals, but their families as well, so that the reputation of the individual is a reflection of the reputation of family and vice versa. because of the strong extended social bonds and family solidarity and cohesion in syrian society, and arab society in general, the reputation of the individual is considered a reflection of the reputation of the family, and vice versa. for this reason, victims often fear to share incidents of sexual harassment with family members. furthermore, our findings show that females were subjected to numerous forms of sexual harassment, including hearing sexual jokes and sexual expressions, and being subjected to suggestive looks, sexual letters, and unwanted touching. this is consistent with the absence already noted of regulations, control, and socialization. the frequency and intensity of sexual harassment indicated a deepening problem in the camp, and an increasingly challenging social environment for the women who had to endure it. syrian women refugees in the camp live in difficult circumstances indeed. they are unable to meet their own basic needs or to escape from their disastrous reality. rates of school drop-out and unemployment are high among them. a lack of available psychological support and guidance makes matters worse (al-hurriat, 2017). this desperate situation engenders psychological disorders that manifest as fear, worry, depression, and social isolation: some refugees reported fearing to be alone in their tents and having nightmares after learning of the attempted rape of fatin by maintenance workers (“shocking stories”, 2013). many female refugees have had to agree to otherwise unwanted marriages in return for safety from violence and sexual harassment (abu-tarboush, 2014). the practice of exploiting women in sex trading under the name of early marriage is carried out by organized criminal elements (abu-tarboush, 2014). many such marriages have resulted in the wives being either abandoned or obliged by their husbands to practise prostitution (al-ghazali, 2018). the lack of food, drink, heating facilities, and electricity have combined with unemployment to encourage opportunists to supply these necessities illegally. the sex trade has spread in the camp, and hundreds of syrian women have been sold through prostitution or by compulsory marriage (migdadi, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 38 most females reported that they were reluctant to report sexual harassment for fear of being stigmatized. many women stated that married women who report harassment to their husbands may have to put up with their husbands restricting their freedom and monitoring their movements in order to protect them. some participants were afraid to visit the bathrooms alone at night lest they be sexually harassed. some families reported that they had even jury-rigged their own bathrooms, a practice that could lead to health problems in the tents. furthermore, researchers noted that syrian women also face obstacles to getting services in the camp. for example, women who care for children, patients, or injured family members find it difficult to get the necessary services to properly help them. we believe that, taken together, our results indicate that the zata’ari camp environment is not secure and safe for females and that authorities of the camp should therefore devise a serious action plan to remedy this by increasing the number of community policemen and police stations in the camp, and by establishing couselling units, rehabilitation centers for both males and females, and hot lines to the community police department. furthermore, practitioners in the camp should recognize and act on the need to establish committees representing women in the camp to lead in organizing against the gbv they face. it is hoped that such committees would both help reduce sexual harassment and premature marriage, and increase awareness of the challenges that women and girls face in the refugee camps. further research on sexual harassment of syrian female refugees should be conducted in more diverse environments including both in other refugee camps and outside the camps. in his theory of deviant behavior, talcott parsons draws attension to the fact that deviant behavior is a consequence of non-conformity, which means that social norms are not clear and not integrated into daily life. there is an important range of problems concerning the difficulty of conformity with a normative pattern that focuses on the nature of the pattern itself. for parsons (1964), this concerns the question of how far the expectations of conformity are or are not specific and detailed. as he suggests, by increasing anxiety, the impact of the confusion or absence of expectations would lead to the escalation of the motivations for the deviant behavior (pp. 267-270). from this perspective, future research should be focused on males who commited sexual harassment against females to arrive at causal explanations for such an act. from parson’s (1964) perspective, four social mechanisms are needed in order to eliminate sexual harassment: (1) an obvious social order including strict, specified, and detailed social norms; (2) socialization: internalization of the social order by individuals; (3) social control: individuals should conform to the social order and its regulations; and (4) respect for the discipline that may be imposed on individual actors should be maintained by ensuring that appropriate sanctions and punishments are applied. furthermore, an attempt should be made to conduct studies on the concequences of sexual harassment on the female victims. we observed in the field that girls who have been sexually harassed were afraid, hesitantt, not self confident, worried, and frustrated. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 39 references abu tarboush, r. 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(2008). unhcr handbook for the protection of women and girls. geneva, switzerland: author. retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/protection/women/47cfa9fe2/unhcr-handbook-protection-womengirls-first-edition-complete-publication.html. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12480 http://iawg.net/areas-of-focus/misp/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-1505-9-s1-s4 https://wlahawogohokhra.com/4427/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.231 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(13)62034-6 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ https://www.jfranews.com.jo/post.php?id=49200 https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/39522 https://www.unhcr.org/protection/women/47cfa9fe2/unhcr-handbook-protection-women-girls-first-edition-complete-publication.html https://www.unhcr.org/protection/women/47cfa9fe2/unhcr-handbook-protection-women-girls-first-edition-complete-publication.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 41 za’atari camp: a theater of sexual abuse and extortion to obtain sex in the marriage. (2013, july 25). al-mada.org. retrieved from https://www.almada.org/ https://www.almada.org/%d8%a3%d8%ae%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%b1-%d9%85%d8%ad%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9/guardian-%d9%85%d8%ae%d9%8a%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b2%d8%b9%d8%aa%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d9%85%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%ad-%d9%84%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%aa%d9%87%d8%a7%d9%83%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d9%86%d8%b3%d9%8a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 42 appendix a questionnaire 1. age 2. marital status 3. educational attainment 4. have you ever been sexually harassed in the camp? if you answered yes to question 4, please also answer the following questions. 5. where you have been sexually harassed? 6. how many times have you been harassed? 7. at what time of day did the harassment occur? 8. what form of sexual harassment did you undergo? 9. do you believe that sexual harassment is pervasive in the camp? 1. motivational environment of sexual harassment in the camp males feel empowered to sexually harass females because: 1. there are no sanctions against harassment in the camp 2. there are no controlling procedures in the camp 3. males recognize that there is an absence of surveillance 4. males recognize that they are able to violate rules without being punished 5. the camp environment doesn’t provide the minimum level of deterrence 6. there is an absence of official authorities to prevent harassment 7. there are no clear procedures for punishing harassment 8. males are not regulated by moral guidance from their families 9. males are able to do what they want in the camp 2. victim’s response to harassment 1. keeping silent to avoid worsening the problem 2. resisting the man strongly and loudly 3. telling family members immediately after the incident 4. being too scared to do anything 5. telling official authorities in the camp 6. expressing satisfaction at successfully avoiding further incidents 7. telling close friends only 3. which of the following harassment types do you see as pervasive in the camp? 1. females being exposed to sexual expressions that violate modesty 2. males making sexual jokes within the hearing of females 3. females hearing expressions that make them uncomfortable 4. females receiving sexually suggestive and aggressive looks 5. males chasing females in the camp 6. uninvited pressure for sexual favors 7. males luring females to obtain sexual favors international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 24–43 43 8. males making sexual remarks to females 9. males touching females or leaning over them 10. females receiving threats to keep silent after being harassed 11. females receiving letters, telephone calls, or materials of a sexual nature the untapped potential in our communities 179 the untapped potential in our communities to assist youth engaged in risky behaviour susan reid abstract: by drawing upon what is known about risk factors and protective factors with respect to at-risk youth, the author discusses how communities can become more actively involved and supportive of young people, and thereby work towards a model where the community actively promotes resilience among children and youth. she provides a detailed review of the research around resilience to support her contention that many resources, already present in communities but largely untapped, have the potential to encourage vulnerable young people to avoid developing an aggressive posture towards others, dropping out of school, drifting into a criminal lifestyle, or being victimized. she notes the growing and consistent evidence that poverty, unemployment, abuse, family and school problems correlate to crime, and argues that while one cannot say with any certainty that these factors are the causes of crime, they certainly are the causes of disadvantage. it is the disadvantaged, she states, who are the “most thoroughly processed” by the criminal justice system. there have been numerous studies which confirm a range of individual, family, school, and community factors that place children and young people “at risk” of engaging in offending and victimization behaviour (mcintyre, 1993; waldie & spreen, 1993; leone, 1994; hawkins & catalano, 1995; latimer, 2001; farrington, 2002). similarly, studies have shown a host of protective factors which help children and adolescents avoid developing aggressive behaviour, dropping out of school, drifting into offending behaviour, or being victimized (howell, 1995; olsson, bond, burns, vella-broderick, & sawyer, 2003). attempts have been made to blame crime on everything from diet and violence on television to different skull shapes and sizes. each of these theories has been limited by the absence of convincing data. there is, however, growing and consistent evidence that poverty, unemployment, abuse, family and school problems correlate to crime. while one cannot say with any certainty that these factors are the causes of crime, they certainly are the causes of disadvantage. the concern lies in the fact that those individuals who are most disadvantaged socially, emotionally, and personally and who lack financial and personal resources are often left behind, and are the people most thoroughly processed by the criminal justice system. hawkins (1995) identified a series of multiple risks associated with neighbourhoods and communities, the family, the schools, and peer groups, as well as factors unique to a given individual that increase the probability of violence, health, and behaviour problems among adolescents and young adults. further, he identified a series of protective factors that “buffer” young people from the negative consequences of exposure to these risks by either reducing the impact of the risk or changing the way in which a person responds to the risk. drawing on the work of rutter (1987), hawkins (1995) suggested that individual characteristics exemplary of a positive social orientation, positive relationships with family members, teachers or other adults, 180 and healthy beliefs and clear standards about behaviour help to protect young people from the risk of involvement in crime and other related problems. this work was later expanded and utilized in the communities that care prevention approach, which is a systematic approach that facilitates the delivery of well-coordinated services that reduce risk and increase protection within defined geographical areas (hawkins, catalano, & arthur, 2002; france & crow, 2005). in an analysis of the effects of the communities that care approach, hawkins et al. (2008) have shown that the approach, when implemented with fidelity, has appreciably reduced targeted risk factors for youth in middle school. the “risk factor prevention paradigm” (farrington, 2000) seeks to identify factors that increase the probability of later anti-social behaviour and intervene to eliminate these risks factors. the united states surgeon general’s report on youth violence (2001) suggested that the strongest risk factors during childhood were involvement in serious criminal behaviour, substance use, being male, physical aggression, low family socio-economic status or poverty, and anti-social parents. as children move into adolescence, the peer group tends to supplant the influence of family and the greatest risk factors delineated by the same report were weak ties to conventional peers, involvement in criminal acts, and ties to anti-social or delinquent peers. in identifying these two trajectories for the onset of youth violence, the surgeon general’s report suggests that late onset violence prevention is not widely recognized or understood. moffitt, caspi, harrington, and milne (2002) argue that even after puberty, there is still a need for intervention to prevent late onset offending in the adult years. as shown by zara and farrington (2009), there is evidence to suggest that adult onset offending may benefit from intervention in the adolescent years to prevent the occurrence during the young adult years. research on adolescent resilience differs from the risk paradigm research through its focus on assets and resources that enable some youth to overcome the negative effects of exposure to risk. this research suggests that despite the presence of numerous risks, resilient individuals have sufficient protective factors in their lives that they do not enter a life of crime and are able to avoid serious delinquency, substance abuse, and other risky behaviours (smith, lizotte, thornberry, & krohn, 1995; turner, hartman, exum, & cullen, 2007). in this context, resilience may be seen as, “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000, p. 543). other resiliency factors mentioned in the literature deal with an individual's environment, such as the presence of a support system outside of the family (fergusson & lynskey, 1996; richmond & beardslee, 1988; rubin, 1996; valentine & feinauer, 1993). losel and bliesener (1994) discuss personal and social resources that have previously proven to be protective in different research contexts as the theoretical background for their bielefeld-erlangen study on resilience. they suggest that the most important protective factors for a youth who has grown up in “multi-problem milieux” are: how the youth deals with stressors and copes with problems; the cognitive competence of the individual; a flexible personality temperament that favours effective coping strategies in the face of adversity; stable emotional relationships with at least one parent or other reference person; a supportive educational climate and social support from outside the family (losel & bliesener, 1994, pp. 756-757). places where resilient individuals find this external support are many, including at school, perhaps from a teacher or counsellor, at church, and from neighbours, peers, or even the parents of peers. 181 bender and losel (1997) indicate that resilience research provides an opportunity to understand the specific protective mechanisms that underlie successful adaptation to specific risks for specific behavioural outcomes. fergus and zimmerman (2005) also point out that adolescents may be resilient in the face of one type of risk but may be unable to overcome other types of risks. this makes it difficult to identify universal protective factors that might be interpreted to operate in the same manner for all groups, all contexts, or all outcomes. there has been a considerable amount of research on the value of community-based crime prevention for high-risk youth (farrington, 1997; schoenwald, scherer, & brondino, 1997; fiester, 1998; robertson, grimes, & rogers, 2001; borum, 2003; ronka, oravala, & pulkkinen, 2002). in this work, it has been found that youths who form positive bonds with their community are generally less likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system so that the development of such programs is based on the value of creating an environment where youths can form or enhance positive attachments to their communities. shaw (2001) suggests the best way to plan for healthy communities is to ensure the inclusion and support of young people and their families. in determining appropriate prevention programs for 12to 18-year-old youth, shaw (2001) has recommended that in addition to universal programs for all young people, there are three additional targeted subgroups worthy of careful prevention programming: youth at risk, with a particular emphasis on those living in poor areas and those with multiple risk factors; youth in care; and youth coming out of the justice system. as whyte (2004) has pointed out, studies over many years have shown that the “vast majority” of young people who have come to the attention of the formal youth justice system are “poor and disadvantaged”. further, one must be cognizant of the fact that the profile of both the typical offender and the typical victim of crime share many similarities with regard to age and background. in an earlier study, whyte (2003) found that 46% of a cohort of persistent young offenders had been accommodated in “public care” at some time in their lives due to abuse or neglect. as a positive outcome for these adverse situations, a number of youth were nonetheless able to become resilient to their negative life situation. this paper will focus on ways in which the community can become more actively involved and supportive of young people by bringing together what is known about risk factors and protective factors to offer youth who engage in “risky” behaviour an opportunity for resilience. werner and smith (1992) suggest that the resilient child is one “who loves well, works well, plays well and expects well” (p. 192). the suggestions that are offered in this paper work toward a community-based model where the community actively engages in the promotion of resilience among children and youth. hagell (2007) has suggested that it is not feasible to expect resilience to develop among young people who may have had lifelong experiences of adversity unless their communities are willing to support them. krovetz (1999) suggested that resiliency theory should be the basis on which all our community efforts are founded: “when a community works together to foster resiliency, a large number of our youth can overcome great adversity and achieve bright futures” (p. 121). 182 protection for children from home and school it has been pointed out in the academic literature that youth who have been repeatedly victimized or witnessed violence against someone that they care about are more likely to be offenders as they grow up. longitudinal research analyzing developmental pathways toward violence and youthful offending have found that youth are more likely to develop a delinquent career if they have parents who are abusive with each other (baldry, 2003). the national crime prevention council (government of canada, 1997) suggested that prevention strategies that address these root causes of crime by supporting families and keeping children safe would help prevent the cycle of violence. they underscored the importance of such prevention activities by stating that prevention programs which support children and families will lead to “meaningful reductions” in human suffering and loss, individual victimization and levels of fear in our communities, and money spent on police, courts, and custody facilities for young offenders. research suggests that early intervention targeted at socially and economically disadvantaged youth can reduce the likelihood of long-term criminal activity. bolger and patterson (2001) found that chronic maltreatment (abuse, neglect, or both) is associated with heightened levels of aggressive behaviour and repeated peer rejection during childhood and early adolescence. utilizing the data from the canadian national longitudinal survey on children and youth, dauvergne and johnson (2001) point out that children who witnessed family violence were nearly three times more likely to be involved in physical aggression at school and twice as likely to be involved in indirect aggression (i.e., excluding others, spreading gossip, etc.) than their peers who did not experience family violence. an earlier study (schwartz, dodge, pettit, & bates, 1997) found that children who were bullied by their peers and showed aggressive tendencies had experienced more punitive, aggressive, and hostile treatment within their families. patterson (1995) has observed that parents who use extremely harsh parenting styles or parents who are neglectful of their children are at high risk for having children who will be aggressive and coercive in interactions with others. baldry (2003) reports that exposure to violence between parents is positively correlated with bullying and victimization in school, even after controlling for direct child abuse. in a later study, she found that where children were exposed to both inter-parental violence and abuse by their parents, there was a significantly higher rate of the children’s reporting of animal abuse (baldry, 2005b). chronically maltreated children are likely to have had few opportunities to experience and observe empathy and responsiveness in their interactions with parents (zahn-waxler & smith, 1992). this lack of knowledge is likely to impede their ability to develop pro-social skills such as helping, sharing, and cooperation. in other words, both abuse and neglect are likely to contribute to children’s propensity to use coercive and aggressive behaviours in their own interactions with others, which may in turn also contribute to children becoming disliked and rejected by peers. in a study of individuals who had managed to transcend the cycle of violence and grew up to be non-abusive adults despite a home life that was replete with episodes of family violence, it was found that the presence of other adults and a support system outside of the family that would not stand for the violence they witnessed was one of the key factors to their success (harris & dersch, 2001). these subjects felt that having access to environments that did not support the use of violence such as their school, neighbourhood, or a friend’s home was essential in the prevention of intergenerational violence. rubin (1996) suggested that resilient individuals 183 have an ability to not only attract others but to use what people can give them and, thus, other people become mentors to the individual. the study by harris and dersch (2001) looking at adults who had been exposed to domestic violence and violent homes yet were not currently abusive or violent themselves, found that these adult survivors frequently referred to mentors who helped them cope with the violence in their families of origin. this underscores the importance of helping children who are in violent homes connect with adults who can offer support, guidance, and caring. patterson (1995) argues that it is essential that parents encourage pro-social behaviour in children, while discouraging coercive behaviour through effective, non-physical discipline. while some families may continue to be dysfunctional, it has been shown that exposure to alternative forms of caring can break the cycle of intergenerational violence. the search institute, as cited in benson (2006), has shown in their longitudinal research that having three or more positive, non-parent adult relationships can have a significant impact on problems experienced by young people in their relationships. it seems that if we were able to actively involve other parents from our communities to share and model their non-physical forms of discipline and alternative methods of talking to children, we may be preventing future generations of violent episodes. this could become a project that would involve the wider community through the school and recreational programs. it seems that some children never experience another “parent” disciplining children in a way that is non-coercive and the use of parent role models as integral features of programs already being offered could provide some assistance in offsetting the negative risk factors inherent in children who experience child abuse and neglect. barbara coloroso (2002) has promoted the concept of involved parenting as a form of additional supervision and guidance to children at schools in order to prevent school bullying. in a study which looked at deviance and other problem behaviour of a group of children who were involved in bullying at the age of 8 years, and a group of children who were involved in bullying at the age of 12 years, it was found that involvement in bullying is not a transient problem. rather, psychiatric problems surface at the time of the bullying and continue for many years after. it was found that children who were involved in bullying at the age of 8 years and displayed deviance on psychiatric tests were five times more likely to display deviance at school at the age of 15 years. this propensity is dramatically increased as the age of onset increases to age 12, with those children experiencing bullying and displaying deviance being nearly 40 times more likely to be deviant at age 15. further, this study found that children who are “bullyvictims” at early ages not only have the most concurrent psychiatric symptoms compared to other children, but also have more psychiatric symptoms later in life (kumpulainen & rasanen, 2000). other research has pointed to the fact that bullies have been found to have more criminal convictions later in life, and they are also more likely to be involved in serious and recidivist crime (olweus, 1993; whitney & smith, 1993). hugh-jones and smith (1999) pointed out that victims of bullying have internalizing problems, relationship difficulties, health problems, and other adjustment difficulties even on into adulthood. coloroso (2002) suggests that, “kids can’t stop the bullying they experience or witness all by themselves. they need adults at home, in the school and in community programs committed to breaking this cycle of violence wherever they 184 see it and whenever they hear about it”, and further states that, “one of the most effective strategies to make a school safe is the physical presence of responsible adults” (p. 180). while having strong and supportive adults in the environment is essential, it is important that those adults are apprised of the importance of understanding the bully and bully-victim phenomenon. research has shown that few children are exclusively bullies and most have experienced both roles in one way or another, at one time or another in their lives (nansel et al., 2001). children who participate in bullying can be “assistants” who physically help the bully; “reinforcers” who incite the bully; inactive “outsiders” who pretend not to see what is happening; and “defenders” who help the victim by confronting the bully (salmivalli, lagerspetz, bjorkqvist, osterman, & kaukiainen, 1996). “bully bystanders” report feeling bad, “uncomfortable”, and “ashamed” when they see someone get the brunt of verbal or physical bullying and these feelings are exemplified if the bullying goes unchallenged by those in authority on whom the children count for protection (harachi, catalano, & hawkins, 1999; coloroso, 2002). baldry (2005a) found that boys were more likely to ignore the bullying taking place than girls, and she argues that ignoring is an indirect way of supporting the bullying. in another study, she found “same gender identification” led to victims of a different gender from the observers being seen as more blameworthy than victims of the same gender. this was true for both boys and girls (baldry, 2004). previous victimization did not place bystanders in a positive position to intervene in subsequent bullying episodes. however, baldry (2005a) did find that students who had been previously victimized were more likely to seek the assistance of an adult teacher than those who were non-victims. she draws attention to the fact that while we may be desirous that children report bullying episodes, we must be careful not to require these because “even if students themselves do not bully, this does not mean that they are willing (or capable) to stop it” (p. 35). it is important to recognize that in order to implement “safe school” policies, it is not good enough to simply have caring and supportive adults present. the literature on school climate has shown that it is essential that the students, teachers, parents, and administrators have a sense of connectedness to the school (sprott, 2004; d. c. gottfredson & g. d. gottfredson, 2002; fein et al., 2002). the establishment of trust and connectedness to an adult in the school setting maximizes the chances that students will confide in them if a problem arises, either for themselves or if they hear that a student plans to harm others. further, in the decision to integrate new programs into a school setting, it is not only important to consider the impact that the program would have on daily operations within the school, but to also build on the concept that the “new” initiative serves a larger purpose for the school (gendreau, goggin, & smith, 1999; fagan & mihalic, 2003). if we are truly committed to creating a community that supports resilient youth, then it will be necessary to tap into the strengths and assets that individual community members possess. garbarino and delara (2002) indicate that while parental presence in the school is welcomed in the elementary grades, by the time children graduate to middle school, a parent’s presence may no longer be welcome: “a clear message from the middle school was either that help was not wanted in the upper-grade classes, or that the school felt parents were not competent helpers past the elementary school level” (p. 51). they go on to suggest that parents should offer to volunteer their time in school in “new ways” and recommend that parents be 185 creative about what they can offer the schools along the lines of additional supervision or security of the environment. coloroso (2002, p. 181) echoes this concern suggesting that few if any programs have been developed for middle school and high school related to the prevention of bullying. she strongly recommends that parents be involved in helping to create a school climate that supports creative, constructive, and responsible activities that work towards reducing all forms of violence. lyznicki, mccaffree, and robinowitz (2004) of the american medical association, suggest that family physicians have an important role to play in advocating for bullying prevention in their communities. they argue that as consultants to schools, police departments, and community groups, physicians can educate other adults about the importance of community environments that “value caring, respect, and diversity”. further, physicians also have a role to play in identifying at-risk patients and counselling families about the problem. to this end, they prepared a handout on school bullying that has been made available to doctors for their patients. extending our prevention programs for youth to the community of older adults it is compelling to note that young people (ages 15 to 24) not only commit the most crime, but they also have a personal victimization rate over twice the national average (shaffer & ruback, 2002). conversely, people over the age of 65 have a personal victimization rate too low to make a statistically reliable estimate (jakobsson, 2005). one reason for the low rate of victimization among older adults may be that older adults expose themselves less to potentially dangerous situations. it is not clear whether this is due to age, illness, or other factors associated with aging, or whether this is due to fear of crime. if there is a direct link between age, victimization, and the fear of crime, it has not been well researched. the aging process for many people means a slowing down of their activities and elicits fears because of greater personal vulnerability to accidents, illness, solitude, and poverty. however, we do not know to what extent the fear of crime is due to the aging process in restricting the activities of the elderly and consequently reducing the probability of their becoming victims (brillon, 1987). in an analysis of adolescent fear of crime, may and dunaway (2000) conclude that factors that affect adult fear of crime are similarly important for adolescent fear, namely neighbourhood incivility and perceived risk. in particular, those who are regularly exposed to the threat of criminal victimization suffer a heightened level of fear of crime. as has been pointed out, many young people do not feel safe in their schools and feel even more vulnerable on their way to and from school (astor, meyer, & behre, 1999). even those young people, who have already been adjudicated by the youth criminal justice system, still indicate that they are afraid of becoming a victim of a criminal offence (lane, 2006). in looking at the fear of crime research, it has been found that people who live in areas with a lot of disorder, decline, and crime report higher levels of fear than those living in other areas (taylor, 2001). ditton, chadee, farral, gilchrist, and bannister (2004) found that with older adults, those who lived in semi high-rise buildings designed for elderly persons and who also watched television news reported a higher fear of crime. hagestad (1998), in her keynote address to the united nations to begin the year of older persons, commented on the importance of moving toward a society for all ages. in an attempt to 186 create such a society there is a need to fight age segregation, she argues, given that in many industrialized societies the old and the young spend much of their time in “age-segregated enclaves”. residential patterns, activities, and institutions such as schools and institutions for the elderly lead to further segregation. stereotypes flourish under conditions of inadequate contact and are reinforced through the segregation of youth and the elderly. she discusses the importance of maintaining conversations: “when the old are not allowed to tell their story, the young grow up without history. if the young are not listened to, we have no future”. in an attempt to break down barriers between youth and older adults, it seems that one method of creating a greater awareness of each “age segregated enclave” is to work on creative ways to bring seniors and youth together. if, as has been pointed out earlier, youth gain resilience when they have caring and supportive relationships with another adult, then it seems that a caring and supportive older adult could be the untapped community resource for many “youth at risk”. with the changes to our modern lifestyles, it is rare to have access to an extended family and older adults may provide a “pseudo family” to young people who live in chaotic and nonnurturing families. fergusson and lynskey (1996) talk about the isolation that many children and youth from abusive families experience. it may also serve the interests of older adults who are isolated from their grandchildren and who have much to offer young people in terms of mentorship, guidance, and the mutual caring and support exemplified in the literature on resiliency. in a qualitative study of youth and older adults, de souza (2003) reports that the youth in her study believed that contact with older adults could prevent violent behaviour and drug abuse among young people. similarly, the elders indicated that they could provide affection ties that would encourage trust, reciprocity, and autonomy for children and youth from disrupted families. as we move into the years ahead, it is essential that we consider the demographic distribution of our population. youth currently comprise over one billion people on the planet and account for approximately 20% of the world population, while just over 10% of the world population consists of seniors over the age of 65 years. it has been predicted that the current ratio of youth outnumbering older people (1.5:1) will be dramatically altered over the next 50 years, and that by the year 2050 older people will outnumber youth (1.8:1). from 1980 to 1990, the growth rate of those in the age range of 15 to 24 years was the highest growth rate of any other age cohort and constitutes the largest generation of youth in history. however, this youthful generation will decline as the growth rate of those 60 or older will reach 2.8% annually between 2025 and 2030 (united nations, 2001). before 2050, the number of those over 60 will surpass those under 15 for the first time in history. over the next half century, the median age of the population is projected to reach the age of 47 in the more developed regions of the world. these projections show a dramatic change in the two ends of the lifespan, yet very little has been put in place to deal with the competing demands and requests for services for both youth and seniors. berg (2001) suggests that the key issue in bringing the generations together is the perception that the “generation in the middle” might believe that both youth and the elderly are liabilities and not assets to society. he goes on to suggest that for youth this bias might be called “adultism” as those in the middle generation think only those in the middle can have responsible attitudes. to the elderly, the bias might be called “reverse paternalism” in which the elderly are held to be incapable and needing treatment like the very young. both youth and the elderly may 187 be ill-equipped to be change agents and may encounter severe resistance with the “generation in the middle”. however, the youth and the elderly might find common cause on issues surrounding the generation in the middle and this may make the relationship more plausible for each end of the aging continuum. braithwaite (2002) advocates for the creation of spaces within the community where young, middle-aged, and older people can get to know each other in order to “build mutual respect, develop cooperative relationships and reignite the norm of humanheartedness” (p. 323). in any attempt to intervene in the lives of young people, it is essential to reinforce the natural social bonds between young and old, siblings, friends, and others. as werner and smith (2001) suggest, these natural social bonds give meaning to one’s life and a reason for commitment and caring. if we look at the work done on resilient families, we find that family protective factors assist individuals in the face of adversity. key characteristics of resilient families include commitment and emotional support for one another. mccubbin, patterson, and thompson (1983) suggest that if parents are not able to provide a warm, affectionate, and cohesive environment, then other kin such as grandparents may step in to provide it. in the literature on intergenerational programming, dramatic results have been achieved in changing attitudes toward the elderly from a diverse group of young people engaged in such programs (wrenn, merdinger, parry, & miller, 1991; barton, 1999; couper, sheehan, & thomas, 1991; bullock & osborne, 1999; larkin & newman, 1997; ward, 1997; kuehne, 2003; meshel & mcglynn, 2004). however, as hagestad and uhlenberg (2005) caution: such intergenerational programs must ensure sustained contact, be of sufficient duration to allow for shared identity, perspective-taking and mutual socialization …to have school children sing carols in the old people’s home at christmas time or inviting an old person for one session at the local school to talk about world war ii will not do the job of forging personal knowledge and viable ties. (p. 357) glass et al. (2004) in their evaluation of an intergenerational program, which was designed to harness the generative potential of senior volunteers to enhance social capital in the community at large, argue that social capital allows for effective collective action “through patterns of pre-existing social relationships characterized by mutual trust, a willingness to provide aid and support, and norms of reciprocity and mutual interdependence” (p. 97). the program was successful primarily due to the community’s ability to find a critical mass of volunteers that could provide a consistent and substantial commitment of time. while intergenerational programs in the community may not provide a panacea for all of the problems facing youth at risk, it is important to recognize that social context is an important component of success in intervention programs. farrall (2002) suggests that social circumstances and relationships are the “medium through which change can be achieved” (p. 21). in an attempt to understand some of the dynamics that would need to be taken into consideration, interviews were conducted with 50 seniors and 50 youth about the potential problems envisioned in attempting to bring together youth at risk and older adults. while these comments reflect concerns that might need to be addressed in designing an intergenerational program for youth and seniors, it is equally important to consider such issues during the actual 188 implementation of such an initiative. in the interviews that were conducted to draw out issues that might come to the fore for young offenders involved in an intergenerational program, the atrisk youth gave the following comments: • youth might not find it interesting, or a waste of time. • there may not be a commonality between the two groups, an inability to bond. • youth might wonder how it would help them: “will i be expected to talk about my problems?” “am i being babysat?” • “why should i trust the program?” “what will the older adults tell?” (privacy issues) • youth may feel that they were forced into the situation. • youth might get attached to the senior and then the senior passes away. • youth may fear being judged or rejected by the older adult: “are they trying to change me?” “will i be treated like a criminal?” “will they look down on me?” • youth might think seniors are afraid of them. • youth need the older adult to be a friend and not an authority figure. • will the seniors even try to understand the youth? • young people may not have respect for the older adults. looking at the responses of the older adults that were interviewed, the following are issues that they identified that might be a problem from the point of view of the young offenders: • it might be too “uncool” for a youth to be involved with a senior. • youth may fear that they will be rejected or judged by the older adults. • youth may think that older adults will tell them things that are outdated or old-fashioned. • youth may feel that they don’t need help so they won’t be receptive to the program. • youth may feel that the seniors won’t be able to hear them (hearing impairment). • youth may be concerned about the rules of the program and whether or not the seniors will be disciplining them. • concern by youth that the guidance that they are receiving from the older adults is legitimate. • youth may be matched up with an older adult that doesn’t suit his or her needs. • youth may feel that there is nothing in common: ”will their childhood be comparable to mine?” involving “high-risk” youth in prevention programs as outlined by harper and carver (1999), involving youth at high risk for negative health outcomes in prevention education programs has presented a challenge, which may be due to the sometimes unpredictable and unconventional behaviours in which adolescents engage. irwin and millstein (1992) suggest that progression through the developmental stage of adolescence is marked by exploration with diverse occupational, sexual, and ideological roles in an attempt to establish a mature personal identity and subsequent participation in a range of risk behaviours. peer perceptions and relationships also become paramount during adolescence as youth struggle to achieve autonomy and independence from parental figures. this developmental pathway is further complicated by specific life circumstances, such as displacement from home through 189 child protection intervention, substance use, school problems, abuse, and a myriad of other social and psychological threats. in considering what youth need in order to be supported on their journey through adolescence, research has shown that young people need peer support, family and significant other relationships, a sense of belonging to a community that cares, the development of coping skills, and strategies to get ahead in the job market or education sectors. building on this sense of belonging and community connection, young people can find mutually caring and respectful relationships that will ultimately lead to opportunities for their meaningful involvement. mclaughlin, irby, and langman (1994), in citing the commentary of an ex-gang member, stress that young people can “walk around trouble, if there is some place to walk to, and someone to walk with” (page 324). the resiliency research literature has pointed out the need to provide interventions with young people exposed to risk that focus on developing their assets and resources (luthar et al., 2000). assets for an individual that may be particularly critical to develop according to fergus and zimmerman (2005, p. 411) are social skills for relating to peers, self-efficacy for healthpromoting behaviour, academic skills, and participation in extracurricular and community activities. peer helping equips young people (as well as others) with basic skills to offer caring, support, and guidance (roehlkepartain, 1996). peer leaders offer several benefits including an enhanced ability to model appropriate behaviours outside the classroom and greater social credibility among students (doi & dilorenzo, 1993; katz, robisch, & telch, 1989). those young people who benefit most from peer education, according to dryfoos (1990), are the peer educators themselves, possibly because they receive more intensive exposure to the issues than the people they serve. with well-defined training, peer helpers can learn lifelong skills. once peer helpers learn to teach and model positive health behaviours, they may continue beyond the program and generalize what they learned to new situations (finn, 1981). research has shown that peer programs modified youth’s self-reported attitudes about violent behaviour, improved school discipline, and reduced absenteeism (powell, muir-mcclain, & halasyamani, 1996; tindall, 1995). through peer interactions, individuals learn critical social skills such as impulse control, communication, creative and critical thinking, and relationship or friendship skills (kellam, sheppard, brown, & fleming, 1982; benson, galbraith, & espeland, 1998). the search institute indicated that youth who engaged in projects and programs to help others on a weekly basis were less likely to report at-risk behaviours (benson, 1990). peer helping programs for youth “at risk”? recruiting youth for peer programs often relies on the quality of the relationship that exists between youth in school and their peer program leader. recruiting outside of schools requires peer program leaders to establish and demonstrate trust building and relationship enhancing qualities to attract experienced “risky” youth (carr, 1998; shiner, 1999). too often, peer helpers in school-based programs are trained in a way that does not prepare them to engage 190 in outreach work or to specifically make connections with youth-serving agencies outside of the school. further, youth out of the mainstream may have had negative experiences with classroombased learning and are likely to find themselves alienated from such an approach. school-based peer training programs are often driven by subject matter, focusing on teaching peer helpers various facts and information they can share with others. youth at risk often have a wider range of experiences, many of which will have to be addressed prior to or during the subject matter discussion. this means that the trainer must be able to personalize the content, insure that the training process is relevant to the experience of the peer helpers, and adjust the content to match the needs of the peer helpers. in the past this has meant that peer helping programs have excluded youth engaged in risky behaviour. caputo, weiler, and green (1997) found four key factors that were important in contributing to the success of peer helper programs for marginalized youth. first, any initiatives that are developed for youth should address both short-term and long-term needs of the young people who are the consumers of the service. it is important to recognize that continuity and dependability may be extremely difficult for some street youth or other young people currently leading a chaotic life. it is essential that the peer helpers be well versed on the importance of confidentiality in dealing with their clients. further, in dealing with youth as consumers of a peer helping program, it is essential that the leaders are supported for their work. second, programs must be socially and culturally relevant as well as accessible. third, there must be the provision of ongoing agency leadership, support, and the necessary structure while maintaining the degree of flexibility required to meet the varying and changing needs of the clients. staff should be involved in ongoing, consistent follow-up with peer helpers to ensure that peer helpers are given the necessary support. fourth, it is important to educate the community about these young people to help dispel negative stereotypes and help the community gain a better understanding about who these young people are and their real needs. misunderstandings and misconceptions can be dealt with through the establishment of a network of support in the broader community. prevention programs that have been primarily delivered by peers in the past have not been well researched and of those that have been studied, there was no evidence that programs with peer leaders led to better outcomes than programs of similar content led by adults (ellickson & bell, 1990; tobler, 1992). however, more recent research using meta-analysis by gottfredson and wilson (2003) found that programs that involved peers alone were most effective. this was due to the statistical interaction between teacher and peer involvement, suggesting that the benefits that accrue to peer delivery of a program may disappear when the teacher shares the delivery role with the peer. it is also important to distinguish between what is meant by a peer helping program and those programs that group all high-risk youth together in one classroom with a classroom teacher. it has been found in the evaluation of such programs for at-risk youth that there are unintended harmful iatrogenic effects from this practice. rather than seeing positive outcomes as a result of such programs, there has been some evidence of the escalation of aggressive and antisocial problem behaviours (capaldi, dishion, stoolmiller, & yoerger, 2001; dishion, eddy, haas, li, & spracklen, 1997; cho, hallfros, & sanchez, 2005). while well intentioned in their design, such programs seem to further alienate the youth that they target and rather than 191 enhancing life skills, school connectedness, and positive peer associations, the research has shown that they seem to make the situation worse. this may be because the youth are further alienated and categorized as outcasts from a system that has already labelled them as deviant. practical application of peer helping with youth at risk a project, peer helpers for youth in conflict with the law: a training resource development project, was developed within the nature and scope of the mission and mandate of the national youth in care network (nyicn) which exists to assist marginalized youth, youth in state care, and youth in conflict with the law to find their voices and regain control over their lives through support, skill building, and healing opportunities. at a youth roundtable of the community partnership symposium on youth justice renewal, hosted by the youth justice policy section of the department of justice, canada, one of the six recommendations made by youth to help policy-makers, service providers, and politicians make decisions that will have a more positive effect on youth crime in canada was, “to support youth helping youth initiatives” (hodgson, 2000). in 1997 a project sponsored by health canada as part of canada’s drug strategy explored peer helping programs for marginalized youth, with a particular focus on street involved youth (caputo et al., 1997). in this work, the term “peer helper” was used as an “umbrella term that covered a range of programs in which young people provide service to other young people”. further, caputo et al. (1997) suggested that the work that peer helpers do includes “providing various kinds of personal support such as informal advice, mediation, tutoring, employment and life skills, and information on issues such as public health and personal safety” (p. 8). this analysis provided a compendium of street-related peer helping programs but did not go far enough in terms of other categories of marginalized youth, youth in conflict with the law, or youth in state care. in the first phase of the project, peer helpers for youth in conflict with the law: a training resource development project, a “youth” researcher from the national youth in care network and an “adult” researcher from the centre for research on youth at risk at st. thomas university were contracted to explore the concept of peer helping and examine existing models, programs, and theories. this collaborative team facilitated a national roundtable of experts (youth and adults) to consult on the various findings of the literature and to consider the most appropriate themes and targets for a peer helper resource for marginalized youth, youth in conflict with the law, and/or youth in state care. the work of the experts at the national roundtable further refined the essential peer helping competencies leading to a set of key principles upon which to base the peer helping curriculum. these principles were: unconditional value, respect, compassion, understanding, confidence, problem solving, being at peace with self, mentorship, and encouragement. the peer helping curriculum was developed by the centre for research on youth at risk (1998) based on these principles. the curriculum included a number of activities that focused on cognitive behaviour skills for the peer and the peer helper to work on collaboratively. these skills included building self-esteem, decreasing anxiety, communicating effectively, developing relationships with others, and asserting and advocating their rights. a train-the-trainer event for youth across canada working on or establishing peer helping programs 192 for youth in conflict with the law was hosted at st. thomas university by the centre for research on youth at risk from june 6-9, 2001. youth from the national youth in care network are now using this peer helper training curriculum in their local communities to train others to be peer helpers with marginalized youth throughout canada. the life skills training curriculum combines the research effectiveness of life skills training (botvin & griffin, 2005) with a delivery or implementation strategy that is likely to enhance success with hard to reach young people. this program has shown the importance of tapping into members of our community that may have been marginalized at one point in their lives but are now able to connect with other young people, who in turn can use their knowledge and expertise in advocating for themselves and transitioning not only out of the system of state care but also into the wider community. in hoffman’s (2004) study of young people who were impacted by violence, she found that peer assisted violence termination was an area that had received very little research attention in the past. for the young people in her study, participation in social action as part of their recovery from trauma and making the decision to desist from their involvement with a violent lifestyle, shows the value of including youth in this process and is an area that has implications for both research and prevention programs in the future. research on recidivism has found that the first several months after release from custody is the period in which there is the highest amount of recidivism. if programs can be designed to promote successful community re-entry with follow-up in a transitional community-based program, there should be a substantial reduction of recidivism and enhanced success. in order to consider what the most appropriate community transitional program may be, it is essential that the strengths and assets of the community be considered. it seems that utilizing the talents and skills of former young offenders as peer helpers in such a transitional program for youth coming out of young offender facilities not only promotes successful community re-entry, thereby potentially reducing recidivism, but also assists the peer helper to further his or her quest for resiliency in a supportive community environment. conclusion programs aimed at preventing crime have proven most successful when community members come together around a common cause to work at solving problems in their own environment. when programs are designed with the community as a partner, individuals are less likely to feel isolated, respect is developed for other members of the community and their property, and the spirit of the community is enhanced, giving each member a sense of belonging. we should be careful not to suggest that a program has not been successful if a young person reoffends. while rehabilitative programs are designed with a goal of reducing recidivism, it is essential that other forms of program success are included in the mix and not to totally rely on measures of recidivism to determine success. for most young people, the offending behaviour is part of growing up, of testing the limits, of taking risks, of asserting their independence. it may also be an indication of boredom and the absence of anything useful or meaningful to do. it may be a reflection of that awkward stage of life where one feels grown up but not able to participate fully in the world of adults. generally, the offences that they commit are relatively minor and 193 decrease in frequency as they grow older, mature, and find a way to participate in and contribute to society. we can reduce occasional or temporary offending by young people by helping them deal with the stress associated with the turbulence of adolescence and by finding ways of involving them in useful and meaningful activities. educational and recreational activities to which all have equal access and which are designed on the basis of the varied needs and interests of young people are important. access to social services can help some young people and their families deal with problems which may underlie the offending behaviour. given what we know about the correlation between poverty, mental health, and opportunities, the economic security of young people and their families should also be a priority. these measures are all primary prevention strategies – ways of creating healthier and ultimately safer communities for all. hoffman (2004) interviewed young people who had been involved in violence throughout most of their lives. when these youth were asked about prevention, they noted that there were many “partial, poorly supported true prevention efforts” which tended to be built around the “tireless efforts… of a charismatic provider” (p. 223). what was most telling in the young people’s responses was their insistence that the only programs that were of value were ones structured like the boys and girls clubs or big brothers and big sisters programs which “do not give up on youth” and, as hoffman describes, have the longevity of the neighbourhood as a key component. with this being said, one of the policies that was recommended by young people in hoffman’s study was to “glorify youth workers not movie stars and celebrities” in order to bring about cultural change in policies which affect youth in today’s society. mihalic and irwin (2003) suggest that while there has been a proliferation of “best practice” programs or models for reducing crime, delinquency, and other problem behaviours, very little research has considered the importance of how the programs were implemented. dubois, holloway, valentine, and cooper (2002) in their meta-analysis of mentoring programs for youth found that those programs which had ongoing monitoring of their implementation were much more successful than those that did not receive such scrutiny. the programs discussed throughout this paper lend themselves well to ongoing evaluation of the implementation process. g. l. bowen, richman, and n. k. bowen (2000) suggest that factors in the community itself affect resilience through several key community strengths. communities that have numerous opportunities for participation in community life allow youth an opportunity to learn important skills such as teamwork, group pride, or leadership. blyth and roelkepartian (1993) suggest that a strong community should provide avenues to contribute to the welfare of others that can foster an individual’s sense of self-esteem and inner strength. having opportunities to connect with peers and other adults strengthens opportunities for youth to access a role model, a “friend” or a confidant. the examples of practical application through parent modelling in the schools to prevent bullying and offer alternative forms of communication with children, the intergenerational programming efforts between youth and older adults, and the peer helping curriculum designed for youth in care or custody reflect the importance of a strong community involvement. these suggestions are not “extraordinary” ideas, but may reflect the power of the ordinary as suggested by benard (2004): 194 what began as a quest to understand the extraordinary has revealed the power of the ordinary. resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities. (p. iv) seccombe (2002) suggests that it is essential that as a society we gain a broader, systemic view of resiliency. based on the work of waller (2001), she argues that risk factors as well as protective factors are cumulative and linked in risk chains. this perspective moves beyond a blaming approach to one that considers the ecological, cultural, and developmental nuances of situations in which people find themselves. as walsh (1998, p. 12) cautions, it is essential that the concept of resilience not be used in public policy to withhold social support based on a rationale that success or failure is determined by strengths or deficits within individuals and their families. benard (1991) had warned about this very approach in suggesting that when we create communities, we must be mindful that we show respect and care for youth as individuals so that we work towards building a critical mass of future citizens who will “rescind the mean-spirited, greed-based, control-driven social policies we now have and recreate a social covenant grounded in social and economic justice” (p. 105). in more recent years, she has called for the transformation of all our youth and human services systems through a fundamental change in relationships, beliefs, and power opportunities so that there is a new focus on “human capacities and gifts” as opposed to our present focus on “challenges and problems” (benard, 2004, p. 10). in working with the “untapped potential” in all of our communities by providing a safe haven for young and old alike, we are taking a step towards a community that may reflect a covenant based on social justice. this would be a resilient community 195 references astor, r. a., meyer, h. a., & behre, w. j. 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(2009). childhood and adolescent predictors of late onset criminal careers. journal of youth and adolescence, 38(3), 287-300. the untapped potential in our communities to assist youth engaged in risky behaviour protection for children from home and school extending our prevention programs for youth to the community of older adults involving “high-risk” youth in prevention programs peer helping programs for youth “at risk”? practical application of peer helping with youth at risk conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs93201818274 come along with me: linking lgbtq youth to supportive resources jennifer m. wolowic, richard sullivan, cheryl ann b. valdez, carolyn m. porta, and marla e. eisenberg abstract: in this study, we examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) youth, who tend to experience greater feelings of isolation and discrimination than heterosexual youth, find and become integrated into supportive activities and resources. as part of a larger study on supportive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth environments, 66 go-along interviews with lgbtq youth, from massachusetts, minnesota, and british columbia were conducted. analysis of these interviews identified important cues that prompt selfagency and integration into supportive environments and affirmative identities. in particular, we argue indirect links or cues such as media and print advertisements increase awareness of supports and resources, while personal links, such as referrals from trusted friends, adults, and regularly attended programs, can help youth form denser networks of support. keywords: lgbtq, youth, adolescence, resources, social supports jennifer m. wolowic phd (the corresponding author) is the managing director of the stigma and resilience among vulnerable youth centre, school of nursing, university of british columbia, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, bc v6t 2b5, canada. email: j.wolowic@ubc.ca richard sullivan phd is a professor emeritus, school of social work, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc v6t 2b5, canada. email: richard.sullivan@ubc.ca cheryl ann b. valdez mph is a graduate of the graduate school of public health, san diego state university, 5500 campanile dr., san diego, ca 92182, usa. email: cvaldez@mail.sdsu.edu carolyn m. porta phd is an associate professor in the school of nursing, university of minnesota, 308 se harvard st, minneapolis mn 55455, usa. email: porta@umn.edu marla eisenberg phd is an associate professor in the department of pediatrics, division of general pediatrics and adolescent health, university of minnesota, 2450 riverside avenue, mn 55454, usa. email: eisen012@umn.edu mailto:j.wolowic@ubc.ca mailto:richard.sullivan@ubc.ca mailto:cvaldez@mail.sdsu.edu mailto:porta@umn.edu mailto:eisen012@umn.edu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 2 this study builds on the literature that asserts affirmative social integration and social support as protective factors in preventing adverse developmental outcomes among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) youth (harper, brodsky, & bruce, 2012; toro-alfonso, varas díaz, andújar-bello, & nieves-rosa, 2006). it is particularly focused on the mechanisms by which such integration is achieved. predicated on the assumption that, in the course of development toward anticipated social roles, youth will avail themselves of information, people, and settings that can provide affirmation (blake et al., 2001; ciro et al., 2005), this study builds on developmental theory (coleman, 1982), role theory (bilodeau & renn, 2005) and symbolic interactionism (longmore, 1998). developmental theory focuses on adolescence and youth as periods of identity consolidation through rehearsal of various role possibilities in an expanding array of contexts (collins & steinberg, 2007). to that end, the degree of social inclusion a youth perceives or experiences is related to the number of role possibilities open to her or him (markus & nurius, 1986). similarly, crone and dahl (2012) posited that motivations and priorities shift amidst the changing social contexts experienced by adolescents. martin-storey, cheadle, skalamera, and crosnoe (2015) explored the social integration of sexual minority youth across different high school contexts and found the presence of positive peer affiliation to be a protective factor, as did toro-alfonso et al. (2006). young people’s social contexts and associated roles provide feedback that may contribute to their developing self-concepts. during development, youth access individuals and programs that support their needs both inside and outside of their schools (curran & wexler, 2017). self-concept is thus socially constructed from the meanings inferred from both direct and indirect (or symbolic) interaction. the messages about themselves that youth perceive in their social context are therefore consequential. self-concepts can be influential, even deterministic, in defining a youth’s prospects and aspirations (almeida, johnson, corliso, molnar, &azrael, 2009). the availability of positive role models and positive affirming feedback can contribute to youths’ sense of their own possibilities. research shows that lgbtq youth often have fewer of these positive social supports and higher rates of risky behaviors, including suicide, than their heterosexual counterparts (eisenberg & resnick, 2006; marshal et al., 2008; saewyc, 2011). other studies have identified that social support programs and psychoeducational programs designed specifically for lgbtq youth can be important protective factors (goodenow, szalacha, & westheimer, 2006). given the risks that these youths may have to contend with, it is important to know more about how they find their way to supportive resources. in this study we are concerned with social signals or symbols that may communicate the possibility of safety and affirmation with respect to developing lgbtq identities. we identify international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 3 some of these communications as direct or indirect links that help youth access new resources that support their identity development. this approach is also congruent with an ecological perspective and social network theory (cohen, underwood, & gottlieb, 2000) insofar as it focuses on interconnectivities and social integration of social actors and their access to the developmental resources of their communities. so constructed, our focus is on youths’ perceived links to resources facilitative of ongoing development. these links can be constituted in a person (nesmith, burton, & cosgrove, 1999; torres, harper, sánchez, fernández, & the adolescent medicine trials network for hiv/aids interventions, 2012), but also in any other medium or form of communication that draws the person to a setting that affirms the process of becoming or developing (craig & mcinroy, 2014; palmer, 2013). this is an approach to development that recognizes the influences of both personal dispositions and environmental contingencies (arciero, gaetano, maselli, & gentili, 2004; guidano, 1991). in other words, the developing person is both self-generated by their inspirations, identifications, and aspirations, and influenced by the possibilities afforded by their social context. in this paper, we are concerned with the ways lgbtq youth learn about and gain access to inclusive activities and supports. we focus on those key prompts that encourage the first attendance and engagement with such activities and supports. based on our conversations with youth across minnesota, massachusetts, and british columbia, this research explores the relative contribution of direct interpersonal links including individuals and regularly scheduled activities, and more impersonal links such as media outreach and exploration on the internet in leading youth to greater integration with a network of lgbtq community and broader community supports. method as part of a larger study exploring social and community elements that affect supportiveness for lgbtq youth, researchers accompanied 66 participants in an exploration of their environments in order to understand the characteristics of places experienced as safe, unsafe, or welcoming (eisenberg et al., 2017). interviews lasted from 35 to 110 minutes and were conducted walking, on transit, and in vehicles in urban, suburban, and rural communities in british columbia, minnesota, and massachusetts. for a fuller discussion of the go-along methods in this study see porta et al., 2017. recruitment occurred in a spectrum of communities in order to identify core common elements of supportive places and spaces as well as common themes for how youth found and accessed resources. participants included 24 who identified as male, 21 who identified as female, 11 who identified a binary gender as well as trans, and 10 who identified as having a non-binary gender. in prescreening of participants, we also asked youth to identify their sexual orientations: 24 identified as gay or lesbian; 21 as bisexual; and 19 as queer or other labels including asexual, pansexual, and panromantic; one trans youth identified as “straight”, and another defined their orientation as “other”. we also intentionally recruited for representation from diverse ethnic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 4 backgrounds; 24 youth in our three locations self-identified as having ethnicities other than a white/european background. these included african american, east asian, southeast asian, west asian, aboriginal, hispanic/latino, israeli-canadian, and french caribbean; some youth identified themselves as having multiple ethnic backgrounds. participants were recruited through lgbtq-serving community organizations, schools, and events. researchers applied for and received approval from school districts to provide posters and information to school gender sexuality clubs and gay straight alliances (gsas). information booths about the study were also set up at lgbtq conferences. ethics approval processes and recruitment are described in detail in another publication (porta et al., 2017). recruitment through organizations and spaces known to be friendly to lgbtq youth meant youth who volunteered to participate were often (but not always) already connected to at least one program or support. the overall study sought to document the qualities of these supports and how youth accessed resources. when scheduling interviews, youths were asked to identify a time they could meet with an interviewer for 45 to 90 minutes and to suggest a location or neighborhood they would want to show the interviewer while talking about safe spaces and supports. following a go-along methodology (carpiano, 2009; kusenbach, 2003; thompson, cummins, brown, & kyle, 2013), researchers interviewed the participants as they moved through the youths’ chosen spaces. during the go-along interview, the participant gives a tour of the selected area to an interviewer. in this study, participants walked through neighborhoods, schools, and community centres with the interviewers. this created moments during the semi-structured interviews for participants to be prompted by and comment on visual cues in their environment. the go-along is particularly useful in research with underrepresented or traditionally misrepresented groups because it provides opportunities to ask questions unique to each participants’ environment and encounters, in order to see what common elements exist across multiple environments or are unique to a group (bergeron, paquette, & poullaouec-gonidec, 2014; oliver et al., 2011; sunderland, bristed, gudes, boddy, & da silva , 2012). using the go-along methodology, this study sought to understand the social ecology of urban, suburban, and rural environments for lgbtq youth in order to explore what commonalities might define resources and safety for these young people (garcia, eisenberg, frerich, lechner, & lust, 2012). the open-ended interviews focused on the participants’ knowledge of resources in their areas. interviewers asked questions such as “what clinics, agencies, or resources do you know of that are specifically for lgbtq youth or who are supportive of lgb youth?”, “how did you find out about these places?”, and additional questions about access, knowledge, and cues about their environment and lgbtq inclusivity. the go-along interviews generally paused or concluded in areas where youth felt comfortable sharing their opinions in public or semi-public settings such as a favourite coffee shop or park bench. in these locations, interviewers asked participants to look around and describe what it was about these spaces that made them feel safe in order to gather further details about what the participants deemed as supportive environments and resources. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 5 participants were also asked where they would bring another lgbtq visitor for various forms of help or simply for pleasure in their community. interviews were transcribed by professional transcriptionists who signed confidentiality agreements. the accuracy of the transcripts was checked by the interviewers, who listened to the audio recordings while reading the transcripts. the first round of coding identified visual cues, connections to resources, supportive people, and supportive places. segments of interviews discussing connections and how youth came to know of or were inspired to access resources were initially coded inductively by the research assistants who conducted the interviews as “bridges”. the subset of quotes initially identified as “bridges” were then analyzed further following the second stage of the constant comparison analytic process by the coauthors of the paper (charmaz, 2000; glaser, straus, & strutzel, 1968). during this stage, the authors separated and recategorized the kinds of connections identified as “bridges”, identifying similarities and differences in, as well as connections between, the various ways youth said they learned of and accessed lgbtq resources. discussion among the coauthors defined some links as more direct than others. the coauthors went back through the sorted quotes again and explored the qualities that made links more or less effective than other kinds of sources mentioned by participants, based on the outcomes of described experiences. discussion and feedback regarding the coding categories led to renaming “bridges” to “links.” with further feedback from peer reviewers for this journal, the coauthors have focused the results on the sources and connections used to reach new supports. results from the ways participants described learning about and accessing resources, we discerned two different categories that facilitate information sharing and entry into inclusive, affirming resources (table 1). the first of these we describe as indirect links. these help increase youth awareness of supportive environments and resources, but tend to be circuitous and require a lot of initiative on the part of the youth to begin their involvement. these assist youth in learning about the lgbtq community and supportive resources. the second category we describe as personal links, which relate to people and events within the youths’ circle of relationships and activities. these personal links are predicated on trusted relationships that encourage youth to attend and try new programs and gain stronger social ties within their communities. participants themselves spoke of the ways people and events or activities and services came across to them or presented themselves so as to invite or discourage their involvement. we have interpreted these instances of impression management as linking mechanisms within a symbolic interactionist framework of social inclusion or social integration in its early stages. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 6 table 1 links to supportive resources for lgbtq youth connection example description indirect links internet search/ social media search engines (e.g., google), online business directories (e.g., yelp), social media platforms (e.g., tumblr) print media magazines, pamphlets, advertisements, postcards density of networked resources organizations and clinics in close proximity to each other events gay pride, pride parades and related events personal links regularly attended programs school-based gay-straight alliance groups supportive adults counselors, educators, clinicians, nonprofessional mentors family parents, foster parents, siblings friends peers connected through school or other organizations indirect links indirect links are constituted by information and environmental variables that youth encounter intentionally and unintentionally as they move through their social, physical, and online environments. these include media such as postings, pamphlets, magazines, and newsletters picked up in coffee shops, bookstores, and health centers that can connect youth to organizations and practitioners. participants noted online information as an important means of finding out and accessing new activities. finally, several participants described a multiplicity of services that helped them access new programs. once they had followed one link and became a part of one program, if other programs were connected to it by notice boards or other means of interagency communication, or even just in the same area geographically, they were made aware of those programs and were more likely to try them. whether or not they established and sustained interpersonal relationships with people encountered in these settings, they sometimes gained knowledge of and access to other resources. internet search/social media: a number of our participants mentioned actively using the internet and social media to connect with similar peers and find resources in their area. youth noted that these indirect links increased their awareness of activities and supports as well as programs they could choose to attend. for example, when a 17-year-old pansexual gender-fluid participant from minnesota was asked what they thought was the most common way to hear about supports and resources, they said: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 7 probably just going to lgbt events, or online. people make announcements, or i sign up for things via email and then they’ll email me different kinds of supports…. i usually just go on google and i just [search for] “lgbt resources” or “hangouts” and stuff like that. that’s what i do with my friends. we just look up places we could go. we go on yelp or on the maps or just scrolling through the page and see. youth are finding and making judgments about these programs based on comments and the online communities that they discover during their searches. this underscores their personal agency in seeking opportunities for affirmation and inclusion. as with other types of indirect link, youth are seeking out this information themselves; the information is not personally recommended or directed into their hands, but requires effort on their part to connect with these resources. from the assumed privacy of their personal devices, youth are looking for and discovering accepting social spaces and programs in their communities. a 16-year-old gay participant in british columbia shared how he found a resource center using the internet: i use tumblr a lot and tumblr’s really nice ’cause, like, people can just upload their stuff and, like, i know, like, a lot of social justice tumblrs and, like, tumblr’s run by, like, queer people. and they, like, have a list of terms or, like, their blog is dedicated to just terms and definitions. and, like, if someone, like, wanted to know something, i’d probably just link it to one of those. our participants were proficient computer users who understood how to search key terms and social media sites to find resources in their areas. as an indirect link, the internet helped youth find resources but did not necessarily counter the awkwardness youth could feel when they first accessed resources. print media: magazines, pamphlets, advertisements, postcards, and other forms of print and broadcast media were also noted as ways youth found resources in their areas. bulletin boards, newsletters, and zines (self-published magazines) were all found in supportive environments and created greater awareness of events and programs of interest to our participants. these were sometimes the first ways they learned of programs or supportive resources for lgbtq youth. youth in each area — minnesota, massachusetts, and british columbia — mentioned such published materials when asked how they found and shared information about resources. for example, an 18-year-old bisexual participant in minnesota shared that such popular media helped them feel better about themselves and their community: it makes me feel good knowing that there are places i can go to for help. not only can i go for help, but also, i can read a magazine. they have a good part for glbt to read, like maybe a drag show is happening at this place, and i can, like, “oh, look, there’s a drag show. i’m going to go to it”, or if there’s a glbt movie that’s going on, i’m going to want to go and see that.… it was pretty cool to know that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 8 the little pieces of information are in there, so people who are reading the reader might look at that and go, “look. it’s a glbt support group that we can go to”, and they go to it and get the information they want. the teenager identified that seeing information about events inspired their attendance and also helped them realize that others might be doing the same. posters about events and programs as well as information pamphlets also provided youth with greater awareness of resources in their area. an 18-year-old bisexual male participant from minnesota shared: i was thinking i really want to go to [a college], but i’m queer and they might not accept me. i didn’t even think to look at a bulletin board and see if they have anything there. you have to keep a peeled eye everywhere because you miss the smallest things and those small things really pay off.… i really wish i’d paid more attention to their bulletin boards, because you can learn a lot from their bulletin boards. i didn’t run into any queer youth [at another college], but there were bulletin boards all over with national coming out day, queer trans group, lgbtq support group, and stuff like that. after seeing that i realized how i missed opportunities. visible posters and the kind of events they are advertising provide insight into the level of acceptance youth may encounter in a particular neighborhood, school, or center. although advertisements provided awareness and information as well as a clue to the neighborhood’s acceptance of sexual minorities, they required youths’ own initiative to access the programs. events: one example of a linking event with salient social potential is the gay pride event that is celebrated in many towns and cities across north america and elsewhere. certainly, attendance at such an event is an instance of direct, personal participation, but it may also be an important, indirect link to community resources insofar as those resources present themselves as participants in the parade and raise awareness of their existence. we were interested to learn how participants assess such events. we asked one 17-year-old pansexual gender-fluid participant from minnesota what resources they connected with specifically by attending a pride event. they replied: probably just clinics. i can never remember the name of it. it’s like [a local health clinic] or something like that. i know within [it] they have a little lgbt shop or whatever you would call it. i think i found that there. also, just small businesses. i found a lot of different kinds of small businesses from pride and maybe would check it out later with my friends, that are friendly, or people that are part of the community own it. youth in all three sites identified pride parades or similar community events as spaces and activities where they learned about health and lgbtq community support services. others said international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 9 that pride events were where they had learned which other schools in their areas had gsas and support groups, or had learned more about planned parenthood. events are places where community groups, resources, and supports come together to celebrate, share information, and foster awareness. participants confirmed that such events are opportunities for youth to gather pamphlets and posters and learn about additional services in their areas. events can also provide a transition between indirect and personal linkages as youth are often accompanied by friends and families at these events, and in-person interactions are created that lead to further interactions with programs, health care providers, and other members of the lgbtq community. however, these interactions required additional follow-up from the youth themselves in order to fully access the resources that are advertised at community events. as such, events are spaces that combine the indirect links through information and advertising with the potential inperson connections that are the foundation of personal involvement. density of resources: given the variety of communities we explored with participants, we believe that the connections among the resources or programs to which youth had access helped them find more resources to incorporate into their social experiences. this suggests that network density or program interconnectedness is helpful to young people seeking to have their various needs met. when one 16-year-old pansexual female participant in british columbia described to an interviewer how she discovered a youth group, she mentioned her original purpose was to attend the clinic next door: i went to the clinic next door … and then i saw the poster and then there was a rainbow painted on the window … the window looks kind of inviting because of all the different posters saying this is a safe space. and then the clinic’s right next to it. other participants also described different kinds of youth programs as being located in the same building; attending one would lead to attending others. a further example of network density was provided by a participant who told us about one after school support group at his school splitting into two groups, one that focused on advocating lgbtq rights while the other continued as a drop-in support group. many youth attended both. in such cases, physical location and attendance at similar programs created easily accessible links to other programs and supports. participants noted that being in a network of resources helped individual resources support one another. for example, a 17-year-old gay teen from massachusetts noted: all these organizations have flyers from other organizations, so i feel like all the lgbt organizations here have a close-knit connection with one another. that helps the whole lgbt community in general, because these partnerships show that we’re all united or all together. if all the organizations were doing their own thing, it might international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 10 be much harder for everyone to communicate the different issues that affect our community, because if everyone’s not on the same page, then of course not much gets done. when this participant and others described the resources they used in terms of their proximity and interconnectedness, they associated a higher density of interconnectivity of resources with positive outcomes in their communities. by advertising for one another or being located in similar areas, the network density of these resources helped youth find new programs and supports. for them, these indirect links sometimes also led to interpersonal relationships that we have characterized as personal links to inclusion and affirming social integration. personal links friends, family, and supportive adults were identified among those who initially inspired or encouraged attendance at events and activities that engaged youth in supportive activities. often these people accompanied the youth or made arrangements that encouraged their participation in lgbtq events and social circles. in this role, friends, family, and others served as conduits or facilitators in accessing resources and settings where alternative, affirming identities might develop. in these personal links to resources, there is an element of personal agency insofar as there was a trusted person to help youth evaluate the new resources, programs, and people and avoid the awkwardness that often accompanies the first encounter. regularly attended programs: youth who are a part of a gsa or similar program are often directly connected to other programs and resources because of the connections made through these regular meetings and the interpersonal relationships that develop over time. our participants shared that facilitators or members they would meet in one regularly attended program would often recommend other programs, events, or resources. for example, an 18-year-old bisexual participant from minnesota shared, “i think it’s good that people are saying, ‘hey, there’s this one place you should go to with me sometime.’ ” these sorts of frequent encounters built relationships between youth that helped the participants find out about, get referred to, and feel comfortable attending the programs. in this way, such relationships can be a personal link to other resources and introduce youth to supportive adults in their community. in minnesota, for example, a 17-year-old pansexual gender-fluid participant shared: in my old gsa class, people would go to it, and then they’d come back and talk about it with the class. they said they met a lot of nice people, and even just going to the coffee shop, they tell you other events you could go to, so just going one place gives you more places to go, in a way. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 11 in british columbia, a 15-year-old queer female described how the gsa clubs in the school district were connected: there’s a district gsa and we meet every month. we met yesterday for january with our teacher, who’s the district gsa leader thing. and we all try to go for those meetings, and we all see each other once a month, and we hang out on the side. through meeting people at clubs and regularly attended meetings, youth share information. an 18-year-old bisexual participant from minnesota described: going to gsa and hearing, “i hear there’s this one place you guys should check out”, or going to a counselor and asking if there’s a place or any support group you could go to and they just hand it out, like, “there’s this one place you should check out if you have the time.” these illustrations show how lgbtq youth seek and share new activities and spaces and then share their findings with others. the relationships that formed with peers and adult facilitators in the process served as personal links to supportive social integration. supportive adults: participants described supportive adults interacting with them in both informal and professional roles. the latter included school counselors, coaches, and teachers who helped motivate participants to join new activities and provided information about resources. these adults asked important questions and encouraged youth to find supports if they felt the youth might benefit from them. a 16-year-old queer trans male in massachusetts shared how several different professionals in his life were supportive of him. when asked how he found out about an lgbtq youth group he said, “my doctor. when i first came out to my doctor, my doctor told me about an lgbtq health center, and from there, i got connected with a therapist, and the therapist recommended me to the youth group.” these professionals served as personal links to social integration insofar as they directly linked this youth to services and supports. youth also described non-professional mentors or trusted adults who connected them to professional services. for example, in minnesota, an 18-year-old pansexual male participant shared his story: when i moved out, i went and stayed with my … she was my girlfriend at the time. we’re not dating anymore, but her mom was really supportive and stuff. she asked me if i wanted to go to counseling.… she actually did a bunch of research at one point, or went on some website and printed out a packet of paper that had a bunch of different resources, like a whole list of resources that i’m like overwhelmed with. in this example, a well-meaning adult in a non-professional role intentionally assisted this young person by doing the work necessary to find suitable therapists and to ensure that the participant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 12 was informed of their availability. participants shared that adults, in both professional and nonprofessional relationships with youth, often provided the first link to resources and offered important continuing support that helped them attend new programs, find therapists, and meet other youth. to the extent that these people facilitated social integration, we believe them to be links in the chain of social interactions that help lgbtq youth achieve affirming social inclusion. family: families were also helpful. different participants in british columbia, minnesota, and massachusetts told us of parents, step-parents, foster parents, and grandparents helping to identify supportive resources and transport participants to those resources. for example, one 16year-old trans participant from minnesota told us of the important role their mother played when we asked how they got connected to programs in their area: [my mom] was trying to find every little resource or anything. oh, at [local area] high school there is a girl named [name]. she is the best person you could talk to. best person. i don’t like the school, but i love her. one 18-year-old rainbow-sexual participant in british columbia shared that his foster parents took the role of mediators and helped him find a clinic: “when i was in my foster home i told them i wanted to get tested, and they took me to a clinic to get a piece of paper to go to the place that i have to go to get tested.” siblings also played important roles in sharing information and facilitating connections. in one instance, a sibling provided the location of a café she knew to be queer-friendly. in another, a sibling acted as an ally for the study participant by warning that their parents were concerned about some of the sites the youth had visited on his computer and being supportive of his attendance at an lgbtq youth rally. in yet another example, an older sibling was also a sexual minority person and served as a guide to available resources and information about their suitability for youth. parents and siblings have unique opportunities to create supportive homes, but our participants also described how family intentionally connected them to various supports outside the home, including clinical resources, supportive churches, sports organizations, and informal social opportunities, and facilitated their participation. the choices these family members made in facilitating connections to lgbtq community resources further illuminate the dynamics by which social inclusion is achieved. friends: many of the youth we spoke with described their friends as offering the strongest kind of personal support. friends provide the emotional support and prompting that helps connect youth to resources and regularly occurring events and programs. among our participants, access to supportive groups like gsa clubs in high schools, and to counseling for lgbtq youth, was often facilitated by friends with prior knowledge of the group or resource. in short, friends take their friends along to these events so that, as with any other social induction process, connection begets other connections in the process of social integration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 13 in minnesota, a 15-year-old bisexual teen described how he entered his school’s gsa. when asked how he heard about the club he replied: my friend. i met her in the library at school and we were just talking, and she was like, “you should come to [gsa group] with me. it’s every monday.” i was like, “okay”, because i was thinking about starting my own lgbt group. i didn’t know that there was already one. we heard many similar stories from our study participants. another 18-year-old bisexual participant from minnesota described going to a weekly recreational event at a local recreation center because of the encouragement of their friends: i started going to my gsa when my friends were like, “hey, i know you’re trying to hide it, but you really suck at it. we all know you’re bi or gay or something. we know you’re something.” they invited me to their national day out thing, where they paraded around the lunchroom for like three lunch periods with posters. “i’m not gay, but my boyfriend is.” “gay teachers rock.” we just shouted, “we’re here, we’re queer, don’t be afraid to come and find us.” and then from there i found out through different friends who went to [a drop in] at an alternate school … i found out about [it] from there. professional staff associated with a youth’s school might also provide personal connections to various resources, but the availability and effect of such a person is often mediated by a peer. peer familiarity with helpful people, organizations, and activities was noted as an important factor not only in club attendance but also for drop-in and support groups outside of school. an 18-year-old lesbian participant from massachusetts described her experience of going to a lgbtq drop-in space with a friend: during that time, i was confused about gender identity and stuff, so i went in there with this other trans guy i was hanging out with. he pulled me along there. he was like, “you’re struggling with stuff. come with me.” i was like, “no.” i walked in there; they made me write down my name on a piece of paper and this counselor pulled me aside into a room and made me talk with her, which is nice but really intimidating. peers helped participants understand why clubs, supports, and other resources could be helpful. for example, a 17-year-old pansexual trans male participant from british columbia told us: i’m assisting a friend as well with trans things. and, well, he hasn’t really looked anything up himself ’cause he’s a little nervous about it. so i’ve been looking up a bunch of groups and different doctors and everything like that for him as well. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 14 friends not only referred participants to resources, but undertook the important acts of conducting research and attending these activities with their friends. a 16-year-old pansexual female youth in british columbia also helped explain why friends were so helpful for participants: often times you look it up and you’re not really sure even though it says that, like, it’s that kind of place, it might not be. like, you find that a lot with, like, people who are transgender and they go to a doctor and it turns out their doctor is really transphobic and, like, doesn’t want them to transition. even though, like, they advertise that that’s what they could help with. they usually, like, start trying to, like, cure them mentally. so it’s hard; you can’t really trust regular resources to find that kind of place. peers played an important role in encouraging participants to join programs, attend clinics, and meet with supportive adults. peers review resources for one another and create pathways through their supportive words and actions. trust, as a feature of peer relationships, enables a form of mediated referral. peer support of the resources thus constitutes a validating reference. discussion our findings illustrate the efforts of lgbtq youth to explore the social ecologies of their lives and settings. this is a developmentally adaptive process oriented to the identification of sites wherein the exploration of prospective roles and identities is supported and affirmed (arciero et al., 2004; craig & mcinroy, 2014). in this sense, the developing person is cast as both a selfgenerating agent and the subject of external influences and opportunities. either directly or indirectly, people, events, and public communications via media as varied as bulletin boards and the internet can serve to connect lgbtq young people to sites of safety and support. many participants in our study accessed several different resources that together created a network of programs and resources they regularly attended. inevitably, direct engagement with supportive resources is most effective, but this does not negate the importance of easily accessible information when it comes to facilitating engagement. clear, complete, easily accessible information can help lgbtq youth take the first steps in becoming aware of and judging the relevance or suitability of supports in their geographical area. in a small study, craig and mcinroy (2014) identified electronic media as often being chosen by lgbtq youth for the first points of contact in accessing resources, exploring identity, and making initial on-line appraisals and forays into communities of peers; off-line contact may follow. social media provided a safe, anonymous place to learn about others’ coming out experiences with their families and also a place to rehearse new identities and roles. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 15 participants in a study by greene, fisher, kuper, andrews, and mustanski (2015) described how best to reach out to lgbtq youth. the 72 ethnoculturally diverse participants in the study consistently recommended the use of positive, affirming symbols and messages to attract the interest of lgbtq youth. this study focused on prospective dyadic sexual health interventions for young same-sex couples with attention to their relationship concerns and their preferences for the content and form of intervention. for those still questioning or not “out” in most of their social contexts, accessible but discreet messages could serve as links to sexual health information and social supports that could be assessed first from some social distance. the ways in which information is presented also shape young people’s choices about where to locate themselves socially with respect to education and other settings of preparation for adult roles. in our study, participants gave clear evidence of how they used the information they had gleaned about the safety and prospects for affirmation of different settings to plan for future involvement. lgbtq youth are actively and frequently looking for symbols of safety and acceptance in spaces and among people (wolowic et al., 2017). effective outreach requires communication in language and other symbols conducive to youth engagement. symbols and images can attract youths’ attention and help youth assess the potential of indirect and personal links they encounter. personal relationships with trusted individuals were often sources of referrals for youth when they entered new programs or services. the trusted assessment of peers and adults moderates their involvement in newly discovered resources, events, and supports. symbolic interaction theory, with its focus on the importance of role models and reference groups as mediating factors, sheds light on the ways in which minority stress can be mediated by identification with affirming reference group members. in this sense, an alternative perspective can correct the harmful effects of internalized homophobia learned in majority contexts (cox, vanden berghe, dewaele, & vincke, 2010; meyer, 2003). throughout our study, participants described their families and parents as mediators or pathways between their offspring’s experience and the larger social world, as we have seen in a previous analysis of data from this study (mehus, watson, eisenberg, corliss, & porta, 2017). many participants reported that their parents sought resources to affirm their offspring’s changing sense of self and buffer against adverse influences. even where family response was tentative, guarded, or contrary, it formed part of the context in which participants explored their social world. the variety of family responses reported by participants reflects the diversity of a sample that ranged from first-generation immigrant families with cultural origins not inclusive of gender role variants to liberal families that had already embraced some measure of gender role variability. in the latter instance, families sometimes served as personal guides and allies in accessing supportive services. where families were less supportive, friends took on an even more important role. friends were important because they not only verbally encouraged attendance, but made the important offer to go with our participants to make introductions and test out new resources international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 16 with them. first-person referrals from other youth who attended programs or were patients or clients themselves were important pathways that recruited new youth to these resources. this made trust, or at least positive expectation, possible as a first step on the pathway to engagement and utilization. our findings affirm the salience of support and access for lgbtq youth in achieving social integration, albeit to varying degrees, during the process of affirming social identities and finding resources. the first step in that process involves the assessment of whom to trust in seeking support and resources. as in sherriff, hamilton, wigmore, and giambrone’s (2011) study of the factors that influence lgbtq youths’ decisions about whom to trust regarding their sexuality or their search for information about resources, participants described a range of characteristics that drew them to the persons they invited to guide them, with perceived experience, competence, and sensitivity figuring significantly in deciding whom to trust. this highlights the salience of selfagency in the selection of the developmental and interpersonal pathways by which social integration unfolds. through the variety of communities we explored with participants, the idea of resource density emerged wherein individual resources or programs helped youth find new or more resources to incorporate into their social experiences. when youth described a density of resources and interconnected indirect and personal pathways in their communities, this was often associated with effective programming and positive outcomes in their communities. our findings show that lgbtq youths’ self-agency can be facilitated by closer interconnectivity of resources and greater density of the different kinds of links that youth encounter. conclusion the young people in this study were proactively engaged in the exploration of their social ecologies. this is an expected developmental task that forms part of the process of role rehearsal and eventual identity consolidation. while ease of access to supportive sites might not be achieved for all lgbtq youth, let alone proactive network density, resources within a geographical area are encouraged to share information and promote related supports and services in order to maximize their effectiveness within a network of support. professionals, parents, and others associated with lgbtq youth can serve directly or indirectly as pathways to safety. for many youth, the role that friends played in introducing them to groups or activities was critical; therefore, organizations may wish to promote a “bring a friend day” or similarly encourage these bridging initiatives. for the professionals working within these networks, knowing that our actions and communications are being assessed by youth can serve as a reminder that our communications can serve as signals to hope, despair, indifference, or any number of other possibilities. those who are assessed to be useful will serve as pathways to affirmative developmental outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(3): 1–20 17 references almeida, j., johnson, r. m., corliso, h. l., molnar, b. e., &azrael, d. 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(2017). chasing the rainbow: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth and pride semiotics. culture, sexuality and health, 19(5), 557–571. doi:10.1080/13691058.2016.1251613 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00727.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.05.007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.10.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.12.018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2016.1251613 reflections on researching with children using “family group interviews” as part of a qualitative longitudinal study international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 649 reflections on researching with children using “family group interviews” as part of a qualitative longitudinal study alice maclean and jeni harden abstract: family sociologists often conduct research which generates and compares parents’ and children’s perspectives as a way of ensuring children’s voices are heard and building an understanding of family practices and cultures. it is far less common, however, for children to be interviewed in the presence of parents or to interview families as a group. primarily, this is a response to concerns that, given generational power relations, the presence of parents may serve to influence, police, or silence children’s voices. however, by making such methodological assumptions and, in turn, not generating group accounts with parents and children, we may be missing opportunities to add further methods to our toolkit and additional analytical dimensions to our explorations and understandings of families’ and children’s lives. in this article, we reflect on our experiences of conducting family group interviews as the second wave of a qualitative longitudinal study, involving parents and children who gave individual accounts at the first and third/final waves. we explore the factors involved in designing this method into a research project, the challenges of conducting family group interviews, and of analysing the data produced. in so doing, we contribute to the methodological debate on researching with children in the context of families. keywords: qualitative longitudinal research, families, group interviews, children, parents alice maclean, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is an investigator scientist at the cso/mrc social and public health sciences unit, university of glasgow, top floor, 200 renfield street, glasgow, united kingdom, g2 3qb. e-mail: alice.maclean@glasgow.ac.uk. jeni harden, ph.d. is a senior lecturer at the centre for population health sciences, university of edinburgh, teviot place, edinburgh, united kingdom, eh8 9ag. e-mail: jeni.harden@ed.ac.uk. mailto:alice.maclean@glasgow.ac.uk mailto:jeni.harden@ed.ac.uk international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 650 family sociologists often conduct research which generates and compares parents’ and children’s perspectives as a way of ensuring children’s voices are heard and building an understanding of family practices and culture (backett-milburn & harden, 2004; gillies, ribbens mccarthy, & holland, 2001; lewis, noden, & sarre, 2008; millar & ridge, 2009). it is far less common, however, for children to be interviewed in the presence of parents (curtis, 2007; irwin & johnson, 2005) or to interview families as a group (astedt-kurki, hopia, & vuori, 1999; astedt-kurki, paavilainen, & lehti, 2001; eggenberger & nelms, 2007; holland, mauthner, & sharp, 1996). primarily, this is a response to concerns that, given generational power relations, the presence of parents may serve to influence, police, or silence children’s voices (harden, backett-milburn, hill, & maclean, 2010; holland et al., 1996). however, by making such methodological assumptions and, in turn, not generating group accounts with parents and children, we may be missing opportunities to add further methods to our toolkit and additional analytical dimensions to our explorations and understandings of the lives of families and children. more detailed reflection is required in this area to aid and inform researchers’ understandings of the impact that parents’ presence has on children’s voices in qualitative research. eliciting and representing children’s voices the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies was, and continues to be, premised on the understanding of children as potentially articulate social actors, thereby challenging the longstanding research practice of accessing children’s experiences by proxy via relevant adults, particularly parents. the emphasis on giving children a “voice” led many to explore children’s lives outwith the family and, within family research, to include children directly but independently, in research. it is acknowledged that the cultural and social norms that shape social interactions within different contexts influence the possibilities that are available for the production of children’s voices within such settings (fox, 2013; spyrou, 2011). alanen (2001) argues that generation can be compared to other social structures, such as gender and class, claiming “the notion of a generational structure or order refers to a complex set of social processes through which people become (are constructed as) ‘children’ while other people become (are constructed as) ‘adults’” (pp. 20–21). concerns about the generational hierarchies that are at the heart of parent-child relationships are often at the forefront of the design of research with children and families. specifically, there is a concern that interviewing children with parents present may result in a silencing or a dilution of children’s voices. punch (2005) highlights how, within everyday family life, differential power relations exist between children and parents as compared to children and siblings, contributing to children exerting more selfcontrol and demonstrating greater respect within the context of parental relationships while sibling relationships, albeit still characterized by power dynamics (punch, 2007), enable a more open expression of thoughts and feelings. thus, an attempt to guard against the potential overpowering and policing of children’s voices by parents or other adult family members underlies the lack of research conducted with children and parents together (holland et al., 1996). however, in recent years, it has been suggested that, despite the fact that research with children is now far more commonplace, there is often a lack of critical reflection on the ways that international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 651 researchers conceptualise, elicit, interpret, and represent children’s voices (komulainen, 2007; spyrou, 2011) and the implications of this for claims that can be made about the authenticity of the voices reported (james, 2007). due to the dearth of research conducted with children and parents together, there has been limited reflection from childhood and family researchers on their experiences with this method of research. those who have utilised a group interview in the context of research with parents and children have suggested that in some contexts, not interviewing children and parents together may inhibit children’s willingness to communicate with the researcher, and so may be acting to silence children’s voices. in the context of the home, children (particularly younger children) may be accustomed to the presence of their parents and may take comfort and feel supported in a joint interview situation, thus allowing them to express their views in ways that might not be possible in an individual interview (eggenberger & nelms, 2007; irwin & johnson, 2005). in this article, we reflect on our experiences of conducting family group interviews as the second wave of a qualitative longitudinal study, involving parents and children who gave individual accounts at the first and third/final waves. we explore the impact of parents’ presence on children’s voices, demonstrating how parents facilitated, modified, and policed children’s accounts, while also showing evidence of children questioning and contradicting parents’ accounts. we also discuss the analytical challenges presented by the data from these interviews. in reflecting on our experiences of conducting family group interviews, we focus on what can be learnt from the intergenerational interactions within the groups rather than the intra-generational or sibling dynamics. firstly, this is because we principally wish to add to methodological discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of interviewing parents and children together. secondly, we are limited in the extent that we can comment on intra-generational interactions by the fact that only four of the 12 family group interviews we conducted involved two or more siblings. by providing our reflections on the use of family group interviews, we hope to contribute to debates on the merits and challenges of this method of researching with children. study background “work and family lives: the changing experiences of ‘young’ families” was a qualitative longitudinal study conducted in scotland as part of the timescapes initiative funded by the economic and social research council (esrc). the study investigated: processes of negotiation between parents and their primary-school-aged children in addressing issues raised by working parenthood; how such issues impact on everyday family practices; and how these change over time in response to changes in work and family circumstances, including those in children’s lives. the sample comprised 14 families recruited from a variety of employment, community, and education sites, five of which were lone-mother households and nine heterosexual-couple families. fourteen mothers, eight fathers, and 16 children (aged between 7 and 11 years at the inception of the research) participated. all parents were in paid employment (11 full-time, nine part-time), apart from two who were retired for health reasons. three waves of data collection were conducted over a period of two years. individual interviews were conducted with parents and children in waves 1 and 3, with a family group interview in wave 2. fieldwork waves were on average nine months apart, from 2007 to 2009. individual interviews were semi-structured and lasted one to two hours for parents and 30 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 652 minutes to an hour for children. children’s interviews included some activities (e.g., drawing, vignettes, choosing from stickers of faces showing a range of emotions) as a springboard for discussion (harden, scott, backett-milburn, & jackson, 2000); parents also responded to some of the vignettes. family interviews were also semi-structured and lasted one to two hours. we conducted family interviews with 12 of the 14 families in the sample because two families were recruited late to the study and only completed two waves of individual interviews. family interviews included parents and children who had been interviewed at wave 1, plus any younger siblings who also wanted to take part. they featured activities designed to encourage interaction and discussion between family members, which are discussed in more detail below. each fieldwork wave had a thematic focus (experiences of time during a working day; experiences of weekends and holidays; values in relation to employment); however, changes over time in relation to work and family were also explored longitudinally. all interviews were conducted by the researcher, alice maclean (am), in participants’ homes, apart from two individual interviews which were conducted at a university. names used in this paper are pseudonyms. research design the central aims of our research – to explore how families experienced and negotiated the challenges presented by working parenthood – informed the design of the research in a number of ways. first, we selected a longitudinal design with the intention of exploring how families’ lives changed over time and the impact this had on their experiences of working parenthood (harden, backett-milburn, maclean, cunningham-burley, & jamieson, 2013). second, we chose to undertake both individual and a family group interview. we anticipated that individual interviews with parents and children would enable us to address our central aim, in part, by providing their separate accounts, which we then analysed together to reflect on the similarities, differences, shared stories, and gaps (harden et al., 2010). however, we were also interested in family practices, that is, the notion of the family as actively created by its members; as something that people do rather than what people are (morgan, 1996). while it is possible to explore family practices through individual interviews, we were keen to explore whether a family group interview would add to this understanding. researchers using this method have suggested that family group interviews can help “capture interactional data or shared meanings” (astedt-kurki et al., 2001, p. 291). it is this interactional nature of family group interviews that some have suggested can reveal the “tone and personality of a family [...] in a way that interviewing individual family members cannot” (eggenberger & nelms, 2007, p. 209). it has also been noted that family group interviews are “a successful method for observing and recording patterns of control and negotiation during the conversation” (holland et al., 1996, p. 14). we were also interested in exploring the interactions between children and parents in these contexts, and whether a public family story or “family front” (holland et al., 1996, p. 14) would be upheld or challenged across the different interview contexts. while we have at no point viewed the family interviews data as wholly “naturally occurring” (smithson, 2000, p. 105) or as representing the “real” family, we included family group interviews in our design because of their potential to offer something different to the individual interviews by bringing the group dynamics to the fore and allowing the interplay of relationships to become part of our understanding of the families’ experiences. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 653 despite the decision to undertake family group interviews we were very mindful, and indeed shared many of the concerns noted earlier. careful consideration was given to the timing of the family group interview, the interview methods and the focus of the interview, and the ethical issues that may arise. we will discuss each in turn. timing the longitudinal design of the study offered an opportunity to explore the potential of this method alongside individual interviews, so minimizing the risk that its use in a single interview study would have presented. we chose to conduct the family group interview as the middle wave of interviews, between the two rounds of individual interviews, because we anticipated that at that point, research relationships built during the first wave would facilitate the group interview. in particular, given the concerns about the potential impact on children’s voices, we hoped that, at that stage, children would feel more at ease with the researcher and the context of the research interview having already undertaken the initial individual interview. however, we are not suggesting that there is a single best point at which to conduct family group interviews within the context of longitudinal or repeat interview research. interview design to engage children and parents, stimulate interaction, and track change over time, we designed a chart that acted as the main activity in the groups. a sheet of a0 size paper was prepared in advance with columns along the horizontal axis representing the school terms and holidays which had passed since they had last been interviewed (e.g., october break, school term before christmas holiday, et cetera.) and, from the left vertical axis, there was a row for each family member and a bottom row entitled “family”. this personalised grid provided a framework for families to record what had been happening for them, both individually and as families, since their first interviews. after reminding families of when they had last been interviewed and providing basic details of what had been happening for each of them at that time (taking great care not to reveal any information to which all family members were not privy), participants were given pencils, pens, and different coloured and sized post-its and were invited to add to the chart using these. what was added to the chart was left up to participants and am was deliberately vague and open in describing the completion of the chart. typically, participants were asked to add “what’s been happening” since they were last interviewed and if they asked for clarification they were given examples, such as things they had done, changes that had taken place, as well as things that had stayed the same over that period of time. we placed keywords around the chart to remind participants of the areas of their lives that we were interested in (e.g., school, work, family, friends, time, money, health, et cetera) and to encourage a wide range of additions to the chart. to capture not only what they had done but also how they felt about events or changes, parents and children were then invited to add emotion stickers to the chart. following the chart activity, families were asked to reflect on their experiences of weekends and holidays, a topic area that had been touched on in the individual interviews but which we felt was something that needed to be explored further. initially this was done using a basic format where am asked questions of the group without props or activities. however, after conducting two of the family group interviews, we found that children tended to lose interest in the discussion after the chart activity. to keep children engaged for the remainder of the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 654 interview, when interviewing subsequently we used a role-play technique whereby laminated cards were placed in the centre of the group. each card had an interview question printed on it and all members of the group took turns to pick a card and to pretend to be the interviewer by asking the rest of the group the question. this worked well in engaging the children, as they were generally keen to take their turn to ask a question. ethical concerns we also acknowledge that the wider discussion around the implications of using family group interviews, in terms of eliciting children’s voices, is also an underlying ethical issue, which we hope the article, in its entirety, addresses. here we focus on specific ethical issues raised by the use of family group interviews. as noted above, we considered very carefully the potential topic focus for the interview and deliberately avoided topics that we thought could be considered to be sensitive, for example financial concerns. while the potential impact of topics or question areas should always be considered when designing an interview, the family group interview presented the additional challenge of ensuring that the topics were not an area that parents and children would feel uncomfortable discussing together. clearly there is no absolute correct answer to this, as one family may feel happy to discuss what for another is taboo. we based our judgements on which topics to include on the data emerging from the individual interviews. for example, in the case of financial concerns, we noted an awareness of monetary issues and some indication of this as a difficult area for some of the children, which did not always appear to be communicated to parents. as a result, we did not feel that this was something suitable for group discussion. nevertheless, in some families this issue arose spontaneously. moreover, it was also not always possible to anticipate what would be sensitive topics for families. the passing of time and occurrence of events between the first interview and the group interview also had an impact on families’ reactions to some topics, which in turn called for careful facilitation. depending on what had happened in their lives since their first interviews, raising and probing around even seemingly innocuous topics could prove difficult. in one group, a request to hear more about their summer holiday caused upset and the children seemed to panic at the prospect of talking about this. their mother quickly curtailed the discussion, saying that they would rather not talk about the holiday because it had involved her ex-partner from whom she had only recently separated. this shows the way that seemingly mundane topics could become sensitive depending on what had happened since the previous interview. we were also aware of the increased difficulty of ensuring network confidentiality when using this method as part of a longitudinal design. this refers to keeping the individual interview contents private from the respondent’s family (hill, 2005) and is pertinent to research with children and parents, given that members of a family may wish to know what the others have said when interviewed separately (harden et al., 2010). am ensured that she was very familiar with the individual interviews carried out in wave 1, noting shared topics of discussion and those raised only by the individual members. when discussing change during the time period between wave 1 and wave 2, she was also careful to summarise the family’s situation in very general terms. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 655 family group interviews also present the potential for tensions in relationships between parents or between parents and children to become evident. this poses additional challenges to the researcher and may require considerable sensitivity in handling potentially difficult situations. we discuss this sense of experiencing “relationships in action” below. reflections on conducting family group interviews eliciting children’s voices despite our concerns about children being silenced, in practice there were very few examples of parents talking over, or instead of, children. in the majority of the groups, children seemed to contribute enthusiastically and often. nevertheless, there were ways in which we noted that parents seemed to influence their children’s accounts, for example by modifying their more negative comments to present things in a more positive light. in one group, when talking about their holiday, while the son (robert) dwelt on their mistakes or things that had gone wrong, his dad (hugh) tried to downplay the negatives and emphasised the good time they had: hugh: yeah, yeah, we went to [canada]. [...] robert: oh, aye. that wasn’t very nice. hugh: it was lovely. robert: you forgot the bed! hugh: oh well minor… i: what happened? robert: they forgot my bed! [...] hugh: but when we got there it was late at night [...] there was only a double bed, no bed for him, you know [...] aye, it wasn’t the best place in the world i’ve ever stayed in [...] but we had a good time, it was a great time. equally there were instances where it appeared that parents also facilitated their children’s contribution. on occasions, am asked questions to the group and parents directed them to the children, implying they would be able to answer best. parents also reminded children of things that they had done, so facilitating their voices by bringing them into the discussion more. there was also evidence of children questioning and contradicting the accounts of parents and siblings. for instance, in one group, the middle of three sisters commented negatively on all the activities her sisters and parents noted on the chart. for example when her father said they had been for a nice meal she made a retching sound and said it was the worst meal ever. somewhat unexpectedly, instead of children being the quieter presence, it was at times one or other of the parents who contributed little to the group dialogue. in one group, it was the father who said very little and at times both his wife and children spoke for him. this was interesting given that his individual account had been detailed and articulate. it suggests that either the group dynamics prevented him from having a strong voice or that he chose to have a quieter presence in the group situation. there was also evidence of parents modifying and policing one another’s accounts. in one group, there was an interesting dynamic between the parents whereby the mother seemed to look to her husband for permission or back-up to her international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 656 statements, asking him “is that okay?” and “is that not important?”. am got a sense that she was looking for more input from him whereas he seemed guarded and perhaps not entirely comfortable with what she was revealing. the family group interviews gave us some insight into the tensions, constructions, and negotiations of relationships within families. again, we see evidence of children’s agency in negotiating these relationships, rather than the silencing of them in the context of the group interview. relationships in action participants’ interactions in the family interviews also sometimes suggested the existence of tensions in relation to events and relationships within their family. the extracts below, with gail (lone mother) and her 12-year-old daughter heather, exemplify this: gail: i suppose the other thing that’s a real change for you [heather] is you’ve been spending a lot of time with your dad that you’ve never really done. she’s been practically living at her dad’s house [since the renovations on our house started]. heather: i do live at dad’s house. gail: because we thought by the time you got back [from school camp] it [the renovations] would be all alright. how foolish we were. heather: how foolish you were… later when talking about weekends and future changes: heather: well, i go swimming a lot and i go round and see my friends and things like that and they…well, they don’t come round here because it’s disgusting. well, it is. it’s horrible. [...] gail: yeah, if we can get the house finished that’ll be… heather: my room. i don’t care about the house, i want my room back. gail: yeah, well that’ll happen… heather: you can’t be bothered. however, the interactions also exemplified relationships in other ways. the family interviews gave us an insight into the ways “childhood” was enacted within families. in the individual interviews with parents, there was a sense in the parents’ accounts that children should be shielded from financial worries and responsibilities and we saw evidence of this in the family interviews. the watsons (father graham, mother sheila, and 10-year-old son lewis) talked openly about how they had far less money than they used to as a result of graham starting up a new business and increasing everyday expenses as a result of the recession: graham: we eat a lot of root vegetables! and the price of food is going through the roof! lewis: is it? sheila: yes, i mean, you do notice things like that, that just ordinary… graham: bread, rolls, rice is really expensive. lewis: i don’t notice that. sheila: well no and why should you? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 657 the fact that graham and sheila spoke frankly throughout the group about how much their financial circumstances had changed suggests lewis already knew this or that they were not trying to hide these facts from him. however, lewis’s contributions to this exchange give the impression that he knew little about the rising costs to which his parents were also adjusting. sheila’s response, “well no and why should you?”, could be read as implying that she thought that lewis, as a child, should not be expected to know or worry about such things. there was also evidence of children negotiating future changes relating to their independence. lisa (age 12), while being interviewed with her mother jane, brought up changes she would like to happen when talking about an ideal weekend: lisa: like sort of maybe like go out shopping with my friends, like early in the morning [...] like somewhere different that i’ve never been on my own before... jane: i was wondering when this one was coming. lisa: somewhere like [shopping centre in city centre]. but i would go with like one of my friend’s parent dropped me off there and then say like we all meet back at like say [shopping centre] at like... pick you up there. just like free time sort of thing. jane: [sighs] jane’s comment, “i was wondering when this one was coming”, suggests she had sensed that lisa wanted to negotiate this change and was anticipating her raising it at some point. it is possible that lisa did so in the family interview because she thought her mother would be under increased pressure to grant the request. again, this shows how the family interviews provided a lens through which to view the processes involved as parents and children negotiate change over time. it is impossible to know whether these “questions” would have been asked in the course of day-to-day family life and if they would have been asked in the same ways, or if the family interviews gave children and parents a space in which to raise these issues. nevertheless, these interactions provided us with a different perspective, which we would not have accessed had we only conducted individual interviews (bushin, 2009; eggenberger & nelms, 2007; irwin & johnson, 2005; punch, 2007). the relationships between parents and children were often clearly evident in the group interviews and while this provided very interesting data and an insight into the ways in which family practices are negotiated, it was also challenging at times for the researcher. this raises wider questions about the role of the researcher within the context of these interviews. the role of the researcher am conducted each family group interview alone. her reflective notes highlight some of the concerns she felt about engaging with multiple family members in a very different context than her initial meetings with them: when i started conducting the family interviews, one of my first feelings was that it was like walking a tightrope between all the relationships that i’d started to develop with the individual participants in the first wave. it felt like it was impossible to please everyone and i came away from some groups concerned that the children were disappointed with international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 658 how i’d interacted with them in the groups, so i questioned whether i was able to build on existing relationships through the group context. indeed the researcher is positioned very differently in the context of the family group interview. managing the group dynamics single-handedly was a significant challenge of facilitating the family group interviews, as family life did not stop when the interview began. the interview was often interrupted by phone calls, different family members not involved in the interview coming and going, arrangements being made, and so on. yet it is perhaps these multiple events that represent the “doing family” that we were seeking to capture. when together, many families will not be ordered, speaking in turn, remaining focused on a single topic or task. this messiness of family life may be part of what we hope to access via the family group interview but it also proved challenging for the researcher. as in other interview contexts, researchers need to make on the spot decisions about whether to let the interview conversation go in any direction the interviewee takes it, or whether there are times when the researcher needs to refocus the discussion. in family contexts there is an additional challenge given that the distractions, interruptions, conversational tangents, and so on that “disrupt” the interview may inform what we are researching: that is, they may give us an insight into the family relationships and processes of negotiation between family members. moreover, as researchers in this context, we are stepping into established relationships, and in the case of parents, children, and their siblings, hierarchical relationships based on their different generational positions (alanen, 2001; mayall, 2001; punch, 2005). there were occasions when parents dominated the interviews in various ways. in one group, the mother dominated whenever she could by talking about her work or financial concerns. in another, the mother took control over filling in the chart for everybody and the children complained, saying “mum, why are you filling in all the chart?” (anna). as other researchers have found in similar situations (bushin, 2009; punch, 2007), am found it difficult to take control in order to redress the power imbalance without this perhaps being interpreted as undermining the parents. on another occasion, a father commented on how am was facilitating the group, telling her that she should give the children more direction. there were also times when parents’ abilities to take control were perceived by am as helpful, such as quietening dominant children in order to give others a say or preventing outspoken children from dictating the pace or direction of discussion. these instances highlight the complex nature of the power relations, which the researcher becomes part of, and through which the researcher has to navigate. although these instances could be difficult to manage, we also came to value them as a way of seeing family dynamics and hierarchies being acted out through the activities conducted in the family group interviews. for the most part these interactions show how parents, children, and indeed am, assumed and accepted parents as being highest on the power hierarchy, and thus in greater control (punch, 2005). however, we have also shown how children tried to challenge parents’ positions and attempted to negotiate more control in this context. when deciding to use family group interviews, we recognised that non-verbal communication and aspects of group dynamics that could not be picked up through transcription of an audio recording were an important aspect of the data. we discussed whether to involve a second researcher to act as an observer in the group interviews but decided that this may be international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 659 overwhelming for families and so may limit their engagement. while we have not necessarily changed our view on that, it proved to be extremely challenging for am to simultaneously note and record such non-verbal interactions while facilitating the interview. in practice, am attempted to capture as many aspects as she could of the non-verbal communication, dynamics, and roles within the group by writing detailed field notes after each interview. for example here are her field notes following the wilson family interview: there was an awkward exchange between andrew [father] and marie [mother] when they talked about the changes they were planning to make to their house. while she talked about their plans, andrew tapped marie on the arm, where tom [their son] couldn’t see. he seemed to be worried that she would say too much or maybe was concerned that she would reveal something that tom didn’t yet know about. i had to think quickly about what to ask next in order to avoid an uneasy silence. however, we recognise that without a systematic means of observing non-verbal exchanges, it may only have been the more exceptional situations that were captured and many of the more subtle aspects may have been missed. reflections on analysing family group interview data analysing the perspectives of multiple family members is a complex task (ribbens mccarthy, holland, & gillies, 2003). indeed, one of our concerns about incorporating family group interviews into this study was the challenge of analysing the individual accounts of multiple family members alongside accounts with those same family members in a group context (harden et al., 2010). in the discussion below we reflect on some of these challenges. integrating family group and individual interview data the analysis of the family group interview data was informed and enhanced by linking those data with the individual interview data. in the example we gave earlier of the tensions between gail and her daughter heather, had we only the family interview data to draw on, the dynamics of this exchange may have been hard to unpick. nevertheless, being able to refer back to gail’s first interview, in which she expressed concerns about her relationship with heather and that she felt envious towards the children that gail spends time with in her job as a support worker, enabled a deeper understanding of heather’s behaviour throughout the family interview. it is possible that having already felt that aspects of her relationship with her mother were lacking, such as doing things and going places together, heather felt increasingly shut out, and in turn resentful, when the renovations meant she had to move in with her father. however, the analytic integration of group and individual interview accounts is not always straightforward. one of the key analytic challenges we faced was making sense of contradictions and changes across individual and group accounts, and between family members. as a qualitative longitudinal study we were interested in tracking change over time and this presented additional challenges to the analysis of the group interviews. this is a quote from jan ritchie, a mother of three who was on maternity leave when first interviewed. talking about the prospect of going back to work, she said, “at the moment i could just weep at the thought of going back”. jan’s dread of her imminent return to work was a major theme in this interview, so international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 660 we were keen to follow it up during their family interview. in the family interview, nine months later they said: jan: when did i go back [to work]? calum: back to work [reads off calendar and laughs]. sad face. jan: [laughs] well, no actually, it’s been fine. calum: [laughs] has it? later in the group, jan’s daughter, anna, also gave her view that jan had felt very sad about going back to work. in the family group setting, it would have been unethical to probe by referring back to the level of jan’s anxiety in her first interview, so in terms of tracking and exploring change over time we are left with a sense that information has been lost and our understanding of this change is incomplete at this stage. it was not until jan’s next interview, 18 months after her first, that am was able to explore in more detail her return to work. instead of the entirely positive gloss given by her to this change during the family interview, she acknowledged in her last interview that “everything’s going as well as it could” and that although one of her children was still not happy about the situation, they would simply have to accept it. this example highlights, as noted earlier, that intergenerational power relations are evident both in the content of what is discussed, and the manner in which the issue is discussed in the group. while both the children gave the impression that the return to work had been experienced as a negative change, jan was quick to correct them and present it more positively. this example also indicates that we may be accessing different accounts in the family and individual interviews. although jan spoke openly about the challenges of the return to work, in both of her individual interviews, her very positive account in the family interview may have indicated that she did not want to acknowledge any difficulties directly, in the presence of the children, despite the fact that the children’s accounts indicate they were well aware of problems. the way that we addressed these different accounts was shaped by our epistemological stance. we were not seeking to find a single “truth” or to triangulate the accounts as some form of corroboration of a family reality. instead, drawing on interpretivist traditions, we adopted what has been referred to as a bird’s eye view (ribbens mccarthy et al., 2003) highlighting the analyst’s ability to have an overview of all family members’ accounts and, for example, to see and interpret in a detailed context where these agree and contradict in order to provide an interpretation, one that did not claim to be the “truth” but that was grounded in the data (perlesz & lindsay, 2003). non-verbal data while am did not systematically record non-verbal interactions, her field notes were very useful in offering additional data through which to make sense of the families’ accounts. for example, here she reflected on an incident during the erskine family interview. when adding post-its to the chart, jack asked if it was only good things they were supposed to put on. when i said he could put any changes on, he added that his mum’s boyfriend had left and evie also put this on the chart. when using the smileys, jack and evie both went for sad faces first and put them on this change. this was an awkward moment. rachel made eye contact with me, she looked international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 661 concerned and seemed to be saying “this is difficult, please don’t ask any questions” – which i didn’t. it was also useful to note observations regarding the roles adopted during the interview. in many of the interviews it was the mother who oversaw the chart activity or who the others looked to for information and direction (e.g., asking what they did and when they did it and younger children also asked what they should write), reflecting the evidence from the individual interviews that it was the mothers who were most involved in organizing the family’s lives (harden, maclean, backett-milburn, & cunningham-burley, 2012; mckie, gregory, & bowlby, 2002). in addition to monitoring who took the lead, it was also interesting to note cases where a family member did not participate. for example in the clarke family interview, the father, alan, was silent through much of the interview. he may simply have been tired or less interested in taking part in the group interaction, but drawing on the individual interviews we can offer a different interpretation. his first interview portrayed a deep sense of antagonism towards his partner – he was very critical of how much she contributed to the family. there was nothing within the accounts of the children or the mother, maggie, that indicated that this was a feeling they were all aware of, so he may have used the individual interview to express how he felt and was then “silenced” in the group context. family group interviews: the private and the public we have seen, above, how private tensions are at times enacted in family group interviews. as part of our analysis we explored the ways in which what children and parents said in the family interviews may have been controlled, inhibited, or facilitated by one another’s presence and utterances. however, it also became clear that there was a sense of awareness of the family group interview as “public”. while this notion of private and public accounts in interviews has been noted in relation to individual interviews (cornwell, 1984), it is the negotiation of this public face that is interesting in the context of family group interviews. this was most evident in relation to the construction of the chart. there were many examples of discussions and disagreements among families about what should be added to the chart, suggesting participants were thinking about how people who might view the chart would perceive what they had written on it. jan objected to her husband’s suggestion that they should add that their youngest son was ill with sickness and diarrhoea when he started going to nursery upon her return to work, saying “do we really need to put that? we don’t really”. given the significance of this event for them as a family, as noted above, it is interesting that she did not want this recorded. there were also instances of parents editing what children wanted to add to the chart. in one group, paul (age 5), who was one of the youngest children to take part in the family interviews, was keen to fill his section of the chart and wanted to add the fact that he had recently got a filling in one of his teeth. in response to his suggestion, his mother sighed and said “okay, but it was a very minor filling honey”. again, this implies a concern, on the part of paul’s mother, that those who might see the chart may judge her as a parent due to her son having a filling. the children also commented on each other’s contributions. in one group, ashley (age 9) suggested that his brother ryan (also age 9) should write on the chart that he got the “all clear” after being hospitalized. however, ryan responded by saying “that’s my privacy, i’m not writing it on paper”. interactions such as this suggest a tension between the notion of the chart as a international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 662 public document and the private nature of the issues the activity often raised. thus, we interpreted the family interviews data as co-constructed performances shaped by context and participant awareness of “the public that is being addressed” (morris, 2001, p. 556), whether this was the others in their family, the researcher, or the wider public audience who may come into contact with the data. these interactions suggest that the chart activity may be an effective means of exploring the normative standards that impact upon the ways in which families and family life is displayed (dermott & seymour, 2011; finch, 2007; haldar & waerdahl, 2009) in the somewhat public context of research. they also suggest that, at least for the families in our study, the research team and other research “users” could be considered as among the “multiple potential audiences” who matter when it comes to the display of family (dermott & seymour, 2011, p. 14). conclusion one of the central aims, and indeed an ethical responsibility of qualitative research, is to ensure that the context within which the research is conducted enables the participants to tell their stories, that is, that we ensure their voices are heard. research with children has rightly questioned the authenticity of hearing children’s voices by proxy, interpreted by key adults. however this may have led to an assumption that including children as independent participants in research provides us with an authentic voice and neglects the potential of methods that include the involvement of parents. we have suggested that, in our study, family interviews assisted us in making sense of the multiple perspectives of family members often presented in fragmented form via indivdual interviews alone. in addition, the family interviews may have facilitated children’s voices by providing them with a supportive, comfortable context within which to take part in research; and the opportunity to voice grievances, ask questions, and to negotiate relationships and change. we do not claim that by using the method we can elicit more authentic voices or that we can see the “real” family in action. indeed we have addressed the ways in which we understood the interview to be, in part, a public performance. moreover it is a method that presents particular ethical and practical challenges. nevertheless, our experience with family group interviews has led us to conclude that it is a useful and interesting method to add to the toolkit for use in research with children in the context of families. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.1) 649–665 663 references alanen, l. 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"i felt they were ganging up on me": interviewing siblings at home. children's geographies, 5(3), 219–234. ribbens mccarthy, j., holland, j., & gillies, v. (2003). multiple perspectives on the 'family lives' of young people: methodological and theoretical issues in case study research. international journal of social research methodology, 6(1), 1–23. smithson, j. (2000). using and analysing focus groups: limitations and possibilities. international journal of social research methodology, 3(2), 103–119. spyrou, s. (2011). the limits of children's voices: from authenticity to critical, reflexive representation. childhood-a global journal of child research, 18(2), 151–165. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/003803850203600406 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047279408002572 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/104973201129119208 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645570305056 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1537-4661(04)10009-3 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733280701445770 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645570305052 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/136455700405172 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568210387834 abstract: family sociologists often conduct research which generates and compares parents’ and children’s perspectives as a way of ensuring children’s voices are heard and building an understanding of family practices and cultures. it is far less comm... eliciting and representing children’s voices study background research design timing interview design ethical concerns reflections on conducting family group interviews eliciting children’s voices relationships in action the role of the researcher reflections on analysing family group interview data integrating family group and individual interview data non-verbal data family group interviews: the private and the public conclusion references international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs94201818637 the background and development of quality of life and family quality of life: applying research, policy, and practice to individual and family living roy i. brown and alice schippers abstract: this article introduces the concepts of quality of life and family quality of life and shows how they have developed in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities in terms of concepts and principles. the article underscores the relevance of many of the principles and practices to a wide range of disabilities and challenges in the broad field of human development. finally, the article provides an introduction to the other articles in this special issue, and considers their relationship to the broader areas of research, practice, and policy. keywords: quality of life, families, disabilities and other challenges, practice and policy development, research development acknowledgements: we are grateful to dr. sibylle artz for encouraging us to prepare this special issue of the journal. we would also like to acknowledge ms. susan scott, the associate editor, for her invaluable contribution in copyediting. we are also grateful to dr. nancy jokinen for her helpful suggestions. several individuals were involved in reviewing the articles and we recognise the time and thought they gave to this important role. finally we would like to thank the authors who have worked diligently and patiently in completing their contributions. roy i. brown phd (the corresponding author) is adjunct professor at the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria bc v8w 2y2, canada, and emeritus professor at the university of calgary, canada and flinders university, australia. email: royibrown@shaw.ca alice schippers phd is a coordinating senior researcher at the disability studies unit of the medical humanities department of the amsterdam university medical center, de boelelaan 1089a, 1081 hv amsterdam, the netherlands. she is also the general director of disability studies in the netherlands. email: alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl mailto:royibrown@shaw.ca mailto:alice.schippers@disabilitystudies.nl international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 2 2 in this foreword we introduce readers to some of the major characteristics of both individual and family quality of life as a background to the articles that follow. quality of life1 (qol) and family quality of life (fqol) are relevant to all of us, and are particularly critical as we face challenges in our lives, whether as individuals or families. in this special issue we present research, practice, and personal experience from the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities (idd) to indicate the potential application of qol to a wide range of challenges in other areas of experience, and show how it may be valuable to individuals and families as well as professionals living and working in a variety of areas of need across the lifespan. we recognise that such an inductive approach can overreach its remit, so examples are provided to illustrate transfer to other life challenges in terms of both research and application. identifying the causes — and the means of resolution — of such challenges is relevant to a wide range of families, and needs to be considered by professional and family supporters, whether working in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities, brain injury, or mental health, or confronting the critical crises that can arise with any individual or family. such challenges frequently go beyond the family and have repercussions in the wider community and in society as a whole. the degree and kind of support may differ in these situations but the paradigm of qol in the field of intellectual and developmental disability seems to have much to offer to other areas of individual and family concern (brown & faragher, 2018). the notion of qol has a long past: its origins go back at least to aristotle. the term then used was eudaimonia, which relates to satisfaction of an individual’s needs (see parmenter, 2018; schippers, 2010). the topic, as a formal social and psychological concept, was introduced by thorndike in the 1930s but not addressed in detail in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities until the early 1980s. research and practice have since expanded, first in terms of individual qol, and then in the early 21st century in terms of fqol (turnbull, brown, & turnbull, 2004). definitions and development in idd a number of formal definitions of qol and fqol have been offered (see brown & brown, 2003). at a generic level the definitions encompass the social well-being enjoyed by people, communities, and their society. qol and fqol are optimised when a person’s basic needs are met and when he or she has the opportunity — or the family has the opportunity — to pursue and achieve goals in major life settings. such goals might include experiencing certain types of education or employment, or becoming involved in certain types of sporting activities. 1 quality of life has also been referred to as well-being. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 3 3 satisfactory fqol also requires that the family has opportunities to pursue, achieve, and enjoy life even when challenges are present. for example, it is neither unusual nor satisfactory to find that where there is severe disability, parents may not be able to go out together or take vacations. the fqol literature is replete with examples of this type (turnbull et al., 2004; kober, 2010; brown, geider, primrose, & jokinen, 2011; i. brown, 2016). these concerns are expressed around the world and exemplified by keith and schalock (2000) in cross-cultural perspectives of quality of life. nor are the concerns limited to particular people or specific fields of endeavour as can be seen in the detailed accounts of research and practice in romney, brown, and fry (1994), which included issues of well-being in the field of mental health. the latter theme was further developed by renwick, brown, and nagler (1996) whose book has chapters on qol in relation to hiv, sexual abuse, homelessness, and aging, as well as idd. a further and more comprehensive overview of qol can be read in the encyclopedia of quality of life and well-being research (michalos, 2014). both the qol and fqol approaches have specific and general implications such as the importance of the well-being of individuals and families, the need for ways of assessing wellbeing, and the development of methods to address challenges and needs as they become known. the resulting studies have significance for the design and development of government policies and the means by which support and intervention can take place. since the 1980s, qol has become an increasing concern in the field of idd. this field includes conditions such as down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, and a vast range of other genetic and environmental impacts including early birth injuries and accidents in a child’s developmental years. the research of goode (1994) and brown, bayer, and brown (1992) gives detailed accounts of qol intervention in this field, while a book edited by brown (1997) provides a broader canvas, including a chapter on indigenous people in canada. later, schalock et al.’s (2002) overview of this work in the field of idd helped to shape the development of theory, research, and practice, leading to a set of principles that are relevant to research, service, and policy development. the range of international qol research has been increasing. for example, in the last few years, studies have been done in italy (lombardi, croce, claes, vandervelde & schalock, 2016), slovenia (schmidt, schmidt, & i. brown, 2017), and israel (roth & i. brown, 2017), as well as in asian countries (e.g., krishnasamy, li, & chen, 2016). principles of qol the principles of qol have been expanded and clarified, and most recently set into a broad pattern that covers qol and fqol across the lifespan. we briefly introduce these important qol principles here as they constitute a practical paradigm that is relevant as a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 4 4 background to the articles in this special issue (see brown, cobigo, & taylor, 2015 for further details). first there are general principles. these include items such as dignity of people with disability, ethically based policy and practice, personal and professional values, the duty of care, managing risk and safety, the principle of normalisation, and attending to concerns that arise in terms of exclusion and inclusion. although these overarching principles apply in the field of idd, they also have relevance to other areas in which a wide range of professionals and informed laypersons deliver service, comfort, and support to their fellow human beings. it is now recognised that it is very important that people with disabilities should have life opportunities like everybody else in the community, opportunites that can assist development and learning and lead to improvement in overall qol. the most major challenge in qol research and practice — apart from assessment, support, and education — is probably to encourage communities in all countries to become more involved and more supportive in terms of people’s rights and respect for individuals regardless of the disabilities or limitations they may have. exclusion and discrimination become dominant when there is an imbalance of power — when society imposes decisions on marginalised people (schippers, bakker, & peters, 2018; baur & abma, 2011). their freedoms and their opportunities for learning must be considered when support is provided; this requires working to ensure that their experiences of daily living are what the individual or family concerned regard as desirable. the second set of principles of qol relate to specific aspects of development and learning and can be divided into those concerning the individual, and those concerning the environment. the individual: these principles include accepting that qol is affected by the resilience of the person, their perceptions, their self-image, the degree of empowerment that is available to them and can be encouraged in and developed by them, and the extent of their personal control over situations and activities. in this context there needs to be recognition of the intrapersonal and interpersonal variability that occurs amongst individuals and families. one might ask, for example, how familiarity and unfamiliarity impact the various principles outlined, such as perception and self-image. we know that an unfamiliar environment as well as conditions of new learning can frequently reduce behavioural performance even to the level of impairing a person’s language and motor behaviour (hutt, hutt, & ounsted, 1963; brown & semple, 1970). the environment: these principles concern the wide range of life domains that every individual experiences. they relate to education, family life, financial security, links with the community, type and level of employment, and ability to live effectively both in the family and in the communities with which each person is associated. all of these areas are important for individuals. they are also critical for families, and particularly family carers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 5 5 another aspect of environment is holism. that is, all components of qol are linked together, for each affects the others. health impacts both physical activity and psychological state, but physical activity and psychological state also influence health. how the qol components are managed together requires a re-examination not only of the services provided in each of the life domains but also of the links between them; moreover, comprehensive and supportive multidisciplinary teams must be developed, along with opportunities for engaging with the domains. this fundamentally affects how families operate, how communities respond to individuals, and what facilities are required in areas such as employment and leisure. putting principles and areas together imagining and planning for the future is important for people with challenges and disabilities as well as for their families and their support services. such imagining needs to take into account all the areas itemised above. for example, predicting the impact of an increasingly aging population and imagining their needs is critical for countries and agencies if they are to provide the necessary services and avert complex challenges where the resources to meet the requirements are not available. a good example of this is the fact that in many developed countries certain types of surgical operation (e.g., hip replacements) are often delayed, not only causing pain but also impacting psychological and physical well-being. from the above, we see that the principles of qol apply not just to children and young adults but to everyone across their lifespan. the variables involved, including the types of supports and the types of interventions that are required, will differ both by amount and level throughout life. for example, many people with idd may be included in comprehensive education; however, in many countries, when they come to the end of the school cycle they are frequently sent to agencies that provide workshop-like activities segregated from the general community, where they do not get adequate payment. finally, a critical issue affecting qol is the availability of opportunities for the individual to make choices. people require access to a wide range of opportunities, and they should be supported and able to express their choices. indeed, to teach using people’s own choices is much more likely to influence behaviour in a positive direction (brown et al., 1992). in other words, individuals need support when they make choices, but they also require understanding and, depending on the nature of the challenges, adequate time to absorb information and to build this into their learned repertoire. all the above principles and ideas are relevant not just to the individual who has idd but to a wide range of individuals who face challenges in everyday life. the articles — rationale and relevance one of the challenges facing qualitative research that applies to many of the articles in this special issue is an embedded notion in some areas of science that the results from such research are subjective and not objective. both dehaene (2014) and patton (2015) have international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 6 6 challenged this view and brown (2017) provided arguments and examples to illustrate that such data when appropriately recorded are objective. it is the interpretation of the results that is often subjective. in the articles that follow precautions have been taken to check reliability and validity. the sequence of articles in this special issue is strongly influenced by our view that without a detailed knowledge of the issues faced by individuals and families the development of policy is likely to be faulty. we begin with a research-based article to give a clear overview of qol measurement and structure in the general population. the article by bob cummins covers large samples of various general populations and goes on to describe the levels of satisfaction in relation to economic and social status. he puts forward a theoretical framework to indicate how qol can be viewed as a homeostatic process that at times may temporarily shift as the result of variations occurring in an individual’s life. he argues that a person’s basic outlook or satisfaction is related to inheritance but can be modified by life experiences. in the next article kierstyn butler examines one of the tools for assessing fqol. she describes the background to the family quality of life survey and provides examples of the types of answers one obtains from families and the relevance to individual as well as to overall family need. such information is important for the future development of services. she also provides information for using the survey for clinical applications as well as in research. the following two articles are by members of the same family, margaret and nicole kyrkou, a mother and daughter who are professionals in the field of disabilities and who themselves have a family member with severe disabilities. the articles look at a range of challenges for the person with disability and the day-to-day challenges for other family members. these represent areas that professionals and others involved with such families need to be aware of so they will be able to take appropriate action. the article by meaghan edwards et al. examines ways in which our understanding of family needs can be supported in terms of improving individual social conditions through applied psychological and social actions. in a study of multicultural families in the netherlands, femke boelsma and colleagues examine the social experiences, situations, and needs of parents and their children in their communities. recognising the importance of validating interview statements, the researchers constructed a detailed analysis of the data involving independent assessment by several skilled assessors. the results indicated a wide range of views underscoring how the norms and values of society influence the types and levels of support that vulnerable families receive. the authors emphasise the needs of the family members regardless of where they are living: their need to feel their family is accepted by society, and to feel that others perceive them as being full members of the local community. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 7 7 hanna peels and sofie sergeant take on an important challenge for individuals who have limited oral communication. the authors have developed an interesting way of tapping into the interests and life experiences of people who face difficulties in interacting with those around them. the authors are exploring imagery through verbal narrative and metaphor and individuals’ drawings as a basis for interaction. their careful application of qualitative methodology is used to increase the range of discussion involving their clients and to cross-validate the findings that emerge. such an approach has interesting possibilities and is suited to deal with an issue raised by brown (2017) and discussed earlier in this article: that qualitative data are fundamentally objective not subjective. information obtained from indivduals and recorded is factual. the challenge is to provide rational and valid interpretations of the hard data collected. it is the interpretation that is in danger of being subjective. the next two articles, one by belaynesh tefera et al. and the other by sue wilson demonstrate how the qol/fqol paradigm and its principles can be applied within very different situations that present a variety of challenges, and that arise under very different circumstances. tefera and colleagues examine the plight of families in ethiopia and describe major social and psychological stresses for families and children, particularly those with physical disabilities. the article provides examples of the importance of insight and the relevance of changing existing values if people and policy in all countries are to respect and support individuals with such needs. this is an example of the types of change envisaged by writers such as parmenter (2018) and turnbull (2018). the following article, by wilson, uses the qol conceptual framework and its principles to examine the challenges related to anxiety and self-image that preservice teachers face in learning aspects of mathematics teaching, and the potential negative effects on the performance of the students they will eventually teach. the final article, by bob schalock et al., concerns policy; it underscores many of the comments and recommendations in the previous articles. the development of policy in a systematic manner is critically important, yet policy also has to be developed from the experiences of individuals with disabilities and other challenges, and their families and other primary carers, along with professionals who have intimate knowledge of the families concerned. such a need is also reflected in an article by schippers, zuna, and brown (2015) in which they provided an integrated framework of policy and practice at the individual and the family levels, with positive qol outcomes as the ultimate aim of professional support and policy making. concluding comments in this special issue we have included several articles that explore newer approaches to validating and interpreting research involving qualitative methodologies. this is critical because international journal of child, youth and family studies (2018) 9(4): 1–11 8 8 results from qualitative research are often accorded less weight due to the strong influence of a traditionl positivist approach that views qualitative data as subjective. we need to take seriously the scientifically recorded experiences and views of individuals with life challenges and their family members, and of practitioners if we are to see changes in policy and support. the majority of these articles are based on cooperative research or written by authors with lived experience themselves within their family. with regard to fqol and qol, the experiences of those who live with disability on a daily basis are critical to our understanding of individual challenges and disabilities. first, as content, their direct experience adds to the relevance of research projects and practice; second, the process of attempting to understand those experiences leads to new and creative methods of exploration, trust, and commitment amongst those involved. when people with disabilities and other challenges are actively involved as equal partners in both research and practice it adds to their self esteem and feeling of belonging, and thus to their qol (frankena, naaldenberg, cardol, linehan, & van schrojenstein lantman-de valk, 2015; schippers et al., 2018). experience in the community is important, as are the resulting perceptions of both family members and the community. the articles underscore the arguments of authors such as turnbull 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(2018). four under-considered intersections. in r. i. brown & r. m. faragher (eds.), quality of life and intellectual disability: knowledge application to other social and educational challenges (softcover ed., pp. 287–298). new york, ny: nova science. turnbull, a., brown, i., & turnbull, h. r., iii (eds.). (2004). families and people with mental retardation and quality of life: international perspectives. washington, dc: american association on intellectual and developmental disabilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jppi.12208 http://dx.doi.org/10.1352/0047-6765(2002)040%3c0457:cmaaoq%3e2.0.co;2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jppi.12111 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jppi.12188 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 121–131 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019941 deinstitutionalization of the child care system in lithuania jolanta pivoriene abstract: the reform of the child care system in lithuania started with the ministry of social security and labor approving the strategic guidelines for deinstitutionalization in 2012, followed by the transition from institutional care to community-based services in 2014. the strategic aim of the reform was to create a system including a comprehensive range of services that would enable every child and their family or guardians to receive individual services as well as community assistance according to their needs. the process of transformation of institutional care was designed in two steps: creation of the necessary conditions for the transformation, which took place in 2014 to 2017, and development of infrastructure in the regions, planned for 2017 to 2020, but now extended to 2023. the goal of this article is to discuss the deinstitutionalization process by presenting legal regulations, information about the conceptualization and scope of the project, and evidence based on documents and statistical and secondary data analysis. i will also discuss possible contradictions between analytical and political discourses, and quantitative and qualitative evidence. keywords: deinstitutionalization, child care system, community-based services jolanta pivoriene phd is an associate professor in the faculty of human and social studies at mykolas romeris university, ateities str. 20, lt-08303 vilnius, lithuania. email: jolantapiv@mruni.eu mailto:jolantapiv@mruni.eu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 122 this paper describes the process of deinstitutionalization of the child care system in lithuania, which is still ongoing, from its beginning in 2012 to the present (2020). it is based on a presentation given at the 34th fice international congress on residential and out-of-home care, “better future opportunities for children and young people in multicultural societies”, which was held in tel aviv in 2019. as the opening doors for europe’s children (2020a) website states: the transition from institutional to familyand community-based care has received … support from the european union and its member states. on one hand, the eu has been issuing policy guidance and allocating significant amounts of eu funds while, on the other hand, countries across europe were increasingly adopting strategies or action plans to shift away from institutions. (para. 1) lithuania was one of the countries shifting away from institutions. in 2012, the strategic guidelines for deinstitutionalization (order no. a1-517, 2012) were approved. in 2014, an action plan for the transition from institutional care to community-based services for the disabled and children deprived of parental care (order no. a1-83, 2014) was introduced. the process of transforming institutional care was designed to take place in two steps: (a) creation of the necessary conditions for the transformation (2014–2017); and (b) development of infrastructure in the regions (2017–2020), which has been extended to 2023. deinstitutionalization can be viewed from different points of view, which sometimes contradict each other, or at least do not match. in an ideal situation, the political approach and agenda should be supported by a theoretical analytical approach, and by evidence at both the meso and micro levels; moreover, the theoretical approach and the evidence should complement each other. however, this is not always the case in practice. this article will address these problematic issues by examining documents, and through statistical and secondary data analysis. as the deinstitutionalization process in lithuania is ongoing and as yet there has been little research done, this paper is based more on description than in-depth analysis. insights from some of the few qualitative studies that have been done, those by čižikienė (2018), genienė and šumskienė (2016), gražulis and čižikienė (2016), and gvaldaitė and šimkonytė (2016), will be presented. legal regulation the adoption of the european commission recommendation on investing in children in 2013 created momentum as it called on member states to use european structural and investment funds (esif) to stop the expansion of institutional care in europe and promote quality familyand community-based care. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2020a, p. 13) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 123 member state countries are making systematic progress towards the development of alternative child care services to transform the lives of children living in institutions. (janta et al., 2019, pp. 43–44) according to the official documents mentioned above that established the reform in lithuania, the strategic aim was to create a system of a comprehensive range of services that would enable every child, person with disabilities, or their families (guardians) to receive individual services and assistance in the community according to their needs. the first specific aim is that children and their families (guardians) will receive community-based services according to their individual needs; the second sets out the same goal for adults with disabilities. the third specific aim seeks (a) to promote a change of moral values in society while forming a positive public attitude towards the restructuring of the system, and (b) to ensure the transparency of these processes. the first step undertaken was to create the necessary conditions for the transition from institutional care to the sustainable development of familyand community-based social care services in lithuania by (a) evaluating the individual needs of every service recipient; (b) determining the motivations of the staff, and what new knowledge and skills they will need; (c) developing an individual care plan for every resident of a social care institution, as well as a plan for the transition for each institution, and regional plans of services and infrastructure; (d) preparing the methodological basis (methodological documents, legislation, etc.) for the new types of service; (e) informing and educating the public, and social marketing. the goal of the second step is to provide new forms of community-based social services for the target groups and to develop the necessary infrastructure for the services in the context of available regional services and infrastructure development plans. according to the state child rights protection and adoption service (2015), based on approved legal documents: from november 2015 the state child rights protection and adoption service under the ministry of social security and labour together with the department of disabled affairs under the ministry of social security and labour implements the project “creation of the conditions of the system in lithuania of sustainable transition from institutional care to the services provided in the family and community”. the purpose of the project: to create the conditions that are necessary for the development and implementation in lithuania of [an] effective system of transition from institutional care to the services provided in the family and community. the purpose of the institutional care restructuring [is] to pursue ensuring [a] sustainable environment and conditions for every child (and for the intellectually and/or mentally disabled child) to grow in the biological family, and for the children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 124 deprived of parental care to grow in the foster, adoptive family or household, to be assisted by the community. (para. 1–2) another important step was the centralization of the child welfare system (lietuvos respublikos socialinės apsaugos ir darbo ministerija, 2018): the lithuanian government has established the child protection and adoption department under the ministry of social security and labour, integrating regional child protection agencies under its umbrella…. the government has also created a case management service to identify the child protection issues and address them in an efficient way. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2020c, para. 2) moreover: each municipality in lithuania has now the duty to develop a network of care centres responsible for recruitment, training and support of professional foster carers. in addition, small group home projects are piloted nationwide and have proved so far to be an effective measure to organised care provision. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2019, p. 2) according to the new regulations, “a child removed from parental care can be placed in the childcare institution only in exceptional cases where there is no possibility to take care for (guard) the child in the family of foster parents, care centre or household” (state child rights protection and adoption service, n.d., para. 1). in addition: from 2020 the children removed from parental care and the children at social risk cannot be provided with … social care (with the exception of a short-term social care up to 3 months) in the social care homes for children. (state child rights protection and adoption service, n.d., para. 8) scope the european union plays a key role in transforming child protection systems, by providing the additional investment needed to accelerate reform, leading the transfer of knowledge and experience among member states, and keeping the transition from institutional to familyand community-based care high on the political agenda. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2020a, p. 5) during the current funding period, €76 million of structural funds have been allocated for the transition from institutional to community-based care in lithuania. out of €76 million, €38 million have been allocated for the development, piloting and implementation of the new social services; the remaining amount is used towards the development of infrastructure. most recently, €14 million have been allocated to the municipalities across lithuania to strengthen the role of small group international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 125 homes and day care centres for children. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2019, p. 2) based on eu data: the number of children growing up in institutions … decreased and, in 2018, family-based care grew in most of the campaign countries. for example, in romania, bulgaria, latvia, lithuania, hungary, serbia, and moldova, the number of children without parental care who grow up in foster and kinship families exceeded the number of children living in institutions. (opening doors for europe’s children, 2020a, p. 15) in lithuania, the decrease in the number of institutionalized children was due to the fact that “the childcare institutions restructured themselves into community childcare homes. as demonstrated by the data of 2018, there are 84 community childcare homes in the country that accommodate 490 children” (state child rights protection and adoption service, n.d., para. 7). table 1. children in care in lithuania 2017–2019 all children in care children in institutions year annual change n % of children in care annual change (%) n δn % 2017 8912 n/a n/a 2872 32.2 n/a 2018 8177 -735 -9.0 2419 29.6 -2.6 2019 7446 -731 -9.8 1954 26.2 -3.4 note. data taken from valstybės vaiko teisių apsaugos ir įvaikinimo tarnyba [state child rights protection and adoption service], 2020. in recent years, the number of child care institutions and the number of children in care institutions has decreased in lithuania (see table 1). however, deinstitutionalization is a complex issue, involving much more than simply restructuring care homes and allocating children to other places. in the process of deinstitutionalization, the closure of care institutions is a consequence of the transformation, but not its primary point. conceptualization the theoretical conceptualization of deinstitutionalization mostly began in disability studies and with people involved in the disabilities rights social movement. nowadays deinstitutionalization is seen as having a wider scope and is generalized to various vulnerable groups. deinstitutionalization has been defined as a change in the organization of the provision of services that is implemented in three stages: (a) release of service users from residential institutions, (b) directing potential users to alternative institutions, and (c) development of community services (baghragh, 1996). another definition of deinstitutionalization, one that deals more with human rights issues, sees it as a means for better ensuring the human rights of various international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 126 vulnerable groups (johnson, 1998). dunajevas (2012) combined both approaches and described deinstitutionalization as a change from a hierarchical structure and relations to a network and networking, as the right of organizations to control people’s actions gives way to the right of people to control their own actions. pūras (2012) argued that the changes to the system that are necessary for deinstitutionalization should be guided by a holistic understanding of human rights and a concern for the best interests of child and family. it is important that all involved in the process, whether directly or indirectly, ground their actions in a common accepted understanding of deinstitutionalization; differences in deinstitutionalization theories and processes could lead to miscommunication between social policy makers, social services providers, and service users. the explanation of deinstitutionalization in lithuania follows theoretical paradigms. stakeholders involved in the reform, the asociacija “nvo vaikams konfederacija” et al. (2016), have developed informational materials stating that deinstitutionalization is a systemic change based on political will, the end result of which is reduced reliance on institutional care and increased access to services aimed at maintaining children in their biological families and communities. they further state that the reform seeks to reduce dependence on institutional care by increasing the services available in family and community environments; preventing the separation of children from parents by providing appropriate support for children, families, and communities; and developing support and assistance for those leaving care (both institutional and non-institutional). the main components of deinstitutionalization are identified as: investing in families and children, developing services, using and adapting existing resources, creating appropriate care environments, doing ongoing work with the community and developing community sensitization, and investing in workers (asociacija “nvo vaikams konfederacija” et al., 2016). in practice, there will be two active systems — two paradigms of care — that exist side by side during the period of transition. challenges are created when decisions are made to close residential institutions without fully deciding how community-based services will be provided and whether provision of these services will be ensured. moreover, residential institutions usually aim to keep their existing power and will make use of their financial, human, and technical resources to do so (genienė & šumskienė, 2016, p. 55). evidence as deinstitutionalization in lithuania has progressed, little reliable and valid evidence has been collected. the first step of the reform has been evaluated (bgi consulting, 2020), but only a summary of the results had been presented to the public at the time of writing this article. an overview of some qualitative studies (čižikienė, 2018; genienė & šumskienė, 2016; gražulis & čižikienė, 2016; gvaldaitė & šimkonytė, 2016) that give insights into the process of deinstitutionalization is presented below. it should be noted that these qualitative studies were conducted and published earlier than the quantitative data from valstybės vaiko teisių apsaugos ir international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 127 įvaikinimo tarnyba [state child rights protection and adoption service], (2020), which were collected at least two years later. quantitative research data show that the beginning of the process was not easy. both gvaldaitė and šimkonytė (2016), and pūras (2012) agreed that deinstitutionalization requires more than just the restructuring of residential institutions. even though many institutions have been converted to smaller living units, they still do not and cannot provide a close family environment, and thus are not suitable for positive child socialization. the voices of children best illustrate how deinstitutionalization was implemented in practice. bgi consulting’s (2020) evaluation survey of 205 children in care who moved to alternative (community-based) care homes showed that they evaluated the transition positively, emphasizing that the community-based care is better at meeting their needs, especially emotional ones, that it allows more independent living, and that it better prepares them for care leaving. however, some elements of institutional care remain: control of food and housekeeping, daily and weekly agendas, rigid rules, a dominance hierarchy among the children, bullying, extensive record-keeping, and inspections by managers (bgi consulting, 2020). care workers also admit that these disadvantages exist (bgi consulting, 2020). qualitative data show that although the setting may be new, an institutional culture very similar to the old institutional culture arose; the buildings and staff remained the same, and newly created community services were not so different from the services that had been provided by the residential institution (genienė & šumskienė, 2016). in the transition to community-based services, the responsibilities, functions, and activities of care workers changed; care workers needed to update their knowledge and apply different working methods. during bgi consulting’s (2020) evaluation survey, the generic and professional (subject-based) competences of 104 care workers were assessed. the survey found that some generic skills — interpersonal, leadership, and teamwork — could be improved; also, some workers lacked motivation, the courage to act independently, and change-management skills. among professional competences, the ability to work effectively with the residents’ biological families required improvement. this involves a wide range of skills, starting from how to acquire basic knowledge about a resident’s family, and then how to apply appropriate working methods with that family. however, not all care workers surveyed were motivated to involve a family in the process. other areas where knowledge was lacking were psychology of children and youth, sexuality training, working with trauma, prevention of bullying, consultation skills, ability to motivate children, and stress and conflict management (bgi consulting, 2020). care workers were highly motivated to provide community-based services; indeed, this motivation rose during the reform process (bgi consulting, 2020). however, there were factors that diminished motivation: inadequate salary, heavy workload, lack of services in the community, lack of dissemination of good practice examples, and lack of clear regulation of care workers (bgi consulting, 2020). the fact that care workers viewed their work as meaningful and important was partial compensation for the inadequate salary; however, a better salary was named as the main international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 128 factor in a care worker’s decision to change to another job (bgi consulting, 2020). qualitative data show that those who had a strong motivation to work with children were willing to continue their work under the new conditions, and those with weaker motivation had more doubts about the new system and whether they would be able to conform to it (gvaldaitė & šimkonytė, 2016). the evaluation survey showed that more than half of the participating care workers evaluated the deinstitutionalization reform as “excellent”, and said that both their emotional state and that of the children had improved; as well, the workers felt they had a better perspective on their work (bgi consulting, 2020). these data were supported by qualitative data from two recent studies. in gvaldaitė and šimkonytė’s (2016) study, all informants agreed that the reform was necessary because the institutions were not the equal of a family environment in meeting the needs of children. in čižikienė’s (2018) study, interviewed social workers agreed that in a process of deinstitutionalization the transition to community services is necessary and evaluated it positively. however, looking more deeply into these qualitative data, some of the interviews showed that professionals were lacking information on the topic of deinstitutionalization within care institutions, and had not had discussions on the topic with external experts or with representatives of responsible authorities. ignorance about the reform process increased anxiety among workers: they raised questions and doubts, they remembered unsuccessful projects, and they worried about their jobs or changes in duties; for this reason, it seems that some social workers were sceptical about the deinstitutionalization and even opposed it (gvaldaitė & šimkonytė, 2016). the same studies provide evidence of the challenges faced during deinstitutionalization: there is a lack of a clear and unified action plan to be implemented in different regions and of a clear financial mechanism, the legal framework needs review, the right human resources management must be carefully chosen, workers need training and retraining, the public must be kept informed about the positive impact of transformation on the development of children (čižikienė, 2018), the deinstitutionalization process lacks political will and the unitary participation of all subjects involved (gvaldaitė & šimkonytė, 2016), and there is a lack of public support and developed community services that would ensure that new needs and requirements in the ongoing process of deinstitutionalization are met (čižikienė, 2018). an urgent issue arises from the seemingly complementary aims of reducing the number of young children accommodated in institutions while building up community services to decrease the number of vulnerable families and their children. social workers worry that the directive to keep the number of children in residential and community-based institutions as low as possible will result in children being forcibly sent back to live in their own problematic families, or left with them, and in children being transferred to other places of residence merely to satisfy a quota, regardless of their actual situation, needs, and best interests (gvaldaitė & šimkonytė, 2016). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 129 as mentioned earlier, there is a critical shortage of social services for families. the 2018 country fact sheet for lithuania (opening doors for europe’s children, 2019) notes: despite strong commitment and active engagement of the lithuanian government in deinstitutionalization reform which makes feasible progress nationwide, the lack of continuity measures in the project’s planning presents a challenge to developing a well-functioning and sustainable network of services in some regions. (p. 2) conclusion the process of the transformation of institutional care in lithuania was designed in two steps: (a) creation of the necessary conditions for the transformation (2014–2017), and (b) development of infrastructure in the regions, planned for 2017 to 2020, but now extended to 2023 as progress was slower than anticipated. in 2020, the assessment of the first step has been completed and will be made available to the public1. the conceptualization of deinstitutionalization in lithuania is grounded in theoretical reasoning, and there is no big contradiction between analytical and political discourses. however, there are differences in what was planned and what is actually happening. quantitative and qualitative empirical data supplement each other, and looking at both gives a fuller picture of the state of deinstitutionalization in lithuania. however, some contradictions were found in the qualitative and qualitative data, especially when the focus was switched from general statements to everyday practice. statistical data show that the planned quantitative outcomes of the reform have been reached. nevertheless, there are still major challenges. for example, the perceived necessity to reach a quantitative measure — to diminish the number of children in institutions — may result in children being left with, or reunited with, their families even when it is not in their best interests. meeting such challenges will be an important focus in the ongoing deinstitutionalization effort in lithuania. 1 at the time of writing this article, only a preliminary summary of the results was available. please see http://www.pertvarka.lt/wp-content/uploads/_mediavault/2020/03/pertvarka_santrauka_20200328.pdf http://www.pertvarka.lt/wp-content/uploads/_mediavault/2020/03/pertvarka_santrauka_20200328.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 121–131 130 references asociacija “nvo vaikams konfederacija”, žiburio fondas, & norway grants. 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rethinking photography as event kimberley ainsworth abstract: within contemporary early childhood contexts, children’s photography is often seen as a democratic practice that incorporates children’s photographs as representations of children’s inner experiences of thinking, feeling, and learning. this article outlines tensions arising from the author’s photography inquiries, which took place within a canadian preschool setting. within the context of early childhood education (ece) practice, anthropocentric, representational views of photography and child-centered practice are critiqued and contrasted with a relational materialist stance. the impacts of onto-epistemological positionings on ece conceptions of knowledge and knowledge production, understandings of identities –of both children and early childhood educators – and impacts on studio art practices are considered (atkinson, 2011; kind, 2013; lenz taguchi, 2011). viewing early childhood photography as “event” and centering upon the materiality of photographs and camera, are presented as more ethical and authentic means of ece art practice inquiry. keywords: early childhood education, photography, documentation, relational materialism, early childhood art kimberley ainsworth is a graduate student in the school of child and youth care, and manager of child care services, at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: kainsw@uvic.ca mailto:kainsw@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 742 what might it mean to consider the camera and photographs as bodies within the early childhood classroom? what might be set in motion as a result of centering upon the materiality of camera and photographs and decentering children? what might we notice if we shifted from a child-centered to a relational materialist paradigm – focusing our gaze upon the entanglements of children-camera-adults-photographs (e. edwards, 2012; kind, 2013; lenz taguchi, 2011). in this article, i draw upon my experiences as an early childhood educator to explore these questions. as a foundation for this inquiry, i reflect upon past tensions i have experienced in incorporating children’s photography within my preschool program. thinking of the camera and photographs as bodies requires us to move beyond contemporary anthropocentric positioning of early childhood pedagogy (lenz taguchi, 2011). within the ece classroom, the camera is often seen as a tool for documenting children’s learning (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 2007; c. edwards, 2012; government of british columbia, 2008). my intention is to explore other meanings for photography, viewing it as a studio inquiry. in shifting to a relational materialist paradigm, i will contemplate what is privileged as “knowledge” and “learning”, and how identities of children, educators, classroom, camera, and photographs are shaped. in moving beyond human-centric thinking, i will propose a shift from child-centered pedagogy and consider the ethics of such a shift. finally, i will explore how we might treat photography within the ece classroom, as “event” (atkinson, 2011; richardson & walker, 2011). what might we learn in following the camera’s movements? what might we learn of the camera’s entanglements with children, teachers, rules, histories, space, time and other materials? photography in the classroom: flows and tensions over the course of three years of ece practice, the camera had a regular presence within my preschool classroom and served several purposes. in my own hands, i saw the camera, primarily, as an instrument for documenting the children’s learning. this practice of photography, which is inspired by reggio emilia philosophy, is often seen as an essential aspect of reflexive ece practice in the euro-western world (carr, 2001; government of british columbia, 2008; macdonald & sánchez, 2010; rinaldi, 2012; tarr, 2011). in keeping with this, i used the photographs and my subsequent reflections as a means through which i could “listen” more deeply to the “hundred languages of children” (fyfe, 2012; rinaldi, 2012). at other times, my photographs served as a means of archiving our experiences within the classroom, for the benefit of the children’s family members. these photographs offered us an historical preservation of special classroom memories. to this end, i carefully selected photographs that revealed heartwarming and coherent vignettes to display on preschool walls and in the children’s learning stories. in these ways my relationship with photography in the classroom flowed: the camera helped me to meet my purposes of building community within the early childhood setting and provoking learning through our (the children’s, family members’ and mine) critical reflections. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 743 however, i also experienced tensions through the children’s engagements with photography. from time to time, i offered my camera to the children to take their own photographs. as with others in my field, i conceptualized children’s photography as a democratic practice for giving children an alternative language of expression or “voice” (clark, 2005; demarie & ethridge, 2006; government of british columbia, 2008; harris & manatakis, 2013). i assumed that the photos would be mirrors of the children’s experiences and values and give me insight into their lives in our preschool. in reality, i found the children’s photographs intriguing, yet also puzzling. the photographs revealed many close-ups of shoes, faces, backs of heads, obscure snippets of our play materials and preschool space. it seemed to me that in the children’s hands, the camera revealed only fleeting glimpses of the inner worlds of the children that i wished to capture. while the photographs offered up interesting perspectives of our space, our materials, each other, and how they valued these, the children’s approach to photography did not align with my own. as well, the children’s reflections upon the photographs lacked the engagement i wished. in keeping with reggio emilia philosophy, i viewed my desired role as educator as “co-inquirer” with children. as carolyn edwards (2012) states, “the teacher’s role centers on provoking occasions of discovery through a kind of alert, inspired listening and stimulation of dialogue, co-action, and co-construction of knowledge” (pp. 152-153). in contrast to these educator goals, i was struggling with my sense of disappointment in the children’s engagements with the camera. i made a few futile attempts to redirect the children’s photography experiences, for example, asking the children to imagine that they were taking photographs for visitors from outer space. i appealed to the children to take photographs that would explain to alien visitors who we were and what our preschool was about. during each “re-focusing” attempt, the children listened to my instructions respectfully then scurried off to continue their photography experiences where they had left off, with my instructions cast aside. these resistances felt anything but coconstructive in nature! i felt ineffective and was left contemplating my identity as educator. my own purposeful intentions with the camera seemed at odds with the, ostensibly, spontaneous intentions of the children’s. i sought to make sense of the children’s relationship with the camera. i pondered why the children might neglect my precious camera and leave it lying about, seemingly forgotten. i questioned why the children would loop the camera casually over their wrists to wear as a fashion accessory rather than use as intended. i wondered why one child seemed only interested in playing with the settings on my camera rather than taking photographs. my own complex history with the camera was at odds with those of these children. the children’s photographs, their engagement with the camera, and their subsequent reflections never quite met with my expectations. in this space of tension, i stumbled about pedagogically, looking for a means to align the children’s intentions to mine. in retrospect, the entanglements of children-camera-teacher-photographs-spacehistories-time were tugging at me with lessons i was not yet ready to consider. as long as my focus remained child-centered, the materiality of the camera and photographs escaped international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 744 my gaze. through my anthropocentric stance, i viewed the photograph images as holding purely representational value and offering single images of “truth”. yet, perhaps there were other ways of viewing photography in our preschool – as partial, subjective, and offering multiple possibilities? i needed to lean into the dissension to think more broadly about how knowledge – both the children’s and my own – could evolve through our engagements with the camera. shifting to thinking of the children’s photography as studio inquiry rather than a channel into children’s inner worlds opens up new possibilities. a relational materialist epistemological perspective offers inroads for me to explore alternative photography meanings and possibilities. ruptures dennis atkinson (2011), a former secondary school art educator turned scholar, points out how theoretical positions offer us lenses through which we come to understand our worlds. our conceptions of what counts as knowledge, how knowledge is produced, and how we view identities of educators and children, are all shaped and regulated through the onto-epistemological frameworks we hold. atkinson (2011) states that experiences that do not fit within these existing frameworks create tensions that can serve as precious ruptures from which new perspectives can emerge. in the world of artist william kentridge, working through a stuck, in-between moment is, “where the real work takes place” (sollins & dowling, 2009). as atkinson (2011) argues: we need pedagogies that are open to the irreducible singularity of what happens, pedagogies that can be fed and nourished by the surprise of the unexpected. such pedagogies would then be of the event, pedagogies against the state, within their respective contexts. (p. 19) in his exploration of pedagogy in art education, atkinson (2011) cautions us that when we define pedagogy as simply knowledge transfer from teacher to student, then learning becomes subordinated to teaching. in reflecting upon my own classroom experiences, i wondered how my goals for the children’s learning were shaped by my own definitions and expectations of knowledge and knowledge production. had i expected the children to simply follow my lead? how often had i prodded the children to tell me how the photographs represented their inner worlds, rather than noticing what and how the children interacted with the camera and photographs? my own conceptions of what counted as children’s knowledge in photography inquiry blinded me to what children-camera assemblages were trying to teach me. centering upon the assemblages of children-camera-photographs offers interesting new spaces for me to reconsider my definitions of learning, teaching, and knowledge. what if i suspended my own definitions of camera and photography knowledge to engage in more authentic co-inquiry, with the children, allowing the camera to lead the way? what if i made space in my inquiry to consider the materiality of camera and photographs and the entanglements between photographer, subjects, teacher, children, camera, histories, rules, and motivations? in the following sections i will expand upon each of these rupture points. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 745 camera and photography meanings photography meanings can be seen as being shaped historically, socially, culturally, and discursively. sylvia kind (2013), in writing about ece studio inquiries using photography, states that historically, photographs have been viewed as presenting “the real, tangible, and objective world” (p. 2). as kind points out, these meanings assume an agential photographer/viewer and passive subject – a human-centric approach. the “material turn” has brought new thinking to the studies of archeology, anthropology, and geography. within the field of early childhood education, this post-human movement has changed how photographic images are interpreted (e. edwards, 2012; hultman & lenz taguchi, 2010; kind, 2013; vestberg, 2008). historical, anthropocentric views of photography are now critiqued as failing to capture the inter-relatedness – the layered and nuanced entanglements – of photographer, subjects, camera, and photographs. in my own classroom photography experiences, i was caught up in the polarities of representation and product versus ambiguity and process; thinking separated from doing and feeling; and camera as instrument versus camera with agency. i made suggestions to the children that they take photographs of their favorite areas of our preschool spaces and felt disappointment when the children instead used the camera as a prop in their dramatic play. what if i considered how the materiality of the camera called the children to engage in such playful encounters? what new relationships and histories were formed between children and cameras as a result of this play? what else did the cameras call children to do? what if i printed the children’s photographs and allowed the children to use these as they wished as part of a studio art inquiry? what might the children teach me about photography, as a result? my gaze excluded the multiple, complex, and rich in-between spaces that comprise the world of the camera and photography. my humanist-social constructionist gaze also assumed that there was an essential inner world of children waiting for the “skilled” teacher to access. this takenfor-granted gaze excluded the multiple entanglements of material, teacher, histories, time and space, and what these might teach me. materials cannot be understood in isolation; they are always in relationship with one another. as mccoy (2012) states: matter is not a formless blob that is given shape by our imaginings of it. it is not inert substance waiting to be discovered and described. it acts; matter pushes back. some encounters might just be collisions—random and chance, but when encounters are lasting and they cohere, they are not just collisions. forces are produced. momentum. counterforces. (p. 764) paying attention to the flux and agency of the materials, human and non-human – how they collide and co-shape one another – opens up exciting new ways to view studio art practices. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 746 centering the camera, decentering the child as i reflect upon my experiences in the ece classroom, i can see how the identity of the camera and photographs were always present but silenced. assumed to be passive, instrumental, and objective, i never considered the multiple identities and possibilities of these non-human subjects. materials ask questions of us and we respond in particular ways in return (ingold, 2007; lenz taguchi, 2011). my child-centered pedagogy limited the questions i was open to receive. critical child developmental psychologist, erica burman (2008), has queried the ethics of a child-centered approach. burman (2008) argues that while child-centeredness sounds emancipatory, the child-centered discourse regulates us by keeping our focus on the individual child and disregarding social, political, and cultural forces at play. post-humanists argue that a child-centered view disregards the non-human materiality also actively participating in the life of an early childhood program (kind, 2013; lenz taguchi, 2011). these non-human materials are performative, always in relationship with human and non-human matter (paciniketchabaw, personal communication, august 12, 2013). as an early childhood educator, i can widen my gaze by noticing the multitude of assemblages that surround me – assemblages of children, adults, and non-human matter (lenz taguchi, 2011). in widening my gaze, i notice the identities of materials are never fixed or static, but always in process: “caught up in the currents of the lifeworld” (ingold, 2007, p. 1). non-human cameras and photographs interact in particular ways with bodies, hands, histories, space, and other materials. centering upon the materiality of the camera and decentering children does not mean excluding children from my inquiries. rather, in centering upon the in-between spaces of child-camera/photographs, i learn more about children. light is shone on the shadows of previously unconsidered entanglements of the children with materials. with a relational materialist lens, i reflect back upon the preschool photography experiences and see how the materiality of the camera, with its interesting buttons, called children to engage with it, to tinker with its settings, to play with its digital images. in children’s hands, the camera called upon children to stretch themselves into new roles, not only as photographers but also artists and creators of new games. i see the delight that digital images of our classroom play materials held for the children. caught in the power of the lens, these play materials were magnified, framed, distorted, and isolated from other visual contexts. i see the pull these images had for the children in creating games for one another of “guess-what-this-is?” and in reflecting back, i wish that i had welcomed these playful games into our classroom instead of resisting these important camera encounters. how might the relationships of children and camera have evolved if i had centered upon the materiality of the camera and photographs? what might have been set in motion in our classroom had i offered several cameras to the group, rather than a single camera? i wonder how the materiality of photographs might have engaged the children had i set up a provocation of the children’s printed images, to do with what they pleased. inviting the materiality of cameras and photographs into our space, as studio inquiry with the children, presents so many possibilities! decentering the children and international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 747 centering upon the camera or the photographs as bodies, calls for my authentic engagement in co-inquiry with the children, keeping myself open to the unexpected. i contend this is a most ethical ece practice as it provides new ways of understanding children. photography as event thinking of photography as “event” increases the complexity of art practice, and opens up many more possibilities for photography as a form of ece studio inquiry. richardson and walker (2011) draw upon gilles deleuze’s “philosophical concept of becoming” (p. 6) in defining “event” as, “a multiplicity of relationships in constant flux at the intersection of thought and action” (p. 9). an event is not a single art-making experience but rather a sustained exploration of the art-making process, involving many experiences. thinking of event means thinking more deeply about the process of process. as richardson and walker (2011) explain, “in this sense, experience is not something that happens or has happened; it is something happening” (p. 11). thinking of photography as “event” means moving beyond chronological definitions of time and noticing instead how time is affected through our photography relationships. does time expand or contract or intensify through photography experiences? in paying close attention to the child-camera-photographs-teacher entanglements, i wonder what i might learn about the stories and rules that govern human and non-human relationships with one another? in my noticing the camera and photographs “becoming-with” human and non-human subjects, my notions of children and ece might also be transformed. in attending to the ways that photograph materiality is expressed or suppressed, i must shift from instrumental views of the camera. setting up photography as potential event means keeping open to keenly observing what camera-bodies set in motion in the classroom. it calls upon us to be attuned to the nuances of camera and photography materiality and playing up, or exaggerating the properties of the camera and photograph materiality in innovative and generative ways. conclusion pedagogies are never innocent. in ece practice, they are performative – transforming what we count as knowledge, how we teach and how we view children, teacher, families, and materials’ identities (pacini-ketchabaw, personal communication, august 12, 2013). as an early childhood educator, my meaning making in pedagogical practices continues to evolve. moving away from anthropocentric and logocentric approaches (lenz taguchi, 2011) means viewing cameras, photographs, time, spaces, and all manner of human and non-human materials as agential and active co-participants in ece settings. while counterintuitive to my early childhood educator training, moving beyond child-centered practice and decentering the child widens my gaze so that i might learn more about children through their relationships with the camera and photographs. by centering the camera and photographs and seeing these as bodies within the classroom, i wonder what lines of flight might be possible? what might happen if i viewed the photography as event and paid attention to the camera and photographs’ resistances and their constraints, and followed their flows and rhythms instead? i wonder international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 748 what these observations and sensitivities might generate for my early childhood understanding of children and early childhood pedagogy. i continue to look for ways in which “art practice and research acts provoke one another” (kind, personal communication, august 15, 2013) in my continuing search for more meaningful and ethical ways of being with the children in my ece practice. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 741–750 749 references atkinson, d. 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(2008). archival quality: on photography, materiality and indexicality. photographies, 1(1), 49–65. doi: 10.1080/17540760701786 http://www.pbs.org/art21/films/compassion international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs101201918807 responses to structural violence: the everyday ways in which queer and trans migrants with precarious status respond to and resist the canadian immigration regime edward ou jin lee abstract: this article examines how the canadian immigration regime socially organizes the everyday lives of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. drawing from key findings from an institutional ethnographic study, this article maps out the disjuncture between the actual experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status and the ideological and textual production of precarious status by the canadian state. making explicit this disjuncture reveals how the canadian immigration regime enacts structural violence upon queer and trans migrants. this article also engages with the response-based approach to violence in order to understand how queer and trans migrants actively respond to this violence. in doing so, this article highlights the ways in which queer and trans migrants respond and resist the structural violence integral to the canadian state’s production of precarious status. keywords: lgbtqi, immigration, queer and trans migrants, structural violence edward ou jin lee phd is an assistant professor in the school of social work at the university of montreal, 3150 jean-brillant avenue, montreal qc, h3t 1n8. email: wje.lee@umontreal.ca mailto:wje.lee@umontreal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 71 in the contemporary global arena, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex (lgbtqi) human rights continue to be debated and contested (lee, hafford-letchfield, pullensansfaçon, kamgain, & gleeson, 2017). there remain uneven levels of legal and social acceptance of diverse sexual and gender expressions and identities within and across communities, regions, and states (carroll & ramón mendes, 2017; lee et al., 2017). yet, there is a persistent dominant media representation that frames countries of the global north as lgbtqi human rights leaders, compared to those of an often rigidly homophobic and transphobic global south1 (cantu, 2009; jenicek, lee, & wong, 2009; luibhéid, 2008a; murray, 2016). a closer examination of the lives of lgbtqi people in the global south suggests more complicated realities (awondo, geschiere, & reid, 2012; dutta & roy, 2012; ekine, 2013; lee et al., 2017). over the past decade, canada has asserted itself as a global leader in lgbtqi human rights, as well as a “safe haven” for lgbtqi people who are fleeing homophobia or transphobia (jenicek et al., 2009; nicol, gasse-gates, & mulé, 2014). however, this simplistic framing obscures how the movement of lgbtqi people from the global south to canada is shaped by the complexities of global capitalism, post-colonial nationalism, and national migration laws (el-hage & lee, 2016). the international and forced migration of lgbtqi people from the global south to canada is thus shaped by a complex set of historical, material, and transnational conditions. forced migration is often defined as the coerced movement of people due to the interrelated factors of conflict (war, persecution), development projects, international trade agreements, worker mobility regulations, environment (e.g., climate change and natural disasters), and human trafficking (castles, de haas, & miller, 2014). shaped by processes from both areas of origin and areas of destination, forced migrations are influenced by a multitude of factors and motivations that obscure the line between “forced” and “voluntary” (castles et al., 2014). people who are compelled into a migratory process to canada are caught within the asylum–migration nexus (castles & van hear, 2005), which is shaped by a confluence of factors (conflict, development, etc.). this nexus suggests that for many people compelled into a migratory process to canada, forced and economic migrations are intertwined, and may or may not align with factors required to ensure a successful refugee claim. this complex understanding of forced migrations reveals the limits of the legal definition of the “refugee” in fully capturing the set of factors that result in coerced movements (crépeau et al., 2006). 1 although the terms “global south” and “global north” refer to geographic locations, they also signify a global order shaped by active social processes that organize social, political, and economic inequalities between regions (castles, de haas & miller, 2014). informed by colonial and imperial histories, this uneven and unequal international economic and political order suggests that nation-states from the global north actually do more to cause forced migration than to stop it (castles, 2003, p. 18). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 72 although the terms “migrant” and “refugee” are often used to differentiate between different types of migration, the production of a migrant/refugee binary obscures the complexities of forced migration processes (macklin, 2005). for example, migrants who are shaped by the asylum–migration nexus often arrive with temporary migrant status, as established by the receiving nation-state (castles et al., 2014). this production of temporary migrant status, often described as “precarious” status, is conditional, with limited access to citizenship, and results in differential access to social and legal rights (goldring & landolt, 2013). those with precarious status include visitors, international students, temporary workers, sponsored family members, refugee claimants, and protected persons, along with those detained and undocumented (goldring, berinstein, & bernhard, 2009). this article examines how the canadian immigration regime socially organizes the everyday lives of lgbtqi migrants with precarious status. i draw from my recently completed study (lee, 2015) to map out the disjuncture between the actual experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status and the ideological and textual production of precarious status by the canadian state. making explicit this disjuncture reveals how the canadian immigration regime enacts structural violence upon queer and trans migrants (lee, 2015). structural violence is a set of complex and often hidden social processes and practices embedded within policies, institutions, and laws that favour some groups within society over others, resulting in an unequal distribution of life chances and intergenerational social inequities (mullaly, 2010). i also critically engage with the response-based approach to violence (kinewesquao & wade, 2009; wade, 1997) in order to understand how queer and trans migrants actively respond to this structural violence. the response-based approach to violence suggests that victims of violence “invariably resist violence and other forms of oppression, overtly or covertly, depending on the circumstances” (kinewesquao & wade, 2009, p. 205, citing coates, todd, & wade, 2003). a response to violence is understood as acts of resistance, instead of as simply an effect or impact of violence (kinewesquao & wade, 2009). although this approach was initially developed within the frame of interpersonal violence (i.e., intimate partner violence and family violence), it has since been used to situate indigenous peoples’ responses to interweaving structural and interpersonal violence shaped by ongoing colonial discourses and practices (kinewesquao & wade, 2009; todd & wade, 1994). in a similar manner, this article aims to highlight the ways in which queer and trans migrants respond to and resist the structural violence integral to the canadian state’s production of precarious status. the emergence of queer and trans migration studies before turning to the literature review, it is important to note that although i engage with sexual and gender identity categories (i.e., lesbian, queer, and trans)2, i also recognize these terms’ 2 the terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual are described as sexual orientations or identities, while trans (transgender or transsexual) or cis (cisgender or cissexual) are described as gender identities (lee & brotman, 2015). a variety of umbrella terms also exist, such as lgbtqi, queer, trans, and so on. these terms emerged from particular historical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 73 historical formation from “specific epistemologies and social relationships that upheld colonialist, xenophobic, racist, and sexist regimes” (luibhéid, 2005, p. xi). the emergence of various terms (e.g., “gay” and “lesbian”, and even “sexuality”) as categories of meaning can be traced back to colonial modes of knowledge production that reconfigured indigenous ways of knowing (driskill, finley, gilley, & morgensen, 2011; haritaworn, 2012; manalansan, 2003; massad, 2007). these terms are taken up not only to denote identity, but also to engage with queer and trans theories and politics (see bastien-charlebois, 2011; cohen, 1997; stryker, 2008). critical queer and trans theories unpack how social institutions, processes, and practices reproduce heterosexuality (heteronormativity) and the gender binary and the erasure of trans people (cisnormativity), thus operating to reinforce dominant social norms (cohen, 1997; stryker, 2008)3. queer and trans migration studies highlight the relationship between sexuality, gender, and migration in order to disrupt the assumption of the heterosexual and cissexual migrant (cotton, 2012; luibhéid, 2008a; manalansan, 2006; sears, 2008). queer and trans migration studies is a multidisciplinary field, drawing from sexuality, international and forced migration, refugee, diaspora, and transnational studies. knowledge about queer and trans migrants has been produced from researchers across the spectrum of the social sciences and humanities. some of these scholars draw from queer/trans diasporic critique to examine how sexuality and gender are imbricated into global capitalism and ongoing colonial legacies (bhanji, 2012; eng, 1997; gopinath, 1998; haritaworn, 2012; manalansan, 2003; puar, 1996). most of the canadian and u.s. empirical literature about queer and trans migrants with precarious status focuses on lgbtqi refugees (laviolette, 2007, 2009; lee et al., 2017; murray, 2016; nicol et al., 2014; rehaag, 2008, 2009; ricard, 2011, 2014). there is also scholarship that focuses on same-gender spousal sponsorship (farber, 2010; laviolette, 2004; miluso, 2004; zaske, 2006), international students (kato, 1998; oba & pope, 2013), undocumented status (cruz, 2008; manalansan, 2014), and detention (solomon, 2005). three key themes emerge from this literature: legal implications; multiple identity formation; and broader historical, political, and social dimensions. although still focused on the refugee process, a growing body of literature examines the broader historical, political, and social dimensions of queer and trans migrant realities (fobear, 2013; lee & brotman, 2011; murray, 2016; white, 2013). a central critique includes interrogating the liberationist narrative in which queer migrations are framed as a simplistic “movement from repression to freedom, or a heroic journey undertaken in search of liberation” (cantu, 2009, p. xxv). this framing obscures the global and and geographic contexts and have shifted and changed over time. the term cis is used for people who are not trans and whose gender identity has always aligned with the gender assigned to them at birth (serano, 2007). 3 engaging in queer or trans politics extends these theories into political action that challenges not only normative sexual practices, but any type of dominant social norm, such as immigration reform (de genova, 2010). however, queer and trans theories and politics have been critiqued for reproducing a white cis gay male subjectivity, and failing to address how sexuality and gender have been historically constructed differently for queer and trans people of colour (bhanji, 2012; haritaworn, 2012; perez, 2005). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 74 colonial character of homophobia and transphobia as well as the daily forms of homophobic and transphobic violence that continue to exist in canada and the united states. the liberationist narrative is reproduced in the media (jenicek et al., 2009; roy, 2012) and by lgbtqi refugee claimants in order to successfully navigate the refugee process (murray, 2016). scholars also examine how the figure of the lgbtqi refugee in canada navigates homonational discourses (murray, 2016; white, 2013) and contributes to the ongoing settler colonial project (fobear, 2013). there is also scholarship that focus on how queer and trans migrants navigate undocumented status and detention, especially in the united states (cruz, 2008; manalansan, 2014; rivera-silber, 2013; terriquez, 2015). these studies suggest that queer and trans undocumented people experience employment and housing barriers and are often denied access to health and social services. some studies suggest that queer and trans undocumented people resist through living their everyday lives (manalansan, 2014) or actively participating in migrant justice organizing, such as by the creation of the “undocuqueer” slogan (rivera-silber, 2013; terriquez, 2015). the few studies that have examined detention suggest that queer and trans migrants who are detained encounter heterocisnormative practices such as not recognizing same-gender couples as families (lee & brotman, 2011), the separation of migrants based on a gender binary with the presumption that everyone is cis (spade, 2011), and sexual assault of trans women by detention security guards (solomon, 2005). this type of structural violence is a result of policies and practices which create systemic vulnerability and unevenly distribute life chances for queer and trans migrants (lee & brotman, 2011; spade, 2011). some of this scholarship also explore the links between refugee status and other forms of temporary migrant status (kato, 1998; lee & brotman, 2011; murray, 2016). however, there remains an absence of published research that engages in a sustained and in-depth analysis of the links between multiple temporary statuses and how precarious status impacts queer and trans migrants in particular. this article thus aims to address this major gap within the empirical literature, by focusing on the canadian state’s production of precarious status and how this shapes the everyday experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. mapping out the canadian immigration regime the findings in this article are from my doctoral study (lee, 2015), which applied an institutional ethnography methodology. the purpose of the study was to map out the canadian immigration regime as a ruling regime (g.w. smith, 1990) that socially organizes the everyday lives of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. ruling regimes can be described as a complex set of text-mediated processes and practices which flow through multiple sites of power, including political and bureaucratic apparatuses, social institutions, and media (ng, 2006; g.w. smith, 1990, 2006). institutional ethnography aims “to link local experiences to broader social and global processes, which are not always immediately apparent at the local level” (ng, 2006, p. 186). ruling regimes are not fixed entities but instead are a set of social relations driven by individual people, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 75 and a series of text-mediated coordinated activities at political and administrative levels (ng, 2006; g. w. smith, 2006). a politico-administrative regime is defined as “institutional sites of regulation and control (that) are merged together … these kinds of regimes usually have two interrelated pieces of organization: a political apparatus and a bureaucracy” (g. smith, 1990, p. 25). as a ruling regime, the canadian immigration regime is organized by state governance, laws and policies, and administrative systems (i.e., institutional bodies such as police, immigration, and detention). another key feature of any ruling regime is the ways in which ideological practices present a series of “facts” about that regime that serve to displace and conceal people’s actual experiences (g.w. smith, 1990). within ruling regimes, ideological regulatory frames are created by individuals in positions of power to produce a set of “facts” about that regime (d. e. smith, 2005). this series of “facts” in turn obscures how people actually experience a ruling regime. instead of describing what is actually occurring, these “facts” that are reproduced within text-based discourses become ideologically based “codes” that reproduce particular modes of social representation. these “codes” are thus mediated by texts located either within (i.e., immigration and refugee board [irb] policies) or adjacent to (i.e., articles in the media) the canadian immigration regime. the institutional ethnography methodology thus investigates the disjuncture between ideological accounts and people’s actual experiences (kinsman & gentile, 2010). in this article, i map out the textually mediated processes that socially organize the migration paths of queer and trans migrants from the global south. i investigate how the canadian immigration regime produces ideologically based “facts” about precarious status that conceal how queer and trans migrants actually experience precariousness. research design my doctoral study was conducted in four parallel phases, drawing from four different but interconnected data sets: (a) written notes about personal experiences, (b) secondary data from eight interview transcripts from a previously completed research project, (c) primary data from five interviews conducted for the present study, and (d) 49 policy and media texts dating from 2006 to 2014 (lee, 2015). although i list these data sets linearly, the research process was iterative as i moved back and forth between data collection and analysis. this cyclical process affirms that no institutional ethnographic study is put together in the same manner (d. e. smith, 2006). for phase 1, i drew from my social location and own experiences as a scholar-activist in order to present the research problem my study addressed — the disjuncture between an ideological account of queer and trans migration and actual queer and trans migrant experiences. during phase 2, i analyzed eight interviews that i had previously conducted as research coordinator for the speak out! lgbtq refugee research project, a community-based project that explored the experiences of lgbtq refugees in canada (lee & brotman, 2011). for phase 3, i mapped out the text-mediated processes that were emerging from my data analysis. i developed a practice of listening for and asking about texts (devault & mccoy, 2006). for phase 4, i collected and analyzed policy and media texts in conjunction with my data analysis of the interviews. these international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 76 texts included websites, press releases, and published pdf files, along with media articles and research publications. in order to ensure a rigorous practice of critical inquiry, i developed a set of principles and procedures, adapted from other scholars (devault & mccoy, 2006; campbell & manicom, 1995; d. e. smith, 2006). i also asked myself a series of reflexive questions throughout the research process, including: what are the everyday experiences and daily activities of queer and trans migrants? is any coordination of activities happening here? what are the possible texts that may be linked to a particular set of activities? how might this coordination of activities be linked to a variety of social institutions or the canadian immigration regime? evaluation of findings in contrast to most forms of qualitative research, an institutional ethnography does not use measures of trustworthiness or validity. instead, the strength of the linkages among actual experiences, texts, and the coordination of activities are what is evaluated. i thus evaluated the degree to which ideological practices related to precarious status are reproduced across texts, along with the breadth and depth of the text-based processes that socially organize the realities of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. this type of evaluation requires a “faithfulness to the actual work processes that connect individuals and activities in the various parts of an institutional complex (ruling regime). rigor comes not from technique — such as sampling or thematic analysis — but from the corrigibility of the developing map of social relations” (devault & mccoy, 2006, p. 33). i also evaluated the degree of recursivity within the findings in order to map out “how things happen here in the same way they happen over there … recurring events or recurring use of words … show(ing) a pattern in the world — something is organized to recur” (campbell & gregor, 2008, p. 69). recursivity is demonstrated by the strength of text-based patterns and their degree of recurrence within everyday life. findings and analysis in this section, i map out how the canadian immigration regime — state governance, laws and policies, and administrative systems (i.e., institutional bodies such as police, immigration, and detention) — shapes the everyday experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. more specifically, i examine the disjuncture between the ideological production of precarious status and the actual queer and trans migrant experience of precarity. these findings examine how each participant navigated visa/permit eligibility criteria, crossed borders to enter canada with precarious status, and shifted between precarious statuses. i also consider the ways in which heterocisnormative processes inform the canadian immigration regime’s production of precarity, resulting in particular forms of structural violence towards queer and trans migrants. this ideological account and erasure of structural violence shapes contextualized negative social responses towards queer and trans migrants. social responses refer to the systematic manner in which victims of oppression are blamed as individually responsible for the various forms of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 77 interpersonal and structural violence (kinewesquao & wade, 2009). in this case, i consider the ways in which state and non-state actors perpetuate contextualized negative social responses towards migrants generally and towards queer and trans migrants specifically. finally, i consider how strategies used by queer and trans migrants to navigate their precarity can be understood as a response to structural violence and resulting contextual negative social responses. the ideological account of precarious status versus actual experiences the immigration and refugee protection act (irpa; 2001) outlines five categories of people who reside in canada: citizen, permanent resident, indian, refugee, and temporary resident. the “immigration objectives” presented for the temporary resident category include “trade, commerce, tourism, international understanding and cultural, educational and scientific activities” (irpa, 2001, s. 3[1]). this category is separated into three classes: visitors, students, and workers. these classes within the temporary resident category are grouped together on the department of citizenship and immigration canada’s (cic; 2014b) webpage explaining how to apply for a visitor visa. in contrast, refugee protection is in a separate section in the irpa (2001, part 2), as its main objectives are textually described as distinct from the temporary resident categories. the refugee objectives are linked to “canada’s international legal obligations” and described as an “expression of canada’s humanitarian ideal”, meant to provide a “safe haven” for those facing persecution, torture, or cruel and unusual treatment (irpa, 2001, s. 3[2]). temporary resident and refugee categories are textually separated throughout the irpa, its regulations, and the cic website, implying that the migration flows of these categories are distinct. however, a participant’s decision to apply for visitor, student, or worker status was shaped by having lived either in the united states with precarious status or in a context of overlapping generalized, political, and heterocisnormative violence in the country of origin. eleven out of the 13 participants from my doctoral study entered canada (mostly between 2006 and 2011) as temporary residents; two filed refugee claims at the canada–u.s. land border. four entered as visitors, six entered as international students, and one entered as a temporary foreign worker. their entry as temporary residents and, for some, their subsequent refugee claims, were inextricably tied to their forced-migration context. the textual separation of temporary resident and refugee categories reproduces an ideological regulatory frame of precarious status that obscures the everyday realities of queer and trans people from the global south who have been compelled to leave their countries by taking on any precarious status available to them. at the same time, migrants with precarious status are textually linked together through the term “foreign national”. the irpa (2001) describes a “foreign national” as “a person who is not a canadian citizen or permanent resident, and includes a stateless person” (s. 2[1]). the “foreign national” label applies not only to people seeking entry but to all migrants with precarious status living in canada. although temporary residents and refugees are textually separated, the foreign national is textually imbricated into policies specific to migrant exclusion, surveillance, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 78 removal. the foreign national thus serves as the ideological tool through which temporary resident and refugee categories can remain textually divided, while policies related to migrant exclusion can be operationalized on all migrants with precarious status. the temporary resident visa (trv) as barrier to migration and site of structural violence in this section, i explore how participants anthony, sarah, and lana4 struggled with barriers to obtaining a temporary resident visa (trv), which would allow them to enter canada with precarious status. the trv application, imposed on 147 nation-states mostly from the global south (cic, 2014b), operates as a central organizing tool to determine who will be accepted or refused entry. a trv is issued to a foreign national who applies for a visitor visa or study/work permit, meets the requirements related to the temporary resident class, is “not inadmissible”, and will leave canada at the end of an authorized time period (immigration and refugee protection regulations [irpr], 2014, s. 9). in order to be eligible for a trv, applicants must undertake to leave canada at the end of their stay, have enough money to maintain themselves and return home, not intend to work or study unless authorized, have no criminal record, be law abiding, not be a security risk, be willing to provide documents upon request, and be in good health (cic, 2014a). the trv application form also reproduces the gender binary through its use of male and female categories. the participants encountered obstacles to fulfilling the trv eligibility requirements. one of the main challenges was meeting the requirement to obtain the “approval” of a non-state canadian actor via an acceptance letter from a post-secondary institution (student), invitation letter (visitor), or signed job offer/employment contract (worker). as a muslim gay man from southeast asia, anthony spent many years working in the united states. after a friendly encounter with a canadian couple, they offered him the possibility of attending a language centre that they operated while working for them at the same time. anthony’s study permit application process was subverted by the couple to include a work requirement, which is not legally allowed on a study permit. in contrast, as a working-class gay and gender nonconforming person living in the caribbean, lana’s everyday life was marked by homophobic and transphobic violence, which included verbal harassment and physical assault. while lana was evading this violence by staying at a friend’s home, her friend informed her of a recruitment agency that was hiring temporary foreign workers to work at a canadian hotel: my friend, she told me about this work program that was coming to canada and i said i would give it a try.… i was very suicidal … because it’s like, before i die from someone who is homophobic, i’m ready to do it myself. that was always my theme, right? … and then there comes this light in the tunnel. (lana) 4 all participant names included in this article are pseudonyms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 79 lana was not certain that she would be able to emigrate because the recruitment agency that hired her had confiscated her passport; however, it was returned to her on the day of her departure. it was also worrying for lana that she did not receive the signed job offer (employment contract) or her approved work permit until after she arrived in canada. income-related criteria can also be a barrier. as a transwoman from northern africa, sarah was working as a café manager and experiencing everyday harassment and threats to her life due to her trans identity. sarah reached out to numerous lgbtqi human rights organizations in order to make plans to leave. after unsuccessful attempts at obtaining a visa elsewhere, sarah connected with people from canada who provided her with an invitation letter and financial support. upon submitting her visitor visa application, sarah had to navigate a phone call from the canadian embassy that was part of the verification process: the visa delivery doesn’t happen in algeria, it happens in paris.… they called me. i was working, my mother, she said to me, “you received a call from the embassy. they asked how much you earned and all.” me, i falsified everything because i don’t make a lot (of money). i said, “i earn (enough). i am ok. i earn. i can cover my needs here in canada and everything.” (sarah, translated from french) sarah’s decision to falsify her income in order to obtain a visitor visa to canada was intimately tied to her economic status, the transphobic violence she was experiencing on a daily basis, and her country’s political context. the trv processing procedures also reveal how the application process to canada is shaped by contemporary international relations, situated within a french– northern african historical colonial context. these examples highlight the disjuncture between these participants’ actual experiences of the trv application process and how the canadian immigration regime ideologically frames temporary resident categories. these participants’ migration trajectories are clearly situated within the migration–asylum nexus, as their motivations to migrate did not fit the narrow parameters within the temporary resident categories through which they arrived. and yet, this forced migration context had no bearing on their gaining trv approval, even though they all eventually filed refugee claims. the canadian immigration regime thus places temporary resident migrants in discrete categories of visitor, student, worker, or refugee claimant. the operationalization of these categories, notably through the trv application form, imposes barriers for queer and trans migrants, and indeed all migrants, to obtaining visas to enter canada. before and after obtaining their trv, anthony, sarah, and lana faced various forms of structural violence, such as being compelled to agree to work under a student visa, being forced to obtain a visa from france, or having to hand over a passport to a recruitment agency. border crossings as sites of structural violence and contextualized negative social responses in the following section, i explore the ways in which the ideological account of precarious status established by the canadian immigration regime embolden state actors to apply international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 80 contextualized negative social responses to migrants. ligeia and sayad’s migration paths illustrate how border crossings operate as a site of structural violence for queer and trans migrants. ligeia was born in north africa within a muslim family and eventually entered canada with a study permit. ligeia arrived at the canadian airport and was questioned at an immigration office: he asked me … “are you going to a specific place?... what is the place?… who are the people that you’re going to be living with?” and all these crazy questions.… he gave me the study permit and this is real, it will always stay in my mind. his features got a bit severe, strict and he was like, “see that date there, you’re not allowed to stay in canada for that date” and he didn’t tell me that you can renew. he was like … “if you stay after that date, then we’ll have problems” and the look, the tone, everything, oh my god … you start to feel as a stranger. (ligeia) in contrast, the immigration officers responded differently when sayad and his partner crossed the border. sayad is a university-educated gay man who fled azerbaijan with his partner after their families discovered their relationship and threatened their lives. upon arriving at a canadian airport with a visitor visa, sayad and his partner immediately filed a refugee claim. they were subsequently held at the airport for two days of interrogations and placed in detention: the first interrogation was basically just, based on … questions related to our documents and passport. they took all our fingerprints.… they basically asked… “how did you come to canada? what was the route? what kind of visa? how did you come? why do you declare refugee status?” and the next day, they had the actual interview, which basically determined the eligibility to claim refugee status.… my interview went very smooth. however, my partner’s wasn’t that good because his english at that time wasn’t very well, so they had an interpreter … and there were some misinterpretations and so the officer who was interviewing, she had some concerns. she didn’t believe what my partner said. even though what he said was what i said during separate interviews … that same officer, she made a decision to detain us until the next hearing. (sayad) although the initial concerns by an immigration officer were related to translation problems by an interpreter for sayad’s partner, they were both detained because sayad was deemed a “flight risk” based on his connections with people in the united states. classification of a migrant as a flight risk is one of four reasons that an immigration officer can use to justify the detention of a migrant with precarious status (irpa, 2001). although sayad and his partner were legally identified as refugee claimants, the moment sayad was named a flight risk they were also identified as foreign nationals who were potential threats to the security of canadian citizens, which provided justification for their detention. ultimately, sayad and ligeia’s pre-migration experiences of violence were irrelevant to the border agents. the ideological account of precarious status emboldened the border agents to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 81 threaten ligeia and disbelieve sayad’s partner. these text-mediated processes related to precarious status give border agents the power to apply immigration entry procedures in ways that reinforce state power and justify structural violence. it was not only what was said and decided, but also the manner in which it was spoken that reveals how power operated. in both cases, the border agents reproduced contextualized negative social responses towards migrants with precarious status, which suggests that migrants are possible liars or security threats. responses to violence: mobilizing informal support networks and becoming a refugee claimant in this section, i highlight the ways in which lana, sarah, and anthony responded to the structural violence attached to their precarious status by mobilizing an informal support network and filing a refugee claim from within canada. before turning to how these participants mobilized support, i describe the structural barriers imposed by the canadian immigration regime for migrants to access the inland refugee claim process. as i described previously, the ideological regulatory frame of precarious status produces a textual separation between the temporary resident and refugee categories. the irpa regulations define a “refugee claimant” as “a person who has made a claim for refugee protection in canada or at a port of entry” (irpr, 2014, p. 296). the irpa (2001) does not explicitly state that individuals who enter canada as temporary residents have the right to file a refugee claim. indeed, the only way that migrants can file refugee claims, and thus become refugee claimants in canada, is at a port of entry (i.e., border crossing, seaport, airport). this omission within the irpa is significant because entering as a temporary resident is one of the only pathways to access the inland refugee claim process. this omission is also reflected in the absence of policies and programs within educational institutions and worksites that employ temporary workers regarding the possibility of filing inland refugee claims. lana, sarah, and anthony each had a unique set of circumstances that led them to file a refugee claim. each of them connected with individuals who helped them in their process. they reached out to family members, friends, and, sometimes, random strangers who helped them to navigate their trv application process and their transition from temporary resident to refugee claimant. in some cases, they received support on a transnational scale, either from people living in canada prior to their arrival or from people living in their country of origin post-migration. sarah, for example, knew very quickly that she would file a refugee claim and did so with the assistance of her informal support network — the same individuals who had helped her to migrate to canada by providing an approval letter and financial support. sarah attributed the ease with which she navigated the refugee process to the economic, social, and information-related resources and support she received. however, it was sarah who initiated contact with these key individuals and convinced them to provide letters, financial support, and other help. in contrast, lana and anthony did not make the decision to file a refugee claim until after they arrived in canada. after a search of multiple websites, anthony learned that he could apply for refugee status due to his fear of persecution as a gay man. he found this information after living international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 82 in canada for over a year with a study permit but under a work contract (enforced by the canadian couple who provided his study permit). during this time, anthony was isolated and did not initially have access to support. it was only after anthony refused to continue working for the canadian couple and transitioned from a student to a visitor visa that he had the time to reach out to individuals for support. anthony eventually contacted a refugee lawyer and other individuals who would support him in this refugee process. lana’s decision to apply for refugee status was informed by a chance encounter with someone in an online gay chatroom: so i went on [gay website], and i met this guy. his name was [gary].… i don’t even know this guy and he just come up online and he just start talking to me. anyways, i just start talking.… he called me, and then he said to me, “why are you so nice?”, he said, “you sound like somebody who was crying.”… i just burst into tears.… i tell him my situation. he’s like, “oh my god, you know, you don’t have to live like that. there’s a way that you can claim refugee status.” (lana) through phone conversations with this person, lana was referred to a refugee lawyer. although lana was very grateful for the support provided by this stranger, it is important to note that lana would not have received this support unless she took the risk to disclose her situation. discussion and conclusion in this section, i summarize this study’s key findings and analysis as well as discuss their relevance to existing scholarship. i also explore implications for developing a response-based approach for practice with queer and trans migrants and consider the possibilities of engaging in reflexive ways of knowing. in my findings, i mapped out the ways in which the canadian immigration regime produced the ideological regulatory frame of precarious status and socially organized the lives of queer and trans migrants from the initial visa or permit application to postarrival experiences. my findings illustrate how the trv requirements result in a nationality-based differential eligibility threshold for entry into canada (targeting the global south), revealing a racialized and neoliberal geopolitical division of precarious status. these eligibility criteria, as part of the trv application process, enact structural violence, resulting in an uneven distribution of life chances. the use of male and female categories in the trv application form reproduces a gender binary that makes trans and gender-nonconforming migrants systematically more vulnerable to a cisnormative immigration regime. moreover, the consequences of “telling the truth” in the trv application process for most participants would have been ineligibility to enter canada and further exposure to heterocisnormative, generalized, and political violence. in some cases, the choice of whether to lie or tell the truth was the choice of whether to live or die. in addition, the textual separation of temporary resident and refugee claimant status produces the ideological “fact” that migrants naturally flow into distinct migrant categories. this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 83 ideological framing lays fertile ground for the immigration regime to become a site of structural violence by reproducing the refugee–migrant binary (macklin, 2005) through the use of migrant classification schemes that do not correspond with the everyday realities of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. the actual experiences of sarah, anthony, and lana illustrate that temporary resident status is a major pathway for queer and trans migrants to access canada’s inland refugee claim process. indeed, if they had not been eligible for trvs, they would never have been able to file refugee claims. the textual erasure of the trv as a key pathway to becoming a refugee reveals the degree to which the canadian immigration regime ignores the forced migration context of queer and trans people from the global south. prior to the start of worldpride 2014 (an international lgbtqi human rights festival) in toronto, 10 ugandan “gay rights advocates” were refused entry into canada due to lack of travel history, no family ties in uganda, and insufficient funds (keung, 2014). more recently, some lgbtq tunisian activists were denied visas to enter canada (larivée-tourangeau, 2017). in both cases, one reason for the refusal was the fear that these activists would seek refugee status upon arrival, as did one lgbtq tunisian activist whose initial visa application to attend a human rights conference in montreal was refused (larivée-tourangeau, 2017). these experiences reveal how the trv process is used as a racialized, gendered, and sexualized tool to exclude queer and trans people from the global south, in ways that prioritize economic concerns over humanitarian ones. recently, the irb implemented guidelines for refugee claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (sogie; irb, 2017). these guidelines have been hailed by policymakers and advocates as an important step forward in protecting the rights of lgbtqi refugees (lee et al., 2017). although there is certainly merit to these claims, focusing only on improvements to the refugee determination system obscures the fact that the canadian immigration regime remains designed to block the migration of the vast majority of queer and trans people from the global south who are compelled to flee their countries. this narrow focus on improvements also fortifies the liberationist narrative (cantu, 2009; murray, 2016) in which canada is the site of freedom and a safe haven for lgbtqi refugees in contrast to “backwards” homophobic and transphobic countries. this ideological framing of precarious status (i.e., the separation of temporary resident and refugee categories) feeds into the liberationist narrative by making invisible the various policies and practices (e.g., the trv) that embolden state actors (e.g., immigration agents) and non-state actors (e.g., community workers) to surveil and interrogate queer and trans migrants with precarious status as foreign nationals who are possible security threats. developing a response-based approach to practice with queer and trans migrants in order to develop a response-based approach (kinewesquao & wade, 2009) to practice with queer and trans migrants with precarious status, practitioners should be keenly aware of how the canadian immigration regime produces an ideological account of precarious status and promotes the liberationist narrative. this framing and narrative obscure queer and trans migrant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 84 realities and their actual experiences of structural violence enacted by the canadian immigration regime. developing this analysis will assist practitioners to be mindful of how these social processes shape the contextualized negative social responses (kinewesquao & wade, 2009) imposed on migrants generally and queer and trans migrants specifically, including the blaming of migrants either as non-genuine or as security threats (i.e., terrorists). the irb’s sogie-based guidelines will improve the refugee process and some positive decisions are certainly given for lgbtqi refugee claims. however, the overemphasis on canada as a safe haven for lgbtqi refugees makes it very difficult to point out the heterocisnormative processes and overall structural violence intrinsic to the canadian immigration regime. service providers should develop strategies to co-construct analysis with queer and trans migrants about these social processes and push back against state and non-state actors that reproduce ideologically-based accounts and narratives (i.e., the textual separation of temporary resident and refugee categories within the irpa, and the justification of the trv as having been designed to assess entry of temporary residents — not to block entry to possible refugee claimants from the global south). this may assist queer and trans migrants to not take personal responsibility for structural issues. within a direct practice context, it is helpful to explicitly affirm and validate the resourcefulness of queer and trans migrants and their varied responses to structural violence. the participants from my study actively responded to both the trv eligibility criteria and immigration officers. one resistance strategy used by participants was the engagement of “intentional institutional capture” (eastwood, 2006), whereby they actively translated their objectives (entry into canada) into a text-mediated process (e.g., trv permit approval document or passport) that was recognizable to various state actors (e.g., border agents). these microactions reveal the subtle but powerful ways in which queer and trans migrants navigate, contest, subvert, and resist ideological practices, thus refusing to give in to a regime organized to exclude them. another key strategy queer and trans migrants with precarious status use to respond to violence is the mobilization of an informal and transnational support network. such networks serve as crucial informal pathways for queer and trans migrants to learn more about the specific policies and institutions that regulate their lives in order to develop collective strategies that directly respond to and resist the canadian immigration regime. at times, informal support was fostered due to queer and trans migrants connecting with a key non-state actor (e.g., a community worker) that put them in contact with other individuals. informal supports also emerged through virtual and in-person chance encounters. regardless of how support was mobilized, the mobilization serves as an example of a response to state-based violence initiated by queer and trans migrants themselves. however, queer and trans migrants may not be aware of the extent to which their microactions — deciding to reach out to people, disclosing key information about their situation, and requesting support — are acts of resistance. indeed, informal support networks become sites of politicization reorienting the mundane to “hint at political potentials, gesture to alternative narratives and enable an openness to multiple futures” (manalansan, 2014, p.106). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 85 for those who work with queer and trans migrants, it is helpful to critically reflect upon how informal support networks may be built in a more organized manner. such networks can be fostered by integrating their development into community organizing or service provision models. this strategy encourages “learning in social action” (foley, 1999), which highlights the importance of informal processes in learning to build social movements. as a scholar-activist, i seek to extend the usefulness of my study, and this article, in order to further contribute to queer and trans migrant justice and movement building. activist scholarship and engaging with reflexive ways of knowing to conclude, i critically reflect upon how my findings and analysis from this article (and my doctoral study) are grounded by my posture as a scholar-activist and reflexive ways of knowing. first, my knowledge claims are anchored by my standpoint as a queer and gender nonconforming migrant-turned-citizen and scholar-activist of colour. i draw from my long-term involvement with queer and trans people of colour and in migrant movement-building across academic, community, and activist spaces to unpack “social relations and organization in which our everyday doings participate but which are not fully visible to us” (d. e. smith, 2005, p. 1). through my involvement with individual support work and public anti-deportation campaigns, i have witnessed the impact of structural violence and contextualized negative social responses on the lives of queer and trans migrants fighting for their lives. i have heard story after story of queer and trans migrants who were retraumatized (leading to, e.g., depression, anxiety, suicide) as they navigated the canadian immigration regime. i have lost track of the number of people who have told me that the immigration and refugee process felt like a prison, or was literally or figuratively killing them. these conversations have led me to question how canada could be framed as a safe haven for lgbtqi people in the midst of state-sanctioned brutality. although outside the scope of this article, i note that this experience also led me to resituate and rehistoricize (kinsman & gentile, 2010) my own family’s migration path. my knowledge claims thus question the assumed standard of “objective” knowledge production (bannerji, 2011; hill-collins, 2000; naples, 1996; d. e. smith, 1990). the pursuit of objective knowledge implicitly situates the researcher as a universal, yet invisible, subject whose interests and biases are concealed, thus obscuring the relations of power that socially organize what counts as valid knowledge (naples, 1996; d. e. smith, 2005). historical and contemporary modes of knowledge production are imbued with colonial and imperial logics that were developed in the 19th century during an era of colonization, slavery, indentured labour, and empire building (bannerji, 2011; lowe, 2006; simpson, 2014). lisa lowe (2006) suggests engaging with the politics of “lacking knowledge” to recover erased global histories of colonial violence. the recovery of these colonial histories reshapes how contemporary international migrations of queer and trans people are understood (see alexander 2005; driskill et al., 2011; dutta & roy, 2014; el-hage & lee, 2016; luibhéid, 2008a, 2008b; manalansan, 1997; walcott, 2006). for example, canadian immigration policies and practices cannot be untied from the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 86 colonial logics that inform policies and practices towards indigenous peoples (lee, 2015). indeed, there was a state entity called the “department of immigration and colonization” from 1917 to 1936 (library and archives canada, 2014; lee, 2015). from 1936 onwards, the term “colonization” was dropped from subsequent departments that focused on immigration, citizenship, and so on. however, immigration and colonialism continue to be intertwined, as one sees when considering how newcomer settlement programs are being implemented on unceded land. how might this shift in analysis reframe our understanding of how queer and trans migrants respond to the canadian immigration/colonization regime (see lee, 2018)? what kinds of knowledges and solidarities may by produced in analyzing the colonial histories that differently inform the lives of queer and trans migrants from the global south and two-spirit5 and lgbtqi indigenous people in canada? 5 prior to colonization, lgbtq and two-spirit people occupied valued social positions within “the shared culture of a native nation, which through kinship, economics, social life, or religion linked all native people in relationship” (morgensen, 2011, p. 135). for more information see meyer-cook and labelle (2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(1): 70–94 87 references alexander, m.j. 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(2006). love knows no borders – the same-sex marriage debate and immigration laws. william mitchell law review, 32(2), art. 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spv010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801x.2013.770999 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs142202321471 the lived experiences of parents of young women with multiple sclerosis in iran marzieh panahi, zahra tazakori, and mansoureh karimollahi abstract: chronic illness in children causes more mental health risks for parents than for other family members. therefore, exploring the experiences of parents who have a daughter with multiple sclerosis (ms) and presenting them to health care planners and managers can have a positive impact on community health. this phenomenological study involving 12 participants in iran aimed to explore the experiences of parents of young women (aged 17 to 40) with ms. the data collected from semi-structured interviews were analyzed using colaizzi’s method. open coding resulted in 450 codes, and after several stages of analysis and integration of similar codes, five main themes containing 21 subthemes were produced. the main themes were mental distress, feeling trapped, adaptation issues, reaction to the disease, and coming to terms with the disease. this study showed that having a daughter with ms affects all dimensions of the parents’ life, and can lead to experiences that are new to them and may confuse them. these findings provide a path towards improving effective parental care for their daughters with ms, and ultimately reducing the burden of disease on the family, the health system, and the community. keywords: lived experiences, multiple sclerosis, parenting, phenomenology marzieh panahi msc is an instructor in the nursing department at saveh university of medical sciences, saveh, iran. email: panahi.m172@gmail.com zahra tazakori phd is an associate professor at ardabil university of medical sciences, ardabil, iran. email: zahra.tazakori@gmail.com mansoureh karimollahi phd (corresponding author) is a professor in the department of emergency nursing, school of nursing and midwifery, ardabil university of medical sciences, shohada headway, ardabil, iran. email: karimollahi@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 87 multiple sclerosis (ms) is the most common neurological disease among young adults, affecting more than two and a half million people worldwide (gafari et al., 2017). in the united kingdom, more than 100,000 people are affected, with a ratio of 1:3 male to female (mcclurg et al., 2019), and in the united states, about 400,000 people (dilokthornsakul et al., 2016). in iran, approximately 60,000 people are affected, a number that seems to be increasing (eskandarieh et al., 2019). for instance, in a systematic review that examined the prevalence of ms in different parts of iran as well as other countries, heydarpour et al. (2015) reported an increase in the prevalence of ms in tehran from 51.9 per 100,000 in 2008 to 74.28 per 100,000 in 2011. it seems likely, however, that this rapid increase, at least to some extent, reflects methodological variations as well as possibly improved diagnosis and reporting. the number of people with ms in the 13to-18 age group in iran was reported to be 16.20 per 100,000 people in 2017; the ratio of women to men was 3.69 to 1 (eskandarieh et al., 2019). maghzi et al. (2010) found a significant increase in the incidence of ms among females over the last decades in the isfahan province of iran. obtaining a definitive diagnosis of ms can be difficult; once the diagnosis is received, rehabilitation is considered medically necessary (rao et al., 2009). diagnosis is based on the presence of clinical symptoms and signs, and the results of an mri scan, which provides highly sensitive detection of the lesions characteristic to ms (brownlee et al., 2017). most patients suffer from multiple problems, which can include spasticity, tremors, tiredness, sensory disorders, cognitive and sexual disorders, double vision and balance disorders, bladder and intestinal dysfunction, and difficulty swallowing and speaking. moreover, the disease can lead to changes in professional and family life, and psychosocial problems (kapucu et al., 2011). the effects of ms vary unpredictably from person to person; for any individual, the prognosis too is unpredictable (asadi haghighat et al., 2019). most patients with ms need corrective treatments and rehabilitation due to their debilitating symptoms; however, rehabilitation strategies are limited (lipp & tomassini, 2015). people with ms may become desperate enough to try unapproved treatments. although a neutral observer might see them as having fallen victim to “medical racketeers peddling false hope”, the patients often view themselves as “empowered citizens who have taken an informed decision to pursue an experimental therapy” (mazanderani et al., 2018, p. 232). patients with ms often experience negative prejudice, judgemental attitudes, and social exclusion because of their disease (rao et al., 2009). this feeling of “having an attribute that marks them as different and leads them to be devalued in the eyes of others is conceptualized as stigma” (major & o’brien, 2005, p. 395). most people affected by ms are young women at their peak of social responsibility (qaderi & merghati khoei, 2013). in a study of 70 ms patients in iran, masoodi et al. (2013) found that the burden of the disease on the caregiver seems to be of both primary and secondary types: the primary one of providing direct physical care and coping with psychological stresses caused by the stigma, and the secondary one of taking on the role of caregiver. parents who are primary caregivers must adopt new roles and responsibilities that require adjusting the family’s routine and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 88 other life commitments (jones et al., 2016). as with the birth of a new baby, the emergence of a chronic disease in the family brings with it a commitment to provide years of care and nurturing (brola, 2018). when they live with a child who has a chronic disease, parents are not only the primary caregivers, but are also key members of their child’s health care team (fairfax et al., 2019). chronic diseases of a debilitating nature, such as ms, affect not only the physical, social, psychological, cognitive, and emotional aspects of patients, but also of their families (silvestri et al., 2018). in a study of spousal caregivers, cheung and hocking (2004) argued that the overwhelming nature of the caregiver’s role — juggling health concerns while maintaining their spousal relationship, often with insufficient support — can lead to the internalization of mental stress. caregivers of children with chronic illnesses experience challenges that can affect their own health (magliano et al., 2015), as other researchers have found. for instance, chronic illnesses in children create more mental health risks for parents than for other members of the family (jones et al., 2016). flury et al. (2011) stated that parents of children with cancer experience a “huge amount of new and changed tasks” (p. 143) while caring for their children at home. nygård and clancy (2018) explored the experiences of parents of children with special health problems who were caring for them at home, stating that the burden of care can lead to reduced parental ability, which in turn can affect parental health and family functioning. therefore, exploring the experiences of parents living with young women who have ms and presenting the findings to health care managers can have a positive impact on the health of the community. to achieve family-centered compassionate care, it is critical that health care professionals become knowledgeable about parental experiences. the descriptive phenomenological approach previous ms studies conducted in iran that have focused on the epidemiology of illness and perceptions of carers and their quality of life have been done quantitatively (e.g., alonso et al., 2011), and thus did not explore the carers’ experiences. this paper, in contrast, uses a phenomenological approach. phenomenology is essentially the study of lived experiences (sigaroodi et al., 2012). it is a qualitative research method that is suitable for understanding the depth of a participant’s experience with, and their concept of, a phenomenon. according to thorne, phenomenology is a good way to explore broad concepts, including care (shahgholian & yousefi, 2018). after hearing a person describe their view of a phenomenon — the role it plays in their inner world —researchers must draw conclusions without imposing their own interpretations or assumptions about that person or the phenomenon (heidari et al., 2020). drawing on participant experiences to help gain a better understanding of the psychological, social, and cultural contexts in which the experiences took place, the present researchers decided to use the descriptive phenomenological method to explore the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and economic experiences (ebrahimi et al., 2021) of parents living with daughters who have ms. an examination of the literature shows that this research is the first in the world to explore the experiences of parents of young women with ms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 89 method ethical considerations this study was designed to conform to the code of ethics from the ardabil university of medical sciences. permission to conduct this research was obtained from the university’s ethics committee under the ethics code r.arums.rec.1395.114. before signing a consent form, participants were informed of their rights, including the right to withdraw at any time, and were assured that their statements and opinions would be treated as confidential. participant names are not used in this paper, and all analyses were based on codes. all the recordings were deleted after transcription, and transcripts were stored in a locked cabinet in the researcher’s office. trustworthiness to validate the findings, four criteria attributed to lincoln and guba (1985) were used: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. to achieve credibility under this framework, two techniques were applied: long contact (10 months) with the research environment to build participants’ trust, and self-review by each researcher through repeated study of the interview material they had recorded in order to ascertain the exact meaning of the participants’ statements as nearly as possible. for transferability, a rich description was used; that is, an attempt was made to fully describe all the details of the research from sampling to the process of data collection and analysis, and to present our findings concerning the postures and body language of the participants. to achieve dependability, the peer checking method was used: the coding, which was designed in the form of tables, was provided to two faculty members of the ardabil school of nursing and midwifery. for confirmability, we used the triangulated interview method, in which the researcher uses two or more questions to examine the phenomenon under study. participants eligible participants were parents of a daughter who had ms but no other chronic illness. daughters of the participating parents were all members of the ms association of ardabil, iran. participants were chosen using a purposeful sampling method based on their experience caring for a daughter with ms, and their ability to express themselves. seven of the parents were living with their daughters; the daughters of the rest were married and lived separately, but their parents still felt responsible for helping them cope with their illness. the data were collected from february 19 to december 5, 2018. data saturation was achieved with a sample size of 12. nine mothers and three fathers participated; their ages ranged from 42 to 78 years (m = 56.41). the demographic characteristics of the participants in the study and their daughters with ms are presented in table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 90 table 1. demographic profile of the participants and their daughters with ms parent daughter role age education occupation age durationa education occupation mother 38 middle school housewife 17 7 diploma unemployed mother 48 elementary housewife 19 30 diploma housewife mother 42 high school housewife 23 48 undergraduate student student mother 63 illiterate housewife 38 48 diploma housewife mother 60 illiterate housewife 40 72 associate degree housewife mother 48 elementary housewife 26 84 undergraduate student student father 68 high school plumber 31 96 phd student translator mother 58 elementary housewife 28 108 bachelor degree housewife mother 60 associate degree retired teacher 38 120 bachelor degree computer services father 78 elementary vendor 33 120 middle school degree unemployed mother 61 elementary housewife 35 144 diploma housewife father 53 middle school driver 29 168 diploma housewife a time in months since ms diagnosis data collection the data were gathered using in-depth interviews, and the researchers tried to extract the unfiltered experiences of the parents in their own language. after obtaining verbal and written consent from the participants, a digital voice recorder was used to record the interviews. throughout each interview, the researcher applied “bracketing” — putting aside, as far as possible, all feelings and preconceptions about the subject of the study. the interviews were conducted in quiet locations convenient for the interviewee: the ms society, the workplace of the parents, the interviewee’s home, or a nearby park. the interviews began with general prompts: “what experiences do you have with your daughter with ms? what is the effect of your daughter’s illness on your life? talk about what happened to you after your daughter started suffering from this disease.” in addition, when participants experienced difficulty in describing their experiences, the researcher put forward follow-up questions for clarity. the follow-up questions varied, as they were based on participant responses and the results of the analysis of earlier interviews. the duration of the interviews ranged from 45 to 120 minutes. each interview continued until the participant had finished describing his or her experiences and the researcher had decided that no further clarification was needed. the participants' speeches were translated into english by the first author, then reviewed and modified by the other authors. analysis the analysis was performed simultaneously with data collection. since the aim of the study was to achieve a comprehensive description of the parents’ lived experiences, colaizzi’s seveninternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 91 step method of data analysis was used (morrow et al., 2015). the first step, collecting participants’ descriptions of the phenomenon under study, was accomplished by making digital recordings of what the participants said during their interviews. second, all interviews were transcribed verbatim; after reading an interview several times, we tried to extract the meaning of each statement. third, after reading all transcripts, the meaningful information and comments associated with the subject under study were underlined, and the essential sentences were noted. fourth, the researchers tried to extract a concept from each statement that expressed the meaning of the interviewee. fifth, the concepts were categorized into subthemes based on similarity, then considered as a whole to ensure that we had as full a description as possible of the phenomenon under study; the subthemes were then grouped into general themes. sixth, we wrote a comprehensive description of the phenomenon, with the aim of making it as clear and unambiguous as possible. the seventh and final step was accreditation of the findings, in which eight of the participants confirmed the codes and themes. an example of the analysis process for five of the subthemes is presented in table 2. table 2. analysis process quote code sub theme i think to myself, god, will my daughter be cured or not? the unpredictability of the daughter’s disease status in the future uncertain future after my daughter's illness, the stress caused a hearing problem in me, and i got diabetes. getting sick due to daughter’s illness burnout always, i say, god, what is this disease?! why me? look now, how many people are there?! from all around, why only me?! why me? bargaining i think that the problems of life, both economic and financial, have caused the disease to come to light hypothesis about the daughter’s illness hypothesizing the cause of the illness we did not go to places where we could not take her! constraints on socialization due to daughter’s illness change in lifestyle measures taken to achieve consistency included allowing sufficient time for data collection (about 17 months), establishing adequate and appropriate rapport with participants, having eight participants confirm the extracted codes and categories, and reviewing the interviews, codes, and themes with the aid of faculty members. the sample was diverse in terms of gender (mothers, fathers), age (38–78), disease history (7–168 months), and education (illiterate to associate degree). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 92 results open coding led to extraction of 450 codes. these were classified into 22 subthemes from which five themes were obtained: mental distress, feeling trapped, adaptation issues, reaction to the disease, and coming to terms with the disease (see table 3). table 3. themes and subthemes subtheme theme worry and fear sadness uncertain future mental preoccupation mental distress desperation burnout feeling trapped ups and downs of diagnosis economic burden problems with the treatment process adaptation issues denial bargaining concealing the disease resort to appeals to god through prayer interpretation of the disease reaction to the disease accepting hypothesizing the cause of the disease family mobilization managing people around daughter change in lifestyle discovering resources and techniques coming to terms with the disease mental distress the four subthemes of worry and fear, sadness, uncertain future, and mental preoccupation combine to make up the theme of mental distress. participants expressed that, because of the unpredictable nature of ms and uncertainty about future conditions and responsibilities, they had a constant concern about what the future might bring, causing mental distress. a 60-year-old mother said, “i’m worried. for example, i say what will happen to my daughter after my death?” the inconveniences and frustrations participants felt were sometimes due to the unpredictable nature of the disease. however, some participants expressed that their mental distress resulted from their child’s attitude to the illness, a lack of understanding of their child’s condition on the part of others, or the additional demands placed on them because of their child’s illness. for example, a 48-year-old mother said: now, it is ten days since our relatives learned of my daughter’s illness; they keep ringing and asking how she is. i say she is fine. they learned of it after two and a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 93 half years, but if they had known before that, they would have been calling every day. i’m upset with their behavior. the recurrent nature of the disease, the unpredictability of when an attack will occur, and the lack of certainty regarding treatment outcomes all cause instability in the lives of patients and families. participants were often preoccupied with their child’s predicament, and worried about an uncertain future. some parents voiced concerns about their daughters’ futures in terms of career, marriage, and schooling. for instance, a 38-year-old mother said, “questions like these have been put forward: 'whom will i marry? when will i be married?’ oh my god, what can i say to her?” feeling trapped participants stated that, because of the new responsibilities imposed on them, they could no longer be present in the community; they felt trapped, and had a sense of helplessness. this theme comprises two subthemes: burnout and desperation. some parents said they had made repeated unsuccessful attempts to help address their daughter’s medical condition, and were left with a sense of helplessness and desperation: i did everything. i took her to the best doctors in tehran, i took her to an herbalist, i took her to the bee therapy, and i do not know what i am going to do now? we cannot do anything? (53-year-old father) one of the effects of their daughters’ illness on participants was burnout, whether physical or mental. a 60-year-old mother said, “when they told me that my daughter is ill, i became ill too, i could not raise my head, and doctors said it is because your daughter got sick!” adaptation issues as noted above, obtaining a definitive diagnosis of ms can be difficult, and once the diagnosis is received, rehabilitation is considered necessary. throughout the process of diagnosis and rehabilitation, some hindering issues may emerge. in our analysis of the participants’ statements, we grouped these issues into three subthemes: ups and downs of diagnosis, economic burden, and problems with the treatment process. the subtheme “ups and downs of diagnosis” reflects the fact that the uncertainty of diagnostic tests, lack of access to skilled physicians and diagnostic facilities, and the resulting likelihood of an incorrect diagnosis potentially increase the challenges of the disease. for instance, a 38-yearold mother described the difficulties of obtaining a diagnosis: she had nausea and vomiting, her legs were paralyzed, i was not at home, and her dad had no idea, then we went to the doctor, they did not say what it was. later she was hospitalized; [but the] ct and mri machines were broken down. after that the doctors sent us to tabriz [a metropolitan city], where they diagnosed, hospitalized, and injected cortisones into my daughter. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 94 when a child has ms, parents often encounter economic problems as they must pay for any costs associated with diagnosis, treatment such as drugs and supplements, and hospitalization. these problems were more pronounced in participants with lower incomes, for whom even the cost of food can became an issue. a 42-year-old mother said, “i cannot completely take care of my daughter, but i am trying to reduce the cost of nutrition or recreation of myself or my husband to fully supply the cost of medication for my daughter.” reaction to the disease parents perceived each successive stage of the disease differently from the previous one, and their response to the illness varied according to their present understanding. we named this theme “reaction to the disease”. it was obtained by combining five subthemes: denial, bargaining, concealing the disease, resort to appeals to god through prayer, and interpretation of the disease. these reactions were conveyed in participant statements like the following: because this disease was unexpected to me, i did not believe it, and i did not accept it, i could not believe it, of course, still after years now, i do not really accept that my daughter has this problem. (42-year-old mother) we took our daughter to tabriz, we said that maybe the mri has a problem, maybe they are lying to us, and maybe they had made a mistake. (60-year-old mother) except my children, nobody knows about my daughter’s illness. we know it [ms] can be bad, but thanks to god, right now she’s good, like ordinary people. (61-yearold mother) coming to terms with the disease after a while, most participants accepted their daughters’ illness. parents learned how to look after their daughters and to manage altered social relations. they also changed their lifestyles to make their daughters more comfortable and better able to cope with the disease. this theme consists of seven subthemes: accepting, hypothesizing the cause of the disease, family mobilization, managing people around daughter, change in lifestyle, and discovering helpful resources and techniques. representative participant statements included: at first, we said the diagnosis might not be correct, we did not believe it, but then we saw the symptoms, and we believed it … (61-year-old mother) i asked myself what kind of disease this is. why did this happen to us? maybe it happened because our financial situation was not good. perhaps this happened because we did not eat good food. this disease is like a cold, does it have a virus? i have ms. did my daughter have a higher chance of having ms? (38-year-old mother) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 95 some participants came to accept their situation, even though, prior to their daughters’ illness, they could never have imagined being able to cope with it: the reaction of my daughter’s friends was perfect; none of them made my daughter upset! (48-year-old mother) my daughter’s illness affected my life badly, for example, i could not have a child again, i had stress, i said, “i have to raise her, it is costly!” (53-year-old father) participants found that the onset of chronic illness was the start of a long struggle with practical aspects of their daughters’ care, such as a special diet, medications, and rehabilitation. gradually they discovered and became familiar with resources that made their lives easier: it was very hard at the beginning, and we did not know where we can get her medicine or how to get it, we did not know the red crescent helps for providing the family with the drugs, we bought it from the ordinary pharmacy. now, it is better, we have much more knowledge in this regard. (60-year-old mother) discussion upon receiving the diagnosis, parents are often overwhelmed with such sadness, worry, and fear that they can become preoccupied with their daughters’ illness, and distressed over the unpredictability of its future course. their concerns about the progress of the disease, the treatment process, the reactions of others to disclosure of the illness, and their daughter’s future life could be minimized if they received appropriate emotional and spiritual support. in a study of parents whose children had been diagnosed with congenital heart disease, barreto et al. (2016) reported similar parental reactions and concluded that the development of a supportive network was crucial to mitigating parental distress. in line with our study, salehi et al. stated that mothers with disabled children experience many psychosocial concerns and painful experiences in caring for their disabled child; they also emphasized the need for specialized support (salehi et al., 2022). mental distress and improper management can result in the parents becoming destitute and exhausted, making them feel trapped. the effects on parents of their daughter’s chronic disease may cause physical and mental changes that can worsen over time and endanger their social and even physical activities. consistent with the present research, ali et al. (2012) stated that parental stress associated with problems, difficulties, and complications arising from their child’s disease negatively impacted parents’ lives, with lack of support leading to individual isolation and loneliness. ms is not only a great stressor for the patients but also for their families. vorobeychik et al. (2020) stated that stressors can be physical, psychological, social, or financial, and that “the uncertainty and unpredictability of the disease course can … contribute to major stress” (para. 11). consistent with the present research, johnson et al. (2019) stated that when, as sometimes happens, a positive cystic fibrosis screening result in infants is accompanied by an inconclusive diagnosis, the uncertainty and lack of clear information from health care professionals had an ongoing international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 96 negative psychological impact on parents. banitalebi et al. (2020) also found that family caregivers of ms patients are severely stressed. when a child is diagnosed with a chronic illness, parents strive to accept and adapt to the situation, but our findings show that they may then face such obstacles as the ups and downs of diagnosis, economic burdens, and problems arising in the treatment process. consistent with our study, jadid mylani et al.’s (2012) study, which was “conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of peer groups on promoting physical health status in ms patients” (abstract), also reported problems in the initial diagnosis. most of the patients had been referred to a physician for symptoms such as anorexia, weight loss, and pallor, but underestimation of the seriousness of symptoms and incomplete testing caused the disease not to be diagnosed at the beginning. as a result, the disease progressed and the opportunity for early treatment was lost. in a study of children with congenital heart disease, barreto et al. (2016) stated that factors that interfere with the recognition and proper management of the disease included “the child is the first child, [and] the need for reorganization of family and financial routines” (p. 131). they showed that, alongside other factors, a lack of professional support from specialists makes it more difficult to obtain a correct diagnosis, and for parents to cope with the child’s illness. dung (2020) described the key problems parents of children with autism faced when taking their children to psychiatric clinics for diagnosis, which included financial problems and fatigue. our study found that with the onset of symptoms, some parents deny their child’s illness, some complain about the situation, some prefer to conceal their daughter’s disease, and some, on learning that there is no cure, resort to appeals to god through prayer. uccelli’s (2014) review of 30 studies of families who had a member with ms found that families are widely affected: even 5 to 10 years after the initial diagnosis, there are significant changes in normal family functioning. barreto et al.’s (2016) study of parents of children with congenital heart disease pointed out that the anxiety and fear parents feel from the moment they learn of their child’s diagnosis, and the long-term challenges that follow, lead to frustration related to their insecurity and lack of power. baumbusch et al. (2018) also reported feelings of loneliness and isolation in parents of children with rare diseases. each participant had a unique comprehension of their daughter’s illness: some viewed it as a natural part of life, while others found it an almost intolerable challenge. parents’ reactions varied depending on their background and their current condition; some reported reacting with shock, crying, and sleepless nights after learning of their daughter’s diagnosis. nikfarid et al. (2017) reported similar reactions in iranian mothers of children with cancer: although they felt that their child’s illness had strengthened them, thoughts of their child’s future illness were shocking to them, leading to a sense of insecurity and chronic sorrow. karami nejad et al. (2020) also reported that the parents of children with down syndrome experienced initial shock, then sadness, avoidance, guilt, confusion, and frustration. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 97 after the early stages of diagnosing and confronting the disease, the participants accepted their daughter’s illness. although they wanted to know what caused the illness, they accepted their new circumstances and concentrated on improving conditions, enlisting the help of all members of the family. they learned how to handle the people around their daughters, adapted their lifestyles to their daughter’s changing needs, and gradually discovered resources and techniques to help them deal with the disease. in short, they came to terms with the new situation, and were able to help their daughters do so as well. this enforced lifestyle change did not mean that parents were unable to recognize problems or were in a state of denial, but was a positive indication that they wanted to make a success of life in their new situation. strickland et al.’s (2015) investigation of the experiences of those supporting people newly diagnosed with ms mentioned that participants used the term “shared journey”; that is, a shared experience is created between the person with ms and the one supporting them as they help each other deal with emotional problems that arise, such as fretfulness, fears, and distress. limitations this study took place in ardabil, with parents of young women who were members of the ms association there. the findings cannot be generalized to other regions, although the results may be similar to outcomes in studies performed elsewhere. conclusion ms is a chronic and costly illness that challenges the continuous and orderly process of life. the experiences of the parents of daughters with ms show that each parent’s understanding of his or her daughter’s disease is unique. parents’ understanding of the disease, whether it seemed a natural part of life or an almost intolerable challenge, impacted how it affected them. these disparate understandings can lead to unique responses and confusion about how best to adjust. parents are forced to make changes to their lifestyles as they learn how to manage and treat not only their daughters, but other relatives and friends who have their own ideas about ms. parents are the most essential carers of daughters with ms. it is therefore crucial that health care planners and managers develop a greater understanding of parental experiences in order to effectively address their problems. ensuring that parents are properly supported could also reduce the burden of disease on the family, the health system, and the community. furthermore, the present study can be a resource for future studies related to the experiences of parents of men with ms as well as the experiences of spouses of people with ms. in addition, we suggest that the present study be replicated in other cities to study the influence of culture on the experiences of parents of daughters with ms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 86–102 98 references ali, s., sabih, f., jehan, s., anwar, m., & javed, s. 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(2020). multiple sclerosis and related challenges to young women’s health: canadian expert review. neurodegenerative disease management, 10(2s), 1–13. doi:10.2217/nmt-2020-0010 abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 489 speaking rights: youth empowerment through a participatory approach amy cooper, vincenza nazzari, julie kon kam king, and annie pettigrew abstract: using equitas’ speaking rights program as a best practice example, this article outlines the essential practices and conditions of a participatory approach to human rights education for youth, and explores how this approach effectively supports youth empowerment. the authors maintain that programs that use a participatory approach to human rights education are more likely to engage youth in actions for social change within their communities. they suggest that youth workers who are trained and well equipped to address issues that are on the minds of youth are critical in helping youth develop the skills and motivation to participate. keywords: youth empowerment, participatory approach, human rights education, sustainability amy cooper (the corresponding author) is an education specialist at equitas international centre for human rights education, 666 sherbrooke st. west, #1100, montréal, québec, h3a 1e7. telephone: (514) 621-4645, extension 244. e-mail: acooper@equitas.org vincenza nazzari is the director of education at equitas international centre for human rights education. e-mail: vnazzari@equitas.org julie kon kam king is a senior program officer at equitas international centre for human rights education. e-mail: jkonkamking@equitas.org annie pettigrew is an education specialist at equitas international centre for human rights education. e-mail: apettigrew@equitas.org mailto:acooper@equitas.org mailto:vnazzari@equitas.org mailto:jkonkamking@equitas.org mailto:apettigrew@equitas.org international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 490 using equitas’ speaking rights program as a case study, this article attempts to provide insight into how human rights education (hre) carried out according to a participatory approach contributes to youth empowerment which, in turn, leads to greater confidence and motivation among youth to participate in decisions that affect their lives. the article begins by outlining the theoretical underpinnings of the curriculum design of the speaking rights program and goes on to describe how the program is able to provide an enabling environment for youth empowerment aimed at the active participation of youth in their communities. the first section describes equitas’ participatory approach to hre and the components of the speaking rights program. it then explains how the approach is implemented in the program to foster empowerment and participation of youth. the second section offers areas for reflection, challenges encountered, and lessons learned since the program began. it is important to note that all four authors have been closely involved in the design, development, and implementation of the speaking rights program. as such, we have had the opportunity to monitor and evaluate the evolution of the program first-hand. therefore our insights and learning captured below reflect the dual perspectives of participant and observer through which we experienced the speaking rights program. speaking rights – an hre program for equitas – international centre for human rights education1, hre is a process of empowerment that begins with the individual and branches out to encompass society at large (equitas, 2011). hre includes all learning that builds knowledge and skills, as well as attitudes and behaviours that reflect the fundamental rights and freedoms articulated by the universal declaration of human rights, and that most importantly leads to action for social change (delores, 1996; equitas, 2011; united nations, 2010). ultimately, hre inspires individuals to take control of their lives and become active participants in decisions that affect them. a participatory approach, grounded in transformative learning theory, is crucial to achieving the goal of empowerment. it is with this understanding of the potential of hre that equitas, in partnership with the city of montréal, developed the speaking rights program. speaking rights is an hre program that aims at developing the capacity of youth (12 to 18 years of age) to engage in actions that support respect for human rights. young people participating in the speaking rights program embark upon a process of empowerment guided by human rights values and principles. as they work through the program, they come to realize that their ideas and talents are key assets to society and that they have a responsibility to participate in building the kind of community in which they want to live. at the same time, youth workers 1 equitas – international centre for human rights education is a non-profit organization that advances equality, social justice, and respect for human dignity through innovative education programs in canada and around the world. equitas equips front line human rights defenders and educators, government institutions, and children and youth with knowledge, skills, and values to build a global culture of human rights. equitas is based in montréal, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 491 involved in speaking rights become more aware of the real contribution youth can make to accomplish positive change in the community, as well as their own role as facilitators in this process (equitas, 2012). the components of the program include: the speaking rights toolkit, a facilitation tool for conducting hre activities and projects with youth2; basic and advanced-level training for youth workers; follow-up coaching and support mechanisms for organizations; and financial and organizational support for youth-driven community action projects. the participatory approach in the development of the speaking rights program a participatory approach in hre for youth promotes and values the sharing of personal knowledge and lived experience of human rights, and encourages critical reflection on individual beliefs and values. it is founded on principles of mutual respect and reciprocal learning and seeks out and includes the voice of the youth participants in all aspects of the learning process from the design and development to the implementation, evaluation, and follow-up. it enables youth with different backgrounds, cultures, values, and beliefs to work effectively together and learn from each other. speaking rights starts from the premise that all youth, regardless of their situation, have something meaningful to contribute to society, and that it is important to enable each young person to develop the self-confidence and capability to participate. the participatory approach is critical to this youth-enabling process. it helps build in young people the necessary knowledge, confidence, self-esteem, and skills to first articulate their needs in human rights terms and then to undertake appropriate action to ensure that those rights are respected. it is an educational approach based on the belief that the purpose of education is to expand the ability of people including youth “to become shapers of their world by analyzing the social forces that have historically limited their options” (nash, 2001, p. 188). the participatory approach as implemented by equitas consists of three fundamental characteristics or pillars. these are: starting with the participants’ experience; critically analyzing and reflecting; and developing strategies for action (equitas, 2011). these three conditions must be met both in the design and in the implementation of hre. for equitas, an important tool to help put the three pillars of the participatory approach into practice is the learning spiral model (arnold, burke, james, martin, & thomas, 1991). the learning spiral (figure 1) is the instructional design model that guides how the participatory approach is applied at various levels of the speaking rights program. 2 the speaking rights toolkit consists of 60 activities (including icebreakers and project ideas), plus detailed reference sheets for youth workers/facilitators that focus on building an understanding of human rights values and principles, as well as how to use the toolkit. the reference sheets highlight the various strategies youth workers can use to implement a participatory approach with their youth groups. they cover topics such as how to create open, safe, and democratic learning environments for youth, strategies for youth participation, in addition to information about the educational approach of the toolkit. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 492 figure 1. the learning spiral (arnold et al., 1991). adapted with permission from the doris marshall institute for education and action. we describe how the three pillars of the participatory approach are applied in the speaking rights program and how, through experiencing the approach, youth workers build their capacity to facilitate human rights education. pillar 1 starting with the experience of the participants.3 the speaking rights program was developed in a manner in which the experiences of youth, youth workers, and youth-serving community-based organizations were central to the design, development, implementation, and continuous evaluation of the program. a needs assessment, designed to ensure that all stakeholders would have an equal opportunity to participate and contribute their expertise in shaping the direction of the program was carried out with more than 280 youth, youth workers, and youth-serving community-based organizations in montréal, vancouver, surrey, victoria, and winnipeg4. a common characteristic among the young people surveyed was that they had rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to actively participate in their community organization, their school, or broader community, and in some cases even in their own families. this made clear the appropriateness of a participatory approach that values participants’ knowledge and capacity and provides a safe and collective space for sharing and analyzing personal experiences. the ongoing evaluation process of the program has enabled equitas to draw on the evolving experience of stakeholders. it has allowed us to expand or adapt the program to address their changing needs and interests. as a result of their feedback, a number of elements have been 3 pillar 1 corresponds to the first step of the learning spiral model: start with the experience of participants. 4 the program was first developed in montréal and has since expanded to include vancouver, surrey, chilliwack, lillooet, victoria, winnipeg, toronto, and kahnawà:ke. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 493 added to the speaking rights program including 12 new activities, two new reference sheets, one additional community action project, and two specialized training programs for youth workers on the topic of youth participation. what’s more, a working group representing 20 different youth organizations continues to meet biannually in montréal and vancouver to provide feedback to equitas on the speaking rights program and to help define the strategic direction moving forward. different stakeholders have consistently reported that their active involvement in shaping the direction of the speaking rights program has been both a motivating and empowering experience. drawing on their day-to-day practice, they feel they can continue to contribute to enriching the program through their suggestions, comments, and actions. the design of the speaking rights toolkit activities5 is such that they provide a framework for dialogue and exploration, where much of the content comes from the participating youth. these types of activities enable youth to make conscious or unconscious connections with prior experiences or familiar situations which, as a result, become new and meaningful experiences on which they can base their thinking (taylor, 1998). through the toolkit activities, youth share personal stories, facts, or opinions that they might not otherwise recount. they get to know each other better, their self-confidence increases, and they become aware that their experiences, feelings, and thoughts are important and worth revealing to others. as one youth worker described: taking a position is new and difficult [for youth]. at school there is always a right answer and a wrong answer, but in these activities, it is their own answer that matters. [by sharing their opinion by] taking a physical place on the line, they are able to build the skills to take a position on something. pillar 2 critically analyzing and reflecting.6 building the understanding and capacity of youth workers to lead a process of critical reflection with their youth and develop opportunities for “transformation”7 is fundamental to the success of the participatory approach and central to the design of speaking rights. during their training, youth workers are exposed to approximately one-quarter of the activities in the speaking rights toolkit. as participants in the activities, they are also exposed to a transformative learning opportunity as they are asked to confront their own biases and prejudices, and come to understand how their personal world view influences their judgment and behaviour. drawing on this transformative experience, they consider the potential effect, both positive and negative, a specific activity may have on participating youth and are encouraged to 5 an example of how a speaking rights activity was designed according to the learning spiral is provided in the appendix. 6 pillar 2 corresponds to steps two and three of the learning spiral model: look for patterns (step 2) and add new information and theory (step 3). 7 critical reflection is central to the transformative learning process described by mezirow (1990). transformative learning opportunities that encourage critical reflection lead to the reevaluation of underlying assumptions, perspectives, and world views (taylor, 1998). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 494 share strategies to ensure its appropriateness for their youth groups. this process not only contributes to their own critical reflection, but also to ensuring the safety and well-being of their youth (dworkin & larson, 2006; fraser-thomas & côté, 2009). in debriefing toolkit activities, youth workers need to be able to encourage youth to discuss their experiences and surface patterns or ideas that are shared with others. through a process of guided discourse during which a diversity of views emerge, youth are able to critically examine their own assumptions, test their own justifications, and make decisions based upon the resulting consensus (taylor, 1998). mezirow (1990) suggests that the most significant learning occurs through articulating with others one’s values, beliefs, and feelings. through the debrief discussions, youth contribute new knowledge or ideas, further building mutual awareness and experience. the debrief scaffolds the critical reflection process and supports empowerment by encouraging youth to think about what happened during the activity and to draw life lessons that they can apply in other contexts. it gives youth the opportunity to discover the importance of human rights values for themselves and encourages them to suggest ways to actually live in line with these values. it also encourages the full participation of youth by giving them the opportunity to exercise their right to express themselves and be heard. the speaking rights training requires youth workers to think critically about their role as facilitators and their responsibility to create an environment where young people feel safe and secure. they also build their understanding of the human rights framework as a tool for analyzing their contexts and enabling the youth they work with to do the same. research shows that youth workers who are trained and well equipped with skills and resources to openly address issues that are foremost on the minds of youth, and who can act as role models, can be critical in helping youth as they develop the skills that can help shape their future (eccles & gootman, 2002). youth workers involved in the speaking rights program, must, at a minimum, participate in a one-day training session about the program and its underlying approach. training plays a significant role in strengthening the capacity of youth workers to engage in a process of critical reflection with their youth and in ensuring the success of the program. for these reasons, equitas made a conscious decision not to do a mass distribution of the speaking rights toolkit without the benefit of training for the youth workers. pillar 3 developing strategies for action.8 critical reflection in itself is not sufficient for empowerment and transformation. freire (1970) believed that this reflection must also result in concrete action. from his perspective, true transformation implies that learners change their behaviours to transform their reality, and transform society as a whole. the speaking rights program guides youth and youth workers through a process for developing concrete actions that will contribute to change in their communities. through training, follow up and community action projects, youth and youth workers are able to practise new skills and apply their learning in action. the literature supports the importance of practising new skills in order to ensure the effectiveness of programs that aim to develop prosocial behaviours among youth (durlak, weissberg, & pachan, 2010). 8 pillar 3 corresponds to steps four and five of the learning spiral model: practise new strategies and plan for action (step 4) and apply in action (step 5). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 495 during the training, youth workers spend time with their colleagues developing action plans for putting their learning into practice, with the aim of increasing their organization’s capacity to conduct hre through a participatory approach. the program supports youth in the development and implementation of community action projects to address issues that are important to them, that make connections with human rights values, and that incorporate a participatory approach.9 examples of community action projects undertaken by youth groups to date include: (a) art-based initiatives to promote gender equality, respect for diversity, and human rights values within local communities; (b) youth-led public events to raise awareness about poverty, discrimination, and social exclusion; and (c) youth-led forums to discuss and find ways to reduce cyber-bullying, homophobia, and racism (see figure 2 for more detailed examples). figure 2. examples of speaking rights community action projects. rights on the street! ywca, montréal, quebec a group of 10 girls raised awareness about human rights values through a community art event in the streets of downtown montréal. through painting, they invited neighbours, partners, and people on the street to express themselves about human rights values. they distributed free food thanks to donations they received to support their project. more than 250 people attended the activity. write4rights ann davis transition society, chilliwack, british columbia a group of youth created a graffiti wall within their school which promotes positive human rights values. they spoke to their peers about the importance of respect and human rights, and with the support of their teachers and principal, they created a rights awareness campaign in their school. what makes you beautiful? dawson community centre, montréal this project brought together eight girls who photographed women from their communities asking them: what makes you beautiful? the girls asked the women to link their personal definition of beauty to human rights values. photographs were mounted on a giant canvas and presented at the dawson community centre’s annual general meeting. they are now permanently exhibited at the centre. 9 to ensure that the community action projects developed by youth workers with their youth can actually be implemented, the speaking rights program provides materials and financial resources to support organizations in this endeavour. through a mini-grants process, youth groups are eligible for up to $500 for materials and other resources needed for their projects. furthermore, equitas provides ongoing coaching to the youth workers ranging from how to write a proposal for grants and develop budgets all the way to celebrating the successes of the initiatives undertaken. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 496 youniss, mcclellan, and yates (1997) assert that the impact of these types of initiatives are far reaching, helping to engender civic identity into adulthood: “by offering youth meaningful participatory experiences, we allow them to discover their potency, assess their responsibility, acquire a sense of political processes, and commit to a more ethical ideology” (p. 629). it is interesting to note that during follow-up interviews, a number of youth workers conceded that their own programming would probably not change the reality facing youth. significantly altering the environment of violence, emotional neglect, or discrimination rampant in their communities is well beyond their scope of influence. however, youth workers do feel that with continued involvement in the speaking rights program, they are in a position to change how youth perceive their realities, moving toward a way of looking at life that is more positive and hopeful. as one youth worker explains: our objective isn’t for the youth to remember every detail, but to have them think and be critical about what they are seeing and experiencing. often they are the victims of racism and so they react negatively in a way that reinforces those that oppress them. for example, they are aggressive toward the police or obnoxious in stores.... but through the discussions after the activities, they’ve been able to realize that they should not aggravate the problem and add to it, but defuse the violence instead. sustainability of the speaking rights program – challenges and lessons learned since the official launch of equitas’ speaking rights program in 2010, 200 community organizations and 450 youth workers in montréal, vancouver, surrey, chilliwack, lillooet, victoria, winnipeg, toronto, and kahnawà:ke have joined together to promote youth voices and leadership in their communities. through the use of program activities and projects they have supported the positive engagement of over 5,500 youth. as noted earlier, continuous engagement with a majority of speaking rights stakeholders has allowed the program to develop content and direction that reflect the needs and interests of those involved. as with most programs like speaking rights, however, a major challenge is ensuring sustainability. the longer-term success of a program such as speaking rights depends to a significant degree on its adoption and continued use by its stakeholders. we offer our reflections and some strategies that can contribute to supporting sustainability. engaging youth workers in the speaking rights approach the speaking rights approach places youth workers in the role of facilitator and this is relatively new and challenging for many of them. some youth workers have reported that they are at times reticent or apprehensive to try activities that involve subject areas in which they lack familiarity, such as racism, sexuality, and youth rights. engaging youth around these issues requires experience on the part of youth workers in navigating differing opinions and addressing sometimes challenging questions from youth. many of the youth workers recognize the value and importance of not just informing youth about issues, but also providing safe spaces to discuss them with youth. although youth workers report they are better able to support youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 497 empowerment and participation through youth-led initiatives and community action projects, they acknowledge that they need more skills. regular follow-up training, coaching, and on-site visits are incorporated into the speaking rights program to support youth workers in their own learning about the approach and about human rights. moving forward, it is important to consider how the program can provide more proactive, continuous, and flexible means to support youth workers as they develop their capacity to facilitate human rights education and integrate the participatory approach into their work. going beyond training and support. for there to be intentional, planned, and systematic use of the speaking rights program, both management and staff need to see the connection between the goals and values of the program and what they as an organization are trying to achieve with respect to youth empowerment and participation. equitas’ experience, both in canada and internationally, has shown it is important to go beyond training and support for youth workers and ensure organizational buy-in at the supervisory level for a program and its underlying approach. notably, equitas’ work with play it fair! (a program similar to speaking rights but geared toward children 6 to 12 years old) has indicated that adoption and acceptance at the management level is critical to firmly establish a program within an organization and make sure that the values and approach of the program remain a priority from year to year. such buy-in helps support day-to-day use of the program and ensures that there are enough resources allocated to it. in addition, equitas has learned that uptake of programs such as speaking rights will not be successful unless there is alignment with a partner organization’s own values or mission. developing the organizational culture. an organizational culture that places a high priority on youth empowerment and participation and reflects the values of human rights within youth-serving organizations is a key factor in supporting sustainability. developing this culture, however, requires experienced staff as well as adequate time and resources. the reality of these organizations is that there is high staff turnover and very often lack of time and resources to effectively plan and develop long-term programming. training more than one person at a time from each partner organization engaged in the program contributes greatly to stronger support and motivation for the program within the organization. garnering enthusiastic organizational participation will also go a long way in encouraging and supporting the necessary new behaviours that are essential to altering culture. engaging the broader community. meaningful youth participation and empowerment occurs in partnership with adults across the wider community (cook, blanchet-cohen, & hart, 2004). both youth and youth workers have reported that their participation in speaking rights community action projects have led to positive changes. through concrete actions such as art exhibits, graffiti walls, youth councils, and other initiatives they have developed their skills and sense of agency in the community. while these action projects reflect an important step in building empowerment and participation of the youth involved, equitas recognizes the need to capitalize on this momentum and expand these initiatives so that they not only impact youth organizations, but also contribute to substantive change within a particular community. as hughes & curran (2000) explain, genuine youth participation must look beyond having a program for youth and toward a more holistic view of a community where we don’t “work on young people” but “work with young people.” in many cases youth-serving organizations remain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 498 on the exterior or periphery of community development initiatives (tolman & pittman, 2001), so it is important that equitas reflect on how to overcome these barriers. conclusion: making the change we want to see youth voices, especially those marginalized by society, are rarely listened to and consulted by the community at large (burgess, 2000; curran, bowness, & comack, 2010). the program’s current focus on youth and youth workers in community-based organizations therefore may be limiting the full potential of meaningful youth participation. to increase effectiveness, it is important to envision a program that integrates a “whole community approach” and addresses community change and growth (warner, langlois, & dumond, 2010). consequently, to create the necessary social conditions for youth empowerment across a community, equitas will need to expand partnerships beyond youth-serving organizations to include other community actors such as parents, teachers, and decision-makers. the speaking rights program is currently being implemented in nine cities and in just over 200 organizations across canada. equitas is in the process of identifying ways to provide necessary follow-up and coaching while at the same time trying to balance this with an increasing demand from new youth organizations that want to participate in the program. it is becoming evident that equitas has to make some strategic decisions regarding whether to focus on depth or breadth of scope in the evolution of the speaking rights program. for many participating youth, engaging in speaking rights has provided the first opportunity to participate and express themselves on issues that matter to them. as a result, youth are coming back to their youth centres wanting to discuss, learn, and take action. an individual’s decision to feel, think, or act differently is a foundational step toward transformation. in partnership with their youth workers, youth are making some initial links with their local communities in an effort to contribute to social change. it is clear that the essential practices and conditions of a participatory approach to hre, such as those integrated throughout the speaking rights program, have tremendous potential to support the development of strong and healthy democratic communities. continuing to work together, while challenging both ourselves and our partners to critically reflect on how best to make the change we want to see, will surely engender youth empowerment and greater participation. i’ve seen these girls changing: from the disinterest climate at the beginning came a lively atmosphere of solidarity and collaboration. they learned how to create a project, master entrepreneurship skills and techniques, take some responsibilities, become engaged, and invest their leadership in a common cause not just their individual interest. furthermore they are interested in coming back to the action council next year to do new community projects! (youth coordinator, personal communication, 2012) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 499 references arnold, b., burke, b., james, c., martin, d., & thomas, b. (1991). educating for a change. toronto: between the lines. burgess, j. (2000). youth involvement can be the key to community development. community youth development journal, 1, 38–41. retrieved from https://plus28.safeorder.net/cydjournal/2000winter/burgess.html cook, p., blanchet-cohen, n., & hart, s. (2004). children as partners: child participation promoting social change. victoria, bc: international institute for child rights and development. retrieved from http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/children-partnerschild-participation-promoting-social-change curran, a., bowness, e., & comack, c. 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(2002). community programs to promote youth development. washington, dc: national academies press. equitas international centre for human rights education & office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights. (2011). evaluating human rights training activities. a handbook for human rights educators. geneva, switzerland: office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights. equitas international centre for human rights education. (2012). speaking rights: human rights education toolkit for youth 12 to 18. montréal: author. fraser-thomas, j., & côté, j. (2009). understanding adolescents’ positive and negative developmental experiences in sport. the sport psychologist, 23, 3–23. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: herder and herder. https://plus28.safe-order.net/cydjournal/2000winter/burgess.html https://plus28.safe-order.net/cydjournal/2000winter/burgess.html http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/children-partners-child-participation-promoting-social-change http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/children-partners-child-participation-promoting-social-change http://www.policyalternatives.org/publications/reports/meeting-needs-youth http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?bookid=117682&searchtype=basic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 500 hughes, d. m., & curran, s. p. (2000). community youth development: a framework for action. community youth development journal, 1, 7–13. retrieved from https://plus28.safeorder.net/cydjournal/2000winter/hughes.html mezirow, j. (1990). fostering critical reflection in adulthood: a guide to transformative and emancipatory learning. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. nash, a. (2001). participatory workplace education: resisting fear-driven models. in p. campbell & b. burnaby (eds.), participatory practices in adult education (pp. 185–196). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. taylor, e. w. (1998). the theory and practice of transformative learning: a critical review. columbus, oh: eric clearing house. retrieved from http://www.calpro online.org/eric/docs/taylor/taylor_00.pdf tolman, j., & pittman, k. (2001). youth acts, community impacts: stories of youth engagement with real results. the community and youth development series, 7. takoma park, md: the forum for youth investment, international youth foundation. united nations. (2010). world program for human rights education: plan of action – second phase. geneva: office of the high commissioner for human rights. retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/wphre_phase_2_en.pdf warner, a., langlois, m., & dumond, c. (2010). voices from youth action teams: creating successful partnerships for community action. in w. linds, l. goulet, & a. sammel (eds.), emanicipatory practices: adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (pp. 95–108). rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. youniss, j., mcclellan, j. a., & yates, m. (1997). what we know about engendering civic identity. the american behavioral scientist, 40(5), 620–631. https://plus28.safe-order.net/cydjournal/2000winter/hughes.html https://plus28.safe-order.net/cydjournal/2000winter/hughes.html http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/taylor/taylor_00.pdf http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/taylor/taylor_00.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/wphre_phase_2_en.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 489–501 501 appendix steps of the learning spiral model: toolkit activity 6 one step forward in this role-play activity, participants put themselves in someone else’s shoes and try to imagine what their life is like. participants are given a role card specifying an identity, for example: you are 15 years old. you are a lesbian; or your parents are rich; or you are 14 and your parents don’t let you go out after 8:00 p.m. based on the identity, participants build their image of the person. the facilitator then reads a series of statements such as: you have never been in serious financial difficulty; or you have never been discriminated against; or you can fall in love with whomever you choose. if the participants think the statement applies to the role on their card, they take a step forward. if not, they must stay where they are. once all the statements have been read out, some participants will find themselves at the front of the room, while others will not have moved at all. the facilitator then asks participants in turn to reveal their identity to the group and then leads a debrief using the feel, think, and act questions provided. step 1: start with experience of participants the activity begins by asking participants to imagine their roles. the roles are intentionally vague so that participants develop an identity for their characters based on their own experiences and which consequently will very likely reflect their biases and preconceptions. drawing on their experiences of what it means for example to be rich or to be a lesbian, participants take a step forward or stay where they are. step 2: look for patterns during the debrief, the facilitator asks participants to identify how they felt being able to move forward or when they couldn’t (feel questions) as well as lessons they have drawn from the experience (think questions). through the discussion, youth recognize that various opportunities in life are mediated by not only their financial or social standing, but also by personal characteristics such as sense of self-worth. step 3: add new information the debrief is also an opportunity to hear from others in the group and add new perspectives to a given role (think questions). this is particularly effective when two or more participants are provided with the same role but end up in different parts of the room. the exchange between them provides a platform to explore how our experiences and world view can affect our standing in life. step 4: put learning into practise the debrief may bring to the surface issues of discrimination and exclusion, opportunities for marginalized youth in the community, or factors that promote agency and participation. the last series of questions during the debrief (act questions) ask participants to reflect on the issues at hand, identify what kind of changes are possible and their role in the process. step 5: apply learning in action the activity provides the catalyst and platform for encouraging youth and youth workers to apply their learning in action. continued support from youth workers and youth peers is necessary to integrate the lessons learned into observable behaviours or changes within the group. forging ethical adult-youth relationships international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 433 forging ethical adult-youth relationships within emancipatory activism rachel e. evans and darren e. lund abstract: the authors engage in a duoethnographic dialogue about their past work as activists in a high school setting, where rachel was a high school student and darren a teacher-advisor. their discussion focuses on their recollections of the formation of a gay-straight alliance (gsa) within a conservative community setting, the first of its kind in the province of alberta. reflecting critically on their own roles, they explore the dimensions of effective adult-youth collaborations, including notions of power and privilege, and the role of adults in protecting students from hostile community backlash. using specific illustrations, the authors outline some of the optimal qualities of adult-youth projects in a way that can enable and empower young people, while avoiding unduly burdening them with the responsibility to solve all social inequity. keywords: student activism, gay-straight alliances, adult-youth collaboration, social justice, duoethnography rachel e. evans, bfa, is a humane education coordinator with the spca in victoria, british columbia. she is accepted to a city planning master’s program at the university of manitoba. e-mail: 26sharks@gmail.com darren e. lund, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of calgary, 2500 university drive nw, calgary, alberta, canada, t2n 1n4. telephone (403) 220-7365. e-mail: dlund@ucalgary.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 434 rachel: hey darren, now that a bit of time has passed, i am wondering what your thoughts have been on the “transforming practices: emancipatory approaches to youth engagement” conference held in montreal in june 2012, in relation to your ongoing work with youth activists. it was such a wonderful gathering of young people and scholars, all focused on how best to engage in activist work in respectful and collaborative ways. have you been able to put some of the things you learned or realized into action? darren: thanks for contacting me again, rachel. yes, it has been a few months now, and i am often reminded of our experiences at that excellent meeting. i especially appreciated the collegial and interactive nature of the sessions. it did not feel like a typical conference at all, but more of a gathering of like-minded colleagues to have an indepth conversation about a specific topic, in this case, adult-youth collaborations on social activism. for me, it was exciting to attend with maryam nabavi, a colleague with whom i’ve written about youth activism in the past (e.g., nabavi & lund, 2010), and who was attending with her own youth activist colleague. your question is important, as it stimulates me to reflect more deeply on how we each move forward after an inspirational meeting to make some tangible progress on our work. in my case, i’m fortunate in that i have two current research projects regarding youth and social justice that both benefit from these insights. one project is a three-year study on “engaging young people in social justice research” funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and the other is a community-led project that engages pre-service teachers in service-learning opportunities with children and youth from immigrant families in our community (see lund, lee, kaipainen, & bragg, 2012). too often, young people in our communities are merely viewed as another niche market to be exploited as potential consumers (boyles, 2008), or are demonized in the media as a lost generation, falsely stereotyped as either dangerous or apathetic. as henry giroux (2003) wrote, “if not represented as a symbol of fashion or hailed as a hot niche, youth are often portrayed as a problem, a danger to adult society or, even worse, irrelevant to the future” (p. xiv). an issue that we talked about in montreal that continues to guide my current thinking is studying how to establish a healthy role as an adult mentor when working with youth. it almost seems like an art form to try to “do it right” and i remember one of my colleagues describing it as a kind of “syncopated rhythm” that emerges between students and teachers (soohoo, 1995). i would love to hear your insights on this issue. rachel: yes, i also felt it was an atypical conference in many ways. it was very conversational in nature, sort of like a ... duoethnographic conversation. i like that this piece respects each of our voices as distinct, which is really symbolic of the separate perspectives that adults and youth working together must honour. as you know, this new research methodology pioneered and named duoethnography by joe norris and rick sawyer features dialogic inquiry toward shared understandings that are only possible through a critical engagement across differences (norris, sawyer, & lund, 2012). when applied to youth-adult relationships, this methodology affords a more level playing field, as both participants become co-researchers. the differences in age and perspective add to the richness of the discussion, and allow for a more complex and ambiguous power international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 435 relationship than a typical student/adult dichotomy. in a related vein, what i valued most at the montreal conference was having the opportunity to speak with people in other communities about their work. it was so interesting to see such a diversity of people and initiatives come together, and to find similarities in terms of the challenges and realizations we all faced. many of the participants emphasized the need for initiatives that are led by youth. in that sense, the adult in such a partnership is truly a mentor and role model. the position is to inspire and support rather than control. so i agree; that makes it a bit of an art form, and one that requires a fair amount of sensitivity and open communication. darren: you make a good point about inspiring and supporting versus the adult control model. can you think of any specific examples where you have seen situations with inspiring and supportive adults? any times where this wasn’t the case? in our last duoethnographic conversation we reflected specifically on the challenges of starting a school-based activist club in the late 1990s that focused on lesbian / gay / bisexual / transsexual / transgender (lgbtt) issues. as it turns out, our written conversation also became the first-ever published duoethnography (see lund & evans, 2006). i am still learning the various forms this method can take, and am very impressed with how it builds on critical ethnography and autoethnography to allow deeper understandings through dialogue. as we discussed, our gay-straight alliance was quite innovative and groundbreaking for its time. having been initiated back in the 1999-2000 school year, it was the first such group in alberta (lund, 2007). in that conversation we focused a lot on our own identities and personal histories around sexual orientation and gender, working toward some new shared understandings. i’m wondering how your thinking has progressed in the five or six years since then? rachel: i still think our original students and teachers opposing prejudice (stop) program that you helped form at lindsay thurber comprehensive high school in red deer, alberta, back in the mid-1980s would be the most obvious example of a supportive adult mentoring model. in particular with our formation of the gay-straight alliance (gsa), some friends and i had the initial idea to organize it, but when you’re 16 years old, you simply don’t have the tools or the knowledge to see through an idea like that. particularly with lgbtt youth, you may not have the confidence either. even simply navigating the bureaucracy of the school administration could be enough of a challenge to put off many kids. i found it helpful to have you supporting us and using your experience with stop to help us create this other group. darren: i actually remember being a bit afraid when you and your friend rene came to me and asked if you could form the group. it really hadn’t been done before in this province, and only a few times across canada at that time, so we didn’t have a proper model to use, and besides, we were living in a very conservative small prairie city. i am reminded of paulo freire’s (1998) insistence that adults need to respect and attend to the lived experiences of students, and their calls for change. he insists that educators “establish an ‘intimate’ connection between knowledge considered basic to any school curriculum and knowledge that is the fruit of the lived experience of these students as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 436 individuals” (p. 36). i’ll admit that when you asked for my help to fight the homophobia in our school, i was personally very uncomfortable addressing these issues because i was tied to the notion that it was somehow a “teen sexuality” issue. you two reminded me that it was really about creating a safe learning environment. this proactive approach in schools is now widely regarded as the morally, ethically, and pedagogically correct thing to do – and indeed there is much formal support for teachers and students wishing to form gay-straight alliances in this province (alberta teachers’ association, 2012) – but at the time, it was all new territory. now, there are handbooks, workshops, summer camps, and facebook support groups to guide the formation of gay-straight alliances, and there are currently dozens of such groups in the province of alberta alone. your groundwork in convincing the school principal to consider it, and winning over the staff in a courageous talk to them about making the school a safe place, were both really remarkable accomplishments. rachel: thank you. there was definitely a feeling that we were breaking new ground with the gsa. i think all of us felt afraid at some point, since we really didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect. it’s interesting that you would bring up the fact that you felt uncomfortable about the school administration or the public regarding the club as a teen sexuality issue. from my vantage point now, it strikes me as odd that dealing with a teen sexuality issue would have been an issue that we had to worry about at all! i mean the right to an inclusive education regarding sexuality and sexual health is also a basic human and moral right. people’s discomfort regarding the spectrum of human sexuality is what has kept gay rights on the margin of human rights debates for so many years. when we started the gsa that was where our outrage was coming from. we were saying: “why aren’t we talking about this? why are lgbtt people and their issues being swept under the rug when it comes to these important debates?” we were indignant about the fact that adults around us were asking us to confront human rights issues like racism and sexism, while effectively ignoring homophobia because it might mean they would have to mention sex. it was uncomfortable at the time, and risky. however, we all felt that it was a conversation that needed to be started, and we needed some adults to assist us. darren: could you remind me of the point you raised at the conference about an adult mentor/sponsor needing to “protect” the young activists? that was an interesting point, but i see it as problematic in a way, since it implies a kind of paternalistic notion in my case, that these helpless kids need a mother hen or a father figure to shield them from the harsh realities of the world. could you explain that point a bit? rachel: i know protection is a word that tends to make many activists bristle. the focus of this kind of activism is so much more about empowerment, but i think it’s important for adult mentors to assume a somewhat protective role at times. we have to remember that the climate in red deer at that time was very homophobic, i would argue, and there were real threats that we could have faced after forming the group. some of the young people involved in our group were being bullied and threatened daily. even though we became empowered students through the formation of the group, we were still international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 437 vulnerable simply because we were young. it felt important to have adults on our side, on whom we could rely if and when the backlash came. at that age, i don’t recall having very clear knowledge about what my rights as a young person and student actually were, so i don’t know that i could have been relied upon to defend them myself. this is where the protective element comes in and the importance of creating a safe space. the group really became about young people learning how to recognize and defend their rights. i also felt that we began to protect and stand up for each other. there was a sense of empowerment in that respect as well, but it developed over time. to me that was key. we were just learning, and i felt protected by the knowledge and access to the “adult world” that you had. none of the students had access to that, would you agree? darren: certainly. i remember how uncomfortable many people were about our forming the group – including me, of course – and particularly our principal who knew that the community could easily critique this effort as “promoting a lifestyle” or some such nonsense. i was feeling confident as an “openly” straight person, married to a woman, that i would be understood to be an ally to lgbtt persons, but i also remember the other teacher-mentor, kirsten spackman, half-joking about on how this affiliation might ruin her opportunity to get dates with men in a small community! moving forward with formally initiating the gsa group, we all decided that the alliance would be most comfortably located within the stop program. even though our meetings were held on a different weekday than the stop meetings, the group was under the umbrella of an award-winning1 student activist program that had been around for over a decade, and that had brought our school and school district some national acclaim. rachel: yes, i think it may have affected my ability to get dates, too! but joking aside, i think it is important to acknowledge that, like it or not, you were in a position of greater power than we were, by virtue of the fact that you were straight, white, male, an adult, and a teacher. i thought and still think it was very admirable to use that position to help us gain resources we wouldn’t otherwise have access to. so maybe ally feels like a more comfortable word than protector, but i do feel that there needs to be an element of responsibility or protection when adults are working with youth. i don’t think we were helpless, but i do think we needed help. darren: i really appreciate the way you’ve expressed that. now that my children are both around their teenage years now, i can appreciate how much trust we parents 1 the stop group won a number of local and national awards, including a 1989 together we’re better award from canadian heritage, a 1993 canadian student human rights award from the league for human rights of b’nai brith, a 1998 race relations award (with darren lund) from the federation of canadian municipalities, a 1999 harmony award of distinction (with darren lund) from the harmony movement, the march 2000 freedom fighter of the month designation from the rock group, rage against the machine, and a 2001 award of distinction from the canadian race relations foundation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 438 must put in teachers on a daily basis. of course, teachers also hold a legal role, through the concept of in loco parentis, as acting parents during the hours that young people are in school. when dealing with supervising and participating in social justice activism, the stakes are even higher. if you think about it, the issues we’re tackling together – race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, ability, age, religion, and the like – are hot-button topics that often elicit very emotional responses from people. these are also highly-charged political activities, and our dealing with them proactively within a public institution, even through a volunteer school club, puts us all on some rocky ground. you make a good point about the adults stepping up to take appropriate responsibility for the group. i can think of a number of moments in the gsa when students needed a kind of protection from school staff and community backlash. when we had just formed the gsa, one of my openly anti-gay colleagues sent a note to the school’s staff e-mail list saying, “what’s with all the gay stuff at school these days?” and i politely reminded him of his professional obligation to treat all students with dignity and respect (see alberta teachers’ association, 1992). rachel: i don’t remember hearing anything negative from teachers during those first few months after forming the gsa. in fact, i think we actually felt supported by most of the staff in the school, and i remember their positive reactions to our talk at that staff meeting where we first raised the idea of starting a gsa. i do remember that terrible incident that took place in red deer where a young man was beaten up for being gay. i also remember some media controversy over the group and ongoing letters to the editor of the local newspaper, many of which were hateful. darren: yes, that assault was a horrifying incident. i was in my last month of teaching high school, when a local youth pastor wrote a letter to the editor of our local daily newspaper criticizing anyone who defended the rights of gay people as “perverse, self-centred, and morally deprived individuals” and “just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities” (boissoin, 2002, p. a4). just two weeks later, a young gay man was beaten up in red deer by some other young men. they taunted him and asked him, “you’re a faggot, right?” and then began beating him, crushing his right cheekbone and knocking out some of his teeth (zielinski, 2002). the victim said to the newspaper reporter that he didn’t “feel safe reading the anti-gay statements like the ones in the red deer advocate’s june 17 letter to the editor from stephen boissoin.” he continued, “i feel the letter was just encouragement for people to go out and stop the gay rights movement” (p. a2). rachel: that incident and the initial homophobic letter really reminded the whole community that homophobia was alive and well in our community, and that the health and safety of gay kids really were at risk. i was proud of you for actually filing that human rights complaint against boissoin, and so pleased when you won at the human rights panel tribunal almost five years later. it was disappointing that you later lost the ruling on appeal (slade, 2012). darren: yes, the upshot of that decade-long ordeal was quite disappointing, but it did open an important and ongoing national debate about hate speech and seeking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 439 reasonable limits on free speech. i experienced a great deal of backlash as well, and even now continue to get hate mail and occasional death threats that the police investigate. homophobia and hate are very real to me. however, i have some serious reservations about loading students up with all the responsibilities of repairing the world. it is quite unfair of the adults in the community to say to young people that they are now the leaders in making improvements to social justice activism (and ironically, i’ve said and written about this topic many times myself). really, this off-loading of the remedy to social ills onto the backs of young people is rather unethical, and i have recently written about it, both in an encyclopedia entry on student activism (lund, 2012), and in a rather self-critical dialogue on this issue (lund & paul, 2011). my main critique is that, too often, adults abdicate our own responsibility for remedying inequity and injustice by concluding that youth must take the lead since we have failed. it is irresponsible and a lame cop-out that helps us shirk our own ongoing responsibilities to strive for social justice alongside our youth allies. i’d be interested in your perspective on this issue from a young activist’s viewpoint. rachel: i found the co-written article you shared to be very interesting and pertinent. it touches on a lot of what i have been thinking about lately, as i reflect on the work we did. you wrote: “i feel that my colleagues and i, albeit with the most honorable of intentions, often engage in rather unjust actions ourselves with the relentless seeking and promoting of youth leaders in this field” (lund & paul, 2011, p. 255). what a wise observation. it made me wonder: when we engage young people in activist pursuits, are we providing them with an opportunity to use their creativity and energy to build a better world? or are we simply trying to mould them into miniature versions of ourselves? or, as your colleague jim paul put it, are we “normalizing” them (p. 257) into an adultdefined world? and in doing this, are we cheating ourselves out of the creative energy and fresh perspectives that we claim to value so much in young people? these are important questions that came up at the conference for me and that i hope i can keep in mind as i continue to work with young activists. darren: your comments on these critiques and questions surrounding the problematic engagement of youth in social justice activism really remind me that forging a mutually constructive relationship with youth collaborators is such a difficult thing for many adults to do, especially for educators who are often put in the role of organizing everything. we need to follow a set curriculum in all our teaching, and to have clear learning objectives for our students, straightforward and predictable learning outcomes, and fair assessment strategies at all stages of our instruction. so being put in the role of staff advisor to a program or club that must retain some flexibility in its structure and planning is really new and often uncomfortable territory for most teachers. one principal told me, while we were watching students dance in the mosh pit at a school-based allages benefit concert that our stop group had organized, that he felt like he was driving a full school bus downhill with no brakes! it takes a significant degree of trust, and perhaps ability to tolerate risk and failure, to allow young people to lead, and perhaps to fail. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 440 thinking back on the gay-straight alliance, and the students and teachers opposing prejudice group that had been running since early 1987, we had many marginally successful or even disastrous events and activities, but we also had some dramatically impactful moments over the years. our first public event with the gsa was to create eye-catching posters with pro-diversity mottos. i remember some typical ones such as, “closets are for clothes,” and some funny ones such as, “i don’t care if you’re gay, straight, or australian” with a drawing of a kangaroo. we had so much fun creating dozens of them, and putting them up around the school with the permission and approval of the principal (who, incidentally, did not approve my poster that said: “stop flaunting your heterosexuality!”). for me, the failure part came when most were torn down, perhaps by a small number of students, early the same day. rachel: even so, many positive things came out of the experiences we were creating within that group. we managed to put on many events that all youth were welcome to attend. i remember looking around our first meeting, which, if you recall, had a record turnout. the classroom was completely full! most of the kids who came were identified as straight. they didn’t need to be there, but they wanted to show support; they wanted to show up as allies. i witnessed many small victories in the hallways and classrooms, too. even if many of the posters were torn down, the conversation had already started, and that was the most important thing. for both of us it has led to opportunities for recognition and professional development. i don’t keep in touch with the other youth that were involved with the gsa group we started, but i often wonder if their efforts were rewarded in the same way ours have been. this thought bothers me because there were some kids in the group who were much more marginalized than i was, just based on the fact that they were more “visible” minorities. being of non-white racialized identities added another layer to their activism, i think they stuck their necks out further than we did in some ways. i wonder at how many academic conferences they have been invited to speak, and how many papers they have been able to add to their cvs because of it. these are issues that i don’t see reflected in the literature on youth engagement, but that need further exploration. i don’t say this to denigrate the work that you and i have done, but to remember that we haven’t done it alone. it’s something i think about. darren: what an important point, rachel, and one that i’m often self-conscious about. i’ve long tried to be a good ally to a number of marginalized groups – in almost all of which i’m not an insider – so it is always with a great deal of unearned privilege that i undertake this role. even knowing that and trying to account for it, i am still blind to many things and i continue to reap the benefits of my status in the dominant group categories as a white, straight, and (temporarily) able-bodied male. of course, i’m proud of the things that our collective actions were able to accomplish, to break new ground then, so that our province now has dozens of high schools with active gsa groups. rachel: i didn’t intend to make you feel self-conscious. i think a bit of selfawareness is important, but self-consciousness can be inhibiting. i think it’s important for all of us to defend human rights, regardless of which group or category we belong to, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 441 this was certainly the kind of behaviour that you and kirsten spackman modelled in your roles as the teacher advisors in the stop program. for me, the most important personal success that came out of the formation of the gsa is simply that i was able to help create a safe place within a very hostile environment. that space should have existed anyway, but it didn’t, so we created it. for an hour at lunch, every kid that came in the door could feel welcomed, accepted, supported, and eventually empowered. once we had that space, what followed was the ability to discuss and plan the ways that we could stand up for human rights in the wider world. that was a very powerful feeling, and i continue to be grateful for your support in realizing it. darren: i feel honoured by my role as one of the adult mentors in the formation of that program, and by my continued association with you and so many other activists who have taken the courageous steps to make it happen. my ongoing research to discover new insights about collective social justice activism often focuses on this very topic, gaining an understanding of the adult-youth relationship in these projects. as giroux (2010) reminded us, we all have much to gain from the active engagement of young people in respectful coalitions and educational endeavours that foster social justice: “a future in which democratic possibilities will flourish can become a reality only if young people are provided with the knowledge, capacities, and skills they need to function as social agents, active citizens, empowered workers, and critical thinkers” (p. 23). i understand that there isn’t one single way of making this happen, being a good adult facilitator, or finding a professional relationship that will work for each context, but i know that having respect for the agency and power of young people is somewhere near the core. it has been gratifying to extend our work through duoethnography once again, using this emerging dialogic method to continue our meaning-making around youth activism and coming to some new understandings about optimizing the role adults can play in adult-youth collaborations. this direction echoes recent findings showing that youth strongly prefer consensus-based decision-making that values differing viewpoints (blanchet-cohen, manolson, & shaw, 2012). thanks for initiating this conversation, and i look forward to many more as we continue our collective efforts toward making our schools and communities safe and just environments for all people. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 442 references alberta teachers’ association. (1992). code of professional conduct. edmonton, ab: author. alberta teachers’ association. (2012). sexual orientation and gender identity [online resources]. edmonton, ab: author. retrieved from http://www.teachers.ab.ca/for%20members/professional%20development/diver sity%20and%20human%20rights/sexual%20orientation/pages/index.aspx blanchet-cohen, n., manolson, s., & shaw, k. (2012). youth-led decision-making in community development grants. youth & society. doi: 10.1177/0044118x12455024. retrieved from http://yas.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/07/31/0044118x12455024.abstract boissoin, s. (2002, june 17). homosexual agenda wicked [letter to the editor]. red deer advocate, p. a4. boyles, d. (ed.). (2008). the corporate assault on youth: commercialism, exploitation, and the end of innocence. new york: peter lang. freire, p. (1998). pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage. new york: rowman & littlefield. giroux, h. (2003). the abandoned generation: democracy beyond the culture of fear. new york: palgrave macmillan. giroux, h. (2010). youth in a suspect society: democracy or disposability? new york: palgrave macmillan. lund, d. e. (2007). challenging homophobia in conservative canada: forming alberta’s first gay/straight alliance. in l. van dijk & b. van driel (eds.), challenging homophobia: teaching about sexual diversity (pp. 99–109). london: trentham. lund, d. e. (2012). student activism. in j. a. banks (ed.), sage encyclopedia of diversity in education (pp. 2085–2087). thousand oaks, ca: sage. lund, d. e., & evans, r. e. (2006). opening a can of worms: a duo-ethnographic dialogue on gender, orientation and activism. taboo: the journal of culture and education, 10(2), 55–67. lund, d. e., lee, l., kaipainen, e., & bragg, b. (2012). connecting with children and youth of immigrant families: service-learning through a social justice education course. in editorial fellows team (eds.), proceedings of the international association for research on service-learning and community engagement (iarslce) 12th annual conference. baltimore, md: iarslce. retrieved from http://www.teachers.ab.ca/for%20members/professional%20development/diversity%20and%20human%20rights/sexual%20orientation/pages/index.aspx http://www.teachers.ab.ca/for%20members/professional%20development/diversity%20and%20human%20rights/sexual%20orientation/pages/index.aspx http://yas.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/07/31/0044118x12455024.abstract international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 433–443 443 http://iarslceproceedings2012.wikispaces.com/file/detail/lund_connecting+with+ children+and+youth_final.pdf lund, d. e., & paul, j. (2011). off-loading self/other/world responsibilities: confronting questionable ethics in youth engagement in critical pedagogy. in b. j. porfilio & c. mallot (eds.), critical pedagogy in the 21st century: a new generation of scholars (pp. 251–283). charlotte, nc: information age. nabavi, m., & lund, d. e. (2010). youth and social justice: a conversation on collaborative activism. in w. linds, l. goulet, & a. sammel (eds.), emancipatory practices: adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (pp. 3–13). rotterdam, the netherlands: sense. norris, j., sawyer, r. d., & lund, d. e. (eds.). (2012). duoethnography: dialogic methods for social, health, and educational research. walnut creek, ca: left coast press. slade, d. (2012, october 17). appeal court upholds ruling in favour of 2002 antihomosexual letter. calgary herald. retrieved from http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/city/story.html?id=b5d571cc-8de24147-a848-313583c978ae soohoo, s. (1995). emerging student and teacher voices: a syncopated rhythm in public education. in b. kanpol & p. mclaren (eds.), critical multiculturalism: uncommon voices in a common struggle (pp. 217–234). westport, ct: bergin & garvey. zielinski, s. (2002, july 4). gay teenager beaten: victim fearful attackers could return. red deer advocate, pp. a1-a2. http://iarslceproceedings2012.wikispaces.com/file/detail/lund_connecting+with+children+and+youth_final.pdf http://iarslceproceedings2012.wikispaces.com/file/detail/lund_connecting+with+children+and+youth_final.pdf http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/city/story.html?id=b5d571cc-8de2-4147-a848-313583c978ae http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/city/story.html?id=b5d571cc-8de2-4147-a848-313583c978ae international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 826 entanglements of time kelsey wapenaar abstract: materials are entangled within complex assemblages that are constantly in motion (lenz taguchi, 2011). drawing on richardson and walker’s (2011) notion of an “event” being a time where relationships between bodies of materials and people come together in intersection, it attends to the dialogue between materials and human bodies. in this intersection of bodies, time is produced. this time of intra-actions becomes alive and entangled. it moves beyond chronological time to a rhythm of multiple time flows. time is felt as an element of the experience rather than as a ruling presence. grounded within karen barad’s (2007) work with material-discursive relations, time is understood as living with the intra-actions as a component that is alive. to bring a feeling of tangibility to this idea, the essay explores a series of events from my work as an educator at a childcare centre, as well as my work as an artist. specific encounters from these experiences are woven as a narrative throughout the article, illustrating the idea of material as an event where materials play an active role in assemblages and act with a sense of agency. this event was not intended to create “something”; rather, it was seen as a process of becoming, where bodies of things and people are entangled together in as assemblage. keywords: time, early education, rhythm, temporalities, layers, bodied time, duration, entanglements, assemblages kelsey wapenaar is an early childhood educator residing in vancouver, british columbia. she is a recent graduate from the capilano university early childhood education degree program with a particular interest in the role of the arts in early childhood. e-mail: kwapenaar@hotmail.com multiple rhythms live within curriculum, and it is within these tiny moments of time that curriculum becomes. curriculum does not begin or end, rather it can be seen as mailto:kwapenaar@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 827 constantly becoming, emerging from entanglements between time, place, materials, narratives, artifacts, bodies, and histories. by acknowledging these entanglements we move beyond a unidirectional, binary approach to curriculum, “which operates in linear and sequential ways so that positions build on points already plotted” (sellers, 2013, p. xv). this moves curriculum away from pre-established ideas and towards a multidimensional way of thinking that works in inventive ways to establish meaningful connections. looking at curriculum from a relational materialist perspective opens a space that takes into account the non-human elements and forces that are also at play with children. it is within these entanglements at play in early childhood curriculum that i hope to bring attention to the intricacies of time. this article aims to bring forth another way of being with time in early childhood settings that takes into account the environment and the materials that are at play with the child. early childhood sites can be seen as places of relationality, rich with multiple entanglements and emergences. our being is always within these entanglements, and it is because of these entanglements that i aim to express how time is not empty, but rather is an active force (guerlac, 2006). moving away from an anthropocentric position, i focus on the web of relations that humans are situated within. while challenging the habitual ways of seeing and understanding movements of human and non-human bodies, i engage with questions that have emerged from recent encounters in intra-active relationships. or as hultman and lenz taguchi (2010) state: what, however, most of these perspectives have in common is that they take humans or human meaning-making as the sole constitutive force. from a relational material perspective this anthropocentric position is of course problematic. it reduces our world to a social world and neglects all other non-human forces that are at play. a turn to relational materialism, where things and matter, usually perceived of as passive and immutable, are instead granted agency in their intra-activities, can be understood as promoting a more ethical research practice. (pp. 539–540) various forces are at play in early childhood settings. it is not solely the teacher or child that is bringing life to passive materials (lenz-taguchi, 2011). entanglements of humans and non-human bodies all play a role in producing time. not acknowledging these forces reduces our world. it is this meeting of forces that becomes a place of emergence. disrupting the binaries between passive and active, physicist and feminist theorist karen barad’s (2007) theory of relational materialism acknowledges the vibrancy of the material forces that we become entangled with. time can then be seen as an “event” of forces and things coming together (richardson and walker, 2011). this provokes a textured, layered, alive quality of time that moves beyond a view of static, sequential time that is often expressed through a developmental perspective of children moving through predictable stages of growth. expressions of time are produced from entanglements: how might time, then, become with the relations of a classroom or studio space? complex and messy, time is not homogenized (pacini-ketchabaw, 2013). it leaves me dwelling with this question: how can time be lived and understood otherwise? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 828 time as an educator/artist currently i am working as an educator at a childcare center situated on a university campus on the west coast of canada. the educators in the classroom where i work have been inquiring into the entanglements between humans, materials, ideas, time, space, and narratives. the classroom has become a living studio: materials are alive and at a play with the child. it is from these entanglements that our curriculum lives. narratives from stories that we read linger throughout the day. they are with us as we draw, work in clay, put on our jackets; they move with us through transitions of time. ideas and materials often move between the classroom and our studio space that is situated across the street. this studio space is a place where we work closely with materials and ideas. these ideas have also extended beyond the walls of the centre with me into my work as a student of the studio arts program. in the studio my curiosity about the multiple expressions of time has become an integral part of my work and who i am as an educator and artist. in my work as an educator and artist, i have been paying particular attention to the assemblages of human and non-human bodies. these moments have been recorded through video, photography, notes, and traces of materials. within these assemblages, i have taken note of encounters between human bodies and material bodies. clay, charcoal, wooden blocks, and paper have become vital bodies in these experiences. within these moments i have noticed the tempo of time that emerges and the way in which time is lived, embodied, and layered. it is with karen barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism that i think of the classroom as a place of entanglements. from this position, the child can be seen as a part of an assemblage of moving bodies. thinking with barad (2007), i pay particular attention to the role of time in assemblages that make up our daily work with children. time can be produced through materials in various ways: in multiple rhythms, slow stretches, intensities, periods of waiting, and spontaneous edges of time. in a search for a deeper meaning and understanding of the rhythms and tempos of time produced in these encounters, i use drawing as a way to “map” the many expressions of time. through drawings and photography i attempt to bring tangibility to the multiple layers of time. i illustrate how time can be seen as a living active force that operates with multiple rhythms (grosz, 1999). i attempt to inquire into the multiple layers and entanglements of time that are embedded within our daily rituals with children. to bring forth a more nuanced understanding of the timeliness of time, i must first establish the forces that are at play with the production of time. bodies as becomings when i use the term “bodies” i refer to bodies as a system of relations, composed of time and place, rather than a single unit: “a body as understood in physics that can be any kind of body; a human body, an organ, an artifact or any kind of matter” (hultman & lenz taguchi, 2010, p. 529). elizabeth grosz (2005) states: if the body is to be placed at the center of political theory and struggle, then we need to rethink the terms in which the body is understood. we need to understand international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 829 its open-ended connections with space and time, its place in dynamic natural and culture systems, and its mutating, self-changing relations within natural and social networks. in short, we need to understand the body, not as an organism or entity itself, but as a system, or series of open-ended systems, functioning within other huge systems it cannot control, through which it can access and acquire its abilities and capacities. (p. 3) clark (2012) draws on deleuze and guttari to describe the movement of bodies as, “continually shifting as new connections are formed and break apart. to describe a body in a particular moment, we can describe, for example, a child, but the child is continually shifting and changing” (p. 33). thus, bodies are illustrated as holding various tempos and rhythms and motions and resist fixed boundaries (clark, 2012). lenz taguchi (2010) states: in the first place, a body, however small it may be, is composed of an infinite number of particles; it is the relations of motions and rest, of speeds and slowness between particles, that define a body, the individuality of a body. secondly, a body affects other bodies, or is affected by other bodies; it is this capacity for affecting and being affected that also defines a body in its individuality. (p. 48) bodies are entwined within assemblages that are in constant motion. karen barad (2007) notes in her book, meeting the universe halfway, that these shifting bodies are not static, “things do not have inherently determinate boundaries or properties, and words do not have inherently determinate meanings” (p. 138). expanding on this idea, barad further explains that, “[t]his account refuses the representationalist fixation on words and things and the problematic of the nature of their relationship, advocating instead a relationality between specific material (re)configurings of the world through which boundaries, properties and meanings are differentially enacted” (p. 139). barad’s (2007) agential realism theory describes how bodies are always in relation, and are continuously becoming as they encounter other bodies. she states, “agential realism takes account of the fact that the forces at work in the materialization of bodies are not only social, and the bodies produced are not all human” (p. 34). this theory illustrates matter as an alive, agentic, generative, and responsive force. it sees matter in a state of becoming and involved in the process of doing. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 830 figure 1. assemblage of bodies paper brushes scola-cel shoes ball and and (photo by the author). materials as agentic in describing assemblages of bodies, i refer to bennett’s (2010) description of multiple bodies and forces coming together into play: “assemblages are ad hoc groupings of elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts. assemblages are living, throbbing confederations that are able to function despite the persistence of energies that confound them from within” (pp. 23–24). to depict this idea of an assemblage, i draw upon a scene taking place one morning in the classroom. a pair of size 12 black rubber boots rest on top of a low platform. discarded socks – toddlers’ bare feet – hands tearing – scholastic catalogues – brushes – scola-cel – morning sun – camera – voices all come into play to create an assemblage of bodies. hands tear strips of paper that now cover the surface of the boots. it is here that something ordinary such as a pair of boots begins to become something else: these boots take on another meaning. in this act of paying international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 831 attention to the ordinary objects that live around us we began to notice the particularities of materials and we see them as an active participant. the tiny lines of the rubber, the places they travel to, and the tempos which they evoke in the classroom. it is within the meeting of these movements that new stories, ideas, and meanings are cultivated. materials play a crucial role in how time is lived and how it is produced; they hold memories and histories and provoke particular ways to be with time. jane bennett (2010), a political scientist, brings an awareness to how we live with materials in her book, vibrant matter. what happens to materials as piles of waste are becoming a norm in today’s disposable society? what does this say about our relationship to and understanding of materials? bennett (2010) encourages us to think about the binaries between viewing materials as passive and lifeless, and humans as active, arguing instead that humans need to be attentive to the active qualities of materials. materials hold a sense of vibrancy and play an active role in events; materials, although they hold their own sense of agency, depend on collaboration and interactive forces of bodies. bennett (2010) states: “a lot happens to the concept of agency once nonhuman things are figured less as social constructions and more as actors, and once humans themselves are assessed not as automatons but as vital materialities” (p. 21). as described previously in a moment from the classroom, materials are vibrant and alive and move with particular rhythms. or as a recent exhibit, material encounters (2014), so beautifully depicts: materials live in the world in multiple ways. they can evoke memories, narrate stories, invite actions, and communicate meanings. materials and objects create meeting places. in early childhood education we gather around things to investigate, negotiate, converse, and share. materials – a block of clay, pots of paint, a brush, a colourful wire, a translucent sheet of paper, a rectangular block – beckon and draw us in. (p. 3) early education tends to focus on humans holding agency and materials as passive elements of children’s play. however, as the material encounters exhibit (2014) expresses, materials, places, bodies, time, and objects all become active participants. thinking with bennett (2010), how can we then see early childhood centres as vibrant spaces for caring relationships with materials? dismissing the role of materials in early childhood would tell a dishonest story of the vibrant experimentation that occurs with materials. it is only through the encounter of a hand and a piece of black charcoal that the hand is able to become the hand of a ‘black princess’; without the powerful, dark smudging qualities of the charcoal the hand would remain simply a hand. can children’s centres be places where time is taken to understand materials and the qualities they hold? when we begin to focus on materials in an attentive manner we are able to see how they act with a sense of agency. we are then able to see the role that materials play in the flow of time and how materials can evoke particular times. jardine (2008) expresses how, “in light of such an empty measured-time, things are no longer understood to have a time of their own” (p. 8). engaging with the timeliness of time brings forth a way of knowing deeply that moves with us, a feeling that lingers. what happens if we listen to these emergences of time? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 832 intra-active relationships what i refer to as a relational materialist approach is based on the work of karen barad (2007). her work illustrates the agency that occurs in between bodies, arguing that spaces of intra-action is where meaning is cultivated. intra-active relationships take place amongst assemblages that form between the material world and living organisms. barad (2007) emphasizes that at the heart of intra-activity is how these assemblages cultivate meaning through intra-actions or, as she explains: “through specific agential intraactions that the boundaries and properties of the components of phenomena become determinate and that particular concepts (that is, particular material articulations of the world) become meaningful” (p. 139). encounters between these forces reveal spaces of multiple meanings, tensions, and generativity. as time continues, these size 12 black ordinary rubber boots have become entangled in multiple relationships. layers and layers of paper continue to cover the black rubber, splashes of paint hide the images on the paper, and crumbled pieces of leaves are tucked in between papers. constantly these boots change as piece by piece the black rubber is revealed and once again concealed with bits of paper. it is through the meeting of these bodies that the boots cultivate their meaning. the images in the scholastic book orders that have become plastered over the boots continue to change with the season. images of “pete the cat” sitting in the sun evolve to him wearing a santa hat. bits of paper that cover the edges of the boots have started to fade and become soft between my fingers. day after day, papers are torn and bodies meet the paper with a history. gathering around the boots, a particular time unfolds, a time of dwelling. bodies slow down, almost transfixed by the rhythms of tearing, dipping and covering these boots. stories are held within the collection of these papers. black rubber boots, an ordinary object of footwear, transform with the movements of the room. it is from the constant configuration and reconfiguration of bodies, boots, papers, scola-cel, children, educators that a particular time is produced. time is entangled with the material forces of intra-activity and becomes a force itself in these becomings. the past then cannot be seen as a segment of time that passes, rather it becomes entangled within intra-active relationships of the present and future. moving throughout the day in linear, sequential movements dictated by the clock, time becomes reduced to fragmented segments. however, time is not something we control or do something to, rather, it is something that becomes with assemblages. understanding time in this way moves away from habitual, anthropocentric viewpoints of how time is produced and lived in early childhood programs. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 833 materials as an event multiple forces are at work in producing time and it is not solely dependent on social construction. time does not flow alone; it flows with, it is entangled and relational. richardson and walker (2011) draw on deleuze’s idea of “becoming” to illustrate how art making and the process of art can be seen as an “event”, a combining of forces and bodies (time, cameras, paper, artist, the table, chair, feet, paper, rubber boot) that come together for a singular moment of time. this process is not intended to create “something”,; rather it is seen as a process of becoming, where bodies of things and people are entangled together in an assemblage. there is constant movement, “at the intersection of thought and action” (p. 9). sellers (2013) builds on richardson and walker’s idea by describing event as follows: an energy producing movement and affect as intensity of encounters generated inbetween. the deleuzo-guattarian sensibilities force, event and affect work all at once with energy of matter through productive encounters that open ongoing possibilities for becoming something different. (p.162) at this intersection of bodies a generative force is cultivated, things are alive, and hold feelings of intensity and spontaneity. sellers (2013) also states: “events are not things that happen, they are happenings of speed, rest, flow and movement; similarly embodied in mo(ve)ments of becoming, humans are perceptible as becoming children~becoming adult” (p. 171). it is in these intermingling of forces that time is produced in multiple rhythms. richardson (2013) aptly describes how time can be seen as an “event”, where multiple moments and bodies of time come into intersection. moments of fluttering and tearing of paper in the classroom intersect with moments of pressing and casting of paper in the art studio; these experiences can be seen as the “event of the boots”. moments in intersection tell a story, not a story that reads beginning to end but a story that holds moments of time and intersecting fluctuations. elements of these stories speak to one another, as ideas from the classroom and studio travel back and forth and intersect. it is a meeting of these multiple times between different spaces that an “event” of time lives. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 834 international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 835 figure 2. paper is torn, boots are concealed and then revealed, boots travel to the studio, paper boots are molded and casted, fall leaves and discarded shoes intersect cultivating the “event of the boots” (photos by the author). tempos of time jack richardson (2013) explains time as “unhinged” from chronology” (p. 92). when time is “unhinged from chronology” we are able to see time as fluid, active, and dynamic and as “multiple melodies” (richardson, 2013; posman, 2012). orchestras consist of an assortment of sounds, instruments, and bodies; the notes come together in harmony as well as standing on their own. it is in the “multiple melodies” of an orchestra that we can see a resemblance to the duration of time; within the song different notes can be heard and felt, yet they are woven together in one song. there are similarities to time in that there are singular strands of varying times within one collective time. henri bergson’s (2001), concept of “duration” describes time as a series of “nows” in contrast to the conventional way of understanding time. coleman (2008) draws on bergson stating, “time in this sense can be conceived as spatial; as a uni-directional line on to which time is plotted and which proceeds and passes externally to our bodily experiences of it” (p. 90). karen barad (2007) suggests to instead think of time as “temporality” where various speeds, rhythms, and motions of time can be felt. here, i feel the necessity to quote bergson (2001) at length as he speaks to his theory of duration: pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assume when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 836 its former states. for this purpose it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer endure. nor need it forget its former states: it is enough that in recalling these states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states into an organic whole, as happens when the notes of a tune, melting, so to speak, into one another. (p. 100) bergson’s (2001) concept of duration also proposes that time is pure movement, a movement that within it holds multiple rhythms and a myriad flow of time. or, as guerlac (2006), who draws on bergson, states, “duration implies a mode of temporal synthesis that is different from the linear narrative development of past-present-future. it involves a temporal synthesis of memory that knits temporal dimensions together, as in a melody” (p. 66). dwelling with bergson’s (2001) theory of time as a duration, i draw on the tempos of time living in the classroom in one morning scene: rain streams down leaving tiny droplets dripping down the window. the movements within the room mirror the rapid rain and dawdling drops. within this space, multiple movements of time are visible. charcoal is crushed and is slowly spreading across bodies. busy hands become immersed within the movements between the charcoal and the grinder. as time goes on, i see bodies becoming blacker and blacker. braided amongst this intense time are moments of stillness, and moments of waiting. bodies move slower as they gather around the clay. movements are weighted by the density of the clay. walls around me speak the stories of the past and echo with the documentation. there is a familiarity within the relationship to paper that floats around the room. hours of tearing, cutting, and covering with this paper has established a deep awareness to the touch of paper. this “time of the classroom” consists of an orchestra of sounds. conventional modes of understanding time are often associated with the ticking of a clock, routines, and efficiency. as posman (2012) explains, “when scientists study time as an absolute, objective phenomenon that they can take apart and measure, they miss the point that time moves, that the flow of time escapes subdivisions” (p. 108). organizing and maximizing time often becomes the dominant way in which time is lived in early childhood settings. jardine (2008) problematizes the notion of “empty time” with this explanation: once it is compositionally and topically unheld, fragmented time can only try to become fulsome through accelerating (this again is a lived-experience in schools caught in empty time and its effluence). cut off from the while of things, there is nothing to hold memory and attention and experience in place, nothing to call it to collect itself or attend or return. time speeds up. (p. 9) in these plurality of times that exist within the classroom i am provoked to think about how rhythms unfold within individual bodies, within the block of clay, the basket of paper and within the charcoaled hands. over time, i have watched a pair of rubber boots become covered in tiny tears of paper. slowly the black of the rubber begins to disappear. small moments of time involving slow rips of the paper being carefully placed international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 837 on the boot – quick movements of scattered paper covering the boot – fluttering paper and sudden shedding of the boot’s paper only to become covered again. peaking out from the collage of scholastic papers i see the remainders of a fall leaf. pieces of moments have become entwined together. each of these bodies holds their own time, yet they encounter each other forming, a composition of varying tempos. what becomes of time when it’s temporality is so regulated? time lives throughout our days, yet, i wonder: what is our understanding of time? rhythmic time long waits, spontaneous moments, and pulsating moments of intensity combine to produce the flow of time. how do these moments continue with us as we move throughout the day? pacini-ketchabaw (2013) explains that spaces of time are complex: “they are messy and unpredictable. they don’t leave things behind; they look into the future; they are the past” (p. 227). instead of seeing moments as “ending” and a “new activity” beginning, what if we thought about how spaces of time can move with our bodies? time progresses with an intensive flow of rhythms. grosz (1999) elaborates, saying, “the essence of time that is not regulated by causality and determination but unfolds with its own rhythms and logic, its own enigmas and impetus” (p. 4). what would we notice if we recognized the movement of time in this way? how do the movements and ideas carry with us as we transition to lunch, on our walk to the studio or when we travel home? materials move out of the centre and our ideas travel with us across the road to our studio space. our rubber boots, concealed in paper mâché, bring with them the stories of the dogwood room yet they continue to become with the assemblages of the studio. within the layered tears of paper, narratives of “max and the wild things” move with us; we do not leave them behind in the “past”. these narratives of stories, ideas, and happenings do not come to an “end” when we move to new spaces, rather these spaces become more complex. another layer becomes entangled within their existence. stories, moments, and engagements live with us; the life of these moments are not synchronized to the ticking of the clock. this space between the studio and the centre opens itself to a pace in between, a generative crack of time, a time of pause, and a time of movement. narratives of moments live with us, they stay with us as we move from space to space; they do not simply end when the graphite pencil we drew with rests. rather, these stories that emerged from the drawing move with us throughout the day. moments become layered within us, and we carry the past in our present. embodied memories of tearing and fluttering paper, histories of the material, the now, and the future are entwined. entanglements between the past, the future, and the now co-exist as children move from the studio to the classroom, carrying with them the transformative, airy qualities of the paper. how do we see these complex spaces in between? travelling across the road to the classroom with tiny ground pieces of charcoal stuck in the crevices of their clothes, emerging from the cracks to encounter other fluxes of movements. our bodies become distanced from the intense intra-actions in the studio, international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 838 yet the force of time continues to move with our bodies. how do we live with the rhythm of these moments of intensity throughout the day? to understand the rhythms of time, i look to artist andy goldsworthy (2000), who works with the passages of time in his book, time. he illustrates the rhythms of time through his art, playing with the changes of seasons, weather, and light to cultivate new meanings. in his piece, “sand holes” he works with the tide, as it encounters the sand it becomes with the water. working with these rhythms and tempos of time, he attends to the entanglements that time is positioned within. as the tide moves out and in, the tempo changes. goldsworthy (2000, p. 30) wrote the following on a piece where he stacked rocks in an arch formation and worked with the tempos of the tide: eleven arches made between tides followed the sea out working quickly waited for its return sun, wind, clouds, rain his work acknowledges the past that it held within the moment, noticing the tide that comes in not as a single, segmented wave, rather as a part of a larger assemblage of bodies. time as layered layers of moments, stories, and histories are held within the artifacts, places, and lands that we live with. as we move throughout the day, moments of the past, present and future move with us, our bodies holding these layers. time as layered illustrates an understanding of time as entwined within the past, the present, and the future (grosz, 1999). leah oates (n.d.), an artist whose work photographs transitory spaces, exposes the layers of time that are contained within a single space. her work speaks to the multiple motions, movements, questions, and intensities that exist at once. capturing the multitude of energies and tensions that exist in a moment of time, she creates a feel for how time can be seen as alive. fluctuating layers intersect and expose the multiple energies that exist at once. i imagine that these layers are not sedimentary in composition, rather are a merging of multiple tempos and rhythms perhaps composed of fluid layers that come together and flow apart. richardson (2013) also writes about the past, present, and future becoming entwined, in the following: here, deleuze challenges our understanding of time as merely a chronological sequence of moments and experiences by suggesting that time is evoked by a coincidental overlapping of pasts, presents, and futures occurring simultaneously. experience occurs as events each producing a particular time by including or excluding other events. (p. 94) international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 839 thus, time can be seen as a layered strand that speaks to relations between the past and present co-existing (coleman, 2008). it is also possible to think about how time can be seen as braided; a braid that consists of various strands, all holding individual tempos and rhythms, yet formed together to make one braid, or one time. it is within the different strands of the braid that time holds different temporalities. i bring the idea of differing temporalities with me to my own work in the studio and attempt to make it tangible through the making of paper. as i make sheet after sheet of paper, i collect tiny traces of moments, pieces of drawings and forgotten papers. tearing them in to tiny fragments they transform as they become pressed into paper. i think about the time that exists within these tiny papers and of the entanglements of this piece of paper. as i break the fibres down to form them together, the multiple colours, textures, and images remain. each trace of paper holds the story of its own rhythm and tempo. as paper after paper form together in a synthesis, the layers build upon each other. scraps of paper remain visible in the paper’s new form as it continues to be sculpted and transformed. it holds within it multiple strands and entangled stories. to build on this metaphor of layering paper, i call upon elizabeth grosz’s (1999) concept of the new, which brings forth ideas of time as becoming: time, or more precisely duration, is an extraordinarily complex term which functions simultaneously as singular, unified, and whole, as well as in specific fragments and multiplicitous proliferation. there is one and only one time, but there are numerous times: a duration for each thing or movement, which melds a global or collective time. as a whole, time is braided, intertwined, a unity of strands layered over each other; unique, singular, and individual, it nevertheless partakes of a more generic and overarching time, which makes possible relations of earlier and later, relations locating times and durations relative to each other. (p. 18) this idea of braided, intertwined and relational time, builds on barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism where time is entangled within assemblages of paper-tearing boots. a dance of time active time holds an element of suspense. it is felt throughout the body with a force and an awakening. what is it to feel the edges of time? or to feel long of waiting? how do we think about time through our bodies or come to know something through our bodies? it is the powerful force of time that becomes incredibly generative, pulsating through the body. coleman (2008) states, “according to bergson, the contrast between ‘time’ and duration is that while time is measured objectively and externally (for example by clocks and calendars), duration is intuitive, a bodily knowing” (p. 90). time is particular to the body experiencing it, there is no ‘one’ time, rather time varies from body to body (bergson, 2001). fatima stands on a platform; in front of her sits a large exercise ball covered in strips of paper. strips of scholastic catalogue are flowing out of the basket. brushes are scattered amongst the platform and a small bowl of scola-cel sits international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 840 beside the ball. her body begins to move with the paper as she places strip after strip on the ball. creating a rhythm between her body, the paper and the ball, she begins to dance. tapping her foot against the platform, she keeps a beat. her body is immersed within the movements of paper, her dancing body mirrors the flight of the paper. children around her are preparing to go for a walk. fatima seems unaware of these movements, focusing only on the time produced through the paper and her body. richardson (2013) inspires the question, what kind of time does the material evoke? “what kind of time is produced through process?” (p. 107). time is not a silent, invisible force. what does it evoke in the process? asking these questions leads me to wonder how fatima was experiencing this time as she works with the fluttering paper. what kind of time was evoked for her? what becomes the time of paper? how is it embodied through the day? acknowledging the role time plays in process as we peel, reveal, conceal, we work with time; the product of the paper ball is what it is not only because of the work of hands tearing and papers forming with the glue but because of time. barad (2007) views time as complex and dynamic; it is cultivated through intraactions with human and non-human bodies. it is through the meetings of bodies that a particular time is produced (barad, 2007). as the paper slips from fatima’s fingers and slowly falls, what does this invoke within her body? the force of time can be seen as a materializing force. in these moments of intensities, time becomes alive (grosz, 2005). further, elizabeth grosz (2005) explains how time can become active. intensities are entangled with an active time where bodies are in motion. it is in this feeling of time that time materializes, and becomes “an openended and fundamentally active force – a materializing if not material – force whose movements and operations have an inherent element of surprise, unpredictability, or newness” (grosz, 1999, p. 4). one morning, we were investigating the materiality of blocks in the studio. as we were nearing the end of our time in the studio, after an announcement of “5 more minutes” (until cleanup), things quickly shifted. an intense time of spontaneity was provoked. wooden blocks that had been still all morning, almost as if they were weighted in their place, suddenly began to take flight. hands quickly moved materials, pieces of paper scattered, cardboard rolls were piled, and sticks were dispersed throughout the space. hands and feet quickly moved throughout the room knocking, touching, pulling, stacking, and placing. this intense time set materials and ideas in motion with the tempo of rising from a slow melody to a peak note. last minute moves to the blocks were being made as we began to walk out the door. sarah, however, climbed to the top of a stool, and stood tall while tightly holding her yellow bucket and a driftwood stick. drumming on the harsh plastic yellow bucket with a smooth piece of driftwood, sarah chanted and sang and chanted and sang and chanted and sang. bodies moved with an intense momentum, materials took on a new force and became entangled with the force of time (guerlac, 2006). this instance makes visible the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 841 emergence of time from entanglements. assemblages of blocks, knitted hearts, cardboard rolls, a stool, a yellow bucket, cameras, a doorway, an open classroom space, a walk across the street, lunch time, children, and educators combined for a moment to cultivate a spontaneous moment of time. sarah’s sudden urge to stand high on the stool and make as much noise as possible was almost a releasing of time. the meeting of the yellow bucket, the stick, the tall stool, the limited time, and sarah’s body became entangled together in an intense pulsation. time in the studio holds a particular rhythm, it becomes, “studio time” that cultivates a particular feeling of time. durations of time become intensified within this space and unfold with the movements of materials and bodies. time is not static, it becomes alive and acts with a materializing force (grosz, 1999). guerlac (2006) explains: time becomes energy by passing, by the mere act of becoming. it acts as a force in conscious beings because it accumulates in them. just as a solar panel collects and holds the energy of the sun, so our living body and memory hold the energy of time. (p. 79) how was sarah’s body experiencing this movement of time? as we left the space, how did this pulsation carry with her? how, then, is time conducted through our bodies? time through touch ripping, tearing, curling paper. time after time sheets of newsprint are torn into tiny pieces. what memories are held within these curled papers? as fingers glide along the text, searching for the paper’s grain or a familiar image, what do they remember? springgay’s (2010) concept of “pedagogy of touch” instigates this question: what is it to know paper through your fingers? on the carpeted floor sits stephanie and the paper mâchè tiger, a small wooden bowl, a few pages of the winter issue of the scholastic book order catalogue. the painted layer of the tiger is starting to wear patches of newsprint peak through the orange and black stripes. stephanie stares at the tiger and smiles, “hi tiger, how you doing tiger? i missed you, tiger”. with the bowl in front of her legs, she picks a piece of paper up. rubbing the piece of paper between her fingers, she leans her head closer to the paper and pauses to look at it. fingers rub against the grain of the paper, and she tears through the images. again and again, the paper and her fingers rub together, and the paper tears again. feet run by her, knocking the wooden bowl slightly, blocks pile up beside her, blocks fall beside her, hands come to touch her noodles, hands leave, the tiger falls, and the tiger is picked up. moving bodies dance around and against stephanie, the paper, the bowl, and the tiger. again and again, the paper tears, slowly breaking down in to tiny curled pieces. curled strands of paper are delicately placed in the wooden bowl for tiger. this piece of catalogue paper transforms in to tiny curled “noodles” over and over again. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 842 entanglements of the paper, the tiger, time, hands and the movements of the bodies surrounding this assemblage produce a particular time. the thin, weak fibres of the newsprint are easily torn and curled, they glide with stephanie’s body. it is through this configuration of bodies that a time of paper is felt through fingertips. figure 3. what happens when fingers meet paper day after day? (photo by the author) a “pedagogy of touch” is carried through to my art in the studio. it is through close engagements with a material that a time of paper becomes (springgay, 2010). working with my paper in various forms in the studio and in the classroom, i have become aware of the time of paper. tearing, pasting, casting – paper quickly flutters through my fingers. running my fingers along the inside of my plaster mold, i can feel where the paper is sparse. day after day i encounter paper, i begin to notice the details in the weave and fibers within it. a conflicting desire of making multiple castings of paper boots, yet the need to wait for the boots to properly dry, sends me into a feeling of anxious waiting. propping many fans and heat sources around the mold, i attempt to quicken the time of drying. this time of waiting feels endless, almost like a tiny dot in the international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 843 distance that is unreachable. i feel my body tighten, my hands are knotted and my feet tap against the floor. popping into the studio daily to check if it is time. time in this case is not dependent on the clock or a scheduled day; rather, it is left to my fingers to know. only through the touch of my fingers can i feel when it is time to shed the mold from the boots. i run my finger along the inner edges of the paper boot and slowly in to the base of the boot. i feel the pull of the paper and its radiating warmth. finally, it’s time. intra-active relations between the forces of the heat, the fan, the paper and my fingers came together in entanglement, cultivating new meaning. gliding my fingers along the paper i was able to read the time of the paper and understand this “time of paper” through my body. entanglements barad (2007) speaks of entanglements as bodies not only being intertwined with another but also lacking existence alone, stating, “[e]xistence is not an individual affair: our relation to the world is a relationship as beings that are a part of the world” (p. ix). this emphasizes her theory of agential realism, where everything is in relation; everything is situated with an entanglement and intra-connected. materials are entwined within place, history, time, and bodies; it is from these entanglements that curriculum emerges (sellers, 2013). the learner and the world are entangled becomings, impossible to isolate. they are situated within entanglements of histories, place, discourse, space, and time (lenz-taguchi, 2010). this is not a private affair as our bodies are always entangled in interactions with other human and non-human bodies. knowledge is not located within a single body; however, it is created within the encounters and intermingling of bodies (barad, 2007). this space of intersection between forces becomes incredibly generative. ideas, thought, stories are all relational, they are created through encounters. collections of time pulsate between each other and i am brought back to moments of making paper boots in the studio, an idea that emerged from the materials and bodies that surround me in the classroom. time cannot be separated from these entanglements, but is entwined between multiple elements; it is not something that can stand alone. when we see time as knotted with multiple elements of the day it becomes impossible to see it as something that can be reduced to sequential, homogenous segments. conclusion: attending to the rhythm of relations entanglements are continuously becoming; opening new lines of thought and different possibilities. relations of space, time, matter, and bodies are constantly shifting, drawing attention to the complexity and fluidity of the intra-activity of moments. karen barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism provokes me to pay attention to the human and non-human bodies that are at play with children’s ideas. or, as lenz taguchi (2010) describes, “complicating what we know about practices, to put ourselves in motion to be in a process of change and invention” (p. 91). being with time in this way brings forth something new to the way we think and work with materials and children. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 844 multiple expressions of time became evident in my inquiry. i became attentive to the rhythms and layers of time in my work as an artist and as an educator. i dwelled with these expressions of time, wondering about the various tempos of time that are produced by spaces and materials. i wanted to make visible the layers that exist within time and to complicate how time is often perceived in early education. shifting away from the notion of time as linear: ideas, moments, and feelings of time that were produced in the centre were carried with me and continued to be in my work at the studio. narratives that unfolded from stories moved with me from the children’s centre to our small studio, to the studio arts sculpture studio. in these encounters between identities and ideas, time is present as an active force. a force that breaks through notions of time as a uniformed, linear segment and evokes the multitude of temporalities. these entanglements leave me thinking about the multiple stories, meanings, and histories that materialize from the bodies that surround us. it leaves me questioning. how do we live with the rhythm of these moments of intensity throughout the day? if moments are not linear and do not end, might they flow with our bodies? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 826–846 845 references barad, k. 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(2013). time unhinged. visual arts research, 39(1), 90–107. richardson, j., & walker, s. (2011). processing process: the event of making art. studies in art education, 53(1), 6–9. sellers, m. (2013). young children becoming curriculum: deleuze, te whariki and curricular understandings. new york: routledge. springgay, s. (2010). knitting as an aesthetic of civic engagement: reconceptualizing feminist pedagogy through touch. feminis http://leahoates.com/ text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/gsch.2013.3.3.221 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/visuartsrese.39.1.0090 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs142202321467 are africa’s poorest children on course to avoid being left behind in poverty by 2030? rose ingutia abstract: this paper examines the performance of key factors influencing the prospect of africa’s poorest children avoiding being left behind in poverty by 2030 as required by the united nation’s agenda for sustainable development, a set of sustainable development goals (sdgs) declared in 2015. at that time, sub-saharan africa (ssa) was facing both rising debt and deterioration of the fiscal space required to provide resources. quantitative methods employing descriptive analysis on secondary data are used in this study to compare the trend of child poverty, as represented by under-5 mortality rates (u5mr), both over time and between country clusters. u5mr was chosen because it is an indicator of the well-being of a nation’s children. countries were “clustered” into quartiles based on their average u5mr between 2000 and 2018. the results indicate marked disparities in u5mr across ssa. no strong association was found between economic growth and u5mr, but good governance, as demonstrated by progress towards achieving the sdgs, correlates with decreases in both u5mr and the incidence of childhood stunting. in the first u5mr quartile, the sdg index score is over 50% in all child poverty indicators under consideration, whereas in the fourth quartile it is below 50%. ssa as a whole performed well in child poverty indicators from 2000 to 2015; however, consideration of the period from 2015 to 2018 suggests that much remains to be done to lift every child out of poverty. within and across countries, critical areas for immediate attention include: improving sanitation and access to clean water and lowering the prevalence of anaemia and stunting; increasing the rates of exclusive breastfeeding, birth registration, and pre-primary enrolment; and reducing youth unemployment and socioeconomic disparities. cash transfers to low-income families may help address the added economic insecurity due to covid-19 that has left more children vulnerable to child marriage and child labour. keywords: vulnerable children, sustainable development goals, under-5 mortality rates, malnutrition, education rose ingutia phd is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of economics and management, faculty of agriculture and forestry, university of helsinki, p.o. box 27, latokartanonkaari 5, fi-00014, finland. email: rose.ingutia@helsinki.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 2 worldwide sustainable development goals (sdgs) were adopted in 2015 by the united nations general assembly with the aim of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development by 20301, and ensuring that no one is left behind in poverty by achieving a better and more sustainable future for all (united nations general assembly, 2015). at the inception of the 2030 sustainable development agenda, sub-saharan africa (ssa) had challenging development needs including rising debt and deteriorating fiscal space, which meant less money for necessary resources. a report by the sdg centre for africa (2019) on “sustainable development goals: three-year reality check” revealed that, as a result of these challenges, there had generally been minimal progress. ssa’s rapid growth of the last two decades is presently fragile (jayne et al., 2018), and below the sdg target of 7% per year. although poverty has declined in africa, it is nevertheless home to 27 of the world’s 28 poorest countries, all with poverty rates above 30% (world bank, 2018, p. 27). the international labour office (ilo; 2018) found that “a vast majority of the global poor live in rural areas and are poorly educated, mostly employed in the agricultural sector, and over half are under 18 years of age” (p. 10). the notion of poverty may be narrowly understood as a lack of income, but to some it denotes a lack of the basic needs of life (sen, 1999). sen (1999) regarded poverty “as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of income, which is the standard criterion of identification of poverty” (p. 87). echoing sen, our working definition of child poverty sees it as a deprivation of the capabilities essential for child development. poor children are those exposed to economic, social, cultural, physical, and environmental risks, including income poverty, hunger, poor health, being out of school, child labour, discrimination, and marginalisation (ingutia, 2017). if one hopes to ensure that no one is left behind in poverty, why does it make sense to focus on child poverty in particular? childhood poverty causes lifelong damage to children’s minds and bodies, giving rise to poverty in adulthood and propelling a poverty cycle when it is transmitted to the next generation. childhood is a critical period for the investment and development of human and social capital: when children are healthy and receive good education, they are likely to become healthy, skilled, productive adults, and thereby to contribute to sustainable growth and poverty reduction (luca & gatti, 2018). the future of a nation in terms of prosperity, sustainability, and inclusive development is largely determined by the kinds of investment made in the lives of its children. the focus on child poverty also recognises that children in both developed and developing countries, including those of ssa (batana et al., 2013), are at greater risk of poverty 1the sdgs are: (1) no poverty; (2) zero hunger; (3) good health and well-being; (4) quality education; (5) gender equality; (6) clean water and sanitation; (7) affordable and clean energy; (8) decent work and economic growth; (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure; (10) reduced inequalities; (11) sustainable cities and communities; (12) responsible consumption and production; (13) climate action; (14) life below water; (15) life on land; (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions; and (17) partnerships for the goals. see https://sdgs.un.org/goals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 3 than is the rest of the population. in 2020, 26% of people worldwide were under 14 (world bank, 2021), yet, as of 2015, they made up 46% of extremely poor people (united nations statistics division, 2019, p. 2, last paragraph). it being thus apparent that the goal of “leaving no one behind” in africa demands a focus on child poverty, the objective of this paper is to examine the performance of the key factors in alleviating poverty among africa’s poorest children. as noted above, our definition of child poverty implies that, besides lack of money, child poverty involves complementary factors such as health, nutrition, water, sanitation, education, access to public institutions, and geographical location (figure 1). the objective of this paper is to examine the performance of these key factors to assess africa’s progress in addressing the needs of its poorest children. monetary measures alone do not fully capture what it means for a child to be poor (chzhen & ferrone, 2017): in some instances health care and other services are not available even to people able to afford them. thus access to these services also depends on the capacity and willingness of the state to provide them at all, let alone in a manner that ensures that poor children are not sidestepped. in its 2018 ibrahim index of african governance (iiag), the mo ibrahim foundation (2018) defined governance as “the provision of the political, social and economic public goods and services that every citizen has the right to expect from their state and that a state has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens” (p. 7). good governance in terms of child poverty implies the government’s fulfilment of its commitment to the rights of children by facilitating their access to the resources needed for developing their capabilities without being unduly constrained by financial hardship. figure 1. crucial complementary factors in ensuring africa’s poorest children are not left behind note. neet: youth not in employment, education, or training; oosc: out-of-school children. child poverty (u5mr) pre-primary and primary education quality of basic services: water, sanitation, education public institutions literacy rate, neet, oosc geographical location health and nutrition status international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 4 figure 1 shows that public institutions play a central role in providing interrelated basic services. as explained in ingutia (2017), poor institutional quality generates low institutional capacity and capability, which are expressed through a deficient supply of basic services including schools, health care, and such elements of infrastructure as roads, water, and sanitation. governments’ failure to adequately supply these services constrains children’s access to good education and health care. for instance, a lack of access to improved water and sanitation facilities is often the beginning of a cascade of negative outcomes. it leads directly to poor health, which has negative impacts on education. lack of access to education contributes to a lowering of the human capital available to the workforce. this deficiency in human resources in turn has negative effects on institutional quality, and results in a surplus of underqualified people with fewer possibilities of employment and access to only low-paying jobs. low income results in families having to live in suboptimal locations as they cannot afford rent in higher-priced areas with better, more modern, amenities. consequently, the health and education status of their children also suffers, completing the cycle of intergenerational poverty. methods and data the study uses a quantitative method with the application of descriptive statistics methods to secondary data from the world bank’s (2020b) world development indicators and, to a lesser extent, from iiag’s (mo ibrahim foundation, 2018) reports on institutional quality and sachs et al.’s (2019) sdg score indices. i chose these data sources because they gather data from internationally recognised authorities, including national statistical agencies and central banks, that have applied household survey methods for data collection. unfortunately, methodological inconsistencies affect data reliability and comparability across ssa. although the world bank has made a substantial effort to standardise the data, the extent of this problem means that my attempts to indicate trends and identify significant variations across countries can produce only tentative results, not firm conclusions. to meet this paper’s objective of examining the performance of key factors in addressing poverty among africa’s poorest children, i first clustered countries based on averages of under-5 mortality rates (u5mrs) between 2000 and 2018, placing countries with the lowest rates in the first quartile and those with the highest rates in the fourth quartile (my reasons for clustering countries by u5mr and for the specified period are explained in the succeeding text, also see table 2). i then: 1. calculated averages of u5mrs across ssa countries in five 1-year periods from 2000 to 2018 (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2018). 2. calculated ssa country averages and averages within each u5mr quartile of the performance of child poverty indicators in each period. the percentage change in child poverty indicators over time was calculated based on the averages of indicators across ssa. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 5 3. the performance of child poverty indicators across u5mr quartiles was compared using the quartile averages. 4. to gauge the trends in child poverty indicators, the averages of the five periods were calculated (see table 3). 5. poverty headcount ratios among children aged 0 to 14 for the most recent year in which data were available (2008 to 2016) were compiled by country (see table 4). 6. u5mr country clusters’ goal scores, based on the sdg index scores in child povertyrelated sdgs as reported in 2018 (united nations statistics division, 2018), were used to gauge how well each of the u5mr quartiles had progressed in child poverty indicators. in examining the performance of the key factors that determine whether africa’s poorest children will remain in poverty, i use descriptive analysis to compare the trend of child poverty over time and between country clusters, based on u5mrs. descriptive analysis is an appropriate analytical and communication tool for translating the raw data in findings and conclusions into a format helpful for all intended audiences (loeb et al., 2017; cielo et al., 2017), and can lead to an understanding of causal relationships and the mechanisms underlying them. in table 1, the figures for all variables, including u5mr, are averages across the 41 countries under study during 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2018. we use pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) to test the association between u5mr (our proxy for child poverty) and the selected child poverty indicators (mukaka, 2012). a t-test is used to compare the averages of u5mr and the other variables, higher t values indicate that the coefficient is a good predictor. since it is unknown whether the difference between the pairs of averages will be positive or negative, i chose a twotailed test. the notes accompanying all tables and figures explain the details. analysis of the trends of child poverty over time and between u5mr country clusters reveals key information on children at risk of being left behind and the barriers they face. due to limitations on the availability of data, our sample consisted of only 41 of the 48 ssa countries; the list of the countries is in appendix a (see table a1). in 2015, the sdgs were announced with the purpose of updating and carrying forward the unfinished agenda of the millennium development goals (mdgs), which had been set in 2000. since the first seven sdgs represent an extension and regrouping of the mdgs2, and are those of most relevance to child poverty issues, this paper presents data from 2000 (the starting year of mdgs) to 2018 (the latest year of sdgs for which data were available at the time of writing). the aim of this paper is to 2like the mdgs before them, the sdgs define explicit targets for each goal. for instance, the first goal lists five “outcome targets” (e.g., target 1.1, “eradication of extreme poverty”) and two intermediate targets (e.g., target 1.a, “mobilization of resources to end poverty”). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 6 establish the degree to which the 2030 agenda for sustainable development set forth in the sdgs is benefiting africa’s poorest children. are they on course to avoid being left behind in poverty by 2030? we follow the sdgs in the selection of the variables under investigation. the sdg variable most relevant to this study is sdg-1, but since child poverty is multifaceted, we also touch on other goals. the full set of variables used in this study is as follows: • sdg 1: zero poverty; • sdg 2: zero hunger and improved nutritional status; • sdg 3: ensuring healthy lives, in particular target 3.2, which aims to reduce u5mr to no more than 25 per 1,000 live births; • sdg 4: inclusive and equitable education, in particular targets 4.2 (pre-primary education), 4.5 (gender parity index), and 4.6 (literacy rates); • sdg 6: availability and sustainability of water and sanitation for all, in particular targets 6.2 and 6.3 (proportion of the population using safely managed sanitation and water); • sdg 8, target 8.6: reduce the proportion of youth not in education, employment, or training; and • sdg 16: institutions, in particular targets 16.6.1 (government expenditure by sector) and 16.9.1 (proportion of children under 5 whose births have been registered). our definition of child poverty suggests that childhood poverty means both monetary and deprivation poverty. we therefore apply measures of both types. furthermore, studies, including alkire (2018), have noted that monetary and multidimensional methods are complementary, and represent two alternative conceptions of poverty. the international poverty line, currently set at us$1.90 a day, is derived from national poverty lines that are compatible with national poverty rates and displayed in equalised units. it thus serves as a universal standard to measure the number of people living in extreme poverty or, as in this paper, the percentage of children aged 0 to 14 who live in households experiencing extreme poverty. u5mr is the probability, expressed as a rate per 1,000 live births, that a newborn baby will die before age 5 given current age-based mortality rates. u5mr has been chosen by the united nations children’s fund (unicef) as its single most important indicator of the state of children’s wellbeing in each nation; for instance, unicef has summarised the state of children’s well-being throughout the world in a table ranking nations in descending order of their u5mr (unicef, 2008, p. 113). andrews et al. (2010) proposed the use of u5mr as an indicator of good governance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 7 we follow unicef (2008) and andrews et al. (2010) in examining multidimensional child poverty in terms of u5mr. in addition, in table 4 we report the multidimensional poverty index3 (mpi) by alkire and robles (2016). disparities exist in indicators for child poverty across african countries. to address this, we have clustered country quartiles based on child mortality averages between 2000 and 2018 to compare the performance of respective u5mr clusters in child poverty indicators. table 1 presents the variable definitions and summary statistics. table 1. variable definition and descriptive summary statistics variable definition m sd r t (p <) iiag ibrahim index of african governance (0% worst, 100% best) 50.14 0.14 -.64 8.45 (.001) gdp per capita annual growth (%) 1.98 5.06 -.01 1.58 (.050) u5mr mortality rate under 5 years (per 1,000 live births) 94.48 42.73 immunization, dpt in children aged 12–23 months (%) 75.53 19.85 -.66 0.01 internet access internet users (% of population) 8.44 11.94 government effectiveness scores (-2.5 to 2.5) in quality of public & civil services, & policies -0.74 0.61 -.01 2.58 (.010) poverty headcount ratio at us$1.90 a day (2011 ppp; % of population) 42.7 22.41 .61 1.17 (.100) births attendedt births attended by skilled health staff (% of total) 63.14 24.02 -.63 8.92 (.001) child labour children in employment, total (% of children aged 7–14) 35.89 15.62 .57 4.51 (.001) children out of school % of primary school age 22.2 16.67 .48 8.40 (.001) birth registration, total % of children under age 5 whose births have been registered 56.66 24.26 -.40 1.47 (.100) health expenditure % of gdp 5.51 2.41 .07 6.40 (.001) exclusive breastfeeding % of children under 6 months 35.35 20.02 -.32 3.56 (.001) gov’t expenditure/student, primary % of gdp per capita 12.29 5.69 gov’t expenditure/student, secondary % of gdp per capita 24.23 12.96 income share held by highest 20% percentage share of income held by the richest 20% 50.49 7.08 -.25 3.80 (.001) income share held by lowest 20% percentage share of income held by the poorest 20% 5.69 1.57 .15 5.71 (.001) literacy gpi, youth gender parity index (gpi) 0.86 0.16 literacy rate, total % of people aged 15–24 72.31 19.62 -.73 0.00 access to basic water services % of population 61.39 16.81 -.58 6.80 (.001) access to basic water services, rural % of the rural population 47.28 18.05 3according to alkire and robles (2016), “the mpi reflects both the incidence or headcount ratio (𝐻) of poverty — the proportion of the population that is multidimensionally poor — and the average intensity (𝐴) of their poverty — the average proportion of indicators in which poor people are deprived” (p. 4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 8 variable definition m sd r t (p <) access to basic water services, urban % of the urban population 82.36 9.12 access to basic sanitation services % of population 31.52 21.58 -.56 3.68 (.001) access to sanitation services, urban % of the urban population 41.73 18.20 access to sanitation services, rural % of the rural population 21.98 19.34 population aged 0–14 % of total population 42.11 5.73 population living in slums % of urban population 61.3 18.76 .49 3.34 (.001) anemia among children % of children under 5 63.87 13.09 .66 1.47 (.100) stunting, height for age, total % of children under 5 35.89 9.89 .42 1.41 (.100) underweight, weight for age % of children under 5 19.37 7.74 .41 6.46 (.001) wasting, weight for height, total % of children under 5 8.08 3.98 .31 3.34 (.001) primary completion rate, total % of relevant age group 65.52 21.61 -.72 0.00 pupil–teacher ratio, primary the average number of pupils per teacher 42.11 13.70 repeaters, primary, total % of total enrolment 13.66 8.10 school enrolment, pre-primary % gross 30.56 32.81 neet youth % of the youth population 23.06 11.04 teenage mothers % of women aged 15–19 who have children or are pregnant 24.68 9.51 .52 1.08 (.150) trained teachers, pre-primary % of total teachers 56.46 27.90 trained teachers, primary % of total teachers 77.97 19.80 child marriage % of women aged 20–24 who were first married by age 15 10.75 7.39 .61 6.72 (.001) note. r and t are between u5mr and each variable. the mean values for u5mr and for each variable are averages across the 41 ssa countries under study. neet = youth not in employment, education, or training. source: world development indicators (world bank, 2020b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 9 the data for the poverty variable on children aged 0 to14 (headcount ratio at us$1.90 a day) are from the most recent year available in the range 2008 to 2016; the same applies to the data on mpi (2005–2015). this kind of data fails to serve our purpose of gauging trends in child poverty indicators or of making comparisons across countries; thus it gives only an approximate idea of the percentages of children living in both income and multidimensional poverty. results and discussion results are presented under three subsections: health and u5mr, malnutrition, and education. health and u5mr figure 2 portrays a line graph of u5mr, immunization, and births attended by skilled health staff. countries in the first quartile with the lowest u5mr have the highest percentages of immunization and of births attended by skilled health staff. these findings point to the critical role of investing in health services in reducing u5mr. figure 2. line graph of u5mr, immunization, and births attended by skilled health staff note. countries are clustered based on averages of u5mr between 2000 and 2018. countries with the lowest child mortality rates belong to the first quartile, while those with the highest rates belong to the fourth quartile. source: world development indicators (world bank, 2019). the variable “births attended by skilled health staff” is the percentage of deliveries attended by personnel trained to give the necessary supervision, care, and advice to women during pregnancy, labour, and the postpartum period. data from the world bank (2019) show that in 13 african countries the proportion of children born with the assistance of skilled health staff between 2000 and 2018 was less than 50%; this health deprivation exposes newborns and their mothers to health risks. child immunisation measures the rate of vaccination coverage of children aged 12 to 23 months. a child is adequately immunised against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 si er ra l eo n e ca r n ig er an g o la bu rk in a fa so co n g o (d rc ) be n in co te d 'iv o ir e li be ri a bu ru n d i m al aw i to g o u g an d a rw an d a zi m ba m bw e su d an co n g o r ep . g h an a g ab o n so u th a fr ic a sa o t o m e m au ri ti u s 4th quartile 3rd quartile 2nd quartile 1st quartile mortality rate, under 5 (per 1,000 live births) immunization, dpt (% of children ages 12-23 months) births attended by skilled health staff (% of total) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 10 (dpt) after receiving three doses of vaccine. the world bank data (2019) show that countries with fewer than 50% of their children immunised are equatorial guinea (32%), chad (33%), angola (39%), nigeria (43%), and the central african republic (car; 45%). moreover, these countries are in the fourth u5mr quartile (except equatorial guinea at the bottom of the third quartile), where u5mr is at its highest and immunisation and births attended by skilled health staff are at their lowest; the reverse is true for first quartile countries. figure 3. the trend of under-5 mortality rate (u5mr) over time (2000–2018) note.values are averages of u5mrs across african countries during the 2000 to 2018 period. source: world development indicators (world bank, 2019). u5mr has declined steadily across africa over the past two decades (see figure 3). world bank (2019) figures show that african countries reduced child mortality rates by 52% during the period 2000 to 2018 (table 5). between 2000 and 2018 seychelles was the best performer with a u5mr of 14 while sierra leone was the worst performer with a u5mr of 170; the average u5mr during the period was 95. can the wide gap between the best and the worst performer be explained by differences in either economic growth or institutional quality? zimbabwe, eritrea, and gabon had negative growth rates during the period under study and yet in the same period saw impressive declining child mortality rates. conversely, sierra leone, chad, car, nigeria and angola, which are clustered in the fourth u5mr quartile, had positive growth but much less marked declines in child mortality rates. in appendix 1table a1, however, comparisons of u5mr versus governance (as measured by institutional quality) indicate a strong negative association, implying that an improvement in institutional quality does correspond to decreasing child mortality rates; sierra leone, chad, car, nigeria, angola, and equatorial guinea all average below 50% in institutional quality. 134 110 87 71 64 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 u nd er fiv e m or ta lit y ra te p er 1 ,0 00 li ve bi rt hs international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 11 table 2. comparison of the performance of child poverty indicators across u5mr quartiles child poverty indicator 1st quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile 4th quartile mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000 live births) 49 83 106 139 births attended by skilled health staff (% of total) 76 56 60 44 birth registration, urban 80 68 60 62 birth registration, rural 67 52 45 39 birth registration, total 77 57 51 47 stunting, female 28 33 37 36 stunting, male 33 37 43 41 stunting, total 28 35 40 38 underweight, male 17 21 20 26 underweight, female 15 18 17 22 underweight, total 14 19 19 24 wasting, female 7 7 6 9 wasting, male 8 9 7 11 wasting, total 7 8 7 11 immunization, dpt (% children aged 12–23 months) 88 80 80 58 child labour, female 28 27 32 43 child labour, male 30 32 34 45 child labour, total 29 30 33 44 child labour, study, and work, female 87 68 71 55 child labour, study, and work, male 86 68 74 61 literacy rate, youth male 93 78 74 63 literacy rate, youth female 92 71 63 44 literacy rate, youth total 92 75 68 53 note. the table depicts averages during the 2000-2018 period of respective u5mr quartiles. source: world development indicators (world bank, 2019). having proof of birth registration is necessary for legal recognition — for claiming a child’s civil rights of legal access to basic services. civil registration enables governments to plan the number of schools, health centres, and other services needed. using world bank (2019) figures, a comparison of average total rural and urban birth registration rates across u5mr quartiles indicates that the first u5mr quartile has the highest percentages of children under 5 whose births have been registered. urban registration is higher than rural registration, but birth registration across african countries overall is low: 15 of the 41 countries have fewer than 50% of their children registered. particularly low rates are found in ethiopia (5%), chad (12%) and liberia (12%). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 12 malnutrition malnutrition is a consequence of limited dietary intake, often caused by household food insecurity, lack of safe drinking water, lack of knowledge of the basics of sanitation, and poverty. it can impede children’s development and affect their cognitive abilities and productivity in adulthood, contributing to continuing malnutrition and poverty on an intergenerational scale (victora et al., 2008). undernourished children are characterised by low height-for-age (stunting), low weight-for-height (wasting), and underweight-for-age. in their study of schoolchildren in rural tanzania, mrimi et al. (2022) noted that “malnutrition, anemia and micronutrient deficiency … pose a significant health burden” (p. 1). according to the world bank (2019), the prevalence of anaemia among african children under the age of 5 fell from 69% to 59% between 2000 and 2018 (see table 3); semedo et al. (2014) had similar results. stunting, second in prevalence to anaemia, declined from 41% to 32% over the same period. table 2 reveals that the first u5mr quartile had the lowest percentages in all measures of child malnutrition status, suggesting that addressing malnutrition could contribute to a reduction in child deaths in africa. exclusive breastfeeding (ebf) of infants until six months of age is an infant’s first immunisation against morbidity and mortality; furthermore, it represents a long-lasting investment in the child’s physical, cognitive, and social capacity that can open the way to an escape from poverty (hansen, 2016). when the percentage of children who are exclusively breastfed rises, the percentage of stunted children typically declines (see table 4); thus, ebf appears to play a role in minimising child malnutrition. despite the critical role of ebf, its prevalence remains low: the average rate of ebf in africa is 35% (see table 1), and in some countries is much less (e.g., chad, 3%; gabon, 6% (world bank 2019). figure 4 compares institutional quality and prevalence of stunting, and shows that countries whose institutional quality is high tend to have low percentages of stunted children. figure 4. comparison of institutional quality and child nutritional status note. country averages are based on the period 2000–2018. source: world development indicators (world bank, 2019) and iiag (mo ibrahim foundation, 2018). 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 % s tu nt in g vs . i ns tit ut io na l qu al ity (i ia g ) iiag prevalence of stunting, height for age (% of children under 5) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 13 table 3. trends in child poverty indicators in africa from 2000 to 2018 child poverty indicator 2000 2005 2010 2015 2018 exclusive breastfeeding (% of children under 6 months) 26 40 43 39 42 stunting, female 39 37 36 31 28 stunting, male 44 41 42 36 33 stunting, total 41 41 39 33 32 underweight, male 24 22 23 19 18 underweight, female 20 19 20 16 15 underweight, total 22 22 21 17 18 wasting, female 9 8 7 6 6 wasting, male 10 9 9 8 7 wasting, total 9 9 8 7 7 anemia among children 69 66 62 60 59 access to water rural pop. 42 45 48 51 access to water urban pop. 80 81 83 85 access to water total 56 59 62 66 access to sanitation urban 38 40 42 45 access to sanitation rural pop. 18 20 23 25 access to sanitation total 26 29 32 35 enrolment, pre-primary, male 25 27 27 37 36 enrolment, pre-primary, female 25 28 27 38 37 enrolment, pre-primary 23 28 27 37 36 primary completion, female 49 59 65 70 79 primary completion, male 57 66 70 70 75 pupil-teacher ratio, primary 45 44 44 38 37 children out of school, female (% female pri. school age) 42 27 25 25 16 children out of school, male (% male pri. school age) 36 24 21 21 15 children out of school, total (% of primary school age) 34 24 21 19 12 literacy rate, youth male (% of males aged 15–24) 80 50 78 79 82 literacy rate, youth female (% of female aged 15–24) 69 28 72 70 78 literacy rate, youth total (% of people aged 15–24) 74 38 75 74 80 government expenditure per student, primary 14 12 11 12 14 government expenditure per student, secondary 31 30 24 24 22 neet, male 27 14 12 16 24 neet, female 35 24 22 26 33 neet, total 31 19 18 21 29 income share held by highest 20% 51 53 53 51 50 income share held by lowest 20% 5 5 6 5 6 poverty headcount at $1.90 a day 47 46 50 30 44 note. the table depicts averages of child poverty indicators in africa during the 2000 to 2018 period. source: world development indicators, world bank (2019). table 3, using data compiled by the world bank (2019), shows that 49% of rural africa but only 15% of urban africa lacked access to safe water in 2015. lack of access to sanitation also international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 14 remains a big challenge: although access to basic sanitation services in ssa rose between 2000 and 2015 (from 26% to 35%), only 25% of rural africa and 45% of urban africa had access to sanitation by 2015. the disparities between rural and urban africa are very wide. lack of access to adequate water and sanitation brings a significantly high risk of child mortality (ezeh et al., 2014). for instance, open defecation contributes substantially to the transmission of diarrheal disease, which is known to be one of the major causes of u5mr (galan et al., 2013). child marriage contributes to a high percentage of maternal and child morbidity and mortality (malhotra et al., 2011). child marriage denies a child the right to be educated, thereby limiting her development and life chances. the average incidence of child marriage is 11% (see table 1); however, in some countries, including chad and niger, more than 30% of women were married by age 15 (world bank, 2019). human rights watch (2020) noted that economic insecurity due to covid-19 exacerbates both child marriage and child labour, suggesting that cash transfers to low-income families could help avert the looming danger to vulnerable children. figure 5. percentage total of oosc, primary completion, youth literacy, and neet note. the figure presents ssa country averages for 2000 to 2018. source: world development indicators, world bank (2019). education lack of access to preschool education has profound effects on children, for the early years of life are crucial in developing a person’s mental and physical health to their full potential (martinez et al., 2012). the pace of pre-primary school enrolment is slow: in 2000, a mere 23% of african children of preschool age were enrolled in school and by 2018 this number had increased only to 36% (table 3). figure 5 depicts the trend of the percentage total of out of school children (oosc), primary completion, youth literacy, and youth not in employment, education, or training (neet). primary school completion rates for both sexes are increasing, and at the present pace will likely 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 ed uc at io n st at us % primary completion, total children out of school, total literacy rate, youth total (% of people ages 15-24) neet, total international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 15 meet the 2030 sdg target of having all children complete primary school. youth literacy rates fell in 2005, picked up between 2005 and 2010, and are on the rise. however, the rates of neet declined initially but have been on the rise since 2015. table 3 depicts that the percentages of oosc were 34% in 2000 but had declined by more than half in 2018 (12%). economically active children who are not going to school make up a large part of oosc. working during school hours negatively affects school enrolment and learning outcomes. in africa, the average child labour rate was 36% during 2000 to 2018 (table 1). child labour ranged from 29% in the first u5mr quartile to 44% in the fourth quartile, while children who were either studying or working were 80% and 56%, respectively, in these quartiles (table 2). there has been a long-standing disparity between the genders, with much higher percentages of females out of school; however, this gap has been narrowing gradually. monden and smits (2013) found that educating women contributes to the decrease of child mortality by improving mothers’ knowledge and use of health practices. we had similar findings: the first u5mr quartile, with the lowest child mortality rates, had the highest female youth literacy rates; while the fourth quartile, with the highest child mortality rates, had the lowest female youth literacy rates (table 2). public expenditure is not evenly distributed across complementary education sectors: primary education receives less per student than secondary education does (table 3). ogawa (2004) reported similar findings for zambia. such disparities may be partly attributed to political considerations (farayibi & folarin, 2021). the efficiency of government education spending on primary and secondary education — the ratio of outcomes to spending — is, on average, lowest in ssa among world regions (african development bank, 2020). between 2000 and 2018, the average share of income held by the highest 20% was 51%, and that held by the lowest 20% was only 6% (table 3). such high levels of income inequality may further enhance the power of the elite, resulting in more limited provision of public goods and thereby hurting those in poverty through inadequate public health services and lower average education levels, leading to lower long-term gdp growth rates and increased social unrest. these negative effects are reflected in the high percentages of child poverty shown in table 4. as noted elsewhere in this paper, good institutional quality is more effective in reducing u5mr than are gdp growth rates. table 4 presents the poverty headcount ratio and mpi4 for children aged 0 to 14 in each ssa country for which data were available. it is clear that much more needs to be done to bring every child on board. 4 people are said to be “multidimensionally poor” if deprived of at least a third of weighted indicators. the weighted indicators include: years of schooling, child school attendance, child mortality, nutrition, type of flooring in the home, ownership of basic modern assets, and availability of electricity, sanitation, safe drinking water, and cooking fuel. the first four indicators weigh one-sixth each (0.166), while the others weigh one-eighteenth each (0.055). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 16 table 4. children ages 0–14 headcount ratio most recent year (2008 to 2016) country 0–14 yrs. poverty mpi benin 56 62 botswana 22 burkina faso 81 84 burundi 77 81 cameroon 30 46 central african republic 71 78 chad 41 87 drc* 82 75 congo republic 45 40 cote d’ivoire 37 59 g. bissau 71 78 gambia 12 60 ghana 17 34 kenya 46 40 madagascar 85 67 malawi 76 56 mali 54 78 mauritania 7 52 mozambique 69 70 niger 81 89 nigeria 62 53 rwanda 63 54 senegal 44 57 south africa 49 11 togo 57 50 uganda 77 70 note. data on children aged 0 to14 headcount ratio at us$1.90 a day of the most recent year available (2008 – 2016) is from the ssapov database of ppp adjusted household surveys of african countries5, controlled by the subsaharan african team for statistical development. the ssapov database draws on data from world bank (2020a). data on mpi (multidimensional poverty headcount ratio) most recent year (2005–2015) is from alkire and robles (2016). *drc = democratic republic of the congo. 5 data on the headcount ratio at us $ 1.90 a day for children aged 0 to 14 was available for only 26 ssa countries. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 17 table 5. percentage change in child poverty indicators over time (2000–2018) child poverty indicator 2000 2015 % change 2000–2015 2018 % change 2015–2018 % change 2000–2018 iiag 47 51 8 51 1 9 u5mr per 1,000 live births 134 71 -47 64 -10 -52 gdp per capita growth 0.6 0.89 49 1.24 40 107 poverty headcount at $1.90 47 30 -37 44 48 -6 immunization 62 80 29 81 2 31 access to water 56 66 18 access to sanitation 26 35 34 exclusive breastfeeding 26 39 50 42 9 62 stunting 41 33 -19 32 -3 -22 underweight 22 17 -21 18 1 -18 wasting 9 7 -24 7 -8 -22 enrollment, preprimary 23 37 60 36 -2 57 trained teachers in preprimary 62 61 -1 56 -9 -10 primary completion 53 70 34 77 9 45 pupil-teacher ratio, primary 45 38 -14 37 -3 -18 trained teachers in primary 75 71 -6 82 15 9 children out of school, 34 19 -44 12 -37 -65 child labour 42 38 -9 govt. exp. per student, primary 14 12 -13 14 12 0 govt. exp. per student, sec. 31 24 -21 22 -8 -29 literacy rate, youth 74 74 0 80 8 8 adolescents out of school 33 33 -1 29 -13 -12 neet 31 21 -33 29 35 -6 child marriage 9 12 37 9 -23 0 teenage mothers 21 27 25 29 8 38 individuals using the internet 1 20 2163 31 59 3000 note. percentage change in child poverty indicators over time is calculated from averages of respective indicators across africa with data sourced from world development indicators (world bank, 2019). table 5 presents child poverty indicators for 2000, 2015, and 2018, averaged across 41 ssa countries, and also shows the percentage change in these indicators between 2000 and 2015, and between 2015 and 2018. ssa performed well in nearly all child poverty indicators; however, the indicators make clear that much more needs to be done to bring every child on board. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 18 conclusion the performance of the key factors influencing the prospect of africa’s poorest children avoiding being left behind in poverty suggests that at the present pace, the targets set in the sdgs will not be achieved by 2030. based on the findings of this study, critical areas requiring immediate attention are sanitation, access to a safe water supply, the prevalence of anaemia and stunting, exclusive breastfeeding, birth registration, pre-primary school enrolment, innovations for youth employment, and economic and social disparities within and across countries. our findings are comparable to those of ohwo and agusomu (2018), who concluded that lack of access to adequate water and sanitation in africa exacerbates health problems. issues of public administration also affect the prospects for reducing child poverty. expenditures favour secondary education over primary education, and income inequality levels remain high. improvement in governance is crucial in leaving no child behind, particularly in the fourth u5mr quartile countries that lagged in sdg index scores across all child poverty indicators. tebaldi and mohan (2010) found that good institutions facilitate poverty reduction, whereas kaidi et al. (2019) stated that the influence of institutions on poverty depends on the selection of indicators. monetary and multidimensional measures of poverty can give markedly divergent results (see table 4); this discrepancy is largest in gambia (48%), chad (46%), mauritania (45%), and south africa (38%). thus, as victor et al. (2014) also pointed out, policymakers need to consider both poverty measures in their decision-making. given that poverty is predominant in rural areas, lack of disaggregated data by geographic location makes it impossible to accurately identify from child poverty indicators the most critical regions to focus on in bringing all children on board. despite this limitation, this paper’s comparisons of the trend of child poverty over time and between u5mr country clusters give deep insights on children at risk of being left behind and the barriers they face. the findings can give policymakers a better understanding of child poverty for addressing disparities and targeting critical areas, narrowing the gaps to ensure that all children benefit from efforts to meet the sdg targets by 2030. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 19 references african development bank. 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(2019). sustainable development goals overview: end poverty in all its forms. united nations statistics division (unsd). https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2019/goal-01/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 23 appendix a table a1. u5mr country clusters’ goal scores (sdg index score) in child poverty related sdgs 2018 country poverty hunger health education gender wash e growth inequality institution 1st quartile ghana 69.02 61.58 54.39 69.17 54.11 52.85 76.61 58.63 69.74 botswana 56.67 36.60 54.74 88.31 66.17 60.58 63.47 65.73 c. verde 54.27 46.48 73.30 78.46 65.38 69.14 73.54 36.58 74.45 gabon 85.90 52.71 50.27 79.02 46.28 61.69 62.91 46.96 53.12 kenya 29.80 49.88 50.42 71.00 67.46 43.90 70.20 36.29 57.21 mauritius 98.59 46.03 79.12 89.40 48.93 57.04 75.10 39.16 69.51 namibia 55.14 39.81 49.79 82.17 87.31 59.00 64.63 69.61 sao tome 37.80 64.65 62.03 84.71 45.18 66.61 66.75 90.70 77.33 s. africa 49.85 52.52 48.74 78.06 80.05 66.99 61.20 54.91 2nd quartile comoros 49.16 41.56 50.43 47.16 32.10 66.64 48.28 50.77 67.59 congo rep. 11.27 42.84 48.45 57.71 51.84 38.32 56.34 29.37 53.00 ethiopia 32.53 48.59 44.63 33.50 53.31 39.43 71.42 67.32 51.62 gambia 62.16 45.30 43.18 45.71 34.92 59.97 69.31 44.26 60.14 madagascar 37.44 41.17 44.04 66.92 38.73 62.80 31.66 51.05 rwanda 17.11 51.69 60.02 60.89 80.47 56.19 69.77 27.31 70.91 senegal 29.30 53.66 54.25 37.10 53.10 57.81 73.10 52.52 59.75 sudan 36.01 19.01 52.03 30.32 37.26 32.99 52.44 65.63 56.27 tanzania 21.47 48.19 45.09 47.96 70.68 46.47 73.84 60.15 50.53 togo 18.58 53.28 42.97 61.44 40.16 46.75 71.51 39.54 52.33 uganda 28.31 48.27 46.64 53.21 58.36 41.08 72.01 62.01 47.55 zimbabwe 38.90 43.25 68.80 76.42 52.42 68.94 55.96 51.13 3rd quartile benin 18.31 55.47 47.15 46.95 40.36 46.64 70.73 36.21 49.01 burundi 44.09 47.65 61.02 63.03 54.29 44.02 67.07 48.86 cameroon 47.59 56.65 40.64 63.80 51.89 52.53 68.02 43.19 45.97 c. d’ivoire 43.50 48.55 34.82 39.79 35.07 51.89 74.99 46.66 52.21 lesotho 13.71 54.46 28.72 55.01 71.90 58.12 52.46 46.18 liberia 20.47 48.57 39.20 10.20 41.45 48.01 64.93 83.87 44.94 malawi 3.23 53.74 43.64 48.44 62.19 56.49 62.81 43.61 55.81 mauritania. 80.91 36.37 47.17 29.37 30.84 54.30 45.60 86.17 44.88 mozambique 11.04 45.09 31.16 41.59 60.03 41.11 53.36 49.20 52.63 zambia 13.46 42.94 46.53 62.68 63.64 52.57 67.22 16.62 45.43 4th quartile angola 45.16 47.78 33.74 37.84 53.57 45.96 59.88 57.18 41.72 burkina f 24.26 51.89 47.99 27.03 34.62 44.15 69.21 78.08 57.03 car 0.00 40.91 17.59 10.30 30.60 47.99 37.46 19.28 49.51 chad 23.59 37.12 21.55 14.72 27.01 40.84 54.17 53.25 32.18 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 1–24 24 country poverty hunger health education gender wash e growth inequality institution congo, d. 0.66 36.46 37.75 56.10 37.17 42.66 58.44 58.93 31.07 guinea 35.50 49.79 33.28 24.74 35.68 43.65 65.37 82.50 48.31 mali 24.26 45.04 32.33 12.62 35.57 56.01 67.37 73.96 50.75 niger 5.59 42.93 39.09 8.42 40.23 40.41 64.19 81.76 55.87 nigeria 17.15 48.01 28.04 32.13 36.50 53.52 64.71 9.06 42.95 sierra leone 23.16 46.90 26.73 52.21 44.91 38.90 62.66 69.40 50.81 note. wash = water and sanitation; e growth = economic growth. i have reported the sdg index scores based on u5mr country clusters to gauge how countries under different u5mr quartiles are progressing in child poverty indicators. the sdg index score signifies a country’s performance on the sdgs from a score of 0 (worst outcome) to 100 (best outcome). the difference between 100 and a country’s score is therefore the distance in percentage that needs to be completed to achieve sdgs. adapted from “sustainable development report 2019” by j. d. sachs, g. schmidt-traub, c. knoll, g. lafortune, and g. fuller, 2019, bertelsmann stiftung and sustainable development solutions network (sdsn). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019985 “students for children”: a volunteer programme-model for universities for the support of children in foster care gabriella kulcsár, judit zeller, and beáta korinek abstract: foster care institutions are badly understaffed and operate on the lowest expected standards in terms of human resources in hungary. in many cases, child protection personnel working with children in foster care do not have the necessary qualifications, and even those that do are often so overloaded with tasks that they cannot routinely engage in meaningful social interactions with the children. this paper introduces a unique and easily adaptable model of volunteer ,,work in university settings that aims to improve the situation of children in foster care. the students for children volunteer programme was founded in 2010 in the faculty of law at the university of pécs, hungary, and is now part of the curriculum there both as an elective course and as a cross-faculty programme. from the outset, the primary goal of this initiative has been to improve the situation of children in foster care through student mentoring by empowering them to manage everyday challenges and develop meaningful perspectives on their futures. other equally important objectives are to enhance students’ social sensitivity and skills and to shape their thinking through this challenging work. since its inception, the programme has been operating with unbroken success and, over the years, nearly 400 volunteers have completed the programme. the long-term plan is that through this model a country-wide network of similar volunteer programmes can be developed to improve the situation of children in need. although aspects of the students for children programme still need to be refined, our experience with it shows that it has invaluable social, educational, and psychological effects on both the children and the future law professionals. keywords: volunteering, foster care, child protection, care system, sensitization, experiental education, supervision gabriella kulcsár phd is assistant professor at the department of criminology in the faculty of law at the university of pécs, 7622, 48-as tér 1 pécs, hungary. email: kulcsar.gabriella@ajk.pte.hu judit zeller phd is assistant professor at the department of constitutional law in the faculty of law at the university of pécs, 7622, 48-as tér 1 pécs, hungary. email: zeller.judit@ajk.pte.hu beáta korinek llm is assistant lecturer at the department of civil law – family and social law group in the faculty of law at the university of pécs, 7622, 48-as tér 1 pécs, hungary. email: korinek.beata@ajk.pte.hu mailto:kulcsar.gabriella@ajk.pte.hu mailto:zeller.judit@ajk.pte.hu mailto:korinek.beata@ajk.pte.hu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 2 the roots of the students for children volunteer programme (students for children) lie in the recognition of two complementary sets of needs: the needs of children in state care for meaningful relationships and activities, and the social and cognitive needs of university students — primarily of the law faculty — to get acquainted with an important target group of their future work. since its launch in 2010, students for children — initiated by balázs somfai, then head of the family and social law group — has been a pioneer model in legal education in hungary (somfai, 2011). despite being a fairly new model, its design makes it easy for any high school or faculty to adopt. motivation the primary motivation for launching the programme was to improve the living conditions at children’s homes in hungary. the hungarian child protection system was designed almost 25 years ago. with the “best interest of the child” being its highest priority, the legislation established a system comprising two levels of intervention: the level of prevention and the level of protection (herczog, 2001). prevention happens within the birth family with the support of child welfare services. preventive measures are directed at the child in their own family environment, contributing to the promotion of their physical, intellectual, emotional, and moral development, their welfare and upbringing, and the prevention and elimination of endangerment. protection and specialised care are provided if the necessary support cannot be realised within the family. on this second level, children are removed from their families, and are placed with foster families, in small foster homes, or — still in many cases — in larger children’s homes or care homes. despite the well-structured system in place, many problems continue to arise, particularly in children’s homes (hüse, 2016). despite the legal obligation for children under 12 to be placed with foster families, children’s homes look after a significant number of children in that age range. although children’s homes are divided into small units structurally, they virtually function as large residential institutions, and bear the systematic shortcomings of that facility type: the homes are understaffed, caregiver social workers are both underqualified and underpaid, and turnover is high (herczog, 2001). caregivers are overburdened with administrative tasks, which limits the amount of individual quality attention the children receive. the secondary motivation of the programme was to provide professionals — primarily future lawyers — with the specific knowledge, skills, and sensitivity to deal with the legal issues of children in the child protection system. lawyers working at guardianship authorities and in the courts rarely see the complete picture in child abuse and custody cases; consequently, they seldom appreciate the child’s perspective on being brought up in an abusive family or without parents. in fact, general legal education is not focused on children’s rights, yet many students become legal officers designated to deal with children’s issues at court, at the guardianship authority, and in various other settings. also, while prospective lawyers are required to pass practice or training courses to earn an advanced academic degree, the compulsory period of practical training in law international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 3 school is only 6 weeks. this means, unfortunately, that higher education does not currently provide sufficient insight into the unique, rather closed setting of the child protection system. students for children provides support and encouragement for children living in these disadvantaged circumstances, by organising university student volunteers from various academic fields. students visit children in the children’s home on a weekly basis and engage in various social activities. in terms of volunteering motivations, students for children fulfils a twofold objective. on the individual level, it opens the path for students to obtain practical skills and speciali sed knowledge. on the altruistic level, students’ goals are strongly associated with the intention to help children. programme set-up and frames of operation students for children operates as an elective course in the curriculum of the faculty of law at the university of pécs. the programme leaders — the authors of this paper — are lecturers from different fields (family law, constitutional law, and criminology) and their role enables them to give students a broader perspective on the legal and psychological aspects of children’s lives in foster care. in the beginning, membership in the programme was offered only to law students but, by the year 2018, students for children had developed into a cross-faculty programme. owing to this development, children in foster care now get to meet future representatives of not only one profession but of several, and can profit from their knowledge and expertise. students signing up for the programme are asked to commit to volunteering for a minimum of one semester, but are encouraged to stay longer in the programme in order to build more substantial relationships with the children in foster care. all students are protected and bound by a volunteer contract, according to which they spend at least 2 hours a week volunteering; this consists of leading mentoring activities, mainly tutoring and recreation. in addition, the volunteers are required to join a weekly complementary class, designed by the programme leaders, in order to deepen the volunteers’ knowledge of the programme’s principles and guidelines, as well as of the psychological and legal dimensions of their task. furthermore, the programme leaders — two of whom are trained psychologists — also offer the professional support the volunteers need to cope with the burden of the practical and psychological difficulties they face in this line of work. in addition, the programme leaders also help them discover the unique skills and abilities that will help make volunteering an enriching experience both for them and the children. group confidentiality in the weekly class creates an atmosphere where students feel safe enough to open up about their feelings and struggles. principles of the programme principles and corresponding guidelines for the volunteers were developed in accordance with the goals of the programme. the most important principles include the following: 1. causing no harm: as the programme aims to help highly vulnerable children in foster care, it is important that the students use a trauma-informed approach to avoid causing any further harm. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 4 in order to follow this principle, students learn what traumas the children may have experienced and how these might have impacted the way they feel, think, and behave. 2. building trust with reliability, trustworthiness, and transparency: the second step is to earn the children’s trust by being reliable and trustworthy, which entails being good and empathetic listeners but also requires practical contributions such as volunteering consistently every week for at least one semester. students are expected to communicate honestly with the children and let them know in advance if they cannot keep an appointment. it is vital that students appreciate the importance of these rules and expectations because children in foster care are in particular need of positive experiences with the adult world, especially as their trust in people may have been betrayed many times before. in conjunction with these principles, it is highly recommended that students commit to the volunteer work for longer than just one semester because children in foster care need to develop a strengthened sense of stability in many fields of their lives. it is of great value to a child if a person they have grown to trust stays in their life for at least one or two years. 3. empowerment through instilling hope in the children’s future by helping them develop positive, but realistic, perspectives: being a good mentor also means being a good role model. in fact, volunteer students serve as inspiration for the children in foster care in how to live a meaningful life, self-empower, and define one’s goals and aspirations in a realistic way. in the best case, students succeed in supporting children in developing and maintaining skills and competencies and in giving them the hope that they too have the ability to live meaningful lives. 4. social inclusion through a non-judgemental and respectful approach: an essential element in interacting with the children is to approach them with respect and sensitivity. the volunteers must never judge them for how they behave, speak, or look. accepting the children as they are helps them accept themselves and gives them the feeling of social inclusion. 5. respecting boundaries: students also learn that it is of utmost importance to set clear boundaries in the interests of both the children and themselves. having physical, emotional, and professional boundaries is fundamental to building and maintaining healthy mentor–mentee relationships. this means that as much as we encourage students to interact with the children and build connections with them, we also emphasise that the students are not therapists or child protection professionals, and therefore their responsibilities are limited. they have to protect themselves from the emotional burden of not being able to do more for the children than their mentoring roles allow, and to understand that it is not their task to solve the difficult problems the children face. students also have to be careful if the children trust them with sensitive information or if the children ask them to do small favours, such as forwarding messages or physical items to someone else. there is a thin line between being a confidant and an accomplice, and students have to be very careful not to get unintentionally involved in unethical activities. 6. signalling in cases of danger: in conjunction with setting boundaries, it is also important to discuss with volunteers when, how, and to whom they have to report potential or actual dangers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 5 we define the situation as dangerous or potentially dangerous when students receive information that children are engaging in substance abuse, prostitution, self-harm, suicide attempts, bullying, and other forms of high-risk behaviour. in cases of immediate danger, students are advised to alert any personnel who are on hand and the programme leaders, and to call 112 for emergency assistance if needed. in less urgent or unclear situations, students are advised to refer the case to the institution’s psychologist. in addition, they are asked to report such situations for discussion in the complementary class. 7. importance of emotional support for volunteers: as mentioned earlier, the programme aims not only to guide the volunteers, but to provide them the emotional and professional support they need throughout their volunteer work, and to make this experience meaningful and positive for them. working with traumatised children in settings of child protection institutions can be extremely challenging. even if the volunteers’ work is limited to mentoring activities only, they might face difficult situations or hear about emotionally disturbing life stories that they need to process. fortunately, the hundreds of students who have completed the programme have given highly positive feedback about their work with children in foster care: in some cases, these enriching experiences have even influenced their career choices. results of the programme benefits for the children in care students for children is a somewhat unusual volunteer programme, since volunteering more typically takes place at community, non-profit, and civil organisations in support of common causes. volunteering means giving one’s time and ability, with no expectation of financial return, to the community or to one of a wide range of organisations that support civic interests and the vulnerable (salamon, 2012, as cited in washington, 2018, p. 3). students for children, however, operates at a university that is maintained by the state and that directly supports the delivery of state public services. nevertheless, children’s homes are “not simply providers of services, but spaces of living, living together, growing up, and socialisation” (schmid & herczeg, 2018, p. 138). aiming at fostering change in people, children’s homes “are predominantly based on interactional relationships. thus, the quality of face-to-face relationships and of interactions is a strong determinant of the success of any intervention, including sociopedagogical ones (fretschner, 2011, p. 77)” (schmid & herczeg, 2018, p. 140). therefore, whom the children meet and when determines whether they have the opportunities to observe adult role models, build personal contacts, and relate to others. in order to understand the role of the students in the lives of the children, and be able to place the volunteer programme in the public service framework, we have to consider the general situation of the child care system and the specific institutional context. recent surveys show that child care institutions in hungary are badly understaffed and, in terms of human resources, operate at the lowest standard allowed by law, or lower (hungarian office of the commissioner for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 6 fundamental rights, 2019, p. 17). in fact, in many cases, professionals working with children do not possess the required qualifications for their work (rácz, 2012, p. 15). also, staff members are generally preoccupied with and overloaded by household chores and administrative duties, and consequently are not always able to engage in meaningful social interactions with the children beyond general oversight of their behaviour and actions. the volunteer students may fill this void by being present in the children’s home without any official duties. their main focus is to build interactions with the children themselves. the methods students use to improve the situation of the children include: 1. providing one-on-one contact and time: residential institutions have a general tendency to weaken one-on-one relationships. current hungarian law allows a maximum of 12 children per house group in a residential institution. the group is usually cared for by only one adult in every shift throughout the day and night. it is not difficult to realise that in this setting the children’s legitimate demand for attention is likely to exceed the capacity of the caregivers. however, students are in a position to devote time and capacity to meet the children’s need for personal contact and attention. 2. being a person of trust: an almost necessary consequence of establishing substantial relationships is that students are often present in the children’s home as persons of trust but not as authority figures. students are closer to the children in age, and are not perceived as supervisors or controllers; the informal nature of the relationship facilitates the building of trust. it is therefore the volunteers that the children often contact first to discuss personal, even intimate, problems; to receive help with heartfelt private issues; and to ask for support or further advice in moments of crisis. in crisis situations, the students are expected to identify and report the perceived danger and encourage the children to share their problems with the professionals — caregivers or psychologists — of the care home as soon as possible. 3. providing disciplined knowledge and skills: although students are not expected (and not allowed without professional supervision) to exercise their future profession (e.g., as teachers, nurses, or lawyers), they already have sufficient professional back-up to help the children acquire new knowledge and new skills. mentoring children means introducing activities ranging from doing homework with them and baking together for christmas to rehearsing a play and practising how to apply make-up. sometimes mentoring means just sitting around together or playing football in the courtyard. the variations are limitless. benefits for the students the direct involvement of volunteers with the residents of the children’s home has been a feature of the programme’s design since its inception. this means that the students are in immediate contact with the children instead of being put to use in administrative or other background capacities in the children’s home. the programme does not concern itself with directly arranging a space for exercising professional skills; it is, however, strongly concerned with the future tasks and responsibilities of the students in various ways. the strongest feature of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 7 programme is that students are constantly engaged with a community to which they had not been exposed previously but which they are likely to meet in their future professional practice in various official proceedings. as removing children from their birth families and placing them in residential institutions is a decision to be made by legal officers of the guardianship authority, our volunteer programme becomes all the more important: volunteering in the children’s home offers the students insight into numerous relevant areas, of which we would like to highlight the following: 1. gaining tangible experience and understanding what it means for a child to be removed from the birth family: children living in institutional care often bear a double burden. first, these children have a difficult family background, for being placed in an institution always means that the birth family was either dysfunctional or absent: by the time these children are placed in institutions, many have already been victims of child abuse or severe neglect. second, children in residential care suffer from the negative emotional effects of losing their birth family background. according to extensive research, more than 25% of children in institutional care consider self-harm, and a much higher percentage of them than of children living in families (even foster families) engage in risk-taking behaviours, including use and abuse of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes; and unsafe sexual activities (elekes & paksi, 2005; kökönyei et al., 2003; szőtsné et al., 2007, as cited in rácz, 2012). the same research also indicates that children living in institutions experience anxiety more often and have more difficulties with emotional intelligence, more struggles with their negative emotions, and a less efficient problem-solving capacity than do children living in their birth families. authors emphasise that children often react to removal from the birth family with panic, and that their self-concept is based on the experience that they do not belong anywhere (rácz, 2012, p. 20). consequently, children in the care home are highly vulnerable and, because of their volatility, not easy to interact with. students who develop a meaningful relationship with the children not only receive first-hand information about the problems of this vulnerable group, but they also gain insights into the psychodynamics of being placed and living in an institution as a child. this experience adds to their knowledge of children who are victims of deprivation, disadvantage, and maltreatment. the new insights significantly contribute to a deeper understanding of what is at stake when placing a child into residential care. 2. getting acquainted with the functioning of a child care facility: being present regularly in the facility gives the volunteers insight into the operation of the children’s home as a system. this helps them identify the roles, tasks, and responsibilities of staff members and contributes to their recognition of probable dysfunctionalities and anomalies that hinder the effective, childcentred functioning of the institution. 3. gaining professional experience and context for the future profession: unlike legal clinics or mandatory university-prescribed practicums for teachers or law students, students for children expects participants not to have to rely on their future profession throughout the volunteer work. although the students for children agenda does not aim to provide field training for future professionals, nor does it reject the use of professional knowledge and skills. during their volunteer work, future teachers are welcome to use the pedagogical approaches they have learnt, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 8 and psychology students can also apply their discipline knowledge in giving emotional support for children. similarly, law students can identify problems of legal relevance in the child care setting. once again, we emphasise that respecting boundaries is an important principle of our programme: proper psychological support and legal aid may only be provided by professionals. however, students are encouraged to recognise problems and direct them to the experts for professional and binding resolutions. 4. gaining multidisciplinary experiences with peers: students for children is organised as a cross-faculty volunteering opportunity that also offers rich learning experiences because of the multidisciplinary environment in which it is embedded. during fieldwork in the children’s home, the students support and complement each other with their specific knowledge and skills. students usually visit the home in pairs, which facilitates making contact with the children through games and other activities. during supervised sessions in the classroom, the future professionals often introduce standpoints and opinions that contribute to a multidimensional evaluation of issues in connection with the volunteer work. while at first glance the differences in approaches might seem to discourage mutual understanding between professionals, in our experience, multidisciplinary discussions facilitate the development of a much-needed comprehensive awareness of the links between the elements of the child care system — children, staff, facility, and state. such discussions also help break down barriers between professions. furthermore, the collaboration between faculties aids the development of professional connections that are likely to be amplified into long-term professional networks outside the university. it may be possible to optimise this outcome through a more strategic pairing of students on visits to homes. at the moment, students select their own partners. organising them into interdisciplinary pairs (lawyer with social worker, psychologist with teacher, etc.) is one of the possible directions for development of the programme. 5. revitalising unused skills and developing new ones: our 10-year experience shows that every volunteer student possesses a unique combination of skills within a wide variety of fields. these skills are rarely — or not at all — used in the educational setting. the students for children programme offers the opportunity to revitalise one’s rarely used talents and creativity. 6. taking responsibility and initiative: according to mcfadden and smeaton (2017), a recent call in higher education has been for universities to create … students who possess more than discipline knowledge and who are also ‘active and engaged citizens’ (arvanitakis & hornsby, 2016, p. 11) … who can identify and rectify power imbalances in society … and [are] invested in the creation of an equitable society (arvanitakis & hornsby, 2016). (p. 2) as the students for children programme has no special focus on providing learning support or free-time activities, the students themselves are involved in the conceptualisation of the specific programmes introduced in the children’s home. this creates space for innovation and opportunities for the students to be active and engaged during their volunteer work. taking part in defining the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 9 concept, however, means assuming responsibility for the outcome as well. in fact, students must consider and discuss the details of bigger plans such as a christmas charity baking project, or theatre classes conducted in the home by future theatre teachers. they must also take into account project-related costs and benefits. we certainly hope that positive experiences with personal responsibility, together with receiving positive feedback on the initiatives, will not only have a favourable long-term impact on the students, but will also give rise to further engagements with volunteering in their professional and private lives. possibilities for further improvement of the programme and challenges of dissemination at its launch 10 years ago, students for children started as a vision without a detailed methodology or structure. today, we aim in our day-to-day efforts to solve some of the major inherent psychological, educational, and organisational challenges to this work. addressing psychological challenges, such as maintaining the motivation of students to do volunteer work, applying the “cause no harm” rule, and managing the emotional toll involved in working with traumatised children, is the reason for the complementary class; it serves as a necessary support for students. from an educational and organisational perspective, the main challenge in implementing the programme was scheduling: the programme had to be integrated into the already existing curricula of the different faculties without conflicts in order to enable learners to attend. another challenge was engaging and building stable relationships with child protection facilities in the area. as programme builders, at the launch of the programme in 2010 we focused on learning and improving through routine experiences. however, after 10 years it has become obvious that in order to maximise the social, educational, and psychological benefits for both the students and the children, we need a more scientific approach. to upgrade the programme to an evidence-based educational experience it is now essential to conduct overall impact assessments with special focus on the empowerment of the children and students who are in the programme, as well as alumni students. research on the impacts is also crucial for the dissemination of the programme. furthermore, the programme objectives will need a more defined outline with empowerment as the focus.the experiences of a decade’s work will also need to be included in the process of building a more stable and — in terms of dissemination — reproducible structure and methodology. additional future plans include broadening the spectrum of services we offer to child protection services in order to further improve the benefits connected to the programme. another route for development is to build productive relationships with other organisations doing volunteer work in this field, and not only to learn from each other’s experiences but also to coordinate and perhaps combine our efforts to maximise the positive impact of the volunteering activities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 10 conclusion while the students for children programme has been active in the past 10 years in various facilities for children, its main target has always been the work with children in residential care in the pécs children’s home. throughout the years, the programme has evolved from a small group of law students in one faculty at the university of pécs into a larger-scale university-wide volunteer programme with the participation of future psychologists, doctors, health care professionals, and teachers. students for children meets very important needs for both the volunteers and the children, and thus fulfils a double task: it serves social purposes through supporting the interests of the children, and it also helps the volunteer students pursue their individual goals in gaining professional experience and expertise. in addition, as children’s homes often lack the required personnel, and material conditions may be inadequate, volunteering helps to improve the much-needed public services provided to children. systematically assessing the outcomes of the students for children programme requires ongoing in-depth analyses and detailed descriptions. therefore, one possible course of development, and an important future goal of the programme, is to develop evidence-based information on the specific experiences of the students and the impact of the volunteer work on the children and the care homes. this goal is to be reached by empirical research such as quantitative surveys and interviews among the students, the children, and the staff members in the children’s home. our other developmental goal is to present our model programme to other universities and give rise to a country-wide volunteer programme in hungary. students for children fits the requirements for a mandatory practicum as it complements professional experience requirements with insight into the social differences and power imbalances in society. students for children amplifies the outcomes of university education and has a long-term impact on the mindset and the work of future professionals. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 1–12 11 references elekes, z., & paksi, b. 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(2007). gyermekvédelmi gondoskodásban és családban nevelkedő serdülőkorúak érzelmi intelligenciája, megküzdési stratégiája és szorongása. [emotional intelligence, coping strategy and anxiety of adolescents living in child care]. család, gyermek, ifjúság, 16(2), 17–22. washington, j. (2018). becoming active citizens: motivations to volunteer among undergraduate students in a liberal arts college. school of professional and continuing studies nonprofit studies capstone projects, 4. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/spcs-nonprofitstudiescapstones/4 https://scholarship.richmond.edu/spcs-nonprofitstudies-capstones/4 https://scholarship.richmond.edu/spcs-nonprofitstudies-capstones/4 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019988 police studies program for youth at risk: the role of police distributive justice and personal morality in explaining police legitimacy ameen azmy abstract: this study examined a unique police studies intervention program by comparing two groups of youth-at-risk in two types of residential youth schools. the experimental group included 129 youths who had attended a police studies program, while the control group included 167 youths who had attended a different intervention program, without police studies. we hypothesized that the experimental group would have more positive perceptions of police legitimacy and distributive justice and higher levels of personal morality than the control group would. moreover, we hypothesized that the relationship between the type of the intervention program and perceptions of police legitimacy would be explained by youths’ personal morality and perceptions of police distributive justice. the study showed that the experimental group had more positive perceptions of police legitimacy and higher personal morality than did the control group, but there were no differences in perceived police distributive justice between the two groups. in addition, while personal morality partly mediated the link between the type of intervention program and perceptions of police legitimacy, perceived police distributive justice did not. empirical and theoretical implications are discussed. keywords: youth at risk, police programs, police legitimacy, police distributive justice, personal morality, out-of-home care, residential schools, youth villages ameen azmy ma is a phd candidate in the department of criminology at bar ilan university, ramat-gan, israel 52900. email: ameen.azmy@biu.ac.il mailto:ameen.azmy@biu.ac.il international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 58 a legal socialization process may reduce the likelihood of youth being involved in delinquent behaviors and breaking the law and increase the likelihood of their having positive perceptions of the police (trinkner & cohn, 2014). the results of such a process intensify with age, and shape youths’ understanding of legal and accepted behaviors in society, their role as law-abiding citizens, and their perception of law enforcement institutions, especially the police (cohn et al., 2012). recent studies of legal socialization have pointed out that the degree to which this process succeeds is related to the individual's experiences in both legal and non-legal contexts. legal contexts include, for example, experiences with the police in the streets or with judges in court. non-legal contexts include settings such as home, school, and intervention programs in the community (tyler & trinkner, 2017). those studies have shown that a healthy environment that provides fair, respectful, and caring contact with the police has a positive impact on youths’ understanding of why they should obey the law and help the police (wolfe et al., 2017). this understanding is related to youths’ perceptions of police legitimacy and the development of their personal morality. police legitimacy is related to the belief that the police have the right to claim civil obedience, and that civilians should cooperate with them and help fight crime (tyler, 2004) while personal morality is related to the individual’s internal obligation to accept a specific idea or behavior as morally right or wrong (jackson, 2018). indeed, studies have shown that the more youth accept the police as a legitimate authority, and the more they value personal morality, the more willingness they show to help the police and avoid breaking the law (fagan & tyler, 2005; murphy, 2015). studies in criminology have shown a complex relationship between the police and at-risk youth: police interactions with youth at risk were observed to have a negative effect on both youths’ perceptions of the police and their personal morality, leading to lower levels of police legitimacy; the youth at risk disobeyed the law, became less cooperative with the police, and assisted them less (brunson, 2007; hurst, 2007). in order to improve relations between at-risk youth and the police, policymakers use intervention programs that bring at-risk youth and the police together in a friendly and non-threatening environment (lee et al., 2017). studies that have examined such intervention programs have shown a positive impact on at-risk youths’ perceptions of the police (jones et al., 2015). despite those important studies, to the best of my knowledge no studies to date have examined the relationship between participating in such programs and youths’ personal morality. moreover, no studies have yet compared the perceptions of police distributive justice among youths have who have participated in such intervention programs with those of youths whose programs did not include police studies. finally, no studies have examined whether personal morality and police distributive justice can mediate between participation in programs that bring youth at risk and the police together and improved perceptions of police legitimacy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 59 perceived police legitimacy and youth–police cooperation the conflicted and tense relationship between youth at risk and the police has a negative impact on the former’s legal socialization process, resulting in negative perceptions of the police and low personal morality, and in turn increasing youths’ chances of involvement in criminal activities and disobeying the law (schepers, 2017a). tyler (2004) defined police legitimacy as “the belief that the police have the right to claim civil obedience” and “that the citizens must cooperate” (pp. 86–87). studies have suggested that such obedience and cooperation are motivated less by desire for reward or fear of sanctions and more by internal moral agreement with values that are conducive to the police being perceived as legitimate (e.g., mazerolle et al., 2013). compared to youths who consider the police illegitimate, youths who view them as legitimate place greater trust in them and are more willing to provide them with information, comply with their requests, and obey the law in general (murphy & cherney, 2012). accordingly, strategies based on legitimacy have been found more effective in encouraging obedience and willingness to help the police in the long term; they are also less costly compared to strategies based on deterrence (jackson et al., 2014). murphy (2015), for example, found that australian youths’ perceptions of police legitimacy and willingness to report suspicious activities and crimes were positively correlated (for other studies in australia, see hinds, 2007 and murphy & gaylor, 2010; for a belgian example, see dirikx & van den bulck, 2013). finally, fagan and tyler (2005) found a negative link between self-reported offending by new york youth and their perceptions of police legitimacy. personal morality and police distributive justice as shaping police legitimacy recently scholars in the police legitimacy field have highlighted the important role of personal morality and perceptions of police distributive justice in promoting the legitimacy of the police (tankebe et al., 2016; van damme & pauwels, 2016). personal morality refers to the individual’s internal obligation to accept a specific idea or behavior as morally right or wrong; the more individuals think that laws and rules match their personal morality, the more they will feel an obligation to follow them (schepers, 2017b). citizens will avoid criminal behavior because of their belief that the action that is forbidden is immoral ; indeed, even in cases where the behavior seems to be legal, believing the behavior is immoral will inhibit it (chrysoulakis, 2020). conversely, when citizens believe a behavior that is prohibited by law is morally correct or at least neutral, they will tend to break the law (wikström, 2010). some studies in criminology indicate that personal morality is related to both perceived police legitimacy and willingness to cooperate and assist the police: when citizens feel obliged to cooperate with the police, it is because they think that morally this is the right thing to do (hough et al., 2010; van damme & pauwels, 2016). note that while these important studies have been conducted among young adults, to the best of my knowledge no studies have focused on youth at risk. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 60 the distributive justice model examines whether citizens perceive that the police equitably provide a service without individual differences such as race or socioeconomic status (tankebe et al., 2016). in their study of youth in australia, murphy and gaylor (2010) showed a relationship between perceived police distributive justice and police legitimacy. wolfe and colleagues (2016) and sunshine and tyler (2003) obtained similar results among adults in the united states. policing youth at risk policing youth at risk is one of the greatest challenges facing police forces worldwide, particularly because police practices used with members of this population have a crucial role in shaping their perceptions of police legitimacy, police procedural justice, police effectiveness, and police distributive justice (azmy, 2020) and their personal morality (arsino & gold, 2006; reysen et al., 2017), which affect their willingness to cooperate with the police (helwig & jasiobedzka, 2001; murphy et al., 2008). by definition, youth at risk are exposed to a variety of risk factors, including family and individual crises and mental, academic, and financial difficulties (baglivio et al., 2014). moreover, they tend to live in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods (males & brown, 2013). combined, these factors increase the likelihood of youth turning to crime and of a conflicted relationship with the police in general (adorjan et al., 2017). indeed, many studies have shown that this relationship is characterized by a tendency to disrespect and abuse of power by the police; as a result, perceptions of police, and of police legitimacy in particular, are negatively affected, and this conflicted relationship discourages youths from assisting the police (bradford et al., 2014; nuño, 2018; weitzer & brunson, 2009). conversely, living in neighborhoods characterized by high crime rates and communal disorganization also increases the probability of falling victim to crime. victimization has also been related to at-risk youths’ evaluations of police effectiveness and personal morality: those victimized tend to feel that the police have failed to protect them, and that the police are ineffective and illegitimate and therefore do not deserve cooperation )sargeant & kochel, 2018; slocum et al., 2010; wu et al., 2015). as well, victimized youth tend to morally justify deviant behavior )doering & baier, 2016; medina & rodrigues, 2019(. intervention programs that bring together youth at risk and police in attempting to heal the conflicted relationship between youth at risk and the police, intervention programs have been implemented that bring youths and police together for informal activities in a non-legal, non-threatening, friendly environment (arter, 2006; cohn et al., 2012). those activities provide youth a chance to experience police officers outside the context of their official role, which is too often characterized by hostility (ivanich & warner, 2019; solhjell et al., 2019); rather, they provide youth an opportunity to see the police as role models and mentors (broaddus et al., 2013). such intervention programs enable police officers to build a healthier relationship with youths, who in turn develop more positive attitudes towards the police and a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 61 deeper understanding of the law (hinds, 2009). thus, intervention programs that bring youth at risk and the police together in a non-legal environment can be an important contribution to a healthy and positive legal socialization process that positively affects youths’ personal morality and their perceptions towards the police (tyler & trinkner, 2017). these intervention programs are informed by intergroup contact theory, which holds that, when two hostile social groups come into direct and positive contact, fear of the outgroup is reduced, knowledge about it increases, and negative prejudices may be replaced by empathy and mutual trust (allport, 1954). according to pettigrew and colleagues (2011), four conditions should be met in order to achieve these goals: social and institutional support; significant personal contacts; reduction in hierarchy and increase in equality between the two groups; and finally, a focus on promoting cooperation between the groups and creating common interests. despite this sound theoretical basis, the literature regarding intervention programs that bring youth at risk and the police together remains limited. some promising evidence of their effectiveness has been reported, however. for example, a community intervention program for african american and hispanic youth of low socioeconomic status improved youths’ perceptions of the police (jones et al., 2015; rabois & haaga, 2002). leroux and mcshane’s (2016) study among canadian youths showed that such a program affected their perceptions of police distributive justice, although this finding should be interpreted with caution as the study examined only one group of youths (who were not at risk) and did not include a no-program comparison group. finally, a recent study of youth at risk who participated in police studies in an out-of-home care setting (residential school) showed that they evaluated police effectiveness, procedural justice, and legitimacy more positively than did a similar group in a different setting who received a different intervention program (azmy, 2020). the study also showed that perceptions of police effectiveness and procedural justice mediated the relationship between program participation and perceived police legitimacy (azmy, 2020). youth villages (residential schools) and police studies programs in israel many developed countries use out-of-home intervention programs for empowering youth at risk, including boarding schools, foster care families, and residential care (ainsworth & thoburn, 2014). youth are integrated in such programs in order to remove them from an unhealthy environment, often characterized by a poor, violent, abusive, dysfunctional family and a neighborhood with high poverty and crime (brick et al., 2009). these characteristics increase the likelihood of socioemotional and educational damage to these youth and their involvement in criminal activities (slocum et al., 2010). ideally, out-of-home intervention settings provide protection, improved welfare, and healthy living conditions. often, they also provide intervention programs to treat the effects of abuse and neglect and foster healthy and normative development, as well as preventing youths from taking a criminal path (o’donnell et al., 2016). as attar-schwartz (2008) stated, there are five types of out-of-home intervention program in israel. four types — rehabilitation, therapeutic, and post-psychiatric programs, and crisis international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 62 intervention shelters — are supervised by the ministry of welfare and social affairs and are treatment-oriented. the fifth type — residential schools or youth villages — is the focus of the current study; it is education-oriented and supervised by the education ministry (attar-schwartz, 2008). youth villages include youth from underprivileged backgrounds, such as migrant youth who are in the midst of their cross-cultural transition process; youth from low socioeconomic backgrounds and high-crime neighborhoods; youth who seek a second chance after having failed at or dropped out of school; and youth coping with emotional–behavioral difficulties (pinchover & attar-schwartz, 2018). the youth village is designed to create a stimulating environment with a variety of informal after-school activities and programs, including elements of emotional– behavioral treatment by social workers or psychologists (grupper, 2013). in 2004, one youth village developed an original program in police studies for 10th to 12th graders in collaboration with the israel police, the ministry of education, the ministry of immigration, and the ministry of public security (2018). key program elements included studies in criminology, sociology, and law enforcement; the importance of the rule of law in the democratic state of israel; empowerment through involvement in social activities that develop leadership and initiative skills; improving attitudes towards the police; and, finally, recruiting candidates to the police as part of their mandatory service in the military (ministry of public security, 2018). to achieve these goals, the program involved participants in a variety of informal police activities that brought them into contact with police, including volunteering in a neighborhood watch, visiting police stations and staying at border police bases, and guarding checkpoints (ministry of public security, 2018). the current study only a few studies have been published to date on police studies programs for youth at risk. to the best of my knowledge, none have examined the relationship between participating in such programs and youths’ personal morality, nor have any compared the perceptions of police distributive justice of youth whose intervention programs included a police studies element with those of youth whose programs did not include that element. finally, this study has examined whether personal morality and police distributive justice can mediate between participating in programs and perceptions of police legitimacy. the goal of the current study is to fill this gap in the literature. the study focuses on two groups of israeli youth at risk in youth village (out-of-home) care settings: one that participated in a policestudies program and a second that participated in a program without police studies. specifically, the research hypotheses are as follows: h1: youth at risk in a youth village setting who have participated in a police studies program will hold more positive perceptions of police distributive justice than will their peers in a different youth village setting with different intervention programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 63 h2: youth at risk in a youth village setting who have participated in a police studies program will have higher personal morality than will their peers in a different youth village setting with different intervention programs. h3: youth at risk in a youth village setting who have participated in a police studies program will perceive the police as more legitimate than will their peers in a different youth village setting with different intervention programs. h4: the link between the participation of youth at risk in the police studies program and perceptions of police legitimacy will be mediated by personal morality and perceptions of police distributive justice. method procedure we used pencil-and-paper surveys to collect data from at-risk youth (males and females) aged 14 to 18 who studied and lived in three similar out-of-home care settings: youth villages in central israel. in order to examine the reliability of the questionnaire, i first conducted a pilot study among 36 youths who did not participate in the final study. the pilot study showed that all three dependent variables — personal morality, police distributive justice, and police legitimacy — had a minimum cronbach’s alpha of .69. the reliability of the three variables was confirmed in the analyses of the final sample as well. students were first told about the study by their teachers. the researcher traveled to each village and administered the questionnaire in classrooms. before filling out the questionnaire, participants were assured that their participation was voluntary and that their responses would remain completely anonymous. most participants completed the questionnaire within 20 to 25 minutes. design and participants the design was quasi-experimental and cross-sectional. a total of 296 youths participated in the study; five refused without saying why. the study compared two groups from three different youth villages: one village included the experimental group of at-risk youth in the police studies program (n = 128), and two other youth villages comprised the control group of at-risk youth in different intervention programs (n = 178). all participants in the study were jews. instrument the questionnaire included items examining the following control and demographic variables: age, gender as a dummy variable, and type of contact with police. the latter variable was converted into three dummy variables: negative, between positive and negative (hereafter, “ordinary”), and positive. the variables were coded as follows: negative contact = 1 and all other types of contact = 0; ordinary contact = 1 and all other types = 0; positive contact = 1 and all other types = 0. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 64 finally, victimization by crime was a dummy variable (1 = was a victim; 0 = was not). the independent variable was the type of intervention program, also coded as a dummy variable (1 = police studies program; 0 = other program). the study focused on three dependent variables: personal morality, police distributive justice, and police legitimacy, as defined in the police legitimacy literature (hinds, 2007, 2009; reisig et al., 2012; sunshine & tyler, 2003; van damme & pauwels, 2016). personal morality was captured by 11 items. the respondents were asked to indicate how wrong it was to commit various antisocial activities such as “ to get drunk in public places”; “steal or try to steal an object worth more than 100 shekels”; and “buy, sell, or hold consciously stolen goods”. all items were measured on a likert scale ranging from 1 (completely okay) to 5 (completely wrong). higher scores indicated strong intrinsic moral principles. cronbach’s alpha was .83. police distributive justice was captured by five items that reflected participants’ assessments of whether the police allocate services and outcomes equally regardless of individual differences such as race or socioeconomic position. participants were asked, for example, whether the police “provide different services based on where people live”, and “use much more force against arabs than jews”. all items were measured on a likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the scale was coded so that a higher score reflected higher levels of perceived police distributive justice. cronbach’s alpha was .69. police legitimacy was conceptualized according to reisig et al. (2012) and sunshine and tyler (2003) as a combination of obligation to obey and trust and confidence in the police. the first dimension was captured in the questionnaire by two items: “i usually try to obey the law even when i think the law is unfair”; and “you should follow the police’s decisions even if you do not like the way the police behave with people”. the second dimension included three items: “i have confidence in the israel police, i trust the israel police”; “i respect the israel police”; and “if a relative or close friend falls victim to a crime, i will encourage them to call the police”. the present study operationalized police legitimacy as a two-dimensional construct by combining obligation to obey and trust and confidence in the police into a single likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the scale was coded so that a higher score reflected higher levels of perceived police legitimacy. cronbach’s alpha was .76. data analysis data analysis was performed in three steps. first, we compared the independent and dependent variables. next, we used ordinary least squares (ols) multivariate regressions on control variables known to be correlated with the dependent variables. finally, we used hayes’ (2013) spss process model 4 to examine mediation between variables. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 65 to examine differences between the experimental and control groups, we first compared five background independent variables: gender, age, victimization, contact with police, and type of contact with police, using independent chi-squared tests and t-tests. we then compared the three dependent variables in a series of three independent t-tests. when we found a significant difference, we calculated cohen’s d (see table 1). to better understand the relationships between the police studies program and the dependent variables, we next conducted three ols multivariate regressions on control variables known to be correlated with them. each included three models (steps): entering the intervention program type; entering the demographic variables of gender and age; and entering the control variables of type of contact with police and victimization (murphy, 2015; see table 3 to 5). finally, to examine whether personal morality and police distributive justice would mediate the relationship between participating in the intervention programs and perceptions of police legitimacy, we used hayes’ (2013) procedure (see figure 1). results independent t-tests and chi-squared tests conducted to compare the two groups’ background variables produced no significant results, showing that the only difference between the two groups was the type of intervention program. conversely, the comparison of the dependent variables did produce significant results (see table 2). the independent t-tests yielded the following results. first, participants in the experimental group had a significantly higher personal morality score (m = 3.667, sd = 0.691) than participants in the control group (m = 3.406, sd = 0.788), with a medium effect size, t(293) = 2.972, p < .05, d = 0.352. second, participants in the experimental group had a significantly higher police legitimacy score (m = 3.547, sd = 0.899) than participants in the control group (m = 3.136, sd = 0.872), with a medium effect size, t(292) = 3.946, p < .001, d = 0.464. finally, participants in the experimental group had a significantly lower police distributive justice score (m = 3.349, sd = 0.767) than participants in the control group (m = 3.532, sd = 0.782), albeit with a small effect size, t(292) = 2.007, p < .001, d = 0.236. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 66 table 1. descriptive statistics and compression between background and dependent variables police studies program program without police studies variable n m se % n m se % t d χ2 df age 128 16.74 1.00 167 16.78 .90 -.376 gender 128 148 3.938 3 male 63 23.1% 65 23.8% female 61 22.3% 81 92.7% victimization 128 167 1.811 1 was victim of crime 19 6.4% 35 11.9% wasn't victim of crime 109 36.9% 132 44.7% contact with police 124 155 1.148 1 contact with police 56 20.1% 80 28.7% no contact with police 68 24.2% 75 26.9% type of contact with police negative 21 7.1% 34 11.5% .747 1 ordinary 17 5.8% 19 6.4% .245 1 positive 19 6.4% 23 7.8% .068 1 personal morality 128 3.667 .691 167 3.406 .788 -2.972** 0.352 police distributive justice 127 3.349 .767 167 3.532 .782 2.012* 0.236 police legitimacy 127 3.547 .899 167 3.136 .872 -3.930*** 0.464 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 2. means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations for dependent variables for experimental and control groups police studies program (experimental group) program without police studies (control group) variables 1 2 3 n m sd 1 2 3 n m sd 1. police distributive justice -.013 -.193* 128 3.349 .767 -.034 -.088 167 3.532 .782 2. personal morality -.013 .350*** 128 3.667 .691 -.034 .351** 167 3.406 .788 3. police legitimacy -.193* .350*** 127 3.547 .899 -.088 .351*** 167 3.136 .872 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 67 tolerance tests in all three ols multivariate regression models revealed that no independent variable was under .50, and pearson’s r correlation findings revealed that no correlation between the independent variables was above .70. accordingly, multicollinearity was not a concern in the current study. the correlation matrix was created separately by group and included the three dependent variables. in the experimental group, the results indicated no correlation between police distributive justice and personal morality (r = -.013, p > .05); weak negative correlation between police distributive justice and police legitimacy (r = -.193, p < .05); and moderate positive correlation between personal morality and police legitimacy (r = .350, p < .001). in the control group, the results indicated no correlation between police distributive justice and personal morality (r = -.034, p > .05); no correlation between police distributive justice and police legitimacy (r = -.088, p > .05); and moderate positive correlation between personal morality and police legitimacy (r = .351, p < .001). predicting personal morality in order to predict personal morality, a linear regression of three models (steps) was performed (see table 3). the first model included only the type of intervention program but, although it was statistically significant (p < .001), it explained only a very small share of the variance in personal morality (r² = .030). the model showed that the type of intervention program (β = .172, p < .001) was a significant predictor of personal morality. in the second model, we added the demographic variables gender and age. the model was statistically significant (p < .001), but again, explained a very small share of the variance (r² = .057). the model showed that the type of intervention program (β = .188, p < .001) and gender (β = -.167, p < .001) were significant predictors of personal morality. finally, in the third model, we added the control variables type of contact with police and victimization. the model was statistically significant (p < .001), but explained only a small share of the variance (r² = .120). the model showed that the type of intervention program (β = .166, p < .001), gender (β = -.122, p < .05), victimization (β = -.137, p < .05), and negative contact with police (β = -.168, p < .001) were all significant predictors of personal morality. predicting police distributive justice in order to predict police distributive justice, a linear regression of three models (steps) was performed (see table 4). the first model included only the type of intervention program, and was not statistically significant (p > .05). in the second model, we added the demographic variables gender and age; this model was also statistically insignificant (p > .05). finally, in the third model we added the control variables type of contact with police and victimization. the model was statistically significant (p < .05), but explained only a small share of the variance in police distributive justice (r² = .049). the model showed that only negative contact with police (β = .189; p < .001) predicted police distributive justice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 68 table 3. linear regression for personal morality predicting personal morality step 1 step 2 step 3 variables es b () es b () es b () intervention program .087 .258 (.172)** .086 .282 (.188)** .085 .248 (.166)** age .045 .007 (.045) .044 .015 (.019) gender .086 -.250 (-.167)** .087 -.183 (-.122)* victimization .121 -.261 (-.137)* negative contact with police .132 -.321 (-.168)** ordinary contact with police .128 .067 (.032) positive contact with police .114 -.216 (-.137) r² .030 .057 .120 adjusted r2 .026 .047 .098 r2 change .030 .028 .063 f 8.778** 5.783*** 5.503*** n 290 290 290 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 4. linear regression for police distributive justice predicting police distributive justice step 1 step 2 step 3 variables es b () es b () es b () intervention program .061 -.167 (-.106) .092 -.166 (-.106) .092 -.154 (-.098) age .048 .048 (.058) .048 .033 (.040) gender .093 .012 (.007) .095 -.033 (-.021) victimization .124 -.089 (-.044) negative contact with police .132 .378 (.189)** ordinary contact with police .144 .070 (.030) positive contact with police .139 -.064 (-.029) r² .011 .015 .049 adjusted r2 .008 .004 .026 r2 change .011 .003 .034 f 3.285 1.423 2.082* n 290 290 290 *p < .05. **p < .01. predicting police legitimacy in order to predict police legitimacy, a linear regression of three models (steps) was conducted (see table 5). the first included only the type of intervention program, and was statistically significant (p < .001), but explained a very small share of the variance (r² = .049). intervention program (β = .222, p < .001) was a significant predictor of police legitimacy. in the second model, we added the demographic variables gender and age. the model was found to be statistically international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 69 significant (p < .001), but explained a very small share of the variance (r² = .53). only intervention program (β = .228, p < .001) was a significant predictor of police legitimacy. finally, in the third model, we added the control variables type of contact with police and victimization. the model was found to be statistically significant (p < .001), explaining a small-to-moderate share of the variance (r² = .187). intervention program (β = .201, p < .001), victimization (β = -.157, p < .01), negative contact with police (β = -.235, p < .001), ordinary contact with police (β = -.115, p < .05), and positive contact with police (β = .147, p < .05) were all found to be significant predictors of police legitimacy. table 5. linear regressions for police legitimacy predicting police legitimacy step 1 step 2 step 3 variables es b () es b () es b () intervention program .104 .400 (.222)*** .105 .412 (.228)*** .098 .363 (.201)*** age .055 .011 (.012) .052 .032 (.034) gender .105 -.110 (-.061) .101 -.029 (-.016) victimization .132 -.360 (-.157)* negative contact with police .132 -.360 (-.157)* ordinary contact with police .154 -.311 (-.115)* positive contact with police .148 .373 (.147)* r² .049 .053 .187 adjusted r2 .046 .043 .167 r2 change .049 .004 .134 f 14.852*** 5.317** 9.248*** n 289 289 289 note. from “police studies program for at-risk youth in youth villages: program evaluation and understanding the psychological mechanism behind participation in the program and perceptions towards police legitimacy” by a. azmy, 2020, police practice and research, pp.1–17 (doi:10.1080/15614263.2020.1712200). *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. the process model 4 analysis (see figure 1) revealed that type of intervention program was significantly related to personal morality; conversely, the model showed no relationship between type of intervention program and police distributive justice. moreover, the model showed that personal morality and police distributive justice were significantly linked with police legitimacy. it also revealed that there was a direct effect of intervention program type on police legitimacy, and that the total effect of intervention program on police legitimacy was significant (b = .41, se = .10, p < .05). finally, the model showed a partial mediation effect of personal morality on police legitimacy (b = .10, se = .04, z = 2.65, p < .001). conversely, the model showed no mediation effect of police distributive justice on police legitimacy (b = .02, se = .01, z = 1.37, p > .05). https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2020.1712200 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 70 figure 1. path diagram explaining the mediator variables (personal morality and police distributive justice) between type of intervention program and police legitimacy note. n = 294; b = unstandardized beta coefficient of the path between variables; se = standard error. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. discussion lowering the involvement of at-risk youth in criminal behavior and cultivating positive perceptions of the police and an understanding of the need to cooperate with them can be the outcome of a healthy socialization process. this process can be directly related to either a legal context or a non-legal context. an extensive literature has focused on the legal context, examining the nature of the encounters between youth at risk and police in the streets and how the type of encounter influences youths’ perceptions of the police. the current study contributes to the literature by examining whether youth at risk who participate in a police studies program (direct contact with police in a non-legal context) would show a better understanding of why they should help the police and follow the rules (police legitimacy and personal morality) compared to youth in intervention programs without police studies, which do not bring them into direct contact with the police. in addition, the study explores the role of police distributive justice and personal morality in explaining at-risk youths’ perceptions of police legitimacy. specifically, we hypothesized that youth at risk who participated in the police studies program would perceive police distributive justice more positively (h1), have higher personal morality (h2), and perceive the police as more legitimate (h3) than would their peers in the different intervention programs in the two other youth villages. moreover, we hypothesized that personal personal morality type of intervention program police legitimacy b = .27**, se = .09 police distributive justice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 71 morality and police distributive justice would mediate the relationship between participation in the intervention program and perceptions of police legitimacy (h4). the results showed a significant correlation between type of intervention program and personal morality and police legitimacy. on the other hand, no correlation was found between type of intervention program and police distributive justice. to establish a better understanding regarding the factors that explain perceptions of police legitimacy, we ran a theoretical model (see figure 1) that indicated a direct and significant correlation between type of intervention program and perceived personal morality but no correlation between type of intervention program and police distributive justice. moreover, the model showed a direct and significant correlation between police legitimacy and personal morality and between police legitimacy and police distributive justice. more importantly, the model indicated that personal morality partly mediated the relationship between participating in the intervention program and perceptions of police legitimacy. therefore, h2 and h3 were supported, whereas h1 and h4 were not. the findings indicate that taking part in a police studies program built an understanding among youth at risk that deviant behaviors were morally wrong and unacceptable. as a result of the personal morality element of the program, youth at risk came to acknowledge that the police have the right to claim civil obedience and have to be assisted in fighting crime, and that cooperating with them is based on acceptance of the values of law enforcement, rather than fear of sanctions or desire for reward. results regarding personal morality showed that gender and negative contact with police were negatively correlated with personal morality: specifically, males scored higher on personal morality than did females, and participants who experienced negative contact with police had lower levels of personal morality. those differences are in line with studies that have focused on morality development. gilligan (1982) argued that a morality of care and response, mainly linked to females, had been overlooked in favor of a morality of justice and rights, and felt this was because it was mainly men who had formulated explanations of moral development. in line with gilligan’s argument, results showed that, compared to female youth at risk, male youth at risk have a higher chance of experiencing negative police contact, including unfair and hostile treatment involving misuse of power by the police. the negative effect of such contacts on their standards of personal morality led these youngsters to regard deviant behavior as morally justified. another interesting finding was the negative correlation between victimization and personal morality: at-risk youth who had experienced victimization had lower personal morality scores than non-victims; accordingly, victimized participants tended to believe that deviant behavior was morally acceptable. similarly, youth at risk who had experienced victimization had negative perceptions of the legitimacy of the police compared to non-victims, and accordingly showed low levels of trust and confidence in the police. it may be that, like most people, youth at risk initially expect the police to be effective in preventing crime, maintaining public order, and creating a sense of safety and protection. however, when youth at risk experience victimization at the hands of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 72 police officers, or receive inadequate police assistance, they feel that the police are unable to “serve and protect”. they feel let down by the police, which in turn has a negative effect on their perceptions of police legitimacy and personal morality. moreover, results showed that police legitimacy was found to be related to police distributive justice; in addition, there was a link between police legitimacy and all types of contact with police — positive, ordinary, and negative. this is in line with previous studies that showed citizens’ views of police legitimacy and decisions about whether to cooperate with police were heavily influenced by their view of how they had been treated at the hands of police officers. indeed, the findings showed that when participants had experienced negative or ordinary contact with police, and in cases where participants thought that the police didn’t provide equal and fair service because of a citizen’s race or background, the participants showed low levels of trust and confidence in the police and low levels of acceptance of and obedience to the police. conversely, they showed high levels of trust and confidence and were more willing to agree with, accept, and obey the police when they had had positive contact with them. lastly, the study showed a correlation between police distributive justice and negative contact with police: when participants experienced negative treatment by the police it led them to think of the police as targeting people because of their age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. this finding is consistent with the finding that citizens’ assessments of whether the police allocate services and outcomes equally and fairly regardless of individual differences such as race or socioeconomic position were heavily influenced by the way police officers treated citizens (brunson & weitzer, 2011: huq, jackson & trinkner, 2017). conclusions the results of this study are important for educators, psychologists, and police agencies who rely on intervention programs that include police studies to create a healthy socialization process that can help to reduce the likelihood of youth at risk taking part in criminal activities. the study was able to show that participating in this type of intervention program has the potential to improve levels of personal morality. more importantly, the current study was able to examine a theoretical model that explored the role of personal morality and police distributive justice in influencing perceptions of police legitimacy among youth at risk who participated in an intervention program that brought them together with the police. the study was able to show that those participants’ perceptions of the police were explained by their personal morality but not by their evaluation of police distributive justice. the findings suggest the need for developing intervention programs in schools and in the community that bring together youth at risk and police. moreover, it is crucial that when police officers encounter youth at risk, they attempt to establish a healthy relationship with them, as this international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 73 will enhance youths’ perceptions of police legitimacy and, more importantly, contribute to their personal morality. fostering such a healthy relationship may be applied to aspects of police procedural justice in encounters with civilians. in such an encounter, the degree to which the police treat citizens fairly and equally, with respect and dignity, and show concern for their views and arguments affects the relationship between citizens and police. such treatment will, in turn, make it more likely that citizens will regard police authority as legitimate and will cooperate with the police, as well to shape a positive personal morality. promoting such treatment requires a special training program for police officers, one that provides the knowledge needed to demonstrate aspects of procedural justice in their contacts with youth at risk. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 57–79 74 references adorjan, m., ricciardelli, r., & spencer, d. c. 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state of victoria, department of health, 2010). central to many such guidelines is the practice of watching or maintaining various levels of observation on the adolescent. to illustrate, the new zealand guidelines group and ministry of health document (2003) suggests that there are various levels of observation including “within reach”, “same room and in sight”, and “frequent observation” that specify intervals of observation whereby the level of observation provided is matched to the level of appraised suicide risk (p. 61). studies on the use and effectiveness of observation of suicidal persons have been undertaken (e.g., junker, beeler, & bates, 2005), however such monitoring practices have yet to be examined in suicide interventions by child and youth care professionals with adolescents. this paper presents findings from a larger grounded theory study that examined the mental health literacy practices realized by child and youth care professionals during their encounters with suicidal adolescents. my present discussion is focused on one of the practices i identified during data analysis: watching. the descriptions provided by participants and extant texts incorporated into the analysis consistently reflected enacting observational practices in response to the adolescent. various terms and phrases were used to denote the practice of watching such as “having an eye on” or “getting extra eyes on”, “checks”, “monitoring”, or “putting [adolescent] on suicide watch”. as some terms for watching were organization-specific, to protect anonymity i replaced such terms with “watching”. i begin with a review of the literature pertaining to observational practices with suicidal persons. following this, an overview of the grounded theory methods used in the study is offered. in the third section, i define and describe the practice of watching and its related conditions that i identified during analysis, and provide quotations for illustration purposes from child and youth care professional and supervisor participants, and texts that were incorporated into the analysis. lastly, i discuss the implications of child and youth care professionals’ watching practice and provide suggestions for future research. a review of the mechanisms of observation in suicide intervention the present paper provides the first inquiry into child and youth care professionals’ observation practices in encounters with suicidal adolescents. while there is an absence of research to draw upon in the field of child and youth care specific to suicide observation practices, the concept of watching a person who is suicidal has been taken up in the literature within allied helping professions. in this section i delineate the practice of observation as defined in the literature, outline litigation concerns, and explore the tension noted in the literature between power and collaborative engagement. lastly, i present features evident in child and youth care literature to situate the problem under international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 6 study: child and youth care professionals balancing physical proximity with relational proximity in observational practices with suicidal adolescents. defining the practice of observation watching is described in the literature using a variety of terms including “constant observation” (alland, gallagher, & henderson, 2003; fletcher, 1999; vrale & steen, 2005; wheatley, waine, spence, & hollin, 2004), “formal observation” (manna, 2010), “special observation” (horsfall & cleary, 2000), or “suicide watch” (junker et al., 2005). the various terms refer to “high levels of observation, with some degree of removal of freedom and/or belongings, with the aim of preventing suicide” (fletcher, 1999, p. 9). for example, in junker and colleagues’ study the researchers describe a suicide watch within a correctional setting to encompass the following mechanisms: (a) constant surveillance using closed-circuit television; (b) rounds conducted by nursing staff, every 15 minutes; (c) rounds by correctional staff, every 15 minutes; and (d) direct observation (pp. 22–23). the suicidal person’s fellow inmates, who had completed an education program on observation skills, conducted direct observation. to further illustrate and define the mechanisms of observation, three different levels of observation are recommended by crag, the clinical resource and audit group (2002; see table 11). crag publishes clinical guidelines to develop clinical effectiveness for health and allied health care professionals within scotland. table 11. description of progressive levels of observation level of observation description general the staff on duty should have knowledge of the patients’ general whereabouts at all times, whether in or out of the ward. constant the staff member should be constantly aware of the precise whereabouts of the patient through visual observation or hearing. special the patient should be in sight and within arm’s reach of a member of staff at all times and in all circumstances. (crag, 2002, p. 2). despite efforts to clearly define and delineate the various levels and forms of observational practices in suicide intervention in the aforementioned articles and guidelines, janofsky (2009) suggests that there are tensions in the literature as to the importance of observation in preventing suicide and disagreement in how observation levels are described leading to confusion and improper implementation of observation policy. as evident in the presentation of findings from the current study, child and youth care professionals also defined, interpreted, and implemented watching practice in a variety of forms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 7 litigation concerns customary rules of suicide intervention, rather than efficacy, underpin the practice of observation. in a review of the literature from 1996 to 2009, manna (2010) found a significant gap in the literature providing empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the practice of observation. a barrier to research evaluating observation identified by manna may be the legal and ethical implications of withholding a practice that may be life-saving. despite the paucity of evidence in support of observational practices, litigation concerns are well founded. for example, a recent united states court of appeals ruling held a nurse and the nurse’s employer partially to blame for an inmate’s death by suicide for not initiating close monitoring based on the inmate’s affirmative response to suicide ideation (“suicide risk”, 2011). power and collaboration in the practice of observation findings in other studies have noted that policies influence how and when professionals enact observation practices. for example, a discourse analysis of a special observation policy for nurses within an in-patient psychiatric facility illuminated the power such policies have over patients and nursing practices such that “it is unlikely that either the patient or the nurse has the actual power to resist the observation prescription, or to re-negotiate it” (horsfall & cleary, 2000, p. 1295). further, stevenson and cutcliffe (2006) suggest the discourse surrounding observation practices such as watching hold implicit assumptions about risk and power relations that are taken for granted. creating opportunities for shared decision-making regarding how watching is realized may change practice for both professionals and adolescents. for example, kettles and paterson (2007) conducted a small pilot study to examine the introduction of more flexible observation guidelines where nursing staff within a psychiatric setting were given more autonomy to decide a patient’s level of observation, rather than only following an observation procedure directed by a physician. initially, nurses in the study were reluctant to make decisions as to the level of observation; however, results of the study indicated a shift towards multidisciplinary team decision-making or nursing decisions regarding patients’ needs for observation. patients were on high levels of observation (e.g., special observation or constant observation) less frequently or for shorter periods of time. kettles and paterson suggest “staff time is better spent in engagement and therapeutic intervention than sitting in corridors watching patients from a specified distance” (p. 379). cutcliffe and barker (2002) suggest that observational practices may be best realized as an aspect of what i interpreted as being with (see ranahan, 2013b) or relational engagement, rather than a technical and formal procedure of observation. that is, there is a need for professionals to balance physical proximity with relational proximity in interactions with suicidal persons. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 8 the need to balance physical proximity with relational proximity the practice of constant observation may end up creating distance between nursing professionals and patients (alland et al., 2003), can be paternalistic, and can be an activity that interferes with the formation of therapeutic relationships (bouic, 2005). the dynamic between observation for control and safety, and observation for therapeutic relations was identified in vrale and steen’s (2005) content analysis examining how nurses perform constant observation of patients. participants in the study described monitoring the patient’s movements to control against self-harm, while also showing interest and care, creating hope, offering conversation about everyday life and discussing with the patient that patient’s experience of constant observation. vrale and steen found that nurses described moving together with the patients as like a “dance” while “at the same time allowing space between the partners” thus balancing “between control and therapeutic aspects” (p. 517). a requirement that nurses balance observation with engagement when working with persons who present a risk for violence or aggression was also recommended by mackay, paterson, and cassells (2005). using in-depth unstructured qualitative interviews, mackay and colleagues investigated the practice of observation by nurses with potentially aggressive patients. participants described observation in terms of procedure (e.g., a nurse implementing an institutional policy to maintain the patient within arm’s reach), and role and skills (maintaining safety, intervening, de-escalation and management of aggression, assessing, communication, and therapy). that is, observation for the nurse participants in mackay et al.’s study was comprised of more than watching: “observations also allowed the opportunity to be with, spend time with, and help the patient – the very process of the procedure allowing ‘one to one’ care for those thought to be most in need of it” (p. 469). thus observation of suicidal persons may be reconceptualized as a process of engagement to refocus professionals on the interpersonal relationship with the patient, exploring the suicidal person’s experience, and attending to their needs for emotional and physical security (cutcliffe & barker, 2002, p. 619). features of child and youth care practice reconceptualizing observation as engagement may be aligned with child and youth care practice perspectives. while recognizing that the field of child and youth care continues to evolve (gharabaghi & krueger, 2010; little, 2011) and final or absolute descriptions of the field should be resisted (white, 2011), features of the profession are provided here as overarching themes concerning practice with young people. features of child and youth care practice include the therapeutic relationship (anglin, 1999) where the personal relationship between worker and child or youth is at the centre of practice (fewster, 1990). child and youth care professionals engage in “relational practice” (bellefeuille & jamieson, 2008, p. 38) where “the relationship is their job” (martin, 2002, p. 116). this relationship occurs within young people’s life international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 9 space (anglin, 1999) where practice transpires as flexible “counselling on the go” (garfat & fulcher, 2011, p. 14). krueger (1994) posits that the worker strives to be “in-synch” with the child or youth (p. 227), while skott-myhre and skott-myhre (2011) suggest that “practice is not something we do to young people” but “we indeed do with them” (p. 46). thus, if child and youth care practice is relational, flexible, and collaborative, how do such professionals enact observational practices when they encounter suicidal adolescents? in the following section i present an overview of the research methods used to examine the observational practices of child and youth care professionals in their encounters with suicidal adolescents. research methods grounded theory methods offer a rich opportunity to examine social processes, such as interactions between child and youth care professionals and suicidal adolescents. charmaz (2000) posits that grounded theory methods offer “systematic inductive guidelines for collecting and analyzing data to build middle-range theoretical frameworks that explain the collected data” (p. 509). the theory generated through analysis may be generalizable to some extent, yet it is intimately connected to the data (morse, 2009), and specific and meaningful to the context, situation, and participants in the study (macdonald & schreiber, 2001). grounded theory research can provide theories that are centred on resolving practical problems professionals encounter in their practice (glaser & strauss, 1967), such as situations involving suicide. further, grounded theory is suitable for inquiry into “individual process, interpersonal relations and the reciprocal effects between individuals and larger social processes” (charmaz, 1995, pp. 28–29). professionals’ suicide intervention practices are both promoted and impeded by certain conditions (charmaz, 2006). conditions, then, lead to further actions, which result in various consequences (corbin & strauss, 2008). that is, child and youth care professionals’ mental health literacy practices are not viewed as static “but as continually changing in response to evolving conditions” (corbin & strauss, 1990, p. 5). the aim of grounded theory is “to build a theoretical explanation by specifying phenomena in terms of conditions that give rise to them, how they are expressed through action/interaction, the consequences that result from them, and variations of these qualifiers” (corbin & strauss, 1990, p. 9). within the substantive theory generated during analysis, i identified several practices child and youth care professionals realized during their encounters with suicidal adolescents. in this paper, i focus on the practice of watching and the influencing conditions of policies and professionals’ aroused emotional states that swayed such practice during the interactional process between professional and adolescent. the study received ethical approval from the university of victoria human research ethics board in may 2010. participants included the following: 10 child and youth care professionals with not more than undergraduate qualifications (i.e., diploma or bachelor’s degree) from schools of child and youth care in western canada and selfidentified practice experience with a suicidal adolescent; four supervisors in youthserving organizations; five educators from schools of child and youth care; and extant texts provided by participants (e.g., policy documents, practice guidelines, assessment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 10 tools). child and youth care professionals who participated in the study had between 4 years and 25 years practice experience in a range of settings (e.g., child welfare, residential group care, psychiatric facilities, schools, community outreach, recreation, youth justice). semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant and the researcher transcribed each interview and provided participants with a copy of the transcription for their review. no participants made any substantive changes to their transcription. data collection and analysis followed universal strategies of grounded theory method which include the following: (a) simultaneous collection and analysis of data, (b) a two-step data coding process, (c) comparative methods, (d) memo writing aimed at the construction of conceptual analyses, (e) sampling to refine the researcher’s emerging theoretical ideas, and (f) integration of the theoretical framework. (charmaz, 2000, pp. 510– 511) the analysis generated the substantive theory i identified as the balancing proximity and perimeter process (ranahan, 2011). in this substantive theory, the mental health literacy practices taken up by professionals were placed on a fluid continuum with professionals shifting from one practice to another based on various influencing conditions (e.g., prior education, presence of suicide protocols, perceived role of child and youth care professionals). the theory encompassed several practices including being with (ranahan, 2013b) and flooding the zone (ranahan, 2013a) that have been reported elsewhere. some practices were located within the sub-process of circling care whereby professionals were relationally engaged and connected to the young person, whereas other practices were located within the sub-process of circling defensively such that a professional’s primary focus shifted to establishing a perimeter of safety to defend against the threat of suicide. as noted previously, the focus of the present discussion is specifically on the practice of watching. the following section defines watching and the conditions that influenced how child and youth care professionals realized this practice. the practice of watching watching involved child and youth care professionals monitoring the movements of the adolescent and maintaining close physical proximity. watching was distinct from the engaging practice of being with as the intent of the practice served an alternate purpose. being with was a practice in which the child and youth care professional was energetically present, drawing on communication skills to listen to the adolescent, attending to the adolescent’s needs, and building a relational connection (see ranahan, 2013b). watching, on the other hand, was a monitoring activity, often structured temporally, with the intent of supervising the adolescent’s actions. child and youth care professionals were watching for any efforts made by the adolescent to attempt to act on their suicidal ideation. that is, watching was a practice that was viewed as preventing suicide, ensuring the adolescent was physically safe and kept alive. as the practice consistently was focused on monitoring activities and physical safety and did not constitute relational engagement, watching was interpreted during the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 11 analysis of the data as a disengaging practice. although professionals were in close physical proximity to the adolescent, watching was often devoid of the collaboration evidenced in being with. further, adolescents were “put on” or “placed on” a system of monitoring and may not be informed of what watching would entail, as described by a supervisor: i’m going to be checking in on you. we don’t tell them it’s every 15 minutes, obviously for the reasons that you don’t want to schedule, but we do let them know that we’re going to be checking on them a lot. supervisors identified that the timing of the “checks” when watching varied from “through the night, so 5-minute checks, and checks, that’s light, breathing, watching”, to “put her on suicide watch which means that the worker has to go in every 2 hours to check up on her”. a child and youth care professional described how the absence of collaboration in the practice of watching was evident to the adolescent as well: i said to [the adolescent], “do you have a plan?” and he says, “yes i do but you’re not going to know what it is. i’m not telling you anything; i’m just going to do it. you can’t watch me 24 hours. you’re by yourself.” “oh frigg!” so yeah, i had a panic attack i have to say. watching was not always a realistic or effective practice with the adolescent even though child and youth care professionals may be instructed not leave the adolescent alone. however, watching often took precedence over all other activities, especially when working alone, as evidenced in the following quotation from another child and youth care professional: and i really had to pee, [laughter] but part of the protocol is do not leave the student alone and the [colleague] was already very non-supportive and so i didn’t want to ask him to watch her and i wasn’t sure if i could leave [peer] in charge of her, so i missed my lunch and i missed any breaks and we sat there until about 1:30 p.m. and this was started at 10 o’clock in the morning. observational practices outlined in documents that were incorporated into analysis were aligned with how child and youth care professionals enacted the practice of watching. assurances of “close supervision” and “one-on-one supervision” were emphasized in practice guidelines referenced by one child and youth care professional. agency policies also emphasized watching as not leaving the adolescent alone. to illustrate, an agency protocol included in the analysis states, “stay with the child/youth to ensure safety”. thus, professionals may assume that watching ensured safety. despite the structure of watching not lending itself to meeting a child and youth care professional’s own needs around breaks, or for collaboration with the adolescent as illustrated above, when someone else was available a child and youth care professional experienced a sense of reassurance from knowing others, such as parents, would be watching: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 12 so i just felt like i had wanted them to maybe take it a little bit more seriously and i just – yeah. that’s how i felt. but i knew they were, i knew they were good parents in that they, they were aware of it, and like they were watching and like they would have an eye on him and stuff like that. despite the efforts to observe the adolescent, watching did not always lead to the adolescent being safe from harm. though child and youth care professionals may have received directions to watch and instructions regarding the frequency and timing of checks on the adolescent, there appeared to be a disconnect between actually knowing the adolescent’s emotional state and the practice of watching. such a disconnect may be attributed to not knowing what to watch for, as noted by this supervisor: when this staff came in to monitor she was watching but you know, in hindsight, not all the clues and the experience of kind of what to watch for. so the young girl decided she was going to sleep. so, she rolled over and went to sleep but in her hand she had somehow managed, you know, in the washroom, (not really quite sure how) to have a blade. so, she was rolled over and going to sleep but she was cutting when the staff was actually sitting right there. and so, not until the sheets became quite crimson red did she realize and she had gotten a good, quite a deep, deep cut. an articulated aspect of watching was maintaining physical proximity to the adolescent so they could be observed and checked for signs of life. professionals in some encounters went to great lengths to maintain such physical proximity and keep their eyes on the adolescent. though the following quotation is rather lengthy, i have chosen to include this child and youth care professional’s description of watching to illustrate how the practice can be enacted at all costs: and then he boots it out the door and so my co-worker and i follow him and chase him down, like walk behind him. and as he starts walking onto oncoming traffic and we’re following him and we’re on radio talking to the [supervisor] that’s in from previous shift, being on the phone, giving a description of what he was wearing so the police can come and get him. so we start following him and instead of him going up towards the bridge, he starts walking towards the bottom pathway, which is a good sign for us because he’s not going up the bridge to jump. so he sees us that we’re following him and so yeah. and he just, basically we keep following him and this is happening and it’s raining too at the same time. so we’re like getting soaked and we’re following this kid. the dynamic of the adolescent physically trying to move away, and the professional subsequently following them in an effort to maintain physical proximity was realized in other incidents described by participants. for example, a child and youth care professional described following an adolescent in his/her car for 2 hours. thus, maintaining physical proximity and “eyes on” the adolescent was a central aspect of the practice of watching. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 13 watching also was realized during encounters with suicidal adolescents as an ownership or responsibility for all events within a particular amount of time. underlying the watching practices of these professionals were concerns regarding the potential for harm to occur to the adolescent, and the need to protect oneself from blame. in watching, professionals essentially took responsibility for the adolescent’s life and engaged in activities (e.g., documentation) as a way of proving and tracking that they did what they could to keep the adolescent alive, as illustrated by this supervisor: “every time [adolescent] cut herself, or talked about suicide i wrote an incident report. i mean, i did massive paperwork on this girl ’cause i was very concerned that we might lose her on our watch.” documenting the watch was an important part of how the practice of watching was enacted by professionals. professionals were not only concerned about their responsibility for the adolescent’s life, concerns about the aftermath of an adolescent’s death by suicide and the ramifications on their own well-being were also evident, as described by a supervisor: i just, i mean, is it fear? i don’t know. i keep saying, “i don’t want anyone dying on my watch”, but, and i haven’t. and i’ve talked with people who have had clients complete and it’s devastating because for the rest of your life you’re thinking “what else could i have done?” is what people have told me and i’d probably be in that same place. experiencing a death by suicide could place professionals in a position of questioning their abilities and actions. taking ownership for the watch, following the watch guidelines, ensuring watching was enacted in a structured, well-documented manner, and maintaining physical proximity, were all characteristics of child and youth care professionals’ watching practice during the balancing proximity and perimeter process. certain conditions influence the professionals’ movement through the balancing process (charmaz, 2006) and thus which practices or tactics are employed by child and youth care professionals in their encounters with suicidal adolescents. the aim of grounded theory is “to build a theoretical explanation by specifying phenomena in terms of conditions that give rise to them, how they are expressed through action/interaction, the consequences that result from them, and variations of these qualifiers” (corbin & strauss, 1990, p. 9). thus the child and youth care professionals’ practice of watching was influenced by certain conditions. in the analysis of the data i identified policies and professionals’ emotional arousal as the conditions that influenced watching. policies policies refer to guidelines or protocols either prescribed by the child and youth care professionals’ employer or agreed upon amongst services within a community. policies pertaining to suicide were often made available to professionals in written form as part of a larger group of documents outlining procedures employees were to follow in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 14 a variety of situations. child and youth care professionals and supervisors explained policies were comprised of various steps professionals were to enact should they encounter a person who was suicidal, or a situation where a person has attempted suicide. for example, some professionals were instructed by an agency policy to enact the following steps during an encounter with a suicidal child or youth: 1. is the child or youth’s life in immediate danger? 2. stay with the child/youth to ensure safety. 3. arrange transport to the hospital. 4. if safe transport is not available, phone 911 for ambulance/police assistance. 5. inform the parents/guardians. 6. inform child/youth’s therapist, social worker. the presence of a policy outlining steps for professionals to enact during an encounter with a suicidal adolescent was a condition that influenced the balancing process. to illustrate, step one in the above policy document is aligned with child and youth care professionals’ appraising practice whereby professionals measure and assign a level of suicide risk, and step two coincides with professionals’ practice of watching. policies, then, became part of the process and influence professionals’ practices in the situation. child and youth care professionals explained how policies could constitute either helpful or unhelpful conditions, with a consequent impact on their practice. as one child and youth care professional explained, the presence of a policy created confidence they were undertaking correct action in the encounter: so one thing i think for me because i am a “p and p” [policy and procedure] person, i value that piece because for me that gives me that sense of if anything happens, the policies and procedures are there in writing and it’s clear to me of how i’m to proceed in this situation, if i come across a situation like a suicidal situation our policy and procedures state that we need to follow this way. like you know, step by step and then follow that. and that gives me peace of mind that i’m doing my job correctly because i’m following procedure. or at least that’s a guideline for me to follow and if i didn’t have that then i don’t know where things would, would go, right? so, so i think that’s, that’s an important piece that we need to have. the presence of a policy outlining the steps to take during encounters with suicidal adolescents provided the child and youth care professional with “peace of mind”. this professional also alluded to the policy providing a predictable pathway through the encounter: “if i didn’t have that then i don’t know where things would, would go, right?” however, not all professionals found the presence of a policy helpful in their encounters with suicidal adolescents. policies may not necessarily be applicable across encounters and may provide the professional with limited information. for example, in this interview excerpt one child international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 15 and youth care professional explained the policy available from the employer was directed only towards situations where the child or adolescent had attempted suicide: researcher – was there a specific policy around what you were supposed to do if you encounter a suicidal kid? ask the questions. researcher – that’s what it said? yeah. i remember that it was a stupid thing [laughter]. follow the suicide protocol was all in place for if a child attempted. researcher – oh. okay. so if you went in and they’re hanging from the door, whatever, there was a specific you know, what you had to do. researcher – but there wasn’t anything to tell you – not if they were sort of threatening, no. researcher – threatening or thinking about? here’s some possible questions to ask. well, here’s questions. you could ask these questions. researcher – but then nothing to tell you what to do next? well then you could phone your supervisor and get guidance that way, or if there’s a mental health worker, you could phone them. if they’re working with a suicide prevention worker you could phone them. so there’s all these “coulds”, “you could” or “you could do this” or “you could do that” or “you could do the other”. but no specific, it was only if one, if there was an attempt in progress what you needed to do. don’t leave them hanging. go call the [emergency]. that’s not helpful. thus policies impacted child and youth care professionals’ practice of watching directly. professionals followed the steps outlined in policies regarding what questions they were to ask the adolescent and who they needed to contact and how they were to observe the adolescent. arousal at the intersection of arousal and watching practice, some professionals often made decisions regarding the adolescent’s suicidality based on “gut feeling” or intuition. professionals “tuned in” to their bodies in order to recognize the physical and emotional indicators of arousal. as one child and youth care professional explained, the experience of physical and emotional arousal during the encounter may have more influence on their practice than suicide education: and to be honest with you, i just, it’s a gut, and it’s just a feeling that i get. it’s just an intrinsic, like. i just know: a knowing of it. i. and, of course, i’ve had some training in some suicidology. like i’ve been to a conference and i’ve read up on it, but it’s just really, just the experience. just being in it, and knowing, and feeling it out. i don’t know how to explain it. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 16 researcher – are you able to tell me more? you say “gut”. what does that feel like? what it feels like is a clear indication. like it’s just coming from like, where it’s like you’re into my intuition. and it’s like this kid is serious. and it just, i think i feel like it’s arousal that you get from it, that you, it’s a different kind of arousal when you get this kid is just bullshitting, right? it’s just a different feeling and emotion and you tap into it. like i think when you’re in tune with your body and your body knowledge and how it reacts to things then you have a clear message of what that feels like. several of the professionals explained they experienced a physical and emotional arousal in response to the encounter with the adolescent. for example, another child and youth care professional described engaging in the practice of watching the adolescent for several hours until someone arrived to provide relief. after the colleague took over the watching practice, the professional explained how arousal influenced his/her response to other adolescents in his/her care: i immediately made him [colleague] sit at [the adolescent’s] door. i had to disengage. it was, i was just mentally just a basket case and i went down and i think became very mother-like to the boys. not childcare-like. it was, “you’re in your rooms right now. and get in there. and get to sleep. and just i don’t want to talk to you. i don’t want anything. you just need to settle and i’m going to clean this mess up”. and i just focused on cleaning the mess. i mean at that point i’m in their faces. they settled and then i just spent the time cleaning up. and i was like shaking. the professional disengaged with the suicidal adolescent, was physically shaking, and mentally a “basket case”. the condition of arousal influenced the professional’s practices such that when the professional stopped watching, she/he moved entirely away from the adolescent, was in a heightened state of arousal, and took up a directive stance with other adolescents in the program. child and youth care professionals’ practice of watching during their encounters with suicidal adolescents was influenced by the conditions of the presence of policy documents that directed professionals to respond by watching, and by professionals’ emotionally aroused state where they drew on gut feelings or intuition to guide their watching practice. in the following section i discuss the implications for practice and future research in relation to the practice of watching. implications for practice and future research as noted above, child and youth care professionals’ watching practice was comprised of surveillance, observation, or physically following the adolescent to maintain “eyes on”. many professionals were following a direction or implementing an agency policy when they watched the adolescent, and at times, watching became a structured, time-sensitive activity (e.g., checking on the adolescent every 15 minutes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 17 while they are sleeping). child and youth care professionals in my study also assumed they had little influence or power in how the practice of watching was performed. as presented above, one professional followed the observation policy above all else: “i really had to pee, [laughter] but part of the protocol is do not leave the student alone.” several implications for child and youth care practice with suicidal adolescents emerged from the findings including the need for increasing professional autonomy, adopting a political praxis, and re-envisioning relational and physical proximity as simultaneous ventures. increasing child and youth care professionals’ autonomy and/or engagement in multidisciplinary decision-making regarding the practice of watching may be beneficial for both professionals and young people. however, such a shift would require a change in how child and youth care professionals’ role is perceived, by the professionals themselves, as well as by mental health care providers. participants in my study were not only directed by policy in realizing the practice of watching, they were also instructed to perform watching by other mental health professionals. we can put them on special attention with the understanding that we will, we remain with them until a psychiatrist can place them on [watching]. so although [watching] means a check every 15 minutes, if i’m a supervisor and i have a large concern for maybe if you were my youth, i’d put you on [watching] but i would still keep you in my face until i could get psychiatry. what often happens is the psychiatrist, it’s a matter of a telephone call, will give the verbal order for [watching] and then come in and either dismiss it or continue it. but [watching] must be directed by psychiatry. child and youth care professionals, as evidenced in the above quotation, did not have decision-making power or influence in the implementation of the practice of watching, nor did they critically question the practice. child and youth care professionals were clear on who directs watching, and how the practice is realized during encounters with suicidal adolescents. skott-myhre and skott-myhre (2011) posit that child and youth care may be viewed as political praxis whereby professionals collectively join with youth and families to “challenge the existing dominant social arrangement of society” (p. 44). that is, child and youth care practice is not only comprised of relational engagement with individual adolescents; it includes challenging oppression and working collectively towards equitable conditions for all (newbury, 2009). child and youth care practice, then, may be envisioned more broadly to include challenging policies and practices that marginalize young people from participating fully in the community (stuart, 2004) and in a collaborative process in suicide intervention. challenging policies and engaging in a political praxis would require professionals to critically examine, question, and reflect on how watching is realized in their interactions with the adolescent. barriers to such reflexivity may be the fear of blame for an adolescent’s death by suicide or the discourse of observation practice. as noted previously, participants’ explained that they did not want the adolescent to die when they were responsible (e.g., “i was very concerned that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 18 we might lose her on our watch”). further, the discursive statements of “constant attention” or “suicide watch” discussed by child and youth care professionals serve, in part, to produce and reproduce the suicidal person as risky or dangerous, in need of being monitored within a special space (e.g., “keep you in my face”). as “language both mediates and constructs our understanding of reality” (starks & trinidad, 2007, p. 1374), and discourse conveys and shapes professionals’ experiences (harvey & adolphs, 2012), professionals must confront and contest the dominant discourse of individual risk and watch to find new collaborative ways of being with suicidal young people. universal procedures for observation or watching a suicidal person evidenced in the literature and in the findings from the current study displace the expertise and decision-making of the professional who is in closest relational proximity to the person and neglects the uniqueness and individuality of the person contemplating ending their life. child and youth care professionals in my study shifted between relational proximity and physical proximity when taking up practices such as watching. despite being in physical proximity to the adolescent while watching, professionals were less engaged in relational proximity. child and youth care professionals’ mental health literacy practices then, within the balancing proximity and perimeter process, may be best realized as concurrent and simultaneous practices; that is, relational proximity and physical proximity become intertwined in youth suicide intervention practice. while some participants in my study realized such practices concurrently, some practices such as watching were often viewed by participants as distinct, stand-alone activities. when watching is understood as a stand-alone activity, professionals are situated at the periphery, rather than in relational proximity with adolescents in their care. such a position is in stark contrast with the focus on therapeutic relationships reported in child and youth care literature previously noted. as a detached activity, watching is a disengaged practice. avenues for future research mann-feder (2011) suggests that child and youth care professionals can offer life space interventions in the form of therapeutic conversations situated in the “here and now” and “in the midst of the activities of daily living” (pp. 67–68). further, fewster (2001) posits that all struggles are born in relationship, and can only be resolved in the context of a relationship. thus a child and youth care response to adolescents who are suicidal may be ideally understood as a therapeutic conversation occurring in the present moment in the context of a relationship between professional and adolescent. however, the evidence presented here of professionals’ watching practice denotes a different style of engagement in many encounters such that observation was realized in a mechanistic manner, often supported by policies which outlined observation as a step to be completed by a professional and sustained in the discourse of observation (e.g., “eyes-on”). professionals’ checks on the adolescent in 15-minute intervals lies in stark contrast to mann-feder’s (2011) “therapeutic conversations” that occur in the “here and now” (pp. 67–68). future research can illuminate further the dynamics between professionals’ relational engagement and practices such as watching that can position professionals at a distance and are in contrast to central relational features of child and youth care practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 4–23 19 additionally, if as manna (2010) suggests, there is a paucity of evidence supporting the effectiveness of observation practices, future research may address this gap by examining the adolescents’ perspectives on how monitoring their movements impacted their suicidality. as deaths by suicide still occur when individuals are being observed (janofsky, 2009), insight into the adolescent’s perspective on child and youth care professionals’ practice of watching would be beneficial for advancing knowledge of how observation practices impact suicidality. lastly, it is clear from the findings in the present study that power dynamics are at play in the practice of watching including the professionals’ restraint in questioning how the practice was realized, and how decisions were made as to what level of observation was required. research methods, such as discourse analysis (potter, 2004) may further develop our understanding of such issues of power located within the discourse and practice of youth suicide intervention. as an academic discipline and profession, scholars and professionals in child and youth care have an opportunity to question and critically examine such practices in suicide intervention that may be based solely on customary rules rather than evidence-based effectiveness in ensuring adolescents’ safety. as white (2012) suggests, youth suicide intervention “cannot be solved, nor contained, through an exclusive reliance on pre-determined, standardized, 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(eds.), (2009) frankfurt/main: igfh-eigenverlag (isbn 978-3-925146-72-5) 288 pages, €19 review by james p. anglin, phd professor, school of child and youth care, university of victoria this fascinating book grew out of two seminars, one held in israel in 2007and the other in germany in 2008, bringing together leaders in child and youth care (the term used in israel) and social pedagogy (the term used in germany). on many levels, this is an important contribution to the international child and youth care literature. however, the title is somewhat misleading, as the book itself is a collection of papers on the german system and issues and on the israeli system and issues, with only one article bringing a comparative perspective. while the two seminars would have featured dialogues between the two cultures, histories and traditions, regrettably this volume does not contain any of those. at the same time, the editors comment that they see these seminars “almost as a starting point for discussions”, and it is to be hoped that this historic initiative does continue and that it will produce more comparative and dialogic publications. this volume runs almost 300 pages, and consists of 20 chapters divided into four parts. part i includes two chapters on the wider context of social pedagogy in modern society by michal winkler and friedhelm peters which i shall review in some detail below. part ii has six chapters on the history and structures of services in germany and israel. part iii has nine chapters on current professional challenges, divided into three sub-sections on “practical approaches”, “multiculturalism and migration”, and “training”. part iv includes three chapters examining innovative models and some future directions in both germany and israel. now, to cut to the chase, my favourite chapter, and worthy of the purchase of this text in itself, is the opening chapter by michael winkler. it is a challenging and erudite exploration of “why modern societies need social pedagogy more than social work” – a “must read” for any serious child and youth care scholar. winkler reflects on the fact that, after an apparent period of decline in the emphasis on social pedagogy as opposed to the more successful concept of social work, there seems to be a reappreciation and resurgence of the concept of social pedagogy underway in europe, and even in the uk where it has never before had more than a toehold. in brief, winkler suggests two primary reasons for this: first, the empirical evidence that social pedagogy leads to better child outcomes for young people in children’s homes and foster care; and second, that societies now need new competencies amongst their members which social pedagogy can provide. it is primarily the latter point which takes the author and reader through the evolution of social pedagogy in europe, including references to the thinking and influence of immanuel kant, george wilhelm friedrich hegel, anton makarenko, herbert marcuse, a.s. neill, zygmunt bauman (and many others), and even up to the steps of the temple at delphi!. i have already warned the reader it is challenging, but it is well 349 worth the effort. it may be helpful to first read/re-read one of the succinct histories of western philosophy; e.g. the multi-volume charles copleston (1946-1974), dual-volume will durrant (1926,1933) or single volume bertrand russell (1945). one last point i will make about this chapter is the introduction of the important german notion of bildung. as with many germanic concepts, it is difficult to render this notion readily into english. in brief and rough translation, it refers to the process of spiritual formation of the person; that is, not only to the development of knowledge and skills, but also values, ethos, personality, authenticity and humanity. a reading and unpacking of this chapter is worthy of a graduate seminar all in itself. the second chapter in part i by peters examines the “impacts on child and youth care practice of modernising child welfare states by new public management”, and will be of interest especially to those involved in, or studying, the management of services. it highlights the neo-liberal wave of managerialism that treats child and youth care and education as commodities like any other, that (supposedly) require contracting for services, product control and technical expertise above all else. the juxtaposition of this perspective with the discussion of bildung in the previous chapter could not be more stark. peters sees hope in the “reflective practice” of experienced and expert social pedagogues, but it is evident from his analysis that it will be an uphill battle. readers from around the world are sure to find echoes of their own bureaucratic realities and struggles. part ii includes a number of very useful histories of child and youth care in israel and germany, including two on israel by aharoni and grupper, and two on germany by hansbauer and winkler that are worthy of special note. together, these chapters offer complementary and in-depth overviews of the development of social pedagogy/child and youth care in the two countries. grupper offers a succinct and informative perspective on the past, present and future of “residential care and education” in israel. the concept of residential care and education as a unity is a hallmark of the israeli approach, and is worthy of study by other countries around the world. the winkler chapter is an intriguing analysis of an “unfinished unity: child and youth care in eastern and western germany”. this chapter will be especially interesting for those with a sociological and historical bent. it offers insights into the social pedagogical aspects of the re-unification of germany and raises important questions about the profession’s future in germany, and in eastern germany especially. part iii is a section with numerous and kaleidoscopic facets, including examinations of: physical activity and sport, leisure and day care, care leavers, recording and publications, integration of migrants, cultural diversity, the psychology of training, and fostering reflective skills. chapter 11 by zeller, zeira, köngeter, benbenishty and schröer on “care leavers and their transition to adulthood: comparative perspectives in israel and germany” is worthy of special mention as it is the only contribution to this text that offers a comparative analysis of an aspect of the german and israeli systems. the final section, part iv, includes several chapters on models of care, including three models in one israeli village (yosef), an innovative model in germany called integra (koch and peters) and an approach to working with the bedouin population in israel (kirschbaum). the integra model, standing for “integrated, flexible, regionalized, infrastructural oriented child and youth care”, represents a bold 350 attempt to develop and implement a new form of service structure based upon core social pedagogical principles. this model will be of great interest to those in the field of child and youth care looking for holistic models of practice combined with localized agency and service design. emmanuel grupper, josef koch and friedhelm peters are to be congratulated for ensuring that these contributions towards a unique german-israeli dialogue, many of which were originally shared in the 2007 and 2008 seminars, have been edited and published for broader access and use. on the level of child and youth care/social pedagogy, this is a source book of amazing ideas and valuable information. on the level of child welfare systems development and change, it is a text full of innovative principles and models. on the level of international understanding, it represents an inspirational discourse on world peace and human reconciliation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019992 care leavers’ perspectives on the family in the transition from out-of-home care to independent living stephan sting and maria groinig abstract: findings from youth research have shown that, due to the development of the transitional phase of “emerging adulthood”, the family has become increasingly significant for young adults as a source of support and as a safety net. in contrast, care leavers are confronted with a relatively abrupt transition to independent living. however, international studies have shown that the family also plays a significant role during the status passage of leaving care — as an arena of concrete social relationships, as a normative model and ideal, as a biographical experience and memory, as a connection to family traditions and practices, and as an important contextual factor for resilience and identity formation. the first section of this paper describes the various links between care leavers and their families based on a literature review. in the second section, the biographical relevance of the family is highlighted based on the example of a qualitative interview study about the educational pathways of 20to 27-year-old care leavers. the study shows the various influences of family links on the educational careers of young people during and after out-of-home care. from the findings, we derive some consequences for professional work with families in out-of-home care and for professional support and guidance during the status passage of leaving care. keywords: care leaver, family, out-of-home care, transition to adulthood stephan sting phd (corresponding author) is a professor of social pedagogy in the department of educational science at the university of klagenfurt, universitaetsstrasse 65–67, a-9020 klagenfurt, austria. email: stephan.sting@aau.at. maria groinig ma is a research assistant in the field of social pedagogy at the university of klagenfurt, universitaetsstrasse 65–67, a-9020 klagenfurt, austria. email: maria.groinig@aau.at. mailto:stephan.sting@aau.at mailto:maria.groinig@aau.at international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 141 findings in youth research show that the status ascribed to the family during the transition from youth to adulthood has changed in recent decades. for young people in highly developed societies, like that of austria, the pluralisation of lifestyle choices, uncertainty during biographical transitions, and more demanding educational requirements have extended the phase of youth, or even blurred its boundaries (schröer, 2011), making young people dependent on their family for longer. one sign of this is the pan-european trend towards young people living with their parents for longer (statista, 2019). the transitional phase between attaining legal adulthood at the age of 18 until the age of roughly 25 has become known as “young adulthood” (stauber & walther, 2013) or “emerging adulthood” (arnett, 2000). this features discontinuous, unstructured, and sometimes reversible transition processes (schröer, 2013, p. 70; weinhardt, 2014), which give young people space to develop and try out lifestyle choices (hurrelmann & quenzel, 2016, p. 35), make attempts at higher education, and, in tackling these challenges, contribute to their personal development and establish social affiliations. in this phase, when family supports are an important “safety net” and backup (großegger, 2011), young people receive differing degrees of financial, practical, social, and emotional support from their birth families. this often leads to a redefinition of their family relationships (arnett, 2019), and increases the burden on family resources. when families are unable to provide extended support, young people are thrown back on their own resources for coping with the transition process (ward, 2008). this is especially the case for “care leavers” — adolescents or young adults who have grown up for at least part of their lives outside their birth family in residential care or foster families and are setting off on the path to adulthood from that starting point (thomas, 2013; care leavers’ association, 2019). this definition implies that they have complicated relationships with their birth families. typical reasons for being in care include stressful or even traumatising experiences in the family of origin, such as neglect, violence, abuse, the parents’ inability to raise or care for their children, or even parental absence. care leavers transition to adulthood at a distance from their families, though the specific relationships they have with their birth families vary greatly. one thing they all have in common, however, is their experience of youth welfare, which becomes part of their family history and needs to be processed in the context of family relationships (collins et al., 2008). in austria, as in many countries, young people in youth care are generally expected to transition to independence at the age of 18, a transition that has been described as “instant adulthood” (sulimani-aidan, 2018). this abrupt change is linked to a limited range of lifestyle options, a greater number of biographical risks, and the threat of social exclusion (e.g., arnett, 2007; häggman-laitila et al., 2018; refaeli, 2017; stein, 2008). as a consequence, care leavers are confronted with a discrepancy between their situation in life and that of their peers in t he general population that amounts to a structural disadvantage affecting different areas of their lives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 142 youth care workers preparing youth for independence place a strong focus on “living alone” (sievers et al., 2015, p. 41). care leavers themselves consider their ability to live independently and be self-reliant a key success factor in the status passage of leaving care (sulimani-aidan, 2018; driscoll, 2013). it has been argued that this self-image of being independent and self-reliant may belong to a pattern of “pseudo-independence” that youth from care use to avoid future attachments and to mask their social isolation (mann-feder, 2019, p. 15), yet living alone itself may engender feelings of loneliness and social isolation (gradaílle et al., 2018; sulimani-aidan & melkman, 2018). internationally, there are differing degrees of professional support for the time after care. in austria, programmes for care leavers are few and fragmentary as yet. stable social relationships with people outside youth welfare are relatively uncommon amongst young people who have spent time in care (theile, 2015, pp. 230–231). care leavers often experience the absence of a safety net (mendes et al., 2014). accordingly, during the status passage of leaving care, the “quest for social and emotional care” proves to be a central principle guiding care leavers’ actions (groinig & sting, 2019, p. 44). numerous international studies have shown that, in this situation, the family increasingly comes to the fore again in various ways (e.g., collins et al., 2008; gradaílle et al., 2018; refaeli, 2017; theile, 2015; wade, 2008). the various links of care leavers to their families are described below in a review of the international literature. the subsequent section is based on a qualitative study of the educational pathways taken by care leavers in austria. it points out the biographical relevance of the family through examples of its influence on the educational careers of young people during and after outof-home care. the final discussion examines the implications of our analysis with regard to professional work with families in out-of-home care, and for support and guidance during the status passage of leaving care. literature review the transition from out-of-home care to independent living has been described as a biographical “turning point” and a phase of reevaluating life orientations and social ties (driscoll, 2013; wade, 2008). when searching for sustainable relationships, care leavers often turn to family members, resurrecting complicated family circumstances. the extent to which the family is perceived as either a form of social support or a burden seems to have a significant impact on subjects’ future prospects and chances of successfully coping with life (häggman-laitila et al., 2018). in this context, the family can be conceptualised in various ways: as a biological family of origin, as a social construction of the family in the sense of “doing family” (jurczyk et al., 2014), as an extended family in which more distant relatives may become important attachment figures apart from the nuclear family (schmidt & moritz, 2009, p. 61), or as an action-guiding image and normative model that influences everyday practices and actions (bauer et al., 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 143 relationships with the family of origin when young people turn back towards their family during the status passage of leaving care, this is accompanied by a reevaluation of their relationship with their birth family. despite negative experiences, their biological parents still have a central place in their social network (e.g., mendes et al., 2012; nestmann et al., 2008; theile, 2015). even in problematic family constellations, there still seems to be a “general supply of support” (menz, 2009, pp. 194, 242). equally, in socially disadvantaged contexts there are still aspirations to “being a good mother” or “effective parenting”, even if these do not always coincide with dominant social norms and may thus come into conflict with the youth welfare system (adjei & minka, 2018; narciso et al., 2018). with this in mind, the link to the birth family may promise support in the light of biographical risks such as imminent homelessness, and is also associated with the hope that the relationship with the family could improve (collins et al., 2008; wade, 2008). studies by collins et al. (2008), mendes et al. (2012), and wade (2008) have shown that although only a few care leavers actually return to their family of origin, they do connect to and maintain contact with family members in a variety of ways. wade concluded that contact intensifies in the course of the status passage of leaving care. refaeli (2017), however, pointed to the need to distinguish between family relationships and family support. while relationships with family members are not unusual, there tends to be little actual family support (marion & paulsen, 2019). most family relationships remain conflictual or are accompanied by ongoing resentments (collins et al., 2008; gradaílle et al., 2018; mendes et al., 2012). in some cases, the care leavers are themselves required to support family members (sulimani-aidan & melkman, 2018). various studies have shown that members of the birth family are not usually “active agents” in developing future-oriented motivations and goals (sulimani-aidan, 2018), but are more likely to act as a source of stress (driscoll, 2013; refaeli, 2017). in some cases, turning back towards the family can lead to the reenactment of family conflicts and critical events (sievers et al., 2015, p. 38), or to the care leavers themselves breaking off contact. when there is a definitive break with the family of origin, it is generally preceded by experiences of rejection and disappointment, neglect, traumatisation, or emotional abuse (wade, 2008). construction of family in the sense of “doing family” young people who have been in care are characterised by heterogeneous family experiences that often do not correspond to normative models and ideals of the family. at the same time, structural changes to the family in general mean that traditional family forms, family roles, and everyday family-related practices have altered (e.g., brake & büchner, 2011, pp. 145–146; lange & xyländer, 2011, pp. 66–68; peukert, 2007, pp. 40–42). with this in mind, jurczyk (2014) developed the concept of “doing family”, in which the family is understood as a social construction: family is a historically and culturally variable system produced by the family members’ social practices, the most relevant of which are daily practices of care and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 144 construction of affiliation. the concept has now been taken up in the context of youth welfare to reflect idealised and normalist expectations of the family, and to direct the focus towards specific private and professional forms of care and constructions of affiliation. taking the example of family-like forms of care, eßer and köngeter (2012) showed how forms of belonging are produced through daily practices and developing a history of affiliation. they revealed how care is manifested as the establishment of a comprehensive framework extending from satisfying basic needs to looking after the sick, encouraging school education, and arranging leisure activities. maack (2013) studied how care leavers have developed their own understanding of the family according to which, for example, carers, youth welfare workers, or even other young people at a placement can become their “new family”. equally, they may manage to bring in people offering informal support, such as neighbours, or caretakers, as part of their family construction (groinig et al., 2019, pp. 162–163). however, relationships of this kind, just like those with professional carers, are all temporally limited and revocable (maack, 2013), setting them apart from family relationships, which tend to be indissoluble and irrevocable (e.g., kasten, 2003, p. 21; schneewind, 2010, p. 194). moreover, when professional relationships are being formed in youth welfare institutions, professionals emphasise the need to balance closeness and distance, which prevents such relationships from replacing the functions of a family (e.g., dörr & müller, 2012, pp. 8–9; thiersch, 2012, p. 38). accordingly, during the status passage of leaving care, contact with family members often grows stronger over time, whereas contact with other attachment figures, such as foster parents and professional carers, weakens relatively quickly (wade, 2008). status of family members from the perspective of an extended family there is ample evidence that young people who have been in care distinguish between extended family constructions and family members with whom they are related. the children surveyed in leitner et al.’s 2011 study on sibling relationships in sos children’s village families showed that, even though the children are cared for in a family-like manner, they clearly differentiated between biological and social sibling relationships, according biological siblings a prominent status in their social network (pp. 161–162). once they have transitioned to independent living, care leavers seem to be guided to a large extent by their families, with a wide range of family members taking on the role of attachment figures. siblings and birth mothers seem to come first as key persons, followed by birth fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and other relatives (wade, 2008). attar-schwartz and huri (2019) emphasised the fact that, even during residential care, members of the extended family were fulfilling the role of attachment figures to an extent that had previously been underestimated: when the birth parents are absent, this extended family seems to be an important source of social support. it seems likely that family members such as grandparents and siblings (sting, 2014) continue to play a significant role as supportive figures even after the status passage of leaving care. care leavers thus seem to create a link to their family that does not so much follow the model of a bourgeois nuclear family as the model of an extended family in which heterogeneous international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 145 relationship constellations can develop. the concept of the extended family includes the idea that although its members are physically separated, the family contains relevant relationship and support structures (schmidt & moritz, 2009, p. 61; segalen, 2009, p. 61). a connection to their extended family seems to be of particular relevance to those care leavers who have experienced conflicts with their parents. focusing on the extended family does not relieve them of the need to “do family”. it shows, however, that members of their birth family and other kin play a particular role in family constructions, because they are associated with implicit expectations of loyalty and solidarity (kasten, 2003). the role of “images of the family” in guiding care leavers’ actions examination of the explicit expectations that care leavers hold about family members reveals that their connection to the family contains an imaginary component based on their notions and images of the family. the concept of “images of the family” refers to linguistic and imagined representations of and about the family (bauer et al., 2015, pp. 16–17) that are based on normative models and become a canvas for projected hopes and fears. they are also an expression of care leavers’ own experiences with their families, and help individuals develop identities that position them specifically in the context of family generations (bauer & wiezorek, 2017, p. 8). finally, they are used in the cultural reproduction and transformation of familial communities, by taking on the form of a “collective memory” (cyprian, 2003, p. 10). for young people who have transitioned from care to independent living, the mixture of factual experiences, normative ideals, and collective memories that make up their images of the family have an action-guiding role that can influence their everyday practices. on one hand, the power of these images of the family (bauer et al., 2015, p. 17) is rooted in legal regulations that, for example, require care leavers to give their parents financial support when needed, or that make funding for further education dependent on their parents (care leaver e.v., 2019). on the other hand, images of the family can develop an imagined power that continues to have an effect even when ties to the family have been cut off. refaeli (2017) pointed to the example of a young man who broke off contact with his family after leaving care due to traumatising experiences and negative feelings. despite this, he brought up links to the family memory that guided his actions: “he mentioned that joining the fire department was a family tradition that he decided to perpetuate” (refaeli, 2017, p. 6). this gives him access to a stabilising social environment. care leavers have often experienced many biographical ruptures and discontinuities. the fact that family relationships are lasting and unquestioned despite periods of lack of contact seems to give young people who have spent time in care a feeling of continuity and affiliation; this “sense of permanency” is conducive to their healthy development and identity construction (collins et al., 2008). family relationships have been recognised as “identity capital” (mann-feder, 2019, p. 16) and as an important element of “social capital” that predicts positive outcomes and resilience in the status passage of leaving care (van breda & dickens, 2017). conversely, stein (2008) identified the lack of a “sense of family” and a failure to understand damaging experiences with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 146 the family as the main barriers to identity construction and to having the ability to “psychologically ‘move on’ and look to the future” after leaving care (p. 295). in the transition to independent living, imagined and real family relationships thus seem to form a central basis for processes of selfeducation and the establishment of social affiliations. one way of “doing family” is to enter into a partnership and start a new family. after the transition, images of the family can act as ideals or objectives that lead young people to construct an “alternative home base” in an attempt to make up for negative experiences with their families of origin and counter the risks of loneliness and social isolation (wade, 2008). at this stage, however, partnerships often prove to be unstable. alongside a partnership, parenthood also offers them a means of establishing social affiliation. statistical studies show that on average, care leavers become parents earlier than peers who have not been in care (cameron et al., 2018). in such cases, care leavers are trying to become emotionally significant to someone else, as well as trying to demonstrate “normality” by living up to the normative ideal of the nuclear family (wade, 2008). attempting to enact their idealised image of the family in this way brings risks to care leavers, which have been discussed in terms of the problems of teenage parenting and the transgenerational propagation of dependence on the youth welfare system (knight et al., 2006). nonetheless, it also offers opportunities to start afresh, doing things differently or better than their own parents. parenting creates feelings of being needed and of living a meaningful life, feelings that may be experienced positively and help strengthen the personality. equally, it sometimes improves the care leaver’s relationship with his or her birth family (wade, 2008). in cases where a positive connection to the family of origin is difficult or impossible due to a negative history, confrontation with the family — especially parents — can nonetheless be an important motivating factor for a care leaver’s future way of life: the parents’ difficult situation in life is seen as a “mirror image” to be avoided when planning a “possible future” (sulimani-aidan, 2018, p. 74). the stage of emerging adulthood opens up a “window of opportunity” (sulimaniaidan & melkman, 2018, p. 136) for them to pursue a different life path from their parents’ negative example. the precedent set by a care leaver’s parents becomes an important reference point for developing the care leaver’s own life goals and expectations, and a catalyst for their efforts to educate themselves (groinig et al., 2019, p. 147). in other words, by drawing on images of the family care leavers can see various possible ways to live their lives. despite the risk that hanging onto counterfactual ideals may lead to disappointment, these images offer care leavers a potential means of maintaining and developing social affiliations and a chance to make their own life plans, deviating from their biographical experiences with their birth families. as yet, little is known about how likely these efforts are to succeed. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 147 the present study: educational pathways of care leavers the following section reveals how family relationships affect future life outcomes, using the example of their influence on care leavers’ educational pathways. educational success is an increasingly vital means of acquiring and maintaining social status, which has simultaneously altered the social significance of family. in contrast, those who stumble on the educational pathway risk exclusion and disadvantages later in life (steiner et al., 2016, p. 176). against this background, a new, implicit expectation has developed in modern society that parents and responsible attachment figures are obligated to guarantee their children’s education; the family and parents are now seen as an educational resource (richter, 2016). however, in the family networks of young people with experience of youth care (often known as “troubled families”) conditions are usually unfavourable for putting them on a positive educational path (hücker, 2014). research design the role that the family plays in care leavers’ educational pathways was examined in the study “educational opportunities and how social contextual conditions affect care leavers’ educational biographies”, which was conducted at klagenfurt university (groinig et al., 2019). we carried out a qualitative biographical sub-study, as reported in groinig & sting (2019), in which interviews were held with 23 care leavers aged 20 to 27 who had experienced residential care in different regions of austria. to collect the data, we used problem-centred, semi-structured interviews combining unstructured biographical narratives with focused questions (witzel, 2000). the interviews were complemented by the creation of “egocentric network diagrams” (hollstein, 2006),which were used to generate further narratives about the relevance of different people (e.g., family members) in the care leavers’ networks. the data analysis was based on the documentary method (bohnsack et al., 2007; bohnsack et al., 2010; nohl, 2017). the documentary method is a reconstructive hermeneutic procedure for working out central action-guiding orientation frameworks. to carry out this procedure, as we reported in groinig & sting (2019): “focusing metaphors” (bohnsack, 2010, p. 105) were reconstructed. these are culminating points in the storyline of reported experiences with social contexts such as families, youth welfare facilities, schools, or peer groups. they were found by analysing emphasised and repeated statements in individual interviews or by comparing different cases. the focusing metaphors relate to a specific focal group’s “centres of common experience”. (p. 44) people who share a biographic experience have a common experiential space that is “documented” in interaction and discourse. for example, care leavers often described the experience of their educational aspirations having been restrained in their families of origin. in the interviews, this experience was not only reported verbally, but was also evident in the structure of the interviews as narratives that received particular emphasis or were mentioned repeatedly by interviewees. by this means, the study analysed the effect that different social contexts had on care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 148 leavers’ educational pathways. below, selected findings from the study are presented that shed light on how the family shapes educational journeys. regarding the respondents’ families of origin, it can be said that most of the young people had parents with low scholastic and vocational qualifications. but some of the young adults who were interviewed had far outstripped their parents’ level of education: the sample of our study was part of the general development of education taking place throughout society, which sees younger generations aiming for higher educational qualifications than their parents. results education-related experiences in the family of origin in all of the cases we examined, the young people’s families of origin were found to provide no support on their educational pathway. none of the families supported their scholastic achievement in the home, or noticeably valued formal education; instead, family stressors prevented them from performing as required by the schools. for example, as verena’s single mother was overtaxed, verena took on the role of a housekeeper and looked after her sisters, which had a negative effect on her schooling1: i couldn’t do my homework because there were five of us children in all. i, um, i didn’t have my own room. there was constant chaos. so i always had to clean up and help out at home. um, i was the second child, and we, me and my older sister, had to look after the younger ones too, because my mother was constantly, utterly overwhelmed. (verena, lines 493–497) in these family contexts, it is generally not possible for the family of origin to support the children when it comes to meeting the demands of schoolwork, as there is too much to deal with and too many everyday stressors. at the same time, a lack of interest in education or even a disparaging attitude towards educational aspirations can act as a hindrance. zoey, for example, saw her father as preventing her from achieving her educational goals. the family lived in an area where, zoey stated, “there are mainly poorly educated people” and where “no one ever talked about school or anything”. after moving to a group home for young people, zoey developed an independent commitment to education. with the support of a care worker and the youth welfare institution, she gained the matura, the qualification required to enter higher education. she then decided to start studying. however, to do so, she relied on financial contributions from her family of origin, and had to deal with her father’s disparaging and emotionally stressful attitude: that he just says, right, to me, “yeah, i shouldn’t think i’m something special just because i have the matura.” and yeah. … afterwards he said what a cheek i have 1all names used to present the findings are pseudonyms chosen by the interviewees themselves. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 149 going to university full-time afterwards…. and then he actually has to pay for it. yes, nothing productive ever came from him. (zoey, lines 113–119) her father himself had completed an apprenticeship as an electrician but was unemployed at that time. zoey portrayed her mother as an alcoholic with the minimum required level of schooling who had died when zoey was 21. during the interview, zoey indicated that there was some ongoing contact with her family, but that she did not get on well with them. the empirical material makes it clear that some of the people interviewed used their experiences with their family as a negative example that motivated them to dissociate themselves and follow a different path. verena commented, “well, one positive influence on … my … career was actually the realisation that i didn’t want to be like my family” (line 900). the children’s efforts to distance themselves from their families of origin spurred them to become more committed to their own educational pathways. in zoe’s case, a gender-specific aspect appeared when she indicated that she wanted to become an independent woman, in contrast to her mother. for her, acquiring formal educational qualifications seemed to be the key to an independent life that would not correspond to the role models provided by her family of origin: that’s why i always just did a lot to make sure i didn’t end up like that. like mum, who … simply always depended on men. afterwards i thought, “i don’t want to live like that.” or “i never want to have a man so as to be able to afford anything.” (zoey, lines 1545–1546) the examples show that in these families, support in coping with educational needs and educational aspirations did not come into the picture. one exception is pascal, whose mentally ill mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and who herself had only low qualifications, but who, according to pascal, described her son as a “bright lad who’ll study one day”. pascal shared her aspiration and indicated in his biographical narrative that if he dropped out of education it would probably have been a bitter disappointment to his mother. he was the only one in the sample to have taken a relatively straightforward path from school to university. stances towards the family and their influence on educational pathways consistent with the conceptualisations of the family outlined in the first section of this article, care leavers making the transition to independent living took up different positions towards their families of origin and these positions influenced their educational paths. in some cases, the family became an imaginary reference point, an ideal or model that either reproduced their own familial experiences or acted as an aspirational family arrangement differing from that of their family of origin. mike, for example, looked back on a positive family childhood in which his father stood out as playing a central role. he was treated like a “little prince” who did not have to achieve educational success to gain his family’s respect. when mike was 12, his father fell ill and died; this led to the family losing their apartment and falling apart. from then on, mike international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 150 lived on the street, in shared supported housing, and finally in a homeless shelter. he left school without a diploma after completing compulsory education. at the time of the interview, he was not yet over the loss of his family of origin, and dreamt of a “divine intervention” — a stroke of good fortune that would help him achieve his idealised image of a harmonious family life: but at some point in my life i might come across a nice family or a wife or later a child. that might happen. in life, i know, the way i see it, if you have a wife and child, god gives you everything. and that’s how i’m going to do it. and i want a job. (mike, lines 219–223) unlike mike, martin rejected the low educational aspirations of his family of origin. according to him, his family were “all labourers or unemployed” for generations. when he was in youth care as a child, he talked about wanting to be a doctor and was confronted with stigmatisation and demotivating comments based on his origins: how could i ever become a doctor when my two parents are losers, in quotation marks ... back then, as a child, i always dreamt of becoming a doctor, but i was always talked out of it: “forget it. you have to learn a lot, learn a lot, and you have no aptitude for that.” (martin, lines 1042–1044) at the time of the interview, martin had been living for several years in a new family of his own with his girlfriend and their child. in these new family circumstances, his girlfriend supported him on his educational pathway, which he was continuing at evening school alongside his job: she tries to encourage me to just keep on going, just that i could easily go to university [brief sigh] even though in the past people always said, “you — you idiot, you’ll never make it.” (martin, lines 827–829) the educational path of pascal, a care leaver who had maintained a positive relationship with his mother, was shaped early on by the division of roles in the sense of “doing family”. although he could not grow up in his mother’s home he visited her every weekend, but did not receive any support from her in school matters. pascal explained that on the weekends, “everything was just quite unacademic”; instead, it was the caregivers in the youth welfare institution who “took on the parental role” and “kept … things moving ahead at school”. when it came to getting through the matura exam (to enter higher education), he was also supported by the family of his girlfriend at the time. this constructed family assembled at the graduation ceremony: couple of carers came. um, mum came. … my then girlfriend’s dad came … it was pretty cool. (pascal, lines 736–740) anja, by contrast, cut off contact with her family at an early age and never saw the carers working in youth welfare as relevant attachment figures. however, she did describe living together in all-girl group home as a “big family” where they lived “like sisters”, stating, “you don’t necessarily need parents as long as your sisters are there (laughs).” living in a group home gave international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 151 her a feeling of belonging. after leaving care, she developed a similar feeling of belonging with her friends: “i built up my group of best friends, that’s my family.” anja was given practical support by a friend’s mother, who helped her with tasks such as writing her cv and filling out job applications. in other words, anja maintained her “doing family” on the level of informal peer relationships, though she still stressed that she has never experienced anything like real family life: when i, um, was invited over to friends’ families, it was new to me. it was funny, you know. (anja, lines 722–723) while care leavers typically lack relevant support from their parents when it comes to achieving educational goals, links may be found to other family members, usually siblings. martin, whose partner motivated him to go to evening school, emphasised that his older sister was even closer to him than his girlfriend, stating that his sister showed him “going to university isn’t just for highly intelligent people, but that i — or that we —can do that kind of thing.” dalia listed two distant aunts as important attachment figures. she grew up on a farm, and her parents did not support her interest in technical training, which created family conflicts and ultimately led to dalia being placed in out-of-home care. some time after leaving care, she followed a roundabout educational route and ended up graduating with a matura at a technically focused evening school. she described her aunt, who lived abroad and was the odd one out in the family, as her role model: she’s out in [a european country] now, she’s a project manager. and she’s my role model for what i want to be, and yes, she did a technical apprenticeship.… she always said like, “you’ll do it.” and she always said, “i’ll make it somehow”.... and my other aunt in [city] also said, “you’re, you’re a phenomenon.” they were like kind of the two people, people i turned to, who were always behind me. //mhm.// when afterwards my family said like, “huh, you’ll never make it anyway.” (dalia, lines 830–841) discussion and practical implications using the example of care leavers’ educational pathways, our study revealed how family relationships influence their way of life, their outlook on the future, and how they establish social ties. for young people with experience of youth care, the status passage of leaving care is a prominent transitional phase during which they reexamine their previous life experiences and inclinations (wade, 2008). reliable, continuous, social ties are not common during this phase (theile, 2015). after young people leave care, social ties from their time in care and informal relationships with carers or foster parents seem to quickly dwindle in importance. at the same time, research findings show that social relations play an important role for resilience and for a successful transition to adulthood (goyette, 2019). when faced with living alone, care leavers focus on different aspects of family. often, the family represents an imaginary model of belonging, mutual care and support, and a feeling of continuity and permanence. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 140–159 152 during the transition to independent living, whether or not care leavers cultivate their family relationships, and in what way, depends on their individual background and experiences. reexamining their experiences of family, which necessarily includes their history of youth care, can revive stressful memories and conflicts. many get back in touch with family members, while some finally break off contact once and for all (mendes et al., 2012). others try to create a sense of belonging by entering into their own partnerships and starting their own families (cameron et al., 2018). despite the risk of instability, the latter is usually experienced as something positive, and can lead to them taking on responsibility for achieving their life goals, or sometimes reconnecting with their family of origin. a relationship with family is not necessarily a relationship with parents. depending on care leavers’ experiences of family, different family members, such as siblings, grandparents, or aunts and uncles, can take on important positions as people that they can turn to for support, or as role models or mentors. the relevance of family relationships for care leavers has several consequences for child and youth welfare. first of all, it seems necessary to recognise the importance of family in the transition to independent living. in this context, it is constructive to apply approaches that have already been established in work with families and in family preservation (sievers et al., 2015, pp. 135–139), as these may have already been used while the young people were in youth care to help them deal with their families of origin. one such approach is to identify and encourage positive developments in the family of origin, though it is never possible to fully overcome the fundamental conflict between the perspective of child protection and that of family support (collins et al., 2008). in cases where the young people cannot or do not want to come into contact with their parents, it can be helpful to engage with the family past and any “residual” feelings of loyalty or connection, as a means of developing their own identities (sievers et al., 2015, p. 139). in addition, care leavers need to be supported in the positions they adopt in relation to the family network. if family connections are to be turned into supportive relationships, past and present conflicts need to be processed. moreover, reflecting on their own family histories can lead to a “sense of personal continuity” that is important for identity formation (mann-feder, 2019). to this end, it can be helpful to provide support to care leavers in the form of counselling, discussion, or therapy. most care leavers see the established forms of aftercare as insufficient (häggman-latila et al., 2018). considering the ambivalent nature of family relationships, it seems advisable to enable care leavers to stay in contact with professional carers, as well as setting up contact centres and support services during and after the status passage of leaving care. finally, in order to support sustainable relationship structures, a sensitivity to an individual’s specific relationships with family members is needed. to achieve this, one must look beyond parent–child relationships to reveal other family members who could be relevant attachment figures. in this 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(2000). das problemzentrierte interview [25 absätze; the problem-centred interview; 25 paragraphs]. forum qualitative sozialforschung/forum: qualitative social research, 1(1), art. 22. doi:10.17169/fqs-1.1.1132 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.11.009 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcl342 https://www.resonanzen-journal.org/index.php/resonanzen/article/view/267 https://www.resonanzen-journal.org/index.php/resonanzen/article/view/267 https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.1.1132 https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.1.1132 title: the paradox of being young and homeless: resiliency in the face of constraints international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 425 the paradox of being young and homeless: resiliency in the face of constraints sue-ann macdonald abstract: the major contribution of this article is to address the lack of knowledge regarding homeless youth’s experiences of risk, from their point of view. the youth atrisk field has become a burgeoning area of research that tends to magnify vulnerabilities, yet limits our understanding of complex youth experiences. it is important to highlight another dimension of the homeless youth experience that has rarely been promoted, and that is one of adaptability and creativity encompassed within a framework of survivability and resilience − notions that often necessitate taking risks. drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study with 18 homeless youth (aged 16 and 17 years old) in ottawa (canada), this article paints a more complex understanding of the struggles youth face, in terms of structural (social assistance, housing) and symbolic (stigma, social representations, and identity constructs) constraints. this analysis adds complexity to youth-at-risk discourses and displays the challenges they encounter and the resilient ways in which they seek to overcome obstacles. this paper supports a movement towards recognizing youth strengths and the heterogeneity of their experiences. keywords: homeless youth, risk, constraints, identity, adaptability sue-ann macdonald, ph.d. is an assistant professor of social work at université de montréal, 3150 jean-brillant, montréal, québec, h3t 1j7. e-mail: sueann.macdonald@umontreal.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 426 “at-risk” youth homeless youth are deemed an “at-risk” group because they have been defined as such in several ways. most research on homeless youth suggests that they have experienced childhoods rife with abuse, neglect, and abandonment, setting them on a negative developmental course that in turn pushes and pulls them to the streets (baron, 2003; cauce et al., 2000; gaetz, 2004; gaetz & o’grady, 2002; janus, archambault, brown, & welsh, 1995; kurtz, kurtz, & jarvis, 1991; karabanow, 2004; karabanow et al., 2005; mounier & andujo, 2003; whitbeck & simons, 1990). additionally, research shows that poor parent-child relationships and parenting practices (see dipaolo, 1999; stefanidis, pennbridge, mackenzie, & pottharst, 1992; whitbeck, hoyt, & yoder 1999; whitbeck & simons, 1990) along with family breakdown, instability, and recomposition (bearsley-smith, bond, littlefield, & thomas, 2008; bellot, 2001; caputo, weiler, & anderson, 1997; jones, 1997; laird, 2007) place these youth at increased risk for homelessness, further victimization, and engagement in deviant activities (baron, forde, & kennedy, 2007; reid, 2011; whitbeck et al., 1999). some scholars suggest these negative early experiences of family or institutional life create perfect “training grounds” for anti-social behaviours (baron et al., 2007; corrado & freedman, 2011; whitbeck, hoyt, & ackley, 1997), culminating in a life on the streets and a venue for competing “character contests” (where violence and criminality are encouraged) that play out in youths’ efforts to achieve social legitimacy and recognition (baron et al., 2007). a systemic issue pertinent to this population is that many arrive on the streets from the child welfare system (aubry, klodawsky, nemiroff, birnie, & bonetta, 2007; fitzgerald, 1995; karabanow, 2004; karabanow et al., 2005; kraus, eberle, & serge, 2001) or are released from detention centres and have nowhere else to go (gaetz & o’grady, 2002; public health agency of canada, 2006). in ontario, canada, where this study was conducted, young people have the right to leave their “home” at age 16, and many choose to do so. however, significant gaps that contribute to youth homelessness have been identified in ontario’s child welfare and protection services, especially for 16 and 17 year olds (kraus et al., 2001). structural constraints abound for this population: inadequate social assistance and supportive housing systems, and the changing labour market, make it difficult for this age group to gain access to scarce resources and to eke out a living in socially legitimate ways (bessant, 2001; farrell, aubry, klodawsky, & pettey, 2000). in much of the key literature on youth homelessness, the streets are characterized as intensely dangerous spaces in which these young people congregate. as hagan and mccarthy (1997) state in their watershed study of youth homelessness entitled, mean streets: youth crime and homelessness, “the street is a downward spiral of deviance, danger, and despair” (p. 3). using an integrated framework that combines strain and control theories, these authors make the case that exposure to life on the streets predisposes youth to offending. in a subsequent study (mccarthy & hagan, 2005), they provide a list of “risky behaviours” common to homeless youth such as hitchhiking, sleeping in abandoned cars or buildings, and describe the dangers associated with certain types of crime such as theft, drug selling, and prostitution (p. 1071), as exemplars of the factors that contribute to the downward spiral. others have remarked that objective dangers of street life are well documented: rates of violence and victimization are greater than those experienced by the canadian public (gaetz, 2004, 2009) and victimization is likely to increase international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 427 based on length of time spent without a home (boivin, roy, haley, & galbaud, 2005). while on the street, youth also are known to engage in activities that increase their chances of becoming victims of violence (hoyt, ryan, & cauce, 1999). many researchers have noted a rise in criminal involvement among youth who do not have access to legitimate means of self-support, without which a significant number are drawn into illegal activity as a method of survival on the streets (baron, 2003; baron et al., 2007; hagan & mccarthy, 1997). experience with deviant behaviours increases the likelihood of victimization (gaetz, 2004, 2009; kraus et al., 2001; mccarthy & hagan, 1992; whitbeck et al., 1997) and increases the likelihood of further involvement with deviancy and crime (hagan & mccarthy, 1997; mccarthy & hagan, 2005). all of the aforementioned factors combine to create a daunting and debilitating experience for at-risk youth. and yet little is known about how youth perceive such challenges and how they survive in the face of so many risks, dangers, and fears. while youth make up a third of the homeless population (laird, 2007), they are the least likely to seek help (gaetz, 2004, 2009; karabanow, 2004); they instead rely extensively on informal social networks for survival (tyler & melander, 2011) and “street families”1 to reduce their chances of victimization (hagan & mccarthy, 1997; mccarthy, hagan, & martin, 2002). though youth are considered the most vulnerable population among the homeless (nickerson, salamone, brooks, & colby, 2004) and much of their behaviour is highly stigmatized (benoit, jansson, & anderson, 2007), they are the least likely to make use of emergency services (e.g., shelters, drop-in centres) that are the settings for most research about homelessness. thus, they remain a largely understudied group (bradley, 1997; kraus et al., 2001; marshall et al., 2008). there is a dearth of knowledge – particularly longitudinal situated knowledge – about the subjective experiences of homeless youth (aubry, 2008; aubry et al., 2007; benoit et al., 2007; kidd, 2006; tyler, 2008; whitbeck et al., 1999). the study that is described here seeks to understand these risks not only from the vantage point of the researchers who have thus far sought to conceptualize and analyse these conditions but also from the vantage point of youth – their conceptualizations of risk and how they deal with these, from their points of view. while risk is pervasive in discourses encompassing this population, the intangibility of risk means that all knowledge is contestable and dependent upon interpretation. i argue that the absence of input and collaboration from youth about their experiences renders risk frameworks incomplete. this article bridges these conceptual and empirical gaps by examining the interplay of risk, identity, and structural constraints in homeless youths’ everyday lives. the purpose of this article is to offer a broader interpretation of homeless youths’ experiences in relation to risk. this study’s ontological position argues that there are other experiences, outside of depictions of victimization and deviancy, that have seldom been explored and that these unfold within a complex junction of constrained options. this article is part of a larger ethnographic study that provided a launching pad from which youths’ viewpoints about risk frameworks could emerge. 1 according to hagan and mccarthy (1997), “street families tend to form around issues of survival and support, and individuals within these groups often assume specialized roles that frequently are identified in family terms, including references to street brothers and sisters” (p. 177). similarly, “youth friendships can augment or replace the intimacy, support, and other resources characteristically provided by families” (mccarthy et al., 2002, p. 831). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 428 theoretical underpinnings becker (1963) believed that adolescence posed certain problems with regard to social rules, norms, and responsibility: adolescents find themselves surrounded by rules about these matters which have been made by older and more settled people. it is considered legitimate to do this, for youngsters are considered neither wise enough nor responsible enough to make proper rules for themselves. (p. 17) in this light, adolescents by virtue of their young age are cast as different or deficient from the rest of society (half-child/half-adult) and not fully able to make decisions for themselves. according to kelly (2000), “a historically novel aspect of the truth of youth-at-risk is that, potentially, every behaviour, every practice, every group of young people can be constructed in terms of risk” (p. 463); moreover, he argues that this is an attempt to “regulate youthful identities” (p. 465). kidd (2009) states that the family histories of most homeless youth are understood to be different or deviate from the ideals of the social norm, further magnifying their “riskiness” thus reinforcing their otherness2. being labelled “at risk” has the effect of magnifying perceptions of vulnerability and fragility, due to their young age and their marginalized social status, yet little is known about how they contend with risk in their everyday lives. this study attended to these unknowns by extending and deepening analyses of risk, identity, and the interplay of structural constraints affecting homeless youth. risk in the context of this study was understood more broadly and harkened back to an earlier time when notions of risk embodied taking chances (fox, 1999; bernstein, 1996) rather than contemporary meanings of potential harm (lupton, 1999). this alternative conceptualization of risk views risk as neither good nor bad, and invites the complexity of youth perspectives. while grand social theories of risk (beck, 1992, 1995, 1996; douglas, 1969, 1985, 1992; foucault, 1991) tend to explain risk from a macrosociological perspective, they have difficulty describing people’s individual experiences in negotiating risk (lupton, 1999). notably, the interplay of identity and risk is poorly understood (tulloch & lupton, 2003). these approaches tend to construct individuals as atomised, self-interested, and calculating actors, rooted in the “homo prudens” or rational actor perspective (kemshall, 2010). however, risk epistemologies are inevitably mediated through social, cultural, and political frameworks of understanding and motivations, whether expert or risk knowledges. tulloch and lupton (2003) argue that: rather than drawing a distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ (or ‘accurate’ and ‘biased’) risk assessments, we prefer to concentrate on the meanings that are imputed to risk and how these meanings operate as part of people’s notions of subjectivity and their social relations. (p. 12) echoing similar orientations found in macdonald’s (2006) work, this article points to difficulties “applying straightforward and influential models of risk assessment and prediction to individual biographies” (p. 371) that are based on rational theory. 2 emphasis mine. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 429 this study attempted to bridge this gap between theory and empirical inquiry by offering an empirical foothold regarding how individuals negotiate risk in their everyday lives in relation to their evolving identities. drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study with homeless youth in a large urban canadian city, the major contribution of this article is to offer a more complex understanding of homeless youths’ risk frameworks in their everyday lives by combining two approaches, symbolic interactionism and social constructionism. a broad understanding of risk emerged as it better captured the complexity and diversity of homeless youth experiences; embracing the nuances, ambivalence and tensions that tend to co-exist, especially in a context of constrained options. in a similar vein of subjectivity, identity was a central concept that emerged from the data and shifted in time and place. this study viewed identity construction as provisional, continuous, and complex – a construction having neither a certain goal nor a specific endpoint (erikson, 1968; hall, 1904). it drew upon theories of experimentation and self-discovery, especially as they pertain to perceiving, taking, and managing risk, which emanated from participants’ experiences. it employed aspects of bajoit’s theory of identity based on three interlocking fields: engaged identity (how one views oneself), assigned identity (how one is viewed by others), and desired identity – whom one wishes to become (2003, pp. 102–104). this theory of identity underscores different spheres of interaction – one’s view of oneself in a certain time and place, how one is perceived by others (labelling), and how this influences one’s self-concept. these were particularly apt concepts for this study and were intimately connected to youths’ risk constructs, as will be showcased below. epistemological, ontological, and methodological standpoints this ethnographic study built relationships with participants over a 1to 4-year period; this was a purposeful attempt to capture the ontological complexity of youth experience. to date, most research has assumed that risks are universally understood, internalized and externalized in a uniform manner, replete with normative assumptions about opportunities, constraints, danger, and excitement. these assumptions however, are often framed in the researcher’s perceptions of risks and not framed by those living that experience whose underlying beliefs, motivations, options for survival, and values may be quite divergent. while expert approaches are valuable in giving a sense of the objective dangers that may be present, they assume that people view, weigh, and respond to risks in the same manner and that they have access to the same means to overcome obstacles. the theoretical framework of this study assumes that risks are social constructions and are perceived, valued, interpreted, and responded to differently. risk constructs are dynamic, and are affected by time, context, and social standpoint. this study employed a qualitative approach, collecting information through participant observation and informal interviewing. this ontological approach captured how youth conceptualize their personal power in estimating, managing, and avoiding or embracing risk, as participants tended to view risk in a multitude of ways. this epistemological approach valued above all the youth’s interpretation and subjective understanding of their lived experiences. according to denzin and lincoln (1994), “the constructivist paradigm assumes a relativist ontology (there are multiple realities), a subjectivist epistemology (knower and subject create understandings), and a naturalistic (in the natural world) set of methodological procedures” (p. 13). the social world cannot be understood in terms of simple causal relationships but instead international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 430 view phenomena as social constructions. “[h]uman actions are based upon, or infused by, social meanings: that is, by intentions, motives, beliefs, rules, and values” (hammersley & atkinson, 1995, p. 7). in this same way, conceptualizations of risk are complex and dynamic, particularly so when options of survival may deviate from normative conceptualizations of what is acceptable risk. ethnography allowed for this form of in-depth and situated knowledge to emerge. ethnography is a “scientific approach to discovering and investigating social and cultural patterns and meaning in communities, institutions, and other social settings” (schensul, schensul, & lecompte, 1999, p. 1). ethnographers discover what people do and why before they assign meaning to behaviours and beliefs. as a method of investigation, ethnography differs from other research techniques because it depends on the researcher as the primary tool of data collection (schensul et al., 1999, p. 1). immersion in ethnographic research is then twofold. firstly, it means being with the people under study to see how they respond to events as they experience them, and secondly, experiencing these same events as they happen and experiencing them for oneself. according to emerson, fretz, and shaw (1995), the “task of the ethnographer is not to determine ‘the truth’ but to reveal the multiple truths apparent in others’ lives” (p. 3). participant observation and informal interviewing were the primary methods of data collection. participant observers hope to learn the culture or the subculture of the people they are studying and to interpret the world in the same way as they do; this form of understanding social phenomena has been coined “verstehen” (hammersley & atkinson, 1995, p. 8). in this instance, ethnography using participant observation methods was the best way to facilitate verstehen, so that the researcher’s preconceptions of risk were minimized to the extent possible. data gathering took place over an extended period of time, periods of observation and interaction included encounters from brief (a few minutes) to long (several hours), inside and outside homeless agencies with youth, both individually and in groups. interactions also occurred with participants through telephone and e-mail correspondence. this longitudinal data was a purposeful attempt to capture the essence of experiences as they were unfolding, and to replace traditional research methods that have relied upon data from a static snapshot based on single point in time. field notes were taken during non-structured interviews or directly after time spent observing and interacting with youth. from these initial notes and journal entries more elaborate notes were constructed. in this sense, as much as possible, direct verbatim accounts were written in situ or directly after periods of observation, with the aim of capturing the essence and meaning of participants’ narratives. the following results showcase a mix of direct quotes and reconstructions of their narratives. as a social worker on a community outreach team serving homeless youth for almost a decade, i was well integrated within the community to recruit participants who would have been difficult to meet otherwise. my aim was to “follow” 15 homeless youth over a period of one to several years. the participation criteria for the project included participants who were: 16 and 17 years old at the beginning of the study; were emancipated (legally independent and not requiring parental consent to partake in the study); homeless (staying in shelters, “couch-surfing”, sleeping “rough”, or marginally housed); willing to allow the researcher to observe, speak, and remain in contact with them over the research period; and english and/or french speaking. data collection began in december 2006 and continued until early 2010. access to participants and initial international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 431 recruitment occurred in four agencies that serve homeless youth in ottawa (canada). in all, 18 youth participated in the study. the majority of participants were female (12), a third were male (6). participants were mostly from the ottawa area or surrounding regions. approximately half of the participants had been raised in group homes, foster families, extended families, or were leaving youth detention centres, with most cycling through a mélange of substitute care arrangements. ten youth entered street life directly from their families of origin and were not leaving a substitute care arrangement. all participants experienced housing instability, with a large proportion living on the streets or in emergency shelters. some youth were seen regularly, on at least a weekly basis, if not several times a week, while others were seen only a couple of times during the study period. structural constraints that promote a climate of risk-taking one of the impetuses for this study based on years of clinical observation, is that there are structural constraints impinging on this younger cohort that push them into an arena of constrained options, despite being designated a vulnerable group. these structural obstacles make it more difficult for this group to eke out a living in socially legitimate ways and have the effect of pulling them into activities deemed more dangerous or marginal. in the province of ontario, canada (where the study took place), the simple act of 16or 17-year-old youths leaving “home” ultimately determines their legal autonomy, meaning there are no legislative provisions that allow a youth to become emancipated. this represents a significant equality rights issue. at one end, these youth are not required to submit to parental control; at the other, they have not reached the age of majority and are subsequently denied legislated adult benefits. they are in a kind of no-status limbo where the resources are often paltry and difficult to access. while these young people attempt to live independently, they cannot access resources as easily as adults (e.g., housing, social assistance). paradoxically, they represent a more stigmatized and vulnerable group due to their young age. incongruously, however, these issues are rarely examined as separate and distinct from the youths’ older counterparts in the literature. the “system” (i.e., social assistance, supportive and/or transitional housing, shelters) often poses enormous challenges, aspects of which will be examined below. social assistance according to participants, social assistance (welfare) was difficult if not almost impossible to obtain, for a multitude of reasons. one of the criteria needed for an application for social assistance in ontario – known as ontario works (ow) – is possessing valid id or identification (e.g., driver’s licence, health card, etc.). however, many youth do not have requisite id cards before hitting the streets and if they do, it is often not long before they are stolen (a frequent occurrence) or lost. chris3, who had cycled in and out of detention centres for the past several years stated: “i can’t get ow. i am not 18 and i have no id, so i don’t bother trying to apply”. he revealed that he commits petty crimes and theft to support himself because he does not believe he can access social assistance. some of the other constraints that participants identified included needing to prove to the ow worker that their previous home was unsafe. this determination was made by the worker after consulting the participant’s parent or guardian instead of being based on the youth’s testimony. participants often felt betrayed by a 3 pseudonyms are employed throughout. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 432 system before they attempted to rely on it because they felt their stories of mistreatment or conflict with parents were not viewed by workers as justifiable reasons to leave home. moreover, youth needed to be enrolled in school full-time to be eligible for ow (unlike their older counterparts). in some instances, exceptional circumstances permitted a youth to be enrolled in some form of treatment (e.g., addictions or mental health counselling) as an alternative to not being enrolled in school, but it was still within the discretionary authority of the worker to refuse or accept this option. annie did not apply for social assistance because she perceived it as being too difficult to obtain: “when you are 16 or 17 you are in limbo. ... [ow] is impossible to get. ... how are we supposed to manage being in school when we don’t have a place to live?” approximately half of the youth shared the same opinion; as luke noted: “i got tired of waiting on the phone for hours for the intake. i called back so many times that eventually i just gave up”. claire revealed that she cancelled her application when she found out they would have to contact her parents: “i was really worried [my parents] would find out where i am or that my information would be shared with them. i just want to be left alone. i’ll make money another way. i can always panhandle or sell my art”. michelle was told that she would have to go back to her high school, but stated: “i just can’t go back there. i was cutting class all the time and hiding out in the bathroom. i had no friends. i felt like i was suffocating”. most participants did not want to be forced to go back to school, did not feel they could trust workers to keep their information confidential, did not want to be reliant on the “system”, and certainly did not want to be told by a social assistance worker what to do, so they opted not to continue with the application process and found other ways to survive. it is important to note that other researchers have found that youth are proportionately less likely to be reliant on social assistance than their adult counterparts. o’grady and gaetz (2009) found that only 15% of their sample relied on social assistance and this fact “reflects the barriers to obtaining and maintaining such benefits for people who are young, out of school, and without shelter” (p. 9). this study found that only four participants (of 18) were successful in obtaining social assistance when they were 16 and 17 years old, and more participants became reliant on income assistance once they turned 18 or had children to care for as they found it easier to access. housing unfortunately, youth in this study identified just as many barriers when attempting to access housing. supportive and affordable housing systems and the private market were described by youth as posing too many barriers to access, or as unappealing due to the imposition of “rules”. olivia had applied for a supportive housing room but she needed to prove to the housing provider and ow that she had already attended school for two weeks. for olivia, who had been homeless for approximately two years, this was not realistic given that she had not attended secondary school since hitting the streets. supportive housing was also perceived by several youth as having “too many rules” (e.g., curfews, no overnight guests, no alcohol or drugs on the premises, and no pets). many participants stated they wanted to have more freedom and not be treated, as shane noted, “like kids, not babysat”. many cited supportive housing as unappealing and constraining. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 433 many participants also described their inability to access the rental market. with long waiting lists for public housing (5 to 10 years), many youth searched fruitlessly in the private market. without a prior rental history and the mistaken belief commonly held by landlords that they cannot rent to individuals under 18 years of age, renting a private room or an apartment was an insurmountable challenge. they were told frequently when making inquiries that they needed a co-signer to rent a place. casey admitted that, “no one will rent to a 16 year old. if you are 16 you are discredited. landlords told me i need to get a co-signer and to ask my social worker to co-sign. but my social worker told me to find someone else to co-sign. ... who am i going to find?” when youth did find a landlord who would rent to them, the housing was often substandard and their tenancy precarious. tyler revealed that he had recently rented an apartment in a more dangerous part of town, stating the only reason the landlord rented it to him was because he gave him $1,200 in cash up-front: “the landlord told me, ‘you look a little young,’ but after i flashed him the $1,200 he went to get the keys”. like tyler, many youth wound up renting apartments in more dangerous parts of town with limited rental agreements. youth were often evicted from these situations and many were uninformed about their tenancy rights. informal and less secure rental arrangements were often the only means participants had of entering the rental market. the downside was that their tenancy was often insecure, at the mercy of the landlord, and rentals tended to be located in more dangerous areas of the city. daniel could not find a place to live and rented a room in a rooming house that he described as a “big set up”: everyone in this rooming house was doing crack. i mean the dealer lived in the building and he knew when it was cheque day [when people would receive their cheques from social assistance]. you wouldn’t even see your money, it would just be handed over to the crack dealer ... there was no way you were going to pay the rent. daniel admitted he spent all his money on crack, was evicted, and wound up homeless again. he stated the most easily accessible places for 16and 17-year-olds to rent were located in the rooming houses where, ironically, the most dangerous risks lurk. he explained that such places not only served as gateways into harder and more addictive drugs, but also fostered an environment of violence and criminality (theft, prostitution, drug dealing) in which one became a target for predators and never felt safe. cost was another obstacle for participants trying to access housing in the private market. several youth managed to secure a place but because it was beyond what they could reasonably afford, they wound up letting many friends “crash” with them to help pay the rent. the overcrowding often ended in eviction. ingrid revealed that her one-bedroom apartment now housed eight people and that she was spending most of her money on drugs. she and her boyfriend had stopped living there even though they had paid the rent because there was too little privacy and security. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 434 youth revealed many of the “system’s” failures. these barriers create undue risks that push and pull youth to make different choices within a narrow range of already constrained options. it also forced them to manipulate systems to their advantage to create opportunities for survival. for instance, some younger youth lied about their age to shelter staff in order to access the adult shelter system, pushing them into arguably more vulnerable spaces in the adult systems where greater opportunities for exploitation and victimization may exist. the barriers posed by social assistance, housing systems, and shelters pushed many youth to find creative strategies to survive, and generally pulled them into more dangerous contexts. this paradoxical phenomenon has not been fully explored but the irony was evident in youths’ narratives. participants described the risks they felt obligated to take due to social safety nets that did not respond to their needs, were perceived as inaccessible, or posed too many constraints – despite the fact that these systems are established to protect vulnerable youth. survival and identity experimentation youth’s identities shifted based on their changing needs and constrained opportunities. this study used aspects of bajoit’s (1999, 2000, 2003) theories of identity formation to unravel youths’ identities in relation to risk. this approach espouses that identity construction is always provisional and evolving and is based on an intersecting trilogy that ties past histories with present experiences and projects future ideals of selfhood. it represents a conceptual framework that is apt for deconstructing the complexity and evolution of youth experience in relation to identity formation and risk. the different forms of work that youth engaged in (often because they could not access socially legitimate systems) is an aspect of street life that had a huge impact both on identity and risk. attempting new forms of work – particularly in the informal economy – came with its own risks, which several authors have explored (gaetz, 2004; gaetz & o’grady, 2002). working in the informal economy entailed work that included but was not limited to panhandling, squeegeeing, buying and selling items, stealing, drug dealing, participating in surveys, working for agencies (including internships and acting as resources for agencies involved in community engagement work), babysitting, sex-trade work (including telephone solicitation), informal work in the service industry (getting paid “under the table” or in-kind), and working for family members or friends. participants used their street-savvy skills to survive by: selling marijuana or other drugs (a common activity reported by almost half of participants), selling items (stolen or second-hand), panhandling (half of participants), squeegee-ing (a third of participants), or hired to work under the table in various capacities (half of the female participants reported working in restaurants, babysitting, phone solicitation, handing out flyers, carnival work, and transsexual impersonation). male participants who had difficulties accessing formal resources tended to identify more strongly with deviant representations, often bound up in notions that they were hustlers, robbers, predators, and opportunists, perhaps indicating the common social perception and stigma that males occupy more deviant roles in society. lucy revealed the myriad ways she made money. she was an intravenous (iv) drug user who was articulate around issues regarding responsible drug use that made her attractive to agencies that served youth struggling with addiction. she was hired as a peer support worker and advocate for harm reduction strategies. lucy was also resourceful when it came to making international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 435 money; she knew which research surveys were taking place and how much participants were remunerated. when she could not make enough money through certain means of work (e.g., surveys, youth engagement, and outreach work), she admitted resorting to stealing, but said she only did so when she felt she had no other option. lucy was very concerned about maintaining her “$20 a day habit” and in fact stated that her “whole day revolved around how you are going to make the money for your habit so that you don’t get sick from not maintaining your use and using clean ‘gear’ [instruments]”. while initially quite open about her drug use and passionate about issues related to safe injection use, she admitted that she had not revealed this aspect of her identity (her continued use) to her family and some workers. she feared that it could negatively affect her relationships, as many believed she was not currently using substances. lucy was eloquent and outraged about the kinds of risks that were inherent for young women acquiring drugs: being a young woman, men are always after you for sex, trying to pick you up, offering you loaded needles to sleep with them, or they’ll say they’ll give you free drugs for a month if you sleep with them. being a substance user means it’s dangerous to get the drugs you need and use them safely. i try to go to x [large adult shelter] to buy my drugs but guys always stop us [her and her boyfriend], they threaten to beat up my boyfriend because they say ‘why are you getting a young girl hooked on dope’, they try to deny me access to the drugs i need. having a drug dependency was, according to lucy, another element that put her at greater risk, since, “it’s dangerous to get the drugs you need and use them safely”. she felt she was dependent on her boyfriend to acquire her drugs because many of the dealers would not sell to her unless she would have sex with them. however, when her boyfriend would attempt to buy their drugs, the dealers would want to “beat him up” and would accuse him of “getting her hooked on dope”. lucy’s engaged, assigned, and desired identities fought for prominence at different times and for different purposes: ranging from a responsible and creative iv drug user who survived the constraints that street life poses, particularly considering the violence faced by young women who use drugs (engaged), to a highly politicized peer advocate who projects the image that she is in recovery (assigned). lucy used these different understandings of herself to meet different ends. lucy dabbled between normalized representations of herself as “responsible” (assigned) and the more marginalized, hidden “other” (engaged). in essence, she led a “double life”. this identity theme was a strong undercurrent in participants’ stories, utilizing different facets of one’s identity to survive in the face of constraints. participants experimented with their self-concept, and in this sense displayed some feelings of control and power within the contexts in which they found themselves. engaging in different forms of work, particularly in the informal economy (as noted earlier: selling drugs/items, panhandling, squeegee-ing, babysitting, and phone-sex solicitation) allowed youth the chance to experiment with different roles and gave many the feeling of some control and power over their own lives; however, this was often within an arena of constrained choices (i.e., structural obstacles such as access to labour and housing markets). many participants described the different roles they assumed in order to meet their needs (e.g., lying about drug use to preserve relationships with family members or service providers), and shaped these accounts as stories of survival. youth slid into different roles and in various domains that oscillated between international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 436 mainstream and more marginal existences (school, housing, formal and informal work, family, street friends). indeed, boundaries were found to be muted and slippery and depended very much on what kinds of activities youth were engaged in, what kind of identity they wanted to project, and the context of relationships and resources. it would not be accurate, however, to suggest that all of the participants worked in the informal economy. a little less than a third denied ever being engaged in any work in the informal economy, while two-thirds of them dabbled in it (with one-third of the total being quite actively involved on a daily basis). nonetheless, all participants noted that socially legitimate resources were difficult to access and affected the choices they made on the street. most of the youth who were more active in the formal economy (roughly half the group by the end of the study) had limited experience working in service-industry jobs that they described as insecure and temporary. those attempting to disengage from street life chose more recognized forms of work in the formal economy and gradually slipped into more “normal” and socially acceptable roles. this greatly impacted their identities and the kinds of risks they took. stigma, power, and complex social representations the perception that youth felt they were viewed as deviant because of their identification with street life was a common theme; the stigma of being labelled a “street kid” or an “addict” had a strong resonance among participants. when youth were victims of crimes they felt particularly judged and re-victimized by systems that were supposed to protect them – a phenomenon that has been addressed in the literature (gaetz, 2004; karabanow, 2004). for example, laura had been assaulted and tried reporting the incident to the police but felt that her concerns were not taken seriously because of her young age and homeless status. police told her they were too busy to deal with the case and asked her to come back when they were less busy. several participants revealed that they felt unfairly judged because of their young age and their experiences were delegitimized because they were just a “street kid”. conversely, many youth felt they had some power in relationships with authority figures and several shared stories of their savoir-faire and how they sometimes used their “vulnerability” to their advantage. for example, some participants knew to ask for an officer’s badge number and a supervisor’s name when they were being targeted, and many confessed they told service providers what they wanted to hear in order to maintain access to services. these efforts served to limit the power that authority figures exerted over them. many also admitted that they lived a “double life”, lying to family or service providers about drug use, violence, or living on the streets in order to preserve relationships. participants were also very aware about how their appearance affected opportunities and judgment and treatment by others. when dealing with opportunities in the mainstream world, many youth tried to alter and soften their image for job or housing interviews to present themselves as more appealing. michelle pretended to be in school full time when looking for a part-time job because she felt she would have a better chance with employers if they believed she lived a more “normal” life. some participants also told stories of the powerful roles they played on the streets, acknowledging that they sometimes occupied spaces of oppressors. in fact, some youth named other youth as their main sources of oppression and risk on the streets. claire’s story paints an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 437 extreme version of peer network oppression; she reported being marginalized by a group of homeless youth who limited her access to services and friendships: i ended up getting barred from the shelter because this girl accused me of sexual harassment and even contacted the police because the group leader told her to lie. they wanted to charge me with sexual harassment, but they had no proof. they [agency] also barred me from using the drop-in because she had lied to the police and told them i was stalking her. we [the girl and herself] used to go to the same group at the hospital and i just tried talking to her on the bus but then she turned it around and told them i was stalking her…. she hangs out with this group that hates me…. they’ve beaten me up twice and won’t leave me alone and no one wants to hang out with me because they are scared of them, especially the group leader – “the queen”. she [the ring leader] wants to be the queen of downtown, she has a lot of people scared. but i don’t believe in violence and i let her hit me. i don’t fight back because violence doesn’t solve anything. claire admitted that when she slept outside she had to sleep alone because everyone else was too frightened to be associated with her. she was not allowed to access the shelter or drop-in services because of the lingering sexual harassment charge. curiously, she never lamented these constraints. she utilized her school friendships and college resources to eke out a living and maintain a social life, and was somewhat philosophical about the group’s impact on her life: it’s fine, it’s okay for now, it’s not such a big deal. i mean what more can i do? everyone downtown is too scared to be around me. i just stay in the west end, mostly at the college library, and i see some of my old school friends from my old ‘hood [neighbourhood]. sometimes they will come downtown and pan [panhandle] with me outside of mcdonald's. i always make do, get by, survive. she rationalized this form of survival in terms of her “difference”, stating she always felt different because she had been adopted at a young age from another country (identifying with her engaged and assigned identities). this solidified her belief that she was adaptable, a survivor, and somehow different from other people. claire’s risk perception, however, was impacted by the threats and this transformed her risk practices, as she limited the amount of time she spent downtown. while her choices were affected, she described having to creatively adapt to these constraints and use alternative resources to survive; this form of adaptability to decrease risk was central to how she perceived herself. youth were keenly aware of the multiple roles they played and projected to increase opportunities for stability, to diminish legal consequences of criminal involvement, to gain the services or resources they needed, or to start the process of disengagement from street life. these notions run counter to the passive otherness frequently described in the literature. it demonstrates that youth are thoughtful about constraints and their options and are acutely aware of stigma and social representations, including knowing when and how to manipulate them in order to survive. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 438 discussion and implications for policy and practice the aim of this study was not to prescribe interventions but to offer a starting point for exploration into how homeless youth conceptualize risk. indeed, it was to explore how youth make assessments about risk, and what strategies they employ to minimize harm or maximize benefits in the face of so many obstacles. risk assessments were heterogeneous and ran the gamut from those participants who were extremely risk-averse to those who were complete riskembracers (or who at least espoused beliefs that they were fearless in order to portray an image of rebellion). thus, it is difficult to state any unequivocal truths about participants’ perceptions and responses to risk. moreover, the results of this study are not generalizable due to the small sample size. having said that, a few broad lessons can be drawn from the results. it is important to highlight another dimension of the homeless youth experience that has rarely been promoted, and that is one of adaptability and creativity encompassed within a framework of survivability and resilience – notions that often necessitate taking risks. taking risks is a common element of the homeless youth experience, whether it is understood in terms of adolescent needs (as exemplified in psychological, sociological, and anthropological theories of adolescence) or due to structural constraints. street life opportunities conceptualized as active risk-taking was provided as a rationale for being drawn to the streets by more than half of the group. these youth indicated that they felt they had more control over their lives and ultimately more power over choices on the streets than in their previous lives. as a starting point, it is important to ground our knowledge of risk from youths’ viewpoints instead of rooting them in expert discourses. basing interventions on experts’ points of view will only exacerbate pre-existing dissonances between “helpers” and their interventions and the lives of homeless youth. one of the objectives of this study was not to superimpose ideas of victimization, deviance, and risk onto youths’ experiences but rather to begin where they are at. the same principle should hold for intervention. by embracing this approach, an unfolding of context and meanings can occur and conceptualizations of risk will have relevance for the targeted youth. this study revealed several assumptions and paradoxes. participants tended not to characterize their experiences as examples of victimization but instead considered harmful experiences as character-shaping. some (e.g., ingrid) described themselves as “warriors” but many viewed themselves as survivors who were resourceful and creative, and who were not necessarily passive but who instead actively practiced resistance against those who tried to exert authority over them (e.g., police, other youth). this study found that most participants were thoughtful about their lives, their identities, and their relationships with others, and were very conscious of social stigma. moreover, their risk frameworks were malleable and shifted over time based on the accumulation of new and monumental experiences, which also served to shape and reshape the construction of their identities. another finding was that participants’ relationships to drug use were rife with ambivalence. use was conceived of as both constraining and liberating. a few participants described the stigma associated with drug use and the need to lead a “double life”, thus hiding their use to maintain relationships with family or service providers. the risks inherent in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 439 acquisition of drugs for young women were also elucidated by a few participants, especially the risk of sexual exploitation (i.e., exchanging sex for drugs). it is important to have this broad view of risk when assessing drug use, not only in terms of employing a harm-reduction approach to the actual utilization but also applying such an approach to the context of minimizing the inherent dangers involved in acquisition. moreover, examining both the drawbacks and benefits of drug use is a better starting point for intervention because it recognizes the ambivalence many youth have about their use, and it acknowledges the freedom/dependency paradox. another central contribution is that conceptualizations of risk are very much embedded in who we perceive ourselves to be, how we think we are perceived by others, and who we wish to become. utilizing bajoit’s (1999, 2000, 2003) tripartite theory of identity construction allowed for a deeper understanding of the connection between participants’ perception of risk and these identity constructs. judgments about risk were intuitive, organic (rooted in the youths’ ideas about themselves, others, their histories), and affected by localized dangers and opportunities. this implication runs counter to ideas expounded in the risk society thesis (beck, 1992, 1996). indeed, risk constructs not only were embedded in the “who” youth perceived and desired themselves to be, but also by the “what” of local contexts. significant events, brought about by experimenting with different roles and different living arrangements in order to survive, also greatly transformed their notions of risk. these experiences pushed youth to consider the risks (dangers and opportunities) inherent in continuing with certain aspects of street life. this dynamic nature of identity construction underscored the shifting and evolving nature of risk perception and practices. what this means for practice and theory is that identity is very much embedded in our understanding of risk, and is directly linked to our assessments and tolerance of risk; however, this has not been examined previously and requires further investigation. one of the most important findings of this study, is that structural barriers facing 16 and 17 year olds pose enormous obstacles that push them to make constrained and sometimes “dangerous” choices (e.g., renting a room in a rooming house, working under the table) that may lead to exploitation or poor health (e.g., deficient addictions resources for this age group in which they are forced to share instruments due to lack of services for those under 18). while there is a tendency to view this younger cohort of the population as vulnerable and requiring protection, there is a lack of resources and choice within existing services and policies, especially as they are denied access to adult services such as social assistance, shelters, housing and labour markets, and addictions services. several participants revealed that the social assistance system for 16 and 17 year olds was so onerous, cumbersome, and difficult to obtain, that they did not apply. in particular, needing to contact family members in order to prove that residing with them was not an option, was a risk some participants were not willing to take as they were fearful their location might be revealed to family. finding the home unfit was also a determination made by the front-line worker; many participants felt these workers were biased and could relate better to their parents. workers’ judgment of eligibility was a common complaint among youth. participants’ perceived these determinations to be laden with strong moral undertones that made them feel that they were failures for not living at home and attending school regularly. these barriers meant that youth often sought other ways of making money in the informal economy, including but not limited to panhandling, squeegee-ing, buying and selling items, drug dealing, and sex work. one of the ways these challenges could be addressed is by making social assistance easier to obtain and by not requiring families to be contacted. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 425–446 440 similarly, housing systems represent another hurdle for this age group. while there are some affordable social housing units, it is never enough, nor is there enough choice. moreover, the private market poses many barriers due to landlords’ lack of knowledge regarding tenant rights and age criteria (e.g., many believe that 16 and 17 year olds need a co-signer), and landlords discriminate against youth based on their age and association with the streets. again, this pushes youth into arguably dangerous places to rent (e.g., rooming houses) and precarious rental arrangements. participants were often unaware of their tenancy rights and were frequently exploited (e.g., substandard housing that does not comply with government regulations), or evicted without just cause over the course of the study. this research has several potential outcomes for intervention with youth. clinically, providing workers with increased knowledge regarding youths’ conceptualizations of risk will help develop a more collaborative intervention plan and may mitigate future dangers. this knowledge could also help orient new workers to the realities and complexities of the hazards, opportunities, and constrained choices homeless youth face. on a policy level, the structural barriers that increase a climate of risk-taking that frequently leads to victimization or criminalization of homeless youth needs to be underscored. these findings support the need for better housing, employment, and supports for homeless youth, including peer supports and communities that actively promote resilience (as argued by reid, 2011). moreover, it is hoped that this study demonstrates the heterogeneity of the population and their experiences, and thus supports the central importance of engaging youth in service provision and planning to better meet their needs, while also using their keen insights to develop more effective policy. conclusion in sum, this brief portrayal displays the challenges this group faces and the resilient ways in which they seek to overcome system constraints. this analysis adds complexity to the youth at-risk discourses that tend to trap them in a passive “otherness”. a common element in participant’s narratives, ranging from the very street-entrenched to those living more of a mainstream existence, was the notion of adaptability, creativity, and survival. youth were savvy in using aspects of their assigned and engaged identities to cross over into the mainstream by assuming “socially appropriate” roles as students, workers, or tenants, in the search for social recognition and integration and, paradoxically, survival in the face of so many obstacles. all the youth in this study – whether they self-identified as the family scapegoat, the target of group victimization, or the powerful street hustler – recounted their stories in some light of surviving some experience. they demonstrated their resiliency by deploying creative 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(1990). life on the streets: the victimization of runaway and homeless adolescents. youth & society, 22(1), 108–125. társadalmi kirekesztés kérdése gyermekvédelmi perspektívából magyarországon international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 458 social exclusion in hungary from a child protection perspective andrea rácz abstract: this paper deals with the issue of social exclusion from a child protection perspective. with the help of publications, statistical data, and the presentation of the main research results, the issue of child poverty is discussed, the main emphasis being on the situation of children removed from or leaving their families, especially those living in residential care homes. in hungary, the number of studies related to the child protection system is limited and little is known about the school career, employment, or family establishment of those with a care background. we have little information about how well the system prepares them for independent life and how to classify their social integration. the paper also discusses the development of and challenges facing hungarian child protection on a systemic level. keywords: hungarian child protection, challenges, situation of children with care background, social inclusion andrea rácz is associate professor of university of debrecen, department of sociology and social policy. debrecen, 4032, egyetem tér 1. hungary, racz.andrea2@upcmail.hu mailto:racz.andrea2@upcmail.hu international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 459 children in hungarian society the research, political programs, and action plans on social exclusion mainly focus on adults and families, and are less concerned with the issue of how to interpret poverty as a social phenomenon in the case of children (darvas-tausz, 2004). hungary has a population of around 10 million inhabitants. about 2 million of the local residents are under 18 years of age. the youth age group (between 0 and 29 years) includes around 4 million, that is 40% of the total population. families with children are poorer than other hungarians: 13% of the population, 9% of children live in poverty, as their income is under the 60% of the national average income. compared to the 27 european union member countries, hungary is in the middle range regarding the population and it is among the worst one-third regarding child poverty. similarly to other european societies, the main reason for this level of poverty is lack of income, but certainly other additional resources, such as health and insufficient educational attainment contribute to poverty (nemzeti szociálpolitikai koncepció [nszk], 2011). the two most important institutions and scenes for the reproduction of poverty are the education system and the family. the poverty rate of families with one child is roughly the same as that of families without children. the problems begin when families have two children: their poverty rate is around 70% higher than of those with just one child; 60% of large families live below the poverty line, although large families make up only 4% of all families. in the case of poor families with children, there is often no indoor toilet or any bathroom in the apartment, one-fifth of these families do not have running water, and twothirds of them live in homes with traditional heating. in 86% of poor households with children, the breadwinner does not have any secondary education, and in 40% of them, none of the persons living in the household has a job. (“legyen jobb a gyerekeknek!”, 2007) a survey carried out in the field of child poverty discovered that 9% of the households did not have enough income to make a living at all, 23.8% experienced monthly financial struggle, and 10.8% of the respondents felt that their future income situation would get worse. it is striking that 26.9% of the children reported psychosomatic symptoms – headache, stomach ache, sleep disturbance, stress – occurring at least on a weekly basis. the children’s social relations were quite inadequate: almost 10% reported that they did not have any friends, almost 15% did not trust their teachers, and 22% did not talk to their parents on a daily basis. in addition, 17% was the proportion of these children got involved in a conflict with their teachers or their peers on a weekly basis because of their negative relationship with them (darvas-tausz, 2004). the educational attainment is the output of the socialization process and also one of the most important factors in the determination of adult social status. in our country, upward mobility has a strong social determination: 10% of the children whose fathers have a basic level of education and 68% of the children whose fathers have higher education achieve higher education themselves. however, one-quarter of the children of fathers with basic education get only primary education (legyen jobb a gyerekeknek!, 2007). the education system is unable to reduce these social differences; moreover, it makes such differences larger. the children who are from disadvantaged families are very often disadvantaged in school too. according to the pisa survey (mihály, 2002), hungary belongs to those countries where the differences between school types mean differences in the performance international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 460 of the students too. in schools where a strong selection process means students have more advantaged social-economic backgrounds, the performance of the students is better (mihály, 2002) every year, nearly 5,000 students do not finish primary school until the age of 16 and more than 20,000 of them do not continue their studies or drop out of secondary education after finishing primary school (liskó, 2008). according to babusik’s (2003) research, between 40% and 45 % of roma children finish primary school at the age of 14, the vast majority finish at the age of 15 to 16, and approximately 10% of them do not finish it at all. in hungary, the number of children at risk is approximately 200,000 per year which is 10% of the country’s children. less than 1% of children live in long-term care, which is equal to the european average. as for the long-term care data, the number of children who were placed in foster care has been increasing since 2002, compared to the children who were placed in children’s home. in 2011, 8,434 children and young adults lived in children’s homes and 12,638 lived in foster care; thus 60% of the children in care get foster care provision (papházi, 2014). the system of long-term care in the child protection system the child protection act was adopted by the hungarian parliament on 22nd of april 1997, which was the first complete and independent legal regulation of the hungarian child protection system and it enabled the founding of new services and types of care (domszky, 1999). this legislation was greatly influenced by the english children act of 1989, which had the principle of prevention as its central focus. in principle, as a result, it is a basic requirement in hungarian child protection to enable children and families to get every necessary support to keep the child in the family, and these supports need to be provided locally, close to where the family lives. in hungary, there are nearly 3,200 municipalities, of which 19 are county level and one is metropolitan level; the others are local government level municipalities. hungary is divided into seven regions. local governments provide compulsory basic services for the population living in a given area (rácz, hodosán, & korintus, 2009). since the foundation of the act, the operation of child protection long-term care was situated on the country level; however, the years of 2012 and 2013 brought significant challenges when the tasks that had been perfomed on the county level were relocated to the state level, and so too the whole system of child protection long-tem care as well. the main values and aims of the child protection system are as follows: • the official child protection always has to be preceded by some kind of service system for the children in need and it must be voluntary. • the removal of children from their families can only happen if threatening conditions cannot be eliminated within the family in spite of the multilateral support. • the types of supports can only be effective if they are customized and designed for special needs. (domszky, 1999) the care for children who were removed from their families can be (a) children’s home care1 or (b) foster care2. 1 there are five types of children’s home: traditional institutions provide care for quite a large number of children in smaller living quarters for 12 to 48 children. apartment-homes provide care for a maximum of 12 children in an apartment or family house. special children’s homes provide for those special needs children, who have psychological problems or suffer from behavioural or learning difficulties. in such a home there are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 461 the hungarian child protection system takes into account the phenomenon of postadolescence, so it provides care and service for young adults who were raised in the child protection system if needed. after-care provision is available for those who are under 21 and they are working or looking for a job, but their income is not enough to live independently. those who have special needs can stay in the system until the age of 22, while those who participate in secondary education can stay until they are 24 years old. if somebody studies in higher education – 5% of the all young adults – they can have the after-care provision until they are 25 years old. additionally, after-care service is available until the age of 30, in the form of a counselling service including employment, personal relationships, and solving housing based on the methodology of social workers’ case management. the development of child protection in recent years was clearly aimed at only the long-term care and the foster care within it. the proportion of those who were placed in foster care has increased nearly 10% since 1998. the number of places in children’s homes has decreased and the approved places in apartment homes have increased. between 1998 and 2011 the decrease was 6.7%, while the increase of apartment homes was 15.6% (papházi, 2014). as for the numbers of the workers, 5,400 employees work in institutional care, every second professional has a university degree, one-fifth have social worker degrees, and half of them have pedagogy degrees. the number of foster parents is 5,526 (ksh, 2012). more and more young adults stay in after-care provision which means that they need further support; moreover, many of those who typically leave the system at the age of 18 later return. the situation of those who live in long-term care and of those who left the system although little statistical data and few research results are available regarding children and young adults living in or who have left the child protection system, we should highlight some research findings indicating the problems that child protection has to deal with. according to the central statistical office’s data of 2011 on participation in education, those who live in foster care are more successful, which is very important in terms of social integration. a higher proportion of 15to 17-years-olds living in foster care participate in secondary education (86%, compared to 61.1% of those who live in children’s homes). more young adults study in secondary schools that provide a leaving certificate, so it is possible for them to have higher education. in institutional care, vocational education is preferred, where a large proportion drop out of school (rácz, 2009, 2012). every second student who leaves the system between 18 and 25 has only primary education, which makes it very difficult to find a proper job and establish a stable independent life (ksh, 2012). despite provisions of the privacy act that prohibit the recording of ethnic origin, studies indicate that roma children are overrepresented in the long-term care and have more disadvantages than their non-roma peers (neményi & messing, 2007; rácz, 2012). a maximum of 40 places. there are also a few separate homes for mentally retarded children for those children who are disabled, or have special needs because of their age (under 3 years) with maximum 40 places. the after-care homes provide care for those young adults who are entitled to leave care (age 18) but cannot lead an independent life and decide to stay in the child protection system, up to the ages of 21 to 25 with maximum 40 places. 2 in 2014, the system of foster care became unified, previously there were traditional and professional foster parents as well. now being a foster parent is a job and the preferred form of placing children under the age of 12. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 462 maintaining contact with biological families is problematic. in 2011, 1,027 children returned home from the children’s homes and 489 from foster care (papházi, 2014). unfortunately, this indicates that the foster parents consider keeping contact with biological families to be less valuable and it is also problematic that after the removal, the cooperation with the parents is terminated within long-term care, so the parents do not get professional help to facilitate the return of their children. many children living in institutional care show symptoms of anxiety (fülöpné, 2003); the majority of children living in child protection smoke and a significant proportion have problems related to alcohol. it is shocking that the data show that 30% of people living in children’s homes and 10% of those who live in foster care have thought of suicide (elekes & paksi, 2005). several research studies highlighted problems related to the social integration of people who remain in the system or who leave it because they are overage. because of their educational levels, some of these young adults have very unstable positions within the labour market; 40% of those who left the system are unemployed and many of them work illegally or only occasionally. young women consider finding marriage partners as the most important condition of social inclusion (szikulai, 2006). another study shows that successful social inclusion depends on the degree to which the system is supportive towards the young adults. in many cases, it requires, effectively, maintaining the young adult in a child’s role and in a situation of dependency after turning 18 (rácz, 2012). faced with these data and research findings, most of the experts and practitioners feel themselves without the tools needed to help children reduce or negate the disadvantages of childhood, and are therefore unable to prepare children for independent lives, and thus enable them to begin to achieve successful social inclusion. unfortunately, many respond by demanding radical solutions and a stricter institutional system (rácz, 2014). main challenges all of this indicates that hungarian child protection has to face up to many challenges. of course, the development of a comprehensive child protection structure is not yet finished and greater emphasis in the future should be still placed on the development of primary care, since the aim is to have every child raised in a family. in long-term care, the institutions should be modernized and their capacity expanded, especially for children who have special needs and require special care (szikulai, 2014). half of the children newly entering the system are older than 10 years of age, and within it 12and 13-year-olds are the dominant age group; further, the proportion of 16to 18-year-olds is increasing (20% of all people newly accessing the system). most teenagers who get into the system have severe problems regarding integration, behavioural disorders, and substance abuse and struggle with disorders requiring psychiatric care. therefore, beside providing care that substitutes for the family there is a need for an institutional system which is therapeutic, ensures targeted services, compensates for disadvantages in school, and helps them to catch up and prepare for an independent life (nszk, 2011). we must also see that the unilateral development of the system providing foster care can cause problems in the long term, because without an extensive support network it is difficult to place children who are older, severely disadvantaged, roma, or demonstrate special needs or behavioural problems or are disabled. (rácz, 2014). so the main principle international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 463 of future developments should be to adjust child protection’s concept and attune the whole system to the problems that arise in everyday life. the best way to address these issues is by having competent professionals to deal with the children in institutional care and in foster care as well. the child protection professionals must have human qualities such as devotion, love of children, adaptability, and must have professional characteristics such as empathy, cooperation skills, and professional awareness (domszky, 2004). unfortunately, during the child protection training, the preventive work of child welfare – intensive family support, child poverty, social work in school, childhood policy – are not discussed in detail. it is important to include these in the ongoing training of the professionals. the development of the child protection system cannot happen without being aware of, acknowledging, and taking into account the opinions of the children and young adults who live in it. at present the children’s parliament run by fice is an outstanding example and will be taken as a model. its meetings are clearly designed to promote the social integration of children and young adults living in child protection. an important target group of fice-hungary consists of children living without a family, in children's homes or institutions. it is particularly important for these children to learn to define their situation, to assess their problems, and to express them in a suitable form. the children's home children's parliament aims to provide a forum and a framework for this. the aim of the children's parliament is not only to express opinions, but also to help bring suggestions and ideas to the surface. the first children’s home children’s parliament was held on april 28, 2011. the children’s parliament is held two or three times a year, with the participation of 60 to 80 persons. the children’s parliamentary session is preceded by a preparation training session, where children and young people get together to share experiences and discuss various topics. from the work of the parliament, a compendium of professional material is compiled that is also sent to decision-makers. there have already been sessions of this parliament, which have been attended by the children’s rights representatives of the ombudsman’s office, thus conveying the children's opinions directly to the decision-makers. the most important topics of the children’s parliament are: higher education; biological family relations; the problems relative to the co-placement of children with special needs; the importance of joint placement of siblings; and the treatment of homosexuality in the context of institutional care (hazai, 2014). in the field of the well-being of children and youth, it is fundamental to have properly trained professionals with up-to-date knowledge of child welfare, who are well informed in the fields of education, social and labour market, and who take the opinions of people living in care into account. viewing the situation of children in hungary, specifically, and the chances for social integration, the overall aim of hungarian child and youth policy objectives must be to reduce the poverty rate of children and their families, eradicate all extreme forms of child exclusion, and reduce the occurrence rate of deviant behaviours destroying future life choices. in general, the modus operandi of institutions and services which contribute to poverty and exclusion reproduction must be changed. the generations growing up today should have better basic skills and competencies than the current active generation. they should be more flexible and mobile so that they can respond to economic and social change and prepare for a lifetime of learning, thus being able to meet the rapidly changing economy’s labour needs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 458–465 464 references babusik, f. 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(2014). jó szülő-e az állam? – fejlesztési igények a gyermekvédelmi szakellátás professzionalizációjáért. in a. rácz (ed.), jó szülő-e az állam? – a corporate parenting terminus gyakorlatban való megjelenése (pp. 215–245). budapest, hungary: rubeus egyesület. retrieved from http://rubeus.hu/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf szikulai, i. (2006). “nem szeretném, hogy befejeződjön...” – a gyermekvédelmi rendszerből nagykorúságuk után kikerült fiatal felnőttek utógondozásának és utógondozói ellátásának utánkövetéses vizsgálata. in a. rácz (ed.), a magyar gyermekvédelmi rendszer helyzete, jövőbeli kihívásai. budapest, hungary: ncsszi. (cd-rom) szikulai, i. (2014). gyermekvédelem a xxi. században – kihívások. in a. rácz (ed.), jó szülő-e az állam?– a corporate parenting terminus gyakorlatban való megjelenése (pp. 371–389) budapest, hungary: rubeus egyesület. retrieved from http://rubeus.hu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf http://www.efoesz.hu/download/nemzeti_szocialpolitikai_koncepcio_munkaanyaga.pdf http://www.efoesz.hu/download/nemzeti_szocialpolitikai_koncepcio_munkaanyaga.pdf http://rubeus.hu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf http://rubeus.hu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf http://rubeus.hu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf http://rubeus.hu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cpnemzetkozi_2014_final.pdf stop now and plan (snap™) is a cognitive-behavioural strategy that helps children and parents regulate angry feelings by getting them to stop, think, and plan positive alternatives before they act impulsively international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 330 rolling out snap® an evidence-based intervention: a summary of implementation, evaluation, and research leena k. augimeri, margaret walsh, and nicola slater abstract: this article describes the evolutionary process of developing, disseminating, and implementing an evidence-based intervention model for children in conflict with the law. stop now and plan (snap®), a canadian, evidence-based gender sensitive model for young children in conflict with the law, was initiated in 1985 in response to the decriminalization of children under 12 in canada. this community-based model is well validated for its efficacious outcomes on reducing problem behaviours in this high-risk population, helping to shift the trajectory of criminal outcome. the article describes the lessons learned during the evaluation, implementation, and replication of snap® and the resulting creation of a stringent implementation approach. currently under the management of the centre for children committing offences (ccco), replication sites known as snap® affiliates, enter into a formalized licensing agreement that includes assessing site readiness and theoretical philosophy, ongoing training and consultation, and an accreditation quality assurance process. this formalized approach has been adopted to ensure sites are able to deliver the highest quality of service and to replicate successful outcomes, changing life course trajectories of these high-risk children and families. keywords: evidence-based intervention, implementation, replication, quality assurance address correspondence to: leena k. augimeri, child development institute, 46 st. clair gardens, toronto, ontario, m6e 3v4, canada. e laugimeri@childdevelop.ca t 416-603-1827 ext. 3112 f 416-654-8996 leena k. augimeri, phd is director, centre for children committing offences & program development, child development institute, toronto, ontario and adjunct assistant professor/sessional lecturer, university of toronto. margaret walsh, ba is manager, research & evaluation, child development institute, toronto, ontario. nicola slater, nneb is manager, centre for children committing offences, child development institute, toronto, ontario. mailto:laugimeri@childdevelop.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 331 this paper describes the genesis and 25-year evolution of stop now and plan (snap®), a canadian evidence-based gender sensitive model for young children in conflict with the law. focus will be placed upon the lessons learned during the implementation, replication, and evaluation of this multi-faceted intervention program. this journey involved a number of major chronological developments (see figure 1) beginning with the decriminalization of children under the age of 12 in canada. recognizing a need to establish services for these children, a community-based children’s mental health centre specializing in latency aged children with disruptive behaviour problems initiated the development of the program. this was done through a review of the scientific literature, the development of a theoretical framework and treatment model, creation of program manuals, and multiple evaluations and research studies. this was a rarity as such programs typically find their beginnings within university communities versus applied community-based settings (weisz, sandler, durlak, & anton, 2005). the dissemination of positive treatment effects and research findings generated much attention and interest from various mental health providers and researchers. the model is now regarded as one of the most fully developed and longest sustained evidence-based gender specific interventions for young children in conflict with the law (garbarino, 2006; howell, 2001, 2003). requests for replications have led to the creation of a dissemination and training unit, the centre for children committing offences (ccco). the ccco would be responsible for the development of snap® training and consultation modules, as well as licensing, model development, fidelity frameworks, and external evaluations. interest in snap® is growing quickly. in the intervening time, thousands of professionals have been trained in its use. to date, snap® licenses have been issued to children’s mental health agencies, educational facilities, and other community and social service organizations across canada, the united states, europe, and australia. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 332 brief snap® history snap® was created as a response to the decriminalization of children under the age of 12 in canada with the introduction of the young offenders act (yoa) in 1984 (which was subsequently replaced with the youth criminal justice act in 2002). under the act, these young children fall under the jurisdiction of provincial/territorial child welfare or mental health legislation. police officers have two options when they come into contact with a child under the age of 12 engaging in antisocial behaviour: (a) return the child to their parent/caregiver(s), or (b) notify child welfare services, if the child is deemed to be “in need of protection”. a canadian research study conducted around the same time (leschied & wilson, 1988) indicated that the number of pre-adolescent children involved in antisocial behaviour and/or criminal activity was extensive. given the limited options for these young children in conflict with the law, the federal government encouraged the provinces and territories to fund and develop innovative initiatives for supporting and treating these at-risk children and their families. this government support resulted in earlscourt child and family centre (now called child development institute, cdi) to seek funding for a 6-month pilot. given the centre’s mandate and expertise in working with latency aged aggressive and antisocial children and their families, the agency was well positioned to develop such a program. in october 1985, the under 12 outreach project (now called snap® under 12 outreach project, snap® orp) was launched in toronto, canada by a team of scientists and practitioners in partnership with toronto police services. it was the first program of its kind designed specifically to meet the needs of children under the age of 12 engaging in antisocial activities such as physical aggression/assault, break and enter, vandalism, and shoplifting/theft. given the presenting problems and the complexity of issues and risks that these children and their families experience, there was a need to develop a multi-faceted and multi-systemic approach to intervention (goldberg & augimeri, 2007). from its onset, research was an integral part of the model’s development. researchers worked hand-in-hand with the clinicians to inform the theoretical approach of the model and to provide ongoing evaluation feedback, which further informed program development. this scientist-practitioner approach (jones & mehr, 2007; lane & corrie, 2006) built a strong foundation for the establishment of snap® as an evidence-based program and helped to stimulate ongoing research activities. the province of ontario (ministry of community and social services, now assumed under the ontario ministry of children and youth services) subsequently funded the program when the pilot showed promising outcome results (hrynkiw-augimeri, 1986). from the onset, the snap® model utilized components from a variety of established interventions: skills training (allan & narnne, 1984; goldstein, sprafkin, gershaw, & kline, 1980; mcginnis, goldstein, sprafkin, & gershaw, 1984), cognitive problem solving (spivack, platt, & shure, 1974; spivack & shure, 1982), self-control and anger management strategies (camp, blom, hebert, & van doorninck, 1977; carter, patterson, & quesebrath, 1979; cummings, 1987; cummings, iannotti, & zahn-waxler, 1989; marion, 1994; meichenbaum & goodman, 1971; schneider & robin, 1973; stern & fodor, 1989), cognitive self-instruction (corno, 1987; bornstein & quevillon, 1976; kendall, 1977; snyder & white, 1979), family management skills training (patterson & stouthamer-loeber, 1984), and parent training international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 333 (forgatch, bullock, & patterson, 2004; forehand & mcmahon, 1981). as the model continued to evolve, consultations with research scientists at the oregon social learning center (oslc) in eugene, oregon helped focus the theoretical orientation and parenting component through its social interactional family therapy (sift) approach in working with families (forgatch & patterson, 1987; patterson, reid, jones, & conger, 1975; patterson, 1982; patterson & forgatch, 1987). today, sift is now referred to as social interactional learning or sil (patterson, forgatch, & degarmo, 2010). in the mid-1980s the focused treatment approach for children with conduct problems generally included social skills training (see mcginnis et al., 1984; pepler & craig, 1990; pepler & rubin, 1991). however, the snap® model included a self-control and problem solving focus along with social skills and parent management training. as strayhorn (2002) indicates, “selfcontrol difficulties are of central importance for many psychiatric disorders…[it] is also a crucial, and often missing, ingredient for success in most treatment programs” (p. 7). in addition, research has found that latency-aged children tend to be good candidates for learning self-control strategies (see piquero, jennings, & farrington, 2010). the snap® technique is a cognitive behavioural strategy intended to help children control impulsivity, think about the consequences of their behaviour, and develop a socially appropriate plan. it was first developed in the late 1970s in a former earlscourt day treatment classroom for children with behavioural problems. in the classroom, the clinician would “snap her fingers” to cue a child to begin the snap® process. this technique which formed the basis of the snap® model, was formalized with the creation and publication of program manuals (earlscourt child and family centre, 1990a, 1990b, 2001a, 2001b, 2002; levene, 1998) and was trademarked in 1998. the technique underlies the entire foundation of this multi-component model. the steps of snap® have now been translated onto the image of a stoplight, which creates a visual for children: red light (stop), yellow light (now and), green light (plan). these steps are used to help children regulate angry feelings by helping them to first, calm down through the use of techniques such as taking deep breaths and/or counting to 10 (stop); second to use coping statements (now and) to think of what to say to remain calm (for example, “this is hard but i can do this”), and third, to generate effective solutions (plans) to make their problems smaller instead of bigger, make them feel like a winner and not hurt anyone, anything, or themselves. a key aspect of this strategy is teaching children to identify triggers (what makes them angry or upset), and helping them make the connection between their body awareness (body cues) and what stops they can use to effectively help their bodies calm down in order to make a plan. the original snap® orp program (1985 to 1995) was a time-limited intervention that consisted of two core structured group components: the transformers club (now called snap® boys club) and the parent group (now called the snap® parent group). the groups lasted for a period of 12 weeks, repeatable once. the focus of these 1.5-hour groups incorporated social skills, self-control and problem solving using group discussion, modelling, behavioural rehearsal/role-playing, home practice exercises, in vivo learning opportunities, and relaxation training. using the corresponding group manuals (earlscourt child and family centre, 1990a, 1990b, 2001a, 2001b), the structured groups were facilitated by trained, designated snap® staff (e.g., parent group – family worker; child group – child group leaders). the transformers international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 334 club was comprised of seven children placed according to developmental needs and ages (younger children’s group, 6-7 years; middle children’s group, 8-9 years; and an older children’s group, 10-11 years). over the course of the 12 weeks, specific topics (e.g., joining in, dealing with anger, avoiding trouble, dealing with peer pressure, apologizing, and stopping stealing) were addressed. in addition, the concurrent parent group exposed parents to skills and strategies taught to their children, encouraged prompting of the skill at home, and taught effective parent management strategies. other components that were offered based on levels of risk and need included: individual befriending/mentoring, family counselling, and school advocacy/teacher consultation. the model underwent major modifications in 1996 as a result of the extensive review of a decade’s worth of outcome evaluation and research data (e.g., augimeri, farrington, koegl, & day, 2007; augimeri, jiang, koegl, & carey, 2006; day, 1997; day & augimeri, 1996; day & hunt, 1996; hrynkiw-augimeri, 2005; hrynkiw-augimeri, pepler, & goldberg, 1993; koegl, farrington, augimeri, & day, 2008; webster, augimeri, & koegl, 2002). there were three major shifts in the model’s development and implementation: 1. the use of a structured professional judgment (spj) approach to clinical risk assessment and management (e.g., douglas & kropp, 2002; hart, 1998, 2001); 2. the move of snap® orp from a time-limited intervention to a continued care model; 3. the introduction of the gender-specific snap® girls connection (snap® gc). assessment of children and youth at risk in the assessment of children’s potential for continued delinquency, snap® clinicians identified the need for the development of a risk and protective factors checklist (augimeri & levene, 1994, 1997). after its creation, the checklist proved to be a beneficial tool for reference during case conferences and treatment reviews as it helped to identify child and family risk indicators associated with possible aggression and future violence. in-depth research and consultation on spj risk assessment (see webster, douglas, eaves, & hart, 1997), child delinquency and participation in a very young offender task force sponsored by the u.s. office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention (loeber & farrington, 2001) led researchers and clinicians at cdi to develop two structured, professional judgment risk schemes: the early assessment risk lists or earl-20b v2 for boys (augimeri, koegl, webster, & levene, 2001), and the earl-21g v1 for girls (levene et al., 2001). in their current form, the earls allow clinicians to isolate specific areas of concern and need across three domains (family, child, and responsivity) that will be amenable to change (augimeri, enebrink, walsh, & jiang, 2010; augimeri, walsh, liddon, & dassinger, 2011). this further enhanced the snap® program’s theoretical framework by including this developmental-systemic model of risk and protective processes. furthermore, it has been found that interventions that address need, responsivity, and risk principles show larger effects in term of recidivism than those programs that do not address these principles (andrews et al., 1990). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 335 subsequent research and outcome evaluation indicated that the program was highly effective for the majority of the snap® orp children (see augimeri et al., 2006, 2007, 2011). however, there was a sub-group of high-risk boys (approximately 10% to 16%) that did not appear to benefit and/or showed a slower rate of improvement as compared to the low-tomoderate risk snap® orp children (augimeri et al., 2006). a decision was then made by the multi-disciplinary team (clinicians and researchers) to move to a continued care model of service delivery. under this model, the child and family would now remain in service as long as an identified level of risk and need is present, as assessed by the earls. now, the snap® children and families can access a range of service components that incorporates the developmental need of the children and families as they undergo a transition from pre-adolescence to adolescence (see table 1). table 1: snap® under 12 outreach project (snap® orp) and snap® girls connection (snap® gc) treatment components snap® orp treatment components snap® gc treatment components snap® boys group (transformer club)* the snap® girls club† snap® parent group* snap® parent group† individual counselling/mentoring & community connections girls growing up healthy (gguh)† school advocacy/teacher consultation school advocacy/teacher consultation leaders in training (lit) leaders in training (lit) stop now and plan parenting (snapp): individualized family counselling stop now and plan parenting (snapp): individualized family counselling homework club/academic tutoring homework club/academic tutoring victim restitution victim restitution tapp-c (the arson prevention program-children) tapp-c (the arson prevention program-children) parent problem solving continued care croup parent problem solving continued care croup crisis intervention individual counselling/mentoring & community connections *core components of the snap® orp; †core components of snap® gc at the same time, clinicians had noted that in the snap® mixed-sex groups, girls were either not fully engaged in the clinical process (e.g., they were withdrawn, would model boys’ behaviours, and/or would compete for boys’ attention), or were not supportive of one another (pepler et al., 2010). given that these girls often showed a high prevalence of risk for abuse, a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 336 lack of coping skills (walsh, pepler, & levene, 2002), strained mother-daughter relationships, multiple separations from caregivers (pepler et al., 2010), and troubled family/peer relationships (ehrensaft, 2005), it was felt that a gender-specific intervention was necessary to address such concerns. the snap® gc program’s theoretical foundation is similar to snap® orp’s (e.g., social learning, self-control, and problem solving) but is also guided by feminist perspectives in providing assertiveness and anti-oppression training to these largely mother-led families, as well as a focus on relationship building. snap® gc has a third core component, the girls growing up healthy model, a mother-daughter group that specifically focuses on positive attachment. this component is offered after the snap® girl’s core group has been completed and when the girl in question has reached the age of 9. moving towards a snap® community implementation model evaluation and research conducted on both snap® gender-specific, evidence-based programs demonstrated positive treatment outcomes with moderate to large effect sizes. in general, the program lowers aggressive, bullying, and delinquent behaviours in the short term, with good evidence that these effects can be sustained over the intermediate future (see augimeri, enebrink, et al., 2010; augimeri et al., 2007; pepler et al., 2010; jiang, walsh, & augimeri, 2011; walsh, et al., 2002). there is also some indication that the program produces long-term changes such as preventing involvement in criminal activities in adolescence and adulthood, although more work is clearly needed to isolate the snap® as the key factor preventing this type of negative outcome (see augimeri, pepler, jiang, walsh, & dassinger, 2010). groundbreaking neurological research provides supporting evidence that snap® helps children manifest changes in brain systems responsible for cognitive control and self-regulation (lewis et al., 2008). furthermore, following treatment, snap® families showed an improved ability to “repair” after engaging in difficult parent-child interactions (granic, o’hara, pepler, & lewis, 2007). publication and dissemination of snap® research results generated much interest from communities seeking an effective crime prevention program for young children. snap® group manuals and information were readily distributed to interested organizations without establishing a formal monitoring process. in 1998, funding was received through the national crime prevention centre (ncpc) to develop a snap® resource kit containing treatment manuals, videos, risk assessment tools, and education booklets. these kits provided the necessary information and resource materials to fully replicate the model. in 1999, an effort was begun to maintain consistency with a high standard of quality over the snap® treatment strategies, a snap® license was established. licenses were issued to organizations, clinicians, and educators interested in using the snap® technique for a nominal fee of $1.00. the license simply allowed the developers to monitor which organizations were using snap®. in 2000, with funding from the j.w. mcconnell family foundation, cdi opened the ccco. in addition, the mandate of this dedicated research, training, and dissemination unit focused on the development of a comprehensive gender-sensitive crime prevention strategy for young children in conflict with the law. this strategy involves (a) police-community referral protocols that establish efficient community-based referral mechanisms, (b) clinical risk management tools that assess the potential risk for future antisocial behaviour in young children, and (c) snap® gender-specific programs that serve aggressive and antisocial children and their families (augimeri et al., 2011; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 337 koegl, augimeri, ferrante, walsh, & slater, 2008). with a canadian focus and an international presence, the ccco works collaboratively with researchers, policy-makers, clinicians, and other professionals to advance and implement this three-pronged crime-prevention strategy. in early 2000, the ccco partnered with a number of national and international organizations (e.g., government of yukon, canada; banyan community services, ontario, canada; st. paul public school board, minnesota, united states; and a number of scandinavian organizations including the university of oslo, norway, and several professional groups in sweden) to implement partial and full replications of the snap® orp. this resulted in the ccco creating comprehensive replication budgets, training modules, consultation schedules, and the beginnings of a fidelity and monitoring framework. preliminary evaluation results from the various external replications supported the previous snap® outcomes (see augimeri et al., 2011). banyan community services, the first organization to implement a full snap® orp program (a site funded by ncpc), conducted a third-party multi-year external evaluation that included a wait-list comparison group. significant differences were found in terms of rule breaking, aggression, and conduct problems between the snap® orp and the wait-list control group (see lipman et al., 2008). in an effort to heighten awareness of the need for services for children under 12 in conflict with the law and to determine interest in replicating the snap® model, the ccco focused its energy on “scaling up” during the first six years. much energy was invested in establishing as many snap® affiliate sites as possible, as well as developing training modules, distributing snap® resource materials, and issuing snap® licenses (approximately 80 licenses were issued by 2006). growing interest was also accelerated when the model received among the highest effectiveness designation from accredited reviewers such as the u.s. office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention – model program guides, and the canadian national crime prevention centre – model programs. thus, snap® emerged as a unique model that is accessible, user friendly, and easily adopted. what was now needed for the program was an understanding of how to support and monitor snap® affiliate sites to ensure successful program outcomes and sustainable implementations. in a survey conducted by the ccco (see augimeri, koegl, slater, & ferrante, 2006, fall), snap® affiliate sites reported that the following practice activities would strengthen their snap® replication: participation in snap® research, access to snap® resources and information, ongoing snap® training and consultation, and assistance dealing with snap® implementation issues. a large percentage of sites indicated that connecting with other snap® organizations would also help enhance their abilities to provide sustainable and successful snap® programming within their communities. these findings showed strong support for the creation of a snap® community of practice. a “scaling deeper” process was needed to help focus the ccco’s idea to create a comprehensive framework that would assess the readiness of communities and sites, as well as put into place the implementation, training, consultation, and support mechanisms. to lay the foundation for developing such a framework, the ccco undertook the development of a business plan. the focus was also to put into action a marketing strategy that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 338 included safeguards to preserve control over intellectual properties and ensure product fidelity. the ccco would now take a measured and strategic approach to dissemination. with this strategy, interested organizations would no longer have only the capacity to replicate, but would also be required to enter into an annual licensing agreement that would include required criteria for implementation sites and a snap® accreditation designation rating model. criteria for implementation includes the following: sites must participate in snap® training (this includes a 5-day core snap® training, as well as a 2-day site-specific training to deal with implementation issues); all staff must be trained by the ccco; staff must participate in ongoing consultation activities between year one and year three (which involves ongoing fidelity and integrity activities); members must agree to an annual licensing fee; and, finally, they must participate in data collection and program evaluation activities. this last criterion is especially vital to the ccco as it is important to clinical risk management planning and program quality assurance. the accreditation model that is currently being tested involves three possible snap® designations. an “a” designation indicates that the snap® affiliate site is implementing their program with high integrity and fidelity, and is meeting all required criteria. such a site will be implementing the full snap® model and achieving at least 90% program delivery compliance. a “b” designation indicates that the site has not yet achieved 90% compliance and/or has not been able to implement the full snap® model at this time; however, the commitment to reach full implementation has been negotiated. sites that have achieved at least 90% compliance level for implementing their snap® group components but are not yet a full replication site fall within this category. the final designation a site can receive is a “c” designation. this means that the site has just completed training and no fidelity and integrity checks have yet been completed and/or the site is transitioning from the status of a partial snap® replication site to a full replication site. the developers were aware that this new strategy could result in a decreased number of licensed snap® affiliates due to increased costs and heightened required standards. however, it was not anticipated that this approach would weaken the brand; rather, it was seen as an opportunity to “delve deeper” with a set of partnerships that would provide a strong base to the sustainability of the snap® model and the snap® community of practice. this would include the creation of a dedicated interactive snap® website (www.stopnowandplan.com), electronic newsletters, and teleconference/videoconference communications. a new generation of snap® affiliates the ccco now requires all professionals and/or organizations using snap® to commit to the following implementation standards and principles: 1. replication sites must enter into a formal snap® licensing agreement. 2. the organization’s treatment philosophy should be consistent with cdi’s (e.g., cognitive behavioural family-centred approach). 3. the replication site must have a strong history of collaboration with other social service programs and relevant stakeholders (e.g., child welfare, police, schools). 4. replication sites should allocate full-time, dedicated, and trained staff to operate programs. http://www.stopnowandplan.com/� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 339 5. training and consultation should be built into the implementation plan. 6. any adaptations to the model must be first approved by the ccco. 7. research must be an integral part of the replication. snap® site selection the business plan helped to further formalize and expand the selection process, and new agencies were required to become a snap® affiliate site. this site selection program development process includes eight stages where potential sites must: 1. complete a readiness checklist (e.g., snap® request for qualifications application); 2. participate in a two-hour telephone or on-site needs assessment and information session that determines the availability of appropriate pilot project funding with a plan for sustainability; 3. lead staff to participate in an interview highlighting key program implementation issues (e.g., identifying target population and key stakeholders, developing referral mechanism and evaluation plans); 4. hold a snap® site readiness review meeting that includes a community mobilization meeting with key stakeholder; 5. partake in staff recruitment and training that includes a 5-day full replication training module and an additional 2-day session for lead staff; 6. sign and issue a snap® licensing agreement; 7. provide ongoing snap® affiliate site program implementation support; and 8. participate in ongoing fidelity and integrity activities as stated in the snap® program’s policy and procedures manual and by snap® developers. snap® fidelity and integrity framework treatment integrity is used to determine the accuracy and consistency with which an intervention is implemented (wilkinson, 2006). research has shown that when treatments are implemented with high integrity (e.g., consistency in treatment implementation according to a treatment manual, training from developer/consultant), more successful outcomes are obtained (sterling-turner, watson, & moore, 2002). when program developers are available to provide direct training and consultation to ensure consistency in program implementation (according to program/treatment protocol), treatment integrity has been shown to be higher (sterling-turner et al., 2002). as program developers of snap®, our primary concern is that the model be delivered and implemented effectively. steps have been taken to ensure this (e.g., manualization, integrity checks, licensing standards, and training); however, this does not always guarantee that an affiliate site will be competent in its delivery (patterson et al., 2010). the need for successful implementation and service delivery stems from the notion that in order to attribute treatment outcome to the intervention, the implementation must be consistently and accurately carried out as determined by previous evaluations of the program, historical experience, and so on. early in the development of the snap® model, fidelity and integrity practices were utilized to ensure quality program implementation and adherence to the manuals (day & augimeri, 1996; pepler et al., 2010). lipsey (2009) found that “aside from delinquency risk, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 340 largest and most consistent relationship with recidivism effects is the quality of program implementation with, of course, higher quality associated with bigger effects on recidivism” (p. 141). there are a number of ways to assess treatment integrity that include both direct and indirect methods (kazdin & perepletchikova, 2005), snap® being one such model that uses both methods. snap® fidelity/integrity practices include file audits (indirect) and ongoing monitoring of the snap® parent and children’s groups (direct) using a snap® children’s and/or parent group integrity checklist. in 2009, the ccco began to establish a more comprehensive snap® fidelity rating index (walsh & augimeri, 2009). this emerged from an identified need to monitor new and existing snap® affiliate sites more stringently as part of the established snap® accreditation rating framework and new licensing requirements. in recent years, such practices (fidelity) are becoming the standard for understanding clinical practice by including process of change mechanisms (patterson et al., 2010; schoenwald, heiblum, saldana, & henggeler, 2008). the framework is broken down into a number of subsections that afford a rating for each with an overall fidelity rating at the end. sections include: pre-implementation site selection procedures/requirements: (as outlined in the snap® request for qualification application), this subsection includes a review of the interested organization’s performance standards (e.g., a reputable track record, demonstrated fiscal budget management), a compatible orientation (e.g., client-centred, family focused, cognitivebehavioural), dedicated and adequately trained staff, appropriate physical program space, and a plan for continued program sustainability beyond the pilot period. ongoing site implementation activities: includes training, consultation (onand off-site support), program manuals, internal program integrity and fidelity checks, research and evaluation, team meetings, and assistance with the hiring of program staff. ongoing process of service implementation: includes the tracking of referrals, admission criteria, service utilization, file audits, and ensuring the timely completion of program measures (pre, post, and follow-up). monitoring of suggested clinical risk management strategies: includes reviews of clinical risk management plans, ensuring delivery of the group components according to program manuals, and that snap® treatment services/components adhere to snap® therapeutic principles and orientation (e.g., cognitive-behavioural). dosage monitoring: in relation to risk level utilizing the earls. dosage monitoring consists of the review of a number of treatment components recommended and received, as well as any hours of service. treatment quality: relates to the delivery of the service, which includes facilitator preparedness, skills, and understanding of snap® principles, client satisfaction, and alliance. participant responsiveness: includes child and parent engagement during treatment, goal attainment, and evidence of behavioural change as noted on standardized measures. process and outcome evaluation framework the scientist-practitioner approach helped to establish snap® as an evidence-based practice that enabled the ccco to share knowledge and evidence with others (nationally and internationally), so that the positive impact on children’s lives could be increased exponentially. it is a formula that works – building knowledge, understanding change, and developing effective interventions. in continuing with the spirit of the scientist-practitioner way of thinking, the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 341 ccco introduced an evidence-based implementation evaluation checklist/barometer (see figure 2) that is used to systematically track the various snap® models (snap® orp, snap® gc, and snap® for schools) program planning, evaluation, and research activities. the checklist/barometer is a visualization of each snap® model’s progress. it outlines three stages along a continuum for establishing efficacious interventions: program planning, process evaluation, and outcome evaluation. figure 2: evidence-based implementation evaluation checklist *methodology may vary. ^ fidelity/integrity reviews level i refers to program level supervision, peer review of cases, pre/de-briefs, external case consultations. fidelity/integrity reviews level ii refers to a quantifiable activities/measures conducted for fidelity and scored on a regular bases. ^^ csq client satisfaction data is collected at several point across programming (e.g., post group, post treatment components, and discharge). the greater the number of tasks completed in each stage, the longer and darker the barometer becomes. once the checklist is updated, the barometer indicates (with color-graded bars) the completion rate within the three stages. for example, as seen in figure 2 our snap® orp and gc models have been involved in a variety of process and outcome evaluation and research activities since their implementation in 1985 and 1996 respectively, and have received a higher bar grading/completion rate across all stages than the new snap® for schools model. this newer model is at the beginning stages of its evaluation and research activities and evolved from the snap® orp and gc. community consensus about the need to expand the snap® program, led to the creation of this school-based model. this program is tailored to meet the needs of elementary school-aged children with serious conduct problems. preliminary evaluation results are promising with significant positive behavioural changes being identified (walsh, hong, & augimeri, 2009, 2010). under the program planning stage of the barometer, one of the key steps for all new program implementations is the development of program logic models (millar, simeone, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 342 carnevale, 2001; united way of greater toronto, 2005). a logic model can help to conceptualize the relationship between the program inputs, activities, target group, outputs, and expected outcomes. as part of a snap® replication, sites are required to develop their own program logic model independent of the ccco’s snap® logic model. this exercise enables snap® affiliate sites to begin thinking about their individual program and community needs and linking agency and program resources. under the process evaluation, key activities include tracking: number of referrals, admission criteria, demographic data of clients admitted into service, program and client utilization rates, and cultural competency. process evaluation analyses on these key indicators will help to provide information that describes the clients and families served, and the level of service delivery they have received. for replication sites, this information is helpful in explaining variations in how different children and families respond to the program. do those who get more services or certain services do better than those who get fewer or different services? by following such a systematic approach, programs will be better informed about the processing involved in reaching the ultimate goal of being identified and validated as evidence-based programming. the primary function of a process evaluation is designed to assess the overall implementation of services within a program and whether services were delivered to the target clients. under the outcome evaluation stage of the barometer, several steps are outlined to be taken along the pathway to evidence-based programming (e.g., qualitative and quantitative analyses, pre/post data, use of standardized measures, statistically significant results, sustained effects for at least one year, use of a comparison group, random control trials, replication, and third party external evaluation). we included criteria noted for efficacious and well-established treatments (see brestan & eyberg, 1998; chambless & hollon, 1998; chambless & ollendick, 2001; task force on promotion and dissemination of psychological procedures, 1995). this is an extensive step-by-step process and can take many years to accomplish. the snap® orp and gc models have been moving along this stage of the continuum for some 15 to 25 years. conclusion the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of implementing snap® has led to the need to create replication standards and principles, licensing agreements, accreditation, and fidelity frameworks as outlined in this paper to ensure success. although the new standards and criteria under the annual snap® licensing agreement may seem daunting and challenging, these are designed to act as a safety net to protect the snap® model and guide snap® affiliate sites along their implementation process. in the past two years under the new licensing agreement, more than 25 organizations have transitioned into the newly established snap® standards and requirements, with a additional number slated for the coming years. these include a variety of different types of organizations (e.g., accredited children’s mental health centres, community based and government organizations, and schools) across canada, the united states, europe, and australia with promising and replicable results (e.g., lipman et al., 2008; lipman, kenny, brannan, o’grady, & augimeri, 2010; canfield & burke, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 343 it is apparent that creating an efficacious, well-established, and recognized program takes a team of dedicated scientists and practitioners. it requires commitment, support, and resources from the host organization, particularly when such programs begin their incubation within a community-based setting. this process requires patience and extensive monitoring and documentation that can expand across decades. if successful, replication may occur. the rollout of the model will necessitate that developers initiate a replication, implementation, and dissemination strategy. this requires further support and resources to ensure its viability as evidenced in the evolution of snap® and the creation of the ccco. there are five important aspects of implementation and replication that deserve to be reiterated in regard to ensuring successful snap® outcomes: 1. adherence to the model is critical. an integral tool used to ensure this is the use of program manuals. manuals can be seen as limiting a clinician’s creativity (weisz et al., 2005). however, given that snap® is a cognitive-behavioural social learning skills-based approach, requiring a certain level of knowledge, understanding, and expertise, the manuals provide clinicians with clear and distinct direction on how to implement the components with the highest integrity and fidelity (corrigan, steiner, mccracken, blaser, & barr, 2001). 2. restraint from making modifications is essential. we understand the importance of making programs “fit” within an existing practice or make it more “culturally appealing”. for example, during the implementation process at one of our snap® aboriginal sites, it was requested that the snap® learning log (a form that helps the client document the process of learning what happens when they get angry or upset by identifying the trigger, body cues, thoughts and feelings, how they handle the situation, and how they incorporate snap® in the learning) be altered to resemble the shape of a “medicine wheel” to make it more culturally sensitive. such minor adaptations such as changing the esthetic appeal of a learning tool can be a helpful improvement, one that may offer a different look, but not dramatically change the content of what is to be achieved. caution and careful consideration must be taken so that key treatment ingredients are not altered in any way. 3. training and ongoing consultation is essential. it is an investment that both the replication and host agencies commit to provide clinical staff with the necessary skills and information to implement the program as intended (lipsey, 2009). it also provides ongoing communication, feedback support, and a quality assurance mechanism (schoenwald et al., 2008). 4. engagement in ongoing fidelity/integrity audits ensures the program is being delivered with the highest possible efficacy to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved (dane & schneider, 1998; forgatch, patterson, & degarmo, 2005; schoenwald et al., 2008). auditing program integrity and fidelity is the responsibility of both the host organization and the replication agency as part of good clinical supervision and program management. 5. selecting the right staff is paramount to program success. hiring dedicated, passionate, knowledgeable, and skilled team members is important for such variables as staff turnover and high dropout rates that can affect quality and delivery of services (lipsey, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 344 for example, clinicians have to be able to engage high-risk clients and establish therapeutic relationships. it is obvious that implementing and replicating the model is not an undertaking that we have addressed without an awareness of the complexity for insuring its generalizability. we have attempted to maintain the contents of the program without compromising its initial integrity. we have held true to our belief that achieving successful outcomes and changing life course trajectories of these high-risk children and families has been the principal focus of the snap® model, and brings us back to why we began this journey. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 330-352 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 345 references allan, a., & narrne, j. 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(2007). developmental pathways of aggressive girls: a gender-sensitive approach to risk assessment, intervention, and follow-up. unpublished doctoral dissertation, york university, toronto, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 29–53 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019937 promoting youth’s self-empowerment in residential care — the influence of the organisation: the first year of the project “creating futures” and its swiss–hungarian community of practice anna schmid abstract: in the project “creating futures”, youths, staff, and leaders from youth homes in switzerland and hungary collaborate in a community of practice. their goal is to develop organisational innovations that allow each of the youth homes to more effectively promote the self-empowerment of young people: their ability to take charge of their own lives and realise their own ideas of the future. this paper reports results, learnings, and first impacts regarding both the topic and the collaborative process in the project’s first formalised year, 2019. in developing its ways of working, the community of practice aims to engage as many persons as possible in each youth home. through focus group discussions, a literature review, and a young expert exchange, organisational factors that promote selfempowerment in residential care have been identified. representatives of each youth home have selected those of most interest and have begun to assess their existing good practice as well as needs and potentials for innovation. the article includes the voices of participants as it reflects on the requirements for, and benefits and challenges of, youth participation and collaboration within a highly diverse community of practice. keywords: creating futures, child, youth, care leaver, residential care, empowerment, participation, protagonism, community of practice, organisation, development, innovation, hungary, switzerland, international anna schmid phd is an independent expert on youth care and organisation development, a board member and international representative at fice switzerland, and project leader of “creating futures”. email: anna.schmid@fice.ch mailto:anna.schmid@fice.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 30 motivation and problem identification international research shows that a considerable number of young people with experience of residential care do not succeed in establishing sustainable lives for themselves. more frequently than their peers in the general population, they are affected by unemployment, homelessness, delinquency, and self-harming behaviours (burgund & rácz, 2015; gabriel & stohler, 2008; stein, 2014; stein & munro, 2008). youths’ ability to take charge of their own lives and create and realise their own ideas of the future is one of the main prerequisites for their success in creating sustainable lives for themselves. youth homes in switzerland and hungary want to be able to promote this self-empowerment of young people more effectively. with this purpose, they have formed a community of practice (cop) where youths, leaders, and staff collaborate to develop concrete organisational innovations. in 2019, funding granted by the mercator foundation switzerland has allowed the project to formally enter its main phase. this article presents the activities, methodology, results, learnings, and first impacts of this year. the motivation for the creating futures project, the identification of the problem it addresses, and the overall project design have been described in a previous article in this journal (schmid & herczeg, 2018) and, therefore, are summarised only briefly here and with a focus on emerging aspects of the project. an overview of the project in german can be found in schmid et al. (2020). project members and organisation the cop includes members from five organisations: the swiss youth homes gfellergut sozialpädagogisches zentrum [gfellergut sociopedagogical centre] and stiftung jugendnetzwerk [youth network foundation], together with the hungarian child and youth homes cseppkő and szilágyi erszébet of cseppkő gyermekotthon központ [cseppkő children's home centre] in budapest and the group homes of szabolcs-szatmár-bereg megyei gyermekvédelmi központ [szabolcs-szatmár-bereg county child protection centre] in mátészalka. the swiss homes are attended by adolescents aged 14 to 17 and young adults aged 18 to 24 in residential and associated settings, and the hungarian homes by children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 in residential settings, and young adults aged 18 to 24 in associated settings. over its entire duration, the project is designed to include active participation of approximately 400 youth aged 14 to 24, 20 firstand second-level leaders, and 300 staff members. under the leadership of the author, the youth homes formed the cop, which has defined a topic and goals, designed the project, and determined the central elements of its methodological approach. the cop is currently implementing the project. a small binational scientific team, also led by the author, provides the cop and project with the necessary empirical knowledge as well as scientific methods and services (e.g., moderating, analysing, and interpreting focus group discussions). at the beginning of march 2020, the project moved from its original location, zhaw zurich university international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 31 of applied sciences, to the international federation of educative communities (fice) switzerland. together with the hungarian fice expert network nenesz, fice switzerland has played an important role in the project from the start, providing a sounding board, advice, contacts, and opportunities for disseminating the project nationally and internationally. project goals the project has two aims: to develop concrete innovations, and to cultivate an innovation process that, through its high degree of participation, stimulates and promotes sustained learning and development processes for all those involved on the personal, professional, and organisational levels. innovations may concern any aspect (or aspects) of the organisation, such as the physical or organisational structure; interaction of staff with young people; the participation of young people in organisational matters; the selection, training, or supervision of staff; attitudes and values; and the interaction of the youth home with external stakeholders. among the planned outcomes are:  that youth homes will have greater capacity than before to promote the self-empowerment of young people and to make good use of their expert knowledge for organisational development and innovation; and  that young people will have a greater capacity than before to take charge of their own lives, develop their own ideas of the future, and realise them actively and sustainably, and that they will do so to a greater extent and in greater numbers than before; furthermore, that they will have increased their capacity to actively help shape the youth home and thus part of their living environment. project design and methodology the creating futures project was originally planned to run from january 2019 to august 31, 2021; due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will probably be extended into 2022. the project consists of four modules. module 1 has the goal of gathering knowledge about the self-empowerment of young people in residential care and organisational aspects that promote it. it includes a literature review (see appendix) and focus group discussions with young people, leaders, and staff in the youth homes. module 2 has the goal of developing concrete organisational innovations to promote the self-empowerment of young people more effectively. activities include the definition of a framework of analysis, and the identification of good practice, needs, and gaps regarding the promotion of self-empowerment in the youth homes, as well as the development and piloting of innovations. the framework of analysis is presented in the results section of this paper. module 3 will see the evaluation of the innovations observed, and of the processes in the cop and the youth homes that have led to them; a final framework embodying these innovations and processes will be constructed. module 4 will see the conclusion of the project as well as the dissemination of learnings, innovations, and experiences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 32 the project methodology is participatory and collaborative and, as such, is coherent with the project goals. it has the following main characteristics:  young people aged 14 to 24 collaborate on a voluntary basis in all parts of the project as “young experts”: protagonists and experts of their own lives in and outside of the youth homes, together with leaders and staff. their participation corresponds to the fifth through eighth degrees of the “ladder of participation” defined by hart (1992): 5: “consulted and informed”, 6: “adult-initiated, shared decisions with children”, 7: “child initiated and directed”, and 8: “child-initiated, shared decisions with adults” (pp. 12–14).  the cop harnesses the diversity of different persons (young experts, leaders, staff), youth homes, and country contexts to learn from each other and with each other, reflect on current practice, widen horizons beyond each youth home’s daily practice, inspire new ideas, develop concrete innovations, and support each other as “critical friends” in the process. this is in keeping with the definition of a cop by wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner (2015), and wenger’s (2009) recommendations regarding cops as learning spaces.  a participation model defines three different modes of collaboration by young people, leaders, and staff of the youth homes. first, delegations from the five youth homes, each consisting of one leader, one social pedagogue, and at least one young expert, form the cop core group. as core group members, they jointly collaborate in: (a) the planning, organisation, and steering of the project; (b) the reflection on results and learnings; (c) dialogic knowledge development; and (d) the evaluation of the participatory, collaborative learning and development process, as well as its results, learnings, products, and impacts. importantly, as leaders and catalysts of the project in each youth home, the cop core group members work on ensuring the involvement of as many young experts, leaders, and staff from their youth home as possible, keeping them informed and making sure that their impulses, ideas, and feedback are shared in the core group in a mutual exchange with the representatives of the other youth homes. second, in each youth home, young experts, leaders, and staff from the homes actively collaborate as “experts” in the project, participating, for example, in: focus groups, young expert exchanges, the analysis of good practice and development needs, the development and testing of concrete innovations, and the dissemination of results and learnings. third, all remaining staff, young people, and leaders of the youth homes are “observers”. they are informed about the project and its activities and may, at any time, contribute ideas, knowledge, and feedback, or choose to become more active in a project activity as “experts”. wenger and colleagues (2002) describe different intensities of participation as typical of a cop.  the project does not strive for “one solution that fits all”. each youth home has its specific reality, conditions, possibilities, limitations, challenges, and potentials. accordingly, each youth home, involving its three actor groups, organises itself, implements the project in its own way, and creates its own innovations, guided by the general project design and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 33 methodology, and by supportive reflection and exchange with the other youth homes as “critical friends”. importantly, each youth home documents its activities, methods, and results in order to share learnings and reflect on them with the other youth homes in the cop. literature survey in processes of self-empowerment, people take matters into their own hands, become aware of their abilities, and learn to use their individual and collective resources to establish self-determined lives. based on this definition, self-empowerment must be considered a prerequisite for a life led independently and sustainably. the promotion of self-empowerment of young people in the context of residential care can only take place in “co-production” between staff and youth (herriger, 2010, pp. 16–20). a clear challenge for youth homes that promote young people’s ability to “take charge of their own lives” lies in the fact that the lives of young people in residential care are, to a great extent, in the charge of others. the young people have not usually chosen to be in a youth home, nor can they determine the structure and rules of daily life and practice in the youth home. for information on youth homes as organisations, readers may refer to schmid and herczeg (2018). creating futures embraces a systemic understanding of organisations as open and contingent entities as described in the new st. gallen management model (rüegg-stürm, 2005), which is in common use in german-speaking countries. the model views the organisation as a whole, describing it in terms of six dimensions: environmental spheres (society, nature, technology, economy), structuring forces (strategy, structures, culture), stakeholders, processes (management processes, core processes, support processes), interaction issues (resources, norms and values, concerns and interests), and modes of development. according to howaldt et al. (2016), a social innovation is a new combination and/or a new configuration of social practices in certain areas of action or social contexts prompted by certain actors or constellations of actors in an intentional targeted manner with the goal of better satisfying or answering needs and problems than is possible on the basis of established practices. (p. 27) creating futures aims to develop such innovations in the youth homes as social contexts and within the larger social context they are embedded in as well as in their specific areas of action. these innovations will better satisfy the need for promoting the self-empowerment of young people than the currently established practices do. the new combinations or configurations may concern any of the dimensions of the organisation described in the new st. gallen management model (rüeggstürm, 2005) mentioned above. howaldt and colleagues (2016) pointed out that nowadays, “customers no longer serve as suppliers for information about their needs (as in traditional innovation management); they make contributions to the process of developing new products to resolve problems” (p. 27). this involvement of addressees not only helps to ensure the fit between international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 34 their wishes and needs and the innovations, it also increases the diversity of perspectives and thereby promotes innovation (hewlett et al., 2013). according to wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner (2015), cops are groups of people brought together by a “shared domain of interest” and “competence”. they “engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. they build relationships that enable them to learn from each other” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner. 2015. p. 2). cops “organize themselves, meaning they set their own agendas and establish their own leadership” (wenger & snyder, 2000, para. 9). members participate in a cop to different degrees of intensity, usually either in the core of the community, in active groups, or in the community’s periphery (wenger et al., 2002). a cop, when it works well, is a “quintessential example of a social learning space” (wenger, 2009, p. 3). wenger (2009) considered enabling social learning spaces, and inspiring the learning citizenship these spaces depend on, to be an art. describing those who do so successfully, he wrote: social artists tend to be collaborative. they care that people feel ownership of their learning space. they listen to others and are very good at including multiple voices. they create social containers that turn conflict into learning opportunities. they are patient with social processes. they do not seek control and are comfortable with a high level of uncertainty. they can tolerate chaos, dissension, and negotiation.… they care about making things happen. they will (gently) twist arms if need be. they will inspire people to do things these people never thought they would do and end up feeling good about doing.… social artists help others discover new part of themselves. (p. 9) wenger-trayner (2014) elaborated a framework for assessing, planning, and social learning in cops with the following elements: (1) a network [community] member participates in a network [community] activity that generates interest or excitement (immediate value); (2) this participation creates an insight, strengthens his or her [the member’s] resolve or forges a new relationship (potential value); (3) the member returns home and does something with this new insight, inspiration or connection (applied value); (4) … which leads to an improvement in [practice] … (realized value); (5) it might even lead to transformation in the way business [practice] is done (transformative value). (p. 3) present investigation module 1: raising knowledge module 1, which was implemented from january to august 2019, had the goal of gathering knowledge about self-empowerment of young people in residential care and the organisational aspects that promote it. it also saw the first months of collaboration of the cop in the project’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 35 now-formalised setting. table 1 shows the main activities of module 1 and the main topics of knowledge raised. in addition, self-designed and self-directed project activities took place in the participating youth homes throughout the module. the activities and their results are described in more detail below. table 1. main activities of module 1 activity topic first binational cop core group meeting, zurich (3 days) structure of the child and youth care systems in both countries, especially residential care information and participation processes in the participating youth homes national cop core group meeting, budapest and zurich (0.5 days each) how to recognise concretely that a young person in the youth home has taken charge of their life young expert exchange, budapest (3 days) characteristics of the “ideal” youth home where all young people take charge of their own lives recommendations for other young people, leaders, and staff regarding how they can promote young people taking charge of their own lives focus group discussions and literature review; internal report organisational aspects that contribute to, or hinder, the promotion of selfempowerment of young people in residential care cop core group meetings table 2 shows the composition of each cop core group meeting that took place during module 1. with a few variations, the same core group members participated in all cop meetings. all meetings were facilitated by the author and co-facilitated by two hungarian members of the project’s scientific team, both trained psychologists from one of the youth homes who also served as translators. table 2. composition of cop core group meetings young experts leaders staff core group hu ch hu ch hu ch female male total binat. cop 03/19 3 8 3 3 3 2 13 9 22 nat. cop hu 06/19 2 4 5 9 2 11 nat. cop ch 07/19 6 2 4 4 8 12 note. hu = hungary; ch = switzerland. methods used in cop core group meetings are: (a) content-based forms of exchange and getting to know each other, (b) forms of sharing and producing knowledge (e.g., presentation of project activities and results in the youth homes, joint elaboration of definitions), and (c) reflection and feedback methods (e.g., discursive joint evaluation of learnings regarding project content, process, and methodology, aggregated by youth home or by actor group, and joint elaboration of recommendations). the cop core group members collaborate in the selection and design of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 36 methods, often deciding for themselves when working on a topic which subgroups and which methods they will use. the first binational cop core group meeting in march 2019 served as the official start of the project. on the process level, the results were that cop core group members had become better acquainted with each other, had learnt about the participating swiss youth homes through visits, had had first experiences of collaborating in the formalised setting, had discussed roles and taken decisions on communication in the project, and had discussed next steps. on the level of content, the participants had increased their knowledge of the child and youth care systems in both countries and of aspects of management and coordination in each youth home. during this meeting, some seeming imperfections turned out to be seminal for collaboration and facilitation in the cop. in a first example, several participating leaders and staff did not want to discuss a topic that the facilitator (the author) had proposed because they felt that it had been covered sufficiently in their professional training already. faced with a choice between insisting on the preplanned programme and passing the reins to the participants of the meeting, the facilitator came to the conclusion that the latter was appropriate to a cop setting while the former was not, and asked the participants for their suggestions on how to proceed. the participants readily made recommendations, underlining explicitly that their criticism was meant as a constructive contribution to the success of the meeting and the project. as the meeting continued, they actively collaborated in structuring it, with good results regarding content, in an enjoyable and constructive atmosphere. ever since, the cop core members’ ownership of the process and practice of collaboration has never wavered. a seeming imperfection of facilitation allowed this fundamental pillar of the cop and the project to manifest itself and, consequently, gain further strength. a second occurrence made apparent the existence, and the value, of differences between the cop core group members, their organisations, and national contexts. the participants from each youth home were asked to write down the concrete steps they would take to ensure that everybody in the youth home knew about the project and that as many people as possible would get involved. at first, with statements such as: “it’s obvious how to organise this, we do this all the time and there is no need to discuss it”, some participants resisted. assuming that such processes might differ between organisations and countries in spite of these statements, the facilitator asked one of the participant groups to give a short oral description of how they usually organised such projects. one of the hungarian groups described their process. after the first few sentences, some swiss participants expressed astonishment, since in their youth home the process would be different. the ensuing lively discussion resulted in descriptions of five different processes, one per youth home. all processes had in common the important role of young experts, who would inform and motivate their peers. the discussion of these processes led to the suggestion by participants to provide each other with an overview of the child and youth care system in each of the countries. in a self-organised manner, young experts, staff, and leaders from each country prepared such a presentation and discussed it with their counterparts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 37 in the two national cop core group meetings — in budapest in june and zurich in july — the youth homes presented and discussed project activities that had taken place since the preceding binational meeting. in each youth home, two questions had been discussed with young people and staff: “how do i recognise a person who takes charge of their own life?” and “what helps, or hinders, a young person taking charge of their own life?”. the main purpose was for the youth homes to engage youth and staff in active discussions about the topic as a preparation for further internal collaboration inside each youth home. in two of the hungarian and one of the swiss homes, the discussions with youths were led by the home’s young expert core group member. one youth home had even involved a further two youth homes in the same administrative region. in another youth home, a cork board was installed at the initiative of young experts and used for continued exchange on the topic. in one of the swiss youth homes, three young experts and cop core group members were internal project leaders involved in running and documenting activities, and had chosen for their motto a quotation from the autobiography of mahatma gandhi: “the future depends on what you do today”. in both countries, young experts and staff were said to have felt touched and interested by the topic and motivated to continue working on it. in several instances, young experts enriched discussions with pointed, thought-provoking statements; for example, in the case of one of the swiss youth homes: “if i take charge of my own life but do something that does not fit your [staff’s, society’s] ideas, then you [adults] think that i am not taking charge of my own life?” in addition, first tentative results from the focus group discussions about organisational aspects that influence the self-empowerment of young people in the youth homes were presented at the meeting by hungarian and swiss scientific team members and discussed by the participants. young expert exchange the objective of the young expert exchange (yee) was to develop ideas of what an “ideal youth home where all young people take charge of their own lives” would look like, and to develop concrete recommendations for leaders, staff, and other young people regarding the contributions that these could make to such a youth home. the results would serve as a kind of compass in the continuation of the project, helping to maintain the strategic direction of the innovation process, and ensuring the focus on the young people as protagonists of their self-empowerment and personal development. the original goal of discussing the results of the focus groups and literature review with the young experts could not be realised due to delays in the analysis; however, since then, these discussions have been happening directly in the youth homes. the yee took place in july 2019 in budapest with 21 young experts (11 from hungary, 10 from switzerland; 9 female, 12 males; 8 aged 14–17, 13 aged 18–24) from all five youth homes. among the young experts were several cop core group members from each country. six staff from switzerland and three from hungary accompanied their participants to help facilitate the meeting and provide logistic support. two of the hungarian staff members, who were also members of the scientific team, were co-facilitators of the meeting along with the author, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 38 provided translation. the meeting lasted three days, with the swiss group staying for an additional day to enjoy the beautiful city. the young experts from the cop core group began the yee with an introduction to the project and its current status. the yee continued with discussions and presentations in groups of differing sizes and compositions, partly self-organised by the young experts and self-led, but with the support of the facilitators and accompanying staff of the youth homes. creative methods were used in the discussions, such as making collages and drawings. short, fun games supported activation and focus. the fact that all those involved stayed at the same hostel and spontaneously organised free-time evening activities together further contributed to the exchange and collaboration among the participants. some aspects of the “ideal youth home where all young people take charge of their own lives” named by the hungarian participants were: team-building among the young people of the same house group; more staff, with greater resources that allow them to pay attention and show affection to young people; stricter screening and selection of staff; the leader of the youth home acting as legal guardian (rather than the state-assigned guardians often perceived as too distant); a reward system honouring young people’s achievements; youth advocating for their own interests through formal youth representation in the youth homes; and opportunities for the development of artistic talent. the swiss young experts mentioned, among other things, that such an “ideal” youth home would have less turnover of young people, and admittance of a new young person to a group would be undertaken jointly by staff and the young people already present. adolescents would organise interesting excursions together and decide for themselves how long to go out in the evenings, or on which weekend they would visit their families. hungarian and swiss participants sometimes differed in their recommendations. the young experts from hungary more often mentioned material support (state funding for young adults, easier access to higher education, support finding a job and a place to live when leaving, etc.), and being taught practical life skills, as preconditions for self-empowerment. this may be due to their group including a higher number of young adults than the swiss group. however, it may also reflect different conditions for residential care in the two countries, such as differences in the finances available to the youth homes and young people, or in unemployment rates. regarding the recommendations for how leaders, staff, and young people could contribute to such a youth home, the young experts from both countries directed some of their advice to all three actor groups equally. this suggests that they indeed perceive the three groups to be cocreators of daily life in the youth home. the swiss young experts emphasised that leaders, staff, and young people should all be open to new things, communicate and collaborate well with each other, be motivated, never lose hope, and “create big things by taking small steps”. the hungarian young experts recommended team building for all three actor groups as well as a focus on affection, or “love”. the young experts from both countries also emphasised the necessity of good relations between leaders and youth and closeness of leaders to daily practice with statements such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 39 as: “leaders should go to the youth home groups more and see their reality. they should reconsider the rules for living together more often.” throughout the exchange, the young experts, of their own volition, discussed, and were fascinated by, differences and similarities between their countries, cultures, youth care systems, and youth homes. on the last day, the young experts presented their results to a larger audience in one of the hungarian youth homes. they were impressed that, in addition to the three leaders of the hungarian youth homes, the director general of the hungarian directorate general of social affairs and child protection attended the presentation and welcomed the results of the young experts as being of great interest and importance. several staff members and some young people from the hungarian youth homes who had not gone to summer camps were also in the audience. due to the fact that the short film (mayer, 2017) about the exploratory 2017 yee that took place during the project’s preparation phase had been successful in promoting the project within the participating youth homes as well as in attracting project financing and presenting the project in the wider expert community, the 2019 yee was also documented in a short film in english, hungarian, and german (mayer, 2019). focus group discussions and literature review the goal of the focus group discussions and literature review was to explore which aspects of the organisation promote, and which hinder, the self-empowerment of young people in residential care, based on the explicit and implicit knowledge of young experts, leaders, and staff, and on generalised empirical knowledge retrieved from the scientific literature. these aspects would be used to define the framework of analysis in the subsequent module phase 2a. focus group discussions were chosen in order to make visible the knowledge available in the participating youth homes themselves, led by the assumption that recognising the great and diverse knowledge resources already present in the three actor groups would stimulate and strengthen their ability to carry the innovation process forward. the focus group discussions were held in the manner suggested by krueger and casey (2015). an interview guide was used, containing a few open subquestions to the main question, “which organisational aspects of the youth homes promote the self-empowerment of adolescents and young adults, and which hinder it?” young experts, staff, and leaders participated in separate groups. the discussions lasted about 90 minutes each and were moderated in the local language by a psychologist from the scientific team in each country (in switzerland, by the author). participation was voluntary. a total of 13 discussions took place: one with young experts and one with staff in each of the five youth homes, one with all the leaders from the hungarian youth homes, and one each with the level 1 and level 2 leaders from the swiss homes. a total of 69 people participated. in hungary, 10 adolescents aged 14 to 17 and 10 young adults aged 18 to 24 participated, and in switzerland nine adolescents and five young adults; the youth comprised equal numbers of males and females. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 40 in addition, a systematic search of the scientific literature in german and english published between 2004 and 2019 was completed in switzerland, using the relevant scientific publication databases web of science, eric, proquest, ovid, fachportal pädagogik, and publisa, with search strings such as ((empowerment) and ("youth home*" or "residential care" or "care leaver*" or "children’s home*" or "children in care" or "institutional care")). this wide search yielded only 14 texts that referred explicitly to at least parts of the question posed (see appendix). search strings that included the term “organisation” or subterms thereof yielded no hits whatsoever. there was even less hungarian literature explicitly addressing the topic of empowerment in residential care; this remained true when the search was extended to project reports that had not appeared in scientific publications. the results of the review confirm that even though organisational aspects of residential care both enable and constrain empowerment, there is a paucity of literature that explicitly addresses the connections between youth empowerment in residential care, and the organisational aspects of the institutions in question. clearly, creating futures is an innovative project, as it brings these topics together, producing both knowledge and the application of that knowledge in practice. methods of data analysis the sound recordings of the focus group discussions were anonymised and transcribed. together with the literature found, they were coded as suggested by kuckartz & rädliker (2019), using the software maxqda in a content-structuring qualitative content analysis. two members of the project’s scientific team, hungarian researchers from the university of pécs, analysed the hungarian data. they developed different subcategories from their material than did the swiss team. this had the advantage that the thematic focuses relevant to each country became apparent but meant that the results could not be directly compared. the advantage was considered to outweigh the disadvantage, as the project’s methodological focus is to use diversity for the reflection of own practice and as inspiration for new perspectives and ideas. results the results of the focus group discussion and literature analysis were summarised in a 50-page internal cop working paper in both german (schmid et al., 2019a) and hungarian (schmid et al., 2019b). rather than aiming to formulate a final answer to the question posed (an inappropriate endeavour within the constructivist and contingent paradigm of the organisation), the working paper presents the panorama of knowledge raised, structured by country and source (young experts, leaders, staff, literature). the results of the analyses of the focus group discussions and literature reviewed were grouped into 11 main categories and their subcategories, as shown in table 3. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 41 table 3. categorisation of key points from focus group discussions and literature review main category subcategory structural characteristics of the youth home location, size, structure, bureaucracy structure of youth home as hindrance in itself sociopedagogical staff availability of staff characteristics of staff education and training of staff expert knowledge self-reflection staff management sociopedagogical processes duration and termination individualised, gradual, transition process fit of setting stability approaches and methods (self-)empowerment through self-determination (self-)empowerment through co-production (self-)empowerment through being able to try out by oneself formal education promotion of professional, personal, and social skills focus on strengths promotion of critical thinking, independent opinion individual attention to the person understanding of trauma time and space for reflection situational application of thought models and methods staff attitudes belief in skills, potentials; “meet at eye level” deficit-oriented attitude young people’s relationships family peers sociopedagogical staff problematic relationships mentors network young people’s own resources identity, roots, own life history of young people further aspects society state limited financial resources diversity international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 42 several findings from the focus group discussions and the literature reflected the inherent paradoxes in residential care that youth homes have to navigate continuously: structures defined by the youth home versus spaces and opportunities for youth taking charge of their own lives; youth protection versus youth empowerment; collective setting versus individualised attention; remunerated job versus a requirement for staff to have high intrinsic motivation and personal, even affective, commitment; and so on. since this article aims to give an overview of the project activities and results of a whole year, we will not attempt here to illustrate each category and subcategory with the rich and diverse knowledge gathered. categories and knowledge raised were discussed in detail in the binational cop meeting in september 2019 and continue to be discussed and further specified in the cop core group and in each youth home throughout the project. in a major milestone, the cop core group has used the categories to create the framework of analysis in phase 2b of the project. in doing so, it observed that different actor groups and different youth homes set different focuses (see table 6). interestingly, when the author correlated the above results with the new st. gallen management model’s dimensions of an organisation (rüegg-stürm, 2005), it became clear that the model includes several internal and external aspects of organisations that in the youth homes could potentially impact the promotion of youth’s self-empowerment, yet these had barely been mentioned, or were not mentioned at all, in either the focus groups or the literature reviewed. these aspects are shown in table 4. even though these aspects were not mentioned, or barely mentioned, it is likely that they, too, impact the self-empowerment of young people in youth homes. for example, a young person attempting to realise their own ideas of the future has very different opportunities in a flourishing economy and a truly inclusive society compared to a difficult economy with a high unemployment rate, or a highly prejudiced society. a youth home, therefore, must be prepared to customise its approaches and conditions in order to promote a particular young person’s self-empowerment. this principle can be applied in many ways. a youth home that seeks collaboration with young people’s families and other relevant parties as important stakeholders will have more opportunities to promote the self-empowerment of young people than one that does not seek such alliances. a youth home that involves young people in redesigning its mission statement or pedagogical concept will be better placed to promote young people’s self-empowerment than one where young people can merely choose the colour of paint for the walls. the organisational aspects summarised in table 4 were communicated to the cop in the working paper, with the suggestion that the youth homes consider exploring them further in their reflections and analyses. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 43 table 4. additional categories, derived from the new st. gallen management model main category subcategory environmental spheres economy (e.g., jobs, apprenticeships) society (aspects promoting self-empowerment, e.g., support, potentials, chances) stakeholders state as lawmaker, financier, administrator/supervisor of the youth home family competing organisations (e.g., re: finances, staff) cooperating partner organisations (school, health services providers, etc.) private donors media interaction issues between youth home and stakeholders norms and values (e.g., norms, values, and expectations of families or young people) concerns and interests (e.g., expectations of private donors) processes: management processes normative management (development of vision, mission, concepts, etc.) strategy development, taking into account the different stakeholders and interest groups (e.g., involving the young people) processes: support processes administrative processes (e.g., entry process of the young person into the youth home) human resources processes (e.g., staff recruitment processes) structuring forces: structure infrastructure of the youth home (single or shared bedrooms, shared living spaces, garden, sports area, etc.) structuring forces: culture explicit and implicit cultures and subcultures in the youth home young people’s subcultures in the youth home diversity organisational development modes optimisation (development in small steps based on past experience) renewal (development in big steps, redesigning parts of the organisation, e.g., introducing a new sociopedagogical model) at the second binational cop core group meeting, described in the next section, the members received the results of the focus group discussions and literature review with great interest. several members pointed out that it was particularly helpful to see the youth homes’ own specific knowledge rather than “only” the knowledge from literature which, with its higher degree of generalisation and abstraction, they perceived as somehow more distant from their realities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 44 module phases 2a and 2b: framework of analysis and its application held during three days in september 2019 in pilis, hungary, the second binational cop core group meeting had the goals of (a) assessing and understanding the results of the focus group discussions and complementary literature review, thus concluding module 1; (b) jointly creating the framework of analysis of module phase 2a; (c) kicking off module phase 2b, the analyses of good practice and innovation needs and potentials in the youth homes; and (d) planning the project activities to take place in 2020. the composition of participants in the second binational cop core group meeting is shown in table 5. table 5. participants in the second binational cop core group meeting in hungary young experts leaders staff core group hu ch hu ch hu ch female male total binat. cop 09/19 3 3 4 2 3 2 9 8 17 note. hu = hungary; ch = switzerland. the methodology of the meeting was equivalent to that of the previous meetings, albeit with a greater degree of self-organisation of the group. one group member, a social pedagogue with one of the swiss youth homes, had designed outdoor activities to introduce and focus on some of the topics. the meeting was facilitated by the author and co-facilitated by a psychologist and a social pedagogue from one of the hungarian youth homes, both members of the project’s scientific team, who also served as translators. the two researchers from the university of pécs were in attendance to present and discuss the results from their analysis of the hungarian data. module phase 2a saw the definition of a framework of analysis. this framework consists of all aspects mentioned in the working paper (including those not mentioned in the focus group discussions and literature) and, for each youth home, a subset of aspects that its cop core group members chose as a starting point for their analysis of module phase 2b. the youth homes will further extend their basic frameworks in the implementation of their analyses. first, each meeting participant chose those topics from the working paper that they felt had the most potential for developing innovations in their youth home that would more effectively support the self-empowerment of young people. interestingly, the choices differed somewhat according to actor group and country, as shown in table 6. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 45 table 6. topic choices by actor group and country actor group hungary switzerland young expert relationships, network young people’s own resources identity structural characteristics of the youth home sociopedagogical staff young people’s own resources leader work, profession, finances structure of the youth home per se hinders self-empowerment training and education of staff sociopedagogical staff leadership and management approaches and methods, especially regarding trauma staff independence (practical life skills) focus on the strengths of young people relationships, network stability in sociopedagogical processes promoting an understanding of trauma believing in the abilities and possibilities of young people; interaction “at eye level” the team from each youth home (young expert or experts, leader, staff member) then agreed on the subset of aspects they would use as a starting point for their analysis, as shown in table 7. table 7. aspects chosen by each team as a starting point for analysis youth home aspects for analysis youth home a (hungary) independence (practical life skills) relationships (especially outside the youth home, in the family) own resources of young people (with particular focus on those who seem “undermotivated”) youth home b (hungary) independence (practical life skills); own resources of young people; identity, roots, own life history of young people; focus on strengths relationships (family, peers, staff, mentors, network) staff training, structure of the youth home youth home c (hungary) independence (practical life skills) identity, roots, own life history of young people youth home a (switzerland) staff (availability, characteristics) staff attitudes such as belief in the abilities and possibilities of young people methods and approaches youth home b (switzerland) methods and approaches, especially regarding trauma staff: recruit and choose suitable workers; keep them “fit” own resources of young people, “make them shine” the comparison between table 6 and table 7 shows that aspects chosen by the young experts were adopted by each youth home. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 46 to start module phase 2b, the team from each youth home next planned a schedule and selected methods for analysing the chosen aspects to determine areas of existing good practice and areas where innovation is most needed or has the greatest potential benefit. they also planned how to involve as many young experts, staff, and leaders as possible. a wide range of methods was suggested, including questionnaires and group discussions. for example, three young experts from one swiss youth home offered to make a short version of the 50-page working paper as a basis for the analysis. the team from one of the hungarian youth homes announced that they would continue involving a further two youth homes from their region, extending the project to a total of 44 house groups (raising the number of young people involved by approximately 200). both the analyses and the creation of the first proposals for innovation would be completed by means of a competition that each house group could enter. the review board would include three young experts, three staff, and three leaders; entrants were to present their ideas at an open forum, and the winning house group would gain use of the youth home’s vehicle for a day trip of their choice. regarding their existing good practice, the team emphasised their active promotion of roma language, music, and dancing in collaboration with members of the large local roma community. the group from another hungarian youth home mentioned creating and using “manga” cartoons and board games to support activities related to the promotion of self-empowerment. also, they would launch an “advocacy forum” where they would bring together authorities, youth, staff, leaders, and parents for an analysis of their good practice and their innovation needs and potentials. the whole cop core group together defined principles for the analysis phase and for the remainder of the project:  permanent reflection is important.  each and every person has something to say.  work on the assumption that everybody has talents, both for this project and for their lives.  try to involve young people who seem “unmotivated”: they may have the most relevant insights to contribute.  use infectious ideas to attract people to collaborate in the project.  identify “champions” of the project among young people, staff, and leaders to help spread the project in the youth home (= potential contribution to leadership and staff development!).  ensure consequent leadership that stands behind the project. the young experts additionally suggested:  involve respected young experts to, in turn, involve other young people as experts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 47 general discussion evaluations regarding project goals and processes take place regularly during the project. overall, all actor groups in the cop have expressed that they are happy with the collaboration and the progress of the project. comments from these evaluations are summarised in the following discussion, which is structured using wenger-trayner’s (2014, p. 3) framework for assessing and social learning in cops, as described in the literature survey above. a community member participates in a community activity that generates interest or excitement (immediate value): young people, leaders, and staff in both countries have shown an impressive amount of interest and engagement in the project, which is evident in their feedback, their drive in self-directedly rolling out the project in each youth home and collaborating in the cop, their voluntary investment of many work hours, and their energy and creativity. some of the reasons given by the actor groups for this enthusiasm are: the fundamental relevance of selfempowerment for both young people’s lives and the mission of residential care (all actor groups), “feeling good” during activities and “proud” as a participant (young experts), the opportunity to “make a difference” and “have an impact” (young experts), and the potential and hope of achieving real change (all, especially young experts). among further motivators cited is the chance to meet and collaborate with “great people” from another country, and to get to know the other country and its youth care system (all, especially young experts). different perspectives and roles among cop members are considered a great resource (all), as evident in statements such as: “i can meet people, i hear different stories, i see different points of view” (young expert); and, “it is a great experience to have theory and practice meet around a table” (leader). “being heard” was mentioned as important by all actor groups: “i liked that i, as an adolescent, could participate truly actively, and that i was heard” (young expert); “young experts are treated as equal partners, which is an excellent way to encourage them to cooperate fully.… at the same time, both the leaders’ role and work and the importance of the youth are acknowledged in this project” (leader); “the faith in the youths, involving them on a 100% equal footing, is an unusually valuable experience for them. an experience they have mostly had the opposite of in their history” (leader); and, “in my 37 years [of working in the youth home], this was the first time that somebody asked me at all what i consider to be good or bad, and what could be done” (staff). the participation creates an insight, strengthens the member’s resolve, or forges a new relationship (potential value): as reported above in the descriptions of cop core group meetings, yee, and the focus group discussions and literature review, a wealth of insights regarding the promotion of self-empowerment was created in 2019. the focus group discussions made swiss staff aware that, “we have meetings, but rarely do we have opportunities to go beyond our roles and the hectic everyday life, which is always about ‘putting out fires’, and converse with each other about important, fundamental topics” (staff). further insights are currently being created in the analyses of good practices and development needs and potentials in the youth homes. for example, one of the swiss youth homes has a whole corridor full of posters put together by one of their young experts from the cop core group showing first results from all their house international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 48 groups as well as from staff. according to the cop core group members, many young people and staff in the youth homes in both countries want to participate in the project. they are of the opinion that awareness of the topics of self-empowerment and participation has increased in the youth homes due to the project. the young experts participating in the yee showed resolve to continue in the project, as exemplified by the statement: “now we go back home and encourage others!” according to a swiss leader, the project is a big win for the young people: to be part of an intercultural exchange, to reflect on their own situation, to be able to get away from everyday life in the youth home. the adolescents have come back from [the yee in] budapest and the encounters there very impressed in many ways and also a little humbled. for me/us an important legitimation for participation in the project is that especially the adolescents and young adults, profit from the project process. in this regard, i am more than positively surprised. new relationships were forged between members from all actor groups. hungarian young experts called both the hungarian and swiss yee participants “fantastic people”, whereas the team from a swiss youth home has described the acquaintance with their hungarian colleagues “heart and mind opening”, “very edifying and inspiring”, and their warmth “a wonderful experience for the heart”. they also said “it takes a great personal calling and much herzblut (literally “heart blood”, i.e., passion) to do social work in hungary; it is valuable to feel this”, and it “inspires appreciation and humility for all [the resources] we have [in switzerland]”. the member returns home and does something with this new insight, inspiration, or connection (applied value): this element is in itself part of the project design. beyond the directly project-related activities, cop members have done, and are doing, a range of things that have been inspired by the project. a staff member from a swiss youth home confirmed that: “in daily life in the group, we think much more often about self-empowerment now. when we do something, what does it mean for the self-empowerment of the young people?” hungarian participants stated: “a new way of looking at things has emerged, which helps us to reflect together with the young people that we care for”. a young expert from hungary reported that, due to the project, many more young people in the youth homes now want to learn english. swiss staff spoke of youths’ “great gains in social learning and empathy”. a group leader from hungary reported that, together with the other group leaders, she has started conversations with staff and not only adolescents but also younger children about “taking charge of one’s own life”. among young experts and staff in both countries, several persons are particularly active, showing leadership regarding the project. a hungarian young expert has drawn inspiration from the project for his bachelor’s thesis in social pedagogy about “dreams of young people in residential care” and has brought impulses from it to the project. according to the three actor groups from one swiss youth home, creating futures as a joint project “at eye level” between staff and youths is a big gain and strengthens relationships. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 49 … which leads to an improvement in practice (realized value): this element is also part of the project design, especially in the upcoming module phase 2c, when it will be assessed. some seeds have already been planted. for example, new formats have been established for involving young people and obtaining their input and feedback in the youth homes, and the two swiss youth homes are planning to include the learnings from module 1 in their upcoming revisions of concepts. as the young experts stated at the yee: “it is a breakthrough that we are all here, and that the topic is important to all of us. the project is a breakthrough in itself ”. module 1 and module phase 2a were completed successfully in 2019, module phase 2b has started and is being maintained despite the hindrances of the covid-19 pandemic. at least once a week, a cop member from one country or the other contacts the author with the assurance that motivation for the project is still high. challenges remain. a good online collaboration platform is still needed. the concept of capturing the innovation process must be refined. the knowledge raised must be kept alive in constant application to and feedback from practice. good ways must be found to increase involvement among those young people who seem to be “less motivated” or have “more difficulties” as their success will ultimately be the most meaningful reflection on the project. the logistics for the binational meetings are complex and labour intensive. working in three languages is a challenge, but the cop gets better and better at it. at the time of writing, it is five years since the first encounter of the initial hungarian and swiss partners. the developments of 2019 described in this article are the fruit of the engagement and voluntary collaboration of a diverse cop of many people striving for common goals. it is a great privilege and joy to serve this community of practice for which the author is deeply 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(2015, april). communities of practice: a brief introduction [web post]. http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-briefintroduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407x.2013.836236 https://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/09-04-17-social-learning-capability-v2.1.pdf https://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/09-04-17-social-learning-capability-v2.1.pdf https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier https://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/14-11-21-wb-report-sadcopac-eaapac.pdf https://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/14-11-21-wb-report-sadcopac-eaapac.pdf http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 52 appendix bibliography for literature review of module 1 batista, t., johnson, a., & baach friedmann, l. (2018). the effects of youth empowerment programs on the psychological empowerment of young people aging out of foster care. journal of the society for social work and research, 9(4), 531–549. doi:10.1086/700275 bramsen, i., kuiper, c., willemse, k., & cardol, m. (2018). my path towards living on my own: voices of youth leaving dutch secure residential care. child and adolescent social work journal, 36, 365–380. doi:10.1007/s10560-018-0564-2 burgund isakov, a., & hrnčić, j. (2018). preparedness for emancipation of youth leaving alternative care in serbia. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 9(1), 83– 107. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs91201818121 dixon, j., ward, j., & blower, s. (2019). “they sat and actually listened to what we think about the care systen”: the use of participation, consultation, peer research and co-production to raise the voices of young people in and leaving care in england. child care in practice, 25(1), 6–21. doi:10.1080/13575279.2018.1521380 dupuis, j., & mann-feder, v. (2013). moving towards emancipatory practice: conditions for meaningful youth empowerment in child welfare. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 4(3), 371–380. doi:10.18357/ijcyfs43201312436 finkel, m. (2004). selbständigkeit und etwas glück: einflüsse öffentlicher erziehung auf die biographischen perspektiven junger frauen [independence and a bit of luck: influence of public education on the biographical perspectives of young women]. juventa. goyette, m., mann-feder, v., turcotte, d., & grenier, s. (2016). youth empowerment and engagement: an analysis of support practices in the youth protection system in quebec. revista española de pedagogia, 74(263), 31–49. jones, l. p. (2014). former foster youth’s perspectives on independent living preparation six months after discharge. child welfare, 93(1), 99–126. kaplan, s. j., skolnik, l., & turnbull, a. (2009). enhancing the empowerment of youth in foster care: supportive services. child welfare, 88(1), 133–161. lukšík, i. (2018). resilience of young people in residential care. journal of social service research, 44(5), 714–729. doi:10.1080/01488376.2018.1479336 marion, e., paulsen, v., & goyette, m. (2017). relationships matter: understanding the role and impact of social networks at the edge of transition to adulthood from care. child and adolescent social work journal, 34(6), 573–582. doi:10.1007/s10560-017-0494-4 https://doi.org/10.1086/700275 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-018-0564-2 https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs91201818121 https://doi.org/10.1080/13575279.2018.1521380 https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs43201312436 https://doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2018.1479336 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-017-0494-4 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 29–53 53 nesmith, a., & christophersen, k. (2014). smoothing the transition to adulthood: creating ongoing supportive relationships among forster youth. children and youth services review, 37, 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth2013.11.028 schofield, g., larsson, b., & ward, e. (2017). risk, resilience and identity construction in the life narratives of young people leaving residential care. child & family social work, 22(2), 782–791. doi:10.1111/cfs.12295 sulimani-aidan, y. (2017). future expectations as a source of resilience among young people leaving care. british journal of social work, 47(4), 1111–1127. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcw077 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth2013.11.028 https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12295 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw077 running head: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 119 promotive factors during adolescence: are there changes in impact and prevalence during adolescence and how does this relate to risk factors? claudia van der put, peter van der laan, geert-jan stams, maja deković, and machteld hoeve abstract: in this study we compared the impact of promotive and risk factors on 18month recidivism during adolescence. we measured bipolar factors (factors with risk and promotive effects being the ends of the same continuum) for 13,613 american juveniles who had committed a criminal offense. for most of the factors no significant differences were found between the impact of the promotive and risk ends. interventions aimed at increasing promotive factors may therefore be potentially just as effective as interventions aimed at decreasing risks. the importance of both promotive and risk factors was found to be significantly higher for younger than for older adolescents in almost every domain, which emphasizes the importance of early intervention. furthermore, age and sex differences were found in the impact and prevalence of promotive and risk factors. the discussion focuses on implications for clinical practice. key words: promotive factors, protective factors, dynamic risk factors, recidivism, early intervention, juvenile delinquency claudia van der put, msc is a ph.d. student, forensic child and youth care sciences, research institute child development and education, university of amsterdam, the netherlands. peter van der laan, ph. d. is full professor, faculty of law, free university of amsterdam, the netherlands. geert-jan stams, ph.d. is full professor, forensic child and youth care sciences, research institute child development and education, university of amsterdam, the netherlands. maja deković, ph.d. is full professor, department of child and adolescent studies, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands. machteld hoeve, ph.d. is assistant professor, forensic child and youth care sciences, research institute child development and education, university of amsterdam, the netherlands. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 120 it is generally recognised that delinquent behavior can be seen as the result of complex interactions between risk factors and protective factors (deković & prinzie, 2008; prinzie, hoeve, & stams, 2008). risk factors are those factors that increase the chances of delinquent behavior, while protective factors are associated with a smaller probability of delinquent behavior. risk and protective factors comprise on the one hand, personal characteristics of the individual juvenile, and on the other hand, factors in the social environment, including the “family”, “peers”, “school” and “community” domain (howell, 2003; loeber, delamatre, keenan, & zhang, 1998; stouthamer-loeber, loeber, wei, farrington, & wikström, 2002; loeber, slot, & stouthamer-loeber, 2008). these risk and protective factors have been conceptualized as static or dynamic. static factors are historic and cannot be changed, such as age at first offense, temperament, and iq. dynamic risk factors can potentially be changed, such as the youth’s friends or school performance. investigating the impact of dynamic risk and protective factors is considered important not only for the development of evidence-based interventions, but also for the purpose of adequate risk assessment of recidivism and successful referral to behavioral interventions targeting desistance from crime (see andrews & bonta, 2010). whereas a large body of research exists regarding risk factors (e.g., farrington, 2003; lipsey & derzon 1998; loeber, slot et al., 2008), far less is known about protective factors. when studying risk factors, researchers have often dichotomized variables and added the neutral middle part of the distribution to the protective side, thereby masking information about the protective effect (stouthamer-loeber et al., 1993). stouthamer-loeber and colleagues (1993, 2002, 2004) advanced the investigation of promotive factors first as main effects, similar to the search for the main effects of risk factors, and then they investigated the interaction effects between promotive and risk factors. still we know much more about risk factors than protective factors (loeber, slot et al., 2008). besides this, there is much discussion in the literature on the definition of protective factors (deković, 1999). this discussion focuses primarily on the question of whether factors are unipolar or bipolar, that is, whether risk factors and protective factors really are two different groups of factors or the same factors, with a risk effect at one extreme and a protective effect at the other. an example of bipolar conceptualization is the factor “school achievement”, for which “poor grades” is considered a risk factor and “good grades” a protective factor. however, there may be a difference in the strength of the risk effect and the strength of the protective effect: “poor grades” might be a relatively strong predictor of recidivism, whereas “good grades” might offer only small protection against recidivism (stouthamer-loeber et al., 1993). in the second place, there is a debate regarding the effect of protective factors. some researchers define protective factors as factors that moderate the effects of risks on delinquency (fergusson & lynskey, 1996; pollard, hawkins, & arthur, 1999; rutter 1987, 2003). according to this definition, the presence of the risks is required. protective factors only have an indirect effect on problem behavior by attenuating the effect of the risks. other researchers assume that there are direct effects on problem behavior and use the term promotive factors to express this. so promotive factors are considered as factors that have a direct effect on reducing problem behavior, even where there are no risks present (farrington, loeber, jolliffe, & pardini, 2008; loeber, slot et al., 2008; sameroff, bartko, a. baldwin, c. baldwin, & seifer, 1998; stouthamer-loeber et al., 2002). loeber, slot, and stouthamer-loeber (2008) provide an overview of the promotive factors mentioned in the research literature. examples of this include: good social skills, good academic achievement, high school motivation, mentoring by adults, consistent discipline, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 121 and a high family income. for risk factors it is the accumulation of risks in several domains that leads to problem behavior (deković & prinzie, 2008; loeber, slot et al., 2008; stouthamer-loeber et al., 2002). it seems that, similarly, an accumulation of protective factors in several domains reduces the likelihood of problem behavior (e.g., deković, 1999; farrington et al., 2008; sameroff et al., 1998). thus, it appears that delinquent behavior can best be tackled by focusing on reducing the number of risk factors as well as increasing and/or strengthening protective factors in several domains (van der laan, veenstra, bogaerts, verhulst, & ormel, 2010; veenstra, lindenberg, verhulst, & ormel, 2009). in order to be able to do this effectively, it is important to know which dynamic protective factors are most strongly linked to delinquent behavior and recidivism. this is because the effect of an intervention to prevent recidivism is greatest when it is aimed at those dynamic risk factors and protective factors that are linked to recidivism (andrews, bonta, & wormith, 2006; bonta, 2002; farmer, compton, burns, & robertson, 2002; lipsey & derzon, 1998). the stronger the link to recidivism, the greater the potential effect of an intervention aimed at these factors. because of the paucity of knowledge available on this subject, the goal of the present study was to investigate the impact of dynamic protective factors from various domains on recidivism and to compare the impact of dynamic protective factors to the impact of dynamic risk factors. because recent studies only found support for promotive factors and not for protective factors (deković, 1999; farrington et al., 2008; van der laan et al., 2010), this article investigated only the direct effects of promotive factors. various studies also show that by far the majority of factors have both promotive and risk effects (farrington et al., 2008; stouthamer-loeber et al., 1993). for this reason this study concentrated solely upon bipolar variables. previous research on risk factors of recidivism showed that the impact of these factors is dependent on juveniles’ age (van der put et al., 2010b; van der put et al., in press). these studies demonstrated that the importance of almost all dynamic risk factors decreases with age. for this reason, the current study investigated the (relative) importance of dynamic promotive factors from various domains at various ages during adolescence. we also compared the impact of the promotive aspect to the impact of the risk aspect of the measured factors. this knowledge is important when considering whether to focus an intervention on reducing risks or on strengthening promotive factors. as previous research on risk factors of recidivism also showed that the impact of these factors is dependent on a juvenile’s sex (funk, 1999; schwalbe, fraser, day, & cooley, 2006; van der put et al., 2010a), we also examined sex differences. to summarise, this study focused on the following research questions: 1. what is the prevalence of promotive and risk factors? 2. what is the impact of promotive and risk factors on recidivism? 3. are there age differences and sex differences in the prevalence of promotive and risk factors? 4. are there age differences and sex differences in the impact of promotive and risk factors? 5. which factors are the best unique predictors for recidivism at different ages and for male and female juvenile offenders? 6. do the promotive factors uniquely contribute to the prediction of recidivism? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 122 method sample the sample of this study consisted of 13,613 american juveniles aged 12 to 18, who in the period from january 1999 to january 2000 were placed on probation for committing a criminal offense and for whom the washington state juvenile court assessment (wsjca; full assessment) was completed (barnoski, 2004; see instruments section). these juveniles scored medium to high on the washington state juvenile court pre-screen assessment (wsjcpa; pre-screen assessment). because many youth enter the juvenile justice system on multiple occasions, the current study utilized only the first full assessment for each youth in the sample, so the 13,613 represent unique individuals. table 1 presents the sample characteristics. table 1 sample characteristics (n = 13,619) sex boy 10,111 (74%) girl 3,502 (26%) cultural background european americans 7,956 (69%) african americans 1,234 (11%) hispanic americans 1,369 (12%) other 970 (8%) total number of misdemeanor referrals none or one 5,923 44% two 3,230 24% three or four 3,358 25% five or more 1,102 8% total number of felony referrals none 5,872 43% one 5,736 42% two 1,321 10% three or more 684 5% mean age 15.4 instruments and procedure for this study, secondary data from the washington state juvenile court assessment (wsjca) validation study were used (barnoski, 2004). the wsjca is a screening and risk assessment instrument, which was developed in washington state. the wsjca maps out the most important risk and protective factors on a large number of domains. the selection of domains and items took place on the basis of a review of the juvenile delinquency research literature and then was modified, based on feedback from an international team of experts. following reviews by washington state juvenile court professionals, the assessment instrument was revised again (barnoski, 2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 123 the wsjca comprises two parts: a pre-screen and a full assessment. the pre-screen is a shortened version of the full assessment that quickly indicates whether a youth is at low, moderate, or high risk for re-offending. this version is administered to all youth on probation and the full assessment is required only for youth who are assessed as having moderate or high risk on the pre-screen (71% of the juvenile offenders). the full assessment identifies a youth’s risk and protective factor profile to guide rehabilitative efforts. the courts have refocused their resources on moderate and high-risk youth by assigning low-risk youth to minimum supervision caseloads. these caseloads have a large number of youth report to a single probation officer where supervision is primarily by telephone. as a result of these savings in resources, more effort is directed toward the higher-risk youth. the full assessment includes 132 items, broken into 13 domains such as relationships, employment, school, attitudes, and aggression. probation officers perform the full assessments on the basis of information from a structured motivational interview with the youth and youth’s family. probation officers are trained in conducting the assessment. this training includes reviewing videotaped interviews and the resulting assessment to ensure the probation counselor has mastered the assessment skills. there is a manual available for the full assessment and quality assurance is an important part of the assessment structure and organization in washington state (barnoski, 2004). the full assessment measures both static (historical) and dynamic (current) risk and promotive factors. in the present study, we only examined dynamic factors because these factors are used to guide the rehabilitative effort. the dynamic factors are measured over the preceding six months. the full assessment contains dynamic risk and promotive factors in the following domains: school, employment, use of free time, relationships, family, alcohol and drugs, attitude, aggression, and skills. we have excluded the employment domain from the analysis because of the large number of missing values (only 9% are employed). items were rated at a 3-point scale (strong promotive side, neutral middle part, strong risk side), a 4-point scale (strong promotive side, weak promotive side, weak risk side, and strong risk side), or a 5-point scale (strong promotive side, weak promotive side, neutral middle part, weak risk side, and strong risk side). each item was recoded in two separate dichotomous variables as follows: a promotive factor (1 if the strong promotive side is present and 0 if the strong promotive side is absent) and a risk factor (1 if the strong risk side is present and 0 if the strong risk side is absent). thus, the meaning of the scale-points of the items was decisive for determining which response categories were designated as promotive or risk factor. for example, the response categories of the item “believes getting education of value” were coded as follows: “believes getting education of value” (promotive), “somewhat believes education of value” (neutral), and “does not believe education of value” (risk). the strong promotive and the risk ends (extreme ends) of the variables measured were: 1. school: behavior (good behavior/severe behavior problems), academic performance (mostly as and bs/some ds and mostly fs), attendance (good attendance/often truancy), relationship with teachers (close to 2 or more/not close to any), participation in school activities (2 or more activities/not interested in school activities), believes school is encouraging (yes/no), believes getting education of value (yes/no), estimation of school progress (very likely to graduate/not likely to graduate); international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 124 2. use of free time: involvement or interest in structured recreational activities (2 or more/not interested), involvement or interest in unstructured recreational activities (2 or more/not interested); 3. relationships: positive adult non-family relationships (2 or more/none), prosocial community ties (strong/none), friends (only prosocial/only antisocial), romantically involved (prosocial person/antisocial person), admiration of antisocial peers (no/yes), resistance to influence of antisocial peers (yes/rarely); 4. family: annual income ($50,000 and over/under $15,000), relationship with parents (close to both father and mother/not close to both father and mother), level of conflict (well managed/domestic violence), parental supervision (consistently good/inadequate), following family rules (usually/consistently disobeys), parental punishment (consistently appropriate/inconsistently or consistently insufficient), parental reward (consistently appropriate/inconsistently or consistently insufficient), family support network (strong/not available), opportunities for family involvement (yes/no); 5. attitude: optimism (high aspirations/low aspirations), impulsiveness (usually thinks before acting/usually acts before thinking), belief in control over antisocial behavior (yes/no), empathy, remorse, sympathy, of feelings for victims (yes/no), respect for other’s property (yes/no), respect for authority figures (yes/no), respect for rules and social conventions (yes/no), accepts responsibility for behavior (yes/no), thinks they can comply with measures (yes/no); 6. aggression: frustration tolerance (rarely gets upset/often gets upset), interpretation of other’s behavior or intentions (primarily positive/primarily hostile), belief in verbal aggression to solve a conflict (rarely appropriate/often appropriate), belief in physical aggression to solve a conflict (never appropriate/sometimes or often appropriate); 7. skills: consequential thinking (good/does not understand about consequences of actions), goal setting (set realistic goals/does not set any goals or set unrealistic goals), problemsolving (good/cannot identify problem behaviors), situational perception (selects the best time and place for the best skill/cannot analyze the situation for use of a prosocial skill), dealing with others (good/lacks basic social skills), dealing with difficult situations (often uses skills in dealing with difficult situations/lacks skills), dealing with feelings (often uses skills in dealing with emotions/lack of skills), control of internal triggers (actively monitors and controls internal triggers/cannot identify internal triggers), control of external triggers (actively monitors and controls external triggers/cannot identify external triggers), control of impulsive behaviors (uses techniques to control impulsive behavior/lacks techniques to control impulsive behavior), control of aggression (often uses alternatives to aggression/lacks alternatives to aggression). the predictive validity of the wsjca has been tested in two studies: barnoski’s study (2004) and a study by orbis partners inc. (2007). the predictive validity indicates how effectively a risk-assessment instrument predicts recidivism, and the “area under the receiveroperating-characteristic curve” (auc) is regarded as the most important indicator for this (rice & harris, 2005). the first study showed that the auc of the wsjcpa is .64 and the second study showed that the auc is about .63. these auc values concur with the average predictive validity of juvenile justice risk assessment instruments, which is .64 (schwalbe, 2007). the magnitude of these auc values is considered moderate according to generally international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 125 accepted criteria, whereas auc values of .70 and higher are considered “acceptable” (dolan & doyle, 2000; hosmer & lemeshow, 1989; shapiro, 1999). outcome measure recidivism was defined as the occurrence of one or multiple new convictions within 18 months after completing the full screen. data on recidivism were based on official records, both juvenile and adult records, from washington state. recidivism was treated as a dichotomous variable (whether or not convicted for any new offense). analyses in this study, 12and 13-year-olds were considered separately, because of the many changes that occur during this period, such as the transition from primary to secondary school. the study by van der put et al. (2010b) showed a strong decrease in the importance of risk factors in the social domain for this age group. a total score was calculated for the risk factors as well as the promotive factors per domain by adding the number of risk factors and the number of promotive factors respectively. we used analysis of variance (anova) to determine whether there are differences between the age groups and between boys and girls in the prevalence of promotive and risk factors. pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the strength of the relation between the promotive factors and recidivism, and between the risk factors and recidivism. fisher’s z tests were used to examine whether the correlations differed significantly between boys and girls in between the youngest and oldest age groups. multiple logistic regression analyses were used in order to identify the best unique predictors of recidivism for boys and girls and for the different age groups. separate multivariate prediction models were conducted for boys and girls and for the different age groups, based on only risk factors and based on only promotive factors. subsequently, hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis was used in order to analyse the unique contribution of the promotive factors. results age and sex differences in the level of recidivism table 2 shows the seriousness and nature of the repeated offense for each age group and for boys and girls. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 126 table 2 seriousness and type of recidivism separately for age groups and for boys and girls 12 year (n = 439) 13 year (n = 1,009) 14-15 yr (n = 5,023) 16-17 yr (n = 7,142) f recidivism n % n % n % n % misdemeanor or felony 233 53% 516 51% 2340 47% 2818 40% 36.0 * felony 103 24% 243 24% 1178 24% 1409 20% 9.9 * felony property 54 12% 133 13% 657 13% 698 10% 12.2 * felony violent 43 10% 87 9% 380 8% 457 6% 5.1 * boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) f n % n % misdemeanor or felony 4715 47% 1192 34% 170.0* felony 2497 25% 436 13% 234.7* felony property 1317 13% 225 6% 113.7* felony violent 856 9% 111 3% 111.3* *p < 0.001 the level of recidivism was dependent on age and sex. recidivism was higher in younger age groups and lower in the older age groups. especially in the age group 16-17 years there was less recidivism than in the younger age groups. recidivism was significantly lower in girls than in boys. with felony offenses, the recidivism among girls was about two times lower than in boys. prevalence and impact of promotive factors and risk factors table 3 shows how often the promotive and risk ends occur (prevalence) for the different variables and how strong the correlation with recidivism is (impact). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 127 table 3 prevalence and correlations between the promotive and risk side of factors and recidivism promotive end (n = 13,613) risk end (n = 13,613) fisher’s z n % r n % r school (average number of factors) 1.3 -.15 2.4 .11 3.36*** school behavior 262 2% -.04 5739 42% .11 5.81*** attendance 2258 17% -.09 5922 44% .07 1.66 academic performance 830 6% -.09 3707 27% .08 0.83 relationship with teachers 2335 17% -.06 6034 44% .04 1.65 participation in school activities 592 4% -.06 5743 42% .04 1.65 estimation of school progress 3007 22% -.15 2301 17% .09 5.02*** believes school is encouraging 3374 25% -.11 2716 20% .08 2.50* believes getting education of value 5194 38% -.11 1164 9% .07 3.33*** use of free time (average number of factors) 0.3 -.05 0.9 .07 1.66 unstructured activities 3340 25% -.05 5869 43% .06 0.83 structured activities 790 6% -.04 5847 43% .06 1.65 relationships (average number of factors) 1.1 -.15 1.8 .15 0.00 relationships with adults 2764 20% -.05 6350 47% .06 0.83 social bonds in the community 908 7% -.07 4585 34% .08 0.83 prosocial/deviant friends 1910 14% -.12 3105 23% .10 1.67 romantic relation prosocial/deviant person 2348 17% -.01 1605 12% .02 0.83 admiration of antisocial peers 4756 35% -.13 2451 18% .12 0.84 resistance to influence of peers 2112 16% -.13 6112 45% .17 3.38*** family (average number of factors) 2.7 -.14 2.5 .12 1.68 family income 1545 11% -.06 3314 24% .03 2.48* relationship with parents 2046 15% -.05 4399 33% .05 0.00 seriousness of conflict 4826 35% -.10 3056 22% .07 2.49* parental supervision 5766 42% -.10 2587 19% .07 2.49* parental authority and control 3455 25% -.14 3008 22% .11 2.51* parental punishment 6093 45% -.09 6633 49% .08 0.83 parental reward 6382 47% -.08 5920 44% .08 0.00 family support network 2229 16% -.07 2479 18% .04 2.48 opportunities for family involvement 2929 22% -.07 2025 15% .03 3.31 attitude (average number of factors) 2.8 -.18 2.1 .17 0.85 optimism 1222 9% -.09 4408 32% .12 2.50* impulsiveness 1101 8% -.11 6613 49% .13 1.67 control over antisocial behavior 5183 38% -.13 923 7% .08 4.17*** empathy 2965 22% -.10 4193 31% .10 0.00 respect for other’s property 4877 36% -.15 4519 33% .14 0.84 respect for authority figures 7215 53% -.14 2305 17% .10 3.35*** respect for rules/social conventions 2741 20% -.12 2838 21% .12 0.00 accepts responsibility for behavior 5154 38% -.11 2086 15% .10 0.83 thinks they can comply with measures 7192 53% -.12 679 5% .08 3.33*** aggression (average number of factors) 1.2 -.14 1.0 .15 0.84 frustration tolerance 2912 21% -.11 3556 26% .11 0.00 interpretation of other’s behavior/intentions 7562 56% -.11 912 7% .07 3.33*** verbal aggression to solve a conflict 3494 26% -.10 2651 19% .09 0.83 physical aggression to solve a conflict 2830 21% -.10 6720 49% .14 3.35*** skills (average number of factors) 2.2 -.16 3.6 .14 1.69 consequential thinking 3056 22% -.09 1278 9% .06 2.49* goal setting 1617 12% -.09 5377 40% .12 2.50* problem-solving 2791 21% -.12 3268 24% .09 2.50* situational perception 3672 27% -.12 3760 28% .10 1.67 dealing with others 3553 26% -.11 2695 20% .09 1.67 dealing with difficult situations 5993 44% -.13 4201 31% .10 2.50* dealing with feelings 5578 41% -.12 4334 32% .08 3.33*** control of internal triggers 581 4% -.08 6686 49% .08 0.00 control of external triggers 734 5% -.09 4408 32% .08 0.83 control of impulsive behaviors 702 5% -.05 7650 56% .11 4.98*** control of agression 1935 14% -.07 5731 42% .12 4.16*** total number of promotive/risk factors 11.7 -.20 14.3 .19 0.86 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 128 note. all correlations are statistically significant (p < .001), except the correlation between recidivism and romantic relation pro social/deviant person. correlations above .10 are in bold. *p < .05. **p < .01. *** p < .001 for the juveniles in the sample, there were, on average, more risk factors than promotive factors: the average number of risk factors was 14.3, and the average number of promotive factors was 11.7. in most individual domains, on average, more risk factors than promotive factors were present, except in the domains attitude, family, and aggression. the differences between the average number of promotive factors and risk factors were significant in almost every domain (p < .001). besides differences in prevalence, we found some differences in the impact of promotive factors and risk factors. for a number of factors, the impact of the promotive end was greater than the impact of the risk end, in particular concerning a number of factors from the domains school (estimation of school progress, believes school is encouraging, and believes getting education is of value), family (family income, seriousness of conflict, parental supervision, parental authority and control), attitude (control over antisocial behavior, respect for authority figures, and thinks they can comply with measures), aggression (interpretation of other’s behavior or intentions), and skills (goal setting, problem-solving, dealing with difficult situations, dealing with feelings). in contrast, for a number of other factors the impact of the risk end was greater than the impact of the promotive end, including factors from the following domains: school (school behavior), friends (resistance to influence of peers), attitude (optimism), aggression (physical aggression to solve a conflict), and skills (goal setting, control of impulsive behaviors, control of aggression). for most of the individual factors (55%) there was no significant difference between the impact of the promotive and risk ends. also, for most of the total scores per domain no significant differences between the promotive end and the risk end were found, except for the total score for the school domain, in which the impact of the promotive end was significantly greater than the impact of the risk end. age differences in the prevalence of promotive factors and risk factors table 4 shows the total score per domain for the promotive factors and risk factors at different ages (prevalence). table 4 average number promotive and risk factors separately for age groups 12 yr (n = 439) 13 yr (n =1,009) 14-15 (n =5,023) 16-17 (n =7,142) f pro risk pro risk pro risk pro risk pro risk school 1.6 2.4 1.4 2.7 1.3 2.8 1.3 2.2 8.3*** 82.8*** use of free time 0.4 0.6 0.4 0.7 0.3 0.8 0.3 0.9 10.9*** 39.9*** relationships 1.2 1.6 1.1 1.7 1.0 1.9 1.2 1.7 20.2*** 10.7*** family 2.8 2.6 2.7 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.7 2.4 3.3* 5.5** attitude 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.4 2.6 2.3 3.0 1.9 34.1*** 47.9*** aggression 1.1 1.3 1.1 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.3 0.9 23.5*** 50.9*** skills 1.4 5.6 1.6 4.8 1.9 4.1 2.6 3.0 122.3*** 217.3*** total number 11.0 16.9 10.8 16.1 10.8 15.5 12.5 12.9 38.3*** 99.2*** *p < .05. **p < .01. *** p < .001 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 129 it can be derived from table 4 that the prevalence of promotive factors was significantly higher in late adolescence, whereas the prevalence of risk factors was significantly lower in late adolescence. the number of risk factors was about equal to the number of promotive factors in late adolescence. younger adolescents had fewer promotive factors and more risk factors than older adolescents. in order to examine whether this can be explained by the early age of onset of the younger group, we reran the analysis on the subsample of adolescents who have committed their first offense before their 12th year (n = 3,386). older adolescents still had significantly (f = 18.8, p < .001) fewer risk factors (14.0) than younger adolescents (16.9), but the difference was smaller than for the total sample. the number of promotive factors was roughly equal (11.2 and 11.0). so, the differences between younger and older adolescents in the prevalence of risk and promotive factors can indeed be partially explained by the early age of onset of the younger age group. the results varied per domain: the prevalence of promotive factors in the individual domain (in particular skills, but also attitude and aggression) is higher in late adolescence than in early adolescence; the prevalence of promotive factors in the domain, use of free time, is lower in late adolescence than in early adolescence; for the domain family, the prevalence is about the same and for the domains school and relationships, prevalence decreased until age 15, after which it showed an increase. for the total number of risk factors, the prevalence of risk factors was significantly lower in older adolescents. similarly, within several domains the prevalence of risk factors differed between age groups. the prevalence of risk factors in the individual domains (in particular skills, but also attitude and aggression) is lower in older adolescents; risk factors in the free time domain is higher in older adolescents, for the domain family, the prevalence is about the same, and for the domains school and relationships prevalence increased until age 15, after which a decrease was seen. sex differences in the prevalence of promotive factors and risk factors table 5 shows the total score per domain for the promotive factors and risk factors separately for boys and girls. table 5 average number promotive and risk factors separately for boys and girls boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) f pro risk pro risk pro risk school 1.3 2.5 1.4 2.4 2.2 .4 use of free time 0.3 0.8 0.2 1.0 63.8*** 59.6*** relationships 1.1 1.7 1.0 2.0 50.2*** 72.8*** family 2.8 2.4 2.3 2.9 129.8*** 159.8*** attitude 2.8 2.1 2.8 2.0 .7 3.6 aggression 1.3 1.0 1.1 1.2 63.4*** 67.2*** skills 2.2 3.7 2.3 3.5 2.9 12.4*** total number 11.9 14.1 11.1 14.8 17.8*** 15.2*** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 the number of promotive factors was higher among boys in the following domains: use of free time, relationships, family, and aggression. in girls, the number of risk factors was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 130 higher in these domains. in total, there were significantly more promotive factors in boys than in girls, while for girls there were significantly more risk factors. age differences in the impact of promotive factors and risk factors table 6 shows the correlations between the total scores and recidivism at different ages (impact) per domain. table 6 correlations between recidivism and the promotive and risk factors for each age group 12 yr (n = 439) 13 yr (n =1,009) 14-15 (n =5,023) 16-17 (n =7,142) fisher’s z pro risk pro risk pro risk pro risk pro risk school -.20 .16 -.16 .19 -.16 .11 -.14 .07 1.25 2.48* use of free time -.08 .05 -.07 .10 -.05 .09 -.06 .08 0.41 -0.61 relationships -.20 .19 -.24 .22 -.14 .15 -.13 .14 1.46 0.41 family -.31 .29 -.19 .14 -.13 .12 -.12 .10 4.05*** 4.02*** attitude -.29 .28 -.21 .19 -.18 .18 -.17 .15 2.57** 2.77** aggression -.30 .26 -.16 .17 -.15 .15 -.12 .12 3.83*** 2.95** skills -.27 .24 -.15 .11 -.14 .13 -.15 .11 2.55* 2.72** total number -.34 .31 -.23 .22 -.19 .18 -.18 .16 3.49*** 3.23** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 a: fisher’s z is calculated between the youngest group (12 years) and the oldest group (16-17 years) table 6 shows that the impact of both promotive and risk factors was high among younger adolescents, but low among older adolescents in almost every domain. this age difference was significant in the family, skills, attitude, and aggression domains. the largest difference in impact was found between 12-years-olds and 13-years-olds. this finding was consistent across domains. the impact, on average, was 22% lower in 13-years-olds and 40% lower in 16to 17-years-olds. furthermore, the age differences in the relative importance of the promotive and risk factors were almost the same: at age 12, promotive factors from the family, attitude, and aggression domains showed the strongest correlation with recidivism; at age 13, promotive factors from the relationships domain showed the strongest correlation with recidivism, and from age 14, promotive factors from the attitude domain. sex differences in the impact of promotive factors and risk factors table 7 shows per domain the correlations between the total scores and recidivism separately for boys and girls. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 131 table 7 correlations between recidivism and the promotive and risk factors for boys and girls boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) fisher’s z pro risk pro risk pro risk school -.16 .12 -.12 .07 2.24* 2.88** use of free time -.07 .09 -.02 .06 2.50* 1.64 relationships -.17 .17 -.10 .13 3.69*** 2.14* family -.16 .14 -.10 .11 3.48*** 1.61 attitude -.20 .19 -.15 .14 2.42* 2.41* aggression -.16 .16 -.13 .15 1.35 .42 skills -.16 .13 -.15 .14 .84 .26 total number *p < .05. **p < .01. *** p < .001 in most domains, the impact of both the risk and promotive factors was greater in boys than in girls. age differences in the best unique predictors multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine the unique contribution of the predictors for the different age groups. separate multivariate prediction models were tested for risk factors (see table 8) and promotive factors (see table 9) in the four different age groups. table 8 logistic regression coefficients predicting recidivism from risk factors for each age group 12 year (n = 439) 13 year (n = 1,009) 14-15 year (n = 5,023) 16-17 year (n = 7,142) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) school .04 .07 .32 1.04 .15 .04 14.54** * 1.16 .02 .02 2.36 1.02 .02 .01 2.93 1.02 use of free time -.27 .16 2.99 .76 -.07 .10 .52 .93 -.01 .04 .08 .99 .01 .04 .10 1.01 relationships -.02 .09 .03 .99 .12 .05 5.30* 1.13 .08 .02 10.36*** 1.08 .08 .02 15.42*** 1.08 family .18 .06 9.08** 1.20 .01 .04 .06 1.01 .01 .02 .68 1.01 .02 .01 1.31 1.02 attitude .11 .07 2.43 1.11 .03 .05 .44 1.03 .07 .02 12.65*** 1.07 .05 .02 9.01** 1.05 aggression .16 .11 2.41 1.18 .17 .07 6.75** 1.19 .13 .03 17.80*** 1.14 .08 .03 8.60** 1.09 skills .04 .03 1.26 1.04 -.02 .02 .94 .98 .01 .01 .46 1.01 .01 .01 2.02 1.01 constant -.92 .21 20.13*** .40 -.72 .13 29.71** * .49 -.71 .06 147.44*** .49 -.90 .05 341.51*** .41 χ2 (7) 57.3*** 68.7*** 194.2*** 189.3*** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 132 table 9 logistic regression coefficients predicting recidivism from promotive factors for each age group 12 year (n = 439) 13 year (n = 1,009) 14-15 year (n = 5,023) 16-17 year (n = 7,142) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) school .06 .09 .41 1.06 -.03 .05 .29 .97 -.09 .02 13.72*** .91 -.08 .02 17.31*** .92 use of free time .19 .19 .98 1.21 .16 .13 1.62 1.18 .12 .06 2.96 1.13 .09 .05 2.51 1.09 relationships .03 .10 .07 1.03 -.27 .07 16.63*** .77 -.05 .03 3.87* .95 -.08 .03 9.76** .92 family -.18 .06 9.30** .84 -.05 .04 2.14 .95 -.02 .02 .91 .99 -.01 .01 .36 .99 attitude -.08 .07 1.09 .93 -.06 .04 2.01 .94 -.07 .02 11.47*** .94 -.06 .02 12.92*** .94 aggression -.28 .12 5.70* .76 -.05 .07 .58 .95 -.08 .03 6.39* .92 -.00 .03 .02 1.00 skills -.11 .06 3.33 .90 .01 .04 .11 1.01 -.03 .02 2.88 .97 -.05 .01 13.00*** .95 constant 1.04 .17 35.80*** 2.83 .64 .11 35.40*** 1.90 .32 .05 47.97*** 1.38 .03 .04 .58 1.03 χ2 (7) 64.6*** 71.37*** 209.7*** 246.7*** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 at age 12, only risk factors from the family domain were significant; at age 13 risk factors from the school, relationships, and aggression domains were significant; at age 14-15 risk factors from the relationships, aggression, and attitude domains were significant; and at age 16-17 also, risk factors from the relationships, aggression, and attitude domains were significant. significant promotive factors at age 12 included promotive factors from the family and aggression domains; at age 13 promotive factors from the relationships domain; at age 14-15 promotive factors from the school, use of free time, aggression, and attitude domains; and at age 16-17 promotive factors from the school, relationships, attitude, and skills domains. sex differences in the best unique predictors again, multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine the unique contribution of the predictors for boys and girls. separate multivariate prediction models were tested for risk factors (see table 10) and promotive factors (see table 11) in boys and girls. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 133 table 10 logistic regression coefficients predicting recidivism from risk factors separately for boys and girls boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) school .04 .01 15.3*** 1.0 .01 .02 .06 1.00 use of free time -.03 .03 1.2 .97 -.00 .05 .00 1.00 relationships 1.00 .02 30.0*** 1.1 .07 .03 5.7* 1.07 family .03 .01 7.7** 1.0 .04 .02 3.8* 1.04 attitude .06 .01 16.4*** 1.1 -.00 .03 .01 1.00 aggression .13 .02 31.1*** 1.1 .19 .04 25.5*** 1.21 skills .01 .01 .8 1.0 .04 .01 7.7** 1.04 constant -.73 .04 344.0*** .5 -1.28 .08 260.6*** .28 χ2 (7) 456.1*** 120.2*** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 table 11 logistic regression coefficients predicting recidivism from promotive factors separately for boys and girls boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) b se wald exp (b) b se wald exp (b) school -.06 .02 11.9** .95 -.06 .03 4.6* .94 use of free time .09 .04 3.0 1.10 .13 .08 2.6 1.14 relationships -.11 .02 29.6*** .89 -.03 .04 .43 .97 family -.04 .01 10.1** .97 -.01 .02 .12 .99 attitude -.06 .01 15.8*** .95 -.04 .02 6.5 .96 aggression -.06 .02 6.8** .95 -.09 .04 4.4* .92 skills -.04 .01 10.9** .97 -.07 .02 12.3*** .93 constant .42 .03 149.6*** 1.52 -.23 .06 15.5*** .79 χ2 (7) 502.6*** 110.6*** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 for boys, risk factors from the school, relationships, family, attitude, and aggression domains were significant. promotive factors proved to be significant in the following domains: school, relationships, family, attitude, aggression, and skills. for girls, risk factors from the relationships, family, aggression, and skills domains were significant. promotive factors were significant in the following domains: school, aggression, and skills. unique contribution of promotive factors to the prediction of recidivism hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis was used in order to analyse the unique contribution of the promotive factors to the prediction of recidivism (see table 12 and table 13). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 134 table 12 the incremental contribution of promotive factors for each age group 12 year (n = 439) 13 year (n = 1,009) 14-15 year (n = 5,023) 16-17 year (n = 7,142) χ2 (df) χ2 (df) χ2 (df) χ2 (df) risk factors (block 1) 57.27 (7) *** 68.70 (7) *** 194.16 (7) *** 189.25 (7) *** promotive factors (block 2) 14.24 (7) * 23.33 (7) *** 46.86 (7) *** 78.30 (7) *** total model 71.51 (14) *** 92.04 (14) *** 241.02 (14) *** 267.56 (14) *** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 table 13 the incremental contribution of promotive factors for boys and girls boys (n = 10,111) girls (n = 3,502) χ2 (df) χ2 (df) risk factors (block 1) 456.14 (7) *** 120.19 (7) *** promotive factors (block 2) 111.18 (7) *** 19.55 (7) ** total model 567.32 (14) *** 139.74 (14) *** *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 it can be seen in table 12 and table 13 that adding promotive factors significantly improved the prediction of recidivism for both boys and girls an in all age groups. so, the promotive factors contributed significantly to the prediction of recidivism after having entered risk factors. discussion the goal of this study was to gain more insight into the importance of promotive and risk factors for 18-month recidivism during adolescence. there is a relative paucity of knowledge on this subject, even though such knowledge is of essential importance for developing evidence-based interventions, adequate risk assessment of recidivism, and effective referral to judicial interventions targeting resistance to crime. therefore, we investigated the prevalence and impact of a large number of factors that have both a promotive and a risk aspect. the importance of promotive and risk factors appears to be similar. for most of the domains, the impact of the promotive end is comparable to the impact of the risk end. there are, however, differences in impact in a number of individual factors: of the 49 factors that were measured, it was found that for 15 factors the impact of the promotive end was greater than the impact of the risk end, whereas for 7 factors the impact of the risk end was greater. for 27 factors, no significant differences were found between the impact of the promotive and risk ends. thus, for about half of the factors there is a linear relation between the factor and recidivism, while for the other half there is no linear relation. it is therefore important to distinguish between risk and promotive factors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 135 risk factors appear to be more common than promotive factors. this seems consistent with the fact that the sample consists of mediumto high-risk youth. other studies, with samples including low-risk youth, also show that during adolescence risk factors are more common than promotive factors (loeber, farrington, stouthamer-loeber, & white, 2008; van der laan & blom, 2006). however, very few studies have questioned whether the proportion of promotive and risk factors is more or less constant across development (loeber, farrington et al., 2008). the present study shows that the prevalence of promotive factors was higher in older adolescents, whereas the prevalence of risk factors was higher in younger adolescents. in 16and 17-year-olds, the number of risk factors was about equal to the number of promotive factors. this can partly be explained by the fact that the group of younger adolescents included more adolescents who started offending at earlier ages. research has shown that the behavior of early starters is more strongly determined by individual and/or social risk factors than the behavior of late starters, whose behavior is more often determined by situational factors (moffit, 1993). especially for the factors in the individual domains (attitude, aggression, and skills) the prevalence of promotive factors is higher in older adolescents, while the prevalence of risk factors is higher in younger adolescents. a possible explanation for this is that adolescence is characterised by social, emotional, and moral growth (m. cole, s. cole, & lightfoot, 2005), which means that juveniles develop more promotive factors in an individual domain over time. recent research on adolescent brain development also shows that the maturation of the brain ensures that adolescents increasingly master a variety of skills (crone, bullens, van der plas, kijkuit, & zelazo, 2008). for example, it appears that by the activity of certain brain areas, younger adolescents make more risky choices for themselves and are more sensitive for rewards than older adolescents (van leijenhorst et al., 2010). the impact of promotive factors as well as risk factors on recidivism is high among young adolescents, but low in older adolescents in almost every domain. the difference in impact is greatest between 12-years-olds and 13-year-olds: the impact is on average 22% lower in 13-year-olds than in 12-year-olds. so, the influence of both risk factors and promotive factors on recidivism is greatest at the beginning of adolescence. a possible explanation for this is the increasing level of autonomy attained by juveniles during adolescence (oudshoorn, brans, duyx, & eussen, 2002). this increasing autonomy may result in juveniles who become increasingly less sensitive to external stimuli, and who therefore are less likely to be influenced by, for example, friends or family. another possible explanation is the rising heritability with age: genetic influences become more important as children grow older. according to work by plomin and colleagues (2001), heritability estimates calculated on infant samples are as low as 20%, rising to around 40% in middle childhood, and ultimately as high as 80% in adult samples in the united states. this suggests that the underlying genes actually express themselves by affecting a person’s predisposition to build, learn, and develop mental abilities throughout the lifespan (plomin, defries, mcclearn, & mcguffin, 2001). finally, age differences were found in the unique contribution of promotive and risk factors to the prediction of recidivism. at age 12, promotive factors in the family and aggression domains were the best independent predictors, at age 13 promotive factors in the relationships domain, and from age 14 promotive factors in the school, relationships, and attitude domains. at age 12, risk factors in the family domain were the best independent predictors, at age 13 risk factors in the school, relationships, and aggression domains, and from age 14 risk factors in the relationships, attitude, and aggression domains. https://legacy.ic.uva.nl/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/robert_plomin� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 136 some limitations of this study need to be mentioned. first, the wscja was not designed to provide an in-depth examination of promotive and risk factors. instead, it is a risk assessment tool that is designed to be used by juvenile justice professionals and clinicians to summarize youth’s risks and needs, classify their overall risk level, and plan treatment and supervision strategies. second, the sample predominately consisted of moderateand highrisk youth. therefore, the results cannot be generalized to juvenile delinquents with a low risk of criminal offense recidivism. third, there are no research results available regarding the interrater reliability of the wsjca. however, given that quality assurance is an important part of the assessment structure and organization in washington state and probation officers receive intensive training to adequately administer and reliably score the wsjca (barnoski, 2004), we have no reason to assume that reliability of the wsjca would be low. the results of this study have a number of important implications for policy and practice. in the first place, this study shows that the dynamic promotive and risk factors were most strongly related to recidivism in different domains. examples of important promotive factors are: “very likely to graduate”, “believes getting education of value”, “prosocial friends”, “usually following family rules”, “respect for authority figures”, and “skills in dealing with difficult situations”. examples of important risk factors are: “severe behavior problems at school”, “admiration of antisocial peers”, “no resistance to influence of antisocial peers”, “no respect for other’s property”, “believes physical aggression is appropriate to solve a conflict”, and “lacks techniques to control impulsive behavior”. this knowledge is essential for practices and policies used to prevent recidivism, because the effect of an intervention to prevent recidivism is greatest when it is aimed at those dynamic risk factors and promotive factors that are most strongly linked to recidivism (andrews et al., 2006; bonta, 2002; farmer et al., 2002; lipsey & derzon, 1998). the stronger the link to recidivism, the greater the potential effect of an intervention aimed at these factors. second, the results show the importance of early intervention within the juvenile justice system. because both the importance of the promotive factors and the importance of the risk factors are greatest at the beginning of adolescence, the potential effect of an intervention aimed at these factors is also greatest in early adolescence. the large difference in impact of promotive and risk factors immediately after age 12 implies that at age 12 relatively good progress can be achieved in all domains, while at age 13 this may well require a good deal more effort. the low influence of dynamic risk and promotive factors in 16and 17-year-olds illustrates the importance of further research on predictors of recidivism in late adolescence. knowledge of the most important risk and promotive factors for recidivism for 16and 17-year-olds especially is needed to develop adequate treatment (aimed at those dynamic factors that relate to recidivism most strongly) for this age group. in the third place, the results show that the focus of an intervention needs to be geared to the age of a juvenile to maximize the potential effect on recidivism. the first step in determining what should be treated comprises a screening to investigate which problems are present in which domains. given that delinquency and recidivism are the results of complex interactions between risk and promotive factors (deković & prinzie, 2008; prinzie et al., 2008) and the detrimental effect of cumulative risk (loeber, slot et al., 2008), it is probable that changes in multiple risk and promotive factors are required to reduce recidivism. when determining treatment goal priorities, it should be kept in mind that the potential effect of an intervention aimed at reducing recidivism at age 12 will probably be the greatest when attention is paid to the family domain, because the family domain is the most important international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 137 independent predictor at age 12. at age 13, attention should be especially paid to promotive and risk factors in the relationships domain, and from age 14 promotive and risk factors in the attitude domain deserve special attention. these findings emphasize the need for developmentally appropriate interventions. fourth, both risk and promotive factors from the attitude domain, such as lack of empathy and having no respect for other’s property, authority, and social conventions, are strongly related to recidivism at any age. previous research has shown that youth with more antisocial attitudes are also those with more risk factors in the other domains, which indicates that problematic or antisocial attitudes play a central role (van der put et. al., 2010b). these findings suggest that the attitude domain should be taken into account during any intervention, because if a change can be brought about in the attitude domain this may work its way through other domains. fifth, the results are important for risk assessment. the results show that the prediction of recidivism based solely on promotive factors is about as accurate as the prediction based solely on risk factors. it also appears that the prediction of recidivism significantly improved by adding promotive factors to risk factors. therefore, the combination of risk and promotive factors provides the best prediction of recidivism. most of the fourth-generation instruments contain promotive factors, but they are usually not included in calculating the overall risk of recidivism score. promotive factors are measured in order to assess the needs of juveniles and get insight into the possibilities for reducing the risk of recidivism. the predictive value of the overall risk score is likely to improve if promotive factors are also included in the calculation of this score. finally, the results show that a decrease in recidivism can be achieved by focusing on both an increase and/or strengthening of promotive factors and a decrease in the number of risk factors. for most factors, the impact of the promotive aspect is comparable to the impact of the risk aspect. interventions aimed at increasing promotive factors are therefore potentially just as effective as interventions aimed at decreasing risk factors, which is important when considering what the focus of an intervention should be. in addition, this knowledge is important because it may be easier to foster treatment motivation by targeting promotive factors instead of targeting risk factors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 119-141 138 references andrews, d. a., & bonta, j. 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(2009). childhood-limited versus persistent antisocial behavior: why do some recover and others do not? the trails study. journal of early adolescence, 29(5), 718-742. resilience-building with disabled children and young people: a review and critique of the academic evidence base international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 394 resilience-building with disabled children and young people: a review and critique of the academic evidence base angie hart, becky heaver, elinor brunnberg, anette sandberg, hannah macpherson, stephanie coombe, and elias kourkoutas abstract: the aim of this paper was to review published accounts of resilience-based approaches with and for disabled children and young people aged up to 25 years. the review is part of a broader study looking more generally at resilience-based interventions with and for young people. the authors attempt to summarise the approaches and techniques that might best support those children and young people who need them the most. however, when compared to the number of evaluated resilience-based approaches to working with typically-developing children and young people, those including children and young people with complex needs are disappointingly lacking. of 830 retrieved references, 46 were relevant and 23 met the inclusion criteria and form the body of this review. they covered a variety of intervention content, setting, and delivery, and diverse children and young people, making comparative evaluation prohibitive. the difficulties in identifying suitable resilience-based interventions are discussed, together with the authors’ iterative approach, which was informed by realist review methodology for complex social interventions. the review is set into a context of exclusion, an ableist mindset and the political economy of research. it also provides recommendations for future research and practice development in this field. keywords: resilience, intervention, disability, young people, review acknowledgement: the authors would like to thank marina trowell for her assistance with article screening and translation. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to professor angie hart, centre for health research, university of brighton, 264 mayfield house, falmer, brighton, bn1 9ph, united kingdom. tel: +44(0)1273 644051 fax: +44(0)1273 644541 e-mail: a.hart@brighton.ac.uk mailto:a.hart@brighton.ac.uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 395 angie hart is professor of child, family & community health at centre for health research, mayfield house, university of brighton, falmer, brighton, bn1 9ph, uk. e-mail: a.hart@brighton.ac.uk becky heaver is research officer at centre for health research, mayfield house, university of brighton, falmer, brighton, bn1 9ph, uk. e-mail: b.heaver@brighton.ac.uk elinor brunnberg is professor of social work at school of health, care and social welfare, mälardalen university, drottninggatan 16a, eskilstuna, sweden. e-mail: elinor.brunnberg@mdh.se anette sandberg is professor of education at school of education, culture and communication, mälardalen university, högskoleplan 1, västerås, sweden. e-mail: anette.sandberg@mdh.se hannah macpherson is senior lecturer in human geography at school of environment and technology, cockcroft building, university of brighton, lewes road, moulsecoomb, brighton, bn2 4gj, uk. e-mail: hm139@brighton.ac.uk stephanie coombe is ph.d. student at centre for health research, mayfield house, university of brighton, falmer, brighton, bn1 9ph, uk. e-mail: s.i.green@brighton.ac.uk elias kourkoutas is associate professor of psychopathology and special education at department of primary education, university of crete, gallos campus, rethymnon, crete, gr-74100, greece. e-mail: hkourk@edc.uoc.gr mailto:a.hart@brighton.ac.uk mailto:b.heaver@brighton.ac.uk mailto:elinor.brunnberg@mdh.se mailto:anette.sandberg@mdh.se mailto:hm139@brighton.ac.uk mailto:s.i.green@brighton.ac.uk mailto:hkourk@edc.uoc.gr international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 396 resilience may be usefully viewed as positive development despite adversity (see hart, blincow, & thomas, 2007; masten, 2011; rutter, 2006; ungar, 2012). hart et al. (2007) suggest that “resilience is evident where people with persistently few assets and resources, and major vulnerabilities … have better outcomes than we might expect given their circumstances, and in comparison to … other children in their contexts” (p. 10). there is a vast academic literature on resilience-building with children and young people, and the benefits and outcomes of interventions or programs designed to enhance specific or general aspects of their resilience. these include concrete progress, such as improved confidence, coping and self-esteem, and less measureable outcomes, such as doing better than expected, or simply maintaining the status quo (hart et al., 2007). these benefits are of particular importance to children and young people with disabilities, who face additional adversity, disadvantage, and challenges to their development. the purpose of the review is to summarise which resilience interventions were effective in enhancing resilience, and with what populations, with a focus on whether and how children and young people with disabilities were included in academic studies of explicit resilience-building approaches. prior to interrogating the evidence base, this article sets out why it focuses on children and young people with disabilities and the enhancement of resilience, how we define disability, and the approach used to conduct the review. there is a strong link between disability, exclusion, and socioeconomic inequality (hosseinpoor et al., 2013), and the implications for children and young people with disabilities depend on the nature of their disability, where they live, their culture, socioeconomic status, and gender (united nations children’s emergency fund [unicef], 2013b; van campen & van santvoort, 2013). figures show that in particular, education, training, and employment opportunities for girls with disabilities are fewer than for girls without disabilities, and even boys with disabilities (groce, 2004). children with long-term illnesses or disabilities have been shown to underperform in educational attainment, maths, verbal and non-verbal skills, at age seven, compared to their non-disabled peers (jones, gutman, & platt, 2013). contact a family (2013) recently reported that children with disabilities experience illegal exclusions from school on a regular basis in england and wales. young people with neurodevelopmental conditions, learning or mental health difficulties, in the united kingdom, united states, and canada, are more likely to go to prison than other young people because the youth justice system is failing to recognise their needs (doob & cesaroni, 2004; hughes, williams, chitsabesan, davies, & mounce, 2012; odgers, burnette, chauhan, moretti, & reppucci, 2005; talbot, 2010). swedish adolescents with disabilities are more likely to experience psychological symptoms (brunnberg, lindén boström, & berglund, 2007) and abuse, such as force at sexual debut, than adolescents without disabilities (brunnberg, lindén boström, & berglund, 2012). a study from switzerland compared the prevalence and intensity of victimisation from bullying and found higher rates of teasing, physical aggression, and social exclusion for adolescents with chronic conditions compared to young people without chronic conditions (pittet, berchtols, akre, michaud, & suris, 2010). young people with a learning difficulty may also be at increased risk of substance misuse, which cosden (2001) suggests may be a negative coping strategy related to the developmental need for family support over a longer period of time, increased difficulty in making friendships with peers, and a lack of understanding of the effects of their own disability. the general pressures of living in an ableist society are also likely to contribute. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 397 the world health association (who) considers participation in age-appropriate activities to be essential for understanding functioning of children with disabilities (who, 2007). it also improves children’s social relationships, academic performance, mental health, physical health, and skills and competencies (forsyth & jarvis, 2002; janssen & leblanc, 2010; mâsse, miller, shen, schiariti, & roxborough, 2013). however, it is clear that children and young people with disabilities are often excluded from activities others take for granted, many of which can help to build resilience. for example, mâsse et al. (2013) found that in canadian schools, children with a range of disabilities were restricted from participating in educational, physical, and social/recreational activities such as art/music lessons or summer camp, particularly if they were from poorer families or had more severe disabilities. perusing the resilience literature, it seems to us that most academic research is conducted from a psychological or medical view of disability (e.g., lee et al., 2009; storch et al., 2012), instead of a social model of disability (e.g., evans & plumridge, 2007; runswickcole & goodley, 2013). some have even critiqued the concept of resilience itself, for making implicitly ableist assumptions and being conflated with normative perspectives on health (hutcheon & wolbring, 2013). this is clearly a contested area, hence an important question to consider is what is meant by disability, and how it will be defined and measured relative to this review, in order to answer the question: whether and how children and young people with disabilities are included in academic studies of explicit resilience-building approaches. in writing this paper our interest in resilience from a disability perspective, as researchers, parents, and practitioners, arises in part from our personal circumstances. our group of seven includes adults who identify as having disabilities, parents of children with complex needs, and practitioners who work day-to-day with disabled children and young people. exploration within our team revealed 25 conditions or differences perceived by society as disabilities, including physical disabilities, neurodiversity, sensory impairment, chronic medical conditions, learning difficulties, and mental health difficulties. method according to the who (2012): ‘disabilities’ is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. an impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives. whilst this is the definition of disability we are using, we cannot do it justice because it rendered our search unfeasibly large. the issue of defining “disability” is itself subjective, multifarious, and incredibly nuanced. it has implications for those who do or do not fit a particular definition, and corresponds to a vast and growing disability studies literature from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., salvador-carulla & gasca, 2010; schalock & luckasson, 2013). understandably, the way that disability is defined can affect the research findings (grönvik, 2009), but including a wide range of disability-related search terms made the search broad and non-specific. therefore we took a pragmatic approach. disability in this review was conceived to include children and young people fitting the who (2012) definition of disability, but in particular those with physical disability, severe or chronic physical or psychiatric illness, and learning difficulty, mostly referred to in the research base international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 398 as learning, cognitive, or intellectual disability, despite preference of the term “learning difficulties” by self-advocates who have them (goodley, 2005). limited time and resources made a wider search impractical. therefore we did not specifically include mental health/illness search terms, which themselves return a vast number of results. this is in part due to the popularity of “well-being” programs and the perceived preventative nature of resilience interventions aimed at preventing depression, anxiety and stress, and increasing socio-emotional competence in typically-developing children and young people with average levels of need. the aim of our review was not to look at broad interventions aimed at the mental health of the general population, but those focused specifically on children and young people with the most long-term and complex needs. our review methodology grew out of the “realist” review approach for complex social interventions (pawson, greenhalgh, harvey, & walshe, 2005), which aims to identify what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how. resilience-enhancing interventions generally do not suit a traditional review approach due to a lack of comparable elements. we formulated some broad aims in consultation with the parents and practitioners with whom we regularly work, and incorporated these into an iterative, flexible approach outlined below (as per hart & heaver, 2013). a parsimonious search was made using disability search terms (disabl* or disabilit* or autis* or chronic or ebd or severe) in conjunction with resilien* and (youth or young or child* or adolescen*). additional search terms (e.g., “complex”, or terms relating to specific acquired and congenital conditions and disabilities, sensory impairment, psychiatric illness, neurodiversity or learning difficulties) did not increase the number of (relevant) results; therefore it was concluded that these concise terms were sufficient, and would be included in most papers concerning children and young people with a disability. children and young people with what is generally termed “severe” mental health or behavioural problems were captured by inclusion of the search terms “severe” or (psychiatric) “disability”. the authors assessed whether or not papers included evaluated interventions on the basis of the abstract, rather than through search terms, as many unsuitable articles include the word “intervention” in the abstract referring to future directions. articles were initially retrieved from the literature by searching ebsco databases (amed, british nursing index, cinahl, criminal justice abstracts, ebook collection, ejournals, psycarticles, psycinfo, sportdiscus), expanded academic asap, aei, bei, eric, ibss, pubmed, web of science (incl. medline), sciencedirect, and swedish databases artikelsök and swepub, for articles between 2000 and 2013, which included resilience keywords in the title, and keywords related to disability and age group in the abstract. the search for articles emanating from the nordic countries produced no results. articles originated from countries including u.s.a., canada, hong kong, south africa, taiwan, mexico, wales, japan, germany, and france, and were mostly written in english. additional publications were identified in an iterative process via google scholar, hand searching reference lists, and discussion with colleagues. the authors screened 398 of the 830 retrieved references, and identified 46 documents as relevant on the basis of their title and abstract. in groups of 2 to 3 we reviewed each full text collaboratively, initially agreeing on 96% of the articles, and reaching 100% consensus on all papers after brief discussion. we considered 23 of the 46 articles to have met the inclusion criteria for the review (see figure 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 399 figure 1: the review process. initial inclusion criteria for the search were: at least some of the participants were children or young people aged 0 to 25 years, or were parents/carers/families/teachers of children or young people; at least some of the participants had a disability as defined previously; the intervention was resilience-based; the intervention was evaluated. interventions were considered to be resilience-based if the following criteria were met: the authors had engaged with the resilience evidence base and attempted to link their program, or components of their program, with specific resilience-enhancing capacities (see, for example, mental health foundation of australia, 2005); articles included a definition or explanation of resilience that indicated the authors’ orientation with respect to the locus and nature of resilience (e.g., individual asset, dynamic transaction between individual/environment). in an iterative process, we expanded two of the inclusion criteria (that the intervention was resilience-based, and that the intervention was evaluated) in a second search, to increase the number of articles, and therefore the usefulness of the review. some articles were also included that were not strictly interventions, but were excellent practice examples of resilience-building activities with children and young people with complex needs. the authors chose the age range because our work focuses on children and young people and the parents and practitioners supporting them. furthermore, interventions with children and young people is where interventions potentially may make the larger difference. as the age group was so broad, and in line with realist approaches that document the ecological context of the interventions, programs were not required to target predefined developmental or resilience aspects which would be contextand age-specific. however, it was considered essential that discussion of underlying models or theories provided a conceptual basis for why the intervention would be effective in enhancing resilience in that age group (e.g., increased self-esteem). consistent with our own practice, experience, and research interests, and because of the connection between inequalities, disability, and adversity, we wanted to capture any information regarding inequalities faced by the children and young people in the studies. inequality, by and in itself, directly impacts on psychological and physical health, to a degree international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 400 that cannot simply be ameliorated by psychological interventions (prilleltensky & prilleltensky, 2005). an inequalities perspective is imperative when considering children and young people with disabilities and their families, who face additional financial hardship, lack of opportunities, more intense and longer-term caring responsibility, multiple bureaucratic procedures, access barriers, stigma and discrimination, and often have to negotiate with and manage multiple ineffective, unresponsive, and underfunded professionals and services, often reported to work in a disjointed fashion. resilience scholars, and those writing about resilience interventions, often define “resilience” as residing solely within individuals, rather than as a dynamic interplay between persons and their environments (hart et al., 2007). making resilient moves with and/or on behalf of children and young people may be seen as a response to inequalities; therefore, resilience-based interventions might well include an inequalities dimension. the parents and practitioners with whom we are working support children and young people in contexts they would define as complex inequality or disadvantage, those who are “denied access to the tools needed for self-sufficiency” (mayer, 2003, p. 2). these parents and practitioners were eager to find out more about what best supports these children and young people’s resilience. detailed information about each intervention was collated to gain an understanding of what worked, for whom and in what context: participant characteristics, method and intensity of delivery, setting and circumstances. to identify whether an intervention satisfied all or most of the inclusion criteria, aspects such as resilience definition, program-theory links, capacities, and measures and outcomes were also recorded. additional headings collected evaluation design and methodology, program costs, funding and implementation history (where available), and strengths and weaknesses of the program and the evaluation. results and discussion when it came to identifying comparable resilience-based, well-evaluated interventions, the reality was bleak. in previous work (hart & heaver, 2013), we had to exclude some useful and innovative articles as they did not meet the inclusion criteria, the most common reasons being that they did not properly relate their study to resilience conceptually, despite using the term in the abstract or keywords. however, when looking for approaches to building resilience with disabled children and young people, had we applied the same strict criteria, just seven of the original 830 papers would have been suitable (bloemhoff, 2006; buckner et al., 2005; leve, fisher, & chamberlain, 2009; macpherson, hart, & heaver, in press; mears & stevenson, 2006; theron, 2006; woodier, 2011). after the first iteration of our search, we decided to expand our inclusion criteria – papers still had to address the population of interest (i.e., children and young people, with some of the sample having a disability), but they were also considered if they were resiliencebased but not evaluated (e.g., alvord & grados, 2005; burka, 2007; ellis, braff, & hutchinson, 2001), if their link to the resilience literature was not explicitly stated in the introduction, despite reporting a program that clearly could be conceptualised as increasing resilience (e.g., ferreyra, 2001; morison, bromfield, & cameron, 2003; pelchat, 2010), and in some cases if they were not strictly “interventions”, for example describing the benefit of individual resilience-building activities that were not part of an intervention (jessup, cornell, & bundy, 2010), or existing service provision that was not part of a research project (evans & plumridge, 2007; morison et al., 2003). with a redefined set of inclusion criteria, the second iteration identified 23 of the papers as suitable for inclusion in this review. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 401 originally it was our intention to structure the results section according to the commonly asked questions of our own parent and practitioner collaborators, and attempt to identify what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how (e.g., pawson et al., 2005; hart & heaver, 2013). however, there was so little actual data, that this has not been possible. details that would satisfy these questions, such as cost, are often missing from published evaluations of resilience-based interventions involving participants who do not have disabilities; there is even less information available about interventions for the disabled children and young people who are the focus of this review. therefore we have taken a slightly different approach, focusing more on what has been done and how, and who has been left out and why, rather than making evaluative comparisons of effectiveness. participants approximately 800 children and young people from nine countries participated in the 23 studies, in samples sizes ranging from 2 to 213; alvord and grados (2005), ferreyra (2001), leve et al. (2009), and mears and stevenson (2006) did not provide sample sizes. despite being key to interpreting the generalisability of their results, a large proportion of the studies omitted to report major demographic characteristics of their samples. half the studies did not supply information about gender (alvord & grados, 2005; burka, 2007; ellis et al., 2001; evans & plumridge, 2007; ferreyra, 2001; gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012; leve et al., 2009; mears & stevenson, 2006; morison et al., 2003; pelchat, 2010; stallard et al., 2005); of the studies that did, around 32% of participants were female (see figure 2). the participants were aged 0 to 25 years, with the most commonly included age group being 13, and those aged between 9 and 18 years were most commonly included (in at least nine studies; see figure 3). figure 2: gender breakdown of participants. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 402 figure 3: frequency of age groups in the studies. twenty of the 23 studies included solely disabled children and young people (some with multiple disabilities and complex needs), with the remaining three studies (ellis et al., 2001; firth, frydenberg, steeg, & bond, 2013; stallard et al., 2005) also including typicallydeveloping peers (see table 1). only 6 studies gave any indication of participants’ socioeconomic status (ellis et al., 2001; ferreyra, 2001; firth et al., 2013; irie & tsumura, 2011; lee et al., 2009; stallard et al., 2005), with five studies reporting race/ethnicity (buckner et al., 2005; ferreyra, 2001; firth et al., 2013; lee et al., 2009; storch et al., 2012), and none recording sexual orientation. what did the studies do exactly, for how long, and with what intensity? this review has confirmed our observations from many years of research and practice, that to be effective as practitioners, parents, and researchers in the resilience field, one has to be contextually focused. perhaps understandably, one of the capacities specific to resiliencebuilding interventions for disabled children and young people that was not mentioned in interventions for typically-developing (or where no specific details of the sample were given, at least assumed to be typically-developing) peers, was “accurate understanding of the illness and its medical and psychosocial consequences” on the individual and the family (shapiro, 2002, p. 1376). therefore some interventions included psychoeducation, information, and advice on helping the children and young people/families to cope with their specific condition or disability (e.g., buckner et al., 2005; evans & plumridge, 2007; ferreyra, 2001; firth et al. 2013; mu & chang, 2010; shapiro, 2002; storch et al., 2012). however, only two studies international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 403 included identity formation (see gwernan-jones, 2008) as a disabled young person (ferreyra, 2001) or as the family of a disabled child (mu & chang, 2010). several interventions had a specific focus for enhancing resilience including: prevention elements such as mental health (firth et al., 2013; stallard et al., 2005; storch et al., 2012) and substance use (ferreyra, 2001); learning new skills such as problem-solving, social and life skills (alvord & grados, 2005; ellis et al., 2001; ferreyra, 2001; macpherson et al., in press; mears & stevenson, 2006; theron, 2006); leisure, outdoor activities, and hobbies (bloemhoff, 2006; buckner et al., 2005; burka, 2007; ellis et al., 2001; evans & plumridge, 2007; jessup et al., 2010); creative therapies including art/music (macpherson et al., in press; theron, 2006); and work experience (woodier, 2011). length and intensity was very wide-ranging – from one-off sessions of 1 to 4 hours (bloemhoff, 2006; mu & chang, 2010) to weekly sessions over 2 to 3 years (ferreyra, 2001; woodier, 2011; see table 1). several interventions worked with the wider family system rather than just the individual child (alvord & grados, 2005; burka, 2007; evans & plumridge, 2007; ferreyra, 2001; gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012; lee et al., 2009; morison et al., 2003; mu & chang, 2010; shapiro, 2002), and in some cases included significant others involved with the child, such as teachers (ferreyra, 2001; mears & stevenson, 2006) and health-care practitioners (lee et al., 2009; gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012). given the individual nature of disability and chronic illness, it is perhaps not surprising that compared to interventions for typically-developing youth, articles in this review included a highly customised approach to meet individual levels of need (e.g., ellis et al., 2001; evans & plumridge, 2007; ferreyra, 2001; gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012; leve et al., 2009; macpherson et al., in press; morison et al., 2003; mu & chang, 2010; pelchat, 2010; shapiro, 2002; theron, 2006; woodier, 2011), often informed by a focus group or collaboration with the children, young people and their families (e.g., ellis et al., 2001; ferreyra, 2001; gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012; macpherson et al., in press; pelchat, 2010; storch et al., 2012). by contrast, only two interventions used a universal approach at the level of the classroom and/or school (firth et al., 2013; stallard et al., 2005). one program featured an inclusive model of teacher training to change the whole school culture, and a coping program for students with dyslexia, nested within a whole-class coping program aimed at all students in that year (firth et al., 2013). whilst they excluded pupils with other types of reading difficulties (from lack of opportunity, learning difficulties, asperger syndrome, sensory impairment, or emotional difficulties), those pupils (assuming they were present) still received the general whole-class coping skills intervention. unfortunately the results of this well-intentioned, sustainable intervention were weak, with minimal improvement, lack of difference between dyslexic/non-dyslexic students at the start or end of the study, and observed benefits that could have been the result of the passage of time. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 404 table 1: summary of contexts, interventions and delivery (where given). (ses=socioeconomic status; m=male; f=female). study children & young people age no. delivery other info alvord & grados, 2005; usa adhd, anxiety, limited number with "mild" asperger's, learning disabilities, fine-motor/gross-motor skills deficits (all) 4-14 yrs 24-28 sessions over 2 semesters; clinician facilitator not < average iq or aggression/ antisocial details: facilitated, single-sex, goal-oriented social skills group to learn new skills; included free play, relaxation training, active parental involvement, reward system and homework. outcome: empirical data collected but not included. bloemhoff, 2006; south africa behavioural and/or emotional problems (e.g., depression, anti-social behaviour) (all); at-risk, referred under child care act 1983 16 yrs 47 (m) one-off 4hr session; researcher facilitator details: ropes course in environment of 'safe' risk-taking and competition; followed by facilitated processing and reflection to apply learning to real life. outcome: significant increase in protective factors after course compared to before. buckner et al., 2005; usa asthma (all); caucasian & african american; low & moderate-high ses 12-14 yrs 12 (8f 4m) 3 day camp; nurses, camp staff details: residential camp including outdoor physical/leisure activities, such as canoeing and country dancing, combined with asthma education. outcome: increased resilience after camp compared to before, improvement still present at 6 months. burka, 2007; usa learning challenges (e.g., learning disability, adhd) or medical problems (e.g., diabetes, cerebral palsy) (all) 8-13 yrs 49 3hrs a day, 5 days a week for 3 weeks; program staff details: summer program of challenging but fun activities; included individual work, arts and crafts, coping and problem-solving skills, earning non-competitive awards for reaching goals. outcome: not reported. ellis et al., 2001; usa learning, emotional, attention hyperactivity disorders (some); at-risk, referred from judicial/mental health services; low ses 12-18 yrs 72 2-5 evenings; program staff, therapeutic recreation specialists participatory international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 405 study children & young people age no. delivery other info details: leisure and skills activities, individualised for youth unable to participate independently; included academic, life and stress management skills, opportunity for personally meaningful pursuits, community service and represent peers at youth-directed planning and strategy meetings. outcome: reported greater sense of self-efficacy, voice and self-confidence. evans & plumridge, 2007; england autism spectrum, learning difficulties, hearing impairments, physical impairments & complex needs (all) 5-13 yrs 47 social model of disability; awareness raising details: wide-ranging inclusive, integrated and specialist play and leisure provision, such as after-school clubs, holiday play-schemes; included specialist information and advice, respite, advocacy and peer support for families. outcome: reported increased confidence and self-esteem, reduced isolation. ferreyra, 2001; usa specific learning difficulties (e.g., dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dysphasia, adhd, motor/social perceptual learning disability) and/or physical disability (cerebral palsy, spina bifida, spinal cord injury, amputee, speech disabilities) (all); african american, latina, asian american, native american, caucasian; from economically challenged/diverse neighbourhoods 14-21 yrs f 1-3hrs a week during school year for 2 yrs; program staff with disabilities addresses basics; participatory details: facilitated group and one-to-one counselling; focus group developed content and responsive curriculum including life-skills, substance use prevention, disability awareness/rights and identity formation; provided adult female disabled role models and help with basic living support, food, clothing and shelter. outcome: increased academic resilience, confidence and social capital, decreased substance use. firth et al., 2013; australia dyslexia (some); anglo-european; 1/3 receiving maintenance allowance 10-11 yrs 23 (8f, 15m) 10 x 50mins weekly; teachers details: dyslexia-specific coping skills program in addition to whole-class cbt program for all students, whole-school changes in practice (e.g., teacher training, student screening) and dyslexia-friendly environment (e.g., nonprint-based access to curriculum and means of expression). outcome: inconclusive – authors suggest measured international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 406 study children & young people age no. delivery other info improvements in locus of control and non-productive coping due to age/development. gauvin-lepage & lefebvre, 2012; canada moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (all) adolesc-ent 8 nurses collaborative with parents details: focus on recognising the knowledge and expertise of families, helping them feel better supported and understood; intervention designed and tested with the family. outcome: on-going research, results not yet available. irie & tsumura, 2011; japan learning difficulties/developmental disability (all); moderate-high ses 3-5 yrs 4 (1f 3m) ~90mins, ~monthly for 1 year; researcher details: family coping intervention through interviews with researcher. outcome: over time parents learned to verbalise feelings and take joint ownership of their children’s condition. jessup et al., 2010; australia blind & visually impaired (all); had met educational & developmental milestones 16-24 yrs 8 (4f 4m) at least once a week details: participants’ own pre-existing leisure pursuits, hobbies and activities, including sports, volunteering, music, tutoring others and being a mentor. outcome: activities provided acceptance, supportive relationships, desirable identity, experiences of power, control and social justice, enabling them to thrive despite adversity. lee et al., 2009; usa mental health issues (adhd, adjustment disorder, mood disorder, depression, oppositional defiant, bipolar, disruptive, impulse-control, dysthymia, ptsd, anxiety, trichotillomania) (all); caucasian, african american, multiracial; mostly low income; at-risk, referred by judicial/children’s/mental health services 4-17 77 (27f 50m) up to 6 weeks; mental health workers details: family intervention utilising behavioural prescriptions, solution building and crisis plans, disrupting problem-maintaining behaviours within family and between family and services. outcome: significant improvements in child functioning, parental competency, family cohesion and adaptability, maintained at 6 months. leve et al., 2009; severe emotional & behavioural difficulties (all); in foster care 9-18 yrs 6-9 months; foster parents & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 407 study children & young people age no. delivery other info usa multi-disciplinary team details: community home foster parents intensively trained, supervised and supported to provide positive adult support, mentoring, close supervision and consistent limit setting; individualised strength-building, positive interventions (e.g., social skills training, academic support, reward charts) coordinated in the home, with peers, in educational settings, with birth and/or adoptive family. outcome: improved social behaviour, placement stability and supportive attachment and peer relationships. macpherson et al., in press; england mental health complexities and/or learning difficulties (all) 16-25 yrs 9 (5f 4m) 10 x 4hr weekly; inclusive art therapist, researcher, play therapist participatory, food provided details: visual arts workshops building toward end of course exhibition; included learning new arts skills, connecting communities, expressing and processing emotions, following a resilience curriculum; participants co-developed a practitioner resource. outcome: increased sense of belonging, confidence and coping with difficult feelings. mears & stevenson, 2006; new zealand special educational needs (all) 13-14 yrs 1 class 3 weeks; researcher, school staff action research details: in class curriculum including role playing, problem-solving, discussion around videos showing “risky” scenarios. outcome: increase in resilience after intervention compared to beforehand; reported increase in self-confidence, self-esteem and ability to identify and handle risky situations. morison et al., 2003; australia chronic moderate-severe physical illness or disability (metabolic/endocrine disorders, epilepsy, chronic bowel disorders, malignancies, central nervous system disorders, asthma, cystic fibrosis, cardiac disease) (all) 0-25 yrs 82 counsellors builds capacity details: flexible, customised interventions to accommodate needs of all family members; wide variety of activities, type, length and location; included peer mentoring, community education and social events; no time constraint or limits to participation. outcome: anecdotal, positive feedback from clients and professionals. mu & chang, 2010; taiwan epilepsy (all), 63% also having learning difficulties 0-18 yrs 78 (31f 47m) 1-2 x 60-90mins; researchers identity formation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 408 study children & young people age no. delivery other info details: nursing intervention with family to define roles and responsibilities of family members and foster family resilience; included parental needs checklist, psychoeducation, enhancing mastery and coping, and reconstructing identity. outcome: significant reductions in family boundary ambiguity and maternal depression. pelchat, 2010; canada down syndrome or cleft lip/palate (all) 0-18 mths 46 researcher, perinatal care nurses co-created with parents details: therapeutic intervention with family addressing needs at level of individual, parental, conjugal and familial/extra-familial; included forging reciprocal partnership between family and professionals, sharing reciprocal resources, coping skills. outcome: positive impacts reported by family and professionals, including increased confidence in their knowledge and skills. shapiro, 2002; usa complex, chronic health problems & developmental disabilities (hypotonic cerebral palsy, anaemia; learning, social and behavioural disabilities, memory problems, mental health problems) (all) 13 yrs 1 (f) 1 year; clinical psychologist collaborative with parent; negotiating for resources details: psychotherapy with child, parent and family to make better use of existing and new resources in multiple systems and form coherent illness narrative. outcome: improved health efficacy, communication and shared problem-solving. stallard et al., 2005; england severe emotional problems (e.g., anxiety) (some); from area of social & economic deprivation, at-risk 9-10 yrs 213 10 sessions over 1 term; school nurses details: universal cbt approach using in-class workbooks to teach relaxation, problem-solving and coping skills. outcome: significant improvements in anxiety and selfesteem, reported positive classroom culture. storch et al., 2012; usa tic disorder (tourette’s or chronic tic disorder) with associated psychosocial impairment (all); caucasian, hispanic 8-16 yrs 8 (2f 6m) 10 x 50mins weekly; clinical psychology doctoral students focus group contributed to content details: individual cbt psychotherapy sessions; focuses on psycho-education and coping/living with tics and managing associated distress, anxiety and impairment, rather than trying to reduce frequency/severity or suppress. outcome: improvements in self-concept, anxiety and quality of life. theron, 2006; specific learning difficulties (e.g., spoken or written language, listening, secondary 6 (4f 8m) 12 x 1hr sessions over 5.5 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 409 study children & young people age no. delivery other info south africa speaking, reading, writing, spelling or doing maths) (all); at-risk school months; researcher facilitator details: school-based individualised program and group therapy; included art, music, cbt, resilience curriculum, visualisation and role-play. outcome: increased resilience attributes, particularly positive future orientation, compared to before intervention. woodier, 2011 ; scotland emotional & behavioural difficulties (e.g., adhd, prenatal alcohol/drug exposure) (all); looked after, school exclusion 11-15 yrs 2 (m) 3hrs/week for 1-3 yrs; teacher, input from multi-disciplinary team details: one-to-one asset-building curriculum to identify strengths, plus individual, structured voluntary work experience placement in community for academic credit. outcome: increased inclusion with school and peers, positive future orientation and responsibility for self. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 410 some of the interventions built capacity, for example the paediatric and adolescent support service included a parent peer mentoring scheme where parents who had “been there, done that” received training as volunteer mentors for other parents, acting as role models and gaining “recognition for their value as experienced people with much to offer others” (morison et al., 2003, pp. 127–128). having parents or young people developing and/or delivering training, for example in the manner of the amaze charity in brighton, u.k. (hart, virgo, & aumann, 2006), and the experience in mind community group, also in brighton, (taylor, & hart, 2011), enables interventions to involve the most excluded parents and young people, potentially makes groups more sustainable, and builds training capacity and the wider social capital of parents and young people. noticeably, despite the important resilience-building benefits of encouraging hobbies, talents, and interests (e.g., gilligan, 1999; jessup et al., 2010), these dimensions appear to have been left out of most resilience-based interventions for children and young people, as we have found in earlier work (hart & heaver, 2013). arguably, their inclusion in resilience programs is even more important for disabled children and young people, as they are already being given fewer opportunities and resources than their typically-developing peers. funded programs usually come with significant resources. using some of these to develop hobbies and interests could result in an impressive return on investment, laying the foundations for meaningful activities and job opportunities in adulthood. other papers in the search that did not include an intervention but were worth mentioning for their strategies and models addressing specific resilience capacities in special education include jones (2011), hartley (2010), and kourkoutas and xavier (2010). exclusion through disability-blindness and an ableist mindset analysis of this data set leads us to suggest that children and young people with complex needs are unjustly under-represented in study samples. our view prior to undertaking this review, that resilience-focused interventions seemed to exclude the very people who might need them the most, has been confirmed. these marginalised children and young people already have fewer chances and a greater need for intervention, yet some of the most generously funded studies continue to deliberately exclude children and young people with complex needs. some studies such as repetitions of the penn resiliency program (prp) often target what are termed “sub-clinical” samples, with a preventative focus on “teaching skills for promoting positive experiences or coping with everyday problems, rather than addressing clinical levels of symptoms that might require advanced clinical training to address” (kranzler, parks, & gillham, 2011, p. 486). a social-skills group therapy model excluded children and young people with “below average intellectual capability or severe aggression”, rather than providing additional support to sessions, on the basis that these youth would be antisocial, and that “placing antisocial youth together results in interventions that are often ineffective and may even increase the likelihood of delinquency” (alvord, & grados, 2005, p. 242). somewhat in opposition to the research ethos the authors are advocating, one study took functional analysis, an approach designed for students with severe disabilities, behavioural problems, or emotional disorders, and applied it preventatively to children who had no identified disabilities, but who showed “mild behavioural challenges in regular education classrooms” (stoiber & gettinger, 2011, p. 689), described as talking in class when they shouldn’t, or not staying in their seat. for most studies, exclusion was more subtle, reducing the likelihood of their cohort including any children and young people with complex needs by: (a) using written or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 411 computer-administered program materials that may be inaccessible to students with learning, reading, or communication difficulties (we know from experience that the concepts included in commonly-used resilience scales can be difficult to convey to participants with moderate learning difficulties, and to students in chronic pain who may not be able to concentrate or process much information at one time); (b) taking opportunity samples from low-risk mainstream schools, where disabled pupils who do attend mainstream school may still be absent on the day that the intervention takes place through ill-health, illegal exclusion, or lack of inclusive provision (e.g., grunstein & nutbeam, 2006); (c) using university undergraduate populations where students are less likely to have a moderate to severe learning difficulty (e.g., stallman, 2011); (d) conducting program activities that are inaccessible or non-adapted, or which take place in a location inaccessible to students with physical disabilities (e.g., ewert & yoshino, 2011); or (e) conducting an intervention in a workplace (e.g., bennett, aden, broome, mitchell, & rigdon, 2010) when young people with disabilities aged 16 to 25 have a rate of unemployment two to four times higher than those without disabilities (burchardt, 2005). standardised cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) programs may not be accessible for children and young people with learning difficulties. they might struggle with aspects such as identifying thoughts, separating thoughts from feelings, and learning and applying new information and concepts (mirow, 2008). these children and young people require creative individual adaptation to meet their needs, such as using simple language, including parents/carers, and actually having a less collaborative, more directive, approach (willner, 2009). we do not mean to imply that all these studies necessarily set out to exclude children and young people with disabilities and complex needs, but their prevalence in the research evidence base suggests a level of disability blindness and an “ableist mindset” (e.g., butler, & parr, 1999; chouinard, hall, & wilton, 2010), along with an absence of an “inequalities imagination” (hall & hart, 2004; hart, hall, & henwood, 2003). even when researchers are aware of inequality and inclusion issues, they may be guided by different definitions of an “inclusive” program. for example, inclusion may be achieved through additional separate “specialist provision” giving disabled children and young people similar opportunities to their non-disabled peers; additional “integrated activities” that disabled and non-disabled children and young people both participate in together; or supporting disabled children and young people to be safely integrated into mainstream provision by providing equal access to existing play and leisure activities (evans, & plumridge, 2007). evans and plumridge (2007) reported that some services actually “rais[ed] awareness of the needs of disabled children and attempted to change the practice of mainstream providers” (p. 235) through providing deaf awareness and british sign language training for mainstream services, and “tackl[ing] disabling barriers within all the spheres of children’s lives” (p. 231). however, overall, few interventions addressed consciousness-raising, or the basics, such as giving participants a decent breakfast. these arenas would be included in resilience interventions that took inequalities seriously. for future resilience-based interventions we consider that an “inequalities imagination” (hart et al., 2003) is needed on the part of the designers and deliverers, to ensure that resilience-based approaches act as political moves against the structural and power inequality manifest in some children and young people’s lives, through poverty, marginalisation, unemployment, and constellated disadvantage (hart et al., 2007; hart et al., 2003; prilleltensky & prilleltensky, 2005). addressing basic inequalities and lack of access to developmentally-appropriate resources has been authoritatively described as the single most important step in improving mental health international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 412 outcomes (friedli, 2009; layard, 2005), yet is rarely explicitly considered and worked with beyond citing contextual issues relating to the child’s social ecology, even when interventions target disadvantaged populations. this may partly be due to difficulty in defining what constitutes disadvantage, and how it is located and measured (hart et al., 2007; mayer, 2003; prilleltensky & prilleltensky, 2005). there are also other, more subtle political issues of disability rights to be considered. children and young people with disabilities have been regarded as a small group that is difficult to visualize. but this viewpoint does not reflect reality. in sweden about 14 to 18% of young people in secondary and upper-secondary school report that they have one or more disabilities (brunnberg, lindén boström, & persson, 2009), with 3% reporting multiple disabilities (brunnberg & olsson, 2013). the political goal for disabled children and young people in many countries has been “equality”, but this has in many contexts centred on equality in attending, for example, the same school as their non-disabled peers. equality has not been a concept of quality, for example, in education or communication. children and young people with disabilities have the equal right to be heard and listened to, and to be treated in the best way (unicef, 2013a). this should apply to their meaningful participation in research studies, both as participants and, ideally, as collaborators in the research process and intervention design. more than 20 years ago, oliver (1992) made the point that disability research “has had little influence on policy and made no contribution to improving the lives of disabled people” (p. 101), and could even be described as “alienating” (p. 101) rather than emancipatory. it feels as though little has changed. in terms of balancing the cost efficiency of time and resources against helping those most in need, more debate needs to occur amongst researchers regarding where it is realistic and ethical to draw the line. sometimes it is clear how the balance has been reached; for example, storch et al.’s (2012) cbt program for young people with tic disorders was contextual and participatory – focusing on coping skills specific to living with tics, and conducting focus groups with the youths themselves to inform the content of the course. it was delivered via one-to-one psychotherapy sessions, making it resource-intensive. costs were reduced by having doctoral students deliver the sessions, rather than more qualified therapists, and by keeping the program to ten weekly sessions of 50 minutes each. a consequence of using less experienced practitioners conducting a short program was that young people with more complex needs (e.g., having a “comorbid” diagnosis), who therefore might require a greater level of support, were excluded from participating. providing intensive, contextualised, and customised interventions via experienced practitioners is expensive; the higher the cost, the fewer children and young people having the opportunity to benefit; the greater the level of customisation, the less generalisable it may be, with a reduced economy of scale. funders may be more willing to award money to a marketable prevention program that states it will help 50 children now and could be rolled out to 500 in the future, than to an intervention that costs the same and will help five children with complex needs in the here and now. the political economy and market orientation of research, or “academic capitalism” (barry, 2011), promotes the use of “tame” populations and means that money is usually spent on typically-developing children and young people with average levels of need. research often focuses on those who will sit quietly and complete the measures that the researchers are interested in, with minimal supervision and in the fastest time. the children and young people who are most in need of resilience-based interventions are left out because they may need support to participate in the study; those support needs will need to be assessed; suitably qualified and experienced researchers/practitioners will need to be part of the team, or training international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 413 will need to be provided in order to sensitively and appropriately support participants; scales/measures will need to be adapted, not only in terms of presentation in a suitably accessible format (e.g., short sentences, easy read, or pictorial), but also in terms of concepts that are meaningful and relevant to the participants (e.g., not asking about activities that participants are unable to do), and not making assumptions (e.g., that having lots of friendships is necessarily beneficial or desirable to someone with autism); extra time will need to be built into the research project to allow for supported participation, which may also need co-operation and co-ordination of parent, carer or trusted adult attendance at sessions, or arrangement of appropriate transport and travel expenses. children and young people with complex needs are less likely to form a convenient opportunity sample, in contrast to pupils in a large mainstream school. the authors know that it is immensely difficult to keep participants with learning difficulties involved in research, but it is politically, morally, and ethically very important. other researchers could learn from, for example, the swedish study “life and health” (brunnberg & olsson, 2013) in which students with different types of disabilities could read and answer the survey in sign language, talked language, spelling with big letters, as well as in a traditional format as text. while the survey was still not presented in easy-to-read text, it did however have a high response rate and was more inclusive than most. in studies where researchers do not specify the participant demographics, it is easy to work out that they have not included children and young people with disabilities, based on the description of the work, the questionnaires they used to evaluate the program, the level of staffing, and the lack of tailoring for individuals. some programs are implicitly ableist, for example developing an exercise or physical activity-based resilience-building intervention, which has not, or cannot, be adapted for different needs. we are advocating a more transparent and reflective approach to the inclusion of disabled children and young people, with the hope that some balance can be achieved. one way to address exclusion might be to acknowledge the tensions between factors – including finances, time constraints, and funding body agendas – from an informed viewpoint, admitting that there are excluded populations and stating reasons for decisions about participants. this in itself might encourage more attention to be paid to what should be done differently to make research more inclusive. limitations of the methodology this review used the who (2012) definition of disability, and the researchers have translated their interpretation of the definition into the search terms and search strategies that were applied. the definition, and its interpretation, will therefore both influence the results of the literature search (e.g., grönvik, 2009). iterative evolution of the inclusion criteria introduces a researcher bias to the choice of which studies to include, albeit informed by years of research and practice in this area, but this should be acknowledged reflexively. such subjective influences make a literature search less replicable and more contextualised. however, given the area of interest, this may be appropriate, and we have tried to make explicit all decisional processes in our strategy. the articles that were included varied in the degree to which authors had engaged with the resilience evidence base and definitional debates. therefore the programs included are diverse in their theoretical underpinnings and adherence to resilience principles, and it is unlikely that there was a great deal of overlap in perspectives. however this may reflect broader disagreements over the definition of the terms resilience and disability. where possible, the authors have tried to highlight studies that take a more sociointernational journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 414 ecological/inequalities view of resilience (e.g., hart et al., 2007; masten, 2011; rutter, 2006; ungar, 2012), rather than those focusing on individual traits or characteristics in isolation from contextual issues, and those with a more participatory approach, incorporating the input of the young people with disabilities themselves into the research process. additional difficulty in finding comparable studies lies partly in the specific and distinct effects, restrictions, and life-courses of different types of chronic illness and disability (e.g., as per shapiro (2002), steady, fluctuating, or progressive; impacting predominantly physical, cognitive, or sensory functioning; invoking sympathy or stigma; visible or hidden), which may result in different types of intervention or therapeutic approaches being selected for their benefits and potential fit with the individual. categories were complex and diverse, and the only “population” where there was any overlap in terms of labels was “behavioural and emotional problems”, which is itself a broad umbrella for a range of conditions and severities. imagining the interplay of the unique effects that a young person’s disability has on them, the context of their individual environment, their family and the available resources, leads to an appreciation of the enormous amount of individual difference within a group of children or young people participating in one specific study, let alone between studies. trying to compare groups from different studies, with the massive variation in resilience-building approaches and activities taken, makes a review of comparable studies with comparable populations and programs almost impossible. it also highlights the even greater need for contextualised understanding of and response to the individual child’s situation, rather than standardised, manualised interventions aimed at large groups of typically-developing children and young people in mainstream settings. conclusion of the papers identified, only 23 met (at least in part) the inclusion criteria, including a robust resilience concept and basis to the intervention, and a way of measuring changes in the children and young people’s resilience. the 23 studies covered a variety of program content, setting, delivery, and children and young people. due to the lack of evaluated, theoreticallysound programs designed for the needs of children and young people with disabilities, the inclusion criteria were applied more flexibly if the intervention demonstrated solid links to resilience but was not evaluated, or if the intervention lacked a specific definition of resilience but was clearly linked to resilience capacities (e.g., self-esteem). overall, it was difficult to summarise such sparse and disparate studies in a meaningful way, particularly when small sample sizes and analyses of varying type and quality made it challenging to draw conclusive or comparative results. the authors would like to encourage better research “practice”, that will lead to the conducting of rich, informative, and detailed research that is inclusive, participatory, and sustainable in its approach, and suitable to inform a realist review. whilst this is a very complex goal to realise, our review has provided some evidence for the notion that resilience-based programs hold promise, despite design flaws, small samples, poor definitions, and inconsistent measurement. the academic publishing landscape has been dramatically changed by recent research council open access policies that hold grant recipients accountable to wider stakeholders and the general public. this may yet provide opportunities for positive developments in relation to the inclusion of disabled children and young people in research. some journals suggest major demographic characteristics of study samples should be included in the methodology section of new submissions, to “provide a more complete understanding of the sample and of the generalisability of the findings” (american psychological association, 2013). the authors suggest that such disclosure should become mainstream within the social sciences: a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(3): 394–422 415 demographics statement that describes which disadvantaged or marginalised groups are included in the sample, including people who identify as having disabilities, should be required as part of project outputs. if no participants are described as experiencing these types of inequality, then a rationale should be provided by the researchers that explains why a nonrepresentative sample has been chosen. in addition to making this information explicit and publicly available, this would increase awareness and shift focus onto inequalities issues. goodhart’s law identifies that the measurement of a system usually disturbs it (mcintyre, 2000), and the use of non-representative opportunity samples in large-scale, publicly-funded studies is a system most in need of some disturbance. the overall flavour of the resilience and disability research evidence base is of measuring how things are, and identifying fairly fixed characteristics of individuals which are associated with better outcomes. practitioners wishing to know what they can do right now to help disabled children and young people make resilient moves within the context of their own lives, can experience the literature as frustrating, difficult to digest, and hard to learn from. there is often a huge gap between what research reports, and what people want to know and learn about when working in the messy, complexity of situated practice. the research world must do more to answer the questions of parents and practitioners who support children and young people with disabilities and complex needs. researchers also need to think of ways to capture the views, needs and experiences of children and young people with disabilities to ensure the relevance of their interventions. children and young people with highly complex needs were of specific interest to the parents and practitioners we consulted, and we can infer from the papers in our review that, perhaps unsurprisingly, these children and young people responded to high intensity, individually-customised interventions. given the high level of illegal school exclusions experienced by disabled children and young people in england and wales (contact a family, 2013), with devastating effects on their basic education, coupled with the well-documented disadvantages they face throughout their lives, more effort should be made to focus resilience-based interventions on supporting children, young people, their families and schools, to undo this damaging practice. young people beyond the age of 18 were rarely included in 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(2011). building resilience in looked after young people: a moral values approach. british journal of guidance & counselling, 39(3), 259–282. doi:10.1080/03069885.2011.562638 http://www.boingboing.org.uk/ http://www.unicef.org/crc/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0036-6 http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mppsy.2009.06.018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2011.562638 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs113202019696 ȼentol tŧe teṉew̱ (together with the land): part 1: indigenous landand water-based pedagogies morgan mowatt, sandrina de finney, sarah wright cardinal, gina mowatt, jilleun tenning, pawa haiyupis, erynne gilpin, dorothea harris, ana macleod, and nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton abstract: this article presents reflections from an indigenous landand waterbased institute held from 2019 to 2020 for indigenous graduate students. the institute was coordinated by faculty in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria and facilitated by knowledge keepers in local w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke nation territories. the year-long institute provided land-based learning, sharing circles, online communication, and editorial mentoring in response to a lack of indigenous pedagogies and the underrepresentation of indigenous graduate students in frontline postsecondary programs. while indigenous faculty and students continue to face significant, institutionally entrenched barriers to postsecondary education, we also face growing demands for indigenous-focused learning, research, and practice. in this article, part 1 of a two-paper series on indigenous landand water-based learning and practice, we draw on a storytelling approach to share our individual and collective reflections on the benefits and limitations of indigenous landand water-based pedagogies. our stories and analysis amplify our integration of indigenous ways of being and learning, with a focus on local knowledges and more ethical land and community engagements as integral to indigenous postsecondary education. keywords: indigenous pedagogies, decolonization, land-based education, indigenous students, colonialism, postsecondary, child and youth care, youth work international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 13 morgan mowatt (corresponding author) is a phd student in political science and indigenous nationhood, university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. email: morganmowatt@uvic.ca sandrina de finney, school of child and youth care, university of victoria sarah wright cardinal, school of child and youth care, university of victoria gina mowatt, school of child and youth care, university of victoria jilleun tenning, the office of indigenous academic and community engagement, university of victoria pawa haiyupis, indigenous nationhood, university of victoria erynne gilpin, indigenous governance, university of victoria dorothea harris, the office of indigenous academic and community engagement, university of victoria ana macleod, school of child and youth care, university of victoria nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton, school of child and youth care, university of victoria acknowledgement: we gratefully acknowledge our funders, the aboriginal service plan (ministry of advanced education, skills and training), and the canet foundation and spirit bear art farm, without which this institute would not have been possible. mailto:morganmowatt@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 14 íy, sȼáćel siám 'uy' skweyul tawâw, tânisi — tatawâw, tân’si luu amhl good’y win gya’an šaḥ yuut qʷaa the greetings that begin this paper are for our ancestors, relatives, and readers. starting with our languages is our way of honouring the sacredness of the first stories, which come from our homelands and connect us to all our relations. we extend our deepest gratitude to the songhees, esquimalt, w̱sáneć, and t’sou-ke nations on whose homelands we live and work. in making this acknowledgement, we commit to moving beyond gratitude to enact everyday actions and solidarities that uphold their resurgence and sovereignty. together with the land, waters, and all our relations is how this story begins, with greetings in our own languages. we write together as graduate students and faculty from the university of victoria who are privileged and honoured to live and learn on the homelands of the lekwungen and w̱sáneć nations. we belong to the nations of the w̱sáneć, snuneymuxw, stz’uminus, cowichan, ahousaht, gitxsan, saulteaux-cree métis, nehiyaw (cree), ojibwa, anishinaabe, kahnawake, wolastoqiyik, and maya (guatemala). in between may 2019 and may 2020, we participated in an indigenous landand water-based learning institute hosted by w̱sáneć old one jesiṉten, t’sou-ke knowledge keepers jeff welch and thor gauti, and nuu-chah-nulth artist denise williams from house of winchee. the institute was facilitated by faculty mentors sarah wright cardinal, nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton, and sandrina de finney from the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria. collective storytelling of an indigenous landand water-based institute during the institute, we gathered, walked, harvested, feasted, learned, and shared together in special and sacred places: the shores, meadow, trails, and forest at sṉidȼeƚ [tod inlet] in w̱sáneć territory, and between coastlines, sheltered inlets, and old growth on t’sou-ke territory. these have been, and continue to be, significant gathering places for w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke nations; their histories were restoried for us by jesiṉten and knowledge keepers jeff and thor, who generously hosted our group. when we came together for a closing and blanketing ceremony, we were honoured by and grateful to old one may sam and knowledge keeper jb williams for sharing protocols and land-based teachings with us on w̱sáneć territory. each teaching we received has been practised on these territories since time immemorial, rooted in the resilience of the knowledge keepers who steward these lands, waters, and languages. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 15 our hosts recounted how local ecosystems and ways of life have been severely impacted by colonial practices and policies. they described how policies of genocide, reserve systems, segregation, forced land appropriation, and residential schools, and numerous child apprehension policies — among many other forms of colonial violence — were deliberately imposed on their sovereign nations. in the process, indigenous peoples were disconnected from their homelands, and thus from their landand water-based ways of teaching and learning (archibald, 2008; simpson, 2017; williams et al., 2018). to counter the colonial harms held in these sacred places, our institute recentred landand water-based pedagogical practices of working in circle, harvesting, ceremony, speaking the language, and sharing oral histories. these practices are vital to our accountability to all of our relations that guide and protect us in our frontline work with diverse indigenous communities. to coauthor this paper, we employed a collective oral and written storytelling approach by sharing in circle, taking field notes, and exchanging stories and writing. as lead authors (morgan, sandrina, and sarah), we collectively wrote the abstract, introduction, and framing pieces, and invited institute participants to share individual reflections on their experiences with landand water-based learning, which we edited to fit into a collective story. we have organized our work into two distinct papers both featured in this special issue. this paper, entitled part 1: indigenous landand water-based pedagogies, focuses on our experiences with restorative, de-settling, land and water-based local indigenous learning and pedagogies in postsecondary contexts. part 2: indigenous frontline practice as resurgence (de finney et al., 2020) applies this learning to our frontline practice frameworks with children, youth, families, and communities, and outlines our connections to broader debates about landand water-based programs. in this paper, we augment our integration of indigenous ways of being and learning with a focus on local knowledges and more ethical land and community engagements as integral to postsecondary pedagogy. in terms of terminology, we use both old one and elder to refer to an honoured and respected teacher of indigenous worldviews. “old one” is a more appropriate english translation of the senćoŧen word used in w̱sáneć territories. we also use both of the terms “land-based” and “landand water-based”, with the understanding that even though “land-based” already encompasses water and air, specifying “water” is especially important when working in coastal territories. we raise our hands in deepest gratitude to the knowledge keepers, ancestors, relatives, waters, and lands who hosted, cared for, and fed us during this institute; to institute faculty mentors christine sy, leanne kelly, mandeep kaur mucina, nick claxton, sarah wright cardinal, and sandrina de finney; and to all the staff of the university of victoria’s indigenous academic and community engagement (iace) office, especially indigenous initiatives coordinator dorothea harris, le,noṉet mentorship and bursary coordinator jilleun tenning; to the centre for indigenous research and community-led engagement (circle); to our funders, the aboriginal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 16 service plan (ministry of advanced education, skills and training) and the canet foundation1; and to spirit bear art farm2. figure 1. at spirit bear art farm note. gathering on the beach to share wild rose and fir tip tea in t’sou-ke territories. land and water as our first teachers the primary purpose of our institute was to foster a community of learning for indigenous graduate students that values and honours their distinct and diverse histories, cultural traditions, and worldviews. indigenous students continue to be drastically underrepresented in graduate programs in canadian postsecondary institutions (pidgeon et al., 2014) and face significant institutionally entrenched barriers to success that include intersecting forms of colonial violence (gehl & ross, 2013), systemic racial discrimination, poverty, limited accessibility, and lack of relevant curriculum and pedagogical practices (chirgwin, 2015; cote-meek, 2014; smith & varghese, 2016). at the same time, indigenous instructors and students are increasingly called upon to conduct indigenous practice and learning rooted in their own worldviews (chirgwin, 2015), highlighting the need for new pedagogies in practitioner training to support culturally 1 www.thecanetfoundation.org 2 www.spiritbearartfarm.com http://www.thecanetfoundation.org/ http://www.spiritbearartfarm.com/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 17 grounded, community-responsive (mashford-pringle & stewart, 2019) teaching, practice, and learning models. this work is crucial to unsettling enduring colonial ideologies and practices in postsecondary education. relationality is a way of being that is restricted by western teaching and pedagogical models (datta, 2018). thus, a sense of relational, landand water-rooted community is often missing for indigenous graduate students who attend western postsecondary institutions (pidgeon et al., 2014). dominant western modes of education have been employed by the canadian government to disconnect indigenous peoples from their territories, languages, and community responsibilities (mashford-pringle & stewart, 2019; truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2016). while indigenous students have been forced to adapt to the cultural norms of western universities, universities have lagged in adapting to the cultural and educational needs of indigenous students and communities (battiste, 2005; chirgwin, 2015; cote-meek, 2014). landand water-based learning offers a vital response to this institutional lag. indigenous pedagogies differ from other kinds of imported, eurowestern-centric, colonial nature-based pedagogies in that they are rooted in place-based relations held by families and nations, and require participants to enter into reciprocal relationships with local ancestral knowledge systems rooted in indigenous governance pathways. for decades, indigenous scholars have advocated for relational, politicized pedagogies that enhance the well-being of indigenous peoples (archibald, 2008; deloria & wildcat, 2001; gunn allen, 1986; robertson & ljubicic, 2019; simpson, 2014). red pedagogy (grande, 2000), radical indigenism (garroutte, 2005), and other indigenous resurgence frameworks provide a vital roadmap for restoring indigenous knowledge systems that open the way for community healing and wellness. garroutte (2005) urged resistance to the pressure upon indigenous scholars to participate in academic discourses that strip indigenous intellectual traditions of their spiritual and sacred elements. garroutte took this stand on the ground that sacred elements are absolutely central to the coherence of our knowledge systems; if we surrender them there is little left in our philosophies that makes any sense (garroutte, 2005, p. 172). engaging with these ancient indigenous knowledge and linguistic systems fulfils an eternization of indigenous worldviews that is required for vibrant indigenous futures. the pedagogies that we centre so rigorously in these reflections both challenge and “run parallel” to mainstream discourses on indigenous worldviews and relationships to land and water (gaudry & hancock, 2012). indigenous-led pedagogies carry the potential to foster spiritual, social, emotional, and physical (mashford-pringle & stewart, 2019) changes in worldviews that continue to influence students even after their studies have concluded (corntassel & hardbarger, 2019). to illustrate the transformative power of these pedagogies, in the following sections graduate students who participated in the institute share individual reflections on their learning experiences there. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 18 figure 2. t’sou-ke landand water-based learning note.students observe t’sou-ke knowledge keeper jeff welch butterfly salmon with cedar stakes. shifting accountabilities, by morgan mowatt stepping out of the classroom and onto the land, into the water, into fresh air immediately transports me from a colonial mindset back towards my teachings. as a gitxsan person, being with the land and water reminds me that my accountabilities lie with our relations and the future generations, not with the colonial institutions where much of our work is contained. this shift towards teachings is greatly enhanced for me when these sacred places i enter into have been sheltered or restored in some way from the grotesque impacts of colonization. this was the case where we gathered on w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke territories, which have been nurtured, and continue to be restored and protected, by their relations. unfortunately, finding decolonial learning spaces is a challenge in conventional graduate education. throughout canada’s short history the canadian education system has been one of the most utilized tools of genocide on indigenous peoples. the disconnection from our accountabilities, a result of indigenous students learning solely through western academic frameworks in canadian universities, can be traced to canada’s nation-building project. this particular disconnection plays a key role in upholding canada’s claims to legal and political authority; put succinctly, “one, if not the primary, impact on indigenous education has been to impede the transmission of knowledge about the forms of governance, ethics and philosophies that arise from relationships on the land” (wildcat et al., 2014, p. ii). indigenous international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 19 students continue to be set up to fail by the intentional exclusion of indigenous ways of knowing, relating, and governing from post-secondary institutions. ultimately, state-sanctioned disconnections from land, such as reserve systems, residential and indian day schools, and unjust apprehension of our children, seek to convince us that we are separate from land (goeman, 2008). further, universities create an environment that promotes forgetting our indigenous accountabilities. without the land, water, air, and more-than-human beings to remind us of our responsibilities, we may struggle to honour them. as jane smith (2005) has shared, our people’s origin story paints us as one with the land: “the first gitxsan was thrust out of the earth and became the first child of the earth. the gitxsan are children of nature.” (p. 17). consequently, canadian universities force indigenous students to choose between expending our energy in efforts to validate our own accountabilities within the institution or focusing on the studies in front of us. the immense tool of oppression that is canadian education is mitigated, at least in part, by land-based learning. accountability structures shift the moment teaching is moved into less colonially-entrenched spaces: i can see, smell, taste, and feel our relations once again. i am reminded at snidȼeƚ and on t’sou-ke territories of my responsibilities to the relations here. failure to adhere to the laws and protocols of indigenous lands, including my own, is also a failure to recognize myself as a part of the land (goeman, 2008). parallel to actions in my home territories, as a guest i seek to embody gitxsan principles of harmony, balance, and interconnectedness, all framed within a holistic framework of respect (smith, 2005). when jesiṉten speaks to his history, land, people, and nonhuman beings, i simultaneously hear my own ancestors’ calls for accountability. the ancestors know when they are being slighted: the trees tell them, the wind tells them, and the salmon tell them when they head back home. the connection to the land, water, and beings that is fostered through land-based learning sends messages to the ancestors and lands from which we’ve been disconnected. honouring these accountabilities is reciprocal, of course. the earth, water, and ancestors have always offered us much more than we offer them. land-based learning fosters the remembering required to become a good ancestor, both on our own territories and as guests on the homelands of others. interconnectedness, by jilleun tenning jesiṉten begins the land-based workshop with stories of land. land is the most fundamental part of indigenous life. sandra styres (2011) teaches us that land informs pedagogy “through storied relationships that are etched into the essence of every rock, tree, seed, animal, pathway and waterway in relation to the aboriginal people who have existed on the land since time immemorial” (p. 721). land-based education is a vital part of resurging and sustaining indigenous life and knowledge. this way of knowing acts in direct contestation to the colonizer’s drive to eliminate indigenous life and indigenous claims to land. jesiṉten’s process of storying land is an important example of indigenous education whereby storying connects us as indigenous peoples to our ancestors and reinforces that we are a part of everything that has come before. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 20 the old ones position language at the forefront of our land-based learning; they know that the “voice of the land is in our language” (taylor, 2004, p. 19). languages arise out of land; language is our relative; it speaks to us as learners in many different verbal and nonverbal ways. this means that indigenous languages have not developed in isolation inside our brains but in relationship to land and water (rasmussen & akulukjuk, 2009). thus, indigenous languages are necessary for story and are connected to the very concept of land. the w̱sáneć nation, where i was raised culturally, uses the indigenous language senćoŧen. indigenous languages are at the core of who indigenous people are. at this workshop, as senćoŧen language is spoken, i become cloaked in its superpower that is impenetrable by the colonizer. when i hear senćoŧen and when i hear myself represented through story, i feel complete — as if the words are blanketing me through ceremony. without a connection to the unique lands the creator gave to each of us, i am made aware that we as indigenous peoples would very likely be starved into colonial dependence and erased from history. to avoid this spiritual disconnection, we must remain deeply connected to the teachings embodied in the phrase “all my relations” — respect for all our relations — for which we all hold responsibility. we must push back against the violence that occurs when we are disconnected from land and our languages. towering over the group of indigenous learners in t’sou-ke nation are the cedar trees, which are also referred to as grandparents. knowledge keepers jeff and thor share that the cedar tree is the tree of life, capable of sustaining the mind, body, and soul. sadly, many of the grandparents have been cut down through commercial logging practices, sold as a commodity to make way for colonial development and extractive industry. these human intruders on the land have been unaware of or uncaring about the disruption this has caused to delicate ecosystems. at a deeper level, old ones share that land is not a possession; rather, it is the heart of indigenous people and her pulse beats through our bodies (tuck et al., 2014). as learners of the land, our old ones share the teaching that we should “take only what we need.” having this opportunity to engage in land-based learning has provided our circle of indigenous students with the chance to share knowledge, culture, and lifeways. these are infused with land, as she is the first, foremost, and best teacher (tuck et al., 2014). additionally, this experience created opportunities to engage in decolonizing practices that promote reciprocal relationships and ethical practices; these position indigenous approaches to learning at the forefront of our educational journeys, nurturing us as students who are learning how to practise through our indigenous ways. the land is our greatest teacher, by gina mowatt i am frog clan from the house of luutkudziiwus and xsimwitjinn of the gitxsan nation. my master’s research was on indian education as an act of genocide, and on the oral history of gitxsan cultural strength and resurgence. during the institute, i reflected on how my experience in a previous program — a mainstream learning environment — shaped my thinking, my reactions, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 21 and the questions i felt i needed to ask and answer in my work. colonial and eurocentric buildings, where western knowledge and colonial mentalities are considered to be neutral and universal baseline markers of “scholarship”, are unsafe learning spaces for indigenous learners. some indigenous learners will never be able to be themselves, will always be on guard, will always feel uncomfortable and will always be on the defence (cote-meek, 2014, p. 34) in colonial spaces. many of us navigate postsecondary institutions in survival mode. survival mode is a traumatizing place in which to be and learn; it disrupts our cognitive functioning as students and changes our relationship with ourselves and our kin. land-based learning with and by first peoples can help us transcend this harmful experience. the space was provided in the land-based institute to feel vulnerable. i shared my academic experience and connected with other similar stories. in this sacred space, my mind, body, and spirit were able to open, to let go of and transcend the harm that had been inflicted on me in my former program. outside of western thought, pursuits, and knowledge — and beyond fighting racist students within the walls of a trespassing state’s institution — indigenous students begin to thrive. different places, smells, and experiences activate our “ancestral memory” (basso, 1996, p. 17). land-based learning elevates the mind and spirit to reach a higher consciousness in our thinking and our work. hearing birds singing reminds me of stories about birds from my territory, which underlines my responsibility to those relations. i remember the teachings passed on to me: to fight to keep the vision of our ancestors alive and pass it on to the next generation. the land is our greatest teacher. the rocks are calm and quiet and also strong and fierce. the water has depths that hides mysteries and worlds. viewing the water from one way, we see one teaching, and from another perspective we see something else. further, the ocean is a collective, but it has innumerable particles. we are that way too. we are like the diversity of trees: one tree offers something the other does not, but they are both necessary for a healthy ecosystem (grant, 2018). listening to brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers sharing stories, talking in circle, and hearing and feeling the worldviews of w̱sáneć, cree, punjabi, and other ancestors in how they speak and relate reminds me of what we hope to reclaim and what feeds our spirit. i am reminded of the love, kindness, gentleness, and calm that lives in the blood of our circle as we share together. indigenous students need to learn in spaces where our knowledge, our teachings, our food, our bodies, our accents, and our voices are the baseline. we are not the visiting scholar; we are not the blurb at the end of the page in the textbook. we are the pedagogy and approach to the course. when a student can present their body on the land that their ancestors have fed with good medicine, good lessons, and good energy, our spirit awakens. that memory is sparked when we are on our territories and start our day with a prayer in our language, when we come together and invoke our laws and protocols and our ways of respecting each other on our journeys, side by side. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 22 reclaiming my indigeneity, by ana macleod indigenous people have always healed through stories, song, dance, and connection to land and water. leanne simpson (2014) explained that we are not only “learning from the land” but we are learning “with the land” (p. 7). during my time participating in the land-based research institute, i learned how sacred land and water are to my healing and reclaiming of my identity. hansen (2018) stressed that land-based education “is a fundamental part of decolonization because it promotes an indigenous model of education in a culturally appropriate way” (p. 78). further education such as the land-based research institute is needed to inform indigenous and nonindigenous researchers and practitioners about the importance of connecting to land and water as a way of healing. connecting to land helps me to ask myself how i can continue to be an advocate for the indigenous families and communities alongside whom i will work. how can i learn from and with indigenous families and communities in a way that shows my deep compassion, respect, and empathy for their stories, traditions, ethics, and protocols? during one of the land-based days when we spent the afternoon at spirit bear art farm on the lands of the t’souke people, i started to consider what it means to be indigenous. over the past six months i have been deeply connecting to my indigenous roots. i am mayan but not exactly sure which indigenous maya guatemalan community i am from. i also identify as latina as i have some mixed spanish roots from el salvador. land keeps me connected to my ancestors who are thousands of miles away. i also now think of myself as living in two worlds, both western and indigenous. my birth family are indigenous and my adoptive family are western. being physically in the ocean i am reminded that i am always going to be living in both worlds. connecting to land grounds me, as “land teaches and can be considered as first teacher” (tuck et al., 2014, p. 10). for me, land is indeed first teacher. i need to feel comfortable with the land and water before i can do good, grounded work with indigenous families and communities — work that is relational, honest, and compassionate. i also think about the different worlds i am in as an academic, community member, daughter, and professional. education and learning can come from any human and nonhuman relation. before i weave my academic, personal, and professional lives into the counselling work i will be doing with indigenous youth, communities, and their loved ones, i need to find out how i am reclaiming my indigeneity. as someone who is not from this territory, i have been very privileged and honoured to learn from teachings, land, and ceremonies of local communities. connecting to land reminds me that the colonial institution called “academia” or “university” is just a small part of my journey toward becoming a strong indigenous young woman. i raise my hands to the knowledge keepers, mentors, old ones, and nonhuman relations (rocks, land, and water) who have taught me that my body is to be respected, not abused. my spirit is to be protected, not bruised. the land is to be honoured, not misused. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 23 the potlatch way, by pawa haiyupis colonization dehumanizes people (fanon, 1963). for example, in canada, the indian act is a colonial tool that has devastated indigenous people (allan & smylie, 2015). the gradual civilization act and the gradual enfranchisement act of 1855 were consolidated in 1876 as the indian act (henderson, 2006). frances abele (2007) compared people living under the indian act with people in prison because they both “live so thoroughly under the supervision and control of the executive branch of the federal government” (p. 30). due to its ongoing and traumatic interference, the indian act represents all the things taken away from indigenous people, such as connection to territory, language, ceremony, culture, and children (satsan, 2019). i come from a strong bloodline: my kin have been leaders, weavers, healers, artists, whalers, and warriors. we are descendants of potlatch people. in the pacific northwest, where my family is from, the potlatch is a governance feast system that is centred around gift giving and wealth sharing to foster economic redistribution and to show appreciation and respect (m. sutherland, personal communication, october 5, 2019). for us, potlatch is a way that centres deeply situated indigenous identity, values, and ethics. wealth sharing through the potlatch system helps decrease inequality within communities (kte’pi, 2013), since “a chief earned respect by giving away all that he had at the appropriate times” (atleo, 2010, p. 43). our potlatch system is a cultural expression of familial and tribal economy, laws, institutions, and spirituality. two pieces of indian act legislation, the potlatch ban and the pass system, which were enforced from 1855 to 1951, significantly disrupted the intergenerational relationship between indigenous people and our ancestral territories (allan & smylie, 2015). under the reserve system, officials called “indian agents” were armed with the power to govern the movement of indigenous people on and off reserve through a pass system (allan & smylie, 2015; truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). making the potlatch, a source of land-based teachings, illegal at the same time as imprisoning indigenous people on reserves limited our access to the natural world. as fanon (1963) so rightly stated, “for a colonized people, the most essential value, because it is the most meaningful, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity” (p. 9). before contact, the natural world sustained potlatch people economically and spiritually, whereas life under the indian act created poverty and disconnection (satsan, 2019). the indian act made it illegal for us to live freely, and our sacred big houses were replaced by churches that are now abandoned on reserves across the country, a symbol of the spiritual wasteland (satsan, 2019). in my work with various indigenous young people and communities across canada, i have observed that creating more opportunities for land-based well-being offers a pathway to heal from the damages of colonization. the oral process and cultural protocol within the potlatch provide a specific kind of land-based pedagogy. potlatch provides instructions for activities such as origin stories, songs, dances, art, language, and big house etiquette, as well as harvesting sustenance from the territory. in my teachings, this framework encourages respect for humanity’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 24 relationships with all life; it serves as our resistance to, and confers resilience against, settler colonialism (simpson, 2014, pp. 19–20). a relationship is a commitment over time. indigenous people who continuously reside in their homelands have a bond to the land that endures across lifetimes. translating knowledge into action to impress on us who we are as learners is an ancient way of coexisting with the natural world and a significant driver of land-based research, pedagogy, and practice. potlatch cultures use protocol, song, dance, prayer, and oral history as means of governance. at all times, our land-based practices comply with the local indigenous protocols of the gathering. speaking indigenous languages to introduce oneself to the people, territory, and ancestors is encouraged. in the same way as the ancestors resisted by practising potlatch underground during the potlatch ban, we now bear a responsibility to the future to keep indigenous potlatch people thriving. today, potlatch teachings provide me with the ethical framework that guides my work with youth and communities. my family goes to the mountains, the ocean, and the forest to heal our trauma. along with reciprocity, a strengths-based, inclusive, indigenous-led, and communityengaged approach benefits our communities. this is a movement of change that inspires people to do more on the land and water, as our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did. a powerful connection to our ancestral roots is generated when we live according to precontact social norms and laws. the potlatch way is in the dna of our people. witnessing kinship, by erynne gilpin i sit here now on w̱sáneć shorelines watching an eagle fly above me, and salt water meets fresh water along the body of the lands. my eyes are puffy from quiet tears and i feel like falling asleep among those gathered in this learning circle. maybe because, for the first time in a while, i feel safe. i feel like i can drop the stones i have been carrying in my fists. i feel like i can rest. i feel; i am allowed to feel. i truly feel love move through us, as the warm wind. i can hear the trees and they are happy because nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton and tracy underwood are sharing knowledge, systems of science, technology, healing, governance, and kinship through introducing us to the land. introducing us to the territories and the relatives, and inviting us to introduce ourselves to them. sharing with us the kin names of the lands, waters, and plants, which in this moment house our circle, and hold our bodies. then i cry some more, when i look at how much cedar loves their people. and i cry again, quietly, for the people in my life who have taken time over these past five years to teach me about the beauty, complexity, vitality, sorrow, and mystery of their homelands. today our learning is on the land, and this is how i feel. i feel like i am a visitor in the house of a dear friend’s grandmother. it is warm, familiar, safe, and welcoming, yet still not my own place of belonging. i am here from another territory, kinship, and community. the love and respect contained in their kinship and belonging radiates outward, and i can feel its strength. through learning and witnessing their kinship, i am accountable to them. today, we have been invited to be witnesses. what does it mean for me to witness as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 25 someone who is a visitor in the kinlands and waters of w̱sáneć peoples? just as i witness and revere kinship that flows between grandmother and grandchild, i am here today, witnessing and feeling sacred kinship and belonging that flows through senćoŧen speakers and w̱sáneć lands and waters, informing my own sense of accountability. don’t i wish for visitors on my own homelands to treat my kinship in the same regard — with honour, love, and respect? to honour the love i share with my grandmother? the love that flows between my own nehiyawewin-michif language and nehiyaw lands is sacred. my body is here, my mind is here, my heart and spirit are here. the trees are happy that we recognize this, and the wind pushes a little louder through their leaves. rattles. as a birth-doula/helper, i understand my responsibilities, roles, and accountabilities within a framework of loving support, unconditional care, and quiet helping. sometimes i think of the nehiyawewin word natamakewin, which tells me about how to be a helper and offer support and involves responsibility to make space for others rather than take space. the roles and responsibilities of natamakewin in my birth practice also inform my everyday ethic as a witness and visitor to these lands and waters. i realize that witnessing kinship informs an everyday commitment to support, assist, and make space for w̱sáneć and t’sou-ke community members in relationship to their lands and waters. when we remember we belong to the land, we remember that we belong to one another, yet i am a visitor here. i am accountable. when i enact natamakewin in the birth room, i am not a member of the family but rather a witness, a witness to expanding kinship networks extending from ancestral belonging and into futurity. to enact the everyday relational practice and governance of natamakewin is to ensure that our communities can live out safe, loving, and focused kinship with their lands and waters. as i sit here on w̱sáneć shorelines, learning from the land and waters, witnessing kinship, and informing my accountabilities … this is what i feel. decolonizing ourselves in a spiritual vacuum, by dorothea harris as we stood in circle and each of us introduced ourselves traditionally, grounded in teachings that were shared by the old ones, i could sense my spirit come back to me. the academy — the place where i work and learn — had been draining the life out of me. the place where we held our work was sacred; i could feel it. i sat with my feet in the ocean, watching the birds flit over its surface and remembering times that i have felt that carefree and peaceful. decolonization and indigenization are overarching theories that describe the work that many of us in the academy are trying to do. what often gets missed is that we need to decolonize ourselves. there is nothing healthy, or indigenous, about sitting at a computer all day writing reports and sending emails. the very things that we are trying to do — indigenize curriculum, support land-based learning, prioritize indigenous ways of knowing and being, and listen to the old ones — are lost in the sheer business of the academy. we become a cog in the wheel of indigenization. in contrast, what i experienced during our institute was that the land is nourishing, and being in community with old ones and knowledge keepers is life-giving. the old ones often talk about international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 26 knowing who you are and where you come from. how do we do that when we are so busy reading and writing that we aren’t listening to the land, to the sounds of the waves crashing on the rocks, the birds chirping, the wind rustling through the trees, people laughing? how do we feed our souls? we talk about developing cultural acumen among our teachers, colleagues, and students; we even have indigenous cultural acumen training. but how can we teach people to be still and listen, to be present and learn from creation … in a classroom? how can we teach these spiritual values that are so important to indigenous ways of knowing and being when we are in a spiritual vacuum? these are the questions that i asked myself after spending time being reacquainted with my spirit at spirit bear art farm. qwul’sih’yah’maht (2018) reminded us that: even when our academic work takes us away from our communities, we must always be mindful of our ways of knowing … our relationships with all living things are what keeps us rooted in our traditional ways of knowing and being. (pp. 48–49) these relationships with one another, with our communities, and with the land are imperative, but they take time. time is often not afforded to academics and students, as i am quickly discovering. it seems that a “good” academic practice can involve spinning wheels in the hope of making change: finishing a degree (or several), being published, and presenting at conferences. this is in sharp contrast to my experiences of working in community, where “relationships do not merely shape reality, but they are reality” (wilson, 2008, p. 74). in first nations communities, good practice is spending time — time with community members, old ones, elders, and children, and on the land. while this represents an indigenous epistemology, actually supporting land-based learning for students, supporting staff and faculty to have healthy relationships with one another and to get out on the land, is a challenge. we need to engender a culture that respects the work that is done outside the walls of the academy, that encourages students, staff, and faculty to spend time with one another and the land, and that rewards us for more than mere academic production. it is too easy to get lost in this space and forget the values that we are fighting for. songhees elder skip dick, talking about the effects of assimilation that happen within educational institutions, summed it up this way: “once you become institutionalized you give up your family way” (s. dick, personal communication, april 1, 2019). this is what indigenous academics must be wary of — losing our teachings, our family way. this institute was an opportunity for healing, and it reminded me of what is important, and of skip dick’s words to us: “we are not a program, we are human beings” (s. dick, personal communication, april 1, 2019), human beings who need a connection to the land. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 27 conclusion indigenous education is not indigenous or education from within our intellectual practices unless it comes through the land, unless it occurs in an indigenous context using indigenous processes. leanne simpson, 2017, p. 154 to conclude, we return to leanne simpson’s profound teachings about the vitality of our original, sacred learning processes and governance that are integral to the well-being of our children, youth, families, and communities. recognizing that indigenous nations have distinct, sovereign ways of knowing and doing provides an opening to foster more complex dialogues regarding whose knowledges are being reproduced and valued in post-secondary education. indigenous scholars have long warned us against the danger of romanticizing and essentializing indigeneity, and we see these challenges in postsecondary classrooms when indigenous ontologies are presented in appropriative, diluted, or tokenistic ways (borrows, 2017; deloria, 1969; grande, 1999; robertson & ljubicic 2019). these are significant questions for students who face the paradoxical pressures of enacting holistic praxis informed by indigenous worldviews, while at the same time learning in educational environments that are removed from the very places and relations that inform those worldviews (borrows, 2017; munroe et al., 2013). as we share our diverse experiences and histories, we are reminded that there is no singular, prescriptive, linear approach to landand water-based relational praxis. these practices are learned over time, with hard work, in relationship, and through complex ethical frameworks that hold us accountable to place and kin. there are no shortcuts. simpson (2017) stressed that land-based pedagogies require a permanent shift in learners’ worldviews: like governance and leadership and every other aspect of reciprocated life, education comes from the roots up. it comes from being enveloped by land. an individual’s intimate relationship with the spiritual and physical elements of creation is at the center of a learning journey that is lifelong. (p. 154) the institute encouraged us to sharpen our landand water-based literacies and ethics while centring local knowledges. we are grateful for the lived connections that perpetuate relational praxis, extend our kinship to one another, and inform our accountability to children, youth, families, and communities. this prepares us for the difficult work of extending our learning into our frontline practice, which we discuss in part 2 of this two-paper series. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 28 figure 3. at sṉidȼeƚ note. learning under our tree and sky relatives. photo credit: danielle alphonse. land–water kinship, poem by erynne gilpin (institute participant) on the land on the water held in senćoŧen kinship today is the future it belongs to the next generations of learners — dreamers — healers maybe one day we will move beyond territorial acknowledgement and gather here in a good way so that the land and their kin can introduce themselves. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 29 references abele, f. 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(2014) learning from the land: indigenous land-based pedagogy and decolonization. decolonization: indigeneity, education, & society, 3(3), i–xv. williams, l., bunda, t., claxton, n., & mackinnon, i. (2018). a global de-colonial praxis of sustainability: undoing epistemic violences between indigenous peoples and those no longer indigenous to place. the australian journal of indigenous education, 47(1), 41–53. doi:10.1017/jie.2017.25 wilson, s. (2008). research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. fernwood. https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2016.1167065 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2011.601083 https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708 https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2017.25 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(3): 12–33 33 biographies morgan mowatt is a member of the gitxsan nation, a phd student in political science and indigenous nationhood at the university of victoria, and co-director of the innovative young indigenous leaders symposium. morgan’s research focuses on indigenous sovereignty, decolonial futures, and youth empowerment. dr. sandrina de finney is a faculty member in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, and lead researcher for sisters rising: honouring indigenous body and land sovereignty (sistersrising.uvic.ca), part of an international study that promotes indigenous-led, youth-engaged, landand water-based gender well-being and resurgence. dr. sarah wright cardinal is a faculty member in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria. her work centres the importance of healing from colonial disruptions to indigenous identities and addressing these fractures with land-, water-, and spirit-based teachings and practices that contribute to child, youth, and community wellness. jilleun tenning is coast salish from stz’uminus. jilleun holds a master of arts degree in child and youth care from the university of victoria. gina mowatt is frog clan from the house of luutkudziiwus and xsimwitjinn from the gitxsan nation. gina is a phd student in child and youth care at the university of victoria and codirector of the innovative young indigenous leaders symposium. gina’s research interests include gitxsan cultural, language, and place-based resurgence and intergenerational knowledge transfer as a mode of healing and transcending ongoing colonial violence in our communities. pawa (pawatsqʷačiił) hayupis is a graduate student in indigenous nationhood at the university of victoria. she has 20 years of experience facilitating transformational gatherings in first nations communities by encouraging connections to traditional waterways, lands, languages, songs, and ceremonies. pawa hosts “safe enough spaces” to explore difficult governance questions and her approach is rooted in the belief that nation-rebuilding is healing. erynne gilpin is saulteaux-cree métis (the pas, manitoba). erynne is a community wellness researcher and practicing birth doula, and is completing a phd in indigenous governance with a focus on indigenous women’s embodied experiences with well-being, leadership, and kinship to land and waters. dorothea harris is the indigenous initiatives coordinator at the university of victoria and is completing a master of education degree in leadership studies at the university of victoria. dorothea is snuneymuxw (from nanaimo), german and irish. ana celeste macleod is maya and salvadoran. ana is a second-year graduate student in the master of arts program in child and youth care at the university of victoria. her research focuses on how she is reclaiming her indigeneity. dr. nick xemŧoltw̱ claxton’s teaching and research are centred on the revitalization and resurgence of indigenous knowledges and languages through community-based and land-based research and education. nick’s work involves reconnecting elders, youth, and community members and supports a longer-term journey of resurgence and intergenerational resilience. https://sistersrising.uvic.ca/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs104.1201919286 identity crisis and assimilation problems among syrian refugee women residing outside refugee camps in jordan sahar al-shar and muhammad al-tarawneh abstract: this article describes and analyzes the main problematic issues of social and cultural assimilation encountered by syrian refugee women in jordan who are not living in refugee camps, and the reasons for the identity crisis that these women experience. the data that provide this information were collected by means of semistructured interviews from a sample of 50 of these women. the results show that most of the syrian refugee women living outside the camps suffered from hardships that interfered with their social and cultural assimilation. there were few formal social relationships between refugee women and others in their milieu, and the refugees felt that there were distinct cultural differences in dialect, customs, and traditions between them and their jordanian peers. the study shows that most of the participants were living in a state of social isolation resulting from identity crisis. it was difficult for them to develop a sense of belonging to the society of the country of asylum while being distracted both by day-to-day concerns and by their desire to return to their homeland. these factors limited their ability to develop good relations with the host community as a prelude to integration, assimilation, and social symmetry. keywords: assimilation, identity, identity crisis, syrian refugees, syrian female refugees sahar al-shar phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the sociology department, university of jordan, amman, jordan. s1987. email: alshare@yahoo.com muhammad al-tarawneh is a professor in the sociology department, university of jordan, amman, jordan. email: mtarawneh2002@gmail.com mailto:alshare@yahoo.com mailto:mtarawneh2002@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 45 the forced displacement of people resulting from the growing syrian crisis and other ongoing crises in iraq, afghanistan, and eritrea is one of today’s leading international humanitarian and judicial concerns. when displaced people migrate across international borders, there are repercussions in both the source countries and the countries of asylum. the crisis of the syrian refugees constitutes one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world in recent decades. since the beginning of the crisis, according to a report from the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr 2014), the number of displaced syrians has reached about 12 million, of which 5 million have sought refuge in the four neighboring countries of lebanon, jordan, turkey, and iraq. this amounts to about a sixth of the former population of syria (united nations population fund, 2016). a report issued by the west asia-north africa (wana) institute (lockhart & barker, 2018) pointed out that up to 516,000 refugees had entered jordan but were not living in the camps allocated for hosting them. this was confirmed by statistics from the unhcr (2014) stating that 20% of the refugees were living in five camps: the za’atari camp, the mrajeeb al-fhood camp, the cyber city camp, the garden camp in ramtha city, and the al-rajhi camp, all of which are located in the northern jordanian governorates. because of their proximity to the syrian border, jordan’s northern governorates bear the greatest burden of hosting syrian refugees. za’arour (2014) reported in his study that the syrian presence there constituted 60% of all syrian refugees in jordan. a unhcr (2019) report on the syrian refugees in jordan shows that the majority of syrian refugees are women, children, and the elderly, and that despite the challenges imposed by their harsh circumstances, women were able to be involved in work and in the community and were thus able to bear the burden of meeting their families’ requirements, and of adapting to the new circumstances, customs, and culture. recently, studies by al-salahat (2014) and aqeel (2013) have addressed the conditions faced by refugee women, especially the economic hardships they encounter. these studies show that being an asylum-seeker often means living with violence and disorder, as well as having difficulty in assimilating into the host community because of fragmentation, isolation, and identity crisis. several institutions, organizations, and associations, such as the jordanian women’s union1, the sisterhood is global institute jordan (sigi jordan2), and the united nations children’s fund (unicef; 2015), have demonstrated the importance of taking care of women and children who are living in a state of general instability. 1 http://jwu.org.jo/home.aspx?lng=1 2 https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/members/sisterhood-global-institute-jordan-sigi-jmy-mhd-ldwly-ltdmnlns http://jwu.org.jo/home.aspx?lng=1 https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/members/sisterhood-global-institute-jordan-sigi-jmy-mhd-ldwly-ltdmn-lns https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/members/sisterhood-global-institute-jordan-sigi-jmy-mhd-ldwly-ltdmn-lns international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 46 understanding assimilation and identity within the asylum community is important when dealing with asylum issues, because the new environment in which refugees find themselves is culturally and socially distinct even when neighbouring countries share similarities in many customs, traditions, ways of living, and religion. as well, local and international institutions concerned with the affairs of refugee women and their families have emphasized that an increasing number of refugee women and their children encounter economic problems due to the absence of a former breadwinner, whether it be a husband, father, or brother. sigi jordan (2013) noted that about 36% of the families registered with them were supported by women who had escaped without their husbands. our study draws attention to the hardships and problems that prevent syrian refugee women from achieving social integration in the country of asylum, and highlights the most important reasons for the identity crisis suffered by many of these women. thus, this study addresses two main questions: 1. what problems of social and cultural assimilation are experienced by syrian refugee women who have gained asylum in jordan but are not residing in a refugee camp? 2. what are the underlying causes of the identity crisis experienced by these women? identity crisis of refugee women the crisis of asylum for refugee women is not limited to the harsh economic conditions they face and the violence practised against them as refugees. on the contrary, in order to understand the situation of syrian refugee women residing outside refugee camps, it is necessary to grapple with questions of identity and explore such issues as their relationships with those around them, whether they are able to attempt to improve their lives, and the level of their involvement with the asylum community. research carried out by unhcr (2014) and conveyed in a report entitled “women on their own: syrian refugee women struggle for survival” showed that a quarter of refugee women run their homes on their own and are in such difficult economic conditions that 78 % of them receive assistance from associations concerned with refugee affairs. in having been placed suddenly and forcibly into very difficult circumstances, these women are forced to confront central questions of identity, such as “who am i?” and “to whom do i belong?”. these are questions that are often raised as a result of alienation, confusion of values, and marginalization. alex mikshelly (1993) defined identity as “an integrated system of psychological, moral, materialistic and social data that involves a pattern of cognitive integration processes and is characterized by its unity embodied in the inner spirit that has a sense and feeling of identity” (p. 129). burhan ghalioun (2000) considered that the subject of cultural identity is about neither heritage nor modernity, but about defining one’s relationship with others in society while remaining culturally distinct from them. furthermore, while others, such as halliday (2000), link personal identity to a national identity with its roots in history, we also know that as an ideology, a personal identity that is grounded in nationalism fosters instability, since national international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 47 identity changes with changing social and political relations; these are the most important components of national identity, along with history, language, and culture (kinnvall, 2004). research on the question of identity is needed in order to understand the relationships among the diverse segments of society, each representing a different cultural or life pattern. this may be a necessary input for planning social systems and education in a manner that facilitates interaction and unity on the basis of diversity. in such planning, the importance of language in the individual’s identity and culture must be addressed: language must be considered as identitybearing, given that it plays a fundamental role in the formation of social systems (avayah, 1986). each social system produces cultural forms reflected in the customs, social institutions, and relations between members; these social systems make it possible for people to live in groups (avayah, 1986). overall, language is an element of identity as well as a means of communication, and is one of the most important elements of determining belonging; it is of no less importance in this regard than religion, which historically has been its rival in terms of importance (ma’alouf, 1999). the identity of refugees in the public sphere is different from that in the private sphere (the camps): the identity definition of those residing in the camps is different from that of those outside the camps, as a result of the latter’s involvement and interaction with members of the community that has received them. refugees residing outside the camps have become open to the culture of the other, while the communication of refugees within the camp is based on the refugees’ places of origin before asylum. this is confirmed by al-zein (2007) in his study showing that palestinians’ identity is based on their culture and their dialect. al-zein’s study emphasized the role played by culture in shaping the identities of individuals and groups, and saw culture as a meeting of material and spiritual systems that aim to control individuals’ behavior so as to improve their identity, their self, and their lifestyle. as ermann (2014) showed, because of war, refugees are thrust into a new reality in which they experience the contradictions and differences between their own culture and that of the host. these experiences, which involve harsh conditions and a sudden break with a self-understanding grounded in feelings and webs of significance oriented by one’s culture of origin, can lead to a lack of self-understanding and a neglect-based approach to survival coupled with difficulties in adaptation. these lead in turn to a sense of alienation from others, and to those others considering the refugee or incoming person as estranged. in this vein, abdul-ghani (2016) noted that the most important aspects of identity are those transmitted within the group, and that these aspects maintain their vitality based on their ongoing contribution to the maintenance of identity. in practice, it is difficult to deconstruct the strong association between the identity of the individual and the identity of the group (abdul-ghani, 2016). abdul-ghani also stated that a key contributor to identity is social upbringing, a natural mechanism that strengthens the association between the individual and the group at several levels. social upbringing does its work by associating the individual identity with the group (collective) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 48 identity and promoting the sense of belonging to the group within the individual — that is, pushing the individual to adapt to the society’s prevalent social, moral, political, economic, and religious values (abdul-ghani, 2016). the social upbringing mechanism is important in preserving identity and enhancing the individual’s sense of the surrounding community, especially for those who suffer from shocks that could undermine their trust in others; the social upbringing mechanism can maintain this trust, but if that mechanism is disrupted, difficulties can arise (abdul-ghani, 2016). abdul-ghani (2016) pointed out that adaptation within the control mechanisms contributes to adjusting to new circumstances despite difficult conditions or personal tragedies, and to avoiding becoming secluded within the boundaries of narrow self-identity (isolation). social upbringing, therefore, contributes to strengthening the association of individual identity and collective identity, as the individual identity helps to ease the acceptance of others without eliminating belonging to others. we see that one’s identity is deeply rooted in social structures: the identity of the individual represents an outside threat at the emergence of cultural specificities, while the collective identity strongly reshapes the identity of the individual in line with the general cultural field (abdul-ghani, 2016). following haidar (1997), we raise the possibility that syrian refugee women are positioned between two poles when raising the issue of identity, especially if they are not sufficiently aware of belonging to their syrian culture of origin and its possible connections to the culture of jordan, the country in which they now live. thus, syrian refugee women may be caught between isolation and fragmentation on the one hand, and between integration, interaction, and openness on the other. their attempts to interact within mutual social relations, especially outside the camps, could contribute to a form of natural integration based on cultural openness to new societies. as haidar noted, the personal identity of individuals within any society is that which is in confrontation and conflict with its present circumstances, which means that it is not a once-and-for-all experience. one’s living identity is engaged in a continuous production of its own (haidar, 1997). additional frameworks that contribute to understanding identity challenges in refugees trauma theory as long ago as the post-world war ii years, murphy (1955) asserted that refugees must ultimately come to terms with what they have lost: their homeland, identity, and past life, in addition to suffering trauma, oppression, and loss of those whom they love. refugees then have to face a new life in a strange land of which they know little, while also dealing with anxiety, fear, frustration, and emotional disturbance. in these circumstances, the refugees may become apathetic or aggressive, and so lose the capacity to coordinate, predict, and anticipate events (murphy, 1955). more than forty years later, hyndman (1999) confirmed that women refugees suffer from trauma before and during asylum and after settling down, while always also having to deal with being at risk for other painful gender-based experiences such as sexual assault and rape. all these experiences play a role in determining the success of the refugees who seek asylum, which in itself is a form of trauma. rashedi (1999) showed that the convergence of these multiple pressures international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 49 creates circumstances in which people exhibit various degrees of adaptation and noted that the trauma of the refugees is accompanied by fear, anxiety, stress and psychological symptoms such as depression, helplessness, and denial. with regard to refugees, several sets, or clusters, of factors have been identified as either aiding adjustment, or tending to increase mental health challenges: loneliness or isolation; changes in life situation, especially with regard to work; generational conflict among refugees themselves; and cultural shock (zwingmann, 1978). cluster boundaries are not precisely defined; they often interact closely with one another and with the factors that contribute or limit refugee adaptation and assimilation in the country of asylum, specifically among refugee women. baskauskas (1981) discussed the adjustment of refugees in terms of a grief process and indicated that this adjustment has three stages: (a) conservatism, a defensive mechanism to maintain continuity and preserve and hold on to the past; (b) bereavement (emotional mourning), an admission of irretrievable loss; and, (c) innovation, a movement beyond one’s loss in order to develop a new way of life. however, as baskauskas pointed out, the bereavement stage is the most important of these for refugees, especially if it lasts a long time, either because their homeland is permanently lost to them, or because the refugees identify so strongly with their nation that they cling to the hope of returning, delaying their psychological adaptation to the new society. refugees often find themselves in ambiguous situations where they have difficulty predicting the behavior of others. as refugees attempt to redefine their life situations and adopt strategies to deal with the crises they face, they begin to discover that their past life experiences have not adequately prepared them to live in a different culture (taylor & nathan, 1980). based on what we have described above, we suggest that the trauma of asylum for syrian women may begin with the lack knowledge of acceptable and unacceptable behavior patterns in the new environment (jordan). this is especially true for those who live independently away from the camps. they may suffer from insomnia and stress, and are always under pressure to become more compatible with the new environment. assimilation theory milton gordon’s (1964) foundational analysis of refugee assimilation comprised three key elements: the assimilation model itself, the role of the refugee community or the ethnic group, and the nature and form of the assimilation process. gordon defined the assimilation process as one of leaving behind one’s original cultural identity as a singular source of self-description and moving towards a location of self in the larger society. according to gordon, this process necessarily involves the newcomer learning the culture and behavior of the dominant society. gordon (1964) also noted that there are three models of assimilation in relation to refugees: (a) conformity, or more closely matching the host; that is, the refugee moves towards full acceptance of the prevailing culture; (b) integration or “melting pot”, an idea of american origin international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 50 that regards both indigenous peoples and refugees to have changed and merged into a better alloy; and, (c) multiculturalism, in which the refugee will adopt the dominant culture, especially in politics, recreation, education, and labor, but will preserve his or her personal way of life and many facets of his or her culture. before gordon (1964), eisenstadt (1954) had argued that for refugees to reach the highest level of adaptation and assimilation, they must pass through the process of absorption within the process of assimilation. this process takes place in four stages: (a) acquisition of language (including the dialect of the region), norms, and roles; (b) learning to perform a set of new roles for dealing with the many new situations that will occur; (c) developing a new identity, self-image, values, and patterns of self (basic personal adjustment); and, (d) movement from participation in the institutions of the ethnic group of origin to participation in the institutions of the host society. gordon (1964) considered these phases, especially the first three, to constitute behavioral assimilation or symmetry — learning the cultural patterns of the new country — and argued that this corresponds to the long-term existence of ethnic subgroups. gordon called the fourth stage structural assimilation, which is entering into the life of the primary group of the new land. this occurs when members of the ethnic subgroup marry into the primary group; join clubs; acquire new identities that fit the host society; are no longer subjected to prejudice, bias, and discrimination; and no longer have value conflicts with members of the host community. this structural absorption is a precondition for ideal and total assimilation — a complete merging of refugees into the local society. based on what we learned from our own study, and considering the absorption process with its four phases, for a syrian refugee woman to engage seriously in the labor market and in the social life of the host country she must learn the languages or dialects used by neighbors and friends; only then will she acquire the ability to learn new roles in the new culture. holding on to the old without being able to participate in the new will leave her in a state of contradiction and in a crisis of assimilation. therefore, developing an identity commensurate with the general identity of the host country (jordan) enables syrian refugee women, over time, to participate in different interactive social institutions. this assimilation does not occur overnight. on the contrary, it passes through the phases addressed by eisenstadt (1954), in which assimilation begins with acquiring skills in the first few months. eisenstadt characterized this phase as stressful for almost all refugees regardless of gender; if they acquire some mastery of colloquial communication in the first and second year, they become capable of learning new roles within the second phase. this gives them some control over the changes to their lives that occurred during the journey to asylum, changes that were necessary in order to survive. after four years of asylum, the adjustment becomes clear in their behavior and identity, as the first phases have gradually passed, and the refugee has undergone real change. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 51 the theory of assimilation developed by alejandro portes (portes and rumbaut, 2001), who began his research on this topic in the united sates in the early 1990s, focuses on the migrants’ circumstances as experienced between two generations of immigrants and the wider ethnic community, and describes the possible results in the second generation (children of migrants). in their article examining theories of assimilation using data from new york, waters, tran, kasinitz, and mollenkopf (2010) stated: segmented assimilation theory posits three possible outcomes for the second generation: upward assimilation, downward assimilation, and upward mobility combined with persistent biculturalism. these paths correspond to three processes that summarize the relations between immigrant children, their parents, and the wider ethnic community — consonant, dissonant, and selective acculturation. (para. 6). we may employ these three possible outcomes described by portes and rumbaut (2001) with regard to syrian refugee women in jordan living outside the camps in order to understand the levels of assimilation that the refugees have reached since the beginning of the syrian crisis. according to waters and colleagues (2010), in the united states, consonant acculturation occurs when the children and parents both learn american culture and gradually abandon their home language and “old country” ways at about the same pace. as these children enter the american mainstream, they achieve upward mobility with the support of their parents. dissonant acculturation occurs when children learn english and adopt american ways far faster than do their immigrant parents. portes and rumbaut (2010) argue that this process can lead to downward assimilation when these young people confront racial discrimination [and] bifurcated labor markets on their own without strong parental authority or community support. the third process, selective acculturation, leads to upward assimilation and biculturalism. this occurs when parents and children both gradually learn american ways while remaining embedded, at least in part, in the ethnic community. (para. 6) alba and nee (2003) applied the theory of assimilation to immigrants in the united states of america when considering the impact of new communities on the first and second generation children, the extent of their integration into society, and the impact of the new community on the culture of the immigrants. their work helps to expand assimilation theory by providing a better understanding of the integration of immigrants. alba and nee (2003), while retaining key insights from earlier theorists, predicted that most members of the current second generation (i.e., the children of immigrants) will experience increasing social integration and upward mobility. however, they rejected the prescriptive assertion that second generation immigrants need to adopt “american norms” (or those of any other dominant culture) and stressed the fact that the american society “mainstream” is highly dynamic and heterogeneous. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 52 these theoretical pathways that describe assimilation theory may be helpful to our understanding of syrian refugee women in the asylum community, and may offer some perspectives with regard to our understanding of the children of syrian refugee women who may be slowly absorbing the culture of jordanian society. overall, we suggest that the experiences of refugee women and children may produce constant acculturation between the refugee community and the host community, and with it, upward assimilation. some members of the first-and-second generation refugee community may take on the culture of the new society more rapidly than others, which can lead to a gap between the first generation and the second with respect to the culture of the new society, and therefore to a dissonant acculturation where parent–child bonds are concerned. this in turn can lead refugees and their children to having distorted views of each other’s engagement and integration within the culture of the host society. learning the culture of the new society while retaining an identity based in connection to the old culture in difficult conditions leads to the third case developed by portes and rumbaut (2001). this takes the form of the upward assimilation of refugees and their second-generation children with the possibility of maintaining a dual culture. this situation is very close to the social integration that the refugee may achieve over time as described by alba and nee (2003). beyond the research described above focusing on the accumulated assimilation process, there are few studies dealing with the alienation and identity crisis of refugees. among these we found the work of mikshelly (1993), who carried out a study of the changes associated with the maturing of the individual refugee identity. mikshelly asked his research participants to answer the question, “who am i?” 20 times in a row in a different way each time. he found that the responses first referred to social categories (age, sex, and occupation), then to social roles (fathers, brothers, etc.) and then to political affiliations. the results showed that the concept of identity is varied in its meanings and terminology and that identity is referenced at the individual, group, and cultural levels. furthermore, this suggests that an individual’s identity is a changing and evolving concept, one that in the course of its development comes to define the distinctiveness of each human being. we also located the work of mubayyed (2010), which has relevance to the psychological trauma and isolation of refugees, and to their difficulty in assimilating into the host society. mubayyed examined the various issues and conditions faced by palestinian refugees in general, and of those in the balata camp in the west bank in particular. the key finding of this research was that the refugees in the balata camp felt politically alienated, as indicated by their feelings of isolation, rebelliousness, and non-adaptation. finally, we found one study that focused on syrian refugee women in jordan who are not living in a refugee camp. the study was conducted by al-salahat (2014), who sought to identify the psychological and social problems that syrian refugee women encounter in the za’atari camp. this study concluded that refugee women suffer from psychological problems, of which the most severe is post-traumatic stress disorder, followed by depression and anxiety and other international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 53 psychophysical problems. al-salahat also found that these women suffered from social problems, mainly to do with the environment in which they found themselves and the ensuing difficult social relations, and from grief over the loss of their relatives and other loved ones. given the paucity of information about refugee women in general, and about syrian refugee women in jordan who are not living in a refugee camps in particular, we conducted the study that we report on here. we addressed two main questions: “what problems of social and cultural assimilation are experienced by syrian refugee women residing in jordan, but not in a refugee camp, after gaining asylum there?” and “what are the underlying causes of the identity crisis experienced by these women?” method population and participants the study population consisted of all syrian refugee women in the city of irbid in northern jordan and its villages, who were living outside the refugee camps that are designated for receiving syrian refugees in jordan. the unhcr (2014) report on the struggles for survival of syrian women on their own pointed out that only about 20% of syrian refugees live in camps, while the rest live outside the camps and are involved in their local communities. since 2015, the jordanian women’s union has provided social and psychological services, in-kind assistance, and various courses for refugee women and has involved them in projects aimed at economic and social empowerment, while also raising awareness of the importance of these women’s rights through the union’s family guidance line. from the beginning of the syrian crisis until the end of 2017, 1,326 syrian refugee women in irbid residing outside the camps visited the jordanian women’s union there. our study sample consisted of 50 of these women. a recorded, semi-open interview was the main data collection instrument employed. the questions are listed in tables 2 and 3 below. although the interview sessions were focused on asking questions and recording the answers, they also allowed us to observe the participants’ responses and to gauge the extent of their cooperation and to ask supplementary questions. the participants were interviewed in their homes after setting appointments in coordination with researchers in the jordanian women’s union. demographic data about our participants are provided in table 1 below. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 54 results table 1. characteristics as a percentage of the sample characteristic f % age 20–40 29 58 > 40 21 42 marital status married 39 78 divorced 6 12 widow 3 6 single 2 4 educational level illiterate 18 36 secondary 26 52 ba 3 6 diploma 3 6 postgraduate degree 0 0 asylum duration 1 year 1 2 2 years 4 8 3 years or more 45 90 house owned 0 0 rented 50 100 husband presence available 39 78 not available 11 22 husband employed after asylum has a job 32 82 doesn’t have a job 7 14 number of children 1–4 7 14 4 or more 43 86 woman employed before asylum had a job 8 16 never had a job 42 84 woman employed after asylum has a job 49 98 doesn’t have a job 1 2 note: n = 50. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 55 table 1 shows that most of the refugee women in the sample were between 20 and 40 years old. this is correlated with their ability to encounter challenges and assume the responsibilities and burdens of the circumstances that accompanied their asylum. of the women who were living with their husbands, the husbands had a job after asylum in 82% of cases; however, these women pointed out during interviews that the husband’s work alone was not enough to meet the family’s needs. husbands often had to change jobs as a result of the continual pursuit by the authorities of those syrians who were able to find work because syrian refugees are not given official permits to work in jordan. the interviews showed that the women were forced to work to cover the shortfall in family expenses and that both husbands and wives constantly had to deal with the possibility of losing their jobs. most (86%) of the refugee women had not worked before asylum. after being given asylum in jordan, 98% of participants worked. the implications of this are reflected in the level of education. our results indicate that the majority (52%) of the interviewed women had achieved a modest level of education up to less than the secondary level. this played a role in their inability to work before asylum. one participant said, “i was not used to having to work; i have never thought in my life that i would become a servant.” another refugee woman agreed, saying, “had i known that the end of my coming to jordan would be raising the children of my neighbors, i would have preferred to stay in syria, which is far more merciful.” having a husband whose economic contributions have been reduced by unemployment, underemployment, or low wages was a clear and tangible change of circumstances for the married refugee women. this involved a change in their perception of work, and in their ability to get paid by their own efforts and so help support the family. this was shown when one participant said, “i have to go out to work. life is hard here and i have to cooperate with my husband.” another said, “no matter how much aid we obtain, it is insufficient, and so i have to work so that my children will be secure.” these statements indicate the urgent necessity for women to work and contribute to household expenses. during the asylum journey, most women (80%) and their children were accompanied by their husbands. the participants confirmed that they were unable to escape the crisis without either a husband or an alternative breadwinner such as a father, older brother, or uncle on whom they had been mainly dependent before asylum. in this regard, one participant commented: had it not been for my elder brother, may allah protect him, we would not have been able to travel, or to move from one place to another. we are all females. my mother accompanied us, and this is the greatest reason for our departure. it makes us feel safe to be a group of females. we see this as a clear expression of the need for a basic breadwinner in the life of a refugee woman, especially during the journey to seek asylum. both the refugees’ own culture and the host society consider males in the family (husband, father or brother) to be a source of social, economic, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 56 psychological stability for refugees. their absence therefore makes an already precarious situation even worse. the results of this study are inconsistent with the figures that reported by sigi jordan since this study conducted outside the refugee camps where women were overwhelmingly with their husbands. issues of social and cultural assimilation table 2 shows that, after asylum, participants were in a state of emotional and intellectual agitation due to their lack of a sense of compatibility with the new society. this was despite having established somewhat successful social relations within their new social milieu. however, these relations tended to occur in work contexts only, not in the personal social sphere: the percentage of social relations within the work environment was 66%, whereas the percentage of social relations within the neighborhood, combined with personal relations, was only 26%. table 2. issues of social and cultural assimilation issue f % compatibility in community yes 21 42 no 29 58 others’ acceptance of refugee women yes 17 34 no 33 66 good social relationships at work 33 66 with neighbors 13 26 no relations 4 8 similarity of customs and traditions little difference 11 22 great difference 39 78 note: n = 50. approximately 42% of the participants felt they were compatible with the surrounding society, while 58% felt incompatible. several circumstances experienced by the latter contributed to this difference, most importantly: (a) lack of adequate medical aid; (b) inadequate housing due to economic hardship; (c) exposure to multiple forms of verbal and other humiliation; and, (d) persistent nostalgia for the homeland, leading to an inability to adapt to the new circumstances. when asked about her psychological state of being in a country other than her native homeland, one participant said, “i am confused and stressed. i feel suffocated as there is nothing here (in jordan) that gives me ease of mind.” another woman said, “i wonder why the world is so cruel to us in this way — there is nothing to please us.” the women’s statements show that they were suffering from a state of hidden agitation that they were trying in vain to overcome. another refugee expressed her state of psychological disorder and her confusion of sad feelings by saying: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 57 i have been here in jordan for seven years, and even today i weep every day, feeling sad as the picture of my home does not leave my imagination; nor does the image of my family who stayed there in the levant while we came out here. this shows an element of longstanding nostalgia for the times, places, and people this participant had known. another refugee woman replied, “sister, never believe that refugees feel happy about alienation from their country.… all of them are distressed but they are trying to hide it and i am the first to hide it.” in spite of being caught in a confusion of negative feelings and ideas, refugee women have a clear ability to hide their tension and grief from their children and family members. the lives of such participants had been shaped by this state of agitation and other negative feelings. they had experienced a depth of grief that they had not been familiar with before asylum. despite their many attempts to overcome these sad feelings, which were a barrier to their integration, the feelings had lasted for a relatively long time. now, when contemplating the fabric of their new social relations, some of the refugee women only saw in themselves misery, agitation, and internal imbalance. therefore, the results of this study show a degree of compatibility with the surrounding society of non-refugees that varied only slightly. as for whether the refugees felt they were accepted by others in society, the results of the study show that 66% of participants felt they were not accepted by the people of jordan, while only 34% felt accepted. acceptance by the host population is one of the necessary elements for assimilation. it is impossible to adequately address matters such as compatibility, assimilation, and harmony in a society that rejects a particular category of people. one refugee woman said, “many people refuse to employ us just because we are syrians.” another gave an example of the refusal of some neighbors to have social contact with them, saying, “i tried to visit the neighbors more than once, but some of them apologized and many of them did not pay me a visit back. they said, ‘we do not want relationships, do you understand?’ ” main problems underlying the identity crisis of syrian refugee women the results of the present study show that our participants were experiencing what can be termed an identity crisis. one main problem underlying this crisis was that the majority (72%) of the women in the sample felt unable to accept the people of the host community. clear differences between the culture of syria and the culture of jordan — different customs and traditions — underlay this rejection, although 42% of participants felt that the symbols and semantics of these two cultures show a nearness and general similarity. the difference lay in details of content, which led the majority of participants to reject the new culture: they preferred isolation to learning a new way of life. there was also a clear correlation between the extent to which the participants were accepted by those in the asylum society and their willingness to identify themselves as syrian international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 58 refugee women. approximately 66% of the women interviewed either hid their identity or, at least, did not introduce themselves as refugees or as syrians at their first meeting with a new acquaintance, whether it was in the vicinity of the home, at work, or elsewhere. for some, their identity was revealed through their dialect or through the use of customs or traditions unfamiliar to jordanians. one of the refugee women said, “i don’t like to say that i am syrian because i feel that people start to sympathize with me.” according to another participant, “when i say that i am syrian, people look upon me as if i were defective.” another refugee woman explained not being accepted by saying, “jordanians don’t accept us. they think we are beggars, or that we came to rob their houses and their lands.” findings about our participants’ identity crises are given in table 3. table 3. identity crisis issue f % acceptance of those around them yes 14 28 no 36 72 difficulty understanding the spoken language yes 32 64 no 18 36 symbols and semantics between the two cultures are similar yes 21 42 no 29 58 persistent desire to return to the homeland yes 42 84 no 8 16 revelation of syrian identity to the host community declared 17 34 concealed 33 66 note: n = 50. despite the identity-related concerns expressed by the majority of our participants, 34% of those we interviewed declared their identity as refugees and did not hesitate to do so, and considered seeking refuge to be a necessity that any woman or any society might encounter, given that no country is immune to crises, calamities, and natural disasters. one participant said, “i am not ashamed to say that i am syrian. being a syrian is not shameful. what has occurred to us might occur in any country, so why should i be ashamed?” another explained her willingness to reveal her identity by saying, “i feel that i am among my family; they don’t treat me as if i were a stranger.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 59 revelation of syrian identity was clearly correlated with the extent to which participants felt accepted by others. the results of the study show that 66% of participants felt they were not accepted by the surrounding society, while 34% felt welcomed (see table 3); these are the same percentages as those for participants’ preference for concealing or declaring their identity. these results imply that the refugees in our study population considered that their social relations succeeded only when they did not hesitate to declare or disclose their identity. identity disclosure is an important part of the establishment of labor relations, social relations with neighbors, and even kinship and marriage. most of the participants (90%) had been in jordan for three or more years. residing outside the refugee camps provided them with a chance to establish good relations beyond the boundaries of their old traditions. to explore the extent of assimilation that had been achieved, participants were asked whether they had made changes to the terminology that they used in the context of social transactions. their responses showed a pronounced impact of the past in many contexts; for example, citing a particular proverb or comparing prices or in relation to certain traditions and customs. one refugee said, “here, you feel that everything is different. even their wedding parties and what goes on at consolation houses and family management are completely different.” another participant, addressing a favorable estimate of the extent of assimilation with the current society, pointed out: your prices of vegetables and fruit are more expensive than ours, in addition to the prices of clothing that make you feel that it is not the same in jordan which is located near to sham (syria), still everything is cheaper there. the study has also revealed a state of alienation due to the differences between the two countries and their cultures. however, this finding is contradicted by al-zein (2007) in a study that addressed palestinian identity in their culture and their dialect: palestinian refugees who live outside camps developed an openness to the others’ host culture as a result of their involvement and interaction with the host community, whereas the communications of refugees within camps were largely restricted to compatriots. in this regard, one of the syrian refugees we interviewed pointed out, “sometimes, i feel lost, not knowing what to say or where to go.” our study also revealed that, as baskauskas (1981) and loizos (1975) noted (see “trauma theory” above), refugee adaptation is carried out through the three-stage grief process of conservatism, bereavement, and innovation. but in the case of our study, table 3 shows that bereavement, indicated by a sustained desire to return to the homeland, was experienced by the majority (84%) of the women interviewed, even though most had been living in jordan for 5 to 7 years. we therefore suggest that the prolonged period of bereavement had limited the degree of harmony and adaptation to the new culture that the women were able to achieve, influencing the depth of social relations and causing an inability to overcome the difficult new circumstances. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 60 in another context, the results of our study are consistent with eisenstadt’s (1954) first phases of assimilation (acquisition of language, performing a set of new roles, and developing a new identity) but are in contradiction with the last phase (participating in the institutions of the host society). our study shows a pronounced incompatibility in the final phase, behavior and identity adjustment. given our data, it seems that our participants remained largely in the first phase as defined by eisenstadt, because these refugee women remained preoccupied with the emergency that had entered their lives. they were suddenly involved in work for which they had not been prepared, requiring abilities and skills they had never used before, in circumstances that were incompatible with the culture that they had been forced to leave. the findings of our study are also consistent with those of mubayyed (2010), who revealed that the refugees in the balata camp in the west bank felt politically alienated, isolated, rebellious, and not adapted. in that vein, our study shows that the syrian refugee women who were living outside the camps also suffered from a state of alienation and non-assimilation. this state correlated with their long-standing nostalgia for their homeland; the necessity to work hard because of economic difficulties, to which they were unaccustomed; and their desire to return to syria, despite the difficult situation there. conclusion and recommendations the results of this study, which addressed the problematic issues of assimilation and identity, indicate that there are many internal and external factors and influences that correlate with refugee women being unable to integrate fully into the social life of jordan, the country of asylum, despite having lived there for years. the study also shows both hesitancy by refugee women to declare their syrian identity to jordanians, and a lack of jordanian acceptance of the syrian identity, even when it comes to syrian women who have spent years in jordan with their husbands and children. moreover, when assimilation into the new society has not been achieved, the impact of this failure is made manifest in the identity of the syrian refugee women, and in their inability to accept the new living situation. often, the syrian refugee women had not developed the new identity necessary to fit in with the asylum community, and to participate in social institutions in roles that they had not previously been familiar with. additionally, the asylum trauma of the syrian refugee women has a strong influence on their social relationships in the wider community. our study has revealed an interactive set of experiences lived by the refugee women residing outside the refugee camps. these experiences include: difficult economic circumstances, which resulted in challenges that were new in their lives; internal and external violence, a result of the difficult conditions and pressures of asylum; and psychological and social alienation from the new society, which resulted from the failure to assimilate and the distortion of the general identity of refugee women. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2019) 10(4.1): 44–64 61 the results of our study show that many syrian women refugees living outside the camps are suffering an identity crisis, and are having difficulty assimilating. therefore, it is recommended that public, international, and local associations and organizations pay attention to the cultural, social, and psychological assimilation of refugee women in the asylum society and work to empower them to become involved in the host culture. this can be achieved through organizations holding workshops to provide psychological and social support, as well as informing refugee women of the nature and conditions of the hosting environment. these measures would help to speed up the process of assimilation, in addition to avoiding 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(2014, december 11). خارطة اللجوء السوري في االردن [syrian refugee map in jordan]. nowk. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/53be84aa4.pdf https://www.unhcr.org/ar/4be7cc278c8.html https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/more-numbers-regional-overview-responding-gender-based-violence-syrian https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/more-numbers-regional-overview-responding-gender-based-violence-syrian http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419871003624076 running head: pre/perinatal risk, aggression and sexual behaviors international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 36 pre/perinatal adversities and behavioural outcomes in early childhood: preliminary findings from the vancouver longitudinal study patrick lussier*, stacy tzoumakis, ray corrado, pratibha reebye, and jay healey abstract: several pre/perinatal factors (e.g., birth complications, maternal substance use, low birth weight) have been associated with early neuropsychological deficits and negative behavioural outcomes in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. the current study examines the relationship between maternal substance use during pregnancy and its impact on physical aggression and sexual behaviours in a sample of preschoolers. this study is based on a sample of children (n = 129), boys and girls, recruited as part of the kd-bear project, an ongoing longitudinal study conducted in vancouver, british columbia, canada. the sample consisted of clinical referrals for an externalizing disorder and children recruited in daycares located in at-risk neighbourhoods. semistructured interviews were completed with the primary caregiver. a series of structural equation modelling showed that children showing higher levels of physical aggression and sexual behaviours were more likely to have been exposed to maternal substance use and pregnancy-related complications. implications of the study are discussed in light of the scientific literature on the early prevention of aggression and violence. keywords: physical aggression, normative sexual behaviours, prenatal, perinatal, early childhood, maternal substance use, birth complications, maternal distress *contact information: patrick lussier, ph.d. is associate professor, school of criminology, simon fraser university (sfu), 8888 university drive, burnaby (british columbia), canada, v5a1s6, phone: 778-782-3018, e-mail: plussier@sfu.ca stacy tzoumakis and jay healey are ph.d. candidates at sfu. ray corrado, ph.d. is a professor in the school of criminology at sfu. pratibha reebye, mb, bs, dpm, mrc (psych) is infant psychiatrist at the british columbia children’s hospital and clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at the university of british columbia. mailto:plussier@sfu.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 37 the period of adolescence has long been a focal point for researchers interested in the aetiology and the prevention of youth violence. in recent years, developmental psychologists have stressed the importance of looking earlier in the development to better understand: (a) the course of aggression and violence from infancy to adulthood (e.g., tremblay et al., 1999); and (b) the risk and protective factors associated with its course (e.g., tremblay et al., 2004). key to this issue is the early identification of intervention targets to inform developmental prevention programs aiming to reduce the likelihood of serious forms of aggression and violent behaviours (e.g., robbery, assault, rape, homicide) before their occurrence in adolescence (e.g., elliott, 1994; leblanc & fréchette, 1989). longitudinal studies have contributed to an understanding of the unfolding of aggression and violence from its onset in infancy to early adulthood. these studies have shown the presence of different courses of aggressive behaviours during that period characterized by much between-individual differences and within-individual changes over time in the frequency of aggression. of importance, these longitudinal studies have shown, first, much stability in between-individual differences as to the level of aggression in youth, and second, significant within-individual changes in the level of aggression as children age (e.g., nagin & tremblay, 1999). more to the point, if the majority of children tend to manifest some level of aggression during early childhood, most learn to inhibit these manifestations before school entry. a small sub-group of children, however, that continue to be physically aggressive after school entry has been identified in different empirical studies conducted in various countries (broidy et al., 2003). these aggressive children are often those exposed to more biosocial adversities frequently starting at the pre/perinatal period of development (tremblay, 2003). studies have also shown that this small group of children is at risk of a series of negative outcomes in adolescence, more specifically juvenile delinquency and various forms of violent behaviour (brame, nagin, & tremblay, 2001; broidy et al., 2003). loeber and colleagues (loeber & hay, 1997; loeber & stouthamer-loeber, 1998) argued that physically aggressive children follow a specific developmental pathway which, if it persists over time, escalates to more serious acts of violence, including sexual assault. theoretical models of persistent antisocial and aggressive behaviours suggest that problems and difficulties in one life domain (i.e., interacting prosocially with peer-age group) may in fact spill over into other life domains (moffitt, 1993). the sexual development of aggressive youth has been focused on the period of adolescence. in fact, clinical research has been concerned with the co-occurrence of antisocial behaviours with noncriminal sexuality (figueredo, sales, russell, becker, & kaplan, 2000), mating efforts (rowe, vazsonyi, & figueredo, 1997), risky sexual behaviours (leblanc & bouthillier, 2003) and sexual coercion (e.g., knight & sims-knight, 2003) in youth. while these sexual manifestations characterize the period of adolescence, not much is known about manifestations in childhood, especially early childhood. childhood is an important developmental period for sexual development but has not been subject of much empirical research (e.g., delamater & friedrich, 2002; friedrich, grambsch, broughton, kuiper, & beilke, 1991), even less so for physically aggressive children. a recent study (lussier & healey, 2010) has shown much overlap between the level of physical aggression and the level of sexual behaviours manifested by preschoolers. in other words, the most physically aggressive preschoolers tend to also be the ones showing higher levels of sexual behaviours in early childhood. in fact, male preschoolers, coming from low-income family environments and having been clinically referred for an externalizing spectrum disorder, were more likely to show elevated levels of both physical aggression and sexual behaviours. these researchers hypothesized that the co-occurrence of these two behavioural manifestations might be indicative international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 38 of common developmental risk and protective factors present at the earliest developmental stages. the current study builds on these findings by examining pre/perinatal risk factors and their association with the level of physical aggression and sexual behaviours in a small sample of vulnerable preschoolers. theoretical framework traditionally, theoretical models of aggression and violent behaviours have focused on individual-level factors and environmental-level factors. some theoretical models have stressed the predominant role of individual-level causal factors, others the predominant role of environmental-level causal factors, while some models have stressed the interplay between the two. in the past two decades, there has been increased attention by developmental psychologists and criminologists to the possible role of a third causal pathway leading to aggression and violent behaviours. this third causal pathway has been described as the risk factors the fetus is exposed to in utero (i.e., prenatal adversities) as well as those the child is exposed to around the time of birth (i.e., perinatal adversities). pre/perinatal adversities have been increasingly included in developmental models of aggressive and violent behaviours. indeed, the role of pre/perinatal adversities on aggressive and violent behaviours has been recognized by risk factors studies and later introduced to contemporary explanatory models (loeber, slot, & stouthamer-loeber, 2008; moffitt, 1993). generally speaking, three broad categories of pre/perinatal risk factors have been considered: (a) pregnancy-related complications, (b) birth-related complications, and (c) maternal use of teratogenic agents. these three sets of adversities have been linked to negative behavioural outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. pregnancy-related complications is a generic term which has been used to describe a series of medical problems which include gestational diabetes, hypertension, pre-eclampsia, placenta previa, vaginal bleeding, anemia, excessive vomiting, fibroids, etc. similarly, birthand delivery-related complications describe a series of medical problems including preterm delivery, fetal distress, preterm rupture of membranes, abnormal presentation, prolonged labour, umbilical cord prolapse or compression, low birth weight, etc. while the causal pathways describing how these risk factors may be linked to later negative behavioural outcomes remain elusive and speculative, the empirical association found across studies warrants further examination. the role of pre/perinatal factors on the development of aggression and violence has been stressed in the life-course persistent theory by moffitt (1993). according to this model, pre/perinatal risk factors impacting neural development can lead to neuropsychological deficits in the child, more specifically, verbal and executive function deficits. moffitt argued that such deficits may be too subtle to be clinically detected and treated resulting in a series of manifestations such as poor cognitive abilities, self-regulation abilities, and a difficult temperament, all of which are precursors and risk factors of antisocial behaviour and delinquency. these manifestations, in turn, can evoke negative and even hostile reactions from the environment, and most importantly the parents, further reinforcing the negative behavioural pattern emerging (see also, thornberry, 2005). moffitt further claimed that the source of neuropsychological deficits tends to co-occur with a criminogenic family environment characterized by disadvantages and/or deviance. this model stresses that successive interactions between a child with neuropsychological deficits and a criminogenic environment would contribute to maintaining such early deficits. as a result, vulnerable children affected by pre/perinatal risk factors are disproportionally found in environments that will not moderate the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 39 impact of these risk factors. brennan, grekin, and mednick (2003) further elaborated on other possible moderators in the relationship between pre/perinatal risk factors and aggression. brennan et al. (2003) raised three complementary hypotheses stipulating how the child’s gender could play a moderating role: 1. boys and girls might be affected differently by pre/perinatal risk factors. 2. there might be gender differences in the impact of pre/perinatal risk factors based on the timing of the exposure to the risk factor due to the slower brain development of males as opposed to females. 3. there might be gender differences as to the negative outcomes associated with pre/perinatal risk factors (e.g., physical aggression for boys, relational aggression for girls). the role of child gender as a moderator is further reinforced by the observation that females learn more quickly to regulate their emotions and their disruptive behaviours (tremblay, 2003). taken together, it is suggested that pre/perinatal risk factors might lead to aggressive behaviours in early childhood, but this pattern might only affect children exposed to socially disadvantaged family environments and might take different forms for boys and girls. pregnancyand birth-related complications and the child psychosocial development pregnancyand birth-related complications are associated with several negative outcomes for infants and children in such areas as cognitive ability, executive function, and sensory issues. a retrospective study of 152 mothers of preschool boys and girls examined the relationship between perinatal problems and sensory integration issues (crepeau-hobson, 2009). this author found that gestational age (low birth weight, prematurity), psychosocial events (maternal stress, pregnancy planning), delivery complications (presentation direction, type of anesthesia), and teratogenic stress (alcohol and cigarette use) were associated with sensory processing difficulties, although the explained variance remained low (2% to 8 %). preterm births have been associated with several negative outcomes in the literature, including executive function deficits in infants. one study compared the executive function between very preterm infants (37 boys and girls) and healthy full term infants (74 boys and girls) matched for age and gender (sun, mohay, & o’callaghan, 2009). results indicated that preterm infants did not perform as well on the executive function tasks of working memory, inhibition to distraction, and planning. moreover, preterm births have been found to be more problematic for boys than for girls. using a prospective cohort of 754 preterm boys and girls, spinillo et al. (2009) found that risk of neurodevelopment impairment of boys was higher than that of girls at age 2. this was especially the case for those whose mothers suffered from pre-eclampsia, medically indicated preterm births, and for low birth weight infants. when a cohort of very low birth weight infants, who were matched with normal birth weight children, were followed up to age 8, the very low birth weight children continued to display cognitive, educational, and behavioural deficits (anderson & doyle, 2003). other studies have found a relationship between obstetric complications and autism by comparing children with autism with their non-affected siblings. a population study compared children with autism (n = 465), their siblings (n = 481), and a control groups from the general population (n = 1,313) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 40 and found that those with autism were more likely to have experienced several birthand pregnancy-related complications including threatened abortion, epidural use, labour induction, fetal distress, and elective or emergency caesarean delivery (glasson et al., 2004). researchers have also examined the question by considering the proportion that a pregnancy is free of complications (optimality) and have found an association between autism and birth and pregnancy complications (bolton et al., 1997; lord, mulloy, wendelboe, & schopler, 1991). one such study compared 78 children with autism and 88 of their unaffected siblings using a composite scale of 61 different obstetric complications. the authors found that those with autism had more complications during pregnancy and that the proportion of relatives with autism was not significant (zwaigenbaum et al., 2002). other studies have examined the impact of birthand pregnancy-related complications on aggression and delinquency. severe pregnancy (physical, social, or psychological problems) and delivery complications (breech presentation, caesarean section, hospitalization of the mother or child due to lack of oxygen, blood transfusion, or jaundice) were found to be significant risk factors for parental reporting of both aggressive and delinquent behaviour at ages 10 to 12 (buschgens et al., 2009). when looking at low birth weight specifically, mixed results have been found. very low birth weight (less than 1,501 grams) was significantly associated with attention problems and aggression at ages 7 to 8 in a sample of 243 children (sykes et al., 1997). tibbetts and piquero (1999) examined the relationship between the early onset of offending with low birth weight (less than 6 pounds), socioeconomic status, disadvantaged environment, and family structure in a sample of 207 male and female offenders. the authors found that those with low birth weight did have an earlier onset of offending, as did the interaction between low birth weight with both socioeconomic status and weak family structure. others have found no association between low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams) and juvenile offenders (at least one conviction) or chronic juvenile offenders (five or more convictions) for any crime in a retrospective birth cohort identified using birth and justice datasets (conseur, rivara, barnoski, & emanuel, 1997). contradictory results have also been found regarding birthand pregnancy-related complications with antisocial behaviour in adulthood. one study which examined individuals with schizophrenia, found no relationship between pregnancy (e.g., pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, diabetes, fever, bleeding, rh incompatibility, anemia) and neonatal complications (e.g., convulsions, intraventricular hemorrhage, abnormal neurological signs) with general or violent convictions at ages 35 to 44 in a sample of 636 individuals (cannon et al., 2002). another study found that obstetric complications alone had no effect on the risk of offending (at least one criminal conviction by age 30) in a sample of 7,101 men and 6,751 women (hodgins, kratzer, & mcneil, 2001). however, the authors did find an interaction effect between pregnancy complications (such as vaginal bleeding, placenta previa, pre-eclampsia, hypothyroidism, diabetes, viral infections, smoking and alcohol consumption, hyperemesis, etc.) and inadequate parenting (reported by child welfare) and offending (hodgins et al., 2001). prenatal risk factors of adverse fetal and child psychosocial development maternal smoking. teratogens are environmental agents (such as nicotine, alcohol, soft drugs, and hard drugs) that can affect the fetus during the prenatal period. it has been suggested that maternal smoking causes fetal hypoxia (i.e., deprivation of oxygen to the fetus), which has a negative impact on the physical and cognitive development of the fetus (lassen & oei, 1998). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 41 as such, newborns having been exposed to daily maternal smoking have been shown to be lighter and shorter (fox, sexton, & hebel, 1990; hardy & mellits, 1972; wingerd & schoen, 1974), as well as showing lower cognitive scores on reading, memory, spelling, and verbal comprehension tests in early childhood (cornelius, ryan, day, goldschmidt, & willford, 2001; davie, butler, & goldstein, 1972; fried, o’connell, & watkinson, 1992; martin, dombrowski, mullis, wisenbaker, & huttunen, 2006; sexton, fox, & hebel, 1990). the extent of these differences is difficult to determine considering important methodological differences in measurement and research designs across studies. daily maternal smoking during pregnancy has been shown to have adverse behavioural outcomes such as early disruptive behaviours (fergusson, horwood, & lynskey, 1993), conduct disorder (fergusson et al., 1993; weissman, warner, wickramaratne, & kandel, 1999), attention-deficits (fergusson et al., 1993), negative emotionality (martin et al., 2006), and aggression (martin et al., 2006; tremblay et al., 2004). threshold effects appear to be at play for maternal smoking as these negative outcomes are generally found for heavy smoking, which has been measured differently across studies (e.g., >6, >10, >20 cigarettes, daily). the effect of maternal smoking remained after controlling for possible confounding factors such as the child’s gender and ethnicity, maternal age, education, psychiatric diagnosis, and postnatal smoking (e.g., fergusson et al., 1993; weissman et al., 1999), thus suggesting that heavy smoking has a teratogenic effect. women who tend to continue smoking during pregnancy are typically (a) younger and found in single-parent families, (b) heavy smokers, or (c) from lower educational background (cnattingius, lindmark, & meirik, 1992; fried, watkinson, dillon, & dulberg, 1987; pickett, wakschlag, dai, & leventhal, 2003). they are also susceptible to experience depression during pregnancy and express defiance over their right to continue smoking while being pregnant (nichter et al., 2007). maternal alcohol use. fetal alcohol syndrome (fas) has been recognized for some time now (e.g., jones & smith, 1973) and its teratogenic effect is well established in laboratory studies conducted on animals (randall & taylor, 1979). researchers have emphasized the longterm negative role of maternal alcohol use on the child’s development of executive functions, more specifically for future-oriented behaviours such as response inhibition, planning, and regulation (connor, sampson, bookstein, barr, & streissguth, 2000). the negative impact of maternal substance use on the child’s development, however, is multifaceted. the seattle prospective longitudinal study on alcohol and pregnancy, launched in 1974, has documented the associated aversive consequences of maternal alcohol use and the child’s development from birth to age 25 (streissguth, barr, & sampson, 1990; streissguth, barr, sampson, & bookstein, 1994; streissguth, 2007). in this study, regular maternal alcohol use has been related to birth complications and lower birth weight. adverse consequences were also found during preschool years, as regular alcohol use was linked to lower scores on a general intelligence measure, poorer attention span, and goal directedness. at school, during early and middle adolescence, children exposed to alcohol had more learning problems, attention deficits, lower reasoning skills, antisocial behaviours, and delinquency, as well as alcohol use and abuse (carmichael olson et al., 1997). these effects remained after controlling for potential confounding risk factors. by age 25, those having been exposed in utero to regular alcohol use were three times more likely to show characteristics of an antisocial personality disorder. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 42 maternal drug use. researchers have most often examined the maternal use of cocaine and marijuana. cocaine use impacts the neurotransmitter systems (e.g., dopamine, norepinephrine) by blocking the re-uptake of these neurotransmitters leading to neurochemical magnification of the pleasure response and stimulating behavioural arousal (frank, bresnahan, & zuckerman, 1996). maternal cocaine use during pregnancy has also been found to have subtle negative impacts on emotional and behavioural regulation in infants and children. empirical studies have shown that maternal cocaine use is related to higher reactivity and lower ability to regulate anger in infants (eiden et al., 2009) as well as higher impulsivity and poor inhibitory controls (bendersky & lewis, 1998; bendersky, gambini, lastella, bennett, & lewis, 2003), increased frustration and disruptive behaviour (dennis, bendersky, ramsay, & lewis, 2006), and aggression (bendersky, bennett, & lewis, 2006) in preschoolers. maternal use of cocaine has also been linked to lower birth weight and increased risk for prematurity after adjusting for potential confounding factors (frank et al., 1996). regular marijuana use has also been linked to a small but significant decrease in birth weight (fergusson, horwood, & northstone, 2002; j. martin, barr, d. martin, & streissguth, 1996; see, however, richardson & day, 1991). richardson and day (1994) found that maternal marijuana use was inversely linked to a measure of global intelligence. these results, however, were not replicated by fried, watkinson, and gray (1998) who argued that the impact of marijuana use might be more specific to executive function tasks requiring impulse control. in that regard, regular maternal use of marijuana during pregnancy was also related to impulsive/hyperactive behaviours as well as a decreased ability to sustain attention in 6 year olds (fried, watkinson, & gray, 1992). the impact of regular marijuana use on attention deficits was also found in adolescents (fried, watkinson, & gray, 2003). furthermore, the use of cannabis during pregnancy has been related to early behavioural problems, but this effect disappeared after controlling for post-natal exposure to aggression at home (o’connell & fried, 1991). maternal use of drugs during pregnancy tends to be more prevalent in younger, less educated, single-parent families with a lower socioeconomic background (richardson & day, 1991; fried, watkinson, & gray, 1992; streissguth et al., 1991). the teratogenic effect of a specific drug is difficult to isolate considering that: (a) a high proportion of cannabis smokers also smoke nicotine during pregnancy, as reported by fergusson et al. (2002); and (b) drug users are also likely to report the use of alcohol during pregnancy (bendersky et al., 2006; streissguth et al., 1991). aim of the study theoretical formulations of general antisocial behaviours – in particular, aggression and violent behaviours – have stressed the contributing role of pre/perinatal factors. the aims of the study are threefold. the study aims to examine the association between early exposure to adversities during pregnancy and birth and later behavioural outcomes. more specifically, the study investigated whether pre/perinatal risk factors such as the maternal use of alcohol, drugs or nicotine, or pregnancy-related and birth-related complications, are associated with higher levels of physical aggression and sexual behaviours in preschoolers. considering that prior studies have shown the co-occurrence of higher levels of physical aggression and sexual behaviours, the study also investigated the possibility that both of these phenomena might share similar risk factors. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 43 methodology sample the study is based on the first 129 children (boys, girls) recruited as part of the vancouver longitudinal study on the psychosocial development of children (kd-bear project) conducted in vancouver, british columbia (b.c.), canada. the kd-bear (i.e., kids’ development of behavioural, emotional and aggression regulation) is an ongoing longitudinal project that aims to inform policy-makers about the key early risk and protective factors for aggression and violence from the earliest developmental periods. this project was initiated by the b.c. ministry of children and family development and the b.c. ministry of health, in collaboration with researchers affiliated with the b.c. children’s hospital and the school of criminology at simon fraser university. all children included in the study were recruited between february 2008 and april 2009. two samples were recruited for this study. first, a clinical sample (n = 17) was recruited at the infant psychiatric clinic at the b.c. children’s hospital. clinical practitioners informed the primary caregiver about the kd-bear project. the inclusion criteria were as follows: 1. the child is currently being assessed and/or treated for any externalization spectrum disorder. 2. the child is between 3 and 5 years old. 3. both the child and the primary caregiver have a reasonable understanding of english. 4. the child and the primary caregiver reside in and around the city of vancouver and the greater vancouver regional district (gvrd). for the majority of this sample, concern over the child’s aggressive behaviour was one of the main reasons cited for referral to the clinic for assessment or treatment. based on the clinical assessment conducted at the clinic, this sample of children was mainly characterized by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 44 table 1. descriptive information for the sample of preschoolers (n = 129) pre/perinatal risk factors prevalence (%) descriptive statistics (mean, sd, range) 1. maternal substance use 10.9 nicotine (at least 1 pack a day) 3.9 alcohol (at least 4 drinks at one time) 3.9 non-prescribed soft drugs (weekly basis) 6.2 non-prescribed hard drugs (exposure) 3.9 2. pregnancy complications (m = .51; sd = .69; range = 0-2) vaginal bleeding 12.4 anemia 11.6 maternal serious health problems 5.4 high blood pressure (eclampsia) 3.1 other 20.2 3. low birth weight ≤ 5lbs 7.0 > 5lbs 93.0 4. premature birth < 37 weeks 10.9 ≥ 37 weeks 89.1 5. birth complications (m = .51; sd = .75; range = 0-2) signs of fetal distress during labour 20.2 baby placed in an incubator 12.4 cord around neck 10.1 required oxygen 6.4 other 16.3 second, the research program also includes a community sample (n = 112) for comparative purposes. the community sample was recruited in at-risk neighbourhoods in the city of vancouver and the gvrd. more specifically, the recruitment took place in seven cities and in each of these cities, neighbourhoods ranked in lowest 25% by two provincial surveys were selected (kershaw, irwin, trafford, & hertzman, 2005). these surveys rank the neighbourhoods according to various indicators related to the socioeconomic status of the family and the psychosocial development of preschoolers. based on the survey results, we established a catchment area of daycares in at-risk neighbourhoods. local managers of community daycares were contacted to participate in the study. in each of the participating daycares, the research team put up posters informing parents about the study. the inclusion criteria were similar for the community and the clinical samples with the exception that having been referred for an externalizing spectrum disorder was not a requirement for the community sample. it is important to stress the fact that the neighbourhoods, not the families or the children, were sampled for the study. it was expected therefore that, in spite of targeting at-risk neighbourhoods, the community sample would still provide a reasonable range of families in terms of risk factors (low-risk, medium-risk, high-risk). descriptive information for the two samples is presented in table 1. only one significant difference (i.e., child’s age) emerged between the clinical and the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 45 community samples, but a few more were marginally significant. the clinical sample included older children. there were also non-significant trends suggesting that the clinical sample included more males coming from single-parent, low income families with a lower educational achievement. procedures the present study is focused on the first wave of data. one in-person interview was conducted with each of the research participants. simultaneous interviews with the primary caregiver and the child were conducted as part of wave one of the data collection. the vast majority of primary caregivers interviewed were the biological mothers of the children (88.4%). on average, the primary caregiver interview lasted about two and a half hours. the interview protocol was standardized across research participants and the data was collected using a computerized questionnaire. the child interview protocol was also standardized and lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. the interview protocol included a series of tasks and tests to assess the child’s cognitive and self-regulation abilities. both the primary caregiver interview and the child interview were conducted by trained research assistants. for the current study, only data gathered from the primary caregiver interview were used. the study was conducted according to the ethical guidelines set by simon fraser university, the university of british columbia, and the b.c. children’s hospital. participation in the study was voluntary and the participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time. the primary caregivers were paid $40 for their participation in the study. they all signed a consent form indicating that the information was confidential and collected for research purposes only. measures environmental covariates. several environmental covariates were included in the study to explore possible individual differences in the level of aggression and sexual behaviours. two sets of characteristics were examined. first, child characteristics included four general individual characteristics: (a) gender (0 = male, 1 = female); (b) age (i.e., coded as the child’s age at the time of the interview; (c) ethnic origin (0 = caucasian; 1 = non-caucasian); and (d) sample, (i.e., whether the child was a clinical referral or recruited from the community; 0 = clinical, 1 = community). second, we also included structural variables representing socio-demographic characteristics of the family environment. structural variables reflecting economic deprivation or familial adversities have been related to higher levels of aggression manifested by children. therefore, in keeping with the previous work of tremblay et al. (2004) and côté, vaillancourt, leblanc, nagin, and tremblay (2006), among others, we included three items reflecting such adversities. low family income referred to whether the family had been on welfare in the past year (0 = not on welfare, 1 = on welfare). lower parental education refers to the highest education level of achieved by the primary caregiver (0 = post-secondary education, 1 = high school diploma or less). moreover, a variable reflecting the family structure was included. the variable was coded to highlight whether or not single parenthood reflected the family structure of the child (0 = not in a single parenthood situation, 1 = single parenthood). pre/perinatal risk factors. pregnancy-related complications refer to risk factors present during the gestation period. the following six indicators represent pregnancy-related complications in the current study: vaginal bleeding, anemia, serious maternal health problems, high blood pressure (eclampsia), rh factor incompatibility, pregnancy-related diabetes. all of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 46 pregnancy-related complications were dummy coded and then scored using a three-point scale: (0) absence of pregnancy-related complications; (1) presence of a least one complication; and (2) at least two complications. a higher score, therefore, reflects a higher-risk pregnancy. birth related complications refer to complications occurring during delivery or at the time of birth. birth-related complications include the following five indicators: the use of forceps, signs of fetal distress during labour, umbilical cord around the neck, baby required oxygen, and baby placed in an incubator. all of the birth-related complications were dummy coded and then scored using a three-point scale: (0) no birth-related complication; (1) presence of a least one complication; and (2) at least two complications. a high score on this scale is said to represent a higher-risk birth. low birth weight refers to the child’s weight at the time of birth. low birth weight reflects the presence of a child weighing five pounds or less (2,268 grams or less) at birth. birth weight in pounds (rather than grams) was used for this study to facilitate memory recall. in total, 7.0% of the sample had a low birth weight. in 2007, the provincial rate in b.c. of low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams) was 5.7%. premature birth (preterm birth) refers to the birth of a child of less than 37 weeks of gestational age. according to this definition, our sample included 10.9% born prematurely. by comparison, the prevalence of preterm pregnancy in b.c. in 2007 was 7.5%. we also examined the maternal age at the time of her child’s birth: (0) mother at least 21 years old, (1) mother less than 21 years old. the descriptive information for each of the pre/perinatal risk factors is presented in table 1. maternal substance use. four substance types were used for this study: (a) nicotine, (b) alcohol, (c) soft drugs, and (d) hard drugs. for this study, the maternal behaviours were defined as follows. first, regular use of tobacco/nicotine was defined as having smoked at least a half a pack of cigarettes per day (i.e., minimum ten cigarettes), on average, for at least one trimester of the pregnancy. in total, 3.9% of our sample reported regular use of nicotine/tobacco during pregnancy. alcohol use refers to having consumed, on average, at least four drinks on a weekly basis for at least one trimester. using this definition, 3.9% of the mothers included in the study were characterized by regular alcohol use during pregnancy. soft drug use refers to regular use of cannabis/marijuana on a weekly basis for at least one trimester during pregnancy. regular soft drug use during pregnancy characterized 6.2% of the mothers included in this sample. primary caregivers were also asked to report the maternal use of hard drugs during pregnancy. for this sample, 3.9% reported the use of hard drugs at least once during pregnancy. crack/cocaine was the only substance reported by those having used hard drugs. for the purpose of the study, the variable maternal substance use refers to those having shown any of the previous four behaviours. in total, 10.9% of the sample reported at least one substance use corresponding to the above definitions. in order to obtain a profile of mothers having used some form of substance during pregnancy, we compared children exposed to some substance during pregnancy (n = 14) to those not exposed (n = 115) on all environmental covariates as well as pregnancyand birth related complications included in the study. clearly, several factors significantly distinguished children exposed from those not exposed to any substance. table 2 shows that, compared to children not exposed, children having been exposed to some substance in utero were 13.4 times more likely to have a primary caregiver without a high school diploma, 6.0 times more likely to have a parent with a criminal record, and 4.2 times more likely to come from a low-income familial environment. importantly, and in line with previous empirical investigations, these children were also 5.0 times more likely to have a low birth weight than those not exposed to any substance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 47 physical aggression. in line with earlier studies on physical aggression in childhood (broidy et al., 2003; tremblay et al., 2004), three indicators were used to measure the level of physical aggression: (a) kicked, bitten, or hit anyone; (b) shoved, pushed; and (c) thrown things at other people. the primary caregiver was asked to determine the frequency of each of those four manifestations using a four-point scale: (0) never, (1) a few times, (2) several times, (3) very often. the majority of the children sampled for this study had kicked (65.9%), shoved (68.2%), or thrown things at someone (49.6%) at least once in the past year. as a group, this sample of children had been physically aggressive only a few times in the past year: kicked (mean = 1.13, standard deviation = 1.00, range = 0-3), shoved (m = 1.21, sd = 1.01, range = 0-3), and thrown things (m = .81, sd = .94, range = 0-3). these averages, however, masked the fact that about one-third of our sample had, at least on several occasions, kicked (37.2%), shoved (41.9%), or thrown things at someone (26.4%) in the past year. table 2. overlap of pre/perinatal risk factors exposure to substance (n = 14) not exposed to any substance (n = 115) odds ratio 95% c.i. environmental covariates presence of siblings 9.4% 15.2% .58 .18-1.87 low income 30.0% 9,2% 4.21* .95-18.63 low parental education 46.7% 6.1% 13.37*** 3.76-47.64 parents’ criminality 27.6% 6.0% 5.97** 1.87-29.03 pre/perinatal factors pregnancy complications 9.5% 11.5% .83 .26-2.64 low birth weight 33.3% 9.2% 4.96* 1.08-22.62 premature birth 14.3% 10.4% 1.43 .29-7.17 birth complications 8.7% 12.0% .70 .21-2.36 *p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 sexual behaviours. a revised version of the child sexual behaviour inventory (csbi) (friedrich et al., 2001) was used to gather data on the sexual behaviours of the preschoolers. in line with schoentjes, deboutte, and friedrich’s (1999) findings of the factorial structure of the csbi, three indicators were used for this study to measure the extent of the sexual behaviours: (a) touching, rubbing or masturbating, or self-directed behaviours involving the manipulation of genitals; (b) hands-off behaviours involving trying to watch people undressing, to look or try to look at people when they are nude or showing genitals to others (i.e., children, adults); and (c) hands-on behaviours which includes grabbing or touching the genitals/breasts of someone else (i.e., children, adults). these measures are not intended to be a complete examination and description of all sexual manifestations during childhood, but to represent the most commonly observed manifestations as shown by previous epidemiological studies (see, friedrich et al., 1991; schoentjes et al., 1999). the primary caregiver was asked to determine the frequency of each of these three manifestations using a four-point scale: (0) never, (1) a few times, (2) several times, (3) very often. in total, 74.4% of the sample reported at least one occurrence of the selfdirected behaviours in the past year, 23.3% reported at least one occurrence of the hands-off behaviours, while 55.8% reported at least one occurrence of the hands-on behaviours. while the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 48 prevalence was high, on average, the frequency of self-directed (m = 1.44, sd = 1.04, range = 0-3), hands-off (m = .38, sd = .79, range = 0-3), and hands-on (m = .81, sd = .85, range = 0-3) behaviours were generally occasional. figure 1. latent correlation and shared variance between physical aggression and sexual behaviours note. n = 129. *all paths significant at p < .01. analytical strategy to analyze the covariates of aggression and sexual behaviours, we used a series of structural equation models (sem) using eqs 6.1 (bentler, 1995). considering the small sample size for this study, a series of trimmed (non-nested) models were analyzed. first, we examined a baseline model including only one covariate, namely, gender. this covariate was considered a priori the single most important covariate to control for in order to avoid possible confounding factors due to gender differences between boys and girls in aggression and sexual behaviours. hence, it was included in all subsequent models. distinct models were successively run with each of the environmental covariates and pre/perinatal risk factors included in the study: number of siblings, low income, parent’s criminal history, parental education, birthand pregnancyrelated complications, low birth weight, premature pregnancy, young maternal age at birth, maternal emotional distress, and maternal substance use. for each of the confirmatory factor analyses (cfa) and the sem tested, multivariate kurtosis was analyzed using mardia’s coefficient and the model’s residuals were screened for the presence of model misspecifications. also, the comparative fit index (cfi), and the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) were examined to determine the model’s goodness-of-fit. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 49 figure 2. analytical strategy to examine the risk factors of physical aggression and sexualized behaviours and their shared variance note. double headed arrows represent latent-correlations. single headed arrows are paths. boxes represent observed variables. circles refer to latent variables. “d” refers to disturbance while “e” to errors. results specific correlates of physical aggression and normative sexual behaviours baseline model: gender differences. first, we ran a baseline model with only one covariate, the child’s gender, to determine its role on physical aggression and normative sexual behaviours. the results were in line with previous investigations. gender was related to both levels of physical aggression (b = -.22) and sexual behaviours (b = -.35), explaining respectively 5% and 12% of the variance. male preschoolers were found to be more aggressive and showing more frequent manifestations of sexual behaviours than females. of importance, the level of physical aggression and sexual behaviours did not vary across age groups (ages 3, 4, and 5 years old). goodness-of-fit information for all the models tested in this section is reported in table 3. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 50 table 3. latent association between environmental, pre/perinatal, individual factors and sexual, aggressive behaviours regression paths model goodness-of-fit sexual behaviours physical aggression x2 df p value cfi nnfi rmsea baseline model child’s gender -.35 (.12)** -.22 (.05)** 6.68 11 .82 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.06) baseline model with added covariate (gender) environmental factors presence of siblings -.06 (.00) .16 (.03) 9.21 15 .87 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.04) low income .13 (.03) .25 (.07)** 13.61 15 .56 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.08) low parental education -.02 (.02) .16 (.02) 10.45 15 .79 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.06) parents’ criminality .00 (.01) .12 (.00) 9.32 15 .86 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.05) pre/perinatal factors maternal substance use .27 (.07)** .19 (.02)* 10.24 15 .80 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.05) pregnancy complications .13 (.06) .17 (.02)* 9.38 15 .86 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.05) low birth weight .03 (.09) .06 (.02) 11.94 15 .68 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.07) premature birth .01 (.04) .08 (.01) 15.00 15 .45 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.08) birth complications .18 (.04)+ .09 (.01) 6.76 15 .96 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.04) individual factors child’s age -.04 (.12) .03 (.05) 10.87 15 .76 1.00 1.00 .00 (.00-.06) note. n = 129. environmental, pre/perinatal and individual factors were tested while controlling for the child’s gender (see figure 1; model 1). the regression path is reported for each of the risk factor and the added explained variance is presented in parentheses. *p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 environmental covariates. keeping the child’s gender as a covariate, we successively ran a series of models to test each of the environmental covariates and examine their association with physical aggression and sexual behaviours. looking first at the level of normative sexual behaviours, after adjusting for the child’s gender, none of the four environmental correlates examined (i.e., siblings, low income, low parental education, and parental criminality) were found to be statistically significant. looking at the level of physical aggression, however, one of the four environmental correlates emerged as statistically significant. low-income families (β = .25) were found to have children with higher levels of physical aggression. that relationship was found independently of the child’s gender. taken together, the child’s gender and family income explained 12% of the variance of physical aggression in preschoolers. pre/perinatal risk factors. adjusting for the child’s gender, a series of sem analyses were conducted analyzing each pre/perinatal risk factor individually. of the six pre/perinatal risk factors tested, only one emerged as significantly related to the level of normative sexual international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 51 behaviours. indeed, maternal substance use was positively and significantly related to sexual behaviours (β = .27), thus indicating that children exposed to some substance in utero were characterized by a higher level of normative sexual behaviours in the past year. hence, taking into account both the role of gender and maternal substance use, 19% of the level of normative sexual behaviours were explained by these two factors. birth complications were also found to be marginally related to normative sexual behaviours (β = .18), thus suggesting a trend for birth complications to be associated with a marginal increase in the level of normative sexual behaviours. for physical aggression, however, three pre/perinatal risk factors emerged as statistically significant after adjusting for the child’s gender. hence, more aggressive children were more likely to have been exposed to some substance in utero (β = .19) and to pregnancyrelated complications (β = .17). taking into account the importance of a child’s gender, the explained variance of physical aggression for these three pre/perinatal risk factors was respectively 7%, 7%, and 14%. correlates of the co-occurrence of higher levels of aggression and sexual behaviours baseline model: gender differences. in this section we examined the role of environmental factors and pre/perinatal risk factors on the co-occurrence of higher levels of physical aggression and sexual behaviours. we first ran a baseline model with only the child’s gender as a covariate to determine its role on the co-occurrence of physical aggression and normative sexual behaviours. gender was related to the co-occurrence of physical aggression and sexual behaviours (β = -.40), explaining respectively 16% of the variance. male preschoolers, therefore, tended to show higher levels of both aggression and sexual behaviours than females preschoolers. note that the co-occurrence of a higher level of physical aggression and sexual behaviours did not vary across age groups (ages 3, 4, and 5 years). the goodness-offit information for all the models tested in this section is reported in table 4. environmental covariates. adjusting for the child’s gender, we ran a series of sem analyses and first examined the respective role of each of the environmental factors. of the four environmental covariates examined, only one emerged as statistically significant. hence, children showing higher levels of both sexual and aggressive behaviours were more likely to come from a low income family environment (β = .29). taken together, a child’s gender and the family income explained 25% of the shared variance between the level of physical aggression and the level of normative sexual behaviours. pre/perinatal covariates. next, we examined the role of pre/perinatal risk factors on the co-occurrence of physical aggression and sexual behaviours. the six pre/perinatal risk factors were examined in separate analyses, always adjusting for the child’s gender. of the six risk factors examined, three were found to be statistically significant. hence, preschoolers showing elevated frequency of physical aggression and sexual behaviours were more likely have been exposed to some substance in utero (β = .32), more likely to be characterized by a pregnancy with complications (β = .25). the explained variance for each of these three models ranged between 25% and 28%. additional analyses. a final series of analyses were conducted considering: (a) the role of low income on the co-occurrence of physical aggression and sexual behaviours; and (b) the fact that maternal substance use during pregnancy is predominantly found in lower income family environments. therefore, we examined whether the role of maternal substance use was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 52 not spurious due perhaps to the confounding role of the family income. recall here that the number of covariates analysed simultaneously is kept to a minimum due to the small sample size for the study. hence, a three-covariate model – including child’s gender, low family income, and maternal substance use – was examined, more specifically as to their role on the shared variance of physical aggression and sexual behaviours in preschoolers. the model is presented in figure 3. note that considering the covariance between maternal substance use and family income, both covariates were allowed to covary in this model. the model showed a very good fit of the data and explained 33% of the shared variance between aggression and sexual behaviours. the three covariates were statistically significant, and the results were in line with previous findings. hence, male preschoolers (β = -.43), those from low-income family environments (β = .22), as well as those having been exposed to some substance in utero (β = .28) were more likely to show higher levels of both aggression and sexual behaviours. the role of maternal substance use, therefore, can’t be interpreted as spurious as far as low family income is concerned, as both risk factors were found to uniquely contribute to the prediction of physical aggression and sexual behaviours. figure 3. pre/perinatal factors and the co-occurrence of physical aggression and sexual behaviours discussion gender differences, physical aggression, and sexual behaviours before the behaviour has been shaped by years of exposure to cultural factors, the current study reported significant gender differences in behavioural outcomes in preschoolers. indeed, while manifestations of physical aggression and sexual behaviours were, on average, no more than occasional, the study findings also showed much variation across children. in terms of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 53 frequency in the past year, such variation of physical aggression and sexual behaviours were associated with gender. more precisely, the findings showed that boys were more physically aggressive and manifested more sexual behaviours than girls. in total, 5% of group differences in physical aggression and 12% of group differences in sexual behaviours were accounted for by a gender effect. such differences have been reported elsewhere (tremblay et al., 1999; lussier & healey, 2010) and are in line with the gender asymmetry observed between boys and girls in meta-analytic reviews, especially for direct forms of aggression (card, stucky, sawalani, & little, 2008). when physical aggression and sexual behaviours were combined into a single behavioural dimension, the gender differences were even more pronounced, suggesting that a higher proportion of boys than girls were more aggressive and sexual. when controlling for gender effects on physical and sexual behaviours, the study showed that environmental and pre/perinatal factors were statistically associated with the frequency of occurrence of these behaviours in the past year. of importance, low family income was significantly related to physical aggression as well as the co-occurrence of physical aggression and sexual behaviours. put differently, preschoolers of families with lower income were more aggressive and were also more likely to show higher levels of both aggression and sexual behaviours. a similar, but nonsignificant trend was also observed for parental education and the level of physical aggression. these findings replicate those observed in prior investigations showing that the most aggressive children are typically found in low income, less educated family environments (côté et al., 2006; lussier & healey, 2010; lussier, corrado, healey, tzoumakis, & deslauriers-varin, 2010; tremblay et al., 2004). pre/perinatal adversities and behavioural outcomes while much has been said about the individual pathway (i.e., genetic markers) and the environmental pathway (i.e., family, peers, neighbourhood) to aggression and violence, our study gives further evidence that there might be a third pathway – that is, the pre/perinatal pathway. we found small but significant associations between exposure to pre/perinatal adversities and behavioural outcomes during early childhood. the small sample combined with the low base rate of maternal use of nicotine, alcohol, and drugs did not allow the examination of the specific effects of each of these substances on the child behavioural outcomes. hence, it is unclear whether one specific substance or polysubtance use was responsible for the statistical effects found in the study. taking that into account, the study findings showed that maternal substance use was associated with increased levels of physical aggression and sexual behaviours in preschoolers. furthermore, when physical aggression and sexual behaviours were forced into a single higher construct representing their co-occurrence, maternal substance use remained a significant factor. in other words, children with high levels of both aggression and sexual behaviours were more likely to have been exposed to at least one substance during pregnancy. while the association was modest (9% of explained variance), it was far from negligible. the effect remained significant after controlling for the only environmental factor associated with child behavioural outcomes (i.e., family income). in other words, the effect of maternal substance use on children’s behaviour was found irrespective of the socioeconomic background of the family. our findings on the teratogenic effects (bendersky et al., 2006; martin et al., 2006; tremblay et al., 2004) on later behavioural outcomes replicate those reported elsewhere for aggression, but extend it to sexual behaviours and its co-occurrence with aggression. the factors influencing a mother’s motives for exposing her child to teratogenic effects is unclear and could international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 54 be due to: (a) a lack of understanding of the consequences of these substances on the fetus; (b) the difficulties abandoning or changing her lifestyle and/or addiction during pregnancy; (c) the self-medicating role of these substances for the pregnant mother; or (d) the result of poor decision making on the part of the mother. part of the answer may lie in the overlap of risk factors for both the pregnant mother and her child. overlap of pre/perinatal risk factors our study replicates a well-known observation that aggressive and violent youth are often characterized by a cluster of risk factors (farrington & loeber, 1998; farrington, 2005; lösel & bender, 2006). from a research perspective, this complicates the task of finding the main effect of each of the risk factors present, let alone understanding how their accumulation and/or their interactions might impact the child’s developmental course. children exposed to one substance tended to be exposed to various teratogenic effects. for example, 80% of mothers who used alcohol during pregnancy also used soft drugs (as opposed to 3% of those who did not drink); 60% of these mothers also used hard drugs at least once (as opposed to about 1% of those who did not drink); 40% of the same mothers also smoked at least one pack of cigarettes per day (as opposed to 2% of those who did not drink). hence, it was surprising to find that children exposed to teratogenic effects (i.e., nicotine, alcohol, drugs) were close to five times more likely to show a low birth weight (≤ 5 pounds). this finding replicates those observed in past studies, more specifically those having looked at the birth weight of children exposed to alcohol and drugs during pregnancy (fergusson et al., 2002; frank et al., 1996; martin et al., 1996; streissguth et al., 1990; see, however, richardson & day, 1994). although the association was not significant, low birth weight tended to be associated with increased aggression, but not increased sexual behaviours. children exposed to teratogenic effects, were also more likely to come from a family environment with a lower income, with parents having lower educational backgrounds and a past criminal record. while our study showed that only family income was associated with increased aggression in preschoolers, others studies have shown that parents’ criminality and educational background are associated with aggression in late childhood and adolescence (e.g., farrington, 1989). therefore, children subject to teratogenic effects are also those exposed to significant risk factors for later aggression. economic difficulties may put more pressure on parents, thus affecting the family dynamic and family cohesion, especially for those families with a difficult child. more specifically, these at-risk children are exposed to an increasing number of risk factors as they age that can affect the course of their development in childhood and facilitate the persistence of aggressive behaviours over subsequent periods. the same may be true for sexual behaviours, but we are not aware of studies that have linked teratogenic effects to sexual behaviours in schoolaged children and adolescents. implications the vancouver longitudinal study is in its infancy and the study findings reported here should be considered preliminary and tentative. these findings, however, raise important issues that should be considered by both researchers and practitioners. in spite of the increased efforts of practitioners in recent years to prevent the use of teratogenic agents during pregnancy (e.g., nurses, midwives, medical doctors, and social workers), a small but significant segment of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 36-64 55 population is still using nicotine, alcohol, and/or drugs on a regular basis. more importantly, mothers who use one substance tend also to use another, suggesting that polysubstance (i.e., nicotine, alcohol, soft and hard drugs) use should be emphasized in preventive efforts. clarifying the context and the motives behind the polysubstance use during pregnancy could help inform preventive efforts. while researchers are more aware of the physical health consequences, more research is needed to better understand the behavioural outcomes. our study suggests that the teratogenic effects are not limited to aggression, but extend to sexual behaviours. while the current study did not attempt to determine if a causal mechanism was operating, let alone determine what the causal pathway is, the findings should raise concerns for both researchers and clinicians. among other things, the clinical assessment of preschoolers with unusually higher levels of aggression and sexual behaviours should involve the examination of exposure to teratogenic agents. furthermore, it is not standard practice for clinicians (i.e., psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and practitioners) to enquire about the sexual behaviours of children referred for assessment, unless unusual sexual behaviours are atypical. our study, and a past investigation (lussier & healey, 2010) suggest that preschoolers with aggressive behaviours should also be screened for their sexual behaviours as (a) aggressive children tend to show higher levels of sexual behaviours, and (b) aggression and sexual behaviours seem to share specific correlates, such as exposure to teratogenic agents. limitations the vancouver longitudinal study is still in its infancy, and, as mentioned earlier, the results are preliminary. these findings should be interpreted accordingly and in light of the methodological limitations characterizing it. this study examined the sexual behaviour of children but not other important components of normal sexual development at that age, such as the sexual response (e.g., erection, orgasm) and the sexual meanings that children attribute to their response (bancroft, 2006). we can assume that sexual behaviour, response, and meaning may be disconnected during early childhood. also, the study was based on a small sample of preschoolers in the province of british columbia and, as a result, findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of canadian preschoolers. moreover, while the current study was based on retrospective longitudinal data, a short recall period was used to minimize poor memory recall. furthermore, data based on only one informant (i.e., the primary caregiver) was used to measure the frequency of aggression and sexual behaviours. consequently, some aggressive/sexual behaviours might have been overlooked, minimized, or simply not observed by the informant. finally, because of the small sample size only a few covariates were analyzed simultaneously. conclusion several pre/perinatal risk factors have been associated with early neuropsychological deficits and negative behavioural outcomes in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. the current study replicates and extends these observations to physical aggression and sexual behaviours in preschoolers. more specifically, the study found that children who are more physically aggressive tend also to show more sexual manifestations during early childhood. the cooccurrence of these behaviours was associated, at least in part, to exposure to teratogenic effects (nicotine, alcohol, drugs) during pregnancy and pregnancy-related complications. the overlap between risk factors, especially between maternal use of any substance and family environmental international journal of child, youth and 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(2002). pregnancy and birth complications in autism and liability to the broader autism phenotype. journal of the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 41(5), 572-579. stigma consciusness and percived stigma in children with sickle cell disease: associations with psychological distress and disability international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 391 stigmatising attitudes towards peers with sickle cell disease among secondary school students in nigeria bolanle ola, rotimi coker, and cornelius ani abstract: sickle cell disease (scd) is a serious genetic blood disorder experienced by many young people in nigeria, but the attitudes of students to peers with scd is scarcely studied. we explored the stigmatising attitudes towards scd among 370 secondary school students in nigeria. the students completed questionnaires on attitude to scd based on a modified bogardus scale. a significant proportion of the students endorsed negative attitudes towards peers with scd and showed poor knowledge of the condition. for example, only 41% thought most students would invite a peer with scd to their birthday party; only 43% thought most students would like to study together with a peer with scd; 30% believed spiritual and traditional healers can cure scd; 11% believed that scd is caused by evil spirits; 15% believed it can be caused by bad food; and 9% thought it is infectious. regression analysis identified as significant predictors of negative attitudes these two factors: (a) having less personal contact with people affected by scd, and (b) the belief that people with scd cannot lead a normal life. interventions to reduce negative attitudes towards victims of scd among school children in nigeria should include more exposure to people with scd and positive information to challenge nihilistic beliefs about the condition. keywords: sickle cell disease, stigma, students, attitude, knowledge, nigeria bolanle ola, mbchb, fwacp, fmcpsych, is a senior lecturer in the department of behavioural medicine, lagos state university college of medicine, 1-3 oba akinjobi way, ikeja, lagos, nigeria. e-mail: wobola@yahoo.com rotimi coker, md, fwacp, is a senior lecturer in the department of behavioural medicine, lagos state university college of medicine, 1-3 oba akinjobi way, ikeja, lagos, nigeria. e-mail: cokerrotimi@gmail.com cornelius ani, mrcp, mrcpsyh, md, (the corresponding author) is honorary senior lecturer in academic unit of child and adolescent psychiatry, imperial college of science, technology and medicine, st mary's campus, norfolk place, london w2 1pg. telephone: 02078861145; fax: 0207886 6299. dr. ani is consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at bracknell camhs, berkshire, united kingdom. e-mail: c.ani@imperial.ac.uk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 392 sickle cell disease (scd) is an autosomal recessively inherited disorder and one of the most common genetic conditions worldwide (weatherall, 2008). it affects mainly people of afro-caribbean, middle eastern and asian origins. however, cases are now seen throughout the world due to migration. nigeria has the highest prevalence of scd worldwide because it is the most populous black nation (world health organisation, 2006). the red blood cells of people with scd develop a sickle-shaped deformity under certain conditions such as low oxygen tension; hence the name of the disease. the main pathology results from deformed red cells being trapped in small blood vessels leading to ischaemia. this typically manifests as acute and or chronic pain especially in the bones and joints. the acute pain, which is more common can be severe and last from hours to days. this “painful crisis” is the most distressing symptom in patients with scd (wethers, 2000). the disease is associated with other physical complications, including anaemia, jaundice, infections, stroke, gallstones, and kidney disease (wethers, 2000). although recent advances have improved the medical outcome for people with scd in developed countries, the vast majority of people with scd live in developing countries where treatment opportunities are more limited (serjeant, 2005). while the psychological outcome for people with scd in developed countries has improved in line with advances in medical care and psychosocial care (claster & vichinsky, 2003), the psychosocial outcome in many developing countries remains difficult. for example, a recent study from nigeria (bakare, omigbodun, kuteyi, meremikwu, & agomoh, 2008) found disproportionate rates of psychopathology among children with scd (38%) compared with healthy controls (11%). multiple factors contribute to the outcome of children affected by scd. some are related the nature and severity of scd such as the specific genotype. others factors are related to the effect of scd on interpersonal relationships, such as the experiencing by victims of negative attitudes from non-affected persons. for school children with scd, the attitude of their fellow students toward them is important as stigmatising attitudes could lead to peer rejection and bullying. there is evidence that childhood peer rejection can lead to emotional distress, school avoidance, academic underachievement, and longterm occupational failure in adulthood (buhs & ladd 2001). this is why our study focused on the stigmatising attitude of school children toward their peers with scd. empirical investigation of stigma in scd is growing (dyson et al., 2010; jenerette & brewer 2010; s. dyson, atkin, culley, s. e. dyson, & evans, 2011; dennisantwi, culley, hiles, & dyson, 2011), but no studies have explored stigmatising attitudes towards scd by school children in sub-saharan africa – a region with a high prevalence of the condition. understanding the factors associated with negative attitudes by school children towards scd could help to develop interventions to improve the experience of affected children in schools. this study aimed to quantify the level and contributory factors of stigmatisation by nigerian secondary school students towards scd. we hypothesised that students who have less personal contact with people with scd and students with limited knowledge of the condition will have more stigmatising attitudes towards scd. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 393 methods we conducted a questionnaire survey of 370 secondary school students in lagos state, nigeria. lagos is the largest city and commercial capital of nigeria. the students were selected with a multi-stage random sampling technique. the first stage of the sampling involved selecting four secondary schools. the second stage involved random selection of one class in each school from junior secondary classes 2 and 3 and senior secondary classes 1 and 2. prior discussion with headmasters in the selected schools indicated that sampling from these classes would be least disruptive for the schools. finally, 20 to 25 students were selected from each class using a table of random numbers and weighted by class size. following informed consent from parents and the children, the selected children completed the questionnaires privately in their classrooms in a quasi-exam condition. the questionnaire was presented in english, which is the medium of instruction in secondary schools in nigeria. no parent or child who was selected declined to participate. a total of 378 students were selected but 8 were not in school on the day the questionnaires were administered. the study was approved by the ethics and research committee of lagos state university teaching hospital. our approach to conducting the study met the requirements of the helsinki declaration on the use of human participants in research. measurements stigmatisation the students’ stigmatising attitude toward peers with scd was assessed with five questions on social distance modelled after bogardus social distance scale (bogardus, 1933). the original bogardus scale has been widely adapted for different age groups including children (walker, coleman, lee, squire, & friesen, 2008) and in different parts of the world including nigeria (adewuya & makanjuola, 2008; ani, ola, & coker, 2011). vignettes were presented about a hypothetical “boy” in the student’s class who suffers from scd. the students were invited to indicate on a 3-point likert scale how most students in their school would respond to the vignette. we piloted and adopted vignettes that were more relevant to typical interactions among secondary school students. unlike previous studies of negative attitudes with respect to mental illness and epilepsy, we avoided vignettes which portray very intimate associations (e.g., willingness to marry someone with a stigmatising condition) as such behaviours are of less direct relevance to children of secondary school age and may cause distress to children with scd. also, the active verbs in some of the vignettes were positively framed (e.g., “would” instead of “would not”) to minimise potential distress for children with scd who might be in the sample. we piloted gender-neutral versions of the vignettes and got feedback that they were too impersonal. the pilot showed that the students were not confused by the use of “a boy” in the vignettes. other studies have successfully used gender-specific vignettes (walker et al., 2008). the five social distance items were summed to create a social distance scale with a range of 0-10 (higher scores = more stigmatising attitudes, mean 4.3, sd 2.6). the internal consistency was good (cronbach alpha = 0.8). the full scale and proportion of responses are shown in table 1. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 394 knowledge and beliefs about scd the students’ knowledge and beliefs about scd were assessed with eight statements to which the students indicated “yes” or “no” responses. the statements were selected to examine aspects of the biology of scd (e.g., heritability), variability in outcome (e.g., that some affected persons can lead a “normal” life), and inaccurate perceptions known to be associated with stigma (e.g., the belief that scd is infectious). the answers were coded “yes” = 0 and “no” = 1. instead of aggregating the eight questions to create a composite scale of knowledge and belief, we treated each item individually in analysis as we were keen to identify the specific knowledge or beliefs related to negative attitudes. the latter could be used as a target in anti-stigma intervention. the full list of items is shown in table 2. level of personal contact with scd the students’ level of personal contact with scd was assessed with the “level of contact report” (holmes, corrigan, williams, canar, & kubiak, 1999; corrigan, edwards, green, diwan, & penn, 2001). the level of contact report lists seven situations of varying degrees of contact with people affected by scd. the situations varied from least level of personal contact (1 = “i have never heard of or seen someone with scd”), to medium personal contact (4 = “i have a friend who suffers from scd”), to highest personal contact (7 = “i have scd”). the students were instructed to indicate all of the situations on the 7-item list that they have experienced in their lifetime. the measure of personal contact is the highest ranked (closest personal contact) indicated by the student. for example, a student who ticked two situations from the list “i have never heard of...” (rank order score = 1), and “i have a brother or sister who suffers from scd” (score = 6) will receive a score of 6 because “i have a brother or sister who suffers from scd” is a higher level of personal contact with scd for this individual student. analysis the data was analysed with spss version 18. continuous and categorical data were described with means (and standard deviations), and numbers and percentages respectively. scores on the social distance scale were normally distributed; hence t-test was used to conduct bivariate analysis between social distance and dichotomous predictor variables (gender, questions on knowledge and beliefs). associations between social distance and continuous variables (age, familiarity with scd, and perceived family attitudes) were explored by calculating pearson correlation coefficients. chi-square tests were used to explore associations between sets of categorical variables such as gender and questions on knowledge. the pattern of missing was random and, as recommended by pallant (2007), all analyses excluded cases only if they were missing data for the particular analysis. predictor variables with significant associations with social distance scale were entered simultaneously into a linear regression model to identify independent significant predictor variables. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 395 results of the students, 52% were males and the mean age of the whole cohort was 14 years (sd 1.7, range 10 to 21 years). most lived with both parents (88%). there was no significant difference in mean age between males (m = 14.1, sd = 1.63) and females (m = 13.9, sd = 1.8); t(361) = -0.95, p = 0.34. most of the students were familiar with scd with 98% having seen or heard of someone with the condition. male students scored significantly higher on the social distance scale (m = 4.6, sd = 2.5) than females (m = 3.9, sd = 2.6; t(367) = -2.7, p = 0.007). males also showed significantly poorer knowledge of scd than females. for example, males were more likely to believe that scd is infectious (26/163 vs. 7/168; χ2 = 10.5, df = 1, p = 0.001) and could be caused by bad food (41/152 vs. 14/160; χ2 = 12.5, df = 1, p = 0.0001). they were also less likely to know that scd affects red blood cells compared with females (28/161 vs. 12/160; χ2 = 5.6, df = 1, p = 0.018). there was no significant gender difference on level of personal contact with people with scd. students who believed that scd can be caused by bad food scored significantly higher on the social distance scale (m = 5.3, sd = 2.4) than those who did not hold similar beliefs (m = 4.1, sd = 2.6; t(364) = 3.2, p = 0.001). similarly, those who were unaware that the condition is heritable scored significantly higher on the social distance scale (m = 5.0, sd = 2.6 vs. m = 4.2, sd = 2.6; t(365) = -2.0, p = 0.045). those unaware that the condition affects red blood cells or that some affected persons could lead normal lives also scored higher on the social distance scale (m = 5.3, sd = 2.7 vs. m = 4.2, sd = 2.6; t(358) = -2.8, p = 0.006) and (m = 5.6, sd = 2.8 vs. m = 4.0, sd = 2.5; t(365) = -4.4, p = 0.0001) respectively. the social distance scale correlated significantly and negatively with level of personal contact with scd (r = -.20, n = 368, p = 0.01). table 1 shows the students’ responses to the social distance questions. for all five questions, most students endorsed the ambivalent position “not sure”. however, a substantial proportion also endorsed negative stigmatising attitudes towards scd. for example, 35% of the students believed that most students would definitely spread rumours about a peer with scd. also, only 41% believed their fellow students would definitely invite such a child to their birthday party and only 43% believed other students would definitely like to do home work together with the affected peer. regarding level of personal contact with scd, most students were familiar with the condition with only 2% stating they had never heard of or seen an affected person; 16% had a relative with scd and 40% had a friend who has the condition. four students (1%) identified themselves as having scd. most students answered the questions on knowledge correctly. for example, 89% knew that scd affects red blood cells and 86% knew it is heritable (table 2). however, a significant minority had inaccurate information. the latter include students who thought that scd is caused by evil spirits (11%), infectious (9%), caused by bad food (15%), or curable by spiritual healers (30%). the preceding bivariate analyses identified six explanatory variables with significant positive associations with social distance scale. these are: (a) gender (males had more stigmatising attitude than females); (b) a belief that scd can be caused by bad international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 396 food; (c) being unaware that the condition is heritable; (d) not knowing scd affects red blood cells; (e) a belief that affected persons could not lead normal lives; and (f) having less personal contact with people affected by scd. these six predictor variables were entered into a linear regression model to determine if they are significant independent predictors of social distance, controlling for each other as well as age and gender (pallant 2007). the anova for the regression model showed it was statistically significant: f(7, 346) = 6.95, p < 0.0001. the model showed that (a) a belief that affected persons cannot lead a normal life, and (b) limited personal contact with people affected by scd were the significant independent predictors of the social distance scale with the latter having a higher beta value (ß = -.19, p < 0.0001) than the former (ß = .17, p = 0.002). the model explained 12.3% of the variance in the social distance scale (see table 3). discussion to our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the stigmatising attitude of secondary school students towards peers with scd in sub-saharan africa. despite nearly all the students having some personal contact with people affected with scd, a significant proportion still had negative attitudes and limited knowledge of the condition. our finding that less than half of the students believed that their colleagues would do home work with an affected child or would invite the child to their birthday party suggests a significant level of negative attitudes towards scd in secondary school students in this setting. the study showed that more personal contact with people with scd and awareness that some affected persons can lead a “normal life” were the two significant predictors of a less stigmatising attitude. lack of other similarly-designed studies in scd means that direct comparison with our study is not possible. however, the findings are consistent with other studies showing high levels of stigma by students against other physical conditions like epilepsy. for example, njamnshi and colleagues found that 25% of students in cameroon would not associate with a child with epilepsy (njamnshi, angwafor, jallon, & muna, 2009). incidentally, another study of secondary school students’ attitude towards epilepsy in nigeria using the same format as our current study found that 41% of students believed their colleagues would definitely spread rumours about a peer with epilepsy and only 24% and 31% believed their colleagues would invite this peer with epilepsy to their birthday party or do home work together with him respectively (ani et al., 2011). this suggests that in this setting, epilepsy appears even more stigmatised by secondary school students than scd. level of contact with scd and stigmatising attitude consistent with our hypothesis, a closer level of contact or familiarity with people affected with scd was associated with a less stigmatising attitude. the level of familiarity with scd was high among the students with only 2.4% indicating they had not had any contact with an affected person. however, it is significant that despite the widespread contact with persons with scd, this does not readily translate into better international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 397 attitudes towards people with scd. familiarity with the disease is not enough to affect behaviour. only a closer level of personal association seems to mitigate against a stigmatising attitude. this finding is similar to other studies of stigma by children against mental illness and physical disorders and consistent with the “contact hypothesis” of stigma (hebl, tickle, & heatherton, 2000). for example, in a study of attitude towards mental illness among young people in australia, jorm and wright (2008) found that exposure to mental disorders was associated with reduced social distance. njamnshi and colleagues also found that better acquaintance with epilepsy on the part of the subject students was associated with less negative attitude (njamnshi et al., 2009). in the context of scd, our finding suggests that anti-stigma interventions in schools could be more effective if the delivery were to involve improved contact with people who are affected by scd, for instance through peer education. evidence from other disorders suggests that such peer education can be effective (paxton, 2002). in designing such intervention, it should be noted that the quality of interpersonal contact with people with the stigmatised condition may be more important than the quantity. in particular, close social and personal contact may result in better acceptance and reduction in stigma than formalised contact (hebl et al., 2000). reduction in stigmatising attitudes from increased personal contact with stigmatised persons works by humanising the affected individuals and highlighting that possession of the stigmatising attribute is only one aspect of the person (biernat & dovidio, 2000). knowledge and stigmatising attitude towards scd knowledge of scd among the students was high. for example, 89% knew that scd affects red blood cells and 86% were aware the condition is heritable. however, one particular aspect of knowledge (that some affected persons can lead a normal life) was predictive of less stigmatising attitude towards scd. this finding is significant. although scd is a potentially serious illness, the natural course is variable and some affected persons (e.g., people with hbsc genotype) can lead a relatively healthy life. also improved medical care can result in prolonged good health. therefore an adverse course of scd characterised by chronic disabling ill health is not inevitable. this type of knowledge could be used in interventions to challenge the type of therapeutic nihilism shown here and in other studies (gonzalez-torres et al., 2007) to drive negative attitudes. although improving knowledge to dispel myths about stigmatising conditions are generally helpful in reducing negative attitudes (hebl et al., 2000), supplanting specific untruths such as therapeutic nihilism can be particularly helpful (gonzalez-torres et al., 2007). limitations this study is the first to measure stigmatising attitudes on the part of secondary school students towards scd in sub-saharan africa. however, the results should be considered with some limitations in mind. the first limitation is that our measure of social distance assesses attitude rather than actual behaviours. also, attitudinal measures international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 398 of this kind are limited by socially desirable responding. thus, it is uncertain whether the students’ responses would match their behaviour in practice. given that the sample was drawn from secondary schools in a highly urbanised part of nigeria, caution is advised in generalising the findings to other parts of sub-saharan africa or beyond. finally, the cross-sectional design means no causal inferences can be implied by any of the significant associations found in the study. conclusion the results support our hypotheses and are consistent with well-established stigma theories and previous studies of stigma with respect to other disorders. our study showed significant levels of negative attitude by students towards scd. less stigma was predicted by more contact with scd and awareness that some affected persons can lead a normal life. scd can be a challenging condition in developing countries like nigeria; hence efforts to reduce the additional burden engendered by stigma would be in the interest of affected children. this study provides useful information that could inform the design of effective anti-stigma interventions in secondary schools in nigeria. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 399 references adewuya, a. o., & makanjuola, r. o. 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(2006). retrieved november 27, 2009 from http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/wha59/a59_9-en.pdf tables table 1. social distance questions vignette no, definitely n (%) unsure n (%) yes, definitely n (%) most students would spread rumour about a boy with sickle cell disease when he is not there: 103 (27.8) 139 (37.6) 128 (34.6) most students would invite a boy with sickle cell disease to their birthday party: 61 (16.5) 157 (42.5) 151 (40.9) most students would like to do their home work together with a boy with sickle cell disease: 46 (12.5) 165 (44.7) 158 (42.8) most students would say bad things to a boy with sickle cell disease: 153 (41.4) 153 (41.4) 64 (17.3) most students would like to share food and drinks with a boy with sickle cell disease: 102 (27.6) 167 (45.1) 101 (27.3) http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/wha59/a59_9-en.pdf international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 391–402 402 table 2. knowledge and beliefs about sickle cell variable yes n (%) no n (%) sickle cell disease can be caused by evil spirits, witches and wizards. 41 (11.1) 328 (88.9) some people with sickle cell disease can lead a “normal” life. 308 (83.7) 60 (16.3) spiritual and religious healers are very good at curing sickle cell disease. 105 (29.7) 249 (70.3) sickle cell disease is infectious and can be acquired by staying very close to a sufferer. 33 (9.1) 331 (90.9) people with sickle cell can be very tall compared to people not affected. 119 (33.1) 240 (66.9) sickle cell can be caused by bad food. 55 (15.0) 312 (85.0) sickle cell disease can be inherited. 316 (86.3) 50 (13.7) sickle cell disease affects red blood cells. 321 (88.9) 40 (11.1) table 3. regression coefficients for independent predictors of social distance model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t b std. error beta model 1 constant 7.21 1.23 5.88** age -0.10 0.08 -.06 -1.25 gender 0.50 0.27 .09 1.85 scd caused by bad food -0.68 0.39 -.09 -1.75 scd can be inherited -0.29 0.43 .04 0.69 scd affects red blood cells 0.69 0.48 .08 1.44 affected person can lead normal life 1.17 0.37 .17 3.19* level of personal contact with scd -.44 0.12 -.19 -3.73** * p < 0.01, **p <0.001 gender coded 1 = male, 0 = female r square = 0.123 we conducted a questionnaire survey of 370 secondary school students in lagos state, nigeria. lagos is the largest city and commercial capital of nigeria. the students were selected with a multi-stage random sampling technique. the first stage of the ... discussion to our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the stigmatising attitude of secondary school students towards peers with scd in sub-saharan africa. despite nearly all the students having some personal contact with people affected with scd, a sig... our finding that less than half of the students believed that their colleagues would do home work with an affected child or would invite the child to their birthday party suggests a significant level of negative attitudes towards scd in secondary scho... the study showed that more personal contact with people with scd and awareness that some affected persons can lead a “normal life” were the two significant predictors of a less stigmatising attitude. lack of other similarly-designed studies in scd mea... level of contact with scd and stigmatising attitude consistent with our hypothesis, a closer level of contact or familiarity with people affected with scd was associated with a less stigmatising attitude. the level of familiarity with scd was high among the students with only 2.4% indicating they had n... this finding is similar to other studies of stigma by children against mental illness and physical disorders and consistent with the “contact hypothesis” of stigma (hebl, tickle, & heatherton, 2000). for example, in a study of attitude towards mental ... in the context of scd, our finding suggests that anti-stigma interventions in schools could be more effective if the delivery were to involve improved contact with people who are affected by scd, for instance through peer education. evidence from othe... knowledge and stigmatising attitude towards scd limitations this study is the first to measure stigmatising attitudes on the part of secondary school students towards scd in sub-saharan africa. however, the results should be considered with some limitations in mind. the first limitation is that our measure of ... conclusion the results support our hypotheses and are consistent with well-established stigma theories and previous studies of stigma with respect to other disorders. our study showed significant levels of negative attitude by students towards scd. less stigma w... references microsoft word 08 queering_care.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019519 queering child and youth care wolfgang vachon abstract: building on queer theory, on formative and current discourses of child and youth care (cyc), and on feminist and other ethics of care theorizing, this paper applies queer analytics to cyc by considering how desire, identity, sexuality, theory, and politics may be taken up within cyc. keywords: care, queer theory, child and youth care, lgbtqi2sa wolfgang vachon is a professor in the school of social and community services, humber institute of technology and advanced learning, 3199 lakeshore blvd. w., toronto, ontario, canada m8v 1k8. email: wolfgang.vachon@humber.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 62  caring for the land in considering care, i start by recognizing the many peoples who have lived on and cared for the land upon which this paper was conceived, presented, edited, and where it will be read — land which has been home to many species and materials over hundreds of millions of years. this paper was originally presented on the territories of the lekwungen-speaking, songhees, esquimalt, and wsáneć peoples. i live and work on the traditional lands of the huron-wendat and petun first nations, the anishinaabe, the six nations of the haudenosaunee, and the mississaugas of the credit first nation. it is likely that the reader of this paper also lives in a region that has a history of migration, settlement, war, colonization, and displacement. as i edit this draft, i am in ethekwini, the zulu name for the area that was colonized most recently from the zulu and renamed durban, south africa — land inhabited by hunter-gatherers for at least 100,000 years. the toronto region, where i live, was bought in 1805 by the british crown from the mississaugas of the credit under the terms of the toronto purchase treaty, also called treaty 13 (mississaugas of the credit first nation, n.d.). however, this treaty was not finally settled until 2010. the revised settlement (from the original purchase price of 10 shillings, the equivalent of about $27, to a settlement claim of $145 million) was due to the perseverance of the mississaugas of the credit first nation, who contested the documents upon which treaty 13 was based (mississaugas of the credit first nation, n.d.). treaty 13, as originally implemented, has been described as less like a treaty than a theft based on dubious documents and colonialist mapping (simpson, 2008). in addition to deception through administrative dishonesty, the eurocanadian view of treaties, according to simpson (2008), does not recognize that, “first and foremost, treaties are about maintaining peace through healthy collective relationships” (p. 35). healthy collective relationships have infrequently, if ever, been the intention of british, french, and canadian governments when establishing institutional relationships with indigenous peoples, and this has significant implications for child and youth care (cyc). most land acknowledgements done in toronto recognize that the land is also part of dish with one spoon, a treaty between first nations. simpson (2008) calls upon settlers to honour the intentions of dish with one spoon, recognizing that we all share the same resources, we are all responsible for taking care of the territory, and we will not interfere with one another’s sovereignty. there should be no weapons present, only spoons, as we meet and commit to living in harmony with the land and with each other. it is worth considering how well the field of cyc and its practitioners have followed the intentions of dish with one spoon, both historically and currently. part of the history of cyc is a history of colonialization, regulation, and disenfranchisement (beukes & gannon, 1999; charles & gabor, 2006; de finney et al., 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 63  many within cyc navigate this complex reality regularly in our work with young people, in our negotiations with professors, when teaching students, and while doing research. this is true across locations, whether one is white, cis-gendered, middle-aged, male, or otherwise privileged, like myself, or — like many cyc practitioners (cycps) — racialized, indigenous, marginalized, minoritized, young, female, or otherwise lacking the multiple benefits of privilege. as i try to move beyond the preliminary step of acknowledging land towards understanding the implications of my presence on the land, and the responsibilities thus entailed, i have taken the opportunity to think, speak, and ask for feedback about my own land acknowledgements. after the workshop that gave rise to this paper, i asked for feedback regarding how i acknowledged the land and its keepers. i was told that i did not put myself into the acknowledgment. i agree. when reflecting upon the theory of care and our practice as cycps, it is instructive to consider how one brings one’s self to one’s work. when doing research, locating one’s position and subjectivity can reveal insights into how one understands what one is studying. this, i am coming to recognize, is also true of land acknowledgments. land acknowledgements invite me to consider how my own actions perpetuate settler–colonialist–occupier positions, thinking, and practices. every time i do a land acknowledgment, i am called to study how i am implicated through my presence and actions. the truth and reconciliation commission (trc) of canada (2015) looked at the residential school system that existed in canada for over 100 years. the final report delivers 94 calls to action in a number of areas, including child welfare, education, and programs for justice, health, and youth. as a cyc practitioner who also teaches in post-secondary education, i am implicated in all of these calls. i am also implicated as a white settler–occupier and as a man in the 231 calls for justice contained in canada’s recent national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (2019). beyond the specific, clear, and direct calls to action in each of these documents, i hear another call, a call to each of us who lives on colonized land: a call to care. queer theory care permeates queerness. it can be seen in the careful ways that sex, identity, desire, and love must be traversed in queer life throughout history and to this day in many countries, communities, and families; in the care-filled ways that queer people (male, female, trans, others) came together to look after one another when hiv/aids first ravaged the gay community, and as it continues to infect around the world; in the caring ways that communities of queers have formed throughout history when rejected by family, friends, employers, and society; in the many diverse, creative, and taboo acts of sexual expression that queering desire gives rise to (although, this is certainly not exclusive to lesbian, gay, or trans people); and in the navigation of homophobic policies, practices, and people. queerness requires and radiates care in our desires, sexuality, identity, politics, and theory. it is within these five elements of queerness that i centre this paper as it relates to cyc practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 64  shotwell (2016), in her book against purity, rejected urgent imperatives and suggested “shifting from categorical imperatives to hypothetical imperatives” (p. 8). instead of the categorical “we need”, or “we must”, she suggested changing our stance to “if we”. the “if ” opens up possibilities, creating space and opportunities. this is, at least partially, what cyc is about — possibilities, creating spaces, and finding opportunities. in this “if ”, i embrace the call for queer worldmaking from the likes of muñoz (2009) and alexander (2018). muñoz (2009) called for a revivification of the queer political imagination. i invite readers to consider a queer cyc imagination, one that recognizes, perhaps even celebrates, desire, sex, identity, theory, and politics. and to wonder, together, what this might mean — what does queering cyc do? ball (2016) asserted that queer theory actively works against a reduction to its essence. and yet, it is useful to have a construct to contest. alexander (2018) located queer theory as coming out of critical social theory, stating that it “is engaged in an active process of contesting scholarship and politics, contesting categories, contesting identity, contesting liberalism, contesting truth, contesting history, and contesting subjectivity” (p. 278). while all this contestation might seem overly oppositional, queer theory also moves towards “expounding, elaborating, and promoting alternative ways of being, knowing, and narrating experience” (alexander, 2018, p. 278), which is something many cycps seek to do in their practice. as part of this move, alexander (2018), building on the work of johnson (2001) — both authors are black gay men — uses “quare” theory to disrupt the whiteness that has historically dominated queer theory. (johnson explained that he uses “quare” because that is how his southern grandmother pronounced “queer”.) i see queer theory existing in two primary ways (the irony of binary reductionism is intentional). in one manifestation, queer theory critically analyzes issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer (questioning), intersex, two-spirit, and asexual people (lgbtqi2sa). this analysis tends to be identityand problem-focused. abramovich and shelton (2017) provide such an analysis in their useful book that looks at homelessness and the lgbtq2s community: understanding the societal oppression of lgbtq2s people through the lenses of cissexism and heterosexism allows us to broaden the analysis of the harassment and discrimination faced by lgbtq2s youth experiencing homelessness from looking only at the micro-level of interpersonal interactions to include the macro level of institutional structures that produce and maintain this group’s marginalization.… this understanding directs our attention to the ways our systems have failed lgbtq2s youth and calls us to redesign our systems to meet the needs of all youth. (pp. 338–339) in this quote, we see several elements of identity and issue-focused queer theory: classification of the specific population, naming of debilitating factors, critiques of systemic oppression, and calls for concrete actions towards addressing the recognized problems. while there is a focus on international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 65  lgbtq2s people, abramovich and shelton’s (2017) analysis is couched in language that points out how all are advantaged when change is made, an approach not dissimilar to universal design in disability studies. this approach is familiar, and comfortable, to many cyc practitioners. most writing that might be affiliated with queer theory in cyc analyzes, evaluates, designs, or supports programs and services that cater to lgbtqi2sa children and youth, while at times justifying these programs through arguing the benefits for all. much of the writing falls into a particular homonormative discourse regarding only lgt people, and thus might not be considered queer, in a critical theory sense, at all. the second mode of queer theory is seen in the application of a queer analytic to topics that may not necessarily be understood as queer. through this “queering”, there is an attempt to look at, understand, and reveal existing binaries, norms, and systems in order to show how these function. as ball (2016) writes, “queering something involves a deconstructive disposition that points to norms, resists them, and opens up a space in which things might be done differently” (p. 35). while much of this critique is done in spaces not exclusively gay, such as abramovich and shelton’s (2017) book on homelessness, or ball’s (2016) take on criminology, puar (2017) and others have taken this queering to gay spaces as well. in doing so, they provide insightful critiques of the norms extant in much lesbian and gay discourse; for example, puar’s (2017) critique of the “it gets better project”, or johnson’s (2001) coining of “quare”. these queerings are some of the more fricative spaces of queer theory, causing sparks, chafing, and stimulation. i claim, based upon my knowledge of cyc literature, that queer analytics has been only minimally applied in cyc. there is certainly a body of literature that looks at programming and “issues” related to lgbt youth (bochenek, 2002; fox, 2015; moore & moore, 2000; wagaman, 2015); however, much of this hews to inclusive space or normative psychology paradigms, not dissimilar to the abramovich and shelton (2017) quote above. according to ahmed (2006), the word “queer” has its origins in a word meaning “oblique” or “off line”: “the lines we follow might also function as forms of ‘alignment’, or as ways of being in line with others. we might say that we are orientated when we are in line.” (p. 15). much cyc work seeks a relationship — a coming together or an alignment. as ahmed (2006) pointed out, however, to get in line is to be disciplined. the orientation of many cyc services is an orientation of alignment. young people are required to get in line or else risk being refused service — taken “off-program”. this is an orientation of discipline. cyc as a relational practice based upon alignment merits queering. what is really being enacted through the therapeutic use of relationship, for example? how might “use of self ” lead to a denial of others? when we seek to align with children, youth, and families, is the agenda actually to bring children, youth, and families into line? international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 66  we do see glimpses of oblique queering. for example, de finney et al. (2011) went a little out of line when they suggested “conceptualiz[ing] residential care as a site for radical advocacy and social change” (p. 361). de finney et al. (2011) focused on the orienting and disciplining logic of residential placements as the place of analysis, rather than the genders or sexual orientations of those who enter the residence. by doing this, they looked at institutional manifestations of this logic upon bodies entering residential placement, which they saw as based on “a deep-seated belief that nonconforming gender expressions are something to be corrected” (p. 374). in their queering, there is a shift in focus from the trans body of the resident being the “problem” to the institution being the site in need of intervention. while there has been a minimal application of queer theory in cyc, there are examples of queer theory being developed in meaningful ways as it relates to children and youth. mccready (2013) used a “queer of color analysis (qoca) … as a form of critique designed to unsettle the dominant discourses, key questions and normative beliefs …” (p. 512). according to brockenbrough (2013), qoca is based upon “queer of color epistemologies — or ways of knowing rooted in queer of color political struggles, cultural traditions, and lived experiences — as lenses for knowledge production” (p. 427). these lenses use a historically situated sociocultural awareness to focus on specific issues affecting particular populations, which, in the case of mccready (2013), is black queer male youth living in toronto. shotwell (2016) argued that rather than identifying “bad” normativity and replacing it with the “good”, one can look towards “open normativity” which “names those normativities that prioritize flourishing and tend toward proliferation, not merely replacing one norm with another” (p. 155). one of the open normativities qoca points to is the adaptability of queer analytics. its focus can be adjusted to examine particular inquiry contexts and agendas. one example is my ongoing doctoral inquiry with cycps from care (cycpfc), in which i wonder whether there might be a cycpfc epistemology based upon “political struggles, cultural traditions, and lived experiences — as lenses for knowledge production” from those who lived “in care”. after presenting this paper at the conference, i was asked during the question and answer period how i defined “queer”. this was linked to what the questioner perceived as the erasing of sexuality within my queering of cyc. the question requires an accounting regarding what makes something queer and asks if queer theory can be applied outside of contexts related to sexuality or gender. for example, why apply queer theory to care, cyc as a whole, or, as in my doctoral inquiry, cycpfc? why not focus on lgbtqi2sa children, youth, families, and cycps? there is nothing necessarily queer, in terms of sex, sexuality, or gender, when it comes to those with whom cycps work or those who have lived in the care of the state. so why is it necessary to queer care? sedgwick (1993) defined queer as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality, aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (p. 8). one can argue that the project of state residential care is a project of monolithic intent. while i do not suggest this intent is primarily focused on sexuality or gender, i think queering international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 67  provides insights into what intents do exist in residential care and cyc. building on sedgwick, one might ask whether thinking about sexuality and gender in care reveals meanings and intents of that segment of cyc practice. a foundation of state care is the restriction of youth agency, including in the domain of sexuality. this is embedded in the language of social services. for example, child welfare agencies in the united states, canada, and europe are frequently called child protection services (or systems). child protection is a notion that has come under many critiques, for a variety of reasons (international institute for child rights and development, n.d.; dugmore, 2013), not least of which is how protection relates to sexuality (egan & hawkes, 2009). these restrictions are supported by an extensive medico-judicial apparatus which has a long history of pathologizing and criminalizing activities outside of socially constructed acceptable child and youth sexuality (foucault, 1978). conceptualizing childhood sexuality within the discourse of protection creates a framework that pathologizes the sexual subjectivity of children.… within these narratives, once the sexual consciousness of the child is spurred into expression it is constructed as dangerous and pathological and thus in need of outside intervention (egan & hawkes, 2009, p. 392). a full discussion of child and youth sexuality and desire is beyond the scope of this article; however, it is pertinent to recognize that the state responds to young peoples’ sexuality with sanctions, prohibitions, and pathologizing. this is all the more so when desire is queer — out of line — which, arguably, includes all child and youth desire according to the logic of child protection. this can be seen in the monolithic response to expressions and actions of desire from those in care. to answer the question of how i am using “queer”, it is, and yet is not only, about sexuality, gender, desire, and identity. i seek to apply queer analytics to all areas of cyc practice. queer theory comes out of queer lives, but it need not be restricted to queer people. through queering, i desire to honour the particularity of the critical thinking that these ways of being can lead towards in cyc. if we limit queer theory to considering only queer lives, we risk foreclosing what may be revealed. my intention is to try to queer identity, sexuality, desire, theory, and politics as an approach to cyc — as a way of caring for children, youth, families, and communities. i choose not to take a reductionist stance, but to play within “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning” (sedgwick, 1993, p. 8). queer theory frequently takes into account experience, subjectivity, epistemology, power, and knowledge, which are all useful in understanding care. many lgbtqi2sa young people come into various child and youth social service systems (abramovich & shelton, 2017; de finney et al., 2011). developing queer critiques, as opposed to the more traditional liberal homonormative lesbian/gay studies approach to working with lgbtqi2sa folks, may serve this population better. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 68  i stress “may”. this position is part of the contested queer theory terrain mentioned above. queer theory can be seen as a critical response to the politic of acceptability (ball, 2016). this politic is evident in calls for gay, lesbian, and transgender people to be “allowed into” the military, and for same-sex couples to be able to be legally married. what does the politic of acceptability look like within cyc? it reveals itself in rainbow flags and pink triangles mounted around homeless shelters, in children’s aid pride brunches, and in field trips to see the movie love simon. it includes pink shirt anti-bullying campaigns that claim “all children are the same”, “it doesn’t matter who you love”, and “sex is between the legs, gender between the ears”. it may even bypass all discussion of gayness; for example, by reducing pink shirt day to a politically neutered “anti-bullying” event, as happened in multiple schools across ontario in 2019. it shows up in lgbtqi2saa, where the second a denotes “ally”; in implementing “zero tolerance programs”; and in claiming — if not insisting — that same-sex couples are just like everyone else, implicitly negating the existence of more than two genders. the heteronormative politic of acceptability is, paradoxically, a logic of homonormativity. through acceptance calls, differences are elided in a formation of sameness. thus, we see an embracing of that which is of “us”, and a deepening resistance to that which is not. we see calls to, and demands for, alignment. through a politic of acceptability, care risks becoming contingent upon alignment. this homonormativity is less about queering cyc, and more about quieting queerness. care i recently did a presentation titled “if cy(c)”. this title was an attempt to show the absence of care within cyc. this absence occurs in our theorizing, in our education, and, at times, even in our name: in ontario, practitioners used to be designated “child and youth worker”, not “cyc practitioner”. care is also too frequently absent in our institutional practice. this has been articulated, documented, and discussed by de finney et al. (2018), charles and gabor (2006), and gharabaghi et al. (2016), among others. in surveying cyc writing, there is remarkably little theory that is directly about care (thomson, 2018). while the word “care” is everywhere in our publications, the actual deep thinking — theorizing, conceptualizing, and grappling — is minimal. however, this has not been my experience of conversations with practitioners, many of whom think profoundly about, and act with, care in their individual practices, practices that at times actively resist the lack of care in institutional practice. cyc presents itself primarily as practice-based, with a literature that clearly situates cyc as a way of doing, “in direct work with children, youth, families and those who support them” (garfat & fulcher, 2011, p. 1). anglin (2001) wrote of five characteristics that differentiate cyc from other helping professions, stating that it:  is primarily focussed on … growth and development …  is concerned with the totality of a child’s functioning … international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 69   has developed a model of social competence rather than a pathology-based orientation to child development …  is based on … direct day to day work with children and youth in their environment, and  involves the development of therapeutic relationships. (para. 4–8) in these characteristics, there is a clear agenda and purpose to the caring within cyc. garfat and fulcher (2011) expanded the list of characteristics to 25 items, and ended their list by writing: a child and youth care approach may find ready applications in direct care work with people of all ages…. the child and youth care approach represents a way of being and working in the world. it is, therefore, about how one does what they do. (p. 16) cyc has long seen itself as a field that is about doing, being with, and working in “the life-space”, and is based upon “moments” in the “co-created space” between cycp and a child, youth, or family member (garfat & fulcher, 2011). within this focus on “how one does what they do” it has been noted that written theory has at times been perceived as extraneous or unnecessary to cyc practice (little, 2011). thomson (2018) argued that there has been, and continues to be, a lack of theorizing about care in particular. given that the field prominently situates care within its name, it is perhaps surprising that there has not been more writing on conceptualizations of care. “the core of care”, by maier (1979), was one of the earliest articles in this area. maier named seven elements as comprising the core of care: bodily comfort, differentiations, rhythmic interactions, predictability, dependability, personalized behavioral training, and care for the care givers (pp. 162–172). drawing directly from developmental psychology and observations from his work with children, he located care as developmental, ecological, and practice-based. this fits comfortably within the traditional paradigms that cyc has emerged from, and it would be easy to imagine maier’s piece being written today. maier (1979) starts by asking the reader to “pause and think of an incident where you experienced nurturing care. this would be a moment in your life when you had the sense of being the one, and only one, who counted at that particular moment” (p. 161). the heuristics of inductive analysis and of self-reflection are familiar approaches in considering care. indeed, the self has been claimed as essential to “care ethics”, as the practice of care “builds on the motivation to care for those who are dependent and vulnerable, and it is inspired by both memories of being cared for and the idealizations of self” (sander-staudt, n.d.). maier’s construction of care as being tied to affect, belonging, and recognizing differences in individuals (both receivers of care and “workers”) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 70  is one that informs and is challenged by his own elements of care1. care is relational and interdependent: the care “giver” is essential to the care “receiver” and by extension the receiver is essential to the giver. the child, youth, and family provide the opportunity to care. drawing from moral, justice, virtue, and feminist theory (held, 2006), along with, more recently, new materialism (puig de la bellacasa, 2017), care ethics can be seen to be as much aspirational as practised, what we might think of as “care desire”. held (2006) explained: caring well should be a moral goal, and basic caring relations are a moral necessity. the values involved in the practices of caring need to be understood and cultivated, and the failures of many practices to reflect these values also need to be understood. caring as an actual practice should be continually evaluated and improved. to bring about such improvement radical transformations may be needed in the social and political contexts in which caring takes place. (p. 61) acts of care take place within social and political contexts. how these acts are performed reveals much about the contexts in which the acts of care, including cyc, are embedded. politics is an aspect of care that has always existed, although it has not always been recognized or named as such, particularly within cyc (charles & gabor, 2006). thomson (2018), tracing the construction of care within cyc, argued, “cyc professed to approach care in an apolitical way focusing primarily on the one-on-one care relationship between worker-client, everyday caring interactions in a young peoples’ [sic] life space and a utilitarian approach to care practices (anglin, 1987).” (p. 23). her use of “professed” is significant, for care ethics argues that care is not apolitical. the seven elements that maier (1979) ascribed to the “core of care” can be read as instrumental, utilitarian, and apolitical, or one can recognize the overt political stance he made in his writings about “private space”, which he proclaimed “is theirs [the child’s] regardless of whether their behavior has been acceptable or not. their personal (private) corner, bed, or other ‘mine only’ place is undisputedly theirs as part of their inalienable rights within the child care arena” (p. 163). therefore, private space is less about the utilitarian notion of the “greatest good” or an instrumental means to an end, than it is about a single child and what might be best for them, regardless of the desires of the cycp or the smooth functioning of the “home”. as anyone who has lived or worked in residential care knows, this is indeed a radically political stance, and a moral stance as well. it is also a stance that is frequently violated. political, ethical, and theoretical elements of care do appear in some cyc writing, from ricks’ (1992) explicitly feminist reading of care in cyc, smith’s (2006) considerations of love as it relates to care, newbury’s (2014) discussion on the economics of care, and thomson’s (2018) “tracing” of how care is constructed in an introductory cyc text. thomson’s analysis of the 1 maier’s (1979) seven elements are bodily comfort, differentiations, rhythmic interactions, the element of predictability, dependability, personalized behavioural training, and care for the caregivers (pp. 162–172). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 71  presentation of care in carol stuart’s 2013 textbook foundations of child and youth care practice is worth quoting at length as it speaks directly to many of the ideas raised above: conceptualizations of care in the text are deeply influenced by normative frameworks such as neoliberalism and dominant conceptualizations of the self as individual, separate, and autonomous.… one of the main findings suggests that potentially there is a taken for granted understanding of care that is based on notions of care as apolitical, simple and practical.… there is a tendency in the text to frame care positively, which is demonstrative of an underlying assumption that all care is good. the consequence of this is that the text does not attend deeply to the complicated realities of the care relationship.… further, my analysis suggests that the ability to care and care well as a cyc practitioner is understood in the textbook as being the result of an inherent personal quality and motivation. this reinforces essentialist discourses about care in cyc. (p. 96) these findings extend beyond the stuart text.  much writing regarding care within cyc is utilitarian, instrumental, and imbued with a masculinist–maternal essence, existing in a space neither/both paternal and maternal, patriarchal and feminist, indoctrinary and emancipatory. what do i mean by the above claim? charles and gabor (2006) categorized canadian institutional residential care into five eras:  moralistic–saviour: an 18th century agenda of “saving the souls of the young people”;  reformation–rescue: a shift away from souls and towards protecting children from “the abuses of the adult dominated world”;  protection–segregation: introduction of the first residential schools for indigenous children;  treatment–intervention: the beginning of psychiatric treatment for children and youth, as well as the rise of juvenile detention facilities; and  consumer–community partnership: the emergence in the 1970s of outpatient as well as community-based treatment programs, which continues to this day. (pp. 18–22) these foundations are the ground upon which some approaches to cyc grew. not the only ones, as i will discuss shortly; however, this history continues to inform our practice. as de finney et al. (2018) wrote, cycps continue to be implicated in “transcarceral care systems”: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 72  in the public imagination, residential schools are part of a flawed ideological history we can now heal through reconciliation. but in fact, thousands of indigenous and racialized children continue to be systematically detained, incarcerated, criminalized, institutionalized, and lost by us and canadian authorities. for example, per capita, there are more indigenous children in government “care” today than at any other point in history (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). we are in the midst of the “millennial scoop,” a wave of government incarceration of indigenous children, who represent less than 7% of the population, yet make up 48% of children in government care (turner, 2016)”. (pp. 28–29) transcarceral care system involvement (what might be thought of as “in-care-ceration”) is not unique to indigenous children. as de finney et al. (2018) pointed out, transcarceral care system involvement also disproportionately affects black children and youth. in ontario, due to a lack of race-based data tracking at many of the children’s aid societies, it is hard to find exact numbers; however, a 2018 report from the ontario human rights commission “observed disproportionately high incidences of indigenous and black children in admissions into care at many [child welfare] agencies across the province” (ontario human rights commission, 2018, p. 2) the report states that, “overall, the proportion of black children admitted into care was 2.2 times higher than their proportion in the child population” (p. 4). in considering transhistorical transcarceral in-care-ceration, some of the common elements that run through charles and gabor’s (2006) five eras become apparent. what shotwell (2016) called “purism” — an attempt to cleanse — resides in the religious imperative of the moralistic–saviour era towards “saving the souls of young people” (charles & gabor, 2006, p. 18); in the milieu focus (reformation–rescue era) and treatment focus (treatment–intervention era) as applied to particular demographics; and in the removal of indigenous and racialized bodies (protection–segregation era). essential to this agenda remains the perception that the young person, their family, or their culture needs to change due to some impurity, and it is the duty of service providers to ensure that the young person, the family, and the culture align with that period’s purism. cyc as a practice of intervening, categorizing, saving, containing, fixing, and purifying is a particular understanding of cyc that comes out of residential care, one that is patriarchal, colonialist, and curative. this framing of cyc is akin to what fusco (2016) has called the “sociology of regulation”, which she contrasted with the “sociology of change” in youth work. according to fusco (2016), a sociology of regulation focuses on changing the young person. it incorporates character building, treatment, social education, and youth development agendas, all of which mesh neatly with charles and gabor’s (2006) five eras. a sociology of change, in contrast, focuses on the young person doing the changing. rooted in radical humanism and structuralism, it incorporates empowerment discourses, youth leadership, organizing, and civic engagement. the relationship between these different approaches can be seen in some of the current tensions within cyc. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 73  in examining the histories of adults working with young people, we can ask who is being cared for and what is being cared about. caring is not neutral. along with noble-sounding aims — saving the soul, saving the psyche, saving the child — the history of “caring” includes forced medication, incarceration, sterilization, and eugenics (chapman & withers, 2019; clare, 2017). grappling with care requires acknowledging this legacy and understanding its effects on cyc. but these are not the only histories. there is a history of care rooted in relationship, not removal, such as how children were cared for in precolonial times (as mentioned by beukes and gannon [n.d.] in their look at cyc practice in what is now known as south africa). there is a history of care that is feminist, ethical, and loving (held, 2006; sander-staudt, n.d.). it concerns affect and politics. it is personal, social, and transformative. it is this history that has brought some of us into the caring fields. it is a history of communities looking out for each other, and friends and family supporting those in need. mothers, fathers, aunties, siblings, neighbours, and strangers caring for and caring with. in the may 2019 episode of the cyc podcast2, i interviewed juanita stephen and peter amponsah about the cyc alliance for racial equity (care). stephen spoke about diverse theories of care that come out of black communities, theories that i’ve never seen referenced in my cyc care readings. amponsah spoke about intergenerational continuums of care that the carer brings — care rooted in historical practices, and transgenerational care ethics that have been passed down from one generation to the next. as seen from the texts above, this transgenerational care legacy can be transcarceral (de finney et al. 2018), or it can be transformative (beukes & gannon, n.d.). graham (2007) considered a black feminist ethics of care in order to “open up new insights into care and its multiple dimensions” (p. 194). graham (2007) wrote of the interdependency of care that simultaneously resists and fosters: from an african-centred perspective, ethics are employed in the practical outworking of personhood and the freedom to develop fully one’s human dispositions through interaction with others. interdependence offers a condition of existence and moral capacity which is held together by relationships and human connections…. self-determination and freedom have long been a site of resistance and empowerment in everyday action and experience. (p. 200) interdependence, resistance, relationality, ethics, action, and experience: all of these are elements that fit within cyc theory and practice. as steckley and smith (2011) wrote, care is interdependent, reciprocal, dialogic, fallible, and flexible. tronto (2015) reminded us that care is relational: to care for asks that we are responsible (p. 5), to care about that we are attentive (p. 5), and to care give that we are adept (p. 6); listening to those who care receive makes us responsive (p. 6). caring is a political act. it is a relational act. it is a transformative act. yet it is not only an 2 http://www.cycpodcast.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 74  act. it is also a disposition, as smith (2019) pointed out. care is not exclusively what we do, it is also why and how we do it. as berry et al. (2018) wrote: in a time of late capitalism, the ethics of care in child and youth care work can no longer be viewed as a purely individual, human pursuit. extracted from its relational origins and appropriated as a tool for managing and regulating bodies, care within contemporary global capitalist structures is located as an isolated, moral choice. this conceptualization of care ignores the socio-political constellations which frame ‘free’ choice. sole responsibility of ethical work is placed in the bodies of individuals amid systemic discourses of production and progress which instrumentalize care and perpetuate oppressive conditions to which cyc work aims to respond. (p. 49) queering child and youth care what then does queering care in cyc do? consider the multiple ways that “queer” has been taken up — desire, identity, sexuality, theory, and politics. each provides opportunities to queer cyc. as a preliminary conceptualization of how these five facets of queering may be relevant, i will give an example of each, applying them to practice, theory, or inquiry. there are multiple other ways these five facets could be taken up. i provide the following only as initial flirtations. desire desire as an operating function of cyc opens possibilities regarding ways of being, being with, and becoming. rather than beginning with the deconstruction or contestation of queering, desire leads us to the imaginative “if”, to finding ways of practising, theorizing, teaching, and researching that are about what we, and those we work with, desire — what is sought, what is fantasized, what motivates. the possibilities of desire lead toward a politics of pleasure, a perhaps radical way of considering engagement with our colleagues, those we work with, how we research, and why we do cyc. enjoyment, pleasure, and desire as criteria in considering cyc practice may not be regarded as relevant by all; indeed, it may be seen as part of the problem. however, new possibilities arise when we introduce these conditions for consideration. quoting peter reason, foster (2016) wrote, “if human inquiry is not exciting, life enhancing, even pleasurable, then what is it worth?” (p. 134). this i suggest is also true of cyc outside of inquiry alone. pleasure becomes a political and ethical stance when working with people and imagining what their futures hold. identity identity within cyc is a contested space (vachon, 2013). the arguments about what is and is not cyc, who is and is not a cycp, if cyc is or is not a profession, a field, or a way of being, continue to arise in conferences, faculty discussions, multidisciplinary team meetings, and informal conversations. generally, the young people i work with have no idea of my professional or academic credentials. labels like cycp, social worker, psychologist, counsellor, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 75  practitioner mean little to most people i engage with. while titles may hold value for professionalization, accreditation, employment, salary, and membership in one organization or another, i suspect they hold minimal value for those seeking services (except when needed to satisfy the requirements of insurance, payments, funding, and the like). cyc identity does matter in that it creates a sense of belonging and a way of orienting practice, and provides a body of literature and a language to discuss that literature. i do call myself a cycp. yet, identity risks becoming restrictive, creating hierarchies, and being dismissive of alternative ways of thinking, working, practising, and being. one of the ironies of queer identity is the pull to rigidity. rather than being deconstructive, queer identity at times becomes constrictive. who is or is not queer? is queerness about the people one loves, those one sleeps with, a sense of self, or whom one watches in porn? does queer need to be about sex, about desire, about identity, about a political position? is it, like care, both a disposition and an action? what makes one queer enough to justify applying the appellation? lost in the constrictive defining are some of the very things queer does, such as revealing “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning” (sedgwick, 1993, p. 8). i worry that this is also true of cyc. while i value my identity as a cycp, it does at times seem over-policed regarding what ideas i draw upon, who i cite, the way i practise, and if my way of working is legitimate. how queer is queer enough? sexuality acts of sexuality within cyc are perhaps the most, and least, comfortable of the queer framings i draw upon. there is a body of literature within cyc that addresses practice with lgbqi2sa young people — identified, of course, by their sexuality. much of this, as andersonnathe (2019) pointed out during his presentation at the uvic conference, is rooted in the language of lgbq “issues”, “challenges”, and other pathologizing framings. as noted by abramovich and shelton (2017) and de finney et al. (2011), many lgbtqi2sa people access cyc services and need resources to support them in ways that reflect and honour who they are, including their sexuality, gender, identity, needs, and desires. there are few, if any, cycps who would disagree with this position. while there may be disagreement on what care with lgbtqi2sa people looks like, all would likely agree that support ought to be available to those who require it. however, it is a rare residential program that goes beyond asexual support of queer children and youth (or, indeed, most children and youth). there are few group homes or shelters that allow young people to have sex on the premises, regardless of sexual orientation or whom they are having sex with. such a policy seems contradictory when we claim that we want to reduce harm — risk of exploitation, abuse, and stis. within a residential setting, help would potentially be available from caring supportive adults who are on the premises if one of the young people perceives a need for support in dealing with an issue like discomfort, violence, sti protection, or emotional upset after sex. having sex in parks, cars, alleys, stairwells, garages, toilets, squats, motels, bushes and other locations poses additional safety risks for young people. while the rationales abound, i can think of few legitimate reasons as to why young people should not be allowed to have sex in their group homes, shelters, foster homes, or other living spaces; we know full well that young people international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 76  are having sex in all of these places, most frequently without the permission of the adults present, and at times risking sanctions, expulsion, or homelessness in doing so. sharing our own sexual experiences, how we learned what gives us sexual pleasure, and techniques or approaches to sexuality are all elements to consider in queering sexuality within cyc. theory an analysis grounded in “an active process of contesting scholarship and politics, contesting categories, contesting identity, contesting liberalism, contesting truth, contesting history, and contesting subjectivity” while simultaneously “expounding, elaborating, and promoting alternative ways of being, knowing, and narrating experience” (alexander, 2018, p. 278) is a good start towards queering cyc. we can also draw on qoca “as a form of critique designed to unsettle the dominant discourses, key questions and normative beliefs” (mccready, 2013, p. 512) that exist within our field, a field whose writing, education, and management is dominated by white heterosexuals. ball’s (2016) understanding that “queering something involves a deconstructive disposition that points to norms, resists them, and opens up a space in which things might be done differently” (p. 35) provides useful frames for us to draw upon. care within cyc merits all of these approaches. understanding how “care” has been used as a way to oppress young people, families, and particular communities, while normalizing these oppressions, forces cyc to reflect upon our complacency at one end and active perpetuation of harm at the other. through particular historical lenses of cyc practice, the notion of interdependency starts to seem more parasitic than symbiotic. queering cyc requires looking at the implications of “caring”, considering how it fosters and how it resists, in all its many helpful and destructive ways. politics political and apolitical framings of cyc have been present for many years now, as thomson (2018) pointed out. in canada, we increasingly see politics productively forced onto the agenda at conferences, in hiring, in curriculum, and in the ways that cycps work with young people. we have seen a growing tension between “development” and “social justice” approaches to cyc practice, and, more recently, a reckoning regarding racism within cyc (daniels, 2018; gharabaghi, 2017; vachon, 2018). in the debates around these framings we see echoes of homonormative and queer politics. resistance to the homogenizing politics of homonormativity can be loudly heard in the “queercore”3 phrase “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” (nault, 2018, p. 5). i am not suggesting that this be the opening gambit in queering cyc. i am 3 nault (2018) glosses queercore as “a configuration of artistically minded gender/sexual dissidents who annex punk practices and aesthetics to challenge the oppressions of the mainstream and the lifeless sexual politics and assimilationist tendencies of dominant gay and lesbian society. this subculture is known as ‘homocore’ or, more recently, ‘queercore’, to indicate an alliance with antiestablishment radical queer politics — as opposed to a liberal gay politics of social integration. ‘queercore’ invokes a movement that is by and for not only homosexuals, but genderqueers, transgender folks and all those whose gender and/or sexual identities fall outside restrictive male/female, heterosexual/homosexual binaries.” (p. 1). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 61–81 77  suggesting we listen to every “fuck you” and strive to hear the invitation to open the space in which things can be done differently. references abramovich, a., & shelton, j. 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(2015). honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: summary of the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada. retrieved from http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/honouring_the_truth_reconciling_for_the_future_july_23_201 5.pdf thomson, j. (2018). re-imagining care: thinking with feminist ethics of care [master’s thesis]. university of victoria, victoria, british columbia. dspace. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstream/handle/1828/9675/thomson_jenny_ma_2018.pdf?se quence=1&isallowed=y tronto, j. c. (2015). who cares? how to reshape a democratic politics. cornell university press. turner, a. (2016). living arrangements of aboriginal children aged 14 and under. statistics canada. retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006x/2016001/article/14547-eng.htm vachon, w. (2013). do not enter: what are the risks of gatekeeping child and youth care? child & youth services, 34(2), 156–171. doi:10.1080/0145935x.2013.785888 vachon, w. 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(2015) changing ourselves, changing the world: assessing the value of participatory action research as an empowerment-based research and service approach with lgbtq young people. child & youth services, 36(2), 124–149. doi:10.1080/0145935x.2014.1001064 violence prevention and the canadian girl child 134 violence prevention and the canadian girl child yasmin jiwani, helene berman, and catherine ann cameron abstract: the authors argue that because there are no groups of girls or young women that can be considered immune from gender-based or systemic violence, there is a significant need for the inclusion and recognition of the girl child in official policies, programs, and legislation. in their view, a fundamental recognition of the specificities of the gendered nature of violence, particularly as it intersects with age, race, class, ability, and sexual orientation is required. moreover, the antecedent roots of violence need to be identified, as they provide sites for effective and early intervention. they discuss the social and historical context of the girl child in canada and follow this analysis with a presentation of the research carried out by the alliance of five research centres on violence and its consequent implications for policy and programming. finally, the authors append a detailed list of concrete recommendations for policy-makers at all levels of government, as well as for service providers and the media, covering such areas as education, service delivery, and future research. the occurrence of violence is a significant threat to the health, safety, and well-being of all girls and young women. this assertion holds true regardless of whether girls grow up in loving homes where mutual respect is valued, and where conflict is resolved by peaceful means, or whether they live in homes where interactions are characterized by violence and aggression. the capacity of families to keep their daughters safe and to shield them from violence is limited by the multitude of ways in which violence is condoned and perpetuated in our communities, the media, schools, and society in general. although violence is experienced differently, and may include physical, social, emotional, and/or sexual dimensions, there are no groups of girls that can be considered to be immune from violence, whether gender-based or systemic. there is a significant need for the inclusion and recognition of the girl child in official policies, programs, and legislation. a fundamental recognition of the specificities of the gendered nature of violence, particularly as it intersects with age, race, class, ability, and sexual orientation is required. hence, an understanding of the intersectional and interlocking character of violence should provide the framework for the development of policies, programs, and legislation. more importantly, there is a desperate need to incorporate an analysis of violence that takes into consideration the notion of a continuum of violent attitudes, behaviours, and practices. it is not enough simply to identify violence as occurring in the more extreme situations of murder, rape, and property crimes, or to permit interventions in the form of apprehensions and confinements when girls and young women transgress normative laws or moral boundaries. there are clearly antecedent roots of violence that need to be identified, as they provide sites for effective and early intervention. during the past decade, a team of community and academic researchers from the alliance of five research centres on violence has examined the situation of the canadian girl child, with 135 particular attention to their experience of violence and the differential effects of gender socialization. the goal of this chapter is to identify issues relevant to policy and practice in relation to the safety, health, and well-being of canadian girls. we begin by discussing the social and historical context of the girl child in canada. this analysis is followed by a presentation of our research and its implications for policy and programming. a central issue that this chapter addresses is that generic violence-prevention programs, policies, and practices devised for “children and youth” may radically miss the mark for either boys or girls or both, unless they are assiduously gender-sensitive (pepler, madsen, webster, & levene, 2005). due to differential socialization practices, primary and secondary prevention and tertiary intervention strategies, policies, and practices must effectively accommodate this major gender divide. girls and boys require policy and programs that are explicitly and appropriately directed to them if they are to be effective (moffitt, caspi, rutter, & silva, 2001). a social and historical context of the girl child in canada throughout the past three decades, the plight of girls has received growing international attention, beginning in the 1980s when unicef adopted the phrase, “the girl child”. in recognition of the oppression of girls as a gendered concern, several organizations followed suit, proclaiming 1990 “the year of the girl child”, and the 1990s as “the decade of the girl child” (berman, mckenna, traher arnold, macquarrie, & taylor, 2000). at the united nations fourth world conference on women in beijing in 1995, the plight of girl children was highlighted as a significant issue of concern. the focus on girls was subsequently incorporated into the beijing declaration and platform for action that was ratified by canada. the declaration identifies the following objectives that state parties are expected to achieve elimination of: 1. all forms of discrimination against the girl child; 2. negative cultural attitudes and practices against girls; 3. discrimination against girls in education, skills development, and training; 4. discrimination against girls in health and nutrition; 5. the economic exploitation of child labour and protection of young girls at work; promotion of: 6. the girl child’s awareness of and participation in social, economic, and political life; and 7. protection of the rights of the girl child, and increase of awareness of her needs and potential; 8. strengthening the role of the family in improving the status of the girl child; and eradicating: 9. violence against the girl child (united nations division for the advancement of women, 1995, paragraphs 259-285). the impetus for the declaration came initially from women in developing countries throughout the world. in contrast, researchers, programmers, and policy-makers have largely overlooked the unique vulnerabilities of girls in canada. in part, this omission may be attributed to a mistaken notion that gender equality has been achieved and that violence directed toward girls is a phenomenon that occurs “elsewhere”. the commonly held perception, both domestically and internationally, that canada is a leader in the arena of progressive human rights 136 and egalitarian gender relations, has further contributed to a reluctance to acknowledge the challenges girls face. the net result that strategically serves to obscure gender differences collapses these into the more generic rubric of “children and youth”. focusing on children and youth as categories deserving of societal attention is problematic. firstly, it results in the negation of the compounding effects of the intersection of various forms of oppression. thus, racism in combination with sexism and classism, or ableism in conjunction with sexual orientation and racism, are rarely treated as interlocking and systemic forms of domination (razack, 1998). rather, the tendency historically has been to treat these multiple forms of oppression as mutually exclusive, isolated, and distinct from one another. secondly, the focus on children and youth strategically obfuscates the reality of gender-based violence and inequality, thereby positioning women as simply bearers and nurturers of children, and girls as future mothers. the international human rights discourse surrounding the girl child is underpinned by a universal and stereotypical construction that presents her as a victim of backward, oppressive, and highly patriarchal cultures. typically, the girl child is portrayed as the desperate and reluctant victim of female genital mutilation in africa; the poverty-stricken child labourer and child bride in india; the child prostitute in thailand; the undeserving victim of honour killing in the middle east; the illiterate, uneducated, exploited, and uncared for child in latin america; or the unwanted girl child in china. more recently, the girl child has entered the popular western imagination in the form of the fleeing, illegal refugee who is in need of protection on the one hand, and who signifies the barbarism of her country of origin on the other hand. all of these images are typically displayed prominently in fundraising initiatives of international aid organizations and in the mass media. the unstated premise is that atrocities inflicted upon girls occur elsewhere – in backward nations outside the realm of the “civilized” west, and more specifically, canada. existing statistics reveal otherwise. within canada, the girl child is subjected to a range of violent behaviours, attitudes, and practices. for instance, adolescent wives between the ages of 15 and 19 are three times more likely to be murdered as compared to wives who are older (rodgers, 1994). girls are also more likely to be victims of sexual and physical assault by family members than are boys (statistics canada, 2000, pp. 31-37). it has been estimated that up to 75% of aboriginal women under the age of 18 have experienced sexual abuse, 50% are under 14, and almost 25% are younger than 7 years of age (correctional service of canada, as cited in mcivor & nahanee, 1998, p. 65). child poverty is also a significant concern. the campaign 2000 report card on child poverty in canada states that 23.4% of canadian children live in poverty. aboriginal children and children from racial minority communities constitute the largest populations facing poverty, at 52.1% and 42.7% respectively. clearly, the situation of girl children in canada is far from being equitable or in compliance with the obligations set forth in various international agreements. as the statistics demonstrate, violence against girls and young women is pervasive and deeply entrenched in canadian society. yet, it often goes unnoticed. the masking and erasure of the gendered and racialized nature of violence contributes to a flawed understanding, with enormous ramifications for social policy, programs, and legislation. when violence is 137 normalized, and when its manifestations are not considered until they have escalated and moved into the realm of institutional control, then potential sites of effective intervention and prevention are lost. this tendency is perhaps best demonstrated by the increased focus on the issue of girls as aggressors, and thus actors of violence (underwood, 2003). in the current research we have consciously focused on the girl child as the recipient of violence rather than emphasizing the differential ways in which violence expresses itself for girls and boys. instead we explicate the pervasiveness and manifestation of gendered violence and examine how the girl child both perceives and negotiates the resulting lived reality. the problem of gender neutrality examining girls’ lives through a gender lens is critically important for gaining an understanding of the fundamental dynamics of inequality at work. gender analysis requires simultaneous attention to the lives of women and men, girls and boys. although approaches to gender analysis differ, key features include understanding and documenting differences in gender roles, as well as the activities and opportunities available to girls and women (chesney-lind, 1997). a critically informed gender analysis does not treat women as a homogeneous group or gender attributes as immutable (hoskins & artz, 2004). rather, it highlights the different societal expectations attached to gender attributes that may themselves vary across race, culture, class, income, and time (randall & haskell, 2000). a critical gender analysis enables the evaluation of potentially differential and discriminatory impacts of government policies and practices on males and females from different backgrounds. this is especially important for interrogating the impact of policies, programs, and legislation that treat everyone the same regardless of gender, race, and/or class. in the context of violence against women and children, gender-neutral descriptions obscure root causes of violence, and leave underlying gender-related dynamics unnamed and invisible. instead, structured and systemic social problems appear as random, un-patterned, and individualized. differential gender-based socialization from an early age children learn what is expected of them as girls and boys. in many cultures, though not universally, there is a tendency toward socializing girls to adopt nurturing, caregiving roles, and for boys to adopt protector roles. this notion is conveyed through the family, peers, schools, the community, the media, and virtually every other social institution. typically, boys learn that aggression increases their ability to carry out their desires in the world. despite some limits on their actions, the overall message is that boys can expect some latitude regarding aggressive behaviours. girls, by contrast, are more typically encouraged to conform to social imperatives regarding clothing and demeanour to appear more desirable to boys. they are socialized to prioritize personal characteristics in the relationship domain. girls’ internalization of “being nice” is implicated in the array of physical and emotional health problems, including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, found with disturbing frequency among girls and young women (jiwani & brown, 1999). beale (1994) suggests that friendship cliques for girls are more likely to serve as a defensive, protective strategy through which they are assured a place in the peer group, popularity, and thus power. aggression is more likely to 138 manifest itself verbally with same-sex peers (moretti, odgers, & jackson, 2004). boys tend towards more obviously competitive group activities such as team sports. girls and boys also learn from a young age their racial identity vis-à-vis the communities in which they reside. the early ethnic nature of identity interlocks with the socializing influences of sexism and classism, or disability and sexuality as the case may be (jackson, 2004). power is also established within peer groups. the gender messages revolving around prescribed roles of protector and protected resurface strongly in adolescent dating relationships. accommodating themselves to sexually-based intimate relationships requires relinquishing some autonomy for both boys and girls, though the balance is not likely to favour the girl child, who is more apt to be socialized towards deference and accommodation to the wants and needs of others. toward a definition of violence violence is explained and understood in diverse ways. most commonly, violence is thought of in terms of physical actions that result in tangible harm to another. but this conceptualization overlooks an important aspect of violence that has increasingly gained acceptance: psychological harm is a more insidious form of violence (canadian panel on violence against women, 1993). its inclusion permits a more comprehensive and exacting gender analysis of everyday violence. it allows us to understand violence as a mechanism used to distribute and maintain power imbalances in society. these power imbalances are predicated on social relationships that channel oppression, and ultimately serve to sustain a social order based on dominant/submissive roles. laws, policies, and other formal repositories of entrenched traditions normatively sanction these relationships. control is gained by depersonalizing people who are categorized as different or as having less value. personal traits and aspects of social identity such as gender, race, or class, become tools for identifying this difference. when this control of individuals or social institutions becomes invested in specific groups, members of these groups have greater access to power and privilege. the prestige and status of elite group membership also conveys greater potential to influence marginalized groups. an important element for understanding how inequality is structurally embedded is to consider how less powerful groups must interact with the dominant group. this shaping of the social arena induces less powerful groups to cooperate with acts that may be harmful to them individually and collectively, but they also internalize valuations of themselves and their communities as inferior. this is the subtlest form of violence in society. it is also seamlessly woven into social and institutional structures and is thus less likely to be penalized, save in situations explicitly resulting in harm. everyday violence in the lives of girls and young women takes a myriad of forms, including all manifestations of physical, emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse. in recent decades a new category of abuse, the impact of children witnessing violence (jaffe, wolfe, & wilson, 1990), demonstrates that children can be victimized in indirect ways. further, responses to various forms of violence are gender-specific (jiwani, 1998). what all of these forms of violence have in common is that they serve to undermine the recipient’s sense of self. reinforcing a sense 139 of powerlessness that limits functioning in both the private and public realms enhances this corrosive effect. violence reflects an abuse of a power relationship, which for children, often stems from their age and size relative to the perpetrator, and for girls, stems from the combined vulnerabilities of age, gender, and social situation. our definition of violence recognizes the hierarchical nature of canadian society. it is grounded in the findings of the first phase of our national project on violence prevention for the girl child (jiwani & brown, 1999). in essence, this definition highlights the power imbalances that lead to violence and is predicated on conceptualizing violence as spanning a continuum of attitudes, beliefs, and actions (see also kelly, 1998). thus, violence is: …the construction of difference and otherness; it entails inferiorizing or devaluing the “other.” violence is further understood as the mechanism by which individuals or groups vie for, and/or sustain, a position of power in hierarchical structures defined by patriarchal values (as defined at the alliance of five research centres on violence meeting, winnipeg, 2001, as cited in berman & jiwani, 2002, p. 4). the current research in recognition of the reality that girls in canada routinely encounter subtle and explicit forms of violence, researchers from the alliance of five research centres on violence undertook a national research study. one purpose of this project was to interrogate and challenge the binary construction which positions the west as a superior, altruistic, and progressive entity. by examining the situation of the girl child in canada, we have deconstructed the universality of the categories of “children and youth”. moreover, we have challenged the denial and trivialization of gender-based violence as it affects and influences the safety and well-being of canadian girls and young women. our investigation sought to demonstrate that “the third world” exists in the so-called “first world” (amos & parmar, 1984; mohanty, 1991). other objectives of this study were: to explicate the diverse ways in which girls are socialized to expect violence in their lives; to examine how social policies, legislation, and institutions alleviate, or perpetuate, the problems faced by this population; to explore dimensions and manifestations of the intersections between systemic forms of violence, such as racism and sexism, and violence occurring within intimate/familial relationships; and lastly, to propose constructive, meaningful strategies for implementing policy and programming changes geared to prevent gendered violence and to promote egalitarian interactions in the lives of girls. theoretical and conceptual underpinnings the theoretical and methodological perspectives derived from the principles of feminist theory and participatory action research guided the conceptualization and implementation of this project. assumptions upon which this work are based include: that girls and young women are socialized to expect violence in their everyday lives; that, as a result of their socialization, violence becomes “normalized” for girls; that violence occurs 140 in both subtle and explicit ways including psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual; and that girls from all socio-economic, racial, geographic, and cultural groups are affected by the multiple forms of violence, and experience it differently. implicit in these assumptions, given the pervasive and insidious nature of many forms of violence, all girls are considered to be vulnerable and “at risk” when addressing the topic of violence. during the first phase of this research, each of the five centres carried out parallel research activities in our own communities. more specifically, we compiled an inventory of existing programs and services available to girls and young women, reviewed the literature on specific issues pertaining to violence, and lastly, conducted focus groups with service providers as well as girls and young women across the country. overall findings from the first phase of the study revealed that girls are rarely considered to merit special attention. rather, girls are treated monolithically, and tend to be collapsed within the gender-neutral category of “children and youth”. additional findings revealed that: (a) there are few violence prevention initiatives in place; (b) existing initiatives are underfunded, sporadic, and intermittent; (c) there is a lack of program coordination and integration with existing services; (d) very few programs are gender specific despite the need and demonstrated success of such programs; and, (e) the dichotomy between violence prevention and intervention is illusory. one consequence of this dualistic assumption, however, is that there is rarely sufficient money for intervention and, at best, sporadic funding for prevention. while effective programs need to be gender-specific to address the differential outcomes of violence for girls and boys, the quality and quantity of regional programs designed to address violence in the lives of girls is relatively inconsistent. with the possible exception of québec, effective programs are scarce and, for the most part, deal with the issue of violence in a gender-neutral manner. the differential gender role socialization of girls and boys needs to be recognized and used as a point of departure for the development of policies, programs, and legislation (jiwani, 1998). during the second phase of this project, each of the centres studied a particular aspect or manifestation of gender-based violence in the lives of girls and/or programmatic aspects of violence prevention, legislation, and policies. this approach was consistent with our collaborative practice and was also sensitive to regional needs. the centre for research on violence against women and children in london, ontario, focused on the sexual harassment of girls and young women. the british columbia/yukon freda centre for research on violence against women and children examined issues contributing to the vulnerabilities of immigrant and refugee girls from racialized communities and the policies that influence their access to services and sense of belonging. the resolve tri-provincial network (alberta, manitoba, and saskatchewan) focused on the sexual exploitation of girls and the policies and programs impacting on them. the muriel mcqueen fergusson centre for research on family violence (new brunswick) and the centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la violence familiale et la violence faite aux femmes (criviff) in québec, each focused on programmatic aspects of violence prevention and the promotion of egalitarian interactions between genders, and in relation to the girl child. cri-viff undertook an evaluation of the factors that contribute to the diffusion and implementation of effective anti-violence programs, while the muriel mcqueen fergusson centre focused on 141 examples of successful interventions that highlighted the relative merits and limitations of gender-separate versus gender-integrated anti-violence programs. research methodology from a feminist perspective, knowledge is not something that is produced in a vacuum by a sort of “pure” intellectual process. instead, knowledge is value-laden and shaped by historical, social, political, gender, and economic conditions (berman, ford-gilboe, & campbell, 1998; habermas, 1971; guba & lincoln, 1994). ideologies, taken-for-granted assumptions, and values that usually remain hidden and unquestioned, create a social structure that serves to oppress particular groups by limiting available options. principles underlying feminist research (acker, barry, & esseveld, 1991; fonow & cook, 1991; harding, 1987) that inform this study are: (a) the research process is based on valuing the experiences of girls and young women from their own perspective, and challenging taken-forgranted assumptions and stereotypes; (b) the inclusion of a diversity of girls’ and women’s experiences; (c) reflexivity in the research process, allowing both investigators and participants the opportunity to reflect on the content and process of the study and to share these reflections through dialogue; and d) knowledge produced by the research has the potential to foster change in the participants, in the community, or both. the notion of research as praxis, or the combination of research and action, is a basic tenet. a critical/feminist “agenda”, then, focuses on creating knowledge that has the potential to produce change through personal or group empowerment, alterations in social systems, or a combination of these. the present research is framed within this paradigm, with particular reference to the tradition of participatory action research (par). however, the emphasis on par varied among the centres and was contingent upon the specificity of the topic of investigation and the contextual factors operative in each of the different regions: some centres concentrated their efforts on the analysis of specific policies and legislation, while others focused on evaluating programs, and still others combined policy and narrative analysis based on the lived realities of girls and young women. similarly, the levels of analysis differed depending on the nature and subject of the investigation: some centres framed their investigations with particular reference to international policies and obligations, while others focused on provincial legislation and local policies. findings the results of these investigations demonstrate that violence operates at numerous levels spanning the continuum from individual lived realities to systemic institutional structures. further, violence is discursively represented in strategic omissions and gender-neutral perspectives embedded in policies, programs, and legislation. although a detailed presentation of the findings from each centre is beyond the scope of this chapter, we present some of the overarching theoretical, programmatic, and policy considerations below. 142 doing research from the ground up employing a par approach led to privileging the voices and experiences of girls and young women. their experiences inform our understanding of the ways in which policies and legislation, wittingly and unwittingly, shape their lives. their stories poignantly communicate the erosion of self that is an outcome of violence, whether that violence is orchestrated in a series of daily acts or instigated in a single horrific incident. moreover, their stories tell us about the absence of any kind of effective recourse. thus, for girls who experience everyday sexual harassment or everyday racism, or a combination thereof, there are few places to turn to for assistance and support. this is not to imply that these girls are simply “victims”. on the contrary, their experiences reveal a form of agency that is both highly creative and self-sustaining. nevertheless, institutions need to support these efforts, for example, by providing “safe spaces” and being vigilant about the differential impact of policies and programs. failure to do so results in the normalization and embeddedness of these forms of violence. the gendered nature of socialization suggests the ways in which social institutions (e.g., schools, family, laws, and media) produce and reproduce the girl child. a common concern articulated by the girls in our research dealt with the nature of “fitting in”. implicit in this concern was a normatively grounded acceptance of what they were fitting in to. most commonly, taken-for-granted knowledge referred to internalized standards of femininity, and conformity. it is apparent that fitting into something requires prior knowledge of it; dominant institutions in society transmit such knowledge both subtly and explicitly, begging the question of whose interests are served by the perpetuation of these complex interwoven forms of oppression. keeping girls in their place maintains the existing power and privilege hierarchies, entrenching and perpetuating the patriarchal order most overtly recognizable in dominant structures of power. gender, as anthias and yuval-davis (1992) among others have noted, is used to signify boundaries between groups. gender also becomes a contested site of multiple discourses regarding sexuality, ethnic group membership, and traditionalism versus modernism/westernization discourses (handa, 1997). for effective change to occur, it is imperative that institutional sites for intervention be defined and appropriate resources be harnessed toward implementation. factors that influence the identity formation of girls as girls, as racialized and sexualized “others”, and as disabled, need to be understood and recognized as critical points of departure for the development of equitable policies and programs. basic needs such as food, shelter, and protection from violence constitute fundamental rights for all girls. as structural needs, they are key to identity formation. similarly, peer group and family supports are integral to the development of a positive and healthy identity. they contribute to a sense of belonging that, in turn, reduces alienation and marginalization. yet, as our current research demonstrates, these fundamental human rights and supports are not always available to the canadian girl child. gender-neutral policies and legislation canada is a signatory to many international conventions, accords, declarations, and protocols. while many of these differ, they share a common commitment to the protection of human rights and the enjoyment of civil liberties. our analysis reveals a significant disparity 143 between these commitments as articulated in the international arena and the lived reality of canadian girls and young women. the commitment toward gathering gender-specific data remains of significant concern despite international obligations. while there have been progressive attempts to gather such data, only in rare situations are such data utilized for social policy formation. for example, available statistics clearly demonstrate the heightened risk and vulnerability of aboriginal girls. the study conducted by the resolve tri-provincial network, and reported by ursel (2001, 2006), further demonstrates the factors that contribute to their marginalization and sexual exploitation. nevertheless, current legislation and policies have failed to factor this reality into programs and policies. similarly, while there is a paucity of information relating specifically to immigrant and refugee girls, there is nonetheless widespread recognition at the international level and among researchers regarding the heightened vulnerability of this population. yet again, existing policies and programs do not reflect this recognition, nor do they embrace an intersectional analysis of the multiple forms of oppression that impact on the lives of these girls and young women. further, it had been established that gender-sensitive violence prevention programming is necessary, but few such programs have been developed or monitored for efficacy. significant exceptions are located in ontario and in new brunswick (cameron, 2004). in part, this failure to address the specificities and risk factors shaping the lives of canadian girls is rooted in a current climate of backlash. within this context, it is “safer” to collapse gender, race, and class differences within the categories of “children” and “youth”. under the guise of “the best interests of the child”, federal, provincial, and territorial governments (albeit not uniformly) embrace legislation and policies that seemingly protect all children. while this appears to be in compliance with the united nations convention on the rights of the child, the focus on the girl child, as outlined in the beijing platform for action, is rarely incorporated into policies and legislation. one exception appears to be québec where the political climate surrounding the issues of youth protection laws, sexual aggression, dating violence, and children who witness violence, has resulted in a policy environment that more explicitly recognizes the differential impact of violence on girls and boys. nevertheless, the specific needs of the girl child are consistently omitted in canada’s federal, provincial, and municipal policies and programs. instead, part of the discourse of backlash seems to be an emphasis on the supposed gender equality of girls and boys, women and men. this has resulted in a preoccupation with the supposed increase in aggression of girls. in this respect, girls are seen to have achieved gender parity in the realm of their potential to participate in violence. however, despite the seemingly benevolent intentions of protecting children, it is interesting to note the sentiments and rationale underpinning some of the existing policies and legislation. the research conducted by the resolve centre addressed the issue of prostitution and the sexual exploitation of girls and young women. this research also analyzed the impact of the secure care act (british columbia) and the protection of children in prostitution (pchip) (alberta). as the resolve research indicates, governments seem to be most committed to protecting these rights in those instances where interventions are mandated by the criminal justice system; in other words, where laws have been broken. where interventions seem to be most preventive or appropriate, but where no legal infractions have occurred, then these 144 interventions rest largely on the shoulders of underfunded non-governmental organizations (ngos) and advocacy groups: from a policy perspective there is a conundrum: the category of children most in need of services are [sic] for the most part children “on the run” from “controlling” agencies, which are the agencies most securely funded to provide the services. thus the evolution of securely funded programs with a mandate to protect child sexual abuse victims may have the unintended effect of frightening these children/youth away because of their fear of, or aversion to the “control” components of these services (busby et al., 2002, p. 108). this pattern is particularly apparent in the subtle, yet pervasive, effects of sexual harassment. this issue was the focus of the research conducted by the centre in london, ontario (berman, straatman, hunt, izumi, & macquarrie, 2002). a key finding from this research was the inefficacy of current policies in dealing with the continuum of everyday violence and the limitations of prevailing gender-neutral programming and policies. as the ontario centre’s research amply demonstrated, sexual harassment is supported and sustained in a multitude of ways, with long-term deleterious physical and emotional effects that include – but are not limited to – eating disorders, suicidal ideation, marginalization, and addictions. the loss of self that is an outcome of the constant and insidious forms of sexual harassment, often labelled as teasing and bullying, is profound. while most schools and communities have various “zero tolerance” policies intended to deal with these subtle forms of violence, these policies tend to embrace a gender-neutral and minimizing perspective. issues regarding race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are negated and/or trivialized. nevertheless, in the context of scarce programming, these services provide a limited and needed form of intervention. however, they are underfunded, heavily reliant on volunteer labour, and sporadic. a similar trend is evident in the research conducted by the british columbia/yukon freda centre where the research focus was on gender racialization, with particular emphasis on racism as a form of violence. the freda centre’s research, framed within the context of international, national, and provincial policies affecting the girl child, highlighted a multitude of inadequacies and program and policy inconsistencies. an important contribution of the freda centre’s research was an articulation of definitions of violence as understood by young women and girls of colour from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. of particular note is their identification of racism as the principal form of violence they encounter: intimate forms of violence, such as sexism and classism, were background structural issues simply taken for granted. anti-violence school policies often do not deal with racism. rather, racism is simply articulated in the school context as anti-tolerance to multiculturalism. the latter is most obviously manifested and celebrated as an appreciation of cultural differences, provided these differences do not spill over the confines of safe topics such as food, dress, and dance. as per the critique of policies and legislation articulated in the research conducted by the resolve tri-provincial network and the british columbia/yukon freda centre, the gaps between existing policies, legislation, and programs versus the international obligations ratified by canada, offer glaring examples of inequities, and highlight the disjuncture between rhetoric 145 and reality (cameron, 2001). such disjuncture is most obvious in areas of legislation that potentially violate the charter rights of the girl child. programmatic considerations the disparity between publicly, internationally stated commitments and the actual reality of girls and young women in canada is highly surprising in one sense given the extensive groundwork conducted by community organizations, advocates, and researchers dealing with gender-based violence over the last few decades. as the research of centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la violence familiale et la violence faite aux femmes (cri-viff) and the muriel mcqueen fergusson centre reveals, there are numerous and frequently irreconcilable factors involved in the adoption and implementation of effective gender-based anti-violence programs. critical amongst these are issues of core funding, political commitment, and the involvement of all stakeholders. the linkage model identified by cri-viff is highly congruent with the participatory action research paradigm used by our centres, as well as by organizations worldwide. strategies to insure safe spaces for girls to engage in their own violence prevention initiatives were suggested as well by the research of the muriel mcqueen fergusson research center in new brunswick (cameron, normandeau, & mckay, 2003). further, as the resolve tri-provincial network’s research reveals, communities most affected by an issue are more likely to utilize programs and services that are perceived to be less coercive and more flexible. the muriel mcqueen fergusson centre’s contribution also underscores the necessity of involving communities in the planning and implementation of successful programs (cameron & creating peaceful learning environments team, 2002). more pertinently, the new brunswick centre’s research demonstrates the imperatives of conducting both gender-specific and gender-integrated programming, provided these are done with the full recognition of the gendered nature of violence and the unique concerns influencing girls and young women (cameron, 2004). despite such positive evidence, the par paradigm, with its emphasis on the involvement and mobilization of community partners, has tended to be accorded little legitimacy within the dominant research, funding, and policy-making spheres. it is refreshing, however, to notice a growing acceptance of this approach, especially within government. conclusion the alliance of five research centres on violence is currently engaged in an intensive process of dissemination of our research findings. this process includes dialogue, discussion, and analysis with our community partners and relevant stakeholders regarding the recommendations developed. regional roundtables, invitational conferences, and community forums have been held across canada and in ottawa. consistent with the participatory nature of this research, the dissemination strategies include sharing and discussing what we have learned with those who are most directly affected, namely the girls and young women who have so generously and poignantly shared their stories, their fears, their hopes, and their dreams for violence-free lives. 146 while each centre has focused on a different aspect of violence in girls’ lives, they collectively and conclusively represent the current shortcomings of policies and programs pertaining to the lives of girls and young women who are differently situated. more specifically, this research reveals the urgent need to provide solidly funded programs and services to ameliorate the condition of girls, and to fulfill the societal obligation of protecting them from violence. awareness, then, of the different faces and compounding effects of interlocking and intersecting forms of violence must be the point of departure for any further investigation, policy formation, and program implementation. we clearly cannot wait until the violence that exists escalates into lethal forms before intervention is made possible or mandated. 147 references 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(1997). the female offender: girls, women, & crime. thousand oaks, ca: sage. fonow, m., & cook, j. (eds.). (1991). beyond methodology: feminist scholarship as lived research. bloomington, in: indiana university press. guba, e., & lincoln, y. (1994). competing paradigms in qualitative research. in n. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-117). thousand oaks, ca: sage. habermas, j. (1971). knowledge and human interests (j. j. shapiro, trans.). boston: beacon press. handa, a. (1997). caught between omissions: exploring “culture conflict” among second generation south asian women in canada (doctoral dissertation). toronto: university of toronto, graduate department of sociology and education. harding, s. (1987). is there a feminist method? in s. harding (ed.), feminism and methodology (introduction, pp. 1-14). bloomington, in: indiana university press. hoskins, m. l., & artz, s. (2004). working relationally with girls: complex lives – complex identities. binghamton, ny: haworth press. jackson, m. a. (2004). race, gender, and aggression: the impact of sociocultural factors on girls. in m. m. moretti, c. l. odgers, & m. a. jackson (eds.), girls and aggression: contributing factors and intervention principles (pp. 85-99). new york: academic press. jaffe, p. g., wolfe, d. a., & wilson, s. k. (1990). children of battered women. newbury park, ca: sage publications. jiwani, y. (1998). violence against marginalized girls: a review of the current literature. vancouver, bc: freda. 149 jiwani, y., & brown, s. m. (1999). trafficking and sexual exploitation of girls and young women. vancouver, bc: freda. kelly, j. (1998). under the gaze: learning to be black in white society. halifax, ns: fernwood publishing. mcivor, s. d., & nahanee, t. a. (1998). aboriginal women: invisible victims of violence. in k. bonnycastle & g. s. rigakos (eds.), unsettling truths: battered women, policy, politics, and contemporary research in canada (pp. 63-69). vancouver, bc: collective press. moffitt, t. e., caspi, a., rutter, m., & silva, p. a. (2001). sex differences in antisocial behaviour: conduct disorder, delinquency, and violence in the dunedin longitudinal study. new york: cambridge university press. mohanty, c. (1991). under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. in c. t. mohanty, a. russo, & l. torres (eds.), third world women and the politics of feminism (pp. 51-80). bloomington and indianapolis, in: indiana university press. moretti, m. m., odgers, c. l., & jackson, m. a. (2004). girls and aggression: a point of departure. in m. m. moretti, c. l. odgers, & m. a. jackson (eds.), girls and aggression: contributing factors and intervention principles (pp. 1-5). new york: academic press. pepler, d. j., madsen, k. c., webster, c. d., & levene, k. s. (eds.). (2005). the development and treatment of girlhood aggression. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. randall, m., & haskell, l. (2000). gender analysis, inequality, and violence: the lives of girls. unpublished manuscript. razack, s. (1998). looking white people in the eye: gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. toronto: university of toronto press. rodgers, k. (1994). wife assault: the findings of a national survey. juristat, 14(9). ottawa: canadian centre for justice statistics, statistics canada. statistics canada. (2000). family violence in canada: a statistical profile, 2000. ottawa: canadian centre for justice statistics. underwood, m. k. (2003). social aggression among girls. new york: guilford. united nations division for the advancement of women. (1995, september). fourth world conference on women: beijing declaration and platform for action (paragraphs 259 285 on the girl child). retrieved march 25, 2010, from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/girl.htm http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/girl.htm� 150 ursel, j. (february 2001). report on domestic violence policies and their impact on aboriginal people. submission to aboriginal justice implementation commission. winnipeg, mn: university of manitoba. ursel, j. (2006). over policed and under protected: a question of justice for aboriginal women. in m. hampton & n. gerrard (eds.), intimate partner violence: reflections on experience, theory and policy (pp. 80-89). toronto: cormorant press. 151 appendix introduction to recommendations the recommendations we present here are a “work in progress”. some of these are targeted to particular ministries or sectors of society. others are more general in nature. while we acknowledge that some of our recommendations are already being enacted at the local, provincial, or federal level, most are not. collectively, they reflect our shared vision of what we hope, and believe, is possible. the most far-reaching recommendation we make concerns the need for the inclusion and recognition of the girl child in official policies, programs, and legislation. the implementation of this recommendation requires a fundamental recognition of the specificities of the gendered nature of violence, particularly as it intersects with age, race, class, ability, and sexual orientation. hence, an understanding of the intersectional and interlocking character of violence should provide the framework for the development of policies, programs, and legislation. more importantly, there is a desperate need to incorporate an analysis of violence that takes into consideration the notion of a continuum of violent attitudes, behaviours, and practices. it is not enough to simply identify violence as occurring in the more extreme situations of murder, rape, and property crimes, or to permit interventions in the form of apprehensions and confinements when girls and young women transgress normative laws or moral boundaries. there are clearly antecedent roots of violence that need to be identified, as they provide sites for effective and early intervention. the following recommendations outline the necessity for supporting, through funding and legitimacy, ground-up, community-based and community-driven programs and initiatives that are clearly tailored toward prevention and intervention. our recommendations reflect what we believe is necessary for the reduction and elimination of violence in the lives of girls and the promotion of egalitarian interactions between genders. the interventions we propose should occur in situations of normalized and subtle forms of violence, as well as in its more extreme manifestations. general recommendations • that the gendered nature of violence be fully recognized with awareness of the multiple ways in which violence manifests and impacts on the lives of girls and young women. • that the legitimate status of the girl child be recognized and named in the public realm, and that the social obligations which arise from her gendered experiences of violence be clearly stated. • that additional funding resources that reach out to the girl child be provided rather than waiting for her to overcome internal and external obstacles to reach out to the system.  not all forms of violence land on the radar screen of the criminal justice system. nor is it typical for the girl child to reach out to parents, teachers, or even the health care system unless encountering more extreme forms of violence. • that programs and policies provide emotional, cognitive, and physical spaces that enable the girl child to engage in healthy relationships and give voice to the full range of her thoughts, feelings, and experiences. 152 • that the context of sexuality and attitudes about male and female roles generally, as well as the societal conceptualization and sexualization of youth, be acknowledged as contributing factors to violence and sexual exploitation. recommendations for governments • that the federal, provincial, and territorial governments cooperate to implement working groups comprising front line service providers, researchers, advocates, policy-makers, and legislators. these working groups should also be mandated to monitor compliance and work toward the harmonization of domestic policies and legislation so that they are in alignment with canada’s international obligations. • that the constitutional divide between federal ratification and provincial implementation of treaties be eliminated. the first step is to emphasize that this division is a violation of the spirit of the treaties, and include this information in all research which deals with international human rights instruments. • that popular education tools about women’s equality rights and international human rights instruments be developed and disseminated for groups seeking equality on behalf of women and girls. • that the federal government play a direct role in promoting secure funding for national and local ngos by utilizing their 3-year pilot project funds to lever a greater commitment on the part of provincial governments toward the maintenance of services demonstrated to be effective.  and that the federal government fund studies required to demonstrate the effectiveness of these programs. • that governments sponsor national and regional workshops and conferences to assist service providers to share and develop best practices in the field. • that governments critically evaluate and amend legislation such as the provision to obtain parental/guardian consent for minors to access services and assistance. • that governments allocate a percentage of their “housing for the homeless” funds specifically to street youth and children and youth at risk for involvement in prostitution.  shelter services and safe homes are desperately needed in many communities. • that governments allocate enriched funding for employment readiness and employment training courses for children and youth exploited through prostitution, immigrant and refugee youth, and those marginalized by virtue of disability, sexuality, and class. • that governments provide additional funding and support to immigrant and refugee girls and their families. • that governments implement their commitment to publicize and communicate to the canadian people the nature and extent of their international obligations.  these obligations should be contextualized within the current framework of federal, provincial, and territorial responsibilities. • that governments provide basic services such as food, shelter, clothing, and safety for girls and young women who have experienced violence or who are at risk of experiencing such violence. 153 • that governments provide stable and adequate funding to community organizations to facilitate the provision of such basic necessities as food, shelter, clothing, and, above all, safety to girls and young women. • that governments establish secure funding for organizations that cater specifically to the wide-ranging needs of girls and young women.  that funding for such organizations not be vulnerable to the “political winds of change”. • that there be improved methods of consultation with governments about canada’s international positions. • that ngos be supported to develop and disseminate evaluation tools (such as shadow reports and report cards) to be submitted to government and the united nations during canada’s reporting periods. • that international human rights law and norms be used to interpret the charter and other domestic laws in domestic equality litigation. this should include the conventions themselves, general recommendations of relevant committees, concluding remarks of relevant committees on canada’s reports under conventions, and any documented discussion on canada’s reports between canada and the relevant committee. recommendations for research • that governments promote and fund research that specifically outlines the health sequelae of different forms of violence.  this includes research that focuses on the impact of systemic forms of violence such as racism, ableism, sexuality, and experiences of marginalization. • that governments promote and fund gender-based research that centres the voices of girls, and their interaction with adult caregivers and service providers. • that research funded by governments embody a critical anti-racist perspective in keeping with the intent of such international instruments as the convention for the elimination of racial discrimination. • that research be conducted in a feminist participatory action framework and research partners make every effort to disseminate the results in a community-friendly fashion which simultaneously inspires community action. • that non-traditional forms of research be encouraged, particularly those that involve girls and young women as full partners in all phases of the research process.  priority should be placed on those projects that include girls and young women from diverse and marginalized communities. • that community organizations be encouraged and provided full recognition and compensation for their partnership in all phases of the research process. • that qualitative research be encouraged to examine the impact of specific legislation and programs on the immigrant and refugee girl child. recommendations for education • that adequate funding be provided for the development, assessment, and dissemination of effective violence prevention and intervention programs and strategies. 154  in recognition of the intersectionality of gendered violence and racism, such programs and strategies should be required to incorporate an anti-racism, antioppression framework. • that violence prevention/intervention programs be fully institutionalized in schools by incorporating them into the mandates of various provincial ministries of education and by integrating them into the curricula as compulsory components.  that funding for such prevention/intervention programs include compensation for a coordinator/facilitator. • that schools be supported to implement and evaluate phases of violence prevention/intervention programming so as to ensure their continual refinement and effectiveness. • that school curricula reflect culturally diverse perspectives and information and that these be framed within an anti-racism paradigm. • that testing methods used within schools be free of cultural and gender bias. • that the participation of all girls, and most especially marginalized girls, be encouraged in work co-op programs, mentoring, and curriculum development. • that teacher training and education about racism, and its fundamental link with the perpetuation of gendered violence, be required.  such training extends to an awareness and appreciation of the potentially deleterious effects of discrimination on academic performance and general behaviour. • that the development and sustainability of peer mentoring programs for immigrant/refugee girls from racialized communities be fostered. • that training to school personnel be provided in order for them to be able to respond to everyday instances of racism and sexism. • that school counsellors be trained within an anti-racism paradigm so that their services are not merely cultural prescriptions but are based on a recognition of unequal power relations and social hierarchies extant in society. • that media literacy courses be made a mandatory component of school curricula and that initiatives toward this end be encouraged and funded within the non-profit sector and the private sector of media organizations.  that such initiatives enable girls and young women, especially those from racialized communities, to tell their own stories. • that girls and young women be taught strategies to challenge and change harmful behaviour that they encounter, and that such knowledge be a critical component of any initiative. these strategies will focus on individually and collectively empowering girls and young women, while simultaneously eliminating any structural propensity for victim blaming. such knowledge will be a critical component of any initiative. • that canadians be educated on the extreme poverty levels of immigrant and refugee families and visible minority groups generally. that such education emphasize that this is the product of international and domestic institutionalized racism. • that immigrant and refugee and visible minority youth be educated on their rights under the various provincial and the federal human rights acts. it is imperative that these youth be equipped to recognize when racism is a factor is hiring, and use their legislated recourse to address the wrongdoing. 155 • that schools develop comprehensive strategies to increase awareness of human rights, especially children’s rights. recommendations for health service providers • that health professionals fully recognize violence as a critical determinant of health.  that health services respond to the many and varied effects of the entire spectrum of violence. • that health care providers recognize that the multitude of health problems experienced by girls are often the result of exposure to, and experiences of, violence. • that health care providers be educated to elicit and respond to the particular vulnerabilities of girls and young women. • that there be provision for more generalized health services for sexually exploited girls and young women as the health impacts of violence are often ill-defined. • that health care service providers receive training and education regarding the impacts of marginalization and the pernicious effects of subtle and systemic forms of violence. • that “one stop” health care facilities which provide a variety of services addressing different health issues for girls and young women be established with their full participation. • that consent requirements be waived in situations where they might impede the delivery of, and access to, health care services for girls and young women. • that mandatory reporting requirements not interfere with access to health services for young women and girls who are experiencing violence. • that violence and gender inequality be included as integral topics of education and communication in all health prevention and promotion initiatives. • that there be a consistent delivery of health care services to all marginalized girls and young women and that this be predicated on principles of universal access without regard to the official status or age of this population. recommendations for media • that a serious attempt be made to reflect a more representative portrayal of racialized communities and perspectives in the canadian mass media, as per canada’s international obligations, domestic policies, and legislation. • that educational, consciousness-raising manuals, videos, cd-roms, and other forms of programming and educational material be developed and be accessible to teachers, employers, and those who are interacting with girls and young women. • that girls and young women be involved in the production and dissemination of their own forms of media, and that the relevant agencies be encouraged to distribute work that reflects their concerns and realities. • that governments at all levels be encouraged to meet our obligations under international law regarding children’s exposure to harmful media content. 156 recommendations for programs and service delivery • that immigrant settlement services be provided with funding to hire cultural liaison workers and additional services for settlement in order to reduce the isolation of girls and their families. • that counsellors and others who are familiar with different cultural traditions be hired within schools and service organizations.  that such counsellors be trained within an anti-racism paradigm so that their services are not merely cultural. • that substance abuse/addiction be formally recognized as a co-determinant with other forms of violence, and most especially sexual exploitation. • that services aimed at the prevention of violence in the lives of girls be responsive to those less visible and more subtle, yet nevertheless real, needs of girls and young women who have experienced violence in its many forms.  that such services take advantage of the window of opportunity that opens up when girls seek out voluntary services on their own initiative rather than being coerced to participate in the latter as a result of state intervention. • that securely funded programs with a mandate to provide services to girls exposed to violence be required not to exert a control and coercive orientation.  that such programs have a voluntary character that facilitates choice on the part of girls and young women. • that generic and specialized services for girls who have experienced violence be available and accessible.  that services be designed to respond to the range of outcomes corresponding to the continuum of violence. • that girls be given safe gender-segregated opportunities to discuss violence in their lives. • that interventions be developed that capture the positive attention of boys who can be negatively affected by programming that is not appropriate to their stage of awareness. • that the girl child be taught strategies of healthy resistance.  that health-seeking behaviours which represent resistance to oppressive circumstances be redefined as indicators of physical and emotional well-being. • that a feminist process evaluation of the programs that are currently in place, and those being initiated, be encouraged. • that economically restricted rural and isolated communities be assisted to develop human and other resources necessary to implement action and change. violence prevention and the canadian girl child a social and historical context of the girl child in canada the problem of gender neutrality differential gender-based socialization toward a definition of violence the current research theoretical and conceptual underpinnings research methodology findings doing research from the ground up gender-neutral policies and legislation programmatic considerations conclusion appendix introduction to recommendations general recommendations recommendations for governments recommendations for research recommendations for education recommendations for health service providers recommendations for media recommendations for programs and service delivery from the zone of risk to the zone of resilience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 17 from the zone of risk to the zone of resilience: protecting the resilience of children and practitioners in argentina, canada, and ireland dermot hurley, liliana alvarez, and helen buckley abstract: this three-site investigation conducted in argentina, canada, and ireland, examines the concept of resilience within specific socio-cultural contexts of child protection practice. the study seeks to understand how child protection workers (cpws) construct and utilize the concept of resilience and how they enable resilient capacities in children and families. cpws were encouraged to share client narratives of resilience and to reflect on how these narratives impact them in working with clients. the paper explores how working with resilient clients helps foster resilience to compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress in cpws through a process of shared or vicarious resilience. lastly, the study questions the role of child protection agencies in protecting the resilience of the worker. resilience in this context may be defined as the capacity to sustain professional competence and commitment under conditions of adversity. a key finding in the study is the critical role of resilient teams in sustaining the resilience of the cpw. the rationale for this study is based on the assumption that cpws have to develop the capacity for resilience and be able to sustain their own resilience in order to be effective in their work. knowing how child protection workers can remain resilient and committed to children is of great interest to social workers and other professionals involved in this work. keywords: resilience, child protection, vicarious resilience, resilient team culture dermot hurley, msw, rsw is an associate professor in the school of social work, king’s university college, university of western ontario, 266 epworth avenue, london, ontario, canada, n6a 2m3. e-mail: dhurley2@uwo.ca liliana alvarez is the head of forensic psychology at uces (universidad de ciencias empresariales y sociales), buenos aires, argentina. helen buckley, ph.d. is an associate professor, school of social work and social policy, trinity college, dublin, ireland. e-mail: hbuckley@tcd.ie mailto:dhurley2@uwo.ca mailto:hbuckley@tcd.ie international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 18 for humans the space of a crack is enough to flourish. – ernesto sábado resilience and child protection there is a widely held view that resilience involves a complex interaction of individual and relational characteristics, personal agency, environmental factors, and cultural contexts (werner & smith, 1992; masten & coatsworth, 1998; luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000; ungar, 2004a; rutter, 2007). resilience focuses on the question of how people cope with hardship and develop competence under stress and has been defined as “the capacity to face adversity and be strengthened by it” (melillo, suarez ojeda, & rodriquez, 2004, p. 76). similarly, a leading researcher in the field suggests that, “resistance to environmental hazards may come from exposure to risks in controlled circumstances rather than avoidance of risk” (rutter, 2007, p. 208). in a thorough review of resilience research and practice, ann masten notes a trend away from deficit toward competence-based models of resilience practice and suggests that efforts to promote resilience have in common a focus on positive indicators of adaptation, risk moderators, social development, and the quality of relationships (masten, 2011). others suggest that a greater understanding of the social ecological roots of positive development is essential in promoting resilience (ungar, 2011). this is particularly important in working with youth and families in the field of child protection where a high rate of burnout, compassion fatigue, and attrition has been consistently reported (jayaratne, chess & kunkel, 1986; reagh, 1994; anderson, 2000; conrad & keller-guenther, 2006; ellett, ellis, westbrook, & dews, 2007). resilience research has kindled efforts to integrate resilience concepts into findings and has had an impact on child protection practice that is evident in the number of studies offering various strategies to promote resilience in children at risk (ungar, 2004b; flynn, dudding, & barber, 2006; masten, 2006). the goal of these programs is to minimize risk factors that negatively affect children’s development and increase positive adaptation through resilienceenhancing interventions. researchers have emphasized the importance of promoting resilient capacities in children in a variety of ways, including: mentoring talents and skills (gilligan, 2000); strengthening social, relational, educational, and personal assets (daniel & wassell, 2002; daniel, 2006); fostering resilience through art, dance, and music (pintat, 2006); specialized programs for aboriginal youth in care (filbert & flynn, 2010). common to these approaches is the application of resilience research toward enhancing psycho-social functioning in children and youth. in addition to the above approaches, researchers strongly emphasize the importance of multilevel, coordinated, continuous, and user negotiated services in promoting resilience (ungar, liebenberg, & ikeda, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 19 notwithstanding various attempts to promote resilience in child protection, there is some vagueness and lack of clarity in the application of resilience concepts, suggesting that resilience is not fully articulated within the field of child protection. mcmurray, connolly, preston-shoot, and wigley (2008) looked at social workers’ understanding and use of resilient concepts in child protection practice in the united kingdom and found that cpws had difficulty conceptualizing resilience and linking the concept to child protection (cp) practice. other researchers similarly identified a lack of knowledge of resilience theory among social work professionals, and noted the importance of integrating resilience concepts into assessment and intervention practice (daniel, 2006). a debate continues among researchers about the specific mechanisms that contribute to resilience in vulnerable children, which prompts the question about how resilience is understood by cpws and how they identify and support resilience in their clients. a recent systematic literature review looked at individual and organizational factors associated with resilience and burnout in child protection workers and identified a combination of personal development, coping styles, organizational culture, quality of training, supervisory support, and workload, as critical factors in sustaining workers’ resilience (mcfadden, campbell, & taylor, 2014). high rates of emotional exhaustion and burnout among cpws are well documented (anderson, 2000; corovic, 2006; bride & figley, 2007) and must be seriously concerning for a profession that seeks to promote stability and relational continuity in the lives of children at risk. cpws deal with adversity in many forms and are deeply emotionally affected by exposure to intense conflict that is ubiquitous in child protection work (ferguson, 2004). promoting practitioner resilience is becoming a priority in practice and a recent study links social work coping, relational skills, peer support, and supervision with sustaining resilience in health care and non-statutory practice settings (adamson, beddoe, & davys, 2012). on the positive side, there is growing evidence to suggest that working with resilient clients can strengthen a worker’s own resilience. early work in the field suggested that there is a heavy price to be paid for exposure to secondary traumatic stress such as compassion fatigue and burnout (figley, 1995). more recently, hernandez, engstrom, and gangsei (2010) explored the idea of reciprocity in therapeutic relationships and found that witnessing clients overcoming adversity can change a therapist’s “attitudes, emotions and behavior in ways that the authors conceptualized as manifesting vicarious resilience” (p. 72). the concept of vicarious resilience, though poorly understood, offers a unique perspective on how resilience in practitioners who work with traumatized clients can be developed by proxy, through participation in the lives of resilient survivors of trauma and abuse (hernandez, gangsei, & engstrom, 2007; alvarez & hurley, 2010; hurley, martin, & hallberg, 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 20 the study this study examines how resilience is understood and promoted within cp practice. from a phenomenological perspective it explores four basic questions: 1. how is the concept of resilience understood within child protection practice? 2. what do cpws see themselves doing to promote resilience in children and families? 3. how is the cpw impacted by the client’s resilience? 4. what support does the cp institution offer towards sustaining resilience in the cpw? from the author’s perspective, child protection discourse in many jurisdictions has been dominated by deficit thinking and risk aversive practice which has been extensively critiqued in the u.k., australia, and elsewhere (lonne, parton, thomson, & harries, 2008; lonne, harries, & lantz, 2013). a resilience approach to child welfare practice is consistent with a strengths based perspective and seeks to explore the link between resilience research and front line child protection practice (russ, lonne & darlington, 2009). sample the research participants consisted of 60 social workers from three very different countries (argentina, canada, and ireland). these workers had a varied range of experience and years of practice within the field of child protection. as well, more than 90% of the participants reported having removed a child on at least one occasion from a high-risk home and placing this child in care. additionally, caseloads varied greatly in the three locations reflecting the multiplicity and complexity of practice within the particular cultural setting (see tables 1 & 2). the sample was diverse in characteristics and experiences both within groups and across groups. purposive sampling allowed the researchers to select a wide range of participants with similar but quite distinct experiences within the field of child protection. because the three locations differ significantly in how services are delivered, participants recruited across cultures allowed for work experiences to be filtered through important cultural lenses. following a call for volunteers to participate in the project in ontario, respondents were selected from a range of cp services, including crisis intake, specialized foster care, family services, adoption, domestic violence, and sexual abuse teams. a similar recruiting strategy was utilized in argentina and ireland. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 21 figure 1. survey demographics, argentina. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 22 figure 2. survey demographics, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 23 figure 3. survey demographics, ireland. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 24 table 1. table 2. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 25 method the study employed semi-structured interviews based on questions (spanish and english versions) related to how cpws understand and utilize the concept of resilience in their work with children and families. questions included in the interview guide were informed by the extant literature, feedback from a focus group session, and the extensive experience of the authors in child protection work. ethics approval was granted by the ethics review committee of king’s university college at western university, as well as senior management at the participating agency. written consent was received at the beginning of each interview, and a guarantee of confidentiality was provided. all the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed by research assistants in both english and spanish in buenos aires and in london, ontario. data collection & analysis in-depth interviews (1 to 1.5 hours) were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. the interview guide allowed for some thematic consistency across interviews while preserving the uniqueness of each interview session. data analysis and interpretation utilized a systematic approach for the management of textual data consistent with interpretative phenomenological analysis (reid, flowers, & larkin, 2005). a generic framework was used that involved careful reading of the text, coding, clustering topics, and identifying emergent themes (cresswell, 2008). thematic analysis was conducted manually, frequently with accompanying playback, in order to identify recurring patterns and themes in the interviews. care was taken to ensure accuracy in translating from spanish to english and english to spanish, and professional translators were employed in ontario and buenos aires to minimize inaccuracies and maximize linguistic and conceptual equivalence. in order to ensure that different points of view were fully explored before consensus was achieved on emerging themes and categories, drafts of all transcriptions were read independently by members of the research team. the basic analysis, including an independent audit, was conducted at the home institution of the principal investigator (pi) and portions of the transcript and corresponding emerging themes were shared by e-mail between the primary authors. following transcription, the researchers worked intensively with the text, coding the emerging themes and identifying patterns in the coded material. discussion among team member enabled refining of coding frames, such that as initial themes emerged from the data these were coded by team members, who were careful to avoid subjective bias by practicing phenomenological bracketing. codes with similar content were clustered into categories from which final themes international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 26 emerged. these were then organized into a framework with matched sections of text illustrating the main thematic findings. two colleagues (both professors of social work) who were not involved in the study conducted an independent audit of the themes. they did this by reading segments of data and independently comparing these with the coding frames. the inter rater reliability between the research team and the independent auditors was 0.85. every effort was made to identify commonalities, differences, and contradictions between the respondents allowing for a fuller and more critical appraisal of emerging categories and themes. as well, care was taken to triangulate data via journal entries and field observations, and member checking was undertaken with respondents to ensure credibility and trustworthiness in all three locations. member checking in the canadian portion of the study, the principal investigator (“dh”), conducted all of the recorded interviews with a co-investigator acting as an observer and note taker. in argentina, the pi co-interviewed with a spanish-speaking colleague (“la”) as well as a trained interpreter who attended all of the small group interviews. the irish interviews were conducted solely by the pi who travelled to a number of child protection units around the country. the pi, a trained systemic family therapist with over 25 years experience in clinical interviewing, engaged the interviewee in prolonged collaborative open-ended discussion, frequently summarizing comments made by the participant in the form of ongoing informal member checking. formal member checking occurred when the research team presented their initial findings to the host agencies and invited the participants to comment on the initial themes that emerged in the research. this form of respondent validation via cross-checking interim research findings added greater authenticity to the study findings. prior to the submission of the manuscript for publication, selective participants were contacted and asked to provide input on whether the final selection of themes accurately reflected what had been discussed in the interviews. a follow-up focus group was also conducted with a group of senior cpws at brookes college, oxford to obtain feedback on the emerging themes, which further helped the team to refine the choice of final themes for publication. constructing resilience this portion of the paper focuses on common themes that emerged in the interviews across the three sites of the study with some themes more strongly emphasized in one location than another. to show how themes and categories were developed from textual data, we have included an example from the spanish portion of the study to illustrate the process by which final themes emerged from the analysis (table 3). in this section of the paper the authors have chosen to use the exact words of the respondents which are presented in italicized speech and quotation international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 27 marks interspersed with connecting commentary by the authors so as to maintain a sense of narrative flow and coherence. as the sample shows, the construction of resilience among cpws in the study is based on a number of ideas that we were able to conceptually link to practice. resilience is seen described by participants as a multidimensional concept involving a complex interplay of family history, developmental factors, social supports, eco-systemic, and cultural influences (see table 4). these descriptions point to the notion that our participants believe that there may well be an innate human quality that develops in times of adversity, facilitated by environments that help sustain resilient capacities. table 3. constructing resilience (argentina) emerging themes text resilience in practice personal resources (cpw) social networks/ pathways ordinary magic/strengths dynamic relationship “the concept of resilience is not in our heads but it is built into our work…we have it incorporated beyond the word, first we work with the people not with the concept! we ask what are their skills and possibilities, then we say, oh this is resilience!” “you must be resilient yourself in order to promote resilience in others… you must develop your own resources and make them available” “it’s about developing networks that link people to resources you have to find ways of helping kids become more resilient, by developing skills and talents or by just giving of yourself” “it’s really the day to day stuff …i try to focus on those aspect that make resilience possible. i ask what would be the magic that could get to the strength?” “resilience begins when a child feels and understands that the social worker is working with them on their life project, to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 28 collectivist /social messaging re resilience resilience shared between cpw & family zone of risk internal resources ingenuity & taking advantage of adversity limitations make their life better” “first we have to be resilient ourselves…without that all is lost...i see resilience not only in others but also in ourselves, in the work team, without this in argentina all projects are finished before they’ve begun” “the social workers here in argentina work most of the time in the houses of the people, we see what happens to them and how they live, how they sleep, how they live…it’s where one sees the culture of people and how families grow and develop” “it also produces in us another type of commitment, when one goes to someone’s house...a commitment and a risk, because we go to marginalizes zones, to zones of risk, and because of it they also value the fact that we go to them” “we investigate what talents and capacities the child has so that they can be developed further...we try and build on whatever resources the child has” “we went to a house where a family were living in garbage, the mother would point out all the good things that living in garbage had…they could raise pigs; there was no water and for light they hung up some cables and were making fire with branches that they were taking off some trees” “i think resilience only by itself is not enough…i think it’s part of a package, if you work only with the concept of resilience it is not sufficient” the following excerpts are from interviews across all three locations and will be identified as such by (a, c, i) after each quote. “resilience is a very unique idea, i think it’s a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 29 mixture of things like biology, environment, family development and culture” (c). resilience is described as a universal attribute that requires the development of internal resources. “i think we’re all born with different strengths and resilience is one of them, but you really have to work at it!” (c). personal resources are frequently identified: “resilience is the capacity by which a person can get out of a crisis situation, despite a bad environment and still achieve a good result” (a). cpws “try to deal with the inner resources, abilities and potentials to identify them and to enhance them” (a). universality was mentioned many times as in the following statement: “every human being has something in there that’s worth working with or exploring and having them build up some type of resilience to whatever life’s thrown at them” (c). an internal capacity for survival was seen as significant in the development of resilience as in the following: “it’s not just the supports we put in place, a kid can be from an environment of severe neglect and one has this persistence and this tenacity which makes them very successful while another is still stuck at the start” (c). resilience is conceptualized as a developmental process that builds over time, “resilience, for me is a continuum, i think it’s about building on strengths that you have as an individual, a worker, a parent, or child, it relates to everybody” (c). it is the ability to move forward despite adversity and focus on strengths: “there’s a tendency in social work to look at the negatives, it’s very confrontational especially if you’re going to court you build your evidence against someone, whereas i think resilience is more of a positive focus and i think there’s a move towards that, i think it gives you a different perception of the situation, like how can i be instrumental in making a positive impact on this person?” (i). coping with adversity is a characteristic frequently associated with resilient functioning. for example, one cpw spoke about the “mystery of resilience” in reference to children who have an extraordinary capacity to manage stressful situations: “it’s amazing when you see even with placement breakdowns, and they’re still going to school or they’re still trying to make friends, you know…what factors are giving them the strength to keep going when you think of all the negativity, i suppose for some children they have greater adaptability and strength to do that and others don’t!” (i). there is an understanding among social workers that resilience is related to intrinsic qualities of the child, as well as family support and environmental responsiveness. growth promoting experiences are viewed as a natural consequence of dealing with adversity and in many ways are the expected outcomes. “resilience is being able to make the best of a bad situation, and still come out on top” (c). facing up to difficult situations in life triggers resilient capacities and greater emotional stamina. “i suppose it’s being able to manage to override difficult situations in your life, when bad things happen, through no fault of your own, you’re able to pick yourself up and get on with getting the best out of your life” (c). this sense of personal struggle is pervasive in the descriptions given by social workers and suggest that making the best out of a bad situation is a shared human trait that makes it possible for people to survive and move ahead in life despite adversity: “it’s something that everybody has, an inner international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 30 strength, of course you have to work at it…resilience means finding strength from somewhere and taking advantage from the situation” (c). ultimately it is the individuals themselves who recognize their own resilience, which is embedded in their self-concept. “i think it’s the person’s view of themselves, it’s their ability to see their strengths” (c). one cpw who spoke primarily in metaphor likened resilience to “tools for life”; she gave the following explanation: “suppose we were asked in life to set a table for a banquet and you’re given the tools, four forks, four knives, spoons, glasses, napkins blah, blah…and they were the tools that you were given at birth in order to be able to set this table, but some people are asked to set a table for a banquet but they’re only given a fork and a knife and maybe a spoon, so how can they possibly do the things that they’re expected to do to be a normal, average member of society when they we’re given the tools in the first place?” (i). an important distinction made between resilience theory and practice is captured in the following phrase, “the concept of resilience is not in our heads but it is built into our work, we have it incorporated beyond the word, first we work with the people, not with the concept, we ask what are their skills and possibilities? then we say, oh this is resilience!” (a). resilience is also viewed through the lens of gender, particularly in argentina: “i have the feeling that women have greater adaptability to change, the fact that women have less opportunity than men makes them more resilient” (a). the willingness of families to acknowledge problems and accept support is a key element in what is viewed as resilient functioning. any effort by the client to change the conditions that sap resilience is generally seen by cpws as evidence of resilience at work. cpws expect setbacks and are realistic about change, in fact the coupling of realism and resilience is central to how resilience is constructed by cpws in the study, “even though she had serious mental health issues she worked with us and tried her very best to be there for her children” (c). table 4. constructing resilience: central themes argentina canada ireland child as active agent in resiliency project and self resilience based on child temperament and internal resilience based on stubborn determination to survive, & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 31 protection resilience shared between cpw, family & community based on rights of child resilience embedded in social and cultural messaging, seen as essential to survival vicarious resilience as a consequence of interaction with resilient clients capacity for survival resilience as an enablingdynamic relationship between cpw & child resilience as a developmental process that can accumulate or diminish over time shared resilience between cpw & child based on mutual decision making self advocacy resilience as a supportive relationship based on interests and talents resilience as access to tools for life; education, health & recreation shared resilience between cpw & child based on sharing life narratives data analysis (table 4) revealed four broad themes related to the construction of resilience by cpws which include: (a) resilient characteristics of children, (b) an enabling/dynamic relationship, (c) access to resilience-enhancing resources, and (d) shared/vicarious resilience. resilient children there was strong uniformity of opinion about what constituted resilient functioning in children. resilient children are seen as possessing tenacity and persistence based on temperament, traits, and genetic endowment. characteristics most often noted about resilient children include stubborn determination, ability to overcome the odds, a willingness to work on problems, and resourceful self-advocacy, “she had a strength about her that i thought, she’s going to make it in the world, she somehow figured out from a young age what she had to do to survive, but i don’t think she recognizes her own resilience” (c). in contrast, some children are described as possessing greater self reflection, “i think it’s a child’s view of themselves, it’s the ability to see their strength(s) which is often demonstrated through an interest or skill or something else outside of the family” (c). a general consensus exists between cpws that resilient children have some important characteristics that set them apart from other children. they are described as hardy, inventive, resourceful, and tenacious, a combination of factors that workers often find challenging. for example, one worker spoke at length about a 14-year-old female client who “can be very intimidating, it’s extremely difficult to work with her at times, her mom and dad were heroin addicts and she actually witnessed her father being shot…she’s international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 32 had to fend for herself, she’s been in and out of care, but she’s incredibly resilient!” (i). another worker spoke of the unique impact a particularly resourceful child had on everyone he met: “there was just a steadiness about him, he’s like a child that just knew, it’s not that he was being cocky or overconfident, he just seemed to have walked the earth before” (i). resilient children are able to remain connected to others in school and extracurricular activities and use resources effectively toward building a positive sense of their own identity. many workers made reference to the fact that “a resilient child is a child who knows their own mind” (i); “resilience must be noticed, children must feel it in themselves” (a), and resilient children are their own best resource in accessing qualities of the worker “they don’t say it but it’s really kids resourcing themselves… it’s part and parcel of the job, you have to make yourself a resource externally, where you’re getting a positive response the only thing to do is build on it” (i). the participants also described resilient children as having a sense of connection to their local communities even when the relationship with biological parents is damaged or severed: “i had one client who used to talk about the lady who owned the pizza parlour across the street and when her mom was drunk and passed out she would go sit with this woman and watch her make pizza” (c). another worker spoke of the importance of connecting kids to what they most value in their communities: “he said to me i do not want to live in buenos aires, i want to go to the countryside where i was born. now he is working with horses and taking care of pigs, he is free, not medicated and he is happy…his eyes change when he speaks about the fields and the animals” (a). such comments underscore the importance of understanding and preserving vital links in a child’s social ecology in order to promote resilient functioning (ungar, 2011). children who have faced adversity and have been hurt by it try and control unfolding events in their life in whatever way they can. workers noted that these adverse and hurtful experiences also contribute to some difficulties in working with resilient kids. statements like “she’s been through so much, she can be very difficult to work with” (c), add substance to the notion that resilient children can be challenging and are not always open to a therapeutic relationship. sometimes the challenges from these children take the form of demanding selfadvocacy, which they are often skilled at. they workers spoke about resilient children being effective in getting what they need: “the thing that amazed me was that he would tell me every day that he had no socks or underwear to wear and i would give him fresh ones daily and i could never figure out where they went, until a worker said to me ‘he’s only saying that to get a new pair of pants and socks every day!’ because he never brought any back, but you know that was something good in his life, i mean we all like fresh clean socks on our feet” (i). on the theme of self-advocacy another worker poignantly remarked about a boy she was seeing: “kids may not appreciate what you do to protect them, one child said to me, ‘what do i want all those things for if i can’t have a family?’” (a). similarly a 12-year-old youth living on the street told his worker, “i don’t want to live in a house where i won’t be able to see the sky over general paz international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 33 (avenue) every morning” (a). missing, perhaps, in the cpws comments in reference to these children, is an understanding of the profound sense of loss children feel in living without their families and the importance that objects and places assume as emotional substitutes for what has been lost. clearly there are limits to a child’s resilience and one worker remarked that “you can’t develop resilience if you keep on getting knocked down...it’s like an elastic band that can only be stretched so far, so many times” (c). there is also the concern among some cpws that too strong a focus on resilience can have negative implications since it suggests that children are invulnerable and can handle whatever adversity or stressors they may encounter in life: “too great a focus on resilience makes it seem that all kids can bounce back” (i); or, “i think resilience only by itself is not enough, i think it’s part of a package…if you work only with the concept of resilience it is not sufficient” (a). it is noted, with considerable concern, that there is greater expectations placed on children who are seen as resilient since typically they are more likely to be the first in a group of siblings to be returned to parents, which can inadvertently increase their risk for further maltreatment. the irony is not lost among cpws that children in care have a much better chance of receiving services than had they remained in their own home: “resilience could really be enhanced for children and families by reallocating funds for in-home parental support and child care” (i). enabling / dynamic relationships resilience is related to ongoing casework with families where collaboration, trust, and empathy are key ingredients of an effective working relationship. the emerging consensus from the research is that resilience is seen as a dynamic relational phenomenon that develops through significant interactions with children and families over time. “we’ve had many ups and downs but i still feel connected to this family, even when mom is really depressed she makes an effort to work with us for the sake of the kids” (c). it means being alert to possibilities for improving clients’ lives by recognizing their personal resources: “i don’t have great expectations but i look for what there is, never for what is missing” (a). child protection requires an emotional investment by the cpw in the context of mitigating risk and supporting resilience. some participants saw a connection between providing stability and emotional support and the resilient functioning of their young clients: “i think she was so resilient because we were able to give her a lot of stability as well as emotional support” (c). continuing along this theme, cpws spoke about the importance of searching for resilient qualities in working with children and families. “i recognized something in her that she didn’t see in herself, so we were able to get her into a soccer program that really brought out her natural talent” (i). some workers saw a strong connection between strengths-based work and resilience concepts and frequently used the ideas interchangeably. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 34 supporting self-efficacy and family decision-making is a natural part of the resilience orientation of the cpw. it includes a notion of children developing the capacity for self reflection and self-knowledge through the relationship with the worker, which is seen as fundamentally related to resilience building: “resilience must be reflected, clients have to see it in themselves” (c). as this worker noted, “there is no absolute standard to judge whether someone is resilient or not, some kids fall under the radar, we need to look at how we fail to see resilience” (c). the importance of identifying what is sometimes referred to as “hidden resilience” (ungar, 2004b), which suggests that some behaviors deemed problematic by society can contain the seeds of resilience even while masking competencies and talents, was highlighted. this belief is reflected in the following: “the boy drugged and stole from his parents who had very little themselves; he sold family heirlooms and things from the neighbors so he ended up before the judge who sentenced him to a juvenile institution. one day he told me that he was fond of cooking, so i spoke to the judge who agreed to give him a chance…i was able to get him a training position in el gourmet in santa fe, he became a chef and is not working in a hotel; that sometimes happens” (a). resilience is seen as dependent on a relational process with key individuals in the child’s world. one irish cpw reminded the interviewer that “it’s not always the relationship with the worker, i mean there are other programs in place that are much more resilient, you know like the big brother, big sister program, which is really a mentoring program but equally i think that you could underestimate your own importance in promoting resilience” (i). in order to overcome the effects of abuse and victimization, a child or adolescent requires developmentally attuned adults who understand that promoting resilience is “a step in a resilient chain” (c). thus workers described resilience not simply as an outcome; rather they saw it as an ongoing process that occurs in the context of caring and supportive relationships which is greatly facilitated by a secure attachment to parents or foster parents: “my role is to be a facilitator for that child, to have a healthy bonding relationship with whoever is going to be their caregiver” (c). generally cpws who participated in this study appeared to be aware that resilience is not a fixed quality and that it fluctuates with changing circumstances. they are also tuned into the idea that lapses in resilience can occur with loss of support and that resilient lacunae exist where a child shows resilience in one situation but not in another. these views accord well with the observation that resilient functioning is not necessarily sustained or consistent over time (masten & powell, 2003; rutter, 2007). our research identified the importance of developing a resilient relationship between a cpw and a child. this sentiment is captured in the following statement: “resilience is possible when a child feels and understands that the social worker is working with them on their life project, to make their life better” (a). on the other hand, workers also noted that relationships with clients frequently test the resilience of both parties: “we’re trying to work with the parent in order to encourage them to reach a certain standard to care for their child, but if international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 35 they’re not good enough we have the power to remove that child” (i). speaking of the profound contradiction that is ubiquitous in child protection work, one cpw remarked: “it’s such a contradiction…to sit in court with a parent and give evidence against them about not being able to look after their child, but we’re also the ones that take them home in our cars!” (i). access to resilience-enhancing resources the point was repeatedly made throughout the interviews that in order to be resilient, it’s essential for families to be able to access key resources within their own community. cpws described importance of the link between resilience and resources and work on behalf of their clients, particularly children in care, for academic, health, social, and recreational resources. all of the social workers interviewed spoke of the importance of access to family supports, child and adult mental health, and addiction services: “we worked together as a team. the strategy included all the family members. the child was placed safely with the extended family instead of an institution which worked with others in the community and developed a mental health support network so the child was reinstated with his parents” (a). likewise another cpw spoke of the importance of sound planning and networking to secure resources on behalf of clients. in general cpws demonstrated persistence and tenacity in accessing resilience enhancing resources tailored to a child’s particular interests and circumstances, so, for example, a child could identify himself as “part of a winning soccer team instead of a child living in foster care” (i). cpws spoke about the importance of making resources available to children for the purposes of nurturing resilience by “investing in whatever talents and skills a child has so that they can be developed further” (c). cpws described using ingenuity and imagination in linking children with resources, as is captured in the following anecdote: “i worked with him to help him understand his attitude, i asked him, ‘can we find somewhere else to live and be productive?’... i arranged for the boy to live in a student hostel, then he began studying and doing theatre. i supported him so he went to school and learned new things...he made relationships and restored his life” (a). generally, greater emphasis was placed on children’s abilities to utilize resources rather than linking resilience to the availability of resources, particularly for economically disadvantaged children living in high-risk communities. in relation to this, one cpw saw herself in the following way: “my conceptual framework is, i am only a tool for the violated rights of the child which must be respected. social rights are not given as economic or political rights, so my role is to fight so that children can exercise their rights” (a). shared / vicarious resilience a striking similarity across the three groups is the understanding that resilience is a shared relationship between people working together to minimize the effects of adversity. the following comments capture some of that feeling between cpw and client: “practice teaches me international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 36 something new every day and make me unlearn many things as well” (a). “i’ve learned so much from my clients not just about what to avoid in life but how to be strong, how to make the best of a terrible situation and still come out on top” (c). resilience shared between the cpw and child or family is a dynamic process based on the idea that the worker receives in return something from the child or family that is not always recognized in child protection practice. a key finding in this study that emerged in the form of stories regarding how clients overcame adversity and made positive changes in their lives, is the extent to which social workers themselves were affected by their perception of a client’s resilience. in this sense, resilience can be viewed as a reflexive process with benefits for both parties involved. cpws acknowledged that they learn a lot about their own lives by observing their clients and seeing how they manage their lives. there are also recognized benefits for the cpw from sharing success stories which is captured in the following statement: “for example i found in a reunion some teachers which i worked with when they were very young, they were children without any support and now they have made it all the way through!... this is very satisfactory for me” (a). the benefits for the worker are acknowledged in phrases such as, “they help us become better at our job” (c), or statements about the importance of working directly with children: “i find that the longer i’m working the less i can actually deal with children and that’s really upsetting for me because part of what i liked about the job was the direct work with children. it was so rewarding!” (i). sharing narratives of client resilience with team members was also seen by the participants as a buffer against compassion fatigue and burnout and all the cpws interviewed had stories to share about a particular child or family that made a difference in their own lives: “good outcomes like this give sense to our work, it’s important to congratulate each other, good outcomes must be celebrated” (a). cpws clearly enjoyed telling stories of positive outcomes in which resilience was a key component of their work and it was evident that the workers benefited from the process of sharing stories about resilient clients. for example, one canadian social worker in the study captured the sentiment expressed by many others in the following account of an encounter with a client a long time after the termination of a case: “a few years ago i was out with my wife to a food court and there was a young man in his late 20s holding a baby in a really gentle way and my wife remarked that it was lovely to see a guy looking after a baby like that… anyway i didn’t know who this guy was until he came over and told me that he remembered me, and he actually said, ‘i just want to thank you, i was hell on wheels in the group home, but there was a lot of things that i heard you say that really struck home later in life’” (c). another very similar story was told by an irish cpw which captured the sense of vicarious pleasure in participating in the success of former clients: “i went into a shop at lunch time and the guy behind the counter said to me, ‘you don’t remember me do you?’ and i said yeah, i do where did you work before? and he said it wasn’t work, ‘i gave you a few headaches in my time’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 37 and then i realized he was a child in care. he’s about 22 now and he’s just finished his first year at nui (national university of ireland)” (i). our research showed what appears to be a bi-directional “transmission of resilience” in which both people in the relationship are affected by the resilience of the other. one cpw described it as a “contagious process” meaning that resilience can be triggered by witnessing or participating in the performance of another person’s resilience. cpws also take vicarious pleasure in their clients’ successes and emotional growth, and they talked about being greatly heartened by stories of successful outcomes in which they themselves have participated: “i just got a letter from a girl who’s 25 and she was in care. she’s still attached to her foster carers but she wrote me this lovely letter thanking me for supporting her through her course and she just got her phd” (i). many cpws spoke about how their own lives had been enriched by working with resilient clients and one worker in particular made the following comment: “i know i am a much more resilient person today because of what i’ve learning from working with resilient clients” (c). this study supports the idea that cpws can be strengthened in their work with clients, and perhaps develop greater personal and professional resilience through participating in the resilience of clients. promoting resilience in practice identifying and promoting resilience in clients is critical to resilience-based practice. table 5 outlines the main themes related to promoting resilience and reveals extensive overlap between the three groups in how cpws promote resilient functioning in children and families. for example, “i like to think that i always go into my work believing that children are resilient, and that can i interject a positive person in that child’s life, or do something to try to tap into that child’s resilience to get them through” (c). cpws provided numerous examples of how they see themselves working to enhance resilience in the context of a dynamic enabling relationship with families they work with. “people perceive human warmth and they show it to us, so it’s reciprocal, if you do not extract from yourself the best you have inside you, the positive and if you do not work with what the other has, there is nothing you can do!” (a). clients are viewed as bringing resilient capacities into the relationship through self-reflection and insight. many cpws showed an understanding of the cumulative nature of resilience. “i don’t have the grandiose idea that a 30 minute interview with me is going to build a lifetime of resilience …although you can help to build resilience over the long term by your input at key point” (c). persistence is also highly valued in the service of building resilience: “it’s very important to stick with it, especially when everything is falling apart” (c). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 38 table 5. promoting resilience themes sub themes identifying resilience capacities & talents securing resources building relationships quality of interaction to enhance resilience balancing risk & resilience noticing strengths seeds of resilience bringing to awareness unique characteristics areas of interest; sports, social & recreation managing adversity persistent advocacy inter-professional cooperation informal social networks respect and commitment dynamic relationship seeing possibilities friendliness & openness sharing personal stories commitment & caring cooperative engagement with child & family buffering adversity & increasing protective factors determining risk & resilience international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 39 an important aspect of supporting resilience for children in care is the crucial role of long-term workers who are guardians of the children’s life stories that provide essential continuity and meaning and would otherwise be lost in the frequent disruptions and relocations that are ubiquitous in child protection practice. one cpw described herself as “part of the living history of that child, kids are asking the worker stories about themselves when they were young, it’s like holding on to the memories for the child which might easily be lost with moves from foster home to foster home, we kept the child’s memories safe” (c). there was an appreciation of the unique relationship that can develop between a child in care and a long-term cpw who can act as a container of narrative memories helping to preserve and retrieve vital narratives of the self, thus providing a sense of continuity and connection. “we’d be making cookies and she’d ask me, what was i like as a baby, did i cry a lot?” (c). this research supports the idea that resilience is more likely to flourish when the worker has been successful in preserving the social ecology of the child, as is evident in the following example: “a group of brothers without a father or mother came before the court, as soon as the eldest brother came of age he took care of the younger ones with help from the neighbors in his community, they were all able to take care of one another so there was no need for internment” (a). one worker in particular wondered if the child protection system overall does more harm than good, which was expressed in the following quote: “i often ask myself are we doing a better job these days of promoting resilience or are we finding better ways to kill it?” (c), a reference to the many placements and cpw turnover that are common in child protection practice. there is an irony that resilience-enhancing resources are more often available to children who have been removed from their family, as children in care generally have greater access to resources than children who remain under supervision with abusing parents. cpws in all three locations were extremely concerned about their mandate to protect children by removing them from their home rather than providing families with the resources needed to promote better parenting and more resilient functioning. the phrase used by one cpw, “we work between the zone of risk and the zone of resilience” (a) captures the feeling of many people working in the field of child protection. child protection work as a “vocation dedicated to helping clients discover their own resilience” (c) was poignantly described in the following words: “my focus is on making the quality of that child’s life as best as possible, looking at the education, health and family context, i focus on that, not so much on the parents, because you know that’s where i have to look, keeping the focus on building up a relationship with that young person and trying to look at what they want” (i). cpws offered numerous examples of what they say and do in their work to promote and sustain resilience in their clients. for example sharing their personal stories: “sometimes i tell them about my own life as a teenager, i suppose i was resilient enough to cope with circumstances in my life, i look at young people the same way…you know what can i give them which will help get them through this period” (c). cpws understand the importance of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 40 cultivating a resilient perspective and being open to finding resilience in their clients as an antidote to a deficit-based discourse that is endemic in the field of child protection. one cpw spoke of the need for resilient systems and acknowledged that, “i suppose child care reviews are quite a good way of building resilience because everyone is brought to the table and are accountable” (i). in summary, the cpws who participated in this study see themselves as nurturing resilience in children by being aware of its importance and understanding resilience as a developmental process and by exposing children to resilience-enhancing activities within the social ecology of the child. table 6 summarizes the main themes that capture various aspects of how cpws see themselves promoting resilience in clients. nurturing resilience can be summarized in four overarching themes that include: (a) accessing resources and enriched environments, (b) promoting talents and skills, (c) overcoming structural barriers, and (d) respectful collaboration with clients. table 6. promoting resilience argentina canada ireland locating basic resources a family needs within their local community& respect for what child values most about their social-ecology finding creative ways to support the development of children’s talents and skills such as arts project accessing resources within the cp agency and professional services in the community tailored to a child’s interests & needs finding the ‘seeds of resilience’ and nurturing them; keeping children’s memories safe accessing educational and social services on behalf of child and family to strengthen parent capacity and meet the needs of the child. creating inter-professional networks on behalf of children based on workers skill and networking abilities international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 41 overcoming structural barriers to accessing resources on behalf of poor and marginalized families recognizing and sharing resilience by entering into the life of the child and family within the local community a cpw provides a step in a resilient chain, not an end point but an on-going project to sustain resilience awareness of needs of low income families & scarcity of assessment and therapeutic resources helping child see resilience in themselves and focusing on success in education and employment exposing child to enriched environments that trigger a resilient response resilience and child protection institutions this is an area that requires more in-depth investigation as it is critical to the emotional well-being and effective functioning of the cpw. in general, child protection agencies are not seen to support resilience in their workers and, in fact, contribute to compassion fatigue and emotional exhaustion that is ubiquitous in the field (reagh, 1994; ellet et al., 2007), which is captured in the following dramatic statement: “in argentina they don’t support resilience in the worker, they try to kill it!” (a). the statement from an irish cpw that, “no one ever thinks about the resilience of the worker!” (i) echoed this sentiment. many cpws in the study also expressed their concerns about the nature of the job and the organizations they work for: “it’s definitely not a healthy profession, a lot of people could be more resilient if we were more financed, i’d say generally most social workers are not working at a great level resiliencewise…a lot of people are affected in one way or another” (i). or, as another highly stressed cpw remarked, “if someone told me five years ago, you’re going to be working in a system where nobody’s going to support you, where’s there’s no resources, where there’s loads of alcohol and drugs, you’re going to be banging your head off a brick wall, i would have laughed at them and said – no way!!” (i). on the other hand, the role of the team in buffering stress and secondary trauma is strongly reinforced across the three locations of the study. “i felt relieved to have my team this year, i had a big slump with a kid who died on the street at retiro station. i continued to work but i gave myself permission to say to my team, ‘i feel bad’” (a). phrases such as “i could never do this work without my team” underscore the importance of resilient team international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 42 functioning as well as the importance of humor as an antidote to resignation, demoralization, and despair. table 7. resilience impact on cpw argentina canada ireland team as an essential buffer to emotional exhaustion and burnout reflecting on good outcomes helps cpws remain committed and is an antidote to despair and demoralization cp system as actively undermining the resilience of the worker and creating serious obstacles to resilient functioning in clients team as an essential buffer to emotional exhaustion and burnout reflecting on good outcomes helps cpws remain committed and is an antidote to despair and demoralization agency seen as providing some support for sustaining resilience but could/should do much more to prevent emotional fatigue team as an essential buffer to emotional exhaustion and burnout reflecting on good outcomes helps cpws remain committed and is an antidote to despair and demoralization management structure of cp service not seen as protective of resilience. temporary posts undermine the value of the work and sap resilience responses in this section were highly consistent and raised concerns about the extent to which child protection agencies understand what ferguson (2004) refers to as “the deep emotional impact of child protection work on workers and their capacities to protect children” (p. 190). though some resources are in place to help cpws cope with the day-to-day stress of child protection work such as employee assistance programs (eaps) and mental health days, they do not compensate for the reality of the experience of front line cpws who are confronted by extreme conflict, emotional pain, and wrenching loss on a regular basis. the following quotes speak to a significant disconnect between the emotional needs of front line cpw’s and the ability of child protection agencies to respond appropriately to those needs: “i often ask myself, are we doing a better job these days of promoting resilience or are we finding better ways to kill it? social work resilience is ground down by the system” (i). in a statement referring to supervision international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 43 as a parallel process to the worker-client relationship, one astute cpw remarked, “i think the organization has to believe what they say, so if we’re encouraging and supporting resilience in clients, i think we have to encourage and support resilience in our staff” (c). this shared sentiment was also reported by an irish cpw when she said, “my support is definitely the team, we have great support, formal supervision hardly ever happens, the team leader is just so busy” (i). institutional culture is also very significant in supporting resilience in the cpw as the following quote illustrates: “there’s definitely an informal culture of support, especially since the formal process is very lacking in acknowledging the successes, for want of a better word…it helps when someone turns and says, ‘thanks! you did that well, you made a difference in that child’s life’; that’s very important” (i). some cp supervisors understood the need to provide cpws with emotional support and opportunities to reflect on their work by encouraging innovative supervisory practices as in the following example: “we’re lucky, we have an outside paid facilitator who uses a reflective practice model and that has proved hugely positive, i would say it has very much developed the resilience of team members…i think we’ve become a more resilient team because of it” (i). there was also strong agreement among the participating members of the child protection teams (country notwithstanding) that it is important to support resilience in each other, as shared resilience is as much a quality of team functioning as individual experience: “i think about my co-workers and the things they do and how they’re able to be so resilient in keeping their lives as whole as possible and they’re able to transmit that respectfully to people they’re working with” (c). the small working team was described as the most significant force in promoting resilience in children and sustaining commitment to the work of child protection, such that, “when we can talk and work as a team, which is something we can’t always do because we have too many cases to carry…i believe a much better outcome is possible” (a). an overwhelming number of cpws interviewed stated that their team is the primary source of resilience sustenance to be found in the agency: “i don’t know how i would do this job without my team, being able to talk to other social workers and know they understand how awful it can be, but also see some of the humor as well, that’s what support means to me” (a). accordingly, teams were seen as providing essential buffers against the demands of the work as well as a sense of solidarity that people working in high stress jobs feel with fellow workers: “i’m not alone, i’m not the only one going through this so it kind of normalizes the fact that maybe i will be okay, that i’ll be able to do this” (c). in the discussions about work contexts, cpws also acknowledged the importance of paperwork but did underline their dislike for the volume of recording and repetitive entries in data systems they are obliged to use. the role of the supervisor is important in how social international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 44 workers see themselves engaged in the business of supporting and enhancing resilience in clients, and the study identified the need for resilience-informed supervision to be made available to front line social workers as an adjunct to case planning and more formal supervision. “even in one-to-one supervision it’s about case management, it’s not about ‘oh you’ve done that well’ or ‘i’m amazed that you’ve been able to hang in with this client for so long’…sometimes i just want to be able to say, ‘i had a really bad home visit, it just didn’t go well’”. a supervisory relationship that recognizes the importance of emotional responsiveness in promoting resilience (morrison, 2007) is seen as an essential step in developing a parallel process for supporting resilience in clients that will be elaborated upon in the following section of the paper. discussion resilience in this study is described as a human quality that can flourish in the face of adversity when facilitated within a social ecology that enables the development of resilient capacities. the concept is relationally-based and embodies ideas such as preserving important attachments, strengthening resilient relationships, accessing key resources, and promoting outcomes that give value to clients’ lives. according to the perspectives of the cpws who participated in this study, resilience develops in real life situations, where resources, skills, abilities, strengths, and possibilities are seen as essential ingredients of practice. these findings are consistent with earlier resilience research and practice that offers evidence-informed strategies for enhancing resilience (brooks & goldstein, 2002; hart & blincow, 2007). promoting resilience for cpws in the present study means building on the resourcefulness that individuals utilize in adverse conditions and facilitating the development of these capacities in a variety of ways. the child protection workers from all three countries appeared to share the belief that children at risk can develop resilience despite situations of neglect, abuse, and deprivation, although they also reported that their ability to deliver resilience-promoting resources varies from location to location. in general, cpws did not situate their work within a critical social work discourse, except among cpws in argentina where there is a strong awareness of structural inequality and systemic oppression linked to the issue of basic human rights. important themes emerged from the study adding to those that had been identified in the literature, toward understanding resilience as a shared, mutually beneficial, dynamic process between worker and client. the evolving paradigm toward “human flourishing and compassion satisfaction” for social workers exposed to client trauma and adversity is a timely development (bride & figley, 2007). bride and figley’s study identified characteristics in children that cpws associate with resilience, and examined how resilience may be fostered in a dynamic enabling relationship between a child and a cpw. social workers are seen as having the potential to be part of a resilience-enhancing environment for child clients. cpws look for “a glimmer” of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 45 resilience in their clients, and see themselves “nurturing the seeds” of resilience through a dynamic enabling relationship and by accessing a variety of supports within the social ecology of each child. the unique features of this relationship vary from place to place and worker to worker and there is room for a deeper exploration of the emotional dynamics that operate in resilient relationships. resilience is related to the ability of cpws to access resources to support the development of children’s talents and skills. ironically, it is the experience of many cpws that these resources are made available after children have been removed from their families and are in the care of the child protection agency, which clearly has significant implications for child welfare policy and practice. in the words of one exasperated cpw, “childhood is seriously undervalued in this country, especially for vulnerable families, there is no forward planning to speak of. available beds have been reduced and private providers charge huge amounts of money to look after children in care. the galling thing is that we can’t use any of that money to fund alternative family support services to keep children in their homes” (i). resilience in child protection in the present study is viewed as a two-way relationship in which both participants benefit from the strength and resourcefulness of the other. cpws see themselves as supporting resilience by identifying and promoting resilience in their work with clients. the relationship is recognized as being mutually beneficial, as supporting resilience in clients creates the potential for shared resilience to flourish. though not labeled in this way by the cpws, there is an understanding that vicarious resilience is a natural consequence of participating in the resilience of others. obviously this is not the case in every situation but there was a remarkable sense of vicarious resilience in the success narratives that cpws shared in relation to particular clients in whom they clearly had an emotional investment. it is a concept that requires a deeper understanding of resilience within the context of shared emotional experience. cpws spoke about how they had been inspired and strengthened by their clients’ ways of coping with adversity, and throughout the study it became obvious that this effect could be reinforced by consciously attending to it (hernandez, engstrom, & gangsei, 2010). the point was made in the study by a number of cpws that nurturing resilience in children required cpws to be resilient themselves so that a parallel process could be enacted, thereby enabling the cpw to be more protective of the resilience of their clients. perhaps emotional resilience should be embedded in social work curricula and be an integrated part of social work student professional development (rajan-rankin, 2013). in this study the cp organization is not viewed as protective of resilience in cpws; on the contrary, they may actually contribute to the erosion of resilience in workers. participants in the study expressed that their level of stress was not recognized and the volume of paperwork for risk management and legal proceedings (canada, ireland) was repeatedly mentioned as an obstacle to effective practice. the concern is that the agency is not “tuned into resilience” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 46 despite the fact that resilience building is an important focus of the work with clients. there was a strongly expressed need among cpws for supervisors to be more aware of resilience in front line workers so that a parallel process could occur, enabling the cpw to be more protective of the resilience of their clients. the study identified the need for resilience-informed supervision focusing on the strengths and emotional responses of the cpw based in part on social work and social care research looking at coping and resilience in practice (gibbs, 2001; green, galambos, & lee, 2003; collins, 2008; dill & bogo, 2009; kinman & grant, 2011; mcfadden et al., 2014). notable in this study is the finding that small teams are critical to the working lives of cpws by supplying some of the emotional ingredients necessary to sustain resilience in their workers. the importance of a resilient team culture in child protection practice was very strongly emphasized in the research and cpws placed great value on team understanding and support as an effective buffer against emotional exhaustion and burnout. this is consistent with much of the literature that looks at the utility of resilience models in promoting recruitment and retention in child protection (russ et al., 2009; kinman & grant, 2010). limitations there are some important limitations to this study, the first being the potential for professional bias between the research team and fellow social work professionals, which may contribute to an uncritical acceptance of many of the opinions and statements made by the cpws. there may also be a tendency to ascribe greater significance to the concept of resilience than may be warranted, given the reality of child protection work and its attendant risks. the narrative excerpts show that the themes are not discrete and frequently overlap. there is some danger of over-interpretation of data as well as interpreting selectively on the basis of particular cultural points of reference. difference in responses in the three locations are less represented in favor of the strong similarities that are identified between groups. there is also the possibility that the process of translation may have inflated or diminished the degree of conceptual equivalence in translation. it is important to acknowledge the potential problem of making inferences and drawing conclusion based on anecdotal stories told about resilient clients given as evidence of resilient functioning in the absence of more solid outcome data to support the observations made about resilient children. further, although we faithfully reported our findings, we recognize that what people think and believe to be true about resilience, or for that matter any process or experience, can only ever be understood as a faithful description captured at a particular time and place. as well, we note that there is also a parallel discovery process between theory and findings occurring throughout the study in relation to the concept of vicarious resilience that was cited in the literature before the study began. in other words, our findings are no doubt shaped by our foreknowledge of the literature with which we had engaged. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(1): 17–51 47 we also acknowledge non-standardized translation processes as a limitation of the study and that one can argue that the methodological framework may have been underdeveloped in order to ensure rigor for cross-cultural qualitative analysis. a further limitation of the study is that resilience work at the community level was not adequately explored across the three sites and a model of community-based intervention to enhance resilience would add a further dimension to intervention with children and families (landau, 2007). lastly, this research did not sufficiently capture different cultural manifestations of resilience, which is an important area for further research. aspects of resilience, social messaging, and culture have been explored elsewhere in a previous article based on research on cpws in argentina (alvarez & hurley, 2010). despite these limitations, the study recognizes that 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of child and youth care at the university of victoria and is an early childhood educator at the capilano university children’s centre, 2055 purcell way, north vancouver, british columbia, canada v7j 3h5. e-mail: a.argent@hotmail.com the dogwood room is located in a children’s centre on a university campus. within the children’s centre the educators work with an atelierista (art studio teacher) and a pedagogista (pedagogical facilitator). both of these roles are central to the reggio emilia teaching philosophy. the philosophical principles of the reggio emilia schools inspire us in our thinking. however, we seek not to imitate, but rather are steadfast in our efforts to speak and act with authenticity. in the dogwood room, we are a collective that includes children (ages 18 months to 29 months), parents, and four educators. there are many identities and rhythms that are in constant circulation, sometimes blending together and at other times colliding. materials and objects such as wood, paper, and clay are also active participants. we are in constant partnership with these objects as they become an extension of our voices and our bodies. these objects travel with us as mailto:a.argent@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 848 we create, construct, and deconstruct ideas together. there is a distinct soundscape to the dogwood room that is difficult to describe because it is an ever-changing pulsation of expression. together, we are in a constant state of negotiation, as our movements and affectations flow through the room, producing reverberations that can be both potent and delicate. to say that we play together is an unjust oversimplification: rather we are in an ongoing process of becoming, no beginning or end-fluid-dynamic-generative-highly emotive. our curriculum is lived out daily; it exists with(in) all of us. clay, paper, materials, children, educators, objects, music and…and…and, are all powerful forces and they bring forth movement, history, and multiple layers of meaning. in the dogwood room we understand curriculum as an entanglement of time, place, bodies, materials, and more. curriculum is not situated outside the child, rather the two become enmeshed, (re)acting and transforming each other. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 849 figure 1. traces left behind (photo by kelsey wapenaar). many children have a strong desire to live out their days in bare feet; abandoned boots, socks, and shoes can be found throughout the classroom and the playground. bare feet and materials come together like deeply engrained rituals. there is a rhythm to little feet and they leave behind traces. the sound of little feet echo throughout the room as an ever-present rhythmic cadence. again, this has also become a defining quality of the dogwood room where we observe the fierce struggle to remove a shoe and sock and free one’s foot to intermingle with the elements of nature or the invitation of a large piece of clay. as educators, we can neither ignore nor curtail this strong desire to simply be shoe-less or sock-less and we begin to closely pay attention to the relationship between feet-earth-texture. by intentionally turning our attention to the space inbetween material and body, it becomes possible to observe the intra-activity of things as they meet and move together. intra-activity speaks to a sense of embodiedness with the world; we begin to interpret our environment by penetrating the in-between spaces and becoming a part of it. hillevi lenz-taguchi (2011) describes this further: “the flow of events thus becomes a collective and collaborative responsibility on behalf of all organisms present, whether they are human or non-human. responsibility is thus built into the immanent relationship in-between everything in the encounters” (p. 48). we are interested in what happens in the in-between places. we see the child not existing as separate from their environment, but rather as deeply entwined as body-touch-material are constantly at play. the objects and textures surrounding us in our environment are powerful and dynamic forces and we are in-context, overlapped, and mutually engaged. international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 850 figure 2. paying attention to the in-between places (photo by kelsey wapenaar). the importance of boots: objects that hold meaning footwear, but especially rubber boots, hold significant meaning within the culture of the dogwood room. the children have an interesting relationship with boots. they love to try them on, take them off, pile them together. some boots become highly coveted while others seem less attractive. anyone who spends time in our room will discover that footwear does not always have the purpose of keeping feet dry and protected. the adults in the room always seem to be on the outskirts of this peculiar and seemingly secret relationship between toddlers and boots, as we constantly try to regroup the boots together, in an orderly fashion, with the rightful owner. as a form of investigation, a pair of size 12 men’s black rain boots were brought into the room as a way to explore and extract meanings on the value, importance, and attractiveness of boots. what is it about boots? international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 851 figure 3. collective rituals (photo by the author). these boots were quickly swept up in the movements of our room. they have traveled and come into contact with blocks, natural materials, shadows, paint, and much more. they eventually came into contact with papier mâché. the familiarity of boots has suddenly become unfamiliar and it seems as if our relationships with the boots have actually ruptured the assumed function of boots. the very purpose of boots has faded away and they seem to take on a symbolic characteristic, something that holds meaning and defines a certain characteristic of the collective culture of our room. we are suddenly challenged to re-think these everyday, somewhat normal and mundane objects as objects that hold identity, creative potential, even aesthetic qualities. concealment and revealment: papier mâché encounters the act of covering up and peeling back layers to reveal something underneath is an everpresent ritual in the dogwood room. we decide to explore this idea further through papiermâché on every day familiar objects such as boots, a large orange pylon, and a plastic bike from the playground. the paper we are using holds deep curiosity and meaning for the children as we are recycling and tearing scholastic book orders, which the children have always taken great delight in reading. each shred of paper holds an image of their beloved characters (dora, max from where the wild things are, thomas the tank engine, and so on). this process comes together as an assemblage of bodies-iconic images-paper-objects-space-time. these forces become entwined and layered and they meet not as a singular event or idea, but rather, as an encounter. we international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 852 notice a fascinating flow to this encounter, as paper is continuously layered and images and print disappear, only to reappear again as the layers are peeled back. it would seem as if there is no end to the process. each element of this assemblage carries a unique voice or characteristic: they appear to be fluid, emergent and perhaps inter-dependent. there is no dominant voice, but rather, a flow of exchanges that move with varied intensities and rhythms. figure 4. the inter-mingling of objects, material, space and time (photo by kelsey wapenaar). international journal of child, youth, and family studies (2014): 5(4.2) 847–853 853 acknowledging the tensions, complexities, and rituals that emerge in a collective space allows us, as educators, to dig deep within the culture of our classrooms. through this process, we traverse beyond the familiar and begin to look between subjects to acknowledge the beauty and rhythm of ritual and the shaping and shifting that occurs when materials, humans, objects, and time become entwined. the inter-connectedness of bodily gestures, the movements of materials, and the expressive power of objects elicits a deep understanding that within children’s spaces, curriculum is an embodied experience, and it is embedded within everyday objects that hold distinctive meaning for children. reference lenz-taguchi, h. (2011). investigating learning. participation and becoming in early childhood practices with a relational material approach. global studies of childhood, 1(1), 39–48. dbren text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.36 ill health and discrimination: the double jeopardy for youth in punitive justice systems 157 ill health and discrimination: the double jeopardy for youth in punitive justice systems bernard schissel abstract: the author argues that despite the rhetoric of canada’s youth justice system framework, there is a striking lack of funding for, or commitment to, alternatives to formal justice when dealing with marginalized young people. one consequence of this is an epidemic of ill health, both physical and emotional, among at-risk youth. it is this reality, not criminality, that is the defining characteristic of this vulnerable population. to underline this point, the author presents his research on marginalized aboriginal youth, and notes that the public perception of young people in conflict with the legal system is defined by fear and hostility rather than sympathy. he also discusses examples of microcommunities that understand the epidemic of ill health plaguing marginalized youth and that provide an antidote to the condemnation of children and youth in the larger society. he notes that for children and youth, involvement with the law is a profound individual and collective health risk and argues against conservative law and order politics. he emphasizes the importance of research driven intervention, crime prevention, and alternatives to the criminal justice system. the dilemma for marginalized youth in conflict with the law is clear. they face a high likelihood of being treated rather harshly with respect to conviction and sentencing and they are characterized by relatively poor levels of physical and emotional health. the reasons for these phenomena have been debated over and over, but the conclusions, at least from good social policy work, suggest the following: (a) relative privation dictates a high risk for conviction and incarceration; (b) despite the legal/human rights and social welfare mandates of the previous young offenders act and the recent youth criminal justice act, many young offenders lack access to adequate legal resources and access to adequate health care; (c) most younger offenders, because they live on the margins of society and because of their age, lack political power; and (d) discrimination, either by omission or commission, exists in the justice system and dictates especially harsh treatment for aboriginal youth and youth from relatively poor families and communities (schissel, 2006; bell, 2002a). despite the rhetoric of canada’s youth justice system framework, there is a striking lack of funding for, or commitment to, alternatives to formal justice. in many ways, our inability to improve the lives of young people in trouble with the law, especially those who are marginalized, is fuelled by our antipathy to young people in general (côté & allahar, 2006; giroux, 2003a, 2003b). the result of our indifference to the real needs of young people at risk is the focus of this paper. the manifestation of this indifference is what i describe as an epidemic of ill health among at-risk youth. ill health, not criminality, is the defining characteristic of the young. based on research on marginalized youth that i have conducted over several years, i demonstrate that for youth involved in the legal system, poor health provides a double jeopardy in already marginalized lives. as we will see, however, the public’s general perception of youth, especially youth in trouble with the law, is certainly not characterized by sympathy. in the end, i provide 158 examples of micro-communities that understand the epidemic of ill health amongst marginalized youth and provide an antidote to the condemnation of children and youth in the larger society. these micro-communities attend to the needs of high-risk youth by creating contexts devoted primarily to the improvement of physical and emotional health. the condemnation of age and race there is a rather common attitude amongst the canadian public that young people are more disrespectful now than in the past, and that they are, in the end, more dangerous. the blame for this “adolescent misbehaviour epidemic” is placed on various sources including the family, but most vigorously, on the justice system. the majority of canadians feel that the youth justice system is too lenient and that youth are “getting away with murder”. the associated perception is that if the youth justice system would simply be made tougher, youth would stop misbehaving. politicians and other lawmakers are very sensitive to public opinion polls and often act to satisfy the fears of the public. in the case of young offenders, the canadian government’s typical reaction has been to tinker with the law in hopes of responding to the fears and demands of the voting public. canada’s youth criminal justice act is, in many ways, a typical legal reform response that has contradictory philosophies: one of genuine concern that many young offenders need alternatives to incarceration for their own welfare – that they need to be reintegrated into the community – and one of overriding concern that society needs to be protected from young people who break the law. for example, the act has provisions for community-based alternatives to the justice system but at the same time, it is devoted to a reduction in the age at which a child can be considered a young offender and a reduction in the age at which a young offender can be transferred to adult court, and ultimately, adult prison. both provisions are based on the concept of “societal protection” despite research that suggests that youth in adult prisons face incredibly high rates of physical and emotional jeopardy (schiraldi & zeidenburg, 1997). i maintain that children and youth represent now, maybe more than ever, political and economic scapegoats. at a time when societies are becoming more sensitive to and cognizant of the rights of a diversity of citizens, children and youth are left out of the human rights debates. the reality is that children and youth are no more criminal or dangerous than in the past and this contradicts the public perception that they are. traditional sociological and criminological approaches to crime and punishment have played a significant role in fostering a generalized belief that “evil” children and youth are “out there”, that they are either born bad or made bad by bad cultures in which they live. the public policy and academic research that has a “bad kids” focus has centred on the individual and his or her socio-cultural characteristics, while largely ignoring the possibility that attacking children and youth is a political act with political and economic motivations. more critical approaches to crime and justice contend, on the other hand, that punishing children and youth through a rigid justice system benefits those in positions of power. in the end, the definition of youth crime and the extent to which we deal with children and youth deviance is largely a reflection of how important children and youth are to the canadian political economy. it is important to state here that the political/legal attack on children and youth in canada is highly racialized. currently, the province of saskatchewan locks up more young offenders per capita than all other jurisdictions in the developed world. the largest proportion of these young 159 offenders is of aboriginal ancestry, a proportion much larger than the proportion of aboriginal children and youth in the population at large. my research reveals several relevant demographic phenomena: about 45% of youths with young offender dossiers in saskatchewan social services are of aboriginal ancestry; 88% of the youth in conflict with the law in urban outreach programs in prince albert and edmonton are of aboriginal ancestry; and, 65% of the youth in closed custody in saskatoon and 41% in north dakota are of aboriginal ancestry. the proportion of aboriginal youth in the province of saskatchewan in 2001 is 15.1% of all youth; in the next 15 years the aboriginal youth population is expected to be 26% of the entire youth population. these statistics illustrate a marked overrepresentation of aboriginal youth in the young offenders system, an even more exaggerated overrepresentation in closed custody, and, at the current rates of apprehension, a potential for an even larger young offender population in the next 15 years. in addition to the excessive incarceration of aboriginal youth, the discourse of youth crime is often fraught with words and phrases that implicate aboriginal youth (schissel, 2006; saskatchewan justice, 2004) or african-canadian youth (henry, tator, mattis, & rees, 2000) or other racialized categories of young people as particularly troubled or dangerous. as mentioned previously, the central focus of this paper is that youth in trouble with the law are characterized primarily by jeopardized health. ironically, as we will see, the discourse that condemns youth is largely about health and medicine; medical discourse is part of the condemnatory language that is used to isolate race (and class and gender). the following story illustrates how such condemnation occurs, especially in the context of race. scapegoating youth: a story of race and “justice” in october of 1998, serena nicotine, a first nations young offender residing in a halfway house in prince albert, saskatchewan, in concert with another young offender, murdered helen montgomery, the owner of the halfway house. the murder was unprovoked and the two young women showed little apparent remorse for their crime. the subsequent drama that played out in public discourse, in large part within the local and national press, revealed an oft-told story of young people who have no respect for law and order, ultimately no respect for anyone but themselves, and who are born into circumstances whereby they were neglected or damaged by dysfunctional parents. in fact, headlines such as blood and betrayal: fetal alcohol syndrome: serena nicotine – sins of the mother (saskatoon starphoenix, november 27, 1999, p. e1) were commonplace as the press tried to frame the story of the offenders within a context of race, gender and single-motherhood, and trans-generational criminality. these popular culture versions of youth and cultural nihilism were interposed with accounts of well-meaning people who are the unwitting victims of killer kids. and, in the course of the legal intrigue that followed the murder, the community launched a petition, in concert with conservative provincial and federal politicians, to lobby the federal government to increase the severity of penalties under the young offenders act. the law, especially the police, supported the community lobby and made public declarations that citizens must be protected from youth violence. ultimately, the province shouldered the blame for not building enough open and closed custody facilities and for not building enough jails. 160 the crown prosecutor, in concert with local politicians and community leaders, was successful in having nicotine’s case moved to adult court. despite the initial 8-year sentence in adult prison, the lobby to toughen up the young offenders act became intensified, and both the crown and politicians were adamant that the law was too lenient in dealing with young offenders. and, as we now know, that law has been reformed with intensified provisions for dealing with young offenders deemed to be a danger to the society. both the crown and politicians recommended harsher punishment as an effective deterrent and a moral response. in the years since ms. nicotine’s original incarceration, she has been a perpetrator of a hostage incident and several other violent confrontations in prison. what is interesting about the nicotine case, however, is that the social justice debates about the history of the offender as a victim at a very young age rarely occurred. when such commentary did occur, it was relegated to the last few lines of news reports. even the legal debates ignored the facts that both girls had been violently victimized as children. nicotine had witnessed the violent death of her father. both girls were “systems kids” who had been in and out of the justice and social welfare system for most of their formative years. these are very important justice details because they help us understand and should help us deal with highly disadvantaged children and youth. amazingly, the crown prosecutor, as the voice of the law, never engaged in this important discourse, even when social justice organizations raised important issues. the discourse that played out in the press instead focused largely on young people who have no respect for law and order. from a socio-legal perspective, this case is instructive because it helps us understand how the law, in concert with public opinion, has exceptional ideological power. when the law’s voice is essentially devoid of social justice, especially in high profile cases such as nicotine’s, and when the law stands for alarmist politics in violation of the social welfare tenets of the youth justice system, its primary function might conceivably be to legitimate and/or appease orthodox political lobbies. in the nicotine case and others, the law is unable to dispense social justice. it unavoidably renders opinions that condemn those who are already condemned, especially young people like nicotine who are disconnected from family and community, who are aboriginal, who are young and defiant, and who have been damaged at a young age. i cannot remember a time when the law officially went against public opinion and declared that young offenders are victims before anything else. in other words, the de facto mandate of the law is not to provide justice but to account for injustice. simply put, the law has less to do with social justice, differential oppression, social inequality, prejudice, or discrimination and more to do with collective condemnation of those who stand outside what we deem to be conventional society. more disturbingly, the law creates racialized, gendered, and classed versions of bad citizens. in the case of nicotine, her aboriginality, her youth, her upbringing, her gender, her poverty, and her socio-cultural background were traits that helped to damage her character in the eyes of the world and relegate her to the ranks of the expendable. there is a very good chance that she will be declared a dangerous offender and will remain in jail the rest of her life, potentially 70 or 80 more years. as we observe and analyze cases such as these, it is evident that the law’s purpose to provide justice and to protect the rights of young people is suspect. this contention is no more evident than when we observe the relative physical and emotional condition of children and 161 youth in custody or who have been deemed “at risk”. the following analytical results describe the health crisis in which young offenders and kids on the street find themselves. throwaway youth: life on the streets one of the main arguments in my work is that, for youth, poverty simultaneously dictates health risk with criminal justice involvement. the following data show how living on the margins of society significantly endangers the health of society’s most marginalized youth. in 1999, kari fedec and i (schissel & fedec, 1999) conducted a study of street youth by examining the files of youth offenders with respect to the young offenders act. a subset of these data was based on young offenders who had been charged for being involved in the sex trade. the youth in this study were largely street youth in the city of saskatoon and constituted a cross-section of youths who had been convicted under the young offenders act and who were involved in the sex trade. the following table compares the health risks for street youths involved in the sex trade compared to young offenders who were not. as most of the literature on youth and street life suggests, prostitution is a response to economic need, and the youth involved represent the most marginalized adolescents in society. 162 table 1: the health of young offenders by race and involvement in the sex trade involvement in the sex trade health outcomes non-aboriginal aboriginal yes no yes no (n=14) (n=240) (n=38) (n=100) substance abuse none 12.5 48.1 7.9 28.3 alcohol 25 17.6 8.1 alcohol/drugs 62.5 34.3 92.1 63.6 severity of alcohol abuse not severe 50.6 13.5 33.7 somewhat severe 41.9 35.1 40.5 30.6 severe 58.1 14.2 46 35.7 suicidal tendencies none 78.2 50 52.6 75.8 some 15.1 50 13.1 11.1 severe 6.7 24.2 13.1 suicide attempts no 30.8 90.8 57.9 81 yes 69.2 9.2 42.1 19 self-abuse/slashing no 38.5 93.3 68.4 92 yes 61.5 6.7 31.6 8 physical health poor 33.3 5 17.1 4.1 moderate 16.7 24.3 42.9 42.9 very good 50 70.7 40 53 teen pregnancy no 37.5 71.4 55.9 64.3 yes 62.5 28.6 44.1 35.7 physical assault (outside of home) no 83.3 90.6 58.3 78.4 yes 16.7 9.4 41.7 21.6 sexual assault (oustide of home) no 50 89.4 62.9 87.4 yes 50 10.6 37.1 12.6 note: significant chi-square .05 in bold face 163 the two most important phenomena in this table are the astonishing increase in health risk for youth involved in the sex trade and the absolute levels of health risk for both groups of youth. the table shows clearly that for both non-aboriginal and aboriginal young offenders, being involved in the sex trade results in relatively high rates of health risk. specifically, substance and alcohol abuse pose immediate problems for all youth, but again, especially for youth in the sex trade. for example, 58.1% of non-aboriginal youth involved in the sex trade have severe alcohol problems, as do 46% of aboriginal youth; these percentages are considerably higher than those for youth not involved in the sex trade. for youth who are living dangerous and unpleasant lives, substance abuse may be the only reasonable forum for normalizing an otherwise intolerable life situation. the jeopardy for youth on the street is further evidenced by indicators of self-injury. specifically, 69.2% of non-aboriginal youth involved in the sex trade have attempted suicide as have 42.1% of aboriginal youth. similar results appear for suicidal tendencies; 24.2% of aboriginal youth and 6.7% of non-aboriginal youth involved in the sex trade have severe suicidal tendencies. finally, while a small percentage of all youth in the study has engaged in slashing, 61.5% of the non-aboriginal youth in the sex trade have slashed themselves as have 42.1% of aboriginal youth; the percentages for those not in the sex trade are appreciably smaller but still distressingly present. the phenomenon of slashing is important in understanding the trauma of marginality. the research on slashing has argued that it is a form of emotion-masking behaviour typical of people who are in extremely traumatic life situations, exemplified by the high rates of slashing amongst women prisoners (shaw, 2000; faith, 1993). the alarmingly high rates of slashing amongst youth prostitutes reveal quite clearly the extreme psychic trauma under which they live. that a considerable number of youths in this study engage in slashing is indicative of the marginal and traumatic nature of life for many young offenders. in terms of overall physical health, it is clear that not all youth in our society are healthy but youth in the sex trade suffer considerably more poor health than those who are not. for example, only 50% of non-aboriginal youth in the sex trade and only 40% of their aboriginal counterparts have very good health. furthermore, pregnancy poses a health risk for female street youth and also places their unborn children at risk. pregnancy is also an indicator of high-risk sexual activity so this subgroup of street youth is obviously engaging in unprotected sex: “unprotected sex is a valuable commodity in the sex trade and the highest profits are obtained from the prostitution of young girls who are willing to engage in unprotected sex” (schissel & fedec, 1999, p. 38). female street youth not only run the risk of pregnancy, they obviously are exposed to sexually transmitted diseases including hiv/aids and carcinogenic stds. pregnancy rates are alarmingly high for non-aboriginal youth in the sex trade, 62.5% of whom have been pregnant. lastly, it is important to consider the risk of victimization as an ever-present health risk for youth. clearly, in terms of physical assault, aboriginal youth are highly vulnerable to physical assault; for example, 41.7% involved in the sex trade have been physically assaulted to the extent that they have required medical care. the findings for sexual assault are similarly alarming. for youth involved in the sex trade, 50% of non-aboriginal youth and 37.1% of aboriginal youth have been sexually assaulted. 164 it is clear from these data that young offenders, as marginalized youth, are exposed to severe medical trauma. their health risks include substance abuse, self-injury, high-risk sexuality, and extreme levels of victimization. importantly, for the most marginal person in the society, the inner city street kid who sells her or his body to survive, the medical jeopardy is startling. youth declared as “at risk” the data for this section are based on self-administered questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with young people who had been or were in trouble with the law in saskatchewan, alberta, and north dakota. the 2002-2003 survey was conducted on 163 youth who were either in closed custody, street programs for youth in open custody, and street programs for noncustodial youth deemed at risk and focused on issues of socio-economic background, familial experiences, and experiences with the legal system. the research was intended to understand the lives of youths who are highly marginalized and disaffiliated and who end up in the justice system by investigating the dilemma that youth face, especially as they come to confront youth justice systems or agencies of social assistance. it explored, in part, the racialized nature of youth justice in western canada and in one northern u.s. state. for the analysis, i compare male and female youth of aboriginal and non-aboriginal ancestry in an attempt to understand the gendered and racialized nature of the mechanisms through which youth who live on the margins of the society come to be identified and defined as criminal or “at risk”. by correlating dimensions of health and criminal involvement, i show that the characteristics that describe youth in conflict with the law are, for the most part, not criminal characteristics but characteristics of ill health, both individual and communal. table 2 illustrates the extent of poor condition for both male and female and aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth. the intention in presenting this table is to show the absolute levels of health outcomes and legal involvement and the associations between these variables and race and gender. 165 table 2: health outcomes and legal involvement for aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth and for male and female youth nonaboriginal aboriginal female male total health outcomes physical health below average 7.70% 11.70% 12.30% 9.40% 10.40% rating average 63.50% 69.40% 75.40% 63.20% 67.50% above average 28.80% 18.90% 12.30% 27.40% 22.10% n=52 n=111 n=57 n=106 times depressed rarely 42.30% 48.60% 26.30% 57.50% 46.60% sometimes 17.30% 27% 33.30% 18.90% 23.90% often 40.40% 24.30% 40.40% 23.60% 29.40% n=52 n=111 n=55 n=106 attempted suicide yes 32.70% 29.10% 42.10% 23.80% 30.20% no 67.30% 70.90% 57.90% 76.20% 69.80% n=52 n=110 n=57 n=105 self-injury never 65.40% 73.60% 64.90% 74.30% 71% sometimes 32.70% 21.80% 29.80% 22.90% 25.30% often 1.90% 4.50% 5.30% 2.90% 3.70% n=52 n=110 n=57 n=105 victimized at school yes 19.40% 20.80% 10% 25.90% 20.80% no 80.60% 79.20% 90% 74.10% 79.80% n=31 n=53 n=30 n=54 attacked yes 51.60% 60.70% 63.60% 53.70% 57.50% no 48.40% 39.30% 36.40% 46.30% 42.50% n=31 n=56 n=33 n=54 sexually assaulted yes 22% 23.40% 45.60% 10.60% 23% outside of home no 78% 76.60% 54.40% 89.40% 77% n=50 n=111 n=57 n=104 physically assaulted yes 48% 50.90% 47.30% 51.50% 50% by a stranger no 52% 49.10% 52.70% 48.50% 50% n=50 n=108 n=55 n=103 legal involvement age category under 12 yrs. 46% 27.40% 13.90% 43.70% 35% of first offence 12 14 yrs. 40% 50.70% 58.30% 41.40% 46.30% 15 18 yrs. 14% 21.90% 27.80% 14.90% 18.70% n=50 n=73 n=36 n=87 number of never 41.20% 74.70% 84.40% 52.60% 62.70% convictions once or twice 35.30% 16.50% 6.70% 30.90% 23.20% more than two 23.50% 8.80% 8.90% 16.50% 14.10% n=51 n=91 n=45 n=97 ever moved to yes 23.10% 11.20% 7.30% 19.20% 15.10% adult court no 76.90% 88.80% 92.70% 80.80% 84.90% n=52 n=107 n=55 n=104 risk of low 48.10% 58% 62.70% 50.50% 54.60% re-offending moderate 19.20% 24% 23.50% 21.80% 22.40% high 15.40% 14% 13.70% 14.90% 14.50% extremely high 17.30% 4% 12.90% 8.60% n=52 n=100 n=51 n=101 police contact never 22.40% 31.10% 37.80% 23.40% 28.10% 1 to 4 times 49% 52.20% 53.30% 50% 51.50% 5 or more times 28.60% 16.70% 8.90% 26.60% 20.90% n=49 n=90 n=45 n=94 note: chi-square significance .10 in bold face 166 because the data in table 2 is presented as both descriptive and associational (with race and gender), the significant relationships are presented in boldface. the table is quite complex so i will leave it to the reader to look at the data in detail. i wish, however, to point to some of the more stark findings that frame the arguments in this paper. for example, the attempted suicide, self-injury, and depression outcomes illustrate quite vividly the extent of jeopardy in which these young offenders live: 30% of the youth have attempted suicide and 29% have slashed/self-injured; furthermore, over 50% of the youth are depressed (as per clinical evaluation) at times. interestingly, for the depression variable, female youth show higher levels of depression compared to their male counterparts, as do non-aboriginal youth compared to aboriginal youth. it is interesting to note, here, that these three indicators of health jeopardy do not correspond to the self-assessment of health. in fact, only 10.4% of all youth indicate that their general health is poor despite the findings regarding suicide, self-injury, and depression. clearly, the young people in this study overestimate their own levels of health or have fairly low expectations as to what constitutes being healthy. as we proceed through the table, it becomes clear that the health of the young people in this research is jeopardized by lack of safety and security. this is especially apparent for the experiences of being attacked and assaulted outside the home. for example, 57.5% of the youth report being attacked violently in their lives, 23% report being sexually assaulted by a stranger (this experience is significantly greater for female youth than male), and 50% report being physically assaulted by a stranger. clearly, the context in which these young people live exposes them to considerable health risk from assault. the last variables in this table indicate the degree to which the youth in this study reported being involved with the justice system. the two most glaring findings involve the age of first offence and whether they had been moved to adult court. firstly, 35% of the youth report being first involved with the law under the age of 12. secondly, 15.1% of youth report being moved to adult court, an indication largely of the extent of their involvement with the law and the law’s predisposition to deal with young offenders quite harshly. although these legal involvement variables are primarily descriptive, i wish to discuss the differences especially between racial categories. it is clear from the significant relationships dealing with race, aboriginal youth compared to their non-aboriginal peers are older at first offence, have fewer convictions, are moved to adult court less, have lower risks of reoffending, and have lower police contact. aboriginal youth, empirically, are less involved in criminal offences than non-aboriginal youth. the reality, however, is that aboriginal youth have higher rates of incarceration and longer sentences than do non-aboriginal youth, despite the fact that non-aboriginal youth seem to be more involved with the law (saskatchewan justice, 2004; royal commission on aboriginal peoples [rcap], 1996; schissel, 1993; hamilton & sinclair, 1991). clearly, there are inequities across race for youth in the justice system. the public perception is that aboriginal youths are highly criminogenic because they have high rates of involvement in the justice system. in fact, their involvement in the justice system is not borne out by their criminal involvement, especially in contrast to non-aboriginal youth. the question that remains, then, is this: how does it come to pass that a system predicated on principles of justice treats problems of individual and community health as problems of criminality? 167 a story of an at-risk society the answer to the aforementioned question lies with an understanding of how marginalized people, including children and youth, fit into canada’s political economy. as we will come to see, questions of health, social justice, and the creation and sustainability of healthy communities are subordinated to the demands of industrialization. york (1992) in his book, the dispossessed, confronts these issues as he links the development of a resource-based economy to the destruction of peoples and communities. he describes how rapid industrialization in canada and the expropriation of aboriginal lands and communities in the 1950s and 1960s eroded aboriginal communities to the point of extinction. interestingly, he uses an example from australia to make the point that aboriginal people are in jeopardy in many industrialized countries. he reveals how the connections between industrial exploitation and industry-based education have made children and youth suffer: for centuries, the children of elcho island were educated by their relatives. today the western educational system has intruded, cutting across the responsibilities of the aboriginal adults and placing a barrier between man and boy. . .the aboriginal adolescent is doubly excluded. on the one hand he is blocked from sharing in the benefits of european society by educational deficiencies and by the fear of breaking step; on the other, he is ambivalent about many of the old ways. some he has forgotten altogether . . . gasoline sniffing is a result of the disorientation of the murngin adolescents . . . adolescents reflect the conflicts of a people. (york, 1992, p. 17) in this simple, poignant example, we see how cultural invasion through education has a direct and profound effect on the welfare of children and youth. the problem of gas sniffing is epidemic in many exploited communities in north america and australia, and the question remains why gasoline sniffing has taken over the lives of some young people. most importantly, from a critical criminological perspective, we need to understand how the trauma that marginalized children and youth and their families experience – and their resulting conduct – gets translated into definitions of criminal deviance or pathological culture rather than jeopardized health. for at the end of the day, in canada, aboriginal children and youth have a greater likelihood of being convicted for criminal violations than do their non-aboriginal counterparts. importantly, courts rarely understand or take into account issues of historical oppression or cultural devastation in their day-to-day dealings with aboriginal young offenders. and, in many cases, the criminality of canada’s youth is largely tied to substance use and abuse, issues that in any other context would be considered as health issues. a canadian example presents a heart-rending reminder that the structural conditions of a society can have devastating effects on children and youth. on january 26, 1993, six innu youth in davis inlet, labrador, tried to commit suicide together by sniffing gasoline. their attempt at collective death was thwarted by an addictions counsellor who heard the youth declare that they wanted to die. subsequently, 14 youth from this small community were airlifted south for medical treatment, but the legacy of colonialization and government neglect remained, in that 95% of the adult population was addicted to alcohol, 10% of the children and youth were chronic gasoline sniffers, and 25% of the adults had attempted suicide. seven years later, the trauma for davis inlet had grown. in november of 2000, 20 innu children were, again, airlifted 168 to the goose bay treatment centre as an interim reaction to another epidemic of gas sniffing among the children. of the 169 children (ages 10-19) living in davis inlet at the end of 2000, 154 have attempted gas sniffing and 70 of them are chronic sniffers. the socio-economic reality for davis inlet, like many other northern aboriginal communities in canada, is one of historical resource exploitation and/or community relocation, and the imposition of euro-canadian education. healthy contexts how we respond to issues of risk and marginality for children and youth indicates the quality of social justice in our society. unfortunately, to date, canada’s record appears to be mostly a record of condemnation and not of concern (schissel, 2006; green & healy, 2003; bell, 2002b; mallea, 1999). there are, however, pockets of caring where change does occur, if only at a rather microscopic level. importantly, these rather rare examples are important because they illustrate what just social policy can accomplish, especially policy that is based on healing (and health) and not on punishment. in their struggle to dispense real justice, the courts are faced with several problems in regard to social justice and youth. most importantly, the courts are overburdened with young offender cases and closed custody institutions have been historically filled to overflowing, although since the inception of the youth criminal justice act, the youth closed custody population has decreased. secondly, even if the courts were not oversubscribed, theirs is not an activist mandate; they are mostly unable or unwilling to address issues of poor health and social inequality (green & healy, 2003). thirdly, the majority of youth plead guilty and are, therefore, merely processed in and out of the system. this fact is borne out, in part, by the reality that youth are not always represented by counsel and when they are represented by legal aid or court-appointed counsel, the legal time given to them is minimal and they rarely have their cases contested (schissel, 2002). quite clearly, given these concerns, effective alternatives to “incarceration justice” are needed and, most importantly, these alternatives need to be connected to health. interestingly, a health-oriented, holistic approach to youth justice does not preclude the role of the justice system. in fact, it asks that policing and jurisprudence expand to incorporate issues of social justice, social and personal health, and preventive social reform. in short, alternative schools and programs for healing in conventional schools, in concert with the legal system, become places where high-risk children and youth learn not only educational and occupational skills (and meaningful apprenticeships) but also the skills for well-rounded citizenship and individual development. i have explored several examples of how this might work. the school officer liaison program in the city of regina has police officers, as mentors and advisors, spend time in schools with students. the program bridges the gulf of mistrust between youth and the law and is a typical example of how law and education blend. another example from the city of saskatoon illustrates how law and education combine to create a context of trust that goes a long way toward preventing crime. several years ago, the city implemented its first community police station in the heart of the inner city, close to several elementary schools. the police officers in this detachment took it upon themselves to visit the schools on a daily basis to 169 interact with the students either through sports or just plain talk. the principals and staff of one of these schools indicated how important this practice was to the lives of the students and how effective the police were in creating a safe and secure environment for the students. in effect, the staff was saying that law enforcement practised in this manner is more effective than the typical crime control/“lock-’em-up” mandate of traditional police forces. unfortunately, due to fiscal pressures, the community station and its programs were cancelled. the ongoing resource problem is exacerbated by the reality that the police are asked to perform a diversity of tasks including militaristic-style policing. their mandate is unclear. we need to look, however, no further than the boundaries of canada for effective and important alternatives to the formal youth justice system. mediation and alternative measures for young offenders, as originally mandated by the young offenders act and now by the youth criminal justice act, have been used as alternatives to youth courts. the john howard society has for years been involved in programs that stress keeping kids out of custody and giving them opportunities whereby they can make reparation and, at the same time, receive counselling to restore themselves. healing and sentencing circles are common in many aboriginal communities in canada and, especially in northern communities, are replacing the system of circuit court law that tended to “process” people with little concern for cultural and personal considerations. for centuries, first nations communities have dealt with anti-social behaviour through a community well-being approach that has melded the best interests of the community with the best interests of the offender. the simple, yet profound basis of this healing philosophy is that it is more appropriate and ultimately safer for the society to bring the offender back into the fold than to punish or remove her or him from the community. when we consider that the typical repeat young offender in canadian society is one whose past is typified by abuse and punishment, it makes little moral or practical sense to continue this abuse and punishment with legal sanction. furthermore, from a healing perspective, when someone violates the community or when someone is punished the community suffers collectively. the goal, then, should be to reduce punishment and, as a result, to reduce personal and collective victimization. interestingly, within canada we have examples of success that also occur at the legislative level. the province of québec has made a devoted effort to keep young offenders out of the justice system and ultimately out of jail. they have, as a solution, moved for several decades toward community-based programs based on healing and rehabilitation (green & healy, 2003; hogeveen & smandych, 2001). in a very real sense, québec has pursued a policy that involved diversion from formal law to treatment in the community, in the true spirit of the young offenders act and the youth criminal justice act. importantly, their achievements stand out in canada as a relative success story. for example, in 1999, one in 57 youth who committed an offence in québec was incarcerated compared to one in 17 in ontario (mallea, 1999). the province of newfoundland and labrador in the last few years has made a concerted effort to keep young people out of custody by relying on family, friends, and other devoted community members to take an active role in caring for young offenders (newfoundland, 2001). their program has been successful in maintaining one of smallest provincial youth crime rates in canada. so, the goal of diversion and care appears to be not just an illusion, but rather may have real justice potential when it is constructed within social justice principles. the question remains, however, whether simply diverting young people from the justice system actually translates into policy that is effective in 170 reducing young people’s criminal involvement (doob & cesaroni, 2004). the following stories show how social justice principles can work at a grassroots level. alternative schools, health, and justice: won ska cultural school won ska cultural school in prince albert, saskatchewan, exemplifies an alternative education program that provides a context in which troubled youth can heal. won ska deals with first nations street kids and adults who have been in trouble with the law, identified by social services as “at risk”. the school began in 1993 in response to a high dropout rate for aboriginal students in prince albert. first nations and metis parents, community agency workers, teachers from other schools who had a vision for a new school, and youth created an alternative program for the school. won ska is successful for several reasons. firstly, for many of the students who have been in trouble with the law, this school is the only place that deals with the fundamental issues that resulted in their legal problems. secondly, the school mandates that the transition from childhood and adolescence to adulthood is a fundamental priority. the school is administered in a democratic way in which students, essentially, have the final say in their educational development. the teacher as mentor is of profound importance. the mentoring process includes not only training and the transmission of knowledge, but also the creation of a context in which ideas are shared and in which the mentors listen as much as they speak. most students in this school have missed out on the basic, fundamental rights of young citizens: a concerned and patient audience; a physically and emotionally safe context; a place where what they say is as important as what they learn; a chance to influence their life circumstances; an opportunity to make explanation and reparation; and a chance to see and emulate responsible, caring adults. the last point, the need for adult role models, is paramount to this new paradigm of healing and learning. it is through interaction with and emulation of caring adults that marginalized youth develop basic life skills which include the ability to perform the dayto-day tasks that facilitate living, to understand what constitutes responsible parenting and responsible intimacy, to overcome the frustration that lands them in trouble, and to learn to trust people in positions of authority. the majority of students in alternative educational programs (students who are from the streets or who are in young offender alternative measures programs), when interviewed expressed an overwhelming fear and distrust of the police and other legal officials and a generalized discomfort in conventional schools. significantly, many of these students, when asked where they would be without an effective alternative school, immediately responded that they would likely be in jail or no longer alive. by using education to teach academics, life skills, and self-empowerment, the school is able to take the negative legal experiences of its students and develop a system of healing that emphasizes healthy, non-offending lifestyles. in doing so, the teachers focus on the future and essentially ignore the histories of their students, thereby circumventing labels such as “at risk”, “young offender”, or “high needs” and concentrating, rather, on what the students need to develop intellectually and socially. this policy of discarding labels is very much in accord with first nations spirituality and healing which focuses on the elimination of guilt and blame from the healing process. at a very basic level, the concept of “at risk” is based on individual blame. 171 second, the school operates on the basis of a non-authoritarian consensus system: students decide on curriculum, marking, school social events, and discipline or justice issues which are imposed upon them in conventional systems. the rationale is that one of the basic problems for marginal youth (and all youth, more generally) is their disenfranchised position in the world. by investing their lives with basic human rights, the school teaches students that, despite the legal labels that have been placed on them, their role within the school is one of importance and credibility. as a result, retention rates are high; when students discussed their educational satisfaction, their main comments focused on their wish to stay at school 24 hours a day. the basic problem for won ska school, despite its record of success with highly damaged students, is that it is constantly fighting for enough physical and financial resources to provide a comfortable school. moreover, it is continually fighting for credibility. the school poses several problems for the local school board. it does not use a standard curriculum because the programs are students-driven. furthermore, one-to-one learning/mentoring is expensive. the school, as well, rejects offender/risk designations for its students and does not engage in dialogue with the school board and the community regarding potentially dangerous students. finally, it allows students to remain in school as long as they wish, some well into their 20s, and this violates the traditional educational focus on high school as a place for adolescents only. ironically, the things that make won ska highly successful are the same things that jeopardize its existence. standardized, factory-like, fiscally efficient education unfortunately remains the norm in education, often to the detriment of students as unique individuals (giroux, 2003b). at the end of the day, however, by using community resource people as much as possible, won ska cultural school provides the opportunity for adults to interact with troubled youth as real people, an important first step in neutralizing the stigma of their being a young offender. education as a vehicle for holistic healing – cote first nations it is remarkable in aboriginal-based alternative schools how education and health are held as inseparable. education, in such a philosophical context, is part of the process through which the personal, social, and physical environments are healed. several years ago, with several colleagues from the university of saskatchewan, i had the good fortune to work with the cote first nation on the preliminary development of social and environmental proposals for the community. the cote first nation is a saulteaux community located in southeastern saskatchewan. the community is relatively small and, as is typical of many aboriginal communities in western canada, the land has been “mined” by non-aboriginal farmers for decades. the absentee tenants have often left the land denuded and damaged and intensive agriculture has contaminated the land and the water. the cote people were aware of this and began to work on a proposal to take back their land, in large part to improve their own levels of health. they envisioned a series of land use proposals that involved organic farming and reforestation. the other issue faced by the community was the loss of its children to urban areas. cote is relatively isolated from any urban centre and, like many rural communities, had a difficult time providing adequate employment or social opportunities for its young people. as a consequence, the dropout rates from high school were quite high as were the rates of youth in trouble with the law. 172 the community, in resolution of the social and physical problems they faced, proposed that a reformed education system could, in part, hold the answer. there is a new school on the reserve and the people proposed that the school become the centre of the healing project. the idea was that the school curriculum must reflect not only the formal academic needs of the students but also the community’s ability to teach beyond formal education. the priority in this regard is that children and youth learn to be citizens of the earth, that they gain an appreciation for and an understanding of the earth as a living environment, and how this environment is the basis of their own physical and emotional well-being. their proposal involved the use of the school day to teach formal requirements and the local environment to teach life skills. this time outside of formal school would entail working on environmental projects on the reserve, learning traditional knowledge and languages, designing and implementing new projects involving land restoration, and engaging in physical activities to improve levels of fitness amongst the students. the initial project was a community garden on school property in which the children participated as growers. the cote community was convinced that time on the land would instill in the children and youth an appreciation of the importance of food and how safe food can be grown without chemicals, a sense of how land and people are inevitably connected, and a sense of proprietorship over their own well-being. in this new and rather unique education paradigm, the teachers would be prepared to share the instruction duties with elders from the reserve with the goal of providing students with both traditional and contemporary knowledge. the students would learn the “science” of horticulture but also the spirituality involved in the human affinity with the land. furthermore, in their interactions with the elders, the students would be exposed to their cultural history and immersed in the anishnabe language. in a more general sense, what the interactions with elders teach is a connectedness across generations, something that has been lost in conventional societies that ask people to disengage when they reach the age of 65. such a context also allows for older generations to learn from children and youth, a potential that is almost non-existent in the conventional industrial world. the cote proposal does not intend to turn back the clock. it does, however, advise that if students do not understand the past, if they cannot conceive of living on reserve in a relatively pastoral context, they will be lost to the cote community. it also does not diminish the importance of formal education, for the cote people see the value of reading, writing, arithmetic, and more. they do believe, however, in a rather revolutionary way, that you cannot bombard students exclusively with formal education without alienating them from the community. their proposal then, was to fuse formal learning with traditional learning in an “on the land” context. for example, one of the initial projects, which would be connected to the school, was to involve the planting of shelter belts throughout the reserve to be maintained, in part, by the students. the traditional cote people, more than seven decades ago, depended on trees for their livelihood. they produced maple syrup, berry crops and a sustainable lumber industry. the shelter belt proposal is intended to teach the environmental importance of tree planting, with the traditional uses of trees as part of a sustainable community, and further how healthy land is essential to healthy people. the types of projects that have been envisioned and proposed by the cote community, and are in the seminal stages of implementation, are essentially part of a new form of education that 173 melds formal education with life skills mentoring based on a conception of health writ large. the fundamental goal of this system of learning is threefold: to provide the students with the academic and life skills to enable them to be happy and productive citizens; to create a context in which mutual learning takes place across generations (where mentoring is more important than lecturing); and, to create in the students an appreciation for the social and physical environment, especially as it relates their personal health. the cote people believe that if education can produce these desired results, their children and youth will not be lost to the jeopardy of the urban world, and that if they decide to leave their community, they will have a holistic intelligence that will make them strong people and resilient to the health risks that they currently see in their youth, especially those who have migrated to the city. their proposal, then, is to make education an intrinsic part of the everyday world in a cultural and spiritual milieu that focuses on a multi-dimensional understanding of healthy people and healthy communities. conclusion the pressing question that emanates from the foregoing discussions is this: why would powerful people and groups choose, either deliberately or inadvertently, to stigmatize and control young people, especially young people who live on the margins of the society? part of the reasoning must be that as the adult world makes moral or judicial judgments about youth, they not only reinforce the notion that adults are productive and youth are not, but they also reinforce class, race, and gender ideologies that suggest that certain youth (e.g., visible minority and aboriginal youth, poor children and youth, street kids) are less moral and redeemable than others. furthermore, we need to put our condemnation of children and youth in an historical context. with respect to the histories of aboriginal children in residential schools and immigrant children in industrial canada, canadian society understood the delinquency and incorrigibility of young people as closely tied to the need for children and youth in the labour market, that the coerced or enforced employment of youth is often tied to the contemporary labour market need for cheap or free labour (schissel & wotherspoon, 2003). côté and allahar (1994) argued several years ago that young people, in general, are disenfranchised and lacking power, rights, and legitimacy. at the same time, this demographic is crucial to the economic system because it constitutes a cheap source of labour, as well as a massive consumer market. their sequel to this work (côté & allahar, 2006) reinforces their original argument and illustrates that little has changed. politically and economically speaking, then, those in control have to ensure that young people do not realize the extent to which they are crucial to the survival of the system, and that they do not band together and rebel against the system. to prevent this kind of uprising and maintain the status quo, dominant interests use ideology and subtle ideological control, as schissel (2006) notes: the general dispossession of youth is accompanied by popular discourse that demonizes kids as dangerous. . .individual and corporate business interests, through their control of the media, offer portraits of young people as potentially dangerous, violent, and morally bereft (giroux, 2003a; glassner, 1999; schissel, 1997). if the general public views youth as dangerous and prone to criminality, it is less likely to be sympathetic to the increasingly dire economic situation that today’s youth face. this economic situation is the direct result of cuts to social programs implemented 174 by the federal government at the insistence of business groups who have successfully lobbied against welfare liberalism (see mcbride, 2005; carroll, 2004; teeple, 2000; burman, 1996). further, in marginalizing youth, the state undercuts social programs that target youth in particular. the relationship between poverty levels and youth crime is rarely discussed in media representations of young criminals. instead, media images are of youth who are lazy, unwilling to work, and criminally volatile. (p. 139) males (1996, 2000) argues, in addition, that the moral and judicial attack on children and youth stems in large part from the needs of the baby boom generation to protect its investments and its pensions. the logic here is that the disenfranchisement of younger generations, either through the labour market or the crime control system, facilitates the democratic dominance of the baby boom generation. its money is protected through access to cheap labour, to youth consumerism, and through the minimization of social programs that sustain and foster the welfare of young generations. such social programs put financial pressure on government resources that the boom generation thinks should be directed, by right of its contributions in taxes, to an increasingly large pension-eligible generation. this is a philosophy that forgets that the world does not necessarily or rightfully belong to an adult generation but is instead borrowed from a younger generation. as we attempt to come to grips with the expanding state control of youth, we need to try to understand whether children and youth are perceived to be and are, in fact, an increasing reserve army of marginalized labour. now, more than ever, youth are both in demand as consumers and as underpaid labourers. the multinational fast food industry is a typical example of global capitalism that flourishes on the backs of part-time, poorly paid child and youth labourers who receive no labour benefits, have no rights to collective action, and are often exposed to dangerous work. in fact, compared to adults, youth and child work in north america is considerably more dangerous than adult work (schissel, 2001). the absolute denial of the rights of children and youth in the labour market coincides quite dramatically with the denial of the rights of children and youth to fair and impartial justice, a denial that is embedded in modern day youth justice policy in canada. as an antidote to conservative law and order politics, the importance of the kinds of social policies that emanate from research on crime prevention and alternatives to justice cannot be overstated. saskatoon is typical of many canadian cities which have tried to deal with issues such as child and youth prostitution through legal avenues. unfortunately, successes have been few. when children and youth are sexually exploited and assaulted by pimps and adult pedophiles, the law’s best purpose is not served through legal apparatus like the former young offenders act or the new youth criminal justice act. in fact, when the police arrest children and youths for involvement in the sex trade, they are doubly jeopardizing kids. simply put, the law needs to change very fundamentally. the youth criminal justice act does have progressive, caring dimensions that include provisions for diverting youth from the justice system into community-based, alternatives to a formal justice system which incarcerates. unfortunately, the “security of the society” framework upon which the act is based could easily become more punitive and more comprehensive than previous incarnations of youth justice in canada – or nothing could change – especially as neo-liberal societies adamantly oppose 175 increased spending on social justice programs like alternative, community-based programs for young offenders. i argue in my work that any attempt to change the justice system – for example, to include the legal system in the protection of children and youth – without the involvement of education and a profound understanding of health and marginality is futile. for example, safe houses are important but if they do not provide a context in which street kids can develop a sense of selfworth and competency, and where they can access services to become healthy and secure, they are only temporary places of refuge. furthermore, if social policies are blind to the epidemic of ill health that characterizes marginalized children and youth – closely tied to issues of race, class, gender, and geography – they are doomed to failure. my research proposes that involvement with the law for children and youth is a profound individual and collective health risk, and that, as a result, the courts are not the places where youth justice can occur. fundamental justice can arise, however, if we reframe the way that we think about institutions like education, if we constitute schools, for example, as democratic communities that care for the whole person. 176 references bell, s. 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(2000). women, violence and disorder in prisons. in k. hannah-moffat & m. shaw (eds.), an ideal prison? critical essays on women’s imprisonment in canada (pp. 61-70). halifax, ns: fernwood. teeple, g. (2000). globalization and the decline of social welfare into the 21st century. aurora, on: garamond. york, g. (1992). the dispossessed: life and death in native canada. toronto: little, brown and company. bernard schissel the condemnation of age and race scapegoating youth: a story of race and “justice” throwaway youth: life on the streets youth declared as “at risk” a story of an at-risk society healthy contexts alternative schools, health, and justice: won ska cultural school education as a vehicle for holistic healing – cote first nations conclusion literature review to accompany ontario’s roots of violence project international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 233 the correlates of youth violence: evidence from the literature alan w. leschied abstract: this review provides a general presentation of the factors that are linked to youth violence. in general, these risk factors can include any of the following: pregnancy and delivery complications, emotion-related disorders, hyperactivity, concentration problems, restlessness, risk taking, aggressiveness, early initiation into violent behaviour and beliefs, and attitudes supportive to violent behaviour. what can increase our accuracy of prediction for youth violence is an appreciation of the systemic factors that interact with these individual risk factors. these can include factors within the family including: early family conditions related to poverty, abuse, a generally poor relationship between child and parent, and parental criminality. peers also play a role in rewarding behaviour and attitudes supportive of youth violence. the implications for knowledge with respect to these correlates are highlighted in a review of promising programs that address youth violence. key words: youth, violence, descriptors, predictors, gender acknowledgement: this review was made possible with funding support from the centre of excellence in children’s mental health, children’s hospital of eastern ontario, ottawa, ontario, canada. comments on earlier drafts of this review from dr. ian manion were of particular benefit and are gratefully acknowledged. alan w. leschied, ph.d. is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of western ontario, london, ontario, canada. telephone: (519) 661-2111, ext. 88628. e-mail: leschied@uwo.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 234 the general correlates of youth violence violence in the general society remains a relatively rare event or, in other words, it is a low base rate phenomenon, which is to say that it simply does not happen very often. hence, the prediction of such relatively rare events is a challenge for researchers in either overestimating the relationship between a predictor and the committal of violence, referred to as false positive predictions, or underestimating the relative strength of a predictor, referred to as false negative predictions. in other words, research is drawn from the general case and caution is always expressed for translating the significance of such findings to specific instances. in addition, predicting a violent incident, even knowing the risk within the young person, will still require a precipitating event that will trigger the violent act. hence what is also necessary in order to increase the likelihood of an accurate prediction is an understanding of the contexts or circumstances that can increase the likelihood of violence. there are both direct and indirect circumstances that relate to the likelihood of the committal of a violent act by a young person. as gilgan (1999) notes, the direct contextual variables can include any one of the following: 1. a preoccupation with violence 2. access to means (i.e., weapons) 3. psychological vulnerability 4. history of violence within the family of origin 5. a pattern of glorifying violence indirect indicators or circumstances that can influence violence potential include: 1. being emotionally closed 2. unshared anger and grief 3. a history of antisocial behaviour that has been non-violent in the past 4. chemical abuse 5. self-injurious behaviour 6. signs of cumulative stress with these facts in mind, this section will summarize the general correlates of child and youth violence. it will be organized around those factors that are considered within the individual and those that are related to the systems that surround children and youth, namely families, peers, school, and the media. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 235 individual factors numerous studies have now reported on a number of individual risk factors that have been identified linking individual characteristics within the youth to the committal of violence. risk for violence occurs at all developmental points in the life of the child or youth. hawkins et al. (2000) have provided amongst the most useful summaries of these risk factors for violence in the context of when in the life course of the young person they occur. these can include any number of the following: pregnancy and delivery complications, emotional disorders, hyperactivity, concentration problems, restlessness, risk taking, aggressiveness, early initiation into violent behaviour, and beliefs and attitudes favourable to violent behaviour. what is missing from this review is the differential strength of each predictor. in addition, while these risk factors have been shown to predict violence, many of them also predict general criminogenic behaviour as well. what can increase the accuracy of violence prediction, however, is an appreciation of the context or systemic variables that can increase the accuracy of the prediction. the following sections review the major systemic predictors of risk for youth violence. systemic factors family. families play a differentially powerful role in shaping the behaviour and values of their children. within a developmental framework, and in the context of appreciating the influence of families on aggressive and violent behaviour in their children and adolescents, the most meaningful way to characterize this influence is, again, within a developmental perspective. that is, what family influences at what ages and stages of their children are predictive of future violent behaviour? lipsey and derzon (1998) have offered a useful summary of the family-related predictors of youth violence, separating those predictors that are relevant in the lives of children ages 6 to 11 and those relevant to an older age group, 12 to 14 years. for the younger age group, the strongest predictors include family socioeconomic status and antisocial orientation of the parents. weaker predictors, yet still significant, were related to parent-child relations, coming from a “broken” home, and having abusive parents. for the older age group, some of the same predictors were in evidence: parent-child relations, having parents who themselves were antisocial and coming from a “broken” home, family socioeconomic status, and having abusive parents. it would therefore appear that early family conditions related to poverty, abuse, and a generally poor relationship between child and parent are related to later violence. however, these conditions within the family do not operate in isolation. in the absence of strong family ties that reinforce prosocial and non-violent ways of coping, young people will seek out associations with peers who will, in some respects, fill a vacuum of belongingness through the types of associations that are established. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 236 peers. there is an extensive literature related to the importance of peer associates in promoting youth antisocial and violent behaviour. from a developmental perspective, the value of peers influencing individual adolescent behaviour has been identified as one of the strongest risk factors for adolescents, second only to personal values and beliefs supportive of violence. it would appear that not only the association with negative peers that legitimatize and reinforce antisocial beliefs and values around violence, but the isolation from adolescents who represent more prosocial non-violent beliefs is what lies at the basis of the strength of this factor. this is particularly the case when viewed from the perspective of youth who are immersed within a gang culture where the values related to supporting violence are pervasive. youth gang members, as opposed to youth who hold preference for the association with antisocial peers but who are not organized within a gang culture, hold particularly strong negative peer associates. these are young persons who have met with limited success socially and academically and have difficulty finding meaningful ways in organizing their time. as summarized in a previous report for the ministry of children and youth services (leschied, 2007): affiliation within gangs meet an individual youth’s needs for power, affiliation, self esteem, socialization, and, what can only be characterized as, creating a “feeling of family” and a sense of belonging. there is some belief that as youth may continue to feel marginalized and disconnected from the mainstream with family structures changing and school/work becoming increasingly challenging for certain segments of the province’s youth, the formation of gangs may continue to be an attractive option. peers can form the basis for much of a marginalized adolescent’s values that can influence the perceived rewards attached to behaving violently. the challenge of providing effective community-based intervention for gang violence is a significant one. recent reviews of the literature produced for both ontario’s ministry of children and youth services (leschied, 2007) and by the first nations university of canada along with the university of saskatchewan (lafontaine, ferguson, & wormith, 2005) will be of more than passing relevance for appreciating effective evidence-based practice for gang-related interventions. school. schools offer one of the most significant socialization contexts for youth and hence hold significant potential to affect a child’s life course (ladd, buhs, & troop, 2002). unsafe, cliquish environments in schools can contribute to a difficult school experience for some students, especially for a subgroup who experience frequent physical and verbal harassment (rusby, forrester, biglan, & metzler, 2005). this subgroup is more likely to exhibit problems in high school reflected in aggressive behaviours, antisocial peer associates, and numerous mental health disorders such as alcohol use, and psychological distress reflected in low self-esteem, insecurity, depression, anxiety, and suicide (rusby et al., 2005; mackay & sutherland, 2006; reynolds, 2003; rigby, 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 237 heng, leschied, and killip (2009) indicate that perceiving the school as unsafe due to the threat of violence is linked to anxiety and phobic responses, harm to students’ mental and physical health, and ultimately to the avoidance of school altogether. reynolds (2003) suggests that if students fear for their safety, they may avoid areas of their life in which this safety is threatened. when the setting being avoided is school, students’ learning and their pursuit of an education is also compromised. the national center for education statistics (2005) noted that victims of bullying were more likely than non-victims to report receiving failing grades. hence what has emerged is the study of the major predictors for school-based violence, the impact of violence occurring within the school context, and what constitutes more versus less safe schools that can promote violence-free learning environments that also address student mental health concerns (warner, weist, & krulak, 1999). culture: the influence of media [t]aken as a whole, the past 50 years of research on human aggression suggests that habitual aggressive behavior in young humans is to a great extent learned from the child’s early interactions with the environment. (huesmann et al., 1997, p. 183) to this point, family, peers, and school have been highlighted as important systemic factors that aid in the understanding of risk as it relates to the perpetration of youth violence. in the context of mental health disorder, the literature thus far indicates that certain factors can both create the conditions for children and youth such that they are more likely to experience mental health disorder and are also linked in ways that increase the likelihood that certain youth will act in aggressive or violent ways. in other words, it is how individuals, children and youth, interact with their surroundings in the context of having a mental health disorder that aids in both the prediction as well as the understanding of the link between mental health and youth violence. an additional systemic context in which to appreciate youth violence and mental health disorder is reflected in the influence of violent media on child and youth violence, attitudes, and behaviour. the role of media is a legitimate area of concern in a review of violence and mental health given its predominance in the lives of children and youth. there is also a substantial body of knowledge that has examined its impact on the conditions under which certain youth act in violent ways, which is linked to their consumption of violence in the media. some of the hallmark studies, which addressed the importance of observational learning and aggression, occurred almost 50 years ago. since that time, there has been a refinement in examining the nature of how violence in the media impacts children and adolescents. and while most of the knowledge base in this area remains correlational, the convergence of findings from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 238 different studies along with the strength of associations reported, suggest there is now an acceptance that certain young people will be more adversely affected (i.e., demonstrate more aggression) with greater exposure to violent media. in the prestigious journal psychological science in the public interest, distinguished researchers (anderson et al., 2003) including leonard berkowitz and rowell huesmann summarized their review of the evidence regarding the impact and role of violence in the media: research on violent television and films, video games, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts. (p. 311) in a review of both correlational and experimental studies, this review identified not only the impact of witnessing violence that is promoted as entertainment, but also the characteristics within the observation of violence in music, films, television, and interactive games that influence children and youth to act out violently. this review suggests that it is a combination of imitation learning, the “priming” of aggressive cognitive schemas that make more readily accessible violent images and actions, arousal and excitation, and emotional desensitization. it is also germane to a review of childhood and youth mental health disorders and violence to acknowledge that there is a differential impact of viewing media violence. simply, certain observers are more susceptible to the influence of watching such violent content compared to others. for example, age of the viewer, gender, and identification with the violent character being depicted are all factors that will influence media’s impact on youthful viewers. there is also research reporting on the interaction of media violence with certain psychological characteristics of the viewer. huesmann, moeski, and podolski (1997), noted that the mental health characteristics of children and youth affected their susceptibility to the impact of the violence being watched. specifically, youth who were characterized as more aggressive prior to consuming violent media acted out their violent tendencies to a greater extent. this was particularly the case for boys where emotional disorder characterized youth who were more aggressive and reacted more violently following the observation of violent media content, relative to a group of young males who were within normal limits on scales assessing psychological adjustment. community factors that mediate the extent and nature of youth violence generally speaking, social disadvantage will be a predominant predictor in appreciating a youth’s risk for either or both mental health disorder and violence (aneshenel & sucoff, 1996). these predictors will rest on the youth’s perception as to the degree of safety, social stability, and social cohesion that exists within the immediate community. hence transient communities, communities where there is a high level of openly expressed violence, and communities where international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 239 there is not a shared appreciation for academic or vocational attainment will be perceived as less stable and more threatening. locating where a youth lives can influence the extent to which that person experiences either mental health or violent outcomes. further, while it is limited, there are reports comparing the levels of distress and violence for youth in urban and rural communities. given the above findings with respect to the perception of social stability, it may be a surprise to note the findings from one large-scale study suggesting that male youths coming from rural communities present more significant problems in the context of experiencing higher unemployment rates, lower educational attainment levels, and greater use of illegal substances, as well as per capita higher arrest rates for violence. however this is not to suggest that urbanbased youth perceive their communities as being risk-free. rather it may be that the risks for urban-based youth related to mental health and violence are unique relative to rural-based youth. urban-based risk factors for youth violence include extreme poverty, community disorganization, high rates of transitions, criminal subculture, and the availability of drugs and weapons (swenson, henggeler, taylor, & addison, 2005). mental health correlates of youth violence [n]o matter how many social and demographic factors are statistically taken into account, there appears to be a greater-than-chance relationship between mental disorder and violent behavior. mental disorder [is] a statistically significant risk factor for the occurrence of violence. (monahan, 1997) dating back to the early 1980s, dr. dan offord and his associates at mcmaster university reported in the ontario child health study estimates that one in five of ontario’s children and adolescents will experience a mental health or behavioural disorder sufficient in degree to require some form of outside intervention (offord, boyle, fleming, blum, & raegrant, 1989). this estimate has been replicated in other countries suggesting a relatively stable cross-cultural rate of mental health disorder in the child and youth population of 20 per cent for children and youth ages 0 to 16. the most common disorders identified include depression and conduct disorder. the question, in the context of this review, relates to the literature reporting on the crossover of children and youth who experience a mental health disorder and who also display violent or aggressive tendencies. while the rate of 20% of the child and youth population who experience some form of mental health disorder is a stable cross-cultural estimate, there is variability within this estimate as to the severity of the disorder(s). typically, mental disorder with significant impairment is reflected in 11% of the overall one in five, with extreme disorder reflected in 5% (osenblatt, 2001). so the question then is this: within this group of children and youth who experience more extreme impairments due to mental health disorder, who are those youth, who have a tendency to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 240 act violently? there are several methodologies that have been used to address this issue. the first is the group of studies that examine prospectively what the estimate of mental health disorder in children and youth is, and the percentage of this group who are subsequently involved in the commission of violence. the second methodology is the retrospective study of youths who have committed a violent act, been arrested, and then, through psychological testing and detailed history taking, are described as those youth who have had or currently experience a mental health disorder. prospective studies related to mental health disorder and violence. prospective studies are more generalizable to other populations relative to retrospective studies, since they begin from a more inclusive understanding of the population under study. generally then, findings from such studies tend to be relevant for readers wishing a more general appreciation of the prevalence of youth violence and mental health disorder. one study is representative of findings that relate prospectively to the prevalence of violence and mental health disorder in a birth cohort, this one occurring in england (arsenault, moffitt, caspi, taylor, & silva, 2000). in a sample of slightly less than 1,000 children, participants were tracked to their 21st birthday to record the incidence of violent behaviours. several noteworthy findings emerged from this study. first, approximately 2% of the original sample met diagnostic criteria on the dsm-iii-r (the sample was originally assessed in 1973). in descending order, the most prevalent mental health disorders were alcohol dependence, marijuana dependence, and schizophrenia. participants who met the diagnostic criteria for child and youth mental health disorder reflected 20% of the sample, who committed at least one violent act. however, taken together they accounted for over half of all of the violent crimes reported. and, of the differential diagnostic categories, the groups accounting for the greatest extent of violence in descending order were: marijuana dependence, 3.8 %; schizophrenia, 2.5 %; and alcohol dependence, 1.9 %. the conclusions of these authors: in the age group committing the most violent incidents, individuals with mental disorders account for a considerable amount of violence in the community. different mental disorders are linked to violence via different core explanations. (arsenault et al., 2000, p. 979) as previously stated, there is a significant overlap in the conditions that account for violence with those that also account for mental health disorder. for example – and a more complete summary of this issue will occur in a later section of this report under the heading the cycle of violence – exposure to violence within a child or youth’s family of origin has both the impact of modelling violence as well as being a risk factor in promoting emotional disorder such as depression. durant, barkin, kreitzer, and krowchuc (2001) noted that while adolescents who are exposed to violence have a greater likelihood of resorting to violence to resolve interpersonal conflicts, acquire possessions, and achieve goals, such exposure is also associated with higher international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 241 scores on depression and increases in the consumption of illegal substances. in addition, a recent meta analysis by the author along with colleagues at the university of western ontario and the center for addiction and mental health provides a review of prospective studies in the prediction of later youthful offending including violence (leschied, chiodo, nowicki, & rodger, 2008). two important outcomes were identified in this review. the first was that within the set of predictors, childhood and adolescent factors that rated most highly included: a variety of behavioural concerns such as the early identification of aggression, attentional problems, motor restlessness, and attention seeking; emotional concerns consistent with depression reflected in withdrawal, anxiety, self-deprecation, and social alienation; family characteristics such as a variety of negative parenting strategies including coerciveness, authoritarian behaviours, lack of child supervision, and family structure such as witnessing violence, interparental conflict, and poor communication. the second major finding was that as the negative life circumstance occurred later for the adolescent, the predictor was more accurate for future antisocial and violent behaviour, extending into adulthood. retrospective studies related to mental health disorder and violence. retrospective studies use as their starting point an already defined group, in the present case youth who have committed or been arrested for committing a violence-related offence. the information generated from these studies provides important clues related to this subgroup of youth. however, there is a tendency in such retrospective analysis to overestimate the prevalence of mental health and violence in youth. hence caution should always be used in appreciating the significance of such data. notwithstanding this caution, it will come as little surprise to learn that the crossover of mental health disorder with youth who have been arrested for violence-related offences is high relative to those who are arrested and do not meet a diagnostic criteria for the presence of such a disorder. teplin, abram, mcclelland, dulcan, and mericle (2002) reported the following with their youth detention-based sample: 60% of males and more than two-thirds of females met diagnostic criteria and had a diagnosis-specific impairment for one or more psychiatric disorders. half of the males and almost half of the females had a substance use disorder, and more than 40% of males and females met criteria for disruptive behaviour disorders. affective disorders were also prevalent, especially among females; more than 20% of females met criteria for a major depressive episode. rates of many disorders were higher among females. (p. 1133) the significance of gender reflected in such data will be further explored in a subsequent section in this report detailing gender as an important factor in understanding the link between mental health disorder and youth violence. relevant to the above findings here however is the representation of the extent of mental health disorder in youth who appear in the youth justice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 242 system because of the commission of a violent offence. further, mackinnon-lewis, kaufman and frabutt (2002) suggest, “youth involved with the juvenile justice system frequently have more than one co-occurring mental and substance use disorder” (p. 359). several considerations bear attention in this context. youth come into the youth justice system for many reasons. obviously youth appear because they have, in the context of this review, been arrested for the committal of violence-related offence(s). their offence drives their appearance in court and subsequent placement within the range of dispositional alternatives open to the court. however it may also be that youth are “managed” in the justice system because of the lack of resources in other aspects of the children’s service delivery system, either through the children’s mental health or child welfare systems. a full discussion regarding how the children’s service delivery system manages the mental health needs of youth is beyond the scope of this review and interested readers can refer to the more detailed study in judy findlay’s (2002) crossover kids authored through the ontario office of the child advocate. suffice at this point to appreciate that the representation of the extent of youth with mental health disorders who appear in the youth justice system as the result of violence-related offences can also be a caveat not only of the crossover of challenges that certain youths present – violence and mental health disorder – but also how the systems identify and are organized to meet the needs of these youth. in addition, the literature relating risk factors for mental health disorder and youth violence and general antisocial behaviour reflects a high degree of overlap. one epidemiologic study of risk factors associated with youth psychiatric disorder included the following list of factors: sociodemographic factors including parental income and family structure; parental management practices reflected in the use of physical discipline; the quality of the family environment related to parental discord and marital quarrelling; negative life events that result in extreme stress; and a history of psychiatric disorder in parents (goodman et al., 1998). mapped against this list of risk factors for mental health disorder in youth, is the following list of risk factors for violence in youth: early identified nervousness, anxiety, and worry; early signs of aggressiveness; early initiation into violence and general delinquency; parental criminality reflected in a high tolerance within the family for violence in general; child maltreatment; poor family management reflected in inconsistent discipline or the use of physical child management practices; negative parent-child involvement and interaction; poor family bonding; high levels of family conflict and marital discord; stressful family events; low academic attainment and truancy; peer and sibling delinquency; availability of drugs; neighbourhood adults involved in crime and violence; exposure to racial prejudice; and poor community organization and low neighbourhood attachment (hawkins et al., 1998). the conclusion drawn from the review of the comorbidity regarding mental health disorder and violence suggests there is considerable overlap in the conditions under which some children and youth who develop a mental health disorder also display some form of violent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 243 behaviour. still, while the overlap of these conditions is significant, most children and youth who experience a mental health disorder do not proceed to develop beliefs favourable in the use of violence. in certain cases, such as reflected in children and youth who are the victims of violence themselves, the emergent violence displayed can be readily understood within the context of the cycle of violence. other violent outcomes related to a child’s mental health status would seem not to be as clear, and for this, it is important to consider the circumstances that the child interacts with as reflected in their family status, peer associates, and school belongingness and achievement that together may help explain violent outcomes. this is an obvious area for future research in appreciating those children who are not only at risk for mental health disorder but also for violence as well. substance use and youth violence a number of studies cited already have identified the relevance of substance use with violence. it will therefore come as no surprise that there is a strong link between the use of illegal substances and alcohol and antisocial or violent behaviour among young people. indeed an early study examining this relationship suggested that the link created a “clear pathway” between substance use and violence (huizinga, menard, & elliott, 1989). yet, not all young people who consume illegal drugs or use alcohol behave in antisocial or violent and aggressive ways. a recent study on substance abuse in canada indicates, “some teens may be self-medicating to cope with toxic environments, untreated trauma, and underlying psychological conditions” (canadian centre on substance abuse, 2006). the result could be that certain at-risk youth with mental health disorder who resort to heavy drug use may be exacerbating their condition that in part could appear as a heightened risk for violence. information such as this suggests that the relationship between drug and alcohol consumption and adolescent violence is more complex than might first appear. indeed, when we look at this literature, we find that the consumption of certain drugs or alcohol under specified conditions will influence not only the likelihood of the committal of a violent act, but is also revealing of the link to specific violent acts, such as dating violence and sexual assault. the link between substance use and violence. first, as previously stated, the stable estimate of mental health disorder in the child and youth population is consistently reported as 20%. within this percentage the representation of disorders is: anxiety disorders, 13.0%; disruptive disorders, 10.3%; mood disorders, 6.2%; and substance use disorders, 2.0%. hence, substance use is the fourth leading mental health disorder identified within the child and youth population. second, research suggests that the use of illegal substances is imbedded in a series of early life circumstances for children and adolescents. these typically include coercive family processes, social stress, poverty, poor academic outcomes, and social disadvantage (patterson, reid, & dishion, 1992). noteworthy, when referencing substance use, a distinction is made between experimental occasional users, and heavier more constant users. those youth more international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 244 closely aligned with heavier, constant drug use are more likely to be involved in antisocial and violent behaviour. again it is difficult to disentangle the effects of substance use and violence, as many of the predictors of youth violence are also characteristic of substance users. these include, inconsistent parental discipline and harsh, punitive parental practices, low parental monitoring of their child/youth’s behaviour and whereabouts, deviant peer associations, depression, low self esteem, and poor academic achievement (dishion, capaldi, & yoerger, 1999). in addition, the illegal use of substances and the committal of violence is also imbedded within the youth’s social and academic context. for example, in one large study in washington state, researchers identified that not only is substance use linked to youth violence but it is also part of an array of other later risk factors such as poor academic performance, likelihood for dropping out of school, and poverty (mandell, hill, carter, & brandon, 2002). the implications of findings such as these speak to the need for interventions that are multifaceted and include all aspects of the youth’s community. as summarized in the washington state analysis of findings, “if schools and communities are concerned about improving achievement, they must address both attitudes and behaviors related to substance use and violence” the link between substance use and specific forms of violence. there is also research linking the use of substances and alcohol use to specific forms and contexts for youth violence. here, the literature focuses on dating violence and sexual assault. it is estimated that approximately 20% of young women to the age of 18 years will be either physically and/or sexually assaulted within the context of a dating relationship (silverman, raj, mucci, & hathaway, 2001). further, compared to males who may be victimized, females report higher levels of severe violence and more severe physical and emotional reactions to that violence (molidor & tolman, 1998). of relevance in this section relating substance and alcohol abuse to adolescent violence is the consistent finding that the relationship of dating violence and unwanted sexual involvement is highly related to drug and alcohol consumption. in numerous studies, drugs and alcohol have been shown to increase risk in both college age and high school age youth and has been identified as the main reason for unwanted sexual activity for both male and female victimization (gover, 2004). gender similar to other countries reporting data related to gender and violence, canada too shares an increasing violent crime rate for adolescent girls. recent evidence from statistics canada suggests that the violent crime rate for girls has doubled over the past ten years, currently reflecting approximately 8% of the officially reported total adolescent violent crime rate. in the united states the general crime rate for adolescent girls has increased to a similar extent and is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 245 increasing at a much higher rate than for any other segment of the population (henington, hughes, cavell, & thompson, 1998) with the percentage of girls involved in violent crime increasing by 103% during the period from 1984 to 1993. however, it should be remembered that adolescent boys continue to commit the vast majority of violent crime with a prevalence ratio compared to adolescent girls of from 3:1 to 12:1 depending on the exact type of violent offence reported (borduin & schaeffer, 1998). why is the issue of gender salient in a review of mental health and violence? while males are involved in the majority of incidents of physical aggression, the increase of female violence reflects a broadening of the definition of what constitutes violence. and, as the definition of what constitutes violence is broadened, the data begins to reflect something quite different in terms of the representation of girls in violence categories. everett and price (1995) suggest that while girls are lower in rates of school violence when compared to boys when violence is defined as overt aggression, girls are proportionally more likely to appear in the data when verbal threats and intimidation are included. crick (1996) suggests that, “the degree of aggressiveness exhibited by girls has been underestimated in prior studies, largely because forms of aggression relevant to girls’ peer groups have not been assessed” (p. 719). and, as recent studies have suggested, the presence of indirect forms of female aggression is related to the expression of physical forms of violence as well (cummings & leschied, 2002). bjorkqvist and his colleagues in finland contributed significantly to the understanding of girls’ aggression within this broader definition. these researchers suggest that violence reflects not only an act, but also an intention. the focus on physical aggression reflects a male perspective; female indirect aggressive tendencies focus on the disruption of relationships. in this context, “instigators who manipulate others to attack the victim or, by other means, make use of social structures in order to harm another person,” are seen as acting in aggressive ways (bjorkqvist, osterman, & kaukiainen, 1992). there are unique contributors in appreciating gender in the context of adolescent violence within a mental health perspective. in a review provided to the solicitor general of canada, the author along with a research team from the universities of western ontario and toronto reviewed the literature comparing risk factors for adolescent female versus male violence (leschied, cummings, van brunschot, cunningham, & saunders, 2000). unique to the studies on comorbidity with violence and risk with boys, girls who behave aggressively report higher levels of depression and suicidal ideation. in the studies reported in this review, girls with higher scores on aggression reported elevations on depression at a rate close to 40%. more than for boys, when girls behave violently, it is important to assess for the presence of underlying mental health disorder that may be coinciding with a higher violence potential. in addition, this review also identified rates in girls relative to boys who are aggressive as significantly higher reflected in diagnoses of adhd, substance abuse, and suicide risk (leschied, cummings, van brunschot, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 246 cunningham, & saunders, 2001). why might this be the case for girls experiencing higher rates of mental health disorder who express violence? one suggestion is that girls are at a much higher risk for being victimized physically or sexually in both their families of origin as well as through stranger contact, a fact that relates prior victimization with the perpetration of violence. both langhinrichsen-rohling and neidig (1995) and watts and ellis (1993) noted the association of a history of victimization for girls with higher scores on measures of violence and mental health indicators. cunningham and leschied (1998) reported the high incidence of victimization of women who subsequently came into contact with the adult justice system in part as a result of their past victimization histories. this cycle of victimization leading to aggression with adolescent girls is an obvious area for further study. sibylle artz (1998) of the university of victoria suggests that, in part, aggression for girls may be viewed as a means of avoiding subsequent revictimization. cycle of violence an appreciation of the literature related to the cycle of violence and mental health disorder in children and youth is warranted. this reflects the data indicating that child victims of maltreatment – be it physical or sexual maltreatment, neglect, or exposure to interparental violence – are linked to later violent offending by children and youth. two factors are of importance in this discussion. the first relates to the incidence of mental health disorder in children and youth who emerge from early family conditions where they are exposed to, or are the victims of violence. second, the introduction to violence at an early age for many children is itself a risk factor for later violent offending. children who experience maltreatment are nearly twice as likely to report clinically significant elevations for emotional and behavioural disorder on the child behaviour checklist compared to children and youth who do not report maltreatment (burns et al., 2004). and, as previously indicated in relation to gender, girls are more likely to be victimized through maltreatment, particularly through sexual maltreatment, with evidence suggesting that these young women will experience such sequale from victimization as depression, self-injurious behaviour, and suicide to a greater extent relative to males who are maltreated (leschied et al., 2000). widom and maxfield (2001) also have noted that such victimization increases the prevalence of violent offending in particular for female victims. numerous studies have reported on the link between early experiences with violence in a child’s family of origin and later aggression. in one sample of maltreated adolescents, 39% of youth self reported as incurring at least one violent offence by late adolescence, with that percentage “slipping” to 29% by early adulthood (smith, ireland, & thornberry, 2005). clearly, the legacy of child maltreatment is enduring in the context of ongoing violence. in addition, it is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 247 not only the impact of being maltreated that for certain children and youth translates into their own perpetration of violence, but it is also the vicarious trauma experienced by children and youth in being exposed to interparental violence that influences that likelihood. widom (1997) reported that witnessing verbal hostility and physical violence for children and adolescents was associated with higher levels of both internalizing and externalizing disorders, concluding that children who experience such exposure “[some children] developed post-traumatic stress disorder whereas others became angry and violent.” cognitive and developmental correlates of youth violence this review was asked to speak to the literature relating the potential for violence in the context of cognitive and developmental anomalies. developmental disabilities. hassan and gordon (2003) suggest that “developmentally disabled people may be more likely than non-developmentally disabled people to exhibit characteristics, or experience social or economic conditions that have been associated with criminality such as low self-esteem, poverty and lack of social skills.” early studies have also reported that developmentally disabled adult males were five times more likely, and females 25 times more likely, to commit a violent act than their non-developmentally disabled counterparts (hodgins, 1992). there is little data, however, upon which to draw to investigate the relationship between developmentally disabled youth and the committal of violence. most of the research in this area relates to the developmentally disabled being the victim rather than the perpetrator of violence. and typically, this victimization is related to sexualized violence. only tangentially, the literature related to iq does suggest that intelligence is a protective factor in crime generally and this holds true for violence as well. fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd) is the current diagnostic classification used to characterize children who have previously been referred to under various categories such as fetal alcohol syndrome (fas), fetal alcohol effects (fae) and prenatal exposure to alcohol (pae). in a summary provided by henry, sloane, and black-pond (2007), the effects of fasd are described as: prenatal alcohol exposure… impacts two core developmental processes – neurophysiological growth of the brain, nervous system, and endocrine system, along with psychosocial development, including personality formation, social conduct, and capacity for relationships. developmental domains affected include language, social cognition and communication, impulse control, memory, attention, and executive functioning. estimates for prevalence rates for fasd range from 3 to 190 per 1,000, with an international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 248 estimated rate of 9 per 1,000 in canada (mills, mclennan, & caza, 2006). along with the acknowledgement of severe developmental anomalies for children and youth experiencing fasd, and relevant to the current focus on mental health disorder and violence, is the data indicating the high prevalence of mental health disorder within this group as well. mills et al. (2006) noted that between 93% and 96% of fasd children to the age of 9 years had comorbidity rates with mental health disorder, and as children with fasd age, the prevalence of comorbidity and mental health disorder actually increases. the most common forms of mental health disorder include sleep disorders, abnormal habits, and emotional disorders. the rates for fasd children with mental health disorders is typically twice the rate reported for children with other developmental anomalies such as adhd (mills et al., 2006). of relevance to this discussion of violence and fasd is further evidence that these young people are also more likely to be the victims of violence. streissguth, barr, kogan, and bookstein (2002) noted that, violence against individuals with fas/fae occurred at an alarming rate: 72% had experienced physical or sexual abuse or domestic violence. being a victim of violence was a strong risk factor for [these children and adolescents] committing inappropriate sexual behavior, increasing the odds fourfold. the relevance of such data cannot be underscored too greatly. these young people not only possess developmental challenges in most all major cognitive spheres and share much higher representation in mental health categories, but their secondary disabilities related to interpersonal difficulties and consequent victimization also places them at greater risk for perpetrating violence as well. in a recent study on aboriginal youth in western canada, many of whom were diagnosed with fasd, violent reoffending rates along with sexual offending behaviour were much higher than in a comparable group of non-fasd youth. the suggestion is that cognitive deficits set the stage for low impulse control along with difficulties in social development and, along with a history of prior victimization, places these young people at greater risk for violence perpetration. an overview of best and promising practice interventions in youth violence and mental health disorder two general concepts related to intervention follow from this review: first, the relationship between mental health and youth violence is, for the most part, bidirectional. that is, child and youth violence victimization, be it either as a result of family-based maltreatment or peer on peer violence (e.g., school-based violence), has the effect of (a) increasing the likelihood a child or youth will reflect some form of mental health disorder, and (b) the presence of a mental health disorder in turn increases the risk that a child or youth will act out violently. hence as a general statement, interventions that address mental health disorders in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 249 children and youth will have the effect of reducing the risk for violence within this population as well. second, there are general principles regarding effective interventions for children and youth that translate to the literature on violence prevention and intervention. these general principles can guide the selection and implementation of effective services to reduce youth violence (see farrington, 2001; farrington & welsh, 2007). these intervention strategies include: services are targeted. capitalizing on the knowledge base addressing the links between mental health disorder and youth violence, effective services will target the specific causes of youth violence and mental health. services are empirically-based. there is now an extensive body of knowledge in regard to effective service such that prevention and intervention strategies should be guided by the literature that has evaluated service outcomes. services reflect the multiple pathways that link mental health disorder and youth violence. as can be appreciated from the literature summarizing the links between mental health disorder and youth violence, there are numerous multiple causes that link mental health and violence and many of these are co-occurring. interventions need to reflect the coincidental occurrence of a variety of risk factors within their intervention. services are gender-informed. the links between mental health disorders and violence are unique as a function of gender. in the summary related to risk factors associated with female violence, literature reflects that girls will more likely experience an underlying mental health disorder such as depression and suicidal ideation relative to boys. interventions need to reflect this understanding. services are developmentally appropriate. more recent evidence with respect to effective service delivery in youth violence prevention and intervention indicates that for services to be effective, they need to reflect age appropriate services that connect meaningfully with the children and youth who are the receivers of that service. in addition, age appropriate service also reflects appropriately targeted service in the context of when the risk occurs. for example, children victimized through maltreatment who then become violent will benefit from services differentially compared to adolescents who are the victims of maltreatment and show violence. service implementation constitutes a “science” in its own right. it is a necessary but not international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 250 sufficient condition to select empirically-based services. services, in order to be effective, need also to be implemented in ways consistent with the principles of effective service delivery (see bernfield, farrington, & leschied, 2001). as aforementioned, there is a well-established empirically-based literature reporting on outcomes related to violence prevention and intervention now being reported. as a caveat to this summary, the extensive literature on best and promising approaches to the reduction of youth violence tends to follow the above five principles. hence within a brief overview of this literature summary, only a snapshot of effective service is provided. what it will reflect is the variety of programs being reported, what they target, and where they are offered. services that focus on primary prevention. primary prevention programs target the onset of violence. a useful example of this form of intervention focuses on the effects of media violence. while not as extensively evaluated as other forms of violence prevention, strategies that reduce a child or youth’s exposure to media violence, such as the introduction of technology to control violence displays through the v-chip and coding for content of video games similar to what is used in movies, are examples of primary prevention. such technology empowers caregivers to monitor their child’s intake of violence from the media, particularly for those children who may be more susceptible to its influence. these susceptibilities will include children and youth who have experienced trauma linked to previous violence exposure or who already demonstrate vulnerability to media violence due to a pre-existing emotional disorder. more direct forms of prevention would also include the ontario ministry of education’s promotion of courses on media literacy within the elementary grades. one such example is the ontario ministry of education’s media literacy resource guide. there are also findings from the family intervention literature that have shown encouraging outcomes in promoting more effecting parenting and a lowering of risk among children. these would include the triple “p” parenting and cope programs along with ontario’s better beginnings, better futures and best start programs. services that focus on secondary prevention. secondary prevention programs target the risks and needs of youth who have already developed the risk for violence but who have as yet not displayed aggressive or violent behaviour. this group of interventions will include targeting children and youth who already display such risk factors as a history of maltreatment, or victimization through dating violence. examples in this category include programs that are directed at abuse survivors, which assist in helping youth victims with post-traumatic stress disorder, feelings of vulnerability, depression, and suicidality. the work of leena augimeri and her colleagues at toronto’s child development institute in delivering the snap (stop now and plan) program falls into this category of effective programs that target children under the age of 12 years (augimeri, farrington, koegl, & day, 2007). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 251 services that target tertiary prevention. tertiary prevention programs are directed at those youth who have already been identified as being at risk and have committed acts of violence. gang interventions serve as useful examples of this level of intervention. effective services in this area include: targeting youth’s need for mentoring; focused skill development; the teaching of non-violent conflict resolution skills; substance and alcohol abuse intervention programs; academic and vocationally focused upgrading and recreation programs. services that are community-based. community-based services are, as they refer, programs that occur within the youth’s community and require implementation on a communitywide coordinated basis. the work of scott henggeler and his colleagues through the medical university of south carolina is singular in evaluating and reporting on effective communitywide efforts to reduce adolescent violence (swenson et al., 2005). the components of mst service in reducing youth violence are well chronicled in numerous studies and reports. mst is considered as one of the best practice programs as reported by the highly regarded washington state institute for public policy (wsipp) and the center for the study and prevention of violence at the university of colorado. services located within schools. school-based violence prevention and intervention programs are widely implemented as part of almost every school board’s initiatives to reduce not only violence that occurs within the school but also targets the factors that could help generalize to violence reduction within the broader community. a number of programs report on providing successful conflict resolution skills for youth. one notable program that is currently being evaluated is the “fourth ‘r’ project” (wolfe, 2011) offered through the centre for prevention science, centre for addiction and mental health. this project provides a curriculum-based, teacher offered program that focuses on the development and building of relationship capacity within the general elementary and secondary school-age populations with the primary outcome being the ability for youth to display non-violent conflict resolution skills. limitations in the research on youth violence while the literature with respect to youth violence is substantial, it carries with it the caveats of most all applied research in being limited by the research designs and methods employed. most of the work reported here is retrospective and correlational in nature, and hence the limitations with respect to causality are always in evidence when it comes to interpretation. although, within all lines of research that rest on correlational studies, interpretation of outcomes rest on convergence through replication. with respect in particular to the knowledge base in risk predication for youth violence, outcomes from the major longitudinal studies by david farrington in the united kingdom and rolf loeber in the united states report high levels of agreement with much of the cross-sectional, retrospective findings, thereby adding credence to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 252 the risk predictors for youth violence that are reported in this review. in addition, some of the findings from canadian-based longitudinal studies by richard tremblay and marc leblanc, although not as robust in comparison to farrington and loeber, are supportive of the knowledge base in youth violence and risk. as well, this review focused on the nature of co-morbidity relating mental health disorders and violence in children and youth. as will be apparent in reading this literature, it is often difficult to disentangle the what and when of these two factors of risk for children and youth. this was no more apparent than in the review related to child maltreatment and the cycle of violence. exposure to family violence for children, either through vicarious trauma of witnessing violence or being the victim of maltreatment sets the stage for the development of both higher reported rates of emotional disorder (i.e., depression) and acting out the violence. the “pathway” leading from the exposure to violence to the child or adolescent acting violently themselves is unclear yet a relevant area of investigation. the literature related to substance use and violence, in contrast, has matured to the point where path analyses – predicting the strength and direction of the relationship between these two events and the outcome – are well established. charting the relationship between mental health status and aggression in children and youth would similarly benefit from investigations of this type. future directions for research currently there is unprecedented worldwide interest in research addressing youth violence. and, there is urgency in developing our understanding regarding how we can be more effective in providing services and interventions that can lessen the risk for violence. the world health organization reports that worldwide, “36.2% of global mortality due to interpersonal violence occurred among young adults aged 15-29 years … and for every youth’s death that occurs from interpersonal violence, many more young people are injured and permanently disabled” (world health organization, 2007). the packard foundation’s report in the united states, children, youth and gun violence, indicates that gun violence in the united states is the second leading cause of death in young people ages 10 to 19, accounting for the deaths of 20,000 children (behrman, 2002). in ontario, the death of toronto’s jane creba on boxing day, 2006 and jordan manners at c.w. jefferies school remind us we are not immune to realizing the effects of youth violence. while ontario’s concern for youth violence may not seem similar in degree or lethality to other parts of the world, ontario does share a high degree of similarity in interests in worldwide research initiatives to address youth violence. this section will outline those research areas that could best advance our understanding of youth risk and effective services. research focusing on understanding youth risk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 253 promoting a developmental understanding related to risk, mental health disorder, and youth violence. a review of the most important contributions in the past several years to understanding both risk and effective interventions has highlighted the area of “charting” the pathway of child and youth experiences that lead to violence. this approach to understanding risk builds on the empirical basis of risk prediction, with the value-added component of casting it within a developmental framework. leblanc and loeber’s (1998) updated contribution to developmental criminology suggests that “it is important to search for variables that determine or mediate the variation of behavior with age [as it relates to violence potential]”. such research contributions would improve our understanding of which services offered in the timeliest ways could reduce risk for youth violence. this line of research would most significantly inform services in the area of secondary prevention. david farrington’s two recent summaries have helped focus research efforts in intervention in the context of developmental pathways to violence. in ontario, the work of christine wekerle and the maltreatment adolescent pathways (map) project reflects this type of research and will provide significant contributions in this area. resilience and protective factors for youth who reside in high-risk communities. while much is known about risk factors with children and youth that are related to violent offending, considerably less is known about the conditions that influence heretofore higher risk cases becoming lower risk. for example, while there is considerable information related to macro level risk indicators such as poverty and neighbourhood stability, it remains an accepted fact that the majority of children and youth even in these highest of risk communities do not resort to violence. research that addresses invulnerability within this group of youth would be a very significant contribution in helping communities mobilize naturally occurring conditions that promote resiliency within the community. developmental disabilities and fasd services. while children and youth who experience developmental disabilities and fasd are low relative to the frequency they appear within the youth population, they do in themselves represent very high-risk groups in regard to violence. yet, there is a lack of studies reporting on effective ways of managing their considerable needs. one exception to this is the prevention strategies to reduce alcohol consumption in expectant mothers in reducing the incidence of fasd. however even here, few studies report on the impact of these prevention efforts to reduce fasd. more research is required to understand the needs of these youth and their families in developing strategies that can reduce their violence potential. research promoting the understanding of delivering effective services gender-informed programming in youth violence. it has only been within the past 10 years that a research agenda in canada has begun to inform service providers regarding the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 254 differential understanding of female violence in relation to male violence. previously, what was known regarding the models of violence that youth interventions were built on, reflected our understanding of how males acted violently, not females. as this gender-informed appreciation has developed regarding risk and violence, programs have developed to reflect this orientation, services that are unique and tailored to the individual needs of girls. however, these programs are to a large extent still in their infancy, and service providers are only now integrating gender informed components into their violence prevention and intervention strategies. outcome research needs to both focus of how these services are meeting the needs of girls and what kinds of outcomes can be achieved. this is of particular relevance in the context of mental health. this review has identified that girls involved in violence report much higher comorbidity rates of emotional disorder and violence. effective coordination of various service sectors in targeting youth violence. all studies that focus on community-wide efforts in reducing youth violence speak to interventions that range from mental health specific, to academic, vocational, and social skills targets within a group of youth. such coordinated efforts at intervention require the cooperation of a variety of service providers. yet, these same studies reporting on the need for coordinated service efforts all speak to the difficulties in providing focused, coordinated, and timely services such that treatment outcomes can be maximized. research into service delivery needs to advance our understanding regarding what the most effective means are to provide such cross-sectoral services. this research will be of particular relevance for communities who are examining the delivery of gang-focused services where youth needs are diversified and require coordinated community efforts. service delivery issues related to offering best practices in violence prevention and intervention. this review identified that the implementation of effective service should be considered as a science in its own right. that is, while the literature is growing regarding what services are most effective, less is known about how to generalize the delivery of those services such that high levels of replication can report similar positive outcomes across all communities. questions related to the required training of those delivering the service, when services should be offered (i.e., daytime, evening, weekends), and how intensive services need to be to achieve positive outcomes, are examples of areas requiring further investigation. one way to address this gap in the literature is to study those programs that have demonstrated positive outcomes in relation to mental health and violence and examine the conditions under which the programs were successively developed and delivered. effective means of disseminating the existing information regarding current best practice research in youth violence. there is a considerable body of evidence that speaks to understanding the needs of children and youth who experience both mental health concerns and who are also at risk for violence. in addition, there is a growing research literature on effective international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research perspectives for youth at risk for serious and violent offending: implications for crime prevention policies and practices 255 services that reduce risk. and, while numerous gaps in our knowledge still remain, perhaps the largest gap of all is that between the knowledge that exists and the service providers who are charged with implementing the program. the challenge therefore is this: how do we disseminate and translate this evidence such that communities and service providers can utilize this knowledge in informing their approaches to meet the needs of youth and their communities? there is little information to inform the best strategies to connect knowledge with its potential users. evaluating effective strategies to disseminate the existing research knowledge should be considered a high priority. summary this review underscores the extent of the knowledge base for youth with respect to violence and mental health. the importance of focusing efforts to both further our understanding regarding those children and youth who are at risk for being aggressive and those interventions that can lessen that risk are considerable. the most likely victim of youth violence is another youth. hence, what we know about the cycle of violence and mental health is that once victimized, those children then increase their own likelihood of developing similar disorders that compromise the community’s safety with respect to further victimization. drawing on our knowledge with respect to effective outcomes, from prevention through to tertiary intervention, has a significant payoff in lessening the traumatic effects on both the direct victims as well as the general community. there is also current research efforts focused on accounting for the “cost” of purchasing community safety; cost as measured both in terms of lessening human misery through reduced victimization rates, as well as in real economic costs related to “purchasing” the benefits of delivering effective services to youth at risk. aos, lieb, mayfield, miller, and pennucci (2004) summarize their considerable findings thusly: in the last two decades, research on what works and what doesn’t has developed and, after considering the comparative economics of these options, this information can now be used to improve public resource allocation [in an effort to reduce youth violence]. clearly when we look to research in this area to help guide our efforts, there is much to inform our decisions that benefits all who are concerned with reducing youth violence and mental health disorders, thereby improving community safety. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 2.1: 233-262 canadian research 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(2007). youth violence. kincardine, scotland: author. http://www.thefourthr.ca/� a holistic approach to emancipatory practice: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 371 moving towards emancipatory practice: conditions for meaningful youth empowerment in child welfare jennifer dupuis and varda mann-feder abstract: what are conditions that facilitate the development of youth voice in child welfare? this article will build on current literature that emphasizes the critical importance of treating youth in the care of the public system as valued resources and agents of change in their own lives who can contribute to effective service delivery. a focus will be on comparing principles of youth empowerment and the general purpose of child welfare systems in canada and the united states. challenges to the implementation of this model will be highlighted and recommendations to facilitate its execution at the individual, organizational, and policy development levels of our youth serving agencies will be made. keywords: youth empowerment, child welfare, youth in care jennifer dupuis is a youth empowerment liaison at batshaw youth and family centres, 6 weredale park, westmount, quebec, h3z 1y6. e-mail: jennifer_dupuis@ssss.gouv.qc.ca varda mann-feder, d.ed. (the corresponding author) is a professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke west, room ve 227-3, montreal, quebec, h4b 1r6. e-mail: varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca mailto:jennifer_dupuis@ssss.gouv.qc.ca mailto:varda.mann-feder@concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 372 every year thousands of children and youth in north america are involved with child welfare systems. these systems can be defined as encompassing both social work practice and all the systems put into place to ensure the upholding of the safety, security, and development of at-risk children. in addition to theoretical perspectives based on the review of relevant literature, this article draws on the practical experience of co-authors jennifer dupuis and varda mannfeder. jennifer dupuis, an alumnus from care, draws on her experience as a youth growing up under the jurisdiction of youth protection and her current experience as youth empowerment liaison at batshaw youth and family centres, the youth protection organization that serves quebec’s anglophone population. varda mann-feder is a professor at concordia university, but worked for 27 years as a consulting psychologist in the anglophone child welfare system in montréal. due to advances in the field of child development that began in the early 20th century, the universal rights of children and adolescents for protection have been adopted throughout the world (mann-feder, 2007). this has resulted in legislation in most countries that requires the protection of children and prescribes measures that must be taken when an individual child’s development is compromised. as technical systems for youth protection have become more sophisticated, given electronic databases which enhance the capacity to track case files, there has been an increase in the number of interventions with families in canada and the united states. a significant proportion of the young people involved have ultimately been placed outside their families because assessments have found their development to be seriously compromised. being in care in the child welfare system can refer to a range of options along a continuum ranging from the most normative and individualized at one end (adoption) to foster care and group care at the other end. provided under these options are either: (a) a substitute family, with a member of the child’s extended family or an adult known to the child; (b) group home care, which acts as a therapeutic group setting; or (c) residential placement, which is similar to group home care but much more structured. children can have long-term placement in any of these options or can move along the continuum through the course of a placement career. many factors influence outcomes in child welfare, and with an increased emphasis on evidence-based practice, outcome studies have proliferated. results overall have provided a mixed picture of the long-term adjustment of youth who have been subject to intervention in the child welfare system. it is generally accepted that youth who have received services can grow into healthy and successful adults. however this outcome reflects a complex interaction between characteristics of the young people themselves, and a range of ingredients that characterize their experiences in the system. a factor that has been identified as helpful for youth in the care of child welfare particularly is the degree to which they had a say in their own care experiences, and were given some power and control in the relationship with decision-makers in their trajectory through the child welfare system. defining youth empowerment empowerment can be defined as “a process of increasing personal, interpersonal, or political power so that individuals, families, and communities can take action to improve their life situations” (pearrow, 2008, p. 202). youth empowerment in child welfare involves power international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 373 sharing between adults and youth, allowing the youth to become active agents of change (as opposed to simply service recipients) in an effort to encourage youth to improve their own lives. the goals of youth empowerment can be subsumed under a broad definition of “emancipatory practice”, an approach which “illuminates power dynamics in adult-youth relationships….with the goal of improving organizations to build stronger communities” (linds, blanchet-cohen, mann-feder, & yuen, 2010, p. 5). goals of youth empowerment there are numerous benefits to empowering youth in care, and using an empowerment model serves many functions. gibson (1993) identifies the main goal of youth empowerment as helping those who come from disadvantaged groups to believe and understand they have control over the outcomes in their lives, and aiding them to realistically identify the oppressive barriers they face. essentially, the capacity of individuals to improve their situation is determined by their ability to “control their environment, connect with needed resources, negotiate problematic situations, and change existing social situations that limit human functioning” (gibson, 1993, p. 389). empowering youth in care can result in significant long-term benefits, including enhanced self-awareness and social achievement (pearrow, 2008); improved mental health and academic performance (pearrow, 2008); reduced rates of delinquency, substance abuse, and school dropout (roth, brooks-gunn, murray, & foster, 1998; pearrow, 2008); and reduced violence (pearrow, 2008). history of youth empowerment in child welfare historically, children were seen as objects rather than as people. by the 19th century, there was still no legislation to protect children from abuse or neglect as they were largely viewed as the property of their parents, who could do what they pleased with their children (denov, 2005). the general consensus at the time was that children should be seen and not heard, and there was no concept of a young person having a voice. slowly things began to shift and from approximately 1867 until the mid-20th century a new view was adopted in relation to children. by the mid-20th century, children and youth in north america were considered a separate class of individuals who were vulnerable and had a need for care, and the movement to care for children in the united states trickled down to canada. the state accepted responsibility for the welfare of vulnerable youth by establishing organizations to meet their basic needs. by the end of world war ii there was another shift in the way children were viewed; they began to be seen as people who had their own unique rights. these rights were officially recognized in 1959 when the united nations adopted the declaration of the rights of the child (denov, 2005). support for the voice of the children as accepted and valued continued to evolve, and in the 1970s the national youth development bureau was established by the u.s. department of health, education and welfare. by the 1980s, youth advisory boards, or groups of youth appointed by officials to offer their advice or opinions on identified areas, had begun to appear. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 374 the establishment of youth advisory boards represented the earliest youth empowerment initiatives. throughout the 1980s and 1990s, this was the only visible form of youth engagement in child welfare (crowe, 2007). these youth advisory boards sprung up at various levels in the child welfare system, but at the same time they presented significant logistical problems. these boards were poorly run and were often understaffed and/or staffed by individuals with inadequate training. practical aspects such as transportation for the youth and the provision of meals were not usually taken into account. there was little consideration for the school or work schedules of the youth sitting on the boards (denov, 2005). additionally, there was a lack of funds available for projects that youth wanted and these collaborations were experienced as tokenism rather than as active participation in partnerships. collaboration and advice was sought from youth, yet little was done to implement any of their suggestions. another significant issue was that the youth that were chosen to participate on these boards were only those who were perceived as doing well in their placements, and youth in care who were struggling were not represented (denov, 2005). by the early 1990s, projects that promoted youth empowerment were funded throughout the united states by the dewitt-wallace foundation through organizations that focused on character building such as the ymca, boy and girl scouts, and the boys and girls clubs of america. in 1992, the child welfare league of america joined in this effort and formally introduced the concept of youth empowerment to the child welfare community (denov, 2005). since then, this movement has continued to grow within child welfare agencies across north america. there has been a growing emphasis on developing relevant approaches and programs. however, there are still many challenges that child welfare agencies face in incorporating an empowerment model. challenges to youth empowerment in a child welfare context the literature of child welfare has increasingly endorsed a youth empowerment stance (kaplan, skolnik, & turnbull, 2009). this is reflected by the recent movement towards positive youth development models such as “the circle of courage” (brendtro, brokenleg, & van bocken, 2002), an approach that stresses first nations philosophies and non-hierarchical relationships with appropriate role models (reclaiming youth international, 2013). in practice, however, there are still considerable obstacles to such approaches in child welfare. there are inherent contradictions between the goals of youth protection and the goals of youth empowerment. assuming responsibility for the security and safety of children in need of protection implies a paternalistic stance (turnell & edwards, 1997), in which there is a focus on doing for vulnerable young people (dumbrill, 2005). service must be provided to individuals who are often involuntary recipients, and the legal obligation to intervene results in the exercising of authority over individuals and depriving them of their right to choose. some theorists have stated that, “the nature of child welfare practice is in itself oppressive” (child welfare anti-oppression roundtable, 2009, p. 8). the necessity of providing involuntary protection positions youth (and their parents) in the child welfare system as passive recipients of services who are controlled for their own good. the shift in child welfare from controller to partner is considerable, and cannot be made without a significant commitment on the part of agencies and individuals (adams & chandler, 2004). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 375 this commitment would entail sustained efforts to transform the culture of care to a culture of collaboration, where policies and procedures stress partnerships with clients. compounding this emphasis on the power of the child welfare system over the young people in its care, the approach to intervention has historically been deficit-based. what this means in practice is that the point of entry into the child welfare system is the failure of parents to provide an appropriate environment for their children. the children, as a result, become clients. workers are designated as experts whose role it is to assess the impact of neglect and abuse, and prescribe care plans that will compensate for deficits in parenting. power and knowledge rests with the system, not with the clients themselves (turnell & edwards, 1997), and the youth who are targets of these interventions have virtually no say in what happens to them. ironically, they are deprived of a voice because they are perceived as vulnerable, but their inability to exercise any degree of control over their own lives renders them more vulnerable (dumbrill, 2005). child welfare agencies, by their very nature, tend to be funded by government and structured as large bureaucracies with strong links to the judicial system. in practice, this can result in organizations that are large, complex, and hierarchical. not only is this confusing for young people, it is disempowering. decision-making processes are most often top-down and do not even allow for the expression of individual client views and preferences in relation to the future. services to youth and families are provided in separate departments that function as silos (mann-feder & guerard, 2008). these structures are difficult to navigate and discourage meaningful participation. the extent to which formal rules are generated by these large bureaucracies to regulate practice also results in a dynamic in which front-line workers are themselves controlled, and in turn manage their interactions with youth by placing emphasis on regulation and discipline (fleming & spicer, 2003). while interest in developing a youth empowerment approach has grown considerably in the last two decades, in practice agencies tend to underestimate the depth of the change that is required to sustain true youth empowerment. because the culture of child welfare has developed in the context of the value system described above – that is, deficit-based, expert driven, and bureaucratic – deep reflection, preparation, and willingness to engage in a cultural shift is critical. it is paramount that all the adults involved embrace a willingness to give up their own power in order to truly empower youth (dumbrill, 2005). recommendations for practice recommendations for incorporating youth empowerment into a child welfare model of practice must be made at individual, organizational, and policy development levels. in implementing youth empowerment, it is crucial to look for opportunities to engage child welfare clients in current procedures in our agencies, but we must also co-create new possibilities for participation. simply inviting youth participation at meetings is not enough; the values of youth empowerment must be incorporated into the “mission, values and practices” of our organizations (romanelli et al., 2009, p. 203). in order to adopt a youth empowerment approach in child welfare, preconditions that can result in the establishment of a culture of empowerment must exist. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 376 multiple tasks are involved in order to meet these conditions. the child welfare league of america recommends that youth be given meaningful involvement in decision-making around their own care, but that they also have opportunities to participate in leadership roles in relation to policy and program development, both as current care recipients and as alumni of care (kaplan et al., 2009). ensuring that a commitment to youth empowerment exists at every level in the organization is one of the greatest challenges when attempting to implement this model, but it is critical to the successful adoption of an emancipatory approach. youth participation can quickly deteriorate into tokenism, which is more destructive to the aims of child welfare than not attempting these initiatives at all, because the misuse of youth involvement undermines the development of the capacity for agency and self-determination. individual level. at the individual level, workers require support, training, and the necessary tools to implement a youth empowerment model. firstly, workers need time and support to examine the values underlying their current practices and to help them determine what shifts can be made to move from a coercive approach to establishing partnerships that promote meaningful involvement with the youth they serve. as with any new approach, some workers may be reluctant to change their practices without being entirely sure about what it entails. the first step is education. it is critical to offer staff members training in an effort to challenge some of the negative myths associated with youth empowerment practice (for example, that it provides clients with opportunities to misuse their power and in some way overpower staff). the training should highlight the ways in which this approach is consistent with the worker’s current practice. while most staff have been trained in counselling approaches that advocate that the clients are experts on their own lives, this message often gets lost in practice. this is especially true when practitioners take on a youth protection mandate and consequently feel they must adopt an attitude of i know what’s best for you. though this is done with the client’s best interest at heart, it fails to consider the impact on a young person and his or her relationships with the worker and the organization. young people in care often feel powerless over their own lives and feel as though their thoughts, desires, and opinions are neither valued nor welcomed. reminding workers of this, and highlighting how the adoption of empowerment practice does not mean discarding previous ways of working but rather making more room for youth input, can ease the anxieties of child welfare professionals. it is equally important that training highlights the benefits of a collaborative approach, allowing practitioners to adopt a positive view of the model. a critical issue to explore is the fear that workers may have about the need to reconcile legal obligations to clients and the potential loss of control implied in youth-adult partnerships. open exploration will encourage staff to be more receptive to the possibilities afforded when youth voice is maximized and their role with clients shifts to create space for young people to express themselves. ensuring that practitioners have the necessary tools to operationalize the model is also key and requires appropriate and specific training. these tools can range from theoretical understanding to concrete information and materials for implementation. not only are written manuals required, but standard tools that are used with clients need to be revised to ensure that they are consistent with the approach and that youth are fully informed about their rights and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 377 entitlements (romanelli et al., 2009). this includes the creation of youth-friendly intervention plans, and the modification of rule books for programs in which youth input is solicited. it is equally necessary for staff to be aware of potential challenges in empowerment practice and to be equipped to deal with them. resources must be made available to practitioners to help them realize the projects or changes that are necessary to encourage youth voice. caution must be taken to ensure that when youth bring forward suggestions, individual staff members are given the authority and the means to implement them. organizational level. at the organizational level, evaluation should happen regularly for all employees, and incorporate ongoing discussion of the impact of shifting to an empowerment approach. this offers front-line practitioners an opportunity to examine in-depth what is working well and what isn’t, and also provides an opportunity for feedback and support for improvements. the focus of supervision should be on supporting staff to find new ways to work collaboratively with their clients, as their own empowerment is critical to their capacity to, in turn, empower young people. the adoption of universal supervision practices across the organization can facilitate the adoption of a culture of empowerment. in order to avoid gaps between the practices of upper management and front-line workers, the organization must take steps to avoid a broken telephone phenomenon, in which messages get lost. accountability is important, as is a focus on measurable outcomes (romanelli et al., 2009). a clear message needs to be conveyed by upper management about the adoption of this approach and expectations of employees. principles of empowerment should be embedded in all agency documentation and all levels of staff need to be made aware of their responsibility for contributing to the promotion of youth voice (romanelli et al., 2009). if upper management supports this new approach and consistently conveys this message to those at the level below them, it will permeate down to front-line workers. given the size and hierarchical nature of child welfare agencies, opinions or interpretations are often added each time that a message is passed on, until the direction becomes skewed and unclear. regular supervision to ensure that the new approach is being implemented is necessary, as is an action plan to address individuals or programs that are not successfully incorporating values of empowerment. the organization must take steps to ensure that all practitioners are being given the opportunity to explore their successes and challenges with implementation. furthermore, management must ensure that any resistance is addressed and be prepared to follow up on obstacles to implementation of the model when necessary. policy development level. at the policy development level, a shift from an approach in which the emphasis is on doing for clients rather than working in partnership is needed to truly embrace the incorporation of empowerment practice into child welfare. success will only be possible when youth are viewed as active agents of change in their own lives, as opposed to passive recipients of service. this necessitates that youth are represented at every level in the organization and have opportunities to use their own voices. areas where opportunities already exist should not be the sole focus of implementation. in order to truly have a holistic approach, forms of collaboration with youth must be expanded. a common example of this is that in most child welfare agencies, team meetings take place weekly in all residential units where youth are placed. often individual youth are given the opportunity to submit a list in writing to request items that they need. this procedure could be expanded so that the youth’s voice is actually international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3: 371–380 378 heard. a portion of the meeting could be planned for youth to enter into dialogue with staff, allowing them to: (a) make suggestions about improving living conditions, (b) ask questions that they may not normally have the opportunity to ask, and then (c) be given the opportunity to receive feedback. the collaborative creation of a new process could even extend to inviting one youth per week to participate in parts of the meeting where confidentiality is not an issue, to act as a liaison between staff and youth. this can be taken even further by arranging regular meetings for all youth with staff and management, with the goal of increasing opportunities for communication and collaboration. in order to relate to youth as partners rather than service recipients, youth must be given a say in the functioning of the units where they live. this, in turn, will lead to a higher likelihood that they will follow the rules they helped to establish, and will further contribute to their experience of being respected and empowered. as a final thought, it is essential to not only find pre-existing opportunities but to create new ways to empower youth within the child welfare context. having a voice in relation to placement experiences is a critical component of successful outcomes for individual youth, but it can also result in better programs and policies for all. it is critical that youth empowerment be incorporated into all elements of child welfare practice, not just as an isolated activity or through 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(1998). promoting healthy adolescents: synthesis of youth development program evaluations. journal of research on adolescence, 8(4), 423–459. turnell, a., & edwards, s. (1997). aspiring to partnership: the signs of safe approach to child protection. child abuse review, 6, 179–190. http://www.reclaiming.com/content/about-circle-of-courage international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019989 residential care in germany for refugee young people norbert struck abstract: this article analyzes developments in the forms of social work with young refugees and the legal framing of such work in germany from 1990 to the present. in particular, it addresses the reactions of politicians and the child and youth welfare system to the sharp rise in the number of refugees in 2015 and 2016, and the concomitant significant increase in the number of unaccompanied minor refugees. it underlines the need for an approach based on children’s rights, and the necessity for social workers, especially those involved in helping youth, to resist the policies of deterrence that are aimed at keeping refugees out of germany. keywords: young refugees, unaccompanied minor refugees; children’s rights; child and youth care act — sgb viii norbert struck dipl. pädagoge is a member of igfh, the german section of fice, is the former youth welfare officer of the paritätischer wohlfahrtsverband, germany, and was the chairman of the arbeitsgemeinschaft für kinderund jugendhilfe – agj germany [german child and youth welfare association] from 2006 to 2012. email: norbert-struck@t-online.de acknowledgement: with a big thank you to george austin-cliff of the german youth institute (dji), who helped me so much. the diction of this article follows the lecture. mailto:norbert-struck@t-online.de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 81 when we consider the situation of refugee young people in germany, we have to take into account that germany is an immigrant society. about 25% of young people in germany have a migration background; however, in big cities — such as berlin, cologne, munich, and hamburg — this rises to half. on the other hand, in some of the districts, especially in east germany, most people have hardly any experience with immigrants. as shown in table 1, the likelihood of people having a migration background decreases somewhat with age, as does the likelihood of those with a migration background having german citizenship. table 1. population with and without migration background by age in germany, 2019. total 0–10 years 10–20 years status no. % no. % no. % people without migration background 60.814 74 4.310 60 4.901 64 people with migration background 20.799 25 2.910 40 2.747 36 german citizen 10.892 13 2.032 28 1.904 25 not german citizen 9.907 12 0.879 13 0.833 11 note. population numbers are in millions. data from destatis-statistisches bundesamt (2020); own calculations. the most vulnerable group of young people in terms of participation, education, and the uncertainty of their residence status are those without nationality in one of the european union countries: young refugees. the period from 2015 to 2016 was not the first in which the number of refugees entering germany rapidly increased. due to the yugoslav wars, there were as many refugees in 1992 as in 2015.(bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge, 2015, p. 8; bundeszentrale für politische bildung, 2005, p. 1). we can also be sure that such challenges for the child and youth welfare system in germany can recur at any time: we must do better at anticipating such situations. we are failing in moria, lampedusa, and the mediterranean sea. (meinhold, j., 2020). but if europe is going to take responsibility for these young refugees the german child and welfare system must be prepared. according to estimates by the office of the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), 40 % of all refugees worldwide are minors — more than 32 million young people (unhcr, 2020). mostly they flee with their parents or family members; but sometimes they are separated while on the run and become unaccompanied minor refugees (umrs): many children move alone and face particularly grave risks. in parts of the world, the number of children moving on their own has skyrocketed. on the dangerous central mediterranean sea passage from north africa to europe, 92 per cent of children who arrived in italy in 2016 and the first two months of 2017 were unaccompanied, up from 75 per cent in 2015. at least 300,000 unaccompanied and separated children moving across borders were registered in 80 countries in 2015– 2016 – a near fivefold increase from 66,000 in 2010–2011. the total number of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 82 unaccompanied and separated children on the move worldwide is likely much higher. (unicef, 2017a, p. 6; see also unicef, 2017b) europe sees only a fraction of these refugees. the vast majority have to endure very difficult conditions in countries neighbouring their homelands. syrian refugees, for example, have fled to countries like turkey, lebanon, and jordan (mediendienst integration, 2020). accompanied young refugees in germany: figures and problems in 2015 and 2016 about 350,000 children came to germany accompanied by their parents or by relatives who took care of them (unhcr 2020). like all children, young people who flee to germany with their parents have — or should have — the right to protection, promotion (i.e., development), and participation. however, many families are accommodated in a reception facility or in a lager [warehouse] — a shared accommodation camp — where they face dangerous situations and are excluded from many rights (terre des hommes, n.d., pp. 4–11). in the reception areas in germany, most refugees have as little as 6 square meters of living space per person (wikipedia, 2020). in the lager, about 75% have less than 9 square meters per person. although these lager are not a child-friendly environment, for many of the minors they are the center of life for months, or even years. the lack of either privacy or safe places to serve as retreats means that children do not have quiet places to learn or to play, and are instead confronted with threats and violence, including sexual abuse (bundesfachverband unbegleitete minderjährige flüchtlinge [bumf], 2013). to make matters worse, the children do not typically attend regular schools (paritätischer gesamtverband, 2019). on the other side, we have to realize that about 5% of all instances of inobhutnahme [taking into care] in germany are because of “housing problems”, living conditions which are insufficient for the childs well-being (destatis, 2019, struck, 2014, p. 22). the german authorities know that there are problems of child well-being related to the living situation but they don’t relate it to the housing problems of young refugees in initial reception facilities and shared accommodations. umrs — a short history of the legal framing besides the european union regulations — for example, the “reception condition directive 2013/33/eu” of june 2013 (europäische union, 2013), which is taken into account when receiving persons who apply for international protection — there are many laws and other legal framings that relate to the situation of umrs in germany. the most important of them are the social code book viii (child and youth care act — sgb viii; sozialgesetzbuch viii, n.d.), the asylum act (bundesamt für justiz, 1992), and the residence act (bundesministerium des inneren, n.d.). over the years there have been some changes in the corresponding law that i regard as positive: • 1990: two new sections were created §§ 42, 43 sgb viii: inobhutnahme [taking into (state or social services) care], which covered all children, and thereby included umrs, but they were not explicitly mentioned in the law. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 83 • 2005: the first amendment in § 42 subsection 1 sgb viii altered its text to state explicitly that the child and youth welfare system must take care of umrs. • 2015: new subsections a to f were added to § 42 sgb viii. these specified new regulations for provisionally taking umrs into care, and new special regulations for taking non-umr children and youth into care. under the additions to section 42 in 2015, umrs are to be provisionally taken into care by the youth welfare office that has local responsibility. this provisional taking into care ensures that they are accommodated with a suitable person or — more often — in a so-called suitable facility. suitable persons can be relatives or foster families, while suitable facilities are as a rule either “clearing houses” specialising in caring for umrs, or youth welfare facilities. during the provisional taking into care, an initial screening is carried out, consisting of an examination of the umr’s state of health and a determination of the umr’s age. a nationwide distribution procedure assigns each umr to a youth office, which is then responsible for their further taking into care. furthermore, a (legal) guardian or curator must be appointed for unaccompanied minors by a family court: the youth welfare office must apply for a guardianship to be set up within 4 weeks or at the start of regular care (bundesverwaltungsgericht, 1999). • in 2015, the § 80 residence act was changed: the age of eligibility to represent oneself during the administrative procedure was raised from 16 to 19 (bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend, 2015, p. 1805). in consequence, all minors now receive assistance as they go through the asylum procedure. the changes in national law that i have been discussing are framed by regulations of international law, especially the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc; 1989), which was implemented in germany on april 5, 1992. however, the federal states of the federal republic of germany agreed to sign the crc only if the government put forward a declaration concerning the following articles, a “design reserve”: • article 9 separation from the parents • article 10 family reunion • article 18 responsibility for the well-being of the child • article 22 refugee children this design reserve is in regard to the rights of young refugees. germany at that time used abschiebehaft [detention] against young refugees. germany did not want to stop this practice, nor did germany want to allow children the right to have their parents also settle in germany. the german interpretation was: immigration law has priority over children’s rights. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 84 in germany at that time, young people of 16 years were regarded as able to handle legal procedures relating to their residence status on their own without a legal guardian, despite the complexities presented by the many different types of residence status in germany: • aufenthaltsgestattung (suspension of deportation; the lowest type), • aufenthaltserlaubnis (issued for an educational, humanitarian, or similar reason), • aufenthaltsduldung (temporary suspension of the deportation of foreigners required to leave the country), and • niederlassungserlaubnis (right of establishment; the highest type). as it is difficult even to translate these words to english in a way that captures the distinctions between the different types of permit, there is clearly little chance for a umr who does not speak much german to get an idea what the authorities are saying, even if he or she is able to speak english. opposition to forcing young people to handle their own legal procedures emerged from the civil societies that deal with children’s rights and the rights of young refugees. these were aggregated in the national coalition germany1 (n.d.), which formed part of the network for the implementation of the crc. on july 15, 2010 germany withdrew the design reserve. this was a great victory for all those who were engaged in the opposition against the design reserve. we hoped that this would finally signal to german society and politics that: • the human rights of young refugees must be respected and upheld by the child and youth welfare system; • the activities of the youth welfare system must have priority over the intentions of internal politics; and, • the best interests of the child — the child’s well-being — must be the leading criterion. the situation in 2015 the increasing number of refugees that came to europe, and especially to germany, in 2015 found the nation unprepared: the influx became a crisis. (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge, 2016, pp. 10–23) the first priority of crisis-management was to organize emergency shelter, food, and elementary medical aid. umrs were subject to the redistribution process mentioned above, which meant that some were sent to facilities with experience and knowledge, while others were sent to rural towns and hostels, where no professionals were available with experience in the care of young people, especially those who — like many umrs — have been 1 https://www.netzwerk-kinderrechte.de/en.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 85 severely traumatized. other difficulties could also arise in the rural locations; for example, umrs sent to villages lacking a stable internet connection had difficulty keeping in touch with relatives. under german law, minors have to be taken into social services care when their well-being is at risk. since umrs are a group at risk, they have to be taken into state care by the youth authorities, who, according to § 36 sgb viii, must provide them with shelter, protection, and a care plan. official figures from 2013 to 2018 provide an impression of the challenges faced by the german child and youth welfare system during this period (see table 2). table 2. youth taken into care by the child and youth welfare system year total umrs % of umrs 2013 42,123 6,584 15.6 2014 48,059 11,642 24.2 2015 77,645 42,900 55.2 2016 84,230 44,900 53.3 2017 61,383 22,500 36.7 2018 52,590 12,211 23.2 note. figures from mühlmann (n.d.). in 2015, about 137,500 minor refugees reached germany (unicef, 2018); almost two thirds of them were accompanied. in certain towns and areas where the concentration of people arriving was especially high, the residents and authorities were hard pressed to supply elementary shelter, food, clothing, and protection. in civil society, structures for coordinating the willingness of citizens to get involved have been expanded and diverse offers of support for refugees have emerged. at the same time, the issues of integration and participation has come to the fore in the social debate. it's not just about welcoming and looking after the refugees, but about crafting national policies regarding asylum and immigration. however, many cities and federal states were hardly affected by the situation and accumulated almost no experience in meeting the needs of young refugees. article 4 of the gesetz zur verbesserung der unterbringung, versorgung und betreuung ausländischer kinder und jugendlicher (2015; bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend, 2017) required that the outcomes of this situation and the handling of the “problem” of the umrs be evaluated: art. 4: “the federal government must investigate the effects of this law and report to the german bundestag by 31.12.2020 on the results of this investigation.” and § 42 e sgb viii says: “the federal government has to submit to the german bundestag a report every year on the situation of unaccompanied foreign minors.” only patchy data are available on what happened to the young people in federal states that had previously taken little care of refugees (kopp et al., 2016). there is much that we don’t know, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 86 unfortunately i can only assume that we have been deliberately kept in the dark, in order to make arguments in favour of changing laws and practices more difficult to mount. we know that in several towns the refugees were exposed to xenophobic and racist violence (see, e.g., wikipedia, 2018, 2019).in regard to umrs involved in such incidents, no precise information is available about what happened and what lessons were learned. we do know, that, in some cases the umrs have simply been relocated or have been sanctioned (peters, 2016; struck, 2017). excursus: trafficking and the discourses about illegal behavior among young refugees in germany, discourses about illegal behavior among young refugees are becoming more common (bundeszentrale für politische bildung, 2020). young refugees are increasingly seen as actual or potential criminals rather than as children with human rights, who often have been victims of severe crimes (willems, 2020). i focus on three aspects of such behavior (struck, 2019, p. 3): 1. deviant behavior among adolescents is a ubiquitous phenomenon, and thus is necessarily found among young refugees. it is also transitory, however. 2. research has shown that a number of factors favor or encourage deviant behavior among adolescents (dollinger, 2018), such as experience of violence, social isolation, lack of ressources, and no optimism refering to the future, and it is vital to emphasize that young refugees — especially those who arrive unaccompanied or as young adults — often have had high levels of exposure to these factors. also, the conditions in the lager prevent privacy, promote violence, promote social isolation, cut off resources, and, above all, destroy the young refugees’ reasonable hopes for the future (meinhold, 2019). in such conditions it is actually rather surprising that most of the young people, in my experience, still keep their motivation and show great willingness to integrate. 3. the facilities hosting umrs are also sometimes required to accommodate young people who have been victims of trafficking. trafficking includes “exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs” (united nations office on drugs and crime, 2004, p. 42). the exploitation of criminal activities of young people is mostly difficult to recognize. in my experience, social workers often struggle to endure the distancing of these young people and feel exploited by them, although in reality it is the young people who have been exploited by the traffickers. (döcker & stamm, 2015, p. 4) in germany, ecpat deutschland2 — the national branch of the international ecpat organization, which specializes in addressing the sexual exploitation of children — assists in dealing with these problems. when faced with trafficking, you cannot protect a child on your own. you need cooperation, support, and advice, and, above all, you need to stay connected to the child and not to reject him or her in frustration. 2 https://ecpat.de/ https://ecpat.de/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 87 problems arising after 2015 in order to deal with the large number of young refugees who had suddenly appeared starting in 2015, the care standards in the facilities for umrs were lowered on a “temporary basis” (bumf, 2017, p. 15). more and more facilities were designated as special units for umrs: it was estimated that by the end of 2016 about 75% of facilities housing umrs were specialized (deutscher bundestag, 2017, p. 72) for that purpose. there was a high level of engagement in civil society by welfare organizations and the youth welfare authorities, but there were also people and companies looking only for extra profit. peters (2018), among others, objected to the privatization of refugee care under the company “european homecare” (see also taz, 2019). today, we still have to deal with the consequences of the years 2015 and 2016 (struck, 2016). in some regions, there has been hardly any experience of working and living together with umrs; and even in regions with a more multicultural environment where there has been more contact with umrs, facilities with good accommodation and professional care and support are not being fully used. going forward, we need: • to reinstate uniform standards of quality of care for young people; • to create competence centers — professional facilities focused on supplying all the needs of young refugees — in all 16 federal states, rather than go on with simply numerical redistribution of umrs to about 600 local youth welfare offices; and • to counteract the increasing exclusion and separation of young refugees. basic needs and special needs of umrs: inclusion or exclusion by special arrangements in general, i believe that, beyond their basic needs, all young people need recognition, respect, and opportunities for participation. but i believe, too, that every young person has particular needs resulting from his or her life experiences, traumas, talents, illnesses, disabilities, and other incidental characteristics. the balance between answering general and particular needs must be managed by every service provided by the child and youth welfare system. but what follows? are communal living arrangements in any case the method of choice? should special provisions for umrs generally be abolished? i think we should recognize by now that that would not be a correct answer. i believe, for example, that we should differentiate between urban and rural areas. in cities, common facilities should be the rule. in rural areas, on the other hand, with regard to the young people’s security, schooling, and social well-being, distributing them among multiple institutions may not always be appropriate. rather, it may be more effective to make special provision for the young refugees, with a focus on helping them to manage better in everyday life, cope with the demands of school, and deal with language problems. for example, the alreju-projekt3 in brandenburg has created three group-living facilities, as well as places for youth requiring supervision, for umrs. of course, this is not to be applied without due 3 https://diakonie-ols.de/alreju.html https://diakonie-ols.de/alreju.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 88 consideration, but professionals should be encouraged to look for optimal arrangements in each case and to orient youth welfare planning processes to each youth’s specific requirements. of course, some argue for specialization in order to save costs. the essence of their attitude seems to be that, “those who have proven strong enough to escape to germany as refugees just need a bit of help to integrate, so we can get by with providing a modest and cost-effective level of youth social work.” in reality, this translates into a cost-driven claim that the need for care in these special facilities is particularly low, and thus fees can be low as well. approaches like these could only be formulated by people who never have come into direct contact with escaped young women and men. german domestic policy in regard to umrs seems to be based on the idea that the authorities are justified in putting children and adolescents’ lives on hold until their residential status has been decided, and then either deporting them or setting them at last upon a path to a life in germany. but for children, every day counts: they need continual opportunities to grow, to learn, to develop, and to gain confidence about the future. their lives cannot be paused. therefore, it is imperative that the child and youth welfare system fight for the children and young people’s right to every single day of their lives. broader issues this leads to more general questions (struck, 2017). can the child and youth welfare system remain true to its responsibility to safeguard and uphold the human rights of children and young people and resist becoming complicit in politics and its deterrence-based system?4 is the child and youth welfare system able to enforce the right to education for all young people? can it enforce children’s right to family reunification? can we manage to uphold the priority of the child and youth welfare system with regard to responsibility for umrs, or will domestic politics continue to encroach on that power? is the child and youth welfare system able to take care of the thousands of children and young people in the reception camps and give their families the support they need to deal with the new situation and challenges? i would like to offer the following specific recommendations for policies affecting umrs: • for each umr, a decision is made as to whether he or she comes under the protection of the crc (i.e., is under the age of 18 years). this age determination must be kept in the hands of the child and youth welfare system and not entrusted to institutions that are not primarily committed to child welfare. • umrs should no longer be distributed throughout all 600 urban and rural locations of the local youth welfare offices. instead, they should be placed in a sufficient number of 4 on this complicated tension, see gonzalez mendesz de vigo (2019) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 89 competence centers with adequate professional standards, qualified personnel, a large pool of translators, and access to the internet and thus also to their communities of origin. • the effective and successful participation of umrs in all decisions made about them and for them is urgently needed. this will require a sufficient number of well-qualified language and cultural mediators. • the umrs must be able to rely on the child and youth welfare system to practise a policy of non-cooperation with authorities who are preparing or carrying out deportations. • more resources should be made available for the provision of interculturally competent therapeutic services for traumatized young refugees. care must be taken, however, not to stigmatize all young refugees as “sick”. • umrs need an environment in which they can quickly develop realistic, hopeful, life perspectives. they need to believe that their efforts will have a worthwhile outcome. above all, i would urge the german child and youth welfare system to secure the international and national rights of both unaccompanied and accompanied young refugees, resisting the challenges of domestic policies, and of politicians who use various policies of deterrence in their attempts to keep refugees, including young refugees, out of germany. young refugees have a right of participation, provision, and protection from the very beginning. germany has to fulfil its obligation to implement these rights — even when some european union member states refuse to acknowledge these rights of young people at all. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 80–95 90 references autorengruppe kinderund jugendhilfestatistik. 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(the corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke street west, montréal, québec. e-mail: natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca alan warner, ph.d. is an associate professor in community development at acadia university, wolfville, nova scotia. e-mail: alan.warner@acadiau.ca giulietta di mambro is a student in translation at concordia university. e-mail: giulietta.di.mambro@gmail.com christophe bedeaux is a student in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university. e-mail: c_bedeau@live.concordia.ca mailto:natasha.blanchet-cohen@concordia.ca mailto:alan.warner@acadiau.ca mailto:giulietta.di.mambro@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 445 you write about our anger, and yes, we are angry. we are angry at our government, at our police and at you. but none of you are [sic] succeeding in conveying what it feels like when you walk down the streets of montréal right now, which is, for me at least, an overwhelming sense of joy and togetherness. . . . i have lived in my neighbourhood for five years now, and this is the most i have ever felt a part of the community; the lasting impact that these protests will have on how people relate to each other in the city is deep and incredible. (translating the printemps érable, 2012, an open letter to the mainstream english media, paras. 3 & 5) in 2012, against a sociocultural landscape in which young people are often portrayed as alienated, self-interested, and financially focused (gauthier, 2003), north america experienced its largest youth-led movement and engaged social protest since the 1960s (hallward, 2012). dubbed the “maple spring” by the media, the québec student movement was sparked by the provincial government’s announcement that it would increase university tuition fees by 82% over a 5-year period (sorochan, 2012). encompassing a broad and deep social agenda that went well beyond the fight against the tuition increase, the movement saw students disturbing the peace by striking and marching through the streets over a 10-month period. they mobilized large numbers of people using a wide and sophisticated range of techniques, including participatory education, direct democracy, and civic protest strategies, which were poignantly symbolized by the red square (carré rouge) and the banging of pots (casseroles). the movement impacted the fabric of communities, captivated a society, and contributed to the electoral defeat of the government (clibbon, 2012; seymour, 2012). we sensed the opportunity to better comprehend emancipatory approaches in the context of youth-led social movements. using duoethnography (norris & sawyer, 2012), a collaborative research methodology, in this article we each recount our experiences of the movement and the lessons we learned. as students and professors positioned in different social and cultural locations, our narratives illustrate how the same phenomena can provide different and important experiences and conclusions about youth-adult partnerships as related to emancipatory practice. drawing from our personal experiences, we collectively identify aspects that can facilitate youth-led movements that lead to social change. first, we describe our method of inquiry. our method of inquiry this article originated from informal conversations that took place at the june 2012 conference “transforming practices: emancipatory approaches to youth engagement” in montréal during the peak of the movement. while not formally addressed in the conference program, the student movement was very present in discussions. initially, the conversations arose among the authors from the desire to understand why student views of the protests seemed different from what was presented in the anglophone media. the students were motivated by the opportunity to explain their experiences in light of what they perceived as misrepresentation in wider society, and the relevance of those experiences to the conference theme. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 446 we chose to write a joint article using duoethnography; we were coming together having experienced a common phenomenon (i.e., the movement) but from different locations (norris & sawyer, 2012). in supporting multiple perspectives, rather than accepting one authoritative or powerful voice, we thought duoethnography would bring fresh perspectives and deeper understanding to a youth movement that had disrupted québec society, and garnered international support (bherer & dufour, 2012). our collaboration took shape over a 7-month period, in which we engaged in eight skype and face-to-face conversations as a group, and numerous one-on-one interactions to share and deepen our own understandings of our experiences by juxtaposing our varied views. consistent with duoethnography, existing theory from the literature is blended into our sections, helping us give meaning to our experiences. at the outset we considered writing the article in dialogue format as is conventional in duoethnography (norris & sawyer, 2012). however, the student movement was so complex and our experiences so distinct that we chose instead to write in the first person about our experiences of and thinking on the student movement in separate sections. as we worked through the writing process, we gained a deep respect for each others’ experiences, culminating in our decision to collectively write the implications to the conceptualization of emancipatory practice. our distinct experiences of the movement the four narratives presented below draw on our different social and cultural locations. giulietta begins by describing her experiences as a francophone student organizer at the heart of the student protest. christophe then shares his views as an undergraduate francophone student who, though not a student activist, was gradually drawn into the movement through friends and social media. natasha follows with her perspective as a bilingual university professor in montréal, whose work focuses on youth engagement. finally, alan reflects on his experience of the movement as an anglophone university professor based in nova scotia. each of us identified learnings that emerged from our reflections. transformative education in the streets: a student activist’s perspective giulietta: i approached the 2012 student strike with prudent hope, though i had felt alienated by the rise and fall of previous movements. my involvement started on march 6, when the executive committee of the concordia graduate student association (cgsa) convened a general assembly (ga) to discuss the possibility of going on strike. i attended, considering this my duty as a graduate student. an astounding 600 or 700 students showed up. three hours later, we achieved a first in québec history: an anglophone institution of higher learning voting in favour of an unlimited strike mandate, and supporting a motion to become affiliated with classe (coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante), the most radical provincial student organization. this sparked my interest and filled me with a great sense of hope because historically, québec student activism had been a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 447 typically francophone effort. i was excited by my peers’ courage: by choosing to officially voice their dissent and join the general strike, concordia students were transcending the perceived lack of will for communication between québec anglophones and francophones, replacing the “two solitudes” with solidarity. discovering meaningful “university” education. i quickly realized that there was a discrepancy between the students who participated in the first strike-oriented ga, and the rest of the student body. the democratic culture was absent from concordia’s institutional ethos. my political self and my passion for education came together; i had a reason to act. concordia students were taking baby steps in direct democracy, but there was also much ambiguity. my first reflex was to write a letter explaining my position and reasons to strike, which i sent to faculty members in my department, as well as some student peers. i received deprecating comments from some professors, and encouragement from others. from that moment, there was no going back, and things started to snowball. i participated in recruiting and motivating students to go to their general assemblies, through class announcements as well as informal discussions on campus. i had mixed feelings about my peers’ ignorance of the issues: do we not all cherish our democratic values? i actively participated in weekly gas giving my opinion and voting in favour of extending our unlimited strike motion. these official gatherings – chaired by students, all versed in robert’s rules of order and gender equity – ensured that respect for differences of opinion was maintained throughout the decision-making process. gas were a non-threatening space with high pedagogical value that clarified and reiterated what it meant to be on strike, how striking works, and the reasons for striking, while justifying tactics like picket lines and what actions to take. as an additional obstacle, picket lines were severely repressed at concordia, with the administration hiring security guards from private firms mandated to intimidate students on picket lines. several times, security guards tried to force me to identify myself and threatened to call the police if i did not stop participating in the picket. the concordia graduate student association (cgsa) denounced this type of behaviour, especially when a security guard on university grounds struck a woman student on the head. my worst picketing memory was seeing a tall education professor push my friend and look down on her in an intimidating fashion so as to make way for his students to enter his classroom, thus disrespecting the strike mandate. as a multilingual student studying translation, the opportunity to facilitate solidarity between francophone and anglophone cultural groups further catalyzed my motivation to act. i realized i could put my linguistic talents to use for the cause. working with two other students, we created the rougesquad 1, a volunteer-based translation group dedicated to diffusing francophone news about the strike to english speakers, and to responding to the english mainstream media’s biased portrayal of the movement. in a week, we had recruited a group of loosely affiliated volunteer members, working in teams, translating and posting on the website. 1 http://rougesquad.org/ http://rougesquad.org/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 448 this is what i had imagined university would be – an intellectually creative space for sharing across disciplines and institutions. it was unprecedented in my long university student experience. the large, ongoing street protests coupled with ga participation gave me a feeling of belonging to a political community, and of being able to explore a shared vision of society, while collectively confirming my political identity. indeed, a whole vision of society was emerging from this movement, which was vastly underrepresented in mainstream media coverage. these protests did not revolve around the monetary aspects of a tuition increase, but rather the symbolic meaning of this tuition increase and its implications on governance. i realized that the most valuable “university” education came through dialogue, personal involvement in community building, and leadership in the streets. the potential of youth-led, direct democracy. my participation intensified when i was elected as an arts and science representative to the concordia graduate student assembly (cgsa). in addition to participating and mobilizing for local gas, i volunteered to act as concordia’s graduate delegate to classe congresses. this was the ultimate in direct democracy, where representatives of over 50 affiliated student groups came together on a weekly or bimonthly basis to share and brainstorm about specific issues, and put forward motions that had been voted for in their own local assemblies in order to give direction to classe’s overall position in the conflict. i was stunned by the quality and professionalism of student interventions. in the past, the leading student groups had always been the provincial federations, which functioned by representative democracy. local student associations entrusted provincial representatives to make the right calls during negotiations with government, with no obligation for the representatives to get agreement from their base before “sealing the deal” with government officials. the unprecedented ascension of classe as a leading force in the 2012 strike unveiled the powerful potential of grassroots movements. for the first time in québec history, the leading provincial student union was functioning by direct democracy, which meant the student base, and not its leaders, would decide the strike’s outcomes. classe’s priority was to empower and educate its members using direct democracy (beaumont, 2012). as of 2010, part of classe’s strategy had been to create and offer a wide range of tools to help mobilize and stimulate its base. this involved training camps with workshops on the principles and foundations of political action, effective strikes, how to coordinate a ga, effective meeting and decision-making procedures, among other topics. for younger students in cegep (post-secondary college prior to university), campus mobilization campaigns were supported by classe through “job-shadowing” and mentoring experiences, linking each campus association to an assigned mobilization agent. there were tremendous opportunities for informal learning. the outcomes speak to the strength of peer-led and peerinitiated education for youth, by youth. applying direct democracy as the core value meant there was no hierarchy. as a cgsa delegate, my voting powers were dictated and strictly circumscribed by motions passed in our own association: i was representing a collective voice. in the same manner, i loved the fact that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 449 gabriel nadeau dubois, classe’s main spokesperson, was given neither special treatment nor status during classe congresses. his interventions were in the name of his local association, nothing more. i was especially inspired by the verve of younger students’ interventions, which reminded me of why i wanted to be an educator. these youth were not only passionate and extremely articulate, they were also more at ease with organizational processes than i was, and the motions they brought forward showed a holistic understanding of the situation and a high level of critical consciousness. the potential of youth-led, direct democracy for facilitating individual learning and effective collective action was my second enduring lesson. experiencing repression. in mid-april, after dozens of protests and press conferences inviting dialogue, the government had not budged. escalation was seen as a last resort to catalyze resolution, and i believe that the direct actions had a significant role to play in the government’s decision to finally open dialogue with the students. at this point, the only way to have our voices heard was by disrupting the only thing that seemed to matter in the neo-liberal paradigm: economic activity. unlike other post-secondary institutions, concordia’s administration ignored the protests and held final exams as scheduled, even though entire departments had been on strike for six weeks. on the first day of exams, i joined the picket line in which students from many institutions formed a human chain around the university. the university response was to call in riot police to remove us by force. the squadron charged us, advancing at a brisk military pace as they intimidatingly banged their batons on their shields. they did not stop until we were practically belly-to-belly and i could see the nervous sweat pearl on their visors. we chanted: “les enfants des policiers sont aussi des étudiants!” i was on the front line in solidarity with my peers, linking arms and refusing to step back. the only thing separating us from their heavily-armed attire was our cloth banner marked with demands for truly accessible education and transparent governance. my chants were muted by the sting of a police shield striking my upper jaw, sending searing pain to my brain. batons were whipped against my shins, bringing me to my knees, followed by a shower of tear gas sprayed into my eyes from 30 centimetres away. my exposed skin and lungs were on fire. students by my side were kicked to the ground. we were doing this for future generations, including the children of these police officers, but they had clear orders. they made no exceptions even for the physically disabled students in the group, one of whom i saw pushed off balance and held to the ground by a police officer. at that moment, i felt ashamed to be canadian. how could student dissent be repressed as though it were a crime, when we supposedly built this country on democratic values? the tears in my eyes were stimulated by a physiological reaction to the tear gas, mixed with feelings of sheer frustration and impotence. by bruising my bones, they intended to break my dreams. they did not break my self-control despite the injustice – none of us retaliated with violence. this incident was the source of direct albeit painful experiential learning on the limits of liberal democracy and the brutality of state power. even though the strike was a vehicle for youth to create a social context in which we could be collectively heard, using direct democracy international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 450 as a means and an end to promote progressive values, youth were continually and consistently infantilized, criminalized, and brutalized by the state and mainstream media. this was a powerful third lesson. the baton bruises and stinging tear gas were all worth sustaining. they brought to light the mechanisms of power that depicted youth as violent while applying severely repressive tactics to contain dissent. a tremendous sense of satisfaction arose from the fact that our actions, while characterized as “violent” by the mainstream media, made the mask fall, albeit momentarily, shaking up our political landscape and bringing humanist values to the forefront. from awareness to involvement to confrontation: a reflective student’s perspective christophe: during the student protests, i was an undergraduate francophone student in psychology and human relations at concordia university. unlike giulietta, i was not as directly involved in the student movement, but became pulled into it. my department did not vote for a strike mandate, nor was there much discussion about the student movement. instead, i became informed through friends from francophone universities who explained the reasons for the demonstrations and invited me to join them. social media, particularly facebook, also played a critical role in helping me access information shared by students, teachers, and supportive organizations. i discovered research on-line, posted by students, debunking the arguments used by the liberal government to support the tuition hike. this information played a crucial role in convincing me of the legitimacy of the movement and the unacceptability of the tuition increase. my participation in this movement had significant impacts on my perception of society. participating in demonstrations involving more than 200,000 people gave me a strong sense of belonging. i experienced a sort of transcendence: belonging to and participating in something way bigger than myself. this feeling is the antithesis of the mainstream media judgment that student protesters were egocentric. this movement was a time when, for protesters, the collective was more important than the individual. this experience strengthened my identity as a french québécois and i felt i was participating in an important piece of québec’s history. simultaneously, i felt more alienated from other social groups who were either not involved or opposing the movement. my experience deepened my awareness of the role of social media and the troubling repression and brutality by police. below, i discuss these transformational issues, drawing both on my experience and research. the contribution of social and student media. the movement influenced me to place more trust and value on social media, and to more critically examine the portrayal of the student protesters and their organizations conveyed in the media and by the government. i observed that the government was trying to marginalize and devalue the students by portraying them as violent. the mass media disseminated videos showing provocative and uncivilized acts from protesters, but rarely showing the violence and brutality of police repression. having a background in social psychology, i disapproved of targeting and degrading people to justify a political decision. in response, i read and watched social and student media to gain a broader and more accurate view of the conflict. they played a critical role in enabling student organizations to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 451 mobilize students for events and communicate positions thoughtfully. two key outlets were concordia university tv (cutv), an on-line television channel, which was most prominent, and social media such as facebook and twitter (wyatt, 2012). one of the main strengths of student media was that, by being inside the conflict, they were able to cover events more intensively, deeply, and directly than traditional media (dallaireferland, 2012; therrien, 2012). cutv attracted up to 100,000 viewers a day and also relayed information from student organizations to more traditional media. one challenge faced by student media was that student journalists did not benefit from the same privileges as traditional media. several student journalists were arrested or intimidated despite showing their press passes (dallaire-ferland, 2012; therrien, 2012). in spite of this, videos filmed by these journalists were shared widely with significant impact. one video 2 showing a police officer shouting, “there! right in the ass, y’little shit” at a protester after having fired a rubber bullet at him, had more than 225,000 views. facebook and twitter also played a vital role in facilitating coordination and communication between students and in reaching out to the broader public. facebook events were created for each protest, and news, pamphlets, and posters were shared (radio-canada, 2012; wyatt, 2012). a cyber protest was organized on twitter. internet and social media were used to relay the students’ messages and arguments to the population and to respond to the government’s messages, without necessarily requiring a spokesperson, and at low cost. a good example of the creative use of the internet was the development by students of a bilingual website explaining the arguments against the tuition hike, mirroring the one created by the government (which cost $50,000) to support the tuition hike. another powerful communication tool was the creation of two websites, translating the printemps érable 3 and rougesquad offering english translations of francophone media articles in order to reach the anglophone population, as mentioned by giulietta. a study surveying social media conversations related to the student protest during may 2012 found that social media were occupied mainly by student protesters and their organizations, whereas government outlets were relatively absent, with the exception of the montréal police (sciencetech communications, 2012). this study further noted that students and their organizations did not use a formal communication strategy on social media. instead, they improvised and did not require additional expertise because students use social media naturally. the lessons of police brutality. another way in which this movement transformed me involved the state and police response. i had heard about police brutality and social and racial profiling, but here i actually experienced it. i was struck when police anti-riot squads charged firing rubber bullets, not discriminating between protesters who were peacefully demonstrating and those who were not. witnessing the brutality and repression decreased my trust in the montréal and québec police. 2 http://youtu.be/rkwj1la45p4 3 http://translatingtheprintempserable.tumblr.com/ http://youtu.be/rkwj1la45p4 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 452 a total of 3,387 people were arrested at protests between february and september (dupuis-déri, 2012). one hundred and ninety-three complaints were made to the commissaire à la déontologie policière du québec, québec’s police ethics commissioner (d’astous, 2012). additionally, a request for a public enquiry on police repression was made by about 30 organizations in québec, including a collective of teachers and professors, amnesty international, and the league of rights and liberties (dupuis-déri, 2012). the montréal police force was accused of having violated human rights through arbitrary mass arrests and detentions, social profiling, and abusive body searches, and by not providing first aid to injured protesters. they were reported to be using disproportionate levels of force against protesters resulting in some serious injuries (dupuis-déri, 2012; profs contre la hausse, 2012). they were also accused of prejudice and contempt against the protesting students and people wearing the red square (jutras, 2012). this repression has affected me and numerous other protesters and students who have become fearful of the police. some have told me that the goal was to scare protesters away from the demonstrations and decrease the movement’s strength. indeed, it affected me. i started to feel unsafe and scared of being injured or arbitrarily arrested during demonstrations after having experienced and/or watched on video riot police charging protesters, dousing them with pepper spray, hitting them with riot batons, and shooting them with rubber bullets. i stopped going to night demonstrations, or left early. i believe that one consequence of police repression and brutality was to scare away the most peaceful protesters and to motivate the hard core, which in turn increased the risk of tension and violence. the heavy presence of riot police, separating protesters, and blocking streets during demonstrations acted as antagonizing factors for protesters, rather than pacifying them (marshall, 2012). this student movement was for me a wake-up call that engendered a strong desire to participate in issues that affect me. it brought to the fore creativity and new ideas, and influenced me to take advantage of opportunities offered by social media. it illuminated for me the resistance to the repression of the government and the brutality of police forces. facilitating youth rights and youth-led movements: a bilingual professor’s perspective natasha: as a university professor at concordia and a parent of young children, my experience was very different from that of either student. though living in montréal and teaching community development, i only became attentive to the student movement on march 22. given that the university had cancelled classes, i had organized research meetings for that day. returning home by the montréal metro, i saw young people with red placards flood into the cars. there was a thrilling feeling in the air and i decided to see for myself. the number of people and the energy overtaking the streets stunned me. certainly 20 years ago, i would have been fully involved. but here i was an observer, somewhat uncomfortable given my position as a professor employed by a university that had requested faculty to “fulfil their current duties and responsibilities” (david graham, personal communication, march 6, 2012). i somewhat envied the youth’s courage and passion. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 453 i returned to work and social activities with a newfound interest in talking about the movement. this was not a neutral topic. conversations with parents of my children’s friends as we waited for swimming classes showed me the contempt and criticism adults had for the youth who were taking to the streets. parents emphasized youth’s responsibility to do their share; no mention was made of youth’s fresh perspectives, perseverance, and innovative strategies. i tried to refrain from being judgmental. i realized that this was about youth engagement in community, a subject i have researched for the past 15 years. youth were fully invested, employing their energy and competencies as well as engaging other members of the community (villarruel, perkins, borden, & keith, 2003). it was a collective effort by young people to ensure social justice for youth at a scale that i had never witnessed. its potential for community change was inspiring compared to single youth-led programs (blanchet-cohen & cook, 2012). i needed to engage with what was happening in my backyard. my contribution was to conduct research that gave voice to the youth who daily took to the streets despite the criticism and risks. the decision reflected my responsibility as a researcher to be an agent of social change. generating and sharing knowledge were, after all, another means of giving power to youth. several authors have also called for more empirical research on youth engagement in community settings to inform practice (checkoway & gutierrez, 2006; zeldin, camino, & calvert, 2007). i put other work on the back burner to focus on the movement. i began doing interviews and focus groups with youth under the age of 18 to understand the reasons for their involvement, how they pressured government despite their status as minors, and how they perceived the state as the primary duty bearer responsible for young people’s right to participate (blanchet-cohen, 2013). youth rights and participation: the gap between theory and practice. one key realization from my experiences of the student movement was seeing the gap between the glorified international discourse on youth’s right to participate and society’s openness to it. legally, according to the united nations (1989), young people may have the right to “express their views” (united nations convention on the rights of the child [uncrc], article 12), to freedom of association (uncrc, article 15), and to the freedom to access appropriate information (uncrc, article 17), but in reality there was a discomfort with young people’s political participation. participation was promoted for youth development up to the point where young people disobeyed rules and questioned decisions made by adults in power. young people’s rights were easily forfeited when young people trespassed on adults’ notions of good citizenship behaviour. it was a reminder of the paradoxical perspective of established interests with respect to youth: youth agency can be profiled when contributing to the status quo, but is repressed when opposing dominant discourses (wyn & white, 2000). of significance in this instance is that despite the repression and criticism, young people persevered, succeeding in revoking the announced student fee hike and changing the political landscape. creating space and involving allies. a second aspect that stood out involved the role of space and allies in facilitating the youth-led movement. frequently, student groups are unstable because leadership rotates quickly, resulting in a loss of accumulated knowledge and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 454 competencies in the process. student organizations in québec have, however, a social and cultural history that is unique in canada (gauthier, 2003). analysis of the québec movement shows that knowledge has not been lost, but rather reinvested, transferred, and documented from one strike experience to another (choudry, 2012). student organizers have also institutionalized their learning through the creation of provincial associations that act as centralizing bodies for coordinating local association mobilization strategies, playing an active role in transmitting and maintaining their capacities. funded through student fees, universities and government have paradoxically and implicitly contributed to building these organizations. indeed, the structure and resources for youth-led organization provided a “space for youth participation and social recognition attached to it”, two critical elements of youth engagement identified by harré (2007, p. 714). beyond society’s provision of space for youth organization, an additional positive factor for the movement was the support it received from adult allies. although the movement was youth-led, its success was fundamentally assisted by support from adult organizations across québec. in particular, the movement was invigorated by the government’s move to halt the protests and civic unrest by passing law 12 (seymour, 2012). recognizing the new law as a threat to democratic rights, other prominent social groups such as lawyers, judges, unions, and university faculty came out in strong support of the student movement. now the rights of every citizen were under attack. the shared feeling of conflict with government represented a key ingredient in facilitating a sense of unity and belonging among the young people (harré, 2007). adult support was necessary to provide for broader social change, but the power of the movement remained with the youth (wong, zimmerman, & parker, 2010). shifting views: a professor’s perspective from english canada alan: as an anglophone professor at a rural university in nova scotia, i experienced the movement differently from giulietta and christophe as well as natasha. during the first seven months of the protests, i was on sabbatical in new zealand. i had only heard of the student protests in march when violent incidents were reported in the international media. i had been back for just three weeks when i came to montréal for the international conference on youth engagement. during those three weeks, i had been bombarded on a daily basis by the english canadian media with news reports about the protests. the tuition issue was typically framed in relation to the fact that québec students already paid the lowest fees in canada and the increases would only raise tuition to the national average (dehaas, 2012; simpson, 2012). the student protesters were presented as young, egocentric troublemakers who did not recognize their privilege and the considerable subsidy they were receiving from taxpayers. the violent actions were presented as threatening the viability and reputation of montréal as a tourist destination, and the economic benefits that would flow from that industry. there was little discussion of the issue on my university campus in nova scotia. most students had left for the summer. among those remaining, as well as among faculty and staff, there was little support for québec students given that nova scotia’s students had been swallowing tuition increases on a yearly basis for the last decade. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 455 building identity and community through experiential learning. i arrived in montréal with this perspective. however, it was radically altered over the course of a few days based on extended conversations, particularly with the student co-authors of this article. ultimately, i marched one afternoon with several thousand others banging pots through the streets of montréal. i experienced the protests from a youthful, street perspective, and was moved by the support of those people lining the sidewalks and balconies along the route, and banging pots in response. it gave me an inkling of the collective sense of belonging experienced by the students. my perspective on the protests shifted radically and i came to see them as a fascinating example of successful youth engagement that was challenging government and neo-liberal interests and priorities. large numbers of young people were demonstrating in an unparalleled and persistent effort, as well as organizing large-scale and non-violent civil disobedience to bring about social change. this came at a high personal cost to their formal educational aspirations and economic self-interest. the personal tuition increases for those protesting were small relative to the time spent in the streets and the expense of paid tuition fees that promised no course credits in the wake of the extended strike and cancelled classes. through my experiences and conversations with students, it was clear that the sense of belonging and collective identity they established were keys to their success and the willingness of so many to persevere despite the personal costs. niki harré (2007) argues that community activism among youth is an “identity project” and is more successful when it is characterized by belonging, efficacy, and stimulation, and speaks to core values. the québec student movement built identity through deliberate participatory and experiential education practiced in the streets. it was not just about getting demands met, but about the education gained through participating in the process. student organizations supported and enabled young people to actually practice citizenship and build action competence (jensen & schnack, 1997), which has largely been overlooked in formal curricula. instead, school curricula on citizenship education have mostly dealt with teaching skills, knowledge, and attitudes related to citizenship as “apprenticeship” (liebel & saadi, 2012, p. 177). this narrow focus ignores the fact that young people actively participate in political processes related to their own everyday lives (thomas, 2009). community youth development emphasizes the importance of experiential learning to build relationships and a sense of community at a group or program level (warner, langlois, & dumond, 2010). my first lesson drawn from this student movement was the benefit and possibility of building such a process on a broad scale. challenging media narratives and the reinforcement of youth stereotypes. once in montréal, i quickly came to see the impact of the media in framing my initial view of the protests and my implicit acceptance of the stereotypes and messaging. this was startling given my self-perception as a critically thinking, media-literate academic with specific expertise in community youth engagement. upon my return to nova scotia, i found myself engaged in many conversations with my colleagues in which i was educating them and rebutting views that i had accepted just a couple of weeks previously. the mainstream media defaults to the portrayal of youth activism in a stereotypical manner – that is, as the actions of self-indulgent and attention-seeking troublemakers with radical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 456 elements in pivotal organizing roles (gilliam & bales, 2001). the youth as troublemaker narrative is highlighted with any violent incident, whatever the context. the high profile example for the maple spring was the june 4, 2012 cover of maclean’s magazine which portrayed a student with his face covered by a red bandana under the headline: “québec’s new ruling class”. the result is that many adults, who are removed from youth lifestyles and perspectives, implicitly accepted the stereotypes and worried about potential political, social, and economic instability brought about by youth activism (gilliam & bales, 2001; hampton, hartmann, hurley, & lamarre, 2012). the student co-authors describe the organizational and contextual dynamics that enabled the student movement to combat the media stereotypes in montréal. student and social media were essential to reaching out to youth and informing the public. french-language media were more balanced in reporting events and did not consistently communicate the negative perspectives and stereotypes which could be found in english-language media, both in québec and across canada (christoff, 2012; giroux et al., 2012). media stereotypes seemed most dominant for those who were most distant from the experience in the streets. i recognized the need to be vigilant about not allowing my perspectives to be defined by mainstream media, particularly when the phenomena are distant and hard to comprehend. alternative media sources are essential to understanding a phenomenon. without them, those removed from the experience are left vulnerable to accepting mainstream media interpretations of events. the student movement was not an instance of feel good, youth volunteerism in which the mainstream media is typically a youth ally, providing images of enthusiastic young people doing positive things for the community. youth-led activism is not typically portrayed in the same positive vein, particularly when it challenges established community or government institutions and practices. interestingly, the movement gained positive media attention when respected and powerful adults wearing robes (judges and lawyers) protested bill 78 (later law 12), a law passed by the government which restricted freedom of association and assembly and included fines for individuals and student organizations. the law was criticized for infringing on the rights guaranteed in québec’s charter of human rights and freedoms (bherer & dufour, 2012). in english canada the media discussion shifted from “what should they do with those spoiled brats?” to “what is actually going on in québec?” (somerville, 2012). the latter question prompted some journalists to present more nuanced perspectives, even if superficial criticism of the students still dominated many publications. my second lesson is that established interests attract and drive positive media coverage, and that media coverage is extremely influential in framing social and political issues, even if i might think that i can maintain a critical perspective. implications emerging from our accounts of the student movement we identified two implications for emancipatory approaches to youth engagement. the first focuses on the contributions that support youth-led processes and social change, and the second relates to the value of duoethnography as a means to enable youth voices to be meaningfully represented in scholarly work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 457 youth-led movements and social change while our narratives were distinct, we found interrelationships among our different perspectives. in developing youth-led initiatives for social change, we identified four shared aspects to consider (see table 1). they are: (a) the benefit of experiential education for both youth and adults; (b) the nurturing effect of structures and spaces to support youth-led processes; (c) the need to align youth emancipatory theory with practice, especially in systems which regularly resist change; and (d) the unexpectedly powerful impact of youth stereotypes, especially those delivered through mainstream media, and the difficulty of overcoming them. taken as a whole, these suggest that there are both internal and external dimensions to youth-led processes leading to social change that is emancipatory. table 1. aspects of youth-led movements and social change 1. seeking experiential education for youth and adults meaningful “university” education is in the streets (di mambro) building identity and community through experiential learning (warner) 2. providing structures and spaces for youth-led processes the potential of youth-led, direct democracy (di mambro) creating space and involving allies (blanchet-cohen) 3. resisting systemic responses awakening to the system’s resistance and police brutality (bedeaux, di mambro, warner) youth rights and participation – the gap between theory and practice (blanchet-cohen) 4. re-appropriating media the contribution of social and student media (bedeaux) challenging media narratives and the reinforcement of youth stereotypes (warner) with respect to the internal dimensions of the movement, our narratives suggest that youth-led processes that allow youth to personally experience the value of collective action can be transformative. this experiential element allowed youth and adults to connect more deeply with the issues, particularly creating a sense of belonging. this finding is consistent with zeldin, christens, and powers (2012) who identify the psychological context as key to realizing youthadult partnerships. this experiential education process arose in part out of the space and structures for youth-led processes that were already present. these structures allowed the impactful relationships to be built internally, as well as externally with allies and the general public (percy-smith & thomas, 2010). another aspect was that in challenging the status quo, youth, and adults who supported the movement, had to confront a system that defended established norms. the level of resistance was illuminating, if not surprising. we found that working through youth-led processes requires building youth-adult partnerships, and fighting against systems that resist youth voices and social justice perspectives. finally, social media became a key means for youth to communicate among themselves and with the broader public. its use mirrored the arab spring in which digital media international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 458 was a tool that broadened dissent occurring in specific places, facilitating a collective consciousness and providing an internal means of communication that identified opportunities for joint action (howard & hussain, 2011). it is interesting to note that within each aspect, we found clear interconnections between the sub-themes although they are expressed and framed differently based on each of our social locations. for experiential education, giulietta’s passionate first person experience of discovering meaningful education in the streets contrasts in tone with alan’s recognition of similar phenomena based on conversations, program experiences, and academic literature. yet in both cases the focus on the nature of interaction and direct participation is paramount. duoethnography as an asset in youth-adult partnerships beyond what we learned about youth-led processes that contribute to social change, we found the duoethnography methodology valuable in bringing forth youth voices in ways not possible through other research methods. it might be argued that the adult researchers could have simply interviewed student activists and then analyzed the interviews to generate similar narratives. however, even with appropriate respondent checking in the methodology, we do not believe the result would have been as relevant for multiple reasons. duoethnography engaged the youth as researchers, giving space for students’ voices, and offering an insider’s perspective on what happened. this process allowed us all to come away with a deeper understanding of what defined this youth-led movement and its broader implications. as professors, natasha and alan were introduced to a phenomenon through the eyes of the students who experienced it most directly, providing for a deeper appreciation of the movement. as students, giulietta and christophe each had very different experiences of the movement, a reminder to be careful not to generalize for either youth or adults. the method was pedagogical and emancipatory for all of us as authors. engaging in the conversations and writing process altered and enriched our perspectives, an integral aspect of duoethnography (sawyer & norris, 2012). we discussed, and at times debated, how the stories would be best told. our dialogue was a reminder that duoethnography involved each one of us undoing historical and cultural scripts (norris & sawyer, 2012). while listening to the passionate and at times gut-wrenching stories of youth in a way that does not typically occur, natasha and alan emphasized to giulietta and christophe the importance of first-hand experiences in writing, and that citing external sources was not always needed to legitimize their voices. both giulietta and christophe felt that writing was a way of validating the movement. having students and professors in an ongoing dialogue across the different stages of conceptualization, writing, and editing allowed us to work through some of our differences and present a more complex and multi-faceted understanding of this phenomenon. throughout, each of us had to be sensitive to negotiating across our diverse spaces and respecting our individual experiences. the format for our concluding comments was the result of an ongoing dialogue that generated a shared synthesis of our different perspectives. we considered writing the final international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 459 section in a dialogue format, but through our conversations we realized that we had come to identify common themes, much as a focus group in which consensus is drawn out of discussion. the format was an opportunity for youth and adults to interact in more egalitarian ways, respecting youth voice, which is often lost in the writing process. in the future, it would be interesting to explore duoethnography as a mean of transformative learning for both youth and adults to strengthen adult-youth partnerships in the context of emancipatory approaches. concluding thoughts the québec student movement provides a powerful example and valuable lessons for youth-led civic engagement. through the movement, youth demonstrated a level of creativity and innovation that stands as an illustration of the effectiveness of young people in contributing to social change when given the means to do so. in enacting direct democracy, using alternative media, resisting the system through non-violent means, and protesting by strategically reaching out to the broader public, young people showed their capacity to facilitate social change. our use of duoethnography was transformative, uncovering the multi-faceted perspectives and deepening our own understandings of our individual experiences. privileging individual voices as well as dialogue, and the melding of youth and adult voices may be a useful method for approaching emancipatory approaches to youth engagement on complex social and cultural issues. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 444–463 460 references beaumont, e. 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(2012). the psychology and practice of bridging generations for youth development and community change. american journal community psychology, 51(3/4), 385–397. doi: 10.1007/s10464-012-9558-y http://translatingtheprintempserable.tumblr.com/post/23754797322/an-open-letter-to-the-mainstream-english-media http://translatingtheprintempserable.tumblr.com/post/23754797322/an-open-letter-to-the-mainstream-english-media http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/06/18/social-media-making-it-ea_n_1604792.html international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019935 introduction to the two fice 2020 special issues emmanuel grupper, alexander schneider, and friedhelm peters guest editors abstract: fice international is an international organization focused on children and youth who are in need of out-of-home care. one of its major activities is organizing a world congress every three years. in these congresses, professionals from all over the world who are involved with out-of-home care can meet, exchange knowledge, and learn from each other. the most recent fice congress, held in october 2019 in tel aviv, israel, was dedicated to the theme “better future opportunities for children and young people in multicultural societies”. the editor of this journal has been kind enough to offer this platform for the publication of selected material presented at the congress. fice-international, and we as guest editors, are most thankful to prof. sibylle artz, editor of the ijcyfs, for this opportunity. the richness and variety of the selected articles, coming from 10 countries, could not be accommodated in a single issue. the editors of the journal have therefore decided to divide the articles into two special issues, to be published one after the other. the first of these issues includes articles in three thematic categories: (a) evidence-based research on effects of out-of-home care, (b) historical and sociological perspectives on institutionalized child and youth care, and (c) normalization — a challenge for foster care programs. four further categories will provide the framework for the forthcoming second special issue: (d) emotional and pedagogical considerations, (e) refugee children and youth, (f) residential staff, and (g) care leavers. emmanuel grupper phd is president of fice-international, and associate professor at the school of education and social studies at the ono academic college, 104 zahal st., kiryat ono 5545173, israel. email: emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il alexander schneider phd is a board member of fice-israel, and an educator and researcher at the evaluation and research unit, beit berl academic college, post beit berl 4490500, israel. email: drschneidera@gmail.com friedhelm peters phd is former vice-president of fice-germany, and senior professor at the protestant university for social work, education and care, dürerstraße 25, 01307, dresden, germany. email: friedhelm.peters@ehs-dresden.de mailto:emmanuel.g@ono.ac.il mailto:drschneidera@gmail.com mailto:friedhelm.peters@ehs-dresden.de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 2 fice international, founded in 1948, is an organization of child and youth care professionals from more than 35 countries around the globe. its membership includes practitioners, university professors, and researchers in fields such as social pedagogy, social work, child and youth care work, psychology, and education. as the fice website1 explains, combining their efforts enhances the ability of these professionals to exert a positive influence on the quality of child and youth care: fice-international’s vision is to create networks across continents worldwide to support actions and all those working with at-risk young people, children with special needs and children and youth in out-of-home care. all activities aim to respect the personality, interests, and needs of the child or the young person. (fice international, 2017, para. 1) a major and prestigious activity of the international organization is a world conference held every three years. the purpose of fice conferences is to bring together experts from all over the world in order to share knowledge and programs and to assist in building supportive and sustainable professional networks to promote the rights of children and youth at risk. the conference serves as a platform for reviewing work involving at-risk children, children with special needs, and children and young people in out-of-home care, and as a forum for innovative ideas. 34th world congress the 34th world congress of fice international took place in tel aviv, israel from october 29th to 31st, 2019. the theme of the congress, “better future opportunities for children and young people in multicultural societies”, is timely, as most societies are becoming increasingly multicultural. the challenge of our era is to create a brighter future for children and young people in multicultural societies. the conference participants included representatives of associations, organizations, and similar interested parties. the more than 520 professionals who attended from nearly 40 countries — principals, supervisors, teachers, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, academics, researchers, and others — represented various roles in residential schools, treatment residential centres, foster care, group homes, and other forms of out-of-home care. also in attendance were decision makers at different levels from countries around the world. the attendees came together to share their knowledge and learn from each other, forming a genuine “educative community”. the congress was held at the friendly campus of ono academic college, where prof. emmanuel grupper, chair of the organizing committee, holds the position of deputy dean of humanities. it was organized by the israeli national section of fice, together with the main 1 https://www.ficeinter.net/ https://www.ficeinter.net/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 3 governmental agencies in israel that deal with residential education and care: the ministry of welfare and social services, and the ministry of education. other important partners came from a large group of civil society organizations that are active in israel in the field of education and care for children and young people who need specialized services, in both out-of-home care and community-based programs. the chairperson of the scientific committee was prof. shalhevet attar-schwartz from the hebrew university in jerusalem, whose contributions were instrumental to the high quality of the congress program. this large group of volunteers, all of them israeli professionals and civil society activists, joined forces to meet the challenge of putting on such a large conference. together, they made the 34th fice international congress a big success. fice publications after the 32th fice international congress in bern, switzerland in 2013, the editorial board of fice international decided to no longer distribute edited congress proceedings, but instead to publish selected materials from the congress in the form of “special issues” in open access electronic journals. this became possible due to a generous invitation from the editor of this journal, prof. sibylle artz of the university of victoria, british columbia, canada, to publish fice special issues based on the congress material. this has already begun to emerge as a “fice tradition”. here we are now, applying this most successful model for the third time. the topic of the first special issue was inclusion (grupper et al., 2015), the theme of the bern congress. guest editors were emmanuel grupper (israel), james p. anglin (canada), and anna katharina schmid (switzerland). after the vienna congress in 2016, we published a special double issue with guest editors james p. anglin (canada), silke gahleitner (germany), and emmanuel grupper (israel). the first part was named after the congress theme, together towards a better world for children, adolescents and families (anglin et al., 2018a). the theme of the second part was evaluation, research, and challenges in residential, foster, and family care (anglin et al., 2018b). the special issue — again a double issue — that we introduce here is based on materials presented during the tel aviv congress in october 2019, with the theme “better future opportunities for children and young people in multicultural societies”. the guest editors are emmanuel grupper and alexander schneider, both from israel, and friedhelm peters from germany. the issue includes 16 contributions from 10 countries: austria (2), croatia (1), germany (2), hungary (1), india (1), israel (4), italy (1), japan (1), lithuania (1), and switzerland (2). we have divided this material into seven thematic categories. fice tel aviv congress october 2019 special issue 1 evidence-based research on effects of out-of-home care: the first category includes four contributions, all of which are evidence-based research dealing with the effects and outcomes of out-of-home care on children and young people. the first paper, by rosalind willi and douglas reed from the sos international research centre in austria, measures the long-term impacts of family-like child care and family-strengthening social services. the second, by anna schmid of switzerland, presents the first results from an original swiss–hungarian project, “creating international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 4 futures”, that promotes the self-empowerment of youth in residential care, enlisting them as experts in the research process. in the third paper, from croatia, lucija vejmelka, roberta matković, and davorka kovačić borković present their research about online activities in dormitories in residential care programs. the fourth article deals with assessing the association between care quality and household chore rules for children in japanese residential care institutions. this research was carried out and written by four scholars from japan: rie mizuki, mamiko kyuzen, satoru nishizawa, and shigeyuki mori. historical and sociological perspectives on institutionalized child and youth care: there are two papers in this second category. the first is by patricia lannen, clara bombach, and oskar g. jenni, all based in switzerland. this team is involved in a research project about institutionalized care in switzerland during the late 1950s and early 1960s. they involved former residents in these institutions as partners for developing the interview guides for the project; this paper presents their preliminary results. the other paper in this section comes from vilnius, lithuania. jolanta pivoriene analyses the process of deinstitutionalization of the child care system in her country. normalization — a challenge for foster care programs: the single paper in this section, by friedegard föltz, analyzes how foster care programs in germany cope with the challenge of creating normalcy for children and youth in their care who have disabilities or medical fragility. fice tel aviv congress october 2019 special issue 2 emotional and pedagogical considerations: the fourth section opens with a paper by gabriella kulcsár, judit zeller, and beáta korinek. it describes the students for children volunteer program, in which university students in hungary mentor children in foster care, with benefits for both groups. the second paper, by revital sela-shayovitz and michal levy from israel, deals with the rather new phenomenon of cyberaggression. their paper focuses on the effects of parental mediation on specific bystanders’ roles. it is followed by a paper by alexander schneider and einat yitzhak monsonego, also from israel. they present an original point of view about the changing role of pedagogy in school principalship that recognizes the importance of emotional literacy. the paper that closes this section, by ameen azmy, presents an evaluation of a police studies program in “youth villages” (residential care institutions) in israel. the program’s rationale was to develop police legitimacy among youth at risk who had been placed in residential care institutions, and thus change their perceptions regarding law enforcement officers. refugee children and youth: the fifth section deals with a widespread and troubling phenomenon of our era — “children on the move”, or refugee children and youth. the one paper in this section, written by norbert struck, deals with residential care in germany for refugee young people. residential staff: the sixth section is dedicated to a crucial element of training: empowering and developing competences among residential educators. the first paper is by anna reznikovskiinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 5 kuras and anna gerasimenko, both from israel. their paper identifies six best-practice strategies for residential caregivers working with children at risk. the final article is part of a collaborative project by five european union countries to empower and develop competences among residential care workers. project members laura formenti and alessandra rigamonti of italy write about enhancing reflective competences among care workers practising in residential child care, who are frequently confronted by complex situations. care leavers: the seventh and final section of this special double issue includes two papers about care leavers. over the last decade, this has been one of the most important developments in out-of-home facilities in many countries. a lot of activities and research were done during that decade on the transition from care to independent living. the first paper is by stephan sting and maria groinig of austria, who write about the interesting perspectives care leavers have on their families during the transition from out-of-home care to independent living. the second paper, by indian researchers kiran modi, lakshmi madhavan, leena prasad, suman kasana, and sanya kapoor, presents a synopsis of beyond 18: leaving child care institutions, a report that described a research study of support systems for youth leaving care in india and made recommendations for policy reforms in that area. taken together, these 16 articles give the real flavour of multiculturalism and its implications. although educators and caregivers who are working with children and youth in out-of-home care facilities in these 10 countries face the same basic challenges, they are addressed differently in each cultural context. for example, the transition from care to independent living looks completely different in india than it does in a western culture like austria. the same is true for all other issues described in these articles. for example, measurement of outcomes, and issues in staff-related areas such as training and professional status, look quite different in the israeli cultural context than in european countries like italy. the different ways challenges are addressed in different cultural contexts demonstrates the multicultural dimension of our professional field. this is part of the multicultural celebration that the participants in the fice 34th world congress experienced during the four days of the congress in israel. we do hope that readers will feel this cultural diversity while reading the interesting papers in these two special issues. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 1–6 6 references anglin, j. p., gahleitner, s., & grupper, e. (eds.). (2018a). together towards a better world for children, adolescents and families [special issue]. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 9(1). anglin, j. p., gahleitner, s., & grupper, e. (eds.). (2018b). evaluation, research, and challenges in residential, foster, and family care [special issue]. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 9(2). fice international. (2017). child and youth care around the world. https://www.ficeinter.net/ grupper, e., anglin, j. p., & schmid, a. k. (eds.). (2015). inclusion [special issue]. international journal of child, youth and family studies, 6(3). https://www.ficeinter.net/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs142202321468 language variances in defining young women in northern uganda humanitarian settings victoria flavia namuggala and consolata kabonesa abstract: this paper, which focuses on formerly displaced communities in postconflict northern uganda, discusses the variance between the way formal institutions view young women’s identities and how young women see themselves. based on a qualitative study that used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, findings indicate that the infantilizing and victimizing language adopted by these institutions does not reflect the identities of young women in the post-conflict setting. these women argue that terminology such as “child mother” and “child soldier” is disempowering, denying them the prestige of adulthood yet disassociating them from childhood. the intersecting nature of their perceived identities hinders their access to humanitarian assistance targeted specifically to children or adults, since they are not recognized as clearly belonging to either group. the use of the term “child mother” effectively penalizes young women for engaging in adult (sexual) behaviour, while denying them the adult status that mothers are normally accorded. this article argues that sustainable post-conflict reconstruction, with efficient access to and use of humanitarian assistance, demands insitutional adoption of contextually inclusive language that recognizes young women’s professed identities and is reflective of local experiences and realities. keywords: uganda, language, identity, intersectionality, humanitarian assistance, child mother, peace building victoria flavia namuggala phd (corresponding author) is a lecturer at the school of women and gender studies, college of humanities and social sciences, makerere university, p.o. box 7062, kampala, uganda. email: vnamuggala@gmail.com consolata kabonesa phd is a senior lecturer and associate professor at the school of women and gender studies, college of humanities and social sciences, makerere university, p.o. box 7062, kampala, uganda. email: ckabonesa@ss.mak.ac.ug international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 26 since gaining independence in 1962, uganda has been engulfed in a series of violent conflicts (mutiibwa, 1992). the northern region of uganda has been characterized by civil war involving various rebel groups since 1986, leading to chronic poverty, disease, and high hiv infection rates, and poor social services in the areas of education, health, and infrastructure development (mulumba & namuggala, 2014). the more than two decades of armed civil violence under the lord’s resistance army (lra) against the government of uganda that began in 1987 were especially destructive (dolan, 2009). the lra rebellion has been characterized by extreme human rights violations in the form of sexual abuse and physical torture, as well as economic and psychological trauma. unlike the earlier episodes of civil unrest that plagued uganda into the 1980s, this rebellion was exceptional in that it strategically targeted the civilian population (dolan, 2009), the majority of whom were women and children (machel, 2000). in order for the government to ensure the protection and security of the civilian population, much of the local population — over 1.8 million people (idmc, 2012) — were confined to displacement camps. the war and eventual displacement disrupted social norms and exacerbated gender inequality (kinyanda, 2010). following the declaration by the president of uganda of a post-conflict phase in 2008, internally displaced persons (idps) — such as former rebel recruits and abductees — began returning home. while this has been a continuous process, most idps had returned home by 2012. the government of uganda recognized that resettlement processes need to be based on principles of social justice and gender equality. implementation, however, has not always reflected these principles. although it is a well-known global challenge, violence against women and girls is more pervasive in traditional societies where it is shrouded in patriarchal ideologies and hence may be seen as socially acceptable, especially in situations of war and displacement. forced displacement is a critical contemporary worldwide issue, the impact of which affects all the united nations sustainable development goals1 (sdgs). globally, by 2015, there were an estimated 38 million idps (internal displacement monitoring centre [idmc], 2016). forced displacement is closely linked to armed conflict within states. it is more prevalent in the global south, especially africa, than elsewhere. africa hosts at least 20.3 million forcibly displaced persons (6.3 million refugees and 14 million idps; abebe, 2019). besides idps, armed conflict results in local, regional, and global disturbances engendering violations of basic human rights (dolan, 2009); crucially for this study, these include sexual and gender-based violence. 1the sdgs are: (1) no poverty, (2) zero hunger, (3) good health and well-being, (4) quality education, (5) gender equality, (6) clean water and sanitation, (7) affordable and clean energy, (8) decent work and economic growth, (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure, (10) reduced inequalities, (11) sustainable cities and communities, (12) responsible consumption and production, (13) climate action, (14) life below water, (15) life on land, (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions, and (17) partnerships for the goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 27 most displaced people live in global regions with the highest levels of poverty and inequality (idmc, 2016), whilst protracted displacement has become the norm in many areas suffering sustained conflict, with some existing in a cycle of perpetual crisis (zetter, 2014). forced displacement continues to steal the childhoods of millions of africans; as has been seen in syria, the presence of such conflict can potentially result in a “lost generation” (relief web, 2013). in such situations, violence in all its forms is normalized, if not explicitly condoned (bukuluki, 2013). child labour, defined by the international programme on the elimination of child labour [ipec] as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development” 2 (ipec, 2019, para. 2), is ubiquitous in conflict situations. young people have been conceptualized doubly as the primary victims of, and as actors in, the lra rebellion (cheney, 2007; dolan, 2009). a key challenge for young people in africa, and uganda specifically, is unemployment. uganda’s national unemployment rate is estimated at 9.2%, while the youth (18–30 years) unemployment rate is 13.3% (kempner, 2020). unemployment is always worse in war-torn regions due to the breakdown of infrastructure and services (uncdf, 2021). the literature further demonstrates that there is a generational variance in the understanding and appreciation of employment: while the older generation tends to take a pre-conflict perspective that acknowledges as work only certain types of labour, such as agriculture and communally beneficial activities, the younger generation has different notions (namuggala, 2017). some young people are engaged in work (e.g., sex work, sports betting, dancing for pay) that has traditionally been despised as immoral and disrespectful, if not outright criminal (namuggala, 2017). as a result of the differentiated constructions, both the older generation and the formal institutions have framed these youth as lazy and idle (namuggala, 2017). while communities encounter numerous challenges in reintegrating idps due to the breakdown of social structures and the loss of former sources of livelihood, the challenges are exacerbated by some of the terminology adopted in the post-conflict phase, especially as used by the humanitarian agencies working to help communities resettle (book, 2020; greene et al., 2017). young women, given their gender and age, face unique challenges and, for those with children, the agencies’ use of language has been particularly discomfiting by undermining their sense of belonging to the adult category of mothers. such terminology further blames young women for engaging in sexual behaviour — traditionally an adult domain — and thus creates a sense of shame in them. in northern uganda, sexual violence resulted in rape, early pregnancies, and early and forced marriages, giving rise to the widespread use of terms like “child marriage”, “child-headed household”, “child mother”, and “young mother”, which in themselves have had a negative impact on the lives of young people. 2 note that ipec’s definition specifically exempts many contexts of child employment that are viewed as benign, such as helping out in the family business. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 28 this paper elaborates on how the vocabulary used in the process of accessing humanitarian aid and assistance contributes to and exacerbates gender-based violence. we therefore recommend use of more inclusive, and less victimizing and stigmatizing, language. language and identity formation while the entire civilian population of northern uganda was affected by the war, children and young people were among the most directly affected, as rebels targeted them for abduction and recruitment (spitzer &twikirize, 2013). consequently, more than 25,000 children (both girls and boys) were abducted to serve in the lra (buss et al., 2014). young girls were kept as servants to be forcibly married as remuneration to those with rank within the rebel group (beber & blattman, 2010). we argue that the language adopted in post-conflict humanitarian frameworks exacerbates the existing marginalization of these young people. this paper engages the perspective that motherhood is a marker of adulthood. language plays a key role in defining people’s identity. it can contribute, for instance, to forging or breaking social ties (dieckhoff, 2004). belonging to particular groups can create a sense of pride and self-esteem (tajfel, 1979). as such, one’s identity may be reconstructed in relation to other members of society (norris, 2007). as young women in northern uganda forge an identity, it is unsurprising that they resist, and work to decolonize, key concepts advanced by reconstruction programs that only minimally reflect the lived experiences of the local population. various conceptualizations have been adopted to characterize children and distinguish them from adults (huntington & scott, 2020). due to social construction, children have been conceptualized as vulnerable and thus in need of constant protection and guidance by their elders (cheney, 2007: liebel, 2012). these understandings, however, sometimes contradict or misrepresent local realities and experiences. consequently, they are perceived negatively as offensive and degrading by those to whom they are applied. the mismatch between social constructions of children and how young people perceive themselves is worse in war-affected areas (namuggala, 2018). who are the young people? the phrase “young people” in this paper refers to both children and youth. there is however, variance and contestation when it comes to the terms in which youth should be defined. for the united nations, a youth is a person aged between 15 and 24 years3; for the african union, the range is 15 to 35 years4; in uganda, it is 18 to 30 years (uganda bureau of statistics [ubos], 2017). while these numeric definitions provide a starting point for categorizing young people, they are limited in multiple ways. first, the adoption of a numeric definition is largely anchored in the dominant western mindset (namuggala, 2018), which downplays the role of sociocultural 3https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/youth 4https://au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/7789-treaty-0033_-_african_youth_charter_e.pdf, p. 3. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 29 perspectives reflected in functionality and relationality (morrow, 2011). in the global south, there are also challenges relating to issuance of birth certificates; for instance, due to experiences like conflict and displacement, some individuals are unaware of or pay no attention to their birth date (morrow, 2013; namuggala, 2018). this paper instead adopts a holistic approach that encompasses all these criteria for assessing development (age, functionality, and relationality) to conceptualize young people as comprising both those who self-identify as young people and those society identifies as young people. while experiences of all young people in situations of distress are worthy of attention, this paper is particularly centred on young women in northern uganda’s post conflict reconstruction. girlhood in post-conflict situations girlhood is a cross-cultural construct that is shaped by race, class, ability, sexuality, and settler society contexts (jiwani et al., 2006). young women’s resistance to the concepts imposed by reconstruction programs is expressed in the language they adopt regarding their identity formation in post-conflict reconstruction. identity formation is a complex and dynamic process urhthat can be disrupted by destructive factors, such as violence against women and girls — a globally acknowledged problem (green, 2018). even post-conflict, complex brutal cultures of violence against women and girls persist. we contend that even when the intent is to minimize such violence, the language adopted by restoration programs can end up reinforcing discrimination against young women and girls. it is critical to note that degrading language of the type that fails to accord young women any social status and privilege is socially constructed, accepted, reinforced, and propagated since it is engraved in normalized patriarchal structures. women often internalize such constructions and sometimes are complicit in such violence and labelling; for instance, women sometimes encourage early and forced marriages (ubos & icf, 2018, pp. 71– 72; unicef, 2015, pp. 47–49). men who internalize such constructions demand that women comply with them. young women, however, in post-conflict settings in northern uganda have established a new wave that resists such construction by deconstructing linguistic usages that infantilize them and downplay their agency. such resistance is informal and unstructured, but nevertheless widely practised by young people; it is seen, for instance, in their disregard of programs that use stigmatizing language. understanding the ways that girls contribute towards their own self-identification and empowerment requires both interrogating conventional and dominant ways of knowing and knowledge and acknowledging girls as valid knowers who can efficiently define themselves based on their everyday lived realities. it is thus important to rethink what constitutes girlhood (palacios, 2019), especially in situations of distress like forced displacement, encampment, return, and resettlement. girlhood in situations of distress stretches beyond gender and age to reflect interconnectedness with marital status as well as with motherhood, level of education, and social justice systems. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 30 girlhood and agency young people — especially young women — are faced with several challenges as the discussion above reveals; however, they continue to shape the social environments in which they reside. they can reconfigure exclusion into inclusion (christiansen et al., 2006). this paper demonstrates how young women contribute to defining their lived realities through deconstructing homogenizing language and representation. such language depicts young mothers as no more than victims in need of help; they are further presented as having low levels of morality and integrity. agency can be expressed in different forms, ranging from bargaining and negotiation through deception and manipulation to outright resistance (kabeer, 1999). this article concentrates on agency that emerges from a context of group-based oppression (abrams, 1999) — agency expressed in the form of resistance and defiance that young women adopt to challenge the terminology used by reconstruction programs. we particularly draw on critical consciousness and consider both individuals’ awareness of their own status and the strategies they advance to positively change their lived reality. critical consciousness further involves resistance against oppressive social and political structures as a step to advancing status (o’hara & clement, 2018). in northern uganda, one way the oppressive structure is constructed and manifested is through the use of language. sexual desire and pleasure in northern uganda, under the guise of protection, social structures including humanitarian agencies have stigmatized and thus problematized adolescent girls’ sexual activity, pleasure, and desire, framing young women who are sexually active as “morally decayed” and so a problem to society (logie et al., 2021). both social policy, which preaches abstinence, and law deter sexual activity among young people (de haas et al., 2017). since young women are socially expected to be sexually inactive, their access to and use of reproductive health information and services is not facilitated; they have difficulty accessing reproductive health services involving birth control measures, including condoms, since birth control is viewed as pertaining only to married couples (de haas et al., 2017). while ugandan social mores, influenced by religion and culture, generally regard abstinence as the ideal, it is an unrealistic one for girls born into situations of displacement, since the majority have been exposed to sexual encounters early in life (namuggala, 2018) in the form of rape and defilement or through following sex-based strategies for survival such as sex work and early marriage (mulumba & namuggala, 2014). in the post-conflict setting, where social standards and expectations relating to abstinence exist, but are in practice unattainable, young adults indulge in sex secretively, which limits their informed decision-making. in many cases, the fact of sexual activity comes to light only when a resulting pregnancy forces the choice of motherhood or abortion. since abortion is in most circumstances a crime in uganda (the 1995 constitution of the republic of uganda, ch. 4, art. 22), most young women carry their pregnancies to term and are described as “child mothers”. those young women who do attempt abortion generally use unsafe methods with a high risk of health complications (namuggala, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 31 the terminology adopted by humanitarian agencies, especially “child mother”, emphasizes the unique position that young mothers occupy as well as their roles and responsibilities in challenging social environments. it is the consequences of this intersectional position, which denies young mothers a place in either the adult or child categories, that young women resist. this paper problematizes some terminology used to describe young women in northern uganda. however, due to the paucity of available vocabulary, we ourselves continue to use “girls” to refer to young women throughout the paper, albeit with a clear understanding of its limitations to the context under study. in the paper, unless otherwise stated, “girls” refers to “emancipated” young women in the study area. methodology this article draws on a larger qualitative cross-sectional study (unpublished) conducted in 2018 in the soroti district of northeastern uganda: specifically, in soroti municipality (urban) and soroti county (rural). in soroti municipality, the northern division was considered, focusing on the kichinjaji and usuk cells. for soroti county, katine, tubur, and arapai subcounties were considered. the study explored conflict-related sexual violence among young people in postconflict situations who lived among the returned communities; it included both males and females who self-identified as young people, irrespective of their numeric age. the participants for the larger study were purposively selected from a list of names (the sample frame) provided by local council leaders and civil society organizations operating in the area. the sample frame included young people in and out of school, those born in displacement, young mothers, and heads of households. from this list, the sample for the present study was selected. the selection criteria included formerly displaced young women who had endured sexual harassment and were willing to participate. fair distribution across urban and rural sites was also considered. the above process led to the selection of 108 participants who matched the inclusion criteria. the study was grounded in sandoval’s (2000) “methodology of the oppressed”, which she described as “a set of processes, procedures and technologies for decolonizing the imagination” (p. 69); one goal of her methods is to enable differential social movements by challenging the naturalness of dominant ideology and language. the study set out to examine the young women’s experiences using qualitative methods of data collection that included interviews and focus group discussions. in order to understand and interpret the data, rigorous thematic analysis was used following a deductive approach focused on the research objectives. however, unanticipated new themes were also appreciated. interview transcripts were closely examined and coded. common themes reflecting patterns in the form of ideas, opinions, and experiences relating to identity, girlhood, motherhood, sexuality, employment, and child labour were identified. based on these themes, detailed thematic analyses of responses was conducted. responses relating to particular specified themes were grouped together and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 32 analyzed in detail. this facilitated realization of interconnections between themes and variations among them, and yielded significant insights into the dynamics of sexual oppression in the population under study. ethical considerations: the study observed key ethical principles including voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality, along with other ethical requirements for research approval. a certificate was issued by the makerere university school of social science research ethics committee. participation was entirely voluntary and an informed consent process was used. confidentiality was observed: only the core research team had access to the data collected. for anonymity, personal identifying data were kept separate from the findings in order to avoid associating findings to any individual. theoretical grounding our study adopted an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing feminist, indigenous, conflict, and peace studies. feminist epistemologies acknowledge that reality is always under construction by social actors, is context-specific, and accommodates diverse and contradictory knowledge (alcoff, 2006). specifically, we turned to feminist theorizing that focuses on margins (hooks, 2000), self-identification (collins, 2000) and intersectionality (crenshaw, 1989). there is no single feminist approach to armed conflict, but feminism provides an alternative perspective on the dominant, masculinized understandings of armed violence (sjoberg, 2013). that perspective centres on the lived experiences and voices of previously marginalized groups (especially women and girls) while acknowledging their multiple standpoints (sommers, 2007), and appreciates women’s agency. a feminist perspective can uncover hidden gender power relations in the genderneutral approach that is often taken in defining war, peace, violence, and reconstruction, and that is reflected in the language adopted in such situations. feminism, however, cannot provide a sufficiently nuanced examination of violence if it does not also draw on an indigenous perspective. indigenous epistemologies aid contextualised understanding of traditional perceptions of violence. results the results of the study demonstrate the participants’ defiance and resistance towards the naming and labelling language frequently used by governmental institutions and humanitarian agencies like non-governmental organizations (ngos) to define young women. the results are based both on the one-on-one interviews conducted with the young women and on focus group discussions. the social construction of girlhood in post-conflict northern uganda in exploring the experiences of young women who have suffered conflict-related sexual violence, it was noted that certain conceptualizations adopted by reconstruction programs were perceived as disrespectful by young people. this was reflected in terminology adopted by such programs that ignores, due to biases of age and gender, young people’s capabilities, agency, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 33 choices. in emphasizing protection of young people, these organizations take a view of youth and childhood that is largely anchored in numeric age, but in post-conflict situations like northern uganda, age-based standards are not necessarily applicable. the terminology used by these organizations further affects young people’s identity within society by establishing forms of control and surveillance, and categorizations demarcating the forms of association into which young women fit. for instance, young women with children are referred to as “child mothers” and “young mothers”; if married while under age, it is considered “forced”, “under age”, or “early” marriage. these usages amount to institutionalized marginalization against young women, manifested through universalistic language that informs conceptions of entitlement and belonging. girls have to struggle through multilayered forms of victimization constructed at the personal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels. we agree with palacios (2019) that “heteronormative, euro-western white perspectives of girlhood constitute another form of violent confinement from which [girls in the global south] must free themselves” (p. 281). one participant noted: when giving support, the organizations follow the age of a person, which is okay but now how many of us don’t know our age — several. parents don’t record dates when a child is born. we end up restricted by things we have no control over. if one really wants to take part, then you “forge” your age to reach what the organization requires. another elaborated the dissonance caused by programme labelling: they [ngos] call us young. but are we young? what do adults face that we don’t? if i can have a child safely, then why call me a young/child mother? anyway, for me it makes me feel disrespected, as if i don’t know what i can and cannot do with myself. while the participant clearly pronounces her agency, the ngos do not acknowledge it. the labels and language the humanitarian agencies apply are largely part of a construct of the western world that doesn’t necessarily represent the sociocultural attributes of human growth and development in global south settings like post-conflict northern uganda. it certainly doesn’t fit in the local community context where motherhood automatically translates into adulthood irrespective of numeric age. as the above quote highlights, the participant sees motherhood as a marker of adulthood, and feels that ngos deny girls adult standing simply because of their numeric age. this exacerbates marginalization in the form of poverty, insecurity, and limited decision-making powers, as well as limiting access and use of available social services. motherhood as a marker of adulthood in 2016, about 25% of female adolescents aged 15 to 19 in uganda were either pregnant or already mothers (ubos & icf, 2018, p. 89). in a recent national survey covering a 7-year period, adolescent girls accounted for a significant proportion (12.8%) of maternal deaths (ubos & icf, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 34 2018, p. 310). in part these reproductive health challenges are rooted in gender and social norms that encourage large families, early child marriage, teenage pregnancy (ninsiima et al., 2018), and limited access to youth-friendly reproductive health services. although the concept of “child motherhood” is intended to accord protection to young mothers, findings indicate that young women reject the vulnerability it implies, with its connotations of immaturity, immorality, and incapacity on the part of the mother. in most cases these are single mothers, engulfed in poverty, and entirely dependent on parents and guardians. a 17-year-old single mother explained that: if they think you are below 18, you are considered [a child mother] … being identified like that means you had a child at the wrong time, it is a mistake. when they call for meetings, they start teaching how to avoid pregnancies, and sex generally. it is like we are a burden to everyone, yet like other mothers we take care of our children to the best we can. agency is a relational concept and intersects with relationships. it constitutes a key aspect of self-determination and self-direction (abrams, 1999). as shown in the above quote, young women demand inclusion and acknowledgement of their capacity in taking care of their children. such acknowledgement would recognize their agency and capture the values that give meaning and purpose to their lives. in uganda, access to productive resources like land is difficult for single women. for example, men alone are traditionally considered to have the right to access, use, and control land (dimova, 2022); women can access land only through relationships with males such as husbands and fathers. to challenge the term “child mother”, girls self-identify as “women”, which is socially empowering for it accords them access to productive resources including land (especially as wives), and the opportunity to be involved in decision-making. to reinforce their social status as women, they explicitly identify themselves as mothers using their children’s names. for instance, “maama maria” would signify “maria’s mother”. such titles disregard age and daughterhood status and emphasize instead the young women’s new roles as mothers. in general, the roles and responsibilities that motherhood brings are common to all mothers irrespective of age. age thus becomes less crucial than motherhood in creating a sense of identity and belonging. instead of feeling guilty for their early pregnancies, these mothers embrace their new identity as mothers, disregarding negative connotations and blame. they expect to be supported and mentored to fulfil the collective responsibilities that come along with the new status they have attained. childhood and functionality in conflict and post-conflict environments, children are inevitably involved in what are socially regarded as adult roles and responsibilities (namuggala, 2018). children are, for instance, recruited (either voluntarily or through conscription or abduction) into fighting forces (namuggala, 2018), where they are actively involved in roles such as fighting, spying, and looting, but also in morally degrading practices like rape and sexual violence against both other children and adults. despite such roles, when the conflict ends children are again treated as innocent and vulnerable by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 35 adults and institutional frameworks and thus are expected to accept being protected by them. formerly displaced young women emphasized that continuing to place them in the childhood category was intended to discredit their contributions during situations of violence, and limited their participation in conflict resolution processes. one participant, who was 21 years old and pregnant with her second child when this study was conducted in 2018, had returned home in 2011: i was abducted and spent some years with the rebels before we escaped. we were sexually used and i even have a child from the bush. you don’t know what i went through, it’s a lot and then upon return, they want me to behave like i am innocent [i.e., naïve]! i am not innocent at all. and for me i don’t accept that. the participants thus actively resisted naming. they organized themselves to demonstrate that they are not simply victims but rather are agentic and resilient, and deserving of being credited as such. the involvement of these young people in armed forces, commonly referred to as “child soldierhood”, needs to be acknowledged. resettlement age discrimination in order to encourage an end to armed conflicts, institutional frameworks take steps to persuade armed forces to accept a ceasefire and begin the peace-building process, including compensation of rebels and provision of return packages to the displaced populations. children in northern uganda did not received return packages, however, despite having been actively involved in the conflict as combatants (machel, 2000). young people who are former soldiers, as reflected in the infantilizing language used towards them, have not been considered for compensation because they are expected to be dependent on adults — on parents or guardians. resettlement has largely targeted household heads, who are generally expected to be male and adult. traditionally it is men who are heads of households who have access to and control over land. the impetus to grant compensation to men (and male youth) is partly due to a desire to allay the security concern they present, since they could easily return to the fighting zones and threaten the realized peace (chabal et al., 2005). former young female combatants, on the other hand, are perceived as victims and thus accorded less influence in communal development, yet their roles in the conflict were similar to those of males and adults (blattman & annan, 2009). in order that communal development take their needs into account, the younger generation advocates for their rightful positioning as leaders and decision makers. since formal structures deny them space to express themselves, the young generation informally resists, and even at times sabotages, approaches from sociocultural and formal institutional levels. the lack of young peoples’ involvement in resettlement strategies that target them is evident in the following statement from a single mother of three (who seemed around 25 years old) who was uncomfortable with the proposal that she go back to formal school as part of a resettlement strategy, when she was more interested in options that would bring in income, such as vocational training: we all went through hell. working with the forces is not easy but what do we get? nothing. they want us to return to school. were the adults told to go back to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 36 farms? or they were supported to do what they wanted to do? i see most young people trying with school but it doesn’t make sense to me. school should be for those who want it and give options to us who don’t. notions of employment government programs such as the peace, recovery and development plan5 (prdp) have concentrated on agriculture, yet, due to their experiences during displacement and encampment, youth lack the skills and motivation required to become actively involved in agricultural production (namuggala, 2017). this is exacerbated, especially for young women, by limited access to and control over productive resources like land. youth instead opt for “quick money” jobs, including hawking, sports betting, sex work, “boda boda” (operating a motorcycle taxi), and street dancing. much of this work is done in the evening and at night. as a result, adults who do not see the youth working during the day mistakenly assume that they are idle. older adults can also find some of the work inappropriate. for instance, the costumes of female dancers may violate dress codes, revealing what culturally are regarded as private areas, including the thighs and breasts. the youth, however, feel that in fact they work hard and, most importantly, are earning an income. one female dancer noted: we are neither lazy nor idle. that’s what they think [because some sleep during the day] but it’s not true. we work, even in the night. we need to be supported socially and financially so that we can progress in what we know and can do. in our focus group discussions and interviews, the younger generation advocated for safety measures to be put in place to cover the activities from which they earn a living. for instance, hawkers are often mistreated by the police, through confiscation of their property, having to pay bribes, and spending nights in police cells. instead, the hawkers could be provided with security and trained in how to save, and how to access credit facilities in order to obtain loans. child labour despite attention to the topic in the form of international, regional, and national debates and frameworks focused on child protection, child labour is still deeply entrenched, particularly in situations of conflict and displacement, and in post-conflict settings where livelihoods, and survival itself, are constrained. some of the children who have been orphaned or left unaccompanied take on adult roles and responsibilities including headship of households. to fulfil their new roles, children become involved in income-generating activities such as hawking, operating road-side businesses, taking in washing, working as housemaids, porters on construction sites, or casual labourers on farms (namuggala, 2018). formal frameworks discourage and criminalize such work, yet many children have no other viable options for meeting their basic everyday needs: they either get involved as active agents or starve, since for them adult provision 5 http://www.peacebuildingdata.org/research/uganda/results/transitioning-to-peace/prdp international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 37 and care are negligible. in contexts like post-conflict uganda, child labour needs to be decriminalized and regulated so that young people who are struggling to earn a living can benefit from formalized arrangements. to fully meet the need, these would have to ensure not only a regulated safe working environment, but also the necessities of survival — food, clothing, shelter, and access to basic services like education and health. one roadside worker said: i have worked since i was around 7, i would sell polythene bags to customers on the street. i had to because we had to survive. i worked alongside my aunt’s stall. later, i got involved in selling fruits, especially mangoes, on the streets. then a friend told me about a house help job. house help is good because you are assured of food but the workload is too much. i tried but it was hard so i returned back on the street. young people support each other in finding employment, especially through social networking. as a strategy to get and retain such jobs, they charge less than older workers do. in interviews, youth explained that to minimize negative connotations in their search for employment, they don’t talk about their childhood status (in terms of age) but rather emphasize their responsibilities, such as being household heads. child-headed households conflict and displacement bring famine, poverty, disease, and insecurity. living under these conditions disrupts social networks and cultural frameworks that support the adoption of abandoned or orphaned children. in the absence of those mechanisms, some children inevitably find themselves heading households due to the death or disappearance of parents and guardians. although their situation is superficially similar to that of other households in the community, households designated “child-headed” cannot participate fully in communal activities, including decision-making. they are considered to be of less value than “normal” households and thus to present an extra burden on the community. where such families are female-headed, gender inequalities intersect with age disparities, making it doubly hard to access and use services. despite the agency and effort such households put in to survive, they are considered vulnerable and dependent: it is like we don’t do anything for good for the community or ourselves. whenever leaders talk about families headed by young people, it is in the negative, asking adults to help us. help is good but when someone thinks about it and not leaders begging on our behalf. yet we work hard to survive independently. young people in such circumstances feel that their efforts towards survival are not acknowledged or respected. labelling some households as child-headed results in “othering” — a process “through which identities are set up in an unequal relationship (crang, 1998, p. 61) — and hence a downplaying of their contributions to the community. it was clear from participant statements that such households headed by those socially defined as children would benefit from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 38 more positive language that acknowledges their agency and capacities. although no consensus emerged on how they wished to be described, many of the young people interviewed for this study felt that their households could provide good learning opportunities for the design of reconstruction programs, refuting hegemonic notions equating childhood with vulnerability. conclusions and recommendations gender inequality is a pervasive threat to sustainable development and has negative impacts on our collective ability to meet human rights obligations. while the language and naming used by ngos and governmental institutions comes from a genuine desire to help young people, it can carry negative connotations in local populations. by adopting locally sustainable approaches and familiar language and terminologies that informally work to the benefit of youth, young women are effectively advocating for a change in language practices. initiatives intended to benefit young people should involve them at all stages, and use terminology that young people are comfortable with. the term “girlhood” is a colonial legacy that privileges euro-western theories of normative, linear child development, which have continued to be imposed upon indigenous girls. it is a word that not only emphasizes universalistic progression to growth and development but also social surveillance and control in regard to sexual desire and behaviour, especially for young females. similarly, the term “child motherhood” attempts to explain “abnormal” sexual encounters: children are not expected to be sexually active, let alone become mothers. in that respect, some recommendations are suggested below. as shown by the participants’ statements, language has created mental prisons for young ugandan females through institutionalized control. while motherhood is treasured in theory, the age at which it happens and the marital status of the mother set boundaries as to whether it is welcome in practice. civil society organizations need to adopt more inclusive and genderresponsive language that reflects the ways youth identify themselves, rather than imposing labels that reflect the views and interests of donors and the international community. identity construction through language creates “othering” categories, which need to be continuously deconstructed. when we use language that not everyone in the community is acquainted with, we create an insider–outsider culture that promotes othering (richard, 2019) and affects identity and belonging, and hence agency. language is critical in building relationships and trust across differences, whether they are gender-related, generational, or cultural. to achieve this, the terms used must be based on lived realities and experiences. anti-bias education that supports key dimensions of human difference, including language, gender, culture, and age, should be embraced. schools can promote a more inclusive language through messages on communal communication platforms like radios, and communally engaging activities like poems, music, dance, and drama. this will raise sensitivity about victimizing and marginalizing forms of communication, hence promoting participation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 39 humanitarian strategies that specifically rely on certain categories — for instance, child mothers, former child soldiers, child prostitutes — end up reinforcing victimization and isolation within the community. when the general community disassociates itself from child soldiers, for instance, it adversely affects their ultimate reintegration. in conclusion, it is important that survivors are treated in a holistic and integrative framework within general community programs. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2023) 14(2): 25–44 40 references abebe, t. t. 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child, youth and family studies; careers; transdisciplinary critical pedagogy shannon a. moore, ph.d. is director, centre for women’s studies and associate professor in the department of child and youth studies at brock university. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to shannon moore, department of child and youth studies, brock university, 500 glenridge avenue, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1. contact: smoore@brocku.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 353-360 354 the selection of articles in this volume focuses on social justice issues within child, youth, and family studies, and has been shaped by my epistemological and personal standpoint. specifically, this standpoint comes from a feminist perspective wherein gender and power relations can be seen to impact our ways of knowing, and further, situate the knower as a researcher, a pedagogue, and in my instance, as a practitioner (harding, 1986, 1991, 2004; hartsock, 1983; smith, 1987, 2005). as levison (2000) further explains, there is a clear relationship between the visibility of women’s ways of knowing and children’s perspectives: “there is a striking parallel between the evolution of feminist research….to gendered analysis and feminist standpoint theory – and emerging directions for studies of children and childhood” (p. 126). i hold a ph.d. in counselling psychology and since 2000 have been a registered clinical counsellor and psychotherapist in canada. from this foundation, i integrated feminist and indigenous epistemologies that for me formed a transdisciplinary theoretical foundation for praxis in service delivery systems across canada, scotland, and england. moreover, as the mother of two young children, my viewpoint has been shaped by two decades of counselling the children, young people, and caregivers who have accessed the various social service systems where i have found employment. these lenses shape how i ask questions and seek answers about social justice issues within the “spaces of childhood” (moss & petrie, 2002). in an effort to move from the epistemological (and ontological) debates over contested definitions of social justice, i take this premise forward: social justice is the act of raising awareness of injustice, and taking action to address inequities with the aim of creating a world with less suffering (moore, 2008). this definition is associated with notions of praxis discussed in the work of critical educator paulo freire (1970, 1985) who began as a teacher in poverty-stricken northeastern brazil during the 1960s, and was introduced to north americans through his seminal text, pedagogy of the oppressed (freire, 1970). by raising political awareness, he proposed an approach to education that is focused on critical reflection and praxis. critical pedagogues encourage individuals “to think, to reflect, and to act, in order to create a more democratic egalitarian society” (kaufmann, 2000, p. 432; see also moore, 2006). they also propose that the responsibilities of those who have privilege in society include actions leading to greater social justice for marginalized individuals and groups. in line with critical educators henry giroux and susan searls giroux, for me this means “academics need to connect their work to a larger public and assume a measure of responsibility in naming, struggling against, and alleviating human suffering” (giroux & searls giroux, 2004, p. 84). critical pedagogues are challenged to open up safer spaces for criticality, and in so doing, attempt to be agents of change by taking risks (moore, 2006; moore & mitchell, 2008; mitchell & moore, 2008). these scholars are aware that practitioners, educators, and academics are faced with complex decisions concerning social justice, democracy, and competing ethical claims in all aspects of their work (kincheloe, 2005). moreover, they engage liberation pedagogy with the intention of creating more democratic and egalitarian societies through their actions as educators and citizens (moore, 2006). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 353-360 355 this critical yet optimistic stance focuses on illuminating the nexus of power and knowledge hidden in both academic and policy texts shaping interventions in the lives of young people and families. (in this issue, see the contributions of stevens and ajandi for further discussion). as sevenhuijsen (1998, p. 123) has affirmed, such texts are “sites of power”. she further observes: by establishing conventions, authoritative repertoires of interpretation and frameworks of argumentation and communication, they confer power upon preferred modes of speaking and judging, and upon certain ways for expressing moral and political subjectivity. through examining official documents in this way it becomes possible to trace both the overt and hidden gender load in their vocabulary. (also cited in moss & petrie, 2002, p. 81) once again, sevenhuijsen directs our attention to challenging the taken-forgranted knowledges embedded within childhood studies. historically, childhood professional training has been dominated by developmental psychologists and notions of “the child” divorced from culture, community and history, presenting not as competent or powerful, but as a future investment, or an adultist abstraction rooted in the medical model (aitken, 2001; see also mitchell, 2003; burman, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). these categorizations reflect a type of modernist “arborescent thought” thus reinforcing notions of lesser power and passivity for young people, and not infrequently, the women providing the bulk of their care: the study of children and childhood has historically been accorded a marginal place in the health, human, and social sciences. in part, this is due to prevailing western ideology that constructs children as passive, presocial, innocent, and vulnerable. the dominant discourse is further characterized by the treatment of children as a homogeneous group, devoid of race, class, or gender. (berman, 2003, p. 102) in medical literature and developmental psychology, ideas are generally understood to have originated as universal truths. this quest for the ultimate axiom has been associated with masculine epistemologies and the establishment of binary positions suspended in confrontation and struggles for domination. by contrast, feminist epistemologies are often drawn towards connectedness, continuities, convergence, and relational constructions (hartstock, 1983). (in this issue, see madan for further discussion). again as sevenhuijsen (1998) has suggested, the inclusion of a feminist ethic of care and relational vocabulary shapes different questions and answers about childhood making it more likely we will develop new conceptions of what constitutes social justice. this conceptualization of a gendered, fluid, and socially constructed world view has been described as “rhizomatic” thought in contradistinction to the set trajectory of arborescent thought (jung, 1956; see also holmes & gastaldo, 2004; deleuze & guattari, 1987; moore, 2006; moore & mitchell, 2008). socially constructed knowledge has established a solid foundation in sociological discourse throughout the 1980s and is integral to understanding the sociology of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 353-360 356 childhood (james & prout, 1990; jenks, 1996; matthews, 2007; see also mitchell in this issue for further discussion) and more critical psychological perspectives (burman, 2008a; in this issue, see grondin for further discussion). matthews (2007) has explained the epistemology of such historically and culturally situated forms of knowledge as follows: both the socialization and the developmental psychology perspectives push scholars to write about children as if all children were the same regardless of social location or context. the “new” sociological perspective stresses “the plurality of childhoods” not only with the same society but also across the settings in which children conduct their everyday lives … historical and anthropological research provides strong evidence that the nature of childhood and children varies through time and across society. (p. 325) the au courant notion of the “social studies of childhood” (matthews, 2007, p. 330; see also prout, 2005) now draws attention to a merger of far-ranging disciplines from anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, history, education, and law, as well as sociology (montgomery, burr, & woodhead, 2003; in this issue, see also mitchell for further discussion). similarly, burman (1995, 1996) has encouraged scholars to investigate the linkages between women and children in particular by experimenting in disciplinary and cultural tourism. my experience as a counsellor for children and their carers (and most particularly within mental health settings) has shown me that there is an inverse relationship between the number of professionals intervening in young people’s lives and the positive outcomes that one may expect. in this way, i have observed that young people are more likely to “fall through the cracks” of service delivery systems if professionals charged with their care hold tight to disciplinary knowledge and power. the impact is massive as collaboration, knowledge exchange, and socially just action become paralyzed (see moore & mitchell, 2009, p. 36). disciplinary boundaries are another artifact of the modernist notion of truth that holds only that which can be objectively evaluated in the greatest esteem: in truth there is little that is merely measurable … there is an inverse relationship between importance and what can be easily measured. the deeper we venture beneath the surface, the more profound the moral and spiritual character of learning and the more elusive the measurement becomes (scottish council foundation, as cited in moss & petrie, 2002, p. 67). thus, as levison (2000) claims, if our aim is to improve the quality of knowledge creation in childhood studies and extant practice within professional settings, we must move away from “rigid disciplinary boundaries and limiting entry points for ideas” (p. 131) towards a transdisciplinary study of childhood (mitchell & moore, 2008; moore & mitchell, 2009). as klein (2004) explains, “the problems of society are increasingly complex and interdependent. hence, they are not isolated to particular sectors or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 353-360 357 disciplines, and they are not predictable. they are emergent phenomena with non-linear dynamics, uncertainties…” (p. 517). transdisciplinarity involves moving beyond all disciplines “into a fabulous space of new knowledge” (nicolescu, 2005, p. 3). it concerns emergent new thinking, new ways of accessing old ways of thinking, construction of new ways of knowing, and praxis in order to transcend tired, dichotomous critiques (moore & mitchell, 2008). transdisciplinary approaches to science, politics, education, and cultural studies of media and the arts sharply contrast multior even inter-disciplinary methodologies, and are fundamentally associated with critique. a transdisciplinary epistemology (moore, 2006; moore & mitchell, 2008, 2009) – defined as a “deep interdisciplinarity” by kincheloe and mclaren (2005) – holds key ontological concerns for “the relationship between individuals and their social contexts” where an “ever evolving criticality … does not determine how we see the world but helps us devise questions and strategies” for exploring our social spheres (kincheloe & mclaren, 2005, pp. 303–342). the idea is to create spaces for plurality, diversity, and opportunity to encourage open dialogue about counter-hegemonic processes. moreover, through transdisciplinary critical pedagogy (moore, 2006), voices and social issues from the margins enter active discourse to promote critical inquiry, consideration of multiple viewpoints and perspectives in dialogue with others, and engagement of socially just actions (in this issue, see moore, gegieckas, marval, mccauley, & peloquin; pon, gosine, & phillips; de finney, dean, loiselle, & saraceno for further discussion). as guest editor for this special issue, i have taken real pleasure in my “responsibility … to provide a space where the complexity of knowledge, culture, values and social issues can be explored in open and critical dialogue through a vibrant culture of questioning” (giroux & searls giroux, 2004, p. 243). readers are now invited to consider the following multiple viewpoints and perspectives in a dialogue with the contributors, and to move from simple contention towards a positive transformation of the world around them (nagda, gurin, & lopez, 2003; hooks, 2003). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 3 & 4: 353-360 358 references aitken, s. c. 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(2005). institutional ethnography: a sociology for people. oxford: altamira press. http://cetrans.com.br/novo/textos/transdisciplinarity-past-present-and-future.pdf� listening for the voices of resilience: a group of adolescents’ experiences with a suicide prevention education program international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 24–46 24 listening for the voices of resilience: a group of adolescents’ experiences with a suicide prevention education program chelsea k. f. ohlmann, janelle l. kwee, and robert lees abstract: adolescents’ experiences in a grassroots, school-based suicide prevention education group in british columbia, canada, were investigated in response to anecdotal observations of the group’s strong positive impact. in the alive group, at-risk high school students, 15 to 18 years of age, learned to support each other, became literate in mental health issues, and created and performed presentations on suicide prevention to peers. the authors employed the qualitative method of the listening guide to explore the participants’ experiences of this program. participant narratives reveal voices of vulnerability (including voices of not knowing, disconnection, and silence – primarily in reference to past experiences of suicidality and depression), and of resiliency (including voices of knowing, connection, altruism, and protection). through their experience of the alive group, the participants developed and strengthened inner and interpersonal resources of resilience and knowledge of themselves and others. motivated by their own healing, they articulated a desire to help and impact others with what they had learned. keywords: suicidality, resilience, listening guide, suicide prevention education acknowledgements: this research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council. the authors would also like to acknowledge the assistance of jennifer decker, the research assistant for the present research, who had a significant role in the analysis process and implementation of the listening guide. chelsea ohlmann, m.a. (the corresponding author) is a graduate of the master of arts counselling psychology program at trinity western university, 7600 glover road, langley, b.c., canada, v2y 1y1 and has worked as a youth suicide prevention therapist in mission, b.c. phone: (778) 292-0142. e-mail: chelsea.ohlmann@gmail.com janelle kwee, psy.d. is an assistant professor in the master of arts counselling psychology program at trinity western university, 7600 glover road, langley, b.c., canada, v2y 1y1. e-mail: janelle.kwee@twu.ca robert lees, ph.d. is a community psychologist for the ministry of children and family development of british columbia, 8978 school street, chilliwack, b.c., canada, v2p 4l4. e-mail: robert.lees@gov.bc.ca mailto:chelsea.ohlmann@gmail.com mailto:janelle.kwee@twu.ca mailto:robert.lees@gov.bc.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 25 recently, within both the medical and psychological fields, attention on effectiveness research in prevention has increased (marchand, stice, rhode, & becker, 2011). within psychology, there has been a growing emphasis on health promotion and well-being, which directs the emphasis away from a problem-focused orientation. this shift represents a move from tertiary prevention, or targeting treatment towards those who are already experiencing symptoms of a disease, to primary and secondary prevention, defined respectively as preventing disorder onset in the general population and preventing further onset of a problem among populations at elevated risk (marchand et al., 2011). research and practice in the area of suicidality has also experienced a shift towards prevention. this shift has built upon the tenet that the traits or abilities an individual possesses have a protective influence with respect to negative risk factors. these internal protective factors and the process of their development are often referred to as resiliency. johnson, wood, gooding, taylor, and tarrier (2011) conceptualize resiliency to suicide as “a perception or set of beliefs which buffer individuals from suicidality in the face of stressors or risk factors” (p. 563). everall, altrows, and paulson (2006) define resiliency as “an adaptive process whereby the individual willingly makes use of internal and external resources to overcome adversity or threats to development” (p. 462). there appears to be a consensus in research literature that resilience is not a fixed attribute or outcome, but rather is a multi-dimensional and continually changing process (everall et al., 2006; richardson, neiger, jensen, & kumpfer, 1990; rutter, 1987, 2001; ungar, 2005). resiliency has been connected to the area of suicide prevention in numerous recent studies (everall et al., 2006; johnson et al., 2011; nrugham, holen, & sund, 2010). in a narrow sense, resilience has come to mean the individual capacities, behaviours, and protective processes associated with health outcomes despite exposure to a significant number of risks. however, ungar (2005) cautions against a purely individual approach to resiliency, stressing that it is complex, and that youth, their caregivers, and their communities travel on multiple pathways toward health. therefore, it is essential to consider the experience of at-risk youth in developing and enacting resiliency when we examine the suicidology literature. for the present study, resiliency is not solely conceptualized as the development and utilization of internal coping resources by an individual, but also as the complex process emphasized by ungar, one that individuals, their families, and their communities engage with to travel towards and achieve healthy outcomes. the shift in focus towards prevention and the increasing emphasis on resilience is a much-needed approach when one considers the important concern of suicide within youth populations. according to a nationwide survey of students between grades 9 and 12 in the united states (hooven, herting, & snedker, 2010), 15% of respondents had seriously considered attempting suicide, 11% had made a specific plan, and 7% had attempted suicide within the 12 months preceding the study. in canada, suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth between 12 and 18 years of age (rhodes, bethell, & bondy, 2006; skinner & mcfaull, 2012). the statistics are comparable in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 26 province of british columbia. according to a study by the mccreary centre society involving over 50,000 teenagers, suicide is the second leading cause of adolescent death in british columbia, and in 2008, 12% of students surveyed had seriously considered suicide and 5% had attempted suicide (smith, stewart, peled, poon, & saewyc, 2009). although self-reported suicide ideation and attempts among youth may have declined recently (16% in 2003 to 12% in 2008; 7% in 2003 to 5% in 2008, respectively, according to smith et al.), it is important to acknowledge recent evidence that suggests over the past 30 years, rates of suicide among canadian adolescent girls have increased (skinner & mcfaull, 2012). school-based suicide prevention programs surfaced in the 1980s as a response to the significant increase in suicide rates that many western industrialized nations experienced (guo & harstall, 2002; white, morris, & hinbest, 2012). since the emergence of school-based suicide prevention, there has been a similar emphasis within the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs in reducing suicidal ideation and completed suicides in the adolescent population. in turn, youth suicide prevention education programs have followed the emphasis on evaluating effectiveness and on prioritizing evidence-based practice highlighted in the literature, and many prevention programs are now predicated on what is deemed to be effective, that is, on what works. while research on effectiveness is valuable and necessary, an overemphasis on efficacy may increase the tendency of researchers to focus on evaluations from a quantitative perspective. both qualitative and quantitative are valuable approaches of inquiry and offer unique perspectives when considering both the effectiveness of and experience of suicide prevention programs. furthermore, research in the area of suicide prevention education has not reached a conclusive answer as to which prevention education efforts are most helpful. guo and harstall’s (2002) systematic review of early suicide prevention programs concluded that “there is insufficient evidence to either support or not to support curriculum-based suicide prevention programs in schools” (p. iv). though some of the early school-based prevention education programs were examined with mixed results, the emerging focus on program evaluation led to more rigorous research and evaluation studies. for example, a more recent systematic review demonstrates similar results: miller, eckert, and mazza (2009) found that of the 13 studies reviewed, five showed promising evidence for outcomes of statistical significance, and only two demonstrated strong evidence. corcoran, dattalo, crowley, brown, and grindle (2011) conducted a systematic review of 17 studies and also reported mixed results. these authors state that in the studies that measured suicidal ideation at post-test, intervention group participants were slightly less likely to report suicidal ideation than control group participants, both at post-test and at follow-up. however, for studies that measured both suicidal and self-harm events and assessed the outcome later than immediately after the intervention, the intervention group was slightly more likely to have suicidal and self-harm events than the control group. the authors interpret these contradictory findings to mean that interventions are only slightly effective in reducing suicidality in adolescents, and that they may, in fact, increase suicidal and self-harm events over time. despite this finding of corcoran et al., other studies have suggested that some programs can lead to increased student knowledge and change unwanted attitudes, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 27 without undesirable effects (ciffone, 2007). one response to the apparent lack of evidence is to call for more rigorous methodology in the effectiveness research and to increase the number of evidence-based suicide prevention programs in schools (tompkins, witt, & abraibesh, 2010). however, white et al. (2012) argue that the traditional evidenced-based practice and research focus “tends to obscure the complexity and dynamic nature of social learning, privileges a unitary and individualistic understanding of suicidal behaviour, and fails to account for the multiplicity of ways in which understanding suicide and ideas about prevention might be understood” (p. 346). for these reasons, an equally valuable response is to recognize that better understanding the components and mechanisms at work within suicide prevention programs is necessary to provide insight for decision-makers in determining future suicide prevention strategies (guo & harstall, 2002). as white et al. (2012) suggest, the narrow range of methodologies that have been utilized to study school-based suicide prevention education initiatives, the lack of definitive conclusions, and the resulting questions that remain around suicide prevention set the stage for “alternative conceptualizations and fresh approaches to inquiry” (p. 344) of suicide prevention education programs. though there have been many attempts within the literature on suicidality to demonstrate effectiveness, there is little research on the adolescents’ experiences of the intervention programs. michael ungar (2002) cautions against taking a top-down approach in understanding youth, as this tempts those in power positions to assume they understand the youth and as a consequence make decisions too quickly. rather, he argues that a voice is missing from the literature pertaining to the field of interventions, specifically the voices of the youth themselves (ungar, 2004). as we listen to the narrative of effectiveness within the suicidology literature, the lived experiences of the prevention program participants is starkly absent. therefore, in the following paper, we aim to explore the insider accounts of the participants of one such suicide prevention education program. in a high school in british columbia, an intervention program with high-risk adolescents experiencing suicidality appeared to result in notable improvements for its participants. through learning about suicidality and presenting suicide education information to their peers, the participants seemed to have overcome much of their previously suicidal thoughts and behaviours and developed into purposeful and capable peer leaders. the perception of teachers and school counsellors that remarkable change occurred within the participants provided the basis for further investigation of the participants’ experiences. through exploring the thick narratives of their experiences, we intend to serve as a vehicle that allows their voices to be recorded in the suicide prevention literature. the present investigation background of the alive group the alive group was a youth-led suicide prevention education group sponsored by the f.o.r.c.e. society for kids’ mental health, a non-profit agency. the group was international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 28 established to enhance training and skill development among at-risk youth. through participation in the alive group, the participants in this study provided support to each other and became literate in mental health issues, recognizing the signs and symptoms of emotional distress and developing the skills needed to reach out to peers. after learning about various mental health disorders and the connection between mental illness and suicide, the group members decided to focus on suicide prevention. the participants learned a model of responding to suicidal ideation called “ask, assess, act”. as the participants experienced the value of learning this model and applying it to their own lives, they decided to create a presentation based on the model to share with other students and other schools. as a result, the group had a dual focus: first, to educate the members of the group and second, to reach other youth and teach them how to recognize signs of suicide risk in themselves and in their peers (leuthardt, 2011). because of the organic, student-led nature of the group’s development, its goals and focus were strongly impacted by the personalities and passions of the members. because of this grassroots development and the way that the structure of the group was adapted to fit the needs of the members, the goals and strategies of the alive group evolved as the group journeyed together. for these reasons, looking at the participants’ experiences may prove to be the most helpful approach to understanding the nature of the alive group. participants the participants in this study included five high school students between 15 and 18 years of age. some of the students had been identified by school staff as being at risk for self-harm or suicide; other students had a personal connection with suicide. four of the five participants in the present study initially joined what they referred to as a “girls’ group” in grade 10, which was intended to provide a supportive environment for these students. the students decided that they wanted to make a difference for others and transitioned into a suicide prevention education group, which they named alive. the participants who had been part of the group from the outset had been in the group for three years; one participant had been in the group for one year. the teachers and mental health workers involved in the group’s leadership observed remarkable changes in the participants over the course of their involvement in the group, and because of this the group was identified for the present research. the participants involved in this study were high school students who were part of a preexisting, school-based intervention group, which had become a suicide prevention education group, called alive. the complex lived experiences of the participants from this group may inform the research and practice of other similar suicide prevention programs. method the listening guide (gilligan, spencer, weinberg, & bertsch, 2003) was chosen in order to more fully understand the participants’ experiences of this suicide prevention education group. a relational method, such as the listening guide, is intended to recognize the layered nature of psychological processes and to interpret psychological international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 29 behaviour within a relational and cultural context. carol gilligan (1982) laid the foundation for the present method through her work on identity and moral development. the listening guide is based on psychoanalytic theories, with an emphasis on the layered nature of the psyche, as well as on relational and feminist psychologies, wherein one’s sense of self is inseparable from one’s relationships and culture (gilligan et al., 2003). the listening guide involves reviewing the multiple voices within the participants’ transcripts and exploring how the voices interact within their expressed experience to convey, or to hide, their inner world. mikel brown (1997) describes how the listening guide provides a way “to trace the movement in girls’ understanding of themselves and others as they take in the voices around them, both appropriating and resisting the different perspectives on relationships” (p. 686). this qualitative method is best used when the research question requires listening more deeply both to a person’s expressed experience and to the contexts in which their experiences occur (gilligan et al., 2003). for instance, gilligan and machoian (2002) demonstrate that the listening guide offers a fresh approach to the exploration of adolescent girls’ suicidality. these authors argue that in early adolescence, girls’ resilience is at risk, and their peak susceptibility to suicidality reflects a fight for relationship. interpreted in this light, suicidality can be viewed as a way of “enacting the hope that someone does care about them and will listen and take them seriously” (gilligan & machoian, 2002, p. 323). gilligan and machoian further suggest that girls may learn to speak the language of violence in order to be taken seriously. through a relational interpretation of her suicidality, the authors understood one participant’s suicidality as “an active resistance to disconnection; as an active fight for voice” (p. 333). in this way, an adolescent girl’s suicidality can be seen, they state, as a “complicated hope for relationship” (p. 335), demonstrating that a relational interpretation of suicidality can offer new understandings and unique perspectives. with a strong relational component, the listening guide intentionally brings researchers into relationship with participants through making one’s experiences and interpretive lens explicit. the process of making the researcher’s lens explicit will be further elaborated when we describe the implementation of the listening guide. the structure of the method is flexible rather than a set of prescriptive rules. for these reasons, the listening guide empowers participants, enabling them to impact how researchers listen, how researchers ask questions, and how the participants’ expressed experience is interpreted. the researcher listens first to the participants’ voices before looking for answers to the research question (gilligan et al., 2003). the specific process of implementing the listening guide will be described in more detail subsequently in the present section. the listening guide was expected to cast new light on the experiences of the alive group members, interpreting their experiences within the context of adolescent female development and within the cultural context in which they live. this method involves listening deeply to the participants’ experiences, capturing not just what they say directly, but also the meaning and context behind their words. exploring meaning and context is a reflexive process that thickens as the relationship develops between the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 30 researcher, the data, and the participants. for example, in the present study, one participant describes the group as being “not a school activity”. in order to more fully understand what is meant by these words, it is essential to explore this participant’s experience of school and of the group. in this instance, the participant experiences school as a disconnecting, isolating, and impersonal place. conversely, she experiences the suicide prevention group as a place where her individuality is valued and she can use her voice to help shape the direction of the group. considering the context behind her words, therefore, more fully explicates what she means when she describes the group as “not a school activity”. due to the dynamic interaction between the experiences of suicidality, the unique challenges of being an adolescent, and the complex and multi-dimensional ways that individuals experience suicide prevention and education, the listening guide was identified as an appropriate way to capture the participants’ experiences in order to address the research question of the present study. data collection the research ethics board at trinity western university, as well as the relevant school district, approved the research study. the consent process involved demonstrating the rationale for the study, requiring all participants to receive parental consent, and offering opportunities to debrief their experiences with the study. some might suggest that it could be harmful for the participants to be asked about their experiences with suicidality. however, these potential participants have been taking part in the suicide prevention group for over a year and each individual had been delegated their own piece in the presentation, which involved sharing how they have been personally touched by suicide. in the focus group, students discussed the experience of sharing: “i really liked that we got to tell our stories, this was a real healing process for me”, and “it was a really nice feeling to be heard, it made us feel like we were looked up to”. furthermore, research has demonstrated that talking about suicide does not increase an individual's suicide risk (ciffone, 2007). the researchers gathered data through semi-structured interviews, following the listening guide protocol. students and parents completed a written informed consent questionnaire, and interviews of 45 to 90 minutes duration took place either at the individual participant’s school or at an outside office. at the beginning of each interview, participants were invited to engage the interviewer with questions about the process, and informed consent and confidentiality were reviewed. the researchers implemented the interview protocol with flexibility, which involved responding to markers of intensity or conflict, asking further about questions with strong emotional content, clarifying meaning, and building rapport throughout the interview. maintaining openness serves to explore the participants’ experiences in greater detail, eliciting more richness and depth in the interview data. the interviews were video recorded and systematically transcribed concurrent with the data collection process. the transcribed interviews were anonymized and all identifying information and names were changed. the researchers had access to the videos and transcripts throughout the analysis process. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 31 at the end of each interview, participants had the opportunity to debrief. after all the interview questions had been asked, the same interviewer asked if there was anything else the interviewee would like to talk about and offered to connect them with any other necessary supports (e.g., counselling). though the interviewer was available for as much time as the participants needed to debrief, participants for this study utilized only a few minutes and none of the participants seemed to have been impacted in a negative way by the interview. in fact, many participants spoke of the value of reflecting on their experiences. a focus group was also carried out with the participants after the interviews were complete. the goal was to provide a forum for the youth to reflect on the experience of participating in the study and share with each other what they had learned. the primary researcher was also available to the participants by phone for the duration of the study and up to four weeks after the study’s completion. implementing the listening guide the listening guide was implemented according to the protocol and guidelines outlined by gilligan et al. (2003). sequential sessions of listening help the researcher glean distinct aspects of one’s experience, co-occurring voices, and the relationship between voices (gilligan et al., 2003), which adds depth and richness to the interpretation of the participant’s expressed experience. a brief outline of the sequential listenings is included in the following section, and this section serves as the description of the data analysis protocol for the present study; for a more detailed description of the listening guide method, see gilligan et al. (2003). it is important that the steps be implemented with flexibility, paying attention to the iterative and non-linear nature of qualitative analysis. the analysis process was completed by a research team, which included the primary researcher (chelsea ohlmann), dr. janelle kwee (the research supervisor), and jennifer decker (the research assistant). any further references to the research team refer to these individuals. step one: plot and listener’s response. step one involves listening for the plot, including the landscape, multiple contexts of the story, what is happening (what, when, where, with whom, and why), repeated images or metaphors, dominant themes, contradictions and absences, the social context of the story, and the research environment. listeners also pay attention to their own response to the narrative, including thoughts, feelings, what touches them, where they feel connected or disconnected, their respective social positions, and how these responses impact their understanding of the person. identifying personal responses enables researchers to separate their experiences from those of the participants. the researchers completed this step individually and wrote down observations; these observations were then shared verbally as a team and the primary researcher compiled the varied perspectives. acknowledging one’s interpretive lens is embedded within the analysis process and in conversations with the research team; the interpretive lens does not come into the results explicitly because it is so embedded in the process. for instance, one participant referred to the importance of her relationship with her cat and she spoke of “having her cat to talk to”. the varied perspectives of the research team caused some to see this as evidence of disconnection, while others saw this as indicative of a connective experience. as we made our lenses explicit, we had international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 32 meaningful conversations that led to new and deeper understandings of this participant’s experience. though the listener’s response and interpretive lens is too complex to tease out separately, it is very much embedded within the results. step two: i poems. the second listening helps the researcher listen to the participant’s first person voice, capturing what the participant may not have said directly but that is nonetheless central to the meaning. when the participants use the word i, they are talking most directly about themselves, so tuning into first person voices enables the listener to attend to what the participants know about themselves. to construct the “i poem”, each first person i was identified within the passage, along with the verb and any important accompanying words. maintaining the original sequence of the text, we pulled out each underlined phrase and arranged each phrase on a separate line. the i poem picks up on an associative stream of consciousness that runs through each participant’s narrative, and the stanzas reflect shifts in meaning or voice. step three: listening for contrapuntal voices. listening for multiple voices enables the researcher to discover several different layers within a person’s expressed experience. the concept of contrapuntal voices is based in musical counterpoint, where two or more melodic lines, which have independent rhythm and contour, move in relationship with one another. listening sequentially for various contrapuntal voices within participants’ expressed experience allows the researcher to access and describe diversity within unity. identifying harmony and discord between the voices illuminates the ontological complexity of the participants’ experiences with coherence and detail. each contrapuntal voice was identified in a separate listening. the essential qualities of each voice were identified by critical markers, such as “references to identifying with others” as a marker for the voice of connection, for example. the use of markers rather than static definitions for each voice is consistent with the iterative and reflexive nature of the research process. in this process, the research team revises, expands, and continually nuances their understanding of each voice. relationships between the contrapuntal voices and the first-person voice emerged, revealing whether the voices were in harmony with or in opposition to one another. as each voice should illuminate a meaningful aspect of the text, the researchers continued to identify voices until the meaning of the text was most fully represented by the identified voices. descriptions and examples of each contrapuntal voice are elaborated in the results. due to the emphasis of the relational nature of the method, each interview was analyzed and voices were identified by at least two members of the research team. this collaborative process enabled the research team to discuss similarities and differences between participants, to consider how the person of the researcher impacts the process of analysis, and to elicit more richness and depth in the understanding of the participants’ narratives. the research team read the first interview and identified preliminary voices that were most clearly heard in the first interview. for instance, it was very clear that at times the first participant spoke in a knowing, confident voice, while at other times she spoke with hesitancy or spoke directly about a lack of knowledge. as a result, we began by coding for the “knowing” and “not knowing” voices. each voice was coded in a international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 33 separate listening and we continued to identify additional voices until it appeared that the meaning behind a participant’s words was captured. as we continued to identify voices, the voices seemed to form two categories: voices of resilience and voices of vulnerability. the voices of resilience include knowing, connection, altruism, and protection. the voices of vulnerability include not knowing, disconnection, and silence. after the voices were identified, the researchers used the same process to code for voices in subsequent interviews, listening for similarities and differences between participants. when differences were noted, the researchers identified either a new voice, or the nuances of how a particular voice varied between interviews. for instance, the voice of silence was originally identified in the first interview as we heard the participant speak about not being able to say what was on her mind. in another interview, the participant also evidenced self-judgement as she spoke. as a team we determined that this self-judgement or self-silencing fit within the voice of silence, although it was qualitatively different from what we had heard previously. in this way, the researchers implemented the listening guide reflexively, taking into account the individual experience of each participant and the reactions of the researchers. step four: composing an analysis. once all interviews had been listened to multiple times and the voices had been identified, the primary researcher composed an analysis for each participant, synthesizing the identified voices with what had been learned about the participant. for example, one participant shares in a knowing voice that her story is not something to be ashamed of, yet she follows her statement of knowing with a voice of not knowing – saying “i guess” – thereby making her knowing voice sound more hesitant and doubtful. bringing the voices of each interview back into relationship with one another aids in retaining the complexity of the participants’ experiences and enables us to access the diversity in their words that may have been missed had we merely analyzed by theme. in short, steps one through three are compiled at this point, creating an overall narrative of the participant’s experience. multiple interviews were then looked at in relation to one another, and the researchers looked for similar and contrasting voices across participants. this helps the researchers to explore the participants’ individual and collective experiences of the suicide prevention education program and how it impacted their resilience. the following section includes an outline of the identified voices. focus group. a focus group was held with the participants after all the interviews were complete. the purpose of the focus group was to provide greater insight into the context of the participants’ experience as a social unit and to give them another opportunity to debrief and reflect upon their experience of the study. though the participants had the opportunity to reflect on their experience of the group within the individual interviews, the focus group gave them the opportunity to reflect together on what the group had been like, creating a shared meaning of their experience. furthermore, the focus group provided a credibility check as the researchers shared the voices that had been identified and the participants were able to respond. overall, the participants expressed agreement with what had been heard and summarized by the researchers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 34 results and discussion although the purpose of the present study was to explore how resiliency was fostered through adolescents’ experience of a suicide prevention and education program, we approached the analysis of the interviews with openness to what would emerge from the participants’ voices. this practice is consistent with feminist research, as a fundamental tenet of the listening guide approach is to allow the participants to shape the methodology and analysis as the research develops (gilligan et al., 2003). through immersing ourselves in the interviews, it became apparent that the way the participants spoke about themselves and their experiences unfolded into two overarching themes: voices of vulnerability and voices of resilience. we review these voices, providing illustrations of how these themes emerged from the narratives. voices of vulnerability voice of not knowing. the not knowing voice occurred as participants spoke with hesitancy, were expressing a lack of understanding or awareness, or were questioning their own voice or ability to know. markers used to identify this voice include a manner of speaking that indicates hesitancy or uncertainty, participants speaking directly about their lack of knowledge, or implicit references to lack of knowledge. the not knowing voice presented within the participants’ expressed experience through questioning their own voice or experience. as the participants were speaking, there were instances in which qualifying statements such as “kind of”, “i guess”, “i think”, and “i don’t know” preceded or followed what they were saying, making their knowing voice appear more hesitant. the not knowing voice also occurred as the participants were speaking about a lack of explicit or experiential knowledge. for instance, when talking about being depressed and suicidal, jane shares, “when i was in that state, i didn’t know how i felt and i didn’t know really what the signs were.” exemplifying experiential not knowing, harper shares that even though she knew what to do, getting emotionally overwhelmed kept her from using her knowledge effectively. she states that at first, “you just freak out, you just say whatever’s on your mind, like you don’t know what to do, you don’t sit back and like try to think about everything you know.” though learning the knowledge was the beginning of knowing, utilizing this knowledge effectively was not automatic. through the analysis process, we noticed that many of the participants directly and indirectly referred in their interviews to a society-based voice of not knowing, for example including references to cultural norms that reflect ignorance about suicide as well lack of understanding between adults and teenagers. voice of disconnection. the voice of disconnection was marked by references to distance, conflict, or superficiality within relationships, talking about being alone, or an inability to connect to others. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 35 for many of the participants, references to the voice of disconnection were prominent in their before and after narrative of involvement in the alive group, describing a feeling of vulnerability and isolation prior to experiencing a sense of belonging or connection through involvement in the group. jane shares about her life before the group: “i had nobody to talk to at all… i felt, like, really alone, like nobody was there anymore for me.” some participants spoke in a voice of disconnection when they described specific relationships, such as with their parents or adults in the helping profession. the voice of disconnection is also apparent as the participants talk about their experiences with mental illness. for example, anne states, “the worst thing about depression is i did really questionable things and really terrible things to my family during those years, and it's really hard to reclaim the relationships.” while the sense of isolation and disconnection not only influenced the development of mental health concerns, these same issues also contribute to further disconnection. voice of silence. markers of the voice of silence include evidence of any time a participant felt unable to say what was on her mind or kept a secret, references to silencing in the world, or internalized self-judgment. the voice of silence, commonly heard in references to relationships, often coincided with relational disconnection. revealing a discrepancy between her internal feelings and expressed experience, harper easily shares what she wants to say to a friend when he is suicidal, following her statement with “but i never say that to him.” a similar disconnect is evident as she speaks about her relationship with her mother: “i was so mad at her for doing that but i didn’t wanna tell her.” within the voice of silence, many of the participants referred to silence in an indifferent world, including stigmas against suicide and mental illness and a real or perceived inability for the participants to speak into the world. anne’s experience of the silence in the world includes an expectation that she would be judged due to her depression. lucy elaborates further on the silence in the world as she shares about the reactions of some teachers upon hearing that she was in a suicide prevention group, and the “stigma that you don’t talk about [suicide].” she continues to share about how suicide often gets “swept under the carpet.” all of the participants demonstrated some aspect of stigma in the cultural status quo regarding the topic of suicide. there was also evidence of internalized self-silencing, demonstrated by participants judging themselves based on stigmatization. for instance, anne shares her own experience with depression and self-harm, and she follows up her words with “you know, this whole story” in a mocking, minimizing tone, further stating that she tends to devalue her story when she hears those of others. finally, we heard the voice of silence as participants related their experiences with helping professionals. jane refers to the legal limits of confidentiality in counselling as silencing, inhibiting her comfort in sharing her feelings and thoughts about issues like international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 36 suicidality because sometimes counsellors “[can’t] keep stuff a secret.” anne further reflected on her felt experience of being silenced in a counselling setting: “nothing's worse than trying to tell someone that you cut yourself or that you throw up to someone you don't even know that's, like, super old, and they're like [looking at their watch].” it appears that some elements of formal counselling made it more difficult for some participants to share. voice of literal silence. though the concept of voice serves as a metaphor to understand one’s dynamic relationship to oneself and the world, we also noted literal references to voice as expression and to silence as not speaking. a variation of the voice of silence that was heard in some interviews was a sense of being pressured to fake what one was feeling or thinking. this voice seemed to represent the actual living out of silence in their lives by purposefully hiding their authentic selves. jane demonstrates this voice within her experience as she shares about feeling sad, yet faking a smile and pretending she was happy. harper also demonstrates this literal silent voice as she shares about the discrepancy between what she was thinking and what she was actually saying to a friend. voices of resilience voice of knowing. the markers denoting the voice of knowing include words that were emphatic, such as definitely; a tone of confidence, certainty, or purposefulness; or a sense that the participant had come to a new realization. the participants used the knowing voice when speaking about something that was important to them or something that was true for them. listening to the participants’ knowing voices, we had the clearest sense of hearing what was most representative of their internal experiences and the impact of their participation in the alive group. the knowing voice appeared in references to factual and inner knowledge gained within the alive group. for example, jane shares, “i've been more aware of people's actions and how they feel, and i can pick up when people feel depressed or suicidal.” she further describes the confidence this knowledge has instilled in her: “i know what to do and how to help him.” for anne and lucy, their knowing voices are used when they share how they have become more comfortable with themselves and owning their own experiences. anne states that the group “definitely made it easier for me to be comfortable with my story.” with a similar sense of confidence, jane explains that being in the group has created a sense of certainty about who she is and who she wants to be in the future. she states, “i definitely would say me being in the group has made me a better person and has made me somebody who i want to be for the rest of my life.” another aspect of the knowing voice that emerged included an intuitive sense of being able to access knowledge when it is needed and having a sense of the limits of knowledge. lucy states that “being able to understand what you're supposed to do and then being able to put it into action are two totally different things because it is the most scary situation where your friend's like, i'm going to kill myself.” similarly, harper shares that “in the moment it’s hard to remember like you don’t think of how to deal with it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 37 calmly, you just freak out… so now i know how to deal with it without freaking out.” these participants demonstrated a realistic and grounded sense of knowing, recognizing that suicidality is overwhelming, but at the same time, their knowledge can better equip them to handle these situations. the knowing voice was also used when participants were speaking about being more settled in relationships and understanding others. for instance, lucy notes that, “being in a group like this not only teaches you about suicide but teaches you that there’s so many different levels to people.” anne uses her knowing voice to share that she feels more independent and better able to handle her emotions. she states, “i was finally able to stand on my own and be happy” as a reference to how participation in the alive group impacted her. in this way, the knowing voice connects with her ability to feel in control of her own emotions, rather than be controlled by them. from this place of knowing, she is able to share about what it is like to be depressed. she states, “the worst part of depression is not being able to control how you feel and not being able to be like, you know what, life sucks but i'm going to feel okay today. you just can't. you want to feel happy, but you just can't. it really sucks.” better understanding her own emotional experience, both now and in times of depression, helps her to be an empowered agent of her own change rather than a passive recipient of the emotions that previously dominated her experience. the knowing voice also included evidence of the participants’ abilities to set boundaries for themselves. for instance, anne expresses a desire to continue helping others in her future. however, from her knowing voice, she expresses concern that if she does go into a helping profession, it might negatively impact her mood. in this way, the knowing voice is heard not as a naïve or idealistic desire to help others, but a desire to help with an awareness of how it would impact herself. the voice of knowing also appeared in the form of giving advice about adolescents or about counselling. for instance, near the end of the interview anne says, “i’m way younger than you, but i’m gonna give you some advice here. . . . the best counsellors are the counsellors that get to know you as a person first rather than get to know you as someone who’s depressed.” harper also offers some advice about suicide prevention as she shares: when it comes to suicide prevention, there’s a lot of focusing on the people that commit suicide or have attempted, and the people that have lost but there’s not much focusing on the people that are the people that they come to. so i was like, i know there’s a lot of people that get in that situation and no one ever really focuses on that part of it. harper knows that because she felt unprepared to deal with her friends that experienced suicidal thoughts, there must be others out there who also need to know more about how to help their friends who experience suicidality. based on her experience, she felt confident and sure about the recommendations she had for suicide prevention work. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 38 harper continues to offer advice as she speaks about the reason that the alive group had such an impact. she shares, “i think the reason why we get through to them more is because we are their age…it hits closer to home for them.” the importance of the peerto-peer education is further elaborated on within the voice of connection. lucy’s voice of knowing sometimes takes on a unique quality; presented charismatically, her words have a sense of carrying a strongly felt message: you don't have to tell everybody that you're feeling that way, but there's definitely other ways. you don't have to self-medicate yourself in order to feel better. you don't have to start cutting to feel better. you don't have to do any of those things. there's help. there's definitely help for you. the purposeful sentences she has chosen to represent her knowledge demonstrate an ability not only to know, but an ability to persuasively communicate what she knows. voice of literal knowing. the literal knowing voice included participants’ references to what they actually said and to being able to speak. when speaking in the literal knowing voice, it is clear that the participants intend to be listened to and are communicating in a way that demands to be heard. jane uses her literal knowing voice to relate being able to talk frankly to her parents. she also used this voice as she shared how in the group, she was able to talk and state her opinion. anne told how the group enabled her to express what she was feeling. with a similar sense of literal knowing, harper described the boundaries she has learned to establish in relationships. harper demonstrates that though she is able to care for others in crisis, she is also able to create boundaries so that she does not lose herself in the process. we heard the participants’ voices of literal knowing as an ability to put flesh on their ability to know. though many of their words exemplify metaphorical voices, these words are literal references to voice. in these moments, the participants demonstrated that they did not just gain knowledge; they also gained the ability to implement their knowing voice through powerful words and actions. voice of connection. the markers of the voice of connection include references to encounters with others, identification with others having similar traits or experiences, and any language that signifies having a close or connected relationship. connection was a prominent aspect of all of the participants’ experiences. the voice of connection was strongly tied to the participants’ experience of solidarity in the alive group. within the alive group, the participants were able to share their stories and learn that they are not alone. lucy describes her sense of connection in the group stating, “all other people don’t connect with each other the way we connect, and it’s really kind of amazing and empowering.” in the alive group, the participants experienced their connection with each other as novel and empowering. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 39 sharing one’s story; hearing the stories of others leading to increased understanding of oneself and others; representing an inextricable link between the experiences of connection; feeling a sense of knowing: all these are intrinsic to the connection voice. participants referenced their experience of identification with others in the context of their presentations to other students about suicide and in the context of their relationships in the alive group. jane shares a story about a girl who, after listening to her story in the presentation, approached jane and said, “thank you so much, i understand now what’s going on with me.” anne captures the mysterious felt sense of connection while sharing her story in a presentation: “something i said really kind of made her feel something… i could feel that something within her connected to something that was said… it was just something about that whole moment, you know?” referring to her experience in the group, anne also mentions a realization she had after listening to the deeper issues others in the group experience: “then you’re like, oh, everyone goes through that.” being understood, or having someone identify with you, helped the participants to come to a place of knowing. the absence of judgment is another aspect identified as part of the experience of connection. lucy speaks about a particular presentation that was smaller and more intimate: “you could feel the connection between them, and it wasn’t – like, nobody judged you.” in this judgment-free environment, everyone had a voice and everyone was valued. for jane, the sense of equality and teamwork she felt within the group was important. she states, “we usually work together on stuff, and we just try to make everything really equal, like when we voted for our name.” trust was vital in this group because it enabled the participants to share without fear. harper contrasts this experience of trust in the group with the norms of high school. sharing within the context of the alive group built trust with the members, which provided them the safety and support necessary to share their stories in the presentation. as harper says, “because i was with those people that were sharing the same amount of stuff it was like we would all share stuff with people we didn’t even know. but it was because we were together that it was okay.” through experiencing powerful connections within the group and at presentations, participants appeared to develop a desire for deeper connection in their lives. lucy shares: “i’ve always kind of been more interested in people, what makes people tick, why do people think that way, and it’s just kind of grown deeper.” it also appeared that the participants developed greater empathy for others, with anne revealing that, “i feel bad for people that are down, you know, because i’ve been there.” the participants also spoke about the power of identification experienced by having teenagers, instead of adults, share with other teenagers. jane explains, “having a teenager talk about [suicide] to another teenager is way more impact to a person than having an adult.” in a voice laden with both knowing and connection, anne says, “i think that’s easier to understand someone your age.” harper expresses the awareness that peers can help each other, stating “we always try to relate to them because we are the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 40 same age as them.” the participants agree that an important factor in the impact of the group was the peer-to-peer connections that were established. voice of altruism. the voice of altruism was marked by language about giving back to the world or using their experiences in the group to make an impact on others. one aspect of the altruistic voice is the inner gratification from helping that the participants described. anne discusses how “going to schools and talking is a big thing. i love to do that. it’s a good feeling inside.” similarly, harper shares, “i can be proud of myself for doing something and teaching people stuff.” through the public activities of the alive group, participants experienced themselves as positive agents of change. the altruistic voice was also noted in the participants’ desire to share their experience of value in the alive group with others. in contrast with the aforementioned focus on the personal gratification felt in helping, this aspect of the voice of altruism was focused on the healing of others. for instance, lucy shares, “i just wanted to teach other people about what i know.” as harper talks about how she would rather do presentations than be simply a support group, she shares, “[doing presentations] feels like we’re making a difference and actually doing something.” it appears that their own experiences with suicidality and depression gave the group members an increased amount of empathy for others who are struggling with similar concerns. their journey through these issues seems to have fed their desire to make a difference in the lives of others. activist voice. we heard in one participant’s interview the altruistic voice cooccurring with her literal speaking voice. when lucy’s literal voice occurred at the same time as her altruistic voice, her voice took on a unique tone. as she spoke, it was as if she was making a speech. in her interview, she even referred to herself as an activist. we decided to title this voice the activist voice. listen as she speaks with it: we can show them that just the four walls in the counselling office, those four walls don't have to be that small, you know what i mean? we can expand those. like, [our high school] can be our walls to start. everyone can talk to each other. everyone can know. everyone can understand each other. this activist voice goes further than to talk about helping others; she creates the sense that she is going to revolutionize the world. as we listened to lucy speak from this voice, we were inspired by the power in her voice and by the desire she has to shift others’ way of thinking and acting towards suicide. she speaks again in this activist voice as she shares about what it is like to present: it's those moments where you go in front of a crowd of people and everything – you feel kind of different. you feel like you're the outsider, the one that's stepping kind of out of the line, and all of these kids are just watching you being like, okay, whatever. like, sometimes it feels like that, and then as soon as you finish your presentation, it kind of feels like everybody kind of steps a little bit out of their line. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 41 here, she paints a picture of what it is like to make a difference. after experiencing the impact of openness and vulnerability in the group, she is committed to taking leadership in offering this knowledge to others. lucy’s words reflect that she does not participate in the group only because she enjoys it or likes the way it feels; the urgency in her activist voice communicates that, for her, this is something she must do. voice of protection. throughout the data collection process for the present study, the participants experienced a change in leadership within their school-based group. having experienced a profound impact in the group under the first leader with whom the members felt a strong sense of connection, the leadership change introduced a novel challenge. a voice of protection emerged within the interviews that described their reaction to this change. the participants voiced feelings of anger and frustration; listening to these, we came to hear how these were directed at the recent changes in the group, originating in a desire to protect the value of the group that they had helped to create. demonstrating the essence of the protective voice, jane shares, “we don’t want to lose what we created.” some participants directed the protective voice at members who demonstrated less investment in the group or attended sporadically. lucy shares: “this group is so important. it's not just a place where we meet. it's not just presenting to people. it's changing the world in our own little kind of [way].” some members responded to the change in leadership by not attending the alive group. speaking about members who had stopped attending lucy states, “jane and harper don't show up anymore because they don't like [the new leader] and they don't like the new people, but we have to have new people, and it's always kind of like that battle between do we fight for it or do we grow up?” lucy demonstrates a resilient and balanced approach to validate the frustration she and others experienced while holding on to a bigger sense of purpose and meaning. conclusion the traditional format of a research article might be to now interpret the voices of the alive group participants and to apply our perspectives as researchers, the underlying assumption being that our perspectives, as formally educated individuals, are prioritized and elevated in importance, when compared with the inexperienced or less formally educated voices of the participants. often, the researcher is given the task of bringing the voices into context and providing a tangible summation of what these voices mean for researchers and practitioners in the world of suicide prevention education. as we reflect on this usual way of presenting research, we feel a resistance to simplifying or to attempting to encapsulate what has already been quite profoundly stated by the participants. perhaps a narrative of a perspective on suicide prevention will help to anchor this perspective. chelsea recalls a story told by a colleague about an encounter within an aboriginal community. after a number of recent completed suicides of aboriginal youth, an elder from a particular aboriginal community stated that an answer, from his perspective, to the problem of suicide was, to build more canoes. from an outsider international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 42 perspective, this advice seems confusing, perhaps even unhelpful. how can building more canoes protect individuals or communities from suicidality? when probed further, the elder describes the process and meaning of making canoes within that community. when the community builds canoes, the young are with the old. they come together for a common purpose, for mutual support, with all the tradition, culture, and meaning of this common purpose surrounding the young people. through the building of the canoes, the youth can experience purpose, meaning, and connection in a tangible, communityfocused way. at the outset of the present study, we hoped that exploring the perspectives of the alive members would cast new light on their experience of a suicide prevention education initiative. it is with this intent of casting new light that we hope to highlight the participants’ unique perspectives through these concluding comments. it appears that the participants were impacted primarily through the experience of connection. through identification and connection with others who had experienced similar difficulties, the participants discovered that they are not alone. this discovery instilled hope. through this identification, the participants were able to come to a greater understanding of their own internal experience. their deeper understanding seemed to increase participants’ sense of self-efficacy, fostering an ability to take control of their lives. the experience of connection also enabled the participants to experience vulnerability in a safe and supportive environment. learning that relationships can provide healing seemed to enable the participants to create more healthy relationships in their own lives. through the connection in the alive group, the participants came to know themselves more deeply, and they became more confident in trusting their own intuition. becoming more familiar with who they are and who they want to be, they were better able to maintain a healthy emotional state. though many of them still evidenced risk factors for suicidality, they became more liable to bounce back from adverse circumstances, and they knew what to do to stay well. learning about suicidality enabled the participants to help others and to help themselves. because they became more aware of how helping others can negatively impact their own well-being, the participants learned to ask for what they need, ensuring that they would not lose touch with their own voice for the sake of relationship. joining each other in shared vulnerability, they affirmed each other’s strengths, courageously moving closer to self-acceptance. together, they formed a common purpose in looking outward, with a vision and means to help others around a theme with deep personal significance for each of them. without a formal, externally imposed curriculum that would lend to proper effectiveness in research standards, the activities of the alive group were akin to building canoes in the context of their social ecosystem. this group offered them purpose, meaning, connection, and support as valued members and as active agents of change in their community. according to their expressed voices of experience, these adolescent girls were profoundly impacted through the period of their involvement in the group. the voices of vulnerability evidenced in this study include voices of not knowing, disconnection, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 1: 24–46 43 silence. these voices welled up in their interviews primarily as the participants discussed past experiences of suicidality and depression. references to the voices of resiliency in the participants’ experiences – voices of knowing, connection, altruism, and protection – were largely linked to their involvement in the alive group. through the connection gained in the alive group, they experience their lives less through the voices of vulnerability, rather coming to a greater sense of knowing about themselves and others. as they experienced healing, they expressed a desire to help others and to impact the world with what they have learned. as we have listened to the voices of these participants, what do their voices tell us about doing suicide prevention education? resonating with the findings and perspectives of white and morris (2010), suicide prevention initiatives that are standardized, driven by facts and content, and applied universally to all individuals miss the mark. in fact, what these participants are crying out for is to be heard and to be treated as real people, unique and valued in relationships. they do not want to be boiled down to a list of risk and protective factors, put in a category, or be the passive recipients of an intervention. though not formulaic, further interventions and research related to resiliency in youth can be informed by the experiences of the alive group participants. perhaps for the same reasons that the alive group cannot be replicated and evaluated according to commonly accepted outcome standards for evidence-based practice, it may have worked for these participants: it was in fact alive, an organically inspired process, born out of the individually experienced pain and dynamic personalities of its participants in the context of their shared experiences. leadership for the group created space and safety for encounters with each other, in which the participants’ experienced healing and pursued activism. these participants expressed wanting to be known, have a voice in these interventions, enact the vision that they are passionate about, and be 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(2012). collaborative knowledge-making in the everyday practice of youth suicide prevention education. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 25(3), 339–355. doi: 10.1080/09518398.2010.529852 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bch237 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.09.046 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.529852 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019986 cyberaggression: the effect of parental monitoring on bystander roles michal levy and revital sela-shayovitz abstract: the digital world has created new opportunities for aggression through cyberaggression. despite growing research interest in cyberaggression, little is known about the various bystander roles in the digital interaction. this paper examines the effect of parental monitoring practices (parental restriction, youth disclosure, and parental solicitation) on five bystander roles: aggressor-supporter, defender, help-seeker, outsider, and passive bystander. data were derived from self-report questionnaires answered by a sample of 501 adolescents in israel. the findings indicate that adolescents who share their experiences of cyberaggression with their parents are more likely than others to defend the cybervictim. interaction effects were found between adolescent gender, installing warning applications, parent gender, and the aggressor-supporter role. boys whose parents installed warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities were positively associated with the aggressor-supporter role, while girls who were higher aggressor-supporter reported that their parents used warning applications but did not monitor their online activities. the discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of the effectiveness of parental monitoring on the cyberaggression bystander’s role. keywords: cyberaggression, bystander roles, aggressor supporter, defender, helpseeker, passive bystander, parental involvement michal levy phd (corresponding author) teaches special-education at david-yellin college and at the seymour fox school of education, hebrew university of jerusalem, mount scopus campus, jerusalem 919050, israel. email: michal.levy3@mail.huji.ac.il revital sela-shayovitz phd is a professor in the faculty of humanities and social sciences, ono academic college, tzahal st 104, kiryat ono, israel. email: revital.s@ono.ac.il mailto:michal.levy3@mail.huji.ac.il mailto:revital.s@ono.ac.il international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 14 communication technologies have become a necessity of daily life. adolescents, sometimes referred to as the “net generation” or “digital natives”, frequently use online social networks; one survey of american adolescents showed that a large majority (95%) have access to smartphones and 45% of them used the internet “almost constantly” (anderson & jiang, 2018, p. 2). at the same time, the digital world has created new opportunities for delinquency and crime (vandebosch et al., 2012), including acts of aggression that negatively affect many adolescents. for example, adolescents who are either cyberaggressors or cybervictims are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to attempt suicide than are adolescents who have not experienced cyberaggression (patchin & hinduja, 2010). accordingly, cyberaggression has become a growing concern for society: one extensive literature survey found prevalence rates in adolescents ranging from 5.3% to 31.5% for cyberaggression, and 2.2% to 56.2% for cybervictimization (modecki et al., 2014). social ecological theory (bronfenbrenner, 1992) emphasizes the need to explore the interrelated systems, both proximal and distal with respect to the children themselves, that influence children’s behavior; these are known as micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chronosystems. as described by hong and espelage (2012), the theory provides a framework for understanding potential risk and protective factors deriving from different systems, whether individual (e.g., age, gender), social (e.g., family relations, peer group dynamics), or environmental (e.g., cultural norms, religion). parental monitoring is one example of a proximal effect that is situated in the micro-system; it incorporates interactions of youth with others and with groups within immediate settings (e.g., home, school), and influences adolescent cyberaggression involvement (baldry et al., 2019). while there is accumulated knowledge about parental monitoring in the case of cyberaggressors, cybervictims, and cyberaggressor–victims (khurana et al., 2015; kowalski et al., 2014; mishna et al., 2012), little is known about the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles (wright & wachs, 2018). the current study seeks to address this research gap by exploring the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles and how the interactions of parental monitoring with individual characteristics (adolescent age and gender, and parent gender) affect these roles. we posit that it is particularly important to investigate parental monitoring: although cyberbystanders may be motivated to assist when witnessing prolonged damage to cybervictims on a daily basis, it can be difficult for them to defend the victim and help stop the attacks without adult supervision or intervention (kowalski et al., 2014). we first review the literature on cyberaggression and bystander involvement in aggression and cyberaggression. we then address the existing literature regarding parental monitoring in cyberaggression, taking into account gender and age differences. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 15 cyberaggression cyberaggression refers to a wide range of negative behaviors that occur in internet settings. these behaviors include publishing offensive private pictures and videos and posting or sending malicious messages, as well as other forms of aggressive behavior such as “flaming” (harsh invective), impersonation, and cyberstalking (grigg, 2010). recent indications show that cyberaggression occurs less frequently than traditional aggression (wang et al., 2011); however, the psychosocial outcomes of cyberaggression (stress, anxiety, depression, dropping out of school, substance abuse, and, in extreme cases, murder and suicidal ideation) are consequential (kowalski et al., 2014). aggression, whether traditional or cyber, may be more than a dyadic interaction between an aggressor and a victim: group processes and bystanders are often involved. thus, when cyberaggression takes place in a peer group, its members engage in different roles, such as encouraging the aggressor, defending the victim, or remaining passive and refraining from any involvement (salmivalli, 2010; salmivalli & voeten, 2004). extensive research has been conducted on bystander roles in traditional aggression incidents (salmivalli & voeten, 2004; thornberg & jungert, 2013). bystanders play a vital role in determining the outcomes of aggression incidents (salmivalli, 2010). in atlas and pepler’s (1998) study of classroom bullying, bystanders were present in 85% of the incidents observed. hawkins et al. (2001) found that peers in a school playground intervened in 19% of bullying incidents, and succeeded in stopping 57% of those. salmivalli (2010) distinguished three main bystander behavior roles: pro-aggressor (reinforcer and assistant, referred to here as aggressor-supporter), in which the individual encourages and actively supports the aggressor; pro-victim (defender), in which the bystander actively helps the victim and opposes the aggressor; and passive (outsider), in which the bystander avoids active involvement and does not extend support to either side. a recent study identified two additional discrete roles — help-seeker and passive bystander; empirical distinctions have been found between help-seekers and defenders, as well as between outsiders and passive bystanders (levy & gumpel, 2018). the three main bystander roles (aggressor-supporter, defender, and outsider) also appear in cyberaggression incidents (bastiaensens et al., 2014). however, barlinska and colleagues (2013) found that most bystanders support the cyberaggressor or remain outsiders, whereas cyberdefenders are portrayed as exceptional bystanders who intervene on behalf of the victim because they have experienced cybervictimization and possess moral reasoning skills (patterson et al., 2017). olenik-shemesh and colleagues (2017) reported that 46.4% of participants in a sample of israeli youth had been cyberaggression bystanders. more than half had taken the passive role; only one third had actively helped the cybervictim. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0140197117301525#bib58 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0140197117301525#bib59 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 16 characteristics of cyberaggression, but not of aggression generally, include anonymity, low supervision, physical distance, and public exposure (patchin & hinduja, 2010). these characteristics may make it difficult for cyberbystanders to intervene in cyberaggression incidents. for example, in traditional aggression the passive bystander implicitly approves of or consents to the aggressor’s behavior by witnessing the event without intervening (salmivalli, 2010). in cyberaggression, the victim may actually prefer that bystanders remain passive, since the involvement of further individuals carries the risk of increasing public exposure and thus escalating the harmful act (barlińska et al., 2013). at the same time, physical distance can be considered a disadvantage for bystanders because online interactions are often not enriched by nonverbal social cues such as facial expressions that could otherwise enable them to recognize the victim’s distress. conversely, physical distance may help bystanders support the victim without fear of risking physical retaliation by the aggressor (desmet et al., 2016). a wide range of factors determine bystander decisions to intervene online, including: age and gender (olenik-shemesh et al., 2017), incident severity, social pressure (bastiaensens et al., 2016), moral disengagement (desmet et al., 2014; patterson et al., 2017), affective and cognitive empathy (barlińska et al., 2013), number of offenders (kazerooni et al., 2018), and the bystander effect (obermaier et al., 2016). however, little research has examined the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles. parental monitoring family connections become less pronounced in adolescence, with social ties and status among peers taking precedence, especially among early adolescents (boniel-nissim & sasson, 2018). while striving to gain more independence, they reduce the frequency and intensity of communication with their parents (keijsers & poulin, 2013). they begin to take control over the amount of information they share with their parents by not revealing thoughts and experiences as freely as in the past (frijns et al., 2020). in an attempt to regain control, parents may monitor or restrict the adolescent’s activities, or explicitly solicit information from them (laird et al., 2013). some terms used to describe parental involvement in adolescents’ cyberexperiences are “parental control”, “parental monitoring”, and “parental mediation”. parental control refers to parental awareness and follow-up of the adolescent’s social connections and activities (elsaesser et al., 2017). kerr and colleagues (2010) describe three parental monitoring strategies that help parents obtain information about the whereabouts of their adolescent children: (a) control, or restriction, whereby parents set rules and demand information from adolescents before they engage in social activities; (b) parental solicitation, which refers to requesting information from the adolescent, and his or her friends and their parents; and (c) youth disclosure, which depends on adolescents’ willingness to proactively share information with parents about their social activities. the first two strategies are initiated by parents and the third by adolescents themselves. some scholars (e.g., mesch, 2009) who use the term “parental mediation” distinguish between restriction mediation, by which parents either limit the adolescent’s access to social media or monitor their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 17 online habits by installing warning applications, and evaluation mediation, which relates to parent’s tendency to openly discuss with their children the dangers to be found online (e.g., formulating together acceptable rules for web engagement). for the purposes of this study we use the three parental monitoring strategies described by kerr and colleagues (2010): parental restriction, youth disclosure, and parental solicitation. findings regarding the effects of parental monitoring on reducing cyberaggression are inconsistent. for example, several studies have indicated that parental monitoring reduces children’s aggressive behavior on the internet (khurana et al., 2015; shapka & law, 2013), while others did not find such an association (mesch, 2009; sengupta & chaudhuri, 2011). khurana et al. (2015) found an indirect association between parental monitoring and cyberaggression, mediated by restricting internet access in the child’s bedroom. several studies found the effect of parental monitoring to be dependent on the type of participation in cyberaggression. mishna and colleagues (2012) found that parents of children who were both cyberaggressors and cybervictims (cyberaggressor–victims) were more likely to use internet blocking programs than parents of children who were not involved in either cyberaggression or cybervictimization. cyberaggressors who reported weaker emotional relationships with their parents were more severely disciplined by their parents, and their online activities were less closely monitored (wang et al., 2009). similarly, cybervictims reported less parental control over their online activities (kowalski et al., 2014). although there is growing knowledge about parental monitoring in cyberaggression, much less is known about the role of youth disclosure. early adolescents are reluctant to disclose information to their parents (laird et al., 2013). makri-botsari and karagianni (2014) indicated that the majority of adolescents in their study preferred to report cyberaggression incidents to their friends rather than to their parents. they also suggested that adolescents who more often engaged in cyberaggression against peers were compensating for lack of communication with and rejection by their parents. although adolescents are often reluctant to disclose information about their cyberactivities, some evidence indicates that adolescent disclosure is more effective than parental monitoring in reducing delinquency. in a longitudinal study on the associations between three parental strategies — control, solicitation, and reliance on youth disclosure — and delinquency among adolescents, parental knowledge of an adolescent’s whereabouts was associated with the adolescent’s disclosure of information and not with parental control; only disclosure predicted decreased delinquency (kerr et al., 2010). disclosure was also found to be protective against aggression and cyberaggression (elsaesser et al., 2017) and should therefore be included in studies on cyberbystander roles. when parents react supportively to disclosure of bystander cyberexperiences, adolescents’ confidence about intervening on behalf of a victim may increase: findings have indicated that higher levels of social support and lower levels of loneliness among cyberbystanders are associated international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 18 with extending help to the victim (olenik-shemesh et al., 2017). hence, adolescent disclosure may be crucial in determining whether a particular adolescent will provide help and support to the cybervictim. despite growing empirical data regarding the effect of parental monitoring on cyberaggression, research on the effects of disclosure on cyberbystander roles is limited. desmet and colleagues (2014) showed that adolescents generally perceived a lack of parental support for defending the victim. wright and wachs (2018) found that being a bystander who witnessed cyberaggression was positively related to both restriction and evaluation mediation. however, these results were limited to witnessing the cyberaggression, and did not distinguish among bystander roles. gender and age differences in cyberaggression, cyberbystander roles, and application of parental monitoring findings regarding gender and age differences in cyberbystander behavior have been inconclusive (hinduja & patchin, 2010). some studies did not find gender and age differences in cyberbystander roles (barlińska et al., 2013; macháčková et al., 2013), whereas others found such differences to exist. for example, various studies found that younger adolescent girls helped victims, while boys and older adolescents joined the aggressor or remained passive (pabian & vandebosch, 2016; van cleemput et al., 2014). in contrast, olenik-shemesh and colleagues (2017) reported that girls and older adolescents were more likely to actively help cybervictims than to remain passive bystanders. bastiaensens and colleagues (2014) showed results similar to traditional aggression, with girls tending to comfort and support the victim and boys tending to support the aggressor. past research demonstrated that in cases of cyberaggression and cybervictimization, parental monitoring differed by adolescent age (khurana et al., 2015) and gender (wright, 2017). in relation to gender differences, baldry and colleagues (2019) showed that boys who were cyberaggressors did not receive parental guidance regarding safe internet use and the risks of online surfing; in contrast, girls who suffered cybervictimization reported elevated parental supervision. keijsers and poulin (2013) examined changes in parent–adolescent communication patterns among 390 adolescents aged 12 to 19. early adolescents reported less disclosure of information and early adolescent girls reported less parental solicitation and higher secrecy levels. middle adolescents reported less parental monitoring and middle adolescent girls reported more adolescent disclosure and parental solicitation and less keeping of secrets. these results underscore the need to explore the impact of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles in relation to adolescent gender and age. the role of parent gender is another important aspect of parental monitoring. inconsistent findings have emerged regarding the effects of parent gender on parental monitoring with regard to cyberaggression. several studies have found that fathers are more engaged than mothers in internet monitoring (wang et al., 2005), while others have indicated stronger involvement of mothers in parental control and parental warmth (lau & yuen, 2016; valcke et al., 2010). some consistency was found, however, regarding parental styles in relation to cyberaggression, with international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 19 fathers having a more dominant, authoritarian, style and mothers an authoritative parenting style (valcke et al., 2010). a longitudinal study conducted by zurcher and colleagues (2018) demonstrated different parental styles with respect to cyberaggression by both adolescent and parent gender. both parental verbal hostility and physical coercion (subtypes of the authoritarian parenting style) were linked to cyberaggression attitudes and participation among boys, while a mother’s permissive parental style was linked to cyberaggression among girls. research is lacking regarding whether the effects of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles vary according to parent gender. in summary, examining the effects of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles in relation to adolescent gender and age and parent gender may enhance our understanding of familial and demographic patterns underlying cyberbystander roles. research aims and hypotheses the present study aimed to fill the literature gap by exploring the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles in relation to gender and age differences. specifically, the first aim was to determine whether the help-seeker and passive-bystander roles are found in cyberaggression interactions. we assumed that, similar to the bystander roles in traditional aggression (levy & gumpel, 2018), five bystander roles would emerge in cyberaggression: aggressor-supporter, defender, help-seeker, outsider, and passive bystander (h1). the second aim was to examine the main effects of parental monitoring (parental solicitation, parental restriction, and youth disclosure) on cyberbystander roles. we anticipated that cyber helpseekers and defenders would share their digital experiences with their parents more often than aggressor-supporters and passive bystanders, while the latter groups would report having warning and blocking applications installed on their computers and mobile devices more often than other bystanders (h2). we also assumed that adolescents whose parents discuss online dangers and ask for information regarding online habits would defend the cybervictim, while adolescents whose parents set rules would support the cyberaggressor (h3). the third aim was to evaluate to what extent cyberbystander roles differ in interactions between parental monitoring variables (restriction, disclosure, and solicitation) and demographic variables (adolescent gender and age, and parent gender). we assumed that older adolescent girls who share their cyberexperiences with their mothers would defend the victim more often than younger adolescents, whereas boys whose fathers monitor their online habits with restrictive measures and by setting rules would more often support the cyberaggressor (h4). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 20 method participants the sample consisted of 501 adolescents in israel, all students in the 8th to 12th grades. girls constituted more than half the sample (65.9%) and boys 34.1%. participant age ranged from 14 to 18 years (m = 16.31, sd = 1.34). more participants were in 12th grade (45.1%) than any other grade; the fewest were in 8th grade (4.8%). procedure data were collected using an anonymous self-report questionnaire in hebrew that was sent to the student’s email address and contained a web link. sampling was conducted after receiving the permission of the ono academic college ethics committee and the active consent of the participant’s parents. participants could discontinue their participation at any time, were ensured anonymity, and received a gift card for their participation. assessments and variables dependent variables: the cyberbystander roles scale was based on the participant role scale (revised version; salmivalli & voeten, 2004), using the hebrew version of the self-report questionnaire (levy & gumpel, 2018). the questionnaire was adjusted to cyberaggression incidents. participants were asked to think of cyberaggression incidents in the past 6 months and to select the responses that most characterized them. the questionnaire included 15 items that describe cyberbystander roles in cyberaggression: defender (e.g., “you sent messages to others in order to help the victim”); aggressor-supporter (e.g., “you encouraged the offenders by sending comments”); help-seeker (e.g., “you notified an adult [parent, teacher, principal, or counselor] about cybervictim abuse”); passive bystander (e.g., “you read the offensive messages sent to the cybervictim, but did not respond”); and outsider (e.g., “you do not come across cyberaggression situations”). items were rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). independent variables: the present study examined three main parental monitoring practices: parental solicitation, parental restriction, and youth disclosure. parental solicitation was measured using three variables: discussion (“how often do your parents discuss social media dangers with you?”); information (“how often do your parents ask for information about your online surfing behavior?”); and rule-setting (“to what extent do your parents set rules and boundaries regarding your social media habits?”). discussion and information were measured using a 3-point scale: 1 (never), 2 (seldom), 3 (frequently). rule-setting was measured using a 3point scale: 1 (very little), 2 (moderately), 3 (very much). parental restriction was measured using two variables: warning (“have your parents installed warning applications on your mobile phone that warn of offensive content on social media?”), and blocking (“have your parents blocked your access to certain websites?”). youth disclosure was measured with respect to sharing information with their parents (“do you share cyberaggression incidents with your parents?”). parental restriction and youth disclosure variables were measured using two values: 1 (yes) and 2 (no). two international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 21 variables examined parent gender: “which parent monitors?”, and “with which parent do adolescents share their online experiences?”. these two variables were measured using 4 values: 1 (father), 2 (mother), 3 (both equally), 4 (neither). demographic variables: participant demographic variables included gender and age. gender consisted of 2 values: 1 (boy), 2 (girl). age included 5 values, ranging from 1 (14 years old) to 5 (18 years old). data analysis data were collected using the participants’ self-report responses and analyzed at three levels. first, an exploratory and confirmatory analysis was conducted to examine the number and type of cyberbystander roles and to determine whether help-seeker and passive-bystander roles are found in cyberaggression incidents (aim 1). exploratory factor analysis was conducted to understand the latent constructs underlying the observed cyberbystander variables. confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the hypothesized structures of the latent constructs (bandalos & finney, 2018). second, descriptive statistics were evaluated by dichotomizing the cyberbystander roles into “no-participation” and “participation” values based on the cutoff value of one standard deviation. three multivariate regression analyses were then conducted to examine which parental monitoring practices explained the variance in each of the cyberbystander roles (aim 2). based on the bonferroni correction that controls for type i errors, the significance level was adjusted to .02 (.05 / 3). standardized scores of the three parental solicitation variables were used in the multivariate regression analyses to control for different metrics. last, anova analyses were conducted to explore the interaction effects of parental restriction (warning and blocking) and youth disclosure (sharing) with demographic factors (gender and age) and parent gender (which parent monitors, and with which parent do adolescents share their online experiences) on each of the cyberbystander roles (aim 3). results bystander role: links to gender, age, and parental monitoring the results show that 45% (n = 225) of the 501 participants were cyberaggression bystanders. among the bystander roles, 10.8% (n = 54) were aggressor-supporters, 18.2% (n = 91) passive bystanders, and 16.0% (n = 80) defenders. descriptive statistics of the independent variables show that more girls than boys engaged in passive-bystander behavior (10.6% and 7.6%, respectively) and in defending the victim (11.0% and 5.0%, respectively). by contrast, more boys (6.2%) than girls (4.6%) supported the aggressor. regarding parental monitoring, 47.9% (n = 240) of the participants shared their cyberaggression experiences with their parents, and 52.1% (n = 261) did not do so. most parents did not install a warning application on their children’s mobile devices (88.8%, n = 445), and many of them did not block their children’s access to websites (76.8%, n = 385). table 1 presents international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 22 averages, standard deviation, and pearson correlation coefficients between cyberbystander roles and parental monitoring variables. validation of bystander roles (aim 1) the cyberbystander scale was validated using a combination of exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). the maximum rotation likelihood extracted a three-factor solution. one item (“you usually do not encounter situations of cyberaggression”) did not load on any factor and was therefore deleted. three cyberbystander roles were found in online aggression: aggressor-supporter, defender, and passive bystander. the aggressor-supporter factor included one item (“you spread offensive messages or images of the aggressor to avenge what he or she did to the victim”) worded to reflect the defender role. this item was also excluded from the study to prevent ambiguity. the three factors accounted for 56.89% of the variance. based on the efa, the model was then examined using cfa. the cfa results showed that all items loaded strongly on all four target factors (≥ .50). the χ2/df ratio was 3.63 and the rmsea value was 0.07. the comparative fit index (cfi; .93), normed fit index (nfi; .90), and the tucker-lewis index (tli: .91) values approached a good fit to the sample data. appendix 1 summarizes the efa and cfa analyses. the internal reliability of the defender, passive-bystander, and aggressor-supporter roles was measured using cronbach’s alpha and their values were .87, .56, and .86 respectively. the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles (aim 2) the results of the first regression analysis indicated that the first model explained 0% of the variance in the defender role (r2 = .00, f(2, 498) = .35, p > .05). the second model significantly added to the predictive equation (r2 = .03, δr2 = .03, p < .01, f(5, 495) = 3.12, p < .01), as did the third model (r2 = .09, δr2 =.06, p < .001, f(8, 492) = 6.39, p < .001). in the third model, both sharing (βc = -.23, p < .001) and warning applications (βc = -.13, p < .01) significantly explained the variance in the defender role. a second regression analysis was conducted to examine whether parental monitoring (parental restriction, parental solicitation, and youth disclosure) predicted the aggressor-supporter role. results indicated that the first model explained 3% of the variance (r2 = .03, f(2, 498) = 7.62, p < .01). the second model significantly accounted for additional variance (r2 = .05, δr2 = .02, p < .01, f(5, 495) = 5.48, p < .001) as did the third model (r2 = .14, δr2 = .09, p < .001, f(8, 492) = 10.08, p < .001). furthermore, rule-setting (βb = .16, p < .01), warning applications (βc = -.25, p < .001) and gender (βa = -.17, p < .001; βb = -.15, p < .01; βc = -.13, p < .01) all significantly explained the variance in the aggressor-supporter role. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 23 table 1. averages, standard deviations, and pearson correlation coefficients between cyberbystander roles and parental monitoring variables variable m sd defender passive bystander aggressorsupporter sharing warning app blocks on websites/ apps parents discuss dangers parents request info defender 2.25 .94 – passive bystander 2.30 .90 -.02 – aggressor-supporter 1.25 .58 .23*** .24*** – sharing (youth disclosure) 1.52 .50 -.27*** .08 -.08 – warning applications 1.89 .32 -.15** -.04 -.33*** .12** – blocks on websites/applications 1.77 .42 -.04 .04 -.24*** .00 .44*** – parents discuss online dangers 2.15 .68 .14** -.03 .04 -.30*** -.10* -.12** – parents request information 1.75 .70 .14** .05 .05 -.27*** -.15** -.14** .45*** – parents set online activity rules 1.54 .70 .09 .02 .17*** -.16*** -.26*** -.38*** .29*** .45*** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. table 2 presents the results of the regression model coefficients for the aggressor-supporter, defender, and passive-bystander roles. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 24 table 2. multiple regression analyses for aggressor-supporter, defender, and passive-bystander roles model 1 model 2 model 3 b se b βa r2 b se b βb r2 δr2 b se b βc r2 δr2 defender gender .00 .03** .03** .09*** .06*** gender .07 .09 .04 .08 .09 .04 .07 .09 .04 age .01 .03 .01 .03 .03 .04 .03 .03 .04 parents discuss online dangers .09 .05 .10 .04 .05 .05 parents request information .09 .05 .09 .04 .05 .05 parents set online activity rules .03 .05 .03 .01 .05 .01 sharing (youth disclosure) -.43 .09 .23*** warning applications -.38 .15 -.13** blocks on websites/applications .07 .11 .03 aggressor-supporter .03** .05*** .02** .14*** .09*** gender -.21 .05 .17*** -.19 .05 -.15** -.15 .05 -.13** age -.01 .02 -.03 -.01 .02 -.02 -.01 .02 -.03 parents discuss online dangers -.00 .03 -.01 -.01 .03 -.02 parents request information -.01 .03 -.02 -.02 .03 -.04 parents set online activity rules .09 .03 .16** .04 .03 .06 sharing (youth disclosure) -.08 .05 -.07 warning applications -.45 .09 .25*** blocks on websites/applications -.15 .07 -.11* passive bystander .01 .02 .01 .03 .01 gender -.20 .09 -.10 -.20 .09 -.11 -.17 .09 -.09 age .02 .03 .02 .02 .02 .03 .02 .03 .02 parents discuss online dangers -.06 .05 -.07 -.04 .05 -.05 parents request information .08 .05 .09 .09 .05 .10 parents set online activity rules -.01 .05 -.02 .01 .05 .01 sharing (youth disclosure) – .16 .09 .09 warning applications -.17 .15 -.06 blocks on websites/applications .17 .11 .08 **p < .01. ***p < .001. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 25 an additional multivariate regression analysis was conducted to examine whether parental monitoring (parental restriction, parental solicitation, and youth disclosure) predicted the passivebystander role. the first model did not explain significant variance for this role (r2 = .01, f(2, 498) = 2.72, p > .05). neither the second model (r2 = .02, δr2 = .01, p > .05, f(5, 495) = 1.79, p > .05) nor the third model (r2 = .03, δr2 = .01, p > .05, f(8, 492) = 1.82, p > .05) significantly added to the predictive ability of the regression equation. the interaction effect of parental monitoring and parent gender (which parent monitors/which parent child shares with) on cyberbystander roles (aim 3) anova analysis for the defender role was conducted based on the multivariate regression analyses in order to examine to what extent installing warning applications and sharing with parents differed by parent gender. table 3 presents the average and standard deviation values of the main effects and interaction effects for cyberdefenders and cyberaggressors. results show a significant main effect for sharing (f(1, 446) = 7.64, p < .01, η2 = .02), such that adolescents who shared their online experiences with their parents (m = 2.51, sd = .95, n = 240) defended the victim more than adolescents who did not share these experiences (m = 2.01, sd = .86, n = 261). however, main effects were not found for warning applications (f(1, 446) = 2.74, p > .05), which parent monitored (f(3, 446) = .64, p > .05), and with which parent the adolescent shared information (f(3, 446) = .53, p > .05); also, interaction effects were not found to be significant for the defender role. table 3 presents the averages and standard deviations of the main effects and interaction effects for the cyberdefender role. an additional anova analysis was conducted for the aggressor-supporter role in order to examine the extent to which installing warning applications differed by parent gender. results indicated a main effect for warning applications (f(1, 485) = 48.26, p < .001, η2 = .09), such that higher aggressor-supporter scores were found among adolescents whose parents installed warning applications (m = 1.79, sd = 1.08, n = 56) compared to those whose parents did not install these applications (m = 1.18, sd = .44, n = 445). a main effect was also found for participant gender (f(1, 485) = 11.79, p < .01, η2 = .02), such that significantly more boys (m = 1.39, sd = .71, n = 171) than girls (m = 1.18, sd = .49, n = 330) reported supporting the aggressor. three interaction effects significantly predicted the aggressor-supporter role: the first interaction effect between gender and gender of monitoring parent predicted the aggressorsupporter role (f(3, 485) = 5.07, p < .01, η2 = .03); the second interaction effect between warning applications and gender of monitoring parent predicted the aggressor-supporter role (f(3, 485) = 4.08, p < .01, η2 = .03); and the third interaction effect between participant gender, warning applications, and gender of monitoring parent predicted the aggressor-supporter role (f(3, 485) = 4.02, p < .01, η2 = .02). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 26 table 3. averages and standard deviations of the main effects and interaction effects for cyberdefender and cyberaggressor defender sharing with which parent do you share? m sd n yes father 2.35 .83 16 mother 2.52 .94 115 both equally 2.65 .97 79 neither 2.20 .96 30 total 2.51 .95 240 no father 2.14 .95 18 mother 2.08 .90 79 both equally 2.24 .89 48 neither 1.84 .78 116 total 2.01 .86 261 aggressor-supporter gender warning applications which parent monitors? m sd n boys yes father 2.50 1.33 6 mother 1.87 1.29 13 both equally 1.74 .74 9 neither 2.11 .38 3 total 1.98 1.09 31 no father 1.33 .64 15 mother 1.23 .47 47 both equally 1.35 .61 24 neither 1.22 .48 54 total 1.26 .51 140 total 1.39 .71 171 girls yes father 1.00 .00 3 mother 1.17 1.29 12 both equally 1.75 .501 4 neither 2.44 .41 6 total 1.55 1.04 25 no father 1.08 .18 20 mother 1.15 .38 107 both equally 1.23 .49 53 neither 1.13 .39 125 total 1.15 .40 305 total 1.18 .49 330 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 27 figure 1. interaction effect of warning applications and which parent monitors on the aggressor-supporter role for boys figure 1 illustrates the three interactions and shows higher scores for the aggressor-supporter role among boys whose parents installed warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities (m = 2.50, sd = 1.33, n = 6). the lowest scores for this role were found among boys whose parents did not install warning applications and whose online activities were monitored by neither parent (m = 1.22, sd = .48, n = 54). in contrast, figure 2 shows higher aggressor-supporter role scores among girls whose parents installed warning applications but did not monitor their online activities (m = 2.44, sd = 1.41, n = 6), whereas the lowest scores for this role were found among girls whose parents did not install warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities (m = 1.08, sd = .18, n = 20). figure 2. interaction effect of warning applications and which parent monitors on the aggressor-supporter role for girls international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 28 discussion this paper presents the findings of a study that explored the effect of parental monitoring on cyberaggression bystander roles. the main purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of this mediation on cyberbystander roles by participant age and gender, and parent gender. several findings are particularly noteworthy. first, contrary to hypothesis h1, the help-seeker role was not found to be distinct from the defender role. this result may indicate that, unlike traditional aggression, cyberbystander provictim roles are not distinguished by direct (defender) and indirect (help-seeker) patterns (levy & gumpel, 2018). this may be the result of the indirect nature of online interaction, which is characterized by anonymity, low supervision, and physical distance (patchin & hinduja, 2010). furthermore, the analysis did not find an empirical distinction between the outsider and the passive-bystander roles, but instead showed that these two roles merge into one in online aggression. the item “you usually do not come across situations where cyberaggression occurs” was not associated with any of the cyberbystander roles. this may be explained by the unique characteristics of online interaction in which all participants are exposed to and aware of cyberaggression incidents. therefore, both the passive bystander and the outsider exhibit passive behaviors and avoid active intervention. previous studies suggested that although the outsider and the passive bystander exhibit similar behavior, they represent different roles. while the outsider was associated with the victim, the passive bystander was associated with the aggressor-supporter (levy & gumpel, 2018). the current study may suggest that the outsider roles in cyberaggression and in traditional aggression are not the same. therefore, assessment of this role in online aggression is inaccurate and further research should examine the distinctions between the outsider and passive-bystander roles in the cyberaggression context. second, the results support hypothesis h2 and reveal that youth disclosure (sharing with a parent) is key to cyberbystander roles. the results indicate that adolescents who shared their online cyberaggression experiences with their parents tended to defend the victim more than those who did not share. this result concurs with prior research showing youth disclosure to be a protective factor against both traditional aggression and cyberaggression (elsaesser et al., 2017). nonetheless, and contrary to hypothesis h4, an interaction effect was not found between sharing with a parent and the gender of the parent with which the information was shared. this may imply that youth disclosure is a key element in motivating teenagers to support the victim, regardless of which parent they share their cyberaggression involvement with. however, this result may differ by cyberaggression type. for example, girls who are bystanders to cybersexual aggression may confide in their mothers more than their fathers, because they prefer to discuss intimate gender issues with a member of their own gender. hence, future studies should further explore this result with consideration of the different types of cyberaggression. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 29 third, as proposed in hypothesis h2, adolescents who reported parental restriction (warning applications) were more likely to support the aggressor than those whose parents did not use restriction interventions. this finding is compatible with a previous study showing that adolescents whose parents used restriction interventions were more likely to be cyberaggressors and cyberaggression victims than those whose parents did not use such measures (mishna et al., 2012). hence, parental restriction measures in cyberaggression are more prevalent among cyberaggressors and aggressor-supporters. additionally, in agreement with hypothesis h3, only one parental solicitation practice predicted the aggressor-supporter bystander role: parental rule-setting for online behavior. the results indicate a positive association between rule-setting and the aggressor-supporter role, such that rules set by parents predicted the aggressor-supporter bystander role. since rule-setting is considered another form of parental restriction (kerr et al., 2010), these results may imply that parental restrictions (e.g., using technologies to block websites or applications, or setting rules) are more common among aggressor-supporters, perhaps as a consequence of their involvement in cyberaggression. these results raise questions regarding the efficacy of restriction interventions in discouraging adoption of the pro-aggressor bystander role. perhaps these restrictive parental measures do not serve as a substitute for direct parental involvement in addressing adolescent cyberaggression by, for example, creating an atmosphere in which adolescents willingly share their cyberaggression experiences. future studies should examine the reasons that parents restrict their children’s online activity, especially in the case of cyberaggressor-supporters. fourth, the results of the current study highlight the role of parent gender in predicting the cyberbystander’s role. consistent with hypothesis h4, higher aggressor-supporter scores were found among boys whose parents installed warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities. however, contrary to h4, higher aggressor-supporter scores were found among girls whose parents installed warning applications, but neither parent monitored their online activities. finally, the lowest aggressor-supporter scores were found among girls whose parents did not install warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities. these results point to the important role fathers play in their adolescent children’s adopting the cyberbystander role. paternal monitoring increases the likelihood of boys supporting the cyberaggressor, but decreases that likelihood among girls. these results contradict the finding of a previous study that mothers are more involved than fathers in monitoring their children’s online use at home (lau & yuen, 2016). however, that study did not specifically examine the effect of parental monitoring on cyberbystander roles. some scholars consider cyberaggression to be a form of indirect aggression (hemphill et al., 2012), one that uses social relationships as a direct or indirect means of controlling and socially isolating the victim. this type of aggression has been reported to be more common among girls (bjorkqvist et al., 1992; crick et al., 2007). many forms of relational aggression and cyberaggression are considered covert and not easily recognized by adults, and so are less frequently addressed by parents and school practitioners (barnes et al., 2012). this may explain international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 30 why girls in our study tended to support the cyberaggressor when neither parent monitored their online activities. lastly, contrary to hypothesis h4, interaction effects between age and restriction interventions or sharing with a parent did not predict any of the bystander roles. this result is inconsistent with previous studies finding that bystander roles differ between early and later adolescence (olenikshemesh et al., 2017; pabian & vandebosch, 2016; van cleemput et al., 2014). however, this inconsistency may be the result of the relatively small number of young adolescents (in grades 8 to 9) in the present sample. furthermore, parental monitoring measures, such as adolescent disclosure, installing warning applications, and blocking websites, were not associated with the passive-bystander role. this result raises questions regarding the extent and type of parental influence on certain cyberbystander roles, and highlights the stability of passive cyberaggression patterns in the face of family influences. future studies should examine the effect of parental and other proximal and distal influences on the passive-cyberbystander role. limitations the results of the current study may have been influenced by a relatively higher representation of girls and older adolescents. additionally, the results regarding the outsider and passivebystander roles indicate that further analysis of the distinction between the two is needed. the abovementioned explanations regarding parent gender differences in online monitoring of both genders clearly indicate that further research is required. implications for practice the results of the current study highlight the importance of designing prevention programs that focus on both parental monitoring and adolescent disclosure. these programs should encourage adolescents to frequently engage in disclosure and share their cyberexperiences with their parents. prevention programs should also aim to increase parents’ awareness of the benefits of expanding their dialogues with adolescents on issues rather than relying on restriction interventions. another important implication is the need to design prevention programs aimed at developing the communication skills of both the parent and the adolescent in order to effectively contend with cyberaggression incidents. such programs should focus on training parents and adolescents to recognize both cyberaggression and cybervictimization incidents and to practise effective coping and response strategies including defending the victim, sharing incidents with parents, and parental involvement and guidance. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 31 references anderson, m., & jiang, j. 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(2018). parenting and cyberbullying across adolescence. cyberpsychology, behavior, and social networking, 21(5), 294–303. doi:10.1089/cyber.2017.0586 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.009 https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21534 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.03.021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2010.07.012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00214.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00214.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.059 https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7110231 https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2017.0586 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 13–36 36 appendix 1 factor analyses table 4. factor loadings of exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) for the cyberbystander roles scale (n = 501) efa cfa item df as pb out df as pb you advised the victim what to do after the cyberaggression .75 -.10 .10 .00 .66 you sent a message to the whole group demanding that they stop the aggression against the victim .78 .02 -.06 -.01 .72 you sent a personal message to the offender to stop hurting the victim .70 .25 -.09 .07 .69 you sent messages to others asking them to help the victim .73 .12 -.00 .07 .69 you notified an adult (parent, teacher, principal, counselor) about the victim’s online abuse .74 .06 .04 -.11 .67 you notified a family member or close friend of the victim .70 .25 -.01 .07 .69 after the event, you went with the victim to get help .79 .10 -.07 .03 .77 you encouraged others to send abusive messages to the victim .12 .84 .06 -.05 .85 you sent the offensive messages or offensive images of the victim to other social media networks .14 .86 .10 -.10 .86 you responded with laughter to the insult (you sent comments like: “ha, ha” or a laughing emoji) .03 .79 .14 .07 .67 you spread offensive messages or images of the aggressor to avenge what he did to the victim .20 .83 .09 -.02 you read the offensive messages sent to the victim, but did not respond. -.03 .21 .69 .13 .61 you preferred to disconnect and not follow what was happening .00 .15 .69 .07 .55 you ignored the offensive messages that were sent to the victim. -.03 -.04 .78 -.07 .50 you usually do not encounter situations where cyberaggression occurs. .06 -.09 .12 .97 % variance explained 26.14 46.00 56.89 63.59 cronbach’s alpha (α) .87 .86 .56 note. factor loadings above .50 are in bold. df = defender; as = aggressor-supporter; pb = passive bystander; out = outsider. microsoft word 07 gender_reveal party.docx international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs112202019520 the gender reveal party: a new means of performing parenthood and reifying gender under capitalism astri jack abstract: this article explores the popularization of gender reveal parties and considers what they can tell us about current societal expectations around gender, parenthood, and consumption. gender reveal parties are events in which expectant parents reveal, or even learn, the sex of the child-to-be through a surprise display of something pink or blue, typically using innocuous means such as confetti, balloons, or a coloured cake. however, methods for revealing fetal sex have become increasingly bizarre and dangerous, involving firearms, car fires, and, in at least one case, an alligator. this article examines digital media depictions of gender reveal parties and their aftermath; discusses sexing technologies and diversity in biological sex and gender; looks critically at how capitalism and the white neoliberal state have constructed the gender reveal party as a performative event for parents-to-be; and explores the physical and affective violence done to individuals, families, and the natural environment by gender reveal parties. keywords: gender reveal, gender, parenthood, capitalism, biological sex astri jack ba is a master’s student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc v8w 2y2. e-mail: astrijack@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 83  during her third pregnancy in 2006, louise a. gosbell (2016) found herself routinely fielding question about the fetus’ gender by well-meaning friends and family. because she had already had two girls she was often asked if she was hoping that her third child would be a boy, and if she would be disappointed with another girl. gosbell found these questions upsetting but brushed them off by telling the inquirers that she had chosen not to find out the sex of the child in advance, to which many would respond, “well, it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, so long as it’s healthy” (p. 100). these interactions that gosbell recounts illuminate several social narratives that frame parenthood, family, gender, and ability. among these narratives are assumption of binary sex and gender (preves, 2013), the conflation of sex and gender (fausto-sterling, 2013), the script of “family balancing” (seavilleklein & sherwin, 2007), ableist discourses and a centering of productive citizenship (burman, 2017), and expectations around a mother’s role in fetal and child development (burman, 2017). at the same time that gosbell (2016) was defending her decision to not find out the sex of her unborn child, a new cultural phenomenon was about to arrive in north america. gosbell’s pregnancy and the casual conversations — with embedded complex discourses — that she had around the sex of the baby predated the popularization of a photo-worthy event wherein all these discourses could climactically come together: the gender reveal party. in 2006, when gosbell was pregnant with her third child, the number of times the search phrases “gender reveal” and “gender reveal ideas” appeared was negligible, but google trends (2018) noted that in 2010 there was an uptick in searches. over the next eight years, the search terms would skyrocket in the united states with the number of searches for each phrase respectively averaging 60,500 and 165,000 in march 2019 (wordtracker, 2019). the premise of a gender reveal party is that the expectant parents will hold a party at which the sex of the fetus is announced through a surprise display of something pink for a girl or blue for a boy. it is typical for expectant parents to not know the sex of the child and to have the obstetrician write down the sex and seal it in an envelope. the envelope is then taken to a person or professional who will assemble the materials for the “reveal”. reveal examples include cakes that are coloured on the inside, confetti cannons, coloured balloons that emerge from a box, or more dramatic and dangerous means. this article will provide an analysis of the sociocultural conditions under which expectant parents reify gender difference and perform “good” parenthood through gender reveal parties. i will discuss gender, biological sex, and sexing technologies; provide a survey of the ways the developmental model of childhood has placed parents and children under a social and state microscope; identify the impacts of social media and capitalism on how parenthood is performed; and analyze the sociocultural purpose of gender reveal parties by exploring their representation in online videos. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 84  gender, sexing technologies, and disability the term “gender reveal party” is a misnomer. while i have jokingly referred to them as “genital reveal parties”, they actually proclaim the likely sex of a fetus based on either or both of two non-invasive prenatal tests: (a) an ultrasound scan to detect the presence or absence of a penis, or assess the direction of the genital tubercle, at or after 12 weeks gestation (odeh et al., 2009); and (b) a maternal blood test to identify the fetus’s chromosomes, as early as 4 weeks gestation (de jong et al., 2010). amniocentesis can also be used to test the fetus’s chromosomes, but because it carries a higher risk to parent and fetus than non-invasive prenatal testing does, it is now generally reserved as a method of confirming a suspected chromosomal abnormality (de wit et al., 2017). because biological sex is composed of a combination of chromosomes, genitalia, internal reproductive organs, sex hormones, gametes, and secondary sex characteristics (ferber et al., 2013), these tests cannot guarantee, on their own or in combination, a biologically male or female child (seavilleklein & sherwin, 2007). preves (2013) reported that, out of every 2,000 births, one or two babies are born with genitalia unaligned with “socially accepted norms of sexual anatomy” (p. 24). while the likelihood of accurately determining a fetus’s sex increases if both a chromosomal test and an ultrasound scan are consulted, a fetus with ambiguous genitalia could easily be assessed as phenotypically male or female in utero but be deemed intersex after birth. additionally, because only one or two of the six components that make up biological sex are generally examined during a pregnancy, it sometimes happens that an intersex child (1% to 4% of all births1) is born when a boy or girl is expected; in many cases, a person will not know they are intersex until puberty or later, or they may never know (preves, 2013). while determining the sex of a fetus is, ultimately, a best guess made by a healthcare provider, gender is an even more slippery and mutable category (burman, 2017). sex and gender are distinct categories, but they are not completely discrete: rather, they exist in a mutually informed and complex relationship with one another (fausto-sterling, 2013). unlike sex, which is based on biological characteristics made meaningful by culture, gender is a personal, affective, nd socially constructed category that cannot be properly applied to an individual without their input (ferber et al., 2013). gender identities include man/boy, woman/girl, and any of myriad trans and nonbinary genders. as such, a gender reveal party is, at best, a biological sex reveal party and, at worst, an event that contributes to the establishment and maintenance of a strictly gendered social order (motzkau, 2009; preves, 2013) into which a transgender or intersex infant may be born. the more gender reveal party videos i watched, the more disturbing i found them. i was startled by the number that demonstrated disappointment when the child’s sex was revealed. one example 1 the wide range in the estimated number of intersex people is due to varying opinion on what constitutes “intersex”. while ambiguous genitalia is one of the most easily spotted examples of intersex, there are numerous other forms; those may impact, among other things, chromosomes, reproductive organs and gametes, hormone production, and the body’s response to hormones (thyen et al., 2005). there is debate, especially in the area of variation in hormone production and hormone response, about who meets the criteria for being considered intersex, resulting in a wide range of estimates for the number of intersex people (davis, 2015). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 85  showed an expectant mother and her two children popping silver balloons to reveal blue confetti. the mother gasps, scrunches her face, and yells disappointedly, “it’s a boy!?” meanwhile, her teenaged daughter begins to cry beside her, presumably because she had been hoping for a sister. while the disappointment in this video was obvious and awkward, to an uninvolved observer the over-the-top reaction might have bordered on humorous. another, more sinister, video showed two parents and a toddler opening a box that was supposed to release pink or blue balloons. instead, rainbow balloons emerged. the parents did not share my delight at this flutter of queer glory — their upset at not seeing pink or blue was palpable. the mother looked shocked and the father balled up his fists and shook his head, saying, “i can’t believe this.” the toddler, instead of being excited by the miraculous appearance of balloons, silently and anxiously looked at the parents, as if trying to figure out how to react. these two videos, as well as thousands of others, demonstrate that to many families discovering the sex of the child in this way may be exciting, but can have unexpected emotional impact. the evolution of sex-selection technologies adds a layer of complexity to the already fraught social underpinnings of gender reveal parties and the assumed correlation of sex and gender. while infanticide has a long history of use as a sex-selection method, it, along with sex-selective abortions, is largely seen as unethical across the globe (seavilleklein & sherwin, 2007; whittaker, 2011). having said that, there are still a significant number of sex-selective abortions and infanticides worldwide and across cultures; however, greater access to more covert forms of sex selection may obscure the rates of sex selection among wealthier populations (vogel, 2012) and inaccurately suggest that communities of colour are the primary perpetrators of sex selection. indeed, sex-selection technologies have advanced tremendously for white prospective parents who, on average, have greater access to wealth and healthcare technologies. these newer technologies are generally non-abortive, such as the microsorting of sperm by x and y chromosomes followed by in vitro fertilization (seavilleklein & sherwin, 2007). we can infer that a person who seeks sex-selection technologies when they are trying to get pregnant is likely assuming that the eventual child’s biological sex and gender will align, and that the child will behave in particular gendered ways associated with their sex that fulfil prescriptive societal expectations of male and female behaviour. many of the tests used to sex fetuses are also used (sometimes primarily; de wit, et al., 2017) in detecting chromosomal differences such as down syndrome (kaposy, 2013). while the ethics of abortions based on fatal and nonfatal chromosomal difference in fetuses is beyond the scope of this article, i would like to briefly consider how forces that influence parental decisions around gender also come to bear on ability and disability. slater (2013) observed that children with disabilities disrupt the “normal child” ideals inherent in the developmental model of childhood (turmel, 2004). as such, a parent who chooses not to terminate a pregnancy that will produce a child with a disability can be framed as unruly for not upholding the tenets of social order that underlie developmentalism (turmel, 2004): specifically, they are failing at the ableist expectation that parents should produce productive citizens who will contribute to the capitalist state. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 86  returning to gosbell’s (2016) experience of fielding questions about the sex of her unborn child, if a pregnant person truly does not have a sex preference but finds out that there are fetal “abnormalities”, the gravity of the statement “it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, as long as it’s healthy” is brought into stark relief. performing parenthood under capitalism in the early 1900s, the emergence of the developmental model of childhood invited science, the state, and an increasingly educated public to scrutinize the minutiae of child-rearing and family life (turmel, 2004). this scrutiny was done in the name of ensuring a “normally developed child” (turmel, 2004, p. 420) who would progress along specific physical, emotional, and social trajectories believed to result in a productive and responsible adult (burman, 2017). such thinking, far from having disappeared, is still with us a century later. iantaffi (2009) argued that parents, especially mothers (or, more specifically, birthing parents), are constantly being monitored by the people around them. additionally, birthing parents and primary caregivers (often mothers) bear the burden of being the primary locus of judgement by their peers, care professionals, and the government, based on what burman (2007) calls their perceived “success or failure in promoting [their] child’s development” (p. 139). parents can find themselves having to contend with the advice or admonishment of family, friends, and even strangers, not to mention medical professionals, who are also susceptible to trends in public opinion. these observers are armed with popularized ideas about all facets of childrearing, and feel that closely monitoring the behaviours of pregnant people and new parents is their social duty (burman, 2017). among myriad other things, parents are expected to ensure optimal attachment with their newborns (though how they are to achieve this is highly debated; burman, 2017). they face overt criticism if they do not successfully adapt to fluctuating trends regarding infant feeding, such as determining the socially acceptable age to stop breastfeeding, or conforming to trends or the latest studies pronouncing bottle, breast, or formula as the optimal way of ensuring proper child development (burman, 2017). parents must also contend with childcare advice being delivered through online content via bloggers, opinion pieces, and parenting apps, all of which allow for an unprecedented turnover in parenting trends on topics such as optimal disciplinary methods for ensuring resilient children, and the benefits or evils of sleep training (burman, 2017). increasingly invasive social media and self-help apps are additional sources of guilt for parents and pregnant people (johnson, 2014). parents and expectant parents are under social pressure to use what brown and webster (2004, as cited in johnson, 2014) called “socio-technologies” to consume and then publicly reproduce images of ideal parenting (johnson, 2014). these technologies bring with them: a reminder to take your folic acid; a selfie of your sister-in-law drinking a green smoothie, accompanied by a status update letting you know that she is walking to her mamas’n’babies yoga class; a professional photograph of your friend’s peacefully smiling, plump baby with a pink headband, complete with giant silk peony, artfully placed on its bald head international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 87  (“i just got this on etsy!”); and, of course, a video of the climactic cake-cutting moment at your friend’s pinterest-perfect pink-and-blue-mason-jar themed gender reveal party. while there is nothing inherently untoward about a mamas’n’babies yoga class, and although taking a folic acid supplement during pregnancy is a verifiably good idea (de-regil et al., 2015), the exposure of new and expecting parents to the flood of curated content coming from advertisers, celebrities, and other parents on social media has become the primary means of constructing and “communicating ideal motherhood” (chae, 2015, p. 504). bound up in the construct of ideal motherhood is an expectation that good parents are those who are, at minimum, middle class, a position that byrne (2006) argued is inextricably linked to whiteness, thus positions the ideal parent as white. in 1899, american economist thorstein veblen (as cited in currit-halker, 2017) coined the term conspicuous consumption, which takes the form of overt displays of wealth through items like fancy watches and sports cars. currid-halkett (2017) noted that, as the middle class in the united states flourished, black and latinx people have increasingly been able to demonstrate conspicuous consumption. she argued that, in response to this, wealthy and middle-class white people have turned to inconspicuous consumption as a new means of positioning themselves as the elite. in this case, inconspicuous consumption might take the form of only eating organic foods during pregnancy, attending yoga classes at a high-end studio (in a predominantly white neighbourhood), and being able to take the time off work to be able to breastfeed your child. nonwhite parents are able to literally buy their way into the good graces of a society that espouses neoliberal values through particular kinds of consumption (mukherjee, 2011). in this case, nonwhite parents can make purchases to bring them closer to an idealized parenthood by emulating the inconspicuous spending habits of the white elite. however, many of these forms of inconspicuous consumption require ongoing financial commitment (such as yoga classes) and are not sustainable by lower-income families, white or non-white. this is where the gender reveal party comes in: it provides a contained and finite way for expectant parents to signal upward class mobility, at a smaller scale but in much the same manner as celebrations like weddings have long been used to signal a family’s prosperity (bloch et al., 2003). while the conspicuous consumption required to purchase a flashy car may be considered economically irresponsible for a lower-income family, “getting ready for baby” is seen as a responsible allocation of funds. throwing a gender reveal party may allow less wealthy parents to inconspicuously project affluence in a way that is socially acceptable, demonstrates “good” parenting, and does not entail ongoing financial commitments, like hiring a nanny, that would be hard to maintain. parents-to-be may also regard money for non-permanent items like food and napkins as well spent because the evidence can be posted to social media outlets such as facebook and instagram, which have become important venues for demonstrating “ideal motherhood” to others in one’s social circle (chae, 2015). interestingly, the purchasing of consumer goods rises after the sex of the fetus has been disclosed (barnes, 2015). in her discussion of the impacts of sex determination on the consumption patterns of pregnant people, barnes (2015) argued that ultrasound scans have impacted the ways international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 88  fetuses are understood, and are used as a tool for “learning to see who exists in the world” (haraway, 1997, as cited in barnes, 2015, p. 372). that is to say, an ultrasound scan can serve to make the pregnancy feel more “real” (barnes, 2015, p. 372), which elicits particular kinds of consumption by the pregnant person and their friends and family. this assessment aligns with the results of a study conducted in the wake of the popularization of fetal sexing technologies in the 1980s: winestine (1989) reported that women who chose not to learn the sex of the fetus were more likely to focus on the state of being pregnant, and thought of motherhood as a future state, while those who chose to learn the sex of their fetus by way of amniocentesis were more likely to be preoccupied with “the object of the pregnancy” (p. 1021), that is, the baby. gender reveal parties and masculinity gender reveal parties are highly gendered affairs not only in that they prepare the parents for the particular social and economic expectations associated with raising a boy or a girl, but also in the expectation that parents will perform gender at the party itself. while pinterest, with its predominantly female user base (gantz, 2013), is replete with handmade pink and blue theme and reveal ideas, there is also a phenomenon of fathers-to-be revealing the fetus’s sex through overthe-top displays of masculinity. when a friend of mine and her fiancé were expecting a baby, their gender reveal party involved the fiancé and his group of military friends donning their army fatigues, building a snow wall, and the father-to-be shooting a paintball gun at it. i was initially surprised at the violent tone of this reveal. however, i was easily able to find several videos online that also made use of paintball guns and firearms as part of the gender reveal. at a gender reveal party in louisiana, a father-to-be displayed his machismo by prying open the jaws of a live alligator (rm videos, 2018). once they were opened wide enough, he dropped in a watermelon. the alligator crushed the watermelon to reveal that it had been filled with blue jelly. i find reveals like these, couched in a particular kind of violent masculinity, to be quite haunting. i find myself left with this question: once the baby is born, will gender roles be enforced as violently as the sex was revealed? “just an excuse for some harmless fun!” i have heard repeatedly in conversation that expectant parents host gender reveal parties because they are “just an excuse for some harmless fun!”. however, there are ample examples of gender reveal parties being obviously and immediately harmful, including: a “burn-out” reveal in australia in which coloured smoke came off the tires of a car, but also resulted in the car bursting into flames (dixon, 2019); and an arizona reveal wherein the father-to-be shot a target filled with blue explosives, leading to a 47,000 acre wildfire and 8 million dollars in damage (avagnina, 2018). even in the absence of car explosions and wildfires, gender reveal parties are not harmless. we live in a world where sex and gender matter a great deal as evidenced by: the rapid production and honing of sex-selection technologies (seavilleklein & sherwin, 2007), new and expectant parents international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 89  gathering online claiming to be suffering from pathological “gender disappointment” on learning the sex of their child (duckett, 2008; whittaker, 2011), and the prevalence of the idea that “family balance” can only be achieved through having equal numbers of male and female children (whittaker, 2011). a woman in a care profession told me that her husband and son had a special bond that she did not have access to because she doesn’t know “what it is like to have a penis” (personal communciation, april 24, 2019). this is an example of the amount of power some give to genitals in dictating not only the kind of life they expect a child to have, but even what kind of relationship a parent of a particular sex can have with that child. even more telling than whether or not a parent expresses a preference for having a boy or a girl are the realities that the child may face depending on their sex and gender. the 2005-2006 virginia transgender health initiative survey reported that nearly 45% of transgender adults had experienced gender-based violence, and 28% had made at least one suicide attempt (goldblum et al., 2012). the canadian trans youth health survey, which took place from october 1, 2013 to may 31, 2014, found that 70% of transgender youth reported having been sexually harassed, and one in three did not have an adult in their family they felt they could talk to (saewyc et al., 2015). in 2010, research conducted by the native women’s association of canada documented 582 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women and girls (special committee on violence against indigneous women, 2014); in the 1993 violence against women survey, 39% of canadian adult women reported having been sexually assaulted at least once since the age of 16 (statistics canada, 2006). such societal ills provide a sobering context for the practice of holding gender reveal parties, which are laden with complex social discourses that take them out of the realm of “just some harmless fun”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(2): 82–93 90  references avagnina, g. (2018, november 28). “gender reveal party” triggers 47,000 acre wildfire causing $8m of damage. the telegraph. retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/28/moment-gender-reveal-party-went-horriblywrong-caused-wildfire/ barnes, m. w. (2015). fetal sex determination and gendered prenatal consumption. journal of consumer culture, 15(3), 371–390. doi:10.1177/1469540513505606 bloch, f., rao, v., & desai, s. (2003). wedding celebrations as conspicuous consumption: signaling social status in rural india. the journal of human resources, xxxix(3), 675–695. doi:10.3368/jhr.xxxix.3.675 burman, e. (2017). deconstructing developmental psychology (3rd ed.). routledge. byrne, b. (2006). in search of a “good mix”: “race”, class, gender, and practices of mothering. sociology, 40(6), 1001–1017. doi:10.1177/0038038506069841 chae, j. 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(2019, april 23). 50 of 50 keywords for 'gender reveal'. retrieved from https://www.wordtracker.com/search?query=gender%20reveal susanna hoikkala & martti kemppainen international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 466 running away from children’s residential care: the finnish case susanna hoikkala and martti kemppainen abstract: this article discusses the phenomenon of running away from children’s residential care in the finnish context. in the finnish welfare system, residential care is understood as a last-resort form of alternative care. its aim is to secure children’s well-being, development, and safety. our article is based on the findings of a small-scale study launched and administrated by the central union for child welfare. these findings illustrate the multidimensional nature of the topic. first, the reasons for and the consequences of running away are diverse. second, we need implementation of more inclusive and consistent practices as well as more explicit cooperation between authorities. finally, the importance of children’s peer relations should be taken more seriously within residential care services. in this article, these findings are discussed bearing in mind the following critical question: what is the point of child welfare if it fails to serve children and safeguard their well-being and health during the out-of-home placement? keywords: running away, residential care, professional practices susanna hoikkala is a senior advisor at the central union for child welfare, armfeltintie 1, 00150 helsinki, finland. e-mail: susanna.hoikkala@lskl.fi martti kemppainen is a senior advisor at the central union for child welfare, armfeltintie 1, 00150 helsinki, finland. e-mail: martti.kemppainen@lskl.fi international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 467 in finland, running away from residential care is a well-known phenomenon within the field of child welfare, but one that has been little examined. in recent years, it has become a matter of concern in the field that knowledge regarding child welfare in general and children’s alternative care in particular is limited and fragmented (e.g., pekkarinen, 2011). the extent and nature of running-away behaviour, as well as professional interventions and responses to it, have not been adequately explored and problematized (central union for child welfare [cucw], 2013, pp. 4–5). this article is based on a small-scale study launched and administered by the central union for child welfare (cucw) in 2012 and 20131. in the finnish context, the need for this particular study emerged from many sources. the topic was first discussed with several partner organizations of cucw2 when the police board of finland was renewing national guidelines concerning cooperation between the police and child welfare practitioners in 2011. at the same time, grassroots level practitioners expressed concerns about the well-being of young runaways because of the serious dangers into which their flights often lead them. also, those health services workers identified running away as a risk for children’s health and well-being; children’s uncontrolled sexual behaviour was considered especially alarming. in addition, absconding was considered to threaten the placement process by disrupting the children’s regular lives (see also fasulo, cross, mosley, & leavey, 2002, p. 624). running away was also recognized as a burden to the service system, because the necessary response involves numerous resources and multiple authorities. the lack of knowledge and appropriate know-how was the final starting point. these background observations are in many ways similar to the findings of international research on the topic (e.g., biehal & wade, 2000; fasulo et al., 2002; malloch & burgess, 2011). contemporary researchers use the terms “running away” and “runaways” to refer to children in a variety of situations, not just residential care. for biehal and wade (2000, p. 213) “going missing” includes all types of unauthorized absences from placement, covering both children gone missing overnight and children reported as “missing” to the police. malloch and burgess (2011) use the alternative terms “absconding” and “absconders”. those studies, however, cover incidents of running away both from familial homes and from various child welfare services. this article discusses a study restricted to children under the age of 18 who were taken into care via a care order and placed in residential care units3. the cases of children who run away from their familial homes and foster homes were not examined. the finnish equivalents of the phrases “running away” and “on the run” are used widely, and these terms also have slang equivalents. in the study considered here, the term “unauthorized absence” refers to incidents in which a child has either left the residential care unit without permission or has not returned at the agreed time. “running away” is used, however, almost as a synonym. these terms are therefore used interchangeably in this article, as well as the terms “absconding” and “flight”. in the finnish context, “going missing” refers mainly to a case that has been formally reported to the police as a “missing person”. child welfare cases are rarely reported in that way. the study had several practical objectives. first, it aimed to locate some of the main features of running away as a phenomenon; and to gather information on the frequency of flights, on models of cooperation between different authorities, and on existing good practices. a second aim was to find out the judicial status of the child and the child’s rights during the unauthorized absence. third, the study attempted to map a course for both policy and practice, and to make concrete recommendations for further actions. this article focuses mainly on the first and third objectives. children’s residential care in finland in finland, the welfare system is based on a nordic welfare state model: universal welfare, extensive statutory services, and a shared value base with a strong emphasis on social solidarity, on equal rights, and on access to basic services. the child welfare system has also been built upon international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 468 these cornerstones. policies regulating the position of children and families with children have traditionally been considered first-class in the nordic countries (e.g., eydal & satka, 2006). challenges to the system have emerged in the past few years, however, in the form of neoliberal ideas and market-oriented values based on new public management as well as privatization of services (e.g., forsberg & kröger, 2011, pp. 1–2; satka, harrikari, hoikkala, & pekkarinen, 2007). these new ways of thinking have become more prevalent in many areas, including the field of children’s alternative care. for instance, the organization of service provision has become more market-oriented: the number of private and even commercialized for-profit service providers has mushroomed, and the practice of “shopping around” to get “the best value” for the money available has become more usual (e.g., eronen, laakso, & pösö, 2011). many municipalities have decreased their own service provision and instead purchase welfare services, including child welfare, from ngos and private enterprises. in finland, the objective of the child welfare act (lastensuojelulaki 417/2007, section 1) is to protect children’s rights to a safe growth environment, to balanced and well-rounded development, and to special protection. it emphasizes the principles of the child’s best interest, children’s and families’ participation in child welfare decisions, and alternative care as a last-resort and a temporary solution. the act does not allow permanent placements of children and, in principle, the primary aim is always family reunification. however, this is not possible in every case and, therefore, long-term placements do exist. in finland, adoption is not used as a child welfare measure and parents do not lose their parental rights. the need for child welfare services has tripled in finland since the early 1990s. in 2012, the number of children using child welfare and social work services was 87,200. altogether 17,830 children were in out-of-home placements during that year, this number included both existing and new placements, short-term as well as long-term. therefore, approximately 1.4% of children under 18 years of age were in out-of-home placements. the number of children taken into care has remained nearly the same in recent years, but the number of children placed outside their homes has continued to grow. the number of children who were taken into care or placed urgently for the first time was 3,079 in 2012; of these, 2,726 were placed urgently. the growth in the number of teenagers in need of urgent or other out-of-home placement stands out. slightly more boys than girls are placed in alternative care (child welfare 2012, 2013). there are any many ways to implement alternative care: foster care, professional foster families, residential care (such as reception centres, children’s homes, youth homes, and reform schools), and other care, such as independent living. the described services are provided by the state (in six reform schools), the municipalities, ngos, and private enterprises. in finland, residential care units are open, except for a few that operate as special care units for short placement periods. that kind of care and treatment is arranged by a multiprofessional team and the placement period requires a special care order by a municipal office-holder. special care may be arranged for children aged 12 years or more to stop them from engaging in behaviours that seriously harm them. continual absconding may be handled in this way. the length of a placement may be to a maximum of 90 days, and includes restricting the child's freedom of movement. special care units are small, handling a maximum of five children at a time, with a high ratio of staff to children. intensive dialogue between the staff members and the children is emphasized. the main aim is to get a child to settle down and to enable a change in the child's situation (see pösö, kitinoja, & kekoni, 2010). in international comparisons, finland is usually categorized as placing an emphasis on residential care services for children rather than foster care (e.g., eronen et al., 2011). in recent years, however, many initiatives have been introduced to strengthen foster care, including the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 469 revision of child welfare legislation in 2012. at the regulatory level, this revision prioritized foster care as the primary form of alternative care in finland for the first time. according to the child welfare act (lastensuojelulaki 417/2007), “institutional care is arranged if substitute care for the child cannot be provided in the best interest of the child in family care or elsewhere by means of sufficient supportive measures” (section 50). at the end of 2012, 50% of children placed out-ofhome were in foster care, 18% in professional family homes, 27% in residential care, and 4% in other forms of care (child welfare 2012, 2013). numerous factors and the cumulative effect of simultaneous ongoing difficulties can lead to an out-of-home placement. they include challenges faced by parents, such as difficulty in coping with everyday life, inadequate parenting skills, substance abuse, and mental health problems. on the other hand, some issues can be related to the child’s own behaviour and psychological wellbeing, such as self-endangerment by substance abuse. a child may have serious difficulties at school or problems with inappropriate friendships. a child’s absconding from a familial home can be the main reason for a placement, but in such cases children only enter alternative care when they have run away repeatedly (see heino, 2007; myllärniemi, 2006). heinonen, väisänen, and hipp (2014) discuss the ways in which a child can become a child welfare client and the various paths a child may take through the finnish child welfare services. running away from alternative care as mentioned above, we do not have much research-based information about running away from alternative care in finland, even though this phenomenon is well known among practitioners and mentioned in some studies (e.g., hoikkala, 2011; pekkarinen, 2010; vehkalahti & hoikkala, 2013). only one publication, saari’s karkailun ongelma [the problem of runaways]4, published in 1965, focuses particularly on this topic in the context of children’s residential care. it consists of four different studies carried out in reform schools from 1946 to 1955. the number of running-away incidents varied annually during that time. the autumn months seemed to be the most popular for absconding, with sunday the preferred day; more than half of the cases did not last longer than a week, and running away presumed “readiness and a trigger” (saari, 1965, pp. 43–44). the explanations offered for running away mainly invoked the individual characteristics of the runaways and their familial conditions, but also the “environmental conditions” of the reform schools. saari posed an important question: what is the reason for boys feeling forced to escape from their living conditions? he concluded that the flight may be motivated either by a rejection or by a “tropism”5 (saari, 1965, pp. 44–45). these observations from almost half a century ago remain pertinent to the present day: there remain many ways to explain running away and of defining the runaway child. as discussed in other studies, responses to the topic and ways of intervening in individual cases reflect the surrounding societal context (see, e.g., biehal & wade, 2000; malloch & burgess, 2011.) within finnish child welfare praxis, running away is generally understood as a threat to the child’s growth and well-being, because the child’s safety may be at risk during the unauthorized absence (cucw, 2013, p. 5). a runaway child may be characterized as being “in need”, or “troublesome”, or both. child flights inspire feelings that range from concern and despair to frustration and even anger. however, interventions with runaways should always be based on welfare principles instead of the impulse to punish with sanctions such as prolonged confinement. restrictions, including restriction of freedom of movement, may be used after a flight but they should only be used as defined in the child welfare act (lastensuojelulaki 417/2007) and after applying a thorough case-specific consideration and a formal decision-making procedure. in finland, there is no appropriate statistical data available for illuminating the extent of running away. a similar observation is made in many foreign studies as well (e.g., biehal & wade, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 470 2000, p. 214; malloch & burgess, 2011, p. 64). incidents of running away are recorded in children’s individual case files, but residential care units are not required to compile statistics or to report the number of cases to monitoring authorities or any other bodies in a systematic way. if a child runs away or does not return to the unit on time, the residential care workers must report the situation at least to the child’s social worker or to emergency social services, and to the legal custodian(s). the social worker with jurisdiction is obliged to report the case to the police and to request executive assistance for locating and returning the runaway. however, not all runaways are reported to the police specifically as missing children. variations in the procedures used for reporting a missing child and requesting police assistance may result in differences in the official status of a runaway child. it seems that the police do not maintain systematic records of all cases in which their assistance is requested by social workers on behalf of missing children. therefore, the police records are not comprehensive enough to illuminate the extent of running away nationally. the study the central union for child welfare launched a study on unauthorized absences of young people from residential care and practices of residential care units in autumn, 2012. this study is descriptive rather than explanatory by nature. the data, collected by two external researchers, included a web-based questionnaire as well as five interviews. seven young people with personal experience of residential-care placement were interviewed in a group. three social workers from the municipal child-welfare social work units and one social worker from the municipal emergency social services were interviewed via email. the group interview was transcribed and analysed using the methods of content analysis (cucw, 2013). the questionnaire asked the respondents to provide basic background information on the residential unit and the educational background of the managers and the caregivers6, as well as statistical information on the frequency of running away. information was gathered on the key features of runs; for example, why children run away, what happens during a run, how children are brought back and what brings them back, as well as interventions after a run. the respondents were asked to identify the number of running-away incidents and individuals during the last one-month and six-month periods (see also biehal & wade, 2000, p. 214). in addition, they were asked to provide information on local protocols and to describe good practices. the questionnaire was distributed to 413 children’s residential care units7. altogether 81 responses were received8 from reform schools (5), municipal reception centres (9), private units (44), municipal units (17), and other units (4). most of the responses were received from the southern part of finland. the data provided by the questionnaires were analysed by calculating the responses and by evaluating the content of open questions. findings respondents reported that 306 children had running-away incidents, lasting for a total of 2,996 days. the total number of children who had repeated runaways during the previous six months was 184 (14.7% of all beds in residential units, n=1251). as one would expect, there are some children who run off repeatedly, and others who do so only once or twice. one third of the runaways had been placed with an emergency care order and two thirds with a standard care order. sixteen incidents took place while under an order of special care (lastensuojelulaki 417/2007, section 71). thirteen units reported that they had not had any incidents of running away during the time. about 46% of the respondents indicated that running away had not increased during the past year (cucw, 2013, p. 18). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 471 differences between genders varied during the previous month compared to the six-month period. there were more female than male runaways during the month: 50 girls and 38 boys had run away, making the total number 88. during the longer period, there was no difference: 153 girls and 153 boys had run away during the previous six months. the length of placement of the runaways varied between one month and 190 months. the duration of flights ranged from less than 24 hours to 185 days. the average duration was eight days. in finland, there is no official distinction between a “temporary” run and a “permanent” run, even though some municipalities do not pay to the service provider the total care fee after a certain period of absconding (e.g., the fee may be cut to half after seven days of running away). in the study by fasulo et al. (2002, p. 628), a duration of less than two weeks distinguished a temporary run from a permanent one. the responses in the questionnaires revealed that most of the unauthorized absences had started from within a residential unit: a child had absconded from the unit without permission. most children left alone, but in some cases a group “escape” occurred (see also biehal & wade, 2000). the rest referred to cases in which a child had not returned to the unit from holidays as agreed. responders indicated that some children had run away for the excitement of it and “just for fun”, while others had planned their flight carefully. it can be argued that children with such different motivations are seeking different things when they run away. the impulsive runaway may require different management than a child who has made a careful plan to stay away for an extended time. this variability poses an additional challenge to the service system. most often, the young runaways were found in their community of origin or the town or municipality nearest to the residential care unit. more than half of them were among their friends. some children were found in a public place such as a city centre or a street. there were also children who were with their family members or relatives. most often, children run away to their family of origin or to their friends. according to this study, children return to the residential unit most often either by themselves or with staff members who have been searching for them. a child can also be returned by the police or by a family member (cucw, 2013, p. 34). during the flight incidents that occurred while a child was “on the run” included misuse of alcohol and drugs, involvement in offending, violence (child’s own behaviour), trading sex for money or substances, self-harming, pressure for sexual contact, abuse, and even rape (cucw, 2013, p. 33). these findings are similar to many other studies. for example, courtney et al. (2005) state that many runaways are exposed to sexual and criminal victimization and are at risk of abusing drugs and alcohol or committing crimes themselves. in this study, 65% of the respondents indicated that unauthorized absence is occasionally a serious risk for the child’s growth and development, and 29% estimated it to be always a serious risk. why do children run away? the respondents indicated that the main motivations for unauthorized absences were related to friends and peer relations, because runaways wanted to spend time with their friends (see also biehal & wade, 2000, p. 217). for some, the escape meant a quest for freedom. misuse of substances can be the main motivation for some children, or the desire to escape the restrictive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 472 nature of the residential care unit and to test boundaries. in some responses, the psychological condition (distress and poor coping mechanisms) and behavioural problems of a child were defined as key factors. family-related issues were reported to be important too: children want to run to their biological parents, siblings, and relatives for a number of reasons. in some cases, disagreements or conflicts between a child and either staff members or other children in the unit were considered the main motivations (cucw, 2013, p. 19). biehal and wade (2000, p. 218) talk about “pull factors” and “push factors” when discussing the reasons for running away. this categorization is present in this study also. some issues are clearly related to the world outside the residential unit, such as those involving peer relations, girlfriends and boyfriends, or conflicts with parents. some are closely related to internal matters and to features of residential care as such, like conflicts with staff members. some childrelated reasons for running away include misuse of substances, boredom, and anxiety. institutionrelated reasons such as seeking to avoid rules, regulations, and sanctions can be defined as push factors. young people who were interviewed emphasized several motivations for running away, including (a) factors outside a residential unit: friends, family, a girlfriend or boyfriend, hanging around, partying; (b) factors related to their well-being: substances, boredom, anxiety; (c) factors related to the institution: rules and regulations, unwillingness to live in the institution, disagreements with the staff or with other children; (d) impulses: “just wanted to do it”; and (e) lack of freedom. they indicated that children in general and their distress in particular should be taken more seriously in residential care (cucw, 2013, p. 22–23). the respondents were also asked to suggest key factors that could be linked to running away in general. the most common factor mentioned was the child’s objection to the placement: the child had objected to alternative care. in addition, it was felt that children in the teenage years were more likely to run away than those younger. the third reason commonly advanced was parental objection to the placement. the last two causes may be related to insufficient preparation for the process of placement and a mismatch between the needs of the child and the residential care unit (cucw, 2013, p. 22). after running away a runaway child’s uncertain emotional and physical condition, including the possibility of abuse and neglect, demand sensitivity of the workers in their interventions. in this study, most of the respondents indicated that a warm, emphatic, and caring welcome after the flight is crucial. children should be given positive feedback for returning. the basic needs of the child, such as food, sleep, and hygiene, should be met first. after an appropriate time, a report of the events needs to be made with the child. in some cases, the report is completed by the child and the worker of the residential care unit; in others, family members and the social worker responsible for the child are involved. it is crucial to find out what caused the flight, to learn what took place while the child was unsupervised, and to determine what should happen afterwards (cucw, 2013, pp. 34–35). in some cases, procedures such as bodily search, drug testing, and restrictions of contacts and freedom of movement were applied. health checks made by a medical doctor were also used. the respondents emphasized that restrictions and procedures were instituted only for the well-being of the child, not as punishments (cucw, 2013, p. 35). the flights could have both short-term and long-term consequences. in extreme cases, a change of placement location was decided upon. for some children, this meant a period at the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 473 special care unit, and for some a treatment period in a mental health unit, such as a psychiatric ward for adolescents (cucw, 2013, pp. 36–37). how to prevent running away this study found that clear policies and practices are very important as preventive factors. there should be both multi-agency protocols and locally-defined guidelines. in this study, about 6% of the respondents did not have any local written protocols on running away (cucw, 2013, p. 24). residential care units may have a lot of working knowledge of the topic, but it is not made visible. local practices and the position of the social worker as a part of the process should be clarified. some respondents claimed that they lack the resources to eliminate absconding. however, respondents were confident in being able to mount an immediate response when a child has run away: to start a search, and to contact the child’s family (cucw, 2013, pp. 25–28). the study revealed that the nation-wide guidelines are unclear and are inconsistently applied. this raises an issue of children’s rights, as children are likely to be treated differently in different parts of the country. when a child runs away, cooperation between the front-line workers in residential care, the social worker responsible for the child’s placement, the police, the emergency social services, and the emergency response centre is needed. however, this study revealed gaps and grey areas both in the cooperation between authorities and in their responsibilities. these administrative boundaries between various authorities must be bridged in the future. the authors of this study propose that the national guidelines should be improved, as should the level of cooperation among various authorities (cucw, 2013, pp. 11–13). sensitive situations need sensitive reactions this study indicates that children who run away need understanding rather than punitive reactions and restrictions. appropriate means for surveillance and preventing escapes are required. the findings suggest that children should be given more time with workers and that the workers should pay more attention to building mutual trust. communication between the children and the professionals should be increased and improved. one sensitive reaction worth mentioning is the need to recognize the importance of family members, friends, and others close to the child. taking these crucial relationships more seriously could foster the child’s commitment to the process. dealing with peer and other social relations can be challenging in the context of residential care. on the one hand, troubled peer relations can be a reason for the child’s placement and the need for alternative care. on the other hand, children’s peer relations should be supported to maintain their right to access and relationships. in the future, we suggest the following questions should be explored: how should “good” and “bad” peer relations be defined, and how should friends best be involved in the everyday lives of the children (cucw, 2013, p. 20). our final comment concerns children who run away repeatedly and do not settle down into any kind of alternative-care unit. these children may go from placement to placement in different units with little prospect of stability. such cases present a challenge for the service system for many reasons. children who have experienced many placements probably do not have a trusting relationship with care workers, and may not respond as hoped to interventions. the finnish view of child welfare is that children cannot be locked up and their movement restrained for a long time. sometimes it is difficult to settle a child down without such measures. once a cycle of unstable and unsuccessful placements is under way, child welfare practitioners may not have other tools to break it. the well-being of the children may be difficult to secure in these circumstances. we must ask international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 474 how better to meet the needs of children whose multiple attempts at running away disrupt their prospects for an ordinary life. this question should be elaborated and explored further in future research. conclusion in this article we have introduced a study on unauthorized absences from children’s residential care, implemented by the central union for child welfare in finland, and discussed its main findings. first, the reasons for running away, as well as its consequences, are diverse. second, there is a need for the implementation of more inclusive and consistent practices as well as more explicit cooperation between authorities. finally, the importance of peer relations to children within residential care services should be recognized. we also want to draw attention to the importance of appropriate placement procedures. it seems that running away is closely tied to the success of the whole process. children and their needs should be assessed properly and carefully matched to an alternative care unit (pösö & laakso, 2014). this applies not only at the individual level but also at the level of policy. social workers must ensure that children are placed appropriately and that 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(1965). karkailun ongelma [the problem of runaways]. pieksämäki, finland: sisälähetysseuran raamattutalon kirjapaino. satka, m., harrikari, t., hoikkala, s., & pekkarinen, e. (2007). the diverse impacts of the neoliberal social policies on children’s welfare and social work with young people: the finnish perspective. social work and society, 5(3), 125–135. vehkalahti, k. & hoikkala, s. (2013). gender and discipline in the finnish reformatories of the 1920s. journal of the history of childhood and youth, 6(3), 457–481. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.117 7/1473225410381687 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hcy.2013.0044 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 466–477 477 endnotes 1 the study was carried out by two external researchers, social workers ms. irma lehtonen (m.soc.sc.) and mr. janne telén (m.soc.sc.). it was funded by the alli paasikivi foundation and supervised by a multiprofessional advisory group. the writers of this article are senior advisors at cucw and they have been involved with the research process as advisory group members. cucw has the copyright for the research data and materials. 2 the following partners participated in the preparation process: cucw; the association of finnish local and regional authorities; the family federation of finland; the national institute for health and welfare; the cities of helsinki, espoo, and vantaa; and three service providers. 3 this study excluded both children placed without a care order and children placed into foster care. 4 in saari’s book, “absconding case” means a situation when one person had run away once; “absconding trip” refers to a case when there was an absconding situation including one or more absconders, and the absconder was a person who had absconded one or more times from “his dwelling-place” (1965, p. 43). 5 by tropism, erkki saari refers to a child’s propensity to run away. 6 most managers had a qualification at least from a university of applied sciences in a program related either to social or health matters. most caregivers also had a degree from a similar program. however, 2.4% (n=33) of all workers (n=1389.5) had no appropriate educational background (cucw, 2013, p. 16). 7 residential care units receiving the questionnaire included private children’s homes, the six reform schools run by the state, and the reception centres and children’s homes of the twenty biggest municipalities or joint municipalities, as well as private reception centres. 8 the number of responses was low, 19.6% out of total. reasons for this low number can only be speculated on. however, researchers were contacted and feedback was given concerning the questionnaire itself. according to some, the questionnaire was considered too difficult and timeconsuming to fill in. running away from children’s residential care: the finnish case children’s residential care in finland running away from alternative care the study findings conclusion references endnotes serious conduct problems among girls at risk: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 142 serious conduct problems among girls at risk: translating research into intervention marlene m. moretti, candice odgers, n. dickon reppucci, the gender and aggression project team*, and nicole l. a. catherine abstract: until recently, research on serious conduct problems focused primarily on boys and men. in the past decade, however, we have gained a better understanding of the unique and shared risk and protective factors for girls and boys, and the role of gender in relation to developmental pathways associated with such problems. in this paper we discuss findings from the gender and aggression project on risk and protective factors for girls who are perpetrators but also victims of violence. we discuss our findings from a developmental perspective, with the goal of understanding how exposure to adversity and violence early in life places girls at risk for aggression and violence, among other problems, and how continued exposure to trauma and the disruption of interpersonal and self-regulatory developmental processes cascades into ever deeper and broader problems. this research points more clearly to the need for accessible, evidence-based, and developmentally sensitive intervention. key words: gender, aggression, victimization, mental health, intervention marlene m. moretti, ph.d. is cihr senior research chair, institute of gender and health, and professor, department of psychology, simon fraser university. candice odgers, ph.d. is professor, department of psychology and social behavior, university of california at irvine. n. dickon reppucci, ph.d. is professor, department of psychology, university of virginia. *simon fraser university research team: (tanya bartolo, margaret jackson, ingrid obsuth, maya peled, stephanie penney, gillian watson, zina lee); *university of california at irvine research team: (summer robins, michael russell); and *university of virginia research team: (mandi burnette, preeti chauhan, emily marston, barbara oudekerk). nicole l. a. catherine, postdoctoral fellow, department of psychology, simon fraser university. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 143 although rates of youth violence have levelled off in recent years, sizeable increases have been noted from the mid-1980s, particularly in rates of aggressive and violent acts perpetrated by adolescent girls (east & campbell, 1999; juristat, 2004; puzzanchera, stahl, finnegan, tierney, & snyder, 2003; savoie, 2000). as these trends have become apparent, so has our lack of understanding of the role of gender in aggression and violence. our limited understanding of the developmental precursors of aggression and antisocial behaviour in girls is due to the fact that past research focused primarily on identifying risk and protective factors, and developmental trajectories for boys (barker et al., 2010; vitaro, brendgen, & tremblay, 2001; wilson & lipsey, 2007). over the past decade, however, a number of researchers have turned their attention to the causes, correlates, and consequences of aggression and antisocial behaviour among girls (e.g., acoca, 1998; altschuler & armstrong, 1994; healey, 2001; moretti & obsuth, 2011; moretti, odgers, & jackson, 2004; moretti, penney, obsuth, & odgers, 2006). studies are underway examining the developmental pathways from adolescence to adulthood among high-risk girls, a particularly risky period with respect to social and mental health, especially for girls growing up in adverse conditions. such research is a priority in order to develop prevention and risk reduction programs. despite progress in the field, few studies have undertaken a comprehensive investigation of mental health, social-cognitive outcomes, and physical health in girls at high risk for violent and aggressive behaviours. to this end, our research team has worked together over the past decade to better understand the lives of high-risk adolescents in canada and the united states. the findings reviewed in this paper are derived from our longitudinal research, the gender and aggression project, in which we examined the profiles, risk factors, and outcomes of at-risk adolescent girls and boys in canada and justice-involved adolescent girls in the u.s. (see odgers, moretti, & reppucci, 2010). we briefly summarize research on maltreatment experiences, vulnerable interpersonal beliefs, attributions, and cognitive patterns; risky romantic relationships; mental health problems, including substance use and suicidality; and physical health challenges. we argue that exposure to adversity, early in development and repeatedly over time, contributes to the development of problematic social-cognitive and emotional processing and, in turn, to mental health problems, substance use, and physical health problems. our findings are discussed in relation to policy issues and the development of effective prevention and treatment. child maltreatment, interpersonal beliefs and risky relationships a large body of empirical evidence exists linking child maltreatment to aggression and violence (e.g., fergusson & lynskey, 1997; widom & white, 1997) in close relationships (wekerle & wolfe, 2003; wolfe, wekerle, reitzel-jaffe, & lefebvre, 1998). consistent with this work, our research confirmed that experiences of maltreatment are associated with engagement in aggressive behaviour and a multitude of poor mental, interpersonal, and physical health outcomes for girls. more specifically, girls who were exposed to family violence, physical, emotional, and sexual maltreatment, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 144 and neglect reported higher levels of both overt and relational forms of aggression, and violent offending both concurrently and prospectively (moretti, obsuth, & odgers, 2006; moretti, penney et al., 2006; odgers, reppucci, & moretti, 2005). maltreatment experiences are not only associated with future aggression and violence in girls, but they have also been linked to the development of recurrent patterns of interpersonal problems (burnette, & reppucci, 2009; burnette, south, & reppucci, 2007; moretti, obsuth, odgers, & reebye, 2006). indeed, a large body of literature links maltreatment experiences with the development of borderline personality disorder (bpd) features in girls (rogosch & cicchetti, 2005; wonderlich et al., 2001). many experts in the field view childhood maltreatment as playing a causal role in the development of bpd by interfering with the development of effective emotion regulation (linehan, 1993), in conjunction with other factors such as temperament (harman, 2004). research carried out by our team (burnette & reppucci, 2009; burnette et al., 2007) and others (beauchaine, klein, crowell, derbidge, & gatzke-kopp, 2009) confirmed that childhood physical abuse was associated with bpd features, and further, that these personality features mediated or accounted for the relationship between maltreatment and aggressive and violent behaviour. one mechanism through which maltreatment increases the likelihood of perpetration of aggression is via the development of interpersonal expectations and attributions. in our research we investigated two social-cognitive processes that have been linked to aggressive and violent behaviour: sensitivity to interpersonal rejection and the tendency to ruminate on anger. rejection sensitivity (rs) is the tendency to defensively expect, readily perceive, and overreact to perceived rejection by others (downey, feldman, & ayduk, 2000). the rs model proposes that severe and prolonged rejection, and maltreatment in particular, in early childhood leads to the development of expectations of rejection from others. rs gives rise to a range of interpersonal problem behaviours in response to perceived rejection, including hostility, aggression, and violence, which in turn can precipitate precisely what is most feared – rejection and abandonment. our research confirmed the relation between maltreatment and angry expectations of rejection (rs), and between rs and overt and relational aggression (bartolo, peled, & moretti, 2010; marston, chauhan, grover, & reppucci, 2006). not only are girls who are exposed to maltreatment at greater risk for developing angry expectations of rejection, but they are also vulnerable to ruminating on anger (i.e., thinking repeatedly about their feelings of anger and resentment), which in turn increases their feelings of anger and their tendency to be aggressive in relationships (sukhodolsky, golub, & cromwell, 2001). individuals who engage in anger rumination are more likely than others to retaliate aggressively after being provoked (caprara, 1986; collins & bell, 1997), and may even direct their aggression toward innocent targets (bushman, bonacci, pedersen, vasquez, & miller, 2005). our research confirmed that anger rumination was associated with increased overt and relational aggression in girls at risk (bartolo et al., 2010; peled & moretti, 2007). notably, this association between anger rumination and aggressive behaviour was independent of feelings of anger, suggesting that the cognitive process of anger rumination in itself has a direct relation with aggression. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 145 how do experiences of maltreatment and other adversities, in conjunction with the development of interpersonal, cognitive, and affective vulnerabilities, influence the type of romantic relationships that at-risk girls develop? there is convincing evidence that risky romantic relationships are the nexus of continued aggressive behaviour and poor mental health among at-risk adolescent girls: results show that these girls are victimized in their close relationships and, in turn, they perpetuate aggression within their romantic relationships (e.g., gilligan & wiggins, 1988; odgers et al., 2005). numerous studies show that female aggression is more likely to ensue in the context of romantic or family relationships (straus & ramirez, 2007; shaw & dubois, 1995) and that, compared to boys, the victims of girls’ violence are more likely to be an acquaintance, friend, or partner (archer, 2000). what experiences have led girls to navigate their close relationships through aggressive strategies? in one of our early studies (moretti, obsuth, odgers, & reebye, 2006) we found that girls who were exposed to their mother’s perpetration of aggression toward their father (or their mother’s partner) were more likely to be aggressive themselves in their peer and romantic relationships. in contrast, boys exposed to their father’s perpetration of physical aggression toward their mothers (or father’s partner) were more likely to be physically aggressive in their peer relationships, but their aggression in their romantic relationships was primarily related to their mothers perpetration of partner violence. these findings suggest that both girls and boys learn important lessons about navigating close relationships through their exposure to interparental violence. in particular, mothers’ perpetration of physical aggression toward romantic partners (i.e., slapping, hitting, using a weapon) appears to be a highly influential model that guides girls’ aggression in their own peer and romantic relationships. our research on attachment patterns in adolescent girls at risk provides further confirmation of the importance of internal models of relationships that influence violence perpetration. like other researchers (allen et al., 2002; allen, porter, mcfarland, mcelhaney, & marsh, 2007; brown & wright, 2003), we found that the tendency to be anxiously attached was common among at-risk girls and was associated with the perpetration of interpersonal aggression (obsuth, 2009; moretti & obsuth, 2011). we concur with artz (1998) that the significance of relationships for girls can introduce risks for their health and well-being, and more specifically contribute to their vulnerability for victimization and perpetration of violence. this is especially true for girls who are growing up in risky contexts. this model of female aggression emphasizes the need to understand the experiences of girls in prior relationships – particularly experiences of trauma and maltreatment – in terms of how girls may draw upon their experience of interparental aggression when forming their own intimate, yet violent relationships. although research on the romantic relationships of at-risk girls is just beginning to burgeon, the emerging findings consistently suggest these girls are vulnerable to forming romantic relationships with antisocial partners and such liaisons can often lead to even further victimization and engagement in risk behaviour (haynie, giordano, manning, & longmore, 2005). in our recent study of the quality of at-risk international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 146 girls’ romantic relationships, we found that even though many girls reported satisfaction with their partners, the majority of these relationships were characterized by high rates of victimization and violence (see oudekerk & reppucci, 2010). in turn, girls who were involved in relationships with antisocial partners were more likely to continue offending, whereas girls who formed relationships with prosocial partners were more likely to desist from crime. furthermore, violent victimization within girls’ romantic relationships was a powerful predictor of risk of violent recidivism: girls who experienced violence in mid adolescence were approximately 11 times more likely than girls who were not victimized to commit a violent offence in late adolescence (see oudekerk & reppucci, 2010). surprisingly, even though many girls reported dating antisocial boyfriends and experiencing violence and victimization within their relationships, 75% of girls felt strongly that their partners cared for and supported them. these seemingly contradictory findings – that girls feel cared about and satisfied in relationships in which they are victimized – speak to the powerful influence of lessons about violence and intimacy that girls learn through exposure to interparental violence. given these past experiences, girls may come to expect that violence and intimacy go hand in hand. they may even view relationship violence as an expression of attachment. if this is the case, these girls might not be inclined to discuss their partners’ abusive and antisocial behaviours with authorities, nor will they be inclined to seek out social services until violence escalates to extraordinary levels. more research is needed to better understand the developmental pathways and experiences of closeness combined with violence that these girls experience. juvenile justice interventions that promote the formation of healthy romantic relationships may contribute to the reduction of recidivism and encourage positive outcomes in adulthood. as we will discuss in detail later, these findings point to the primary importance of preventing child abuse as a key to reducing the problem of youth violence, for both girls and boys. not only do such experiences result in profound damage to young children, but their effects on developmental processes are also carried forward into adolescence and adulthood. maltreatment experiences have a powerful direct relationship with aggressive behaviour, and they have an equally if not more deleterious effect through a multitude of cognitive, affective, and interpersonal developmental pathways as we have illustrated here. mental health problems girls involved in aggressive and violent behaviour and those involved in the juvenile justice system bear a heavy burden of mental health problems. teplin and colleagues (2002) reported that approximately 75% suffer from one or more psychiatric disorders. similarly, in their longitudinal research, moffitt, caspi, rutter, and silva (2001) found that 88% of the boys and 93% of the girls met criteria for one or more disorders. not only are prevalence rates of externalizing and internalizing disorders among incarcerated females substantially higher than in normative community samples of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 147 adolescent females (costello, mustillo, erkanli, keeler, & angold, 2003; dixon, howie, & starling, 2004; domalanta, w. risser, roberts, & j. risser, 2003; fazel, doll, & langstrom, 2008; loeber, farrington, stouthamer-loeber, & white, 2008; teplin et al., 2002), but psychiatric disorders appear even more common among at-risk girls than boys (cauffman, 2004; espelage et al., 2003; grisso, 2004). these findings suggest that incarcerated adolescent females may be the most psychiatrically impaired population in today’s juvenile justice system. our research was consistent with this conclusion: 88% of girls in our canadian sample and 94% of girls in our u.s. sample met diagnostic criteria for at least one psychological disorder (see russell & marston, 2010). more specifically, using a standardized diagnostic interview, obsuth, watson, and moretti (2010) found a lifetime prevalence among canadian girls at risk of 71% for conduct disorder (cd), 68% for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd), 49% for major depressive disorder (mdd), and 52% for post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). these rates were even higher for girls with onset of cd before age 10 (i.e., early onset cd): 85% met criteria of adhd at some point in their life, 74% mdd, and 57% ptsd. similar results emerged in our sample of at-risk girls from the u.s. comorbidity is also the rule rather than the exception among girls at risk (abram, teplin, mcclelland, & dulcan, 2003; dixon et al., 2004; dolamanta et al., 2003; ulzen & hamilton, 1998). our research also bore consistent findings: in the canadian sample, 59% of girls met criteria for at least three disorders in addition to cd. similar rates were observed in our u.s. sample (russell & marston, 2010). not only is the burden of mental health suffering immense among girls at risk for aggressive and violent behaviour, but it is a burden that extends into their future: for example, russell and marston (2010) found that adhd in girls in our american sample increased the odds of self-reported offending, mental health impairment, and continued psychopathology approximately two years after release from detention. adhd also uniquely, and apart from other comorbid disorders, predicted enduring externalizing problems such as aggression and rulebreaking behaviour in the transition to adulthood. these results highlight the unique risks that adhd adds to the mix of comorbid mental health problems experienced by at-risk girls, problems that must be better understood and addressed in treatment planning. we also examined comorbidity among girls who met criteria for early onset cd (i.e., up to age 10) versus adolescent onset cd (obsuth et al., 2010). girls with early versus late onset cd were just as likely to suffer from up to three comorbid psychiatric disorders (i.e., cd plus two additional disorders), suggesting that even those girls with late onset were at high risk for mental health problems as they moved toward adulthood. nonetheless, early onset girls were more likely than late starters to have four or more disorders showing an even greater burden of risk, confirming prior research on the seriousness of early onset trajectories. however, the important take-home message is not that late onset cd is clinically insignificant; rather, both early onset and late onset cd in girls carries a disconcerting risk for mental health problems which are very likely to cause ripple effects in their social, emotional, and vocational adjustment as they transition to adulthood. thus, researchers and practitioners are advised to reconsider the assumption that these girls will “grow out of it”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 148 substance use and dependence our results from the gender and aggression project were consistent with previous reports showing that the rates of substance abuse and dependence are high in this highrisk population: 70% met criteria for at least one substance dependence disorder (alcohol, marijuana, and/or street drugs) at the time of the assessment and 74% of youth met criteria for at least one dependence disorder over their lifespan (see obsuth et al., 2010). similar rates were observed for girls and boys. with respect to specific substances, alcohol was the most common form of substance problem with almost 60% of youth meeting criteria for a current alcohol dependence (ad) and 61% meeting criteria for a lifetime diagnosis of ad. both girls and boys reported early onset of alcohol use (10.6 years of age). girls reported their first symptom of ad at approximately 13.3 years of age and boys at 13.8 years of age. marijuana dependence was also common: 48% met criteria for current marijuana dependence (md) and 57% met criteria for lifetime md. girls and boys reported first use around age 11 and first symptoms of dependence at 12.6 years for girls and 13.0 years for boys. current street drug dependence (sdd, e.g., heroin, downers, cocaine, speed, crack) was diagnosed in 40% of youth and 45% met criteria for a lifetime diagnosis of sdd. first use started around age 13 for girls and boys and the mean onset of dependence occurred shortly afterwards. in sum, girls who are victimized and victimize others are highly similar to their male counterparts in very early onset of multiple forms of substance use and high risk for substance dependence. further, our findings revealed high levels of comorbidity between substance dependence and other psychiatric disorders, particularly for girls (obsuth et al., 2010). our findings highlight the urgent need to develop effective early intervention within high-risk populations to reduce early substance use and offset the development of dependence. such programs must also address the other mental health problems that challenge these youth, particularly girls. physical and sexual health the problems experienced by at-risk girls extend beyond their social and emotional well-being. recently researchers have turned their attention to the medical and physical health challenges that these young women face (e.g., timmons-mitchell et al., 1997; dixon et al., 2004). our research team addressed this issue by assessing the physical health of a population of girls sentenced to custody in a u.s. state using a multimethod approach that integrated self-report, physician gathered, and biomarker data (see robins, odgers, & russell, 2010). we found that at-risk girls experience high rates of physical health problems (e.g., asthma, obesity), sexual health problems (sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy), and are at elevated risk for physical injury (fracture, head injury, gunshot) and self-inflicted harm. moreover, these problems persisted into young adulthood with 40% continuing to engage in health risk behaviours and close to 30% reporting that they engage in self-harm behaviour. thus, not only must programs address the wide range of social, emotional, and mental health problems that atinternational journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 149 risk girls experience, and their substance use issues, but programs must also attend to their physical and sexual health problems. given the long list of acute needs of at-risk girls, it is not surprising that mental health providers and other professionals feel overwhelmed and ill-equipped to provide interventions that are tailored, yet sufficiently broad to be effective. implications for intervention and social policy what are the implications of our findings for treatment and social policy? importantly, our work highlights the need for gender-sensitive risk assessment tools (see penney & lee, 2010). girls perhaps more than boys require full spectrum screening programs that assess both externalizing (e.g., conduct disorder, adhd) and internalizing (e.g., depression, anxiety, ptsd) disorders, as well as substance use disorders. developmental sequencing of disorders can be informative in shaping intervention for girls. for example, girls who develop substance use problems secondary to trauma and ptsd may require a different approach to treatment than girls who develop substance use problems in conjunction with conduct disorder and adhd. in terms of treatment, the findings presented here and elsewhere (glantz et al., 2009; moretti, obsuth, & odgers, 2006; moretti, obsuth, odgers, & reebye, 2006; moretti, penney et al., 2006; odgers et al., 2005) underscore the importance of prevention and early intervention. specifically, these results and innumerable others highlight the harmful and long-lasting effects of child maltreatment. preventing child abuse and neglect must be a priority if we are serious about reducing violent, aggressive, and antisocial behaviour in all children and youth. the early, chronic, and serious nature of maltreatment in the lives of high-risk girls warrants special attention. in interviews and from social service records we often learned that girls’ experiences of victimization were not identified until much later than the occurrence, and even when identified, intervention was often limited. if interventions occurred (such as placement outside of the family home or changes between foster homes), they were often time-limited, fragmented, and lacked integration into a systemic model of care. consequently, they did not necessarily lead to better care or better health outcomes; social service files grew thicker but with no identifiable benefit. importantly, this often appeared as frustrating to social service workers as it was to families and youth themselves. social workers frequently ran into barriers in accessing appropriate evidence-based services, integrating services and care across systems, and ensuring continuity of services. high quality, evidence-based, and accessible early interventions must be more readily available across communities. while many effective programs exist, few are implemented within communities. indeed, the gap between science and practice in this regard is so significant that it raises questions about our ethical obligations at both research and government levels. for example, excellent programs have been developed for parents, particularly those at high risk, even prior to the birth of their child or early in childhood. evaluation of services has produced impressive long-term positive effects. perhaps the best known of such programs is the nurse home visitation program, which provides home visits to young unmarried teens during their first pregnancy and up to the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 150 first two years of the child’s life (olds, 2006). a 15-year follow-up evaluation revealed that the children of mothers who participated in this program had accrued significantly fewer arrests, convictions, and parole violations compared to the children of mothers who did not take part in this program (olds et al., 1998). even if programs are not initiated prior to birth or during a child’s infancy, there is still good evidence for intervening in the early school years. for example, the fast track program identified high-risk children and randomly assigned them to comparison condition (services as usual) versus an integrated program of familyand child-based intervention beginning in grade 1 and continuing to grade 10 (conduct problems prevention research group [cpprg], 2007). children in the integrated fast track program were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with cd than children who were in the comparison condition. based on the number of averted conduct disorder cases achieved through the program, it was estimated to save $3,481,433 for the entire sample included in the study, or $752,103 for each youth at the highest level of risk (cpprg, 2007). although early childhood prevention and interventions are clearly very important (e.g., bakermans-kranenburg, van ijzendoorn, & juffer, 2003; klein-velderman, bakermans-kranenburg, juffer, & van ijzendoorn, 2006; maughan, christiansen, jenson, olympia, & clark, 2005; reynolds, mathieson, & topitzes, 2009), estimates reveal that between 70% and 90% of young children who are in need of intervention for serious behaviour problems do not receive it (brestan & eyberg, 1998). furthermore, almost half of children who develop serious behaviour problems do not do so until adolescence (broidy et al., 2003). even though early onset conduct problems are more likely to have a persistent life course trajectory than are adolescent onset problems (moffitt, 1993, 2006), as previously noted, our research shows that adolescent onset conduct problems also have serious and lasting consequences for girls. there is good evidence for the effectiveness of integrated wrap-around programs that tailor treatment plans to the needs of each family and include parent, teen, and family interventions. several trials have supported the efficacy of mulitsystemic therapy or mst (sheidow & woodford, 2003) compared to individual outpatient counselling or standard community treatment in reducing recidivism and improving the quality of family relationships (carr, 2005). however, research suggests that comparable effects can be achieved through good quality community wraparound support (sundell et al., 2008). this seems to suggest that systemic integration is very important and should be sustained and strengthened within communities, whether this is achieved through adoption of a strict mst model or through other means. promoting healthy parent-teen relationships is an essential component of all intervention programs in the pre-teen and teen years. during this developmental transition, parents and teens undergo rapid changes and teens are often exposed to very risky situations. our research highlighted the importance of parent-daughter relationships: girls at high risk for conduct problems commonly reported a history of child maltreatment, experiences which set a precarious foundation for their expectations about other social relationships (moretti, obsuth, & odgers, 2006; russell & marston, 2010). they lacked attachment security in their relationships with their caregivers and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 151 they were sensitive and vigilant to rejection (bartolo et al., 2006). seeking to have their interpersonal and attachment needs met in other relationships, they often became involved in romantic relationships that placed them at even greater risk for victimization (oudekerk & reppucci, 2010). interventions for adolescents focused on attachment are beginning to emerge and they show promising results (e.g., g. s. diamond, reis, g. m. diamond, siqueland, & isaacs, 2002; keiley, 2002). in our work with high-risk teens, we have developed a brief manualized intervention (the connect program) designed to promote attachment security in the relationships of caregivers and high-risk teens (moretti & obsuth, 2009). this program bears many similarities to other parenting programs, but places parent-teen attachment at the forefront in the theoretical rationale, structure, and content of the program. our research shows that this short-term, cost efficient program has considerable promise in producing significant reductions in conduct problems and increasing parenting efficacy and satisfaction (moretti & obsuth, 2009). these effects were sustained and additional reductions in conduct problems, depression, and anxiety were noted at the 12month follow-up. additionally, the program has been highly portable across communities and cultures (moretti & obsuth, 2009). to summarize, there are a number of effective prevention, early intervention, and risk reduction programs to integrate into clinical service delivery models within our communities. what we do not know is whether these programs produce similar results for girls and boys. some researchers and clinicians argue that differences in risk factors, mental health, and social consequences for girls and boys warrant gender-specific programs (acoca, 1998; altschuler & armstrong, 1994; healey, 2001; moretti & obsuth, 2011; moretti et al., 2004; moretti, penney et al., 2006; nicholls, greaves, & moretti, 2009), pointing out that existing research has failed to detect these differences because we have not looked for them in meaningful ways. others point to the similarities between girls and boys in risk factors and processes related to problem behaviour, and counter that gender-tailored or gender-specific interventions are unnecessary and a waste of limited resources (scott, spender, doolan, jacobs, & aspland, 2001). past studies offer little guidance on this issue because there has been greater focus on the development and evaluation of interventions for adolescent boys than girls (barker et al., 2010; vitaro et al., 2001; wilson & lipsey, 2007) and gender differences have rarely been addressed even when the same program is delivered to both girls and boys (maughan et al., 2005). when gender has been addressed, it was typically examined in a cursory manner by simply comparing outcomes across gender. what is needed is a genderand sex-based analysis that goes beyond the previous research and addresses how gender matters in terms of the spectrum of risk and protective factors, the nature and trajectory of comorbid mental health, social, and health problems, and the factors that account for treatment effects. it is entirely possible that similar treatment outcomes occur for girls and boys, but these effects may arise for different reasons or as a function of different therapeutic change processes. for example, in our evaluation of the connect program, we have preliminary research that suggests parentdaughter dyads change differently than parent-son dyads, yet both achieve similar international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 152 outcomes in terms of reduced conduct problems. if gender matters in determining these processes, it is possible that fine-tuning our interventions to maximize gendered change processes can further increase our treatment effectiveness (moretti & obsuth, 2009). finally, researchers have been too silent on the issue of cultural and other forms of diversity, but social context matters on several fronts. programs may not be available or easily accessible and those that are may not be tailored to the unique racial and social context needs and challenges (e.g., chauhan, reppucci, & turkheimer, 2009). through engagement with communities and youth, tailored programs can be developed that contain standard components with proven efficacy within a culturally sensitive treatment structure. summary in sum, like other researchers, we found that girls at risk for engaging in aggressive and antisocial behaviour were themselves victims of maltreatment and violence (moretti, obsuth, & odgers, 2006; moretti, obsuth, odgers, & reebye, 2006; moretti, penney et al., 2006; odgers et al., 2005; penney & lee, 2010). we also found that these girls developed high levels of vigilance and rejection sensitivity within their close relationships and furthermore, they became involved in romantic relationships in which they were victimized by their partners (bartolo et al., 2010; oudekerk & reppucci, 2010). mental health problems emerged early in their development, and they typically experienced multiple mental health conditions as they moved toward early adulthood including ptsd, depression, and substance dependence (obsuth et al., 2010; russell & marston, 2010). not surprisingly, the majority of these girls suffered poor health outcomes in early adulthood, including mental and physical problems (robins et al., 2010). there is no lack of evidence for the clinical and economic value of intervention. effective programs have been developed to assist at-risk parents prior to the birth of their children; effective programs also exist for early childhood prevention and intervention; new, exciting, and effective programs are emerging for teens. these programs offer considerable benefit at low cost. the critical question is this: if effective and economically advantageous programs exist, why have we lagged so far behind in implementation? this is a serious question for researchers, policy-makers, and clinicians alike. at the heart of the issue is our ethical and moral obligation to do the right thing. unless researchers, politicians, and clinicians become aligned and work collaboratively, we are unlikely to improve the lives of children and young adults. if we are unlikely to translate our research into measurable benefits, we should begin to the question the value of continuing to invest in research. harsh statements to be sure, but such issues need to be raised. as we have noted, we know little about the relative effectiveness of programs for girls versus boys. few studies have asked this question, and we have yet to examine this issue in a sophisticated way that can shed light on whether we need gender-specific or gender-tailored programs. for the time being, given the lack of services in general, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 153 policy-makers and clinicians are well advised to advocate for the effective programs we now have and to use these wherever possible. this does not preclude further examination of the question of whether and how gender matters in terms of treatment processes and effectiveness. indeed, this is an exciting area of further research and practice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 142-161 154 references abram, k. m., teplin, l. a., mcclelland, g. m., & dulcan, m. k. 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(2001). sexual trauma and personality: developmental vulnerability and additive effects. journal of personality disorders, 15(6), 496-504. social justice in akwa ibom state, nigeria: a content analysis of children accused of practicing witchcraft international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 447 children accused of practicing witchcraft in akwa ibom, nigeria: a qualitative analysis of online news media uchenna onuzulike abstract: this essay analyzes online news media reactions to the labeling and stigmatizing of children as witches in eket, within the state of akwa ibom, nigeria. the paper was triggered by governor godswill akpabio’s august 30, 2010, appearance on cnn, during which he stated that the situation of these stigmatized children is exaggerated. this essay seeks to understand what perspectives the online news media created in response to akpabio’s interview. three themes – the children accused, the behavior of the gatekeepers (i.e., among others, parents, guardians, religious leaders, and government officials), and the practice of witchcraft – emerge from the data. the results reveal the following: (a) the governor is defensive and in denial, (b) the involved pastors are opportunists, and (c) the accused children are abandoned, maltreated, and sometimes murdered. results also show that none of the analyzed online news media specifically blame the parents of the accused children; rather they blame the governor and pastors, and specifically helen ukpabio. further analysis indicates that poverty is not necessarily the root of the problem as the governor claims. the essay recommends acknowledgement of folk belief systems in the training of gatekeepers. keywords: children accused of practicing witchcraft, pentecostalism, online news media uchenna onuzulike (ph.d. candidate, department of communication and culture, howard university) is a doctoral fellow in the school of media arts and design at james madison university, msc 2104, 54 bluestone drive, harrisonburg, virginia, usa 22807. e-mail: uchelike@gmail.com mailto:uchelike@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 448 on august 30, 2010, the cable news network (cnn) interviewed chief godswill akpabio1, governor of the akwa ibom state in nigeria, regarding children accused of practicing witchcraft2. akpabio responded that the child abuse associated with witchcraft is exaggerated and that the real problem is poverty and not witchcraft, a response that triggered much criticism (ezeamalu, 2010; fakoya, 2010b; ndibe, 2010; onwumere, 2010). in addition, akpabio accused charitable organizations of using the children who have been accused of practicing witchcraft as tools to obtain donations, which they use for their own benefit and to tarnish the image of the akwa ibom state (cnn, 2010). the governor, who has five children, said that he would never allow children to be abused or stigmatized (cnn, 2010). although there are reports and reactions in the news that address children accused of witchcraft in the state (foxcroft, 2009; schnoebelen, 2009; unicef, 2010; ezeamalu, 2010; fakoya, 2010b; igwe, 2011a, 2011b; ndibe, 2010; okon, 2010), there is no known study of the media content addressing this issue since governor akpabio’s interview on cnn. this research, therefore, seeks to understand the nature of the content of online news media, primarily nigerian, by analyzing the characterization of the children accused of practicing witchcraft, the gatekeepers (including but not limited to include parents, guardians, religious leaders, and government officials), and the practice of witchcraft in the news. this study defines witchcraft as a belief in the manifestation of supernatural powers which may be innate in a person, inherited, or acquired in several ways (mbiti, 1975/1991). the author, who grew up in the eastern part of nigeria, and currently resides in the united states, has lived the culture and has first-hand knowledge regarding the seriousness of witchcraft accusations. the purpose of this essay is to determine how the children accused of practicing witchcraft, the gatekeepers, and the practice of witchcraft itself were characterized by the online news media that appeared on selected news websites between the august 30, 2010 airing of governor akpabio’s interview with cnn, and 12 days after the arraignment of mr. sam ikpeitauma by the governor on january 11, 2011, for accusations of fraud and of defaming the akwa ibom state3. in constructing this paper, three themes (children accused, behavior of gatekeepers, and practice of witchcraft) and six subthemes (physical harm, structural harm, being deceitful, terrorizing, superstition, and evil) were generated. secondarily, this essay aims to draw attention to the fact poverty is not necessarily the root of witchcraft accusations, as claimed by governor akpabio. 1 two versions of this article were presented at the 2012 eastern communication association conference in cambridge, massachusetts, as a top-four student paper and at the 2011 howard university graduate symposium. 2 the interview can be seen on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkc70_rzbke 3 her picture can be seen on the child’s right and rehabilitation network’s page (warning: graphic image): http://www.facebook.com/crarn#!/photo.php?fbid=184518944924590&set=a.184514471591704.3838 5.184502538259564&type=1&theater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkc70_rzbke http://www.facebook.com/crarn#!/photo.php?fbid=184518944924590&set=a.184514471591704.38385.184502538259564&type=1&theater http://www.facebook.com/crarn#!/photo.php?fbid=184518944924590&set=a.184514471591704.38385.184502538259564&type=1&theater international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 449 accusing children of practicing witchcraft the phenomenon of accusing children of practicing witchcraft is relatively new as women and the elderly have been popularly accused in the past (cahn, 2006; foxcroft, 2009; schnoebelen, 2009). cahn (2006) notes that “children are generally accused of witchcraft by two different groups: churches or the families of the children themselves” (p. 422). cahn further notes that “children may be labeled as sorcerers by the preachers themselves, who blame the failure of their prophecies on interference by a child sorcerer, or who, in attempting to explain a family’s misfortune, blame a child” (p. 422). witchcraft belief differs from one culture to another, but it is relatively the same when it comes to the belief that it is “harmful actions carried out by persons presumed to have access to supernatural powers” (adam ashforth, as cited in veroff, 2010, p. 27). according to foxcroft (2009), “numerous cases of children being accused of witchcraft and horrifically abused have been highlighted in the democratic of congo, angola and, most recently, nigeria” (para. 22). foxcroft notes that “abuses of children’s rights linked to witchcraft are not isolated to africa” (para. 23). for example, “pakistani police have found the body of a child with his throat cut in a town where two men were arrested earlier this year for allegedly murdering four children to use their blood in witchcraft, police said today” (religion news blog, herald sun, 2004, para. 1). foxcroft (2009) further notes these children were not accused of witchcraft, rather they were used for witchcraft sacrifices: since the late 1990’s a new witch hunt has taken place in this region. the massive boom in pentecostal churches preaching the gospel of child witchcraft, demonic possessions, deliverance and exorcisms has led to a huge rise in accusations of witchcraft against children. a significant number of pentecostal pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young nigerians. children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money from the fear of parents and communities. (para. 32) this statement demonstrates how children are vulnerable in certain regions in nigeria when it comes to witchcraft accusations. according to the written statement submitted by the international humanist and ethical union (iheu), a non-governmental organization in special consultative statutes to the united nations, films such as ukpabio’s end of the wicked (benson, 1999; false prophet nigeria, 2008) depict children as witches. fakoya (2010a, para. 3) notes that in ukpabio’s (1996) book, unveiling the mysteries of witchcraft, she writes “that a child under the age of two that cries at night and has poor health is ‘an agent of satan’” (p. 3). foxcroft (2009) states that research done by stepping stones nigeria found that this film is “one of the significant contributory factors behind the spread of the belief in child witches” (para. 26). even though the child witchcraft accusations and sacrifices are not isolated to africa (foxcroft, 2009), the children accused of witchcraft practices in eket, akwa ibom deserve attention due to reports by the media of significant child abuse related to the accusations (cnn, 2010; sahara reporters, 2011a). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 450 witchcraft in akwa ibom state according to offiong (1983a), for the akwa ibomites (the ibibios), witchcraft “is the psychic act through which socially disapproved supernatural techniques influence events” (p. 82). he goes further to say that they clearly visualize witchcraft as evil in the sense that it destroys life through supernatural activities, as well as by “eating the soul of their victim, thereby causing that person’s death” (p. 82). by his definition, witchcraft is a belief in the possession of some mystical powers by which evil or harm can be done to someone (quarcoopome, 1987). in addition, awolalu (1979) articulates: [a] witch is a wise person [who is]supposed to possess supernatural powers in consequence of forming a league with the devil or evil spirits, and through such an evil alliance and co-operation the possession of the craft which enables her [or him] to perform supernatural acts which, in most cases, are destructive. (p. 80) in some african societies, notions about witchcraft consist of a belief that the spirits of living human beings can be sent out of the body on errands to wreak havoc on other individuals. it is usually believed that witches can communicate with the world of the dead or with supernatural forces. adult witches are said to bewitch children by giving them “witch” in the food and then using them to achieve their evil objectives by bringing misfortune to their families and enemies, causing illnesses, bad luck and death (mbiti, 1975/1991; quarcoopome, 1987). as mbiti (1969/1999) states, “in africa villages, disease and misfortune are religious experiences, and it requires a religious approach to deal with them” (p. 165). although the above assertion may not be true across all african societies, it may help to explain why many citizens of eket attribute their misfortune to their children. this mindset is what the parents in eket adopt when abusing and abandoning their children. on january 11, 2011, in akwa ibom, a team of police officers rescued an eight-year-old girl who was abandoned by her family after being accused of witchcraft. she had started sleeping in the market square and was eventually kidnapped by a 40-year-old man believed to be mentally ill. since 2010, she had lived with him in a shanty house, where he raped her repeatedly (igwe, 2011b). despite the violent nature of this incident, according to sahara reporters (2011a), governor akpabio was concerned only about the image of his government. akpabio vehemently opposed the witchcraft stigmatization of his state and, as a result, ordered the eviction of two leading ngo employees who were providing shelter for abandoned children. igwe (2011a) points to cnn’s documentation of the churches’ role in child victimization. he says that cnn offered an opportunity to akpabio’s government to defend itself regarding the child witchcraft phenomenon in his state, “but it blew it” (para. 7). igwe contends that the governor instead blamed the ngos for utilizing the same image to attract sympathy and funds from international donors. the governor says that he introduced the 2008 child rights act as a comprehensive safeguard for the rights of children, specifically those stigmatized as witches and wizards, but igwe (2011a) notes that no one has been convicted since the enactment of the law. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 451 neo-pentecostal and charismatic churches’ implications according to smith (2001), “in many respects, [p]entecostal churches in nigeria have positioned themselves against the social forces perceived to be responsible for inequality, forces that are locally understood to be supernatural as well as political and economic” (p. 588). he argues that the popularity of pentecostalism is connected with mass dissatisfaction “over poverty and inequality and with people’s aspirations to achieve wealth and prosperity” (p. 588, emphasis in original). “much of the literature on the proliferation of witchcraft in modern africa has focused on the dramatic nature of contemporary inequality” (bayart, 1993, as cited in smith, 2001, p. 593). in his article, akrong (2000) argues that witchcraft in ghana took on a new dimension and reintegrated itself into the african way of life. he notes that the importance attached to witchcraft in the neo-pentecostal and charismatic churches is increasingly “crediting what can be described as a revived witchcraft mentality in popular christianity” (p. 1). by borrowing akrong’s understanding of the similar ghanaian situation, the consequence is that: [in nigerian] popular culture, christianity is perceived as a religion with the power to deal with the old threat of witchcraft. the result is the emergence of what might be called a neo-witchcraft mentality in the neo-pentecostal and charismatic churches, which uses witchcraft as an interpretative scheme for dealing with misfortune. (p. 1) this statement indicates that these churches perceive themselves as a tool for eradicating witchcraft in the lives of their congregations. furthermore, as akrong argues, “the ideological framework and the cultural infrastructure for the construction and maintenance of this new witchcraft mentality of the charismatic movement … [are] deeply embedded in the traditional african metaphysical construction of the world” (p. 2). the statement shows that recent beliefs that witchcraft exists were engineered by the charismatic movement as a way to connect with beliefs rooted in african culture and how it perceives the world. as mbiti (1975/1991) notes, africans are very religious and their cultures are intertwined with religion. their worldview of the supernatural is unique, making it easier for pastors with motives beyond what is traditionally acknowledged to impose their ideology on less-educated african peoples. this analysis supports the intent of popular christianity to repack the african traditional witchcraft mindset into christian rhetoric, which could result in child abuse. it is not uncommon for online news media outlets to join the debate when it comes to socio-cultural or socio-religious issues, as in this case (fakoya, 2010a; igwe, 2011a, 2011b; ndibe, 2010; okon, 2010). online news media research on the use of online news media continues to increase (e.g., mitman, nikolaev, & porpora, 2012; yoo, 2011), especially concerning adults who use the internet to keep abreast of the news (abdulla, garrison, salwen, driscoll, & casey, 2005). scholars have explored the significance of national online news coverage as well as reader comments (glenn, champion, & spence, 2012). even though online news media have accelerated the spread of information, they also raise troubling issues. according to abdulla et al. (2005): international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 452 multiple concerns about online news and information have emerged in the past decade. these include fear about public access to private information, but also about publication of rumors online, inclusion of personal and institutional biases, the general levels of trust of online news, and the accuracy of information rapidly posted to web sites during the cycles of breaking news stories. (p. 147) in political news, for example, it is common to find bias in liberal, conservative, moderate, and corporate media (doumit & minai, 2011). even though bias within online news media appears to be pervasive, traditional news media also invest in online news media. salwen (2005) notes that print and broadcast news organization which have online news media, can use this outlet to “contribute to public knowledge about news and public affairs issues by carrying original news of social consequence” (p. 47). he further observes that one of the advantages of online news media over print media includes “unlimited space and the ability to report the news at any time”. consequently, “when media users can fulfill a majority of their goals and needs through a particular medium, they become not only dependent on that medium, but also affected by that medium” (mckeague & leidman, 2010, p. 37), a statement indicating the impact of media on the lives of their audiences. on the basis of this discussion of online news media, this essay aims to understand the nature of media content by analyzing how online news media characterized children accused of practicing witchcraft, the gatekeepers, and the practice of witchcraft. in order to do this, the following questions are posed: 1: how were the children accused of witchcraft characterized by the online news media? 2: how was the behavior of the gatekeepers characterized in the online news media? 3: how was the practice of witchcraft characterized in the online news media? methodological approach the study utilizes frequencies from qualitative analysis to indicate how the online news media stories or opinion pieces interpreted and responded to governor akpabio’s interview with cnn regarding the children accused of practicing witchcraft in akwa ibom state. it basically seeks to understand the perspectives the online news media used or created in response to akpabio’s interview. as a result, three variables examined in this essay were children accused, behavior of the gatekeepers, and practice of witchcraft. the author was in part guided in these choices by his own knowledge and background as a nigerian who grew up in that culture. sample selection with the keyword combination “helen ukpabio and godswill akpabio and children accused of practicing witchcraft in akwa ibom state,” the author used the google search engine to locate news accounts published between august 30, 2010 and january 11, 2011. this time frame was chosen because it encompasses governor akpabio’s interview with cnn on august 30, 2010 through to the arraignment of mr. sam ikpe-itauma by the governor for fraud and the defaming of the akwa ibom state on december 30, 2010. to select the news articles, the author utilized criteria of whether an article emphasized reaction to the governor’s interview or the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 453 arraignment of itauma. out of 66 nigerian online news stories identified, 23 emphasized reactions to the governor’s interview and the arraignment of itauma. twenty of the 23 selected articles were from nigerian online news media (some of which are diaspora-based) and three were from western news media, including the cnn posting that carried the interview in question.4 procedures stories were coded for topics, words, and phrases used by the online news media in relation to governor akpabio’s interview with cnn and witchcraft (see table 1). after reading each commentary or opinion piece several times, the author determined its relevance and identified three recurring attributes, used as three separate themes, from which the six subthemes emerged. the following were the emerged three themes and six subthemes: (a) the theme children accused generated the two subthemes of physical harm and structural harm; (b) the theme behavior of gatekeepers generated the two subthemes of being deceitful and terrorizing; and (c) the theme practice of witchcraft generated the two subthemes of superstition and evil (see table 1). all of the 23 analyzed online news media are opinion pieces authored by critics, except for the cnn interview given by governor akpabio. table 1. themes, subthemes, and codes themes children accused behavior of gatekeepers practice of witchcraft subthemes physical harm structural harm being deceitful terrorizing evil superstition codes burned beaten bathed in acid killed abandoned indirect economic and cultural violence manipulation fake exaggerated minimal gunmen militancy arrest firing sporadically misfortune exorcism bloodsucking magic supernatural mysterious forces 4 see also the following: 234 next, 2010; akwaibomites news, 2010; baudiirocz, 2009; emma, 2012; front line, 2011; holyreg, 2010; muller and brimelow, 2010; oloye, 2010; p. m. news, 2010; rahaman, 2010; sahara reporters, 2011b, 2011c; umanah, 2010. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 454 results theme 1: children accused the first research question addresses how the children accused of witchcraft were characterized by the online news media. the analyzed online news media characterized children accused of witchcraft as physical(ly) abuse(d) and structural(ly) abuse(d). there were some words and phrases denoting physical harm, including “burned”, “beaten”, “bathed in acid”, and “killed”. example of words and phrases utilized in coding structural harm include “abandoned”, “stigmatized”, “emotional injury”, and “emotional and psychological torture of children”. examples of comments used in coding structural harm include “unidentified [persons] ransacked the crarn centre in the night, ostensibly in the search for mr. ikpe-itauma, leaving the young children traumatized” (sahara reporters, 2010c, para. 9); and further, “the ministry was also ignorant of the activities of ngos in the state which took up the challenge of providing for the children who were stigmatized, and who found themselves abandoned and neglected by the government and society” (sahara reporters, 2011a, para. 5). figure 1: children accused of practicing witchcraft (photo by robin hammond). the analyzed online news media characterization of children accused physical(ly) abuse(d) and structural(ly) abuse(d) is associated with burned, beaten, abandoned, and neglected (fakoya, 2010b; ndibe, 2010; onwumere, 2010). physical harm or violence is aimed directly at the victims, such as in the case of burning the children, pouring acid on them, and sometimes killing them. as onwumere (2010) indicates, there are some reports that children have been taken to forests, bathed in acid, burned, and buried international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 455 alive following the accusation of witchcraft. in addition, sahara reporters (2011a) notes that bishop samuel okon william is on trial for allegedly confessing “to the killing of over 100 child witches” in a documentary aired on bbc channel 4 (para. 15). this alleged abuse and killing of innocent children indicates the kind of physical harm and death the stigmatized children face. however, “the governor [akpabio] immediately ordered the bishop’s arrest. the bishop was later paraded at the state police headquarters, where he told reporters he did not kill the children as alleged, but merely destroyed spirits of witchcraft in them” (ibrahym, 2013, para. 8). structural harm is indirect economic, political, and cultural violence. as kent (2006) states, “structural violence is harm imposed by some people on others indirectly, through the social system, as they pursue their own preferences” (p. 54). as some of the news articles cited by ndibe (2010) and fakoya (2010b) indicate, the accused children are exposed to negligence, poverty, abandonment, stigmatization, homelessness, displacement, and denial of education. these types of structural violence affect the quality of their lives and deny them basic amenities. kent (2000) indicates that structural harm “produces a variety of harms to children, including the massive mortality of children throughout the world” (p. 2). structural violence is indicated by sahara reporters (2010a): “governor godswill akpabio of akwa ibom state has framed up two charitable organizations offering shelter to abandoned children on charges of fraud for ‘embarrassing akwa ibom state’ in the international community” (para. 1; emphasis added). another example is provided by ukah (2010), who states that “it is instructive to note that these spurious allegations and dehumanisation of children has gone on for years” (para. 17). theme 2: behavior of gatekeepers the second research question inquires how the behavior of gatekeepers was characterized in the news. the news media characterized the behavior of gatekeepers as being deceitful and terrorizing. there were some words indicating being deceitful, which include “manipulation”, “fake”, “exaggerated”, and “minimal”. an example of a comment exemplifying being deceitful is ‘“like i said, it’s a very, very minimal situation,’ said akpabio about the incidence of witchcraft-related abuse in akwa ibom” (cnn wire staff, 2010, para. 3). there were some words and phrases denoting terrorizing including “gunmen”, “militancy”, “arrest”, “firing sporadically”, and “tormentor of children”. the following is an example of a comment signifying terrorizing: [i]n eket, the state capital on sunday revealed that unidentified gunmen on the trail of officials of [the child rights and rehabilitation network] crarn invaded the centre run by the group for abandoned “child witches” late on saturday and unleashed a reign of terror on the stigmatized children. (sahara reporters, 2010b, para. 2) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 456 figure 2. an accused child with face bathed by her mother because a prophet accused her of killing one of her younger brothers (photo by robin hammond).5 as kurtz (2011) puts it, “governor akpabio denied the very existence of the accused witch children that he addressed in his legislation” (para. 2). upon the presentation of pictures of the victims, he says they are insignificant. he claims that it is a form of media propaganda to discredit him and his state. furthermore, he refuted a report that was sent to the united nations from stepping stones nigeria, an ngo that provides shelter for abandoned children. he argues, “i need to know why the same set of children are [sic] being shown all over the world with the same story” (para. 11). he attributes the situation to poverty. however, ndibe (2010) attests that the governor’s claims were deceptive, while fakoya (2010b) proclaims that “contemporary history has also indicated that religion, especially nigerian pentecostalism, has been nothing but exploitative, deceitful and retrogressive” (para. 11). he describes this type of scenario as apparent across the nation but worse in areas that are more antiquated, such as akwa ibom state. the online news media also indicate that direct and indirect participant/pastors, including helen ukpabio, “who accuses children of witchcraft and promotes their abuse” (kurtz, 2011, para. 2), “samuel okon william, who is being prosecuted by the [akwa ibom] state [government] for stigmatising children accused of [practicing] witchcraft” (sahara reporters, 2011a, para. 4), and according to ndibe (2010), “the governor and his commissioner are the ones making facile fiction out of a gory reality. the fact is that children, thousands of children, in akwa ibom are accused of witchcraft, and then beaten, burned, maimed and killed on the grounds of the unproven, ignorant charges” (para. 5). surprisingly, the media reports show that the parents of children accused of practicing witchcraft are not blamed for the abuse. this fact may indicate that news articles focus on people who have influence in society instead of the immediate gatekeepers – the parents. religious groups and government officials have been accused of mistreating one of society’s most vulnerable groups – children (fakoya, 2010b; sahara reporters, 2010c). for example, according to ezeamalu (2010), ukpabio uses her religious status to push her agenda – diagnosing children with witchcraft in order to enrich herself as she undermines vulnerable 5 this following youtube video shows her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?nr=1&v=47iidwrzdi0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?nr=1&v=47iidwrzdi0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 457 minds. the above assertion is consistent with fortner (2007), who observes that “many christians have tremendous faith in the power of messages”; as a result, ukpabio uses buzzwords, sacred terms, animated characters, and movies to convey her ideology (p. 29). the news media characterized ukpabio as “an organised businesswoman who discovered a working formula amongst the multitude of pentecostal preachers” (fakoya, 2010a, para. 3), utilizing witchcraft accusations to financially enrich herself while manipulating parents and the system (fakoya, 2010a). this characterization is consistent with the warning of apostle john okoriko of solid rock foundation church in nigeria and the catholic archbishop of lagos, who “denounced pastors who are profiting from the witchcraft industry, condemning the falsehood, exploitation and inherent deception in modern-day nigerian pentecostalism which sees the gospel used to deceive the gullible” (fakoya, 2010a, para. 2). terrorizing is coercion by intimidation. for example, as sahara reporters (2011a) noted, the governor, while reacting to the cnn report in a radio broadcast “on the child witch syndrome in akwa ibom” (para. 5), ordered the arrest of operators of the shelter that cares for approximately 250 accused children (sahara reporters, 2011a). sahara reporters (2011a) reports: the commissioner of police in akwa ibom, mr walter rugbere, has been briefed to arrest the president of crarn, mr. sam ikpe-itauma, and mr. garry foxcroft, who heads stepping stones foundation. but no sooner was the instruction given than they filtered to the duo. they immediately went underground. (para. 4) in an earlier development, “the nigerian police anti-kidnapping unit in eket … [around the same period] arrested and tortured mr. leo igwe, a humanist associated with the child rights centre in the state, accusing him of “fraud”’ (sahara reporter, 2011a). fakoya (2010b) indicates that, “the militancy that characterizes the phenomenon of child witchcraft in that state, actively championed by that apostle of doom, helen ukpabio, raises question[s] about the wickedness of man to man” (para. 11). he goes on to say that ukpabio must be laughing at the absurdity of members of the state government while she continues to make money by diagnosing children with witchcraft. although some credit the amiable governor for doing a wonderful job for the state (e.g., fakoya, 2010b; also see a youtube video)6, he failed the children (ndibe, 2010). the above discussion suggests that the analyzed online news media characterized the behavior of the gatekeepers as evil, nonchalant, defiant, and opportunistic. 6this following youtube video shows some transformative work of governor akpabio in akwa ibom state: “the new uyo” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rn07cbrdt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rn07cbrdt8 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 458 theme 3: practice of witchcraft the third research question asks how the practice of witchcraft was characterized in the online news media. the analyzed online news media predominantly characterized the practice of witchcraft as evil and superstitious. there were some words and phrases denoting evil, which comprises “misfortune”, “exorcism”, “blood-sucking”, and “sickening cruelty”. an example of a comment signifying evil is “these pastors allege that illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them” (ukah, 2010, para. 3). there were some words and phrases denoting superstition, consisting of “magic”, “supernatural”, “mysterious forces”, and “causing misfortunes”. fakoya (2010b) supplies one comment indicating superstition: this governor readily admits that poverty is the bane of the issue in his state but missed the point in not connecting poverty with the exaggerated pentecostal revivalism in his state and the geometric rise in the incidents of so-called orphans, some of whom were accused of practicing magic. (para. 7, emphasis in original) figure 3. an accused child with a brain injury (photo by robin hammond).7 7 nwaeka is a teen girl into whose head a six-inch nail was driven based on a witchcraft accusation in eket, akwa ibom. she later died of the brain injury. for details, click on http://africanspotlight.com/2012/06/fresh-witch-hunting-in-akwa-ibom-state-govt-official-backs-witchhttp://africanspotlight.com/2012/06/fresh-witch-hunting-in-akwa-ibom-state-govt-official-backs-witch-hunters-photos/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 459 the analyzed online news media characterization of the practice of witchcraft as evil and superstitious is associated with bad omens, magic, and immoral activities (sahara reporters, 2010c). as ndibe (2010) observes, “[s]ome of the accused witches and wizards are still toddlers. before they have learned to walk, they have been diagnosed as blood-sucking witches or wizards by this obviously deranged ‘bishop’ posing, like many other crazed miscreants, as ‘a man of god”’ (para. 13). ndibe is referring to bishop sunday ulup-aya, who nicknamed himself the “poison destroyer” (para. 13). evil is an immoral intention to cause injury. for example, ukah (2010) characterized the practice of witchcraft as evil in the sense that it brings terrible misfortunes to families and neighbors. superstition is a belief or illogical fear of mysterious forces. for example, onwumere (2010) says that in many african communities, “witchcraft is cultural art” (para. 1). he notes that whichever family engages in witchcraft, it is believed that the power to become a witch is transferred across family members from one generation to another. it is also believed that witches operate at night by changing “into birds, cats, rats, bats, cockroaches, etc[.] – to suck blood mysteriously and inflict harm on their victim” (para. 1). he further suggests that people flock to churches, believing that it is their only hope for protection against witchcraft. from the above conversations, the analyzed online news media characterized the practice of witchcraft as evil in the sense that it brings misfortunes to families. also, it described the practice of witchcraft as involving superstition since it is an unnatural phenomenon. summary of results the purpose of this research was to understand how the online news media characterized the practice of witchcraft, the gatekeepers, and the children accused of practicing witchcraft in the eket, akwa ibom state, nigeria. the essay was triggered by governor akpabio’s interview with cnn, in which he claims that the issue is minimal, defended his state, and said that it was “media propaganda against the state” (cnn, 2010), and that witchcraft is not peculiar to akwa ibom but exists within every society. he stressed that the problem is poverty. analysis of the data revealed the following characterizations by the news media: 1. the governor is in denial and defensive about his state in playing down the impact of the situation on the accused children; in addition, the implicated pastors are opportunists who care about money; 2. accusations of the practice of witchcraft are typically based on misfortunes in one’s life and can result in exorcism; and 3. the accused children are often abandoned, maltreated, and sometimes murdered. the data further characterized the gatekeepers as people who marginalized the children. hunters-photos/; also, a youtube video showing nwaeka before her death can be viewed on http://www.youtube.com/watch?nr=1&v=47iidwrzdi0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?nr=1&v=47iidwrzdi0 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 460 discussion: poverty with respect to witchcraft accusations an important issue in this analysis is the role of poverty in the stigmatization of children as witches. this issue is important because some have argued that poverty is at the root of beliefs regarding the existence of witchcraft, as indicated by governor akpabio. in the interview with cnn (2010), he argued that the real problem in akwa ibom state “is not witchcraft, but poverty” (para. 7). he further claimed that “his government has established centers for orphaned children, cast out either because they [are] accused of practicing magic or because their families are too poor to care for them” (para. 7). this argument is not consistent with research by scholars who note that poverty is not the sole reason for accusations of child witchcraft; rather there are other issues responsible for these human problems, including poverty but also poor governance, ignorance, poor health services, “failure of the churches in authentic prophetic ministry, unemployment, youths restiveness, as well as the proliferation of churches which equal commercialization of religion and the [self-enrichment] of the purveyors of prayers and miracles for money and prosperity in southeast nigeria” (essien & ben, 2011). yet, many in the region continue to blame their misfortunes on witchcraft. even though akpabio’s government passed legislation in 2008 legally mandating that anyone who accuses a child of witchcraft is liable to a jail sentence (cnn, 2010), the legislation may be ineffective. apparently, no one has been convicted since the law went into effect (igwe, 2011a). in considering the complexity of witchcraft belief in the region akpan and oluwabamide (2010) indicate, “there is the likelihood that the ban on people from accusing children of witchcraft would receive some negative reactions. this is because the belief in witchcraft is entrenched in the people’s world view” (p. 192). another view suggests that poverty is not the chief reason for the children being accused of witchcraft. according to offiong (1983b), the fear of witchcraft is not limited to the poor natives [the ibibio] living in the state: because of the fear posed by witchcraft and other malevolent forces, most ibibio – young and old, male and female, wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated – resort to the use of good medicine (or turn to spiritualists) for charms to protect themselves from jealous foes. (p. 109) even the wealthy ibibio individuals “have to constantly inform the village of their sources in income, lest they be accused of amassing wealth through unam okuk, a form of witchcraft that brings money to its possessor” (offiong, 1983a, p. 94). this fact suggests that witchcraft accusations are, in general, attributed to the poor as well as the rich in ibibio/eket community. witchcraft accusations are embedded in the belief system of the people. concluding comments this paper found that online news media characterizations of or perspectives on children accused of witchcraft involved physical and structural abuse by gatekeepers, including parents, guardians, religious leaders such as ukpabio, and government officials such as governor international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 461 akpabio – and involved evil and superstition. one striking aspect of the coverage was that none of the online news media blamed the parents directly for branding their children as witches or abusing them. rather they blamed primarily the governor, his government, as well as pastors like helen ukpabio and the church. belief in the reality of witchcraft among many african societies has been the source of much debate. the author has been monitoring this debate on new media and social media; the author noticed that when, for example, witchcraft accusation result in the abuse of children or elderly women, people tend to comment on and question the reality of witchcraft. they tend to argue that the people who believe in the existence of witchcraft are uneducated and implicitly condemn african cultures while blaming christianity. on the other hand, when someone posts something about witches wreaking havoc with and bringing misfortune to people’s lives, numerous people reply by expressing their belief in the existence of witchcraft. based on my personal observation of new and social media, witchcraft remains a serious issue and a common ground for understanding this phenomenon has not emerged. irrespective of the belief systems on both sides of the aisle, children should not be blamed for the misfortunes that afflict a family and result in child abuse. as one pastor told me, “if a parent accuses his or her child of witchcraft, it means that the parent himself or herself is a witch, too” (o. umenna, personal communication, june 7, 2012). a critical but culturally sensitive approach should be taken to educating these parents about the implications of accusing their children of witchcraft. recommendations there are several studies that have provided recommendations to improve the situation in akwa ibom (e.g., foxcroft & secker, 2010; secker, 2012). consistent with the analysis here, i support secker’s (2012) recommendations, which in part advocate for “training for key government actors, addressing the cultural media which are considered to perpetuate the belief, regulation of churches and their leaders” (secker, 2012, p. 32). this training should involve the articulation and acknowledgement of the intertwinement of folk beliefs and the broader culture. cultural and religious considerations should not be flatly dismissed while in dialogue with people who live within that culture and hold those religious beliefs. in addition, even though stepping stones nigeria and child rights and rehabilitation centre (crarn) are actively involved in attempts to alleviate the situation, more proactive organizations should get involved. for example, the fahamu pan-african fellowship programme, with its policy supporting grassroots movements, could help. its central message reads, “from the local to the continental, the fahamu pan-african fellowship programme aims to nurture and support grassroots african activism generating contemporary, energetic, visionary and innovative thought and activism” (fahamu.org, para. 1). grassroots activism is essential in battling child abuse. further, any ngos that are involved in efforts to improve the lives of accused children should also utilize local media outlets and traditional mass media in eket to educate parents about witchcraft in relation to their children so the parents will avoid accusing and abusing their children when misfortune afflicts their lives. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 447–466 462 references 234 next. 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(2011, january 1). nigeria: stigmatisation, arrest and judicial harassment of childrens rights defenders in akwa ibom state. frontdefenders.org. retrieved from http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/14277 p. m. news. (2010, august 31). child witchcraft activists are fraudsters – governor akpabio. rahaman, o. (2010, february 17). in defence of akwa ibom child witches. focusnigeria.com. retrieved from http://www.focusnigeria.com/akwa-ibom-child-witches.htm ukpabio, h. (1996). unveiling the mysteries of witchcraft. calabar, nigeria: liberty foundation gospel ministries. umanah, a. (2010, november 23). photo news: akpabio sets up commission on child witch saga. akwa ibom news online. retrieved from http://www.akwaibomnewsonline.com/photos/2010/governor-akpabio-sets-up-commission-on-child-witch-saga.php international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 440 farming families as foster families: the findings of an exploratory study on care farming in switzerland clara bombach, renate stohler, and hans wydler abstract: the terms “care farming” and “social agriculture” are used to describe the foster care that farming families provide to children, adolescents, and adults. whereas some european countries have national systems that provide support for care farming, little is known about care farmers in switzerland. best estimates show that at least one percent of all agricultural family operations provide care services in switzerland; accordingly, care farming is a component of swiss foster care. against the background of the recent revision of the child and adult protection act [kindesund erwachsenenschutzgesetz] and of legal provisions in relation to foster care, a qualitative system analysis was carried out in three cantons in 2013. the aim of the system analysis was to describe the context and importance of care farming and to identify the attitudes and working methods of both child and adult protection authorities and family placement organizations in relation to placements in agriculture. as part of the study, documents were analyzed and expert interviews were held with representatives of both groups. the interviewed representatives of the placement authorities regard placements in agriculture as a viable option, in particular for adolescents, if the match between the client and foster family is suitable. according to the surveyed family placement organizations, the interest among farming families in offering foster places is considerable. the study presents care farming as one care service within a complex support system for children and adolescents, and raises new questions for investigation by more detailed research projects. keywords: foster care, care farming, farming for health, green care, multifunctional farms, switzerland clara bombach, ma, is research associate at the school of social work, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8037 zurich, switzerland. tel: (41) 58 934 89 53. e-mail: clara.bombach@zhaw.ch renate stohler, is researcher and lecturer at the school of social work, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, pfingstweidstrasse 96, p.o. box 707, 8037 zurich, switzerland. tel: (41) 58 934 88 67. e-mail: renate.stohler@zhaw.ch hans wydler, the institute of natural resource sciences of the school of life sciences and facility management, zhaw zurich university of applied sciences, grüental, p.o. box, 8820 wädenswil, switzerland. tel: (41) 58 934 55 39. e-mail: hans.wydler@zhaw.ch mailto:clara.bombach@zhaw.ch mailto:renate.stohler@zhaw.ch mailto:hans.wydler@zhaw.ch international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 441 in addition to their everyday activities as farmers many farming families throughout europe perform social care services. so-called “social farmers” or “care farmers” take care of children and adolescents, disabled people, the elderly, and former drug addicts. the farmers share their family homes and working routines with their charges for short or extended periods of time. whereas in countries such as belgium and the netherlands national systems to provide both professional and financial support for care-farming activities were established several years ago, little is known about care farmers in switzerland. wydler and picard (2010) estimate that at least 1% of all agricultural family operations in the swiss agriculture sector perform social care services; however, they assume that the actual number is significantly higher (wydler, widmer, & christ, 2010b). a qualitative research study by wydler and gairing (2010) found that care farmers described their work as particularly demanding in terms of workload, and psychologically challenging (see also christ, widmer, & wydler, 2010). although many farming families are clearly involved in the swiss care sector, very little is known about how and with which target groups they perform their social activities, and how they are supported professionally and financially. a research project from the zurich university of applied sciences, supported by the federal office for agriculture, carried out a system analysis to identify the major players and administrative bodies in the field of care farming in switzerland, and to identify questions for further research and in-depth investigation. the objective of this paper is to outline the findings of the study. the paper first introduces the field of care farming in general, comparing the development of care farming in switzerland with that in other european countries. then the study is described and its findings are presented in their particular swiss context. farming for health: green care and care farming many forms of nature therapy are subsumed under the concept of “farming for health”. the term “green care”, which involves animal-assisted therapy and garden therapy, for example (hassink & van dijk, 2006a; hine, peacock, & pretty, 2007; hine, peacock, & pretty, 2008; sempik, hine, & wilcox, 2010), is sometimes used synonymously with “farming for health”. what links these services is that they enable participants to experience nature and create a focus on interaction with natural elements (wiesinger, 2011): “green care farms represent a working environment where a diversity of target groups is performing meaningful activities” (hassink & van dijk, 2006a). these educational, preventative healthcare, therapeutic, and rehabilitation methods include garden therapy, animal-assisted therapy, farm education, and other care farming methods (hassink & van dijk, 2006b; haubenhofer, demattio, & geber, 2012; wiesinger, 2011). synonymous terms found in the literature include expressions like “social farming” and “green social work” (limbrunner, 2003; limbrunner & van elsen, 2013). the concept of care farming is also used in german-language discourse on the topic (condrau et al., 2012; haubenhofer et al., 2012; wiesinger, 2011; wydler & picard, 2010; wydler et al., 2010b). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 442 in this paper, we focus only on a specific aspect of farming for health: the type of care farming where children and adolescents are accommodated and looked after in farming families. target groups care farming benefits a variety of target groups, including disabled people, children and adolescents, former drug addicts, and elderly people with dementia (driest, 2006; hine et al., 2008). as hassnik & van dijk (2006a) state: “care farms can be a good provision for a diversity of target groups like people with mental problems, people with an addiction history, elderly people with dementia, autistic persons, long-term unemployed, people with burn-out and prisoners” (p. 350). there is a varying emphasis on particular focus groups in different european countries. for example, according to hassink & van dijk (2006b), in norway it is primarily psychiatric clients and children who are accommodated in the agricultural care sector, while in sweden the majority of clients placed in agricultural settings are vulnerable children. service types, duration of stay, reason for stay the services provided in the context of care farming range from short stays to long-term care (driest, 2006). the duration of a person’s placement in a farming family will differ according to the indication (reason for the stay) and the nature of the social service measure being implemented. for example, whereas elderly persons with dementia may live on a farm for several years, crisis interventions for adolescents may require stays of just a few weeks. traditionally, studies carried out on care farming differentiate between long-term and short-term care (kalisch & van elsen, 2007). one type of shortterm stay on farms, the “time-out”, lasts only a few weeks to a few months. for example, a disruptive young person may be temporarily removed from school on a time-out, with the expectation of resuming attendance thereafter. care farming is thus a highly heterogeneous field, covering many different social activities and reaching a wide range of clients. an examination of concrete examples of care farming in different countries reveals further differences. care farming in europe care farming has developed in different ways in different european countries (hassink & van dijk, 2006b). up to now, few general data have been available on care farming at the european level. this is due to the complexity of the services, their historically different developments and assessments, and structural differences. the services offered are managed through a variety of public structures. as a result, they vary widely in nature, and in the ways they are financed; moreover, often there are no organizations that arrange or survey the different green-care initiatives. in many cases, these social services have low visibility even in their own countries, and national regulations are often inadequate (driest, 2006). despite this, according to hassink and van dijk (2006a), an increase has been observed in the social agriculture sector throughout europe. forms of green care have already existed in belgium for many decades. the first examples in northern european countries go back to 1930 (goris & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 443 dessein, 2007). in terms of the development and spread of these services, southern and eastern european countries are still in a “pioneering phase” (driest, 2006, p. 102). these development trends will be dealt with selectively below. major differences can be observed throughout europe with regard to activities, objectives, the nature of financing, the balance between care activities and agricultural production, and attitudes towards the target groups. mayer & van elsen (2005) note this in the case of germany, where green care services include organic teaching farms, facilities for people with disabilities, and addiction initiatives. different services are offered for different target groups in norway: “care farms have developed as kindergartens and after-school clubs, provide activities for children with special needs or provide health and care options for psychiatric patients, those with learning difficulties and elderly people with dementia.” (hine et al., 2008, p. 40). green care has developed in very different directions in great britain “ranging from horticultural therapy, animalassisted therapy, pet therapy, ecotherapy, facilitated green exercise activities as a treatment option, and care farming” (hine et al., 2007, p. 123). in eastern europe, poland and slovenia provide examples of the “pioneering phase”. there are no statistics available on care farming in these countries and, instead of ministerial support, farming families in the green care sector have their own voluntary organizations and are often privately funded. pawelczyk (2006) attributes the gap in the research on green care in poland to the current lack of awareness among the polish population of green care as a solution for social problems. as a result, up to now the activities in this area have been limited to small, isolated, self-financing projects that offer their own programmes. vadnal (2007) describes care farming in slovenia as similarly consisting of patchwork organizations, which are run on a voluntary and bottom-up basis and are not supported by specific policies or institutions (p. 11). when farmers in slovenia were asked whether they could imagine providing services in the area of green care, 66% of the surveyed farming households reported that farmers generally knew too little about the topic of social farming (vadnal, 2007). in italy, green care activities are often supported by non-profit organizations such as social cooperatives or church organizations (hine et al., 2008). the situation in relation to care farming in the netherlands is completely different. wydler & picard (2010) refer to a “success story” here (p. 4). the number of farms that offer social services has been steadily increasing, not least because the ministry of agriculture, nature, and food quality; the ministry of health; and the ministry for sport support these activities. professionalization in the sector is also strongly supported, which could also be a factor in the rapid growth of care farming there (hine et al., 2008). in norway too, care farmers receive support from different ministries, for example the ministry of agriculture; the ministry of health, social affairs, children and family affairs; and the ministry of education and research. in addition to the ministries, local governments have established committees that support green care activities (hine et al., 2008). the farms in norway are involved in their municipalities and offer the services required by them. however, there are no statistics on the number of farms in norway that provide social services (haugan, nyland, fjeldavli, meistad, & braastad, 2006). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 444 research projects in europe the community of practice (cop) “farming for health”1 was established in 2004 to promote the exchange of information among european countries and record comparable data. the “cost action 866 green care in agriculture” 2 project was also initiated in the context of calls for proposals for the seventh eu framework programme (braastad, gallis, sempic, senni, & van elsen, 2007). an overview of the status of green care in different countries was developed as part of the cost action and in the context of the cop (hassink & van dijk, 2006b). the focus was on social services in agriculture, on the one hand, and the field of green care in individual areas beyond the agriculture sector, on the other. the findings of the cop farming for health conference of 2007 were published as conference proceedings by dessein (2008). a project on social farming entitled so far was carried out as part of the sixth eu framework programme for research and technological development. this project assessed the current situation of green care activities in eight european countries. these situational assessments are accompanied by implementation-oriented strategy forums and comparative strategy development (di iacovo & o'connor, 2009). in recent years, numerous publications, including one by limbrunner and van elsen (2013), have explored the topic of care farming from different perspectives. hence, interest in such services is clearly increasing, not only in relation to supply and demand, but also from the perspective of making a scientific contribution. the evolution of the structures of social services in swiss agriculture and how they compare to the above-presented developments in europe are examined in greater detail in the next section. established social service structures in swiss agriculture different forms of care services have been provided within the swiss agriculture sector for a very long time and continue to be provided today, albeit in a different form. traditional care services in agriculture constituted preliminary stages in the development of the welfare state, social welfare, and old age provision. these have been replaced today by modern forms of care (studer, 1998). for certain social movements, social aspects were always part of a holistic understanding of agriculture. important representatives of this orientation can be found, for example, in anthroposophic circles, but also in many other movements based on ecological, ethical, religious, and philanthropic motivations. limbrunner (2003), for example, refers to the potential represented by the intensification of the relationships between organic farming and social work. in addition, as is typical of switzerland’s decentralized system, numerous grassroots and locally grown solutions to social emergencies existed in the past and continue to exist today: indeed, the attitude was and 1for further information, see the community of practice farming for health website: https://farmingforhealth.wordpress.com. 2 cost (european cooperation in science and technology) is an eu framework supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across europe. for further information see www.cost.eu. https://farmingforhealth.wordpress.com/ http://www.cost.eu/ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 445 is that, where possible, solutions should be community-based and social-welfare solutions should be organized on a decentralized basis. as the current debate concerning the history of the verdingkinder [contract children] – indentured child labourers – shows, it is necessary to create transparent, good quality general conditions for these services (heller, avvanzino, & lacharme, 2005). from an agricultural perspective, care farming can be understood as a structural diversification strategy (“para-agriculture”) adopted by farming households/operations. agricultural operations in switzerland are strongly dominated by family operations. over 80% of farmers live on their own farms, usually with their family members (bundesamt für landwirtschaft, 2007). the traditional full-time holding, that is, the type of farm where core agricultural production is the sole source of income and the members of the household work on the farm if needed, accounts for barely one quarter of all agricultural operations in switzerland (saxer, 2007). the majority of farm managers and their partners have embraced diversification strategies such as labour market integration: in 59% of agricultural operations in switzerland, the farm manager, his or her partner, or both, rely on external employment. in addition to agricultural diversification, there are indications that structural diversification is an increasing factor in farming operations: households/operations are diversifying in sectors that are not in the core area of agricultural production. these activities are referred to in switzerland as para-agriculture and include such activities as direct marketing, the processing of agricultural products, agritourism, handcrafts, wood processing, and certain forms of energy production. internal diversification arises in approximately two-fifths of farming operations. (saxer, 2007). there are few reliable data on the scale and nature of the social services provided within the agriculture sector in switzerland. the existing data sources tend to focus on the farming operation and its core production area; the varied income-generating pursuits of the household members are recorded with few details, if at all. in the federal statistical office’s (sfso) agricultural farm census of 2005, in a supplement to the farm structure questionnaire, a randomly-selected sample was presented with a short questionnaire on the pursuit of activities in para-agriculture (bundesamt für statistik, 2005). although this survey extends the focus to activities with economic impacts on the farm, it does not include those within the farm household. information about the scope of care-farming services and the persons who provide them, or a more detailed description of the activities and of the nature of their integration into the farm are not available. limitations also exist in relation to another data source: the central evaluation of accounting data by the agroscope reckenholz-tänikon (art) research station.3 although different para-agricultural activities are surveyed here in the context of accounting data, they are only recorded if they form part of the farm’s operational activities. there is scope for the inclusion of care-farming activities in the accounting; however, smaller operations are generally not covered by the central evaluation of accounting data and the nature of the services provided is not recorded in detail. having specified the context for the implementation of care-farming activities in the above-presented accounts, we shall now ask what the concrete developments in 3 for further information see: http://www.agroscope.admin.ch/betriebswirtschaft/04362/index.html?lang=de http://www.agroscope.admin.ch/betriebswirtschaft/04362/index.html?lang=de http://www.agroscope.admin.ch/betriebswirtschaft/04362/index.html?lang=de international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 446 switzerland look like. in the research project presented below, attention is also focused on the target group comprising children and adolescents. to appreciate the presented results in their historical context, we believe that it will be helpful to review the foster care system in switzerland. the first central actors in the foster care system, who also play a key role in the context of social services in agriculture, are presented here. foster care in switzerland foster care is a central component of child and youth welfare in switzerland; however, empirically-founded knowledge on the sector is scant. no national statistics are recorded on this topic; for example, it is not known how many children and adolescents live with foster parents (zatti, 2005). based on the data from the 1990 census, the number of foster children has been estimated for almost 15 years at 15,000 (zatti, 2005; shuler, 2013). similarly, there are no current data on the demographics and socio-economic backgrounds of foster families. a study on foster families undertaken some time ago in the canton of zurich found that one-third of foster children lived with relatives and, hence, two-thirds were placed in non-kinship foster homes (juhasz & sunitsch, 1996). in recent years, only a few studies have been published that focus on the fostering process in switzerland, on the participation of children and parents (arnold, huwiler, raulf, tanner, & wicki, 2008; wigger & stanic, 2012), and on the perception and impact of foster situations (gassmann, 2010). interest in the exploration of care farming as a diversification strategy for farming families and as an additional possibility for accommodating foster children and adolescents has clearly increased in recent years (see hodel, 2012; karli, 2007; stohler & werner, 2013). the history of foster care in switzerland has not been dealt with systematically (zatti, 2005). the first studies examining the practices of the authorities and the injustices suffered by the victims of the system of contract children were published a few years ago (e.g., freisler-mühlemann, 2011; leuenberger & seglias, 2008; leuenberger, mani, rudin, & seglias, 2011). under that system, in the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, authorities frequently placed orphans, children of divorced parents, illegitimate children, and children from poor backgrounds with farming families for a subsistence payment. the children were forced to work hard for their keep and often suffered violence and injustice (see, e.g., leuenberger & seglias, 2008). residential and foster care in switzerland has undergone considerable change since the 1970s; for instance, a basic distinction is now made between “traditional” and “professional” foster families (zatti, 2005). whereas traditional foster families do not have any specific training, in professional foster families at least one of the parents has undergone training in social services or special needs education, and the family income is mainly derived from caring for foster children. the “networked” foster families, a third type (zatti, 2005, p. 11) that developed in the 1990s, can be described as semiprofessional. unlike the other two types, networked families are monitored and supported by a family placement organization (fpo) (zatti, 2005). there is no overview available showing how many of each of the different types of foster family there are in switzerland. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 447 as is the case in other european states (everychild, 2011), there seems to be an increasing trend towards family placements in the area of child and youth foster care in switzerland, although precise data are not available; one possible cause is the structural shift that is forcing families in agriculture and small business to secure additional income streams (zatti, 2005). because farms often have the necessary space, the provision of foster-care places is an obvious option for farming families. in zatti’s view, this development presents an opportunity for the foster-care sector. “to a certain extent, this trend can offset the lack of suitable foster families observable in some locations under the condition that the families are suitably prepared, expertly monitored and professionally supported in their work” (p. 31). the fpos offer a range of services in foster care and have developed into a separate area of foster care over the past two decades (keller, 2013). the first organizations were established in the 1990s and, although the exact number is not known, it is estimated that at least 70 such organizations exist in german-speaking switzerland (keller, 2013). the fpos fulfil important tasks in the area of child and youth welfare on behalf of the authorities and referring bodies, and “have a major influence on the safe and development-promoting placement” (keller, 2013, p. 113) of children and adolescents with foster families. they are responsible for, among other things, the recruitment of foster families and referral of foster places, and offer services for foster families and for foster children, such as regular visits and advisory discussions. an fpo usually has a particular focus area and tailors its services to children or adolescents, or to a particular duration (longor short-term placement) or to a function of the care situation (time-out, temporary or emergency placement, or assessment) (keller, 2013). since no binding quality standards apply to the activities of the fpos at the national level, the question regarding their quality has been a matter of concern to experts in the field for some time. for example, various organizations joined forces to establish an interessengemeinschaft für institutionelle pflegeplätze [interest group for institutional foster placements] and the expert association for social and special needs education (integras) has developed a quality label for fpos, which can be acquired through a certification process (keller, 2013). other organizations also provide labels that can be obtained by the fpos (spindler, 2011). similarly, some individual cantons, such as bern, have formulated guidelines for the activities of fpos (wydler, stohler, christ, & bombach, 2013). legal aspects. child and youth welfare and, hence, foster care in switzerland are based on the united nations convention on the rights of the child, which was ratified by switzerland in 1997 (arnold et al., 2008). in addition, the federal constitution of the swiss confederation (art. 11) guarantees children and adolescents “the right to the special protection of their integrity and the encouragement of their development”. the legal basis for foster care is provided by articles 307–317 of the swiss civil code. these provide the basis for the ordinance of 19 october 1977 on the placement of children in foster care (pflegekinderverordnung, pavo, sr 211.222.338). this ordinance contains basic provisions, which the cantons are responsible for implementing (zatti, 2005). swiss foster care was long criticized for its lack of regulations on the protection of children and adolescents in foster placements, and the ordinance was partly revised as a result. the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 448 new provisions have been in force since early 2013 and january 2014 (eidgenössisches justizund polizeidepartement, 2012). a central feature of the revised legislation is that persons or families in switzerland who would like to provide foster placements for children require authorization from the competent authority and are subject to the supervision of this authority (art. 4 pavo). moreover, requirements for the activities of the fpos also came into force for the first time on 1 january 2014 (art. 20a– f pavo); these organizations had been active hitherto in various cantons without being subject to any specific legislative conditions. the revised legislation now includes a registration obligation for persons and organizations that provide services in the area of family care, whether for payment or free of charge. while corresponding provisions existed in individual cantons, some cantons had to develop new solutions as a result (wydler et al., 2013). a further innovation in the area of child protection in switzerland that also affects foster care is the introduction of professional child-protection authorities on 1 january 2013. up to the end of 2012, the municipal guardianship authorities were responsible for decisions in the area of child and adult protection in german-speaking switzerland. except in the larger cities, the members of these lay authorities frequently did not have the necessary resources for the work they carried out (zatti, 2005). the law now stipulates that the responsibility for decisions in the area of child and adult protection now rests with a regional expert authority consisting of at least three members. the cantons are responsible for the appointment and implementation of the expert committees (art. 440 swiss civil code). as the overview provided by fassbind (2013) shows, the cantons availed themselves of their organizational autonomy when it came to the implementation of the new authority structure. with the new child and adult protection act [kindesund erwachsenenschutzgesetz] coming into force, the number of competent authorities was significantly reduced. up to the end of 2012, approximately 1,420 guardianship authorities were responsible for decisions on child and adult protection in switzerland. since january 2013, there have been approximately 148 professional expert authorities, which are now known as childand adult-protection authorities [kindesund erwachsenenschutzbehörde, kesb]. according to fassbind (2013), the professionalization of these authorities and the accompanying reduction in their number is an important attainment. care farming in switzerland the stronger orientation of agriculture towards its constitutional objectives could result in the emergence of greater respect for the provision of care services.4 today, agriculture contributes to the integration and participation of various target groups, creates and maintains job opportunities in rural regions in the context of a multi-income strategy, and contributes to the decentralized settlement of the country. in the area of 4 the constitutional objectives for agriculture include security of supply, the conservation of natural livelihoods, the preservation of the cultivated landscape and decentralized settlement. if the new agricultural policy places greater emphasis on the positive external effects of agriculture (ecology, biodiversity, but also the inclusion services provided by agriculture), care farming services also appear to better fit into the framework of the defined targets of agricultural policy. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 449 social services, care farmers provide important services that can have positive external effects. however, little is known of the scope and impact of these services. it is obvious, however, that care farming can only constitute a small element of a multifunctional agriculture sector. it is a niche activity, but nevertheless presents considerable potential. care farming is practised more frequently on organic farms and, in many cases, it forms part of a specific view on how sustainable farming should be implemented. social aspects are a very important element of this viewpoint. organic farming was practised by 25% of the sample of care farms surveyed (wydler, widmer, & christ, 2010a). only fragmentary empirical data are available on the diffusion and scale of care farming in switzerland. according to the study carried out by wydler and gairing (2010), at least one percent of agricultural family operations offer care services; children, adolescents, and disabled people are the main target groups. the evaluations show that the families providing care report merely average satisfaction rates from their involvement, which entails time pressure and psychological challenges. this is due in part to unsatisfactory legal and societal conditions: their work tends to be low in status, their professionalism is underdeveloped, and finances often lack transparency (wydler et al., 2010b). method objectives of the study the aim of the study was to examine the provision of social services by farms through a system analysis: an overview of the most important actors, the legal provisions, processes, requirements, tasks, and competencies. based on this analysis, we also attempt to project the future development of care farming. the main objectives of the study were: • to provide an actor-based and exemplary system analysis of the current situation in relation to placements in farming families by means of a case study in each of three cantons: berne, st. gallen, and zurich; • to record and assess developments and changes in care farming caused by the new child and adult protection act [kindesund erwachsenenschutzgesetz] and identify potential opportunities and risks associated with the new system; and • to integrate and compare multiple perspectives as a basis for identifying development potential in the care farming area, for formulating strategies and measures to promote the objectives of care farming, and to assess the risks of the different approaches. the study did not focus on the perspectives of the people who are the subjects of social services activity in the agriculture sector, nor those of the farming families who provide these services or wish to do so. this would require a far more complex study design. hence, the analysis of the perspectives of the service users and providers was expressly not an objective of the study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 450 target group the study examined so-called civil law foster placements, that is, placements arising on the instigation of guardianship authorities or, from 1 january 2013 onward, the child and adult protection authorities, in accordance with the swiss civil code of 10 december 1907 (schweizerisches zivilgesetzbuch, sr 210) and the ordinance of 19 october 1977 on the placement of children in care (pflegekinderverordnung, pavo, sr 211.222.338). this analysis relates to the two most important target groups of care farming: children and adolescents placed in foster care, and people with disabilities subject to guardianship [beistandschaft] (wydler & gairing, 2010). as a result, many of the current target groups of care farming were not considered, such as persons subject to criminal law measures, and placements made in relation to health therapies, rehabilitation, or voluntary time-outs. the reason for this limitation is that each type of placement has its own authorities and sources of financing. the central findings for the target groups, children and adolescents, are presented below. this paper does not cover the specific situation of persons with disabilities. implementation of the study the study was carried out from january to october 2013. the project was supported by an advisory group consisting of representatives from the agriculture sector, the child and adult protection authorities, the jugendamt [youth welfare service], the foster care system, integras, and the disabled self-help sector. four meetings were held with the advisory group, at which the intermediate findings were discussed and the project was further developed and substantiated with the help of the different perspectives of the group members who had practical experience of the foster care system. research methods a qualitative research approach was selected. a system analysis was carried out for each of the three cantons, based on a document analysis of organizational, legal, and institutional conditions and policies conducted through internet research and discussions. the situation in relation to care farming in the relevant cantons was identified with the help of information on the number of placement organizations, an estimate of the number of care farmers, a review of traditional policies, and an estimate of the scope of the services currently provided. central networks and performance structures were also identified with the help of qualitative methods. this information was complemented by qualitative interviews with selected representatives of childand adult-protection authorities [kindesund erwachsenenschutzbehörden, kesb]. interviews were carried out with three fpos and four kesbs in the cantons berne, st. gallen, and zurich. the interview partners were selected and solicited on the basis of the document analysis. results the study showed that placements of children and adolescents in foster families in the agriculture sector, known as care farming, are carried out in the official foster care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 451 context, but that specific regulations relating explicitly to care services in agriculture do not exist in switzerland. foster care is organized at the federal level in switzerland. hence, the most important general conditions are defined at the national level and the cantons and municipalities are responsible for their implementation. there have been important changes to the swiss national legal basis of foster care which are also of importance for care farming. for example, the new provisions adopted in the context of the partial revision of the ordinance on the placement of children in care (pavo) entered into force in early 2013 and 2014. in terms of the placement of children and adolescents in agriculture, the legislative innovations include new requirements for the providers of services in the area of family care (the fpos). regulations governing their complex and demanding activities were previously lacking at the national level. the research in the three cantons shows that the fpos play an important role in the placement of children and adolescents in agriculture. in one canton, in particular, there are fpos that specialize in the referral of foster places in farming families. however, the exact number of fpos in the canton in question is still unknown as authorization is required only for larger fpos (as of late 2013). with the enactment of the revised pavo and the new obligation to register and monitor fpos, each canton will be informed in future about the number of organizations active in the canton and about the families with which they work. statistical recording of the socio-economic background of the foster families would help to make care farming or placements in agriculture more visible and better understood. the extent to which this is being done by the cantons is not known. the first conversations with representatives of the kesbs from the three cantons revealed a basically neutral attitude to these placements in agriculture. important criteria for a placement include securing the well-being of the child and achieving an acceptable fit between the child and foster family. explicit indications for placements in agricultural settings were not mentioned by the interviewed representatives of the authorities. hence, from the perspective of the kesbs, placements in agricultural settings are possible options that can be used as required. all of the interviewed kesb members reported positive experiences with fpos and stressed their importance for the success of placements. it is not currently possible to estimate the extent to which placement practices and the allocation of authorizations to foster families will ultimately change through the professionalization of the authorities. decisions are based on the substantiated proposals of the assessing social services, whose experience and attitudes with regard to placements in agricultural settings went unrecorded until recently. the interviews with representatives of the fpos show that farming families have considerable interest in offering social services on their farms. the fpos check the suitability of the families; the representatives indicated in the interviews that only some families are deemed suitable. the organizations’ own selection criteria are assessed as strict and are also regulated based on cantonal requirements. the interviewed representatives of the fpos and kesbs draw attention to the fact that the topics of religiosity and an additional income stream are repeatedly raised in connection with the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 452 motivation of the families in offering foster places. the fpos’ reaction to this varies. the interested families not only have to pass the fpos’ selection process: they must also be authorized by the kesbs. in general, the examined fpos value professionalism and quality. evaluations or studies on the practice of the fpos by independent assessors do not yet exist, however. the acceptance of foster children makes significant demands on the families. according to the interviewed kesb representatives, the skills required are also available in agricultural settings, but are not qualitatively better or do not arise more frequently there than in other environments. conversely, critical arguments against placements in agricultural settings or rural areas were presented, in particular by individual representatives of fpos, who cited the lack of therapeutic services or special schools in rural areas, and listed sources of danger to be found on farms. it emerged from the interviews with the representatives of the fpos and kesbs that it is primarily adolescents who are placed in agricultural settings, usually in the context of time-outs or temporary solutions, and that the farm criterion is not relevant for the long-term placement of younger children. time-outs generally tend to arise for educational or legal reasons. conclusion and outlook the analysis that was carried out primarily outlines the context in which care farming arises in the area of swiss foster care. care farming is integrated into the existing system but it remains relatively invisible and poorly understood. cost arguments could represent an important background factor and driver for care farming. in this regard, the debates and comparisons about foster care and residential placements will intensify in the future. the expert discussions show that, in practice, a lot of experience-based knowledge is available that has not been systematically analyzed. the perspectives of the affected children and adolescents are also unrecorded. further research on support for foster children and, in particular, on the efficacy of agricultural settings is required to ensure visibility and quality in this field. international journal of 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(2010). care farming: soziale leistungen in der landwirtschaft. agrarforschung schweiz, 1(1), 4–9. http://pflegekinder.ch/dokumente/projektbericht.pdf http://www.greencare.li/images/stories/pdf/care%20farming%20in%20swiss%20farm%20households.pdf http://www.greencare.li/images/stories/pdf/care%20farming%20in%20swiss%20farm%20households.pdf text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4541-7_19 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2015) 6(3): 440–457 457 wydler, h., widmer, s., & christ, y. (2010a). care farming in switzerland. in t. van elsen, f. di iacovo, & j. hassink (eds.), policies of green care in agriculture. cost (in preparation). wydler, h., widmer, s. & christ, y. (2010b). soziale dienstleistungen in der schweizer landwirtschaft: care farming. zurich: research station agroscope reckenholztänikon art, zürich university of applied sciences, institute for environment and natural resources zhaw. cost-beitrag. wydler, h., stohler, r., christ, y., & bombach, c. (2013). care farming – eine systemanalyse. schlussbericht. zurich: zürcher hochschule für angewandte wissenschaften: life sciences und facility management, umwelt und natürliche ressourcen. soziale arbeit, forschung und entwicklung. available from http://www.sozialearbeit.zhaw.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/soziale_arbeit/forschung /forschungsberichte/kindheit_jugend_familie/care_farming_schlussbericht.pdf zatti, k.b. (2005). das pflegekinderwesen in der schweiz. analyse, qualitätsentwicklung und professionalisierung. expertenbericht im auftrag des bundesamtes für justiz. available from https://www.bj.admin.ch/dam/data/bj/gesellschaft/gesetzgebung/archiv/kinderbetr euung/ber_pflegekinder-d.pdf http://www.sozialearbeit.zhaw.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/soziale_arbeit/forschung/forschungsberichte/kindheit_jugend_familie/care_farming_schlussbericht.pdf http://www.sozialearbeit.zhaw.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/soziale_arbeit/forschung/forschungsberichte/kindheit_jugend_familie/care_farming_schlussbericht.pdf https://www.bj.admin.ch/dam/data/bj/gesellschaft/gesetzgebung/archiv/kinderbetreuung/ber_pflegekinder-d.pdf https://www.bj.admin.ch/dam/data/bj/gesellschaft/gesetzgebung/archiv/kinderbetreuung/ber_pflegekinder-d.pdf farming for health: green care and care farming target groups service types, duration of stay, reason for stay care farming in europe research projects in europe established social service structures in swiss agriculture foster care in switzerland care farming in switzerland method objectives of the study target group implementation of the study research methods results conclusion and outlook references running head: trajectories of perceived parental monitoring knowledge international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 403 trajectories of parental monitoring knowledge and their associations with adolescents’ substance use, poor academic outcomes, and behaviour problems leanne findlay, rochelle garner, and dafna kohen abstract: lower levels of perceived parental monitoring knowledge have been associated with various risk behaviours among children and youth. data from the canadian national longitudinal survey of children and youth were used to: 1) identify longitudinal patterns of parental monitoring knowledge through early adolescence; 2) explore associations between these patterns and socio-demographic factors; and 3) examine the association between patterns of parental monitoring knowledge and behavioural and academic outcomes. results revealed that a 3-group model best represented patterns of parental monitoring knowledge. socio-demographic factors were found to differentiate membership in these patterns. findings also suggested that lower levels of perceived parental monitoring knowledge were associated with higher levels of behaviour problems, poorer academic outcomes, and a greater likelihood of substance use. keywords: parental monitoring knowledge, adolescence, behaviour, academic outcomes, trajectories acknowledgements: the authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the canadian council on learning. the authors would also like to thank rubab arim, as well as zohreh zadeh, for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. leanne findlay, ph.d., (the corresponding author) health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture way, rhc-24a, ottawa, ontario, canada, k1a 0t6. telephone: (613) 951-4648. fax: (913) 951-3959. e-mail: leanne.findlay@statcan.gc.ca rochelle garner, ph.d., health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture way, rhc-24a, ottawa, ontario, canada, k1a 0t6. telephone: (613) 951-3977. e-mail: rochelle.garner@statcan.gc.ca dafna kohen, ph.d., health analysis division, statistics canada, 100 tunney’s pasture way, rhc-24a, ottawa, ontario, canada, k1a 0t6. telephone: (613) 951-3346. e-mail: dafna.kohen@statcan.gc.ca mailto:leann.findlay@statcan.ca mailto:leann.findlay@statcan.ca mailto:leann.findlay@statcan.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 404 parents’ supervisory behaviours have a strong impact on their children’s development, including various risk behaviours among children and youth. while researchers have explored the relationship between parental monitoring behaviour and child or youth outcomes, few have examined the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of parental monitoring over time (i.e., from childhood into adolescence), in particular different patterns of monitoring. it is possible, for example, that a trajectory of continuous high monitoring is differentially associated with outcomes than a pattern of high monitoring in childhood which tapers off as the child moves into adolescence, a period which is typically associated with increased autonomy (larson & richards, 1991). the purpose of the current study is to examine patterns of perceived parental monitoring knowledge (ppmk) over time for a population-based sample of youth, while considering socio-demographic characteristics of the child and family to examine relationships between these patterns of ppmk and youth outcomes. definition and measurement of parental monitoring the foundation of research on parental monitoring is often traced back to the work of patterson and others in the oregon youth study (oys). patterson and colleagues developed a latent construct of parental monitoring that consisted of two elements: (a) rules and expectations regarding the kind of information that parents require of their children and youth, and (b) how much time parents spend with their child (capaldi & patterson, 1989). since this seminal work, however, there has been a great deal of debate in the literature regarding the definition and measurement of parental monitoring. it has been argued that “monitoring” is not the same as supervision or surveillance, as direct observation of a child or youth’s behaviour is often not truly feasible or practical (hayes, hudson, & matthews, 2003). rather, the definitions and measures used in research often focus on what parents know regarding their child’s whereabouts and the activities in which they are engaging, which originates from the child’s willingness to disclose rather than actual parental efforts at monitoring (stattin & kerr, 2000). patterns and correlates of parental monitoring knowledge it is well established in the literature that levels of parental monitoring tend to decrease as the child ages (barnes, reifman, farrell, & dintcheff, 2000), although this decline may be quite modest (pettit, keiley, laird, bates, & dodge, 2007). as children gain more autonomy and interest in spending time with peers in adolescence (larson & richards, 1991), their parents reportedly monitor activities outside the home to a lesser degree. however, less attention has been granted to examining whether different patterns of ppmk exist for subgroups of children and youth. for instance, it is possible that some parents continue to monitor their children at high levels throughout adolescence, whereas other parents change patterns, monitoring their children less over this time as they approach adulthood. cross-sectional and longitudinal research which has relied on examining changes in mean scores (over time) may overlook nuances in individual differences in dynamic, or changing, patterns of monitoring (laird, criss, pettit, bates, & dodge, 2009), in particular given that individual variability in parental monitoring behaviour is high (laird, pettit, bates, & dodge, 2003; pettit et al., 2007). for instance, laird et al. (2003) and laird, marrero, and sentse (2010) have not found a sample-wide increase or decrease in parental monitoring knowledge over time. rather, decreases in parental rules were a more common trajectory than decreasing monitoring knowledge in adolescence (laird et al., 2009), reaffirming international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 405 that patterns of parental behaviour may differ based on the specific definition of the monitoring behaviour of interest. utilizing a semi-parametric analytic approach, previous research has generally identified three trajectories of parental monitoring, indicating heterogeneity of monitoring behaviours or subgroups of monitoring patterns among youth. for example, laird and colleagues (2009) described three patterns of monitoring knowledge among youth aged 12 to 16: low-decreasing (16% of youth), moderate-stable (60%), and high-stable (23%). other work by spano and colleagues (spano, rivera, & bolland, 2011; spano, rivera, vazsonyi, & bolland, 2012) found that just under half (48%) of their sample of 11 to 17 year-old at-risk african-american youth demonstrated a declining trajectory of parental monitoring. both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have also shown that socio-demographic characteristics may be associated with parental monitoring practices. there is consistent evidence that girls are more highly monitored than boys (barnes et al., 2000; rai et al., 2003), with boys experiencing greater decreases in parental monitoring into adolescence than do girls (laird et al., 2010). on average, children from socio-economically disadvantaged families tend to be less highly monitored (crouter, helms-erikson, updegraff, & mchale, 1999) as are children from single-parent or step-parent families and children with less educated mothers (chilcoat & anthony, 1996). there is also evidence that first-born children may be less highly monitored than higher birth order children (crouter et al., 1999). finally, maternal age, in particular teen motherhood, tends to be associated with parenting behaviours as well as adolescent outcomes (dahinten, shapka, & willms, 2007) although less is known about the impact of teen motherhood on parental monitoring knowledge. however, the aforementioned studies have generally examined associations between possible antecedents (generally socio-demographic characteristics) with mean levels of monitoring at one point in time, rather than with distinct patterns or trajectories over time. this information might identify why some youth experience certain patterns of monitoring instead of others. of particular relevance to this study, laird and colleagues (2008, 2009) suggested that socio-economic and child and youth behavioural characteristics may be associated with patterns of parental monitoring knowledge. youth characteristics related to group membership included gender, living in a safe neighbourhood, and peer anti-sociality, with being female, and those with more externalizing problems showing an association with increased probability of high-stable monitoring knowledge versus low-decreasing monitoring knowledge. in contrast, tobler and komro (2010) did not find gender or the number of parents in the home to be associated with trajectory group membership. perceived parental monitoring knowledge and youth outcomes the link between perceived parental monitoring knowledge and risk behaviours as well as social and academic outcomes is well established. for example, low levels of parental monitoring are associated with increased levels of smoking, alcohol, and drug use (barnes et al., 2000; tobler & komro, 2010; webb, bray, getz, & adams, 2002), greater signs of conduct problems, aggression, and antisocial or delinquent behaviour (crouter, bumpus, davis, & mchale, 2005; diclemente et al., 2001; laird et al., 2010), and more risky sexual practices and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 406 earlier initiation of sexual behaviour (baptiste, tolou-shams, miller, mcbride, & paikoff, 2007; crosby, diclemente, wingood, lang, & harrington, 2003). in contrast, greater parental monitoring has been associated with higher levels of self-esteem among youth (dekovic & meeus, 1997; parker & benson, 2004) and with academic success and school-related behaviours (annunziata, hogue, faw, & liddle, 2006; li, fang, stanton, su, & wu, 2003). while monitoring behaviour itself may be influenced by youth’s socio-demographic characteristics, associations between parental monitoring and child outcomes may also be influenced by characteristics specific to youth, such as the number of parents in the home (coley & hoffman, 1996), or child/youth gender (borawski, levers-landis, lovegreen, & trapl, 2003; lenciauskiene & zaborskis, 2008) or age (chilcoat & anthony, 1996). moreover, examining heterogeneous patterns may also allow the examination of reciprocal relations between patterns in monitoring and child outcomes (laird et al., 2010; spano et al., 2011). for example, adolescent substance use has been differentially associated with parental monitoring, with those who experienced decreasing monitoring from age 12 to 14 being more likely to use alcohol or marijuana than were youth who were consistently highly monitored (tobler & komro, 2010). moreover, the relationship between friends’ anti-sociality and delinquent behaviour is stronger among youth with moderate-declining parental monitoring knowledge. youth who perceived that their parents were less knowledgeable were more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour and report anti-social friends, and more likely to report rapid increases in such behaviour over time than were youth with higher levels of parental monitoring knowledge (laird et al., 2008). thus, differences in behavioural (or other) outcomes based on heterogeneous patterns in monitoring over time as well as characteristics of the individual should be considered in any examination of ppmk. the present study given the variety of definitions, terms, and measures used in the literature, it is important that studies of parental monitoring clearly define the behaviours represented by the particular tool or measure employed. the measure of parental monitoring included in the present study can be likened to the concept of “parental monitoring knowledge” employed by laird and colleagues, which emphasizes the distinction between disclosure of information (i.e., by the child/youth) versus knowledge and or solicitation of information by the parent (e.g., laird et al., 2010; 2011). furthermore, after examining the factor structure and conceptual strength of the measure of monitoring used in the present study, arim, shapka, dahinten, and olson, (2011) suggest that “parental knowledge” is a suitable descriptor of the scale measure used in this study. to further clarify that it is the child/youth who is reporting on their parents’ monitoring knowledge, and not the parent themselves, we are utilizing the term “perceived parental monitoring knowledge” (ppmk) in the present study. the goals of the current study were threefold. the first was to extend previous research by examining the presence of multiple patterns of ppmk among a national sample of canadian children from late childhood through early adolescence (ages 10 to 15 years). this study is unique in that little research has been conducted on monitoring behaviours for a national sample of canadian children/youth, and few dynamic approaches to parental monitoring have been pursued except within specific populations (e.g., at-risk or african-american/hispanic samples, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 407 see spano et al., 2011) or relatively small samples with limited ability to detect effects across multiple groups (e.g., laird et al., 2008). second, the associations between different patterns of ppmk and several family-level socio-demographic factors were explored. third, the association between specific patterns of ppmk and other behavioural and academic outcomes as well as substance use for youth ages 14 to 15 were examined. based on the reviewed literature, the present study hypothesized the following. first, it was expected that more than one trajectory of ppmk would be identified, and that at least one trajectory would show a decline in the level of ppmk as the child ages. second, girls were hypothesized to report experiencing higher levels of ppmk than boys, whereas those from more socio-economically disadvantaged families, with single parents, with less educated parents, and first-born children were expected to report lower levels of ppmk. finally, lower levels of ppmk were expected to be associated with increases in adolescents’ substance use and problem behaviour, poorer academic performance, and lower self-esteem at ages 14 or 15. methods data source the national longitudinal survey of children and youth (nlscy), conducted jointly by statistics canada and human resources and skills development canada, gathered information on the development and well-being of canadian children. first conducted in 1994, the nlscy was conducted every two years for 8 cycles (to 2009/10). the target population of the nlscy comprised the non-institutionalized civilian population (aged 0 to 11 at the time of their selection) in canada’s 10 provinces. the survey excluded children living on indian reserves or crown lands, residents of institutions, full-time members of the canadian armed forces, and residents of some remote regions. most questionnaires were administered by an interviewer using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (cati) or computer-assisted personal interviewing (capi). in total, 13,439 households were interviewed in cycle 1, with a total of 22,831 children participating in the survey (statistics canada, 2005). all individuals in the study sample were part of this longitudinal cohort first interviewed in 1994. due to changes in the measurement of ppmk across cycles, and in order to maximize the outcome variables in included in the study, three cohorts were selected for the current analysis: children who were aged 12 to 13 in cycle 3 (cohort 1, n = 2,246), children who were aged 10 to 11 in cycle 3 (cohort 2, n = 2,169), and children who were aged 10 to 11 in cycle 4 (cohort 3, n = 2,101).1 1 an attrition analysis within the present study found that youth from economically disadvantaged situations were less likely to be included in the analysis than more economically advantaged youth due to missing data. therefore, the reader should use caution when generalizing the present findings to the general population of canadian children and youth. however, the present sample does include children from a variety of family and economic backgrounds. replication of the present study with a different data source would be useful for determining the generalizability of the current findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 408 measures socio-demographic characteristics. socio-demographic information was provided by the person most knowledgeable of the child, most frequently the child’s biological mother, and was drawn from the cycle in which the child was aged 10 or 11. the person most knowledgeable will hereafter be referred to as the “parent”, although a small proportion may be non-parents. characteristics of interest were the child’s gender and birth order (only child, first-born, higher birth order), the number of parents in the home (singleversus dual-parent families), household income, and parental age and highest level of educational attainment. parent’s highest educational attainment was categorized as less than a high school diploma, being a high school graduate, or having at least some post-secondary education. household income was rescaled (divided by $10,000) to allow for a more meaningful interpretation of the beta coefficient in the results. therefore, the value in the model refers to a unit change of $10,000 in household income. although some of these characteristics could change over time, their values were fixed at the time that the child was aged 10 or 11. perceived parental monitoring knowledge. parenting behaviour questions used in the nlscy were drawn from scales developed by lempers, clark-lempers, and simons (1989). included were measures of parental nurturance, rejection, and monitoring. as recommended by arim and colleagues (2011), the parental monitoring scale in this study was reduced from five to four items in order to improve the scale’s factor structure and associated fit to the data. the four items were: my parents (1) “want to know exactly where i am and what i am doing”; (2) “tell me what time to be home when i go out”; (3) “find out about my misbehaviour”; and (4) “take an interest in where i am going and who i am with”. using a 5-point likert scale (never, rarely, often, sometimes, and always), children and youth were asked to indicate the frequency with which their parent(s) exhibited each of four monitoring behaviours. responses to all four items were summed to create a ppmk score that ranged from 0 to 16, with higher scores indicating greater ppmk. cronbach’s alpha for the monitoring scale improved with the age of the child: α = .58 at ages 10 and 11; α = .65 at ages 12 and 13; and α = .67 at ages 14 and 15. similar internal consistency values have been found by others (laird et al., 2008; spano et al., 2011, 2012). school-related outcomes. four measures were used to describe youth’s academic performance and school-related behaviour at ages 14 to 15. first, youth’s math skills were measured using a shortened version of the mathematics computation test of the standardized canadian achievement tests (cat/2). this objective test reflects the student’s skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and problem solving. the short version of the cat/2 used in the nlscy consisted of 20 questions at each grade level and standardized scores were derived from norms established by the canadian test centre in 1992 (statistics canada, 2005). three other measures of academic and school behaviour were based on youth self-report. using a 4-point likert scale (never, once or twice, 3 or 4 times, or 5 times or more), youth were asked how often they had skipped a day of school without permission or had been suspended from school since the beginning of the school year (at least once in the past year versus not). youth also reported how often they completed their homework (all of the time or most of the time, versus some of the time, rarely, and never). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 409 behaviour-related outcomes. in terms of children’s social and behavioural functioning, self-reported information was collected from youth at ages 14 or 15. six behavioural scales were used: direct aggression (6 items, e.g., “get into fights and threaten people”); hyperactivity and inattention (7 items, e.g., “impulsive, act without thinking”); indirect aggression (5 items, e.g., “try to get others to dislike someone”); emotional disorder and anxiety (7 items, e.g., “unhappy or sad”); pro-social behaviour (10 items, e.g., “try to help someone who is hurt”); and property offences (6 items, e.g., “destroy my own things”). items for these scales were derived from the child behaviour checklist (achenbach & edelbrock, 1981) and modified for a canadian sample (boyle et al., 1987; tremblay, vitaro, & nagin, 2003). cronbach’s alpha was found to be adequate across subscales (α = .70 .87). self-esteem. questions regarding youth’s overall self-esteem were taken from the general self scale of marsh’s self description questionnaire (marsh & shavelson, 1985; marsh, 1992). four items were included on the nlscy: (1) “in general i like the way i am”; (2) “overall i have a lot to be proud of”; (3) “a lot of things about me are good”; and (4) “when i do something, i do it well”. using a 4-point likert scale (false, mostly false, sometimes false/sometimes true, mostly true), youth indicated the degree to which they felt that certain statements about themselves were true2. for youth’s reports at ages 14 and 15, the scale had a cronbach’s alpha of .83. substance use behaviours. three measures of substance use were included in the current study. youth reported their current and past experience with smoking, drinking, and marijuana use. response scales were dichotomized to indicate the presence (or absence) of a risk behaviour (daily smoker, ever been drunk, weekly marijuana user). youth who reported smoking 6 or 7 days a week were classified as daily smokers. youth who had ever consumed alcohol (more than just a sip) were asked if they had ever been drunk. youth were also asked if they currently used marijuana and, if so, how often. youth who reported using marijuana at least once a week were classified as weekly marijuana users. data analysis trajectory model estimation. a semi-parametric group-based approach was used to identify distinct patterns of ppmk from ages 10 through 15 (jones, nagin, & roeder, 2001; jones & nagin, 2007; nagin, 2005). this approach allows for qualitatively different trajectories to be identified and examined, creating sub-populations of ppmk. it should be noted that such trajectories are latent groups and that no child actually belongs to a particular group. rather, his or her pattern of ppmk is best described by a particular pattern or trajectory, which is reflected by the posterior probability of group membership (nagin, 2005). to be included in the trajectory analysis, youth had to provide at least two waves of information on ppmk. 2youth who failed to provide a response to one or more of the scale items did not receive a score for the measure. for all behaviour and self-esteem scales, upwards of 89% of youth provided responses to all scale-specific items. those with missing behaviour and self-esteem measures had similar average pme scores and socio-demographic characteristics as those with complete information, with the exception that first-born children with siblings were less likely to be missing these measures than were other children. based on these findings, it was felt that excluding those with missing values on these scales (i.e., not imputing scores) would not significantly bias the findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 410 the number and shape of trajectory groups were varied in sequential models to determine the most parsimonious number of groups in the model and the significance of the shape of the trajectories (flat, linear, or quadratic). the final model was chosen based on two factors: (a) the model which yielded the largest (i.e., least negative) bayesian information criterion (bic); and (b) a model in which all slope parameters were statistically significant (nagin, 2005). in model fitting, each individual is assigned a posterior probability of being classified in each trajectory group; the posterior probabilities total to 1.0 across all trajectory groups for each individual. next, covariates were added to the model to estimate their effect on membership in a particular trajectory group. the effect of covariates on trajectory group membership was assessed using multinomial logistic analysis. coefficients are interpreted as the increased probability (odds) that an individual will follow a particular trajectory relative to a referent trajectory group. regression model estimation. after identifying longitudinal patterns of ppmk, the association between the trajectories of ppmk and youth’s behaviours and school-related outcomes was examined using regression models. these models controlled for a series of sociodemographic characteristics, including child gender, birth order, family structure (i.e., whether the child lived with one or two parents), parental education, parent age, and household income. the effect of ppmk trajectories was examined by including the posterior probabilities of belonging to a certain trajectory group in the regression analysis. odds ratios (and betas) refer to a change of 10% in the posterior probability. two dichotomous cohort identifiers (cohort 2 as the reference) were included in regression models to adjust for inter-cohort differences. among the continuous scale measures examined at ages 14 to 15, only mathematics and pro-social behaviour scales conformed to the normality assumption in linear regression models. models for these behaviours were conducted using multivariate linear regression models. appropriate transformations could not be found for the remaining scales. in these cases, scales were dichotomized using the 90th percentile as a cut-point indicating high levels of behaviour problems. the exception was self-esteem, for which a cut-point identifying low self-esteem was set at the 10th percentile. this approach has been taken by other researchers examining behaviour problem scales (lipman, offord, & dooley, 1996; lumeng, gannon, cabral, frank, & zuckerman, 2003). due to the ordinal nature of the scales, the 90th (or 10th) percentiles did not always include exactly 10% of the sample. all dichotomous outcomes were examined using logistic modelling. sampling weights were applied to all analyses. bootstrap techniques were used to adjust the standard error estimates in the descriptive and logistic regression analyses for the complex design of the survey (rust & rao, 1996). however, due to software limitations, trajectory models and the resultant posterior probabilities were not bootstrapped. statistical significance was set at the p < .05 level. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 411 results descriptive statistics approximately half of the youth were male, 12% were only children, while a further 33% were first-born children. the majority of children (92%) were caucasian, and only 3% of children were immigrants. nearly 15% of children lived in single-parent homes. the children’s parents were 39 years of age on average, most likely to be female (92%), and 10% had less than a high school level of education. the mean household income was approximately $68,493 and approximately 14% of children’s families were considered low-income for their family size and place of residence. trajectory analyses in the trajectory model-building phase of analysis, models with an increasingly higher number of trajectory groups provided the best fit to the data, but additional trajectory groups were interpretively similar or represented very small proportions of the sample. the model with the greatest number of trajectory groups that still maintained enough sample (i.e., more than 2%) in each trajectory was a three-group model (figure 1). for ease of interpretation, these groups were labelled: high, moderate and decreasing ppmk. it was estimated that approximately 53% of children were best represented by the high ppmk group, 41% by the moderate ppmk trajectory, and the remaining 6% by the decreasing trajectory of ppmk. the average score in the high ppmk group was slightly lower at age 15 than at age 10. within the moderate trajectory, although ppmk at age 15 was lower than at age 10, there was actually a slight rise in the level of ppmk, with peak levels reported at age 12. in the decreasing trajectory, levels of ppmk dropped precipitously to age 13, but then started to increase slightly up to age 15. the intercepts were similar between the moderate and decreasing trajectories (wald chi-square = 3.35, p = .07), meaning that levels of ppmk were similar at age 10 for members of these two groups. intercepts were statistically different between the high and moderate trajectories (wald chi-square = 44.78, p < .0001) as well as between the high and decreasing groups (wald chi-square = 4.27, p = .04), meaning that levels of ppmk were higher at age 10 for members of the high group compared to those in the moderate or decreasing trajectory groups. analyses were performed to identify characteristics at age 10 or 11 that were associated with membership in the trajectory groups (table 1). results revealed that members of the moderate ppmk trajectory were distinguished from members of the high ppmk trajectory on the basis of household income: as household income increased, the likelihood of being in the moderate ppmk trajectory decreased (or = 0.90). comparing members of the decreasing and high ppmk trajectory groups, girls were significantly less likely than boys to be in the decreasing ppmk trajectory group (or = 0.37), whereas children with older siblings (not firstborn children) were significantly more likely to be in the decreasing ppmk trajectory than were first-born children (or = 3.10). lastly, comparing members of the moderate and decreasing ppmk trajectories, only children were significantly less likely than first-born children to be in the moderate ppmk trajectory (or = 0.24) than the decreasing ppmk group. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 412 figure 1. trajectories of parental monitoring efforts (pme), ages 10 to 15. outcome analyses the posterior probabilities of membership in each of the three trajectory groups were used as predictors in multivariate regression models. for each participant, their probability of belonging to each of the moderate and declining trajectories were entered into the models, with the probability of belonging to the high ppmk trajectory group as the reference category. posterior probabilities were used in lieu of assigned trajectories as the former takes into account individuals whose ppmk patterns may lie somewhere between those that are described, whereas the latter requires an individual to be assigned to a specific trajectory, even if their pattern of ppmk is not well described by that trajectory. behavioural outcomes. the following proportions of children were categorized as having high levels of behaviour problems: 7% for direct aggression, 9% for emotional disorder, 6% for hyperactivity, 6% for indirect aggression, and 7% for property offences. furthermore, 8% of 14to 15-year-olds had low levels of self-esteem. girls were less likely than boys to report high levels of direct aggression (or = 0.44) or property offences (or = 0.53), scored higher in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 413 pro-social behaviours (b = 2.99), but were more likely to exhibit high levels of emotional disorder (or = 2.52) and low self-esteem (or = 2.05). higher birth order children were more likely to have low self-esteem than first-born children (or = 1.75). youth whose parent had some post-secondary education (b = 0.51) and those from higher income households (b = 0.06) tended to have higher pro-social behaviour scores. table 1. baseline factors associated with likelihood of trajectory group membership (n = 4035), odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) baseline (age 10 or 11) risk factors perceived parental monitoring knowledge trajectories moderate vs. high decreasing vs. high moderate vs. decreasing female child 0.82 (0.56, 1.19) 0.37 (0.14, 0.95) 2.22 (0.76, 6.47) single parent 0.94 (0.54, 1.63) 0.53 (0.18, 1.59) 1.76 (0.51, 6.11) parental educational attainment less than high school 0.87 (0.45, 1.67) 3.12 (0.88, 11.00) 0.28 (0.07, 1.19) high school graduate (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 at least some postsecondary 1.15 (0.75, 1.74) 1.49 (0.60, 3.70) 0.77 (0.26, 2.23) birth order only child 0.79 (0.42, 1.49) 3.33 (0.97, 11.46) 0.24 (0.06, 0.99) firstborn with siblings (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 not firstborn with siblings 1.44 (0.93, 2.23) 3.10 (1.06, 9.04) 0.47 (0.13, 1.60) parental age age 38 or under 0.88 (0.62, 1.26) 0.92 (0.43, 1.99) 0.96 (0.40, 2.32) age 39 or older (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 household income (per $10,000 unit) 0.90 (0.85, 0.96) 0.92 (0.83, 1.02) 0.98 (0.85, 1.12) estimates in bold are statistically significant at p < .05. ppmk trajectories were significantly associated with four of the seven behavioural outcomes (table 2). as the probability of belonging to the moderate ppmk trajectory increased (compared to high ppmk), the odds of reporting higher levels of direct aggression (or = 1.10) and property offences (or = 1.15) increased, while pro-social behaviour scores decreased (b = -0.19). furthermore, as the probability of belonging to the decreasing ppmk trajectory increased, the odds of reporting higher levels of direct aggression (or = 1.16), indirect international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 414 aggression (or = 1.16), and property offences (or = 1.12) increased, while pro-social scores decreased (b = -0.27). table 2. association of perceived parental monitoring knowledge trajectory membership and sociodemographic factors with adolescents’ behaviors and self-esteem at age 14 and 15 above the 90th percentile on… low self esteem, below 10th percentile (n = 3425) direct aggression (n = 3586) emotional disorder (n = 3575) hyper activity (n = 3364) property offenses (n = 3583) pro-social behavior (n = 3581) odds ratio (95% confidence intervals) beta (se) probability of trajectory membership high ppmk (ref.) … … … … … … moderate ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) 1.10 (1.04, 1.17) 1.00 (0.94, 1.05) 1.03 (0.96, 1.10) 1.02 (0.93, 1.11) 1.15 (1.08, 1.22) 1.05 (0.99, 1.12) -0.19 (0.03) decreasing ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) 1.16 (1.04, 1.10) 1.05 (0.96, 1.15) 1.05 (0.90, 1.22) 1.16 (1.03, 1.31) 1.12 (1.01, 1.24) 1.07 (0.98, 1.16) -0.27 (0.09) female child (ref. male child) 0.44 (0.28, 0.70) 2.52 (1.68, 3.78) 0.71 (0.46, 1.09) 0.82 (0.49, 1.37) 0.53 (0.33, 0.85) 2.05 (1.41, 2.97) 2.99 (0.18) single-parent family (ref. dual-parent family) 1.01 (0.53, 1.91) 1.25 (0.75, 2.08) 0.93 (0.50, 1.73) 1.24 (0.53, 2.94) 1.00 (0.61, 1.63) 0.99 (0.59, 1.68) 0.18 (0.30) parental educational attainment less than high school 0.88 (0.41, 1.88) 1.01 (0.43, 2.36) 1.09 (0.42, 2.83) 0.88 (0.38, 2.01) 0.84 (0.36, 1.94) 0.99 (0.52, 1.89) 0.75 (0.51) high school graduated (ref.) … … … … … … … some post-secondary 1.05 (0.61, 1.81) 1.22 (0.74, 2.03) 1.26 (0.74, 2.15) 1.79 (0.96, 3.34) 1.05 (0.63, 1.74) 0.91 (0.57, 1.47) 0.51 (0.25) birth order only child 1.09 (0.56, 2.12) 1.62 (0.87, 3.03) 1.32 (0.57, 3.03) 0.36 (0.12, 1.08) 0.92 (0.45, 1.89) 1.09 (0.58, 2.07) 0.18 (0.36) firstborn with siblings (ref.) … … … … … … ... not firstborn with siblings 1.10 (0.71, 1.72) 1.27 (0.86, 1.88) 1.00 (0.62, 1.63) 1.08 (0.61, 1.90) 0.81 (0.49, 1.34) 1.75 (1.14, 2.69) 0.02 (0.21) parent aged 38 and under (ref. parent aged 39 and older) 1.05 (0.69, 1.60) 0.92 (0.63, 1.33) 1.28 (0.82, 1.99) 1.25 (0.79, 2.00) 1.06 (0.67, 1.69) 1.41 (0.94, 2.12) -0.15 (0.23) household income (per $10,000 change) 0.96 (0.91, 1.01) 0.97 (0.93, 1.02) 0.99 (0.94, 1.04) 1.00 (0.91, 1.11) 0.98 (0.93, 1.03) 0.92 (0.84, 1.00) 0.06 (0.02) estimates in bold are statistically significant at p < .05; estimates also adjusted for the child’s cohort (betas and odds ratios not presented) academic and school-related outcomes. overall, 76% of 14to 15-year-olds reported that they completed their homework at least most of the time, 27% reported skipping school without permission at least once since the beginning of the school year, and 7% reported being suspended from school at least once since the beginning of the school year. on average, girls had lower math scores than boys (b = -9.06), were more likely to complete their homework (or = 1.61), and were less likely to be suspended from school (or = 0.42). youth in single-parent families were more likely to skip a day of school than youth in dual-parent families (or = 1.39), although other academic outcomes did not show differences by the number of parents in the home. having a parent with some post-secondary education was positively associated with higher math scores (b = 17.91). youth’s math scores also differed significantly with the age of their parents; youth whose parent was younger than average (i.e., age 38 or under) generally had lower math scores than youth with older parents (b = -19.25). household income was positively international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 415 related with mathematics scores (b = 2.29) and inversely related with the likelihood of skipping school (or = 0.97) or being suspended from school (or = 0.87). table 3. association of perceived parental monitoring knowledge trajectory membership and socio-demographic factors with school outcomes at ages 14-15 math homework completion skip a day of school suspended from school (n = 3254) (n = 3543) (n = 3608) (n = 3600) beta (se) odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) probability of trajectory membership high ppmk (ref.) … … … … moderate ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) -2.03 (0.82) 0.96 (0.91, 1.00) 1.03 (0.99, 1.07) 1.07 (1.00, 1.14) decreasing ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) 0.94 (2.03) 0.90 (0.83, 0.98) 1.13 (1.05, 1.22) 1.02 (0.92, 1.13) female child (ref. male child) -9.06 (4.88) 1.61 (1.21, 2.14) 0.83 (0.64, 1.07) 0.42 (0.28, 0.63) single-parent family (ref. dual-parent family) -4.66 (8.81) 0.80 (0.55, 1.15) 1.39 (1.02, 1.89) 1.20 (0.74, 1.95) parental educational attainment less than high school -15.68 (9.16) 0.96 (0.60, 1.54) 0.98 (0.62, 1.54) 1.35 (0.68, 2.69) high school graduated (ref.) … … … … some post-secondary 17.91 (5.87) 0.87 (0.63, 1.20) 0.80 (0.60, 1.06) 0.96 (0.59, 1.55) birth order only child -1.29 (7.78) 1.17 (0.75, 1.84) 0.83 (0.56, 1.22) 0.76 (0.43, 1.36) firstborn with siblings (ref.) … … … … not firstborn with siblings -5.02 (5.58) 0.91 (0.66, 1.25) 1.13 (0.86, 1.49) 0.95 (0.61, 1.48) parent aged 38 and under (ref. parent aged 39 and older) -19.25 (5.32) 0.81 (0.62, 1.07) 1.16 (0.90, 1.49) 1.07 (0.69, 1.66) household income (per $10,000 change) 2.29 (0.69) 1.02 (0.99, 1.05) 0.97 (0.94, 1.00) 0.87 (0.81, 0.93) estimates in bold are statistically significant at p < .05. estimates also adjusted for the child’s cohort (betas and odds ratios not presented). turning to the associations between academic and school-related outcomes with ppmk, as the probability of belonging to the moderate ppmk group increased, math scores tended to decrease (b = -2.03) while the likelihood of being suspended from school increased (or = 1.07; table 3). furthermore, as the probability of belonging to the decreasing ppmk trajectory increased, the likelihood of completing homework at least most of the time decreased (or = 0.90), while the likelihood of skipping a day of school increased (or = 1.13). substance use outcomes. overall, 7% of youth reported being current daily smokers at the age of 14 or 15, 35% reported ever being drunk, and 8% reported using marijuana on a weekly basis. few of the baseline socio-demographic characteristics were significantly international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 416 associated with substance using behaviours. girls were significantly more likely to be daily smokers (or = 1.97), and significantly less likely to report using marijuana on a weekly basis (or = 0.65), than boys. youth from single-parent families were significantly more likely to be daily smokers (or = 1.76), while youth from higher income households were less likely to be daily smokers (or = 0.90). ppmk trajectory membership was found to be significantly associated with the likelihood of ever being drunk (or = 1.06), whereas the odds of reporting ever being drunk increased as the probability of belonging to the moderate ppmk trajectory increased (table 4). there was also a tendency (or = 1.09, p = .08) for the odds of being a daily smoker to increase with an increase in the probability of belonging to the decreasing ppmk trajectory. table 4. association of perceived parental monitoring knowledge trajectory membership and socio-demographic factors with substance use behaviors at ages 14-15 daily smoker ever been drunk weekly marijuana use (n =3613) (n = 3608) (n = 3629) or (95% ci) probability of trajectory membership high ppmk (ref.) … … … moderate ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) 0.98 (0.92, 1.04) 1.06 (1.01, 1.10) 1.00 (0.91, 1.09) decreasing ppmk (per 10% increase in probability) 1.09 (0.99, 1.19) 1.04 (0.97, 1.12) 1.03 (0.92, 1.15) female child (ref. male child) 1.97 (1.31,2.96) 1.15 (0.92, 1.44) 0.65 (0.45, 0.94) single-parent family (ref. dual-parent family) 1.76 (1.08, 2.88) 1.26 (0.93, 1.71) 1.46 (0.90, 2.38) parental educational attainment less than high school 0.88 (0.44, 1.66) 0.85 (0.53, 1.37) 0.74 (0.34, 1.63) high school graduated (ref.) … … … some post-secondary 0.80 (0.52, 1.23) 0.82 (0.61, 1.10) 1.19 (0.76, 1.89) birth order only child 0.74 (0.39, 1.40) 1.09 (0.76, 1.56) 1.01 (0.58, 1.79) firstborn with siblings (ref.) … … … not firstborn with siblings 0.66 (0.41, 1.04) 1.18 (0.91, 1.52) 1.09 (0.63, 1.89) parent aged 38 and under (ref. parent aged 39 and older) 1.03 (0.68, 1.55) 1.20 (0.95, 1.53) 1.05 (0.70, 1.59) household income (per $10,000 change) 0.90 (0.84, 0.98) 1.01 (0.98, 1.04) 1.01 (0.97, 1.05) estimates in bold are statistically significant at p < .05. estimates also adjusted for the child’s cohort (odds ratios not presented). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 417 discussion this study examined youth’s reports of parental monitoring knowledge over time using population-based longitudinal survey data. similar to previous work investigating trajectories of monitoring with an at-risk sample (spano et al., 2011, 2012), and in keeping with the hypothesized findings, results showed three distinct patterns of ppmk from ages 10 through 15. all trajectories showed declining levels of ppmk into mid-adolescence, reaffirming previous research showing that youth perceive their parents to monitor their behaviours less frequently as they age (barnes et al., 2000). in the present study, one trajectory depicted relatively high levels of ppmk over time (53% of youth), a second trajectory depicted moderate levels of monitoring (41%), and a third depicted a trajectory of ppmk that began relatively high in late childhood but declined precipitously to relatively low levels in mid-adolescence (6%). the high and moderate ppmk trajectories are similar patterns to those identified by laird et al. (2008) in a sample of american youth. although the trajectory of declining ppmk is the smallest in number, it represents a group of youth with experienced ppmk patterns that differ significantly from those of their peers, and can have an impact on youth outcomes. in the present study, youth from lower income families were more likely to be members in the moderate ppmk trajectory than they were to be in the high ppmk group. the association between lower household income and decreasing (versus high) ppmk was in the same direction but was not significant, perhaps as a result of the smaller sample size of the decreasing ppmk group. while these findings are similar to other studies that have shown ppmk to be associated with socio-economic status (pettit, bates, dodge, & meece, 1999; pettit, laird, dodge, bates, & criss, 2001), the present study did not find an association between trajectory membership and parents’ educational attainment. the latter may be due to the fact that children with less educated parents were more likely to be lost to follow-up in the survey and not contribute to the present analysis. however, the mean level of parental education in the nlscy is higher than other studies, particularly in comparison with samples from the united states (kohen, brooks-gunn, leventhal, & hertzman, 2002). the present study also found that higher birth order youth were more likely to be characterized by the decreasing ppmk trajectory than they were by the high trajectory, and only children were significantly more likely to be in the decreasing ppmk trajectory than they were to be in the moderate ppmk trajectory. this is in contrast to other studies that have found that higher birth order children tend to be more highly monitored. however, the work by crouter and colleagues (1999) did not distinguish age effects from the effect of birth order, where secondborn children were necessarily younger than first-born children within a family, and therefore more likely to be more highly monitored. further examination of the impact of birth order on levels of ppmk could be explored in future research. although there were some significant differences, not many of the baseline sociodemographic characteristics distinguished between the ppmk trajectories. it is possible, however, that other factors or events that occurred post-baseline could have distinguished these two trajectories. although this was beyond the scope of the present study, future research may seek to determine which factors differentiate youth who perceived significant declines in their parents’ ppmk relative from those who maintained a relatively high level of ppmk. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 418 turning to the relations between ppmk and outcomes at ages 14 to 15, several significant associations were seen. ppmk trajectory membership was associated with 9 of 14 outcomes examined. as a youth’s probability of belonging to the moderate ppmk trajectory increased compared to high ppmk, they were significantly more likely to report higher levels of direct aggression and property offences, lower levels of pro-social behaviour, scored lower in math skills, and were more likely to have been suspended from school and to report ever being drunk. as a youth’s probability of belonging to the decreasing (versus high) ppmk trajectory increased, they were significantly more likely to report higher levels of direct and indirect aggression, to report more property offences and less pro-social behaviour, were less likely to complete their homework, and were more likely to report skipping school. these findings support previous research suggesting that lower levels of ppmk are associated with higher levels of behaviour problems and substance use behaviours (barnes et al., 2000; tobler & komro, 2010; crouter et al., 2005). although this study found significant associations between ppmk trajectory membership and outcomes in adolescence, no clear pattern of association emerged. some of the behaviours for which significant associations were found are externalizing in nature, meaning that the behaviours are prominent and observable, such as direct aggression and property offences. these types of behaviours may be more easily monitored, as opposed to other outcomes that may be more internal, such as self-esteem, which seem to be less associated with parents’ monitoring knowledge. future examinations may wish to investigate whether other parental behaviours, such as nurturance, are more strongly associated with such internalized feelings and behaviours than with parental monitoring. this study makes a significant contribution to the literature on the effects of ppmk on academic and school-related behaviours, outcomes which have received less attention in the monitoring literature. the findings show that moderate or decreasing levels of monitoring were more likely to be associated with lower youth academic outcomes. significant associations were found between the probability of membership in the moderate ppmk trajectory group (on math scores and being suspended from school), as well as the probability of belonging to the decreasing ppmk trajectory (homework, skipping school). limitations and conclusions the current study is unique in that it examined multiple patterns of ppmk with a population-based, longitudinal sample of canadian children and youth aged 10 to 15. although other work has been conducted with longitudinal samples (e.g., spano et al., 2011; laird et al., 2008), the present study utilized a far greater sample than previous work, drawing conclusions based on a sample of several thousand children, as opposed to samples of several hundred children. this affords greater statistical power to this study’s analyses, and perhaps strengthens the findings across studies. other studies also focused on specific sub-populations (e.g., youth at risk), whereas the present study examines a more heterogeneous, general population sample. in addition, a wide range of socio-economic predictors and youth outcomes were examined for associations with ppmk. multiple outcome measures were available, including behavioural, academic, and substance use outcomes, as well as an objective, standardized measure of math. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 419 however, because the majority of outcomes were reported by youth, as was the measure of ppmk, we cannot discount the issue of shared method variance. although parent-reported outcomes are available in the nlscy, they are not available for youth in this age range. although the present study took a longitudinal approach, the findings cannot be interpreted as causal. that is, although the behavioural outcomes examined in the study occurred at the end of the study period (ages 14 to 15), this study does not conclude that parental monitoring practices cause certain adolescent behaviours. in fact, many of the adolescent outcomes examined follow, themselves, longitudinal patterns, such as stable or changing levels of behaviours. laird and colleagues (2003) found that there was a reciprocal relationship between adolescents’ delinquent behaviour and parents’ monitoring-relevant knowledge. future research may wish to extend such findings by examining reciprocal associations between longitudinal patterns of ppmk and patterns of behavioural and academic outcomes. it might also be of interest to examine these relations for specific sub-populations of youth (e.g., first-born children, those at risk, see spano et al., 2012). furthermore, heterogeneous trajectories of ppmk could be considered as a moderator variable in future research examining associations between family-level variables and youth outcomes (e.g., kiesner, poulin, & dishion, 2010). the measure of ppmk used in this study also has certain limitations. as a youth-reported measure, the items only capture youth’s perceptions of their parents’ monitoring behaviours. several studies have demonstrated that parental reports may overestimate parental knowledge of their child’s whereabouts and activities and significantly underestimate their child’s engagement in high-risk behaviours (cottrel et al., 2003; stanton et al., 2000). conversely, adolescent reports of parental monitoring behaviours are generally thought to be more accurate than parental reports as they have been found to be significantly associated with adolescent risk behaviours (cottrel et al., 2003). however, adolescents can only provide reports of their perceptions of parental monitoring rather than actual parent behaviours (hayes et al., 2003). a different or more objective measure of parental monitoring may have yielded different findings. furthermore, the measure of monitoring was limited by survey items, which may not fit with theoretical concepts of monitoring (e.g., stattin & kerr, 2000) and may be more reflective of the construct of parental knowledge. thus, some caution is warranted in interpreting the findings. the results of this study point to the heterogeneity in parental monitoring practices as well as the association between levels of ppmk and adolescent behaviours, school outcomes, and substance use. overall, this study underscores the important role played by ppmk in youth development, even as the child enters adolescence and exerts greater independence, in particular in terms of behavioural, academic, and substance-use outcomes. future research may wish to examine predictors of monitoring behaviours, different measures of monitoring behaviours or practices that have the greater impact on children’s development, and the period during which their importance is most salient. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 403–424 420 references achenbach, t. m., & edelbrock, c. s. 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(2002). gender, perceived parental monitoring, and behavioural adjustment: influences on adolescent alcohol use. american journal of orthopsychiatry, 72(3), 392–400. retrieved from pm:15792051 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/imdb-bmdi/document/4450_d4_t9_v5-eng.pdf a prospective examination of the relationship between childhood neglect and juvenile delinquency in the cambridge study in deli international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 65 a prospective examination of the relationship between childhood neglect and juvenile delinquency in the cambridge study in delinquent development lila kazemian, cathy spatz widom, and david p. farrington abstract: the relationship between childhood neglect and later life outcomes is an understudied topic. this study employs data from the cambridge study in delinquent development, a longitudinal follow-up of 411 working-class males in london, to examine (a) the profiles of the boys who were neglected in childhood and (b) the relationship between childhood neglect and juvenile delinquency, controlling for other risk factors. findings reveal that boys who were neglected in childhood were characterized by other adverse events in childhood. childhood neglect predicted both self-reported and official offending in adolescence, although these effects eventually dissipated with the introduction of other measures of childhood risk. the odds ratios are particularly large for official offending, with the odds of juvenile conviction being over four times higher for individuals who were exposed to neglect in childhood when compared to those who were not. neglect and other adverse childhood characteristics were more predictive of official offending than self-reported offending, suggesting potential stigmatization effects. implications of these findings as well as priority areas for future research are discussed. key words: neglect, maltreatment, childhood risk factors, juvenile delinquency. address correspondence to: lila kazemian, 899 tenth avenue, department of sociology, room 520.01, new york, ny, 10019. tel: (212) 484-1301. e-mail: lkazemian@jjay.cuny.edu. lila kazemian, ph.d. is associate professor at the john jay college of criminal justice, city university of new york. cathy spatz widom, ph.d. is distinguished professor at the john jay college of criminal justice, city university of new york. david p. farrington, ph.d. is professor of psychological criminology at cambridge university. mailto:lkazemian@jjay.cuny.edu� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 66 the negative consequences of child maltreatment have been well established (allen, 2008; arata, langhinrichsen-rohling, bowers, & o’farrill-swails, 2005; colman & widom, 2004; dutton & hart, 1992; horwitz, widom, mclaughlin, & white, 2001; lansford et al., 2007; maxfield & widom, 1996; rodgers et al., 2004; smith, ireland, & thornberry, 2005; smith & thornberry, 1995; stouthamer-loeber, loeber, homish, & wei, 2001; widom, 1989; widom, czaja, & dutton, 2008; widom, dumont, & czaja, 2007; widom, white, czaja, & marmorstein, 2007), but studies focusing specifically on childhood neglect have been scarce. studies that have specifically examined the long-term effects of childhood neglect have generally found that this form of maltreatment predicts later adverse behavioral outcomes (tyler, johnson, & brownridge, 2008). neglect is frequently defined as “the failure of a parent or other person with responsibility for the child to provide needed food, clothing, shelter, medical care, or supervision such that the child's health, safety, and well-being are threatened with harm” (u.s. department of health and human services, 2010b). official statistics indicate that neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment. according to the united states department of health and human services (2010a), of the 772,000 victims of child maltreatment in 2008, 71.1% were subject to neglect, 16.1% were physically abused, 9.1% suffered sexual abuse, and 7.3% were psychologically maltreated (please note that the same child may be exposed to more than one type of maltreatment). various studies have observed the same trend in the distribution of types of maltreatment, namely the particularly high prevalence of neglect (hildyard & wolfe, 2002; legano, mchugh, & palusci, 2009; manly, kim, rogosch, & cicchetti, 2001). interestingly, while the prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in the united states appears to have declined over the past two decades, this has not been the case for childhood neglect (jones, finkelhor, & halter, 2006). nonetheless, despite the high prevalence of neglect and the general consensus regarding the negative effects of neglect on development and adult outcomes (glaser, 2002), research on this form of maltreatment remains largely scarce in the literature (hildyard & wolfe, 2002; manly et al., 2001). in addition to the fact that neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment, it is also characterized by a more chronic and less sporadic character when compared to other forms of abuse (physical or sexual; see hildyard & wolfe, 2002). the current study aims to investigate the link between childhood neglect and juvenile delinquency using a longitudinal study originally designed to study the development and risk factors for delinquency (west & farrington, 1973). while some research has suggested that childhood neglect exerts a significant impact on internalizing problems (bolger & patterson, 2001), very little is known about the midto long-term effects of neglect on behavioral outcomes such as offending. it has often been argued that prospective longitudinal studies are crucial to the understanding of the intricate relationships between childhood victimization experiences and later outcomes (widom, raphael, & dumont, 2004). widom et al. (2004) conclude that “recall bias in the report of childhood victimization can artifactually cause an association between selfreported childhood abuse and neglect and later health outcomes” (p. 720). (for an overview of limitations on retrospective reports, see fagan, 2001; kazemian & farrington, 2005). as such, prospective longitudinal data are desirable in the study of the long-term consequences of childhood neglect. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 67 the link between childhood neglect and later offending few studies have investigated the effect of child neglect on subsequent delinquency and offending (chapple, tyler, & bersani, 2005). moreover, studies that focus solely on neglect are scarce; research on neglect generally employs cumulative constructs that combine neglect with other forms of child maltreatment. mersky and reynolds’ (2007) analyses rely on substantiated cases (i.e., cases reported to the child protection division of the illinois department of child services or juvenile court) of physical abuse and neglect that occurred prior to age 12. the authors conducted separate analyses for physical abuse and neglect, and found that neglect was associated with violent delinquency. however, they further argue that the possible combination of abuse and neglect “may have confounded the estimates reported for physical abuse and neglect” (p. 254). cohen, smailes, and brown (2004) collected information about self-reported and official child abuse and neglect in upstate new york. their findings show that neglect is less predictive of arrests in adulthood when compared to other forms of maltreatment (i.e., physical and sexual abuse), but the authors acknowledge that these results may be due to weak statistical power. chapple et al. (2005, pp. 39-40) discussed some of the negative consequences associated with childhood neglect and argued that “neglected children experience limited parent-child interactions, which are often devoid of attention and caring, and subsequently are unlikely to have the ability to regulate their emotions, curb impulsivity, or choose appropriate peers”. chapple et al. used data from the children of the national longitudinal survey of youth to investigate the link between child neglect and violent behavior in adolescence and found that the exposure to neglect (particularly physical neglect) was associated with a greater likelihood of subsequent self-reported violent behavior (measured up to ages 15 to 17). in contrast to studies utilizing self-reports, several studies have relied on official measures of offending. generally, these findings suggest that the likelihood of arrest is higher among neglected children when compared to non-abused and non-neglected children (see english, widom, & brandford, 2002; zingraff, leiter, myers, & johnsen, 1993). widom and maxfield (2001, p. 1) summarized findings from their research on childhood abuse and neglect and maintained that “being abused or neglected as a child increased the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 59%, as an adult by 28% and for a violent crime 30%” when compared to nonabused and non-neglected children. two additional studies reported similar findings for maltreatment, but did not report results specifically for neglect (smith & thornberry, 1995; stouthamer-loeber et al., 2001). in short, the small body of research that has examined the longterm effects of childhood neglect has generally found that this form of childhood maltreatment is associated with subsequent offending behavior. in light of the gaps in research on neglect, the current study employs prospective longitudinal data collected for a sample of british males to address some of these shortcomings. the design of the cambridge study provides many advantages in studying the consequences of childhood neglect, including the use of a community sample that defines neglected children without recourse to official child protection agency records, a prospective longitudinal follow-up international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 68 that includes comparisons between neglected and non-neglected children (and varying degrees of neglect), self-reported and official measures of delinquency, and controls for other potential correlates of delinquency. we have four goals: 1. to identify individuals who experienced neglect in childhood; 2. to describe their individual, social, and family characteristics; 3. to contrast the profile of the neglected group to other groups; and 4. to examine whether childhood neglect predicts juvenile delinquency among the cambridge study males. methods data data used in this study were collected in the context of the cambridge study in delinquent development (csdd), a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 mainly caucasian males from a working-class area of london. the study participants were first contacted in 196162, at the age of 8-9 years old, and were interviewed on eight subsequent occasions. they completed questionnaires in school at ages 8, 10, and 14. these questionnaires assessed various cognitive (intelligence, attainment, personality, etc.) and social (school, friends, family, etc.) measures. the boys were also interviewed in a research office at ages 16, 18, and 21, and in their homes at ages 25, 32, and 48. more detailed descriptions of the sample can be found elsewhere (farrington, 2003; farrington et al., 2006; farrington, coid, & west, 2009). the current study focuses on childhood indicators measured during the first two interviews, when the boys were between 8 and 10 years old. all measures documented at this age reflect social worker assessments based on parent and child interviews, unless otherwise indicated (e.g., teacher ratings). the current paper addresses some of the recommendations put forth by zuravin (1999, pp. 40-42) with regard to the measurement of childhood neglect. namely, we employ data from different sources to obtain information on neglect (e.g., teacher, parent, and social worker reports; see also williams & herrera, 2007), integrate psychological and physical components in our operationalization of neglect, and select a reliable and valid classification of neglect. moreover, in line with zuravin’s recommendation, we provide detail regarding the criteria for classification. offending measures measures of offending include both self-reports and official records of convictions. official records of convictions are available between ages 10 and 50 for the following offenses: shoplifting, theft from vehicles, theft of vehicles, theft of bicycles, theft from machines, theft from work, other theft, burglary, fraud, receiving, suspicious behavior (loitering with intent), robbery, assault and wounding, insulting or threatening behavior, carrying an offensive weapon, sex offenses, drug offenses, arson, vandalism, and driving under the legally allowed age. the age of criminal responsibility in england is 10 years old, and offenders were regarded as juveniles up to the age of 16. due to relatively low prevalence rates for convictions, a dichotomous measure of officially processed offenses is employed and logistic regression is appropriate for this analysis. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 69 self-reported offenses measured in adolescence include various forms of theft (burglary, shoplifting, theft of vehicles, joyriding, theft from vehicles, theft from machines, theft from work, theft from home), assault, vandalism, and fraud (total of 19 items with alpha = 0.85). the analysis of self-reported offending relies on gravity scores, which are a composite measure integrating the frequency and seriousness of offending this measure was selected because it enables us to give more weight to more serious crimes and less weight to more minor offenses. we drew on wolfgang, figlio, tracy, and singer’s (1985) seriousness scale and le blanc and fréchette’s (1989) average seriousness scores (homicide: 31.1; sex offenses: 14.3; personal attack: 13.21; aggravated theft: 11.54; personal larceny: 7.1; motor vehicle theft: 6.7; burglary: 6.43; fraud: 6; common theft: 5.07; shoplifting: 2.2; vandalism: 1.8; petty larceny: 1; public mischief: 0.7). these seriousness scores were multiplied by the offending frequency and added up for all offenses at ages 14 and 16, resulting in cumulative offending gravity scores (see kazemian, farrington, & le blanc, 2009; le blanc & fréchette, 1989, for a more detailed explanation of gravity scores). because some individuals did not complete the interview at age 16 (though attrition rates were quite low – 405 individuals completed the interview at age 14 and 397 at age 16), the maximum self-reported offending score measured at either age 14 or 16 was selected for the analyses. gravity scores were logged, which enabled us to fulfill the assumptions of ordinary least squares regression. conceptualizing childhood neglect and other childhood risk factors legano et al. (2009) describe three types of neglect: physical (insufficient food, inadequate clothing, etc.), emotional (inadequate affection on the part of the caregivers), and educational neglect (excessive absenteeism from school or inadequate educational services). to the extent that such measures were available in the data, we have integrated these three components in our measure of childhood neglect. a ten-item construct of childhood neglect was computed (kr-20 = 0.72), integrating measures of neglectful behavior of both parents. the items were selected on the basis of scales developed in existing studies on neglect (nikulina, widom, & czaja, in press). the first two items measure neglectful maternal and paternal attitudes, which refer to the overall neglectful attitudes of parents towards the child. housing neglect documents the lack of care of the interior of the house, with a neglected interior reflecting a dirty or untidy environment, or other evidence of gross carelessness. physical neglect of the child refers to noticeable neglect of the child's clothing, hygiene, or food (as rated by a social worker). in addition, this component includes a negative assessment of the child’s cleanliness and tidiness as rated by the teacher, who identified children regarded as noticeably below average with regard to their physical appearance. educational neglect measures the parents’ lack of knowledge of school activities, of the child’s difficulties at school, and the extent to which they help the child with school work; uninterested parents had little or no knowledge of the child’s progress. emotional neglect refers to the absence of praise, rewards, or special privileges for the child’s good behavior. it also measures whether the father behaves in a disinterested manner in his interactions with the child, and whether he expresses little interest towards his children more generally. the last item reflects supervisory neglect, which is assessed through the under-vigilance of parents, the poor quality of supervision, and lack of knowledge of the child’s activities. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 70 based on the distribution of these cumulated scores, three groups emerged: individuals who did not show any evidence of childhood neglect (n = 202, 51.8%), those who were possible cases or ambiguous cases of neglect (i.e., who had 1 to 3 neglect factors; n = 138, 35.4%), and those who were victims of neglect on the basis of the indicators described above (4 or more neglect factors; n = 50, 12.8%). we used the top quartile of scores to identify the neglect group. the no-neglect and possible neglect groups will be respectively referred to as nn and pn groups. using information from ages 8 and 10 assessments, we also include four other childhood risk constructs that may also be markers of early outcomes associated with childhood neglect. problem behavior (kr-20 = 0.66) is a five-item construct that reflects ratings by parents or social workers (risk-taking/adventurousness, resistance to discipline, and problematic conduct disorder), and by peers (daring attitude and troublesomeness). cognitive abilities (kr-20 = 0.66) reflect low mechanical reading quotient, low verbal iq, low non-verbal iq, and the teacher’s assessment of poor arithmetic ability. school maladjustment (kr-20 = 0.73) is a six-item scale that documents the child’s negative behaviors in school, as reported by teachers (including problem behavior, poor work or laziness, lack of interest in school, poor attendance due to unjustified absences, lack of concentration, and difficult relations with other classmates). highrisk family environment (kr-20 = 0.71) includes 7 dichotomous items reflecting inadequate family income, poor housing (unsatisfactory or dilapidated premises), whether the family is supported by social agencies, convictions of older siblings, inconsistency in parental discipline (confusing rules between parents or allowing the child to play off one parent against the other), slack parental rules (rarely enforced rules), and poor marital relations between parents. given that it has been argued that parental convictions are one of the most salient predictors of offending by the cambridge study males (farrington, 2003), parental criminality is examined separately from other measures of family risk. some additional variables did not fulfill internal consistency requirements, and constructs could not be created for these measures. these variables were however included in the descriptive analyses in order to investigate differences across the three neglect groups. measures in infancy assess whether the child was a fretful baby, experienced feeding problems or delayed walking or talking, and whether the pregnancy was unwanted by the mother. parental background variables document the background of adversity of the parents (one or both grandparents having died or deserted before the parents were 16, and/or the parent spent substantial time in a children's home, orphanage, or foster home), background of poverty (refers to extreme poverty), background of unhappiness (social worker assessment based on the balance of information about parents’ home background, and on what complaints they voiced about it), the lack of higher schooling, erratic employment records (which includes frequent and unexplained changes of employment, being a poor worker, or frequently unemployed), and a history of significant illnesses or accidents. measures of parental traits include a social worker rating of the intelligence of the mother, severe nervousness of parents (social worker rating based on past history as well as on reactions during the whole period of contact with parents from intake), and the parents’ poor health at the time of the interview. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 71 results table 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of the men in the sample who display signs of neglect, possible neglect (pn), and no evidence of neglect (nn) at ages 8 to 10. even by applying the conservative bonferroni correction, table 1 suggests a stronger prevalence of childhood risk factors among the neglect group, particularly across measures of parental criminality, high-risk family environment, problem behavior, school maladjustment, and cognitive abilities. these results suggest the co-occurrence of neglect and other risk factors in childhood. table 1. description of social and individual characteristics of three neglect groups at age 8-10, n = 390. no neglect possible neglect neglect χ2 (n = 202) (n = 138) (n = 50) measures in infancy fretful baby 24.5% (n=48) 21.1% (n=28) 13.3% (n=6) 2.75 feeding problems 35.4% (n=69) 30.2% (n=39) 37.8% (n=17) 1.27 delayed walking/talking 16.7% (n=33) 15.2% (n=20) 22.2% (n=10) 1.21 unwanted pregnancy 13.5% (n=26) 25.0% (n=32) 40.4% (n=19) 28.07* parental background background of adversity father 25.4% (n=46) 25.4% (n=31) 31.6% (n=12) 0.66 mother 32.8% (n=64) 41.4% (n=53) 39.1% (n=18) 2.60 background of poverty father 30.7% (n=55) 32.5% (n=39) 27.0% (n=10) 0.41 mother 19.0% (n=37) 16.5% (n=21) 10.9% (n=5) 1.77 background of unhappiness father 26.4% (n=47) 33.3% (n=39) 27.0% (n=10) 1.72 mother 35.4% (n=69) 34.6% (n=44) 36.4% (n=16) 0.05 lack of higher schooling father 89.3% (n=167) 88.5% (n=115) 82.2% (n=37) 1.76 mother 76.4% (n=149) 70.0% (n=91) 78.7% (n=37) 2.20 erratic or unsatisfactory job record father 3.6% (n=7) 12.6% (n=17) 46.9% (n=23) 66.90* mother 13.5% (n=26) 21.9% (n=28) 22.2% (n=10) 4.47 history of significant illness/poor health father 25.0% (n=47) 27.5% (n=36) 56.5% (n=26) 18.09* mother 26.5% (n=52) 32.1% (n=43) 40.4% (n=19) 3.81 parental traits “dull” mother 8.5% (n=17) 19.9% (n=27) 34.0% (n=17) 22.14* father’s severe nervousness 9.0% (n=17) 17.6% (n=23) 20.8% (n=10) 7.30 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 72 no neglect possible neglect neglect χ2 (n = 202) (n = 138) (n = 50) mother’s severe nervousness 12.6% (n=25) 18.0% (n=24) 20.0% (n=10) 2.75 father unhealthy at time of interview 14.8% (n=27) 20.2% (n=26) 53.2% (n=25) 32.78* mother unhealthy at time of interview 19.0% (n=38) 30.3% (n=40) 49.0% (n=24) 19.33* high-risk family environment (kr-20 = 0.71) inadequate family income 8.9% (n=18) 28.3% (n=39) 62.0% (n=31) 68.62* poor housing 25.7% (n=52) 40.6% (n=56) 74.0% (n=37) 41.02* family supported by social agencies 9.4% (n=19) 18.1% (n=25) 74.0% (n=37) 102.54* convicted older siblings 4.5% (n=9) 14.5% (n=20) 30.0% (n=15) 28.33* inconsistent parental discipline 11.3% (n=21) 39.4% (n=50) 61.7% (n=29) 60.67* slack rules by parents 6.7% (n=13) 14.7% (n=20) 73.3% (n=33) 113.06* parents’ poor marital relations 13.3% (n=26) 31.1% (n=41) 65.3% (n=32) 56.88* parental criminality criminal record of parents 19.8% (n=40) 25.4% (n=35) 54.0% (n=27) 24.34* problem behavior (kr-20 = 0.66) risk-taking/adventurousness 13.2% (n=26) 21.1% (n=28) 45.7% (n=21) 24.76* resistance to discipline 15.7% (n=31) 29.9% (n=41) 49.0% (n=24) 26.02* problematic conduct disorder of boy 5.2% (n=10) 24.4% (n=31) 41.3% (n=19) 43.93* daring (peer rating) 25.7% (n=46) 26.3% (n=31) 38.9% (n=14) 2.73 troublesome (peer rating) 20.1% (n=36) 21.2% (n=25) 36.1% (n=13) 4.55 teacher’s rating of school maladjustment (kr-20 = 0.73) problem behavior 5.0% (n=10) 23.2% (n=32) 34.0% (n=17) 37.15* poor work or laziness 35.2% (n=69) 50.4% (n=69) 67.3% (n=33) 19.09* lack of interest (doesn’t care) 9.7% (n=19) 30.4% (n=41) 54.2% (n=26) 50.52* poor attendance 19.0% (n=37) 23.4% (n=32) 40.0% (n=20) 9.85† lack of concentration 44.2% (n=87) 63.5% (n=87) 61.2% (n=30) 13.57* difficult relations with peers 16.4% (n=32) 31.3% (n=41) 43.5% (n=20) 18.82* cognitive abilities (kr-20 = 0.66) low mechanical reading quotient 16.8% (n=33) 24.3% (n=33) 60.0% (n=30) 39.79* poor arithmetic ability (teacher rating) 30.8% (n=60) 39.5% (n=51) 55.8% (n=24) 10.15† low verbal iq 16.8% (n=34) 24.4% (n=33) 58.0% (n=29) 36.43* low non-verbal iq 15.3% (n=31) 29.0% (n=40) 54.0% (n=27) 33.52* * p < .001 † < .01 note: no neglect group = 0 neglect factor; possible neglect group = 1-3 neglect factors; neglect group = 4 or more neglect factors. due to multiple comparisons, the bonferroni correction was applied and the alpha-level has been adjusted to p < .001 (.05 / 44 comparisons). interestingly, measures in infancy are not significantly associated with the extent of exposure to neglect. the only exception relates to the unwanted pregnancy of the mother, which is relatively more common among the neglect group (40.4%) when compared to the possible neglect (25%) and no neglect (13.5%) groups. further, parental background characteristics also generally fail to distinguish the three groups. a background of adversity, poverty, and unhappiness of parents, as well as their educational attainments, is not significantly associated international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 73 with neglect. however, the father’s erratic employment record (46.9% for the neglect group versus 12.6% for pn and 3.6% for nn groups) and history of significant illnesses (56.5% for neglect group versus 27.5% for pn and 25% for nn) are significantly more prevalent among the males in the neglect group when compared to the other groups. table 1 also shows that the social worker rating of a “dull” mother (a british term that refers to a slow-witted individual) is more common among the neglect group (34%, n = 17) when compared to the pn (19.9%, n = 27) and nn (8.5%, n = 17) groups. while the severe nervousness of parents is not significantly associated with neglect, individuals in the neglect group were more likely to have parents who were in poor health at the time of the interview; about half of the neglect group had at least one unhealthy parent. nearly all indicators of family risk are significantly associated with increased likelihood of neglect. children in the neglect group are more likely to come from families with inadequate income (62% versus 28.3% and 8.9% for possible neglect and no neglect groups, respectively), poor housing (74% versus 40.6% and 25.7%), older siblings with convictions (30% versus 14.5% and 4.5%), inconsistencies in parental discipline (61.7% versus 39.4% and 11.3%), slack rules (73.3% versus 14.7% and 6.7%), and poor marital relationship (65.3% versus 31.1% and 13.3%). perhaps most interestingly, there is a significantly higher prevalence of families that are supported by social agencies among the neglect group (74% versus 18.1% and 9.4% of the pn and nn groups). this finding may suggest that families of neglected children have been, at an early stage, formally identified as having special needs. parental criminality is also significantly more prevalent among the neglect group (54%) when compared to the pn (25.4%) and nn (19.8%) groups. most measures of problem behaviors (risk-taking and adventurousness, resistance to discipline, and problematic conduct disorder) are associated with neglect, though the differences across the groups do not appear to be as substantial as for the indicators of high-risk family environment. risk-taking and adventurousness are more prevalent in the neglect group (45.7% versus 21.1% for the pn and 13.2 % for the nn), as is resistance to discipline (49% versus 29.9% and 15.7%) and problematic conduct disorder (41.3% versus 24.4% and 5.2%). there are no significant differences in peer ratings of daring behaviors and troublesomeness across the three groups. measures of school maladjustment, which are based on teacher ratings, also emerge as significant correlates of neglect. individuals in the neglect group exhibit more problem behavior in school (34% versus 23.2% for the pn and 5% for the nn), show more signs of laziness or poor work (67.3% versus 50.4% and 35.2%), lack interest (52.2% versus 30.4% and 9.7%) and concentration (61.2% versus 63.5% and 44.2%), have poor attendance (40% versus 23.4% and 19%), and have more difficult relations with their peers (43.5% versus 31.3% and 16.4%) when compared to the nn and pn groups. finally, the bottom section of table 1 shows that neglected children are significantly more likely to have limited cognitive abilities (low mechanical reading quotient, poor arithmetic ability, and low verbal and non-verbal iq) when compared to the other groups (see perez & widom, 1994). overall, table 1 suggests that neglected children are more likely than other groups to be exposed to other childhood risk factors. as such, it is important to consider all factors international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 74 simultaneously when assessing the relationship between childhood neglect and later life outcomes. while these analyses do not enable us to draw conclusions about the direction or sequencing of associations, they do illustrate the concurrence between childhood neglect and other risk factors. table 2. mean differences in age 8-10 risk factor constructs between the three neglect groups. no neglect possible neglect neglect χ2 (n = 202) (n = 138) (n = 50) problem behavior 0.76 (1.11), 0 1.23 (1.37), 1.0 2.13 (1.77), 2.0 33.62** low cognitive abilities 0.80 (1.08), 0 1.21 (1.33), 1.0 2.32 (1.39), 2.5 47.67** family risk 0.82 (1.05), 1.0 1.87 (1.54), 2.0 4.40 (1.73), 5.0 128.9** school maladjustment 1.29 (1.47), 1.0 2.25 (1.76), 2.0 2.97 (1.89), 3.0 45.63** ** p < .001 * < .01 note: no neglect group = 0 neglect factor; possible neglect group = 1-3 neglect factors; neglect group: 4 or more neglect factors. m (sd), mdn are presented. analyses with replicated with different procedures. the same results were obtained with anova, the kruskal-wallis non-parametric test of mean ranks (χ2), and the median test. despite the skewed distributions, means are presented for ease of interpretation. table 2 summarizes the information in table 1, and presents mean and median differences in key childhood risk constructs (problem behavior, cognitive abilities, high-risk family, and school maladjustment) between the neglect groups. table 2 illustrates a steady progression in risk construct scores with increased exposure to neglect. internal reliability was low for measures in infancy as well as parental traits and background, and thus it was not possible to create scales with these items. moreover, these variables were generally not significantly associated with the degree of exposure to neglect. table 3 investigates the predictive power of neglect and other childhood risk factors on the prevalence of convictions in adolescence. it has been suggested that some of the risk factors (namely those reflecting problem behaviors) may measure the same underlying construct as offending (e.g., antisocial personality), and that these measures should be excluded from an analysis of offending behavior (see amdur, 1989). instead of removing these constructs entirely from the analyses, we have entered them consecutively in separate models in order to better assess the independent effect of neglect on official offending in adolescence. the measures were entered in order of strength of correlation with neglect, from the weakest to the strongest correlates. the variables were entered in four steps: neglect, behavioral outcomes (problem behavior and school maladjustment), cognitive abilities, and family risk measures (parental criminality and high-risk family environment). the risk factors were split at the median and dichotomized, due to the skewed distributions. two dummy variables were created for the neglect groups, with the no neglect group serving as the reference category. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 75 table 3. logistic regression analysis: dependent variable = juvenile conviction (0 = no conviction, 1 = at least one conviction), n = 382. b se wald exp(b) model 1 neglect group (no neglect) possible neglect 0.31 0.30 1.12 1.37 neglect 1.47 0.35 17.44 4.35*** model χ2 16.93*** -2ll 364.27 nagelkerke r2 0.07 model 2 neglect group (no neglect) possible neglect 0.03 0.31 0.01 1.03 neglect 0.99 0.37 7.05 2.70*** school maladjustment 0.62 0.29 4.53 1.85* problem behavior 0.89 0.31 8.35 2.44** model χ2 32.99*** -2ll 348.21 nagelkerke r2 0.13 model 3 neglect group (no neglect) possible neglect -0.07 0.32 0.05 0.93 neglect 0.70 0.39 3.29 2.02† school maladjustment 0.23 0.31 0.55 1.26 problem behavior 0.95 0.31 9.07 2.58** low cognitive abilities 1.10 0.34 10.37 2.99*** model χ2 44.19*** -2ll 337.01 nagelkerke r2 0.17 model 4 neglect group (no neglect) possible neglect -0.27 0.34 0.63 0.76 neglect 0.11 0.43 0.06 1.11 school maladjustment -0.02 0.33 0.01 0.98 problem behavior 0.95 0.32 8.51 2.58** low cognitive abilities 1.06 0.34 9.39 2.87** high-risk family 0.80 0.33 5.70 2.23* parental criminality 0.87 0.30 8.31 2.40** model χ2 62.53*** -2ll 318.66 nagelkerke r2 0.24 *** p < .001 ** p < .01 * p < .05 † < .10 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 76 model 1 in table 3 shows significant differences in the odds of juvenile conviction between the no neglect and neglect groups, but not between the no neglect and possible neglect groups. the odds of being convicted in adolescence are 4.35 times higher for individuals in the neglect group when compared to individuals who did not have any exposure to neglect (wald = 17.44, odds = 4.35, p < .01). these findings are consistent with those of widom and maxfield (2001), who found that abused and neglected children were more likely to be arrested when compared to non-abused and non-neglected individuals. this significant association is maintained when introducing measures of problem behavior (model 2), but significantly attenuated (p < .10) with the inclusion of the measure of low cognitive abilities (model 3). interestingly, school maladjustment is not significantly associated with the odds of conviction in adolescence when taking into account low cognitive abilities. it seems that problem behaviors at school and juvenile convictions do not necessarily reflect the same underlying construct in this sample of british males. in the last model, the introduction of family risk factors renders the differences between the nn and neglect groups non-significant, but the measures of low cognitive abilities, problem behavior, high-risk family environment, and parental criminality remain significantly associated with increased odds of juvenile conviction when all measures are considered simultaneously. interactions between neglect and all other risk factors were also examined, none of which were significant. it is also interesting to note that similar results were obtained when controlling for self-reported offending, with the exception of a slightly higher explained variance. table 4. ols regression analysis: dependent variable = self-reported offending gravity in adolescence (logged), n = 375. model 1 model 2 b se β t b se β t neglect group (no neglect) possible neglect 0.09 0.06 0.08 1.54 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.47 neglect 0.22 0.08 0.14 2.60** 0.04 0.10 0.03 0.43 low cognitive abilities 0.19 0.06 0.18 3.06** school maladjustment -0.01 0.06 -0.01 -0.06 problem behavior 0.13 0.06 0.12 2.24* high-risk family 0.01 0.06 0.01 0.18 parental criminality 0.12 0.07 0.10 1.84† r2 .01 .06 *** p < .001 ** p < .01 * p < .05 † < .10 table 4 presents results relating to the relationship between neglect and other risk factors measured at ages 8 to 10 on self-reported offending in adolescence. similarly to results observed for official offending, significant differences emerge only between the groups that are at the two extremities of the neglect continuum (no neglect and neglect, see model 1). neglected boys are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 77 characterized by higher self-reported gravity scores in adolescence. however, this association dissipates in model 2, and low cognitive abilities and problem behavior become the only significant predictors of self-reported offending gravity in adolescence. it is particularly interesting to note that the other childhood risk factors are not predictive of self-reported offending behavior in adolescence, though parental criminality is nearly significant. the interactions between neglect and risk factors were not found to be significant. two points are noteworthy. the exclusion of the measure of problem behavior from the analyses does not alter the results: neglect remains a significant predictor of self-reported offending gravity in the first model, and only low cognitive abilities emerge as a significant predictor when the full model is considered. it should also be noted that the analyses presented in table 4 were replicated with four other measures of self-reported offending: age of onset, frequency, versatility, and seriousness. these comparisons showed similar results, namely the non-significant effect of neglect on self-reported delinquency when other childhood risk factors are taken into account. discussion the objective of the current study was to identify a group of men in the cambridge study who were neglected during childhood, to describe their individual, social, and family characteristics when compared to non-neglected men, and to examine whether exposure to childhood neglect predicted offending behavior in adolescence. three key findings emerge. first, boys who were neglected in childhood tended to belong to disadvantaged families, exhibit more problem behaviors at home and at school, and have more limited cognitive abilities. in other words, these neglected boys were characterized by a variety of adverse childhood factors placing them at risk for delinquency. second, our findings indicate that childhood neglect dramatically increased the odds of being convicted of an offense as an adolescent (or = 4.35) and significantly predicted self-reported offending. however, these effects were attenuated (in the case of official offending) or disappeared entirely (in the case of self-reports) when controlling for other childhood risk factors. thus, these new findings suggest that these earlier childhood risk factors associated with neglect may provide a link to understanding how childhood neglect, in addition to physical and sexual abuse, leads to increased risk for delinquency. while the assessments in the cambridge study began at an early age (age 8), earlier assessments may shed some light on whether the development of behavior problems occurs a result of exposure to neglect earlier in childhood. on the other hand, the explained variance in analyses predicting offending was relatively low (particularly for selfreported offending), suggesting that other important predictors of juvenile delinquency may have been omitted for this sample of british males. third, our findings indicate that neglect and other childhood risk factors were better predictors of official crime than self-reports of offending in adolescence, possibly indicating the negative effects of the stigma attributed to children identified as neglected or from problem families. despite the importance of early detection and intervention in cases of child abuse and neglect, our findings suggest some unintended consequences of the early identification of such cases. the fact that neglect and other risk factors measured in childhood are better predictors of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 78 officially recorded crime when compared to self-report may suggest the presence of stigmatization effects. as widom (2003) noted earlier, although it is important to identify abused and neglected children early and to detect signs of trouble, it is also critical to be sensitive to the potential negative effects of increased attention and surveillance. this attention may represent a “double-edged sword”, in which children become labeled and stigmatized, or expectations of delinquency and crime for these children are prophesied. care must be taken to prevent this early identification from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. future research while the purpose of the current paper was to identify a group of boys from the cambridge study who were victims of childhood neglect and to examine the impact of neglect on offending in adolescence, further analyses are needed to investigate the mediating processes between childhood neglect and offending behavior that are suggested by the present results. future studies will attempt to unravel the explanatory mechanisms that may link childhood neglect to offending behavior and other life outcomes. this study has also not examined the impact of the neighborhood context as a potential moderating factor in the association between child neglect and criminal behavior, and recent research suggests that it may be worthwhile to examine this contribution (e.g., see schuck & widom, 2005). these analyses have focused on externalizing behaviors. however, some have suggested that childhood neglect may be associated with internalizing and withdrawn behaviors (arata et al., 2005; hildyard & wolfe, 2002; manly et al., 2001). thus, it may be worthwhile to examine the impact of childhood neglect on internalizing (depression, anxiety, etc.) and other externalizing behaviors (substance use, offending, sexual promiscuity, etc.) of the boys in the cambridge study. the data used in this study did not include specific information about parental experiences of abuse and neglect, and few indicators of parental traits were collected in childhood. more comprehensive measures of these constructs are needed to examine the potential intergenerational transmission of maltreatment behaviors. finally, it would have been interesting to contrast the impact of neglect in childhood and in adolescence in order to test thornberry, ireland, and smith’s (2001) assertion that adolescent (or persistent) maltreatment exerts a more pronounced effect on adverse outcomes (delinquency, substance use, depression, etc.) when compared to maltreatment that is limited to childhood. however, the cambridge study does not include indicators of neglect in adolescence. in conclusion, the current study has identified a group of boys in the cambridge study of delinquent development who were neglected in childhood. the csdd offers rich, longitudinal data that enables the study of the long-term effects of childhood neglect, a topic that remains understudied and misunderstood (national research council, 1993). additional research is needed to better understand the mechanisms that link childhood neglect to later offending and other life outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2011) 1 & 2: 65-82 79 references allen, b. 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(1999). child neglect: a review of definitions and measurement research. in h. dubowitz (ed.), neglected children: research, practice and policy (pp. 24-46). thousand oaks, ca: sage. running head: a movement to belong international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 464 a movement to belong: the green movement as a site of citizenship maryam nabavi and romina mahboub abstract: drawing on ethnographic data collected in 2010, this paper unpacks the notion of social citizenship as it bears on the lives of young iranian immigrant activists in canada. drawing on our researcher and activist standpoints, we examine activist youth’s involvement in the green movement – a global movement of dissent in response to the 2009 presidential elections in iran. in doing so, we move beyond the duality of identity and belonging as mediated by a sense of nationhood to either iran or canada. rather, through the lens of social citizenship, we shed light on the ways in which the green movement, as an activist practice, was a space of emancipation. we explore the ways in which support for and momentum of an initiative created and led by youth enabled them to engage as citizens in ways that challenged the notion that citizenship is defined merely by geographic borders; globalized social, cultural, and political contexts were more significant in characterizing their citizenship. keywords: social citizenship, citizen, green movement, youth, learning, diaspora, duo ethnography, activist, immigrant maryam nabavi, ph.d. (the corresponding author) received her doctorate in educational studies from the university of british columbia in 2011. maryam nabavi, 101, 1950 east 11th avenue, vancouver, british columbia, canada, v5n 1z2. e-mail: maryam.nabavi@gmail.com romina mahboub is a student in the faculty of applied sciences at simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby (british columbia), canada, v5a 1s6. e-mail: romina_mahboub@hotmail.com mailto:maryam.nabavi@gmail.com mailto:romina_mahboub@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 465 natarsid! natarsid! ma hame ba ham hastim. don’t be afraid! don’t be afraid! we are all together. the above chant echoed throughout iran as thousands of civilians poured into the streets of major cities throughout the nation to protest the outcome of the june 12, 2009 presidential elections. the collective call to not fear was, specifically, a call to stand up to a regime in which freedom of expression, democracy, and equal opportunities, as well as social, political, cultural, religious, and economic rights were a threat. the demonstrations were unique, not only because they were the largest in iran’s post-revolutionary history, but also because young people led the demands for change just as in the case of egypt, less than two years later. they were unique also because of the global nature of the call for change. the iranian diaspora played a significant role in creating awareness of the civil rights movement in places as far from tehran as tokyo and as close as istanbul. the movement for change, started by young iranians in iran with young iranians across the globe joining in, was leaderless and fuelled by its commitment to democracy and human rights (hashemi & postel, 2010). it was coined the green movement because green was the campaign colour of the forerunning challenger, mir-hossein mousavi. however, green eventually came to symbolize international unity to those asking for change in iran. in vancouver, canada, numerous formal and loosely organized grassroots efforts committed to the green movement arose in the days immediately following the elections in iran. these efforts were orchestrated by young diasporic iranians, some of whom had been living outside of iran longer than they had lived inside the country. in this article, we explore the green movement as a site of citizenship for young iranians from the perspectives of a researcher (nabavi) and an activist (mahboub) involved in the movement. we are inspired by the duoethnographic approach (norris, sawyer, & lund, 2012), a methodology in which the lived experiences of the authors are central to unpacking the topics of exploration. we draw on our researcher and activist positions within the green movement in order to analyze the notion of what it means to be a citizen and show how citizenship is a process of learning mediated by action. our starting point is an exploration of the ways in which our status as iranian-canadians informs our sense of identity and belonging in the diaspora. however, we move beyond the duality of identity and belonging as mediated by a sense of nationhood to either iran or canada. rather, through the lens of social citizenship, we shed light on the ways in which the green movement, as an activist practice, was a space that fostered a sense of identity, belonging, and emancipation. we explore the ways in which support for and momentum of an initiative created and led by youth enabled them to engage as citizens in ways that challenged the notion that citizenship is defined merely by geographic borders; globalized social, cultural, and political contexts were more significant in characterizing their citizenship. maryam: as a recent doctoral graduate in educational studies, i am excited to not only share insights from one piece of my dissertation research (nabavi, 2011), which explored young international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 466 iranian immigrant activist efforts in vancouver, but to be doing so with someone who is an iranian immigrant activist. it is a pleasure to be writing this article with romina, whom i met in 2010 during research. i am an academic and former youth activist committed to issues concerning social, cultural, political, and spatial inclusions and exclusions. these commitments are fuelled by my own experiences of immigration and belonging within a multicultural nation state (nabavi & lund, 2012). aside from my personal interests in the green movement – a movement that i was unequivocally a member of, by virtue of being from iran and emigrating because of the very regime which the green movement was reacting to – as a researcher, i found myself asking the following questions: why were young iranian immigrants engaged in a movement that they were not directly impacted by and in a country that they had emigrated from at a young age? what were the experiences of immigrant youth who were involved in the green movement? and, more specifically, how could those experiences help us in understanding what it means to be a citizen in canada? romina, tell me about your experiences as an immigrant youth in canada and your motivations for being involved in the green movement. romina: maryam, exploring the concept of citizenship through my involvement in the green movement has been an opportunity to reflect on my experiences of being an immigrant youth in canada. i was 12 years old when i arrived in canada. although i am now 24 years old, i still consider myself a youth. i feel strongly about the possibilities for social change and believe that youth not only have the thirst and determination to create change, but that they are often at the forefront of it. so, although i may not fall within the conventional age parameters assigned to youth, i situate myself as a youth in my commitments and actions. my belief that change is possible ignited my involvement in the green movement. being an immigrant youth, especially one whose native country is in a state of unrest, fuelled my commitment to engaging in any way i could with the very issues that led to my and my family’s emigration, and to contributing to the process of democracy for my fellow iranians living in iran. during childhood years in iran, i quickly learned to be two people at the same time. as my family’s core values are in opposition to the values of the current iranian regime, creating a second persona for the outside world was a way of survival. for example, who i was in school was not a clear reflection of my true being. the differences between how i was supposed to behave at home and at school were minor when i was in elementary school. however, as i grew older, i learned to switch to the outside persona who adhered to the fundamental islamic values that permeated society as soon as i stepped out of my home. this duality was one of the many reasons driving my family to emigrate. shortly after our move to canada, my family and i realized that the “normal” environment that we were striving for had its own limitations, and it was in canada that i experienced duality again. while immigration can be rewarding in many respects, it has its disadvantages, such as the cultural confusion experienced by the émigré. as a youth, immigration was the biggest shift of my life. i was living the life of an iranian youth in canadian society; i was reliving the life i had in iran, but in a different world, with different limitations international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 467 and opportunities. in canada, as a teenager, my home seemed like the limitation and the outside world was the opportunity. so it is not by accident that ever since i was young, i have been interested in understanding the reasons behind this duality. politics seemed to be behind all the confusion developed during my life in iran and it was through my involvement in the political scene in canada that i realized i have the right as a citizen – a canadian citizen – to step towards change. it was my hope that this change would ultimately make iran more livable. in other words, it would be a place where differences were celebrated rather than condemned, and children wouldn’t have to develop a second persona for survival. my involvement in the green movement was an effort to make these changes happen in iran. after the 2009 elections, i quickly realized that i was a citizen of iran only in the official sense of carrying a passport. i recognized how desperately i was looking to be an iranian beyond either an official status or a cultural identity in canada. i felt invested in the politics of “home” as i wanted to also be iranian. my activism in the green movement provided a space to do that. maryam: romina, as you share your experiences, i am reminded of the ways that you, like many other immigrant youth today, are embedded in what stuart hall (1996) poignantly calls new ethnicities. these are defined by the ways in which locality, culture, migration, and language within an increasingly globalized landscape inform the ways in which dominant markers of identity are articulated. engagement with their new ethnicities entails that immigrant youth are not “passive recipients of social transformations, as may have been assumed, but are responding to change in a variety of ways that draw upon the signs, symbols and motifs made available at local, national and international scales” (nayak, 2003, p. 167). all youth, as giroux (2006) argues, are made to be political subjects and take on political identities as a way to belong. thus, it can be argued that for immigrant youth, new ethnicities, coupled with the current realities facing youth in general, contribute to the ways in which they engage with and learn to be citizens. based on our earlier conversations about our own experiences of emigration and immigration and how we situate ourselves as iranian and canadian, i would argue that we live in an era in which the lines between national and global identities and belongings are increasingly blurred, and that there is an urgent need to situate citizenship in ways other than those that emphasize status, rights, and duties. an exploration of citizenship must take into consideration the foundational dimensions – the interplay of civil, political, and social rights (marshall, 1965) – as they intersect with historical and contemporary contexts of individual, cultural, and institutional identities and belongings. this approach to citizenship which falls under the canopy of social citizenship (miller, 2002; rosaldo, 1999) responds to the limitations of contemporary conceptions of citizenship in canada, which are associated with particular moral, political, and cultural claims closely aligned with a multicultural national identity (mitchell, 2003). to this end, i think the notion of “belonging” is central to how we understand social citizenship. what are your experiences of belonging in canada as a young immigrant? romina: shortly after coming to canada i realized that starting a new life in a new country and learning a new culture would not necessarily erase my past and my origin. on the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 468 contrary, it would build upon it. this realization was informed by my positive experiences of feeling welcomed in canada. for example, my high school held an annual multicultural week; students from different backgrounds came together to teach others about their food, music, dance, and culture. this sort of celebration was useful as it allowed me to endorse my iranian culture and heritage amongst my peers and, in many ways, it helped me maintain pride and acceptance of my culture, which i was afraid of losing after immigration. these sorts of experiences were so rewarding that i was able to shape my canadian identity through my iranian heritage. my early positive experiences with multiculturalism were valuable for teaching me both how to be a leader and how to implement my thirst for change in my new context. through external affirmation of pride for my culture and celebration of the duality, i learned that my identity as a youth, a student, and an immigrant in canada were points of entry for being a leader; this was starkly different than my experiences in iran. for example, i was given the opportunity to be involved in the youth advisory committee for the district of west vancouver. although my language skills were limited, it did not stop any of the committee members from listening to my opinions. this helped me build a sense of agency and belief that i could be an active citizen in canada. i believe adaptation can happen regardless of the situation, but its process can be turbulent or smooth according to one’s new environment. as i belonged to two different places at the same time and because my canadian experiences yielded opportunities to highlight my iranian identity, i felt like i was able to have the best of both worlds and willingly adopt the identity of an iranian-canadian. maryam: although we immigrated 15 years apart, in both our experiences of being a youth arriving in canada, we experienced a loss of belonging to one place (iran), which didn’t necessarily coincide with an automatic sense of belonging to another (canada). the contexts of migration – both forced and free – are always marked by a reminder of the “home” that is left behind. the need to “belong” is a central characteristic of youth culture (giroux, 2006; maira, 2004; nayak, 2003; pilkington & johnson, 2003), which is amplified for immigrant youth who are tasked with the additional burden of negotiating the differences of familial and peer, and ethnic and mainstream contexts in their lives. as with other young immigrants, the need to belong not just to our adopted culture, but also to the culture left behind, is what makes one feel like a citizen. it seems like your experiences of belonging were largely informed by the ways that the celebratory dimensions of multiculturalism played out in your life. similarly, the participants in my study expressed a range of meanings and interpretations of the official and unofficial discourses of multiculturalism and how they felt they were positioned as citizens. some of the young people i spoke with held similar views to yours – that on the whole their experiences in multicultural canada enabled them to celebrate their heritage and, in effect, feel that they were integral to the canadian milieu, and to see themselves as citizens. however, the majority of the people i spoke with drew attention to the ways in which their canadian experiences were coloured with discrimination and exclusion, and they experienced their canadian citizenship as nothing more than a passport. the range of perspectives reaffirmed the critical views of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 469 canadian leftist multiculturalists that discourses and lived experiences of multiculturalism exist between inclusion and exclusion (giroux, 2006; steinberg, 2001). in spite of the differing perspectives, individuals’ informal lived experiences influenced the meanings and interpretations they gave to citizenship. i think one of the ways that young iranian immigrants make sense of their experiences is to find belonging in the hyphen of their iranian-canadian identity and, in effect, to create a new hybrid identity (nabavi, 2012). for immigrants, the relationship between belonging and feeling like a citizen are closely connected. however, unlike conventional conceptions of being a citizen and citizenship that draws attention to a shared identity informed by common national boundaries, belonging, for immigrants, is within and across transnational social and political spaces which shape notions of identity and belonging (castles, 2004). as you mention, your involvement in the green movement was shaped by the contexts and experiences surrounding your immigration experience, so in effect, the boundaries of the nation become less important for how you belong. similarly, while i identify as an iranian-canadian, this identity is far more a social, cultural, and political identity than it is a geographic one. the green movement was central to how the participants expressed their sense of identity and belonging in canada (or their social citizenship). i’m interested to know if your experiences in canada were in any way a source of motivation for being involved. romina: as youth – and particularly as immigrant youth – we are often positioned without social capital and socio-political influence. yet, our desires to belong and make sense of our dual identities and be part of a larger movement were factors that led to, what many would argue, was the success of the green movement. for me, the idea of belonging came about through an opportunity in my new country to stand up for the rights of iranian people in iran. after the presidential election, when many iranian people believed that the government ignored their votes, a silent revolution started. a new wave of hope was generated and a sense of identity within the iranian community, especially among the youth, was created (dabashi, 2011). when the results of the election were announced, hundreds of vancouverites, mostly iranian-canadians, gathered for ten consecutive nightly vigils in front of the vancouver art gallery for what was called the silent scream – a show of support for those in iran who too felt that the election was undemocratic. the vigils were envisioned and organized by youth and they attracted diverse and unprecedented intergenerational participation from across the iranian immigrant community. for me, this was telling of how an issue can affect youth and adults in the same way and, more importantly, of how youth are able to mobilize and organize with the support and participation of non-youth. this success made us feel we were not just part of a movement, but that we were the movement. in addition to the youth-led leadership that the green movement facilitated, it was also instrumental in forming the identities of many youth who participated. like many friends who were actively involved, i engaged with and understood more fully my identity as an iraniancanadian in ways i had not in the past. i was able to engage in the very political issues that drove my family to emigrate while doing so freely as a canadian. for me, this transcended being international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 470 iranian or canadian or just a hyphen between the two – it was an identity that was rooted in the global contexts that i am embedded in. we both organized and mobilized, which made me believe that youth are able to ignite change and fuel it concurrently. it was through this movement that i realized that youth do not need to depend on adults and that we can reach what is desired. i think it would be ideal to have youth participation and leadership coupled with the timeless experiences of adults, along with adults’ encouragement, and the ability to consult with them. for me, this is the essence of youth emancipation. maryam: thank you for sharing your experiences. you provide a concrete example of how being part of a movement, particularly across national belongings, allows us to be citizens. i think that while the motivation for many to be involved in the green movement was informed by a commitment to justice, shared values, and sovereignty, it was also a response to nostalgia for a place to which it may be impossible or undesirable to return. no longer fully belonging to the country from which one has emigrated or to the country of immigration, iranian migrants in many respects inhabit a space in between two or more places, as you eloquently articulated above. let me share my own experiences. like you, i often experience a duality insofar as i am invested in the social, cultural, and political contexts of both iran and canada. however, as someone who has had my formative experiences in canada, the ways in which i am invested in iran are not as an iranian, per se, but rather as an iranian living in the diaspora. at the same time, as a canadian, i am partial to the well-being of iranians living within and outside of iran. thus, the ways in which i inhabit a space as both an iranian and canadian are complex, though perhaps not uncommon. this ultimately shapes my sense of identity and what it means to belong. furthermore, it informs the way i view myself as a citizen of a place and my notions of citizenship. one of the findings in my study with young immigrants (many of whom self-identified as activists) is that the notion of being a citizen is linked with action. in other words, one does not become a citizen through state-imposed criteria such as having a passport. rather, becoming a citizen and having a sense of citizenship is a process that is constantly changing based on an individual’s stage in development and the circumstances through which it was acquired. elsewhere, i have argued that this approach to understanding citizenship takes into account issues of identity, representation, membership, and engagement (nabavi, 2010). for example, there may be significant differences in how two citizens of canada engage with their formal citizenship based on their process of acquiring citizenship. the processes of understanding and even engaging with citizenship are different for an individual whose citizenship is granted as a birthright and for a refugee who acquires formal citizenship only after being granted asylum and undergoing a lengthy bureaucratic process. thus, for migrants, social dimensions of citizenship, such as a sense of belonging, both inform and are informed by formal dimensions of citizenship. while different connections to homeland and the meanings and interpretations this has for citizenship have been widely studied (ong, 1999; soysal, 2000; yuval-davis, 1997) and are valuable for understanding the ways in which young immigrants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 471 were involved in the green movement, it is also valuable to explore how young iranian immigrants’ experiences (as citizens and with citizenship) in canada mediated their involvement in the green movement. what are your thoughts on this? romina: the green movement of vancouver consisted mostly of students. within this student body, there was diversity. there were second generation iranians who had never been to iran, but had a passion for making change in our home country; there were some who had lived most of their lives in iran but had to leave their home due to the political situation there; and there were some, just like me, who identified as both iranian and canadian, who felt compelled to practice their rights as canadians to be loud and inquisitive, and to ask for justice in their home country. our experiences in canada varied and we had all experienced inclusion and exclusion in many forms. despite our varied backgrounds, the idea of a democratic iran was our common denominator. i wonder if this was the case because we felt nationalistic towards iran or because we were nostalgic for an imagined and romanticized place of our past. in other words, do we consider ourselves iranians or iranian-canadians? and do we want to identify as iranians beyond a cultural identity only when democracy is achieved? do you think the reason iranians, especially youth, came together so quickly during the aftermath of the presidential elections was solely because they wanted an opportunity to see their home country change to their ideal state – an imagined iran of their past? or do you think it was driven by a desire to feel a sense of belonging as active citizens (sears & hughes, 1996) in canada, by using a situation with which they felt an affinity as a launching pad? maryam: this is a really good question and i don’t think there was only one reason that motivated the activism. i find the framework of diaspora studies useful for unpacking the motivations of the young immigrants involved in the green movement and, in effect, understanding how the impact of their involvement was emancipatory. in safran’s (1991) classic heuristic of diaspora, four out of six characteristics are concerned with homeland. these include: first, maintaining a collective memory or myth about the homeland; second, “regarding the ancestral homeland as the true, ideal home and as the place to which one would (or should) eventually return”; third, being collectively “committed to the maintenance or restoration of the homeland and to its safety and prosperity”; and fourth, “continu[ing] to relate, personally or vicariously”, to the homeland, in a way that significantly shapes one’s identity and solidarity. (safran, 1991, as cited in brubaker, 2005, p. 5) these criteria of orientation to homeland are not just simple yearning for an imagined or real nation. as werbner (2002) argues, “many diasporas are deeply implicated both ideologically and materially in the nationalist projects of their homelands” (p. 120); thus a central feature of organizing as a diaspora community is to mobilize around national and ethnic symbols that serve as a resource to strengthen a diaspora identity (anthias, 2009). so, in effect, for the activists involved in the green movement, knowing that their efforts could lead to a change in iran to the point that they would find it desirable to return was, i think, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 472 a real motivation. equally central was that their efforts, just as in your experience, were motivated by a sense of belonging to canada by building a strong diaspora identity. i do not believe the nationalist project of iran was the sole motivation. rather, resisting, mobilizing, and educating as engaged citizens were central characteristics to the movement; it was not a practice of citizenship that was informed by a place, but rather informed by the broader conceptions of being a citizen within the global context. like you, the decision to be involved in the green movement for all the people i spoke with was grounded within their globalized experiences of citizenship, such as how they were implicated within the structures of inclusion and exclusion in both iran and canada. what this highlights is that involvement in the green movement for young iranian immigrants in canada was a response to substantive and social dimensions of citizenship in both iran and canada and, simultaneously, a process of learning citizenship and becoming a citizen. in terms of our understanding of youth emancipatory practices, we can gather that for immigrant youth, being involved in a movement that straddles their national and cultural identities and troubles dominant conceptions of citizenship, is an emancipatory practice insofar as providing space to be a citizen, to belong, and to explore a sense of identity. romina: this makes sense to me as after the elections, i felt compelled to do something about my people, my homeland, and most importantly, about my feelings of nostalgia for iran. being involved in the green movement was not solely to fulfill my obligations as an iranian citizen, but rather to consciously involve myself in a movement in which the possibility of a better future for my homeland could be created. it was through my activism that i gained the power to speak up to my community (both iranian and the community at large) and also to politicians and the media in order to give voice to the voiceless in my home country. it was through that power that i realized i have the potential of creating change, or at least the possibility of change, for something so dear to my heart. as a youth, a student, or simply an immigrant, i had the power of change and that to me is what citizenship means. it was through this i experienced a sense of belonging, and a citizenship that is not limited to a document, and i was able to internalize where i situate myself as an iranian-canadian. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 464–474 473 references anthias, f. 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(1997). ethnicity, gender relations and multiculturalism. in p. werbner & t. modood (eds.), debating cultural hybridity (pp. 193–208). london: zed books. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 54–79 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019938 online at risk! online activities of children in dormitories: experiences in a croatian county lucija vejmelka, roberta matković, and davorka kovačić borković abstract: the virtual environment available through the internet is an important domain of children’s subjective well-being. widespread usage of information technology brings risks as well as benefits, a topic now under intensive study by professionals in multiple fields. to date there has been a lack of research about the experiences of children from group accommodation settings when navigating the virtual environment. the main goal of the present study, which involved 510 high school students living in dormitories in split-dalmatia county, was to determine and document patterns of internet usage and internet addiction, and to examine another internet behavior, cyberbullying. our results show that 3.73% of the children we studied manifested a severe level of internet addiction, while about one third took part in cyberbullying as victim, perpetrator, or both. an important finding is that children involved with cyberbullying have significantly higher levels of internet addiction, suggesting a relationship between these phenomena. in the second, qualitative, phase of the study, the quantitative research findings were discussed with children, parents, teachers, and staff. our results enable a better understanding of young people`s behaviors in the online world, and could contribute to the development of educational programs for children and young people and the promotion of evidence-based practice in dormitory settings. keywords: virtual environment, online risk behaviors, student dormitories, croatia, split-dalmatia county lucija vejmelka phd (corresponding author) is an assistant professor at the department of social work, university of zagreb, faculty of law, nazorova 51, 10000 zagreb, croatia. email: lvejmelka@pravo.hr roberta matković is head of the research, data collection and analysis department at the institute for public health of split-dalmatia county, service of mental health, vukovarska 46, 21 000 split, croatia. email: robertamatkovic.rm@gmail.com davorka kovačić borković is the head of mental health counseling for children and youth at the institute for public health of split-dalmatia county, service of mental health, vukovarska 46, 21 000 split, croatia. email: davorka.b70@gmail.com mailto:lvejmelka@pravo.hr mailto:robertamatkovic.rm@gmail.com mailto:davorka.b70@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 55 the current generation of youth has grown up with digital technology and the internet, resulting in high proficiency in the use of electronic media. many of the terms applied to these youth — generation y, the “millennial” (or “net”, or “google”) generation, cyberkids, generation m (for “media”), and so on (lazić-lasić et al., 2012) — illustrate the interconnectedness of youth and technology, and serve to emphasize the importance and daily presence of technology in children’s lives. the new technologies have led to changes in the way adolescents communicate, socialize, create, and learn (helsper & eynon, 2010). in croatia, where our study took place, young people aged 15 to 34 years are the most frequent internet users (croatian bureau of statistics, 2019). despite the many advantages they gain from it, their use of the internet prompts social concerns and leads to new risks such as privacy and security breaches, and exposure to inappropriate web content and cybercrime (greenfield & yan, 2006). very little research into cyberbullying has been published to date. there have also been few studies of traditional bullying within institutional settings for children, although research conducted in the united kingdom (barter et al., 2004; berridge et al., 2012; gibbs & sinclair, 2000), finland (honkatukia et al., 2007), croatia (jaman, 2008; sekol, 2011; vejmelka, 2012), and serbia (plut & popadić, 2007) has found that children in institutions both experience and perpetrate peer violence on a daily basis. in croatia, only one study has explored experiences with cyberbullying: it found that between 4.7% and 14.4% of children in the residential setting had either experienced or perpetrated cyberbullying behaviors (vejmelka & majdak, 2014). future research will be important in determining the characteristics of online violence among children residing in a group context. online risk behaviours of children and youth in recent years, a number of risky online behaviors have been identified among children and youth: excessive internet use, internet violence, sexually risky behaviours, online gaming disorder, and online gambling (fineberg et al, 2018). because this paper is focused on internet addiction and the related phenomenon of cyberbullying, it is on those risks that we shall keep our attention. internet addiction internet addiction is emerging as a recognized risk of internet use; it has been the focus of increasing scientific interest over the past 20 years (mihajlov & vejmelka, 2017). internet addiction may be described as a condition in which an individual lacks the ability to control his or her own use of the internet, resulting in excessive use with problematic outcomes that negatively impact the individual’s own life (mihajlov & vejmelka, 2017; young & de abreu, 2011). internet addiction was first suggested as a clinical disorder by egger and rauterberg (1996). block (2008) argued that internet addiction should be included as a disorder in the diagnostic and statistical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 56 manual of mental disorders (dsm-5; american psychiatric association, 2013), and stated the four elements of addiction, which have been cited by many authors: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue. (p. 306) however, internet addiction is not listed in the official classification system of mental disorders, and no formal diagnostic criteria have been set forth. in developing a first version of an internet addiction test (iat), kimberly young (1996), a pioneer in internet addiction research and treatment, noted eight criteria of addiction: (1) high preoccupation with the internet; (2) the need to use the internet for increasing amounts of time in order to maintain satisfaction; (3) unsuccessful efforts to control, reduce, or eliminate one’s internet use; (4) anxiety, depression, or irritability from attempting to reduce or stop using the internet; (5) staying online longer than intended; (6) endangering personal relationships or job, educational, or career opportunities because of the internet; (7) hiding the truth about the extent of one’s internet use from family members, therapists, or others; and (8) using the internet as a way of escaping from problems. anyone who exhibits at least five of these criteria may be considered addicted (young, 1996, 1998). the problems observed in people who are addicted to the internet may be classified under five categories: academic, interpersonal, financial, professional, and physical (young, 1996). young’s version of the iat was later extended to a 20-item scale that measures the presence and severity of internet dependency among adults and adolescents (young, 1996; mihajlov & vejmelka, 2017). widyanto and mcmurran (2004) stated that the scale items reflect six dimensions of internet addiction: salience, excessive use, neglect of work, anticipation, lack of control, and neglect of social life. therefore, people who are addicted to the internet may experience significant difficulties in the academic, relationship, financial, professional, and physical domains (young, 1996). in a recent study using a representative sample of croatian high school students, černja and colleagues (2019) identified three dimensions of internet addiction: emotional and cognitive internet preoccupation, neglecting work and lack of self-control, and social problems. the same research showed that 3.4% of the students reported high levels of internet addiction, while 35.4% reported some signs of addiction. cyberbullying as noted, the internet habits of adolescents might be risky in terms of addiction, but they may also be an avenue for violent behavior in the virtual context. cyberbullying may be understood as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 57 any communication or interaction between individuals or groups that (a) takes place via electronic or digital media, and (b) include messages of aggressive or hostile content that are intended to inflict discomfort or harm on other persons (tokunaga, 2010). there is still no consensus among authors regarding the definition and measurement of cyberbullying, which complicates efforts to compare research results from different countries. the term cyberbullying itself did not gain wide currency until the past decade or so; it is now applied to a variety of phenomena (notar et al., 2013). belsey (2019) was among the first to mention the term and to define electronic violence as the use of information and communication technologies for the purpose of hostile behavior by individuals or groups. some authors, drawing on the criteria of traditional bullying (vejmelka et al., 2017; olweus, 1998), have defined cyberbullying as deliberately and repeatedly harming others through computers and related electronic devices such as mobile phones. in other words, it entails behaviors that are repeatedly committed with the intention of causing negative consequences through electronic means (patchin & hinduja, 2015; smith et al., 2008). the constant advancement of electronic technologies and the increasingly rich opportunities for interaction they provide have enabled diverse new forms of violence that go beyond electronic verbal abuse (corcoran et al., 2015). grigg (2010) suggests “cyber-aggression”as an umbrella term for a wide range of negative behaviors on the internet, whether repeated or one-off. problematic usage of the internet in group accommodations for children an institutional accommodation for children is a specific environmental context. the children live there together 24 hours a day: it is the scene of all their daily activities. the peer group, which largely replaces both the practical functions and the socializing influence of the family, has certain characteristics that can be linked to violence among children in these settings, above all in the ratio of children to adults and in the conditions under which the children reside. for example, lack of privacy due to shared housing, or spending a large part of each day unattended by an adult, provide opportunities for more intense and frequent violent behavior in an online environment, especially if we accept that parental monitoring and self-disclosure by children can be helpful in protecting children from online violence (end child prostitution and trafficking – ecpat, 2016). although research on problematic usage of the internet among children and youth has mainly been conducted in school settings, it is also important to investigate the specifics of online violence among children in other environments, especially institutional contexts where children reside. when studying different forms of violence among children and youth, the environmental context is of the utmost importance, and contributes to our understanding of the phenomenon of violence itself. four key facts are important for understanding child violence in group accommodations. first, it is indisputable that children in such accommodations spend most of their time surrounded by other children. second, caregivers are not always able to control the children’s behavior: institutional placement, by definition, entails that the number of caregivers is less than the number of children. third, the organization of children’s leisure time in an institution is more flexible than international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 58 in a school (although some structured leisure time activities are provided) and parental supervision is clearly absent. finally, as baker et al. (2002, p. 1) point out, children in group settings often have knowledge of each other’s family circumstances, and access to other personal information that could be used to intimidate and control the victim, including by cyberbullying. although they are few in number, studies on the association between internet addiction and cyberbullying have shown that the frequency of cyberbullying significantly correlates with the occurrence of internet addiction among adolescents (jung et al., 2014). similarly, research in school settings in croatia has revealed that both cybervictimization and cyberaggression are more prevalent among adolescents who have developed moderate, mild, or high levels of internet addiction (vejmelka et al., 2017). previous research in institutional settings for children in croatia shows a lower rate of violence among children in families than children in care (sladović franz, 2003). in institutional accommodations for children in croatia, control over internet usage has been used to reward or to punish (vejmelka, 2012). majdak and vejmelka (2014) stated that from 4.7% to 14.4% of children in institutional homes reported having committed some form of electronic violence. considering the lack of research into internet addiction and cyberbullying in residential settings for children and youth, the research we present in this paper could contribute to a better understanding of the online risks faced by this population. the purpose of the study was to document patterns of internet usage and internet addiction and to examine the allied phenomenon of cyberbullying. we believe that the findings presented here could contribute to the development of educational programs for children and the promotion of evidence-based practice in dormitory settings. parental control and internet usage by children the internet and associated technologies affect each aspect of our environment, and so impact parenthood as well. modern parenting increasingly involves parental attitudes and actions that aim to provide direction for children in relation to the quality of online content they consume and the amount of time they spend online. parental control over children’s internet usage is commonly implemented through: screen-time limitations, use of filtering software or website blockers to exclude potentially harmful websites, granting or withholding permission for internet use (lebo, 2001), monitoring social media use, and banning internet use as a form of punishment (lebo, 2017). other measures include imposing rules relating to the disclosure of personal data, the publication of various types of content, and the use of social networks (haddon & livingstone, 2012 as cited in lagator et al., 2018). adult control as a protective factor and support for children’s safer internet use is certainly not available to children in group accommodations to the same extent as those in families. although group accommodation settings for children employ educated professionals, the comparatively low international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 59 ratio of adults to children makes it impossible to implement an individual approach to every child or for care workers to continuously monitor each child’s online activities. research objective the main purpose of the present study was to determine the patterns of internet usage of children in a group residential setting. the research has two goals: first, to determine the level of internet addiction among these children, and second, to examine the internet-mediated phenomenon of cyberbullying. methods the research was conducted in cooperation with the institute for public health of splitdalmatia county and the department of social work at the university of zagreb faculty of law. a mixed-method research design was employed: that is, one in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches are combined in a single study (este et al., 2009). the purpose of using both research methods was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the online risks in dormitories, as well as to triangulate the perspectives of different actors — both children and adults —on the researched phenomena. because quantitative research is deductive, the results are limited by the selection of variables in the study. on the other hand, the qualitative research is inductive: it thus creates opportunities to expand and deepen our understanding of the topic but also enables consideration of questions about existing ideas, the development of new theories, and an openness to the perspectives of research participants that is lacking in quantitative research (guba & lincoln, 1994, as cited in sekol & maurović, 2017). phase one: quantitative research the aim of our quantitative research was to document patterns of behavior on the internet with a special focus on internet addiction and participation in cyberbullying. the research hypotheses were in line with previous research of online risks among high school populations (vejmelka et al, 2017):  the first hypothesis regarding gender differences presumes that there is no gender difference in cyberbullying behaviors and level of internet addiction.  the second hypothesis posits that children who participate more often in cyberbullying will significantly more often exhibit higher degrees of internet addiction. sample in the first phase, quantitative research was done with the whole population in the student dormitories. from the overall pool of subjects (n = 524), 97.33% (n = 510) high school children agreed to participate. the survey included 37.6% (n = 192) males and 62.4% (n = 318) females, which is in accordance with the sex ratio in the overall population of children in the dormitories. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 60 the average age of the high school students was 15.4 years. a plurality of respondents, 30%, were 15 years old, 24.12% were 16 years old, 19.61% were 14 years old, 18.43% were 17 years old, 4.90% were 13 years old, 2.55% were 18 years old, and 0.4% were 19 years old. all of the participants were adolescents, but since the convention on the rights of the child (united nations commission on human rights, 1989) as well as much national and international legislation defines a child as a person under 18 years, the term “child” will be used in this article in accordance with the conventional terminology in child protection. student dormitories in split-dalmatia county there are four student dormitories in the split-dalmatia county area to accommodate students who must move to attend their desired high school, as their chosen course of study is not available in their communities. this ensures equal access to education for students from all regions and a chance for them to obtain the education they desire, despite the hardships of dislocation and separation from their families who are living in smaller communities. most of the students in the dormitories are housed in double and triple rooms; only a few rooms have more beds. various types of common room are also provided, such as classrooms, dining rooms, and even rooms equipped with washers and dryers. children have at their disposal common leisure facilities such as a tv room, or a hall for activities such as music, dance, folklore, drama, journalism, technical pursuits, robotics, table tennis, and chess. some activities, such as football, basketball, and badminton, take place in extramural facilities. to address everyday student needs there are cooks and cleaners, and even a custodian in charge of repairs. in the dormitory, the most important adult role in the children’s lives is played by educators. the children are organized in groups. each educator works with a group of approximately 25 students. they actively participate in the children’s lives in the dormitory, holding regular group meetings to discuss any topic of concern and help solve issues with school, family, or relationships. they are in constant contact with the children’s parents and teachers. the educators work in shifts, and the children are under adult supervision at all times. except in unusual circumstances, such as severe bad weather, most of the children visit their family homes every weekend. quantitative procedures the study was conducted during the year 2016 in dormitories for children in split-dalmatia county. before the research, the authors requested permission to use measuring instruments that examine internet addiction (iat; young, 1996) and cyberbullying (european cyberbullying intervention project questionnaire [ecipq]; del rey et al., 2015). the research design was approved by the croatian ministry of science and education. in order to minimize the potential risk of harmful effects from the research (e.g., a sense of unease or anxiety), cooperation was obtained with civil society organizations that provide psychological support to children; their international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 61 contact information was given at the end of the web questionnaire. data collection was conducted by the group-administered web survey, which lasted approximately 20 minutes. measures the sociodemographic questionnaire created for the purpose of this research included questions about the participant’s gender and age, the type of school attended and the classes taken, and school achievement. it also solicited information about the participant’s internet habits, the hardware used for internet access, and the frequency of availability of the internet in the residential part of the institution and at school. in order to examine internet addiction, the iat (young, 1998) was used. the iat consists of 20 items that are scored on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (not applicable) to 5 (always); the total score ranges from 0 to 100, with a higher score representing a higher level of addiction. results 0–19 indicate that signs of addiction are absent; 20–39 shows mild but unproblematic symptoms; 40–69 implies a moderate level of addiction; and 70–100 indicates a high level (young, 1998). our study used the ecipq (del rey et al., 2015) to investigate cyberbullying. this instrument comprises 22 items that examine instances of various forms of electronic violence that have occurred over the previous 2 months. the questionnaire contains two subscales (cybervictimization and cyberaggression), which both measure the same items related to certain online behaviors but from opposite perspectives: first, that of the person exposed to the behaviors (11 items), and second, that of the person engaging in violence (11 items). the answers range over a 5-point scale: 0 (never); 1 (once or twice); 2 (once a month); 3 (once a week); 4 (more than once a week). based on the results of both scales, young people are divided by statistical criteria into categories according to their participation in cyberbullying: victim, aggressor, and victim/aggressor. participants whose results were equal to or higher than 2 (once a month) on any item of the cybervictimization scale and less than or equal to 1 (once or twice) on any item of the cyberaggression scale, are considered cybervictims. cyberaggressors are those subjects whose results are equal to or higher than 2 (once a month) on any item of the cyberaggression scale and less than or equal to 1 (once or twice) on all items of the cybervictimization scale. finally, cybervictim/aggressor participants show results greater than or equal to 2 (once a month) on at least one item in both scales (del rey et al., 2015). phase two: qualitative research for the second phase, the plan was to deepen our understanding of the quantitative results from the perspectives of children, teachers, and parents, using a convenience sample of children (n = 25), teachers and care workers (n = 13), and parents (n = 20) in eight focus groups. a focus group protocol was created for the purposes of the research. focus group leaders were experienced experts, and the duration of sessions was from 45 to 75 minutes. qualitative thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts was conducted. data processing using the thematic analysis method involved a mostly deductive approach, based on prior knowledge in the field (braun & clarke, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 62 2006). previous findings and studies in the field of internet use enabled the preliminary definition of themes. moreover, the chosen method of qualitative analysis ensured that some themes could be deductively derived from the respondents’ answers and that researchers were guided by the data collected. thematic analysis was conducted on the collective answers of teachers and care workers, children, and parents, but if some category was extracted solely from the answers of just one or two groups of respondents this fact was reflected in the category or theme name. research ethics the research observed all ethical guidelines for conducting research with children. in the planning and implementation of this empirical research the code of ethics in research with children (vijeće za djecu vlade republike hrvatske & državni zavod za zaštitu obitelji, materinstva i mladeži, 2003) was fully respected. prior to the survey, the students and their parents, as well as the heads of the institutions and the caregivers who worked in them, had been informed about the purpose and importance of the research, its estimated duration, and the content of the web questionnaire. they had also been informed about and familiarized with the right to anonymity which assured them that their responses could not be traced back to them, and of the fact that participation was voluntary — they had the right to accept or refuse research participation. furthermore, participants had been informed that withdrawal from the study was possible at any time. results and discussion internet usage: quantitative results since the beginning of 2017, combined usage of internet browsing and social media from mobile smartphones has hovered consistently at around 50% of total web traffic worldwide; in 2019, mobile devices other than tablets generated 52.6% (statista, 2020). while in the dormitories, the participants in our study most commonly accessed the internet from their cell phones, with 41.18% connecting via a wi-fi network and 41.57% via their mobile network. the least common use of the internet in the dormitory (22.35%) was via personal computer (pc). from table 1 we can conclude that participants most often used a cell phone to connect, with 25.69% using a cell phone via wi-fi often or very often, and 25.29% using a cell phone via a mobile network often or very often. participants spent weekends at their family homes and used the internet more often there than when they were in the dormitory. it is interesting that when they were at their family homes, as many as 84.12% used the internet from a mobile phone connected to a wi-fi network. according to the participants’ statements, using the internet on their mobile phones ensured their privacy. international research indicates that 95% of teens have access to a smartphone and that 45% say they are online “almost constantly” (anderson & jiang, 2018). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 63 table 1. internet usage methods in the dormitory versus in the family home frequency pc cell phone (wi-fi) cell phone (mobile) other dorm. home dorm. home dorm. home dorm. home never 77.65% 12.75% 58.82% 4.51% 58.43% 17.84% 75.69% 39.61% very rare/rare 13.53% 38.82% 9.02% 6.47% 10.98% 28.63% 10.98% 26.86% sometimes 2.55% 21.76% 6.47% 4.90% 5.30% 14.51% 4.90% 15.29% often/very often 6.27% 26.67% 25.69% 84.12% 25.29% 39.02% 8.43% 18.24% total 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% internet usage: qualitative results the qualitative phase of our research gave us an opportunity to deepen the research topic and obtain the detailed opinions of the children and their significant adults. table 2 presents the results of the thematic analysis of the children’s general internet usage. two themes were extracted from the participants’ answers: (1) positive internet use, and (2) negative internet use. both consist of three categories. table 2. thematic analysis: participant perspectives on internet usage by children. theme category chosen statement positive internet use perceived by all participants source of information now we are enrolling in high school and online there are groups of people who are planning on enrolling in the same school. i think there are more benefits [than drawbacks] to it. (studentos4) educational opportunities as far as i can see from my children, one part helps them: much more information about the school. (parentos3) peer communication i notice that online communication between children encourages socializing (teacherss5) i use the internet for texting and sharing info with my friends (studentos3) negative internet use perceived by adults information overload because the information is available on google, they do not need to remember the data, the facts, the details. why? because they know they can google it at any time, type it and find it. (parentos4) the decline of motor skills they do not know how to hold a pen in their hand; their motor skills are very bad becauste they are typing on a keyboard all the time. (teacher & care workerss5) poor communication skills (verbal and nonverbal) and they all write in abbreviations and incomplete sentences. everything is in note form. (teacher & care workerss3) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 64 an interesting finding is that the benefits of internet use (easy access to information, educational opportunities, and peer communication) were pointed out by children as well as adults. however, the children did not report the negative consequences of internet use noted by the adults (information overload, decline of motor skills, poor communication skills). online activities and social networks usage: quantitative results the most popular ways of using the internet were listening to music (97.06%, n = 495) and sending and receiving instant messages (96.47%, n = 492). more than half of the participants, (57.65%, n = 294) reported sending and receiving messages for 4 hours or more every day (figure 1), while 49.02% (n = 250) spent 4 hours or more daily listening to music. in a study by vejmelka et al. (2017), listening to music and sending instant messages are among the online activities that have a positive correlation with internet addiction. figure 1. online activities for 90% (n = 459) of the participants, the third most frequent online activity was watching movies or videos: 30% reported having consumed such content for 4 hours or more daily over the previous 2 months. moreover, 85.88% (n = 438) participants used social networks daily, with 19.61% (n = 100) spending 1 to 3 hours a day, and 18.63% (n = 95) more than 4 hours, on social media services such as instagram, facebook, and snapchat. a study by carter and wilson (2015) highlighted social networks as virtual platforms where children experience cyberbullying. in addition to communication, children often use these services to exchange multimedia content and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 65 engage in various forms of interaction, thereby increasing their risk of becoming involved in violent acts on the internet. almost half of the participants spent an hour or less daily using the internet for viewing information portals, reading and sending email, and writing homework or doing research. the least interest was shown for consuming content like online gambling and online prize gaming, visiting chat rooms, and keeping a personal website or blog (figure 1). social media have become almost universally popular among adolescents in recent years, with the various services competing fiercely for users. instagram was the most popular social media site among our sample: 90% (n = 459) participants had an instagram profile (figure 2). most of the participants maintained profiles on two or more services, with facebook (76.3%, n = 389) and snapchat (52.7%, n = 269) being the next most popular. only 1.2% (n = 6) of participants did not have a profile on any social media service. this is broadly in line with international trends: anderson & jiang (2018) found that youtube, instagram, and snapchat were the most popular online platforms among teens (. figure 2. social network usage social network usage: qualitative results in the qualitative part of the research, four themes were extracted from the data: (1) children’s profiles on social networks, (2) children’s lack of interest in facebook, (3) instagram preference, and (4) parents and teachers’ perceptions of the negative impact of social networks (table 3). participants confirmed that the children typically have more than one profile on social networks, but also stated that some profiles are not active. in line with contemporary worldwide trends, the children preferred instagram over facebook. this was partly due to the children’s perception that their activities on facebook could be monitored by their parents. in addition, they international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 66 saw instagram as easier to use, particularly for mobile devices, and preferred its emphasis on visual over textual communication. they were aware that publishing content on instagram could lead to a distorted self-presentation, but they viewed this in a positive light as providing an opportunity to create a preferred online self-image. it was again the adults who pointed out negative aspects of social network usage: that children gave too much weight to the opinions of “influencers”, and that social network activities were a waste of time. they also perceived social networks as a psychological burden for children, based on the belief that social network activities intensify the emotional reactions of children, including their negative feelings. this finding confirms recent international research showing that parents are anxious about the effects of screen time on their children and that they are particularly concerned about their teenaged children spending too much time in front of screens (jiang, 2018). table 3. thematic analysis:participant perspectives on use of social networks by children. theme category chosen statement profiles on social networks passive and active profiles on social networks facebook used to be popular, i do not use it any more but my profile remains active. (studentss2) profiles on multiple social networks they follow youtube a lot. it surprised me at the beginning of the school year when i found out. in my experience from the whole class, only a few do not follow it, and everyone else does for a few hours a day. and they know everything about them. (teacher & care workeros2) children’s lack of interest in facebook parent activity on facebook parents do not use instagram and rarely check us out on instagram and they are all on facebook. (studentos4) children’s aversion to facebook luckily i am not in the generation that was on facebook. (studentos4) instagram preference interesting multimedia content instagram is more interesting. (studentss3) the convenience of using this platform and simple settings … and the instagram story is a lot easier to watch. (student os4) an opportunity to present a desirable virtual image of oneself on instagram we can create a picture of ourselves that we like. (studentos5) parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of the negative impact of social networks excessive following of influencers yes, we agree that children are more unhappy [due to the use of social networks]. (parentss5) social networks are wasting children’s time for me, the disadvantage [of using social networks] is the indescribable waste of time. children don’t have the skills to tell themselves “enough”. (parentss6) social networks as a psychological burden children are also naive, trusting. to my younger daughter, instagram is especially exhausting. she thinks about which picture to publish — she has a hundred filters. she is not satisfied after that, she is just exhausted. (parentss6) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 67 cybersecurity: quantitative results some of our other results regarding the cybersecurity of children on social networks also deserve mention. as many as 21.57% (n = 110) of our young participants maintained a public profile, 10.98% (n = 56) did not know how to use security and privacy settings on social media; in total, 22.35% (n = 114) had not used such settings. setting a password is one way to prevent unauthorized access to private information on social media and prevent numerous other abuses, such as profile theft and unauthorized sharing of information — but only if the password is kept confidential. nevertheless, 19.84% (n = 100) of participants shared their passwords with partners and close friends. arranging real world meetings with strangers encountered online is a high-risk behavior. against much advice, 64.31% (n = 328) of the children in our study had experience of online meetings, and 63.73% (n = 325) expressed the intention of physically meeting strangers whom they had first encountered online. rogers (2010) noted that peer pressure and the desire to gain popularity impel adolescents to make online friendships with strangers and disclose personal information to them. accordingly, adolescents who are active on social networks are at greater risk of exposure to cyberbullying (navarro & jasinski, 2012) than are those who do not use them. also, our research identified that 20.67% (n = 105) have sent nude or otherwise inappropriate photos of themselves via the internet to friends or partners, and that 1.18% (n = 6) have sent such photos to strangers. our results should be taken into account when planning cybersecurity strategies for children. such strategies should include timely and adequate interventions that are based on local needs and fit the specifics of each institution. educating children, parents, and professionals in the field of safe internet use is particularly important today when the online world and internet activities are entwined in the lives of almost every child and family. cybersecurity: qualitative results qualitative analysis confirms that participants are aware that personal data can be misused for identity theft and that images can be misused through modification and publishing of materials intended to shame a victim. participants were also knowledgeable regarding other misuse of personal information and the importance of safeguarding online privacy and not sharing personal details (table 4). very concerning is the finding that children are underestimating the risks of real-world contact with people they have met online. this should be addressed by preventive strategies to educate care workers, parents, and especially children on the potential hazards of online behavior and how to mitigate them. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 68 table 4. thematic analysis: participant perspectives on cybersecurity. theme category chosen statement misuse of personal data identity theft and impersonation fake profiles on facebook: as far as i heard they are very popular. then various messages are sent from this profile and the child in whose name messages were sent has no idea about it. (teacher & care workerss3) misuse of images [someone] takes a picture of some girl from the internet and then teases a friend to start an interest in her. we haven’t done that, but we know someone who has. (studentss2) misuse of other personal information i think the risk is to leave personal information, neighborhood, location, address… for example, i don’t know anything about anyone, but i can find out everything very quickly. (studentos4) dating people they met people online relativizing the risk of meeting people in real life: student perspective meeting people from the internet offline can be risky, but if they are followed on instagram by 37 people you know and you know what school they are going to, you will know someone from that school, so it is not dangerous. (studentos4) awareness of the risks of meeting people in real life meeting someone we have met online may or may not be dangerous. you can never really know who you met until you see them live. (studentos7) prevalence of internet addiction: quantitative results the current study indicated that on average the participants demonstrated moderate signs of addiction (m = 33.53; sd = 17.77). among the symptoms of addiction reported were: extending online time; preoccupation with the internet, even while offline, or fantasizing about being online; sleep loss due to internet use; decline in grades or neglect of school work because of time spent online; and unsuccessful self-attempts to reduce time spent online. a large majority (73.73%; n = 376) of participants were not at risk of addiction (figure 3). this group included students with no symptoms of addiction (37.25%; n = 190), as well as those who exhibited mild but unproblematic signs of addiction (36.47%; n = 186). however, more than a quarter of the participants (26.27%; n = 134) were already experiencing high (3.73%; n = 19) or moderate (22.5%; n = 115) internet addiction, with the latter at risk of progressing to more severe addiction. tsitsika et al. (2014), in a large study with over 13,000 participants (n = 13,248), showed that on average 1.2% of adolescents exhibited high levels of internet addiction; 12.7% had signs of addiction and were at risk of progressing to such a level. the same study found large variations in the level of internet addiction between subsamples of children from different european countries, with results ranging from 7.9% in ireland to 22.8% in spain. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 69 figure 3. prevalence of internet addiction when the total score for prevalence of internet addiction is broken down by gender, statistically significant differences are found, which contributes to the partial rejection of our first hypothesis. the shapiro–wilk test of normality (boys: f = 0.910; df = 192; p < .001; and girls: f = 0.945; df = 318; p < .001) shows non-normal distributions so a further analysis was conducted with mann– whitney (mann–whitney = 26991.5; df = 5, p = .028). the analysis identified that girls have statistically significant higher scores on the internet addiction scale, indicating that they experience internet addiction symptoms more frequently than boys do (girls: m = 30.233; sd = 19.602; boys: m = 26.505; sd = 19.231). prevalence of internet addiction: qualitative results the phase of our qualitative research that focused on internet addiction extracted seven categories (table 5). the participants identified symptoms matching some of the internet addiction criteria mentioned in previous paragraphs, such as excessive internet use, postponed sleep, and neglect of duties and tasks. they were familiar with the fact that internet addiction is like any other addiction. despite this, and whether or not they were conscious of spending too much time online themselves, they were often willing to offer excuses for excessive internet use. children are informed about the negative aspects of internet addiction, and also about treatment programs. this is interesting considering that treatment of internet addiction in croatia is still developing and as yet there are few institutions specializing in the treatment of problematic internet usage (mihajlov & vejmelka, 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 70 table 5. thematic analysis: participant perspectives on internet addiction theme category chosen statement internet addiction excessive internet use if someone spends more than 1/4 of the day on the internet, that is too much. (studentos8) some people have to use the internet too much when they are with other people, not only when they are alone. (studentos6) postponed sleep they stay up all night and then do not function at school. (teacher & care workerss2) neglecting duties and tasks i would study more (for school) without the internet. (studentss2) school tasks as an excuse for internet use children neglect their obligations due to cell phones. (teacher & care workerss5) addiction to online gaming (boys) more boys are addicted to online games; they play them more. (teacherss05) awareness that internet addiction is a real problem but addiction is addiction and some can’t stand being without internet or cell phones: after some time they go crazy without internet, it’s addiction. (studentos5) student perception of self-control in internet use it is no problem for me to stop using the internet, i don’t use it very much in general. i play games but rarely when i have to learn as i don’t have time. (studentos1) informed about a possible treatment i know that there is something like rehabilitation centers for internet addicts. (studentos4) prevalence of cyberbullying: quantitative results our results show that almost 33% (n = 168) of participants were in some way involved in cyberbullying. the number of participants who had been victims of cyberbullying (10.0%; n = 51) was similar to the number who had bullied someone online (10.59%; n = 54), as seen in figure 4. these results are consistent with the findings of del rey et al. (2015) in their study of cyberbullying in six european countries. moreover, 12.35% (n = 63) of students were both cybervictims and cyberbullies (figure 4). the prevalence of exposure to cyberbullying varies widely between countries, with results that have ranged from 2% in italy and portugal to 14% in iceland (haddon et al., 2012). more recent results from a cross-national comparative study conducted in seven european countries show that as many as 21.4% of young people had been exposed to violence through electronic media (tsitsika et al., 2014). in a survey conducted in nine croatian high schools, as many as 50% of students reported having participated in cyberbullying (vejmelka et al., 2017). analysis of our results shows no statistically significant difference in cyberbullying between boys and girls (χ² = 3.726; p = .293), which is in line with previous research (vejmelka et al., 2017) and contributes to partial acceptance of our first hypothesis. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 71 figure 4. cybervictimization and cyberaggression reported by participants prevalence of cyberbullying: qualitative results qualitative analysis enabled deeper insight into the participants’ experiences with and understanding of the cyberbullying phenomenon (table 6). both children and adults agreed that sending and receiving offensive content and joining internet hate groups were particularly problematic behaviors, but in other categories adults and children took mutually distinct positions. while adults showed awareness of the cyberbullying problem, children differed in lacking that awareness and in their normalization of violent behaviors in the online world. it is interesting that adults ascribed most online bullying to girls, while children maintained that it was a problem mainly in younger age groups. vejmelka et al. (2019) conducted a study in a school setting in the same region that found, on the contrary, that cyberbullying tended to increase with age. in that study, 35% of children in primary school and 42.3% of children in secondary school were found to be involved in cyberbullying. this raises the question of the extent to which they integrated this kind of behavior and began perceiving it not as problematic but as a routine mode of communication. among the interesting responses elicited in our present study was the suggestion that cyberbullying is a product of other social processes, and in particular that it is a consequence of the normalization of violence in general and the erosion of standards of conduct in the real world. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 72 table 6. thematic analysis: participant perspectives on cyberbullying theme category chosen statement cyberbullying sending and receiving offensive content when he/she insults… sends some abusive messages… (studentss5) internet hate groups in our class, cyberbullying also happened. one girl attacked another through a class group. (studentos1) adult perception of girls as perpetrators of cyberbullying in internet violence, i think that girls lead in insulting, harassment, [and] mocking if one does not have branded clothes and shoes. (parentss7) cyberbullying as effect of a social process it seems to me that this violence on the internet is a side effect of some social processes.… how do we prevent people from mocking each other for their physical appearance? we all know that we are bolder on the internet. we should generally change standards in society. (studentss4) students’ perceptions of experiencing cyberbullying at an earlier age it is more an elementary school student problem than ours (studentss05) lack of awareness among children and young people about cyberbullying they do not perceive these ugly messages as such at all. (teacheros4) adult awareness of cyberbullying i think cyberbullying is an emerging problem (teacherss02) normalization of violent behavior on the internet by children in conversation with the children i concluded that they did not perceive these ugly messages as such at all. it’s like they have a new way of communicating. (parentos4) relationship between internet addiction and cyberbullying the relationship between internet addiction and cyberbullying was analyzed based on the total score of internet addiction and four categories of cyberbullying (table 7). analysis identified a statistically significant relation between internet addiction and cyberbullying (welch = 123; df₁ = 3; df₂ = 506; p < .001), and revealed that children who are involved in any kind of cyberbullying exhibit significantly more signs of internet addiction (games-howell = 28.110; df₁ = 3; df₂ = 107.260; p < .001). this finding is in line with previous studies showing that higher levels of internet addiction among high school students are associated with their more frequent involvement in cyberbullying; this contributes to the acceptance of our second hypothesis (nartgün & cicioğlu, 2015; vejmelka et al., 2017). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 73 table 7. games-howell post-hoc test dependent variable: iat total score md (i-j) se p (i) cyberbullying (j) status not involved cyberbully -15.91423* 2.57984 < .001 cybervictim -15.19092* 3.62953 .001 cyberbully/victim -17.55973* 2.59796 < .001 cyberbully not involved 15.91423* 2.57984 < .001 cybervictim 0.72331 4.27151 .998 cyberbully/victim -1.64550 3.43827 .964 cybervictim not involved 15.19092* 3.62953 .001 cyberbully -0.72331 4.27151 .998 cyberbully/victim -2.36881 4.28247 .945 both cyberbully and cybervictim not involved 17.55973* 2.59796 < .001 cyberbully 1.64550 3.43827 .964 cybervictim 2.36881 4.28247 .945 *p ≤ 0.001 conclusion it is apparent that about a quarter of the children in our sample were at risk of developing severe internet addiction, and that about the same proportion of children fell into two other categories: those who already had some experience with cyberbullying, and those who showed high-risk behaviors in the domain of online security and personal data sharing. these results are in line with previous research in the field of online risks among the general population of children in high school in croatia. although children in dormitory accommodation are separated from their families during the work week, the research findings on their online activities are consistent with the results of studies conducted in the school context of students living at home and attending local schools (černja et al., 2019). thus, several of our findings are relevant to the planning of cyberviolence prevention programs for the general population, including children placed outside the family. for instance, they may indicate the importance of parental supervision and parental support in mitigating the risks associated with the online environment, a consideration that should certainly be included in future research activities, especially because parents show awareness of the cyberbullying problem and at the same time insecurity and anxiety about children’s use of the internet. one of the most significant findings is children’s normalization of problematic use of the internet and acceptance of online risk behaviors, especially offline meetings with online acquaintances, which can furnish opportunities for predators and perpetrators of sexual exploitation of children. despite such international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 74 hazards, children show lack of awareness regarding these negative aspects of internet use. this finding should be considered carefully in future research that contributes to better understanding of online activities of children placed out-of-home for schooling. although the accommodation of children in placements outside their families is a risk factor for their problematic use of the internet, they also benefit from a protective factor: that they live with educated adults — their caregivers. institutional accommodations vary in their specifics. in croatia they usually cannot offer high-quality wi-fi, so children spend less time on the internet while residing in the institution. similarly, we can point out the influence of peers as a risk factor, but a compensating protective factor is that institutions provide some organized leisure time through numerous activities. in sum, poor internet connections and some structured leisure time mean that the children have fewer opportunities to engage in problematic online behaviors. at the same time, however, they also have fewer opportunities to develop the digital competencies that today are valued in all sectors and professions. these observations suggest that the negative aspects of the online activities of children in dormitories might best be addressed through the careful planning, implementation, and continuous carrying out of both online and offline activities within institutions that can respond to the specific needs of these children. some of our results are particularly interesting on the regional level, and may serve to guide further practices with children, parents, teachers, and caregivers. but most aspects of children’s online habits are subject to global influences whose impacts on actual situations and outcomes should not be ignored. in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, these findings should be taken even more seriously, considering that children today are online more than ever. problematic internet use by children is especially risky during this unplanned and rapid transfer to the online world of many aspects of life, not just in education, but also in fun and leisure time; in electronic contacts with friends and families; and collectively in a lot more online hours for all age groups, but especially children. the practical implications of the findings should direct and focus measures to address actual needs. the need for continuous research should also be emphasized: the internet is a fast-evolving medium, constantly offering new and improved options and new applications as social media networks and other providers and platforms compete to retain existing users and attract new ones. the special contributions of this research are reflected in (1) the mixed-method approach that allows a broader understanding of an area under study; and (2) helping to build our understanding of the specifics of online interactions among children placed in care outside their own families. the online environment should be used for the promotion of positive online behaviors. we have the opportunity to utilize online content about safer internet use, and about preventing cyberbullying and other forms of problematic internet use among children, and share it widely on online platforms. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 54–79 75 references american psychiatric association. 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(2011). internet addiction: a handbook and guide to evaluation and treatment. john wiley & sons. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx https://www.bib.irb.hr/725901 https://www.bib.irb.hr/725901 https://doi.org/10.5559/di.26.1.04 https://www.ufzg.unizg.hr/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/eticki-kodeks-istrazivanja-s-djecom.pdf https://www.ufzg.unizg.hr/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/eticki-kodeks-istrazivanja-s-djecom.pdf https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2004.7.443 https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1996.79.3.899 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114.2202019990 identifying best-practice strategies for managing residential caregivers working with children at risk anna reznikovski-kuras and anna gerasimenko abstract: residential caregivers are the central figures responsible for the children in their charge. their work is physically and emotionally taxing, and carried out under pressure: they are prone to burnout. in addition, their status is lower than that of other staff. this study aimed to identify the strategies to improve caregiver functioning that have been adopted in israel’s residential social-service facilities, and to examine the extent of their implementation. a two-stage, mixed-methods study design was employed. in the qualitative stage, six successful care facilities were identified; their directors were interviewed in depth using the learning from success method. in the quantitative stage, a survey was administered to 95 directors, using open and closed questions. six best-practice strategies for working with caregivers were identified: careful screening, training, ongoing supervision, personal and professional support mechanisms, flexible schedules, and a clear work plan and procedures. while these strategies were applied to some extent in most facilities, they varied in scope and implementation. using a regression model, we found a connection between the implementation of these strategies and the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ work. we discuss recommendations that can help directors incorporate the six strategies in residential homes and meet the challenges directors face in their work with caregivers. keywords: children at risk, out-of-home care, residential caregivers, learning from success anna reznikovski-kuras ma (corresponding author) is a research associate at myers-jdcbrookdale institute, pob 3886, 9103702 jerusalem, israel. email: annare@jdc.org.il anna gerasimenko ma is a research associate at myers-jdc-brookdale institute, pob 3886, 9103702 jerusalem, israel. email: annage@jdc.org.il mailto:annare@jdc.org.il mailto:annage@jdc.org.il international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 97 before you [the caregiver] go to meet your group of children, go to the mirror, and say: “these children were taken out of their homes because of (a), (b) and (c). am i going to change things for them? am i giving them something different? because if i’m giving them more of the same, they would be better off with their parents. (facility director) the work here … it’s impossible to explain. not what you have to cope with, not the feelings that the children bring out in you, and not how you come home after a day’s work. no matter how people try to explain it to you, it doesn’t come close to the real thing. (residential caregiver) from 2016 to 2018, at the request of the israeli ministry of labor, social affairs and social services (molsa), the myers-jdc-brookdale institute conducted a comprehensive study involving directors of residential care facilities in israel (ellenbogen-frankovitz et al.,2018). this article is based on that research. as we noted in gerasimenko and reznikovski-kuras (2019), residential caregivers play a major role in the lives of children and adolescents1 in residential homes, with responsibility for their physical and emotional care and their educational needs (baranes & bourdon, 1990 ; ellenbogen-frankovitz et al., 2018). to date, the professional status of residential caregivers in israel has been undefined, and it has become clear that there is a need to identify best practices and methods for working with them. these can then be standardized for the purpose of upgrading the role and status of caregivers in all residential facilities in israel. this article, which is part of a broader study on residential caregivers, focuses on identifying strategies directors can use for working with residential caregivers of children at risk and examines the extent to which those strategies have been implemented. the findings could serve as the basis for formulating theories and policies for further evolution of the caregiver role and continued professional upgrading. characteristics of residential facilities for children at risk in israel out-of-home placements are necessary for many different reasons, ranging from environmental inadequacies that are impeding the child’s optimal development, through physical and emotional neglect, to dangerous situations that pose a serious threat to the child’s well-being or even their life (zeira et al., 2012). out-of-home facilities utilize various models and methods of operation designed to adapt to the children’s needs so that they will have the best chance of adjusting to life in the facility, and to rehabilitate and continue to grow and develop healthily. israel stands out among the developed nations in its relatively large number of residential placements: in 2016, a total of 7,168 (72%) of 1 hereafter, we refer to children and adolescents as “children”. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 98 all children at risk in israel were in residential facilities, with only 28% in foster care (israel national council for the child, 2018). in many developed countries, the proportions are reversed or there is at worst an equal division between residential facilities and foster families (ainsworth & thoburn, 2014). the high rate of residential placements in israel is partly due to historical and cultural circumstances. in the years following the establishment of the state of israel in 1948, residential schools were associated with training youth for the realization of zionist settlement; they were designed for youth from all population strata and considered by the public to be normative settings (grupper, 2004). these days, additional reasons for the high placement rate in residential facilities include the serious shortage of foster families, the objections of the biological families to having their children placed in foster families, and the fact that the compensation provided for giving foster care to relatives is inadequate (silman, 2014). there are three categories2 of residential facility in israel, based on the severity of the children's needs. educational and rehabilitative facilities serve those who, despite gaps in their schooling, learning difficulties, or emotional deficiencies, have the potential for normative development. next on the continuum are therapeutic facilities, which serve children with organic, behavioral, and mental or emotional disorders that have led to deficient functioning in multiple areas, and who are in need of special education. in extreme cases, children who have come out of psychiatric hospitals or need an alternative to hospitalization are placed in post-hospital facilities (dolev et al., 2009).3 each residential care facility is affiliated with an educational stream: secular state education, state-religious education, haredi (ultra-orthodox) education, and arabic-speaking education. the children have varying levels and types of difficulty, including learning difficulties; social, emotional, and behavioral problems (outbursts of anger, aggression, criminal behavior); and mental disturbances — some have been in psychiatric hospitals, and some have suicidal tendencies. the subject of the care of children in residential facilities is, from time to time, the focus of public debate and criticism. in 2016, the state comptroller (ministry of labor, social affairs, and social services, 2017) examined the process of placing children in residential facilities, what therapeutic and educational services were provided while they are there, and what was provided after their return to the community and in adulthood; they also reported on molsa’s inspection and regulation of the facilities. the report found that the lack of clear policy from the ministry with regard to the running of the facilities was detrimental to the care provided to the children and to the children’s well-being. this gave rise to such problems as an absence of systematic information about the status of the children when they reach adulthood or about the effectiveness 2 it is important to note that under the current reform of out-of-home placement, the categorization of residential facilities is likely to change. 3 in addition to the residential facilities operated by molsa, the ministry of education operates educational residential facilities. these are for children with normative functioning or mild developmental disorders, and with high potential to improve their condition, and are not included in our study. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 99 of work at the institutions to maintain their status; a lack of adequate investment in the students’ scholastic advancement; and a lack of adequate preparation for adult life and support after age 18 (ministry of labor, social affairs, and social services, 2017). in light of the changes that have taken place in recent years in the characteristics of children referred to out-of-home placement and the complexity of the challenges facing them both in israel (molsa, 2018) and abroad (budde et al., 2004; dale et al., 2007), and, above all, public criticism, the ministry appointed a committee to examine the care provided in residential facilities. the committee produced two documents, the aforementioned policy report (molsa, 2018) and a forthcoming book on procedures for operating residential facilities. the committee's work has led to the implementation of reforms in out-of-home placements, affecting a broad range of aspects of care in the facilities and working towards the formulation of policy that will meet the needs of the children and improve the services. this process includes a review of the role of caregiver in residential facilities. complexity of the role of caregiver in residential facilities for children at risk every type of residential facility for children at risk has a multidisciplinary professional therapy staff: social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and providers of various forms of therapy (e.g., art therapy). alongside them works a team of educational professionals: residential caregivers, teachers, and housemothers (dolev et al., 2009). in 2017, there were 1,600 care staff working with children in residential facilities under the supervision of molsa’s service for children and youth. of these, approximately 900 were residential caregivers (knesset, 2017). these caregivers are crucial figures in the lives of each child at the facility: like their counterparts the world over, they are required to assume a “substitute parent” role and provide emotional support (baranes & bourdon, 1990; white et al., 2009). at the same time, they are expected to help in the development of the children’s talents, self-esteem, and independence, along with their interpersonal skills (australian youth affairs coalition, 2013; youthlink scotland, 2009). over the years, the focus of the caregiver role has changed from social aspects to rehabilitation and caring for children by dealing with daily events (cohen, 2000). recruitment of residential caregivers in many european countries, candidates for the position of residential caregiver are required to be licensed to work with children at risk. furthermore, during the recruitment process, the candidates go through a series of interviews, their recommendations from previous employers are checked, and they have to provide a certificate of good conduct from the police (united kingdom department for education, 2011; ireland department of health and children, 2000). in the united states, most of the residential facilities require candidates to submit a drug test, to have a driver’s licence, and to take a first-aid or resuscitation course. preference is given to candidates with some prior experience of working with children (bertolino & thompson, 1999). studies have found that directors in residential care facilities look for caregivers whose personal qualities include international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 100 commitment and dedication to their work, emotional maturity, wisdom, and resilience as well as the knowledge and basic skills required to work with children (white et al., 2015). in israel, there is no requirement for appropriate higher education or professional training. the majority of caregivers have no experience in the field, and most of them have just completed military service; in some cases, their work as caregivers is concurrent with university studies (attar-schwartz, 2010; cohen & cohen, 2001; talias & ben yair, 2000). difficulties at work and with burnout a number of studies (barford & whelton, 2010; shammai & moyal-botwin, 2012; talias & ben yair, 2000) have identified working conditions that make it difficult for caregivers to do their job properly. one of the demands of the job is the requirement to be constantly available, which blurs the boundaries between professional and private life and creates an emotional burden. even during what is officially their free time, caregivers have to be available to take phone calls and to respond to children’s needs as they arise (knesset, 2014). in their study of 94 child and youth care workers in a western canadian city, barford and whelton (2010) noted that the most significant source of the pressure on caregivers is that they work with groups of children who are contending with a wide range of emotional and mental difficulties and who frequently exhibit antisocial behavior, including verbal aggression, self-harm, and refusal to accept treatment. working with this population can place severe strain on the emotional resources of caregivers. as reported by talias and ben yair (2000), caregivers claimed that there is considerable disparity between the demands and expectations they face and the financial compensation they receive. furthermore, they felt their status was regarded as inferior to that of other members of the professional staff and that they were therefore not sufficiently included in decision-making processes about the children and their future. finally, the shift arrangements allowed little time for meetings with their fellow caregivers and they did not have professional contact with their colleagues at the facility (talias & ben yair, 2000). in their extensive study of children’s homes in the united kingdom, whittaker and colleagues (1998) found additional sources of pressure on caregivers: a lack of support from management, a feeling of powerlessness, and a negative impact on family life. a later study of caregivers in israel by shammai and moyal-botwin (2012) reported that the environment in which they worked subjected them to emotional, personal, and interpersonal pressures, and that their job was conflictual and overburdened, resulting in burnout. burnout had a negative impact on the way caregivers dealt with tasks and challenges at work; many of them left the job within the first year. professionalization of residential caregivers in israel in israel, as opposed to most european countries, the only basic requirement for the job of caregiver in a residential facility is 12 years of schooling: there is no legislation setting out the professional status of caregivers. job requirements, conditions of employment, and career advancement prospects are all determined by the individual facility (attar-schwartz, 2010; cohen international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 101 & cohen, 2001). to address this pattern of burnout and high turnover among caregivers, and ensure an appropriate level of care for children, it has been proposed in the literature to professionalize the role of the residential caregiver. in 2005, the international organization of social educators (association internationale des educateurs de jeunes inadaptés – aieji) published the montevideo declaration (regional declaration on the new orientations for primary health care), which sets out demands for the licensing of social educators (equivalent to residential caregivers): they must receive pedagogical training equivalent to a bachelor’s degree (i.e., graduation from university or college) and gain additional practical experience in order to be licensed for the job (grupper & romi, 2015). molsa current working procedures for training residential caregivers were presented at a meeting of the knesset committee for the rights of the child in may 2017. currently, in addition to the basic training days provided by the ministry, the training and study curriculum includes: an orientation period of several days after the caregivers have started working; workshops and seminars throughout the year, provided both by the facility and by molsa; social workers to provide support to the caregivers and all members of staff at the facilities; “educational guidance centers” providing guidance in all areas; and courses for caregivers once a year after they start working at the facility. the courses would be adapted for the general population, the haredi population, and the arab population (for whom they would be conducted in arabic; knesset, 2017). study design study goal as noted above, residential caregivers play a crucial role in residential care facilities, but given their low professional status, they are frequently undervalued and underpaid, meaning that there are few professional promotion prospects, and high rates of burnout (freeman, 2013; knesset, 2014). this situation poses a great challenge to the facility directors in their efforts to recruit and retain caregivers. there are many suggestions in the literature about how to work with caregivers to enable them to give children the best care, as described in the discussion section (below), while the current article reflects our efforts to produce a comprehensive paper with practical applications. the goal of the study discussed here was to collect up-to-date information at residential facilities for children at risk in israel regarding the strategies used by directors and professional staff in their work with caregivers, and use that information to identify best-practice strategies and examine whether there is a connection between the extent that such strategies are implemented and the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ work. study method this was a mixed-methods study conducted in two stages. the first stage of the study used a qualitative method in which specific and effective strategies for evolving the caregiver role were international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 102 identified and conceptualized. the second stage used a quantitative method, in which measures for mapping the strategies were devised and a survey of facility directors was conducted to examine their applicability. study population stage 1: national inspectors at molsa selected six residential facilities that they judged to be working successfully with caregivers. the success measures included: job retention, optimum performance, caregivers’ satisfaction with the work, and professional staff’s satisfaction with the caregivers. the directors of these six facilities were interviewed. stage 2: residential care facilities in israel are of three kinds: therapeutic (51%), rehabilitative or rehabilitative-therapeutic (28%), and post-hospital or post-hospital therapeutic (21%). the directors who participated had held their positions for an average of 8 years (8–38 years; sd = 8.1). their educational backgrounds were in the fields of education and special education, social work, psychology, criminology, and management. a slight majority (56%) held a master’s degree or a doctorate; 35% had a bachelor’s degree. research tools and data collection stage 1: the interviews at the selected facilities were based on the learning from success method, in the belief that systematic learning from the past and the use of principles that have already proved successful could be a good foundation for similar outcomes, provide leverage for assimilation of collective learning in an organization, and lead to improvement of products in the future (sykes et al., 2006). the learning from success method is based on 10 stages of research (sykes et al., 2006): (a) describing the organizational context; (b) identifying a success worthy of being learned, and defining the field of success; (c) concisely describing the success in terms of “before” and “after”; (d) identifying positive outcomes of the success — both objective and subjective; (e) identifying any negative “side effects” or costs of the success; (f) examining whether the success indeed justifies further learning; (g) detailing the actions that led to the success; (h) identifying turning points between “before” and “after”; (i) deriving the common elements that underlay the actions that led to the success; and (j) identifying unresolved issues for further learning. based on these 10 stages, specially trained interviewers conducted preliminary interviews with the directors of facilities that had had notable success in their work with caregivers. the purpose of the questions was to enable us to identify, reveal, and conceptualize the professional knowledge that until then had been implicit only, and turn it into explicit, actionable knowledge. the interviews took place from november 2016 through february 2017. from the interviews, six strategies that the directors considered to be successful were identified. stage 2: the directors of all residential facilities under molsa’s responsibility were surveyed to determine which of the six strategies for optimum work they used in working with caregivers. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 103 in order to collect the data, we built a self-report internet survey. before sending it out, we conducted a pre-test of all the questions with three directors. in light of their feedback, the questionnaire was then revised and unclear or irrelevant items were deleted. it was then distributed to the directors of molsa’s residential care facilities throughout israel to be completed anonymously. the data were collected in the summer of 2017. of the 95 directors who received questionnaires, 75 (79%) responded. the extent to which each strategy was implemented was examined quantitatively using questions suitably formulated for each strategy. for example, regarding the first strategy — identification of quality caregivers with suitable skills by means of thorough screening — the directors were asked about the number of interviews conducted with each candidate, and about the length of the recruitment process (one or two days, about a week, two weeks, about a month). the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ work was examined with a general question, “how satisfied are you with the caregiver’s work?”, and with more focused questions about different aspects of their work, such as: concern for the well-being of the children; ability to manage a group of children, cope with violence or behavioral problems, and provide the children with emotional support; their relationship with the school and with parents; and so on. data analysis stage 1: the quantitative analysis of the six interviews was conducted using the thematic approach (braun & clarke, 2006), and comprised several steps. firstly, the researchers read the interviews several times to identify subjects for analysis. the subjects identified were divided into text units with significant meaning. these were then grouped by central themes that recurred in several interviews and then grouped by strategy. finally, these strategies were defined and given titles covering all the contents of each. for example, “creating mechanisms for personal and professional support of the caregiver” included components such as giving positive reinforcement to the caregivers, fostering a personal connection between the directors and the caregivers, showing great professional appreciation to the caregivers, and recognizing the importance of their role and the therapeutic value of their work. stage 2: the spss program version 24 was used to analyze the data. in order to determine whether implementation of the strategies considered successful by the respondents was correlated with their satisfaction with various aspects of the caregivers’ work, an “implementation of strategy measure” was calculated for each facility included in the survey. the measure summarized the extent to which each strategy was implemented, making it possible to attribute them to a single factor, thereby simplifying the analysis. a dichotomy summary score was calculated for each strategy, after which a summary measure was calculated, indicating the number of strategies implemented. the average measure was 3.19 (sd = 1.63, range: 0–6). exploratory factor analysis was conducted with varimax rotation, accounting for 59.9% of the variance. the analysis conducted for questions relating to the responding directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ work produced two separate summary measures, one regarding caregivers’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 104 performance in the emotional and social area (cronbach’s alpha .871) and the second regarding their performance in the scholastic area and their relationship with the parents (cronbach’s alpha .669). we then conducted a linear regression to examine the impact of the type of facility, and the extent to which the strategies were implemented, on the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ work. findings the study findings are presented in two stages. first, we present the six best-practice strategies for working with the caregivers and the statistics regarding the extent to which each is implemented in residential facilities in israel. next, we present an examination of the correlation between the responding directors’ satisfaction with caregivers’ work and implementation of the strategies at the facilities. this demonstrated that these strategies are indeed optimal and result in good performance by the caregivers and optimal care of the children. description of the strategies and extent of implementation the following six strategies for working with residential caregivers were identified and recommended: • identifying quality caregivers with the right skills by thorough screening of candidates; • providing successful candidates with training (both immediately upon assuming their role and in the course of their work); • providing them with ongoing supervision; • creating mechanisms for personal and professional support, such as positive reinforcement, promoting good relations with the director, supporting caregivers as far as possible when they make mistakes, and constantly ensuring all is well with them; • creating working arrangements that take their individual needs into consideration and offering incentives; and • formulating clear work plans and procedures. in the following paragraphs, we describe in greater detail each of the recommended strategies for the evolution of the role of residential caregiver and our findings about the extent of their implementation in residential facilities. strategy 1: identifying quality caregivers with the right skills through a thorough screening process in the past, anyone with a birth certificate living nearby the facility could get work here as a caregiver. nowadays, caregivers are chosen with a fine tooth comb. (facility director) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 105 for the selection process, the directors set entrance requirements for candidates, such as: completion of military, civic, or national service; relevant training in the field of education or therapy (psychology or social work); experience working with children; experience of command in the army or counselling in a youth movement; sense of mission and a wish to contribute; rich language skills; willingness to learn; interpersonal abilities; and personal resilience. in most of the facilities that responded to the survey, the process of recruiting candidates prior to their acceptance as caregivers lasted between 2 weeks and a month (75%). during that time, in most of the facilities (85%), each candidate underwent at least two interviews, in which they were told what the job involved and were informed about the characteristics and status of the children. in most cases (88%), the interview was conducted by the director of the facility; the caregiver coordinator and a social worker were often involved as well. apart from the interviews, the recruitment process included other components, such as a review of recommendations from previous employers; tests (personal compatibility test, polygraph or graphology test, or participation in a group dynamic); and observation and hands-on experience (observation of a group activity and sometimes working alongside experienced caregivers). strategy 2: providing professional training immediately upon assuming their role and in the course of their work we carry out training, then more training, then yet more training. (facility director) professional training was provided to the caregivers when they started work and periodically during the course of their employment. the training sessions were conducted in large groups and addressed cross-cutting professional issues affecting the work in the residential facilities, such as the educational philosophy at the facility, what it means to be a new caregiver, the role of caregiver, the characteristics of the child population, the basic principles of caring, the history of the facility, the daily schedule in the facility (e.g., wake-up, breakfast, homework, lights-out), and establishing authority — a mainly theoretical element that also includes self-examination and identification of a personal authoritative style. most of the responding directors (92%) reported that all of the caregivers participated in all of the training sessions given by the facilities. nearly as many (84%) considered that the training contributed to a great or very great extent to the caregivers’ ability to perform their work. however, the directors noted areas that should be added or strengthened: a precise definition of the role, and the meaning and importance of caregivers; work procedures for caregivers (relationships, monitoring and reporting, time management); and the language and practice of educational and therapeutic work with children at risk. strategy 3: providing regular and ongoing supervision to the caregivers the supervision meetings are the place to talk, to dwell on dilemmas, mainly to diffuse distress, aggression, and depression. without this embrace, people wouldn’t be able to carry on. (facility director) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 106 the supervision meetings were held regularly at the responding facilities, led mainly by the social worker (87%) and sometimes by other professionals (e.g., the caregiver coordinator, psychologist, or facility director). supervision meetings are another way of training caregivers for their work and were provided to every caregiver as needed, whether individually, in pairs, or in small groups. every responding facility ensured that caregivers participated in the supervision meetings; 89% of the directors reported that all the caregivers in the facilities for which they were responsible received ongoing supervision, in most cases (66%) one or more times a week. the supervision meetings addressed the daily work of the caregivers, questions and challenges that needed to be resolved (e.g., how to keep a stressed child occupied; how to talk to him or her; how to recognize when the child is about to explode); and provided emotional support when needed. strategy 4: creating mechanisms for personal and professional support the most important thing, just like for the children, is for the caregivers to feel embraced, included, and strengthened. that they have backing and someone [standing] beside them. (facility director) most of the directors interviewed in the preliminary stage attributed great importance to personal and professional support and provided it in various ways. personal support was given through positive reinforcement within a framework of strict adherence to the facilities’ rules and regulations; fostering a personal relationship between the director and the caregivers; and sending the caregivers a clear message that they did not have to cope on their own, that there was always someone to talk to, and that help was always available. professional support comprises practices such as professional fostering of the caregivers and constant concern for their well-being; showing professional appreciation, and recognizing the importance of their role and the therapeutic value of their work; giving backing, as far as possible, to those who made mistakes; and communicating to them that they were expected to share their difficulties and challenges with other members of staff. another way to support the caregivers over time was to develop new roles for them, based on needs in the field, that allowed for interest and personal development. such roles were aimed at reducing burnout and facilitating personal development, variety, and interest. in 40% of the responding facilities, the directors reported that caregivers had additional roles: in the area of recreation (e.g., responsibility for events and field trips, volunteer coordinator, sports coordinator); responsibilities for staff members (e.g., for night-shift caregivers and other caregivers, mentoring for new caregivers); educational roles (e.g., study coordinator, liaison with the school, responsibility for tutoring); and other tasks (transport coordinator, security coordinator, medical coordinator). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 107 strategy 5: creating working arrangements that take account of caregivers’ individual needs and providing incentives we’ve learned that a 100 percent full-time position is too much. it doesn’t allow for family life or couple relationships, so our caregivers work in less than full time positions. (facility director) the responding facility directors were aware of the possibility of burnout due to the intensity and pressure of the caregivers’ work. in order to prevent burnout, the caregivers were allowed flexible hours that suited their needs and preferences. they were invited to events at the facility (parties, field trips), and staff days and fun days were arranged for them. another way of rewarding the caregivers was to provide incentives having financial value or offer the opportunity for professional advancement. a majority of the directors (58%) offered at least one form of incentive (out of four proposed) as a reward for the caregivers: housing at the facility, better salary conditions, a scholarship for higher education, and a grant for a non-degree course. the most common form of incentive was housing at the facility, which was offered in 40% of the facilities, followed by better pay (25%), and scholarships for higher education (20%). strategy 6: formulating clear work plans and procedures we have clear plans and there are things that both the caregivers and i are allowed to do — exactly the same things. the caregiver will get wholehearted backing from me if he responds correctly, in exactly the same way as i would respond in the same situation. (facility director) a key factor in caregivers’ success is based on the tools available to them when they work with the children. the directors emphasized that a uniform approach to the children made the staff’s work easier and had greater success. to this end, the directors noted the importance of having the caregivers follow orderly procedures and work methods: all responding directors (100%) endorsed the use of standardized professional language for all the staff at the facility, including a system of rules to impose uniformity in reacting to irregular behaviors; 97% provided clear instructions to the caregivers regarding work practices at the facility, thereby reducing uncertainty about what to do and increasing the likelihood that work would be conducted in accordance with the facility’s vision; and 94% provided ongoing information about the children and regular contact with the professionals taking care of them. correlation between directors’ satisfaction with caregivers’ work and implementation of the strategies a factor analysis of 10 questions about the responding directors’ satisfaction with various aspects of caregivers’ work produced two factors. the first, “direct work with the children”, included most of the social and emotional aspects of the caregivers’ work: the work in general, their attitudes towards the needs of each child, their concern for the well-being of the children, and their ability to manage groups of children, to cope with violence and behavioral problems, to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 108 organize recreational activities, and to provide emotional support to the children. the second factor, “scholastic assistance and relationship with parents” included questions about the relationship with the school, the scholastic assistance provided, and the caregivers’ relationship with the parents of the children. in order to examine the correlation between the extent that the strategies for optimum work were implemented with the caregivers, and the characteristics of the facilities and the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers, we conducted linear regressions that included the type of facility and the extent of implementation of the strategies as explanatory (independent) variables, and the two factors of the directors’ satisfaction as explained (dependent) variables. the outcomes of the first regression are presented in table 1. using the proposed model, it is possible to predict the directors’ satisfaction with the first factor, caregivers’ direct work with the children. after controlling for the type of facility, the extent of implementation was found to correlate positively with the directors’ satisfaction with caregivers’ direct work with the children. in contrast, it was not possible to predict the directors’ satisfaction with the second factor, scholastic help given by the caregivers to the children and their relationship with parents. in further examinations, no significant correlation between the directors’ demographic characteristics (education and tenure) and their satisfaction with the caregivers was found. table 1. linear regression model to predict directors’ satisfaction with caregivers’ direct work with children (factor 1) by implementation of strategies and by facility characteristics explanatory variable b se (b) β t type of facility .115 .096 .139 1.195 extent of implementation .100 .042 .273 2.349* r 2 .088 f 3.299* note: n = 70 (only 70 of the 75 directors interviewed responded to all the questions in this model). *p < .05. conclusion this study on supervision and training for staff caring for children from at-risk situations was designed to benefit caregivers working in residential facilities for children and youth. given the centrality of the caregivers’ role and the high rates of burnout and turnover, the study goal was to create a foundation on which to formulate policy and strategies to further evolve the role of caregiver and continue to upgrade it professionally. while the study was conducted in facilities belonging to molsa, the insights from it could be relevant for caregivers in other israeli residential facilities, such as those operated by the ministry of education. what makes this study special is the methodology. the learning from success method was used for interviews in the first (qualitative) stage, and identified six effective strategies for evolving international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 109 the role of residential caregiver. the identified strategies were then used in the second (quantitative) stage, which surveyed directors of all residential facilities under molsa’s responsibility in order to examine the feasibility of the strategies at the national level and validate their importance regarding the directors’ satisfaction with various aspects of the caregivers’ work. the response rate to the survey was 79% (n = 75). findings revealed that although the strategies were implemented in most of the facilities, there was variance among them in the extent and method of implementation. with their first-hand knowledge of the complex role of residential caregivers on the one hand and of the needs of the facility on the other, directors constitute a reliable professional source and make a vital contribution to this discussion. the two factors impacting the directors’ satisfaction with caregivers are caregivers’ direct work with the children, and caregivers’ provision of scholastic assistance to the children and their relationship with the parents. we found that the more extensive the implementation of the six strategies, the greater was the directors’ satisfaction with the caregivers’ direct work with the children. however, the degree of implementation did not correlate with the directors’ satisfaction regarding the provision of scholastic help and the relationship with parents. this finding could possibly mean that there is a need to invest in training and supervision strategies to enable the caregivers to respond to scholastic needs and develop their relationship with parents using the relevant tools and skills (as proposed in the state comptroller’s report; ministry of labor, social affairs, and social services, 2017). there is much discussion in the literature about the importance of investing in the nonprofessional staff at residential facilities, so that they can adapt their care according to the particular needs of each child in the best possible way, and so that their work with the children will produce the desired results. most of the six strategies found in the current study have also been mentioned in the research literature and in discussions in professional and public forums, as follows: 1. careful selection of caregivers so as to recruit quality personnel suited for the job (leichtman, 2006) can be achieved by establishing licensing rules for working in residential facilities (department of health and children, 2000; department for education, 2011). under such rules (not yet in effect in israel), the candidates’ personal characteristics, education, professional experience, and affinity for working with children must be suitable before they are accepted for the job (bertolino & thompson, 1999; kashti et al., 2008; white et al., 2015). 2. providing comprehensive training and (3) providing ongoing supervision for caregivers working on therapy and rehabilitation with the children is necessary (white et al., 2015), given that therapy for children at risk cannot rely solely on personal characteristics and natural instincts (cohen & cohen, 2001; freeman, 2013; kashti et al., 2008; leichtman, 2006; zemach-marom et al., 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 110 4. creating mechanisms to support the caregivers has been suggested by leichtman (2006) and whittaker et al. (1998). 5. working arrangements that meet caregivers’ needs and the provision of incentives are necessary in view of the physically and emotionally demanding nature of the work (barford & whelton, 2010; shammai & moyal-botwin, 2012). one way to use incentives to retain caregivers and prevent burnout would be to develop an advancement track and scholarships for higher education (knesset, 2014; talias & ben yair, 2000). 6. clear work procedures, along with making the caregivers partners in the theoretical concept by which the facility works, are key to caregivers’ success (leichtman, 2006). limitations of the study in the current study, we collected data from the directors of residential facilities and no other sources. to obtain a more complete picture, we recommend that follow-up studies examine attitudes from additional perspectives, such as those of the caregivers themselves, who can provide unique insights through their own assessment of their professional performance and best practices for improving their work; and those of staff members of molsa, who have a broad overview of all the residential facilities, know how each of them operates, and have information about the status of the children. we were able to reach only limited conclusions about the effectiveness of the strategies. the current study examined the extent to which israel’s residential care facilities had implemented the strategies, but not the extent to which the difficulties experienced by caregivers in their work (emotional burden, physical burnout) had been impacted. follow-up studies should examine the impact of each of the strategies identified in the current study on reducing or preventing such difficulties. implications and recommendations for practice and policy this study gives rise to a number of recommendations whose implementation would allow directors of residential facilities to better contend with the challenges they face in their work with caregivers. many directors spoke of the difficulty of recruiting caregivers with the right skills. to address this, we recommend joint action by molsa and other key organizations working in the field (e.g., nonprofit organizations) to ensure that caregivers receive training before they start work and to advertise jobs in such a way that suitable candidates can be found and referred to the facilities. in order to provide sufficient pre-employment basic training to caregivers, we propose increasing access to the training programs already provided by molsa, perhaps by opening several training cycles each year, with suitable remuneration for those who participate. in addition, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 111 we recommend that assistance be given to the facilities to conduct in-house training; for example, by setting guidelines for the contents of the training. finally, we propose capitalizing on the knowledge and experience that has accumulated at those facilities where the work with the caregivers is considered successful. for example, several directors have established a relationship between their facility and a college such that time spent by caregivers participating in courses relevant to their specialization or practical work is compensated as employment. enabling mutual learning among residential facilities could lead to wider adoption of best-practice strategies such as those identified in this paper. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.2): 96–114 112 references ainsworth, f., & thoburn, j. 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(2012). number and characteristics of children in residential facilities: trends from 2000–2010 [in hebrew]. mifgash – journal of social educational work, 36 (2), 17–38. https://www.ncb.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/research_reports/training_developing_staff_childrens_homes_summary.pdf https://www.ncb.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/research_reports/training_developing_staff_childrens_homes_summary.pdf running head: co-learning in youth adult partnerships international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 391 co-learning in youth-adult emancipatory partnerships: the way forward? katie shaw-raudoy and catherine mcgregor abstract: youth engagement continues to be a priority issues for canadian governments and policy-makers. the focus on young people often negates the critical role that adults play in the process and implementation of youth engagement activities. the following article examines the evolution of youth engagement in canada, and identifies the key theories and ways of thinking about involving youth that currently guide the field. the article attempts to examine how well-meaning adults concerned with genuine youth engagement re-imagine the possibilities of youth-adult engagement by exploring the ideas of adults and youth sharing civic learning outcomes, emancipatory goals, and iterative forms of reciprocal co-learning. keywords: youth engagement, co-learning, youth-adult partnerships, transformational learning theory (tlt) catherine mcgregor, ph.d. is an associate professor in the faculty of education at the university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: cmcgreg@uvic.ca katie shaw-raudoy, m.a. is a government relations consultant with global public affairs in victoria british columbia. she was previously a graduate student at the university of victoria and a community development facilitator with a focus on youth engagement: 2609 avebury avenue, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8r 3w3. e-mail: shawkates@gmail.com mailto:cmcgreg@uvic.ca mailto:shawkates@gmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 392 many scholars have argued that youth are disempowered from genuine participation in contemporary society (camino, 2005; cook, mack, & blanchet-cohen, 2010; golombek, 2006; youniss et al., 2003). as a result, much literature in the field has explored how this imbalance might be addressed and mitigated. for example, the fields of positive youth development (hart, 1994, 2008; lerner, dowling, & anderson, 2003; lerner, 2005; roth & brooks-gunn, 2003) and community youth development (hughes & curnan, 2000; perkins, borden, & villarruel, 2001) offer important advice to practitioners on how to effectively build programs or construct approaches that more actively and authentically involve youth in engagement activities by moving from deficitbased models to more positive, developmentally focused approaches. a related strand of research focuses on civil society and how the principles of youth engagement and inclusivity should reflect youths’ rights to participate as citizens (biesta, lawry, & kelly, 2009; balsano, 2005; camino & zeldin, 2002; lansdown, 2001; youniss et al., 2003). certainly our own previous work in youth-adult university research partnerships (mcgregor, 2010) has been built around a similar desire to achieve authenticity, participation, and civic engagement – making a place and space for youth voices in more typically adult-focused civic community issues. but the question remains: can well-meaning adults concerned with genuine youth engagement erase the naturalized boundaries – often unacknowledged – between youth and adult created and maintained in our cultures, institutions, and discourses? in particular, can we shift from conceptions that naturalize youth as “deficient” in some way? can we move away from dominant conceptions of what it means to be civically engaged, a model that requires youth to fit within contemporary socio-political landscapes and systems of governance that privilege particular conceptions of civic-mindedness? in this article, we re-imagine the possibilities of youth-adult engagement by exploring the ideas of adults and youth sharing civic learning outcomes, emancipatory goals, and iterative forms of reciprocal co-learning. this work arises from a recently completed study in which shaw (2012) surveyed contemporary literature and then spoke with practitioners and funders involved in youth engagement in canada about their experiences. in this article we begin by surveying the historical and contemporary theories of youth engagement, and then describe how research participants both legitimize and sometimes contest these approaches. we then consider the potential for enhancing the legitimate engagement of youth through the lens of transformational learning theory and, in particular, describe the ways in which co-learning – with youth and adults as intergenerational collaborators engaged in a relationship developed through enacting common goals – might offer an enhanced means through which to realize the call for authentic engagement and emancipatory outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 393 understanding the landscape: influencing foundations of youth engagement theory and practice in the canadian context contemporary thoughts on youth engagement have changed from deficit-based models of the past towards more youth-centred approaches (pittman, 2000), clearly a positive move. yet while this shift in the philosophical underpinning of youth engagement is significant, approaches to youth engagement remain centred around assisting youth rather than around the relationships that are necessary for creating successful engagement processes. in what follows we summarize how this shift in thinking has emerged; in particular, we highlight the significance of the adoption of the united nations convention on the rights of the child or uncrc (united nations, 1989), acknowledged as a critical historical juncture in youth engagement theory and practice. subsequent developments within the field are also detailed providing an important historical and contextual perspective that informs current practices among youth engagement practitioners in canada. it is critical to understand how the current context of youth engagement is shaping the space for youth-adult learning relationships in canada. the first phase in youth development theory: deficit-based approaches deficit-based approaches to youth engagement emerged in the 1960s. the mass media in particular characterized teens as uncivil, highlighting issues such as teen pregnancy, high school dropout rates, and youth delinquency. pittman (2000) documented that it was towards the end of this decade that the “indirect cost associated with the loss of skilled human capital was emerging” (p. 19) and, in turn, public funding began to focus on interventions dealing with youth “deficit” or “delinquent” behaviours. pittman’s (2000) research also documented how these “programs built on, rather than squelched, young people’s sense that they could make a difference… [and he called] for programs that addressed young people’s needs before they ran away, dropped out, or become pregnant began to grow” (p. 19). pittman’s (2000) call was a significant departure from the approach used during the 1960s. he argued that work with youth needed to emphasize development, support, and nurturing practices. lerner et al. (2003) concur; they suggested such approaches were a significant deviation from the acceptable norms of the time. this initial shift in thinking, however, created openings in the policy, research, and programming agendas within communities interested in moving to an asset-based approach. as block (2008) noted: “[it is] hard to argue against the next generation. an alternative future opens when we shift our view of youth (say 14 to 24 years) from problem to possibility [emphasis added], from deficiency to gift [emphasis added]” (p. 165). the second phase of youth engagement literature: the uncrc as a catalyst while a shift was clearly emerging, change in theory and practice required a new anchor: pittman (2000) argued that this emerged as a result of the adoption of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 394 uncrc in 1989. central to the uncrc (united nations, 1989) was its role as a binding legal document describing the universal rights of the child, both in the developed and developing world. it became a catalyst for action for governments and nations, particularly in the western world. the uncrc is understood by many in the youth engagement field as the catalyst that finally propelled deficit-based programming into an asset-based or strength-based praxis capturing a fundamental shift in understanding the role of young people in society. in canada, the uncrc represents the only ratified, legally binding commitment that explicitly states that children – those under the age of 18 – have the right to participate, the right to be heard legitimately, and the right to be part of the very decisions that affect their day-to-day lives. the uncrc uses legal language and therefore has presented some challenges to the concrete achievement of its intentions, as the next section will show. but the explicit articulation of young people as capable decision-makers in an adult dominated context within western society proved to be a message of great weight. article 12 created significant new opportunities for practitioners, funders, and researchers across countries who ratified the declaration to re-examine the roles and responsibilities associated with young people under the age of 18 (lansdown, 2001). golombek (2006) has further highlighted how this emerging understanding of youth as capable decision-makers enabled a focus beyond conventional measures of citizenship (i.e., voting or running for office activities reserved for adults), to the inclusion of such activities as public debate, letter writing and lobbying, or participation in community groups, as “individuals engage[ed] in activities that connect them to larger issues to sustain and strengthen their community – the traits of ‘good citizens’” (p. 13). essentially then, the uncrc was the first document in canada to create this opportunity for broadening our expressions of citizenship to include youth as participating members within society, who possess civic capacity. the third phase of youth engagement literature: the asset-based approach the implications for post-uncrc youth engagement scholars was profound as it signalled a critical shift in thinking about how exactly a young person’s civic capacity could or should be both honoured and nurtured, implying the move to an asset-based approach. it also signalled important changes in the field of youth development, which we outline next. hart’s ladder of participation. one of the seminal frameworks that emerged from the uncrc (united nations, 1989) was hart’s (1994) research children’s participation: from tokenism to citizenship. this publication represented one of the first, if not the landmark typology for linking youth participation with the concept of children’s rights. presented using a ladder as a metaphor, hart’s (1994) work focused on identifying ways in which young people’s engagement could be hierarchically organized while reflecting principles for inclusion and participation. the simplicity of the model is international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 395 important as it provided a means by which practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers could identify their current youth engagement practices and compare them to participatory “ideals”. hart’s typology highlighted two dichotomies: non-participation and participation. a total of eight rungs were identified on the ladder. the lower three represented nonparticipation and the upper five represented increasing degrees of participation: assigned and informed; consulted and informed; adult-initiated; shared decisions with children; and children lead and initiate action; (hart, 1994, pp. 11–14). while the typology is hierarchical, hart (1994) viewed participation as a continuum, arguing: [i]t is not necessary that children always operate on the highest possible rungs of the ladder…. the important principle again is one of choice: programmes should be designed which maximize the opportunity for any child to choose to participate at the highest level of his [sic] ability. (p. 11) positive youth development. between 2000 and 2003, the term positive youth development was coined by lerner (2005) who examined youth engagement through a psychological lens. building on the asset-based work of other scholars, positive youth development (pyd) reconceptualized youth engagement by shifting from the binary of “good” and “bad” youth to one that argued for a developmental approach. pyd is based on the premise that young people will thrive and meet their fullest potential when spaces and opportunities are provided which support, nurture, and empower their natural gifts and abilities in ways that benefit the larger community (lerner, 2005; roth & brooksgunn, 2003). pyd’s approach promoted a potential-oriented model for youth engagement – and the concept of plasticity as an approach that shifted from an emphasis on negative youth behaviours to a focus on preventing undesirable behaviour by promoting desired outcomes (lerner, 2005) while considering “youth… as resources to be developed” (roth & brooks-gunn, 2003, as cited in lerner, 2005, p. 11). central to pyd is the concept of relationships: “if young people have mutually beneficial relationships [emphasis added] with the people and institutions in their social world, they will be on the way to a hopeful future marked by positive contributions to self, family, community, and civic society. young people will thrive” (lerner, 2005, p. 12). community youth development. the culminating effect of hart’s ladder of participation (1994) and the pyd movement was to initiate a push for more formal acknowledgement of young people in decision-making processes. community youth development (cyd) emerged within the community development sector, which sought to formally engage youth in decision-making processes and practices associated with community development. originally developed by the national network for youth and composed of a consortium of youth engagement practitioners and policy writers in the united states, cyd is described as a blueprint which supports a “partnership for action” between youth and systems within society (perkins et al., 2001). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 396 two core beliefs were building blocks for the cyd framework: first was a belief in building and promoting healthy communities that included youth (we will return to this theme shortly); the second concerned the concept of protective factors which, while still emphasizing youth risk-taking, focused more substantially on how resiliency as a youth behaviour or response to risk might operate. risk wasn’t a new discourse around youth practitioners (smoking, vandalism, and unprotected sex are three well-documented examples), but the idea of resiliency was a departure from the more typical cyd and sought to enhance the “ability of [young] individuals to withstand the stressors of life and the challenges to their healthy development” (perkins et al., 2001, p. 44). resiliency is linked, in turn, to the amount of protective factors in one’s life that increases resilience to known and unknown risk factors. protective factors, they argued, emerge from key relationships within a young person’s life; in the case of cyd the relationship is connected institutionally. practitioners and scholars using this lens explored how having adults and young people working together increased protective factors. pathways to civic engagement. in considering asset-based approaches to youth engagement, it is particularly important to consider the work of camino and zeldin (2002). they describe the meaningful participation of young people as the “primary component of civic society” (p. 213) and frame youth engagement as the opportunity for young people to learn, create, demonstrate, and actualize their civic responsibilities. their work identified five specific pathways that, they assert, formulate critical entry points for young people’s meaningful involvement; these pathways “concurrently promote positive youth development and community change” (p. 215). they also identify specific characteristics necessary within each of the pathways to meet the criteria for meaningful civic youth engagement including ownership, youth-adult partnerships, and facilitative strategies and structures (pp. 218-219). for the purposes of this article, we focus specifically on the latter two. youth-adult partnerships are identified as critical catalysts supporting the goals of meaningful youth engagement. aspects of youth-adult partnerships identified include “coaching, dialoguing, [and] connections to institutional resources and community leaders” (p. 218). further, camino and zeldin (2002) linked the role of youth-adult partnerships to building the capacity of young people as leaders both now and in the future. they also argued that “youth-adult partnerships are critical to the efficacy of the pathways because they have the potential to engage a full range of human capital” (p. 218). the development of human capital is enhanced through the interplay of youth’s leadership qualities and exchanges with adults in youth-adult partnerships. they go on to opine that “leadership is not a skill per se. it is rather a complex set of skills, behaviours, actions, and attitudes best developed through apprenticeship and experiential-type learning processes, which necessitate close partnership between novices and older hands” (p. 218). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 397 camino and zeldin (2002) also posited that without the facilitative policies and structures that require larger institutions and established processes (such as government decision-making and budgeting) to genuinely engage young people in processes, practices, and outcomes, youth engagement is merely an afterthought. “accordingly, the need to enact policies and build structures to support youth engagement becomes salient. policies and practices provide the scaffolding that articulate the vision, expectations and support for the pathways” (p. 219). the historical footprint in summary, we have documented the history of youth engagement theories to illustrate how some events and scholarly fields served as catalysts for changing approaches to youth engagement practices. while we are aware of researchers who continue to develop these approaches to youth engagement, in this article we propose a new direction that we believe could reconceptualize the field. this is necessary for several reasons. in particular, we draw attention to how the frameworks described here offer a western-centric focus, particularly with the majority of youth engagement research coming out of the united states. this dominance means that youth engagement approaches in the global south and in regions outside of the usa are frequently obfuscated, even if these approaches might meaningfully contribute to our collective knowledge of how to work with youth. in addition, the frameworks or approaches discussed here fail to provide the necessary space for addressing the complexity of the very relationships and social, cultural, and political contexts that are shaping youth and their participation in contemporary society. in what follows we hope to engage in an exploration of how we might close these gaps by drawing upon the insights of canadian youth engagement practitioners, and suggest how the application of transformational learning theory to youth engagement might offer another important shift in the youth engagement landscape. shifting the landscape: reframing the youth engagement conversation our work as educators has led us to explore the ways in which meaningful learning processes are necessary to effecting change in youth engagement. in particular, we draw from our work in the field of adult education as we believe it offers the opportunity to engage in a richer, more nuanced conversation about the differences between development (the dominant discourse of youth engagement theory) and shared spaces of learning. we elaborate on our reasons in what follows. transformational learning theory: a new approach to youth engagement? transformational learning theory (tlt) has emerged from adult education scholarship, and allows the creation of spaces for growth, as well as new interpretations and ways of knowing around any subject matter, experience, or phenomenon (morrell & international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 398 o’connor, 2002). tlt embodies a holistic foundation in attempting to understand, grow, and nurture any issue, subject, experience, or individual personal context. as the previous review of the scholarship has made clear, youth engagement practitioners are similarly concerned with change. yet tlt provides a way of shifting from changing youth through adult-guided intervention to understanding how young people are able to activate their citizenship, their agency, themselves in their worlds, and the worlds around them. tlt, we argue, provides a vehicle through which this can be realized as a function of learning. tlt also emphasizes the need for experiential learning as a critical component for transformational personal and social change. in other words, change is understood to mean not only a change in the behaviours or policies that we as citizens can see, but also a change in the habits – as well as psychological, cultural, and even spiritual conceptions – of individuals and their relationships to larger contexts: from family, to peer group, to community, and beyond. in doing so, tlt actively positions the role of learning at the centre of community change – and not just learning for one sector of a group over another, but rather a shared space developed mutually through action. we believe the tenets of tlt offer a space through which to move from emphasis on individual development (the psychological foundation described in earlier sections of this article) to situated social action learning; in other words, moving from the individual to the collective. tlt aspires to create a collective learning environment that enlightens and empowers through active engagement or experiential learning (dirkx, 1998; morrell & o’connor, 2002). our work has led us to examine youth engagement through tlt as not only a tool but also a process in which a collaborative learning space becomes possible. because tlt allows space for responding to emergent or situated contexts and addresses local complexity, the traditional barriers between youth and adults as well as between youth and institutions can legitimately become opportunities for collaborative and reciprocal learning processes. repositioning youth engagement as a shared learning experience opens greater potential for meaningful impact, for both youth and the organizations of the social and cultural communities in which they live. we sought to demonstrate this potential in a recently completed research study (shaw, 2012). examining the current canadian landscape: research snapshot building on the theoretical framework of tlt, we sought to examine the current youth engagement landscape in canada so as to explore the personal perspectives and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 399 understanding of youth engagement practitioners, researchers, and funders1 within the canadian context. using snowball sampling techniques, 20 participants from across canada were initially identified, with 18 agreeing to participate. using interviews and focus groups, and informed by our analysis of youth engagement and transformational learning theory (tlt), we documented the perspectives, beliefs, and experiences of the participating practitioners, researchers, and funders in canada. an initial conversation sought to map out participants’ understandings of meaningful youth engagement, as discussed in the literature. to facilitate this, participants were asked to respond to the following definition: meaningful youth engagement is the intentional establishment and support for the genuine involvement of young people in the design, creation, coordination, implementation, and evaluation of the processes, practices, and decisions that shape civic life. (shaw, 2012, p. 16) while the study supported the assertion that youth engagement was a term in common usage, what became increasingly clear was the range of different perspectives and beliefs central to working with youth in ways that facilitated meaningful engagement. we explore in greater detail the findings of the study in the sections that follow. key findings: meaningful engagement, youth centred and youth citizens a detailed analysis of the interview and focus group transcripts resulted in the identification of six key themes, described here as meaning clusters. the use of the term meaning cluster attempts to reflect the scope and complexity of voices and experiences of the researchers, practitioners, and funders involved in youth engagement in canada, while also emphasizing connections where evident. three meaning clusters that emerged pertinent to this article were: the key characteristics of meaningful youth engagement, putting youth at the centre of our practice, and valuing youth as citizens now. the following provides a brief summary of each. what is meaningful youth engagement? the data gathered from participants included a listing of the attributes, descriptions, and characteristics of what they believed amounted to effective and meaningful youth engagement. in particular, specific participants identified the following elements: (a) the need for positive processes and experiences for youth and adults involved; (b) that outcomes for youth participants need to result in tangible change; (c) engagement needs to be action-oriented; (d) the importance of including youth from diverse and inclusive communities; (e) the need to 1 for the purposes of this research, shaw (2012) identified a practitioner as any adult working front line with young people or in coordination of youth programs, while a researcher was any adult undertaking research associated with youth engagement or youth involved within their communities; funders were any adults paid within funding mechanisms, both non-profits and foundations, who directly funded youth engagement or youth civic involvement projects. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 400 provide young people opportunities to connect outside of their traditional kin group such as peers and immediate family; (f) the need to include youth at decision-making tables; and (g) the need to establish supportive resources including money and human resources and expertise. however, by far the most critical characteristic described by the participants was the role of adults as essential allies, supports, and resources for meaningful youth engagement. putting youth at the centre. while the list of key elements could be applied to many different approaches and frameworks for establishing a definition of meaningful youth engagement, it was the belief, value, and practice of putting youth at the centre that was most often reiterated by participants. for example, one participant who was a practitioner expressed that meaningful youth engagement, “meets youth where they are at, celebrates their abilities, nurtures their potential, appreciates their contributions, and invites both participation and ownership”. another participant provided the following insight: “youth engagement is the development of positive relationships between young people and their community through formal and informal programs that are structured to benefit both the youth and the host organization or institution”. clearly these practitioners were centrally focused on relationships and authenticity, both attributes of what the literature argues is necessary for effective approaches. yet while the outcomes for youth were placed at the centre by these practitioners, the mutuality of benefits to youth and adults was also identified as key. for example, another participant stated: engaging is looking outwards; you are using that strength and voice to connect with young people and issues bigger than yourself. that is where things like adult-youth partnerships become important. to engage with a system larger than your experience, you need those relationships. without them, you bump up against systems in unproductive ways; you don’t take no for an answer, but you need to know how to talk to change it. another stated: “engaging youth in genuine and productive roles is a strategic and good practice decision”. these quotations also make clear how participants understood the mutuality of effective youth participation: both individuals and communities can benefit. while participation of young people was a broad theme, the quality of their involvement resonated most throughout the data. the term quality in the context of this study was a term selected to highlight how the participants discussed expanding engagement methodologies beyond just having young people involved and instead pushing for a deeper (i.e., more meaningful) engagement agenda. providing opportunities that expanded young people’s capacities both as leaders and civic agents was a key characteristic discussed within this theme of increased quality rather than tokenistic approaches. one participant in the research described it this way: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 401 basically, if you just bring people to the table all the time and do the token thing by asking them questions you already know the answers to and questions that you think you should but don’t really listen to their feedback, then you won’t really have a meaningful experience. it won’t mean anything. another participant emphasized this same point, while applying what we would call an intergenerational lens: “community engagement is important and young people should be allowed a number of opportunities to contribute and shape their world as everyone else”. clearly participants in this research connected the increase in quality and opportunity to achieving the goal of genuine community involvement with young people acting as change agents in their own right. youth as civic assets “now”. we like the words of another participant: “everyone has something to contribute”. in addition to the two meaning clusters discussed above, this statement highlights how participants have developed a strong sense of self through their work with young people not only as participants in community building, but as conveners and holders of spaces where young people can be recognized as community assets and change agents despite their identity category of youth. these clusters from the research are particularly important to the discussion in this article as participants clearly describe the necessity of involving young people as citizens and co-participants. research participants made this clear. one said: “youth engagement inherently is of value as it does engage young people in their own development for themselves and how they contribute to their life, their communities and their world”. another added that youth engagement “builds stronger communities. the benefits are so substantial, there are so many ways to do it and that’s what’s exciting about it”. all of these statements and perspectives on youth as agents of change stress their assets as individuals and valuable members of a community. reflections on findings. we believe these results offer important insights into how youth practitioners perceive their work as both advisors and learners in the joint endeavour of civic action. we do, however, want to acknowledge the limitations of this study. shaw’s (2012) research was selective and included a small sample – but the words and voices of the practitioners, researchers, and funders within the canadian landscape are nonetheless important. these voices make evident the experiences that are directly shaping the current realities of youth and the practices of youth engagement, both in the defining characteristics of what youth engagement in canada looks like, and in the tangible decision-making processes in which youth are participating. the themes from the data highlight the ongoing dependence on previous typologies for building and implementing youth participation opportunities. the ideas are embedded in the foundational words of the uncrc and still closely linked to the early work of hart’s (1994) ladder of participation and even the more recently developed pathways to youth civic engagement described by camino and zeldin (2002). in the final sections of this paper we want to build on these insights and consider how transformational learning theory might serve as a catalyst to advance the work being done by current canadian practitioners. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 402 thinking differently, acting boldly: reconceptualizing youth engagement as adult education earlier in this article we introduced the concept of transformational learning theory (tlt) as a potential anchor to begin understanding and building a new movement in youth engagement. as we have noted, the current literature has some very specialized notions, segregating youth engagement and placing it into the field of youth capacity building and youth learning processes. we have also discussed a recent small research project that examined and brought to the surface the experiences, perspectives, and thoughts on youth engagement of key adult practitioners, researchers, and funders within the canadian youth engagement landscape. their views that youth need to be valued as citizens now, that youth engagement is part of an asset-based community development approach, and that meaningful youth engagement is a relationship between adults and youth placing young people at the centre highlighted an ongoing dependence on previous typologies currently underpinning the youth engagement landscape (although some tensions between these conceptions of youth engagement had surfaced in their comments). while encouraged, we nonetheless contemplated this question: what evidence is there that if youth engagement were reconceptualized and articulated as a reciprocal, co-learning process undertaken simultaneously by adults, institutions, and youth, more effective practices of adult-youth partnerships would be enabled? a first step in thinking through this reconceptualization is identifying within the youth engagement field how frequently young people’s experiences or ideas are actually expressed through the roles taken on by adults or so-called experts who are, the majority of the time, acting as institutional agents commissioned by local organizations within a youth engagement context. these include positions such as a youth worker, a community planner, a council member, or a chamber of commerce youth liaison. these adult roles effectively create binaries of difference with youth on the one hand positioned as learner and adult on the other as expert, knowledge holder, or mentor. this binary relationship perpetuates a power dynamic favouring the adult within the current canadian youth engagement culture, and makes it impossible for young people to actually become change agents because they are always marginalized. shaw’s (2012) research participants made clear that while the discourse of empowerment of youth and agency is vocalized, practices or institutionalized responses result in maintaining the status quo of dependency. while some participants were clearly bridging between competing conceptions of youth agency and adults as empowering agents, there was no explicit acknowledgement of how youth could or should be considered genuine citizens in their own right within the community context. dislodging these assumptions, we believe, will be difficult work, largely because the shared discourses within the youth engagement community have become normative based on shared beliefs, values, and expectations that both youth and adults experience through existing youth engagement processes. however, by adopting a new discourse – tlt – practitioners and youth alike could be provided with a vocabulary and philosophical international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 403 stance through which these binaries could be re-examined, as well as new spaces through which local complexities could be addressed. there are some other adult education scholars who have tried to address this gap. for example, biesta et al. (2009) use the term citizenship learning to describe what could be usefully considered meaningful youth engagement. they explain: the teaching of citizenship needs to be supplemented with a more thoroughgoing understanding of the ways in which young people actually learn democratic citizenship through participation in the communities and the practices that make up their everyday lives. a focus on young people’s citizenship learning in everyday life settings allows for an understanding of the ways in which citizenship learning is situated in the unfolding lives of young people and helps make clear how these lives are themselves implicated in the wider social, cultural, political and economic order. it is, after all, ultimately this wider context that provides opportunities for young people to be democratic citizens and to learn from their actual “condition of citizenship”. (p. 8) addressing cultural norms that reinforce this binary positioning within youth engagement will require a different type of learning environment for youth; but more than this, it requires adults to operate and think differently. how might this be achieved? the following section discusses specific opportunities that could be considered by youth engagement practitioners as strategies for creating and supporting more complex spaces and approaches to their work with youth and adults alike. issue-focused, not status-, ageor identity-focused how to actually deconstruct the binaries currently embedded within youth engagement is not simple – nor should it be. every community, person, and experience is unique; creating innovative and expansive spaces for these differing perspectives and ways of knowing to be legitimatized needs to be inclusive and respectful of diversity. yet there are opportunities where the focus can be easily changed from involving youth to a focus on issues or situations within communities that both young people and adults want to address. collaboratively naming these and then focusing on the issue versus the involvement of a specific identity group or population provides for collective and intentional community-based work that builds intergenerational networks. block (2008) also makes this point when he argues for developing shared networks or social movements: collective change occurs when individuals and small diverse groups engage one another in the presence of many others doing the same. it comes from the knowledge that what is occurring in one space is similarly happening in other spaces, especially ones where i do not know what they are doing. this is the value international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 404 of a network, or even a network of networks, which is today’s version of a social movement. (p. 75) while block (2008) discusses a network approach, the foundations of his ideas are focused on creating platforms that bring young people into action-oriented processes that require them to work alongside adults while addressing specific issues. creating a space where the term youth is actually removed from the engagement process and where it is assumed that young people have a legitimate stake in the issue at hand would create a very different tone for engagement – one that promotes shared adult-youth partnerships and learning. pushing this concept further, we suggest that the term adult-youth partnerships also tends to re-marginalize young people because it places youth and adults as binaries, while failing to acknowledge learning for the team. if we could change our language to emphasize inclusive participation or learning partnerships with an emphasis on learning together, it could create the opening necessary for the complexity of youth’s experiences and knowledge to become embedded with the experiences, knowledge, and understanding of adults involved in facilitating and supporting youth engagement processes. attempting to take an issue-centered approach would potentially enable a revised view of young people as civic agents in their own right and in multiple civic and/or social locations – instead of relying on traditional organizational settings and governance strategies, such as policy decisions, volunteerism, and community-based organization involvement. we agree with youniss et al. (2003) who assert, “at a minimum, new generations must learn what democratic citizenship entails and figure out how to satisfy their needs within the demands of a capitalist system” (p. 122). a focus on intergenerational learning also underpins our call to focus on an issue rather than an identity group. the process of learning how to address and implement intergenerational approaches to issues facing a collective population across generations could provide the very space that both scholars in the field of youth development and the participants in shaw’s (2012) research were seeking. instead of creating a space where youth are engaged in becoming adult citizens, this inclusive participation design would focus on developing a context where, as shaw puts it, “young people wanting to participate in something positive, enjoying that process and feeling like they contributed in a meaningful way – they feel like they are giving back and changing the world” ( p. 97). the challenge ahead: implications for practice one of the few researchers to consider fully the complexity of the role of adults in the youth engagement field, camino provides an excellent starting point to begin unpacking the intricacies of creating meaningful youth engagement, necessitating a new conceptualization of the role of adults that fits with our argument for shifting this role international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 405 from expert to co-learner. meaningful youth-adult partnerships, camino (2000) argues, are: [a] multidimensional construct. they contain (a) principles and values, which actors use to orient the relationships and guide behavior; (b) a set of skills and competencies through which the behaviours are focused; (c) a method to implement and achieve collective action. (p. 14) camino (2000) also suggested that the gap in thinking about adult learning as a central element to youth engagement is limiting the field’s transformational capacity because of how adults conceive of issues of power and empowerment: the value orientation (of adults) is clear and positive: to transform asymmetrical relationships between youth and adults into more symmetrical ones that are characterized by an atmosphere of equality. the intention is to assist youth in exercising their full range of agency that they are developmentally capable of, and to assist youth in assuming roles as active decision makers and problem solvers. the fallacy of this perspective is that it conceives power as a “zero-sum equation.” that is, the only way youth can gain power is for adults to give up power [emphasis added]. (p. 75) camino (2005) explains that this assumption pushes adults to close off their ability to collaborate, or, in our conception, to become co-learners, and shifts their focus to the institutional connections of a young person’s project or initiative, rather than allowing situated “experience and wisdom” to surface (p. 75). concluding comments in this article we have attempted to provide a broad review of how particular ways of thinking about youth engagement or empowerment have developed over time. we outlined what we learned during a recently completed research study that illustrated how these discourses continue to shape current youth engagement practices, while noting some of the tensions around issues of agency and empowerment. we concluded our discussion by drawing on the work of camino (2005) who argues for equality through symmetrically purposed relationships and intergenerational issue identification and action planning; we extend these ideas by considering how transformational learning theory might provide a means to operationalize these goals. we argued that an emphasis on shared, intergenerational learning might provide a practical framework to bring these ideas into the everyday practices of agencies, organizations, and adults and youth working together. we believe this approach is quite feasible; our earlier research work with youth leaders (mcgregor, 2010) provided us with evidence of how this model might be successfully implemented. yet we also know one of the limitations in taking this approach is time. youth engagement relationships are often time sensitive and constrained around a specific international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 406 project or programmatic deliverables, particularly in the case of organizations devoted to youth engagement. these limitations create silos where cross-generational and personal learning by the youth and adults become stifled. but if adequate time were built into organizations working with youth and transparency of expectations for co-learning made explicit, new opportunities for this kind of shared commitment could emerge. we also think learning-centred approaches could become part of policy documents developed by civic or governmental organizations mandated to work with youth and adults in community settings. institutionalizing these two suggestions – focusing on an issue and engaging adults and youth in a co-learning experience – will require considerable infrastructure, both in terms of capacity and long-term resources. however, as we have intimated in our discussion, maintaining the status quo discourses and practices of youth to adult empowerment will continue to allow for only a limited form of youth engagement to be realized. revising the type of youth-adult engagement and the roles of youth and adults in more collaboratively focused efforts with concrete entry points will alter the status quo power dynamics that currently dominate the traditional approaches to and spaces for youth engagement. such approaches will move us towards the kind of genuine, authentic, intergenerational learning and shared forms of problem solving needed by communities in today’s complex world. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 407 references balsano, a. 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(2002). from periphery to center: pathways for youth civic engagement in the day-to-day life of communities. applied developmental science, 6(4), 213–220. cook, m., mack, e., & blanchet-cohen, n. (2010). changing the landscape: involving youth in social change: a guidebook. international institute for child rights and development, victoria, bc. montreal: j. w. mcconnell foundation. dirkx, john m. (1998). transformative learning theory in the practice of adult education: an overview. paace journal of lifelong learning, 7, 1–14. golombeck, s. b. (2006). children as citizens. journal of community practice, 14(1/2), 11–30. hart, r. (1994). children’s participation: from tokenism to citizenship. florence, italy: unicef icdc. hart, r. (2008). stepping back from “the ladder”: reflections on a model of participatory work with children. in a. reid, b. b. jensen, j. nikel, & v. simovska (eds.), participation and learning (pp. 19–31). new york: springer. hughes, d., & curnan, s. (2000). community youth development: a framework for action. community youth development journal, 1, 7–11. lansdown, g. (2001). promoting children’s participation in democratic decision making. florence, italy: unicef innocenti insight. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 3.1: 391–408 408 lerner, r. m. (2005). promoting positive youth development: theoretical and empirical basis. institute for applied research in youth development. medford, ma: tufts university. lerner, r., dowling, e., & anderson, p. (2003). positive youth development: thriving as a basis of personhood and civic society. applied developmental science, 7(3), 172–180. mcgregor, c. (2010). irreconcilable differences? youth–adult partnership in a civic and legal literacy research project. in w. linds, l. goulet, & a. sammel (eds.), emancipatory practices: adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (pp. 123–140). rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishing. morrell, a., & o’connor, m. (2002). introduction. in e. o’sullivan, a. morrell, & m. o’connor (eds.), expanding the boundaries of transformative learning: essays on theory and praxis. (pp. xi–1). new york: palgrave. perkins, d., borden, l., & villarruel, f. (2001). community youth development: a partnership for action. school community journal, 11, 39–56. pittman, k. (2000). balancing the equation: commuities supporting youth, youth supporting communities. community youth development journal, 1, 33–36. roth, j., & brooks-gunn, j. (2003). what is a youth development program? answers from research and practice. applied developmental science, 7(2), 94–111. shaw, k. (2012). practice in perspective: youth engagement in the canadian context. unpublished master’s thesis, university of victoria, victoria, british columbia, canada. united nations. (1989). convention on the rights of the child. new york: un general assembly. youniss, j., bales, s., christmas-best, v., diversi, m., mclaughin, m., & silbereisen, r. (2003). youth civic engagement in the twenty-first century. journal of research on adolescence, 12(1), 121–148. self-reported symptoms and parents’ evaluation of behavior problems in preschoolers disclosing sexual abuse international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 467 self-reported symptoms and parents’ evaluation of behavior problems in preschoolers disclosing sexual abuse martine hébert, rachel langevin, and marie-josée bernier abstract: child sexual abuse is a prevalent social problem known to have a deleterious impact on the mental health. while sexual abuse may affect preschool children, there is a lack of knowledge regarding its short-term correlates, namely regarding internalized symptomatology due to the few available self-report measures. this study aims to (a) contrast self-reported symptomatology in a group of sexually abused preschoolers and a group of non-abused children, and (b) provide preliminary data on the psychometric properties of the adapted french version of the press. results indicate that children in the sexual abuse group (n = 59) show higher levels of self-reported depressive symptoms than children in the comparison group (n = 66). caregivers described sexually abused preschoolers as displaying more internalized and externalized behavior problems than their non-abused peers. keywords: child sexual abuse, preschoolers, depression, self-reports acknowledgements: this study was supported by a grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) awarded to martine hébert. the study was also supported by infrastructure grants from the chaire de recherche interuniversitaire marie-vincent sur les agressions sexuelles envers les enfants and the fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (fqrsc). the authors wish to thank the children, the parents, and the daycare workers who participated in this study. special thanks are extended to the members of the clinique de pédiatrie socio-juridique chu stejustine and of the centre d’expertise marie-vincent. martine hébert, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is professor at the department of sexology, université du québec à montréal, c.p. 8888, succursale centre-ville, montréal, québec, canada, h3c 3p8. telephone: (514) 987-3000 #5697, fax: (514) 987-6787. e-mail: hebert.m@uqam.ca. rachel langevin is a ph.d. candidate at the department of psychology, université du québec à montréal, c.p. 8888, succursale centre-ville, montréal, québec, canada, h3c 3p8. e-mail: langevin.rachel@gmail.com marie-josée bernier is a ph.d. candidate at the department of psychology, université du québec à montréal, c.p. 8888, succursale centre-ville, montréal, québec, canada, h3c 3p8. e-mail: marie-josee.bernier@live.ca mailto:hebert.m@uqam.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 468 a host of empirical studies have documented the profiles of adult survivors, highlighting the devastating consequences associated with sexual abuse (sa) (trickett, noll, & putnam, 2011). in fact, recent reviews conclude that sa is a non-specific risk factor for a number of symptoms in adulthood including depression, suicidal ideations, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, as well as high-risk sexual behaviors (maniglio, 2009). despite the proliferation of studies examining long-term outcomes associated with sa, relatively few empirical studies have explored the short-term impact, and only a handful of empirical reports have specifically focused on outcomes in preschooler victims of sa. however, studies including young child victims of various and/or multiple forms of maltreatment, or investigating the impact of trauma exposure more broadly, have underscored the deleterious consequences of trauma in young children (e.g., grasso, ford, & briggs-gowan, 2013). documenting the symptoms of preschoolers victimized by sa is relevant for several reasons. first, the prevalence of sa among preschoolers is quite high with almost 30% of child sexual abuse involving children aged 4 to 7 years (putnam, 2003). second, as shown by longitudinal studies of non-clinical populations, the preschool period is a crucial developmental period that may pave the way to long-standing and pervasive difficulties (levi, sogos, mazzei, & paolesse, 2001). third, a thorough evaluation of outcomes in children at this particular developmental phase may offer the necessary information required to underscore the need for intervention. such interventions may in turn foster change in symptomatic behaviors given that behaviors are not yet crystallized in young children (luby, heffelfinger, koenig-mcnaught, brown, & spitznagel, 2004). another argument for the relevance of exploring outcomes in sexually abused preschool children is that in maltreated populations, the impact of abuse may be associated with more serious long-term negative outcomes when the trauma occurs early. in one analysis, higher levels of depression and anxiety were identified for participants reporting abuse in the early years compared to those abused in later developmental periods (kaplow & widom, 2007). experiencing abuse at a younger age may indeed compromise essential developmental tasks, which are crucial from birth to school age (calkins & hill, 2007). for instance, attachment security may be affected by early experiences of maltreatment, such as an incident of sa, especially if the abuser is a parental figure (garber, gallerani, & frankel, 2009). available studies highlight that the main outcomes associated with sa may be manifest in preschoolers. according to trickett and putnam (1998), the principal outcomes linked to an early onset of sa refer to somatic problems (such as enuresis), inappropriate sexualized behaviors, anxiety, social isolation behaviors, and possible developmental delays. in a recent study of 103 girls and 13 boys, victims of sa aged 3 to 6, beaudoin, hébert, and bernier (2013) found that close to half (43%) of sexually abused children were rated by the non-offending parent as reaching clinical levels of internalized behavior problems while 33% achieved clinical levels of externalized behavior problems. few studies have contrasted sexually abused preschool children with non-abused children. however, in one such study, sexually abused preschoolers were found to display more inappropriate sexualized behaviors and behavior problems (mian, marton, & lebaron, 1996). in turn, maternal reports indicated that sexually abused children exhibited significantly more international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 469 depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal than did their non-abused peers. interestingly, mian et al. (1996) reported that while sexually abused children scored higher than non-abused children on the internalized behavior problem scale, no significant difference was found on the externalized behavior problem scale. these results highlight the need to further explore the specificities of internalized symptoms in sexually abused children with a comparison group of non-abused children. in one of the rare studies exploring possible age specificities in outcomes of sexually abused children, mccrae, chapman, and christ (2006) found that in their sample of 553 children (aged 3 to 14 years), 31% reached clinical levels of internalization, while 46% reached clinical levels of externalization, based on parental reports. of interest, the authors reported no differences between subgroups of different ages (3 to 7, 8 to 11, and 12 to 14 years old) regarding internalized and externalized symptomatology, suggesting that despite their young age, preschoolers may be as affected in the aftermaths of sa as older children. self-reports of internalized symptoms (depressive and post-traumatic symptomatology) were unfortunately only available for older children (> 7 years), as the measures included were not appropriate for use with younger children. in sum, studies documenting the symptomatology of preschooler victims of sa have reported significant internalized and externalized behavior problems. to date, studies have mostly relied on parental reports of behavioral problems. hence, whether or not negative outcomes may be also highlighted in self-reports of young sexually abused children remains relatively unexplored. while parental ratings are essential in a detailed evaluation of young children’s difficulties, self-reported measures of symptomatology, in combination with parents’ perceptions, may offer additional relevant information regarding these difficulties (weems, taylor, marks, & varela, 2010). regrettably, clinicians and researchers wanting to assess symptomatology directly from children face several challenges. some believe that young children may not be developmentally capable of comprehending symptoms, namely those associated with internalized problems such as depression (angold, egger, & carter, 2007). consequently, there is a paucity of developmentally appropriate self-report measures of depression for preschoolers (levi et al., 2001) and evaluation of symptoms typically relies on reports from informants such as parents, teachers, or daycare workers (luby, belden, sullivan, & spitznagel, 2007). evaluation of internalized problems may pose particular challenges given such symptoms are not readily observable and not as disruptive to others compared to externalized behavior problems (garber & carter, 2006; weems et al., 2010). informants may be more likely to focus on external and disturbing behaviors, possibly missing relevant information about the child’s internal states and feelings. a study conducted by weems and colleagues (2010) on discrepancies in parents’ and children’s evaluations of the children’s anxiety sensitivity found that parents tend to underestimate their child’s sensitivity to anxiety, while they tend to overestimate it in their adolescents. lack of concordance between informants underscores the need to integrate selfreported measures of internalized behavior problems into the clinical assessment of children’s symptoms. in the specific case of child maltreatment, the issue is even more relevant as caregivers may overestimate or underestimate problems due to their own level of psychological distress international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 470 following disclosure or the perceived impacts of their responses (litrownik, newton, & landsverk, 2005). a parent may attempt, unwillingly or not, to understate problems to avoid placement or overestimate problems to insure that intervention services will be available to their child. studies have found that parental symptoms have been associated with a tendency for some parents to overestimate their child’s behavior problems compared to reports from children or teachers (de los reyes & kazdin, 2005). mothers of sexually abused children may be particularly vulnerable to psychological distress given the high prevalence of a past history of sa in this population (kim, trickett, & putnam, 2010). one recent study found that maternal history of sa predicted externalized behaviors even after controlling for family income and type and severity of sexual abuse experienced (berthelot, langevin, & hébert, 2012). relying on different sources of information is important in order to gather a more comprehensive view of children’s profiles, as research clearly documents that cross-informant agreement is generally low. while this may be partially explained by the difficulty in observing internalized symptoms (garber & carter, 2006), cross-informant discrepancies sometimes reflect real differences in children’s behaviors across contexts and times (de los reyes, 2011). thus, assessing symptoms in young child victims of sa by means of self-reports may offer salient information as to the consequences associated with sa. few such measures are available, but the preschool symptom self-report or press (martini, strayhorn, & puig-antich, 1990) was designed to measure depressive symptoms specifically among preschool-aged children. the press scale has been used in prior studies and has shown adequate reliability estimates with samples of preschool children (dubowitz et al., 2001; litrownik et al., 2005; morrel, dubowitz, kerr, & black, 2003). the present study aims to contrast self-reported symptomatology in a group of sexually abused preschoolers and a group of non-abused children. it is hypothesized that child victims of sa will report greater symptoms than non-abused children. in addition, we predicted that victims of more severe, chronic, and intrafamilial abuse would report greater symptoms than victims of less severe, less frequent, and extrafamilial abuse. a secondary aim of the study is to provide preliminary psychometric data on the adapted french version of the press, namely by examining the internal consistency of the press score and the discriminative power of individual items. in addition, cross-informant agreement will be explored by correlating selfreport scores with maternal reports of children’s behavior problems. method participants a sample of 59 sexually abused preschoolers (ages 4 to 6 years) and their non-offending caregivers were recruited at two intervention settings in montréal, québec, canada offering specialized services to children disclosing sexual abuse: the clinique de pédiatrie socio-juridique of the chu ste-justine and the centre d’expertise marie-vincent. a sample of 66 non-abused children recruited from daycare centers and kindergartens in the same city served as a comparison group. sexually abused children were found to be comparable to non-abused children on all socio-demographic variables, except for family structure, maternal level of education, and family income (see table 1). only family structure was included as a co-variable in subsequent international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 471 analyses given the significant correlation between family structure, maternal level of education, and family income. table 1. socio-demographic variables of the sample and group differences variables sa group comparison group statistical test (n = 59) (n = 66) average age of children (in months) 60.31 (7.35) 59.11 (6.01) t(123) = 1.00 ns gender of children χ2 (1, n= 125) = .82 ns girls 79.7% 72.7% boys 20.3% 27.3% family structure χ2 (1, n = 125) = 20.21, p < .001 single-parent family intact or recomposed family 55.2% 45.8% 16.7% 83.3% maternal level of education χ2 (4, n = 121) = 45.85, p < .001 elementary school high school college level undergraduate level graduate level 5.5% 52.7% 30.9% 10.9% 0% 0.0% 7.5% 31.9% 43.9% 16.7% annual family income χ2 (1, n = 122) = 29.01, p <.001 < 40 000$ > 40 000$ 64.3% 35.7% 16.7% 83.3% duration of the abuse one episode 36% na few episodes 20% na chronic 44% na severity of the abuse clothed touching 7% na unclothed touching 25% na penetration or attempted 68% na note: na = not applicable. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 472 measures preschool symptom self-report. children completed the 25-item (press) pictorial scale designed by martini and colleagues (1990). this self-report scale aims to assess depressive symptoms among preschool-aged children. elaboration of the scale was guided by inspection of items loading on the depression factor of adult-rater scales including the child behavior checklist and symptoms for depressive disorder on the dsm-iii-r (martini et al., 1990). the measure minimizes verbal ability by the use of drawings. following two practice items, children are presented with two drawings simultaneously: one depicting a child without a problem behavior (coded as 0) and the other a child with a problem behavior or symptom (coded as 1). scores are then summed to obtain a total score, with a higher score reflecting more endorsed symptoms. for the present study, the measure was adapted (adding new drawings) and translated for use with french-speaking children. as in the original version of the press, the position of the character illustrating either the presence or the absence of symptoms on the left or right side varied across items. captions that describe each of the two illustrations are inscribed below each drawing and are read aloud as the child is invited to choose the one that is “most like you”. two sets of items were used (boy/girl version) according to the sex of the child (see sample items in figure 1). results reveal high internal consistency (α = .82) for the adapted french version of the press. all items show adequate item-total correlations except for two items (7 and 13) that presented lower but still positive item-total correlations (.10 and .18) (see table 2). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 473 figure 1. example items for anhedonia and self-esteem. table 2. item-total correlations of the adapted version of the press item number item descriptiona corrected item-total correlation 1 depressed mood .46 2 frustration tolerance .27 3 feeling unloved .27 4 self-image .45 this girl is playing and not having fun this girl is playing and having fun this boy thinks that he is not good looking this boy thinks that he is good looking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 474 5 self-image .33 6 worrying .44 7 anhedonia .10 8 anhedonia .23 9 irritability and anger .35 10 fatigue .44 11 insomnia .32 12 socialization .31 13 appetite decrease .18 14 somatization .33 15 fearful .33 16 sadness .25 17 irritability .26 18 social isolation .44 19 separation anxiety .29 20 socialization .44 21 teasing .30 22 fearful .53 23 psychomotor deficit .62 24 decreased concentration .52 25 disobedience .36 internal consistency of the total score α = .82 note: derived from martini, strayhorn, and puig-antich (1990). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 475 child behavior checklist. the non-offending parent completed the preschool version of the child behavior checklist or cbcl (achenbach & rescorla, 2000). the parent was invited to answer each question on a three-point likert scale indicating the frequency of the behavior manifested by the child (0 = not true; 1 = somewhat or sometimes true; 2 = very true or often true). items associated with dimensions of internalizing (anxiety, depression, somatization, etc.) behavior problems and externalizing (e.g., aggressivity) were considered. t scores are calculated, with a higher score indicative of higher levels of behavior problems. the cbcl is used extensively in clinical research. internal consistency of scores for the internalizing (α = 0.89) and externalizing scores (α = 0.92) are adequate and numerous studies support the validity of the scale (achenbach & rescorla, 2000; keenan & wakschlag, 2000). procedure for the sexual abuse group, parents completed questionnaires with the assistance of a research assistant in the intervention setting while parents in the comparison group completed questionnaires at home. written informed consent was obtained from parents after explaining the study’s aims and procedures to them, while verbal consent was solicited from children. the human research review committees of the université du québec à montréal (uqam) and the ethics committee of the chu sainte-justine mother and child university hospital center approved this study. results group differences in self-reported symptoms a univariate analysis of covariance (ancova) was performed to determine if there was a difference between the sa victims group and the comparison group on self-reported depressive symptomatology, while controlling for family structure. results show that the mean score of the press is higher in the victims group than in the comparison group (sa group: adjusted m = 4.01; comparison group: adjusted m = 2.14; f(1,121) = 7.93, p < 0.01). analysis of endorsement for each item revealed that nine items of the press scale discriminate between sexually abused and non-abused children. the item highlighting the highest difference in endorsement refers to somatization (item 14). other items discriminating between groups are related to depressed mood (item 1), feeling unloved (item 3), self-image (item 4), worrying (item 6), fatigue (item 10), sadness (item 16), socialization (item 20), and psychomotor deficit (item 23) (see table 3 for details). to evaluate possible differences according to type of abuse experienced (intraor extrafamilial abuse), children in the sa group were divided into two groups according to the nature of the relationship between the child and its abuser. results indicate that victims of intra-familial abuse obtained a significantly higher mean score for self-reported depressive symptoms (m = 4.95 sd = 4.21) than child victims of a non-family related or unrelated abuser (m = 2.07 sd = 2.40; t(55) = 2.42, p < 0.05). children experiencing penetration or attempted penetration achieved a higher mean score on the press scale (m = 5.05 sd = 3.98) than child victims of clothed or unclothed touching (m = 2.78 sd = 3.78; t(54) = 2.03, p < 0.05). analysis based on the length of the abuse failed to identify a significant difference as children reporting more than one episode of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 476 sa (m = 3.86 sd = 4.13) did not differ from children reporting a single episode of sa (m = 4.69 sd = 4.22; t(43) = 0.64, ns). table 3. items discriminating between abused and non-abused children items (this boy/girl…) % sa group % comparison group 1 is sad and is crying most of the time 23.7% 7.6% * 3 thinks parents do not love her/him 10.2% 1.5% * 4 thinks that she/he is not good looking 15.3% 4.5% * 6 does not want to leave her/his father and play outside, she/he thinks he will go away 23.7% 9.1% * 10 is tired and does not want to play 22.0% 9.1% * 14 feels sick and doesn’t want to go out and play 25.4% 3.0% *** 16 is feeling bad about her/himself, is sad 10.2% 0.0% ** 20 other boys and girls do not like this child 20.3% 7.6% * 23 feels does not have enough energy to keep up with friends 16.9% 6.1% * note. *p < .05. **p < 0.01. ***p < .001 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 477 group differences in caregivers’ ratings of children’s behavior problems ancovas controlling for family structure revealed that caregivers of sexually abused children report both higher internalized (f(1,119) = 51.68, p < 0.001) and externalized behavior problems levels (f(1,119) = 31.07, p < 0.001). analyses were also performed to ascertain whether the proportion of children reaching clinical levels of behavior problems (t score > 70) was different across groups. results showed a significant difference as 42.9% of sexually abused children reached clinical levels of internalization, while only 1.5% of non-abused children did so (χ2 (1, n = 122) = 31.78, p < .001). in the sa group, 30.4% of children displayed clinical levels of externalization, while only 1.5% of children in the comparison group reached clinical levels (χ2 (1, n = 122) = 20.04, p < .001). correlations between self-reports and caregivers’ ratings results indicate a significant correlation between press total score and parental ratings of child’s externalized behavior problems (r = .22, p < 0.05). a marginally significant correlation was found with internalized behavior problems (r = .15, p < 0.10). discussion the main objective of this study was to document self-reported symptomatology of preschooler victims of sa by contrasting them with a group of non-abused children. in line with our hypothesis, results indicate that sexually abused children self-report higher levels of depressive symptoms than their non-abused counterparts. specific items appear to be salient to discriminate between the sa and the comparison group. the item presenting the greatest discriminant power concerns somatization, which is coherent with trickett and putnam’s (1998) observation that somatization is an outcome frequently associated with sa in preschoolers. preschool-aged children may not be as developmentally capable as older children in expressing the complex feelings associated with sa and/or using efficient coping strategies to overcome the trauma experienced (yancey & hansen, 2010), resulting in somatization of the distress. a recent study by kugler, bloom, kaercher, truax, and storch (2012), with a sample of older children (8 to 17 years old) in residential care, found that while other forms of maltreatment (physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, or witnessing domestic violence) were not associated with higher selfreported symptoms, somatic symptoms discriminated between child victims of sexual abuse and those who had not been sexually abused. these somatic symptoms may affect sa victims even later in adulthood as zink, klesges, stevens, and decker (2009) found, namely that experiencing sa at an earlier age was associated with greater somatic symptoms. another important item that was differentially answered according to groups related to sadness. sadness appears to be a central symptom in depression, even for preschool children (luby, belden, pautsch, si, & spitznagel, 2009). however, luby and colleagues (2009) reported that in their study, contrary to their expectations, sadness was found to be a relatively unspecific symptom of depression compared with anxiety and disruptive disorders in young children. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 478 close to one out of five children reporting sa endorsed the item regarding not being liked by their peers. greater endorsement of this item by children in the sa group may reflect an impairment in children’s social functioning. impairment is a central diagnostic criterion in psychopathology, including depression. stigmatization and feelings of shame often experienced by child victims of sa (feiring & cleland, 2007) may introduce a sense of being different from their peers, and as such young children may be susceptible to the development of feelings of social isolation (finkelhor & browne, 1985). in addition, sa may generate a sense of betrayal likely to affect interpersonal trust in others, a critical element in the development of social relationships (blanchard-dallaire & hébert, in press). finally, emotion dysregulation in maltreated children is associated with disruptive behaviors, which in turn may be linked to peer rejection (kim & cicchetti, 2010). our results revealed that child victims of intra-familial sa report higher levels of depressive symptomatology than victims of extra-familial sa, results in concordance with prior studies with samples of older children or adults (hébert, tremblay, parent, daignault, & piché, 2006). victims of abuse involving a close family member abuser may experience a higher sense of helplessness, which is known to be linked to depressive behavior (garber & carter, 2006). as proposed by finkelhor and browne (1985) in their conceptualization of the traumatic impact of sa, powerlessness or the sense of losing power over their own selves can also lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety. both helplessness and feelings of powerlessness may be more salient in victims of abuse perpetrated by close family members due to the potential aftermath of disclosing the abuse and the possible fear of not being believed. self-reported symptoms were also endorsed more frequently by preschool children experiencing penetration or attempted penetration which is consistent with past studies with older children highlighting that severity of abuse is related to clinical profiles at intake (yancey, naufel, & hansen, 2013). our data failed to identify significant difference between duration of sa and self-reports of symptoms. obtaining reliable information regarding the duration of the abuse experienced may represent an important challenge, especially when reports of preschoolers are concerned, given the sense of time is under development. it is also possible that the full details of the duration of the abuse experienced are not provided at initial intake but rather gradually given over the course of treatment, once rapport is established. our study provides initial data on psychometric properties of the french version of the press. the total score showed a high level of internal consistency with children as young as 4 to 6 years, thus suggesting that responses are not random but consistent across items. our data also offers some support for validity of the french version of the press as scores of self-reported depressive symptomatology were found to be correlated with caregivers’ reports of externalized and internalized behavior problems, while this last correlation was marginally significant. prior studies exploring cross-informant agreement with the original version of the press have yielded inconsistent results. in martini et al.’s (1990) study, self-reports did not correlate with either the parent or teacher version of the press. in litrownick et al.’s (2005) study, crossinformant agreement was found between the press score and externalized behavior problems as rated by primary caregivers only for younger children (aged 3) in the foster care sample. however, caregivers’ reports of behavior problems were not related to self-reports of depressive international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 479 symptomatology in children ages 4 to 7. morrel et al. (2003) found that self-reports based on the press were correlated with parental reports of children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, but only for mothers reporting a history of physical and/or sexual victimization. clearly, additional studies are needed to explore the complex interplay between age of the child, informant and possible characteristics of informants (for instance, victimization history or psychological distress), and level of agreement. the study presents certain limitations. sample size, while comparable to other published studies, is small and did not allow sufficient power to conduct gender-based analyses. another limitation of this study is its transversal design, which prevents the drawing of causal conclusions regarding the studied variables. further analysis of the psychometric properties of the french version of the press, including exploring the stability of scores and concomitant validity with other self-report measures, as well as with clinician-based ratings of symptomatology, are needed. in addition, future studies should evaluate the potential value of the press score as an index of change during the course of treatment. while participants were recruited from two of the main centers offering specialized services to preschoolers disclosing sa in montréal, our sample is nevertheless based on families that sought services and/or were identified and referred to services by cps agencies or police authorities. therefore, our results may not generalize to the population of sexually abused children that includes a number of cases that are not disclosed. notwithstanding these limits, this study has a number of strengths. the inclusion of a comparison group allows us to draw stronger conclusions regarding the profiles of preschooler victims of sa, a population that is clearly understudied. the reliance on a self-report measure for this specific clientele is also innovative and our results provide preliminary evidence regarding the usefulness of the french version of the press scale to discriminate between sexually abused children and non-abused children and, within the sa group, those reporting severe and intrafamilial abuse. such documentation may sustain future studies exploring internalized symptoms with this population of young children. soliciting data from multiple informants with children who are victims of sa will not only contribute to a more comprehensive picture of symptomatology but also highlight discrepancies between parent and child reports that may predict subsequent poorer child outcomes (goodman, de los reyes, & bradshaw, 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2013) 4: 467–483 480 references achenbach, t., & rescorla, l. 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(2009). the development of a sexual abuse severity score: characteristics of childhood sexual abuse associated with trauma symptomatology, somatization, and alcohol abuse. journal of interpersonal violence, 24(3), 537–546. doi: 10.1177/0886260508317198 note: derived from martini, strayhorn, and puig-antich (1990). table 3. items discriminating between abused and non-abused children note. *p < .05. **p < 0.01. ***p < .001 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4.1): 80–95 doi: 10.18357/ijcyfs114202019939 assessing the association between care quality and household chore rules in residential care institutions in japan rie mizuki, mamiko kyuzen, satoru nishizawa, and shigeyuki mori abstract: the performance of household chores by children in japanese residential care institutions has been widely accepted as a practice that fosters children’s independence and self-sufficiency. however, children coming from neglectful or dysfunctional families often require sensitive, individualized care, which they did not receive from their family of origin. while a shift away from large-scale institutions has begun, with smaller units or group homes now accounting for 40% of all care institutions, it is not clear that family-like, individualized care has been achieved in these smaller group homes. this study involved 61 participants aged 10 to 15 years and their care workers from six residential care institutions in the greater tokyo area. it explored what aspects of care quality were related to the presence of certain characteristics of traditional management-oriented care: fixed rules for household chores and lack of choice in daily living. care workers were asked whether children washed their own dishes, did their own laundry, chose their own clothes when shopping, and had mandatory events to attend in the residential care institutions. care quality was assessed using the early adolescent home (home observation for measurement of environment) developed for japanese residential care institutions (ea-home-jp). the findings suggest that care workers should re-examine their intentions in setting and applying household chore rules while exploring which aspects of child care, including regulatory activities and modeling, should be emphasized in order to actualize family-like and individualized care in institutions. keywords: home, institutional rules, residential care, alternative care rie mizuki ma (corresponding author) is a lecturer at the radiation medical science center for the fukushima health management survey, fukushima medical university, 1 hikariga-oka, fukushima city 960-1295, japan. email: mizu5656@hotmail.com mamiko kyuzen ma is a clinical psychologist at aisenryo, 2-15-57 dote, kazo, saitama, 3478510, japan. satoru nishizawa ms is a professor in the faculty of human and social services, yamanashi prefectural university, 5-11-1 iida, kofu, yamanashi, 400-0035, japan. shigeyuki mori phd is a professor in the department of human sciences, faculty of letters, konan university, 8-9-1 okamoto, higashi-nada, kobe, hyogo, 658-8501, japan. mailto:mizu5656@hotmail.com international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 81 rules and tasks have traditionally been used in japanese residential care institutions as tools to manage and regulate children’s daily activities and behaviors. the lives of children at these institutions have usually been structured using a daily routine timetable consisting of a series of chores and tasks, all of which the children are expected to follow. in interviews, care staff and children placed in these institutions during the 1950s and 1960s have described the typical routine: a fixed morning wake-up time, cleaning one’s own bedroom, taking turns to clean common areas, a time for morning physical exercise, washing one’s own used lunch box, eating a snack, and taking a bath every other day on a predetermined schedule (kikuchi, 1993). older children were also expected to take turns washing everyone’s dishes after breakfast and assisting in the bathing of younger children. similar routines were revealed in the case analysis of an institution located in tokyo during the 1940s and 1950s (kikuchi & watanabe, 1995). after waking up at a fixed time, children took turns in cleaning designated areas, washing dishes, carrying and chopping firewood, and assisting in cooking meals. having such a regimented structure was considered important in fostering a sense of predictability and stability in everyday life, conditions that many of those children’s lives might have lacked prior to their placement. the tradition of rules setting, by which children are expected to perform assigned chores, survived into the second half of the 20th century: a study in 1998 showed that 79.5% of the children at institutions were assigned tasks and roles (as cited in hayashi, 2000). children’s dissatisfaction with the lack of freedom of choice in their daily lives and strict or unreasonable application of institutional rules was uncovered by recent qualitative studies. in ito’s 2010 study, in which 10 children living in a residential care institution were interviewed about their daily lives, the children reported their dissatisfaction with the rigid schedule, which stipulated preset meal and bath-time schedules and a curfew. some of their complaints were: we aren’t allowed to have a meal a little later than the scheduled time based on how we feel or our physical conditions on that day…. dinner time is set too early, so we become hungry at night…. we are told to “take a bath between x o’clock and y o’clock.” we cannot take a bath when we like…. the curfew of six o’clock is too early. (p. 87) constraints in other domains were also observed in the same study: [we are told that wearing clothes with] a design of a skull is not okay, leopard print is not okay. we don’t have freedom of buying our own clothes…. we cannot ride a bike without permission, and there’s an age limitation, and also a bicycle exam…. video games are banned, so we can’t play even for one minute, and only card games are permitted. (p. 87) institutions sometimes procure children’s clothes by blanket purchase for the entire institution; such practices not only fail to attend to each child’s needs and preferences, they take away international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 82 opportunities in which children could enjoy the process of shopping and choosing clothes through positive communication with care workers (nagai, 2006). similar reports of dissatisfaction, such as institutions restricting hobbies like computer games and banning ear piercings and dyed hair, were observed among the adolescents in fujita’s 2012 study (p. 183). in another study, taniguchi (2018) found that fixed rules were applied strictly to all children regardless of the individual child’s age or needs; these included: not permitting a romantic relationship with a child living in the same institution; not permitting children to spend money earned through part-time jobs, instead forcing them to save it in their bank accounts; not allowing children to own cell phones unless the child’s parent agreed to pay; and requiring that, if they purchased shampoo or soap of their choice, it must be paid for from their allowance. thus, growing up in an institution involves being bound by responsibility for tasks and chores, alongside adherence to stringently defined schedules and rules (nagase & karino, 2012). fixed rules were and are adopted by many institutions in japan in order to provide structure to daily living where many children live together (taniguchi, 2018). kato (2003) pointed out that care workers, given their high workloads, could not help but prioritize the efficient management of children; they accomplish this by establishing a detailed daily schedule and enforcing strict rules under the name of communal living. thus the rules are for the benefit of alleviating the high work demands of care workers when managing a large number of children. further, each child’s needs or requests may be neglected or subjugated in an attempt to ensure “equality” in the treatment of children, which in turn could hinder the growth of children’s autonomy and independence (kato, 2003). nonetheless, the above quotations exemplify how rigidly rules were implemented and enforced, and how constrained the children might be feeling in various aspects of their lives in the institution. while such conditions in japanese institutions — the lack of reasonable amounts of flexibility and individualized treatment — do not indicate severely deprived environments or poor care quality, they do signify that the children experience challenges derived from communal living in large groups, challenges that children living with their parents at home rarely face (hirata & negayama, 2012). thus, rigid rules may impede efforts to provide more individualized and familylike care for children living in institutions. with the global trend moving in the direction of providing a therapeutic environment and sensitive, individualized care to children in alternative care, the japanese government has been introducing financial incentives to abolish large-scale residential care institutions in favor of smaller residential facilities that can provide a family-like environment. such measures have resulted in the adoption of smaller-scale residences that house between six and eight children, with a single bedroom (in principle) for each child. these residences are each equipped with a common bathroom, and a kitchen where care workers cook for the children. small-scale residences are structured either as an independent house (group home) or apartment-style in a building (small unit). there are also medium-sized units with 13 to 19 children and large-sized units with 20 children or more. the bigger units have a kitchen where cooking staff fix food for all the children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 83 and one large dining room in which all eat together; bedrooms are usually shared by two to four children. these smaller-scale residences now account for approximately 40% of residential care facilities (ministry of health, labour and welfare, 2019). the steps to achieving family-like and individualized care, similar to the experiences of children living with their family, are described by the ministry of health, labour, and welfare (2019) as: teaching household chores through sharing everyday life, providing home cooking, establishing a less stressful environment to foster greater emotional stability for the children, and developing a sense of home life so that children may envision having families of their own in the future. however, these care requirements cannot be met by simply reducing the scale of the residential environment while continuing to practise the type of management-oriented traditional care that applies uniform rules to all children and does not take into consideration each child’s individual needs. even where rigid adherence to rules and tasks is still maintained, in some cases care workers have been able to creatively apply these rules to daily living. for example, in some institutions, care workers chose to do laundry for the children; they felt it was important for the children to experience being cared for by adults, since many came from family environments in which such ordinary care was not often provided (taniguchi, 2018). some children lack knowledge of basic self-care practices, such as how to take a bath, how to wash their bodies, or how often to change clothing to avoid wearing soiled garments; for those children to master these basic skills, it is necessary for care workers to customize their approach, including engaging in washing and bathing the children, dressing them in clean clothes, and folding their dried laundry with them, instead of just instructing them to take a bath or wash their clothes (sato et al., 2011). mandatory tasks, often prescribed as rules, may impede the development of children’s independence if they have not had the experience during their early childhood of being completely dependent on and cared for by adults (nagai, 2006). the above examples of caregiving go beyond the traditional stance of japanese residential care institutions, which focus on the group management of children, to consider children’s individual and developmental needs as well. thus, some residential units appear to be moving toward the individualized and family-like care model proposed by the ministry. studies in smaller children’s homes reported greater emotional closeness (iida, 2010), increased communication between care worker and child, more individualized treatment (yoshimura & yoshimura, 2016), and greater flexibility in daily routines through eliminating certain rules that were being applied to all children (gonokama, 2013). although these positive changes may derive from downsizing the residential units, discrepancies were nevertheless observed between care workers in the way they perceived children’s ability to become selfsufficient and in the extent to which they incorporated children’s opinions into daily rituals (kobe, 2007). although the downsizing of residential units may impact care practices, including the strict and universal application of daily routines and institutional rules, research evaluating the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 84 relationship between rule implementation and care quality in residential institutions remains scarce. the purpose of the current study, therefore, was to explore the possible impact on care quality of traditional rules for chores (e.g., washing one’s own dishes and doing one’s own laundry), and rules for limiting choice in daily living (e.g., not being allowed to purchase clothes of one’s choosing and having mandatory events to attend), which are still implemented at many residential institutions in japan. this study is a part of the research project in which the japanese version of home observation and measurement of environment-early adolescent version (ea-home-jp; zhang et al., 2018) was introduced in order to objectively measure care quality in residential care institutions in the greater tokyo area. the ea-home-jp was developed and tailored for japanese residential care institutions in order to assess the “soft” dimension of care giving (zhang et al., 2018). in the preliminary results of their study, the scale of residential unit was not associated with care quality, implying that the reduction in residential unit size does not automatically mean that the quality of care improves or that family-like care is achieved. thus, the impact of a smaller residential unit (the “hard” dimension of institutional care) on the quality of care practices (the “soft” dimension) needs to be further examined. the ea-home-jp study dataset was used for the analysis. hence, this study explored the associations between the presence of traditional institutional rules (i.e., washing dishes, washing clothes, choosing their own clothes, and attending mandatory events) and the scores on various aspects of care quality measured with ea-home-jp. method participants the sample consisted of 61 children, aged 10 to 15 years, and their care workers from six residential care institutions in the greater tokyo area that comprised a mix of group homes, small units, and medium-sized units1. at each institution, the staff approached children in the target age range, introduced the study, and asked if they were interested in participating. if a child showed interest in the study, the care worker contacted the research team. if requested by care workers, the research team members visited the institution and explained the details of the study to those children — individually in some institutions and in a group format in others — so that the children could ask questions of the research team directly. after confirming the children’s interest in taking part in the study, care workers contacted the research team and the timing of an interview was arranged, based on the child’s availability. participants thus comprised the children who both 1 for instance, one institution in the study owned a large building containing six small residential units on the premises and three external group homes. another institution owned a large building containing one medium unit on the premises and three external group homes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 85 consented and were available for the interview. at the data collection session, a research team member again explained the study, as detailed in the ethics section below. written assent from each child participant was then collected. two cases were excluded due to missing demographic data, resulting in 59 children being included in the analyses. table 1. sample characteristics (n = 59) characteristic n % m sd age 12.65 1.49 sex boy 30 50.9 girl 29 49.1 residential type group home 16 27.1 small unit 30 50.9 medium-sized unit 13 22.0 current placement in months 89.2 46.15 total placement in months 100.7 47.33 no parental consent 3 5.08 no communication with parents 18 30.5 no meeting with parents 16 27.1 nursery placement 23 39.0 maltreatment experiences physical abuse 21 37.5 emotional abuse 14 25.0 sexual abuse 2 3.6 neglect 25 43.9 as shown in table 1, 50.9% of the child participants were boys. almost half had been in placement for 8 years or longer. a slight majority (50.9%) of the children were living in small units that were equipped with a private kitchen and bathroom, in addition to bedrooms that accommodated 6 to 8 children. in some cases, the small units were housed within a large institution. sixteen (27.1%) of the children lived in group homes of up to six children each; most were houses located in residential communities close to the main premises of the parent institution. thirteen (22.0%) lived in medium-sized units, where common facilities such as bathrooms, dining room, and kitchen were usually shared with other units, accommodating 13 to 19 children. based on the reports by their care workers, many of the participating adolescents had experienced maltreatment: physical abuse (37.5%), emotional abuse (25.0%), sexual abuse (3.6%), and neglect (43.9%). the mean duration in which the children were in out-of-home care was over eight years (m = 100.72 months, sd = 47.33). considering that their mean age was 12.65 years, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 86 these adolescents on average had spent two-thirds of their lives away from their parents. furthermore, contact with their parents was hampered for many adolescents: 30.5% reported having no communication, including phone calls and letters, and 27.1% had no direct meetings with their parents, such as going out for meals or sleeping over at their parent’s residence. while the parents of most of the children agreed to place their child in an institution, for 3% of the children, parental consent could not be obtained and the children were in placement under the child welfare act, article 28, of japan. ethics the ethics committee at the yamanashi prefectural university approved this study. the heads of each institution, who have custody of the placed children, gave informed written consent for each child participant and the participating care workers. written assent was also collected from all child participants. the research staff clearly explained to each child participant that: (a) their participation was completely voluntary; (b) all of their responses, except for the home interview, would be kept confidential, even from the staff at the institution; (c) they could withdraw from the study at any time; (d) no disadvantages would be associated with their refusal to participate or with their withdrawal from participation; and (e) the data included in the study reports could not be used to identify them. a number was assigned to each participant. the data were linked with these numbers and kept separate from the participants’ personal information. procedure one or two members of the research team visited each institution. they first met with each child individually and had the child fill out the questionnaire packet. the researchers then conducted an interview about care quality with both the child and his or her care worker. at the end of the interview, with the child’s permission, the researcher visited the residential unit and the child’s bedroom for observation. in the case of children who did not agree to the researchers’ visit to their residential unit, the researchers asked the children to describe their current home in as much detail as possible. participating care workers also filled out a questionnaire packet prior to the data collection. the child’s and the care worker’s responses to the questionnaire were collected separately and kept confidential. materials: care quality care quality was gauged using the home observation for measurement of environment for early adolescent (ea-home-jp), which was developed specifically for japanese residential care institutions (zhang et al., 2018). the measure comprises 64 items, answered with dichotomous ratings (yes = 1, no = 0). the items contain seven subscales: 1. physical environment, measuring safety, space, and age appropriateness of the physical environment (e.g., adolescent’s room has at least two pictures or decorations appealing to an adolescent; house or apartment has no potentially dangerous structural or health hazards); international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 87 2. learning materials, assessing resources and conditions available for children’s learning (e.g., adolescent has access to at least 20 developmentally appropriate books; adolescent has access to home computer); 3. modeling, evaluating whether or not the caregiver functions as a positive role model (e.g., care worker shares healthy practices/fitness activities that s/he regularly engages in; care worker has not lost their temper with an adolescent more than once during the past week); 4. fostering self-sufficiency, indicating how the caregiver integrates activities promoting children’s self-sufficiency (e.g., care worker teaches adolescent basic cleaning skills; care worker has taught adolescent about safety and how to deal with emergency situations); 5. regulatory activities, representing regulations and supervision set by care workers as caring and responsible caregivers (e.g., residential unit has a fairly regular and predictable daily schedule; parent has had contact with at least 2 of the adolescent’s friends in the last month); 6. family companionship, rating the provision of social and cultural activities, family-like atmosphere, and fair relationships among children (e.g., care worker regularly engages in outdoor activity with the adolescent at least once every two weeks; children interact with both male and female care workers at least four days a week); and 7. acceptance, looking into whether there is a positive relationship between the care worker and child, including warm and caring attitudes of care workers (e.g., care worker shows some positive emotional response when visitor praises adolescent; care worker encourages adolescent to contribute to the conversation during visit). each subscale score was calculated by adding up the scores of corresponding items. the cronbach alpha for each subscale is shown in table 2. table 2. cronbach’s alpha for each subscale subscale no. of items α physical environment 7 .50 modeling 9 .45 fostering self-sufficiency 8 .56 regulatory activities 6 .47 family companionship 10 .48 acceptance 9 .87 note. the learning materials subscale was excluded from the analyses due to low internal consistency. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 88 materials: institutional rules care workers answered yes/no questions regarding rules for tasks and household chores. the following questions were included: 1. do children at your home wash their own dishes due to an institutional rule? 2. are children at your home supposed to do their own laundry based on an established rule? 3. can children at your home choose their own clothes when shopping? and 4. do children at your home have to attend mandatory events planned by the institution? analysis first, a kruskal-wallis rank test was conducted for the ea-home-jp subscale scores by residential type. second, a correlation analysis examined the relationships among the subscale scores. third, bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to examine whether or not there were associations between the subscale scores and institutional rules. all statistical analyses were conducted with stata (version 13.1; stata corp college station, texas, united states). the level of statistical significance was set at p < .05 (two-tailed). results the distribution of ea-home-jp subscales by residential types is presented in table 3. only family companionship (χ2[2] = 6.73, p < .05) and acceptance (χ2[2] = 12.0, p < .01) were impacted by residential type; significant median score differences among the residential types were observed. a post-hoc dunn test revealed that medium-sized units (median = 5.0) had a significantly lower score in family companionship than small units (median = 7.0). in acceptance, medium-sized units scored significantly lower than either group homes (median = 9.0) or small units (median = 9.0). marginally significant differences were found in fostering self-sufficiency (χ2[2] =4.88, p < .10) and regulatory activities (χ2[2] = 5.837, p < .10). there were no differences across the residential types in the scores for physical environment and modeling. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 89 table 3. ea-home-jp subscale score distributions by residential type group homes (n = 16) small units (n = 30) medium units (n = 13) subscale mdn 25% 75% mdn 25% 75% mdn 25% 75% p* physical environment 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 6.00 7.00 6.00 6.00 7.00 0.303 modeling 6.50 5.50 8.00 6.00 5.00 7.00 6.00 5.00 6.00 0.125 fostering self-sufficiency 6.00 4.50 7.75 5.00 3.00 6.00 4.00 4.00 5.00 0.087 regulatory activities 7.00 5.50 7.00 6.00 5.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 0.054 family companionship 6.00 4.50 7.00 7.00 6.00 8.00 5.00 4.00 6.00 0.035 acceptance 9.00 9.00 9.00 9.00 9.00 9.00 7.00 7.00 8.00 0.003 * probability for kruskal-wallis rank test. table 5. bivariate odds ratio of institutional rules by ea-home-jp subscale score wash dishes (n = 56) do laundry (n = 59) choose clothes (n = 59) attend event (n = 59) subscale or 95% ci or 95% ci or 95% ci or 95% ci physical environment 1.04 [0.51, 2.10] 1.55 [0.75, 3.21] n/a 0.84 [0.47, 1.52] modeling 0.69 [0.40, 1.20] 0.52* [0.25, 1.08] 1.20 [0.61, 2.37] 0.80 [0.51, 1.26] fostering self-sufficiency 1.21 [0.85, 1.73] 1.36 [0.90, 2.07] 1.02 [0.67, 1.55] 0.78 [0.58, 1.05] regulatory activities 2.94** [1.46, 5.91] 3.74** [1.52, 9.17] 1.06 [0.57, 1.97] 0.93 [0.62, 1.42] family companionship 1.05 [0.74, 1.49] 1.42 [0.92, 2.20] 1.10 [0.71, 1.69] 1.05 [0.79, 1.40] acceptance 0.50 [0.18, 1.40] n/a 1.01 [0.66, 1.55] 0.79 [0.57, 1.09] *p < .10, **p < .05. table 6. multivariate odds ratio of institutional rules by ea-home-jp subscale score wash dishes (n = 56) laundry (n = 44) choose clothes (n = 39) attend event (n = 59) subscale or 95% ci or 95% ci or 95% ci or 95% ci physical environment 0.75 [0.28, 1.97] 1.48 [0.39, 5.58] n/a 1.01 [0.51, 2.03] modeling 0.72 [0.36, 1.44] 0.35* [0.12, 1.02] 1.13 [0.56, 2.28] 0.91 [0.55, 1.50] fostering self-sufficiency 1.19 [0.64, 2.21] 0.94 [0.40, 2.17] 1.16 [0.62, 2.18] 0.72 [0.47, 1.09] regulatory activities 2.78** [1.29, 6.00] 4.50** [1.16, 17.53] 1.23 [0.58, 2.62] 1.02 [0.63, 1.66] family companionship 0.96 [0.55, 1.66] 1.70 [0.74, 3.89] 1.15 [0.70, 1.88] 1.26 [0.87, 1.82] acceptance 0.55 [0.18, 1.66] n/a 1.03 [0.62, 1.72] 0.85 [0.61, 1.18] *p < .10, **p < .05. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 90 the spearman correlation analyses (see table 4) revealed low to moderate correlations between some subscales of ea-home-jp. physical environment was significantly positively correlated with fostering self-sufficiency (rs = .38, p < .05). also, modeling was significantly positively correlated with acceptance (rs = .28, p < .05). positive correlations of fostering selfsufficiency with regulatory activities (rs =.31, p < .05) and family companionship (rs =.44, p < .05) reached statistical significance. despite this, the lack of high correlation coefficients indicated that the correlations of these subscale scores were not strong. it is suggested that the subscales measured different concepts, even though some subscales might represent somewhat overlapping components of the caring environment. table 4. correlation coefficients among ea-home-jp subscale scores subscale 1 2 3 4 5 1. physical environment 1.00 2. modeling 0.13 1.00 3. fostering self-sufficiency 0.38* 0.26 1.00 4. regulatory activities 0.20 -0.18 0.31* 1.00 5. family companionship 0.23 0.14 0.44* -0.03 1.00 6. acceptance 0.07 0.28* 0.25 -0.19 0.08 note. spearman correlation analysis was conducted. * p < .05 level. bivariate logistic regressions revealed some associations between the ea-home-jp subscale scores and institutional rules, as shown in table 5. ea-home-jp regulatory activities had significantly higher odds ratios (or) on washing dishes (or = 2.94; 95% ci [1.46, 5.91]) and doing laundry (or = 3.74; 95% ci [1.52, 9.17]). residential units with higher scores on regulatory activities were more likely to direct children to wash their own dishes after meals and to do their own laundry by setting these tasks as rules. on the other hand, modeling had an odds ratio on doing laundry (or = 0.52; 95% ci [0.25, 1.08]) with higher significance in the protective direction, but only marginally so. this meant that the residential unit scoring higher on modeling tended not to let children do their own laundry; instead, those care workers tended to do laundry for their children. there were no significant associations between ea-home-jp subscale scores and the rule of mandatory attendance at institutional events. with multivariate logistic regression, including all ea-home-jp subscale scores, regulatory activities was significantly associated with washing dishes (or = 2.78, 95% ci [1.29, 6.00]) and with laundry (or = 4.50, 95% ci [1.16, 17.53]), as presented in table 6. residential units with higher scores on regulatory activities were likely to have a rule directing their children to do dishes after the meal and their own laundry, after controlling for the influence of other subscales. modeling maintained its marginal significance with an odds ratio of 0.35 (95% ci [0.12, 1.02]) in the protective direction, on doing their own laundry. the care workers who scored higher on modeling are likely to take care of laundry for the children, instead of telling the children to do it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 91 themselves, independent of the impact of other subscale scores. in multivariate models as well, none of the ea-home-jp subscale scores were associated with children’s choosing their own clothes and mandatory attendance at institutional events. discussion using japanese data from the greater tokyo area, the current study examined the relationship between the quality of care as measured by ea-home-jp, and three types of residential care: group homes, small units, and medium-sized units. the type of residence was found to make a difference in family companionship and acceptance scores. further analyses using logistic regressions revealed that higher scores on the ea-home-jp subscale of regulatory activities had a higher odds ratio for having a rule telling children to wash their own dishes after meals and do their own laundry. in contrast, higher scores on the subscale of modeling showed a tendency to be associated with a lower odds ratio for a rule directing children to do their own laundry. because rigid rules are considered to reflect more traditional approaches to child care in these institutions, the associations with the rules suggested that ea-home-jp regulatory activities may be aligned with traditional “professional” practices of institutions, which focus on boundary setting and supervision. with their much higher child–staff ratio, the traditional institutions could not help but emphasize the management of stable care quality and regulation of children’s behavior. as a matter of fact, the ea-home-jp regulatory activities subscale includes an item asking if children are assigned personal tasks or chores, or ones that benefit the entire residential unit. this suggests that even the items in the inventory were skewed towards meeting collective demands and goals rather than those of the individual. however, this subscale also investigates care workers’ behaviors, such as whether they have information on how the child spends time and keeps routines during days away from the institution, or whether they establish basic routines of everyday life, such as by setting fixed times for waking, eating meals, and going to bed, which can give children a sense of predictability. these actions are regarded as reflecting care workers’ intention to regulate children’s daily lives by organizing them with some type of routine. stability and predictability are often referred to as essential components for building a safe environment for maltreated children (barton et al., 2011). gonokama (2013) gave examples that describe a sensitive balance between maintaining structure in daily life and incorporating flexibility. differences in the intentions and attitudes behind care workers’ actions may be difficult to identify using a quantitative scale such as ea-home-jp, but they may be measurable by the acceptance subscale, while regulatory activities focuses on care workers’ efforts to create a safe environment through establishing some routines and boundaries. it is important to share some guidelines with care workers, particularly at the institutional level, so that the management of care does not rely on the individual care worker’s discretion. modeling was marginally associated (or = 0.52) with doing their own laundry. this subscale assesses whether or not care workers read books in front of the child, talked about their personal international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 92 friends, discussed current events, and so on. showing the child how to do chores was not included in the subscale. modeling rather measures whether care workers share their own opinions and experiences with the children. in other words, it reflects how much care workers, while maintaining professional boundaries, share aspects of their personal lives with the children. the importance of personal openness when interacting with children is addressed in the field of social pedagogy (mori, 2016). although modeling may be a new concept in child welfare in japan, it should be integrated into the training of care workers and recognized as a critical concept for homelike, therapeutic care. the fact that at least one in four children does not see or is not in contact with their parents denotes the absence of parents or caregiving adults in their lives. to encourage the healthy socialization and development of such children, care workers need to function as role models, becoming involved with the children at the personal level. this will not only help compensate for the children’s insufficient exposure to a healthy image of caregivers, but will lead to residential care institutions becoming less management-oriented, more individualized, and providing more family-like care. limitations several limitations must be addressed. first, ea-home-jp has not yet been validated. lower variability in the physical environment is congruent with the results of zhang et al. (2018) and may be attributed to the application of the national standards for residential care institutions, which are set by the ministry and that firmly regulate structural design and physical environment. on the other hand, when using ea-home-jp as a tool to compare residential care institutions with foster homes and family household environments, the subscale of physical environment may become meaningful. in addition, low internal consistencies for the subscales, as indicated by the low cronbach alpha levels in the current study, call into question the validity of the observed associations and demand careful interpretation of the results. the cronbach alphas in the current study were lower than those indicated by zhang et al. (2018). thus, ea-home-jp question items must be scrutinized by further statistical analyses, such as factor analysis, using a larger sample. although its convergent validity was implied by zhang et al. (2018), further examination of the validity of the ea-home-jp is necessary. second, the current study employed a small convenience sample, which may have hampered the detection of associations between care quality and institutional rules. because of the sampling procedure, the interpretation and generalization of the results requires careful consideration. in particular, the study was conducted in tokyo, where the metropolitan government has been implementing its own policies for improving care quality in residential care institutions. financial assistance and the child–staff ratio tend to be more generous in tokyo than in other prefectures; thus; policy differences across prefectures must be integrated into future analyses with a larger and more representative sample. therefore, caution must be exercised when applying the results, even to residential care institutions in the greater tokyo area. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 93 third, care workers’ responses to the questionnaires may have been influenced by social desirability. working in the field of child welfare, most of the care workers are likely to be aware of the shift towards individualized care and small-unit residences strongly encouraged by the japanese government. as a result, they may feel hesitant to report having rules for tasks and chores that are assigned to all children at their institution. conclusion the current study explored care quality in japanese residential care institutions by focusing on the traditional management-oriented method of rules and tasks, which assigned household chores to children. the results show that care workers’ efforts to structure children’s daily routines were associated with rules directing children to do chores. on the other hand, it was revealed that care workers’ efforts to function as role models may impact traditional attitudes in institutions that focus on managing children’s behavior through rigid rules. achieving family-like or individualized care in any one institution may depend on which aspects of care quality are emphasized by that institution. if the values of individualized or familylike care quality are shared by the staff, and such aspects of care quality are discussed and emphasized in staff meetings and personnel training, this can eventually lead to the abolishment of the rigid rules that characterize management-oriented care in residential institutions, and lead to the provision of more individualized, child-centered care. hence, additional analysis of household chore rules that addresses modeling performed by care workers is suggested. the fact that approximately 30,000 children, who may have maltreatment histories, are still being raised in residential care institutions highlights the importance of improving child care quality by incorporating individualized and family-like care to foster children’s healthy development. to realize this, further research endeavors are also called for in order to provide evidence for links between care quality and the application of rules in residential care institutions. acknowledgement this research was supported by a grant from the japanese society for prevention of child abuse and neglect. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2020) 11(4): 80–95 94 references barton, s., gonzalez, r., & tomlinson, p. 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(2018). japanese residential care quality and perceived competency in institutionalized adolescents: a preliminary assessment of the dimensionality of care provision. children and youth services review, 91, 204–212. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.05.013 https://doi.org/10.15065/jjsnr.20110729012 http://hdl.handle.net/10638/00007949 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.05.013 it’s time to talk about it: utilizing a community-based research approach to develop a family guide for youth suicide preventio international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 47 it’s time to talk about it: utilizing a community-based research approach to develop a family guide for youth suicide prevention kim gryglewicz, meredith b. elzy, renee r. brown, krista kutash, and marc s. karver abstract: utilizing principles from family-driven care and community-based research, community members and researchers collaborated to uncover the experiences, perceptions, and needs of families whose children had been impacted by mental illness and suicide. using a flexible and iterative process involving in-depth qualitative interviews, four themes emerged: (a) the need for greater awareness about youth suicide; (b) the need to provide clear and direct steps to obtain help for at-risk youths; (c) the need to learn how to locate and access resources to seek help and overcome barriers to care; and (d) the importance of involving and empowering families to get involved in the design and increased utilization of treatment services and suicide prevention efforts. further thematic content analysis revealed specific content areas that served as the foundation for the creation of a family-focused guide on youth suicide prevention. preliminary findings with community stakeholders suggest that the family guide, it’s time to talk about it, is a useful and motivational resource that enhances awareness on how to prevent youth suicide and how families can become more involved in treatment and advocacy efforts. this paper provides an example of how to engage and partner with community participants throughout the stages of planning, developing, implementing, and disseminating a community-based suicide prevention effort. keywords: youth suicide prevention, family-driven care, at-risk youth, community-based research (cbr) author note: this project was funded by grant number 1u79sm058379-01 from the substance abuse and mental health services administration through the garret lee smith memorial act. the views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of cmhs, samhsa, or hhs; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the united states government. authors have complied with apa ethical principles in their treatment of individuals participating in the research described in this manuscript. all research activities were approved by the institutional review board at the university of south florida. correspondence concerning this article and the family guide for suicide prevention should be addressed to kim gryglewicz, department of psychology, university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, pcd 4118 g, tampa, florida 33620. e-mail: kgryglew@mail.usf.edu. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 48 kim gryglewicz, ph.d., msw (the corresponding author) is a senior research associate at the department of psychology and adjunct faculty in the school of social work, university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, pdc 4118g, tampa, florida 33620, u.s.a. e-mail: kgryglew@mail.usf.edu. dr. gryglewicz specializes in mental health and suicide prevention community-based planning, program implementation, research, and evaluation. meredith elzy, ph.d. is an assistant professor at the university of south carolina, aiken. she received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, pdc 4118g, tampa, florida 33620, u.s.a. e-mail: melzy@mail.usf.edu. dr. elzy’s research focuses on the impact of emotional invalidation in the development of psychopathology. renee brown is a third year doctoral student in clinical psychology at the university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, pdc 4118g, tampa, florida 33620, u.s.a. e-mail: rrbrown5@usf.edu. she is studying the relationships between sexual harassment and suicidality in college women. other research interests include resilience to self-harm behaviors in survivors of trauma. krista kutash, ph.d. is professor emeritus in the department of child and family studies at the university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, tampa, florida 33620, u.s.a. e-mail: kutash@usf.edu. dr. kutash specializes in services research for children with emotional disorders and their families. marc s. karver, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of psychology at the university of south florida, 4202 east fowler avenue, pdc 4118g, tampa, florida 33620, u.s.a. e-mail: mkarver@usf.edu. dr. karver’s research interests include the assessment, management, treatment, and prevention of youth suicidality and treatment process research. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 49 over the last two decades, there has been a growing movement in the united states to transform and improve mental health service delivery systems and outcomes into becoming family-focused and family-driven (duchnowski & kutash, 2007; spencer, blau, & mallery, 2010). federal legislation, policies, and grassroots efforts taken by family advocates and organizations have been largely responsible for redefining the family’s role within service delivery systems, shifting the focus of care away from provider-driven practices and instead toward renewed values and beliefs that families can and should play an integral role in their children’s care (new freedom commission on mental health, 2003; spencer et al., 2010). although excellent progress has been made in increasing family involvement in the mental health service system, similar advancements have not been made within the field of youth suicide prevention (breton et al., 2002; mckeon, 2006). given that family connectedness and support appear to be important protective factors in lowering the risk of adolescent depression (van voorhees et al., 2008) and suicidal ideation (hall-lande, eisenberg, christenson, & neumark-sztainer, 2007; kerr, preuss, & king, 2006), the need to engage and involve families in the design and implementation of youth suicide prevention programming is clearly warranted. this paper describes our efforts to engage and involve community members in a countywide suicide prevention initiative to raise awareness about youth suicide. this initiative was part of a larger federally funded project known as the florida adolescent suicide awareness and prevention (asap) project, that was created to develop and implement a series of educational, training, and outreach initiatives aimed at reducing adolescent suicide morbidity and mortality rates in a densely populated county in florida that had been affected by the growing number of youth suicide attempts and deaths by suicide (gryglewicz et al., 2012). due to lack of family involvement in youth suicide prevention, in particular, one of the overarching goals of the asap project was to enhance family participation within these initiatives. utilizing principles of family-driven care (osher, osher, & blau, 2008) and cbr or community-based research (israel, eng, schulz, parker, & becker, 1998) to guide our efforts, as community researchers from a large metropolitan university in the southeastern united states, we sought to first develop collaborative and sustainable partnerships with community members who had been impacted by suicide (i.e., family members of at-risk suicidal youth, survivors of suicide [family members who had lost a youth to suicide], and mental health professionals working with at-risk suicidal youth). by forging these partnerships, our goal was to reduce the power differential (green & mercer, 2001) that can pressure participants into telling researchers what they believe the researchers want to hear. therefore, we strove to create a non-judgmental, non-leading, and open environment for community members to genuinely share their perspectives and experiences with us. second, by acknowledging the expertise, strengths, knowledge, and resources of community members, key principles that underpin cbr and familydriven care, and can drive system level change (pullman, 2009), our other goal was to collectively generate new knowledge to co-develop an educational resource that met the needs and concerns of the targeted community. this paper captures the process of how we engaged and involved community members to participate in an outreach initiative to raise awareness about youth suicide prevention. specifically, we describe the collaborative partnership that was developed between community researchers and community members, outlining recruitment strategies and steps involved in the creation and development of the family guide, it’s time to talk about it: a family guide for youth suicide prevention (gryglewicz et al., 2010). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 50 background family-driven principles. in many ways, care delivered to youths without family involvement does not make much sense. youth are embedded within families (bronfenbrenner, 1979). it is within families that youths develop and learn their beliefs and values. it would seem that to help troubled youths to improve their lives, family involvement would be critical. not surprisingly, research evidence suggests that family engagement and involvement within service delivery systems improve youth outcomes (dowell & ogles, 2010; karver, handelsman, fields, & bickman, 2006). prevention programs aimed at increasing parental involvement, in particular, have shown promising results. these programs have contributed to lower prevalence rates of early-onset substance abuse, problematic behaviors, and depressive symptomatology (connell & dishion, 2008; connell, dishion, yasui, & kavanagh, 2007; mason et al., 2007; stormshak et al., 2011), and to improving academic outcomes (hill & tyson, 2009) and child and adolescent functioning (kutash, duchnowski, sumi, rudo, & harris, 2002). perhaps, the success of prevention programs provides a firm empirical foundation for involving families and a platform to begin building programs and delivery systems that are family-driven. the vision of family-driven care is simple, yet fundamental: families know what is best for them, what will and will not work (osher et al., 2008). osher and colleagues emphasize the importance of recognizing the family’s role in making informed decisions about services, programs, and policies. based on their guiding principles of family-driven care, they suggest that: 1. families and youth be given accurate and complete information to set goals and to make informed decisions; 2. families and youth coalescence together to provide support to each other as well as to utilize their knowledge and skills for system transformation; 3. families, youth, and agencies collectively embrace decision-making responsibilities that impact funding, services, treatments, and outcomes; and 4. agencies take the initiative to remove barriers to care and to provide services that are culturally competent and sensitive to the diverse and ever-changing needs of children, youth, and families. given that previous research has shown that lack of family involvement can be a major barrier to participation in mental health prevention, community acceptance and adoption of mental health prevention and intervention programs, and the ultimate outcomes of intervention efforts (herman et al., 2011; ingoldsby, 2010; karver et al., 2006; lee, august, bloomquist, mathy, & realmuto, 2006), this project sought to embrace the family voice by giving community members the opportunity to become collaborative partners in developing suicide prevention educational materials for parents and families. community-based research. unlike conventional forms of research that are researcherdriven at all stages of the research, cbr embraces community collaboration – that is, active engagement and involvement of community members throughout most of the stages of the research process (green, daniel, & novick, 2001). cbr builds upon community members’ international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 51 strengths and resources so that such information can be respectfully generated and incorporated into action to further advance knowledge, understand and address community needs and concerns, and enhance the health and well-being of community members (israel et al., 1998; minkler, 2005). similar to the principles of family-driven care, cbr is not conducted on community members, but with and for them (flicker, savan, mcgrath, kolenda, & mildenberger, 2008). the aim of community collaboration, therefore, is to gain a deeper understanding of needs and concerns of a targeted group or population, to formulate research questions and plans to address needs, and to ensure that interventions and services that are developed in response to a community need are relevant and useful to the targeted population (israel et al.). by seeking out and developing partnerships, we qualitatively captured the lived and social experiences of community members who had been personally impacted by mental health issues and suicidality. we also collectively developed a relevant product that targeted a significant community need, the need to prevent youth suicide. community needs. the initial phase of the development process for the family guide began with an observation that our targeted community was lacking educational resources for family members in the area of youth suicide prevention, as well as a global process for implementing family-driven care services. simultaneously, research efforts being conducted as part of the asap project were revealing some common themes: (a) families of youths at risk for suicide were expressing a need for informational resources; (b) families were frustrated with the obstacles they faced when trying to access help for their children; and (c) families often felt that they were being isolated or left out of their children’s care. in many ways, we were not surprised by this, as these themes had come up in our earlier work when trying to engage and involve parents in suicide prevention trainings in a community in the southwest united states (gunderson et al., 2009). in this prior project, focus group participants, many of whom were parents from low-income households, reported that physical barriers such as limited time, busy work schedules, and lack of transportation and affordable childcare prevented them from participating in suicide prevention trainings. low participation rates, however, did not equate to a lack of interest in learning about youth suicide and prevention efforts. these parents still had a desire to learn about youth suicide and prevention, expressing a need for easy-to-read materials on the topic. this participant input helped point us toward the approach we took. additionally, a thorough literature search was conducted to gain insight into the most supported strategies for delivering information to families. existing research supported the use of written informational strategies, such as brochures and guides, to increase knowledge (boundouki, humphris, & field, 2004; whittingham, ruiter, castermans, huiberts, & kok, 2008). while informational strategies have been used to develop guides for many mental health conditions among children and adolescents (duckworth, gruttadaro, & markey, 2010; national institute of mental health [nimh], 2008), a comprehensive guide written with the help of community participants and targeted specifically to the prevention of youth suicide was clearly absent. furthermore, critics of existing resources for youth suicide prevention believed that the lack of adequate information given to family members helped to maintain stigma related to suicide (jacksonville community council inc. [jcci], 2007). development of the family advisory committee. in order to advance our initial effort to engage and involve community members in outreach efforts to raise awareness about youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 52 suicide prevention, a team of mental health and suicide prevention researchers and key informants, individuals who worked in non-profit mental health agencies and who had relationships with community advocates and families in the targeted community, coalesced together with community advocates and family members to form a family advisory committee. over the course of the first year in the asap project, this committee met bi-monthly to brainstorm and discuss strategies to build community partnerships and engage additional parents and family members in suicide prevention efforts, as well as to highlight general needs and concerns of the targeted community. based on the review of the literature, previous research findings with families of at-risk youth, and initial comments shared by community stakeholders in the targeted community, the advisory committee expressed a concern around the need for the development of informational materials for community family members on youth suicide in general, with more specific information on the warning signs of suicide and strategies to use to help youths who may be at risk. these discoveries further led to the conceptualization that a printed guide specifically written for families on youth suicide prevention was not only needed and wanted in this community, but that the family voice also needed to be incorporated into the development and dissemination process. the steps outlined below describe a qualitative, flexible, iterative, and collaborative process with community members that led to the development of the family guide, starting from a basic skeleton that was derived from community feedback and scientific research about youth suicide prevention, and finishing with the finalized product. methods community participants and procedures in order to further explore the community’s need and desire for informational materials on youth suicide prevention, the advisory committee made a collective decision to obtain input from community members who had direct experience dealing with youths who struggled with suicidal ideation or had attempted or died by suicide. this decision was based on models of the experiential learning process, which emphasize the combination of using both current and retrospective perspectives in an effort to provide the most comprehensive and effective learning strategies (kolb, 1984). given that one of the goals in the asap project was to develop a suicide prevention resource specifically for adult family members who could come in contact with an atrisk youth, recruitment efforts focused solely on adults. as such, this process began with the recruitment of 12 parents with youths currently at risk of suicide, 18 survivors of suicide who were able to provide retrospective insight into the needs of family members who struggle to find and receive the help they need, eight mental health professionals involved in the treatment of youth at risk of suicide, and five professionals actively involved in suicide prevention advocacy efforts. all of the participants were from different families. among survivors of suicide, six were parents who had lost a daughter or son to suicide, two were adult children who had lost a parent, three were adult siblings, and seven identified themselves as losing a family member. participants’ roles were the same in that all community members had an equal opportunity to share personal accounts and perspectives. participants were recruited from various mental health agencies and grassroots organizations and groups in the targeted county using snowball sampling (padgett, 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 53 participants were sampled in an attempt to be representative of the adult population in the targeted county, which mostly reflected that of a white, working class population. specifically, the majority of residents had identified themselves as caucasian (62.8%), followed by africanamerican (29.8%), and latino(a) (7.9%). the median household income was $49,964. nearly 15% lived below the poverty level. among those over the age of 25, 87.5% had graduated from high school, 25.2% graduated from a 4-year college (united states census bureau, 2011). among study participants, 43 adults were involved in a multi-stage, multi-informant interviewing and feedback process. of these participants, 32 (74% of them) were female and 11 (26%) were male. six (14%) participants identified as african-american, three (7%) identified as latino(a), and 34 (79%) identified as caucasian. the majority were married (60.5%) and ranged in age from 25 to 70 years old (m = 41.50, sd = 12.04). educational status varied in that there was a relatively equal representation of individuals who had earned a high school diploma or ged (30.2%), a post-secondary degree (39.6%), and an advanced professional degree (25.6%). phase i: initial feedback and development once community members were identified and recruited by individuals from the advisory committee, members of the committee then held individual and/or group meetings to build rapport, to discuss perceived community concerns and needs, and to highlight the overall goal of the family initiative, which was to enhance familial and community participation in suicide prevention planning, implementation, and dissemination efforts. by engaging with and establishing rapport with community members, we were able to have open discussions about the needs of the community, defining shared goals and action steps to address the problem at hand. this process led to greater consensus around the need to develop educational materials on youth suicide prevention. following the establishment of rapport and a collaborative relationship, we then conducted in-depth qualitative interviews over the phone and in person in order to gain further insight into community members’ personal experiences and perceptions about mental illness, suicide, treatment, and related fears and difficulties. we also explored content information or topics that needed to be included in a guide about youth suicide prevention. during the 60minute interview, participants confirmed their willingness to participate. each interview was conducted by two members of the research team with the use of an interview guide to maintain the integrity of the research questions. one interviewer was the primary questioner, while the other interviewer focused on taking notes and following up with general clarification questions when necessary. interviews were audiotaped to ensure the accuracy of the interviewers’ notes and to confirm that participant perspectives had been comprehensively captured. participants were given $20 as tokens of appreciation for their involvement. research protocols and questions were reviewed and approved by the university of south florida’s institutional review board. each participant was asked a series of open-ended questions regarding content that would be appropriate for the family guide. these questions were constructed to target a participant’s perspectives on five main areas of interest: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 54 1. existing resources available for family members with a youth at risk of suicide; 2. barriers for family members engaging in suicide prevention activities; 3. overall goals of a family guide for suicide prevention; 4. knowledge necessary for suicide prevention; and 5. any other additional information that might be relevant for family members engaging in suicide prevention activities. phase ii: finalizing the product after incorporating participant feedback to develop the initial draft of the family guide, we then conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with a subsample of participants (n = 8) who agreed to share additional input and to pilot test a series of questions designed to quantitatively evaluate the utility of the guide in regard to the quality and comprehensiveness of the information presented. this iterative process enabled us to determine how well the family guide met recommendations previously provided by participants. interviews lasted 45 minutes and were conducted using the same procedures described above. interview questions followed a semi-structured format, alternating between a multiplechoice item and a follow-up open-ended response question to allow for flexible adaptation with participant feedback. there were three sections to this interview. for the first section, participants were asked to rate the level of importance of the primary content areas that were uncovered during the qualitative interviews. in section two, participants were asked to rate the appropriateness of the amount of information in the family guide pertaining to each of the content areas covered (see table 1). for each rating item, participants were asked to provide additional feedback if needed. in the third and final section, participants were asked a series of individual items designed to evaluate the general utility of the family guide. participants were asked whether they would use the family guide and recommend its use to others, and whether or not they perceived the guide as being a useful resource for themselves and other families. participants were also asked to rate whether or not the family guide instills a sense of hope and if it helps to empower and motivate parents and families to become more engaged in their children’s care and in suicide prevention initiatives. changes were made to the family guide to incorporate additional feedback provided by participants during the semi-structured interviews. a published version of the family guide was then distributed to all of the participants for one last review. participants were asked to provide general feedback about the content and design. this feedback was reviewed and integrated one more time. based on recommendations from community participants and the advisory committee, the final version of the family guide was then distributed at venues where families, youth, community mental health professionals, and suicide prevention advocates frequented, including schools, family resource centers, churches, crisis centers, mental health and substance abuse agencies, medical centers, emergency shelters, and counseling centers. over 6,000 family guides were distributed during the initial year of circulation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 55 data analysis participants’ recorded responses to the qualitative interview questions were first transcribed verbatim by research assistants. to start the process of developing an initial coding scheme, two members of the research team (the first and second authors) selected two transcripts to read together. keeping in mind the five main areas of interest described above, we searched for relations, commonalities, and distinctions. key words, phrases, or sentences emerging from the two transcripts were highlighted and coded. next, we began to identify an initial coding scheme to sort and group the data into categories. preliminary definitions and rules describing the coding scheme and categorization process were documented to create an audit trail for validation purposes (lincoln & guba, 1985). the remaining transcripts were coded independently by the two researchers and then compared to determine the degree of consensus in how data was coded, sorted, and categorized into the initial set of categories. if disagreements existed, the researchers re-read the transcripts, discussed the discrepancy until a consensus was reached, and if needed, additional categories and/or subcategories were refined or created. when new categories and/or subcategories emerged, all of the transcripts were reanalyzed by the two researchers to assure that key points were not lost during the process of expanding the initial set of categories. this constant comparative method (glaser & strauss, 1967) was utilized in order to maintain the integrity of participant responses while simultaneously developing non-overlapping categories. once saturation was achieved, categories and subcategories were then examined to formulate overarching themes. to establish rigor and trustworthiness, we relied on peer examination from members of the advisory committee during the coding and thematic process. this process enhanced the quality and credibility of the data in that others outside the research team were able to crosscheck how categories and themes were being developed, thereby keeping the researchers objective in their quest to find meaning behind the data (krefting, 1991). testimonial validation, or member checking (lincoln & guba, 1985), also provided added assurance that we accurately captured what community members had shared and deemed important to include in the family guide. this strategy was of particular importance while writing the content for the guide. this iterative process of coding to categorizing, to redefining categories, and to searching for meaningful patterns and themes (patton, 1990) is what led us to the final framework that outlines the main content areas of the family guide. the additional comments provided by participants in regard to the presentation of the material, including strategies and language to engage family members, were incorporated into the writing of the family guide. throughout the entire writing process, participants and members of the advisory committee reviewed the style, language, and reading level of the family guide to ensure that the content reflected the voices of the community. descriptive statistics were used to examine quantitative data and to corroborate qualitative findings. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 56 results qualitative interviews four primary themes or domains were ascertained from the qualitative interviews with participants relative to identifying important content to be included in the family guide. these domains were labeled as the following: (a) problem awareness, (b) being available to youth, (c) overcoming barriers to service utilization, and (d) family involvement. with regard to the first three themes, the different groups of participants gave surprisingly similar responses. however, in the family involvement theme, survivors of suicide emphasized topics such as denial and stigma more frequently than parents of currently at-risk adolescents. participant responses and thematic content from these domains are outlined below. problem awareness. the most prevalent topic indicated by participants was the need to raise family members’ awareness that a problem with suicide risk may exist with their youth. one survivor articulated this point by stating, “parents may think that it is just a phase that they [the at-risk adolescents] are going through. it may be more than that.” another parent expressed the need to provide “clear explanations” about youth suicide, noting “there are some families out there that just don’t believe that [suicide] is real and that it can happen to their child or youth.” relatedly, participants discussed the importance of educating family members with the information necessary to recognize the warning signs of adolescent suicide risk. in particular, participants emphasized that the warning signs of suicide needed to be placed in a context of “normal” adolescent development so that family members would be able to recognize and differentiate between typical adolescent development and symptoms of a youth struggling with depression, which suggests it is time to seek help. one survivor recounted: i think one of the things that i encountered is how much of that teenage angst goes along with the normal development versus the significant mood changes that do with the more serious mental illnesses. it’s hard to tell sometimes because the acting out has a lot of similarities. i wish that i had known more when i was going through that, knowing the overall warning signs that something was going on. participants also communicated that lack of adequate family member knowledge on mental health issues and suicidality contributed to stigma and family members’ denial of the existence of a problem. many participants expressed that these are the primary obstacles in family members getting the help they need and thus awareness about the issues of stigma and denial relating to mental health issues also needed to be raised, as one parent expressed: a lot of people walk around with blinders on [believing] it’s not going to happen to me, my kid wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t do that to me…one of the biggest problems is not knowing or even ignoring the signs. getting people to listen and know what those signs are. a lot of people have the belief if we ignore it, it will go away; or that they can handle it on their own. being available to youth. some participants emphasized the importance of providing family members with clear and simple ways to directly help youth. for example, participants international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 57 commented on the importance of parents just being available to their children so that they have the opportunity to observe the warning signs. one parent of a youth who was currently seeking mental health services to address suicidal ideation commented: the families need to have the knowledge that it is happening, it is real. a lot of family members are so caught up in what’s going on in their busy day and they really need to pay close attention to what’s going on in their homes. they need to have knowledge so that they can help. another participant, who was a survivor of suicide, gave a retrospective account of wishing she had been around her youth more often so that she could have monitored her teenager’s behavior more closely. she noted: “a good message for parents to receive is if you start to pick up on things, have these cues, these gut feelings.” she further alluded to the importance of “establishing rules and boundaries…to let [youth] be independent but to also have a clear understanding of the rules that say that i will monitor your activity because i think it’s important, i care.” additional participants agreed that it is important to be emotionally “present” for their children, “to be around, to sit down and find out what’s going on.” a survivor poignantly described: i think the parent’s communication with the child is critical. it is probably one of the most important things that can assist in deterring suicide. even communicating with friends and adults that are significant to that child. you might get nothing at all or you might just get a little bit of information. they may be looking for that opportunity. in particular, participants felt family members could be more available to their youths if they were provided with information on ways to promote emotional resiliency, ways to effectively monitor the behavior of an at-risk youth, and strategies to help family members communicate with youth who may be at risk of suicide. overcoming barriers to service utilization. while some participants identified various locations in the community that might have accessible resources on where and how to seek help, such as medical offices, libraries, and schools, other participants stated they did not know how or where to access local resources. all participants were consistent in their belief that accessing services is overwhelming and that most family members are unfamiliar with the steps or processes to obtain help. one participant commented: “it's very hard, i think, to know where even to begin. if you have at least a beginning point then at least you could follow through from that part of it.” another participant stated: “i had no idea where to start. i didn’t know what resources were available. just knowing what’s available out there is really important, just knowing where to turn to.” in addition, participants commented that families are reluctant to seek services because of prior negative experiences with professional providers, that lack of alliance or disconnect between professional providers and family members, and/or financial constraints that limit access. one mental health professional pointed out the importance of educating families about the need to stay in treatment even if that disconnect occurs: sometimes when i talk to families they will say treatment is not working, it’s a waste of time. families need to be educated about what therapy is. you don’t abruptly stop international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 58 treatment because they or the kids are not getting along with the therapist, or the therapist is not communicating right. you know, sometimes it doesn’t always gel with an individual so maybe there’s someone else on the team that might be better suited for the child or family. consistent with these problems, participants unanimously agreed there was a need for accessible written resources in the community and that such written resources, like the family guide, should include information about specific steps on where and how to access help and on how to work with professionals in order to overcome barriers to seeking and receiving mental health services. family involvement. a common theme expressed across participants was an emphasis on the importance of involving and empowering family members to get involved in suicide prevention efforts. participants discussed how involving parents in suicide prevention could not be superficial but instead required reaching family members on an emotional level to encourage the hope and confidence needed to get involved. one survivor passionately delivered this message regarding advocacy for youth suicide prevention: “people need to get mad about it. they need to get passionate about it. people have to see that they can make a difference. [we] need to move them to become passionate about it. one child is too many.” however, only participants who were already involved in suicide prevention advocacy had suggestions for increasing participation. participants who were not already involved in suicide prevention advocacy had little to no input on how to increase involvement. the involved participants suggested that it is difficult to get people involved unless they have been personally touched by a death from suicide. one survivor noted this while describing her role as an advocate: whenever i talk about teenage suicide, people are shocked. they have no idea. they just don’t have a clue. so, what i have found in my experience is that people do not become advocates until they have experienced a personal loss and then you say, gosh, i wish we could have had this support before that step, before the suicide. people don’t realize the severity of it. i think that society is uncomfortable and we don’t like to talk about it. probably the one thing that could make the most difference in youth suicide is the advocacy of parents. participants also emphasized that in order to increase personal and community-wide participation, there first needed to be a raising of awareness about the reality of youth suicide, a clarifying of the myths and facts about suicide, and an addressing of stigma relative to involvement in mental health treatment and suicide prevention. one survivor acknowledged that, “stigma does exist” and that there is a “fear of labeling a child” which may deter families from seeking help, further noting that, “you want to believe that your child is not afflicted by anything. you want the very best for your child, including emotional health. denial is the easiest thing to do. it is the biggest barrier.” a parent of an at-risk youth also expressed that one of the biggest barriers to advocacy is lack of knowledge, further acknowledging that the lack of awareness about suicide and mental health treatment is what is reinforcing feelings of denial and misconceptions that suicide only affects “other families” and is a “sign of weakness.” international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 59 fundamentally, participants wanted to know how to empower families and steps that could be helpful to engage more families to participate in advocacy efforts at state and local levels. overall, participants felt a written document specifically focusing on the needs of parents and families could be a useful tool to increase family involvement in suicide prevention. all participants mentioned it was critical to have information and resources, needed by a family member who knows a youth at risk of suicide, in one body of work that is easily accessible. however, they pointed out that how the information in the family guide is delivered could substantially affect its use. suggestions mentioned by participants included omitting professional jargon, utilizing an indirect approach through language which could be relevant to someone’s own child or the child of someone they know, and including parts meant specifically to instill hope and motivation. developing the family guide in order to create the family guide, the first step was to frame the content of the guide around the categories and themes identified from the qualitative interviews described above. thematic content analysis of these interviews identified 12 specific topics that participants believed should be in a family guide for suicide prevention. these included: 1. warning signs of suicide; 2. specific steps to getting help; 3. accessing resources in the community; 4. ways to promote emotional well-being and resiliency; 5. how to work with professionals; 6. how to get involved in suicide prevention efforts at the local level; 7. how to get involved in suicide prevention efforts at the state level; 8. ways to communicate with at-risk youths; 9. differences between normal adolescent behavior and suicidal risk factors; 10. awareness of stigma and denial; 11. tips on monitoring behavior of at-risk youths; and 12. ways to empower parents and families. these 12 categories provided an outline for the content of the family guide. content was then created to align with this outline. after a careful examination of the research literature, relevant websites (national federation of families for children’s mental health, 2012; suicide prevention resource center [sprc], 2012), and information from past research (gunderson et al., 2009), information on suicide prevention, resiliency promotion, family empowerment, and programs that offer assistance to youths at risk of suicide and their families was synthesized and incorporated into the family guide in a practical, family-friendly manner, taking into account the input and recommendations made by community participants and members from the advisory committee. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 60 semi-structured interviews utility of the guide. the utility of the family guide was ascertained using the semistructured interview described previously. for the first section of the questionnaire evaluating the importance of each of the 12 content areas listed above, participants unanimously reported that information on warning signs of suicide and differences between normal adolescent behaviors and suicidal risk factors were very important (m = 5.00, sd = .00) (table 1). information on ways to communicate with at-risk youth, promote emotional well-being, and empower families to become more involved in their children’s care were also reported as being very important (m = 4.86, sd = .38), followed by information describing the need for suicide prevention (e.g., addressing stigma and denial associated with suicide), how to access resources to get help, and ways to monitor at-risk youth behaviors (m = 4.71, sd = .49). for the second section of the questionnaire, the majority of participants reported that the information contained in the family guide was adequately described (m = 2.88, sd = .15); in other words, it was not too little or too much, but “just about right”; see table 1 for the average rating for each content area. in measuring the general utility of the family guide, all of the participants noted they would use the family guide and recommend its use to other families. in particular, they believed all families, not just those with at-risk youths, could benefit from reading the family guide. when asked to rate the degree to which the family guide “provides parents with hope,” participants responded positively, noting that it provides a good amount or a great deal of hope (m = 4.86, sd = .38). the majority of participants also reported that the family guide fostered a sense of empowerment to take action and get needed assistance if they felt a youth was at risk of suicide. in fact, when asked to rate the degree to which the family guide “will motivate parents to act to get their children help,” the majority of participants believed the family guide would be a motivational resource (m = 4.14, sd = .89). in sum, all of the participants reported that the family guide addressed a need in the community (m = 4.00, sd = .00)1 and contained information that was perceived as useful (m = 4.86, sd = .38). discussion by utilizing principles of family-driven care and engaging in a cbr approach, we set a goal to engage and involve community members to become active participants and collaborative partners in a community-based initiative to raise greater awareness about youth suicide and suicide prevention. we achieved this goal by first listening to and learning about the various barriers, problems, and needs of families and helping professionals who cared for at-risk, suicidal youths, and then by getting input and recommendations from these participants to develop an educational resource that addressed the unique needs of families in the targeted community. we made sure that community participants understood that we, as researchers, valued their contributions – their knowledge and expertise. we “asked” instead of “telling” so that community participants would know that their opinions and perspectives mattered. the approach we engaged in involved a cyclical and iterative process that included partnership development and maintenance, problem identification, and a reciprocal transfer of knowledge and expertise, fundamental principles of cbr (israel et al., 1998). in essence, by building a respectful and 1 based on a 4-point scale international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 61 trusting partnership, community participants not only became more comfortable in sharing their personal accounts and experiences, they also acknowledged and valued their roles in becoming mutual decision-making partners in developing an educational product that they could call their own and that would be utilized by their community. in conceptualizing and developing the family guide, community participants informed us that the overall content of the guide needed to reflect key points and strategies on how to prevent suicide among youth. participants expressed the need to include content on the warning signs and risk factors of suicide. in particular, they wanted the family guide to differentiate between warning signs of suicide and normal teenager behavior. adult survivors of suicide emphasized that this information is vital in preventing youth suicide. however, participants also felt that this was not enough. the majority commented that a major barrier for many families is that they either do not know or are unsure how or where to begin to get help for an at-risk suicidal youth. in addition, many participants stated that families do not know how to talk to youths or even how to begin conversations with them. this means that even if they believe a youth might be suicidal, they would not even be able to start a conversation with the youth to try to discuss the issue. participants also commented that myths and misconceptions about suicide, mental illness, and help-seeking behaviors add to the difficulties in talking about the issue or getting the help they need for youths at risk. limited knowledge of the warning signs of suicide and steps to take to seek help have been captured in other studies as well (maine, shute, & martin, 2001; owens et al., 2011). given these barriers, participants expressed the need to have a document, like the family guide for youth suicide prevention (gryglewicz et al., 2010), provide clear and informative steps that families could follow on how to access and locate community resources and services when a youth is identified as being suicidal. an interesting note, however, is that despite the importance of including this type of information, participants also felt that the family guide needed to equally reflect on the processes of getting help. for instance, when we discussed including evidence to suggest that mental health treatment (donaldson, spirito, & espiritosmythers, 2005; wood, trainor, rothwell, moore, & harrington, 2001) can help to reduce suicidal tendencies, participants informed us that we would first need to address issues of stigma around help-seeking behaviors. thus, we made a conscientiousness effort to normalize this process. additionally, participants spoke of negative experiences of family members with professional providers which is concerning given that lack of family involvement and engagement between parent and therapist can be a barrier to treatment adherence, retention, and outcomes (garcia & weisz, 2002; hawley & weisz, 2005; karver et al., 2006). in response, we infused strategies and steps on how families can collaboratively work together with professionals in the community. this approach, which is based on the principles of family-driven care (osher et al., 2008), emphasizes to family members that they have the right to be involved in their child’s care, can help design service programs, and to, more importantly, find or help develop services that best meet the needs of their child and family. participants also believed that families needed to become more aware of the various roles they can play to help prevent suicide. they conveyed that, regardless of the type of role families assume, whether one becomes a suicide prevention advocate or a trusted adult who provides a listening ear to a youth in crisis, families can help to prevent youth suicide by just getting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 62 involved. in response to this input, steps on how families can get involved in suicide prevention activities and efforts at different levels were included in the family guide. throughout this multi-stage process of conceptualizing, planning, and developing the family guide, participants eagerly shared their stories, barriers, and struggles. for many, the process was both empowering and inspiring. participants came to realize that their experiences could be a source of strength for others and thus they wanted to be able to do more. they took pride in knowing that they could help and direct others to learn how to prevent suicide. it was impressive to go through this process together and watch as each community member transformed into a suicide prevention advocate. in thinking about this process, we realized that we, as community researchers, not only learned from one another content relative to creating a guide on youth suicide prevention, but we also learned valuable methods on how to partner with communities to prevent suicide. fundamentally, this partnership promoted a co-learning and empowering environment for us all (israel et al., 1998). limitations and directions for future research although one of the major strengths of this initiative was the extensive involvement of community participants, it should be noted that there were some limitations in the methodology and approach. for one, due to limitations imposed by federal funding, both time and resources prohibited the implementation of more of a community-based participatory research (cbpr) design. we acknowledge that a power imbalance existed at the start of the project, in that the project was initiated and led by an experienced group of suicide prevention researchers. however, through ongoing member checking and advisory committee consultation, we believe that we were able to greatly reduce this power differential. similar barriers and challenges in conducting cbpr studies have been recognized (flicker et al., 2008; israel et al., 1998). given that a cbpr approach can help to enrich the quality and outcomes of research (minkler, 2005), future studies should consider utilizing this approach throughout all stages of the research process, especially among individuals who represent different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic strata. this in turn may help to capture broader cultural and community perspectives. additional information may also be gleaned by targeting other nonfamily members who have frequent contact with youth and their families. engaging school personnel, such as teachers, counselors, and coaches, could provide insight into school-based strategies to help youth at risk of suicide and their families. future efforts could also capture the perspectives and experiences of at-risk suicidal youths as such information may provide a richer understanding of the youth experience and their perceptions of what it is like to talk about suicide with family members. constraints in time and resources also led to the recruitment of a relatively small sample, most of whom were white women. therefore, future research should be directed at reaching a larger and more diverse sample of community members. as a beginning to this process, the family guide has been translated into spanish in an effort to expand its utility and encourage feedback from more diverse cultural perspectives. moreover, since creating the family guide, some family members have asked for different types of media or other ways for families to access this type of information. we are currently in the process of working with the community to address this need. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 63 implications for youth suicide prevention programming and research this article provides an example of how to engage and partner with community participants throughout the stages of planning, developing, implementing, and disseminating a community-based suicide prevention effort. while our approach is not the only way to engage and work with the community, we believe that others, especially in the field of suicide prevention, can learn from the principles we incorporated into our work. by partnering with community members to create interventions, policy-makers and program developers have greater potential to design policies, programs, and tools that the community would be more receptive to and want to be involved with. as ferguson (2003) notes, effective practices and policies derive from working with and obtaining feedback from community stakeholders. failure to work with community members as equals not only marginalizes or discredits their contributions, but it also limits the scope and relevancy of prevention programs as communities are much more likely to be receptive to an effort they are involved in creating rather than one that is imposed upon them by outside sources. this is true for research as well. engaging consumers in the research process can help to redefine traditional ways of conducting research. this process gives researchers the opportunity to design and implement studies that are relevant, practical, and feasible (turnbull, friesen, & ramirez, 1998). community engagement, participation, and ownership are key attributes in helping to ensure that programs, as well as research, are developmentally and culturally appropriate to the target population (bond & carmola hauf, 2004). in fact, community collaboration and partnership building through mutual interest, goal setting, respect, and sharing of resources also appear to be staples for successful adoption and adaptation of prevention programs (green et al., 2001). by utilizing the principles of family-driven care and cbr to guide our work, we were able to capture the shared experiences and voices of the community. as a result, this enabled us to (a) identify a critical community need and gap in suicide prevention; (b) develop collaborative partnerships with community members; (c) mobilize community members to become involved in various stages of a family-driven initiative for youth suicide prevention; and (d) advance the field of suicide prevention by creating a user-friendly educational resource for families of at-risk suicidal youth. conclusion it is essential for community participants to be at the forefront of prevention programs and initiatives from the very beginning. in our experience with developing the family guide, we found that the inclusion of community participants – their experiences, knowledge, wisdom, and perspectives – guided us to develop a prevention effort that was relevant to the needs of youth and families. this was evident by the extremely positive responses to the family guide that we received from the community. as the field of suicide prevention moves forward, it is important that policy-makers, program developers, and community researchers integrate principles of family-driven care and cbr into their work. it is likely that these principles will be critical to the sustainability of current and future youth suicide prevention efforts. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 64 references bond, l. a., & carmola hauf, a. m. 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(2001). randomized trial of group therapy for repeated deliberate self-harm in adolescents. journal of american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 41(11), 1246–1253. text box http://dx.doi.org/10.2511/rpsd.23.3.178 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.11.135 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/her/cym018 text box http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200111000-00003 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 47–69 69 table 1. 12 primary content areas included in the family guide level of importance of content (1) adequacy of content description (2) m sd m sd warning signs of suicide 5.00 .00 2.86 .38 adolescent behaviors vs. risk factors 5.00 .00 2.86 .38 promote emotional well-being 4.86 .38 2.71 .49 communicate with at-risk youth 4.86 .38 3.00 .00 empower parents/families 4.86 .38 3.00 .00 assessing resources 4.71 .49 2.86 .38 awareness of stigma and denial 4.71 .49 2.83 .41 monitoring behavior of at-risk youth 4.71 .49 2.71 .49 steps to get help 4.57 .53 3.00 .58 work with professionals in the community 4.57 .53 2.86 .38 involved in suicide prevention-local 4.43 .53 3.00 .00 involved in suicide prevention-state 3.71 .76 2.86 .38 note. 1range is from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important). 2 adequacy of content: scores ranged from 1 (“not enough information”) to 5 (“too much information”). a score of 3 is indicative of content areas containing “just right information.” introduction to the special issue on youth suicide prevention: research, policy, and practice international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 1–3 1 introduction to the special issue on youth suicide prevention: research, policy, and practice jennifer white, co-editor, and patti ranahan, guest co-editor we are pleased to introduce this special issue of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (ijcyfs) on youth suicide prevention. this issue brings together a diverse and exciting range of perspectives on the topic of youth suicide prevention. original research, theoretical contributions, and critical reflections on practice are all represented here, underscoring the importance of multiple and collaborative approaches to addressing youth suicide, which is a leading cause of death among this age group. we begin the issue with a series of groundbreaking original research articles on youth suicide prevention. first, patti ranahan examines child and youth care professionals’ observational practices in the article, watching in child and youth care suicide interventions: the potential for observation practices to be disengaging. in this grounded theory study, ranahan illuminates the complexities and intricacies of the common practice of observation in situations where youth are suicidal. then chelsea ohlmann, janelle kwee, and robert lees report the findings from their qualitative study, which emphasizes the importance of youth participation in suicide prevention efforts. their article, listening for the voices of resilience: a group of adolescents’ experiences with a suicide prevention education program describes a novel methodology for capturing the voices of young people which has important implications for practice. next, kim gryglewicz, meredith elzy, renee brown, krista kutash, and marc karver jennifer white, ed.d., co-editor of the international journal of child, youth and family studies, is an associate professor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: jhwhite@uvic.ca patti ranahan, ph.d., guest co-editor of this special issue, is an assistant professor in the department of applied human sciences at concordia university, 7141 sherbrooke st. west, montréal, québec, canada, h4b 1r6. e-mail: patti.ranahan@concordia.ca mailto:pranahan@alcor.concordia.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 1–3 2 present results from their community-based research project in their article, it’s time to talk about it: utilizing a community-based research approach to develop a family guide for youth suicide prevention. the authors developed a family guide as a resource to enhance awareness in youth suicide prevention. this is an area that has not received much attention to date and represents an important contribution to our field. another series of research articles focuses on specific groups, many of which experience disproportionately high rates of suicidal behaviour compared with the general population. in their article, family and youth vulnerability to suicidal behavior in first nations: a comparison of reserve and non-reserve groups, michel tousignant, nathalie morin, livia vitenti, antoine bibaud de serres, and arlene laliberté examine the particular vulnerability of aboriginal youth to suicide. their findings suggest that prevention initiatives that include a focus on ecological factors and promote parental empowerment through family interventions are likely to hold promise. in the next article, school-based strategies to reduce suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and discrimination among sexual minority and heterosexual adolescents in western canada, youth in school are the primary focus. elizabeth saewyc, chiaki konishi, hilary rose, and yuko homma explore the relationship between the implementation of school-based programs and policies to prevent anti-homophobic bullying, and the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, mostly heterosexual, and exclusively heterosexual young people. results of their analysis of a province-wide survey in british columbia suggest that school-level interventions, such as gay straight alliances, may be an effective approach to reducing risks for suicide among sexual minority youth, while also offering prevention benefits for heterosexual boys. shelley craig, lauren mcinroy, ramona alaggia, and lance mccready offer an in-depth critique of an online video project from the perspectives of sexual minority youth in their article, “like picking up a seed, but you haven’t planted it”: queer youth analyze the it gets better project. using a grounded theory approach, craig and colleagues found that the it gets better project may raise awareness on bullying and suicide, however it has limitations for young people experiencing significant distress. we close our section on specific populations with a comprehensive literature review conducted by anne rhodes, jennifer bethell, and lil tonmyr entitled, child sexual abuse and youth suicide: a review of the evidence with implications for future research. in this article the authors examine the evidence for potential sex differences in the association between child sexual abuse and suicide. they conclude that the relationship between child sexual abuse and youth suicide remains unclear and the potential sex differences in the association remain largely unaddressed. the next set of articles focus on practice. first, lyndsay wells provides an historical account of the development and implementation of two youth suicide prevention programs offered within school settings, also in british columbia, canada. in her article, connection and relational engagement in a youth suicide prevention program, wells emphasizes the need to pay attention to the space that is created between students and practitioners in suicide education. next, kees maas offers a practitioner’s account of the implementation of a provincial suicidal prevention protocol in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(1): 1–3 3 province of quebec. his article, suicide prevention in child welfare: the quebec experience protecting children and staff explores the impact of standardizing approaches and defining interdependent levels and supports when intervening in situations where young people are suicidal. finally, the importance of enhancing family wellness through community engagement with aboriginal communities is explored in the article by darien thira. his article, aboriginal youth suicide prevention: a post-colonial community-based approach describes the core elements of a youth suicide prevention program, which has been offered within aboriginal communities over the past 20 years. the final article is a provocative theoretical piece by scott kouri and jennifer white entitled, thinking the other side of youth suicide: engagements with life. this article invites us to consider “new spaces for thinking” and sets the stage for novel approaches to theorizing youth suicide and suicide prevention. collectively, all of the authors in this special issue showcase the value of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on this complex and challenging issue, thus extending our current knowledge of youth suicide prevention, practice, policy, and research. a comprehensive review of the literature on the impact of exposure to intimate partner violence for children and youth international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 493 a comprehensive review of the literature on the impact of exposure to intimate partner violence for children and youth sibylle artz, margaret a. jackson, katherine r. rossiter, alicia nijdam-jones, istván géczy, and sheila porteous abstract: children living in homes where intimate partner violence occurs are often exposed to such violence through witnessing, seeing its effects, hearing about it, or otherwise being made aware that violence is taking place between parents or caregivers. exposure to intimate partner violence is considered to be a form of child maltreatment, and affected children are often also the victims of targeted child abuse. this paper presents findings from a comprehensive review of the literature on the impact of exposure to intimate partner violence for children and youth, focusing on: (a) neurological disorders; (b) physical health outcomes; (c) mental health challenges; (d) conduct and behavioural problems; (e) delinquency, crime, and victimization; and (f) academic and employment outcomes. the notion of cascading effects informed our framework and analysis as it became evident that the individual categories of impacts were not only closely related to one another, but in a dynamic fashion also influence each other in multiple and interconnected ways over time. the research reviewed clearly shows that children who are exposed to intimate partner violence are at significant risk for lifelong negative outcomes, and the consequences are felt widely in society. keywords: children, domestic violence, exposure, intimate partner violence, witnessing, youth acknowledgements: this project was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council. portions of this article were presented at the 2012 national research day conference in vancouver, canada. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 494 sibylle artz, ph.d. (the corresponding author) is a professor in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: sartz@uvic.ca margaret a. jackson, ph.d. is a professor emerita in the school of criminology at simon fraser university and director at the freda centre for research on violence against women and children, 515 west hastings street, vancouver, british columbia, canada, v6b 5k3. email: margarej@sfu.ca katherine r. rossiter, ph.d. is an adjunct professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, and postdoctoral fellow and associate director at the freda centre for research on violence against women and children, 515 west hastings street, vancouver, british columbia, canada, v6b 5k3. e-mail: rossiter@sfu.ca alicia nijdam-jones, m.a. is a research associate at the freda centre for research on violence against women and children, 515 west hastings street, vancouver, british columbia, canada, v6b 5k3. e-mail: ahn@sfu.ca istván géczy, ph.d. is a psychology instructor at northern lights college, 9820 – 120th avenue, fort st. john, british columbia, canada, v1j 6k1. e-mail: igeczy@nlc.bc.ca sheila porteous, b.a. is a child, youth, and family counsellor at beacon community services and a master’s student in the school of child and youth care at the university of victoria, p.o. box 1700, stn csc, victoria, british columbia, canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: sheilap2@uvic.ca mailto:sartz@uvic.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 495 table of contents introduction ............................................................................................................................... 496 family violence and child maltreatment in canada ........................................................................ 496 research on children’s exposure to intimate partner violence ...................................................... 497 need for a comprehensive review ...................................................................................................... 499 literature review methodology ........................................................................................................ 501 neurological disorders ............................................................................................................. 502 neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment ...................................................... 504 neurobiological regulation in infants exposed to ipv .................................................................... 505 physical health outcomes ........................................................................................................ 512 health conditions and use of health services .................................................................................. 514 nutritional status and mortality ......................................................................................................... 516 mental health challenges: internalizing and externalizing issues ..................................... 517 mediators in the relationship between ipv exposure and behaviour problems ............................ 521 attention problems .............................................................................................................................. 524 conduct and behavioural problems ....................................................................................... 525 substance misuse................................................................................................................................. 526 delinquency, crime, and victimization .................................................................................. 537 developmental pathways ..................................................................................................................... 539 parenting and delinquency ................................................................................................................. 540 interpersonal victimization ................................................................................................................. 544 academic and employment outcomes ................................................................................... 545 academic outcomes ............................................................................................................................. 546 employment outcomes ........................................................................................................................ 550 conclusions: the weight of the evidence .............................................................................. 552 limitations ........................................................................................................................................... 555 references .................................................................................................................................. 558 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 496 introduction in the early 1980s, the parliament of canada had established an all-party committee to address the problem of domestic violence and shelters. on may 12, 1982, margaret mitchell, ndp member of parliament [mp] for vancouver east, rose in the house of commons to ask the minister responsible for the status of women why there were not more shelters for battered women. she began by noting that the parliamentary report tabled in the house the day before stated that one in 10 women was beaten by their husband. the mostly male house did not take the statement seriously and a ripple of laughter was heard from all sides of the house. one mp declared, “i don’t beat my wife”. women across the country were angry, prompting an apology from the house to canadian women (see house of commons debates, 1982, p. 17334). family violence and child maltreatment in canada in canada, as in every country in the world, violence that is committed against family members is seen as a serious and pervasive issue, although this has not always been the case. as recorded in the latest report on family violence released by statistics canada (sinha, 2013), the total number of police-reported family violence crimes (including dating violence) in 2011 was 94,839, a number that constitutes 25.5% of all violent crime for that year. more than 69% of the victims of family violence crimes were female (65,587) rather than male (29,252). despite the ominous and inescapable presence of family violence in everyday life, it has only been within the past 30 years that the perception of violence, aggression, and threats against family members has changed from being considered a private matter within the family to being recognized as a serious crime (sinha, 2013). the link between the experience of abuse by family members, mostly parents, and negative outcomes for children and youth has been under discussion at least since sheldon and eleanor glueck (1950) published their seminal work on the subject in the decade after the end of the second world war. however, the connection between the abuse of children and youth, the general level of violence in a family, and the perpetration of violence upon intimate partners, most often mothers, was not seen as a core issue until the 1980s. in the aftermath of the second wave of feminism and growing public awareness of the plight of abused women and their children, attention turned specifically to the effects on children of exposure to intimate partner violence (ipv) (bedi & goddard, 2007; carlson, 1984). as bedi and goddard (2007) note, “although it has long been recognized that different forms of violence may co-exist […] research addressing the overlap between ipv and child abuse is a relatively recent phenomenon” (p. 67). bedi and goddard reviewed 117 research articles on the co-occurrence of ipv and targeted child abuse, examined the possible reasons for the overlap, and summarized the impacts on children of living with ipv and child abuse. they conclude that the “substantial overlap between families in which targeted child abuse occurs and those characterized by ipv has resulted in a population of doubly traumatised children” (p. 72). based on their findings, they suggest that exposure to ipv is itself a form of child abuse – a position already enshrined in child protection policy in new south wales, australia. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 497 children living in homes with domestic violence are often exposed to this violence, through witnessing physical violence between parents or caregivers, seeing the effects of violence (e.g., injuries, broken furniture), hearing about violence, or otherwise being made aware of this violence. children’s exposure to ipv also includes “being used as a tool of the perpetrator” (olofsson, lindqvist, gådin, bråbäck, & danielsson, 2011, p. 89). research tells us that families experiencing domestic violence are more likely than non-violent families to have children present (bedi & goddard, 2007). young children are especially likely to bear witness to violence in the home, and also to experience abuse and neglect themselves – two problems that often cooccur and may contribute to negative outcomes for children, in a range of arenas (carpenter & stacks, 2009; herrenkohl, sousa, tajima, herrenkohl, & moylan, 2008). it is increasingly recognized that witnessing family violence is as harmful as experiencing it directly. often parents believe that they have shielded their children from spousal violence, but research shows that children see or hear some 40% to 80% of it and that these children suffer the same consequences as those who are abused directly (royal canadian mounted police, 2012). saltzman, holden, and holahan (2005) even drew the conclusion that the “psychological scars” borne by children who are exposed to violent interactions between their parents could be more detrimental than those of children who had been the direct targets of physical abuse by a parent. research on children’s exposure to intimate partner violence research on children’s exposure to ipv has grown significantly over the past 30 years, though it is still less developed than research on other problems such as child abuse and maltreatment (wolfe, crooks, lee, mcintyre-smith, & jaffe, 2003). the first case studies of the effects of domestic violence exposure on children emerged in the late 1970s, with the initial empirical studies published in the early 1980s. what is referred to as the “first wave” of research in this area has been criticized for its serious methodological limitations, while the “second wave” of research – literature published since the early 1990s – is considered to be much more sophisticated (evans, davies, & dilillo, 2008). a number of early reviews were published on the effects of children’s exposure to domestic violence (e.g., fantuzzo & lindquist, 1989; kolbo, blakely, & engleman, 1996), with several more published since the year 2000 generally reporting on research from the 1990s or later, though a few include literature dating back as far as the late 1960s and 1970s. it is clear from the available research that ipv can have an enduring adverse effect on diverse domains of children’s development, even if children are only indirectly exposed to domestic conflicts, for example, by observing the incident, experiencing the aftermath, or hearing about the event (holden, 2003). the pervasive influence of the problem is illustrated by the fact that in the united states alone an estimated 10 million children are exposed to ipv each year, and children under 6 years of age are more likely to be affected than older children (carpenter & stacks, 2009). data collected on 7,865 children and their families by the british office for national statistics found that 4.3% (n = 340) of these children had witnessed severe incidents of domestic violence, and that witnessing ipv was the third most frequently reported trauma for children (meltzer, doos, vostanis, ford, & goodman, 2009). of the children who witnessed severe domestic violence, 30% also experienced another traumatic event such as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 498 witnessing violence against their family members or friends, or experiencing a serious and frightening accident (meltzer et al., 2009). international data suggest an undeniable link between childhood exposure to ipv and adverse life outcomes (ackerson & subramanian, 2008; roustit et al., 2009). in their retrospective cohort study of 3,023 adult participants in paris, roustit et al. (2009) found that individuals who witnessed domestic violence during childhood were 44% and 75% more likely to develop symptoms of depression and alcohol dependence, respectively. roustit et al. (2009) also observed, moreover, that the association between childhood exposure to ipv and domestic violence perpetration is the strongest. the presence of ipv elevated the risk of perpetrating ipv and child abuse by more than three times and almost five times, respectively. child maltreatment in canada has been acknowledged as a public health concern (afifi, 2011). for instance, the canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect (cis report), a comprehensive nationwide study conducted in 2008 on the physical and psychological health of canadian children, found that almost 150,000 children were either maltreated or were at risk of future maltreatment (public health agency of canada, 2010). the cis report also revealed that exposure to ipv appears to be the most common form of abuse affecting nearly 30,000 children of the 85,000 cases where investigations revealed substantiated maltreatment (categories included sexual abuse, neglect, emotional maltreatment, and exposure to ipv). intervention from child welfare services, on the other hand, is less likely to occur when the child is affected by ipv compared to other forms of maltreatment (black, trocmé, fallon, & maclaurin, 2008). researchers have hence concluded that the “canadian child welfare system is substantiating exposure to domestic violence but is concluding that these families do not require ongoing child welfare services” (black et al., 2008, p. 403). this position, however, can be contrasted with converging new evidence that early-onset exposure to domestic violence is associated with maladaptive courses of child development culminating in a less optimal outlook through the entire lifespan (carpenter & stacks, 2009; yount, digirolamo, & ramakrishnan, 2011). in much the same vein, the cis report concluded that an abusive family environment is linked to a high incidence of adjustment problems among canadian children of all ages in the domains of social conduct, intellectual/academic performance, mental health (i.e., anxiety, hyperactivity), and attachment (public health agency of canada, 2010). corroborating data from a meta-analysis of 60 related studies published between 1990 and 2006 – drawing mainly on samples from locations in the united states – also indicate that mental health and behavioural problems in children (i.e., internalizing and externalizing behaviours) are moderately associated with violence exposure at home (evans et al., 2008). finally, wood and sommers (2011) have argued that the severity of symptoms may worsen if children are exposed to multiple types of family violence, also often referred to as the dual exposure or “double whammy” effect (moylan et al., 2010). exposure to maltreatment may endanger children’s physical and psychosocial development, particularly if families have insufficient support (noll & shenk, 2010). although child abuse is thought to be the most severe form of maltreatment, exposure to ongoing disputes and adversities between parents or international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 499 caregivers in the home environment, such as ipv, are known to have severe detrimental effects on the developing infant (for recent reviews of the literature see adams, 2006; buckley, holt, & whelan, 2007; carpenter & stacks, 2009; evans et al., 2008; holt, buckley, & whelan, 2008; howell, 2011; wood & sommers, 2011; yount et al., 2011). to summarize the main points of these arguments, research emanating from the last two decades attests that children are often exposed to different forms of domestic violence simultaneously (i.e., directly experiencing as well as witnessing abuse, see margolin & vickerman, 2011; moylan et al., 2010), yet exposure to ipv has an independent contribution to symptoms of maladaptive child development (carpenter & stacks, 2009; yount et al., 2011). the majority of the review articles published recently focus on the effects of children’s exposure to intimate partner or inter-parental violence and aggression, while some have a broader definition of “family violence” that includes other types of violence, such as child abuse, sibling violence, and even violence towards pets (e.g., martin, 2002). other reviews include both exposure to inter-parental violence and direct victimization (e.g., bedi & goddard, 2007; chan & yeung, 2009; herrenkohl et al., 2008; sternberg, baradaran, abbott, lamb, & guterman, 2006), in an effort to compare groups of children who are exposed to violence, those experiencing it directly, and those who both witness and experience violence themselves. research in this area has focused on a range of child outcomes including the following: delays in neurological development (carpenter & stacks, 2009); health outcomes and use of health services (bair-merritt, blackstone, & feudtner, 2006; wood & sommers, 2011); internalizing and externalizing problems or behaviours (bedi & goddard, 2007; evans et al., 2008; martin, 2002; sternberg, baradaran, et al., 2006; wolfe et al., 2003); trauma symptoms or ptsd (bedi & goddard, 2007; evans et al., 2008); adjustment and developmental problems (chan & yeung, 2009; herrenkohl et al., 2008; holt et al., 2008; rhoades, 2008); and academic and social outcomes (fowler & chanmugam, 2007). it is clear from the literature that both targeted child abuse and exposure to ipv contribute substantively to an array of problematic outcomes for children and youth. however, not all children experience adverse effects, and it remains unclear which children are at the greatest risk for which negative outcomes, or not at risk despite their exposure to domestic violence in all its forms. need for a comprehensive review as society can incur significant costs from both child abuse and maltreatment, prevention efforts should begin with a basic understanding of the factors which mediate or moderate the effect of early-onset exposure to domestic violence (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000; noll & shenk, 2010). until quite recently, however, in mainstream research “pathways between marital conflict and children’s development have typically been illuminated by means of a mediating effect of parenting […] few have explored direct links between marital discord and emerging physiological and emotional regulation indexes in infancy” (porter, wouden-miller, silva, & porter, 2003, p. 298). careful inspection of six comprehensive papers from the field (reviews and meta-analyses) published since 2008 shows, indeed, that neurodevelopmental implications of witnessing domestic violence are addressed, to a certain extent, in only two of these articles (carpenter & stacks, 2009; yount et al., 2011) but ignored in the rest (evans et al., 2008; holt et international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 500 al., 2008; howell, 2011; wood & sommers, 2011). although both neuroscientists and social scientists consider human development a focal point in their research interest (nelson & bloom, 1997), cross-fertilization between the two disciplines has just recently begun to facilitate a broader understanding of how “children’s competencies develop across multiple domains and progress along a trajectory of critical stages in a web of complex transactions among environmental and ontogenic characteristics” (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000, p. 71). in a comprehensive review of the psychobiological literature on childhood maltreatment, published between 1990 and 2007, grassi-oliveira, ashy, and stein (2008) found strong support for a direct link between children’s exposure to abuse or neglect and neurodevelopmental abnormalities in brain structures implicated in memory formation (hippocampus), emotional regulation (amygdala), inter-hemispheric communication (corpus callosum), and executive functions (prefrontal cortex). furthermore, a series of carefully designed neuroimaging and endocrinological studies on infants with institutionalized backgrounds, representing the most extreme form of social and emotional deprivation, has found evidence of: (a) diminished white matter connectivity in higher cortical areas controlling emotional impulses; (b) lowered levels of hormones (oxytocin and vasopressin) linked to affiliative or positive social behaviours; as well as (c) dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions that mediate a complex array of physiological responses related to stress reactivity such as hormone production (e.g., glucocorticoid, denver & crespi, 2006) and emotionality (bos et al., 2011). finally, findings from the adverse childhood experiences (ace) study 1 indicate a dose-response relationship between severity of abusive childhood experiences and the number of comorbid outcomes in adult life (anda et al., 2006). specifically, individuals reporting the greatest number of childhood adversities at the baseline survey (i.e., those with the highest ace scores) had, on average, three times more comorbid health-related conditions as adults than those with few adverse childhood experiences (i.e., those with the lowest ace scores). by contrast, those who obtained a moderate ace score suffered twice as many comorbid health outcomes as those who were not exposed to adversity in the home as a child (anda et al., 2006). collectively, these studies illustrate clearly that chronic exposure to multiple sources of childhood maltreatment would be related to an accumulated effect on the individual with lifelong consequences that often manifest years after the exposure. in addition, a major implication of the ace study is the proposed convergence of evidence from epidemiological and neurobiological data. for example, dysfunctional short-term memory (stm) processes observed in adults who were regularly exposed to abuse (bremner et al., 1995) or severe social deprivation (bos, fox, zeanah, & nelson, 2009) during infancy could be related to reduced volume in their brain structures (hippocampus) (mccrory, de brito, & viding, 2011). similarly, evidence on 1 the ace study (see anda et al., 2006) is a large scale population-based epidemiological study in the united states (n = 17,337) to assess the relationship between childhood exposure to maltreatment and its effect in adulthood, measured in terms of indicators of physical and mental illness and high-risk behaviours. the study combines retrospective reports of adverse childhood experiences at baseline and prospective follow-up of the study cohort on diverse health outcomes that include incidence of diseases, health care utilization, premature mortality and causes of death. ace scores are composite values calculated by summing the five different forms of aces to which the person recalled being exposed in the household as a child (alcohol or other substances, mental illness, violent treatment of mother or stepmother, criminal behaviour, and parental separation). current health outcomes of the respondents included categories of mental health and somatic disturbances as well as substance abuse and sexuality. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 501 heightened risk for externalizing behaviours such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and conduct disorder (bos et al., 2011), or elevated aggression (evans et al., 2008) in individuals exposed to adversities during their infancy, is consistent with neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies demonstrating a marked reduction in the size of the prefrontal cortex (i.e., the most advanced cortical structure mediating executive functions and controlling emotions) in individuals with a history of childhood adversity (mccrory et al., 2011). such shared findings might have the “potential to unify and improve our understanding of many seemingly unrelated, but often co-morbid health and social problems that have historically been seen and treated as categorically independent in the western culture” (anda et al., 2006, p. 181). this perspective is within the developmental ecological approach (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000), which views a particular trajectory of child development as an “emerging property” (i.e., a unique outcome of life perspective) and as a web of complex interactions between individual factors and environmental characteristics (hertzman, 2012). the developmental ecological model allows for accounts of lifelong phenotypic variations postulating a subtle interplay between early childhood experiences and the person’s neurobiological variables. for example, health conditions common in adulthood (e.g., diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases) have typically been assumed to result from lifestyle issues or poor adherence to dietary guidelines. it is less well known, however, that each of these illnesses, along with many others, might emerge as a result of exposure to adverse childhood experiences in the family environment (boyce, sokolowski, & robinson, 2012; hertzman, 2012; shonkoff, boyce, & mcewen, 2009). applying the developmental ecological perspective presents a useful research strategy as “understanding the multiple etiologies and sequelae of domestic violence requires the use of comprehensive conceptual models that bring together multiple theoretical perspectives under a broad umbrella” (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000, p. 70). literature review methodology in this narrative review of the recent literature, we summarize the current research on the effects on children and youth of the “adversity package” (jirapramukpitak, harpham, & prince, 2011); that is, the “family burden” (kassis, artz, & moldenhauer, 2013) of exposure to domestic violence. domestic violence, or intimate partner violence, can be defined as “patterns of assaultive and coercive behaviors that adults use against their intimate partners” (holden, 2003, p. 155). we use these terms interchangeably throughout this paper, and use the term “family violence” to reflect both ipv and child abuse and/or maltreatment. our review examines the specific effects of children’s exposure to ipv in a number of important arenas, and the factors that may influence these outcomes. the review is divided into sections that reflect the main areas of research on family violence and child and youth outcomes: (a) neurological disorders; (b) physical health outcomes; (c) mental health challenges; (d) conduct and behavioural problems; (e) delinquency, crime, and victimization; and (f) academic and employment outcomes. we did not include the already well-reviewed and analyzed public health research on intimate partner violence here because this literature focuses rather more on the impacts of ipv on women than on children. in that regard, we refer readers to the following for a comprehensive overview of the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 502 public health research on the impacts of ipv: afifi (2011), black et al. (2008), public health agency of canada (2010), and varcoe et al. (2011). literature searches for each section of the review were conducted using keywords most relevant to the particular area of focus; for example, “domestic violence” (and synonyms such as family violence, spousal violence, intimate partner violence, inter-parental violence) and children/youth or exposure/witnessing,2 in addition to keywords associated with the outcomes of interest (e.g., neurobiology, physiology, health, illness, hospitalization, mental disorder, substance use, addiction, internalizing, externalizing, conduct, behaviour, crime, delinquency, victimization, education, employment). specific databases searched included: psycinfo (for neurological, mental health, substance misuse, conduct and behavioural, and delinquency and crime outcomes), psycarticles (for mental health and substance misuse outcomes), criminal justice abstracts (for mental health, substance misuse, and conduct and behavioural outcomes), social work abstracts (for delinquency and crime outcomes), ebsco (for employment outcomes), and summon (for physical health and education outcomes). google scholar was also searched for all but two outcome areas (employment and conduct and behavioural problems). the review included english-language articles only and, while the majority were original articles, review articles were also included. the review focused on literature published between 2006 and 2014 in order to capture the latest research on children’s exposure to ipv and avoid replicating recent review articles on the subject, which typically report on original research published before the year 2006. abstracts identified in the literature search were reviewed for relevance and, in most cases, additional articles were identified by scanning the reference lists of articles selected for inclusion. google scholar was used to identify any additional articles that may have been missed in the academic database searches. neurological disorders a useful departure in accounting for the “biological embedding” of individual life experiences is to view development as a series of interactions between genomic and nongenomic factors in a cascading context of events that require the developing individual to continually respond to changing demands in an adaptive manner (hertzman, 2012). although development in humans is exquisitely complex, more so than in even the most advanced nonhuman species, some elementary physiological mechanisms underlying individual variations to early social experiences have probably been conserved (denver & crespi, 2006; hertzman, 2012; kolb, gibb, & robinson, 2003; perry & pollard, 1998; rutter, 2012). specifically, the most critical neurobiological regulatory networks are the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system; together they generate a complex array of adaptive networks of physiological and behavioural responses under stressful conditions that mature over time through close interactions with the physical and social environment.3 therefore, early traumatic 2 the terms “exposure” and “witnessing” are used interchangeably throughout this report when referring to children’s experiences in relation to ipv. 3the autonomic nervous system consists of two complementary parts, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, functioning through the release of two different hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine. while the role of the sympathetic nervous system is to prepare the body for rapid metabolic change and physical movement international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 503 relationship features not only affect the formation of neural circuits in the brain but get mapped into the structure and function of the neuroendocrine system involved in mediating the timing of life history transitions, as well as in generating immune reactions and integrated behavioural responses to stress (denver & crespi, 2006; porter et al., 2003). essentially, “the neuroendocrine system transduces environmental information into developmental and physiologic responses” (denver & crespi, 2006, p. e184). the pace and quality of this neurological development is governed by the complex interaction between environmental forces and neuroendocrine factors in children. organ maturation in intrauterine life, including the fetal brain and nervous system, can be sped up by the presence of chronic maternal stressors (e.g., socioeconomic, emotional, or nutritional) stimulating precocious maturation of the fetal neurobiological system that regulates physiological and behavioural responses under stress. the proximate benefit of such processes could presumably mean neurobiological adjustment to conditions demanding constant vigilance and readiness, but the distal cost is significant as the underlying physiological stress-response system is tuned to an environment in which the cost of survival is altered neuroendocrine activities, reduced body size, and lifelong susceptibilities to diseases (e.g., obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes), along with negative behavioural and mental conditions (e.g., externalizing and internalizing problems such as aggression, anxiety, and depression) and higher mortality rates (for a summary see denver & crespi, 2006; perry & pollard, 1998). this research highlights the critical role that early attachment relationships play in the development of neurobiological regulatory mechanisms because elevated cortisol levels early in life are associated with structural and functional impairments in various domains (danese & mcewen, 2012; hertzman, 2012; mccrory et al., 2011). more specifically, danese and mcewen (2012) outline three brain structures critically affected by elevated cortisol production associated with chronic exposure to severe stress coming from adverse family environments (i.e., allostatic overload). first, anatomical alterations in the prefrontal cortex precipitate a host of behavioural conditions such as impaired attention, and problems with emotional control and executive functioning. second, structural changes in the amygdala increase the risk of heightened sensitivity to unlearned fear and fear conditioning. finally, stress-related reduction in the hippocampus is associated with impaired memory processes in the declarative, contextual, and spatial domains. taken together, findings from animal and human studies provide converging evidence that the stress-response system is a “phylogenetically ancient signaling system” keeping track of salient interpersonal relationships and converting them to specific patterns of underlying neurochemical dynamics (denver & crespi, 2006, p. e187). given that early adverse experiences from the social environment might have long-term consequences by mapping into the architecture of the developing neurobiological apparatus, the biological cost paid by those under stressful conditions, the parasympathetic nervous system is associated with opposite tendencies of energy conservation and relaxation. balance between those two parts of the autonomic nervous system is essential for adaptive functioning. through the release of a series of different hormones, on the other hand, the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis has a slower but more enduring effect on the body. in general, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity results in increased metabolic rate in structures required for action (e.g., heart and skeletal muscles) along with suppressed expenditure in those ones that are not of immediate concern under conditions of acute stress (e.g., digestion and immune responses). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 504 who suffer from these conditions can have far reaching consequences long after the timing of the traumatizing childhood relationship. neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment based on research on the neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment, we know that: 1. early socialization plays a critical role in the structural and functional development of the brain (danese & mcewen, 2012; grassi-oliveira et al., 2008; mccrory et al., 2011; shonkoff et al., 2009; teicher, 2000). 2. the most influential of all social interactions is the relationship with primary caregivers in the family (harlow, dodsworth, & harlow, 1965) with direct implications for the emergence of neurobiological architecture in the infant (anda et al., 2006; carpenter & stacks, 2009; saltzman et al., 2005; yount et al., 2011). 3. being subjected on a regular basis to abusive, neglectful, or severely stressful conditions within the parent-child relationship significantly elevates the risk of experiencing lifelong deterioration both in physical and mental health (adams, 2006; cummings, el-sheikh, kouros, & buckhalt, 2009; katz, 2007; rigterink, katz, & hessler, 2010; roustit et al., 2009). 4. delayed effects of early adverse experiences on health and well-being are mediated through various neuroanatomical (choi, jeong, polcari, rohan, & teicher, 2012), neuroendocrine (engert et al., 2010; sturge-apple, davies, cicchetti, & manning, 2012), and epigenetic factors (essex et al., 2013; mcdermott, dawes, prom-wormley, eaves, & hatemi, 2013). at least four main arguments can be made in favour of widening the breadth of research in the domain of family violence. first, many more children witness the effects of ipv than become the target of domestic violence (adams, 2006). second, different forms of abuse might be associated with distinct mechanisms inflicting damage (margolin & vickerman, 2011). third, although a growing body of literature illustrates the psychosocial and neurodevelopmental sequelae of child abuse and neglect (anda et al., 2006; shonkoff, 2003; wood & sommers, 2011), scholars have just recently made attempts to examine how exposure to ipv alters developmental trajectories of the infant (carpenter & stacks, 2009; yount et al., 2011). fourth, as deleterious outcomes can be mediated at multiple levels of functioning, experts across diverse disciplines (e.g., social epidemiology, developmental sciences, psychopathology, neurosciences, and molecular genetics) should integrate their efforts to address the issue of domestic violence influencing children’s health and behaviour (margolin & vickerman, 2011; mohr & fantuzzo, 2000; mohr, lutz, fantuzzo, & perry, 2000). a minority of research in the area has emphasized that traumatic experiences in the family do not purely evoke pathological patterns of behavioural and emotional issues but also inflict “bruises and scars” (saltzman et al., 2005, p. 136) in underlying physiological and neuroendocrine mechanisms causing problems which often remain unobservable for years (adams, 2006). despite substantial evidence suggesting that structural and functional alteration in the neuroendocrine system probably represents the most fundamental consequence of family violence (anda et al., 2006; perry & pollard, 1998; shonkoff, 2003), research in this respect lags international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 505 behind investigations concerned with more observable somatic and psychosocial difficulties associated with children’s exposure to ipv (carpenter & stacks, 2009; yount et al., 2011). the aim of this foundational section of the current review is, therefore, to fill this gap of knowledge by focusing specifically on the neurobiological correlates of early-onset exposure to domestic violence. several themes arise from a critical review of this body of research including: (a) cortisol production as a measure of variation in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity; (b) patterns of activation in the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system; and (c) other neurobiological correlates (e.g., white matter abnormalities and epigenetic regulation of neurochemical synthesis). neurobiological regulation in infants exposed to ipv animal and human studies have provided ample evidence that adverse early environments (e.g., lack of parental care, emotional neglect, insufficient nursing) can cause profound alterations in the activities of the sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis constituting the fundamental elements of a highly integrated physiological regulatory system evolved to support the individual to effectively deal with imminent demands (danese & mcewen, 2012; kemeny, 2003). hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation. eleven of the 26 articles reviewed in this section assessed hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions in the context of exposure to ipv focusing on patterns of cortisol production (davies, sturge-apple, cicchetti, manning, & vonhold, 2012; davies, sturge-apple, & cicchetti, 2011; davies, sturge-apple, cicchetti, & cummings, 2007, 2008; davies, sturge-apple, cicchetti, manning, & zale, 2009; hibel, granger, blair, cox, & the family life project key investigators, 2009, 2011; koss et al., 2011; stride, geffner, & lincoln, 2008; sturge-apple et al., 2012; towe-goodman, stifter, millskoonce, granger, & the family life project key investigators, 2012). cortisol secretion normally increases as a response to physical and psychological stressors, facilitates the mobilization of resources inside the body, and alters the processing of emotionally charged stimuli. short-term activation of the stress-response system is adaptive with rapid elevation in the cortisol level followed by a return to the normal baseline level. chronic exposure to stressprovoking conditions such as ipv, on the other hand, evokes an environment where the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system calibrates to address recurrent hostilities associated with long-term dysfunction in cortisol regulation (down-regulation or up-regulation) mediating risk for maladaptive patterns of behavioural adjustment (e.g., externalizing and internalizing problems). autonomic nervous system activation. while parental care and the family’s emotional atmosphere profoundly affect the structural and functional properties of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis in the developing infant, this is but one of the three different components of an integrated human stress-response system which is influenced by the quality of the early social environment. el-sheik and colleagues have recently advanced a model highlighting the relationship between exposure to marital conflicts and subsequent developmental psychopathology modulated by individual variations in the functioning of the child’s autonomic nervous system (cummings et al., 2009; el-sheikh & erath, 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2009). the most critical element of the theory lies in the proposition that adaptive/maladaptive patterns of international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 506 physiological and psychological activities within a particular social environment are associated with a highly coordinated and hierarchical neurobiological system involving the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. as the term neural plasticity implicates (kolb et al., 2003), regulatory features of the autonomic nervous system emerge during early childhood “in a perpetuating process of coordinated fine-tuning to meet individual and environmental needs” (el-sheikh et al., 2009, p. 2), shaping individual patterns of emotional and psychosocial characteristics. consistent with this theoretical position, it is suggested that physical, emotional, or sexual maltreatment in the family may result in early physiological and emotional “fine-tuning” to a hostile life-course environment giving rise to behavioural strategies (externalizing and internalizing) not best suited under less hostile social conditions (cummings et al., 2009). nonetheless, individual variations in emotional and physiological responsiveness may also moderate the effect of early maltreatment on children’s behaviour (ellis & boyce, 2011; obradović & boyce, 2009). gordis, feres, olezeski, rabkin, and trickett (2010) have demonstrated, for example, that increased parasympathetic activity measured at the baseline in 12-year-old boys in a laboratory challenge task serves as a protective factor moderating the deleterious effect of an abusive family environment on aggressive tendencies. conversely, other studies indicate that children displaying evidence of diminished fearfulness and behavioural disinhibition more likely manifest externalizing symptoms in the context of harsh parenting if they show signs of lowered sympathetic reactivity (cummings et al., 2009). thirteen of the 26 studies reviewed in this section examined whether witnessing domestic violence was associated with alterations in the development of autonomic regulatory functions. physiological indices of sympathetic nervous system were identified as measures of skin conductance level (el-sheikh, hinnant, & erath, 2011; el-sheikh, keiley, erath, & dyer, 2013; el-sheikh, keller, & erath, 2007; el-sheikh et al., 2009), salivary alpha amylase (gordis, margolin, spies, susman, & granger, 2010), and cardiac activity (davies et al., 2009; stride et al., 2008). the same indices for parasympathetic nervous system function included measures of vagal activity (davies et al., 2009; el-sheikh & hinnant, 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2013; el-sheikh et al., 2009; el-sheikh & whitson, 2006; katz, 2007; moore, 2010; obradović, bush, & boyce, 2011; rigterink et al., 2010). six of the 13 papers reported registering more than one physiological marker of neurobiological regulation (davies et al., 2009; el-sheikh et al., 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2013; el-sheikh et al., 2009; obradović et al., 2011; stride et al., 2008). three cross-sectional studies directly tested sympathetic responses in the context of childhood exposure to marital violence (davies et al., 2009; gordis, margolin, et al., 2010; stride et al., 2008). two of them (gordis, margolin, et al., 2010; stride et al., 2008) provide support for the sensitization hypothesis predicting increased sympathetic nervous system activation associated with repeated exposure to marital conflict (el-sheikh et al., 2009). using college students’ retrospective reports on childhood exposure to abusive environments, for example, stride, geffner, and lincoln (2008) found significantly higher levels of heart rate to stressprovoking conditions in students reporting ipv exposure compared to those reporting no abusive experiences. this result is of particular interest as no other indices used in the study (e.g., cortisol international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 507 and behavioural trauma symptoms) yielded comparable difference with exposure to ipv versus no abuse. contrary to the sensitization hypothesis, on the other hand, davies and colleagues (2009) obtained diminished basal sympathetic nervous system activity in 27-month-old toddlers exposed to ipv. taken together, several pieces of the data reviewed above lend limited support for the view that early experiences of ipv could be associated with emerging regulatory patterns aiming to enhance sensitivity to physiological and behavioural readiness. specifically, witnessing marital discord was associated with: (a) enhanced sympathetic activity at rest (stride et al., 2008) and under conditions of stress (gordis, margolin, et al., 2010); (b) diminished parasympathetic activity at baseline and during a task requiring active engagement along with attenuation of withdrawal of parasympathetic activity in situations involving emotional stress (moore, 2010); and (c) reduced increase of parasympathetic tone at baseline during middle childhood years 4 (rigterink et al., 2010). this line of evidence is consistent with some neurobiological implications of emotional security theory (see cummings et al., 2009) insofar as this theory considers children’s evolving pattern of self-regulatory capacity as an important conduit where experiencing emotional security in the family has an impact on subsequent adjustment functions in life. more specifically, a central tenet of emotional security theory is the proposition that repeated experiences of stressful family conditions, such as marital violence, give rise to emotional insecurity and thereby generate conditions for allostatic 5 load (the wear and tear on the body which grows over time when the individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress), thus reflecting “the price the body pays for being forced to adapt to adverse psychological and physical situations […] or the inefficient operation of the allostasis response systems” (mcewen, 2000, p. 174) . experiencing ipv can “tune” an infant’s neurobiological apparatus to a developmental trajectory characterized by enhanced sympathetic reactivity and concurrently reduced parasympathetic reactivity, generating a state of perpetual physiological readiness (or “sensitization”, see el-sheikh & whitson, 2006) even when no challenge is actually present. at the same time, this developmental trajectory leads to experiencing insufficient mobilization of physiological resources when coping is required (i.e., dampened elevation of sympathetic nervous system accompanied by impaired suppression, or elevation, of parasympathetic nervous system activation to stress). this means the individual is both overreactive and unable to respond (i.e., frozen in a state of readiness to fight). a significant proportion of the data reviewed above, however, remains inconsistent with the sensitization model of autonomic regulations (davies et al., 2009; el-sheikh & hinnant, 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2013; el-sheikh et al., 2009; el-sheikh & whitson, 2006). it is conceivable, on the other hand, that attenuation – instead of augmentation – of baseline readiness develops as part of physiological regulation in the context of marital conflict. as davies et al. (2009) have suggested, “lowering of the set point of the [sympathetic nervous system] may specifically reflect the activation of processes designed to prevent the toxic effects 4 the normative developmental pattern of autonomic regulatory functions includes gradual elevation of resting parasympathetic nervous system tone over the years of childhood. 5 allostasis refers to adaptive variations in physiological outputs (e.g., heart rate and blood pressure) emphasizing the body’s natural ability to regulate different “allostatic” response systems in the service of meeting ambient environmental demands. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 508 of the chronic overarousal in response to threat” (p. 1389). heightened and lowered sensitivities of autonomic self-regulation, however, incur different health costs: heightened and lowered levels of arousal are linked to internalizing and externalizing symptoms, respectively (davies et al., 2009). individual differences in neurobiological sensitivity. research discussed so far provides strong evidence that children’s experiences of parental discord in the early rearing environment are associated with altered neurobiological development resulting in increased odds for negative life outcomes. nonetheless, these findings are insufficient to account for the observation that not every child is equally affected by early adverse influences in the family (belsky, bakermanskranenburg, & van ijzendoorn, 2007; gordis, feres, et al., 2010). one common explanation regarding these discrepancies implies that a particular risk factor (e.g., maltreatment in the family) can be considered as a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of child maladjustment. in other words, a single risk factor usually co-acts interactively with multiple contributors (e.g., genetic, neurobiological, psychosocial, cultural) to produce a developmental outcome in any individual (cicchetti & rogosch, 1996). for instance, although two infants might be equally exposed to early maltreatment, the one that exhibits symptoms of adjustment issues might carry a particular form of genetic polymorphism associated with increased vulnerability to maladaptive behaviours under specific adverse environmental influences (bakermans-kranenburg & van ijzendoorn, 2011; belsky et al., 2007). mona el-sheikh’s recent research program represents one line of study that has applied a multi-system approach to examine patterns of sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system activities together to explain the pathways of individual variations in sensitivities to maladaptive consequences of early exposure to ipv (cummings et al., 2009; el-sheikh & erath, 2011; el-sheikh et al., 2009). in short, the underlying idea is that physiological systems, like the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system, operate in concert. in other words, elements of physiological regulation must function in a synchronized fashion to ensure adaptive behaviour and emotional stability. as autonomic regulation is not yet fully shaped in infancy, chronic stress experienced in the family could result in dysregulated and uncoordinated patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activities that have the potential to forecast problematic behavioural and mental symptoms – that is, externalization and internalization issues – later in life. most importantly, particular patterns of physiological regulation can moderate deleterious effects of ipv on child adjustment (davies et al., 2007). findings of three independent cross-sectional studies by el-sheikh and colleagues reported in the monograph of the society for research in child development summarize four different profiles of physiological regulation explaining individual differences in vulnerability of behavioural symptoms within the framework of domestic stress (el-sheikh et al., 2009). more specifically, low sympathetic activation in children (aged 6 to 12 years) was a vulnerability factor for problem behaviours measured in the context of decreased parasympathetic activation (co-inhibition). in contrast, low sympathetic activation was a protective factor in infants whose concurrent parasympathetic activation was elevated (reciprocal parasympathetic activation). similarly, co-activation (high sympathetic nervous system reactivity and high resting parasympathetic nervous system) and reciprocal sympathetic activation (high sympathetic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 509 nervous system reactivity and low resting parasympathetic nervous system tone) would render infants more and less vulnerable, respectively, to behavioural problems in the context of marital conflicts. a recent longitudinal study conducted by el-sheikh’s group has found evidence of gender difference in children (aged 8 to 10 years) in the relationship between autonomic regulatory patterns and behavioural adjustment issues within the framework of domestic stress (el-sheikh et al., 2013). for example, co-inhibition in girls was a vulnerability factor for behavioural symptoms at each time point of the study if they were exposed to high family conflict. in contrast, co-inhibition in high family conflict environments predicted the sharpest decline of adjustment problems in boys by the age of 10. it is important to note, however, that the two studies published by el-sheik et al., (2013; 2009) used different measures of problem behaviour as the former was focused on externalizing problems (e.g., non-compliance and aggression) whereas the latter assessed internalizing problems (e.g., depression and anxiety). the work conducted by el-sheikh et al., (2013; 2009) is consistent with ecological (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000; mohr et al., 2000) and contextual (steinberg & avenevoli, 2000) perspectives of developmental psychopathology documenting that adjustment problems in children who are exposed to ipv should not be considered as a simple function of toxic environmental conditions. instead, as noted by cicchetti and rogosch (1996), “the meaning of any one attribute, process, or psychopathological condition needs to be considered in light of the complex matrix of individual characteristics, experiences, and social-contextual influences involved, the timing of events and experiences, and the developmental history of the individual” (p. 599). thus, for instance, increased parasympathetic nervous system activation to a laboratory challenge, in conjunction with low sympathetic nervous system responsiveness, can actually serve either as risk for, or protection from, symptoms of behavioural maladjustment in girls from high-conflict homes and boys from low-conflict homes, respectively (el-sheikh et al., 2013). a plausible interpretation for such a finding is that interaction among elements of the neuroendocrine regulatory system reflecting organismic variables as well as the emotional quality of the early rearing environment engenders a “psychobiological fingerprint” (boyce et al., 2001, p. 148) for individual variations in context-specific stress-response matrices. the second avenue of research directly addresses the role of contextual modulation in the relationship between parasympathetic response patterns and developmental consequences of child maltreatment. as a whole, higher resting parasympathetic nervous system activation (i.e., keeping sympathetic control under check) and greater parasympathetic nervous system suppression to challenge (i.e., easing parasympathetic “break” over sympathetic activation) should buffer against negative developmental outcomes (cummings et al., 2009; el-sheikh & erath, 2011), ensuring adaptive neurobiological regulation and readiness to “greater social engagement, exploration, activity, expression of empathy and positive emotion, fewer behavioral problems, better emotional regulation, and less antisocial behavior” (cipriano, skowron, & gatzke-kopp, 2011, p. 206). however, several authors report, on the other hand, that elevated parasympathetic tone at baseline is not a protective factor but actually a risk for problem behaviour if the child is exposed to community violence (scarpa, tanaka, & chiara haden, 2008). to underscore the importance of parasympathetic activity in behavioural adjustment, it international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 510 has been suggested that parasympathetic nervous system control of emotional regulation in childhood reflects a general sensitivity to variations in environmental conditions rather than a stable trait-like emotional predisposition (cipriano et al., 2011). to summarize, childhood exposure to ipv does not unconditionally lead to deleterious developmental outcomes but individual and contextual variations are thoroughly implicated in the process. most importantly, a multisystem approach using concurrent measures of physiological parameters (e.g., parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system) seems to be the most promising as biological regulation is based on integrated activation of different regulatory systems. additionally, physiological systems do not work in a vacuum but exert their influence in particular contexts. hence interactions between contextual parameters (e.g., high-stress and low-stress family environments) and patterns of integrated neurobiological activities are likely to determine individual trajectories of responsiveness in the case of witnessing marital violence at home. structural and epigenetic alterations in the brain. the evidence reviewed so far illustrates that not only can abuse targeting the child be associated with severe developmental outcomes, but also that sole exposure to parental violence (i.e., witnessing family aggression) on a regular basis may be related to impairments in emotional, psychosocial, health-related, and neurobiological functioning. with the advent of improved technology introduced in the neurosciences, novel approaches to the study of neural development can increase our understanding of brain regions that are most affected by the harmful effects of child maltreatment (grassi-oliveira et al., 2008; mccrory et al., 2011; nelson, 2007; teicher, 2000). for example, employing positron emission tomography in studying brain development among romanian orphans suffering from severe early neglect and social deprivation has produced one of the first brain imaging results of chronic childhood maltreatment. these results showed decreased metabolism in the prefrontal and temporal areas and other regions in the brain associated with higher cognitive functions and emotional control, thus corroborating behavioural data showing neurocognitive impairments in these orphans along with reduced attention and socio-emotional problems (nelson, 2007). such findings provide strong evidence that severe early abuse and neglect appear to lead to anatomic and functional alterations in the young brain with profound implications to developmental pathways associated with adjustment issues in various domains of functioning. there are only a few studies, however, inquiring about comparable effects on brain development by simply witnessing ipv on a regular basis at home during the infant years. three recent papers published by martin teicher and his team focus specifically on the relationship between witnessing parental discord by children and neuropsychiatric consequences (choi et al., 2012; teicher, samson, sheu, polcari, & mcgreenery, 2010; teicher & vitaliano, 2011). each study used a proxy measure termed “limbic irritability” (teicher, tomoda, & andersen, 2006). the underlying idea is that development of the limbic system – a set of interconnected subcortical structures involved in a variety of regulatory functions – would be particularly sensitive to exposure to heightened levels of stress. stress-induced chronic stimulation of the limbic system due to exposure to domestic violence should, therefore, exert a negative influence on the development of the limbic area in the brain (teicher et al., 2010; international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 511 teicher & vitaliano, 2011). abnormal development in the limbic system, in turn, is considered a risk factor for adult neuropsychiatric malfunctions including brief hallucinatory events, distortions in the somatic and perceptual domains, dissociative symptoms and motor automatisms (e.g., involuntary, stereotyped, and non-purposeful movement of the upper extremities). data presented in the three articles indicate that witnessing ipv during childhood can influence limbic irritability in a complex manner. most germane to this review are the findings that retrospective reports of young adult participants on witnessing ipv, coupled with parental verbal abuse, appeared to generate higher levels of limbic irritability scores than sole exposure to physical or sexual abuse (teicher, samson, polcari, & mcgreenery, 2006). in contrast, teicher and vitaliano (2011) found no direct association between witnessing violence toward the mother or the father and limbic irritability. nonetheless, this does not mean that no relationship exists between these factors. conversely, by conducting a series of path analyses to detect interrelationships between different forms of maltreatment and psychiatric outcomes, teicher and vitaliano (2011) have found evidence that the association between witnessing family violence targeting the mother and limbic irritability is mediated by maternal verbal aggression. the authors explain this complex phenomenon suggesting “that domestic violence toward [the] mother affects the emotional well-being of her children by primarily altering her behavior, which may be reflected in her more frequent use of verbal aggression” (p. 9). in the third study, choi, jeong, polcari, rohan, and teicher (2012) employ sophisticated image acquisition tools and analyzing techniques to detect structural alterations in the brain following early exposure to ipv. retrospective reports of young adults on witnessing domestic violence during childhood, combined with magnetic resonance imaging examinations of the brain and neuropsychological assessments, revealed a link between domestic violence and the anatomic development of a bundle of fibres in the brain (i.e., inferior longitudinal fasciculus) central in emotional regulation and processing sensory information on adverse events between different cortical regions. the authors found that symptoms of limbic irritability were associated with both ipv and inferior longitudinal fasciculus anatomy. most importantly, however, exposure to verbal disputes between parents was a stronger predictor of attenuation in the size of inferior longitudinal fasciculus than inter-parental physical violence. taken together, the three studies conducted by teicher and colleagues converge upon four major points: 1. early exposure to stressful social conditions in the form of domestic violence is capable of sculpting postnatal brain development. 2. reduction in the volume of both the white (choi et al., 2012) and grey matter (teicher et al., 2010) may alter the way the brain processes sensory information to increase the person’s vulnerability to psychopathology. 3. although the harmful effects of child maltreatment are typically defined in terms of physical or sexual harassment and emotional neglect, verbal abuse appears to be a powerful modifying factor for neural development in the young brain regardless of whether the child is the target of peer (teicher et al., 2010) or parental (choi et al., 2012) verbal abuse, or witnesses domestic verbal conflicts (choi et al., 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 512 4. the statistically insignificant association between ipv and psychiatric outcomes should not lead us to believe that experiencing domestic violence has no impact on development because this relationship might be potentiated (mediated) by effects from other powerful determinants (teicher & vitaliano, 2011). physical health outcomes the health and safety of children is intricately linked to the health and safety of their mothers, particularly in families where violence is present. ipv has been widely recognized as a public health epidemic, given the strong evidence that violence against women has a negative impact on women’s physical and mental health and well-being (chrisler & ferguson, 2006; garcia-moreno & watts, 2011). exposure to violence and trauma is associated with a number of severe negative health outcomes, and domestic violence in particular has been linked to negative health and medical outcomes for women. for example, research suggests that the health status of women who have experienced ipv is lower than that of other women, and that the health care system incurs significant costs associated with treating violence-related health problems (bc society of transition houses, 2011). yet, women who experience violence often face numerous barriers to health care services, particularly marginalized or minority women experiencing intersecting health and social inequities (rodríguez, valentine, son, & muhammad, 2009). and while much is known about post-traumatic stress responses, depression, and other mental health impacts of ipv, less is known about the physical health impacts of violence against women (olofsson et al., 2011); even less still is known about physical health outcomes for children and youth who are exposed to ipv. a growing body of literature is beginning to shed light on the incidence and impacts of children’s exposure to domestic violence. for example, bair-merritt et al. (2008), in their study of domestic violence screening in an urban paediatric outpatient clinic found that, of the 30 women who disclosed domestic violence, over half reported that at least one of their children had watched and/or heard this violence. specifically, 40% of the children had heard violence in the home, 33% had witnessed physical/verbal abuse directly, 27% had learned about violence in the home from family or friends, 13% had seen the impact of domestic violence (e.g., injuries or damage to property), and 10% had experienced life changes as a result of domestic violence. the effects of chronic stress on children who are exposed to domestic violence may increase their vulnerability to health and medical problems and illness (howell & graham-bermann, 2011), and indeed, research has found that adolescents who have been exposed to domestic violence report poorer overall health (lepistö, luukkaala, & paavilainen, 2010). exposure to ipv is associated with a wide range of negative health outcomes for children and youth, leading to actual or “perceived physical illness” (fredland, campbell, & han, 2008, p. 164), chronic disease, and in some cases premature death (brown et al., 2009). the direct effects of violence exposure include psychological distress associated with witnessing violence against a child’s primary caregiver, often the child’s mother, or witnessing the aftermath of this violence (ackerson & subramanian, 2009; anda et al., 2006; bair-merritt et al., 2008). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 513 research has shown that infants and children who are exposed to ipv have disrupted adrenocortical activity, and can experience either heightened or lowered cortisol output (bairmerritt, johnson, okelo, & page, 2012; saxbe, margolin, spies shapiro, & baucom, 2012; towe-goodman et al., 2012). for example, the adrenocortical and behavioural stress-response patterns of 7-month-old infants exposed to severe interparental violence exposure is associated with significantly greater odds of high cortisol reactivity and moderate negative behavioural problems compared to infants exposed to no, or low, interparental violence (p < .05) (towegoodman et al., 2012). in turn, chronic stress associated with living in a home where domestic violence is occurring may increase children’s vulnerability to other health and medical problems (herman-smith, 2013; howell & graham-bermann, 2011). children who are exposed to ipv also have significantly more eating, sleeping, and pain complaints than children who have not been exposed to domestic violence (lamers-winkelman, schipper, & oosterman, 2012). in their recent dutch study, lamers-winkelman and colleagues (2012) compared the physical complaints reported by caregivers of children are exposed to ipv (ages 6 to 12 years) with the somatic complaints of a matched sample. their results showed that the exposed children experienced significantly more somatic health complaints than those without exposure. for instance, the parents of ipv-exposed children reported that their children had significantly more eating complaints (i.e., eats too much, overweight, constipation, and nausea), sleeping complaints (i.e., overtired, trouble sleeping, and nightmares), and pain problems (i.e., aches and pains, headache, stomach ache, and dizziness). further, this study showed that there were few differences in health complaints between children who experienced only ipv exposure, and those with compounded experiences of maltreatment (e.g., ipv and physical abuse or other trauma). negative health outcomes for children who are exposed to domestic violence may also impact an individual’s health over his or her lifetime. in a 26-year long-term prospective population-based study in sweden, researchers found that when controlling for confounding variables (e.g., adult violence exposure and health), late adolescent ipv exposure significantly increased the women’s odds for self-reported bad health and heavy illness burdens in adulthood when compared to non-ipv-exposed women (olofsson, lindqvist, shaw, & danielsson, 2012). negative health outcomes associated with domestic violence exposure may also be a result of the impact of ipv on women’s mental and physical health, which in turn can affect their ability to provide proper care for their children (åsling-monemi, naved, & persson, 2008; hasselmann & reichenheim, 2006; olofsson et al., 2011; silverman et al., 2011). additionally, if mothers are experiencing domestic violence, they may be less likely to seek health care for their children for fear that health care practitioners may detect and report domestic violence to the authorities (ackerson & subramanian, 2009; onyskiw, 2002; rico, fenn, abramsky, & watts, 2011). onyskiw (2002) noted that children who had witnessed family violence were, in fact, more likely to have had contact with medical and health professionals, but not paediatricians. other scholars have suggested that women experiencing ipv may use health care services to a greater extent due to “hypervigilance and misinterpretation of symptoms” (bairmerritt et al., 2008, p. 135) or because of difficulties experienced coping with their children’s health concerns. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 514 poor health outcomes associated with domestic violence are compounded by poverty and poor socioeconomic status, which may further impact women’s ability to provide proper care for their children (ramiro, madrid, & brown, 2010). exposure to domestic violence may also be an indicator that children are themselves experiencing abuse (ackerson & subramanian, 2009; olofsson et al., 2011), which is also associated with serious negative health outcomes (hasselmann & reichenheim, 2006). health conditions and use of health services much of the literature on the health impacts of children’s exposure to ipv also draws on findings from the adverse childhood experiences (ace) study on the neurological impacts of exposure to violence in the family described in the previous section. this study involved 15,472 participants over a 3-year period and assessed eight adverse experiences: (a) emotional abuse, (b) physical abuse, (c) sexual abuse, (d) exposure to domestic violence, (e) growing up with household substance abuse, (f) growing up with an adult with mental illness, (g) growing up with a criminal household member, and (h) parental separation or divorce (anda et al., 2006). participants received an ace score that reflected the number of adversities they had experienced during childhood. for example, an ace score of one indicates that the participant experienced one type of adverse childhood experience, an ace score of two indicates that the participant experienced two types of adverse childhood experiences, and so on. these ace scores were used to examine the relationship or association between childhood adversity and a wide range of outcomes measured later in life. several reports on findings from the ace study touch on physical health outcomes associated with domestic violence exposure (anda et al., 2008; anda et al., 2006; brown et al., 2010; brown et al., 2009; dube et al., 2009; ramiro et al., 2010). in many cases, variables of interest were found to have a dose-response, or graded, relationship. an important finding in this growing body of research is that the risk of negative health impacts increases steadily with the number of adverse childhood experiences (anda et al., 2006). for example, individuals who had one adverse childhood experience were 1.2 times as likely as those with no adverse childhood experiences to have sleep disturbances in adulthood, whereas individuals with four or more adverse childhood experiences were 2.1 times more likely to have sleep disturbance problems than those with no adverse childhood experiences. similarly, persons with more adverse childhood experiences were more likely to report severe obesity and other physical symptoms. having more adverse childhood experiences was also associated with increased risk of smoking, illicit drug use, and alcoholism. other outcomes that reflected a dose-response relationship included headaches (anda, tietjen, schulman, felitti, & croft, 2010), lung cancer (brown et al., 2010), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or copd (anda et al., 2008), autoimmune diseases (dube et al., 2009), and as noted above, premature death (brown et al., 2009). in another study, adults reporting five or more aces were 2.6 times more likely to develop copd, twice as likely to be hospitalized for copd, and 1.6 times more likely to be taking prescription medication for copd than those with no reported adverse childhood experiences (anda et al., 2008). data from hospital and mortality records revealed that persons with six of more aces international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 515 were at 2.7 times the risk of developing lung cancer, and died on average 20 years earlier, than those who had not experienced any adverse childhood experiences (brown et al., 2009). reports based on data from the ace studies (anda et al., 2008; anda et al., 2006; brown et al., 2010; brown et al., 2009; dube et al., 2009; ramiro et al., 2010) are helpful in illustrating the relationship between childhood adversity and various negative outcomes; however, few of these studies explored the increased risk of outcomes associated with specific adverse childhood experiences. that is, few examined the independent association between exposure to domestic violence and negative health outcomes. of course, this limitation in the literature reflects the reality that adverse childhood experiences often co-occur and negative outcomes can often not be attributed to a single factor or childhood experience. still, some studies did report on outcomes associated with domestic violence exposure alone: lepistö and colleagues (2010) found that, among students aged 14 to 17, witnessing domestic violence during childhood was associated with self-perceived health problems. olofsson et al. (2011) revealed that swedish children who had witnessed ipv against their mothers reported poorer overall health, more symptoms, and higher rates of health care system and prescription medication use than children not exposed to ipv. onyskiw (2002) reported similar findings in canada: that is, that children who had been exposed to family violence were more likely to have health conditions, poor health status, and to be taking prescription medications than those not exposed to domestic violence. several studies have also found a relationship between ipv exposure and asthma in children (bair-merritt et al., 2012; kuhlman, howell, & graham-bermann, 2012; subramanian, ackerson, subramanyam, & wright, 2007; suglia, enlow, kullowatz, & wright, 2009). additionally, a cross-sectional health survey from india using a large nationally representative sample of 88,513 ever-married women revealed an increased risk of asthma in infants of all ages living in the same household where the mother is subjected to ipv (subramanian et al., 2007). this study found that any individuals exposed to domestic violence against women in the household were at greater risk of developing asthma than those who were not exposed to domestic violence (or 1.15 to 1.19). this risk was even higher for children under age 5 whose mothers reported experiencing physical ipv in the past year (or 1.32) and children aged 5 to 14, for whom the risk of asthma was increased by 17% (subramanian et al., 2007). further research on the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adults revealed that those who had witnessed domestic violence during childhood were 1.3 times more likely to report frequent headaches than those who had not witnessed domestic violence (anda et al., 2010). in the same vein, rico et al. (2011) found that adults who had witnessed their mothers being treated violently during childhood were found to be 1.3 times more likely to smoke, 2.4 times more likely to have initiated smoking at an early age, 1.7 times more likely to use alcohol, 1.3 times more likely to drive while under the influence of alcohol, 1.7 times more likely to use illicit substances, more than twice as likely to become pregnant early, 1.5 times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy, and 1.8 times more likely to attempt suicide than individuals who had not been exposed to domestic violence in childhood. it is notable that in rico et al.’s study, 64% of participants who had experienced physical abuse as children, and 41% of those who experienced sexual abuse as children, also reported witnessing domestic violence. this provides international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 516 additional evidence that children who are exposed to domestic violence are often also the victims of child abuse and that both experiences contribute significantly to poor physical health. not only has research found an association between exposure to ipv and negative health outcomes, such exposure has also been linked to the greater use of health services. the children of women victims of ipv, especially severe ipv (e.g., being kicked, beaten, choked, or threatened with a weapon), are more likely to use health care services and take prescription medications than children who have not been exposed to domestic violence (olofsson et al., 2011), and more likely to experience higher rates of emergency room visits at 18 months (rr 2.0) and 36 months (rr 1.9) (bair-merritt et al., 2008). however, olofsson and colleagues (2011) also note that emergency room visits were not greater at follow-up for children whose female caregivers had experienced “minor” (e.g., pushed, slapped, shoved) or no ipv at baseline (rr 0.2). nutritional status and mortality research on children’s exposure to domestic violence and malnutrition has found that the risk of child malnutrition increases as verbal and physical aggression between parents increases such that severe physical aggression between parents is associated with severe and acute malnutrition among children (hasselmann & reichenheim, 2006). rico et al. (2011), who conducted a five-country study (encompassing egypt, honduras, kenya, malawi, and rwanda) on the associations between maternal experiences of intimate partner violence and child nutrition and mortality found a significant association between severe growth stunting due to malnutrition and exposure to ipv in honduras, kenya, and malawi. research conducted by sobkoviak, yount, and halim (2012) in liberia produced results similar to those found by rico et al. and also showed that ipv against women is associated with increased risk for children of stunting (or = 2.3) and being underweight (or = 2.57). both stunting and being underweight are indicators of nutritional status (sobkoviak et al., 2012). interestingly, these outcomes may not only be observed in low income and politically stressed countries, such as honduras, kenya, and malawi, as nutritional status can also play a role in young adult life in countries where food is readily available. witnessing family violence (not only ipv, but other forms as well) has been shown to be moderately but significantly correlated with disordered eating among university students (r = .24, p < .01), with the relationship partially mediated by symptoms of depression and anxiety that may be associated with family violence exposure (brady, 2008). at the extreme end of the continuum of negative physical health outcomes associated with exposure to ipv is premature death. a study in india of children under 5 years of age found that physical ipv against women was associated with child mortality (rr = 1.21), although this relationship was not found to be as strong for sexual and psychological forms of ipv (ackerson & subramanian, 2009). findings from this study suggested that regardless of gender, exposure to multiple types of ipv was strongly associated with infant death (rr = 1.49) and somewhat associated with child death (rr = 1.18). an additional study conducted in india confirmed that infant and child mortality is associated with exposure to ipv against women, but in this study the results were confirmed only for girls (silverman et al., 2011). silverman et al. explain the girlsonly result by suggesting that girls’ exposure to domestic violence is likely compounded by international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 517 gender-based maltreatment and neglect due to gender discrimination in india, and argue that reducing ipv in the country could result in a 6.67% reduction in female infant deaths and 6.25% reduction in female child deaths in india. the five-country study conducted by rico et al. (2011) described above also examined the mortality of children under 2 years of age and found a significant association between exposure to physical and sexual ipv and mortality in honduras, kenya, and malawi. in contrast, research in rural bangladesh found no association between ipv against women and mortality for children under age 5, more generally (åsling-monemi et al., 2008). however, a closer look at the data gathered by åsling-monemi and colleagues (2008) revealed an elevated risk of death for female children of more educated women who were experiencing severe physical violence (rr = 2.2) and controlling behaviours (rr = 2.5) in their intimate relationships. åsling-monemi et al. suggest that these findings may be explained as reflecting differences in socioeconomic status and perceptions of controlling behaviour in marriage between more and less educated women and by gender discrimination and differences in child caring practices for boys and girls in bangladesh. the health impacts of exposure to ipv have also been extensively investigated in the area of mental health and substance use. this research is reviewed next. mental health challenges: internalizing and externalizing issues in canada, child and youth mental health challenges are highly prevalent with 14% to 25% of youth presenting with diagnostic symptomatology for at least one mental illness. in fact, two-thirds of adults living with mental concerns indicate that their symptoms began during adolescence (mental health commission of canada, 2012). the term mental illness covers a broad range of symptoms that interfere with emotions, thinking and/or behaviour, and that contribute to ongoing limitations or impairment (manion, 2010; mental health commission of canada, 2012). these vulnerabilities often lead to illness and disability across the lifespan, and beget poor social, economic, and interpersonal outcomes (manion, 2010; mental health commission of canada, 2012). much of the research on the impact of exposure to ipv focuses on what are referred to as internalizing and externalizing problems. the externalizing construct refers to the outward expression of harmful behaviours (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity, defiance) that affect the external environment. due to the observable dysregulated emotional states and related conflict that ensues, externalizing symptoms are often referred to as behaviour problems by professionals working with children and youth (lane, oakes, carter, lambert, & jenkins, 2013; liu, 2004; mikolajewski, allan, hart, lonigan, & taylor, 2013). in the american psychiatric association’s (2013) diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-5), the clusters of externalizing symptoms are commonly categorized as oppositional defiant disorder (odd), conduct disorder (cd), and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). while focusing on the internalized and externalized manifestations of mental health and illness, the literature also recognizes the relationship between people and their environment and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 518 therefore investigates not only the traits of individuals but also the environmental factors that contribute to mental illness (canadian association of social workers, 2013; mental health commission of canada, 2012). thus, the developmental psychopathology perspective posits that mental health challenges arise from complex biological, psychological, social, and economic interactions, which interplay with external factors in the social and physical environment (gewirtz & edleson, 2004; manion, 2010; mental health commission of canada, 2012). exposure to ipv is an interactive factor that compromises mental health outcomes. three decades of research have revealed that exposure to ipv negatively affects child development and functioning, and may lead to a multitude of mental health challenges (bayarri, ezpeleta, & granero, 2011; bogat, dejonghe, levendosky, davidson, & von eye, 2006; gewirtz & edleson, 2004; lamers-winkelman, willemen, & visser, 2012). the literature confirms that 35% to 45% of children who are exposed to ipv demonstrate clinically significant symptomatology (bayarri et al., 2011). correlational studies demonstrate that the average effect size for children’s exposure to ipv and subsequent adjustment problems is -.29 (kitzmann, gaylord, holt, & kenny, 2003). it is worth noting that the long-term mental health consequences for children who are exposed to violence are not significantly different from the outcomes for children who are directly victimized (bayarri et al., 2011; gewirtz & edleson, 2004; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012). children who witness ipv may present with a combination of significant mental, emotional, and behavioural impediments. clinical challenges encompass everything from aggressive and non-compliant behaviours to emotional and internalizing problems; comorbidities across the range of symptoms are common (bayarri et al., 2011; gewirtz & edleson, 2004; gewirtz & medhanie, 2008; moylan et al., 2010). a meta-analysis of 118 studies on psychosocial variables by meltzer et al. (2009) demonstrated that children who were exposed to ipv had significantly worse outcomes than those who were not so exposed. similarly, kitzmann et al. (2003) concluded that the results of their “current meta-analysis provided robust evidence that exposure to interparental aggression is associated with significant disruptions in children’s psychosocial functioning” (p. 347). the effect size of this particular study indicates that approximately 63% of children who are exposed to ipv are faring more poorly and have ongoing functional challenges. using a developmental psychopathological perspective, margolin and gordis (2000) reviewed the effects of child maltreatment, community violence, and ipv at different developmental stages to determine how violence may compromise child development. cited by 664 related articles in google scholar alone, this pivotal study exposed several domains of functioning that were negatively affected across the lifespan. the impacted developmental patterns that were identified included aggression and externalizing problems, depression and internalizing problems, psychobiological disturbances,6 ptsd symptomatology, delayed cognitive development and academic functioning, and difficulties in peer relationships. examining the available data, the authors state that the long-range effects of exposure to violence are clearly associated with mental health disorders and victimizing others. in conclusion, 6 these disturbances included alterations in arousal, muscle tone, startle response, sleep disturbance, and abnormalities in cardiovascular regulation. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 519 margolin and gordis note that “outcomes associated with exposure to violence range in nature and severity” and, as the “child develops and matures, assessments of outcome must be viewed as highly time specific” (p. 469). examining multiple forms of victimization in a representative sample of 2,030 children, turner, finkelhor, and ormrod (2006) determined that multiple forms of victimization in a child’s life created an increased risk for mental health difficulties. interestingly, turner et al. noted that although forms of victimization may be interrelated, they demonstrated that “each victimization domain, including ipv, remained a significant predictor of mental health” (p. 13). employing longitudinal structural equation model tests on data gathered from the lehigh longitudinal study – a prospective study of 457 youth and outcomes associated with family violence – herrenkohl and herrenkohl (2007) examined the impacts of physical and sexual abuse, child neglect, and ipv under the general constructs of child maltreatment. the children and their families who participated in the lehigh study were assessed three times: when they entered preschool (1976-77), when they were school aged (1980-1982), and when they were adolescents (1990-1992); 416 of these cases provided the basis for the herrenkohl and herrenkohl (2007) study. accounting for the overlap of many possible factors in the general constructs of child maltreatment, herrenkohl and herrenkohl’s results determined that child maltreatment independently predicted youth problems and lasting adverse effects, especially in the realm of externalizing and internalizing behaviours. similarly, in a meta-analysis reviewing exposure to ipv and developmental consequences, gewirtz and edleson (2007) reported that children exposed to ipv exhibit more externalizing and internalizing behaviours, and that the impacts are chronic with lasting effects. meltzer et al. (2009) reiterated these findings: exposure to ipv can have serious effects on child development and well-being, including challenges with psychological adjustment and emotional and behavioural problems in adolescence. in fact, “the psychosocial outcomes of children witnessing domestic violence were not significantly different from those of physically abused children” (meltzer et al., 2009, p. 492). regrettably, many of these associated symptoms persist into adulthood. moylan et al. (2010) confirmed that children exposed to ipv had higher levels of externalizing and internalizing problems in adolescence. testing for dual exposure effects, the authors determined that exposure to ipv and later outcomes are more complex than the literature would suggest. similarly, in a longitudinal analysis of 1,816 caregivers and their children, emery (2011) determined that there was a “robust relationship between ipv and externalizing and internalizing behavior” (p. 1553). importantly, the researcher used a fixed-effects model to control for selection bias. following on the above, the majority of studies that focus on ipv and negative outcomes assess externalizing and/or internalizing mental health symptoms (briggs-gowan et al., 2010; cosgrove et al., 2011; english et al., 2009; ford, gagnon, connor, & pearson, 2011; harding, morelen, thomassin, bradbury, & shaffer, 2013; hunter & graham-bermann, 2013; slade, 2007; wright & fagan, 2012; zarling et al., 2013), with much research documenting behavioural and emotional challenges in these two domains. a multitude of other researchers have reported similar findings with regard to externalizing and internalizing behavioural patterns and dsm-iv international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 520 symptomatology (jayasinghe, jayawardena, & perera, 2009; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012; lang & stover, 2008; marmion & lundberg-love, 2008; meltzer et al., 2009; moylan et al., 2010; spilsbury et al., 2008). it is also of note that gender differences with regard to emotional and behavioural problems related to ipv have been described (bourassa, 2007; camacho, ehrensaft, & cohen, 2012; helweg-larsen, frederiksen, & larsen, 2011; spilsbury et al., 2007). yet, some metaanalyses show no significant gender differences related to the psychological effects of witnessing ipv (olaya, ezpeleta, de la osa, granero, & doménech, 2010). the specific influences of gender remain unclear in the literature. as spilsbury et al. (2007) state: “collectively, research on gender differences in the externalizing vs. internalizing sequelae of exposure to domestic violence has produced disparate results” (p. 495). the research generally suggests caution with regard to relating certain psychological problems with specific genders; at the same time, the age-specific effects may be less difficult to determine in that the exposure at a younger age appears to be clearly associated with detrimental outcomes, with increasing age being correlated with fewer symptoms (camacho et al., 2012; helweg-larsen et al., 2011; spilsbury et al., 2007). still, overall, the internalizing and externalizing symptoms of mental disorders are highly correlated with ipv; estimated factors range from .66 to .72 (ford et al., 2011; helweg-larsen et al., 2011; mikolajewski et al., 2013). children who have been exposed to ipv vary in their levels of social adjustment and in their resilience or coping mechanisms. when controlling for gender, ethnicity, age, and family environment variables, exposure to violence cumulatively over a child’s lifetime accounts for more variance in adjustment than a child’s age at first exposure (graham-bermann & perkins, 2010). several other factors may also impact a child’s adjustment. owen, thompson, shaffer, jackson, and kaslow (2009) examined 129 low-income african-american children (ages 8 to 12) who had been exposed to ipv and the impact it had on their emotional and behavioural problems. the researchers found that exposure to ipv (i.e., experiencing or witnessing ipv) negatively impacted the families’ maternal psychopathology, family cohesion, and family relatedness quality (e.g., emotional quality or psychological proximity seeking), which were all associated with reduced child adjustment. in an earlier study by graham-bermann, gruber, howell, and girz (2009), the researchers explored how risk and protective factors, such as violence exposure and the individual characteristics of the mother, child, and family, impact a child’s level of social and emotional adjustment and resilience to the adverse consequences of domestic violence. their research suggests that the parental functioning level greatly impacts a child’s adjustment or resilience. in their study, the researchers interviewed 219 mothers and their children (ages 6 to 12) in the community using standardized measures to assess different factors that may impact a child’s adjustment (e.g., family violence, parenting, family functioning, maternal mental health, and children’s adjustment and beliefs). employing a cluster analysis, graham-bermann et al. (2009) discovered four different profiles of children’s adjustment: children with severe adjustment problems (24%); children who were struggling with adjustment (45%); children who were depressed (11%); and children who were resilient and had high levels of self-worth and competence and few adjustment problems (20%). children with severe adjustment problems international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 521 witnessed more violence and their mothers had higher levels of depression and trauma symptoms, whereas the most depressed children were exposed to less violence but had higher levels of concern for their mothers’ safety. mediators in the relationship between ipv exposure and behaviour problems youths’ relationships with their mothers or peers may mediate the effects of the domestic violence exposure (camacho et al., 2012; holt et al., 2008; johnson & lieberman, 2007; owen et al., 2008). camacho and colleagues’ (2012) study of 129 youth (aged 10 to 18) found significant associations between exposure to ipv resulting in injury and internalized behaviours (β = .24, p < .05), but when female youths engage in, and are the recipients of, prosocial behaviours, they are at a decreased risk of developing internalized behaviours. these findings support the idea that “it is not the amount of peer support sought, rather, the perception of prosocial behavior received from peers, such as verbal kindness and expressions of caring, that predicts girls’ reduced risk for developing internalizing problems” (camacho et al., 2012, p. 136). another study by owen et al. (2008) examined whether perceived social support for mothers and children exposed to domestic violence decreases emotional and behavioural problems for youth. with a sample of 148 low-income african-american children aged between 8 and 12, the researchers found that children’s perceived social support provided a mediating role in the associations between ipv as reported by the child and internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems. on the other hand, the mother’s perceived social support only played a mediating role between abuse and a child’s internalized problems. however, howell, grahambermann, czyz, and lilly (2010) also found that maternal factors had an impact on deleterious outcomes and resiliency in their study on children aged 4 to 6 who were exposed to domestic violence. in their sample of 56 mothers and children exposed to domestic violence within the previous 2 years, howell et al. noted that “[b]etter parenting performance, fewer maternal mental health problems, and less severe or frequent violence exposure” predicted better prosocial and emotional regulation skills in youth (p. 158). mothers’ attunement to children’s emotional experiences, such as sadness and anger, also mediate the impact of exposure to domestic violence. johnson and lieberman’s (2007) study of 30 preschool-aged children of mothers who had been domestically abused found that the children’s externalizing behaviour was associated with the “severity of domestic violence prior to the marital separation, as well as with the current quality of the mother–child relationship and maternal attunement to the child’s sad and angry feelings” (p. 304). the researchers found that mothers who were attuned to their children’s feelings of sadness and anger, and were rated by a clinician to have a strong mother-child relationship, were better able to help prevent the onset of externalizing hyperactive or aggressive behaviour problems. still, children who are exposed to domestic violence have a higher risk of internalizing and externalizing problems than the non-exposed child population. such problematic externalizing behaviour may include adjustment problems, delinquency, sexual behaviour problems, and interpersonal violence victimization or perpetration. interventions which foster maternal attunement and social support must be tailored to reduce the impact on children international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 522 exposed to domestic violence in order to ensure that they do not “slip through the net of fragmented services” (buckley et al., 2007, p. 306), as the research is clear that such exposure increases adverse behaviour problems for youth. although many ipv studies focus on clusters of emotional and behavioural symptoms, as slade (2007) notes, “much of our understanding of mental disorder descriptive epidemiology has been achieved by focused investigation of single mental disorders examined in isolation” (slade, 2007, p. 554). as a result, a variety of studies that examine exposure to ipv and mental health outcomes review specific diagnoses and draw a variety of conclusions (bayarri et al., 2011; gewirtz & medhanie, 2008; hungerford, wait, fritz, & clements, 2012; moylan et al., 2010). mental illnesses that have been investigated in relation to ipv include ptsd, anxiety, and depression. this literature is reviewed next. post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders. as emphasized throughout this review, the literature makes clear that each child is unique, and the distress caused by exposure to ipv within the home can be expressed differently even among siblings (horn, hunter, & graham-bermann, 2013). for some youth, distress from ipv may manifest in post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). ptsd is a normal stress reaction to abnormal events that involve the threat of injury or death (american psychiatric association, 2013). in studying preschool trauma associated with ipv, bogat et al. (2006) noted that children aged 3 to 12 manifest trauma symptoms as a result of witnessing ipv. bogat and colleagues’ study further showed that nearly half of the participants exhibited at least one trauma symptom following exposure to family violence. examining a clinical sample, crusto et al. (2010) arrived at similar conclusions: ptsd was positively and significantly correlated with family violence; the risks increased with the number and types of trauma experienced, and led to detrimental mental health outcomes in adulthood (crusto et al., 2010). in the united states, research suggests that approximately 50% of children exposed to ipv between the ages of 1 and 7 years old experience trauma symptoms, with increased frequency of exposure associated with more ptsd symptoms (levendosky, bogat, & martinez-torteya, 2013). as well, lamers-winkelman, willemen, and visser (2012) found rates similar to those in the united states in their high-risk dutch sample, where between 45% and 54% of children exposed to ipv demonstrated high levels of trauma. in a meta-analysis of ipv exposure studies, evans et al. (2008) found a significant association between ipv exposure and trauma symptoms (estimated d-value of 1.54). other researchers have recognized ptsd as a pathological outcome of exposure to ipv. olaya et al. (2010) assessed 520 children aged between 8 and 17 years and showed that living with ipv increased the risk of ptsd; spilsbury et al. (2007) discovered clinically significant levels of several trauma symptoms related to ipv exposure; and meltzer et al. (2009) also noted the higher risk of developing ptsd with measured ipv in the home. additionally, the post-traumatic stress symptoms that arise as a result of ipv exposure may also mediate internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems that may not be direct effects of ipv exposure, which suggests a comorbidity between traumatic stress and child adjustment (miller, howell, & graham-bermann, 2012). as well, cisler et al. (2012) have demonstrated that cumulative ipv exposure predicts subsequent ptsd, depression, delinquency, and binge drinking (βs = .07, .12, .10, and .09, respectively, p < .01 in all cases). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 523 children who experience trauma from ipv may also be exposed to additional traumatic events (e.g., sexual assaults, physical assaults, serious illnesses) that can aggravate traumatic stress symptoms. as graham-berman, castor, miller, and howell (2012) found in their study of 120 children, aged 4 to 6 years, who had been exposed to ipv within the previous 24 months, at least 38% of the children were exposed to other traumatic events in addition to ipv. in comparison to children exposed solely to ipv, these children exposed to multiple stressors (ipv and other traumatic events) had a greater likelihood of ptsd diagnoses, more traumatic stress symptoms (d = 0.96), and more internalizing (d = 0.86) and externalizing behaviour (d = 0.47) problems. ptsd does not disappear after childhood and can differ in severity depending on the other factors present during childhood and ipv exposure (anderson & bang, 2012). as anderson and bang (2012) found, adult women who experienced police intervention in relation to childhood ipv incidents had higher ptsd rates than women who did not experience police interventions (t = -2.90, p = 0.005). similarly, adults who reported that they were exposed to ipv and had mothers with mental health problems also reported higher ptsd rates and than those whose mothers did not (t = -2.95, p = 0.005). although less studied than ptsd, longitudinal analyses have examined the relationships between witnessing ipv and anxiety symptomatology. anxiety is a general term for several disorders that contribute to nervousness, fear, apprehension, and excessive worrying. anxiety disorders can be extremely debilitating and can have ongoing detrimental impacts (american psychiatric association, 2013). studies reveal that witnessing ipv is intricately connected to anxiety disorders and, compounding the problem, that there is an associated risk of exposure to community violence for affected youth (bourassa, 2007; briggsgowan et al., 2010; kennedy, bybee, sullivan, & greeson, 2009; slade, 2007). these papers, and others, provide conclusive evidence of the significant relationships between exposure to ipv and resultant ptsd and anxiety disorders. also linked to ipv, but to date not as extensively investigated as some other mental illnesses, is depression, which as the american psychiatric association (2013) states is often chronic and follows a pattern of remission and relapse that affects individuals’ adaptive functioning. studies that have examined the effect of ipv exposure in relation to depression have thus far yielded mixed results. employing a longitudinal, multi-information design, sternberg, lamb, guterman, and abbott (2006) found that there was “little stability over time in the pattern of reported effects, and children were more likely than other informants to report levels of maladjustment that varied depending on recent or concurrent exposure to family violence” (p. 283). information obtained from mothers, fathers, children, and teachers provided a range of results with little agreement between groups. the findings did suggest that with regard to depression, younger children (under age 10) were more susceptible to the effects of ipv. yet, some of the children who had problems in the early years did not have challenges later. the authors determined that the chronicity, severity, and nature of ipv likely influenced the results (sternberg, lamb, et al., 2006). kennedy, bybee, sullivan, and greeson (2010) conducted a longitudinal study to examine the relationships between several types of violence exposure including ipv, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 524 depression among 100 school-aged children. the authors found significant between-child differences in depression, both initially and over the course of the study, notwithstanding the risks of ipv. like sternberg, lamb et al. (2006), kennedy et al., (2010) posit that youth respond differently to ipv due to a number of factors. on the other hand, kennedy et al. did find that a reduction in ipv exposure was significantly associated with lower levels of depression over time. kennedy et al. also noted that initial support and gender were moderating variables; that is, boys’ levels of depression did not significantly decline with reductions in ipv exposure, while support appears to have contributed to a decline in depression for girls. additionally, several small scale and population-based studies conducted since 2009 have revealed correlations between ipv exposure and depression among adolescents and across the entire lifespan (nguyen & larsen, 2012; roustit et al., 2009; slopen, fitzmaurice, williams, & gilman, 2012). perhaps bayarri and colleagues (2011) draw the most prudent conclusion given the current knowledge base: “all children and adolescents, regardless of their age and sex, and irrespective of their level of exposure to ipv, are equally at risk of experiencing psychological problems” (p. 542). thus far, we have discussed the internalizing manifestations of these problems. we follow next with externalizing manifestations. attention problems exposure to ipv is associated with the development of attention and conduct problems for youth. becker and mccloskey (2002) used a two-part longitudinal study (time 1 = 1990/1991, time 2 = 1996/1997) to examine the impact of ipv on youth. at time 1, mothers (n = 287) were interviewed using the child assessment schedule (cas) to assess attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder in one of their children (aged 6 to 12); children were interviewed at time 2. the study’s findings suggest that domestic violence is a strong predictor of attention problems and conduct problems for girls, but it did not necessarily lead to delinquency. although many researchers have examined externalizing symptoms concerning ipv exposure, few studies have discretely examined specific externalizing disorders in relation to ipv exposure. the results that have been extrapolated offer some concerning correlations. meltzer at al. (2009) revealed that, “witnessing severe domestic violence almost tripled the likelihood of children having conduct disorder but was not independently associated with emotional disorders” (p. 491). briggs-gowan et al. (2010) also confirmed that witnessing ipv was associated with conduct problems and the disruptive behaviours of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (adhd) in older children. however, although there is a paucity of research examining adhd and ipv exposure, preliminary studies of adhd and maltreated children indicate that there may be significant problems associated with ipv exposure (beckerblease & freyd, 2008; olaya et al., 2010). this association certainly becomes clear in a recent prospective american study (bauer, gilbert, carroll, & downs, 2013) that examined 2,422 children in the united states and found that, even when controlling for sex and ethnicity, children of parents who self-reported experiencing both ipv and depressive symptoms between international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 525 the child’s birth and 2 years of age had increased odds of being diagnosed with adhd between ages 3 and 6 (adjusted or = 4.0, 95% ci, 1.5-10.9). conduct and behavioural problems behavioural problems are prevalent among children who experience all forms of domestic violence (english et al., 2009). however, children who are exposed to both physical and psychological ipv are at higher risk of behaviour and conduct problems than children with no exposure, even though they may not necessarily experience child abuse themselves (renner, 2012). for instance, one study found that the 2to 3-year-old children of mothers victimized by ipv were, respectively, 2.72 and 3.48 times more likely to surpass the clinical cut-off for externalizing behaviour than children who had not been exposed to ipv (dejonghe, von eye, bogat, & levendosky, 2011). such associations between ipv exposure and negative outcomes persist into a child’s adolescence and adulthood (ehrensaft & cohen, 2012; herrenkohl & herrenkohl, 2007; holt et al., 2008; israel & stover, 2009; jarvis, gordon, & novaco, 2005; moylan et al., 2010). in fact, according to meltzer et al. (2009), children who have witnessed severe incidents of domestic violence are almost three times as likely to develop conduct disorders (or = 1.78, 95% ci = 1.79–3.92, p < 0.001, meltzer et al., 2009). similarly, becker and mccloskey’s (2002) longitudinal study on attention and conduct problems for youth exposed to domestic violence found that girls exposed to domestic violence experienced attention problems related to concurrent conduct problems. the evidence for concurrence and for variations in that concurrence mounts: in a study by spilsbury et al. (2008), researchers examined adjustment problems in a community-programbased sample consisting of 175 school-aged children who had been exposed to domestic violence. these researchers found that 18% of the sample demonstrated externalizing problems (both with and without additional internalizing problems); 11% of the sample demonstrated both externalizing and internalizing problems, whereas only 13% met the clinical threshold for internalizing problems. further, domestic violence exposure may co-occur in other negative environmental settings, such as child abuse, community violence, and parental alcohol abuse, which all influence negative externalizing behaviour (herrenkohl et al., 2008; malik, 2008; moylan et al., 2010; ritter, stewart, bernet, coe, & brown, 2002). for example, ritter and colleagues (2002) found that exposure to domestic violence and parental alcohol abuse increased the risk for delinquency and conduct disorders for young females, and such environments negatively affected both male and female youths’ self-esteem. animal cruelty may be another adverse consequence from a child’s exposure to domestic violence. duncan, thomas, and miller (2005) completed 289 chart reviews of young boys in residential treatment to examine the differences between children (aged 8 to 17 years) who had conduct behaviour problems or conduct behaviour problems and a history of cruelty to animals. the researchers found that when comparing young boys with conduct disorders only (n = 50) to the boys who had both conduct disorders and recorded incidents of animal cruelty (n = 50), the latter group had significantly greater histories of physical child abuse (p = .036), sexual abuse (p = .048), and exposure to domestic violence (p = .050). the study authors concluded that the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 526 male youth exposed to domestic violence were almost twice as likely as the comparison group to engage in animal cruelty. substance misuse the problematic impact of young people’s exposure to ipv is also strongly felt in another externalizing behaviour: substance misuse. childhood maltreatment in all its forms, including witnessing ipv (butchart, harvey, mian, & furniss, 2006), has been identified as a key contributing factor to substance misuse in adolescents and adults. widom, marmorstein, and white (2006), in their prospective study on childhood victimization and illicit drug use in middle adulthood, found that at least 20 studies published between 1975 and 1989 demonstrated evidence for a relationship between childhood abuse and substance use. as hovdestad, tonmyr, wekerle, and thornton (2011) state, “childhood maltreatment and adolescent substance abuse are important health issues that have been linked by research and theory for at least 50 years” (p. 525). however, discerning the exact contribution of witnessing ipv to adolescent substance misuse is a difficult task, firstly, because genetic influences may play a role in substance use, and secondly, because substance use (not misuse) is generally well distributed among adults and adolescents. with regard to genetic influences, enoch (2011), in her extensive and thorough review of more that 190 studies that focus on genetic and environmental influences on the development of alcohol dependence, states quite definitively that, “experiencing maltreatment and cumulative stress prior to puberty and particularly in the first few years of early life is associated with early onset of problem drinking in early adulthood” (p. 17). she further states that research has shown that “environmental stressors can swamp genetic influences” (p. 17). the negative impact of exposure to abuse and neglect on development, especially neurological development, has already been examined in an earlier section of this review. nonetheless, it is highlighted again here in order to underline the reach of this negative impact. with regard to the second issue, typical and atypical substance use, hovdestad et al. (2011), state that, “substance use and abuse among adolescents must be distinguished because it is considered normative that the majority of adolescents experiment with alcohol and many experiment with other substances” (p. 3). we concur and took care to make sure that this distinction was clearly described and acknowledged in the literature included in this review. non-typical use of substances. citing data gathered in canada (canadian alcohol and drug use monitoring survey [cadums], 2009) and the centers for disease control and prevention (2008) in the united states, hovdestad et al. (2011) note that in representative samples from both countries of youth aged 12 to 17 years, about 53% reported using alcohol and just over 27% reported using cannabis in the previous year. abuse of alcohol and other substances therefore needs to be distinguished from these normative levels. alcohol abuse is defined by hovdestad et al. and others (e.g., centers for disease control and prevention, 2012; hamburger, leeb, & swahn, 2008) as binge or heavy episodic drinking (five or more drinks per occasion) at least once per month or more. according to clark, bukstein, and cornelius (2002), approximately 33% of adolescents in the united states engage in such binge drinking with about international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 527 6% progressing to alcohol use disorders. in canada, approximately 28% of those surveyed by cadums (2009) reported binge drinking at least once per month or more (as cited in hovdestad et al., 2011). using data gathered via the ontario student drug use and health survey, paglia-boak, mann, adlaf, and rehm (2009) show that among canadian students aged 15 to 24, 25.5% had used cannabis at least once in the past three months, with 16% of the identified 25.5% reporting monthly use, 29.1% reporting weekly use, and 18.4% reporting daily use. it is not clear from these reports how many students also became dependent or sought treatment for problematic cannabis use. united states data cited by hovdestad et al. (2011) do, however, give us some indication: using american treatment program admission data as the basis for their estimates, these researchers state that “16% of all admissions reported that marijuana [cannabis] was their primary substance and of those 16%, 41% were adolescents” (p. 528). simple arithmetic therefore suggests that, as with alcohol misuse, approximately 6% to 6.5% of adolescent cannabis users become cannabis misusers (substance abuse and mental health services administration [samhsa], 2007 as cited in hovdestad et al., 2011). alcohol and cannabis are, of course, not the only substances that are misused and, increasingly, research on the abuse of substances is moving away from single substance studies to polysubstance use and misuse studies (kendler et al., 2012; schensul, convey, & burkholder, 2005). however, despite the rising awareness of polysubstance use and misuse, alcohol and cannabis are still the most common substances used by adolescents and therefore these substances still receive the most research attention. although the negative and harmful impacts of the misuse of these substances on the lives of adolescents are also well studied, this research is beyond the scope of this literature review. however, it is important to note that it is well recognized that substance misuse is linked with a plethora of negative outcomes for adolescents, so much so that in may of 1998, the united states department of justice office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention published an online research summary of the consequences of youth substance abuse (us department of justice office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, 1998). this summary shows that youth substance abuse is linked to poor grades, higher truancy and higher levels of dropping out of school, poor socioeconomic outcomes, higher levels of delinquency and higher crime rates, poor physical health, higher levels of car accidents, physical disabilities and disease including hiv/aids, and significantly greater risks of death from accidents, illness, suicide, and homicide (us department of justice office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, 1998). in light of this research, it is extremely important that we fully understand how substance misuse develops in young people. as noted above, it is well documented that child maltreatment plays a major role in the development of substance misuse. however, not all research that has been conducted on the link between child maltreatment and substance misuse necessarily includes witnessing ipv as a part of such maltreatment. along with disentangling typical substance use from atypical substance use, unravelling the impact of witnessing ipv from other forms of child maltreatment provides an additional challenge. still, since 2008, the united states centers for disease control prevention report has included witnessing ipv in the definition of child maltreatment (leeb, paulozzi, melanson, simon, & arias, 2008) and the literature on child maltreatment has begun to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 528 pay greater attention to this form of maltreatment. it is therefore more likely that studies conducted after 2008 will include mention of witnessing ipv in definitions of maltreatment and will more readily assist us in assessing the impact of ipv exposure on children and youth. in this examination of the literature on the links between child maltreatment and substance misuse, we scrutinized the published research generated by our search and selected only studies that included witnessing ipv as a form of child maltreatment or which focused explicitly on the relationship between witnessing ipv and substance misuse. as we conducted this review, we also paid careful attention to method and followed the well-supported suggestion given by gilbert et al. (2009) who underline the importance of longitudinal and prospective research to understanding relationship consequences of child maltreatment (including witnessing ipv) to the development of substance misuse issues in children and youth. these researchers state: since we are interested in the consequences of child maltreatment we want to assess causality. thus the strengths of prospective studies include the temporal ordering of maltreatment and subsequent outcomes, objective measurement of maltreatment, avoidance of recall bias, minimization of selective inclusion of participants on the basis of outcome and the opportunity to adjust for social and individual confounding factors as they occur. (p. 74) longitudinal and prospective research. summarizing the longitudinal and prospective research on ipv exposure and its impact on the development of substance misuse is challenging despite the fact that only four studies were published within the time frame of interest for this review. each of these four studies had somewhat different research questions, and each used different measures, different age groups with different socioeconomic, cultural and ethnic locations, different sample sizes, and different methods for collecting data. thus, as cross-study comparisons are difficult, the better approach may be to examine the convergence and divergence across studies and across the timelines within which these studies were conducted. fergusson, boden, and horwood’s (2008a) 25-year, prospective, longitudinal study of the developmental antecedents of illicit drug use was conducted in new zealand and followed a cohort of 1,265 children (635 males, 630 females) born in christchurch in 1977. these children were studied at birth, 4 months, and 1 year of age, and at ages 6, 18, 21, and 25. the focus of the study was the use, abuse, and dependence on “other illicit drugs” (i.e., not alcohol or cannabis). other illicit drugs were defined as: solvents (glue, petrol, and paint); stimulants (including methamphetamine); barbiturates; other prescription medications that were illicitly obtained; opiates, including both heroin and morphine; cocaine (in any form); hallucinogens including ecstasy, lsd, and pcp; and any other substances (primarily plant extracts) including mushrooms and datura. (p. 168) the study involved a variety of measures from a number of sources: parent surveys and interviews, teachers’ reports, cohort members’ self-reports, medical and other records, and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 529 psychometric assessments. multiple contributing factors for illicit drug use known to be implicated in 1977, when the study was first conceptualized, were examined, including personal characteristics (e.g., child’s gender, childhood adolescent adjustment, child novelty seeking, affiliation with substance-using peers), parental adjustment factors (e.g., parental illicit drug use, parental criminality, parental alcohol problems, parental use of physical punishment and physical abuse, interparental violence), and cohort members’ use of cigarettes and alcohol at ages 16 and 25. one problematic aspect of fergusson et al.’s (2008a) study is that, although ipv among the parents of child and youth cohort members was investigated, this was not done until cohort members reached the age of 18. only at this point were youth participants, but no one else, asked to retrospectively report on their exposure to ipv prior to the age of 16. the questions asked of the 18-year-olds were based on 8 items derived from the conflict tactics scale or cts (straus, 1979) and its follow-up, the revised cts2 (straus, hamby, boney-mccoy, & sugarman, 1996), a scale that is still frequently used to assess psychological and physiological attacks on intimate partners. interestingly, although the cts is designed specifically for assessing ipv in adult partners, in fergusson et al.’s (2008a) study, only participating 18-year-old youth were asked to report on this issue. the omission of parental self-report data about ipv that could well have been collected during each wave of the longitudinal study seems curious, especially because fergusson et al. used the cts to question youth and seemed to have recognized, from the start, the potential impact on the cohort members of witnessing ipv. still, fergusson et al., using regression analysis, did detect a significant association between youth cohort members’ illicit drug use, abuse, and dependence at ages 16 to 25 for both males and females (p < .0001), at a level of association that was the same as that found for exposure to sexual abuse in childhood (both queried retrospectively prior to the age of 16, only of youth cohort members at ages 18 and 21), for novelty seeking assessed via self-reports at age 16, and for conduct problems which had been assessed via teacher reports at ages 7 and 13. all these measures yielded a higher level of significance (p < .0001), than that detected for exposure to physical punishment (p < .001), which was also examined retrospectively for the time period prior to the age of 16, only of youth cohort members at ages 18 and 21. finally, gender (that is sex, since no definition of gender was provided) also emerged as significant in that males were found to use, abuse, and be dependent on illicit drugs at significantly higher levels than females (p < .01). interestingly, the significant association for witnessing ipv prior to the age of 16 did not hold when fergusson et al. (2008a) conducted a multivariate analysis of all the risk factors that they included in their study in order to establish the time dynamic significance of these factors. the multivariate analysis found that with regard to the three abuse exposure factors (ipv, childhood physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse), only childhood sexual abuse (p < .0001) remained significant. being male (p < .0001), novelty seeking (p < .0001), and conduct problems between the ages of 7 to 13 (p < .05) also remained significant, but the scores for novelty seeking and conduct problems may well have been influenced by the timing of the various measures used in the fergusson et al. study. we note that participants’ childhood conduct and attention problems were examined during the time that cohort members were aged 7 to 13, but their exposure to ipv, childhood sexual abuse, and childhood physical abuse were not investigated until after their conduct problems had been measured and already established as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 530 implicated in the development of the use of illicit drugs. given the distinct possibility that conduct and attention problems can be triggered and exacerbated by witnessing ipv (becker & mccloskey, 2002; english et al., 2009; meltzer et al., 2009), by not investigating exposure to ipv until cohort members were 18 years of age and then only through retrospective reports, it is quite possible that the impact of cohort members’ witnessing ipv on the development of their conduct problems was missed, while at the same time, their conduct problems were foregrounded as predictive of the development of their illicit drug use, abuse, and dependence at ages 18 to 25. it is conceivable that these conduct problems may well have developed, at least in some significant part, because participants had been witnessing ipv before the age of 7. to understand the pre-age 7 effects of exposure to ipv we turn to andersen and teicher (2009), who conducted an extensive review of the recently reported effects of early stress on brain development in order to examine the causal links between such developmental stress exposure and subsequent risk for substance abuse. in the abstract of their review, andersen and teicher state that the “interaction of exposure [to childhood adversity] during a sensitive period and maturational events produces a cascade [italics ours] that leads to the initiation of substance use at younger ages, and increases the likelihood of addiction by adolescence or early adulthood” (p. 516). their definition of childhood adversity includes exposure to witnessing domestic violence and they place this stress on par with abuse, parental loss, and household dysfunction, all of which they identify as implicated in producing “a cascade of physiological and neurohumoral events that alter trajectories of brain development” (p. 517) such that this altered development creates a significant vulnerability for drug abuse. andersen and teicher describe drug abuse as a developmental disorder and offer compelling evidence for their claims by reviewing the findings of more than 190 studies relevant to the understanding of the impact of early life exposure to adversity on brain development published between 1978 and 2007. while exposure to ipv was not the only adversity examined in this review, it is included among the kinds of stressors that significantly increase the potential for changes in the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis, such that those who are affected experience what andersen and teicher describe as a “revved up” reward system that predisposes people to the compulsive use of substances that manifests at an early age. smith, elwyn, ireland, and thornberry (2010) also refer to a cascading effect, although the cascade that they refer to is not physiological and neurohumoral; their cascade is made up of negative consequences. smith et al., who examined the impact of adolescent exposure on substance use in early adulthood in their longitudinal rochester youth development study (ryds) beginning in 1987, propose that, “exposure to family violence along with other family processes potentially contributes to a cascading series of consequences that lead from short-term reactive responses to entrenched longer term consequences such as drug and alcohol problems” (p. 220). they examine this proposition in a subset of 508 participants (77% male, 23% female; 58% african-american, 18% latino, and 22% white) who were enrolled in the ryds, which involved 1,000 mostly urban, high-risk, minority adolescents who were already seen as extremely vulnerable for engagement in delinquency and crime. the 508 selected participants in the subsample were those whose primary caretakers were either married or had cohabiting partners in at least one of the waves of data collection during which partner violence was assessed with the cts (straus, 1979). as with many samples of youth who are at risk for international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 531 delinquency and crime, there were considerably more males in the group than there were females (chesney-lind & jones, 2010; zahn, 2009). smith et al. found that the participants reported considerable substance use: 56% of males and 33.9% of females reported any drug use, with 19.7% of males and 8% of females reporting drug use problems; as well, 42.2% of males and 17.4% of females reported heavy drinking, with 32.5% of males and 16.1% of females reporting any alcohol abuse problems. the self-reported levels of drug abuse and problem drinking in smith et al.’s (2010) highrisk population were certainly higher than the levels reported for the general adolescent population in the united states where approximately 33% of adolescents were shown to engage in binge drinking with about 6% progressing to alcohol use disorders (clark et al., 2002) and about 6% to 6.5% of adolescent cannabis users becoming misusers, as noted earlier in this section. however, in smith et al.’s (2010) population sample, exposure to severe ipv was found to increase the odds of alcohol problems (not other substances) in early adulthood only for young women (or = 5.63, p < .05). while these results raise awareness of the greater potential for alcohol abuse among high-risk, marginalized girls who are exposed to ipv, these findings cannot be treated as informative for a general population, even if restricted to females. the females in this study belong to a highly select group: high-risk girls. although smith et al.’s study is longitudinal and the data-gathering tool was standardized, the participants in the study comprise a very particular marginalized minority, high-risk, predominantly male group that cannot be seen as representative of a more general population. greater generalizable weight may be given to the findings of skeer, mccormick, normand, buka, and gillman (2009), who utilized data from a three-wave longitudinal study (project on human development in chicago neighborhoods) conducted between 1994 and 2001 in multiple neighbourhoods in chicago, illinois, rather than a single high-risk location. skeer et al.’s data were drawn from a stratified probability sample of 80 neighbourhoods selected from 343 neighbourhood clusters, from which 20-block groups were selected at random from each of the 80 neighbourhoods. to select the 1,421 children aged 10 to 22 (51% female; 44% hispanic/latino, 37.4% black, 14% white) who were the focus of the substance disorder study, the researchers drew a systematic random sample of residences from the sampled block groups and screened all the households in each block group (~40,000 households), which they enumerated and screened for the presence of age-eligible children. they subsequently included those children aged between 10 and 16 at enrolment in their study on the development of substance disorders in adolescence. in this more generalizable group, family conflict was assessed in wave i (1994 to 1997) at baseline using moos and moos’ (1986) standardized family environment scale (fes), which examines nine behaviours (e.g., family members hitting each other, being openly angry, losing their tempers), when the child participants were between 10 and 16 years of age. psychological stress was measured at wave ii (1997 to 1999) using two standardized scales, youth self report or ysr (achenbach, 1991) for internalizing problems and the child behaviour checklist or cbcl (achenbach & edelbrock, 1983) for externalizing problems, when participants were from 13 to 19 years of age. substance use disorders (sud) were assessed at wave iii (2000 to 2001), when participants were between 16 and 22 years of age, using the dsm-iv diagnosis for alcohol dependence or marijuana abuse or dependence. at wave i, data were also gathered on external social supports from immediate family, extended international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 532 family, friends or neighbours, school or community members, or others to see if these supports buffered against familial conflict. also at wave i, additional confounding factors known to be associated with both familial conflict and substance disorders were examined: parental history of substance abuse, parental history of depression, primary caregiver marital status, family socioeconomic status, and exposure of children to physical abuse and/or punishment. using bivariate and multiple logistic regression models to evaluate the association between familial conflict at wave i with adolescent substance use disorders at wave iii, skeer et al. (2009) showed the following: in the bivariate analyses, familial conflict at wave i was significantly associated with suds in wave iii, indicating that a one standard deviation increase in familial conflict was associated with a 24% higher odds of a substance use disorder (or: 1.24; 95% ci: 1.05–1.46). additionally, males were more likely to have an sud at wave iii (or: 1.61; ci: 1.19–2.18), as were individuals whose parents had a history of substance use problems (or: 1.46; ci: 1.01–2.11) […] in the fully adjusted logistic regression model, the association between familial conflict and substance use disorders was unchanged (or = 1.23; ci = 1.02, 1.47). other significant covariates in the adjusted model were gender and family ses […] finally, we added the interaction term between familial conflict and social support to the adjusted model to test the buffering hypothesis described above; however, it was not significant (p = 0.815). (p. 69) in referring to their primary hypothesis that “familial conflict during childhood will increase the risk of developing a substance use disorder during adolescence” (skeer et al., 2009, p. 66), they state: our primary hypothesis was substantiated in this study, as evidenced by our finding that controlling for a number of demographic and parental and family characteristics, children who lived in families with higher levels of familial conflict when they were younger had a significantly greater risk for developing substance use disorders in late adolescence and emerging adulthood. this is important because not only is it consistent with other studies examining this association (rhodes & jason, 1990; vakalahi, 2001), this is one of the only studies to examine this relationship using longitudinal data, thereby avoiding the alternative reverse causation hypotheses. furthermore, we found that almost one-third of the cases of substance use disorders in the sample would have been prevented if the adolescents had not lived in family environments with elevated levels of familial conflict. this underscores the need for prevention efforts to focus on adversity in the home. (p. 70) certainly the evidence presented by skeer et al. (2009) is persuasive and at the same time, where gender is concerned, contradicts the evidence presented by smith et al. (2010). to recap, smith et al. found that exposure to severe ipv increased the odds of alcohol problems (not other substances) in early adulthood only for the young women in the ryds. but skeer et al. found a significant relationship between exposure to familial conflict and substance disorders for both females and males, with males being even more likely than females to develop substance use disorders when exposed to familial conflict. on careful examination of both studies, we suggest international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 533 that the smith et al. study carries less overall weight. the smith et al. study is based on a highly select subsample from the ryds and that calls into question the generalizability of the findings. we have greater confidence for generalizability in skeer et al. (2009), given their more extensive sampling procedures as described above. further longitudinal research that supports a negative relationship between witnessing domestic violence (family-based adversity) and substance misuse was also provided by the fourth and final longitudinal study we were able to locate: begle et al. (2011) used a nationally representative sample of 3,614 adolescents aged 12 to 17 drawn from a united states national household probability sample (2005 national survey of adolescents [nsa-replication]), to examine “the direction of the association between victimization and high risk behavior and the role of gender” (p. 683). these researchers hypothesized that victimization experiences are predictive of engagement in high-risk behaviour. the victimization variables that they investigated included physical abuse and/or assault, sexual abuse, and witnessed community and domestic violence. the high-risk behaviours examined included alcohol use, drug use, and delinquency. the data were gathered through highly structured telephone interviews with the focus in wave i being on establishing a lifetime prevalence baseline for victimization along with year one information about all the behavioural variables in question. wave i and wave ii data collection interviews were conducted approximately one year apart. witnessed domestic violence was described as participants having observed their parents punch, hit, or beat up one another, choke one another, hit one another with an object, or threaten one another with a gun, knife, or other weapon. data were analyzed using structural equation modelling and showed that, as hypothesized, victimization at wave i significantly predicted high-risk behaviour incidence for both males and females at wave ii. unfortunately, the multiple and separate victimization constructs, and the multiple and separate high-risk behaviour constructs, were combined to create a single composite victimization variable and a single composite high-risk behaviour variable for the purposes of analysis. this means the model cannot be teased apart in order to ascertain the contribution of witnessed domestic violence to alcohol and drug use and abuse. however, begle and colleagues did report that: the baseline model for victimization provided a good fit to the sample data, χ2 (15, n = 3614) = 812.39, p < 0.001, nfi = 0.94, cfi = 0.94, srmr = 0.05. victimization at wave 1 significantly predicted victimization at wave 2 (β = 0.68, b = 22.76, p < 0.05) suggesting invariance of the construct over time. similarly, the baseline model for high risk behavior provided an adequate fit, χ2 (29, n = 3614) = 4253.85, p < 0.001, nfi = 0.92, cfi = 0.92, srmr = 0.08. high risk behavior at wave 1 significantly predicted behavior at wave 2 (β = 0.73, b = 43.88, p < 0.05). (pp. 685–686) additionally, begle et al. (2011) reported the following: results indicated that the model combining these constructs provided adequate fit to the hypothesized model, χ2 (122, n = 3614) = 8198.33, p < 0.001, nfi = 0.90, cfi = 0.91, srmr = 0.10. investigation of individual paths revealed that victimization at wave 1 significantly predicted high risk behavior incidence at wave 2 (β = 0.42, b = 16.47, p < 0.05). (p. 686) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 534 however, begle et al. (2011) also showed that their cross-lag model, while holding for boys, did not do so for girls: results of the cross-lag model analyses provided adequate fit to the sample of boys, χ2 (92, n = 1806) = 4773.74, p < 0.001, nfi = 0.89, cfi = 0.89, srmr = 0.23. […] examination of individual paths revealed that victimization at wave 1 significantly predicted high risk behavior at wave 2 (β = 0.03, b = 1.55, p < 0.05) [but] results of the cross-lag model did not provide an adequate fit to the sample of girls, χ2 (92, n = 1808) = 2385.98, p < 0.001, nfi = 0.85, cfi = 0.86, srmr = 0.12. (p. 686) the four longitudinal studies reviewed above provide several valuable lessons about the development of substance misuse issues: witnessing violence between one’s parents, whether that is termed interparental violence (fergusson, boden, & horwood, 2008b), family violence (smith et al., 2010), family conflict (skeer et al., 2009), or a victimization experience (begle et al., 2011), makes a direct and lasting contribution to substance misuse. yet, these studies are not in agreement with respect to gender effects: smith et al. (2010) suggest that girls are more vulnerable, begle et al. (2011) and skeer et al. (2009) suggest that boys are more vulnerable, while fergusson, boden, and horwood (2008b) suggest that both sexes are vulnerable. together these studies bring attention to the fact that witnessing ipv has significant impacts on youth substance misuse. as well, methodological problems with cross-study comparability and within study decisions about strategies for data gathering and analysis notwithstanding, the cascading effects of exposure to ipv, whether these cascades are internal (neurohumoral) or external (a series of negative events), are clearly evident in the four longitudinal studies. these findings point to an additional cascade, the cascade of the evergrowing accumulation of evidence of a significant relationship between exposure to ipv and the development of substance misuse issues. we turn next to large representative sample correlational and retrospective studies for further corroboration of the impact of witnessing ipv on youth substance misuse. large representative sample correlational and retrospective studies. additional support for the significant and negative contribution of witnessing ipv to the development of substance misuse issues comes from the large representative sample correlational studies: douglas et al. (2010); gavazzi, lim, yarcheck, bostic, and scheer (2008); kaufman et al. (2007); kliewer and murrelle (2007); rothman, edwards, heeren, and hingson (2008); singh, thornton, and tonmyr (2011); strine et al. (2012); zinzow et al. (2009). these studies, like the longitudinal studies reviewed above, also present a number of methodological issues that create challenges with regard to comparing and synthesizing their results. the first challenge is that the literature on the factors that contribute to the development of substance misuse largely refers to child maltreatment as a comprehensive construct (see, for example, hovdestad et al., 2011), without necessarily examining each type of maltreatment separately. as well, the recognition of witnessing ipv as a variable separate from general maltreatment is a relatively recent development. this is confirmed by gilbert et al. (2009), who international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 535 in their comprehensive search for any systematic reviews of the scholarly literature on child maltreatment and its negative and adult-life persistent impacts published from 2000 to june 2008, found that most of the literature speaks to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and does not necessarily include mention of witnessing ipv. still, as these authors also state, “increasingly, witnessing intimate-partner violence is also regarded as a form of child maltreatment” (gilbert et al., 2009, p. 69). further, as gilbert et al. also show, “children who are exposed to one type of maltreatment are often exposed to other types on several occasions or continuously” (p. 71), thus untangling one form of abuse from another in order to measure its individual impact is difficult. it can therefore be assumed that if one category of abuse is found, others are also likely to be present, so even the non-mention of witnessing ipv does not mean that research participants did not in fact witness ipv. accordingly, gilbert et al. state, “cross-sectional studies indicate that exposure to multiple forms of abuse and other childhood adversities, including witnessing intimate-partner violence, leads to a cumulative increase in the risk of self-reported alcohol or drug misuse in adulthood” (p. 76). this suggests again that the cascading effect is constantly in play. indeed, the cross-sectional studies reviewed here, while containing the issues described above, like the longitudinal studies reviewed above, also showed strong links between witnessing ipv and the development of substance misuse problems. each of the cross-sectional studies reviewed here made reference to family adversity, although how these were operationalized was far from uniform. douglas et al. (2010), who retrospectively examined the relationship between adverse childhood events and substance dependence in a sample of 2,510 members of families (average age not reported) receiving services from four united states university health centers, employed constructs that had been developed for the diagnostic reliability of the semi-structured assessment for drug dependence and alcoholism (ssadda) drug and alcohol dependence instrument developed by pieruccilagha et al. (2005). the focus of the questions in this instrument is on family stability (multiple caregivers, number of relocations), childhood trauma (exposure to violent crime, sexual abuse, and physical abuse), and relationship with the main caregiver (excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor). gavazzi et al. (2008), who examined family-specific factors and their association with poor mental health and substance abuse in adolescents, gathered data about the current experiences of family conflict of their 2,646 court-involved participants in ohio using the 132-item global risk assessment device or grad (gavazzi et al., 2003). the grad contains 17 items that focus on disrupted family processes including measures of family fights. kaufman et al. (2007), examining the genetic and environmental predictors of early alcohol use in a group of 219 children (average age 12.5 years) who had been removed from their parents’ homes in connecticut, used child protection case records and multiple informant interviews (caseworkers, parents, and the children themselves) to establish the kinds of abuse the child participants had been subjected to (physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and witnessing domestic violence). kliewer and murrelle (2007), who investigated risk and protective factors for adolescent substance use in a three-country central american sample of 17,215 adolescents aged 12 to 20 years, used a 175-item survey constructed after they conducted a pilot study with 988 adolescents between ages 11 and 19 years in panama. their survey included 10 items that international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 536 measured negative family interactions and communication and five items that measured exposure to violence and witnessing serious violence. rothman et al. (2008), who looked into the connection between adverse childhood experiences and the early onset of alcohol consumption in a sample of 3,409 current or former drinkers aged 18 to 39 years, used a survey containing questions from the national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions (nesarc), a survey developed by the united states department of health and human services. with reference to family experiences, this survey contains questions about child abuse and neglect, including psychological abuse, contact sexual abuse, household dysfunction, and witnessing violence against a mother or stepmother (not father or stepfather). singh et al. (2011), who investigated the determinants of substance misuse in a random subsample of 4,381 children and adolescents drawn from the canadian study of reported child abuse and neglect-2003 (cis), a study of 11,552 child maltreatment investigations that included cases from every canadian province except québec, used a specifically developed report form that was completed by trained protection workers. the form queried substantial maltreatment and other neglect on a yes/no basis: yes – the child experienced any one of substantiated physical abuse, substantiated sexual abuse, substantiated emotional maltreatment, or substantiated exposure to domestic violence; or no – the child did not. strine et al. (2012), who examined the connection between adverse childhood experiences, psychological distress as a mediator, and adult alcohol problems in a sample of 7,279 over-18year-old adult members (average age: 54.8 females, 57.1 males) of an american health maintenance organization (hmo), developed and employed the 168-item family health history (fhh) questionnaire, that is a composite of selected questions from several previously existing standardized scales, for example, the cts (straus, 1979; straus et al., 1996). the questionnaire included 4 items that queried witnessing violence against participants’ mothers or stepmothers (not fathers or stepfathers). finally, zinzow et al. (2009), who examined the relationship between witnessed parental and community-based violence in substance use and delinquency in an american national household probability sample (3,164 parent-child cases) of urban dwelling youth aged 12 to 17, used a modified version of a previously developed violence assessment module that examined parental violence with five questions about witnessing parents punching, hitting, choking, beating, using objects to beat, or threatening each other with guns, knives, or other weapons. none of the studies, briefly described here, used the same measures, although all covered very similar experiences. despite the variations in measures, the range in age of the participants, and the sample size of each of the studies, the collective findings drawn from more than 40,000 participants converged: abuse and lower perceived quality of relationships with their primary caregivers (douglas et al., 2010), disrupted family processes (gavazzi et al., 2008), maltreatment, including witnessing family violence (kaufman et al., 2007), negative family interactions (kliewer & murrelle, 2007), parental discord or divorce (rothman et al., 2008), substantiated maltreatment international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 537 including substantiated exposure to domestic violence (singh et al., 2011), and witnessed violence (zinzow et al., 2009), played a significant role in the development of substance misuse and other issues. only strine et al. (2012) did not report a direct connection between family conflict variables (witnessing domestic abuse of mothers and stepmothers) and substance misuse, but the average age of participants was considerably higher than that of the participants in the other studies, and strine et al.’s emphasis was on psychological distress as a mediator for alcohol problems rather on the direct relationship between the individual variables they queried and substance misuse issues. if we set aside strine et al.’s 7,279 participants and focus on the findings from the six studies that reported similar age ranges (kaufman et al., 2007; kliewer & murrelle, 2007; rothman et al., 2008; singh et al., 2011; zinzow et al., 2009) and the data from their 31,034 participants, collectively, these large, representative sample correlational and retrospective studies provide strong evidence that negative family interactions that include witnessing family violence, play a significant role in the development of substance misuse issues. these correlational studies, taken together with the longitudinal studies described earlier, certainly add to the evidence that implicates witnessing ipv as a source of significant risk for problematic substance misuse issues in adolescence and adulthood. while there may still be room to argue on the basis of the longitudinal studies that the long-term effects of witnessing ipv may only pertain to females (smith et al., 2010), or that females and males are both affected but males ultimately experience an even stronger effect (begle et al., 2011; skeer et al., 2009), the additive weight of the research provides a strong case for taking seriously the impact of witnessing ipv on the development of substance misuse issues, especially because substance misuse is also strongly implicated in delinquency and crime. delinquency, crime, and victimization much of the current research examining the link between exposure to domestic violence and violent or aggressive behaviour has examined compounding factors, such as that of exposure to domestic violence and adolescent maltreatment (mejia, kliewer, & williams, 2006; park, smith, & ireland, 2012; sousa et al., 2011). both targeted child abuse and ipv contribute substantively to an array of problematic outcomes. this overview summarizes the current research on the effects on children and youth of the adversity package (jirapramukpitak et al., 2011), that is, the “family burden” (kassis et al., 2013) of the exposure to family violence and delinquency and crime. however, although both witnessing ipv and experiencing violence are associated with the highest level of negative adjustment problems, exposure to ipv only is also associated with delinquency and substance use (ellonen, piispa, peltonen, & oranen, 2013). although we chose to focus our attention on research conducted from 2006 onwards, for our consideration of crime, delinquency, and victimization, we also believed it important to include four earlier reviews that covered additional material from 1994 to 2003 and provided the basis for the more recent reviews upon which we concentrated. the first of these four reviews, schwartz, rendon, and hsieh (1994), still focused on child maltreatment rather than children’s exposure to aggression and violence between their parents or caregivers, but nonetheless drew our attention to some key issues in the research that has been generated about family violence and child abuse and their effects: although a link has been established between family violence, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 538 particularly child maltreatment and neglect, and delinquency, the wide range of methodologies for examining these links, the notable variation in definitions for what constitutes violence, maltreatment, and delinquency, and the possible selection biases in sample populations, create challenges for those who attempt to systematically analyze this literature. schwartz et al. therefore suggest that where reviews of this literature are concerned, one should tread carefully and select for inclusion only those studies that have rigorously dealt with the issues outlined above. that is, studies that: (a) employed comparable methodologies that could be independently replicated; (b) were based on prospective rather than retrospective data; (c) utilized comparable standardized tools and definitions; and (d) accounted for sampling biases such as drawing only from women’s shelters and transition house populations and from present and former children in care or from incarcerated youth and adults. buehler et al. (1997), in their meta-analysis of interparental conflict and youth problem behaviours, did just as schwartz et al. (1994) suggested and from a body of literature that spanned 15 years, selected 68 studies that met the required criteria for definitional agreement and sampling and for data that allowed the calculation of effect size. after conducting their rigorous meta-analysis, buehler et al. reported an average effect size of .32 and noted “a consistent and important association between inter-parental conflict and youth problem behaviors” (p. 243). following buehler et al. (1997), kitzmann et al. (2003) also conducted a meta-analysis of the psychosocial outcomes of children exposed to family violence. in their analysis, kitzmann et al. acknowledged the earlier work of buehler and others but noted that this work included in a wide spectrum of forms of marital discord and conflict strategies, not only exposure to physical aggression between parents. although buehler et al. made an important contribution to our overall understanding of the effect of interparental conflict, their analysis does not inform us specifically about the effects of witnessing interparental violence. to that end, kitzmann et al. (2003) examined 118 studies (84 journal articles, 5 book chapters, and 29 theses or dissertations) published between 1978 and 2000. the selected studies allowed outcome comparisons for: (a) child witnesses of interparental violence and non-witnesses; (b) child witnesses of interparental violence and child witnesses (only) of interparental verbal aggression; (c) child witnesses of interparental violence and children who had been physically abused; and (d) child witnesses of interparental violence and physically abused children, along with a systematic comparison of the reported outcomes of correlational studies of exposure to the four conditions described above. all 118 selected studies yielded a significant association between exposure to interparental aggression and/or violence and to physical abuse and poor child outcomes. witnessing interparental violence creates a notable risk, one that is at least as problematic as direct abuse at the hands of one’s parents. wolfe et al. (2003), who conducted their meta-analysis almost concurrently with kitzmann et al. (2003), and reference kitzmann and colleagues, selected only 41 studies for their analysis. still, wolfe et al.’s analysis, while premised on even more conservative methodological parameters than kitzmann et al.’s, shows considerable overlap with that of kitzmann et al. (33 of the 41 studies analyzed by wolfe et al. were the same as those included by kitzmann et al.). not surprisingly, wolfe et al. and kitzmann et al. came to similar conclusions. wolfe et al. therefore state that the “answer to whether or not children exposed to violence experience more difficulties than their peers emerged as an unequivocal yes” (p. 183). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 539 by 2003, based on three meta-analyses of 194 studies, some of which were analyzed twice, a convergence of findings had emerged: exposure to violence in the family has serious consequences for a significant number of children, a number that should not be ignored. still, up to this point, the analyses focused on a range of poor externalized and internalized psychosocial outcomes rather than examining the effects of exposure to violence on each of these outcomes separately. this problem persists even in more recent work and should perhaps be acknowledged not as a limitation of that work but as likely an accurate reflection of the reality that poor child and youth outcomes cannot be neatly sorted into discrete non-overlapping categories. this overlap, and with it the inability to neatly pinpoint which outcomes are tied to which outcomes, necessitates an understanding of the impacts of domestic violence that is dynamic even while striving to sort out differential impacts and outcomes. a dynamic understanding of the impact of exposure to domestic violence on the health and development of children is summarized in holt et al.’s (2008) review of 143 peer-reviewed articles selected from over 1,000 studies conducted in the 11-year period between 1995 and 2006. this review, which also included research that was previously analyzed (for example, kitzmann et al., 2003; wolfe et al., 2003), focused specifically on those studies that examined children and young people’s outcomes through reports, surveys, and other measures that directly involved these children and youth rather than eliciting the views of their parents, shelter workers, and other professionals as a way to gauge these outcomes. this focus on child and youth experience rather than on others’ (mediated) perspectives of that experience is what lends particular significance to holt et al.’s review. as holt et al. point out, although we have more than three decades of research on the scope and consequences of children’s exposure to domestic violence it is only within the last decade or so, that we have begun to acknowledge that children are indeed “dynamic in their efforts to make sense of their experiences while navigating their way around the complexity and terror intrinsic to domestic violence” (p. 798). holt et al. underline the fact that children are not just passive recipients of experience – recipients who merely replicate and reproduce what they see, hear, taste, touch, and feel; they also interpret their experiences and use their interpretations to draw conclusions about self, others, and the world. further, as holt et al. show, as children grow and develop, they shift and change their understanding of and their responses to exposure to domestic violence. thus the impacts of domestic violence are developmentally linked and negative child outcomes are, as wolfe et al. (2003) noted, processes rather than once and for all absolutes. developmental pathways the impact of frequent exposure to ipv may have long-term negative outcomes on a child’s aggressive and externalizing behaviour. for instance, one american study found no significant differences in aggressive behavioural problems among children exposed to frequent ipv between birth and 3 years of age and their non-exposed peers (holmes, 2013). however, over time, the children who were more frequently exposed between birth and 3 years of age were found to exhibit more aggressive behaviour 5 years later (holmes, 2013). thus, where the impacts of domestic violence on youth delinquency and crime and later adult crime are international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 540 concerned, the pathway is also developmental. for example, the first manifestations of later behavioural and criminal problems may appear as: problems with attachment for infants and toddlers (mcintosh, 2002); behavioural problems like temper tantrums and aggression in preschoolers (cunningham & baker, 2004; huth-bocks, levendosky, & semel, 2001); antisocial rationales (cunningham & baker, 2004); difficulties with aggression and adhering to rules, poor social skills, engagement in bullying others, being bullied during the school-age years (bauer et al., 2006; cunningham & baker, 2004; knous-westfall, ehrensaft, macdonell, & cohen, 2012; lundy & grossman, 2005; voisin & hong, 2012); and then delinquency and crime in adolescence and adulthood (leschied, chiodo, nowicki, & rodger, 2008). leschied et al. (2008) took up the developmental understanding of criminal behaviour in their meta-analysis of 38 prospective and longitudinal studies that examined the impact of negative early childhood experiences and detrimental family factors on adult offending in a total of 66,647 participants (68% from continental western europe; 24.7% from the united states; 6.3% from the united kingdom, australia, and new zealand) who were followed from a mean age of 10.5 until they reached a mean age of 24.5. leschied et al. also emphasized dynamic over static characteristics of experience and calculated effect sizes for the factors that the 38 studies reported. they found that overall, across all age groups, externalizing issues (e.g., lack of selfcontrol, antisocial behaviour, hyperactivity, and conduct disorder) were satisfactory predictors of adult criminality with the predictive strength becoming stronger as the behavioural issue persisted over time (effect size was .20 in early childhood, .31 in mid-childhood, and a robust .52 in adolescence). as well, the most potent family factors that were predictive of adult criminality across all studies were: parent management that is coercive, inconsistent, lacking in supervision, and a child or youth becoming involved with the child welfare system. parenting and delinquency in their meta-analysis of 161 published and unpublished manuscripts about the association of parenting and delinquency, hoeve et al. (2009) point out that parenting should not be examined in isolation from an examination of other familial factors, but interestingly confine their analysis to a range of parenting behaviours without making reference to either contextual or interfamilial factors. still, they provide convincing evidence for a significant relationship between harsh, hostile, rejecting, controlling, and neglectful parenting with delinquency, evidence that again raises the spectre of an overall negative family climate. lescheid et al. (2008) did include family dynamics in their meta-analysis and found adverse family environments that include family violence implicated in the question of dynamic risk and the prediction of criminality. they state: [t]he nature of parent management viewed as inconsistent, harsh, or punitive, along with a child’s experience with violence in the home, both as a witness and as a victim proved to be particularly strong family-based predictors […] it is the combination of factors as well as the intensity of a specific risk factor that leads to the overall potency of prediction […] child-specific risk – including a variety of behavioral disorders in combination with [italics in the original] being the recipient of harsh or inconsistent parenting and exposure international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 541 and victimization of violence within the home that can co-occur or follow in a sequence of risk – can incrementally increase the accuracy of [risk] prediction. (p. 458) criminality, like many social problems, cannot be traced to a single cause or contributing factor but violence in the family – whether in the form of targeted abuse, hostile, harsh and punitive parenting, exposure to ipv, or a combination of these – creates serious risk for criminality and other negative outcomes. while the precursors to criminality may be experienced in the private domain of the family home, the impacts that emanate from that private experience are felt far beyond the family domain and very quickly become a broadly shared concern. violence that is enacted upon family members by family members is, of course, a chargeable offence; it is a crime. the extent of this crime in canada has been under careful scrutiny for some time and has been the focus of the family violence initiative or fvi (public health agency of canada, 2013) since 1998. the fvi is a comprehensive government of canada program led by the public health agency of canada and involving 15 departments, agencies, and crown corporations working in concert to reduce the occurrence of family violence. each year, the fvi, in conjunction with statistics canada, releases an annual report that tracks the nature and extent of family violence in this country. it is of great importance to our understanding of the impact of family violence on crime, and the intergenerational transmission of this criminal behaviour, that we take a close look at the role of family violence in the overall distribution of crime in canada and that we note the developments in our understanding that have occurred in recent years. the following excerpt from the 2010 family violence in canada statistical profile illustrates this point: recently, there has been some consideration within the research community both nationally and internationally and by federal, provincial and territorial governments towards including all types of intimate partner relationships, including dating partners, in a definition of family violence […] violence against dating partners has been argued to fall within the definition of family violence, due to its many similarities with spousal violence […because] research has found that the characteristics of police-reported dating violence generally mirror those of spousal violence […and because] research has [also] found that individuals’ experiences in early dating relationships can have an impact on future patterns of violence for both victims and abusers. (varcoe et al., 2011, p. 9) the inclusion of dating violence in the definition of ipv highlights two important findings in the canadian context: 1. the victimization rate for police-reported ipv is 341/100,000 for people aged 15 years and older, a rate that is almost 2.5 times higher than police recorded rates for family violence against children, parents, or other family members where the reported rate is 141/100,000; and 2. even when compared to the police-reported rate for stranger violence (287/100,000), the greatest risk for victimization is to be found in intimate partner relationships (sinha, 2013). these rates not only speak to victimization, they also provide a record of chargeable offences, that is, criminal activity. it is especially in the perpetration of ipv that the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 542 intergenerational transmission of crime is most apparent. as noted by schwartz, hage, bush, and burns (2006), in their narrative review of the 143 studies on witnessing and/or experiencing violence in the family and poor parenting practices generated since 1984, “witnessing and/or experiencing violence in the family of origin has been the most researched and accepted explanation for the intergenerational transmission process of intimate violence” (p. 206). they, too, suggest that there is no single mechanism or element at the core of the intergenerational transmission of ipv and suggest that rather than attempting to isolate single factors or characteristics in the search for a causal model, we consider instead what they describe as “multiple family-of-origin pathways to future intimate violence” (p. 207). this model embraces the overlap between witnessing ipv and child abuse – also identified by bedi and goddard (2007) – and recognizes, as noted earlier in this review, that the impacts of domestic violence are dynamic rather than chain-like. as schwartz et al. (2006) show, “detrimental family-of-origin factors not only model violent, abusive, and coercive behaviors but also have negative effects on intrapersonal (e.g., self-worth) and interpersonal (e.g., communication skills) development [and] may also damage the attachment between parent and child” (p. 216) and thereby model maladaptive relational templates. these maladaptive templates serve to continue the intergenerational transmission of intimate partner violence by ill equipping the next generation for positive attachment and by modelling violent crime toward those with whom one has one’s closest connections. in a study comparing a representative sample of 1,152 school-aged children to 148 juvenile offenders between the ages of 11 and 19 in colombia, mejia et al. (2006) examined the associations between direct and indirect mechanisms of family violence and adolescent maltreatment with aggression and impaired prosocial behaviour. these researchers found that exposure to domestic violence was both directly (.06, p < .001) and indirectly (.09, p <. 001) associated with violent behaviour. they also found that children who were exposed to both family violence and childhood maltreatment “reported greater levels of violent behaviors, such as carrying weapons, knives, or responding by physically fighting, and limited capacity to respond proactively towards others” (mejia et al., 2006, p. 265). similarly, park et al. (2012) used longitudinal data collected from youths 14 years old to adulthood, from the ryds, to explore the co-occurrence of domestic violence exposure and child maltreatment and found that, although maltreatment has a stronger overall impact on negative behavioural outcomes such as antisocial or violent behaviour in both adolescence and adulthood, exposure to severe ipv does have an independent impact on committing violent crime. being exposed to domestic violence in youth may also have long-term negative consequences that result in other violent or criminal behaviour. witnessing ipv in childhood may increase the risk of perpetrating aggressive behaviour or ipv during adolescence and adulthood (adams, 2009; caldeira & woodin, 2012; fergusson et al., 2008b; lohman, neppl, senia, & schofield, 2013; mandal & hindin, 2013; moretti, obsuth, odgers, & reebye, 2006; murrell, christoff, & henning, 2007; roberts, gilman, fitzmaurice, decker, & koenen, 2010; temple, shorey, tortolero, wolfe, & stuart, 2013) and may be associated with cognitive biases which condone abusive behaviour (neighbors et al., 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 543 fergusson et al. (2008b) conducted a study that examined the developmental antecedents of ipv victimization and perpetration in a new zealand birth cohort (n = 828). the researchers found that individuals exposed to multiple psychosocial adversities in childhood, including family adversities in adolescence such as child abuse or family violence, and who showed longterm adjustment difficulties, were at a higher risk of domestic violence perpetration. similarly, moretti et al.’s (2006) study provides evidence that exposure to interparental violence increases an adolescent’s risk of perpetrating aggressive acts against mothers, fathers, friends, and romantic partners. in their sample of 63 girls and 49 boys (ages 13 to 18), moretti et al. found that females who witnessed their mothers’ aggressive behaviour toward their partners were significantly more aggressive toward their peers and friends, whereas male youths who were exposed to their fathers’ aggression were significantly more aggressive toward their friends. both male and female adolescents who observed their mothers’ aggression toward their partners also reported significantly higher levels of aggression toward their romantic partners. murrell et al. (2007) examined a sample of 1,099 adult males arrested for battery and also found that as exposure to domestic violence as a child increased, so did the frequency of domestic violence offences perpetrated. social learning theory may play a role in the perpetration of domestic violence during adulthood by individuals who were exposed to domestic violence in childhood. adams (2009) examined data collected from in-depth interviews with 51 men who killed or attempted to kill their partners. adams’ (2009) research supports the social learning theory of domestic violence that it is “first learned by parenting modeling and then socially reinforced through peer and cultural supports of male dominance within male-female relationships” (p. 228). however, gover, jennings, tomsich, park, and rennison’s (2011) study examining social learning and self-control theories in a sample of south korean and american college students found that observing domestic violence in childhood “was not a predictor of psychological violence in the college student samples”, which may indicate that “modeling does not appear to cross types of violence (i.e., physical and psychological)” (p. 311). exposure to either domestic violence or child abuse has also been found to affect a child’s attachment to their parents and antisocial behaviour (sousa et al., 2011). youth who have a stronger attachment to their parents have lower risks of antisocial behaviour during adolescence (sousa et al., 2011). the connection between in-home exposure to ipv and subsequent aggressive and antisocial behaviour is also well supported by recent longitudinal research conducted by ireland and smith (2009) who followed 1,000 urban american youth from age 14 to adulthood using prospective data gathered in the ryds (browning, 1999; thornberry, krohn, lizotte, smith, & porter, 1998), a study that examined the impact of family process factors on delinquency and youth development. ireland and smith’s findings are compelling. using bivariate and multivariate logistical regression, they showed that: (a) the risk of violent crime in adolescence is 1.7 times greater if the adolescent resides in a partner-violent family; (b) caregiver severe partner violence is significantly related to self-reported violent crime; (c) being raised in a partner-violent family significantly increases the risk of both antisocial behaviour and relationship violence in early adulthood; and (d) none of the differences between male and female coefficients achieved statistical significance (p < .05). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 544 even the non-violent aspects of interparental conflict are implicated in the transmission of intimate partner violence, specifically in dating violence in adolescence (tschann et al., 2009). in their longitudinal study of 150 mexican-american and european-american male and female adolescents, tshann et al. used multiple regression and path analyses and found that both nonviolent parental conflict and interparental violence were predictive of mutual verbal aggression, dating violence victimization, especially for girls, and dating violence perpetration for both sexes, especially for boys. both sexes were affected by exposure to parental conflict and violence and both sexes were at significant risk for becoming victims and/or perpetrators of romantic partner violence, and therefore, at heightened risk for involvement in criminal behaviour. if exposure to interparental violence is tantamount to child abuse (bedi & goddard, 2007), and such exposure is at the same time significantly predictive of future involvement in delinquency, crime, and the use of violence against romantic partners, then surely a concerted effort aimed at preventing intimate partner and romantic partner violence would make a strong contribution to crime prevention. as sinha (2013) documents: intimate partner violence, including both spousal and dating violence, accounts for one in every four violent crimes reported to police. in 2011, there were approximately 97,500 victims of intimate partner violence, representing a rate of 341 victims per 100,000 population […] violence by a dating partner was more prevalent than violence committed by any other type of perpetrator, including one of the most common – friends or acquaintances. in particular, the rate of violence by a dating partner was 10% higher than the rate of violence committed by friends or acquaintances, 42% higher than stranger violence and nearly three times higher than non-spousal family violence. (p. 38) it would seem then that for many people, the perpetration of crime and the experience of victimization are most closely connected to those with whom they have their closest relationships. interpersonal victimization in addition to the perpetration of crime, youth exposed to domestic violence are at an increased risk for criminal and violent victimization compared to non-exposed youth (mitchell & finkelhor, 2001; schewe, riger, howard, staggs, & mason, 2006), which may compound the mental health impacts of early ipv exposure. mitchell and finkelhor (2001) examined data from the 1996, 1997, and 1998 american national crime victimization surveys and compared survey participants of households with at least one youth who was exposed to: (a) at least one incident of domestic violence against an adult (n = 352 households, 627 youth); (b) at least one incident of violence against an adult by a nondomestic person (n = 1,993 households, 3,534 youth); or (c) no crime or violence against an adult (n = 2,333 households, 4,106 youth). the study authors found that living in a household with domestic violence increased both boys’ and girls’ risk of victimization by 115% and 229%, respectively, as opposed to youth in households with no domestic violence (100% and 119%). although some of these youths were victimized by the same perpetrator that committed domestic violence against an adult in their household, “most of the victimizations of youth from domestic violence households were at the hands of someone international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 545 outside of the family, suggesting that the impact of living in a violent household extends beyond interfamilial abuse” (mitchell & finkelhor, 2001, p. 958). in another study examining welfare recipients in illinois, schewe et al. (2006) used data collected from a third wave of interviews with 814 women receiving welfare services and found that being exposed to domestic violence as a youth was a significant risk factor for sexual assault (p < .01) and domestic violence victimization (p < .001) in adulthood. the lifelong impacts of childhood exposure to ipv, however, do not end here. even if this exposure does not lead to internalizing and or externalizing mental health and behavioural issues, substance misuse, delinquency and crime or victimization, there are additional risks pertaining to academic and employment outcomes, as discussed in the following section. academic and employment outcomes the link between educational attainment and economic success is well demonstrated (alexander, 2011; currie & widom, 2010; macmillan & hagan, 2004; tanaka et al., 2011; zielinski, 2009). according to zielinski (2009), “better performance in school and higher educational attainment leads to higher income, better odds for employment, and more stable employment over time” (p. 675). therefore, it is vital to consider educational deficits when considering the ongoing impacts of ipv exposure and employment outcomes. zielinski further noted that, “maltreatment has consistently been found to serve as a significant risk factor for impaired cognitive and academic outcomes” (p. 675). she also cited several studies that demonstrated the negative effects of early victimization on educational attainment and highlighted the fact that maltreatment in childhood was associated with a higher risk of not completing high school. margolin and gordis (2000) created a substantial list of additional functional deficits with lasting ramifications for children exposed to trauma. these effects include delayed cognitive development, poor academic performance, inability to react to stress adequately, dysregulation of the stress regulating system (i.e., the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), abnormal hypothalamic pituitary growth hormone axis control, and limbic system dysfunction. impairments in physical functioning, including body pain, general health, and vitality are also correlated with ipv (dauvergne & johnson, 2001; tanaka et al., 2011). detrimental experiences that influence child development and pivotal transitions shape and alter the life course of individuals (macmillan & hagan, 2004). self-report data on witnessing regular and consistent parental violence in adolescence is negatively associated with income and wealth, that is, net worth (covey, menard, & franzese, 2013). this section of the literature review was written with the intention of explicating the relationship between exposure to ipv and employment outcomes. at this stage of the analysis, existing research indicates that there are a myriad of factors associated with ipv that put individuals at risk for problematic employment trajectories and future achievements. although reviewed in summary, the psychopathological problems, psychosocial difficulties, and functional deficits convey general barriers to successful employment. however, the lack of research in this area reveals that relatively little is known about the ongoing consequences of ipv and future socioeconomic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 546 outcomes. “this gap in our knowledge is surprising considering recent speculation that exposure to violence undermines socioeconomic attainments” (macmillan & hagan, 2004, p. 128). the current findings reinforce the need for new and continued investigation of the influence of ipv on employment variables. at this point, the impacts of ipv appear to lead to possible, and perhaps significant, socioeconomic disadvantage in the long run. with specific and applicable knowledge, subsequent intervention and prevention models may be able to moderate this particular effect. academic outcomes exposure to domestic violence has been considered a form of child maltreatment, which is known to impede children’s academic performance and success (coohey, renner, hua, zhang, & whitney, 2011). yet, not all children who have been exposed to domestic violence have difficulties in school (coohey et al., 2011). because young children are disproportionately exposed to domestic violence, and are more limited in their ability to cope with the impacts of domestic violence, the effects of ipv exposure on early learning may be especially concerning (baker & cunningham, 2009). intellectual ability. domestic violence impacts children’s cognitive development by increasing stress levels and by impacting mothers’ own mental health, which can in turn affect their relationships with their children (busch & lieberman, 2010). there is some evidence that multiple forms of adversity in childhood may be linked to iq, with research indicating that children exposed to domestic violence have lower iq scores than non-exposed children (busch & lieberman, 2010; byrne & taylor, 2007). according to busch and lieberman, this relationship may be moderated by mothers’ attachment security, as their study found mothers’ attachment to be associated with iq scores, particularly verbal iq scores, of preschool-aged children who had witnessed at least one incident of ipv in the previous year. a pilot study examining the relationship between children’s exposure to trauma (including direct physical/sexual abuse and witnessing domestic violence) and deontic reasoning concluded that dissociation, rather than trauma exposure, predicted errors in this type of reasoning among school-aged children (deprince, chu, & combs, 2008). one longitudinal study (coohey et al., 2011) used the violence exposure scale to measure maltreated children’s (n = 702) exposure to domestic violence in the form of witnessing ipv. only 12.8% of the children in the sample reported domestic violence exposure and the study found that, although domestic violence exposure was related to reading scores, it was not related to children’s overall academic achievement (coohey et al., 2011). exposure in this study was a measure of children’s reports of witnessing domestic violence, rather than hearing or knowing about domestic violence. another longitudinal study found that 12-year-old children who had witnessed family violence were 1.45 times more likely than non-witnesses to have low reading levels (thompson & whimper, 2010). cognitive development and intellectual ability, particularly verbal skills, are important for academic success (graham-bermann, howell, miller, kwek, & lilly, 2010). ipv exposure has been found to be associated with speech and language difficulties, with ipv-exposed international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 547 children 7.5 times more likely to have been referred to a school-based speech pathologist than their non-exposed peers (kernic et al., 2002). another study found that mother-reported exposure to ipv for infants at 30 months old significantly predicted lower memory functioning for the children when they were 60 months old and entering school: when controlling for confounding variables, ipv exposure was able to predict lower short-term (β = -.46, p < .01), working (β = -.17, p < .05), and deliberate (β = -.15, p < .05) memory (gustafsson et al., 2013). other research has found that children exposed to domestic violence scored significantly lower on standardized tests of verbal ability than a national sample of same-aged children, and that this relationship was mediated by maternal education level (graham-bermann et al., 2010). a longitudinal study found that secure maternal attachment was associated with higher iq scores in children who had been exposed to domestic violence, thus suggesting that parents play an important role in moderating the impact of domestic violence on their children (busch & lieberman, 2010). ybarra, wilkens, and lieberman’s (2007) research also found that among 2 to 5-year-old children, those who witnessed domestic violence had lower verbal scores, poorer cognitive functioning, and higher internalizing behaviours than their non-exposed peers. academic performance. the overall association between ipv exposure and academic outcomes has been described as ambiguous (knutson, lawrence, taber, bank, & degarmo, 2009), though research has found exposure to physical marital aggression and violence to be associated with poor academic progress and performance (haeseler, 2006; jayasinghe et al., 2009; margolin, vickerman, oliver, & gordis, 2010; peek-asa et al., 2007). a study of chinese adolescents in hong kong found witnessing domestic violence to be associated with cognitive functioning (-0.13, p < .05), as measured by self and school reports of academic performance (ho & cheung, 2010). in this sample of 422 students (65% male, 35% female) aged 11 to 18, girls reported more exposure to (i.e., witnessing) domestic violence than boys. in a crosssectional study of 828 sri lankan children, aged 14 to 17, ipv exposure was found to be negatively associated with both school performance and attendance. children who were exposed to current physical abuse of their mothers were found to be 2.8 times more likely to obtain an average grade of < 40% (i.e., a failing grade) and 3.8 times more likely to have school attendance < 80%, compared to their non-exposed peers (jayasinghe et al., 2009). a prospective, longitudinal study of 103 families found that children aged 9 and 10 who were exposed to physical marital aggression in the previous year were more likely to experience academic failure, as measured by failing grades, suspension, and/or expulsion (margolin et al., 2010). over half (59.2%) of the children in this sample reported being exposed to physical marital aggression at least once in the previous year, providing further evidence that a large number of children are exposed to ipv each year, and that this exposure has significant implications for their educational attainment and academic success. academic performance may be affected by exposure to domestic violence in a number of ways, both as a result of the negative effects of exposure on children and the impact of domestic violence on victims’ ability to support their children’s academic success. for instance, children may have difficulty focusing or concentrating because they are preoccupied with problems at home or are getting insufficient sleep (buckley et al., 2007; peek-asa et al., 2007). the coping strategies of young children, while perhaps adaptive in the environment in which domestic international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 548 violence is occurring, may not be adaptive in school settings and may interfere with their academic performance (baker & cunningham, 2009); that is, children who tune out noise to cope at home may similarly tune out teachers in the classroom (baker & cunningham, 2009). some children and youth have difficulty studying or completing homework assignments due to ongoing conflict at home, which can in turn lead to conflict with teachers and detachment from school (buckley et al., 2007; peek-asa et al., 2007). ipv exposure can also have an impact on children’s emotional expression, which may interfere with their academic performance, as well as relationships with teachers and peers (byrne & taylor, 2007). research suggests that children who are exposed to domestic violence may not reach developmental or academic milestones as quickly as their peers (baker & cunningham, 2009). a rural population-based cohort study involving school-aged children found that those exposed to severe physical domestic violence scored 12.2 percentile points lower, on average, than their non-exposed peers, on standardized tests (peek-asa et al., 2007). the study found that standardized test score reductions were greater for girls than for boys, and for younger (i.e., under age 12) than older children. additionally, the effects were stronger for language and math than for reading. the authors note, however, that they did not examine direct child abuse and that, given the strong correlation between abuse and ipv exposure, it is plausible that other confounding variables, such as child abuse, were responsible for test score reductions. however, another study of children exposed to maternal ipv found that exposure was not related to lower grades, special education, or being held back in school – all measures of poor academic performance. yet, if children were also themselves abused, their gpas were lower, on average, than those of their non-exposed peers, and they were at greater risk of being held back a grade in school (kernic et al., 2002). absenteeism and suspension. domestic violence may also be one reason that children move or change schools, which has the potential to disrupt their learning and affect their academic success (baker & cunningham, 2009). in some cases, the impact of domestic violence on children and youth may result in absenteeism or dropping out, suspension or expulsion from school, or being denied access to education (byrne & taylor, 2007). however, few teachers in byrne and taylor’s (2007) study reported expulsion for children who displayed aggressive behaviour at school and were exposed to domestic violence at home. a study of sri lankan children found that those exposed to physical violence against their mothers were more likely to have both poor school attendance and performance (jayasinghe et al., 2009). another study of children exposed to domestic violence found them to be 1.6 times as likely to be absent from school, and 1.8 times as likely to be suspended from school, than their non-exposed peers (kernic et al., 2002). importantly, the likelihood that exposed children would be absent from school rose to 2.2 times the comparison group if those children were also themselves the victims of child abuse. the study did not find maternal ipv exposure to be associated with academic expulsion (kernic et al., 2002). one longitudinal study found that the relationship between domestic violence exposure and dropping out of high school was moderated by peer communication and support (tajima, herrenkohl, moylan, & derr, 2011). spillover effect on peers. the impact of ipv exposure on school-aged children is not limited to children who are directly affected, but may also have residual effects on their peers. in international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 549 a study that matched school records with domestic violence cases, identified through civil court records involving a request for protection, carrell and hoekstra (2010) estimated that adding “one more troubled peer in a classroom of 20 students reduces student [reading and math] test scores by 0.69 percentile points and increases the number of disciplinary infractions committed by 17 percent” (p. 226). the authors note that these effects were amplified for higher-income children whose lower-income peers have been exposed to domestic violence, and for boys whose male peers have been exposed to domestic violence. the “spillover” of domestic violence exposure for one child thus has impacts for other students in the classroom. it is unclear from this study whether negative academic outcomes stem from the disruptive behaviours of ipv-exposed students in the classroom that distract non-exposed peers or are observed because ipv-exposed students are slower learners, thereby slowing down the learning of other students. this study highlights the important implications of domestic violence exposure not only for children who live in households where such violence occurs, but also for their peers who may be indirectly exposed to the impacts of ipv at school. while difficulties at home may interfere with academic success, not all children who are exposed to domestic violence at home will exhibit behavioural difficulties in school. rather, byrne and taylor (2007) suggest “schools may be seen as a protective or resilience factor against the effects of domestic violence on children” (p. 187). some exposed children adjust well to new school settings and make a concerted effort to hide the impact of domestic violence exposure, making it more difficult for school staff to identify those who are experiencing adversity at home (buckley et al., 2007; turpel-lafond, 2012). children may perceive school as a “safe place” where they are not at risk of exposure and where they may find some support to deal with the impact of domestic violence exposure (buckley et al., 2007; byrne & taylor, 2007). young children may have limited coping skills when facing exposure to domestic violence and, because educators are in contact with students on a regular basis, they play an important role in identifying signs of domestic violence exposure, supporting children as they attempt to cope with the impact of domestic violence, serving as positive role models for children, and enhancing children’s safety (baker & cunningham, 2009; haeseler, 2006). specifically, teachers may provide positive and supportive relationships that can assist children in coping with domestic violence in the home (byrne & taylor, 2007). however, one study involving a focus group with 11 abused mothers, found that school staff sometimes lacked understanding about domestic violence, and were unable or unwilling to assist children who were exposed to violence in the home (buckley et al., 2007). interviews with youth who were themselves exposed to domestic violence similarly found that programming for school-aged children and teachers was thought to be beneficial so that teachers were more understanding, supportive, and inclusive of children who were exposed to domestic violence (buckley et al., 2007). a recent report from british columbia’s representative for children and youth recommended domestic violence training for school personnel throughout the province, and stressed the importance of age-appropriate education for school-aged children concerning issues of domestic violence (turpel-lafond, 2012). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 550 employment outcomes given the detrimental impacts of exposure to ipv in childhood and adolescence on the life course path, one could hypothesize that childhood adversity may substantially influence the future employment outcomes and earning potential of individuals. entering the labour force is a key developmental stage of adolescence. while employment enhances psychosocial functioning and provides a myriad of benefits, failure to execute this transition successfully can lead to serious problems in adulthood (tanaka et al., 2011; zielinski, 2009). unfortunately, the association between exposure to ipv in childhood and adolescence, and employment outcomes, has not been directly studied; in fact, the relationship between child maltreatment and employment status in adulthood has rarely been examined (tam, zlotnick, & robertson, 2003; tanaka et al., 2011; thompson et al., 2012; zielinski, 2009). additionally, no long-term, longitudinal studies have examined the link between exposure to ipv and labour force participation (tanaka et al., 2011). although there is a paucity of research that specifically examines exposure to ipv and employment variables, there are a few studies that consider child maltreatment and prospective socioeconomic variables. child maltreatment, which includes exposure to ipv (cfcsa, 1996; moss, 2004), is correlated with a variety of challenges that have been determined to be detrimental to employment outcomes (hall & parker, 2010; liptak, 2009).7 this section of the review identifies research endeavours that have investigated child maltreatment (including exposure to ipv) and employment outcomes in adulthood. concurrently, encumbrances related to ipv and employment variables, including psychopathological problems, psychosocial difficulties, and functional deficits will be contemplated.8 zielinski’s (2009) study met the search and inclusion requirements for this review. the author studied the relationship between childhood experiences of maltreatment and definitively considered employment outcomes. employing a prospective cohort design to analyze the longterm effects of child abuse and neglect, the author examined several indicators of socioeconomic well-being in adulthood. nine dependent variables related to the participants’ socioeconomic situation were evaluated; these measures included employment status, income levels, and health insurance coverage. the author used data from the national comorbidity survey (ncs). this psychiatric epidemiologic general population survey has been used previously to examine issues of socioeconomic well-being, child maltreatment, and family violence, as well as numerous forms of psychopathology. the complete sample size for this review was 5,004 with a mean age of 35.32. importantly, in his literature review, zielinski (2009) pointed out that, “nearly all of the studies that have examined this issue have suffered from significant methodological limitations” (p. 667) and subsequently addressed many of these challenges. the results of the zielinski (2009) study indicated that, when compared to individuals without maltreatment histories, adults who had “experienced maltreatment were twice as likely as non-maltreated adults to be unemployed at the time of survey” and “80% more likely to have 7 this paper is not intended to be a comprehensive literature review on common barriers to employment. 8 the complete text addresses many of these challenges in depth; this section considers the possible impact to employment outcomes. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 551 had someone in their household lose their job over the previous 12 months” (p. 671). furthermore, participants who reported maltreatment in childhood were more than twice as likely to fall below poverty levels, and twice as likely to live in the lowest quartile of income distribution. maltreatment victims were also less likely to have health insurance coverage. participants with histories of severe neglect were more likely to be employed, but were impacted by unemployment in the household (60% in the past year) and were 90% more likely to fall below the poverty line. zielinski’s study provided more evidence for dual exposure theories (i.e., the “double whammy” effect) in the realm of employment: “adults who had experienced more than one type of maltreatment were at increased risk for employment difficulties” (p. 673). given the dearth of studies that fit the specific search terms of exposure to ipv and employment outcomes, the methodological limitations in this research area, and the possibility that similar variables are being examined using a variety of terms, the research parameters were expanded to include symptoms of trauma that are associated with ipv and employment outcomes. it is known that children who are exposed to ipv typically experience multiple traumas and other adversities (evans et al., 2008; herrenkohl et al., 2008; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012). related studies indicate that trauma in childhood may have deleterious effects on employment trajectories. sansone, leung, and wiederman (2012) designed a project to study five types of childhood trauma and employment measures. of the respondents who participated in the survey (n = 328), 43% indicated that they had witnessed violence during childhood, 15% had experienced physical neglect, 44.8% had experienced emotional abuse, 25.9% had experienced physical abuse, 22.9% had experienced sexual abuse, and 37.2% denied having any experiences of childhood trauma. the questions related to employment queried the participants on their number of full-time jobs, percentage of time they had been employed full or part time, jobs that paid under the table, and being fired from a position. sansone et al.’s (2012) results suggest that, “trauma in childhood has varying and differential effects on employment in adulthood, depending on the type of trauma and the individual employment variable under study” (p. 678). notably, witnessing violence was correlated with a greater likelihood of being fired from a job, and sexual abuse was associated with a higher number of total occupations and a greater likelihood of being fired. the other forms of childhood trauma garnered no statistically significant relationships with employment variables in this study. these findings differ from zielinksi’s (2009) results. analyzing the link between traumatic experiences and consequent future expectations, thompson et al. (2012) explored expectations surrounding academic and employment success, employment instability, and social instability. for adolescents, perceived expectations may influence behaviour and actual outcomes (e.g., increased sensation seeking and risk taking, lowered impulse control). although exposure to family violence was not significantly correlated with future expectation domains in this study, maltreatment predicted low expectations in regard to academic and employment achievement and high expectations related to employment instability. the authors conclude that further research is required to determine how expectations in childhood and adolescence influence future functioning. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 552 in a canadian study, tanaka et al. (2011) examined the correlations between childhood physical and sexual abuse and employment outcomes. although not necessarily related to exposure to ipv in childhood, these variables certainly fall under the domain of child maltreatment. importantly, the authors made explicit efforts to overcome common limitations in this type of study. they used data from a more generalizable population, focused on both males and females, and examined the impact of more than one type of abuse. the study used data from the longitudinal ontario child health study, which were collected in 1983, 1987, and 2001. the final sample comprised 1,893 participants who had indicated experiences of childhood physical or sexual abuse. data pertaining to employment variables were analyzed for 1,616 participants who were employed during the previous 12 months (defined by the statistics canada definition of labour force status). importantly, variables from 1983 were included to control for childhood factors other than abuse. the study determined that adults who experienced severe physical abuse earned 29.6% less annual income compared to non-abused individuals. the authors indicate that this finding is “somewhat consistent with previous studies that have suggested a negative effect of child abuse on earnings” (p. 837). for employment variables, the authors found no significant associations with exposure to abuse, although the results indicated appreciable employment vulnerability for severely maltreated males. tanaka et al. encouraged future researchers to consider other “potential factors that have a negative influence on earning and might be associated with exposure to child abuse, such as difficulty in maintaining employment, life stressors, and other psychological impairment including aggression, antisocial behavior, and substance use problems” (p. 838). barriers to employment. a multitude of researchers have revealed enduring detrimental consequences that are correlated with exposure to ipv (see dauvergne & johnson, 2001; english et al., 2005; herrenkohl & herrenkohl, 2007; herrenkohl et al., 2008; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012; meltzer et al., 2009). many of these factors could contribute to employment deficits in adulthood: “barriers [to employment] stem from many circumstances, and they likely are multidimensional in terms of their impact and response to rehabilitation” (johannesen, mcgrew, griss, & born, 2009, p. 298). common obstacles to employment include poor work history and experience, insufficient education, lack of a support system, personal problems (e.g., financial, transportation), physical illness, and discrimination (liptak, 2009; sigurdsson, ring, o'reilly, & silverman, 2012). barriers specifically related to psychological attributes include concentration challenges, psychosocial difficulties, emotional regulation deficits, stress management problems, substance use, and other essential impairments (johannesen et al., 2009; liptak, 2009; sigurdsson et al., 2012). importantly, psychological challenges can be problematic to resolve because “they have a direct impact on self-confidence and self-esteem, and can contribute to feelings of stress, anger, depression, and helplessness” (liptak, 2009, p. 14). conclusions: the weight of the evidence at the beginning of this review of the literature on the impact of exposure to intimate partner violence for children and youth, the perspective established was a developmental ecological approach, one in which any particular trajectory of a child’s development emerges as international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 553 a web of complex interactions between individual factors and environmental characteristics (hertzman, 2012). this approach has proven to be useful, as it was speculated it might, in understanding the “multiple etiologies and sequelae of domestic violence” (mohr & fantuzzo, 2000, p. 70). that web and those complex trajectories have crystallized more clearly through the review. frequently the search found meaningful intersecting and interrelated impacts among those outcomes examined. after a brief synopsis of the initial foundational piece, what follows is a set of the major themes arising from the review, which serves as a roadmap through that complex landscape. the review began with a consideration of the neurobiological impacts. a double-edged sword effect is said to arise from the reality that simply witnessing domestic discord can impact on the development of the main stress-regulatory system (that is, the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal axis and autonomic nervous system) such that the emerging stress system can lead to malfunctions in the neurochemical regulatory system. the subsequent cost occurs much later when the dysregulated physiological mechanisms may lead to a host of physical and mental sequelae. unfortunately, because this manifestation may occur many years later, the direct association between the exposure to ipv and health issues, as well as behavioural and social adjustment problems, may remain obscured. an important related neuropsychological finding points to the direction of integrating individual activity patterns in the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system into specific response profiles reflecting interactions between these two autonomic nervous system branches. context-related ambiguity involved in interpretations of neurobiological response patterns was one of the most critical findings. consistent with contextual mediation hypotheses (belsky et al., 2007; ellis & boyce, 2008, 2011; steinberg & avenevoli, 2000), environmental factors seem to modulate the specific relationship between physiological activity patterns and health outcomes. thus the same pattern of neurobiological responses can serve both as a protective factor against, and as a risk factor for, pathways of pathological development under favourable and stressful conditions (e.g., ipv), respectively (obradović et al., 2011). in other words, just because the developing brain is impacted by exposure to or witnessing parental conflicts does not necessarily mean those will result in negative impacts. it depends on the environmental context in which those experiences occur, whether positive and protective or negative and stressful. in that sense, the context directs the final response to emerge along a continuum of possible positive and negative outcomes. one example given from the review to illustrate this was the situation in which a child had witnessed intimate partner violence in the family as directed toward the mother, but because the mother was supportive and protective of the child, he/she did not appear subsequently to develop dysfunctional internalizing or externalizing behaviours. the latter reality speaks to one theme that was common throughout our review. that is, the wonderment in these findings about why some of the children and youth, despite the experience of witnessing intimate partner violence apparently overcome the negativity to assume “normal” development and behaviour patterns. the answers to that question may assist in the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 554 development of successful preventive interventions as much as the answers to the question of what drives the negative impacts for children and youth in the first place. what are clear, however, are the potentially quite debilitating effects on a significant proportion of children and youth who witness or are exposed to intimate partner violence. that outcome indeed constitutes the major common theme emerging from the review. this was true no matter which categories of interest were examined: neurobiology, physiology, health, illness, hospitalization, mental disorder, substance misuse, addiction, internalizing and externalizing problems, conduct disorder, behavioural issues, crime, delinquency, victimization, academic achievement, and employment. to have them examined together allowed for a comparison and mapping of the outcomes amongst them, and possible points of intersection and intervention. considering first then the issue of internalizing and externalizing problems, we find that although current research is still attempting to delineate specific etiologies and trajectories, witnessing ipv has also been clearly correlated with a multitude of internalizing and externalizing problems (briggs-gowan et al., 2010; cosgrove et al., 2011; english et al., 2009; ford et al., 2011; slade, 2007). inevitably, contemporary studies may portray fragmented descriptions of the consummate impact of ipv exposure and the proposed dichotomies of externalizing and internalizing symptomatology tend to result in rudimentary descriptions of complex problems (cosgrove et al., 2011; ford et al., 2011). the significant comorbidity of psychiatric disorders indicates that there are ongoing challenges for mental health diagnoses and subsequent research. for example, there is significant overlap between depressive symptoms and aggressive behaviour. on the other hand, the science continues to evolve and psychosocial models and recovery-focused research reveal some of the complexities inherent in this realm (cosgrove et al., 2011; slade, 2007). without the compounding effects of child maltreatment and abuse that often co-occur with family violence, exposure to ipv has a definitive detrimental impact on mental health outcomes in the life course of individuals who are impacted by ipv (bayarri et al., 2011; bogat et al., 2006; bourassa, 2007; gewirtz & edleson, 2007; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012). although children who are threatened by high levels of ipv are at greater risk for developing emotional and behavioural problems, research confirms that children are affected by ipv, regardless of the degree of the exposure (bayarri et al., 2011; bourassa, 2007; gewirtz & edleson, 2007; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012). in discussing the various aspects and dimensions of the impacts of exposure of intimate partner violence on children and youth, we observed that these are not mutually exclusive. the notion of cascading effects informed our framework and analysis as it became ever more clearly evident that the individual categories of impacts were not only closely related to one another, but in a dynamic fashion influence each other in multiple and interconnected ways over time. the research that we have reviewed clearly shows that children who are exposed to intimate partner violence are at significant risk for lifelong negative outcomes. these outcomes have their beginnings in early exposure to intimate partner violence and the establishment of a “psychobiological fingerprint” (boyce et al., 2001) and “psychological scars” (saltzman et al., 2005) that can subsequently develop into internalizing and externalizing behaviours, conduct international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 555 disorders, or addictions, and can, in turn, lead to crime and delinquency, victimization, academic dysfunction, and employment challenges. the impacts of exposure to intimate partner violence are certainly felt first by the individual children and youth who suffer these exposures; however, as the impacts are felt in the lives of these young people, they also are also felt in their life worlds: their early childhood education and care centres, schools, peer groups, community connections, places of employment, health care centres and hospitals, detention centres, and so forth. in the end, exposure to intimate partner violence is in no way merely an intimate experience. it is a toxic, harm-producing experience that cascades into all aspects of our shared social world. limitations despite advances in research on the subject of children’s exposure to domestic violence since the early 1980s, a number of methodological problems remain. these include: 1. lack of clarity concerning the definition of “exposure” to domestic violence; 2. few standardized tools for assessing domestic violence exposure and child outcomes, and overreliance on some measures, such as the conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979; straus et al., 1996); 3. limited generalizability due to oversampling from shelter populations; 4. small sample sizes and lack of comparison groups; 5. overreliance on self-reporting, and mother-reported exposure and outcomes, instead of multiple informants; 6. limited attention to confounding variables; and 7. insufficient attention to the continuum of exposure and variations in children’s involvement (bair-merritt et al., 2006; chan & yeung, 2009; evans et al., 2008; fowler & chanmugam, 2007; gewirtz & edleson, 2007; holt et al., 2008; kitzmann et al., 2003; martin, 2002; mohr et al., 2000; sternberg, lamb, et al., 2006; wolfe et al., 2003). although the conclusions offered in this review seem to be grounded on a solid foundation, there are good reasons for exercising caution when interpreting the results. most importantly, it is taken for granted that “exposure” to domestic violence has the same meaning across studies, but clear definitions and operational measurements of the construct run into difficulties (holden, 2003). accurate assessment of children’s exposure to ipv is hampered by indirect retrospective measurement of vaguely defined terms like “exposure” to “domestic conflict” or “intimate partner violence” (edleson et al., 2007). according to edleson et al. (2007), the most often used – albeit imprecise – measurement technique relies on self-report formats inviting mothers and fathers to indicate how often their child witnessed (saw or heard) parental conflicts, suggesting that empirical criteria of exposure to ipv include children (a) not being the primary target of the violence, but (b) witnessing (seeing or hearing) the incident. much of the research on children’s exposure to domestic violence relies on maternal or primary caregiver reports of ipv, and does not verify or corroborate these reports with those of children themselves, or with official documents such as medical records (e.g., ackerson & subramanian, 2009; bair-merritt et al., 2008; hasselmann & reichenheim, 2006; olofsson et al., international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 556 2011; silverman et al., 2011; sobkoviak et al., 2012). a related limitation is that retrospective reporting is subject to recall bias and possible underreporting, particularly when participants are asked to report on violence they experienced many years in the past (anda et al., 2006; brown et al., 2009; dube et al., 2009; olofsson et al., 2011; ramiro et al., 2010; silverman et al., 2011; sobkoviak et al., 2012). finally, due to the sensitive nature of questions about ipv, including physical, emotional, and sexual violence, participants may not be forthcoming about their experiences (brown et al., 2010). this is particularly true in societies or cultures where social stigma related to domestic and sexual violence against women is high (sobkoviak et al., 2012). a lack of consensus on the definition of “exposure” and a lack of specificity in measurement continue to present limitations for this field of research. for example, in the area of health impacts, the frequency and/or severity of health outcomes (e.g., headaches) are not always taken into account. as well, the majority of research in this area indicates an association, rather than a causal relationship between the incidence of ipv against women and negative outcomes for children and youth (åsling-monemi et al., 2008; brady, 2008; sobkoviak et al., 2012). finally, in the physical health arena, research conducted in developing countries on the subject of nutritional status and mortality may have limited generalizability. with respect to mental health outcomes, camacho et al. (2012) outlined a number of methodological problems that plagued early research in the area of ipv exposure. many studies relied on clinical samples of children and cross-sectional, retrospective designs. as such, these findings may not be generalizable to a larger population and some of the measured effects of ipv may be attributed to recent events and residing in shelters (cosgrove et al., 2011; manion, 2010; slade, 2007). furthermore, the lack of longitudinal data makes it impossible to determine whether some individuals may develop mental health problems in later years (ford et al., 2011). contemporary research has made substantial efforts to address these limitations to improve reliability and validity of the study results. additionally, current projects are beginning to examine possible moderators and mediators of ipv exposure (camacho et al., 2012; spilsbury et al., 2008). while much of the existent research on ipv exposure and mental well-being have focused on children aged 5 to 12, and have been limited to a single encounter in the lifespan of the individual, studies have revealed the same detrimental results when examining adult outcomes (howells & rosenbaum, 2008). presently, scientific investigation on exposure to family violence and other family-related traumas remains limited (crusto et al., 2010). further study in the realm of ipv exposure and mental health challenges is required to determine possible adjustment trajectories (spilsbury et al., 2008). unfortunately, the lack of research funding and appropriate services for youth in canada compounds the problem, and may leave youth with lifelong encumbrances (manion, 2010; mental health commission of canada, 2012). the detrimental consequences of ipv exposure may linger throughout the lifespan of the individual and, if recognized, may require extensive treatment. regrettably, many of the subtle effects may not be diagnosable and remain untreated (bayarri et al., 2011; gewirtz & medhanie, 2008; moylan et al., 2010). exposure to ipv is associated with the presence of externalized and internalized symptoms in children, and a multitude of other mental health disorders. few studies extrapolate international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 557 potential moderating and mediating variables of ipv exposure, and while research suggests a multitude of risks, some children are functioning well after ipv exposure (ford et al., 2011; sternberg, lamb, et al., 2006). new knowledge could enhance treatment modalities and, as a result, possibly improve psychopathological outcomes and create lasting functional improvements (bourassa, 2007; crusto et al., 2010). presently, little is known about long-term trajectories of children who have been exposed to ipv and what variables may enhance their life course paths (ford et al., 2011; sternberg, lamb, et al., 2006). however, it is clear that violence in the home contributes to an environment that is frightening, confusing, and lacking in security and safety, and that ipv exposure places a substantial burden on the mental health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities (bayarri et al., 2011; lamers-winkelman, willemen, et al., 2012; mental health commission of canada, 2012; world health organization [who], 2013). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 493–587 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 558 references achenbach, t. m. 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(2009). witnessed community and parental violence in relation to substance use and delinquency in a national sample of adolescents. journal of traumatic stress, 22(6), 525– 533. doi: 10.1002/jts.20469 introduction family violence and child maltreatment in canada research on children’s exposure to intimate partner violence need for a comprehensive review literature review methodology neurological disorders neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment based on research on the neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment, we know that: 1. early socialization plays a critical role in the structural and functional development of the brain (danese & mcewen, 2012; grassi-oliveira et al., 2008; mccrory et al., 2011; shonkoff et al., 2009; teicher, 2000). neurobiological regulation in infants exposed to ipv animal and human studies have provided ample evidence that adverse early environments (e.g., lack of parental care, emotional neglect, insufficient nursing) can cause profound alterations in the activities of the sympathetic nervous system, parasympat... health conditions and use of health services nutritional status and mortality attention problems references beginning to understand the economic costs of children’s exposure to intimate partner violence international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 588 beginning to understand the economic costs of children’s exposure to intimate partner violence martin a. andresen and shannon j. linning abstract: intimate partner violence comprises 37% of violent crime in canada, imposing significant economic costs on society. childhood exposure to intimate partner violence is a well-documented phenomenon, but the resulting costs are less understood. some research has found that children exposed to intimate partner violence are at a greater risk of developing health and behavioural problems that potentially impact these children as well as society as a whole. however, there is no known estimate of the economic costs of this exposure to intimate partner violence. in this paper, we develop a simple model to estimate these costs. we estimate that each year there are approximately 125,000 new children exposed to intimate partner violence generating a yearly economic cost to society of $759 million for that one cohort of children in canada. over a period of 10 years, this one cohort would impose an economic cost of $7.0 billion, and this is substantially underestimated because it does not include the new sets of children exposed to intimate partner violence each year. as such, the potential for societal economic cost savings resulting from the prevention of intimate partner violence is significant. keywords: intimate partner violence, childhood exposure, economic costs martin a. andresen, ph.d. is an associate professor in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, british columbia, canada v5a 1s6. e-mail: andresen@sfu.ca shannon j. linning is a graduate student in the school of criminology at simon fraser university, 8888 university drive, burnaby, british columbia, canada v5a 1s6. e-mail: sjl6@sfu.ca mailto:andresen@sfu.ca international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 589 intimate partner violence (ipv) compromises approximately 30% of all violent crime reported to the police in canada (sinha, 2012). however, it is well known that not all crime is reported to the police. with the reporting rates to the police for ipv and violent crime as a whole being 22% and 29% respectively, ipv is estimated to be 37% of all violent crime (brennan, 2011; brennan & dauvergne, 2011). because this significant proportion of violence is based on ipv, this is not an issue that can be ignored if (violent) victimization is considered a concern in our society. as with any form of crime, the costs of ipv can be estimated. these costs consider both the direct costs (medical services, counselling, police and criminal justice services, etc.) and indirect costs (decreases in productivity, loss in the quality of life (pain and suffering), etc.). in this context, zhang, hoddenbagh, mcdonald, and scrim (2012) estimated that the total economic impact of ipv in 2009 for canada was $7.4 billion, with costs borne by the victims comprising over 80% of that figure. absent from this estimate and others (e.g., reeves & o’leary-kelly, 2007; rivara et al., 2007; varcoe et al., 2011) are the economic costs borne by the children exposed to ipv. of course, in these studies the authors are investigating the impact of ipv on the direct victims of ipv such that the economic costs of exposure to ipv are beyond the scope of their research. in fact, we are unaware of any studies that investigate the economic effects on these children or on the health, social, and justice agencies that respond to these children. there are many costing studies that investigate the effects of child maltreatment – see brown, fang, and florence (2011) for a systematic review – but none that identify the independent effect of children’s exposure to ipv. in this study, we make a first cut at such an economic cost estimation. we consider: the effects of children’s exposure to ipv, some measurable and others not; the number of new annual exposures of children to ipv; and the ultimate economic costs of children’s exposure to ipv considering a number of different contexts with sensitivity analyses. effects of children’s exposure to ipv the effects of children’s exposure to ipv are many and varied. children’s exposure to ipv has been found to be associated with neurological disorders, physical health outcomes, mental health and substance use outcomes, conduct and behavioural outcomes, delinquency, crime and victimization, and academic and employment outcomes (anda et al., 2006; anda, tietjen, schulman, felitti, & croft, 2010; ramiro, madrid, & brown, 2010). the difficulty, however, in assessing the economic costs of these outcomes is the need for: (a) the number of new children exposed to ipv annually; (b) base rates of these outcomes to avoid double-counting; (c) the increase factor (risk of these outcomes resulting from children’s exposure to ipv); and (d) costs associated with these various outcomes. if any one of these four items is missing, the economic costs associated with them cannot be estimated. this is a limitation we encountered for many of the individual outcomes listed in the outcome categories above. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 590 the number of new children exposed to ipv annually is estimated below, and despite the lack of data, we were able to obtain all three of the latter items for our estimates. data used in these estimates are drawn from many countries, but canadian data are used where possible. the following individual outcomes are considered for oneyear costs: sleep disturbances, asthma, frequent headaches, smoking, alcohol abuse, driving under the influence, illicit substance abuse, early pregnancy, unintended pregnancy, attempted suicide, conduct disorder, referral to a speech pathologist, and living below or at poverty. sleep disturbances sleep disturbance is a more general term that captures not only insomnia, but also the phenomena of having difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep, as well as feeling tired after what should be a good night’s sleep (anda et al., 2006). and the literature on the effect on children exposed to ipv is an increase in its prevalence by a factor of 20%, 1.2. the base rate for sleep disturbances had wide variation, ranging from: 35% to 40% (hossain & shapiro, 2002); 30% to 32% (rosekind et al., 2010); 30% to 48% (ohayon, 2002); and 33% (daley, morin, leblanc, gregoire, & savard, 2009). in order to err on being conservative, we use 30% in the calculations below. with regard to the economic costs of sleep disturbances, there are equally wideranging estimates. however, this is primarily due to what is included in the economic costs: direct costs (medications and health care services) and other costs (vehicle collisions attributed to sleep disturbances). though there are a number of these studies available (see, for example, hossain & shapiro 2002, rosekind et al., 2010, and daley et al., 2009), we used the estimates of hillman, murphy, antic, and pezzullo, (2006) because they were the most inclusive, considering direct health costs, work-related injuries, vehicle collisions, and productivity loss for one year. the hillman et al. (2006) annual estimate is national (australian), so this was transformed into a per person cost. per person here, and in all subsequent calculations, refers only to those people who are involved in the outcome – sleep disturbances in this case. this is because we are not concerned with the cost that each person has to pay – using the total (working) population as the denominator – but rather the average cost imposed on society by the individual directly involved in the outcome. transforming this figure into 2013 canadian dollars gives us $9,490 per person per year; all subsequent dollar figures mentioned are 2013 canadian dollars. asthma according to subramanian, ackerson, subramanyam, and wright (2007), the effect on children exposed to ipv on asthma is an increase in its prevalence by a factor of 15% to 19%, 1.15 to 1.19. in our calculations below, we use 1.15 to be conservative. the base rate for asthma varies by the age of the individual and is greater for children than adults. however, there is very little variation across studies (barnett & nurmagambetov, 2011; centers for disease control and prevention, 2011). generally speaking, the base international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 591 rate for asthma in the general population ranges from 6.9% to 9.6%. we use 7% as a conservative estimate. the cost of asthma is based on work undertaken in the united states (barnett & nurmagambetov, 2011; centers for disease control and prevention, 2011); that is, $3,995 per person per year. frequent headaches as identified by anda et al. (2010), children exposed to ipv have an increase in frequent headaches by a factor of 30%, 1.3. the prevalence of (being troubled by) frequent headaches depends upon the specific research within each study. those studies that investigate migraines identify prevalence rates of: 11% (lipton, stewart, & scher, 2001); 9.6% to 23.2% (berg & stovner, 2005); and 17% (pradalier et al., 2004). however, the occurrence of frequent headaches is a more inclusive outcome with a prevalence of 15.6% (anda et al., 2010, in a review) and 29% to 77% (berg & stovner, 2005). consequently, we use 15% as a conservative estimate of the prevalence of frequent headaches. oleson, gustavsson, svensson, wittchen, and jonsson (2012) found the per person per year cost of headaches to be $410. smoking children exposed to ipv have an increased rate of smoking by a factor of 30 %, 1.3. the prevalence of smoking in the united states and the united kingdom is just over 20% (scarborough et al., 2011; centers for disease control and prevention, 2006), a figure that has remained constant since at least the early 2000s. using data from health canada and statistics canada, smoking prevalence in canada was 17.3% in 2011 for the general population, but 23.8% and 21.5% for the populations mostly under consideration here, 25 to 34 years and 20 to 24 years respectively (reid, hammond, burkhalter, rynard, & ahmed, 2013). we use a 20% prevalence rate for the base rate in the calculations below to err on the conservative side. the centers for disease control and prevention (2002, 2008) have estimated the health-related and economic costs attributed to smoking to be $6,500 per person per year. alcohol abuse alcohol use by children who are exposed to ipv is at a rate 70% greater than the general population, 1.7 (ramiro et al., 2010), whereas alcohol abuse through adulthood (defined as a self-proclaimed alcoholic) by children who are exposed to ipv is 100% greater than the general population, 2.0 (anda et al., 2006). considering the estimates for the prevalence of alcohol use that is considered high, defined below, we use the 70% increase in prevalence to err on the side of conservative estimates. the prevalence rates for a high level of alcohol use (exceeding government benchmarks for heavy drinking) range from: 20% and 15% of men and women respectively (scarborough et al., 2011); 12.5% (lee & forsythe, 2011); and 8.5% (hasin, stinson, ogburn, & grant, 2007). we use 8.5% in the calculations below. the economic cost of alcohol abuse, based on bouchery, harwood, sacks, simon, and brewer (2011) and sacks et al. (2013), is $5,951 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 592 per person per year: these costs include lost productivity (72.2%), health care costs (11%), criminal justice costs (9.4%), and other costs (7.5%). driving under the influence of alcohol driving under the influence of alcohol is at an increased prevalence of 30%, 1.3, by children who are exposed to ipv (anda et al., 2006). caetano and mcgrath (2004) found the prevalence of driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs to be just over 20%. we use 20% in all the calculations below. though bouchery et al. (2011) estimate the economic cost of deaths due to driving under the influence, more inclusive estimates that include the costs of vehicle collisions (including lost labour market productivity, property damage, medical expenses, and travel delay) are provided by blincoe et al. (2002) and moore, harrison, young, and ochshorn (2008). based on these latter national level estimates, the economic cost per person per year of driving under the influence is $2,315. illicit substance abuse illicit substance abuse has a relatively low prevalence rate in the general population; children exposed to ipv have a 70% increased prevalence, 1.7 (ramiro et al. 2010). compton, thomas, stinson, and grant (2007) estimate the base rate of illicit substance abuse to range from 1.4% to 2.0%. we use 1.4% in the calculations below. though the prevalence of illicit substance abuse is low, the costs associated with that substance abuse are substantial, considering costs such as health care, productivity losses, criminal justice costs, and other related costs that are associated with illicit substance abuse. based on the per capita costs of illicit substance abuse (productivity losses, medical costs, law enforcement costs, and other costs) estimated by rehm et al. (2006), the estimated cost per illicit substance abuser per year is $22,886. early pregnancy early pregnancy, defined as a pregnancy at 18 years of age or younger, is twice as prevalent within children (females) exposed to ipv (ramiro et al., 2010). the prevalence of early pregnancy has been estimated as 41.9 per 1,000 females in 2006, up from 40.5 per 1,000 females in 2005 (martin et al., 2008). we use 4% (40 per 1,000 females) in the calculations below. the economic cost of early pregnancy is estimated at $2,205 per person per year, based on lower earning/productivity of the teen parents and their children, increased use of social services, and increased prison costs (hoffman & maynard, 2008). unintended pregnancy children (females) who are exposed to ipv have a 50% increased prevalence, 1.5, in unintended pregnancies among adult women (ramiro et al., 2010). both trussel (2007) and finer and zolna (2011) have found that the base rate of unintended international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 593 pregnancies is approximately 50%. the economic costs of unintended pregnancies stem from the births themselves (medical costs of child delivery), terminated pregnancies, and stillbirths (trussel, 2007; sonfield, kost, gold, & finer, 2011). we use the more conservative estimate of trussel (2007), less than 50% of the more comprehensive estimate of sonfield et al. (2011), estimating that the economic cost per person per year is $1,998. attempted suicide children exposed to ipv have an 80% greater prevalence of suicide attempts, 1.8, than in the general population (ramiro et al., 2010). the base rate for suicide attempts has been shown to be 4.6% (kessler, borges, & walters, 1999) and ranging from 3% to 5% (weissman et al., 1999). we consider the prevalence of 4%. the costs associated with attempted suicides vary quite widely depending on the injuries that result from the attempt. yang and lester (2007) found that the range of economic costs for attempted suicide was approximately $2,000 to $68,000 (2005 usd). the average cost has been identified as $12,570 and $13,690, so we base our calculations on $12,500 leading to a per person per year cost of $17,373. conduct disorder conduct disorders are defined as behaviours such as bullying, threatening or intimidating others, being absent from school often, or lying to get something or avoid having to do something (foster & jones, 2005). children exposed to ipv in the united states have been found to have a 78 percent greater prevalence, 1.78, of conduct disorders than the general population (foster & jones, 2005). however, research in canada estimates that children aged 6 to 11 years exposed to ipv have a 124% greater prevalence, 2.24, of highly aggressive behaviour (hotton, 2003); whereas children aged 4 to 11 years have a 133% to 197% greater prevalence, 2.33 to 2.97, for hyperactivity, indirect aggression, and physical aggression (dauvergne & johnson, 2001). as such, we use the increase risk factor of 2.5, the average of the greater prevalence found in the canadian context. henggeler and sheidow (2003) found that the prevalence of conduct disorder ranges from 1% to 6%. we use 3% in the calculations below. based on economic costs in criminal justice, child welfare, special education, and mental health, foster and jones (2005) estimate the economic cost of conduct disorder to be $19,115 per person per year. referral to a speech pathologist children exposed to ipv have 7.5 times the referral rate to school-based speech pathologists than the general population (kernic et al., 2002). according to aron and loprest (2012), 22% of students possess a speech or language impairment. however, such a base rate is not realistic. statistically speaking, we would only expect 2.5% of the population to have true speech or language impairment, unless language impairment included learning english as another language and impairment was defined as functional international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 594 within a particular society – this is, based on 2.5% of the population in a normal distribution being two standard deviations to the left of the average. however, according to the 2007 american community survey conducted by the united states census bureau, over 94% of the united states is english speaking. and in canada, according to the 2011 census of population, 86% of the population is english speaking1. considering this, and the fact that the factor identified by kernic and colleagues (2002) referred to referrals to a school-based speech pathologist, we consider 10% of the aron and loprest (2012) prevalence rate, 2.2%. this number also falls within what would be expected from a statistical perspective (2.5%). the economic costs of a school-based speech pathologist were estimated to be just over $10,000 for 2000 in the united states (aron & loprest, 2012). as such, the per person per year cost is $19,115. below or at poverty lastly, children exposed to ipv as children are twice as likely to fall below the poverty line as the general population when they become adults (zielinski, 2009). the studies investigating the prevalence of poverty, and specifically those that consider children living in poverty, have variances in prevalence that are based on the definition of poverty itself. the most recent study (in the united states) that investigates this prevalence (adamson, bradshaw, hoelscher, & richardson, 2007) found that 22% of children live in poverty. however, the figure that is of concern here is the percentage of the population living in poverty, not just children. though estimates of such a statistic are readily available in the united states, there is no government-sanctioned calculation for those who live below the poverty line. consequently, there are many estimates of those living in poverty in canada, ranging from 10% to 20% (canada without poverty, 2014). as such, we use the median value of 15% in our calculations below; this value, incidentally, corresponds with the percentage in the united states. the economic costs of witnessing ipv in childhood are based on subsequent adult income, participation in crime, and poor health (holzer, whitmore schanzenbach, duncan, & ludwig, 2008)2. the per person per year economic cost of childhood poverty is estimated at $8,108. summary and exclusions though there are 13 outcomes considered in the economic costs of children’s exposure to ipv, there are a number of outcomes that have been identified but were difficult to implement in the analysis below. the prevalence of being absent or suspended from school, receiving lower grades, or having lower reading levels were not included because of difficulties in estimating the costs and prevalence associated with this outcome; also, because these outcomes are likely components in other outcomes, such as conduct behaviours, their exclusion avoids the potential double counting of costs. 1 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/hlt-fst/lang/index-eng.cfm?lang=e 2 ideally, we would obtain the necessary data for these factors individually. however, the necessary data are not available to us so this composite measure must be used instead. as such, this estimate should be considered an underestimate of the true cost of being at or below poverty. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 595 a notable absence is also an estimate of the economic costs imposed from criminal activity. the prevalence and economic costs of crime are well documented in the criminological and economic literatures (cohen, 1998; cohen & piquero, 2009; cohen, rust, steen, & tidd, 2004; cohen, piquero, & jennings, 2010; craig, schumann, petrunka, khan, & peters, 2011; delisi & gatling, 2003; park, 2010; zhang et al., 2012). however, these costs are at least partially considered in the outcomes of illicit substance abuse, conduct disorder, and living below or at poverty. as such, in an effort to avoid the double counting of the economic costs of delinquency, these costs are not explicitly included in the analysis below. consequently, this maintains the conservative nature of the subsequent estimates because some economic costs of criminal delinquency are most certainly excluded; one does not have to engage in illicit substance abuse, conduct disorders, or live in poverty to commit criminal events. similarly, children who witness ipv have a higher prevalence of adolescent alcohol abuse and illicit substance abuse. though these could have been included in the calculations below, they are not in order to avoid double counting and to generate more conservative estimates – these costs would be partially included within illicit substance abuse, conduct disorder, and living below or at poverty already. consequently, all of the economic costs present below in their various contexts must be considered underestimates of the true economic costs associate with children’s exposure to ipv. table 1 presents a summary table of all the outcomes from children exposed to ipv used in the economic cost calculations below, along with the base rates, ipv factors, and economic costs per person per year. clearly evident from table 1 is that the marginal costs of each outcome, with the exception of illicit substance abuse, are most often rather low. consequently, an important factor in the calculation of any economic costs is the number of children exposed to ipv. table 1. summary of outcomes for children exposed to ipv in cost calculations ipv outcome base rate ipv factor economic cost per person per year, 2013 cdn$ sleep disturbance 0.30 1.2 9,490 asthma 0.07 1.15 3,995 frequent headaches 0.15 1.3 410 smoking 0.20 1.3 6,500 alcohol use 0.085 1.7 5,951 dui 0.20 1.3 2,315 illicit substance abuse 0.014 1.7 22,886 early pregnancy 0.04 2.0 2,205 unintended pregnancy 0.5 1.5 1,998 attempted suicide 0.04 1.8 17,373 conduct disorder 0.03 2.5 19,115 speech pathologist 0.022 7.5 19,115 child poverty 0.15 2.0 8,108 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 596 new annual exposures of children to ipv when considering the economic costs of children exposed to ipv, a reliable estimate of the number of children exposed to ipv is critical. as such, we undertake a number of different calculations to ensure consistency and reliability with this estimate. this is important because if there is a lot of variation between the different calculations, one cannot be sure any one of them is reliable. however, if all of the calculations produce similar results, we can be confident in the estimates that are produced. there are a number of issues that must be considered. first, if reliance is made using official police data, there is a significant degree of under-reporting of ipv. second, not all situations with ipv are in the potential presence of children. third, not all children will be aware of any ipv in the household. fourth, there is a high degree of repeat victimization in the context of ipv that must be considered in order to identify the number of new exposures of children to ipv; this assumes that the “damage is done” after one exposure and we do not want to count the same children twice. and fifth, not all of the outcomes shown in table 1 will be applicable to all children. in order to make an estimate of the number of children exposed to ipv each year, these issues are considered in three different estimates of the size of this population in canada; two of these estimations are independent, with the third being related to one of the other estimations. the first estimation uses police incident data as its base. according to statistics canada (2011), the rate of ipv in canada, 2010, was 363 per 100,000 population. however, as indicated in the repeat victimization literature, the percentage of repeat victims is 42% in the united kingdom based on the british crime survey (hanmer, griffiths, & jerwood, 1999), 44% in canada and the united states according to the international crime victims survey (van dijk, 2001), and more than 50% in canada, based on an estimate of two or more victimizations per year (sinha, 2012; statistics canada, 2011). considering the upper bound of 50% as a conservative estimate of repeat victimization, the new/unique rate of ipv in canada is 181.5 per 100,000, based on police incident data. however, under-reporting is also a known issue regarding ipv. according to the general social survey in canada, the percentage of ipv incidents reported to the police was 28% and 22% in 2004 and 2009, respectively (mihorean, 2005). this result indicates a reduction in the rate of reporting of ipv to the police, but we split the difference and use a 25% rate of reporting to the police to be conservative. this results in a final rate of 726 per 100,000, of those aged 15 and older. in 2013 in canada, there were 29,484,181 persons 15 years or older leading to 214,055 new victims of ipv each year in canada. in canada, 70% of households are classified as families, that is, places where children may be present (statistics canada, 2007), and the average number of children a woman in canada had in 2011 (the most recent data) was 1.6 children. the first figure reduces the number of potential children exposed to ipv, whereas the second figure increases the number of children exposed to ipv. and finally, according to johnson international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 597 (1996) based on results from the 1993 violence against women survey, 40% of children are exposed to the ipv in their home; this is a lower bound because parents have a tendency to underestimate how much their children are aware of, while others have estimated the exposure of children to ipv to be as high as 60% to 80% (jaffe, wolfe, & wilson, 1990). however, more recent data from the general social survey in canada has shown that this exposure has risen in recent years. according to the most recent and available data, the percentage of children exposed to ipv has risen from 43% to 52% (sinha, 2012). consequently, of these 214,055 new victims of ipv each year, 70% are in familybased households (149,839) with an average of 1.6 children (239,742 children potentially exposed), with 52% of those children actually being exposed to ipv (124,666 new exposures each year). based on 2013 population data from statistics canada, this represents just less than 1.8% of all canadian children. over the course of 18 years, considering childhood to represent the years of 0 through 17, this indicates that one-third of the population has been exposed to ipv. the second estimation is more straightforward, based on the number of victims of ipv in any given year. according to johnson (1996), 3% of women are victims of ipv in any given year; because of the relative stability of self-reported spousal victimization, we use johnson’s (1996) number (brennan, 2011; sinha, 2012). with a 2013 (canada) female population (15 years or older) of 14,962,543, there are 448,876 victims of ipv in any given year. considering a 50% repeat victimization rate, this leads to 224,438 new women victims of ipv in any given year. multiplying this number by 70% (family-based households), then 52% (children exposed to ipv), and then by 1.6 (the average number of children per woman) generates an estimate of 130,713 new children exposed to ipv each year. for a more direct comparison to johnson (1996) – the number of police-reported victims of ipv in 2010 (sinha, 2012) – there were 102,500 victims; this is based on the rate used in the first estimation so it should not be considered an independent estimate. multiplying this number by 4 (a conservative estimate of under-reporting to the police) leads to 410,000 victims of ipv in 2010,,and 429,229 victims of ipv in 2013 based on a population growth of 4.69% during those years. considering the same multiplication factors above, this leads to an estimate of 124,991 new children exposed to ipv each year. the third estimation, one that is related to the previous estimation, considers the number of children exposed to ipv in 1993: 160,000 (johnson, 1996). because this estimate by johnson (1996) was based on the number of women, it should be multiplied by the growth of women in canada from 1993 to 2013, 29.1%. this results in 206,538 children exposed to ipv each year. and considering repeat victimization (50%) this results in 103,269 new children exposed to ipv each year. however, this number is based on previous estimates of the percentage of children exposed to ipv; this number therefore international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 598 needs to be multiplied by 1.21 to represent the increase in exposure rates leading to 124,883 new children exposed to ipv each year. because all three of these estimations generate basically the same result – 125,000 new children exposed to ipv each year – this number is considered robust and used in all the calculations below as the base number of new children exposed to ipv each year. however, certain outcomes from childhood exposure to ipv are restricted to subpopulations within that 125,000. for example, unintended pregnancies can only be attributed to the female population, approximately 48% of those between the ages of 0 and 17, and early pregnancies are defined as females who become pregnant at 18 years or younger. because the 125,000 number is based on those with a maximum age of 17 and this literature considers 15 as the age of potential pregnancies, this leaves females between and including the ages of 15 and 17. these are the outcomes in which pure biology plays a role. however, many of these outcomes would not become apparent until the later years of childhood: it is unlikely that smoking, alcohol and drug use, and suicide, for example, would become issues before 12 years of age. additionally, conduct behaviour and referrals to school-based speech pathologists are outcomes with costs borne in the school system, the former for those aged 11 to 17 years and the latter for those 5 to 17 years of age. consequently, all of the economic costs calculated below consider the appropriate female population and school age population. also, some economic costs consider age appropriate ranges for all outcomes, reducing the 125,000 number to the appropriate number. this begins with only those between the ages of 12 and 17 years being able to impose societal costs from these outcomes. these can be seen in table 2. though some research has indicated that long-term memory begins as early as age 1 (cromie, 2002, based on the research undertaken by jerome kagan), most research indicates that 3 years of age is when long-term memory begins to be more prominent (bauer & larkina, 2013). childhood amnesia is still apparent at this age, and until 7 or 8 years, but the exposure to ipv may be considered significant enough to be retained by children as young as 3 years old. as such, when age restrictions are considered, children aged 0 to 2 are excluded. table 2. percentages of age ranges and females females, 15 to 17 8.8% all, 12 to 17 34.5% all, 11 to 17 39.8% all, 10 to 17 45.1% all, 9 to 17 50.4% all, 8 to 17 55.7% all, 7 to 17 61.1% all, 6 to 17 66.6% all, 5 to 17 72.3% all, 4 to 17 77.9% all, 3 to 17 83.5% international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 599 economic costs of children’s exposure to ipv with the number of new children exposed to ipv, base rates of outcomes, the effect of exposure to ipv on those base rates, and the associated costs of the outcomes, the economic costs of children’s exposure to ipv can be estimated. in our calculations, we use a simple model. the base rate of any given outcome applies to the general population so we do not want to consider this rate for our cost calculations. rather, we want to consider the additional cases of each outcome resulting from childhood exposure to ipv. for example, if the base rate is 5% and the effect of childhood exposure to ipv is 50% (an increase factor of 1.5), we do not use 7.5% as our prevalence rate but 2.5% because the initial 5% are expected to occur regardless. this 2.5% is then multiplied by the appropriate population and marginal cost in order to obtain the annual expected cost of childhood exposure to ipv for that particular outcome. total costs are obtained by simply adding all of the marginal costs. all necessary data for these calculations are contained within tables 1 and 2, but our spreadsheet for the values reported below are available to the interested reader. though this basic modelling approach may be considered simplistic, in other research the lead author found that simple costing models have proven to generate far more realistic results than more complex models, when compared to actual data (see, for example, the discussion in andresen & jozaghi, 2012, p. 3533). table 3. economic costs, by issue, total dollars, and percentage of total issue total annual cost per issue (millions 2013 cdn$) percentage of total sleep disturbance 71.18 0.09 asthma 5.24 0.01 frequent headaches 2.31 0.00 smoking 48.75 0.06 alcohol use 44.26 0.06 dui 17.36 0.02 illicit substance use 28.04 0.04 early pregnancy 0.97 0.00 unintended pregnancy 30.4 0.04 attempted suicide 69.49 0.09 conduct disorder 42.13 0.06 referred to speech pathologist 246.91 0.33 below poverty 152.03 0.20 total 759 international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 600 the first estimated economic cost of children exposed to ipv restricts pregnancy to the appropriate female population and all children to the appropriate school ages, generating a yearly economic cost to society of $759 million for one cohort of children exposed to ipv (see table 3)3. this figure should be considered an upper bound for our conservative estimate of the annual economic cost of children exposed to ipv. discounted at 2% per year (average inflation over the past 10 years has been 1.7%), this results in a 10-year cost of one cohort of children exposed to ipv at $7.0 billion; this number does not include any growth in the population and is, therefore, an underestimate from that perspective. when the age range on the non-biological and school-based outcomes is restricted to those aged 12 to 17 years (34.5% of the 125,000), a yearly economic cost to society of $472 million is estimated for one cohort of children exposed to ipv. this results in a 10year cost of one cohort of children exposed to ipv at $4.3 billion, again not considering population growth. these figures should be considered lower bounds of the true cost of children exposed to ipv. when the age range on the non-biological and school-based outcomes is restricted to those aged 3 to 17 years (83.5% of the 125,000), in order to account for memory retention of children at very young ages, a yearly economic cost to society of $687 million is estimated for one cohort of children exposed to ipv, with a $6.3 billion 10-year cost of one cohort of children exposed to ipv. these 10-year economic cost estimates are also unrealistically low. if we consider 2013 the base year and calculate the annual economic cost to society considering the age range of 12 to 17 years, the following year there will be an entirely new cohort of children exposed to ipv contributing to the economic costs. consequently, over a 10-year period the actual economic costs of children exposed to ipv is far greater. considering these additional economic costs, but restricting subsequent cohorts of children exposed to ipv to fewer years in the calculation (9, 8, 7, and so on) the 10-year cost of children exposed to ipv becomes $26.4 billion. subsequent calculations may be undertaken to consider an entire generation of children exposed to ipv, a full 17 years, but it should be clear at this point that the economic costs of children being exposed to ipv are significant. considered in conjunction with the economic costs of ipv on the direct victims, the costs to our society from this violence are a detriment to our social welfare. limitations though the estimates provided above are instructive as a first estimate of the costs associated with children exposed to ipv, there are a number of limitations with the current analysis that must be considered. first, data are not available for all of the outcomes associated with childhood exposure to ipv. consequently, the estimates here 3 the percentage of total column must be treated with caution because we were not able to include all possible issues related to children being exposed to ipv. these numbers are provided to show the relative contribution of each issue in the current context. as future research is able to include more issues related to children being exposed to ipv, these percentages will, no doubt, change. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 601 may be considered underestimates. second, though canadian data were used when available, international studies were used in many cases. most of these, however, were based in the united states and can be assumed to be similar to canada, but this is not necessarily the case. third, and the most significant, is that our estimates are not based on a longitudinal study comparing outcomes of children exposed to ipv and children not exposed to ipv. we attempted to mimic such a methodology by only considering the additional number of people in the general population who would be associated with the various outcomes because of exposure to ipv, but we cannot be sure that our estimates are representative. however, we are confident that our estimates are a good starting point for understanding the costs associated with children exposed to ipv. using conservative statistics whenever possible, we have demonstrated that the costs borne by society because of children exposed to ipv are significant. also, with the estimated cost of children witnessing ipv being just over 11% of ipv, relative to zhang et al. (2012), our estimate is credible because not all children witness actual ipv victimization and the outcomes investigated here are probabilistic whereas the estimated cost of ipv is from actual victimization. hopefully, our research will stimulate others to replicate and extend our work. these extensions may be in the context of more sophisticated modelling strategies to investigate their utility or, potentially, through longitudinally-based research. conclusion interpersonal violence imposes significant costs to our society. these costs are borne by the direct victims of this violence (the relationship partner) as well as by any children who are involved. this research study has estimated the cost to society from children’s exposure to that interpersonal violence. at a minimum that societal economic cost is $472 million per year, but this estimate does not consider many of the outcomes of exposure to ipv that do not have data available in terms of prevalence or cost. additionally, if one considers that most individuals spend more of their life beyond the age of 17 years, the societal economic cost of children’s exposure to ipv is $759 million each year. the literature on the intergenerational transmission of ipv has not generated any conclusive risk factors we are aware of (see kwong, bartholomew, henderson, & trinke, 2003), and thus was not included in our earlier cost calculations. however, taking even a conservative 5% of the economic costs of ipv (based on zhang et al., 2012) resulting from the direct victims of ipv attributable to intergenerational transmission would cause the societal economic cost of children's exposure to ipv to soar and to easily exceed $1 billion each year. as such, the potential for societal economic cost savings resulting from the prevention of ipv is significant. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2014) 5(4): 588–608 in harm’s way: a special issue on the impacts and costs of witnessing intimate partner violence 602 references adamson, p., bradshaw, j., hoelscher, p., & richardson, d. 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